will@cvradio.com The tiny house that Bryan Korbel is building in his driveway will have all the comforts of a 260-square-foot home. Therell be a shower with an on-demand water heater, a microwave oven, stove, composting toilet, satellite dish and power provided by solar panels. Its being built on a trailer, so it can be towed anywhere. Korbels self-sufficient micro-cottage isnt being built out of a Thoreau-esque desire to simplify, simplify, or to achieve a chic Dwell magazine minimalist aesthetic. Hes building it for the end of the world. When all hell breaks loose war, natural disaster, a breakdown in civil society Korbel will hitch his house on wheels to a 1972 Ford F100 pickup. (Thats before the advent of computerized car systems, which Korbel says will be fried by the electromagnetic pulse created by a nuclear blast.) Hell haul the structure and his family to a patch of land he has north of Hinckley, Minn., stopping to get supplies hes cached along the way in PVC tubes buried underground. Hes prepared, he believes, to ride out anything that man or nature might throw at him. Korbel, 53, is a prepper, of course, that breed of person who stockpiles food, toilet paper and ammunition to last not days, but months just in case. Preppers see themselves as prudent, sensible ants in a world of feckless grasshoppers, even while they recognize that others consider them paranoid conspiracy theorists and doomsday prophets. My wife gave me the nickname Mad Max, Korbel said. My brother, he thinks its nuts. Hes lazy. I already know hes going to be knocking on my door. Predictions that the end is near are as old as Noah. More modern manifestations have included people who felt the need to build home fallout shelters during the Cold War and pessimists who feared the worst from a Y2K collapse. Events such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina have continued to fuel fears. The latest bad news: This year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decided to reset its famous Doomsday Clock a universally recognized indicator of the worlds vulnerability to catastrophe from three minutes to only 2 1/2 minutes before midnight. The scientific worrywarts cited tensions between the U.S. and Russia, North Korean nuclear tests, climate change, a rise in strident nationalism and intemperate statements from President Donald Trump and even lethal autonomous weapons systems yeah, killer robots among the looming existential threats to humanity. According to the Bulletin scientists, in the 70-year history of the Doomsday Clock, the last time things have been this bad for the planet was 1953, just after the U.S. and the Soviet Union developed the first hydrogen bombs. At that time, the scientists deemed we were only two minutes to apocalypse. SELLING PEACE OF MIND No wonder Costco is selling $3,399.99 packages of freeze-dried and dehydrated emergency foods that promise 31,500 total servings, enough to feed four people for a year, with a shelf life of up to 25 years. The food shipment arrives on a pallet that is black-wrapped for security and privacy. Or you could buy end-of-the-world supplies from a specialty retailer such as Safecastle.com. Safecastle was started by Prior Lake resident Vic Rantala after 9/11 because he saw a niche for an online source of affordable, quality, long-term stored food. The company has since branched out to sell surveillance robots, radiation detectors, folding bug-out bicycles intended for paratroopers and a 35-piece pet survival kit designed for a CATastrophe. We sell stuff nobody else sells, Rantala said. You can even buy an underground fallout shelter that costs more than $100,000. We early on developed a relationship with a steel plate shelter builder in Louisiana, Rantala said. Our builder has done seven-figure bunkers for people. He said his best-seller is something homier: canned, cooked bacon with a shelf life of more than 10 years. Rantala, 59, said his background has included service in the Army, intelligence work for the government and communications and consulting for corporations. But selling prepping gear has become kind of like a lifes mission. The shelters hes sold have saved lives in tornadoes, he said. Some of the food hes sold to preppers ended up being eaten when the disaster turned out to be a job loss. We sell peace of mind to people, Rantala said. Even though he sold the company a couple of years ago, he continues to work for it. He said sales are close to $50 million a year. He estimates that as many as 10 percent of the population are into prepping these days, although he admits figures can be fuzzy because preppers are notoriously secretive about their preparations. Sometimes you dont even tell your family members, he said. It can be a little bit of an obsession, I have to admit. Coconino County Sheriffs Office sent two deputies to keep an eye on things at Leupp Schools, Inc. after a threatening note found in the restroom of the school. According to CCSO, the note was found at 10 a.m. and referred to a shooting at the school. CCSO was asked to send deputies to the area to monitor the situation until Navajo Police officers could arrive. The school is not part of the Flagstaff Unified School District. Navajo Police are investigating the incident. Ayah Paul W. MUSA The Advocate General at the Supreme Court and President of the Popular Action Party, PAP and Chief Justice Ayah Paul Abine has reiterated that he has always acted within the ambit of the law and will forever do so. In an outing through his Facebook page early Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Justice Ayah said despite his incarceration, he has remained steadfast but is still waiting to be told what his crimes were. Ayah Paul writes, As I commemorate over 110 days under illegal detention at SED (in complete ignorance of why I am here; for I am yet to be told what my crimes are) following my abduction from my residence at biyem-Assi Yaounde, I have a word for all Cameroonians who care: ''"MY MORALE IS EXCEEDINGLY HIGH! FOR I AM AT PEACE WITH MYSELF AND WHOLLY SATISFIED THAT I HAVE FOUGHT (AS I KEEP FIGHTING) A GOOD FIGHT; WITH INTEGRITY, IN ALL HONESTY, IN TRUTH, AND ABOVE ALL, WITHIN THE LAW. AND SO ONWARD I MARCH AND SHALL SO DO TILL THE END; WITH INSPIRATION FROM THE HOLY SCRIPTURES THAT; Whoever Holds on till the end shall be saved'''' The Most High God has a Divine mission for me. Therefore, I shall not die unless HE so permits. I shall live; to accomplish it and to tell of the goodness of the Most High God in the land of the Living. I have always acted within the law and shall forever so do. MAY PEACE REIGN IN AND AROUND YOU ALL. GOD BLESS Rexon rescued by Police W. Musa A woman in Fiango Kumba, Meme division in the South West region has been killed May 9, 2017 by her own son after a dispute erupted over meal. Reports indicates the son who is commonly called Rexon,31, returned home late Wednesday and demanded to be served food but the mother allegedly told him there was no food. This angered Rexon who engaged in a bitter quarrel with the mother before using a machete on her. He partially chopped off the head of the mother in the sitting room leaving her dead in her own pool of blood in their Fiango residence. The population of Fiango spared no time to administer jungle justice to the guy who according to sources close to the family had taken an overdose of Tramadol, a hard drug. Police in Kumba saved his life from the hands of angry looking youths who had come out with sticks, stones and machetes to also hack his head. | BY Ricki Green | Jungle director Scott Pickett, an Aussie, has this week launched his fashion film Balestra for eyewear brand Carla Colour. Carla Colour eyewear is the brain child of ad industry expat and ex-BMFs Carla Robertson. Carla Colour joined forces with Pickett and model Taylor Allard (Ford Models) to create a visually dynamic, surreal and atmospheric fashion film to present the sunglasses brand in SS17. Shot in a magnificent yet crumbling housing estate outside Paris, Balestra evokes an atmosphere of a parallel world blending past and future. Allard gives an incredible performance as our multiple hero. Her buzz-cut and utilitarian styling were crucial to create a strong androgynous character. This stark look welcomes the explosion of colourful eyewear, featuring the key colours for the Carla Colour SS17 collection. Robertson launched her first unisex capsule collection in 2014 with her iconic round LIND frame, and is proud to be a women-owned business. The Carla Colour brand is committed to bringing rich and exciting colour to the eyewear market. Scott Pickett is represented by Jungle in Australasia. | BY Ricki Green | Last Friday, MediaCom Sydney closed its office to fundraise on behalf of its recognised charity partner, Starlight Childrens Foundation. Starlight Day, an annual event held nationally sees thousands of volunteers raise much needed funds to brighten the lives of seriously ill children through the organisations uniquely Australian hospital programs. Formed as a childrens charity in 1988, Starlight Childrens Foundation supports the well-being and resilience of children and their families who are living in and out of hospital by continuously helping restore the fun and laughter illness takes away. Participating in Starlight Day for a seventh year, over 120 yellow and purple clad MediaCom-ers took to Sydneys CBD to sell merchandise and collect donations during Starlight Childrens Foundations biggest annual fundraising event. Working as part of numerous teams across the CBD, MediaCom raised an incredible $18k for Starlight Childrens Foundation. The funds raised will go towards supporting Captain Starlight, Starlight Express Rooms, granting wishes to sick kids, and most importantly, to increasing the impact Starlight Childrens Foundation has for sick kids and their families across Australia. Says Sara Durree, talent manager, MediaCom: Our people are truly dedicated to raising vital funds for Starlight Childrens Foundation. These much-needed funds make a real difference to help brighten the lives of ill children, giving them the opportunity to laugh, play and be a child again. We are so grateful to have the opportunity to help bring some happiness back into the lives of those that need it most. Im so proud of our team as they have shown amazing support and dedication to Starlight Childrens Foundation. Acting as OneMediaCom, our people are strongest when they work together to help sustain Starlights programs that help bring smiles and laughter to ill children and their families. | BY Ricki Green | Mindshare has appointed Helena Snowdon (right) to the role of managing director of the Melbourne office. In tandem, Mindshare has promoted Sarah Thom (left), currently client leader, to the role of general manager. Snowdon has 18 years experience and has held senior level global new business roles in London since 2003, driving significant new business and network growth for agencies including Mindshare and Maxus. Most recently, she was the global new business director and a member of the Global Steering Board at iProspect, the digital performance specialist of Dentsu Aegis Network. Thom has been with Mindshare for over 3 years and is a stalwart of the Melbourne market having held senior roles at a range of agencies in the past 20 years including Vizeum, Mitchell & Partners and Optimedia. Says Snowdon: Im genuinely thrilled to be returning to my GroupM family and to be taking up the helm of Mindshare in Melbourne. Together, I know Katie, Sarah, the team and I have a great adventure ahead of us, shaping and evolving the agencys solutions with an absolute commitment to excellence, integrity, and our brilliant people. Says Thom: Im thrilled and honoured to be taking my career to the next level with Mindshare. Im particularly excited to be working closely with Helena, to build on our strong foundations and continue to grow and develop as an agency that is strategic, innovative and provocative. Says Katie Rigg-Smith, CEO, Mindshare Australasia: It is wonderful to have Helena and Sarah at the helm of our Melbourne office. Helena brings with her a fresh perspective, unique point of view and an energy that I am confident will continue to drive our Melbourne office forward. Having worked with Mindshare in the past she is also very well versed in our values and overall approach as an agency. Sarah has been an integral part of Melbourne Mindshare since she started over 3 years ago. I have had the privilege of working closely with her and cannot think of anyone better to step into the newly created role of general manager. Between Helena and Sarah we have a formidable duo that I am really looking forward to working with. Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 9:19AM By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla The UAG Rugged Case for the Microsoft Surface Book is like Hulkbuster armour for your Book. Adding military spec protection to Microsoft's premiere 2-in-1 notebook. Here's my take on what this case has to offer. Since I switched from MacBook Pro to Surface Book in December, I've bemoaned the general lack of accessories for Microsoft's flagship mobile computing product. While I did find a neat plastic cover on Amazon, I only used it when I had to lug the Surface Book to day-long events, trips or conferences. I always had my eye on the Urban Armor Gear (UAG) case which seems to offer comprehensive protection with hard plastic and bonded rubber parts. I liked that the case offers complete protection and even has a clever Surface Pen holder. I've used UAG's cases on Samsung Phones and iPhones and they've added maximum protection without impacting the weight and thickness that much. Designed to work with the Surface Book's 2-in-1 design and its Dynamic Fulcrum Hinge the UAG Rugged Case might just be what you need for work or school. Fit and finish Installing the UAG Rugged Case for Microsoft Surface Book requires some elbow grease. This case, after all, is designed to fit like second skin. You need to detach the display of the Surface Book, pop it into the top case and slide it in to ensure all the ports are accessible. The keyboard base just snaps nicely into the bottom part of the case and putting it all back together is generally easy. The UAG Rugged Case bulks up the Surface Book but it also protects it. Opening the hinge also raises the keyboard and angles the display in a more ergonomic angle than without the case. The rugged bumpers around the display protect the most vital parts of the Surface Book while some rubber tabs ensure that the Surface Book is locked when closed. UAG has done a great job allowing the necessary vents to breathe and none of the ports are obstructed. What you get, aside from overall protection form dents or scratches when you carry Surface Book in a bag is Military Spec drop protection. The Surface Book is impeccably designed and can survive a lot, but if you use it on the field or are out and about away from home, office or school then this is definitely an accessory to consider. Unfortunately, the UAG Rugged Case for Microsoft Surface Book accentuates the flaws of the Surface Book's design, mainly that the display half is heavy. The Rugged Case adds considerable weight and will cause the screen to fall forward even more if you're not using it on a flat surface. Hits: Rugged and complete protection for Surface Book (without performance base) Well designed, durable and offers drop resistance Surface Pen holder Dual Lock Screen Closure Misses: Bulks up Surface Book A bit tricky to install and remove Verdict: UAG has brought quality build and materials of its popular smartphone cases to Microsoft's Surface Book. The UAG Rugged Case gives the Surface Book added protection from day-to-day use, it has a convenient Surface Pen holder and is also designed for use in tablet or notebook mode. It is the best protection available for the Surface Book and ideal for anyone who takes their device everywhere and doesn't mind the extra bulk and weight. Rating: 4 out of 5 "The vet said that the hole in their head was done by a single blow, and both of them had the exact same size hole in the exact same area of their heads," Ms Williams said. In his section of the budget papers, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said there would be more "contestability" of government services, or opportunities for private players to bid for work, as he looks to save an average of $830 million a year from the public service for the period from 2014 to 2021 and $2.3 billion in the years to 2027. 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. Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) to declare the results for the state Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) exams on May 12, 2017, at 3 PM. When was the Karnataka SSLC exam held? The Karnataka SSLC exams 2017 were held from March 30 to April 12, 2017. How many students appeared for the exam? As many as 8.77 lakh students appeared Of those who appeared, there were 4.69 lakh boys while 4.07 lakh girls. About the paper pattern: The Board this year issued separate question papers and answer sheets so that students can take the question papers home. How to check Karnataka SSLC result 2017? Log on to official website Click on the notification on the home page for the Karnataka SSLC result 2017. Enter your roll number in the fields provided. Click to submit. Download the Karnataka SSLC Class 10 Results 2017 Take a printout for future reference. Also read: Karnataka II PUC Exam Results 2017: Expected On May 10 Jim Svobodas developmentally disabled brother was often confined to restraints. When he acted out, the solution was to increase his medication. Then, around 10 years ago, he came to Beatrice State Developmental Center, where workers took a different approach. They reduced his medication, increased his quality of care and made a word of difference, according to Svoboda. He used to be in straightjackets quite often, Svoboda recalled. When BSDC said 'Were no longer going to be using that,' We thought this is craziness. Youre putting my brother at risk, youre putting your staff at risk. They pulled it off. It surprised all of us. Svoboda, of Valley, was one of several people who spoke in support of BSDC during a public hearing in Lincoln Tuesday afternoon. The hearing was an early step in determining a plan for BSDCs future, prompting rumors of cuts or even the closure of the facility. Instead, the preliminary recommendation of the report is a combined service array, under which BSDC would continue to support the 109 residents. Megan Gumbel, CEO of BSDC, said providing respite services, short-term breaks for unpaid caregivers, would be a key component of the plan. Families dont always have respite options and what happens when you have that immediate need and theres nowhere to go? she said. How do you provide that care? It becomes a crisis. Now, we would serve as a respite provider, but only as a last resort, and thats while the community builds additional capacity for respite. Gumbel said one challenge would be the need to be licensed, while a benefit is that BSDC currently has the capacity. The recommendation also calls for enhancements to crisis intervention support and acute crisis stabilization. It would also call for continuing to locate operational and functional efficiencies, the goal being to address service needs and gaps. It doesnt mean that we would be looking at doing another layoff or another rightsizing, Gumbel said. It means that we would work through attrition and work through locating other efficiencies. Efficiencies dont always come in people. They often come in process that can lead to decreased cost, and we have seen that. Area officials representing the city of Beatrice, Gage County Board of Supervisors, NGage economic development group and Beatrice Area Chamber of Commerce all attended Tuesdays hearing to speak in support of BSDC. Beatrice Mayor Stan Wirth described BSDCs impact on the community, and what it means to the area. Beatrice has been home to the Beatrice State Developmental Center for 130 years, and its a very important element to our community," he said. "The residents have always embraced the center as a community partner. The 109 individuals that call BSDC their home are citizens of our community. Myron Dorn, Chairman of the Gage County Board of Supervisors, said BSDC represents more to the area than an economic benefit. He recalled growing up in the area and seeing the impact BSDC residents have on the community from a young age. As long as Ive been a member of Gage County, which has been all my life, I have been amazed by the BSDC facility, Dorn said. As a young child I remember driving by and being very impressed by it. I remember growing up, being a part of the county fair and seeing all the residents that came out to the county fair. However, not all who spoke at the hearing were in support of BSDC continuing to operate. Eric Evans, CEO of Disability Rights Nebraska, said the group supports the three-year plan, but ultimately wants to see BSDC closed for good. Today, I am here to advocate for the planned closure of Beatrice State Developmental Center, he said. We have developed a position which argues that the continued operation is not sustainable economicallySimply put continuing to invest in the facility is bad policy. Closure was listed as a possible option for BSDC, but was not the recommended course of action. Dennis Crawford, who said his brother has been a resident of BSDC since 1975, also spoke at the hearing in support of BSDC. He said closing the facility and forcing his brother to leave would be devastating, and that his brother has difficulty leaving, even for short trips. Everything we could see of the quality of care is very good, Crawford said. Hes been a resident of BSDC since 1975. He is severely handicapped and disabled, so the services that he receives there are very vital. I think if he were to be moved out on an involuntary basis, I think it would be very disruptive. If BSDC would close, residents would be served in alternative settings, under the proposal. Challenges with closing BSDC include housing needs for the residents, and that these residents would be removed from their homes. The hearing was held as as result of legislative bill 895. Passed in 2016, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Division of Developmental Disabilities was required to hold a public hearing regarding Beatrice State Developmental Center. The hearing is part of a larger report that will include an analysis of BSDC, including the ability to serve residents in the community. The plan will take into consideration the preferences of the residents, nationwide trends in similar facilities and the cost efficiency of services. The study is to include a cost analysis of the buildings and their current uses, evaluation of vacant buildings and demolition costs, a review of residents needs and conversations with families regarding their preferences. It will also evaluate community integration. Many BSDC residents are employed off campus, and more than 4,200 trips were taken by residents last year. According to information from the hearing, the average age of residents at BSDC is 67, with residents ranging from 25-86 years old and an average stay of 47 years. In 2017, the estimated cost per patient was $322,098. A rightsizing effective in April reduced the staff by 39 full time employees, and also prompted the closure of Carstens Cafe, a public restaurant located on the campus and operated by BSDC staff and residents. It was stated at that time that BSDC had 481 employees. The cuts were expected to annually save an estimated $1.6 million. Information provided during the hearing said that nationwide, state operated facilities are declining in size or closing. BSDC began as the State Institution for the Feeble Minded Youth, founded by the Nebraska Legislature on March 5, 1885 to provide special means of improvement to those in need. By 1921, the campus had 663 residents and 57 employees. Documents from DHHS state that by the mid 1960s the campus had reached a peak census of more than 2,200 and lacked space and staff. Because of this, hundreds of residents were transferred to the Norfolk Regional Center and the Kearney Tuberculosis Hospital. DHHSs history of BSDC states that the campuss population declined in the 1970s, allowing the facilitys quality to gradually improve the quality of basic care to residents, retrain staff and incorporate residents into new programs. The owners of two Yellowstone County auto dealerships are trying to block the pending sale of Beartooth Ford in Columbus to the owner of Dave Smith Motors and take over the dealership themselves, according to Beartooths owner and court filings. Garry Brayko, owner of Archie Cochrane Ford in Billings, and Don Jones, owner of Laurel Ford, exercised the right of first refusal in March. They argue in a filing in Stillwater County District Court that Beartooth Motors was overvalued by RFJ Holdings, which owns Dave Smith, because of pricey management contracts. A right of first refusal is a term included in most auto dealer franchisee contracts with the manufacturer to prevent unwanted buyers. In this case, Ford Motor Co. offered the right to Brayko and Jones, who are operating a partnership called Columbus Spartan LLC. The group that exercises the right of refusal typically must make the same deal offered. Archie Cochrane is the area's largest Ford dealer. Tonya House, Beartooth Fords owner for 15 years, said Tuesday the deal with Dave Smith, one of the nations largest dealers, would bring new jobs to Columbus and better benefits to current employees. She said she believes the Yellowstone County dealers want to shut down her lot to eliminate a competitor. I absolutely will fight them," said House, 45. She added she has hired an attorney. "This deal is very important to my community. Its very important to my employees. I am not going to be bullied." Messages left for Brayko and a Laurel Ford representative were not immediately returned Tuesday. Theyve hired Billings law firm Moulton Bellingham PC. In court documents, the two dealers argue that parts of the deal are too high or cant be justified, including: A three-year contract for House to remain as general manager for $20,000 per month. A list of the dealers assets, including shop equipment, office supplies and work vehicles, for about $600,000. A valuation of the real estate of $1 million. A list of contracts for employees and other services for about $850,000 annually. House said she never put her dealership on the market but was approached by RFJ last summer. Over the course of a few months, she changed her mind because she said she felt the sale was a good opportunity to grow the business and take care of her employees. House said the sale could allow the dealership to expand from its current workforce of 14 employees to 75 within five years. Employees would also likely be eligible for better health insurance and 401(k) retirement plans at a larger company, she said. I dont want to sell it, but I think this could be beneficial to everybody, and give Stillwater County a leg up I think (Dave Smith Motors) is an amazing group, and I think they would be an amazing partner for me, she said. Beartooth Ford is Columbus' only dealer for new vehicles. Kellogg, Idaho-based Dave Smith is one of the top 150 auto dealers in the country, according to Automotive News. It ranked first in the United States in 2015 for new retail throughout, largely because of its huge online presence, according to Automotive News Data Center. The dealer is known from Idaho to the West Coast. Its lot often had more vehicles in stock than the population of Kellogg, largely because Dave Smith marketed heavily in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. The dealer was sold in 2015 to RFJ, which was founded by Texas auto dealer Rick Ford and backed by a New York private equity firm. A hearing date in Stillwater County has not been set. Presented last month at the 2017 Shanghai Auto Show, the Audi E-Tron Sportback Concept has been green lighted for production and it will arrive in the USA in 2019. The decision is official, according to Autonews, citing executives with knowledge on the matter, and once ready, the electric SUV will be underpinned by a modified version of the MLB Evo architecture, shared with the A4, A5, Q5, and Q7. Its expected to hit the market with a broad range of zero-emission powertrains, but the most potent version of the vehicle should produce up to 500 horses, similar to the studys 496hp with boost mode engaged. This will allow it to travel from naught to 62mph (100km/h) roughly the same as the show car, in approximately 4.5 seconds. Audi will go the extra mile to make their E-Tron Sportback as futuristic as possible by fitting it with exterior cameras, organic light-emitting diode (OLED), and screens replacing the conventional side mirrors, but only in markets that allow it. Pricing is believed to commence at around $70,000, which will make it some $20,000 more expensive than the entry-level 2017 Q7. Paving the road for the E-Tron Sportback will be the E-Tron Quattro, a similarly sized SUV, which was previewed by the E-Tron Quattro Concept in 2015. It will be launched in 2018, and it will look similar to the coupe-ish Sportback, but with a more conventional roofline and the extra interior space that comes with it. PHOTO GALLERY The dieselgate scandal has pushed Volkswagen to give up on diesel engines in the United States but, in a surprise move, Mercedes has also conceded defeat. According to Autonews, Daimler has withdrawal its attempt to have 2017 models approved with diesel engines in the United States. The company hasnt decided whether or not to stop offering diesel engines in the future but its not a promising development. When reached for comment, Mercedes-Benz USA spokesman Rob Moran said We constantly review our portfolio offerings and make adjustments to meet immediate customer need. However, he conceded Combined with the increased effort to certify diesel engines in the U.S., we have put the certification process for diesel passenger cars on hold. Mercedes diesel engines are currently being investigated by the Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Air Resources Board. The company hasnt been charged with wrongdoing but the automaker has previously said it could be hit with a recall as well as significant penalties. An absence of diesel engines would be a notable omission but it wouldnt have much of an effect on the companys bottom line as diesel vehicles accounted for less than one percent of the companys U.S. sales in 2016. Photo Gallery In an Asian first, the government of South Korea is building a small city dedicated as a site to test self-driving technologies. Dubbed K-City, the site is being built on an 88-acre slab of land and will be used by local technology companies including Samsung, SK Telecom and Naver as well as Hyundai and Kia, Korea Business Times reports. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of South Korea, K-City will include expressways, zones for autonomous parking and bus-only lanes in an attempt to accurately mimic a real city. The site, set to be completed in 2018, will cost the government about 11 billion won ($9.7 million) to construct. Last week, Samsung received approval to test autonomous cars on public roads in South Korea as the country looks to become a leader in the self-driving field. In November 2016, the U.S. Department of Transportation started construction of a 335-acre site in Southeast Michigan as a purpose-built facility for the testing, verification and self-certification of connected and autonomous vehicles. When it opens, it will surpass South Koreas K-City as the largest location of its kind. PHOTO GALLERY B&E and theft at Tims Vernon - 10:20 am Photo: CSRD The Shuswap Emergency Program has activated a call centre in support of emergency events occurring throughout the Shuswap region. For all emergency related information requests and inquiries please contact: Emergency Operations Centre at 250-833-3351 Go to the CSRD website for information updates. Photo: Tim Stanfield UPDATE: 6:20 p.m. West Kelowna Fire Rescue says it quickly knocked down a truck fire outside the West Kelowna CIBC this afternoon and kept it from extending into the commercial building. The building suffered minor heat damage, however the truck is a total loss. Crews remained on scene to ensure there were no hidden fires in the soffits. The incident is not considered suspicious at this time, and no one was injured, said assistant fire chief Chad Gartrell. ORIGINAL: 4:50 p.m. A pickup truck went up in flames outside the West Kelowna CIBC this afternoon. The Ford crew cab sent a pillar of smoke rising over the commercial district near Walmart on Elk Road just off Highway 97. The fire happened just after 4:30 p.m. Fire crews are on scene and apparently have the blaze out now. During the fire, bank staff kept customers inside the building for safety, as the vehicle was parked directly outside. Alanna Kelly Photo: Contributed The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has launched a website to let the public know what roads have been impacted by flooding. The information on this website covers roads that arent major thoroughfares that are covered by drivebc.com. Numerous roads throughout the province have been damaged or closed entirely because of the recent rain storms that have soaked the B.C. Interior. Debbie Sell, TNRD Emergency Operations Centre, encouraged people to use the site before travelling. Photo: Contributed A tragic three-vehicle crash on Highway 1 east of Revelstoke last Saturday left one man dead and another man with serious injuries. All of those involved were from Alberta. The BC Coroner's Service has taken the lead in the investigation, and is being assisted by Revelstoke RCMP and the Trans Canada East Traffic Services division. On May 6th, 2017 at approximately 4:20 p.m., police and emergency services personnel responded to a three vehicle collision near Albert Canyon. According to investigators, the scene examination showed that the collision occurred in an S curve portion of the road and involved a loaded eastbound commercial motor vehicle, a westbound Chevrolet pickup truck pulling a boat and a westbound empty logging truck. The 59-year-old male driver of the eastbound commercial motor vehicle from Calgary was pronounced dead at the scene. The male driver of the empty logging truck from Grande Prairie suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to the hospital in Kamloops. The male driver in the pickup and three members of his family received minor injuries that were treated at the scene. The family came from Acme, Alberta. Police said the investigation is continuing. MetraPark is hosting two big events Friday, including a visit by Vice President Mike Pence to help fellow Republican Greg Gianforte stump for votes. But, MetraPark officials say they've got it handled. Pence will speak in the Montana Pavilion, which holds 1,500 people and is on the lower part of the grounds close to the carnival lot. The other event is the Missions Banquet presented by the Billings chapter of Provision International, a worldwide Christian ministry of outreach that networks resources to serve people in great need. The banquet will be held in the Rimrock Auto Arena. About 3,000 guests are expected at the banquet. Ray Massie, MetraPark marketing director, said there will be ample parking for both events, but warned that there will be a high volume of traffic on Main Street. Typically, Friday evening at 5 p.m. is one of the busiest times on Main Street as Heights commuters head home from work. Massie has received calls from folks worried that two events can't take place at the same time. "MetraPark was built to handle simultaneous multiple activities," Massie said. "Both events will happen as scheduled." Those attending the banquet should park in the upper lot and people attending the Pence visit should park in the lower lot. Massie is considering opening the carnival lot to accommodate more parking. Otherwise, some people attending Pences speech will have to park in the upper lot. MetraPark is not in charge of security for Pence; the Secret Service is. Massie did say people should plan ample time for the security check and leave extra items at home to streamline the process. Pence's speech is free. In May 2016 when presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, spoke in the Montana Pavilion, a second room was opened to accommodate an overflow crowd. Massie said 3,000 people were at that rally. Some people waited in line for over an hour to get into the building. Photo: Google Maps The City of Kelowna has issued a water quality advisory for customers served by the Swick Road water intake in the Mission. The advisory affects 48 properties within the City of Kelowna water utility area and alerts residents of a modest health risk associated with consuming water. The following customers are affected: 5851 5891 Lakeshore Road 167 180 Rimrock Road 164 168 Rimrock Court 100 186 Timberline Road 205 220 Ambridgefield Road The advisory is due to elevated turbidity levels due to sediment material flowing into the lake. Interior Health has been contacted, and city staff continue to monitor the situation. We will also continue to provide updates for residents as they become available, Ed Hoppe, water quality and customer care supervisor, said in a press release. IH recommends people with weakened immune systems or chronic illnesses, and those under 12 or over 65 drink water that has been boiled for one minute and allowed to cool. Alternatively, they can use use filtered, bottled or distilled water. Photo: Twitter A Manitoba politician is planning to repay a $5,000 cellphone bill he racked up while on a tropical vacation. Rob Altemeyer, a longtime legislature member for the Opposition New Democrats, submitted a monthly expense claim in February that included $5,000.72 for wireless service. The figure is contained in documents filed with the Members' Allowances Office, the legislature group that oversees politicians' work-related spending. His bills the two prior months were under $60 each. The NDP rejected interview requests Tuesday, but a caucus spokeswoman said Altemeyer inadvertently racked up high roaming charges while on vacation in Mexico. She said he filed his expense claim with the expectation he would have to repay much of it. "Rob had already committed to covering the full bill, other than the normal allowable monthly business expenses, after negotiations with the provider to reduce the bill are complete," Rachel Morgan wrote in an email. "He had already arranged with Members Allowances to cover it, with the exception of the normal allowable monthly businesses expenses. Taxpayers won't be on the hook for the extra fees." There was no word on when Altemeyer's attempt to knock down the price might be complete. Altemeyer has represented the Wolseley constituency in Winnipeg since 2003. He captured 41 per cent of the vote in last year's election, narrowly defeating a Green Party candidate. The high phone bill comes at a time when the New Democrats are pressing for information on the cellphone habits of Premier Brian Pallister when he goes to his vacation home in Costa Rica. Pallister has said taxpayers do not cover any of his out-of-country communications costs. He has cited security concerns for refusing to provide details as to how he keeps in contact with his staff and caucus colleagues while he is away. Photo: Alanna Kelly Steve Thomson has been declared the winner in Kelowna Mission. "Very excited and very humble," said Thomson. Thomson was declared early in the evening, followed closely behind Norm Letnick. The incumbent Liberal MLA and Minister of Forests led right from the start and currently has more than 52 per cent of counted votes. "They did come in quickly, my great colleague Norm Letnick was declared first," he said. "To be declared early makes the evening a lot easier to settle down the nerves before hand." Thomson said he was proud of the work he was able to do as Minister of Forest, Land and Natural Resources. A key area he said he will focus on now will be water infrastructure for south-east Kelowna. "I learned that we need to continue to focus on bringing benefits to B.C., that we need to continue to focus on the critical needs in the area I heard that for sure, health, growing institutions at UBC and Okanagan College because they are great institutions and they continue to grow," he said. Harwinder Sandhu of the NDP was the closest challenger, currently sitting with 23 per cent of the vote. For the Greens, Rainer Wilkins sits with 16 per cent of counted votes, and BC Conservative Chuck Hardy trails with 7.59 per cent. "We need to continue to grow our economy so that we can continue to provide those services for all our citizens here," said Thomson. Photo: Alanna Kelly Liberal MLA Norm Letnick currently has 59 per cent of counted votes and led from the very start, which had him declared the winner of Kelowna - Lake Country early in the night. I got re-elected because the voters wanted to make sure we continued to provide good stable leadership in the province and the country," he said. Letnick said going forward, campaign financing needs to change. "Each party will come up with a system that will benefit them, I think people need to put things in perspective." He agreed with B.C. Premier Christy Clark's statement on having a independent commission on campaign finance reform. "In my next election this cannot be an issue," he said. "I dont think it serves the people well to have this hanging over their heads. I totally agree with the premier decision that we should set up." Letnick said he is looking forward to taking a day off and then rolling up his sleeves and getting back to work. It's a dead heat so far between the runner-ups; the NDPs Erik Oleson and BC Green newcomer Alison Shaw, who are deadlocked at roughly 20 per cent of counted votes. Photo: The Canadian Press Sen. Don Meredith, his name now inexorably linked with his sexual relationship with a teenage girl, declared Tuesday he would resign his Senate seat, short-circuiting what could have been a historic vote to kick him out of the upper chamber. The Senate had been poised to vote as early as Wednesday on an explosive Senate ethics committee report that found Meredith unfit to serve as a senator and recommended that the upper house take the unprecedented step of expelling him. Meredith pre-empted that vote Tuesday with a terse, 174-word statement. "I am acutely aware that the upper chamber is more important than my moral failings," the statement said. "After consulting with my family, community leaders and my counsel over the past several weeks, I have decided to move forward with my life with the full support of my wife and my children. I am blessed to have had their unconditional love and support throughout this ordeal. "It is my hope that my absence from the Senate will allow the senators to focus their good work on behalf of all Canadians." The statement did not explicitly refer to resignation, nor did the Senate have immediate confirmation of his departure. However, Meredith's lawyer, Bill Trudell, confirmed that Meredith had decided to resign. Had Meredith not agreed to go voluntarily, it's virtually certain his former colleagues would have voted overwhelmingly to give him the boot. The ethics committee's recommendation followed an explosive report from Senate ethics officer Lyse Ricard earlier this year. Ricard concluded that Meredith, a 52-year-old married Pentecostal minister, had failed to uphold the "highest standards of dignity inherent to the position of senator" and acted in a way that could damage the Senate itself. She said Meredith began a relationship with a girl when she was just 16, which progressed from flirtatious online chats to fondling, sexually explicit live videos and, eventually, to sexual intercourse once shortly before she turned 18 and twice after. Ricard also concluded that Meredith had abused his position as a senator to take advantage of the teen, known only as Ms. M. Photo: Melissa Shaw UPDATE: 1 a.m. By Melissa Shaw With election results reading Liberals at 43 seats and the NDP sitting at 41, with the Greens at 3, Christy Clark addressed supporters on TV played at the NDP election headquarters. A crowd gathered waiting for John Horgan at the Vancouver Convention Centre and booed Clark. It was a night of close races. Morgane Oger was set to make history as B.C.'s first transgender MLA. Supporters cheered the incoming vote results at the election gathering. Oger was initially counted as having won in Vancouver-False Creek, but as results came in, the riding went to former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan and the Liberals. Spencer Chandra Herbert was re-elected in Vancouver-West End and voiced his support for Oger. "Clearly, the people want a vocal representative, someone who will advocate and be outspoken on their behalf," he said. When asked about working with the Green Party, he spoke of common goals. I'm hoping that we can ban corporate and union donations. I hope we can finally get action on climate change." He said he believes the NDP can get some action on both with support from the Greens. In her address about midnight, Clark also said she would work with the other parties. "Thank you for all that you've done," Horgan to a chant of "thank you John" from party supporters. He said it was a campaign that will go down in provincial history. He ended his speech with "Let's hang tight and get back to the party!" ORIGINAL: 9:50 p.m. NDP Leader John Horgan is re-elected in his riding of Langford-Juan de Fuca in the B.C. election. Photo: Twitter UPDATE: 11:49 a.m. RCMP in Burnaby say a search continues along the banks of the Fraser River in Richmond for a 36-year-old woman who went missing with two other members of her family on Sunday. Sgt. Derek Thibodeau says they are searching for the body of Yu Ling Zhang. Police say the woman's four-year son Garrick was found inside the family's vehicle when it was pulled from the river, while the body of her husband, Ming Dong Xu, was found nearby. The three were last seen leaving their Burnaby home Sunday afternoon in the family's silver 2006 Honda Accord. Thibodeau says foul play is not suspected but an investigation, including a mechanical inspection of the vehicle, is continuing. He says Xu worked on Mitchell Island and was familiar with the industrial area where the vehicle was found, which may be why the family had travelled there. ORIGINAL: 6 a.m. Police say two members of a Burnaby family reported missing Sunday have been found dead. RCMP said 38-year-old Ming Dong Xu, his wife, 36-year-old Yu Ling Zhang and their four-year-old son Garrick left their home Sunday afternoon and did not return as expected. They were last seen in a silver 2006 Honda Accord. Police say a submerged vehicle was found in the Fraser River near Mitchell Island in Richmond and pulled from the water. They say one person was pronounced dead at the scene and a second person was found dead near the vehicle. A third family member is still missing, and police say foul play is not suspected but the investigation is ongoing. Photo: The Canadian Press The ship made famous in the book and subsequent film "The Perfect Storm" is about to be intentionally sunk off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts so it can become part of an artificial reef. The sinking of the Tamaroa, a 205-foot Coast Guard vessel, initially was scheduled to take place several months ago, but was repeatedly delayed by rough seas and other related issues. Officials say they plan to sink it Wednesday morning, about 33 nautical miles off the coast of Cape May, New Jersey. They note that the ocean waters need to be as calm as possible so the vessel can sink straight down to the reef. A tugboat began hauling the Tamaroa from a Norfolk, Virginia, shipyard on Monday afternoon and it slowly made its way up the Eastern Seaboard on Tuesday without any issues, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The vessel's most notable mission came in October 1991, when three strong storm systems came together off the New England coast, generating 40-foot (12-meter) waves and wind gusts of more than 70 mph. The Tamaroa's crew helped save three people aboard a sailboat that was caught in the storm. They also rescued four of five crewmen of an Air National Guard helicopter that ran out of fuel during a similar rescue mission and had to be ditched in the ocean. Photo: Twitter British Columbia has its first minority government in 65 years as the Liberals squeaked out a razor-thin victory over the NDP on Tuesday, with the Green party holding the balance of power for the first time in Canadian history. Christy Clark's Liberals won 43 seats, the NDP under John Horgan got 41 and the Greens led by Andrew Weaver achieved a major breakthrough by picking up three seats. The NDP won one riding by only nine votes, making a recount a certainty that will determine the difference between a minority and an ultra-thin majority if it were to flip to the Liberals. As the incumbent premier and with the most seats, Clark would be expected to get the first opportunity to form a minority government with the support of the Greens, who finished one seat short of gaining official party status in the legislature. Horgan was not ready to concede defeat, however, saying that British Columbians have waited 16 years for a new government and will have to wait a bit longer until all the votes are counted. "This is what we do know: a majority of British Columbians voted for a new government and I believe that's what they deserve," he said. Weaver, whose party doubled its popular vote to 16.7 per cent compared with the last election, looked ecstatic as he addressed supporters in Victoria. "What a historic day for British Columbia," he said. "People across British Columbia have shown that they are ready for politics to be done differently." Weaver wasn't ready to tip his hand on whether he would support the Liberals or NDP in a minority government. "In the days ahead there will be plenty of discussions taking place between all parties. Now is not the time for those discussions, now is the time for Greens across North America to celebrate," he told a cheering crowd. Photo: Melissa Shaw At the end of a 28-day campaign where John Horgan campaigned for change, the leader of British Columbia's New Democrats was ready to claim victory on Tuesday night despite finishing slightly behind the Liberals. Speaking to hundreds at Vancouver's convention centre, Horgan said the campaign will go down in history as transforming the province. "British Columbians voted today to get big money out of politics. British Columbians voted today for proportional representation. British Columbians voted for action for action on climate change. And they voted for an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top," he said. The party won 41 seats, but there are still absentee ballots outstanding and there may be recounts, including Courtenay-Comox on Vancouver Island where NDP candidate Ronna-Rae Leonard won by nine votes. The Liberals won 43 seats and the Green three as B.C. elected its first minority government since 1952. Party leader Andrew Weaver wasn't giving any indication which of his rivals would get support from the Greens to form a minority government. The New Democrats had 35 seats when the legislature was dissolved last month. They picked up some key ridings across the province, including Surrey-Fleetwood where Jagrup Brar defeated cabinet minister Peter Fassbender. Horgan handily won his own riding of Juan de Fuca, where he was first elected in 2005. The 57-year-old leader told the crowd this election is special for him. "This is one of the most humbling moments of my life. I have enjoyed every single minute. I do not regret a single moment," said Horgan, who was acclaimed the party's leader in 2014. Photo: The Canadian Press Christy Clark says the results of Tuesday's British Columbia election that produced a minority government for the first time in 65 years is "the beginning of something very different." Voters have sent a clear message they want political parties to find a way to work together, said the Liberal leader after a roller-coaster evening of flip-flopping election results. Clark told supporters early Wednesday she intends to remain premier despite coming one seat shy of the bare minimum 44-seat threshold needed to form a majority government. "British Columbians did tell us tonight that they want us to do some things differently," Clark told hundreds of supporters who had gathered in downtown Vancouver to watch the election results come in. "They want us to work together. They want us to work across party lines. And they want us to find a way to get along so that we can all work for the province that all of us love so very, very much." Clark's Liberals won 43 of the 87 seats in the legislature, while the NDP had secured 41. For the first time in provincial history, the Greens expanded their seat count from one to three, which gives the third party the balance of power. Many swing ridings were won with small margins, so the final seat count could shift after absentee ballots are tallied and judicial recounts are conducted. "Voters always know best. And they reminded us tonight that we are far from perfect," Clark said, adding that she was willing to work with the other parties to govern. "They reminded us that we need to be humble. But it's also our job to always remember who it is that we serve and that we need to stay focused on the things that matter to ordinary British Columbians." Photo: The Canadian Press The collapse of an underground tunnel containing radioactive waste that forced workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to shelter in place is the latest incident to raise safety concerns at the sprawling site that made plutonium for nuclear bombs for decades after World War II. Officials detected no release of radiation Tuesday and no workers were injured, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology. The anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear said the incident helped show "radioactive waste management is out of control." Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said worker safety must be the priority. "My thoughts are with the first responders who are working to assess the situation on the ground," she said. Worker safety has long been a concern at Hanford. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit last fall against the Energy Department and its contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, contending vapours released from underground nuclear waste tanks posed a serious risk to workers. Lawyers for the Energy Department have said no evidence has been provided showing workers have been harmed by vapours. Hanford officials said they were studying the area of the collapse to determine how to create a barrier between the contaminated equipment in the tunnel and the outside air. Non-essential workers among the labour force of 9,000 at the site were sent home early along a safe route. "No action is currently required for residents of Benton and Franklin counties," the Energy Department said, referring to the nearly 300,000 residents near the site. "There is no indication of a release of contamination." Photo: Twitter President Donald Trump defended his firing of FBI Director James Comey, asserting in a flurry of tweets Wednesday that Republicans and Democrats "will be thanking me." Trump did not mention any effect the firing might have on the probe into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia. Instead, Trump tweeted that he'll name a replacement "who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI." Nevertheless, Tuesday's abrupt firing throws into question the future of the investigation into the Trump campaign's possible connections to Russia and immediately raised suspicions of an underhanded effort to stymie a probe that has shadowed the administration from the outset. Trump has ridiculed the investigations as "a hoax" and denied any campaign involvement with the Russians. Democrats likened Comey's ouster to President Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" and renewed calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor, and some Republicans also questioned the move. In a flurry of tweets, Trump said Comey had "lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington," adding: "When things calm down, they will be thanking me!" In his brief letter Tuesday to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. The administration paired the letter with a scathing review by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein of how Comey handled the investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices, including his decision to hold a news conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about Clinton. Photo: The Canadian Press Kosovo's government collapsed Wednesday after losing a no-confidence vote, setting the scene for an early election following months of political deadlock over a border demarcation deal that critics say would mean a loss of territory for the tiny Balkan country. Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's coalition government lost in a 78-34 vote, with three abstentions and five lawmakers not present. The outcome means that the government has fallen about a year before an election was due. The president is now expected to set an election date within 30 to 45 days. Opposition parties have blamed his cabinet for being unable to carry out its program and pass important laws. "The country is badly governed. The country needs a new government," said Valdete Bajrami of the opposition Initiative for Kosovo party, which proposed the motion. The government had been hobbled by its inability to secure a majority in parliament over a border demarcation deal with neighbouring Montenegro, despite pressure from the U.S. government. The government hasn't had enough lawmakers to pass the deal, which was signed in 2015, and Mustafa withdrew the draft bill last year. The opposition has claimed that Kosovo would lose territory under the deal, an accusation denied by the government. Mustafa considered the no-confidence motion as a "political pamphlet without any argumentative basis," adding its consequence will be "the country's destabilization through creating a lack of trust in institutions, and an institutional vacuum." Photo: The Canadian Press While waters levels have continued to drop in Quebec, the province's environment minister is warning the situation could deteriorate this weekend because of heavy rain. David Heurtel says the central Quebec region of Mauricie is expected to bear the brunt of the precipitation. "We're looking at considerable rainfall on the weekend," Heurtel told a news conference Wednesday. "Depending on the region, we're talking about 20 to 40 millimetres but in Mauricie the impact will be even greater, so we should expect another tough weekend there." Heurtel said the combination of rain, melting snow and rising tides could prove to be damaging. Meanwhile, Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux told the same news conference that 3,882 residences in the province have now been affected by the recent floods. Coiteux also said 2,721 people have had to leave their homes and that there have been 126 landslides. The floods have claimed at least one life in the province a man whose car ended up in a surging river in the eastern Gaspe region on Sunday. Authorities were to continue searching Wednesday for a two-year-old girl who disappeared in the same incident. Some 1,730 Canadian Forces troops are helping in the flood effort. The Canadian Red Cross has set up a relief fund, with the federal government contributing $1 million and the Quebec government $500,000. Photo: The Canadian Press Ontario deputy NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is poised to launch a bid for federal leadership next week, The Canadian Press has learned. Sources familiar with Singh's plans say he will make the announcement at the Bombay Palace in Brampton, Ont., on Monday night the venue where he held an election party in 2011 when he entered provincial politics. They also say his campaign will be led by Michal Hay, executive assistant to Toronto city councillor Michael Layton the son of late federal NDP leader Jack Layton. Supporters note Singh is also backed by other New Democrats, including Manitoba legislature member Nahanni Fontaine, party youth wing co-chair Ali Chatur, Quebec organizer and former Layton speech writer Willy Blomme and Peel school board trustee Harkirat Singh. Singh, a 38-year-old criminal defence lawyer, was named deputy to Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath in spring 2015. There are four official candidates in the lengthy race to replace Tom Mulcair as NDP leader in October. Current contenders include B.C. MP Peter Julian, Ontario MP Charlie Angus, Manitoba MP Niki Ashton and Quebec MP Guy Caron. Photo: Alanna Kelly The BC Liberal Party took a hit across the province, but its stranglehold up and down the Okanagan and surrounding regions remains as strong as ever. All seven sitting MLAs won re-election in ridings from Shuswap in the north, down to Boundary-Similkameen in the south. The number swells to 10 out of 10 if you include the two Kamloops ridings, as well as Fraser-Nicola, which encompasses Merritt and the Nicola Valley. While voters in some parts of the province are seeking change, not so in the Southern Interior, where the margin of victory by each of the candidates was as healthy as it was in 2013. In Boundary-Similkameen, MLA Linda Larson, thought to be in some jeopardy from backlash over proposed school closures in her riding a year ago, saw her support dip slightly. However, she was still able to win with 43 per cent of the vote. Liberal leader Christy Clark also saw her support diminish slightly from 62 per cent in the 2013 byelection to 59.6 per cent this year. The remaining five throughout the region, Grey Kyllo (Shuswap), Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee), Norm Letnick (Kelowna-Lake Country), Steve Thomson (Kelowna-Mission), and Dan Ashton (Penticton), all saw their support rise. With 43 seats won after all the votes were tabulated Tuesday, the Liberals fell one short of a majority. Barring any changes from recounts and absentee ballots, which will be counted near the end of the month, they will need the support of the Green Party, which elected three members, to form a government. The NDP elected 41 Tuesday. With some ballots still left to count, voter turnout provincially was just under 57 per cent. Photo: Contributed UPDATE 9:53 A.M. Parkers Cove residents who were evacuated as a precaution during the removal of a large log jam at Whitemans Creek Tuesday are allowed to return to residences. The Okanagan Indian Band has officially rescinded the evacuation order issued on May 9, affecting residents at Parkers Cove community located off of Westside Road. Residents are encouraged to continue to check the bands website or the most current updates as OKIB continues to monitor the area for potential flood hazard over the next few days. We would like to thank the concerted efforts of our neighbouring communities for mobilizing emergency services and resources which assisted us to ensure the safety of our community members, said Chief Byron Louis. The City of Vernon and the Okanagan Indian Band are working together to help those evacuated from Parker Cove Tuesday. Emergency Social Services (ESS) reported to the city that approximately 300 people from 100 homes near Parker Cove were affected by flooding. Approximately 70 evacuees from the Okanagan Indian Band Parker Cove area on Tuesday evening were given help after the city received a request from Emergency Management BC (EMBC). A log jam located, approximately 200 metres north of the bridge at Whitemans Creek off Westside Road, requires removal. The potential of flooding during the removal of the log jam prompted the evacuation of residents living in Parkers Cove. A reception centre was established at Vernon Curling Centre, 3400 39 Ave., at 11:30 p.m. "We had ESS volunteers and the on-duty fire crew set up initially," said Deputy Chief David Lind of Vernon Fire Rescue. "We also had nine Red Cross volunteers ready to assist evacuees." Lind said 55 people were housed in hotels while rest went to friends and family. "We expect the evacuation to be lifted in the next day or so," Lind said. A city press release said the evacuation is expected to end on Thursday. Photo: Wayne Moore A new, wide-ranging series of evacuation alerts in Lake Country has many people concerned for the safety of the animals at Kangaroo Creek Farm. Farm owner Caroline Wightman told Castanet Wednesday that concerned people have been calling to offer help after the operation was one of approximately 580 addresses placed on evacuation alert Tuesday night. "We have people panicking, our phone is ringing off the hook. We're getting hundreds of emails from people saying 'What's happening to the animals, do we need to help you move them?'" said Wightman. "It's all very nice, and generous of people, but given our particular situation, it's all over the top. It would take an event of biblical proportions for flood waters to reach us." She chuckled and added, no need to build an ark. She said the farm's topography means it is not in any danger. The animals are fine. "We appreciate everybody's concern, but we are fine, and we are open." Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement warning of rain and potential thunderstorm over the Southern Interior beginning Thursday evening, similar to the storm that wreaked havoc on the region a week ago. Photo: D. Stickney A lengthy section of the Mission Creek Greenway is closed until further notice. Crews are working along the stretch from KLO Road to Gordon Drive to raise the height of the dike. With the potential of record creek levels, raising the dike is a proactive step to mitigate potential damage. Signs and fencing are in place at each entrance of the closed trail, and for their safety, residents are asked to stay out as heavy equipment will be working on these portions of the recreational trail. Two underpasses along the Greenway at Casorso Road and the Gordon Drive bridge remain closed as well because of high water levels in the creek. Meanwhile, the lower Gellatly Road parking area and trail to Brown Road in in Glen Canyon Regional Park are also still closed due to flooding along Powers Creek. In addition, flooding has forced the closures of Hardy Falls Regional Park and Mill Creek Regional Park. Killiney Beach Community Park is also closed to all visitors, with limited vehicle access through the park for waterfront properties. Regional Parks staff continues to monitor creek levels in all these areas and, when safe, will be assessing the condition of bridges, trails and other amenities in these parks. The largest elk ever taken in Montana is on display for a few weeks at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's Visitor Center in Missoula. Montana resident Steve Felix shot the bull on public land in Eastern Montana while on a solo hunt in September 2016. This bull is a reflection of the importance of quality habitat, wildlife management strategies and hunters who provide funding for conservation efforts through excise taxes on guns, ammunition and archery equipment, as well as the purchase of tags and licenses, said Steve Decker, RMEF vice president of marketing. The elk has a gross score of 447 inches and a net of 430 (Boone & Crockett and Pope & Young). In addition to being the largest elk ever taken in Montana, it also is the largest ever killed with a bow and the largest taken in North America in the last 48 years. Felix and his bull recently received the Isi Award, the highest honor from the Pope & Young Club. RMEFs Elk Country Visitor Center is located at 5705 Grant Creek Road in Missoula. It is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. UPDATE 2:30 p.m. Emergency Operations Staff are bracing for the worst as a second storm prepares to batter the water-logged Southern Interior. Forecast are calling for another storm, similar to the one which hit the region last Thursday, to hit again tomorrow. "Localized flooding in the Kelowna region is imminent. What we are expecting to see is unprecedented water levels resulting from rain, rising temperature and melting snowpack," said EOC head Brian Reardon. "The ground is already saturated, in other words, the perfect storm. We are planning for the worst, and hoping for the best. Residents should do the same." The storm, which is expected to hit the area sometime tomorrow afternoon, will cause water levels to begin peaking late Thursday evening, or early Friday morning, according to Reardon. "If you haven't started preparing, now is the time. "Last week's flooding may prove to be just a dress rehearsal for a much larger event." He says those who experienced flooding last week should anticipate the same, or worse. Those living along creeks and streams who escaped the first wave of flood activity should expect to see some. Reardon reminded property owners they are responsible for protecting their own property. "Sand and sandbags are available around the Central Okanagan. The demand is huge, and we are continuing to replenish those supplies." Hotel and motel rooms are booked up for the weekend, so Reardon said people living in danger areas should make arrangements to stay with family or friends, or, if you have an RV, make plans to use it. He added flooding from these two storms could eclipse the last major flooding event in 1997. Original Story 10 a.m. The Central Okanagan Emergency Operation Centre will hold a press conference at 11 a.m. to provide information about "imminent flooding expected to start Thursday evening." Representatives will discuss advance planning and expected water conditions. The EOC says a combination of rain and spring snow melt for the next few days will lead to rising water levels, likely to peak on Thursday, and may increase the risk of flooding. Emergency personnel and volunteers are planning for the worst while hoping for the best, the centre says. EOC staff have been working round the clock to respond to ongoing flooding, but residents are reminded they need to be proactive and take steps to protect their properties. Reduce damage by removing items from basements and gathering essential items such as medications, eyeglasses, valuable papers, etc, in case you have to leave quickly. Sandbags are available at the Kelowna firehall on Enterprise Way. Sand and sandbags are available at Swalwell Park in Lake Country. Sand is available outside the Hotel Eldorado on Cook Road in Kelowna and on Commonwealth Road by Holiday Park in Lake Country. In West Kelowna, sand is available at 1341 Green Bay Rd., 2606 Casa Loma, 1651 Pritchard Dr., 4081 Hitchner Rd. and in Pebble Park at 2589 Whitworth Rd. Sand and sandbags will be replenished throughout the day. Photo: Joe Harder With heavy rains predicted for later this week, city officials are preparing for possible flooding. Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) staff are on standby should water levels rise and stockpiles of sand and sandbags are being made available. The current long-range weather forecast indicates rainfall in the region and the potential for high-flow conditions is likely. The city will continue to monitor water levels of creeks and streams, as well as the condition of culverts within Vernon. Vernon residents in low-lying areas are being advised to prepare for overflow of creeks and streams and take measures to protect their property. Affected property owners adjacent to creeks, streams and lakes are responsible for having a plan as well as the tools and equipment necessary to protect their properties from possible flood damage. Stockpiles of sand and sandbags are available at Vernon city operations at 1900 48 Avenue, outside the main gate on Pleasant Valley Road and at the corner of Okanagan Avenue and Okanagan Landing Road. Blocked culverts and water debris that cause a threat of flooding should be reported to the public works department. Residents can report blocked culverts online, by emailing [email protected] or by calling 250-549-6757. The City also reminds residents to exercise caution, particularly with children, when in the vicinity of fast-moving creeks, streams and water. Photo: The Canadian Press The military is deploying another 600 soldiers to help deal with the flooding in Quebec, amid fears of more heavy rains this weekend. Col. Eric Landry is overseeing the military's flood relief efforts in the Outaouais region, in western Quebec. He says the number of troops helping out across the province is expected to increase to 2,300 by the end of the day. Landry expects to see the number of soldiers under his direct command expand to 500 from 400, which will let him expand relief efforts into the more rural areas west of the city of Gatineau. He says his soldiers have been filling sandbags, evacuating people who want to leave their homes and helping police monitor water levels. Water levels are dropping in Quebec, but the province's environment minister has warned more rain could be on the way. Photo: Facebook Mexican media say a Canadian man is charged in the death of a 23-year-old woman at a Cancun resort. The reports say the woman who they identify as Gabriela Janeth Jaramillo was killed on April 22, and had arrived a few days earlier to meet her 33-year-old Canadian boyfriend. The Quintana Roo attorney general's office said in a May 5 release that a man identified only as M.K. was arrested on the way out of a hospital, where he had been since April 22. The release said translators were brought in to inform the man of his rights and he was charged with homicide. A spokesman for Global Affairs told The Canadian Press in an email that consular services are being provided to a Canadian citizen who has been detained in Cancun. John Babcock says consular officials are in contact with local authorities to gather additional information. British Columbia faces a two-week period of uncertainty until the final results are in from its tight election race and it will become clearer whether the province has a minority or majority government. Premier Christy Clark spoke to the lieutenant-governor on Wednesday after the Liberals squeaked out a razor-thin victory over the NDP, leaving the province with its first minority government in 65 years, if the results don't change. The premier's office said Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon has asked Clark to continue governing after the election. Clark's party won 43 seats while the NDP led by John Horgan collected 41 and the Greens under Andrew Weaver won three ridings in the 87-seat legislature. The Liberals only need one more seat for a majority. But the results will remain unclear for at least two weeks until absentee ballots are counted, which could flip close ridings including Courtenay-Comox, where the NDP won by nine votes. Even after the final results are announced May 24, tight finishes could trigger judicial recounts. After the results were in, Horgan said the outcome shows British Columbians want a change in government after 16 years under the Liberals. But Clark had a different interpretation, saying she reads the results as a plea to the major parties to work together more effectively. Asked directly several times Wednesday if she accepts personal responsibility for the Liberals' showing, Clark avoided a direct answer. "British Columbians sent a very strong message to all sides of the legislature. They want us to work together collaboratively and across partisan lines," said Clark, who was trying to win the party's fifth straight majority government. Clark said there are 51,000 votes still to be counted. The difference between the Liberals and NDP in the popular vote on Tuesday was about 17,800 votes in favour of Clark's party. With three seats, the Green party holds the balance of power in the legislature a remarkable position for Weaver after becoming the first Green elected four years ago. Incoming Vernon-Monashee MLA Eric Foster says the province is in uncharted waters following Tuesday night's election results. B.C. has its first minority government in 65 years as the Liberals squeaked out a razor-thin victory over the NDP on Tuesday, with the Green Party holding the balance of power for the first time in Canadian history. Foster comfortably won his seat for the Liberals for the third straight time with 48 per cent of the vote. When asked when he would be sworn-in, Foster could not answer. "I have no idea," he answered. "It's uncharted waters. I don't know what the procedure is in a situation like this, but you can't run a province without a government." The Liberals won 43 seats, the NDP got 41 and the Greens achieved a major breakthrough by picking up three seats with no party winning a majority. Liberal Party leader Christy Clark met with Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon Wednesday morning in the hope she would be able to form a government. Photo: Jerry Mason With rain on the way, villagers in Lumby have been told to brace for more flooding. "The Village of Lumby emergency personnel are warning residents who live near creeks to prepare for possible floods because of expected rains starting Thursday, May 11," said a notice on the village's website. Last week's flooding led the mayor to declare a state of emergency, while more than 50 people were evacuated from 24 residences and 80 others were put under an evacuation alert. As flooding began, villagers came out in droves, filling 50,000 bags full of sand to fight the rising water. Heavy machinery was brought in to create berms along Duteau and Bessette creeks. However, there is concern that the work to fight last weekend's flooding won't be enough to stop more from happening later in the week, especially with snow melting in the hills above the village. "The Village of Lumby is advising residents to be prepared for unpredictable weather events which could cause further flooding," said the notice. Photo: Insights West The extremely close provincial election has left a large proportion of the electorate unhappy, a new Insights West poll reveals. The online survey of almost 700 voters found more than half would be upset if the BC Liberals assembled a majority (57 per cent) or minority (53 per cent) government. Similarly high proportions of voters would feel upset if the NDP were to govern in a majority (52 per cent) or minority (50 per cent) scenario. A formal coalition between the Liberals and BC Greens would upset 49 per cent of voters, and slightly fewer (45 per cent) would be upset with a coalition featuring the NDP and Greens. A merger between the NDP and Green Party is also contentious, with 40 per cent of respondents saying this would make them happy, and 43 per cent saying they would be upset. Two-in-five voters (41%) say that they don't like the leader of the party they voted for, but felt the party seemed like the best option at this time. Voters of all political stripes are urging whoever forms the next government to take action on issues such as mental health and big money in politics, said Insights West vice-president Mario Canseco. There is also an appetite for electoral reform, particularly from those who cast ballots for the New Democrats and the Greens. The idea of voting strategically was not as popular in this election as it was in the 2015 federal election. Just one-in-four voters (26 per cent) said they voted for the candidate in their riding who had the best chance of defeating a party they dislike, even if the candidate they voted for was not their first preference. Madison Erhardt UPDATE: 4:09 P.M. Emergency crews responded to reports of a two vehicle collision at the intersection of Harvey Avenue and Dilworth Drive at 12:30 p.m. Witnesses say the driver of a grey Jeep was heading southbound on Dilworth Drive, when she collided with a northbound black Ford F-150 pickup truck. It is believed that both vehicles proceeded into the intersection during a yellow light for traffic on Dilworth Drive. The driver of the Jeep, a 60-year-old Kelowna woman, and the driver of the Ford a 45-year-old Alberta woman were each transported to hospital for further medical assessment and treatment. "The investigation remains ongoing at this time, as investigators of the Kelowna RCMP Municipal Traffic Section plan to review dash camera footage, which may have captured the crash as it happened," says Cpl. Jesse O'Donaghey. "Pending the conclusion of the investigation, it is possible that both drivers could face potential charges under the Motor Vehicle Act." A collision between a Jeep and pickup has the intersection of Dilworth Drive and Harvey Avenue blocked. The accident has backed up traffic on Highway 97 through Kelowna. An occupant of one of the vehicles is sitting at the side of the road, being treated by paramedics. Both vehicles are moderately damaged. Police, firefighters and BC Ambulance are on scene. More details to come. with files from Madison Erhardt Photo: The Canadian Press It's not easy being Green on British Columbia's political scene especially for a party facing a difficult choice in who it might back in a minority government. Political scientists say Green Leader Andrew Weaver must carefully stickhandle his limited power while not alienating his own supporters if the results from Tuesday's provincial election hold once the final count is done in two weeks' time. The Liberal party won 43 seats, leaving it one seat short of a majority government. The NDP won 41 seats and the Greens have three seats, leaving Weaver to determine whether to side with the Liberals or the New Democrats in a minority government situation. Prof. Richard Johnston of the University of British Columbia says that while the Greens share some common policies with the NDP on issues such as electoral reform, the party must evaluate whether it should back the losing team. Kathryn Harrison, also a professor at UBC, says the Greens must weigh the risks of either choice, but the Liberals may wait to do any negotiating until after May 24, when a final count of ballots is expected. Montanas Democratic U.S. House candidate, Rob Quist has ties to a rental property not listed on state tax rolls, public records show. Quist acknowledged the apartments Tuesday in an interview with The Gazette, but denied renting out the units. Advertising records and leasing contracts suggest otherwise. My sons living there, so thats not a rental property. It's just something that's kind of family-owned, Quist said. At issue is a 1948 barn that Rob and Bonni Quist converted into commercial property. Quist, 69, a musician by trade, explained the arrangement to The Gazette in a March 24 interview. "We took this 100-year-old barn and we were running an event center early on, in the 90s, and so took this 100-year-old barn, and we made it into an event center with three apartments. And so our whole goal is to sell the ranch house and 10 acres and move over into the old barn," Quist said. State property tax records dont indicate those changes, taxing it instead as a barn with no living quarters. The Flathead County Assessors office also lists the structure as a barn. The distinction matters because the Department of Revenue generally recognizes apartment units as more valuable than barns. The tax amount owed on rental property is typically higher. The title to the property has been in Quist's daughter's name for a few years, with Bonni Quist retaining power of attorney. Apartments are going to be worth more, said Bob Story of the Montana Taxpayers Association. The difference in valuation, if it was a barn on a piece of ag land, the tax rate would be 2.3 or 2.4 percent. If it was three apartments, it might be commercial property. Commercial is 1.89 percent, but the valuation is more. Story said the Montana Taxpayers Association scouted the Quist property for a potential event in 2002 or 2003. Apartment rentals also comes with state income and expense reporting requirements. The Quists have rented the apartment units, advertising them on Kalispell Craigslist as a Cozy Country Slice of Montana Close to Town. Through the online classified service, Bonni Quist described the units, one with lofted ceilings, as being part of a renovated 100-year-old barn. The Gazette identified four people who have rented from Quist in recent years. None wanted to be drawn into the politics of Montanas U.S. House race by commenting on their relationship with the Quists, although two former renters provided leases active in 2015 and 2016 which put the monthly rent, paid to Bonni Quist, at $695 for one unit and $950 for another. Department of Revenue officials told The Gazette the state relies on property owners to obtain the required local government permitting for electrical and sanitation work. Tax assessors monitor those permits and come calling on property owners once permits are filed. When the required permits aren't obtained, things get murky. Revenue officials assess property from the curb, where it can be hard to tell if apartments or other improvements have been built. Quists personal finances have been an ongoing issue in Montanas U.S. House special election. Quist, Republican Greg Gianforte and Libertarian Mark Wicks are competing to fill Montanas only U.S. House seat, which was vacated in March by Republican Ryan Zinke, who is now Interior secretary. Voting is underway and will end Thursday, May 25. Last week, Quist filed a new disclosure statement with the U.S. House after The Associated Press asked the Democrats campaign about discrepancies in his initial disclosure document and on his 2016 income tax returns. Federal ethics law requires congressional candidates to file a one-time accounting of their personal finances. Quist reported an additional $57,000 in income. The original report, filed in March, put Quists household income at $79,000. The number was bumped up to $136,000 as the number of concert performances Quist reported went from 11 in his first report to 34, including a spot at the Red Ants Pants Music Festival. Neither Quist's original House financial report, nor his second listed apartments, or rental income in the Schedule A "assets and unearned income" portion of the filing. In March, Flathead County District Court records and a lien search by The Billings Gazette revealed Quist had financial troubles spanning 16 years, which involved being turned over to collections, being sued over a bank loan and being accused of fraud and deceit by a former member of the Mission Mountain Wood Band, the legendary country bluegrass band that launched Quists half-century music career. The Quists also owed $15,000 for three years unpaid property taxes. The candidate said poor health was the cause of his financial troubles. The couple paid their tax bill in May 2016. The most delayed tax payment was nine years old. A judgment against the Quists for a $10,000 debt stemming from a Wells Fargo bank loan was lifted late last week. Photo: Darren Handschuh Cindy Masters has been on the verge of tears for hours. And not because of the damage caused rising flood waters, but by the community effort to stop flooding before it happens. Masters is with the Kindale Developmental Association in Vernon and when the call went out to help protect the Polson Road centre from a rising Vernon Creek, the community responded big time. Masters sent out a call for help Tuesday evening, asking people to help with sandbagging. When she arrived at the city works yard where the sand and sandbags are kept, people were already there. For all of us at Kindale, it is making us feel very emotional, said Masters. To ask and have all these people step up has been amazing. Keeping the Vernon centre open has taken on an even greater importance because flood waters forced the closure of two Kindale sites in Armstrong, so those people are now coming to Vernon. Kindale works with people and their families with mental and physical diversabilities. Tuesday evening and for most of Wednesday, a steady stream of volunteers filled bags and built two walls around the centre. Crews were running back and forth between the Polson Road centre and city works yard, hauling truck loads of filled sandbags, until Price Landscaping brought a dumptruck load of sand to them. The response has been amazing. I have been on the verge of tears all day, said Masters. The sandbags are now in place and all that can be done is watch the creek and hope for the best. It's higher than we've ever seen it and we've been here 25 years, said Masters. Another rain storm is predicted to soak the valley this week. If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,... Mobile home owners in Yellowstone County will get their tax assessments and bills later than usual this year, and many are expected to show significant increases in value. Robin Rude, the regional manager for the Montana Department of Revenue, said the major differences from last years assessments are that 2017 is a reappraisal year and, for the first time, the agency is using a comparable sales method for valuing most mobile homes. Mobile home values are expected to increase an average of 15 percent to 19 percent, although some values decrease as well, Rude said. Mobile homes are reappraised every two years and were last appraised in 2015, Rude said. The assessments apply to mobile homes that are considered personal property and not permanently attached to the land. Most mobile homes are on land owned by others and are located in mobile home courts or parks. The assessments are delayed this year because of the 2017 legislative session. Rude said there was pending legislation that could have affected tax rates and the agency waited to see if it needed to make changes. The legislation did not pass, and the agency is proceeding, she said. The assessments, which are not tax bills, will be dated May 26 and will be mailed the week of May 22, she said. Rude advised property owners to look at their assessment and to contact her office if they have questions. The assessment tells the mobile home owner the new value of the mobile home, the 2016 value and how to estimate taxes based on 2016 mill levies, which do not include special levies. Mobile home owners who are dissatisfied with the new value will have 30 days from May 26 to file for an informal review with the DOR. Agency staff will do a review and make any necessary changes, Rude said. If the mobile home owner is still unhappy, he or she has another 30 days to appeal to the county tax appeal board. In previous years, the DOR has used a cost method for appraising mobile homes in Yellowstone County. That approach reviewed cost tables and depreciation to determine a value. For the 2017 cycle, DOR is using a comparable sales model, which determines value based on sales of similar mobile homes. Yellowstone County never had enough sales to develop a comparable sales model until recently, Rude said. Other larger counties, like Gallatin, Lewis and Clark, Missoula and Cascade counties, developed comparable sales models in 2015 and have been testing the approach, she said. Yellowstone County has about 7,700 mobile homes, and the number has been increasing, in part from oil and gas development in the Bakken fields and North Dakota, Rude said. Following up the DOR assessments will be the Yellowstone County tax bills. Treasurer Sherry Long said first half 2017 mobile home taxes normally would be due by May 31. But because the assessments are delayed, the first half taxes will not be due until July 31, she said. Second half taxes will still remain due by Sept. 30. The tax bills will be mailed sometime in June, Long said. We like to get them out as quickly as we can, she said. The county billed $1.16 million in mobile home taxes in 2016. So it wasn't exactly "Law and Order," but it was a kind of people's court on Monday. There were no cameras (because cameras aren't allowed in federal court) and there weren't any impassioned soliloquies, but U.S. District Court Judge Susan Watters made a small but significant ruling in the higher profile case of Angela Corson Smith who will be sent back to federal prison for 10 months because of 13 probation violations, including that she established a GoFundMe online fund-raiser after her son was born premature, and posed as an Air Force Medic wanting to leave an abusive marriage. At around 6:50 a.m. Monday, less than three hours before the start of the hearing on the probation violations, Corson Smith's attorney, Marvin McCann, filed a hastily written motion to close the hearing. In other words, shut the public out of knowing what's happening to his client, even though there have been many of Corson Smith's victims in the public. This last-minute motion could have gone through, but The Billings Gazette noticed and was prepared to object to closure. Luckily, that was not necessary because Watters made the important and correct decision: Shutting the people out of a United States courtroom (let's repeat that: United States courtroom) was a bad idea. Furthermore, the defense had presented absolutely no basis for closing the hearing, and Watters pointed out criminal court proceedings often have information about medical, mental and personal information. That's the nature of court itself. We appreciate Watters' decision because it didn't deprive the public from knowing what is happening with Corson Smith who, since her release from the federal Bureau of Prisons, took $250 from her employer in Great Falls before quitting, started an unauthorized GoFundMe campaign, and posed as a former Air Force medic. In other words, the federal judge did not shut out the public when clearly the public was at risk by Corson Smith's freedom. Kicking the people out would have been incredibly heavy-handed and without merit. After sitting through the court proceedings, we didn't hear information that sounds different from so many other court proceedings. The only reason for closing the court hearing would have been to avoid some of the publicity around this very public case. It appears that it is just another attempt at manipulation by Corson Smith to avoid the public embarrassment of this case. Watters told Corson Smith that she tries to manipulate everyone else, but it will not work with the federal court. Closing the door would have been to also miss the opportunity to point out that Corson Smith still has restitution of more than $140,000 -- and that means there are people in the area still living with the consequences of her actions who deserve to know what's going on. They were able to know about it because the doors of the court remained open. We appreciate that our judges -- both at the local and federal level -- have continued to fight to keep the courts open to the public. Moreover, we believe our judges also know that in order for people to have faith in the system, they must see it in action. We came to court not wanting to fight but being prepared to do so. Instead, the court had already come to the wise conclusion that the bar to closing the court is set by law and precedent extremely high; and, nothing was too special about Corson Smith's circumstances to warrant clearing the court. For all the flag emblem lapel pins out there and as much as everyone loves talking about the importance of freedom, Watters did the real work of the Constitution when she invoked the First Amendment and said the people of the United States have a place in the courts of the United States, too. Its time to speak out forcefully about the fear experienced by minorities and the one experienced due to the gun violence in America. I am an immigrant. I have lived in the U.S. for 45 years, obtaining my American citizenship in 1982. I also happen to be Jewish, a son of Holocaust refugees, and a native of Israel. What I share with Americans, whether Native, African, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, or the LGBTQ community is not necessarily our peoples history, ethnic background, or religion, but still each of us belongs to a minority group in the U.S. I am aware of the millions of Americans who empathize with and actively support minorities, but I am also aware of the millions of Americans who do not. The hard truth is regardless of their empathy or lack thereof, most White Americans have never known, nor will they ever know about living as a minority. They will never experience the racial profiling, stop and frisk, Neo-Nazi marches, burning crosses in front of homes, ethnic jokes, pathetic slurs, sprayed swastikas on homes and houses of worship, desecration of tombstones, and above all the constant fear in which minorities in the U.S. live. Sadly, I experienced such hate myself when, in 1993, extremists attacked my home in Billings and the home of another family in our congregation. This racist, inhumane disregard for our countrys fellow citizens is nothing short of a moral depravity that totally contradicts American values. Yet, there is another kind of fear, one that Americans inflict on each other. Consider this: You go to a movie (Aurora, Colo.) or to a night club (Orlando, Fla.) you get shot; you go to a political rally (Tucson, Ariz.) or to an office party (San Bernardino, Calif.) or to a church (Charleston, S.C.) you get shot; you go to an elementary school (Newtown, Conn.) or to a high school (Littleton, Colo.) or to a university (Virginia Tech) you get shot; you go to work (Navy Yard, DC) or to an airport (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) or wait at a bus stop (Chicago) you get shot. Succinctly put: In todays United States, there is no longer a safe place to assemble, study, work, worship, travel or be entertained. When every year thousands of innocent civilians are murdered by other civilians the country has gone mad. The framers of the Constitution would roll over in their graves if they knew how irresponsibly Americans abuse the Second Amendment. Lets make it unequivocally clear: The Second Amendment does not grant Americans the right to murder innocent civilians. Under such daily, terrifying scenarios, why should we even fear ISIS, North Korea or Iran when were already doing the job for them? Nevertheless, Im not anti-guns. I am sufficiently down-to-earth to realize that in this dangerous world, guns are a necessary evil. In fact, back in Israel, I served in the Israeli Defense Forces for 10 years and participated in battles, including a retaliatory campaign in 1964, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the War of Attrition in 1969-70. I have handled more weapons than you wish to know, and as long as I was in the military, I had a submachine gun and a pistol with me 24/7. In Israel, a country that has been surrounded by enemies from its first day in 1948, 80 percent of the population has access to guns. Yet, the percentage of murder in Israel is infinitely smaller than that in the U.S. In other words, its not guns that we need to worry about but the noxious gun culture that plagues our society. Here, for some odd reasons, people hark back to the days of the Wild West when people were taking the law into their hands: You have a dispute with your wife? Shoot her. You are unhappy with your employer? Shoot him. You are upset with your grades? Shoot the professor. Problem solved. Clearly then, as long as the Second Amendment and its current interpretation are in force, no gun control measure of any kind would solve the problem, not only because guns are so accessible but because, as stated above, the problem is not the guns or their owners; its the gun culture that must change. Last June, after The Billings Gazette published my sarcastic poem Ode to Guns, I received six supportive comments but also a nasty one. Not only did the coward who sent me that letter not sign his name or include his address, the gist of his message was, If you dont like it here, go back to where you came from. Really? Is the solution for the millions of Americans who are concerned with the gun violence in the U.S. to simply pack their belongings and seek asylum in Canada, Mexico or elsewhere? How about if, instead, Americans grow up and acknowledge that no right comes without responsibility, and that Americans rights to consume alcohol, drive a car, or bear arms do not abridge, annul or supercede other Americans right to live. What happened to American decency? What kind of a society are we becoming with so much intolerance, hatred, and in-your-face aggression? Is that who we really are? If you answer, Yes, then shame on you, and shame on me. In spite of Donald Trumps promises, America cannot be great as long as its minority citizens are continually discriminated against and attacked, and as long as all Americans fear for their lives due to the corrosive gun culture in this country. Indeed, both racism and gun violence were alarmingly combined in the horrific massacre of nine parishioners in Charleston, S.C. To be a civilized and a moral society, America must eliminate the fear that results from being a minority and from the countrys gun culture. Let us recognize that the opportunity to act maturely and in a dignified way is always there, and let us also understand that its not enough for us to just cherish the ideals of the pursuit of happiness and of liberty and justice for all, we must practice them as well. A resident of Billings for 33 years, Uri Barnea is a retired orchestra conductor and Reform rabbi. Interim President Debbie Adams with graduate Interim President Debbie Adams with graduate Commencement speaker Randy Boyd Previous Next Chattanooga States 51st Commencement exercises were held at the McKenzie Arena on Monday. Thousands of friends, family, faculty, and staff were on hand to applaud this milestone in the graduates academic career. Randy Boyd, former State of Tennessee Commissioner of Economic and Community Development addressed the 2017 graduating class. In 2012, Comm. Boyd served in the administration of Governor Bill Haslam as an unpaid advisor on education, where his work resulted in creating the Drive to 55 and the Tennessee Promise. A total of 1,357 students graduated, earning a combined 1,471 degrees and certificates. Chattanooga State Interim President Debbie Adams conferred rights and privileges upon this years graduating class. The Class of 2017 ranged in ages from 17- 71, with more than 45 percent over age 25, while 61 percent were women. A total of 503 students were awarded academic honors, up from 330 awarded in 2016. Fifty-seven percent of Chattanooga States first class of Tennessee Promise students have graduated or are still in school. The top five College Division Programs with the highest number of graduates include Transfer Programs, 342; Tennessee Transfer Pathway, 204; Nursing, 116; Engineering Technology, 54; and Digital Media Design and Production, 44. Among the top five College Technical Certificates, Emergency Medical Technicians, Dental Assisting, Advanced Emergency Medical Technicians, Acting and Computer Aided Design (CAD), boast the greatest number of graduates. In the Embedded Certificate category, the top five programs include Early Childhood Education, Entrepreneurial, Advanced Process Technology, Process Technology, Volume Non-Destructive Testing, and Surface Non-Destructive Testing. Hamilton County Collegiate High at Chattanooga State recognized class leaders Joy C. Baxendell, valedictorian and Heather Grace Marsh, salutatorian. A total of 46 graduates received their high school diploma with a number of college-credit classes under their belt, while 17 of these graduates also have earned enough credits to receive their associate degree. Also recognized during commencement this year, were Faculty Fellows: Caitlin Moffitt, Jason Huddleston, Robin Hoiffecker, and Marie Loisy. Faculty and staff Excellence Award winners included Sandra Williford, Peter Kriener, Houston Graham, Judy Mabe, and Debra Jones. Retiring faculty and staff for 2016-17 include: Kathryn Bissell, Rhonda Castleberry, Gwyn Chambers, Richard Claburn, Deborah Evans, Jerome Gober, Cliff Goodlet, Ole Hansen, Robert Hawfield, Johnny Jones, Denis Kiely, Virginia Kilgore, Glenda Madewell, Deborah Mailen, Ronald Martin, David McGlumphey, Blaine McGuffey, Linda Miller, Kathryn Patty, James Pierce, David Posey, Carolann Roberts, Linda Swafford, and Sandra Williford. Five Minutes With Damien Geter Audio Article Vocalist, composer and Richmond Symphony artist in residence Damien Geters musical roots sprouted when he was a boy in the Matoaca District of Chesterfield County, where he was raised and... Aker, a Chicago-based agriculture company that uses drones to make farms more efficient, earned the biggest prize at the Clean Energy Trust Challenge pitch competition Tuesday. Unlike similar platforms that just collect data, Aker combines aerial images with analysis from agronomists and farm retailers to help growers use chemicals more efficiently, as well as find spots to improve drainage and identify crop-smothering weeds. Advertisement Aker's prize: $400,000 in funding from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Overall, $950,000 in funding was awarded to five early-stage clean-tech startups as part of the seventh-annual pitch competition. Erik Birkerts, CEO of the Clean Energy Trust, said the yearly pitch competition started as a way to connect clean-tech stakeholders from throughout the Midwest, but it's turned into an investment-focused event to support "exciting" projects that might otherwise struggle to raise capital. Advertisement More than $4.6 million in funding has been awarded to 38 startups since the competition began in 2010. "For a lot of these science-based companies, the road they have to follow to develop and prove their technologies is so much longer than what you might see with an internet-based startup or software company," Birkerts said. "You're not seeing as much traditional venture capital active in this space." Orlando Saez, co-founder and CEO of Aker, said his company will use a portion of its prize to commercialize a field-level tool designed to gather more data from under the canopy of plants. Aker will also use the funding to bolster its sales team and expand in Illinois, he said. "This money is definitely going to help grow our company and make farming more efficient," Saez said. "The more farmers know, the smaller the chemical footprint they'll have, and that's very important for everybody." PowerTech Water a Kentucky-based startup that developed technology to remove salts, corrosive minerals and toxic metals from water without the need of expensive pipe coatings or high-pressure pumps received $200,000 from Clean Energy Trust's general prize fund. IdleSmart a Kansas-based transportation startup that created an automated engine start and stop system to reduce the amount of time drivers have to idle their vehicles overnight won a $130,000 award from Wells Fargo and a $20,000 award from United Airlines. Sun Buckets which developed portable solar-powered cooking stoves won four different awards totaling $100,000. The Champaign-based startup won the $20,000 Power Clean Cities Award, the $20,000 Hanley Foundation Award and a $20,000 award from ComEd. It also received $40,000 in funding from the Clean Energy Trust prize fund. With a second $100,000 prize from the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Lotic Labs was the only other Chicago-based startup to secure funding. Lotic Labs provides financial products and risk-management services for water-dependent businesses. Advertisement Clean Energy Trust has made equity investments in nearly two dozen clean-tech startups, including last year's pitch competition winners NovoMoto and Nexmatix. Combined, its startup portfolio has raised more than $112 million in follow-on investment and created more than 300 jobs. The majority of Clean Energy Trust startups were founded by women and minorities, Birkerts said. About 250 students, entrepreneurs, business executives and investors attended this year's Clean Energy Trust Challenge, according to organizers. Robert Holly is a freelance writer. Twitter @RobertWadeHolly More top Blue Sky Innovation stories: Sittercity's new CEO sees opportunity with app-focused millennial parents Jammber wants to be the money-tracking app musicians and labels count on Teen's plea for free Wendy's nuggets sets retweet record Advertisement Entrepreneur Jimmy Odom leaves government, says Illinois isn't committed to minorities Grubhub wants to feed your office. Will it eat Fooda's lunch? Want to strike out on your own and start a business? Here's what I learned Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, left, talks with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at an April 14, 2014, reception with alumni of Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses program at La Taberna Tapas, a restaurant in Chicago's University Village neighborhood. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune) Chicago will get another $10 million from Goldman Sachs to extend a program that aims to help small businesses grow, Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to announce Wednesday morning with the investment bank's CEO. The money, which builds on $25 million Goldman Sachs committed to Chicago in 2011 when it launched the program here, will allow the 10,000 Small Businesses program to continue through 2020. Advertisement The program, offered in cities throughout the country, has provided free business education, mentoring and access to capital to more than 500 small-business owners in Chicago since its launch. Chicago is the first city where Goldman has announced an extension. Alumni of the Chicago program represent half a billion dollars in local revenue and support more than 8,000 jobs across the region, according to a news release from the mayor's office. More than 70 percent of local alumni reported increases in business revenues six months after graduating, and 47 percent created new jobs in that time, according to the release. Advertisement Emanuel and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein plan to announce the extension at an event at Harold Washington College, which teaches the business courses, marking the start of the 18th class of the program. aelejalderuiz@chicagotribune.com Twitter @alexiaer Though people often focus on unemployment rates as a measure of economic health, another telling data point is how many people are so discouraged with the job search that they're dropping out of the labor force altogether. A newly released survey found good news: Fewer unemployed Americans are giving up looking for work. But that's not the case in Illinois, where more people seem to be throwing up their hands. Advertisement A survey conducted by Harris Poll for Express Employment Professionals, a staffing agency, in March and April found 44 percent of jobless people in Illinois said they had completely given up looking for a job. That's worse than the 41 percent who said the same last year and the 33 percent who said so in 2015. Nationally, by contrast, 33 percent of jobless Americans in the recent survey said they'd stopped looking for work, an improvement from 40 percent last year. Advertisement "Economic and political factors unique to Illinois may be at play here," Bob Funk, CEO of the staffing agency, said in a news release. Harris surveyed 1,500 jobless Americans, including 100 in Illinois. Constant infighting between the Illinois legislature and the governor and a state budget impasse now approaching its third year may be deterring businesses and hurting job creation, making it harder for people to find suitable work, said Patrick Dolan, who oversees 16 Express Employment franchises in the Chicago area. "Business owners know that we have massive unpaid bills in the state, so they start thinking tax hikes," he said. He also points to minimum wage increases in Chicago and Cook County, and paid sick leave laws that go into effect in July, as causing employers to tighten their purse strings. But the problem is not necessarily that there aren't enough jobs; after all, Chicago and Cook County, which are both inching toward minimum wages of $13 an hour, tend to have stronger job creation and lower unemployment than many other parts of the state. Rather, the city and county wage increases may be changing workers' pay expectations throughout the state and misaligning their demands with what employers wish to offer, Dolan said. The poll data showed that 45 percent of Illinois' unemployed had received only a high school diploma and nearly a third are under age 30, suggesting the jobs they aren't finding are lower-skill, entry-level jobs. And, in Dolan's experience, there are plenty of those available. But he has found that many workers refuse to consider jobs that pay less than $10 an hour even in areas where the state's current minimum wage of $8.25 is in effect. "We have open positions across the Chicagoland area that we can't fill because we can't find the people willing to engage in the pay rate employers are offering," he said. Advertisement Other factors that could be contributing to Illinoisans giving up the job hunt is how they are looking for jobs, Dolan said. Nearly a third of their job search time is spent filling out applications online, up from 20 percent two years ago and significantly higher than the national average, while a shrinking amount of time is spent networking, following up on applications and interviewing, the survey found. Online job boards have made it easy for people to apply with the push of a button but have overwhelmed hiring managers on the other side, Dolan said. Job seekers "shoot their application into the ether and wait for a response, and on the other side of it, when an organization is deluged by applications for a single job, that applicant is going to be lost," he said. Still, the challenges haven't dampened optimism. Ninety-two percent of jobless Illinoisans said they were hopeful they would find a job within the next six months, the same as the national figures. And the average duration of unemployment in Illinois has decreased, to 20 months down from 24 months last year and nearly 30 months in 2015. A quarter of the Illinois respondents had been out of work for more than two years, compared with a third nationally. The survey also looked at the political opinions of the unemployed. Despite President Donald Trump's emphasis on jobs, 35 percent of respondents nationally said they voted for Hillary Clinton versus 25 percent for Trump. Thirty-four percent did not vote for president, a smaller share than the overall U.S. population that decided to sit the election out. The poll respondents were mixed on whether the Trump administration will have a positive impact in job creation and the job search. A modest majority said they were in favor of repealing Obamacare and believed it would be easier for them to get a job if there were less illegal immigration, both key Trump initiatives. Advertisement But just over half said it would be most useful to increase government spending for a job program, rather than cut taxes on corporations that could hire more workers. aelejalderuiz@chicagotribune.com Twitter @alexiaer One person was arrested after a brawl erupted aboard a Southwest Airlines jet deplaning in Burbank after arriving from Dallas. A statement Tuesday from the Dallas-based air carrier said the incident happened Sunday aboard Flight 2530 during deplaning at Burbank Bob Hope Airport in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles. Advertisement The fight involved three passengers aboard the Boeing 737. Southwest spokeswoman Alyssa Eliasen says police were summoned and one passenger was arrested, while another incurred minor injuries that didn't prevent further travel. There was no word on what prompted the quarrel. The Southwest statement says flight crews are trained to de-escalate conflict. Advertisement The brawl is the latest in a series of disturbances involving U.S. airliners. Problems began last month with cellphone video capturing a passenger being dragged off a United Airlines flight. Other horror stories from customers surfaced later involving flights on Delta and American airlines. Southwest Airline fight @ Burbank Airport pic.twitter.com/FvQcgExKyR Nick Krause (@nickkrause08) May 7, 2017 Then late Monday, irate passengers swarmed ticket counters at the Fort Lauderdale airport after Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights, blaming the decision on pilots' failure to show up. Some travelers started a near-riot at the Fort Lauderdale terminal as hundreds of travelers were left stranded. Deputies arrested three people from New York in the Fort Lauderdale airport, charging them with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. GMO fact map from Just Label It campaign. (Courtesy of Just Label It) Tuesday marked the deadline for the Food and Drug Administration to respond to the "Just Label It" petition, urging the agency to label genetically modified foods for American consumers. The anti-climactic response was essentially: We've made no decision and require more time. Advertisement This is not an uncommon response and organizers say they are hopeful for something more substantive soon. But a more immediate source of friction involves the way the agency counts petitioners versus the way Just Label It does. Organizers say the campaign garnered more than a million supporters, far more than any other petition brought to the FDA in history. But the FDA disagrees. By its count the number is: 394. Advertisement The agency says that if 35,000 people, for instance, sign their name to the same form letter it only counts as one person or "comment." And if tens of thousands sign a petition, they are only counted as one "comment," too. "This is the problem with the very un-friendly regulations.gov site," said Sue McGovern spokesperson for the Just Label It campaign in a statement. "It will not allow groups like Just Label It to direct individual comments from our site into theirs. Consequently, McGovern says JLI has to send its petitions and signatures as PDFs to the agency, where a petition with "tens of thousands of signatures/commenters" is counted as one. "It would be great if FDA would update their system to allow for more transparency by making a way for us to send in individual comments from our site so they would be visible to all without a FOIA," she said. FDA spokesperson Siobhan DeLancey said the rules are the same with for all citizens petitions to the FDA, also called dockets. Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > "Because that's the case for all dockets," she said, "it's impossible for me to compare the claim of 1 million comments to other dockets--especially without knowing how JLI is defining a 'comment'." But whether the citizens petition gathered a million or 394 official commenters, the FDA was required to respond in 180 days and it did, sort of. "They sent a letter saying that they had not made a decision yet and when they did they would let us know," said Andrew Kimbrell an attorney for the Center for Food Safety, one of the partner groups on the Just Label It campaign. . Advertisement "We know that this is a complicated issue and this response is not uncommon," he said. "But legally they are in a very difficult position in not mandating labeling because, among other things, so many of our trading partner require it." He was hopeful for an expeditious response but noted that JLI could also sue for unreasonably delay if it should come to that. "This is an election year and there are more than a million people who say this is important to them," he said, noting, "This is petition has nothing to do with whether or genetically modified foods are dangerous. We don't label dangerous foods, we take them off the shelves. This petition is about a the citizens' right to know what they are eating and whether or not these foods represent a novel change." During a press conference for the Just Label It campaign Tuesday, organizers presented results of a Mellman Group poll showing that 91 percent of Americans polled (representing a wide geographical and political swath) favored labeling. Eighty-one percent strongly favored it. Washington wines come mostly from the eastern part of the state, on the dry side of the Cascade Mountains where days are hot and nights cold during the growing season. ( Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune ) Those adhering today to the legendary prompt of 19th-century America "Go west, young man" would serve themselves well by not going all the way west, particularly if the goal is to make Pacific Northwest wine. Coastal Washington has beauty and charms all its own and even produces some of the state's wine. But eastern Washington is predominantly where the state's wines come from most famously its cabernet sauvignon, merlot, riesling and syrah, among other varietals and blends. The state grows close to 70 grape varieties, after all, in roughly a 60/40 split, red to white. So, if the east is the best in the Northwest, it might cause you to wonder aloud: "East of what?" Advertisement Great question. East of the Cascades the mountain range that acts like a gigantic meteorological checkpoint, keeping the state's wet weather west and preserving the much drier climate of the east, where vineyards enjoy long, hot sunny days and cool nights. Because of Washington's northerly latitude, vineyards there enjoy longer days of sunshine than do wine regions to the south, and longer days are good for ripening. When the northern night air rolls in and temperatures dip drastically (as much as 50 degrees in a single day), it helps grapes retain their all-important acidity. You can generally count on bright fruit and vibrant acidity in the wines of Washington, the country's largest wine-producing state after California. Washington's Puget Sound AVA (American Viticultural Area) hugs large stretches of the state's Pacific coastline, on both the mainland and its many islands, and the Columbia Gorge AVA crosses the border into Oregon. But east of the Cascades and almost completely within Washington, the Columbia Valley AVA is where the overwhelming majority of the state's wine is grown and produced. About 50,000 acres of grapevines are planted in Washington, most of them in Columbia Valley. Advertisement The region is enormous, and within it, there are several smaller AVAs (the state is home to 14 AVAs total), including Walla Walla Valley, Horse Heaven Hills and Yakima Valley. And then, as if they were Russian nesting dolls, there are even AVAs inside Yakima Valley: Snipes Mountain, Rattlesnake Hills and Red Mountain. It all sounds very Wild West, doesn't it? I guess you could say that not too long ago (in wine years), Washington actually did have a sort of Wild West feel. Large-scale commercial vineyards started appearing in the 1960s, and as recently as 1981, the state was home to only 19 wineries. By the 1990s, the larger world began to take notice of Washington wines, and by 2001, the number of wineries had jumped to 170. Ten years after that there were 740, and today there are more than 900. The big, pioneering wineries of the Washington wine industry Chateau Ste. Michelle and Columbia Winery, to name two are still thriving, but smaller, startup operations are materializing fairly consistently, even today. Don't be surprised when the number of Washington wineries exceeds 1,000 and you see even more of it on store shelves and restaurant wine lists. Meanwhile, pick up a few bottles and familiarize yourself with the wines of a western state that knows firsthand that, in at least one local pursuit, going west is a relative term. Recommended Below are notes from a recent tasting of Washington wines. They are listed in ascending order according to price, and by style whites followed by reds. WHITES 2015 Goose Ridge Vineyards g3 Estate Bottled Chardonnay. Green apple, nutmeg, honey, vanilla and a touch of salinity characterize this creamy wine from Columbia Valley. $15 2016 Tamarack Cellars Chardonnay. Tropical fruits, herbal qualities, pear, citrus, toasty notes, zingy acidity and 12.9 percent alcohol. $16 Advertisement 2015 Poet's Leap Riesling. From Long Shadows Vintners, this off-dry riesling offered stone and tropical fruits, melon, lemon, minerality, crisp acidity and a long finish. $20 2015 Eroica Riesling. This tangy beauty, a collaboration between Chateau Ste. Michelle and Germany's Dr. Loosen, was full of apple, pear, lime and bright, refreshing acidity. $22 REDS 2014 Charles Smith The Velvet Devil Merlot. Plum, blackberry, herbs, tobacco and spice led to a lingering finish. $12 2013 Columbia Winery Merlot. Made of 87 percent merlot, this one was floral and toasty, with notes of black cherry and black licorice. $16 2014 L'Ecole No. 41 Merlot. A luscious mouthfeel, with ripe blue and black fruit and notes of violets and vanilla in a long, slow finish. $25 Advertisement 2014 Januik Cabernet Sauvignon. This lively and elegant wine offered a medley of plum, blackberry, olives, spice and a cleansing pass of mint. $30 2012 Cadaretta Cabernet Sauvignon. Blueberry, blackberry, vanilla, cocoa, herbs and touches of smoke and earth sum up this wine, with 14.8 percent alcohol. $40 2014 Canvasback Red Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. This silky wine was full of rich, dark fruits and black olives, plus leather and spice. $40 Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > 2014 Buty Winery Conner Lee Vineyard Merlot & Cabernet Franc. This 63/37 blend was floral with plum, cherry, cedar, tobacco and spice. $45 2013 Columbia-Crest Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. This luscious, lip-smacking wine was full of blackberry, black cherry and plum, with smoke and leather on the finish. $45 2014 Force Majeure Vineyard Parabellum. Juicy, complex Bordeaux-style blend (merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc), layered with dark fruits, nutmeg, vanilla and a hint of smoke. $55 Advertisement 2013 Woodward Canyon Artist Series #22 Cabernet Sauvignon. Plum, dark fruits, forest floor, baking spices, pine, black pepper and bright acidity sum up this wine. $59 2012 Double Canyon/Double Canyon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. Violets, blackberry, plum, cedar, tobacco, lively acidity and a persistent finish characterize this Horse Heaven Hills wine. $65 food@chicagotribune.com Twitter @pour_man An action comedy about white women beset by brown men in Latin American countries portrayed by Hawaii, "Snatched" is Amy Schumer's second big movie, her follow-up to the very funny "Trainwreck," which introduced her to audiences unfamiliar with her stand-up or her TV work on "Inside Amy Schumer." The film co-stars Goldie Hawn, in her first major screen role since "The Banger Sisters" 15 years ago. Shrewdly, 20th Century Fox is positioning their product as a Mother's Day weekend offering; what better way to market it? Mother. Daughter. Kidnapped by Ecuadorean ransom-seekers while on vacation. They get stuffed in a car trunk; they harpoon a bad guy; they dance; they learn to take it easy on each other. The movie does not take it easy. Director Jonathan Levine ("50/50," "The Night Before") has skill, but broad visual gags aren't really his strength. Screenwriter Katie Dippold wrote "The Heat," the one with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy (sequel coming), which pulled a successful variation on a familiar odd-couple theme. "Snatched," more about victimhood than women running their own show, is funny here and there, but in ways that make the bulk of the formulaic material all the more frustrating. Advertisement Stiffed by her boyfriend (Randall Park) on the eve of their nonrefundable Ecuador getaway, directionless, hard-drinking Emily (Schumer) invites her cat-obsessed suburban shut-in of a mother (Hawn) on the trip instead. Mother Linda's fears of abduction come true soon enough, though Emily's too smitten by the flirtatious Englishman (Tom Bateman) on vacation to sense trouble. "Snatched" engineers ways to get Emily and Linda in danger and then out again, evading their kidnapper (Oscar Jaenada, stereotypical swarthy menace incarnate) as best they can, while back home Emily's agoraphobic brother (Ike Barinholtz) nudges a skeptical U.S. State Department in the rescue of his family. Amy Schumer, left, and Goldie Hawn star in "Snatched," which opens just in time for Mother's Day. (Justina Mintz / 20th Century Fox) If you're going to write a movie like this one, you're going to try to invent ways and means of pushing the story forward without your audience getting that weary, back-to-the-kidnapping-stuff feeling. I had that feeling a lot during "Snatched." You sense the relief on Dippold's behalf every time she gets the chance to ditch what's "required" and focus on what's amusing, or offbeat. Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack make for entertaining side players as a couple of vacationers who come in handy plotwise; Christopher Meloni scores a laugh or two as a would-be adventurer who serves as Emily and Linda's guide through the jungles of Colombia. "Feel free to drink from any puddle you see," he says at one point. "All water in the jungle is safe." The jokes are sardonic 21st century variations on "Don't Drink the Water," sometimes literally. Advertisement It's extremely broad humor, for the most part, nervously edited, involving the extraction of a vicious-looking tapeworm from Emily's throat, or Emily makeshift-douching herself in a restroom, preparing for a possible hookup with her English friend. Hawn does not easily suggest a paranoid lonelyheart with bad knees, as the script dictates, but she and Schumer parallel-play together, affectionately. "Snatched" is too busy with everything around, and outside, this central relationship. In that regard it resembles the Tina Fey/Steve Carell action comedy "Date Night," which got by with audiences despite itself. We'll see about this one; it is, after all, opening on Mother's Day weekend. Michael Phillips is a Chicago Tribune critic. mjphillips@chicagotribune.com Twitter @phillipstribune "Snatched" 2 stars MPAA rating: R (for crude sexual content, brief nudity, and language throughout) Running time: 1:37 Opens: Thursday evening Advertisement RELATED STORIES: 'King Arthur' review: Guy Ritchie's ridiculous tale a far cry from Camelot Partners Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell get Walk of Fame stars Were Walt Disney's dying words really 'Kurt Russell'? As Disney's 'Guardians' opens, the urban legend persists 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) Alderman Raymond Lopez at City Hall talks about police issuing him protection after what they termed "credible threats" against him from gang members. (John Byrne / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune) The Southwest Side alderman who's under police protection after being threatened by gang members is standing by his statement that "no innocent lives were lost" in a Brighton Park mass shooting and says he will continue to speak out against the violence plaguing his ward. Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, said the Chicago Police Department posted officers at his home, office "and when I'm out in public if it's something that needs to be there" after what officials termed "credible threats" from gang members. Advertisement "We'll be discussing how much longer this additional support is required, but I know that's not going to stop me from doing my job, being out in the community," Lopez said at City Hall Tuesday. The alderman made his "no innocent lives were lost" comment Sunday night after two people were killed and eight others wounded when two masked gunmen with rifles opened fire on a group congregating at a makeshift memorial for a man who had been slain in an earlier shooting. Advertisement Asked Tuesday whether his remark prompted the gang threats, Lopez said it's not important how gang members react to his comments. He said he doesn't regret what he said. Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th Ward, talks during a press conference down the street from where 10 people were shot, two killed and eight wounded, at the 2600 block of West 46th Place on May 7, 2017, in the Brighton Park neighborhood. (Alyssa Pointer / Chicago Tribune) "However my comment is taken, the point remains we have people who are willing to kill indiscriminately to maintain this culture of gang violence and retaliatory warfare in our communities," Lopez said. "Standing up against that is what brought this on; not remaining silent is what brought this on." "(Police) will continue to monitor the situation, but in the meantime I'm just going to continue doing what I have done since I was elected, which is to stand up for my communities and fight back against the gang and gun violence that has been plaguing them for decades," he said. Daniel Cordova, who police said had gang affiliations, was found fatally shot at around 4:30 a.m. Sunday near 46th Place and Rockwell Street. Later that day, a crowd had congregated at a memorial for Cordova near where he was shot when two masked gunmen emerged from an alley and opened fire on the group with rifles. Killed were siblings Adriana Williams and Michael Williams, and police said the brother had gang affiliations. Chicago police Deputy Superintendent Kevin Navarro, Deputy Chief Kevin Ryan and 15th Ward Ald. Raymond Lopez speak at the scene of a shooting that left two people dead and eight wounded in Brighton Park on May 7, 2017. (Alyssa Pointer / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune) That evening, Lopez spoke at a news conference with police officials on the scene. "I am thankful today that no innocent lives were lost," Lopez said then. "No children were shot; no police officers were shot." By Monday, police were providing Lopez with a security detail, according to a law enforcement source who indicated the alderman had received threats. On Tuesday, Lopez mentioned that gang members previously have threatened him on social media when he took steps to crack down on them in the Southwest Side ward, which also includes parts of Back of the Yards, Gage Park and West Englewood. jebyrne@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @_johnbyrne One night last fall, Victoria Rodriguez, a pediatric hospitalist at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, was paged from the emergency room for a consultation on a case. An ER doctor had evaluated a 4-week-old infant, and although he couldn't find anything wrong with the baby, he hesitated to send the anxious family home. His concern? During the night, the parents had received an alarm on their phones that the baby's heart rate and blood-oxygen level were low. The alarm had been triggered by the baby's high-tech sock, one of a new class of devices that continuously measure babies' vital signs, but the ER doctor wasn't sure how to interpret this information. There is no peer-reviewed research on the accuracy of these devices, and they have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. "Without having testing for this device, it's really hard to make sense of the alarm," Rodriguez said. Advertisement These new monitors are a far cry from the simple sound monitors that have been a nursery staple for decades. They come in several forms, with wireless electronics integrated into socks, leg bands, buttons, onesies or diaper clips that send data to parents' smartphones using Bluetooth technology. Some use motion sensors that purport to detect if a baby stops breathing, and others use pulse-oximetry probes, which shine a light through the skin to measure blood-oxygen levels. The devices can be purchased online and at major retailers for $90 to $350. The monitors track infants' vital signs, but it's not clear how accurate this information is or how it should be used by parents and medical providers. In the case Rodriguez was consulted on, she felt she had to recommend that the baby be hospitalized for more testing. After bloodwork, an EKG and 24 hours of heart-rate and oxygen monitoring - none of which revealed problems - the infant was cleared to go home. "The child was completely fine, but those 24 hours were very nerve-racking for the parents," Rodriguez said. Advertisement Eric Coon, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, has overseen the care of three infants with similar stories in the past few months, all admitted to the hospital from the emergency room after parents reported an alarm from a high-tech baby monitor. In each case, he said, the infants' hospital stays were "of questionable value," and he worries that this new class of monitors is causing unnecessary medical interventions. "People think, 'Oh, all you're doing is getting more data - more data on your child. How could that be bad?' " Coon said. But "hospitalization carries a whole host of potential harms to children," including the risk of hospital-acquired infections and side effects of medical procedures, he said, along with stress and anxiety for the family and the cost of the hospital care. "Every single medical technology has the potential to harm patients, and really the only way to know if the benefits outweigh the harms is to study it," Coon said. Parents might assume that a monitor that measures vital signs could prevent their baby from dying of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, but there's no hard evidence for this. And studies from the 1980s and 1990s of hospital-grade heart-rate and breathing monitors prescribed for home use for babies thought to be at high risk for SIDS found that the monitors didn't reduce babies' risk of dying of SIDS. These older monitors were more cumbersome - not wireless like the commercial monitors available today - but they collected similar data, and some studies reported that their use increased parental stress and fatigue. In its guidelines on SIDS prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics says, "Do not use home cardiorespiratory monitors as a strategy to reduce the risk of SIDS." Manufacturers don't claim that new monitors prevent SIDS or other sleep-related deaths, only that they offer "peace of mind" for parents and caregivers. For example, Baby Vida's website says its oxygen monitor offers "vital peace of mind while your baby sleeps." The company's website also states, "The Baby Vida Oxygen Monitor does not prevent SIDS. It is not a medical device. . . . It's only intended use is to provide additional information to caregivers." Snuza says its movement monitors, which detect "the slightest of movements, monitoring your baby when sleeping," provides "peace of mind and supports you when you need it the most." Because the devices do not claim to be medical equipment, they do not fall under FDA regulation, which requires manufacturers to show that devices are safe, effective and accurate. Advertisement Christopher Bonafide, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, says it's a problem that the new monitors have not been evaluated by the FDA. Bonafide was lead author of an editorial on the monitors that was published in JAMA in January. "There's no role for any type of home monitoring of healthy infants, and there are further risks with using these sort of non-FDA-approved devices in that we don't know how accurate they are and we think there could be risks of harm if parents do choose to use them," he said. FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Caccomo said that the agency is reviewing Bonafide's paper. Reiterating what's in his editorial, Bonafide says that potential risks include burns from the devices' electronics or other skin damage caused by many hours of wear, but he's most concerned about indirect harms such as unwarranted medical interventions. Temporary pauses in breathing and periods of low blood oxygen occur occasionally in healthy infants, but if this normal variation triggers an alarm of a home monitor, it could lead to a cascade of unnecessary actions and parental anxiety, as Rodriguez and Coon saw in their patients. Other types of constant monitoring have been shown to be unhelpful and even harmful. For example, the AAP no longer recommends continuous pulse-oximetry monitoring of children hospitalized for bronchiolitis. Studies found that when monitoring detected periods of low blood oxygen, children stayed in the hospital longer, but longer stays didn't improve health outcomes. Likewise, continuous fetal monitoring during an uncomplicated labor was found to increase a woman's chances of Caesarean delivery - and associated risks - with no health benefit to the baby. "It's so hard for medical providers not to react to data that is slightly abnormal, and sometimes it's better that we didn't know it at all," Coon said. With the new generation of infant monitors, data is being streamed to parents from unregulated devices. "This kind of thing could lead people to try and make a clinical decision from a device that is really more like a toy in the way it's being regulated," said David Jamison, co-author of the JAMA editorial and executive director of health devices at the ECRI Institute, a nonprofit organization that reviews medical procedures and devices. The institute will be testing the safety and accuracy of home infant pulse oximeters this year, Jamison said. Owlet, maker of one of the monitors, says it has done internal safety and accuracy testing and plans to publish results soon. Meanwhile, 80,000 families are using Owlet's sock pulse oximeter. Jane Putman, the company's public relations director, said in an email, "A number of our current customers are physicians and healthcare providers, who have expressed support for the product and the information it provides through its continued use with their own children." She added that "due to innovations developed by Owlet to lessen false alarms, many users will use the Owlet Sock for several months without ever getting a false alarm, greatly reducing the risk of over diagnosis." Owlet also has an FDA application pending for a medical version of its pulse oximeter, available by prescription, she said. Snuza founder Greg Gallagher said in an email that his company also is working with the FDA on a product that would be available by prescription. A Snuza monitor that detects breathing cessation has been approved as a medical device in Europe. Advertisement A small, easy-to-use, wireless pulse oximeter could be a welcome improvement over current hospital-grade devices, Bonafide said. "With evidence of their safety and accuracy, these products could be truly innovative to those patients who do need monitoring," he said, though he would recommend their use only for sick infants under the care of a physician, not for routine monitoring of healthy infants. Some pediatricians worry that home use of vital sign monitors might falsely reassure parents about SIDS, defined as a sudden death with unexplained cause during the first year of life, and other sleep-related deaths such as those caused by suffocation. "Parents may become complacent if they are using a monitor and figure that, since the monitor is on the baby, it's okay to place the baby on her stomach to sleep or to otherwise not follow the safe sleep recommendations," Rachel Moon, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, wrote in an email. She was the lead author of the AAP's policy statement on safe sleep. Moon's concern hasn't been formally studied, but Alexis Dubeif, founder of a 30,000-member Facebook group focused on infant sleep, says she believes complacency is not uncommon. "I have seen, anecdotally, a significant portion of parents who feel that it's okay to use unsafe sleep practices because they are 'protected' by their monitoring device," she wrote in an email. To reduce the risk of SIDS, Bonafide emphasizes proven strategies. "There are things that we know help in terms of prevention of SIDS, like the bare crib and the flat mattress with a tight crib sheet. These are not sexy. These are not smartphone-integrated things," but they are effective, he said. The AAP also recommends that babies sleep in their parents' room (but not in the same bed) for the first year of life and that parents place babies on their back for sleep, avoid tobacco exposure, breast-feed, offer a pacifier and immunize babies on schedule to reduce the risk of SIDS. Victoria Rodriguez understands the anxiety associated with SIDS. In addition to being a pediatrician, she is a mother who checks on her year-old daughter while she sleeps. When Rodriguez talks with parents, she says, she tells them to follow the AAP guidelines and not to bother with vital-signs monitors because they "don't seem to prevent bad things from happening and can cause emotional distress for families." RELATED STORIES: Advertisement Untreated vision problems plague U.S. preschoolers Why kids rebel against tyranny of socks Long-term birth control is the most reliable. So why do so few young women use it? Drew Peterson's cantankerous former attorney Joel Brodsky is back in hot water and a federal judge's patience seems to be wearing thin. Brodsky, who found fame as the goatee-bearded advocate for convicted murderer Peterson, has long had a knack for winding folks up. Advertisement A vexed courtroom opponent once accused him, perhaps unfairly, of "constantly shaking his head, his bald head, so that the light is shining on me." But Brodsky's recent conduct in Chicago's federal court where he all but accused a witness of inventing a son, and accused his rival attorney of running a "criminal enterprise" has prompted U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall to take the highly unusual step of setting aside an entire day to hear complaints about his behavior in a small-time lemon law case. Advertisement She angrily warned Brodsky and his opposing counsel Peter Lubin last month that, "I'm not going to permit my courtroom, ever, to be used as a circus." "It is my strong opinion that Mr. Brodsky has been overly aggressive in this case, that he's not following the rules of professional conduct, and that he is filing a lot of motions to exacerbate the discovery process," Kendall said in court April 12. "And so it's going to be a hearing primarily to determine whether sanctions should be applied to him." Brodsky, who represents S&M Auto Brokers (That's "S" for Saed Ihmoud and "M" for Mohammed Ihmoud), is defending the auto dealer against allegations that they knowingly sold a wrecked and rebuilt luxury Infiniti SUV without disclosing that it had been in a bad accident. He accused Lubin of hiring an expert who has lied about the condition of cars in other cases to shake down car dealers. Brodsky also accused the expert of threatening an elderly lady in an unrelated case, and then insinuated that the expert had invented a son who provided an alibi. Last week, Brodsky was quick to point out to Chicago Inc. that Kendall said she also will use the June 9 hearing to determine whether she should sanction Lubin, as Brodsky had requested. But on Tuesday, Brodsky asked to formally withdraw his allegations against Lubin. Kendall, in any case, had already made it clear which way she was leaning. After hearing an audiotape of a wild deposition at which Brodsky repeatedly accused Lubin of being a criminal, she encouraged Lubin to file for sanctions against Brodsky and added, "I have concerns about the level of acrimonious behavior on the part of the lawyers primarily Mr. Brodsky. I mean, after reading everything and listening to everything, it looks like Mr. Lubin is defending himself 99 percent of the time, trying to maintain a level of decorum that is appropriate." She warned the Ihmouds that the case could end up being very expensive for them, too, telling them, "So, you see, we've taken what is an odometer-fixing case and we've blown it into an enormous disciplinary matter." And when Brodsky tried to walk back his insinuation that the expert had invented a son, the judge told him, "That, I think, is maybe the least of your issues." Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > And she advised him to hire a lawyer. Advertisement It isn't the first time Brodsky has faced discipline. His law license was suspended for three months in 2004 for forging a dead man's signature in a probate case; he was referred to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission by the judge in the Peterson trial; and he was thrown off a case in 2013 by a judge after he called his opponent a "liar" and a "moron." Brodsky noted that the disciplinary commission took no action against him in either of the last two cases, and added, with a laugh, that the opponent he called a "moron" was also thrown off the case and "died of a rage-induced stroke, which tells you all you need to know." "Twice does not make a pattern," he said. Lubin, who has no disciplinary record with the commission, declined to comment. kjanssen@chicagotribune.com Twitter @kimjnews Tribune Media, a Chicago-based company whose holdings include WGN-AM 720, is expected to be acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune 2010) First, they took our Frangos. Now they've come for WGN. Advertisement "They" are the invaders who descend upon Chicago and snatch all sorts of things we pride ourselves on calling local. That brewery. That bank. That candy company. One day they're ours, the next day they've been abducted by aliens. Advertisement This time the interloper is Sinclair Broadcast Group from Maryland, which announced Monday it was buying Tribune Media, a Chicago-based company whose holdings include a radio station and a TV station that have helped define the city. For decades, the stations have worn their pride of place like a badge of honor. "Chicago's Very Own." That's how WGN Radio describes itself. "An independent television station located in Chicago." That's how WGN-TV is identified online. Neither will be able to make those claims much longer, not authentically, even if the call letters stay the same. (The call letters WGN were derived from "World's Greatest Newspaper," an early slogan of the Chicago Tribune. Please note, however, that the Tribune and the WGN stations are no longer owned by the same company. The sale of Tribune Media has nothing to do with the newspaper.) Around Chicago in the past couple of days, the lament over the WGN sale has been loud, much of it animated by fear of Sinclair, a company known for using its TV stations to press a conservative political agenda. But there's also a sense of loss that transcends politics, and the names of Bozo the Clown, Garfield Goose, Harry Caray and Jack Brickhouse, among others, have been invoked as evidence of what's been taken. Advertisement In social media, people have responded to the news by making lists of their favorite WGN radio and TV characters, both real (Caray, Brickhouse) and imaginary (Bozo, Garfield). In some quarters, the wail has been so anguished you'd think Bozo and the gang had just this week been marched to the guillotine. In reality, they've all been gone a long time, and most Chicagoans are too young to remember watching or hearing them. If, like me, you didn't grow up here, they're no more than legend. Still, their names are symbolic of our collective past and of WGN's homegrown flavor. To many Chicagoans, the loss of any major local company is the equivalent of an execution or, at best, an amputation. When a local company is sold to someone from somewhere else, a piece of our identity is nabbed or so it seems until we forget. When I moved to Chicago, I joined First Chicago Bank solely because I liked the name. It made me feel anchored in my new place. Years later, after many metamorphoses, that old bank has been folded into Chase, the monster that ate the banking world. I was briefly sad to lose my local bank, but now I never think of it except when another local enterprise is snatched. Several years ago, beer lovers were distressed that Anheuser-Busch, the monster that ate the beer world, bought Chicago's Goose Island brewery. Some serious craft-brew types may still be holding a grudge, but plenty of people still drink Goose Island. Advertisement Such snatching is all around us, even if we fail or forget to notice. The Willis Tower born as the Sears Tower and built by the local Sears company is now owned by an enterprise based in New York. As of last fall, Tribune Tower, the local landmark built to house the Chicago Tribune, is owned by a company in LA. Fannie May, the chocolate company that made its candy at a plant on West Jackson Boulevard for more than 80 years, is now owned by Ferrero, the Italian candy-maker best known for Nutella. A China-based company is leading an effort to buy the Chicago Stock Exchange, pending approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Local companies and icons aren't always worse when they're taken over by outsiders, but too often businesses run from afar don't understand or care about the place they've invaded. Even if they do, they don't provide that intangible benefit called local pride. Advertisement But life is change. New local businesses come. And go. And every now and then come back. Like many hardcore Chicagoans, I stopped buying Frangos, the famous chocolate sold in the famous Marshall Field's stores, when they ceased to be a Chicago confection and Marshall Field's turned into Macy's. This winter, Garrett Brands, which owns the popcorn shops by that name, bought the Frango brand from Macy's, bringing it home. Getting Frangos back doesn't make up for losing WGN, but it's better than nothing. I plan to start giving Frangos as gifts again, until Garrett is abducted by a popcorn conglomerate in China. mschmich@chicagotribune.com Twitter @MarySchmich Advertisement A Mary Schmich column published Wednesday incorrectly described the current ownership of the Chicago Stock Exchange. A China-based company is leading an effort to buy the exchange, but that acquisition is awaiting approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Tribune regrets the error. An airline passenger attempted to bring a loaded gun through Bismarck airport security on Monday morning, according to the Transportation Security Administration. A TSA officer noticed the Smith and Wesson .380 semiautomatic pistol on an X-ray scan of the passenger's carry-on property around 8 a.m. TSA notified a Bismarck Police officer, who removed the gun, which contained seven rounds, including one in the chamber. TSA will level a civil penalty against the passenger, who was flying to Denver, Colo., but he was not cited by law enforcement, the agency said. Fines can amount to as much as $7,500. According to TSA, it is the third time this year that a passenger has tried to bring a firearm through Bismarck airport security. A total of six firearms have been recovered across the state during airport security screenings. Passengers are allowed to carry unloaded firearms in their checked luggage, as long as they are declared, according to TSA. It is not allowed to bring guns in carry-on. The rules for traveling with firearms are not new, and passengers will be held accountable for the contents of their baggage, said David Durgan, Federal Security Director for North Dakota. Ellen Gantner, director of the Illinois Artisan Program from about 1985 to 2000. (Illinois State Museum) Ellen Gantner had an eye for beauty and an appreciation for those who could create it, qualities she used as director of the Illinois Artisans Program from about 1985 to 2000. "She lifted people up, to say that their artisan work was important, that what they made was important," said Elizabeth Black, who began working with and for Gantner as manager of the Illinois Artisans shop in the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago in the late 1980s. "She gave (Illinois artisans) a place to showcase their work." Advertisement For Gantner, there was no distinction between artisan and artist. "From her I learned how to (really) see things and appreciate things," said Kasha Yankovich, who succeeded Black as the Chicago store manager. "She had this sparkle in her eyes all the time and was very determined to bring fine crafts into the forefront of art." Gantner, 87, died of natural causes April 1 in the home of one of her daughters, Jenny Herrmann, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, according to her son Gregory. The longtime Chicago-area resident had been living in Ohio about two years. Advertisement She was born Ellen Schmitz in Chicago, grew up in Glenview and returned to Chicago to attend high school at the since-closed Immaculata High School. She briefly attended college to study piano, but left in 1950 to marry Robert Gantner, who survives her. She soon began raising a family that grew to seven children. In the mid-1970s, she began volunteering with the archaeology department at Northwestern University and became involved in the work the school was doing at the Koster Site, an important archaeological dig near Kampsville in southwestern Illinois. She became a director of the school site, her son said, spending time there each summer and at other times making presentations on the site and the work going on there to school and community groups to raise public awareness. Through that work, she met leaders of the Illinois State Museum and through them joined what became the Illinois Artisans Program. At the time, Black said, the shop was on the second floor of the Thompson Center. "When I began, it was called the Illinois Artists shop. When I left, it was a program." Black said Gantner added shops in other parts of the state, including in Springfield, and what Black called a large marketplace at Rend Lake. "She had a vision and a goal in mind, which was to be bigger and to open shops throughout the state," Black said. Advertisement Gantner often had to work her way around the state bureaucracy. "She had so much fortitude and she could move mountains," Black said. Black said during Gantner's time, artists were encouraged to submit slides of their work for judging for inclusion in the program and in special exhibits, often featuring a particular medium or type of art or craft, all aimed at showcasing the best Illinois artisans had to offer. "She saw herself as the employee and the artists as bosses," Black said. "She was in service to them." As part of that approach, Gantner would travel the state, covering a circuit that included church basements and the halls of fraternal organizations, asking artisans and crafts people to "show me what you have." Along the way, she connected with local crafters and nationally recognized artists alike, all responding to Gantner's interest and genuine respect for their work. Yankovich said Gantner saw art as ranging far beyond conventional paintings and sculpture. Advertisement Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 86 Dick Orkin, an award-winning radio advertising creator for close to a half-century who was perhaps best known for his syndicated Chickenman spoof, which aired on Chicago stations, died on Dec. 24 in California. He was 84. Read more. (Handout) Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "She had this appreciation, this historical alignment with things from wood carvings to pine needle baskets," Yankovich said. "I learned how to look at those individual crafts and appreciate the craftsmanship." Gantner, in a video interview provided by her son, acknowledged the value of art for herself and for others. "So, I didn't get to be a pianist," she said, "and I didn't get to be a painter or anything, but I got to do something that gave me what I needed to have, to work with artists, and I am very grateful for that." The Illinois Artisans Program was suspended in 2015 because of a lack of funding. Gantner also is survived by another daughter, Sarah Granados; her other sons Jim, Paul, Mark and Dan; sisters Mary Polhemus and Betsi Orr; a brother, Tom Schmitz; 21 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. Services were held. Advertisement Megan is a freelance reporter. Frankfort SUSPENDED LICENSE: Danielle Duhoski, 30, of the 11000 block of First Street, Mokena, was charged with driving on a suspended license and no insurance May 2 at U.S. 30 and Windy Hill, police said. Advertisement SUSPENDED LICENSE: Kimbriel Bentley, 23, of the 200 block of East 22nd Street, Chicago, was charged with driving on a suspended license and speeding May 2 at Laraway and Majestic, police said. Homer Glen Advertisement RETAIL THEFT: Adam Staszel, 33, of the 7700 block of Wolf Road in Burr Ridge, was charged with retail theft after stealing numerous items including dog food, tools, laundry products and torch bits from Menards, 13956 S. Bell Road, on April 13, police said. HIT AND RUN: Samantha Dorsey, 37, of the 300 block of Madison in Calumet City, was charged with hit and run, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, driving on a suspended license, failure to report an accident, no insurance and abandoning a vehicle April 13 at Cedar and Bruce, police said. Midlothian STOLEN CAR: A man told police someone stole his 2005 Ford Focus when he briefly left his car running outside his home in the 14400 block of Lawndale May 1. CAR BURGLARY: A man told police someone stole his wallet containing $950 in cash as well as his license and debit card when he left his car unlocked outside his home on Springfield Avenue May 2. HOME BURGLARIZED: A man told police a burglar broke into his apartment in the 3500 block of 147th Street and stole two televisions, a mink coat, six pairs of shoes valued at $1500 and $14,000 worth of jewelry on May 3. The man said his front door was unlocked and a window left open when he came home. STORE BREAK-IN: Police said someone shattered the front door of T-Mobile, 14659 S. Cicero Ave., and damaged a door leading to a backroom around 3 a.m. May 4. A store manager said nothing appeared to be missing despite several valuable items left in plain view. BURGLARY: A man told police someone stole $700 worth of tools from his garage in the 4300 block of 151st Street May 4. Advertisement WINDOW SMASHED: A woman told police someone broke out her car window when she was parked in the Midlothian Park District Rayday Lodge parking lot in the 3200 block of 145th Street May 6. The next day someone broke a mirror and a window on a car parked in the 14900 block of Willow Crest Court. DUI CHARGE: Melinda Gutierrez, of Oak Forest, was charged with drunken driving at 159th and Cicero Avenue May 6, police said. Mokena DUI CHARGE: Crystal Lawrence, 34, of the 11200 block of 191st Street, was charged with drugged driving, illegal possession of prescription drugs, hit and run, and no insurance after an April 22 crash in the 10700 block of Mary Lane, police said. HIT AND RUN: Kaitlyn Kearny, 24, of the 12600 block of Regan Trail, Mokena, was charged with hit and run after hitting another car in the parking lot of The Alley, 18700 Old LaGrange Road, and then fleeing the scene April 27, police said. BATTERY: Eric Flaherty, 40, of the 18300 block of Gladville Avenue, Homewood, was ticketed for battery after attacking two men he did not know at Jenny's Steakhouse, 10160 W. 191st Street, on April 30. Advertisement New Lenox THEFT: Someone stole wooden pallets from the back of a store in the 2100 block of Calistoga Drive April 28. RETAIL THEFT: Angelos Star, 20, of the 1000 block of U.S. 30, New Lenox, was charged with retail theft after stealing items from Walmart in the 500 block of U.S. 30 on April 30, police said. THEFT: Police said someone stole pieces of the HVAC unit from the roof of Patterson Dental Group in the 2000 block of East Laraway Road on May 1. SUSPENDED LICENSE: Rickia Blair, 22, of the 10800 block of Edbrooke, Chicago, was charged with driving on a suspended license and no insurance May 5 in the 500 block of U.S. 30, police said. Oak Forest Advertisement DRUG CHARGE: Antonio Montoya, 21, of the 15700 block of Thomas Kane, Oak Forest, was charged with intent to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia after police found 60 grams of marijuana and various drug equipment while executing a search warrant at his home April 27, police said. ORDER VIOLATION: Salahedin Issa, 22, of the 5700 block of Independence Avenue, Oak Forest, was charged with violating an order of protection after telephoning a member of his household April 28, police said. BATTERY: Andre Johnson, 19, of the 13700 block of South Wallace Avenue, Riverdale, was charged with two counts of battery and retail theft after shoving two employees from Jewel-Osco, 5616 W. 159th St., who attempted to stop Johnson from stealing a sandwich and a bottle of tequila from the store April. 28, police said. Also charged with retail theft was Darius Sims, 21, of Merrillville, Ind., police said. BATTERY: Joseph Mikos, 61, of the 5100 block of Shadow Creek Drive, Oak Forest, was charged with battery and criminal trespassing after shoving an employee who was escorting him out of Starbucks, 15852 Cicero Ave., on April 28, police said. DOMESTIC BATTERY: Renato Hernandez, 42, of the 15300 block of Ann Marie Drive, Oak Forest, was charged with domestic battery after an April 28 incident at his home, police said. HOME BURGLARIZED: Someone broke into a home in the 6900 block of Westview Drive, ransacked the inside and stole numerous pieces of jewelry on May 1. Advertisement THEFT: A catalytic converter was stolen from a car parked in the 15800 block of Central Avenue May 3. PURSE SNATCHED: A woman's purse was stolen while she used the bathroom at Linger Martini Bar, 4142 167th St., on May 3. CRIMINAL TRESSPASS: David Kirby Jr., 32, of the 5700 block of 150th Place, Oak Forest, was charged with criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct after screaming at an employee of Circle K, 5600 159th St., and refusing to leave May 6, police said. DOMESTIC BATTERY: Michael Englesman, 44, of the 15500 block of Ridgeland Avenue, Oak Forest, was charged with domestic battery May 7 after an incident at his home, police said. Orland Park RETAIL THEFT: Michael Seminetta, 32, of Burbank, was charged with felony retail theft, possession of stolen property and driving on a suspended license after stealing $600 worth of medication from Walgreens, 7960 159th St., on April 13, police said. Advertisement DUI CHARGE: Mary Murphy, 59, of the 10300 block of Keating Avenue, Oak Lawn, was charged with drunken driving April 13 in the 15800 block of Harlem Avenue, police said. DUI CHARGE: Karen Vogel, 59, of the 9800 block of Cordoba Court, Orland Park, was charged with drunken driving April 16 in the 15700 block of Ravinia Avenue, police said. RETAIL THEFT: Leticia Martinez, 56, of the 8900 block of Biloba Avenue, Orland Park, was charged with retail theft after stealing $355 worth of merchandise from Sears in Orland Square Mall April 17, police said. IDENTITY THEFT: Ryan Rogers, 29, of Detroit, was charged with felony identity theft after attempting to purchase three iPhones using someone else's credit at the Apple Store in Orland Square Mall April 17, police said. HIT AND RUN: Scott Hejna, 35, of Hickory Hills, was charged with hit and run, driving on a revoked license, no insurance, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident and illegal transportation of alcohol after an April 18 crash in the 10700 block of 143rd Street, police said. RETAIL THEFT: Maurishia Brown, 23, of Chicago, was charged with retail theft after stealing $275 worth of merchandise from Kohl's in Orland Park Place Mann April 19, police said. Advertisement RETAIL THEFT: Lauren Benford, 36, of the 21100 block of Christina Drive, Matteson, was charged with retail theft and criminal trespass to property after stealing $140 worth of energy drinks from Jewel-Osco, 17930 Wolf Road, on April 20, police said. Tinley Park EMPLOYEE ARRESTED: Aaliyah Turner, 21, of the 3700 block of 168th Street, Country Club Hills, was charged with theft after stealing and underselling merchandise while employed at Live Uniforms, 15935 Harlem Avenue, between last November and April 29, police said. CAR BURGLARY: Someone smashed a car window and stole a woman's purse when she was parked outside of Family Harvest Church in the 18500 block of 92nd Avenue April 30. FELONY THEFT: Domingo Alvarez, 24, and Sindia Valdovinos, 20, both of the 15300 block of Marshfield Lane, Harvey, were charged with felony retail theft after stealing more than $500 in merchandise from Target in the 7300 block of 191st Street April 30, police said. Alvarez was also ticketed for driving on a suspended license, possession of marijuana and failure to secure a three-week-old baby in a car seat. THEFT: A 93-year-old man told police someone stole his catalytic converter when he was parked outside of his retirement home in the 16800 block of Harlem Avenue April 30-May 4. A second resident of the facility also reporter his converter stolen May 2-3. Advertisement THEFT: Catalytic converters were stolen from cars parked in the 16400 block of Oak Park Avenue, the 7000 block of 167th Street and the 7100 block of 166th Street on May 3. CASH THEFT: A woman told police she withdrew $850 from Chase bank in the 17100 block of Harlem Avenue May 3 but it was stolen from the facility after she briefly left it unattended. CAR BURGLARY: A woman dropping off her child at KinderCare in the 16100 block of Oak Park Avenue told police someone smashed her car window and stole her wallet while she was inside the building May 3. CRIMINAL DAMAGE: Witnesses saw an unknown man kick in a car windshield in the 17200 block of Oak Park Avenue May 4. PHONE STOLEN: An iPhone was stolen from a child who briefly left it unattended while playing a video game at Chuck E. Cheese, 16090 Harlem Ave., on May 6. Store surveillance shows a woman stole the phone and left the building. DUI CHARGE: Marcceo Hill, 62, of the 17400 block of Westminster Avenue, Country Club Hills, was charged with drunken driving May 6 in the 7100 block of 175th Street May 6, police said. Advertisement Will County TRUCK STOLEN: Police said someone stole a 2002 Ford E-350 box truck from Western Applied Robotics in the 22000 block of Center Road in Frankfort Township on April 13. SUSPENDED LICENSE: Xavier Jackson, 24, of the 0-100 block of Monee Road, Park Forest, was charged with driving on a suspended license and speeding April 15 at Interstate 80 and Harlem Avenue in Frankfort Township, police said. HOME BURGLARIZED: Police said someone broke into a an unoccupied home in the 900 block of Cedar Road in New Lenox Township and stole ceramic flooring, dry wall, doors, windows, pipes, cabinets, insulation, toilets, sinks, two bath tubs, paint products, door knobs and trim on April 18. A 36-year-old Wheaton man is facing two felony hate crime charges after police allege he burglarized and vandalized two churches Monday and then made anti-Christian comments to authorities. Michael Leathe, of 105 Kensington Circle, allegedly threw a small bench through a plate glass door at Trinity Episcopal Church about 12:30 a.m. Monday, then about 30 minutes later he allegedly broke out a window at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, police said. Advertisement Police said Leathe entered Aldersgate church, 1753 S. Blanchard St., through the broken window and took some small items, including office supplies. Officers arrived at Aldersgate church and Leathe attempted to flee, but he was quickly apprehended, Wheaton Police Sgt. P.J. Youker said. Youker said it was unclear why those two churches, which are across town from each other, were targeted. Advertisement Leathe was charged with one count of burglary, two hate crime charges and two charges of institutional vandalism. When questioned by police, Youker said Leathe made several comments that were determined to be anti-Christian in nature, which prompted the hate crime charges. "It's an unusual charge, but it did fit," Youker said. Leathe is being held at the DuPage County jail. He is scheduled for arraignment June 5. Alex Keown is a freelance reporter. Annette Nance-Holt and Ronald Holt discuss the honorary street sign dedicated May 10, 2017, on the 10th anniversary of the killing of their son, Blair Holt. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune) Blair Holt, the only son of a Chicago firefighter and Chicago police officer, was 16 when he was shot and killed aboard a CTA bus as he tried to shield a friend from gunfire as a gang member shot at a rival. On Wednesday, his family and friends marked the 10th anniversary of his death by unveiling an honorary street sign Blair DeLane Holt Way in his memory outside his Far South Side alma mater, Percy L. Julian High School. Advertisement Blair's slaying drew outrage across Chicago as it spotlighted how the city's violence has claimed so many innocent victims. Shortly before the street sign's unveiling, Blair's mother, Annette Nance-Holt, choked up in front of TV cameras and reporters as she explained how the pain of losing her only child is still unbearable. Advertisement "Just to lose your legacy that you put so much into, for something that didn't have to happen, I think that hurts more than anything," said Nance-Holt, a deputy district fire chief, who was flanked by her son's father, police Cmdr. Ronald Holt, as well as her son's friends and other public officials. "Just to get him taken away from me when I dropped him off at school that morning, coming home from the firehouse, and telling him to do good and that I loved him, it's just unbelievable in America," a weeping Nance-Holt said. "We live in such a culture where guns are just everywhere. They're in the hands of young people who shouldn't have them. "They don't know what they took from us," she said. "They took everything from us." The 16-year-old was fatally shot after school May 10, 2007, while he was aboard the bus near 103rd and Halsted streets. Four others were wounded. Two teens were arrested and have since been convicted in the shooting. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 13 Annette Nance-Holt and Ronald Holt hold honorary street signs for their son, Blair Holt, during a street-naming ceremony in front of Percy L. Julian High School on 103rd and South Elizabeth streets in Chicago on May 10, 2017. Blair, 16, was shot on a CTA bus as he shielded a friend from gunfire on May 10, 2007. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) Ronald Holt acknowledged some of Blair's friends who attended the ceremony and pointed to a photo of his son posted on a stand next to him that showed him doing homework. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Holt talked about how his son loved school, describing him as a "voracious reader." He reminisced about taking his son shopping on his birthday at a South Side bookstore. "I think he hit me up for about $100 worth of books that night," recalled Holt, drawing a few chuckles from supporters, and said his son had aspirations to attend Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta. Advertisement Holt's tone then got serious when he echoed some of the sentiments of Blair's mother. He said that he wants young people living in Chicago's communities beset by violence to drive by the street sign at 103rd and Elizabeth streets and be reminded why they shouldn't pick up a gun. Surveillance video of Blair Holt shooting. (WGN-TV) (Chicago Tribune) "This is an issue that claimed Blair's life, something that he had no part of," said Holt, his tone rising in anger. "So I would hope that when people drive past, especially young people in this city, especially young people who are out there in the streets involved in a culture of violence, (they) would look at his name and know what it means ... and why his name is up there. "And not that we want it up there. It shouldn't be up there. But when they see that name ... (they) would think twice, three times, four times, multiples times about carrying out a deadly and destructive act with a firearm," he said. "It is not worth it. It is tearing our communities apart." jgorner@chicagotribune.com Twitter @JeremyGorner Chicago Public Schools has enough cash to complete the school year but the system is still short hundreds of millions of dollars needed to make a pension payment due at the end of June, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's top finance official said Tuesday. CPS and city officials say that's because the state still owes CPS about $467 million in aid that has been held up by Illinois' budget impasse. Advertisement While still trying to come up with a plan to keep the district from running out of cash, CPS and Chicago Chief Financial Officer Carole Brown used the state aid shortfall as the latest salvo in an ongoing battle with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration over funding. "We're in this horrible, horrible position because the state's not doing its job," Brown said. "And the thing we hope people will do is encourage and push the state to pass a budget and pass a budget that has adequate funding for schools." Advertisement The state disputes the amount owed the district and blames the issue on a failure by Democratic state Comptroller Susana Mendoza, an Emanuel ally and Rauner critic, to make payments. Officials say that without short-term borrowing or some other rapid infusion of money, the district will fall far short of making a $700 million-plus contribution to the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund. Making a late or incomplete pension payment could violate state law and prompt a negative response from bankers the district needs to stay afloat. "This is clearly a bad option," pension fund Executive Director Chuck Burbridge said Tuesday. "I don't think the rating agencies would respond well to them missing the pension payment," Burbridge said. "Everybody knows where that gets you." Brown on Tuesday acknowledged officials have discussed withholding the pension payment as they test ideas with bond rating agencies to see which would do the least additional harm to the district and the city's already low bond ratings. "It's an option that we've talked about, but it's not an option that anybody's concluded is something that's viable, or an option that anyone's concluded is the preferred course of action," she told the Tribune. Brown's comments reflect an ongoing debate within city government over how Emanuel can craft a CPS financial rescue that would likely also have to address another looming budget mess next school year. Brown said CPS funding options include short-term borrowing, a loan from the city's tax increment finance districts and delaying payments to vendors that provide services to the district. Advertisement She declined to rule out reinstating a so-called head tax on jobs at large firms that Emanuel eliminated with much fanfare in his first term but which some aldermen and the Chicago Teachers Union have proposed resurrecting. "I don't have the luxury of telling you we definitely aren't doing anything," Brown said. The district began this budget year counting on $215 million from the state to help pay for teacher pensions. But Rauner vetoed the funding measure because he said legislators didn't tie it to broader pension reform. CPS proceeded to cut school budgets and filed a lawsuit challenging state education funding. District CEO Forrest Claypool warned that Rauner's veto would force schools to close almost three weeks early. But after a Cook County judge rejected the district's lawsuit in April, Emanuel quickly staged a news conference to say the school year would go on as scheduled. The district said it reduced its budget gap after Rauner's veto to $129 million, but it has regularly declined to acknowledge whether it had enough cash to pay the bills. The $467 million in state funds that CPS says it is owed are separate from the $215 million in pension assistance from the state that the district had counted on. The money represents education grants that are part of regularly scheduled aid payments distributed to school districts across the state. Advertisement State government distributes general aid to school districts as well as grants that finance specific programs but are ultimately swallowed up and used for expenses in the district's multibillion-dollar operating budget. The budget impasse has delayed the distribution of more than $1 billion of that grant aid to schools across the state, a Wall Street ratings agency concluded last month. Illinois State Board of Education records indicate CPS is owed roughly $324 million in grants that have yet to be processed by Mendoza's office. The district maintains that doesn't cover the full total owed by the state. Rauner's office said Mendoza's office can send the money awaiting processing to Chicago at any time. Mendoza's office says there's no money to cut those checks without a state budget. As of Tuesday, the teachers pension fund said CPS owed it about $716 million. The fund said it expects CPS to pay about $470 million of that tab by June 30, with the rest payable after a quarter-billion dollars in revenue arrives later in the summer from a new property tax devoted to teacher pensions. Burbridge said the pension fund's outlook changes if the city falls short on its payments for less predictable reasons, such as a lack of state aid. "The critical thing for us is being able to plan so we can structure our investments appropriately to both make the pension payments that are certain and take advantage of markets and the compounding impact of interest and dividends," he said. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Emanuel's administration told aldermen this week the issue is "extremely complex" while delaying an update on district finances. The solution will hold consequences not only for students, parents and teachers, but for the district's reputation with financial markets. "The district doesn't have any good choices," said Matt Fabian, a partner at Concord, Mass.-based Municipal Market Analytics. "Arguably, their biggest problem this year was relying on the state to help them in any way," Fabian said. "Their fundamental problem is they spend too much money they don't have, but really in fiscal year 2017, it's been relying on the state to fill that gap." jjperez@chicagotribune.com Twitter @PerezJr hdardick@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @ReporterHal The front entrance of the proposed site of Patriot Acres, a 25-acre composted landfill, along East Central Road in Des Plaines on April 6, 2017. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune) A food composting plant won approval from Cook County commissioners Wednesday despite opposition from nearby residents who fear it will be bad for the environment and their property values. Some opponents shouted their disapproval to commissioners after they voted 11-2 in committee in favor of the Patriot Acres facility, which is planned on a site along the Des Plaines River outside Des Plaines. Advertisement Residents organized to fight the plan, concerned that the operation would bring noise, odor, truck traffic and rodents to the area. Dozens of people spoke about the plan before commissioners Wednesday, both for and against, but after the committee vote some opponents, among them Nancy Taylor, said they thought they weren't really heard. Advertisement "This is typical Chicago politics at work," Taylor said. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The plan passed with a long list of conditions related to things such as hours of operation and noise and environmental protections. Patriot Acres also will be required to operate a hotline for citizen complaints. Matthew Smarjesse, one of the owners, said he understood residents' concerns and that "we believe we will be a great neighbor." He said the company plans outreach to the community with measures like an open house and the creation of an oversight committee. John Lardner, the other owner, said he hopes to improve communication with the residents, which he admitted was lacking so far. The County Board took a final, 13-2 vote later Wednesday, with two suburban Republican commissioners, Sean Morrison of Palos Park and Gregg Goslin of Glenview, casting the no votes in both rounds. GOP Commissioner Peter Silvestri of Elmwood Park, whose district includes the site in question, abstained because, he previously said, he had worked for the law firm representing Patriot Acres. The 25-acre property across Central Road from Oakton Community College will compost landscape waste and food scraps, but no meat, company officials have said. The compost created will be marketed to landscape contractors, farmers, greenhouses and "other users within the horticulture and agriculture industries," according to a company website. The Des Plaines City Council and Maine Township Board both passed resolutions opposing the project. gwong@chicagotribune.com Twitter @GraceWong630 The man was about to feed his parakeets Tuesday night when he thought he heard gunfire outside his Pill Hill home on the Far South Side. "I just heard that one pow and then I was like, 'Damn, is that a gunshot?' said the man, who only wanted to be identified as Jon. "Maybe 20 seconds later, it was like pow, pow. It didn't sound like an automatic, it sounded more like a revolver." He ran outside and saw a man lying on the front lawn of a neighbor's home. "He was struggling to sustain life because he had been shot in the head," Jon said. "He had actually been shot in the head, close range." Jon said he considered rendering first aid, but another neighbor who's a police officer told him to stay back. His block in the 9200 block of South Chappel Avenue was now a crime scene. Police identified the dead man as Jesse Woods, who was in his early 30s and lived about seven miles away in the 8200 block of South Carpenter Street. Officers responding to a call of shots fired around him around 10:15 p.m. He had been shot several times, including the head and back, police said. He was pronounced dead on the scene at 10:30 p.m. Police officers taped off part of the block, which slightly rises and is lined with single-story brick homes. Joseph Warren Elementary School is across the street from where the shooting took place. At 92nd Street and Chappel Avenue, motorists slowed down to look at the crime scene, some lowering their windows to ask what happened. No family or friends of Woods arrived. Jon stood at the edge of the crime scene and recalled seeing a suspicious man as he made his way home from work. The man was wearing dark clothing and appeared to be pretending to look at his phone. When the man continued walking, Jon said he went to his home. He was inside for about two minutes when he heard the gunshots. "It was so quick, it was so sudden." He didn't recognize Woods. Two people were killed in separate attacks on the same block in September 2012, according to city data. One of those victims was Jeffrey Smith, 38, of Monee, who was found shot dead inside a car. Another homicide happened on the block in September 2003. But Jon described the block as a good neighborhood to live and said he generally feels safe. Some of his neighbors include first responders. The area is known as Pill Hill because of how many doctors once lived in the neighborhood. "You work hard, you bring your family to a safe environment, well what you consider a safe environment or neighborhood, and this still happens," he said. "Like I said, it could happen anywhere. No one should feel safe. It's happening up north, deeply out south." His brother and sister moved their families out of the state to places they considered safer than Chicago. He thinks the city has many issues to solve, such as gun violence and lack of economic opportunities on the South Side. Still, he has no plans to move and he intended to help police with the investigation if he can. "The perception is Chicago is a deadly city, the perception," he said. "Me, personally, like I said, I love my city. I'm not going anywhere." Roberto Cerda was sentenced May 2 to life in prison for three 2010 slayings. Cerda is the enforcer for a crew that has been linked to at least 13 murders over 18 months. (Jonathon Berlin And Steve Schmadeke/Chicago Tribune) "Fear Me" read the sticker with an image of a skeletal, scythe-wielding figure on the back of Roberto Cerda's 1991 Mercury Grand Marquis. The image was of La Santa Muerte Holy Death or Saint Death a female deity meant to provide protection and deliverance to the afterlife. Cerda, 30, had built a shrine to the dark icon in his West Side bedroom, laying offerings of alcohol, chocolate and cigarettes at the bony feet of seven figurines. Advertisement He had good reason to seek protection. By day, Cerda worked at a chocolate factory but, in his off hours, he plied a darker trade, moonlighting as "The Watchdog" an enforcer for a violent drug and robbery crew that has collectively been linked to at least 13 murders committed from 2009 to 2011, according to Cook County prosecutors, court records and trial testimony. The crew has been charged in 10 of those. Advertisement The Santa Muerte death cult was the crew's calling card, prosecutors said members had stickers on their vehicles, tattoos on their bodies, shrines in their homes and even Santa Muerte-stamped bands to hold their cash. "They were a team and that was their team logo," said Assistant State's Attorney Nina Ricci at Cerda's March trial. The crew sold powder cocaine but also robbed and killed would-be customers, according to prosecutors, court testimony and records. Last week, Cerda's days as an enforcer came to an end. Seven years after his arrest, he was sentenced to life in prison for the 2010 killings of two drug dealers and the middleman who helped set up the deal. He is the first crew member to be convicted. "This was a vicious, cold-hearted scheme ... to execute in this cold-blooded manner three persons whose only sin was getting involved in low-level drug dealing," Cook County Judge Timothy Joyce told the courtroom during sentencing as an emotionless Cerda looked on. For a city dealing with an increasingly deadly and fragmented gang culture, Cerda's brutal method of operation shows how much violence even a small crew can unleash. The crew is charged with more murders than the notorious Hobos "supergang" that in January was convicted in what federal authorities at the time said was the largest Chicago gang prosecution in recent history, for eight slayings over a decade. Rising violence among Latino gangs has gained the attention of the FBI. Last year, the bureau's special agent in charge in Chicago, Michael Anderson, created a gang squad that focuses on Latino gangs to supplement the bureau's three other gang squads. Advertisement No trial date has been set for two other members of the outfit, the uncle of Cerda's girlfriend, Raul Segura-Rodriguez, 42, and the alleged ringleader's cousin Augustin "Auggie" Toscano, 36. Between them, they are charged with a total of seven slayings straight out of "Breaking Bad," including four men who were bound with duct tape and shot dead in front of two young children in a Southwest Side garage, prosecutors say. Lawyers for Segura-Rodriguez and Toscano did not respond to a request for comment. The crew's alleged ringleader, Arturo, is dead. He was killed in a wild shootout, at 37, in 2011 with Chicago police after he, Segura-Rodriguez and Toscano allegedly slit the throats of three men, only one of whom survived. Roberto Cerda's "Fear Me" La Santa Muerte sticker. (Cook County State's Attorney) A fiance's grief The toll of the violence was on stark display at Cerda's trial. "That's the person who took my husband's life," Angelica Foeller angrily told jurors during the trial as she identified Cerda, who stared straight ahead. Though they were never married, she said that Andres Butron, 34, had proposed to her the day their daughter was born. Advertisement "My hatred for Mr. Cerda is strong because of the horrible acts he committed," Foeller said. Butron himself led a dual existence, working full time at a suburban candy factory and also setting up drug deals for the crew. It was not for long. He was found suffocated in the trunk of a car where two buyers were fatally shot, point blank. To Cerda, it was all part of his job as enforcer, prosecutors said. A former drug dealer testified at trial that Cerda served as the muscle when the crew did business. Renoras McDonald, who testified that he once sold drugs but now owns a South Side jerk chicken restaurant, said he once asked Ibarra, the alleged ringleader, why Cerda remained silent at meetings. "He's not there to talk," Ibarra allegedly responded, making a gesture as if he were shooting a gun. "It meant he a shooter," McDonald testified. "He there if something go wrong." Advertisement But Cerda's attorney, Richard Kling, said that at trial there were no eyewitnesses or any physical evidence that tied his client to the triple homicide. Kling told the Tribune there's no evidence he had seen that Cerda was involved in any of the other murders some of which happened after his client was locked up. Like Cerda, Rodriguez and Ibarra also had day jobs. Theirs worked at a West Side roofing company where they were highly regarded employees, their boss previously told the Tribune. Toscano, who has a Scarface tattoo on his right arm, was on public aid, according to court records. Roberto Cerda's shrine to La Santa Muerte. (Cook County State's Attorney) The beginning Police trace the beginning of the crew's violent reign to 2009. Victorino Chavez, 43, was found dead inside his blue Kia Sportage that August after it crashed into the El Milagro tortilla factory building in Brighton Park, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by police. He had been shot twice, records show. Chavez, who had a prior drug conviction, was in financial trouble and had recently fallen behind on his mortgage payments his wife told detectives, the affidavit said. Advertisement Police investigators zeroed in on Ibarra after learning that a witness saw a white SUV similar to the white GMC Yukon that Ibarra drove emerge from an alley near West 36th Street and Albany Avenue and ram into Chavez's car after three gunshots rang out. They also learned that before the crash, Chavez had a cellphone conversation just before he died with a person whose phone was using the cell tower closest to Ibarra's home. Ibarra was never charged with Chavez's murder. Police later cited the killing in the search warrant affidavit after Cerda and his fellow crew members were arrested. About eight months later, in April 2010, police came upon another grisly scene. Officers found the bound bodies of Stephen Bailey and Tyrece Bailey, two sibling drug dealers, as well as Crawford Davis who family has said was a driver for the brothers inside a 2007 Grand Prix parked in the 2300 block of West 36th Street. The three, one of whom had been reported missing, had been beaten to death and robbed. Toscano and Segura-Rodriguez eventually were charged with those killings. Police then learned that the three had been scheduled to meet Ibarra's crew for a drug purchase, but officers found no physical evidence tying the crew to the slayings, according to the affidavit. Less than a month later on May 18, 2010 the crew allegedly struck again, this time with another triple homicide and robbery. At this point, Chicago police had put Ibarra under surveillance, according to a prosecution court filing. Advertisement Roberto Cerda's La Santa Muerte T-shirt he was arrested in. (Cook County State's Attorney) A mounting toll Then in September, the bloodshed continued, prosecutors say. Ibarra and his crew allegedly robbed and fatally shot four men Noel Cazares, 25; Luis Santillan and Roberto Rivera, both 30; and Alonso Pena-Villareal, 32 in a West Lawn garage after binding their arms and legs with duct tape in front of Cazares' two small children, according to prosecutors and the search warrant affidavit filed by police. Segura-Rodriguez would eventually be charged with these murders. Butron had done time with Ibarra in federal prison, so when the two men bumped into each other in a South Side Target store not long after his daughter was born, he jumped at the chance to more than double the small salary he earned at the candy factory, according to prosecutors and trial testimony. Soon he was setting up drug deals for Ibarra, even enlisting the help of his fiance who helped by counting cash and who once took their infant daughter to a drug deal at a South Side strip mall, Foeller testified. But Butron didn't want Foeller to go to the deal he was doing with Ibarra that night, she testified. Ernesto Alequin, 42, a father of five, and Hector Romero, 28, who had a narcotics past but was working for a gang-mediation organization called CeaseFire Illinois, were set to meet with Ibarra. Alequin and Romero were found dead on May 18 in the back seat of a car on the Southwest Side, their faces covered with duct tape and hands zip-tied together. Butron was found suffocated in the trunk, possibly after Ibarra's crew forgot they had shut him inside and he asphyxiated, prosecutors said. Advertisement Police began watching Ibarra's house nearby when Cerda pulled up, went inside the home and walked out with what prosecutors said was a sawed-off shotgun hidden under a jacket. Cerda was pulled over, and police said they found the shotgun which was not the murder weapon and a rifle in his car. Cerda was arrested on a gun charge. He was wearing a black Santa Muerte T-shirt. Later that day, police found the actual murder weapon when they searched Cerda's home, along with $4,000 that prosecutors said was his cut on the robbery and triple murder. Ultimately, Santa Muerte had come back to haunt Cerda. He was convicted in part because security video showed a vehicle similar to his Grand Marquis including its distinctive Santa Muerte window decal leaving the isolated, industrial South Side area where the bodies were found in the car. Cerda was held in the Cook County Jail on the gun charge, but the rest of the crew remained on the street until nearly a year later. In February 2011, police, who had by then put the crew under "intense surveillance," according to prosecutors, saw Ibarra, Toscano and Segura-Rodriguez leave an apartment building in the 5800 block of North Winthrop Avenue about the same time police had been called about a shooting there. Officers tried to stop the gray Ford F-150 the men were driving but the three sped away, crashed into a police car and opened fire, striking a Chicago gang intelligence officer in the leg, authorities said. The officer would recover, but Ibarra was killed by police after he allegedly raised his gun at officers. Advertisement Back inside the Winthrop apartment, police found the bodies of Joel Diaz, 33, and Ramiro Mendoza, 37, both of whom had their throats cut that day after being restrained with duct tape. A third man survived and identified the three members of the crew as the killers, according to the search warrant affidavit. Segura-Rodriguez and Toscano were arrested that day. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > In court last Tuesday, Cerda, who has a tattoo on his shoulder depicting a Santa Muerte figure holding a dog by a chain, declined to say anything before he was sentenced. "Tell him no," he ordered a Spanish interpreter when the judge asked if he wished to speak. When it was over, Romero's family said they were glad justice had been done after seven years. "Ernesto did not deserve to die that way," Alequin's sister Ada Nieve wrote in a victim-impact statement that prosecutors read in court. Advertisement She wrote that one of Alequin's sons had just started at the police academy, training to become a police officer. sschmadeke@chicagotribune.com Twitter @SteveSchmadeke A 16-year-old boy has been charged as a juvenile with murder and attempted robbery in December attacks on two men in their 50s in the Roseland neighborhood that left one of the men dead, Chicago police said Wednesday. The boy, who police were not identifying because he is a juvenile, is charged with murder in the killing of Quenten Wright, 53, in front of his home in the 11400 block of South King Drive about 11:45 a.m. Dec. 12. The boy shot his victim during an attempted robbery, hitting him in the head and both arms, police said in a news release. Advertisement The boy, who was 15 at the time, appeared in Cook County Juvenile Court on Wednesday, and was ordered held in custody on juvenile charges, according to Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office, correcting earlier information from police that the boy had been charged as an adult. Wright was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead at 3:31 p.m. the day he was shot, according to the medical examiner's office. Advertisement Just before the attack on Wright, the boy had tried to rob a 52-year-old man as he shoveled snow in the 11300 block of South Forest Avenue, less than two blocks from where Wright was shot, according to police. The boy tried to hold up the man at gunpoint, but that man was able to run away and wasn't injured, police said. The boy was arrested about 5:20 p.m. Monday at his South Side home in the 7400 block of South Michigan Avenue, police said. The boy was scheduled to appear in Cook County bond court Wednesday. SPRINGFIELD Illinois Senate Democrats on Wednesday pushed through controversial legislation that would expand access to taxpayer-funded abortions, a proposal Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has pledged to veto. The bill would allow women to use Medicaid coverage and state employee health insurance to pay for abortions and has become an early issue in the 2018 race for governor after Rauner's veto vow. Supporters say the measure also would remove a so-called "trigger provision" in current law, which would help ensure abortion remains legal in Illinois if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Advertisement Opponents, including Rauner, contend the state shouldn't expand taxpayer funding of abortions. After a lengthy debate Wednesday, senators voted 33-22 in favor of sending the plan to the governor. The House approved the bill late last month. State Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, began her debate remarks by saying her "uterus has a question." Advertisement She said she "took exception" to opponents noting they are parents in an effort "to prove their pro-lifeness." She said many of those who are opposed to taxpayer-provided abortions would never need one because the bill was about providing care for poor women who have limited options. Hutchinson said she was sick of hearing Republicans, and men, talk about limiting government except when it comes to women making decisions in their doctor's office. "News flash: We have every bit the ability to make our own health decisions as you do," Hutchinson said, noting that taxpayer dollars cover elective vasectomies. On the other side, Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, said lawmakers are "scraping and clawing" a budget together. He said Illinois can't afford to spend money it doesn't have on providing abortions. Righter also contended removing language from Illinois law that says life begins at conception would create other problems, such as trying to prosecute someone who attacks a mother and kills a unborn child in the process. State Sen. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, said it was ironic legislators were considering the bill on a day when they were also honoring children who grew up in the state's foster care system. Many were on hand to shadow lawmakers for the day. Tracy said she has long opposed abortion, saying she previously had worked as an attorney to place children with families, including those who were the result of incest. She said those children often went on to become productive citizens of society who brought great joy to the families they ended up with, later noting that one of her own daughters is adopted. "I cannot imagine a world without her," Tracy said. "So yes, I am a strong advocate for life."' Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, said it was not up to lawmakers to play "God, judge and jury" about what a woman should do with her body. "If you find it a disgraceful practice you do not believe in, guess what? You have the choice to not to do it," she said. "But don't take choice away from somebody who may find themselves in the situation where it is an appropriate choice they need to make." Advertisement As for Rauner, his veto promise has won praise from socially conservative groups who have been angered by some of his other actions, including his approval last year of a law that requires doctors who oppose abortion to refer patients to providers who will perform the procedure. But the position could hurt Rauner next year with a key election voting demographic: suburban women who lean Republican but have socially moderate views. Abortion rights groups were quick to accuse Rauner of betraying voters who supported him in 2014, noting he frequently declared he had "no social agenda" while on the campaign trail in 2014. Political action group Personal PAC took the rare step of releasing a previously confidential candidate questionnaire from that race in which Rauner expressed support for the ideas contained in the legislation he now opposes. Rauner has declined to further explain his shifting position, saying that expanding taxpayer funding for abortions is a "very divisive issue." If Rauner follows through on his veto pledge, lawmakers will be unlikely to override his veto in full. A veto override in the House would take 71 votes, but there are just 67 Democrats. It would take 36 votes in the Senate, but Wednesday's tally included just 33 votes in favor. mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com hbemiller@chicagotribune.com A group of North and Northwest Side aldermen on Wednesday said they will seek to decrease housing segregation in Chicago by adding affordable housing units in their wards. They made the announcement at a City Hall news conference in solidarity with 45th Ward Ald. John Arena , who has faced stiff community opposition, some of it racially charged, to a proposed apartment complex with subsidized units in the Jefferson Park neighborhood. The seven aldermen signed a letter pledging to add no fewer than 50 Chicago Housing Authority-sponsored housing units in each of their wards before their terms are up in 2019. Advertisement "We understand that for far too long, aldermen on the North and Northwest sides have done far too little to open our communities to low-income and minority families," the letter reads in part. "Chicago's history of racism has left a legacy of exclusion we must respond to today." It remains to be seen whether the aldermen are able to follow through on the promise. Much depends on finding landlords or developers willing to include willingness to put up with any opposition they might get from their own residents. Advertisement Notably, several of the aldermen who stood with Arena represent wards with areas far more racially integrated than the 45th Ward, which is dominated by bungalow belt neighborhoods. That would potentially make it easier for those aldermen to avoid vocal opposition to welcoming minorities with housing vouchers than it has been for Arena. One alderman on hand, Ameya Pawar , is not running for re-election in the tony, relatively progressive 47th Ward, instead throwing his hat in the ring for the Democratic governor nomination. Pawar noted the political freedom that gives him at the news conference. "I think part of this also has to come down to what do people want?" Pawar said. "In many cases, your elected officials are a reflection of their communities. And so if Ald. Arena brings up this project and his office gets hijacked for six months for 80 affordable units, how do you bring that forward in other communities? If a small amount of people are able to turn a conversation about affordable housing into this giant racist narrative and then hide behind it around density?" Arena wants to allow a developer to build a seven-story apartment building at a busy Jefferson Park intersection, including 80 units rented at below-market rate, with 20 of those set aside for people with CHA vouchers. Veterans with vouchers would get preference. Angry crowds have turned up at meetings at City Hall and in the 45th Ward to oppose the plan. Some opponents have said they are worried about the size of the building. But Northwest Side Ald. Deb Mell, 33rd, characterized that opposition as "widespread, thinly veiled prejudice and a general 'not in my backyard' perspective masquerading as concerns about density and building height." jebyrne@chicagotribune.com Twitter @_johnbyrne Guards arrive for work at the Cook County Jail on Nov. 15, 2016. The County Board on Wednesday is expected to approve paying $380,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a Minnesota woman who alleged that sheriff's correctional officers and supervisors ignored her repeated complaints about being sexually assaulted. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) The Cook County Board on Wednesday approved paying $380,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a Minnesota woman who alleged that sheriff's correctional officers and supervisors ignored her repeated complaints about being sexually assaulted and badly beaten during a 27-day stint behind bars. According to the suit, filed by prominent attorney Kathleen Zellner, the then-26-year-old woman "experienced the full panoply of abuses that the well-established culture of sadism and violence (that the jail) had to offer." Advertisement The woman was booked into Cook County Jail in November 2013 on local drug charges and was awaiting extradition to another state on separate drug charges, the suit states. She was targeted by other detainees who labeled her with terms like "snow bunny, cracker and Pocahontas" after making "comments about her being cute and white," the lawsuit alleged. After refusing to exchange sexual favors for commissary items, a female detainee charged with murder sexually assaulted the woman in a shower while two other detainees stood guard, according to the suit, which preserved the woman's anonymity by identifying her as "Jane Doe." Advertisement The woman repeatedly was kicked after that incident and later attacked twice because she was deemed a "snitch" for reporting the initial assault, the lawsuit states. She suffered a broken nose, busted tooth and a deep cut to her thigh from a sharp object during the last two attacks, the suit adds. "All of this occurred with the full knowledge and complicity of the officers and their supervisors," the lawsuit states. The legal filing goes on to accuse a nurse and mental health specialists at Cermak Hospital, where jail detainees are treated, of fabricating reports that omitted the woman's sexual assault allegations and failing to document stitches she needed for wounds to her thigh and face. The state's attorney's office recommended the settlement, and the board signed off with no discussion or dissent. But Cara Smith, the jail's former executive director who now is policy chief for Sheriff Tom Dart, made it clear that her office was conceding no wrongdoing in the matter. "At the time the case was filed, continuing to the time that the decision by the state's attorney's office was made to settle this case, we have vehemently denied its allegations," said Smith, who initially was named in the lawsuit but later dismissed as a defendant. "We took no position on the settlement of the case." Proceeding to trial would have been costly so the county decided to settle, County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said after the vote. "I would encourage all separately elected officials to review their operations and, wherever possible, to create better documentation to defend such suits in the future," Preckwinkle added. Zellner, the jailed woman's attorney, declined to comment. hdardick@chicagotribune.com Twitter @ReporterHal Auditor General Frank Mautino is seen here when he was a legislator in Springfield in 2013. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune) Illinois Auditor General Frank Mautino should be fined for "willfully" violating an order from the State Board of Elections that he provide more information on his former legislative campaign committee's spending, a hearing officer has recommended. Mautino's campaign fund has been under scrutiny since shortly after he ended his 24-year career as a Democratic state lawmaker and assumed the role of the state's top financial watchdog. Advertisement A Downstate group known as the Edgar County Watchdogs first raised questions in early 2016 about why Mautino's campaign fund had reported spending more than $247,000 on fuel and car repairs over 16 years. A Streator resident asked the state elections board to look into it, and the federal government is in the midst of its own investigation of the matter. State Board of Elections Hearing Examiner Philip Krasny wrote in a recommendation that his review was focused only on determining whether Mautino had "willfully refused to abide" by the board's rules when he failed to provide additional information that was requested last May as part of the board's probe. Advertisement Krasny concluded that Mautino had violated the order by not providing additional information on spending that occurred in 2014 and 2015. He found that Mautino hadn't violated the order regarding spending in earlier years because those records were destroyed, according to his former campaign treasurer Patricia Maunu, who participated in a deposition about the campaign's accounting practices. The hearing examiner's report didn't spell out what size fine he is recommending to the state election board, but he cited a handful of state laws to serve as a guide. The board is expected to consider the recommendation at its Monday meeting. Krasny said it should also consider the issues raised in the underlying complaint, including whether Mautino violated prohibitions against a campaign committee paying directly for gas and repairs for personal vehicles, whether the campaign made expenditures in excess of fair market value and whether it failed to properly maintain records. Mautino, through his lawyers, has tried to put a halt to the elections board's probe, citing the parallel federal investigation. Some Republican state lawmakers have called on him to step aside in the meantime. A spokesman for Mautino declined to comment. kgeiger@chicagotribune.com Twitter @kimgeiger SPRINGFIELD Rank-and-file House lawmakers from both parties vented their frustration at the two-year Capitol stalemate, penning an open letter saying it's time for the legislature to pass a budget. The letter comes as Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have revived budget talks that stalled earlier this year. While Democrats are pushing for a possible Senate vote on the package as soon as Wednesday, Republicans warned against moving too quickly, saying there's still more work to be done. Advertisement The 30 House members who signed the letter expressed support for the Senate effort, saying it could serve as a jumping-off point for negotiations in the House. "The finances of the state of Illinois are in crisis, and we must do better. The time for resolution is now," the lawmakers wrote. "We ask the senators from both parties to pass the best negotiated package they can, and then we will take up their work in the House." Advertisement The statement reflects a long-simmering frustration among some House lawmakers, who have watched talks unfold in the Senate with little action in their chamber. They are hoping to move past the battles between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan that have stalled any progress, while they're still reluctant to speak out against their respective party leaders. The letter, which was light on specific solutions, wasn't addressed to Madigan or Rauner. "We thought it was important to let our legislative leaders know that we encourage them and support them to work together, and let them know that we don't want to go home without doing a budget," said Rep. Carol Sente, D-Vernon Hills, who helped organize the group. "This is not meant to be coup or whatever, this is meant to be a strong show of force." Sente said the group met with Democratic Senate President John Cullerton and Senate GOP leader Christine Radogno several weeks ago. They also gave Madigan and House Republican leader Jim Durkin a heads-up about their efforts. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said the letter is "part of the ongoing dialogue." But Brown noted that the speaker has appointed a top ally to negotiate with Rauner on the budget, and on Monday named several of his deputies to work with the governor on the agenda items he's made a prerequisite to a broader deal. Republicans say they are skeptical of those efforts, arguing Madigan often appoints working groups in an effort to stall progress on topics he doesn't want to address. But they say they hope the letter keeps up the pressure to work toward a resolution. "We are running a bit out of time," said Rep. Steven Andersson, R-Geneva, noting lawmakers face an end-of-session deadline of May 31. Meanwhile, senators worked behind the scenes Tuesday to try to find an agreement on a sweeping budget package that could be called for a vote this week. Efforts have focused on incorporating ideas backed by Republicans after the GOP dropped support for the legislation amid concerns from Rauner's office that it was asking too much from taxpayers. Republicans are now pushing a proposal that would include a five-year income tax increase in exchange for a five-year property tax freeze, along with spending cuts and a spending freeze. Advertisement But one top Senate Democrat noted "significant barriers" remain, saying Rauner is pushing a property tax freeze that is "politically popular" but "bad policy" because it would harm local governments and schools that rely on the money the levies generate. "We're just not prepared to make those sorts of trades to do what we should all be doing, which is passing a budget," said Sen. Don Harmon, D-Oak Park. While Republican leader Radogno said good-faith negotiations were continuing, they tried to slow a push for a vote this week, saying more time was needed to hammer out an agreement. "We've had serious daily conversations many times several meetings a day. But our work is not complete. Given time, I think we can get there," said Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington. Harmon said it's time for lawmakers to make some decisions. "We've been hearing 'one more day, one more thing, one more week' since January. And at some point we need to do it or not do it," he said. Advertisement mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com hbemiller@chicagotribune.com WASHINGTON Democratic lawmakers from Illinois joined in their party's widespread condemnation of President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, and some state Republican members of Congress said they were looking for more answers after the surprise move. U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley of Chicago called Comey's dismissal a "brazen decision taken straight out of the Nixon playbook," referring to former President Richard Nixon's 1973 firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor probing his conduct during Watergate. Quigley is on the House Intelligence Committee, which is looking into whether Trump's associates coordinated with Russians to tamper with the presidential election. Advertisement "It is no coincidence that Director Comey was fired shortly after confirming the existence of the FBI's investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials," Quigley said. Quigley and other Illinois Democrats called for a special prosecutor to pick up the FBI's probe into Trump's campaign. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Evanston Democrat, said "for the sake of our democracy and national integrity, we must get to the bottom of this mess." Advertisement Illinois Republicans in Congress didn't make the same calls, but they didn't fully embrace Trump's move, either, reflecting the difficult political positions in which the president has sometimes put members of his own party. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, speaking at Harold Washington College, talks about need for an independent prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election following President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. (John Byrne / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune) Rep. Darin LaHood, a Peoria Republican and a former assistant U.S. attorney, said that he was surprised by Comey's ouster and that he has admired him for his "integrity, judgment and independence." But he wanted to know more about the rationale for the dismissal. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Channahon Republican, said on Facebook that "we need a transparent investigation that we, the American people, can all trust." And Rep. Rodney Davis, a Taylorville Republican, said he was concerned by Comey's dismissal but believes the Trump administration will be "transparent" and "lay out its case ... in the coming days." Rep. Peter Roskam, a Wheaton Republican, said that he was surprised by the timing of Comey's firing but that he "had become a lightning rod for criticism" as "Republicans and especially Democrats had sadly lost confidence in his ability to lead the FBI." "The FBI director must enjoy the full confidence of the American people to effectively administer justice," he said. A new FBI director would have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, where Illinois' two Democratic members had sharp criticisms for Trump. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, speaking Wednesday from the Senate floor, assailed photos released by the Russian government showing Trump meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday with Russia's foreign minister and its ambassador to the U.S. "The warm smiles and hearty handshakes that President Trump gave to these Russian officials stands in sharp contrast" to the way that the White House treated Comey, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former New York-based U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Durbin said. Advertisement He said the three U.S. officials all were leading probes "that appeared to be getting close to the president and his inner circle." "Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues," he said. Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Wednesday said she was "deeply concerned" that the White House is being "very opaque" about Comey's firing in the middle of an important investigation, for which he reportedly sought additional money and resources last week. 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 Democratic governor hopeful J.B. Pritzker has scored the endorsement of an important Downstate Democratic organization in next year's primary. Advertisement "We met with J.B. and discussed his vision for Illinois," Bob Sprague, chairman of the St. Clair County Democrats, said in a statement. "He's the right candidate to take on Bruce Rauner to create jobs, protect workers' rights and fix the budget mess. We will support J.B. every step of the way in order to take back our state." The endorsement is significant for Pritzker given that St. Clair, located across the river from St. Louis, is one of the largest and most dependable Democratic voting counties outside the Chicago area. Advertisement Still, in last year's presidential general election, of more than 120,000 votes cast in the county, Hillary Clinton scored a relatively narrow 50.4 percent to 44.7 percent victory over President Donald Trump. Four years earlier, with roughly the same amount of votes, adopted home-state President Barack Obama carried the county by about 14 percentage points over Republican Mitt Romney. Republican support has been evolving in the Metro-East area over decades. In the 2016 Democratic presidential primary in St. Clair County, just more than 40,000 votes were cast, with Clinton defeating Sen. Bernie Sanders 60 percent to 39.2 percent. "I am thrilled to have the support of Democrats across the state of Illinois, and St. Clair County is critical to Democrats' chances of winning the governor's race," Pritzker said in a statement, adding, "Unlike Bruce Rauner, I know pitting Illinoisans against each other won't help us solve our state's big problems." (Rick Pearson) What's on tap *Mayor Rahm Emanuel will announce that a Goldman Sachs education program for small businesses is continuing. He'll also preside over an afternoon meeting of the Public Building Commission. *Gov. Bruce Rauner will attend a trio of events in Springfield. He again won't take questions from reporters. *The Illinois House and Senate meet. *The Cook County Board meets. Advertisement From the notebook *Controversial abortion proposal advances: An abortion bill that Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has pledged to veto is one step away from his desk after clearing a Senate panel Tuesday. The bill, which was approved by the House late last month, would allow women to use Medicaid coverage and state employee health insurance for abortions. Supporters say it also would help ensure abortion remains legal in Illinois if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court by removing a so-called "trigger provision" in current law. Opponents, including Rauner, contend the state shouldn't expand taxpayer funding of abortions. The proposal was approved by a Senate committee with Democrats voting for it and Republicans against. Democratic Senate President John Cullerton said last month that the Senate is prepared to send it to Rauner's desk and override his veto if necessary. Abortion rights groups have pressured Rauner on the issue, noting he once expressed support for the ideas contained in the legislation he now opposes. (Haley BeMiller) Advertisement What we're writing *Chicago alderman stands by comments despite gang threats, police protection. *CPS says it may fall short on upcoming teacher pension payment. *Cook County Board mulls $380,000 settlement in alleged jail sexual assault of 'cute, white' Minnesota woman. *Illinois House lawmakers pen letter to vent about lack of a budget. *Auditor General Mautino should face campaign fine, according to hearing officer recommendation. *Republican Dold won't seek fourth rematch for Congress with Democrat Schneider. Advertisement *Ethics Board rejects watchdog recommendation that city officials report lobbying. *New Chicago State leaders offer plans for the future. *Tribune wins groundbreaking open records lawsuit against College of DuPae, foundation. What we're reading *Shedd to request first price hike in 17 years seeking shorter lines, more free days. *Cook County Jail inmates can order hot pizza delivered to their cells. Advertisement *"You know when people say life throws you a curveball? Well, life threw me a fastball to the head." Follow the money *Secretary of State Jesse White, who's up for re-election next year to what would be a sixth term, reported more than $51,800 in contributions largely from labor sources, including a $25,000 gift from the Illinois Laborers Legislative Committee. *Track Illinois campaign contributions in real time here and here. Beyond Chicago *Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. *Trump OKs arms for Syrian Kurds despite Turkish objections. Advertisement *Politico logs visitors to Trump's White House. *South Korea elects leader who backs talks with North Korea. Two weeks into his new job as deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein was vaulted into the national spotlight after authoring the memo that figured in to Tuesday's dismissal of FBI Director James Comey. Lauded as a low-key, precise and bipartisan prosecutor in his 12 years as U.S. attorney in Maryland, Rosenstein's memo outlining how Comey mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails thrust him into one of the nation's most high-profile and politically charged battles. Advertisement In the three-page memo, Rosenstein wrote that Comey had battered the public's trust in the FBI and committed "textbook" examples of what not to do by publicly discussing the Clinton investigation. Under the subject line "Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI," the memo echoed many of the themes Rosenstein hammered in corruption cases he brought in Maryland: officials in public positions must beware of actions that undermine public trust. Advertisement Days before the Senate confirmed Rosenstein to the second-highest position in the Justice Department, Rosenstein, 52, discussed the work he did in Maryland from his office in downtown Baltimore. He was heading to the Justice Department job as the department is expected to tackle major issues including drug enforcement and mandatory-minimum sentences, violent crime in cities and the high-profile investigation of Russia's ties to Trump associates during the 2016 campaign. Rosenstein had dedicated most of his career to prosecuting fraud, corruption and other white-collar crimes before he was tapped to lead the U.S. attorney's Office in Maryland in 2005. He notably served on the Whitewater team that investigated Bill and Hillary Clinton's real estate dealings in the 1990s. Much of his experience didn't directly align with the state's safety priorities when he took over in 2005, but he began to expand his expertise and reorganized his team to take on violent crime while holding steady on his longtime pursuit of public corruption. "It was a challenging time for the office," Rosenstein recalled during the Baltimore interview. "Violent crime was at near-record levels in Baltimore City and had been for some time, and of course it was the post-9/11 era." In Maryland, where Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has declared a state of emergency to fight the opioid crisis, Rosenstein's office worked closely with federal and local law enforcement to target drug distributors. Overdose fatalities are now investigated as homicides, not suicides, with law enforcement searching for evidence that leads to sources and sellers. "If you think about the traditional view, you have someone who overdosed on drugs and you'd think, 'Well, it's their own fault because they took too many drugs,' " Rosenstein said. "But if the drug that they're taking is illegal and a drug they shouldn't have had, then someone committed a crime by giving them that drug." Since 2015, the Maryland Attorney General's Office - working with the U.S. attorney's Office and other federal law enforcement - has indicted more than 50 drug traffickers. The idea is to disrupt the supply chain to prevent further harm, particularly from a particularly powerful batch of drugs that can set off a string of overdoses, he said. Advertisement "The opioid crisis is about people dying from the drug," Rosenstein said. "The crack wars were about people dying from bullets, largely as the result of criminal organizations warring over turf because they were trying to make money selling the drug." Rosenstein is expected to play an important role in determining how the Justice Department handles drug-charging policies and the use of mandatory-minimum sentences. Sessions has indicated that his office will pursue mandatory minimums as it clamps down on gun and drug crime, possibly undoing Obama administration policies that considered such sentences discriminatory against minorities and low-level drug offenders. In some cases in Maryland, Rosenstein said, mandatory minimums were a "valuable tool." When applied appropriately, he said, they can stop offenders from committing more crime and induce people to share information about other criminal activity. "A career criminal is not going to be persuaded to cooperate out of some sense of patriotism," Rosenstein said. "We've had cases where people have come in and cooperated, and they might have information that allows us to resolve a dozen murders or more because they're facing a mandatory minimum." In Baltimore, violent crime dropped 15 percent over Rosenstein's first 10 years in office. But enforcement alone wasn't enough to address crime, he said. He also wanted the office to focus on community and direct outreach. Advertisement Borrowing an idea from Virginia and other offices, Rosenstein worked with local law enforcement and social agencies to develop a "call-in" program. Likely recidivists were brought in to speak with police and prosecutors, who gave warning lectures about the consequences of getting caught with guns. The program helped drive down shootings and homicides in the city over a six-year period, according to former federal prosecutors for Maryland. Those attending the meetings would be connected to such resources as information on jobs or housing opportunities. "In some cases, I felt sorry for these career criminals," Rosenstein said. "They had been repeatedly prosecuted in the state system and had gotten light sentences. When they sat down in front of our federal prosecutor," they were told, "Hey, because of your crimes and the volume of drugs you were dealing and the fact that you had a gun, you're facing a mandatory sentencing of 10 to 20 years in prison in federal court." His office prosecuted former Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson for bribery and brought cases in a scheme in which more than a dozen Baltimore prison guards helped a notorious gang traffic drugs, launder money and order criminal activity from behind bars. More recently, his office announced the indictment of seven Baltimore police officers and the breakup of a pay-to-play scandal involving former Maryland politicians and the Prince George's liquor board. "That has not been an accident," Rosenstein said of his focus on corruption. "It's because we've had people committed to those cases who have exceptional experience." Before packing and leaving Baltimore, the Bethesda resident pointed out meaningful items that filled his offices: a photo of his two young daughters - now teenagers - in matching blue dresses and hair bows; an image of Rosenstein in his 20s, grinning with a chisel and hammer as he chipped away at the Berlin Wall; and framed printouts of meaningful quotations. Advertisement One he reflects on often is from a 1940 speech that U.S. Attorney General Robert Jackson gave describing the qualities of good prosecutors. "The citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility," part of the passage reads. Rosenstein said, "It means that before filing charges, we should pause and ask, 'What if we are mistaken?' " Two Republican lawmakers charged with conducting government oversight sharply rebuked Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Tuesday for curtailing his employees' ability to communicate directly with Congress and suggested that the move violates federal law. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said the policy that Price's chief of staff outlined in a memo last week "is potentially illegal and unconstitutional, and will likely chill protected disclosures of waste, fraud, and abuse." In the May 3 memo, chief of staff Lance Leggitt informed senior HHS staff members that "any communications with Members of Congress and staff should not occur without prior consultation with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation." Such communications include "requests for calls, meetings, briefings, technical assistance, policy development, hearings, oversight, detailees, etc.," he said. "Your cooperation will help us avoid unnecessary problems in our relationships with Congress." Multiple federal departments have restricted their employees' external communications to varying degrees since President Trump took office. In some cases, political appointees limited the use of social media or news releases. But Grassley and Chaffetz, who sent their letter to Price on Thursday and made it public five days later, took specific issue with the HHS policy. Its limitations, they argued, could deter whistleblowers from raising legitimate concerns from a separate branch of government. "The attached memorandum contains no exception whatsoever for lawful, protected communications with Congress," the lawmakers wrote. "In its current form, employees are likely to interpret it as a prohibition, and will not necessarily understand their rights." They noted that "federal employees have a constitutional right to communicate directly with Congress and 'petition the Government for a redress of grievances,'" a right that was clarified under a 1912 law to extend to "matters directly related to their employment." HHS spokeswoman Amanda Smith said in an email that the department "is responding to the Chairmen's inquiry." She said the memo does not specifically prohibit all communications with Capitol Hill and was aimed at notifying staff of the legislative liaison's function. "Transitions between administrations can mean significant staff turnover, which often leads to confusion and a breakdown of communications," Smith said, noting that previous administrations have sent similar advisories. In 1993, a memo from then-HHS Secretary Donna Shalala to the heads of HHS operating and staff divisions emphasized that communication "on any legislation, appropriations requests, hearings, or policy development should not occur without prior consultation" with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation. Some teachers inspire, some influence and still others innovate. John Schultz did all that and more, living passionately and vigorously in a world of words. "All aspects of my life are unified by interest in story, pursuit of story," he once said. "(It) is one of the fundamental ways in which human beings communicate with one another. We definitely don't want to do without it. And we can't do without it." Advertisement The author of much fiction and nonfiction, and important books such as 1969's "No One Was Killed" about the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Schultz was a professor in the Fiction Department of Columbia College for more than five decades and the creator of the renowned Story Workshop method of writing. Schultz, 84, died after a long illness Saturday at his home in suburban Riverside. Advertisement "He was always a great influence in my life and always a such a valiant guy, boldly facing whatever troubles confronted him," said daughter Susan Schultz, who spent a great deal of time caring for her father during the last year, traveling here from New York, where she works, perhaps not surprisingly, in the publishing business as a graphic designer. "I have never met a man with a greater will to live, and to live life fully to the very end," said his stepson Shawn Shiflett, a Columbia professor and novelist. "His impact on the literary scene in Chicago and beyond was nothing short of remarkable." Hundreds of others would agree. Randy Albers, himself a force on the city's literary landscape and a professor and chairman emeritus of fiction at Columbia, was hired by Schultz in 1978. "As the founder and, for a half-century, the leader of writing programs at Columbia, he has left a legacy among countless students and colleagues that will likely never be matched," Albers said. John Schultz was born on July 28, 1932, in Iberia, Mo., where his family had deep roots, and grew up in Iowa. After high school, he attended the University of Iowa, served overseas as a United States Army medic during the Korean War and later attended the University of Chicago. It was there he began to form the foundation of what would become the Story Workshop. By the mid-1960s, he was conducting private workshops in a Lincoln Park studio near the home he shared with his first wife, Anne, and their two children, Tim and Susan. He caught the attention of Columbia's visionary president, Mike Alexandroff, who hired Schultz to teach at the school. He soon became the head of the newly created Writing/English department and, years later, the Fiction Writing department. His Story Workshop method has been adopted and employed by schools across the country. The Story Workshop method is often hard to describe in a few sentences. But Albers gives it a go: "A dynamic, interactive, process-based method that draws fully upon students' diverse backgrounds and experiences, emphasizing development of each student's unique voice and story content. Through activities emphasizing imaginative play, this approach enables students to tap into their creative potential and learn flexible skills that prepare them to adapt to the needs of any writing task." Advertisement It was at Columbia that Schultz met Betty Shiflett, who began teaching there the year after he did. They were each married to other people and had families of their own but began seeing one another socially in the 1970s and were married in 1992. "She was wonderful in the way she could reach out, listen (and) come out toward people, particularly students or others," Schultz once said of Betty, who died in February 2016. "We got along like gangbusters." Together they established the John Schultz and Betty Shiflett Story Workshop Scholarship fund in 1997 and that same year began the not-for-profit Story Workshop Institute. Four years later Schultz started The Schultz Group as a sister organization, and both benefited students through the creative writing and supplemental education programs he created. "My father was such an adventurous spirit," said son Tim Schultz. "He loved stories telling them or hearing them. And living them. He always told us that challenges make life worthwhile." He continued to teach long after attaining emeritus status and was a frequent presence at literary events and readings around town, where he was warmly greeted by former students and teachers. "John touched the lives of countless students who went on to publish wonderful writing, work successfully in a variety of jobs and live productive, rewarding lives," said Albers. "Who, at the end of their days, wouldn't like to have that said about them?" Advertisement Schultz is also survived by stepchildren Drew Shiflett and Melissa Shiflett as well as grandchildren Emma, Christian and Joshua Schultz; Rachel, Kalina and Maggie Shiflett; and Cole Shiflett. Visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Lakeview Funeral Home, 1458 W Belmont Ave. in Chicago. Services will take place at 2 p.m. Friday at Graceland Cemetery. rkogan@chicagotribune.com 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. The New York Times reported, "Senior White House and Justice Department officials had been working on building a case against Mr. Comey since at least last week, according to administration officials. Mr. Sessions had been charged with coming up with reasons to fire him, officials said." If this is true that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was charged by President Donald Trump (no one else would have the authority) to figure out reasons to fire then-FBI Director James Comey then the question hanging over the presidency is: What was the real reason? If the reason was not that Trump, after all that talk about "locking up" Hillary Clinton and praise last October for Comey's letter reintroducing the Clinton email investigation into the campaign, suddenly realized Comey had behaved improperly under Justice Department rules, then the rationale is a lie. The letters from Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are therefore part of a pretext for firing the FBI director engaged in an investigation of the president and his campaign's conduct. Advertisement Former ambassador and White House ethics lawyer Norman Eisen explains, "The reasons given by the president and White House for the firing are clearly pretextual." Eisen points out that the reasons stated in the letters for firing Comey "are contrary to the president's and Attorney General Sessions own prior statements, and ... the firing was contemporaneous with the revelation of the existence of a grand jury and of subpoenas." He adds, "Clearly, the president is attempting to hamper an investigation that affects him, and those who were and are around him--and brazenly lie about it." In other words, if Sessions and Rosenstein cooked up a false reason to get rid of Comey because the president was displeased with Comey's investigation, this is nothing less than a baldfaced attempt to interfere with a legitimate investigation of the executive branch. The president has the right to fire the FBI director, so this likely would not rise to the level of a criminal offense, according to several legal experts, including former Justice Department officials, with whom I spoke. However, in the constitutional sense, a scheme to mislead the American people and prevent discovery of his possible misconduct violates his oath of office. If he is engaged in such conduct, he is no longer acting to enforce and execute the laws of the United States. Advertisement What is critical here is why the president fired Comey and whether he cooked up a cover story to conceal his motivation. The inquiry into what the president, Sessions and Rosenstein were up to cannot be conducted by the executive branch. Either Congress interrogates them, or a prosecutor who cannot be fired by the president or the Justice Department is needed. To add to the mound of suspicious facts, CNN reported Tuesday night: "Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn seeking business records, as part of the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year's election, according to people familiar with the matter. CNN learned of the subpoenas hours before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey. "The subpoenas represent the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBI's broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. The subpoenas issued in recent weeks by the US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia, were received by associates who worked with Flynn on contracts after he was forced out as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, according to the people familiar with the investigation." President Donald Trump shakes hands with James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during an Inaugural Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders Reception in the Blue Room of the White House on Jan. 22, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Pool / Getty Images) We do not know whether this played any role in Comey's firing. Using one law enforcement body (or set of individuals) to stop another from investigating presidential wrongdoing was the nub of Watergate and the ensuing impeachment proceedings. We do not know whether that is what is at issue here, but Congress has no alternative but to determine why the president acted and why he acted now. That should entail questioning under oath of any persons aware of or involved in the firing process and ultimately an accounting by the president of his own actions. Every single Republican must make a decision: Insist on full-throated, independent investigation of the firing, or be party to a possible cover-up. Every candidate for office in 2018 must be asked a question: If it is determined that Trump fired Comey to interfere with the Russia probe, would that representative vote for impeachment/senator vote to convict? Yes, it really has come to that. Washington Post Advertisement Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. Related articles: Donald Trump sure looks like someone with a lot to hide Trump's firing of Comey looks like a politically motivated hatchet job If Trump gets away with this, America will be seen as a failing state No, James Comey's firing isn't like the 'Saturday Night Massacre' President Donald Trump took office with half of Americans expecting greatness and the other half gravely suspicious of the presidency that would unfold. Generously feeding that suspicion: an FBI investigation of Trump's moot presidential campaign. That probe is ongoing, but James Comey will not be the FBI director who completes it. And whatever its conclusions, droves of citizens will see them as dubious. All because on Tuesday the president fired Comey a drastic, legal but highly problematic action. No matter the justification from the White House, this looks like a politically motivated hatchet job, designed to purge the investigation of the official who ran it and owned it. The Trump administration will name Comey's successor. To continue a thorough investigation of... Trump's associates? That's what we mean by "problematic." Skeptics and critics will go much further. They'll say Trump has dipped his wide brush in a brimming bucket of whitewash. Advertisement In short, those inclined to think the worst, will. And who could blame them? This looks like an end-around. Comparisons to President Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" are inexact; Nixon ordered the firing of a special prosecutor to thwart a subpoena of Oval Office recordings. That was worse. But this president now invites Americans to see Nixonian motives. And Trump will have no way of proving the negative to this nation of convincing doubters that this is all about having a better FBI director on the Russia probe or any other case. Trump fires Comey as drawn by editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis. (Roger Tino Morales / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune) Trump's judgment and timing are both poor here: Neither congressional nor FBI exploration of Russian contacts with Trump campaign associates has produced public evidence of wrongdoing. If Trump's critics have exaggerated the import of those contacts, his smart move would have been to let Comey finish his probe and report his small-potatoes findings. Instead all of us are left with what smacks of a disingenuous excuse for defenestrating Comey. Advertisement The genesis of Trump's decision, as the White House frames it, is an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. A probe of Clinton and her camp focused on her mishandling of sensitive State Department emails, and resulted in Comey announcing last July that no criminal charges were warranted. But when new emails came to light as Election Day approached, Comey reopened the case and went public with the FBI's need to sift through more evidence. Nothing new was found but to Democrats the damage was done: Comey had derailed Clinton's momentum. Republicans, meanwhile, were more worried about the FBI's ongoing look into Russian meddling intended to hurt Clinton's candidacy. Had Trump associates colluded with Russians? Comey said nothing about that. We shared Comey's view that there was a clear distinction between the two investigations: The Clinton probe was concluded in July, until new information was discovered that Comey felt compelled to share with Congress. The Trump campaign investigation, though, was (and remains) very much open; having reached no conclusions, the FBI had nothing to say. How all this led Trump to fire Comey is, at this writing, beyond us. Trump's justification is grounded in Justice officials saying they "cannot defend" Comey's handling of the Clinton case. Specifically, it faults Comey's decision to announce the decision not to prosecute. However deep the criticism runs at Justice, it's bizarre to see Trump lambaste Comey for his investigation of Trump's defeated opponent. Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation is certainly open to second-guessing, something Democrats may never tire of doing because Comey may have cost their candidate the election. But this instead looks like Justice or the White House using the Clinton case as a pretext for dumping Comey in the middle of his investigation of Trump associates. And remember: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who said in a letter to Trump that he agrees with this decision, had recused himself from the Russia investigation. He should be nowhere near any action that now undermines public confidence in that case. By Tuesday evening, Trump's critics were insisting on different approaches: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants a special prosecutor to assume the Russia probe, while Republican Sen. John McCain wants a special congressional committee to take the case. With the firing still fresh and more details to come, we're less concerned with protocols than with the mission: Americans who've demanded a full accounting of Russia's meddling have to double down on that insistence. Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook. Advertisement Read more: Donald Trump sure looks like someone with a lot to hide If Trump fired Comey over Russia, he should be impeached No, James Comey's firing isn't like the 'Saturday Night Massacre' Democrats once blamed Comey; now they're defending him 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 groundbreaking decision, an Illinois appellate court Tuesday ruled the College of DuPage Foundation is subject to the state's open records law and ordered that it turn over a federal subpoena the Tribune requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The unanimous decision which upholds an earlier ruling by DuPage Circuit Judge Robert Gibson marks the first time an Illinois higher court has ruled in favor of releasing records in the possession of a public college's fundraising organization. The decision could have broader implications for public bodies that outsource responsibilities to non-government agencies. Advertisement "The Tribune is very pleased with the decision, which is a victory for transparency regarding the affairs of government," said Karen Flax, the Chicago Tribune's vice president of legal. "The Appellate Court's decision confirms that public bodies like the College of DuPage cannot shield public records by attempting to contract out governmental functions to a third party." As part of a yearlong investigation into college spending and contracts, the Tribune sued COD and the foundation in April 2015 to obtain various documents that reporters were refused after they filed open records requests. The college later provided most of the records, but the foundation refused to turn over a subpoena it received as part of a sweeping federal investigation into the Glen Ellyn-based school. Advertisement The federal inquiry came after the Tribune raised questions about top administrators' expenses, contracts awarded to members of the foundation board and other spending issues at the state's largest community college. In March 2016, Gibson ruled that the foundation is subject to open records requests because it conducts government business and that the subpoena is a public document. The 2nd District Appellate Court upheld that position, rejecting the foundation's position that it is a charitable organization with no public role. The justices, however, pointed out that the foundation controlled the college's entire fundraising operation and was staffed by employees who were paid by the college and received state health and retirement benefits. "The Foundation is plainly performing a governmental function on behalf of the College," Justice Robert Spence wrote in a 27-page ruling. The appellate court held the college equally responsible for improperly withholding the subpoena from the Tribune, saying the college should have done more to retrieve it from the foundation. According to the ruling, a college employee who also had foundation responsibilities accepted the subpoena from federal agents in April 2015. She then had a conversation with her boss, who served as both the foundation's executive director and a college vice president. After that conversation, a third college employee drove the subpoena to a private attorney's office in Wheaton, where it has remained. The court ruled that giving the document to a third party did not absolve the college of its obligation to retrieve the subpoena once the Tribune requested it under FOIA on April 16, 2015. "We reject the College's contention that it is powerless to obtain the subpoena, as doing so would have required minimal effort due to the extreme degree to which the College is entwined with the Foundation," the decision states. Advertisement A college attorney declined comment late Tuesday, while foundation attorneys could not be reached for comment. The decision can be appealed to the state Supreme Court. The foundation had argued the document's release could have a chilling impact on future fundraising because corporate and private donors who wish to remain anonymous may fear public disclosure. The appellate court rejected that concern, saying the Freedom of Information Act includes exemptions and the Tribune had requested a document that was clearly a public record under the law. "The subpoena 'directly relates' to the Foundation's governmental function," the ruling states. In keeping with the state's open records laws, the court ordered the college and foundation to pay for the Tribune's legal fees associated with the appeal. A DuPage County judge will decide how much the Tribune should receive for fees related to the trial court phase. jscohen@chicagotribune.com sstclair@chicagotribune.com Advertisement twitter @jodiscohen twitter @stacystclair What's more metropolitan than a stroll through a museum? We've rounded up some of the best exhibits in Chicago's museums this month. Robot Revolution Museum of Science and Industry 5700 S. Lake Shore Drive 773-684-1414 Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry will reopen its "Robot Revolution" exhibit May 11. The all-ages exhibit focuses on the way cutting-edge robots are changing our daily lives and the world as we know it. Get an inside look at robots and the minds of the people who create them with audio from roboticists revealing the inspiration for their creations. Exhibit runs through Feb. 4, 2018. Advertisement Go The Art Institute of Chicago 111 S. Michigan Ave. 312-443-3600 The Art Institute of Chicago is showcasing "Go," its second exhibition in the museum's "Modern Series." A collection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles and films explores how artists responded to seeing the world in the fast-paced modern age. "Go" offers a range of sensory reactions to movements and changes from the perspective of the artists that experienced them first hand. Exhibit runs through June 4. Eternal Youth Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 220 E. Chicago Ave. 312-280-2660 "Eternal Youth" at the Museum of Contemporary Art explores how "coming of age" is expressed in art and film, particularly how images of youth have responded to social, cultural and political changes since the 1990s. A main focus of the collection is photography from Larry Clark, director of the 1995 film "Kids," which follows a group of teenagers in New York City as they navigated sex, drugs and the freedom of youth. Exhibit runs through July 23. Advertisement Memoria Presente: An Artistic Journey National Museum of Mexican Art 1852 W. 19th St. 312-738-1503 The National Museum of Mexican Art is celebrating its 30th anniversary with an exhibition showcasing artists currently working in the Chicagoland area. The artists on display were chosen for their ability to reflect the vibrancy and diversity of Chicago's Mexican community. The art on display aims to start a dialogue, break down barriers and preserve cultural heritage by using art as a bridge between communities. Exhibit runs through Aug. 13. Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy Museum of Contemporary Photography 600 S. Michigan Ave. 312-663-5554 Petcoke, a dust-like waste product containing carbon, toxic heavy metals and other dangerous compounds, is the result of oil refining processes in the Chicago area and elsewhere in the U.S. This multimedia exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Photography uses photography, video installations, sculptural objects and interactive maps to draw attention and inspire action to protect our home planet. Exhibit runs through May 30. Dan Friedman: Radical Modernist Chicago Design Museum 108 N. State St. 3rd floor. 312-894-6263 This exhibit at the Chicago Design Museum celebrates the work of the late Dan Friedman, an American graphic and furniture designer who was a major contributor to the post-modern and new wave typography movements. The exhibit includes objects, photography and Friedman's philosophy on work and life to celebrate his art. Exhibit runs through Aug. 12. EN MAS': Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean DuSable Museum of African American History 740 E. 56th Place 773-947-0600 "EN MAS'" is an exploration of the influences of the celebration of Carnival on contemporary performance practices in the Caribbean, North America and Europe. The exhibit pieces together nine different performances across eight cities in six different countries, connecting Carnival and performance, masquerade, social criticism and transnationalism. Exhibit runs through Aug. 13. L'Affichomania: The Passion for French Posters Driehaus Museum 40 E. Erie St. 312-482-8933 The Driehaus Museum will display 50 posters by multiple masters of the medium. The posters date from 1875-1910, the era known as the Belle Epoque. The works are bright, bold and fuse art with commerce. Poster advertisements include cigarette papers, milk, stage stars and bohemian cabarets. Included in the exhibit is the famous "Le Chat Noir" by Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen. Exhibit runs through Jan. 7, 2018. @AudreyGorden | agorden@tronc.com Richard Baldino, a write-in candidate, was sworn in to office May 1 at a raucous meeting that attracted dozens of protesters, promoting Cook County's minimum wage and sick day ordinance. (Courtesy of Richard Baldino / HANDOUT) The focus of Richard Baldino's first Arlington Heights Village Board meeting as a trustee wasn't on the pomp and circumstance that usually starts a new term. Instead, the write-in candidate was sworn in to office May 1 at a raucous meeting that attracted dozens of protesters, promoting Cook County's minimum wage and sick day ordinance, before the board voted, 5-4, to opt the village out of the countywide mandate. Advertisement Or, in the words of Arlington Heights Mayor Thomas Hayes, it was akin to a "baptism by fire." The pressure only increased when Baldino, who was one of the four dissenting trustees on the opt-out vote, was urged by a handful of hecklers in the crowd, who shouted out, "We want to hear from Baldino!" Advertisement "As the new person who was only one half-hour into his tenure on the board, I didn't feel confident enough to say a lot because everything I wanted to say had already been said," Baldino said. "I knew it was going to be a long meeting, and I didn't want to reiterate points that were already made. But when it became clear that folks wanted to hear my position, I felt they deserved a brief statement." While three incumbent trustee candidates, Thomas Glasgow, Bert Rosenberg and Jim Tinaglia, were all re-elected on April 4, Baldino captured the fourth open seat as a write-in candidate by beating out a second write-in candidate, Mark Walker. Walker said he attended the village board meeting on May 1 to be a "good sport" and show support for the trustees who were being sworn in for the new term. "I was pleased to see the way (Baldino) voted, which is they way I would have," said Walker, who supports the county's minimum wage and sick day ordinance. "Given how local residents and lawmakers have little influence over higher governments, I think the trustees who voted to opt out of the county ordinance are abdicating their responsibility to their constituents." Hayes, who ran unopposed and was re-elected to serve a second term as mayor, said that as a newcomer to village government, Baldino will need some time to adjust to his new role. "It was definitely a baptism by fire, but in general, we try to keep the agenda light on the first meeting of the new term, when the board members are sworn in," Hayes said. "There's a lot for new trustees to pick up in terms of how a meeting is done, but I'm sure (Baldino) will do a great job." Hayes said that while trustees addressing contentious matters like the minimum wage ordinance "comes with the territory," he is hopeful that board members now can turn their attention to important local issues, such as infrastructure improvements to roads and sewers. In the coming weeks, officials will be discussing and prioritizing the recommendations detailed in a study of the village's flood control program, which, Hayes said, could include residents funding some of the improvements with a new stormwater management fee. Advertisement "Where our focus needs to be, and the issues we need to address, are on providing residents with basic services, like police, fire and public works," Hayes said. "We don't mind discussing larger issues with residents, but these things really should be on the plates of the state legislature and federal elected representatives." As an environmental scientist who works as a consultant for the federal government, Baldino said he looks forward to contributing to the board's upcoming discussions on stormwater management. "As a scientist, I'm trained to take in as much information as possible and process it, and I believe it is very bad to make snap decisions," Baldino said. "You have to consider the weight of evidence, and not be subjective, which is built into who I am as a person and as a professional." kcullotta@tribpub.com Twitter @kcullotta Former Aurora Mayor Robert J. O'Connor (right) hands new Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin the mayoral gavel during inauguration ceremonies at the Paramount Theatre Tuesday night. (Sean King / The Beacon-News) History was made in Aurora Tuesday night. It happened when Richard Irvin took the oath of office as the 59th mayor of Aurora - the first African-American to ever hold that post. He took the oath from Second Appellate Court Judge Joseph Birkett, then stepped to the podium and announced, "I am Richard Irvin, and I am the mayor of Aurora." Advertisement His words were greeted with cheers from a crowd of more than 1,000 people who packed the Paramount Theatre downtown, the most ever to see an Aurora mayor be sworn in. They were rewarded with their candidate and now mayor inviting them to travel with him "down a pathway I plan to build a pathway to yes." Advertisement That pathway includes safe streets and neighborhoods, good schools, plenty of economic development and jobs, Irvin said. It also includes a world where Aurora's multi-cultural mix is seen as "truly our strength," he said, where people of all races and religions can "join hands and celebrate our Aurora." "We must change our mindset," Irvin said. "We must begin to believe in yes." Irvin also sounded many of the points of his campaign, and past campaigns, in saying it is time to look to the future. He even invoked the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in saying "now is the time " Time, he said, for new infrastructure, extended technology, economic development and growth, safe communities and the best education available, and building Aurora together. "I have worked for this for more than 20 years," Irvin said. "Now here I am." Members of Irvin's family, including his mother, stood with him as he took his oath. He also called the audience's attention to his aunt, who turned 100 years old earlier this year. The life-long Auroran told of the Aurora his aunt lived in, where she was denied opportunities both as a woman and a "person of color." He said she could not enter some restaurants through the front door, and had to ride in the back of the bus. "Well, those days are long gone," he said. "In 2017, women are leaders and in business, and people of color are sought after as patrons " Irvin was sworn in amid the backdrop of the glamour of the Paramount Theatre, which was used because it could accommodate the large crowd. Among the crowd were other public servants from other boards in the city, as well as the three opponents Irvin faced in the election, state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora), Alderman Michael Saville, 6th Ward, and Rick Guzman. Advertisement Saying a few short words before the inauguration was U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Chicago), who said he came to Aurora to attend the historic event. And three of Aurora's four living ex-mayors were in attendance, Tom Weisner, David Pierce and Robert O'Connor, who himself turned the gavel over to Irvin. The audience also watched as five returning aldermen were sworn-in Juany Garza, 2nd Ward, to her fourth term; William Donnell, 4th Ward, to his second term; Scheketa Hart-Burns, 7th Ward, who was first elected African-American alderman in 1991; Edward Bugg, 9th Ward, to his second term; and Robert O'Connor, at large, to his ninth term. One new alderman was sworn in, Judd Lofchie, who was elected in the 10th Ward. The night included theatrics appropriate to a venue such as the Paramount, with three Aurora high school JROTC units, from East and West Aurora and Marmion Academy, presenting the colors, and Quinn Rollins, Irvin's son, leading the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. slord@tribpub.com Sounding hoarse and looking uncomfortable at all the attention, Madeline Connelly explained how a quick hike with her dog Mogi became six days lost in the Montana wilderness. "I realized we didn't have water. Found a swimming hole. . .got back up, took a wrong turn," the River Forest native told reporters Wednesday after she was rescued from the Great Bear Wilderness near Glacier National Park. "The first night, I realized that I was not in the right place." Connelly said she and her dog kept walking, up to 10 miles some days, sleeping under trees and hoping to eventually come across a trail. "I thought if I kept going, I would be on the same loop of a trail," she said. "I ended up at a lake and I was like, this is not right. " She said they tried to keep going every day but found it hard in the steep terrain and "treacherous weather conditions." "We rested for about two days because I just couldn't move, and one day it kind of snowed," she said. "All I had was overalls, a sweater with a hood, a T-shirt, my dog's leash, my dog and my car keys." Two Bear Air Rescue released a video it says shows the rescue of missing River Forest native Madeline Connelly. (YouTube / Two Bear Air Rescue) (Youtube / Two Bear Air Rescue/Chicago Tribune) Connelly said she survived by drinking water out of creeks and streams. She did not have much to eat and was unable to start a fire at night to keep warm in the near freezing temperatures. Rescuers found her Wednesday, about five miles from where her car was parked. Connelly asked if she could hike back out, but rescuers insisted she be airlifted. Authorities said she was tired and hungry but otherwise she was fine. Her dog too. "She's a very fortunate young lady," said Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry. A search-and-rescue effort began Saturday after she was first reported missing, Curry said. Efforts included helicopters and 40-50 searchers on foot in what Curry described as a heavily wooded, rugged terrain. The Great Bear Wilderness spans 285,771 acres in northern Montana and is located south of Glacier National Park. The area has elevations as high as 8,000 feet and has more than 300 miles of trails. Wildlife includes wolverine, deer, elk, moose, grizzly bears, black bears, mountain goats and mountain sheep. Advertisement Madeline Connelly and her dog Mogi. (WGN-TV) Connelly had been visiting relatives near the park on her way to a job at a bakery in Alaska. She decided to take a quick hike with her dog before continuing her trip. "I can't believe we were able to get out my dog and I," she said. "I just kinda wanted to say thank you to everyone who put in all of this effort and helping me. I didn't really know what was going on out there. I kinda just thought I was going to make it out to my car this morning and go get a coke and then go to my uncle's house. I had no idea that all of this other stuff had been going on. I feel like an idiot, honestly." Her mother Laura Connelly, tearfully told reporters her daughter's return was the "best Mother's Day gift ever." "Never lost the faith because of all the incredible people both in West Glacier, in Whitefish in Kalispell and East Glacier," Laura Connelly said as she hugged her daughter. Family and friends had gathered Monday and Tuesday at St. Luke Catholic Church in River Forest to pray for Connelly. Michael Connelly said the family never lost hope. "I said if one grandchild was going to survive this, it's going to be her," Michael Connelly said. "I've been texting her what's been going on the whole time knowing that she will read all of the texts I send her. Some of them are funny, some of them were probably a little more emotional. She'll read them all. I knew she would." Advertisement Steve Schering is a Pioneer Press reporter. Alicia Fabbre is a freelancer. Associated Press contributed. MOORHEAD, Minn. -- Lisa Twomey of Moorhead has four young sons ages 4 to 11 and works full-time. So how does she do it? You just have to be creative, said the Concordia College world language and culture professor who has been able to work things out with her husband, pharmacist Miguel Buisan, and her employer over the years. Shes one in the vast army of working moms in Minnesota, a state that was ranked the second best in the nation for working moms as Mother's Day nears. North Dakota at 19th and South Dakota at 34th were further down in the rankings, but also won high marks in a few categories, according to a study released this week by personal-finance website WalletHub. The rankings were based on day-care quality, median womens salaries and female unemployment rates, among other categories. Minnesota finished behind only Vermont as it ranked third in professional opportunities, fifth in child-care quality and ninth in work-life balance. North Dakota shined in its unemployment rate for women, with a 2.4 percent rate, compared to the highest in the District of Columbia at 7.5 percent. The state was also tied for third in best day-care system, behind only New York and Washington. But it was at the bottom, ranking 50th, by having the highest gender pay gap. For South Dakota, it was No. 1 for having the highest ratio of female executives to male executives at 79.39 percent, way above the lowest ratio in Utah at 25.81 percent. South Dakota also was fourth in the most affordable child-care costs. Nationwide, women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, and more than 70 percent of moms with children younger than 18 are working. Yet women earned only 83 percent of what men made in 2015 and have far less upward mobility, as evidenced by the fact that only 5.8 percent of S&P 500 companies chief executives are female, said the study. The real question, however, is what is being done about this fundamental problem of workplace inequality, said the study. Progress appears to be taking shape at different rates across the nation. Not only do parental leave policies and other legal support systems vary by state, but the quality of infrastructure from cost-effective day care to public schools is also far from uniform as well, said the analysis of public and private data by WalletHub. Molly Flaspohler, a librarian at Minnesota State University Moorhead and the mother of two girls ages 13 and 14, said she believes the state offers some of the best educational and cultural opportunities. She also notes that the violence seen in so many places around the nation -- especially in bigger cities -- is less of a problem. I dont think I have to worry as much as some mothers, she said. Both Flaspohler and Twomey, however, even though they have husbands to help and enjoyed understanding employers during their childrens earlier years, said its not easy. Flaspohler said flexibility is a key to making things work in balancing work and raising children. She said at one point she worked nights and her husband worked days so one or the other was home most of the time. But the problem there is that my husband and I never saw each other, she said. And it was exhausting. The couple also had a hard time finding infant care, and she believes that is still a problem. After starting her new job at MSUM a few years ago, she also still seemingly spends more time than even her daughters at home in front of her computer going the extra mile to earn tenure at the university. Twomey said she was able to take a leave of absence when her first boys were born -- something she felt she had to do because she wasnt being fair to either her job or children. I realize I was pretty lucky to be able to do that. I know some mothers dont have that choice, Twomey said. But I love my job and I love being a mom, she said. So she tries to be that creative person to make things work. She said her husband once switched to four-day work weeks. She also tries to juggle her work schedule around being home with the boys, and sometimes it simply is the goodness of the people that she works with. E-Zine In this weeks Computer Weekly, as the government publishes the Online Safety Bill, we look at what the laws mean for internet services. A ransomware victim shares the insider story of the trauma of losing their corporate IT systems. And we ask, what happens when quantum computers get too powerful to verify their output? Read the issue now. Continue Reading 5 things to know about Adam Frisch Laure Boebert is in a tight race for s second term in Congress with Democrat Adam Frisch looking to unseat her and represent Colorado's 3rd district. Doing Business in China 2022 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in China. Compiled by the ... You are here: Home The establishment of "Chinese Brands Day" will help independent brands, a senior official said Tuesday. The State Council, China' cabinet, has approved a Chinese Brands Day, to be held on May 10 each year from this year. The first falls on Wednesday. Influential brands are symbols of the overall competitiveness of companies and countries, and can help lead economic transition, according to Wang Dong, a senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner. Compared with developed countries, China is still short of globally influential brands but well equipped to accelerate brand development, Wang added. Chinese Brands Day will publicize brands owned independently by Chinese companies, tell the stories of the brands and raise brand recognition, according to Wang. The Royal Thai Navy (RTN) on Monday signed a contract with a Chinese company to procure an S26T diesel-electric submarine, a move experts believe will promote China's export of conventional submarines. The Royal Thai Navy (RTN) on May 8 signed a contract with a Chinese company to procure an S26T diesel-electric submarine. [Photo/en.people.cn] The contract was signed in Beijing by RTN chief of staff, Vice Admiral Luechai Ruddit and Xu Ziqiu, chairman of the stated-owned China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC). According to CSIC's official website, this is the company's second submarine export contract, after an eight-ship deal with Pakistan's navy in 2015. "The submarines from China are the cheapest, with quality that is relatively acceptable. [China] also offers services after purchase, something extra that we have received," Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was quoted as saying by Nationmultimedia.com in March. The S26T will be the RTN's first submarine since the end of World War II. Due to domestic politics and a budget shortage, the country delayed its plan to buy a submarine until China offered an unbeatable deal. According to Nationmultimedia.com, the ship will be nearly 78 meters long and 9 meters wide. It will be equipped with the latest technology, including a AIP (Air Independent Propulsion) system, which will allow the ship to stay underwater for up to 21 days without resurfacing. Normal nuclear-based submarines can dive for around seven to 10 days at a time. China has set up a national venture capital fund for guiding the development of startup companies in new sectors of strategic importance. The fund was set up by the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Development & Investment Corporation (SDIC), among others. SDIC Chairman Wang Huisheng said that the fund had raised a total of 17.8 billion yuan (about 2.6 billion U.S. dollars), with 80 percent to be invested in startups in initial and early stages and 20 percent in mature enterprises that are not yet listed. The State Council, China's cabinet, decided to set up the venture capital fund in early 2015. In July 2016, SDIC set up a company as the management platform for the fund. The fund will promote the development of new strategic sectors, including new information technology, energy conservation and environmental protection, new materials and high-end equipment manufacturing. China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang on Tuesday called upon lawmakers, judges and prosecutors of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) to exercise the rule of law so as to maintain long-term prosperity and stability of the SAR. Zhang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, made the remarks at the Legislative Assembly of the Macao SAR. The Legislative Assembly, created in accordance with the Basic Law of the Macao SAR, is an important part of the political system of the SAR, he said. Since Macao's return to the motherland, the SAR's Legislative Assembly has earnestly performed its duties to support, coordinate and supervise the SAR government according to law, and has contributed significantly to the promotion of Macao's democratic development, rule of law and social advancement, Zhang said when meeting with all members of the assembly. The achievements have been made by the SAR's Legislative Assembly as it functions in the spirit of the rule of law and under the Constitution and the Basic Law, Zhang said. The Legislative Assembly is an integration of electoral democracy and consultative democracy, which should play a greater role in the future, he added. He asked the lawmakers to fulfill their oath of office and keep the motherland in mind. Zhang said they should have a full and accurate understanding of the "one country, two systems" principle, uphold the central government's overall jurisdiction over the Macao SAR, and ensure the effective functioning of the SAR's administration-led system set up by the Basic Law. The lawmakers were also reminded of trying and carrying on mechanisms related to the implementation of the Basic Law in order to establish a legal system commensurate with the Macao SAR's condition. The democratic consultation with Macao's characteristics has to be maintained, Zhang told the lawmakers, emphasizing the importance for them to express aspirations of different sectors in the society objectively and supervise the SAR government in its policy implementation rationally. Zhang urged the lawmakers to join hands with the SAR government to promote unity among the public in Macao, in order to build a strong, positive power to safeguard the national sovereignty, security and interests, and Macao's long-term prosperity and stability. Zhang also met with the SAR's judges and prosecutors at the Court of Final Appeals and encouraged them to firmly establish consciousness about the Constitution and the Basic Law. The Macao SAR is endowed with independent judiciary and final adjudication by the Basic Law. Courts and prosecutorates in the SAR have made substantial contribution toward the implementation of "one country, two systems," Zhang said. He also stressed the importance of judicial impartiality in order to protect the legal rights of Macao residents and guarantee the promotion of successful implementation of the "one country, two systems" principle in Macao. Zhang arrived in the Macao SAR on Monday for a three-day inspection. You are here: Home A senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) had urged the country's publishers to digitalize high quality books and distribute them through the Internet. Liu Qibao, head of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, made the remarks Tuesday at the Commercial Press, which is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. Traditional publishers should integrate their advantages in content with Internet technology, said Liu. Liu also called on the country's publishers to introduce more books on China's development, social system and contemporary values to overseas readers. Founded in 1897, the state-owned Commercial Press is known for publishing dictionaries and academic works. Two men has been detained by police for allegedly stealing and killing a black swan from Xujiahui Park in Shanghai, police said. The duo, surnamed Zhou and Wang, allegedly stole the black swan around 1am on April 20 from the park and slaughtered it at their rented home. Zhou confessed to police they kept it in the fridge and planned to eat it later. They later threw it away because it didnt taste good. The suspects had planned to catch fish in the first but gave up after seeing security guards patrolling. On their way out, they saw the black swan and grabbed it around its neck, police alleged. The missing of the bird was reported to the police on April 20 by the park securities who also provided surveillance footage. The two people were detained on charges of hunting and killing wild animal and further investigation is underway, police said. China will offer every assistance to crash relatives, ministry says The Chinese leadership has issued instructions for relevant departments and localities to help deal with the aftermath of the deadly Tuesday traffic accident in Weihai, Shandong province, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Twelve people, including 11 kindergarten pupils, were killed when a school bus crashed and then burst into flames as it traveled through a tunnel in the coastal city in northern China. Of the 11 children, who were aged between three and six, five were from the Republic of Korea and six were Chinese nationals. They were all pupils at an international kindergarten in Weihai, Xinhua quoted local authorities as saying. "The Chinese side is in communication with the ROK through diplomatic channels" and will help with any issues to be resolved, said a written statement issued on the ministry's website. Members of the ministry's staff have been assigned to provide comfort and assist the families of the dead, the statement said. Shandong province and Weihai city launched contingency response plans immediately after the crash, and leading local officials went to the site and guided operations by relevant departments, it said. You are here: Home President Xi Jinping, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, has signed a decree that will release a regulation on military legislation. The regulation, which took effect Monday, defines the rules for establishing military laws and regulations as well as the drafting of standard documents. The regulation standardizes the formulation of military laws and regulations, spanning the drafting, submission, modification and issuance stages. In addition, it regulates the review and compilation of records, and suggests measures to improve the management system for documents. People attend a protest against last week's U.S. airstrikes on Syria, in front of the UN office in Damascus, capital of Syria, April 11, 2017. [Xinhua file photo] The idea of creating safe areas in Syria to save the common people from ravages of the conflict is not new. It had been in discussion for quite some time but could not emerge as a reality due to complexity of the civil war. But a flurry of diplomatic activities involving key international leaders have started yielding results. As agreed in Astana, having de-escalation zones free from violence is an important achievement. This phase of pro-active diplomacy started with the direct telephonic contact between President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin the first since the missile strike on Syria last month. The two talked about the issue of ceasefire, among other things. Their desire for peace provides space for breaking the deadly pattern of violence in Syria. Next came the meeting between Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The relations between the two have fully recovered after the disastrous effects of the shooting down of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey in 2015. And with the bilateral trust building, their cooperation on Syria has also improved. The key indicator of growing consensus for peace on Syria is the expression of intent by Putin and Erdogan to create non-combatant zones within Syria. This agreement for special safe zones will be a major progress in protecting the life and property of the civilians in the war-torn country. The idea was further discussed by the rebels and government officials at the ceasefire talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. The key outcome of the moot was that Russia, Turkey and Iran, the three facilitators of the Astana process, signed a memorandum to set up "de-escalation areas." It is an important step to make the ceasefires meaningful for ordinary people, provided the idea is implemented in its true spirit. Though, it is still early to say about the success of the initiative but there are signs for optimism. The support of Turkey is vital for such zones, as it shares a volatile border with Syria where Kurds have emerged as a strong entity. Previously, it expressed opposition to the non-fly zones in the areas. According to the trilateral agreement of Astana, the parties to the conflict will not be allowed to target each other in the marked security areas. The detailed maps will be prepared and circulated among the stakeholders. Initially, four such zones may be established. The areas identified are located one each in provinces of Idlib and Homs. Another would be created in the Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus, while the fourth may be set up in the south of the country. The front lines between the forces of the government and opposition groups would be separated and ceasefire properly enforced. The jets operated by Russia and Syria would not fly over the safe zones provided the ceasefire is observed by all sides. To further establish the credibility of the safe areas, these zones would be monitored by international observers. Russia, Turkey and Iran are joint guarantors to see the implementation of the de-escalation zones and monitor their functioning. However, the parties would be free to target Deash/ISIL and other militant Islamic groups which are not covered in the Astana agreement on de-escalation zones. It is a workable idea despite pitfalls. But it would need full commitment and honesty by all. Once the initial set of safe zones is successful, the initiative can be multiplied with the aim of creating wider peace zones. Though, the opposition groups want to go beyond the safe zones and are demanding a nationwide ceasefire. It shows their eagerness for peace. But it is better to start with limited areas where ceasefires can be implemented. Caution is the watchword to break the stranglehold of violence. After years of bloodshed, a war economy develops with its powerful stakeholders who can disrupt any chances for restoring the normality. Peace should be given a chance through designated areas under supervised conditions. With the passage of time, peace and stability would create its own proponents, supporters and business environment to sustain. The Astana process launched in January is slowly proving its effectiveness. While its focus remains on cessation of hostilities and implementation of ceasefire, the other track of talks being pursued in Geneva should be expedited. It should vigorously explore options for a lasting political solution to the Syrian problem. Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. You are here: Home Flash An 11-year-old girl died Tuesday after falling from a rapid ride at a theme park in Central England, police in Britain reported. The tragedy happened on the Splash Canyon attraction at the Drayton Manor theme park, north of Birmingham. The ride has been closed while police and inspectors from the government Health and Safety Executive carry out an investigation. Reports said the girl, who was on a school trip, fell from the ride into the water. Police in the county of Staffordshire said the girl, thought to be from the Leicester area, was airlifted to Birmingham Children's Hospital at about 14:20 BST. In a statement Staffordshire Police said: "Following an incident at Drayton Manor Park, we can confirm that an 11-year-old girl has died this afternoon (May 9)." "Emergency services were called at 2.20 pm following reports the girl had fallen from a water ride at the park." Superintendent Carl Ratcliffe, of Staffordshire Police, said: "Specially-trained officers are supporting the girl's family at this difficult time. Our thoughts are very much with her family and friends following this tragic incident." A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said: "On arrival, crews discovered a girl with serious injuries who had been rescued from the water by park staff. "Ambulance staff administered advanced life support before she was flown to Birmingham Children's Hospital with the doctor continuing treatment en-route. Unfortunately, shortly after arrival at hospital the girl passed away." Police said the family have requested that their wishes are respected at this difficult time. Note: This is post #16 in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the Presidents Cabinet. See the series introduction here. Cabinet position: Attorney General Department: Department of Justice Current Secretary: Jeff Sessions Succession: The Attorney General is seventh in the presidential line of succession. Department Mission: The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the Office of the Attorney General which evolved over the years into the head of the Department of Justice and chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters generally and gives advice and opinions to the President and to the heads of the executive departments of the Government when so requested. In matters of exceptional gravity or importance the Attorney General appears in person before the Supreme Court. Since the 1870 Act that established the Department of Justice as an executive department of the government of the United States, the Attorney General has guided the worlds largest law office and the central agency for enforcement of federal laws. (Source) Department Budget: $29.0 billion for FY2017 Number of employees: 118,110 positions. This staffing level is comprised of: Agents (23,885 or 20%); Attorneys (10,046 or 8%); Correctional Officers (20,969 or 18%); Intelligence Analysts (4,169 or 4%); and Other (59,041 or 50%). Other captures analysts, administrative, clerical, information technology specialists, legal services, and security specialists. Primary Duties of the Secretary: To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. (Source) Secretary Info Secretary: Jeff Sessions Previous occupation: United States Senator for Alabama since 1996. Education: B.A. from Huntingdon College and J.D. from the University of Alabama School of Law. Previous government experience: Served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and as the Attorney General of Alabama. Religious Affiliation: United Methodist Notable achievements: Was an Eagle Scout and earned the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. Served in the Army Reserve and earned the rank of Captain. Was nominated for the position of district court judge by President Ronald Reagan (but rejected by the Senate judiciary committee). Notable quotes: On the role of attorney general: If the attorney general is asked to do something plainly unlawful, he or she cannot do that. I would have to resign before executing policy that would be unlawful or unconstitutional. On the rule of law: No American is above the law, and no powerful special interest will cower this department. Previous and forthcoming posts in this series: Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security Flash U.S. President Donald Trump will not make an announcement on whether or not to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement on climate change until after he returns from the May 26-27 Group of Seven (G7) summit in Italy, the White House said Tuesday. "The president has been meeting with his team for quite a while on this matter," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters at a daily briefing. Trump was originally scheduled to sit down Tuesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, his daughter Ivanka Trump and others to discuss the agreement, but the meeting was postponed. When asked if the canceled meeting is a sign that Trump is vacillating on the agreement, Spicer said: "No, I think it's simply a sign that the president wants to continue to meet with his team ... and come to a decision on what's (in) the best interest of the United States." It's reported that Trump's cabinet and top officials are deeply divided about whether the U.S. should pull out. Tillerson and Ivanka are said to want the U.S. to stay, while Pruitt and White House strategist Steve Bannon reportedly have been pushing Trump to leave the international agreement. Trump himself has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement during his presidential campaign. Flash A state representative of Michigan was found dead from an apparent suicide Tuesday, hours after he was released from detention following drunk driving, local media reported. The sudden death of John Kivela, 47, a Democratic representative from Marquette, is still under investigation by local police, according to Detroit Free Press. The former mayor of Marquette was arrested on Monday for driving under the influence of alcohol for a second time while in office. Police records show he had a blood-alcohol concentration of more than 0.17 percent, while the legal limit for a motorist is 0.08 percent. Kivela's first arrest took place in November of 2015, when he was found speeding and swerving with an open bottle of whiskey in the car. He ended up getting 12 months probation and was fined some 1,600 U.S. dollars. Flash U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Scott Gottlieb as the new chief of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Gottlieb, who has served as the FDA director under former U.S. President George W. Bush, has returned to his old post after a 57-42 vote in the upper chamber of the Congress. "As a practicing physician with a wealth of policy experience, Dr.Gottlieb has the necessary qualifications to lead the FDA at this critical time," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said from the Senate floor. Despite strong backing from the GOP, Democrats said Gottlieb's ties to the industry he's set to oversee may fringe his judgements. Gottlieb has reportedly invested in or consulted for dozens of healthcare companies since leaving the FDA. "We need FDA to be a tough cop on the beat, not a rubber stamp approving the latest big pharma painkillers," said Edward Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts while debating on the Senate floor. Gottlieb's confirmation came as a new study revealed one in three drugs approved by the FDA has a new safety issue detected in the years after the approval, suggesting the necessity for the FDA to step up measures of testing drugs for safety. You are here: Home Flash La Gare du Nord, one of Paris' main railway station, reopened in early Tuesday morning after police evacuated it to search for possible terrorist suspects, the Paris prefecture said. "End of security checks. Gradual return to normal," Paris police said on its Twitter account. Police had intervened for operation checks, it said without elaborating. According to the local news paper Le Parisien, officers, with assault weapons, searched a high speed train arriving from northern France to hunt presumed terrorist militants who were believed to be on board. An alert about the three suspects was issued by a "partner country" and it was circulated to police last Friday, it added. France remains top target of terrorist cells due to its military intervention in Iraq, Syria and the Sahel region. Over the past two years, waves of attacks broke several times the calm at home, with the bloodiest staged at Rivera city of Nice where a man drove his truck into a crowd, killing 86 people on Bastille Day last year. You are here: Home Flash South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday appointed new prime minister, intelligence agency chief, presidential chief of staff and chief of the presidential security service. Lee Nak-yon, an incumbent governor of South Jeolla province, was named as the first prime minister of the Moon government. Lee, 65, is a former journalist who entered politics in 2000 and served as a four-term lawmaker. He worked as spokesman for late liberal presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. He was elected in 2014 as the provincial governor. The prime minister nominee will be subject to the parliamentary hearing, requiring a parliamentary ratification to take office. Im Jong-seok, 51, was named as presidential chief of staff. He is a two-term lawmaker who served as chief of staff for Moon's campaign team in the presidential race. Im is a famous student activist in 1980s who visited a students' festival held in 1989 in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). For that visit, he was jailed for three and a half years. Under the national security law, it is illegal to visit the DPRK without advance permission from the government. He entered politics in 2000 by joining the New Millennium Democratic Party, a predecessor of the current ruling Minjoo Party, and was elected as the youngest lawmaker in the year. Im also worked for Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon as vice mayor on political affairs. Suh Hoon, a former vice director of NIS (National Intelligence Service), was appointed as the spy agency's chief. Suh, 63, managed official and unofficial contacts with the DPRK under the liberal presidents of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. He led negotiations with the DPRK behind the scenes to hold two inter-Korean summit meetings in 2000 and 2007. Joo Young-hoon, a career secretive service man, was named as chief of the presidential security service. Joo, 61, entered the presidential security service as a guard in 1984, and had worked for the presidential secretive service since then. Flash Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday said he hopes to cooperate with South Korea's new president Moon Jae-in in dealing with issues pertaining to tension on the Korean Peninsula. Abe made the remarks during a meeting of government and ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) officials. Abe said for his part, he is keen to further develop future-oriented relations with Seoul. The Japanese leader also said Japan plans to continue to work in close alliance with the United States, South Korea, China and Russia to continue to urge the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to "abandon its missile and nuclear ambitions and to refrain from further provocations." Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said South Korea remained an important neighbor which shares strategic interests with Japan. Japan is still at odds with South Korea, however, over "comfort women" statues erected to memorialize the women coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Word War II. Japan believes that a 2015 accord inked between Tokyo and Seoul and the paying of 1 billion yen (8.9 million U.S. dollars) last year to a South Korean fund to help former "comfort women" and their families as part of the deal would settle the matter. But a South Korean civic group erecting a "comfort women" statue outside the Japanese Consulate General in the port city of Busan last December led to Japan recalling its ambassador to South Korea for three months by way of protest. Prior to that, a "comfort women" statue was erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, which also irked Tokyo. What happens when governments, NGOs, charities, and churches all converge in scurried attempts to alleviate global poverty, whether through wealth transfers or other top-down, systematic solutions? As films like PovertyCure and Poverty, Inc. aptly demonstrate, the results have been dismal, ranging from minimal, short-term successes to widespread, counterproductive disruption. Surely we can do better, avoiding grand, outside solutions, and instead coming alongside the poor as partners. Yet even amid the menu of smaller and more direct or localized bottom-up solutions, there is still plenty of room for error. Participants in failed projects will typically respond that at least were doing something. But what if failure at doing good is actually worse than doing nothing? In a recent article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Kevin Starr prompts us to ask this very question, arguing that when it comes to economic development and global charity, one significant failure is often enough to doom a community for the foreseeable future. Once a well is drilled, a clinic built, or a program delivered, an NGO or government official checks a box, and future resources go somewhere else, he says. Starr recounts a recent trip to Ghana, where he observed the work of Saha Global, a non-profit organization that trains women in rural communities to solve their villages need for clean water by providing business opportunities. Using local entrepreneurs, Saha sets up individual chlorinating businesses with the goal of making clean water affordable. According to Starr, the Saha model is a great fix, in large part due to their simple process and technology, their use of the profit motive/mechanism, and the rigorous, ongoing monitoring that comes along with it. But while Saha has had having great success in certain areas, other areas have been flooded by a range of competing solutions. In a village called Kulaa, one Saha entrepreneur was off to a wonderful start until the government began offering ceramic filters for free. By about six months in, most of the filters had either broken or clogged, Starr explains. The filters could be cleaned, but nobody knew how, and of course there was no way to replace ones that broke. Then came an American church group, which blew into town with a truckload of LifeStraw Family gravity filters, handing out yet another method of (free) filtration, but with no training or ongoing monitoring to ensure the solution was sustainable for the future. Soon enough, those filters faded, too, and even the few that continue to be used are faulty or misapplied, leading to filtered water that still tests positive for E. coli and coliforms. Then came an NGO, with yet another solution. Alas, what happened next is rather predictable, involving more free handouts, more faulty products, and the same deficit of hands-on training and monitoring, leading to more contaminated water and more economic disruption for the Saha entrepreneur with a solution that actually worked. In sum, this village has seen four water interventions, Starr writes, in summary. The last three didnt work, and each of them managed to screw the one that would have. As a takeaway, Starr points us to three lessons learned, which he hopes will serve as basic principles of development going forward: 1. There is a huge opportunity cost to failure. When you do something stupid, you either a) wreck something that is working or could have worked, or b) or blow the peoples one chance to get anything ever. Once a well is drilled, a clinic built, or a program delivered, an NGO or government official checks a box, and future resources go somewhere else. Failure is worse than nothing. 2. Most training for end users is useless. Some guy came by my house the other day to teach me how to keep the wifi up and running. The next day, I screwed it up. So it is for things like water filters. If a product or technology intended for consumers requires training, its probably going to fail. 3. Its all about follow-up. If you cant provide repair and replacement, if you cant monitor performance over time, dont do it. If you cant make a strong case that, say, two years from now, things will still be workingand in a way that inspires confidence that it will work over the long hauldont do it. Stuff breaks in ways you cant even imagine, people use things in completely unpredictable ways, and unintended consequences rule supreme. The devastation of lake ecosystems in Africa from fishers repurposing fine-mesh mosquito nets is a fine example of the kind of debacle that could be avoided with some decent monitoring over time. For Starr, this amounts severe development malpractice, and its the type of thing that happens all over the world in varying degrees. In Ghana as in elsewhere, few are taking responsibility for these failures. Indeed, few are even pausing to consider whether success ever occurred in the first place. Until we recognize the ripple effects of these sorts of interventions, the path of upward economic development will continue to be defined by frustration, waste, and, yes, actual death and destruction. Whether the solution is coming from a government, church, or charity, the same risks apply, and the principles for success remain the same. If a charity-driven solution hopes to succeed, it will require attentive, long-term investment and concern what Christians might more commonly refer to as discipleship. We wont be always able to invest our time, resources, and attention completely in this or that country or toward this or that optimal solution. But we can start by asking those basic questions about the types of relationships were hoping to cultivate and the ripple effects that are likely to occur. What are the actual fruits or failures of our investments, and who is ultimately responsible? What is the source of our action economic, social, spiritual, or otherwise and are we really taking that seriously, as well? Photo: Elmina harbor, Francisco Anzola (CC BY 2.0) Almost all of a sudden, the apparently imminent danger of a military showdown on the Korean Peninsula seems to have evaporated into thin air. A government delegation from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea talked with American political experts in Oslo, Norway, on Monday through Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, the freshly elected Moon Jae-in, who advocates engagement with Pyongyang, was sworn in as the new president of the Republic of Korea. At least for now, a temporary relaxation in the once inflammable tensions in the area looks credible, thanks to such precious highlights in the bleak geopolitical landscape of Northeast Asia. Even better, the region has a precious opportunity to heal some of its most damaging recent rifts. Although Pyongyang keeps clamoring it will conduct its sixth nuclear test "at any time", and it is ready to enter a nuclear duel with the United States. Although Washington has distanced itself from the Oslo talks, and ruled out any change to its preoccupation with "maximum pressures" on the DPRK. And although it remains to be seen how far Moon can overcome the potential drags at home in Parliament, where his party lacks a majority, when he does reach out to the DPRK. Given US President Donald Trump's recent indication of his willingness to meet DPRK leader Kim Jong-un, who knows whether or not the informal contact in Oslo will pave the way for more formal, direct engagement? After all, the White House has left that door open; Pyongyang craves it; Beijing would welcome it; and it would certainly be in Seoul's interests. Coordination with Washington then will be Moon's foremost foreign policy challenge. Since it is anticipated he will take a milder approach to the DPRK than his predecessor, he will have to first straighten things out with decision-makers in Washington, who until now have favored imposing further isolation and sanctions. Moon's expressed disfavor toward the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system in the ROK is certainly conducive to his aspiration for repairing his country's strained ties with China. It is hoped that he has the ability to maneuver a meaningful change to the almost-complete fait accompli. Yet if their shared interest in peacefully denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula does lead to constructive interaction among stakeholders, and the threat from across the 38th Parallel diminishes, Moon surely can make a stronger case for removing THAAD. For if THAAD is meant solely and specifically to address escalating threats from the North, why should it stay if such threats de-escalate? Amina J. Mohammed, deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, examines a piece featuring President Xi Jinping in the photo exhibition Strengthening International Cooperation for Win-Win Development, which opened on Monday in the New York headquarters of the UN. The exhibition opened just days before the start of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. [LIAO PAN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE] What started as President Xi Jinping's proposal to draw together Asia, Europe and other areas through reviving the land and sea routes of the historic Silk Road has become a growing international movement embraced by many countries. This is demonstrated in graphic form in a photo exhibition on the initiative, Strengthening International Cooperation for Win-Win Development, which opened at United Nations Headquarters in New York on Monday night. "The Belt and Road Initiative is not a solo by China, but a symphony performed by all the relevant parties," said Liu Jieyi, China's ambassador to the UN, in describing its core value. The exhibit, with about 40 photographs along the first floor's south wall, showcases the thinking behind the initiative, its achievements and its prospects and promises. Photos are divided into five sections: Policy Coordination, Facilities Connectivity, Unimpeded Trade, Financial Integration and People-to-People Bondin line with the initiative's five focuses. The initiative, short for the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, was proposed by Xi in 2013 to enhance complementarity and promote common progress through closer international cooperation. Infrastructure investments and improved trade are major components. It is rooted in the Silk Road spirit of "peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit", and follows the principle of "extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits", Liu said. A Changhong TV production line in Nymburk, the Czech Republic. Ding Yi / Xinhua Editor's note: This is the latest in a series of reports focusing on the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, the proposed trade route linking China with the rest of the world. The Central European country hopes to become a regional financial center. Fu Jing reports from Prague. In the heart of Prague's Old Town, representatives of the Czech Republic's Central Bohemian Region and officials from Sichuan province in Southwest China sat together on the ground floor of an old building. It was the first time the two groups had met under the same roof to further their aim of promoting synergy and close cooperation. They have opened promotion centers in Sichuan and Prague, the Czech capital, to embrace the concept of "think globally, act locally". The top floor of the building is also home to the New Silk Road Institute, established to promote the Belt and Road Initiative. The institute was founded by Jan Kohout, a former foreign minister who is now adviser to Czech President Milos Zeman. As one of the people involved in bringing Central Bohemia and Sichuan closer together, Kohout has good reason to put the centers and his institute together. "It is an innovative mix of government promotion centers and a think tank," he said. "We need to think big and also promote specific projects." Kohout has just returned from a visit to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. He is attempting to persuade the city authorities to build an industrial park in the Czech Republic, and is even trying to bring giant pandas to the country. A political highway "What I understand is that a political highway has already been built between the two countries, and we need to increase traffic by expanding cooperation in various areas," Kohout said. The "political highway" he referred to is the closeness of the strategic partnership formed in recent years through frequent high-level exchanges. Kohout will accompany Zeman to the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which will be held in Beijing at the weekend. It will be the Czech leader's third visit to China since taking office in 2013, the year Xi proposed the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, known together as the Belt and Road Initiative. Momentum Ma Keqing, China's ambassador to the Czech Republic, said the frequency of high-level political exchanges between the countries is unprecedented. "In the past three years, President Xi and President Zeman have met six times. Now, Zeman is going to make his third visit to China, which illustrates the closeness of our top leaders," she said. "We need to maintain that momentum." In March last year, Xi paid a state visit to the Czech Republic. Ma said the upgrading of the countries' relationship to a strategic partnership signifies the Czech Republic's recognition of the importance of its ties with China, because the Central European country only has strategic partnerships with six countries. In November, 2015, China and the Czech Republic signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly promote the Belt and Road Initiative. In November, the memorandum was transformed into the Belt and Road Initiative Work Program. Kohout believes the deepening of the relationship indicates his country's belief in the initiative. "It is obvious how firmly the Czech Republic supports the initiative, and now the most important thing for us is to enrich it by institutionalizing the platforms and designing suitable projects," he said. Suzana Li holds her translation of The Explosion Chronicles by Yan Lianke. [FU JING/CHINA DAILY] When Milos Zeman gave a speech at Renmin University of China in late 2014, the Czech president received a special gift: a Czech-language edition of The Four Books, a novel by Chinese writer Yan Lianke. The book, which won the Franz Kafka Prize in 2014, describes events in China during the 1950s and 60s. It took Yan, a professor at Renmin, 20 years to plan and two years to write. Suzana Li, from the Czech Republic, translated the book, along with works by other Chinese writers, such as Su Tong and Liu Zhenyun. Recalling Zeman's gift, she said fruitful exchanges between China, the Czech Republic and other European countries rely heavily on gaining the trust of the general populace, winning hearts and minds: "Literature and movies are the perfect vehicles to achieve that aim." Ahead of Zeman's arrival in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation at the weekend, Li was keen to deliver the message that the participants should support the translation of great literature and help bridge cultural gaps, even in an era of digital transformation. "Films have taken the upper hand now, but literature is essential as well in narrowing the gulf in understanding," said Li, who began studying Chinese in the 1990s and gained a doctorate in Chinese literature at Peking University 10 years ago. She finds the accounts of love, hardship, despair, sorrow and success in Chinese literature so compelling that she spends six hours a day, six days a week working on translations in her study. "I spend roughly the same amount of time reading the books when I am tired after a day spent translating. Sometimes, I struggle to understand the writers' narrative styles." Li is constantly delighted by the plots that show how ordinary Chinese live their lives, how they earn their daily bread and how their fates change. "I hope more Czech readers will share my delight in reading these stories," she said. Her latest translation is The Explosion Chronicles, also by Yan, which describes how a village in the writer's home province of Henan, Central China, has been transformed in the past three decades as a result of country's rapid economic development. Li's translations of Yan's books will help Czech readers understand the path of China's recent development. One of the other books she has translated is I Did Not Kill My Husband, by Liu Zhenyun. Li is impressed by Liu's writing style, which she finds humorous and easy to understand. "It's witty and funny, and it illustrates the everyday lives of Chinese people. That's why the Czech publisher was interested in the book. I think it's a good way for Czech readers to understand Chinese people's lives," she said. Li's translation skills have seen her receive subsidies from the headquarters of the Confucius Institute, which promotes Chinese culture and language overseas. In August, the Chinese government presented her with an award to honor her work. With regard to the Belt and Road Initiative, she said: "In my view, it is a colossal building that will require patient day-by-day work for many years. I am confident that what I am doing to help Czechs learn about the lives of ordinary Chinese people via translated best-sellers is laying the foundations, which is essential and effective." The Chengdu-Europe Express Rail opens its northern route from Chengdu to Minsk in Belarus on March 1. Peng Chao/china Daily The Chengdu government is actively participating in the Belt and Road Initiative by building a national pilot free trade zone in Southwest China with advanced logistics and transportation systems. Operation Manager Natalia Kosana Goldysiak at the Polish Showroom in Chengdu introduces customers to every product they are interested in - from biscuits, chocolates and drinks to laundry detergent and liquid soap. The hundreds of products displayed at the showroom come from Poland via the Chengdu-Europe Express Rail. Goldysiak has been in Chengdu since 2011 when she was a postgraduate student in the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. The first Chengdu-Europe Express Rail, from Chengdu to Poland's third-largest city, Lodz, attracted her attention when it opened in April 2013 Instead of returning to her hometown in Poland, she decided to stay in Chengdu after graduation in 2014. She said she wants to be a link between Poland and Chengdu, facilitating more business cooperation. "Seven years ago, few people in Poland knew about Chengdu," she said. But now, the city is famous and products from Chengdu are popular throughout Poland. The railway line between Chengdu to Lodz is 9,826 kilometers long, and a train on the railway line travels 10 days to cover the distance, one-third the duration of sea transport, and at one-sixth the cost of transport by air. In 2015, the railway line started its return trip from Lodz to Chengdu, and Goldysiak saw "historic opportunities". In June 2016, Polish logistics provider Hatrans established its fully owned subsidiary, Chengdu Probiz, the first Polish company in the city, and opened the Polish Showroom to exhibit and sell Polish products. Goldysiak said the company has built two platforms - one for trade and the other for industry information - and both are based on the Chengdu-Europe Express Rail. Natalia Kosana Goldysiak arranges goods displayed at the Polish Showroom in Chengdu. Peng Chao/china Daily More than 300 products from Poland are being sold in China via the trade platform she is working for, and her partnered local retailers are in many major cities across the country, including Beijing, Guangzou, Hangzhou and Qingdao. Last year, 460 Chengdu-Europe Express Rail trains were opened, accounting for 26 percent of all cargo express trains running between China and Europe that year. Officials from Chengdu's logistics authority said the Chengdu-Europe Express Rail will have three routes this year. More than 1,000 trains are planned, including 650 on the middle route from Chengdu to Lodz, 150 on the north route to Moscow and 200 on the south route to Istanbul. In addition to the railway system, the city, as China's fourth-largest civil aviation hub, is also increasing its international connections in the air. The Chengdu-Los Angeles direct flight opened on March 15. It is the second direct flight from the city to the United States, after the Chengdu-San Francisco flight. The duration of the new flight is 13 hours, nearly four hours shorter than previous indirect flights. Direct flights to Sydney, Moscow, Madrid and Dubai opened last year, and direct flights to Oakland, Sochi and Addis Ababa will open this year. During the 22nd World Route Development Conference in Chengdu last September, Sichuan Airport Group signed agreements with six airline companies to open nine new international routes. The city will have about 100 international air routes by the end of this year. zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn Is the Belt and Road an incarnation of the ancient Silk Road? Largely, yes, especially in spirit. But anyone can join, including countries that weren't part of the historical trade network. Journalist Erik Nilsson explains the initiative to his 5-year-old daughter, Liliana, in China Daily's "Belt and Road Bedtime Stories" series, awakening her curiosity and understanding of what it means for globalization's future. BEIJING - China's insurance regulator said Tuesday it will find and defuse hidden risks in the use of insurance funds, a fresh move to tighten supervision of the multi-trillion dollar sector. Authorities will stop the illegal use of insurance funds, keep the leverage ratio under control and fill regulatory gaps, according to a statement from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC). Inspections will be focused on major investment in stocks, equities, real estate, alternative and financial products as well as overseas investment. The sector will be screened for compliance risks, regulatory arbitrage, asset-liability mismatches and other major risks. Those who violate laws and regulations will receive the maximum punishment. Chinese insurers grabbed headlines for using leveraged money to buy shares in listed companies, triggering sharp volatility in the market late last year. Tuesday's move came two days after the CIRC called for a strict and effective supervision framework, pointing out that regulatory loopholes had given rise to risky practices. It was also part of the deleveraging of China's economy to ward off financial risks after years of a relatively eased monetary stance. In Tuesday's statement, the CIRC said insurance funds should serve the real economy and help supply-side structural reform. By the end of December, the combined assets of China's insurance sector totalled 15.12 trillion yuan ($2.2 trillion), official data showed. An employee counts yuan banknotes at a bank in Huaibei, Anhui province, June 22, 2010. [Photo/Agencies] NAIROBI - The internationalization of the Chinese yuan will help boost Kenya's economy due to the close Sino-Kenya commercial and trade ties, the bankers lobby said on Tuesday. Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) Chairman Lamin Manjang told Xinhua in Nairobi that Beijing is now one of Kenya's top trading partners and this has raised the significance of the renminbi (RMB). "So, if the yuan is easily convertible to the Kenya shilling, it will ease trade between Kenya and China and hence boost Kenya's economy," Manjang said on the sidelines of the Euromoney Kenya conference. The day long seminar brought over 200 participants including government officials, policymakers, bankers, investors, and entrepreneurs to deliberate on the economic environment in Africa. Kenyan banks are increasingly promoting the use of the RMB as a currency of international trade as China is a major player in global trade. Manjang said that the use of the Chinese currency minimizes currency risk of traders by eliminating the need to covert the Kenya shilling to US dollars and then to yuan. According to KBA, the number of banks that can provide Chinese yuan over the counter is increasing. "Typically, banks that that are strong in China and Africa have an advantage over the smaller banks when it comes to embracing the renminbi," he added. Manjang, who is also the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, said that his bank has fully embraced the RMB. "We are now able to help clients who want to settle obligations in China by converting Kenya shilling to yuan," he said. The Ni'ihau Incident led to President Franklin D Roosevelt issuing Executive Order 9066, which directly led to the mass internment of 119,803 Japanese-American men, women and children until the end of the war. The film is about the incident itself, which was seen to be the catalyst of fear that spurred Roosevelt's decree. In 1976, President Gerald Ford rescinded Executive Order 9066. According to Deadline , Zach McGowan will star in the historical film, directed by Gabriel Robertson and set in Hawaii during World War II. He will portray Benehakaka Kanahele, a native Hawaiian who received the Medal for Merit and Purple Heart for his part in killing the pilot of a downed Imperial Japanese plane in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor.You'll probably notice that Zach McGowan doesn't bear much of a resemblance to Kanahele, and it's even more of a stretch than casting Emma Stone as part Hawaiian in. Once again, members of the API community will watch as they are portrayed in media by white replacements. At this point, we are frustrated, but hardly surprised when this happens. Pacific Islanders have been abused throughout the U.S.'s history, and this appears to be just another manifestation of that shameful legacy.To our surprise, however, this may not even be the worst of it.What is disturbing here is the historical denialism bubbling up from under the surface.Take a look at this quotation from the Deadline article:First, I want to emphasize that this is not a personal attack on the author. We have to look critically at all statements about our history if we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of our past. The Ni'ihau Incident merits discussion, but it cannot be seen as the "catalyst" that led to the unjust incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans.Here is the problem with the above statement. Yes, the Ni'ihau Incident occurred, where a Japanese immigrant provided assistance to a downed pilot for the Imperial Japanese air force. However, the above quotation is inherently discounting the decades and decades of anti-Asian racism and institutionalized discrimination that influenced FDR, the state governors, congress, and local governments to create and implement Executive Order 9066 and its subsequent legal enforcement mechanisms.Remember that in 1922, the Supreme Court used racial pseudoscience to decide that white meant Caucasian (in reality Western European), and thus Ozawa could be barred from naturalized citizenship, since the Naturalization Act of 1870 limited this to whites, as well as "aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent."After this, there were the alien land laws that barred Asian immigrants from owning land (using the above SCOTUS decision), since many local whites wanted to use legal means to take away the land that immigrants had worked so hard to cultivate. The 1924 immigration act that banned Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants altogether, leaving many families separated, and feeling betrayed by the country they had come to call home.Numerous hate groups sprung up along the West Coast that tried to demonize all people of Japanese descent. The Southern California Committee of One Thousand infamously said, "They exist like the yellowed butts in an over-full ashtray, vilifying the air with their loathsome smells..."This is all compounded by the blatant racial bias that infected military and political leadership. General DeWitt, who was in charge of the Western Defense Command, said that "the Japanese are an enemy race," and that "a Jap's a Jap. It makes no difference whether the Jap is a citizen or not."Around this time, the Governor of Wyoming even threatened genocide in his state, saying that if people of Japanese descent were in his state unguarded during the war, there would be "Japs hanging from every pine tree."If you want to realize how normalized anti-Japanese discrimination was at the time, look at this cartoon that came out around that time, and note the artist's name in the corner.Yes, the Ni'ihau Incident is a part of history, and should not be dismissed or suppressed for any reason. However, historians for the military, academics, the government and others have all concluded that this incident was in no way the catalyst that led to Executive Order 9066. Personal Justice Denied, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC)'s 467-page report on Japanese American incarceration, concluded that EO9066 and the subsequent unjust imprisonment of around 120,000 citizens and their families were the result of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." We have to remember that it was the widespread normalization of racial prejudice that made our society so willing to accept such a gross violation of the civil liberties of its citizens and their families.The article might have just been written poorly, and it is not clear whether or not this is a definite statement about the film's content and angle, but what is clear is that Asian Americans must take control of our history, and make sure that it is not exploited or abused, whether it is simply for a profit (although signs show that whitewashing isn't even that profitable at this point), or to push a more dangerous political agenda that uses immigrants as scapegoats.We have to push back against a denialist narrative that demonizes immigrant families not just of Asian ancestry, but of all backgrounds. If it could happen to Japanese Americans back then, it could happen to any vulnerable population, and we are seeing a dangerous resurgence of this in modern times against our friends in the Muslim and Latinx communities, among others.We have to make it clear that we will not allow anyone, politician, director, or otherwise, to distort our history for their own gain. We must own our history. A chinese tourist takes a selfie in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, May 5, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] MADRID - The development of China as a source market for international tourism over recent years is not so much an "evolution" but a "revolution", said a high-ranking member of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Xu Jing, the UNWTO Regional Director for the Asia-Pacific Area, told Xinhua that the growth of numbers of Chinese people visiting other countries was a "a real revolution," as he discussed 2016 spending results which showed that Chinese tourists had spent 12 percent more in travelling abroad than they had in the previous year. UNWTO figures show that Chinese tourists spent $261 billion in other countries, while the number of outbound Chinese travelers increased by 6 percent to 135 million in 2016. For Xu Jing, a key factor was that "when Chinese outbound tourism started, it began with such a low volume, it was unknown to the rest of the World," while since 2004, "Chinese outbound tourism has enjoyed consecutive double-digit growth." He explained that one factor behind this is that while other counties have seen their outbound tourism develop slowly over time, as the fashion for international tourism developed in the 1960's 70's and 80's; the Chinese "were total newcomers, so they came with a totally different behavior and consumption pattern." "They came in big volume, but they went into niche markets where traditional markets were unable to touch; they penetrated the shopping markets and other niche markets like rural tourism and gastronomy." "These characterize the ongoing Chinese market," said Xu Jing. It is clear that the increase in outbound tourism has coincided with China's spectacular economic growth and the rise of a middle class with disposable income, but in the year of Tourism for Sustainable Development the UNWTO are at pain to highlight the benefit this brings to other countries. "With a high percentage of Chinese tourists visiting other Asian counties such as Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, this has contributed socially to the welfare of these countries," explained Xu Jing, who said the effects ran deeper than just providing employment. "We emphasize not only the economic growth, but also social goals, like poverty reduction and the empowerment of women" "The Chinese market is and will continue to contribute to the overall social prosperity of the world;" he commented, adding that the fact Chinese people use the internet to make reservations means they "go to the less known corners of the world." "On one hand, they are contributing to shopping and gastronomy tourism, but more importantly they are also a very strong force to those less developed areas when it comes to community development and that contribution," he told Xinhua. Finally Xu Jing sees a secondary benefit to increased outbound Chinese tourism; as well as helping to lift the burden on the internal Chinese market, especially on key holiday periods such as the Spring Festival, greater numbers of international travelers "are certainly contributing to peace and more importantly to the mutual understanding between the Chinese people on one hand and people of the rest of the world on the other." "It is a cultural exchange and a process of mutual understanding and for the Chinese it is a question of internationalization in both an economic and a social sense," said Xu Jing. And with just 4 percent of the Chinese population owning a passport, compared to 37 percent of Americans, the "revolution" looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. The newly built "Silk Road Golden Bridge" in Beijing Olympic Park gets its lights tested on April 18, 2017, in preparation for the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that will be held from May 14 to 15. [Photo/VCG] As China's State-owned enterprises actively seek opportunities from the Belt and Road Initiative, private companies are also accelerating their "going out" strategy, especially some listed companies with abundant funds. Between 2014 and 2016, 953 companies listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative in their annual reports, according to statistics from Shanghai Securities News. Among them, the number of private companies reached 416, accounting for 43.65 percent. These private companies' overseas business-interests related to architecture, energy, automobile, communication, environmental protection, agriculture, steel, transportation, electrical equipment, machinery, information technology and nonferrous metals. Chinese electronics giant TCL Corporation gradually promoted its Belt and Road Initiative plan by building factories in Vietnam, Poland, Mexico, Egypt, and Brazil. The company is also constructing a manufacturing base in Pakistan and cooperating closely with India's Reliance Jio, the telecom unit of Reliance Industries. Of the 416 private listed companies to mention the Belt and Road Initiative, 86 have made preliminary achievements, Shanghai Securities News reported. Chinese leading bus maker Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Co Ltd has seen its exports for the first quarter rise by 56 percent, thanks to opportunities delivered by the Belt and Road Initiative. Yutong's products have been sold to more than 40 countries along the Belt and Road. Since 2010, Yutong has delivered 7,121 passenger buses to to overseas markets, including Russia, Pakistan, Belarus and Georgia. Last year, 11.49 percent of its 36 billion yuan in revenue came from overseas markets. Yutong Chairman Tang Yuxiang said that with the support of the government, the company has built factories along the Belt and Road. The company has been able to assemble its products locally, and achieved capacity and technical cooperation in Pakistan, Iran, Myanmar, Cuba, Venezuela, and Ethiopia. Private listed companies said they are very confident about the future development, and pledge more investment in the Belt and Road Initiative, according to the newspaper. The Belt and Road Initiative brings enormous business opportunities, however, it is also a localization capacity test for enterprises developing emerging markets, TCL chairman Li Dongsheng said. In the future, TCL plans to speed up the localization process, shorten the time cost to adapt to local markets, Li added. Over the next two to three years, the proportion of TCL's overseas revenue is expected to rise to 50 percent. Wang Jianlin, chairman and president of Dalian Wanda Group, attends the Asian Financial Forum (AFF) in Hong Kong, Jan 18, 2016. [Photo/VCG] China's real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin from Dalian Wanda Group and his son Wang Sicong topped the 2017 New Fortune 500 rich list, with a personal wealth of 179.4 billion yuan ($25.99 billion), according to the latest annual wealth ranking released Tuesday by New Fortune magazine. Alibaba's CEO Jack Ma, one of China's internet triumvirates known as BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent), came in second, with 156.3 billion yuan to his name. Replacing another BAT leader Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, SF Express's chairman Wang Wei rose to the third spot after the logistics company was listed on the A-share market this year, catapulting his personal wealth to 150.5 billion yuan. The other BAT head, Baidu's controller Robin Li, slipped to the 10th on the list with a wealth of 63.4 billion yuan. Jia Yueting, CEO and founder of LeEco, dropped out of the top 10, after his wealth shrunk by nearly 30 billion yuan. About a decade ago, the real estate industry, the main beneficiary of China's fast urbanization, produced the highest number of rich people with seven out of 10 richest and the top four coming from the industry. However, five of this year's richest come from technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) industries. Although Wang Jianlin and Wang Sicong remain top on the list, their fortune slipped by 9.5 percent from 200 billion yuan in 2016 to 179.4 billion yuan in 2017. While the wealth of Jack Ma, CEO of an e-commerce firm Alibaba group, increased by 24.3 percent from 125.7 billion yuan to 156.3 billion yuan. The development of China's capital market has boosted the A share market to become a main rich maker on the Chinese mainland. In 2003, about 50 percent of the rich people's listed companies were listed on overseas stock exchanges, but the percentage dropped to 27 percent in 2012. More and more of China's wealthy are being marked "made in China." Mats Granryd, director general of GSMA, poses for a photo in Beijing on May 9, 2017. [Photo/provided to chinadaily.com.cn] The Belt and Road Initiative is a huge opportunity for Chinese mobile operators to expand overseas and promote the development of new technologies, said a senior executive of global telecommunication association GSMA in Beijing on Tuesday. "The Belt and Road Initiative is a new way to show the importance of globalization, which means more trade, communication and travel. Telecom is a unique technology to realize the target," said Mats Granryd, director general of the GSMA and a member of its board. The GSMA is the organizer of industry-leading events such as Mobile World Congress, Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Mobile World Congress Americas and the Mobile 360 Series of conferences. Themed "The Human Element", this year's Mobile World Congress Shanghai will be held on June 28 to July 1 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. As a global association, the GSMA is actively supporting China's three telecom operators to cooperate with carriers along the Belt and Road region on telecom roaming and infrastructure construction, pushing the export of China's home-grown TD-LTE and building an international platform, according to Si Han, head of GSMA Greater China and Asia. "The Shanghai event will promote Chinese operators to cooperate with international enterprises in the field of mobile business, data services, network capabilities and internet innovation. We will make more efforts to attract more companies from the Belt and Road region to Shanghai for exchanges and cooperation in the mobile industry," said Si Han. In addition to the keynote sessions, the conference incorporates 12 focused summits that will explore the latest industry trends, from connected cars to network evolution to augmented reality/virtual reality and more. With the development of 5G technology, Mats Granryd predicted that by 2025, there will be 1 billion internet connections via it. China is really in the forefront in the Internet of Things (IoT) sector, which is key to 5G, said Granryd. "Here in China, there are more than 150 million machine to machine connections, which represent one third of the volume in IoT globally." Airbus Group, one of the world's biggest aircraft manufacturers, is to set up an assembly line in Jimo, Shandong province, to build H135 helicopters. The helicopters are currently only made in Europe. According to the local government, Airbus Helicopters a division of Airbus Group has signed a deal with China Aviation Supplies Holding Co and Qingdao United General Aviation Co to set up a consortium to run the assembly line. The line is scheduled to go into operation next year, and is expected to produce 36 helicopters annually. It will be built in the Jimo High-tech Zone, the core area of Qingdao's general aviation industry. The zone aims to become a national-level general aviation manufacturing zone by focusing on aircraft final assembly, delivery, repair and maintenance, as well as airplane parts manufacturing, general aviation training and business tourism, the local authorities said. Editor's note: Starting this year, May 10 has been earmarked as the "Chinese Brands Day" by the State Council to raise awareness about brands owned by Chinese companies. Companies in the technology, banking and telecom industries have dominated a list of most valuable brands in China compiled based on a study by advertising research agency WPP and Millward Brown. The total value of BrandZ Top 100 Chinese Brands hit record levels in 2017, growing 6 percent to reach $557.1 billion in brand value. Here are the top 10. No 10 Agricultural Bank of China Category: Banks Brand value: $14,848 million The logo of Huawei is seen at a store in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, Jan 19, 2017. [Photo/VCG] Huawei Technologies Co Ltd said it will continue to tap into the internet smartphone market after a report suggested that its sub-brand Honor overtook Xiaomi Corp as the most popular handset brand among China's online population in the first quarter of 2017. Zhao Ming, president of Honor, the brand created to chiefly target online users, said China's internet smartphone market still has big potential though the growth has slowed down. "Despite the challenges, the online sales model still has advantage in costs and services. It can help players swiftly respond to consumers' rapidly changing demands," Zhao said. In the first three months of 2017, Honor sold 10.5 million handsets, beating all other internet smartphone vendors, data from research firm GFK showed. It had a share of 23 percent of China's online smartphone market in January and February. "In the face of slower online expansion rate, internet players should be wary of blind expansion into the offline retailing channels. The key is to bring real value to consumers and partners," Zhao added. His comments came amid Xiaomi's pledge to open 1,000 retail stores in China within three years. Liang Shi studies at a teahouse in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on May 8, 2017. [Photo/VCG] Burying himself in a pile of papers, 50-year-old Liang Shi from China's Sichuan province might be the country's most tenacious student for he has tried to crack the Gaokao, or National college entrance exam, 20 times, and this year he is ready to tackle it again. Never giving up on his dream, Liang has decided to continue his attempt - to get into Sichuan University, for mathematics study. Last year, he only managed 417 points, which is far from the minimum passing marks for admission to the university. Liang first sat for Gaokao when he was 16, and now 30 years later his son is already a college student. When asked why he keeps trying for Gaokao, Liang, who runs a construction supplies business, said he just want to fulfill his dream of going to university. 12 killed in E China traffic accident Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-10 08:04 JINAN - Twelve people, including 11 kindergarteners, were killed Tuesday when a school bus crashed and then burst into flames as it traveled through a tunnel in East China's Shandong province. Of the 11 children, who were aged between three and six, five were Republic of Korea (ROK) nationals and six Chinese nationals. They were all students at an international kindergarten in Weihai City, local authorities said. The accident occurred at about 8:59 a.m. inside Taojiakuang tunnel in Huancui District when the rented bus was on its way to the kindergarten with 13 people onboard, including the children's teacher. The driver also died and the teacher has sustained serious injuries. Both the driver and 11 children's identities have been confirmed via DNA identification, according to Ye Liyun, a deputy mayor of Weihai. The provincial government has assigned a team, headed by a vice provincial governor, to investigate the accident. "An initial investigation shows this traffic accident was caused by a rear-end collision," said Ye. Weihai Municipal Hospital has opened an emergency "green channel" to treat the injured teacher, who is conscious with stable vital signs. Weihai municipal goverment has set up 13 teams for relief works. Korean interpretors have also arrived at the scene to assist with follow-up works. The kindergarten is part of an international school that was set up in 2006 to accommodate children of ROK business people in Weihai, according to records of China's education ministry. A group of college students from China West Normal University in Nanchong, Sichuan province, ran a fundraising campaign to buy a cell phone for a sanitation worker who had lost his phone during work. The sanitation worker named Ren Xingyu at first politely rejected their good deed, saying the students were not making any money. But the students insisted, saying the phone was a promotional gift by the carrier. Finally, Ren accepted their kindness. The 63-year-old Ren lost his phone on May 3 after cleaning the street near the university. Nearby students tried to help him by putting up posters on the street and posting the information online, but the phone was lost. On the same day, a female student surnamed Zhang saw the information and suggested a fundrasing activity to buy Ren a new phone. Her proposal was liked by a number of students. The next day, a total of 817.24 yuan was raised in about 4 hours, and more than a hundred people showed their love. Upon learning about the story, the mobile phone store also donated 100 yuan. At first, Ren rejected the new phone, saying the students were not making any money. But Zhang and her friends told Ren a white lie: the phone was a promotional gift by the carrier. After a long explanation, Ren finally accepted the students' kindness. Ren said the only way to reward the students is to make the roads cleaner. President encourages strong ties with newly elected French leader In their first telephone talk, President Xi Jinping and French president-elect Emmanuel Macron agreed on Tuesday to maintain contact and meet each other at an early date. The phone conversation, reaffirming a shared commitment to tackle a range of global issues, came a day after Xi sent a congratulatory message on Monday to Macron on his victory the day before. Macron scored a landslide victory in Sunday's runoff vote of the presidential election. In the phone call, Xi congratulated Macron and said China "has always viewed France as a cooperative partner of great significance and priority". Macron appreciated Xi's call and said he attaches great importance to ties with China, according to an official release from the Foreign Ministry. The new French government will continue friendly relations with China and uphold the one-China policy, Macron said. Xi said that by raising the relationship between China and France to the next level, as Macron takes office, both peoples and the international community will be served. Xi said he hopes the two countries will support each other on major issues and deepen cooperation in various fields. China welcomes France's participation in building the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said, referring to the ongoing development of building the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which has won support from more than 100 countries and organizations. Macron echoed Xi's point, saying the new administration will deepen cooperation with China regarding diplomacy; the economy, trade and industries; and collaboration within the framework of building the Belt and Road. Cui Hongjian, director of the department for European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said the brief interval between Xi's message and the phone conversation "mirrors the strong readiness shared by both sides to establish a good working relationship between the two leaders quickly" and to manage a smooth transition of the ties. "As the two countries share a great common ground on many issues, continuity (of policies) should be ensured to promote bilateral cooperation," Cui said. He said it is possible the two sides may arrange a first meeting between Xi and Macron on the sidelines of a multilateral international meeting, such as the G20 Leaders Summit. On regional and global topics, Xi said Beijing "will continue supporting the integration process of Europe". Both Xi and Macron highlighted further communication and coordination between the two countries over regional and global issues, including the cooperation within the framework of the G20. Xi said the two countries should further promote the reform of global governance and champion the fruits of global governance, such as the agreement reached at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015. Both Xi and Macron agreed to exchange their views on the development of ties between their two nations develops and issues of common concerns are raised from both sides. China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang told the people of the Macao Special Administrative Region on Tuesday to cherish the success gained by adopting the One Country, Two Systems principle while taking part in the national development plan. The chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee made the remark when meeting with about 150 representatives from different sectors on the second day of his three-day inspection visit to Macao. Zhang attributed Macao's achievements since the handover in 1999 to the city's determination to adhere to the One Country, Two Systems principle while making full use of the benefits brought by two systems. He praised the Macao government and different sectors of the city for upholding three essential guidelines in implementing the principle. He listed them as: one country is the prerequisite for two systems; Macao should be administered by those who love the country and the city; and the central government authorizes a high degree of autonomy. Macao has implemented its executive-led system under the central government's overall jurisdiction in the city. It had also boosted its economy and enhanced people's livelihoods, Zhang said. He also praised Macao for setting a good example in safeguarding the country's national security. He noted that the city had taken a lead in legislating Article 23 of the Macao Basic Lawa part of its constitutional document that deals with security. Zhang added that only through continuing to love the country and the city could Macao secure its long-term prosperity. He said Macao's schools should promote traditional values to help the younger generation learn more about the country's history and culture. Zhang said Macao should seize development opportunities brought about by the Belt and Road Initiative, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and other central government policies. Individuals who earned 5,000 yuan ($724) or more by illegally selling others' personal information will face up to three years behind bars, according to a judicial interpretation jointly issued by the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate on Tuesday. Those who illegally obtain, sell or provide 500 pieces of data related to personal credit or property information could face a prison term of up to seven years, the new rule stipulates. The judicial interpretation, to take effect on June 1, is crucial to fighting the trafficking of personal data, and also a key way for the top court to combat telecom and online fraud, a senior judge said. "Many telecom and online frauds are caused by personal information leaks or infringement. The interpretation will not only increase protection for personal data, but also fight fraud from the start," Li Ruiyi, deputy chief judge of the top court's No 3 Criminal Tribunal, told China Daily. China revised the Criminal Law in 2015 and introduced a new crime called "infringement upon a citizen's personal information". The law stipulates "serious" violations are punishable by prison sentences of up to three years and "very serious" violations by up to seven years. However, the law failed to specify what "personal information" was, or which circumstances would be considered "serious" or "very serious", making it difficult to enforce. Now the judicial interpretation makes clear that not only residents' general informationsuch as names, addresses and identity card numbersare considered "personal information", but also their travel information, mobile phone contents, transaction data, and credit and accommodation records. The interpretation lists 10 circumstances that could be deemed "serious"such as illegally obtaining, selling or providing more than 50 pieces of data related to personal credit or property informationand four circumstances listed as "very serious"such as violations that lead to the victim's death, serious injury, mental disorder or kidnapping. "Such specified and stricter rules will play a bigger role in deterring potential violators, thus better protecting people's personal data and privacy," Li said. "What's more, it will help fight the rapid rise of telecom and online fraud, and serve as practical references for judges in court hearings," he said. Chinese courts heard 1,726 cases of telecom and online fraud in 2016, up by 51.5 percent year-on-year, according to the top court. Li forecast that the number will continue rising sharply this year thanks to the country's crackdown on telecom fraud. He said judges nationwide are also facing challenges in hearing such cases. Some Chinese fraud suspects are based in foreign countries, which makes it harder for Chinese law enforcement officers to find them, let alone verify how much illegal profit they made, Li said. Although Chinese authorities have ramped up international cooperation to combat such crimes, and the top court issued a guideline on telecom fraud at the end of last year, "such efforts are still insufficient," he said. "As we're protecting privacy by issuing judicial interpretations, some departments with citizens' personal data, such as banks and telecom entities, should also take their responsibilities more seriously, including implementing real-name rules," he suggested. In recent years, online fraud has caused great economic losses to residents, and even led to deaths. In August, Xu Yuyu, an 18-year-old student in Linyi, Shandong province, was reported to have died of a heart attack after her personal data was released and she was cheated out of money meant to pay her tuition. Court hearings in the case, which aroused wide public outrage last year, will start soon. The Red Cross Society of China has launched a fund to boost humanitarian activities and cooperation in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. Wang Ping, vice-president of the society, said the Belt and Road Fraternity Fund has raised 70 million yuan ($10.14 million), most of which has been donated by Chinese enterprises. "The money will fund Red Cross humanitarian projects in Belt and Road countries and help set up a channel for Chinese businesses to perform humanitarian duties," he said. As the country's largest humanitarian organization, the society is positioned as an important platform for boosting people-to-people exchanges, according to Wang. The China Red Cross established an emergency care center in Pakistan's Gwadar Port on Sunday alongside its local counterpart, the Pakistan Red Crescent Society. Wang described it as the first project of the Belt and Road Fraternity Fund. The center will help meet medical demands from along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a regional partnership under the Belt and Road Initiative. As an international humanitarian organization, the society is important for fundraising and social mobilization, Wang said, adding that it "helps to increase humanitarian resources and boost communication and cooperation at the grassroots level". Humanitarian threats such as military conflicts, natural disasters and uneven socioeconomic development are common in Belt and Road regions, so "local demand for humanitarian aid is immense", he said. To better address the demands, the society will further enhance its capacity, particularly in conducting projects overseas in fields such as crisis and disaster relief, and first aid, he said. In addition, nonemergency assistance, such as community development programs, health promotion, disaster reduction and disease control, are also planned, he added. In the long run, "the society is committed to ensuring people in those areas are no longer vulnerable to such situations, and helping them realize self-sustainability and development", he said. As has been proven by many humanitarian crises, "the weak and vulnerable always suffer the most", Wang added. The Chinese leadership has issued instructions for relevant departments and localities to help deal with the aftermath of the deadly Tuesday traffic accident in Weihai, Shandong province, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Twelve people, including 11 kindergarten pupils, were killed when a school bus crashed and then burst into flames as it traveled through a tunnel in the coastal city in northern China. Of the 11 children, who were aged between three and six, five were from the Republic of Korea and six were Chinese nationals. They were all pupils at an international kindergarten in Weihai, Xinhua quoted local authorities as saying. "The Chinese side is in communication with the ROK through diplomatic channels" and will help with any issues to be resolved, said a written statement issued on the ministry's website. Members of the ministry's staff have been assigned to provide comfort and assist the families of the dead, the statement said. Shandong province and Weihai city launched contingency response plans immediately after the crash, and leading local officials went to the site and guided operations by relevant departments, it said. Taiwan should endorse one-China principle: spokesperson Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-10 14:56 BEIJING - Taiwan authorities should accept the 1992 Consensus which embodies the one-China principle, to break the current cross-Strait communication deadlock, a Chinese mainland spokesperson said Wednesday. By refusing to endorse the 1992 Consensus, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has undermined the common political foundation of the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, said An Fengshan, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council. "The key to ending the deadlock is for Taiwan to return to the common fundamental political basis. There is no other way," he said. "Different paths means divergent development prospects. If the Taiwan administration chooses the old road of conflict and confrontation, it will clash with the will of people across the Strait," An added. Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen has refused to recognized the 1992 Consensus since taking office in May 2016, which has led to the suspension of cross-Strait communication mechanisms. BEIJING -- President Xi Jinping, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, has signed a decree that will release a regulation on military legislation. The regulation, which took effect Monday, defines the rules for establishing military laws and regulations as well as the drafting of standard documents. The regulation standardizes the formulation of military laws and regulations, spanning the drafting, submission, modification and issuance stages. In addition, it regulates the review and compilation of records, and suggests measures to improve the management system for documents. HEFEI -- The former vice mayor of Anqing city in East China's Anhui province stood trial Wednesday on charges of taking bribes. The Intermediate People's Court of Bozhou opened the trial of Fan Xianhan on charges of allegedly taking 1.8 million yuan ($260,700) of bribes, and receiving gifts worth 4.68 million yuan. Procurators alleged Fan took the bribes, mostly from a real estate developer, when he worked as the county chief of Huaining, then vice mayor and police chief of Anqing between 2012 and 2016. Fan pleaded guilty and expressed remorse. The court has adjourned to decide on sentencing. Fifteen of the 40 most-wanted corrupt officials who have returned to face trial in China have been convicted and sentenced, the nation's anti-graft watchdog said on Wednesday. Sentences ranged from life in prison to no further punishment due to good behavior. Nine other defendants have been tried and are awaiting a verdict, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Prosecutors decided not to bring charges against two suspects, while the indictment against Gu Zhenfang was dropped. Gu died in Thailand in 2006. "The punishments reflect China's rule of law," a source with the CCDI's International Cooperation Bureau said. "Those who return voluntarily to confess their crimes will be given more lenient sentences within the scope of the law. Those who are captured will face more severe penalties." In recent years, a large number of corrupt Chinese officials and State-owned company directors have fled abroad to countries such as the US and Canada to avoid legal punishment. They have also transferred large amounts of illicit funds to foreign accounts through money launderers and underground banks, the Ministry of Public Security said. President Xi Jinping launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign in late 2012. To capture economic fugitives abroad, the country launched the Sky Net operation in 2014. In April 2015, Interpol issued red notices international arrest warrants for the 100 most-wanted Chinese fugitives. To date, 40 have returned from more than 16 countries and regions, including high-profile targets such as Yan Yongming, former chairman of Tonghua Golden-Horse Pharmaceutical Industry Co in Jilin province, who was convicted of embezzlement on Dec 22. Due to his decision to return voluntarily after 15 years on the run, Yan received a lenient sentence of three years in prison, suspended for three years. The court also confiscated 329 million yuan ($47 million) in illegal assets. Egyptian journalist Wahid Mohamed Elmallah plays a Uighur ethnic musical instrument after visiting the Xinjiang Art Theatre in Urumqi, Northwest China's Xinjiang autonomous region, May 10, 2017. [Photo by Zhu Xingxin/chinadaily.com.cn] Nearly 50 journalists from China and 22 foreign countries including Turkey and Singapore, arrived Wednesday in Urumqi, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, to participate in a media event themed Approaching the Core Zone (Xinjiang) of the "Silk Road Economic Belt". Through visits to Xinjiang Software Park and some companies, the journalists are getting a closer look at the development of the AI industry and other industries serving the Belt and Road Initiative in Xinjiang. The event will last until May 19. A Chinese voice recognition firm said it is working on a voice system to achieve automatic translation of Chinese to languages widely used in West and Central Asia, aiming to contribute to communications among countries along the Belt and Road Initiative. iFlytek, the Shenzhen-listed tech firm, has basically completed its study of the automatic translation of Mandarin to the Uygur language since it came to establish a lab in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in 2010, according to KaharKadeer, a company employee. "Now, the automatic translation has been adopted," he said. "It can help officials from other areas unfamiliar with the Uygur language work with our local residents, as well as can provide language translation services in public places, such as railway stations." Based on its success, the company began extending the application to other languages, especially Kazakh and Russian, which is in great demand after the initiative was proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013. "Language is very important to push forward the initiative, as understanding each other can improve connection in many other ways, such as in business," said KaharKadeer. "Xinjiang has a good geological location to talk to countries in Western and Central Asia, so building the lab here is easier for us to have tests." As for the tests, he confirmed they are facing a lot of difficulties. "For example, we have to find those who can speak Kazakh or Russian and then collect their voices as big data, but actually the number of people or experts speaking the two languages is not very big," he said. Although the study is costing the firm much time, "We'll still try our best to complete it, and what's more, we'll also make more efforts to ensure the accuracy of our system's translation," he added. President urges mutual trust and proper handling of disagreements President Xi Jinping called for joint efforts to strengthen mutual political trust and properly handle disagreements in a congratulatory message on Wednesday to the newly elected president of the Republic of Korea. Noting that he has always attached great importance to China-ROK relations, Xi wrote Moon Jae-in that the two countries should push forward the healthy and stable development of ties under the basis of mutual understanding and respect. Moon, of the liberal Democratic Party, won the presidential election by a landslide on Tuesday to replace ousted president Park Geun-hye, who was impeached in December on charges of bribery and abuse of power. Analysts said Moon is likely to seek to mend China-ROK relations damaged by the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system led by the United States. In the message, Xi said the development of China-ROK relations has not only brought tangible benefits for the people of both countries, but also made positive contributions to regional peace and stability. Xi pointed out that China and the ROK are important neighbors. Relations have been comprehensively developed in the 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, he said. Xi said he would like to work with Moon to help China-ROK relations better benefit the two countries and their people. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular news conference that China's stance on the deployment of THAAD is consistent. He called on the ROK to attach importance to China's concerns and handle the THAAD issue properly. Moon said in his inaugural speech that he will sincerely negotiate with the US and China over the deployment of THAAD. During his campaign, Moon argued for a parliamentary ratification and public consensus for the THAAD installation that can influence the country's society from diplomatic, security and economic perspectives. Part of the US missile-interception system has been transported to the deployment site in the country's southeastern region, causing strong protests from anti-THAAD activists and residents. Huang Youfu, a Korean studies professor at Minzu University of China in Beijing, said it's impossible for the ROK's new government to withdraw the deployment given the current situation of the Korean Peninsula. But Moon is highly likely to take measures to improve the relations with China, and Beijing will welcome such moves, he said. Da Zhigang, director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said Moon faces challenges on the THAAD issue as he has to balance domestic public opinions while also coordinating the relations with both China and the US. China and the ROK should create opportunities now to enhance strategic mutual trust and improve relations, he said. Chinese President Xi Jinping (3rd R) and his US counterpart Donald Trump (3rd L) hold the second round of talks in the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the United States, April 7, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] MAR-A-LAGO, United States - Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, pledged on Friday to expand mutually beneficial cooperation and manage differences on the basis of mutual respect. The two leaders also agreed that their first meeting, held at the seaside Mar-a-Lago resort in the US state of Florida, was "positive and fruitful." During their talks over the past two days, Xi and Trump exchanged views on key areas of bilateral cooperation as well as global and regional issues of common concern. Xi said his first meeting with Trump bears unique significance to the development of China-US ties. He added that he and Trump, during the meeting, have also gained better understanding of each other, cemented their mutual trust, scored many major consensuses, and built up a good working relationship. The two sides need to further enhance their relations so as to better serve the interests of the two countries and their peoples, and to promote world peace and prosperity, Xi said. China and the United States are now each other's biggest trading partner, from which the two peoples benefit a lot, said Xi. Xi said China is pushing forward the supply-side structural reform, boosting domestic demand and increasing the share of the services industry in its national economy. China's economy is to maintain sound momentum of development, and China and the United States enjoy broad prospects in economic and trade cooperation, said Xi, urging the two sides to grasp the opportunity. "China welcomes the US side to participate in cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative," said Xi. On military relations, which he said make up an important part of bilateral ties, Xi pointed out that mutual trust in military and security areas forms the basis of the strategic mutual trust between the two countries. Xi proposed that the two sides maintain military exchanges at various levels, give full play to such mechanisms as China-US defense ministry consultations and Asia-Pacific security dialogue, and make good use of the dialogue mechanism to be established between the two countries' joint staffs of the armed forces. Meanwhile, he suggested that the two sides carry out the annual exchange programs they have agreed upon, and implement and improve the mutual reporting mechanism on major military operations and the code of safe conduct on naval and air military encounters. Xi also underlined the importance of further enhancing law enforcement cooperation and people-to-people exchanges. "I think we have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China," the White House cited Trump as saying after meeting with Xi, adding that the relationship developed by Xi and himself is "outstanding." US representatives have been meeting one-on-one with their Chinese counterparts, and progress has been made, said the US president. Trump said the United States is willing to further strengthen cooperation with China in economy, military affairs and people-to-people exchanges, and support China's efforts in hunting for fugitives who have fled abroad and recovering illicit money. Ahead of the two presidents' second round of talks, senior Chinese and US officials on Friday initiated the comprehensive economic dialogue and the diplomatic and security dialogue, two of the four pillars of the newly established bilateral dialogue mechanisms. Xi made the two-day trip to the southeastern US coastal town of Palm Beach for the first meeting with Trump, in a bid to chart the course of bilateral ties in a new era. Yang Xianjin, Party chief of Tongji University, delivers diplomas to graduates in Shanghai in June 2016. Photos provided to China Daily Tongji University is eager to make its courses more relevant for the new generation. Xu Xiaomin and Wang Hongyi report in Shanghai. Shanghai-based Tongji University is seeking innovative ways to boost its offerings. The university's Party chief Yang Xianjin says that Tongji is also looking for ways to improve its talent cultivation and courses. Yang says: "As President Xi Jinping called on us to achieve the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and fulfillment of the Chinese Dream, I feel the country has a huge demand for high education and talent. "And cultivating talented people to meet the country's demand for development has long been a key issue for educators." The establishment of the Imperial Tientsin University (Peiyang University) in Tianjin in 1895 marked the start of China's high education journey, and during the past 122 years the country has seen remarkable progress. "China now is an important nation when it comes to education. But as it enters a new era, new types of higher education are needed. "First, we have a new generation born in the late 1990s and early 2000s who are connected to the internet," says the professor, an experienced university educator and administrator who has been on the campus since his graduation in 1984. Teaching ideology Meanwhile, to meet its goal of improving higher education, the 110-year-old Tongji University, which is well-known for its engineering and architecture courses, is looking at social sciences. In January, the university convened a special meeting to discuss and explore the development of humanities and social science disciplines. Speaking about the disciplines, he says: "The period between 18 and 22 is the best time in a person's life, and it is an important responsibility for us educators to help these students develop their views of the world and their values. That is why we need to focus on social sciences." Typically, ideology education is seen as boring by students, and the traditional blackboard teaching style used to teach it is seen as a turn-off. But Yang says: "It (ideology) should be sprinkled like salt on food, which should blend naturally in the dishes, thus making it more palatable." So now, instead of using only the blackboard and chalk, teachers in the Tongji University have begun to blend ideology into their courses. For instance, the university has launched a plan to reform the China's Current Situation and Policymaking course. Now, teachers use slideshows and video clips, and use current events in their teaching, which has won favor with the students. TV American Gods [Photo provided to China Daily] Starz's latest show American Gods may be what one might expect from a TV series adapted from UK writer Neil Gaiman's monumental novel of the same name. Well-executed and almost uncompromisingly dedicated to the source material, it opens with a warden telling the main character he's being released a day early to attend his wife's funeral. Upon release he meets the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who hires him as a bodyguard. From there he's pulled into a cross-country road trip to raise an army for a battle between the new gods and the old gods. The novel was gripping, and the TV version promises to be the same. Folk artist Guo Guangming shows his handmade bird cage in Lanzhou, Gansu province. [Photo/VCG] Guo Guangming, a folk artist from Lanzhou of Gansu province, is an expert at making bird cages, and enjoys much fame for doing so in Lanzhou city. Many bird raisers from Xining, Xi'an, Tianjin and Beijing visit Guo for his handmade bird cages. The bird cages in northern China are always made of bamboo and are square in shape, with exquisite engravings and patterns on the cage frame and door. Its making process, however, is quite complicated. First, folk artist chooses quality materials, and then breaks, boils, dries, drills, polishes, inlays and carves the matter, before decorating it with birdseed pot and other details. Guo, now 60-year-old, started making bird cages when he was 40 years old. Making a bird cage is arduous and dull work, which most young people are not willing to do nowadays. However, Guo is dedicated to the bird cage making technique and always works alone in his workshop. The bird cage, which Guo makes, can be used for many years without distortion, due to his reliable and high skills. Bird cage making is not only a craftsmanship, but a kind of cultural memory, and Guo's persistence to the skill will help better preserve the traditional culture. American students are challenged to try Chinese food like preserved eggs, chilli sauce and dairy drinks in hit online videos, made by a team of Chinese and American students in the US. Online video hosts, especially those addressing cultural differences between China and other countries, are becoming instant celebrities. Chen Nan reports. 'Do you want to marry a Chinese woman? Then, you have to be prepared," Thomas Derksen says, speaking a mix of fluent Mandarin and Shanghai dialect. The German wears wigs, applies makeup and plays the roles of his Shanghainese wife and in-laws in the three-minute video in which he humorously talks about his marriage and being a son-in-law to a Chinese family. Derksen shot the video in March 2016, after he filmed his first short clip in which he introduces vegetables from his home country. "After we posted the second video, my wife got sick and I had to bring her to the hospital," Derksen recalls. "While waiting for her to finish her treatment, I checked my phone and saw it was exploding - thousands of messages from Sina Weibo and WeChat. So many people were sharing our video. Then I thought: 'Oh, my god! That's it!'" His wildly popular weekly videos humorously address everyday life and social topics in excellent Chinese. He has more than 3 million followers on Sina Weibo, and his 66 videos have had more than 180 million views on such streaming platforms as Miaopai, Chinese video site Youku and Facebook. He's better known on social media by his Chinese name, A Fu. One of his videos about Shanghai's summer heat had about 100 million views across platforms. Shanxi unveils Middle East e-commerce platform ( chinadaily.com.cn ) Updated: 2017-05-09 Agreements are signed at the Shanxi International Cooperation Conference in Taiyuan on May 7. [Photo/sxxncw.cn] An international cooperation conference for seeking economic partnerships in the Middle East was held in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, on May 7. Hosted by the Shanxi Department of Commerce and Department of Agriculture, the conference aimed to introduce opportunities within the province brought by the Belt and Road Initiative to help local small and medium-sized enterprises enter the Middle Eastern market. "We will take the opportunity to expand domestic and international markets, and advance industrial transformation, as the national initiative has simplified and accelerated customs clearances from different regions in China" said Meng Cai, chairman of Shanxi's Caida International Culture and Logistics Co. Economic and commercial counselors from the embassies of Iran, Afghanistan and the Central Africa Republic introduced the economic prospects and associated investment policies of each of their respective countries to businesses attending the event. The Shanxi Operations Center for Middle East Business Platform, a cross-border e-commerce platform targeted at the Middle Eastern market, was also founded during the conference. The platform signed cooperation agreements with three Shanxi-based companies, including the Shanxi Agricultural Products Group and Shanxis Qinyuanchun Mineral Water Co. Taiwan's main opposition Democratic Progressive Party, DPP, Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, April 15, 2015. [Photo/IC] Obviously Tsai Ing-wen was frustrated and found no better way to vent her disappointment at Taiwan's failure to receive an invitation from the World Health Assembly, which will open in Geneva on May 22. In her 10th tweet on the matter on Monday, the leader of Taiwan tried to justify Taiwan's participation, knowing full well that will not happen. She is reportedly dispatching a group of 20 to the WHA venue. Yet given the status quo of relations across the Taiwan Straits, it is actually impossible for Tsai's envoys to be admitted into the meeting. Tsai and her colleagues know that, especially after their abortive attempt last year. Chances are the "delegation" they are sending will make a scene, as happened last year, and try everything possible to convey the message that Taiwan "is being bullied", and public health on the island is being put in jeopardy. Such a narrative may resonate with some who sympathize but have no knowledge of the whole story. But at the end of the day, even these sympathizers will realize this is nothing but another episode in Tsai's game of autotomyshe is seeking to hijack public health in Taiwan to serve her political end of winning de facto statehood recognition for the island. Tsai's argument for Taiwan's participation is misleading because it ignores the essential premise that the World Health Organization meeting is inter-governmental by nature, and that Taiwan is not a sovereign entity. Taiwan did participate in the WHA meetings from 2009 to 2015. But that was under a special arrangement worked out by both sides of the Straits under the 1992 Consensus that both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China. But the island's presence was never unconditional. That it participated in the name of "Chinese Taipei" and in the capacity of observer says it all. Now the condition that allowed that goodwill arrangement does not exist under Tsai, who obstinately refuses to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, there is certainly no legal basis for Tsai's argument. The mainland's position, on the other hand, has the full support of United Nations Assembly resolution 2758 and WHA resolution 25.1. Tsai's argument is also porous because she is intentionally exaggerating the negative impacts of Taiwan's absence from the WHA. Public health professionals from Taiwan enjoy full access to WHA meetings and activities at the technical level. The WHO can also dispatch experts to the island to provide professional guidance when necessary. Such exchanges were never an issue even pre-2009. Why should they be now? Li Chaoxing, director of the Tianjin Municipal Commission of Industry and Information Technology, was recently dismissed from his post because of his failure to fulfill his duties. According to a notice issued by the Tianjin authorities, in August 2013, the commission signed a framework cooperation agreement with a government department to jointly build a data center in Tianjin. However, it failed to come up with any cooperation content in the following three years, resulting in the agreement's lack of substantial progress. Li, as head of the commission, always held a passive attitude toward the project and thus was held accountable for not pushing it forward, according to the notice. As the senior official in charge of the commission's work, Li deserves his punishment and this is by no means unfair treatment. It is indeed a pity that the data center has been delayed by the commission with "one excuse after another". At a seminar organized in January 2016 for provincial- and ministerial-level officials to study the spirit of the Fifth Plenum of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping lashed out at the inertia of officials. Since then Party and government organs at various levels have worked out measures to punish officials who fail to fulfill their duties. Quite a few officials have received punishments for their "inaction" in recent years, but the punishment of an official of Li's rank is not common, and it shows the determination of the authorities to tackle the widely-denounced lack of action by some officials. Such a passive attitude toward their work compromises the services they should offer the public, increases the costs of social transactions and weakens society's pursuit of higher efficiency. Li's dismissal signals that no officials will be exempt from being held accountable for their inaction. Non-smoking banners are displayed on the iconic Bird's Nest National Stadium in Beijing, capital of China on June 1, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua] SHENZHEN IN SOUTH CHINA'S GUANGDONG PROVINCE implemented a smoking ban on Jan 1 this year, forbidding smoking in public rooms and on public transport. Since May 7, local law enforcers have launched several special campaigns to dissuade people from smoking in public. Sznews.com comments: Some might argue that smoking is a personal choice and one has the right to decide whether to damage one's health by smoking or not. That might be true if they smoke behind closed doors, the problem is, a large number of smokers smoke in public and victimize others. Secondhand smoking is a big problem in modern society and it infringes on the rights of those who do not want to get themselves in harm's way even passively. That's why a smoking ban is the common choice of developed countries and regions. In Singapore, smoking is forbidden in all indoor public spaces and the majority of outdoor ones. In Hong Kong, there is even a special team that inspects public places and punishes illegal smokers. Shenzhen introduced its first municipal smoking ban as early as 1998, which was the first in the country. However, the ban was not enforced. In 2014, Shenzhen revised its ban, but the penalties for smoking in public remained quite light. People were to be dissuaded from breaking the ban, and fined up to 200 yuan ($29) if they ignored the dissuasion. In comparison, the fine in Hong Kong can be up to HK$5,000 ($624). That's why the recent move of Shenzhen should be welcomed. It shows the municipal government's determination to root out the problem. More important, the ban is truly being enforced because 52 people have been fined for smoking in public. The revised ban raises the requirements for both ordinary citizens and legal enforcers. Civilized behavior needs the cooperation of all, and we hope the day will come when smoking totally disappears from society. SHI YU/CHINA DAILY Even the potential threat of a military conflict has not deterred the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from pursuing its nuclear program, as it is under the false impression that nuclear weapons can ensure its security instead of realizing they will further isolate it from the international community. However, on April 13, DPRK leader Kim Jong-un announced the completion of a different program: the Ryomyong Street project in Pyongyang. By doing so, he sent a message to the outside world that apart from pursuing "nuclear hard power", it is also pursuing "nuclear soft power" and "economic development". Ryomyong Street is said to have nearly 5,000 apartments, which DPRK officials said, would be allotted for free to educators, scientists, and government officials. The distribution of the apartments shows that the DPRK attaches great importance to its professionals. Described as "an iconic modern street architecture and a fairyland" with 70-story, 235-meter-tall residential buildings, and shops on both sides of the street lined with LCD TV sets and tablets, Ryomyong Street is seen as a symbol of the DPRK's modernization and an important achievement for the Kim Jong-un government. Also, it is expected to make Kim remain committed to developing economy and improving people's livelihoods. Pyongyang had announced that it will build 100,000 residential housing units, but due to the DPRK's economic limitations, the plan has been downsized to build a smaller number of apartments for educators, scientists and government officials. Due to the successive and severe UN Security Council sanctions and the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Park (a joint venture with the Republic of Korea), the DPRK has been trying to reduce the use of national resources to advance its nuclear program and, instead, is paying equal attention to economic development. As a result, the DPRK government has been making efforts to boost its economy while continuing to pursue its nuclear program. The DPRK's economy, especially its agriculture and foreign trade, has not come to a standstill and the sectors related to people's livelihoods have basically maintained stable development despite the UN sanctions and last year's devastating floods, which were the worst in a century. Pyongyang has launched some economic reforms by, for example, introducing a responsibility system and establishing more than 20 economic development zones. It has also developed a more tolerant attitude toward the market, adding vigor to people's livelihoods. But since the DPRK remains more or less isolated from the international community, it will encounter huge difficulties in boosting its economy, especially because it is banned from exporting its mineral resources, which in turn will prevent it from amassing the funds needed for conducting new nuclear tests. And although the DPRK has made great efforts to reduce its dependence on imports, it cannot realize economic self-reliance and self-sufficiency by remaining isolated from the rest of the world. Increasing economic hardship, however, may prompt the DPRK to again resort to a military-first approach and expedite its nuclear weapons' program, which will further increase its economic burden and worsen people's livelihoods. The Korean Peninsula is growing to be a powder keg, which, once ignited, will rob Northeast Asia of its hard-won economic prosperity. The DPRK nuclear issue can be resolved only through the efforts and cooperation of the international community and other stakeholders that respect Pyongyang's concerns. The international community therefore should gradually build trust with the DPRK through dialogue and economic cooperation, while prompting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program in phases, in order to maintain peace and stability in the region. The author is a researcher at the Northeast Asia Studies Institute at Jilin Academy of Social Sciences. The hotel Burj Al-Arab is seen during sunset in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dec 30, 2016. The UAE, located at the intersection of the Belt and Road Initiative, is an important partner for China to promote the Belt and Road Initiative. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING -- While many countries are excited to be attending the upcoming Belt and Road Forum from May 14 to 15 in Beijing, some Western media continue to hold a the Cold War mentality and smear the initiative as neocolonialism. Some media reports arbitrarily politicalized the initiative, alleging it is not mutually beneficial as China proposes and accusing the country of "seeking to dominate" and taking a grab at "global leadership". Facts and figures show this viewpoint is not correct. Although the Belt and Road Initiative was put forward by China, all parties are involved in carrying it out. China has no intention to stage a solo play. Since 2013, over 100 countries and international organizations have responded warmly to the initiative, and nearly 50 inter-governmental agencies have signed agreements of cooperation. Openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit are the hallmarks of the initiative and source of much of the extensive support it has garnered. As the world economy is still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, it is in urgent need of an efficient, inclusive platform that can help all parties cope with the global challenges. Official data showed Chinese businesses signed new contracts totaling 126 billion US dollars in countries along the Belt and Road in 2016, with projects spanning energy, infrastructure and industrial cooperation, up 36 percent year on year. In the process, China and the other participants of the initiative have driven globalization forward and contributed to global economic recovery through freer trade and cultural exchanges. Unlike the Marshall plan, which some media have compared the initiative to, no political conditions have been imposed on participants in the Belt and Road. Nor is the initiative ideologically oriented. The participants include Western developed nations, socialist countries, Buddhist countries as well as Islamic states. While some media have drawn attention to the expected absence of some major Western leaders from the forum, they should also be aware that the leaders of 28 countries are attending, including the Italian, Spanish, Greek and Polish prime ministers and Swiss and Czech presidents. British Finance Minister Philip Hammon will attend on behalf of the country's prime minister, while, due to ongoing electoral matters, Germany and France will send high-level representatives to voice their support for the forum. The initiative is based on equality, accessibility to growth and mutual benefit. It is not an exclusive club for Western countries, but serves mostly for the extensive developing nations. The forum is a circle of friends, with representatives from more than 100 countries and regions attending. Admittedly, given that so many countries are involved, the initiative has its fair share of difficulties and challenges, such as technical, language and cultural barriers. However, the early harvests and determination of the participants demonstrate the limitless potential waiting ahead. The initiative is bound to bring prosperity to the people living along the Belt and Road. Living in today's interconnected world, prejudice and fear toward the well-intentioned initiative of openness and shared growth do not hold water. Wuwei, in northwest China's Gansu Province, was once a key customs pass and trading center of the ancient Silk Road. [Photo provided to CGTN] Wuwei, in Northwest China's Gansu province, was once a key customs pass and trading center of the ancient Silk Road. Today, under the Belt and Road Initiative, it's being revitalized as an international inland port and transportation hub, connecting China to Central Asia and Europe -- boosting the economy in west China. Once called the pearl on the ancient Silk Road, Wuwei has a colorful history and rich heritage, having witnessed an ebb and flow in fortunes through time. One of the earliest parts of China to open to the world, according to historian Wang Qiying, Wuwei was the second largest international metropolitan place in western China, after the capital. It had flourishing exchanges in politics, economy, and culture. During the city's prosperous years, one of China's most famous Buddhist translators, Kumarajiva, travelled to Wuwei, staying for nearly 20 years. The introduction of Buddhism integrated with China's local Daoism and Confucianism, and profoundly influenced the Chinese way of looking at the world. WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump will not make an announcement on whether or not to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement on climate change until after he returns from the May 26-27 Group of Seven (G7) summit in Italy, the White House said Tuesday. "The president has been meeting with his team for quite a while on this matter," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters at a daily briefing. Trump was originally scheduled to sit down Tuesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, his daughter Ivanka Trump and others to discuss the agreement, but the meeting was postponed. When asked if the canceled meeting is a sign that Trump is vacillating on the agreement, Spicer said: "No, I think it's simply a sign that the president wants to continue to meet with his team ... and come to a decision on what's (in) the best interest of the United States." It's reported that Trump's cabinet and top officials are deeply divided about whether the US should pull out. Tillerson and Ivanka are said to want the US to stay, while Pruitt and White House strategist Steve Bannon reportedly have been pushing Trump to leave the international agreement. Trump himself has threatened to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement during his presidential campaign. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip sit with BBC Television's One Show presenters Matt Baker and Alex Jones at the BBC in London, Britain May 9, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] He takes the garbage out, she cooks at weekends and work never enters the bedroom - British Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip offered a glimpse of their private lives in a television interview on Tuesday. In the run up to her first election as prime minister, May is trying almost every tack to win the votes she says she needs to strengthen her hand in divorce negotiations with the European Union and cement her standing as Britain's leader. After days of factory visits and Conservative Party rallies, May, sometimes uncomfortably, took on the primetime television 'sofa chat', answering questions ranging from how she fell in love with Philip to what made her call an election for June 8. Asked how they split their tasks at home, Philip told the BBC's One Show: "There's give and take in every marriage isn't there? I get to decide when I'll take the bins out or if I'll take the bins out." "I definitely do the taking the bins out, I do the traditional boy jobs by and large," he said, although now she is working so hard he sometimes makes the 'tea', or dinner. "Theresa is a very good cook," he said, although she replied that since becoming prime minister her enjoyment of creating dishes was now confined largely to the weekends. Philip May, a British investment relationship manager and a year younger than his 60-year-old wife, has been a quiet partner to May since she was appointed prime minister shortly after Britain voted to leave the European Union last June. Little more is known publicly about their relationship than that they met at university and shortly afterwards got married. Moon Jae-in of the Liberal Minjoo Party waves during a celebration event in Seoul, South Korea, on May 9, 2017. Liberal candidate Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party said Tuesday that South Korea's presidential election is "a great victory of great people" after most of local media outlets viewed his victory as assured. [Photo/Xinhua] President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to Moon Jae-in on Wednesday to congratulate him on winning the Republic of Korea's presidential election. In the message Xi pointed out that China and the ROK are important neighbors for each other. Bilateral relations have been comprehensively developed in the past 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, with exchanges in all areas being enhanced, Xi said. The development of China-ROK relations has not only brought practical benefits for the people of both countries, but also made positive contributions to regional peace and stability, he said. Xi stressed that he has always attached great importance to the ROK and China-ROK relations. China would like to make joint efforts with the ROK to maintain the achievements of bilateral ties, he said. The two countries should strengthen political trust, properly handle disagreements, enhance coordination and cooperation under the basis of mutual trust and respect, to push forward the healthy and stable development of China-ROK relations, Xi said. Xi said he would like to make joint efforts with Moon to make the China-ROK relations better benefit the two countries and the people of both. anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn South Korea's president-elect Moon Jae-in and South Chungcheong governor An Hee-jung (R) celebrate with supporters at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, South Korea, May 10, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] Moon Jae-in wins S Korean presidential election UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday strongly condemned an attack which killed four blue helmets in the southeastern part of the Central African Republic, calling for efforts to "swiftly bring those responsible to justice." Eight other peacekeepers were wounded in the attack perpetrated on Monday by suspected anti-Balaka against a convoy of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) on the Rafai-Bangassou axis. And one is still missing. "The secretary-general would like to underline that attacks against United Nations peacekeepers may constitute a war crime," said a statement issued here by Guterres' spokesman. "He calls on the Central African Republic authorities to investigate the attack in order to swiftly bring those responsible to justice." The secretary-general would like to reiterate his support for the actions of MINUSCA to protect civilians and stabilize the republic, and call on all parties to heed President Faustin Archange Touadera's call to cease violence and work together for the country's stability, the statement said. "MINUSCA vigorously denounces this odious attack on peacekeepers whose presence on the Central African soil has no other objective than to help the country to protect its population and to allow the Central African Republic to emerge from the cycle of violence caused by armed groups," said a press release. The mission added that it would do everything possible to ensure that perpetrators of the attack, who fled into the bush, are arrested so that they can be brought to justice. Despite significant progress and successful elections, the Central African Republic still suffers instability and sporadic unrest. Clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel coalition and anti-Balaka militia, mostly Christian, plunged the country of 4.5 million people into civil conflict in 2013. Chinas new Cybersecurity Law will become effective on June 1, 2017. In addition to focusing on cybersecurity, the law also details how companies are to handle personal information and data. In determining what is allowed and not allowed for handling personal information in China, it is important to examine The Decision on Strengthening Information Protection on Networks (2012), The Guidelines for Personal Information Protection Within Public and Commercial Services Information Systems (2013), and The Provisions on Protecting the Personal Information of Telecommunications and InternetUsers (2013). There are also many industry-specific rules, including such rules for banking and credit information services. Chinas new Cybersecurity Law adopts and modifies existing regulations and codifies them. Under the new Cybersecurity Law, collecting any users personal information requires the users consent and network operators must keep collected information strictly confidential. Personal information is defined as information that can be used on its own or with other information to determine the identity of a natural person, including the persons name, date of birth, ID card number, biological identification information (e.g. fingerprints and irises), address, and telephone number. Once such information has been de-identified, it is no longer subject to the requirement for personal information under the law. According to the new Cybersecurity Law, network operators are subject to the following requirements when collecting and using personal information: Collection and use of personal information must be legal, proper and necessary. Network operators must clearly state the purpose, method, and scope of collection and use, and obtain consent from the person whose personal information is to be collected; personal information irrelevant to the service provided shall not be collected. Network operators shall not disclose, alter, or destroy collected personal information; without the consent of the person from whom the information was gathered, such information shall not be provided to others. In the event of a data breach or a likely data breach, network operators must take remedial actions, promptly inform users, and report to the competent government agencies according to relevant regulations. In case of an illegal or unauthorized collection and use of personal information, a person is entitled to ask a network operator to delete such personal information; when information collected is wrong, an individual can request correction. Who are the network operators to which the new law will apply? Owners of networks, administrators of networks, and network service providers. Telecom and Internet service providers, clearly, but network is broad enough to go well beyond that. Networks are systems consisting of computers or other data terminal equipment and relevant devices that collect, store, transmit, exchange, and process information according to certain rules and procedures (Article 76 of the new Cybersecurity Law). If you have a couple of computers at home that can share files, and perhaps a printer connected to them, you technically have a network. The law is not likely to go that far, but the generic definitions of network and network operators leave a lot of room for interpretation, which is exactly how the Chinese government wants it. The new Cybersecurity Law also requires critical information infrastructure operators (CIIOs) store within China personal information and important data gathered and generated within China and conduct annual security risk assessments regarding their data. Though the definition of CIIO is yet to be clarified, we already know Chinas yet to be finalized Measures for Security Assessment of Personal Information and Important Data Leaving the Country will likely require foreign companies doing business in China make big changes in how they handle data. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) published a draft of Measures for Security Assessment of Personal Information and Important Data Leaving the Country back in April, raising many concerns for foreign businesses operating in China. These Measures for Security Assessment would expand the data localization requirement to all network operators. This would mean that pretty much all personal information and important data collected by network operators within the PRC must be stored within China and not leave China, other than for genuine business need and after a security assessment. And if you think you may be a network operator, you probably are. Since the new Cybersecurity Law does not differentiate between internal and external networks, it is broad enough to include any company that owns an internal network. Will your China WFOE be able to transmit employee information back to its overseas headquarters? In Chinas Cybersecurity Law and Employee Personal Information, we set out best practices for doing this, but that was written before publication of the Draft Measures. Should the Draft Measures become effective as expected our views on data transfers will almost certainly toughen. Foreign companies are already setting up data centers in China so as to be able to keep data local and many of our clients are looking at doing the same. We have been reluctant to write much about data and privacy protection in China because existing laws are both unclear and in a massive state of flux. But because this is so important and because this reluctance cannot extend to a client who needs to know what it must do now with specific data, we plan to write more often about these topics in the weeks and months ahead. Please stay tuned. (Photo : US Navy) USS Ronald Reagan escorted by warships of Carrier Strike Group 5. Advertisement The U.S. Navy nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Roland Reagan (CVN-76) is now pushing through the Pacific Ocean off Tokyo for sea trials before beginning its annual patrol of the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean later this month along with another navy carrier, the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and its Carrier Strike Group One (CSG-1). Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Both carrier strike groups are also expected to patrol in the Sea of Japan (or the East Sea) to the east of the Korean Peninsula. The USS Ronald Reagan, the navy's only forward deployed carrier and the centerpiece of the navy's most powerful carrier strike group, took to sea once again on May 7 after a four month-long "Selected Restricted Availability" (SRA) maintenance at its homeport, the United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka or Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka (CFAY) in Yokosuka, Japan. CFAY is the largest strategically important U.S. naval installation in the Western Pacific. The carrier's crew will undergo a number of qualification and certification exercises while at sea. "I am extremely proud of the Reagan crew's accomplishments up to this point of our SRA period," said Capt. Michael Donnelly, Commanding Office, USS Ronald Reagan. "We are all looking forward to completing sea trials and returning to operations in the 7th Fleet." The USS Ronald Reagan and its Carrier Strike Group 5 (CSG-5) is the navy's largest and most powerful carrier strike group. The addition of the USS Ronald Reagan and its four squadrons from Carrier Air Wing 5 (CVW-5) consisting of some 60 Boeing F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet strike fighters will bring to over 110 the number of strike fighters aboard the Reagan and the Vinson. The CVW-5 strike fighter squadrons are VFA-27 (Royal Maces); VFA-102 (Diamondbacks); VFA-115 (Eagles) and VFA-195 (Dambusters). Including these four strike squadron, there are nine aircraft squadrons in CVW-5. Two of these squadrons operate Sikorsky MH-60 multi-mission helicopters. CSG-5 includes three Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers and DESRON 5 with its seven Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers. Ronald Reagan and the 10 surface combatant ships of CSG-5 operate out of CFAY while CVW-5 operates out of Atsugi, Japan when not embarked on the Reagan. Together, these units form the U.S. Navy's only continuously forward deployed carrier strike group. Advertisement TagsU.S. Navy, USS Roland Reagan (CVN-76), Pacific Ocean, USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), Carrier Strike Group Five (CSG-5), Carrier Strike Group One (CSG-1), Sea of Japan, United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Capt. Michael Donnelly, Carrier Air Wing 5 (Photo : Getty Images) China's first self-developed large passenger jetliner C919 is presented after it rolled off the production line at Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Co., Ltd on November 2, 2015 in Shanghai, China. Advertisement Preliminary forecasts suggested that China's first jet liner will only likely find its way in the Chinese market, but latest predictions from analysts for short to mid-term suggest that Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC)'s C919 could also land outside the great wall. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Africa reportedly made some pre-orders for the C919, according to Chinese news outlets as cited by Forbes. Aside from the fact that Africa has been receiving economic benefits from China, the C919 could also have cheap operation and maintenance expenses compared with other airline giants. China could also likely serve a good offer for African airlines as part of its economic favor chain. Several experts who bet on Africa also believe that Latin America could be a potential client for the C919. Bangkok-based City Airways also reportedly made a few pre-orders from other nations. City Airways, which currently owns seven planes, grounded its only active plane in 2016 before a flight to Hong Kong because of safety concerns. German start-up PuRen Airlines has also allegedly made seven pre-orders for the C919 in 2015. However, the airline declared insolvency and its plan to build up a German airport with the airline's launch apparently never took place. Meanwhile, Chinese airlines make up to 90 percent of the 570 orders for the C919 so far, China Daily reported. Buyers include Air China, China Southern, China Eastern, Hainan Airlines, and Sichuan Airlines. "It'll undergo several years of test flights before it's operational," Richard Bitzinger, senior fellow of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said. "And it'll probably fly only locally within China, for a while." COMAC's C919, the two-aisle aircraft with 158 to 174 seats, successfully made its first test flight on Friday in Shanghai. It is a rival to the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737. Advertisement TagsComac, COMAC C919, Africa, City Airways, PuRen Airlines (Photo : ASELSAN) Tufan, Turkey's second railgun. Advertisement True to its word, Turkey's largest defense firm, ASELSAN, has revealed a scale model of its electromagnetic (EM) railgun it hopes will one day arm warships of the Turkish Navy and artillery units of the Turkish Army. Given the name "Tufan" (Turkish for "storm"), ASELSAN's railgun is the second domestically engineered railgun produced by a Turkish entity. Turkey's first railgun, which is named "TUBITAK SAPAN," is a 14 megajoule (MJ) weapon developed by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Turkey released the first photos of TUBITAK SAPAN in October 2016. This weapon will arm the Turkish Navy's TF-2000-class anti-air warfare frigates currently undergoing development by the Turkish Naval Institute. Military railguns rely on electromagnetic forces to generate very high kinetic energies that fire specially-made projectiles towards targets at speeds of up to 3,500 meters per second. A good-looking model of ASELSAN's Tufan is currently on display at the ongoing IDEF 2017 (International Defense Industry Fair 2017) being held at Ankara from May 9 to 12. ASELSAN said Tufan can be integrated onto several platforms, including warships and armored vehicles. Tufan can also be deployed as a static land weapon system, and can be used for both indirect fire and direct fire missions against ground, naval and aerial targets. ASELSAN, however, admitted that Tufan is still in the research and development stage. "The current launcher we have is small, but we are developing bigger launchers to get more muzzle velocity," said a company spokesman. ASELSAN designs, develops and manufactures modern electronic systems for military and industrial customers. ASELSAN is the largest in its industry. Turkish media said the development of two railguns is a sign of Turkey's growing technological capability and places the country on the level of BAE Systems and General Atomics, which are developing very advanced railguns for the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army. ASELSAN wants a railgun that fire a projectile to over 300 kilometers at a speed ranging from 2,000 to 2,500 meters per second. The railgun can also be deployed as an air defense weapon "with high efficiency against current threats." Advertisement TagsTurkey, ASELSAN, electromagnetic railgun, Turfan railgun, TUBITAK SAPAN (Photo : YPG) YPG fighters salute their flag. Advertisement The White House has approved a plan to directly arm the People's Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia fighting against ISIS in Syria and the primary component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and in so doing allow YPG to play a greater role in the upcoming battle to re-take Raqqa, the de facto capital of the ISIL caliphate. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The order allows the U.S. to begin arming the YPG with more and better weapons. Sources said YPG is set to receive advanced combat helmets; digital camouflage uniforms; chest rigs that hold ammunition and body armor. YPG will also get M4 automatic rifles with various modifications, including infrared lasers used for targeting during nighttime raids. These weapons and gear make YPG more lethal. YPG will also receive other needed equipment such as radios and bulldozers, which have proven their usefulness against ISIS car and truck bombs. There are some 40,000 YPG fighters in northern Syria. The order allows the U.S. to begin providing the Syrian Kurds with arms and equipment like bulldozers, rifles and radios fairly quickly since some equipment is pre-positioned, officials said. The decision made on May 9 will infuriate Turkey, which considers YPG a terrorist group. YPG is military arm of the Kurdish leftist Democratic Union Party. At the urging of the United States, YPG founded the SDF in late 2015 as an umbrella group combining Arabs and minorities into the war effort against ISIS. On the other hand, Turkey sees YPG as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the U.S. PKK and Turkey are again at war after the former ended a ceasefire it declared in 2013. U.S. Department of Defense spokeswoman Dana White described SDF as "the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future." "We are keenly aware of the security concerns of our coalition partner Turkey," said White. "We want to reassure the people and government of Turkey that the U.S. is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally." The assault on Raqqa by SDF and its partners supported by U.S. and coalition airpower will begin this year after the fall of Mosul to the Iraqi Army and its allies. The complete capture of Mosul is expected by June at the earliest. The Pentagon has said repeatedly the operation to re-take Raqqa will require direct weapons shipments and upgraded equipment to the YPG and its allies in the SDF as these anti-ISIS forces fight their way forward into the last city held by ISIS in either Syria or Iraq. YPG gained worldwide fame with its successful defense of the Syrian city of Kobani against ISIS. YPG's victory against ISIS in March 2015 is considered one of the key turning points in the war against this Islamic terrorist organization since it stopped ISIS' string of victories and forced them into a strategic defensive. Advertisement TagsPeople's Protection Units, YPG, Syrian Kurdish militia, ISIS, Syrian Democratic Forces, Raqqa, Turkey, Kurdistan Workers' Party Puppies at the facility of Alvin Nolt in Thorpe, Wisc., were found on unsafe wire flooring, a repeat violation at the facility. Wire flooring is especially dangerous for puppies because their legs can become entrapped in the gaps, leaving them unable to reach food, water, or shelter. Photo by Wisconsin Department of Agriculture 1.7K shares Take a good, hard look at our latest Horrible Hundred report which is based on our research team scouring federal and state inspection reports of large-scale dog-breeding operations throughout the United States and giving a red card to some of the worst operators. It may be the last time you read a report like this. Why? Because two weeks after the Trump administration took office, the U.S Department of Agriculture took down all of this data from its website, along with other inspection reports and violation notices dealing with federally regulated animal enterprises. The reason? Purported privacy concerns raised by federally regulated animal industries. But it was Congress that passed the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act and that funds inspection activities to the tune of millions of dollars every year. If these federally licensed and registered breeders, exhibitors, research facilities, and horse show operators wanted an absolute right to privacy covering all records related to their operations, then they shouldnt have chosen to do business in a regulated industry. People who choose to do business in state or federally licensed industries be they coal mines, restaurants, nursing homes, firearms dealers, or any of hundreds of other closely regulated business ventures do so knowing that a small class of documents concerning their operations are not going to be private, most notably, federal and state inspection records and citations. No other business would argue that records of workplace safety violations, health code violations, patient deaths, or gun sales that led to mass shootings should be private. That would be an absurdity. But puppy millers, horse abusers, and other bad actors arent asking for fair treatment; they are asking for special treatment no other regulated industry enjoys, which is shielding all of their inspection reports and violation citations from consumers, state and local enforcement authorities, the media, and non-governmental organizations such as The HSUS. If commercial breeders want to sell dogs to the public, they should be inspected. Thats what Congress said. No federal court has countermanded Congresss affirmative action to protect animals and to provide some level of transparency. And it logically follows that those inspection reports should be available to the public. And, yes, on the Internet, since thats the way information is consumed in the Information Age. This is not an abstraction. Theres something very real at work here. Our latest Horrible Hundred report, the fifth in a series of annual reports that is primarily grounded on federal and state inspection reports of commercial breeders, gives us a picture of whats happening at some of the most retrograde puppy mills in the nation. It is cruelty that hits you between the legs with a bullhook: a puppy miller in Missouri who admitted to twisting the tails off puppies instead of having them docked by a veterinarian; a puppy miller in Kansas with more than 600 dogs living in filthy conditions, some with only barrels for shelter; another facility in Missouri, this one with matted and neglected dogs, including one dog with maggots eating away at his ulcerated skin. These are just three of a hundred grisly details about the state of puppy mills in America. Its not that the government is doing too much, as the puppy mill operators suggest. Its that its doing too little. And the cover-up is not only about hiding the ball when it comes to the worst operators, its also about the governments inaction and lax enforcement. Why are people who do such terrible things allowed to continue to operate a commercial enterprise in a nation that abhors these terrible practices? Why are they showing up again and again on our report? Wont somebody stop them? The only reason we were able to compile this report is due to the tenacity of our puppy mills research team, which had already saved many reports from the USDA website before it went dark. They also gathered local inspection reports from many states that inspect puppy mills, consumer complaints, and court records to come up with this list. For the fifth year in a row, Missouri tops the Horrible Hundred with the greatest number of problem dealers 19. In second place we have a three-way tie between Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, each with 12 problem dealers. Fifty-five of the dealers who make an appearance in this years report are repeat offenders operators who have appeared in our previous reports. Its important to note that USDA regulations were never best practices; they are mere canine survival standards even for those dealers who comply with them. Even legal and licensed puppy mills that typically keep hundreds of dogs in small, stacked cages for their entire lives, with little or no exercise, enrichment or human attention, are considered compliant as long as the dogs are provided with basic provisions such as food, water, and rudimentary shelter. Our report shows that many of them dont even do that. We have included in this years report not just breeders but a few dog dealers and one transporter closely tied to the puppy mill industry and entrusted with the care of animals. Here are just a few more examples detailed in the report: A breeder who has been convicted of 47 counts of animal cruelty in the past, and who continues to advertise under various aliases on PuppyFind.com despite numerous complaints about puppies sold that were underweight, sick, or had mange (Tabitha Doyle and Sandra Webb, Mercer, Tennessee); A transporter that had 53 puppies die after being left on an overheated vehicle; the operator did not call the vet until eight hours after the tragedy (RDR Transport, Unionville, Missouri); A puppy miller who has been found with at least 41 dogs in need of veterinary care over the past two years, including limping dogs, dogs with oozing eyes, and several dogs with large, open wounds. In December 2015, he was even suspended for throwing a bag containing two dead puppies at a USDA inspector, yet hes still in business (Steve Kruse, Stonehenge Kennel, West Point, Iowa). The report includes puppy mills from 20 states, but consumers across the United States need to be vigilant because most of the dealers sell online or to pet stores, and their puppies could be sold in all 50 states and beyond. Our researchers found at least nine dealers selling on PuppyFind.com, a website that has been repeatedly linked to problem puppy mills listed in our Horrible Hundred reports over the years. More than 200 lawmakers in Congress have called for the USDA to restore the data to its website. This cover-up needs to end. All of the evidence of why its so important is right here. North Korea has detained a U.S. citizen a self-described Christian missionary raising the number of Americans held there to four. Kim Hak-song, who was taken into custody Saturday (May 6), taught at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. The university, founded in 2010 with donations from South Korean and American Christians, including the Illinois-based Church of the Brethren, remains the only private university in the country. Obviously, this is concerning. Were well aware of it and were going to work through the embassy of Sweden through our State Department, to seek the release of the individuals there, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Monday. Song was detained on suspicion of hostile acts against the state, the Norths KCNA news agency said. One other of the four Americans detained, Kim Sang-duk, also taught at PUST. Experts on North Korea consider the detentions an attempt by the authoritarian North Korean regime to gain bargaining chips as it resists U.S. pressure to rein in its nuclear program, with which it has threatened South Korea and the U.S. Reuters contributed to this report Courtesy: Religion News Service Photo: Kim Hak-song and his wife, Kim Mi-ok. Photo courtesy: Screenshot from video via RNS Publication date: May 10, 2017 Indonesia took a huge leap backwards in its reputation as a moderate Islamic democracy today when a court sentenced the Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, to two years in prison for blaspheming the Koran. The blasphemy accusation was key in Ahoks defeat in a bid to be re-elected as governor of Jakarta last month. Islamic extremist groups opposed to having a non-Muslim lead the city organized massive demonstrations against Ahok, with some observers saying they were aimed at unseating the government of President Joko Jokowi Widodo. The two-year prison sentence was shocking as prosecutors had recommended a two-year probation. Indonesian law allows a maximum sentence for blasphemy of five years in prison. In its decision, a five-judge panel said Ahok was convincingly proven guilty of blasphemy. He was taken to Cipinang Prison in east Jakarta, the latest victim of one of the world's blasphemy laws trampling free speech and religious freedom and being invoked with ulterior Islamist motives. He said he would appeal, and it was unclear if that process would lead to his release. The accusation of blasphemy stemmed from a video that appeared last September of Ahok telling voters they were being deceived if they believed a specific verse in the Quran prohibited Muslims from voting for a non-Muslim leader. The verdict is certain to embolden the Islamic extremists who erupted in jubilation at its announcement. The charge arose after a speech Ahok made to city officials on Sept. 27, 2016, when he said, Ladies and gentlemen, you dont have to vote for me because youve been lied to [or fooled] with Surat Almaidah 51 [Sura 5:51] and the like. Thats your right. If you feel you cant vote for me because you fear youll go to hell, because youve been lied to [or fooled], no worries. Thats your personal right. These programs will go forward. So you dont have to feel uncomfortable. Follow your conscience, you dont have to vote for Ahok. Video footage of the speech went viral on YouTube, and Islamic extremists claimed Ahok had blasphemed against the Koran and Islamic clerics. Ahok on Oct. 10 apologized to all Muslims and anyone who felt offended, saying it was not his intention to slight Islam or the Koran. Saying the trial was purely legal and not political, lead judge Dwiarso Budi Santiarto said Ahoks comments had degraded and insulted Islam, according to The Associated Press. As part of a religious society, the defendant should be careful to not use words with negative connotations regarding the symbols of religions including the religion of the defendant himself, he reportedly said. But Wayan Sudirta, one of Ahoks attorneys, said there was so much pressure for Ahok to be imprisoned, according to the AP. Huge street protests against Ahok in the past six months are one sign of a hard-line Muslim movement in Indonesia. The AP notes that another sign is the long-standing habit of vigilante groups preventing Indonesias religious minorities from practicing their faith. If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.o rg/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved. If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at http://morningstarnews.org/don ate/ ? Its no coincidence that The Handmaids Tale, the Hulu original series based on the Margaret Atwood book of the same name, is being released now, more than 30 years after the books publication. Capitalizing upon a the parallels between its fictional American dystopia and the distress that many people feel at the current state of American politics, The HandmaidsTale has been celebrated as a timely entry into the conversation about where we are headed as a nation. In particular, the show makes an uncomfortable connection between the contemporary political language of a war on women, as heard in the last several presidential election cycles, and the actual war on women in The Handmaids Tale, where women are enslaved, mutilated, raped, beaten, and killed. The villains of The Handmaids Tale are fundamentalist Christians who, after a violent revolution, run a totalitarian theocratic republic called Gilead in place of the secular statean echo of the Islamic Republic established in Iran after the 1979 Revolution, around the time when Atwood penned her novel. The highest function of women in this fearful new world is to bear children. Infertility and infant mortality rates, however, are through the roof, so when a member of the pious ruling class cannot have a child, the state sends her a handmaid to conceive in her place. The handmaid system provides sexual surrogacy, the depiction of which, once seen, will not soon be forgottenespecially as it is set against a track of Onward Christian Soldiers in the shows most heavy-handed moment. The whole scenario is reminiscent of the story of Hagar in the Old Testament, in which Sarah arranges ... 1 They identify as Christians, attend church at least once a month, and say their faith is very important in their lives. Barna Group calls them practicing Christians. But according to a new report by Barna and Summit Ministries, in addition to their Christian beliefs, many practicing Christians have embraced beliefs from other ideologies. Among these practicing Christians, Barna claims: 61% agree with ideas rooted in New Spirituality. 54% resonate with postmodernist views. 36% accept ideas associated with Marxism. 29% believe ideas based on secularism. New Spirituality Nearly 1 in 3 practicing Christians strongly agree that if you do good, you will receive good, and if you do bad, you will receive bad. Barna suggested that these beliefs appealed to many Christians sense of ultimate justice. Another Barna study found that 52 percent of practicing Christians strongly agree that the Bible teaches God helps those who help themselves, ... 1 Believing and belonging, without behaving. This is how the Pew Research Center summarizes the surge of Christianity in Europe around the fallen Iron Curtain roughly 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The comeback of religion in a region once dominated by atheist regimes is striking, states Pew in its latest report. Today, only 14 percent of the regions population identify as atheists, agnostics, or nones. By comparison, 57 percent identify as Orthodox, and another 18 percent as Catholics. In a massive study based on face-to-face interviews with 25,000 adults in 18 countries, Pew examined how national and religious identities have converged over the decades in Central and Eastern Europe. The result is one of the most thorough accountings of what Orthodox Christians (and their neighbors) believe and do. Pew surveyed citizens in Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, ... 1 On Monday, December 22, 2014, I walked into the office of my therapist. I sat down on her couch with my wife by my side. I took a long deep breath and slowly exhaled, waiting for answers to my 36-year-long question. She grabbed her clip board, glanced over the assessments we had completed in weeks prior, looked me in the eye, and uttered three words that changed my life: autism spectrum disorder. While the diagnosis didnt change who I was, it did change my understanding of who I had been. In many ways, I have spent the years since that diagnosis learning myself all over again. As early as seven years old, I was self-conscious about the differences between other children my age and me. I had difficulty understanding other people, and they had equal difficulty understanding me. It felt like the entire world was sharing an inside joke that I did not understand. I was extremely stubborn, more so than other children my age. I struggled with change. Simple shifts in schedules or environments put me on edge. I operated with a robotically calculated persona. I took almost everything literally. Teachers discovered that I had been having accidents on the playground for weeks during my lunch period because I took the instructions of teachers literally when they told us the building was not open until the bell rings. In the midst of social and educational struggles, I was often characterized as weak, weird, or just plain wrong. I was bullied by peers, by teachers, and on occasion by other parents because I seemed strange, stoic, and sometimes rude or arrogant. I became afraid of people, and at the age of 14, I turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. It felt like the entire world was sharing an inside joke that I did not understand. In my first year of college, I decided to leave the life of drugs and alcohol behind me. A near-fatal car accident caused me to re-evaluate my lifestyle and recommit my life to Christ. As a result, I grew more and more successful in school, but I silently continued pretending to be someone that I was not created to be. It was decades before the therapist appointment in which I discovered the language to describe my life. Adults who grow up with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder learn how to blend in as a matter of survival. In my early adult years, I did this successfully. I learned how to mimic the behaviors, attitudes, and opinions of others so that I could have a shot at being normal. Called into Ministry Then one day, just over one year after graduating college, God called me into ministry. I was frightened but intrigued. What could God possibly do with me? I was still so socially awkward; why would God want someone like me? To be honest, I ignored God for almost a year. Surely he had the wrong Lamar. As it turns out, God knew exactly who he was calling. I spent the next nine years trying to find my place in the church. I grew up in the church, so I knew just enough of the culture to fake it. But being a pastor required relational skills that I lacked. Pastoring is a social job, and I wasnt all that fun or exciting to be around. Most people didnt even know that I could talk because I was so quiet and unassuming. I tried several churches in my quest to fit in and follow my calling. Eventually I landed a role as a youth pastor at New Community Church in Lagrange, Georgia. Youth pastoring was a perfect job for me. Most of the teenagers were as socially awkward as I was! After two years, New Community Church started to become home. I felt safe there, and I could start being myself for the first time in a long time. I am often asked about the circumstances surrounding my autism diagnosis. What made me seek out a diagnosis at age 36? It started with a change in my leadership role at church. In 2012 my predecessor resigned, and I had to assist by taking on more responsibilities. This required me to spend more time around adults. During the transition, I heard observations from various people in my church about their social interactions with me. My facial expressions were awkward. I looked angry and tired all the time. I walked past people without stopping to speak. I didnt appear very social or approachable. Someone I worked with wrote in an evaluation that Lamar has difficulty picking up on social cues in large settings. I was defensive and angry until it dawned on me that they were saying things I had heard my entire life. I decided that so many people saying the same things probably werent wrong, so I started investigating. I knew I was missing something importantI would never intentionally walk past someone without speakingbut until that point, I didnt know there was such a thing as social cues. After about a year of investigating on my own by reading and watching videos, I was confident that I would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum, so I mustered up the courage to ask my wife to help me find someone to evaluate me. After the Diagnosis When I received the news, I knew this was an opportunity to explore my faith in an entirely new way. Just one year earlier, in December of 2013, I was named the lead pastor of New Community Church. The words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9 took on new life for me: Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christs power may rest on me. If God knew I was autistic prior to appointing me to pastor his church, then perhaps he had a purpose for my new discovery. If God knew I was autistic prior to appointing me to pastor his church, then perhaps he had a purpose for my new discovery. On March 8, 2015, through a video introduction of a new sermon series, I shared with my church that just months earlier I had been diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. In one of the most beautiful displays of love, acceptance, and community that I have ever experienced, the congregation applauded, cheered, and even shed tears. I simply exhaled. I knew I had done the right thing, and for nearly the first time in my life, I knew I was in the right place. Now that my autism is out in the open, I can adjust my pastoral role appropriately. I still struggle with sensory processing issues and social anxiety, so I focus on the things I do well and ask for help with tasks I dont do as well. It requires me to collaborate with my family, the congregation, the staff, and the elders of the church more closely so the mission of Christ can be accomplished. In that collaboration, I see the beauty of the body of Christ working together. Ive learned to pastor more effectively by managing my time and sensory resources, maximizing my prayer and sermon preparation time, and leveraging the aspects of my autism that prove to be beneficial to my pastoral ministry. Like Paul, I have learned to allow would-be weaknesses to become the platform for Gods grace to be seen through my life and ministry. Autistic traits such as repetitive behavior, the need for precision and routine, and even the way my brain processes language havewith practice, prayer, and patiencebecome assets. They have helped me develop into a visionary pastor and an excellent communicator. I practice, plan, and pray with more effectiveness now because I understand how God works through what some may consider weakness. This journey has taught me to be more graceful and more authentic. It has taught me to share not only my hopes and my faith, but also my hurts and my frustrations. It has taught me to pastor out of my humanity. Lamar Hardwick is lead pastor of New Community Church in Lagrange, Georgia and author of I Am Strong: The Life and Journey of an Autistic Pastor. Not long ago, I pulled an issue of Teen magazine out from under a stack of Engineering and Mining Journals. I have no idea how the June 1985 issue of Teen, in all its neon, big-hair, snappy cover-copy-glory, snuck under a pile of trade publications, but it was fitting. The unusual pairing represented the publication that made me want to be a magazine editor and the publication that actually made me one. Those early issues of Teenwhich printed its last issue in 2009, the end of a 55-year rundid more than shape my career. For an earlier me, they shaped my life, everything from the ridiculous hair and fashions of my junior high years to my understanding of music and movies and health and boys and dating and sex (none of which happened in junior high, I should note). Women raised in evangelical homes in the 80s and 90s shared a similar sense of nostalgia over the recent news that Focus on the Family is resurrecting Brio, its magazine for preteen and teen girls. In coverage by Slate and NPR, former subscribers remembered its prayer tips, DIY crafts, and wholesome dating advice. But if theres one thing I know, as a magazine fan myself and also the mother of a soon-to-be-teen daughter, its that todays publications cannot coast by on nostalgia. Nor can they continue to put out the samelets face itshallow content and expect todays girls to stay engaged. Even with all the media available to my own middle-school-aged daughter and her friends, casually flipping through a glossy teen magazine isnt part of their world. The magazines that were important me (Teen and then Seventeen and then Cosmo, Elle, Vogue) may never make their way into the hands of todays ... 1 home World Militants gun down Egyptian Christian outside his barber shop in North Sinai Suspected militants have gunned down a Coptic Christian man outside his barbershop in Egypt's North Sinai region on Saturday. According to Egypt Independent, Nabil Saber Ayoub and his family had left the city of al-Arish in North Sinai three months ago because of the threats of violence from Islamic State-affiliated militants. They were among the 400 families who fled to Ismailia due to the series of killings, kidnappings and threats to wipe out Egypt's Christian minority. Ayoub reportedly returned to al-Arish without his family as he owns a barbershop and a house in the town. "Ayoub returned because he did not find any job opportunities in Port Said or Ismailia; he decided to return to work in his barbershop in order to provide for his family who are now in Ismailia," said a resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The barbershop owner was shot dead by four masked men on May 6. According to World Watch Monitor, he received a phone call from his wife, so he went out to the street to get a better signal. During the phone call, the suspects shot him four times, with two bullets hitting him in the head, one in the stomach and another one in his shoulder. While they were shooting him, the assailants reportedly asked, "Why do you return back again, oh Kafir?" The suspects allegedly took the victim's ID card and his cell phone before fleeing the scene. "There is a police checkpoint near Nabil's home," said Moheb Qadry Fares, Ayoub's brother-in-law. "How did the police allow those masked gunmen to enter the area and kill Nabil in the daytime? Where was the security when this incident took place? None of them did anything," he added. Fares also noted that police were guarding the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Michael behind Ayoub's home. "How [did] those masked men manage to enter the area and carry out their crime without getting arrested, even though the sound of the shooting was heard by all the residents of the area?" he asked. Ayoub was the eighth Egyptian Coptic Christian to be murdered in the town this year. The seven others were killed between Jan. 30 and Feb. 23. After killing two Christians, the attackers were reportedly seen ticking off the names of the victims from a hit list. The ISIS-affiliated media outlet al-Nabaa recently published an interview with an alleged militant leader who told Egyptian Muslims to avoid police and army headquarters, checkpoints as well as Christian places of worship. The leader warned that the places he mentioned were the terror group's targets and that militants will destroy them at any time. The Emily and Jerry Spiegel Collection After more than 100 Post-War and Contemporary works owned by the visionary New York collectors were auctioned in May, photographs by leading artists such as Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Paul Outerbridge, Paul Strand and Diane Arbus are to be offered in October Internationally recognised as pre-eminent collectors of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Emily and Jerry Spiegel devoted the last 30 years of their lives to patronage of the arts. Their collection of paintings, sculpture and photography comprises more than 100 works and was represented throughout Christies Evening and Day Sales of Post-War and Contemporary Art in May, and now in a dedicated October Photographs Auction in New York. From humble origins working on his uncles farm, Jerry Spiegel rose to become one of Long Islands most enterprising real estate developers. When the Spiegels started collecting in the 1980s, they began to befriend many of the artists they collected. In addition to being early champions of artists such as Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Christopher Wool and Anselm Kiefer, the Spiegels amassed works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Man Ray, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Francis Picabia. My mothers art journey was extraordinary, says the couples daughter, Pamela Sanders, a noted collector in her own right. Her deep passion for the works she collected and the artists she befriended culminated in a highly cohesive collection of American and European fine art. The joy my mother experienced in the art world every day of her life, and her curiosity about culture, prevailed until her last days. In addition to their Modern and Contemporary holdings, the collectors built an important collection of photographs, which included prime examples by Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Paul Outerbridge, Paul Strand and Diane Arbus. The Spiegels bought Wool, Sherman, Koons, Polke and Kiefer when very few collectors had the guts to do so, and acquired works that were considered incredibly radical and fierce at the time, says Alex Rotter, Chairman of Post-War & Contemporary Art. The Spiegels became unflagging supporters of museums and cultural institutions in New York, Long Island, and beyond. They were particularly ardent supporters of the Museum of Modern Art, where Mrs. Spiegel served as a trustee and member of the Painting and Sculpture Committee. The Spiegels and their eponymous foundation underwrote a range of exhibitions and donated a number of important works that now feature prominently in MoMAs permanent collection. In 2001, the collectors gifted Warhols Silver Double Elvis (1963) in honour of their friend Kirk Varnedoe, who was chief curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA from 1988 to 2001. Open a larger version of this image Robert Mapplethorpe, Emily and Jerry Spiegel, 1988. The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Courtesy Art + Commerce Pamela Sanders oversaw the 2010 donation of her parents sizeable library of fine art books several of which were given directly by artists to the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. My parents vision and generosity to artists and institutions have served as powerful examples of the importance of the need for collectors to give back to the art world, she says. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate As the national conversation about airline treatment of travelers reaches a fever pitch (cough, United, cough) J.D. Power has released its annual customer service satisfaction survey for North American carriers. There is good news for Texas-based Southwest Airlines, which earned top marks as a low-cost carrier. The company was able to overtake JetBlue, which has long been the top dog in that category. PREVIOUS: Southwest Airlines to give employees $586 million in profit-share bonuses According to the report, Southwest scored 807 points on the 1,000-point scale, up 18 points from last year. That was good enough to be the top-rated airline across the board. JetBlue scored 803 points. Southwest and JetBlue were followed by WestJet and Frontier Airlines. Among so-called traditional carriers, Alaska Airlines snagged the top spot for the 10th year in a row. That airline scored 765 points among consumers, good enough for a top-ranking in that category. Alaska Airlines was followed up by Delta, American, United and Air Canada. According to the report, overall satisfaction with the airline industry is riding high and has been on the upswing since 2013. Lower costs, fewer problems with flights and better crews are said to be pushing satisfaction numbers higher and higher. UPDATES COMING: Southwest braces for upgrade of 30-year-old reservations system In its biggest technology update ever, Southwest is spending $500 million to move from a 30-year-old reservation system. Southwest's update is particularly important as the carrier has expanded to international markets and become the biggest U.S. airline by domestic passengers. Most travelers these days use social media to voice their displeasure with airlines. At least 29 percent of those polled by J.D. Power said that they use Twitter or Facebook to comment on their experiences with airlines. J.D. Power has conducted this airline study for 13 years. It grades customer satisfaction based on cost and fees, in-flight amenities, the quality of aircraft, checking in, boarding and deplaning process, baggage issues, the temperament of the flight crew and how easy the reservation process is. The study was conducted between April 2016 and March 2017. Coding Dojo, a computer programing school, released a list identifying the most in-demand programming languages by city and the company advertising the most job openings for the top language. RELATED: Upstart offers loans for coding boot camps Houston's top five programming languages are JavaScript/MEAN stack and JP Morgan Chase, Java, Python, C# and PHP, according to the list. Java, JavaScript/MEAN stack and Python were in high demand in all locations surveyed while Ruby on Rails made it in the top five in only two locations, San Jose and Atlanta. San Jose was also the only location where C# did not rank in the top five, attributed to Apple's presence there. C# was developed by Microsoft. Coding Dojo researched 11 locations including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Jose, Washington D.C., Houston, Boston, Atlanta and Seattle. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two San Antonio employers USAA and H-E-B are among Forbes magazines 2017 Americas Best Employers list released Tuesday. USAA was the fifth-best employer in the nation for the second year in a row while H-E-B ranked No. 41 for this year, according to Forbes. USAA has 30,000 employees worldwide, with about 18,000 working in the financial giants headquarters in San Antonio. Click through the slideshow above to view the 40 best employers in Texas in 2017. H-E-B improved its ranking to No. 41 from No. 67 in 2016. H-E-B employs more than 100,000 workers in Texas and Mexico, with about 20,000 workers in San Antonio. Four Texas employers, including USAA, are among the top 10 companies on the Forbes list. Houstons Memorial Hermann Health System is ranked No. 4., Houston-based MD Anderson Cancer Center is No. 6, and the City of Austin is No. 9. A total of 42 Texas companies are named. RELATED: Forbes: Texas billionaires total 50, San Antonio 4 Forbes worked with research firm Statista to compile its rankings. Statista surveyed 30,000 American workers to gather their opinions of their employers. On a scale of zero to 10, it asked how likely they were to recommend their organization to friends or family. Statista also asked employees to recommend other companies outside of their own. Those ratings also informed the ranking, but to a lesser degree. In March, Fortune magazine published its 2017 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. USAA was ranked No. 35 on that list. Other San Antonio employers on Fortunes list are NuStar Energy and Rackspace Hosting. dhendricks@express-news.net Udacity and Google continue to strengthen a joint commitment to providing new scholarship opportunities to deserving communities across the globe. Today we are very pleased to announce a brand-new initiative: 500 scholarships for aspiring Android Developers in Indonesia to take our Android Fast Track program! The Past The seeds for this new scholarship offering were first planted in February of 2016, when Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Silicon Valley and met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai. To coincide with this important visit, Google announced a plan to help train 100,000 Indonesian mobile developers by 2020. The energy behind that effort to contribute to a digitized Indonesia is now helping to power this new scholarship initiative, and all at Udacity are extremely excited to bring 500 Indonesian students into our classroom, and to support them as they advance their Android Development skills. Apply for a scholarship today, applications close May 31! The Present Indonesia boasts a huge population of smartphone users, and a significant majority of internet users in Indonesia use their smartphones to get online. Given that Android has a really significant presence in Indonesiaand is projected to keep rising in popularityit is abundantly clear that getting on track now for a career in Android development is an excellent move for anyone interested in establishing themselves in Indonesias new mobile-centric economy. The Future At Udacity, our mission is to democratize education. We believe in the power of learning to change lives, and we are committed to removing those barriers that prevent deserving individuals from pursuing transformative opportunities. We are fortunate to be part of a global community of learners, and we are thrilled at the prospect of connecting with the Indonesian developer community through this new offering. As a recent Udacity Android Basics Nanodegree graduate from Indonesia describes, this type of opportunity can be a game changer: Since graduating from the Android Nanodegree, I am more confident as an Android developer. I started accepting several projects and can help build peoples dreams. But the most important thing now is that I believe in, and am ready to work on, building my dreams. M. Yusuf Rahman The Fast Track Program The Associate Android Developer Fast Track program features courses co-created by Google and Udacity, and is built to provide a complete path to Google certification. It teaches students exactly what they need to know to successfully pass the Associate Android Developer Certification Exam, thereby enabling them to demonstrate successful mastery of the core skills required to launch a career in Android Development. This in turn affords graduates of the program a distinct advantage in their job searches. The Scholarship The Indonesia Android Developer Scholarship is designed for intermediate Java developers pursuing Android specialization. If you are an Indonesian resident, have 1-2 years of programming experience, and are looking to take the next step in your career, apply for a scholarship today; applications close May 31. We are very grateful to Google for their continued partnership, and for their global evangelism on behalf of aspiring learners all across the planet. Were excited to welcome 500 new students to Udacity, and we look forward to strengthening our ties to Indonesias dynamic and growing developer community through this exciting new scholarship initiative. April registered another boost in Houston-area home sales and prices as more properties hit the market during what has been a strong spring selling season. Buyers closed on 6,583 single-family homes last month, a 3.1 percent increase over the same period last year, at a median price of $228,000, a 4.6 percent increase over April 2016, the Houston Association of Realtors reported Wednesday. In many low-wage industries, it's all too easy for employers to short workers on the wages they're owed either because it's done in a way that employees don't notice, or they need the job too much to protest. How much this costs workers is difficult to pinpoint. But by one estimation, workers in the 10 largest states alone lose out on billions, according to a new report from the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. To put numbers on the phenomenon of "wage theft" a broad term for practices such as not paying proper overtime, requiring work off the clock, denying legally required meal breaks, and misclassifying workers as independent contractors the left-leaning think tank looked at data from a monthly Census Bureau survey that asks people how much money they make. The findings were striking. On average between 2013 and 2015, in the 10 largest states, 4.1 percent of respondents report that their hourly rate is less than the minimum wage in their state, which researchers concluded must constitute a violation of the law. That's about $8 billion stolen from 2.4 million people annually. (Some workers are exempt from the minimum wage, such as some students and people with disabilities; this study includes only those to whom the minimum wage applies.) Among the 10 largest states, Texas ranked near the bottom on the prevalence of wage theft, with just 2.7 percent of minimum wage-eligible workers, or 265,000, getting paid less than they should. That compares to 7.3 percent of workers in Florida. Those affected in Texas, however, lost the most money: $85 per week, compared to $64 per week on average across the 10 largest states. So, fewer people were shortchanged in Texas as a percentage of the population, but each worker lost more money. Related: What's really driving the construction worker crunch? Why could that be happening? Dave Cooper, the EPI researcher who wrote the report, thinks it may have to do with lack of enforcement. Although the Texas legislature increased penalties for wage theft in 2011, the Texas Workforce Commission, which handles those claims, has little power to investigate them or punish violators. "There's reason to think that thieving employers in Texas probably are not that worried that they'll ever be caught," Cooper says, "and even if they are, the penalty is just a slap on the wrist." Texas also has a larger share of undocumented immigrants, who are particularly vulnerable to wage theft, since speaking up could put them at risk of deportation. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Labor had stepped up investigations and prosecution of wage violations, recovering tens of millions of dollars for workers. It's unclear whether President Trump's more employer-friendly administration will continue those efforts. The EPI report also comes as activists highlight poor working conditions across the South. On Tuesday, the Austin-based Workers Defense Project and researchers at the University of Chicago released an exhaustive report on workplace injuries, lack of benefits, and low wages for construction workers in Texas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Houston topped the list for heat-related illnesses, which strike one in six construction workers, according to surveys. In 2017, looking back to the eve of Barack Obama's election to the White House can bring about a complex brew of emotions and thoughts. But for all the mental gymnastics it might take to imagine the country in 2008, at a time when that year feels so recent and yet so long ago, the election of the first African-American president still has, for many, a simple and powerful resonance. That's the way playwright Melda Beaty thinks about her play, "Front Porch Society," which receives a world premiere at the Ensemble Theatre Thursday evening and runs through June 4. "It's going to take us back to that day and what it meant for these characters, what it meant for an older generation," she says. More Information 'Front Porch Society' When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through June 4 Where: Ensemble Theatre, 3535 Main Tickets: $30-$44; 713-520-0055, ensemblehouston.com. See More Collapse Though Beaty began writing the play in 2010, her idea about what the presidential election in 2008 meant for the African-American community hasn't changed. To her, "Front Porch Society" isn't just about a group of older women living in the Mississippi Delta and what they say the night before Obama is elected. It's about what it meant for African-Americans to see someone who looked like them rise to the most powerful post in the nation. "My impetus was seeing how he was able to rally and motivate the oldest generation," Beaty says. "I saw this woman, close to her 90s, in a wheelchair at inauguration. She talked about how important this was to her. What does it mean for older black people to live to see this? For people who grew up during Jim Crow, who had to drink in separate water fountains?" In other words, Beaty says, that was a moment in history that nothing, and no one, can take away from the community. Beaty saw with her own eyes the impact of Obama's election, after all. Her father grew up in poor, rural Mississippi in a small town much like the one in "Front Porch Society." Faced with racism, he fled to Chicago as part of the Great Migration. He gave Beaty a sense of the importance of education, hard work mixed in with a good dose of skepticism - telling her that they still lived in a white world, where white people made the decisions. So when the Obamas came to prominence in 2007 and 2008, Beaty saw a reason to, for the first time in her life, get invested in politics. "Michelle was familiar to us," Beaty says. "She came from the same street we did, she stayed in this area, her parents were like my parents. I felt more included." Eileen Morris, artistic director of the Ensemble Theatre and the director for "Front Porch Society," says the play also speaks to today, and the age of Trump. "We were first introduced to the play three or four years ago, not realizing how timely, both with Obama not in office anymore and with the current administration, it would be," Morris says. "It's really important now to value the contributions made by the Obama administration and how people feel about him being elected." In other words, Morris says, the central topic to "Front Porch Society" isn't any partisan or political matter, but one of humanity and community. For Morris, 2008 was a moment of black pride in a country that hasn't valued that kind of pride. Going to Catholic school as a child, she was never taught black history, though Morris' parents - her mother had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. - made her celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day by staying home and researching black history, even before schools had an MLK holiday. That sense of identity led Morris to pursue a career informed by the passion of telling the story of black pride. It's the same sense that informs her work at the oldest African-American theater company in the Southwest and her perspective as director of Beaty's play. "I want people to know there is a richness to black culture. Because if we're not doing this, who's going to do it?" Morris says. "That's the parallel with this play: These characters are proud because now they have someone who looks like them and comes from a background like them." But the meaning behind Obama stretches beyond feeling good, say Beaty and Morris. It's also about being alive. The protagonist of the play is a cynical woman who's doubtful of the messages of hope and change that the younger generation is sold on. But that's because her son was the victim of a murder that, today, can be seen for its similarity to that of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others who are symbols of the Black Lives Matter movement. "It seems very timely," Beaty says Morris agrees, adding that even if 2008 was a specific moment, the messages of "Front Porch Society," which harken to the importance of pride and community, are universal. They're messages that even a drastically different administration in 2017 can't change. "I still feel like this is my country. I'll be damned if I'll let someone take it away," Morris says. "The play brought us together. It's about human beings coming together and having one experience." A press conference will be held at 1 pm Wednesday in front of the Houston Police Department's headquarters building at 1200 Travis about a civil rights lawsuits filed by a former HPD jail inmate against the city and a former jailer. The lawsuit, filed by Akren Azzam, 24, names the City of Houston and former jailer Lasswon Shannon as defendants. I will get to the strawberries. But first, a theory of international trade that was born exactly two centuries ago this year. British economist David Ricardo outlined it, based on the notion of comparative advantage. The idea seems simple: each country does something, maybe many somethings, relatively well, and they can therefore specialize and trade with each other to their mutual benefit. Economics has since gone well beyond Ricardo's analysis. But it remains instructive when it comes to agricultural products. That brings me to strawberries. Everyone loves strawberries. They are sweet, they go well on ice cream and sponge cake, and, when covered in chocolate, they are a perennial favorite on Valentine's Day. There is even a website "strawberries.for.strawberry.lovers.com." The red fruit, a commercial hybrid of the genus frageria, is primarily produced for U.S. markets in two states, California and Florida. In my part of the country, the Southern California coast, the strawberry fields seem to stretch forever, running inland from the ocean onto the Oxnard Plain. As an economist, I look at the fields and think, "There is Ricardo's comparative advantage." Southern California has a mild climate, moist sea breezes and fertile soil: perfect for strawberry production. The climate that makes Ventura County, California, ideal strawberry territory does not end at the Mexican border (and that won't change even with a big beautiful wall). On the Baja California Coast near San Quintin, you also find strawberries. With the expansion of cultivation in Baja, Guanajuato and Michoacan, states, Mexican production and Mexican exports have been increasing in recent years. One reason is the climate allows for Mexican produce, like its Californian counterpart, to mature through the winter. The consequence of being blessed with good soil and weather for strawberries is that both countries are major exporters of the crop. According to the California Strawberry Export Report, farmers in the Golden State exported about $400 million of fresh and frozen strawberries in 2016. Mexico exported approximately the same amount as California. Here's where things get interesting. Mexican exports tend to be to the United States; the United States exports to Canada and other countries. Why does the United States both export and import strawberries? One reason is the different harvesting season in Mexico, and the perishability of fresh berries. David Maung/Bloomberg But there's another defining quality of strawberries: they are hard to harvest. Any hiker who has come across the wild version knows you have to stoop down and remove each fruit one by one. Machines, now used to pick some other crops, would damage the delicate berry and fail to separate ripe from budding fruits. So it is up to people, typically immigrants, to pick strawberries. According to the Los Angeles Times, a good strawberry picker in Southern California can earn $150 per day during the harvest season. That translates to $18.75 per hour, well above California's current $10 per hour minimum wage. According to the California Legislative Analyst's Office, between 25 and 30 percent of all non-strawberry pickers in the same region earn less than $12.50 per hour. So why are these less well-paid folks not clamoring for jobs in the strawberry fields? They have good reasons. First, strawberry picking is seasonal labor and must be pieced together with other fieldwork, sometimes involving travel to nearby counties. Second, and more important, it is back-breaking work. So the higher wages earned by today's strawberry pickers are not nearly high enough to attract other low-income earners. Down in Baja, strawberry harvest workersno surprisemake much less than they do in Southern California. Even after a successful labor action last year, strawberry pickers' wages are a little less than 200 pesos, or about $11 USD, per day. So if labor is cheaper in Mexico, why doesn't more of the strawberry business move south across the border? Soil and climate quality in California are a factor. And the labor price differential isn't yet so much as to force the move south. Strawberry farms here can still find people to work in the fields. But there is an issue: The people willing to pick strawberries in Ventura County for $18.75 per hour are not Americans. They are Mexicans willing to brave the hazards of slipping across the border and living in the United States undocumented. But the United States is changing. And so the delicate balance that allows both Southern Californian and Mexican strawberry operations to prosper is under pressure. The issue? The Trump Administration has vowed to deport undocumented residents. And where more effectively to deploy the limited resources of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) than where there is a concentration of the undocumented: in the strawberry fields? Whatever one thinks of Trump's change in policy, it's inarguable that it will impact both California and the U.S. economy. Russell Yip/The Chronicle The immediate impact of deportations will be a shortage of labor. This is what was experienced in Georgia when an employer verification law went into effect in 2012. According to separate analyses by Forbes and NPR, farmers left up to 30 percent of peaches and blueberries unpicked in the orchards; farmers also engaged in a failed attempt to enlist prison labor to replace what was estimated to be up to 11,000 fewer agricultural workers. So, California and the United States will have fewer strawberries picked and the berries in the market will command higher prices. But this is just the initial impact. In the longer run, farmers will either pay pickers more, perhaps much more, or they will plant something else, specifically crops like wheat and corn that can be harvested by machines, and these mean even fewer strawberries and even higher prices. But that is not the end of the story. The same people who have been picking strawberries up and down the California Coast will still be picking our strawberries. They just will be doing it south of the border. Let's summarize the costs and benefits. The shift of the strawberry business further south should be a real boon to Mexican agriculture, food processing and trucking. For the agricultural sector here in the United States, profits will be lower as land ideally suited for strawberries will be used to grow feed corn. There also will be less demand for goods and services in the U.S. communities now serving the undocumented, and the juicy red fruit will take more of our personal budgets at the checkout stand. Finally, there is the unintended consequence of a larger trade deficit. President Trump campaigned on closing the deficit with Mexico. The deportation policy moves in the other direction as more profits from the strawberry trade accrue to Mexican land barons rather than California farmers. It is a policy of "choose your poison." You can engage in mass deportations with consequent lower income for American farmers and their Mexican farm workers, and increase the trade deficit. Or you can forego mass deportations, thereby increasing the income of American farmers and their Mexican farm workers, and keep the trade deficit with Mexico no greater than it is today. But you can't do both. If you're willing to think beyond deportations, you'll find other options. One option would be to normalize the status of undocumented farm workers, perhaps via a new version of the bracero program of 1942 to 1964 that permitted U.S. farmers to recruit temporary agricultural help from Mexico. If lessons from that program's history were kept in mind, a new guest-worker regime could correct the flaws of the previous program. It also would have the side benefits of reducing illegal border crossingsU.S. farms would not be providing jobs to newly arrived undocumented immigrantsand this would allow undocumented immigrants already here to come out of the shadows. Or there might be something akin to the 1981 Voluntary Export Restraint (VER) program between the United States and Japan that established a quota on Japanese exports of cars to the United States. A VER for strawberries from Mexico would take care of the trade deficit consequence of deportations, through limits on Mexican strawberry imports. But these limits on imports of Mexican strawberries would exacerbate the shortage of strawberries in our supermarkets and would make St. Valentine's Day even more expensive. And this is just strawberries. In 2015 Mexico exported almost $22 billion of agricultural produce to the United States. Strawberries are just the topping on the iceberg. *** Jerry Nickelsburg, an economist at UCLA Anderson School of Management, writes the Pacific Economist column. He would love to hear from you at Jerry.Nickelsburg@Anderson.UCLA.edu or via Twitter @jnickelsburg. This essay was is part of a series produced by the UCLA Anderson School of Management and Zocalo Public Square. Would you like to tip or recommend something to blogger/curator Olivia P. Tallet? So much has changed in the evolution of a casual restaurant concept that chef Ryan Hildebrand announced about four years ago. The culinary focus has been revised. The name has been modified. The location has shifted. And along that long path to its opening, Hildebrand encountered a disappointing roadblock: the closing of his Triniti restaurant. But there has been one constant in the journey to open FM Kitchen and Bar: a desire for nostalgic simplicity suggested by the roadside restaurants and experiences of rural farm to market roads. The focus on those Texan-y memories evocative of the days when life was less complicated and the joys of an honest burger and thick, frosty milkshake were profound are evident in Hildebrand's new project opening May 15. FM Kitchen and Bar, 1112 Shepherd, has been designed to revive memories of younger days when the backroads outside of metropolis could take you anywhere. "It's definitely a nostalgic thing, definitely a Texan thing," Hildebrand said of FM's deliberate triggers. And those provocations are suggested throughout the sprawling restaurant and its welcoming back yard where guests can play games and listen to live, local bands. There are design details such as front bumpers and grills of old pickup trucks and faded beer signs that drive home the FM experience. And the menu, especially, speaks to the hungry Texas heart: Frito pie, chicken fried steak, fried shrimp and hush puppies, tots, potato salad, fried chicken, and, of course, a homespun cheeseburger. Taken together can be seen as an antidote to the expensive, high-flying culinary offerings readily available in Gotham; a salve, if you will, for the sometimes wearying foodie desires for new flavors and trendy experiences. FM is designed to be the antithesis: a familiar repository of Southern comforts. The new name (its previous incarnation was FM Burger) suggest that Hildebrand's project wants to be more than a casual burger joint in a town brimming with casual burger options. "It's expanded more in scope since the initial concept," Hildebrand said. Indeed, FM feels more multi-layered in its approach. There is an embracing of the local graffiti and street arts scene courtesy of a collaboration with artist Daniel Anguilu who has painted a large-scale mural on a wall facing FM's patio. Anguilu, the first artist to showcase his work at FM, will work with the restaurant to curate other local artists' presentations at the restaurant. FM also is partnering with Wonky Power music collective to present local bands that will play in the patio, which Hildebrand likens to an urban "park." "Where else can you come out to a park, eat a burger and hear a band in the middle of the Washington Corridor?" Hildebrand said. "It's a break from the city." In the city, though. And that means a level of sophistication that the fine-dining chef is applying to the menu itself a document that has changed over the years. Where once it was truly burger focused, the menu at FM now is broader in its Texas scope while also mindful of the flavors Houston holds dear. The latter is underscored by the lineup of appetizers: shrimp and avocado campechana, Frito pie, chips and salsa/guacamole, fried mozzarella and pickles, and sweet or hot chicken wings. A Cobb or Caesar for the salad boys and girls. The entree offers include chicken fried steak, fried shrimp and hush puppies with remoulade and tartar sauce, a half rack of smoked ribs, fried chicken, lemon-thyme brick chicken with roasted garlic and gravy, and Salisbury pork chops with mushrooms and onion gravy. On the side you'll find fries and tots, cole slaw, mashed potatoes, potato salad, smothered green beans and broccoli and onions. And for dessert: bread pudding, loaded shakes, and cake from Jodycakes (local baker wiz Jody Stevens). Hildebrand is already planning to expand the menu after the restaurant gets its bearings. He wants to add dishes such as smoked brisket, smoked chicken tortilla soup, and a Vietnamese-inspired meat pie using smoked brisket burnt ends. Inside, there's a retro garage-station vibe courtesy of Erin Hicks, who had architect Jim Herd's clean, spare, heavily-windowed building design to work with. Herd installed artistic touches such as painted bricks on the patio a nod to the reputation the building had as being receptive to street art when it was the former Alpha Graphics. Drinkers will enjoy the 23 beers on tap with additional taps for cold brew coffee and five cocktails. The fairly-priced wine selections are available at $7 a glass and $25 per bottle. Cute touch: instead of serving a bucket of beers, the bar will serve them in mini plastic coolers. And that's just another little touch that should get Houston excited to explore this taste of country roads. FM Kitchen and Bar, 1112 Shepherd, 832-804-6006; fmkitchenandbar. Opens to the public May 15 with grand opening festivities May 19-20. Initially will serve lunch and dinner; Saturday and Sunday brunch is expected a couple of weeks. In Houston, a growing number of celebrated chefs are finding new life in the bar menu. That means they're creating food items specifically for the bar - not offered in the main dining room - or dishes that are available only during happy-hour times and at happy-hour prices. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The city of Pasadena, founded just east of Houston in 1893, has a lengthy and colorful history of industry, big personalities and small town values. Now the city is in for a big change as voters choose a successor for longtime Mayor Johnny Isbell, a powerful politician by any definition in the Houston area. TAKE THE QUIZ: How well do you know the Houston suburbs? Isbell was first elected mayor in 1981, stunning the city's political establishment by beating incumbent Jim Clark in a landslide victory. Isbell was known as a businessman up to that point and not a politician, but over the course of the next several decades he seemed to take to the gig like a duck to water. Read more about Isbells conflicting, varied legacy in Mark Collette's profile on HoustonChronicle.com. On Saturday night, City Councilman Jeff Wagner, who is considered an Isbell ally, led the field of seven candidates. The next highest vote-getter was John Moon, Jr., a San Jacinto College trustee. Wagner and Moon will face each other in a runoff election tentatively scheduled for June 10. Named after Pasadena, California for its nearly equal amounts lush greenery, the city was a farming community in the beginning. Clara Barton donated a million strawberry plants to Gulf Coast farmers after the deadly 1900 hurricane and the city became a strawberry-growing hub. DARK DAYS: The 20 worst days in Houston's history In just two weeks the city will hold its annual Pasadena Strawberry Festival, where they build the worlds largest strawberry shortcake. It usually sells quickly. The first refineries were built in the 1920s, as nearby Deer Park, La Porte and Baytown began to blossom as refining hubs. By the 1930s ship-channel industries transformed the economy, leading to a new level of growth. According to the Texas State Historical Commission, the city had a population of 3,436 in 1940, but by the post-war boom of 1950 there were 22,483 citizens. No history of Pasadena would be complete without a mention of Gilleys Club. The world-famous bar and honky tonk became an icon shortly after it opened in 1971. The collection of photos in the slideshow above comes from the extensive collection of the Pomeroy family that was donated to the Heritage Park and Museum. JUST DOWN THE ROAD: Check out historic photos of Deer Park, the birthplace of Texas The family's first generation, led by John Edward and Gertrude Lucinda McMasters Pomeroy, built the city's first water wells, which kept it from being incorporated by the city of Houston. At one point, the elder Pomeroy used his own money for the project as the citys banks were struggling. The family plays a big part in historical preservation and education in Pasadena. The family homestead at 204 S. Main has been restored for use as a museum property. Click through the slideshow above to see how much the city of Pasadena has grown... This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It's been 40 years since 23-year-old Vietnam War veteran Joe Campos Torres' body was found washed up on the banks of the Buffalo Bayou. On May 5, 1977, Campos Torres, was arrested at a bar for disorderly conduct. Instead of being taken to jail, police took Campos Torres to "The Hole," an isolated area behind a warehouse along Buffalo Bayou where Houston Police Department officers could write reports, question suspects and sleep. Campos Torres was beaten by six officers for hours before they took him to the city jail. Once there, officials refused to book him because of the extent of his injuries, and ordered that he be admitted to a hospital. The six arresting officers instead took him, once again, to The Hole. LOOKING BACK: Witnesses reflect on LA's Rodney King riot 25 years later Following another beating, Campos Torres was pushed off the raised platform and fell 20 feet into the Bayou, where his body was found three days later. "We never got justice," his sister Sandra Torres told the Houston Chronicle in 2011. "All those cops, they just got a slap on the wrist, and you know what? Where's my brother? He's gone. The cops got to go home to their families while he was floating in the water for three days." Of the six, initially only officers Terry Denson and Steven Orlando were charged with murder. An all-white jury found them guilty of negligent homicidea misdemeanorand sentenced the officers to a year's probation and a $1 fine. Houston's Chicano community found the fine especially hard to swallow, with chants of "A Chicano's life is only worth a dollar," reverberating through the neighborhood and throughout the country's Mexican-American communities. The officers were eventually sentenced to nine months in prison, but tensions simmered for a year until they boiled over on the anniversary of Campos Torres' death. In 1978, the Cinco de Mayo celebrations at Moody Park erupted into riots. Police attempts to break up the crowd were met with waves of retaliation by the attendees. WHERE ARE THEY NOW: A look at prominent figures in the Rodney King riots "What happened was when the police came in to arrest some people, and actually took somebody, people said 'No,'" then-rookie cop Harold Barthe told Houston Public Media in 2008. "'You're not going to take him and do what you did to Joe Campos Torres." "People rose-up and started throwing rocks and bottles at the police, overturning police cars and shouting 'Justice for Joe Torres' and 'Viva Joe Torres,'" Barthe said. "The community had this insurrection in the face of the brutality of the Houston Police Department," Carlos Calbillo, a community historian and filmmaker who made a documentary about the Torres case, told the Houston Chronicle in 2011. More than 40 people were arrested during the riots, which became nationwide news and led to the creation of HPD's internal affairs department. Today, Campos Torres' family is working to erect an official marker to commemorate his death and the riots. "There has never been anything to mark (Torres' death) in a positive way," Torres' nephew Richard Molina, told the Houston Chronicle in 2014. "No parade, no day of remembrance. It's never had its own day, but is definitely something that should be remembered, a lesson of Houston history and among Mexican-Americans." Legal notices 1) The material on this blog has been created by W. Blake Gray, is protected under US copyright law and cannot be used without his permission. 2) To the FTC: In the course of my work, I accept free samples, meals and other considerations. I do not trade positive reviews or coverage for money or any financial considerations, unlike certain famous print publications which have for-profit wine clubs but, because they are not classified as "bloggers," are not required by the FTC to post a notice like this. It starts with a 32-once mason jar that is rimmed with frosting and sprinkles and filled with a vanilla milkshake, but that's not where Pasadena's Brain Freeze experience stops. Gummy stars, gummy frogs, sour punch straws, lollipops, an ice cream sandwich, a strawberry ice cream bar and a mountain of cotton candy round out the sweet shop's signature drink The Whole Shebang a $15 rainbow-colored confection that stands almost two feet tall. It's Brain Freeze's best seller, with wait lines often exceeding more than 20 minutes, Brain Freeze manager Lilia Martinez said. But they didn't always make monstrous treats. In fact, Martinez said the business had humble beginnings as a regular snow cone shop in a small building in Pasadena. "We started out small about five years ago," said Martinez. "It was just a snow cone shop where we sold regular snow cones they were good snow cones, but they didn't have all the extra things we put on them now, but we were slow. Business wasn't really picking up so we thought, 'We need to do something.'" More Information See More Collapse That's when the snow cones started getting bigger. "First we started adding gummies," said Martinez. "We started putting more into our menu. By the third year we were adding fruit kabobs to our drinks." The sweets, along with their architecture, snowballed into the byzantine desserts they are today. Martinez feels that it's no coincidence that the expanding menu and size of their offerings seems to coincide with the growth in business for Brain Freeze. "What's interesting to me," she said, "is that a lot of our customers don't come from Pasadena. We'll tell people that there's a 20-minute wait and they'll tell us, 'that's ok we came from an hour away so we're waiting'." Social media, she said, has been her biggest ally. "We've noticed that most people hear about us from Facebook and Instagram," she said. "What we have is a lot of word-of-mouth business, which is fantastic." Social media was exactly brought Reyna Sanchez and her family in from Crosby May 3, after seeing some Candy Land-inspired concoctions on Instagram. "We like fun drinks," she said. "When we saw that they had different kinds, different flavors with the candy all mixed in we had to come. It makes you want to try all of them." The draw was similar for Jorge Gaytan, who was at Brain Freeze with his sister and nephew. "This is my first time here," Gaytan said. "We read about it on Facebook and wanted to check it out just reading the menu makes your mouth water." Gaytan and his family drove from Memorial City in Houston a 40 minute drive with the specific plan of visiting the local confectioner's. "We don't have anything like this where we live," he said, "so making the drive was worth it. We wanted to try it out." But it's not all sweets at Brain Freeze. A medley of hot Cheetos, pickles and Valentina hot sauce, which is a menu item Martinez calls Cheekles, is another big seller for the business. "We use Valentina hot sauce. There's a big difference between that and tabasco it's a Mexican hot sauce and the flavor is different that was an important choice for us," she said. They also have a pickle juice snow cone sprinkled with hot Cheetos. "It sounds like a weird combination but it tastes really good. It's for wild people," Martinez laughed. "You have to go to the wild side for that one." There are also healthy options at Brain Freeze. "Not everyone can eat a big dessert or drink a milkshake with cotton candy," she said. "People jokingly give us a hard time, but we have carrot juice, fresh fruit, orange juice a lot of healthy options for people who want to enjoy the shop but can't eat too much sugar." Brain Freeze is closed for a few months over the winter, typically from October until March. "The fruit isn't as sweet then and we want to make sure that we're providing the best for our customers." Currently, the shop is open from noon until 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and are closed on Sunday. The business accepts cash only and is located at 2716 Preston Avenue in Pasadena. The 4-year-old boy missing Tuesday afternoon in southeast Houston has been found safe, according to television reports. The boy identified as Jeremiah Green was last seen around 3:25 p.m. in the 6200 block of Waltrip Street, according to KPRC. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Israel Santana has spent the past 25 years wanting to personally administer a lethal injection to Robert James Campbell. On Wednesday, Santana's eyes welled up with tears as he agreed with prosecutors that Campbell would be spared from execution because of his low IQ. "As much as I would love to push the button myself to put Robert Campbell to death, we forgive him," Santana told reporters at a mid-day press conference. "My prayers are that he spends the rest of his life behind bars." Campbell was convicted of capital murder in the 1991 kidnapping, rape and murder of Santana's cousin, Alexandra Rendon, and sentenced to die by lethal injection. E. Joseph Deering But on Wednesday, the Texas Attorney General's Office concluded that Campbell should get a new determination of punishment because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that changed the way Texas assesses intellectual disability to determine if a person should live or die. LETHAL INJECTION: Texas sues FDA to get access to execution drug shipment Because of that attorney general's decision, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said Wednesday she will not seek the death penalty, allowing Campbell to return to a Harris County courtroom in the coming weeks to be sentenced to life in prison without a trial. Ogg said she will try to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. He will immediately be eligible for parole, since he has served more than 24 years and life without parole was not an option when he was sentenced in 1991. "Campbell's crimes were extraordinarily heinous and vile," Ogg said. "His acts were among the worst of the worst." In January 1991, while on parole for robbery, Campbell abducted Rendon, a bank teller, from a Houston gas station, raped and killed her. He later gave away her clothing and jewelry as presents. Evidence presented during his trial showed that he also committed another kidnapping and robbery at gunpoint around the time he killed Rendon. Ogg said the DA's office will file formal protests at all of Campbell's future parole reviews reminding officials of his horrific past. "In unison with his victims and their families, we will do everything we can to see that he serves every second of his life sentence," Ogg said. LONG WAIT: 13 percent of Texas death row inmates wait 2 decades-plus Defense attorneys for Campbell applauded officials for ending the legal battle to keep him on death row. "On behalf of Robert's legal team, I want to say that we are grateful that Robert Campbell's life will be spared as a result of the attorney general's decision to conclude this litigation," said Rob Owen, of Northwestern University School of Law, on behalf of Campbell's legal team. "Given the overwhelming evidence of Mr. Campbell's intellectual disability, it was only a matter of time until the courts reached the same conclusion, and further delay would not have served anyone's interests," Owen said. He extended his condolences to the victim's family on behalf of the defense team, which includes Burke Butler and Callie Heller of the Powell Project and Raoul Schonemann of the Capital Punishment Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. "We hope that the family and loved ones of Alexandra Rendon can take some comfort in having this matter finally resolved," he said, "and we are profoundly sorry for their terrible loss." Scroll through the gallery above to see the longest-serving inmates on death row in Texas This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Houston is showing off why its nickname is Space City. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently arrived in Houston to undergo tests at the Johnson Space Center. The 6.8 ton orbiting observatory is the spiritual and scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that launched 27 years ago. Scientists will perform a lengthy 100-day test to see if the telescope can withstand the freezing temperatures found 1 million miles out in space, the telescope's final destination where it will snap images and gather data on the origins of the universe. HYBRID JET: NASA has an ambitious $43 million plan to make electric planes a reality Story continues below... Intriguingly, the cryogenic test will be performed in the same vacuum chambers where the Apollo spacecraft were tested. The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful telescope to ever be constructed, taking more than 20 years and $8.8 billion to complete. The telescope is named after James E. Webb, NASA's second administrator and the man responsible for leading the Apollo space missions that landed the first humans on the moon. REPORT: NASA spent $200 million on spacesuits that aren't ready yet When it finally launches in 2018, the telescope is expected to carry out its mission for 5 to 10 years, where it will teach scientists more about the Big Bang, determine how galaxies evolve, and investigate the potential for life in other solar systems. Click through above to see more images of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. A soldier is warning others after his photos were used to scam more than $130,000 from a Dallas businesswoman on Match.com. The Army reservist, whose identity was not revealed, told WFAA the pictures used in the fake dating profile were taken from a Facebook page his battalion created in 2011 and 2012 to update friends and family. Meet Mitch Grassi, the Pop Star With a Balenciaga Addiction Its an uncharacteristically gray February day in Los Angeles when I meet Mitch Grassi at the Opening Ceremony on La Cienega Boulevard, right next door to a car wash and across the street from the retro diner Norms. He has on a Balenciaga leather-and-shearling aviator-style jacket, worn low and off his shoulders, pulled close like a four-figure security blanket. Combined with his tattered Raf Simons sweatshirt, patchwork denim, and clunky Vetements boots, its a look thats bordering on downright aggressive, especially for laid-back L.A., where he lives when hes not touring and where virtually all the young guys are still wearing a riff on the Scott Disick fuccboi uniform of ripped moto jeans, past-the-ass elongated tee, John Elliottstyle side-zip sweatshirt, and sneakers. I want to look scary, he says while scanning a display of bomber jackets. I dont really know why, but Ive been into that dont talk to me look. I like to be approachable but I also like I like to keep people at arms length. Its an almost laughable notion a celebrity dressing in such a conspicuous manner to repel people. Its a sort of weird duality, he admits when pressed. I want attention, but I dont want you to talk to me. Grassis first impressions of fashion came, fittingly, from the internet, where he encountered pictures of Christian Lacroix shows or vintage Dior on Tumblr. He was in high school, around 17 years old, and the images hinted at a world beyond his own Texan suburb, of a life of beauty and glamour. Grassi is of a generation that has lived only in a post-internet era marketers would call him, somewhat cynically, a digital native and these online discoveries were seminal to him. I was like, Oh, this is amazing, he recalls. The internet was my gateway into the world. It was my way of finding culture. Grassi, now 24, is most recognizable as one of the five members of Pentatonix, the hit a cappella singing group known for covers of popular songs as well as their own music. That makes him unknown to some and, conversely, incredibly famous to others, kind of like a soap-opera star. In case you havent heard of Pentatonix before, consider this: The group spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard 100 at the beginning of the year (dethroning the Weeknd, no less), and they won a Grammy in February their third, more than Lorde or Frank Ocean for Best Country Duo/Group Performance, of Dolly Partons Jolene. They have more than 3.3 million likes on Facebook and the video for their rendition of Leonard Cohens Hallelujah has racked up more than 143 million views since they posted it on YouTube last October. Its no secret that, today, musicians and actors use their image to convey some sort of message, that fashion is just another form of branding. Its the engine behind Zayn Maliks taciturn mystique, Drakes cozy Champagne Papi brio, and the type of Army-surplus-store chic that Kanye West is trying to bottle and sell en masse under the moniker Yeezy. But while most musicians, like Bieber and his ilk, have styles more connected to the easily digestible streetwear attitude, Grassi is more connected to the strangeness of the high-fashion runways of Europe. Hes unafraid to wear things that look awkward or affected, enjoys it, even. This means, however, that while mainstream websites and magazines fawn over the conventional style seen on the Goslings and Clooneys of the world, Grassi remains one of the most forward-thinking dressers on the scene right now a fact thats hiding in plain sight. Grassi is currently in a voracious Balenciaga phase. While the brand, under its designer Demna Gvasalia, has been given critical love, editorial placements in all the right magazines, and is worn by street-style savants, it has not yet made the jump to the celebrity red carpet, especially men. Thats probably because, unlike Dior or Prada, its difficult to wear, conceptual to a fault, almost. Look at Gvasalias first menswear show for the brand, with its comically overblown silhouettes or his follow-up collection which subverted the tropes of the middle-class corporate office uniform. Its high-minded and, frankly, ridiculous. This doesnt bother Grassi. In a recent Instagram post, hes sporting the cobalt, molded off-the-shoulder anorak that set social media afire during the Gvasalias womenswear debut at the brand. At the Grammys, he wore look 25 from Balenciagas spring menswear show, a burgundy velvet suit with cropped trousers and squared-off, Frankenstein-like shoulders. At Paris Fashion Week he wore a coat, another with Stop Making Sense proportions, this time in a rich damask material. I really like the dramatic and exaggerated silhouettes, he explains. Grassi tends to become obsessed with brands, and has cycled through various ones over the years, from preppy J. Crew (a byproduct of dating someone who worked there) to rock-and-roll Saint Laurent to gothic Givenchy. He went through a phase of wearing mostly womens clothing and he still has a penchant for dramatic womenswear from his favorite brands. We all start out really messy, you know, he says, thinking back on some of his sartorial phases. Like the fashion world at large, Grassi likes change, and is prone to discarding and then restocking his wardrobe when a new fixation takes hold right now, he says, theres a lot in storage while hoodies and outerwear are in prime rotation, despite L.A.s mild weather. Im always layered the fuck out and I dont know why, he says. His favorite shops include temples of the avant-garde: Maxfield, Dover Street Market, the online retailer Grailed. Its no doubt an expensive addiction, but when I balk at the fact that hell drop money on clothes but drives a ten-year-old Toyota Yaris, and says he will until it dies, he looks at me, all arched eyebrows, and intones, deadly serious, one word: Priorities. In addition to his Balenciaga, Grassi is also keen on vintage Raf Simons, particularly the fall/winter 2002 Virginia Creeper collection, and Vetements, also designed by Gvasalia. Its very Parisienne, he says of his attraction to the latter, especially its first collection. I mean, it was just like blue jeans and a button-down, but it was very chic, and it was deconstructed, and it was feminine, and I was all about it. On the designers birthday, Grassi posted a picture of a young, forlorn-looking Simons, eyes cast downward, hair shaggy, on his Instagram. The caption read, plainly, sweetly: happy happy birthday @rafsimons. Its easy to understand why Grassi feels a connection to Gvasalia: Theyre both outsiders whove found themselves on the inside, and who bring their fringe perspective to the spotlight. Gvasalia is from Georgia, and started the tongue-in-cheek sportswear line Vetements before being handed the keys to one of the most storied luxury labels in all of fashion. Grassi, meanwhile, is a small-town gay kid a classic black sheep tale if ever there were one whos now a pop star who sells out stadiums, but whos substituted a dark edge for the saccharine sweetness thats usually associated with the genre. He admires people who break rules and are unconcerned with convention: he cites Rihanna and her bottomless love of fashion and category-defying sense of style, as inspiring. For someone looking to assert their identity quickly, Grassi lets his theatrical ensembles say what he cant when hes busy harmonizing. Grassi was raised in Arlington, a small suburb of Dallas, where his mother is a dental technician and his father works in IT. Its here that he and two others Scott Hoying and Kirstie Maldonado formed the founding Pentatonix trio while in high school, where he started out in the class musicals. I had a passion for performing, so I was like, I guess Ill do this, he says of his theatrical endeavors. But as I got older I knew it wasnt really for me anymore. It felt kind of childish, and I wanted to move on to music because that was my main passion. It always has been. queeniebridesmaid red bridesmaid dresses | blue bridesmaid dresses AUSTIN High-profile legislation to raise the age for criminal responsibility in Texas from 17 to 18 was declared dead in the Senate on Tuesday, as leaders rejected House overtures to pass the bill but delay its implementation until 2021. The move follows weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations on a possible compromise to allow for approval by both legislative chambers. BACKED BY FAITH: Faith coalition backs plan to raise age of juvenile offenders from 17 to 18 Senate leaders said the estimated $35 million cost to implement the change and concerns that putting perhaps thousands of additional youths into the state's already overburdened juvenile system led them to opt instead for a two-year study as a prelude to enacting the change when the Legislature returns in 2019. Still at issue: The dozens of bills that have reportedly been stalled in both chambers over the House's raise-the-age bill and could now die if they are not voted on quickly, from "Jenny's Law" to keep crime victims from being jailed to ensure their appearance in court to bail-bond reforms targeting problems in Harris County to a public vote on any plans to redevelop the landmark Astrodome using public funds. "The concept has merit, but the votes are not there on the Senate floor to do it this year," said Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat and longtime chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. "With all due respect to the House, their proposal did not have any funding in the budget they passed, and there was no plan on how to change the juvenile system to successfully accommodate the additional population of 17-year-olds." TEXAS SPORTS: Senate approves new rule on transgender competitors The change long has been sought by youth advocates and criminal justice experts as a way to bring Texas in line with most other states that already have made 18 the age of adulthood in criminal justice. Under the House proposal, prosecutors would still be able to certify youths charged with serious violent crimes as adults, if a judge agreed. The bill by Reps. Harold Dutton and Gene Wu, both Houston Democrats, earlier passed the House by a substantial margin and has been awaiting action in the Senate that now appears will never come. Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, the Senate sponsor of the House-passed bill, said the measure had no chance of passage in the Senate, despite weeks of negotiations. He echoed Whitmire's sentiments that an interim study could jump-start the change to passage into law in two years. Key House supporters on Tuesday reacted with surprise. "The Senate's position on this bill is bizarre," Wu said Tuesday. "The idea that the House did not have a plan is to make it work is wrong, because we have done interim study after interim study that says Texas should change the age to 18. The reality is that the Senate is just now figuring out that they're slow to the train, and that the House is ahead of them." Dutton said Whitmire's comments sound like a change of heart on the issue, after years spent opposing the change. "Sounds like an epiphany to me," he said. WRONG PLACE: Intoxicated woman randomly searches apartment complex for boyfriend, police say For his part, Whitmire insisted while raising the age may have merit, to do so without ensuring that the juvenile system can safely accommodate the additional youths would be irresponsible and could pose a threat to public safety. In addition, the state's juvenile probation system is overloaded and underfunded and does not have the ability now to provide the necessary treatment for the juvenile offenders would would be added to it if the age were raised to 18. "And then you have the conditions in state juvenile facilities that are unsafe and out of control, in my opinion, with no classification system and locations that are mostly remote and rural and lacking in basic programs that the students need to get back on track," Whitmire said. "If you make this change, you have to do it carefully and correctly, come up with a tight and accurate plan," he said. "You can't just change a system and work out the details later." Under the Senate plan, Whitmire said the Senate plans a two-year study to measure what changes are needed in the current juvenile-justice system to make it work, along with the costs. In 2015, more than 22,500 17-year-olds who were arrested who would no longer be treated as adults under the House plan. Texas is one of five states that treats 17-year-olds as adults in criminal cases, with New York having recently raised its age from 16 to 18. A dozen states have left that list in the past 10 years, and statistics show that many of them either overestimated the costs of raising the age or ended up paying nothing for the policy change. Texas' age of adult responsibility has been at 17 since 1913. Juvenile justice advocates of the change have said treating 17-year-olds as juveniles makes sense because their rehabilitation needs are similar to 16-year-olds in the juvenile justice system; the move would keep them safe from exploitation by older prisoners; and the likelihood they won't re-offend would increase. Transferring the thousands of 17-year-old offenders to the juvenile justice system also would put Texas in compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which prohibits all 17-year-old inmates from being within sight and sound of older prisoners. A recently released report by the Raise the Age Coalition, a network of public policy and civil liberties organizations, concludes that fewer 17-year-olds are being arrested, they're mostly committing low-level offenses and would better be served in the juvenile justice system. Whitmire said Tuesday he hopes that the Senate plan for an interim study can break the deadlock on some Senate bills -- including several of his -- that lawmakers in both chambers suspect were being held hostage until Raise the Age was approved by Whitmire's committee and sent to the full Senate for debate. Wu said the House is ready to move the Senate's bills once HB 122 gets a hearing in Whitmire's committee. Not happening, Whitmire said, "since it has no chance of passing the Senate." Traditional public schools on average received about 29 percent more funding per student than charter schools in 14 metropolitan areas, according to a new study released today. On average, charter schools collected about $5,721 less per student than traditional public schools, researchers at the University of Arkansas found. While public schools received about $19,922 on average, charters took in about $14,200 in a weighted average. The amount includes funds that districts get for mandated services, such as transportation. The University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform examined the disparities between federal, state, local and non-public revenue sources in the 2013-14 school year for the study, called Charter School Funding: Inequity in the City . These results should be troubling to anyone who believes that all public school children deserve access to the same amount of funding, regardless of which type of school they choose, said Larry Maloney, a lead researcher, in a press release. The biggest disparities came from local public revenue sources, such as property taxes and bond measures. Charters in eight of the cities examined by researchers collected no money from local revenue sources. The local revenue gap just creates this huge hole, said Patrick Wolf, a distinguished professor in the department and a study author, to Education Week. Authors found disparities in every categoryand each city had a different makeup of their funding sources. The most extreme funding gap exists in Camden, N.J., where researchers found that charters take in 45 percent less funding than traditional public schools, amounting to almost $15,000 per student per year. But the Camden school system is one of New Jerseys so-called Abbott districts, one of 31 urban districts that receive billions more in state education aid each yeara long-running remedy ordered by state courts to address deep funding disparities between poor, urban districts and wealthier communities. While Camden had the biggest disparity in state aid and the second-biggest gap in federal funds, the city was the only location where charters receive more local revenue than traditional district schools. Also, Camdens charters took in more non-public funds than its traditional district school counterparts. Houston was the only location to score an A for having the most equity between traditional and charter schools with a 2 percent difference. Shelby County, Tenn., where Memphis is located, was the only community with more money9 percentallocated to charter schools. Of the remaining 12 communities, the gap ranged from 12 to 45 percent less for charter schools. In addition to the one-year snapshot, authors also looked at long-term funding for eight of the locations. While disparities shrunk in three communities, the other five saw their gaps widen, including $11,000 per student in the District of Columbia. Researchers also found that when they factored in special education revenues often cited as a reason for larger expenditures in traditional public schoolsgaps remained in 12 of the communities. President Donald Trumps budget proposal includes an increase in funding for charter schools . But Wolf said that money would do little to shrink the gap, if approved, because federal funds make up between 15 and 18 percent of per-student funding. Non-public funds, such as grants and fundraising, also only help in some areas to a minimal degree. It would help some, but its not going to make great strides, Wolf said. Federal funding is such a small part of it. Contact Sarah Tully at stully@epe.org. 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. (Revised and corrected to eliminate editing errors.) Federal tax credits may not be public educations death star, but a large asteroid is headed our way and not enough people are gauging its impact. Many scoffed when candidate Donald Trump pledged to put $20-billion into school vouchers. A tight fisted GOP would never support massive expansion of the hated domestic discretionary funding, it was said. But scholarships funded by federal tax credits dont appear in the federal budget even though they are a drain on tax receipts. Heres how a federal tax credit scholarship program would likely work: A taxpaying individual or corporation could donate to any recognized scholarship organization authorized to support student tuition at a private school. Students would apply, and the scholarship organization would then write a check to the school for the students tuition. Divert Public Money Like direct government voucher payments to families, tax credits divert money from public schools in support of private schools. But vouchers come from the public budget. They are visible and therefore contestable and debatable. Tax credits divert money from public treasuries before the funds even get there. They are different politically and legally. [A briefing from the National Conference of State Legislatures on the differences between various privatization vehicles.] Tuition tax credit programs operate in 17 states. Florida and Arizona have the largest programs followed by Indiana, Louisiana, and Georgia. [A state-by-state guide .] Although some versions of a federal tax credit would simply top off existing state programs, the more common idea is for a 50-state solution . Thomas Carroll, president of the New York based Invest in Education Coalition writes: its the only way President Trump can effectively bring school choice to families in the blue states that voted for him in 2016 and others that might in the future. A good federal tax credit...impacts everyone and doesnt require state approval, shielding it from teachers unions and state and local pols who would otherwise try to muck it up. And it skirts Blaine Amendments in state constitutions that have no power over federal policies. A Prototype for Federal Law The only prototype for a federal tax credit program is the Educational Opportunities Act bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Indiana) in 2015. That bill would have created a federal tax credit of up to $4,500 for individuals and $100,000 for corporations to gifts to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGO). That bill would have allowed scholarships for students from families with incomes of less than 250% of the federal poverty level, currently $61,500. Its not certain the Rubio-Rokita bill will serve as the blueprint for a new tax credit measure. The American Federation for Children, formerly led by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, strongly supported the measure, but as Education Weeks Andrew Ujifusa reported , other egos may intervene. Opposition already exists from both the left and the right . Critics on the right are concerned that a federal tax credit would increase scrutiny of private schools, including unwanted attention to existing state programs. For public school advocates, tax credits are just back door vouchers. Charter school advocates are afraid that they will be caught in the middle. In a letter to legislators last December, the California Charter School Association said that, we believe that vouchers would be at odds with the needs of Californias public school system. The Easy Path Through Congress Regardless of opposition, federal tax credits are likely to take a path through Congress that will be difficult to stop. They will be bundled with other legislation rather than face congressional scrutiny on its own. Most likely, the proposal will be attached to either a tax reform package or a budget reconciliation measure. Education tax credits would be a relatively insignificant part of a tax reform package and thus less likely to face heavyweight opposition. Budget reconciliation measures require only a majority vote in the Senate, and thus Democrats could not filibuster the measure. Lets assume that outright opposition wont destroy the tax credit asteroid. States, including California, can change the impact in at least three ways. Given DeVos repeated states-rights pronouncements, it also seems likely that individual states will have substantial ability to shape how tax credits scholarships are distributed in their jurisdictions to support their vision of public education. Protect against Abuse Each state will have to protect itself, and its children, against waste, fraud and abuse that are already apparent in state tax credit programs. Some existing state programs are little more than tax avoidance schemes for the wealthy . Because state tax credits also generate federal deductions, its possible to make money by buying tax credit scholarships. This table from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy illustrates how its possible to receive up to a 33% profit on a scholarship donation. The Georgia Pay-It-Forward scholarship includes this language in its announcement for its 2018 funding solicitation: When you donate, you will receive both a Georgia state tax credit AND a federal charitable deduction. You will end with more money than when you started, and you will be helping students receive a good education. Little wonder that this years fund was fully subscribed in just one day. Other state programs have become notorious for self-dealing. Arizona diverts $100-million a year from the state treasury to private schools. According to this New York Times story, State Senate president Steve Yarbourgh is also the $125,000 a year executive director of the Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization. He and his wife also run a data processing firm that collected $636,000 in 2014 for back office supports for scholarships, and their company rents space to the scholarship organization. The invitation for self-dealing is built into many voucher programs. The Rubio-Rokita bill, like many state tax credit measures, allows scholarship organizations to charge 10% for processing. However, state programs vary widely. Arizona has more than 50 SGOs, Florida has 2, and in Pennsylvania, private schools can accept tax credit for scholarships directly. Which Private Schools? What authority would states have to determine which private schools get scholarships? Some states vet schools closely, while others are relatively unregulated. California already has a scholarship agency for higher education: the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC), whose 100 employees distribute $2-billion in Cal Grants to students attending both public and private higher education institutions. CSAC also determines which non-profit and proprietary private organizations are eligible in a process that the Trump Administration would respect as extreme vetting. Among private institutions, those that participate must be eligible for at least 3 federal programs and have a loan default rate of 15.5% or less and a graduation rate of 30% or greater. These must provide CASC with an institutional participation agreement , including financial statements and student aid policies, student completion rates, financial audits and accreditation status. Only Privates? What role would the state have in determining what kinds of organizations could apply for tax credit scholarships? The Rubio-Rokita bill would have funded only private schools and specifically excluded public schools that were fulfilling the states constitutional requirement of providing a free public education. But in practice, many states have forms of public-private partnerships, dual enrollment practices, non-profit public school foundations. Many non-profits provide extended services for students, including after school care, tutoring, experiential learning programs, and enrichment. The ability of a state to tailor services to all its students would be crucial if a tax credit scholarship program would be of benefit to all its students. DeVos Likes Florida Betsy DeVos is on record as seeing Florida as a national model. Florida is a good and growing example of what can happen when you have a robust array of choices, she told a radio audience. At least some Floridians disagree. Even reformers are regretting what they did in Florida , writes Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Maxwell. Public schools got overtested while privates got government money and virtually no oversight. DeVos ideological filter blinds her to the effects of the tax credit scholarship asteroid on public schools or their potential for abuse in private schools. States cant afford to be so blind. They need to divert the asteroid if they can. If they cant and the asteroid is headed our way, states need to use its energy to fuel all its schools. SIIX to Open Sales Branch in Vietnam Published: 10 May 2017 by Mike Buetow by Mike Buetow TOKYO -- SIIX, a top 20 EMS company, this summer will establish a wholly owned sales subsidiary in Vietnam. SIIX Vietnam Co. will perform import, export and sales of circuit board assemblies and electronic equipment. SIIX is putting 11 million yen ($100,000) into the new office, which will start operation in August. SIIX ranked 19th on the just-released CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Top 50. Copiii cu nevoi speciale din Stefan Voda au conditii de reabilitare mai bune, datorita UE si Fundatiei Soros Moldova Hayden Walker opened his eyes to see the inside of the zipper on a body bag. It was terrifying. It very much felt real, said Walker, a senior at Tri-Valley High School in Downs. Walker and four of his peers acted as victims of a mock car accident on the lawn of the high school in April to show their classmates the shocking consequences of driving while texting or intoxicated, especially with prom season approaching. Two cars were arranged as if they were in a T-bone crash. Seniors Jordan Symanski, Alexis Myszka and Jared Lauritson sat in one car, covered in cosmetic blood. Lauritson, at the wheel, held an empty brown bottle to suggest he was driving under the influence. In the other car, Walker slumped in his seat with his cellphone in his lap to indicate distracted driving. Behind the crash, senior Abigail Johnson lay in the grass, acting as if she were thrown from the car. Senior Joe Bair applied realistic makeup, mirroring burns and lacerations, to his peers faces. Before the dramatization began, Johnson joked about taking a nap from her position in the sun, and the other young actors admired their costume makeup but soon the atmosphere changed. A swarm of emergency vehicles, lights flashing, from the Downs fire and police departments, LeRoy and Heyworth ambulance services, McLean County Sheriff Department, Illinois State Police and a medical helicopter from Champaign descended on the scene and officials treated it like a reality. The entire school watched from the lawn as first responders assessed the crash by inspecting wounds, cutting away the doors on the cars and loading the actors onto stretchers. Soon the drone of the incoming helicopter deafened the crowd and emergency medical technicians pretended to load a student into the helicopter. Its important to show this while theyre at a young age, said Downs Fire Chief Mike Manint. Many of them are young drivers and this is what it looks like if you make the wrong decision. In the flurry of emergency activity, Symanski wiped away a real tear as EMTs gently fitted her with a neck brace. She was wheeled on a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. It was really freaky to see Abigail on the ground and a sheet draped over Hayden. Its eye-opening to see just how everything happens. Its not at all what I expected, she said after the simulation. Lauritsou hoped the intense scene sent a message to his classmates. You have to do whats smart and right and make good decisions. Its one thing to hear and talk about this kind of situation. Seeing it done like this is another, he said. Junior Bri Haerr said seeing the mangled cars and classmates covered in stage blood was scary. I wouldnt want that to happen in real life, she said. Junior Karigan Houston said she would keep the event in mind during prom celebrations. Im going to make sure everyone driving is sober and reliable, said Houston. I hope everyone is smart enough not to make a mistake like that. Downs Police Chief Josh Dingler spoke at a school assembly after the event. This scene was extremely realistic. Hopefully it gave people a fresh reminder of the dangers that can take place when you show off or act irresponsible. If we changed one persons viewpoint today, thats all I care about, said Dingler. Like most high schools, Tri-Valley will host an after-prom event until 3 a.m. at the school after Saturdays dance. These post-prom events include games, prizes and food to keep students occupied and entertained. Students can only leave early with a handwritten note from parents. Tri-Valley also sent a letter home to parents with safety tips and conversation starters from www.bnparents.org. Tri-Valley Superintendent Dave Mouser expects the mock accident was a good reminder prior to prom season, but said the idea should be observed all the time. Were so distracted as a society in general. Adults make bad decisions, too, said Mouser. I hope by example this teaches students to lead courageously and they stand up for what is right. You hope this is the only example they have to see. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A group of federal lawmakers has proposed a bill that would ban lunch shaming in school cafeterias around the country. But some child-nutrition advocates say some problematic responses to unpaid school lunch bills would continue, even if the measure is enacted. Versions of the Anti-Lunch Shaming Act were introduced this week in the House and Senate by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including four from New Mexico, which recently passed its own state-level measure banning the practice. Lunch shaming is a term child-hunger advocates use to describe practices that single out children with unpaid school meal debts, a problem that has long vexed cafeteria directors, who operate meal programs under tight budgets. The practice has gotten greater attention after recent articles in the New York Times highlighted the issue. No student should be humiliated in front of their peers because their parents cant afford to pay for a meal , said U.S. Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M. It is shocking and shameful that this happens to hungry children, but nearly half of all school districts use some form of lunch shaming. This bipartisan bill will put an end to these draconian practices and help ensure that students can focus on their studies without looking over their shoulder to see their friends pointing fingers. The bill would require schools to communicate directly with parents about low school meal balances, It would prohibit them from requiring students who cant pay to do things like completing chores or wear wristbands or hand stamps to let their parents know they need lunch money, a news release says. It would also prohibit a school from throwing out a childs meal if they determined he or she couldnt pay after the food had been put on a tray. The bill also aims to make the process for applying for free and reduced price lunch applications simpler by expressing that it is the sense of Congress that schools should provide these applications more effectively to the families who need them, coordinate with other programs to ensure that homeless and foster children are enrolled for free meals, and set up online systems to make paying for meals easier for parents when possible, the release says. But school food blogger Bettina Elias Siegel writes that a closer reading of the federal Anti-Lunch Shaming Act reveals that by far the most common form of lunch shaming giving a child an alternate meal, usually a cold cheese sandwichwould not be prohibited if the law were enacted. Nor would the law ban the outright denial of a meal to a debt-ridden child. And a sense of Congress statement about enrolling children in free meal programs comes with no enforcement, which means it might not change things all that much, Siegel writes. School food workers have long asked for guidance on how to handle unpaid meals. While most can agree that practices like discarding full trays of food should not be allowed, simply banning all forms of lunch shaming doesnt answer the root question of how schools should respond when a child cant pay. Should there be any limit to how many overdrawn meals a school provides? If not, how should they manage their already tight food budgets? The School Nutrition Association wrote in a recent statement: Unfortunately, for under-funded school meal programs, unpaid school meal debt can become a critical problem that can impact the quality of meals for all students. SNA's 2016 School Nutrition Operations Report found that about three quarters of school districts had an unpaid student meal debt at the end of last school year, an increase from 70.8% of districts reporting debt in 2014. Additionally, 37.7% report that the number of students within the paid or reduced-price category who do not have funds to pay for breakfast or lunch has increased from the 2014/15 to 2015/16 school years." As I wrote recently, regulations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture require schools to set consistent policies for unpaid meals by the beginning of the 2017-18 school year. Those policies could include alternative meals for students who cant pay. How do you think schools should handle unpaid meal debt? Further reading about school lunches and student nutrition: Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox. Rules to enact Floridas medical marijuana amendment went up in smoke on Friday after the Legislature failed to pass a bill. The House and Senate agreed on most key parts of a bill putting rules in place for Amendment 2. But it collapsed on Friday when the chambers could not agree on the number of retail dispensaries that a medical marijuana treatment center can operate The House voted 99-16 on a bill with the amended language (HB 1397) that put the limit at 100 per treatment center but the Senate, which limited it to five per treatment center, did not take it up. It will now be up to the Department of Health to come up with rules for patients, caregivers, doctors and treatment centers by July 3 and have them implemented by October. House Speaker Richard Corcoran blamed the Senate for the failure of legislation, complaining that they wanted to tax medical marijuana and that the Senate proposal would have forced patients to drive hours in order to get cannabis. To pass what they wanted had nothing to do with the will of the voters, Corcoran said. Senate President Joe Negron said that the chambers had different approaches on licenses and dispensaries that they were not able to reach middle ground. Michael Bowen, who is on the Board of Directors for the Florida Epilepsy Foundation, suffered a grand mal seizure during a Senate committee hearing on April 18. He said Friday that with the legislatures inaction those who suffer epileptic seizures are at greater risk due to lack of access to cannabis. I am 100 percent disgusted. They needed to get something passed. They can hammer out the finer points in future sessions, he said. Currently, low-THC and non-smoked cannabis can be used by patients suffering from cancer, epilepsy, chronic seizures and chronic muscle spasms. The law was expanded last year to include patients with terminal conditions and allowed them to use higher strains. The bill would have allowed those who suffer chronic pain related to one of 10 qualifying conditions to receive either low-THC cannabis or full strength medical marijuana. Patients could have received an order for three 70-day supplies during a doctors visit that they could then take to a medical marijuana treatment center. Besides oils and sprays, those centers would have been allowed to expand sales to edibles and vaping products but smoking would still be banned. It also would have added 10 more medical marijuana treatment centers by July 1, 2018. The Department of Health held five workshops throughout the state in early February to take input on rules. Department of Health spokeswoman Mara Gambineri said they still continue to review public comments while coming up with proposed rules. Litigation is expected over whatever rules the department comes up with, based on its prior rulemaking history. The legislature chose political gamesmanship over the will of 71 percent of voters, said Florida for Care Executive Director Ben Pollara. The House got to poke the Senate in the eye one last time, but the real losers are sick and suffering Floridians. (Associated Press reporter Gary Fineout contributed.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Akron police car.png A man was struck by a car early Wednesday morning, police say. (File photo) AKRON, Ohio -- A man suffered what police described as possible life-threatening injuries after he was struck by a car early Wednesday morning in Akron. The crash happened about 4:45 a.m. along Triplett Boulevard near Lansing Street, Akron police Lt. Rick Edwards said. The man, whose age and identity was not released by police, was walking south across Triplett Boulevard when an eastbound car struck him, Edwards said. Paramedics took the man to Akron City Hospital for treatment. Edwards said that the driver is cooperating with investigators, and the Akron Police Department's traffic reconstruction unit is still investigating. Police have not said whether anyone will face charges in the crash. Police are seeking any potential witnesses to the crash and asked anyone with information to contact the Akron police at 330-375-2552. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section. cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate. Akron police car 2.png Akron police identified a 27-year-old man shot to death Tuesday in the West Akron neighborhood. (File photo) AKRON, Ohio - Investigators identified a man who was shot to death Tuesday in the West Akron neighborhood. Stacy D. Parker, 27, was shot multiple times in the torso sometime before 4:15 p.m. on Cordova Avenue near Thurston Street, police said in a news release. Parker died after paramedics took him to Cleveland Clinic Akron General. The Summit County Medical Examiner's Office will perform an autopsy, police said. Several people spotted Parker while driving on Cordova Avenue, and stopped to call 911, police said. Investigators found a semiautomatic pistol in Parker's pocket. The gun had one round in the chamber and nine rounds in the magazine, according to a police report. No arrests have been made but the shooting remains under investigation. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section. cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate. Akron police car 2.png Akron police are investigating the shooting death of a 29-year-old man in the West Akron neighborhood. (File photo) AKRON, Ohio -- Homicide detectives are investigating after a man was shot to death Tuesday in West Akron. The 29-year-old man was shot multiple times before passersby found him about 4:15 p.m. on Cordova Avenue near Thurston Street, the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office said in a news release. The man died after paramedics took him to Cleveland Clinic Akron General. The medical examiner's office will release the man's identity once his family has been notified. Several people were driving on Cordova Avenue when they spotted the man's body on the side of the road. They pulled over and called 911, police said. The people who called 911 told a police dispatcher that there was a gun on the ground next to the man's body, police said. Investigators have not released any additional information about the shooting. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section. cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate. CLEVELAND, Ohio - The body heat of a hundred design aficionados and neighborhood residents literally steamed up the big windows of the former Winnie's Nursery on East 105th Street on the evening of May 5, as a chilly rain fell on the unheated facility. Everyone came to see the results of a five-week remodeling blitz at the daycare center building performed by Kent State University graduate students in architecture, urban design and landscape architecture. The event culminated a semester-long class that challenged the KSU students to design arts-related revitalization projects for neighborhoods in Cleveland and Havana, Cuba - two very different cities 1,270 miles apart. Havana's "art factory" In Havana, the students envisioned how the Fabrica de Arte Cubano, a widely acclaimed "art factory" installed in a former power plant, could spark revitalization in a struggling section of the Vedado neighborhood, miles west of the colorful colonial architecture of Old Havana. Specifically, the students designed housing and development proposals to transform the barrio of "El Fanguito" or "little muddy" section of Vedado, where squatters live in crowded shacks along the soggy banks of the polluted Almendares River. And in Cleveland, the KSU students focused on how Winnie's Nursery might become a cultural hub and gathering spot for the low-income, primarily black neighborhood of Glenville, which dreams of reviving its early 20th-century status as one of the city's most desirable communities. Cuban design innovators Conceptual guidance for the dual-city class came not just from KSU faculty, but also from Cuban architects Ernesto Jimenez and Sofia Marquez de Aguiar, the husband-and-wife team who designed the low-cost remake of the Fabrica de Arte that made it one of Havana's hottest destinations. Two different delegations from KSU visited Havana in January and March and toured the Fabrica and the Vedado neighborhood to conceive and evaluate their designs. The Cleveland Foundation supported one of those trips, plus a residency for Jimenez and Aguiar in Glenville this spring as part of its 2017 Creative Fusion project, an international cultural exchange focusing this year on Cuba. Assembling revitalization Famicos Foundation, a nonprofit development corporation, recently purchased Winnie's from its owner as part of its plan to jumpstart revitalization in a section of Glenville just north of University Circle, the Veterans Administration Hospital and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Famicos also purchased other properties near Winnie's, including the adjacent Medical Associates Building, a 1962 modernist building and local landmark built for nine black doctors and designed by Clevelander Robert P. Madison, one of America's path-breaking black architects. With those buildings in hand, Famicos enabled KSU's graduate design programs and its associated Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, the school's nonprofit community planning arm, to make Winnie's part of the Havana-Cleveland design class. Getting hands dirty Beyond drawing plans and using computers to make colorful renderings, KSU's class required students to consider how their designs would impact residents in both Havana and Cleveland - in effect, their real clients. In other words, class assignments called for designing with empathy. "No matter how experienced you are as an architect, you can't know a place without knowing its people and its culture," Mark Mistur, dean of KSU's College of Architecture and Environmental Design, said in a recent interview. In Cleveland, Jimenez and Aguiar worked with students not only to design the modest rehab of Winnie's, but also to carry it out with their own hands, just as they did along with teams of workers three years ago at the Fabrica de Arte. "The work for us is very important, not only to think and to draw, but to make," Jimenez said. "It's very important in the process." What they did Together, the architects and students, plus helpers from the neighborhood, removed chain link fences from Winnie's, tore off a dilapidated awning, made lounge furniture out of discarded pallets, and turned a broken piano into a sculpture. They also fashioned new lighting fixtures, fabricated a decorative plywood gate and a shelving system for plants using computerized cutting machines at Case Western Reserve University's ThinkBox. And they turned slats from aluminum window blinds into a sculpture that made an interior structural column resemble a palm tree made of metal. Interior architecture students from the Cleveland Institute of Art also participated by designing new interiors for Winnie's and the ground floor of the adjacent Medical Associates Building. The students presented their designs to faculty members from both schools in a critique Friday afternoon. Time to celebrate And then they readied the space for scores of guests who came for a Cuban-style feast of rice, beans and chicken prepared by Flame Urban Chicken Grill, plus remarks by neighborhood residents, and a dance party DJ'd by James Davis. For Jimenez and Aguiar, the semester-long exchange with Cleveland offered proof of the benefits of renewed diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the easing of travel restrictions initiated by the Obama administration in 2014. When asked if they thought President Trump would reverse Obama's openness, they said that whatever the politics, the two countries are destined to become closer. "The process has started and it's difficult to go back," Jimenez said. "I think it's important to continue this process." Local perspectives From her perspective, Khrys Shefton, director of real estate development for the Famicos Foundation, praised Friday's event, along with KSU's collaborative, headed by director Terry Schwarz and associate director, David Jurca. "We knew they were going to take the time to understand the Glenville neighborhood," she said. "You can't ask for a better sort of partner." Some residents weren't so sure. Actress and longtime resident Sherrie Tolliver, who spoke at Jurca's invitation at Friday's event about her childhood memories of Glenville, said she left feeling miffed. "I just felt like it didn't include the community, and if I hadn't said what I'd said, nobody would have had any idea of what the neighborhood's history was," she said. Hearing that criticism relayed by a newspaper reporter, Jurca said that he and KSU's design collaborative would continue to work on building trust as they plan the next community gathering at Winnie's this summer and help Famicos envision the building's future uses. "The most interesting outcomes come from a deep understanding of a place, and an openness to hearing things that you may not want to hear at first," Jurca said. But he added: "You persevere and you engage those challenges in the work, and you produce something in the end that's unexpected and unique and relevant." SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio - When Rosa Malin took her children back to her childhood home in Mexico, the two-hour drive from Puerto Vallarta to the small farming town in which she grew up always included a stop at a roadside taco stand. Malin wanted her children to experience the traditional tacos she grew up on. Today, she shares that taste experience with her customers at her South Euclid restaurant, Los Arcos. Los Arcos serves its tacos the same way one would have gotten them in Malin's hometown -- three small tortillas with your choice of meat and a hearty plate of cilantro, onions, pico and other traditional toppings and salsas so you "can get your hands in there and create the taste you want." The "Best of" team at cleveland.com visited Los Arcos, one of 12 finalists in cleveland.com's Best Tacos contest. We'll be visiting all 12 restaurants during the search. Voting in the finals is open until May 15 at 10 a.m. You are invited to vote once each hour. The poll can be found at the bottom of this post. Name of shop: Los Arcos Mexican Restaurant Address: 2175 S. Green Road, South Euclid Phone: 216-862-6623 Website: www.losarcoscleveland.com Owner: Rosa Malin When did it open? Jan. 24, 2016 How many varieties of tacos are on the menu? Eight -- chicken, steak, chorizo, shrimp, tilapia, lengua, carnitas, and tongue. Biggest seller: Tilapia Taste test review: Chicken: Generous portion of meat, mildly spiced with traditional spices, comes alive with the toppings. Beef: Meat was tender and juicy. Again, mildly spiced but flavor pops with the traditional toppings you add. Shop's selection (tilapia): Reporter Hannah Drown really enjoyed the tilapia. She said it was perfectly cooked and spiced. The portion was generous. Shop's selection (chorizo and steak combo): The kicky spice in the chorizo brought out the smoky taste of the steak. Price: $10.99 to $12.99 for a plate of three tacos with platter of toppings and sides. Any specials? No What's your most unique Taco? Tongue What makes your restaurant unique? The family-run business takes the same care in preparing its food as you would at home. Its goal is to bring the tastes of all the regions of Mexico to Cleveland to help expose Clevelanders to traditional dishes you would find nowhere else. Fun fact: The taco stand where Malin took her children when they visited Mexico was, literally, in the home of the owner. The home had no wall on one side, so you would eat at their dining table, often with their children playing at your feet or watching TV in the next room. That is where her dream to own a restaurant was born. 09DARCY-MACRON2.jpg Far-right Trumpite, Marine Le Pen lost the French Presidential Election in a landslide to centrist Emmanuel Marcron. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Vive la France for rejecting far-right Trumpite Marine Le Pen and everything she represents; xenophobia, ultra-nationalism, neo-fascism, anti-Semitism, and fear mongering. Centrist Emmanuel Macron won the French Presidential Election in a landslide over Le Pen. At 39, Macron becomes France's youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte, ironically, by running as the anti-Napoleon. After Le Pen, the election's two biggest losers were President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Trump had predicted a Le Pen victory, giving her a tacit endorsement. "She's the strongest on borders, and she's the strongest on what's been going on in France. Whoever is the toughest on radical Islamic terrorism, and whoever is the toughest at the borders will do well in the election," Trump had told the Associated Press. Following an April terror attack in France, Trump posted the following tweet: "Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election." Macron won a landslide victory despite an election eve, Russian-linked cyber attack on his campaign. The hack was also promoted by American far-right groups. Le Pen admires Putin even more than Trump does. She met with Putin weeks before the election. Le Pen vowed to pull France out of NATO. She wants EU sanctions on Russia over Crimea to end. Her political party is partially financed by Russian banks. Citing her party's "historic links to white supremacy and anti-Semitism", French banks refuse to do business with it. Le Pen's father is an infamous Holocaust denier who was convicted in France for inciting anti-Semitism. One wonders what Trump's Jewish daughter and son-in-law think of his tacit backing of Le Pen? Le Pen's defeat was preceded by the loss of "The Dutch Trump" Gert Wilders in the Dutch elections on March 15. Yet another rejection of Trumpism in Europe. The victory of the centrist Macron is especially welcomed knowing how moderates have become an endangered species both in Europe and the United States, at time when they are needed the most with the alt-right and alt-left raging. Macron faces a tough task confronting the problems facing France and the European Union. But those problems would have been made far worse had Le Pen gained power. Cleveland.com is a partner with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate. The Akron Zoo's male lion is Tamarr and the female is Mandisa, seen here in 2013. (Akron Zoo photo) AKRON, Ohio - Zoos are all about conservation, but some of the most dramatic projects are a world away, and Akron is planning an event in support of efforts in Africa. It is Thursday, May 11, 6 to 9 p.m. at the Akron Zoo called Hope for the Wild. It will feature Guy Western, a conservationist in Kenya with a program called Rebuilding the Pride, which is supported by the Akron and Cincinnati zoos. As the program's name suggests, Western's work is helping the lion population to thrive. One problem is the proximity between farmers and the mighty obligate carnivores that pose a significant threat to livestock. Western's crew has a crisis-response team that works to alleviate conflicts between people and lions. Farmers can ask Western's team to accompany them when moving livestock through areas likely to have lions, according to the Akron Zoo, and members also look for missing livestock. Thanks to Rebuilding the Pride, the lion population around Kenya's Olkirmatian and Shompole ranches has rebounded from 10 to the recent estimate of 70. Reservations are necessary for the Thursday event, and general-admission tickets are $35, which includes access to the zoo, appetizers and as cash bar. For $50, one gets appetizers and an open bar. Students 18 and older can attend for $15 with a student ID. For more information, call (330) 375-2550 or go to www.akronzoo.org. In addition to Western, Akron Zoo CEO Doug Piekarz and zoo staffers will talk about other global efforts supported by the Akron Zoo. Almost three years since California joined the vanguard of a burgeoning national movement to sharply curtail the use of student suspensions and expulsions, nearly nine in 10 Golden State teachers say they still need more training and support for utilizing alternative discipline techniques, reports California education news website EdSource . In that same surveyan online poll of 3,500 members by the California Teachers Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association40 percent of teachers reported they had received little or no training on so-called restorative practices like peer mediation. The results of the California survey underscore a national trend : Educators, both fans and foes of the recent student-discipline reform efforts, say that they arent getting the kinds of training and support they need to manage their classrooms without employing exclusionary discipline techniques such as suspensions. While restorative practices are generally a hit with civil rights groups concerned with how suspensions and exclusions have tended to fall disproportionally on black and Latino students, teachers unions have been much more skeptical. Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Association, told EdSource that his union supports these alternative discipline methods when they are done right, but that teachers must get additional help from school psychologists and counselors. Whats happening is these students are being thrown back into the classroom and nothing has been done to deal with their behavior, he said. There continue to be disruptions, causing frustrations on both sides. The 2014 bill that overhauled Californias school-discipline code is set to sunset next year, and lawmakers have already put forth a renewal bill. The California Teachers Association has yet to take a position on the bill, reports EdSource. Prison Inmates With Hepatitis C Win Court Victory A recent federal court decision out of Tennessee is making headlines due to the impact it could have on inmates diagnosed with Hepatitis C in the state's correctional facilities. The decision grants class certification to the lawsuit, which means that the case can proceed to prove the allegations as a class action case and represent the class of over 3,000 inmates with the disease. The case seeks an institution-wide change to the way inmates with Hepatitis C are treated while in custody. The case alleges that the denial of appropriate medical care is a violation of the Eighth Amendment which protects individuals from cruel and unusual punishment, including the denial of medical care or provision of inadequate medical care. Who Controls Medical Care? Typically, inmate medical care is an issue of moral contention. States must find cost-effective medical care maintaining the appropriate levels of care. This leads to policies that may not make all forms of medical care or treatment available to inmates, so long as there is support in the medical community for the approach. For instance, if there are two methods of treatment that essentially reach the same result, the state can only provide the more cost effective one, unless there is a clear consensus against doing so in the medical community. The Tennessee case covers this issue specifically related to the currently available Hepatitis C treatments. The case alleges that inmates are refused access to a more effective treatment to cure the disease, in favor of a less effective method which nearly amounts to no treatment at all, which causes needless pain and suffering, and risk of death. How to Object to Medical Treatment While In-Custody? Unfortunately, when an inmate receives substandard medical care, they may not have any options other than to try to work within their institution, county, or state's legal framework, at least while still in-custody. If resources are available to hire an attorney, or to pursue the case on one's own, or if there is a non-profit willing to champion the cause, an inmate can seek legal relief from the federal courts. At first, there may be grievance procedures, or complaint forms that an inmate can fill out while in-custody. If, or when, those efforts prove futile, the next steps may require taking legal action by filing a federal lawsuit. Eighth Amendment claims regarding medical treatment are extraordinarily difficult claims to prove, and as such, seeking out a legal consultation with an experienced civil rights lawyer could prove immensely helpful. Related Resources: FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Intelligence Committee hearing into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 20, 2017. President Donald Trump fired James Comey on Tuesday, following a string of decisions and public statements that generated concerns about the FBI director's independence across the political spectrum. The firing comes as the FBI is conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including any possible links between Trump campaign associates and Moscow. Here is a timeline of the consequential moments of Comey's tenure during the heat of the 2016 election and after: July 5, 2016: Comey recommended that the Justice Department does not charge Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic nominee for president, for her handling of classified information at the State Department. While Comey said Clinton and her associates were "extremely careless" with classified information, he said no "reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges in the case. Top Justice Department officials cited Comey's handling of the case when they recommended that Trump fire him. Oct. 28, 2016: In a letter to Congress, Comey said the FBI uncovered new emails that could be related to the Clinton investigation. They were discovered during an investigation into disgraced politician Anthony Weiner, who is married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The letter came just days before the presidential election and featured prominently in news coverage in the race's final days. Nov. 6, 2016: Two days before the election, Comey told Congress that the newly discovered emails did not change the FBI's conclusion that no charges were warranted in the Clinton case. March 20, 2017: Comey publicly confirmed the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Moscow's role in the 2016 election, including any possible links between people associated with the Trump campaign and Russia. The U.S. intelligence community previously concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed efforts to influence the election. Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia and has even suggested at times that Moscow may not be responsible for a high-profile cyberattack against the Democratic National Committee. May 3, 2017: At a Senate oversight hearing, Comey said he stood by his decision to send the October letter to Congress, adding that he would "make the same decision" again. "It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election," Comey said. Tuesday: Trump fires Comey, telling him in a letter, "it is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission." Ban on Gay 'Conversion' Therapy Left in Place by Supreme Court The United States Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to California's ban on controversial "conversion therapy" for gay children. That means the statute is legal which prohibits licensed therapists from working with gay minors to change their sexual orientation to straight. It's the second time the Court has passed on an appeal regarding the law, and while not an endorsement of the statute, declining to hear further challenges to the ban effectively leaves Ninth Circuit rulings in the state's favor in effect. Here's a closer look at the case. Under No Circumstances California's Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) statute states: "Under no circumstances shall a mental health provider engage in sexual orientation change efforts with a patient under 18 years of age." Disobeying mental health providers can have their licenses revoked. Passed in 2012, the law previously survived a challenge on religious freedom grounds. The latest appeal, based on broader free speech claims, suffered the same fate. In response to those free speech claims, the Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals drew a distinction from banning speech and prohibiting conduct: Senate Bill 1172 regulates conduct. It bans a form of medical treatment for minors; it does nothing to prevent licensed therapists from discussing the pros and cons of SOCE with their patients. Senate Bill 1172 merely prohibits licensed mental health providers from engaging in SOCE with minors. The Supreme Court's refusal to review that decision essentially leaves that reasoning intact. State of the Nation Sexual orientation conversion therapy is also prohibited in Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia. And Ted Lieu, now a U.S. congressman who wrote California's ban as a state senator five years ago, has already introduced the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, which would take the ban nationwide. Judging from the Supreme Court's tacit approval of such laws at the state level Lieu's law would likely survive future legal challenges. Related Resources: U.S. teen apparel retailer company Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is working with an investment bank to field takeover interest from other retailers, people familiar with the situation said on Tuesday. Abercrombie's shares are trading at a 17-year low, making it a vulnerable acquisition target. The company has struggled as its logo-stamped t-shirts and sweaters, once popular among teenagers, have lost their fashion appeal. Abercrombie has hired investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners to handle the takeover approaches, the two sources said, asking not to be identified because the matter is confidential. There is no certainty that any deal will occur, the sources added. Abercrombie and Perella Weinberg declined to comment. Based in New Albany, Ohio, Abercrombie has a market capitalization of $862 million. It operated 709 stores in the United States and 189 stores outside the United States as of the end of January. The company's operating income shrunk from $72.8 million in 2015 to $15.2 million last year, as fast-fashion competitors and competition from online retailers weighed on its profitability. Many of Abercrombie's peers, which also rely on mall traffic for their sales, have faced financial pressure. Aeropostale Inc., Wet Seal and BCBG Max Azria Group LLC are among the retailers that have filed for bankruptcy over the past two years. While Abercrombie made its mark in the 1990s with its risque advertising and its large logo on apparel, millennial shoppers have more recently eschewed such heavy branding in favor of more independent style. It redesigned its logo in 2014 to renew its image. Abercrombie has been pinning much of its turnaround hopes on its surfwear-inspired brand Hollister. While the company's overall sales are down, the Hollister brand has recorded two years of flat same-store sales performance. Abercrombie has been seeking to cut costs and downsize its retail footprint. It announced earlier this year that it would let the leases of approximately 60 U.S. stores expire, on top of several other locations it has already closed. Abercrombie has also made an electronic commerce push, partnering with Asian online retailer Zalora to sell its Abercrombie and Hollister brands. In 2014, Abercrombie split the roles of chairman and chief executive officer. It also added four independent directors to its board after settling a proxy contest with activist hedge fund Engaged Capital. Earlier this year, Abercrombie named its merchandising head Fran Horowitz as its new CEO. Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook. WHEN: Today, Tuesday, May 9th WHERE: CNBC's "Power Lunch" Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC EXCLUSIVE interview with Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein and CNBC's Wilfred Frost on "Power Lunch" (M-F, 1PM-3PM ET) today, Tuesday, May 9th. Following are links to the video on CNBC.com:http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000617073, http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000617074, http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000617076 and http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000617077. All references must be sourced to CNBC. WILFRED FROST: HEY THERE MELISSA THANK YOU VERY MUCH. INDEED, AS YOU SAID, I'M HERE WITH THE CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF GOLDMAN SACHS LLOYD BLANKFEIN. GOOD AFTERNOON TO YOU. THANKS SO MUCH FOR JOINING US. LLOYD BLANKFEIN: THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME. FROST: I WANT TO START WITH A VIEW ON THE ECONOMY, STATESIDE IN PARTICULAR. YESTERDAY, WE HAD WARREN BUFFETT ON OUR AIR AND HE SAID THAT HE DID NOT THINK DONALD TRUMP HAD YET HAD MUCH EFFECT ON THE ECONOMY. DO YOU AGREE WITH THAT? BLANKFEIN: WELL, I THINK HE'S HAD ONE EFFECT. I THINK HE'S RAISED EXPECTATIONS THAT THERE'LL BE POSITIVE CHANGE TOWARDS STIMULUS. LOOK, THEY WILL EITHER IF HE'S SUCCESSFUL, THERE'LL BE A LOT OF IT. IF HE'S UNSUCCESSFUL, THERE'LL BE A LITTLE BIT OF IT. BUT THERE'S NOT GOING TO BE NONE OF IT AND IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE IT'S GOING TO GO BACKWARDS AS IT MIGHT HAVE. AND I'M TALKING STRICTLY ABOUT STIMULUS HERE. IF HE HADN'T GOT ELECTED, AND IF INSTEAD OF THE CURRENT PROGRAM, WE HAD A PROGRAM THAT CALLED FOR MORE REGULATION, HIGHER TAXES AND I GUESS BOTH PLATFORMS CALLED FOR MORE INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING. BUT CERTAINLY THE PLATFORM, TRUMP'S PLATFORM, IS STIMULATIVE ON THOSE GROUNDS SO HE WOULD BE MORE OR LESS SUCCESSFUL. SO THERE'S GOT TO BE SOME MORE STIMULUS THAN WE WOULD HAVE HAD. FROST: AND THAT VIEW OF DELIVERING 3% REAL GDP GROWTH FOR A SUSTAINED PERIOD, IS THAT ACHIEVEABLE IN YOUR EYES? BLANKFEIN: WELL, I'M NOT GOING TO CONTRADICT BEN BERNANKE PER SE, BUT I THINK THE ECONOMY COULD GROW AT A FASTER RATE THAN IT'S GROWING. I THINK THEIR EXPECTATION IS GOING TO BE PLUS OR MINUS AROUND 2%. SO I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THAT'S 2.5% IS THE GOAL OR 3%, BUT I'M NOT GOING TO FIGHT WITH THAT. FROST: AND IF WE SWITCH FROM THE ECONOMY TO THE MARKET, VALUATIONS RELATIVELY FULL AT THE MOMENT. VOLATILITY VERY, VERY LOW. BLANKFEIN: YES. FROST: DO YOU THINK WE'RE PRICED FOR PERFECTION SOMEWHAT AT THE MOMENT? BLANKFEIN: WELL, EVERY TIME I GET ACCUSTOMED TO LOW VOLATILITY LIKE WE WERE TOWARDS THE END OF THE GREENSPAN ERA, AND WE THINK WE HAVE ALL THE LEVERS UNDER THE CONTROL AND THERE'S LOW RISK IN THE WORLD AND THE WORLD IS AWASH WITH LIQUIDITY THAT POUNCES ON EVERY ABORATION IN THE MARKET SO THINGS GO IN. SOMETHING ERRUPTS TO REMIND US OF OUR THAT THAT IDEA THAT ANYBODY IS IN CONTROL OF ANYTHING IS HUBRIS AND THE WORLD DOESN'T PERFORM LIKE THAT FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME. SO I DON'T KNOW WHAT BRINGS US OUT OF THE DOLDRUMS, BUT MY EXPECTATION IS THAT THIS IS NOT A NORMAL RESTING STATE. FROST: AND I MEAN YOU MENTIONED THE GREENSPAN ERA, YOU BEEN THROUGH AND OVERSEEN LOTS OF CYCLES. SO, ARE THERE WARNING SIGNS THAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT AT THE MOMENT THAT ARE FLAGGING TO YOU OR NOT? BLANKFEIN: WELL, I SAY NOT A LOT. NOT AS MANY WARNING SIGNS AS WILL BE AVAILABLE TO ME IN HINDSIGHT AFTER THERE'S A PROBLEM. AND I WILL SWEAR TO YOU AND I WILL REALLY THINK I SAW THEM. BUT I WOULD SAY IN PROSPECT, I'M A LOT I'M MUCH BETTER AT PREDICTING THE PAST THAN THE FUTURE. I WOULD SAY IF I HAD TO LOOK FOR ANYTHING SPECIFICALLY, I WOULD SAY ASSET PRICES ARE HIGH, BUT A LOT OF ASSET YOU KNOW, LIKE REAL ESTATE SOME OF THOSE HAVE SLOWED UP AND SOME OF THEM HAVE COME DOWN. CREDIT IS VERY TIGHT. SO, I WOULD SAY DISTRESSED CREDIT AS PEOPLE SEARCH FOR YIELD, I COULD SAY MAYBE IN HINDSIGHT IT WILL APPEAR THAT A LOT OF THE MOVE INTO EQUITY, AND SPECIFICALLY PASSIVE EQUITY, IS BASED ON THE IDEA THAT EQUITY IS ALL CORRELATED, THAT INDIVIDUAL COMPANIES DON'T MATTER, INDUSTRIES DON'T MATTER. BECAUSE WE'RE LOOKING AT A YIELD IN DIVIDENDS AND YOU NORMALLY ASSOCIATE YIELD WITH FIXED INCOME AND NOT WITH EQUITY. WHERE YOU THINK OF RETURNS, BUT PEOPLE ARE PLOWING MONEY INTO EQUITIES BECAUSE THE DIVIDENDS ARE HIGHER THAN THE INTEREST THAT SOME OF THESE COMPANIES ARE PAYING. THAT MAY BE EVIDENCE OF A BIT OF A BUBBLE. THE LOW VOLATILITY ITSELF MIGHT BE A KIND OF BUBBLE OF CONFIDENCE, BUT WE WON'T KNOW UNTIL WE KNOW. MY OWN EXPECTATION, WHICH I NEVER RELY ON, LOOK, I ALWAYS DIFFERENTIATE FORECASTING WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN FROM THE EXERCISE OF RISK MANAGEMENT. IN RISK MANAGEMENT, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYBODY THINKS. I DON'T CARE WHAT I THINK. I'M JUST PREPARING FOR CONTINGENCIES. ON THE OTHER HAND, IN OUR TRADING BUSINESSES AND TRYING TO ANTICIPATE FLOWS AND WHAT CLIENTS WANT TO ACCOMPLISH, THERE I HAVE TO TRY TO GUESS THE FUTURE AND WHERE THING ARE GOING. SO THOSE ARE TWO DIFFERENT EXERCISES. MY OWN VIEW FROM A MARKET POSITIONING POINT OF VIEW IS THAT WE'RE MUDDLING THROUGH, A LOT COULD GO WRONG, BUT I THINK THE BASE CASE IS THAT THINGS ARE GOING RIGHT. FROST: IN TERMS OF PREPARING, I SUPPOSE THE BANKING SECTOR AS A WHOLE IS FAR MORE PREPARED THAN IT USED TO BE. IF WE MOVE THE CONVERSATION ON TO POSSIBLE DEREGULATION, DO YOU THINK THE U.S. BANKING SECTOR IS OVERCAPTIALIZED AT THE MOMENT? BLANKFEIN: I DO. I DO. LOOK, WE HAD A VERY THE SYSTEM HAD A VERY, VERY BIG TRAUMA AND WE LEGISLATED VERY QUICKLY. THERE WAS A LOT OF DEMAND FOR IT. AND THE ISSUE WAS WHAT SHOULD WE DO? SHOULD WE REGULATE CAPITAL, SHOULD WE REGULATE LIQUIDITY, SHOULD WE PREPARE FOR THESE THINGS NOT WORKING AND HAVE TESTS FOR HOW PEOPLE WOULD RESPOND IN CASE THERE IS A CRISIS OR A RESOLUTION, THE NEED TO A CALL FOR RESOLUTION. THERE'S EVEN A TEST, THERE'S EVEN A REGULATORY OVERLAY THAT TRIES TO DEFINE YOUR STATE OF MIND WHY YOU TOOK ON A POSITION. THEN WE HAVE THE VOLCKER RULE, WHICH OF THESE SHOULD WE DO? LET'S DO ALL OF THEM. THE NET EFFECT OF LAYER ON LAYER ON LAYER IS THAT EVERY INCREMENTS AT EVERY LAYER PROVIDES LESS INCREMENTAL SAFETY AND SOUNDNESS, BUT MORE OF A BURDEN ON RISK TAKING AND DOING THE VERY THINGS THAT A FINANCIAL SYSTEM IS SUPPOSED TO ACCOMPLISH, LIKE TAKING ON CERTAIN RISKS SO THAT COMPANIES AND INDIVIDUALS CAN DEPLOY THEIR CAPITAL AND WITHOUT FEAR OF A CERTAIN KIND OF RISK THAT BANKS WOULD TAKE ON FOR THEM. AND SO NOW THAT THE TRAUMA HAS EBBED A BIT, WE SHOULD LEARN THE REAL LESSONS OF THE PAST, BUT I THINK SOME OF THE AND I'LL SAY OVERREACTION, I KNOW PEOPLE WILL BE CRITICAL OF THAT STATEMENT BUT YOU CAN ALWAYS DRAW OUT INCREMENTAL SAFETY, BUT IT ONLY COMES AT A COST. AND I THINK NOW THIS DISTANCE FROM THE TRAUMATIC EVENTS PEOPLE HAVE TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE COSTS. FROST: AND IF CAPITAL RULES WERE SOMEWHAT RELAXED, WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH THAT CAPITAL? WOULD IT BE STRAIGHT BACK TO SHAREHOLDERS OR REINVESTED ELSEWHERE? BLANKFEIN: SOME OF IT WOULD BE REINVESTED, SOME OF IT MIGHT GO BACK TO SHAREHOLDERS. BUT I DON'T THINK THERE'S THAT BIG OF A DICHOTOMY FROM A POINT OF VIEW OF PUBLIC POLICY AND THE RIGHT THING TO DO. LOOK, IF I SAW WAYS OF INVESTING IN OUR BUSINESS AND EARNING A HIGH RETURN ON THAT, THEN I SHOULD INVEST THAT MONEY. BUT IF I DON'T SEE IT AND I RETURN IT TO MY INVESTORS, WHAT DO THEY DO? THEY TAKE THAT MONEY AND REINVEST IT IN PLACES WHERE THEY THINK THERE WILL BE A HIGHER RETURN. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THAT MONEY WILL BE REINVESTED. IF I DON'T EXERCISE THAT JUDGMENT FOR MY SHAREHOLDERS, IT'S THEIR MONEY, LET THEM EXERCISE IT. SO, I KNOW SOME PEOPLE WILL SAY, "WELL, IF YOU ALLOW PEOPLE TO DIVIDEND MORE, RETURN SOME MONEY THAT'S OVERSEAS, RETURN THAT TO THEIR GIVE IT TO THE COMPANIES OR FORGIVE SOME TAX THAT MIGHT OTHERWISE BE DUE, IT WILL ONLY RETURN IT TO THEIR SHAREHOLDERS." I SAY YEAH, AND THE SHAREHOLDERS WILL THEN INVEST IT WHERE THEY THINK THE RETURNS ARE THE HIGHEST AND THAT'S A VERY POSITIVE EFFECT FOR THE WORLD. FROST: WE BRIEFLY TOUCHED ON VOLCKER A MOMENT AGO. DID PROP TRADING ITSELF CAUSE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS? BLANKFEIN: NO IT DIDN'T. BUT I COULD UNDERSTAND LOOK, WHEN YOU GO OUT AND REREGULATE THE SYSTEM, I DON'T THINK YOU SHOULD BE STOPPED AND JUST ADDRESS THOSE ISSUES THAT WERE THE PRECISE CAUSE OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. THE CAUSE OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS WAS A CALAMITY IN THE REAL ESTATE MARKET. 90% OF ALL THE LOSSES WERE ATTRIBUTABLE TO REAL ESTATE WHETHER IT WAS IN THE FORM OF DERIVATIVES, OR CASH, OR CDOS, OR STRUCTURED INSTRUMENTS, IT WAS A REAL ESTATE BUBBLE THAT COLLAPSED. DOESN'T MEAN I CAN UNDERSTAND THE AND I AM SYMPATHETIC TO THE IDEA THAT CERTAIN INSTITUTIONS THAT GET CERTAIN BENEFITS IN TERMS OF BEING ABLE TO ACQUIRE CERTAIN KIND OF FINANCING ON A GUARANTEED BASIS SHOULDN'T DEPLOY THAT FOR STRICTLY PROPRIETARY PURPOSES. BUT THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE PRINCIPALS BECAUSE MARKET MAKING IS A VERY IMPORTANT PUBLIC FUNCTION OF COMPANIES LIKE OURS AND IF WE DON'T DO THAT, THE DROP IN LIQUIDITY WILL NOT ALLOW OTHER PEOPLE IN INDUSTRIES AND OTHER INVESTORS TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR OBJECTIVE, WHICH ARE BENEFICIAL FOR THE FINANCIAL MARKETS. FROST: IT'S SOMETHING YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE MORE FLEXIBILITY OF. BLANKFEIN: SOMETHING SHOULD BE THAT MUCH MORE FLEXIBILITY. FROST: IN TERMS OF THE POSSIBILITY OF RING FENCING COMING BACK, DO YOU THINK INVESTMENT BANKS AND COMMERCIAL BANKS SHOULD BE SEPARATED? BLANKFEIN: YOU KNOW, I THINK THE EGGS ARE OUT OF THE SHELL AND AN OMELET HAS BEEN MADE. WE ARE PROBABLY AND THIS HAS BEEN POINTED OUT WE ARE PROBABLY THE LARGE BANK THAT'S BEST POSITIONED FOR A RETURN TO GLASS-STEAGALL BECAUSE WE'RE NOT A UNIVERSAL BANK. WE HAVE SOME OF THOSE FUNCTIONS, BUT VERY MINOR IN RELATION TO OUR INVESMENT BANKING ACTIVITIES. AND SO OUR ADAPTATION TO THAT WOULD BE RELATIVELY EASY. THAT SAID, WITH THAT KIND OF REMOTENESS AND THAT KIND OF PERSPECTIVE I COULD SAY IN 2017 IT'S REALLY HARD TO DIFFERENTIATE FUNCTIONALITY SUCH THAT ONE INSTITUTION COULD LEND MONEY AND COMPLETE A LOAN AND ANOTHER INSTITUTION COULD UNDERWRITE A BOND FOR THE COMPANY WHICH MAY BE THE ECONOMIC EQUIVALENT, BUT THAT'S A SECURITY. FROST: RIGHT. BLANKFEIN: AND SO I THINK THOSE ISSUES HAVE I THINK THE WORLD HAS MOVED ON. AND BY THE WAY, ALL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD HAVE DROPPED THAT DICHOTOMY. SO THE U.S. WOULD BE A KIND OF ISLAND IN THE WORLD AND I DON'T THINK IT MAKE AS MUCH SENSE NOW, BUT I COULD UNDERSTAND AND AM SYMPATHETIC TO THE IDEA THAT CERTAIN OF THE FUNCTIONALITY RELATED TO SECURITY HAS CREATED DIFFERENT SET OF RISKS THAN TRADITIONAL LENDING. BY THE WAY,TRADITIONAL LENDING IS OFTEN THE RISKSIER ACTIVITY. WHEN YOU GIVE MONEY TO YOUR CLIENTS AS WE DO, YOU SIT THERE AND YOU HOPE THEY PAY YOU BACK. WHEN YOU HAVE A SECURITY ON YOUR BOOK AND YOU GET NERVOUS ABOUT THE CREDIT UNDERLYING THAT SECURITY, YOU COULD SELL THAT SECURITY IN THE MARKET AND LIQUIFY YOUR POSITION. SO IT'S KIND OF IRONIC THAT AND IN THE CRISIS IT WAS THE KIND OF BANK-LIKE ACTIVITY, NOT THE SECURITY ACTIVITY, THAT GENERATED MOST OF THE LOSSES. FROST: WANT TO MOVE ON TO YOUR Q1 EARNINGS. BIG MISS IN TRADING. WHAT WAS THAT DOWN TO? BLANKFEIN: BIG MISS IN TRADING. CAME DOWN TO A COUPLE OF BUSINESSES, MAINLY OUR COMMODITY BUSINESS AND OUR CURRENCY BUSINESS. BUT WE'RE LOOKING AT ALL THOSE BUSINESSES. AND THE QUARTER BEFORE WE OUTPERFORMED IN OUR TRADING BUSINESSES. THIS QUARTER WE UNDERPERFORMED. AND GUESS WHAT? I'M HAPPY TO REPORT THAT WE'RE HUMAN. FROST: EVERYONE ELSE, THOUGH, THIS QUARTER IN THE U.S. BANKS OUTPERFORMED. SO IT WASN'T A VOLUME THING. IT WAS A POSITIONAL THING THAT YOU GOT WRONG? BLANKFEIN: YOU KNOW, WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT, YOU KNOW, THE EVIDENCE THAT WE HAVE IS THAT WE UNDERPERFORMED IN A MARKET IN WHICH OTHER PEOPLE PERFORM BETTER. NOW SOME OF THAT IS ATTRIBUTED TO BUSINESS MIX, OUR CLIENT MIX IS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT. WE TEND TO DEAL WITH MORE COMING FROM OUR INVESTMENT BANKING SECURITY ROOTS. WE TEND TO DEAL WITH MORE MONEY MANAGERS AND ASSETS MANAGERS TEND TO BE A HIGHER PROPORTION OF OUR BASE. HEDGE FUNDS, WE KNOW THAT THERE'S SOME STRESS AND DISTRESS IN THAT COMMUNITY. WE TEND NOT TO HAVE CORPORATE MONEY MANAGEMENT SERVICES, WE TEND TO HAVE WE TEND TO PERFORM FEWER SERVICES FOR CASH MANAGEMENT. SO OUR RELATIONSHIP TO CORPORATES TENDS TO BE A LITTLE BIT LESS. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT HAD DONE VERY, VERY WELL DURING THAT BECAUSE CORPORATE BALANCE SHEETS ARE A WASH AND LIQUIDITY. THAT LIQUIDITY GETS INVESTED. SO THERE'S A BIT OF DIFFERENCE IN OUR FOOTPRINT. BUT YOU KNOW SOMETHING, IT BEHOOVES US TO EVEN OUT THAT FOOTPRINT AND DEAL WITH A AND WIDEN OUT OUR INVESTOR AND CLIENT BASE. YOU KNOW, WE'LL ADDRESS THESE ISSUES, WE ALWAYS HAVE. FROST: I WANT TO MOVE ON AND TALK A BIT ABOUT GARY COHN, IF I MAY. BLANKFEIN: SURE. FROST: WHEN HE WAS YOUR NUMBER TWO, DID HE CHALLENGE YOU REGULARLY AND DO YOU THINK HE'LL BE DOING THAT NOW TO PRESIDENT TRUMP? BLANKFEIN: I COULD CONFIRM TO YOU THAT IT IS A CORE OF GARY'S PERSONALITY, WHICH I'VE WITNESSED FOR 27 OF THE 27 YEARS OUR CAREERS OVERLAPPED, THAT HE'S A CHALLENGING PERSON, ALL TERRIFIC. HE HAS GREAT IDEAS. HE'S THE PERSON IN MY LIFE WHO SAID THINGS THAT I'VE THOUGHT TO MYSELF, GEE I WISH I'D THOUGHT OF THAT. FROST: RIGHT. BLANKFEIN: HE'S VERY GOOD AND I KNOW I COULD JUSTI'M NOT THAT IN TOUCH, BUT I CAN SEE THE RELATIONSHIP THAT HE HAS WITH THE PRESIDENT. I CAN TELL THAT THE PRESIDENT IS RIGHT IN BESTOWING TRUST ON HIM. FROST: HAVE YOU SPOKEN TO GARY SINCE HE LEFT? BLANKFEIN: I HAVE. FROST: HOW MANY TIMES. BLANKFEIN: NOT A LOT. FROST: SO YOU DON'T HAVE REGULAR CONTACT WITH HIM OR MANY OF THE OTHER GOLDMAN ALUMNI IN THE ADMINISTRATION? BLANKFEIN: NO. NO. FROST: WELL, WHAT IS YOUR VIEW ON THE FACT THAT SO MANY HAVE STEVE MNUCHIN, DINA POWELL AS WELL HAVE ENDED UP IN THE ADMINISTRATION? BLANKFEIN: WELL, FIRST MY BLINK REACTION IS A SENSE OF PRIDE THAT, AGAIN, ANOTHER PERSON WHO WASN'T NECESSARILY FRIENDLY TO OUR INSTITUTION IN HIS CAMPAIGN RECOGNIZED THE TALENT OF THESE PEOPLE. I DON'T THINK HE WAS GOING OUT OF HIS WAY TO HIRE GOLDMAN SACHS ALUMNI AND CURRENT EMPLOYEES. I THINK HE WAS LOOKING FOR GOOD PEOPLE AND GUESS WHAT, DISPROPORTIONATELY, HE FOUND THEM AT OUR FIRM AND IN OUR ALUMNI BASE. SO I FEEL PRIDE AT THAT. IT GENERATES A LOT OF INCONVENIENCE FOR US BECAUSE LOOK AT THE QUESTIONS YOU ARE ASKING ME. EVERYONE WE ARE UNDULLY, I THINK, APPREHENSIVE. YOU LOOK, IN THE ORDINARY COURSE OF MY LIFE, IS WE'RE AN UNDERWRITER OF DEBT, WE'RE A VERY IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTION. I WOULD NORMALLY BE REGULARLY ENGAGED WITH THE PRINCIPLE ECONOMIC ADVISERS AND MAYBE THE TREASURY SECRETARY AND IN THE ADMINISTRATION. LITTLE APPREHENSIVE ABOUT IT BECAUSE FOR FEAR OF HOW IT MIGHT LOOK. IT CREATES ISSUES FOR US THAT OTHERWISE WOULDN'T BE THERE. SO IN THE ONE CASE, I'M PROUD. IN THE OTHER CASE, IT CREATES SOME INCONVENIENCE TO US BECAUSE IT BECOMES A MATTER OF NEWS, HOW MANY TIMES NOBODY'S ASKED ME HOW MANY TIMES I TALK TO JACK LEW. AND BY THE WAY, I TALK TO HIM FREQUENTLY. FROST: WE'VE HAD A LOT OF CHALLENGES AROUND THE REST OF THE WORLD, PARTICULARLY IN EUROPE OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. SOME ELECTIONS HAVE GONE WELL FOR MARKETS, OTHERS HAVEN'T. THERE'S STILL SOME TO COME. WHEN YOU LOOK AT THAT AND THE CHALLENGES PLACES LIKE EUROPE AND ASIA FACE, DO YOU EVER PAUSE AND THINK GOSH, I'M REALLY PLEASED THAT THE COMPANY I RUN AND MANAGE IS BASED MAINLY IN THE UNITED STATES AND HEADQUARTERED HERE AND THE LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION YOU HAVE IN THE UNITED STATES? BLANKFEIN: LOOK, WE'RE AN AMERICAN-ORIGINATED FIRM AND AN AMERICAN-BASED FIRM. BUT OUR BUSINESSES DISTRIBUTED AROUND THE WORLD, OUR INVESTORS, OUR SHAREHOLDERS DISTRIBUTED AROUND THE WORLD. OUR EMPLOYEES IF YOU WALK THROUGH THE NEW YORK TRADING ROOM, IT'S A UNITED NATIONS. BUT WE HAVE TRADING ROOMS ALL AROUND THE WORLD. SO, WE'RE REALLY A GLOBAL FIRM. CERTAINLY THE U.S. IS THERE WAS A HUGE ADVANTAGE BEING BASED IN THE U.S. IT HAS A BIG BALANCE SHEET. SO, TO THE EXTENT THE BANKS WERE IN DISTRESS, NOBODY THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BLOW UP THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE UNITED STATES. THAT WAS NEVER AN ISSUE. IT WAS ALWAYS THE WILLINGNESS OF THE UNITED STATES AND WHAT THEY'D BE WILLING TO DO, NOT WHAT THEY HAD THE CAPACITY TO DO AS IT WAS IN OTHER PLACES. AND IN GENERAL, THE TONE AND THE NATURE OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE CULTURE OF THE COUNTRY IS TO GET ON WITH THINGS AND DO THINGS QUICKLY. LOOK, YOU KNOW, IT WAS PRETTY STRESSFUL FOR US DEALING IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. BUT THE UNITED STATES DEALT WITH THAT AGGRESSIVELY. FIRMS WERE RECAPITALIZED. I COULD BE CRTICIAL OF SOME ASPECTS AND SOME EXCESSES OF THE REGULATION AND THE LEGISLATION, BUT LARGELY, THEY WERE GOOD AND NECESSARY AND THEY WERE DONE RIGHT AWAY. SO, WE GOT ON WITH THINGS. SO, THE FIRM REGULATION WAS DONE, WE WERE ABLE TO ADJUST TO IT QUICKLY. FIRMS ARE RECAPITALIZED. WE ARE VERY WELL OFF. THE U.S. FIRMS ARE VERY WELL CAPITALIZED. SOME OF THE FIRMS IN EUROPE ARE A HALF A CYCLE BEHIND AND ARE JUST RECAPITALIZING NOW. AND SO, I HAVE TO GIVE CREDIT TO THE OFFICIAL SECTOR IN THE U.S. FOR ACCOMPLISHING THAT OBJECTIVE VERY, VERY EARLY IN THE PROCESS. IT LOOKED CRAZY TO A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WERE WATCHING FROM OVERSEAS, BUT GUESS WHAT? THE U.S. GOT IT DONE. FROST: LLOYD, I WANTED TO ASK YOU, BEFORE WE WRAP UP, ABOUT YOUR HEALTH, IF I MAY. BLANKFEIN: OH, SURE. FROST: 2015 YOU HAD LYMPHOMA. ARE YOU BACK TO FULL HEALTH? BACK TO YOUR BEST, YOU THINK? BLANKFEIN: I FEEL PRETTY GOOD. I HAVE TO PLOT IT AGAINST THE DECLINE I GET FROM JUST GETTING OLDER THAN I WAS WHEN I FIRST GOT SICK. I THINK I'M OKAY. I HAVE VERY SLIGHT RESIDUAL THAT REMINDS ME FROM TIME TO TIME. SOME NUMBNESS HERE AND THERE. AND THEN OF COURSE, THERE'S A LITTLE BIT I'M USED TO I'M IN THE RISK BUSINESS. SO I'D SAY THERE'S SOME A LITTLE BIT OF OVERHANG. YOU WORRY ABOUT THINGS COMING BACK. BUT STATISTICLY, I'M CURED. I FEEL PRETTY GOOD. AND I DON'T THINK ABOUT IT UNLESS EXCEPT AND UNTIL I GET ASKED THE QUESTION. SO THANK YOU FOR THAT. FROST: WELL, I APOLOGIZE FOR BRINGING IT UP. BLANKFEIN: NO, NO, NO. FROST: BUT I'M DELIGHTED AT SUCH AN UPBEAT RESPONSE. WE ALL ARE. BLANKFEIN: IT'S FAIR GAME. IT'S FAIR GAME. AND YOU'RE TERRIFIC FOR COMING HERE TO OUR CONFERENCE. FROST: WELL, IT'S BEEN A PLEASURE TO BE HERE FOR YOUR CONFERENCE. AND TO ROUND THAT OFF, I MEAN, YOU'VE BEEN CEO FOR 11 YEARS. DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU GET BETTER EVERY SINGLE YEAR FROM THE EXPERIENCE AND ANOTHER DECADE TO COME? BLANKFEIN: WELL, I FEEL I GET OLDER. NO, I FEEL OBVIOUSLY YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE. I'M NOT SURE WHETHER COMFORT IS GOOD OR BAD BECAUSE I THINK IN THE FRESHNESS AND NEWNESS, YOU HAVE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES. I THINK THERE IS VALUE TO EXPERIENCE. I'VE SEEN A LOT OF STUFF. AND THERE'S ALSO VALUE TO NERVOUS ENERGY. AND THE FRESHNESS AND NEWNESS THAT ONE BRINGS AND ONE HAS TO WEIGH THOSE THINGS AGAINST EACH OTHER. SO I WOULDN'T SAY I'D SAY IT'S GREAT THAT I'M ABOUT TO START MY 12th YEAR BECAUSE I STARTED BASICALLY, I GOT THE CALL FROM HANK THAT HE WAS GOING INTO THE GOVERNMENT MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND IN 2006. AS I GET READY FOR MY START OF MY 12th YEAR, I THINK THERE'S VIRTUE TO MY LONG TENURE AND ONE WOULD HAVE TO SAY THAT IT'S NOT ENTIRELY VIRTUOUS. BUT I FEEL GOOD AND I CERTAINLY HAVE MY ENERGY ABOUT ME. FROST: AND YOU MENTIONED THAT GARY USED TO CHALLENGE YOU A LOT AND THINK OF THINGS THAT YOU DIDN'T THINK OF. DOES GOLDMAN SACHS MISS GARY COHN? BLANKFEIN: OH SURE. AND WE HAVE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE ALSO TERRIFIC WHO AREN'T GARY AND GARY IS NOT THEM. AND GARY WASN'T ME AND I WASN'T GARY. SO I WOULD TELL YOU HE'S TERRIFIC. THERE WERE THINGS THAT GARY DID THAT GOT EVERYBODY WISHES HE WAS STILL THERE DOING. BUT THE GUYS WHO HAVE STEPPED UP INTO HIS JOB WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN THERE TO DO IT IF GARY WAS IN THAT SEAT. SO, LIFE MOVES ON. IT'S A LONG GRAY LINE. MY PREDECESSORS, I'M SURE, WERE WRINGING THEIR HANDS AND SAYING, "WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO GOLDMAN SACHS WITH THIS GUY LLOYD BLANKFEIN IN THERE?" I'VE LEARNED THE LESSONS OF HISTORY. I'M CERTAINLY NOT THINKING THAT WITH RESPECT TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO BE AROUND AS MY SUCCESSORS. FROST: LLOYD, IT'S BEEN A PLEASURE SPEAKING WITH YOU TODAY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR HAVING US. BLANKFEIN: IT'S MY PLEASURE, WILF. AND YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB. GOOD TO SEE YOU. FROST: YOU'RE TOO KIND. LLOYD BLANKFEIN, THE CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF GOLDMAN SACHS. SEND IT BACK TO HEADQUARTERS. 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. President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey raises concerns that it could create a sideshow that may delay the Trump agenda, analysts said Tuesday evening. "I think it's still another story that's going to slow down Trump's agenda," said Greg Valliere, Horizon Investments chief global strategist. "We're going to have a budget fight in the next few months. Nobody has any idea what the Senate is going to do on health care. You have another huge story that's going to gobble up more time. It's a distraction for sure." BMO Private Bank CIO Jack Ablin said he does not expect markets to react to the news, which was released after the close of U.S. trading. But it could add to doubt that already exists about when Congress and the White House will actually tackle the policy most important to markets tax reform. Stocks have moved higher to record levels since Trump won the election, but the market is no longer favoring the stocks that would show a clear benefit from Trump's policies on infrastructure spending or even tax reform. "There's a healthy degree of skepticism among investors already that a lot of these policies that Trump has been bombastically touting around aren't going to get signed into law. This would seem to undermine that confidence," said Ablin. Valliere said he still expects to see tax reform, but market pros have been questioning when. House Speaker Paul Ryan is scheduled to speak on tax reform Wednesday in Ohio. "There's only two things I see that could really derail this market. One could be a geopolitical crisis, and I don't see it, and the second would be a sign that tax reform bill is dead, and I don't see it. It's a distraction," Valliere said. Ousted FBI Director James Comey thought he had been pranked when reports surfaced that President Donald Trump fired him, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Comey was speaking to FBI employees in Los Angeles when the news broke on a television, the newspaper reported. He then laughed, thinking it was a prank, the Times said. Comey "stepped into a side office, where he confirmed that he had been fired," the report added. Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, telling him in a letter "it is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission." In letters released publicly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommended that Comey be fired due to his conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information at the State department. Several lawmakers questioned the timing of Comey's removal because the FBI is investigating Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, including any possible links between the Trump campaign and Moscow. President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia, has caused a rift among congressional Republicans. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., attend a news conference in the Capitol on January 10, 2017. Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images watch now Until now, most Republicans have brushed off the claim as just another excuse after a devastating election for Democrats. But now some Republicans are using that very incident to defend Trump's decision to fire him. "The handling of the Clinton email investigation is a clear example of how Comey's decisions have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI," Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Tuesday. Quite a few Republicans are on board with Comey's firing Several Republican senators who didn't publicly question Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation during the election or in the immediate aftermath put out statements Tuesday night that sounded like they suddenly found it a topic of great concern. "Over the course of the last several months, Director Comey's decisions on controversial matters have prompted concern from across the political spectrum and from career law enforcement experts," Grassley said in his statement. "The effectiveness of the FBI depends upon the public trust and confidence, and unfortunately his has been lost." Just last week, Trump and the White House came to Comey's defense. But after Trump's decision to fire Comey, several key Republicans argued that the president was justified. House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte had essentially the same reaction as Grassley, raising the importance of having the "trust of the American people." watch now "The FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in the world and it is critical to have a director who holds the trust of the American people. It is clearly the President's prerogative to remove the FBI Director, as was recommended by the top two officials at the Department of Justice," he said in a statement. "I know this was a difficult decision for all concerned," Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement. "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests." John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who also sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, added that Comey's firing doesn't mean the investigation into Trump's Russia ties needs a special prosecutor. A lot of Republicans are skeptical of the timing Democratic lawmakers demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor Tuesday night after FBI Director James Comey was fired. "Now it's even more important that an independent special counsel is appointed to investigate the Russian interference in our elections," said New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. "In case the need for an independent special prosecutor to investigate #TrumpRussia ties wasn't clear enough alreadyit sure is now," said Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. More from NBC News: Why Trump fired the FBI director Timeline: Comey's Fall From Grace Lloyd Blankfein: So Many Goldman Sachs Alums in Trump Admin Is 'Inconvenience' New York Senator Charles Schumer used the word "cover up." "If we don't get a special prosecutor, every American will rightfully suspect that the decision to fire #Comey was part of a cover-up," Schumer said. President Donald Trump, who fired Comey, called top Judiciary Committee Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein before announcing the decision, her office said. "The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee," her statement said. Virginia Senator and former Hillary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine took to Twitter to call the firing of Comey a sign of "how frightened the Admin is over Russia investigation." Some Democrats charged that the sudden ouster by the president of the FBI chief had echoes of Watergate. "This is Nixonian," said Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey. "Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein must A remote village in Italy is promising cheap rent and a lump sum of $2,170 to anyone who agrees to move there in a bid to boost its dwindling population. Mayor Daniele Galliano of Bormida hopes that the incentive will breathe new life into the mountainous village in north-west Italy, which is home to just 394 inhabitants. People looking for a taste of rural life have been invited to make their application either by phone, writing or in person. Successful applicants will then be allocated discounted accommodation via a public tender in approximately two months' time, the mayor said in a post on the town's website. He gave no further details of the selection process. Discounted accommodation will be available from 50 euros ($54) per month. More spacious alternative properties will also available for 120 euros per month ($130). The additional one-off $2,100 "residence bonus" can be expected in 2018, after all "necessary procedures" have been undertaken, Galliano wrote in a separate Facebook post. The Department of Justice was told to come up with justification to fire FBI Director James Comey, The New York Times and CNN reported Tuesday. White House and Justice Department officials "had been working on building a case against [Comey] since at least last week," according to the Times, which cited administration officials. The report said Attorney General Jeff Sessions "had been charged with coming up with reasons to fire him." President Donald Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, telling him in a letter "it is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission." In letters released publicly, Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommended that Comey be fired due to his conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information at the State department. Several lawmakers questioned the timing of Comey's removal because the FBI is investigating Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, including any possible links between the Trump campaign and Moscow. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump had only received the memo from Rosenstein on Tuesday and decided to fire Comey based on it. President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey is troubling because of its timing and publicly-expressed reasoning, according to former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Bharara, who Trump removed in March from his position as the high-profile U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, commented on Comey's dismissal in a Tuesday evening tweet. @PreetBharara tweet: EVERYONE who cares about independence & rule of law in America should be "troubled by the timing and reasoning" of Comey firing. Period. Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, telling him in a letter "it is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission." In letters released publicly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommended that Comey be fired due to his conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information at the State department. Several lawmakers questioned the timing of Comey's removal because the FBI is investigating Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, including any possible links between the Trump campaign and Moscow. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump had only received the memo from Rosenstein on Tuesday and decided to fire Comey based on it. California Supreme Court Sheds Light on State's 'Day of Rest' Labor Law A recent decision by the California Supreme Court settled a question of state labor law that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals needed resolved in order to rule on a pending federal appeal that turns on the application of state law. The case stems from the labor disputes of two Nordstrom employees that allege the company violated California's Labor Code sections 551, 552, and 556 which govern the guaranteed "day of rest" each week to full time employees. The employees asserted that they had been forced to work more than 7 consecutive days without being provided the "rest day." A lower federal court interpreted the California code sections to exempt employees if they work less than six hours on any one day of the week, which knocked out the case in the lower court. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court requested the state Supreme Court clarify the state law. California's "Day of Rest" Statute Finally Explained The California Supreme Court explained that, in California, workers are guaranteed a day of rest by law, however, the guarantee only applies if a worker puts in more than 30 hours per week. However, unlike the lower federal court's determination that one six hour or less shift would disqualify the employee from the statutory "day of rest," the state supreme court explained that if a worker works more than one six hour shift in a week, they are entitled to have one day off, even if the rest of their shifts are under six hours. The court explained that only if all shifts are under six hours, would an employee be exempt from the statute. However, the California Supreme Court also ruled that the "day of rest" only needs to fall within a work week, which means that there is no prohibition against scheduling seven consecutive days, so long as an employee has one day off per work week. This means an employee can work 12 days in a row. Additionally, the court explained that the right to the "day of rest" is held by the employee and can be waived. Employers are only required to make it available. Related Resources: President Donald Trump boards Air Force One for travel to Atlanta from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S, April 28, 2017. White House officials scrambled to quell the chaos after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey late Tuesday. Trump made his decision after receiving Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's memo, which cited Comey's handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. But the White House press office found itself deflecting questions about the FBI's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, which also probes potential connections to the Trump campaign. "Today's actions have zero to do with Russia," Kellyanne Conway, senior White House advisor, told CNN's Anderson Cooper. Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News that there's no "there there" and that it's "time to move on" from this "false narrative that the media continues to want to drive." "Frankly, it's kind of getting absurd. There's nothing there. We've heard that time and time again," Sanders said. Yet after Comey's termination, several Democrats called for the appointment of a special prosecutor, claiming that it is the only way the American people would find the outcome of the probe credible. In a late Tuesday briefing with reporters, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer asked why Comey was fired at this particular moment. "Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president? It is troubling that Attorney General Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russian investigation, played a role in firing the man leading it," Schumer said. Later Tuesday evening, Trump mocked Schumer in response, citing the New York Democrat's comments to Bloomberg in November that he had lost confidence in Comey. @realDonaldTrump: Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp At the time, Schumer told Bloomberg that he wanted to sit down with Comey to understand why he sent a letter to Congress about the Clinton investigation so close to the election. Notable Republicans also raised questions about the timing of Comey's dismissal, suggesting a more independent investigation is appropriate. Trump has repeatedly denied that his campaign colluded with Russia. He has called allegations of ties to Russia a "total hoax" and "an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election." Some of the wealthiest and most influential entrepreneurs in the world dropped out of college. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg all left college before they could collect their diplomas. Peter Thiel even encourages talented students to drop out of college by funding a scholarship that awards recipients with $100,000 if they quit. This infographic, created by Funders and Founders designer Anna Vital, pinpoints the moments when some of the most successful millionaire and billionaire college dropouts decided higher ed wasn't for them. While staying in school as long as possible is proven to increase your wealth and future job prospects, these 10 accomplished entrepreneurs bucked convention and still achieved success. Michael Dell Getty Images Michael Dell Michael Dell dropped out of University of Texas at Austin his freshman year at the age of 19. He would go on to found Dell Technologies and is now worth $20.9 billion. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images Steve Jobs The founder of Apple left Reed College when he was just 19, reportedly because it was too much of a financial burden for his family. Despite his short tenure at Reed, Jobs still found his time there valuable. In a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, he credited a Reed calligraphy course for providing the inspiration for the typography he used on the first Mac. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has claimed asylum in Ecuadors London embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on accusations of rape. Anadolu Agency | Getty Images Julian Assange Before he was a controversial computer hacker, Julian Assange studied mathematics at the University of Melbourne. The Aussie WikiLeaks founder showed early indications of his anti-establishment ideals when he dropped out at the age of 19 over objections to the practice of students working on computer projects for the Australian military. Bill Gates Ramin Talaie | Getty Images Bill Gates Bill Gates attended Harvard for two years before leaving to build what would become Microsoft. The Harvard Crimson describes him as "Harvard's most successful dropout," and today he is the wealthiest person on the planet. Evan Williams, co-founder of Medium and Twitter. Getty Images Evan Williams Evan Williams grew up in Clarks, Nebraska, where his family ran a farm. He attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln for three semesters before dropping out. Williams was a freelance software programmer for Hewlett-Packard and Intel before landing a gig at Google. He later quit his job at Google to build Twitter, and became a billionaire. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard, founded Facebook and became the 5th wealthiest man alive. According to the book "The Facebook Effect," it took him just five minutes to make the decision to quit college. Larry Ellison Getty Images Larry Ellison Today, Larry Ellison is known as a software billionaire and founder of Oracle. When he was growing up, however, his adoptive parents encouraged him to be a doctor. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago, but struggled with his medical courses and dropped out. Today he is worth over $55 billion. Whatsapp CEO Jan Koum David Ramos | Getty Images Jan Koum Immigrant entrepreneur Jan Koum worked his way through college only to quit before graduating. He would go on to work for Yahoo, and then to invent the incredibly popular messaging application WhatsApp. Travis Kalanick VCG | Getty Images Travis Kalanick Before becoming the CEO and founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick studied computer engineering at UCLA. Kalanick decided to quit college just months before graduating to work for now-defunct peer-to-peer search engine Scour. John Mackey Dustin Finkelstein | Getty Images John Mackey It turns out that cool workspaces and free artisanal lunches aren't necessarily key in turning millennial hires into loyal employees. The oldest millennials came of age during the dot-com boom, when jumping from start-up to start-up in search of a better opportunity was the norm. And they've developed a reputation for job-hopping and being unattached to large corporate institutions. But when it comes to what they want most in a workplace, they're not much different from baby boomers and Gen Xers, who employers traditionally have pegged as more loyal workers. Almost 90 percent of millennials surveyed in a new study said that they would choose to stay in a job for the next 10 years if they knew they'd get: A nnual raises And upward career mobility Most millennials are planning to stay in their jobs for at least six years, and 77 percent would be willing to take a salary cut in exchange for long-term job security, according to a survey provided exclusively to CNBC by Qualtrics, a Provo, Utah-based survey software firm, and venture capital firm Accel Partners (a Qualtrics investor). "Millennials want stability yes, that may shock you, but it's true," said millennial attorney James Goodnow, 35, co-author of Motivating Millennials. "Many baby boomer executives think millennials are just cashing in on a short-term gig so they can scrape together enough money to go hike Mount Kilimanjaro or buy an unlimited annual skydiving pass." What is the longest you would stay at your current job even if you liked it? 39 percent said six or more years 68 percent said at least three years 16 percent said one year or less Why did you leave a job you liked? Better opportunity elsewhere: 36 percent Needed to relocate: 24 percent Went back to school: 16 percent Only 3 percent answered, "I don't like to spend too much time at one job." (Source: Accel Partners & Qualtrics study, Millennials @ Work) The Qualtrics-Accel Partners survey, which surveyed almost 1,500 millennials about what they look for in an ideal workplace, offers some insight for employers looking to hire and retain workers from the country's largest labor force. Here are a few myths the research suggest should be busted. 1. Millennials always have one foot out the office door. "These stereotypes are stifling for millennials, who are seeking business where they can grow and develop as professionals," Goodnow said. "This 'they're probably leaving anyway' mentality creates a self-fulfilling prophesy where business leaders don't invest in their youngest workers, who then leave as a result." 2. The mission of a company means more to millennials than traditional workplace benefits. "The notion that millennials place a premium on their employer's mission is clearly an over-generalization, said Larry Yu, marketing partner at Accel. "People value career trajectory and compensation more. It shouldn't be a surprise. This generation is getting to the age where things like owning a home or starting a family is more top-of-mind." Other data from the survey shows that investing in millennial employees during their first 90 days on the job is key to retaining them. Companies need to try harder at giving millennials a valuable reason to stay, which should go way beyond free food it's about upward mobility. "[Millennials] want to be at a place where they own their own career trajectory," said Mike Maughan, head of brand growth and global insights at Qualtrics, who notes that millennials' desire for long-term stability may have come from negative experiences they've had or heard about from their parents, and seeing the impact on their ability to save for retirement. "It's not that they want to be CEO or be a CEO tomorrow, but they want a seat at the table and want to feel like they're part of something." Pedestrians are reflected in the window of an Abercrombie & Fitch store in New York. After a day of speculation, Abercrombie & Fitch has confirmed that it is in preliminary discussions with several interested buyers. "There can be no assurance these discussions will lead to a definitive agreement or that a transaction will be consummated," the company said in a statement Wednesday. Earlier Wednesday, reports of a potential takeover of the struggling teen apparel retailer sent shares of skyrocketing. Express is interested in either a merger of equals or a stock-and-cash takeover of the company, one person told the Journal. American Eagle now boasts more than 1,000 brick-and-mortar locations, compared to Abercrombie's roughly 900, and around 650 for Express. However, Abercrombie has said it will not renew leases for around 60 of its stores this year. Abercrombie, Express, American Eagle and Perella Weinberg all declined to comment on the speculation. Abercrombie is reportedly evaluating this latest takeover interest with the help of investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners, sources have also told Reuters. As the brand has fought to stay on top of ever-changing fashion trends, Abercrombie's shares sat at a 17-year low before these takeover reports began surfacing on Tuesday. The company's operating income shrunk from $72.8 million in 2015 to $15.2 million last year, as fast-fashion competitors and competition from online retailers weighed on its profitability. Other teen clothing retailers Aeropostale, Wet Seal and American Apparel have all filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection within the past year. With Wednesday's gains, shares of Abercrombie's stock have tanked more than 40 percent over the past 12 months but are now up about 18 percent for the year-to-date period. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok, was sentenced to two years in prison after courts found the him guilty of blasphemy yesterday. Ahok, who had become popular because of his stance against corruption, lost his re-election bid for the governor role to Anies Baswedan last month. Questions surround the future of Indonesia 's reputation for tolerance after the conviction of the Christian Chinese governor of Jakarta on blasphemy charges yesterday. Jakarta's Christian governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok, arrives at a courtroom for his verdict and sentence in his blasphemy trial in Jakarta on May 9, 2017. Ahok's loss at the polls has partly been attributed to blasphemy charges brought against him last year. He had suggested in a speech last September that some Islamic politicians were using a verse in the Koran for political means. The verse he referred to has been interpreted by some as barring Muslims from accepting non-Muslim leaders. Markets in Indonesia reversed gains in the trading session yesterday to close lower following news of the ruling. Still, the impact on equity investors is likely to be short-term, said Hugo Brennan, an analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. However, the ruling could have a more significant impact on corporates thinking about entering Indonesia. "The case highlights their concerns about the lack of rule of law and an increasingly fractious political environment," Brennan said. While judges involved in the case were adamant that the ruling was not politically motivated, many were left unconvinced. Indonesians took to social media after the verdict, with some using the hashtag #RIPhukum (#RIPlaw) on Twitter to highlight how they felt about the lack of justice in the verdict. Others compared Ahok to political leaders who had been imprisoned in the past, including Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi and the late Nelson Mandela. Experts also alluded to the political nature of the case. "It's hard to see this for anything other than what it appears a politically-motivated sentence to appease hardline Islamists groups and politicians with a vested interested in seeing Ahok's political career go up in smoke," said Brennan. PHNOM PENH Economic integration has long been the focus of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but attention is increasingly turning to the region's shaky civil liberties plight. At a World Economic Forum (WEF) discussion in Cambodia's capital city on Wednesday, the organization's first regional meeting in the country, a group of experts shared their dreams for the bloc and human rights emerged as a common denominator. "Development can only be sustained when people are secure," said Wai Wai Nu, a former political prisoner under Myanmar's military government who is now founder and director of Women Peace Network. "My dream is for ASEAN is to become an inclusive society where all people in the region can enjoy freedom with respect to their human rights." Protesters calling for the release of jailed prominent land rights activist Tep Vanny, four human rights workers of Cambodian human rights NGO, and an election official outside the Phnom Penh Supreme Court. Satoshi Takahashi / LightRocket / Getty Images One of the goals for William Tanuwijaya, co-founder and CEO of Indonesian e-commerce giant Tokopedia is for politicians to run a clean government and inspire new generations to serve their citizens. Meanwhile, AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes urged leaders to be open to criticism. "It's no secret that a freer a country is, the more creative it is." Formed in August 1967, ASEAN promotes intergovernmental cooperation amongst its 10 members: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar and Vietnam. As the bloc turns 50 this year, several members continue to enforce laws restricting freedom of expressions and the right to peaceful assembly. Such repressive policies have drawn stinging criticism from international non-profit groups who say the bloc must take human dignity as seriously as economic growth ASEAN is expected to grow 5.1 percent annually through 2017-2021 and become the world's fifth-largest economy by 2020, the OECD estimates. Cambodia, the host nation to WEF's 2017 ASEAN meeting, is no stranger to such attacks, especially in the aftermath of the unsolved murder of prominent anti-government critic Kem Ley in 2016. Politically motivated persecutions of activists have been common under the 32-year rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, according to Human Rights Watch. watch now Boeing on Wednesday temporarily suspended flights of its 737 Max narrow-body jetliners due to an engine problem. The plane is powered by Leap engines made by CFM International, a 50-50 joint venture between General Electric and France's Safran. The Boeing aircraft has been undergoing test flights for a number of months and is close to its first commercial deliveries. "CFM notified us of a potential manufacturing quality escape with low pressure turbine disks in LEAP-1B engines delivered to Boeing," the aerospace giant said in a statement. Added Boeing, "We are working with CFM to inspect the disks in question." Boeing shares on Wednesday closed down 1.2 percent to $183.18. Earlier, the stock dropped as low as $177.18. GE's stock ended down modestly. "If the engine issue is indeed a quality issue and not a design issue, then it is likely to have a minimal impact to BA," Richard Safran, an industry analyst at Buckingham Research said in a research note. "It is also not likely to affect first delivery of the 737 Max or the production ramp." CFM has been the sole engine supplier to the Boeing 737 aircraft models since the early 1980s. Last month, CFM said more than 7,400 Leap-1B engines had been ordered to power the 3,700 Max aircraft by 86 customers worldwide. "Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to temporarily suspend MAX flights," Boeing said. "The step is consistent with our priority focus on safety for all who use and fly our products." GE Aviation and Safran confirmed in a statement that CFM notified Boeing of the engine issue. "We discovered the issue as part of our quality inspection process and notified Boeing immediately," the statement said. Boeing said the 737 Max 8 flight test program has put in more than 2,000 hours on the aircraft's engines. It also said the company still plans to begin first deliveries of the Max in May. The 737 Max 8 is the first of three planned models of Boeing's 737 Max line. The others include the Max 9, with just two test airplanes built so far, and the Max 7, a version that has yet to start production. U.S. government debt prices were slightly lower on Wednesday after a Treasury Department sale that saw soft demand. Investors also digested the abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey. The Treasury Department auctioned $23 billion in 10-year notes at a high yield of 2.4 percent on Wednesday. The bid-to-cover ratio, an indicator of demand, was 2.33. Indirect bidders, which include major central banks, were awarded 60.7 percent, the smallest since December. Direct bidders, which includes domestic money managers, bought 5.1 percent. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note cut losses after the sale, last trading at 2.414 percent. The yield had traded at 2.392 percent about 10 minutes before the auction results were released. "The auction was softer than we expected and seasonals were of little help. Overall stats were soft, but not unbelievably so. Again highlights how the auctions are priced by the marginal buyer," Aaron Kohli, interest rates strategist at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note. President Trump firing FBI Director James Comey is a scandal worse than Watergate, and represents an abuse of power, according to George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer. "Of course it's worse than Watergate," Richard Painter told CNBC. "[In] Watergate, we didn't have a foreign power, much less the Russians, conducting espionage inside the United States. That's what we had in 2016." Painter said this controversy also has echoes of the Alger Hiss scandal, where a high-ranking State Department official was accused of being a communist spy. Though the scandal was discovered after the statute of limitations had expired, Hiss was convicted of perjury for lying about his actions. "This is as if you took Watergate, rolled it into the Alger Hiss scandal and put it all in one," Painter said. "This is a very dangerous situation." The ethics lawyer said it's clear that Russia has been attempting to "destabilize our democracy since the 1920's," and was only successful this time because they received help from people within the U.S. Whether those people are connected to Trump needs to be investigated, he said. "The president cannot fire the FBI director while he's being investigated by the FBI director," he argued on "Power Lunch." "This is an abuse of power." Painter said he also isn't buying the Trump administration's claim that one of the reasons Comey was terminated was his handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email. The president, Painter said, would be "high-fiving" Comey if he thought the investigation did aid in his election. The real reason, he said, is clear. "It's about Russia, we know it's about Russia, and they're lying to us if they tell us anything different," Painter said. Watch: Comey fallout's impact on Trump agenda Carl C. Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, was once known for causing consternation in the boardroom. Now, he is the source of much hand-wringing on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, eight Democratic senators led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called for a federal investigation into whether Mr. Icahn violated laws against insider trading and market manipulation in his role as a special adviser to President Trump. In a letter addressed to current and acting heads of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, the senators raised questions about Mr. Icahn's majority investment in CVR Energy , an oil refiner. More from The New York Times: Investor Carl Icahn dragged into gambler's insider trading trial Icahn raises ethics flags with dual roles as investor and Trump adviser A victory for Trump is a victory for big-name traders At issue is whether CVR a company that Mr. Icahn controls made decisions based on nonpublic information it had access to thanks Mr. Icahn's close ties to the Trump administration. CVR is required by the E.P.A. to either blend its oil with ethanol or buy credits. The senators suggest CVR timed its buying and selling of these credits based on information Mr. Icahn had about coming policy changes. For most of his six-decade career, Mr. Icahn, 81, has been known as an outsider. He has gained a reputation as an aggressive critic of corporate chieftains, often waging bare-knuckled battles against companies in efforts to bully management into certain changes. Mr. Trump, a longtime friend and business associate, has lauded Mr. Icahn as a "brilliant negotiator." In their letter, the senators contend that Mr. Icahn used his position as an adviser to Mr. Trump to influence policy that would benefit CVR. They point to a Reuters report that CVR chose not to buy credits in the months leading up to and after Mr. Trump's election, instead selling them as the credits reached peak price shortly after the election. "Mr. Icahn 'made a massive bet in 2016' that the price of the renewable fuel credits would drop," the letter from the senators reads. "He then as an unpaid adviser to President Trump recommended personnel and policies that did in fact cause the price of these credits to drop. The net result was an 'impossible' 'rare profit' on the credits, 'a $50 million turnaround' from Mr. Icahn's initial investment." The senators contend that Mr. Icahn was betting that the price of the credits would plunge thanks to his influence over the Trump administration's choice for a new head of the E.P.A. As the Trump administration began that search, it enlisted the help of Mr. Icahn, who helped to interview and recommend Scott Pruitt, a known critic of the renewable fuel credit program. When Mr. Trump announced the nomination of Mr. Pruitt, the price of renewable credits fell 20 percent, the senators said. The price fell further following news that Mr. Icahn had presented the White House with recommendations on how to modify the renewable fuel credit program. Mr. Icahn's actions and his proximity to future policy decisions helped inform CVR's decisions and save the company $50 million, the senators contend. But, they wrote, "We have no way of knowing at this time whether Mr. Icahn made any of his renewable fuel credit trades or decisions about trades based on material, nonpublic information or otherwise manipulated the market." Since Mr. Trump won the election, CVR shares have gained nearly 75 percent, marking a major windfall for Mr. Icahn over that period. Mr. Icahn has been an investor in the company since 2011, when it was trading around the price at which it trades today. It's not the first time that Mr. Icahn has taken heat for his new role as an adviser to Mr. Trump. In February, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, together with six other Senate Democrats sent a letter to Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, seeking responses to a series of questions about whether Mr. Icahn's role would be official and whether he could work to change regulations to benefit his own investments. Icahn Enterprise, his firm, has several large investments that are affected by E.P.A. regulations, and the senators requested that the White House put in place safeguards to ensure that Mr. Icahn would not have access to information that is not public and could be used to make profitable trades. Neither Mr. McGahn nor the White House has responded to the letter, which was sent on Feb. 13, according to a representative of Mr. Whitehouse. In March, the same senators followed up with a letter to Mr. Icahn, the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department to complain about Mr. Icahn's role as both investor and adviser. In a four-page letter sent on March 27, they wrote: "Were the shoe on the other foot, Republicans would be having fits about any Obama relationship like this." Trump Lawyers Try to Save 2nd Travel Ban If politics and religion have anything to do with President Trump's travel ban, then his lawyers were facing a hostile crowd at the en banc panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nine of the 12 justices hearing the case are Democrats. Two Republican appointees recused themselves. That left only three from the president's party in the courtroom, not including his lawyers. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall did not get far in the argument before U.S. Circuit Judge Robert King jumped in. The judge challenged the government's position that Trump's anti-Muslim statements had nothing to do with the travel ban. "That's the most important issue in the whole case," King said, making it clear that the president's campaign statements could doom his travel ban on people coming from six Muslim countries. Muslim Countries? The case pending in the Fourth Circuit came up from a federal judge in Maryland, who ruled that the revised travel ban was unconstitutional based on the president's campaign promises to keep Muslims from entering the country. Wall side-stepped the issue, arguing that campaign promises are one thing, governing is another. "The text [of the executive order] doesn't have to anything to do with religion," Wall said. "Its operation doesn't have anything to do with religion." Wall insisted that that it was not a ban on Muslims. It was a ban of specific countries -- Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan -- that have Muslim-majority populations. Rhetoric or Xenophobic? Omar Jadwat, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said Trump's campaign rhetoric followed him into office. He said the president intentionally targeted Muslims in the unprecedented ban. "There has never been a multi-country travel ban ordered by the president," he said. The appeals panel took the matter under submission, and will probably not rule before the Ninth Circuit takes up the same issue at a hearing on May 15. The hearing will be broadcast live on C-SPAN. In that case, a federal judge in Hawaii first blocked the travel ban. This is the second time the courts have enjoined the president's travel bans. Related Resources: watch now China has rapidly climbed the ranks to become the world's second-largest economy. Now, the most populous nation on the planet wants to increase its influence by digging further into its pockets flush with cash after decades of rapid growth to splash out with its "One Belt, One Road" policy. The initiative is meant to connect Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa to bolster trade and development. This weekend, hordes of foreign diplomats and business leaders are expected to descend on Beijing for a two-day meeting about the policy. Here's what you need to know: What is "One Belt, One Road?" President Xi Jinping first announced the policy in 2013; it was later named one of China's three major national strategies, and morphed into an entire chapter in the current five-year plan, to run through 2020. The plan aims to connect Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa with a vast logistics and transport network, using roads, ports, railway tracks, pipelines, airports, transnational electric grids and even fiber optic lines. The scheme involves 65 countries, which together account for one-third of global GDP and 60 percent of the world's population, or 4.5 billion people, according to Oxford Economics. CNBC Why does China want to do this? This is part of China's push to increase global clout building modern infrastructure can attract more investment and trade along the "One Belt, One Road" route. It could be beneficial for western China, which is less developed, as it links up with neighboring countries. And in the long run, it will help China shore up access to energy resources. The policy could boost the domestic economy with demand abroad, and might also soak up some of the overcapacity in China's heavy industry, but analysts say these are fringe benefits. Experts say China has an opportunity to step into a global leadership role, one that the U.S. previously filled and may now be abandoning, especially after President Donald Trump pulled out of a major trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's clear China wants to wield greater influence Xi's speech in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos touted the benefits of globalization, and called for international cooperation. And an article by Premier Li Keqiang published shortly after also called for economic openness. But despite all the talk of global connectivity, skeptics highlight that China still restricts foreign investment, censorship continues to be an issue and concerns remain over human rights. How much is China spending? Most of the funding is coming via China's policy and commercial banks, though there is no official data on OBOR projects and spending estimates vary. In 2015, the China Development Bank said it had reserved $890 billion for more than 900 projects. The Export-Import Bank of China announced early last year that it had started financing over 1,000 projects. The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is also providing financing. An Uygur man pulls a fruit cart in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China. Zhang Peng | LightRocket | Getty Images China's big four state-owned banks are estimated to have extended $90 billion in loans to OBOR countries in 2016, according to analysis by Oxford Economics. And Credit Suisse estimates China could invest as much as $500 billion in about 60 countries over the next five years. The assumption is that these countries will be able to pay China back, and that lenders will know how to manage credit risk. This means the obvious challenge is that if these projects fail to deliver as expected, bad debts could create a strain. But the leaks may not spring for a while, as infrastructure projects tend to have a long lead time. What OBOR projects have already launched? Plenty have launched thus far, including a 418-kilometer rail link with Laos, and a collection of infrastructure projects totaling $46 billion, named the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. A freight train service is linking China and Europe. And China and France are jointly developing the $24 billion Hinkley Point nuclear power plant in the U.K. In reality, however, reports abound of delays and confusion. There are worries over due diligence making sure the money is being well-spent which is tough to track in other countries and remains a potent domestic challenge despite China's anti-corruption crackdown. watch now Wait, wasn't China already heavily investing abroad? China's state-owned enterprises and private companies have long invested abroad. In some ways, experts at research firm IHS say the OBOR initiative is simply smart branding for what China was already doing. At the same time, this is Beijing using its political might China announcing with a bullhorn its support for investment abroad could help grease the wheels to get deals and contracts through faster. Who benefits? Sometimes "Goodnight Moon" just won't do the trick. So for parents struggling to get their little ones to rest their eyes for the night, China's state propaganda apparatus has a suggestion: Tell your child about President Xi Jinping's ambitions to extend China's political and economic power across Asia and the Middle East. China Daily, a state-controlled media organization that aims primarily at an international audience, began releasing English-language videos this week describing a huge spending and infrastructure push called the Belt and Road Initiative, in the form of a child's bedtime story. In the two videos released so far, a father uses a windup camel skittering across a map to describe trade across Asia along the old Silk Road, and how China plans to help develop the regions it once passed through. More from New York Times: Tech's Frightful Five: They've Got Us As Department Stores Close, Stitch Fix Expands Online Disney Parks and Movies Soar, but ESPN Is a Concern Mr. Xi's name is, of course, dropped prominently. "They're building new things like highways and railways and airports, and even pipeline and internet cables," says a father trying to put his daughter to bed. "So it's just about moving stuff around?" she asks. "That's a big part of it," he says. "But there's a lot more." Russia's foreign minister came to Washington on Wednesday amid a political firestorm over the surprise ouster of FBI Director James Comey, and greeted questions about the topic with humor. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have questioned the timing of President Donald Trump's decision to remove Comey, which the White House said was due to the FBI chief's conduct during the probe into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information last year. Democrats, in particular, said the move came as the FBI investigates Russia's alleged meddling in the election, including possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The administration said the FBI's Russia probe was not a factor in the FBI director's dismissal, but during the final days of the election, Trump had praised Comey's announcement about the Clinton probe. Clinton blames Comey's announcement in part for her loss to Trump. Standing with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the State Department on Wednesday, Sergey Lavrov was asked if Comey's firing "casts a shadow" on the diplomatic visit. "Was he fired? You're kidding," Lavrov said in a deadpan before shrugging and turning to walk away next to Tillerson. Lavrov will meet with Trump at the White House later Wednesday morning. Tuesday's firing intensified Democratic calls for an independent investigation into Russian interference in the election. Then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, May 3, 2017 in Washington, DC. FBI Director James Comey had asked last week for more resources for the agency's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 election, according to multiple media reports on Wednesday. The New York Times, citing three officials with knowledge of the meeting, reported that Comey made his appeal last week in a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the person who signed the memo that laid out the case for Comey's dismissal because of his public actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and NBC News all confirmed the Times' reporting. A Justice Department spokesman told CNBC that the Times report was "totally false." But a senior congressional official with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC that Comey had told members of Congress that he had requested more staff and money for the investigation. Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told reporters on Wednesday that he would be the first to ask for more funding if needed. Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said that Republican Sen. Richard Burr has indicated he would be supportive of such a request, if made. Burr serves as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Comey had previously confirmed that the FBI's probe of Russia's role in the presidential election would also look into potential connections between Trump's campaign and Moscow. Since President Donald Trump's surprise termination of Comey, the White House repeatedly disputed claims that the director's firing is linked to the FBI's investigation. The FBI said it is not commenting on the reports at this time. Correction: This story was revised to correct that Rosenstein's memo stopped short of recommending that Comey be fired. NBC News contributed reporting. President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey seems to be a "sideshow" to the markets, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Wednesday. "If it is a constitutional crisis, gold should be flying. If it is a constitutional crisis, the S&P should be down a percent and a half," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." Still, the president's abrupt dismissal of the FBI director added to the long list of things Trump will have to address before tax reform and repatriation happens, Cramer said. The Dow Jones industrial , the and the were slightly lower Wednesday. Gold edged off an eight-week low on Wednesday as investors assessed Trump's decision. In Washington, Democrats called for Comey to immediately be summoned to testify to Congress about the status of the Trump-Russia investigation, and for the Justice Department to appoint an independent counsel for the Russia inquiry. Some Republicans said Comey's firing will be a fresh start, while others called Trump's dismissal bad timing. Best known for his roles in movies such as "National Treasure" and "Leaving Las Vegas," Nicolas Cage was once a top earner in Hollywood, worth $150 million. But Cage didn't hold on to his fortune for long. He squandered it away on a string of expensive and often eccentric purchases, eventually facing foreclosure on several properties and owing the IRS $6.3 million in property taxes. Now worth around $25 million, Cage is taking roles left and right to help pay off his debts. As chronicled in CNBC's "Secret Lives of the Super Rich," here's a glimpse at some of Cage's craziest purchases. Democratic lawmakers demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor after FBI Director James Comey was fired on Tuesday and some key GOP senators said they were troubled by the timing of the sudden ouster by President Donald Trump. "Now it's even more important that an independent special counsel is appointed to investigate the Russian interference in our elections," New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said. "In case the need for an independent special prosecutor to investigate #TrumpRussia ties wasn't clear enough alreadyit sure is now," Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley tweeted. More from NBC News: Comey's Fall From Grace Why Trump Fired the FBI Director What You Need to Know About Trump, Comey, and the Russia Probe New York Sen. Charles Schumer used the word "cover-up." "If we don't get a special prosecutor, every American will rightfully suspect that the decision to fire #Comey was part of a cover-up," he added. Trump shot back at the Schumer on Twitter. @realDonaldTrump Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp The president called top Judiciary Committee Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein before announcing the decision, her office said. "The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee," her statement said. Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by the Trump administration in March, said on Twitter that "EVERYONE who cares about independence & rule of law in America should be 'troubled by the timing and reasoning' of Comey firing. Period." Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in a tweet sent a message of encouragement to the career men and women of the FBI and Justice Department. Holder played a major consultative role in the Obama administration selection of Comey as FBI director, it was reported at the time. @EricHolder To the career men and women at DOJ/FBI: you know what the job entails and how to do it. Be strong and unafraid. Duty. Honor. Country. Virginia Senator and former Hillary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine took to Twitter to call the firing of Comey a sign of "how frightened the Admin is over Russia investigation." @timkaine Trump firing Comey shows how frightened the Admin is over Russia investigation Some Democrats charged that the sudden ouster by the president of the FBI chief had echoes of Watergate. "This is Nixonian," Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said. "Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein must immediately appoint a special prosecutor to continue the Trump/Russia investigation." New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich added: "President Trump's dismissal of FBI Director Comey smacks of President Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. If this is an effort to stop the investigations into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, it won't succeed." Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said the nation was in "a full-fledged constitutional crisis." Europe will press the US and China for tougher world trade rules in a fresh effort to fend off the inequalities of globalisation that have been seized on by hard-right nationalists such as Marine Le Pen of France. In a paper on Wednesday that rejects the kind of isolationist turn advocated by US president Donald Trump, the European Commission will call for stronger global rules and institutions to promote trade fairness while urging EU member states to bolster innovation and education. It wants tougher anti-dumping rules and a tribunal to settle international investment disputes. Relief in Brussels at the defeat of Ms Le Pen in the recent presidential election is tempered with anxiety that job losses and factory closures linked to globalisation will continue to fuel support for European populists. More from Financial Times: South Korea's Moon Jae-in offers olive branch at inauguration UK tech investors face loss of significant funding after Brexit Macron's luck persists as economic recovery gathers pace Although Ms Le Pen's loss follows the failure of her ally Geert Wilders to gain traction in the Dutch election two months ago, there is concern that the EU remains vulnerable to anti-establishment movements that whip up public support by attacking free trade and open markets. Despite losing by a big margin to Emmanuel Macron, Ms Le Pen's tally of almost 11m votes was more than double the number gained by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 election. "This movement is still there. If we can't deliver it will come back to bite us," said a senior Brussels official. The commission's push to assert more political control over globalisation comes amid tension in world trade over Mr Trump's demands for a shake-up of global commerce. Mr Trump continues to advance an aggressive "America first" trade policy, imposing tariffs on some Canadian imports even as he pulls back from more radical steps such as declaring China to be a currency manipulator. The commission specifically rejects protectionism, a stance supported by most EU member states, raising questions as to whether Europe could marshal US support for a new drive to strengthen trade rules. Any such effort would require the support of China for measures that might weaken its economic power. Still, Brussels will argue that the global rule book remains far from complete and should be expanded. While calling for a global investment court to settle disputes, the commission will also assert the right to impose punitive tariffs whenever products such as cut-price steel from China are dumped on European markets. Although the commission will make the case that globalisation is a positive force that boosts economic growth, it will say the benefits are spread unequally and fan social polarisation. It will also cite research that suggests a majority of Europeans view globalisation as a threat to their country's identity. The commission will also say globalisation will contribute to a further widening in inequalities unless further steps are taken to curb its downsides. The effort to recast globalisation is part of a wider drive to revitalise the EU after the Brexit shock. This includes parallel plans for a social policy agenda, boosting workplace protection and efforts to reinforce the foundations of the single currency. The commission will say European citizens are concerned they will not be able to determine their own futures due to the perception that their governments are no longer in control of the global economic system. It will argue, however, that the temptation of isolationism should be resisted and that most Europeans recognise that protectionism does not protect. The closure of European borders to trade would prompt other powers to do the same, making exports less competitive and putting more jobs at risk. President Donald Trump's overdue decision to fire FBI Director James Comey has removed all doubt about the very low point we're now in when it comes to American politics and civil discourse. In short, this event has brought out the worst in just about everyone. Whatever trust the American people still had in its political parties and elected officials is likely hanging by a thread now. The worst conduct is coming from the Democrats and their usual allies in the news media. But there's plenty of blame and shame for the Congressional Republicans and the White House to share. The Democrats who are now outraged about Comey's firing are the same ones who have been viciously attacking and erroneously blaming Comey for Hillary Clinton's loss in the November election. In fact, they didn't even wait for the election loss when they cheered then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's October letter accusing Comey of breaking the law for influencing the election and this is key claiming that Comey was derelict in his duty for not doing anything to charge the Trump campaign despite the fact that Reid wrote that the bureau "possesses explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government." And yet we all saw Reid's successor, Senator Charles Schumer, crying bloody murder over the Comey firing Tuesday evening specifically because the firing was supposedly hampering Comey's pointed Russia investigation! That's also the same Schumer who famously proclaimed back in November that he had "lost confidence" in Comey because of his conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Never mind that, in the interim six months, Schumer had never stated that he had changed his mind. Instead, Schumer spoke on Tuesday about Comey as if he were the one man closest to blowing the doors off the endlessly alleged and still never proven collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. If Schumer truly believed that about Comey and the Russia investigation, then why didn't he say so publicy at any time since November or at least since the Trump team took office? Or why didn't he at least explain why Reid got it wrong back in October when he accused Comey of sitting on the Russia investigation, thus making him precisely not the best person to continue that probe? Political hypocrisy thrives on the short memories of the public and the news media. And it's positively flourishing now. Adding to Schumer's hypocrisy is a coordinated attempt at incitement by many of his fellow Democrats who seem to be betting on America's collective historical ignorance. Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey took the lead on that front when he rushed out a statement calling the Comey firing "Nixonian," even though there are no parallels in this case to Watergate. For the record, President Nixon fired the special prosecutor and not the FBI Director during the Watergate investigation. And kudos to the Nixon Presidential library for pointing that out in a tweet Tuesday night that at least provided some comic relief. The charge that this firing is somehow an abuse of power assumes an astounding series of facts not in evidence. What the FBI and the other investigators do or do not have in this Russia investigation is simply unknown to the people making this Nixon analogy. Until they do know something, they have a responsibility as elected leaders to at least be calm. But that's clearly asking too much from an entire political party that has not ceased from throwing a communal temper tantrum since they lost the election. Meanwhile, the Republicans have demonstrated continued cowardice and fence-straddling. Senator John McCain continued his recent string of criticism of the president specifically when he does something Democrats and the news media don't like, saying he was "disappointed" by the decision. Senator Ben Sasse said the timing of the firing was "very troubling." Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would only comment by saying he will work to make sure a good FBI director replacement is confirmed. Some other GOP senators were very supportive of the move, including the Senate's most moderate Republican in Susan Collins of Maine who called the firing an "inevitable solution" to the negative fallout from the Clinton investigation. Collins and the supportive GOP senators aside, this is more of the same from the establishment Republicans in Congress who continue to fall short of outwardly standing up to President Trump but also avoiding strongly endorsing his agenda. Some might see that position as a form of courage, but in reality the Capitol Hill GOP is trying to have its Trump cake and eat it too. And then there is the sloppiness and apparent vindictiveness from the White House to discuss. The Chuck Schumer of last November was right to say he had lost confidence in Comey, because so had most of America. Voters were and remain frankly confused by Comey's conduct and motives in the Clinton email case. Senator Collins is right, too, when she points out that Comey simply could not go on with any credibility in the job. But all of that was true in January when President Trump took office and it would have indeed been more prudent to replace Comey right away. Coming just after Secretary Clinton again blamed Comey for her election loss, President Trump looks like he was responding to her instead of making an informed and timely decision. Whether President Trump was trying to appear overly magnanimous and forgiving to both Comey and Secretary Clinton in the face of his election victory, it was the wrong move to put this off until now. The delay does not excuse the deplorable and ignorant responses from so many members of Congress, but it aided and abetted that very result. So where does this leave the American people? Anyone who thinks this firing will somehow boost their favorite party's or elected leader's poll numbers hasn't been paying attention lately. And those who know their recent history also know that the appointment of a special prosecutor or independent counsel to probe the possible Trump-Russian ties won't do anything but ramp up the political partisan finger pointing and recrimination. This is the kind of move that makes everyone in Washington look worse. Democrats look like partisan hypocrites. Republicans look like they're running scared. And the Trump administration looks like it still doesn't have its act completely together or is simply executing personal vendettas first and governing second. And maybe they all look like that because they are. Comey had, indeed, lost the confidence of the American people, but right now it's hard to make the argument that anyone in Washington has our trust or even respect. This would be a great opportunity for someone in Washington to step up and look like the adult in the room. But don't hold your breath. Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. Supporters of President Elect Emmanuel Macron celebrate near the Louvre museum after results were announced in the second round vote of the 2017 French presidential elections, in Paris, France May 7, 2017. As the results of France's presidential election rolled in on Sunday, Francoise Horiot watched with relief, optimistic about the prospects for her small aviation business. The victory of Emmanuel Macron, an economic centrist, gave her hope that the mechanics in her factory could be more productive if he followed through on promises to ease regulations. And it erased fears that her ties with suppliers and clients in Europe, Turkey and China might founder if his opponent, Marine Le Pen, could have made good on promises to pull France out of the European Union. "Macron has so much to do, both at the national and European level," said Mrs. Horiot, 69, who runs Entreprise Troyes Aviation, which employs 15 people in this industrial and agricultural region in central France. "I hope he'll have the power to improve the economy." More from New York Times: Tech's Frightful Five: They've Got Us As Department Stores Close, Stitch Fix Expands Online Disney Parks and Movies Soar, but ESPN Is a Concern He may not. During the campaign, Mr. Macron promised to swiftly pass measures to lower France's high unemployment rate and revive growth, which has remained stagnant in the wake of Europe's financial crisis. A priority for the more than three million small and medium businesses that form the backbone of the economy is a revision of the nation's 3,300-page labor code, which they say makes it difficult to lay off employees and discourages them from hiring new workers. But Mr. Macron, like many of his predecessors, will face political and social hurdles to change. His new party, La Republique en Marche Republic on the Move must secure a parliamentary majority in legislative elections next month, or face years of possible political gridlock. French trade unions have also vowed nationwide protests to stop him from pushing France toward a less protected labor market, which they warn would fuel precariousness and nourish the populism that lifted Ms. Le Pen. At least half of the battle may be simply persuading the French people and French businesses, investors and workers to feel more optimistic about the future after a long malaise. "The best case is it takes some time, but he manages to implement at least half of what's needed to stop decreasing competitiveness and change the trajectory of France," said Olivier Marchal, the chairman of Bain & Co. France, a business consultancy. "If he accomplishes that, then employment picks up, confidence is rebuilt, new investment comes in, and we shift from a vicious cycle to a virtuous one," Mr. Marchal added. If not, "then the economic situation is going to be a major issue, both for France and for Europe." The Aube region of central France, of which Troyes is the de facto capital, has grappled with economic uncertainty for years. Unemployment has lingered around 13 percent, higher than the national average, as jobs were lost over the decades. Layoffs recently swept through a nearby Michelin tire factory. Textile manufacturers once implanted in the region closed amid cheap global competition. The breakdown of the votes belied the economic weakness. Mr. Macron won 54 percent of votes in the region in Sunday's election. But Ms. Le Pen, who campaigned hard among disaffected workers, had 46 percent of the vote, more than 11 points above the national average. Mr. Macron's platform plays well to businesses around Troyes, a town of 60,000 lined with 16th-century timbered houses and a phalanx of cafes and small shops. A handful of factories that have weathered global competition and the downturn dot the lush landscape on Troyes's outskirts. Tips to Minimize Business Liability for Employee Drinking As National Geographic recently chronicled, fermented drinks and alcohol have been a part of human culture since there was a human culture. Booze, in all its myriad incarnations has become so entwined in our daily and nightly lives that we rewrote the Constitution (twice!) over it. Alcohol has even infiltrated the workplace, from Don Draper's office bar cart in Mad Men to kegerators at startups. Clearly the hard stuff is here to stay, so how do you keep your small business safe from legal liability for inebriated employees? Here are a few tips from our archives: If your staff is on the sauce in the office, it's usually at a workplace social gathering. Whether a holiday party, birthday celebration, or award ceremony, make sure employees know that a toast or two is acceptable, but getting tanked is not. Some scientific research has shown that creativity can be aided with a couple cans of beer. Does that mean you should encourage or allow on-the-clock consumption? Read more about the potential benefits and costs of alcohol in the office. What about bribing your employees with booze? If you're uncomfortable with your staff drinking while they're working, you may consider rewarding them with a pint (or two) for a job well done. On a more serious note, alcoholism can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, requiring certain employers to provide reasonable accommodations for alcoholic employees. These can include modifying an employee's work scheduled to provide time to attend meetings, rehabilitation, or other treatment programs. The ADA also prohibits discriminating against alcoholic employees and job applicants. That said, you are obviously not obligated to provide an employee with alcohol on the job, and you may discipline an alcoholic employee as you would any other. Balancing booze and business can get a bit tricky. For help, contact an experienced employment law attorney. Related Resources: A former political director to President George W. Bush said Wednesday she found the news of James Comey's firing "dumbfounding." "Even if you assume that their intentions were pure, and they fired him because of competence reasons, this just stinks to high heaven," Sara Fagen, a CNBC contributor, said on "Squawk Box." Also on the show, former CIA agent John Sipher said Comey's firing likely won't end the FBI's investigation into possible links between Russia and President Donald Trump's campaign. The Trump administration "tends to look at intelligence officers, law enforcement, judiciary and assume they're part of the partisan process and treat them as such," Sipher said. "However, the people who work professional intelligence officers, FBI officers have been working for a number of administrations. They are nonpartisan and will follow the information where it goes. I think this will continue. I think our institutions are stronger than this." On Tuesday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump fired Comey "based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions." Rosenstein focused on Comey's statements days before the November election about the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's email practices. During the final days of the campaign, Trump had praised Comey's announcement, which Clinton blames for her loss to Trump. In a letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. Comey's abrupt dismissal came amid the FBI's investigation into Russia's influence on the 2016 U.S. election, including possible links between Moscow and Trump campaign officials. Comey confirmed the probe in March. Some Republicans said Comey's firing will be a fresh start, while others called Trump's dismissal bad timing. Many Democrats called for Comey to immediately be summoned to testify to Congress about the status of the Trump-Russia investigation. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said the Justice Department should appoint an independent prosecutor for the Russia inquiry. In a tweet on Tuesday night, Trump took aim at Schumer. @realDonaldTrump: Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp On Wednesday, Trump continued to tweet on Comey's firing. @realDonaldTrump: The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad! James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI. Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me! The Associated Press and CNBC's Christine Wang contributed to this report. Finding an apartment on a budget is difficult, but a few strategies will make it a lot easier. Personal finance experts suggest you keep your rent under 30 percent of your income. But for many young professionals in cities these days, that's a big ask. Millions of Americans are spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent as prices remain sky-high. In Boston, for example, a one-bedroom costs an average of $2,930 a month. In San Francisco, it's $3,360. Even some software engineers at Facebook claim they can't afford rent. As a 26-year-old professional living in New York, where the average one-bedroom apartment goes for $3,680 a month, I get it. In fact, I lived at home for four years after college to save money while I figured out what I wanted to do with my career, and I saved about $47,000 in the process. Me in front of my fifth floor walk-up apartment on move in day. When it came time to move into my own place, it was incredibly difficult to find rent that wasn't going to break my budget. After two months of searching, I eventually found an affordable apartment. Sure, it was a fifth-floor walk-up with a shared bathroom and no oven, but it worked. From having gone through the process of finding an apartment on a budget, here are my top tips: 1. Know your deal breakers You're probably not going to have your own one-bedroom apartment. But being on a budget doesn't mean you have to compromise your quality of life. Take a minute and brainstorm what you would like and what you couldn't stand. Here's my recommended list of things to consider: Your commute time Whether the apartment is smoking or non-smoking How you feel about pets Distance to the nearest subway or bus stop If you want a quiet or lively place to live If you need a stove, oven, dishwasher, elevator or on-site laundry What you're looking for in a roommate How you feel about overnight guests Additionally, think about whether or not you can afford to use a real estate broker. If you're on a tight budget, chances are you won't be able to. Brokers in major cities generally charge 10 to 15 percent of the annual rental fee. For a $1,200 apartment, that's between $1,440 and $2,160. If you can't afford a broker, use keywords such as "no broker" or "no fee" when looking at listings. 2. Download real estate apps To stay up to date on the listings, download apps like Craigslist, StreetEasy, Trulia and Zillow. Checking them daily is a convenient way to cast a wide net, since you'll find unique listings on each. If the app offers certain benefits to people who create an account, such as the ability to save your searches or keep track of your favorite listings, take advantage of them. Your search will be a lot easier. In addition, enable notifications. You'll be pinged every time a new listing that matches your criteria is added. When thousands of other people are searching for places, responding even minutes earlier than others can make a huge difference. 3. Save yourself time and stop looking for a studio Finding an affordable studio apartment in a city like New York is extremely difficult, if not impossible. On the off chance that you do find one, it almost always has some sort of major catch: It will be the size of a closet or it won't have its own bathroom. If you have roommates to share an apartment with, you really open up your options. Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images If you don't have friends or siblings to move in with, fear not. There are a lot of young professionals out there who are looking for roommates too. It will feel a lot like online dating, but when you find the right match, you're more likely to find real (estate) happiness. 4. Join Facebook housing groups There are dozens of Facebook groups out there where people post apartment listings. A friend invited me to join a New York City group, and I'm so glad she did. It makes searching for an apartment more personal, since you can check out the lister's social media profile and put a face to the name. Look up your city name along with "apartments" "listings" or "housing" and you're sure to find a bunch of groups. Request to join them. 5. Post a roommate ad The more you broadcast your search, the more responses you'll get. So post what you're looking for on your Facebook profile and tell your friends. If you don't want to share your exact price point, you can always give a range or use terms like "on a budget." Join roommate matching sites like Spareroom.com or Roomster.com and consider posting a roommate-seeking ad on Craigslist. The Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Getty Images In these posts, include your budget, ideal neighborhoods, a bit about yourself and what you're looking for in a roommate. To stay safe while doing this, don't respond to anyone who asks for money or personal information those are red flags. Ask for multiple social media account links from the person to verify that he or she is real. You could also arrange a video call before meeting up. 6. Draft a post you can use to reply to apartment listings Responding to dozens of listings can be exhausting. To avoid apartment-hunting burn-out, draft a general email response that you can copy and paste, with minor tweaks, to each listing that interests you. The response should include a bit about yourself, your ideal move in date, what you're looking for and any questions you have about that listing. 7. Stay safe Never send money, your social security number or any other personal information to strangers, no matter what they say. Seriously, there's a huge market out there of people trying to scam you. Don't sign any documents or turn over any cash until you do some of your own investigative research. Search the person's name and company with the word "fraud," "scam" and "lawsuit" to see if anything comes up. The more you broadcast your search, the more responses you'll get. When going to view an apartment, always meet in a public place and tell a friend where you're headed. If you have any doubts, do more digging or just hold off. There will be more listings tomorrow. And if you're considering moving into a room in someone else's apartment, make sure to actually meet the person or people you'd be living with first. You'll be able to ask key questions about their lifestyle and habits. 8. Look into new areas Finding an affordable apartment in the posh parts of any city, like the West Village in Manhattan or upscale Brooklyn Heights, is extremely difficult, even if you're planning to share the space. Many young professionals in New York are moving to the less gentrified areas of Queens, the Bronx and nearby New Jersey for this reason. If you look at less trendy but still vibrant neighborhoods such as Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Sunset Park, Kensington and Inwood, you'll find more listings at competitive prices. The commute might not even be that much worse, and the local food might be far better. Find out where young professionals in your area are moving and do some research. Look into where the laundromats, parks and grocery stores are, what the the crime rate is and where the nearest subways or bus stops are. Visit. You might just find a good fit. 9. Don't make impulse buys watch now Improving your home shouldn't demolish your finances. About half of homeowners are either starting or continuing a home remodeling project this spring, according to a new survey from design and remodeling site Houzz. The site polled 95,920 of its users (who, arguably, may be more inclined than the general population to undertake such projects). How much you can expect to spend varies by project last year, Houzz users spent an average $11,700 to remodel or add a master bathroom, for example, and $2,800 on laundry room improvements. Fresh Meat Media LLC | Getty Images Cost is a concern across the board. "Minimizing costs" tied with "increasing resale value" as homeowners' top renovation priority, Houzz found. "Staying on budget" was the top challenge, with more than a third of homeowners saying they struggled not to overspend. Here's how to prepare your finances for a remodeling project: Assess the investment If you're planning to move within a few months or even a year or two, remodeling may not offer a great return on investment, said Angie Hicks, founder of consumer review site Angie's List. A dollar spent on a renovation doesn't necessarily translate into a dollar in added home value. For example, a $62,158 major kitchen remodel recoups just 65.3 percent in resale value, according to the 2017 Cost vs Value report from Remodeling. Spending $71,115 to remodel the basement returns 70 percent. You need to make sure you can afford paying off this debt without the house selling. Odysseas Papadimitriou Chief executive, WalletHub Look for projects that keep you in line with the Joneses, said Hicks. For example, if your home is the only one in the neighborhood that doesn't have two bathrooms, adding one could pay off in added value when you sell. But a buyer may not be willing to pay a premium just because you picked granite countertops when your neighbors have laminate. Save up More than a third of homeowners told Houzz they waited to renovate until they had the savings to do so. More than nine in 10 are paying for their project at least in part with cash. (See charts.) That's smart, said Mark La Spisa, a certified financial planner and the president of Vermillion Financial Advisors in South Barrington, Illinois. Unless that project is an emergency say, you're replacing leaking windows you're far better off saving up, which can help you spend less, and avoid compromising other goals. "With financing, you're paying the full boat price and then interest on top of it," he said. Financing can also be costly when it comes to your bigger financial picture, said La Spisa. Someone financing a renovation because they didn't have savings should consider where they will come up with the extra money to make payments on that debt, he said and whether they can stay on track with other savings goals, with less money in their budget. Budget for the unexpected Once you're figured out how much you can afford to spend, total, prepare your budget to cover 90 percent of that amount, Hicks said. Shop for contractors based on that figure, too. "Give at least a 10 percent cushion for the unexpected," she said that way, if the project hits an unexpected snag, you aren't over-budget. Compare financing options If you have to borrow, weigh the costs and benefits of all the options available to you, La Spisa said. Then shop around to make sure you get the best terms possible for that kind of financing. Tapping your home equity, in the form of a loan or a line of credit, can often be an attractive option because the interest paid is typically tax deductible, he said. But it's not always easy to borrow. Borrowing from your 401(k), although the terms can be attractive, should be a last resort to avoid derailing your retirement plans, he said. Charging the renovation to a credit card isn't the worst idea, if you can snare a zero-percent offerand pay off the debt before that offer expires, said Odysseas Papadimitriou, chief executive of comparison site WalletHub.com. But be cautious about taking on debt if you're hoping the stars will align for you to sell your home and sell it at a profit before any promotional financing deals (like a zero-percent balance transfer offer) expire. "You need to make sure you can afford paying off this debt without the house selling," he said. Weigh payment perks If you have the savings to pay for renovations out of pocket, think carefully about whether to pay via a check or credit. Both have potential advantages. (Skip cash, said Hicks. You should have a trail documenting payment.) Routing renovation spending through a credit card gives purchases extra layers of protection from federal law and individual card perks. You could also earn enough rewards to cover say, your next vacation. "Some of the best rewards cards get close to 2 percent, never mind the initial bonus," said Papadimitriou. "There's a ton of money to be saved." Guido Mieth | Getty Images But that strategy relies on you being able to pay off the balances in full, avoiding interest charges. Paying with a check could ultimately leave more in your pocket, said La Spisa. Contractors may pass along the fees to process credit card charges, adding roughly 2 percent to 3 percent to your bill. You can avoid that with a check, he said and you may find it easier to stay on budget. "Studies show that a person using a credit card tends to spend more than they would using cash, which defeats the benefit of the points," he said. Pay in installments Jack Lew, Obama's Treasury secretary and White House chief of staff, said Wednesday he believes President Donald Trump made the final decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. As a former White House insider, Lew told CNBC's "Squawk Box" decisions of this magnitude are made by the president. He said there have been "questions from Day 1" about who has Trump's ear and who's advice he's following. "That's not in and of itself unusual," he added. "It gets resolved at the top." Comey's firing has not helped the standing of the United States on the world stage, Lew said. "The rhetoric coming in was very jarring, not just to people here but to people around the world," he argued. "There are challenges to make sure the U.S. retains its leadership role in the world," Lew said. "As policy is developed it's important to show the U.S. can be relied on to be a stable source of economic and security strength in the world." Domestically, Lew said, "The important thing here is, is there going to be an independent investigation [and] how will the American people have confidence that Russia's involvement in our election will be fully investigated?" Calling Comey's firing "Nixonian," Democrats were quick to call for a special prosecutor over alleged Russian election interference and possible Trump campaign ties to Russia. The "Nixonian" comparison refers to the so-called Saturday Night Massacre in 1973 when then-President Richard Nixon fired of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. The attorney general and deputy attorney general at the time resigned after refusing to dismiss Cox. The Trump Justice Department said Tuesday's dismissal of Comey, whose agency was conducting an investigation over the Russia questions, was over the mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The administration said the FBI's Russia probe was not a factor in the FBI director's dismissal, but during the final days of the election, Trump had praised Comey's announcement about the Clinton probe. Clinton blames Comey's announcement for her loss to Trump. Republicans on Capitol Hill were divided. For example, Sens. Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn defended the move. While Sens. Bob Corker and John McCain were more skeptical. McCain on Tuesday called for an independent counsel to lead the Russia probe. The man taking over an FBI under the spotlight after the abrupt firing of director James Comey is described as a respected and a fast-rising member of the bureau with a past focus on terrorism. The shakeup of the federal investigation agency in the midst of probes into alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election took some Democratic lawmakers by surprise and raised charges of a "Nixonian" move by the Trump administration. Andrew McCabe, who joined the FBI 20 years ago and was promoted to deputy director last year, was named acting FBI director, a Justice Department official said. More from NBC News: Trump fires FBI director James Comey over email investigation Democrats charge Comey firing Nixonian, demand special prosecutor Sean Spicer asked about Trump's confidence in Comey It's unclear who Trump will nominate to replace Comey, but Senate Democrats could insist on a special prosecutor for the Russia campaign probe as a condition of voting for a replacement, a senior Democratic aide said. McCabe, who is considered to be well-respected inside the FBI, recently surfaced in reports that Trump's chief of staff sought agency help to knock down stories about Russia and the campaign late last year. In the end, the FBI did not get involved, and the White House said there was nothing improper. A law enforcement source said FBI officials also did not consider any lines to have been crossed. McCabe joined the FBI as a special agent in 1996 working out of New York, where he focused on organized crime. He was promoted to a unit focusing on counterterrorism and extraterritorial investigations of Sunni extremists in 2006, and in 2016 was promoted to deputy director of the FBI. At the time Comey said in a statement that "Andy's 19 years of experience, combined with his vision, judgment, and ability to communicate make him a perfect fit for this job." In February, senior Trump administration officials told reporters that McCabe pulled White House chief of staff Reince Priebus aside to say a New York Times report that said the FBI was examining evidence of contacts between Trump aides and Russians during the campaign was inaccurate. According to an anonymous senior administration official, Priebus responded to the FBI's McCabe: "Okay, what am I supposed to do?" and "How do we fix this?" According to a White House official, McCabe then talked to other officials at the FBI and determined there was nothing the FBI could do. FBI officials said they didn't want to get into the business of publicly parsing elements of news reports. A senior law enforcement source told NBC News at the time that it wasn't clear which side first brought up the stories. At the time White House officials said Priebus didn't do anything wrong, and senior law enforcement official said FBI officials also did not consider any lines to have been crossed. But Democrats seized on the reported conversation as a violation of longstanding traditions holding that the FBI must be independent of the White House. After Tuesday's firing of Comey, those questions were raised anew. The White House said the search for Comey's replacement would begin immediately, so it is unclear how long McCabe will remain as acting director. Trump met with McCabe in the Oval Office for around 30 minutes Tuesday, NBC News reported. When McCabe was promoted to deputy director in 2016, he said in an interview that terrorism by groups like ISIS was one of his top priorities. "That is the scariest thing for me right now," he told the Los Angeles Times. "It's the broadening and intensity of the terrorism threat, the crowd-sourcing of terrorism, the flood of propaganda, the enormous number of folks who have become swept up in that propaganda." When he was promoted to deputy director the FBI said McCabe "will oversee all FBI domestic and international investigative and intelligence activities and will serve as acting director in the director's absence." McCabe was appointed to replace deputy director Mark Giuliano, who retired, the FBI said. A former colleague described McCabe as a smart and young agent who enjoyed a rapid rise. McCabe's wife, Jill, ran as a Democrat for Virginia state senate in 2015 but lost. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2016 citing campaign finance records that the political-action committee of Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe gave nearly $470,000 to her campaign, and that McCabe later helped oversee the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. The FBI said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal at the time that McCabe "played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind. Months after the completion of her campaign, then-Associate Deputy Director McCabe was promoted to Deputy, where, in that position, he assumed for the first time, an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton's emails." McCabe graduated from Duke University in 1990 and got a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and considered a career as a prosecutor but ultimately chose the FBI, the Los Angeles Times reported. He spent three years in private practice because the FBI had a hiring freeze at the time. Want to know what Britain's exit from the European Union will actually mean to the world? You can now buy a tour of London that will explain all. The New York Times is running a "Brexit Means Brexit" trip to the capital city, according to a post on its Journeys website, guided in part by London bureau chief Steven Erlanger. "Prime Minister Theresa May said that 'Brexit means Brexit,' but what does this really mean for the British and the international community beyond? Did the voters really know what they were voting for? Does the British government have the power to begin the separation from the EU? And what of the impact on Europe and the strength of the union?" the post states. Shares of Five Point , a California real-estate developer backed by the nation's second-biggest homebuilder, soared on their debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. Five Point raised $294 million in its initial public offering of 21 million shares priced at $14 each. The share pricing Tuesday night was well below the expected range. By Wednesday afternoon, share prices closed more than 7 percent higher than the IPO price, but had been up about 10 percent late in the morning. Lennar agreed to invest $100 million in the company for about a 40 percent stake. Five Point develops commercial and residential land sites in coastal California, which has been a strong housing market. The Asian community in Irvine, California, is driving investment, Five Point CEO Emile Haddad told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "Household formation [is] happening out of that community," he said. "When the son or the daughter wants to buy a home, the parents are helping them so they can have the grandchildren stay around." Appearing alongside Haddad, Lennar CEO Stuart Miller said, "It's not about where you start. It's about how you proceed and how you grow along the way." "We're not locked into yesterday's obsolescence, we're building tomorrow's opportunities. And so as a master plan community strategy, we really have a unique position," Miller said. "California continues to grow," he said. "It continues to be a dominant driver of the economy in the United States ... [and] is going to remain strong." "This is a pure play California strategy," Miller said. Reuters contributed to this report. Tom Price, U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), speaks during a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, May 4, 2017. "So I persisted," said Heyman, a journalist for Public News Service who had been wearing his press pass during the incident. "At some point, I think they decided I was too persistent trying to do my job." At a news conference after his arrest , Heyman said Price "didn't say anything." The question relates to a provision in the bill that would potentially allow insurers in some states to charge people with pre-existing condition higher premiums than they would charge healthier people. Specifically, Heyman said he was asking Price whether suffering from domestic violence would be classified as a so-called pre-existing condition under that bill. Heyman's arrest came after he tried to question Price, who was in Charleston with Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway , about the Republican Obamacare replacement bill, which the Trump administration has championed. The department said the memo "reflects consistent agency policy which has been in place for decades." HHS also said it does not prohibit direct communications with Congress. And it came on the same day that two Republican congressmen blasted Price's Health and Human Services Department for a "potentially illegal and unconstitutional" memo issued May 3 restricting his subordinates from communicating independently with Congress without first informing HHS. The arrest of veteran journalist Dan Heyman on Tuesday in a hallway in the Charleston capitol building was strongly criticized by his lawyer and the American Civil Liberties Union. A reporter in West Virginia was arrested at the state capitol after repeatedly trying to ask President Donald Trump's health secretary Tom Price questions about a Republican bill to replace Obamacare. Police mugshot of reporter Dan Heyman of Public News Service An officer from the West Virginia capitol police then detained Heyman, and handcuffed him. "I was arrested. The police did not ask me to back up. They didn't give me the opportunity to walk away," Heyman said Wednesday. Heyman was charged with a misdemeanor: willful disruption of state government processes. Police said Price and Conway were being protected at the time by Secret Service agents. A criminal complaint said Heyman was arrested after "aggressively breaching the Secret Service agents to the point where the agents were forced to remove him a couple of times from the area walking up the hallway in the main building of the Capitol," according to NBC affiliate WSAZ-TV in Charleston. The complaint also said Heyman caused a disturbance by "yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price." If convicted, Heyman faces a maximum sentence of six months in jail, and a $100 fine, his lawyer said. "He wasn't doing anything different than what happens every day around the country, which is a reporter trying to get a question answered," said Heyman's attorney, Tim DiPiero on Wednesday. DiPiero also said he failed to see how Price walking through a hallway in the state house was a government process that Heyman interfered with. Alleigh Marre, HHS' spokeswoman, declined to comment on the arrest, referring CNBC to law enforcement officials. She said Price was in Charleston "as part of a listening tour to learn from those on the front lines battling the opioid epidemic," which included hearing from "state and local policymakers, recovery advocates, first responders, treatment centers, faith-based organizations, good neighbors, and many more." Jamie Lynn Crofts, legal director at the ACLU of West Virginia, called on authorities to drop the charges. She also said that the arrest of Heyman is part of a pattern that has occurred since Trump became president. "They have shown us every day since Donald Trump took office they don't care about the First Amendment or the free press. Today was just another example of that. It's horrifying," Crofts said. DiPiero, the lawyer, on Tuesday said that the reaction by police "just seems way over the top," and called it a "really bizarre" arrest. "I've never had a client get arrested for talking too loud or anything similar to that," DiPiero said at the news conference after Heyman was released on $5,000 bail. Heyman said he has covered health-care issues for years. "I think it's a terrible example" by police, Heyman said. "I think it's dreadful. I mean, well, this is my job. This is what I'm supposed do. I am supposed to go out and find out if somebody is going to be affected by this health-care law." Benjamin Wakana, who until January had been spokesman for Price's predecessor as HHS secretary, Sylvia Burwell, told CNBC on Wednesday, "If I supported a bill that destroyed protections for people with pre-existing condition, I probably wouldn't want to answer questions either." "But that doesn't mean you can arrest the person asking questions," Wakana added. In Washington on Tuesday, two leading Republicans, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, issued a scathing press release criticizing Price for a potentially illegal directive to staff, saying it could prevent whistleblowers from notifying Congress about problems at HHS. The May 3 memo from Price's chief of staff had told the heads of various HHS divisions "any communications with Members of Congress and staff should not occur without prior consultation with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation (ASL)." "This includes requests for calls, meetings, briefings, technical assistance, policy development, hearings, oversight, detailees, etc.," the memo said. The ASL is responsible for ensuring Secretary Price's involvement on appropriate matters. Grassley and Chaffetz, in a letter to Price, wrote, "The attached memorandum contains no exception whatsoever for lawful, protected communications with Congress." "In its current form, employees are likely to interpret it as a prohibition, and will not necessarily understand their rights," wrote Grassley and Chaffetz, who are each chairmen of powerful congressional committees overseeing the judiciary and government affairs, respectively. "These provisions are significant because they ensure that attention can be brought to problems in the Executive Branch that need to be fixed," the duo wrote. "Protecting whistleblowers who courageously speak out is not a partisan issue it is critical to the functioning of our government." "Absent such a clear communication from you, agency management may seek to intimidate whistleblowers from providing information to Congress. We will not allow that to happen and trust that nor will you. Protecting whistleblowers is crucial to effective government and the oversight process." HHS told CNBC that the department "is responding to the Chairmen's inquiry," and that "the purpose of the memorandum was to notify staff of the role of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Legislation in coordinating policy responses with Congress." "Transitions between administrations can mean significant staff turnover, which often leads to confusion and a breakdown of communications," HHS said in a statement. "This type of memorandum is nothing new. It reflects consistent agency policy, which has been in place for decades, as has been confirmed by the HHS Office of the General Counsel." "There is no prohibition in the memorandum on direct communications. In fact, the Chairmen's letter explicitly states, 'Although the language of the attached memorandum does not ultimately prohibit all direct communications from employees ... If an HHS employee has concerns about waste, fraud or abuse at the agency, we want them to contact the appropriate officials so it can be stopped.' " Is This a Lawyer Ad or a Trailer for a Disaster Movie? Cue the woman screaming. Pyrotechnics. Action! "Tents are on fire, people fighting for food," a frantic fan tweets as crowds run haphazardly through a refugee scene. No, this is not a disaster movie. It's just Philip DeBerard advertising for business. The personal injury attorney is looking for clients to sue over an ill-fated music festival. "Did you pay for and attend the 2017 Fyre Festival in the Bahamas?" he asks on his website. "You may be entitled to compensation!" Advertising Galore DeBerard is old school in experience, but cutting-edge in advertising. His website includes a video clip from the Bahama festival site, a fill-in request form and a live chat representative. The message, according to one report, is played out in "an incredible horror movie trailer." "The Fyre Festival in the Great Exuma Island of the Bahamas, billed as a 'luxury' event featuring high profile music acts and celebrity chefs, was canceled, stranding angry visitors, some of who shelled out thousands upon thousands of dollars to attend," the website says. "Visitors at the music event called it a fraud." DeBerard says his offices are investigating possible claims, and invites people to call for a free consultation. Only one problem with the solicitation, says Business Insider. DeBerard borrowed the video from a YouTube page of Galore TV. Scam Claims According to reports, the festival was supposed to take place on a private island as a "cultural moment created from a blend of music, art, and food." Ja Rule promoted the event, with promises of performances from Blink-182, Tyga, and Desiigner. Prices, which could include VIP passes and staying in a private villa, ranged from $1,500 to $200,000. But the event fell apart, and disappointed ticket holders found themselves wandering around a tent village looking for food. They headed for the airport, only to have officials lock them inside. "People are scared, some are crying, and honestly we're just confused," Farah Benghozi told CBS. "People tried to go outside for some fresh air, and security literally pulled out a chain and bolted us in." The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism issued a statement, which DeBerand linked to his advertisement, apologizing to the visitors. Officials blamed the event organizers for the debacle. "The event organizers assured us that all measures were taken to ensure a safe and successful event but clearly they did not have the capacity to execute an event of this scale," it said. Related Resources: Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, arrives for a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, and cyber security experts in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani told reporters that his meeting at the White House the day after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey did not indicate he's being considered for the job. Giuliani, Trump's cyberczar , told the Atlantic that he's "not a candidate" for FBI director when he was spotted at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., a few blocks from the White House, around midnight on Wednesday. Giuliani confirmed that he was scheduled for a meeting at the White House but refused to disclose the subject, New York Magazine reports. Giuliani has been name-dropped on a short list of FBI director director picks, along with interim Director Andrew McCabe, ex-homeland security advisor Ken Wainstein and former Republican House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers. Comey reportedly thought he was being pranked when he received word of his firing Wednesday evening. He was at the center of investigations into classified information found in Hillary Clinton's emails and alleged links between the Trump administration and Russia. Trump has since said that Comey was dismissed because he "was not doing a good job." @OliviaNuzzi: Just now: Giuliani here at the Trump hotel, says he thinks Trump was correct to fire Comey. The Senate panel has requested information about President Donald Trump and his top aides from a financial intelligence unit in the Treasury Department that imposed a $10 million civil penalty on Trump Taj Mahal in 2015 for multiple violations of money-laundering laws. The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to see any information relevant to its Russia investigation the Treasury agency has gathered, including evidence that might include possible money laundering, according to a committee aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. Also at issue: to what extent, if at all, people close to Vladimir Putin have invested in Trump's real estate empire. The request, made in recent weeks, comes as part of the Senate's investigation into whether Trump associates colluded with Russian meddling in the U.S. election. The FBI is also investigating that issue, but that probe is now under a cloud after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. White House spokesman Michael Short said the president is confident the investigation will exonerate his campaign. "There's a process, and that process is moving forward, and we're confident that once it's complete everyone will again see that there is no `there,' there when it comes to alleged collusion." Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has assisted in the ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation into Trump administration ties with Russia, multiple U.S. officials have said. A former senior Treasury official said that agency would have the authority to demand from any bank with a U.S. branch, including foreign banks, relevant records of transactions by Trump, his family members or his associates. FinCEN also maintains databases of reports of suspicious and cash transactions. Trump's ownership in the Taj Mahal was sharply reduced in 2009 when he resigned as chairman of the company owning the Atlantic City casino after it was reorganized in a bankruptcy. His remaining stake was wiped out when the company was acquired in 2014 by billionaire financier and Trump advisor Carl Icahn, who shut down the casino in October. FinCEN imposed a $10 million civil penalty in 2015 against Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort for "willful and repeated violations of the Bank Secrecy Act," and ordered the casino to conduct "periodic external audits to examine its anti-money laundering" compliance program and "provide those audit reports to FinCEN," according to a Treasury Department statement announcing the penalty. FinCEN "collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes," the agency says on its website. The Senate committee's request covers any potentially relevant information about Trump, his family, his businesses and his associates, the aide said. Such a request presumably would cover copies of the Taj Mahal audits. In a consent order, Trump Taj Mahal admitted to having "willfully violated" reporting and record-keeping requirements under the federal Bank Secrecy Act from 2010 to 2012. FinCEN's complaint said violations had been revealed by the Internal Revenue Service as far back as 2003. In 1998, FinCEN assessed a $477,700 civil penalty against Trump Taj Mahal for currency transaction reporting violations. "Trump Taj Mahal received many warnings about its deficiencies," then-FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery said in the 2015 statement. "Poor compliance practices, over many years, left the casino and our financial system unacceptably exposed." The penalty became an unsecured claim in Trump Taj Mahal's bankruptcy proceeding, which was originally filed in September 2014. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, casinos are required to report suspicious transactions of $5,000 or more. Trump Taj Mahal failed to file about half of the required suspicious activity reports during periods covered by two reviews by the Internal Revenue Service, according to the consent order. This story has been updated to include comment from the White House. WATCH: Here's what experts on CNBC think about Comey's dismissal as FBI director The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, has announced details of more than 43 million ($55.7 million) of investment in low-carbon infrastructure. The investment which is matched by at least 43 million from the private and public sector will be spread across 13 projects in Scotland. These include an energy storage project in Shetland and low carbon heat networks in Stirling, Dundee, Clydebank and Glenrothes. "These projects have great potential to help us tackle climate change, and remain at the forefront of low carbon and renewable innovation," Sturgeon said on Wednesday. "They will also bring economic benefits in terms of savings and jobs to local areas across the country." Sturgeon went on to state that Scotland's pattern of energy consumption had changed considerably over the last ten years. This had helped Scotland meet and exceed its 2020 target for cutting energy consumption six years early. "We are determined to build on this success, and we are now seeking views on a new target through our draft Energy Strategy for 50 percent of our energy consumption spanning heat, transport and electricity to be met by renewables by 2030." Sturgeon's comments were welcomed by environmental groups. "We're delighted to hear the First Minister reaffirm her Government's commitment to meeting half of Scotland's energy needs from renewable sources by 2030," Sam Gardner, acting director of WWF Scotland, said in a statement. "A transformation in how we heat our homes and offices, how we travel to work and school, and how we power our industries will generate many social and economic benefits," Gardner went on to add. The Scottish government says that there are more than 58,000 jobs in the low carbon and renewable energy economy in Scotland, and that renewables are Scotland's single largest contributor to electricity generation. Yet Another J&J Talcum Powder Verdict: $110M for Woman With Ovarian Cancer Johnson & Johnson has been inundated with lawsuits concerning its baby powder and the link to ovarian cancer. One Alabama firm said it had 867 cases pending against the health products giant, and over 1,400 plaintiffs had collectively filed 20 lawsuits in St. Louis alone. It was a St. Louis jury that awarded Lois Slemp over $110 million after connecting her use of Johnson & Johnson's Shower-to-Shower and Baby Powder products to her ovarian cancer. The verdict adds to the $197 million the company was hit with in three verdicts last year. Mistaken Trust Slemp told the jury she had used J&J products for 40 years for feminine hygiene. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2012 and the cancer has since spread to her liver. Plaintiffs have alleged that the company knew about the risks associated with the baby powder, but hid them from customers. "I trusted Johnson & Johnson," Slemp claimed in her deposition testimony (she was too ill to attend the trial). "Big mistake." Other plaintiffs have cited a September 1997 internal memo from a Johnson & Johnson medical consultant addressing the alleged link between talcum powder and ovarian cancer. Reportedly, the consultant wrote that "anyone who denies" the risk of using hygienic talc and ovarian cancer is "denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary." Deepest Sympathies Still, Johnson & Johnson has steadfastly supported the safety of its product, has appealed previous verdicts against the company and seems poised to litigate the issue to the furthest extent possible. In a statement released after the most recent verdict, the company asserted it is "preparing for additional trials this year and ... will continue to defend the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder": "We deeply sympathize with the women and families impacted by ovarian cancer. We will begin the appeals process following today's verdict and believe a jury decision in our favor in St. Louis in March and the dismissal of two cases in New Jersey in September 2016 by a state court judge who ruled that plaintiffs' scientific experts could not adequately support their theories that talcum powder causes ovarian cancer, further highlight the lack of credible scientific evidence behind plaintiffs' allegations." With so many cases in various stages of litigation, it may be years until they are all resolved. Related Resources: The Senate Intelligence Committee has invited ousted FBI Director James Comey to testify next week. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the panel's vice chairman, said the committee sent a request Wednesday morning but has not heard back yet. Warner said the invitation went out with Republican committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr's consent. "My hope is that he'll take advantage of this opportunity," Warner told reporters. Burr tweeted Wednesday that it would be a closed setting. President Donald Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, and the president said Wednesday that the FBI director "was not doing a good job." The president did not explain more about the manner and timing of Comey's ouster, which has sparked criticism across the political spectrum. Warner, along with many of his Democratic colleagues, has called for a special counsel in the Russia probe. Most Republican lawmakers, though, have resisted those calls and said that the Senate Intelligence Committee's probe into Russian interference is adequate. Comey reportedly found out that he had been fired Tuesday around the time the news broke on television. Trump, who received recommendations to fire Comey from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, wrote in a letter that he wants to "find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission." White House officials are scrambling to justify the timing, insisting that Comey got fired because of his conduct in the probe into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information last year. They said it had nothing to do with the FBI's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which Comey first revealed publicly in March and includes any possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia. The timing of President Donald Trump's dismissal of FBI Director James Comey is "frightening," Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager Robby Mook told CNBC on Wednesday. "I think there were serious questions raised about how he handled this," Mook said on "Squawk Box." "But the idea that the same day that we find out subpoenas are going out relevant to the Russia investigation into President Trump's campaign, he decides to suddenly fire the director of the FBI because he claims he's upset about he handled Hillary's e-mails." "The argument is absurd," said Mook, who was critical of Comey on how he handled Clinton's email probe. CNN reported Tuesday that federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas as part of the probe of Russia interference in the U.S. election. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump fired Comey "based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions." Rosenstein focused on Comey's statements days before the November election about the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's email practices. During the final days of the campaign, Trump had praised Comey's announcement, which Clinton blames for her loss to Trump. Many Democrats called for Comey to immediately be summoned to testify before Congress about the status of the Trump-Russia investigation. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said the Justice Department should appoint an independent prosecutor for the Russia inquiry. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Jack Lew, who was Treasury secretary under former President Barack Obama, said Wednesday that the tax-cutting aspects of the House Republican health-care bill supported by the Trump administration are "reverse Robin Hood," robbing from the poor to reward the rich. Working Americans who voted for Donald Trump for president may get "buyer's remorse if people actually look at the details of the tax policy" outlined in the GOP's health legislation that passed the House last week and went to the Senate, Lew said on "Squawk Box." "People who earn more than $250,000 ... get a tax break [on capital gains] and you pay for it by cutting benefits that go to old people" and kids who are disabled, he said. The Republicans' American Health Care Act as written would eliminate Obamacare taxes imposed on the wealthy that, in part, pay for health-care coverage for Americans. The GOP measure calls for the repeal of a 3.8 percent investment tax, and a 0.9 percent Medicare payroll tax. Both of those apply to individuals earning $200,000 or more a year and couples earning more than $250,000. On Monday, billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC that the Republican health-care bill would "cut the hell out of taxes" for wealthy Americans like him. The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway , who had supported Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, said his personal tax bill would be 17 percent lower under the GOP measure or about $680,000 lower on a "little less than $4 million." On the other side, billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell told CNBC on Tuesday he disagrees with Buffett, saying that the GOP measure balances out the system by cutting taxes that should not have been imposed in the first place. Zell, a former Democrat, said he's more of a Republican lately conservative on fiscal matters but liberal on social issues. President Donald Trump has made an enormous bet that takes the entire Republican agenda hostage and could even shorten his time in office. His bet is that now, with James Comey under fire across the political spectrum, he could fire the FBI director investigating his campaign and associates with a minimum of blowback. The muted initial reaction from many Republicans offered encouragement to the White House. But subsequent criticism, as the news sank in, from the Republican senator leading the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and others underscored the risks facing Trump. Foremost among them, in the short term, is that Trump's decision represents a tipping point for Republican lawmakers who have looked past the president's behavior to pursue goals on issues such as health care, tax cuts and deregulation of American business. Heat from their constituents, visible so far in Trump's weak poll ratings and in raucous town hall gatherings, can paralyze congressional majorities especially those as thin as the GOP's 52-48 edge in the Senate. The more easily controllable House barely passed the American Health Care Act last week. The troubled effort to repeal and replace Obamacare has put off the effort to pass tax cuts, placing both priorities in jeopardy. For Trump, the long-term threat is greater. His abrupt move, by prompting questions about the "rule of law" in the words of Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee co-chair Mark Warner, will stoke unease or even outright opposition to the president in major American institutions, the career government services and on the campaign trail as members of Congress prepare for the 2018 mid-term elections. In special election contests already, Democrats have commanded unusual energy and vote totals in Republican-leaning districts. The June 20 runoff for a Georgia House seat Republicans have held for decades will provide an early indication of Democrats' ability to compete next year for control of the speaker's gavel, which appeared highly unlikely just a few months ago. Mid-term election handicappers note the potential for a political "wave" mirroring the 2006 Democratic sweep and 2010 Republican landslide. Another one in 2018 could bring Nancy Pelosi back as House speaker. If that happens, recent history gives Trump and the GOP reasons for grave concern. In what came to be known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," President Richard Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in October 1973. The process of impeachment began in the Democratic-controlled House less than four months later. When Nixon's Republican support in the Senate collapsed six months later, he became the only president to resign his office. So far. watch now U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi is stepping down from the company's top job, effective immediately. David Burritt, who most recently served as president and chief operating officer of the Fortune 250 integrated steel company, will succeed Longhi. Shares of U.S. Steel fell about 1 percent in after-hours trading following the announcement. The board of directors elected Burritt to the role of president and chief executive on Monday. Prior to joining U.S. Steel, Burritt served the chief financial officer at Caterpillar , where he worked for 32 years until he retired in 2010. He served as executive vice president and chief finance officer after joining U.S. Steel and was promoted to COO earlier this year. Burritt takes over at a challenging time for the company. Last month, U.S. Steel reported disappointing first-quarter earnings that sent the stock plunging nearly $8 to under $23 a share on the day it released results. It has fallen nearly 33 percent since April 25. watch now Cowen and Company downgraded shares of U.S. Steel from outperform to market perform, citing a lack of visibility on earnings in light of the company's multiyear turnaround program. "We see defending the stock at this point as impossible given the lack of information regarding the return on investment and the wide variability to earnings based on our sensitivity analysis," Cowen analysts wrote. "We were unable to gain confidence in the duration or shape of the revitalization, despite our conversations and analysis." Following its latest earning report, CNBC's Jim Cramer named U.S. Steel the weakest player among three of its peers, including AK Steel , Nucor and Steel Dynamics . Steel companies have struggled in recent years as demand in emerging markets waned and cheap supplies from China flooded international markets. Longhi will remain on the board of directors and assist in the leadership transition until his retirement on June 30. "When I came to the company, I envisioned a five-year tenure, which I have completed," Longhi said in a statement. "I am proud of the progress we have made, which solely resides on the people of this company. U.S. Steel employees dug in, tackled every challenge and never stopped looking for ways to improve everything they could control." Mario Longhi, CEO of US Steel. Adam Jeffery | CNBC 9th August 1974: U.S. President Richard Nixon looks down as stands at a podium, reading a farewell speech to his staff following his resignation, the White House, Washington, D.C. George Tames | New York Times Co. | Getty Images It's genuinely rare to be able to say you're living in a historic moment, one already being compared with some justification to Watergate. But that's where we find ourselves in the aftermath of President Trump's stunning dismissal of FBI Director James Comey. There's a huge amount to unpack here, but here's what is perhaps the single most important fact: The president of the United States, whose campaign is under FBI investigation over its potential ties to Russia, just fired the head of the FBI the person in charge of that very investigation. Mounting evidence that multiple members of the Trump campaign were in direct contact with Russian intelligence in the runup to the election and in several cases subsequently lied about it has been at the center of a simmering scandal that Trump has been unable to shake. His sudden decision to oust Comey ensures that scandal will bedevil the rest of the Trump presidency and, potentially, bring it to a premature close. More from Vox: Trump's dubious, disturbing firing of FBI director James Comey, explained 9 questions about Watergate you were too embarrassed to ask James Comey literally thought his firing was a joke Let's pause and note that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that Comey was ousted over his grievous mishandling of the FBI's Hillary Clinton email probe, a gaffe that may have cost Clinton the presidency and that has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department's own internal watchdog. Comey drew new criticism earlier Tuesday when the FBI was forced to walk back his false assertions that Clinton aide Huma Abedin had improperly forwarded thousands of emails to her husband, Anthony Weiner. The FBI chief may have deserved to lose his job over how badly he bungled the Clinton probe which included breaking with historical precedent and disclosing, just 11 days before the election, that he was reopening the probe into her email servers but imagine if he had been fired by a President Hillary Clinton. Republicans across Capitol Hill would be making immediate calls for her impeachment. Initial comments from powerful Republicans like Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker suggest that the GOP is in a wait-and-see mode and hasn't yet decided to break with Trump. Still, the Comey firing is already leading to calls for a special prosecutor capable of issuing subpoenas without needing the approval of Republican-led committees in the House and Senate. watch now We've known for months that there is something damaging in the Trump team's dealings with Moscow. The FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees are focusing in on three people who worked for, or unofficially advised, the Trump campaign: former campaign chair Paul Manafort, former foreign policy adviser Carter Page, and Republican political operative Roger Stone. But that's the tip of the iceberg. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was fired for lying about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and has sought an immunity deal as evidence mounts that he accepted money from the Russian and Turkish governments without properly disclosing it. Senior White House aide and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner held undisclosed meetings with Kislyak during the transition and only made them public months later. Perhaps most alarmingly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied to the Senate, under oath, during his confirmation hearings. He told lawmakers he'd had no interactions with the Russian government; it turned out that he'd held conversations with Kislyak. Sessions promised to recuse himself from the FBI investigation into Trump. Sessions is also the man who just recommended that Trump fire the head of the FBI, a recommendation Trump accepted. The Comey firing is sure to spark waves of new hearings on Capitol Hill, each of which will give Democrats and some Republicans the chance to ask the questions on the minds of many Americans: Was the Comey firing part of a White House cover-up? And if so, what is the administration trying to hide? How we got here Here's what we know for sure. In July 2016, the FBI launched an investigation into the various ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The bureau soon acquired a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser with longstanding financial ties to the Kremlin. After Trump's election, the investigation took on considerably more urgency with Comey personally approving more scrutiny, according to the Guardian. In December, Sen. John McCain personally handed Comey a dossier from a former British spy, Christopher Steele, alleging that the Russians had compromising material on Trump and that the Trump campaign actively coordinated with Russian hackers targeting Clinton. By early January, the FBI had confirmed that Steele's sources were credible and its contents could not be dismissed, forcing them to brief both President Obama and President-elect Trump on its contents. The FBI's investigations took on new urgency after Trump took office, and the Trump administration kept stepping on rakes when it came to Russia. That's when the Flynn-Kislyak scandal broke and when Sessions lied under oath about his own contacts with the ambassador during the campaign, which forced him to recuse himself from supervising the Russia investigation in early March. Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had, at this point, started their own investigations into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. On March 20, Comey was called to testify before the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes about the status of the FBI's investigation. That's when he dropped his biggest bombshell yet. "[The FBI is] investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts," Comey said. After this announcement, it became impossible regardless of what Trump said in Tuesday's letter to separate the FBI's investigation into Russia from an investigation into the president. Clearly, Director Comey had given consent and support for an investigation into the Trump campaign's links to Russia. You simply can't look into whether close Trump associates had improper contact with Russia without looking into the question of whether the president approved their actions. It would also come back to the core issue from Watergate: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" Two days after Comey's testimony, it became clear that the FBI's investigation was extremely serious. CNN reported that "the FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign." This information came from "human intelligence, travel, business and phone records, and accounts of in-person meetings." The information, CNN's reporters cautioned, "was not conclusive." But the point is that it was already pointing in a direction that could implicate Trump officials. If that happened if the FBI actually uncovered hard proof that the Trump campaign had coordinated with the Russians it would end up being the kind of scandal that topples a presidency. By early April, the FBI investigation into Russia had gotten so massive that the bureau had to form a special unit for it in Washington. Meanwhile, the House investigation had stalled out due to Nunes's weird insistenceon backing up Trump's wild claims about Obama spying on Trump Tower (which would eventually force Nunes to recuse himself). The Senate investigation, only given limited funding and staff, was proceeding slowly to the point where senators were publicly complaining about the pace. The point of all of this is simple: The FBI was conducting by far the most serious investigation into Trump and Russia in the country, one that simply couldn't be matched by Congress or by journalists. The bureau had the money, the trained investigators, and the access to powerful surveillance tools. Perhaps most importantly, it also had a director who seemed to be entirely behind the investigation. And then Trump and Sessions fired him. Democrats are comparing this to Watergate. They have good reason to. Donald Trump's racist, perjuring Attorney General, former senator Jefferson Sessions, was signaled that he will reverse Obama-era AG Eric Holder's memo that told federal prosecutors not to bring charges against petty drug offenders, because these crime carry absurd minimum sentences that resulted in America imprisoning a greater proportion of its population than any country in the history of the world, including the USSR and Apartheid-era South Africa. The attorney general is considering having his prosecutors bring the most severe charges against drug traffickers, whether they are low-level defendants or not, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Sessions also may allow prosecutors to use more "enhancements" to make sentences even longer. Under what's referred to as "Section 851" of the Controlled Substances Act, defendants charged with a federal drug, firearm or immigration crime may face enhancements if they have previously been convicted of a felony drug offense. Sessions weighs return to harsher punishments for low-level drug crimes [Sari Horwitz/Washington Post] (Image: November Coalition, PD) Trump 's abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday drew a firestorm of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, concerned it appears to be an effort to thwart the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy said they recommended that Comey be fired because of the way he handled the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. President Donald Trump's firing of the FBI director and other developments could motivate Republicans to speed up tax reform to preserve their majority in the House of Representatives, according to Strategas Research. President Donald Trump (C) listens to House Speaker Paul Ryan (L) as he gathers with Congressional Republicans in the Rose Garden of the White House after the House of Representatives approved the American Healthcare Act, to repeal major parts of Obamacare and replace it with the Republican healthcare plan, in Washington, U.S., May 4, 2017. The action was not seen as so much a market-moving event, but as another hurdle to tax reform, with Washington more divided than ever and sidetracked by a new politically charged controversy. "While distractions from investigations could hinder policy developments, our sense is that Republican members of Congress will want to speed up their policy achievements to overcome recent political developments," writes Dan Clifton, head of policy research at Strategas. This may explain the indifferent reaction to the Comey news by the stock market Wednesday. About midway through the trading day, the was basically unchanged. House Speaker Paul Ryan was scheduled to appear in Ohio on Wednesday to tout tax reform. Clifton said he expects Congress to complete tax reform in the first quarter of next year, not in 2017 as previously expected. The process has been slowed down by the fact that the Senate will come up with its own health-care plan, and the House will have to agree after it barely approved its own plan last week. Tax reform has been the most important Trump policy for the stock market since he won the election. While the market has risen to record highs, stocks most likely to gain from Trump's policy have been losing the Trump premium, built in right after the was elected. Now the president could be embroiled in a new fight that may be a negative for him, hurting his approval rating. Gallup put Trump's approval rating at 40 percent, as of Monday. "Democratic talk of impeachment increased significantly last night. The narrative is not going away and will continue to hamper the lightly staffed Administration. This will also make bi-partisan compromise more difficult in the coming months, and the debt ceiling remains our No. 1 policy concern. From a policy perspective, does this in fact force Republicans to get their act in gear and actually get tax and healthcare reform?" Clifton notes. Clifton said so far the Comey termination is not a market event, but he is watching to see if it begins to seep into economic confidence indicators. A drop in confidence could impact markets. "Passage of the Trump agenda, most notably with tax reform should help keep confidence elevated, but any undermining of confidence from political developments and/or the inability to enact the agenda could move the needle in the opposite direction," according to Clifton. The strategist is also watching special elections and the president's approval rating, which in the past has been correlated to party performance in midterm elections. When Democrats lost the Massachusetts Senate race in 2010, Clifton said they quickly ended infighting over Dodd-Frank and Obamacare and passed legislation. "As such, Republican political troubles may serve as a catalyst for policy actions," he wrote. In an earlier note, Clifton pointed out that the weak first-quarter GDP should also put Republicans on notice to get moving on pro-growth policy. The growth rate of 0.7 percent, combined with a strong snapback in the second quarter should still result in growth of only about 2 percent for the first half. "From a political perspective, this is not enough growth to keep U.S. voters happy. In fact, U.S. voters have removed the party in power in five of the past six federal elections. This level of political volatility is very rare in U.S. history and it is the direct result of slower economic growth," he noted. Clifton said if congressional squabbling continues, growth will remain low and the Republicans could lose the midterm election. That makes tax changes much more urgent for the GOP. "Voters will continue to push out the party in power if they do not feel their standard of living is improving. ... The Republicans have been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to prove that getting productivity higher, via tax cuts and deregulation, can help lift GDP even if labor force growth is slowing," he noted. watch now Australia's long-suffering wanna-be homebuyers were likely to be disappointed by the housing affordability measures in the country's 2017-18 budget, analysts said. John Flavell, CEO of Australian mortgage broker network Mortgage Choice, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday that out of the nine budget measures aimed at addressing housing affordability, at least three might actually drive up demand. "What we've got is a series of irrelevant pops and fizzles as opposed to the big bang," Flavell said. The relatively tepid housing measures included increasing a capital gains tax discount for affordable-housing investments, offering lower-tax options for first-time homebuyers trying to save up a home deposit and efforts to encourage seniors to downsize their home. Home prices have loomed large in Australia's political landscape as affordability plunged, vexing monetary policymakers who were stuck between the rock of a slow economy and the hard place of soaring housing prices. Demographia data for the third quarter of 2016 showed the median housing price in Sydney was 12.2 times more than the median household income. In Melbourne, the median home price was 9.5 times more than the median income. Comparatively, in the priciest market, Hong Kong, the median home price was 18.1 times more than the median income. In April, home prices in Sydney were flat on-month, but up 16.0 percent on-year, while Melbourne prices rose 0.5 percent on-month and 15.3 percent on-year, according to data from CoreLogic. Flag of Australia on a beach Getty Images Overall, CoreLogic's data showed home prices rose by 0.1 percent on-month in April across the country's capital cities, the weakest rise since December 2015. Wayne Swan, a former deputy prime minister for an opposition Labour party government, told CNBC's "The Rundown" on Wednesday that despite analysts' protestations, he believed the country had a "huge bubble" in the housing sector. "It's making houses unaffordable for many Australians, but it's also if you like, changing investment patterns in the economy in a not very good way," Swan said. "They should have moved comprehensively on doing something about negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount." The budget measures only made cosmetic changes to the controversial "negative gearing" rules for property investors. Negative gearing rules allow buyers to borrow funds to buy a property with the expectation that the mortgage repayments will be larger than the rental income, then offset that "loss" against their taxable income - a system that makes owning real estate as an investment an attractive option. Added incentive comes from the capital-gains-tax system, under which 50 percent of capital gains made on investment assets held for a full year are tax free. The budget tinkered with how to calculate expenses for negative gearing and removed travel expenses as a deduction. "When we are so heavily invested in investment property, anybody that turns around that's going to touch any elements around that Is treading on some pretty politically sensitive areas," Mortgage Choice's Flavell noted. watch now Precious metals traders assemble on the floor of the London Metal Exchange to conduct its daily business. To maximize the climbing demand for precious metals in London, the London Metal Exchange will inaugurate gold and silver spot and futures trading July 10. The London exchange is a subdidiary of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing. The Hong Kong exchange, according to the South China Morning Post, has positioned to launch trading in gold futures during the third quarter of calendar year 2017 if it is successful in securing approval from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission. The trading of precious metals in both markets will remain separate, with no cross trading, according to the Post. Connect with Coin World: Sign up for our free eNewsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Speaking May 8 at a precious metals workshop in Hong Kong, Kate Eded, LME's head of precious metals, is quoted as saying the LME and HKEX precious metals products will be traded in completely different markets and in different time zones. Gambling on a Morgan dollar roll: Inside Coin World: This week, examines what happens when you gamble on a roll, as well as some unwanted surprises that buyers face. The gold and silver futures contracts are to be traded in U.S. dollars, with five banks, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, contributing price quotes to support market liquidity. For a complete examination by the Posts chief business reporter Enoch Yiu of the two markets and the products being introduced, visit the Post online here. Not a good day in the polls for the beleaguered President. Everyone knows he's lying, and when asked, "What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump," the top answer? "Idiot." A new Quinnipiac poll shows that American voters, "who gave President Donald Trump a slight approval bump after the missile strike in Syria, today give him a near-record negative 36 58 percent job approval rating." Also in this survey, the widest margin ever measured for this question in a Quinnipiac poll: 54-38% want the Democrats to take control of the House. The Quinnipiac University national poll released today shows big losses among white voters with no college degree, white men and independent voters. Snip: Today's job approval rating compares to a negative 40 56 percent approval rating in an April 19 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University and a negative 35 57 percent score April 4, his lowest approval rating since he became president. The president is losing support among independent voters and groups which are important parts of his base. Approval ratings are: Negative 29 63 percent among independent voters, down from a negative 38 56 percent April 19; A split among white voters with no college degree, as 47 percent approve and 46 percent disapprove, compared to a 57 38 percent approval April 19; White men go from a 53 41 percent approval April 19 to a split today with 48 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving. American voters' opinions of several of Trump's personal qualities are down: 61 33 percent that he is not honest, compared to 58 37 percent April 19; 56 41 percent that he does not have good leadership skills, little change; 59 38 percent that he does not care about average Americans, compared to 57 42 percent April 19; 66 29 percent that he is not level-headed, compared to 63 33 percent last month; 62 35 percent that he is a strong person, little change; 56 41 percent that he is intelligent, compared to 58 38 percent; 64 32 percent that he does not share their values, compared to 61 35 percent. "There is no way to spin or sugarcoat these sagging numbers," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "The erosion of white men, white voters without college degrees and independent voters, the declaration by voters that President Donald Trump's first 100 days were mainly a failure and deepening concerns about Trump's honesty, intelligence and level headedness are red flags that the administration simply can't brush away," Malloy added. American voters disapprove 52 40 percent of the way Trump is handling the economy. His grades on handling other issues are: 44 percent approve of the way he is handling U.S. policy toward North Korea and 48 percent disapprove; Disapprove 59 36 percent of the way he is handling foreign policy; 45 percent approve of the way he is handling terrorism and 48 percent disapprove; Disapprove 62 35 percent of the way he is handling immigration. Trump and the Media American voters disapprove 58 37 percent of the way the news media covers Trump. Voters disapprove 65 31 percent of the way Trump talks about the media. And voters trust the media more than Trump 57 31 percent to tell the truth about important issues. Trump's first 100 days in office have been "mainly a failure," 58 percent of voters say, while 38 percent say they have been "mainly a success." By a 54 38 percent margin, American voters want the Democratic Party to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is the widest margin ever measured for this question in a Quinnipiac University poll, exceeding a 5 percentage point margin for Republicans in 2013. If Democrats had won control of the U.S. Senate in the 2016 elections, the country would be in a better place than it is now, 41 percent of voters say, while 27 percent say it would be in a worse place and 30 percent say it would be the same. American voters dislike Democrats less than they dislike Republicans: Voters disapprove 71 22 percent of the way Republicans in Congress do their job; Voters disapprove 58 34 percent of the way Democrats in Congress are doing their job. From May 4 9, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,078 voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points. Live interviewers call landlines and cell phones. Former FBI director James Comey asked the Justice Department for "a significant increase in money and personnel for the bureau's investigation into Russia's interference in the presidential election" right before Trump fired him, reports the New York Times. That would sure explain a lot about why Trump suddenly delivered the surprise sacking yesterday. Snip: Mr. Comey asked for the resources during a meeting last week with Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who wrote the Justice Department's memo that was used to justify the firing of the F.B.I. director this week. Mr. Comey then briefed members of Congress on the meeting in recent days. According to a recent report, academics have been analyzing brainwaves of computer users to improve how they are alerted to cybersecurity dangers. Im sorry, but getting users to pay stricter attention to security isnt brain surgery: Its all about money and job security. Come to think of it, job security itself is all about money, which makes money the only carrot and the only stick that IT needs. That report, courtesy of Bloomberg BNA, said, Many computer users automatically swat away repetitive dialogue box warnings of impending doom, especially when they are engaged in another activity. Now, engineers are using data analytics based on user tracking to discover what might help users pay attention to warnings. Software engineers are exploring promising techniques, such as changing background colors in warning notifications and switching formats to distinguish substantial security warnings from mundane messages. Tapping peoples brains helps the engineers design more effective user interfaces. Especially when they are engaged in another activity? As opposed to when exactly? The problem this approach is addressing is not the actual problem. Changing background colors and switching formats would maybe, possibly help if the problem was that users werent noticing these warnings. In reality, the problem is that users dont care about these warnings. More precisely, users dont care about security nearly as much as they do that other activity, which is typically work. This is also the problem with much of security training. It teaches and preaches and drills and quizzes, all with the goal of making users familiar with proper security procedures. But it does little to convince them to prioritize those procedures over the work project that is about to hit its deadline. Consider, for example, Employee Emma. Emma knows all about phishing schemes and how attachments can deliver viruses and Trojans. But when Emma is rushing to finish a project by deadline and sees an email from her boss saying, Urgent. Project change, and it includes what appears to be a Word attachment, what is she likely to do? Proper procedure for any attachment that wasnt explicitly expected is for Emma to phone, text or email her boss directly (but not by replying to the suspect message) to see if her boss did indeed send her something. Alternatively, she can click on the message and see what it is. Does she risk her deadline by ignoring what appears to be project-related urgent message from her boss? Undercutting the incentives for employees to do the right thing for security purposes is the fact that the vast majority of email attachments from a boss will in fact be a legitimate email attachment from the boss. Even with rampant phishing attacks happening today, most attachments are legitimate, in the same way that most people ringing your home doorbell are not homicidal maniacs. Statistical reality aside, employees perception is that the odds are dramatically against them opening a contaminated attachment and having damage result and having that damage traced back to the employees actions. In short, employees are rushed and they think its a decent gamble to open attachments that at least look legit. (The really bad ones are easy to dismiss.) If a company is serious about getting people to strictly and routinely use proper security, it needs to improve those odds. Bosses should send and track attachments that their staffers did not expect. Anyone who opens one without checking should face some consequences. It could be a small amount of pay docked, or it could be the reverse: a small amount of money that is awarded to people who, over the course of a month, never clicked on one of the trap attachments. Call this catching employees at being good, if you will. But somehow, you have to convince people to behave properly, and money is the only effective motivator you have. This story, "With security awareness, money talks" was originally published by Computerworld . An Israel-based provider of 3D printing technologies and nano-inks is now shipping a desktop machine to beta customers that can produce multi-layer circuit boards. Nano Dimension's Dragonfly 2020 is a desktop 3D printer that can produce circuit board prototypes and small production runs, potentially reducing development time from weeks to hours, according to Amit Dror, co-founder and CEO of the startup. The Dragonfly 2020 uses an inkjet-like material deposition method followed by a heat-based curing system to create the printed circuit boards (PCBs), and it has no limit to the number of layers beyond the mechanical height of the printer's z axis. The printer works by first depositing a dielectric insulating material and a silver-based nano-ink for circuitry on top of it. None of the nano-inks extruded by the 3D printer start at room temperature; before they are desposited on the print platform, they go through process called curing and sintering, which bakes the materials to get rid of solvents, then they are melted further before being extruded, Dror said. A printed circuit board being removed from the Dragonfly 2020 3D printer. A printed circuit board being removed from the Dragonfly 2020 3D printer. "The nano silver particles get melted at very low temperatures -- something like 100 and 200 degrees Celsius," he said. "Once they're sintered, the nano-ink becomes solid silver. It won't melt again until the temperature hits 900 Celsius." "In fact, to our best knowledge, we're only company that can print two types of materials -- dielectric and conductive -- that can withstand high temperatures with high resolution," Dror added. [ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ] The Nano Dimension Dragonfly 2020 can print conductive traces that are about 100 microns in width; the machine makes several passes to create the width required for one line. When commercially available, the 3D printer will have cost around $200,000, Dror said. Nano Dimension The Dragonfly 2020 extruding melted silver-based nano ink. Nano Dimension, founded in 2012, first unveiled the Dragonfly 2020 at the SolidWorks World conference in January 2016. That same year, Nano Dimension was added to Gartner's "Cool Vendors in 3D Printing" report. In that report, Gartner stated the company's printed circuit boards (PCBs) technology "potentially enables scalable production of custom products. This puts Nano Dimension's PCB printer at the convergence of electrical, mechanical and software design and manufacturing." Gartner added that the PCBs could "have unique signatures that make counterfeiting of the item with a custom 3D-printed PCB difficult if not impossible." Nano Dimension A closeup of one of the flexible circuit boards printed by the Dragonfly 2020. Nano Dimension, Dror said, is now working with 10 beta customers, including U.S. banks, a healthcare company, a defense contractor and electronics organizations. Dror was unable to name most of the companies due to confidentiality agreements. The Global Printed Circuit Board (PCB) market, which was worth $63.5 billion in 2016, is expected to reach about $73.8 billion by 2021, increasing at a compound annual growth rate 3.1% over that time, according to BCC Research. Typically, PCBs manufacturing is outsourced to third parties in Asia. Printing prototypes in-house not only protects a company's intellectual property, but it also allows developers to test ideas that might otherwise be too expensive, Dror said. "It can take weeks to get back a prototype. Being able to create and change a design and get it up for testing within a few hours instead of few weeks is the advantage we offer our users," Dror said. Nano Dimension is not the first company to produce a 3D printer for circuit boards. In 2015, Voltera ran a highly successful Kickstarter campaign to fund its desktop circuit board 3D printer. The Voltera V-One 3D printer, which dispenses conducting and insulating ink to create circuit-completed boards for prototyping, garnered nearly five times its $70,000 crowdsourcing goal. Next month, the company plans to begin shipping its 3D printers, which retail for $2,199. Also in 2015, Harvard researchers announced the creation of a 3D printer that could extrude both thermoplastics and highly conductive silver inks that allow electronic products to be created on one process. The printer, sold by Voxel8, had a base price of $8,999 and saw a limited production run; it is no longer available and the company is currently developing new, "more capable" platform, it said. Terry Wohlers, president of 3D printing industry research firm Wohlers Associates, said he has not recently analyzed Nano Dimension's competition, but noted there aren't many rivals and the company "offers something interesting and special" limited to prototypes and small production runs. In the distant future, Wohlers believes, industrial 3D printers will produce circuits and other electronics that conform to the shape of a device, as well as the plastic enclosure itself. Today, products are designed to accommodate conventional printed circuit boards. Nano Dimension A circuit board printed to fit a cell phone's form. "Over time, the market for 3D-printed circuit boards could become large, but many problems first need to be solved," Wohlers said. "One of them is the printing of multiple materials, another is speed, and a third is cost, especially for production quantities." The latest Copycamp call for papers is up, inviting presentations for the excellent Warsaw symposium on copyright, innovation and freedom now six years old! The theme goes beyond copyright this year, and invites submissions on, "business models, heritage digitisation, remix"; "health, food, security, and exclusive rights"; "text and data mining, machine learning, online education"; "IoT: autonomous cars, smart homes, wearables"; "hacking government data, public procurement, public aid in culture." Copyright influences everyone's life. Certainly, it forms the framework for the creation and circulation of culture as each artist has to adjust to copyright when building upon others' work or when planning to make a living from his or her creativity. But copyright-protected works are also used in education, research, and technology. So all of us active in those areas are affected as well. Thus, we have to address the resulting issues in a neutral, multi-sided debate involving all interested parties. Since 2012, the Modern Poland Foundation has organised the annual international CopyCamp conference to provide a forum for such a debate. At CopyCamp we discuss the law, but it is not a legal conference. In the last 5 years, we have succeeded in making CopyCamp the biggest conference on social and economic aspects of copyright in Europe. Over this time, we have facilitated exchange of ideas between 250 speakers from all over Europe and abroad. But copyright is just one piece of a bigger puzzle. We observe attempts to subject all types of information and its various embodiments to different forms of exclusivity. Patents are just one example of how such exclusivity may be secured using legal means other than copyright. Technology (the so-called DRM) is an alternative means that may be used to appropriate information goods by simply making them unusable without authorisation. As a result there is a need to broaden the scope of the debate, for example to such areas as health and food. All of us, not just artists, teachers, or scientists should be concerned with questions such as: Who owns medicines and equipment necessary to provide health care? Who owns grain and machines used to harvest it if they are protected with patent-like rights or DRM? What does it mean to own exclusive rights to software and data used to construct autonomous agents? What will it mean in the near future for traditional concepts such as property or personality? Overview: There are 18 Parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland. At dissolution the Democratic Unionists held eight, Sinn Fein four, the Social Democratic and Labour Party three, the Ulster Unionists two, and Independents one. For the DUP, this will be about trying to regain momentum after the self-inflicted disaster of this years snap elections to the Assembly. They will also be trying to pick up seats from the UUP and SDLP. By contrast, Sein Fein will be trying to keep up the sense of momentum towards constitutional change theyve been trying to generate since said Stormont election. In Westminster teams, theyll be gunning to retake a seat from the UUP and maybe further whittle down the SDLP. For the Ulster Unionists this will very likely be a mostly defensive election, unless a last-minute pact puts them at the tip of the pro-Union spear in a winnable seat. They disappeared from the House of Commons in 2010 but took two seats back last time, and will be fighting to hold on. Its a similar story for the SDLP, the traditionally moderate nationalist party. They currently hold three seats, one of which is incredibly marginal and another that Sinn Fein might take on a very bad night. Theyre not on the front foot in any nationalist seat they dont already hold. The liberal, constitutionally-neutral Alliance Party currently have no MPs, but they held Belfast East from 2010 to 2015 and will be targeting it again. Method and Background: As in 2015, well be taking a region-by-region look at the seats which could change hands and offering our suggested lists of target seats for each party. These lists arent predictions of gains: rather, theyre just seats which we think could be competitive. They might be official party targets, have a small majority, or be subject to other factors which could leave them open to change. Most of our usual resources are of little help here, as mainland political coverage tends to exclude Northern Ireland because of its completely separate party system. The political situation in Ulster also tends to be rather static because so much of the electorate still votes on essentially communal lines. Although Westminster elections are no longer proxy votes for Northern Irelands place in the UK, as that status is now guaranteed by referendum, the main parties havent shaken off the old logic. Thus most of the potential intrigue centres on potential pacts between parties on the same side of the constitutional question. Traditionally, this is mostly a unionist game and true to form there already seem to be unofficial pacts in North Belfast and ultra-marginal Fermanagh & South Tyrone, as well as an attempt to create one to take South Belfast. More interestingly, there was also an attempt to build an opposing coalition around a different constitutional question: Brexit. The idea was to unite nationalists and pro-Remain unionists into a pact to unseat Brexiteer MPs. Unfortunately as all of these are either DUP (which supported Leave) or UUP (Remain) it looked a lot like a sectarian pact, and it eventually foundered when smaller parties such as the Alliance and Greens refused to take part. Were also keeping an eye on the work of many other pollsters, psephologists, and analysts, some of whom our assistant editor has collated onto a Twitter list. Battleground Rating: 3/10 Targets by party: (NB These are our own suggestions of potential attack seats for each party including those officially designated as targets and others where the incumbent has a relatively small majority, or local factors are at play which may open the seat to change.) Democratic Unionists: South Antrim: Danny Kinahan captured this from the DUP in 2015 as probably the most avowedly liberal unionist MP, following a near-miss by the Conservative-aligned Reg Empey in 2010. His majority is just 949 and its easy to see why a smarting DUP might fancy a shot at taking it back. It looked like a logical seat to stand aside in to induce the UUP to stand aside elsewhere, but it doesnt look like that has happened so Kinahan will have a fight on his hands. Belfast East: It took another pact go allow the DUP to take this seat in 2015, securing a majority of almost 2,600 over the Alliances Naomi Long even thought she put on over 4,000 votes from her 2010 performance. If the UUP split the vote here its not hard to see the Alliance retaking it, especially if they benefit from tacit tactical voting from SDLP and Sinn Fein supporters. However, given how much of the Alliance support base is unionist any too cosy arrangement with Sinn Fein may cost them. Belfast South: In 2015 the SDLPs Alasdair McDonnell held this seat with the lowest share of the vote of any MP in the country with just 24.5 per cent. The UUP and DUP between them used to have enough votes to win this seat, although in 2015 a strong performance by the Alliance put that in doubt. Without a pact itll be hard for either unionist party to win here, especially if McDonnell picks up tacit support from Alliance and Sinn Fein voters, but of the two the DUP are larger so may have the better bet. Ulster Unionists: Belfast South: At one point it sounded as if this might be a hot prospect for the UUP, with ex-leader Mike Nesbitt tipped as a possible unity candidate. Although they poll much lower than the DUP individually, the UUP pitch for the seat must be that theyre more likely to woo voters over from the Alliance, who took over 6,700 votes last time, with a liberal candidate in the mould of Nesbitt or Kinahan. It doesnt look like its happening this time though. Upper Bann: This seat has a solid majority of capital-U Unionist voters, but the UUP run the DUP close enough that it may be possible for Sinn Fein to slip through the middle in a good year. The UUP have been wearing down the DUP over the past couple of elections and David Simpsons majority is now just 2,264, so if the party were on the front foot they might hope to take it. Alliance: Belfast East: This provided one of the big surprises of election night in 2010, when Naomi Long unseated Peter Robinson, the First Minister, after he was embroiled in scandal. She declined to follow her partys Liberal Democrat allies onto the Government benches and spent five years with the Others before the DUP took it back, with the help of a pact, by the narrow margin of just 2,600 votes. With the majority that small the Long must fancy her chances of a comeback if the UUP so much as put up a candidate although word on the ground is that unionisms poor showing at the Assembly poll may drive more of the DUPs traditional voters to the polls. Sinn Fein: Belfast North In 2010 this was the only unionist seat in the city after the Alliances shock capture of Belfast East. At the last election Nigel Dodds, the DUPs Westminster leader, managed to extend his majority from 2,224 to 5,326 in the absence of an Ulster Unionist competitor. Unfortunately for Gerry Adams, this is one of two seats where the unionists have managed to actually put a pact together, with the UUP standing down, which probably places it beyond his reach. The other is Fermanagh & South Tyrone: In 2015s stand-out result for the Unionist parties, Tom Elliott unseated Sinn Feins Michelle Gildernew to win back a seat last held by his party at the 1997 election. This is one of the most marginal seats in the country, with a history of both nationalist and unionist MPs in 2010 a Conservative-aligned independent unionist fell just four votes short. As a big, western constituency it also has a psychological impact on the political map out of proportion to its single MP, breaking the unionist parties out of their eastern strongholds. The DUP are standing down here to give Elliott a clear run, but this seat was close-run even in such conditions last time and Sinn Fein will be gunning for it. South Down: Once Enoch Powells seat, South Down has an interesting dynamic. Its a straight fight between the SDLP and Sinn Fein, but the former stay ahead by attracting a substantial share of the seats unionist voters. Thats probably why Margaret Ritchie, the incumbent, has been so keen to downplay any suggestion that her party will be making deals with Sinn Fein a one-election deal could cost her dearly if it alienated her pro-Union support long-term. Although her majority is just shy of 6,000, absent a pact Sinn Fein may be competitive: they topped the poll in the parallel Assembly constituency in March. In 1991, George Holliday's video of Rodney King being kicked and nightsticked by LAPD officers shocked the nation and sparked an uprising that galvanized the discussion about police brutality. A quarter century later, Ed, a political science professor, reports that when he shows the video to his students who have seen dozens of viral videos of American police officers beating and killing other black Americans can't figure out what the big deal is supposed to be. I do believe they all understood, but as that day went on I was increasingly bothered by that that brief exchange meant. This is a generation of kids so numb to seeing videos of police beating, tasering, shooting, and otherwise applying the power of the state to unarmed and almost inevitably black or Hispanic men that they legitimately could not understand why a video of cops beating up a black guy (who *didn't even die* for pete's sake!) was shocking enough to cause a widespread breakdown of public order. Now we get a new video every week sometimes every few days to the point that the name of the person on the receiving end is forgotten almost immediately. There are too many "Video of black guy being shot or beaten" videos for even interested parties to keep them all straight. Do a self test. Do you remember the name of the guy the NYPD choked out for selling loose cigarettes? The guy in suburban Minneapolis whose girlfriend posted a live video on Facebook after a cop shot her boyfriend in the car? The guy in Tulsa who was surrounded by cops and unarmed while a police helicopter recorded an officer deciding to shoot him? The woman who was found hanged in her Texas jail cell leading to the public pleas to "Say Her Name"? "There's way worse videos": Today's students on Rodney King [Ed/Sociological Images] (via JWZ) SOUTH STORMONT, Ontario Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry (SD&G) Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers are currently at the scene of a two (2) vehicle fatal collision on Highway 138 (north of Willy Allan Road), South Stormont Township. Preliminary investigation has indicated that at approximately 6:00am, a passenger vehicle was travelling north on Highway 138 when, for reasons under investigation, collided head-on with a southbound transport truck. The adult male driver (lone occupant) of the passenger vehicle was pronounced deceased at the scene. The truck driver (lone occupant) was not injured. Names are being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin. SD&G OPP, assisted by OPP Technical Traffic Collision Investigators (TTCI) continue to process the scene. A section of Highway 138, between Willy Allan Road and County Road 43 (Monkland) is closed to traffic with indicated detours in place. Two weeks after the 'National Enquirer' promised "World War 3 is coming!" the president's favorite media mouthpiece announces: "Trump's Plan For World Peace!" As plans go, it's a doozy. President Trump will "project a persona suggestive of unpredictable, even erratic, behavior on the world stage. This will deter America's enemies from provocation since they will not know how the president will react." This is according to "official documents" from a secret White House project code-named "Olive Branch." Considering that the 'Enquirer' has close links with Trump, who last year went on the record wondering why the magazine hadn't won a Pulitzer Prize, it's reassuring to know that even the president's most ardent supporters believe that his actions suggest mental instability. "People think he's crazy," the 'Enquirer' source reveals. No argument there. Continuing the tabloids' passion for politics, the 'Globe' reports that "crooked Hillary Clinton is terrified she's going to die in prison" after Trump supposedly killed a plea bargain deal that would have let her escape jail in return for a "full confession" of her alleged corruption and mishandling of state secrets on her personal internet server. Clinton allegedly "called the president in tears, begging for mercy." So much for Trump's post-election promise not to prosecute Hillary. On a happier note, the 'Globe' reports former President Obama revealing "I'm Gay!" in "secret love letters to ex." Ignoring for one moment the fact that most love letters are "secret" because they're invariably sent to one's lover rather than published nationally, this allegation originates in a new Obama biography by David Garrow which includes "newly discovered love letters." In these missives, penned by a young Obama, the future president allegedly wrote to his girlfriend "that he had thought about and considered gayness, but ultimately had decided that a same-sex relationship would be less challenging and demanding than developing one with the opposite sex." Which hardly seems to warrant the 'Globe' headline: "Obama Comes Out of the Closet!" The 'Enquirer' uses the same Obama biography by David Garrow to claim "Obama's Gay Secret Is Out!" while referencing entirely different material: Obama's admiration for an openly gay assistant professor while he was a student at Occidental College, California, in 1980. "He was a terrific guy," said Obama. Yep. That's as good a gay confession as swinging from the chandelier in a San Francisco bath house. Back in the world of show-business, the tabloids revert to their usual unwavering respect for the facts. Angelina Jolie's health has been saved by sheep placenta treatments, a British pop star is under investigation for raping a 14-year-old girl 41 years ago in South Africa, and "secret" FBI files supposedly reveal that Tom Cruise was criticized as prone to "temper tantrums" and "violent tendencies" by his former Scientology girlfriend, according to the 'Enquirer.' Actress Kirstie Alley, who the 'Globe' team of amusement park midway-trained "Guess Your Weight" experts declare is hitting the scales at 252 pounds, is "eating herself to death," consuming "4,147 calories a day!" That's an astonishingly precise calorie count, which serves as testimony to the nutritional expertise the 'Globe' has at its disposal as it weighs, measures and calculates every last bite that Alley consumes. Where's the Pulitzer Prize for the 'Globe' when they deserve it? Fortunately we have the indefatigable investigative reporting team at 'Us' magazine to tell us that Rita Ora wore it best, actor Charlie Hunnam wishes he could meet Santa Claus to "thank him for all the presents," 'Vanderpump Rules' star Scheana Marie carries a spare pair of contact lenses, Visine and her Disneyland annual pass in her GiGi New York satchel, and that the stars are just like us: they bicycle, carry beach bags, pump their own gas, and shock! horror! "they shop at Target." It hardly seems possible, but 'Us' has the photo of Angelina Jolie loading up her SUV after a Target shopping spree. Must be the sheep placenta warping her mind. Have you been missing Taylor Swift lately? No, me neither. But 'Us' magazine helpfully tells us that she's been missing for months in its cover story: "Why She Disappeared." Apparently Tay felt "over-exposed" after break-ups, a feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, and a fan backlash, and hasn't been seen since a pre-Super Bowl performance in February. How did we survive three whole months without Taylor Swift? Fortunately our long national nightmare is over, and apparently she's been in the recording studio, doubtless poised to bring us more bubbly songs about appalling ex-boyfriends. 'People' magazine devotes its cover to Goldie Hawn talking about "family, fame & making love last." The 71-year-old comedienne reveals next to nothing, and consumes eight pages doing it. How does she make love last? "Family. Fun. Laughs. Sex." Truly insightful. It feels like she's bared her soul. Yet again, it's the 'National Examiner' that provides us with the week's most improbable factually accurate story: "Real-Life Hobbits Found!' It hardly matters that the fossils of a race of miniature-sized humanoids who died out 15,000 years ago were found on the Indonesian island of Flores back in 2003. The 'Examiner' helpfully informs us that "these hobbits didn't battle dragons to reclaim fabled rings." It's that sort of truth in journalism that will restore America's faith in the media. Onwards and downwards . . . While THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, seems to cause memory and learning impairment in young mice, surprising new research suggests that it actually reverses cognitive decline in elderly mice. From Scientific American: Researchers led by Andreas Zimmer of the University of Bonn in Germany gave low doses of delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, marijuana's main active ingredient, to young, mature and aged mice. As expected, young mice treated with THC performed slightly worse on behavioral tests of memory and learning. For example, after THC young mice took longer to learn where a safe platform was hidden in a water maze, and they had a harder time recognizing another mouse to which they had previously been exposed. Without the drug, mature and aged mice performed worse on the tests than young ones did. But after receiving THC the elderly animals' performances improved to the point that they resembled those of young, untreated mice. "The effects were very robust, very profound," Zimmer says When the researchers examined the brains of the treated, elderly mice for an explanation, they noticed neurons in the hippocampusa brain area critical for learning and memoryhad sprouted more synaptic spines, the points of contact for communication between neurons. Even more striking, the gene expression pattern in the hippocampi of THC-treated aged mice was radically different from that of untreated elderly mice. "That is something we absolutely did not expect: the old animals [that received] THC looked most similar to the young, untreated control mice," Zimmer says. The findings raise the intriguing possibility THC and other "cannabinoids" might act as anti-aging molecules in the brain. I am going to go out on a ledge and guess there were plenty of actors who could play a physically attractive Pacific Islander. Apparently Hollywood can't find one. Some guy named Zach McGowan has been cast as Hawaiian native Benehakaka "Ben" Kanahele in an upcoming WWII film entitled Ni'ihau. Apparently Ol' Ben Kanahele was not a blue-eyed, white skinned person of non-Hawaiian origin. Via Variety: Success in security depends on working with others. Getting their support on key initiatives to better protect what matters. How do you do that? I recently talked with Kevin Cunningham (Linkedin), President & Co-Founder, SailPoint about the challenge for security leaders to connect with others and get support. With an impressive background that includes founding and marketing Waveset and then co-founding and leading Sailpoint, Kevin understands the importance of getting others on board with your mission. We started our discussion with an acceptance that the perimeter approach isnt working. SaaS adoption continues and is increasing. And while the expansion of business is great for us; its also good for attackers, too. That creates a unique pressure on identity. It is the common line - especially as more of our systems are outside of our non-existent perimeter. It creates a need to know how to manage the identity and to better control access. Kevin explains the details below. How does identity create an opportunity to bring security and the business together? Historically, the business side of an organization has viewed security programs as a hindrance something that at best must be tolerated (and in the worst of cases, ignored), in the interest of more pressing business needs and priorities. To be fair, an over-zealous security program can limit the productivity of business users. But at the same time, a program that is too lax puts the organization at risk. The key is to strike a balance to minimize the impact to (or even boost) the productivity of business users while managing risk to an acceptable level for the organization. A sound Identity management program provides security teams the opportunity to strike this balance. The reality is that security needs business participation in the management of identity. Its the people in the line of business who are doing the hiring and transferring of people, forming relationships with strategic partners, doing mergers and acquisitions, etc. Those people know better than IT who should have access to what. But security must make participation in these processes E-A-S-Y and beneficial. Business people have little tolerance or time to learn new skills just to help the security team. The key for security groups is to provide visible benefit to the business, while at the same time enforcing the security needed to manage risk. Examples of these benefits include self-service capabilities for gaining access to applications and managing their own passwords, as well as streamlining the onerous task of reviewing access privileges (as many organizations are required to do periodically). An effective identity management program delivers these benefits to the business while at the same time allowing for the behind-the scene controls that manage risk to an acceptable level for the organization. In this way, the effective management of identities can be viewed as a business enabler, as opposed to a hindrance. It seems this is a second (or third) chance for a lot of companies. Is it getting easier to tackle identity projects? Managing identities is one of those things that appears straightforward on the surface, but can be extremely complex once you dig under the covers. In complex environments, its not unusual to find hundreds (if not thousands) of applications each with their own security models and many different types of users (employees, contractors, business partners) with very specific access needs. And these users are fluid: new people are coming on board all the time, people are changing jobs, people are leaving an organization, mergers and acquisitions are occurring, and business partnerships are created and dissolve. There are lots and lots of moving parts to be managed on a continuous basis. And rarely is the same person represented in all these systems by the same user ID. So its not surprising that some companies struggle mightily with an effective identity management program. In my years of experience, the biggest differences between those that are highly successful, and those that continue to struggle year after year, break down into three categories: people, process and technology. Identity Management programs that are successful are typically led by strong individuals who have backing at a very high level in the company. Missing either of these elements, and the distributed nature of the identities across the enterprise means an uphill battle. As far as processes go, Ive seen several people take the approach of paving the cow path, that is automating existing (and outdated) processes with an automation tool. What you can end up with can be an automated mess. Successful identity projects take a hard look at existing processes and examine whether there are changes required to modernize or streamline. And lastly, the technology chosen can have a significant impact on the outcome of an identity program. Its imperative to understand underlying architecture. (i.e. How was the solution built? Through acquiring and knitting together multiple solutions or designed from the ground-up in a purposeful manner?) Ensuring that the solution is well architected is key to avoiding an identity management nightmare. Security leaders realize they cant be the team of no. How can they navigate the complexity of identity while meeting business needs? First and foremost, security leaders and teams must accept that the business will continue to evolve and adopt new technologies with or without their involvement. The migration to the cloud and SaaS is happening and BYOD is a fact of life in most organizations. So theres no sense in pushing back on these initiatives. Instead, security teams should find ways to facilitate new technology adoption in ways that allow them to partner with the business on this journey. A centralized identity management strategy provides the security team with the ability to facilitate the deployment, adoption and management of these new technologies. With this kind of partnership, everybody wins. The business gets a set of automated capabilities that allow them to easily onboard users to these new technologies, manage them over time, and provide powerful self-service capabilities for password management and access request all big gains for the business. At the same time, the security team gains the visibility, policy enforcement, and control over these new technologies. The key is taking the time upfront to explain the value proposition to the business stakeholders. Its a frank conversation they will enjoy. Why is a centralized viewpoint of identity essential in the our current landscape? We live in a time of openness and collaboration, which is good for business. It allows companies to expand and grow both organically and inorganically. More and more companies are embracing broad information sharing both internally and with business partners. At the same time, from a security perspective the physical network perimeter has disappeared. People are using their own smart phones, laptops, and tablets to access corporate assets and more and more of these assets are cloud-based beyond the protection of the corporate firewall. Often ones identity is the only common element linking all this together, so managing it effectively is of paramount importance. At the same time, the threats have never been greater or more sophisticated. For example, Google recently reported that they experience 4,000 state-sponsored cyber attacks per month. The dark web is full of identities for sale that have been stolen by organized criminals. For most companies, the time to detect an attack hovers around 150 days. The longer an attacker lingers in the network, the more time they have to move around and steal information. Oftentimes, an attacker achieves this with compromised identities. Each department within the organization should care if theyre creating risk. And that caring comes through education and a culture of security thats created by security teams and executive leadership together. What does it take to check your current approach and get started on the path to better identity management? It all starts with self-assessment. As a security leader, ask yourself these simple questions: Does my organization have an understanding of who has access to what? Do I know whether its appropriate given their relationship to my business (be they employee, contractor or customer?) Do I have a way to enforce controls and security policies over access at an enterprise level? And how do I manage identities over the course of a users life cycle with the organization? If Im a security leader and I cant answer these questions adequately, I need to take this to executive leadership and admit, We cant quantify what our risk profile is. Visibility is key and thats where you want to start. Once you have centrally gathered identity information from your applications (new and legacy), databases, directories and other enterprise resources, you can start to apply the necessary controls and process automation across its management. On Tuesday, Gizmodo published a story about how easy it was to get Trump Administration officials and associates to click a Phishing link. In order to do this, the Gizmodo Special Projects Desk developed a fake Google Docs email, complete with a false sign-in page. During the elections last November, President Trump and his staff often pointed to the risks associated with Hillary Clinton's personal email server. The campaign was also full of discussions around the DNC hack, which started via a Phishing email. In my opinion, I think the point Gizmodo was attempting to make with this story is that officials haven't changed their habits. Gizmodo can also argue that the public has a right to know that officials are still clicking potentially dangerous links in their email. But does it cross a line when a news organization creates a Phishing simulation in order to develop news? The Setup: Gizmodo says their actions were a "security preparedness test" and directed emails towards Rudolph Giuliani (Trump cybersecurity advisor) and 14 others who are associated with the Trump Administration, including Newt Gingrich, and James Comey, the former director of the FBI (who was still actively employed at the time of the test). Gizmodo's test [archive copy] involved spoofing the sender's name to someone the target knew personally, but leaving the return email address intact in this case it was: security.test@gizmodomedia.com . The URL hosting the fake log-in page wasn't a Google domain and it too contained the word test. Moreover, anyone who clicked the sign-in button was directed to a warning notification informing the user they were "the subject of a Gizmodo Media Group Special Projects Desk investigation into your digital security practices." The news organization also placed text in the email body itself identifying the message as a page "built by Gizmodo Media Group to test your security acumen." It's been done before: Gizmodo said a test such as theirs has precedent, citing Red Team engagements conducted by Facebook, and the USB drops performed by the Department of Homeland Security in 2011. The thing is, Facebook and the Department of Homeland Security were authorized for their Red Team and awareness campaigns. Based on the article, none of the people tested by Gizmodo gave consent or were reasonably informed a news organization might be running Phishing simulations against them. That's the key when it comes to Red Teams and awareness campaigns, they require permission. Gizmodo didn't allow anyone to enter credentials, which mirrors actual Phishing simulations performed by some vendors in the space, but that wasn't the point of the story. The point it seems, was to see who clicked, and when. Gizmodo said the targets were not as careless as the government employees who found USB sticks dropped by the DHS in a parking lot, but "some of them were still too trusting." "Some of the Trump Administration people completely ignored our email, the right move. But it appears that more than half the recipients clicked the link: Eight different unique devices visited the site, one of them multiple times," Gizmodo reported. "Theres no way to tell for sure if the recipients themselves did all the clicking (as opposed to, say, an IT specialist theyd forwarded it to), but seven of the connections occurred within 10 minutes of the emails being sent." The two who did respond to the emails, James Comey and Newt Gingrich, were responding to people they thought they knew. Comey thought he was talking to a personal friend, and Gingrich thought he was talking to his wife. Both questioned the authenticity of the emails. Awareness: Gizmodo, based on the wording and account published, ran an unauthorized Phishing simulation against public figures and government officials in order to determine their security posture. This might sound like an awareness test, but it wasn't. At no point did anyone who clicked the link in the emails receive additional training, or even a notice as to why clicking was the bad choice. Instead, they were told the email was part of a media investigation and that a reporter would be contacting them. This test by Gizmodo only used a single round of emails. As such, there is no way to properly measure success or failure. After all, the point of awareness training is to change behavior, you can't do that with a single email. Gizmodo also didn't do any tracking to see who reported the email as Phishing. Then again, they couldn't have tracked this metric, because if the emails were reported, the reports would have gone to the recipient's IT staff. What Gizmodo actually shows with their metrics is that 8 devices accessed their web page, but they have no idea who was on those devices at the time; that Comey has no problem talking to his friend; and Gingrich will hit reply to a message he believes is from his wife. The email states that it was a security test, and those who clicked the link were admonished in the story - "always read the fine print." But the message tacked-on to the fine print only proves that people see what they need to in order to assess an email for context, and decide if they'll take action. That the return email was spoofed isn't a "got ya" moment either, because if the recipients were using cellphones or tablets, they might not have noticed the reply to address anyway. But with all their metrics and observations, Gizmodo missed the larger concept I think: Anyone can be Phished. Red Teaming: As mentioned, Gizmodo cited a Department of Homeland Security Red Team engagement as precedent for the security assessment they performed. It isn't clear if Gizmodo received permission to assess the head of the FBI, the FCC chairman, the White House Press Secretary, among others. If they didn't have that permission, this wasn't an authorized Red Team exercise. Red Team engagements require permission, planning, coordination, and a strict adherence to scope or the clearly defined limits as to who and what can be tested, when and how. Some security professionals will argue against scope in a Red Team gig, but few (if any) will argue against the need for permission. Journalism: Gizmodo got the story. Shortly after it was published, security experts and other journalists discussed the topic online. Some argue that since Gizmodo didn't store any data, the test was valid and important. Others focused on the missing authorization. Most centered on the fact that the results of Gizmodo's test were exactly what they should've been people fell for Phishing, and this is completely expected. Failure was the goal here. There was no win for those who received the "security acumen" test. Everyone can be Phished. Everyone. The story wasn't about a security test, at least that's not how I see it. The story was about creating a fake email, sending it to public figures, and reporting on what happened next. If this had been a real security test, I'm not sure you'd get the same article. Journalists conducting security testing isn't new, but it isn't common either. Years ago, during Black Hat in Las Vegas, three reporters from Global Security Magazine were kicked out of the conference after they sniffed traffic in the press room something that is strictly forbidden. While I could craft a Phishing attack and target public figures in order to see who clicks what, I personally don't see the value in that because other than shaming those who fell for my trick, there is no lesson learned. "Don't Click S---!" is the motto but people click all the time. Where's the news in that? I don't think I could pretend to be someone's wife for the sake of a story either, but that's just me. However, if it was an authorized Red Team engagement, and as part of my job, I was expected to compromise the individual then yes, as long as I'm within scope, anything goes. Some comments suggested that Gizmodo violated the AUP/TOS for their upstream providers, or that their test was somehow illegal. I don't think that's the case, and I'm sure Gizmodo's lawyers cleared the story. My question centers on the impact did Gizmodo hurt themselves in the long run? Will they have trouble getting access to security professionals, or officials? That isn't clear, but I'd say it's unlikely. Most reporters don't rely on official access to do their jobs. It's helpful to have PR assistance, but it isn't a requirement. In the end, what we have is a story about people who fell for weak Phishing attack, which is a problem organizations and security teams the world over deal with on a daily basis. It isn't news, it's reality. Phishing is arguably one of the largest problems a network or individual will face online, and there is no easy answer when it comes to dealing with it. No quick fixes. None. But you know what I observed in the story? I observed two possible victims questioning what they see, and that is a good habit to form. So in my book, Comey and Gingrich passed the test. Let us know your opinion, leave it on our Facebook page. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Contributed photo Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Contributed photo Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Contributed photo Show More Show Less 5 of 5 HUBER TO UNH: Foran wide receiver Brett Huber, the states record-holder for single-season and career receptions, has signed a National Letter of Intent to attend Division II University of New Haven. Huber finished the 2016 season with 106 receptions, breaking the single-season reception record of 102 set by the late Pete Demmerle in 1970 at New Canaan. Huber ended his career with 208 reception; the previous record was 188. He also tied a state record for most receptions in a game (19) against Creed/Career/Whitney last season. According to the U.S. Census, just about 20 million people in the United States claimed full or partial Asian heritage in 2017. In Connecticut, that number was 184,858 or 5.1 percent of the state's population; 4.4 percent of the state's population claimed full Asian ancestry in 2017. Click through to see how that breaks down town-by-town in southwestern Connecticut. Jessica Hill / Associated Press HARTFORD Gov. Dannel P. Malloy plans to use more than $235 million from the states reserves to stop the flow of red ink that has reached nearly $390 million with just a few weeks left in the fiscal year. Malloy on Wednesday announced a deficit-mitigation plan that would cut $33.5 million in the budget that runs through June 30, and require the General Assembly to approve over $122 million in transfers and other action. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BRIDGEPORT - Ernie Newton is going back to the start of his political career and will run for his old seat on the City Council representing the East End. Im going to run with or without the nomination, Newton said Wednesday. The district the 139th is represented by veteran Jim Holloway and sophomore member Eneida Martinez. Holloway told me he wasnt going to run and we need the leadership to help Eneida do the things she needs to do, said Newton. Neither Holloway nor Martinez could be reached for comment. Should both incumbents run again, Newton would need to either defeat one of them at the Democratic Town Committees nominating convention this summer, or in a subsequent party primary. Either way, he will be a candidate under a cloud. Newton is appealing his 2015 conviction for breaking the states campaign finance laws. He was sentenced to six months in prison. You cant stop living, Newton said. That could very well be Newtons motto. He has proven over the years that if he is knocked on his famously flamboyantly dressed posterior, he will get back up and remain a vocal and influential community activist. First elected to the city council in the 1980s, Newton served on that body for four years, then moved on to seats in the state House of Representatives and in the state Senate. A corruption conviction in 2005 ended that phase of his political career. Newtons attempts in 2012 and 2014 to return to the legislature after serving out his prison sentence have been unsuccessful. In fact his latest conviction was related to fundraiser for his 2012 campaign. Newton even competed last year, along with business partners, to run the citys dump. Their bid was ultimately rejected. When the mayor and other city leaders on Wednedsay held a press conference about Tuesdays police shooting of a teenager, Newton was not only there, he was standing next to Mayor Joe Ganim as the tv news cameras rolled. We have a lot of major development projets going on in the district for the first time in 20 years, Newton said in an interview about his rationale for returning to the council. I just feel its time that the City Council has true leadership. I bring a wealth of knowledge. I can show them what council people are supposed to be about. Newton was not concerned that, should his appeal fail, he will face prison time in the middle of serving on the council should he be re-elected to a two year term. Its gonna take two, three years, four years for that (appeal) to happen, Newton said, adding his lawyers feel good. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The head of the University of Bridgeport announced his retirement Wednesday. President Neil Albert Salonen will leave the university, effective June 2018. Salonen, 72, has been UB president since 2000. The universitys ninth president, he came to the job without a background in higher education, but having served as the chairman of the universitys Board of Trustees and part of that presidential search committee. Some at the time said he took the job after others wouldnt. It has been my great privilege and joy to serve the University of Bridgeport and to work with the Board of Trustees, whose steadfast confidence in UB enabled us to reach significant milestones on behalf of our students and faculty, Salonen said in a prepared statement. UB has much to be proud of, and as it looks to celebrate its Centennial Anniversary in 2027, much to look forward to. It is expected upon retirement that Salonen and his wife will relocate to Maryland to be closer to his grandchildren. Board of Trustee Co-Chairman Frank N. Zullo, has named Trustee Robert Bercham as chairman of a university presidential search committee. It is expected to name a firm to launch a national search as quickly as possible. Salonen succeeded Richard L. Rubenstein, who had served as UB president from 1995 to 2000. Both had ties to the Professors World Peace Academy and the controversial Unification Church that provided the funding that helped keep UB from closing in 1991. Sun Myung Moon, the churchs leader, visited the campus several times before his death in 2012. Supporters called Salonen highly intelligent, talented and hard working. During his tenure, UB has slowly grown its enrollment and programs, even as the nations economy soured. Salonen said he recalled rolling up shirt sleeves and working with trustees, faculty and other supporters to shore up deficits and steer the university in a new direction. The university now has a balanced budget and has more than tripled its revenue, UB officials say. This fall 5,658 students were reported at the university, a 4.1 percent increase over last year and the highest it has been in three decades. The campus now has a renovated business school, nursing school and opened its first new dorm in decades last fall. The school still has a strong international population and six Fulbright Scholars are now earning graduate degrees at UB. As president, Salonen became active in the Bridgeport community, serving on the Bridgeport Regional Business Council. He co-chaired Mayor Joseph Ganims transition team after his 2016 election. In turn, Ganim has acknowledged UB and was named an ex-officio member of the UB Board of Trustees. His predecessor, Bill Finch, held a long-standing grudge against the university, and refused to step on campus. We are all proud of the great accomplishments at UB during Neils tenure, Zullo, the former mayor of Norwalk, said. It is difficult to even think of the university without Neil at its helm with (his wife) Rebecca at his side. 090517 MEMBER TO SEEK LEGAL REDRESS By Wesly Bunpalau SOUTH Bougainville MP Timothy Masiu is contemplating legal action against candidates who have levelled damaging allegations against him. And he has asked voters to be vigilant against those candidates with cheap politics who will say anything to smear other candidates. Mr Masiu has instructed staff and supporters to compile the necessary information pertaining to the allegations. He said it is a pity that candidates with no meaningful platform and workable development visions were resorting smear campaigns and character assassination that bordered on defamation of character. Member Masiu warned rival candidates to confine their campaigns to promoting their political platforms and ideologies, and refrain from personal attacks on other candidates. Mr Masiu also described as laughable reports being spread by rival candidates and their supporters that he (Mr Masiu) will face a leadership tribunal for breaking away from the Peoples Progress Party and joining the National Alliance. He said the organic law on the Integrity of Political Parties & Candidates gives Members of Parliament the right to break away and join parties of their choice. Any other matters was being addressed on a party to party level and again urged the voters to be careful of people using deceit and mischief to win support. He told the people to stop candidates and their supporters from engaging in smear campaigns and grill them about their platforms and development visions. ENDS/TM/WB This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Its deja vu all over again for the last surviving member of the Senate Watergate Committee. Lowell Weicker Jr., a former three-term senator who went on to become governor, said Wednesday that the firing of FBI Director James Comey by Donald Trump conjures up memories of the scandal that took down Richard Nixon. I think there are parallels to the extent that it was sort of the straw that broke the camels back, Weicker told Hearst Connecticut Media. Weicker, 85, joined the growing chorus of current and former politicians clamoring for an independent prosecutor to be appointed to probe Russias interference in the presidential election. I think this ball has been kicked around long enough, the GOP cast-off Weicker said. Where theres smoke, theres fire. On Tuesday night, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., compared Comeys unceremonious dismissal to the sacking of special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal in 1973. Both the attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned as a result of Coxs ouster, in what was known as the Saturday night massacre. Blumenthals string of television appearances appeared to touch a nerve with Trump, who Wednesday unleashed a fresh round of Twitter insults over Blumenthals misrepresentations of military service during the Vietnam war. Watching Senator Richard Blumenthal speak of Comey is a joke, Trump tweeted. Richie devised one of the greatest military frauds in U.S. history. For years, as a pol in Connecticut, Blumenthal would talk of his great bravery and conquests in Vietnam - except he was never there. When caught, he cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness...and now he is judge & jury. He should be the one who is investigated for his acts. The torrent of tweets similar to a February assail of Blumenthal by Trump followed the senators appearance on CNNs New Day Wednesday. Blumenthal, the heir apparent to retiring Sen. Chris Dodd in 2010, was dealt a significant blow when The New York Times reported he had said he served in Vietnam when he had not. Blumenthal served in the Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam War, but did not see combat. Weicker said Wednesday that he wasnt buying Trumps explanation for firing Comey that the FBI director had lost the trust of the president and the American people. I dont think the president can be trusted to lead the United States of America anymore, Weicker said. The fierce loathing between Weicker and Trump has been building for decades and goes back to when the real estate mogul proposed a Bridgeport casino in 1993, a project that Weicker opposed. At the time, Trump called Weicker a fat slob. Weicker fired back that Trump was a dirtbag and a bigot in a television interview. Prior to Weickers estrangement from the GOP, he served in both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as first selectman of his former hometown of Greenwich. Weicker, who successfully ran for governor in 1990 under the banner of A Connecticut Party, now resides in Old Lyme. State GOP Chairman J.R. Romano dismissed Weickers criticism Wednesday of Trump. Lowell Weicker hasnt been relevant in 25 years, and all he does is criticize Republicans, Romano said. Not everyone bemoaned Comeys firing. Trumps on-again, off-again confidant, Norwalk native Roger Stone, cheered the move on Twitter. Somewhere Dick Nixon is smiling.#comeyfired Stone tweeted at 1:38 a.m. Wednesday. Stone also retweeted a GIF clip from The Apprentice with Trumps Youre Fired catchphrase. Former John Rowland prosecutor Chris Mattei, a Democrat who is exploring a run for governor and whose Justice Department tenure overlapped with Comeys, blasted Trump. I consider this to be an unprecedented abuse of power, Mattei said. When I was leading highly sensitive public corruption investigations, I knew that no matter how powerful any one person might be, that they were not above the law. Now the question for the United States Congress and all of us is whether we are going to ensure that is true even for the president of the United States. nvigdor@hearstmediact.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy 100517BUIN VISIT BY THE ABG REFERENDUM COMMITTEE By Aloysius Laukai The ABG Parliamentary Committee chaired by the ABG member for Selau, JOSEPH WATAWI and womens representative for Central Bougainville women, MARCHELLIN KOKIAI and the member representing the women of South Bougainville, ISSABEL PETA today carried out their awareness in Buin town. In their comments, the Chairman JOSEPH WATAWI called on the people of Buin to start preparing themselves for the Referendum earmarked for June 15th, 2019. MR. WATAWI said that the development taking place in Buin is one way of making Buin prepare for the Referendum. He said the people must do their part in reconciling with their enemies to make the place conducive to this referendum. MR. WATAWI said that the Bougainville Peace Agreement says that the question on the Referendum vote must be clear and that Independence for Bougainville must be one of the options. He said many Bougainvilleans have commented that for the question to be clear the must be a YES or NO to Independence for Bougainville. The member representing the women of Central Bougainville, MARCHELLINE KOKIAI called on the women of Buin and South Bougainville to support their male counterparts and prepare for the Referendum vote in 2019. She said that women have a role to play to contribute to this coming Referendum. Ends Picture of Member Watawi in Buin today Ousted FBI director James Comey, fired Tuesday by President Donald Trump, reportedly learned about his dismissal from a television news report, according to both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Comey was addressing FBI agents in Los Angeles when news of the dismissal began playing on a television in the background. "In response," the New York Times reported, "Mr. Comey laughed, saying he thought it was a fairly funny prank." According to the Los Angeles Times, Comey was scheduled to speak at an FBI recruiting event in Hollywood on Tuesday night but will not attend. Tuesday's firing was shocking, particularly because Comey was in the process of supervising an investigation of possible ties between Russia and Trump's associates, as well as Russia's interference with the 2016 presidential election. In a letter released by the White House, Trump wrote that he was dismissing Comey following recommendations from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. Rosenstein wrote his reasoning for Comey's firing was in part due to Comey's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira. Jehovahs Witnesses spend a substantial amount of time on Bible study and evangelizing door to door. Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross THE CONVERSATION May 4, 2017 Disclosure statement: Mathew Schmalz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above. The Russian Supreme Court recently sanctioned Jehovahs Witnesses as an extremist group. This ruling criminalizes Jehovahs Witnesses who express their beliefs and allows the Russian government to liquidate any property held by the organization. There are over eight million Jehovahs Witnesses in 240 countries worldwide. Russia, with a population of more than 150 million, has a total of 117,000 Jehovahs Witnesses one Jehovahs Witness per 850 people. Who are Jehovahs Witnesses, and why would the Russian, or any, government consider them to be a threat? Early history The story of Jehovahs Witnesses begins in the late 19th century near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a group of students studying the Bible. The group was led by Charles Taze Russell, a religious seeker from a Presbyterian background. These students understood Jehovah, a version of the Hebrew Yaweh, to be the name of God the Father himself. Russell and his followers looked forward to Jesus Christ establishing a millennium or a thousand-year period of peace on Earth. This Golden Age would see the Earth transformed to its original purity, with a righteous social system that would not have poverty or inequality. Russell died in 1916 without witnessing the return of Jesus Christ. But his group endured and grew. The name Jehovahs Witnesses was formally adopted in the 1930s. Early Jehovahs Witnesses believed 1914 to be the beginning of the end of worldly governments that would culminate with the Battle of Armageddon. Armageddon specifically refers to Mount Megiddo in Israel where some Christians believe the final conflict between good and evil will take place. Jehovahs Witnesses, however, expected that the Battle of Armageddon would be worldwide with Jesus leading a heavenly army to defeat the enemies of God. They also believed that after Armageddon, Jesus would rule the world from heaven with 144,000 faithful Christians, as specified in the Book of Revelation. Other faithful Christians would be reunited with dead loved ones and live on a renewed Earth. Over the years, Jehovahs Witnesses have reinterpreted elements of this timeline and have abandoned setting specific dates for the return of Jesus Christ. But they still look forward to the Golden Age that Russell and his Bible students expected. Given the groups belief in a literal thousand-year earthly reign of Christ, scholars of religion classify Jehovahs Witnesses as a millennarian movement. What are their beliefs? Jehovahs Witnesses deny the Trinity. For most Christians, God is a union of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Instead, Jehovahs Witnesses believe that Jesus is distinct from God not united as one person with him. The Holy Spirit, then, refers to Gods active power. Such doctrines distinguish Jehovahs Witnesses from mainline Christian denominations, all of which hold that God is triune in nature. But like other Christian denominations, Jehovahs Witnesses praise God through worship and song. Their gathering places are called Kingdom Halls, which are ordinary-looking buildings like small conference centers that have the advantage of being easily built. Inside are rows of chairs and a podium for speakers, but little special adornment. Jehovahs Witnesses are best known for devoting a substantial amount of time to Bible study and door-to-door evangelizing. Their biblical interpretations and missionary work certainly have critics. But it is the political neutrality of the group that has attracted the most suspicion. Jehovahs Witnesses accept the legitimate authority of government in many matters. For example, they pay taxes, following Jesus admonition in Mark 12:17 to render unto Caesar what is Caesars. But they do not vote in elections, serve in the military or salute the flag. Such acts, they believe, compromise their primary loyalty to God. A history of persecution Jehovahs Witnesses have no political affiliations, and they renounce violence. However, they make an easy target for governments looking for internal enemies, as they refuse to bow down to government symbols. Many nationalists call them enemies of the state. As a result, they have often suffered persecution throughout history in many parts of the world. Jehovahs Witnesses were jailed as draft evaders during both world wars. In a Supreme Court ruling in 1940, school districts were allowed to expel Jehovahs Witnesses who refused to salute the American flag. Through subsequent legal battles in the 1940s and 1950s, Jehovah Witnesses helped expand safeguards for religious liberty and freedom of conscience both in the United States and Europe. In Nazi Germany, Jehovahs Witnesses were killed in concentration camps; a purple triangle was used by the Nazis to mark them. In the 1960s and 70s, scores of African Jehovahs Witnesses were slaughtered by members of The Youth League of the Malawi Congress Party for refusing to support dictator Hastings Banda. Many Witnesses fled to neighboring Mozambique, where they were held in internment camps. Now it is Russia. The Russian Supreme Court maintains that the country needs to be protected from disloyal religious fanatics. But Jehovahs Witnesses see themselves threatened by nationalists who are far more dangerous. Jehovahs Witnesses attach a great importance to dates. Many Jehovahs Witnesses are filled with foreboding, as April 20, the day the Russian Supreme Court ruled against them, is also the birthday of Adolf Hitler. Their memories of persecution have not faded with time. https://theconversation.com/who-are-jehovahs-witnesses-77077 Mathew Schmalz Bowalley Road Rules The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place. So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules. These are based on two very simple principles: Courtesy and Respect. Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned. Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym. Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse. However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen. 09 Mays 2017 Sal, 14:10 Iklim Ongel The CHP Party Assembly convened extraordinarily at General Chair Kemal Klcdaroglus behest with Mersin MP and Party Assembly member Fikri Saglar on the agenda. Despite Saglar denying his words and offering the defence that there were sentences in the report he had not said, he was remitted to the Supreme Disciplinary Board with his definitive expulsion sought by 38 approving and 19 dissenting votes. It has been learnt that Klcdaroglu, addressing the opening of the meeting, said, We know everything. The button has been pressed and the instruction given from the Palace to cause turmoil in this party. In response to this, some colleagues have aided this project wittingly, and some unwittingly. The CHPs Saglar criticised Klcdaroglu for his single-man style in an interview he gave to the regime-sponsored media machine. Saglars comments were discussed at the Central Executive Committee and a resolution was passed unanimously at the Central Executive Committee for Saglar to be referred to the Party Assembly, seeking his remission to the Supreme Disciplinary Board. On the same day, Klcdaroglu gave notice in a message he sent to Party Assembly members that the Party Assembly would convene extraordinarily on Sunday 7 May with Saglar on the agenda. Saglar stands accused of acting through his comments in breach of the paragraph, Acting in breach of the programme and the provisions of the Rule Book, engaging in attitudes and conduct incompatible with membership and the duties and responsibilities they have assumed in the party and supporting or contributing towards political campaigns and activities that are contrary to the partys direction and basic principles constituting Party Offences Warranting the Penalty of Definitive Expulsion contained in Article 70 providing for Party Offences of the CHPs Rule Book. I deny the report From what has been learnt, Saglar made a measured speech in his defence at the meeting. Saglar, said, I deny the report with reference to the headline that appeared in the pro-regime press, and offered the defence that certain of the statements contained in the report were not his. Despite these comments by Saglar he continued to receive a rough reception at the meeting. It has been learnt that some members said that the penalty of expulsion was too severe and the penalties of censure or caution were warranted. CHP leader Klcdaroglu supposedly said that he had expected a comment denying the report from Saglar in the intervening time, but things had currently come to a head with Saglar failing to make a correction. Saglar reportedly said that he had found himself undergoing disciplinary proceedings before he had found time to make a denial. Saglar: I am sorry It has been learned that Saglar asked Party Assembly members for their forgiveness at the meeting. With hostility gradually rising, Saglar once more took the floor and said, Words that I did not speak were put in the headline. I am sorry that I have caused the Party Assembly to convene thanks to such an event. I am sorry to have taken up the partys time thanks to such an event. With these words coming as no consolation, Klcdaroglu commented, It is wrong to discuss internal party matters over this course of events. What matters is the existence of no. It is the joint responsibility of all of us to boost no not reduce it. It is not right to bring the party to Turkeys public attention like this. I take a dim view of such things being done on the day the president became a party member. I do not find such things to be correct. We will preserve this unity. I accept internal party criticism and I am open to suggestions, but methods of this kind were ill-placed for the party, for Turkey and for no. Erdogans party membership is not being discussed against this backdrop. Everyone will obey the partys programme and rule book. I consider criticism and discussion to be correct, but I have never considered it to be correct to discuss the party in the public eye. Expulsion resolution emerges The Party Assembly moved on to a secret vote after about six hours. Of the sixty-member Party Assembly, 59 people voted. At the conclusion of the vote, it was resolved with 38 approving, 19 dissenting and two abstaining votes for Saglar to be remitted to the disciplinary board seeking his definitive expulsion. It is said that one Party Assembly member also wished for former General Chair Deniz Baykal to be remitted to the disciplinary board. But the prevailing view in the corridors is that, despite his highly controversial comments about Abdullah Gul and the opponents, Baykals clout as former general chair came to his aid. Harsh criticism for Boke Another figure to court as much attention at the meeting as Saglar was Selin Sayek Boke, who has resigned from her party posts. It is learnt that at the meeting, at which Boke came in for harsh criticism, it was said that there was a difference between her deeds and words, with one member even referring to her as a so-called professor. Boke, taking the floor following the harsh criticism, apparently said she would not engage in personal arguments, but was expressing her thoughts aloud as a dissenting opinion and complained that absolutely no attention was paid to them. It has been learnt that Boke said, My resignation is individual. I am resigning because I have had problems with being spokesperson and I respect the General Chair. I do not accept character assassination. It is wrong for me to continue following the bosom of the people debate. Had I continued, I would have stayed in office for its own sake but I have stepped down from my posts. On the other hand, it is reported that Boke said that a different political clique took the decision at the Central Executive Committee, leading to a heightening of tension in the auditorium. Boke also apparently said that she had been elected to the Party Assembly with the highest vote and would continue her fight. Boke accused of having a project Bokes words once more prompted harsh criticism. One Party Assembly member reportedly said, If it was supposedly wrong for you to remain following the bosom of the people debate, then resign from the Party Assembly, as well. In talking to critics of enmity and assassination are you engaging in politics? You are ignoring that these people are expending their labour and money and are campaigning to the detriment of their families. Know your place. Also, Bokes resignation coming one day before the convening of the Party Assembly over Saglar lead to Boke fielding comments that she had shown herself to have a project. Button pressed from the Palace From what has been learnt, Klcdaroglu, addressing the opening of the meeting, said, We know everything. The button has been pressed and the instruction given from the Palace to cause turmoil in this party. Klcdaroglu saying that in response to this, some colleagues have aided this project wittingly, and some unwittingly, commented, I am the one who brought party internal democracy to this party, sorry to everyone for that. It is also my duty to protect this party. If anybody wishes to be general chair, let them step forward and I will actually assist them in meeting the delegates. I will pay out of my own pocket and hire meeting rooms. But I will not let anybody tear the party apart. I do not expect other resignations CHP people spoke to journalists before the Party Assembly meeting about Saglar and Bokes resignation. CHP Group Deputy Chair Engin Altay commented on Bokes resignation by saying, Nothing at all we are experiencing comes as a surprise. As to whether there would be other resignations, he said, Everything is possible in politics and nothing is impossible, but this is not what I expect. His comment on discussion over an extraordinary congress was, No such discussion has started so enough of it. Such things cannot happen just because one or two people demand it. The way in which a congress convenes is known. There are three ways: the general chair convenes it or the Party Assembly does so and, if requested by vote, it can be convened with 650 signatures. The expectation is very different Bursa MP Erkan Aydn, on the other hand, stated that an extraordinary course of events had been embarked on as far as the party was concerned and noted that this was not a road they should be going down. Aydn said, The expectation of the 49% for whom we are the vehicle is very different. We have encountered these events which we all follow with amazement. The ordinary congress schedule has been announced. With this schedule in place, I do not think that holding yet another congress, holding a congress within six months, would be a correct decision. The Party Assembly will act with common sense Balkesir MP Mehmet Tum, on the other hand, stated that the Party Assembly would act with common sense over Saglar, and said, There are serious issues in the country and this must be our principal agenda. This in-family problem will be solved in the optimum manner. Tum described Bokes resignation as a surprise. The delegates will be from the CHP Istanbul MP Eren Erdem, stressing that the partys ordinary congress had been set in motion, said, The incoming delegation will not be from Mars. It will be from the CHP. So, I think it would be more sensible to await the ordinary congress process rather than hold a congress with the existing delegates. Days we would not have wished for Ankara MP Necati Ylmaz said the decision to be taken will be a decision that puts internal party debate to an end and steers clear of creating fresh debate, and will enhance the partys strength. Ylmaz said, We are discussing agendas that we do not wish for and do not deserve. Neither Turkey, nor the party, needs this. As to Bokes resignation, Ylmaz commented, She is a Party Assembly member, but was made Central Executive Committee member and party spokesperson at our general chairs discretion. So, she is obliged among other things to enlighten the general chair rather than enlighten the general public. Turkey does not need a saviour, it needs strong parties. There is only one saviour and that is Ataturk. I believe in the strength of the organisation. I do not at all consider constant debate over a congress and constant debate over the general chair to be correct and well-intentioned. Opening dates, hours and new policies set for 2022 ski season A price increase on all day and season passes at Seven Springs, Hidden Valley and Laurel Mountain ski areas goes into effect on Nov. 20. The Governments decision to spend ten years gradually refurbishing Buckingham Palace (at a cost of 369 million) so the Queen wont have to move out doesnt seem to have impressed the monarch. She appears happier now at Windsor Castle and will be there this week for one of her favourite events, the Royal Windsor Horse Show. Surely moving to Windsor while the palace is refurbished her preference would have been more sensible. It might also have reduced the repair bill considerably and allowed the work to be completed in three years rather than ten. The Queen, pictured at Windsor Castle, could have moved to the residence while Buckingham Palace was refurbished and allow work to be completed in three years rather than 10 The cost of refurbishing Buckingham Palace, pictured, over the next decade will be 369million Norways King Harald and Queen Sonja celebrate their joint 80th birthdays with a series of events culminating in a grand banquet at the Norwegian Opera tonight. The crowned heads of Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Monaco, The Netherlands, Spain and Sweden will be there. Our own monarch is represented by the Countess of Wessex. An indication of HMQs high regard for Prince Edwards wife, Sophie, 52? Or, a relaxed approach by our monarch to young (in her eyes) Harald and Sonjas 80th birthday knees-up? Sophie, Countess of Wessex, pictured with Icelandic President Gudni Johannesson at the birthday celebration of King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway Screen siren Raquel Welch, 76, pictured, who appeared as a scantily-clad tribes- woman in the 1966 hit One Million Years BC, points out in an interview that she has never appeared naked, insisting: Theyd say Youre going to be in the showers and youre going to take your shirt off. 'I just didnt do it. In the Sixties a lot of people were doing it, very well-respected actors and actresses. Raquel Welch, pictured, said she refused to appear naked during the 1960s when 'well-respected' actors and actresses were doing it 'That will never be my standard. Thats really bargain-basement time. Just throwing it out there. Quite so, but surely a small peek, artistically arranged, would not have sullied her reputation. Emmanuel Macron wanted his victory party after winning Frances presidential election to be on the Champs de Mars, under the Eiffel Tower, but the mayoress of Paris (sexy Anne Hidalgo) refused. She wants to keep crowds off the lawns until after the International Olympic Committee visits on May 14. Incidentally its said Macron channels Joan of Arc. His wife, Brigitte, has joked: It can be hard living with Joan of Arc. Europhile Nick Clegg complains that Theresa May is pursuing a hard Brexit after being mildly pro-EU prior to the referendum. Does that mean everything she said to me year after year is not true? he complains to LBCs Nick Ferrari. Nick Clegg, pictured, complained about Theresa May's pursuit of a 'Hard Brexit' Is Clegg being somewhat hypocritical by complaining about being told untruths? The wretched Liberal Democrats were all but destroyed at the 2015 general election after his lies to students about not raising tuition fees when he was the Coalition Governments deputy premier. Prince Harry flies to Sydney next month hoping to shore up the monarchys status there now theres support for a republic in both houses of the Down Under parliament. But is Harry (sans girlfriend Meghan on this occasion) enough? William and Kates 2014 visit, with George, certainly boosted the monarchist cause but the arrival of Charles and Camilla a year later didnt have the same effect. As historians know, the typical cult makes strange demands of its members. The medieval Assassins, based in a remote castle in northern Syria, were said to smoke hashish before venturing forth to kill their enemies. The Ranters, who emerged in England after the civil wars of the 1640s, liked to take their clothes off as a protest against conventional morality. The Rajneesh, who followed the half-crazed Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to a commune in Oregon in the Eighties, dressed entirely in orange. Jeremy Corbyn, pictured, and his Labour Party are reminiscent of one of the more deranged Californian cults of the Seventies, writes Dominic Sandbrook As for the members of the Peoples Temple, they followed the far-Left American preacher Jim Jones to a compound in Guyana, where they committed mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Yesterday in Manchester, a disturbing new cult made a bid for public attention. Its activists, who venerate a bearded prophet with the initials JC, typically wear red ties or red dresses. Like so many cult members, they travel the land handing out leaflets and attracting recruits, and they are tireless in their efforts to solicit donations. And although no poisoned Kool-Aid was on hand yesterday, there was plenty of poison in the air, as the cult leader unveiled a long list of enemies who had rigged the system and would soon face a mysterious reckoning. The cult in question was, of course, Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party. Watching his General Election campaign launch yesterday, I almost had to pinch myself to remember that only seven years ago his party was still running the country. For with their obsessive sense of embattlement, their wild conspiracy theories, their suffocating self-righteousness and their utter indifference to reality, Mr Corbyn and his friends increasingly resemble one of the more deranged Californian cults of the Seventies. Only last week, Labour collapsed to one of the worst electoral defeats in its modern history, losing more than 380 council seats and being humiliated in a string of mayoral contests. The latest polls continue to give the Conservatives a lead of around 20 per cent, and most observers agree that when Britain votes on June 8, Labour will sink to their worst defeat since 1983, and perhaps even since the Thirties. Labour have an 'obsessive sense of embattlement, wild conspiracy theories, suffocating self-righteousness and an utter indifference to reality' You would never have guessed it from the scenes in Manchester, though. There they all were on the platform, clapping ecstatically like Bible Belt Baptists at an evangelical service: Diane Abbott, the would-be home secretary who cannot add up; John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor who promises to run the economy according to the principles of Karl Marx; and Mr Corbyn, the prospective prime minister who cannot bring himself to sing his countrys National Anthem. As Mr Corbyn explained yesterday, he is looking forward to a long spell in office. But if, by some strange accident, he loses, he has no intention of stepping down as Labour leader. I was elected leader of this party and Ill stay leader of this party, he told the website Buzzfeed. I love it . . . Ill carry on doing it. Most party leaders say this sort of thing, of course. But since Mr Corbyns aides have spent the past few weeks briefing journalists about his determination to cling on in the event of defeat, I suspect he means every word. The real mystery, of course, is why? If the polls are even vaguely correct and given last weeks local results, I believe they are why cling on in the face of such a debacle? The answer, I think, is that Mr Corbyn and his friends simply do not care about the General Election. Let me explain. I suspect he would be relieved to lose, because he has never showed the slightest interest in running anything a government department, a business, even a whelk stall and even he must know that he is not remotely capable of organising a Government. Mr Corbyn, pictured, may be 'relieved' to lose because he 'has never shown the slightest interest in running anything' What he really cares about is completing the transformation of the Labour Party into a far-Left sect, a kind of religious cult, sealed off from electoral reality and utterly detached from the values, ambitions and anxieties of ordinary Labour voters, whom the Corbynistas regard as brainwashed capitalist dupes. This explains, I think, why his speech yesterday was so predictable, unambitious and intellectually threadbare. Mr Corbyns admirers have often hailed him as excitingly radical, a refreshingly different voice amid the chorus of professional politicians. But there was nothing radical or surprising about the tired list of cliched villains that he trotted out yesterday. Tax-cheats, Press barons, greedy bankers, crooked financiers we have heard all this a million times. It is a vision of Britain straight from the student union circa 1974. It says it all, I think, that the only intellectual for whom Mr Corbyn and his friends seem to have any time is Karl Marx. According to John McDonnell, we all have a lot to learn from a man who died in 1883, before the invention of the motor car, the aeroplane or the moving picture. I am perfectly happy to concede that Marx was one of the most influential writers of the Victorian age. But I find it frankly laughable not to say slightly sinister that in 2017, the leaders of the British Labour Party should be fawning before the man who wrote the Communist Manifesto and believed that capitalism should be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The ironic thing is that, whatever you might think of his ideas, Marx himself was a fearsomely rigorous thinker. Mr Corbyn, pictured with Labour's new 'battlebus' also refused to confirm he would take Britain out of the EU should his party win when asked six times He would have had very little time for the shambolic mixture of protest-march ranting and Sunday-school pieties that characterised Mr Corbyns speech yesterday. And this, I think, is the single most depressing thing about the Corbyn cult. Even as he steers his party unerringly towards oblivion, he has absolutely nothing interesting to say. Asked six times to guarantee that a Labour government would honour the wishes of the British people and take Britain out of the EU, he risibly refused to do so six times. Like every other party leader, he talks of a Britain for the many, not the few, but he has no practical suggestions about how to build it, other than borrowing billions for the Government to splash around. Like every other Labour leader since the dawn of time, he witters on about saving our NHS, but he has no concrete solutions to the problems of soaring costs and an ageing population. And he says he wants to unlock every persons potential. But when did you ever hear of a politician who said he wanted to stop people achieving their potential? Even by the standards of a cult, therefore, Mr Corbyns Labour Party strikes me as a wretched disappointment. Even by the standards of a cult Mr Corbyns Labour Party, pictured, is a 'wretched disappointment' The Moonies have their spectacular wedding ceremonies; the Scientologists have a lurid cosmological theology; even the Bhagwan had the imagination to come up with some orange jump-suits. Mr Corbyn, however, just has Karl Marx, a red battle bus and some of the laziest cliches ever served up to a national electorate. It is possible, I suppose, that he genuinely cannot think of anything else to say. But it is more likely, I fear, that he is already positioning himself for yet another Labour leadership election after June 8, in which he hopes his followers will confirm him as Supreme Guru. The irony of all this, by the way, is that Mr Corbyn was preceded on stage yesterday by the former Coronation Street and Broadchurch actress Julie Hesmondhalgh, a proper socialist firebrand, who introduced him as a man who gives a toss. I admire Ms Hesmondhalghs passion, but I think she was dead wrong. On the evidence of yesterdays speech and indeed his entire career as leader of his party Jeremy Corbyn does not give a toss about anything, except perhaps himself. And in that respect, he is sadly typical of so many cult leaders throughout history. Their names read like a roll-call of the gilded Left: Melissa Benn, daughter of Tony and sister of Viscount Stansgate; Michael Morpurgo, millionaire author; Michael Rosen, novelist and poet; Fiona Millar, Guardian journalist and partner of Tony Blairs liar-in-chief, Alastair Campbell These are the men and women, backed by prominent members of the education blob, who are hoping to scupper Theresa Mays plan for new grammar schools to give a leg-up in life to bright children, particularly those from poorer homes. But the Comprehensive Future campaigners have something else in common, apart from backing a crowd-funding drive to finance propaganda against selective education. Isnt it striking how many enjoyed every educational advantage their parents and the system could shower on them? Theresa May, pictured, is facing opposition to her grammar school plans from campaigners who enjoyed every educational advantage available to them Take Miss Benn, whose father moved her from a private school to the socialist Eton, Holland Park comprehensive a byword for selection by postcode, with one of the richest catchment areas in the country. Or consider Mr Morpurgo an old boy of the elite independent Kings School, Canterbury who sent his own children to boarding school. As for Mr Rosen and Miss Millar, both went to grammars, though they now seek to pull up the ladder behind them. Yes, this paper shares the groups reservations about the old 11-plus exam. Indeed, we have often argued that the test divided children into academic successes or failures at too young an age, before late-developers abilities could emerge. But the Prime Minister has made clear her new grammars will be much more flexible, allowing entry at later stages. After decades in which the blob has piled all its eggs into the comprehensive basket while Britain slips relentlessly down the international exam league tables the time to bring back grammars has surely come. Meanwhile, isnt there something unseemly about privileged Left-wingers seeking to deny others the advantages they themselves enjoyed? Marxist madness Leave aside the utter confusion over Labours Brexit policy after Jeremy Corbyn refused six times to guarantee he would take Britain out of the EU. Forget the consequences for our defence, foreign policy and security if this lifelong campaigner for unilateral nuclear disarmament and friend of Islamist extremists comes to power. If Jeremy Corbyn, pictured, and John McDonnell put their Marxist theories into practice there will be economic carnage Just think of the economic carnage if Mr Corbyn and John McDonnell put their Marxist theories into practice, with sharp tax rises to fund a ballooning State. Today, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research no natural friend of the Tories forecast that Britain will be the fastest growing major economy in Europe over the next two years. Can anyone imagine it would have made such a prediction if it thought Mr Corbyn had the ghost of a chance of power? A lightbulb moment? Energy Secretary Greg Clark has been branded disgraceful after admitting he has never switched power provider. Says consumer expert Martin Lewis: He should have the energy portfolio taken off him. Energy Secretary Greg Clark, pictured, has been branded disgraceful after admitting he has never switched power provider But should he really? In saying its a hassle to hunt for a better deal, Mr Clark merely shows hes at one with the three-quarters of customers who find switching too time-consuming or confusing. Indeed, the whole point of the planned cap on rip-off bills is to spare loyal customers exploitation by the Big Six. Until a free market in energy can be made to work, it is good to hear a minister speaking for the majority not just the canny few. The saying goes that when you gotta go, you gotta go - a lesson Sophie Cachia has learned the hard way. The popular Young Mummy blogger took to her Facebook on Tuesday to confess that she had 'p*ssed her pants' in the car while stuck in traffic. 'A full bottle of water, a four-month-postpartum pelvic floor, and a freeway standstill with traffic is NEVER a good combo,' Sophie wrote. And this was hardly a little 'dribble of pee', the 26-year-old Melbourne mum revealed. Young Mummy blogger Sophie Cachia, 26, took to her Facebook on Tuesday to confess that she had 'p*ssed her pants' in the car while stuck in traffic The Melbourne mother-of-two blamed her 'four-month-postpartum pelvic floor' for the accident, which occurred after she drank a 'full bottle of water' 'It appears when you're so desperately holding on and you finally crack, the floodgates open and they cannot be shut,' she added. 'I truly never thought this would happen to me. But hey, there's a first time for everything...right?' Thankfully Sophie's husband Jaryd was on hand to save the day when she finally arrived home. The mother-of-two praised her 'devoted husband' for coming out to the house with two towels because 'she totally p*ssed her pants in her car'. Sophie's Facebook post has already been liked more than 8,000 times, with a number of her fans praising the mum's candidness Sophie posted a sweet picture of herself with Jaryd and their five-month-old daughter to accompany the candid caption. Her Facebook post has already been liked more than 8,000 times, with a number of fans praising the mum and sharing similar experiences. 'My pelvic floor has never been the same after three kids, wish someone had warned me!' wrote Jo Mcmaster. 'You're a breath of fresh air Sophie...just love your honesty!' 'Massive shout out to you Sophie for talking about the s*** that happens to all of us, yet no one talks about it,' added Chrissy Mooney. Mother-of-four Shannon Francis commended Sophie for being 'stunning even if you did just p*ss your pants!' Sophie has become famous for her raw posts about motherhood with her three-year-old son Bobby and five-month-old daughter Florence (pictured together) Sophie made headlines earlier this year when she decided to change Florence's name 'This happens a bit actually, my poor pelvic floor,' she wrote. 'Don't even ask me to bounce on a trampoline. I love your posts, you are so honest and so down to earth.' The pelvic floor muscles, which support the bowel, bladder, uterus, and vagina, are stretched and weakened during pregnancy and childbirth. After giving birth, a number of new mothers may find that they leak urine when they cough or sneeze - a common condition known as stress incontinence. Pelvic floor muscles do not become strong again on their own, and thus women are encouraged to start performing pelvic floor exercises even while pregnant. The exercise is simple: Take a deep breath in and, while breathing out, squeeze your pelvic floor muscles as if you're trying not to pee or pass gas. It is suggested to hold the squeeze for up to five seconds shortly after giving birth, and then build up to doing eight rounds of eight to 10 seconds, three times a day. It wasn't long ago that Anna and Lucy DeCinque revealed they wanted to revert back to a 'natural and healthy look' for their bodies. But it seem the identical twins from Perth have back-tracked and are now searching for a plastic surgeon to help them 'achieve the best breasts that we can'. The 31-year-old twins shared their struggle with their breasts after undergoing plastic surgery to have them done seven years ago. In a new video the twins uploaded to YouTube, they explain their struggle with body image issues as a result of their noticeable breast implant scar. Anna and Lucy DeCinque are planning on going under the knife again to fix the scarring left by their first surgery The identical twins from Perth shared their struggle with body image hating their breast implants from seven years ago 'We're quite unhappy about our breasts, we want to get them lifted and we want to get them bigger,' Anna said. 'Our scar is very visible when we're naked and when we wear bikinis, you can see it,' Lucy added. 'Either way a surgeon has to fix that and something has to be done about it because we're very self-conscious about it.' 'It's white, it's long and it's clearly visible and it shouldn't be after seven years.' Having previously admitted they didn't do any research before going under the knife the first time, the twins said they are happy to go overseas for their surgery this time around. 'We don't mind if we go overseas, go to a different country,' Lucy said. The twins are 'quite unhappy' about their breasts and want to get them lifted and bigger The Perth women have also had lip fillers as well as tattooed eyebrows and eyeliner 'We know there's risk and if you're going to judge us, well, this is what we want to do. Life is just too short.' The twins, who famously share a boyfriend, said despite their physical appearance, they don't feel good about themselves. 'Sure enough we wear these dresses and tight things that show off the boobs, but inside and when we're naked, we don't feel as good as we should feel,' Anna said. No stranger to cosmetic operations, the Perth women have also had lip fillers as well as tattooed eyebrows and eyeliner. The twins famously share a boyfriend, Ben, and revealed they have plans to marry him Despite admitting they did no research prior to their surgery, the twins aren't ruling out traveling overseas this time around Despite this, they said their breast implants are the only plastic surgery they've had. 'We're not addicted to plastic surgery, we love it but we've only ever had our breasts done,' they explain. The twins previously revealed that the death of their father is what led them to get breast implants in the first place. 'We'd always been flat-chested, for basically half our lives we were an A,' Anna said. 'We've always loved big boobs, who doesn't,' Lucy added. 'We decided to get them done to keep our mind busy and occupied. It was a big rush for us.' They've also previously spent money on IPL, laser treatments and microdermabrasion, in an attempt to remain blemish free. A mum-to-be who erupted in an incredibly painful rash all-over her body at 30 weeks' pregnant, learned that she was allergic to her unborn baby. Shocking pictures show the horrific extent of Summer Bostock's 'allergy,' which occurred virtually overnight a month-and-a-half before her first child, Izaiah, was due. She is believed to have had an extreme case of the pre-natal condition, polymorphic eruption of pregnancy (PEP) which, while harmless to mum and baby, caused Summer, 29, from Brisbane, Queensland, agonising pain. Starting on her belly, the painful, red blotches spread up her back and down her legs, soon covering her entire body only to vanish within hours of Izaiah's birth. 'The doctor said, 'You're basically allergic to your baby,' recalled full-time mum Summer. 'Since having Izaiah, I've seen other examples of PEP, but none as bad as mine.' Summer Bostock, 29, from Brisbane, Queensland, erupted in an incredibly painful rash all-over her body at 30 weeks' pregnant with her son Izaiah Summer woke up one morning with a sudden influx of stretchmarks and then an angry red rash appeared The doting mother pictured here last month with Izaiah, now five, suffered from a pre-natal condition that was harmless to both mother and son, but caused her agonising pain Summer and IT worker husband Daniel, also 29, were excited when she fell pregnant with Izaiah. Then, one morning at 30 weeks, following a normal pregnancy, she noticed new lines on her expanding stomach. Initially unconcerned, she said: 'I woke up to heaps of stretch marks. I just thought it was normal but pretty unfair. 'Then, suddenly, there were more lines. They started to raise and a rash appeared.' The rash on Summer's back that developed in late 2011 while she was pregnant with her eldest son Izaiah Summer and IT worker husband Daniel, also 29, were excited when she discovered she was expecting their first child, but the pregnancy was anything but straightforward By 37 weeks' pregnant, the pain was so intense Summer was admitted to Redlands Hospital in Cleveland, Brisbane The marks began itching and desperate Summer headed to her GP, who provided a soothing cream and mild steroid. When that failed to work, she took a bath in porridge oats knowing that oatmeal has anti-inflammatory properties and has long been used to treat skin conditions, like eczema. Sadly, Summer's porridge bath proved fruitless. Summer with her husband Daniel and their children on holiday earlier this year. Thankfully the condition did not recur in any of her subsequent pregnancies Summer and Daniel, holding Izaiah, moments after he was born on 20 January 2012 Izaiah on 20 January 2012, the day he was born. Thankfully the rash began to clear, almost as soon as he was born 'That didn't do anything either,' she said. So, four weeks later, she returned to her GP, who gave her more ointment, which again failed to stop the itching. 'It had really flared up,' she said. 'It was so, so itchy. I was in agony.' Following Izaiah's birth the rash on Summer's arm began to clear up. Summer experienced a rash all over her body, including on her leg (pictured), which was so painful she was physically sick The rash that flared up on Summer's arm when she was 30 weeks pregnant Her concerned 59-year-old mum, Kym Holwerda, who relocated from Portsmouth, Dorset, to Brisbane, suspected PEP, after researching her daughter's symptoms online. WHAT IS PEP? The full cause of PEP is unknown, but the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) said it was much more common in first pregnancies. In a paper, updated in January this year, BAD said: 'Polymorphic eruption of pregnancy is a relatively common skin disorder, which usually presents in women during their first pregnancy. 'Recurrence in subsequent pregnancies is unusual and milder. 'It is characterised by an itchy rash that commonly begins on the abdomen, particularly within stretch marks. 'It most usually develops during late pregnancy. 'The cause of PEP is unknown. Previous studies have suggested a link with increased maternal weight gain during pregnancy, increased birthweight and sex hormones, but these are not proven.' Advertisement Doctors confirmed the diagnosis, but said there was little they could do advising that the condition would clear up on its own. 'By this point, I couldn't even have showers, because the touch of the water against my skin was too much,' continued Summer. 'I would vomit, the itching was so intense, and at night I couldn't sleep, I'd just cling to Daniel's hands.' By 37 weeks' pregnant, the pain was so intense she was admitted to Redlands Hospital in Cleveland, Brisbane. 'The medical staff crowded around me, as they hadn't seen a case so bad before,' she laughed. 'They looked after me, but were also fascinated.' Four days later, on January 20, 2012, Izaiah now five was induced. He arrived by Caesarean, because his heart rate started dropping during labour, although this wasn't linked to the rash. 'As soon as he arrived, weighing 7lb 60z, the rash started to clear,' said Summer. 'By the next day, it had virtually gone. Daniel and Summer with their son Izaiah, pictured last year PEP is less common in second pregnancies and Summer did not experience symptoms again with her sons Elijah and Josiah 'So, yes, I was actually allergic to my boy.' Despite her negative experience, she fell pregnant again, with another boy. Although it is believed that PEP is more common in expectant mums carrying boys as there may be a link to testosterone she was fine with both her subsequent sons, Elijah, now three, and Josiah, now one. 'I freaked whenever I had stretch marks, though,' she laughed. And now, full of love for her boys, she cannot believe her eldest caused her such agony. 'It's only when I see the pictures I remember the pain he caused me,' she laughed. 'Then it all comes flooding back... never again.' The mother-of-three with Izaiah, the eldest of her three boys Removing blackheads is a guilty pleasure for many - with 'how to clear pores' yielding a staggering 21million Google search results. And now beauty buffs have gone into meltdown after discovering a bizarre method of extracting blackheads. Dubbed skin gritting, the method involves cleansing skin using a very specific three-step method to bring the 'grits' - the debris that collects in your pores - to the surface. Scroll down for video Beauty buffs have gone into meltdown after discovering a bizarre method of extracting blackheads called skin gritting, which involves a three-step cleansing method So how do they do it? Members of the skincare community begin by cleaning their skin with an oil cleanser. They then put a clay mask on, wash it off and then use a second batch of oil cleanser, which must be vigorously massaged into the skin. The method involves cleansing skin with a very specific three-step method to bring the 'grits' - the debris that comes out of your pores - to the surface. The results, which show people's blackheads from their faces placed on their hands, are hard to stomach Men and women have been sharing photos of the results - and the pictures, in which the people have wiped the blackheads from their faces onto their hands - are somewhat gross. Whilst there's thousands of comments surrounding the quirky method online, dermatologist Elizabeth Tanzi, MD, warns that it could irritate skin The men and women claim that this is when the 'grits' - blackheads and sebaceous filaments - come to the surface and pop out. They are black due to oxidisation. CLEANSE YOUR PORES: HOW TO SKIN GRIT 1. Cleanse skin with an oil cleanser 2. Apply a clay mask, leave on for at least ten minutes before washing it off 3. Use an oil cleanser for the second time, vigorously massage it into the skin and watch your blackheads slide out Advertisement Members of the SkincareAddiction community on Reddit have been sharing photos of the results - and they are somewhat stomach-churning. Photographs posted online by fans of the method capture the freshly removed blackheads on the backs of their hands - looking almost like tiny black bugs. Whilst there's thousands of comments and photos surrounding the quirky method online, dermatologist Elizabeth Tanzi, MD, warns that it could irritate skin. She told Refinery 29: 'Clay is known to have the ability to grab the debris and then lift it out of pores. 'But people with sensitive skin should be very careful with this type of treatment, since the combination of clay (which can be drying) and rigorous exfoliation could be way too irritating.' Advertisement Jackie Collins was as well known for her glittering lifestyle as her perennially popular bonkbuster. Now fans will have the chance to own a piece of her Hollywood story. Artwork, jewellery and exotic treasures from the author's Beverly Hills home will go under the hammer as part of a $3million sale with Bonhams auction house next week. Hollywood legend: The artwork and sculptures on display in Jackie Collins' Beverly Hills home, pictured, will go up for sale Old-school glamour: The author's bespoke metallic gold Jaguar, pictured, is expected to fetch $20,000 at auction next week Ultimate glamour: This three-part emerald and diamond set is among the breathtaking jewellery that is being sold Support: Dame Joan Collins, left, was on hand to launch the auction last week. Right, Jackie Collins, who died in 2015 Collector: These distinctive pieces by British artist Beryl Cook, pictured in Jackie's home, will be among the artwork for sale It offers an insight into Jackie's lavish Hollywood lifestyle, which inspired the vivacious female characters in her 32 bestselling novels. In 2015, just before her death from breast cancer at the age of 77, Jackie instructed her three daughters, Tiffany, Rory and Tracy, to sort through her possessions, choose what they wanted and sell the rest. The late star's bespoke metallic gold Jaguar, which is expected to fetch $20,000 (15,000), would be perfect for cruising through the Californian sunshine with the glamour of its previous owner. While jewels, including a stunning six carat diamond ring valued between $100,000 (77,000) and $150,000 (115,000), would bring sparkle to any outfit. Exotic treasures: Many of these trinkets and artworks are believed to be among the items that will be put up for auction This glittering six carat diamond ring, left, has been valued at up to $150,000 (115,000). Right, a Josef Lorenzl cold painted and silvered bronze and onyx figure of a nude with shawl, circa 1925, will also be auctioned Rare treasure: A Josef Lorenzl cold painted bronze and onyx figure of a prancing dancer circa 1925 Taste of luxury: Sculptures were a particular favourite of the author, and many of them will go under the hammer next week A beautiful diamond, emerald, stone and platinum necklace has been valued at more than $40,000 (38,000) and a matching pair of earrings at between $8,000 (6,000) and $12,000 (9,200). The British-born author also had an extensive art collection which is expected to be snapped up by bidders, including several works by the much-loved English painter, Beryl Cook and a collection of bronze statues. Some statement pieces from the late star's iconic wardrobe will also be available and a portion of all proceeds from the auction will be donated to support the empowerment of young women in the arts and education. Stylish: One of the reception rooms in Collins' Beverly Hills home, where some of the auction lots are on display Reward: A beautiful diamond, gold and platinum bypass ring, pictured, was a present to herself after completing yet another bestselling book. It is worth up to 24,000 The 1,000-lot estate, called 'Jackie Collins: A Life in Chapters', will go under the hammer on May 16 and 17 in Los Angeles. Leslie Wright, Bonhams Vice-President said: 'A Life in Chapters celebrates the phenomenal career and times of this stylish and glamorous woman. 'Jackie Collins lived the lifestyle about which she wrote, and the sale will provide an exclusive insight into the real woman behind her unforgettable characters. 'Her books were loved by millions of readers worldwide. This is their chance to own a piece of the magic.' Business / Economy by Staff reporter The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) is currently owed $2,8 billion in unpaid taxes as companies continue defaulting due to several reasons, an official has said.Zimra acting commissioner general Happias Kuzvinzwa told media practitioners at a media workshop in Bulawayo on Monday that the level of debt in Zimbabwe was overwhelming.Kuzvinzwa said it has been observed that tax debt consists mainly of non-remittance of value-added-tax (VAT) and pay-as-you-earn (PAYE), which would have been paid or accrued to the taxpayer in the course of the business in the tax period. A lesbian shop worker has slammed four top fashion retailers for 'appropriating' the word 'femme' as a t-shirt slogan - which she claims is only the LGBT community's 'to use'. 'H' Beverley, from Chelmsford, Essex, visited Topshop, H&M, Urban Outfitters and Mango taking pictures of the t-shirts before complaining to the stores online informing them it is an LGBT term for a feminine lesbian. The 25-year-old is a self-declared 'aspirational celesbian' and claims it is unfair for stores to turn sexual identity into a fashion statement for profit. She believes it was a huge oversight of the designers to use the word. While H acknowledges that femme is also French for women, she believes the term is 'ours [the LGBT community] to use'. H, who also identifies as femme, said: 'I think the shops don't realise what the word means or they just don't care. 'H' Beverley, from Chelmsford, Essex, has blasted retailers such as Topshop and Urban Outfitters for appropriating the word 'Femme' as a slogan for t-shirts H has taken issue with t-shirts, such as this offering from Mango, saying a word belonging to the LGBT community has been appropriated as a fashion statement for profit 'They've just taken a word that has a specific meaning to a specific group of people and sold it to people that it has no relevance to. 'I don't understand why you would want to wear a word across your chest that doesn't have a meaning to you. 'I was disappointed to find these tops on sale but I wasn't surprised because I don't think it's out of the ordinary to see this kind of thing on clothing. 'You see slightly dodgy or questionable slogans on t-shirts all the time but this was just a bit like, "why would you do it?".' The 25-year-old self-declared 'aspirational celesbian claims it is unfair for stores to turn sexual identity into a fashion statement for profit and believes it was a huge oversight for the designers to use this slogan While H acknowledges that 'femme' is also French for woman, she believes that word when used in English belongs to the LGBT community H says she can't understand why anyone would want to have a slogan across their chest that holds no meaning, such as this one from Urban Outfitters H, who regularly shares LGBT fashion on social media, tweeted H&M and Topshop stating 'the word femme has a history & meaning specific to LGBTQ+ people. What DOES the word 'femme' mean? The lesbian sexual identity stems from working class bar culture of the 1950s. It was used to indicate a woman who had feminine characteristics and wasn't immediately identifiable as a lesbian, compared with a butch partner. While it can still be used in this manner, it now also describes any queer person who appears feminine, regardless of gender or sexuality. For example, a gay man might describe himself as femme. It's also been associated with a new form of feminism that includes people who don't subscribe to any particular gender. Advertisement 'It is ours to use - it isn't yours to sell to straight people'. She later added 'weird how they all wanna be femme but I doubt that I'll ever see butch t-shirts hitting the high street'. H said: 'It's not necessarily diminishing the suffering of the LGBT community by printing this term on a t-shirt, but it's serving it up out of context. ''Femme' is a word that means something to LGBT people and some customers who see that t-shirt aren't always going to be aware of this. 'Designers need to just research the words they put on t-shirts in the future before they print them. 'Ask people from the relevant groups if you think this is a bit questionable. 'I think by printing this on t-shirts, retailers haven't thought it out well enough to be doing it to attract the LGBT community. They just haven't thought about it. H has called on designers for stores such as Urban Oufitters to research the history of words before putting them on t-shirts The retail worker found a multitude of slogan t-shirts on sale by retailers such as Urban Outfitters (left) and Topshop (right) H has been complaining to stores online because Femme is an LGBT term for a feminine lesbian 'I use the term 'femme' to describe myself and if I saw someone wearing one of these t-shirts, I would presume they were gay. The people I know who own this are mainly lesbians. 'Personally, I would say this is appropriation but you need to be careful using it because people just put their guard up as soon as that is used. Topshop has assured H their t-shirts are meant to be fashionable and not offensive 'The shops have taken the identity of LGBTQ people and turned it into a fashion accessory for people who don't understand what it is to be femme. 'I've contacted Topshop and they said it's meant to be fashionable, not offensive. The other places haven't even got back to me.' Another Twitter user, Pip Williams, posted her rejected review for the Topshop t-shirt on her profile. In the review, she states: 'I love this shirt and feel super great wearing it as a queer femme BUT I'm really uncomfortable that a high street brand is marketing an identity that's specifically LGBT+ as a slogan.' However she shared a picture that appeared to show that the shop's online site rejected her review as not appropriate. H&M were contacted but refused to provide a comment. Mango, Topshop and Urban Outfitters were contacted for comment. The run up to the big day is certainly a fraught time for any bride-to-be as they put the finishing touches on the preparations. But it's an equally busy time for the father-of-the-bride who is often playing a crucial role behind the scenes, like Michael Middleton whose daughter Pippa walks down the aisle in just 10 days' time. The 67-year-old has been spotted visiting St Mark's Church in Englefield with Pippa and his wife Carole to meet wedding planners Fait Accompli of Chelsea Entrepreneur Michael was brandishing what appeared to be an itinerary and a copy of the seating plan, no doubt ironing out any potential last-minute hitches with the arrangements. He was also seen arranging cars outside the church entrance, using Pippa and Carole's Range Rovers to replicate what might happen on the day. The bride-to-be was spotted getting into her vehicle outside the church, casually dressed in blue skinny jeans with snakeskin flats. Pippa was seen with her parents Carole & Michael Middleton at the church and met with wedding planners Fait Accompli of Chelsea Pippa Middleton is seen at St Marks church in Englefield where she will marry James Matthews on the 20th may 2017 The entrepreneur was seen carrying what appeared to be a seating plan for the church, which will have screens installed so guests seated in the vestry can watch the service Pippa and James' set up is more complicated than most as they've invited so many people to the church that more than 30 guests are now going to be seated in the vestry. A sound system and screen is going to be set up for them to see the happy couple exchange vows. Another potential adjustment to plans could be the last minute inclusion of Prince Harry's girlfriend Meghan Markle. The Suits actress, 35, was previously rumoured to be off the guest list, due to a 'no ring, no bring' policy, excluding partners who are not married or engaged. Michael Middleton was seen arriving at St Mark's Church in Englefield, brandishing a copy of what appeared to be a seating plan for his daughter's big day The father-of-the-bride has been lending a hand with the last-minute preparations ahead of his daughter's upcoming big day Taking charge: The father-of-the-bride seemed to be instructing a practice run, replicating how vehicles will arrive at the church on the day However, Pippa seems to have had a change of heart and sources insist the actress will accompany her royal boyfriend on the big day. Prince George and Princess Charlotte will act as page boy and bridesmaid, and Pippa is also borrowing a number of ideas from sister Kates 2011 wedding, in which she stole the show in her form-fitting bridesmaids dress. Local florist Green Parlour in Pangbourne, Berkshire, are providing the flowers and their displays are set to incorporate trees very much in the way that Kate had the knave Westminster Abbey lined with 20 foot English field maples. A casually dressed Michael was more than happy to lend his younger daughter a hand for a last-minute wedding rehearsal Former flight dispatcher Michael was seen carrying documents relating to the big day as he prepared to meet Pippa's wedding planners Determined to make sure everything goes exactly to plan, Michael joined his younger daughter for a run through at the church Michael was seen lining up vehicles outside the church, possibly attempting to replicate what will happen on the day Indeed the firm also helped out with some of the flowers for the duchesss wedding day. Pippa has also gone to the same company that made her sisters wedding jewellery Robinson Pelham for her wedding ring and other adornments. One of its directors and founders, Zoe Benyon, is married to Sir Richard Benyon, the wealthy Conservative MP who owns the estate on which St Marks is situated. Both Zoe and Richard are close friends of the Middleton family. The 67-year-old liaised with one of Pippa's wedding planners as they put finishing touches on plans for the big day Last-minute nerves Michael? It's a hectic time for the bride-to-be, but her family are no doubt under pressure too as plans fall into place With royalty in attendance, it's no wonder the couple are determined to pull out all the stops. experts have predicted the Duchess of Cambridge's little sister's wedding bill could total as much as 250,000. While recent studies suggest the average UK wedding costs around 16,842 ($22,000), Pippa and James' big day could cost almost 15 times as much at 246,949 ($320,113), according to Bridebook.co.uk who have factored in everything from the lavish floristry to the designer gown. Advertisement Last night's glittering dinner saw royals from across Europe assemble in Oslo to toast the 80th birthdays of Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja. And this afternoon the celebrations continued with a birthday lunch aboard the royal yacht, HNoMY Norge, although the wet weather was hardly ideal for an afternoon on the water. However, the rain didn't seem to dampen guests' spirits as a cheerful parade of royals arrived to continue the celebrations, with Sophie Countess of Wessex adding a real splash of colour to proceedings. The mother-of-two was a ray of sunishine in a bright red coat, which she teamed with a multicoloured patterned scarf. Sophie, 52, kept the rest of her outfit simple, stepping out in navy skinny trousers and nude flats and looked youthful with her hair drawn back in a half ponytail style. Scroll down for video Sophie, Countess of Wessex, brightened up a dull afternoon in Oslo in a vibrant red coat and colourful patterned scarf Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia of Sweden arrive for King Harald's and Queen Sonja's 80th birthday Lunch on the Norge yacht Crown Princess Victoria wrapped up in a pink coat while her husband Prince Daniel kept them dry under an umbrella Queen Maxima of The Netherlands looked elegant in Chanel as she walked the red carpet with her husband King Willem Alexander Don't stop the party! King Harald and Queen Sonja arrive for a second day of celebrations to mark their 80th birthdays Today's lunch was a more casual affair than last night's gala, with most guests opting for comfortable casuals. Princess Sofia of Sweden was the epitome of casual chic as she covered her burgeoning baby bump in a neutral cape with gold buttons, teamed with white, wide-legged trousers. And Desiree Kogevinas, the daughter of King Harald's cousin, covered up in a black jacket and tiered skirt after putting on a daring braless display at last night's event. Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden also opted for the casual look in stone coloured trousers, paired with white trainers. The mother-of-two looked youthful in a colourful coat and wore her hair pulled back in a half ponytail style However, she added a splash of colour in a blush pink coat which she pulled closely to her to protect herself from the breeze, while her husband Prince Daniel chivalrously shielded her with an umbrella. Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, opted for a suitably nautical look for her afternoon aboard the yacht. The wife of Prince Pavlos of Greece sported a navy and while striped top with a navy blazer and white trousers with statement silver buttons. Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, opted for a suitably nautical look for her afternoon aboard the yacht and arrived linking arms with her husband Prince Pavlos Crown Prince Haakon of Norway showed off his new clean-shaven look with is wife Crown Princess Mette-Marit as they joined his parents' birthday lunch Lady Elizabeth Shakerly arrived with Carlos Eugster and Desiree Kogevinas, the 39 year old daughter of Sweden's Countess Bernadotte and Nicos Eletherios Kogevinas Crown Prince Haakon of Norway showed off his new clean-shaven look after getting rid of his beard during a prank at last night's party. The mischievous prince left diners scratching their heads after sneaking off for a shave during a gala dinner in honour of his parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, at the Royal Palace in Oslo. The Norwegian King and Queen both turn 80 this year and decided to mark the occasion with a joint celebration. Guillaume and Stephanie of Luxemburg opted for the smart casual look as they walked the red carpet to the royal yacht Pregnant Princess Sofia, who is expecting her second child in September, joined her husband Prince Carl Philip The royals are turning 80 five months apart, but decided to mark the milestone with joint celebrations King Harald celebrated his birthday on February 21, while Queen Sonja will reach the milestone on July 4. Further celebrations to mark the occasion are scheduled throughout the week. The Royal Guard will march from the palace through the city to the Oslo Opera House and festivities will end with a fireworks display. Prince Nikolaos and Princess Tatiana share a joke as they arrive for his mother and father's birthday lunch The Swedish royals were among a contingent from across Europe who travelled to Norway to mark the special occasion Last night, members of the royal families from across the continent including the Countess of Wessex gathered at a gala dinner to commemorate the milestone event at the Royal Palace in the Norwegian capital. Guest of honour Sophie, 52, was the belle of the ball in a sweeping emerald gown, while Queen Sonja opted for an eye-catching lime green number, topped with a dazzling tiara, as they made their way to the Palace. Dressed in their brightest finery, the colourful royals made a grand entrance and were later seen on the balcony waving to well wishers - where glamorous Belgian aristocrat Desiree unintentionally stole the show in a clinging red dress. Desiree Kogevinas pulled a silly face as she joined Princess Sofia of Sweden, Prince Carl Philip, Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel on the balcony The Countess of Wessex, 52, was the belle of the ball in a sweeping emerald gown as she joined a host of European royals (and Icelandic President Gudni Johannesson, pictured) in Oslo to honour Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja's 80th birthdays An official photo released by Norway's Royal Court shows King Harald and Queen Sonja celebrating their 80th Birthdays surrounded by members of their family Belgian-born Desiree Kogevinas, the 39 year old daughter of Sweden's Countess Bernadotte and Nicos Eletherios Kogevinas, chose a red asymmetric gown for the event. But she may have regretted her decision to go bra-less after stepping out onto the balcony for photographs on a brisk Spring evening in Oslo. Something of an unfamiliar face among the likes of Sweden's Princess Sofia and Crown Princess Victoria, brunette Desiree, in a striking red dress topped off with a gold headpiece, still managed to ensure all eyes were on her. Prince Albert of Monaco and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark made an appearance for the royal couple's joint celebrations Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja arrive at a gala dinner to celebrate their 80th birthdays on Tuesday night. The birthday Queen wore a striking line-green number complete with a dazzling tiara and a shimmering silver clutch Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and Queen Maxima arrive, with the blonde royal wearing matching diamonds and tiara The Norwegian King and Queen both turn 80 this year and decided to mark the occasion with a joint celebration. Queen Sonja was wearing a bright lime green gown with a red sash, and linked her husband's arm as they were led into the glittering celebrations marking their birthdays. The royal couple were born just a few months apart and both looked remarkably youthful as they smiled for the cameras. Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands arrive together at the gala dinner Princess Tatiana of Greece and Denmark (left), princess Sofia of Sweden and Bernhard Mach (C) attend to the gala dinner as part of celebrations King Carl Gustaf of Sweden and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway link arms as they enter the palace's celebrations. The Norwegian Princess looked stunning in a sweeping white gown with colourful floral detail around the collar Bristol Palin's one-year-old daughter Sailor Grace has a new best friend now that she has met her baby sister Atlee Bay. The 26-year-old mom's husband Dakota Meyer took to Instagram Stories on Tuesday to share darling photos of Sailor holding and kissing her newborn sister after they returned home from the hospital. One of the images sees Bristol holding Atlee on the couch while Sailor is standing at her mom's knees, gazing at her little sister. Look of love: Bristol Palin's husband Dakota Meyer took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a sweet photo of their one-year-old daughter Sailor Grace gazing at her newborn sister Too cute: The doting dad also shared snapshots of Sailor holding little Atlee Bay For her trip home, Atlee was wearing a cozy floral onesie and a pink headband with a bow on her her tiny head. Bristol had her hair thrown up in a messy bun, and she looked comfortable in a flowy black top, cuffed jeans, and flip flops that showed off her pink, manicured toes. In another image, Sailor is pictured sitting on the couch and holding Atlee with the help of her mom, who is kneeling on the ground next to her. Sailor is clearly smitten with her new sister, and the final picture from the series of three sees her bending over to give Atlee a sweet kiss while she is still on her lap. Thick as thieves: At one point, the little girl bent over and gave her little sister a kiss Fast asleep: Dakota also posted a photo of Bristol taking a nap with the baby on Tuesday 'Best friends!' Dakota captioned the heartwarming photo that shows the girls are already as close as can be. Sailor, who turned one on December 23, is only 16 months older than Atlee, and the two are surely going to be thick as thieves growing up. Of course, the entire Palin-Meyer family is over the moon over the arrival of little Atlee. On Tuesday Dakota also shared a sweet photo of a sleeping Bristol lying in bed at the hospital with Atlee on her chest, writing: 'Nap time.' Doting dad: Bristol took to Instagram on Tuesday morning to share a heartwarming photo of Dakota kissing their newborn daughter Atlee Bay 'Welcome to the world!' Bristol posted this photograph of herself with husband Dakota and their newborn daughter on Monday evening to announce Atlee Bay's birth Proud father Dakota shared the same image, writing: 'Meet Atlee Bay!!! The newest edition of the Meyer family!! @bsmp2 #dadlife #ownthedash.' And while the doting dad has been capturing plenty of pictures of his second daughter, Bristol got behind the camera and snapped a photo of the 28-year-old Medal of Honor winner kissing Atlee on the forehead. 'Thank you Lord, for so much more than I ever deserved,' she captioned the sweet image of Dakota cradling a swaddled Atlee. In the days leading up to her due date, Bristol was actively sharing photos of her growing baby bump on Instagram while counting down the days until she would welcome her little girl into the world. Bristol announced the arrival of her third child by posting a photograph of them with their newborn on Monday evening, writing: 'Welcome to the world Atlee Bay.' Look of love: Pregnant Bristol shared a throwback photo of herself sitting on her husband Dakota's lap just days before her due date Almost there: Bristol revealed she was only four days away from her due date on Thursday Proud father Dakota shared the same image, writing: 'Meet Atlee Bay!!! The newest edition of the Meyer family!! @bsmp2 #dadlife #ownthedash.' Her mother, Sarah Palin told DailyMail.com: 'What a happy story! What a happy day! Babies are the best ingredient in our world, and we're blessed to help welcome Atlee Bay to it. The whole family couldn't be more thrilled!' It is not known exactly when Atlee Bay was born; however, the picture appears to have been taken in the hospital. Bristol looks flawless in the snap, in which she appears to be wearing little to no makeup and still has an IV in her arm. Too cute: Bristol, who has announced the birth of her daughter, is pictured with Sailor while she was still pregnant Almost there! Bristol posted a photo of herself sitting on Dakota's lap before the birth earlier this month For the past few weeks leading up to her due date, Bristol and Dakota have been living in a suburb of Austin, Texas, with their daughter Sailor and her eight-year-old son Tripp, her only child with her ex-fiance Levi Johnston. The pair first got engaged during a Rascal Flatts concert in Las Vegas in early 2015, planning a wedding in his native Kentucky. But less than a week before the ceremony, Bristol announced the wedding would not take place and a month later she revealed she was pregnant with Sailor, although she initially refused to say whether Dakota was the father. Sailor was born on December 23, 2015, and after a brief custody battle, the two rekindled their relationship before getting marred in a secret ceremony in 2016. Less than a year later, Bristol was expecting her third child her second with Dakota. As Paris Hilton would tell it, she's always been way ahead of her time. The 36-year-old socialite-turned-reality-star-turned-entrepreneur was a celebrity for being a celebrity before it was cool and, as she says in a new interview with W Magazine, she's really the front-runner that inspired all the celebrity fashion trends of today. Besides truly being one of the first reality stars the Simple Life did, in fact, pave the way for shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the Real Housewives franchise Paris also claims responsibility for the selfie, social media stars, and even many of 2017's biggest fashion trends. Scroll down for video Look at me! Paris Hilton filmed a new video for W Magazine inside her home Her house includes several portraits of her and, according to the writer, a cardboard cut-out 'If a beeper had a camera, I would have taken a selfie with it,' she said, agreeing with the W interviewer's observation that she invented the photo technique or, at the very least, popularized it. 'I think I have a selfie from when I was a little kid, like on a disposable camera,' she added. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence of Paris taking pictures of herself with early digital cameras and flip phones, though some might argue that many people were doing that at the time. Touching on the subject of fashion, Paris also noted that she was wearing all of today's hot trends back in the early-to-mid 2000s. You're welcome! The 36-year-old agrees that she was one of the first people to take selfies (pictured with Stavros Niarchos in 2006) Say cheese: She said she was taking them with flip phones and disposable cameras, and would have taken them with beepers if they'd had that cabaility 'To now see things on the runway, and to see girls wearing things that I used to wear is really cool because nobody really dressed like me back in the day,' she said. ''Young people now see what people wore before and want to bring it back.' Undoubtedly, some critics will say that Paris sounds like she is tooting her own horn. However, her claim may not be so far-fetched she did wear several of today's trends over a decade ago, though her insistence that she was the only one is dubious. Inspired: According to Paris, she also started several of today's trends; certainly Kendall Jenner seemed to have gotten inspiration from a 2002 dress Paris wore Such a girly girl: Paris has always been known for wearing lots of rhinestones, tiaras, and the color pink As W points out, Gucci has been showing graphic tees an old Paris favorite on the runway. Saint Laurent has tiaras and rhinestones another Hilton standby and Paco Rabanne showed chainmail dresses. Vetements also recently debuted a Juicy Couture collaboration, and Paris was certainly one of the most frequent wearers of the brand's tracksuits. She also often carried tiny bags, wore chokers, and sported other accessories that are making a comeback. While Paris' contribution to the trends of today is not comfirmable, it is definitely not outlandish to say that she 'started a whole new genre of celebrity', as she, her sister Nikki, and her frenemy Nicole Richie were the first of their kind No bad blood: Though she and Kim Kardashian (pictured in 2007) feuded for years, she said she was proud of her and her whole family Frenemies: Paris did, though, note that she was one of the first reality stars, and she is glad she did it back when it was fun and unscripted She is, however, glad she got in at the ground floor with reality TV. 'Nowadays, everything is just so scripted and fake,' she said. 'Everything is planned out. There's nothing real, really. I'm glad that I did it in the beginning when it was organic and fun.' This could be a slight dig at the Kardashians, who infamously reshoot scenes for their reality show but Paris won't outright dis the famous family, despite only recently resolving a longtime feud with one-time employee Kim. 'I've known the family my whole life,' she said. 'They are all intelligent, beautiful business women and I'm proud of them and the brand they've built.' Recap: In a video for W, she goes over some of the big trends of the '00s that are back, like tracksuits - but she notes that you should never look like you're going to the gym in one YOLO! She also says miniskirts should be the size of a belt Paris also showed off her famous sense of humor in a video for W, which takes viewers inside her very Paris-centric home. W's writer, who was given the grand tour, descirbes a 'Princess Paris' placard outside the front door, as well as several pictures and paintings of her throughtout the home. There is also a cardboard cut-out of Paris, and even framed mirror selfies. The two-minute clip offers viewers a peek, too, as Paris rehashes her favorite trends from the '00s several of which are back. She shouts out to track suits ('Always wear ones that are colorful, or else you'll like you're actually going to the gym. Ew.'), graphic tees, tiaras, rhinestones, and super-short skits ('Skirts should be the size of a belt. Life's short. Take risks.'). Phone fan: Paris shows off a whopping seven old phones, including Blackberrys, in the video Who needs that many!? She said a person should always have multiple phones, and she currently has five iPhones Flashback: Her collection includes old Razr flip phones an bedazzled Blackberrys She also stresses the importance of having multiple phones, saying, 'You should have at least three phones, and they should all be bedazzled. According to W, Paris actually has five iPhones now but her full collection of old phones is much more extensive. She seems to have hung onto all of the cell phones she's ever used, and even shows them off in the video: Two T-Mobile phones, a Razr flip phone with rhinestones in a cheetah pattern, three bedazzled Blackberrys, and two more cells. A student nurse who beat cancer as a child was so inspired by her treatment she joined the profession - and now works alongside the nurse who cared for her as a child. Clara Markiewicz, 20, from High Barnet, Hertfordshire, was just four when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) - a rare cancer of the white blood cells. After overcoming the deadly illness, she was inspired to become a nurse and has been reunited with her favourite nurse, Kate Pye, over a decade later during a work placement. By a remarkable coincidence, they linked up again 16 years later because Kate, who had moved from London to Southampton, had become head of nursing at the children's hospital where Clara was sent to train. Clara Markiewicz as a child with nurse Kate Pye, left, during her treatment as a child and right, today. The pair now work side by side at Southampton Children's Hospital Clara's parents Ingrid and Chris took their youngest child to the doctor when they noticed bruises over her body in 2001. Following blood tests, Clara was diagnosed with AML and spent the next six months at the Royal London Hospital, in Whitechapel. Clara lived at the hospital with her mother and underwent four rounds of chemotherapy as well as several operations. A clinical trial helped save her life - after she was given a 50/50 chance of survival - and Clara has been cancer-free ever since. But she always remembered the nurse who helped her and decided to become one herself - then was sent to Southampton Children's Hospital for her first work placement. Clara, was just four when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) - a rare cancer of the white blood cells - and spent much of her childhood in hospital Clara was diagnosed with AML and spent the next six months at the Royal London Hospital, living at the hospital with her mother and undergoing four rounds of chemotherapy Speaking about seeing Kate again, Clara said: 'On my third day I was sitting having my lunch and a woman walked in. She was obviously quite senior but was talking to lots of people. 'I was trying to look at her name badge without falling off my seat or being noticed because I thought I recognised her. 'She then caught my eye and said "I know you," and I said the same "I know you". It was amazing, we both had old photos which we swapped and showed each other. It was really good to see her.' Clara added: 'I went to hospital in 2001 for blood results and didn't leave until six months later. Clara during her battle with cancer. A clinical trial eventually helped save her life - after she was given a 50/50 chance of survival - and Clara has been cancer-free ever since Clara said of her childhood illness: 'I didn't realise until I was at university how lucky I was. I hope to be just like the nurses I had looking after me' 'I remember quite a lot from my time there, being in hospital became a lifestyle and it continued for the next few years as they monitor you regularly after you're in remission. 'I remember living on the ward and the nurses. It was quite a small ward and sometimes there'd be days when one of the children would not be there anymore but nobody told you why. 'Obviously it was a critical care ward and everyone was unwell so there was a high percentage of children that didn't live. 'It was sad and a scary place sometimes but the nurses made it fun. The nurses were amazing. 'I remember Kate quite clearly. When my mum was out, she would sit on my bed or lie under the duvets and watch movies with me. Clara always remembered the nurse who helped her and decided to become one herself - then was sent to Southampton Children's Hospital for her first work placement (pictured with Kate) 'I had my room decorated with lots of pictures and they put your name on the door so it felt like a home. It was home for me. 'For a long time my parents, my dad in particular, found it difficult especially when I came home and wanted to go back to hospital because I missed it. 'The staff were always professional and they were so good that it meant the bad things didn't stay bad for long, or you didn't remember them for long. 'They were like big sisters. Most were young, around the age I am now and when you're four you look up to those women as cool grown up girls more than anything else. 'I didn't realise until I was at university how lucky I was. I hope to be just like the nurses I had looking after me.' Kate, right, said: 'I was amazed to see Clara. You do not forget a name like hers. I hadn't seen her for so long but it was lovely to see her' Clara has known she has wanted to be a nurse since she was 10 years old after being inspired by Kate and the other nurses who looked after her. She said: 'I was about 10 when I realised I wanted to be a nurse. I've always loved children and I know firsthand how important nurses are to the kids. 'I've never wanted to do anything else.' The children's ward at Royal London Hospital closed in 2003 and Clara had her follow-up appointments at a different hospital meaning she and Kate did not see each other again for more than a decade. Clara is currently in her first year at the University of Southampton where she is completing a degree in Children's Nursing. She said of her placement at Southampton Children's Hospital: 'It was weird to be back in a hospital, because I spent so much time in them. It was quite emotional. Ambition: Clara has known she has wanted to be a nurse since she was 10 years old after being inspired by Kate and the other nurses who looked after her 'It was eye opening and really good too. I could say to a child, I understand and actually mean it because I've been through it. 'There was a little boy who had been in and out of hospital all his life, he had all these scars and he was getting upset as he didn't want to have another Hickman line put in and another scar. 'I said to him 'you're going to match me' and showed him my scar on my neck and he looked at it and said 'okay that's doesn't seem too bad' and seemed happier about it. Things like that make it all worthwhile.' Kate, now a senior matron and head of nursing at the children's hospital, said: 'We treated Clara in 2001 and the unit closed in 2003 as the children cancer services were transferred to other places. 'It means none of the nurses, who went to work at different units, saw Clara again after she came to say hello soon after being told she was in remission. Kate is now a senior matron and head of nursing at Southampton General Hopsital, pictured, where Clara is doing a placement 'I was ward manager at the time and I remember Clara did really well with her treatment. She was quite a poorly little girl but did amazingly well. 'Nurses work 12 hour shifts and are able to build up professional strong bonds and meaningful relationships with the children and their families which is why Clara decided to become a nurse too. 'I was amazed to see Clara. You do not forget a name like hers. I hadn't seen her for so long but it was lovely to see her. 'To me she looked the same, although I was standing in front of a 20-year-old student nurse I could still see the four year old. 'She had been really brave and been through so much, she's moved around, travelled and I've done the same so it's amazing to meet again. I'm sure she'll be a brilliant nurse.' So how far would you go to get your crush's phone number? One teenage boy took eagerness to new heights when he jumped into the zebra pit at Oklahoma City Zoo, after being told he would get a girl's phone number in exchange for the stunt, officials have said. The 16-year-old high school student was on a field trip when he climbed two barriers and entered the habitat Monday, according to authorities. Dare: A teenage boy jumped into the zebra pit at Oklahoma City Zoo, after being told he would get a girl's phone number in exchange for the stunt, officials said (file photos used) Inside the pen, the boy, who hasn't been named, managed to chase the animals for 30 yards before a security team detained him, KOCO News reported citing the zoo. While the teenager wasn't hurt, he came close to two zebras in the pit, which according to officials were startled by his arrival. The boy escaped uninjured and although he didn't touch the animals, the zoo's deputy director later pointed out the teen had endangered himself, as well as the zebras and members of staff, with his behavior. When questioned about his motive, the boy said he had acted as part of a dare and mentioned getting a girl's phone number as his prize, according to the security team. It was unclear whether that part of the plan was successful. Reckless mission: While the teenager wasn't hurt, he came close to two zebras in the pit, which according to officials were startled by his arrival Risky: The boy escaped uninjured and although he didn't touch the animals, the zoo's deputy director pointed out he had endangered himself, as well as the zebras and members of staff Authorities later charged the high school student with criminal trespassing. 'The safety and security of both our guests and animals is our priority. Our animal habitats are designed both to keep animals in and to keep the public out, so situations such as this do not occur,' the zoo's deputy director, Barry Downer, told the network. 'The young man put himself in a serious situation, which endangered himself, our animals and staff.' After his act of bravado, the 16-year-old's field trip was cut short and ended with his father coming to pick him up at the zoo. As the Norwegian nobility gathered on the balcony of Oslo's Royal Palace for last night's celebrations, they were watched by millions around the world. But one mischievous young royal was clearly tired of all the pomp and show when he cheekily performed the popular 'dab' dance move for the crowds - much to the amusement of his cousins. Eleven-year-old Prince Sverre Magnus, who is the younger child of Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, and third-in-line to the Norwegian throne, emerged as the star of the show during the birthday celebrations for King Harald and Queen Sonja. The dab has become popular among celebrities and sport stars alike, with Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba famously performing 'dabs' after scoring goals. And the little prince's sense of humour clearly runs in the family, as his father Crown Prince Haakon pulled a bizarre prank when he shaved his beard off in the middle of a speech at last night's gala dinner. Prince Sverre Magnus, 11, performed the popular 'dab' dance move on the balcony of Oslo's Royal Palace last night during his grandparents' joint 80th birthday celebrations His father Prince Haakon left diners scratching their heads last night after sneaking off for a shave during the gala dinner in honour of his parents at the Royal Palace in Oslo Glamorous royals from across Europe assembled in Oslo last night to mark the King Harald and Queen Sonja's 80th birthdays. As the monarch's grandson and third-in-line to the throne, Sverre Magnus played a central role in Tuesday evening's celebrations but it clearly all got too much for the cheeky youngster as he pulled a series of silly poses on the balcony. Luckily his cousin, 12-year-old Leah Isadora Behn, was on hand to give him a sharp nudge in the side. Dressed in their brightest finery, royals from across the continent including the Countess of Wessex gathered for last night's glittering gala dinner to commemorate the milestone event at Oslo's Royal Palace. The Norwegian King and Queen both turn 80 this year and decided to mark the occasion with a joint celebration. Queen Sonja was wearing a bright lime green gown with a red sash, and linked her husband's arm as they were led into the glittering celebrations marking their birthdays. Prince Sverre Magnus (third left) joined royals including King Harald and Queen Sonja (centre) and his parents Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit (far right) Playing up for the cameras! The Prince - joined by (L-R) cousin Leah Isadora Behn, sister Princess Ingrid Alexandra, Prince Sverre Magnus, cousin Maud Angelica Behn, and grandmother Queen Sonja - pulls a funny face for the cameras The cheeky royal couldn't resist pulling a series of funny faces as the royal family gathered on the balcony during last night's celebrations - while his parents looked on solemnly A right royal knees-up: Norwegian King Harald and Queen Sonja, pictured at last night's gala dinner, both turn 80 this year and decided to mark the occasion with a joint celebration WHAT IS THE DAB? The dab is a dance move where a person drops their head into their elbow while simultaneously raising their arms to point in one direction. The gesture has been said to resemble sneezing and has become popular in the past few years. Its origins are unclear, with several hip-hop artists in Atlanta claiming to be behind the move. More recently it has become popular with children due to sports stars including Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba and American Football star Cam Newton performing the dab as a victory dance. Prince Harry does the 'dab' as he meets school girls as he attends a youth sports festival at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium showcasing Antigua and Barbuda's national sports Footballer Paul Pogba during the 2016 Serie A tournament, left, and tennis star Victoria Azarenka, right at the 2016 Australian Open, perform celebratory 'dabs' Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson recently performed the move in the House of Commons, with former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton doing a dab on the Ellen DeGeneres show in January 2016. Prince Harry even got in on the action last year, performing the popular dance move with children in Scotland in September, joining stars including the Good Morning Britain team and Sky News anchor Kay Burley. Harry hit the dab again in November in Antigua as part of his 15-day tour of the Caribbean. And eyebrows were raised when son of US politician Roger Marshall performed the dab as his father was sworn into Congress - much to the bafflement of Republican house speaker Paul Ryan. Advertisement The royal couple were born just a few months apart and both looked remarkably youthful as they smiled for the cameras. King Carl Gustaf of Sweden and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway linked arms as they entered the celebrations and kept the colour to a minimum in comparison to the other royals in attendance. Prince Sverre Magnus' mother, Mette-Marit, wore a sweeping white dress with embellished top and sleeves. She kept her blonde hair neat in a slicked-back up 'do and completed her outfit with dazzling drop earrings and a clutch bag. After the celebrations, the King and Queen of Norway decided to take to the balcony to wave at well wishers who had gathered to help celebrate the royal couple's joint birthdays. The rest of the royals joined on another part of the balcony and smiled as they looked on at the crowds which had gathered before them. Chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces Lucy Worsley, 43, lives in London with her husband Mark Hines, an architect. Here, she reveals her style secrets to Rosanna Greenstreet. Whats your style? I am quite old-fashioned: I wouldnt consciously think I am going to dress up in a sexy manner because its just not me. I like to look cheeky, friendly and approachable, and I wear bright colours, like a clown. But I have tried on what was considered sexy clothing in the past. I remember trying on a busk, a Georgian phenomenon which is like a paper knife that you put down your cleavage. About 8 in long and made of wood, a busk goes down the front of your stays. Chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces Lucy Worsley (above), 43, lives in London with her husband Mark Hines Its to do with deportment and carriage: you cant droop over forwards because it would hurt, so you have to stand up straight. It sounds like a torture instrument, but these busks were often given by boyfriends to girlfriends, carved with romantic messages as they were kept close to the heart. Body loves and hates? You shouldnt hate your body parts. I have lovely little ears and eyelashes so long they sometimes get tangled in the machinery when I have my eyes tested. As I am straight up and down, I make a good flapper. One of the highlights of my life was dancing the Charleston with Len Goodman in a nightclub in a cream, Twenties-style dress; it was the nearest Ill ever get to appearing on Strictly. When we got married, my husband made me sign a prenuptial agreement that was very short and said only that I would never appear on the show. I think he thought there would be too much showing off involved and it would all go to my head because I already loved sequins quite a lot. I couldnt say exactly what was in his head, but he definitely felt it would be bad for my mental health. Frocks or trousers? I might once have had a pair of jeans briefly in my teenage years before I realised they werent for me. I dont love my legs but, hey, theyre mine, so I accept them. I like to wear a dress in a bright colour: a triangular shape suits me. I like clothes that have a very definite outline this black and white check dress is from Hobbs and I have the same style in red and turquoise. Lucy says: 'I am quite old-fashioned: I wouldnt consciously think I am going to dress up in a sexy manner because its just not me' The stylist on the photoshoot suggested I wore the petticoat. When I did a series about the history of the Womens Institute, I dressed ironically as a Fifties housewife and wore a similar frou-frou underskirt. Betty and Joan from Mad Men were my costume inspirations for that programme. I put a lot of thought into what I wear. As an art historian, I think clothes express something about who you are and what you are saying. Clothing is intellectual. High Street or designer? The coat sale on the John Lewis website is a happy hunting ground for me. My favourite coat is by Hoss Intropia and I wore it for my first television series, If Walls Could Talk. I cant tell you what colour it is because some people say its green, some say blue and some turquoise, so there has never been any consensus. But my favourite things are secondhand. There is a wonderful website called Etsy that sells old clothes, and I buy things on eBay and have them altered to fit. So Ill buy something for 20 and it will cost 60 to alter, but I end up with something I am very happy with. 5 STYLE SECRETS 1 I have a steamer it saves on dry cleaning and gets the creases out of things very effectively. 2 The peril of high- definition television is that you have to own things like an electronic nasal hair trimmer. 3 After Ive dried my hair I apply No Oil by Percy & Reed. If you have fine, flyaway hair like mine, it gets rid of sticky-up bits. 4 Mac Blot Powder it goes on after foundation and is excellent for my nose and the heads of bald-headed historians. 5 Find out what you like and then stick to it. Advertisement My mother grew up in a drapers shop in Birmingham and she was incredibly good at making and re-shaping clothes. In our house, clothes were not something you went to a shop and bought, they were something you either created or foraged for. I was a very assiduous collector for the Girl Guides jumble sales. I used to put notes through peoples doors and say I was coming to collect their jumble, then Id cream off what I liked and buy it first thats how I built up my wardrobe. Now it would be called vintage, but then it was called being a cheapskate! Wardrobe treasure? My favourite vintage find was a red dress that I wore for my series about the Romanov dynasty in Russia. I typed into Etsy red Russian dress and up popped a frock from the Sixties, which was up for sale in California. It had black Russian-looking embroidery on it and I thought, Theres my dress. Style icon? Jackie O, who wore clothes with bracelet sleeves. I like bracelet sleeves but my wrists get cold when Im outside filming, so Ill wear my long elbow-length purple gloves underneath. I have tricks to keep warm leggings, thermal long johns, foot-warmers in thermal socks inside my boots and hand-warmers in glove liners inside my gloves. Heels or flats? Heels, but something I can walk in. I like Mary Janes, like these from Jigsaw, because they cant fall off your feet. Hoarder or minimalist? I am a minimalist, because I have a very small flat. I give my dresses to my mum, who says, Ooh thats nice, but never wears it. I ask why and she says, Its too bright for a little old lady like me. Lucy 'might once have had a pair of jeans briefly' in her teens but she soon realised they weren't for her Lazy bones or gym bunny? I do exercises while Im watching the BBCs entire history output on iPlayer. I may meet a historian and say I loved your show and they dont realise I saw it upside down while doing a mat workout. I do an hours run a week. I used to do cross-country years ago at one point I was about the 700th fastest girl in England. I put it down to my large nostrils. When a photographer is taking my picture, he or she will often say, You need to look down a bit more because I can see your enormous nostrils. Feast or famine? I eat whatever I fancy. When Im away filming I eat food out of my suitcase: the porridge in a pot that you add hot water to is a life-saver, and I am partial to a John West Tuna Light Lunch which lasts a million years you could take it in your spaceship. Time to get ready? There are definitely two of me normal me and made-up me. Sometimes my friends say, Whos coming tonight? Is it Lucy? Or is it TVs Lucy Worsley? I like both: I like to move between my different personas. I can go from bed to being camera-ready in an hour. Its essential. I was sent on a Mac make-up course early in my TV career and picked up lots of tricks. I have always had the same bob except for when I was working on my PhD thesis a period of four years. I didnt cut my hair and it grew to my shoulders. My treat when Id finally finished was to get it cut again. I have my hair coloured and I did try a fringe for a while, but it was too high-maintenance and caused controversy. People kept saying, Oh my goodness, youve got a fringe, the world has ended! Whats in your handbag? Im not into handbags. I have a rucksack. Inside are my laptop, migraine medicine, money, toothbrush and paste and a Lypsyl. Lucy Worsleys new book, Jane Austen At Home, is published by Hodder & Stoughton in hardback and ebook on May 18, at 25. Advertisement The Norwegian royal family proved they know how to throw a party as they continued the extravagant birthday celebrations of King Harald and Queen Sonja last night with a lavish feast hosted by the country's government. Royals from Sweden, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands joined the Countess of Wessex in raising a toast to the king and queen who are celebrating their 80th birthday with a series of high-profile events in Oslo this week. Last night the glamorous cohort assembled at Oslo's Royal Palace for a glittering gala dinner, and on Wednesday afternoon the celebrations continued with a birthday lunch aboard the royal yacht, HNoMY Norge. This was followed by the Royal Guard's march through the palace, and their next port of call was Oslo Opera House, where festivities will end tonight with a dazzling fireworks display after the gala dinner hosted by the government. Norway's Prime Minsiter Erna Solberg, 56, (centre) delivers a welcome speech before the start of the dinner during celebrations marking the 80th birthdays of Norwegian King Harald and Queen Sofia Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg, top, holds the crowd spellbound as she makes a speech before the dinner in the Opera House Glamorous guests: Sophie, Countess of Wessex is joined by Princess Martha Louise of Norway (left); and Queen Maxima and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands (right) helped the Norwegian royals celebrate their birthday What a gent! Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark ensures Crown Princess Mary stays dry as they arrive at the gala dinner Determined not to let the wet weather dampen their spirits, the stylish royals donned their finery once more as they made a grand entrance at the stunning venue. Luckily a carpet was laid out and umbrellas provided for the glamorous guests to ensure no dresses were ruined in the heavy rain. Sophie, Countess of Wessex opted for a show-stopping sleeveless gown with a sweeping full skirt, peep-toe stilettos and a shimmering snakeskin clutch. Looking far younger than her 52 years, the British royal even managed to outshine her companion for the evening, Princess Martha Louise of Norway, 45, who wore a mint green number with a colourful bodice. Hot on their heels, fashion-loving Queen Maxima of the Netherlands wore a bold blue and gold gown as she beamed and waved at onlookers, linking arms with her husband King Willem-Alexander. King Harald and Queen Sonja arrive. The royal couple are celebrating their 80th birthday with a series of high-profile events in Oslo this week, and enlisted the help of almost every royal family in Europe to mark the milestone event Here comes the birthday girl: A glamorous Queen Sonja defies her years as she steps out of her chauffeured car in a sweeping blue ball gown, cream coat and silver heels - topped off with decadent pearl jewellery A newly-shaven Crown Prince Haakon of Norway colour-coordinates with wife Princess Mette-Marit (left); and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden opts for an unusually summery gown as she links arm with her husband Prince Daniel (right) Last night's glittering dinner saw royals from across Europe assemble in Oslo to toast the 80th birthdays of King Harald and Queen Sonja. Guest of honour Sophie, 52, was the belle of the ball on Tuesday night in a sweeping emerald gown, while Queen Sonja opted for an eye-catching lime green number, topped with a dazzling tiara, as they made their way to the Palace. Queen Sonja was wearing a bright lime green gown with a red sash, and linked her husband's arm as they were led into the glittering celebrations marking their birthdays. The royal couple, both celebrating their 80th birthday this year, were born just a few months apart and both looked remarkably youthful this weeks as they smiled for the cameras. Queen Margrethe of Denmark and Queen Anne Marie of Greece both wrapped up in decadent furs to keep out the cold (left); Prince Carl Philip and pregnant wife Princess Sofia of Sweden wearing an ALEXIS dress make a typically stylish arrival (right) Never mind the downpour: Sophie, 52, and Princess Martha Louise, 45, refused to let the unseasonable wet weather dampen the mood as they donned their finery for second night of celebrations at Oslo's Opera House King Carl Gustaf of Sweden and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway linked arms as they entered the celebrations and kept the colour to a minimum in comparison to the other royals in attendance. Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway wore a sweeping white dress with embellished top and sleeves. She kept her blonde hair neat in a slicked-back up 'do and completed her outfit with dazzling drop earrings and a clutch bag. Not one to be outdone, the perennially glamorous Grand Duchess Maria-Teresa of Luxembourg arrived with King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, and kept her floor-length black dress concealed with a long blush pink coat. She wore a sparkling tiara which complimented her outfit and also kept a tight grasp of King Willem-Alexander as they entered the room. Business / Local by Thobekile Zhou Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers president Denford Mutashu has pleaded with Government to punish retailers who continue to hoard cash and illegally trade in foreign currency.According to Mutashu, there are still pockets of errant operators who need to be reined in."It is unfortunate that we continue to witness market indiscipline yet when such retailers open businesses in other countries . . . they follow the law to letter." The Government of Zimbabwe has done its job to create a good business environment and retailers should not be seen to be taking advantage of a situation where business wants to self regulate," he said as quoted by the state media.Reserve Bank Of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya said they were working on reining in errant traders in line with provisions of the Bank Use and Promotion Act."Our teams are working on the issues of indiscipline being perpetuated by some traders. We have since established a hotline for the public to report to the Reserve Bank instances of such malpractices for a reward of 5 percent of reported and recovered funds." Cold, wet, confused and clutching a walking frame as he shuffled across the dark road, no one knows what was going through Peter Hunts failing mind. Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a thin fleece which offered no protection against the biting December night, the 83-year-old knew only that he wanted to go home to Joyce, his wife. Home to the woman hed loved for 60 years. He didnt see the oncoming car that struck him. It wasnt the drivers fault. His daughter, Reina Mitchell, can see that. Her anger is directed only at the failing care system that not only allowed her father to be out wandering the streets at 8.47pm, but that had forced her parents apart when all they wanted was to be together. Earlier last year, after a stroke, Reinas mother Joyce was put into a care home a devastating event for any family, but one made considerably worse by the fact that it was an hour and a half from the sheltered housing she shared with Peter in Kendal, Cumbria. Earlier last year, after a stroke, Reinas (above) mother Joyce was put into a care home Reina, 59, begged social services to house her mother in the town where her parents had shared their lives for almost 40 years. Peter, a retired caretaker, was devoted to Joyce and wanted only to spend every day with her. Instead, he had to make a daily, three-hour round trip to Lancaster, involving two bus rides and a taxi a mammoth undertaking for any elderly man, but more so for Peter who used a walking frame and was showing early signs of dementia. The dreadful toll of that journey was made all too clear on the evening of December 6. When paramedics arrived, Peter could only remember that he was trying to get home to Joyce. Three days later, he died of a heart attack. Reina, the couples only child, is still distraught. The failure of the organisations involved is spectacular, she says. To think of your father struggling along a dark road, confused, cold and hungry. All he wanted was to be at home with his wife. He was doing everything to get there, but he didnt make it. Its so sad. Sad? It is a downright disgrace. That word has been used frequently in recent months as the shocking state of Britains care home system has been thrown into focus. This week, Britains top family judge, Sir James Munby, described separating elderly couples as inhumane. Speaking at a conference for directors of adult social services, he said the practice could be fatal, as couples literally died of a broken heart. Devoted: Peter and Joyce Hunt on their wedding day. The couple had been together for 60 years Often, the separation is down to a lack of places in care homes. In December it was revealed that bed-blocking costs the NHS half a billion pounds each year, as elderly patients are trapped in hospital because homes have no spaces. The health watchdog says 1,500 homes have closed in the past six years. In 2015-16, bed-blocking patients spent 1,489,575 days in hospital when they were well enough to be discharged. Just as shocking is the human cost of the crisis devoted couples are forced apart, sometimes after 60 years of marriage, when no places can be found to house them. Many, it is feared, simply give up. Last week, MP David Mowatt warned that families should now care for elderly parents as they do their children. Reina, who lives with her husband Ian, a retired chief executive of a housing association, in Sussex, last spoke to her father on the phone on December 4, 2016. As well as trying to visit his beloved Joyce most days, he was also being treated at Lancaster Hospital for bladder cancer. Nobody was told that hed called the emergency services on December 5 and was admitted to hospital in Lancaster before being transferred to Preston. Reina has since pieced together what happened next. My father caught a bus from Preston to Kendal, but got off five miles from home. Hed got it into his mind that my mother was going to be at home. Reina, 59, (above) begged social services to house her mother in the town where her parents had shared their lives for almost 40 years Reina believes that Peters confusion about his wifes whereabouts was the result of his final meeting with Cumbria social services two weeks before. As Reina told the Mail last year, social workers met her father without her present, even though she had power of attorney due to his declining mental state. The meetings left him distressed and confused. Its difficult for me to know exactly what was said because Dad gave me mixed accounts. Hed got it fixed in his mind that Mum was coming home for Christmas. I knew my mother wasnt being discharged, but my father has never been able to take on that board she isnt going to get better. After that meeting, my father had an idea in his head that they were making arrangements for her to go home. After the year apart, all my father wanted for Christmas was my mother. Its . . . Reina struggles for words. COST CUTTING Government funding for care homes for the elderly has dropped by 20 per cent in just nine years Advertisement At 5.15am on December 9 Reina was told her father had had a heart attack. He died 90 minutes later. My only comfort is that he didnt die at the roadside or at home alone. There were people around who made him comfortable. But I didnt get a chance to say goodbye and he didnt say goodbye to Mum. Gail Naylor, Nursing and Midwifery Director of Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: We are deeply sorry that the circumstances of Mr Hunts death have caused the family additional stress, and have offered our sincerest condolences. In December, Mr Hunt left one of our wards without being discharged, and we attempted to notify his next of kin, informed the police, and searched the hospital site. We are undertaking a thorough investigation into the care we provided to Mr Hunt and the circumstances of his departure from our hospital, and are assisting the police with their ongoing inquiries. Reina is pursuing a complaint against Cumbria County Council and the Local Government Ombudsman about the way her mothers care was arranged. Back in September, a council spokesman said: We are not in a position to comment on individual cases, but take all complaints extremely seriously and will be looking into the issues raised by Mrs Mitchell. Meeting the needs and wishes of our customers is of paramount importance, however at times it can be difficult to do this successfully for all parties. Reina's father had to make a daily, three-hour round trip to Lancaster, involving two bus rides and a taxi a mammoth undertaking for any elderly man, but more so for Peter who used a walking frame and was showing early signs of dementia Now an inquest must determine the cause of Peters death. Meanwhile, Reina has had to break the news to her mother. She cant communicate very well, says Reina. We dont know what shes thinking or if shes expecting Dad. She doesnt understand the passage of time. She does, though, have moments of greater clarity. I cant bear to think about her sitting there wondering where he is. Its a situation the family of Thomas Atkinson, 95, and his wife Anna, 95, may face any day. The couple were recently separated for five months, after 70 years together, and their granddaughter Melissa worried the trauma would kill her grandfather. Such is her fear for his state and the fact that the family is at the mercy of social services that Melissa is reluctant to reveal their identities (we have changed their names). Any more upset, she says, could be the tipping point. My grandfather never wanted to go into care, she explains. He liked his independence. Until his early 90s, hed done really well. They both had. For more than 30 years, theyd spent their retirement together, buying a static caravan and enjoying trips out in the car. They were able to take care of themselves. But their health started failing about two years ago. My grandmother has what we call happy dementia. Shes in her own little world. Grandad kept going into hospital for breathing problems. Reina, who lives with her husband Ian, a retired chief executive of a housing association, in Sussex, last spoke to her father on the phone on December 4, 2016 Their two daughters who are both in their 70s would do what they could to help, but about two years ago they said they would have to put them into care. They found a lovely care home for them in Morecambe, Lancashire. Grandad was upset but agreed to go as long as he was in the same home as his wife. And he insisted on a double bed, saying they had shared a bed for 70 years and werent about to stop now. But earlier this year Grandad went into hospital again and Grandma went in too. She had pneumonia and social services said she needed nursing care. She was moved to a different home in the same town but it was too far away for Grandad to see her. Grandma wasnt really aware of what was happening, but for Grandad, it was heartbreaking. He took to his bed and didnt get up for three weeks. At one point he stopped eating and drinking, perhaps wondering what the point was in going on if he couldnt be with his wife? The couple were finally reunited two weeks ago and are doing well. Grandma is much more settled. And Grandad is much happier now that hes back with his wife. Reina is pursuing a complaint against Cumbria County Council and the Local Government Ombudsman about the way her mothers care was arranged George McNamara, head of policy and public affairs at Alzheimers Society, says the forced separation of old people is a national tragedy: Devastating cuts have led to more homes being unable to care for people with dementia. Moving into an unfamiliar care home can be distressing for anyone, particularly if they have dementia, but being forced to separate from a partner makes this even worse. According to the Care Act 2014, care must be based on an individuals wishes. Separating people against their will is not only immoral, but against the law. Then theres the case of retired Bristol teacher Arthur Sibley. Before he died at Easter, aged 90, he spoke to the Mail about his sadness at being separated from his wife Iris, whos 89. The couple, married for 67 years, were forced apart five years ago when Iris, a former legal executive, developed dementia. It got harder and harder for me to take care of her. I had to give in and put her into care, he said. Although Iriss mind was failing, Arthur still remembered the sprightly girl who stole his heart. In our retirement we travelled a little bit, going to the U.S. and Italy, but weve always loved England. Iris loved Sidmouth on the South Coast. After a fall at her care home in June, Iris was sent to Bristol Royal Infirmary where she stayed for a shocking six months before care could be found. As his health failed, Arthur couldnt visit Iris for weeks at a time, leaving her isolated and lonely. I did my best to see her, he said, sadly. Their son, John, says in many ways its a blessing that his mother is unaware of things: She might have dementia but she always asks about him. Sometimes I turn up and she says, Wheres your father? and I will say, Its me youve got today Mum and shell say, No, I want your father, where is he? It makes me so cross that we can treat our old people like this. It will take a brave politician to say that our social care system is broken, but broken it is, and weve seen that first hand. Additional reporting: Jill Foster. She is the TV chef who managed to make baking a seductive exercise. And Nigella Lawson is as famous for her gorgeous, flickable, shoulder-length brown hair as she is for her cakes. But the 57-year-old TV chef has been using her brunette locks for a secretive beauty purpose. Can you guess what it is? Nigella Lawson, 57, is as famous for her gorgeous hair as she is for her cakes. But the 57-year-old TV chef has been using her brunette locks for a secretive beauty purpose. Can you guess what it is? Aside from her glamour, recent photographs let slip perhaps another reason Nigella maintains her trademark tumbling waves: for as the wind blew her hair away from her face, it revealed a pair of rather large ears, about which she is said to be sensitive. While some resort to surgery, many, like Nigella, choose to hide their ears away. Here we speak to four women who share Nigellas secret. They all use intricate and long-devised methods to cover their ears with their hair. I REFUSE TO ANSWER THE DOOR IF MY HAIRS TIED UP Clare Cashion, 40, a civil servant, lives in Worcester with partner Niall, 43, a stay-at-home dad, and their children, Oliver, 13, Libby, 11, and Lochlan, one. Growing up as one of six children, with three brothers, there was no escaping the daily teasing about my large and distinctive, elf-like ears. I inherited them from my maternal granddad something my mother has often apologised for. I hid my ears behind long hair until I went to high school, where I was ordered to tie it back. And so I became Big Ears. 'Big Ears': Clare Cashion, 40, a civil servant, lives in Worcester with partner Niall, 43, a stay-at-home dad, and their children, Oliver, 13, Libby, 11, and Lochlan, one My right ear has always stuck out more than my left. Id sit for hours deliberately leaning my hand against it, in the hope it would eventually stay put. Ive always worn my thick, wavy hair down to keep them covered. If the wind blows, my instinct is to reach for my hair and smooth it down to hide my ears. I often wear hats for the same reason. More than anything, Id hate my ears to poke through my hair, as thats such a horrible look. Drastic measures: My right ear has always stuck out more than my left. Id sit for hours deliberately leaning my hand against it, in the hope it would eventually stay put But big ears bring practical issues, too. Hairdressers always manage to scrape mine sharply with their combs and, when I use hair straighteners at home, I end up burning the pixie points because they get in the way. Thankfully, all my children the eldest two are from my first marriage dont seem to have inherited my ears. Niall and I have been together for four years. When we started dating, Id go to great lengths to keep my ears hidden beneath my hair. But once he had seen me, warts and all, he told me I was silly for worrying so much. Still, I wouldnt dream of leaving the house with my hair tied back. And if someone knocks on the front door on the rare occasions I do have a ponytail, I scurry away and make Niall answer it. 'Elf-like': Thankfully, all my children the eldest two are from my first marriage dont seem to have inherited my ears MY HUSBAND SAYS I RESEMBLE A RAT! Kylie McMahon, 32, is a personal trainer and lives in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, with her husband Steve, 30, who works in events, and their ten-month old daughter, Ava. Ratty was my nickname at school, thanks to my ears, which, though not overly large, stick out. Ive also been called a meerkat. When I became pregnant, I hoped my baby would avoid inheriting my husbands wild hair and my sticky-out ears, but shes ended up with both. Weve started calling her Mousey we call her that more than Ava! I dont want to set her up for a lifetime of being self-conscious of her ears but, in my experience, a bit of teasing from loved ones helps. At the moment, its just a cute pet name. Fit: Kylie McMahon, 32, is a personal trainer and lives in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, with her husband Steve, 30, who works in events, and their ten-month old daughter, Ava My ears have been a joke since childhood, when my three brothers and their friends would take the mickey. My mum blames herself for not nipping their teasing in the bud but, in hindsight, I think the jibes were a good thing, because I do have the ability to be jovial and light-hearted about my ears. My husband and I met when we were serving in the Met Police. I raised the subject of my ears before he could make a wisecrack. I felt I had no choice, as the uniform bowler hat I wore used to sit on top of my ears and make them stick out even more. I looked like a little field mouse. Cruel animal nicknames: Ratty was my nickname at school, thanks to my ears, which, though not overly large, stick out. Ive also been called a meerkat' Steve finds my ears funny if I get out of the shower with wet hair, hell make snuffling noises like a rat! Now that Im a personal trainer, I do (reluctantly) loosely tie my hair back, but I still make sure it covers the tops of my ears. If I could justify having surgery to pin my ears back, I definitely would. But with a new house and a baby, I simply cant. True love: Steve finds my ears funny if I get out of the shower with wet hair, hell make snuffling noises like a rat! THEY CALLED ME THE FA CUP AT SCHOOL Claire Nicholson, 53, works for an animal charity and lives in Warwickshire. She is married and has three children, aged 26, 22 and 19. Looking back at a school photo of me when I was five, and another from a ballet show at the age of six, my ears especially my right one are all I can see. It didnt help that my mother used to have my hair cut short, which made my sticky-out ears glaringly obvious. At secondary school, children called me FA Cup ears because they stuck out like the handles on a trophy. At night, Id stick them down with tape in the hope it would flatten them. 'Constant fiddle': Claire Nicholson, 53, works for an animal charity and lives in Warwickshire. She is married and has three children, aged 26, 22 and 19 Later, in my 20s, as friends fretted about having big tummies or cellulite, all I could worry about was whether my ears showed through my hair. Over the past few years, Ive grown my hair a bit longer and I try to blow-dry as much volume into it as possible so its more effective at concealing my ears. Still, even when my hair is down, I constantly fiddle with it, brushing it down with my hands to make sure my ears arent exposed or, worse, poking through. Unfortunately, at work, I have to tie up my hair, which makes me feel horribly self-conscious. I always pull tendrils over my ears to at least try to hide them a bit. Hair to the rescue: 'Later, in my 20s, as friends fretted about having big tummies or cellulite, all I could worry about was whether my ears showed through my hair' Other people always say they dont notice my ears, but perhaps theyre just being polite. My husband has spent our 15 years together reassuring me they are only glaringly obvious to me, not anyone else. Recently, I was showing a friend some holiday photos taken last month and was horrified to notice that, in one of them, my right ear is the star of the picture. As I often do, I immediately apologised for it! Now Im older, Im a little more relaxed about my ears. I try to remember that everyone has some physical feature that they dont like. Sporting jibes: 'At secondary school, children called me FA Cup ears because they stuck out like the handles on a trophy. At night, Id stick them down with tape in the hope it would flatten them' I LOOK LIKE DOPEY FROM SNOW WHITE Lara Eventide, 35, a costumier, lives in Uxbridge, West London, with husband Chad, 35, a physician, and their children, Caspian, seven, and Starling, two. My insecurities about my ears sticking out stems from childhood, when my mother saved up for surgery to have my older brothers ears pinned back money my father then spent on something else, to her fury. I reasoned that if she thought my brothers ears were worthy of the surgeons knife, then she must think the same about mine, given that they were identical. 'My husband doesn't notice': Lara Eventide, 35, a costumier, lives in Uxbridge, West London, with husband Chad, 35, a physician, and their children, Caspian, seven, and Starling, two My anxiety grew when I went to ballet classes between the ages of 11 and 14. While the other girls looked graceful with their hair in a bun, I looked like Dopey from Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. So, I decided there was only one thing for it: I had to learn how to create beautiful hairstyles that would disguise my ears. I spent hours in my bedroom perfecting different looks, using curlers and voluminous blow-dries. I also became very good at creating pretty plaits and braids. Hiding auburn tresses: 'So, I decided there was only one thing for it: I had to learn how to create beautiful hairstyles that would disguise my ears. I spent hours in my bedroom perfecting different looks, using curlers and voluminous blow-dries. I also became very good at creating pretty plaits and braids' It did the trick. I dont recall anyone ever calling me names at school, because Id got so clever at doing my hair. Even now, I constantly pore over YouTube tutorials to update my look without ever exposing my ears in much the same way as Ive learned to hide my wide hips and bum with skater dresses while eschewing trousers. My husband insists he can see nothing amiss with my ears. As for my mum, because I cover them up so well shes long forgotten about them! Even after 13 years of marriage, it seems as though Princess Mary and Prince Frederik of Denmark are as enamoured with one another as ever. In what looked like a scene straight out of an old Hollywood movie, the glamorous couple stepped out in Oslo, Norway, on Wednesday to attend a banquet dinner as part of Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja's 80th birthday celebrations. The adoring couple looked effortlessly elegant as they made their way to the Opera House for the event - the chivalrous prince all smiles as he sheltered his wife from the heavy rain. Even after 13 years of marriage, it seems as though Princess Mary and Prince Frederik of Denmark are as enamoured with one another as ever In what looked like a scene straight out of an old Hollywood movie, the glamorous couple stepped out in Oslo, Norway, on Wednesday to attend a banquet dinner True to her classic yet chic style, Princess Mary, 45, stepped out in a floor length white number stamped with a blue and red floral design. She paired her look with a pair of simple silver pumps, a stylish black clutch and eye-popping chandelier diamond earrings. Frederik also looked handsome in a tailored navy suit and bowtie. The adoring couple looked effortlessly elegant as they made their way to the Opera House for the event - the chivalrous prince all smiles as he sheltered his wife from the heavy rain True to her classic yet chic style, Princess Mary, 45, stepped out in a floor length white number stamped with a blue and red floral design Snaps of the happy couple, which look as though they've been taken straight from a fashion magazine, show them looking adoringly at each other and laughing as they make their way through the elements Snaps of the happy couple, which look as though they've been taken straight from a fashion magazine, show them looking adoringly at each other and laughing as they make their way through the elements. It's been a busy couple of days for the royal pair, who are in Norway for the King Harald and Queen Sonja's upcoming birthdays. On Tuesday evening, Princess Mary donned a more traditional look in her favourite tiara with a peplum-hemmed patterned dress for the festivities at the palace. At Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja's 80th birthday celebrations in Oslo, Princess Mary wore her favourite convertible tiara cum necklace which she has worn in the past (pictured) The 45-year-old Danish royal donned her favourite tiara with a peplum-hemmed floor-length patterned dress for the festivities on Tuesday night (pictured) In the past, Princess Mary has worn the tiara as both a statement neck jewel and a head piece. She first sported the item as a necklace in 2015. She was attending the Gala Night which marked the 75th birthday of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and paired it with a stunning black dress and co-ordinating earrings. The elegant Princess wore it on top of her head, set in a frame and with an up do and a totally different floor-length black lacy dress. In the past, Princess Mary has worn the tiara as a neck piece (pictured) - this was taken at the Gala Night which marked the 75th birthday of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark Princess Mary has garnered fame for her ability to recycle and re-style her favourite items (pictured left: at the 80th birthday celebrations and right: as a necklace in 2015) This time she opted for a neutral-coloured dress with the tiara. She finished the look off with an up do and sparkling clutch bag. Princess Mary was joined by countless glamorous members of the Royal families from across the continent. The star-studded guest list included Carl Gustaf of Sweden and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, the Countess of Wessex and Prince Albert of Monaco among others. Dressed in their brightest finery, the colourful royals made a grand entrance for the party and were later seen on the balcony waving to well wishers. Taking ibuprofen or other common painkillers for only a week increases the risk of a heart attack, research suggests. Data from nearly 450,000 patients has linked five forms of painkillers ibuprofen, celecoxib, diclofenac, naproxen, and rofecoxib to heart problems. People who take strong doses of the drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are the most at risk, the Canadian researchers found. And the risk starts to rise after only a week of starting the painkillers. Taking ibuprofen or other common painkillers for only a week increases the risk of a heart attack, research suggests (stock image) In relative terms, the risk of a heart attack rose by between a fifth and a half compared to not taking any painkillers, the team calculated. The researchers from the University of Montreal stressed that because most people have only a small risk of a heart attack to start with, the absolute risk of an attack directly contributed to taking NSAIDs is only about 1 per cent a year. But they said doctors should consider alternative painkillers. Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers said: 'Given that the onset of risk of acute [heart attack] occurred in the first week and appeared greatest in the first month of treatment with higher doses, prescribers should consider weighing the risks and benefits of NSAIDs before instituting treatment, particularly for higher doses.' They said for ibuprofen in particular, taking a high dose was especially risky. 'Use for eight to 30 days at a high dose was particularly harmful for ibuprofen (more than 1200 mg/day),' they wrote. This is well within the maximum recommended dose for adults, which is 400mg three or four times a daily a total of up to 1,600mg. They found patients who took ibuprofen for a week had a 48 per cent increased relative risk of a heart attack, those who took celecoxib saw a 24 per cent increase, diclofenac 50 per cent, naproxen 53 per cent and refecoxib 58 per cent. For those who continued taking ibuprofen for up to a month, the increase in risk went up to 75 per cent. Researchers suspect the drugs may cause arteries to constrict, increase fluid retention and raise blood pressure. Alternative theories include the possibility that they encourage the clumping of platelets and formation of blood clots. Data from nearly 450,000 patients has linked five forms of painkillers ibuprofen, celecoxib, diclofenac, naproxen, and rofecoxib to heart problems (stock image) The researchers carried out a 'meta-analysis' of all previous studies on the subject, combining the results to make a study of 446,763 people, of whom 61,460 had suffered a heart attack. The authors said it was the largest investigation into the topic ever conducted. Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: 'This large-scale study worryingly highlights just how quickly you become at risk of having a heart attack after starting NSAIDs. 'Whether you are being prescribed painkillers like ibuprofen, or buying them over the counter, people must be made aware of the risk and alternative medication should be considered where appropriate.' Professor Kevin McConway, of the Open University, added: 'This new study has helped persuade me that there is probably a real association between taking these painkillers and heart attacks. 'But, despite the large numbers of patients involved, some aspects do still remain pretty unclear. People who take strong doses of the drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are the most at risk, the Canadian researchers found (stock image) 'It remains possible that the painkillers aren't actually the cause of the extra heart attacks. We've got to remember that all drugs have side effects, and that people aren't prescribed these painkillers for fun, but to deal with a real pain problem.' John Smith, chief executive of the Proprietary Association of Great Britain, the UK trade association representing manufacturers of over-the-counter medicines, said: 'People taking over-the-counter NSAIDs should not be concerned by this research if they are taking the medicine occasionally for short periods and according to the on-pack instructions. 'The study also showed that after patients had taken their last prescribed dose of an NSAID, their risk of having a heart attack then decreased over time back to normal levels of risk.' Women who take hormone replacement therapy to cope with the menopause may be putting their hearing at risk. A decade on HRT increases womens chances of hearing loss by between 15 and 21 per cent, a study has found. It was thought that the pills, which many women take for years, might slow age-related deafness by substituting oestrogen lost from the body in late middle-age. But researchers found that the opposite was true, with the risk of hearing loss rising by 15 per cent after only five years on hormone pills, which typically include the female sex hormones oestrogen and progestogen. Although they do not know the cause, scientists suspect a surge of the hormone from HRT could disrupt oestrogen receptors in the ears hair cells that pick up sound, and the tissue that carries it to the brain. Women who take hormone replacement therapy (pictured) to cope with menopause could be up to 21 per cent more likely to develop hearing problems (file picture) Blood flow to the ears could also be affected. The study at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, examined self-reported hearing loss in 80,792 post-menopausal women. Lead author Dr Sharon Curhan said: Hearing loss is a common and often disabling condition that can adversely influence communication, social wellbeing, health and quality of life. For many women, hormone therapy helps manage hot flushes, night sweats and bone loss, improving sleep and making a vital difference to their quality of life. But she added: Our study found hormone therapy use was associated with higher risk of hearing loss, and the risk tended to increase with duration of use. Oestrogen is known to affect hearing, with younger women actually less able to hear during the part of their menstrual cycle when the level of the hormone is lowest. Previous studies suggested the menopause may increase womens risk of deafness which led scientists to think that HRT could help. The US research is the first large study looking at hearing loss and hormone therapy, which is taken by around one million women in Britain. Compared with those who never used any type of HRT, the results show that taking the tablets for five to nine years raised womens risk of hearing loss by 15 per cent. For those on them for a decade or more, the likelihood rose to 21 per cent. Women, like men, become more deaf as they age. But the study found those who had the menopause at an older age had a higher risk of hearing loss. The US research is the first large study looking at hearing loss and hormone therapy, which is taken by around one million women in Britain (file picture) This could be due to a longer exposure to oestrogen and progestogen during their lifetime. A study last month showed HRT could protect against heart disease, with women in their fifties and sixties having a 30 per cent lower chance of dying over eight years. This is believed to be because the oestrogen stops arteries blocking, furring and stiffening. But the evidence differs over whether it raises the risk of some cancer. Dr Heather Currie, of the British Menopause Society, said: This trial relies on self-reported hearing loss and does not prove that HRT causes this only that there may be an association. This should not terrify women and the decision about HRT should be based on the balance of benefits and risks. She had to put studies at Georgia College and State University on hold When she awoke, all of her hair and 80 to 90% of her skin had fallen off A 26-year-old woman is suing GlaxoSmithKline after an anti-seizure drug burned off 90 percent of her skin, nearly blinded her, and forced her into a medically-induced coma. Khaliah Shaw was a public health graduate student at Georgia College and State University when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed the medication, Lamotrigine, in 2013. Within a month of taking the drug, she had developed a rash on her face, while the skin on her lips had started to peel off. Although she visited her local ER, she was initially diagnosed with the flu. But two days later, Miss Shaw woke up in excruciating pain, with the skin on her face, neck, back and chest falling off and her mouth covered in blisters. The reaction left her skin permanently scarred, and she is slowly losing her sight. Now, she and many others are suing GlaxoSmithKline for promoting the product without warning of the risks, claiming more than $3.45 million in medical costs. It comes five years after the company shelled out $3 billion in lawsuit for failure to report the drug's risks - before Shaw's incident. 'This did not have to happen,' Shaw, who lives 30 miles outside of Atlanta, told 11Alive.com. 'This was not just some sort of fluke in my opinion. This happened as a directly (sic) result of somebody's error.' Scroll down for video Severe reaction: Khaliah Shaw, now 26, lost up to 90 percent of her skin after suffering a rare allergic reaction to common anti-seizure drug, Lamotrigine in 2013. Above, Miss Shaw is seen before (left) and after (right) her reaction Hospitazlied: Miss Shaw, who was a public health graduate student at Georgia College and State University at the time, was put in a medically-induced coma (pictured) after she contracted Stevens-Johnson Syndrome The lawsuit says Shaw's medical bills amount to more than $3.45 million thus far, with far more expected as she continues with treatment. When Shaw's reaction escalated into blisters, two days after being told she had the flu, she returned to the ER in Oconee County. However, medics were not sure what was wrong with her, according to Miss Shaw's blog, which she started writing after her ordeal. They reportedly isolated her, fearing she had an infectious disease. After the student's condition deteriorated, she was rushed to The Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, where a dermatologist diagnosed her with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), Fox reported. SJS is a rare disorder that begins with flu-like symptoms, which Miss Shaw believes led medics to initially mistake her illness for the flu. It is typically a reaction to a medication, and can prove fatal. During her first night in hospital, Miss Shaw's skin continued to fall off, leaving her with huge, open wounds. Doctors reportedly decided to put her in a medically-induced coma to alleviate her pain. Prescription: The student (left, before her reaction) was reportedly prescribed the medication, Lamotrigine (right), for bipolar disorder in 2013. Within a month of taking the drug, she had developed a rash on her face Misdiagnosis: Although she visited her local ER, she was initially diagnosed with the flu. But two days later, Miss Shaw (right, with a friend, after her reaction) woke up in excruciating pain, with her skin falling off Damaged eyesight: After the student's condition deteriorated, she was rushed to another hospital, where a dermatologist diagnosed her with SJS. Above, Miss Shaw now wears glasses indoors to protect her eyes EXPLAINED: STEVENS-JOHNSON SYNDROME Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) is a rare disorder that begins with flu-like symptoms. These are followed by a painful red or purplish rash that spreads and blisters. Then the top layer of the affected skin dies and sheds. The illness, which is a form of Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, is typically a reaction to a drug or an infection, and can prove fatal. Treatment focuses on eliminating the underlying cause, controlling symptoms and minimizing complications. Patient recovery can take weeks to months, depending on the severity of the syndrome. Source: Mayo Clinic Advertisement 'They put me into a medically-induced coma, because they knew it was going to be really painful,' Miss Shaw said, adding that she was then taken 90 miles to Atlanta's Grady Hospital's Burns Unit. When the student woke up five weeks later, she was shocked to find she could not see and was breathing via a tracheotomy. She had lost all of her hair and her fingernails had all fallen off. She was reportedly later told she had also lost a whopping 80 to 90 per cent of her skin. Although Miss Shaw was, as she describes it, 'essentially almost blind', her vision gradually started coming back and she saw herself for the first time since suffering the devastating allergic reaction. To her horror, she was bald, with pink and white patchy skin instead of brown. 'It was a shock to see that... all my hair had come off. I didn't have any fingernails,' Miss Shaw told the news station. In subsequent days, Miss Shaw had to have her eyes treated by an opthamologist to limit any long-term damage, she writes on her blog. SJS can cause extensive tissue damage resulting in blindness. She also started to suffer from seizures, which 'were a result of being heavily sedated for a long period of time', her blog states. Doctors arranged for her to undertake physical and occupational therapy. Seven weeks after being transferred to the specialist burn center, Miss Shaw was able to go home. The brave former student continues to see a variety of doctors, specialists, and therapists on a weekly basis. She has moved back in with her mother and still cannot see properly. Hospital: 'They put me into a medically-induced coma, because they knew it was going to be really painful,' Miss Shaw said, adding that she was then taken 90 miles to Atlanta's Grady Hospital's (pictured) Burns Unit Life-threatening: When the student (pictured in hospital) woke up five weeks later, she was shocked to find she could not see and was breathing via a tracheotomy. She had lost her hair and her fingernails were gone Contrast: She was reportedly later told she had also lost 80 to 90 per cent of her skin. Above, Miss Shaw is pictured taking a selfie before her allergic reaction (left) and in the same position after losing her hair (right) 'I would love to have my vision back,' said Miss Shaw, who has put her graduate studies on hold and is forced to wear sunglasses, even when indoors, because any bright light is painful to her. She is also 'terrified' to take any more medication to manage her bipolar disorder - which causes shifts in mood, energy and activity levels - fearing that it could spark another severe allergic reaction. In one blog post, she wrote: 'It still haunts me to think about everything they did to me while I was in hospital. I can still hear the IV machines beeping. I never want to end up in the burn unit EVER again.' Miss Shaw, who first fell ill in December 2013, added: 'There are still things I avoid to this day because it reminds me of that time. And no amount of discomfort is worth getting SJS again. NONE.' Looking ahead: Miss Shaw's hair is starting to grow back and her blogging is helping her to make sense of her ordeal and return to her old 'awesome' self. Above, she is pictured in a recent Facebook photo in a wig Blog: Miss Shaw's blog, The Journey of a Butterfly (pictured), details the former student's battle with SJS But despite her struggles, Miss Shaw's hair is starting to grow back and her blogging is helping her to make sense of her ordeal and return to her old 'awesome, hilarious, sassy, smart and articulate' self. Lamotrigina, the generic of the drug Lamictal, is approved in the US for the maintenance of bipolar disorder. The medication is also approved for the treatment of partial seizures in epileptic patients. It features a black box warning about deadly skin reactions, such as SJS, which is a form of Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis. The syndrome is also linked to other on-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. Axed Delhi minister Kapil Mishra has raised fresh questions on the frequent foreign trips of senior AAP leaders and the 'purpose of the visits', as further trouble mounted for the city's ruling party. Mishra has alleged that the five leaders misused public funds on these jaunts and he linked them to hawala money and dubious foreign donations. The ousted minister named Aam Aadmi Party's Raghav Chadha, Ashish Khetan, Sanjay Singh, Satyendar Jain and Durgesh Pathak in his complaint to the CBI. Axed Delhi minister Kapil Mishra makes more trouble for the city's ruling party after more internal dissent and a fresh volley of allegations According to the central agency, it received three complaints from Mishra, with allegations of bribery and other irregularities against national capital territory (NCT) functionaries and others. However, he has neither furnished any details nor tickets to the CBI for the investigation. Mishra claims that he was informed by AAP volunteers' through phone about the alleged wrongdoings by the senior leaders during the foreign trips. He has questioned the party's claims of transparency and asked it to make the details public. 'Five AAP leaders have misused funds for foreign trips. I will sit on a hunger strike if they do not reveal details of their foreign trips,' the Karawal Nagar MLA said. 'Sanjay Singh even did some illegal dealings in Russia. Secret of all the foreign funds and hawala money lies in these secret trips done by these leaders.' Mishra earlier wrote an open letter to Kejriwal, challenging the chief minister to a poll battle. In the letter, Mishra said he will file an FIR against Kejriwal. This is not the first time that AAP leaders' international trips have come under scrutiny. Central auditing body CAG had sent a missive to the Delhi government, seeking details of the foreign tours of babus and ministers. The federal auditor also asked the 'purpose of the visit' and 'cost to the government exchequer'. It sought explanations on how the trips were fruitful in terms of 'development' and 'governance' in the city. Over the 18 months since coming to power, AAP ministers have made 10 foreign trips, with deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia alone jet-setting off six times to international destinations. Sisodia has incurred an expenditure of over Rs 30.73 lakh on the jaunts. He travelled to Athens, Finland and Sao Paulo. The deputy CM went to Sao Paulo in Brazil from August 11 to August 15, 2015, to attend a one-day conference, but spent two days in Rio de Janeiro before the seminar and also took a two-day break afterwards to visit the Iguazu Falls in Argentina. The issue of foreign trips came under public scrutiny last year after the first dengue death was reported in the Capital. Sisodia was out of the country. He was in Finland from September 11 to September 17, 2016, when Delhi witnessed the worst of the dengue and chikungunya outbreaks. Sisodia also went to Berlin to attend the German Habitat Forum, but extended his trip to visit Amsterdam and Paris as well. Health minister Satyendar Jain made the maximum trips in a year three at a cost of Rs 18 lakh. He also accompanied Kejriwal to Rome for two days for the canonisation of Mother Teresa from September 3 to September 5, 2016, with a travel bill of Rs 13.5 lakh. In October 2015, a 10-member AAP delegation, including ministers Gopal Rai and Jain, visited Sweden. The vice-chairman of Delhi Dialogue Commission, Ashish Khetan, also went to Manchester in the United Kingdom in March 2016 with Jain. The then lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung had earlier directed the state government's general administration department to furnish details about foreign visits by ministers, their personal staff and other officials. An inquiry was conducted after Jung called back Sisodia from Finland. In fact, most of the Delhi cabinet was out of town when the Capital was reeling under dengue and chikungunya. Arvind Kejriwal made his name in Indian politics when he went after some of the country's most powerful figures over suspected corruption back in 2012. But now in 2017 the tables appear to have turned. Documents accessed by India Today TV point to possible wrongdoing in Delhi's AAP government headed by the chief minister who once became the face of the nation's anti-graft movement. Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra on indefinite hunger strike at his residence in New Delhi Now under suspicion is what appears to be compelling evidence of how one of the CM's close relatives might have submitted forged bills for carrying out a civic project commissioned by the PWD department, now under minister Satyendar Jain. Surender Kumar Bansal owned the Renu Construction company that was awarded a drainage project in Bakoli village along NH-44 in north-west Delhi in 2015, papers show. Renu Construction, according to official records, won the tender after it quoted the lowest bid. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain speaks to reporters as he arrives to attend the special session of Delhi Assembly in New Delhi But the skeletons have now come tumbling out of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party's closet. Documents reveal what appear to be the fraudulent means the chief minister's relative might have adopted in order to fleece the state exchequer. On paper, Bansal, who died of a brain stroke on Monday, is seen procuring construction material for the drainage system from a company called Mahadev Impex. But when India Today TV's teams visited its registered address at Sonepat's B-22 Industrial Area, the firm was nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, bills as high as around Rs 2 crore, issued by the non-existent Mahadev Impex, had been subsequently cleared by Delhi's public works department, pending completion of the project, show official documents obtained by non-profit Road Anti-Corruption Organisation (RACO) in response to its RTI petition. According to petitioner Viplava Awasthi, the chief minister is suspected of having violated laid-down procedures to favour Bansal. 'We demand a thorough probe into the PWD's working. The chief minister doesn't appear to be above board. He must also be subject to investigation into the forgery case involving his relative,' said Awasthi. India Today TV has also accessed copy of an FIR filed recently by Delhi's anti-corruption branch to inquire into the alleged scam. This scandal implicating a key member of Kejriwal's extended family comes at a time when the Aam Aadmi Party is facing a barrage of allegations from its sacked minister Kapil Mishra, who has targeted the CM, his cabinet colleague Jain and even Bansal. 'Should we stop raising questions about how the entire Bansal family, Bansal's companies might have benefitted through wrongful land deals, illegal PWD bills just because he (Surender Bansal) is no more?' he told India Today TV on Tuesday. 'Evidence that has come to my knowledge show execution of an illegal land deal and clearance of forged PWD bills worth Rs 10 crore,' Mishra claimed when asked to explain how the AAP government had allegedly favoured Kejriwal's late brother-in-law. The chief minister's family has, however, tried to put up a strong defence, rejecting the rebel's accusations as scripted by political rivals. Sunita Kejriwal, the CM's wife, has issued a series of stinging tweets over Mishra's charges. The Delhi government has denied involvement in the PWD drain scandal. 'This contract (to Bansal) was given before AAP came to power, after competitive bidding in January 2015. We came to power in Feb 2015,' said minister Jain. 'Ministers are not involved in payments of every company. There are thousands of them working in Delhi.' Asked about forged bills Bansal is alleged to have submitted for clearance to his department in the name of a bogus company, Jain said the question should be put to the PWD secretary and not him. Some of Bansal's contracts, Jain claimed, were also cancelled by the AAP government. Class 12 student Akash Narwala is the latest to join the fight against online pornography. Disgusted by his schoolmates' addiction to sex videos, the 16-year-old from Rajasthan has knocked on the Supreme Court's door through lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani, seeking to become party to a plea filed by the advocate in 2013 in which the court is issuing periodic directions. The case comes against the backdrop of the Centre blocking hundreds of adult websites in 2015 to prevent porn becoming a 'social nuisance', sparking a debate about censorship and freedom in the world's largest democracy. Akash Narwala is disgusted by his schoolmates' addiction to sex videos The ban was partially lifted days later following a wave of criticism. However Narwala, a student of Vidhyanjali Academy in Kota city and also a social activist, told Mail Today: 'Even kids studying in class four, five, six and seven in my school are watching porn on their mobile and they want to watch them frequently. I am witness to it. 'Young minds are getting corrupted. It is having a damaging and upsetting effect on them.' Millions of Indians access pornography on their smartphones or by using memory chips containing racy videos that are easily available at low prices, say reports. Millions of Indians access pornography on their smartphones or by inserting memory chips containing racy videos that are easily available at low prices, say reports Some internet companies say it is impossible to block all such sites as many of the servers that host them are outside India. Also, the sites can be accessed through proxy servers. 'Mobile accessibility and surfeit of porn on the internet is the primary reason. 'Young people are turning to the internet to learn about sex and relationships. Sometimes they are frequently stumbling across porn, often unintentionally,' says Narwala's affidavit in court. In February, a woman whose marriage was on the rocks due to her husband's alleged porn addiction also became party to the PIL in the top court, seeking a complete ban on online porn. Millions of Indians access pornography on their smartphones or by inserting memory chips containing racy videos that are easily available at low prices (picture for representation only) 'I being a teenager and a young man myself am of the firm opinion that the easy availability of porn through the internet in this country is a serious impediment in the progress of this nation as a whole new generation of youth are adversely affected leading to perversion of youth, loss of moral and spiritual values among them which if not checked can lead to total lack of productivity, rise in sex crimes, matrimonial disputes at a later stage, loss of family values and a state of doom would then set in leading to total and complete disaster,' says the teenager's affidavit. 'Delinquent behaviour and substance use is also widely prevalent among my colleagues addicted to porn.' India has the second-largest population of Internet users in the world, about 450 million, trailing only China. Some internet companies say it is impossible to block all such sites as many of the servers that host them are outside India (picture for representation only) 'Pornography exposure by teenagers through the internet teaches objectification. That is, it teaches little boys to see girls and women as objects, and not as human beings, having value. 'The same could be said for little girls as well, about seeing themselves as objects and not understanding personal worth,' reads Narwala's affidavit. The apex court earlier had asked the central government to find out 'ways and means' to block 'blue films' on the internet. The Supreme Court building in New Delhi, India It had mentioned that obscenity, which is a crime under Indian law, 'cannot be allowed to be perpetuated'. The court is also exploring the possibility of banning watching of pornographic material in any form at public places and has also sought the view of the government on if it can be made a crime. The Centre said it only favours banning child pornography sites and not 'going beyond', considering a citizen's right to privacy, and also because it does not want to be 'moral policing'. However, the court directed it to 'develop a mechanism' for blocking all porn sites with the help of IT experts and service providers. The American predator seeking to take over Dulux's owner Akzo Nobel has given the first hint that it could walk away from its bid. PPG has been trying to acquire the company since March, but has had bids of 18.1billion, 19.3billion and 22.5billion rebuffed. If it walks away it would be a major victory for Akzo, which said PPG grossly undervalued the company and that a takeover would lead to job losses. No dice: Pittsburgh based coatings giant PPG may be ready to walk away from its latest 23bn bid for Akzo Nobel proprietor of Britain's totemic Dulux paint brand Defeat on the deal would secure the future of 3,300 Akzo workers in Slough and the East Midlands. It would also be a loss for vulture hedge fund Elliott Advisors, which has doggedly campaigned for the firm to sell its business to the Pittsburgh-based PPG. On Tuesday it revealed it had taken a case to the Dutch courts after its request to oust Akzo's chairman Antony Burgmans was rejected by the firm. PPG said yesterday: 'Without productive engagement, PPG will assess and decide whether or not to pursue an offer... [and] will continue to examine all of its options.' Entertainment / Music by Staff reporter Oliver Mtukudzi's wife Daisy had a bad day last Friday when she made a cameo appearance at the Harare International Festival of Arts (Hifa).She had taken to the ZOL main stage to join her husband for the performance of Haasi Masanga during the Tuku and Friends concert where Winky D, Mono Mukundu and Tariro neGitare also performed.Despite the fact that Haasi Masanga was familiar to her and she knew all the lyrics as she was featured on the track off Tuku's latest album Eheka! Nhai Yahwe, she simply was off key, leaving a lot to be desired. The crowd did not do much to help her too as they did not hide their discontent as her voice simply could not match the superstar's.The song released late last year is their first collaboration since they got married.As if her off the tune voice was not enough, she went on to talk backstage while the microphone was still on. Her conversation with keyboardist Munya Vhiyali could be heard while her husband haplessly looked at her, but kept his cool as he played the next song.An undeterred Daisy came back to the stage joining Tariro neGitare who served as a backing vocalist on other songs that include Madiro and still, she was off tune.However, the whole crew on stage ignored and continued with their performances.Music critic David Mudzada said there was need for Daisy to practise before taking to the stage while others said she was not ready for the stage."It's good to have her on stage since they've a song together but she needs serious grooming otherwise they might be going in the wrong direction," Mudzada said.Another music critic Reward Muchini believes the superstar needed some time before introducing Daisy on stage."Studio is different from stage because in the studio, the voice can be tuned to make it sound better, but on stage you'll be using your raw voice."He should groom her first before any other moves," Muchini said.In an interview with our Harare Bureau last year, Daisy explained that she had no intention to venture into music but did so after Tuku insisted that she collaborates with him."He (Mtukudzi) told me that he wanted me to add my voice on one of the songs he'd written with me in mind. I didn't want to. But, one evening he just came and said 'let's go'. I love television so much so I was very upset."He showed me what he'd written and I asked 'saka moda kuti ndiite sei' (so what do you want me to do)? to which he replied 'imba' (sing). So I sang and he encouraged me. He told me to do it with confidence and it started making sense. The following day we came back and after three days, I got it right. It's not easy but I must admit, I've an ear for good and bad music," Daisy was quoted just after working on Haasi Masanga.Tuku on the other hand said the song was inspired by his 2015 documentary Masanga Bodo."Masanga Bodo means not a coincidence. Life is not by coincidence. All along she (Daisy) didn't want to sing, but because of the storyline of Masanga Bodo, the documentary, I got her to do it. Now she's rehearsing a number of songs," said Tuku. The riot outside New York City's Astor Opera House was the most violent theatre riot in the city. The carnage left at least 18 people dead at the scene and at least four later died from their wounds. And all this bloodshed was immediately catalyzed by a production of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth,' a show about murder and tyranny. Dueling actors Edwin Forrest, an American, and Englishman William Charles Macready came to embody conflicting ideals of what New York was meant to be. Was it a city for the wealthy, 'Anglophile' class that wanted to make itself in the image of the English aristocracy, embodied by the traditional acting of Macready? Or was it a city for the immigrants, many of whom had just fled Ireland due to the potato famine, and the workers, who idolized Forrest's 'natural spirit?' Such questions would come to a violent head at Macready's May 10, 1849 performance in 'Macbeth.' A lithograph shows the carnage at the scene of Astor Place on May 10, 1849. Up to 30 people were killed in the riot that was immediately instigated by an Englishman's performance of 'Macbeth' at the Astor Opera House National Guard militia are pictured firing into the crowd. Both state and federal forces that altogether numbered around 600 tried to restore order after rioters stormed the Astor Opera House The riot pitted supporters of American actor Edwin Forrest, who had performed as 'Macbeth' one night prior and less than one mile away and was performing as 'The Gladiator' on May 10 at the Broadway Theatre (spelled in British English), and English actor William Charles Macready, who portrayed 'Macbeth' at the Astor Opera House that fateful night On that fateful evening, Macready gave a performance as 'Macbeth,' while Forrest portrayed Roman general Spartacus in 'The Gladiator' nearby at the Broadway Theatre (spelled in British English). The Astor Opera House was packed predominantly with Macready's aristocratic supporters, who clamored to see who was then considered the best English Shakespearean actor in a sold-out performance. But supporters of Edwin Forrest had other ideas. Driven by what they considered to be Macready's slights against Forrest, a smaller contingent of theatergoers hissed at him when he came on stage and yelled: 'Out with him!' Meanwhile, a crowd of around 20,000 people, who mostly supported Forrest, had gathered outside the Astor Opera House, lining the streets between the Bowery and Broadway. At one point, a shot was fired and around 60 outsiders stormed the theatre, while inside rumors traveled fast throughout the audience that there was an assault on the theatre. A black-and-white illustration of the scene shows the thousands of people that stormed a busy intersection of Lower Manhattan to make their anger about what they felt was elitism of the Astor Opera House, and its hiring of the English Macready The Opera House, which was only opened in 1847, proved to be unable to recover from its association with the riot and was shuttered by 1853. The building later became the New York Mercantile Library (pictured in the 1880s) Military personnel called to the scene included the National Guard and Governor's Guards, who expected minor disturbances but were not expecting the mass riot that followed. All told, around 600 peacekeeping forces were called to the scene to maintain order. Direct accounts of the destruction are difficult to come by, but The Albany Evening Journal summed up the chaos of what was immediately known the following day. It proclaimed: 'The Military called out!10 or 15 Persons Killed!! '25 or 30 Wounded, among whom are several Citizens, spectators, and one or two Women!!! '20,000 persons assembled!!!' People shouted 'Oh, horrible! horrible!' and 'Where will it all end?' as people as young as 15 were left lying in the streets. Many of those who died - estimates are frequently between 22 and 25 and go up to 30 - were innocent bystanders and were shot by militia. While theater riots were not an infrequent occurrence, as people protested against anything from dress codes to musical choices, none were quite as violent as this. By the time the dust settled, the city of New York was left to grapple with what caused the riot: a rivalry between two very different actors that illustrated enormous societal divides. William Charles Macready (left) and Edwin Forrest (right) were actors and rivals who often performed in the same roles The opulence inside the Astor Opera House catered to a wealthier clientele, in contrast to theatres nearby such as the Bowery Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) was an American actor born to a Scottish immigrant father and German-American mother. His relatively impoverished upbringing in Philadelphia was marked by his love of theatre; from the age of 11 he performed in local productions. Legend has it that he secured an audition for Philadelphia's famed Walnut Street Theatre (spelled in British English) due to a soliloquy he performed of Shakespeare's 'Richard III' while under the influence of nitrous oxide for a volunteer experiment. His performance impressed one of the experiment's observers, and he went on to achieve enormous international success. William Macready (1793-1873) was born in London to a family of actors. He was meant to become a lawyer and was educated at an independent school, but financial difficulty besot the family and he needed to help manage his father's theater company. He later embraced acting and his performances of iconic Shakespeare roles including Macbeth, King Lear and Richard III. Forrest and Macready began to be compared in the 1820s. Edwin Forrest (pictured in both images) was an American actor who grew up in Philadelphia. He first performed at the age of 11 William Charles Macready was born to an actor family in London and only embraced theater after his family experienced financial difficulties. Originally, he was to become a lawyer Critics took note of Forrest's 'natural spirit' in opposition to Macready's 'refined and artistic' approach to Shakespeare, according to newspaper accounts from the time. Their rivalry reached a flash point when Forrest, watching Macready perform as Hamlet in Edinburgh, hissed at him. An account that appeared in the Times reads that Forrest, occupying a prominent position in the house, made himself unenviably conspicuous by loud and repeated solitary hissing, with the view of expressing his disapproval. British newspapers wrote incredulously of how an American could display such poor manners. Meanwhile, Forrests supporters were offended that he was not invited to Macreadys home while traveling through Britain and so threatened Macready when he returned to America in 1848. By May 1849, their rivalry had reached a fever pitch as Macready appeared at the Astor Opera House to play Macbeth. On May 7, Forrests supporters attended Macreadys show and through repeated interruptions including tossed rotten eggs and fruit, prevented the Englishman from performing. On May 9, the rivals even portrayed Macbeth less than a mile from each other, as Forrest took on the role at a theater nearby. Then the fateful night of May 10, Forrest portrayed The Gladiator at the Broadway Theatre while Macready, after entreaties from Americans including Washington Irving and Herman Melville, agreed to stay in New York to give a performance one last chance. This illustration depicts more of the carnage that earned the two-year-old opera house the dubious distinction of 'Dis-Astor Place Opera House' and briefly caused the entire area to fall out of favor with the public Macready later said: My God, has my appearance led to the sacrifice of human life! I wish I had adhered to my first resolution, and not yielded to the solicitation of my friends. They assured me there would be no difficulty. Newspapers of the time grappled with the question of what caused the bloody theater riot. Some wondered whether the violence was solely due to Forrests supporters, many of whom would have been working-class patrons of theatres such as the Bowery. Others considered a deeper class-based analysis that acknowledged an entrenched class system in New York City despite American ideals of equality. In this analysis, the riot became a struggle in which working-class New Yorkers, both recent arrivals and otherwise, fought for a vision of a distinctly American actor, and by extension society, as manifested in Forrest. Meanwhile, the Anglophile Americans who frequented the Astor Opera House wanted to effect an upper-class society in an English image. The opera house's fancy dress code and high prices served as a slap in the face to the notion that theatre should be enjoyed by all. My God, has my appearance led to the sacrifice of human life!' William Charles Macready Regardless of ones interpretation, the Astor Opera House could never quite recover from its association with the violent night of May 10 and despite opening in 1847 was boarded up by 1853. The posh square of Astor Place briefly fell into disrepute, tarnished by the violent reputation of the Dis-Astor Place Opera House. The site where the Astor Opera House once stood is now 21 Astor Place, which was built in 1890 as the New York Mercantile Library, or Clinton Hall, and now houses condominiums. 1890 as the New York Mercantile Library, or Clinton Hall, and now houses condominiums. Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband, sold his two-bedroom unit in the building for $3.9m back in 2011. Today, Astor Place is a busy square and intersection consisting of commercial buildings and apartments. A North Korean defector has called on President Donald Trump to help topple Kim Jong-un's regime by force. Song Byeok, who worked as a propaganda artist before fleeing the brutal regime in 2002, told Mail Online that he believes conflict with the dictator is 'unavoidable'. But Mr Song, who now lives in South Korea, said that war on the Peninsula is a price worth paying in order to being peace and stability back to his home country. With an 'armada' of US warships parked on North Korea's doorstep, Mr Song called on America and other world leaders 'to make a change so the North Korea people can be free.' Song Byeok, a former North Korean propaganda artist who defected in 2002, has called on world powers to depose Kim Jong-un's regime by force Mr Song was interred in a labour camp before he defected, losing part of his right index finger (pictured far left). He is now known for his dissident art (right), including a painting of Kim Jong-un as Marilyn Monroe Mr Song said the Kim regime will never give up power without a fight because officials are fearful of what people will do once they find out they have been lied to their entire lives. But he said that the internet is already changing some people's perceptions inside the isolated nation, and making them realise that the world outside North Korea is not as bad as they have been told. In the event of a conflict, he believes that many 'ordinary citizens' would refuse to fight for Kim Jong-un because 'they want democracy.' For Mr Song, it was the experience of watching members of his family starve to death during the great famine in the 1990s that convinced him to defect. He lost his mother and sister to the famine, while he was forced to make posters glorifying the 'arduous struggle', as it was called by then-ruler Kim Jong-il. Song Byeok is pictured working on his dissident artwork in Seoul. Song Byeok spent seven years churning out hundreds of paintings for Pyongyang's propaganda campaigns Pictured: Mr Song's painting of Kim Jong-un dressed in the American stars and stripes. Mr Song turned his back on the regime after his mother and sister starved to death in North Korea's famine in the 90s, while his father drowned trying to forage for food During that time Mr Song also watched his father drown after the pair went across the Chinese border to forage for food and the older man fell into a river. Mr Song said he alerted border guards, but they did nothing to help and instead handcuffed him and threw him into a labour camp. There he was starved and beaten so badly that the index finger on his right hand had to be amputated. Shortly after he made his way back across the border to China, before eventually moving to South Korea where he now lives, turning his former talent for making propaganda into dissident art. Asked whether he is fearful that Kim will attack South Korea, he said: 'Of course I am worried. Kim Jong-un is very young, in his 30s, and his character is very unpredictable. We don't know what he is going to do. 'I worry that he will attack and another Korea War, the same thing that happened in the Eighties, will happen all over again and many people will lose their lives.' Speaking about his art, he said that he wants to share his message with the world - that North Korean people want the same rights and freedoms enjoyed by others in the West. He added: 'Every piece of my work is made for North Korean people to share my message to the world and I hope my works will contribute to topple the regime. I am sure the dictatorship will end within my lifetime.' Kim Jong-un is currently engaged in a standoff with President Trump over his nuclear weapons programme. Mr Byeok, who now lives in South Korea, said that while he fears many people might be killed, it is a price worth paying for peace The dictator has made it his mission to develop a missile capable of hitting the mainland United States, while Trump has said that 'will not happen'. In an attempt to force China into clamping down on its ally and neighbour, the President has manoeuvred multiple aircraft carriers and submarines into the region, saying he is ready to 'solve' the issue, with or without Beijing's help. In response Xi Jinping's government called for harsher sanctions on North Korea, only to reassure Pyongyang days later that it wanted to remain on good terms after earning a rare rebuke from the Kim regime. Meanwhile China is unhappy that the US has deployed a THAAD anti-missile defense system in South Korea, concerned that its powerful radar will be used to spy across their border. Throughout, North Korea has threatened to conduct a sixth nuclear test 'whenever and wherever' it choses - a move that would likely promp pre-emptive strikes by Trump and may trigger a war. The art of Song Byeok is being displayed for the first time in the UK at Amnesty International's Human Rights Action Centre, in Shoreditch, London, from May 8th to the 12th The widow of a South Carolina officer forgave the man who killed her husband as he was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday. Jarvis Hall had no intention of speaking Tuesday as he agreed spend the rest of his life in prison for killing Forest Acres police officer Greg Alia on September 15, 2015. But then, Kassy Alia said that she forgave Hall, saying she could imagine him as a little boy, before he gave in to crime and violence. Jarvis Hall (right) pleaded guilty and agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison for killing Forest Acres police officer Greg Alia (right) Kassy Alia said in court Tuesday that mourns for her husband, but also s for a family who will never see their son, brother or father free after he pleaded guilty to murder 'I was touched by officer Alia's widow. Her words and his sister's words, saying she forgave me - I didn't expect that. I am sorry for their loss,' said Hall, 35, who spent three semesters in college studying to be a pharmacist and was at the Richland Mall that day in a stolen van with two stolen guns. Kassy Alia spent much of Tuesday's hearing rubbing her wedding ring she now wears on a chain near her heart with her husband's band on her ring finger. She talked about how the world lost a great police officer, son, brother and father with his own son who turned six months old the day he died. But she also said Tuesday she mourns for a family who will never see their son, brother or father free after he pleaded guilty to murder. 'My heart crumbled the day my husband was killed. And my heart aches for Mr. Hall,' Kassy Alia said. Greg Alia, 32, was working with an officer trainee on September 30, 2015, when a call came in about a suspicious man sitting on a bench outside the mall in suburban Columbia. Two other Forest Acres officers were on their way, but Alia thought that would be a good lesson for the new officer. Hall looked up as the officers approached and said 'not today' before running inside the mall, prosecutor Dan Goldberg said. The three officers chased him, but Alia was the fastest. He caught Hall in a service hallway and the two fell to the ground, wrestling. Hall managed to get the .40-caliber handgun he stole in a robbery weeks before and shot the officer in the back of the head, Goldberg said. Jarvis Hall, shackled at his waist, stands with his lawyers as he pleads guilty to killing Forest Acres police officer Greg Alia in September 2015. Alia's wife said that she forgave Hall in court on Tuesday More than three dozen officers from several jurisdictions packed the Richland County courtroom on Tuesday. Many of them were in uniform More than three dozen officers from several jurisdictions packed the Richland County courtroom. Many of them were in uniform. Some of them wiped away tears as Alia's widow, father, mother and sisters spoke. They talked about an Eagle scout who loved being a new dad to his first child, Sal. They spoke of Alia following a dream to be in the movies, but realizing he could do more for the world as a police officer. Goldberg read a letter from Alia's father, Richard, who dissolved in tears on his wife's shoulder. He remembered the day his son died. He glanced up and saw a Forest Acres police vehicle and thought his son was stopping by for a cup of coffee as he often did on duty. Kassy Alia puts her hand on her father-in-law, Richard Alia's shoulder as Jarvis Hall pleads guilty. After the trial on Tuesday, she hugged every officer who came to mourn But then he saw it was an SUV accompanied by a Richland County Sheriff's car and the Forest Acres chief stepped out. 'Even today, that dreadful scene still haunts me,' Richard Alia wrote. Greg Alia was buried three days after he died in a torrential downpour that would turn into some of the worst flooding areas near Columbia have ever seen. His patrol car, turned into a memorial with flowers and signs, flooded to the windows. But outside the courthouse Tuesday, where Kassy Alia made sure to hug every officer, she saw that the skies were a cloudless and a brilliant police blue. She hugged Forest Acres Chief Gene Sealy last. 'Feels like it should be raining,' she said, smiling. A Coney Island salsa king dancing with his student and two exceptionally dapper best friends on a Harlem doorstep are among some of the colorful characters Jamel Shabazz has encountered throughout his career. Shabazz, 56, has spent four decades photographing New York Citys eclectic and ever-changing streets and neighborhoods, bringing them to life for a wide audience. What I find interesting in the streets is the spontaneity and endless excitement from moment to moment,' Shabazz told DailyMail.com. Since he first picked up his mothers camera in 1975, he has amassed a diverse assortment of photographs showing New York from the ravages of the 80s crack epidemic to the ongoing gentrification across the city today. And his recently released book compiles some of his best work and features some never-before-seen photos spanning from 1980 to 2016. Meanwhile, the prolific photographer also has an exhibition on that focuses specifically on Harlem. Growing up in Red Hook, Brooklyn in the 1960s and 70s, Shabazz explored the waterfront neighborhood with his best friend and first cousin. Every household had a mother and father and the majority of the men in those families were military veterans. A large bakery stood in the center of the neighborhood, giving way to a steady aroma of fresh cinnamon and nutmeg and we had an Olympic size stadium right next to the Gowanus Canal. At our access were two pools, two public libraries, and a number of tree lined parks where children played freely without worry. Jeremy Corbyn's union paymasters have been handed key powers to forge Labour's most left-wing election manifesto in decades. More representatives from unions that have staunchly supported the hapless leader over the past two years - including Len McCluskey's Unite and Aslef - have been drafted in to sign off the platform. The eight-strong union 'contact group' would not previously have been involved in Labour's formal 'Clause V' meeting, where critical decisions about the blueprint will be taken. But a change in the party's rules was pushed through at its conference last autumn. Representatives from unions that have staunchly supported Jeremy Corbyn over the past two years - including Unite headed by Len McCluskey (pictured left with Mr Corbyn) will sign off Labour's manifesto The Claus V meeting is being held in central London tomorrow, and is expected to take all day. Although many of the thorniest issues have already been thrashed out, Labour moderates taking part told MailOnline they are braced for clashes on some of the most sensitive areas. There are fears that Mr Corbyn could resist including a strong statement in support of NATO. He suggested yesterday that the UK should resist a request from the military alliance for more troops to be deployed to Afghanistan for training and security. WHO ARE THE TRADE UNION CHIEFS WHO HELP WRITE LABOUR'S MANIFESTO? The trade union 'contact group' - known as TULO - is chaired by the firebrand ASLEF leader Mick Whelan. The union baron led the waves of industrial action which crippled the Southern Railway network used by a million commuters for months. TULO also includes representatives from the other other unions affiliated to the Labour including Len McCluskey's Unite. The group also includes GMB, the CWU and USDAW. The TULO group is in addition to the 12 members of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee - meaning as many as 20 senior union officials will get a say on Labour's promises. Advertisement The presence of eight union representatives among up to 80 people attending will significantly bolster Mr Corbyn's position. Some of the unions have been wreaking havoc with industrial action, including Aslef over their dispute with Southern Rail. They have given millions of pounds to Labour as donations from other areas have dried up. The amended Labour Party rule book states that the Clause V meeting will include 'eight Trade Union members of the TULO Contact Group' alongside the regular National Executie Committee (NEC), the shadow cabinet, the leaders of the Scottish and Welsh Labour Parties, and representatives from the National Policy Forum. The rules says the session, chaired by Mr Corbyn, will also 'define the attitude of the Party to the principal issues raised by the election which are not covered by the manifesto'. The NEC already includes 12 representatives from the trade unions that are affiliated to Labour. Mr Corbyn gave a flavour of the fire-and-brimstone socialism he is offering as he launched Labour's election campaign yesterday. The shadow cabinet (pictured at Labour's election campaign launch in Manchester yesterday) will take part in the Clause V meeting tomorrow Mr Corbyn, pictured at the election launch in Manchester yesterday, will chair the manifesto meeting in central London tomorrow Using the language of class war, he pledged to 'take the wealth back' with taxes on business and better-off families, as well as renationalisation of industries. Mr Corbyn said he was angry about Tory Britain and promised to fix the 'rigged' economy. The speech in Manchester was denounced by the Tories for omitting any reference to immigration or clearing the deficit, and made only a passing remark on Brexit. Tory candidate Dominic Raab said: 'We've long known that Labour are in the pockets of the union barons. 'But the fact that Corbyn would hand over Britain's future to the militant union bosses who consistently put their own interests above those of hardworking people is both nonsensical and dangerous. 'His plan to hand over control to his union paymasters just goes to show that Jeremy Corbyn cannot be trusted to provide the stability the country needs.' Pizza Hut has apologised after being accused of mocking a Palestinian hunger striker Marwan Barghouti (pictured) by suggesting he should have some pizza Pizza Hut has apologised after being accused of mocking a Palestinian hunger striker with an advert that suggested he should have some pizza. The company's Israeli franchise reportedly shared an image that appears to show prisoner Marwan Barghouti secretly breaking his fast by eating a candy bar in his jail cell. The Facebook post - which was branded 'inhuman' by outraged Palestinians - shows a pizza box seemingly photoshopped onto the floor, as well as a slice of pizza in the sink. 'Barghouti, if you are going to break your strike, isn't pizza the better choice?' the caption read above the screenshot. The image was a screengrab from a video released by Israeli police on Sunday reportedly showing Barghouti eating a candy bar and cookies in his prison cell. The footage, two videos shot days apart from a camera mounted on the ceiling of the cell, do not conclusively show that the prisoner is Barghouti, 58, and it is not entirely clear what he is eating or whether he is doing so. Barghouti's supporters say the video is a fabrication intended to break the prisoners' morale. It was quickly removed from the Facebook page - though it was still found on the page of at least one local branch. A spokeswoman for Pizza Hut International apologised for the post, saying: 'It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect the values of our brand. 'The local franchisee in the country removed it,' she added. 'We truly regret any hurt this may have caused.' More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners have been on hunger strike since April 17 over their treatment in Israeli jails. Barghouti - the most high-profile Palestinian in Israeli detention - urged prisoners to protest against poor conditions and an Israeli policy of detention without trial that has applied to thousands of prisoners since the 1980s. The chain was branded 'inhuman' after reportedly sharing an image of hunger-strike leader Marwan Barghouti secretly breaking his fast in his jail cell by eating a candy bar There was a pizza box seemingly photoshopped onto the floor, as well as a slice of pizza in the sink. 'Barghouti, if you are going to break your strike, isn't pizza the better choice?' the caption read above the screenshot, which was posted on Facebook Pizza Hut's post sparked fury on Palestinian social media, including calls to boycott the chain. 'This isn't enough. A written apology on a FB page isn't enough. Hundreds of prisoners are literally dying or getting their organs hugely damaged in the hunger strike,' one user wrote. 'This is an inhuman and very offensive move from Pizza Hut in the occupied territories.' 'Pizza Hut is ridiculing the prisoners' strike,' activist Alaa Abu Diab wrote on Facebook, using the hashtag #boycott_pizzahut. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for boycotting Israel until it ends the occupation of Palestinian territories, said it supported calls to snub Pizza Hut. 'Pizza Hut's mockery of leaders of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike for freedom and dignity adds insult to deep injury,' said the BDS's Mahmoud Nawajaa. 'We support grassroots Palestinian calls for a worldwide boycott of Pizza Hut, especially in the Arab world,' he wrote in an email. The image, released by Israeli police, was later removed from the Facebook page. Pizza Hut later said the post was 'completely inappropriate' Palestinians hold portraits of Palestinian leader and prominent prisoner Barghouti, during a rally in the city of Ramallah in support of prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails on April 24 Many supporters - including Barghouti's wife - have denounced the video of him reportedly breaking his fast as fake. His wife Fadwa said it is an effort to discredit Barghouti, and suggested the footage may well have been taken in 2004. 'It was not surprising what the occupation did and the fabrications they have tried to spread,' she said. 'Such an act has unveiled the ugly face of the Israeli occupation.' On Monday, following questions about how the video came to light, Israel's public security minister, Gilad Erdan suggested Israeli prison guards had tempted Barghouti with the food. Since he is held in solitary confinement, he would not have been able to smuggle it in. 'You've got to understand, without me going into detail, that in order to lead him to this situation, a great many actions were taken,' Erdan told Army Radio. 'They got results.' 'He lied to the Palestinian public when he claimed to be striking. Israel will not give in to extortion and pressure from terrorists.' Barghouti, a senior member of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party, is serving five life sentences over his role in the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising Pizza Hut has an outlet in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, as well as dozens across the Middle East. It has many inside Israel, as well as one in the settlement of Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank. Barghouti has seen his popularity grow among Palestinians since he was convicted of murder over the killing of Israelis during the second intifada and sentenced in 2004 to five life terms. Surveys show many Palestinians want Barghouti, leader of the Fatah movement, to be their next president. Near an Israeli military installation in the West Bank, Palestinian activists on Tuesday erected a 16.5 by 13 foot mosaic portrait of Barghouti made from glass shards, to show support for him and the strike. 'We, the Palestinian people, have high trust in Marwan, and we don't listen to the Israeli allegations,' said activist Abdullah Abu Rahmeh. 'Marwan will lead the strike until it accomplishes its goals.' Abu Rahmeh said work on the mosaic began before the release of the video purportedly showing him snacking in jail. The prisoners are demanding better conditions, including more family visits. Israeli authorities say 894 Palestinian prisoners have kept up the strike, though Palestinian officials say it is more than 1,000. Some 850,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated since the Israel's occupation of their territories 50 years ago, Palestinian leaders say. Gangs are selling eastern European women into 'sham marriages' with older Asian men after trafficking them into Britain, a BBC documentary has revealed. Humans For Sale found that the poverty-stricken victims are lured to Scotland on the promise of a better life before being raped and abused by gangs. The women are controlled by their traffickers and then forced into the marriages with third party nationals, who are often using them as a route to a British passport. Investigative journalist Sam Poling went undercover to expose the ruthless tactics used by gangs to traffic poor eastern European women into Britain Humans For Sale reported that people are now the second most lucrative criminal commodity after drugs, with labour and sexual exploitation the most common reasons for trafficking to Scotland. Investigative journalist Sam Poling went undercover to expose the ruthless tactics used in the supply chain. She also visited one of Europe's largest Roma communities, in Slovakia, where she met with a young woman who explained the temptation of following the traffickers. She said: If you told me now, come to the car, dont take anything. I would run from here. When asked if she would go to the UK on the promise of a job and accommodation, she said: 'Definitely. There's no thinking about this. Straight away.' Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, said Scotland is being specifically targeted by third country nationals, mainly men from Pakistan and India. Angelika Molnar, who runs Europol's human trafficking unit, told the BBC the victims are recruited by organised crime gangs before being sold to potential grooms. Pictured: Poling at the Slovakian home of a girl who was trafficked to Glasgow, as she reveals the unsavoury tactics used to lure women to the UK Pictured: These are the conditions women in Slovakia are hoping to escape from when they are falsely promised a better life by the traffickers Speaking about one recent case she investigated, she said: 'The victims are lured with false promises of a well-paid job in Scotland and it's only upon arrival that they are told there is no work available and they have to be engaged in marriages with Pakistani men. 'After the marriage, they are kept under control by the traffickers and are exploited as domestic service by the husband, but also raped and sexually exploited by fellow nationals of the traffickers.' Poling travelled across eastern Europe to track down victims sold to Glasgow gangs for sex, and discovered that one Slovakian girl has been trafficked to the city three times. The reporter also examined Scottish marriage records to look for red flags indicating sham marriages, such as young eastern European brides, older Asian grooms, and the same addresses being used for multiple marriages yet with little sign of them living there. Pictured: An extract from a marriage register in Glasgow showing that a teenage Slovakian bride married a man more than 10 years her senior Dozens of such suspicious marriages were found in Scotland. Seventy of them were registered in Glasgow, and a third of those were in the Govanhill district. Forty per cent of those who married there just over five years ago - the cut-off for being granted a passport - are now divorced. Jim Laird, the former head of trafficking services at the charity Migrant Help, told the BBC: 'There's a high number of victims from the Govanhill area and that's because there's a clear link between eastern European crime gangs, who have human trafficking as one of the things they do, and links with organised Asian crime gangs in Glasgow. 'So the eastern European crime gangs will provide the victims, and the Asian crime gangs here will provide the accommodation, which is why there is quite a lot of it in Govanhill.' Pictured: Investigative journalist Sam Poling goes undercover and talks to a man from eastern Europe illegally selling organs The documentary reports 150 people were recorded as official victims of trafficking in Scotland last year, however Mr Laird believes the number of victims in Scotland alone actually runs into thousands. He said: 'There's no prosecution because people are too frightened to be witnesses in trials, they're worried about their own personal safety, but they're also worried about their family's safety back at home. 'Some of them quite frankly are embarrassed because they've been conned. They've been sold a dream, believed it and came here, and when they found out what has happened to them, they just want to disappear as quietly as possible and go back to their own country.' Poling also secretly filmed a man from eastern Europe illegally selling organs. At a meeting in London, he told the undercover journalist one of the organs was a kidney belonging to a woman he claimed was his wife. Brunch favourite 'smashed avocado on toast' could become even more expensive, with the much-loved fruit hit by a tax in this year's federal Budget. The 0.1c levy, which began on April 1 this year, aims to improve the long-term health of the fruit after problems caused by a rise in demand of the cafe favourite. But avocados weren't the only fruit to be hit by a tax, with bananas also set to rise in price after the introduction of a new levy to protect the industry. Brunch favourite 'smashed avocado on toast' could become even more expensive, with the much-loved fruit hit by a 0.1 per cent tax in this year's federal Budget The levy, which began on April 1 this year, will aim to improve the long-term health of the fruit after problems caused by rise in demand of cafe favourite 'avocado on toast' (pictured) While the 0.1 cent rise in avocado prices isn't likely to hurt the hip pocket of brunch lovers, banana costs will see an increase under the levy. At the request of the Australian Banana Growers' Council, the government increased the Plant Health Australia component of the banana levy to 0.5 cents per kilogram. The price hike will aid in the repayment of $3 million given by the government to the banana industry in its battle against the spread of Panama disease. Cotton and tea tree will also become more expensive, after both their respective industries called for a price hike. But it isn't only fruit that will rise in cost, with smokers who roll their own cigarettes also set to be spending more. The tax on rolled cigarettes and cigars will be phased in over the next four years and is expected to earn the government $360 million. The move angered One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who came to the defence of smokers on social media, telling her followers she 'won't support this'. The banana levy has increased to half-a-cent per kilogram and will aid in the repayment of $3 million paid by the government to the banana industry's battle against Panama disease The Australian Government will adjust the tax on rolled cigarettes and cigars (Stock Image) 'If you roll your own smokes you're not going to like this budget. Looks like smokers will get whacked again. We won't support this,' Ms Hanson posted. 'If the Government really wanted to help smokers it should look at supporting our plan to legalise e-cigarettes.' But it's not just everyday items that will be affected by the budget, with a Gold Pass allowing travel for former parliamentarians set to be abolished. Only former Prime Ministers will be granted access to the Life Gold Pass. Pauline Hanson was not in favour of the tax on rolled cigarettes or cigars The government will save more than $2.6 million over the next five years under the cut. The budget also revealed a massive $30 million will go towards broadcasting women sport and niche sport on subscription television. Sports with a 'high level of community involvement' will also be included in the package to promote participation. Festival Australia will be funded with $1.2 million to help support community participation in arts at festivals in regional areas. President Donald Trump has defended his sensational firing of FBI Director James Comey by mocking Senate minority leader 'cryin' Chuck Schumer. Trump sent shockwaves through Washington when he dismissed Comey in a letter yesterday that read: 'You are hereby terminated and removed from office immediately.' Comey, who was appointed in 2013, was dismissed after he provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about classified emails from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner's computer. It took little over an hour for Democrats, led by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, to claim the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia. Schumer said: 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' He then called on Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor to look into ties to Russia, saying: 'America depends on you to restore faith in our criminal justice system which is going to be badly shattered after the administration's actions today.' In a tweet Trump wrote: 'Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp.' Scroll down for video President Donald Trump has defended his sensational firing of FBI Director James Comey by mocking Senate minority leader 'cryin' Chuck Schumer Recommendation: Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the president it was time for Comey to go after his evidence that Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner, some of them classified, was wrong It's over: How the White House delivered the news just after 5.30pm on Tuesday This defense came hours after Schumer claimed that he told the President that firing Comey was 'a very bad idea'. However, as the President pointed out, Schumer has previously been outspoken in his criticism of Comey. In November Schumer told Bloomberg: 'I do not have confidence in him any longer.' He said then that he was incensed by Comey's decision to write to lawmakers with details about the investigation into Clinton's private email server, less than two weeks before the election. That being said, in Schumer's press briefing, he didn't offer up any specific support for the former FBI director, he simply pointed out the convenient timing of the firing. 'Mistake': The White House put out a dossier which consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer - but Schumer said the president needed to now appoint a special prosecutor to look into the claims of collusion with the Russians Comey, 56, was blindsided by being let go. He learned about it on live television screens he could see as he addressed agents in the Los Angeles field office, the New York Times reported. Incredibly, he told the agents he thought it was a fairly funny prank until other members of his staff took him off stage and told him it was true, the paper said. His motorcade was seen on a Los Angeles freeway after the firing as it made its way through slow-moving traffic to a chartered Gulfstream V, which Comey boarded at Hawthorne Municipal Airport just over three hours after his termination. The president used the firing letter to boast that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation - a reference to allegations being touted by his opponents that he somehow colluded with the Kremlin in its bid to bring down Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who blamed Comey for costing her the election, said 'no comment' through an aide. The White House's deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claimed Clinton would have fired Comey as well. She claimed Comey had 'lost the confidence of the rank and file within the FBI', as well as both sides of the political aisle. But the Republican senator chairing the Intelligence Committee investigation into whether Russia hacked the election, Richard Burr, added to the questions over the sacking as he said: 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. Farewell: Comey was seen just over three hours after his firing as he shook hands with law enforcement officers in Los Angeles before boarding a private jet Last gesture: Comey clapped the back of a uniformed officer as he prepared to board the jet which will fly him away from Los Angeles, where he was as the president fired him Up in the air: Comey leaves public life effectively in disgrace after being fired by the president, boarding a chartered Gulfstream V at Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Los Angeles On his way: In a bizarre spectacle, the ousted FBI director's motorcade was filmed on its way from the Los Angeles field office of the agency - caught in the city's notorious slow traffic The FBI chief told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Abedin had made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of Clinton-related emails to Weiner, 'some of which contain classified information'. But he was wrong - and is now being fired. Weiner is still being investigated by the FBI for sexting a 15-year-old girl The firing happened in the late afternoon. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters shortly after 5.30pm that 'the president has accepted the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' A written statement from Spicer, sent minutes later, confirmed that Trump 'acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.' Trump said: 'The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement.' Full court press: Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway went on CNN three hours after the firing to defend the move and said: 'It's not a cover-up.' How the news broke: Reporters at the White House were given copies of the press release and letter from the president just after 5.30pm, announcing Comey's sacking Going into battle: Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were all speaking outside the West Wing on Tuesday night to members of the media WHAT NOW? THE CANDIDATES TIPPED TO SUCCEED COMEY With James Comey ousted as FBI director, President Donald Trump has to select a replacement for a new 10-year term, and he is likely to reach outside the bureau to find someone to run the law enforcement agency. Here are some possible candidates: Rudy Giuliani Rudi Giuliani has been linked with the vacant position, but his appointment is likely to be opposed by the Senate The former New York mayor would be an attractive choice for Trump, as Giuliani was among his most vocal supporters during the presidential race and has a background in law enforcement. However this loyalty would make his appointment unlikely, CNN reports, as he would be extremely unlikely to get the backing of the Senate. He has been outspoken in his opposition to Hillary Clinton. Ray Kelly Ray Kelly, the longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, could be a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions The longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, Kelly was in charge of the force in the years following 9/11, when terror threats were routine. His tough-on-crime stance, including support for provocative tactics like stop-and-search, could make him a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr Kelly defended a police operation, exposed by The Associated Press, that conducted secret surveillance of Muslims. He could work with Trump and Sessions on anti-terrorism efforts. Chris Christie New Jersey governor Chris Christie has a mixed relationship with Trump, but could bring law enforcement experience to the job Though his relationship with Trump has been mixed, the governor of New Jersey has known the president for years and could bring law enforcement experience to the job. He is a former Republican-appointed United States attorney in New Jersey, and he cited that background time and again during his 2016 presidential campaign. David Clarke David Clarke has been a fierce Trump supporter and has described himself as 'one of those bare-knuckle fighters' A wild-card, but the outspoken and polarising Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff has been a fierce supporter of Mr Trump and even landed a speaking spot at last summer's Republican National Convention. A conservative firebrand known for his cowboy hat, Mr Clarke has called himself 'one of those bare-knuckles fighters' and has been critical of what he called the "hateful ideology" of the Black Lives Matters movement. But he would be a long shot given that a county jury recently recommended criminal charges against seven Milwaukee County jail staffers over the dehydration death of an inmate who went without water for seven days. Trey Gowdy Trey Gowdy criticized Comey for not prosecuting Hillary Clinton over the email server investigation The South Carolina Republican led the House committee investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's actions surrounding the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Mr Gowdy is also a former federal prosecutor who boasts of his work on drug trafficking, bank robberies and child pornography cases. He was among politicians critical of Mr Comey's decision not to prosecute Mrs Clinton over the email server investigation, saying other government officials would have been prosecuted if they handled classified information like she did. Andrew McCabe Andrew McCabe was yesterday named Acting FBI Director by President Trump following Comey's dismissal Appointed yesterday as Acting FBI director, McCabe has worked at the bureau for 21 years, having joined as a special agent in 1996. He has expertise in counterterrorism and interrogation, but he is currently under review for his involvement in the Clinton scandal after his wife received funds from a close friend of Hillary for her political campaign in 2015. Before McCabe was appointed as the Deputy Director of the FBI, his wife Jill McCabe ran as a Democrat for the Virginia stat senate in 2015. Her campaign received funds from the state Democratic Party and a political action committee run by Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons. He has, however, been part of the same investigation which Comey was fired for, and this is likely to work against him when Trump names his pick. Advertisement Spicer added that 'a search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately.' The president informed Comey of his sacking in writing, taking the opportunity to underscore that the decision had nothing to do with any ongoing probes involving him personally. 'While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,' the letter read in part. The FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe, will act as leader until there is a permanent appointment confirmed by the Senate. COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. 9 May: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement The sacking is the latest twist in the astonishing chain of events set off by Clinton deciding to use a private server while she was Secretary of State. Last week Comey was questioned under oath about why he had written a letter to members of Congress at the end of October revealing a renewed investigation into Clinton's handling of classified emails. In his sworn testimony, Comey told senators that Abedin, a former top Hillary Clinton aide and Weiner's estranged wife, made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of emails to her husband, 'some of which contain classified information.' But the Justice Department sent the Judiciary Committee a letter late on Tuesday acknowledging that Comey's statement was inaccurate. Spicer had punted earlier in the day when he was asked whether Comey's job was secure. 'I haven't asked him,' he said then. 'I have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about this.' The FBI is also probing Comey's controversial decision to notify lawmakers just before the election that his team was re-examining its investigation into Clinton's emails by looking into messages found on Weiner's laptop. The letter is viewed by many as costing Clinton the election, since she lost to Trump by less than a single percentage point in key swing states after polling indicated she was well in front of her opponent before the the late move. Rosenstein told the president in writing on Tuesday: 'I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails.' And Sessions wrote Trump in a letter: 'I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI.' White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pushed back on questions about Trump's praise for Comey's actions with respect to the Clinton investigation during the campaign as she began a White House spin assault three hours after the sacking. 'I think you're looking at the wrong set of facts here,' she told Anderson Cooper on CNN. 'In other words, you're going back to the campaign. This man is the president of the United States. He acted decisively today. He took the recommendation of his deputy attorney general,' Conway said. 'He has lost confidence in the FBI director and he took the recommendation of Rod Rosenstein,' she said, reading from Rosenstein's letter. Asked about Senate Intelligence chair Burr's statement that he was troubled by the firing, Conway pushed back. 'So the same senators that just voted to confirm this man whose integrity in doubt 94 to 6 two short weeks ago. We're supposed to believe the derogatory descriptions you just made of him?' she asked. Countering Schumer's claim of a cover-up, she said: 'He's wrong. It's not a cover-up.' 'In fact the president makes very clear in his letter the fact that Mr Comey on at least three occasions assured the president that he is not under investigation,' Conway continued, upping the ante on Trump's claim of three separate assurances. Asked when Trump got the assurances, Conway said: 'That's between the president of the United States and Director Comey. Spicer said just last Wednesday that the president had confidence in Comey, whom former president Barack Obama appointed to a ten-year term. Taunt: John Podesta, who could have been a senior government figure if Clinton had won after being campaign chair, rushed to twist the knife on deposed James Comey The end: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein delivered the fatal blow to Comey. He was away from the Washington D.C. headquarters of the FBI, visiting its field office in Los Angeles and had been due to speak at a recruitment event at the Directors Guild of America building. Fired: James Comey is being fired with immediate effect after he misled the Senate on how classified emails ended up on pervert Anthony Weiner's computer. This was the Wednesday May 3 testimony which cost him his career But Trump had launched into a Twitter tirade against the FBI chief in the immediate wake of his testimony last week - and there were claims that the sacking had been under consideration for days, before the Abedin testimony. 'FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!' Trump had tweeted. Spicer told reporters then: 'The president has confidence in the director.' Testifying about the Clinton email controversy, Comey told Senators his agents uncovered 'hundreds of thousands' of emails on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Weiner that Abedin has forwarded her now-estranged husband so he could print them out for her. WHAT THEY'RE SAYING The sacking of the FBI Director sent shockwaves through politics. 'Today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement' - President Donald Trump No comment - Hillary Clinton's aide 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' - Senator Chuck Schumer, Democratic Minority Leader 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee.' - Senator Richard Burr, Republican chair of Intelligence Committee 'This didn't work out well for Nixon. And it won't for @realDonaldTrump--or the country' - David Axelrod, ex-Obama aide 'I have deep respect for James Comey. This is a loss to the FBI and the nation.' - James Clapper, former director of national intelligence 'While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office' - John McCain, Republican senator Advertisement But he - fatally - misspoke. Gregory A. Brower, the FBI's assistant director in the Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote to the Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon to 'clarify' Comey's testimony about Abedin's role in allowing classified material to find its way to her husband's computer. Minutes after his letter emerged, his boss was fired. Most of the 'hundreds and thousands' of emails, Brower wrote, were there as a result of backups of other devices and not manually sent by Abedin. Only 'two e-mail chains containing classified information were manually forwarded to Mr. Weiner's account,' he wrote. Ten additional email chains contained classified material all part of device backups and 'all twelve' had already been reviewed by the FBI. That was the fatal blow which ended Comey's service just three years into a ten-year term he was given by President Obama. He is only the second FBI director to be fired - the first was Williams Sessions, terminated by Bill Clinton over alleged improper use of an FBI plane and other questions over his spending. Trump's historic move spread a firestorm through politics and immediately showed up fault lines in his own party. The most worrying reaction for the White House to the firing will be that of Burr, the Republican North Carolina senator who chairs the Intelligence Committee. In a strongly-worded statement he said: 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. 'I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee. 'In my interactions with the Director and with the Bureau under his leadership, he and the FBI have always been straightforward with our Committee. 'Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees. His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation.' The possibility of a Republican backlash does not appear to have been foreseen by the White House, which consciously reached out to Democrats before the firing. The president personally called a series of Democratic senators to tell them Comey was gone - apparently before Comey himself knew. The first to announce she had been told by Trump was Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. 'President Trump called me at 5:30 p.m. and indicated he would be removing Director Comey, saying the FBI needed a change,' Feinstein said in a statement. 'The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee.' The Trump administration distributed a one-page summary to reporters that it called 'additional background information and context' about the surprising personnel change. It consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader and the party's most senior election figure, who said last Wednesday of the FBI Director: 'I do not have confidence in him any longer.' The supplemental information also cited an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that '[t]he best service Mr. Comey can render his country now is to resign.' But Schumer emerged less than two hours after the firing to issue a broadside over it - and to reveal he too had been phoned by the President to be told the news. He said the firing would lead to the belief Trump was engaging in a cover-up of alleged collusion with Russia in the run-up to the election. Schumer said Trump had called him in the afternoon. 'I said, 'Mr President with all due respect you are making a very big mistake'. And he didn't really answer,' he said. He added that unless there was a special prosecutor appointed: 'Are people going to suspect cover-up? Absolutely.' HERO TO ZERO: FIRED FBI BOSS ENDED UP HATED BY EVERYONE Attorney General James Comey sealed a reputation as a brave and principled actor after a 2004 standoff during the Bush administration, when he refused White House efforts to get him to reauthorize warrantless eavesdropping while Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Comey had been appointed deputy attorney general by President George W. Bush, having served as a U.S. attorney in New York under Rudy Giuliani in New York. With Ashcroft incapacitated, Bush administration officials wanted Ashcroft, and then Comey, to sign off on an extension of the authority, with just hours to go before an N.S.A. program expired. Comey refused. His stand was a major reason why President Obama nominated him to be head of the FBI in 2013. Obama hailed Comey as a person of 'fierce independence and deep integrity' as he nominated him for the FBI post, which carries a 10-year term. A devout Catholic, a registered Republican and a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he seemed to radiate independence from the Democratic machine. And many congressional Democrats became far less supportive of Comey after the 2016 presidential election. Obama's man: Republican James Comey was chosen by the Democratic president for his principled stand but ended up in the words of one senator as 'as popular as cholera' Led by defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, many have griped about Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal. On July 5th, 2016, Comey personally announced the FBI's decision not to charge Clinton in connection with its investigation of her private email server and handling of classified material. He nevertheless called her conduct 'extremely careless.' Then on October 28, he told lawmakers the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails in connection to the investigation. The FBI had uncovered thousands of emails on disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop that had been sent to his wife, longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey drew the Democrats' ire once again when he announced two days before the election that the investigation hadn't turned up anything to alter the decision not to prosecute. Clinton said it only made matters worse and stole headlines. In the congressional hearing where he made inaccurate statements about about Abedin's emails, Democrats grilled Comey about why he had not revealed the existence of an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian election interference. Comey said the FBI 'didn't say a word about' the Russia investigation until months into, whereas he had testified under oath about the existence of the Clinton investigation. Advertisement In a sign of the Democrats' belief that they can make the Comey firing a damaging issue for Trump and the Republicans, he said: 'The American people need to have faith that an investigation as serious as this one is being conducted impartially without a shred of bias. 'The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor.' He also contradicted the White House over his backing for the move, which was implied in their dossier. 'I never called on the president to fire Director Comey,' he said. 'If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the president got into office. 'But they didn't fire him then. Why did it happen today? We know the House is investigating Russian interference in our elections that benefited the Trump campaign. 'We know the Senate is investigating. We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' He also opened another line of attack, this time over the role of sessions, saying: 'It is troubling that Attorney General Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russian investigation, played a role in firing the man leading it.' Clinton, however, refused to get involved. A spokesman told CNN the 2016 loser 'has no comment at this time'. However John Podesta, who served as Clinton's campaign chairman in 2016, snarked on Twitter that Trump was in fact under an FBI microscope. Meet the new boss - Clinton-tainted like the old one: Andrew McCabe who will head the FBI until a permanent replacement is found had oversight of the Clinton email probe. His wife received cash for her Democratic political campaign from a close friend of the Clintons who directed it from a fundraising effort which Hillary Clinton had aided by turning up for an event Critical questions: The White House will be troubled by the reaction of Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who said it complicated his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Loser Hillary Clinton has still to react to Comey's sacking. 'Didn't you know you're supposed to wait til Saturday night to massacre people investigating you?' he asked in a tweet - a reference to President Nixon's notorious mass firings during Watergate. Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Judiciary Committee member, said in a statement that 'while the White House is under investigation by the FBI, firing the head of the FBI raises massive questions, and the Senate should get to the bottom of it.' Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen tweeted that '[f]iring Comey has the foul stench of an attempt to stop an ongoing investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.' Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkeley insisted that the vacancy at the top of the FBI was a clear signal that Republicans should appoint an independent investigator to probe alleged ties between Trumpworld and Russia. 'In case the need for an independent special prosecutor to investigate #TrumpRussia ties wasn't clear enough already ... it sure is now,' Merkeley tweeted. Former senior Barack Obama aide David Axelrod used his Twitter account to compare Trump's decision on Tuesday with former president Richard Nixon's 1973 'Saturday Night Massacre' when Nixon fired an independent special prosecutor along with the attorney general and his deputy. NEW CHIEF G-MAN WAS ALSO CAUGHT UP IN CLINTON SCANDAL James Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, will take over the law enforcement agency. McCabe's wife is a Democrat who ran for the state senate in 2015 in Virginia, before he was promoted to the FBI's No. 2 position. Terry McAullife, the Virginia governor and a close friend of both the Clintons, directed $675,000 Jill McCabe's way for her campaign. The Virginia governor's political action committee, Common Good VA, spent $467,000 on her losing campaign. The state Democratic Party gave her nearly $208,000. A month before McAullife's PAC made its first donation to McCabe, Hillary Clinton headlined a fundraiser for the group. As deputy director of the FBI, it was McCabe who oversaw the investigation into Clinton's secret server, as well as the bureau's investigations into alleged terrorists and spies. He is under review by an inspector general for his involvement in the Clinton case, in light of his wife's ties to the former presidential candidate. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, also asked the FBI in a March letter about McCabe's role in the Russian probe and whether it 'raises the appearance a conflict of interest in light of his wife's ties with Clinton's associates.' The Republican lawmaker asked Comey if McCabe would be recusing himself from that investigation, suggesting in the letter that McCabe faces a possible conflict of interest. Advertisement 'This didn't work out well for Nixon. And it won't for @realDonaldTrump--or the country,' Axelrod wrote. And an ex-Clinton aide suggested it was part of a vast Russian conspiracy. 'This is not on the up and up,' said Brian Fallon, the 2016 loser's ex-press secretary. 'All these months later it still stands out that Director Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation was a travesty. 'But the timing and the nature of this firing that the Trump administration is announcing now belies any possible explanation that this has anything to do with the Clinton investigation. It is clearly and act by a president who is feeling the heat from the FBI's ongoing Russia investigation.' Robbie Mook, who had been Clinton's campaign manager, did not applaud the move that ousted the man she now says was - at least in part - her nemesis. 'Twilight zone. I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me,' Mook said on Twitter. Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, another Democrat, piled on the Tricky Dick comparisons. 'The President has removed the sitting FBI Director in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country one that implicates senior officials in the Trump campaign and administration,' Leahy said. 'This is nothing less than Nixonian.' Critics of President Trump's firing were quick to invoke Richard Nixon's infamous 'Saturday Night Massacre,' where the embattled president fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of the two top Justice Department officials. The sensational Oct. 20th, 1973 incident occurred as Cox was probing the Watergate scandal and cover-up and clashing with the White House over previously secret tape recordings. First, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned his post. Then Nixon ordered deputy attorney general William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused. Solicitor General Robert Bork then became attorney general, and went along with Nixon's demand. FBI agents immediately sealed off the offices of Cox, Richardson, and Ruckelshaus after the firings. How the Republicans deal with the sensational move remains to be seen. The Senate must approve anyone the president selects to replace Comey. To be confirmed, nominees need only a bare majority of lawmakers to vote for them following a rule change that took place when Democrats were in power. Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate and can use the vice president as a tie-breaker if they need to, meaning that Trump's nominee is all but assured to be approved. Trump called Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is leading a Senate subcommittee probe of Russian interference, 'literally minutes' before he sacked Comey, his spokesman told the Post and Courier. Been here before? Democrats rushed to compare firing Comey to Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre - but the only previous firing of an FBI director was of William Sessions (right) in 1993 - by Bill Clinton. Sessions was let go for using an FBI plane for private visits Graham released a statement backing up the decision. 'I know this was a difficult decision for all concerned. I appreciate Director Comey's service to our nation in a variety of roles,' said Graham, who clashed with Trump during the campaign and probed his alleged Russia ties this week. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON'S 'SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE' Following the President's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was the head of the investigation into collusion between Trump's administration and Russia, some were quick to ask whether or not this would be his 'Saturday Night Massacre'. In 1973, President Richard Nixon also fired the official responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing in his administration. On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was head of the investigation into the Watergate Scandal. His firing lead to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. That Saturday night, news broadcast networks turned their airtime over to the 'firestorm' and 'constitutional crisis.' The pushback against these firings was so significant that Nixon was forced to name a new special prosecutor, Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski. The story then played out over the next 10 months, ending when a unanimous Supreme Court forced Nixon to hand over the tapes. Their contents proved the cover-up that led to Nixon's eventual resignation. Advertisement 'Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests,' Graham said. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee's Republican chairman, said in his own statement that '[t]he handling of the Clinton email investigation is a clear example of how Comey's decisions have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI.' 'In my efforts to get answers, the FBI, under Comey's leadership, has been slow or failed to provide information that Comey himself pledged to provide,' he added. 'The effectiveness of the FBI depends upon the public trust and confidence. Unfortunately, this has clearly been lost.' There were also the first signs of a split among Republicans over the firing as John McCain, the senator who has long been a Trump critic, declined to back the move and said there needed to be a special committee to investigate the Russia questions. 'While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office,' he said, 'James Comey is a man of honor and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances. 'I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.' His tribute was one of the few made in Washington to Comey - who had been described last week as 'as about as popular as cholera' by one senator- although the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, did come to his aid. Clapper, who has testified frequently alongside Comey and appeared on Capitol Hill Monday, backed up his counterpart, telling CNN: 'I have deep respect for James Comey. This is a loss to the FBI and the nation.' THE LETTERS WHICH ENDED COMEY'S FBI CAREER Bill Shorten has given mixed messages about the federal Budget - despite experts labeling it the 'most Labor budget' from a Coalition government in recent history. The Opposition leader unleashed a string of critical tweets on Tuesday night after the Budget reveal, describing it as a 'tax cut for millionaires and a tax hike for every working Australian'. But on Wednesday morning Mr Shorten confirmed Labor would not stand in the way of a new levy on the nation's big five banks and remained open to a hike in the Medicare levy - two of the Budget's most contentious selling points. 'Labor supports a levy on the big banks, but we want to ensure it won't be passed on to customers. Turnbull hasn't been clear on that,' Mr Shorten said on Wednesday. Mixed messages? Opposition leader Bill Shorten (right) slammed the federal Budget on Tuesday but confirmed Labor would support a levy on the big banks on Wednesday Treasurer Scott Morrison has been accused of unveiling the 'most Labor Budget' from a Coalition government in recent history The government has removed the deficit levy from high-income earners, but will lift the Medicare levy on all workers by 0.5 percentage points in 2019. At the same time, schools will face a $22 billion easing in funding and the Medicare GP rebate freeze won't come off in its entirety. Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said the opposition would take time to respond to the proposed increase in the Medicare levy to 2.5 per cent, which will help fund the national disability insurance scheme. 'It would be irresponsible to rule out supporting it,' he told ABC radio on Wednesday. Speaking to ABC24 on Wednesday morning, Mr Shorten dismissed suggestions that the budget had sought to implement a number of Labor policies. Not impressed: Mr Shorten unleashed a string of critical tweets on Tuesday night but on Wednesday said Labor was open to an increase in the Medicare levy The government has removed the deficit levy from high-income earners (Mr Turnbull and Mr Shorten share an unusual handshake as they face media on Wednesday) Mr Shorten confirmed Labor would not stand in the way of a new levy on the nation's big five banks 'This is a government who want to look like they are doing something but they are not really, are they?' he said. 'On one hand, they have got a bank levy and we are not going to get in the way of that, but on the other hand they want to give them a corporate tax cut. 'Malcolm Turnbull thinks if you look after the top end of town, then the crumbs off that table will help everyone else. 'We don't buy that, we never did. We are going to keep fighting for real fairness. 'Malcolm Turnbull thinks fairness, if you repeat it enough, makes an unfair budget fairer and it doesn't. It is what you stand for. We know and this government doesn't.' Mr Bowen also remained critical of the nation's financial blueprint, slamming Mr Turnbull for 'picking big businesses over working class families.' 'They've changed their tactics, they've changed their rhetoric, but they'll never change their minds,' Mr Bowen said. 'Budgets are about choices, and Malcolm Turnbull has made his choices tonight. 'He has chosen big business over middle and working class families. He has chosen multinationals over Medicare. He has chosen big business over battlers.' Entertainment / Music by Staff reporter FOLLOWING last year's successful holding of the inaugural Bulawayo Music Carnival, organisers want to have another go at it this year with a mouth-watering line up of artistes from the city.The second edition of the carnival will once again be held at Hartsfield Tshisanyama on Friday.Artistes expected to perform include Iyasa, Simunye Simunye, Sandra Ndebele, Mzoe 7, Hwabaraty, Madlela Skhobokhobo, Kontrol Tribe, Guluva 7, Cal Vin, ASAPH, TKP, Msiz Kay and Tiya.The fete will coincide with the International Nurses Day celebrations with entry pegged at $3. Cooler boxes will be allowed upon payment of $5.Sandra Ndebele commended the carnival organisers for holding the event again."The organisers have come up with the concept and it's now up to us, the artistes to deliver.We should strive to do our best given that revellers will include people from outside Bulawayo," said Ndebele.Rapper POY said: "My team is very excited to be performing at the carnival for the second time. We're rehearsing as we want our act to be a very energetic interactive performance.We support the Bulawayo Carnival as it provides a platform for Bulawayo artistes to showcase their talents," he said.Bulawayo man-of-the-moment, Madlela Skhobokhobo of the Ngamnanka fame is expected to demonstrate why he is enjoying a huge following."All I can say is that people should expect nothing but my best on stage. It's a different market and I'll throw in one or two new tracks such as the one I wrote for Highlanders FC. Obviously I won't leave out Ngamnanka which people love," said Skhobokhobo.For DJ Ace Kater and Ras Boom of the Izankaleli fame, this will be their first time to perform on a big stage in Bulawayo. The two said they were more than excited."We've been waiting for such a platform for a long time. This is one big event and we promise to give nothing but the best," said Ras Boom."After the 40 000 views we got on YouTube for Izankaleli, we hope people in the City of Kings will come out in their numbers to support us. We've new tracks, MaDube and Hope You Serious which fans will sample at the carnival." Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi is defying calls to step down after being accused of taking 33 free international flights and not disclosing them. The State Administrative Tribunal found Ms Scaffidi had committed 45 serious breaches of local government laws, by not disclosing travel and accommodation gifts. At a council meeting on Tuesday evening, WA Today reported Ms Scaffidi was defiant about her future. 'I had a phone call with both (Mark McGowan and Mike Nahan)... walking is not an option for me,' Ms Scaffidi said. Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi (pictured) is defying calls for her to step down from her role, after being accused of taking 33 free international flights and not disclosing them 'I will have a lot more to say on the topic when I can. I won't be resigning, there is no need for me to resign, that is not sought by the director general.' She told the council meeting she would not resign and would weather whatever the process turned up. 'I am prepared to take any penalty... but let the process take its course,' she said. 'I've just been abiding by the process... I hadn't enjoyed it but I've gone through it.' By law, Ms Scaffidi should have disclosed any gift worth $200 or greater. The action was brought against her after she made omissions in her 2008-09 annual return, including a luxury, $36,000 package to the Beijing Olympics paid for by BHP Billiton. The omissions were deemed serious misconduct by the Corruption and Crime Commission in 2015. The State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) found Ms Scaffidi (pictured) committed 45 serious breaches of the Local Government Act. By law, Ms Scaffidi should have disclosed any gift worth $200 or greater Ms Scaffidi faces possible suspension or dismissal from her role as Lord Mayor. Her matter is listed for a penalty hearing on May 16. The SAT also looked into her return for 2013-14 at a hearing in February, where she admitted five breaches of the act including the mining giant's gift. She argued unsuccessfully to the SAT, which handed down its finding on Tuesday, that a distinction should be drawn between accommodation provided to her personally, as opposed to when she was in the course of carrying out an activity in her capacity as Lord Mayor or otherwise as a councillor. Ms Scaffidi conceded she was not careful with her annual expense reports claiming she was sometimes 'too busy' to sort it out, WA Today reports. In an email she wrote to a staff member, Ms Scaffidi said: 'Hope five star - let them know, I don't stay in trash'. The action was bought against Ms Scaffidi (pictured) after she made omissions in her 2008-09 annual return, including a luxury, $36,000 package to the Beijing Olympics paid for by BHP Billiton In October 2015 Ms Scaffidi said she 'would've disclosed my underwear' if she knew she had to, WA Today reports. Ms Scaffidi has resisted repeated calls for her to step down, including from new Labor Premier Mark McGowan, who vowed during the election campaign to sack the entire council if the Local Government Act allowed it, saying his party had a dim view of its propriety. Mr McGowan later acknowledged not everyone on the council deserved to be punished, but wrote to Ms Scaffidi last month, asking her to consider the best interests of the City of Perth and make an honourable decision and resign. She was characteristically defiant, telling reporters it was a 'desperate political move'. Her omissions were deemed serious misconduct by the Corruption and Crime Commission in 2015. She is pictured hugging a Monopoly character before the board game was embraced in Perth in April 2013 Ms Scaffidi (pictured) conceded she was not careful with her annual expense reports claiming she was sometimes 'too busy' to sort it out 'How far does this newly-elected state government intend to interfere with local government?' she said. 'What a sorry day this is for Western Australian democracy and the citizens of Perth.' SAT president Justice Jeremy Curthoys adjourned the matter until May 16, expediting the delivery of penalties and costs as the adverse finding created uncertainty for the council. A City of Perth spokesman told AAP the council would continue as usual until then. Ms Scaffidi was kicked off the Local Government Standards Panel in 2015 over the scandal. A retail store staff member's bleak message about the Sydney housing market and nightlife has been praised online. The tongue-in-cheek message was pictured at a JB Hi-Fi on Tuesday, promoting popular life-simulation computer game 'The Sims City Living'. 'The only way Sydney residents can own a house and enjoy the nightlife,' the review read. Reddit users praised the critique by 'Morris', saying the message was 'depressingly accurate' about living in Sydney. A tongue-in-cheek message promoting a computer game at retail store JB Hi-Fi (pictured) has been praised online for its 'depressingly accurate' view of living in Sydney The JB Hi-Fi tag was promoting Sims 4 City Living (pictured) - a game where players create and simulate the daily activities of virtual people A house in life-simulation game The Sims, which is the only place Sydneysiders can buy a home, according to a JB Hi-Fi staffer 'The City Living expansion pack's 'houses' are all apartments that have to be rented. So you don't even own those either,' one person said. More than 500 people have commented on the Reddit post in less than 24 hours, with many criticising Sydney lockout laws. 'You poor b******s in Sydney. Even Perth has a better nightlife than you do at this point,' a Reddit user said. '1.30am lockouts? That's barbaric,' another person commented. The JB Hi-Fi tag was promoting Sims 4 City Living - a game where players create and simulate the daily activities of virtual people. The picture was revealed moments after the Turnbull government introduced new measures to tackle housing affordability for first-home buyers. Reddit users praised the critique by 'Morris', saying the message was 'accurate' about living in Sydney More than 500 people have commented on the Reddit post in less than 24 hours, with many criticising Sydney lockout laws (stock image) Treasurer Scott Morrison announced first-home buyers will be able to salary sacrifice for a mortgage deposit on Tuesday night. Those looking to buy their first home will be able to sacrifice up to $30,000 into their superannuation account from July 1. Meanwhile, lockout laws continue to disappoint young Sydneysiders and business owners. Licensed venues in the CBD and Kings Coss are forced to close doors at 1.30am and serve last drinks at 3am. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Vladimir Putin's top diplomat at the White House on Wednesday, just one day after firing former FBI Director James Comey, who was heading an investigation that was looking into the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia. The meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Trump would be the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia in Trump's presidency. It would also signal that the two countries have improved ties that Trump recently described as being at an 'all-time low'. The meeting between Lavrov and Trump is scheduled to take place in the Oval Office at 10.30am. That will be after Lavrov meets with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, which had already been scheduled to discuss Ukraine and Syria among other issues. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, will be meeting with President Donald Trump Wednesday after a meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left Trump, pictured Sunday, is scheduled to meet with Lavrov, Vladimir Putin's top diplomat, on Wednesday morning in the Oval Office, which will be the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia in Trump's presidency A Russian plan to stabilize Syria after more than six years of civil war is the most urgent foreign policy topic. But the meeting will be impossible to separate from the Trump administration's unfolding political drama in Washington, where an FBI and congressional investigations are looking into possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and the Kremlin related to last year's presidential election. US intelligence agencies accuse Moscow of meddling to help Trump's chances of victory. The meeting between Trump and Lavrov comes one day after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, pictured. Comey was heading the FBI's investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and Trump's advisers during the 2016 presidential campaign There has been speculation that Trump fired Comey Tuesday because of the FBI's investigation into a possible relationship between Trump's advisers and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election. However, several White House spokespeople have denied those claims, saying Comey was fired because Trump no longer had confidence in Comey's ability to 'faithfully execute his duties'. The taint of Russia probes has been impossible for Trump to shake. Less than a month into Trump's presidency, he fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying Flynn misled senior administration officials about his pre-inauguration talks with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador in Washington. In a Senate hearing Monday, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said she bluntly warned Trump's White House in January that Flynn 'essentially could be blackmailed' by the Russians because he apparently had lied to his bosses about his contacts with Kislyak. The White House has denied that Trump fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. Several of Trump's spokespeople have said Comey was fired because Trump, pictured, no longer had confidence in Comey's ability to 'faithfully execute his duties' Lavrov, left, was already scheduled to speak with Rex Tillerson, right, on Wednesday during his visit to the US. They are supposed to be discussing Ukraine and Syria, among other issues Trump's meeting with Lavrov, far right, will also signal that the two countries have improved ties that Trump recently described as being at an 'all-time low'. Lavrov is pictured with Tillerson, far left, at a meeting at the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany in February Trump has said he has no ties to Russia and isn't aware of any involvement by his aides in any Russian election interference. He calls the various investigations a 'hoax' driven by Democrats still bitter that their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was defeated last year. But in the meantime, his hopes for a possible rapprochement with Moscow, so regularly repeated on the campaign trail, have been derailed. Ties soured further in April after the U.S. blamed a Russian ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, for a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians and Trump fired some 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response. After Tillerson visited Putin and Lavrov in Moscow on April 12, Trump said flatly, 'Right now we're not getting along with Russia at all.' Still, Tillerson's meeting provided a blueprint for how the former Cold War foes might go about improving ties. Trump has said he has no ties to Russia and isn't aware of any involvement by his aides in any Russian election interference. Pictured from left to right are Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Tillerson and Lavrov ahead of the G20 foreign ministers meeting Trump has called the various investigations into Russian collusion with his presidential campaign a 'hoax' driven by Democrats still bitter that their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was defeated last year. Lavrov and Tillerson are pictured in Moscow when Tillerson visited Russia in April A main focus is Syria, where both governments want to end a civil war that has killed up to 400,000 people, contributed to a global refugee crisis and allowed the Islamic State group to emerge as a global terror threat. The continued fighting between rebels and Assad's military has complicated U.S. efforts to defeat IS. Lavrov will be coming to the American capital with a Russian plan to end the violence, after hashing out an agreement with Iran and Turkey last week. It focuses on the creation of four de-escalation zones. Critical details still need to be finalized and the U.S. response has been cautious, with top officials such as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis saying they're still studying the concept and its various unanswered questions. The would-be safe zones would not cover areas where the U.S.-led coalition is fighting IS. Despite the lack of clarity, the possibility of a meeting between Trump and Lavrov would in itself be a sign of some progress. The Russian diplomat hasn't visited Washington at all since 2013, a year before Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and two years before it intervened militarily in Syria to help Assad remain in power. Pauline Hanson has hit out at Budget increases to excise tax on tobacco for the second year in a row. The One Nation leader released her frustrations at announced tax increases to loose tobacco on Sky News on Tuesday night, claiming smokers paid more in tax than multinational corporations. Ms Hanson claimed smokers pay about 62 cents per cigarette just in taxes, figures backed up by the Australian Taxation Office. 'When you look at the figures on what they're going to reign in from tobacco, it's more than what they're getting from the multinationals,' she claimed. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has slammed a tax hike on loose tobacco, claiming smokers pay more tax to the Australian Government than multinational companies 'The multinationals are not paying their tax in this country.' The tax increase is intended to bring roll-your-own cigarettes into line with taxes paid on tailored cigarettes. Price hikes will start this year and continue through to 2020. Ms Hanson said multinational tax avoidance has been an issue for decades, with billions of dollars lost. 'These are areas I would attack. Not the battlers out there that want to have their cigarette,' she said. 'I'm not encouraging smoking by any means, but they are going to bring in more in taxes than the multinationals? Give me a break.' A tax increase on loose tobacco was announced to bring roll-your-own cigarettes into line with tailored cigarettes and remove the perception they are cheaper The newly revealed Budget also contained plans to toughen anti-tax avoidance measures. More than $4 billion in tax liabilities is expected to be scooped up by the Australian Taxation Office in 2016/17. But Treasurer Scott Morrison says it's not easy. Many of these large multinationals use complex business accounting structures that feed debt into their Australian offshoots while shifting the profits offshore. Under new excise hikes, in the 2017/18 financial year, smokers will contribute $11.6billion to the Budget - and about $15.1billion in 2020/21. The government will now expand the law to cover corporate structures using foreign partnerships, trusts and other aggressive tax avoidance strategies. 'Everyone, including multinational companies, has a responsibility to pay their fair share of tax in Australia on the profits they earn,' Mr Morrison and Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer said in a Budget statement on Tuesday. Following the 2016 Budget, where regular excise increases of 12.5 per cent were announced, the Queensland Senator wrote on her Facebook: 'If you're a smoker, you appear to be repaying the national debt'. 'It appears there will be more revenue raised from smokers than the multinational corporations.' Under new excise hikes, in the 2017/18 financial year, smokers will contribute $11.6billion to the Budget - and about $15.1billion in 2020/21. HOW MUCH DOES SMOKING ADD TO THE BUDGET? 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 $9.8billion $10.6billion $11.6billion $12.7billion $13.9billion $15.1billion Advertisement A report from Oxfam released last year revealed one in three companies reported on by the ATO paid no corporate tax in 2015, resulting in a huge loss to the public. 'As a result of tax dodging by Australian-based multinational corporations, the Australian public missed out on an estimated AUD $5-6 billion in 2014,' the report read. Through Twitter, Ms Hanson announced One Nation would not support the tax increase, and wanted the government to find a better way of helping smokers quit. 'Looks like smokers will get whacked again. We won't support this,' she wrote. 'If the Government really wanted to help smokers it should look at supporting our plan to legalise e-cigarettes.' Scott Morrison has called on the big banks to accept the new $6billion levy without passing it on to customers. The Treasurer said the government would be watching the 'big five' after suggestions mortgage rates will skyrocket to compensate for the budget measure. 'If they seek to change their prices, then I think their customers should be very unhappy with that,' he said during a heated discussion with Channel Nine's Karl Stefanovic on Wednesday. Scott Morrison has called on the big banks to accept the new $6billion levy without passing it on to customers 'The ACCC, our regulator, will keep close eye on the banks to make sure they're not lying to their customers. 'It will be a test of the banks' own honesty with their customers.' Mr Morrison said that with profits of $30billion, the 'big five' have a responsibility to help get the budget back in balance. Earlier, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the Seven Network the ACCC would be watching the banks 'very, very carefully indeed'. Mr Turnbull said it was only fair the 'most profitable banks in the world' were levied to help balance the nation's budget. The Treasurer (pictured) said the national regulator would be keeping an eye on the 'big five' Mr Morrison and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull arrive for early morning TV interviews outside Parliament House on Wednesday Under new measures, banks with liabilities of more than $100billion - Westpac, ANZ, Commonwealth, National Australia Bank and Macquarie Group - will be slugged 0.06 per cent on those liabilities each year from July. Mr Turnbull said the levy would raise $6billion over the next four years. 'That will assist us in bringing the budget back into balance and ensuring that our children and grandchildren are not burdened with a mountain of debt,' he said. Meanwhile, Mr Morrison also refused to rule out another increase to the Medicare levy while speaking to Stefanovic on Wednesday. 'We have no need to do that. The National Disability Insurance Scheme - this is the only thing we need to do to fund that,' he told the Today co-host. Stefanovic asked: 'Can you guarantee me this morning that there will be no further increases to Medicare levy?' Under new measures, banks with liabilities of more than $100billion will be slugged 0.06 per cent on those liabilities each year from July Mr Morrison also refused to rule out another increase to the Medicare levy during his heated exchange with Karl Stefanovic on Wednesday 'The Turnbull Government won't be increasing the Medicare levy other than to support the NDIS,' the Treasurer responded. Stefanovic continued to push Mr Morrison, questioning if the levy could increase. 'This is what we need to fully fund the NDIS Karl. We don't need to do anything more than this budget,' he responded. 'Just to clarify, the Medicare levy will not go higher?' the presenter asked. 'No need to do that Karl... I've answered the question. I think it's pretty clear.' Labour today unveiled plans to instigate 'one of the biggest tax increases in the last 30 years' to bankroll a spending spree on education. Jeremy Corbyn wants to hike corporation tax to 26 per cent to fund schools and grants to college students. But the Tories accused the Labour leader of breaking a promise to small businesses not to increase their tax bill. And the party's economic credibility risked taking a fresh battering as the tax rise has already been announced to fund another twelve election promises. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute For Fiscal Studies (IFS), told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that hiking the tax could backfire and discourage investment in Britain. He said: 'It would make it one of the biggest tax increases in the last 30 years or so. 'You could introduce an increase of that level, it would return the main rate of corporation tax to where it was six or seven years ago. Jeremy Corbyn and Labour's shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, pictured in Leeds today. They want to hike corporation tax to 26 per cent to pay for an education spending spree Several students get a selfie with the Labour leader after he delivers his speech promising to hike taxes to splash out on education 'But, I think, two important things about corporation tax - first, it's not a victimless tax, this would increase taxes by about 1 per cent of national income, so it would leave us all in the long run about 1 per cent worse off. 'And of course, it is people in the end who pay it and it would reduce incentives for companies to invest in the UK.' Tory Treasury Minister David Gauke said: 'This is yet more chaos from shambolic Jeremy Corbyn, who can't even agree with himself about whether taxes on small businesses should rise. 'Last month he promised them he wouldn't put up corporation tax, now he's hitting them with huge bills. 'While Theresa May and her Conservative team have simplified and cut taxes for small firms, Jeremy Corbyn would drop a tax bombshell on every small business and working family in Britain to pay for his nonsensical policies.' A Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) spokeswoman said: 'We are pressing Jeremy Corbyn to honour the commitment he made when he met with FSB members last month, for no increases to corporation tax for small businesses under a future Labour government.' Corporation tax the charge on companies' profits has been slashed from 28 per cent in 2010 to 19 per cent, and is due to come down to 17 per cent by 2020. But Labour said it would scrap the cuts and use the extra money to reduce primary class sizes, spend billions on school buildings, and give cash handouts to sixth formers. Around 580million a year will go on weekly payments of up to 30 for 16 to 18-year-olds who stay in education. The party will also restore grants for university students and scrap fees on courses for adult learners looking to 'retrain or upskill'. Under its plans, the headline rate of corporation tax will rise to 21 per cent in 2018-19, 24 per cent in 2019-20 and 26 per cent in 2020-21. Mr Corbyn, pictured at the policy launch today in Leeds, said businesses will benefit from investment in education so should pay for it Treasury Minister David Gauke, pictured at a conference in Luxembourg in 2014, has accused the Labour leader of breaking a promise not to raise taxes on small businesses Twelve ways the Labour Party has already spent the cash raised by hiking corporation tax Increase the adult skills budget Pay to support British steel Ending public sector pay restraint Reintroducing the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) Scrapping university tuition fees Extending pension credit paid to women hit by pension age rises To increase welfare payments paid through the universal credit Guarantee the pensions triple lock, which ensures pensions go up in line with inflation, pay or 2.5 per cent Pay for social care Pour more money into the NHS - including giving staff a pay rise Give more cash to schools Pay for bereavement payments, one-off tax-free sums paid to the spouse of someone who has died Advertisement Speaking at an event in Leeds today, Mr Corbyn said businesses will benefit from investment in education so should pay for it. He said: 'A higher-skilled and confident workforce is a must have for a fairer Britain negotiating in a post-Brexit world. 'Our businesses, both large and small, will prosper, on the back of education, skills and training finally being given serious attention by a very serious government. 'So it is only fair that businesses be asked to contribute to the plan by financing the steps that we are setting out today. 'And we will do this by revering the tax cuts made by the conservatives and still keep UK rates of corporation tax at the lowest of the group of seven most industrialised countries. 'It's what we term our new settlement.' He added: 'When it comes to small business, the backbone of our economy, a Labour government will restore small profits rates and make only a modest increase.' He said labour will 'slowly' raise corporation tax on larger businesses by the end of the next parliament. He said the plans is 'inclusive, fair and costed' and will help 'transform Britain'. The announcement comes as leading economists criticise Labour's plan to give free school meals to all primary pupils. Last month the party said that it would start charging VAT on private school fees to cover the 900million cost of the school dinners. Labour hint at plans to scrap university tuition fees in another expensive manifesto giveaway Labour today hinted that it would scrap university tuition fees raising fresh questions over how it will fund its expensive manifesto giveaways. Jeremy Corbyn told an audience in Leeds that he is carrying 'some stuff in my pocket' on university tuition fees but the plans would be revealed in the party's manifesto next week. While shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said she 'didn't want to give too much of the manifesto away'. She had earlier said voters should 'watch this space' when asked if Labour will pledge to scrap fees in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Students pay 9,000 a year on tuition fees and scrapping them would create a huge funding black hole in the higher education budget. Advertisement A scathing report from the IFS today warns the scheme would create a substantial 'deadweight loss' by paying for families who can easily afford the meals and that 'policymakers should think carefully about whether this is the best use of resources'. The report adds: 'Labour is proposing to take a benefit that is currently means-tested available only to pupils whose families meet certain criteria of disadvantage and extend it to all students. Universal programmes can bring benefits, such as removing the stigma that might otherwise prevent eligible students from taking up free meals. 'However, universal benefits are also costly. Rather than targeting funds at the most disadvantaged, they spread the money across all children, including those whose families are currently paying for school meals. 'This 'deadweight loss' can be substantial.' Sir James Munby, Britain's top family judge, said health and safety fears should take a backseat if it meant uprooting a person's life Separating elderly couples when they go into care is inhumane and could cause them to 'die of a broken heart', Britain's most senior family judge said yesterday. Sir James Munby said that he felt a sense of 'personal outrage' with the separation of couples who have been together for decades. He called for health and safety fears to take a back seat if 'uprooting' a person's life made them miserable. The judge, head of the Family Court, believes most people who rather stay with their partner than move away to somewhere 'safer'. Sir James said: 'I read with personal outrage reports of cases where the results of the operation of the system is that people who may have been together for 30, 40 or 50 years are separated in their final years. That is simple inhumanity'. Sir James told the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services conference in Stafford that he believed the 'inhumane' practice could be fatal. He added: 'We do know that people die from what we colloquially call a broken heart. It is very striking. 'I have read of cases where one person died and then the other dies a couple of days later. How long do people last if they are uprooted? A very short time. 'It may mean putting them in some nice modern building which no doubt satisfies the building inspector but is simply not home to them. 'It is no good just saying most people would prefer to live longer in nice new accommodation without breaking their neck; some people would not.' There are nearly 300,000 elderly people living in care homes in England and Wales, with councils being obliged to respect a person's right to family life. Sir James said some couples are being forced apart, being told 'you're going to go here, you're going to go there'. Research has shown that elderly people moved to a care home have just a 55 per cent chance of surviving their first year, rising to 70 per cent in the second He also said forcing older people to take part in group social activities, such as line-dancing and bingo nights, could leave them miserable. He remarked: 'You are actually putting someone in a regime which may not allow them to smoke, or a regime where for their own good they may be required or heavily persuaded to indulge in the kind of collective jollification which they would have loathed at home.' Studies have shown that thousands of elderly people die within the first year of being admitted to a care home. A study by the London School of Economics showed that the average time an older person stays alive in a care home is 15 months. The study, published in 2011, also found that older people have just a 55 per cent chance of surviving their first year in a care home. For the second year, this rises to 70 per cent. Broken heart syndrome, known by experts as stress cardiomyopathy, is a real condition that can be fatal. The shock from loss of a loved one can cause the left ventricle to change shape, weakening the heart. A study published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal found that those who had suffered a recent bereavement were twice as likely to suffer a stroke or heart attack than someone who had not. Sir James, president of the High Court's family division since 2013, is due to retire next year. This one-year-old 'hair stylist' in diapers has already mastered the art of chit chat. Kerry Robinson, 25, recorded a video of herself talking with her daughter Jayde while the one-year-old brushes her mom's hair. Robinson posted the video to Facebook and it has quickly gone viral with more than 15,500,000 views on the social media site alone. Kerry Robinson, 25, recorded a video of herself talking with her daughter Jayde while the one-year-old brushes her mom's hair. The two are pictured here Robinson posted the video to Facebook and it quickly went viral. It has had more than 15,500,000 views on the social media site so far In the video, diaper-clad Jayde brushes Robinson's hair while the two gossip about Jayde's dad and some free Sea World tickets. 'Can you believe he tried to ask me to get up first to get your breakfast? Girl, he crazy,' Robinson says in the video. Jayde replies, 'He crazy.' The toddler has adorable facial expressions and repeats practically everything her mom says in complete sentences, which is a lot for a one-year-old. Most babies don't start speaking in full sentences or phrases until about two years old, according to National Institute of Health. The mother from San Antonio, Texas said the salon-talk started as a way to calm down the very active Jayde. Robinson gave her daughter a brush and started a conversation. 'We really just do this kind of stuff all the time, because her personality is so big,' she told ABC News. She added: 'Her dad has always talked to her like a normal adult. We never really did the baby talk. She's really smart. She really repeats everything.' In the video, diaper-clad Jayde brushes Robinson's hair while the two gossip about Jayde's dad and free Sea World tickets. Jayde responds to what her mom says with facial expressions and even repeats sentences back to her, which is difficult for a one-year-old A man has claimed leopards are stalking Australia's suburbs after finding a massive cat-like paw print in the bush. Sydney man John Geragotellis, 44, spotted the 8 centimetre imprint in bushland in northern Wollongong. Mr Geragotellis is convinced the footprint left in the mud which he photographed with a cigarette lighter for scale was left by a big cat. A man has claimed to have found proof of the existence of big cats in Australia, after finding a giant cat-like paw print in northern Wollongong Sydney man John Geragotellis (pictured), 44, spotted the 8cm imprint in woodland in northern Wollongong 'Walking through the bush I saw dog paw prints, tyre prints, all sorts of things in the mud,' he said. 'But as soon as I saw this I knew it was a big cat print it looks completely different to the paw print of a dog.' Mr Geragotellis said the paw print is likely from a female leopard, based on his research. The 44-year-old became obsessed with tracking down big cats after spotting what he claims was a panther in New South Wales earlier this year. The roadside where Mr Geragotellis found a paw print he believes gives proof to a big cat population in Australia He said there have been numerous sightings across the state, giving weight to the theory Australia could be home to a secret big cat population. 'A lot of people in Australia believe there could be big cats roaming the country, they really are out there,' he said. 'Obviously they must be breeding and they must have been here for a while because there are reports going back decades. 'There had been several reported sightings in the Campbelltown and Illawarra areas, including one on the same road where I saw the print.' Mr Geragotellis is a member of the Australian Big Cats Research Group - a club that theorises 'a big cat mystery' in Australia. Ambulances are now called to UK jails every 40 minutes due to widespread abuse of so-called 'legal highs' placing severe strain on local NHS services. An epidemic of designer drugs in prisons has been blamed for paramedics responding a record number of times in 2015-16 costing taxpayers millions of pounds. Rampant use of new psychoactive substances, such as 'zombie' drug Spice, behind bars is exerting huge pressure on local 999 crews because of the rising number of prisoners needing medical help. Prisoners abusing legal high drugs have led to a surge in ambulance calls which cost taxpayers 3.7million in 2015-16, without including the cost of hospital treatment (file image) Emergency calls are so frequent that inmates nickname the vehicles 'Mambulances' after another cannabis-like drug called Black Mamba. Each call-out is estimated to cost 300 so the bill for all incidents in 2015-16 is around 3.7million, before the cost of hospital treatment. Ministers have pledged to tackle the problems of prisons being swamped with legal highs, which have been linked to a rise in violence against staff and inmates and overdoses. Last year, ambulances were summoned to prisons for emergencies on 12,576 occasions a jump from 6,677 since 2013-14, or 88 per cent, according to figures from England's ten ambulance services. It mean crews are attending a 999 call at a jail at an average rate of every 42 minutes. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who obtained the damning statistics under the Freedom of Information Act, said: 'Our prisons are facing a scale of violence never seen before and every time an ambulance is called, it is a 999 crew that is unavailable to someone else. The cost to the taxpayer is a disgrace. 'The Ministry of Justice is a shambles and needs to get a grip quickly. They don't seem to have a plan or even a clue about how to deal with this.' Bob Neill, who was chairman of the Commons' Justice Select Committee in the last Parliament, said: 'We know there is a problem with legal highs behind bars and we know these drugs are unpredictable, which means it is much more difficult for prison medical staff to deal with. Users of so-called 'designer drugs' like Spice have suffered seizures, blackouts and even heart attacks behind bars - with multiple ambulances often called at once 'This costs the taxpayer a fortune, puts a strain on the ambulance service and disrupts the running of our prisons. It is a worrying development and that is why it is right that the Government is cracking down on legal highs.' Paramedics have been called to attend to prisoners having fits, blackouts, seizures and even heart attacks. In some cases, more than one ambulance has been dispatched when several prisoners needed treatment at the same time. In one incident involving now-banned new psychoactive substances at HMP Wealstun, a Category C prison near Wetherby in West Yorkshire, all of the available 999 crews nearby had to be deployed to a jail at the same time. In December 2015, a report into the jail by then Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick said: 'They were having so many health emergencies caused by the use of new psychoactive substances that basically all the available ambulances in the community on one occasion were at the prison dealing with prisoners. 'So actually there wasn't the resilience, if there had been something happening in the community they weren't there to deal with that because they were in the prison. It is a big issue.' The figures are for all 999 call-outs to prisons. Ambulance services said it was impossible to say how many were drugs-related. Justice Secretary Liz Truss has vowed to take action to tackle the problem while attempting to push through the biggest shake-up of jails in a generation. The Prison and Courts Bill, which was passing through Parliament before being dropped when the General Election was called, sought to introduce mandatory testing of inmates for legal highs and make it a criminal offence to smuggle them into prison, with a maximum 10-year sentence. A Prison Service spokesman said: 'Staff are trained to respond to emergency situations in a timely, appropriate manner. 'Ambulance call outs are made by healthcare professionals when they identify risks. 'A significant number are for non-violent incidents, including where they attended as a precaution and when the situation was resolved by prison staff.' News / National by Staff reporter PREDICTIONS by former MDC-T top official, Dr Toendepi Shonhe, that the so-called grand coalition will suffer defeat in the 2018 elections flies in the face of MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai who last week threatened that he would not accept the poll results if he is not declared winner.Dr Shonhe, a former MDC-T director general, in a report by our sister paper The Herald, cited ideological bankruptcy and donor fatigue as some of the reasons why the coalition of opposition will fail to dislodge Zanu-PF.He noted that Zanu-PF's empowerment politics had given birth to a new social class comprising of mainly farmers and artisanal miners, who owed their allegiance to the revolutionary party.Contributing in the Gravitas Volume 1. Issue 7 released on May 2, 2017, courtesy of the Institute for Public Affairs in Zimbabwe (IPAZ), Dr Shonhe, who was writing on "The Prospects of a Grand Coalition in Zimbabwe's 2018 Elections: An Ideological Lens", posited that a grand coalition was not a licence to victory for the opposition next year.MDC-T leader Mr Tsvangirai last week made spectacular declarations that he will not accept results of next year's election results unless he was declared winner of those polls.The embattled MDC-T leader went on to imagine himself as US President Donald Trump who had prior to that country's polls, declared that he would not accept any result that did not confirm his victory."We will not accept any outcome which is not victory for the opposition, ndakuita hwaTrump manje. Trump said he was not going to accept the result if he did not win," Mr Tsvangira said."If I do not win in 2018 I will not accept the election result because it is very simple. How does a minority win over the majority. How can a minority divided, fragmented and imploding win over a united opposition and a united alternative?"Mr Tsvangirai then went on his election rigging mantra which he has used to explain successive defeats at the hands of Zanu-PF since the formation of the opposition party.The MDC-T leader made sensational claims that Zanu-PF was already rigging the 2018 elections as he had received information to that effect."We have all the information, you (President Mugabe) want to cheat like what you did with Nikuv in 2013," he said."We are faced with elections in 2018, there is no outcome yatinobvuma which is not a victory for the opposition."That Mr Tsvangirai, his MDC-T and their coalition partners will lose to Zanu-PF is certain and can be seen by anyone who doesn't share the former Prime minister's delusions of grandeur.It is not surprising that Mr Tsvangirai knows, a year before the poll, that he will suffer a decisive loss to Zanu-PF, a loss that will seal his political career, but it is the reasons for his defeat that point to a delusional politician who has learnt nothing from the political field that he has been contesting in since 1999.It has been said that outside their "Mugabe Must Go" mantra, the opposition is not guided by any ideology but has used politics as a conveyor belt to riches from the equally naive West ever ready to sponsor organisations opposed to Zanu-PF.Just recently Mr Tsvangirai's deputy Thokozani Khupe told a gathering of party members in the UK that they are in politics for money as they wanted to use politics to create business opportunities, live a good life and send their children to school.Dr Shonhe's prediction and reasons attached come at an appropriate time to expose Mr Tsvangirai's delusions. It has to be stated loud and clear that Tsvangirai will not rule Zimbabwe not because of the rigging as he alleges but his ideological bankruptcy.This paper has maintained that the fragmentation of opposition parties has not been a result of disagreements around the national interest of Zimbabwe but a clash of selfish interests and positioning of opposition players to financial resources and Dr Shonhe agrees."As things stand, the opposition is in a very weak financial position because of fatigue across well wishers. To a large extent, the collapse of momentum and subsequent splits resulting in more fragmented groupings: PDP, RDZ, ZimPF and NPP are a manifestation of financial drought across the opposition movement. It has nothing to do with ideological differences or contestations around the national agenda."In any case, none of the parties has placed the people's agenda at the core of its actions since 2013. Much more, some parties will be left out, possibly to form their own 'majestic' alliance/coalition," said Dr Shonhe.That Dr Shonhe was once a key member of the MDC-T establishment and has first hand experience to the ongoings within that party and his predictions about the 2018 elections shows that attempts by Mr Tsvangirai to trash the 2018 elections are just ramblings of a failed politician standing face to face with his inevitable demise. The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence panel, Richard Burr, said he was 'troubled' by the firing of FBI Director James Comey, in an early sign of worrisome blowback for the administration. 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination,' Burr said in a statement Tuesday that he also sent out on Twitter hours after Comey's sensational firing. Burr's statement did not mention Russia, although alleged Russian interference and possible collusion with Trump campaign officials is one element that is being probed. 'I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee,' Burr wrote. Senate Intelligence committee chair Richard Burr said he was 'troubled' by President Trump's firing of FBI Director Comey Burr has sought to demonstrate a cooperative spirit alongside his Democratic counterpart, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, even as a separate House Intelligence Committee probe has sometimes descended into partisan fights. He also backed up Comey generally in his statement. 'In my interactions with the Director and with the Bureau under his leadership, he and the FBI have always been straightforward with our Committee. Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees,' Burr said. 'His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation,' Burr added. Top House intelligence Democrat Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose committee is also probing alleged Russia ties, said the firing raises questions about whether the White House was 'brazenly interfering in a criminal matter.' 'The decision by a President whose campaign associates are under investigation by the FBI for collusion with Russia to fire the man overseeing that investigation, upon the recommendation of an Attorney General who has recused himself from that investigation, raises profound questions about whether the White House is brazenly interfering in a criminal matter,' Schiff said in a statement. 'The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor,' said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer of New York immediately raised the possibility of a 'cover-up.' Schumer said Trump had called him in the afternoon, when the longtime New York Democrat warned against the move. 'I said, 'Mr President with all due respect you are making a very big mistake'. And he didn't really answer,' he said. He added that unless there was a special prosecutor appointed: 'Are people going to suspect cover-up? Absolutely.' In a sign of the Democrats' belief that they can make the Comey firing a damaging issue for Trump and the Republicans, Schumer said: 'The American people need to have faith that an investigation as serious as this one is being conducted impartially without a shred of bias. The letter from Attorney General to President Donald Trump to FBI Director James Comey is photographed in Washington, Tuesday, May 9, 2017 In this Wednesday, May 3, 2017, photo, then-FBI Director James Comey pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. President Donald Trump abruptly fired Comey on May 9, ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's election meddling The letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein titled "Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI" is photographed in Washington, Tuesday, May 9, 2017. President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's election meddling. In the letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI 'Mistake': The White House put out a dossier which consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer - but Schumer said the president needed to now appoint a special prosecutor to look into the claims of collusion with the Russians It's over: How the White House delivered the news just after 5.30pm on Tuesday Fired: James Comey is being fired with immediate effect after he misled the Senate on how classified emails ended up on pervert Anthony Weiner's computer This handout image released on May 9, 2017 by the White House shows a copy of the termination letter from US President Donald Trump to FBI Director James Comey. It states that Comey informed him on three separate occasions that he is 'not under investigation' 'The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor.' Arizona Senator John McCain, a Russia critic who Trump went after during the campaign, issued one of the first GOP statements critical of the firing. 'While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office,' he said. 'James Comey is a man of honor and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances. 'I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.' Trump's letter to Comey firing him states: 'I greatly appreciate you informing me, in three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation,' a claim that could not immediately be verified that would seem to go against normal FBI practice. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway shaved off his beard in a bizarre prank during the King and Queen's joint 80th birthday celebrations. The mischievous prince left diners scratching their heads after sneaking off for a shave during a gala dinner in honour of his parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, at the Royal Palace in Oslo. The 43-year-old prankster was joined by Europe's most glamorous royals at the regal event, including the Countess of Wessex. Before and after: Crown Prince Haakon of Norway shaved off his beard in a bizarre prank during the King and Queen's joint 80th birthday celebrations Dressed in their brightest finery, the colourful royals made a grand entrance and were later seen on the balcony waving to well wishers. Other royal representatives from Norway and members of the government were also invited to the festivities. The Norwegian King and Queen both turn 80 this year and decided to mark the occasion with a joint celebration. Pictured: King Harald and Queen Sonja are joined by Crown Prince Haakon as they greet crowds from the balcony of the Royal Palace in Oslo King Harald celebrated his birthday on February 21, while Queen Sonja will reach the milestone on July 4. Further celebrations marking the couple's birthdays include a reception thrown by the King and Queen on their royal yacht, the Norge. At the end of the week the Royal Guard will then march from the palace through the city to the Oslo Opera House and festivities will end with a fireworks display. A United Airlines customer claims his flight reservation was cancelled because he videotaped an employee during a dispute. Navang Oza, 37, was checking in for a flight to San Francisco from New Orleans on Monday when he was told the fee for his over-sized bag would be $300, according to the New York Post. Oza complained, stating that the fee was only $125 for the same piece of luggage on his trip there, and when he didn't get a satisfactory answer he began to record the interaction. Sometime after this and shortly into the video, the agent told a coworker to 'cancel the reservation.' Navang Oza, 37, was checking in for a flight to San Francisco from New Orleans when he began recording his interaction with an agent that led his reservation being cancelled on Monday. The video starts with Oza behind the camera asking, 'Why do you want this deleted?' What happened before that isn't known for certain, but the United Airlines employee is visibly angered at this point in their interaction. 'You do not have my permission to videotape,' she said, answering his question in the video. Not long after this is when the agent told her coworker to 'cancel the reservation.' 'Because I'm videotaping you guys not accepting my bag that's over-sized, that I brought here?' Oza asked. 'I don't know the situation, I know that you're videotaping and this is not acceptable,' the United Airlines employee said. 'Do you know why I'm videotaping you? Because you guys have terrible customer service,' Oza said. The employee then spoke to her colleague again, directing her to 'either, A, call the cops because this [bag] will be confiscated, or B, cancel the reservation.' The United Airlines employee repeatedly told Oza that he could not videotape her The United Airlines employee eventually pulled out her own smart phone and recorded Oza She then pulled out her own smart phone and started recording Oza. This is when Oza clarifies that he's willing to pay for the over-sized bag. After a few moments of silence as the two record each other, the United employee briefly assumed a more professional tone. 'OK, so if you're willing to pay, go ahead and I can do that for you,' she said. 'Are you willing to pay for your over-sized bag?' But Oza had had enough. 'Look, I'm not talking to you,' he said. 'I'm talking to your manager, not you.' 'OK, we all do the same thing, though,' she said. 'And let me take a picture of your over-sized bag if you want to play that game.' The employee then spoke to whoever she had been calling on the telephone for much of the video, saying the bag was 'over 62 linear inches.' To this, Oza replied, 'It has nothing to do with that, I'm willing to pay the fee.' The woman said he had previously refused to pay, which Oza denied in the video. The clip ended with the woman reiterating that she did not give consent for video to be taken of her, to which Oza said he knew the law before the 2 minutes and 20 seconds of footage cuts out. The employee spoke briefly to whoever she had been calling on the telephone for much of the video, saying the bag was over 62 linear inches 'I was shocked because I didnt know she had the right to cancel my flight because I started recording,' Oza told KNTV. Oza ultimately rebooked his flight on a different airline, he said. United is investigating the incident, according to the news station. 'The video does not reflect the positive customer experience we strive to offer, and for that we apologize. We are reviewing this situation, including talking with Mr Oza and our employees to better understand what happened,' United said in a statement. This is the latest in a series of public scandals that United Airlines has faced within recent weeks. A Continental Giant rabbit was found dead following a transatlantic flight from London on the airline, and a Kentucky doctor was videotaped being injured as he was forcibly removed by Chicago police from an overbooked flight. Dr David Dao has reached an undisclosed settlement with the airline. When FBI Director James Comey first learned that he was fired on Tuesday afternoon, he thought it was a 'fairly funny prank.' Comey was speaking to a group of FBI employees in Los Angeles when he saw the news that he had been terminated being played on a TV in the background, according to the New York Times. He reportedly even laughed at the news before staff asked him to step into another room. Before leaving, though, Comey shook hands with some of the FBI employees he had been talking with. His staff then confirmed that he had, indeed, been fired. Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in a surprise decision on Tuesday afternoon But Comey, whose motorcade was later seen on a Los Angeles freeway after the firing, first learned of his termination after seeing it on TV in Los Angeles Comey (the first one boarding the plane) and his entourage were pictured getting on a private jet at Los Angeles International Airport shortly after he was called and told he had, indeed, been fired A letter from Donald Trump was delivered to the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC around the same time. 'While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,' Trump wrote. 'It is essential that we find new leadership for the F.B.I. that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission.' FBI sources told ABC News that Comey was finally read his termination letter over the phone. GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo took to Twitter to express his disbelief over the way the firing was handled. 'No one should find out via the television that they've been fired. If true, that's poor form and plain unprofessional. #Comey,' he wrote. Comey's firing was effective immediately, and deputy director Andrew McCabe was quickly made the acting head of the FBI. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly recommended that Trump fire Comey. The news of Comey's termination sent shock waves through the nation's capital. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON'S 'SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE' Following the President's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was the head of the investigation into collusion between Trump's administration and Russia, some were quick to ask whether or not this would be his 'Saturday Night Massacre'. In 1973, President Richard Nixon also fired the official responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing in his administration. On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was head of the investigation into the Watergate Scandal. His firing lead to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. That Saturday night, news broadcast networks turned their airtime over to the 'firestorm' and 'constitutional crisis.' The pushback against these firings was so significant that Nixon was forced to name a new special prosecutor, Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski. The story then played out over the next 10 months, ending when a unanimous Supreme Court forced Nixon to hand over the tapes. Their contents proved the cover-up that led to Nixon's eventual resignation. Advertisement Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the president it was time for Comey to go after his evidence that Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner, some of them classified, was wrong HERO TO ZERO: FIRED FBI BOSS ENDED UP HATED BY EVERYONE Attorney General James Comey sealed a reputation as a brave and principled actor after a 2004 standoff during the Bush administration, when he refused White House efforts to get him to reauthorize warrantless eavesdropping while Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Comey had been appointed deputy attorney general by President George W. Bush, having served as a U.S. attorney in New York under Rudy Giuliani in New York. With Ashcroft incapacitated, Bush administration officials wanted Ashcroft, and then Comey, to sign off on an extension of the authority, with just hours to go before an N.S.A. program expired. Comey refused. His stand was a major reason why President Obama nominated him to be head of the FBI in 2013. Obama hailed Comey as a person of 'fierce independence and deep integrity' as he nominated him for the FBI post, which carries a 10-year term. A devout Catholic, a registered Republican and a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he seemed to radiate independence from the Democratic machine. And many congressional Democrats became far less supportive of Comey after the 2016 presidential election. Obama's man: Republican James Comey was chosen by the Democratic president for his principled stand but ended up in the words of one senator as 'as popular as cholera' Led by defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, many have griped about Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal. On July 5th, 2016, Comey personally announced the FBI's decision not to charge Clinton in connection with its investigation of her private email server and handling of classified material. He nevertheless called her conduct 'extremely careless.' Then on October 28, he told lawmakers the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails in connection to the investigation. The FBI had uncovered thousands of emails on disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop that had been sent to his wife, longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey drew the Democrats' ire once again when he announced two days before the election that the investigation hadn't turned up anything to alter the decision not to prosecute. Clinton said it only made matters worse and stole headlines. In the congressional hearing where he made inaccurate statements about about Abedin's emails, Democrats grilled Comey about why he had not revealed the existence of an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian election interference. Comey said the FBI 'didn't say a word about' the Russia investigation until months into, whereas he had testified under oath about the existence of the Clinton investigation. Advertisement Comey has been heading an investigation into the connections between Trump's advisers and the Russian government before the 2016 presidential election. He was also responsible for handling the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server last fall - a lengthy process that Trump once called 'gutsy.' In July, Comey stated that the bureau 'did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,' but that they had been 'extremely careless.' Rosenstein wrote in a letter released by the White House that he did not appreciate the findings that Comey had come to. 'I cannot defend the directors handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clintons emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken.' Comey's motorcade was later seen on a Los Angeles freeway after the firing as it made its way through slow-moving traffic. THE LETTERS WHICH ENDED JAMES COMEY'S CAREER Tony Abbott's former chief-of-staff has slammed treasurer Scott Morrison and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, accusing them of betraying conservatives with a 'Labor Budget'. Peta Credlin went on the attack following Tuesday night's announcement, dubbing it a 'tax and spend' Budget that betrayed Coalition policies with its $6billion bank and higher Medicare levies. Talking in her new role as a political commentator on Sky News, Ms Credlin savaged her former colleagues, accusing them of not 'being credible' and saying the Budget would only set Mr Turnbull's government back in the polls. Scroll down for video Tony Abbott's former chief-of-staff Peta Credlin (pictured) has slammed the federal Budget as a 'tax and spend' and accusing Scott Morrison of betraying conservatives with a 'Labor Budget' Ms Credlin, who was advisor to Mr Abbott (pictured) while he was Prime Minister, savaged her former colleagues, saying the Budget would only set Mr Turnbull further back in the polls 'I don't think it is credible for the Coalition side of politics to deliver a tax-and-spend Budget,' Ms Credlin told David Spears. 'This is a Labor tax-and-spend Budget, (take) the bank tax for example... I ran into ministers and I said the last time I heard those lines we were dead against a bank tax. 'This is not who we are as a Coalition, this is not who we are as Liberals.' Ms Credlin said she was also worried the Coalition's 'Gonski 2.0' initiative on school funding would only lead to in-fighting within the party. 'We are behind in the polls, when are we going to stop hitting our own?' But Ms Credlin wasn't the only one to accuse the treasurer of delivering a 'Labor Budget'. During an interview with 7.30's Leigh Sales immediately after his Budget speech, Mr Morrison was handed the 'ultimate insult' with the opening question. 'Could you be the first Liberal Treasurer in history to deliver a Labor budget?' Ms Sales asked, setting the tone for a combative interview. Federal treasure Scott Morrison (right) was handed the 'ultimate insult' by 7.30's Leigh Sales (left) during his post-Budget interview when he was asked if he'd 'delivered a Labor Budget' The Turnbull Government introduced a 0.015 per cent levy on banks and raised the Medicare levy by 0.5 per cent to help reduce the deficit. Mr Morrison said the measures were to make up for $13.5 billion in spending cuts the Senate rejected over the past year. 'We pay for our budgets, and our budgets are honest about the numbers that are in them,' he said. 'What we've done is deal with the problems that are in front of us... otherwise you have to increase the debt or the deficit. But Sales was not satisfied, saying the content of the government's new policies 'can't get more Labor'. 'You have a Medicare guarantee, you're paying for Labor's National Disability Insurance Scheme with a tax, you're taking on debt to pay for infrastructure and giving more money to homeless,' she said. 'That can't get more Labor, can it?' Leigh Sales compared the Coalition's budget to one Labor might produce, saying it was raising taxes to pay for policies instead of cutting spending. Mr Morrison said the measures were to make up for $13.5 billion in spending cuts the Senate rejected over the past year She said the government had 'insisted on paying for things' with revenue increases, like Labor would, instead of cutting spending like it previously pledged to do. Mr Morrison insisted the big banks, which earn $30 billion in profits, multinationals and foreign investors were being taxed, not the Australian people. But he was forced to concede the Medicare levy was 'still a tax', but it was fine because the public had 'generously agreed' to fund the NDIS. Sales also questioned whether the banks were simply 'immediately going to pass [the levy] on to customers', to which Mr Morrison said the ACCC would keep them in line. Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen called budget a 'failed catch-up with Labor' Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen came out swinging against the budget when he too was asked by Ms Sales if it resembled something he would put together. 'It is attempted but failed catch-up with Labor... They have tried to catch up with Labor. I accept that. But they have failed miserably,' he said. Mr Bowen said instead of his promise to cut income taxes, he had levied $20 billion in new taxes on Australians. He appeared happy to accept most of the government's measures without a fight. Retired military top brass have warned Theresa May that sterling's collapse has made US-made aircraft too expensive to fund under current budget restraints. Former Chief of the Air Staff Sir Michael Graydon, General Sir Richard Barrons, former head of Joint Forces Command and Admiral Lord Boyce, former chief of the Defence Staff, are among 25 experts who have written an open letter to the PM. The damning letter claims: 'The nation hopes June's election will produce a government strong enough to conduct the tough Brexit negotiations, promote trading partnerships and maintain our security.' Retired senior military figures have warned Theresa May the collapse in sterling could impact the ability to equip two planned air craft carriers with US-made jets (artists impression) Military figures fear the number of F-35B aircraft may be reduced due to financial constraints The letter accused Theresa May of using 'accounting deception' when discussing defence The authors claim the funding needed to implement the government's own 2015 strategic defence review 'is simply not there to give it substance'. The letter in The Sun, claimed the world is facing a range of global threats, from 'sabre rattling over Crimea' to the ongoing terrorism threat. Mrs May is also warned about Turkey's 'flirtation with hostile powers'. According to the letter: 'The fall in the fall in the Pound threatens the purchase of aircraft for our new carriers, the upgrading of Apache helicopters and the purchase of missiles for submarines.' The authors accuse the PM of using an 'accounting deception' to boast that they are spending two per cent of GDP on defence. Responding to the letter, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told The Sun: 'The choice is between the strong leadership of Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn, who has called for the army to be abolished.' A man has accidentally bought a dead frog into Queensland in his shoe when travelling to Cairns from Indonesia. The black-spined toad was detected in the man's shoe by sniffer dogs at Cairns Airport. Head of Biosecurity for the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources Lyn OConnell told Daily Mail Australia while the pathway of frogs and toads travelling in passengers shoes is not unheard of, the recent case stood out. A man has accidentally bought a dead black-spined toad into Queensland in his shoe (pictured) when travelling to Cairns from Indonesia 'While the passenger was being screened by a Biosecurity Officer, one the shoes elicited a reaction from a detector dog,' Ms O'Connell said. 'The toad was recently dead and was likely alive when the passenger put the shoe on to return from Indonesia.' The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is reminding travellers to be biosecurity-aware and to check their luggage when packing for Australia. The black spined toad is related to the cane toad which, in Australia, has no natural predators. The black-spined toad was detected in the man's shoe by sniffer dogs at Cairns Airport. The toad (pictured) is related to the cane toad and has no natural predators in Australia Head of Biosecurity for the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources Lyn OConnell said animals travelling in luggage is not unheard of, the recent case stood out. Pictured is Cairns Airport The Department of Agriculture said the toad is potentially more damaging than the cane toad, and could become established in the cooler parts of Australia. Being a carnivore, the toad could cause significant damage to Australias natural environment, competing with native frogs and toads for food and habitats. The black-spined toad is also likely to carry exotic parasites or disease. This the third frog to be bought into Australia in recent months. A live banded bullfrog was recently found in a passengers shoe at Perth Airport and a another black-spined toad was discovered at Melbourne Airport, both making the trip over from Thailand. A possum has sent the internet into a spin after he was spotted hitching a ride on a Melbourne tram. Social media users suggested the marsupial, believed to be a female ring-tail possum, was 'tapping on' for the trip with his tail. The image emerged online on Wednesday after it was posted by Reddit user UterZorker. A possum has sent the internet into a spin after he was spotted hitching a ride on a Melbourne tram Senior Keeper at Melbourne Zoo Meaghan Thomas told 3AW she believes the photo is genuine. 'I think it's a real picture,' she said on Wednesday morning. 'I'm thinking something along the lines of where they dock the trams at night time, he's just gotten out, a little bit curious, climbed on the tram and taken a little spot nice and cosy under a seat to have a snooze. 'And he's woken up later on in the afternoon - maybe with all the noise. It seemed quite startled by everything.' Social media users suggested the marsupial, believed to be ring-tail possum, was 'tapping on' for the tram trip with his tail (stock image of a Melbourne tram) Social media users suggested the marsupial, believed to be ring-tail possum, was 'tapping on' for the trip with its tail The image, posted online by Reddit user UterZorker on Wednesday, has sent the internet into a spin Some social media users expressed their concern for the little critter. 'Oh no! Hope he wasn't separated from his clan,' one wrote, while another said: 'This makes me sad... He will have to start his life again somewhere completely different.' Others suggested authorities had found an ingenious way to catch out commuters not paying for tickets. 'It's actually fitted with a hidden camera used by ticket inspectors to spy on fare evading commuters,' one commented. The Richard Nixon Library slyly tweeted at President Trump on Tuesday, pointing out that at least Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI. The tongue-in-cheek tweet points out the similarity between Trump's decision to fire James Comey, the man who was leading an investigation into collusion between the President and Russia, and Nixon's dismissal of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. Late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump announced his decision to fire James Comey, Director of the FBI and lead investigator into the ties between Trump's campaign and Russia. Scroll down for video The Richard Nixon Library seemed to sub-tweet President Trump on Tuesday, pointing out that at least Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI The tongue-in-cheek tweet points out the similarity between Trump's decision to fire James Comey, the man who was leading an investigation into collusion between the President and Russia, and Nixon's dismissal of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox Late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump announced his decision to fire James Comey, Director of the FBI and lead investigator into the ties between Trump's campaign and Russia The decision was announced in a letter, which read: 'You are hereby terminated and removed from office immediately.' And 'The Nixon Library' wasn't alone in noticing that, once again, a President has fired the official responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing in his administration. John Podesta, 2016 chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, tweeted: 'Didn't you know you're supposed to wait til Saturday night to massacre people investigating you?' he asked in a tweet, directly referencing disgraced former President Richard Nixon. Fired: Late Tuesday afternoon Comey was notified of his firing by receiving a letter from Donald Trump Taunt: John Podesta, who could have been a senior government figure if Clinton had won after being campaign chair, rushed to twist the knife on deposed James Comey PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON'S 'SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE' Following the President's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was the head of the investigation into collusion between Trump's administration and Russia, some were quick to ask whether or not this would be his 'Saturday Night Massacre'. In 1973, President Richard Nixon also fired the official responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing in his administration. On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was head of the investigation into the Watergate Scandal. His firing lead to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. That Saturday night, news broadcast networks turned their airtime over to the 'firestorm' and 'constitutional crisis.' The pushback against these firings was so significant that Nixon was forced to name a new special prosecutor, Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski. The story then played out over the next 10 months, ending when a unanimous Supreme Court forced Nixon to hand over the tapes. Their contents proved the cover-up that led to Nixon's eventual resignation. Advertisement Former senior Barack Obama aide David Axelrod also used his Twitter account to compare Trump's decision with former president Richard Nixon's 1973 'Saturday Night Massacre' when Nixon fired an independent special prosecutor along with the attorney general and his deputy. 'This didn't work out well for Nixon. And it won't for @realDonaldTrump--or the country,' Axelrod wrote. Late Tuesday afternoon Comey was notified of his firing by receiving a letter from Donald Trump. The letter provided the President with the opportunity to boast that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation. 'While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,' the letter read in part. In a separate letter, the Department of Justice stated that Comey deserved to be let go of purely for the way that he mishandled the investigation regarding Hillary Clinton's emails. This letter, which was written by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, provided a recommendation to President Trump, from which he was then able to write the official letter informing Comey of his firing. While the letter did not specifically reference the Russian investigation, it is notable that the recommendation came from Jeff Sessions, who had previously recused himself from any and all investigations related to ties between the Trump administration and Russia. The letter provided the President with the opportunity to boast that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation Recommendation: Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the president it was time for Comey to go after his evidence that Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner, some of them classified, was wrong The decision to fire Comey came as a surprise to many, particularly after White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on May 3 that the former FBI director had Trump's full support. However, in March, Comey did pose a direct threat to the Trump presidency when he publicly disclosed in a hearing with the House intelligence committee that his bureau had been investigating ties between Trump associates and Russians since last July. Additionally, he told the committee that the President's allegations that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower were unfounded and untrue. COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. May 9: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement While the letter from Jeff Sessions did not specifically reference the Russian investigation, it is notable that the recommendation came from Sessions, who had previously recused himself from any and all investigations related to ties between the Trump administration and Russia Then, on Monday a Senate hearing revealed that Trump's White House did not act in response to warnings from the prior administration regarding the disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn. It was also revealed that US intelligence obtained information in late 2015 on interactions between the President's associates and known or suspected Russian agents. Now that the lead investigator into the Russian collusion has been terminated, the future of the investigation is unclear. Depending on who is hired to replace Comey, the investigation could proceed as normal, or could be thrown out completely. Andrew McCabe, who was formerly the Deputy Director of the FBI and has temporarily taken over the intelligence agency, is also under review for his involvement in the Clinton scandal after his wife received funds from a close friend of Hillary for her political campaign in 2015. Former FBI Director James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump who claimed Comey provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about classified emails from Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner's computer. When Comey was fired, his deputy director, McCabe, took over the bureau. Before McCabe was appointed as the Deputy Director of the FBI, his wife Jill McCabe ran as a Democrat for the Virginia stat senate in 2015. Her campaign received funds from the state Democratic Party and a political action committee run by Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe is a close friend of the Clintons and before his group, Common Good VA, donated to McCabe's campaign, Hillary Clinton headlined a fundraiser for the PAC. Andrew McCabe, who was formerly the Deputy Director of the FBI and has temporarily taken over the intelligence agency after former director James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump Tuesday In 2015, McCabe's wife Jill, center, ran for Virginia state senate as a Democrat. Her campaign received funds from Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, who is a close friend of the Clintons Though Jill McCabe's campaign was unsuccessful, it had received $467,000 from Common Good VA and $208,000 from the state Democratic Party, which McAuliffe had a lot of control over, totaling $675,000 from McAuliffe. Hillary Clinton, pictured, headlined a fundraiser for Terry McAuliffe's PAC, Common Good VA, before the group donated $467,000 to Jill McCabe's campaign Andrew McCabe was appointed as the FBI's deputy director in January 2016 by Comey. He replaced former Deputy Director Mark Giuliano after he retired. As deputy director, McCabe oversees all domestic and international investigations by the FBI. So when the agency started investigating Clinton's secret server, he also oversaw that case. He is currently under review by the Justice Department Inspector General for his involvement in the Clinton investigation because of his wife's ties to associates of the former presidential candidate. In March, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Comey if McCabe would recuse himself from the Clinton investigation, suggesting McCabe faced a possible conflict of interest. He also asked about McCabe's role in the Russia probe, whether it 'raises the appearance of a conflict of interest in light of his wife's ties with Clinton's associates'. When Andrew McCabe was appointed as the Deputy Director of the FBI in 2016, he became responsible for overseeing all domestic and international investigations of the FBI, including the Clinton email scandal McCabe, pictured with US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente in 2015, is currently under review by the Justice Department Inspector General for his involvement in the Clinton investigation because of his wife's ties to associates of the former presidential candidate In October, the FBI said McCabe 'played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind', according to the Wall Street Journal. FBI officials added that McCabe's involvement with the Clinton investigation wasn't considered a conflict of interest because his wife's campaign was over by then and McAuliffe wasn't part of the case. McCabe has worked in the FBI for almost 21 years, starting in 1996 in a New York Field Office. He eventually earned top positions in the Counterterrorism Division, the National Security Branch and the Washington Field Office. McCabe's position as FBI Director is only temporary. He will lead the agency until a permanent appointee is confirmed by the Senate. When the White House announced Comey was being fired, Trump said in the statement: 'A search for a new permanent FBI director will begin immediately.' The FBI made a statement in October saying McCabe had no conflict of interest for his part in the Clinton investigation because his wife's campaign was over by the time he became deputy director News / National by Simbarashe Sithole Many prostitutes who spoke to Bulawayo24.com in major cities admitted to keeping ex-convicts in their homes.Many people who come from prisons reportedly end up living in the homes of sex workers for sexual favours and accommodation."We do accommodate these jail boys because most of them will be sex starved and at times most of them do not have decent accommodation," said Fiona in Chinhoyi.Takudzwa Chivhange an ex-con said sex workers are understanding people since most of the time they also keep their stolen items."These thigh vendors are good people they accommodate us when we come from prison and at times they keep our staff that we would have stollen," he laughed.Many of the sex workers have permanent boyfriends who allow them to do their business and will only make love when they are no potential customers around."We do have permanent boyfriends whom we stay with and when potential clients come they give us time to do our sex work."These boyfriends help us when we are in times of need and have no clients but most of them are okay with it because they understand we are sex workers," said the source. A large scale search is underway for a missing 16-year-old boy who disappeared from his rural home west of Brisbane on Monday. Eric was last seen about 4.50pm leaving his home on Hulcombe Road, Highvale. About 40 State Emergency Service crew have joined the search for Eric, along with police officers on motorbikes and horseback. A large scale search is underway for missing 16-year-old Eric (pictured) who disappeared from his rural home west of Brisbane on Monday About 40 State Emergency Service crew have joined the search for Eric, along with police officers on motorbikes and horseback Their search efforts are focused on rural areas just outside Brisbane that include Highvale, Samford, Mount Glorious and Mount Nebo. Family members hold grave concerns for the boy's welfare, as is his disappearance is out of character, police said. He was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, long khaki cargo pants and carrying a camouflage military backpack. The boy's family have decided not to release his last name. Police have urged members of the public who may have seen him to come forward. Police search efforts are focused on rural areas just outside Brisbane that include Highvale, Samford, Mount Glorious and Mount Nebo A 78-year-old priest and two other male teachers who worked at WA's Wandering Mission school are facing historic child sex abuse charges. The trio, who worked at the West Australian Catholic school for indigenous children in the 1960s, were arrested on multiple child abuse charges. The day school with a dormitory for Aboriginal girls was established in 1944 and was one-and-a-half hours south east of Perth, before being closed in 1979. A 78-year-old priest and two other male teachers who worked at WA's Wandering Mission school are facing historic child sex abuse charges, stemming from the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Offences (stock image) The 78-year-old priest was arrested in Melbourne and has been charged with rape and 12 other offences. It is alleged between 1965 and 1969 the priest sexually abused four girls who were aged between eight and 15 years at the time of the first offence. He has been charged with six counts of indecent dealing of a girl under 13 years of age, six counts of unlawful and indecent assault on a female and one count of rape. He is due to appear before the Perth Magistrates Court via video link on 22 June 2017. An 83-year-old man from the Perth suburb of Bibra Lake, who worked as a teacher at the mission, has been charged with 14 offences. The day school with a dormitory for Aboriginal girls was established in 1944 and closed in 1979. Pictured is Mission Road in Wandering close to where the school was located These include five counts of indecently dealing with a girl under 17 years by a teacher, three counts of unlawful indecent dealing with a girl under 13 years, two counts of sexual assault, one count of carnal knowledge of a girl under 17 years by a teacher, one count of attempted carnal knowledge of a girl under 13 years, on count of rape and one count of indecently dealing with a child under 13 years. He is due to appear before the Perth Magistrates Court on 31 May 2017. The trio are due to face the Perth Magistrates Court (pictured) in separate appearances in the next month. The 78-year-old priest will appear via video link from Melbourne An 82-year-old man from the Perth suburb of Shelley is facing seven charges, with allegations that between 1960 and 1963 the male teacher sexually abused a girl who was 10 years old at the time of the first offence. He was charged with three counts of unlawful and indecent assault on a female and four counts of indecent dealings with a child under 13 years. He is due to appear before the Perth Magistrates Court on 29 June 2017. WA Police said in a statement on Wednesday that the charges follow investigations which stem from the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Offences. Andrew Nolan, 34, brutally bashed his partner's baby nephew in 2014 A man who brutally bashed his partner's baby nephew, leaving him a quadriplegic and brain damaged, had his jail sentence increased by three years on Wednesday. Andrew Nolan, 34, was sentenced to at least eight-and-a-half years behind bars in 2016 for bashing seven-month-old Bobby Webber. The toddler was left severely disabled and vision impaired after the September 2014 attack on the NSW Central Coast. Court of Appeal judges have increased Nolan's minimum sentence to 11-and-a-half years. Bobby Webber was left severely brain damaged and vision impaired after the September 2014 attack on the NSW Central Coast The toddler was left severely disabled and vision impaired after horrific incident They said the original sentence fell 'well short of adequately reflecting the gravity of the offence, the need for general deterrence and the denunciation of the... conduct'. 'Serious physical abuse of infants is abhorred by the community and general deterrence is of great importance,' Justice Derek Price wrote in a judgement. 'Public confidence in the justice system would not be served by allowing a manifestly inadequate sentence to stand.' Bobby suffered horrific injuries, including skull and rib fractures, bite marks and retinal bruising consistent with a motor vehicle accident or a fall from a great height. Bobby suffered such severe injuries that his parents, Elise and Barry Webster, made the heartbreaking decision to switch off his life support. Bobby refused to give up and miraculously kept breathing The court heard Nolan denied hurting Bobby (pictured) to police in the days after the bashing His parents, who were on their honeymoon when he was bashed, were not in court for Wednesday's decision. After Nolan's first sentencing in December, Bobby's mother, Elise Webber, said Nolan didn't 'deserve to breathe'. 'He doesn't deserve any of our time, any of our tears,' Ms Webber said at the time. 'We cry for Bobby, we don't cry for him.' The infant's parents were left devastated following the original sentencing, claiming 'there was no justice served' as the man who gave 'no viable reason' as to why he hurt their son shouted profanities at them. 'He's claiming to be remorseful but on the way down the stairs he decided to yell out profanities and tell us that hell see us in 12 years,' the boy's mother said. After Nolan's first sentencing in December, Bobby's mother, Elise Webber, said Nolan didn't 'deserve to breathe' The original sentence fell 'well short of adequately reflecting the gravity of the offence, the need for general deterrence and the denunciation of the... conduct,' Court of Appeal judges said on Wednesday The NSW District Court last year heard Bobby was taken off life-support and placed on an end-of-life plan but managed to keep breathing by himself. Judge Philip Ingram, who delivered the first sentence, said Nolan had given four versions of what happened on the night Bobby suffered the injuries. He at first told police an intruder must have entered the little boy's home while he was sleeping on the couch but later admitted putting his foot on the child's back with force and rubbing him along the carpet. He also said he hit Bobby twice with an open hand and threw him into his cot but the judge didn't accept the account, partly because it didn't explain the infant's fractured ankles. Bobby's parents (pictured) made the unenviable decision to turn off his life support several days after the attack Nolan was left alone with Bobby after his partner of 11 years, who was the baby's maternal aunt, went to a drive-in. The court heard he denied hurting Bobby to police in the days after the bashing. 'Whoever did this, I hope you find them before I do,' the court heard he told officers. 'What has happened here is disgraceful.' Nolan's maximum sentence has also been increased from 12 and a half years to 15 years and 3 months. With time already served, he will be eligible for parole in April 2026. The decision to fire James Comey amid the FBI's investigation into the President's ties to Russia outraged Democrats who warned of a Nixon-like constitutional crisis. Donald Trump wrote to the bureau's director Comey on Tuesday afternoon saying: 'You are hereby terminated and removed from office immediately.' Among Democrats, the reaction to Trump's dismissal of Comey was one of rage mixed with apprehension about the future of American democracy. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen warned that the US was at 'a dark and dangerous moment in history.' Van Hollen accused the president of igniting 'a crisis of confidence' in the Justice Department. President Donald Trump's (left) decision to fire FBI Director James Comey (right) on Tuesday in the midst of the bureau's investigation into his campaign's possible ties to Russia outraged Democrats and liberal-leaning pundits who warned of a constitutional crisis 'Firing Comey has the foul stench of an attempt to stop an ongoing investigation into collusion between Trump campaign and the Russians,' he said. Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat, tweeted: 'We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis.' Two Democratic senators, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, described the decision by Trump to sack Comey as 'Nixonian.' Another Democratic senator, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, said the decision had parallels to Nixon's firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. Markey said that Trump's move 'is disturbingly reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal and the national turmoil that it caused.' PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON'S 'SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE' Following the President's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was the head of the investigation into collusion between Trump's administration and Russia, some were quick to ask whether or not this would be his 'Saturday Night Massacre'. In 1973, President Richard Nixon also fired the official responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing in his administration. On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was head of the investigation into the Watergate Scandal. His firing lead to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. That Saturday night, news broadcast networks turned their airtime over to the 'firestorm' and 'constitutional crisis.' The pushback against these firings was so significant that Nixon was forced to name a new special prosecutor, Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski. The story then played out over the next 10 months, ending when a unanimous Supreme Court forced Nixon to hand over the tapes. Their contents proved the cover-up that led to Nixon's eventual resignation. Advertisement Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz (left), a Democrat, tweeted: 'We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis.' Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen (right) warned that the US was at 'a dark and dangerous moment in history' Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (above) claimed the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia 'EVERYONE who cares about independence & rule of law in America should be "troubled by the timing and reasoning" of Comey firing. Period,' former US attorney Preet Bharara tweeted Tuesday in response to a Republican lawmaker, Richard Burr 'We are careening ever closer to a Constitutional crisis,' Markey said. COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. 9 May: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement Nixon's dismissal of Cox, who was investigating him for his role in the Watergate coverup, is widely viewed as leading to the president's eventual resignation. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia. Schumer told reporters that the decision to dismiss Comey was 'a big mistake'. 'This is part of a troubling pattern from the Trump administration,' the New York Democrat said. 'They fired Sally Yates. They fired Preet Bharara. And now they fired director Comey, the very man leading the investigation. This does not seem to be a coincidence,' he said. Bharara was dismissed by Trump from his post as US Attorney for the Southern District in New York in March - even though Trump had previously asked Bharara, a holdover from the Obama administration, to stay on weeks earlier. 'EVERYONE who cares about independence & rule of law in America should be "troubled by the timing and reasoning" of Comey firing. Period,' Bharara tweeted Tuesday in response to a Republican lawmaker, Richard Burr. Schumer said that appointing a special prosecutor to investigate alleged ties between Trump and Russia was the 'only way to restore the American people's faith.' Keith Ellison, a Congressman from Minnesota, said: 'We are witnessing a Constitutional crisis unfold before our very eyes.' Pundits were also beside themselves in reacting to the news. Jeffrey Toobin, a commentator for CNN, condemned Trump's 'grotesque abuse of power.' 'This is the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies,' Toobin said. 'That when there is an investigation that reaches near the president of the United States, or the leader of a non-democracy, they fire the people who are in charge of the investigation.' Jeffrey Toobin, a commentator for CNN, condemned Trump's 'grotesque abuse of power' Toobin and others have likened Trump's dismissal of Comey to former President Richard Nixon's (left) firing of Archibald Cox (right) in 1973. Cox was a special prosecutor who was looking into allegations of wrongdoing by Nixon and his aides in the Watergate affair 'This is not normal,' Toobin said. 'This is not politics as usual. This is something that is completely outside how the American law is supposed to work.' 'This is a political act when the president is under investigation,' Toobin said. 'When his White House counsel was described yesterday as being told that his National Security Adviser was subject to blackmail by the Russians and they fired the attorney general a few days later,' he said, referring to Sally Yates. 'Now they've fired the FBI director. I mean, what kind of country is this?' Associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn have received grand jury subpoenas from the office of US Attorney Dana Boente. The issuance of these subpoenas by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia denotes a significant benchmark in the developing investigation of President Donald Trump's campaign ties to suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The subpoenas seek business records from individuals who had worked with General Flynn on contracts after he was let go as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, as reported by CNN on Tuesday. The development comes the same day that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, in a move that surprised government officials on both sides of the aisle. Associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn have received grand jury subpoenas from the US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia seeking business records; General Flynn is seen here speaking at a White House news briefing in Washington, DC on February 1 Trump's letter of termination to Comey was vague in stating the official reasons for his firing, and included a misleading statement, given the FBI's ongoing investigation into his campaign's involvement with election interference by Russia. 'While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,' Trump wrote. Kellyanne Conway told CNN Tuesday that Trump fired Comey because 'he has lost confidence' in him and that Trump took the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was confirmed 14 days ago by 94 senators, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The news of the grand jury subpoenas in the Russian election meddling investigation comes the same day that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, in a move that surprised government officials on both sides of the aisle; Comey is seen here testifying before a Senate judiciary committee in Washington, DC on May 3 Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican, is seen here walking to a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence closed door meeting in Washington, DC on May 9 The FBI began an investigation in July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. At least part of the investigation is looking into possible wrongdoing related to Flynn's disclosures about payments from clients tied to foreign governments, including Russia and Turkey. Flynn was paid $45,000 for an appearance in Moscow celebrating Russia Today, which is a Russian-funded news outlet that US intelligence agencies have said helped publish and promote stolen emails that were intended to harm Hillary Clinton's president campaign. This paid appearance came after Flynn worked as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014 under President Barack Obama. Flynn, who was a top advisor and high-profile surrogate for Trump throughout his campaign, was offered the role of National Security Advisor on November 18, 2016, just 10 days after Trump was elected president. The White House was warned by former acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn could be 'essentially blackmailed by the Russians', according to her testimony before a Senate Judiciary committee on Monday. Yates testified that she told White House Counsel Donald McGahn that she had information that statements by Vice President Mike Pence, made in reliance on his conversations with Flynn, were false, in a meeting that took place on January 26. 'We weren't the only ones that knew all of this, that the Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done and the Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others,' Yates said Monday. President Donald Trump is seen here in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, DC on May 4 The statements by Pence that Yates was referring to were made during a January 15 interview on Face the Nation. Pence said that based on his talks with Flynn, he did not believe Flynn had discussed US sanctions against Russia for election meddling with a Russian ambassador, according to a timeline by CBS News. Flynn had been sworn in as National Security Advisor on January 22, four days prior to Yates conversation with McGahn. Flynn resigned from his position as National Security Advisor on February 13, after holding his role for only 23 days. Flynn's resignation letter included the following statement: 'I inadvertently briefed the Vice President-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and Vice President, and they have accepted my apology.' Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner, declined to comment. The Justice Department, the FBI and the US Attorney's office also declined to comment. A new bank tax in Tuesday's Budget could be passed on to customers, Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev says. Treasurer Scott Morrison announced a 0.06 per cent annual levy will apply to banks with a debt of more than $100million, including the country's big five banks Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ, National Australian Bank and Macquarie. The tax, which will be introduced on July 1, is forecast to reap $6.2billion for the government over four years. Customers may bear the brunt of a new bank tax introduced during the Federal Budget on Tuesday, Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev (pictured) has claimed Treasurer Scott Morrison announced a .06 percent annual levy will apply to banks with a debt of more than $100million The country's big five banks Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ, National Australian Bank and Macquarie - will be effected Mr Morrison on Wednesday warned the banks, whose profits have soared in recent years, not to pass on the costs of the levy to their customers. But Mr Narev said in a statement Wednesday that the new costs would have to be borne by somebody. 'As every business owner or employee knows, every extra cost needs to be borne by customers or shareholders, or a combination of both,' Mr Narev said. 'As with the many recent new regulatory imposts, we need to take some time to work through the implications. This is particularly so given the lack of detail and the absence of consolation,' he said. 'Once we have received all the details on the new tax, we will do our best to strike the right balance to ensure we continue to enhance the financial wellbeing of people, businesses and communities.' Told about Mr Narev's comments, Mr Morrison said the permanent levy should be absorbed by the big banks, which make a combined profit of more than $30 billion. 'Families absorb costs, small businesses absorb costs,' Mr Morrison told the National Press Club. The tax, which will be introduced on July 1, is intended to reap the government $6.2 billion over the next four years Although the Treasurer (pictured with PM Turnbull) said he warned banks not to pass the levy on to their customers, Mr Narev flagged passing the impost on to customers and shareholders He said companies' value lay in the way they treated their customers and the services they provided. 'They already don't like you very much,' he said to the banks. 'But prove them wrong on this occasion. Don't confirm their worst impressions. Tell them another story. Tell them you will pony up and help fix the budget.' There are suggestions the banks may move quickly to raise mortgage rates by up to 0.15 per cent to compensate for the budget measure. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that would be 'excessive.' The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission would be watching them 'very, very carefully indeed,' he said. Mr Turnbull said it was only fair the 'most profitable banks in the world' paid a levy to help balance the nation's budget, with similar measures in place around the world. 'As every business owner or employee knows, every extra cost needs to be borne by customers or shareholders, or a combination of both,' Mr Narev said First-home buyers are among the chief winners while welfare cheats are the big losers of Budget 2017 With Treasury officials to brief bankers in Sydney on Thursday, Mr Morrison said the ACCC's job would be to ensure the banks don't 'lie to their customers' about the levy. Labor said the government's 'package of half measures' was no substitute for a royal commission. Nevertheless, it will support the levy, shadow treasurer Chris Bowen confirmed. The Australian Bankers' Association said the levy was introduced without consultation. 'This new tax is not a well-thought-out policy response to a public interest issue, it is a political tax grab to cover a budget black hole,' chief executive Anna Bligh said. She said while 'bashing banks' was popular, the strength of Australian banks underpinned the economy. Mr Morrison said he would be looking into how news of the levy leaked out of the budget lockup, driving down the price of bank shares. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has announced he intends to press charges against the elderly man who shoved a cake in his face. Tony Overheu left a room of 500 people aghast when he strolled up to Mr Joyce and shoved a $25.95 lemon meringue cake in his face during a speech at a business breakfast at Perth's exclusive Hyatt Regency hotel. The 67-year-old later explained his actions as a stand against 'corporate bullying' and said he had carefully selected the cake as it was soft and unlikely to do any injury to his target, he told Daily Mail Australia. But despite Mr Overheu emailing Mr Joyce an unreserved apology for Tuesday's stunt, the multi-millionaire CEO isn't turning the other cheek. 'The police are continuing their investigation and my intention is to send a message that this type of behaviour isn't acceptable and that I will have every intention of pressing charges,' Mr Joyce told reporters on Wednesday. Mr Overheu was arrested at the hotel and charged with giving false details to police but he's yet to be charged with the actual 'pieing'. 'Once we receive the complaint from the victim, then we can assess what the charge will be,' a WA Police spokesman told Daily Mail Australia. 'We will issue a statement when we formally receive the complaint.' Scroll down for video Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told a press conference in Canberra on Wednesday that he intends to press charges against the elderly man who shoved a cake in his face Qantas CEO Alan Joyce (right) was attacked by an elderly man wielding a lemon meringue pie (left) on Tuesday morning as he addressed business leaders in Perth The man walked up behind him, grabbing him by the shoulder and shoving the pie in his face Mr Overheu revealed his modus operandi, saying he hid in a small gap between a screen and curtain on the podium from 6.15am and waited for two hours while the audience ate breakfast before emerging to ambush Mr Joyce. He also claimed he was unaware that his actions could be considered assault and has since apologised to Mr Joyce and the event's organisers. 'I had naively believed I could walk out the same way I came, but I was apprehended and now it's a matter for the state police and assault,' he said. 'My family is outraged, my wife is in uproar. I sent a letter this morning to Mr Joyce, the hotel and Curtain University apologising unreservedly for any insult or injury due to my actions.' He says his wife was furious for actions that were not consistent with Christianity, while one of his daughters posted a message on social media supporting same-sex marriage but saying 'I love my idiot dad'. Mr Overheu stood unsuccessfully as a Senate candidate for the Nationals in the 1980 federal election but reportedly cut ties with the party 20 years ago when his farming business had difficulties. He is a devout Christian and senior member of the Church of Christ and Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International. But he denied that his religious ties were the motive behind his unusual attack on Mr Joyce, who has been vocal in his support for marriage equality. 'I'm not a bigoted redneck at all, that's not it. My very best friend from childhood came out as gay and he is a Qantas pilot,' he told Daily Mail Australia. The elderly man who shoved a lemon meringue cake in Qantas CEO Alan Joyce's face has spoken out to explain his actions as a stance against 'corporate bullying' However, he wanted to take a stand against 'corporate bullying aimed at social engineering.' But he attacked influential companies that have been lobbying the government for same-sex marriage, including Qantas, Airbnb, Wesfarmers and Holden. He said he was at a barbecue on the weekend in which other people were also 'pee'd off' about 'green left and corporates' subverting democracy by pushing for same-sex marriage without holding a plebiscite. 'It would appear Alan Joyce is part of a network trying to subvert the federal parliamentary process around the issue of marriage equality,' he said. 'Figures overstepping the line have got to anticipate there will be push back. 'I feel very deeply about this theme of corporate bullying. Middle Australia completely rejects corporate bullying aimed at social engineering.' 'CEOs need to respect Australia is a democracy where backdoor attempts to subvert the clear wishes of the overwhelming majority will cost companies bottom lines. 'Alan Joyce is paid $13 million to run airlines not bulldoze Australia socially against its will.' Mr Joyce, who is gay, released a statement saying there was a role for companies and CEOs to speak up on social as well as economic issues. Mr Overheu explained that his target could have been any national figure but Mr Joyce happened to be visiting the city at the time. 'It didn't have to be Alan Joyce, it just happened to be. 'Recently I have been feeling increasingly uneasy that various individuals or groups of individuals seem to willing to try to bulldoze the public process in directions that the majority of people don't agree with,' he said. 'Why did Trump get elected? Why did Brexit happen? The people will only take so much. People feel like they are not being heard. Mr Overheu said he calmly walked into the hotel lobby at around 6.15am and waited two hours behind the stage to strike He added that he had started plotting after he saw the event advertised in the newspaper about a month ago. 'I went to a barbecue a week ago and I was starting to feel my feelings were shared by a lot of people,' he said. 'So I went to the local cheesecake shop the day before and the lemon meringue cake was specially selected because it was soft and least likely to cause injury. 'I wrapped it up and around 6.15am, I walked into the lobby of the Hyatt. I simply walked up the length of the auditorium and I stood in a gap behind the stage and waited for about two hours. After shoving the pie in Alan Joyce's face, the man was detained by three hotel employees until police arrived 'I was pretty amazed that I managed to get even that far. When the time came, I simply stepped out and carefully placed the cake in his face.' Mr Joyce had addressed the incident afterwards, claiming he was not altogether surprised by the sudden attack considering his job. 'When you've been the CEO of an airline for nine years, there's a lot of things that have happened over that period of time, this is different, but it's not unusual. It is an unusual event, but things like this have happened in the past,' he said. Mr Joyce said he had 'absolutely no idea' what flavour the pie was because he's 'not a big pie eater.' 'I didn't have a chance to test it, it was mostly on my glasses,' he joked. 'I think my issue is I need a good dry cleaner before I leave Perth, so if you have one, please recommend it to me.' In video footage of the incident, Mr Overheu is seen walking up behind Mr Joyce and resting a hand on his shoulder before pushing the cake into his face and rubbing it in. The man then walked off the stage calmly as Mr Joyce processed what had just happened The airline boss took it relatively well, exclaiming 'f***ing heck' before jovially telling the audience: 'I don't know what that was about' He is then seen calmly walking off the stage before he was quickly grabbed by security. Mr Joyce took the attack in his stride, saying 'f****** heck' before jovially telling the audience: 'I don't know what that was about.' After wiping the remnants of the dessert off his face, Mr Joyce joked with the audience before continuing his speech. 'If there are any more pies, can you get them over with now?' he said, before speaking about Qantas' recently announced direct flights to London. A spokesperson for WA police told Daily Mail Australia officers 'have been called to a hotel in Adelaide Terrace, East Perth in relation to an assault.' The spokesperson said one person was in custody and helping police with their inquiries. The 67-year-old, from Perth, was later released with a summons to appear in court for giving police false details. This is the US coastguard that last year seized more than 240 tons of cocaine with a wholesale value of $5.9billion and arrested 585 smugglers. The job of the US Coast Guard cutter Stratton is to intercept vessels hauling cocaine bound for America's cities. It is a monumental task that has grown even larger in the past few years because of a boom in coca production in Colombia. A U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement team from the USCG cutter Stratton boards a small fishing boat that was stopped for inspection in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles south of the Guatemala-El Salvador border. The four suspected smugglers, two Colombians and two Ecuadoreans, were transporting approximately 700 kilos of pure cocaine The four suspected smugglers aboard sat handcuffed as a Coast Guardsman conducted a chemical test on the drugs Hidden in the bales of cocaine was a GPS tracking device wrapped inside a condom, a sure sign the drug bosses behind the shipment knew right away it didn't reach its destination Sometimes smugglers frantically dump their cargo over the side or try to make a run for it, forcing their pursuers to fire warning shots or shoot out their engines. But this time the crew members, some of them barefoot, offered no resistance The crew from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Stratton gather bales of cocaine that were seized from a small fishing boat in Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles south of the Guatemala-El Salvador border However the Coast Guard is bringing in more intelligence and technology to try and catch smugglers. Deep within the 418-foot Stratton, which is based in Alameda, California, specialists crunch data from radar, infrared video, helicopter sorties and now the Boeing-made ScanEagle, which was deployed aboard the Coast Guard cutter for the first time during a three-month mission earlier this year. 'In the earlier days, when you wouldn't see or catch anything, we used to pat ourselves on our back and say we must've deterred them,' said Adm. Paul Zukunft, commandant of the Coast Guard, with more than four decades at sea. 'Now rarely 72 hours go by when you don't have an event or we send a ship down there that doesn't come back with multiple interdictions.' A U.S. Coast Guard sailor scans the horizon with his binoculars just outside the bridge of the USCG cutter Stratton as it navigates the eastern Pacific Ocean One of the Coast Guard's main missions is to intercept vessels hauling cocaine bound for America's cities. It is a monumental task that has grown even larger in the past few years because of a boom in coca production in Colombia On the Stratton about 100-plus crew members patrol the eastern Pacific, through which about 70 per cent of the cocaine consumed in the US passes. With three to five Coast Guard cutters covering 6 million square miles - from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to the eastern Pacific Ocean - it's like having a few police cars watch over the entire lower 48 states. In February this year, they caught one fishing boat - with two Colombians and two Ecuadoreans on - that had 700 kilograms (over 1,500 pounds) of pure cocaine with a wholesale value of $21 million on board. On the streets in the US it could be worth more than five times that. More than a dozen countries in Central and South America have essentially outsourced their drug-interdiction efforts to the U.S The Stratton's biggest bust - a Coast Guard record - came in 2015, when it found more than 16,000 pounds of cocaine worth $225 million before the smuggling craft, a hard-to-detect semi-submersible vessel, sank with some of its cargo still aboard. Their job is becoming increasingly difficult as in the jungles of Colombia, there's a bumper harvest taking place. And Colombia is virtually the only source of cocaine smuggled by sea in small vessels. That, along with better technology, may help explain why the Coast Guard has been coming back with ever-larger hauls. It set a record in 2016, seizing more than 240 tons of cocaine with a wholesale value of $5.9 billion and arresting 585 smugglers. The Coast Guard set a record in 2016, seizing more than 240 tons of cocaine, however, that same year, the amount of land devoted to coca cultivation in Colombia climbed 18 per cent Part of the crew from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Stratton stand for a photo in front of close to 700 kilograms of pure cocaine that were seized from a small fishing boat Last year, the amount of land devoted to coca cultivation in Colombia climbed 18 percent to an estimated 188,000 hectares (465,000 acres), according to a White House report. That is more coca production than at any time since the U.S. in 1999 began investing billions in an anti-narcotics strategy known as Plan Colombia. 'What we know here out at sea is that the business has been really good in the last couple of years,' said Capt. Nathan Moore, the Stratton's skipper. The surge is being driven in part by Colombia's decision in 2015 to suspend aerial spraying of crop-destroying herbicides because of health concerns. Two Coast Guardsmen watch from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Stratton as a small fishing boat was set ablaze by the Coast Guard after close to 700 kilograms of cocaine were seized and four men were detained At the same time, there was a rush among peasant farmers to start growing coca so they could take advantage of generous payments to switch to legal crops being offered as part of a peace deal between the government and Colombia's rebels. Thus far, 55,000 families have signed pledges to rip up 48,000 hectares of coca in exchange for as much as $12,000 over two years. The government is also expanding manual eradication of coca, a slower and far more dangerous task, with the goal of destroying 50,000 hectares this year alone. But many experts are skeptical that poor farmers will renounce coca growing, especially as criminal gangs fill the void left by the retreating rebels. Also, a successful drug run can net each smuggler a small fortune that makes it well worth the risk of a long prison sentence for many. Such dynamics help explain why, despite the Coast Guard's technological superiority, four drug-running boats are thought to get through for every one caught, Zukunft said. Those taken into custody for smuggling are put in white hazmat suits, given health exams and then led into a converted helicopter hangar aboard the Stratton, where they are shackled to the floor and issued a wool blanket, toiletries and a cot or a foam mat. Eventually they are flown to the U.S. and prosecuted at American expense. The alternative would be to seek prosecution in Central American countries such as Honduras, where the vast majority of crimes go unpunished. More than a dozen nations in Central and South America have essentially outsourced their drug-interdiction efforts to the U.S. 'Imagine you're out at Ocean City, Maryland, and then out of nowhere comes this foreign helicopter and it starts peppering a U.S. recreational boat with automatic machine gun fire and sniper fire. We would say it's an act of war,' Zukunft said. 'But that's the faith and confidence these countries have in the U.S. and our Coast Guard.' Two U.S. Coast Guard fast boats carrying suspects detained in prior drug interdiction operations are transferred from the USCG cutter Mohawk, seen in the background, to the USCG cutter Stratton, in the eastern Pacific Ocean A U.S. Coast Guardsman performs a medical check on a drug trafficking suspect transferred from the USCG cutter Mohawk to the USCG cutter Stratton Suspects detained in drug busts use blankets to protect themselves from the sun while waiting on the flight deck of the Stratton The ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle takes off from the flight deck of the Stratton The nine-year-old boy pictured jumping on a police car during Sydney's infamous Redfern Riot has grown up to be a car thief and burglar who has spent most of his adult years behind bars. Stan Ceissman, now 23 and already in jail for break and enter offences, was on Wednesday sentenced to 15 months' prison for stealing a BMW last year. The picture taken of him atop a police car in inner-city Redfern on February 15, 2004, was tendered during sentencing submissions, along with press clippings detailing his subsequent infamy and attempts to reform. Scroll down for video Stan Ceissman pictured as a nine-year-old, atop a police car during the 2004 Redfern Riot Stan Ceissman, now 23, pictured last year as he was preparing for release from Long Bay jail The Redfern Riot of 2004 took place outside Redfern train station near Eveleigh Street The image of Ceissman went around the world and despite - or because - of the notoriety it gave him, he had a copy of it stuck on his cell wall in Long Bay jail last year. In an article published in The Australian in January 2016 and tendered to Downing Centre Local Court, Ceissman joked about the One Way sign in the photograph. 'Ever since then, my lifes gone the wrong way,' he said. Before the Redfern Riot, Ceissman had been a student at Alexandria Park Community School and played five-eighth for the Redfern All Blacks rugby league team. The riot was sparked by the death of Ceissman's friend Thomas 'TJ' Hickey. Hickey, 17, had been thrown from his bicycle and impaled on a fence at Waterloo, near Redfern, on February 14, 2004. A police car had been patrolling nearby and family and friends of Hickey blamed them for what a coroner found was a freak accident. Hickey died the day after he was impaled. Cousin Helen Walford holds a picture of Thomas 'TJ' Hickey, whose death sparked the 2004 Redfern riot Thomas 'TJ' Hickey's mother Gail Hickey outside Glebe Coroner's Court in 2004 Mourners gather at a memorial for Thomas 'TJ' Hickey at the site of his 2004 death That evening, supporters of Hickey, including many Aboriginal youths, gathered around Redfern train station. When police closed the station entrance the crowd began throwing bottles, bricks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails. During what became a full-blown riot around the notorious housing estate known as The Block where Ceissman had grown up the then nine-year-old jumped on the roof of a police car. Ceissman became international news. Within a year of the picture's publication, Ceissman's life was descending into crime. He drank alcohol and smoked cannabis. He committed his first bag snatch while still aged nine. 'From all the good things I did in life, I didnt get noticed,' he told The Australian. 'From the bad things I got noticed. I always wanted to get peoples attention and doing the right thing I never got anyones attention, so I started to do the wrong thing.' He was convicted of stealing in 2012 and sentenced to two years' jail for aggravated break and enter in 2014. He was released on parole in May last year but was soon back behind bars. Two months before his release, Ceissman wrote a letter to his nine-year-old self for indigenous broadcaster NITV program The Point. In it, he wrote: 'The last 12 years of my life have been hell. I have lost a lot of family and friends!!!!' 'Overall in the past 12 years of my life, I reckon I have spent more time in custody than I have on the outside. 'This has led me to wanting something more out of life, something I cant get out of doing the stuff Ive done in the past!! 'So in the next 12 years of my life I want to spend more time with my family, get a job, get a car and eventually have a wife and a family of my own.' Stan Ceissman, pictured right, was taking part in a program called Never Going Back Supporters of the family of Thomas 'TJ' Hickey protest after the death of the 17-year-old Last year Ceissman had been taking part in a program called Never Going Back run by Redfern police and the local Tribal Warrior mentoring group with the help of Corrective Services. Three times a week he was taken from Long Bay to Redfern's National Centre of Indigenous Excellence to box and learn about his Aboriginal culture. Ceissman's supporters had hope. He let them down. Within two months of release he was back behind bars. While in Silverwater jail in July last year, police charged Ceissman with having stolen a blue BMW from Vaucluse, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, earlier that month. He was later charged with having unlawfully entered a black VW Tiguan at Newtown in June and a white Nissan Pulsar at Glebe the same month. Stan Ceissman will be eligible for release on May 25 Supporters of the family of Thomas 'TJ' Hickey still claim his death was the fault of police He pleaded guilty to each offence and on Thursday was sentenced to 15 months' jail for car theft, with a minimum of 10 months. He was convicted of the other offences with no further action taken. The court heard Ceissman was seeking to undergo alcohol and drug rehabilitation upon his release and he had a large support network, including the Tribal Warrior organisation. Magistrate Beverley Schurr said with time served Ceissman would be eligible for release on May 25. 'I know that Mr Ceissman would be both welcoming and feeling a bit apprehensive about returning to the community,' Ms Schurr said. Addressing the prisoner, who appeared via video-link from Junee jail, Ms Schurr said she hoped Ceissman would take advantage of the support network around him. 'Hopefully this time with the help of the community and friends this will be the last time you make such a mistake,' she said. A young family has been left devastated after vandals targetted their new home in a heartless attack on the eve of their daughter's first birthday. Ryan and Alisha Crosby recently finished building their house at Wandin North, an hour east of Melbourne, where they plan to live with their two young girls. But the couple were left shattered when they arrived at the property last Saturday to set-up for one-year-old Asha's first birthday, only to find the playground they'd built for their daughters had been vandalised overnight. Ryan and Alisha Crosby (pictured) were left devastated after their new home and playground they had built for their two daughters was vandalised on the eve of Asha's first birthday Mr and Mrs Crosby arrived at their home on Saturday morning for Asha's party to find their home covered in pink spray paint Mr Crosby had worked tirelessly to build the playground in time for the all important birthday celebrations The couple were forced to tell the young children gathered to celebrate Asha's (pictured) first birthday celebrations that the paint was all a part of the party Pictures taken of the damage by Mrs Crosby show pink paint sprayed across the play equipment and the couple's uncompleted weatherboard house. Eager to have the backyard playground complete in time for his daughter's birthday, Mr Crosby and his mates worked tirelessly to set up the equipment. Shocked when they discovered the vandalism, Mr Crosby told the Lillydale and Yarra Valley Leader he was forced to lie to his children so not to ruin the special day. 'It's pretty disappointing for it to happen right before Asha's first birthday,' Mr Crosby said. The couple (pictured) were left shattered when they arrived at the property last Saturday to find the equipment they'd constructed for their two daughters had been vandalised overnight The couple are nearing completion of their family home and were left shattered by the attack Spray paint covered the windows, doors, decking and playground at their family home 'We had just put her sandpit together; it was her birthday present, it was completely covered.' After putting a plea out on Facebook for help to catch the vandals, both Mr and Mrs Crosby were swamped by generous offers from locals. From pledges of assistance in cleaning their house, to offering to patrol their home at night, Mr Crosby said they'd been left 'humbled'. News / National by Staff reporter With the current acute cash crisis worsening by the day, experts have made renewed calls for the country to adopt the South African rand as Zimbabwe's anchor currency, to stem an impending economic implosion.This comes as Parliament has summoned under pressure RBZ governor John Mangudya and TIMB chief executive Andrew Matibiri to explain the payment chaos that is being experienced by farmers at the Harare auction floors.The Zimbabwean central bank reportedly urged the public to replace the US dollar with the rand as the country's main currency.Reserve bank of Zimbabwe deputy governor Kapukile Mlambo said that they were going to be content if the public used the South African rand more than the US dollar.Mlambo's remarks came as cash shortages in the southern African country continued to bite.Zimbabwe introduced its own surrogacy currency dubbed the "bond notes" last year, but the move has failed to address the cash problem."We will be happy in the central bank if people use the rand more than they would use the other currencies... We can benchmark pricing with the rand, which we can't do with the [US] dollar because we trade almost nothing with the US," Mlambo was quoted as saying.Zimbabwean firms last year urged the government to adopt the South African rand as its "reference currency" instead of the US dollar.The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries reportedly argued at the time that while the country's unique "multi-currency system" should be maintained, all financial reporting must be done in rand.CZI said it is going to push President Robert Mugabe's government to adopt the South African rand, even if there's no formal agreement with Pretoria.The group said that the rand was becoming more attractive, as the southern African country continued to face an "acute liquidity crisis of cash dollars".Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009 and now uses mainly the US dollar and the South African rand, although other currencies are also legal tender.Shortages of the US dollar in the economy are causing hardships for many businesses and ordinary Zimbabweans.President Mugabe's government has so far refused to adopt the rand; it says Zimbabwe can't join the rand monetary union because it doesn't have its own currency.Bond notes were introduced at the end of November but they're still not officially a currency and they can't be exchanged outside the country.So Zimbabwean industrialists are pushing for a non-formalised adoption of the rand.After all, using the rand rather than the US could, if prices are adjusted, make Zimbabwe's companies more competitive and reduce the high cost of doing business.State media today quotes CZI's President Busisa Moyo as saying legal documents will be drafted to support the use of the rand, though of course there's no guarantee the authorities will agree. A frail-looking Clive Palmer has made a dramatic appearance at the Federal Court in Brisbane holding a sick bag and an oxygen mask. The former MP is being questioned by lawyers for the special purpose liquidators of Queensland Nickel over the whereabouts of his missing nephew, Clive Mensink. The court heard evidence Mr Palmer had been suffering from pancreatitis and was too sick to attend on Tuesday, but Justice John Dowsett ordered him to appear in person the following day. Arriving minutes before the hearing was due to begin, Mr Palmer said he had taken the opioid Targin, also known as oxycodone, only hours earlier. A pale-looking Clive Palmer has made a dramatic appearance at the Federal Court in Brisbane holding a sick bag and oxygen mask The former MP is being questioned by lawyers for the special purpose liquidators of Queensland Nickel over the whereabouts of his missing nephew, Clive Mensink 'This is not about Queensland Nickel, this is whether a citizen under medication, which are narcotics, which require to be signed off in an act, should be dragged into court to give evidence and whether he can give evidence,' he said outside court. 'Because I can't remember my Amex pin number for example. This is just a confirmation that this is a political witch hunt.' Clutching a breathing device, a vomit bag and propped up with a pillow, Mr Palmer sat against the back of the courtroom. Mr Palmer claimed he was too sick to attend on Tuesday, but Justice John Dowsett ordered him to appear in person the following day Arriving minutes before the hearing was due to begin, Mr Palmer said he had taken the opioid Targin, also known as oxycodone, only hours earlier His barrister, Andrew Boe, warned Justice Dowsett his client had ingested the morphine-based painkillers and was uncertain he could give accurate evidence. 'All he has to do is to do his best,' Justice John Dowsett responded. During the 45-minute hearing, Mr Palmer told the court he had agreed to pay for his nephew to take two overseas cruises, prompting lawyers representing Queensland Nickel liquidators to request he provide proof that he had purchased the tickets. Mr Palmer also said that in 2016 his Mr Mensink had told him he was mentally distressed. 'This is not about Queensland Nickel, this is whether a citizen under medication, which are narcotics, which require to be signed off in an act, should be dragged into court to give evidence and whether he can give evidence,' he said outside court 'Because I can't remember my Amex pin number for example. This is just a confirmation that this is a political witch hunt,' Mr Palmer said Mr Palmer is seen speaking with reporters as he leaves the Federal Court in Brisbane on Wednesday 'He indicated he had a lot of problems,' Mr Palmer said. 'Distressed, mentally upset, not physically. 'He said that the way he had been treated was a disaster. He said words to the effect he'd spent seven years keeping people employed and it wasn't fully appreciated. 'I said he should go and see a doctor and talk to him about his problems, then come back to Australia.' Mr Palmer then requested a toilet break and proceeded to walk outside the courtroom and lay down once the hearing was adjourned. Mr Palmer requested a toilet break and proceeded to walk outside the courtroom and lay down once the hearing was adjourned. He is seen here leaving court A high school student in Alabama was removed from campus Tuesday after leaving a threatening note in the bathroom. McAdory High School Principal Tod Humphries said that the note, which read 'I'm going to shoot up the school 5/10/17' was found in a restroom stall just as school started on Tuesday morning. The unnamed student was identified within minutes of the note being found with the help of surveillance footage at the school, reported WVTM13. A note, reading 'I'm going to shoot up the school 5/10/17' was found in a restroom stall just as school started on Tuesday morning at McAdory High School According to officials, the teen was released to his parents after admitting to writing the note because he was having problems with his girlfriend. The 16-year-old didn't have any weapons on his person, and was released from custody pending charges in juvenile court and administrative action from the school. Humphries told the news station that the student will not be allowed to return to campus for the rest of the school year, which ends on May 25. Australia's big four banks saw nearly $14billion wiped off their value amid speculation that details of the banking levy was leaked ahead of the Budget. Victorian Senator Derryn Hinch tweeted that he would be contacting the Australian Federal Police about investigating a possible leak that saw share prices plummet before the $6.2billion levy was announced. 'Bank Budget levy not the story. It's the leak. Took $14b off bank stocks. Thought it was a secret lockup? Will be contacting AFP tmrw,' he wrote on Twitter. The Australian's political correspondent David Crowe wrote: 'Bank shares fell heavily before new $6.2 billion levy announced. Who blabbed?' However, an AFP spokesman told Daily Mail Australia that they have not received any referrals in relation to the 2017 Federal Budget. Australia's big four banks saw nearly $14billion wiped off their value amid speculation that details of the banking levy was leaked ahead of the Budget. Above, Scott Morrison The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and Westpac saw a combined $14billion knocked off their stock prices. Commonwealth Bank shares fell 2.77 per cent, ANZ shares dropped by 2.09 per cent, and NAB and Westpac's shares dropped 1.59 per cent and 2.7 per cent respectively, news.com.au reports. The country's big banks gave a thumbs down to Scott Morrison's plans to slug them with the new levy. The levy on the nation's big five banks was a key piece of Mr Morrision's second budget that will reap the government $6.2 billion, while wage earners face a 0.5 percentage point rise in the Medicare levy to help fund the $21 billion NDIS. Victorian Senator Derryn Hinch tweeted that he would be contacting the Australian Federal Police about investigating a possible leak The country's big banks gave a thumbs down to Scott Morrison's (right, with PM Malcolm Turnbull) plans to slug them with the new levy Disability lobby groups applauded the guaranteed funding for the NDIS, but Australian Bankers Association boss Anna Bligh branded the levy a 'political tax grab to cover a budget black hole' and said the tax would hurt investment. 'If the government thinks major banks can afford to pay a new tax, it should make every company in Australia which earns more than banks wonder who's next,' she said. Consumer group Choice welcomed the levy, saying while it was bad for banks it was good for consumers, while the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance said any cost imposed on a bank would be passed on to customers. Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive James Pearson was concerned the government was relying on more taxes to help return the budget to surplus by 2020/21. ISIS-linked terrorists are planning to kidnap foreigners in two of the Philippines most popular tourist spots, the US Embassy has warned. The city of Puerto Princesa and the nearby underground river, both located on the island of Palawan and visited by thousands of tourists every day, were named as likely targets. The warning was issued a month after an abduction and bombing plot by Abu Sayyaf, a group that has pledged allegiance to ISIS, was uncovered. The US Embassy has warned tourists in the Philippines city of Puerto Princesa and the nearby underground river (pictured) that they are being targeted by terrorists in a kidnap plot President Rodrigo Duterte has said security has been beefed up around the affected areas and officers are being told to shoot suspected militants on sight Hardline President Rodrigo Duterte said security has been beefed up in the affected areas and officers have been told to shoot suspected militants on sight. Following the US travel advisory, Canada and Britain also updated their own advice, but included additional warnings about Dumaguete, Siquijor and Cebu, in the central Philippines. The Abu Sayyaf last month attempted a kidnapping raid on Bohol island, a popular tourist destination in the central Philippines, but were foiled after the military uncovered the plot. Security forces found the militants a day after they arrived on speedboats at Bohol, which is 300 miles north of the terror group's bases. A fierce gun battle followed in which nine militants, three soldiers and one policeman were killed, according to authorities. Another militant subsequently died in police custody, officials said. The Bohol raid occurred days after the US Embassy issued a warning of potential kidnappings there and the neighbouring island of Cebu, which has a major city of the same name. The Abu Sayyaf regularly kidnaps foreigners and locals to extract ransom which it uses to fund its activities. Its aim is to establish an independent Islamic state spanning several islands in the Philippines for the Moros minority people. The militants typically raid coastal areas after sailing from their southern island strongholds on speedboats, although in recent years they have also attacked cargo and merchant ships. After the US issued its travel advisory on Wednesday, Britain and Canada updated their own advice, but also included several islands in the central Philippines They beheaded two Canadians last year and an elderly German sailor in February after demands for millions of dollars were unmet. The Abu Sayyaf raided a resort in Puerto Princesa's Honda Bay in 2001, abducting three Americans and 17 Filipinos. One of the Americans was beheaded, while one was killed in a military rescue attempt a year later. The third American was freed in the rescue effort. The Abu Sayyaf has also kidnapped people from Malaysian coastal resorts, which are a short speedboat ride from its southern Philippine bases. In recent years the kidnapping threat had largely been restricted to the southern Philippine region of Mindanao. Until recently, foreign governments had not warned of kidnapping threats in the central and western Philippines. Asked in Manila about the latest travel warnings for Palawan, Duterte said he wanted the suspects dead. 'My order to the security forces is shoot them on sight. Kill them,' Duterte said. Duterte last year ordered a major military offensive to extinguish the Abu Sayyaf on their southern bases, but the militant threat continued to grow. The Philippines is looking to conduct joint patrols with Indonesia and Malaysia to stop the rising number of kidnapping raids on cargo and merchant vessels near the Abu Sayyaf's bases. Duterte on Wednesday repeated a warning that the Islamic State group was gaining influence in the Philippines. 'We have a problem with terrorism. What looms very big ahead is the IS. They are coming in,' Duterte said. A murderer tried to break out of jail disguised as a woman - but was caught after guards noticed he was 'walking funny' and 'speaking in a man's voice,' it was reported Wednesday. Francisco Herrera Argueta, 55, dressed as a lady with a long skirt, blonde wig and fake breasts as he attempted to leave the maximum security jail along with other inmates' families following visiting hours. The prisoner had planned to pretend he was a female visitor to the jail, Jacinta Elvira Araujo, who had left her identity card with guards as she entered the prison in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Sunday afternoon. Francisco Herrera Argueta, 55, dressed as a lady, attempted to break out of the maximum security jail in San Pedro Sula, Honduras on Wednesday with a visitor's forgotten identity card But despite his best efforts to look like a woman complete with blusher and pink painted nails, Argueta apparently forgot to speak like one when it was his turn to pick up the identity card at the jail exit so he could leave. Police spokesman Bayron Sauceda said officers had already noticed the woman's 'funny walk' as Argueta struggled to walk on high heels, but he had still managed to pass through several security filters on his way to the exit. Then when a guard at the prison gate asked the apparent visitor for her identity card number she 'spoke with a hoarse, male voice.' Argueta was finally unmasked after the guard asked the woman to remove her dark glasses so he could verify her identity photo and 'the make-up couldn't hide the fact that he was a man,' according to the spokesman. Argueta, a gang leader known as Don Chico, has been at the jail since September 2015 charged with murder and firearms offences. Prison officials said he will now be punished for his escape attempt and could be transferred to the notorious El Pozo jail in Santa Barbara, known as Honduras' most dangerous prison. Wealthy property investors will no longer be able to claim tax deductions to travel to their beach-side villas or country cottages in a bid to save taxpayers more than half a billion dollars. Under existing laws in Australia, landlords can claim on tax trips to inspect or maintain the houses or units they rent out. However, from July 1, investors will no longer be able to claim these travel expenses when they fill out their annual tax return as part of a tightening of negative gearing rules. Treasurer Scott Morrison gets a kiss from his wife Jenny after delivering the 2017 Budget Wealthy landlords will no longer be able to claim travel to inspect their rental homes on tax (Sydney's Bondi Beach pictured) Treasurer Scott Morrison's measure, announced in Tuesday night's Budget, is designed to save the taxpayers $540 million, over three years, and comes on top of a crackdown on foreign investors as Sydney and Melbourne house prices spiral out of control. 'This is an integrity measure to address concerns that many taxpayers have been claiming travel deductions without correctly apportioning costs, or have claimed travel costs that were for private travel purposes,' the Budget paper said. Treasury said the crackdown was designed to ensure 'tax concessions are better targeted'. Landlords will still be able to claim a tax deduction for hiring property managers or real estate agents to market their homes for rent. The Turnbull Government campaigned during last year's federal election campaign to keep negative gearing, after the Bill Shorten-led Labor Opposition promised to curb the tax break for future investors. However, capital city houses prices are continuing to climb at a much faster pace than wages. The Turnbull Government will also penalise foreign investors who don't rent out their properties for at least six months of the year (Little Manly in Sydney's north pictured) Sydney now has a median house price of more than $1.15 million, making it one of the world's most expensive property markets, along with Hong Kong and Vancouver. In a bid to address this issue, the Treasurer has also announced there will be a new 50 per cent cap on the total amount of dwellings a developer can sell to foreigners. Foreign property investors, who are only allowed to buy existing dwellings, will now face a new annual vacancy charge, if the property isn't rented out for at least six months of the year. The charge will the same as the foreign investment application fee paid by a foreign investor when they bought the property. Wealthy property investors will no longer be able to claim travel on their annual tax return This measure came into effect on Tuesday night. In a bid to boost the supply of rental housing, from January 1, 2018 investors who provide affordable housing will have their capital gains tax discount increased from 50 per cent to 60 per cent. To qualify, landlords must provide housing to low to middle-income tenants and charge rent that is below private market rates. The housing must also be held as an investment for a minimum three years and be managed through a registered community housing provider. This measure has been budgeted at $15 million over three years. After former FBI Director James Comey was fired Tuesday, some of Hillary Clinton's former aides have criticized President Donald Trump's decision. However, Clinton herself has stayed quiet. Comey was dismissed after he provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about classified emails from Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner's computer. However, many Democrats have claimed that Comey's firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia and some of Clinton's former aides who have taken to Twitter with their skepticism. Several of Hillary Clinton's former aides have criticized President Donald Trump's decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey Tuesday. Clinton is pictured in May at the Planned Parenthood 100th Anniversary Gala Clinton's former running mate Senator Tim Kaine, pictured left, tweeted: 'Trump firing Comey shows how frightened the Admin is over Russia investigation.' Her former press secretary Brian Fallon, pictured right, also expressed concern for Comey's firing 'Trump firing Comey shows how frightened the Admin is over Russia investigation,' Clinton's former running mate Senator Tim Kaine tweeted. 'Comey firing recommended by Sessions. I thought he had recused himself from Russia investigation!' In July the FBI held a news conference briefing reporters on their Clinton email investigation and just before the election, he made a controversial decision to notify lawmakers that his team was re-examining its investigation by looking into messages found on Weiner's laptop. Many view that decision as costing Clinton the election, including Clinton herself, since she lost to Trump by less than a single percentage point in key swing states after polling indicated she was well in front of her opponent before the the late move. But her aides were still upset when they heard Comey was fired. Brian Fallon, Clinton's former press secretary tweeted: 'I'm not shedding any tears for Comey personally -he hurt FBI's reputation- but I do worry whether we ever get to the bottom of Russia now'. Former Clinton campaign spokesperson Glen Caplin tweeted: 'I am no Comey fan, but POTUS firing FBI Director conducting investigation into campaign is indefensible. Need independent investigation ASAP'. Former FBI Director James Comey, pictured, was dismissed after he provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about classified emails from Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner's computer Brian Fallon, pictured with Clinton in October 2016, tweeted: 'I'm not shedding any tears for Comey personally -he hurt FBI's reputation- but I do worry whether we ever get to the bottom of Russia now' Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, pictured, tweeted: 'Twilight zone. I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me' Glen Caplin, pictured, tweeted Tuesday: 'I am no Comey fan, but POTUS firing FBI Director conducting investigation into campaign is indefensible. Need independent investigation ASAP' COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. May 9: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook tweeted: 'Twilight zone. I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me.' 'I was as frustrated, concerned and disappointed as anyone with Director Comey's handling of the email investigation, but President Trump just fired the man investigating how Russia meddled in our election and whether members of his campaign were involved, an investigation President Trump called 'charade' only 24 hours ago,' Mook said in a statement reported by CNN. 'It's equally concerning that our attorney general, who lied about his own meetings with the Russians, approved Director Comey's firing,' he added. However, Clinton herself has not made a comment about Comey's firing. She has only said 'no comment' through an aide. Despite speculation that Trump fired Comey because of the FBI's investigation into a possible relationship between Trump's advisers and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election, several White House spokespeople have denied those claims, saying Comey was fired because Trump no longer had confidence in Comey's ability to 'faithfully execute his duties'. Hillary Clinton, pictured in April, has not made a comment about Comey's firing. She has only said 'no comment' through an aide In July the FBI held a news conference briefing reporters on their Clinton email investigation and just before the election, he made a controversial decision to notify lawmakers that his team was re-examining its investigation Comey's decisions didn't make him popular with Clinton supporters, but they still showed skepticism at his firing Tuesday Many Democrats, including Clinton's former running mate Tim Kaine have claimed that Comey's firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia Several White House spokespeople have denied the cover-up claims, saying Comey was fired because Trump no longer had confidence in Comey's ability to 'faithfully execute his duties' HERO TO ZERO: FIRED FBI BOSS ENDED UP HATED BY EVERYONE Attorney General James Comey sealed a reputation as a brave and principled actor after a 2004 standoff during the Bush administration, when he refused White House efforts to get him to reauthorize warrantless eavesdropping while Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Comey had been appointed deputy attorney general by President George W. Bush, having served as a U.S. attorney in New York under Rudy Giuliani in New York. With Ashcroft incapacitated, Bush administration officials wanted Ashcroft, and then Comey, to sign off on an extension of the authority, with just hours to go before an N.S.A. program expired. Comey refused. His stand was a major reason why President Obama nominated him to be head of the FBI in 2013. Obama hailed Comey as a person of 'fierce independence and deep integrity' as he nominated him for the FBI post, which carries a 10-year term. A devout Catholic, a registered Republican and a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he seemed to radiate independence from the Democratic machine. And many congressional Democrats became far less supportive of Comey after the 2016 presidential election. Obama's man: Republican James Comey was chosen by the Democratic president for his principled stand but ended up in the words of one senator as 'as popular as cholera' Led by defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, many have griped about Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal. On July 5th, 2016, Comey personally announced the FBI's decision not to charge Clinton in connection with its investigation of her private email server and handling of classified material. He nevertheless called her conduct 'extremely careless.' Then on October 28, he told lawmakers the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails in connection to the investigation. The FBI had uncovered thousands of emails on disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop that had been sent to his wife, longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey drew the Democrats' ire once again when he announced two days before the election that the investigation hadn't turned up anything to alter the decision not to prosecute. Clinton said it only made matters worse and stole headlines. In the congressional hearing where he made inaccurate statements about about Abedin's emails, Democrats grilled Comey about why he had not revealed the existence of an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian election interference. Comey said the FBI 'didn't say a word about' the Russia investigation until months into, whereas he had testified under oath about the existence of the Clinton investigation. Advertisement A pair of moped thieves snatched a City businessman's mobile phone in the Square Mile - demonstrating the speed at which crimes can happen. The smartly dressed man is walking through the centre of London in broad daylight when the thieves pulls up alongside him and snatch his phone. Officers visited shops and cafes yesterday to speaking to citizens yesterday, in a bid to tackle what is turning into an epidemic. More than 100 reports of phone thefts were reported between December 2016 and February 2017, equating to more than 50,000 worth of losses. Police warn checking the news in the street or even replying to a message could result in a phone being stolen in seconds. Detective Inspector Mark Chapman said: 'The crime that we see in the City is largely preventable. Opportunist thieves strike when they see an unsecured bike, unattended laptops in a bar or by tailgating their way into your office. 'If you visit our new website you will see CCTV of wallets being stolen, phones snatched from victim's hands and bike locks being broken in seconds. The smartly dressed man is walking through the centre of London in broad daylight The thief pulls up alongside him and snatches his phone. Police are now trying to tackle these 'largely preventable' crimes 'These are all real situations that could result is a good time turning sour when you find that your cab fare home or your laptop is gone. 'The CCTV on our new website shows just how quickly thieves can strike. Hopefully, by following our advice and making small changes we can seriously limit the opportunity for thieves to strike.' But it is just the latest in a spate of similar crimes to plague the capital's streets. Members of the public fought back as two armed moped riders wielding a hammer and an angle grinder allegedly attempted to steal a parked scooter. A member of the public took a picture of the men in Belsize Park, London, as they were confronted by brave onlookers and a fearless pensioner Photographs have captured six brave passers-by chasing off muggers as they were confronted by a fearless elderly woman before fleeing the scene in Belsize Park, north London. Gangs riding mopeds attack every HOUR By Chris Greenwood A crime is committed every hour by moped-riding thugs, figures revealed. More than 11,389 incidents an average of 31 a day including thefts, robberies and acid attacks took place in the capital last year. And officers fear they are in the grip of a moped crime epidemic with similar offences taking place in all the countrys major urban centres. Police in one of the areas most badly affected released a map at the weekend showing how 20 moped thefts took place in one square mile in just one week. The Met have drawn up a list of about 200 people who they believe may be responsible for the majority of the moped-related offences. But crimes such as these are often hard to prosecute because of the difficulty in securing evidence as the identity of offenders is often disguised. Police in one of the areas most badly affected released a map at the weekend showing how 20 moped thefts took place in one square mile in just one week. Advertisement The pair were spotted acting suspiciously near a motorcycle in Lawn Road, Belsize Park around 6pm last Thursday (May 4) on a moped which may have been stolen. Shocked eye witnesses ran to help after seeing an elderly woman challenge them. The next day, marauding moped muggers brandishing hammers and crowbars terrified London shoppers just yards from BBC HQ's. On this occasion, at least one iPhone was stolen from a woman in her 40s when it was snatched out of her hand as she waited to cross the road. The BBC has sent internal memos to staff warning them to be vigilant for moped gangs and to keep their valuables out of sight. Radio 4 reporter Andrew Bomford said he saw the thieves almost crash into a man as they targeted him on a pedestrian crossing. Hollywood heartthrob Tom Hardy turned the streets of London into a real-life action movie when he chased and captured a moped thief. The 39-year-old actor was seen chasing after a thief who stole and crashed a moped in Richmond, south west London, on Sunday. Dumbfounded witnesses said Hardy appeared to 'switch into superhero mode in an action movie' as he sprinted through gardens and a building site before grabbing the thief by the scruff of the neck and declaring, 'I caught the c***'. Marauding moped muggers brandishing hammers and crowbars terrified London shoppers just yards from BBC HQ's Tom Hardy (pictured leaving the gym) was seen chasing after a thief who stole and crashed a moped in Richmond, south west London Last month, Jeremy Corbyn's youngest son has revealed he was mugged while walking home in London. Tommy Corbyn, 23, said he was attacked by a man on a moped who 'stole his phone' and 'tried to run him over'. He had been walking in his father's Islington North constituency at the time of the incident. Writing on Facebook, he said: 'Wasn't expecting to get mugged on my own street walking home this evening. Friends if you're going to walk and text PLEASE be vigilant!' Jetstar is the latest budget airline to offer its travellers a bargain, with flights across Australia available for just $13. Only hours after competitor TigerAir set the internet alight with an offer of $1 flights to and from Cairns, Darwin and Perth, Jetstar followed suit. A total of 10,000 domestic fares - including routes to Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and the Gold Coast, will be available at the bargain basement price. Jetstar is the latest budget airline to offer its travellers a bargain, with flights across Australia available for just $13 And the best bit is there's only a small catch, with the fares available to members of the airline's 'Club Jetstar program' - which costs just $49 to join. There's still time to join the club too, with the sale not beginning until noon Thursday and lasting through until 11.59pm tomorrow. Among the routes on sale are Melbourne to Gold Coast for $13, while Sydney to Perth is available for under $50. It comes after Tigerair offered 14,000 return flights at $1, beginning from 12pm on Wednesday to 12pm on Saturday, according to The Cairns Post. Those lucky enough to snag a deal can travel between mid-July to mid-September. Under the deal, when heading from Brisbane to Cairns it will cost $95 for the flight there and $1 for a return flight. A total of 10,000 domestic fares - including routes to Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and the Gold Coast - will be available at the bargain basement price, for members of the Jetstar Club Tigerair is offering $1 return flights, including to and from Cairns, Darwin and Perth (stock image) So that means a ticket will cost $95 from Brisbane to Cairns and $1 home to Brisbane and a ticket from Cairns to Brisbane will cost $95 to Brisbane and $1 return to Cairns. For the Cairns to Melbourne route a one-way ticket costs $135 with a $1 return. For the Cairns to Sydney route it will cost one-way $139 and $1 return. There are a total of 1,600 seats available for the Brisbane to Cairns route, 400 for the Cairns to Melbourne route and 500 for Cairns to Sydney. Travellers can also fly to Cairns, Darwin, Melbourne, Sydney, Whitsundays and Perth from Brisbane for a $1 return airfare. Mr Paulke says he is 'incredibly proud' of the group Group has over 300,000 members he describes as a 'brotherhood' Blokes Advice founder has spoken on decision to keep page running The founder of a 'Blokes Advice' Facebook group whose members encouraged rape, revenge porn and violence against women has spoken on his decision to keep the page running. Brock Paulke told News Corp he has 'faith in the future of the group' after making changes to administrators who were running the page. 'I stuck to my guns and didn't let the feminists win. It's become something I, my volunteers, friends and family are incredibly proud of.' The page, which only admits members by invitation and is operated by a group of men from Brisbane including Brock Paulke (pictured), has more than 300,000 thousand likes The group now has over 300,000 members, a huge increase on the following they had before being shut down in 2016 and a number Paulke describes as a 'brotherhood'. Despite the controversy surrounding the group, Paulke believes it is a platform for men with mental health issues to talk in a safe place without judgement. He also says he has been reached out to by women who support the platform. 'It's had really positive feedback from women too, normal women who aren't raging feminists and can see that blokes need to bond in their own way'. T-shirts with a 'Blokes Advice' logo, which features a penis and a beer, are being sold to promote the page Paulke says the Brisbane-based group are attempting to make a real impact on men's health and have met with members of One Nation. 'We presented this to senior advisers of One Nation, and asked them how they plan to make the situation better for these men. We went in to offer our support to the One Nation party, because they are pushing for change.' The Blokes Advice is full of posts that encourage sexual assault and suggest 'backhanding' a woman to teach her a lesson. Paulke says he does not condone material that is degrading to women. The group was shutdown in 2016 after photos started emerging of some of the vile comments circulating through the group. O ne member posted an image of a woman cowering from a man's clenched fist with a title that read: 'If you can't handle him at his worst...you don't deserve him at his best', according to The Courier-Mail. Another member posted a photo of the character Jack 'The Muss' Heke - a violent, alcoholic wife-beater from 1994 movie 'Once Were Warriors' - with the caption 'Inspirational bloke'. People have condemned the group for disturbing posts (pictured) including one man said the group had started off with the right intentions but has since been sending the wrong message 'Imagine some of the hate rape that went on this weekend due to this page Well done you bunch of sirs I tip my hat,' another person wrote. T-shirts with a 'Blokes Advice' logo, which features a penis and a beer, have also been sold to promote the page. 'What would you do if you saw a female in public wearing the Blokes Advice shirt? Surely a few back hands will teach em a lesson,' one man wrote, according to the news report. News / National by Staff reporter Former vice president and now leader of the fledging National People's Party (NPP), Joice Mujuru who recently signed a preliminary 2018 electoral pact withj opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is negotiating similar deals with other smaller opposition parties.Mujuru's spokesperson Gift Nyandoro said that they were currently engaged in negotiations with the likes of Tendai Biti and is yet to reach an electoral pact with Tsvangirai ahead of the make-or-break 2018 national elections.Mujuru was reportedly trapped when she rushed to sign a memorandum of understanding with MDC-T Morgan Tsvangirai without proper structures."Tsvangirai scored a major coup against NPP, when Mujuru agreed to go and sign the memorandum of understanding at his house. How do you get out of that trap and say we need to discuss on the same platform?" said a NewsDay source.The party is rocked by differences as it does not have any logo."It's true that we don't have a party logo or slogan since we came up with the new party name in March." At the moment, at our rallies, we have no slogans and basically no identity. This shows you that this was hastily done," said a NewsDay source.NPP has also failed to appoint a party spokesperson following the resignation of Jealousy Mawarire, leaving Mujuru's spokesperson, Gift Nyandoro to play a dual role. Office worker Damon Hobday (pictured), 26, avoided jail despite attacking his ex-girlfriend A violent bully who repeatedly beat up a single mother whilst treating her as a 'human punchbag' has avoided jail after a judge claimed a prison sentence might result in him targeting other women. Damon Hobday, 26, from Eccles, Greater Manchester, threw ex-girlfriend Sophie Gilbert into a radiator before pushing her into a cupboard, leaving her with a fractured wrist. The violence was witnessed by the victim's two year old daughter, who was seen screaming and crying by a friend who was at Miss Gilbert's home during the attack. Police discovered Miss Gilbert had injuries to her body, arms and legs from what was suspected to be numerous other beatings. Office worker Hobday also had a previous conviction for harassing another ex-lover. Hobday admitted common assault and actual bodily harm at Manchester Crown Court. But, he escaped with a suspended prison sentence after the judge ruled a short stretch in jail or even unpaid work could mean him losing his job, drinking more and making him even more violent. Judge Jinder Singh Boora said: 'You're a nasty piece of work and a bully. 'People like you often get away with lots of things. It's well known where people pick on vulnerable people offences are often not reported and what you did to her happened on multiple occasions. 'You are a powerfully built man and a tall man and she's a vulnerable woman and not able to fight back. She was not able to defend herself. 'But what do I do? You would not have any complaints at all if I was to send you down and many judges would send you down. I've got to think what would happened if you go to prison.' The judge said he would 'feel better' if he jailed Hobday, but thought prison may make the defendant 'target another vulnerable woman' when he gets out. Judge Singh Boora added: 'It will make me feel better because I don't like bullies but you will come out after six, seven or eight months and it may make you even worse and you will then potentially target another vulnerable woman and you will keep perpetuating the same behaviour. 'You're working and I don't want you to lose your job either and I think that would make you worse. 'If you're not working that would give you more time to drink. Imposing a curfew or unpaid work would mean you would probably lose your job. 'I'm going to suspend the sentence of imprisonment even though it's something I'm not happy about. That seems to be the only way forward for a man like you. Women need to be treated with respect, they are not there to be abused or to be your punchbag, they are there to be respected.' The court heard the pair had split up in 2015 after Miss Gilbert discovered Hobday was seeing another woman. Hobday was violent towards Miss Gilbert in March last year when he went round to her home and argued about keys and bank cards. Prosecuting, Elizabeth Evans, said: 'He grabbed her but then acted like nothing happened even though the victims back was hurting. 'Matters continued when he attended at Miss Gilbert's flat the following evening carrying a can of beer. She said he was acting weird - like he was "on something". 'He grabbed hold of her and threw her into the radiator twice and they argued about his key. The complainant said she would only return his bank card when he returned her key. He grabbed her arms and threw her to the heating cupboard which wounded her. 'A friend of the victim was in the property at the time. She described going into the living room and seeing the victim and the defendant and then the child who was screaming and crying. The child left the room and went into the hallway. 'The defendant then pushed the victim who went flying into a door. There was a fractured wrist. The complainant told her father and police attended. She was very distressed.' He escaped with a suspended prison sentence after a judge ruled a short stretch in jail or even unpaid work could mean him losing his job, drinking more and making him even more violent In a statement, Miss Gilbert said: 'My relationship with Damon has left my feeling my lowest, I felt like I didn't want to be here. 'I don't understand why he treats me like he has done, I can't believe what's happened. He cares so little about me that he's done this. 'I'm very scared of what he may do to me I want and hope I can get the support to get him out of my life and stop him doing this to anyone else. I should never have had to face this injury or the upset I've been through.' Hobday was given a 14 month jail term suspended for two years and was ordered to pay Miss Gilbert 600 compensation. He was also banned from contacting Miss Gilbert under the terms of a restraining order. His lawyer John Hargan said in mitigation: 'He has expressed remorse for what is happened. 'The relationship he had with the victim in this case was largely based around alcohol. 'They met in a pub, drank together and he says that this offence was committed whilst they were both in drink. He realises he's got a problem and he has told me that he now simply does not go out. 'He said you can't really take the risk, you could go out and have a couple of pints but when there's stressful problems or difficulties, problems will arise. 'He has a part time job and then will sit at home and play on the computer. He works in a sorting office. The unpaid work would be during the day and that's when he would sleep.' The Duchess of Cambridge is depicted as a ruthless chief executive figure who smokes when she is stressed in the BBCs controversial new drama about the royal family. King Charles III which will air this evening - has already been branded distasteful for imagining the fallout after Queen Elizabeth has died. But it is its unflattering portrayal of the Duchess which may anger the Palace the most. Kate is shown dragging on a cigarette on her balcony, as she schemes to dethrone Prince Charles and clear the way for her husband to become King. Scroll down for video King Charles III features scenes in which Kate (played by Samantha Riley, left) is shown dragging on a cigarette as she schemes to dethrone Prince Charles. The BBC stage adaptation which will air this evening - has already been branded distasteful for imagining the fallout after Queen Elizabeth has died When her children ask where she has gone, Prince William lies that she has gone to get some fresh air. And - in another scene that will ruffle feathers in the Royal Household - Kate also has a furious shouting match with the Duchess of Cornwall in the drama. She also confesses to the audience that she only pretending when plays the bland and standard wife prettying the Prince, and that she is actually plotting how to take the throne. Charlotte Riley, the actress who plays Kate in the BBC drama, described her as the driving force behind William, as the pair plot to force Charles to abdicate. Shes almost like the CEO of a business. She is pragmatic and forward with her opinions and wants to move things forward for the Royal Family. She encourages William to become the man she knows he can be, leading from the front, she said. Talking about the scene in which Kate drags on a cigarette with The Guardian, Ms Riley added: 'When I read that in the script, I was like: Yes! Of course she has a smoke! Charlotte Riley (right), the actress who plays Kate in the BBC drama, described her as the driving force behind William, as the pair plot to force Charles to abdicate STAR: WILLS AND HARRY WOULD FIND DIANA SCENES 'AGONISING' Prince William and Harry would find scenes in controversial new royal drama depicting their mother 'agonising', according to one of the show's stars. In the last interview before his death on April 7, Tim Pigott-Smith said how painful the new BBC film, King Charles III, would be for the princes when the ghost of their dead mother Diana, Princess of Wales, appeared. The actor, who died aged 70, takes on the role of Prince Charles in the 90-minute film that imagines the first days of his accession to the throne after the death of the Queen. Princess Diana's spirit appears when Prince Charles comes to the throne as she haunts the rooms of Buckingham Palace and tells her late husband: 'You think I didn't love you. It's not true.' Mr Pigott-Smith told The Times: 'One area of the play I found incredibly painful to do was the ghost of Princess Diana. Just because that whole incident was so terrible. 'I don't think it is presumptuous of us to do it or wrong of us to do it.' It would be terribly upsetting for any of them to watch.' 'For Charles or William or Harry it would be agonising to watch. That upsets me. But I don't think we've done anything unreasonable or cruel.' Last week the BBC was accused of inflicting pain on the young royals with scenes of Princess Diana as a ghost (shown, the stage version) Advertisement 'Everyone likes a cheeky fag now and again, especially at times of crisis. 'She cant get through to her husband any more, hes burying his head in the sand, so shes like: F*** this, Im going for a cigarette. Its one small thing that says a huge amount.' In other scenes, the Duchess is shown scheming with the Prime Minister and Prince Charles press secretary to force William to push his father aside, after he attempts to intervene in parliamentary affairs. She instructs William to remind Charles that the young royal couple have three times his public support, and are unwilling to wait for the throne. William resists at first, but is pushed into submission by his Machiavellian wife and eventually tells Charles that he and Prince Harry will cut off ties if he does not abdicate. Speaking about the part with Daily Mail's Weekend magazine, Ms Riley described her performance as 'Kate behind-closed-doors'. Actress Charlotte Riley has certainly not been afraid to take risks on-screen in the past, stripping off for a racy scene in World War II drama Close To The Enemy last year I like to think shes as feisty and forthright in private as she is in our show,' she added. The drama which is based on Mike Bartletts West End play - ends with William and Kates coronation as King and Queen. King Charles III has already stoked considerable controversy. Last week the BBC was accused of inflicting pain on the young royals with scenes of Princess Diana as a ghost. In a review of the play, Diana's former butler Paul Burrell told the Mirror: 'I was rather pleased to see Dianas ghost appear. She will always haunt the House of Windsor. 'Diana runs as a thread through it because she changed the monarchy forever. She is presented as the conscience of the piece, as though she is watching over them all.' He added that it was 'unfair' to portray Kate as a Lady Macbeth-type schemer, claiming that the public, and William, wouldn't take kindly to the representation. Mr Burrell said he was 'amused' to see Charles 'stomping up and down petulantly and throwing a book across the room', recalling a similar incident in his own life. He said: 'He picked the book up, said, You bloody idiot!, and threw it at me. I managed to dodge it. That was a scene completely out of my life.' In one pivotal scene, Prince Harrys love interest, Jess, asks him: Is Charles really your dad? Or was it the other one? She advises him to take a DNA test so that he can prove he was fathered by James Hewitt, who famously had an affair with Princess Diana, and give up his royal duties. The drama which is based on Mike Bartletts West End play - ends with William and Kates coronation (pictured: Charles becomes King after the death of his mother) If Hewlitt [sic] was your dad instead, you would be out the family. Mr Hewitt has publicly denied that Harry is his son noting that he only met Princess Diana two years after Harry was born. Dianas closest confidante, Rosa Monckton, told the Mail on Sunday: The BBC is deliberately causing pain to a real living person in a salacious fashion. Prince Harry was 12 when his mother died and she is no longer around to reassure him. I dont think this is why millions pay their licence fee. And last month, Conservative Andrew Bridgen said the drama adapted from a stage play of the same name denigrates and undermines our royal family. Meanwhile director Rupert Goold has disclosed that a number of actors refused to be involved in case it damaged their chances of receiving an honour. Even with the stage version, wed been through long conversations with lawyers and certain actors refusing to be involved because of how it might affect their future relationship with the honours system, he told the Radio Times. However, it would seem that the actors who joined the show were a little more gung ho. Earlier this week, Oliver Chris the actor who plays Prince William said that the BBC should tell its critics to shut up. In a newspaper interview, he admitted that showing Princess Diana as a ghost was right near the edge. But he added that the BBC should stand up for itself. Everyone seems to be hiding a bit. I sort of want someone from the BBC to come out and say: Everyone just shut up. President Donald Trump would regularly scream at the television when reports of investigations into his links with Russia appeared on television, according to aides. In the week before he stunned Washington by firing FBI Director James Comey, he repeatedly asked his inner circle why the Russia story wouldn't go away, it is claimed. The President was furious with Comey for telling the Senate that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign, and his anger grew when Comey failed to support his allegation that Barack Obama had tapped his phones. FBI Director James Comey yesterday learned he had been fired by President Donald Trump, having initially thought reports were an elaborate prank Trump reportedly flew into a rage whenever reports appeared on TV about alleged links between his campaign and Russia An insider told Politico that Trump would become angry at television news reports about his alleged links to the Putin regime. But even to his closest allies, Trump's decision to fire Comey came as a surprise. One aide told Politico: 'Nobody really knew. Our phones all buzzed and people said, "What?"' Comey himself thought he was being pranked, even telling agents that he thought the joke was quite funny when he saw reports of his dismissal on television. He learned about it on live television screens he could see as he addressed agents in the Los Angeles field office, the New York Times reported. Comey, pictured being sworn in as FBI Director in 2013, alongside former President Barack Obama The move has prompted calls for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and allegations that the Kremlin interfered with last year's election. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein had recommended Comey's firing, pointing to failings in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Democratic Senator Partrick Leahy said Rosenstein 'now has no choice but to appoint a special counsel', the New York Times reports. He continued: 'His integrity, and the integrity of the entire Justice Department, are at stake.' Comey was dismissed after he provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about classified emails from Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner's computer. The firing happened after it emerged that Federal prosecutors have sent grand jury subpoenas to figures close to Michael Flynn, the former National Security Advisor. He was fired after it emerged he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about meetings he had held with Russian officials. The subpoenas were issued to associates who worked with Flynn on contracts since 2014, CNN reports. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer claimed the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia The letter sent shockwaves through Washington - and within just over an hour Democrats, led by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, were claiming the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia. COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. 9 May: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' Schumer said in a press briefing. He then turned his message to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, calling on him to appoint a special prosecutor to look into ties to Russia, saying: 'America depends on you to restore faith in our criminal justice system which is going to be badly shattered after the administration's actions today.' In a tweet Trump wrote: 'Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp.' White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pushed back on questions about Trump's praise for Comey's actions with respect to the Clinton investigation during the campaign as she began a White House spin assault three hours after the sacking. 'I think you're looking at the wrong set of facts here,' she told Anderson Cooper on CNN. 'In other words, you're going back to the campaign. This man is the president of the United States. He acted decisively today. He took the recommendation of his deputy attorney general,' Conway said. 'He has lost confidence in the FBI director and he took the recommendation of Rod Rosenstein,' she said, reading from Rosenstein's letter. 'So the same senators that just voted to confirm this man whose integrity in doubt 94 to 6 two short weeks ago. We're supposed to believe the derogatory descriptions you just made of him?' she asked. Countering Schumer's claim of a cover-up, she said: 'He's wrong. It's not a cover-up.' 'In fact the president makes very clear in his letter the fact that Mr Comey on at least three occasions assured the president that he is not under investigation,' Conway continued, upping the ante on Trump's claim of three separate assurances. Asked when Trump got the assurances, Conway said: 'That's between the president of the United States and Director Comey.' HERO TO ZERO: FIRED FBI BOSS ENDED UP HATED BY EVERYONE Attorney General James Comey sealed a reputation as a brave and principled actor after a 2004 standoff during the Bush administration, when he refused White House efforts to get him to reauthorize warrantless eavesdropping while Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Comey had been appointed deputy attorney general by President George W. Bush, having served as a U.S. attorney in New York under Rudy Giuliani in New York. With Ashcroft incapacitated, Bush administration officials wanted Ashcroft, and then Comey, to sign off on an extension of the authority, with just hours to go before an N.S.A. program expired. Comey refused. His stand was a major reason why President Obama nominated him to be head of the FBI in 2013. Obama hailed Comey as a person of 'fierce independence and deep integrity' as he nominated him for the FBI post, which carries a 10-year term. A devout Catholic, a registered Republican and a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he seemed to radiate independence from the Democratic machine. And many congressional Democrats became far less supportive of Comey after the 2016 presidential election. Obama's man: Republican James Comey was chosen by the Democratic president for his principled stand but ended up in the words of one senator as 'as popular as cholera' Led by defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, many have griped about Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal. On July 5th, 2016, Comey personally announced the FBI's decision not to charge Clinton in connection with its investigation of her private email server and handling of classified material. He nevertheless called her conduct 'extremely careless.' Then on October 28, he told lawmakers the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails in connection to the investigation. The FBI had uncovered thousands of emails on disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop that had been sent to his wife, longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey drew the Democrats' ire once again when he announced two days before the election that the investigation hadn't turned up anything to alter the decision not to prosecute. Clinton said it only made matters worse and stole headlines. In the congressional hearing where he made inaccurate statements about about Abedin's emails, Democrats grilled Comey about why he had not revealed the existence of an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian election interference. Comey said the FBI 'didn't say a word about' the Russia investigation until months into, whereas he had testified under oath about the existence of the Clinton investigation. Advertisement The president used the firing letter to boast that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation - a reference to allegations being touted by his opponents that he somehow colluded with the Kremlin in its bid to bring down Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who blamed Comey for costing her the election, said 'no comment' through an aide. The White House's deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claimed Clinton would have fired Comey as well. She claimed Comey had 'lost the confidence of the rank and file within the FBI', as well as both sides of the political aisle. President Donald Trump on Wednesday invited South Korea's new president to visit the White House after an election victory that could cause friction between the allies over how to deal with North Korea's nuclear threat. Trump wants to tighten an economic vise and has raised the possibility of military force as the North approaches the capability to threaten America with a nuclear-tipped missile. Moon advocates a less confrontational policy. As he took the oath of office Wednesday, Moon Jae-in said he was open to visiting Pyongyang under the right conditions to discuss its nuclear program. In their phone call, Trump congratulated Moon on his election victory and his country's 'peaceful, democratic transition of power,' a White House statement said. The leaders agreed to strengthen the alliance. Moon accepted Trump's invitation to visit at an 'early date.' No specific timing was set. Scroll down for video Talks: Trump made a congratulatory phone call to Monn Jae-in inviting him to the White House Un more chance: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un's reclusive country issued a photograph of him touring 'Rangnang Disabled Soldiers' Essential Goods Factory' in Pyongyang. His new SOuth Korea counterpart says he will go to the Hermit State's capital if it helps build peace South Korea's past decade of conservative rule has encouraged smooth relations with the U.S. Moon's more liberal approach could fuel tensions, as happened under a liberal South Korean government in the 2000s. The country hosts some 28,000 U.S. forces. In a sign of Washington's growing concern about the North, the CIA announced Wednesday its establishment of an integrated 'Korea Mission Center.' It will be headed by a veteran operations officer to harness and direct the spy agency's efforts in addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threats. The center will draw on officers from across the CIA and 'bring their expertise and creativity to bear against the North Korea target,' an agency statement said. North Korea's heightened threat could change Moon's calculus once in power. He also may need to forge political unity at home after months of upheaval that included his predecessor's impeachment. That could slow any attempt at rapprochement with the North's unpredictable leader, Kim Jong Un, at a time of broad international support for sanctions. The U.S. and North Korea aren't currently involved in any diplomacy. But former U.S. officials held two days of informal talks in Oslo, Norway, this week with a Pyongyang delegation led by Choe Son Hui, a senior diplomat for North America. They discussed a range of nuclear, security and bilateral issues, according to a person familiar with the talks. The person wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the diplomacy and demanded anonymity. It was the first such 'track two' dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea since Trump took office. Big day: Moon Jae-in and the new South Korean first lady, Kim Jung-sook, bowqed during their inauguration in Seoul The U.S. side comprised Suzanne DiMaggio at the New America think tank, former U.N. ambassador Thomas Pickering, retired four-star Adm. William Fallon and former State Department nuclear negotiator Robert Einhorn. The State Department would only say such meetings 'are routinely held on a variety of topics around the world and occur independent of U.S. government involvement.' Moon, who was a close aide to Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea's last leader to adopt a 'sunshine' policy of diplomatic and economic outreach toward the North, has called for a balance of pressure and engagement. 'I am willing to go anywhere for the peace of the Korean Peninsula,' he said Wednesday. 'If needed, I will fly immediately to Washington. I will go to Beijing and I will go to Tokyo. If the conditions shape up, I will go to Pyongyang.' Moon succeeds Park Geun-hye, who was ousted in a corruption scandal. Moon also has questioned the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system the last government rushed into service. China contends the system's radar ranges into its territory and threatens its security. Trump has called for South Korea to pay the U.S. $1 billion for a system the U.S. has always described as in America's vital security interests. Other nations must follow Britain's lead on paying into the Nato alliance and fighting terror, the alliance Secretary General has said after talks with Theresa May. Jens Stoltenberg was welcomed to No 10 today for talks ahead of a major summit in Brussels - set to be US President Donald Trump's debut on the world stage. The summit is set to focus on 'burden sharing' in the alliance and the fight against terrorism - both issues Mr Stoltenberg said Britain was a leading performer on. At the talks in Downing Street, Mrs May reaffirmed Britain's commitment to the Nato alliance amid reports more troops could be sent into Afghanistan. A British deployment was not discussed publicly today but was thought likely to have come up behind the scenes. Theresa May is hosting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at No 10 this morning (pictured) amid reports Britain could be asked to send more troops to Afghanistan The Downing Street meeting comes ahead of a crucial Nato summit in Brussels later this month - due to be US President Donald Trump's debut on the world stage Mr Stoltenberg and Mrs May (pictured inside No 10 today) are also likely to discuss the wider security situation facing the Nato alliance UK forces ended combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014, but have still been helping out with training and protection duties (file pictured from Helmand province) Mr Stoltenberg said the two items on the agenda for the Brussels summit were 'burden sharing and fighting terrorism'. 'The UK is leading by example on both these topics when it comes to burden sharing. You spend 2 per cent on GDP on defence,' he said. 'I welcome that very much and hope that allies are starting to increase also their investments in defence. 'Also in the cause of fighting terrorism, I very much appreciate the contribution from the United Kingdom. You have been in Afghanistan for many many years, together with all the Nato allies. 'We will address our presence in Afghanistan at the leaders' meeting but we will also address what Nato can do to step up its efforts to fight terrorism, including providing support to the counter-Isil coalition.' Speaking alongside Mr Stoltenberg, Mrs May said: 'I would like first of all to reaffirm the commitment the UK has to Nato. We see that as the bedrock of UK security and we are pleased to play the role that we are in the alliance. 'Obviously we've got at the moment a number of commitments - nearly 1,000 troops in Estonia and Poland, the RAF Typhoons in the Black Sea as part of that project there. 'We very much consider it to be important that here in the UK that we spend 2 per cent of our GDP on defence and also meet the 20 per cent (of annual defence spending) on new equipment commitment as well. 'Obviously as we look ahead to the leaders' discussions there will be a number of issues including encouraging others to play their role in terms of the support for Nato.' Nato secretary general Jens Stolteberg is meeting Theresa May (pictured leaving No 10 this morning) at Downing Street The talks at No 10 today come as US President Donald Trump is also considering increasing the military presence in Afghanistan to try to stabilise the situation It emerged yesterday more British troops could be deployed to Afghanistan amid rising fears over security in the troubled country. The deployment is expected to be discussed by Mrs May and Mr Stoltenberg today British combat operations in Afghanistan ended in 2014, but there are currently about 500 troops providing security in Kabul and training at the Afghan Officer Academy. A request is said to have been made over the past few weeks for the force strength to be increased. Mr Stoltenberg said the two items on the agenda for the Brussels summit were 'burden sharing and fighting terrorism' The Taliban have been creeping back, including regaining ground in Sangin province where many British soldiers lost their lives. US President Donald Trump is also considering increasing the military presence in Afghanistan to try to stabilise the situation. American military chiefs have been suggesting at least 3,000 more US troops should be deployed. There are 13,000 Nato troops in the country at present, 8,400 of them from the US. Western special forces have continued to provide support to Afghan troops despite the formal end of combat operations. An MOD spokesman said: 'The UK keeps its contribution in Afghanistan under regular review to ensure it remains suited for the requirements of the mission.' A Nato official said: 'Nato regularly asks allies and partners to contribute forces for our missions and operations, for instance in Afghanistan and Kosovo. 'These requests are not targeted at only one nation, but are part of our force generation process which concerns all allies and partners. 'As regards Afghanistan, it's premature to discuss specific figures, as Nato leaders will discuss the mission at the May 25 meeting, with a further discussion on details by defence ministers in June.' It's not unusual for people to lay themselves bare in the name of 'art'. But two cheeky artists have taken that concept to the extreme, turning their naked bodies into paint brushes on the streets of Melbourne. Australian-born international artist Mik Shida, 27, and model girlfriend Zheani Sparkes, 21, daubed themselves in blue house paint and pressed up against brick walls in a very revealing public art exhibition. Scroll down for video International artist Mik Shida, 27, and model girlfriend Zheani Sparkes, 21, (pictured) have turned their naked bodies into paint brushes on the streets of Melbourne The pair snuck out at 7am on a Sunday morning to pull off the revealing stunt Mr Shida, who has been a street artist for the last 15 years, took to Facebook to share video of his work. 'There were not many people around when we did it, we picked locations where there wouldn't be a lot of traffic on a Sunday and it was 7am so no one even noticed us at all,' he said. 'It's not like we were running around naked in front of a whole bunch of people, we drove between locations and were keeping ourselves covered up in between. 'But we used normal exterior house paint so it was extremely difficult to scrub off afterwards.' Footage of the couples cheeky stunt shows Ms Sparkes opening her coat to reveal her blue painted body underneath and pressing it against the wall. After wriggling her body around, she pulls away to reveal a painted blue silhouette. Mr Shida then joins the effort, covering the entire front of his naked body in dark blue, before also pressing against the wall for a revealing outline. Walking up to a large wall, Shida's girlfriend opens her large coat (pictured) before pressing her body against the bricks Mr Shida and Ms Sparkes were inspired by Czech artist Yves Klein, who used naked women as human paintbrushes to create images on canvasses Footage of the couples cheeky stunt shows Ms Sparkes opening her coat to reveal her blue painted body underneath and pressing it against the wall After wriggling her body around, she pulls away to reveal a painted blue silhouette - moving on to cover other walls throughout Melbourne's streets 'There are always some people who do not approve and there was a certain element of it being a statement but it was not meant to be a big rebellious thing,' Mr Shida said. 'Reactions to the video have been quite different but it has mostly been good. There have been a few people who were shocked, but I think if they were actually here in Melbourne to see the art it would be different, it is about putting it into context.' The pair left the abstract naked body art at 20 locations in a 25-mile radius of Melbourne on April 30. The pair stripped off and painted themselves with blue exterior house paint before hiding under large overcoats to casually stroll up to white walls. Reactions to the couples artisitc statement have been quite varied but overall positive The pair left the abstract naked body art at 20 locations in a 25-mile radius of Melbourne last on April 30 Mik said he was inspired by Czech artist Yves Klein, who used naked women as human paintbrushes to create images on canvasses. 'Yves Klein did a similar thing where he used bodies as human paintbrushes in the sixties. We thought it would be quite interesting to take that idea and do it in the street,' he said. 'My work is abstract, psychedelic and often erotic. The colour was significant to Yves Klein and we thought blue was interesting to play with, there is a spirituality behind blue as a colour. 'I think even if people had seen us in the suburbs where we were they would have been quite accepting, Melbourne has an exciting arts scene with lots of different things going on. The couple have plans to repeat the performance in more yet-to-be-disclosed locations soon. The body of a deputy school principle who stabbed his wife and children to death has been exhumed so they will no longer have to share a grave with their killer. Alan Hawe took his own life after killing his schoolteacher wife Clodagh and their three children Liam, 13, Niall, 11, and Ryan, six, in County Cavan, Ireland in August. However, until now, their bodies have laid next to their father's - a period of around 250 days. Hawe took his own life after killing his schoolteacher wife Clodagh and their three children (left to right) Liam, 13, Niall, 11, and Ryan, six, in County Cavan, Ireland in Augus The family grave was opened at around 5.40 this morning at the cemetery in Castlerahan, Co Cavan, a stone's throw from where they had lived. Two-and-a-half hours later, it was lifted out by six men and placed in the back of a put into a silver van, according to the Irish Mirror. In his suicide note he asked to be cremated and for his ashes to be scattered at sea, but they will instead be taken to his family's home, in Kilkenny. Police were called to the Hawes's home near the town of Ballyjamesduff on August 29 last year and found the entire family dead. Hawe had pinned a note to the back door warning neighbours against entering the house before the tragedy unfolded. Another note found on the back door of the house told visitors to contact gardai. In another chilling message, Mr Hawe is thought to have explained how his family 'would not have coped without him'. His body was exhumed from the family grave this morning so they will no longer have to share a grave with their killer Hawe pictured with his three children. He believed that his family 'would not have coped without him' Mrs Hawe's family believe she had no idea she was in danger and had always protected the boys until Hawe carried out the murders. The family believe he carried out the killings 'to escape a fall from grace'. All five family members were then buried in a single grave in the cemetery at St Mary's Church, Castlerahan in September. Mrs Hawe's sister Jacqueline Connolly and her mother Mary Coll said 'evil' Hawe was a 'wolf in sheeps clothing' who 'fooled us all'. She added that the boys were 'pure, lovely, kind, talented, intelligent and wonderful' and their mother was 'their friend and protector, their guide, counsellor and teacher'. The family have said they will now fight to raise awareness of 'silent' domestic violence, adding: 'We need to learn to recognise where dangers lie in the home, see how the desire for control can get out of control and act before it is too late.' Herses arrive at Saint Mary's Church in Castlerahan, Co Cavan, where the funeral of the Hawe family took place Police were called to the Hawes's home near the town of Ballyjamesduff on August 29 and found the family dead At the funeral, priest Fr Felim Kelly said: 'The family played an amazing part in the life of their schools as teachers, held in the highest regard by colleagues, parents and children, respectful of all in their care and so co-operative in every possible way. The children - gifted pupils, team players, budding leaders, warm friends. 'In the community, organisations and individuals benefitted from so much generous sharing with true family and Christian values the motive and inspiration. 'There is a dark side too. How so much goodness could be destroyed? How such happiness could be invaded? How? Why? 'It is not for us to seek answers or to surmise about behaviour. We all are trying to cope with a tragedy beyond our understanding.' Advertisement If you've ever lamented life in a cramped apartment, spare a thought for the dwellers of Hong Kong's coffin homes. Skyrocketing rental prices have driven cash-strapped locals into tiny rooftop shacks, metal cages and coffin homes made of stacked wooden bunks. Images show the degrading conditions, such as combined toilet and kitchens shared by two-dozen people and bunk beds too small to stretch out their legs. The United Nations has condemned the accommodation as 'an insult to human dignity,' but those priced out of the market are left with no alternative. Hong Kong residents, who only gave their surname, Lam, top left, Wan, top right, and Kitty Au, pose at their 'coffin homes' Li Suet-wen and her son, 6, and daughter, 8, live in a 120-square foot room crammed with a bunk bed, small couch, fridge, washing machine and small table in an aging walkup in Hong Kong In wealthy Hong Kong, there's a dark side to a housing boom, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to live in partitioned shoebox apartments, 'coffin homes' and other 'inadequate housing A set of grimy toilets and single sink shared by the coffin home's two dozen inhabitants, including a few single women Single mother Li Suet-wen said she struggled to explain to her son, 6, and daughter, 8, why they live in a 120-square-foot one-room 'shoebox' cubicle. 'Why do we always have to live in such small flats? Why can't we live in a bigger place?' 'I say it's because mommy doesn't have any money,' said Li, a single mom whose HK$4,500 (AUD$785, USD$580, 447) a month in rent and utilities eats up almost half the HK$10,000 (AUD$1,745, USD$1,288, 995) she earns at a bakery decorating cakes. 'They fight over this and fight over that. If there's a day off (from school), the two of them will argue,' she said. 'The bigger they get, the more crowded it gets. Sometimes there's not even any space to step,' she said. 'They don't even have space to do their homework.' Wong Tat-ming, 63, has occupied an even smaller 'coffin home' for four years. He pays HK$2,400 (AUD$430, UDS$317, 245) a month for a 3-foot by 6-foot (1-meter by 2-meter) compartment crammed with his meager possessions, including a sleeping bag, small color TV and electric fan. His bunk sits beside grimy toilets and a single sink shared by two dozen residents, including a few single women. A five year-old boy plays outside his tiny home which is made of concrete and corrugated metal on the terrace of a apartment block as he lives with his parents in an illegal rooftop Housing unaffordability remains Hong Kong's biggest social problem Single mother of two, Li Suet-wen, pays AUD$785 (USD$580, 447) for a 120-square-foot one-room 'shoebox' cubicle Tse Chu, a retired waiter, sleeps in his 'coffin home,' a property which has been condemned by The United Nations as 'an insult to human dignity' Wong Tat-ming, 63, sits in his 'coffin home' where is crammed with all his meager possessions, including a sleeping bag, small color TV and electric fan. He and another elderly resident complain to a visiting social worker about bedbugs and cockroaches Cheung Chi-fong, 80, sleeps in his tiny 'coffin home' where he cannot stretch out his legs A resident who only gave his surname Sin, 55, tidies up the bed in his 'coffin home' Some 200,000 of Hong Kong's 7.3 million residents live in 'subdivided units,' including 35,500 children 15 and under, government figures show On a per square foot basis, 'it's not cheap here either,' Wong jokes. 'Would you say it's more expensive than living in a mansion?' Over the past five years, rental prices in one of Hong Kong has increased nearly 50 percent, rendering it the most unaffordable major housing market in the world. Some 200,000 of Hong Kong's 7.3 million residents live in 'subdivided units,' including 35,500 children 15 and under, government figures show. The figure does not include those living in rooftop shacks, metal cages and 'coffin homes.' A bus drives past a residential and commercial building where the 'coffin homes' This building is a universe away from the lifestyles enjoyed by the rich living in lavish mountaintop mansions and luxury penthouses A resident walks outside his illegal rooftop hut where is located next to a public housing estate It's a universe away from the lifestyles enjoyed by the rich living in lavish mountaintop mansions and luxury penthouses, or even those with middle-class accommodation in this former British colony. Hong Kong regularly tops global property price surveys. Rents and home prices have steadily risen and are now at or near all-time highs. Widening inequality helped drive mass pro-democracy protests in 2014. Young people despair of ever owning homes of their own. They lack space even to have sex, one activist lawmaker said last fall, using a coarse Cantonese slang term that caused a stir. Shocking cell phone footage has emerged showing the moment two airline passengers start a vicious brawl just after their flight touched down in California. One man was arrested after the pair started fighting on board the Oakland-bound Southwest Airlines jet during a stopover in Burbank after arriving from Dallas, Texas, on Sunday. This is just the latest in a string of airline horror stories that have come to light since a passenger was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight last month. Burbank police identified the suspect as Chaze Cable, 37, according to ABC. Cable was charged with two counts of misdemeanor battery and pleaded not guilty in court on Tuesday. According to police, the suspect assaulted another passenger, leaving the victim with a bruise to his left eye, a cut to his nose and a chipped tooth. A statement on Tuesday from the Dallas-based air carrier said the incident happened Sunday aboard Flight 2530 during deplaning at Burbank Bob Hope Airport in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles. A shocking clip has been released showing the moment two airline passengers erupted in a violent brawl when their plane touched down in California The fight involved three passengers aboard the Boeing 737. Southwest spokeswoman Alyssa Eliasen says police were summoned and one passenger was arrested, while another incurred minor injuries that did not prevent further travel. There was no word on what prompted the quarrel. In a statement, the airline thanked their staff for acting quickly to diffuse the situation. They told DailyMail.com: 'Were grateful to our Employees who quickly reacted to break up a fight involving three Customers on Sunday, May 7. 'The altercation occurred during the deplaning of flight 2530 in Burbank after the routine flight landed safely from Dallas. 'Local law enforcement responded following the incident, arresting one of the passengers. 'One Customer had minor injuries, but was able to travel onward. We have no other reports of injuries. 'Our Employees are our everyday heroes and are trained to de-escalate conflict while delivering heartfelt Hospitality on nearly 4000 flights to nearly the half-million Customers who fly Southwest every day.' The plane eventually took off again for Oakland. One person was arrested after the fight aboard a Southwest Airlines jet deplaning in Burbank after arriving from Dallas, Texas, on Sunday The brawl is the latest in a series of disturbances involving US airliners. Problems began last month with cellphone video capturing a passenger being dragged off a United Airlines flight. Other horror stories from customers surfaced later involving flights on Delta and American airlines. Then late Monday, irate passengers swarmed ticket counters at the Fort Lauderdale airport after Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights, blaming the decision on pilots' failure to show up. Burbank police identified the suspect as Chaze Cable, 37. Cable was charged with two counts of misdemeanor battery and pleaded not guilty in court on Tuesday Some travelers started a near-riot at the Fort Lauderdale terminal as hundreds of travelers were left stranded. Deputies arrested three people from New York in the Fort Lauderdale airport, charging them with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. Earlier this month, two men started a fight on a plane as other horrified passengers looked on and a desperate stewardess tried to pull them apart before allegedly being 'choked' by one of the brawlers on a stationary Japanese ANA flight to Los Angeles. The video was posted online after the fight at Narita International Airport. It shows the men, one wearing a bright red and white Hawaiian shirt, throwing punches at each other from their seats. Daniel and Amy McArthur of Ashers Baking Company, which is based in Belfast The Christian-owned bakers who refused to make a pro-gay marriage cake are being backed by customers who have helped their profits rise to 1.5million. Ashers bakery in Belfast was found to have breached equality laws after declining to make a cake iced with the slogan 'Support Gay Marriage' in 2014. And the family-run business was in the news again this week after refusing an online order for a cake decorated with the words 'Gay Marriage Rocks'. But the legal wrangle has not translated into financial damage yet - with the firm recording a 170,000 rise in profits last year, reported the Belfast Telegraph. The Supreme Court will this autumn consider a lower court's judgement that Ashers, which has seven outlets in Northern Ireland, was discriminatory. A two-day hearing for legal arguments has been listed for October over the case, which followed an order placed at its Belfast shop by Gareth Lee three years ago. The family-run business in Belfast was in the news again this week after refusing an online order for a cake decorated with the words 'Gay marriage rocks' Daniel McArthur, the general manager of Ashers, said: 'The fact that the Supreme Court is willing to hear arguments is very encouraging and reflects the importance of the issues and the high-profile nature of the case.' The case against Ashers was taken by gay rights activist Mr Lee with support from Northern Ireland's Equality Commission. The controversy first flared when Mr Lee, a member of the LGBT advocacy group Queer Space, ordered a cake featuring Sesame Street puppets Bert and Ernie for a private function marking International Day Against Homophobia. He placed the order in person at Ashers' Belfast city centre branch in May 2014. It was accepted and he paid in full but, two days later, the company called to say it could not proceed due to the message requested. Mr and Mrs McArthur (right) are pictured last October outside Belfast High Court alongside family members Colin and Karen McArthur (left) after losing their appeal over the case In the original court case, District Judge Isobel Brownlie ruled that religious beliefs could not dictate the law and ordered the firm to pay damages of 500. Mounting an appeal, Ashers contended that it never had an issue with Mr Lee's sexuality, rather the message he was seeking to put on the cake. The business said the slogan was inconsistent with their deeply-held religious beliefs. And this week it was revealed that the family had refused an online order for a cake decorated with the words 'Gay Marriage Rocks'. A woman called Grainne McCann, who is from Northern Ireland but lives in London, said she intended the cake for a gay couple who are friends. This raises the prospect that Mr McArthur, along with his wife Amy, could be back in court over the same issue. Ashers has so far declined to comment on the latest case. The McArthurs are Christians who believe marriage should be between a man and a woman Ms McCann wanted the cake made for her friend Joe Palmer, who is getting married to his boyfriend Andy Wong in the summer. She told Sunday Life: 'The wording we requested was "Gay Marriage Rocks! Happy Engagement, Andy and Joe! Lots of Love xxx". 'We were thrilled when Ashers accepted our online order, and full payment of 23.40 plus 20 P&P, but the next day they sent the cancellation note and a refund. 'My gut instinct told me the cake was refused because it celebrated gay marriage.' She then ordered a christening cake for her goddaughter Leila and felt her point was proved because the firm 'couldn't have been happier to make that cake'. At the time of the first case, they were supported by donations from around the world. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where gay marriage is not legal. News / National by Stephen Jakes The Lupane Magistrate Court has charged and fined Mthwakazi Republic Party President Mqondisi Moyo and the party's Secretary General Hloniphani Ncube with contempt of Court at Lupane Magistrate Court.The court had put May 3 as the commencement of the trial, emanating from the POSA case of the 14th of December 2016.The party has condemned the process as manipulated.It said in one of the worst case engulfed with gross manipulation of the Justice system Magistrate Masuku charged the two despite the fact that they had comunicated with the Prosecutor through their Lawyer and agreed to move the trial to the 17th and the 18th of May 2017."Magistrate Masuku argued that in his court he does not operate through the Lawyers indicating that, the two were suppose to communicate direct with the Court. He then fined them with $30-00 each or five days in prison for disrespecting the court," said the party."Their trial will start on the 17th to the 18th of May 2017. What irked us the most is that the court says the court only accept cash, no Eco cash and form of electronic system. The government is preaching what they do not practice, why are they not accepting plastic money when there is no money in banks and the rest of the country."The two, Mqondisi Moyo and Hloniphani Ncube were fined at 15: 30pm and the court said it does not allow any form of payment except cash."I was left with an hour to look for $60-00 cash which is near imposible in this country. Thank God we have structures in Lupane that gave a swift response. By the time we came back to the court it was 16:17pm and the Prison officers had already admitted our SG to the prison. We had to start all over again to negotiate for his release, and he was released at 17:30 pm," said one of the accused.There were arguments between the Court and the Prison officials over the procedure that should be used in releasing them after paying fines."As MRP we feel that this was not supposed to be a case in the first place," he said. A Kansas City nurse says she was forced to urinate in a cup at her seat on a United Airlines flight after a flight attendant wouldn't let her use the restroom. Mother-of-two Nicole Harper was on a United flight from Houston to Kansas City last month when she tried to use the restroom, but a flight attendant sent her back to her seat because the seatbelt sign was still illuminated. 'After explaining that I have an overactive bladder and would either need to use the restroom or pee in a cup, I was handed a cup by flight attendants,' Harper said in a Facebook post about the incident. Harper, who was wearing a dress on the flight, said she squatted over her seat and filled two cups with urine while her husband sat next to her. Nicole Harper was on a United flight from Houston to Kansas City when she tried to use the restroom, but a flight attendant sent her back to her seat because the seatbelt sign was still on. Harper, who was wearing a dress on the flight, said she squatted over her seat and filled two cups with urine while her husband sat next to her She posted her account on Facebook on Saturday morning, saying she couldn't get anyone at United Airlines to acknowledge her complaint. 'United Airlines refuses to take my call, now I can't sleep and just keep thinking about how wrong this is,' Harper wrote. Harper said her experience happened the same day that 69-year-old David Dao was injured while being forced off a United flight that was overbooked. That incident happened April 9. Upon looking up United flight 6056, which Harper says she was on according to KSHB, it appears she actually traveled on April 10. She said the incident happened 30 minutes into her flight. Harper said that employees had started their drink service, but due to turbulence the seatbelt sign had been turned on, according to KCTV. She wrote on Facebook of the incident: 'I was handed a cup by flight attendants. Bad enough? No, crew then escorted me to the restroom (now it's safe to get out of my seat), shaming me down the aisle while other passengers overlooked. 'The flight attendants treated me like I had committed a crime, stating they would be filing a report, calling in the hazmat team to clean the entire row (let me mention there was no mess involved) and told me I would need to talk with the pilot after the flight! 'I guess they would have preferred me to pee in the seat? After all they were the ones that gave me the cups knowing what I was planning to do with it. 'You would think peeing in a cup on an airplane in front my family and strangers, would be the worst part of this story. But the way I was treated by the flight attendants afterwards was worse. Harper posted her account on Facebook on Saturday morning, saying she couldn't get anyone at United Airlines to acknowledge her complaint 'They were absolutely horrible to use the rest of the flight! And to top it all off, once on our final descent a gentlemen got up from first class (yes the seat belt sign was on, and the plane was flipping tilted) walked right by a smiling flight attendant and entered the bathroom.' Harper said that her efforts to reach United's customer service department were unsuccessful. 'As an emergency room nurse I completely understand having a bad day on the job and having to deal with undesirable bodily fluids,' Harper wrote. 'What I don't understand is ZERO customer service. If I treated a patient this poorly I would surely have consequences.' After Harper's Facebook post went viral, United Airlines released a statement about last month's incident. The airline said: 'Customer safety is always our first priority. Initial reports from the Mesa Airlines flight attendants indicate that Ms. Harper attempted to visit the lavatory on final descent and was instructed to remain seated with the seat belt fastened per FAA regulations. 'The situation as described by Ms. Harper and our employees is upsetting for all involved. 'We have reached out to Ms. Harper and our flying partner Mesa Airlines to better understand what occurred.' Harper's claims are the latest in a string of incidents the have underscored the frustrations of flying. Following the Dao incident, United came under fire after a three-foot rabbit died following a flight from London to Chicago. More recently, a passenger who thought she was traveling from Newark, New Jersey, was accidentally allowed to board a flight to California. These are the distressing images of a young girl being pulled out alive from rubble after two hours following a property dispute. Khushboo Khatun, 19, was on her way home from a market in India when three men pounced on her and threw her into a 3ft deep pit before they filled it with earth and left her to die. Video footage shows the frantic rescue of Khushboo after she was buried under debris in Govindpur village, in Bihar, eastern India on Sunday. Rescuers desperately dig to free Khushboo Khatun, 19, who was left for dead on Sunday Khushboo had been left in the pit for two hours following a planning dispute between her father Muhammad Azim Ansar and local businessman Amit Shah When Kushboo didn't make it home, her father Muhammad Azim Ansari, 43 and mother Sanjana Khatun, 40, began to worry and started looking for her. Eventually, Ansari noticed the nearby pit was randomly filled with earth and suspected foul play. He quickly started digging, and called on other villagers to help, before they came across Khushboo in a semi-conscious state. She had been buried for two full hours and was almost suffocating. Video footage shows villagers ferociously digging as the bottom half of Kushboo's body is still buried deep in the soil. They threw water on her in a bid to clean off the soil but Kushboo could barely hold herself upright, as men continue to dig in an attempt to get her free. One rescuer can be seen pulling debris from inside her mouth. The teen was thrown into a 3ft deep pit dug by her father to build a small room for the family. The culprits filled the foundation with earth and left after the spot assuming she was dead Lucky escape: The teenager is seen emerging from beneath the rubble The teenager was eventually dragged from the rubble and taken to a nearby local government hospital suffering with shock. 'They threw me in the pit, tried to bury me alive, so that they could kill me,' Kushboo said of the ordeal. 'They threw me in the pit, tried to bury me alive, so that they could kill me,' Kushboo said of the terrifying ordeal. She is pictured recovering The police are searching for suspects, Amit Shah, who is a local businessman, and two accomplices. Superintendent Nawal Kishore Singh, from Samastipur police station, said Amit Shah had wanted to use land owned by Ansari for construction. As Ansari was not willing to co-operate, Amit used his daughter as a threat. Superintendent Nawal Kishore Singh added: 'It is a property dispute. 'It's been going on for several years. 'Amit has threatened Ansari many times in the past. 'Amit, along with two others, attacked a member of Ansari's family as a warning. 'They threw the girl into a pit and filled it with the soil. 'We are now searching for all three suspects.' Kushboo was discharged from hospital the following day and is now recovering at home. Khushboo was rescued by her parents and villagers in a semi conscious state and was rushed to a nearby local government hospital where her condition was reported Two gay men who were caught having sex by a vigilante mob will be caned 80 times for breaking Sharia law in a strict Indonesian province. The pair, both in their early 20s, were found in bed together by a group of thugs who raided a boarding house in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh in late March. Police later arrested the distressed couple, who said they were in a relationship and had had sex three times. Two gay men who were caught having sex by a vigilante mob will be caned 80 times for breaking Sharia law in a strict Indonesian province. Pictured in court in Banda Aceh Prosecutor Gulmaini Wardani said they should receive 80 strokes of the cane for having homosexual sex - the first such punishment of a gay couple in the conservative province (stock photo) Prosecutor Gulmaini Wardani said they should receive 80 strokes of the cane for having homosexual sex - the first such punishment of a gay couple in the conservative province. Wardani was speaking to journalists after a hearing at a special sharia court in Banda Aceh. The hearing was closed to the public and the men's identities were not revealed due to the sensitivity of the case. The father of one of the defendants, who requested anonymity, said he did not know his son was gay before he was caught. 'This is an ordeal for our family,' he said. 'After this problem is resolved, we will send him to an Islamic boarding school to be educated so he won't be deviant any more.' The couple are believed to be the two men (pictured) who were slapped by vigilantes who broke into their home and arrested for having gay sex in a shocking video in March The harrowing footage shows vile thugs slapping one of the men, who was naked The couple are believed to be the two men who were slapped by vigilantes who broke into their home and arrested them for having gay sex in a shocking video in March. Horrifying footage shows one of the distressed men, who was completely naked, speaking to his family on a phone, while telling one of the vigilantes: 'Please brother, please stop.' They were beaten and then taken to Wilayatul Hisbah, a Sharia police facility, after their arrest on March 28. A sentence recommendation is a usual step in an Indonesian court case and is typically followed soon afterwards by a verdict. Judges do not have to follow the recommendation but often do. Aceh is the only province in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country which implements Sharia law. A religious officer canes an Acehnese youth onstage as punishment for dating outside of marriage, which is against sharia law, outside a mosque in Banda Aceh The region has since 2001 been allowed by the Indonesian government to adopt bylaws which criminalise homosexuality as well as punishing women who do not cover their bodies. People caught gambling and drinking alcohol have for some years been punished with public canings. Under a local law that came into force in 2015, people can also be punished for having gay sex with up to 100 strokes of the cane. Gay sex is not illegal in the rest of Indonesia, which mainly follows a criminal code inherited from former colonial ruler the Netherlands. Authorities in the province on the northern tip of Sumatra island caned 339 people in 2016 for a range of crimes, according to HRW. The Indonesian government has yet to respond to a letter from the United Nations, written in April last year, expressing concerns about the abuse of LGBT people in Aceh. Last October, president Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo said police must defend the country's LGBT population, but Human Rights Watch has accused him of inaction since. Jeremy McConnell has arrived at court (pictured) to face a charge of assaulting his on-off girlfriend Stephanie Davis Former Celebrity Big Brother star Jeremy McConnell has denied assaulting his on-off girlfriend Stephanie Davis. He entered the not guilty plea in relation to an incident on March 9 this year, but admitted damaging property belonging to the former Hollyoaks actress. There was no sign of Miss Davis, 24, or the pair's four-month-old son Caben-Albi when McConnell arrived at Liverpool Magistrates' Court today. But speaking outside court, the Irish model told reporters he and the actress were still together and the couple's baby was 'doing well'. The on-off pair had recently given their relationship another chance, however both cut ties with each other on social media following the charge against the 27-year-old. In court today, McConnell spoke only to confirm his address and date of birth during a 15-minute hearing. A trial date has now been set for August 7 at Liverpool Crown Court following McConnell's not guilty plea to assault by beating. He has been granted unconditional bail. Yesterday, a spokesman for Merseyside Police told MailOnline: 'We can confirm Jeremy McConnell, 27, of Swords, Ireland has been charged with assault and criminal damage following an incident in Rainhill on 9 March 2017.' Miss Davis was reportedly 'shaken' after calling the police on McConnell at the home she shares with their son. McConnell has previously vehemently denied any wrongdoing. The couple first got together after appearing as fellow contestants on Celebrity Big Brother in 2015, months after Miss Davis finished a five-year run playing Sinead O'Connor in Hollyoaks. Rebuilding: The couple, who share four-month-old son Caben-Albi, are trying to rebuild a relationship following his rehab stint, with the latest reports stating Miss Davis had quit drink Former Hollyoaks actress Stephanie (pictured right) was reportedly 'shaken' after calling the police on McConnell (left) at the home she shares with their four-month-old son Caben-Albi She first came into the public eye when she took part in the BBC talent-spotting show Over The Rainbow in 2010. Last week Miss Davis vowed to quit drinking after posting a worryingly incoherent tweet about cheating. The pair are trying to rebuild their relationship but last Wednesday it appeared all was not well between them, with the 23-year-old tweeting: 'Someone who gives you and doesnt answer, dont I. There beat a cheat n always n in.' The post was reportedly deleted 20 minutes later, but McConnell blocked the star following a holiday the pair took together. Miss Davis had revealed in an interview with Closer magazine just days before, that she and McConnell, who are parents to Caben-Albi, five months, would like to try for baby number two, following his recent stint in rehab. Ex-Hollyoaks actress Stephanie (pictured with McConnell) made the official announcement that she was in a relationship with the father of her son once again on This Morning last month She confessed she was feeling 'broody', adding that her boyfriend wanted to be there for her next pregnancy, after missing out first time round. Miss Davis admitted: 'Weve both talked about having another baby at some point. She said: 'For Jez, its about wanting to put right what he did wrong and be there throughout my next pregnancy. And Im so broody Id love to give Caben a little sister one day.' She also revealed that wedding bells could be on the horizon, saying she 'can't wait to marry him one day'. Miss Davis made the official announcement that she was in a relationship with the father of her son once again on This Morning last month. The White House has claimed FBI director James Comey was fired for the controversial timing of a probe into Hillary Clinton's emails amid speculation it was actually a bid to cover up the president's links to Russia. On Tuesday, Donald Trump fired the bureau's head honcho - the man who led the agency charged with investigating his campaign's ties with Russia - in a move that sent shockwaves through Washington. The surprise dismissal of Comey, who played a huge role in last year's presidential election by relaunching the investigation into Clinton's email scandal 11 days before the vote, came as he was leading a probe into whether Trump's aides colluded with Moscow to sway the November 8 vote. The official line on the dismissal - according to a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein which was circulated by the White House - was for mishandling the probe into presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's emails days before the election in November. But it took the Democrats an hour to claim it was a cover-up, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying it was a 'big mistake'. FBI Director James Comey (above) reportedly erred last week when he falsely claimed in testimony before Congress that top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded classified emails to the laptop of her husband, Anthony Weiner, and has now been fired by the president Farewell: Comey was seen just over three hours after his firing as he shook hands with law enforcement officers in Los Angeles before boarding a private jet Comey rattled both Donald Trump (left) and Hillary Clinton (right) in the race for the White House 'Mistake': The White House put out a dossier which consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer - but Schumer said the president needed to now appoint a special prosecutor to look into the claims of collusion with the Russians COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. May 9: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement Schumer claimed the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia. 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense,' he said. 'Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' He then called on Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor to look into ties to Russia, saying: 'America depends on you to restore faith in our criminal justice system which is going to be badly shattered after the administration's actions today.' The president used the firing letter to boast that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation - a reference to allegations being touted by his opponents that he somehow colluded with the Kremlin in its bid to bring down Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who blamed Comey for costing her the election, said 'no comment' through an aide. The White House's deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Clinton would have fired Comey as well. She claimed Comey had 'lost the confidence of the rank and file within the FBI', as well as both sides of the political aisle. The sacking is the latest twist in the astonishing chain of events set off by Clinton deciding to use a private server while she was Secretary of State. Last week Comey was questioned under oath about why he had written a letter to members of Congress at the end of October revealing a renewed investigation into Clinton's handling of classified emails. In his sworn testimony, Comey told senators that Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's aide and Anthony Weiner's estranged wife, made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of emails to her husband, 'some of which contain classified information.' But the Justice Department sent the Judiciary Committee a letter late on Tuesday acknowledging that Comey's statement was inaccurate. The letter that ended FBI director's career - signed at the bottom by President Donald Trump The FBI chief told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Abedin had made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of Clinton-related emails to Weiner, 'some of which contain classified information'. But he was wrong - and is now being fired. Weiner is still being investigated by the FBI for sexting a 15-year-old girl White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders talks to media outside the West Wing of the White House, in Washington Clinton's emails first became public knowledge in March 2015 during her tenure as United States Secretary of State. It was revealed she had used her family's private email server for official communications and the FBI opened an investigation. Two months later, The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. Another two months passed before Comey announced the bureau's investigation had concluded and that although Clinton was 'extremely careless' in her handling of the email system, he recommended no charges be filed against her But two days later the State Department reopened its probe into the controversy. In September 2016, with Clinton and Trump on the campaign trail, DailyMail.com revealed Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner had sent sexual messages to a 15-year-old girl. When his laptop was seized, more details of the Clinton scandal were unearthed, prompting Comey to notify Congress 11 days before the election that the case was being reopened. The FBI concluded again that Clinton was in the clear, but days later she lost the election, prompting the Democrats to blame Comey. White House press secretary Sean Spicer talks to media in front of the White House, in Washington, Tuesday, May 9, 2017. President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director Comey on May 9, 2017, ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's election meddling On Tuesday, Donald Trump fired the bureau's head honcho - the man who leads the agency charged with investigating his campaign's ties with Russia - in a move that sent shockwaves through Washington In a press briefing, Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer said the president 'has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation'. A search for a new FBI director was to begin 'immediately,' the White House said. In a letter, Trump told Comey: 'You are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately. 'While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. 'It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission.' The stated reason for Comey's dismissal - according to a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that was circulated by the White House - was for mishandling the probe into Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's emails. But his sacking raised immediate questions about Trump's motives. Since the start of Trump's presidency, the FBI chief had increasingly appeared to be a thorn in the president's side. Comey was probing possible links between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin's Russia He has confirmed that the agency is investigating Russian interference in last year's presidential election and notably Moscow's possible collusion with Trump's campaign. Democrats - already angry that Congressional inquiries into Russian meddling have been hamstrung by Republicans' willingness to defend Trump - voiced sharp concerns that the FBI's investigation may now be in jeopardy too, with several calling for an independent commission to take over the probe. Dismissing Comey is a move that prompted parallels with a decision by a crisis-plagued Richard Nixon to fire his attorney general. 'This is nothing less than Nixonian,' charged Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who called Trump's official justification for firing Comey 'absurd'. 'That fig leaf explanation seeks to cover the undeniable truth: The president has removed the sitting FBI director in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country - one that implicates senior officials in the Trump campaign and administration,' he charged. When Trump initially decided to keep Comey - who was appointed by Barack Obama - in his job, it raised eyebrows from critics who saw it as a tacit reward for his role in damaging Clinton's chances. But within months, the FBI chief was back in the national spotlight - this time taking aim at Trump. During testimony to Congress last month, Comey flatly rejected Trump's explosive claim that he was wiretapped by his predecessor. Comey's public testimony - watched by millions around the world - came as Trump sought to steer the news focus by calling the question of Russian election meddling 'fake news.' But it had become increasingly clear that Comey had set his sights on the issue of Russia's election meddling, which has stalked Trump's presidency since he took office. The dismissal came after it emerged Federal prosecutors have sent grand jury subpoenas to people close to Michael Flynn, the former National Security Advisor. Flynn was fired after it emerged he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about meetings he had held with Russian officials. The subpoenas were issued to associates who worked with Flynn on contracts since 2014, CNN reports. James Comey, who is popular among rank-and-file agents, was appointed four years ago Clinton accused Comey of trashing her chances of becoming president by revealing an renewed investigation into her email use Senator Patrick Leahy called Trump's official justification for firing Comey 'absurd' FBI directors are appointed for a single 10-year term. The 56-year-old Comey, who is popular among rank-and-file agents, was appointed four years ago. He played an outsized and controversial role on the American political stage over the past year, with bombshell after bombshell that rattled both parties in Washington. Clinton accused Comey of trashing her chances of becoming president by revealing a renewed investigation into her email use. Comey told lawmakers last week he felt 'mildly nauseous' at the thought that he had swayed the election - but could not have acted any other way. Early frontrunners are starting to emerge in the search for a new FBI Director following the dismissal of James Comey. Donald Trump's sensational decision to fire the embattled head of the bureau sent shockwaves through Washington and even surprised some of the commander-in-chief's closest allies. Now the search is on to find his replacement. On Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted: 'James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI.' The first FBI Director was J. Edgar Hoover. He served for 48 years before his death in 1972. Since 1976, directors have been limited to a 10-year term. They are nominated by the President and have to be confirmed by the Senate. Following Comey's dismissal, Andrew G. McCabe was made Acting FBI director. He is one of the candidates in the running, but a number of other names have been linked with the newly-vacant post, including: Rudy Giuliani Rudy Giuliani has been linked with the vacant position, but his appointment is likely to be opposed by the Senate The former New York mayor would be an attractive choice for Trump, as Giuliani was among his most vocal supporters during the presidential race and has a background in law enforcement. However this loyalty would make his appointment unlikely, CNN reports, as he would be extremely unlikely to get the backing of the Senate. He has been outspoken in his opposition to Hillary Clinton. Ray Kelly Ray Kelly, the longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, could be a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions The longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, Kelly was in charge of the force in the years following 9/11, when terror threats were routine. His tough-on-crime stance, including support for provocative tactics like stop-and-search, could make him a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr Kelly defended a police operation, exposed by The Associated Press, that conducted secret surveillance of Muslims. He could work with Trump and Sessions on anti-terrorism efforts. Chris Christie New Jersey governor Chris Christie has a mixed relationship with Trump, but could bring law enforcement experience to the job Though his relationship with Trump has been mixed, the governor of New Jersey has known the president for years and could bring law enforcement experience to the job. He is a former Republican-appointed United States attorney in New Jersey, and he cited that background time and again during his 2016 presidential campaign. David Clarke David Clarke has been a fierce Trump supporter and has described himself as 'one of those bare-knuckle fighters' A wild-card, but the outspoken and polarising Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff has been a fierce supporter of Mr Trump and even landed a speaking spot at last summer's Republican National Convention. A conservative firebrand known for his cowboy hat, Mr Clarke has called himself 'one of those bare-knuckles fighters' and has been critical of what he called the "hateful ideology" of the Black Lives Matters movement. But he would be a long shot given that a county jury recently recommended criminal charges against seven Milwaukee County jail staffers over the dehydration death of an inmate who went without water for seven days. Andrew McCabe Andrew McCabe was yesterday named Acting FBI Director by President Trump following Comey's dismissal Appointed yesterday as Acting FBI director, McCabe has worked at the bureau for 21 years, having joined as a special agent in 1996. He has expertise in counterterrorism and interrogation, but he is currently under review for his involvement in the Clinton scandal after his wife received funds from a close friend of Hillary for her political campaign in 2015. Before McCabe was appointed as the Deputy Director of the FBI, his wife Jill McCabe ran as a Democrat for the Virginia stat senate in 2015. Her campaign received funds from the state Democratic Party and a political action committee run by Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons. He has, however, been part of the same investigation which Comey was fired for, and this is likely to work against him when Trump names his pick. Trey Gowdy Trey Gowdy criticized Comey for not prosecuting Hillary Clinton over the email server investigation The South Carolina Republican led the House committee investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's actions surrounding the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Mr Gowdy is also a former federal prosecutor who boasts of his work on drug trafficking, bank robberies and child pornography cases. He was among politicians critical of Mr Comey's decision not to prosecute Mrs Clinton over the email server investigation, saying other government officials would have been prosecuted if they handled classified information like she did. John Pistole John Pistole, a former deputy director of the FBI, has worked on terrorism policy under the George W Bush and Obama administrations A former deputy director of the FBI, Pistole worked for the bureau for 26 years before becoming an administrator of the Transportation Security Administration. He is currently president of Anderson University in Indiana, and is likely to be acceptable to Republicans and Democrats, having worked on terrorism policy during the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Pistole has spoken out about Trump policies, telling the Washington Post he opposed a planned cut to the 'armed pilot' programme, which teaches pilots how to deal with hijacking attempts. Michael Mason Former assistant FBI investigator Michael Mason could be a possible pick as the new director Another possible pick could be Mason, USA Today states. He is a former executive assistant FBI investigator, who has experience of handling criminal and cyber investigations. He was backed by the FBI Agents Association for the top job last time the post became available during the Obama administration. Mason retired from the FBI in 2012. Ken Wainstein Ken Wainstein (pictured) has previously worked as chief of staff to Comey's predecessor, Robert Mueller Wainstein has 19 years of experience at the Justice Department, where he was the first head of its national security division. He has also served the FBI, having worked as chief of staff to Comey's predecessor, Robert Mueller. Wainstein has worked as an FBI general counsel, but it chances could be damaged by the fact that he endorsed a letter opposing Trump's candidacy, Fox News reports. Mike Rogers Mike Rogers has said there was a lot of concern about Comey's leadership of the FBI Former House Intelligence Committee chairman Rogers has already said there were a 'lot of concerns' about Comey's leadership of the FBI. He told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that 'Americans need to see this institution as an absolutely nonpartisan enterprise that works pretty hard and handles difficult cases'. Rogers, who chaired the committee between 2011 and 2015 had been tipped to land the post in 2013, and could be in the running htis time around. Faith and Grace Wilkins with their mother Kay Two sisters have beaten off competition from dozens of others to be crowned the winners of the messiest bedroom in the country. Faith and Grace Wilkins, aged five and seven, won the UK's Messiest Bedroom competition thanks to their horrifyingly unkempt abode. Their 23-year-old mother Kay submitted a photograph of their dirty room after finally putting her foot down and refusing to clean it. The competition organised by Huddersfield-based store Time4Sleep offered a free bed to the winner. Faith and Grace's mother Kay said: 'The photo is of my daughters' bedroom, after I refused to clean it. 'As much as it's killing me not doing it, I won't cave in. 'They need to learn - needless to say it's not bothering Grace and Faith at all.' She added: 'It really couldn't have come at a better time as we moved house on Saturday and broke the bedroom furniture, so as you can imagine winning has taken a massive weight off our shoulders.' Faith and Grace's 23-year-old mother Kay submitted a photograph of their dirty, unkempt room after finally putting her foot down and refusing to clean it For many entrants, cleaning their disgusting bedrooms would evidently involve more than a quick dust, polish and vacuum. Images submitted by competition hopefuls showed rooms which looked like they had been burgled. With piles of dirty clothes, make-up stains, rotten food and abandoned toys, the bedrooms left parents in despair. Other dishonourable mentions went to Claire Worton's 20-year-old daughter Claudia's bedroom in Lepton. Ms Worton said: 'The state of her bedroom is, and has always been, the norm for years. 'I have tried to keep it tidy but have now just switched off. 'How she sleeps in there or finds anything is a complete mystery.' A village shop in the Lake District has sparked outrage for selling golliwog dolls. One shopper was so shocked to see the dolls displayed at Main Street Arts & Crafts in Hawkshead, Cumbria, that she went inside to confront the owner. Brigitte Herrod, 52, of Cockermouth, claimed stores should not be allowed to stock the dolls and was aghast that the owner thought they were inoffensive. Main Street Arts & Crafts in Hawkshead, Cumbria, has sparked outrage for selling golliwog dolls, which are displayed outside the shop She told MailOnline: 'I'm white, but I was offended because I think racism does still exist in the world as anyone would agree - and they are a symbol of that. 'They've never been a positive image. Just because people may think they had them in their childhood, that doesn't make them appropriate for now. 'I'm actually ashamed as a northerner to see them being sold in the county that I'm from. Racism has to be stamped out. 'This may be a very small part of the problem, but you have to pick away at the small things to eradicate the bigger problem. One shopper was so shocked to see the dolls displayed at Main Street Arts & Crafts that she went inside to confront the owner. The dolls are pictured above on Google Street View 'I'm not a person who generally picks up on things - I'm a relatively quiet person - but I wrote a letter to my local MP and to the local newspaper. 'My benchmark is if I had been walking with my son and some of his friends who are non-white, I would have been ashamed to have seen them displayed. 'They were outside on a display. The Lake District attracts people from all over the world. Do we as a country and as an area want to be selling these?' The shop owner told her Britain was too politically correct and it was fine because he called them 'Gollies' - but she said changing the name doesn't change the meaning. The owner of Main Street Arts & Crafts (pictured) was unavailable for comment, but a member of staff said she was surprised the dolls had caused offence and insisted they were not racist The dolls go back to the 'Golliwog' character created by Florence Kate Upton that appeared in children's books in the late 19th century and also featured in some Enid Blyton books. Golliwogs: The once loved character now seen by many as racist The golliwog was created by Florence Kate Upton in 1895 in her book 'The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwog', where it was described as 'a horrid sight, the blackest gnome'. After the author created the golliwog, it became a favourite for collectors and was popular in the UK as the mascot of Robertson's jam. But by the 1980s, it was increasingly seen as an offensive racist caricature of black people. Robertson's dropped their golliwog mascot, called Golly, from their labelling in 2001. Advertisement Shop owner Steven Howard was unavailable for comment, but a member of staff said she was surprised the dolls had caused offence and insisted they were not racist. 'I can't see anything wrong with them,' she said. 'We just like them as a toy. Lots of people enjoy them - it takes them back to their childhood. If people think we're racist because they're selling, then it's just them taking offence for no reason. 'I've had black people buying them because they like them. The golly has always been a loving item that children played with. Many people say it's a shame more places don't sell them now.' Michael Woodhouse, chairman of Hawkshead Parish Council, said it had come as a shock to learn the dolls were being sold in the village. 'It's something we need to look at,' he said. 'If it's not illegal then the shop owner isn't doing anything wrong so it's a difficult one, but it is sad and surprises me that people are selling them in Hawkshead.' Aftab Khan, a development officer with AWAZ Cumbria, a support group for black and minority ethnic people, said: 'Some people may find Golly dolls displayed offensive. 'If people feel they have found the display of any objects, signs or symbols associated with reinforcing racism, hostility and prejudice against minority groups they should be reported as a hate crime to police so that appropriate actions are taken.' Last month MailOnline told how a racism row brewed up at Mal's Vintage Tearoom in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire, after golliwog dolls went on sale to customers. The shop came under fire after the owner started selling the dolls to raise funds for local projects, but she said she didn't think the figures would offend anyone. A young Australian soldier has been killed during a live-fire training exercise at a facility near Darwin. The man aged in his 20s was reportedly killed by a bullet to the head but Defence Force officials declined to comment on how the incident occurred. 'The soldier was taking part in a routine training activity at the time of the incident,' it said. It is the second death of a soldier during a training drill in the past week after 21-year-old Stuart Reddan was killed by a falling tree branch last Thursday. A young Australian soldier has been killed during a live-fire training exercise at a facility near Darwin He was reportedly killed by a bullet to the head but Defence Force officials declined to comment on the incident beyond confirming his death Northern Territory Police major crime unit and forensics were sent to the Mount Bundey training facility to investigate. The soldier was medivaced to Royal Darwin Hospital but did not survive, the ADF confirmed. His next of kin was notified and being supported by the army. 'The Chief of Army and Army commanders acknowledge the gravity of this and recent incidents and take all matters relating to personnel and training very seriously.' 'The Army has instigated a suspension of training activities across its combat brigades to review risk assessment processes and training safety management. 'It is a deep shock to the orgaisation and will be felt by the broader Army family,' it said. It is the second death of a soldier during a training drill in the past week after 21-year-old Stuart Reddan (pictured) was killed by a falling tree branch last Thursday The last soldier to be accidentally shot dead in training was Commando Mason Edwards, 30, who was hit by bullets passing through a wall he crouched behind. That incident saw the ADF fined $220,000 for not maintaining a safe workplace or correct supervision, and prompted it to change its live-fire training regulations. The facility is frequently used by Australian military along with U.S. Marines stationed in Darwin and visiting foreign forces. Pig farmer Keith Cini was bashed to death in his Badgerys Creek home in 2014 Blood-soaked handprints, broken doors and overturned furniture: this is the grisly scene where a pig farmer was bashed to death by masked intruders. Lucina Boldi woke in the early hours of May 30, 2014 to see her husband Keith Cini being attacked by two men in the hallway of their Badgerys Creek home in Sydney. Ms Boldi has described the terrifying moment she was forced to play dead in her own home to avoid being beaten to death. Photographs supplied by the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday show the devastation of the savage attack. 'I didnt move,' Lucina Boldi told the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday while giving evidence at the trial of Mr Cini's alleged killer, Ryan David Evans. She said a person in black with their face covered came towards her so she quickly shut her bedroom door. 'I put my back to the door trying to hold the person out but I wasn't strong enough,' she told the court. Ms Boldi was knocked to the ground by her assailant, who was wielding a bat. 'I got hit on the head and then the person ... kept hitting me,' she said. 'I put my arms up to protect my face.' Lucina Boldi woke in the early hours of May 30, 2014 to see her husband Keith Cini being attacked by two men in the hallway (pictured) of their Badgerys Creek home Blood-soaked handprints and broken doors show the devastating impact of the deadly home invasion She begged her attacker to stop but the blows kept coming. 'Was there a point when he did stop?' Crown prosecutor Chris Maxwell asked. 'When he thought I was dead,' Ms Boldi replied. 'What did you do to make him think that?' 'I didn't move,' she said. Ms Boldi wiped her eyes with a tissue during her testimony and several times looked at Evans in the dock. The court heard Mr Cini was found not breathing in the hallway of the home in a pool of blood, with his legs taped together. Ms Boldi has described the terrifying moment she was forced to play dead in her own home to avoid being beaten to death Photographs supplied by the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday upturned furniture and belongings strewn over the home Ms Boldi suffered a broken arm, a head injury, and injuries to her hand so severe that she can no longer make a fist and has lost all sensation in her thumb. Evans, 28, was allegedly a former employee of Mr Cini. He has pleaded not guilty to murder, wounding with intent to murder, and five other offences stemming from the Badgerys Creek home invasion and a second violent break-in at a Medway home in the NSW Southern Highlands. During her evidence, Ms Boldi said there were two safes in their home and Mr Cini used to put cash from pig sales in one. The trial continues. Opinion / Columnist Of late the media has been abuzz with reports that the opposition parties in Zimbabwe are frantically trying to find each other in an effort to enhance their capacity to defeat Zanu PF in the 2018 'watershed' elections. Just this past weekend, leaders of PDP, MDC T, ZAPU, MDC, NPP and others shared a platform where they addressed a NERA rally. With the projections by Afro barometer indicating a possible Zanu PF land slide victory next year, the need to coalesce as opposition parties is no longer just a question of a coalition being necessary' but as rather being critically mandatory. This article will attempt to demonstrate the value of an election fought under a coalition especially that which includes the People's Democratic Party (PDP) in a quest to break Zanu PF's power hegemony.Let me start by cautioning readers that whilst a strong opposition is necessary in the electoral defeat of Zanu PF, it is however, not the only ingredient. A whole host of other conditions that promote free and fair elections, power transfer as well as peace and national stability in the post election period are critically desirable. Put illustratively, it is not enough to provide a virile bull that can sire the desired calves; you also need to have a healthy breed of cows that can withstand its weight and survive the deliver/birth-giving stage. More significantly, the bull itself should be of the right pedigree. For 37 years, Zimbabweans have had to endure painful miscarriages under the weight of sterile political entities whose only value to the nation has been their corrupt shenanigans.Whilst some opposition parties arguably have a sizeable following and some semblance of brave leadership, they, however, have no capacity to give birth to a new Zimbabwe. They are like a beautiful woman without a womb; everyman desires her but she cannot be a mother no matter how frequent the effort to achieve this is made. Other opposition parties do have some semblance of principled leadership with a little intellectual depth but these qualities alone have failed to grow the parties in question since their inception. We also have parties that combine both liberation credentials and government experience at their disposal; however, these too cannot win us any election although we still need their attributes. We need a formula which, whilst accumulating the aggregate attributes from all coalition partners, will also be solid on clarity of vision and policy direction. That is found in abundance in the PDP.PDP is the embodiment of a visionary leadership which is deeply steeped in practical solutions for Zimbabwe's multifaceted crises more than any other political outfit in Zimbabwe. The party has talent diversity. The party has solid cadreship which is a product of a people's struggle for democratisation. However, on its own, PDP cannot remove Zanu PF from power but the party's policy documents reveal how apt the party managed to diagnose Zimbabwe's ailments. It has a winning formula for effective governance, constitutionalism and the Rule of Law. It also has a practical formula for transitional justice, national healing and reconciliation. Above all it has intelligent formulae for macroeconomic stability, job creation, industrialisation, the social delivery system, infrastructural development, mineral beneficiation, rural and urban development as well as land and food security.The PDP acknowledges the fact that for any serious coalition to make an impact in Zimbabwe's elections there is an urgent need to free ZEC from underits Zanu PF incubation. Those Zanu PF party functionaries masquerading as commissioners and administrators must be removed. The coalition needs to cause the compilation of a new voters' roll that is free from manipulation by the Zanu PF rigging machinery. It needs to bust the Zanu PF militia that has always been used to intimidate voters into voting for Zanu PF. It needs to free the traditional leadership in the rural areas from serving Zanu PF interests when they shepherd their helpless subjects into a Zanu PF paddock.In the absence of a coalition pact, the opposition will most certainly not wrestle power from Zanu PF, no matter how wild their imagination might be. However, should it happen that parties do go it alone; the PDP will maul the Zimbabwe electoral landscape! It may not form the next government but will certainly chew a big chunk out of Zimbabwe's electoral cake! As quiet as the footsteps of a giant, the party has been making serious inroads. No other party in Zimbabwe has a thriving membership presence and vibrant structures nationwide as does PDP. A leading polling analyst has said the scale of the Tory victory on June 8 will be mostly determined by the collapse of Ukip rather than Labour's failings. If Ukip's performance in last week's local elections is repeated next month, Theresa May can expect potentially millions more votes to switch to her. Polls suggest at least 43 per cent of Ukip voters in 2015 are already in the Tory column with a month to election day. Ukip switchers alone could hand 70 Labour seats to the Tories even if the Labour votes holds up. Polls suggest at least 43 per cent of Ukip voters in 2015 are already in the Tory column with a month to election day Oxford University professor Stephen Fisher said the impact of Ukip switching could dramatically inflate Mrs May's majority above what a 'uniform' swing would suggest. It means that if Mrs May was 11 points ahead of Labour on polling day a majority of 24 - suggested by a uniform swing - could be much larger. The analysis will add further alarm to the Labour campaign which is already on the defensive in many parts of England and Wales. Professor Fisher told The Times: 'Although many Ukip voters in 2013 and 2015 came from Labour, the polls have been consistently telling us that there is essentially only one place former Ukip voters are now going and that is to the Conservatives. 'In accordance with the polls, the pattern of decline in the Ukip vote across divisions at the local elections generated a corresponding pattern in the rise of the Tory vote. 'The more Ukip dropped the more the Conservatives rose.' He added: 'If half of each constituencys Ukip vote goes to the Conservatives, then that would be enough to deliver the Tories an extra ten seats from Labour. 'These include places such as Batley and Spen, Workington and Great Grimsby. 'If, as some polls suggest, the rate of the flow of votes from Ukip to Conservatives is greater than this, then the damage to Labour will be still worse.' Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (pictured campaigning on Monday) saw his party's vote collapse at the local elections last week with many of his supporters transferring to the Tories It means that if Theresa May (pictured leaving No 10 today) was 11 points ahead of Labour on polling day a majority of 24 - suggested by a uniform swing - could be much larger Ukip's vote crumbled to dust at the local elections last week as the party lost every seat it was defending and picked up just one gain from Labour. The results suggested the Ukip vote transferred enbloc to the Tories, even where Ukip voters had previously backed Labour. A transfer from Ukip to the Tories would endanger even safe Labour seats in place such as Leeds West and West Bromwich East. Vulnerable Labour seats like Chester and Halifax will fall easily if the Tory vote is bolstered by a Ukip collapse. The driver of a crane that collapsed next to a Royal Navy tanker sparking a toxic gas leak has been called a 'hero' for his quick-thinking which prevented any injuries. Police were called to Falmouth docks, owned by A&P Group, in Cornwall just after 9am this morning. The company has just started a 900million Ministry of Defence contract to refit and repair ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Officers set up a 200m exclusion zone and nearby roads were closed to the public after the 61-year-old crane fell with the 'crash' that was heard across the town. Police were called to the 'industrial accident' at Falmouth docks in Cornwall this morning when a huge crane collapsed Cornwall Fire and Rescue declared a major incident and homes and businesses in the area were evacuated. Falmouth dockworker Peter Coles described the moment the crane fell and said somebody could have been killed. 'When the crane fell basically the whole earth shook - it was really worrying,' he said. 'We were evacuated but when I walked past the crane I realised there could easily have been a fatality right there.' Another witness added that it was the crane driver who 'managed to slew [the crane] around and lower it to the wharf' avoiding hitting anything. Julie Wetherell was dropping her daughter off at school when she said she heard a loud noise followed by the docks siren. She said: 'It was like a lorry had crashed and pieces of metal or steel crashing to the ground. knew it was the docks though because of the siren. 'To think of all those people down there and no person was injured, it's unbelievable. What quick thinking [by the driver]. He is a hero.' Workers were allowed back on the site at about midday but not near the crane, which collapsed beside a RFA Tidespring 39,000-tonne tide-class tanker. The fire service said the crane collapsed onto 'acetylene cylinders', which are used for welding. Firefighters from Falmouth and Truro used breathing apparatus sets to isolate the leak and make the area safe. None of the dock workers were hurt in the accident but a firefighter did receive 'minor injuries'. A witness described hearing what sounded like 'an explosion' as he walked his dog in the woods nearby A Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service spokesman said: 'The explosive nature of Acetylene gas necessitates an exclusion area as a precaution and for this reason an orderly evacuation of the docks was carried out and the police initiated a cordon. 'Fortunately there were no injuries to any dock workers or the crane operator. Fire and Rescue Service attendance was for the purpose of dealing with what the service determines as a minor hazardous material incident. 'Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus carried out a survey of the affected cylinders using thermal imaging cameras to assess whether there was any internal heating. 'In addition water spray from firefighting jets was used to disperse the acetylene gas that had leaked whilst Firefighters isolated each of the cylinders. 'During the assessment of the cylinders a firefighter suffered minor injuries and was taken to the local minor injuries unit for a precautionary check.' A spokesman for the Docks told the Falmouth Packet: 'This morning there was an incident at A&P Falmouth involving one of the facility cranes. 'No one was injured in the incident however all personnel have been temporarily evacuated from the docks whilst an assessment of the area is made. 'A full health and safety investigation will take place. Personnel will return to work as soon as possible.' A spokesman for the MoD added that no was injured during the collapse and there was no damage to RFA Tidespring. Fallen mining magnate Joseph Gutnick denies 'ludicrous' claims he has taken steps to hide his assets and insists he is grateful to have a job after declaring bankruptcy, even if it only pays $45,000 a year. The businessman - who once had a fortune of about $300million - was examined about his business affairs in the Federal Court on Wednesday after declaring bankruptcy last July, owing creditors more than $275.5 million. One of his creditors is his wife, Stera Gutnick, who was not able to tell the court anything about her $30.7 million loan to her husband, saying last month she didn't know anything about it. Businessman Joseph Gutnick leaves the Federal Court examination into bankruptcy in Melbourne on Wednesday The mining magnate has denied 'ludicrous' claims he is hiding his assets Mr Gutnick told the hearing on Wednesday that allegations his brother Abraham Gutnick had made previously in the Supreme Court were 'ludicrous' and he was not hiding any assets. 'I totally deny that I have any assets that I'm hiding,' Mr Gutnick told the hearing. 'I haven't talked to him for years, it's a very sensitive issue when families get into feuds. Unfortunately, I have to answer questions about it.' The court was told Mr Gutnick paid his brother's rent for a time because his sibling needed help, but the funds hadn't been repaid. When asked why his trustees in bankruptcy shouldn't require his brother to pay it back, Mr Gutnick replied: 'He hasn't got a cent to his name.' Mr Gutnick was also quizzed about a $61 million loan made by one trust to another while he was a director of both. He replied that he took advice from his accountants and lawyers on financial matters. 'I'm a miner, not an accountant,' he said. The 64-year-old now earns just $45,000 a year, a snippet of what he once earned during the heyday of his mining company The entrepreneur has said he will take defamation action against the Nine Network and Fairfax Media after publishing claims regarding assets moved overseas At one time, he had a $100 million fund in the Cayman Islands, which he said was to be invested in the resources sector worldwide. The court has heard that Mr Gutnick now earned just $45,000 a year to work full time at the family-controlled company Merlin Diamonds after declaring bankruptcy. His son and wife each earn about $280,000 at the business. Lawyers have previously contended Mr Gutnick's wage was deliberately kept low to prevent money being taken from his wage to pay his debts. But he said he was still happy to be employed. 'I've got a wage, a minimal one, and I still keep my reputation intact,' he said. 'The fact that I've still got a job, I'm very grateful,' he said. At a previous hearing, he defended his 'gem' of a wife's wage for her part-time job and said she was probably worth millions. Mr Gutnick also on Wednesday slammed 'fake news' and said he was taking defamation action against the Nine Network and Fairfax Media, which published claims trustees were chasing an estimated $200 million in assets linked to him and believed to have been moved overseas. The matter was adjourned to a date to be fixed. John Beaumont (pictured outside Minshull Street Crown Court) where he admitted indecent assault and actual bodily harm A clergyman committed a series of indecent assaults on three victims by injecting their genitals with hypodermic needles, a court heard. John Beaumont admitted committing nine indecent assaults and one count of actual bodily harm against two females and a male as his trial was due to start on Tuesday. The court heard the disturbing offences took place over a period of more than ten years between June 1986 and October 1996. Beaumont inserted hypodermic needles, and on one occasion a tube, into their genitals. He also caused actual bodily harm by inserting a needle into the male victim's arm. One of the female victims was disabled and the court heard that the assaults would have been 'particularly painful' for her. Prosecutor Michael Brady told Manchester Crown Court how Beaumont, from Greenmount, Greater Manchester, was a manipulative man who had gained the trust of his victims. He said: 'He is a highly intelligent, highly articulate but, ultimately, highly manipulative individual who was able to gain a huge amount of trust to the point he was able to commit these highly unusual offences with the ostensible - and I stress ostensible - consent of the three victims.' He told the court that Beaumont, now aged 58, had convinced them to remove part, or all, of their clothing so he could assault them by bizarrely claiming that they may have been affected by radiation from a Ukrainian nuclear power plant. Susan Beaumont, 49, was due to stand trial as co-defendant but the prosecution decided it was not in the public interest to pursue the charges against her 'He was able to persuade them he needed to carry out these 'examinations' with hypodermic needles by persuading them he had seen a database of those who had been affected by radiation from the Chernobyl disaster,' said Mr Brady. On one occasion Beaumont also used a box with wires that clicked, claiming it was a Geiger counter, to aid his deception. Beaumont convinced them he had some medical training from his time as a minister, or trainee minister, with the Church of Scotland. Mr Brady continued: 'As a consequence of this manipulative behaviour all three allowed him to carry out these 'examinations', which took the form of having all three completely or partially undressed. 'These were, no doubt, highly uncomfortable and traumatic for them.' Beaumont's crimes came to light when the three victims reported the historical offences to social workers after becoming concerned about the possibility of him repeating his offending. A jury which had previously been sworn in to try the case, formally found Beaumont guilty of the charges on the direction of Judge Paul Lawton. He was told that Beaumont already has previous convictions for more than 40 similar offences he carried out in Scotland during the 1970s and 1980s. He used a similar pretext - claiming to be investigating the effects of nuclear radiation - and gained people's trust by posing as a doctor, university researcher or member of the health board. At Minshull Street Crown Court, Judge Paul Lawton was told that Beaumont had convictions for more than 40 similar offences he carried out in Scotland during the 1970s and 1980s Beaumont has been granted bail until his sentencing hearing on June 16 but was warned by Judge Lawton that he should be 'under no illusions' that he faces a lengthy custodial sentence. Beaumont's wife, Susan Beaumont, aged 49, who gave a different address to her husband to the court, was due to stand trial as co-defendant on five of the charges relating to the female victims and another of aiding and abetting the indecent assaults. However the prosecution decided it was not in the public interest to pursue the charges against her in the light of John Beaumont's confessions. A Church of Scotland spokesman said: 'We have checked our historical records and are unable to locate any reference to this individual or establish any connection he may have had to the church.' Two former defense contractor executives in Singapore have pleaded guilty to fraud charges in a wide-spanning scandal involving a CEO nicknamed 'Fat Leonard' and high-ranking US Navy officials. Neil Peterson, 39, and Linda Raja, 44, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to submit fake bids, claims and invoices to the US Navy in an attempt to overcharge the military organization by more than $34.8million over several years. The pair worked as chief deputies for defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis - nicknamed Fat Leonard - as they spent years allegedly scamming the Navy out of millions with the company Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA). Neil Peterson, 39, and Linda Raja, 44, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to submit fake bids, claims and invoices to the US Navy in an attempt to overcharge the military organization by more than $34.8million over several years (file photo of US Navy members) Peterson's Raja was the general manager for Singapore, Australia and the Pacific Isles for the GDMA, while Peterson was the company's vice president of global operations, according to CBS 8. They were both arrested in Singapore and were extradited to San Diego, California, last October. They are scheduled to be sentenced on August 11. Francis' company - which has provided fuel, food and other services to Navy ships in Asia for two decades - overbilled the maritime branch by $34.8million, according to court documents. The pair worked as chief deputies for defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis - nicknamed Fat Leonard - as they spent years allegedly scamming the Navy out of millions with the company Glenn Defense Marine Asia According to their plea agreements, Peterson, Raja and other members of GDMA created and submitted fraudulent bids and invoices to the Navy. In addition to the false claims, Peterson and Raja submitted false price quotes from non-existent companies on letterhead created from graphics cut and pasted from the Internet, according to court documents. They would use the falsified documents to control and inflate prices charged to the Navy and ensure that they would be selected by the Navy as the lowest bidder. By acting as other companies, they would be selected without any true, competitive bidding, which is required by the US government. Peterson and Raja have admitted that their actions caused the Navy to suffer losses that exceeded $34.8million. Meanwhile, Francis is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to bribing Navy officials with more than $500,000 in cash, prostitutes, luxury hotel stays and a staggering amount of others gifts in exchange for classified information. Twenty Navy officials have been charged thus far in the fraud and bribery investigation. Fve GDMA executives - Peterson, Raja, Francis, Alex Wisidagama and Ed Aruffo - have pleaded guilty in the case. This is the nail-biting moment a primary schoolgirl tried to catch a toddler from falling off a building in central China's Henan province yesterday. CCTV footage shows a two-year-old boy falling and hitting a delivery bag on the back of a motorbike despite the young girl's attempts to catch him. The boy was taken to hospital and was said to be uninjured in the incident. Chen Keyu, a primary schoolgirl feared the young boy at the window might fall down anytime She dashed forward and tried to save him as the boy was falling off from the third floor The footage was recorded yesterday on Xinmin Street, a residential area in xingyang City yesterday. According to Henan Daily, the two-year-old boy climbed up to a window in his house on the third floor and yelled 'mother'. There were no safety measures installed on the window at the time of the incident. A group of young children walked past and saw the boy shouting. Chen Keyu, a primary six student in Xingyang No 3 Middle School spotted the boy and was worried he would fall. When he did fall, Chen stretched her arms out and ran to save him. When the boy fell off from the window, Chen stretched her arms out and ran to save him. However she missed him by about two feet. The boy hit a delivery bag on a motorbike and fell onto the ground. Chen picked up the boy and a woman in a red dress came to offer help. Tried as she may, unfortunately the boy hit a delivery bag on a motorbike and fell on the floor A woman in red dress came to offer help and sent the boy to the hospital for treatment The boy was sent to Xingyang People's Hospital immediately and was reported to have a slight fever but no injuries were found. Henan Daily reported that the boy was living on the third floor and had been left at home alone at the time of the incident. A security guard in Zhengzhou, China has been detained after he was found touching female passengers. The man was captured on surveillance footage scanning passengers with a detector however when dealing with female passengers, he could be seen touching them inappropriately. Following complaints, the man was detained by police on May 8 for five days. The security guard checks over a woman as she walks through Zhengzhou bus station In the footage posted to the People's Daily's Weibo account, the man can be seen using a scanner to check people coming through the bus station in Zhengzhou. However when a female passenger comes through the security check, the man gets more hands on. He can be seen touching female passengers inappropriately across their chests. It isn't a single attempt as he continues to grab women inappropriately as they pass by A woman complained to staff at the bus station and the man was detained According to Shanghai Daily, a woman complained to staff at the bus station. The man was detained on May 8 for five days. Many people have commented on the video posted to social media, outraged by the man's actions. One user wrote: 'The women did not give him a slap in the face?' While another commented: 'This is disgusting.' And one user said: 'This man is shameless.' The White House tossed more incendiary rhetoric at James Comey by accusing him of circumventing the chain of the command at the Justice Department, as President Trump's aides sought to justify the president's extraordinary axing of the FBI boss. Comey had 'essentially taken a stick of dynamite and thrown it into the Department of Justice' by holding his infamous press conference about the FBI's decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton, Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday. Sanders unloaded on Comey just hours after Trump fired him while releasing a letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein laying out the case against Comey. Absent from her rationale was any mention of the Russia investigation that Comey was overseeing as head of the FBI, an inquiry that includes alleged interactions between Trump campaign officials an Russia. Sanders filling in for press secretary Sean Spicer, who is on Naval reserve duty also accused Comey of committing 'atrocities' in his conduct, a word usually reserved for the worst actors on the world stage. President Donald Trump defended his firing of FBI Director James Comey after a meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office He's back: James Comey was at home and apparently smiling as he was seen at his home in McLean, Virginia. He is being invited to testify to Congress on Tuesday 'Having a letter like the one that he received and having that conversation that outlined the basic atrocities in circumventing the chain of command at the department of justice,' Sanders said, required the president to act. Sanders said Comey's conduct amounted to going 'around the chain of command' and 'is simply not allowed.' She said Trump made the final decision to sack Comey on Tuesday, but had 'been considering letting Director Comey go pretty much from the day he took office.' The White House has said repeatedly that the initiative came from the Justice Department, although Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Judiciary Committee Democrat who got a head's up from Trump Tuesday night, says President Trump told her he had ordered a review that led to the decision. When I talked to the president last night, he said: The departments a mess, I asked Rosenstein and [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions to look into it. Rosenstein sent me a memo. I accepted the recommendation to fire him,' Feinstein recalled, ABC News reported. On Tuesday evening, Spicer told reporters about the firing: 'That was a DOJ decision.' The Russian embassy in Washington released this photo of President Trump warmly shaking hands with ambassador Sergey Kislyak Recommendation: Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the president it was time for Comey to go after his evidence that Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner, some of them classified, was wrong ALL SMILES: Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US President Donald Trump, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak (L-R) talking during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House. Alexander Shcherbak/TASS In Sanders' timeline, she said Trump met with Rosenstein on Monday. She used language indicating it was at Rosenstein's request. 'He did have a conversation with the deputy attorney general on Monday where they had come to him to express their concerns,' she said. Sanders refused to divulge information about the three times President Trump claims Comey told him he was 'not under investigation,' or reveal whether the president had specifically asked whether he was under investigation. 'Im not going to get into the specifics of their conversation, but I can tell you that Director Comey relayed that information to the president,' she said. Asked about appointment of a special prosecutor something critics say is required to assure an independent investigation, Sanders said: 'We don't think that's necessary. You've got a House committee, a Senate committee, and the Department of Justice all working on this. I don't think that there's a necessary need at this point to add that.' President Trump tweeted attacks on Democrats throughout the day Wednesday President Trump himself was terse as he defended his sudden firing of Comey 'wasn't doing a good job.' The president made his brief statement from the Oval Office during a meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and security advisor under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Asked why he fired Comey, Trump responded: 'Because he wasn't doing a good job, very simply. He was not doing a good job.' The president shook his head when asked whether the issue affected his meeting with the Russians today. He had met earlier with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as well as Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. Wednesday afternoon, Trump tweeted that Democrats were 'phony hypocrites' for their newfound appreciation for Comey. 'Dems have been complaining for months & months about Dir. Comey. Now that he has been fired they PRETEND to be aggrieved. Phony hypocrites!' Trump tweeted. Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders got grilled by reporters about the Comey firing on Wednesday 'Im not going to get into the specifics of their conversation,' Sanders said, when asked whether Trump asked FBI Director James Comey whether he was under investigation In another development, the Senate Intelligence Committee is seeking information about Trump and his top aides from a financial crimes unit at the Treasury Department, CNBC reported. The unit, known as FinCEN, imposed a $10 million penalty on Trump Taj Mahal in 2015 for violations of money laundering laws. The panel wants information related to its investigation of Russia, including evidence of possible money laundering, as well as information about whether people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin invested in Trump's real estate empire, a committee aide told the network. The agency has databases of suspicious transactions and can get banks to hand over information. Comey may get his chance to comment on his sensational firing. Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is probing alleged Russian election interference, said he and Chairman Richard Burr have invited Comey to testify next Tuesday. It would be Comey's first appearance since his stunning dismissal, and his first testifying last week, when the Justice Department had to walk back his inaccurate claim that Clinton aide Huma Abedin had forward thousands of classified emails to her husband, disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner. Photos of Trump's encounter were released by Russia's TASS news agency, Russia's foreign ministry, and Russia's U.S. embassy. U.S. photojournalists did not shoot the meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak and reporters were not allowed in to ask questions. 'On background, our official photographer and their official photographer were present, that's it,' said the White House, when reporters asked about the TASS photo release. The brief comments were Trump's only word on the monumental decision to fire Comey whose agency is probing allegations of ties between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. The New York Times reported Wednesday that days before he got sacked, Comey had asked the Justice Department for an infusion of funds to pay for the Russia probe. Vice President Mike Pence spoke to reporters in the Capitol as the saga unfolded, and said the decision to fire Comey did not have anything to do with government probes of Russian election interference. He was not doing a good job' Trump explains why he fired Comey 'That was not what this was about,' Pence said. 'The president took strong and decisive leadership here to put the safety and security of the American people first,' he told NBC's Kristen Welker. Pence also claimed Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, made the reccommendation that Trump fire Comey. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US President Donald Trump, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak (L-R) talking during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House Calling Rosenstein a man of 'great character' and integrity, Pence said he 'came to work, sat down and made the recommendation for the FBI to be able to do its job that it would need new leadership.' Democrats want to call Rosenstein to brief them on the order of events and whether Trump was behind the decision to fire Comey. The president fired off a series of blasts at Comey Wednesday morning, amid a growing storm over his sudden firing of the longtime lawman a day earlier and new calls for an independentRussia probe. 'Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike,' Trump wrote in one of a series of tweets just hours after firing the FBI boss. 'When things calm down, they will be thanking me!' Trump continued. The president once again tried to keep the pressure on Democrats, many of whom have publicly groaned about Comey's conduct during the Clinton email investigation but who took the president's sudden firing as a sign that the president was orchestrating a 'cover-up' of his campaign's alleged Russia ties. Comey landed overnight in DC after finding out he was fired while in California 'The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!' Trump tweeted in his first shot of the morning. The president also tried to shift the subject to a more typical Washington parlor game of who would succeed Comey, who learned of his firing while addressing FBI recruits in Los Angeles. 'James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI,' Trump said. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats and serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, renewed his call for an independent probe of alleged Russia ties. President Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that fired FBI Director James Comey has lost confidence of 'almost everyone' President Trump kept after fired FBI Director James Comey in a series of tweets Wednesday morning President Trump kept after fired FBI Director James Comey in a series of tweets Wednesday morning The person to help lead it, he concluded, is Comey. 'I had a fun idea in the middle of the night,' King said on CNN. 'The Intelligence Committee ought to hire James Comey to direct our investigation. He's already got his clearances, knows the subject, man of integrity. I'm going to float that today and see what kind of reaction I get,' King said. King added: 'He's a free man as of today, he doesn't have a job.' King also suggested Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation wasn't the 'real motivation' for his firing. 'They supposedly fired James Comey for stuff that he did last summer or last fall, and suddenly now they say well 'he's got to go,'' said King. 'The timing just doesn't pass the straight face test in terms of what's the real motivation for this,' Trump also defended his sensational firing of FBI Director James Comey by mocking Senate minority leader 'cryin' Chuck Schumer. Trump sent shockwaves through Washington when he dismissed Comey in a letter yesterday that read: 'You are hereby terminated and removed from office immediately.' Comey, who was appointed in 2013, was dismissed after he provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about classified emails from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner's computer. It took little over an hour for Democrats, led by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, to claim the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia. Schumer said: 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' He then called on Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor to look into ties to Russia, saying: 'America depends on you to restore faith in our criminal justice system which is going to be badly shattered after the administration's actions today.' In a tweet Trump wrote: 'Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, 'I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer.' Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp.' Senator Angus King (I-Vt.) has floated the idea that axed FBI boss James Comey head the intelligence panel's Russia probe Scroll down for video It's over: How the White House delivered the news just after 5.30pm on Tuesday This defense came hours after Schumer claimed that he told the President that firing Comey was 'a very bad idea'. However, as the President pointed out, Schumer has previously been outspoken in his criticism of Comey. In November Schumer told Bloomberg: 'I do not have confidence in him any longer.' He said then that he was incensed by Comey's decision to write to lawmakers with details about the investigation into Clinton's private email server, less than two weeks before the election. That being said, in Schumer's press briefing, he didn't offer up any specific support for the former FBI director, he simply pointed out the convenient timing of the firing. 'Mistake': The White House put out a dossier which consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer - but Schumer said the president needed to now appoint a special prosecutor to look into the claims of collusion with the Russians Comey, 56, was blindsided by being let go. He learned about it on live television screens he could see as he addressed agents in the Los Angeles field office, the New York Times reported. Incredibly, he told the agents he thought it was a fairly funny prank until other members of his staff took him off stage and told him it was true, the paper said. His motorcade was seen on a Los Angeles freeway after the firing as it made its way through slow-moving traffic to a chartered Gulfstream V, which Comey boarded at Hawthorne Municipal Airport just over three hours after his termination. The president used the firing letter to boast that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation - a reference to allegations being touted by his opponents that he somehow colluded with the Kremlin in its bid to bring down Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who blamed Comey for costing her the election, said 'no comment' through an aide. The White House's deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claimed Clinton would have fired Comey as well. She claimed Comey had 'lost the confidence of the rank and file within the FBI', as well as both sides of the political aisle. But the Republican senator chairing the Intelligence Committee investigation into whether Russia hacked the election, Richard Burr, added to the questions over the sacking as he said: 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. Farewell: Comey was seen just over three hours after his firing as he shook hands with law enforcement officers in Los Angeles before boarding a private jet Last gesture: Comey clapped the back of a uniformed officer as he prepared to board the jet which will fly him away from Los Angeles, where he was as the president fired him Up in the air: Comey leaves public life effectively in disgrace after being fired by the president, boarding a chartered Gulfstream V at Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Los Angeles On his way: In a bizarre spectacle, the ousted FBI director's motorcade was filmed on its way from the Los Angeles field office of the agency - caught in the city's notorious slow traffic The FBI chief told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Abedin had made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of Clinton-related emails to Weiner, 'some of which contain classified information'. But he was wrong - and is now being fired. Weiner is still being investigated by the FBI for sexting a 15-year-old girl The firing happened in the late afternoon. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters shortly after 5.30pm that 'the president has accepted the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' A written statement from Spicer, sent minutes later, confirmed that Trump 'acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.' Trump said: 'The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement.' Full court press: Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway went on CNN three hours after the firing to defend the move and said: 'It's not a cover-up.' How the news broke: Reporters at the White House were given copies of the press release and letter from the president just after 5.30pm, announcing Comey's sacking Going into battle: Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were all speaking outside the West Wing on Tuesday night to members of the media WHAT NOW? THE CANDIDATES TIPPED TO SUCCEED COMEY With James Comey ousted as FBI director, President Donald Trump has to select a replacement for a new 10-year term, and he is likely to reach outside the bureau to find someone to run the law enforcement agency. Here are some possible candidates: Rudy Giuliani Rudi Giuliani has been linked with the vacant position, but his appointment is likely to be opposed by the Senate President Donald Trump has defended his sensational firing of FBI Director James Comey by mocking Senate minority leader 'cryin' Chuck Schumer The former New York mayor would be an attractive choice for Trump, as Giuliani was among his most vocal supporters during the presidential race and has a background in law enforcement. However this loyalty would make his appointment unlikely, CNN reports, as he would be extremely unlikely to get the backing of the Senate. He has been outspoken in his opposition to Hillary Clinton. Ray Kelly Ray Kelly, the longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, could be a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions The longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, Kelly was in charge of the force in the years following 9/11, when terror threats were routine. His tough-on-crime stance, including support for provocative tactics like stop-and-search, could make him a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr Kelly defended a police operation, exposed by The Associated Press, that conducted secret surveillance of Muslims. He could work with Trump and Sessions on anti-terrorism efforts. Chris Christie New Jersey governor Chris Christie has a mixed relationship with Trump, but could bring law enforcement experience to the job Though his relationship with Trump has been mixed, the governor of New Jersey has known the president for years and could bring law enforcement experience to the job. He is a former Republican-appointed United States attorney in New Jersey, and he cited that background time and again during his 2016 presidential campaign. David Clarke David Clarke has been a fierce Trump supporter and has described himself as 'one of those bare-knuckle fighters' A wild-card, but the outspoken and polarising Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff has been a fierce supporter of Mr Trump and even landed a speaking spot at last summer's Republican National Convention. A conservative firebrand known for his cowboy hat, Mr Clarke has called himself 'one of those bare-knuckles fighters' and has been critical of what he called the 'hateful ideology' of the Black Lives Matters movement. But he would be a long shot given that a county jury recently recommended criminal charges against seven Milwaukee County jail staffers over the dehydration death of an inmate who went without water for seven days. Trey Gowdy Trey Gowdy criticized Comey for not prosecuting Hillary Clinton over the email server investigation The South Carolina Republican led the House committee investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's actions surrounding the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Mr Gowdy is also a former federal prosecutor who boasts of his work on drug trafficking, bank robberies and child pornography cases. He was among politicians critical of Mr Comey's decision not to prosecute Mrs Clinton over the email server investigation, saying other government officials would have been prosecuted if they handled classified information like she did. Andrew McCabe Andrew McCabe was yesterday named Acting FBI Director by President Trump following Comey's dismissal Appointed yesterday as Acting FBI director, McCabe has worked at the bureau for 21 years, having joined as a special agent in 1996. He has expertise in counterterrorism and interrogation, but he is currently under review for his involvement in the Clinton scandal after his wife received funds from a close friend of Hillary for her political campaign in 2015. Before McCabe was appointed as the Deputy Director of the FBI, his wife Jill McCabe ran as a Democrat for the Virginia stat senate in 2015. Her campaign received funds from the state Democratic Party and a political action committee run by Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons. He has, however, been part of the same investigation which Comey was fired for, and this is likely to work against him when Trump names his pick. Advertisement Spicer added that 'a search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately.' The president informed Comey of his sacking in writing, taking the opportunity to underscore that the decision had nothing to do with any ongoing probes involving him personally. 'While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,' the letter read in part. The FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe, will act as leader until there is a permanent appointment confirmed by the Senate. COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. 9 May: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement The sacking is the latest twist in the astonishing chain of events set off by Clinton deciding to use a private server while she was Secretary of State. Last week Comey was questioned under oath about why he had written a letter to members of Congress at the end of October revealing a renewed investigation into Clinton's handling of classified emails. In his sworn testimony, Comey told senators that Abedin, a former top Hillary Clinton aide and Weiner's estranged wife, made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of emails to her husband, 'some of which contain classified information.' But the Justice Department sent the Judiciary Committee a letter late on Tuesday acknowledging that Comey's statement was inaccurate. Spicer had punted earlier in the day when he was asked whether Comey's job was secure. 'I haven't asked him,' he said then. 'I have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about this.' The FBI is also probing Comey's controversial decision to notify lawmakers just before the election that his team was re-examining its investigation into Clinton's emails by looking into messages found on Weiner's laptop. The letter is viewed by many as costing Clinton the election, since she lost to Trump by less than a single percentage point in key swing states after polling indicated she was well in front of her opponent before the the late move. Rosenstein told the president in writing on Tuesday: 'I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails.' And Sessions wrote Trump in a letter: 'I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI.' White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pushed back on questions about Trump's praise for Comey's actions with respect to the Clinton investigation during the campaign as she began a White House spin assault three hours after the sacking. 'I think you're looking at the wrong set of facts here,' she told Anderson Cooper on CNN. 'In other words, you're going back to the campaign. This man is the president of the United States. He acted decisively today. He took the recommendation of his deputy attorney general,' Conway said. 'He has lost confidence in the FBI director and he took the recommendation of Rod Rosenstein,' she said, reading from Rosenstein's letter. Asked about Senate Intelligence chair Burr's statement that he was troubled by the firing, Conway pushed back. 'So the same senators that just voted to confirm this man whose integrity in doubt 94 to 6 two short weeks ago. We're supposed to believe the derogatory descriptions you just made of him?' she asked. Countering Schumer's claim of a cover-up, she said: 'He's wrong. It's not a cover-up.' 'In fact the president makes very clear in his letter the fact that Mr Comey on at least three occasions assured the president that he is not under investigation,' Conway continued, upping the ante on Trump's claim of three separate assurances. Asked when Trump got the assurances, Conway said: 'That's between the president of the United States and Director Comey. Spicer said just last Wednesday that the president had confidence in Comey, whom former president Barack Obama appointed to a ten-year term. Taunt: John Podesta, who could have been a senior government figure if Clinton had won after being campaign chair, rushed to twist the knife on deposed James Comey The end: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein delivered the fatal blow to Comey. He was away from the Washington D.C. headquarters of the FBI, visiting its field office in Los Angeles and had been due to speak at a recruitment event at the Directors Guild of America building. Fired: James Comey is being fired with immediate effect after he misled the Senate on how classified emails ended up on pervert Anthony Weiner's computer. This was the Wednesday May 3 testimony which cost him his career But Trump had launched into a Twitter tirade against the FBI chief in the immediate wake of his testimony last week - and there were claims that the sacking had been under consideration for days, before the Abedin testimony. 'FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!' Trump had tweeted. Spicer told reporters then: 'The president has confidence in the director.' Testifying about the Clinton email controversy, Comey told Senators his agents uncovered 'hundreds of thousands' of emails on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Weiner that Abedin has forwarded her now-estranged husband so he could print them out for her. WHAT THEY'RE SAYING The sacking of the FBI Director sent shockwaves through politics. 'Today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement' - President Donald Trump No comment - Hillary Clinton's aide 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' - Senator Chuck Schumer, Democratic Minority Leader 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee.' - Senator Richard Burr, Republican chair of Intelligence Committee 'This didn't work out well for Nixon. And it won't for @realDonaldTrump--or the country' - David Axelrod, ex-Obama aide 'I have deep respect for James Comey. This is a loss to the FBI and the nation.' - James Clapper, former director of national intelligence 'While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office' - John McCain, Republican senator Advertisement But he - fatally - misspoke. Gregory A. Brower, the FBI's assistant director in the Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote to the Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon to 'clarify' Comey's testimony about Abedin's role in allowing classified material to find its way to her husband's computer. Minutes after his letter emerged, his boss was fired. Most of the 'hundreds and thousands' of emails, Brower wrote, were there as a result of backups of other devices and not manually sent by Abedin. Only 'two e-mail chains containing classified information were manually forwarded to Mr. Weiner's account,' he wrote. Ten additional email chains contained classified material all part of device backups and 'all twelve' had already been reviewed by the FBI. That was the fatal blow which ended Comey's service just three years into a ten-year term he was given by President Obama. He is only the second FBI director to be fired - the first was Williams Sessions, terminated by Bill Clinton over alleged improper use of an FBI plane and other questions over his spending. Trump's historic move spread a firestorm through politics and immediately showed up fault lines in his own party. The most worrying reaction for the White House to the firing will be that of Burr, the Republican North Carolina senator who chairs the Intelligence Committee. In a strongly-worded statement he said: 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. 'I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee. 'In my interactions with the Director and with the Bureau under his leadership, he and the FBI have always been straightforward with our Committee. 'Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees. His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation.' The possibility of a Republican backlash does not appear to have been foreseen by the White House, which consciously reached out to Democrats before the firing. The president personally called a series of Democratic senators to tell them Comey was gone - apparently before Comey himself knew. The first to announce she had been told by Trump was Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. 'President Trump called me at 5:30 p.m. and indicated he would be removing Director Comey, saying the FBI needed a change,' Feinstein said in a statement. 'The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee.' The Trump administration distributed a one-page summary to reporters that it called 'additional background information and context' about the surprising personnel change. It consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader and the party's most senior election figure, who said last Wednesday of the FBI Director: 'I do not have confidence in him any longer.' The supplemental information also cited an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that '[t]he best service Mr. Comey can render his country now is to resign.' But Schumer emerged less than two hours after the firing to issue a broadside over it - and to reveal he too had been phoned by the President to be told the news. He said the firing would lead to the belief Trump was engaging in a cover-up of alleged collusion with Russia in the run-up to the election. Schumer said Trump had called him in the afternoon. 'I said, 'Mr President with all due respect you are making a very big mistake'. And he didn't really answer,' he said. He added that unless there was a special prosecutor appointed: 'Are people going to suspect cover-up? Absolutely.' HERO TO ZERO: FIRED FBI BOSS ENDED UP HATED BY EVERYONE Attorney General James Comey sealed a reputation as a brave and principled actor after a 2004 standoff during the Bush administration, when he refused White House efforts to get him to reauthorize warrantless eavesdropping while Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Comey had been appointed deputy attorney general by President George W. Bush, having served as a U.S. attorney in New York under Rudy Giuliani in New York. With Ashcroft incapacitated, Bush administration officials wanted Ashcroft, and then Comey, to sign off on an extension of the authority, with just hours to go before an N.S.A. program expired. Comey refused. His stand was a major reason why President Obama nominated him to be head of the FBI in 2013. Obama hailed Comey as a person of 'fierce independence and deep integrity' as he nominated him for the FBI post, which carries a 10-year term. Brought up Catholic and now a United Methodist, a registered Republican and a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he seemed to radiate independence from the Democratic machine. And many congressional Democrats became far less supportive of Comey after the 2016 presidential election. Obama's man: Republican James Comey was chosen by the Democratic president for his principled stand but ended up in the words of one senator as 'as popular as cholera' Led by defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, many have griped about Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal. On July 5th, 2016, Comey personally announced the FBI's decision not to charge Clinton in connection with its investigation of her private email server and handling of classified material. He nevertheless called her conduct 'extremely careless.' Then on October 28, he told lawmakers the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails in connection to the investigation. The FBI had uncovered thousands of emails on disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop that had been sent to his wife, longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey drew the Democrats' ire once again when he announced two days before the election that the investigation hadn't turned up anything to alter the decision not to prosecute. Clinton said it only made matters worse and stole headlines. In the congressional hearing where he made inaccurate statements about about Abedin's emails, Democrats grilled Comey about why he had not revealed the existence of an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian election interference. Comey said the FBI 'didn't say a word about' the Russia investigation until months into, whereas he had testified under oath about the existence of the Clinton investigation. Advertisement In a sign of the Democrats' belief that they can make the Comey firing a damaging issue for Trump and the Republicans, he said: 'The American people need to have faith that an investigation as serious as this one is being conducted impartially without a shred of bias. 'The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor.' He also contradicted the White House over his backing for the move, which was implied in their dossier. 'I never called on the president to fire Director Comey,' he said. 'If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the president got into office. 'But they didn't fire him then. Why did it happen today? We know the House is investigating Russian interference in our elections that benefited the Trump campaign. 'We know the Senate is investigating. We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' He also opened another line of attack, this time over the role of sessions, saying: 'It is troubling that Attorney General Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russian investigation, played a role in firing the man leading it.' Clinton, however, refused to get involved. A spokesman told CNN the 2016 loser 'has no comment at this time'. However John Podesta, who served as Clinton's campaign chairman in 2016, snarked on Twitter that Trump was in fact under an FBI microscope. Meet the new boss - Clinton-tainted like the old one: Andrew McCabe who will head the FBI until a permanent replacement is found had oversight of the Clinton email probe. His wife received cash for her Democratic political campaign from a close friend of the Clintons who directed it from a fundraising effort which Hillary Clinton had aided by turning up for an event Critical questions: The White House will be troubled by the reaction of Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who said it complicated his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Loser Hillary Clinton has still to react to Comey's sacking. 'Didn't you know you're supposed to wait til Saturday night to massacre people investigating you?' he asked in a tweet - a reference to President Nixon's notorious mass firings during Watergate. Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Judiciary Committee member, said in a statement that 'while the White House is under investigation by the FBI, firing the head of the FBI raises massive questions, and the Senate should get to the bottom of it.' Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen tweeted that '[f]iring Comey has the foul stench of an attempt to stop an ongoing investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.' Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkeley insisted that the vacancy at the top of the FBI was a clear signal that Republicans should appoint an independent investigator to probe alleged ties between Trumpworld and Russia. 'In case the need for an independent special prosecutor to investigate #TrumpRussia ties wasn't clear enough already ... it sure is now,' Merkeley tweeted. Former senior Barack Obama aide David Axelrod used his Twitter account to compare Trump's decision on Tuesday with former president Richard Nixon's 1973 'Saturday Night Massacre' when Nixon fired an independent special prosecutor along with the attorney general and his deputy. NEW CHIEF G-MAN WAS ALSO CAUGHT UP IN CLINTON SCANDAL James Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, will take over the law enforcement agency. McCabe's wife is a Democrat who ran for the state senate in 2015 in Virginia, before he was promoted to the FBI's No. 2 position. Terry McAullife, the Virginia governor and a close friend of both the Clintons, directed $675,000 Jill McCabe's way for her campaign. The Virginia governor's political action committee, Common Good VA, spent $467,000 on her losing campaign. The state Democratic Party gave her nearly $208,000. A month before McAullife's PAC made its first donation to McCabe, Hillary Clinton headlined a fundraiser for the group. As deputy director of the FBI, it was McCabe who oversaw the investigation into Clinton's secret server, as well as the bureau's investigations into alleged terrorists and spies. He is under review by an inspector general for his involvement in the Clinton case, in light of his wife's ties to the former presidential candidate. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, also asked the FBI in a March letter about McCabe's role in the Russian probe and whether it 'raises the appearance a conflict of interest in light of his wife's ties with Clinton's associates.' The Republican lawmaker asked Comey if McCabe would be recusing himself from that investigation, suggesting in the letter that McCabe faces a possible conflict of interest. Advertisement 'This didn't work out well for Nixon. And it won't for @realDonaldTrump--or the country,' Axelrod wrote. And an ex-Clinton aide suggested it was part of a vast Russian conspiracy. 'This is not on the up and up,' said Brian Fallon, the 2016 loser's ex-press secretary. 'All these months later it still stands out that Director Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation was a travesty. 'But the timing and the nature of this firing that the Trump administration is announcing now belies any possible explanation that this has anything to do with the Clinton investigation. It is clearly and act by a president who is feeling the heat from the FBI's ongoing Russia investigation.' Robbie Mook, who had been Clinton's campaign manager, did not applaud the move that ousted the man she now says was - at least in part - her nemesis. 'Twilight zone. I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me,' Mook said on Twitter. Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, another Democrat, piled on the Tricky Dick comparisons. 'The President has removed the sitting FBI Director in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country one that implicates senior officials in the Trump campaign and administration,' Leahy said. 'This is nothing less than Nixonian.' Critics of President Trump's firing were quick to invoke Richard Nixon's infamous 'Saturday Night Massacre,' where the embattled president fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of the two top Justice Department officials. The sensational Oct. 20th, 1973 incident occurred as Cox was probing the Watergate scandal and cover-up and clashing with the White House over previously secret tape recordings. First, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned his post. Then Nixon ordered deputy attorney general William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused. Solicitor General Robert Bork then became attorney general, and went along with Nixon's demand. FBI agents immediately sealed off the offices of Cox, Richardson, and Ruckelshaus after the firings. How the Republicans deal with the sensational move remains to be seen. The Senate must approve anyone the president selects to replace Comey. To be confirmed, nominees need only a bare majority of lawmakers to vote for them following a rule change that took place when Democrats were in power. Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate and can use the vice president as a tie-breaker if they need to, meaning that Trump's nominee is all but assured to be approved. Trump called Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is leading a Senate subcommittee probe of Russian interference, 'literally minutes' before he sacked Comey, his spokesman told the Post and Courier. Been here before? Democrats rushed to compare firing Comey to Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre - but the only previous firing of an FBI director was of William Sessions (right) in 1993 - by Bill Clinton. Sessions was let go for using an FBI plane for private visits Graham released a statement backing up the decision. 'I know this was a difficult decision for all concerned. I appreciate Director Comey's service to our nation in a variety of roles,' said Graham, who clashed with Trump during the campaign and probed his alleged Russia ties this week. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON'S 'SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE' Following the President's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was the head of the investigation into collusion between Trump's administration and Russia, some were quick to ask whether or not this would be his 'Saturday Night Massacre'. In 1973, President Richard Nixon also fired the official responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing in his administration. On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was head of the investigation into the Watergate Scandal. His firing lead to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. That Saturday night, news broadcast networks turned their airtime over to the 'firestorm' and 'constitutional crisis.' The pushback against these firings was so significant that Nixon was forced to name a new special prosecutor, Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski. The story then played out over the next 10 months, ending when a unanimous Supreme Court forced Nixon to hand over the tapes. Their contents proved the cover-up that led to Nixon's eventual resignation. Advertisement 'Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests,' Graham said. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee's Republican chairman, said in his own statement that '[t]he handling of the Clinton email investigation is a clear example of how Comey's decisions have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI.' 'In my efforts to get answers, the FBI, under Comey's leadership, has been slow or failed to provide information that Comey himself pledged to provide,' he added. 'The effectiveness of the FBI depends upon the public trust and confidence. Unfortunately, this has clearly been lost.' There were also the first signs of a split among Republicans over the firing as John McCain, the senator who has long been a Trump critic, declined to back the move and said there needed to be a special committee to investigate the Russia questions. 'While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office,' he said, 'James Comey is a man of honor and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances. 'I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.' His tribute was one of the few made in Washington to Comey - who had been described last week as 'as about as popular as cholera' by one senator- although the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, did come to his aid. Clapper, who has testified frequently alongside Comey and appeared on Capitol Hill Monday, backed up his counterpart, telling CNN: 'I have deep respect for James Comey. This is a loss to the FBI and the nation.' THE LETTERS WHICH ENDED COMEY'S FBI CAREER Advertisement Fascinating pictures have emerged showing US-backed troops fighting Communists in what became known as 'South Africa's Vietnam War'. Photographs show how the Cold War spilled into the African bush as rival forces battled for control of Angola. In one picture, troops from the Western-backed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) cross a river while another image shows rival soldiers from the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which was supported by Fidel Castrol's Cuba. Images also show South African Olifant tanks moving into position ahead of a battle near the Cuito River in the late 1980s. Castro sent tens of thousands of troops when oil-giant Angola became embroiled in a proxy war between the US and Russia who were vying for Cold War supremacy. At the same time, South Africa sent its own troops in to support UNITA rebels, who were backed by America. Fascinating pictures have emerged showing US-backed troops fighting Communists in what became known as 'South Africa's Vietnam War'. South African Olifant tanks are pictured moving up to the frontline prior to a major battle near Angola's Cuito River in the late 1980s Cuban 'Tanquistas' are pictured on a tank in Angola. Fidel Castro sent tens of thousands of troops when oil-giant Angola became embroiled in a proxy war between the United States and Russia who were vying for Cold War supremacy Colour photos show troops from the Western-backed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) crossing a river UNITA generals Demostenes Chilungutila (left) and Ben-Ben Arlindo Pena (right) are pictured during the bitter conflict The Angolan Civil War began in 1975 soon after the country gained independence from its former-colonial power, Portugal, and continued with interludes until 2002. The conflict started as a power struggle between two former liberation movements, UNITA and MPLA. It soon became a Cold War struggle with the involvement of Cuba, USA and the Soviet Union. The pictures have been released in an updated version of The War For Africa: Twelve Months That Transformed a Continent by Fred Bridgland who reported on the conflict for many years as a foreign correspondent. It focuses on Cuban-South African fighting in Angola in 1987-88. Images show UNITA general Demosthenes Chilingutila, a commander of 20 SA Brigade standing with two M-46 Russian artillery pieces and South African fighters gathered together with trucks preparing for battle. Colour shots show troops climbing over a Russian-built Mi-8 assault helicopter used by the Angolan air force and UNITA men walking along the Benguela Railway. The pictures have been released in an updated version of The War For Africa: Twelve Months That Transformed a Continent by Fred Bridgland who reported on the conflict for many years as a foreign correspondent. South African Ratel tanks and rocket launchers cross a rover towards the end of the war. South Africa sent its own troops in to back UNITA rebels, backed by America The conflict started as a power struggle between two former liberation movements, UNITA and MPLA. UNITA troops are pictured crossing Angola's Benguela Railway, blowing up points systems as they progressed The pictures also show soldiers from the Cuban-backed People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola after being captured and blindfolded by UNITA troops 'The book illustrates just how complex the war was, involving not only southern African regional powers but also the great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and other major players such as Cuba, the former East Germany, the United Kingdom and France,' said Mr Bridgland. 'It was the Cold War at its height by proxy, fought physically in a torrid, tropical and turbulent neighbourhood. The complexity was heightened by the fact that as the fighting went on a remarkable peace process was being put in place which would result in an international agreement [the New York Accords] that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa and the establishment of multi-party democracy in Angola and Namibia. 'The 1987-88 tank battles in south-eastern Angola were the biggest on African soil since the 241-day 1941 Battle for Tobruk between Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's German Army and the British Army's 70th division supported by Polish, Australian, South African and Indian soldiers. Having gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule, the MPLA government faced a civil war against UNITA. Troops clamber over an Angolan Air Force, Russian-built Mi-8 assault helicopter shot down during the brutal conflict Civilian ammunition bearers pass through a village close to the frontline. Having gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule, the MPLA government faced a civil war against UNITA Commander of 20 SA Brigade Colonel P.S Fouche is pictured with two M-46 Russian artillery pieces taken by the South African Defence Force during Operation Hooper close to the town of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola in 1987 and 1988 Castro supported the MPLA, which was fighting US- and apartheid-backed UNITA. It culminated in the 1988 Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in southern Angola, an epic confrontation that sounded the death knell for South Africa's apartheid regime and indirectly led to the independence of Namibia. Cuba provided military and ideological support to national liberation movements across the African continent - around 56,000 of the nearly 400,000 troops Castro sent to Cold War hot spots were in Angola. The highlight of that deployment was Cuito Cuanavale, which 'was the watershed moment in southern African liberation,' said Namibia's President Hage Geingob. Castro, 8,600 miles away in Havana, reportedly gave commands via telephone to his generals on the ground. 'Cuba, in Angola is where the cold war superpowers forces had their showdown,' said Paula Roque, a University of Oxford specialist researcher on Angola. On the battlefield: South African troops stand on top of an armoured vehicle as conflict raged in Southern Angola Earlier pictures show South African forces preparing to do battle on Angolan soil. The confloct culminated in the 1988 Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in southern Angola, an epic confrontation that sounded the death knell for South Africa's apartheid regime and indirectly led to the independence of Namibia Another colour photograph from the book shows Jonas Savimbi, the Swiss-educated rebel leader of UNITA UNITA rebels assemble ahead of battle in the Angolan bush. The conflict became a proxy war between the United States and Russia who were vying for Cold War supremacy A black and white image shows fighters laying landmines on a patch of road leading to a bridge near Cuito Cuanavale The pictures are shown in an updated version of The War For Africa: Twelve Months That Transformed a Continent by Fred Bridgland While Cuba provided troops, the Soviet Union was responsible for military hardware. By the time the war ended Angola owed Moscow $5-billion, but nothing to Cuba. The new edition of the book includes new facts in its preface, prologue and epilogue - including a remarkable account of the experiences of a South African battalion involved in the battle. 'I was particularly moved by the story of Piet van Zyl, a white captain in South Africa's extraordinary special force mixed-race Buffalo Battalion, who was upset when ordered to make a tactical withdrawal after his platoon had attacked across a minefield and overrun trenches occupied by Angolan government troops,' he added. 'On return to 'safety', Van Zyl realised that one of his black soldiers was missing. Against orders from a more senior officer, Van Zyl and his lieutenant, Tobias de Villiers Vos, returned across the eight-hundred-metre minefield under heavy enemy machine-gun fire, entered the government trenches and engaged enemy infantrymen in a firefight. They found the missing soldier. 'He was alive, but had a serious back wound. Van Zyl and De Villiers Vos made a stretcher for their wounded comrade with their rifles and ground sheets and began running back to safety, which they achieved under protective fire from their own side's armoured cars. 'He said the Buffalo Battalion's credo was always to recover all of its men, whether alive or dead, after combat.' A Muslim-convert academic married to The Project's Waleed Aly says sharia law can be used to promote Women's Rights. Dr Susan Carland told an audience including feminist Eva Cox in Sydney's inner-west that a hardline, Islamic legal system was compatible with feminist goals. Promoting her new book 'Fighting Hislam: Women, Faith and Sexism', the Monash University lecturer said sharia law could be used to persuade Muslim men that it was wrong to stone or lash women for adultery who had been raped. Scroll down for video Muslim convert Susan Carland told her book launch sharia law was compatible with feminism Veteran feminist Eva Cox (pictured left) with author Susan Carland, holding a glass of water The hijab-wearing writer told the function at the Gleebooks bookstore, in Glebe, how an American lawyer had used sharia law to criticise Pakistan's punishment for adultery. 'For those of you that dont know, if a woman is raped she can be punished for adultery,' Dr Carland said during a question and answer session on Wednesday night. 'The woman I interviewed said, "I could go to them with these human rights justifications for why its wrong but I know that if I do that, they will double down on this law because they will feel its an insult to their culture and their tradition and their religion", so she said, "Why would I just not use the sharia to make the argument this is wrong?".' Under sharia law, a woman's word is worth less than that of a man. A female rape victim also needs the word of four male witnesses to be exonerated in Pakistan where Islamic clerics order punishments. Dr Carland said her interview subject had argued against punishment for adultery on religious grounds with a 'massive manifesto' that was compatible with sharia law. 'Those are the things we need to be focusing on,' she said. Susan Carland and Waleed Aly have both used their profiles to promote Islam in Australia Controversial Muslim psychologist Hanan Dover gets her book signed by Susan Carland Susan Carland inside the Gleebooks store on Wednesday night ahead of her book promotion The writer told the function at the Gleebooks bookstore how an American lawyer had used sharia law to criticise Pakistan's punishment for adultery Dr Carland, who converted to Islam when she was 19, said Muslim women in Western countries often felt more comfortable discussing women's rights in a religious context than their counterparts in conservative, Muslim-majority nations. 'Living in Western countries gives these women freedom, particularly with theological interpretations, than women living in other countries where they have things like blasphemy laws,' she said. 'Some of the most interesting or challenging theological stuff to come from Muslim women has come from Western countries because the government doesn't care what you say.' She also said feminism existed within Islam, and not just the secular West which separates religion and state. 'One of the criticisms made of second wave feminism was that it was very uni-dimensional in its focus. It was very middle class, white, educated, heterosexual and secular in its approach,' she said. Dr Carland (pictured outside the Glebe bookstore) converted to Islam when she was 19 She also said feminist existed within Islam, and not just the secular West which separates religion and state Susan Carland walks along down Glebe Point Road, in Glebe, to the Gleebooks store Susan Carland (pictured second left) with her husband Waleed Aly (far left), Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (centre) and Muslim youth activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied 'You can have secular feminism, you can have Islamic feminism, you can have all different types of feminism.' Veteran feminist Eva Cox, who was in the audience, politely told Dr Carland she disagreed with her take on Western feminism. 'I'm older and I've been around for a long time. I actually defend the second wave,' she said to laughter and replies of 'fair enough' from Dr Carland. Controversial Islamist psychologist Hanan Dover, who has previously represented terror suspects and made anti-gay comments, had Dr Carland sign a copy of her book. Dr Carland's book, published by Melbourne University Press, interviews Muslim women about sexism in their own community and outside their religion. Secular Muslims, like British anti-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz, reject sharia law. Opinion / Columnist On the other hand, the traditionally female line of work for women in many parts of Africa, cuts across: Acquiring a reasonable level of formal education Committing wholly to the hunt for a husband (either physically/spiritually) Speedily bearing his children Raising the kids, and promptly attending to the scary heap of domestic chores all in quick succession, in a way that's unarguably considered 'hard-working and efficient!' Twitter: @princewill_nimi Email: princewill.nimi@yahoo.com Bio: Nimi Princewill is a Nigerian writer, poet and social reformer. He's very passionate about social reformation and the political development of Africa. He's most notable for his unconventional opinions on issues that cut across religion, sports, social lifestyle and politics. African parenting culture, doesn't exactly seem to be bosom friends with the feminine gender.A girl child in Africa, is widely considered a future property of her potential suitor, so the need to prepare her (at least marketable enough) for marriage, becomes inherent!Let's tarry a bit on gender responsibility, as required by the average African society.A man is often regarded as the sole administrator of the home, who's revered and religiously served by his wife. Little wonder, he's saddled with the huge responsibility of providing satisfactorily for his household (whether in a financially favorable time, or a toxic economy).Any other duty performed by an African woman (such as pursuing a career or nursing a day job) is perceived as complimentary or surplus to requirements (depending on the rationality of her husband).Meeting up with these huge marital demands to prove to society that a female is capable and 'marriageable', requires quite a rigorous parental upbringing. Any doubts to the length an African parent can go towards achieving this?Gender slavery is first learned at home, before it undergoes transition into marriage. A female is constantly reminded of her future wifely roles of serving her husband, so no trait of 'laziness' is tolerated by her parents, as she's regularly yanked off the bed (earlier than normal), while the males are permitted to get some more sleeping time.A female is intensely taught to multitask heavily with chores, while males are mostly excused. The females are motivated with statements like: "You have to learn to do all of these as a woman, so you can be useful in your husband's house!" Really??? I guess, this has prompted a high demand for the very few males who can come correct on a meal they prepared themselves!African parents, absolutely require a new wave of enlightenment against gender discrimination. There's a lot more to a female, than solely being of sexual/domestic service to her husband.The male and female, should be trained accordingly, and incorporated into domestic chores, such that, both are accustomed to lending a helping hand, and it doesn't turn out weird when an 'African Married Man' decides to take out the thrash and wipe the dishes, while his wife changes the baby's diaper (which by the way, stinks to the high heavens!) Dr Ganesh Arunachalam denies wrongdoing at a Medical Practitioners Tribunal A hospital doctor sacked for hounding a colleague for a date then harassed another doctor and made her 'skin crawl' after he got a new job, a tribunal heard. Dr Ganesh Arunachalam was fired after he bombarded a trainee anaesthetist with unsolicited text messages. But the 46-year-old NHS Trust Grade doctor won an appeal against his dismissal and got a job as a locum at a different hospital where he began pestering another trainee doctor, it was alleged. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service was told the incidents occurred between May 2014 and November 2014 after the women had been assigned to work at Guys and Thomas' Hospital in London and University Hospital in Lewisham respectively. The first woman, Dr A, swapped mobile numbers with Arunachalam and the rest of her team as it was was easier to use mobile phones than the bleeper systems. Sharon Beattie, lawyer for the GMC, told the Manchester hearing: 'Doctor A found herself becoming uncomfortable with the doctor and felt he was being over friendly and over flirtatious. 'He kept texting her and a lot of the messages were centered around the exams she was due to sit.' One text said: 'If you miss us as much as we miss you, you would come back to work with us,' while another said: 'I haven't heard from you in ages, are you okay?' Despite Dr A not responding, Arunachalam continued: 'Just thinking about the last three months I have worked with you, you are so special and irreplaceable speak to you soon.' Ignoring pleas from Dr A to keep messages work related, he added: 'I am looking for an apple which originated in the midlands and lives in London. It is the sweetest Apple, can you help me find it.' The alleged incidents occurred at Guys and Thomas' Hospital in London and University Hospital in Lewisham respectively Miss Beattie said: 'She replied again telling him not to contact her by text, WhatsApp or personal email again or she would have no alternative but to escalate the matter. 'Despite being issued with this warning, he sent her a large number of texts telling her to have a good time in New York and on her return he messaged her again telling her that he was happy to pick her up from the airport. 'This contact was unwelcome and whilst it is quite clear her attitude remains professional, his are consistent and show that he was trying to initiate a relationship with her.' Arunachalam was fired following a disciplinary process only to be reinstated on appeal and moved to Lewisham hospital where he met the second doctor. The second woman claimed in one incident the doctor crept up and began tickling her as she sat at a front desk writing medical notes. She claimed they were later walking down a corridor to treat a patient having a cardiac arrest when Arunachalam suddenly grabbed hold of her and said: 'I love working with you' and kissed her on the top of her head. Arunachalam was reported again to NHS bosses after the woman, Dr B, said at the end of a shift he blocked her path and hugged her. Miss Beattie said: 'She was particularly uncomfortable because this was a night shift and it was quieter than usual. 'He kept asking when she was working and saying that he only wanted to work with her. 'At the end of the shift everyone started to head home and as she tried to leave her blocked her path and hugged her telling it was nice to work with her. She said it made her skin crawl.' After appealing his dismissal Arunachalam was employed at the University Hospital in Lewisham (pictured) The first woman swapped mobile numbers with Arunachalam at Guys and Thomas' Hospital in London (pictured) - but claims she was then subjected to a stream of messages Later Arunachalam tried to call Dr B before texting her saying he had left his phone charger in work and he wanted her to pick it up and keep it for him. Although she said was going to bed, he allegedly tried to keep the conversation going, insisting he wanted to give her some text books. When she asked him to leave them at work he said there were too many and he said he would drop them at her house. Ms Beattie added: 'This was inappropriate behaviour towards two female colleagues which involved sexual harassment and which was sexually motivated. The incidents left both victims going to work in what they must have felt was a hostile environment, which is damaging to patient care.' Arunachalam, of Camden, North London, later claimed Dr B had initiated contact and was encouraging him. He said his contact with Dr A was to help her 'build confidence.' He denies wrongdoing. The misconduct hearing continues. Jared Seligman is being sued by his ex-PA A former PA to a high profile real estate broker has claimed he used to make her listen to him having loud sex and buy him drugs. Amy Gagnon was hired by Jared Seligman, a broker for New York firm Douglas Elliman, in May last year and has filed a lawsuit against him after she claims she was made to play a part in his illicit sexual encounters and illegal substance abuse. The case was filed on Monday at Manhattan Federal Court, and it alleges the personal assistant picked up packages containing drugs and was made to witness him groping a male doctor who was meant to be giving him botox jabs. On the occasion the she witnessed Seligman and the doctor, the complainant was working from her boss' apartment at his request. Having already been made to pick up drugs from his doorman, Gagnon was in the room when the doctor arrived to administer the injections. After some lewd sexual exchanges, court papers say, 'Mr Seligman then began to roughly grope the doctor in front of Ms Gagnon, gabbing his crotch,' according to The New York Daily News. On a separate occasion, the PA was again at her boss' home when she said a 'strange man' came over. They both went into the bedroom and Gagnon described hearing what was 'loud and unmistakable sexual intercourse'. Her lawyers Jeanne Christensen and Renan Varghese of Wigdor LLP say the broker must have known his assistant could hear them having sex, claiming it was a deliberate ploy. The defense states: 'In fact, Mr Seligman left little doubt about his intentions when, shortly after the other man left, Mr Seligman came out of his room wearing nothing but his bathrobe and smirked at Ms Gagnon.' Jared Schwadron, Jared Seligman (center), Mike Fabbri attend the Gotham Magazine Celebrates New York's Most Eligible Bachelors Aboard Hornblower Cruises on October 15, 2014 in New York City Gagnon was fired in December when she complained about the way she was being treated. The lawsuit states that the personal assistant was prepared to deal with things people might not encounter in other jobs, but her lawyers said: 'What Ms Gagnon did not know, and could not possibly anticipate, is that the price she was asked to pay in exchange for this experience would require her to partake in the sexual predilections and illegal activity of her boss.' Douglas Elliman told the New York Daily News the complainant was never hired or fired by the company, but was paid directly by Seligman. Mr Seligman told MailOnline: 'I do not comment on scurrilous accusations and will discredit them in the appropriate forum.' A billionaire recently named Britain's 18th richest man has now submitted a fifth application in a long-running battle to build his controversial coastal dream home. Jim Ratcliffe, who is valued at 5.75billion, has been embroiled in a lengthy dispute with council bosses over his ambitious plans in the New Forest national park. The 64-year-old's latest plans are less ambitious than previous schemes, comprising a single-storey home with three bedrooms, a large living space and a summer house. The proposed development would be 30 per cent larger than the current two-bedroom bungalow on the two-hectare site at Thorns Beach near Beaulieu, Hants. Jim Ratcliffe's latest plans for the site include a single-storey home with three bedrooms, a large living space and a summer house, all on the edge of the Solent (artist's impression) The proposed development would be 30 per cent larger than the current two-bedroom bungalow (shown) on the two-hectare site at Thorns Beach near Beaulieu, Hants Planning documents submitted to the New Forest National Park Authority state that the new development will 'ultimately benefit the site for many years' Mary Montagu-Scott, daughter of the previous Lord Montagu, is among the objectors to Mr Ratcliffe's decade-long crusade for to redevelop the site. Mrs Montagu-Scott, current High Sheriff of Hampshire, previously argued that Thorns Beach is an 'unspoilt piece of the New Forest'. Planning documents submitted to the New Forest National Park Authority state that the new development will 'ultimately benefit the site for many years' without impacting the wider landscape. The documents add: 'The proposed buildings have been designed to a suitable scale and proportion that evokes the character of a rural home. 'The new dwelling provides a modest and secure home for the client. 'The interplay between indoor and outdoor spaces actively encourages the building to blend harmoniously within the landscape.' Mr Ratcliffe amassed his fortune as the founder of INEOS, which is one of the top chemical companies in the world. Among the billionaire's vetoed plans was this property (artist's impression from 2015), which included hi-tech jacks that could raise the home in case of flooding Mr Ratcliffe (pictured right) amassed his fortune as the founder of INEOS, which is one of the top chemical companies in the world. Shown left, a map of the application site The businessman was listed in 18th place on this week's Sunday Times Rich List, ahead of the likes of Virgin entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson. He has previously submitted four separate planning applications to redevelop the Hampshire property, which he has owned since 2005. His first application was withdrawn after it received a large number of objections, so Mr Ratcliffe went back to work on new ideas, but he has been repeatedly knocked back by the authority. Mr Ratcliffe appealed the authority's decisions on two occasions in 2014 and 2015, but both decisions were upheld by a government-appointed inspector. Among his vetoed plans were for hi-tech jacks that could raise the home in case of flooding. The new application has been welcomed by residents including Michael Clarke, who said in an online comment that the design demonstrates 'flexibility' from Mr Ratcliffe. He added: 'This proposal offers a pleasing but functional design, with traditional features thoroughly consistent with its Solent location and which will enhance its surroundings.' Doris Harrison was left lying on a pavement for almost three hours An great-grandmother was left lying half-conscious on a pavement for almost three hours as she waited for an ambulance despite just five minutes from a hospital. Doris Harrison, 79, broke her hip and her wrist, as well as shattering her hand after falling while getting out of a car yesterday. Her daughter, Julie - who she was visiting - said she rang an ambulance at around 3.20pm. However she said paramedics only arrived at the address, in Kensington, Liverpool, at 6.20pm, despite being just a few roads from the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. In that time, she said her elderly mother - who suffers with a lung condition - was left on the cold pavement 'slipping in and out of consciousness'. The 57-year-old said: 'I rang 999 straight away but they said that there was a high demand in the area and they would get an ambulance to us as soon as they could. 'My mum was screaming in pain and slipping in and out of consciousness. 'Her hand was black and blue from the fall. 'I kept ringing 999 back and friends and people in the street were doing the same, but they just kept saying there was a high demand.' She added: 'We couldn't even lift her to put anything under her because of the pain she was in. 'So, she was literally just lying on the pavement with blankets over her. Her massive waiting time was compounded by the fact that she fell just five minutes away from the Royal Liverpool University Hospital 'We're only about five minutes away from the hospital, so we would have taken her ourselves, but we were told not to move her. 'I think it is absolutely disgusting.' Mrs Harrison, who has one grandchild and a great-grandchild, was eventually taken to the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and kept in overnight. Her daughter said she will be undergoing surgery today for her broken bones, but will have to stay in hospital for some time to recover. Julie added: 'The paramedics, when they arrived, couldn't even believe she had been left lying there that long. 'I know it is not their fault and they are just told where to go but what is our NHS coming to when a nearly 80-year-old is left lying in the street for three hours?' Julie said she will be putting in a formal complaint. The North West Ambulance service said it received a call at 3.33pm and an ambulance arrived at 6.16pm. A spokesperson for North West Ambulance Service said: 'This wait falls short of the high standards we aim for, and we're very sorry for any distress and discomfort caused. 'When we are busy, patients with injuries that are not life-threatening can wait longer for a response because we have to prioritise the most serious cases. Our patient experience team will look into the family's concerns if they would like to contact us directly.' The NWAS spokesperson added that Mrs Harrison's call was initially categorised on an ambulance response time scale as green - which is not a life-threatening call - and does not have a specific response time. The Royal Liverpool University Hospital, where she was eventually taken after her three-hour wait When it was upgraded to a red call - classed as life-threatening - they attended within half an hour. However, according to their website, a 'red' call should be attended to within eight minutes. It comes less than 24 hours after the inquest of a a 95-year-old who died after being kept in one of 11 ambulances queueing outside a hospital for up to four hours. Lilly Baxandall was injured in a fall at her home and it was 42 minutes before an ambulance arrived. When paramedics got her to Ysbyty (Hospital) Glan Clwyd, Bodelwyddan, Wales, there was a long queue to drop off patients. Miss Baxandall's condition deteriorated as she remained in the ambulance for four hours. She was unconscious by the time she was taken into the hospital at around 9pm and died soon after. In the face of accusations that the president abruptly terminated the director of the FBI to derail an investigation into alleged collusion between his associates and the Russians, the White House is tactically claiming that President Donald Trump took cues from his newly sworn in deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had previously recused himself from all election investigations and served only as the conduit for Rosenstein's recommendation, the White House has argued. 'The president took the advice of the deputy attorney general who oversees the director of the FBI, brought those concerns to the attorney general who brought them to the president, and they made a decision to remove him,' Kellyanne Conway said this morning. The White House is tactically claiming that President Donald Trump took cues from his newly sworn in deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Kellyanne Conway is pictured making the case this morning from the White House on CNN Conway, a senior counselor to the president, repeatedly claimed during a CNN interview on Wednesday morning that Rosenstein acted alone. His hand was not forced by the White House or Attorney General Jeff Sessions, she said. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters late Tuesday night that it was 'a DOJ decision' to recommend that Comey be fired. 'It was all him,' Spicer said of Rosenstein. BLAME HIM: The White House is claiming the president took his cue to fire FBI director James Comey for the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein Giving himself cover on second thought, Spicer backtracked, the Washington Post reported, and said: 'I mean, I can't, I guess I shouldn't say that, thank you for the help on that one. No one from the White House. That was a DOJ decision.' Spicer's deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told MSNBC that the FBI probe into Russian meddling in the presidential election was 'absolutely not' why Comey was let go. 'He was given a recommendation, and he made a decision and he made it quickly,' Huckabee Sanders claimed. Rosenstein's letter details Comey's shortcomings as it pertains to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. 'I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgement that he was mistaken,' Rosenstein said. The U.S. attorney under former President Barack Obama said in the memo to Sessions, dated yesterday, that 'almost everyone' agrees that Comey made 'serious mistakes.' 'It is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives,' he writes. Rosenstein goes on to argue that Comey cannot be entrusted to restore trust in the FBI, having refused to admit his errors. Trump praised Comey for the way he ran the probe that Clinton says lost her the election when he was still a candidate. He said at a rally eight days before the election that it took 'guts' for Comey to tell Congress that he was reopening the investigation into Clinton's secret sever with the election at hand. 'What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back. He's got to hang tough because a lot of people want him to do the wrong thing,' Trump said then. Trump said last week in a tweet after Clinton reemerged to blame Comey for her loss that the FBI director 'gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!' Still, Spicer told reporters at a briefing that the president continued to have confidence in his FBI director. He could not make the same declaration on Tuesday, hours before Comey was fired. 'I haven't asked him. I have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about this,' he told ABC News' Jon Karl. 'I don't, in light of what you're telling me, I don't want to start speaking on behalf of the president without speaking to him first.' Karl had asked Spicer about Comey's inaccurate testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about top Clinton aide Huma Abedin's email practices. Comey said Abedin made 'a regular practice of forwarding Clinton emails to her husband Anthony Weiner, and some of which contain classified information. She did this on hundreds and thousands of occasions, he claimed. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters late Tuesday night that it was 'a DOJ decision' to recommend that Comey be fired Rosenstein's letter details Comey's shortcomings as it pertains to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails Spicer's deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told MSNBC that the FBI probe into Russian meddling in the presidential election was 'absolutely not' why Comey was let go The FBI cleaned up Comey's remarks in a letter to the committee just before he was fired. Conway suggested on CNN that Comey's misspeak about Abedin wasn't the reason the president fired him. 'President Trump wants an FBI director who is impartial, who is not politicized and who has the confidence and the trust of people in the bureau, of Republicans and Democrats on capitol hill, of the attorney general, of the deputy attorney general who overseas the FBI director, and of the President of the United States, and he had lost that,' she said. Conway argued Wednesday that President Trump fired Comey at Rosenstein's discretion as she was hammered on the network for a second time in 12 hours on the sudden dismissal that the White House and DOJ say was brought on by actions that the FBI director took six months ago. 'You have to have confidence in the impartiality and the non-politicization of the FBI, of the bureau, and Mr. Rosenstein apparently concluded that's not the case and put forth his recommendation to the president,' Conway claimed. Asked several times about the memo that Rosenstein put together on Comey and the White House distributed, Conway said, 'You'd have to ask Rod Rosenstein.' 'But one presumes that he wrote the report on his own. He's fully capable of writing a report, isnt he Chris?' she said to New Day Host Chris Cuomo. A copy of the termination letter to FBI Director James Comey from President Donald Trump. The White House has been unable to say what role the president had in Comey's firing, other than pulling the lever Cuomo matter-of-factly asked if Rosenstein was urged to filed the report by Sessions, a supporter of the president's, and Conway curtly told him, 'Well, now you're insulting him, too.' At one point in the interview Cuomo told the senior White House aide, 'You're creating an image that doesn't reveal itself in fact' and she denied it. Spicer had been unable to say on Tuesday what role the president had in Comey's firing, other than pulling the lever. 'I have to get back to you on the tick-tock,' he told reporters who chased him down outside the White House after hours. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment on Wednesday morning. Huckabee Sanders said on MSNBC's Morning Joe that she was 'not aware' that Rosenstein's review of Comey was 'requested' by anyone. 'I would imagine that that's part of him coming on board and taking a position,' she said on Wednesday's program. The deputy White House press secretary said it was her understanding that Rosenstein made an 'independent decision' to call for Comey's replacement, but admitted that it was a question that would have to be answered 'in the coming days.' The elderly man who shoved a lemon meringue cake in Alan Joyce's face said he was opposing the Qantas boss' stance on gay marriage. Tony Overheu said he wanted to take a stand against 'corporate bullying aimed at social engineering' to change the marriage law. 'It would appear Alan Joyce is part of a network trying to subvert the federal parliamentary process around the issue of marriage equality,' he told Daily Mail Australia. But Mr Joyce said the incident would not stop him from speaking out on marriage equality or other LGBTI and gender issues. Scroll down for videos The elderly man who shoved a lemon meringue cake in Qantas CEO Alan Joyce's face has spoken out to explain his actions as a stance against 'corporate bullying' 'I have every intention to continue to be vocal on those social and community issues,' he told reporters. 'It's important for our shareholders, our employees, and our customers. It's called good corporate social responsibility. 'I'm a big believer in the great Australian expression a fair government it's all about giving people equality. 'Qantas has always spoken up on gender issues, on LGBTI issues, on Indigenous issues and we will continue to do so and no attempt at bullying us into suppressing our voice will work.' Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told a press conference in Canberra on Wednesday that he intends to press charges against the elderly man who shoved a cake in his face Mr Overheu left a room of 500 people aghast when he strolled up to Mr Joyce and shoved a $25.95 lemon meringue cake in his face during a speech at a business breakfast at Perth's exclusive Hyatt Regency hotel. He is a devout Christian and senior member of the Church of Christ and Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International. But he denied that his religious ties were the motive behind his unusual attack on Mr Joyce, and was only upset he was using his public profile to push the issue. 'I'm not a bigoted redneck at all, that's not it. My very best friend from childhood came out as gay and he is a Qantas pilot,' he told Daily Mail Australia. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce (right) was attacked by an elderly man wielding a lemon meringue pie (left) on Tuesday morning as he addressed business leaders in Perth He said he was at a barbecue on the weekend in which other people were also 'pee'd off' about 'green left and corporates' subverting democracy by pushing for same-sex marriage without holding a plebiscite. 'Alan Joyce is a very active individual in this process [towards marriage equality] and in that context he was appropriate [to target],' he said. 'Figures overstepping the line have got to anticipate there will be push back. 'I feel very deeply about this theme of corporate bullying. Middle Australia completely rejects corporate bullying aimed at social engineering.' 'CEOs need to respect Australia is a democracy where backdoor attempts to subvert the clear wishes of the overwhelming majority will cost companies bottom lines. 'Alan Joyce is paid $13 million to run airlines not bulldoze Australia socially against its will.' The man walked up behind him, grabbing him by the shoulder and shoving the pie in his face He also attacked other influential companies that have been lobbying the government for same-sex marriage, including Airbnb, Wesfarmers and Holden. Mr Overheu explained that his target could have been any national figure but Mr Joyce happened to be visiting the city at the time. 'It didn't have to be Alan Joyce, it just happened to be. 'Recently I have been feeling increasingly uneasy that various individuals or groups of individuals seem to willing to try to bulldoze the public process in directions that the majority of people don't agree with,' he said. 'Why did Trump get elected? Why did Brexit happen? The people will only take so much. People feel like they are not being heard. But despite Mr Overheu emailing Mr Joyce an unreserved apology for Tuesday's stunt, the multi-millionaire CEO isn't turning the other cheek. 'The police are continuing their investigation and my intention is to send a message that this type of behaviour isn't acceptable and that I will have every intention of pressing charges,' Mr Joyce told reporters on Wednesday. Mr Overheu said he calmly walked into the hotel lobby at around 6.15am and waited two hours behind the stage to strike Mr Overheu was arrested at the hotel and charged with giving false details to police but he's yet to be charged with the actual 'pieing'. 'Once we receive the complaint from the victim, then we can assess what the charge will be,' a WA Police spokesman told Daily Mail Australia. 'We will issue a statement when we formally receive the complaint.' Mr Overheu revealed his modus operandi, saying he hid in a small gap between a screen and curtain on the podium from 6.15am and waited for two hours while the audience ate breakfast before emerging to ambush Mr Joyce. He also claimed he was unaware that his actions could be considered assault and has since apologised to Mr Joyce and the event's organisers. 'I had naively believed I could walk out the same way I came, but I was apprehended and now it's a matter for the state police and assault,' he said. 'My family is outraged, my wife is in uproar. I sent a letter this morning to Mr Joyce, the hotel and Curtain University apologising unreservedly for any insult or injury due to my actions.' After shoving the pie in Alan Joyce's face, the man was detained by three hotel employees until police arrived He says his wife was furious for actions that were not consistent with Christianity, while one of his daughters posted a message on social media supporting same-sex marriage but saying 'I love my idiot dad'. Mr Overheu stood unsuccessfully as a Senate candidate for the Nationals in the 1980 federal election but reportedly cut ties with the party 20 years ago when his farming business had difficulties. He added that he had started plotting after he saw the event advertised in the newspaper about a month ago. 'I went to a barbecue a week ago and I was starting to feel my feelings were shared by a lot of people,' he said. 'So I went to the local cheesecake shop the day before and the lemon meringue cake was specially selected because it was soft and least likely to cause injury. 'I wrapped it up and around 6.15am, I walked into the lobby of the Hyatt. I simply walked up the length of the auditorium and I stood in a gap behind the stage and waited for about two hours. 'I was pretty amazed that I managed to get even that far. When the time came, I simply stepped out and carefully placed the cake in his face.' The man then walked off the stage calmly as Mr Joyce processed what had just happened The airline boss took it relatively well, exclaiming 'f***ing heck' before jovially telling the audience: 'I don't know what that was about' Mr Joyce had addressed the incident afterwards, claiming he was not altogether surprised by the sudden attack considering his job. 'When you've been the CEO of an airline for nine years, there's a lot of things that have happened over that period of time, this is different, but it's not unusual. It is an unusual event, but things like this have happened in the past,' he said. Mr Joyce said he had 'absolutely no idea' what flavour the pie was because he's 'not a big pie eater.' 'I didn't have a chance to test it, it was mostly on my glasses,' he joked. 'I think my issue is I need a good dry cleaner before I leave Perth, so if you have one, please recommend it to me.' In video footage of the incident, Mr Overheu is seen walking up behind Mr Joyce and resting a hand on his shoulder before pushing the cake into his face and rubbing it in. He is then seen calmly walking off the stage before he was quickly grabbed by security. Mr Joyce took the attack in his stride, saying 'f****** heck' before jovially telling the audience: 'I don't know what that was about.' After wiping the remnants of the dessert off his face, Mr Joyce joked with the audience before continuing his speech. 'If there are any more pies, can you get them over with now?' he said, before speaking about Qantas' recently announced direct flights to London. The decision to remove a staple ingredient from a Sydney school menu has been met with strong resistance from its enraged pupils. De La Salle College has decided to remove hot chips from its kitchen as the college looks to adhere to the government's new plans for a healthier lunch menu. The students of the Revesby institute have taken matters into their own hands and started an online petition in an attempt to reinstate the popular potato snack. The online petition started by students to reinstate hot chips to their college's canteen menu De La Salle College in south-west Sydney, where hot chips have been removed from the lunch menu in coherence with the government's new healthy eating campaign The petition pleads for the public's support and suggests that hot chips can make a contribution to their academic success. 'To satisfy everyone's desire for some fried potato, we believe this is a necessity for successful academic achievements to get above the state cohort,' the petition reads. Since the page was created two months ago, it has amassed an impressive 360 signatures, just 140 short of their target of 500. De La Salle College principal Timothy Logue said that while he was impressed with the students' initiative to set up an online petition, the school canteen would not be returning hot chips to the menu. Hot chips have been a staple ingredient in Australian school lunches for decades The potato snack looks likely to disappear from all school lunches as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian implements a new healthy eating campaign across all New South Wales schools 'We have discussed with the students the importance of nutrition and physical activity, and how research shows that it underpins effective student learning and achievement,' Mr Logue told The Daily Telegraph. The new strategy, enforced by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, will replace the failed 'traffic light' system and will ensure that 75% of all school menus are made up of fruit, vegetables and fresh food options, leaving little room for the oil fried fritters. 'The new NSW Healthy School Canteen Strategy strikes the right balance between nutrition and freedom of choice,' Mr Logue said. 'Our canteen menu offers students very healthy options like fresh fruit salad bowls, salad wraps and sushi.' One signature from Kalli Ryder in Adelaide went with a pragmatic approach and suggested instead of removing them altogether, to rethink how they were served. 'Rather than ban chips, you could have looked at 'healthier' ways of preparing them, such as baking, shallow frying, making them from potatoes instead of a packet. 'You could have consulted with the students on a new menu, instead, you have chosen to food police your students. Shame on you.' she added. David Harris, 68, claims he was researching a thriller novel when he allegedly offered sums of up to 250,000 to bump off his partner of 30 years, Hazel Allinson (pictured together) A retired TV producer accused of asking hitmen to murder his partner begged neighbours for money to spend on his prostitute lover, a court heard yesterday. David Harris allegedly asked one pensioner for 40,000 to spend on the call girl he was besotted with. The Old Bailey also heard how he had scoured a 20-mile radius from his home for prostitutes and also had an affair with a nurse. Details of the 68-year-olds love life emerged in court, where he is on trial accused of offering three hitmen up to 250,000 to murder his long-term partner Hazel Allinson, 68. Harris, who worked as location manager on ITV show The Bill, is said to have wanted to inherit her money so he could spend it on Lithuanian call girl Ugne Cekaviciute, who he met in a brothel. Jurors were told he spent more than 50,000 on the 28-year-old, even borrowing from neighbours to buy her gifts. He became besotted with her, he said and thought she was too young, too nice, to be in a brothel. But his debts mounted up as the affair continued. The pensioner worked his way through 50,000 Miss Allinson gave him, his 300 monthly allowance from her, a 16,000 loan from a neighbour and credit cards with Saga and John Lewis. Harris is also alleged to have approached an elderly neighbour days after her mother died, and asked to borrow 40,000 but she declined. Prosecutors say he wanted Ms Allinson (left) dead for her assets, including an 800,000 house, so he could spend the inheritance on his girlfriend, Ugne Cekaviciute, 28, (right) Harris told jurors he and Miss Allinson were 100 per cent, fabulous together but he visited brothels because he had an active libido and the pair of them were not sexually compatible. Harris said: Im afraid to say, to my shame, I attended prostitutes, within a ten to 20-mile radius. I met Ugne around October 2011 in a brothel in Worthing. I had become besotted with her. I thought that she was too young and too nice to be in a brothel and over the time we developed our friendship, our relationship, I discovered she wanted to go back to uni and study. Harris said she was also working as a carer for adults with special needs and she left the brothel on his request. He added: It started to get very expensive having dinner, lunch, hotels and I just couldnt afford it so I started drawing out that capital that Hazel had given me. By the time of his arrest, the money was long gone, he said. The Old Bailey heard how Miss Allinson was angry when she discovered an affair Harris had with a nurse some years ago, and in 2014 she learnt of his relationship with Miss Cekaviciute after seeing a bank statement. But she forgave him, said Harris, because the bond was too great for us just to separate after 27 years, so we decided to stay together and work on our relationship. She wasnt happy, but didnt want to end the relationship, he said. Harris told jurors at the Old Bailey that he was inspired by Frederick Forsyth (pictured) to research an 'authentic' thriller She was angry at first, then she calmed down and realised it wasnt very important and that what we had was more important than that. The court also heard that Harris met hitmen as part of a plan to pen a Frederick Forsyth-style thriller. He said he had been emulating the working methods of the author, who penned classic assassin novel The Day of the Jackal. Jurors were told that book sales and film rights would give an easier life to his soulmate Miss Allinson, who also worked on The Bill as a script supervisor. Novels found on a Kindle device at the 800,000 house he shared with her in Amberley, West Sussex, included Assassin by Tom Cain, along with thrillers by Robert Ludlum and Stieg Larsson. Harris had plans to base his own book on his life, in which a marketing executive in his 50s fell in love with a young woman and decided to kill his older wife. But he said he needed to get a realistic storyline. Harris told the court: The hitman was crucial to the plot, and I wanted to contact a hitman because Id read something of Frederick Forsyth when he was writing a novel. The character in that novel wanted to infiltrate the IRA as a gun smuggler, and arms dealer and Frederick Forsyth arranged to meet a guy who did just this, dealt arms. The first thing this guy said to him was, Why did you want to meet me? Youre writing a novel, you can make it up. Forsyths words were, authenticity, believability. Harris denies three counts of conspiracy to murder. The case continues. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is coming under scrutiny for his role in President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey despite recusing himself from 'any campaign investigation' regarding the campaign. Sessions, a former Alabama senator who became a close campaign advisor to Trump, made the statement of recusal following revelations that he had met twice with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, and hadn't told Congress about it during his own confirmation hearing. The White House released a letter from Sessions Tuesday night, after Trump fired Comey, calling for a 'fresh start' at the FBI. Although Sessions didn't mention Russia in his letter, Trump, in his own letter to Comey, thanked Comey for 'informting me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.' The statement was a clear reference to the FBI's probe of alleged Russian interference in the presidential election. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is over fire for participating in the firing of FBI director James Comey after saying he would recuse himself from all matters relating to the 2016 campaign. The FBI is investigating allegations of Russian election interference Scroll down for video 'Why was Attorney General Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia investigations, able to influence the firing of the man conducting the Russia investigation?' asked Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer in a statement on the floor Wednesday. Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, who asked Sessions a key question during his confirmation hearing, called Sessions' actions a 'complete betrayal.' 'I am also deeply troubled by the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who pledged to recuse himself from the Russia investigation because of his own Russia connections, involved himself in Director Comey's firing,' Franken said. 'This is a complete betrayal of his commitment to the public that he wouldn't be involved in the investigation,' he said, The Hill reported. 'It is deeply troubling that President Trump just fired the person in charge of investigating his ties to Russia, and the President's stated reasons for firing Director Comey are difficult to believe,' Franken added. The New York Times reported that Sessions pushed for Comey's firing, and that Sessions had been tasked with coming up with reasons to fire him as part of an effort to build a case against him that started last week. Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, who asked Sessions a key question during his confirmation hearing, called Sessions' actions a 'complete betrayal' Independent Vermont Senator Angus King, an Intelligence Committee member who caucuses with Democrats, also raised doubts about Sessions' role in Comey's firing Sessions wrote President Trump a letter dated May 9 calling for a 'fresh start' in the FBI leadership Sessions acknowledged meeting Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice during the presidential campaign, although he didn't mention it during his own confirmation hearing 'We know that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election, that they did so to undermine confidence in American democracy and that they wanted Donald Trump to become President. The intelligence community has confirmed that,' Franken added. Sessions recused himself from campaign investigations at a March press conference, though not all of his public statements were iron-clad. 'My staff recommended recusal. They said that since I had involvement with the campaign I should not be involved in any campaign investigation,' Sessions told reporters in a hastily-called press conference in the Department of Justice. 'I should not be involved in investigating a campaign I had a role in,' Sessions added. Franken sparred with Sessions during his confirmation hearing, and asked Sessions about reports of Trump campaign Russia contacts. Committee Chairman U.S. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) (R) shows U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) (L) and U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) (2nd L) photos he has taken on his camera during a break on the third day of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill June 30, 2010 'Now, again, I'm telling you this as it's coming out, so you know. But if it's true, it's obviously extremely serious and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?' Franken asked. Sessions replied: 'Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it.' Sessions later admitted that he had met with Kislyak on two occasions. Independent Vermont Senator Angus King, an Intelligence Committee member who caucuses with Democrats, also raised doubts about Sessions' role in Comey's firing. 'What is Jeff Sessions doing involved in this?' he asked. 'He said he's going to have nothing to do with the Russia investigation in any shape or form, directly or indirectly and yet he is involved in firing the guy who is leading the investigation for the FBI,' he said. Nicola Sturgeon claimed the Tories still have questions to answer about election expenses today despite the CPS clearing more than a dozen politicians. The SNP leader faces ridicule after she claimed the prospect of criminal action was the secret reason behind Theresa May's snap election call. But she doubled down today despite the CPS decision not to bring charges on 14 cases. One case, relating to Craig Mackinlay in Thanet South, is outstanding. He denies any wrong doing. Nicola Sturgeon (pictured enjoying a haggis pie in East Dunbartonshire today) claimed the Tories still have questions to answer about election expenses today despite the CPS clearing more than a dozen politicians The SNP leader (pictured rolling pastry at the Table 13 Express today) faces ridicule after she claimed the prospect of criminal action was the secret reason behind Theresa May's snap election call Ms Sturgeon insisted today it was 'still likely' the fear of prosecution drove the decision to call a snap election. Speaking on the campaign trail today, she said: 'But I think there are still really big questions for the Tories to answer in the light of the CPS announcement today. 'Because what they've said is that there's evidence that election returns may have been inaccurate. They just don't have the evidence of the criminal intent that would have enabled them to prosecute. 'Of course, the Electoral Commission has already levied fines against the Tories in respect of the election returns. So I think there are big questions to answer.' Ms Sturgeon said the CPS failing to find evidence meeting the 'high bar' for criminal investigation there were still outstanding questions. She insisted: 'There is lots to suggest that the Tories were 'at it' when it came to how they were allocating election expenses in some constituencies.' The CPS decision will be a relief to Theresa May (pictured leaving Downing Street today) who would have faced a political storm had any of her candidates been charged over the last election Many of the allegations relate to use of Conservative national battlebuses for the benefit of local candidates The SNP leader first accused Mrs May of calling the election over prosecution fears within days of the shock decision. Speaking to Scottish trade unionists she claimed the election was crushing 'dissent and opposition'. She said: (It was called) to do so before possible criminal prosecutions for alleged expenses fraud at the last election catches up with her. 'And whatever else happens in this election we should not allow the Tory party to escape the accountability for any misdemeanours that may have led to them buying the last general election.' Karl McCartney, who was among those told they were in the clear today, called for the whole Electoral Commission executive team to resign James Heappey, pictured left, and fisheries minister George Eustice are among those told they are in the clear today Fury over year-long 'witch hunt' against Tory politicians after prosecutors DISMISS calls for charges Furious Tory politicians slammed a 'witch hunt' against them today after prosecutors finally dismissed calls for charges to be brought over alleged abuses of election expenses. HOW THE EXPENSES INVESTIGATIONS HAPPENED January 2016: Election receipts published by the Electoral Commission February 2016: Channel 4 News broadcast allegations for the first time March 2016: Electoral Commission opens its own investigations April 2016: Tories admit failing to declare spending on battle busses April 2016: More than a dozen police forces apply to court for time to conduct probes into election offences May 2016: Police forces meet with the Electoral Commission to discuss spending November 2016: Theresa May aide Nick Timothy is drawn into allegations about the race in South Thanet April 2017: Crown Prosecution Service reveals it is considering several files handed over by police May 2017: CPS announces that no further action is being taken in 14 out of the 15 cases. Advertisement More than a dozen police forces had submitted files to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over allegations relating to the 2015 campaign. But more than a year after the probes began, 14 of the cases have now been ended with no further action, while one - relating to Craig Mackinlay in South Thanet - is still being considered. His file was submitted by police later than the others. The announcement is a major boost for Theresa May, who had stood staunchly behind her candidates. It sparked Tory calls for the head of the elections watchdog to resign over the 'witch hunt'. Nick Vamos, CPS Head of Special Crime, said: 'We reviewed the files in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors and have concluded the tests in the Code are not met and no criminal charges have been authorised.' Mr Vamos stressed that in order to bring a charge 'it must be proved that a suspect knew the return was inaccurate and acted dishonestly in signing the declaration'. 'Although there is evidence to suggest the returns may have been inaccurate, there is insufficient evidence to prove to the criminal standard that any candidate or agent was dishonest,' he said. Where's the cash Jeremy? Theresa May pours scorn over Corbyn's hints he will scrap tuition fees - and warns that Labour will 'wreck' the economy Theresa May today poured scorn over Jeremy Corbyn's hints Labour would scrap university tuition fees if elected - demanding to know how they would fund the expensive pledge. The Prime Minister said Labour governments 'wreck' the economy, leaving less money to pay for education. And she confirmed the 9,250-a-year fees will 'remain' under a Tory government. Theresa May, pictured enjoying a cup of tea at British Steel in Scunthorpe, demanded to know how Corbyn would fund scrapping university tuition fees Labour are expected to promise to scrap the fees when they unveil their manifesto next week. But the move would leave a huge black hole in university funding - raising the prospect that Labour will clobber Britain with more tax rises to bankroll the policy. During a visit to a printers in Mansfield, Mrs May said: 'Those tuition fees will remain and the question you have to ask the Labour party is how would they actually pay for all of this that they are proposing? 'Because what we have seen from Labour governments in the past is that they wreck the economy. 'If you wreck the economy then you aren't able to support students.' Labour has already threatened to hike corporation tax to 26 per cent in what has been described by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies as one of the biggest tax rises in 30 years. The Labour leader, pictured with students today in Leeds, has hinted that he will promise to scrap the fees when he unveils the party's manifesto next week And their economic credibility has taken a battering after it emerged that the money raised through the proposed tax rise has already been spent on 12 policy announcements. Mr Corbyn and his shadow cabinet have hinted heavily that they will promise to scrap the fees. Speaking at the party's education policy launch in Leeds today, Mr Corbyn said he is carrying 'some stuff in my pocket' on university tuition fees but the plans would be revealed in the party's manifesto next week. While shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said she 'didn't want to give too much of the manifesto away' - having earlier said voters should 'watch this space' on fees. Meanwhile, a video clip of John McDonnell emerged online showed the shadow chancellor promising to scrap the fees during a stump speech in Mansfield at the end of April. In the clip, posted on Youtube, he said: 'We've always believed as a movement that education is a gift from one generation to another. 'It's not a commodity to be bought and sold. So we want to introduce just as the Atlee government with Nye Bevan introduced the National Health Service we want to introduce a national education service. 'Free at the point of need throughout life. And that means ending the cuts in the schools at primary and secondary level. It means free childcare. It means free school training when you need it throughout life. 'And yes it means scrapping tuition fees once and for all so we don't burden our kids with debt for the future.' IHOP waitress, Rhonda Kelly (pictured), was arrested Friday for allegedly pulling a steak knife on a family-of-four, including two kids An IHOP waitress was arrested Friday morning for allegedly pulling a steak knife on a New York family after an argument over poor service. Police said the waitress, Rhonda Kelly, pulled the knife on a family-of-four, including two special needs children, both under the age of four. The mother said she and her family received poor service at the pancake house on Sunrise Highway in Massapequa, according to NBC 4. They asked to speak to the manager and the manager asked them to leave, the mother said. When the family got up to leave, they overheard another waitress comment about their kids' disabilities and turned back around, according to NBC. The wait staff allegedly surrounded the family and an argument ensued. According to the mother, Kelly who had been serving the family grabbed a steak knife and threatened the parents and kids. No one was injured after another IHOP employee snatched the knife from Kelly. The mother of the family, who have not been identified, said they were shaken up after she, her husband and their children were surrounded by the pancake restaurant's wait staff. A statement released by the franchise owner, Camile Gnolfo, says the company wishes the 'outcome had been different', but several 'employees reacted to what they viewed as an immediate threat to their personal safety'. The IHOP in Massapequa is pictured A statement released by the franchise owner, Camile Gnolfo, says the business is cooperating with a police investigation. Gnolfo said in the statement that the company wishes the 'outcome had been different', but several 'employees reacted to what they viewed as an immediate threat to their personal safety' Authorities said Kelly was arrested on a charge of menacing, and is due in court later this month. It's still unclear why the manager of the restaurant asked the family to leave and a spokesperson for IHOP said they aren't supposed to discuss the matter with the media. Former Dance Moms star Abby Lee Miller is speaking out one day after being sentenced to 366 days in federal prison over fraud charges. The 50-year-old sat down on Good Morning America Wednesday and fought back tears while sharing that she hopes to leave prison as 'a smarter businesswoman and also to worry about myself.' 'I have spent so much time and so much energy making other people's children stars. I didn't have any children of my own,' she emotionally said. 'These were my kids and I raised them like they were my kids.' Miller also claimed that her actions were unintentional during the interview. 'I wasn't ever trying to hurt anyone,' she said. She added that in hindsight, she 'would have never filed for bankruptcy ever.' 'I do not recommend it,' Miller stated. The reality television star had been indicted on 20 counts of fraud related to hiding $755,000 in earnings from the U.S. government last year and she pleaded guilty. Scroll down for video Former Dance Moms star Abby Lee Miller (above on Wednesday) is speaking out one day after being sentenced to 366 days in federal prison over fraud charges The 50-year-old sat down on Good Morning America Wednesday (above) and fought back tears while sharing that she hopes to leave prison as 'a smarter businesswoman and also to worry about myself.' Miller said that her prison sentence, 'a year and a day' sounds 'like a movie title.' The Lifetime star has to surrender to prison in the next 44 days. Once she's behind bars, she said she plans to 'pretend' she's 'shooting a movie' and is simply on location 'for 10 months.' In addition, Miller said that she's planning to 'read more' and learn Spanish. She revealed that she is 'already working' on a book. After completing the sentence, Miller, who has owned and operated the Abby Lee Dance Company in Pittsburgh since she was aged 14, will be on supervised release for two more years and have to pay $160,000 in fines. Miller took the stand during her sentencing and begged Judge Joy Flower Conti for mercy while reportedly sobbing in court on Tuesday. 'Dance Moms became a hit and I became the laughing stock of reality TV,' she told Conti. Miller said: 'I wasn't ever trying to hurt anyone.' She added that in hindsight, she 'would have never filed for bankruptcy ever. I do not recommend it.' Miller (above on Tuesday) claimed that her actions were unintentional during the interview 'You weren't truthful, even when you knew you were supposed to tell everything, you still weren't truthful,' Conti told the television star. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Melucci told the court that Miller went from being a 'dance mom in the bankruptcy case to dance con.' Prior to sentencing on Tuesday, Miller claimed that the fame and popularity of the show led to her situation. Before she was sentenced, Miller read a lengthy statement. 'I'm certainly ashamed to be meeting you for the first time in this manner,' she told the judge. 'I wish you could take my class or come to one of my events and see how much I love this.' She said her father had perfect credit, and when she took over his dance business and ran into debt, she intended to pay everybody back, but it became more complicated than she thought. Miller (above arriving for court Tuesday) took the stand during her sentencing and begged Judge Joy Flower Conti for mercy while reportedly sobbing in court on Tuesday. 'Dance Moms became a hit and I became the laughing stock of reality TV,' she told Conti. Miller (above on her show) said in court on Tuesday to the judge: 'Dance Moms became a hit and I became the laughing stock of reality TV' 'I didn't realize when you apply for bankruptcy it's like signing up for more homework,' she said. While apologizing, she said the way she handled her money wasn't an attempt to deceive anyone but just a way to keep her business running. Prosecutors said Miller repeatedly hid her true income and contracts for future income from her TV shows until her channel-surfing bankruptcy judge saw her on TV and concluded she must be making far more than the $8,899 in monthly income she initially declared. Miller eventually coughed up $288,000 in TV income she didn't initially report, but then federal investigators found she'd hidden nearly $550,000 more from personal appearances, dance sessions and merchandise sales. Miller filed for bankruptcy after defaulting on a $245,000 Florida condominium mortgage and a $96,000 mortgage on her dance studio in Penn Hills, a Pittsburgh suburb, her bankruptcy lawyer said. Conti explained that the appropriate sentence should be 10-16 months with a fine ranging from $5,000 to $55,000 along with an additional 18-24 months and fines of $7,5000 to $75,000 for currency reporting charges. Miller (above with students on her show) pleaded guilty last year in federal court having been charged in the fall of 2015 with illegally trying to hide $775,000 in US income from the Lifetime network reality show and spin-off projects during her Chapter 11 bankruptcy While apologizing in court, Miller (above on Dance Moms) said the way she handled her money wasn't an attempt to deceive anyone but just a way to keep her business running Miller pleaded guilty last year in federal court having been charged in the fall of 2015 with illegally trying to hide $775,000 in US income from the Lifetime network reality show and spin-off projects during her Chapter 11 bankruptcy. She allegedly hid the money in secret bank accounts between 2012 and 2013. Dance Moms debuted in 2011 on Lifetime and season seven premiered in November 2016. The show follows a class of Miller's elite students and the perilous relationship she has with the girls' mothers. Critics of 'Dance Moms' accuse Miller of being emotionally abusive toward the girls, and many episodes show her students dissolving into tears after a harsh critique. There were several conflicts on the show between the mother's of the preteen girls and Miller throughout the seasons, as they traveled to various dance competitions week-to-week in an effort to win awards. Miller, who was known for her brash behavior and pursuit of perfectionism from her students, announced that she was leaving the show in March. Lifetime had no comment about Miller's sentencing or the show when contacted by DailyMail.com. Amazon will spend millions of dollars designing and constructing a homeless shelter in one of its new office buildings in downtown Seattle. The online retail giant partnered with the non-profit Mary's Place, allowing them to take over a vacant motel on the lot before construction on the new building begins next year. Instead of booting the homeless families out once the motel is torn down, however, Amazon will incorporate a shelter on the premises of its expanding campus. John Schoettler, Amazons vice president for global real estate and facilities, said the company wanted to help the city's homelessness crisis, which Mayor Ed Murray declared a state of emergency in 2015. But skeptics say the move may be part of an image overhaul after Amazon's reputation has suffered in recent years. Amazon bought the former Travelodge and converted student dormitory in 2014. They partnered with Mary's Place to house homeless families in the vacant motel The motel will be torn down to make way for a new building, which will provide a permanent home for Mary's Place across three of its six floors Amazon bought the former Travelodge and converted student dormitory in 2014 as the company continues its expansion across Seattle. Last month, Amazon announced the partnership with Mary's Place, an organization that helps place families in shelters before they find permanent homes. Mary's Place will be able to use the motel free of charge until spring 2017, when the motel will be torn down to make way for a new building. Families will likely be placed in another motel Amazon owns across the street before Mary's Place will be given a permanent space in the new building. Amazon said it expected to spend 'tens of millions of dollars' on the design and construction of the shelter, slated to open in 2020. The space, taking up three of the six stories, will be able to house 65 families, or about 220 people. Amazon said it will foot the utilities bill and allow the organization to inhabit the space rent-free. Amazon said it wanted to help battle the homelessness crisis in Seattle (pictured, CEO Jeff Bezos) The company released a statement saying: 'As we grow in Seattle, we recognize the importance of investing in our hometown in ways that benefit our neighbors and our employees. 'When Seattle Mayor Ed Murray declared a civil state of emergency on homelessness we wanted to help out in a time of great need.' But not everyone is convinced by Amazon's generosity. Amazon has been accused of gentrification and contributing to the city's homelessness problem by expanding in Seattle and driving up housing costs. The company, which also earned a reputation for a harsh work culture, is known for its weak philanthropic efforts compared to Boeing or Starbucks in Seattle. Alan Durning of Sightline Institute, a nonprofit research organization, told the New York Times: 'Its reputation in Seattle has certainly suffered. Doing things like this may be in its enlightened self-interest, right on site for the world to see.' The homeless population in Kings County was the third-largest in the country last year after New York and Los Angeles, according to a Department of Housing and Urban Development report. An incredible clip has resurfaced showing the moment a mixed martial arts fighter sustained a flurry of powerful blows to the head without appearing to flinch. Fighter Yi Long, a self-described Shaolin monk, can be seen in the ring with Brad Riddell, from New Zealand. Long, 30, stands motionless as his opponent pummels him in the face. After a few seconds of being punched, Long fights back and kicks Riddell in a counter-attack motion. Riddell later won the contest by a unanimous decision. Viewers were very impressed by the fighter's resilience in the clip, which first surfaced in 2012. An incredible clip has resurfaced showing the moment a mixed martial arts fighter sustained a flurry of powerful blows to the head without appearing to flinch Luiz Carlos said: 'This guy is amazing!' Paul Ryder added: 'Not many people in the world could take shots like that!' A spokesman for the Shaolin Temple, a Buddhist monastery in China, denied any connection to the fighter. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made a joke about FBI Director James Comey's sudden firing as he once again sparred on camera with NBC's longtime correspondent Andrea Mitchell. Lavrov made the unexpected comment during a visit to the State Department, just hours after President Trump's firing of the FBI boss once again brought swirling investigations of alleged Russian election interference to the forefront. Lavrov appeared with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for a brief photo-op that included a prolonged handshake between the two men. 'Does the Comey firing cast a shadow over your talks, gentlemen?' Mitchell shouted out. Lavrov responded: 'Was he fired? You are kidding! You are kidding!' Scroll down for video Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (R) watches as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reacts to a reporter's question by joking about FBI Director James Comey's firing With that, Lavrov shrugged his shoulders, turned away from gathered reporters, and walked out the door of the ornate Treaty Room where the event was held as reporters continued to yell questions about the Russia investigation. Lavrov didn't offer any other words. Tillerson's own remarks were brief, and overlapped with the long handshake with the skilled and longtime emissary for Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'I want to welcome foreign minister Lavrov to the State Department,' Tillerson said, 'and express my appreciation for him making the trip to Washington so that we could continue our dialogue and our exchange of views that began in Moscow with the dialogue he hosted on a very broad range of topics. Thank you.' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (L) and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson exchanged a hearty handshake before Tillerson made brief remarks After reporters including NBC's Andrea Mitchell shouted questions, Lavrov stopped to engage, joking about FBI Director James Comey: 'Was he fired?' Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) speaks while posing for photos with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in the Treaty Room of the State Department The two diplomats then walked out of the room while reporters continued to shout questions It wasn't Lavrov's first exchange with Mitchell, 70. Lavrov scolded her for her 'manners' after she shouted a question during his meeting with Tillerson in Moscow in April. Video of the incident begins by showing Tillerson, Lavrov and other officials sitting down at a table at the start of the press conference. Before anyone could be seated at the table, Mitchell started shouting: 'Mr. Secretary, the Russians don't believe the intelligence. How confident are you, Mr. Secretary?' But before the 70-year-old journalist could finish her sentence, Lavrov quickly interjected: 'Who was bringing you up?' 'Who was giving you your manners, you know?' he asked Mitchell while grinning. Mithcell got scolded by Lavrov in Moscow in April. That wasn't her first incident with Tillerson (above left on Wednesday next to Lavrov), as a little over a month ago the veteran journalist was kicked out of a State Department press conference for repeatedly shouting questions at Tillerson Mitchell however claims that she was not the one being targeted, stating: 'My colleague Carol Morello was the brave journalist who started asking questions. 'Lavrov was looking right at her. I was on the opposite side of the room, behind him, out of sight. Perhaps I was a convenient foil, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't his target.' The exchange came as tensions between Russia and the U.S. were high following the missile strike President Trump ordered on Syria. President Trump was set to meet with Lavrov in the Oval Office Wednesday morning. The U.S. and Russia have a series of friction points, including Moscow's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and what the U.S. intelligence community says was interference in the U.S. presidential election. A Norwegian national who climbed onto a Sydney Airport baggage conveyor belt and slapped a Tigerair employee after his flight was cancelled has been convicted of the assault. Isam Abduljabbar Mankhi Al-Kuhaili, now 55, shouted in Arabic before slapping the 26-year-old woman across the face after she told him his flight from Sydney to Melbourne had been cancelled on April 21. Al-Kuhaili appeared before Waverley Local Court on Wednesday where magistrate Lisa Stapleton convicted him but did not impose any further penalty. Isam Abduljabbar Mankhi Al-Kuhaili has been convicted of assaulting a Tigerair employee Al-Kuhaili, 55, climbed a Sydney Airport baggage conveyor belt to reach the employee The court heard Al-Kuhaili was supposed to meet his sister in Australia but she was diagnosed with cancer and died in a Sydney hospital before he arrived. The defence said Al-Kuhaili, who required an interpreter in court, was depressed after the death of his sister and had a history of paranoia and depression. He also told police he believed the reason he was not moved to another flight on the day of the assault was because of his religious beliefs. The woman he slapped, who was Muslim, was "visibly shaken" and upset after the incident, according to Australian Federal Police documents presented to the court. "It is fortunate (the victim) did not suffer any long-term injury," Ms Stapleton said on Wednesday. Al-Kuhaili was enraged after being told his flight to Melbourne had been cancelled Al-Kuhaili was arrested at the airport before being taken to Mascot Police Station where he was formally charged. After being released on bail later that evening, Al-Kuhaili went back to the Tigerair departure terminal and tried to book another flight, but the airline refused. Tigerair then contacted police. Tigerair on Wednesday said the airline had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to inappropriate behaviour of any kind. "The safety and security of staff and passengers underpins the operation at all times and will not be compromised," the company said in a statement. A picture has emerged on social media which claims to show a new military drone China is building. The unnamed aircraft, said to be a torpedo bomber, is able to skim the surface of the sea and carry out 'lethal attacks' on warships, said a post on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter. In addition, the alleged drone would be able to avoid radar detection as it could fly at an extremely low altitude above the waters, according to Chinese news website Sina. Scroll down for video Mysterious and powerful: Source suggested this is a new military drone being built by China. It's said to be a member of the CH drone series and can fly at a low altitude above the sea The picture, thought to be of China's new military drone, was first posted by a Chinese internet user on Weibo on May 3. STATS OF CHINA'S ALLEGED NEW DRONE Maximum take-off weight: 3 tonnes Maximum load: 1 tonne Cruising duration: 1.5 hours Cruising altitude: 1-6 metres (3.2-19.7ft) Advertisement The picture appeared to be a part of a brochure. The brochure claimed that the featured drone could attack large waterborne targets and carry out quick, long-distance strikes with air-dropped torpedoes. The post was quickly picked up by news outlet Sina, which published a report on the aircraft on the same day. According to the report, the alleged drone could carry up to one tonne of aerial torpedoes, and could strike and defend at altitudes as low as one metre (3.2 feet) above the sea. The military channel of Chinese news website Sina said the aircraft is an anti-ship drone that could carry out 'lethal strikes' on warships with aerial torpedoes It is also said to be the latest member of China's military drone series, known as Rainbow or CH. The CH series is developed by China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics. The state-owned academy has reportedly developed nine models of military drones since year 2000. Last year, the academy unveiled CH-5, which is said to be China's most powerful drone bomber yet. Aaron Hernandez's grief-stricken fiancee has spoken out for the first time since his suicide last month. Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez sat down for an interview with Dr. Phil which will air in two parts next Monday and Tuesday. In the interview, Shayanna said that she had no idea her childhood sweetheart had plans to hang himself in his jail cell, despite his suicide letter which said that he told her 'what was coming indirectly'. 'I felt like we were looking so bright. We were going up a ladder to a positive direction,' Shayanna said of their last conversation. Aaron Hernandez's fiancee (right) recently sat down for an interview with Dr. Phil (left) - her first interview since the former New England Patriots star's suicide last month Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez said that her last conversation with Hernandez was optimistic, despite his suicide letter (above) which said that he had 'told [her] what was coming indirectly' 'I felt like we were looking so bright. We were going up a ladder to a positive direction,' Shayanna said of her last conversation with Hernandez (above on March 15) Shayanna says Hernandez appeared so optimistic that she didn't believe it when someone called her to say he killed himself last month. 'I thought it was a hoax, that this was some cruel person playing a joke on me,' she said. Hernandez's hung himself in his jail cell the morning of April 19, just five days after he was acquitted in the double murder of Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Teixeira Furtado, 28, in 2012. Shayanna attended the hearing in which Hernandez was proclaimed innocent, and bought along their four-year-old daughter Avielle. Shayanna brought her daughter to court last month to see Hernandez acquitted in a 2012 double murder. In a now troubling image, Hernandez blew a kiss to his fiance and their daughter. Five days later he hung himself in his jail cell In the interview, Dr. Phil asks Shayanna if she believes Hernandez (above in 2012) killed himself so she could sue the Patriots for the rest of his contract In a now troubling image, Hernandez teared up as he blew a kiss to the mother and daughter. In a press release about the upcoming episode, it was revealed that Dr. Phil asked Shayanna about the theory that Hernandez killed himself so that she could collect the rest of his Patriots contract. In his suicide letter to Shayanna, he promised that she would be 'rich' when he died, despite the fact that he had no money left in his estate. Last month, DailyMail.com revealed the identity of Hernandez's gay prison lover, Kyle Kennedy (above). The Dr. Phil interview will tackle Hernandez's 'purported secret romantic life' In Massachusetts, guilty convictions have to be thrown out if the suspect dies in the appeals process. That opens up the possibility for Hernandez's estate to sue the Patriots for the rest of his contract, who owed him about $6.5million on his contract when they severed it in 2013 when he was arrested for Lloyd's murder. A judge finalized the decision to throw out the guilty conviction in court on Tuesday - making an innocent man. However, legal experts say that it's highly unlikely that a lawsuit to reclaim the rest of his salary would be successful since he settled with the team in 2014 and likely signed documents preventing future payouts, no matter the change in his criminal status. The team could also argue that Hernandez was in violation of his contract for even being suspected in the murder. The interview will also tackle Hernandez's 'purported secret romantic life,' according to the press release. DailyMail.com exclusively revealed last month that Hernandez had written three suicide notes, one to Shayanna, one to their daughter and one to his gay prison lover, who we identified as Kyle Kennedy. In fact, it has since been theorized that the real motivation for Lloyd's murder was that Lloyd knew about Hernandez's homosexual tendencies and threatened to tell Shayanna, who was his girlfriend's sister. Hernandez and Shayanna had known each other since childhood and began dating in 2007. They got engaged in 2012, when Shayanna became pregnant with their daughter. Inmates at a Colorado prison have been given free computer tablets to make phone calls, listen to music and even play games on, but the move has sparked outrage among victims advocate groups. Officials at the Four Mile Correctional Center in Canon City say the pioneering initiative, launched in February, was aimed at lowering aggression and reducing tensions between prison gangs. Eventually, the tablets - which are not connected to the internet and are monitored at all times by prison staff - will offer educational study materials and tutorials. But victims advocate groups are furious that people who committed serious crimes against others are being allowed 'all the comforts of home.' Colorado Department of Corrections inmate Andrew Stiern takes a look out of his cell window, while laying on his bunk using a GTL Inspire Tablet at the Four Mile Correctional Center There were also concerns that inmates could use the tablets to keep in touch with other gang members at the jail, organize beat downs, or even to smuggle in items. 'I'm not pleased with it,' said Rob Wells, president of Families of Victims of Homicide and Missing Persons whose brother was murdered in 1983. 'Some of them are gang members and have been involved in some pretty nasty stuff. They shouldn't be given something that will give them an opportunity to continue their criminal enterprises in prison. How are they going to monitor this?' Even some prison staff had their reservations at first. Ryan Flores, who has worked in Colorado corrections for 21 years, said he had concerns the technology could leave them vulnerable. 'There was a lot of old school mentality,' he admitted before the tablets were introduced in February. The free computer tablets (pictured) allow inmates to make phone calls, listen to music and even play games on Officials at the Four Mile Correctional Center (pictured) in Canon City say the pioneering initiative is aimed at lowering aggression and reducing tensions between prison gangs Another inmate, who wrote anonymously to Westworld, complained that the tablets were nothing more than high tech 'babysitters' for men and women who should instead be focused on rehabilitation. 'The average prisoner will play games and music 8-10 hours a day, just like any kid in America,' they wrote. 'Only they aren't kids; they are men and women who need rehabilitation and education. 'This buys a lot of safety for prison staff, but what a waste of time for the prisoners. If they provided education, it would be marvelous. Prisoners might just learn something useful and not come back.' Colorado's Department of Corrections spokeswoman Laurie Kilpatrick said that the department does plan to install education programming on the tablets 'but we have not made it to that phase of our implementation.' The tech can also be used to streamline prison services, to let inmates use their tablets to buy a snack from commissary, sign up to an educational program, schedule an appointment with the prison medic, write grievances, and view their bank accounts. Corrections tech firm Global Tel Link Corp, GTL, plan to roll out the Inspire program to all 20 private and public prisons in Colorado, delivering tablets to 18,000 inmates, and eventually, the 1.8 million people jailed across the U.S,' theDenver Post reports. The privilege of having the tablet has already been shown to change inmate behavior, said Turner Nashe, GTL's senior vice president over educational services. The big catch is the cost Stiern said the thought of losing the tablet that brings him so much joy, was a big incentive to follow the rules He added that the tablet allowed him to keep a connection with the outside world, through his family and friends, as well as a respite from the intense stress of prison life While the tablets are given free to inmates - unless they maliciously damage them - a 20 minute phone call can cost inmates between $2 and $3, while every text they send - which is monitored before it is released to its intended recipient - is 25 cents. Access to the music and games costs around $6.50 for a two month subscription. Officials admit they still aren't sure how profitable the venture will be but the costs will help to go towards paying for $2.7 million worth of tech. And there is evidence that the scheme is working. Four Mile associate warden, Doug Diedrich, said there had been a noticeable drop in tensions in the prison, particularly the rows and gang behaviour that arose over control of the wall phone, since the tablets were introduced in February. Now inmates can call their loved ones, without having to wait in line, in the privacy of their cells. One inmate who has welcomed the introduction of free tablets with open arms is Andrew Stiern. The 29-year-old, is serving six years for criminal mischief and parole violations, said even his family had questioned whether prisoners should be granted such privileges. 'My stepmom is like, 'Why should you have these in prison?' 'And I explained to her that, you get bored in here. When you are in prison, you are cut off from the outside world. You want your mind to be focused on positive things. It's kind of an escape from this world. These tabs have become a new piece of life in here.' Four Mile associate warden, Doug Diedrich, (pictured) said there had been a noticeable drop in tensions in the prison since tablets were introduced in February He added that the tablet allowed him to keep a connection with the outside world, through his family and friends, as well as a respite from the intense stress of prison life. 'If I go outside and have an issue with someone in the yard I can come come back here and just unwind, put a game on, listen to music.' Prisoners at Four Mile Correctional Center can call using their tablet, any time between 6am and 10pm, when they're not engaged in another prison program. Four Mile inmates can also train companion dogs, which stay with them in. Stiern said the thought of losing his dog Murphy, an adorable black Lab/shepherd mix, and the tablet that brings him so much joy, were big incentives to follow the rules. While for other inmates, who had been in jail for years, it was a chance to acquaint themselves with the technology revolution that had passed them by in the last couple of decades. 'People have to realize that inmates here are going to get out of prison,' Flores said.'This allows offenders to read literature and enhances their programming opportunities.' President Trump took on Democrats Wednesday morning as the administration suffered the fallout from Tuesday's surprise firing of FBI Director James Comey. In particular, Trump lashed out at Connectictut Democrat Sen. Blumenthal, who's repreatedlly called for a special prosecutor since the news of Comey's dismissal. 'What's needed is an independent, , objective, impartial prosecutor because only a prosecutor can bring criminal charges and hold accountable the people who may have committed treason or fraud or lied to the FBI,' Blumenthal said Wednesday morning on Morning Joe. Despite Trump claiming otherwise in the letter he sent to Comey to fire the man, Blumenthal pointed out that 'one of the very revealing parts of Jim Comey's testimony at the judiciary committee was he refused to rule out the president as a potential target in response to my question.' In retaliation, Trump brought up a scandal that almost derailed Blumenthal's assent to the Senate seven years ago. 'Watching Senator Richard Blumenthal speak of Comey is a joke. "Richie" devised one of the greatest military frauds in U.S. history,' the president charged. Scroll down for video Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, is photographed doing the morning show rounds. He's calling for a special prosecutor to take over the Russia investigation in wake of James Comey's firing President Trump took on Blumenthal in a trio of tweets, bringing up a scandal over the Democrat's military record that almost tripped up his election to the senate in 2010 Back in 2010, when Blumenthal, then Connecticut's attorney general, was vying to replace retiring Sen. Chris Dodd, the New York Times unearthed a military record that differed from what the rising politician said publicly. Blumenthal had requested deferments at least five times, which allowed him to finish his studies at Harvard, complete a graduate fellowship in England, work as a special assistant to Katharine Graham, the pubisher of the Washington Post, and finally, serve in the Nixon administration. When Blumenthal finally did serve it was Marine Reserve, which, as the Times put it, 'virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam.' In remarks, Blumenthal would often allude to having served in Vietnam, while in other statements he spoke blatant untruths. Trump, of course, put his own spin on the scandal. 'For years, as a pol in Connecticut, Blumenthal would talk of his great bravery and conquests in Vietnma - except he was never there,' the president said. 'When caught he cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness and now he is judge & jury,' Trump continued. 'He should be the one who is investigated for his acts,' Trump said. Recommendation: Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the president it was time for Comey to go after his evidence that Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner, some of them classified, was wrong Comey landed overnight in DC after finding out he was fired while in California The president took on the broader opposition party as well. 'The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!' Trump tweeted in his first shot of the morning. The president also tried to shift the subject to a more typical Washington parlor game of who would succeed Comey, who learned of his firing while addressing FBI recruits in Los Angeles. 'James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI,' Trump said. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats and serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, renewed his call for an independent probe of alleged Russia ties. President Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that fired FBI Director James Comey has lost confidence of 'almost everyone' President Trump kept after fired FBI Director James Comey in a series of tweets Wednesday morning President Trump kept after fired FBI Director James Comey in a series of tweets Wednesday morning The person to help lead it, he concluded, is Comey. 'I had a fun idea in the middle of the night,' King said on CNN. 'The Intelligence Committee ought to hire James Comey to direct our investigation. He's already got his clearances, knows the subject, man of integrity. I'm going to float that today and see what kind of reaction I get,' King said. King added: 'He's a free man as of today, he doesn't have a job.' King also suggested Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation wasn't the 'real motivation' for his firing. 'They supposedly fired James Comey for stuff that he did last summer or last fall, and suddenly now they say well 'he's got to go,'' said King. 'The timing just doesn't pass the straight face test in terms of what's the real motivation for this,' Trump also defended his sensational firing of FBI Director James Comey by mocking Senate minority leader 'cryin' Chuck Schumer. Trump sent shockwaves through Washington when he dismissed Comey in a letter yesterday that read: 'You are hereby terminated and removed from office immediately.' Comey, who was appointed in 2013, was dismissed after he provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about classified emails from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner's computer. It took little over an hour for Democrats, led by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, to claim the firing was a cover-up attempt over Trump's alleged links to Russia. Schumer said: 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' He then called on Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor to look into ties to Russia, saying: 'America depends on you to restore faith in our criminal justice system which is going to be badly shattered after the administration's actions today.' In a tweet Trump wrote: 'Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, 'I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer.' Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp.' Senator Angus King (I-Vt.) has floated the idea that axed FBI boss James Comey head the intelligence panel's Russia probe Scroll down for video It's over: How the White House delivered the news just after 5.30pm on Tuesday This defense came hours after Schumer claimed that he told the President that firing Comey was 'a very bad idea'. However, as the President pointed out, Schumer has previously been outspoken in his criticism of Comey. In November Schumer told Bloomberg: 'I do not have confidence in him any longer.' He said then that he was incensed by Comey's decision to write to lawmakers with details about the investigation into Clinton's private email server, less than two weeks before the election. That being said, in Schumer's press briefing, he didn't offer up any specific support for the former FBI director, he simply pointed out the convenient timing of the firing. President Donald Trump has defended his sensational firing of FBI Director James Comey by mocking Senate minority leader 'cryin' Chuck Schumer 'Mistake': The White House put out a dossier which consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer - but Schumer said the president needed to now appoint a special prosecutor to look into the claims of collusion with the Russians Comey, 56, was blindsided by being let go. He learned about it on live television screens he could see as he addressed agents in the Los Angeles field office, the New York Times reported. Incredibly, he told the agents he thought it was a fairly funny prank until other members of his staff took him off stage and told him it was true, the paper said. His motorcade was seen on a Los Angeles freeway after the firing as it made its way through slow-moving traffic to a chartered Gulfstream V, which Comey boarded at Hawthorne Municipal Airport just over three hours after his termination. The president used the firing letter to boast that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation - a reference to allegations being touted by his opponents that he somehow colluded with the Kremlin in its bid to bring down Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who blamed Comey for costing her the election, said 'no comment' through an aide. The White House's deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claimed Clinton would have fired Comey as well. She claimed Comey had 'lost the confidence of the rank and file within the FBI', as well as both sides of the political aisle. But the Republican senator chairing the Intelligence Committee investigation into whether Russia hacked the election, Richard Burr, added to the questions over the sacking as he said: 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. Farewell: Comey was seen just over three hours after his firing as he shook hands with law enforcement officers in Los Angeles before boarding a private jet Last gesture: Comey clapped the back of a uniformed officer as he prepared to board the jet which will fly him away from Los Angeles, where he was as the president fired him Up in the air: Comey leaves public life effectively in disgrace after being fired by the president, boarding a chartered Gulfstream V at Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Los Angeles On his way: In a bizarre spectacle, the ousted FBI director's motorcade was filmed on its way from the Los Angeles field office of the agency - caught in the city's notorious slow traffic The FBI chief told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Abedin had made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of Clinton-related emails to Weiner, 'some of which contain classified information'. But he was wrong - and is now being fired. Weiner is still being investigated by the FBI for sexting a 15-year-old girl The firing happened in the late afternoon. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters shortly after 5.30pm that 'the president has accepted the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' A written statement from Spicer, sent minutes later, confirmed that Trump 'acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.' Trump said: 'The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement.' Full court press: Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway went on CNN three hours after the firing to defend the move and said: 'It's not a cover-up.' How the news broke: Reporters at the White House were given copies of the press release and letter from the president just after 5.30pm, announcing Comey's sacking Going into battle: Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were all speaking outside the West Wing on Tuesday night to members of the media WHAT NOW? THE CANDIDATES TIPPED TO SUCCEED COMEY With James Comey ousted as FBI director, President Donald Trump has to select a replacement for a new 10-year term, and he is likely to reach outside the bureau to find someone to run the law enforcement agency. Here are some possible candidates: Rudy Giuliani Rudi Giuliani has been linked with the vacant position, but his appointment is likely to be opposed by the Senate The former New York mayor would be an attractive choice for Trump, as Giuliani was among his most vocal supporters during the presidential race and has a background in law enforcement. However this loyalty would make his appointment unlikely, CNN reports, as he would be extremely unlikely to get the backing of the Senate. He has been outspoken in his opposition to Hillary Clinton. Ray Kelly Ray Kelly, the longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, could be a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions The longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, Kelly was in charge of the force in the years following 9/11, when terror threats were routine. His tough-on-crime stance, including support for provocative tactics like stop-and-search, could make him a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr Kelly defended a police operation, exposed by The Associated Press, that conducted secret surveillance of Muslims. He could work with Trump and Sessions on anti-terrorism efforts. Chris Christie New Jersey governor Chris Christie has a mixed relationship with Trump, but could bring law enforcement experience to the job Though his relationship with Trump has been mixed, the governor of New Jersey has known the president for years and could bring law enforcement experience to the job. He is a former Republican-appointed United States attorney in New Jersey, and he cited that background time and again during his 2016 presidential campaign. David Clarke David Clarke has been a fierce Trump supporter and has described himself as 'one of those bare-knuckle fighters' A wild-card, but the outspoken and polarising Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff has been a fierce supporter of Mr Trump and even landed a speaking spot at last summer's Republican National Convention. A conservative firebrand known for his cowboy hat, Mr Clarke has called himself 'one of those bare-knuckles fighters' and has been critical of what he called the 'hateful ideology' of the Black Lives Matters movement. But he would be a long shot given that a county jury recently recommended criminal charges against seven Milwaukee County jail staffers over the dehydration death of an inmate who went without water for seven days. Trey Gowdy Trey Gowdy criticized Comey for not prosecuting Hillary Clinton over the email server investigation The South Carolina Republican led the House committee investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's actions surrounding the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Mr Gowdy is also a former federal prosecutor who boasts of his work on drug trafficking, bank robberies and child pornography cases. He was among politicians critical of Mr Comey's decision not to prosecute Mrs Clinton over the email server investigation, saying other government officials would have been prosecuted if they handled classified information like she did. Andrew McCabe Andrew McCabe was yesterday named Acting FBI Director by President Trump following Comey's dismissal Appointed yesterday as Acting FBI director, McCabe has worked at the bureau for 21 years, having joined as a special agent in 1996. He has expertise in counterterrorism and interrogation, but he is currently under review for his involvement in the Clinton scandal after his wife received funds from a close friend of Hillary for her political campaign in 2015. Before McCabe was appointed as the Deputy Director of the FBI, his wife Jill McCabe ran as a Democrat for the Virginia stat senate in 2015. Her campaign received funds from the state Democratic Party and a political action committee run by Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons. He has, however, been part of the same investigation which Comey was fired for, and this is likely to work against him when Trump names his pick. Advertisement Spicer added that 'a search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately.' The president informed Comey of his sacking in writing, taking the opportunity to underscore that the decision had nothing to do with any ongoing probes involving him personally. 'While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,' the letter read in part. The FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe, will act as leader until there is a permanent appointment confirmed by the Senate. COMEY: NEW VICTIM OF CLINTON'S TOXIC EMAIL SCANDAL March 2015: It becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was 'extremely careless' in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopens its probe into the email controversy. September 2016: DailyMail.com reveals Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner has sexted a 15-year-old girl. The FBI investigates Weiner, already known as a sexting-addicted pervert, for sexual contact with a minor October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on a laptop used by Weiner including some from Abedin's Clintonemail.com address November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion that Clinton is in the clear is unchanged - but day slater she loses the election. Democrats blame Comey. April 2017: Clinton surfaces to explicitly blame Comey, Russia and misogyny for her loss. May 2017: Comey 'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, saying Abedin sent hundreds or thousands of emails to her husband. In fact she only sent the pervert a handful. 9 May: Comey is dramatically fired with immediate effect by the president. Advertisement The sacking is the latest twist in the astonishing chain of events set off by Clinton deciding to use a private server while she was Secretary of State. Last week Comey was questioned under oath about why he had written a letter to members of Congress at the end of October revealing a renewed investigation into Clinton's handling of classified emails. In his sworn testimony, Comey told senators that Abedin, a former top Hillary Clinton aide and Weiner's estranged wife, made 'a regular practice' of forwarding 'hundreds and thousands' of emails to her husband, 'some of which contain classified information.' But the Justice Department sent the Judiciary Committee a letter late on Tuesday acknowledging that Comey's statement was inaccurate. Spicer had punted earlier in the day when he was asked whether Comey's job was secure. 'I haven't asked him,' he said then. 'I have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about this.' The FBI is also probing Comey's controversial decision to notify lawmakers just before the election that his team was re-examining its investigation into Clinton's emails by looking into messages found on Weiner's laptop. The letter is viewed by many as costing Clinton the election, since she lost to Trump by less than a single percentage point in key swing states after polling indicated she was well in front of her opponent before the the late move. Rosenstein told the president in writing on Tuesday: 'I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails.' And Sessions wrote Trump in a letter: 'I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI.' White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pushed back on questions about Trump's praise for Comey's actions with respect to the Clinton investigation during the campaign as she began a White House spin assault three hours after the sacking. 'I think you're looking at the wrong set of facts here,' she told Anderson Cooper on CNN. 'In other words, you're going back to the campaign. This man is the president of the United States. He acted decisively today. He took the recommendation of his deputy attorney general,' Conway said. 'He has lost confidence in the FBI director and he took the recommendation of Rod Rosenstein,' she said, reading from Rosenstein's letter. Asked about Senate Intelligence chair Burr's statement that he was troubled by the firing, Conway pushed back. 'So the same senators that just voted to confirm this man whose integrity in doubt 94 to 6 two short weeks ago. We're supposed to believe the derogatory descriptions you just made of him?' she asked. Countering Schumer's claim of a cover-up, she said: 'He's wrong. It's not a cover-up.' 'In fact the president makes very clear in his letter the fact that Mr Comey on at least three occasions assured the president that he is not under investigation,' Conway continued, upping the ante on Trump's claim of three separate assurances. Asked when Trump got the assurances, Conway said: 'That's between the president of the United States and Director Comey. Spicer said just last Wednesday that the president had confidence in Comey, whom former president Barack Obama appointed to a ten-year term. Taunt: John Podesta, who could have been a senior government figure if Clinton had won after being campaign chair, rushed to twist the knife on deposed James Comey The end: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein delivered the fatal blow to Comey. He was away from the Washington D.C. headquarters of the FBI, visiting its field office in Los Angeles and had been due to speak at a recruitment event at the Directors Guild of America building. Fired: James Comey is being fired with immediate effect after he misled the Senate on how classified emails ended up on pervert Anthony Weiner's computer. This was the Wednesday May 3 testimony which cost him his career But Trump had launched into a Twitter tirade against the FBI chief in the immediate wake of his testimony last week - and there were claims that the sacking had been under consideration for days, before the Abedin testimony. 'FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!' Trump had tweeted. Spicer told reporters then: 'The president has confidence in the director.' Testifying about the Clinton email controversy, Comey told Senators his agents uncovered 'hundreds of thousands' of emails on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Weiner that Abedin has forwarded her now-estranged husband so he could print them out for her. WHAT THEY'RE SAYING The sacking of the FBI Director sent shockwaves through politics. 'Today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement' - President Donald Trump No comment - Hillary Clinton's aide 'Why did it happen today? We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' - Senator Chuck Schumer, Democratic Minority Leader 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee.' - Senator Richard Burr, Republican chair of Intelligence Committee 'This didn't work out well for Nixon. And it won't for @realDonaldTrump--or the country' - David Axelrod, ex-Obama aide 'I have deep respect for James Comey. This is a loss to the FBI and the nation.' - James Clapper, former director of national intelligence 'While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office' - John McCain, Republican senator Advertisement But he - fatally - misspoke. Gregory A. Brower, the FBI's assistant director in the Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote to the Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon to 'clarify' Comey's testimony about Abedin's role in allowing classified material to find its way to her husband's computer. Minutes after his letter emerged, his boss was fired. Most of the 'hundreds and thousands' of emails, Brower wrote, were there as a result of backups of other devices and not manually sent by Abedin. Only 'two e-mail chains containing classified information were manually forwarded to Mr. Weiner's account,' he wrote. Ten additional email chains contained classified material all part of device backups and 'all twelve' had already been reviewed by the FBI. That was the fatal blow which ended Comey's service just three years into a ten-year term he was given by President Obama. He is only the second FBI director to be fired - the first was Williams Sessions, terminated by Bill Clinton over alleged improper use of an FBI plane and other questions over his spending. Trump's historic move spread a firestorm through politics and immediately showed up fault lines in his own party. The most worrying reaction for the White House to the firing will be that of Burr, the Republican North Carolina senator who chairs the Intelligence Committee. In a strongly-worded statement he said: 'I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. 'I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee. 'In my interactions with the Director and with the Bureau under his leadership, he and the FBI have always been straightforward with our Committee. 'Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees. His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation.' The possibility of a Republican backlash does not appear to have been foreseen by the White House, which consciously reached out to Democrats before the firing. The president personally called a series of Democratic senators to tell them Comey was gone - apparently before Comey himself knew. The first to announce she had been told by Trump was Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. 'President Trump called me at 5:30 p.m. and indicated he would be removing Director Comey, saying the FBI needed a change,' Feinstein said in a statement. 'The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee.' The Trump administration distributed a one-page summary to reporters that it called 'additional background information and context' about the surprising personnel change. It consisted of anti-Comey statements from Democrats including Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader and the party's most senior election figure, who said last Wednesday of the FBI Director: 'I do not have confidence in him any longer.' The supplemental information also cited an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that '[t]he best service Mr. Comey can render his country now is to resign.' But Schumer emerged less than two hours after the firing to issue a broadside over it - and to reveal he too had been phoned by the President to be told the news. He said the firing would lead to the belief Trump was engaging in a cover-up of alleged collusion with Russia in the run-up to the election. Schumer said Trump had called him in the afternoon. 'I said, 'Mr President with all due respect you are making a very big mistake'. And he didn't really answer,' he said. He added that unless there was a special prosecutor appointed: 'Are people going to suspect cover-up? Absolutely.' HERO TO ZERO: FIRED FBI BOSS ENDED UP HATED BY EVERYONE Attorney General James Comey sealed a reputation as a brave and principled actor after a 2004 standoff during the Bush administration, when he refused White House efforts to get him to reauthorize warrantless eavesdropping while Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Comey had been appointed deputy attorney general by President George W. Bush, having served as a U.S. attorney in New York under Rudy Giuliani in New York. With Ashcroft incapacitated, Bush administration officials wanted Ashcroft, and then Comey, to sign off on an extension of the authority, with just hours to go before an N.S.A. program expired. Comey refused. His stand was a major reason why President Obama nominated him to be head of the FBI in 2013. Obama hailed Comey as a person of 'fierce independence and deep integrity' as he nominated him for the FBI post, which carries a 10-year term. A devout Catholic, a registered Republican and a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he seemed to radiate independence from the Democratic machine. And many congressional Democrats became far less supportive of Comey after the 2016 presidential election. Obama's man: Republican James Comey was chosen by the Democratic president for his principled stand but ended up in the words of one senator as 'as popular as cholera' Led by defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, many have griped about Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal. On July 5th, 2016, Comey personally announced the FBI's decision not to charge Clinton in connection with its investigation of her private email server and handling of classified material. He nevertheless called her conduct 'extremely careless.' Then on October 28, he told lawmakers the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails in connection to the investigation. The FBI had uncovered thousands of emails on disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop that had been sent to his wife, longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey drew the Democrats' ire once again when he announced two days before the election that the investigation hadn't turned up anything to alter the decision not to prosecute. Clinton said it only made matters worse and stole headlines. In the congressional hearing where he made inaccurate statements about about Abedin's emails, Democrats grilled Comey about why he had not revealed the existence of an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian election interference. Comey said the FBI 'didn't say a word about' the Russia investigation until months into, whereas he had testified under oath about the existence of the Clinton investigation. Advertisement In a sign of the Democrats' belief that they can make the Comey firing a damaging issue for Trump and the Republicans, he said: 'The American people need to have faith that an investigation as serious as this one is being conducted impartially without a shred of bias. 'The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor.' He also contradicted the White House over his backing for the move, which was implied in their dossier. 'I never called on the president to fire Director Comey,' he said. 'If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the president got into office. 'But they didn't fire him then. Why did it happen today? We know the House is investigating Russian interference in our elections that benefited the Trump campaign. 'We know the Senate is investigating. We know the FBI had been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?' He also opened another line of attack, this time over the role of sessions, saying: 'It is troubling that Attorney General Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russian investigation, played a role in firing the man leading it.' Clinton, however, refused to get involved. A spokesman told CNN the 2016 loser 'has no comment at this time'. However John Podesta, who served as Clinton's campaign chairman in 2016, snarked on Twitter that Trump was in fact under an FBI microscope. Meet the new boss - Clinton-tainted like the old one: Andrew McCabe who will head the FBI until a permanent replacement is found had oversight of the Clinton email probe. His wife received cash for her Democratic political campaign from a close friend of the Clintons who directed it from a fundraising effort which Hillary Clinton had aided by turning up for an event Critical questions: The White House will be troubled by the reaction of Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who said it complicated his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Loser Hillary Clinton has still to react to Comey's sacking. 'Didn't you know you're supposed to wait til Saturday night to massacre people investigating you?' he asked in a tweet - a reference to President Nixon's notorious mass firings during Watergate. Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Judiciary Committee member, said in a statement that 'while the White House is under investigation by the FBI, firing the head of the FBI raises massive questions, and the Senate should get to the bottom of it.' Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen tweeted that '[f]iring Comey has the foul stench of an attempt to stop an ongoing investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.' Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkeley insisted that the vacancy at the top of the FBI was a clear signal that Republicans should appoint an independent investigator to probe alleged ties between Trumpworld and Russia. 'In case the need for an independent special prosecutor to investigate #TrumpRussia ties wasn't clear enough already ... it sure is now,' Merkeley tweeted. Former senior Barack Obama aide David Axelrod used his Twitter account to compare Trump's decision on Tuesday with former president Richard Nixon's 1973 'Saturday Night Massacre' when Nixon fired an independent special prosecutor along with the attorney general and his deputy. NEW CHIEF G-MAN WAS ALSO CAUGHT UP IN CLINTON SCANDAL James Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, will take over the law enforcement agency. McCabe's wife is a Democrat who ran for the state senate in 2015 in Virginia, before he was promoted to the FBI's No. 2 position. Terry McAullife, the Virginia governor and a close friend of both the Clintons, directed $675,000 Jill McCabe's way for her campaign. The Virginia governor's political action committee, Common Good VA, spent $467,000 on her losing campaign. The state Democratic Party gave her nearly $208,000. A month before McAullife's PAC made its first donation to McCabe, Hillary Clinton headlined a fundraiser for the group. As deputy director of the FBI, it was McCabe who oversaw the investigation into Clinton's secret server, as well as the bureau's investigations into alleged terrorists and spies. He is under review by an inspector general for his involvement in the Clinton case, in light of his wife's ties to the former presidential candidate. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, also asked the FBI in a March letter about McCabe's role in the Russian probe and whether it 'raises the appearance a conflict of interest in light of his wife's ties with Clinton's associates.' The Republican lawmaker asked Comey if McCabe would be recusing himself from that investigation, suggesting in the letter that McCabe faces a possible conflict of interest. Advertisement 'This didn't work out well for Nixon. And it won't for @realDonaldTrump--or the country,' Axelrod wrote. And an ex-Clinton aide suggested it was part of a vast Russian conspiracy. 'This is not on the up and up,' said Brian Fallon, the 2016 loser's ex-press secretary. 'All these months later it still stands out that Director Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation was a travesty. 'But the timing and the nature of this firing that the Trump administration is announcing now belies any possible explanation that this has anything to do with the Clinton investigation. It is clearly and act by a president who is feeling the heat from the FBI's ongoing Russia investigation.' Robbie Mook, who had been Clinton's campaign manager, did not applaud the move that ousted the man she now says was - at least in part - her nemesis. 'Twilight zone. I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me,' Mook said on Twitter. Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, another Democrat, piled on the Tricky Dick comparisons. 'The President has removed the sitting FBI Director in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country one that implicates senior officials in the Trump campaign and administration,' Leahy said. 'This is nothing less than Nixonian.' Critics of President Trump's firing were quick to invoke Richard Nixon's infamous 'Saturday Night Massacre,' where the embattled president fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of the two top Justice Department officials. The sensational Oct. 20th, 1973 incident occurred as Cox was probing the Watergate scandal and cover-up and clashing with the White House over previously secret tape recordings. First, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned his post. Then Nixon ordered deputy attorney general William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused. Solicitor General Robert Bork then became attorney general, and went along with Nixon's demand. FBI agents immediately sealed off the offices of Cox, Richardson, and Ruckelshaus after the firings. How the Republicans deal with the sensational move remains to be seen. The Senate must approve anyone the president selects to replace Comey. To be confirmed, nominees need only a bare majority of lawmakers to vote for them following a rule change that took place when Democrats were in power. Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate and can use the vice president as a tie-breaker if they need to, meaning that Trump's nominee is all but assured to be approved. Trump called Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is leading a Senate subcommittee probe of Russian interference, 'literally minutes' before he sacked Comey, his spokesman told the Post and Courier. Been here before? Democrats rushed to compare firing Comey to Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre - but the only previous firing of an FBI director was of William Sessions (right) in 1993 - by Bill Clinton. Sessions was let go for using an FBI plane for private visits Graham released a statement backing up the decision. 'I know this was a difficult decision for all concerned. I appreciate Director Comey's service to our nation in a variety of roles,' said Graham, who clashed with Trump during the campaign and probed his alleged Russia ties this week. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON'S 'SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE' Following the President's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was the head of the investigation into collusion between Trump's administration and Russia, some were quick to ask whether or not this would be his 'Saturday Night Massacre'. In 1973, President Richard Nixon also fired the official responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing in his administration. On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was head of the investigation into the Watergate Scandal. His firing lead to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. That Saturday night, news broadcast networks turned their airtime over to the 'firestorm' and 'constitutional crisis.' The pushback against these firings was so significant that Nixon was forced to name a new special prosecutor, Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski. The story then played out over the next 10 months, ending when a unanimous Supreme Court forced Nixon to hand over the tapes. Their contents proved the cover-up that led to Nixon's eventual resignation. Advertisement 'Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests,' Graham said. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee's Republican chairman, said in his own statement that '[t]he handling of the Clinton email investigation is a clear example of how Comey's decisions have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI.' 'In my efforts to get answers, the FBI, under Comey's leadership, has been slow or failed to provide information that Comey himself pledged to provide,' he added. 'The effectiveness of the FBI depends upon the public trust and confidence. Unfortunately, this has clearly been lost.' There were also the first signs of a split among Republicans over the firing as John McCain, the senator who has long been a Trump critic, declined to back the move and said there needed to be a special committee to investigate the Russia questions. 'While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office,' he said, 'James Comey is a man of honor and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances. 'I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.' His tribute was one of the few made in Washington to Comey - who had been described last week as 'as about as popular as cholera' by one senator- although the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, did come to his aid. Clapper, who has testified frequently alongside Comey and appeared on Capitol Hill Monday, backed up his counterpart, telling CNN: 'I have deep respect for James Comey. This is a loss to the FBI and the nation.' THE LETTERS WHICH ENDED COMEY'S FBI CAREER The murder trial of a Texas man accused of stabbing to death his girlfriend began Tuesday with the presentation of an audio recording of the defendants police interview, in which he outlined how he and the victim had planned to commit suicide together. Kenneth Amyx, 46, told detectives after his arrest last May that he and Jennifer Streit-Spears, 43, had agreed to stab each other to death and go to heaven. 'I cut you, you cut me, I cut you, you cut me,' Amyx was heard telling cops on the audio recording that was played in court on Day 1 of his trial. Murder trial begins: Kenneth Amyx, 46 (left), is on trial for allegedly knifing to death his girlfriend, Jennifer Streit-Spears, 43 (right), in what he has described as a suicide pact But Streit-Spears became too weak from blood loss after Amyx sliced her neck and could not go through with her end of the agreement, he told the investigators. Evidence presented by prosecutors on Tuesday indicated that the victim was so intoxicated on the day of the killing that her reactions were slower than normal, reported the Dallas Morning News. 'Kenneth Amyx was in charge of the situation,' Prosecutor Douglas Millican told the court. Amyx's attorney plans to mount an insanity defense on behalf of his client, who has been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder but was ruled competent to stand trial. Sliced: The woman suffered more than a dozen cuts, including two gaping wounds to her neck and right wrist, and the high levels of alcohol in her system opened up her blood vessels, which made her bleed out faster during the stabbing After the killing, Amyx took grisly photos of himself and his girlfriend and posted them on her Facebook page. He also texted one of the blood-soaked images to the victims mother. When police were called to the woman's apartment, alerted to her condition because of the social media postings, officers found the couple lying naked and bleeding on the floor. Amyx was on top of Streit-Spears, and was holding a knife in his right hand. Another knife was under him, according to an affidavit. As Amyx was being transported to a hospital, he reportedly lamented: 'Oh I killed her, oh I lost her. Ill never get her back,' begging a paramedic to 'Just kill me.' During his interrogation, the audio recording of which was played in court on Tuesday, Amyx said he and Streit-Spears had initially decided to run away together because the man was wanted on outstanding arrest warrants for continuous sexual assault of a child under 14 and indecency with a child, and his girlfriend of four months was unable to come up with rent money. Instead, Amyx told police they decided to off each other as part of a suicide pact. On the morning of May 29, 206, the pair had been drinking vodka when they grabbed a pair of knives from the kitchen and proceeded to cut one another, according to Amyx's version of events. Amyx made the first incision, to the back of Streit-Spears' neck, and then they took turns slicing into each other. Amyx (pictured left in an earlier mugshot) told police Streit-Spears (right) became too weak from blood loss after her sliced her neck and could not go through with her end of the pact He said Streit-Spears told him 'she was cold and she said hit it hard (cut her harder),' the affidavit stated. When he did so, 'blood came out all over' and the woman was left so weak he had to resort to stabbing himself by grabbing her hand, which still held a knife. Apart from uploading the pictures of himself and Streit-Spears to Facebook with the caption, 'Please pray for us,' he also sent a picture in a text message to his girlfriend's mother. He then called his own father and said, 'This is Ken. I love you. Weve cut our throats,' before hanging up, Dallas Morning News reported last year. Streit-Spears' sister saw the Facebook pictures and called police, who had to force their way into the couple's apartment. The gory images stayed on Facebook for nearly 36 hours and took multiple attempts by the family to have removed. In court on Tuesday, Collin County medical examiner William Rohr testified that Streit-Spears died of multiple sharp force injuries, coupled by acute alcohol toxicity. Rohr said that the alcohol in the victims system opened up her blood vessels, which made her bleed out faster during the stabbing. The woman suffered more than a dozen cuts, including two gaping wounds to her neck and right wrist. If convicted of murder, Amyx faces up to a life in prison. Sweden has a much more negative view of immigration following an increased perceived association between migrants and extremism, a new reports finds. Researchers found that far-right Swedish groups are encouraging the country's increasing lack of tolerance when it comes to migration. The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) carried out research on racism and discrimination towards migrants across 26 EU countries. They stated that the tide was turning, with the report noting a change in the portrayal of migrants following the sexual harassment cases in Cologne during New Years celebrations. Sweden has a much more negative view of immigration following a spate of horrifying sex attacks, a new reports finds (pictured immigration officers) Sweden appears to be more progressive than other EU nations on immigration, but is becoming less tolerant, the report concluded. It said that the media was 'conflating the Muslim community with issues of terrorism and security'. 'In terms of immigration and integration policies it appears that Sweden is more progressive than other countries, but the tide is also turning,' ENAR spokesperson Georgina Siklossy told The Local. 'A number of restrictions to existing migration and integration policies have been introduced, and the media discourse has shifted from positive welcoming of refugees and asylum seekers to portraying migration, and by extension, migrants, as a problem.' 'This also has an impact on people who have lived in Sweden for two or three generations and continue to be regarded as "alien elements",' she added. There were 43 arson attacks against asylum seeker housing in Sweden in 2015 - while a group of masked men assaulted people who looked 'foreign' in Stockholm, the Kantor Center recorded. Sweden is one of several EU member states where 'the narrative purports that 'white' European women must be protected from predatory migrant Muslim men,' the ENAR's study added. The Swedish Democrats launched Anti-Roma adverts in the Stockholm subway in 2015. The study alleged that this made it 'as obvious as possible that certain migrants are not welcome' and normalize racism against Roma people'. The adverts prompted public outcry however, and 'individuals as well as organizations' condemned them, ENAR added. According to The Local, the number of reported rapes has gone up from 4,208 in 2006 to 6,560 in 2016. Alexandra Larsson (pictured) told MailOnline she was molested by a mob of 'foreign youths' at a Swedish music festival in July 2016 At least 35 aged between 12 and 17 reported being attacked during the 'Party in the Park' festival in Karlstad, 250 miles from Stockholm in Sweden's Varmland County In one of a number of incidents not mentioned in the report, a mob of 'foreign youths' were accused of sexually assaulting dozens of females at a Swedish music festival in July 2016. At least 35 aged between 12 and 17 reported being attacked during the 'Party in the Park' festival in Karlstad, 250 miles from Stockholm in Sweden's Varmland County. Some of the alleged victims reported being 'kissed and groped' in scenes similar to the Cologne New Year attacks, in which dozens of women reported being assaulted. Later that month, s tickers threatening women with rape if they dont wear headscarves have been posted in the streets of a small town in Sweden. The sick messages appeared on objects in the streets of Nybro, Smaland, along with stickers calling for democracy to be replaced with Islam. Pictures of them circulated on social media but its not clear who put them up. In April this year, three men - including two Afghan migrants - were sentenced to prison in Sweden for participating in a gang rape that was live streamed in a closed Facebook group. The three men, aged 18 to 24, were arrested in January in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, after police received tips about the rape streaming in the group of 60,000 members and interrupted the broadcast. Two of the men are Afghan citizens and the third is a Swedish citizen of Afghan descent. Swedish media have published excerpts of the footage, showing at least one of the suspects holding a revolver. It comes as the Prime Minister of Sweden vowed his country will 'never go back' to recent levels of mass immigration after it emerged the terrorist who killed four people in a truck attack was a failed asylum seeker. Stefan Lofven pledged to change his country's liberal attitude, insisting the massive influx allowed during the 2015 migrant crisis would never happen again. Some of the alleged victims reported being 'kissed and groped' in scenes similar to the Cologne New Year attacks, at the festival (pictured) According to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet there was a violent, unprovoked rampage at Stockholm station by a masked mob of neo-Nazis and football hooligans who were targeting migrants in 2016 Rakhmat Akilov, from Uzbekistan, hijacked the lorry and deliberately drove into pedestrians on central Stockholm's main shopping street in April. It was a copycat of the attack carried out in London in March, when Khalid Masood killed four pedestrians and injured dozens more with a Hyundai 4x4. Swedish police said there were clear similarities. Akilov is thought to have carried out reconnaissance along his route days earlier. Four were killed and 15 injured when he drove a 30-ton truck down a pedestrianised area and smashed into a department store. Chris Bevington, a 41-year-old father-of-two from Britain, was killed close to his office. But it emerged yesterday Swedish authorities had given Akilov four weeks to leave Sweden after his final asylum appeal failed in December. He was being sought by police and immigration officials for deportation but evaded them simply by giving a false address. 'Sweden will never go back to the [mass migration] we had in autumn 2015, never,' Mr Lofven said. 'Everyone who has been denied a permit should return home. 'This makes me feel enormously frustrated. If you have been denied a visa you are supposed to leave the country.' Sweden has taken in 650,000 asylum-seekers in the past 15 years, 163,000 of whom entered in 2015 alone, according to The Spectator. Disgusting stickers threatening women with rape if they dont wear headscarves were posted in the streets of a small town in Sweden in 2016 Of that figure, 35,000 were 'unaccompanied children' - but anyone can be classed as a child if they look young enough, as proof of age is only asked for if they are 'obviously' older than their stated age. The Spectator spoke to a number of immigrants who claimed to be younger than they are to minimize risk of deportation. Elsewhere in Sweden, there are issues not just with ordinary crime, but with terrorism - resulting in a terror level currently set at 'elevated'. Police say at least 300 Swedes have gone to Syria and Iraq for training as jihadis. They include Mohammed Tofik Saleh, 34, an Iraqi-born Swiss citizen who was arrested on February 11, authorities say. It's believed that he and Mahamad Laban, 45, a Lebanon-born Danish citizen, were plotting an attack in Europe when they were arrested in Turkey. Officials say they had both been training with ISIS since 2014. And on February 3 a Swedish court turned over evidence found in the country that was believed to be connected to the 2016 Brussels attacks. That evidence was found in Malmo - a city whose police chief, Stefan Sinteus, asked locals in an open letter this month to help cops stem the 'upward spiral of violence.' Newly minted acting FBI director Andrew McCabe's wife ran for office in Virginia as a Democrat in 2015, helped by hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations steered by Gov. Terry McAuliffe a longtime Bill and Hillary Clinton fundraiser and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. And that's just fine, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Wednesday morning on CNN, since it shows President Donald Trump isn't politicizing the bureau by firing former director Jim Comey. 'Why wouldn't that make the critics happy?' Conway asked on the 'New Day' program. 'His wife ran for political office as a Democrat. It's not personal.' McCabe will 'oversee' the continuing investigation into the Trump orbit's ties to Russia, Conway said. 'He's obviously very familiar with the investigations that are going on there.' Kellyanne Conway poured cold water on Democrats' outrage at President Donald Trump's firing of former FBI director James Comey, saying Wednesday morning that the move left a partisan Democrat at the top of the agency as the acting director Andrew McCabe, who was formerly the Deputy Director of the FBI and has temporarily taken over the intelligence agency after former director James Comey, has a wife who raked in massive amounts of money from Democratic Party sources when she ran for office in 2015 In an interview Tuesday night on PBS, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins drew a distinction between the FBI's 35,000 employees and the one man at the top. 'The president didn't fire the entire FBI,' she said. 'He fired the director of the FBI.' Conway agreed. 'The idea that the FBI has one thing going on and it's the Russian investigation, and the idea that this is somehow "Jim Comey, Attorney at Law," one person in charge of it, is really irresponsible,' she said on CNN. 'There are many capable men and women there. Mr. McCabe's wife ran for political office as a Democrat. I mean, the idea that we don't have other respected men and women who are not seen as partisan or ... who are not seen as partial and politicized is just wrong.' McCabe is the subject of an inspector general probe into his involvement in the Hillary Clinton email because of the $675,000 McAuliffe and the Virginia Democratic Party raked in for his wife's ultimately failed state Senate campaign. Conway used the McCabe story as proof that Trump didn't politicize Comey's dismissal In 2015, McCabe's wife Jill, center, ran for Virginia state senate as a Democrat. Her campaign received funds from Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, who is a close friend of the Clintons Between his political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party, Gov. McAuliffe helped steer $675,000 to McCabe's wife a move that made GOP Hillary Clinton watchers groan since McCabe was overseeing a criminal probe into her handling of classified emails McAuliffe is a close friend of the Clintons, a longtime Bill Clinton fundraising chief, and the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Hillary Clinton headlined a fundraiser for McAuliffe's 'Common Good VA' political action committee which later poured $467,000 into McCabe's campaign. Republicans howled at the time that McCabe, who was among the most powerful arbiters of whether Clinton would be charged with a crime in her email saga, was effectively on the take. The state Democratic Party also under heavy influence from McAuliffe, the sitting governor kicked in $208,000 to Jill McCabe's coffers. Months later in January 2016, Comey appointed Andrew McCabe as the FBI's deputy director,giving him oversight over all domestic and international investigations. That included the probe into the secret, homebrew email server that Clinton used for all her official communications while she was secretary of state an unprecedented breach of data security including thousands of pieces of classified information. Hillary Clinton, pictured, headlined a fundraiser for Terry McAuliffe's PAC, Common Good VA, before the group donated $467,000 to Jill McCabe's campaign Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Comey in March whether McCabe would recuse himself from the Clinton investigation, suggesting McCabe faced a possible conflict of interest. He also asked about McCabe's role in the Russia probe, whether it 'raises the appearance of a conflict of interest in light of his wife's ties with Clinton's associates.' The FBI said in October that McCabe 'played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind', according to The Wall Street Journal. FBI officials added that McCabe's involvement with the Clinton investigation wasn't considered a conflict of interest because his wife's campaign was over by then and McAuliffe wasn't part of the case. McCabe has worked in the FBI for nearly 21 years, starting in 1996 in a New York Field Office. He eventually earned top positions in the Counterterrorism Division, the National Security Branch and the Washington Field Office. McCabe's position as acting FBI Director is only temporary. He will lead the agency until a permanent appointee is confirmed by the Senate. When the White House announced Comey was being fired, Trump said in the statement: 'A search for a new permanent FBI director will begin immediately.' After months without a sighting, the Loch Ness monster appears to be back and ready to be found. For eight months there were no reports of the mysterious creature in the Scottish lake, prompting concerns the infamous 'monster' was dead. But like buses, two have now come at once, as within days, two tourists have take videos of a creature that could be Nessie. Rob Jones was travelling in Scotland from North Wales when he spotted what looks like the 'Loch Ness monster' in a tranquil lake The creature appears to have a head and neck popping out of the water as it passes a boat This video shows what looks like a head and a long neck poking out of the tranquil water in the Scottish loch. It was spotted by Rob Jones, 35, from North Wales, who uploaded the video to YouTube to find out if anyone knew what it was. He asked: 'What the h*** was it? Did anyone else see it?' Speaking to the Scotsman, he said: 'I saw it quite far across the Loch near the castle, but by the time I stopped the van, It was very close and other people stopped to take photos too. 'Sadly I dont believe in monsters, but would love to know what it was.' 'Nessie' appears to be unfazed by the boat moving past him, as does the man who can be seen standing on the top of the boat, by the creature's presence, throwing confusion into the situation. Rob tried to follow the monster's path, but it disappears from sight behind some bushes. But the man in the boat doesn't look round, or appear to be concerned by the presence of the creature at all Rob, who took the video, was sceptical of what he saw, and others commenting online were also less than convinced On May 2, a tourist took a picture of what she believed to be Nessie, the first recorded sighting since August last year. Hayley Johnson, from Manchester, noticed a strange and dark shape at dusk in Urquhart Bay, near Inverness, Scotland. It delighted Gary Campbell, Nessie's official sighting recorder, who had become concerned after a spell without a spotting. With Rob's video being taken on May 7, it makes two sightings in five days. But viewers on YouTube were more sceptical of what they'd seen. One wrote: 'Just a piece of wood or something. It doesn't move in any way even when a boat is right next to it.' Another added: 'The guy on the boat was closest and had the best view and ignored it completely. so we can assume he could tell what it really was and ignored it.' Paul Farrelly says he has given up explaining Mr Corbyn's policies because the prospect of him becoming PM is so remote (file pic) A Labour politician has admitted he does not bother explaining Jeremy Corbyn's policies on his leaflets - because voters would 'laugh me off the streets'. Paul Farrelly said Mr Corbyn's chances of being elected Prime Minister are so hopeless he has given up promoting his party's policies. Instead he is pleading with voters to back him in a desperate bid to limit Theresa May's predicted landslide victory. The embarrassing admission comes days after it emerged that Mr Corbyn is so toxic with voters that even his closest allies are airbrushing him out of their campaign literature. Mr Farrelly, who is defending his marginal seat of Newcastle-under-Lyme, told BBC Radio 4's World at One voters have given up believing that a Labour has any chance in the election on June 8. He said: 'If I told anyone, given the national polls, this is what we will do in government, that Jeremy Corbyn is going to be prime minister, they'd laugh me off the streets, quite frankly. 'And it really is about not giving Theresa May a blank cheque, a lapdog parliament with a landslide, so that she can be properly accountable.' Mr Farrelly is defending a wafer-thin majority of just 650 votes and is one of the Labour politicians most vulnerable to losing their seat to the Tories in the General Election Mr Corbyn's personal ratings have been consistently appalling since he took Labour's top job two years ago. The revelation is a fresh embarrassment for Jeremy Corbyn, pictured yesterday outside the Labour General Election campaign battle bus in Leeds While Jeremy Corbyn is being airbrushed out of many Labour campaign leaflets, Theresa May, pictured at a campaign speech in Nottingham today, is taking centre stage in the Tory Party's campaign material. The Conservative Party has been re-branded 'Theresa May's Team' And many Labour politicians are deliberately deleting him form their campaign materials, fearing he will turn voters off. Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon - a key Corbyn ally - is among the senior figures who have omitted Mr Corbyn from their literature, according to images posted online and on sites such as electionleaflets.org. Leaflets put out by the shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer also fail to mention his party leader. And even Mr Corbyn's own letter to constituents in Islington North does not mention the prospect of him becoming PM. In contrast, Theresa May has tried to capiatalise on her soaring popularity Conservative branding. Instead she has given her stump speeches in front of large placards hailing 'Theresa May's Team', while she describes Tory would-be MPs as her 'local candidates'. Paul Farrelly's leaflets stress that he is local and will be a good opposition MP - but does not mention Jeremy Corbyn's policies because the chances of him being PM are so remote Even Mr Corbyn's own letter to constituents in Islington North does not mention the prospect of him becoming the Prime Minister after the vote on June 8 A Chinese factory worker was scalped after getting her hair caught in a machine - but miraculously survived and has since had the top of her head sewn back on. The plastics factory worker, identified only as Yang, said she was bending down to pick something up when rollers caught her hair and ripped off her scalp. Incredibly, the woman from Jinhua City in East China's Zhejiang Province remained conscious after the gruesome accident and ran to her colleagues for help. A Chinese factory worker was scalped after getting her hair caught in a machine - but miraculously survived and has since had the top of her head sewn back on The plastics factory worker, identified only as Yang, said she was bending down to pick something up when rollers caught her hair and ripped off her scalp (pictured). Doctors have since been able to sew it back on Others saw the woman's head covered in blood, while her detached scalp and hair was retrieved from within the machinery and given to paramedics who arrived several minutes later. Yang was in shock when medics arrived and was taken into the operating theatre for emergency surgery at the Zhejiang University International Hospital - in provincial capital Hangzhou. Doctors Li Bin and Huang Xiaohua then spent the next eight hours cleaning Yang' s wound and sewing her scalp back on. Incredibly, the woman from Jinhua City in East China's Zhejiang Province remained conscious after the accident and ran to her colleagues for help Doctor Li said of the challenging operation: 'The patient's scalp had been completely torn off from below her eyebrows, both her ears, and the lower part of her neck behind her head. 'It was very severe trauma, and she was in shock from blood loss.' Yang has since been transferred to the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, the medic said. Doctor Li reminded people working in factories to keep their hair tied up in a bun and covered in order to avoid similar accidents. In a surprising win for environmentalists and Democrats and a blow to the fossil-fuel industry, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected a resolution to revoke an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions from oil and gas production on federal lands. The legislative loss is a blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to free the drilling industry from what he sees as excessive environmental regulation. The Congressional Review Act resolution received just 49 votes after Republican leaders scrambled for weeks to secure the 51 needed to pass it. The resolution would have revoked the rule and prevented similar regulations from being introduced. Getting the Trump administration to repeal the BLM rule had been a top priority of the oil and gas industry. Companies said it was unnecessary, would could cost them tens of thousands of dollars per well and hinder production. Scroll down for video ONE FOR OBAMA: The former president's oil and gas restriction regulation will remain in place on federal government-owned lands after the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate couldn't muster enough votes to kill it Republicans aimed to use the Congressional Review Act to loosen rules that govern offshore oil and gas drilling rigs But not all Republicans supported the measure, in part because it would have made regulating methane waste more difficult in the future. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona made a surprise vote against the resolution, joining fellow Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine in opposition to torpedo it. The legislative failure will reflect badly on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was unable to hold his conference together and keep his 51-vote majority intact 'While I am concerned that the BLM rule may be onerous, passage of the resolution would have prevented the federal government, under any administration, from issuing a rule that is "similar",' McCain said in a statement. He said the Interior Department should issue a new rule on to replace the existing one on methane leaks, which he called a public health and air quality issue. The rule, finalized by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office, updated 30-year-old regulations that govern flaring, venting and natural gas leaks from oil and gas production. Obama's administration said it would preserve up to 41 billion cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas per year that is currently lost to leaks and flaring. The American Petroleum Institute and other industry groups have said the methane rule is unnecessary because companies have made strides in reducing leaks on their own. 'The rule could impede U.S. energy production while reducing local and federal revenues,' said Erik Milito, API's Upstream and Industry Operations Group Director. Members of the Western Energy Alliance, which include Devon Energy , Whiting Petroleum and EOG Resources had also been strongly opposed to the rule. Turncoats? Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (left), Susan Collins (center) and John McCain (right) all voted with Democrats to keep the oil and gas drilling restrictions in place Environmental groups hailed what they depicted as a rare victory for the environment after several regulatory rollbacks by the Trump administration. 'In recent months, thousands of Americans asked the Senate to stand up for clean air and against the oil lobby, and their efforts were successful today,' said Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society. The Western Values Project estimated that if the rule had been rescinded, the U.S. Treasury would have lost out on $800 million in lost potential royalties from leaked or vented natural gas over the next decade. Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works who supported the resolution to kill the rule, called on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to act unilaterally to revoke it. (Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Alistair Bell and David Gregorio) A lawyer has been convicted of beating his girlfriend's poodle to death - and his ex fiancee said her pet also died at his home in similar circumstances. The attack by Anthony Pastor left the animal, named Snoopy, with nine broken ribs, a pulverized kidney and massive internal bleeding, a New York courtroom heard. Four-year-old Snoopy was found by owner Taly Russell, who described her as a 'ball of fluffy cuteness'. Pastor, 46, could face up to two years in jail, the New York Post reports. Anthony Pastor has been convicted of beating his girlfriend's poodle named Snoopy (similar dog pictured right) to death. The corporate lawyer faces up to two years in jail for the cruel act Russell, 45, told the court: 'I looked down and there was Snoopy stiff, not moving her eyes were sunken into her head, and there were feces behind her, then I went closer, and I touched her and she was cold and hard.' Pastor's lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, said the pet could have been injured the day before she died when she was tied to a tree in Riverside Park while Russell and Pastor had sex. Russell, however, said she had a clear line of sight during the public liaison. She woke up to find her beloved pet dead on August 4 last year. During the week-long trial, Pastor's former fiancee, Monique Olivares, claimed her dog Molly died in similar circumstances in 2013. He was not charged over Molly's death. Pastor, who had denied killing Snoopy, will be sentenced on May 31. Pastor, pictured in court, could face up to two years in prison after being convicted of Snoopy's killing Taly Russell, 45, (left and right) described to the court how she woke up to find her beloved dog dead. She said the pet was her 'ball of fluffy cuteness' Ive seen Donald Trump fire a lot of people. As the winner of his first Celebrity Apprentice season, I joyfully witnessed him send my 13 rivals packing, including the ghastly Omarosa Manigault who with true irony now works for him at the White House. One thing I learned from that experience is this: Trump doesnt hesitate to pull the trigger once he thinks someone has either served their purpose or become a liability. As befits a billionaire New York tycoon, hes very firm, decisive, and utterly ruthless about doing what he thinks is right for business. One minute hes telling you what a great guy you are, the next youre being frogmarched into his gold-plated elevator without even a hug goodbye. Thanks to my stint on The Apprentice, Ive seen Donald Trump fire a lot of people. I witnessed him send my 13 rivals packing and learned from experience that Trump doesnt hesitate to pull the trigger once he thinks someone has either served their purpose or become a liability And heres another thing I learned: Trump was invariably right, often over-ruling NBC executives if they tried to suggest he fire a different contestant to the one he thought should be fired. His instincts were very good, even if they often mystified or enraged viewers. I thought of all this last night when the sensational news broke of James Comeys dismissal from the FBI. On the face of it, this seems both an extraordinary decision and an inexplicable time to make it. The FBI is currently investigating whether Trumps election team colluded with the Russians to fix the 2016 election. If it proves that they did, it would be a scandal so big it will make Watergate look like a tea party. Getting rid of the guy in charge of that investigation on the same day grand jury subpoenas were issued by Federal prosecutors looking into shamed former National Security Advisor Michael Flynns business dealings with Russia well, it stinks, right? As his enemies have been quick to shout, it appears as if Trumps behaving like the worst kind of banana republic dictator in trying to shut down a legitimate investigation into very serious allegations involving himself and his team. But dig a little deeper, and another less explosive explanation emerges that makes more sense to me. Just two weeks ago, Rod J. Rosenstein was confirmed as Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice. He was appointed by 94-6 majority in the Senate; in other words, he was an almost universally popular choice. Not so surprising, perhaps, when you recall that he was originally President Obamas pick to be US Attorney for Maryland. Just two weeks ago Rod J. Rosenstein was confirmed as Deputy Attorney General by a 94-6 majority in the Senate - almost universally popular. He is is highly respected on all sides. And one of his first actions was to take on 'the Comey problem' Rosentein has served in the DoJ in various positions since 1990 and is highly respected on all sides of the political divide for his independence. One of his first actions as Deputy Attorney-General was to address the Comey problem about the FBI director who reports to him and who has been dominating headlines for a year. Rosenstein spoke to all the relevant people, and then sent President Trump a memo with his assessment and recommendation. It said that under Comey, the FBI had suffered substantial damage to its reputation and credibility. It hammered him for the way he handled the politically dynamite reopening of the Hillary email investigation, and for his refusal to accept the near universal judgment that he was mistaken. It further stated that Comey wrongly assumed the role of publicly ruling out charges after attorney general Loretta Lynch compromised herself by meeting Bill Clinton on a plane, and wrongly laid out versions of the facts for the media as if it were a closing argument but without a trial. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do. Most damningly, the memo cited former Deputy Attorneys General Gorelick and Thompsons description of Comeys behaviour as real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit, a kind of reality TV of federal criminal investigation that is antithetical to the interests of justice. The memo concluded: The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions. It wasnt the ongoing Russian collusion investigation that sealed Comeys fate; it was his recent gaffe-strewn appearance at the Senate committee which confirmed Rosensteins suspicions that Comeys an emotion-charged, factually inaccurate narcissist. And that is not a good series of personality traits for the head of the FBI. Comey painted a picture of heroic self-sacrifice as he weighed up his two options the week before the election: one bad (revealing the development in the Hillary email investigation), the other catastrophic (as he put it, concealing that development.) Comeys fate was sealed during his appearance in the Senate in which he was an emotion-charged, factually inaccurate egotistical narcissist. Comey painted a picture of heroic self-sacrifice as he weighed up his options the week before the election His language was bizarrely egotistical. I knew this would be disastrous for me personally, he said, his face etched with torment. But I thought this is the best way to protect these institutions that we care so much about. Oh please! Spare me this lamentable bulls**t, Mr Director. You were supposed to be a dispassionate gatherer and supplier of facts, not a Me Me Me drama queen. Comeys testimony went from bad to worse. Look, this is terrible, he sighed, bottom lip trembling. It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election. But honestly, it wouldnt change the decision. Sorry? You felt nauseous making a decision? One you would make all over again tomorrow? Good grief man, you were running the FBI not a game of pass-the-parcel at a childrens party. But his real offence was that he got his facts wrong, forcing the FBI to correct his false claim that Hillarys aide Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contained classified information to her husband Anthony Weiner. In fact, most of them were simply backed up to Weiners laptop. Thats a big mistake to make about something Hillary Clinton claims costs her the election, especially when youve had six months to think about it. Theres a lot of rank hypocrisy about Comeys firing. President Trump repeatedly praised him to the hilt before, during and after the election, but has now unceremoniously dumped him, citing much of what he did in that period as the reason. The Democrats, led by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, have been just as inconsistent, in reverse. I do not have confidence in him any longer, Schumer said on November 2, 2016, after Comey went public with the new Hillary email revelation. Maybe hes not in the right job, agreed House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Now Comeys gone, theyre both feigning outrage. Such is the absurdly partisan nature of Washington these days, its hard not to agree with Newt Gingrich, who said on Fox News this morning: If Trump came out this afternoon and said the American flag was red, white and blue, Chuck Schumer would come out screaming that its fuchsia. On balance though, I think President Trump was absolutely right to fire James Comey. America needs an FBI it can trust. Comey is not a bad man but he broke that trust by getting big facts wrong, behaving in flagrant disregard for FBI protocol, and turning the bureau into a headline-grabbing, overly-emotional, drama-laden TV reality show. By doing so, he surely gave Trump no choice but to put back on his old Apprentice hat and fire him? But America also needs a president and White House it can trust. And to achieve that, two things must now happen: First, it is absolutely vital Trump appoints a new FBI director of unimpeachably impartial integrity who commands the full respect of Congress. Second, I agree with Senator Schumer that the time has come for a special counsel (or prosecutor as they were previously known) to be appointed to launch a properly independent investigation into this whole Russia business. I think President Trump was right to fire James Comey, but America needs a president and White House it can trust. And to achieve that, two things must now happen: First, it is vital Trump appoints a new FBI director of unimpeachably impartial integrity. Also the time has come for a special counsel for a proper investigation into the Russia business As things stand, theres not a shred of evidence proving any collusion between Trumps campaign team and the Russians. But there is plenty of smoke whirling around thanks to the deeply suspicious behaviour of Michael Flynn and others who lied about their connections with Russia. That smoke will turn into a blazing, politically lethal furnace if any hard, damning facts emerge. But conversely, it will be extinguished if none do. President Trump will huff and puff about a special counsel. But if, as he insists, hes done nothing wrong with regard to Russia, and his team havent done anything wrong either, then he has nothing to worry about. Trump tweeted today that Comey had to go as part of his pledge to drain the swamp. The Russia collusion rumour mill swirling around his White House is a toxic, presidency threatening swamp that also urgently needs to be drained. If it isnt, it may consume Trumps first term in office, stifle his ability to Make America Great Again and lead to voters saying Youre fired! in 2020. The man who survived a brutal crocodile attack has given crews a thumbs up after being airlifted from a remote region in the North Territory. The 54-year-old man was wading through a waterway near the remote community of Palumpa before being bitten in the chest and arm by the creature. He was rushed to Palumpa medical clinic where he was 'bleeding a lot', before being airlifted to Royal Darwin Hospital at 6.40pm to undergo further treatment for bites to the chest and arm. Man gives thumbs up as he is airlifted to Royal Darwin Hospital after crocodile attack A man has survived a brutal crocodile attack that left him with bite wounds to his chest and arm The man was 'bleeding a lot' but was 'in good spirits' while he was being treated, a CareFlight spokesman told NT News. 'It's understood the man was wading in a waterway near the Palumpa community when he was attacked by a crocodile estimated to be two metres in length.' After the attack, the man was driven to the Palumpa medical clinic where the bites on his chest and arm were attended to. He was taken to Royal Darwin Hospital in a stable condition. The area of the 54-year-old's attack, known at the Daly River region, has a history of crocodile attacks. Father-of-two Keith Parry, 20, was killed by a 4m crocodile while swimming across the Daly River in April 2009, according to NT News. Peter Rowsell was attacked last Anzac Day while sleeping in his tent at Palm Creek, sustaining injuries to his right foot. After the attack, the man was driven to the Palumpa medical clinic , before he was airlifted in the NT CareFlight Rescue Helicopter (pictured) The Islamic Council of Victoria has condemned the behaviour of those involved in a brawl inside in a mosque, as new footage of the confrontation emerged. Mohamed Mohiden, president of the Muslim group, slammed the behaviour of those involved in the brawl at the mosque in Preston, Melbourne, in February. 'This should never happen in a mosque,' Mohideen said, according to Nine News. More confrontation at a Preston Mosque in Melbourne following a brawl in February The Islamic Council of Victoria has condemned the behaviour during a brawl in Preston Mosque last February Footage of the confrontation at a mosque 'This is disgraceful behaviour, I accept that, I will not shy away from that. We do not accept this kind of behaviour in the mosque. This is the house of Godm' he added. More footage from A Current Affair's cameras caught a protest outside the mosque more recently. A Preston Mosque administrator said he would welcome an external investigation. 'We're happy for any independent body to come in and do their research,' Tarek Nasher said. The confrontation in February started during a rally over allegedly millions of dollars of lost funds from the mosque donated by people for refugees. Worshippers became upset that Sheikh Mohamed Abou Eid was banned from the mosque. The sheikh has been accused of inappropriate behaviour and has been banned. Sheikh Eid claimed the alleged money that has gone missing was for the poor and homeless. An administrator at the mosque said the allegations were false. A Current Affair caught more confrontation on camera at the Preston Mosque A suspect in a drunken-driving hit-and-run accident in California that sent a 6-year-old boy to the hospital with severe head trauma over the weekend was an illegal immigrant with a criminal history who has been deported from the US at least 15 times. Constantino Banda-Acosta, 38, has been arrested and charged with DUI resulting in bodily injury, hit-and-run with an injury - both felonies - and a misdemeanor driving without a license in connection to a crash that took place in San Ysidro Saturday night. According to police, Banda-Acosta was driving his Chevy Silverado pickup truck at a high rate of speed on Camino de La Plaza at around 11.30pm when he blew past a stop sign at Dairy Mart Road and smashed into a Honda Accord carrying the Lake family, who were returning home from a trip to Disneyland. Justice for Lennox: Lennox Lake, 6, is pictured at Rady Children's Hospital, in California, where he was brought after suffering severe injuries in a May 6 car crash Officials say Constantino Banda-Acosta, 38, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was speeding when he smashed his pickup truck into the Lake family's Honda Accord (pictured) The driver and rear passengers side, where Lennox was riding in his car seat (pictured right at an earlier time), sustained the heaviest damage in the crash The collision took place just a block away from the family's home. The driver of the speeding pickup truck did not pull over to render aid, officials said. The victims' Honda Accord sustained the heaviest damage on the driver and rear passengers side, where Lennox Lake was riding in his car seat, relatives told the San Diego Union-Tribune. Ingrid Lake, the boy's mother, scrambled out of the car and rushed to her son, who was unconscious, not breathing and bleeding from his nose, ears and a wound on his head. Video courtesy of 10News Lennox was taken to Rady Children's Hospital, where so far he has undergone two surgeries to stitch up a gash above his left eyebrow and to remove pieces of broken bone from his head, which entailed peeling back his scalp and opening his skull, according to the description of a GoFundMe campaign started by the victims aunt, Sandi Lake Taylor. In a later update, the aunt said Lennox will have to spend more than 10 days in the hospital getting treated with antibiotics for an infection in his cranium. Lake Taylor is hoping to raise $50,000 to help her brother and his family with her nephew's medical expenses. So far, about a quarter of the goal amount has been collected in donations. The boy was returning home from a trip to Disneyland. The crash occurred a block away from the family's destination The little boy was found unconscious, not breathing and bleeding from his nose, ears and a wound on his head Lennoxs family, inclduing his parents who suffered minor injuries in the collision, are cautiously optimistic about his prognosis. He has two older brothers, aged 14 and 16, who did not go with the family to the amusement park on Saturday. Banda-Acosta, a Mexican national living in the US illegally, was apprehended about 30 minutes after the crash by US Border Patrol agents, who came upon a wrecked Chevy pickup truck that matched the description of the hit-and-run driver's vehicle given to them by Ingrid Lake. The vehicle was found to contain two men, among them Banda-Acosta, who was identified as the driver. He was booked into jail on $100,000 bail pending his arraignment Wednesday. Border Patrol agents said both occupants of the Chevy were undocumented aliens. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show that since 2002, Banda-Acosta has been deported at least 15 times back to Mexico, most recently in January of this year. Road to recovery: Lennox has undergone two surgeries to stitch up a gash above his left eyebrow and to remove pieces of broken bone from his head. He will have to spend more than 10 days in the hospital getting treated for an infection His prior criminal record includes arrests on charges of domestic violence involving his wife of 18 years, who lives in Chula Vista. The woman told the station 10News her estranged husband was deported from the US on or around January 10, but returned 10 days later. He was arrested in 2006 on a drunken-driving charge and had his license suspended three separate times. ICE plans to have the 38-year-old deported again after his latest DUI case is settled. A kidnapper who live streamed himself abducting a man has been arrested after the victim's mother spotted the video and called the police. Terry Miller had agreed to give acquaintance Justin Green a ride to Charleston, West Virginia, on Monday. But the favor quickly turned into a nightmare after Green, who was carrying a knife, began acting increasingly erratically and attacked Miller, punching and stabbing him repeatedly, and threatening to kill him. Cops were tipped off to the terrifying hostage situation after Green, a 31-year-old veteran from Charleston, began streaming the ride on Facebook live. Scroll down for video Terry Miller (pictured in stills from Justin Green's Facebook Live video) was left with wounds to his wrist (left) his neck (right) and leg after he was taken hostage by Green on Monday Green (pictured) was arrested and charged with attempted murder and malicious assault after the kidnapping Troopers caught up with the vehicle on the Route 119 and what followed was a police chase for more than 60 miles. 'While the troopers were behind the vehicle, troopers could see a knife through the back window of the truck. They could see altercations going on between the driver and the passenger. The passenger would start hitting the victim while he was driving,' Sgt. John Dotson told WCHS-TV. By the time they caught up with the truck, the victim had multiple injuries to his neck, wrist and arm, and a stab wound to his leg. The final Facebook live video showed him bleeding from his wrist and neck where Green is believed to have held a knife to his neck. Miller was taken to hospital while Green was arrested and charged with attempted murder and malicious assault. He was also found in possession with the intent to deliver a controlled substance after a large quantity of meth was recovered from the truck. Green had reportedly been using the drug during the hostage situation. Green, (right) who was carrying a knife, reportedly began acting increasingly erratically and attacked Miller (left) punching and stabbing him repeatedly, and threatening to kill him Facebook video reveals how the initially jovial atmosphere in the truck, quickly escalated into a tense stand off as Green began acting erratically. Green appeared paranoid in the footage, demanding to know who Miller was speaking to after he answered a phone call, and later snatching the phone from his hands. As the situation became increasingly strained, Green taunted his vicitm, asking why he wasn't as chatty as he had been earlier in the trip, before demanding Miller took him to the mall. Miller told troopers his West Virginia abductor began threatening to kill him, saying he would 'put him in a body bag and he was going to be famous.' 'Why me?' he asked before Green replied, telling him to 'shut the **** up.' The final Facebook live clip shows a clearly shaken Miller, who has blood on his wrist and around his neck, begging Green to keep calm and not do anything stupid. Green (left and right) was reportedly using drugs during the hostage situation and also faces charges for the large quantity of meth recovered from the vehicle 'Don't, don't!' he told Green, who had obscured half his camera lens and was keeping himself mostly out of shot. 'Chill, chill, please chill. I ain't trying nothing. 'I ain't done nothing to you! I'm trying to get home alive!' Thankfully, Miller's mom was alerted to the video, which was being streamed on Green's Facebook profile under the alias Billy Crystal, and called the cops. After nearly an hour's chase down the Route 119, Miller slammed on the brakes near the Lenore exit in Mingo County, and officers rushed to the vehicle. The case is a first for West Virginia State Police. Most criminals are not stupid enough to record, and then publicly post, evidence of themselves committing crime. Sgt.Dotson said those who do 'don't really care if they get caught or not, because they are putting it on Facebook, but it does make the case a lot easier to be able to prove,' Dotson said. Green is being held on a $75,000 bond. Less than a day after fights broke out in Spirit Airlines' Fort Lauderdale terminal due to canceled flights, a federal judge sided with the carrier on Tuesday and ordered its pilots to stop boycotting flights as part of a labor action. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas issued the order, saying Spirit likely would win its lawsuit charging that the Airline Pilots Association was engaged in work slowdowns that violated federal law. The union has denied the accusation. Spirit Airlines said the pilots had coordinated a work slowdown that set off chaos at Fort Lauderdale's airport on Monday night. Scroll down for video Less than a day after fights broke out (above on Monday) in Spirit Airlines' Fort Lauderdale terminal due to canceled flights, a federal judge sided with the carrier on Tuesday and ordered its pilots to stop boycotting flights as part of a labor action District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas (file above) issued the order, saying Spirit likely would win its lawsuit charging that the Airline Pilots Association was engaged in work slowdowns that violated federal law. The union has denied the accusation The Broward Sheriff's Office says about 500 people jammed Spirit's terminal at the airport after the airline canceled flights because there were no pilots. Another 36 flights were canceled Tuesday. Video posted online showed deputies grappling with screaming passengers and breaking up fights. Hundreds were left stranded and deputies arrested three people, charging them with inciting a riot and other charges. Desmond Waul, 22, Janice Waul, 24, and Davante Garrett, 22, were arrested after being seen by deputies threatening the airlines front counter employees. The airport, which is located north of Miami, regained its calm Tuesday afternoon, following a night of clashes. 'We sincerely apologize to our customers for the disruption and inconveniences they have suffered,' Spirit spokesman Paul Berry said in a statement. The Broward Sheriff's Office says about 500 people jammed Spirit's terminal at the airport after the airline canceled flights because there were no pilots. Another 36 flights (file above) were canceled Tuesday Left to right: Desmond Waul, 24, Janice Waul, 22, and Davante Garrett, 22, were all charged with inciting a riot after the clashes at the Fort Lauderdale Airport on Monday night 'We believe this is the result of intimidation tactics by a limited number of our pilots affecting the behavior of the larger group.' The lawsuit, which was filed Monday, accused the Air Line Pilots Association of coordinating a 'pervasive illegal work slowdown' in order to 'pressure Spirit in its current collective bargaining negotiations.' Since last Thursday some 300 Spirit flights have been canceled -- 15 per cent of the airline's offerings -- with some 20,000 impacted passengers in cities like Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Las Vegas and Detroit. Spirit said in the suit it has lost $8.5million. The federal order issued Tuesday by Dimitrouleas will force the pilots to normalize operations. A hearing for a preliminary injunction is slated for May 15 in a Florida court. The union said pilots would 'fully comply with the order handed down, which is completely in line with our overriding goal: the resumption of normal operations.' 'We call on the company to join forces with ALPA and the Spirit pilots to do just that.' As tensions with Russia, threats from North Korea and turmoil in Syria push the world closer to World War III, the last living Nuremberg prosecutor is speaking out - advocating for peace. In an interview with 60 Minutes, 97-year-old Benjamin Ferencz detailed the way he's seen war turn good men and women into coldblooded war criminals. 'War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people,' he said. Scroll down for video The last living Nuremberg prosecutor, 97-year-old Benjamin Ferencz, recently sat down for an interview with 60 Minutes, condemning war Even the men Ferencz helped convict for carrying out genocide weren't savages, he said. They were 'intelligent, patriotic human [beings]' who, in their minds, were 'acting in the interest' of their country. 'These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite,' he said. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people. Benjamin Ferencz The real issue for Ferencz is preventing war to protect otherwise decent people from being corrupted to carry out atrocities in the name of their country. He thinks the best way to achieve that goal is to hold war criminals responsible in international court, such as the one set up in The Hague in 1998. Ferencz even gave the closing arguments in the very first case that court heard. For those who call Ferencz's dream of world piece 'naive', he says it's 'stupid' to want war instead of peace. 'Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don't even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That's insane,' he said. Ferencz was 27 years old and had no court room experience when he headed Trial Number 9 at Nuremberg The case dealt with SS Officers accused of rounding up and murdering Jews and other 'undesirable' while following the German army into the Soviet Union. Above, four of the men accused Ferencz himself was raised by Jewish parents, who immigrated from Romania to the U.S. when he was just a baby. The family settled in New York City, where Ferencz's father got a job as a janitor. Ferencz couldn't speak English until he was eight years old, which kept him out of school for his early youth. Otto Ohlendorf was the main organizer accused in the Einsatzgruppen. He and four others were executed by hanging But once he was let into school, he excelled - becoming the first member of his family to go to college and later winning a scholarship to study law at Harvard. In his first semester at law school, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he tried to enlist, first in the Army Air Corps and then in the Marines. But both branches of the military passed on him due to his short stature. Ferencz decided to finish law school instead, and when he graduated he enlisted in the Army. He fought in Europe as part of an anti-aircraft artillery unit, taking part in the storming of Normandy beach and the Battle of the Bulge. As the war drew to an end, Ferencz was reassigned to a new unit in General Patton's Third Army tasked with investigating war crimes, due to his legal expertise. That assignment landed him in a front row seat to history's darkest hours. Ferencz's job was in to go in and collect evidence when the U.S. Army liberated concentration camps. Ferencz's eyes welled up and he started to shake has he recalled the horrors of the camps. Before he worked on the Nuremberg trials, Ferencz collected evidence at the concentration camps. His eyes began to water as he recalled the horrors he witnessed Prisoners are seen at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany after it was liberated by General Patton's Third Army in April 1945. Ferencz was assigned to Patton's Third at the end of the war to collect evidence at the camps due to his legal expertise 'A father who, his son told me the story. The father had died just as we were entering the camp. And the father had routinely saved a piece of his bread for his son, and he kept it under his arm at He kept it under his arm at night so the other inmates wouldn't steal it, you know. So you see these human stories which are not - they're not real. They're not real. But they were real,' Ferencz recalled. After victory in Europe, Ferencz returned home, married his childhood sweetheart and vowed never to return to Germany. But he quickly broke that promise when he was asked back by General Telford Taylor, the man in charge of the Nuremberg trials. Taylor wanted Ferencz to lead a group of researchers in Berlin who were going through recovered documents from the German foreign ministry. The documents revealed the existence of a group called Einsatzgruppen, which followed the German army into Soviet Russia to round up and murder Jews, gypsies and other 'undesirable' people. The Eisantzgruppen were groups of SS officers who followed the Germany Army into Soviet Russia, rounded up Jews and other 'undesirable' people and executed them in mass One video exists showing one such mass execution. Above, victims are ordered out of a truck The victims were then made to run to the ditch where they would be shot dead Above, the victims stand as they wait to be shot in a ditch, that was then quickly buried It's estimated that the Einsatzgruppen killed more than one millions Jews, and tens of thousands of 'partisans,' Romani, Slavs, and others during the war. But by the time that Ferencz had discovered this, the Nuremberg trials had already begun and Taylor had no one to prosecute the case. When he was told that the case wouldn't get prosecuted, Ferencz said he started screaming. 'I said, "Look. I've got here mass murder, mass murder on an unparalleled scale." And he said, "Can you do this in addition to your other work?" And I said, "Sure." He said, "OK. So you do it."' Ferencz says he's 'still churning' by how unaffected the defendants in the case seemed during the trial. DEfendents are seen in the back two rows during the trial Ferencz didn't call a single witness in the case. Instead, he used the German's records against them. One such record reads: 'The city's Jews were ordered to present themselves...about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days' That's how Ferencz, who had no prior court room experience, landed himself as the prosecutor on Trial Number 9 at Nuremberg at the young age of 27. Ferencz didn't have to call a single witness in the trial of the 22 men accused in the Einsatzgruppen. Instead, he used their own reports against them, which meticulously detailed how the victims were rounded up and killed and tracked the the total death count. One report read: 'The city's Jews were ordered to present themselves...about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days' Ferencz says he's still shaken by how unaffected the men appeared at trial. He said their faces were always blank, as if they 'were waiting for a bus'. But he says there was only one time that he felt like physically hurting one of the defendants. Ferencz himself was raised Jewish. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Romania when he was a baby (center) During his first term in law school, the U.S. entered World War II and he tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps and the Marines but was turned down. Instead, he decided to finish law school first and later joined the Army Ferencz (pictured left with some of his comrades) stormed the beaches of Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge 'One of these - my defendants said - He gets up, and he says, "[In German] What? The Jews were shot? I hear it here for the first time." Boy, I felt if I'd had a bayonet I woulda jumped over the thing, and put a bayonet right through one ear, and let it come out the other. You know? You know?' After the war, Ferencz briefly returned home to marry his childhood sweetheart. But he was quickly called back to Europe to take part in the Nuremberg trials 'I'm still churning,' Ferencz added. All 22 men in the case were convicted, and four - Otto Ohlendorf, Erich Naumann, Paul Blobel and Werner Braune - were executed by hanging. After Nuremberg, Ferencz stayed in Germany to help set up rehabilitation programs for Nazi victims. He also took part in the reparations agreement between Israel and West Germany. Ferencz and his wife returned to the U.S. in 1956 with their four children, and he became a partner at the private law firm that General Taylor set up in New York. He remained active in advocating for the creation of the International Criminal Court, and remains a popular figure in international law. He has decided to donate his life's savings to a genocide prevention initiative at the Holocaust Museum. Ferencz has dedicated his life towards establishing an international court that holds war criminals accountable. He's pictured above giving the closing arguments during the first case heard by the International Court of Justice at the Hague in 1998 The Senate's top Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer, renewed calls for a special prosecutor to be assigned to the Russia investigation as he spoke from the Senate floor Wendesday. 'If there was ever a time where circumstances warranted a special prosecutor it is right now,' Schumer said. Pointing to his Republican counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Schumer also demanded the majority leader call a full Senate briefing with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, so that senators might pepper the Department of Justice officials with questions about what led to FBI Director James Comey's firing. Scroll down for video Sen. Chuck Schumer (left) again called for a special prosecutor to take over the investigation into President Trump's (right) campaign and Russian collusion Sen. Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor Wednesday to call for a special prosecutor and a closed-door briefing with the top two Department of Justice officials, who made the recommendation to get rid of FBI Director James Comey President Trump lashed out at the senate minority leader on Twitter Tuesday night labeling him 'Cryin' Chuck Schumer' of the Democrat's critical response of James Comey's firing 'I remind him and my Republican friends that nothing less is at stake than the American people's faith in our criminal justice system and the integrity of the executive branch of our government,' Schumer implored. Like a number of his Democratic colleagues, Schumer suggested that Comey's firing came now because progress was being made in the investigation looking into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia. Adding fuel to that theory is a report from the New York Times that said Comey had requested additional resources for the Russian probe from Rosenstein days before his dismissal. It was a report that Rosenstein wrote to President Trump that prompted the firing, the White House said, releasing Rosenstein's assessment and Trump's letter to Comey to journalists Tuesday. Rosenstein has the power, unilaterally, to appoint a special prosecutor. At Wednesday's White House briefing Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she thought a special prosecutor wasn't 'necessary.' 'We have a House committee, a Senate committee and the Department of Justice all working on this,' Huckabee Sanders told reporters. On Tuesday, Schumer was quick out of the gate in his criticism, but the White House was prepared. In a move more reminsicent of a campaign operation or something the Republican National Committee would put out, the White House sent an email to reporters Tuesday night, outlining a trio of times Schumer had publicly criticized Comey. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer held a press conference Tuesday night, but the White House was prepared, sending a note to reporters that detailed the times the top Senate Democrat had been critical of now ex-FBI Director James Comey Schumer was about to hold a press conference on Capitol Hill. The president also used Twitter to chime in, giving the Senate minority leader a new nickname. 'Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant,' Trump said in a tweet, using the hashtag 'drain the swamp.' Schumer outlined his concerns with the administration's actions on the Senate floor Wednesday. 'The question is, why did it happen last night?' Schumer mused. 'We know Director Comey was leading an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. A serious offense.' 'Were those investigations getting too close to home for the president?' Schumer asked his fellow senators. 'The dismissal of Director Comey establishes a very troubling pattern,' he added. At the White House Wednesday, Huckabee Sanders chided the Democrats for suddenly taking Comey's side. 'Frankly, I think it's startling that Democrats aren't celebrating,' Huckabee Sanders quipped. A suspect in the slaying of an Australian man found in a pool of blood in his rented Bali home is being questioned by police before a DNA test. Stephen James Richardson, 63, was found lying on a mattress in his rented home in Sanur in a pool of blood with wounds to his right arm, right cheek, and forehead. They have also uncovered hair and two types of blood at the grisly crime scene, which will now be matched against the suspect's. Denpasar police said the suspect will undergo a DNA test but revealed no details on their identity. However Bali police's general crime director earlier said the killer was known by the victim, according to Daily Telegraph. His heartbroken family believed he had died of a heart attack - until police sent them grisly crime scene photographs (Stephen is pictured with his partner Karen) 'If we see from the crime scene, it seems that the perpetrator is someone that is already known by the victim,' Mr Jaya said. Denpasar police chief Hadi Purnomo later told the publication the suspect would soon be undergoing DNA tests. 'We haven't named any suspect in the case. We will conduct a DNA test on someone,' he said. The mystery surrounding Mr Richardson's death deepened when it was revealed the gate to his home was shut and locked from the inside when his body was found. In a graphic image sent to the family by police and supplied to Daily Mail Australia, the beloved father can be seen lying stark naked on a blood-soaked blue mattress. Police outside the rented villa of Australian man Stephen Richardson in Bali on Tuesday When police arrived they said the house was locked and there was broken glass from a cabinet inside the villa. Police were at the rented villa on Tuesday, scouring the scene as they continued to investigate the case. They said they have spoken with 12 people about the matter and are awaiting forensic and autopsy reports. '(There is little) suspicion he was robbed because the victim's belongings are still there. There is an iPhone, Australian dollars and a watch,' Denpasar District Police Chief Colonel Hadi Purnomo said. Around 10 beer bottles have been found at the scene, while Mr Richardson appears to have suffered several wounds, including to the back of the head. 'It could be the victim was fighting back. Maybe at the crime scene, we will find the blood of a perpetrator,' Col Purnomo added. He was found lying on a mattress in his rented home in Sanur with wounds to his arm, cheek and forehead. Police believe a violent struggle occurred before his 'unnatural death' 'The blood on the porch is being checked to see whether it's the victim's or if it is a perpetrator's.' 'There are weird things (about the case). The main gate was locked from the outside while the garage door was locked from the inside.' Other items from the villa have been collected, including a bed sheet, glass and a kitchen knife - but police believe at this stage that the knife may have nothing to do with what happened. Mr Richardson had last been seen by a friend drinking at a Sanur bar on Saturday night. Police believe there is a possibility he died due to being intoxicated, falling and injuring himself. South Denpasar police chief Wisnu Wardana told the Sydney Morning Herald that he did not believe the broken window was an entrance point for a potential intruder. 'The scene was intact - no sign of forced entry has been found yet,' Mr Wisnu said. 'The gate was locked, so was the door to the room where the body was found. 'We are still investigating. Because of the unnatural death anything is possible at this point. We have our forensic officers investigating the scene.' Forensic testing of the blood found within the property is being undertaken, as is an autopsy. This is the rented house in Sanur, Bali, where Mr Richardson's bloodied body was found Stephen's devastated son Ben Richardson, 29, said he would not rest until his father's killer was brought to justice. 'I will not stop until I know what really happened because it's very clear someone took him from us,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Monday night. 'I am fuming, he didn't even get to see us get married or have kids.' Mr Richardson was in a defacto relationship with Karen East, who he was with for about 18 years, but lived alone the past month after she went to Darwin for work. Denpasar police chief Hadi Purnomo said it was being treated as a murder case, especially as a knife was found, but detectives were still investigating the scene. However, he did not discount the possibility that Mr Richardson's death was an accident. 'The first possibility is that the foreigner died due to an assault as there are wounds on his body,' he said. 'The victim also had a habit of drinking alcohol... so there is a possibility that the victim died due to be drunk and falling and hitting glass.' His son Ben (pictured) has vowed not to rest until his beloved dad's killers were found His body was discovered by friend Garry Croker on Monday about 4.20pm after he didn't show up to a wedding anniversary party and hadn't answered his phone for days. The worried mate borrowed a ladder from the house's owner and jumped the fence on Jalan Danau Poso, only to be confronted with the horrific scene through the window. 'It (the door) was open for the cat and I seen him lying there. I jumped back and got the owner to ring the police,' he told News Corp. 'On Sunday night there was a party for a wedding anniversary and he was invited and he never turned up. He hadn't answered the phone for a couple of days actually and we got worried.' Mr Croker gave police a statement while forensic officers and sniffer dogs searched the house and recovered his iPhone 5. His motorbike was also missing. Another witness claimed to see him on Saturday at the Stand Up Bar in Sanur and friends said he hadn't been around for coffee in several days. Ben paid tribute to his father, who was nicknamed 'the ape', saying he was a great father to both him and his brother Ben Richardson, who works on an oil rig like his father once did, said the whole family was saddened and would be flying to Bali as soon as possible. He recalled the last time he saw his father was six weeks ago when the whole family visited his brother Aaron, 31, in Sydney where he runs a holistic health centre. They then enjoyed a family road trip to Wollongong to visit Mr Richardson's brother Peter, a trip he and Ben spoke about in their last ever phone call a few weeks ago. Two women were arrested in Texas after one called 911 on herself for being 'too drunk to drive'. Friendswood police said Marissa Ann Sluss, 25, called police around 3am Thursday morning saying that she was not safe to drive her vehicle. Sluss said her friend, Hannah Marie Webb, 20, who was in the car with her, told her she was too intoxicated to drive, according to KPRC. Marissa Ann Sluss (left), 25, and her friend, Hannah Marie Webb (right), 20, were arrested after Sluss called 911 to report that she was too drunk to drive Officers said they found the women stopped in the middle of the road on the 100 block of West Parkwood Avenue, according to the station. Investigators said Sluss was on her phone and smelled of alcohol. Sluss told the responding officer that she called 911 because Webb was not 'complying'. Webb was also intoxicated when the officer arrived. Both were arrested after Sluss failed sobriety tests. Both women are now facing charges in the incident. Sluss is charged with driving while intoxicated and Webb is charged with public intoxication. Former FBI Director James Comey had requested additional funding and personnel for the agency's probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election just days before he was fired, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Comey, fired by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, had asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last week for a significant boost in resources and later briefed U.S. lawmakers on the request, the New York Times said, citing three unnamed officials. Rosenstein wrote the memo which Trump cited as the reason to fire Comey in his bombshell sacking late on Tuesday afternoon. The status of the request for more cash and resources is so far unknown. Rosenstein's letter detailed Comey's shortcomings in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails and led to his sacking - but now it turns out Comey asked for more resources for the Russia probe days before he was fired Associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (right) have received grand jury subpoenas from the US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia seeking business records. The scale of the Russian probe is in the hands of Rod Rosenstein (left), the deputy attorney general who called for Comey's head Comey, who is now a private citizen, landed in Washington on Wednesday morning after a private jet flight from Los Angeles, where he learned about his termination as he watched live television. Rosenstein's role in his sacking is now at the center of the firestorm Trump lit by firing Comey. In the face of accusations that the president abruptly terminated the director of the FBI to derail an investigation into alleged collusion between his associates and the Russians, the White House is tactically claiming that Trump took cues from Rosenstein. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had previously recused himself from all election investigations and served only as the conduit for Rosenstein's recommendation, the White House has argued. 'The president took the advice of the deputy attorney general who oversees the director of the FBI, brought those concerns to the attorney general who brought them to the president, and they made a decision to remove him,' Kellyanne Conway said this morning. Conway, a senior counselor to the president, repeatedly claimed during a CNN interview on Wednesday morning that Rosenstein acted alone. His hand was not forced by the White House or Attorney General Jeff Sessions, she said. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters late Tuesday night that it was 'a DOJ decision' to recommend that Comey be fired. 'It was all him,' Spicer said of Rosenstein. Spicer's deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told MSNBC that the FBI probe into Russian meddling in the presidential election was 'absolutely not' why Comey was let go. 'He was given a recommendation, and he made a decision and he made it quickly,' Huckabee Sanders claimed. Eye of the storm: Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday, where he said that he had sacked Comey because 'very simply, he wasn't doing a good job' Back to D.C.: Comey was seen exiting his Gulfstream V flight from Los Angeles early on Wednesday morning after his firing Rosenstein's letter details Comey's shortcomings as it pertains to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. 'I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgement that he was mistaken,' Rosenstein said. The U.S. attorney under former President Barack Obama said in the memo to Sessions, dated yesterday, that 'almost everyone' agrees that Comey made 'serious mistakes.' 'It is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives,' he writes. Rosenstein goes on to argue that Comey cannot be entrusted to restore trust in the FBI, having refused to admit his errors. The current scale of the investigation into allegations of collusion with Russia is unknown - but it is known that associates of ex-national security adviser Mike Flynn have received grand jury subpoenas demanding details of their business dealings. Associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn have received grand jury subpoenas from the office of US Attorney Dana Boente. The issuance of these subpoenas by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia denotes a significant benchmark in the developing investigation of President Donald Trump's campaign ties to suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The subpoenas seek business records from individuals who had worked with General Flynn on contracts after he was let go as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, and was first reported by CNN on Tuesday. More than 100 chickens have been confiscated, with most of them euthanized, after police stormed a property hosting a cockfighting event. Officers were called to the home on Sunday morning in Fort Worth, in Texas, and seized 95 cocks, 17 hens and 18 chicks. A further 17 dead birds were also found at the property. Melecio Diaz, 33, and Jorge Orozco-Carmona, 25, face state felony cockfighting charges Officers were called to the home on Sunday morning in Fort Worth, in Texas, and seized 95 cocks, 17 hens and 18 chicks Diane Covey, from the Fort Worth Animal Shelter, said: 'We humanely euthanized 90 roosters, all who were in some state of suffering. 'Some of the roosters were still wearing gaffs [weapons tied to their legs for fighting], they were bleeding from wounds, and/or near death.' Andres Hernandez, 65, faces a misdemeanor cockfighting charge The Humane Society of North Texas told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram it is caring for several hens and chicks. Ms Covey said the city shelter will work worth appropriate rescue organizations to place the rest of the birds. Officers cited five people and three men were arrested. Melecio Diaz, 33, and Jorge Orozco-Carmona, 25, face state felony cockfighting charges, while Andres Hernandez, 65, faces a misdemeanor cockfighting charge. Orozco-Carmona told police he allowed people to have the cockfight on his property because they had nowhere else to fight. During a police interview he apparently told detectives he charged a $20 entry fee and organizers of the fight also gave him a percentage of the earnings. The body of a missing college student has been discovered in a river more than a month after she went missing. Police confirmed Tuesday that the body found over the weekend in the Feather River near Live Oak, California is that of college student Alycia Leane Yeoman, 20, who went missing on March 30. Yeoman's body was found around 12.46pm on Sunday by an angler fishing south of the boat launch at the Live Oak Recreational Park, officials with the Sutter County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. Scroll down for video Alycia Leane Yeoman, 20, went missing on March 30 in California. Her body was found Sunday Yeoman's body was found by an angler fishing south of the boat launch at the Live Oak Recreational Park (pictured) The river is about 10 miles north from Yuba City, where Yeoman was last seen leaving a home in her green Toyota Tacoma Investigation into the cause and manner of death is ongoing, but local residents didn't mince words that they suspected the worst. 'There was foul play involved,' Don Jacobsen, who works at the park, speculated in an interview with the Sacramento Bee. 'That girl was too respectable to be around here at 11 o'clock at night.' The Yuba College student was last seen alive leaving a male friend's home in Yuba City, about 10 miles south of Live Oak, on March 30 at around 11pm. Yeoman lived in Gridley, which is also north of Yuba City, and it is possible her route home would have taken her through Live Oak. Alycia Yeoman, 20, was last seen leaving a male friend's house in the truck in Yuba City, California, last Thursday Police and FBI agents were seen searching this home where Yeoman was last seen the week after she disappeared. It is not known whether they suspect any connection On March 31, a Friday, workers at an orchard near Live Oak spotted Yeoman's green Toyota Tacoma truck On March 31, a Friday, workers at an orchard near Live Oak spotted Yeoman's truck. The green 1998 Toyota Tacoma was parked and covered with mud. Apparently not realizing the connection to the suspicious disappearance the prior evening, the workers didn't report the truck to police until the following Monday. Police confirmed the truck was Yeoman's and found the young woman's cell phone in nearby as well. Tracking dogs were used to search the area, but did not lead investigators to the body. The day after the discovery of the truck, police and FBI investigators were seen searching the house in Yuba City where Yeoman was last seen alive. Concerned friends said that her disappearance was 'really worrying' and 'not like her' at all The orchard where the truck and phone were found are near Pennington Road, which leads directly to the recreation area on the Feather River where Yeoman's body was found on Sunday. The gruesome discovery sparked an outpouring of sympathy and support on a Facebook page devoted to finding justice for Yeoman. 'I'm sending my prayers up for your family,' wrote Stephanie Kelley. 'I hope they get answers so your momma and daddy can be at peace and heal.' Anyone with information regarding the case is urged to call the Sutter County Sheriffs Office at 530-822-7307. Seamus Ruddy (pictured) was abducted in Paris in 1985 when he was 32 A search team has today confirmed human remains found in a French forest are those of 'Disappeared' republican murder victim Seamus Ruddy. Mr Ruddy, from Newry, Co Down, was 32 when he was abducted in Paris, killed and buried by the republican paramilitary group the INLA in 1985. The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR) has now confirmed that it was his body they found at Pont-de-lArche near Rouen in northern France. Experts began a fresh search of the area last week and his sister Anne Morgan visited the site just hours before the discovery. Ms Morgan said the family 'is all together' after it was revealed the remains found in France were those of her brother. She told BBC Radio Ulster: 'As the family are getting older it is more poignant now we are able to bring him home and at least we will have some sort of closure. 'At this time it becomes a very personal family journey but we are prepared for this and we are all together for this. A search team examining French forest land for the body of 'Disappeared' republican murder victim Seamus Ruddy found human remains 'Those 32 years were the longest years that we had to wait for this, the next few weeks won't be as bad.' She added: 'We waited all these years to get this news and now, inside a minute, life has changed once again for us.' And remarkably, Ms Morgan yesterday claimed she knew the names of the people who killed her brother. She told the BBC: 'The men who killed our Seamus are still alive. There are two of them still alive. We know that. We know their names. 'They are getting on with their lives. They've got families, they've got connections and they've got their lives together.' An ICLVR statement said: 'The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains has announced that the French authorities have completed the DNA profiling of the remains recovered from a forest at Pont-de-l'Arche, near Rouen. 'The remains have been confirmed as those of Seamus Ruddy. The remains will be repatriated in due course.' Following the discovery last week, a post-mortem examination and formal identification was due to be undertaken in conjunction with the French authorities. The sisters of Seamus Ruddy - Anne Morgan - who visited the site hours before the discovery - Patsy McAteer and Molly Carr THE HUMAN COST OF NORTHERN IRELAND'S TROUBLES The 'Disappeared' refers to the 17 people who are believed to have been abducted, murdered and secretly buried during Northern Ireland's Troubles. Beginning in the late 1960s, the Troubles are generally thought to have ended with 1998's Good Friday Agreement. The conflict was a political one with the main issue being the status of Northern Ireland and whether it should remain within the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland. But the Troubles also had a sectarian aspect as the Irish Republicans were mostly Catholic and the Unionists mostly Ulster Protestants. More than 3,500 people were killed in three decades of violence. Following the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA admitted in 1999 that it murdered and hid the bodies of nine of the 16 Disappeared. The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains leads the search for the bodies. Advertisement The ICLVR was set up during the peace process by the UK and Irish governments to recover the bodies of those murdered and secretly buried, mainly by the IRA, in the 1970s and 1980s. There had been three previous searches in the forest area for Mr Ruddy, the most recent by the ICLVR in 2008. The commission's experts, who require those with knowledge of the crimes to come forward and provide information without fear of prosecution, were confident the guidance they were acting on this time was accurate. The latest announcement means three Disappeared victims are still yet to be recovered. The commission was originally tasked to find 16 murder victims. The remains of Columba McVeigh, Joe Lynskey and Robert Nairac have yet to be found. Sinn Fein's Mickey Brady, a childhood friend of Mr Ruddy, said his thoughts were with his family. An heir accused of slaughtering his wealthy family in their beds with an axe WhatsApp-ed and phoned his girlfriend shortly after their murders to report an emergency at their home. Henri Van Breda contacted Bianca Van der Westhuizen from his family's Cape Town property as it was strewn with the bodies of his dead and dying loved ones. The 21-year-old denies butchering his parents and siblings in their bedrooms during a frenzied attack two years ago. If found not guilty he stands to inherit millions amassed by his parents' property empire while they were living in Australia. Henri Van Breda, 21 (left), is accused of killing his family with an axe in January 2015. Shortly after the murders, he called and messaged Bianca Van der Westhuizen (right) Ms Van der Westhuizen denied being Van Breda's girlfriend, saying the pair only met as friends, and told a court in Cape Town that she had no idea why he would have called her He claims he phoned Miss Van der Westhuizen as he didnt know how else to raise the alarm. Police photos from the scene which were previously shown to the court show a list of emergency contacts pinned to the family fridge. The blonde university student told Cape Town's high court that she and Van Breda had known one another for only a couple of weeks, and had gone out for an ice cream just hours before the killings in January 2015. She told prosecutor Susan Galloway she had no idea why he would have contacted her at 4.24am seeking help as they had only just been out together a few times as 'friends, she said. I am not sure why he called me. I assumed because he didnt have anyone else to call, she said, explaining she had not noticed the missed calls and messages for some time. She avoided eye contact with Van Breda, sitting behind his lawyers, as she gave her evidence. When asked about Marli the defendant's then-16-year-old sister who survived the bloodbath despite having her jugular vein slashed, she broke down. Speaking about Marli, Van Breda's then-16-year-old sister who survived the attack, Ms Van der Westhuizen broke down. The girls were pupils at the same school when the murders happened Ms Van der Westhuizen avoided eye contact with Van Breda as she gave evidence Wednesday The girls went to the same boarding school in the winelands outside Cape Town. The 20-year-old described the bond between Marli and Van Breda as the closest relationship in the family of five, adding that Van Breda had also admired his older brother, Rudi. Rudi died alongside his parents Martin and Theresa after sustaining several blows to the head with a 9lbs axe. Housekeeper Precious Myongane also gave evidence, telling the court the axe had been kept on a shelf behind the ironing board in the scullery at the familys home. When asked what it was used for she said 'I do not know because I never saw anybody using it'. She also identified a sharp kitchen knife as part of a set that had seen in a drawer, where the spoons were also kept. Van Breda was wounded on the arms, chest and torso with the knife - which he claims was being wielded by a mystery masked intruder. Mrs Myongane was probably the last person to see the family alive at their home on the high security De Zalze estate, and said there was nothing strange about the way they had acted as she swept and cleaned around them. Van Breda (far left) is accused of killing parents Martin (far right), Theresa (front right), brother Rudi (center) and attempting to kill sister Marli during a frenzied attack in January 2015 Van Breda claims a laughing masked intruder killed his family with this axe, before attacking him with the knife. He says he fought the intruder off and chased him from the house According to Van Breda's version of the gruesome slaying of his loved ones, they were all set upon by a masked intruder, as he watched helpless through a crack in the bathroom door. Then 19, he suffered only minor injuries as he single-handedly disarmed the ruthless killer, before chasing him out of the house. As he headed to the dock to take his seat this morning, he greeted his dead fathers brother, Andre Van Breda, who was the first prosecution witness of the day. Mr Van Breda, whose younger brother Martin was butchered as he rushed to defend Rudi, described how he and Henri had returned to the family home at 12 Goske Street after the killings to collect some clothes for Marli and confirm to police that nothing had been stolen during the intrusion, including cash. He told the court that of the family possessions gathered up by police, Henri had asked for an expensive bottle of imported whiskey and some red wine from his fathers collection. Van Breda denies three counts of murder, one of attempted murder and one of perverting the course of justice. Advertisement Victim: Friends of Evha Jannath allegedly told Drayton Manor staff she was in the water but only took it seriously when teachers backed them up, it has been claimed Drayton Manor staff initially refused to believe friends of Evha Jannath who told them she had been thrown from the Splash Canyon ride and vanished into its rapids, it was claimed today. Evha Jannath turned 11 just four days before the tragedy on the water ride during a school trip to the theme park in Staffordshire on Tuesday. A post circulating on Facebook yesterday claimed the Year Six pupil at Jameah Girls Academy (JGA) in Leicester had been in a six-seater circular dinghy with four friends when she stood up and was tipped out when the vessel hit a rock. The post source added that some teachers were in the following boat, but when the alarm was raised, park attendants did not believe her screaming friends, claiming it was impossible to fall from the vessels. The brother of a pupil who was in the boat added: My sister was saying that Evha stood up in the boat and looked like she was moving seats. Then she looked back and she was in the water. It happened in an instant. But she wasnt struggling - just lying motionless in the water. The other girls then started shouting for the guards who didnt believe them that she was in there. It is not known whether Evha could swim. A parent with a child on the trip said: 'The teachers came and said that the girl was missing that's when they took it seriously and stopped the ride and started looking'. Yesterday a mother told of how she warned Drayton Manor bosses about safety risks four years ago when her son fell from the same Splash Canyon water ride. Vikki Treacy said her son Patrick fell off the same ride in 2013 aged 10. He was pulled from the rapids by a member of the public and she had to go to tell staff. She said: 'I just don't think anything has been done since Patrick fell in. If it's that important not to stand then lap belts should be installed. It was an accident waiting to happen'. Police and safety officials are investigating how Evha was killed amid claims theme park staff were slow to react. Meanwhile Drayton Manor confirmed the park would be closed again on Thursday 'to allow the Health and Safety Executive to complete their work'. Victoria Treacy, 46, left, was terrified when her Patrick, 13, fell into the water on the Splash Canyon ride at Drayton Manor in August 2013, aged 10. She says Drayton Manor have failed to compensate her or rectify the safety features of the ride Victim: Evha Jannath pictured shopping for clothes at the Bullring in Birmingham last Tuesday - a week before she died This aerial view of the Splash Canyon ride shows the attraction deserted bar a few officials following the park's closure today The girl sustained serious injuries after falling into the water from the ride and was airlifted to hospital but sadly died Mrs Treacy's family were on a day trip to the theme park from their home in Rugby. She told the BBC Radio 5 Live: 'When they came into view, Patrick half stood up still holding on and waved to me. The boat constantly collides with the side and shakes the boat. He was tipped out and went under the water. 'I panicked straight away and the woman next to me jumped over two fences and managed to get him to safety and back to me. He was really traumatised and shaken up. 'As I was watching another family came round the children were knocked out of the seat. 'Patrick was lucky where he fell because he was in view and could stand up, but had it been somewhere else, we would not have seen it and it could have been worse'. She added: 'I was told the manager would ring me the following morning first thing, but it got to about midday and I'd had no phone call, I ended up ringing the manager myself and he wasn't even aware of my situation. 'I don't think my incident was taken seriously at all. It just seemed to be, "your child was standing up, there you go, that's what happens".' Drayton Manor has been closed out of respect today as the Health and Safety Executive investigate what happened Mrs Treacy sent a letter, pictured, to Drayton Manor detailing how her son Patrick thrown off a raft on Splash Canyon and 'completely submerged underwater for quite a few seconds' She was with her family on the raft ride and said a voice recording warning visitors not to stand on the boat was not enough to 'prevent a child falling from a ride' Drayton Manor said it would not discuss the ride's safety record. A spokesman said: 'We cannot comment during the ongoing investigation surrounding Splash Canyon other than to say the health and safety of our visitors is of paramount importance and we'd ask Vikki contacts us direct so that we can address her concerns'. A spokesman added: 'The tragic events on Tuesday have shaken the whole Drayton Manor family from the Board, through to staff and visitors. 'We would like to extend our thanks to the emergency services for everything they did yesterday. 'The park will be closed on Thursday, to allow the Health and Safety Executive to complete their work. 'Our thoughts are with the family and all those who have been affected by Tuesdays incident.' In the wake of Evha's death Thorpe Park in Surrey has shut down its similar Rumba Rapids water ride 'as a precaution'. Today one parent with a child on the same trip claims Drayton Manor's response to the disaster was too slow and believes there was no teacher from the Jameah Girls Academy in Leicester on Evha's boat. She told MailOnline: 'The kids started screaming and told the staff at the park that their friend has fallen in the water. There was four other girls on the same boat with the girl and the teacher's boat was behind'. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will now be examining whether human error - the cause of the Alton Towers crash - played a role in the tragedy and also whether the children were properly supervised. Tragedy: Miss Jannath, 11, is believed to have been standing up to change seats when she was knocked off the Splash Canyon ride and 'dragged under the water by the current' Evha attended the Jameah Girls Academy, a Muslim school in Leicester, which is also shut today and is helping investigation The investigation is being led by Staffordshire Police, who were examining the water ride and interviewing staff alongside the HSE today. Both the school and the theme park said they would not comment due to the ongoing investigations. The ride does not have harnesses, a measure sometimes deliberately adopted by theme parks on similar rides as a safety precaution in case boats were to capsize and leave riders trapped. The last picture of Evha shows her shopping for clothes at the Bullring in Birmingham as a birthday treat last Tuesday, MailOnline can reveal Her parents Suable and Nuran Jannath, who recently moved to the area from Hertfordshire, are being offered support by specialist police officers and Drayton Manor and Jameah Girls Academy in Leicester have been closed out of respect. Evha Jannath, who turned 11 last Friday, is believed to have been standing up to change seats when she was bumped out and into the water 'Yesterday our world was torn apart by the news that our daughter and sister Evha, had lost her life in tragic circumstances, following a school trip to Drayton Manor Park,' they said in statement. 'Evha was a beautiful little girl who was full of love and always smiling. Words cannot describe the pain and loss we feel, we are devastated that we will not see our beautiful little girl again'. Evha's distraught uncle Abdul Hadi said the family is bereft and said his niece picked out two shirts and two dresses during a birthday shopping trip to Birmingham on May 2 - exactly a week before her death. Speaking from Bangladesh he said: 'She is our Angel. She is the only daughter of my sister and she just turned 11 on the 5th of May. She was a very quiet and pretty girl.' Abdul explained that the majority of Evha's family live in Bangladesh and were talking to family in the UK, including Evha's mother Nuran, via video chat. He said: 'It's a very difficult time for my sister and our family. It's a critical situation. They live in the UK but the rest of our family live in Bangladesh. 'My niece last visited Bangladesh in 2009, she loved it and wanted to go back.' Drayton Manor has launched an investigation into Evha's death, including probing accusations that staff were not quick enough to respond. A spokesman for the park said: 'While we await the findings of the ongoing investigation we cannot comment further, other than to say we are all shocked and devastated and our thoughts are with her family and friends at this tremendously difficult time.' There are also questions for the school over claims that there was no teacher in the boat with her when she fell out. One teacher, who took her children on the same ride on he school's end of year trip, told MailOnline: 'We have never let children go on without a teacher, teaching assistant or parent helper. We make sure they sit and hold on throughout the splash trip'. One parent of a child on the ride with Miss Jannath, who attended a private Muslim girls' school in Leicester, said the boat with no teacher on board 'hit a rock' and she vanished in the rapids. She said: 'When the girl got up to change seats just then it hit a rock and she got knocked out of the boat and fell in the water and the water currents dragged her in. 'They couldn't see her after she fell in'. Evha suffered life-threatening injuries after plunging into the 5ft deep water and died shortly after being airlifted to Birmingham Children's Hospital. An older brother of a classmate also said: 'She came back in for the trip but she wasn't wearing the right clothes. It was sorted out and she went with everyone else. It's so tragic that she went then didn't come back'. Medics were desperately trying to save her life while she was being flown to hospital but she could not be revived. Much loved: Evha Jannath, who died after falling from the Splash Canyon ride at Drayton Manor theme park, had just turned 11 Shut down: Police, health and safety investigators and park officials survey the scene on the Splash Canyon ride today Probe: Drayton Manor has launched an investigation into Evha's death, including accusation that staff were not quick enough to respond Deserted: Drayton Manor theme park near Tamworth has been closed for today and it is unclear when it will reopen Drayton Manor, who are investigating the incident, announced the park would be closed today 'as a mark of respect to the family' Thorpe Park has shut its Rumba Rapids water ride (file picture) 'as a precaution' following Leicester schoolgirl's death A parent at the school, who asked not to be named, said her child witnessed the tragic incident. The brother of a pupil in the boat said: 'My sister was saying that Eva stood up in the boat and looked like she was moving seats. 'Then she looked back and she was in the water. It happened in an instant. But she wasn't struggling just lying motionless in the water. The other girls then started shouting for the guards who didn't believe them that she was in there'. Boy, 10, also thrown into water by bumpy ride, mother claims Vikki Treacy's son Paddy fell off the same ride as Evha in 2013 when he was ten, and was tall enough to ride alone with his cousin. The family were on a day trip to Drayton Manor from their home in Rugby. She told the BBC Radio 5 Live: 'When they came into view, Patrick half stood up still holding on and waved to me. The boat constantly collides with the side and shakes the boat. He was tipped out and went under the water. 'I panicked straight away and the woman next to me jumped over two fences and managed to get him to safety and back to me. He was really traumatised and shaken up. 'As I was watching another family came round the children were knocked out of the seat. 'Patrick was lucky where he fell because he was in view and could stand up, but had it been somewhere else, we would not have seen it and it could have been worse'. She added: 'I was told the manager would ring me the following morning first thing, but it got to about midday and I'd had no phone call, I ended up ringing the manager myself and he wasn't even aware of my situation. 'I don't think my incident was taken seriously at all. It just seemed to be, 'your child was standing up, there you go, that's what happens'.' Drayton Park said it would not discuss the ride's safety record. A spokesman said: 'We cannot comment during the ongoing investigation surrounding Splash Canyon other than to say the health and safety of our visitors is of paramount importance and we'd ask Vikki contacts us direct so that we can address her concerns'. Advertisement The teenager, who gave his name as Talha, added: 'For the past few days I don't think Eva had been going to school because she wasn't feeling well. 'She came back in today for the trip but she wasn't wearing the right clothes. It was sorted out and she went with everyone else. It's so tragic that she went then didn't come back. My sister was still in tears when I got home'. Floral tributes were left outside Evha's home last night but her mother was too upset to talk. Amina Sheikh, 34, who lives next door, claimed Evha lived with her mum after she had separated from her dad. She said: 'I have lived here for 20 years but Evha's family only moved in around a year ago. 'She is really really struggling bless her. She is in pieces. We live right next door and you can hear her wailing but that's not surprising, it's been a massive shock. 'She obviously wasn't even there at the time so it must have been a huge shock for her. My sister saw her only yesterday morning before the trip when she was going to the shop and they spoke then. 'She was a lovely, playful girl. A very good girl and very quiet. We could always hear her playing happily next door, it's a huge shame. 'Her mum went to see her body yesterday and she said there wasn't a scratch on her. We have been trying to help as much as we can. Taking food around and just trying to be there for them.' Her school is shut today. Erfana Bora, headteacher of Jameah Girls Academy, said: 'Yesterday, one of our children, Evha Jannath, passed away in tragic circumstances. 'She was a lovely, sweet-natured girl and she was loved by everyone at the school. As a school and as a community, we are trying to make sense of this terrible tragedy. 'Our thoughts and our prayers are with Evha's family at this most difficult time. We will be providing specialist support to our pupils and our staff, and we ask that they be given time to grieve and come to terms with our huge loss. Suleman Nagdi, from the Federation of Muslim Organisations, said: 'We expect the school to be open tomorrow. The family lives locally. We are providing support for the other children who were on the ride with her'. Zainab Mohammad, whose 16-year-old sister went on the trip, said the tight-knit school community had been left devastated by the tragedy. Speaking to reporters near the academy, the 26-year-old said: 'It's tragic. We don't know what the cause is but what we really want is for the family to be able to grieve. 'A family member has been ripped from their family and it's a big loss. Everybody is in utter shock, there are no words. 'I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of this.' Asked how her sister was coping after the death, Ms Mohammed added: 'She came home, she spoke to mum and dad and she just went upstairs. 'She was devastated. She didn't want to talk about it. Nobody knows what's happened, we can't speculate on what has happened.' Ms Zainab said: 'The school is not very big, everybody know each other. It's really sad for the kids'. Flowers have been placed outside the home of Evha Jannath in Leicester after her tragic death on a school trip yesterday Erfana Bora, headteacher at Jameiah Girls Academy in Leicester, paid tribute to her student alongside Suleman Nagdi, from the Federation of Muslim Organisations A note on the school gates, pictured, confirmed pupils were on a trip to the park that ended in tragic circumstances - it is shut today Staffordshire Police confirmed the girl's identity and are supporting her family. A police spokesman said: 'Evha sadly died after falling from a water ride at the theme park. She was recovered from the water and received advanced life support from ambulance crews before she was flown to Birmingham Children's Hospital where she later passed away. 'Evha was at the park as part of a school trip with the Jameah Girls Academy. 'A Health and Safety Executive investigation has now begun with the full support of Staffordshire Police. 'The family are being supported by specially trained officers. We would ask everyone to respect the family's right to grieve in private during this extremely difficult time. ' Keith Vaz, the Labour candidate for Leicester East where the school is located, said: 'We are all shocked and saddened by the tragic death of Evha. 'Our thoughts and prayers are with her family, friends and relatives.' Drayton Park director George Bryan looked visibly shaken as he spoke of the staff's 'shock and devastation' at the girl's death. The theme park announced on Twitter it would be closed tomorrow as a 'mark of respect to the family'. He said: 'We are all truly shocked and devastated, and our thoughts are with the family and friends at this horrendously difficult time.' He added: 'Further to the police statement which has been issued to yourself and your colleagues a few moments ago, it is with great sadness that we have to report that a young girl has passed away at Birmingham Children's Hospital following an incident at one of our rides this afternoon. 'Our staff were alerted that an 11-year-old girl had entered the water. 'Trained park staff were immediately on the scene attending to the patient and West Midlands Air Ambulance arrived and airlifted her to hospital.' The 2,300-per year Jameah Academy, for girls aged three to 11, had police stationed outside while the father of a pupil said the 'whole school' went on the trip. He said: 'All the girls had been looking forward to it. My daughter is in the year above the dead girl and is absolutely distraught. 'She was on another ride at the time and realised something was wrong only when she saw other girls in tears. Nobody knows how it happened. People want answers.' Witnesses captured the air ambulance flying above the park this afternoon, pictured left and right Park visitors were speculating online that the girl may have been standing up when she fell into the water. 'It was not known whether she drowned or was in some way injured or trapped under water. Park staff pulled her from the water. A teacher was believed to be on the ride or nearby and the Health and Safety Executive has confirmed it will be investigating the circumstances of the death. Park director George Bryan, pictured, was visibly shaken as he spoke of the 'shock and devastation' of the staff at the death The Leicester Muslims Association posted on Facebook: 'An 11 year old girl has passed away, from Leicester she studied at Jameah girls academy and went on school trip to Drayton manor. 'We humbly request all to make dua for her and may Allah grant her family sabr e Jamel ameen.' Meanwhile hundreds of mourners gathered for evening prayers at Jame Majid Mosque to pay tribute to the 11-year-old girl. A spokesman for the mosque, which is opposite the girl's school said: 'The young girl's death has shaken the community and we're all devastated. 'Obviously our thoughts are with the family after this heart breaking news. Her family sent her off to school in the morning expecting to hear about her amazing day at Drayton Manor but the unthinkable happened. 'When anyone dies it's a tragedy but when it's a child as young as she was it's just awful. 'All we can do now is pray for her family and hold them in our thoughts. 'It will be a painful wait to hear about exactly what happened following a police investigation because at the moment all we know is she fell, not how or why.' Superintendent Carl Ratcliffe, of Staffordshire Police, said: 'Specially-trained officers are supporting the girl's family at this difficult time. Our thoughts are very much with her family and friends following this tragic incident.' The helicopter was later seen arriving at Birmingham Children's Hospital, pictured The ride was cordoned off shortly after the incident, although much of the park remained open Splash Canyon was opened in 1993 and children are supposed to be supervised by adults while on the ride, according to safety guidelines A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said: 'On arrival, crews discovered a girl with serious injuries who had been rescued from the water by park staff. 'Ambulance staff administered advanced life support before she was flown to Birmingham Children's Hospital with the doctor continuing treatment en-route. 'Unfortunately, shortly after arrival at hospital the girl passed away.' A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police added: 'We can confirm the patient was on a school trip. 'A teacher must have either been inside the ride or in close proximity but that will be a matter for the HSE to investigate.' According to the park safety guidelines, adults are told to 'supervise' children near water rides including Splash Canyon, and water quality is continually assessed. Eyewitness Matt Mason, 44, said: 'I was on Splash Canyon just before the person who fell in. 'Didn't see it happen but was collecting my family photo when a lady came up to the collection booth to say that a girl had fallen in. 'She was pretty calm so we assumed it was nothing major. 'Shortly afterwards, police, fire and ambulances arrived and the ride and whole area was closed. 'No one seemed panicked over an hour later when we left.' Mother Jenny Mason, who had been on Splash Canyon moments before the accident, added: 'We were literally the last people off the ride before it happened. 'We were just collecting a photo and a lady came up and said a girl had fallen into the water. 'We thought it was all in hand and heard emergency services arrive.' Officers remain at the scene and investigations continue into how the incident happened The Splash Canyon ride (file picture) at Drayton Manor Theme Park in Staffordshire was closed The Health and Safety Executive tweeted it was investigating yesterday and said: 'HSE has been made aware of today's incident at #draytonmanor and making initial inquiries along with emergency services.' Witnesses reported that the air ambulance, police and fire units were on the scene - and a large area had been closed off, but some sections of the park were still open. Witness Graham Johnstone, 40, said: 'The first I knew something was wrong when I saw staff running over to the ride and turn people away. 'Minutes later an air ambulance appeared overhead. All you could hear was crying coming from the steps leading to the ride entrance. 'It was awful. Somebody said a little child had drowned but you just don't know. 'The emergency services were on the scene so quickly. I saw the air ambulance land but it didn't take off again. I just hope the kid was OK.' Fiona Fletcher, 28, from Burton upon Trent, Staffs, was at the park with her two young daughters. The air ambulance, police and several fire units arrived at Drayton Manor theme park She said: 'The first I heard of it was when a car came charging through clearing the path and then paramedics flew past. 'My kids and I had just got off the carousel ride and all we could hear were sirens. It really scared my daughters. 'The entrance to the Splash Canyon was probably a few hundred yards from where I was standing and there was clearly a huge commotion. 'I saw six fire engines, at least five police cars, four ambulances and two paramedic cars and an air ambulance. SPLASH CANYON: AT A GLANCE The Splash Canyon ride was opened in 1993 and consists of 21 boats holding six people each, with a maximum capacity of 126 guests. According to the description on the theme park's website, Splash Canyon is a 'fast-paced river rapid ride, where guests speed through the water in a dinghy'. The top speed of the ride is unknown, but river rapid rides in general can reach speeds of around 28mph. Minimum height restrictions are in place, and riders must be at least 0.9m (3ft) tall. Anyone under 1.1m (3ft 7in) must be accompanied by an adult. The Splash Canyon ride was opened in 1993 and consists of 21 boats holding six people each There are no seatbelts on the rafts, but guests are encouraged to hold on to a metal wheel found in the centre of the dinghies. Safety information on the ride on Drayton Manor's website said: 'There are two large lakes situated through the centre of the park and several rides expose guests to water. 'These are; the Splash Canyon, Storm Force 10, Pirate Adventure and the Drayton Queen. 'Children must be supervised where necessary. Continuous water quality monitoring is carried out by independent environmental engineers.' Guests who are pregnant or who have heart, back or neck problems are all banned from riding Splash Canyon. Director George Bryan is the grandson of the founder of the park, also George Bryan, who bought up 80 acres of wasteland in 1949. They turned the park - which is also home to the popular Thomasland based on Thomas the Tank Engine - into a family run business with a largely unblemished safety record. In 2000, an attendant was airlifted after an accident at the Black Revolver ride. In 2005, rollercoaster Shockwave broke down and 19 passengers were stranded for 30 minutes but left unhurt. And in 2012, a mother-of-two died of a heart attack after coming off the Maelstrom ride. The incident happened on the Splash Canyon river rapid ride, pictured Following the Alton Towers accident in 2015, the park defended its safety procedures and said its rides underwent a 'rigorous' daily inspection. David Bromilow, Drayton Manor's operations manager said: 'The health and safety of our visitors is of paramount importance. 'All of our rides comply with health and safety requirements for safe operation, maintenance and inspection processes. In addition, each ride has specific risk assessments to ensure that these processes are current.' He added: 'As well as the daily assessment and testing, all rides are verified regularly by independent inspectors in compliance with the HSE guidelines for safe operation. 'As an industry, we have an enviable health and safety record in the UK and it is standard practice to be meticulous where testing is concerned.' Advertisement 'They put metal barriers up around the whole area so no one could get in. It was a quiet day - there was only a few hundred in the park. 'During the day I saw a couple of big groups of children but I couldn't say where they were from. 'I overheard the staff saying 'don't tell anyone yet' and were hurrying people away. 'They just flooded the area with staff ushering people away from the scene. Everyone just looked confused and were asking questions.' Shocked visitors told how they heard crying and screaming coming from the ride's entrance West Midlands Ambulance Service paramedics were called to the theme park at 2.18pm She added: 'I have two young girls, aged three and two, who were on their first visit. We were sat on a bench to calm down but they were still not happy. 'When I saw an ambulance charge out of the barriers with sirens blaring I realised I had to leave. 'Slowly people were wandering away so there was no charge for the gates.' Stephen Brook, a taxi driver from Armitage near Lichfield, was working in Birmingham when he saw the air ambulance bringing the girl to the hospital and filmed this footage. He said: 'I was just outside the hospital when I saw the air ambulance coming in. 'I obviously didn't know the details at the time but found out quickly afterwards that it was carrying the child involved in the Drayton Manor accident.' Safety information on the ride on Drayton Manor's website said: 'There are two large lakes situated through the centre of the park and several rides expose guests to water. 'These are; the Splash Canyon, Storm Force 10, Pirate Adventure and the Drayton Queen. 'Children must be supervised where necessary. Continuous water quality monitoring is carried out by independent environmental engineers.' FOUR DIED IN RIVER RAPID TRAGEDY IN AUSTRALIA Four people were killed in another river rapid ride disaster in Australia last October. Canberra woman Kate Goodchild, 32, her brother Luke Dorsett, 35, his partner Roozi Araghi, 38, and New Zealand woman Cindy Low, 42 died after their raft flipped. Two were thrown onto the conveyor belt and crushed to death while the others drowned after plunging into the water. Four people died after a malfunction on the Thunder Rapids ride at Dreamworld in Queensland, Australia, last October, when a dinghy flipped over, pictured Siblings Kim Goodchild (left) and Luke Dorsett (right) were victims of the Dreamworld tragedy New Zealand woman Cindy Low (left) was among those who died in the horror accident, along with Roozi Araghi (right) The incident occurred after the raft collided with an empty vessel and flipped over. A 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, who were in the raft with their mothers were thrown clear and managed to escape. The ride had passed its annual mechanical and structural safety engineering inspection just four weeks earlier. Advertisement Height restrictions are also in place, with a minimum height of 3ft and anyone under 3.6ft must be accompanied by an adult. Some previous visitors to the park said they were worried about Splash Canyon due to it previously breaking down. Author Ann Bowyer, 37, is a season ticket holder and was visiting the park with her husband Craig, 37, two sons, Zack, 8, and Joe, 18 and two younger sisters two weeks ago when she said the ride experienced mechanical problems. She said: 'I'm disabled so I get a queue jump pass, we went straight to the front but something felt weird. 'The ride had stopped and the turntables the boats sit on was not moving. They told us to get onto the boat. 'About 30 seconds later nothing was happening and they asked us to step out of the boat. There we three staff there and they were quite young. 'The boats were starting to build up behind each other but after 5 minutes we we told to get back onto the ride. 'We eventually went round the ride with no problems but as we got off the ride did stop again. 'We visited the park again on Sunday but didn't use the Splash Canyon ride because we have lost faith and didn't want to get stuck on it. She added: 'It's terrible news and you just can't help but think it could of been mine.' Visitors to the park spoke of their shock and confusion on social media earlier when the ride was initially closed. David Charles tweeted: 'Air ambulance, police and several fire units here at Drayton Manor. Large area now closed off. Not sure what's going on.' Witnesses reported that a large area of the park in Staffordshire had been closed off Drayton Manor said Splash Canyon had been 'closed following an incident this afternoon' Meanwhile Oonagh Law said on the theme park's Facebook page: 'Should have checked this ride Sunday. The carriages were getting stuck when we were on it.' Eileen Heath added: 'I seen two fire engines ambulances and helicopter go there.' Anne Bowyer tweeted: 'Hope she recovers, it kept breaking down a few weeks back, told to get on, then get off it. Happened to a few people. Positive vibes to the girl.' And Martin Blake said: 'Emergency services everywhere in Drayton Manor. Half of the park is closed now.' A spokesman for Drayton Manor said: 'The Splash Canyon ride has been closed following an incident this afternoon. 'Emergency services are at the scene and our fully trained park staff are assisting.' A West Midlands Ambulance spokesman said: 'West Midlands Ambulance Service can confirm it was called to reports of a patient in the water at Drayton Manor Park, Tamworth, at 2.18pm this afternoon. 'An ambulance, a senior paramedic officer, a paramedic area support officer, a rapid response paramedic, a community first responder and the Midlands Air Ambulance from Staffordshire were sent to the scene. The first resource was on scene within seven minutes.' Drayton Manor theme park in Staffordshire is visited by about 1.5million people each year Some people took to Twitter and said the ride was a 'disaster waiting to happen' A spokesman for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service confirmed they attended the incident yesterday. The spokesman said: 'The Service were called to the Splash Canyon area of the park at around 2.20pm today after it was reported a person had fallen into the water from the ride. 'The first appliance from Tamworth arrived just before 2.35pm, followed by the water rescue unit from Tamworth, and appliances from Lichfield and Erdington.' The Splash Canyon ride was opened in 1993 and consists of 21 boats holding six people each. The minimum height for people is 0.9m (3ft). Anyone under 1.1m (3ft 7in) must be accompanied by an adult. The theme park website says: 'Hold on tight and experience Drayton Manor Park's very own river rapids. Swerve around corners, splash through the waves, and get soaked as your boat is swept along our fast-flowing rapids. 'No two experiences are ever the same, so grab your friends and family, climb on board one of our circular boats, and get ready for a wild ride through the water! 'You'll feel like you're in the middle of the jungle as you speed, bounce, and splash your way around our river, past other rides and through the trees, experiencing the most unpredictable and thrilling of river rapid rides. It's called Splash Canyon for a reason.' A Kansas City man is being held by federal authorities over passport fraud after he returned from Egypt where he was arrested and is now suspected of 'jihadist activities'. Isse Aweis Mohamud, 21, was first reported missing to authorities on April 25 by his family who expressed concerns about why they believed Mohamud left, The Kansas City Star reported. They claimed he 'wiped clean' his internet history on several electronic devices and had cordoned off an area inside their home where he was heard several times conversing with unknown people, the newspaper reported. His family members told FBI counterterrorism agents they were worried that he traveled overseas to 'engage in jihadist activities', a federal prosecutor said during a court appearance for Mohamud who was arrested after he returned from Egypt last week. 'They were concerned that he'd traveled to Iraq to fight with the fighters and to engage in terrorist activities,' the agent said in court. Isse Aweis Mohamud (above), 21, is being held by federal authorities over passport fraud after he returned from Egypt where he was arrested and is now suspected of 'jihadist activities' Mohamud, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Somalia, was charged with a single count of passport fraud in U.S. District Court and is being held by federal authorities in the Kansas City area. 'There is much more to this story than the complaint would indicate on its face,' Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin said in an initial court appearance Friday. 'There are serious questions about what in God's name this defendant was doing leaving his family without notice and his job without notice in the middle of the day and flying to Egypt.' The charge comes after authorities say Mohamud lied on his passport application saying that he intended to fly to Canada in January, but did not. A travel itinerary for a round-trip flight departing February 8 and returning one week later from Kansas City to Vancouver, Canada was attached to his passport application, the Star reported. However, he never got on the plane, according to the affidavit, and months later he flew to Egypt on April 25 without informing his employer or family. Not long after he arrived, he was detained by Egyptian authorities at a hotel until FBI employees arrived to interview him. The cab driver who took Mohamud to the airport was also questioned by the FBI and said that the 21-year-old shared he was going to stay in Egypt for three months. The driver said he thought it was odd since Mohamud only had a small backpack. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin said in court there are serious questions about why he was in Egypt and left his family A travel agent also told agents that Mohamud was 'acting suspiciously and the government should consider revoking his passport,' the Star reported. Plus, a resident in Kansas City who has not been publicly named told FBI agents that Mohamud tried to convert him and called him 'the most radical Muslim he has ever met,' the agent testified in court. It's unclear why Mohamud was detained by Egyptian authorities, but he was questioned by the FBI in Cairo on May 1. Mohamud allegedly told agents there that he traveled to Eygpt to meet the 'strangers.' The agent testified in court that the word is sometimes used to reference people who travel from other countries to fight with the Islamic State group. In addition, the agent said investigators found a 2014 conversation they believe is linked to Mohamud on a Facebook account. Mohamud allegedly said in the conversation that he wanted to travel to Syria to be a sniper and join the Syrian Mujaheddin, the agent testified. The 21-year-old flew back to America on Thursday and was met by FBI agents in New York. Federal prosecutors told Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah W. Hays in court Tuesday that he should be detained. They claimed he is a flight risk and a danger to the community. Mohamud's attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Carie Allen, argued that he is not a terrorist or a danger to the community. She said he is doesn't have a driver's license or car, and is willing to surrender his passport. Hays said she would take the case under advisement and deliver a decision by Wednesday. Thomas Siggers, 22, from Welling in south east London, raided the home of his grandfather Barrie and grandmother Linda A callous thief burgled his own grandparents while they were on holiday celebrating their 51st wedding anniversary. Thomas Siggers, 22, from Welling in south east London, raided the home of his grandfather Barrie, 71, and grandmother Linda, 72, stealing cash, jewellery and both of their cards - including a 20,000 Land Rover. He even left his grandfather house-bound after one of the cars had his wheelchair in. Siggers was sentenced to four years in prison for the raid after admitting a string of crimes including theft, burglary, handling stolen goods and taking a vehicle and driving while disqualified, at Inner London Crown Court. After the trial, his devastated grandmother, said the family had been 'ripped apart' by the crime, reports the Evening Standard. She said: 'How could he do this to our own family it's still hard to believe this happened. Thomas is my grandson and he has ripped the family apart by what happened.' Siggers had targeted his family's house while they were enjoying a trip to Spain last September. He stole 700 in cash, 100 of winning scratchcards and 1,000 that had been kept in a jar. The thief also swiped 3,000 euros the couple had kept under their mattress. After picking up the cash he then took mobiles phones, an iPad, an assortment of jewellery and couple's Land Rover and Ford Focus cars. After the trial, his devastated grandmother Linda, 72, said the family had been 'ripped apart' by the crime, reports the Evening Standard . Pictured, Linda with her husband Barrie He sold the Land Rover for 1,000 for scrap. Siggers' trial heard he had been homeless since falling out with his stepfather when he was 14 which had led him to becoming a cocaine and cannabis addict. Shuaib Saeed, defending, said his client owed 1,500 to drug dealers. Siggers was also banned from driving for three years. Theresa May today poured scorn over Jeremy Corbyn's hints Labour would scrap university tuition fees if elected - demanding to know how they would fund the expensive pledge. The Prime Minister said Labour governments 'wreck' the economy, leaving less money to pay for education. And she confirmed the 9,250-a-year fees will 'remain' under a Tory government. Labour are expected to promise to scrap the fees when they unveil their manifesto next week. But the move would leave a huge black hole in university funding - raising the prospect that Labour will clobber Britain with more tax rises to bankroll the policy. Theresa May, pictured talking to a marketing group in Scunthorpe today, demanded to know where Labour would find the money to fund their pledge to scrap tuition fees The PM, pictured today speaking to workers in Mansfield, said Labour would 'wreck' the economy if they got into power on June 8 The PM takes a break from her stump speeches to enjoy a cup of tea while visiting British Steel in Scunthorpe today During a visit to a printers in Mansfield, Mrs May said: 'Those tuition fees will remain and the question you have to ask the Labour party is how would they actually pay for all of this that they are proposing? 'Because what we have seen from Labour governments in the past is that they wreck the economy. 'If you wreck the economy then you aren't able to support students.' Labour has already threatened to hike corporation tax to 26 per cent in what has been described by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies as one of the biggest tax rises in 30 years. And their economic credibility has taken a battering after it emerged that the money raised through the proposed tax rise has already been spent on 12 policy announcements. Mr Corbyn and his shadow cabinet have hinted heavily that they will promise to scrap the fees. Corbyn, pictured with students in Leeds today, has hinted he will scrap tuition fees If Corbyn, pictured on the Labour battle bus in Leeds yesterday, does scrap fees universities would have to plug the gaping hole in funding- raising the prospect of tax hikes Speaking at the party's education policy launch in Leeds today, Mr Corbyn said he is carrying 'some stuff in my pocket' on university tuition fees but the plans would be revealed in the party's manifesto next week. While shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said she 'didn't want to give too much of the manifesto away' - having earlier said voters should 'watch this space' on fees. Theresa May dodges questions over whether she is middle class or upper class -and pledges to stand up for 'ordinary' Brits Theresa May today dodged questions over whether she would describe herself as middle class or upper class - as she insisted she will stand up for 'ordinary working families'. The PM - a vicar's daughter from Oxfordshire - said she wants to create a country where it 'doesn't matter what background you come from' and hard work pays off. She was challenged about her social status after Lib Dem leader Tim Farron suggested he is the only party leader with working class roots. Speaking at a campaign event in Mansfield the PM was asked if she is middle class or upper class. She replied: 'I'll tell you what I am, I'm somebody who is here to work for ordinary working families. 'I want to make sure that it doesn't matter what background you come from, it's up to you, your talents and your hard work as to how far you go in life. 'And we want to create a better future for everyone across the country.' Insisting the party can win in former mining towns, she added: 'This isn't about who people have voted for before. 'It's about who they believe will be able to conduct the strongest negotiations and get the best possible deal for Britain from Europe because that matters to people in Mansfield, across Nottinghamshire and across the whole of the Midlands.' Advertisement Meanwhile, a video clip of John McDonnell emerged online showed the shadow chancellor promising to scrap the fees during a stump speech in Mansfield at the end of April. In the clip, posted on Youtube, he said: 'We've always believed as a movement that education is a gift from one generation to another. 'It's not a commodity to be bought and sold. So we want to introduce just as the Atlee government with Nye Bevan introduced the National Health Service we want to introduce a national education service. 'Free at the point of need throughout life. And that means ending the cuts in the schools at primary and secondary level. It means free childcare. It means free school training when you need it throughout life. 'And yes it means scrapping tuition fees once and for all so we don't burden our kids with debt for the future.' Tory councillor Robert Davies (above) has been condemned by his own party after tweets emerged in which he posted pictures of colonial-era Africans together with references to 'spears' and 'loin cloths' A Tory councillor has been condemned by his own party after tweets emerged in which he posted pictures of colonial-era Africans together with references to 'spears' and 'loin cloths'. In one of the highly offensive tweets, newly elected Robert Davies posted an archive picture of black people waiting next to a cargo plane with the caption: 'In the interests of security keep your loin cloths with you at all times. Spears go in the overhead locker.' The Scottish Conservative party today said the tweets were 'completely unacceptable' and Cllr Davies had been warned about his future conduct. Cllr Davies, who was elected to Stirling Council on May 4, posted three of the messages in 2013 and a further tweet in 2016. Stirling University student Cameron Archibald revealed the tweets today. On June 8, 2013, Mr Davies posted three tweets which all featured black and white images. The Scottish Conservative party today said the tweets (one of which is pictured above) were 'completely unacceptable' and Cllr Davies had been warned about his future conduct Cllr Davies, who was elected to Stirling Council on May 4, posted three of the messages in 2013 (one of them, pictured) and a further tweet in 2016 The first one features a crowd of black people standing in front of an aeroplane and is captioned: 'In the interests of security keep your loin cloths with you at all times. Spears go in the overhead locker.' The second shows a large crowd of black men looking upwards and Mr Davies has written: 'No, I am not your lunch. I am your flight attendant.' Meanwhile, the third picture shows white people standing in front of what appear to be hay bales with a crowd of black people nearby and is captioned: 'It's going to be sodding difficult getting this lot into those tiny plastic meal trays.' On December 1, 2016, he used one of the same images of the crowd in front of the plane but this time captioned it: 'Ah, the good old days before allocated seats and not having to put spears in the hold.' Mr Davies's Twitter account now appears to have been deleted. (Above, another of his offensive tweets) On December 1, 2016, Cllr Davies used one of the same images of the crowd in front of the plane but with a different caption (above). A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said: 'These are completely unacceptable remarks which the Scottish Conservatives strongly condemn' Mr Davies's Twitter account now appears to have been deleted. Twitter users were quick to react to the shocking tweets. Neil Ross wrote: 'Something ought to be done about them. Can we have power of recall for councillors too? David McLean commented: 'I can't even begin to list how offensive this is.' Whilst Olwen added: 'Those are disgusting.' Twitter users were quick to react to the shocking, racist tweets A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said: 'These are completely unacceptable remarks which the Scottish Conservatives strongly condemn. 'The individual involved accepts this was wrong, apologises for any upset caused, and has been warned severely by the party about his future conduct.' A Stirling Council spokeswoman said: 'Stirling Council is committed to fairness, dignity and respect for all who live in, work in and visit the Stirling area and that commitment extends to our wider society. 'We utterly condemn any words, deeds or behaviours which contradict these values.' An ex-cop has filed a lawsuit against a West Virginia city claiming that he was wrongfully terminated after he refused to shoot a suicidal man. Stephen Mader, 26, responded to a domestic incident last May and found himself in a confrontation with armed man, Ronald 'RJ' Williams, who was begging Mader to kill him. 'Just shoot me,' Williams pleaded, but Mader used what he learned in the Marines and the police academy to assess the situation - and refused to shoot. During the incident last year, Mader said he noticed Williams had a gun 'but it was not pointed' at him. Mader said the gun was by the man's side and pointing to the ground. Ex-West Virginia cop, Stephen Mader (left), 26, filed a lawsuit against the city of Weirton claiming he was wrongfully terminated after he refused to shoot suicidal man, Ronald Williams (right), 23, last year Two other responding officers arrived at the scene and one officer fatally shot Williams. Investigators later found his gun was unloaded. Mader was fired shortly after the incident. On Wednesday, Mader filed the lawsuit against the city of Weirton claiming that he was w rongfully terminated, that his constitutional rights were violated and that the city thereafter 'engaged in a pattern of retaliation designed to destroy' his reputation, according to NBC News. Mader's attorney, Timothy O'Brien, along with the ACLU of West Virginia, filed the suit on Mader's behalf. O'Brien said the city's decision to fire Mader 'because he chose not to shoot and kill a fellow citizen, when he believed that he should not use such force, not only violates the Constitution, common sense and public policy, but incredibly punishes restraint' He went on to add that Mader's restraint in the incident 'should be praised not penalized' because of the 'far too frequent unnecessary use of deadly force' in today's society. During the incident last year, Mader said he saw that Williams had a gun 'but it was not pointed' at him. Mader said the gun was by the man's side and pointing to the ground 'To tell a police officer, when in doubt either shoot to kill, or get fired, is a choice that no police officer should ever have to make and is a message that is wrong and should never be sent,' O'Brien said. Weirton City Manager Travis Blosser told NBC on Tuesday that the city hadn't seen a copy of the lawsuit or been made aware of any allegations made in it. Mader had only been working with the Weirton Police Department 10 months when the incident took place. He said instead of shooting Williams he tried using his calm voice urging the 23-year-old, of Pittsburgh, to put the weapon down while standing behind the man's car. 'I told him, "Put down the gun," and he's like, "Just shoot me." And I told him, "I'm not going to shoot you brother."' Mader said Williams started flicking his wrist to try and get a reaction but still he didn't shoot. 'I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop situation.' But before he could, two other Weirton officers arrived on the scene. When Williams walked towards them and brandished his weapon which was later discovered to be unloaded one fatally shot him. An investigation by West Virginia State Police concluded the shooting was justified. But the case was handled questionably by the local police department, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The newspaper reported that Williams was not identified for three days after the shooting. And the case was assigned to an investigator who immediately went on a week-long vacation. Weeks after Mader returned to work following the usual leave after an officer-involved shooting, he was told to meet Weirton Police Chief Rob Alexander. Alexander told him that he was being placed on administrative leave pending an investigation because he 'put two other officers in danger'. Mader said: 'Right then, I said to him: Look, I didn't shoot him because he said, "Just shoot me."' But on June 7, he was handed a notice of termination saying that he had 'failed to eliminate a threat'. It also mentioned other incidents in which the city deemed Mader behaved inadequately. Two other responding officers arrived at the scene and one officer fatally shot Williams, whose gun turned out to be unloaded. Mader (pictured serving in the Marines) was fired shortly after the incident One was because neither he nor two other officers with more experience than him (the same two involved in the Williams case) reported an elderly woman's death as suspicious after she appeared to have fallen in her home after suffering a stroke. Another was a complaint from a woman who said Mader cursed at her when she asked why her husband was arrested for disorderly conduct after receiving a parking ticket. Mader insisted he did nothing wrong in either situation, but was never given an opportunity to clarify what happened. He also said he was outraged that at a press conference on June 8 after he was fired Alexander told reporters that all three officers involved were back at work. He believes the chief said so to give a good impression of the police department and the officers, who are all white, involved in the case in light of the tensions across the country between the black community and police. Mader believes the other two officers were justified in shooting Williams, adding: 'They did not have the information I did.' Weeks after taking the usual leave following an officer-involved shooting, Mader said he was told to meet police chief Rob Alexander (pictured), who placed him on administrative leave pending an investigation because he 'put two other officers in danger' He added: 'All they know is [Williams] is waving a gun at them. It's a shame it happened the way it did, but, I don't think they did anything wrong.' Williams' family; however, believe the decision to fire Mader shows the nature of the police department's policy. 'Not only do they think he should have been shot and killed, but shot and killed more quickly, an attorney for the family told the Post-Gazette at the time. Mader grew up in Weirton and was ecstatic to land a job in the police department after four years in the Marines, which included a tour of Afghanistan. He married his high school sweetheart Kaycie Mader six years ago and the couple have two sons, aged two and four. Mader was excited for the challenge after getting a job with the police department, which paid just $34,000 in the first year. Since he was fired, he has been working with the West Virginia National Guard. Last year, Mader sought legal help to fight the city's decision only to be told there was no point because he could be fired for any reason in an 'at-will' state. They told him he could ask to resign instead of being terminated, but Mader refused to admit wrongdoing. 'To resign and admit I did something wrong here would have ate at me. I think I'm right in what I did.' His wife agrees, saying she is 'extremely proud of her husband'. 'I'm proud that he noticed what the situation really was and didn't shoot, I'm proud that he's standing his ground, and I'm proud that his side of the story is finally out,' she said on Facebook. Police in Florida have released a dramatic video showing Good Samaritans desperately trying to save an elderly father and daughter after their minivan drove off of a jetty and sank, killing both of the vehicles occupants. The accident took place at around 4.20pm Monday when officers with the Venice Police Department responded to reports of a vehicle that drove off the South Jetty and into the waterway. Callers told 911 dispatchers there were two people inside the white the 2006 Dodge Caravan and that the vehicle was slowly taking on water. Freak accident: This white 2006 Dodge Caravan drove off the South Jetty in Venice, Florida, Monday and sank, taking the lives of an elderly father and daughter Valiant efforts: Several bystanders jumped in the water to try and extract the trapped occupants from the doomed minivan Desperate attempt: One would-be rescuer used a hammer to break the rear window, but the occupants were unable to escape Venice Police Officer Paul Watson, who was in the area, and multiple civilians jumped into the water and rushed to the sinking vehicle to try and rescue it occupants, later identified as 88-year-old Eugene Hayden and his 64-year-old daughter, Carol. The Venice Marine Patrol arrived on scene as the pairs minivan completely submerged into the Venice Inlet. According to police, before it ended up in the water, the minivan slammed into a park bench, stopped, backed up and then continued forward, eventually driving over the rocks. Rescuers weathered strong winds and a powerful tidal current in a desperate attempt to extract the father and daughter from their doomed vehicle, but they were unable to get to them in time. Double loss: The victims have been identified as 88-year-old Eugene Hayden (left) and his 64-year-old daughter, Carol (right) One of the heroic Good Samaritans who rushed to the Haydens' aid, Tim Cobb, described the woman and her father as 'frozen in fear' inside their sinking van,' but he told Fox 13 News they did everything they could to try and make it out alive. In the cellphone video recorded by a witness and shared on Facebook by police, Cobb can be seen diving from a passing boat into the water and swimming towards the vehicle to join other rescuers, one of whom was using a hammer to smash the rear window. At one point, Cobb, an experienced swimmer, says he made eye contact with Eugene Hayden and noted that the man was pulling on the door handle, trying to open it, but it would not budge. Rescuers weathered strong winds and a powerful tidal current in a desperate attempt to extract the father and daughter Trapped: A rescuer signaled the driver and passenger to roll down the windows, but they were unable to open them The man was in the front passenger seat and his daughter was behind the wheel. Cobb says his tried to signal them to roll down the windows, but they were unable to open them. Eventually, the Dodge became completely submerged and the outgoing tide pulled it out into the Gulf of Mexico. 'It felt like an hour by the time the van actually went down,' Cobb recalled. 'It was heart-wrenching. I really thought Id be able to do something to help.' Police divers were able to recover the doomed vehicle two hours later and activate the airbags to pull it out of the water, after which it was towed to Higel Marine Park for further investigation. Doomed: The outgoing tide pulled the Dodge out into the Gulf of Mexico Several minutes later, the minivan carrying the Hayden slipped beneath the surface of the water and completely disappeared from view Police divers were able to recover the vehicle two hours later and activate the airbags Mr Hayden and his daughter lived at the Village on the Isle Retirement Community, where their friends and neighbors remembered them as being very close and doing everything together. The Herald-Tribune reported that Joel Anderson, CEO of The Village, said during a press conference Wednesday that Carol Hayden was a 'free-spirited, fun-loving person' who had been with the community since 2008. Her father was known as the villages resident photographer and was active in the local church. Alicia Lockett, a Brainerd High School graduating senior, will be entering the career of education and attending Alabama A&M University. Her goal as an English teacher is to "educate students and inspire them to become confident and literate lifelong learners. At the Brainerd High School Senior Awards Banquet held on Monday, Ms. Lockett received two scholarships totaling $900 from local Kappa Kappa Iota Gamma Chapter members and the Psi State Tennessee Lucille Shugart Scholarship. Presenting the scholarship awards to Ms. Lockett were Sylvia Greene, Gamma Chapter Scholarship chair, and Christine Hockert, Gamma Chapter treasurer and second vice president of National Kappa Kappa Iota. Psi State TN received its charter on Feb. 11, 1967. Lucille Shugart was the first president and founder. The scholarship in her honor is awarded to high school seniors planning to enter the field of education. Judy McCready, president, Psi State Tennessee, said that she is proud to be a member of National Kappa Kappa Iota and the scholarship opportunities available for educators as well as for those who are entering the field of education. The purpose of this organization is to promote the advancement of education by providing an effective network for the exchange of education and teaching practices by educators. A chef who took cocaine and hit his head at a house party died after his friends failed to call 999 and drove him to a hospital instead, an inquest heard. Joel Symons, 24, had been at the gathering in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, with his friends when he suffered a fit and hit his head on a plug. His inquest heard that others at the party failed to alert the emergency services and instead loaded his lifeless body into a van. Judith Symons, his heartbroken mother, questioned why no one called the emergency services for her injured son. Joel Symons (pictured) had taken cocaine and ended up hitting his head at the house party in Hay-on-Wye, Wales Giving evidence to the inquest, his friend Jasmine Andrews, said he was 'on one' that day and was taking drugs. She said that after going to Mark Jones's house nearby, where friend Chris Carter was also sleeping on the sofa, Mr Symons began snorting more lines of the drug. She said: 'It was a lot more than I had seen him take in the past. He started mumbling and talking gibberish before he started fitting. 'I asked Mark, whose house it was, to ring an ambulance and he said no. I kept asking him to call an ambulance and Mark just kept refusing and asked me to dump him in the street.' The inquest heard Mr Symons was then put into the back of Mr Carter's vehicle and driven to Miss Andrews' boyfriend's home. Her boyfriend then drove Joel to hospital in Brecon, Powys - fifteen miles from Hay-on-Wye. She said it took about half an hour from Mr Symons' fitting to getting under way to the hospital, a journey which she said took 15 to 20 minutes. Joel was pronounced dead in the back of the car after nurses desperately attempted to give him CPR at Brecon War Memorial Hospital in February. Speaking to Miss Andrews, Mrs Symons said: 'I'm not blaming you for what Joel did that night. I'm blaming you for not making a phone call.' Mr Symons (pictured with his girlfriend) died after his friends drove him to a hospital 15 miles away She added: 'Any human being is quite capable of making a phone call. 'I am not saying you could have saved him, but if that had happened to somebody else, Joel would have made a phone call.' The inquest in Aberdare, Wales, heard Mr Symons suffered with cystic fibrosis and began heavily using cocaine when he became depressed. The hearing was told he had been arguing with girlfriend Bethan Sergeant on the day of his death. In a statement she told the court that he had previously attempted to take his own life twice. Post-mortem results showed he had extremely high levels of cocaine in his blood - 8.4mg per litre - which indicated heavy and excessive use. Senior coroner Andrew Barkley recorded a conclusion of drug related death. He said: 'It's not possible for me or anyone else to say whether any action by others may have prevented this tragedy from unfolding.' Mr Symons, of Hay-on-Wye, was described as 'loved by friends and family' after his death. Three people have been released on bail for supplying Class A drugs pending further enquiries. A 75-year-old man has committed suicide while police pounded on his door in search of his missing wife, leaving a note claiming he had killed her and buried her body in their back yard. Laurence Caulfield was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound on Tuesday night in the back yard of his Deltona, Florida home. A search for the body of his wife Gail Caulfield, also 75, is underway. Earlier on Tuesday, a female relative of the Caulfields in another state received a disturbing package in the mail, police said. In the package was a letter from Laurence Caulfield saying his wife had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, and that he'd been struggling to cope both physically and emotionally. Scroll down for videos Police investigators search the Caulfield property on Wednesday. Caulfield shot himself on Tuesday and left a suicide note saying his wife was buried in the back yard The package also contained the couple's will, life insurance policy, financial information and contact information for their doctors. The relative, deeply alarmed, called Florida police around 9.15pm on Tuesday, saying she hadn't spoken with the Caulfields in several months and describing the package she'd received. 'The way it's been written is a concern - a strong concern,' the worried relative told police. 'He also has guns in the house, and I'm concerned,' she said. Deputies with the Volusia County Sheriffs department were dispatched to the home right away, and found Laurence Caulfield at home. He told the cops that his wife did have Alzheimer's, and that she'd gone to stay with friends of the family in Kansas City. When deputies pressed him for her contact information, Caulfield said he didn't know, but that his daughter in New Jersey would. When the deputies called the daughter, she said she had no idea about her mother being in Kansas City. The daughter called her father Laurence Caulfield, who told her that her mother was asleep in their Florida home. Concern mounting, the deputies returned to the Caulfield residence and began pounding on the door at around 10.27pm. A gunshot rang out from the back of the house, and the deputies rushed to the back yard with weapons at the ready. On the ground, they found Laurence Caulfield with a gunshot wound and a gun lying at his side. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital at 11.30pm. When deputies searched the inside of the home for the missing wife, they found a a small stack of papers which included the note from Laurence Caulfield. The note claimed that he had killed his ailing wife and buried her in the backyard of their home. On Wednesday, sheriff's deputies and forensic teams were seen in the backyard of the home. A search for Gail Caulfield's body is underway. Conrad Hilton finally appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom on Wednesday, one day after he was due to be arraigned following his arrest this weekend for grand theft auto and violating a restraining order. The troubled 23-year-old put on a show for the gallery as well, calling a photographer 'so f***ing gay' and later informing the judge that he does 'not have sex with hookers.' That comment came shortly after the conditions of Conrad's bail were set, with the young heir being asked to hand over $90,000 before being released into the custody of his father. Conrad was also ordered to check into Menninger, a psychiatric hospital in Houston, for evaluation and so that professionals can diagnose his behavior. In video shot inside the courtroom, Conrad can be seen shaking his head and casting an annoyed gaze when the judge announces he will have to enter the hospital and that his father has been named his court-appointed custodian. Conrad appeared behind a set of bars for the bail hearing, with his lawyer Robert Shapiro standing in front of him inside the main area of the courtroom. Scroll down for video Loud and proud: Conrad Hilton appeared in court on Wednesday after refusing to leave his jail cell on Tuesday (above yelling at a photographer as lawyer Robert Shapiro stands in the foreground) Glare bear: Conrad shouted out a homophobic slur in court, calling a photographer 'so f***ing gay' Fun fact: Conrad later told the judge he 'does not have sex with hookers' when asked if he understood the conditions of his bail Charmer: Conrad also winked directly at the videographer (above) at one point during the proceedings Gathering storm: The judge then told Conrad to take the charges 'very seriously,' saying that the court was taking them 'very seriously.' The homophobic slur came while the judge was reading off some of the more specific details of Conrad's bail conditions, which seemed to be of little interest to the defendant. An amped-up Conrad could be seen making faces and looking around the courtroom during the judge's instructions, eventually directing his gaze at one photographer and mouthing 'so f***ing gay.' He then mouthed more vulgarities to no one in particular and later winked at the videographer who was taping the proceeding. The judge then told Conrad to take the charges 'very seriously,' saying that the court was taking them 'very seriously.' That is when Conrad stated: 'I will never your honor. I am sorry to the court and the entire state for disrespecting the court. I do not have sex with hookers and I'm sorry.' Conrad was released on $90,000 bail Conrad's family was already on hand at the Foltz Criminal Justice Center when he arrived for his appearance, with parents Rick and Kathy along with their youngest son Barron arriving a little after 10am to support Conrad in his latest legal battle. His two older sisters, Nicky and Paris, were not seen at the courthouse. Conrad not only stole a car and violated a restraining order taken out by an ex for the second time this past weekend, but also unleashed a verbal tirade filled with vulgarities as well as racial and homophobic slurs at officers. He also accused the officers of groping him during his arrest, and told the men: 'I'm Conrad motherf***ing Hilton, don't you forget it.' His parents and Shapiro were hoping that the court would order Conrad to check into a hospital so that his behavior can be diagnosed as a condition of his bail. New tactics: The Hiltons and Conrad's lawyer Robert Shapiro are hoping that the young man is ordered to enter a hospital for a diagnosis as a condition of his bail (Rick and Kathy Hilton above on Wednesday) Conrad was released into the custody of his father on $90,000 bail and ordered to enter Menninger, a psychiatric hospital in Houston (Barron and Kathy above) Back in black: Kathy Hilton and Barron (above) arriving at the Los Angeles courthouse on Wednesday Bus a move: Conrad refused to board a bus to the courthouse on two occasions Tuesday Familiar feeling: The Hilton family in court back in June 2015 (above) following Conrad's arrest on an international flight Conrad twice refused to leave his cell at Twin Towers jail on Tuesday and board the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department bus that was set to take him and other prisoners to the courthouse for their appearances. He did not manage to avoid being charged however despite his no-show, with the District Attorney's office announcing he is facing one felony count of driving or taking a vehicle without consent, two misdemeanor counts of disobeying a domestic relations restraining order and one misdemeanor count of contempt of court as a result of his conduct on May 6. Sheriff's deputies were unable to physically remove him from his cell and put him on a bus without a court order. Conrad wound up behind bars after he and a fried decided to steal a Bentley from the home of Rick Salomon on Saturday, using it to drive to the home of his ex-girlfriend Hunter Daily Salomon who has a restraining order against the Hilton heir. Hunter is the daughter of Rick, who previously dated and made a sex tape with Conrad's oldest sister Paris. The footage of the arrest, which was obtained by TMZ, also reveals that Conrad was arrested at the home of his ex's mother, EG Daily. This is now the second time that police have been called to that residence to remove Conrad after he appeared on the property, violating the restraining order his 21-year-old ex was granted by the court. The police were previously called following an incident in June 2015 during which Conrad broke into Hunter's house and threatened to kill himself just one month after she first filed a restraining order against her ex. He was arrested one year prior after he allegedly 'screamed and threatened flight attendants' yelling profane statements such as 'I will f**king own anyone on this flight; they are f**king peasants' on a flight from London to Los Angeles. The US government is expected to announce on Thursday that it has banned laptops on all flights from Europe to the United States. The move to ban the devices was revealed by European security officials, according to The Daily Beast. In addition to the ban on laptops, the Trump administration is also reviewing how to ensure lithium batteries stored in luggage holds do not explode in midair, officials briefed on the matter said on Wednesday. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security, which is expected to announce the ban, told the Daily Beast: 'No final decisions have been made on expanding the restriction on large electronic devices in aircraft cabins; however, it is under consideration. 'DHS continues to evaluate the threat environment and will make changes when necessary to keep air travelers safe.' Any expansion of the ban could impact US carriers such as United Airlines, Delta Air Lines Inc and American Airlines Group. In March, the US announced laptop restrictions on flights originating from 10 airports including in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey because of fears that a concealed bomb could be installed in electronic devices taken onto aircraft. The Trump administration is likely to expand a March ban on laptops on commercial aircraft to include all European countries Any expansion of the original 10-country ban could impact US carriers such as United Airlines, Delta Air Lines Inc and American Airlines Group. A Delta passenger jet is seen above at a terminal in Los Angeles International Airport on May 4 Britain quickly followed suit with restrictions on a slightly different set of routes. One European official acknowledged that the expanded ban could affect flights to the United States from Britain. DHS spokesman Dave Lapan said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly 'hasn't made a decision but we continue to evaluate the threat environment and have engaged in discussions with airline representatives and other stakeholders about the threat.' Kelly will give a classified briefing on Thursday to senators about domestic threats and airline issues are expected to be discussed, a congressional aide briefed on the matter said. Homeland Security chief John Kelly (seen above on April 18) will give a classified briefing on Thursday to senators about domestic threats and airline issues are expected to be discussed The US laptop ban has affected direct flights to the United States by Royal Jordanian Airlines, Egypt Air, Turkish Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Kuwait Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways. One issue under discussion is how to ensure that lithium batteries in any large collection of devices stored in airplane holds do not explode in midair, officials told Reuters. European regulators have warned placing what could be potentially hundreds of devices in the hold on long-haul flights could compromise safety by increasing the risk of fire from poorly deactivated lithium-ion batteries. The Federal Aviation Administration documented 33 incidents last year in which personal electronic devices carried into cabins by passengers caused fire emergencies during flights, the Daily Beast reported. Of these documented incidents, three were were caused by laptops and two were caused by tablets. Two of the more serious incidents involved Delta Airlines flights. On January 15, 2016, a fire erupted in a bag stored in the overhead bin on a flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta moments before landing. The smoke in the cabin became so thick that passengers needed to open the emergency exits over the wings just to get air to flow inside. Airport staff even helped some passenger deplane directly from the wings. A subsequent investigation revealed that the fires were caused by two laptops. A fire also ignited during a December 3, 2016 flight from Honolulu to Atlanta. Airline staff needed three halon extinguishers and two water extinguishers to put out the fire, which also originated in a laptop computer. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that a United Nations agency has begun an effort to craft global guidance for the use of laptops and other portable electronics in passenger aircraft cabins after the bans upset airline passengers and Middle Eastern carriers. The International Civil Aviation Organization met on Tuesday to debate the issue after the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and other countries complained their airlines had been unduly penalized by the decision, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Airports and airlines in Europe have already been working on plans for a possible extension of the ban since the US announced the first restrictions on larger electronic devices in the cabin, according to several industry sources. Issues that need to be resolved include how best to inform passengers of any new restrictions to keep disruption at airports to a minimum. On the operational side, measures such as stopping online check-in for US bound flights or ensuring US flights depart from a dedicated part of terminals are among ideas being mulled, although no decisions have yet been taken. A judge ordered two 16-year-old boys to be tried as adults and publicly identified them on Wednesday after they allegedly shot a 14-year-old girl in the head because her Snapchats were annoying. Deserae Turner, 14, nearly died after being shot in the head and left in a ditch in the small northern Utah town of Smithfield in February. Her mother revealed that the bullet and several fragments are still lodged in her brain and she suffers from partial blindness and paralysis on the left side of her body. Colter Danny Peterson and Jayzen Decker, both aged 16, have now been publicly identified as the two suspects in the horrific shooting after First District Juvenile Court Judge Angela Fonnesbeck ordered that the case be transferred to the adult system. Peterson, 16, is accused of shooting her and is charged with attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and other crimes. Fonnesbeck said that while Decker isn't suspected of shooting Turner, there is reason to believe that he is the one who created the plan to kill her and called upon his friend to carry it out. 'He may not have pulled the trigger himself, but he did take a deliberate and specific action to ensure the crime would be committed,' Fonnesbeck said. Scroll down for video A judge ordered two 16-year-old boys be tried as adults after they allegedly shot 14-year-old Deserae Turner (above in April after being released from the hospital) in the head because her Snapchats were annoying Turner (above in April after being released from the hospital) nearly died after being shot in the head and left in a ditch in the small northern Utah town of Smithfield in February 'There was plenty of time for the defendant to step away from the crime and he did not do so.' Decker is also charged with attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and other crimes. Both Decker and Peterson are expected to make their first appearances in 1st District Court on Thursday. If convicted, both Decker and Peterson now face the same penalties as if they were adults. The attempted aggravated murder charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years to life in the Utah State Prison, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The teenage girl survived the shooting and was upbeat when she spoke at a news conference last month on the day she left a hospital where she had been since the shooting. She has declined to talk about her injuries, but said she's happy to be alive and that she's 'tougher than a bullet.' Her mother said, before the shooting, that her summer goals would have been to 'ride horses, practice karate. Now it's just to move her fingers.' During the press conference last month, she arrived in a wheelchair with short hair and a brace on her lower left leg. Colter Danny Peterson and Jayzen Decker, both aged 16, have been publicly identified as the two suspects in Turner's (above in April) horrific shooting after First District Juvenile Court Judge Angela Fonnesbeck ordered that the case be transferred to the adult system The teenage girl (above left in April and before the shooting on the right) survived the shooting and was upbeat when she spoke at a news conference last month on the day she left a hospital where she had been since the shooting Turner, who sported a shirt saying 'Happy', thanked the doctors and therapists who sent her prayers. Her father, Matt Turner, said at the time it was a joyous day and called his daughter a determined and courageous young woman who has battled for her life. The crime shocked residents in the small town of Smithfield, a bedroom community near Logan, Utah. Authorities say the two teenage boys accused of shooting Turner concocted the plan while playing video games and discussing their desire to 'get rid' of the girl who was texting one of them. One of the boys told police that he shot her because he was annoyed she kept messaging him on Snapchat. Turner considered the boys her friends, and was left in utter disbelief when she woke up in the hospital to learn they had shot her in the head and left her in a dirty canal, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. She has declined to talk about her injuries, but said she's happy to be alive and that she's 'tougher than a bullet.' She is pictured above with her parents on April 20 when she was released from the hospital Two women searching for her after she was reported missing found her in this ditch above on February 16. When she was found, her injuries were so severe that she had to be put in a medically induced coma at a Salt Lake City hospital Cache County Sheriff Deputy Brian Groves said during a court hearing that one of the boys complained to the other defendant about Turner texting and Snapchatting him too frequently. The defendant responded: 'It would be pretty easy to get rid of her.' After the premeditated shooting, the boys stole her backpack with her cellphone and iPod. Turner told her friends over text message that she was getting 'picked on' by the two boys. They invited Turner to meet her at the canal to sell her a knife. The shooter originally intended to slit Turner's throat and let her bleed out in the rural area on February 15. However, the boys decided it would be quieter to just shoot her. One of the boys took a bullet casing from the scene as a memento of the crime. When the shooter was speaking about the murder plot to the other defendant, he callously said over text: 'Let's get this done, bro.' Turner was found by two women on February 16 who were searching for her body after reports that she was missing started spreading on social media, KUTV reported. When she was found, her injuries were so severe that she had to be put in a medically induced coma at a Salt Lake City hospital. The two defendants lived in Smithfield and attended Sky View High School while Turner lives in Amalga and attended North Cache Middle School in Richmond. Donald Trump may be about outlaw all laptops from cabins on flights between America and Europe from today sparking panic among travellers. The US President is expected to extend a ban already imposed on flights from ten Middle Eastern and North African countries brought in during March. All passengers flying from Europe to the US could be barred from carrying large electronics amid fears batteries inside laptops and large tablets like iPads and Kindles can be converted into a bomb powerful enough to bring down a jet. The news has led to some businessman saying they will cancel trips to the US because they will be unable to work on board. Parents have said they are 'shuddering at the thought' of having to entertain their children on transatlantic flights without a laptop or tablet. And there are concerns because the majority of insurance companies will not cover any damage inflicted on electronics stored in a plane's hold. Misery: Plane passengers boarding flights in the UK bound for the US could be banned from taking laptops in their hand luggage (pictured implemented in Tunis) under expanded security checks set to hit Europe Clampdown: The ban is in place amid fears the batteries inside laptops and large tablets like iPads and Kindles can be converted into a bomb powerful enough to bring down a jet Reaction: The proposed ban has sparked concerns among travellers with some saying they wouldn't travel to America if a ban was brought in US officials would not say when the new ruled could come into force, but the Daily Beast reports an announcement is due today. The Trump administration is also reviewing how to prevent explosions triggered by lithium batteries in electronic devices stored in luggage holds Carriers including American Airlines and British Airways say it is business as usual without any formal announcement and Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, say they will be ready to respond if it is imposed. London's Heathrow Airport, where 17 per cent of flights to American originate, has already added an extra layer of security at boarding gates for passengers who originated in the Middle East. The ban was first put in place after a raid on terrorists in Yemen showed that bomb-makers had developed a device which could be inserted into the batteries that would generate enough explosive power to bring down a plane In March, the U.S. announced laptop restrictions on flights originating from 10 airports including in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey because of fears that a concealed bomb could be installed in electronic devices taken onto aircraft. Britain quickly followed suit with restrictions on a slightly different set of routes. DHS spokesman Dave Lapan said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly 'hasn't made a decision but we continue to evaluate the threat environment and have engaged in discussions with airline representatives and other stakeholders about the threat.' Kelly will give a classified briefing on Thursday to senators about domestic threats and airline issues are expected to be discussed, a congressional aide briefed on the matter said. American Airline, Delta and United are likely to be affected. The ban is due to fears that battery compartments on large devices could be used to conceal explosives Heathrow Airport (pictured), where 17 per cent of flights to the US originate, has already announced extra gate checks for passengers originating from the Middle East The U.S. laptop ban has affected direct flights to the United States by Royal Jordanian Airlines, Egypt Air, Turkish Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Kuwait Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways. One issue under discussion is how to ensure that lithium batteries in any large collection of devices stored in airplane holds do not explode in midair. European regulators have warned placing what could be potentially hundreds of devices in the hold on long-haul flights could compromise safety by increasing the risk of fire from poorly deactivated lithium-ion batteries. A United Nations agency has already begun to craft global guidance for the use of laptops and other portable electronics in passenger aircraft cabins after the bans upset airline passengers and Middle Eastern carriers. The International Civil Aviation Organization met on Tuesday to debate the issue after the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and other countries complained their airlines had been unduly penalized by the decision. Airports and airlines in Europe have already been working on plans for a possible extension of the ban since the U.S. announced the first restrictions on larger electronic devices in the cabin, according to several industry sources. Issues that need to be resolved include how best to inform passengers of any new restrictions to keep disruption at airports to a minimum. On the operational side, measures such as stopping online check-in for U.S. bound flights or ensuring U.S. flights depart from a dedicated part of terminals are among ideas being mulled, although no decisions have yet been taken. A mother-of-four whose six-month-old son lay dying while his caretaker was on hold for 'nearly 40 minutes as she tried to reach 911', is suing T-Mobile over an alleged 'ghost call glitch' that kept the babysitter from summoning medical help. Bridget Alex was at her sister's house after attending a funeral for her 19-year-old nephew in March when she got a frantic call from her youngest son's babysitter saying that Brandon had fallen from a day bed and was unconscious. The caregiver, who is Alex's best friend, told her that she had called 911 three times on her T-Mobile phone and kept being placed on hold. In between calls, the first of which was made at 5.55pm, the caretaker had performed CPR on the infant in an attempt to revive him. The last time the baby sitter called, at 6.11pm, she was kept waiting for 31 minutes; the city's goal is to have all 911 calls answered within 10 seconds. Bridget Alex (left), whose six-month-old son, Brandon (right) lay dying while his caretaker was on hold for 'nearly 40 minutes when she called 911', is suing T-Mobile over an alleged 'ghost call glitch' that kept the babysitter from summoning medical help In between calls, the first of which was made at 5.55pm, the caretaker had performed CPR on the infant in an attempt to revive him. The last time the baby sitter called, at 6.11pm, she was kept waiting for 31 minutes. Baby Brandon (pictured) died at a hospital a short time later The City of Dallas later said in a statement that the 911 call center was jammed with calls that day because of an ongoing issue with T-Mobile. The suit was filed Monday in the 101st Dallas County district court on behalf of Alex's son, Brandon, who died on March 11. The suit asks for damages and other monetary relief, according to Dallas News. Alex argues that her son would not have died had T-Mobile implemented technology and services that would have allowed the babysitter's call to go through to the city's emergency call center, according to the suit. The City of Dallas later said in a statement that the 911 call center was jammed with calls on March 11 because of an ongoing issue with T-Mobile A T-Mobile spokeswoman told Dallas News that the company, which owns MetroPCS, declined to comment on the lawsuit. Alex's babysitter was watching Brandon the night he fell off a day bed and was found barely breathing. Her suit alleges the babysitter, who has a T-Mobile/MetroPCS phone, called 911 three times and was on hold for about 40 minutes. Since the babysitter did not have a car to take Brandon to the hospital, his mother sped home and rushed him to Methodist Hospital for Surgery in Addison. 'I jumped in the car with him, and I just kept kissing his lips. He was still warm. I just kept saying, 'Brandon, please wake up. Please wake up,' Alex told WFAA at the time. The six-month-old was later transferred to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Plano, where he died without regaining consciousness an hour later. 'The doctor came and he was like, 'We tried, and he just never woke up,' Bridget Alex said. According to WFAA, when a T-Mobile customer calls 911, ghost calls are created that jam the system by registering as hang-ups. Operators end up putting callers on hold as they try to catch up by calling back each number to check if assistance is needed. Dallas' emergency call center has been dealing with this issue since November. On Saturday, March 11, as many as 442 calls to 911 were placed on hold, with waiting times of 30-40 minutes. Dallas police investigated but found no evidence connecting Brandon's death to T-Mobile's ghost call glitch. 'We can only confirm that the caller was using a T-Mobile device and tried reaching 911 Saturday evening, during the spike in calls,' the statement from the city read. Ghost calls: Since November, Dallas' emergency call center has been dealing with 'ghost calls' from T-Mobile phones T-Mobile CEO John Legere sent his top engineers to Dallas to look into the malfunction the following week. Once the engineers arrived in Dallas, they made technological upgrades and determined the problem was due, in part, to abandoned calls City Manager T.C. Broadnax said at the time that he spoke with T-Mobile CEO John Legere personally, and Legere pledged to send his top engineers to Dallas the following week to look into the problem. Once the engineers arrived in Dallas, they made technological upgrades and determined the problem was due, in part, to abandoned calls, according to Dallas News. The company claimed its large share of the Dallas market made it appear falsely that they were the only carrier with the issue. T-Mobile claimed earlier this month, that it had worked with the city to troubleshoot the issues and the city's low staff numbers were to blame. 'This is an unacceptable situation and the citizens of Dallas deserve better,' Broadnax said. 'With Mr. Legere's commitment today, I'm hopeful T-Mobile can continue to work with the city of Dallas to finally resolve this situation so that we have a reliable 911 system that can properly serve the emergency needs of our citizens.' But for Bridget Alex and her later son, the push to find a solution to the ghost calls problem is too little, too late. 'At the end of the day, I'm still going to be here hurt, because he's not going to be here,' an emotional Alex told the station CBS DFW. 'I'm not going to get to see him or smell him or touch him or kiss him ever again.' Alex, whose oldest child is aged 22, says she wants T-Mobile and Dallas city officials held responsible for the death of her baby boy, who she says was still breathing when she came home. Another loss: Brandon's death came while his family were mourning the loss of Bridget Alex's 19-year-old nephew, Drekeiston Alex (left), who police said was shot dead by a couple, Hakeem Griffin-White (right), 17, and Ashley Coleman, 27, who called themselves 'Bonnie and Clyde' Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said in a statement that it is 'outrageous' that T-Mobile has so far failed to resolve the ghost call malfunction, blasting the carrier for not only putting their customers at risk, but also jeopardizing public safety throughout the city. A week before Brandon's death, David Taffet called 911 when he found his husband, Brian Cross, disoriented at home, according to the Dallas News. Taffet said he was put on hold with 911 for about 20 minutes while Cross, 52, was dying. Paramedics were dispatched, but Cross died at the hospital. At first, city officials blamed the 'ghost call' problem that they said started in October. City officials said T-Mobile and MetroPCS phones appeared to be calling 911 multiple times without the caller's knowledge, flooding the queue and therefore leaving hundreds on hold, the newspaper reported. Baby Brandon's untimely death came at a time when his family were mourning the loss of Bridget Alex's nephew, Drekeiston Alex, who police said was shot dead by a couple calling themselves 'Bonnie and Clyde'. Hakeem Leprince Griffin-White, 17, and Ashley Ann Coleman, 27, were arrested on March 5 in Drekeiston Alex's killing after apparently making a confession on Facebook Live. British holidaymakers traveling to the US could be barred from taking laptops in their hand luggage under expanded security checks by President Trump. In March the US banned passengers boarding flights in 10 Middle Eastern countries from taking the electronics into the cabin. Now the ban is being expanded to cover Europe, with one official saying that Britain could be among affected countries. London's Heathrow Airport, where 17 per cent of flights to American originate, said it is adding an extra layer of security at boarding gates. The ban could impact U.S. carriers such as United Airlines, Delta Air Lines Inc and American Airlines Group. Six U.S. and European officials said they expect the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to make an announcement but declined to say when. In March, the U.S. announced laptop restrictions on flights originating from 10 airports including in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey because of fears that a concealed bomb could be installed in electronic devices taken onto aircraft. Britain quickly followed suit with restrictions on a slightly different set of routes. One European official acknowledged that the expanded ban could affect flights to the United States from Britain. DHS spokesman Dave Lapan said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly "hasn't made a decision but we continue to evaluate the threat environment and have engaged in discussions with airline representatives and other stakeholders about the threat." Kelly will give a classified briefing on Thursday to senators about domestic threats and airline issues are expected to be discussed, a congressional aide briefed on the matter said. The U.S. laptop ban has affected direct flights to the United States by Royal Jordanian Airlines, Egypt Air, Turkish Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Kuwait Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways. One issue under discussion is how to ensure that lithium batteries in any large collection of devices stored in airplane holds do not explode in midair, officials told Reuters. European regulators have warned placing what could be potentially hundreds of devices in the hold on long-haul flights could compromise safety by increasing the risk of fire from poorly deactivated lithium-ion batteries. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that a United Nations agency has begun an effort to craft global guidance for the use of laptops and other portable electronics in passenger aircraft cabins after the bans upset airline passengers and Middle Eastern carriers. The International Civil Aviation Organization met on Tuesday to debate the issue after the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and other countries complained their airlines had been unduly penalized by the decision, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Airports and airlines in Europe have already been working on plans for a possible extension of the ban since the U.S. announced the first restrictions on larger electronic devices in the cabin, according to several industry sources. Issues that need to be resolved include how best to inform passengers of any new restrictions to keep disruption at airports to a minimum. On the operational side, measures such as stopping online check-in for U.S. bound flights or ensuring U.S. flights depart from a dedicated part of terminals are among ideas being mulled, although no decisions have yet been taken. (Reporting by David Shepardson and Mark Hosenball; additional reporting by Victoria Bryan in Berlin; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Grant McCool) A python hunter captured an almost 17-foot long snake using just his bare hands. Dusty 'The Wildman' Crum managed to wrestle the creature while traipsing through the Florida Everglades. It's the biggest python that's ever been caught in the national park. Later, it was discovered that the snake had 78 eggs inside - which were taken out to prevent any new snakes from being born. Of his catch, Crum described it as 'like Andre the Giant versus Hulk Hogan, WrestleMania!' Dusty 'The Wildman' Crum (pictured), holds an almost 17-foot long python he captured while traipsing through the Florida Everglades Crum is participating in a project started two months ago by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) with a goal of eradicating pythons. This python is the biggest caught since the program launched in March, measuring at 16-feet, 10 inches Crum is participating in a project started two months ago by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) with a goal of eradicating pythons. The orchid-grower by day has caught several snakes including the 50th Burmese python in the program - measuring 14-feet, 6 inches - which was broadcast live on Facebook on April 25. But this is the biggest of his career - and the biggest snake that's ever been caught in the Florida Everglades at 16 feet, 10 inches. And Crum gets paid pretty well to do this kind of dangerous work. SFWMD is paying hunters like him $8.10 per hour - with incentives. Depending on the size of the snake they capture, there is an additional on-the-spot payment of $50 for pythons measuring up to four feet long and an extra $25 for each foot measuring more than four feet. Crum's massive catch, however, netted him $375 - the same amount it would cost to sell the skin. The snake was the biggest caught during this round of hunting, although not the biggest ever. The southern Florida record was a snake measuring 18 feet, two inches and weighing 160 pounds. SFWMD pays hunters $8.10 per hour. Depending on the size of the snake, there is an additional on-the-spot payment of $50 for pythons measuring up to four feet long and an extra $25 for each foot measuring more than four feet - Crum (pictured) earned $375 for his catch Found inside the python were 78 eggs (pictured), which were removed to prevent any being born So far, 78 snakes have been removed from the Everglades. The district says a program like this is important because pythons are a massive and growing problem, in south Florida (SFWMD members are pictured transporting the python) But The Wildman's catch was nothing to sneeze at, weighing in at 130 pounds. Hunters are given an additional $100 for each eliminated python found guarding nests with eggs and, in the case of this one, there were 78 eggs found. Researchers estimate that at least 30,000 and upwards of 300,000 pythons likely occupy southern Florida and that this population will only continue to grow. The invasive species terrorizes raccoons, rabbits, birds and even gators. A typical female breeds every other year, produces a clutch of between twenty and fifty eggs, and can live for twenty years or more. 'It is a small program right now. We started 48 days ago78 snakes removed,' Juan Valdes of SFWMD told WFOR. Crum added that just one capture can prevent several more from emerging in the Everglades. 'When people say they are only catching one or two snakes, why are they not catching more snakes?' Crum told WFOR. 'Well we are making the difference by taking the eggs out of the eco system.' Tories have demanded the sacking of Louise Edwards (above) who investigated election campaign spending after prosecutors decided against criminal charges against candidates Tories have demanded the sacking of the official who investigated election campaign spending after prosecutors decided against criminal charges against candidates. Senior Conservatives said the inquiry was a politically-motivated witch-hunt after the discovery of Facebook postings by Louise Edwards, the Electoral Commissions head of regulation, in which she said she did not want to live under a Tory government. Prosecutors yesterday told up to 30 Conservative candidates and election agents that they would not face criminal action for failing to properly declare their use of so-called battle buses in 2015. The allegations centred on claims that expenses relating to busloads of Tory activists sent to key seats were reported as part of national party costs rather than falling within the lower spending limits for the constituencies visited. But yesterday the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that even though some spending returns may have been inaccurate, there was insufficient evidence to prove they were knowingly dishonest. The announcement triggered an outpouring of anger from Tories who had been under suspicion. There was particular fury over the role of Miss Edwards, with the Tories highlighting some of her posts on Facebook, written before she joined the commission. After David Cameron was elected prime minister in May 2010, she wrote: Just cant understand what people were thinking do they not remember the Tories before? She also posted about how she could not believe she lived under a Tory PM again! What is wrong with people? Grrr! Words have failed me. She added: Louise Edwards doesnt want to live under a Tory government. Although the posts predate her employment at the Electoral Commission, Karl McCartney, who is seeking re-election as MP for Lincoln, accused her of purposefully smearing the reputations of Tory politicians, and called the commission incompetent. This whole saga amounts to no more than a politically-motivated witch-hunt, he said. I think Louise Edwards clearly was politically motivated she should have been removed from her position a long time before now. The senior management team who allowed her to get away with what she did should really need to take a long, hard look at themselves and examine their consciences. They are public servants, paid by the taxpayer. After David Cameron was elected prime minister in May 2010, Miss Edwards wrote: Just cant understand what people were thinking do they not remember the Tories before? The positions of the management from the chief executive down to her sidekick Louise Edwards are now untenable and I believe that they should resign forthwith. If the leaders of the Electoral Commission do not take this most honourable course of action, I and no doubt my colleagues who have been victims of the Electoral Commissions witch-hunt will take every opportunity after the general election to persuade the newly-elected government to abolish this incompetent organisation and ensure that those who comprise the Electoral Commissions executive team and senior management group are never to play a role in our countrys public life again. The commission began an inquiry last year into Conservative expenses in the 2015 election, which led 15 police forces to investigate possible breaches of electoral law. But yesterday the CPS announced it would not charge the majority of those involved. Two are still being investigated. In March, the Tory Party was fined a record 70,000 by the Electoral Commission for numerous failures in reporting its expenses for the 2015 general election and three by-elections in 2014. Tory Party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin praised yesterdays decision not to pursue criminal charges, adding: These were politically motivated and unfounded complaints that have wasted police time. Last October, Labour was fined 20,000 for failing to properly declare spending from its 2015 general election campaign, including a stone tablet nicknamed the Ed Stone and a battle bus called the Labour Express. The Liberal Democrats were fined 20,000 in December for missing out more than 184,000 in payments from their general election spending declaration. An Electoral Commission spokesman said its investigations team acted with complete impartiality, adding: Extracts from one employees Facebook profile were taken five years prior to that employee joining the Commission and did not impact on any investigation. The Commission employs individuals from a wide-range of backgrounds. While employed at the Commission they have to adhere to a strict code of conduct. The Tory who beat Nigel Farage to become an MP in 2015 could be charged over his election expenses within days throwing the partys election campaign into turmoil. Even though up to 30 Tory candidates and agents were yesterday told they would not face criminal charges over spending ahead of the 2015 general election, the CPS said it was still considering action against Craig Mackinlay, who won South Thanet by 2,812 votes. The Electoral Commission says a 15,641 hotel bill for supporters should have been included in his expenses, rather than the partys national election spending. Mr Mackinlay and the Tory Party dispute this. Tory treasurer Simon Day is also still believed to be under investigation for his role in the partys botched spending declarations. Two years after the shootings at the Armed Services Recruiting Center on Lee Highway and the U.S. Naval Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center on Amnicola Highway on July 16, 2015, thousands of supporters will participate in the Second Annual Chattanooga Heroes Run/Walk to honor and remember those who lost their lives, as well as the hundreds of responders who worked to protect the city.The Chattanooga Heroes Run/Walk, presented by Erlangers Level One Trauma Center, will take place on Saturday, July 15 beginning at 8 a.m.This year's event has several new features.The five mile loop course will begin at the Naval Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center and end at the Hubert Fry Center at the Tennessee RiverPark. Parking will also be available at the RiverPark.A Stroller Corral will be reserved at the starting line for those who wish to bring a smaller buddy with them to the event. Participants can dress their children in red, white, and blue and deck out their jogging strollers for the event. A 2017 Team Challenge has been created so organizations and businesses can show their pride by rallying their members and associates to participate in the challenge. Awards will be given based on number of participants in five different categories.Participants can join virtually if they are unable to travel to the event. Deadline to register is July 9 at midnight.The one mile kids run will begin at 10 a.m. at the RiverPark.A block party, hosted by Rock Creek, will take place at the RiverPark following the run/walk. There will be a variety of food trucks and vendors for the whole family.There are plans for the artists and landscapers, who are finalist for the proposed Chattanooga Heroes memorial space at the RiverPark, to be present during the event to display their ideas and renderings.Volunteers are needed to assist with pre-run bag packing, set up, race activities, kids run, and post run clean up.For more information about the Chattanooga Heroes Run/Walk, how one can volunteer or to register for the event, visit www.chattanoogaheroesrun.com The families of Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Lance Cpl. Squire K. Wells, and Logistics Specialist 2nd Class Randall Smith have chosen to use the proceeds from this event to help fund the construction of a permanent memorial space at the RiverPark.Erlanger officials thank the following for their time, manpower, and support of this special heroes tribute: City of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, LIFE FORCE Event Medicine, Rock Creek, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and Whole Galaxy. An Australian man who was jailed in the US for overstaying his visa by 90 minutes has been released. Baxter Reid, 26, of Canberra, had been travelling on a five-year visa that required him to exit the country every six months. He made it to the US-Canada border on April 23 at around 10pm two hours before his visa was due to expire. But Mr Reid and his American girlfriend Heather Kancso were denied entry to Canada and held at the border until 1.30am. Scroll down for video Baxter Reid was released on Wednesday from a New York detention centre after being jailed for overstaying his visa by 90 minutes The 26-year-old, from Canberra, was on a five-year visa in the US but needed to exit the country every six months After being released by Canadian authorities, Mr Reid returned to US soil and was arrested for overstaying his visa by an hour and a half. He was released from a detention centre in Buffalo, New York, after a bond hearing on Wednesday. As he was freed, Mr Reid thanked Australians for their support, particularly those who contributed to his legal fees. 'Thanks so much to the Australian people. Never been more proud to be an Australian, honestly,' he told Seven News. Mr Reid (pictured) was released from a detention centre in Buffalo, New York, after a bond hearing on Wednesday 'I have a lot of beers to buy for a lot of people and I can't wait to give everyone a hug.' Mr Reid now has 120 days to leave the country, but is allowed to return in the future which he says he plans to. His girlfriend set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for his legal fees, which amassed more than $10,000 in 11 days. He made it to the US-Canada border on April 23 two hours before his visa was due to expire But the Australian traveller was questioned by Canadian authorities before being denied entry, then arrested in the US for overstaying his visa She posted an update on Wednesday, telling donators that she and Mr Reid will be heading back to Australia in the next two weeks. 'I am beyond happy to say that Baxter's court case went well,' she wrote. 'We cannot express how grateful we are for everything and every one of you beautiful, beautiful souls. We really could not have done this without you.' She added: 'I'm leaving the account running so when Baxter has a chance he can look through it to see all the support he's received from all of you. We love you all!' A substitute teacher was fast asleep when a boy was being choked by another middle school student, the victim's mother said. Mikiline Lester was in his sixth-grade math class at Hephzibah Middle School in Georgia when a classmate grabbed him by the throat, WRDW reported. When his concerned mother Janice Williams later asked why the teacher didn't step in, the boy showed her a photo of the teacher snoozing with her mouth open. Scroll down for video A substitute teacher (above) was fast asleep when a boy was being choked by another middle school student, the victim's mother said The boy grabbed Mikiline by the shoulders before he 'worked his way up to his neck and then just started choking him,' Williams said. Mikiline, who already sees a neurologist and suffers from breathing problems, punched the boy to get him to let go, according to Williams. But Mikiline got in trouble for fighting back, and his mother was incredulous that the teacher didn't protect her son. A picture of the substitute teacher snapped by another student and posted on social media showed clutching a cell phone while deep in sleep with her mouth agape. Another image surfaced showing the teacher taking what appears to be another nap in a classroom with the blinds drawn. Williams filed a complaint with the Board of Education, and the teacher will no longer teach at Hephzibah Middle School, although she is still allowed to work at other schools in the district. Mikiline Lester (left) was in his sixth-grade math class at Hephzibah Middle School when a classmate reportedly choked him. His mother Janice William (right) was incensed the teacher didn't step in and protect her son A six-month-old baby girl has died after being horrifically mauled by the family dog. Kamiko Dao Tsuda-Saelee had been playing in her walker in the family home in Las Vegas on Monday when the pit bull mix suddenly began biting her. Her mother Layla Tsuda managed to stop the dog from attacking Kamiko, but she was already badly injured. She suffered blunt force trauma to the head and was pronounced dead at a local hospital soon after. Six-month-old Kamiko Dao Tsuda-Saelee died on Monday in Las Vegas after the family's pit bull mix suddenly started attacking her Tsuda, who is originally from Hawaii, told KHON she went to the bathroom for a minute and came back to find the dog mauling her little girl. 'I have no words to explain my pain,' Tsuda told the TV station in a statement. She said the male dog, named Mana, had been in their family for nine years and had never bitten anyone before. The family said they were blindsided by the attack because they had considered the dog to be a good family pet. Clark County Animal Control took the dog away a few hours after the attack when the family surrendered the pet. The dog was euthanized on Tuesday, officials said. Mana, a nine-year-old pit bull mix, was euthanized on Tuesday after being surrendered to authorities by the family of the little girl 'The owner surrendered the dog to the County... A dog that has attacked and killed a person would not be allowed to be adopted,' a statement from the County read. Police said the dog attack appeared to be a tragic accident and no charges were expected to be brought against the family. A GoFundMe page was set up to help Kamiko's family with the girl's medical and funeral expenses. Relatives described her as a 'happy and loving daughter and granddaughter'. 'When one of us hurt, we all hurt... It's never easy losing a loved one especially a child. The loss of you is felt all the way here in Hawaii. Rest in Jesus little Angel,' one relative wrote on Facebook. The 'adopted' son of a famous New York jeweler and another man have been charged with murder in the stabbing death of a Hofstra graduate six months ago. James Rackover, 25, and Lawrence Dilione, 29, appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday after being indicted for the grisly murder of 26-year-old Joseph Comunale in November last year. Rackover, Dilione and another man - 29-year-old Max Gemma - had already been charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence in relation to Comunale's death. James Rackover, 25, appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday charged with the murder of Joseph Comunale in November last year. Lawrence Dilione, 29, was also charged with murder Comunale was allegedly stabbed 15 times at an alcohol and cocaine-fueled party inside Rackover's luxury Midtown apartment on the night of November 13 after an argument over cigarettes. His stabbed and burned body was found three days later by police in a shallow grave in Oceanport, New Jersey. Court documents allege that Rackover and Dilione drove Comunale's body from the apartment to New Jersey on the same night he was stabbed and buried him in the shallow ditch. Dilione previously told cops that he had punched Comunale unconscious after fighting over the pack of cigarettes but claimed it was Rackover who allegedly choked and stabbed the victim. Rackover (right), Dilione (center) and another man - 29-year-old Max Gemma (left) - had already been charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence in relation to Comunale's death Rackover (right) was charged on Wednesday with the stabbing murder 26-year-old Joseph Comunale (left) in New York in November last year He also alleged that Rackover tried to dismember Comunale in the bathtub with a serrated blade. They allegedly removed Comunale's body from the apartment by using a luggage cart from the luxury building. Rackover lived in the building with his adoptive father, Jeffrey Rackhouse. The famed jeweler has designed baubles for the likes of Jennifer Lopez and was responsible for Melania Trump's $3million engagement ring. The jeweler has since distanced himself from Rackover. Comunale was allegedly stabbed 15 times at an alcohol and cocaine-fueled party inside Rackover's luxury Midtown apartment (above) on the night of November 13 Rackover (left) lived in the building with his adoptive father Jeffrey Rackhouse (right). The famed jeweler has designed baubles for the likes of Jennifer Lopez and was responsible for Melania Trump's $3million engagement ring Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced the murder charges against Rackover and Dilione on Wednesday. The two are also charged with concealment of a corpse. 'The brutality of this horrific murder was compounded by the defendants' efforts to dispose of the victim's body in an attempt to evade prosecution,' District Attorney Vance said. 'We will prosecute this case to the full extent of the law to achieve justice for Joseph and the Comunale family.' Rackover and Dilione were held without bail following their court appearance on Wednesday. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has become a central character in the story of how President Trump fired his FBI Director James Comey, 110 days into office. Rosenstein, as White House officials have repeatedly pointed out, enjoyed bipartisan support when confirmed by the Senate at the end of April, with a vote 94 in favor to six, as a testament to his successful nearly three decade-long career. 'He doesn't have an ounce of politician in him,' one associate, Maryland's former Democratic Attorney General Doug Gansler, told the Telegraph of Rosenstein, who is a Republican. Scroll down for video IN THE MIDDLE OF IT: Rod Rosenstein was confirmed as deputy attorney general by the Senate in late April 94 to 6, enjoying bipartisan support until this week Rod Rosenstein's memo to Attorney General Jeff Sessions was what caused President Trump to go ahead and fire FBI Director James Comey The reason the small handful of Democrats voted against Rosenstein was that they knew he would be handling the Russian investigation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself, and the longtime federal prosucutor wouldn't commit to appointing an independent prosecutor. Those calls were renewed Tuesday, on the heels of Trump's shocking decision to remove Comey from his post. 'If Mr. Rosenstein is true to his word that he believes this investigation must be fair, free, thorough and politically independent, if he believes as I do that the American people must be able to have faith in the impartiality of this investigation, he must appoint a special prosecutor and get his investigation out of the hands of the FBI and far away from the heavy hand of this administration,' Sen. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. As for Rosenstein, Democrats are suggesting his reputation has been tainted, for writing the recommendation that led Trump to dismiss the FBI director. 'I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails,' Rosenstein wrote in his memo to Sessions, which was passed along to President Trump. 'And I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives,' Rosenstein added. More recently, when reached by the Boston Globe, Rosenstein refused to comment. 'I'm not going to talk about that,' he told a Globe reporter. 'Are you surprised by that?' But former colleagues have stepped forward to vouch for Rosenstein, who is quickly becoming a household name. 'Regardless of his title and his position, he makes decision the same way he did during his decades as a career prosecuror,' former DOJ attorney Jason Weinstein told Fox News. Weinstein worked alongside Rosenstein during the Bush 43 and Obama administrations. 'That means following the facts wherever they lead, pursuing justice and doing the right thing without regard for politics,' Weinstein continued. 'This is a partisan minefield no matter what he decides, but partisanship won't be part of the equation for him.' Rosenstein heralds from Pennsylvania and, like President Trump, went to Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. Like President Obama, he got his law degree at Harvard. High profile cases already checker the 52-year-old Rosenstein's resume. Rosenstein joined the Justice Department in 1990 and during his first decade was tapped to join Kenneth Starr's team of prosecutors who were looking into Whitewater, which involved Bill and Hillary Clinton, and an Arkansas real estate deal gone awry. By 2005 he was appointed by President George W. Bush a U.S. Attorney in Maryland, the top federal prosecutor in the state. Fast forward to the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder asked Rosenstein to investigate who was leaking classified information on the administration's cyberattacks on Iran. Gansler, talking to the Telegraph, also said that Rosenstein knows that 'The minute a prosecutor gets political, that's when he gets in trouble. And Rod recognizes that.' 'He makes decisions for the right reasons and can articulate those reasons,' Gansler said. Britain will send up to 100 troops extra troops to Afghanistan under plans being examined by the Government. They will be deployed to the capital Kabul to join around 500 already there carrying out a training mission. It is understood the proposal was discussed by the PM and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at Number 10 yesterday. Britain will send up to 100 troops extra troops to Afghanistan under plans being examined by the Government. (File image, above, of Helmand province in 2015) The meeting follows a request by Nato for the UK to step up its role in the region as the Afghan security force struggles to maintain its grip on the country. Nato asked the UK to commit dozens more troops to the war-ravaged nation and the UK will fulfil that request, sources said. The defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon has repeatedly ruled out any combat troops being sent to the region, but has stressed the need for UK soldiers to carry out training and security assistance. Nato's military authorities have requested a few thousand more troops for the country from across the alliance. The troops will be deployed to the capital Kabul to join around 500 already there carrying out a training mission. It is understood the proposal was discussed by the PM and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (above) at Number 10 yesterday The request reflects the West's alarm about the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, territorial gains by Taliban militants, and military and civilian casualties. Mr Stoltenberg said after a meeting with Theresa May: 'We are now assessing that request. 'We will make decisions on the scale and scope of the mission within weeks but this is not about returning back to a combat operation in Afghanistan.' He added: 'I strongly believe that the best answer we have to terrorism, the best weapon against terrorism, is to train local forces to fight terrorism.' Megyn Kelly is racking up the frequent flier miles in her new role at NBC, with the network's big hire spotted back in Los Angeles on Tuesday for the second time in two weeks. The popular television personality was looking fresh faced as she touched down at LAX after her cross-country flight, opting to travel in a pair of distressed skinny jeans, Acne boots and a loose peplum top that she layered with a thin, black-suede jacket. And it was right to work for Kelly, who was seen checking her emails and texts while waiting for her luggage to arrive. It is unclear why Kelly is in Los Angeles, and if she is perhaps conducting another interview or working on a project for the network's upfront presentation on Monday morning. A rep for NBC did not respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com. Pretty as a peacock: Megyn Kelly arrived at LAX on Tuesday (above) looking fresh faced after her cross-country flight Intel: It is her second time in Los Angeles in the two weeks since she began her new post at NBC Kelly is hitting the ground running at NBC, with the popular host already getting one big interview in the can, which may be her debut with the network. The former Fox News host was spotted in Los Angeles two weeks ago heading in and out of the same studio where the Kardashian and Jenner women were taping a 10th anniversary special for Today. She was snapped as she and her two person squad made their way through the studio lot, and her masterful makeup and perfectly tousled blonde waves along with her ruffled crimson baby doll dress seemed like just the look for a day of keeping and catching up with the fashion-forward ladies. It has also been announced that Kelly will be heading to Russia and speaking with President Vladmir Putin next month. 'Megyn Kelly of NBC News will moderate the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on stage with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin,' revealed a NBC spokesperson last week. 'The conversation will cover a wide range of global political and economic topics, including international trade agreements, cyber-security and the impact of rising military tensions.' The former Fox News anchor has been laying low ever since she announced back in January that she would be spreading her feathers and heading over to the Peacock Network when her contract was up with the cable news leader, where she has worked for more than a decade. Met up: Kelly and husband Douglas Brunt at the Met Ball last Monday (above) That all changed last month however when she hit the red carpet at the THR Media event in NYC. When asked if she was looking forward to getting back into the swing of things over at NBC, Kelly said: 'I've spent enough time staring at the refrigerator, it's time to do some news.' Kelly, 46, seemed elated to be out and about again as she was photographed smiling and laughing with colleagues past and present including NBC stars Savannah Guthrie and Lester Holt as well as her former Fox News buddy and occasional adversary Sean Hannity. The two could be seen grinning from ear-to-ear in one photo as they embraced each other in the middle of the event, which was held at the still-under-construction Four Seasons Restaurant in New York City. Savanah Guthrie and Lester Holt were also honorees at the event, as was Hannity, who was listed alongside Bill O'Reilly on the THR list this year. O'Reilly was not in attendance, and a week after the event was let go after 20 years with Fox News. Peacock pals: Hoda Kotb posted a photo of herself and Megyn Kelly on Monday at 30 Rock (above) Teamwork: Kelly and Kotb will he airing back-to-back when the new NBC schedule takes effect later this year Fox News co-president Bill Shine, another of the honorees, was in attendance however, and was questioned at the time about O'Reilly's future at the network. New York writer and reporter Gabriel Sherman, who first wrote about the sexual harassment allegations involving the network and Roger Ailes back in 2014 when he released his biography of the CEO, was one of those who approached Shine hoping for a scoop. 'At @THR party, I asked Fox News co-president Bill Shine what plan is for O'Reilly. "I'm just going to have a good time tonight," he said,' wrote Sherman on Twitter. Two weeks later, Shine also found himself out of a job. Bankers and lawyers are set to share a near 100million windfall from a City super-merger that will lead to the loss of 800 jobs. The 11billion deal to join Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management will create one of the largest investment firms in the world. But while many staff are now fearing for their futures, highly-paid bosses will share a 35million bonus pot to convince them to stay. Bankers and lawyers are set to share a near 100million windfall from a City super-merger that will lead to the loss of 800 jobs (file photo) The tie-up will also trigger a 97million fees bonanza for bankers, lawyers and other advisers working on the deal. Among those cashing in are Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Cazenove and Credit Suisse as well as lawyers at Slaughter and May and spin doctors at public relations firms in the City. Yesterday politicians said the plans to axe hundreds of jobs while doling out a total of 132million to bosses, bankers and advisers was a huge concern. Standard Life and Aberdeen are both based in Scotland and have a total of 9,000 staff, including overseas offices. The combined company will be run by Standard Life chief executive Keith Skeoch, 60, and his Aberdeen counterpart Martin Gilbert, 61, in a controversial power-sharing arrangement. Mr Skeoch was paid 2.7million last year and 3.5million the year before while Mr Gilbert, an old friend and fishing partner, earned 2.8million last year having picked up 4.3million the previous year. Merger documents say job losses will be phased in over three years with compulsory redundancies kept to a minimum. At the same time, the two firms are desperate to keep their most valuable staff and have set aside millions to stop them exiting. A Standard Life spokesman said: We have a strong team-based ethos, and this is underpinned by remuneration arrangements which are structured to reward performance over the long term and encourage retention of our talent. The combined company will be run by Standard Life chief executive Keith Skeoch (pictured) and his Aberdeen counterpart Martin Gilbert We have specific plans in place to engage and retain our talent through the merger process. Papers reveal the firm is set to hand out 60.8million in fees, including 26million to bankers, 8.1million to lawyers, 1.9million to accountants and 1.8million on publicity. Aberdeen is paying bankers and brokers 27.5million while its lawyers are getting 7.5million. The firm will also shell out a further 500,000 for PR advice and 400,000 on accountants. The combined company will be called Standard Life Aberdeen, and have 660billion of savers cash on its books. The merger is expected to save bosses 200million a year despite one-off costs of 320million. But there was a growing backlash yesterday with election candidates lining up to criticise the deal. Dean Lockhart, the economy spokesman for the Tories north of the border, said: The merger between these two firms has the potential to create a genuine global player in fund management. However the potential job losses are a huge concern, and both sides need to ensure that they keep them to a minimum. George Kerevan, an SNP member of the Treasury select committee in the last Parliament, said: The new company has said it will try and deal with the proposed job cuts through natural wastage. The new Parliament will hold them to that and I will hold them to that, particularly because it is setting aside such large sums of money for bonuses. He added: The weakness in the proposed merger is having a joint chief executive. That is a recipe for trouble. The company needs to revisit that decision. A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: We will be engaging with both companies as the merger progresses to discuss employment and investment. A retired Navy officer has found a hate-filled note on his car windshield accusing him of stealing a parking spot set aside for veterans in North Carolina. Rod Boyle parked his car outside a Harris Teeter grocery store in Wake Forest before running inside to grab a few things. When he returned, he found the abusive note plastered on his windshield. It read: 'You are a f***ing moron! I hope karma visits you often! This is parking for our veterans.' The 56-year-old retired Navy First Class Petty Officer shared a picture of the note on social media on Saturday night, while also describing what happened. Rod Boyle (left and right), a retired Navy officer, has found a hate-filled note on his car windshield accusing him of stealing a parking spot set aside for veterans in North Carolina Boyle parked his car outside a Harris Teeter grocery store in Wake Forest, and found the note (pictured) when he was leaving the store 'Yes, I was parked in the VETERAN's parking space,' he wrote on Facebook. 'I retired after 20-years of service in the US Navy, in 2001. I am proud of my accomplishment and I definitely do not expect a return but respect is what I feel I have earned.' But despite his initial anger, Boyle defended whoever wrote the note wrongly accusing him. 'I defended our country for a very specific reason, for citizens of the United States to have the right to say that kind of stuff,' he told the News & Observer. 'My service was not only to defend, but also for the rights of Americans. One of those rights is freedom of speech, such as for a person to make an assumption, write a note and touch a car.' Despite his defense of the note, the 56-year-old also told the newspaper he was upset upon seeing it. Harris Teeter issued a statement about the incident, which read: 'It is extremely unfortunate anyone would receive a note like this.' Pictured is the store where Boyle was shopping 'What business is it of someone to make that assumption?' he said. 'I am a veteran. What made you think I wasnt? You cant tell if someone is a veteran just by what they look like, or the car they drive.' The former officer's Facebook page was flooded with support over the weekend, with many praising him for his service to the country. 'Sorry you ran into that stupidity, Rod,' one person wrote. 'People are so quick to judge and be the judge and jury in a split second. Thank you for your years of service!' another added. Harris Teeter issued a statement about the incident, which read: 'It is extremely unfortunate anyone would receive a note like this, and we are certainly disappointed it happened while this veteran was shopping in our store.' The Republican and Democratic leaders of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee have ordered former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to turn over documents related to its deep-dive probe into Russian election interference last year. Committee chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and vice chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, announced the subpoena late Wednesday. 'The Committee first requested these documents in an April 28, 2017 letter to Lieutenant General Flynn,' the two senators said in a joint statement, 'but he declined, through counsel, to cooperate with the Committee's request.' Separately, the same committee announced hours earlier that Andrew McCabe, acting director of the FBI, would testify Thursday in place of ousted director James Comey during an annual hearing about worldwide threats to the United States. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has been ordered to give the U.S. Senate any documents he has concerning Russia's attempts to interfere with the November U.S. elections Flynn has been a lightning rod for the Trump administration since his own firing in February, following revelations that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about contacts he had had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Donald Trump took office. Flynn had insisted at the time that he and Kislyak never discussed the possibility of the U.S. easing sanctions against Moscow. Pence repeated that assurance in a television interview. But Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, brought evidence to the White House establishing that there was more to Flynn's contact with the Russian diplomat than he had let on. Yates told senators on Monday that Flynn's concealment of details of those 'problematic' conversations raised fears in the Department of Justice that he was at risk for blackmail. Days after she raised that issue with White House Counsel Don McGahn, Yates herself was fired for refusing to defend Trump's travel ban executive order in federal court. Yates testified before a Senate subcommittee that she had two in-person meetings and one phone call with McGahn, telling him that Flynn's contention about his Kislyak contacts 'wasn't true.' 'To state the obvious, you do not want your national security advisor compromised by the Russians,' Yates said. Flynn's Russia ties are also being scrutinized by the FBI as it investigates whether Trump's campaign was involved in Russia's election interference. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (right), a Republican, and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (left), a Democrat, issued a joint statement about their subpoena Andrew McCabe, now the acting FBI director following the ouster of his boss James Comey on Tuesday, will testify in a 'worldwide threats' hearing on Thursday in Comey's place Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates explained Monday to a Senate panel why she warned the White House about Flynn's contacts with a Russian diplomat before Donald Trump became president It comes as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi threatened to use a parliamentary maneuver to force a vote on a bill that would create an independent panel to investigate possible contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Pelosi said in a letter on Wednesday to House Democrats that they'll file a discharge petition if Speaker Paul Ryan doesn't call up the legislation 'immediately upon our return next week.' The House is on recess this week. A discharge petition allows a measure to be brought straight to the floor, bypassing consideration by committee. But successes are rare through this approach because a majority of House members must sign the petition. Pelosi said the 'fireworks at the Department of Justice demand that we remove the investigation from the Trump-appointed Justice Department leadership.' Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Wednesday that the White House wanted the FBI to complete its investigation into Russia interference in the election. Asked about appointment of a special prosecutor something critics say is required to assure an independent investigation, Sanders said: 'We don't think that's necessary. You've got a House committee, a Senate committee, and the Department of Justice all working on this. I don't think that there's a necessary need at this point to add that.' FBI Director James Comey was sacked on Tuesday amid the federal investigation into Russian ties but Sanders said the White House does not think appointing a special prosecutor is necessary. It came as Sanders said during the press briefing that Comey had 'essentially taken a stick of dynamite and thrown it into the Department of Justice' by holding his infamous press conference about the FBI's decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton. Sanders unloaded on Comey just hours after Trump fired him while releasing a letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein laying out the case against Comey. Sanders filling in for press secretary Sean Spicer, who is on Naval reserve duty also accused Comey of committing 'atrocities' in his conduct, a word usually reserved for the worst actors on the world stage. He's back: James Comey was at home and apparently smiling as he was seen at his home in McLean, Virginia. He is being invited to testify to Congress on Tuesday ALL SMILES: Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US President Donald Trump, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak (L-R) talking during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on Wednesday 'Having a letter like the one that he received and having that conversation that outlined the basic atrocities in circumventing the chain of command at the department of justice,' Sanders said, required the president to act. Sanders said Comey's conduct amounted to going 'around the chain of command' and 'is simply not allowed.' She said Trump made the final decision to sack Comey on Tuesday, but had 'been considering letting Director Comey go pretty much from the day he took office.' The White House has said repeatedly that the initiative came from the Justice Department, although Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Judiciary Committee Democrat who got a head's up from Trump Tuesday night, says President Trump told her he had ordered a review that led to the decision. In Sanders' timeline, she said Trump met with Rosenstein on Monday. She used language indicating it was at Rosenstein's request. 'He did have a conversation with the deputy attorney general on Monday where they had come to him to express their concerns,' she said. Sanders refused to divulge information about the three times President Trump claims Comey told him he was 'not under investigation,' or reveal whether the president had specifically asked whether he was under investigation. President Trump himself was terse as he defended his sudden firing of Comey 'wasn't doing a good job.' The president made his brief statement from the Oval Office during a meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and security advisor under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Asked why he fired Comey, Trump responded: 'Because he wasn't doing a good job, very simply. He was not doing a good job.' The president shook his head when asked whether the issue affected his meeting with the Russians today. He had met earlier with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as well as Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. Ooltewah High School has been selected to the 2017 School Team Externship Program. In its first year, The School Team Externship Program gave Tennessee teachers the opportunity to learn how businesses work and to better understand the type of expertise that is important for tomorrow's workforce.The Ooltewah High School team, consisting of, Heidi Moses (CTE department chair), Robin Copp (principal), Tracy Manning (guidance counselor), Taylor Flynn (English 11 teacher, yearbook sponsor), and Mark Hamby (English IB 12 and AP English teacher) will spend one week in June with the Unum Group of Chattanooga, learning about current industry technologies and applied skills.These educators will spend a week at Unum's offices to meet with different professionals in various parts of the company to see how the skills taught at today's schools are applied in the business world."Through a collaborative effort, teachers will gain insight by taking the experience back to their school to share with colleagues and integrate in the classroom; including a clearer understanding of the importance of interviewing skills, clear communication, interpersonal relationships and other soft skills needed in the workforce," officials said. "This program is also a chance for Unum to gain insight into the way teachers run their classrooms, and how that can affect the work habits of new hires and young people entering the workforce." Former President Barack Obama used a private jet and a 14-car convoy to transport him to a conference in Milan where he spoke about food security and climate change. Obamas detail also include a helicopter that provided security from the air. Critics seized on the massive logistical effort and the attendant carbon footprint that is a byproduct of Obamas trip. 'It seems like Obama has taken a page out of Leonardo DiCaprio's book of do as I say, not as I do,' wrote the conservative Independent Journal Review. Last year, the star actor was criticized for using a private jet to transport him from Cannes to New York to pick up an environmental award, according to the Telegraph. Former President Obama arrived in Milan, Italy on Monday for a two-day trip. He's pictured above leaving his hotel in the European fashion capital Obama flew in on a private jet and then was escorted by a 14-car convoy to a climate change summit in Milan. Two of the vehicles in the convoy are seen above Critics seized on the massive logistical effort and the attendant carbon footprint that is a byproduct of Obamas trip DiCaprio then flew back to Cannes on another private jet immediately after receiving his award. An associate of the Titanic star defended him, claiming that he merely 'hitched a ride with someone already flying back and to Cannes. 'Hitching a ride was the only way he could make it in time for both events,' the associate said. On Tuesday afternoon the former president delivered a speech on climate change at the annual Seeds and Chips conference - for which 3,500 people have paid 850 each for a ticket, The Times reported. This has raised almost 3million for the Obama Foundation, which was set up to help further his project of 'renewal and global progress'. Obama made the most of his two-day trip to Italy by reportedly staying at a sprawling $20,000-a-night hilltop villa in Tuscany and a five-star hotel in Milan. He reportedly took over two floors of the Park Hyatt hotel - where presidential suite rooms cost almost $10,000 a night. He stayed at the five-star Park Hyatt hotel in Milan (pictured) and reportedly took up two floors with his entourage Presidential suite rooms at the lavish hotel cost almost $10,000 a night Obama seemed to be making the most of his post-presidential work routine. Crowds flocked to the streets with homemade banners as the former American president was escorted by 300 police officers and helicopters. He wore shades and went tie-less as he stepped out of the $9,100 a night Park Hyatt hotel later in the day, waving and smiling to hoards of Italian fans. The visit is his first public foreign foray since leaving the presidency. On Monday he had a private meeting with former Italian PM Matteo Renzi. Renzi resigned from the position in December and is now the head of his country's democratic party. 'The two leaders were close partners and became good friends while in office,' his spokesman said in a statement. From there he visited the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana art gallery - full of works by Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio - before stopping by the city's cathedral. MailOnline has reached out to Obama for comment. Mr Obama's climate change speech comes as President Trump mulls whether to withdraw the US from the Paris climate change agreement On Monday he had a private meeting with former Italian PM Renzi. Renzi resigned from the position in December and is now the head of his country's democratic party Expectant fans gather ready with her phones for a glimpse of the former US president Predicting crimes before they happen was once the preserve of science fiction, but advances in AI are now turning it into reality. And one force is about to implement AI that will allow them to predict whether suspects should be kept in custody. The system labels suspects at a low, medium or high risk of offending, and could be rolled out to the force in the next few months. Scroll down for video Durham Constabulary in the UK are about to launch a new tool that will allow them to predict whether arrested criminals will go on to re-offend if released on bail, with up to 98 per cent accuracy (stock image) HART SOFTWARE The Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) was trained to recognise patterns of recidivism by studying the offending behaviour of criminals gathered over a five year period. Durham Constabulary in the UK taught the algorithm using records taken between 2008 and 2012. The software can determine whether a suspect is at a low, medium or high risk of offending once they are released from custody. They found that AI was 98 per cent accurate in its predictions for low risk offenders and 88 per cent accurate when it came to high risk suspects. And although the predictions did not influence decision making this is about to begin, according to the force. Advertisement The Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) was trained to recognise patterns of recidivism by studying the offending behaviour of criminals gathered over a five year period. And the software can determine whether a suspect is at a low, medium or high risk of offending once they are released from custody. Durham Constabulary taught the algorithm using records taken between 2008 and 2012. Over the next two years, they measured its predictions on re-offending rates. They found that AI was 98 per cent accurate in its predictions for low risk offenders and 88 per cent accurate when it came to high risk suspects. And although the predictions did not influence decision making this is about to begin, according to the force. Speaking to the BBC Sheena Urwin, Durham's head of criminal justice, said: 'I imagine in the next two to three months we'll probably make it a live tool to support officers' decision making.' Officers will start to use the system to asses a random sample of cases. The AI's predictions will then be compared to control data, taken from normal arrest and release procedures. There are some limitations to the system, as it is unable to take offending behaviour in other areas into account in its predictions. Experts say the tool may be useful, but the risk is that it could skew decisions. But if the system proves a success and could be nationalised, this would increase the computer's ability to accurately predict a suspect's behaviour. In the hit 2002 film Minority Report, set in the year 2054 where police forces are able to predict future crimes through the use of psychics called 'precogs'. In the hit 2002 film Minority Report (pictured) police forces are able to predict future crimes. A number of forces around the world have already experimented with technology reminiscent of this ability, which Standford University reports will be heavily relied upon by 2030 This is not the first time that police forces around the world have experimented with technology reminiscent of this ability. In December 2016, police in Leicester tested an AI imaging system called HALO so powerful it can identify someone even only a tiny part of their face is visible, such as their forehead or an ear. In the same month, the Dubai Police force deployed its Crime Prediction software, which analyses patterns from police databases and attempts to spot when and where an event is likely to occur next. And researchers at Stanford university say that 'predictive policing' will be heavily relied upon by 2030. China has announced plans to build a base on an asteroid where it will mine the space rock for precious metals. Ye Peijian, a space scientist and political advisor at the China Academy of Space Technology said that China plans to send robots or astronauts to mine asteroids and transport the resources back to Earth. And although he did not put a timeline on the mission, he said it will be 'in the near future.' Scroll down for video In the hopes of directly competing with US space agencies, China has announced plans to build a base on an asteroid where it will mine the space rock for precious metals TOP FIVE ASTEROID MINING PROSPECTS 162385 (2000 BM19) - Profit: $6.94trillion 4034 Vishnu - Profit: $5.28trillion 65679 (1989 UQ) - Profit: $1.74trillion 5143 Heracles (1991 VL) - Profit: $2.33trillion 7753 (1988 XB) - Profit: $1.31trillion Source: Asterank Advertisement Mr Peijian explained the plans at an 'asteroid exploration forum', according to China Daily. He said: 'In the near future, we will study ways to send robots or astronauts to mine suitable asteroids and transport the resources back to Earth. 'In the long term, we will consider using resources from asteroids to build facilities in space or to provide materials to support interstellar travel.' 'In addition, some asteroids can be used as bases for interstellar exploration. 'We can land an unmanned probe on it, and the probe will travel with the asteroid to deep space. 'When it reaches a certain point, we will activate the probe, which will leave the asteroid to execute its scientific mission. 'This will tremendously reduce the amount of fuel a probe needs to carry and extend its life span as well as its flight range.' China's plans come shortly after Goldman Sachs announced last month that it hoped to build an 'asteroid-grabbing spacecraft' to make billions from mining space metals. In January, Nasa announced plans to find 16 Psyche, one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system 16 PSYCHE 16 Psyche is located in the large asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and may have started as a planet, before it was partially destroyed during the formation of the solar system. Now, it is a 130 mile (200km) wide chunk of metal, made up of iron, nickel and a number of other rare metals, including gold, platinum and copper. If the asteroid could be transported back to Earth, the iron alone would be worth $10,000 quadrillion (8,072 quadrillion). In comparison, all the money on Earth is thought to be worth $60 to $75 trillion. Advertisement The celestial objects are thought to be loaded with tonnes of precious metals and minerals, including pricey platinum, worth quadrillions on Earth. A 98-page report from the banking investment company claims that mining asteroids for precious metals in the near future is a 'realistic' goal. Nasa has also expressed an interest in finding mineral-rich asteroids. In January, it announced plans to find 16 Psyche, one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system. 16 Psyche is located in the large asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and may have started as a planet, before it was partially destroyed during the formation of the solar system. Now, it is a 130 mile (200km) wide chunk of metal, made up of iron, nickel and a number of other rare metals, including gold, platinum and copper. Nasa has also expressed an interest in finding mineral-rich asteroids, espcially 16 Psyche - an asteroid located in the large asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter Lindy Elkins-Tanton the lead scientist on the Nasa mission and the director of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, said: '16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. 'We learn about inner space by visiting outer space.' If the asteroid could be transported back to Earth, the iron alone would be worth $10,000 quadrillion (8,072 quadrillion). In comparison, all the money on Earth is thought to be worth $60 to $75 trillion. It has been a long few months of anticipation for fans waiting to get their hands on the Nokia 3310 remake. But the end is finally in sight, with manufacturers HMD officially confirming May 24th as the handset's UK release date, as well dates for three other European nations. And the firm say Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse will be among the first places people can buy the updated version of the classic mobile, for 49.99. Scroll down for video Nokia 3310 manufacturers HMD has officially confirmed May 24th as the UK release date for the updated version of the classic handset. Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse will be the first places people can buy it (stock image) THE NOKIA 3310 - Thin, light and durable - Measures 115.6 x 51.0 x 12.8mm - Weighs 79.6 grams - 22-hour talk time - One month battery life - 2.4 inch curved colour display - 2 megapixel camera with LED flash - Four colour options: red, yellow, dark blue and grey - Limited 2.5G internet capability - Bluetooth, micro USB, and headphone jack connections - MicroSD card support up to 32GB - Revamped version of Snake will come pre-installed - Release date of May 24th confirmed - Will cost 49.99 Advertisement Rumours of the release date of the much anticipated handset have been circulating since it was announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), held in Barcelona, Spain. A spokesman for the manufacturer said at the time that the phone would go on sale during the second quarter of the year. Some speculated that this could be as early as March, while one retail site Clove listed the handset for pre-orders for delivery in mid-June. But now an official comment from HMD has put an end to speculation, by confirming the launch date as well as it's price - 49.99. Among the bigger networks, EE is the only one besides Vodafone to confirm plans to stock the phone, with O2 and Three saying they will not. A number of independent retailers are also likely to, but this may be at a later date. Fans in Germany will also have to wait slightly longer, until May 26, to get their 3310, with the Netherlands and Belgium following behind on June 6. The European price will be 59.99, and the handset will not be available in the US. Speaking in a press release, the company said: 'Thin, light and incredibly durable, the Nokia 3310 is a head turning modern twist on one of the best-selling feature phones of all time. 'Boasting an incredible 22-hour talk-time and month long stand-by, the Nokia 3310s fresh, colourful, modern design brings it bang up to date. 'Talk all day, text, take pictures, listen to music, and get hooked once more on the original mobile gaming hit Snake, all on a single charge. 'With its unparalleled month-long standby time, the Nokia 3310 encompasses everything you knew and loved in a sleek modern polycarbonate casing. 'And with inherent colour throughout its body the Nokia 3310 is more vibrant than ever before.' The new Nokia 3310, with a slick look that pays homage to its original design, was first unveiled on February 27. It will be available in four colour options, warm red, dark blue, yellow and grey. The firm behind the revamped 3310 (pictured) made the announcement in a message sent out to the press this morning. They were keen to highlight new features including the handset's one month battery life The phone, which sold 126million handsets until it was phased out in 2005, will be available in four colour options: warm red, dark blue, yellow and grey. It also features the return of snake (pictured) The iconic handset was a massive hit with users back in 2000 and the relaunched version will include a month-long battery, 22 hours of talk-time, and even its popular game, snake. While the handset looks similar to its predecessor, Nokia has brought its new model up to date and instead of the original display, a monochrome 84 x 84, it has a colour screen. However, it has limited internet capabilities, relying on 2.5G connectivity, with users browsing at speeds slower than if they were using 3G. It also has a single camera which has just two megapixels. The phone, which sold 126 million handsets until it was phased out in 2005, will be sold by Finish company HMD Global. Carphone Warehouse announced in March that record numbers of people had pre-registered for the handset. They said the 3310 attracted ten times more interest than any other flagship phone previously launched at the MWC. The iconic Nokia 3310 was a massive hit with users back in 2000 thanks to its hardy exterior and custom ring-tones The new 3310 attracted huge interest after details emerged from manufacturer HMD. Andrew Wilson, UK director of buying at Carphone Warehouse, told the Telegraph: 'There has been an astonishing groundswell of interest in the Nokia 3310 following the launch announcement of this reimagined classic. 'Levels of pre-registrations at Carphone Warehouse are incredibly strong, proving that it's not all hype and that consumers really want to get their hands on one.' The UAE turned the heads of space exploration fans everywhere earlier this year when it announced its plans to build a mini-city on Mars in the next century. Officials have since released few details on the project, which is part of its 100-year national programme to better understand the red planet. But yesterday a key figurehead of the ambitious plans said that the UAE is prepared to join the 'new space race' and that young Arab people will lead the mission. Scroll down for video In February the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced its plans to set up Mars' first mini city by 2117. This computer generated concept image shows released by the Dubai Media Office shows what the colony could look like MARS MISSIONS Since 1965, four entities have successfully made it to Mars: Nasa, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organization. Nasa has the highest success rate of the four at around 70 per cent. It has sent 21 missions to Mars since the 1960s, and all but six have succeeded. Japan and China have tried and never succeeded. India is the only Asian country to launch a successful Mars mission. The US is the only nation so far to land and operate an unmanned craft on Mars long-term. More missions have been attempted to Mars than any other planet in the Solar System. The international success rate in Mars missions since the 1960s is less than 50 per cent. Advertisement 'In the UAE... we believe that we are on the cusp of a new age of exploration,' Saeed Al Gergawi, Program Director of the Mars 2117 program at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), announced at the Humans to Mars summit in Washington, DC. '[There's] a new space race that affects literally every human on Earth.' Mr Al Gergawi explained the UAE's ambitions for the colony in a panel of representatives from the European Space Agency, NASA and more. He said that the country plans to collaborate with multiple commercial and national entities to build the colony. Though Mr Al Gergawi gave little detail as to how these collaborations might emerge, it is likely that Nasa will be involved to some degree. In June 2016 the agency announced it would be working with the UAE on space endeavours, and specifically mentioned their mutual interest in Mars. 'The United Arab Emirates and the United States of America are long-standing allies and have deep economic, cultural and diplomatic ties,' UAE Space Agency Chairman Dr. Khalifa Al Romaithi said at the time. 'We at the UAE Space Agency genuinely welcome the opportunity to collaborate and work with the USA and Nasa in the fields of aeronautics, space science, and the peaceful exploration of outer space toward the common goal of fostering the well-being of humankind.' The UAE first announced its interest in colonising Mars at the World Government Summit in February in the presence of representatives of 138 governments. The energy-rich country on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula announced plans to help get people to the red planet over the few next decades. This is a computer generated image of what the interior of the UAE's Martian buildings might look like. Since 1965, four entities have successfully made it to Mars: Nasa, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organization The Mars 2117 Project was announced by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum who is the Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai and His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. The project will explore how people can get to Mars and how to create food and energy on the red planet, according to Gulf News. A virtual presentation was made at the same time as the announcement. 'The landing of people on other planets has been a longtime dream for humans,' said Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid. 'Our aim is that the UAE will spearhead international efforts to make this dream a reality.' He said the UAE is ranked among the nine most important countries in the world to invest in space science. 'The UAE has become part of dynamic human scientific efforts to explore space and making scientific contributions to human knowledge,' he added. 'With the launch of this project, we begin a new journey that will last for decades to come, and it will speed up human endeavours to explore other planets.' More missions have been attempted to Mars than any other planet on the Solar System except the moon. This concept image shows what the UAE's Mars mini-city could look like HUMANS ON MARS There are several reasons we haven't got anyone on Mars yet: - We can't store the necessary fuel for such a long flight - We don't have a vehicle capable of landing people on the Martian surface - We don't know how to keep them alive when they're there Nasa's goal is to send humans to Mars in the 2030s. Advertisement The journey to Mars is complicated and many missions have failed. The international success rate in Mars missions since the 1960s is less than 50 per cent. Nasa so far has the highest success rate at around 70 per cent. It has sent 21 missions to Mars since the 1960s, and all but six have succeeded. For hundreds of years up until the mid-13th century, Islamic advancements in science and technology experienced a golden age, but later fell behind. The ruler of the emirate of Abu Dhabi and UAE President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nayhan said the Mars probe 'represents the Islamic world's entry into the era of space exploration.' This computer generated image shows the pod that will enclose the city. The US is the only nation so far to land and operate an unmanned craft on Mars long-term Several Muslim-majority nations such as Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey Indonesia, Pakistan and Iran already have space agencies or programmes. There have also been several Muslim astronauts from around the world. Saudi-born Prince Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud became the first Muslim and Arab to travel to space in 1985. Meanwhile, Egypt became the first Arab country to launch its own communications satellite in 1998, dramatically transforming the broadcasting landscape in the region. If you're fed up of ogling profile pictures of singles only to swipe right in vain, then there's good news. A new dating app lets users find matches based on more than just looks. The app, called Loveflutter, was inspired by a MailOnline article and claims to be the first to use Twitter, letting users display their tweets on their profile. Ahead of its launch this year, it has released an online interactive tool that lets anyone input their Twitter handle to find out their personality, and get dating advice. Take the test below LOVEFLUTTER The app lets users display their 10 most recent tweets by signing into their Twitter account or tapping 'Connect with Twitter' in settings. Profiles can include photos and useful pieces of information, such as a user's job. Non-Twitter users can also sign-up to Loveflutter via Facebook or email and browse tweets of potential matches. Singles looking for love can anonymously swipe through other profiles and can connect if they 'like' each other much like on Tinder. If users get a match, it's up to them to decide whether to meet in real life and there's an in-app 'venue discovery tool' to help them pick a romantic location. To safeguard privacy, the app does not display its users' Twitter handles or full names, post anything to Twitter on their behalf or alter their existing Twitter privacy settings. Advertisement To find out your 'Twitter personality', use the tool above or click this link to enter your Twitter handle. The site analyses the words used in your tweets and looks for a range of personality traits including Type A or Type B, levels of happiness and depression, persuasiveness and independence. Loveflutter aims to appeal to Twitter's estimated 150 million single users. While it may be designed to delve deeper into its users' personalities than Tinder, the app also allows anonymous swiping to let users 'like' or 'pass' on profiles. Like other dating apps, two users can connect if they both 'like' each other. London-based co-founder of Loveflutter, Daigo Smith said he created the Twitter-focused app having been inspired by an article he read on MailOnline about what tweets reveal about people's personalities. The article showcased a tool called Analyse Words that generated a user's emotional style and said whether they were worried, angry or depressed, as well as revealing their social and thinking styles - all from tweets. Mr Smith made contact with Toronto-based language scientists Receptiviti AI - including the man behind Analyse Words - and rebuilt LoveFlutter with 'Twitter at its core.' James Pennebaker, co-founder of Receptiviti said: 'There is more to tweets than authors' appreciate - each entry is like a fingerprint. The new dating app lets users find matches by what they say on Twitter instead of photos alone and like other dating apps two users can connect if they both 'like' each other 'The frequency of certain words in tweets, such as pronouns, can reveal a person's emotional, social and thinking style.' The thinking goes that tweets, which tend to be spontaneous and opinionated, rather than polished Instagram posts to project your 'best self,' offer insight into people's personalities and could help single people looking for love avoid incompatibilities. Mr Smith said: 'Other dating apps have hooked up with Instagram, giving users the option to display even more pictures on profiles. Loveflutter was inspired by this MailOnline article and claims to be the first to use Twitter to help match singles, enabling users' latest 10 tweets to be added to profiles We tried the app on two of our Twitter accounts. The results gave a psychological snapshot from analysing our most recent tweets with chat-up advice for the future. It generates a user's emotional style and says what they are like - all from tweets 'Instead, we want to shift the emphasis away from a user interface that encourages snap judgements. He explained: 'We're working with science partners for a new direction in swiping that's as much about your thoughts, feelings and opinions as it is your looks. 'Because on a date in real life, looks matter, but what you say counts.' Singles looking for love can anonymously swipe through other profiles and can connect if they 'like' each other much like on Tinder except the focus is on words and not pictures If users get a match, it's up to them to decide whether to meet in real life and there's an in-app 'venue discovery tool' to help them pick a romantic location As well as your most recent tweets, the profile includes up to six pictures, and details such as a user's job, education and political views, common friends and interests. Users can also write a fun fact that is up to 140 characters long. Matches are not currently picked out by language-analysing algorithms, and users simply swipe through profiles peppered with Twitter information. But according to the designers, this could be about to change. THE FUTURE OF LOVEFLUTTER Matches are not currently picked out by language-analysing algorithms but simply by users swiping through profiles peppered with Twitter information. But this could be about to change. Mr Smith told MailOnline: 'The next step for us is an exciting new area in dating of matching algorithms based on language analysis. 'We're already developing a new feature, planned for release by the end of 2017, where we show a 'compatibility score' between two users based on their language used, both at the pre-match stage (i.e. when you view another Twitter-connected user) and the post-match stage (when you're chatting to another user). Advertisement While matches are not currently picked out by language-analysing algorithms but simply by users swiping through profiles peppered with Twitter information, this could be about to change Mr Smith told MailOnline: 'The next step for us is an exciting new area in dating of matching algorithms based on language analysis. 'We're already developing a new feature, planned for release by the end of 2017, where we show a "compatibility score" between two users based on their language used, both at the pre-match stage (when you view another Twitter-connected user) and the post-match stage (when you're chatting to another user). The company has also worked with Receptiviti on a 'Twitter Personality Test' that reveals insights into a user's personality from their tweets and even offers dating tips, such as: 'Get to the point quickly and don't waste their time. Do your best to avoid being negative.' The company has also worked with Receptiviti on a 'Twitter Personality Test' that reveals insights into a user's personality from their tweets and even offers dating tips, such as: 'Get to the point quickly and don't waste their time' Almost half of Android smartphone users are at risk of having their screen 'hijacked' thanks to a major security flaw in the software, researchers have found. The bug allows hackers to steal photos, passwords and bank details, leaving millions at risk of blackmail and fraud. Cyber criminals could hijack the screen of an expensive phone until a ransom has been paid. Scroll down for video Almost half of Android smartphone users are at risk of having their screen 'hijacked' thanks to a major security flaw in the software, security researchers have found. The bug allows hackers to steal photos, passwords and bank details, leaving millions at risk of blackmail (stock image) 'SCREEN HIJACK' FLAW The vulnerability can be accessed through the Android system that allows apps to pop-up on your screen. This is the same system that the Facebook messenger app uses to show a bubble pop-up when a friend wants to chat. But criminals, through malicious apps, could use it to take control of victims' screen and install harmful software. Android users have been advised to avoid downloading untrustworthy apps until the bug is fixed later this year. Advertisement The bug is understood to affect 45 per cent of Android users worldwide. Google has said it does not plan to fix the issue until summer when its newest operating system is released. Security experts Check Point found the flaw on Tuesday. 'Based on Googles policy which grants extensive permissions to apps installed directly from Google Play, this flaw exposes Android users to several types of attacks, including ransomware, banking malware and adware,' the team said in a blog post on the vulnerability. 'Check Point reported this flaw to Google, which responded that this issue is already being dealt with in the upcoming version of Android, currently dubbed Android O.' The vulnerability can be accessed through the Android system that allows apps to pop-up on your screen. This is the same system that the Facebook messenger app uses to show a bubble pop-up when a friend wants to chat. But criminals, through malicious apps, could use it to take control of victims' screen and install harmful software. Cyber criminals could hijack the screen of an expensive phone until a ransom has been paid. The bug is understood to affect 45 per cent of Android users worldwide (stock image) Android users have been advised to avoid downloading untrustworthy apps until the bug is fixed later this year. 'Users should always beware of malicious apps, even when downloading from Google Play,' Check Point said in its blog post. 'Look for the comments left by other users, and grant only permissions which have relevant context for the apps purpose.' 'And just as you protect your PC with dedicated security solutions, you should also make sure to protect your mobile device using a protective solution capable of identifying and blocking known and unknown malware.' Google has yet to respond to MailOnline's request for further comment. With people spending more time glued to their phones, social media is quickly becoming addictive, a new study has warned. The worrying study found that the mere sight of the Facebook logo is now enough to get some people craving time online. The findings illustrate just how obsessed people are becoming with social media, and could help to develop a social media rehabilitation programme. The research claims the site is just as addictive as chocolate or nicotine. Scroll down for video With people spending more and more time online, social media is quickly becoming addictive, a new study has warned. The worrying study found that the mere sight of the Facebook logo is now enough to get some people online THE STUDY Participants were asked to rate a series of images as pleasant or unpleasant after being shown either the Facebook logo or a neutral cue. The results showed that frequent social media users reacted more positively to the images that followed the Facebook logo. But it did not affect the responses of the less frequent users. A second study replicated the first, but added another dimension measuring Facebook cravings among the participants. This included questions such as 'I want to use Facebook right now,' 'I would love if it was possible to use Facebook right now,' or 'I don't need Facebook at the moment'. Results showed that there was a direct link between the level of their cravings and their earlier reaction to the Facebook logo. Advertisement Researchers from Vrije University in Amsterdam studied the online habits of 200 people, and found that showing frequent Facebook users the site's logo sparked spontaneous pleasurable reactions - which made it difficult for them to resist. Social media has been found to be more addictive than drinking or smoking - with doctors warning it can endanger mental health. Now it has been illustrated just how obsessed people can become - with the mere sight of the logo sparking immediate 'hedonic reactions.' In the study, participants were asked to rate a series of images as pleasant or unpleasant after being shown either the Facebook logo or a neutral cue. The results showed that frequent social media users reacted more positively to the images that followed the Facebook logo. But it did not affect the responses of the less frequent users. A second study replicated the first, but added another dimension measuring Facebook cravings among the participants. This included questions such as 'I want to use Facebook right now,' 'I would love if it was possible to use Facebook right now,' or 'I don't need Facebook at the moment'. Results showed that there was a direct link between the level of their cravings and their earlier reaction to the Facebook logo. Dr Guido van Koningsbruggen, who led the study, said: 'Frequent Facebook users showed more favourable affective reactions in response to Facebook cues compared to control cues. Social media has been found to be more addictive than drinking or smoking - with doctors warning it can endanger mental health (stock image) 'Less-frequent Facebook users' affective reactions did not differ between Facebook and control cues. 'These results support our hypothesis that exposure to social media cues triggers spontaneous hedonic reactions in frequent social media users.' The findings are consistent with the idea that social media users have strong and positive reactions to media content. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA SITES REEL US IN Silicon Valley giants such as Google and Facebook are using underhand tactics to get our brains hooked to our smartphones. That's according to former Google product manager Tristan Harris, who claims technology companies are using techniques borrowed from casinos to get us addicted to checking our phones. Mr Harris said notification streams on smartphones and apps such as Facebook are designed to excite the brain in a similar way to slot machines. He said: 'Every time I check my phone, I'm playing the slot machine to see, 'What did I get?' 'This is one way to hijack people's minds and create a habit, to form a habit. He said this explains why apps allow users to slowly gather rewards over time. For example, Twitter lets its users slowly build up followers, while Snapchat keeps a running score based on how much you use the app. And it could also explain why Facebook and Instagram notify you every time you get a like. Advertisement Dr Koningsburggen added: 'Given that cravings reflect one of the aspects of problematic or unregulated media use and have been associated with a preference for immediately rewarding behaviour when tempted, we speculate that the observed spontaneous hedonic reactions to social media cues might also be associated with people's failures to resist social media temptations.' The researchers believe that their findings could be used to develop a social media rehabilitation programme. Dr Brenda Wienderhold, who also worked on the study, said: 'Understanding hedonic reactions, both psychological and physiological, to social media cues can help us to develop more effective treatment and prevention protocols.' A 'tank-like object' has been spotted on the moon, according to controversial UFO hunters. The 'artificial' object could be an ancient tank according to the UFO channel SecureTeam10 who say there are now too many artificial structures on the moon to keep count. Conspiracy theorists who made the 'discovery' say it looks suspiciously similar to tanks on Earth, sparking speculation it could be part of an ancient civilisation. Scroll down for video The 'artificial' object (pictured) could be an ancient tank according to the UFO channel SecureTeam10 who say there are now too many artificial structures on the moon to keep count SECURETEAM10 CONTROVERSY SectureTeam10 is one of the most viewed YouTube channels, with over 785,000 people subscribing to its conspiracy videos. But the channel has come under fire, as Lions Ground, a rival channel, claims that it has been intentionally fooling its viewers. According to Lions Ground, SecureTeam10 has been raking in an estimated 600 ($745) a day by posting fake videos that 'outsmart UFO believers.' But Lions Ground is not happy about this, and has told The Sun Online that many of SecureTeam10's videos are damaging to 'real' UFO research. The Marbella-based channel has produced a series of videos called 'SecureTeam10 debunked' calling SecureTeam10's claims into question. Heathcliff, the owner of Lions Ground, told The Sun Online: 'He outsmarted the UFO believers and today he drives a fancy car thinking: thank you donkeys.' Advertisement SecureTeam10, which are based in Cleveland, Ohio believe Nasa is covering up evidence of aliens. 'I can only describe as a tank-like object... scattered amongst what appear to be ruins', the team said on their YouTube channel. They zoomed in on a photo of the moon and highlighted the 'artificial nature' of an object in the bottom of the footage. 'This exhibits from very similar features to the tanks we see on Earth', they said. The UFO hunters posted a series of photos taken by the satellite which show the tank-like object from different angles. 'If this were a tank obviously it would be ancient which would explains the weathering', the claimed. 'There's a very good chance what we could be looking at could be some ancient structure. 'We know these artificial structures are on the moon to the point there are too many to count.' The team speculated that the strange objects around the 'tank' could be 'scrap metal just scattered across the moon'. The UFO-hunting channel, which are based in Cleveland, Ohio, zoomed in on a Nasa photo of the moon which shows a large boulder in the bottom left of the image The conspiracy theorists also drew attention to an object at the other side of the lunar photo which they claimed was made of an 'almost metallic-like surface texture that is highly reflective'. 'You can see something still on top of it which looks like it's been blurred out a little bit', the team noted. Last month they claimed to have found a disc-like object could be a mobile lunar base for aliens. The team that made the 'discovery' say it looks suspiciously similar to tanks seen on Earth, sparking speculation that it could be part of an ancient civilisation SecureTeam10, which believes Nasa is covering up evidence of aliens, highlighted the 'artificial nature' of this object which they claim looks like tanks found on earth (pictured) The conspiracy theorists drew attention to an object at the other side of the lunar photo which they claimed was made of an 'almost metallic-like surface texture that is highly reflective' The UFO hunters posted a series of photos taken by the satellite which show a disc-like object from different angles. They have claimed that the unusual structure appears at different points of the moon's surface, suggesting that the object is moving around. They added that one image captures the disc-like object in the sky above the moon, suggesting that the structure could be a 'mobile alien base'. SectureTeam10 is one of the most viewed YouTube channels, with over 785,000 people subscribing to its conspiracy videos. But the channel has come under fire, as Lions Ground, a rival channel, claims that it has been intentionally fooling its viewers. According to Lions Ground, SecureTeam10 has been raking in an estimated 600 ($745) a day by posting fake videos that 'outsmart UFO believers.' Mars has become the next giant leap for mankind's exploration of space. But before humans get to the red planet, astronauts will take a series of small steps by returning to the moon for a year-long mission. Details of a the mission in lunar orbit have been unveiled as part of a timeline of events leading to missions to Mars in the 2030s. Scroll down for video Nasa has outlined its four stage plan (pictured) which it hopes will one day allow humans to visit Mars at he Humans to Mars Summit held in Washington DC yesterday. This will entail multiple missions to the moon over coming decades HUMANS TO MARS SUMMIT Attendees at the Humans to Mars Summit held in Washington DC yesterday, were addressed by Greg Williams from Nasa. He outlined the space agency's four stage plan which it hopes will one day allow humans to visit Mars, as well as its expected time-frame. This will involve multiple trips to lunar space, to allow for construction of a habitat which will provide a staging area for the journey. From there, the vehicle that will carry astronauts to the red planet will also be constructed. And a year-long simulation of life on Mars will be conducted in 2027. Advertisement Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans at Nasa, addressed attendees at the Humans to Mars Summit, held in Washington DC yesterday. He outlined the space agency's four stage plan which it hopes will one day allow humans to visit Mars, as well as its expected time-frame. This will involve multiple trips to lunar space, to allow for construction of a habitat which will provide a staging area for the journey. The last piece of delivered hardware would be the actual Deep Space Transport vehicle that would later be used to carry a crew to Mars, he said. And a year-long simulation of life on Mars will be conducted in 2027, according to Space.com. Speaking at the Mars Summit, Mr Williams said: 'If we could conduct a year-long crewed mission on this Deep Space Transport in cislunar space, we believe we will know enough that we could then send this thing, crewed, on a 1,000-day mission to the Mars system and back. 'We're trying to lead this journey to Mars with a broad range of partnerships,. 'One of the things we'll be doing over the next few years is, putting that package together. 'What players want to provide what, both nationally and internationally, and how we can together, with Nasa in an orchestrating role, really move out on these crewed missions to Mars.' As part of the first two phases of the plans, a new generation of space stations which will allow humanity to reach out further into the universe will be built. The first base - known as the Deep Space Gateway - will orbit between Earth and the moon and is expected to launch as early as 2020. As part of the first two phases of the plans, the Deep Space Gateway (left) space station will be built. It will also play host the Deep Space Transport (right) vehicle which will carry astronauts to the red planet MISSION TO MARS: TIMELINE Phase 0 - now: Continue research and testing on ISS to solve exploration challenges. Evaluate potential for lunar resources. Develop standards. Phase 1 - now to 2020s: Being missions in orbit of the moon. Build Deep Space Gateway. Start assembly of the Deep Space Transport. Phase 2 - 2020s to 2030s: Complete Deep Space Transport and conduct year-long Mars simulation mission in orbit of the moon. Phase 3 and 4 - After 2030: Begin sustained crew expeditions to the Martian system and surface of Mars. Advertisement The habitat will support critical research and open up opportunities for future exploration of deep space, as well as a return to the moon and missions to Mars. It will also play host the Deep Space Transport vehicle which will carry astronauts to the red planet. Nasa has teamed up with six companies to develop deep space vehicles as part of its NextSTEP program. And Boeing revealed its vision for the habitat and space vehicle back in April. The Seattle-based aerospace firm's Deep Space Gateway will be launched using Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS). The SLS is currently being put through its paces, in anticipation of its first mission in November 2018. The Gateway itself will be powered by a Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system, a new technology developed by Nasa. The Deep Space Transport vehicle (artist's impression pictured) - which would take humans to Mars - will dock with the Gateway and allow astronauts to travel to the red planet. Once near Mars, crews could deploy a lander for surface missions or conduct scientific research in orbit SEP is powered by solar arrays and uses ten times less energy than conventional rocket propulsion systems. It has already been proven on the Dawn spacecraft - launched by Nasa in September 2007 to study two proto-planets in the asteroid belt found between Mars and Jupiter. Nasa hopes that the SEP will be used to power future missions within our solar system, including Mars. Its set to be the worlds most powerful rocket, but even NASAs Space Launch System is susceptible to the forces of nature. At the launchpad, the SLS rocket will be slammed with wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour, according to NASA. To better understand how environmental factors will tie in before and during lift-off, the space agency has conducted subsonic wind tunnel tests using a 6-foot model of the megarocket, revealing how cross and ground winds will affect different parts. Scroll down for video To better understand how environmental factors will tie in before and during lift-off, the space agency has conducted subsonic wind tunnel tests using a 6-foot model of the megarocket, revealing how cross and ground wind will affect different parts THE EM-1 MISSION Nasa's Orion, stacked on a Space Launch System rocket capable of lifting 70 metric tons will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in November 2018. The uncrewed Orion will travel into Distant Retrograde Orbit, breaking the distance record reached by the most remote Apollo spacecraft, and then 30,000 miles farther out (275,000 total miles). The mission will last 22 days and was originally designed to test system readiness for future crewed operations. Advertisement The tests at NASAs Langley Research Centers 14x22-foot Subsonic Wind Tunnel in Virginia simulated the wind conditions the rocket may experience. This will help them to determine the safest distance between the rocket and the launch tower, according to the space agency. The recent tests included ground winds during a simulated lift-off, using smoke flow visualization to show how the wind flow behaves as it hits the surface of the launch tower. And, the model rocket was subjected to 140 mile-per-hour wind speeds. The wind tunnel tests are just the latest in an ongoing series of checks ahead of the SLS rocket's first launch, during which it will send the Orion spacecraft into Distant Retrograde Orbit. The EM-1 mission was initially scheduled for November 2018, and was designed to be uncrewed. Its set to be the worlds most powerful rocket, but even NASAs Space Launch System is susceptible to the forces of nature. At the launchpad, the SLS rocket will be slammed with wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour, according to NASA. The model used for the test is shown But, at the beginning of this year, the Trump administration called for the agency to assess the possibility of adding astronauts to the first Orion mission. If astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft encounter an emergency situation during the future launch, a life-saving abort system will activate within milliseconds to steer the crew module away from danger. NASA recently completed tests on the Launch Abort Systems altitude control motor, further readying the craft for a crewed mission to Mars. The motor is equipped with eight valves that, combined, can exert up to 7,000 pounds of steering force. The tests at NASAs Langley Research Centers 14x22-foot Subsonic Wind Tunnel in Virginia simulated the wind conditions the rocket may experience. This will help them to determine the safest distance between the rocket and the launch tower, according to the space agency The recent tests included ground winds during a simulated lift-off, using smoke flow visualization to show how the wind flow behaves as it hits the surface of the launch tower.And, the model rocket was subjected to 140 mile-per-hour wind speeds The altitude control motor is one of three motors in the Launch Abort System. It uses a solid propellant gas generator, and has eight equally space valves around its three-foot-wide body. Footage of a recent test fire reveals how it can successfully exert steering force in any given direction upon command a critical safety enhancement, the space agency explains. In preparation for a crewed mission, the Orion team is also working to shave the crew modules barrel down to a lighter weight. The barrel arrived at Ingersoll Machine Tools in Rockford, Illinois weighing roughly 12,000 pounds and, before it is sent to NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, theyll trim it to just 880lbs. A report from the US Government Accountability Office found that the SLS rocket, the Orion capsule, and the Exploration Ground Systems are all facing challenges that likely cant be solved with the time and money currently available to the program If astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft encounter an emergency situation during launch, a life-saving ab ort system will activate within milliseconds to steer the crew module away from danger. NASA has now completed tests on the Launch Abort Systems altitude control motor But, despite the progress, Orions first mission may be faced with delays. While NASA was initially working toward a November 2018 goal, a report from the US Government Accountability Office found that the SLS rocket, the Orion capsule, and the Exploration Ground Systems are all facing challenges. And, they say these likely cant be solved with the time and money currently available to the program. While President Trump has expressed plans to prioritize manned missions to deep space, NASA officials have agreed with the reports conclusion that the launch date for the EM-1 mission the uncrewed precursor to human exploration is likely unachievable. In preparation for a crewed mission, the Orion team is also working to shave the crew modules barrel down to a lighter weight. The barrel arrived at Ingersoll Machine Tools in Rockford, Illinois weighing roughly 12,000 pounds and theyll trim it to just 880lbs In a letter to the GAO, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said that, despite some things cited in the report that are no longer concerns, new problems have also arisen. Because of this, he says the overall conclusions are valid, and notes that the space agency is now rethinking the launch date. Programs in this phase of development are extremely dynamic with critical path for development switching between elements, Gerstenmaier, wrote. Issues that appear initially to have major schedule impacts can sometimes be mitigated with no impact, and new problems that will drive schedule. Despite working toward a November 2018 goal, NASAs first launch of the Space Launch System megarocket will likely be pushed back to 2019 We agree with the GAO that maintaining a November 2018 launch readiness date is not in the best interest of the program, and we are in the process of establishing a new target in 2019. The report found several major issues that could delay the launch date. The Orion programs European Service Module, for example, is late. The SLS program was disrupted by a tornado, which ripped through New Orleans, and the Michoud Assembly Facility, this past February. And, the report notes that the program had to stop welding on the core stage after identifying low weld strengths. TRUMP'S MANNED MOON MISSION NASAs top staff was given instructions to assess the feasibility of sending humans to space with the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The mission was originally designed to be uncrewed, and was set to launch in 2018. In a press conference, officials leading the study revealed the evaluations are now well underway, and theyve already created a 'hard, crisp list' of everything that will need to change from a hardware standpoint in order to add crew. NASAs top staff was given instructions to assess the feasibility of sending humans to space with the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft But, so far, the team says theyre sticking to their baseline plan for EM-1, and will let the let the data drive any decisions moving forward. It will see Nasa's Orion, stacked on a Space Launch System rocket capable of lifting 70 metric tons will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in November 2018. The uncrewed Orion will travel into Distant Retrograde Orbit, breaking the distance record reached by the most remote Apollo spacecraft, and then 30,000 miles farther out (275,000 total miles). The mission will last 22 days and was originally designed to test system readiness for future crewed operations. Advertisement Along with this, the EGS program is considering conducting complex hardware installation and testing. With low cost reserves and a tight schedule, the report says the 2018 launch date is unrealistic. While the Orion, SLS, and EGS programs are working toward a target EM-1 launch readiness date of November 2018, the threats to each programs schedule continue to mount, and the schedule reserve of each program is either very limited or non-existent, the report concluded. In addition, as the target EM-1 launch readiness date nears now less than two years away the flexibility of the schedule to allow for replanning is likewise reduced. In February, NASAs top staff was given instructions to assess the feasibility of sending humans to space with the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The mission was originally designed to be uncrewed, and was set to launch in 2018. In a press conference today, officials leading the study revealed the evaluations are now well underway, and theyve already created a 'hard, crisp list' of everything that will need to change from a hardware standpoint in order to add crew. But, so far, the team says theyre sticking to their baseline plan for EM-1, and will let the let the data drive any decisions moving forward. As of now though, it looks as though the launch date for the mission, manned or unmanned, will be later than first planned. Holidays to Greece are back in vogue, so where to go? Mail On Sunday's Fred Mawer has picked some of the most enticing islands, and flagged up what they are best for. Party time in Mykonos Glitzy Mykonos is Greeces answer to Ibiza. Come to party in see-and-be-seen clubs, bars and sophisticated restaurants in whitewashed Mykonos Town and at Paradise Beach. Thomas Cook has new flights from Manchester to the Cyclades island. Mykonos is pricey: if you want to keep your costs down, stay in one of the small-scale Greek hotels and studios on offer with the Manos brand (thomascook.com/brands/manos, 0844 412 5970): from 279pp self-catering at Elena Studios in Ornos. Santorinis cliff-clinging villages of Fira and Oia are speckled with blue-domed churches and look over a giant volcanic crater filled with the azure Aegean sea Romantic Santorini Nowhere in Greece can surpass Santorini for dramatic, lovey-dovey views. The islands cliff-clinging villages of Fira and Oia are speckled with blue-domed churches and look over a giant volcanic crater filled with the azure Aegean sea. Splash out at adults-only Avaton Resort and Spa, set on the cliffs with breathtaking sunsets and a grotto-like spa: booked through Olympic Holidays (olympicholidays.com, 020 8492 6868), from 1,447pp B&B. Corfus family villas Corfu is in the spotlight with ITVs adaptation of Gerald Durrells My Family And Other Animals about his childhood on the Ionian island. While parts have succumbed to tourist development, that is not the case in the north-eastern corner with its olive groves above coves and villagey resorts, the pick of which is Agios Stefanos. This is villa territory: CV Villas (cvvillas.com, 020 7261 5401) has a choice of rentals, with prices from 1,093 a week for a property sleeping six, excluding flights. Island cruise: Take a boat excursion from Skiathos, where there are 60 beaches to choose from Beached in Skiathos The busy little green Sporades island of Skiathos has 60 beaches to choose from, the most famous being Koukounaries, a half-mile arc of golden sand. Others include Banana Beach with its music bars and white-pebbled Lalaria, accessible only by boat. Thomson (thomson.co.uk, 0871 231 4691) has inexpensive properties in walking distance of Koukounaries beach in its Small & Friendly portfolio, including Sergios Studios and Apartments: from 447pp self-catering. Explore Crete Greeces largest island is too fascinating to spend all your time on the beach. Visit the harbour town of Chania, trek through Samaria Gorge, and see the Minoan palace of Knossos. Crete is the most southerly isle so it stays warmer longer, and flights run to late October. Stay at the Hotel Porto Veneziano overlooking Chanias harbour, from 863pp B&B booked through Cachet Travel (cachet-travel.co.uk, 020 8847 8700). Nooks and crannies: Crete, Greeces largest island, is too fascinating to spend all your time on the beach Off the tourist track Under an hourfrom Piraeus by hydrofoil, Agistri is the Saronic isle popular as a summer escape for Athenians. Cloaked in pine forests and with three villages, it offers gentle walks, clear waters ideal for snorkelling, and is laid-back. Sunvil (sunvil.co.uk, 020 8758 4758) has holidays to Agistri with stays at the Oasis Hotel, on a sandy beach and near the tavernas of Skala from 580pp B&B, including flights. Ithaka for sailing Hop around islands on a flotilla holiday. Sailing Holidays (sailingholidays.com, 020 8459 8787) is offering a new route around the Ionian islands, ideal for beginners. You start and finish on Lefkas, mooring in the evenings at villages and ports along the coast of mountainous Ithaka. The One Week Ithaka Flotilla costs from 615pp based on four sharing, including flights but not food. Thomas Cook has cancelled its holiday bookings to Sharm el-Sheikh following fears of an ISIS attack in the area. The British travel company has scrapped all flight and hotel packages for the winter 2017 season onwards, with alternative trips or refunds offered for some 200 pre-booked customers. The decision comes after continued warnings against travel to the area by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with March's terror attack alert tipping the balance. Thomas Cook has cancelled its holiday bookings to Sharm el-Sheikh following fears of an ISIS attack in the area In a statement on the Thomas Cook website the UK and Ireland managing director Chris Mottershead writes: 'The decision ultimately rests with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which issues expert security advice for UK travellers. 'Since October 2015 it has advised against flying to Sharm el-Sheikh airport and we have had no indication that this is likely to change in the near future.' 'Therefore, we have sadly decided we wont be able to offer any trips from the UK to Sharm.' The five flights per week which had been scheduled for winter 2017 have now been cancelled. Sharm el-Sheikh is a fantastic destination and as soon as the advice changes, we can build it into our holiday programme Thomas Cook's UK and Ireland managing director, Chris Mottershead Instead, the travel company is increasing its availability in the nearby resort of Hurghada and it is also introducing a new destination on the Red Sea Riviera - Marsa Alam. Thomas Cook's decision to limit travel to Sharm el-Sheikh was likely forced by concerns over terrorism in the area. In March Israel warned citizens to immediately leave Egypt's Red Sea resorts and cancel all future travel plans over fears of an ISIS attack. The country's counter-terrorism bureau said at the time that there was a 'serious and current threat' of a terror attack targeting the region. The Red Sea region used to be popular with British holidaymakers seeking winter sun but numbers have dropped in recent years due to ongoing trouble in the area. Tourism levels are now around a third of what they once were In June 2015, a massacre of tourists at a Luxor temple was narrowly averted when assailants armed with assault rifles and explosives bungled the attack and were intercepted by police. But in October that year, Islamic State jihadists, who are waging an insurgency in the eastern Sinai Peninsula, struck. They bombed a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers home from Sharm el-Sheikh. Russia suspended flights to Egypt and Britain cut air links with Sharm el-Sheikh. Thomas Cook also suspended flights. MailOnline reported in March how it had begun selling flights to the destination again with the caveat that they could be cancelled at short notice, but it has now cut travel to the destination altogether. Other travel companies, including TUI, are still offering winter holidays to Sharm el-Sheikh but Thomas Cook's decision could trigger a domino effect. Grounded: The British travel company has scrapped all flight and hotel packages for the winter season onwards, with alternative trips or refunds offered for some 200 pre-booked customers Mottershead concluded: 'As you can imagine, we plan our summer programme many months in advance. We need to make decisions about how many rooms we want and work closely with the hoteliers to ensure our customers have the best time and the highest quality experience. 'Having left it as long as possible, we have decided that even if the advice were to change in the next few months, we wouldnt be able to offer a full programme to the resort next summer. '[Sharm el-Sheikh] is a fantastic destination and as soon as the advice changes and we can build it into our holiday programme, we look forward to flying customers from the UK to Sharm again so they can enjoy all the resort has to offer.' Tourism levels are now around a third of what they once were in the area. Last month Egypt's tourism minister, Mohamed Yehia Rashed, insisted the country's popular Red Sea resorts and Ancient Egyptian sites are a safe choice for travelers. 'We are saying that the tourism sector is safe, the airports are secure, the hotels are secure,' he said, adding that there have not been security breaches at tourist sites. He said Germany represents the largest visitor market, particularly to Red Sea diving spots around Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, followed by travelers from Saudi Arabia. She might be a TV star, but Naya Rivera is still just a regular girl. The actress stopped off at a Target store in Los Angeles for a bit of shopping on Tuesday, before heading out on a walk. The 30-year-old, who shot to fame for her role as Santana on Glee, cut a casually stylish figure in an orange-lined charcoal bomber jacket. Scroll down for video Time for some errands: Naya Rivera stopped off at a Target in Los Angeles for a bit of shopping on Tuesday, and was seen pushing her cart across the parking lot Out and about: Naya was, at another point on Tuesday, also spotted in the same outfit sauntering down the pavement with a black leather purse at her left shoulder Naya had cut a far more formal figure in a glistening five-tiered sleeveless purple dress - one that showed quite a lot of decolletage - at Catch LA on Friday night. Beside her in a bright blue suit and striped tie was David Spade, Naya's latest squeeze, and 22 years her senior. Rumors first circulated that they were an item back in March, when they were spotted flinging their arms about each other in a swimming pool in Hawaii. On the go: She'd flung off the jacket and, apparently, tied it about her waist when she was seen that day enjoying a sunlit hike, checking her phone as she ambled along Naya married actor Ryan Dorsey in Cabo San Lucas in 2014, and in 2015 she gave birth to a son called Josey, but this past November, Naya filed for divorce. Meanwhile, David's got an eight-year-old daughter called Harper by a model named Jillian Grace, who in March 2005 was Playboy magazine's Playmate Of The Month. David's ex-girlfriend Heather Locklear vamped to TMZ last month that the comedian's appeal to women derives from the fact that 'Well, number one, he's funny. Number two, he has a big c***,' though she did later say: 'I'm kidding.' Diane Lane was asked some very personal questions on her Watch What Happens Live appearance on Monday. The 52-year-old actress got candid when talking about her brief relationship with Jon Bon Jovi in the '80s. She revealed to everyone that they dated for: 'Five months, I was 20.' Scroll for video Opening up: Diane Lane got candid when talking about her brief relationship with Jon Bon Jovi in the '80s during her appearance on Watch What Happens Live on Monday The Paris Can Wait actress continued: 'And I think every girl should have such a wonderful experience when she's that young.' Lane even saw off the musician before his Slippery When Wet shows: 'I have some photos of him packing for the tour,' she revealed. 'Just all the jockstraps were lined up on the floor for the whole band to get through the whole tour.' Happy memories: The Paris Can Wait actress said: 'I think every girl should have such a wonderful experience when she's that young' In shock: Host Andy Cohen was excited by this gossip She made another interesting revelation during her WWHL appearance. During her chat with Andy Cohen the brunette beauty was asked by a fan if her and Julia Roberts ever spoke about the fact that Lane almost played the iconic character Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman. She said no she hadn't ever spoken to Roberts about that but that she would like to. Fun times: Lane even saw off the musician before his Slippery When Wet shows: 'I have some photos of him packing for the tour,' she revealed Getting really candid! 'Just all the jockstraps were lined up on the floor for the whole band to get through the whole tour,' Lane said What could have been: She also revealed she went up for the role of Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman She also said the film ended up being a 'feel good movie,' but admitted that wasn't originally supposed to be the case. Apparently the ending of the movie was going to be very different. 'This crazy b**** was kicked out of a rolling limo at the end because she was delusional that she thought this guy was really in love with her. She was only hired for the weekend, I had such compassion for her,' Lane explained. Not yet: Lane said no she hadn't ever spoken to Roberts about the fact she went up for the role but that she would like to Promotion trail: She has her romantic comedy Paris Can Wait out next week with Alec Baldwin The actress and Cohen joked that they should make a movie with that story line. 'I think that movie needs to get made. I want to direct it. Let's make it happen!' she exclaimed. She has her romantic comedy Paris Can Wait out next week with Alec Baldwin and she also has her highly anticipated superhero movie Justice League out in November. Superheroes unite: Her highly anticipated movie Justice League will be out in November Superman's mom: She will reprise her role as Martha Kent The next installment in the franchise, where she plays Martha Kent, will be debuting this November, which includes all the legends from the DC comics. Gal Gadot will reprise her role as Wonder Woman and of course Henry Cavill will reprise his role as Superman. Amber Heard will play Mera, Game Of Thrones actor Jason Momoa will play Aquaman whilst Amy Adams will play Lois Lane and of course Ben Affleck will again take on Bruce Wayne and Batman. Looking smart: Jon Bon Jovi pictured at the Kelly Cares Foundation in New York last year Drug testing for the dole remains a hot-button issue for many Australians after the Turnbull government announced on Tuesday that tough new measures are set to be introduced. And tensions were running high on the Kyle and Jackie O show on Wednesday, during a very heated debate about the 2017 Budget. Radio hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson clashed live on-air with opposing views, and at one point Kyle accused Jackie of giving him the silent treatment simply because he had disagreed with her. Opposing views: Tensions were running high on the Kyle and Jackie O show on Wednesday, during a very heated discussion about the 2017 Budget 'You haven't said a word to me since,' Kyle said after their fiery debate. Jackie insisted she wasn't annoyed: 'See I'm over it, I don't even care - I've moved on since that argument.' Earlier in the show, radio listeners heard Jackie applaud the Turnbull government's decision to begin randomly drug-testing thousands of dole recipients, however, Kyle slammed the move. Clash: Radio hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson clashed live on-air with opposing views and at one point, Kyle accused Jackie of giving him the silent treatment simply because he had disagreed with her 'I think the government is picking on the poorest, the most vulnerable, the people that need help the most,' he said. 'And I think so what if someone's carrying around $10 little bud of weed and if they get their kicks for the day mulling that up with a little bit of spin to drag it out for a week who cares? He added: 'Are you gonna take their money away? We're talking $500 a week, which is nothing.' Not happy: 'I think the government is picking on the poorest, the most vulnerable, the people that need help the most,' Kyle said Jackie bluntly replied: 'Exactly and they should be spending that on essential items, they should be spending that on food not drugs Kyle - why are we funding a drug habit then?' The pair went back and forth with opposing views and at one point Kyle raised the idea of decriminalising drugs altogether, which Jackie dismissed as 'ridiculous.' He then went on to suggest that drug-use is not limited to dole recipients. Extreme views? The pair went back and forth with opposing views and at one point Kyle raised the idea of decriminalising drugs altogether, which Jackie dismissed as 'ridiculous' 'I'm all for drug testing as long as judges and politicians get tested as well - you watch that'll never happen because half of them are of their face. Not joking, I know for a fact,' said Kyle. In an attempt to draw empathy from Jackie, the radio shock jock recalled a time when he was dependent on the system and said it can be tough. 'Some of my friends are on the dole - I've been on the dole myself,' he said to which Jackie flippantly interjected: 'yeah I've got people who I know that are on the dole too but they abused it.' Budget 2017: On Tuesday, the Turnbull government announced plans to drug test dole recipients while delivering the budget in the House of Representatives On Tuesday, the Turnbull government announced plans to drug test dole recipients while delivering the budget in the House of Representatives. Thousands of Australians will be forced to undertake random drug tests to maintain their welfare payments. Beginning next year, 5000 Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients across three locations will be included in the two-year trial of drug testing. Job seekers will be selected at random and tested for drugs including ecstasy, ice and marijuana. Most people are happy when they go on holiday. But when you have the resources of Orlando Bloom, you look delighted. The 40-year-old flashed his brightest movie star smile as he jetted out of LAX on Tuesday. Scroll down for video LegoLAX: Orlando Bloom flashed his brightest movie star smile as he jetted out of LAX on Tuesday. The actor looked stylish in black jeans, a plain white tee and a short leather bomber. He color-coordinated his red, black and Nike High-tops with a zip up tracksuit top of the same hue. There was no sign of his beloved pup Mighty, with whom he has been spending a lot of time with recently. Cool: The actor looked stylish in black jeans, a plain white tee and a short leather bomber Matchey: He color-coordinated his red, black and Nike High-tops with a zip up tracksuit top of the same hue He was seen carrying the pooch - who is identical to ex Katy Perry's dog Nugget - around Malibu over the weekend. While he their passionate romance might not have lasted, their friendship endured - as did their pets. The pair even reunited their dogs for a 'mighty nugget combo date'. Break: The 40-year-old looked chuffed to be sneaking away Solo: There was no sign of his beloved pup Mighty, with whom he has been spending a lot of time with recently The Pirates Of The Caribbean hero publicly declared his affections for his pet as he described Mighty as a 'mighty man' with a 'mighty heart'. The actor has one son Flynn Christopher Bloom who he shares with his ex wife Miranda Kerr. They got married in 2010 but the former couple revealed they had been separated for a number of months in 2013 and the divorce was finalised by the end of the year. Rapper Bow Wow made a major social media snafu on Tuesday The 30-year-old bragged to his fans on his Instagram about traveling by private jet on his promotional tour for his reality show Growing Up Hip Hop: Atlanta. But unfortunately for him, an eagle-eyed airline passenger spotted him traveling to New York on a regular commercial flight, took a photo and called the recording artist out on Twitter. 'So this guy lil bow wow is on my flight to NY. But on instagram he posted a picture of a private jet captioned "traveling to NY today" smh,' @Al_Khee tweeted. Luxury lifestyle: Bow Wow posted this pic to his Instagram as he prepared to set off on a promotional tour seeming to show the private jet he was going to be traveling on Gotcha: Unfortunately for the rapper, 30, he was snapped sitting on a commercial flight from Atlanta by a fellow passenger who then called him out onTwitter Soon Twitter users from all over were chiming in with their reaction to the reveal. One user shared a screen shot from a Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, VIP transportation service, that had the same photo of a private jet with a Mercedes transit van and a Mercedes sedan parked next to it that appeared to be the same image that Bow Wow had shared to Instagram. Laughing: Twitter users soon started poking fun at Bow Wow's social media snafu Copied? Another eagle-eyed Twitter user found the same pic Bow Wow had shared claiming to be at Peachtree Airport in Georgia on a website for a Forida VIP transportation company Oops: The rapper came in for some ribbing Others poked fun at the rapper's seeming attempt to puff up his image and portray a luxury lifestyles he wasn't living. 'Help me, I'm poor,' wrote one Twitter user over a picture of a woman on an airplane. Another tweeted: 'Let Bow Wow be a lesson: Stop comparing yourself to folks on social media. Most of them aren't living how they claim.' Lesson learned: Some Twitter users suggested that this was a teaching moment Bow Wow had traveled to New York for an appearance on The Wendy Williams Show. He shared a photo of himself backstage at the studio but has given no reaction on his social media to being called out over his private jet post. The new series of Growing up Hip Hop: Atlanta, premiering May 25 on WEtv, shows Bow Wow returning to the Georgia city as he plans to release his first album in six years. She left the country just as claims emerged she has been flouting the conditions of her supervised release. But that looked the furthest thing form Teresa Giudice's mind as she showed off her bikini body while larking around on a hotel balcony in her ancestral homeland of Italy on Tuesday. The Real Housewives Of New Jersey favourite, who was convicted of 41 counts of fraud in 2014, looked like she was having the time of her life in Milan as she flaunted her knockout body in her revealing outfit. Body of evidence: Teresa Giudice's legal woes looked far from her mind as she showcased her knockout bikini figure in Italy on Tuesday The snap was taken by Real Housewives publicist Siggy Flicker, who boasted: 'I have taken many pictures in my life but this is one of the best. Love u @Teresa_Giudice.' Meanwhile the 44-year-old seems to have been in the mood for salvation during her trip, as she also shared an image of herself standing outside the Milan Cathedral on Tuesday. But her spiritual moment did not get in the way of her living it up in the capital of the Lombardy region, as she also shared a snap of a drink she boasted is the 'best cocktail in Milan.' Her European excursion comes amid accusations by her probation officer of violating the court order with the conditions of her supervised release. In need of salvation: The convicted fraudster shared an image of herself at Milan Cathedral It's a dog's life: She looked like she was having a great time as she sat with her pooch The reality television personality allegedly failed to report being questioned by police to her probation officer on two separate occasions, according to documents obtained by DailyMail.com. Back in 2014, Giudice was sentenced to 15 months in prison followed by 24 months of supervised release. She was charged on counts of wire fraud along with her husband Joe. Upon her release on December 23, 2015, Giudice was ordered to pay $414,588.90 in restitution. Reason for cheers: She also shared a snap of a drink she boasted is the 'best cocktail in Milan' She was also ordered to cooperate with the IRS, take on no new debt or credit and notify her probation officer within seventy-two hours of being arrested or questioned by a law enforcement officer. On May 5, a 'Report on Offender Under Supervision' was filed by Giudices probation officer. The report accused Giudice of being non-compliant with the conditions of her supervision. The probation officer claimed on two separate occasions the reality star was questioned by police and she never informed him as the court order mandates. Loving it: But Teresa may have to explain previous probation violations when she returns Keeping it in the family: The mother-of-four's husband Joe was also convicted of fraud His new girlfriend Jasmine Yarbrough has just jetted to Sydney from Los Angeles to see him, heading straight to his pad once she touched down this week. And Karl Stefanovic is clearly in high spirits, with the 42-year-old seen cracking up on the Today show on Wednesday. The TV personality burst out laughing with co-host Lisa Wilkinson over the word 'randy'. Scroll down for video Another day in the office! Karl Stefanovic burst out laughing with Lisa Wilkinson over the word 'randy', live on the Today show on Wednesday The presenter couldn't help but laugh when Lisa became confused over the meaning of 'randy.' After hearing that Prince Philip was 'very randy' as a young man, Lisa, 57, said one of her Twitter followers told her it meant 'arrogance' in Scotland, rather than being sexually aroused. 'It's kind of an old school term for arrogance,' Lisa said. Mucking around: Karl'snew sister-in-law Sylvia Jeffreys also bursting out laughing at the gaffe She then corrected herself when a producer got in her ear piece and told her she was wrong. 'I tried to convince you not to say it,' Karl told her, laughing and doing a Scottish accent. 'How many times do I have to tell you, you don't believ everything on Twitter!,' he said, before bursting out laughing when Scottish bagpipes played in the background. 'How good is the bag pipe. I love the bag pipe. Just crank that stuff up first thing in the morning!,' Karl said, with new sister-in-law Sylvia Jeffreys also bursting out laughing. It's heating up: On Tuesday, Karl's younger new girlfriend Jasmine Yarbrough, 33, (R) was seen heading straight from Sydney Airport to his pad On Tuesday, Karl's younger new girlfriend Jasmine Yarbrough, 33, was seen heading straight from Sydney Airport to his pad. Jetting into Sydney from Los Angeles, Jasmine looked to be staying Down Under for a considerable amount of time. A male companion was seen assisting the blonde beauty transport several sturdy suitcases to Karl's bachelor pad. It comes after The Sunday Telegraph reported that Karl received a 'tough' settlement of just $500,000 from his divorce with wife of 21 years, Cassandra Thorburn. Case of the ex: Karl reportedly received a 'tough' settlement of just $500,000 from his divorce with wife of 21 years, Cassandra Thorburn According to the publication, Karl left his 44-year-old wife with $6 million in cash and assets, plus child support and 'ongoing payments'. In contrast, it is alleged the television personality will walk away with just $500,000 in financial assets, an amount which includes his white Mercedes. The divorce was reportedly finalised before Karl went to the United States and Mexico last month, to spend time with his new girlfriend, Jasmine. Sources described the settlement to News Corp as 'tough' for Karl, who makes $3 million a year as host of Channel Nine breakfast program, Today. As part of their divorce agreement, Karl and Cassandra will share custody of their three children - Jackson, 17, Ava, 12, and River, 10. Cassandra will reportedly reside in the former couple's $8 million waterfront Cremorne mansion she received in their settlement, which is believed to be 'significantly mortgaged'. Southern Lit Alliance enters its second year partnering with talented spoken word artist, Christian Collier, offering MANIFEST Voices, a free summer poetry workshop for teens ages 13-18. Starting June 12, Mr. Mr. Collier is a 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow. He is an accomplished artist, public speaker, and educator who has shared the stage with several members of HBOs Def Poetry cast, legendary poet and activist Ishmael Reed, Grammy-nominated artist Minton Sparks, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members The Impressions. He has also given a TEDx Talk and has repeatedly been featured on the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel. His work has been featured on The Guardian, as well as published in such publications as The Seven Hills Review, Voicemail Poems, and Calliope Magazine among others. Mr. Collier has sold hundreds of copies of his 2009 chapbook Ghosts & Echoes based solely on the power of his readings and live performances. In October of 2013, he released his debut EP Between Beauty & Bedlam, which he wrote and produced himself. The record fuses spoken word poetry and an eclectic mix of musical genres including Hip-Hop and ambient to make a sonic gumbo. The application deadline is May 31. The course will take place every Monday night from 6-7 p.m. at the Arts Building at 301 E. 11th Street. Applications and guidelines can be found at www.southernlitalliance.org. The Southern Lit Alliance engages audiences through innovative literary arts experiences and educational enrichment in local schools and underserved communities in Chattanooga. For more information about So Lit and the MANIFEST Voices poetry sessions, visit www.SouthernLitAlliance.org. She rocketed to fame following her role in Gone Girl. And Rosamund Pike showed off her star quality as she attended the HHhH film premiere at the Cinema UGC Normandy in Paris on Tuesday. The British Thunderbirds actress, 38, turned heads in a simple yet elegant LBD by Bottega Veneta. Scroll down for video Standing out: Rosamund Pike showed off her star quality as she attended the HHhH film premiere at the Cinema UGC Normandy in Paris on Tuesday Making the most of her long, lean physique, Rosamund wore an ankle-skimming satin black dress. The figure-hugging piece was embellished with studs, and cinched in at the waist by a slim belt. Adding height to her stature, she wore a pair of platform strappy heels also by Bottega Veneta. And keeping the rest of her ensemble simple, she left her blonde locks loose and went for minimal make-up. The film focuses on the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich and is adapted from Laurent Binet's novel of the same name. Understated: The British Thunderbirds actress, 38, turned heads in a simple yet elegant LBD Leggy: Making the most of her long, lean physique, Rosamund wore an ankle-skimming satin black dress by Bottega Veneta The Gone Girl star has been promoting her latest movie The United Kingdom. In her film, she stars with Selma's David Oyelowo in a based-on-a-true-story of a member of the Botswana royal family who returns to rule his African nation with a white English wife at his side. She's also recently wrapped filming on the as-yet-untitled thriller base don the 1976 Air France hijacking that led to a raid to free hostages at the airport at Entebbe, Uganda, by Israeli special forces. Relaxed: Keeping the rest of her ensemble simple, she left her blonde locks loose and went for minimal make-up Model proportions: Adding height to her stature, she wore a pair of platform strappy heels The in-demand star has five movies completed and in the can, with three set for release this year: Hostiles with Christian Bale, High Wire Act with Jon Hamm and The Man with the Iron Heart with Mia Wasikowska and Jack O'Connell. It was announced this week that she has signed on to play war journalist Marie Colvin in a planned biopic. The veteran correspondent died in 2012 during a rocket attack while covering the siege of Homs in Syria for the U.K.s Sunday Times. Busy: The Gone Girl star has been promoting her latest movie The United Kingdom Cindy Crawford rocked an edgy, head-to-toe leathery look as she arrived at a Beverly Hills hair salon in her Porsche on Tuesday. The nineties supermodel easily defied her 51 years in a black motorcycle jacket, matching pants, purse, a grey hoodie over a V-neck white undershirt, and black suede booties. Sporting a fuss-free ponytail, the Lip Sync Battle guest star's memorable mole was on full display with her make-up free complexion shielded by shades. Scroll down for video Nineties supermodel: Cindy Crawford rocked an edgy, head-to-toe leathery look as she arrived at a Beverly Hills hair salon in her Porsche on Tuesday Fierce after 50! The Illinois-born beauty easily defied her 51 years in a black motorcycle jacket, matching pants, purse, a grey hoodie over a V-neck white undershirt, and black suede booties Cindy and her second husband Rande Gerber just returned from London where they surprised his Casamigos Tequila partner, George Clooney on his 56th birthday on Saturday. The Northwestern University drop-out and the 55-year-old nightlife impresario will next celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary on May 29. Unsurprisingly, Crawford and Gerber's 15-year-old daughter Kaia and 17-year-old son Presley signed with IMG Models in 2015 and 2016, respectively. 'We can always count on him for the photobomb': Cindy and her second husband Rande Gerber just returned from London where they surprised his Casamigos Tequila partner, George Clooney (R) on his 56th birthday on Saturday 1992 throwback: The Lip Sync Battle guest star and the 55-year-old nightlife impresario will next celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary on May 29 Nepotism: Unsurprisingly, Crawford and Gerber's 15-year-old daughter Kaia and 17-year-old son Presley signed with IMG Models in 2015 and 2016, respectively '#daisytime tonight. Taking over!' The Penshoppe princess will take over the Instagram Story of Marc Jacob Fragrances on Tuesday night during their Daisy perfume bash in Los Angeles Their nepotistically-privileged princess will take over the Instagram Story of Marc Jacob Fragrances on Tuesday night during their Daisy perfume bash in Los Angeles. Last Wednesday, Cindy (born Cynthia) took the stage at the Ulta Beauty GM Conference in Orlando to represent her cosmetics brand Meaningful Beauty. The day after, the Becoming author mysteriously teased a 'new little project coming soon' involving 'Grandma and her side eye' for her captive 5.5M social media followers. Mompreneur: Last Wednesday, Cindy (born Cynthia) took the stage at the Ulta Beauty GM Conference in Orlando to represent her cosmetics brand Meaningful Beauty He's a successful media personality but Hamish Blake may also have a future in the culinary world. The radio funnyman whipped up a Disney-themed cake for his son Sonny's third birthday over the weekend, with impressive results. His wife Zoe Foster-Blake took to Instagram on Monday to gush over her husband's baking skills. Not bad! Hamish Blake whipped up a cake inspired by Mack from Disney's Cars for his child Sonny's third birthday over the weekend Attention to detail: Hamish (pictured) concentrates on the finer points of decorating Sonny's Disney birthday cake 'This is the Mack truck cake my husband made (the night before, starting at 8:30pm, equipped with many beer and no idea) for our Disney Cars fanatic of a son,' the Wrong Girl author captioned. Zoe added that because Hamish had no prior baking experience, she didn't think he would be able to pull it off. 'Sure, I heckled, and no, I didn't think it would work, but that's cos I suck at cakes/art/icing/things requiring patience and fine detail, and happily outsource birthday cakes right on out,' she wrote. 'But he did it. And it's perfect.' Tasty delight: Hamish worked hard on the elaborate dessert Seeing double: The finished version looks just like its inspiration Zoe added Hamish hadn't even heard of fondant icing before and managed to make the cake without relying on Google for instructions. 'He made a promise to a boy, and he fulfilled it, and he even pulled off that ludicrous edible-hinge (not pictured) bulls**t that had me eye-rolling for Australia.' she added. 'Good dads doing good deeds deserve good talk, so good on you, Hamie Oliver.' Job well done: Andy Lee (pictured left) gives Hamish the thumbs up for his creation as Sonny (pictured) looks impressed The couple, who met at a deodorant launch in 2004, began dating in 2010. After seeing each other for two years, they tied the knot in December 2012 in a beautiful ceremony. The loved-up duo are expecting their second child later this year, with Zoe previously telling TV Week: 'I make it no secret I'd like more, but I always said I'd wait until Sonny was two.' The temperatures may be dropping in Sydney as winter quickly approaches. But Fiona Falkiner doesn't seems to mind, judging by her recent bikini-clad visits to Sydney's beaches. The 33-year-old, rumoured to be dating rising stockbroker Michael Kodari, braved the city's chillier weather for a morning session at Clovelly Beach on Tuesday. Scroll down for video Beach babe: Fiona Falkiner, rumoured to be dating rising stockbroker Michael Kodari, braved the city's chillier weather for a morning session at Clovelly Beach The fitness enthusiast flaunted her gorgeous curves in an animal print bikini, featuring a tiny triangle top and skimpy bottoms. She wore her long blonde locks in a top-knot bun and shielded her eyes from the sun in designer shades. The reality star took a dip in the freshwater pool by the beach, gingerly stepping down the ladder into the water. Bit cold? The reality star took a dip in the freshwater pool by the beach, gingerly stepping down the ladder into the water Gorgeous: The fitness enthusiast flaunted her gorgeous curves in an animal print bikini, featuring a tiny triangle top and skimpy bottoms She smiled as she immersed herself into the pool's chilly turquoise water, with eastern suburbs temperatures recorded as low as 10 degrees that morning. She was joined by friend and fit and curvy model Jessica Vander Leahy, who accompanied her to the Icebergs pool at Bondi Beach earlier in the week. The models shared a laugh as they enjoyed a fun dip together before laying out in the sun. Adventurous: She smiled as she immersed herself into the pool's chilly turquoise water, with eastern suburbs temperatures recorded as low as 10 degrees that morning Girl time: She was joined by friend and fit and curvy model Jessica Vander Leahy Down time: The models shared a laugh as they enjoyed a dip together before laying out in the sun Keeping busy: Adhering to a strict fitness regime nowadays, Fiona was seen later the same day undertaking a workout session with The Biggest Loser trainer Libby Babet On the go: While she swam with Jessica earlier in the day, she joined fellow fitness enthusiast Libby Babet for a training session When Fiona emerged from the water, she draped herself in an leopard print cover-up and pulled her wet hair into a bun. The popular personality has recently been spotted enjoying the company of prominent businessman and stockbroker Michael Kodari on two separate dates. She confirmed she was dating again during an interview with OK! Magazine earlier this year. 'I'm dating at the moment... it's very early days,' she confessed. Romance: The popular personality has recently been spotted enjoying the company of prominent businessman and stockbroker Michael Kodari on two separate dates.= New flame: She confirmed she was dating again during an interview with OK! Magazine earlier this year 'I'm dating at the moment... it's very early days,' she confessed Popular: The television host first rose to fame as a contestant of the weight loss program in 2006, losing 30 kilos during the first season Adhering to a strict fitness regime nowadays, Fiona was seen later the same day undertaking a workout session with The Biggest Loser trainer Libby Babet. Both ladies danced around together in cute athleisure gear in a video posted to Fiona's Instagram. The television host first rose to fame as a contestant of the weight loss program in 2006, losing 30 kilos during the first season. Bonding: Fiona's trip to Clovelly Beach was the second day she was spotted hanging out with fellow model Jessica, as both were spotted at Bondi's Icebergs on Monday She's only 15 and she's already made a splash in the modeling world. And on Tuesday, Amelia Gray Hamlin proved she's a fashion force while at the Marc Jacobs bash celebrating the launch of their new #MJDaisy campaign. The 15-year-old arrived to the Los Angeles party in a silver beaded crop top with a matching mini skirt, adding a pale blue jacket. Strike a pose: Amelia Gray Hamlin proved she's a fashion force while at the Marc Jacobs bash celebrating the launch of their new #MJDaisy campaign on Tuesday in LA The #MJDaisy campaign features Cindy Crawford's daughter, Kaia Gerber. Amelia, who is the youngest daughter of Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin, wowed in a Marc Jacobs beaded waist tweed skirt. The blue peach and white mini by the designer retails for $1,100. Amelia paired the pricey bottoms with a silver crop top and sky blue colored jacket. Models all around: She posed with (L To R) Kaia Gerber, Cayley King and Presley Gerber What a beauty: The #MJDaisy campaign features Cindy Crawford's daughter, Kaia Gerber Amelia towered in her shimmering blue heels, adding glittering earrings. The teenager pulled her brunette locks back into a bun with silver-blue shadow on her lids and pink gloss on her lips. While at the Marc Jacobs Daisy bash, she posed with Kaia and her brother Presley Gerber as well as Cayley King. One day earlier, Amelia was spotted leaving the flagship Marc Jacobs store on Melrose in West Hollywood. One day earlier, Amelia was spotted leaving the flagship Marc Jacobs store on Melrose in West Hollywood. She's got her hands full: On Monday, Delilah rocked shorts with a black top for a bit of shopping at Marc Jacobs' flagship store She carried two large bags of items while dressed in light wash shorts and a long sleeved top. Last week, Amelia was joined by her older sister, Delilah Belle, at the Nylon Young Hollywood Party. Amelia opted for a classic black dress with long earrings while Delilah, 18, looked spring ready in her floral crop top and skirt set. Glamorous: Last week, Amelia was joined by her older sister, Delilah Belle, at the Nylon Young Hollywood Party; pictured on May 3 at Avenue Genetically blessed sisters: Amelia opted for a classic black dress with long earrings while Delilah looked spring ready in her floral crop top and skirt set; seen on May 2 at Avenue for the Nylon Young Hollywood party She's been caught taking video selfies while driving on more than one occasion. And despite it being against the law in NSW, Betty Banks was at it again on Wednesday taking to Instagram to defiantly film a new clip from behind the wheel. The My Kitchen Rules babe apologised to fans for being MIA and explained that she has been feeling under the weather. Third time lucky? Despite it being against the law in NSW, Betty Banks was caught taking a selfie while driving on Wednesday taking to Instagram to defiantly film a new clip from behind the wheel 'Happy hump day ... I'm so sorry that I haven't been posting any snap stories on Instagram,' she began. 'I'm currently fighting a cold, it's getting colder, look after yourselves.' Sporting a striped shirt and glamorous makeup, the 27-year-old cut a chic figure as she multi-tasked. Under New South Wales law, Betty could have faced a fine and/or lose demerit points had she been caught by police. Defiant: Sporting a striped shirt and glamorous makeup, the 27-year-old cut a chic figure as she multi-tasked Driving laws: Under New South Wales law, Betty could have faced a fine and/or lose demerit points had she been caught by police The video marks the third time the reality star has been caught breaking the law in a matter of weeks. The tattooed model was also seen posing for the camera while driving on a public road last month. Daily Mail Australia previously reached out to Channel Seven for comment. Betty made her reality TV debut earlier this year after appearing on MKR alongside her pal David Vu. Not again! The tattooed model was also seen posing for the camera while driving on a public road last month The duo made it to the semi-final on April 25 but lost against Queensland siblings Amy and Tyson Murr. 'It was a dream come true going into the semi-finals,' Betty recently told WHO magazine. 'That's what I was aiming for, although we also saw the light at the end for the grand final. She added: 'But first things first and to be able to stand in Kitchen HQ and say we were in the semi-finals, it was a privilege. It really was.' Stephen Belafonte drove himself to a supervised visit with his daughter Madison, five, on Tuesday in Los Angeles. The 41-year-old looked relaxed and in good spirits as he carried a neon orange cooler bag with him into the meeting. He has been granted permission to see his child with former Spice Girl Mel B as long as it is heavily supervised as his bitter divorce from the celebrity drags on. Court rules: Stephen Belafonte looked relaxed as he carried a neon orange cooler bag on his way to a supervised visit with his daughter Madison, five, in LA on Tuesday Belafonte wore his preferred ensemble of black Nike sweatpants, black sneakers and black t-shirt. He pulled up to the venue in a black luxury SUV and was seen smiling as he chatted on his phone as he walked. It's been previously reported he is allowed two four-hour sessions with Madison a week after his estranged wife obtained a restraining order against him. Drove himself: The film producer, 41, was granted permission to see his daughter with estranged wife Mel B for two four-hour sessions a week as the couple's bitter divorce drags on Good mood: Belafonte wore his preferred ensemble of black Nike sweatpants, black sneakers and black t-shirt and was seen laughing as he chatted away on his cell phone as he walked At a court hearing in late April, a judge in LA ruled he can see Madison but only in the confines of a counselling center with a court monitor present. The film producer was not granted permission to re-establish contact with the America's Got Talent judge's daughter Angel, who was born three months before their wedding - but whose father is Eddie Murphy. Meanwhile, Mel has also secured a five-year restraining order against the couple's former nanny Lorraine Gilles. The 41-year-old, who claims Gilles had an affair with her husband and Stephen and got pregnant by him, filed a declaration in court saying the nanny had 'harassed' her, according to a report by TMZ . Gilles, 26, has alleged she had regular sexual encounters with Melanie Brown and Belafonte over a seven-year period after being hired to care for their children. Protective mom: The former Spice Girl had opposed giving Belafonte visitation rights with daughter Madison (L) and Angel (R), her daughter with Eddie Murphy - pictured in 2016 The late, great Michael Jackson might have been her father, but Paris Jackson professed her love for The Beatles in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The 19-year-old IMG Model rocked a black T-shirt featuring the beloved British band along with groovy sunglasses, patchy baggy blue jeans, and well-worn Converse high-tops. In the last month, the meditation-loving hippy - who boasts 2.7M followers - has posted seven Beatles-related Instagrams, and zero of her famous father. Scroll down for video All you need is love: The late, great Michael Jackson might have been her father, but Paris Jackson professed her love for The Beatles in Los Angeles on Tuesday Paris - who's been through the AA program - emerged from a smoke shop with a pink-haired gal pal she's dubbed 'my special flower' on social media. The Star actress has reportedly been sober since her stint at the $10M Diamond Ranch Academy in Utah after slashing her wrists and overdosing on pills back in 2013. Jackson will next play an edgy 20-year-old called Nelly in Nash Edgerton's feature directorial debut alongside his brother Joel, Charlize Theron, and David Oyelowo. From Hot Topic to Hippy: The 19-year-old IMG Model rocked a black T-shirt featuring the beloved British band along with groovy sunglasses, patchy baggy blue jeans, and well-worn Converse high-tops Superfan: In the last month, the meditation-loving hippy - who boasts 2.7M followers - has posted seven Beatles-related Instagrams, and zero of her famous father Legal in California: Paris - who's been through the AA program - emerged from a smoke shop with a pink-haired gal pal she's dubbed 'my special flower' on social media Troubled past: The Star actress has reportedly been sober since her stint at the $10M Diamond Ranch Academy in Utah after slashing her wrists and overdosing on pills back in 2013 However, the heavily-tattooed teen clarified on Twitter Saturday that she'd only appear in 'one scene' of the Mexican-set dark comedy for Amazon Studios. Paris also filmed a mystery project at the John Sowden House in Los Feliz with Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown, who's only known project is the 2019 sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters. When the homeschooled socialite tweeted that she already missed the 13-year-old SAG Award winner on April 24, Millie replied: 'Awww miss you to sista! Love u!' Acting gig: Jackson will next play an edgy 20-year-old called Nelly in Nash Edgerton's feature directorial debut alongside (from L-R) his brother Joel, Charlize Theron, and David Oyelowo 'Yahh totes!' However, the heavily-tattooed teen clarified on Twitter Saturday that she'd only appear in 'one scene' of the Mexican-set dark comedy for Amazon Studios It girls: Paris also filmed a mystery project at the John Sowden House in Los Feliz with Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown When the homeschooled socialite tweeted that she already missed the 13-year-old SAG Award winner, Millie replied: 'Awww miss you to sista! Love u!' According to Page Six, Jackson landed her first major seven-figure fashion campaign to front Calvin Klein shortly before attending the Met Gala with designer Raf Simons. The privileged heiress hardly needs the money with the $8M she receives annually from her estimated $100M inheritance as well as additional bonuses at ages 33 and 40. Meamwhile, it's unclear when the 5ft9in millennial last visited her mother, dermatology nurse Debbie Rowe, who's been battling breast cancer. 'High profile': According to Page Six, Jackson landed her first major seven-figure fashion campaign to front Calvin Klein shortly before attending the Met Gala with designer Raf Simons He's the Australian hunk turned Hollywood star who has been busy filming his latest film as superhero, Thor. And Chris Hemsworth made time to greet his fans on Tuesday in the United Kingdom after finishing with filming of The Avengers sequel. The actor, 33, happily stepped out to sign autographs and take photographs with a large star-struck crowd. That's a wrap! Chris Hemsworth treats Thor fans with selfies and a signed hammer in United Kingdom after finishing filming on The Avengers: Infinity War on Wednesday Eagerly waiting! The friendly Durham locals gathered around the filming location in North-East England, hoping the star would later emerge The friendly Durham locals gathered around the filming location in North-East England, hoping the star would later emerge. Looking rugged up in a black puffer jacket, Chris was spotted in a black T-shirt and trucker hat after wrapping up the shoot for the flick. Keeping true to his Australian roots, the star wore a hat from his hometown of Byron Bay, which read 'Emery Surfboards Byron'. Say cheese! Looking cosy in a black puffer jacket, Chris was spotted in a black t-shirt and trucker hat after being on shoot for the flick THIS guy! The fans were excited to rub shoulders with the actor, taking selfies on their phone as a digital autograph to treasure and share with their friends Missing home? Keeping true to his Australian roots, the star wore a hat from his hometown of Byron Bay, which read 'Emery Surfboards Byron' The fans were excited to rub shoulders with the actor, taking selfies on their phone as a digital autograph to treasure and share with their friends. The crowd varied in age and gender, with everyone sporting high-spirited smiles as they all got a chance to interact with the hunk one on one. One lucky fan walked away with a special momentum from his encounter, claiming he was 'starstruck' and it was 'the best day ever'. 'The best day ever': One lucky fan walked away with a special memento from his encounter, taking to social media claiming he was 'starstruck' 'To James, you're a better Thor than me!!': Chris signed the Thor hammer, Mjolnir, for super-fan James during the impromptu meet and greet Chris signed a Thor hammer for the super-fan, writing: 'To James, you're a better Thor than me!!' The fan took to social media to thank Chris: 'Life goal. Bounding off the ceiling thank you @chrishemsworth for the photo!' The Avengers: Infinity War is due to be released 26 April, 2018. All smiles! The crowd varied in age and gender, with everyone sporting high-spirited smiles as they all got a chance to interact with the hunk one on one He's worth a cool 150million, but Rod Stewart loves a good deal when he sees one. The Maggie May rocker was spotted blending in with other customers as he hit his local fastfood joint this week with wife Penny Lancaster. Rod, 72, and Penny, 46, tucked into two delicious sandwiches at Subway in Harlow, Essex, with fellow customers barely batting an eyelid. Tucking in! Rod Stewart was spotted blending in with other customers as he hit his local fastfood joint Subway in Harlow, Essex this week with wife Penny Lancaster Rod was dressed in a smart blazer with an open white shirt and tan trousers for the lunch date. Penny meanwhile kept casual in skinny jeans paired with a pretty pink sweater, and showed off her natural beauty with minimal makeup. According to onlookers speaking to the Daily Star, the a-list couple opted for two six-inch subs before settling down inside to eat. Far away from the red carpet: According to onlookers speaking to the Daily Star , the a-list couple opted for two six-inch subs before settling down inside to eat Penny was seen grabbing an extra seat, while her musician hubby patiently waited for the food at the table. The onlooker said: 'It was quite amusing seeing this loaded rock star come into Subway with this beautiful woman and buy her lunch for under 5.' It's not the first time the down-to-earth rocker has gone incognito. Down to earth: Back in February Rod took the London Undergroung to his show at the capital's O2 Arena, where he played to a sold-out crowd of 20,000 people Back in February Rod took the London Undergroung to his show at the capital's O2 Arena, where he played to a sold-out crowd of 20,000 people. In a bid to keep a low profile, the rocker clad himself in sunglasses as he made his way to the venue on a number of trains and tubes, instead of in a private car - with his wife, 45, documenting the whole saga on Instagram. Informing fans of their journey, she captioned the shot teasingly: 'Sneaking into London by train today' followed by a wink emoji. Clearly excited by the adventure, Penny then uploaded a second snap of Rod on the Central Line tube. How The City Plans To Make Wicker Park's Dangerous '6 Corners' Safer By Stephen Gossett in News on May 10, 2017 2:30PM David Hilowitz To bike or walk through the bustling intersection of North, Milwaukee and Damen avenues is to know that somethings gotta give, in terms of infrastructure. Quite frankly, it could use a major overhaul. But while the intersections unforgiving engineering keeps long-term fixes out of focus for the time being, local officials and the Chicago Department of Transportation arent waiting around to get moving on much-needed short-term amelioration. Taking cues from a plan of recommendations released by the Wicker Park Bucktown Special Service Area #33 back in February, CDOTjoined by Ald. Brian Hopkins, Proco Joe Moreno and Scott Waguespack (those six corners bump several wards)floated on Tuesday a handful of intriguing low-cost, quick-hit pilot projects to improve safety and better tailor the street environment to how people are actually getting around. Here are some of the possibilities put forth to residents at the community-input meeting: Paint/Post Curb Outs These curb extensions could be added strategically along the perimeter of the intersection. The aim is to reduce crossing distances for pedestrians, increase visibility and also help reduced motorist speed. You can see the concept in the image below, at the Lincoln Hub (Southport, Lincoln and Wellington), which was invoked in terms of similar examples. Dont worry; Mike Amsden, Assistant Director of Transportation Planning at CDOT, promised no polka dots in Wicker Park. Paint/post curb outs at Lincoln Hub / Google Maps / Screenshot Slip Lane Closure Theres a pretty huge use disparity when it comes to that little standalone island situated at the southwest corner of Damen and Milwaukee. More than 1000 thousand people walk along the slip lane during combined morning and evening peak hours; but just 32 drivers pass through during that same timeframe, according to CDOT. A ped-friendly plaza-like closure would function much like the one at Broadway and Halsted (pictured below, after the Wicker Park slip lane). Slip lane closure in place at Halsted and Broadway / Google Maps Crosswalks Where There Are None Ever catch somebody doing the frogger shortcut walk from near Starbucks all the way across to the Walgreens? Youve probably done it, weve done it, and, according to CDOT, a lot of people do it. The intersections high sidewalks could make it difficult to transform residents favorite impromptu crosswalk into an IRL crosswalk; and as Amsden cautioned, Just because it makes sense doesnt mean its a guarantee. But were happy to see it at least on the table. Right there where that neon green strip is / WPB SSA #33 Get Rid of Turn Lanes Drivers would still be allowed to make left turns, where theyre not already restrictedbut dedicated lanes could be made un-dedicated, freeing up much needed space. While the driving rate remains flat citywide, more than 800 cyclists pass through the busy Wicker Park Six Corners intersection during morning peak hours, and there are thousands of pedestrian crossings each day during AM and PM peaks, according to CDOT. Reduce Speed Limit to 20 Miles Per Hour Speed limits as posted near the intersection range between 25 and 30 mph. But the vast majority of drivers are already going 24 mph or slower around the crux, CDOT said. Making a slight reduction official could help boost safety. Other options include green-pavement bike boxes and bike lanes; and the plan is also considering infrastructure changes on Milwaukee from Armitage through Division. For the moment, the project remains in the data-collection and public-input phases, and details appear to still need ironing. (For instance, one attendee worried that a slip closure might negatively impact cyclists; and CDOT needs to look closer at, for instance, if turn-lane elimination could impact side-street traffic.) But appetite for some change at the intersection is palpable. Slip-lane closures and curb-outs appealed to Janelle Campos, a Wicker Park resident and frequent cyclist. Anything that improves the speed differential so its not as drastic, she said. If cars are forced to slow down from a bump out, it gives people a better chance to see them. The next community meeting is scheduled for July 17. However it unfolds, some form of action is imminent. Some $150,000 is already allocated for restriping later this year, and even given how much volume from outside the neighborhood traffics through the intersection, Hopkins said hes willing to reach beyond the wards for any additional financing that might be necessary. The cost shouldnt fall exclusively on us, he said. The TBD construction is slated to commence in August. Her brother Sam outed the extensive methods behind her, admittedly smug, holiday snaps. And Louise Thompson was in front of her professional camera once more as she jetted to Greece on her sixth holiday of the year with boyfriend Ryan Libbey - commemorating the occasion with one of their trademark lift selfies. The 27-year-old Made In Chelsea star slipped into a chic patterned swimming costume as she was hoisted into the air by her shirtless beau - before later showing off her impressively washboard abs in a glittering gold two-piece. Scroll down for video Back at it: Louise Thompson was in front of her professional camera once more as she jetted to Greece on her sixth holiday of the year with boyfriend Ryan Libbey while posing in a swimsuit while she was held in the air by the personal trainer Louise has already jetted off to the Maldives, Sri Lanka, two Paris trips and a Dubai jaunt this year - and the couple are once again setting off on their jollys. As the duo have become known for their selfie snapping ways, they were back in their natural habitat of posing in front of the cameras rather than hitting the beach. Proving his strength, honed at length in his work as a personal trainer, Ryan lifted his girlfriend in the air with ease while they both beamed with joy. Golden girl! They later returned to the comfort of the pool, where Ryan got behind the camera as Louise sizzled in a glittering gold bikini They later returned to the comfort of the pool, where Ryan got behind the camera as Louise sizzled in a glittering gold bikini. While the bikini itself was a show-stopping number, adorned with silver sequins all over, it was the reality star's incredible body that took centre stage - with her ripped stomach clear for all to see. Leaving her hair in loose waves and accessorising with mirrored sunglasses, the brunette was effortlessly glamorous as she beamed in the blazing sunshine. Just the two of us... and a camera: The 27-year-old later slipped into a trendy embroidered one-piece as she posed among some greenery for another stunning snap Just a day before, Louise proved that she wasn't content with life back on home turf as she took to Instagram to upload the very first snap from their getaway. She looked absolutely jaw-dropping as she showcased her impeccably chiselled torso in a tiny coral bikini. Louise teased what was to come in the following days with the titillating snap, which saw her gym-honed abs on full display. Good for some! Louise looked absolutely jaw-dropping as she showcased her impeccably chiselled torso in a tiny coral bikini in the first snap from her Greek getaway The minuscule halterneck style bikini top, with a bedazzled silver fastening in between, held her assets in place. The matching bottoms rested low on her hips with the bow-tie detailing and flaunted her lean, honed legs. Louise, who donned a pair of super cool shades, looked off into the distance while her dip-dyed brunette locks billowed in the slight breeze. Loved-up getaway: The star will be joined on her sixth holiday of the year with her personal trainer beau Passionate traveller: Louise has already enjoyed four holidays this year - including two in January to the Maldives and Sri Lanka Envy-inducing: Last month, she also headed to Dubai and Paris - where her social media display was nothing short of spectacular The beauty, who already sported an immaculate tan, captioned the snap: 'We arrived in Kefallinia checked into our beautiful room @f_zeen_retreat now time to explore and book some yoga classes. bikini @bahimibeachwear.' Louise soared to fame on the E4 show in 2011's second season, where she was introduced as Spencer Matthews' girlfriend before becoming a central character with her convoluted love life playing out on-screen. After dating stars including Jamie Laing, Andy Jordan and Alik Alfus, she found love with personal trainer Ryan who she kept secret for five months after falling for him over gym sessions. Famous: Louise soared to fame on the E4 show in 2011's second season, where she was introduced as Spencer Matthews' girlfriend before becoming a central character with her convoluted love life playing out on-screen In love: After dating stars including Jamie Laing, Andy Jordan and Alik Alfus, she found love with personal trainer Ryan who she kept secret for five months after falling for him over gym sessions And it seems like the pair are incredibly smitten as they have enjoyed a slew of envy-inducing holidays this year - including two in January to the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Last month, she also headed to Dubai and Paris - where her social media display was nothing short of spectacular. Last week, Louise shared a cheeky snap of her personal trainer beau's bum as he strolled around the bedroom stark naked. With his burly physique, it's no wonder that he's helped whip her into tip-top physical shape since they started working out together last year. He recently had assault charges against him dropped, after an altercation outside a strip club in Adelaide. And now Shannon Noll is on top of the world with a fit new physique and a hit new single called Southern Sky. The 41-year-old opened up about his chiseled body during an appearance on The Project on Wednesday. Scroll down for video 'Quite a few months training and consistency in eating well': Shannon Noll opened up about his new physique during an appearance on The Project this week When asked how he achieved his new look, the star said: 'Quite a few months training and consistency in eating well.' He then joked: 'I had a six-pack from - until 21. Then I started drinking so that was gone by 21.5!' This isn't the first time that Shazza has opened up about his new body. 'I had a six-pack from - until 21. Then I started drinking so that was gone by 21.5!' he joked Flex appeal! Shannon recently revealed that he goes to the gym 'six times a week' The 41-year-old recently told The Kyle and Jackie O Show that he goes to the gym at least six times a week. Shannon said he has put all of the Crazy Horse incident 'behind him' and spends a lot of his days 'lifting' at the gym. He said: 'I put my headphones on, listen to music and I don't go to socialise like other people do at the gym and I'm really enjoying my training.' As well as staying focused on his gym work, Shannon said that he chooses not to go out after a show because 'nothing good happens'. Learning: After the Crazy Horse incident, Shannon said he's 'putting it behind him' As well as touring nationally, Shannon has also done his fair share of strange 'corporate' gigs as he recalled his most memorable one. He said: 'I did one for a bottle-o company and I'm thinking: "This is going to be great, everyone's going to be totally loaded up," but they were all 90 years old and we said "If you guys aren't going to drink, we are!"' The interview comes just days after Shannon opened up to Yahoo! about telling his sons about the Crazy Horse incident. Sensible: As well as staying focused on his gym work, Shannon said that he chooses not to go out after a show because 'nothing good happens' Despite his run ins with the law, he still has his two young sons to answer to. Shannon revealed he told Cody, 16 and Blake, 14 all about the unfortunate incident 'as soon as he got home.' 'I sat the boys down as soon as I got home and explained the situation to them and told them what actually happened,' he said. The former Australian Idol runner-up insisted that such issues needed to be dealt with proactively, but said he 'regrets' the fact it happened in the first place. She is famed for her fiery temper and smoking hot physique. And Megan McKenna was putting said assets on show on Tuesday as she appeared riled behind the scenes of a photoshoot, shortly before grappling with her swimwear as her skimpy one-piece appeared to be causing her difficulty. The 24-year-old TOWIE star crumpled her face into a frown while raising a defensive hand in the air during a chat among a gaggle of pals, shortly before she struggled with the derriere of her stunning orange swimsuit. Scroll down for video Furious: Megan McKenna was putting both her assets on show on Tuesday as she appeared riled behind the scenes of a photoshoot, shortly before grappling with her swimwear as her skimpy one-piece appeared to be causing her difficulty Megan has been working hard during her trip to Spain, where everyday she has been sizzling in front of the camera for her new swimwear collaboration. As she stood behind the scenes of the shoot, she wore a stylish orange swimming costume with black straps wrapping around her body. She boosted her cleavage with the sculpted cups on the top while the halterneck acted to further enhance her front facing assets. At the back, the high-rise hips on the strappy number gave a very cheeky glimpse of her perky posterior while also emphasising her endless legs. Oops! The 24-year-old TOWIE star crumpled her face into a frown while raising a defensive hand in the air during a chat among a gaggle of pals, shortly before she struggled with the derriere of her stunning orange swimsuit Sizzling: Megan has been working hard during her trip to Spain, where everyday she has been sizzling in front of the camera for her new swimwear collaboration The skimpy nature of the ensemble meant Megan appeared to run into trouble with the back of the garment as she grappled slightly with the material. She injected a designer touch into the look with a black Celine tote bag which coordinated nicely with her black sliders. Her hair, which she later appeared to dye pink, was worn in stylish boxer braids falling over her shoulders while she appeared irritated as she held a hand up to one of her group. MailOnline has contacted a representative for Megan for comment. Megan's fiery reputation has long been tied to her presence on TV, as despite her tender age, Megan has thus far enjoyed a prolific television career as she continues to crop up on reality shows across the British TV realm. Not happy: Megan appeared riled as she stood among her pals Starting out, she appeared on BGT in 2006 where she performed a rendition of What is This Feeling? (Loathing), from West End musical Wicked. She went on to appear on The X Factor, made a brief appearance on TOWIE as a member of Jess Wright's band LOLA, two stints on Ex On The Beach, a spot on Celebrity Big Brother and her now-permanent role on TOWIE. On Ex On The Beach, CBB and TOWIE Megan has been seen to get in blazing rows - leading to being restrained on occasion. Wait! Her hair was worn in stylish boxer braids falling over her shoulders while she appeared irritated as she held a hand up to one of her group TV temper: Megan's fiery reputation has long been tied to her presence on TV, as despite her tender age, Megan has thus far enjoyed a prolific television career as she continues to crop up on reality shows across the British TV realm Any fury from Megan is somewhat topical after the end of TOWIE's 20th season was dominated by her row with co-star Chloe Meadows, who she failed to bury the hatchet with on the finale. The Essex beauty's ex BFF joined the ITVBe series last year when the former Celebrity Big Brother star was snapped up to appear, as bosses wanted to capture their friendship on screen. However, following a row over the brunette beauty's then-boyfriend Pete Wicks, they fell out and it doesn't look like they'll be making up any time soon. Fuming: On Ex On The Beach, CBB and TOWIE Megan has been seen to get in blazing rows - leading to being restrained on occasion Opening up to The Sun Online, Megan insisted that the blonde bombshell doesn't want to salvage their relationship. She told the publication: 'The truth is she only messages me during the show and even then it is only so she can use it as a storyline. 'I dont believe she genuinely wants to repair our friendship. Shes never actually been there for me.' She recently shared the camera with her darling seven-month-old son Anaca for a new campaign with Gap. Although loving life as a new mother, Candice Swanepoel proved she can still ooze sex appeal as she showcased her angelic figure by going topless for a Victoria's Secret campaign to promote their new Bombshell fragrance line. The 28-year-old VS Angel sizzles in the imagery as she poses in nothing but a pair of racy lace black underwear for the smouldering campaign for Bombshell Summer and Bombshell Paris scents. Scroll down for video Sizzling: Candice Swanepoel went topless as she showcased her angelic figure in a campaign for Victoria's Secret's new Bombshell Summer fragrance line Leaning against a white wall, the South African stunner showcased her incredible post-baby body while her skimpy lingerie highlighted her honed golden pins with a silhouette of the Eiffel Tower in the backdrop. The supermodel flaunted her bronzed subtle skin in the image as she posed on her tippy toes, covering her cleavage with arms crossed over her chest while she looks straight down the camera lens. With her blonde locks seductively tousled in a beachy curl, Candice worked a sultry smokey eye as she peered over her shoulder in the photo, shot by photographer Russell James. In another candid snap from the campaign, the fashion star gets her close-up with the best-selling fragrances - which gets two new variations for this year. Working her magic: The blonde beauty provocatively stared into the camera lens as she continued to go topless for the campaign The face of both scents, Candice dazzles in the cleavage flaunting shot while her blonde locks cascade down her shoulders as she seductively rests her fingers around the bottle. The sun-drenched snap showcases her natural full-pout while her blue eyes pierced the lens. Her dazzling display comes after she welcomed her first child Anaca in October with her long-term love and fiance Hermann Nicoli - who she met at the tender age of 17 working with the Brazilian male model on assignment in Paris back in 2005. Hermann eventually popped the question in August 2015, but no wedding date was ever set for the New York-based couple. Modelling for fun and profit: She is joined by her son Anaca in a new ad campaign for Gap Following in his mother's footsteps already, seven-month-old son Anaca joined Candice and a host of celebrity mothers and their adorable offspring, smiling for the cameras as they play with bubbles in the advert directed by famous mother and actress Liv Tyler. Liv, who co-directed the commercial - dubbed 'Mama Said' - with Paola Kudacki, also appears alongside actress Jurnee Smollet-Bell, model Coco Rocha, and artist and photographer Ali Bird and wife Cass Bird with all of their children. Elsewhere, 5ft10in catwalker Candice teamed up with Mara & Mine designers Jasmine Yarbrough and Tamie Ingham for a collection of four vegan sandals (retailing between $210-$285), released on May 6. Hamish And Andy are returning to Channel Nine as part of their brand new comedy series, True Story, that will showcase everyday tales by legendary Australians. The Logie award-winning comedy duo, comprised of Hamish Blake and Andy Lee, are due to add hilarious and dramatic recreations to previously unheard stories. Channel Nine revealed to Daily Mail Australia that the premiere episode will feature mother-of-two Rachel's bizarre holiday dining experience involving 'the stinky and expensive dish' Thousand Year Old Eggs. Scroll down for video He ATE what?! Hamish And Andy laugh histerically as Rachel retells regretful tale of offering husband 'anything' to eat her Thousand Year Old Eggs during premiere episode for True Story, due to air on June 5 In each half-hour episode, Hamish and Andy will meet one regular Australian storyteller as their story is brought to life by actors. Rachel will be introduced as a bubbly brunette with a past of attracting 'bad luck' while on holidays with her family. The story is based in Hong Kong, where Rachel's husband and two children visit her while she was on a work trip lecturing in risk management. The tale takes an unbelievable turn when Rachel claims she promised her husband 'anything' to eat the strange local delicacy on her behalf to avoid being rude to her host. Uh oh! The first tale takes an unbelievable turn when Rachel claims she promised her husband 'anything' to eat the strange Hong Kong local delicacy Thousand Year Old Eggs on her behalf to avoid being rude to her host What happens next? Rachel later reveals the bribe backfires into a decision the pair would later regret Rachel later reveals the bribe backfires into a decision the pair would later regret. During a promo video for the series, at least nine other tales are also hinted to. A backpacker named Jack appears to tell the duo of an accident where he tampered with a water system, as he claims: 'All of a sudden it's like this bomb goes off.' So many stories! During a promo video for the series, at least nine other tales are also hinted to Blonde guest Sammie recounts a hospital visit where her partner Matthew appears to get squeamish in the surgery room. An actor who plays Matthew can be seen turning away to focus on his breathing as the Doctor asks 'Is he dead?' The actress playing Sammie shouts 'don't care' as Hamish And Andy burst into laughter and claim: 'That is unbeliveable!' Is he OK? Blonde guest Sammie recounts a hospital visit where her partner Matthew appears to get squeamish in the surgery room 'That is unbeliveable!' Hamish And Andy find it hard to believe Sammie's tale as clips in the promo later show the actor playing her partner Matthew with a bandage over his eye after Sammie shouts 'don't care' in response to doctor's asking: 'Is he dead?' An official announcement for the show was made on the Today Show last June, with the 2Day FM radio hosts sharing the news while sailing around the South Pacific as part of The People's Cruise. Producing the project through their Radio Karate company, Hamish And Andy have used a cast of Australia's most renowned performers to re-enact the tales. 'There's no prize, no recording contract, you don't fall in love at the end of it or become a chef,' Hamish told Confidential, 'the prize is you just get to sit there and often embarrass yourself in front of us and tell your story.' True Story with Hamish & Andy premieres on Channel Nine on Monday, June 5, at 7.30pm She's been showing off her modelling prowess while shooting a new campaign in Florence. And Suki Waterhouse looked simply sensational on the second day of the Salvatore Ferragamo shoot on Wednesday. The model, 25, displayed a flash of her toned thighs as she slipped into a 60s-inspired mini dress while strutting down a raised platform in the Italian city. Stunning: Suki Waterhouse looked simply sensational on the second day of the Salvatore Ferragamo shoot on Wednesday The blonde beauty showed off her incredible figure in the retro number, featuring tassel-detailing along the hem. Her stylish look was completed with a pair of thigh-high suede boots, which had an unusual sculpted heel at the back. Wearing her locks down in loose waves, she oozed glamour as she sported a classic winged eyeliner, accentuating her lips with a nude lipstick. Retro look: Wearing her locks down in loose waves, she oozed glamour as she looked straight down the camera Model prowess: The model, 25, displayed a flash of her toned thighs as she slipped into a 60s-inspired mini dress Stylish: The blonde beauty showed off her incredible figure in the retro number, featuring tassel-detailing along the hem Suki later looked effortlessly chic with a black shawl wrapped around her, in a bid to keep warm in between takes. The Brit was seen in a glamorous metallic animal print dress during the shoot on Tuesday, as well as a Breakfast at Tiffany's inspired look in keeping with the retro theme. Suki cemented her modelling career when she became the face of Burberry in 2013, after originally being scouted when she was 16. Beauty: Suki sported a classic winged eyeliner, accentuating her lips with a nude lipstick Chic: Her stylish look was completed with a pair of thigh-high suede boots, which had an unusual sculpted heel at the back True pro: Suki pulled a series of poses while standing on a raised platform in the Italian city She graced the cover of British Vogue for their April 2015 issue alongside Cara Delevigne and Georgia May Jagger. She is also cultivating a career as an actress, appearing in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, as well as Love, Rosie and Insurgent. Suki, who previously dated Bradley Cooper, has been filming on the set of new thriller Assassination Nation. She will take on an American accent in the movie, which also stars Bella Thorne, Maude Aptow, Bill Skarsgard and Joel McHale. Wrapping up: Suki later looked effortlessly chic with a black shawl wrapped around her, in a bid to keep warm in between takes Light on her feet: The Brit danced around on the platform during the Ferragamo shoot Pensive: The actress looked out into the distance as she showed off her natural beauty Adjustments: An assistant helped her to adjust her thigh-high suede boots while on set Break: Suki was seen taking a brief break during the shoot, wrapping up in a large shawl All smiles: The model looked to be enjoying herself while on the shoot in Florence Breathtaking: Suki posed in front of the stunning backdrop of the Italian city for the Ferragamo campaign She's been enjoying a huge career comeback since being crowned the winner of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! in March. And while Casey Donovan's second wind has landed her a lucrative commercial with Coles, not everybody is enjoying the diva's supermarket jingle. Fans and viewers alike have rushed to various social media platforms to slam the ad, which features a guitar-toting Casey rocking out in the Coles aisle to an excruciating cover of Status Quo's 1974 classic 'Down Down'. Scroll down for video 'I'm glad I don't waste my money in their shops!' Viewers have flooded social media with negative comments about Casey Donovan's new Coles commercial 'If this is the best Coles can produce I'm glad I don't waste my money in their shops,' one user wrote on YouTube. Another said: 'I think Casey usually has a lovely voice... But in this ad she sounds like a cat that someone has stepped on its tail!' One YouTube user even said that the commercial is the reason why they shop at rival supermarket Woolworths. 'I think Casey usually has a lovely voice... But in this ad she sounds like a cat that someone has stepped on its tail!' Viewers are less than impressed with Casey's latest gig Comments on Twitter were just as harsh, with some users claiming that the jingle was driving them to criminal activities - including homicide. 'I love me some casey donovan but that coles add [sic] is making me homicidal,' wrote one. 'So I just saw the Coles ad with Casey Donovan,' wrote another. 'I just burnt my house down with all the TVs in it.' Comments on Twitter were just as harsh, with some users claiming that the jingle was driving them to criminal activities - including homicide 'I just burnt my house down with all the TVs in it': Casey's commercial has caused some Twitter users to joke about arson and homicide 'So irritating!' One Twitter user called it the most annoying commercial of all time and vowed to shop at Coles rival Woolworths instead Another wrote: 'I had a little respect for Casey Donovan before - but after that Coles advert she is dead to me.' 'All I hear in my head is Casey Donovan singing for Coles,' tweeted one dismayed viewer. Casey, who was working as an Uber driver before her Coles gig, has even acknowledged the infectious nature of her 'Down Down' disco remix. 'I had a little respect for Casey Donovan before - but after that Coles advert she is dead to me.' 'It is definitely a song that gets stuck in your head!' Casey has acknowledged the catchy nature of the song 'It is definitely a song that gets stuck in your head,' she proudly told the Daily Telegraph. Describing the visuals, the one-time chart-topper said: 'The fact I get to have my afro out and wear a big red dress is a bonus. 'I drove for Uber and here I am now helping people save money with Coles.' They tied the knot in March and have been in wedded bliss ever since. Now getting her feet back on the ground, actress Samira Wiley, 29, couldn't contain her joy as she stopped by Netflix's FYSee Kick Off event with her wife Lauren Morelli, 34, before later dinning at Madeo restaurant in Hollywood. The Orange Is The New Black star - who plays Poussey Washington in the Netflix series - looked sensational in a striking green midi pencil dress while she dined with her wife at the famed eatery. Wedded bliss: Samira Wiley, 29, (left) couldn't contain her joy as she stopped by Netflix's FYSee Kick Off event with her wife Lauren Morelli, 34, (right) before later dinning at Madeo restaurant in Hollywood The stunning actress choice of dazzling occasion wear highlighted her enviable curves as she hugged her slender while she arrived at the restaurant. Her one-shouldered garment featured wrap over detail on the thigh-skimming skirt, highlighting her honed pins while she showcased her eye-catching wedding ring and diamond earrings. She added inches to her petite frame with a pair of metallic strappy heels as she teetered to the venue hand-in-hand with her long-term love. Letting her locks framed her features, the Washington D.C. native worked a slick of red coloured gloss across her pout. Date night: The Orange Is The New Black star looked sensational in a striking green midi pencil dress while she dined with her wife at the famed eatery Complementing her love, OITNB writer and producer Lauren Morelli worked an on-trend monochrome look that commanded attention with her semi-sheer tuxedo inspired blouse. The blonde bombshell teamed her slinky shirt with a pair of high-waisted black pants that highlighted her narrow waist. She completed her look with a pair of sandal heels and small clutch while her blonde bob was worked into a soft curl. Their beaming appearance comes after they divulged all the intimate details of their romantic honeymoon to Italy to ET on the red carpet. Chic: Complementing her love, OITNB writer and producer Lauren Morelli worked an on-trend monochrome look that commanded attention with her semi-sheer tuxedo inspired blouse Lauren said: 'We went to Italy and stayed there for a little while and gazed into each other's eyes and had a good time. 'That's what you're supposed to do on a honeymoon, right? We didn't speak at all. We just gazed the whole time,' she joked. 'It was really great. It was really lovely.' Samira tied the knot with her long term partner in an intimate ceremony with friends and family, which was reported exclusively by Martha Stewart Weddings. With custom gowns by Christian Siriano, their nuptials were confetti-themed and based in part on the couples desire for a non-traditional event. Radiant: Samira tied the knot with her long term partner in an intimate ceremony with friends and family, which was reported exclusively by Martha Stewart Weddings Wileys parents officiated the ceremony, according to the magazine. Christine and Dennis W. Wiley, are the co-pastors of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Washington D.C. The pair made upbeat music selections for the ceremony, walking to This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan for the recessional and entering the reception to Justin Biebers Baby. Guests dined amid centerpieces of flowers and citrus fruits, garlands, sparkling light strands and mismatched glassware, reports the publication. Married! The darling duo announced their engagement in October via Instagram For their wedding cake, Samira and Lauren opted for a jubilant but non-traditional Funfetti cake. Their chosen Palm Springs location was significant for the couple, as it was where OITNB writer Morelli popped the question with a dazzling yellow-gold engagement ring. Settling back into everyday life after their whirlwind trip, the pair are currently preparing for the release of the fifth season of Orange Is the New Black, which hits Netflix June 9. He calls himself the world's number one Michael Jackson impersonator and has worked as the late star for 20 years. And it was clear to see why Navi is so successful as the famed tribute act stepped into his idol's shoes to film biopic Michael Jackson: Searching For Neverland. In official stills from the Lifetime show, the Trinidad native bore a striking resemblance to Michael - no doubt owing to his multiple plastic surgeries. Scroll down for video As seen on screen: It was clear to see why Navi is so successful as the famed tribute act stepped into his idol's shoes to film biopic Michael Jackson: Searching For Neverland Navi - who has modified his chin, nose and cheekbones to look like the Grammy Award winner - showed his best Smooth Criminal moves for the shots, which also featured child actors. The trio also bore resemblances to Michael's three children, Paris, Michael and Prince. The TV movie follows the last three years of Michael's life until his overdose death in 2009 and is told through the eyes of his two bodyguards, Javon Beard and Bill Whitfield. Michael Jackson: Searching For Neverland will air on May 29 on Lifetime. The legend: Navi has spent the last 20 years impersonating Michael Jackson (pictured) who died in 2009 from cardiac arrest Paris Jackson - Michael's daughter - has not spoken publicly about the biopic, following her outrage at the casting of Joseph Fiennes in a controversial spoof. Joseph starred as Michael in Sky Arts' Urban Myths: Elizabeth, Michael And Marlon, which was due to air in January before it was dropped by the network following a complaint from Michael's daughter, Paris Jackson. The series featured reenactments of fabled tales about famous stars - with the episode showing a supposed road trip which Michael, Marlon Brando (Brian Cox) and Dame Elizabeth Taylor (Stockard Channing) are said to have taken following the September 11 terror attacks. Committed: In official stills from the Lifetime show, the Trinidad native bore a striking resemblance to Michael - no doubt owing to his multiple plastic surgeries Three of a kind: Navi - who has modified his chin, nose and cheekbones to look like the Grammy Award winner - showed his best Smooth Criminal moves for the shots Good casting: The child actors also bore resemblances to Michael's three children, Paris, Michael and Prince In their eyes: The TV movie follows the last three years of Michael's life until his overdose death in 2009 and is told through the eyes of his two bodyguards, Javon Beard and Bill Whitfield On screen soon: Michael Jackson: Searching For Neverland will air on May 29 on Lifetime Following Paris' remarks that the show was 'disrespectful' towards her late father and her godmother Dame Elizabeth, along with campaigners complaints that a white actor should not play black musician Michael, the skit was scrapped. A spokesman for Sky announced: 'We have taken the decision not to broadcast Elizabeth, Michael And Marlon, a half-hour episode from the Sky Arts Urban Myths series, in light of the concerns expressed by Michael Jackson's immediate family. 'We set out to take a light-hearted look at reportedly true events and never intended to cause any offence. Joseph Fiennes fully supports our decision.' Striking: The resemblances were clear to see as Navi took on the role Trouble in Neverland: Stills show the star's controversial and shocking life at home Birthday fun: The stills show the young Paris celebrating her birthday with her family Family man: It will show Michael as the father and the loving way he was with his dear kids Iconic: Jackson fans will notice several iconic looks on the star Out and about: Navi looked strikingly similar to Navi The U-turn came after Paris went on Twitter to complain. She wrote: 'I'm so incredibly offended by it, as I'm sure plenty of people are as well, and it honestly makes me want to vomit. 'It angers me to see how obviously intentional it was for them to be this insulting, not just towards my father, but my godmother Liz as well. 'Where is the respect? They worked through blood sweat and tears for ages to create such profound and remarkable legacies. Shameful portrayal.' She added: 'He made a point of it plenty of times to express his pride in his roots. He would never have wanted this.' Quiet: Paris Jackson - Michael's daughter - has not spoken publicly about the biopic, following her outrage at the casting of Joseph Fiennes in a controversial spoof Could this be the moment Coronation Street viewers have been waiting for? In teaser snaps from a forthcoming episode of the veteran soap, Bethany Platt's villainous boyfriend Nathan Curtis looks like he could get his comeuppance. Having been seducing and grooming the 16-year-old school girl for months, it looks like the authorities might be closing in on what he's been up to. Scroll down for video Closing in: Coronation Street's resident sex ring leader Nathan Curtis is ARRESTED during a vicious public altercation with Bethany Platt It seems that the police intervene during an argument between Nathan and Bethany in public, splitting them up in the process. Given that Bethany is yet to see sense and go to the authorities about what's been going on, it's more likely that the cops will wade in because of the public tiff. Perhaps this will be the key to Nathan being found out. Could the police delve deeper into Nathan and Bethany's relationship and discover what he's been doing? Depraved: Could the police delve deeper into Nathan and Bethany's relationship and discover what he's been doing? Or could Bethany spill all if she's brought in for questioning? Nathan's hands are secured behind his back in one shot, suggesting he will indeed be taken in. Another sees Bethany clinging on to him, while a third sees him fighting to get away from her. The 16-year-old, played by Lucy Fallon, has been repeatedly sexually abused by Nathan's friends in what is unfolding as one of the soap's most shocking storylines to date. Violent: One shot sees Bethany clinging on to Nathan, while a third sees him fighting to get away from her Passed out: Coronation Street's Bethany Platt suffered yet another devastating twist in her embattled story as she was forced to drown her sorrows in alcohol Tough times: The 16-year-old, played by Lucy Fallon, is currently being groomed by her older boyfriend Nathan, who has been allowing his friends to sexually abuse the teen in one of the soap's most risque storylines to date Adding a further twist to the police intervention, Bethany's pleas for help have been ignored by the authorities after she was raped by an officer. In scenes which have left viewers shocked and horrified, Bethany has been subject to persistent abuse by Nathan, played by Christopher Harper. In scenes set to air later this week, Bethany is forced to dress in a sexy outfit in yet another abusive slight by Nathan who wants to entice some of his sick pals so they can abuse the teen. As he throws one of his 'parties', she is prepping by sporting a super sexy outfit although uses Dutch courage to help face the bash. After overindulging she collapses into a stupor. Furious: After waking up to find her mum Sarah and her mum's boyfriend Gary Windass she flies into a huge rage as she hurled items at the duo when Gary locked her in the house to prevent her visiting Nathan Struggles: Sarah was stunned to find her young daughter dressed up in scanty clothing having overindulged in alcohol - yet she is unaware of the horrifying truth After waking up to find her mum Sarah and her mum's boyfriend Gary Windass she flies into a huge rage as she hurled items at the duo when Gary locked her in the house to prevent her visiting Nathan. Nathan's plan was to leave the house to collect his friend Ian so he could abuse Bethany after plying the teen with alcohol and forcing her into a racy outfit. Sarah is stunned to find her young daughter dressed up in scanty clothing having overindulged in alcohol - yet she is unaware of the horrifying truth. There is set to be shock once again when it emerges that vulnerable Bethany's latest abuser is a policeman, in scenes which are yet to air. You're staying in! Gary locked her in the house to prevent her visiting Nathan Vulnerable: But when brave Bethany plucked up the courage to report her abuse, she was stunned to discover that one of the men who groomed her was in fact an officer Viewers have been gripped by the shocking storyline after Nathan manipulated her into sleeping with two other older men. But when brave Bethany, plucked up the courage to report her abuse, she is stunned to discover that one of the men who groomed her is in fact an officer. In a chilling twist, the sadistic policeman will threaten Bethany's family, warning her: 'You're not even safe in a police station'. A programme insider told The Sun on Sunday: 'She is convinced her ordeal will end when she goes to the police station and is utterly horrified to find out she was wrong. 'She is terrified of Neil and terrified that her family could be at risk and her fear forces her into an even darker place. Things are going to get worse for Bethany long before they begin to get better.' Illinois Lawmakers Sound Off On Comey Dismissal 'Straight Out Of Nixon Playbook' By aaroncynic in News on May 10, 2017 4:50PM former FBI director James Comey, via Getty Images In a move that would presumably make the ghost of Richard Nixon shake his jowls from the grave with jealousy, President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey Tuesday, whose charge at the time was investigating allegations of Russian tampering with the 2016 election. He wasnt doing a good job, Trump told reporters Wednesday morning. Very simply. He was not doing a good job. Predictably, the President also took to Twitter, saying that everyone would thank him: Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017 The dismissal came as a shock to lawmakers, the country and even Comey himself, who found out from television while he was speaking with FBI employees in Los Angeles. Despite the brazen nature of Comeys firing however, it seems to fall in line with the Presidents known dislike for basic checks and balances within government. Former President Richard Nixon wasnt exactly a fan of them either, famously firing the special prosecutor appointed to investigate his conduct in the watergate scandal. Lawmakers in Illinois were quick to weigh-in and condemn the move. Senator Dick Durbin said Comeys termination raises questions as to whether the FBI investigation will continue, or whether collusion by the Trump campaign with Russian will be investigated. Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues, Durbin said in a statement. Under these circumstances, I renew my call for an independent counsel and a special commission to fully investigate the Russian interference. Senator Tammy Duckworth also made a call for an independent investigation and asked why Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who Trump said made the recommendation to ouster Comey, was involved with the decision given his own recusal in all investigations related to Russia. The Presidents actions transcend any one individual and raise significant concerns over the basic rule of law, especially if they are intended to dissuade criminal investigators from digging too deep into Trump Administration officials and associates - or even the President himself, said Duckworth in a statement emailed to Chicagoist. Like many, Congressman Mike Quigley, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, saw the similarities between Trump and the 37th president, saying his actions were a "brazen decision taken straight out of the Nixon playbook." In a statement published by the Tribune, Quigley said that Trump "added to his long record of disruption and distraction by attempting to hand-select the individual that leads the (FBI) investigation into his own administration. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky called Comeys dismissal another high-profile example of a pattern within the Trump administration. Earlier in the week we heard former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates tell the United States Senate, under oath, that the Trump Administration actively and willfully ignored her warnings about their own National Security Advisor being vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian government, said Schakowsky. With U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Sally Yates, and now James Comey, we have three high-profile examples of the Trump Administration firing the individuals investigating them. At least one Illinois lawmaker appeared to come up with some sort of defense for Comeys dismissal, though without mentioning Trumps name. Director Comey had become a lightning rod for criticism over the past few months, Rep Peter Roskam told NBC5. Republicans and especially Democrats had sadly lost confidence in his ability to lead the FBI. I was surprised by the timing of the announcement. The FBI Director must enjoy the full confidence of the American people to effectively administer justice. Updated: U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez also sounded off on the firing, via Twitter Wednesday morning: Stephanie Davis has been rushed to hospital just hours after Jeremy McConnell appeared in court to deny assaulting her. The former Hollyoaks star, 27, was put under doctors' care after falling ill with a stress-related illness in Liverpool on Wednesday afternoon. The news comes after on-off boyfriend Jeremy, the father to her four-month-old son, ended their relationship and moved out of her home after his court hearing. Scroll down for video Under stress: Stephanie Davis, 27, was admitted to hospital with a stress-related illness on Wednesday afternoon hours after on/off partner Jeremy McConnell appeared in court to deny assaulting her According to The Sun, Stephanie was at a Premier Inn in Liverpool and collapsed before calling for help. A representative for Stephanie confirmed to MailOnline: 'I can confirm our client Stephanie has been admitted into hospital with a stress related illness this afternoon. 'She is expected to make a quick and full recovery.' The news comes just hours after Jeremy dumped the brunette star and moved out of on-off her Liverpool home following his appearance in court. Moving on: Jeremy McConnell has reportedly moved out of on-off girlfriend Stephanie Davis' home and ended their tumultuous romance following his appearance in court earlier on Wednesday The 27-year-old model denied assaulting the star in an appearance at Liverpool Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. Bizarrely, he insisted after the hearing that he was still with the actress and that their four-month-old son Caben Albi is 'doing well'. The reality star, who has been granted unconditional bail, is believed to have now jetted back to his native Ireland. On Wednesday, Jeremy entered the not guilty plea in relation to an incident on March 9 this year, but admitted damaging property at the actress' home. Conflict: The 27-year-old model denied assaulting the star in an appearance at Liverpool Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. Bizarrely, he insisted after the hearing that he was still with the actress and that their four-month-old son Caben Albi is 'doing well' There was no sign of Stephanie or Caben-Albi when Jeremy arrived at court. A source told The Sun things have gone sour for the couple once again: 'Jeremy left Stephanie's home yesterday and has been staying at a hotel a good move if they're going to ever get along. 'He's going to pick up his things later today and fly back to Ireland until the dust has settled. They could both do with some time apart before meeting to discuss what's next.' Heading in: Jeremy denied assaulting Stephanie on Wednesday, after he entered the not guilty plea in relation to an incident on March 9 this year, but admitted damaging property at the former Hollyoaks actress' home Heading off: There was no sign of Stephanie or Caben-Albi when Jeremy arrived at court Into court... The on-off pair had recently given their relationship another chance, however both cut ties with each other on social media following the charge against the star The on-off pair had recently given their relationship another chance, however both cut ties with each other on social media following the charge against the star. In court today, Jeremy spoke only to confirm his address and date of birth during a 15-minute hearing. A trial date has now been set for August 7 at Liverpool Crown Court following his not guilty plea to assault by beating. On Tuesday, a spokesman for Merseyside Police told MailOnline: 'We can confirm Jeremy McConnell, 27, of Swords, Ireland has been charged with assault and criminal damage following an incident in Rainhill on 9 March 2017.' Stephanie was reportedly 'shaken' after calling the police on Jeremy at the home she shares with their son. Jeremy has previously vehemently denied any wrongdoing. The couple first got together after appearing as fellow contestants on Celebrity Big Brother in 2015, months after Stephanie finished a five-year run playing Sinead O'Connor in Hollyoaks. Rebuilding: The couple, who share four-month-old son Caben-Albi, are trying to rebuild a relationship following his rehab stint, with the latest reports stating Stephanie had quit drink Heading in: Yesterday, a spokesman for Merseyside Police told MailOnline: 'We can confirm Jeremy McConnell, 27, of Swords, Ireland has been charged with assault and criminal damage following an incident in Rainhill on 9 March 2017' Moving on: The couple are said to be taking a break after their troubles Making the appearance: Jeremy has been granted unconditional bail Former Hollyoaks actress Stephanie (pictured right) was reportedly 'shaken' after calling the police on McConnell (left) at the home she shares with their four-month-old son Caben-Albi Flanked: Jeremy's entourage stood alongside the star ahead of the appearance She first came into the public eye when she took part in the BBC talent-spotting show Over The Rainbow in 2010. Last week Stephanie vowed to quit drinking after posting a worryingly incoherent tweet about cheating. The pair are trying to rebuild their relationship but last Wednesday it appeared all was not well between them, with Stephanie tweeting: 'Someone who gives you and doesn't answer, don't I. There beat a cheat n always n in.' The post was reportedly deleted 20 minutes later, but Jeremy blocked the star following a holiday the pair took together. Stephanie revealed in an interview with Closer magazine just days before, that she and Jeremy would like to try for baby number two, following his recent stint in rehab. Heading home: Last week Stephanie vowed to quit drinking after posting a worryingly incoherent tweet about cheating Happier time: Ex-Hollyoaks actress Stephanie made the official announcement that she was in a relationship with the father of her son once again on This Morning last month She confessed she was feeling 'broody', adding that her boyfriend wanted to be there for her next pregnancy, after missing out first time round. Stephanie admitted: 'We've both talked about having another baby at some point. She said: 'For Jez, it's about wanting to put right what he did wrong and be there throughout my next pregnancy. And I'm so broody I'd love to give Caben a little sister one day.' She also revealed that wedding bells could be on the horizon, saying she 'can't wait to marry him one day'. Stephanie made the official announcement that she was in a relationship with the father of her son once again on This Morning last month. She has been modelling for nearly twenty years. And to mark her ten year anniversary with V Magazine, Lara Stone has gone all out, posing for a sizzling new fashion story. The 33-year-old Dutch beaut goes braless for the shoot, flashing her assets in a series of designer autumn pieces. Baring all: To mark her ten year anniversary with V Magazine, Lara Stone has gone all out, posing for a sizzling new fashion story As part of their June issue, the blonde beauty was shot by photographer Mel Bles for their Back To The Future feature, marking ten years after her debut photoshoot for the publication. While she models the likes of dramatic capes and draped dresses, all focus is on Lara's sensational figure, as she shows off her ample assets. Wearing minimal makeup and with her blonde locks slicked back off her face, Lara pulls off her best poses for the high fashion shoot. The Dutch model - whos graced the catwalks and campaigns of some of fashions biggest names such as Givenchy, Chanel and Prada - first appeared in the magazine in 2007. Wow factor: The 33-year-old Dutch beaut goes braless for the shoot, flashing her assets in a series of designer autumn pieces Lara soared to fame at the tender age of 12 when she was scouted during a family trip to Paris and since then her star has continued to rise as she won modelling contracts all over the globe. In the midst of her superstardom, she went on to enjoy a high profile romance when she married comedian David Walliams in 2010 before sadly splitting five years later. The duo share a four-year-old son, Alfred. She has been spotted on a number of dates since her divorce, but Lara appeared completely infatuated last month, as she packed on the PDA with new man Andrew Gray, 30, at a pub in North London. The pair were first linked in February 2016, when they attended the BRIT Awards together and reportedly indulged in a spot of PDA at their table during Adele's performance. Issue 107 of V Magazine is on sale now. Joanna Krupa and her husband Romain Zago appeared to have split in December. The news was shared only earlier this week. And it looks as if the former Real Housewives Of Miami star is already spending time with a new man. On Tuesday the blonde model was seen leaving Mr Chow in Beverly Hills with the handsome fellow. New catch? Joanna Krupa was seen leaving Mr Chow in Beverly Hills with a mystery man on Tuesday evening Vroom: The blonde bombshell was in the passenger's seat as the man drove off The two left the Chinese restaurant at the same time and got into a dark sedan together. He was in the driver's seat while she took the passenger's seat. The beauty looked fetching for her night out. She had on a beige off-the-shoulder top and dark slacks with her hair worn in a ponytail. Sweet look: The beauty looked fetching for her night out. She had on a beige off-the-shoulder top and dark slacks with her hair worn in a ponytail The mystery man wore a black top, scarf and coated jeans. The Playboy cover girl was also seen talking to a woman outside the popular eatery where Sharon Stone and Britney Spears have dined. Joanna and Romain have been apart since December, according to E! News. 'They just grew apart,' a source told the site. The beauty did not spend her birthday in late April with him and last week she stepped out in LA without her wedding rings on. Chatty: The Playboy cover girl was also seen talking to a woman outside the popular eatery where Sharon Stone and Britney Spears have dined Close bond? Joanna seemed to know the woman, dressed in a white shirt and jeans, well The two remain friends, it was added. The insider also said that the Playboy cover girl is still flying to Florida to see her estranged spouse as she keeps a home in Los Angeles. The 38-year-old blonde from Poland wed in Carlsbad, California in 2013. The siren used to post several shots with Romain on her Instagram account. Time out: Krupa and Romain Zago have been apart since December, according to E! News. Pictured March 2016 That was then: The 38-year-old blonde from Poland wed in Carlsbad, California in 2013 But that slowed down last year. She has not shared a photo with the handsome nightlife guru since November. Krupa got her starts posing for FHM, Shape and Maxim, then went on to take the cover of Playboy magazine. Showing off what she's got: In the past few months Krupa has posted more naked photos She then did the TV series Superstars in June 2009 with Terrell Owens, that led to competing on season nine of Dancing With The Stars. Since autumn 2010, Krupa has hosted and served as the head judge on the Polish version of Top Model. She was also one of the cast members on The Real Housewives of Miami. Joanna is best known for her sexy Instagram posts where she wears lingerie and swimsuits, and sometimes nothing at all. They've been dating for about six months. And now it looks like Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough could be taking things to the next level with a visit to meet the family. According to Confidential, Karl and Jasmine will head to Queensland for Mother's Day weekend, where both their mothers live. Mother's Day getaway? Karl and Jasmine will reportedly head to Queensland for Mother's Day weekend, where both their mothers live This won't be the first time that Karl has met his girlfriend's family. Last month, the 42-year-old spent time with Jasmine's parents and her brother in Mexico. The latest news come just days after The Sunday Telegraph reported that Karl received a 'tough' settlement of just $500,000 from his divorce with wife of 21 years, Cassandra Thorburn. Not the first time: This won't be the first time that Karl has met Jasmine's (R) family Family: Last month, the 42-year-old spent time with Jasmine's parents and her brother in Mexico According to the publication, Karl left his 44-year-old wife with $6 million in cash and assets, plus child support and 'ongoing payments'. In contrast, it is alleged the television personality will walk away with just $500,000 in financial assets, an amount which includes his white Mercedes. The divorce was reportedly finalised before Karl went to the United States and Mexico last month to spend time with his new girlfriend, Jasmine. Tough: The latest news come just days after The Sunday Telegraph reported that Karl received a 'tough' settlement of just $500,000 from his divorce from Cassandra Thorburn Sources described the settlement to News Corp as 'tough' for Karl, who makes $3 million a year as host of Channel Nine breakfast program, Today. As part of their divorce agreement, Karl and Cassandra will share custody of their three children - Jackson, 17, Ava, 12, and River, 10. Cassandra will reportedly reside in the former couple's $8 million waterfront Cremorne mansion she received in their settlement, which is believed to be 'significantly mortgaged'. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson admits running for president is a 'real possibility.' The 45-year-old actor-and-wrestler believes he has what it takes to rule the United States Of America and has been considering the idea of moving into politics 'more and more' over the past year. The Baywatch actor told GQ magazine, 'A year ago, it started coming up more and more. There was a real sense of earnestness, which made me go home and think, "Let me really rethink my answer and make sure I am giving an answer that is truthful and also respectful."' Is he for real? Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson told GQ magazine running for president is a 'real possibility' He's got the guns for the job! The Baywatch actor told the magazine, 'A year ago, it started coming up more and more' And the Fate Of The Furious star claimed he would be a confident leader of the United States as he would take 'responsibility' for all of its citizens. He told the fashion monthly magazine: 'Personally, I feel that if I were president, poise would be important. Leadership would be important. Taking responsibility for everybody. '[If I didn't agree with someone] on something, I wouldn't shut them out. I would actually include them. Celebrities are taking office: The current President, Donald Trump, also comes from a show biz background as he was the star of TV's The Apprentice 'The first thing we'd do is we'd come and sit down and we'd talk about it. 'We all have issues, and we all gotta work our s**t out. And I feel like one of the qualities of a great leader is not shutting people out. I miss that part. Even if we disagree, we've got to figure it out.' The former pro wrestler doesn't seem short of support for his dream job, as Ron Meyer, the NBCUniversal Vice Chairman, whose studio produces the franchise, would definitely vote for the actor. From swim trunks to suits? Here he is seen with his Baywatch cast which includes Zac Efron and Alexandra Daddario He said: 'If [becoming the president] is something he focused on ... he probably would accomplish it. 'I think there's nothing that he couldn't do. I would vote for him without a question.' The current President, Donald Trump, also comes from a show biz background as he was the star of TV's The Apprentice. Big franchise: He was also in Fast & Furious 6 with the late Paul Walker and Vin Diesel and was in the sequel as well And so did Ronald Reagan, who was an actor in such films as Kings Row and Bedtime For Bonzo. He was also married to actress Jane Wyman. The 45-year-old has been with Lauren Hashian since 2007. He was married to Dany Garcia from 1997 until 2007. He has two children: Simone Alexandra Johnson and Jasmine Johnson. The star has been filming Rampage with Malin Akerman. The indigenous model celebrated her third wedding anniversary with beau Luke Hunt in March. And Samantha Harris has now revealed children are on the couple's mind. The 26-year-old told The Daily Telegraph on Thursday: 'One day, I definitely want it, but there is no rush.' 'I definitely want it': Model Samantha Harris opens up about having children with her husband Luke Hunt in interview with The Daily Telegraph on Thursday... after celebrating third wedding anniversary together in March Basking in the joys of marriage, the Australian stunner is known for putting on a loved-up display with her beau at red carpet and VIP vents. Samantha insisted while it wasn't in their immediate future, it was definitely on the table: 'Not at the moment, but one day.' Meanwhile, the stunner revealed she became an official ambassador for Make-A-Wish Foundation Australia earlier this year. The organisation, which grants the wishes of children aged 3-18 who are battling life-threatening illnesses, is praised by the brunette beauty as: 'an amazing charity.' Stunning! Samantha Harris attended Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia's Schedule Launch in Sydney in March In March, Samantha looked smitten as she posed alongside Luke, 30, while clutching a champagne glass at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia's Schedule Launch in Sydney. She showed off her statuesque frame in a black figure-hugging off-the-shoulder dress paired with open-toe stiletto heels. Her luscious balayage locks were straightened and worn loosely and her flawlessly applied makeup consisted of bronzer, smokey eyes and nude lipstick. She wore minimal accessories, opting to wear a simple wedding band. Slender: She showed off her statuesque frame in a black figure-hugging off-the-shoulder dress paired with open-toe stiletto heels Happy: The 26-year-old model and her husband Luke, 30, a loved-up display with her beau at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia's Schedule Launch, in Sydney on Wednesday Meanwhile, Luke looked sharp in a crisp white shirt and black pants. Samantha and Luke had recently celebrated their three-year wedding anniversary, and took to Instagram to share a never-before-seen photo of their nuptials. 'Happy Anniversary' Sam captioned the snap, in which she was seen dressed in a white Carla Zampatti bridal gown accented by a black bow around her tiny waist. The couple tied the knot two months before Luke started a two-year jail term, after the pair were involved in a tragic accident that resulted in the death of Kenneth Lay, 78. Samantha posted a photo of the pair on their happy day, smiling into the camera as they signed their marriage certificate. The couple held hands as they both gripped the same pen used to sign the certificate. Lovebirds: Samantha and her husband Luke Hunt celebrated their three-year wedding anniversary a week ago, sharing public displays of affection to their Instagram accounts The brunette beauty revealed to Marie Claire in October last year she married Luke privately out of respect for Kenneth Lay's family. The Sydney grandfather was killed in May 2012 when Sam and Luke's Commodore crashed into his Hyundai Lantra in Narraweena on the Northern Beaches. The court heard at the time Luke was going about 95km/h in a 60km/h zone and was aggressively changing lanes. Bittersweet: The couple tied the knot two months before Luke was sent to jail for two years, after they were involved in a tragic accident that resulted in the death of Kenneth Lay, 78 Low-key: The brunette beauty revealed to Marie Claire in October last year she married Luke privately out of respect for Kenneth Lay's family Luke was charged with dangerous driving occasioning death and he quietly married Sam two months before starting his sentence. 'Would our wedding have been bigger under normal circumstances? Probably not, but I would have posted a photo or something on social media,' she stated. The grief from the accident took its toll on her husband, she described. 'We dont talk about the accident much because I cant handle it, but I know he feels deeply for Mr Lays family and always will.' She gave birth to precious baby son Boston in April this year. And Joanna Burgess revealed to The Daily Telegraph that motherhood has strengthened her relationship with NRL star husband George, 25. 'It's brought George and I even closer,' the 27-year-old gushed. 'It's brought us closer': Joanna Burgess, 27, revealed to The Daily Telegraph that the birth of son Boston strengthened her relationship with NRL star husband George, 25 'It's been a challenge but the best challenge - words can't even describe it,' Joanna told the publication of first-time motherhood. 'There is just so much love in our life. And it's brought George and I even closer,' she continued. The interior design student also added that little Boston 'definitely looks like his dad.' Bundle of joy: Joanna gave birth to Boston in April this year, after the couple's December nuptials Joanna gave birth to Boston in April this year, after the couple's December nuptials. An intimate ceremony in Noosa, Queensland, saw the whole Burgess clan together, including George's brother Sam and his wife Phoebe. 'What an unbelievable day it was last Saturday getting married to my queen,' George sweetly wrote online at the time. New chapter: The Rabbitohs star proposed in January last year, confirming later in September that they were expecting their first child 'It was everything we could have imagined. Thanks to everyone who was a part of our special day, and those who were there in spirit,' he added. The Rabbitohs star proposed in January last year, confirming later in September that they were expecting their first child. Joanna regularly shared updates of her pregnancy journey with her 24,600 Instagram followers. They have yet to confirm if they are an item but this outing certainly had all the hallmarks of relationship. Lewis Hamilton and Sofia Richie were spotted out on a lunch date on Tuesday. The 32-year-old race car driver and the 18-year-old model grabbed a bite to eat at Cecconi's in West Hollywood, California. Grabbed at bite: Lewis Hamilton and Sofia Richie were spotted out on a lunch date in in West Hollywood, California, on Tuesday The duo - and Lewis' dog Coco - arrived in style, and no doubt fast, with Lewis driving the teenage star in his Porsche 911 Turbo S. While the pair have yet to confirm whether they are dating, they walked along very close to one another as they headed into the eatery. For their lunch date, Sofia wore a semi-sheer white T-shirt with tailored pants, a trench and a pair of white leather sneakers. Lewis meanwhile wore a pink sweater with white pants, solid 18k rose gold sunglasses by L.G.R and zebra Yeezys. Impressive motor: The duo - and Lewis' dog Coco - arrived in style, and no doubt fast, with Lewis driving the teenage star in his Porsche 911 Turbo S Casually chic: For their lunch date, Sofia wore a semi-sheer white T-shirt with tailored pants, a trench and a pair of white leather sneakers The god father: Following their date, Lewis headed over to a friends' house to meet his god son While their relationship status remains up in the air, last week the two were also together in New York. The model and the racer were seen leaving a screening of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 at the Whitby Hotel. Following their date, Lewis headed over to a friends' house to meet his god son. The sportsman proudly posted a snap of himself with the little baby on social media. They delighted fans with their triumphant return to screens with motoring show The Grand Tour last year. And so Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond were surely feeling confident that a second season was inevitably going to be commissioned by Amazon Prime. And now it's in full swing with filming taking place on the island of Pag in Croatia. Scroll down for video On their marks, get set...! Jeremy Clarkson looks ready for battle as he prepares to race Richard Hammond for the SECOND day in a row as they shoot new scenes of The Grand Tour Ready for battle: Richard, 47, looked like a pro as he hopped into an Ariel Nomad as cameras rolled, while Jeremy, 57, got comfortable in a bright blue Audi This was the boys' second day filming race scenes, having spent Tuesday shooting a similar sequence as well. Richard, 47, looked like a pro as he hopped back into the Ariel Nomad he was driving yesterday while Jeremy, 57, got in the zone in an electric blue Audi. The men looked ready to indulge in a little friendly competition, as is often the case with the Grand Tour trio - which also includes an absent James May. Filming at the former Maraska Factory in Zadar, Jeremy appeared to be testing a standard design car in the race against Richard, whose vehicle was a buggy off-roader. Over and out: The men were seen communicating with one another via walkie talkie On location: Filming at the former Maraska Factory in Zadar, Jeremy appeared to be testing a standard design car in the race against Richard, whose vehicle was a buggy off-roader The men were seen communicating with one another via walkie talkie before taking off on the race. Jeremy was seen making sure he knew what's what as he was talked through the functioning of the vehicle he was about to race. Richard seemed in great spirits, laughing with the crew as they mic'd him up. Jeremy was seen taking selfies with crew members too. Trying something new: Richard kept his adrenaline up by getting strapped into the red Ariel Nomad Cool: Jeremy got comfortable in a blue Audi Speaking about the release of the second season, Clarkson gave some insight while promoting their new website DriveTribe on a Facbook livestream. 'It will go out this year at the same time the last one went out whenever that was,' he revealed - hinting at an autumn release after season one premiered in November. Filming for the second season hasn't been without its setbacks though, as Hammond reportedly injured himself during a motorbike crash in Africa. Rat race: As cameras rolled, it looked like the two motor lovers were in the midst of competition to see who could go quicker Coming soon: Speaking about the release of the second season, Clarkson gave some insight while promoting their new website DriveTribe on a Facbook livestream Raring to go: Jeremy was seen making sure he knew what's what as he was talked through the functioning of the vehicle he was about to race Gearing up: Richard seemed in great spirits, laughing with the crew as they mic'd him up Richard confirmed the accident on DriveTribe, stating: 'Thanks for enquiries re my slight shunt whilst filming for GT. I can confirm that yes, I fell off a bike, many times, in fact and yes, I banged my head and everything else. But life goes on.' With footage of the crash expected to appear in the upcoming season, Hammond added: 'Can't tell you more yet about the how and why of it; that's all for later in the year on the show.' The father of Richard also recently spoke of his relief after his son survived a second 'horror crash' while filming for the TV series in Mozambique. Horror: Filming for the second season hasn't been without its setbacks though, as Hammond reportedly injured himself during a motorbike crash in Africa New woman: Jeremy, who is in a relationship with Lisa Hogan, 46, also added: 'He really did hurt himself quite badly.' The star, who sustained brain injuries after a 288mph rocket car accident in 2006, toppled off his motorcycle and banged his head while riding through a 'remote' part of Mozambique. Alan Hammond said he spoke to his son on the phone this morning with the TV presenter reassuring him that he had fully recovered from the terrifying incident. Alan, 73, said: 'Richard called this morning and he said everything is fine. He has fully recovered and is all okay. 'Yes, I fell off my bike': Richard confirmed the accident on DriveTribe Accident: The star, who sustained brain injuries after a 288mph rocket car accident in 2006, toppled off his motorcycle and banged his head while riding through a 'remote' part of Mozambique Picture perfect: Jeremy chatted to the various crew members on set 'He does have a habit of getting involved in things like this, but then that is his job.' About the incident, a source told The Sun: 'Richard was travelling quite fast when he came off. It caused instant horror on set. There was a lot of concern.' Jeremy, who is in a relationship with Lisa Hogan, 46, also added: 'He really did hurt himself quite badly.' While last year the show visited the likes of Finland, South Africa and Dubai, this year they will also visit the US and Georgia. Trio: James May (L) is also a presenter on the series but wasn't filming on Tuesday Kim Kardashian tied the knot with Kanye West nearly three years ago during a decadent ceremony in Italy. And it looks like the 36-year-old reality star has the milestone on her mind as she shared images from her bridal shower in Beverly Hills to her website kimkardashianwest.com on Wednesday. The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star revealed the shower was a surprise that was organized by her mother Kris Jenner and it turned out to be 'amazing.' New: Kim Kardashian shared a photo from her bridal shower in 2014 on her website on Wednesday afternoon Oh mama! The Vogue cover girl wrote on her site: 'Three years ago, at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, my mom and sisters surprised me and threw me the most amazing bridal shower' The cake had an Eiffel Tower on it Kim looked stunning in her white Chanel dress with a pearl strap and pearls on the front. The mother to North and Saint also appeared very slender. The Vogue cover girl wrote on her site: 'Three years ago, at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, my mom and sisters surprised me and threw me the most amazing bridal shower. 'I thought I was going to a meeting with my mom and she told me to wear white. ' I guess I should have known something was up! 'I wore this really cool white Chanel dress that I had been dying to wear. 'It was all about a French theme, and it was a brunch with the best foodwe even had an Eiffel Tower cake! Of course, we had churros too.' Her words: 'It was all about a French theme, and it was a brunch with the best foodwe even had an Eiffel Tower cake! Of course, we had churros too' The family: Also at the shower were Kourtney and Khloe, seen here at the Peninsula Hotel Deja vu: A closer look at her Chanel dress and beige pumps she wore for the event The couple wed on May 24, 2014 at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence in front of pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr with Andrea Bocelli singing. Kim wore a white lace Givenchy gown with a long veil. Also on Wednesday Kim posted to her site a note about her Costa Rica vacation with her kids. 'When we all went on our family trip to Costa Rica, it was so important to me to just relax and be with the kids. Growing up, I have such great memories of going on vacation with the whole family and I love that I get to do that with my kids now.' Tied the knot: The couple wed on May 24, 2014 at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence in front of pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr with Andrea Bocelli singing Pretty lady: Kim wore a white lace Givenchy gown with a long veil A hit photo: This image with baby North became a sensation in 2014 China performs the world's second largest number of organ transplants, but a shortage of qualified transplant doctors is impeding progress. Now the country has sped up training of doctors, with the help from the international community. Seven Chinese universities will conduct postgraduate training in organ donation and transplants this year. The laKeTLOD (Knowledge transfer and leadership in organ donation from Europe to China) is co-founded by the European Commission and Chinese universities. Launched Tuesday at Shanghai Jiaotong University, laKeTLOD expects to enroll 20 postgraduate students in a course on organ donation and transplants this autumn. Specialists from three universities in France, Italy and Spain will offer training in accordance with European guidelines. Twenty-two Chinese doctors have already been through a three-month online course and will be in Spain from May 21 for a week of further training. They will then offer courses on what they have learned to 140 healthcare postgraduates over two years in universities in Beijing, Kunming, Nanchang, Nanning, Shanghai and Wuhan. Marti Manyalich, President of Spain's Donation and Transplantation Institute (DTI), said at the launch that training is not just about sharing knowledge, but about transferring the course to China, adapted to local needs and delivered in Chinese. "Seven universities are not enough. We must train more Chinese professionals in the next decades," said Manyalich. Spain has more organ donations per capita than any other country. It has been at the forefront of training on the subject for thousands of healthcare professionals worldwide since the 1990s. China has the largest number of organ donations per year in Asia, and the second number of organ transplants globally after the U.S., but lags far behind on a per capita basis. "But China is changing," said Francis Delmonico, representative of the World Health Organization and former president of the Transplantation Society. Organ donation is a challenge in China due to lack of training and health professionals, said Wang Qian, Dean of International Cooperation Office of China's Capital Medical University, one of the participants in laKeTLOD. Currently, 169 Chinese hospitals can perform transplants with the number expected to reach 300 in the next five years. "We are waiting for the Chinese versions of textbooks and more medical specialists to join the program," said Chen Xiaosong, who will teach the course at Shanghai Jiaotong University. They are both in Tulum, Mexico. And Tyga's rumored new love interest Jordan Ozuna has been sending temperatures soaring as she enjoys some fun in the sun. The model, 24, shared an alluring snap of herself completely naked as she lounged on a romantic white bed at her resort, Azulik Tulum. Scroll down for video Cheeky! Tyga's rumored new love interest Jordan Ozuna has been sending temperatures soaring as she enjoys some fun in the sun in Tulum, Mexico 'Sleepy baby j': The model captioned the seductive snap 'Sleepy baby j,' she captioned the seductive snap. It's not clear if Jordan and Tyga have met up in Tulum, and Jordan responded to speculation she was even with the rapper in Mexico by posting on Twitter: 'When you're actually on vaca with girlfriends and this happens ...' As Jordan enjoys some time in her hotel, Tyga has been living it up with the boys. The rapper has been ATV riding with his pals and soaking up the sun on the beach. Ready for some bikini fun! Jordan shared a snap of herself rocking a tiny crochet bikini last week as she packed for her trip to Mexico Just the boys: As Jordan enjoys some time in her hotel, Tyga has been living it up with the boys Contemplative: He also shared an introspective snap of himself, sitting beside an ocean, which he captioned, 'Trust the process' 'Ayyyyyee pull up made it look sexy,' he captioned a photo of himself riding an ATV. He also shared an introspective snap of himself, sitting beside an ocean, which he captioned, 'Trust the process.' The rapper even explored some ruins in Tulum, sharing a photo of himself trekking through what he dubbed the 'Mayan City.' 'Ayyyyyee pull up made it look sexy': He captioned a photo of himself riding an ATV Meanwhile: The trip comes a little over a month after Tyga split from long-term girlfriend Kylie Jenner Tyga and Jordan were first linked when they were seen hugging after eating a meal at Seraphina on the Sunset Strip last month. Last month, Jordon took to Twitter deny any sort of relationship, writing: 'Omg y'all I'm not dating Tyga come on.' The trip comes a little over a month after Tyga split from long-term girlfriend Kylie Jenner, who is now linked to rapper Travis Scott. Let's get this show on the road: The rapper has been ATV riding with his pals and soaking up the sun at his beachfront digs Adventurous: The rapper even explored some ruins in Tulum, sharing a photo of himself trekking through the 'Mayan City' Exploring: The 27-year-old checked out his beachfront surroundings Advertisement Ryan Seacrest has moved from Los Angeles to New York City for his new job opposite Kelly Ripa on the morning chat show Live! But he's not squeezing himself into a small bedroom, the way most Manhattanites do. Instead, the host - who is also up for a job on the American Idol reboot - is renting a luxurious 11,000 square foot modern-looking apartment that costs $75,000 a month. Images of the stunning dwelling, which is located in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of the Upper East Side, surfaced just after the 42-year-old was seen taking in a Broadway play with girlfriend, stunning blonde Shayna Taylor. Lovely pad: Ryan Seacrest has moved from Los Angeles to New York City for his new job opposite Kelly Ripa on the morning chat show Live! But he's not squeezing himself into a small bedroom, the way most Manhattanites do Fancy place: The host - who is also up for a job on the American Idol reboot - is renting a luxurious 11,000 square foot modern-looking apartment that costs $75,000 a month Does she live there too? Images of the stunning dwelling, which is located in the Lenox Hill neighborhood, surfaced just after the 42-year-old was seen taking in a Broadway play with girlfriend, stunning blonde Shayna Taylor The 19th-century mansion has an ornate exterior but inside it's a different story. The look is modern but subtle with mostly white and light beige used throughout with plenty of big, open spaces. It also looks as if the blonde TV personality can fit in several guests visiting from Los Angeles because there are seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms on the six levels of the pad. A good place to cook: The kitchen is large with white cabinets and what appears to be a marble-surfaced island with tile floors. The area, which is fit for a top chef, is filled with top-of-the-line appliances from German company Gaggenau So inviting any time of the year: There are a total of six wood-burning fireplaces in the six story home And throwing parties would be a breeze for the 5ft8in Georgia native as there is 3,000 square feet of what has been described as 'entertaining space. Even the ceilings are extraordinarily high at over 12 feet. The kitchen is large with white cabinets and what appears to be a marble-surfaced island with tile floors. The area, which is fit for a top chef, is filled with top-of-the-line appliances from German company Gaggenau. Ryan's round table: Here is a look at the space where he can enjoy a meal with Kelly Ripa and her husband Mark Consuelos Another place to dine: It is not clear if this is the same space with different chairs or an entirely new one The living room boasts three long windows that offer a nice view of the tree-lined street below. There is enough space for 10. The master bedroom is certainly roomy with space for a king-size bed and a desk. There is also a seating area and a fireplace (it is only one of six wood-burning fireplaces in the home). And the bathrooms are as bright as they are spacious with white and marble features as well as an oversized bathtub in the master. A good place to rest: The master bedroom is certainly roomy with space for a king-size bed and a desk. There is also a seating area and a fireplace There is a high-speed elevator with 'energy efficient climate control and humidification.' 'The interior has been renovated spectacularly in the last three years,' Nancy Aryeh at Douglas Elliman, who sold the property in 2015, said. 'Its also a wonderful location.' The 1879 Greek Revival home was bought by a developer in 2015 for $11.5 million. It was removed from the market in late April. He might want to wear sunglasses in this room: the bathrooms are as bright as they are spacious with white and marble features as well as an oversized bathtub in the master Another one: Here there is a view of double sinks in a very large bathroom with a shower Seacrest can sit in Michael K Chen Architecture architectural firm restructured the home. Designs from Italy and Scandinavia were used. 'It was a very substantial construction project, we just finished it earlier this year,' said Michael Chen, CEO of the Michael K Chen Architecture architectural firm. Red or white? The property included a walk-in wine room with a sink and space to unwind next to a staircase It's also made with 'locally sourced materials using local artisans' and is categorized as 'ecologically conscious,' according to listing copy. Seacrest announced that he will be spending five days a week in New York and jetting back to the West Coast every weekend. If he joins Idol, he may have to commute to Disney World in Florida where TMZ reported on Wednesday the new show may be filmed. It has also been added that Kelly Clarkson may become a judge for the competition show. Ripa asked him on Live about joining Idol to which he said: 'I don't know if I can host it. Do you know the preparation I have to do for [Live!] every night?' She replied: 'Yes you can, you can! I know that you're busy in the mornings, I get it. I understand its hard doing double duty. You've got the radio show, you've got this. But your nights are free. You don't have that much to do,' she stated. She has been practically channeling Kim Kardashian's style in recent days. And Ashley Graham stepped out once again on Wednesday in an outfit that was a total dead-ringer for an ensemble the reality star had worn previously, from the high heels to the skin tight dress. The model, 29, rocked a clingy olive green frock, beige high heels, and a satin bomber jacket during an appearance at SiriusXM studios in New York. Scroll down for video Gorgeous in green! Ashley Graham stepped out once again in New York on Wednesday in an outfit that was a total dead-ringer for an ensemble the reality star previously wore That looks familiar! Ashley's dress was practically straight out of Kim's closet (Kim pictured L in 2016) Hair pulled back into a high ponytail, Ashley's hair style even resembled Kim's trademark slicked back hair style. The model radiated with a pink swipe of blush, lip gloss, and smoky eye shadow. She accessorized the look with a large pair of hoop earrings. Ashley has been heavily promoting her memoir, A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty and Power Really Look Like, so it's no wonder she's been dressed to grab attention. The mane attraction: Hair pulled back into a high ponytail, Ashley's hair style even resembled Kim's trademark slicked back hair style All ears! Graham listened intently to the conversation through her large headphones Striking: The model radiated with a pink swipe of blush, lip gloss, and smoky eye shadow Opening up! The star made an appearance on Sway In The Morning And on Tuesday, she had heads turning four times as she rocked a number of Kim inspired looks. The model rocked a body hugging midi dress as well as corset belt and satin duster coat throughout the day - staple pieces in Kim's closet. The Vogue cover model was seen in the beige outfit earlier in the day, before changing into another another Kim inspired look. Twice as nice! The model rocked a second black dress and chic olive green coat Let's talk: Graham spoke with Hoda Kotb on the show Leading Ladies Kimmy style: Graham wore a cream duster coat with a matching fitted dress on Tuesday in NYC, similar to Kim Kardashian's ensemble in July 2015 while pregnant with son Saint Lovely look: Ashley sure made her khaki dress work hard on Tuesday The Vogue cover model was seen in the beige outfit earlier in the day, before changing into another another Kim inspired look. Ashley swapped out the shades of cream look for a khaki silk dress with a black corset belt. Her third look was a black turtleneck dress and corset, which highlighted Ashley's derriere. And her last outfit change, Ashley wore a sheer turtleneck dress with a cleavage revealing bodysuit beneath. Focused: Kim rocked an olive dress as well while pregnant in June 2015 Looking good: Ashley finished off her day with a fitted black turtleneck dress, much like Kim's look from September 2014 Like Mrs. West: And her last outfit change, Ashley wore a sheer turtleneck dress with a cleavage revealing bodysuit beneath' Ashley on Tuesday and Kim, pictured in April 2015 During her second pregnancy with Saint, Kim lived in fitted neutral dresses with long silky coats. The mother of two has been often times sporting tight numbers with the floor-length cover up. Ashley kicked off her Tuesday in an almost identical cream coat - complete with no buttons and a silky texture. The runway star added a tight cream dress that showed off her small waistline akin to the one Kim wore on her outing. Ashley added calf-length cream boots with pointy toes; Kim often wears the same shoes from husband Kanye West's Yeezy line. She can't cover up! Graham pulled at her coat as she entered ABC Studios earlier in the day Neutral dress and duster coat combo: Graham may have been inspired by Kim Kardashian; the reality star pictured April 2016 on the left and 2014 on the right The second look could barely contain the supermodel's curves; she was seen exiting the ABC studios in New York City in the look after filming the daytime chat show The View. Graham's silky dress hugged her hips and dipped a bit in front, offering a hint of her cleavage. A black wide corset-style belt showed off her slender waistline. And black strappy shoes with a chunky heel matched nicely. The photogenic beauty also wore large hoop earrings. A 10! Graham's silky dress hugged her hips and dipped a bit in front, offering a hint of her cleavage Kimmy attire: Ashley's third ensemble was an ankle length black turtleneck dress with a corset belt and simple heels Ashley's third ensemble was an ankle length black turtleneck dress with a corset belt and simple heels. The author completed her chic ensemble with hoop earrings and a high ponytail. Kim has rocked skintight midi frocks for years; the star sported a shorter version in September 2014 while attending Kanye's concert in Australia. Showing off her small waist! Kim often adds a corset belt or top to her outfit to show off her hourglass figure What a bombshell: She wore a black bodysuit with a sheer turtleneck dress on top Graham's last look of the day was another Kardashian inspired look; she wore a black bodysuit with a sheer turtleneck dress on top. Kim has been a fan of both the sheer turtleneck and the low-cut bodysuit for several seasons; the E! star has worn it to a variety of events and outings. She wore a Givenchy ensemble - a one piece with sheer elements - to the fashion house's 2014 runway show in Paris; Kim rocked the edgy pairing in London as recent as summer 2016. Sizzling! Ashley looked sensational in her clingy black body-con which flashed her low-cut bodysuit underneath Shes a household name on British shores, but Katie Price and her notorious glamour modelling alter-ego were lost on perplexed American holidaymakers during her recent trip to Miami. The Loose Women panellist, 38, yelled Google Me! to bemused party-goers during a late night out at Score Nightclub in the Floridian coastal city, according to The Sun. The woman was causing a scene as she walked through the door when she first arrived, one reveller told the publication. Scroll down for video Katie who? Shes a household name on British shores, but Katie Price and her notorious glamour modelling alter-ego were lost on perplexed American holidaymakers during her recent trip to Miami No one had a clue who she was so she kept shouting "Google me". She was asking the door people and anyone interested enough to look over. She kept asking people what they thought of her body and telling them she looked good for a mum of five kids. Katie, whose raunchy modelling persona Jordan turned her into a star, enjoyed a wild time in Florida without husband Kieran Hayler, a former male stripper, and her children. Good times: Katie, whose raunchy modelling persona Jordan turned her into a star, enjoyed a wild time in Florida without husband Kieran Hayler, a former male stripper, and her children Footage has since emerged of the brunette appearing to kiss and canoodle a fellow club-goer in the city last Friday during a night out with her make-up artist, Gary Cockerill. The mother-of-five appeared worse for wear while chatting to her new companion, seemingly struggling to stay upright at the bar. A witness told Sun Online: 'Katie seemed wasted. She was there with friends, but at one point she was slumped over the bar. Close: Footage has since emerged of the brunette appearing to kiss and canoodle a fellow club-goer in the city last Friday during a night out with her make-up artist, Gary Cockerill 'She was visibly very woozy but seemed to perk up a bit when she got chatting to this guy. 'They were very touchy feely, and at one point he leant up behind her and put his arms around her waist. It wasn't the behaviour of a married woman.' In December the mother-of-five appeared on Loose Women and vowed to go sober for a year after she was caught on video ranting and flashing her breasts at a company's Christmas party she had been hired to appear at. Opening up, she said: 'Its taken me 38 years to do this Ive never done dry January and Im not going to drink for the whole year. 'When Im pregnant I can do it, its just one year out of my life,' she said, adding: 'When I drink Im a nightmare!' She's a staunch advocate of body confidence and recently scolded herself for judging Kim Kardashian's unairbrushed bum pictures. And Ashley James looked absolutely sensational as she arrived at the official launch of the new 'Share a Coke' event in London on Wednesday. The 30-year-old former Made In Chelsea star looked super trendy as she flaunted her lean legs in a bronze metallic skirt and logo-clad hoodie. Scroll down for video Fashionista: Ashley James, 30, flaunted her lean legs in a bronze metallic skirt as she arrived at the official launch of the new 'Share a Coke' event in London on Wednesday The London native was hard to miss in the trendy black hoodie, which boasted flared sleeves and was neatly tucked into her thigh-skimming skirt. The clingy skirt fell at a saucy level, allowing Ashley to show off her long legs in all their glory in a pair of open toe strappy black heels. The star's blonde locks were tied into a super tight topknot - putting prominence on her striking features which boasted smokey eyes and a nude glossy pout. Trendy: The London native was hard to miss in the trendy black hoodie, which boasted flared sleeves and was neatly tucked into her thigh-skimming skirt Pins on parade: The clingy skirt fell at a saucy level, allowing Ashley to show off her long legs in all their glory in a pair of open toe strappy black heels Stunner: The star's blonde locks were tied into a super tight topknot - putting prominence on her striking features which boasted smokey eyes and a nude glossy pout Ashley oozed body confidence despite giving herself a scolding over her immediate reaction to the now-famous unairbrushed Kim Kardashian bikini photos which were taken during her recent trip to Mexico. Posting a lengthy caption with a sexy shot of her in a revealing red swimming costume, Ashley admitted: 'To be honest, when I first saw the photos I thought two things. Firstly, I loved seeing cellulite because I thought it was great that she could of edited images and she didn't.' 'Secondly, my immediate subconscious reaction was to be judgemental of her body, and I had to stop myself because I realise - why do we do this or care about how another woman's body looks?' Pals: Meanwhile, Ashley was joined by her friend Charlotte De Carle, who also looked trendy in funky dungarees Ashley's post then became philosophical in nature, and she proffered some advice for her fans that she follows herself. 'Does judging Kim Kardashian make me feel better about myself? I think judgement is natural, but I always to train myself not to think it and I never say it out loud to others.' Ashley is herself a victim of body shaming, claiming last week that a taxi driver 'slut-shamed' her for wearing a plunging black crop top. Shocking pink! Ella Eyre rocked a pretty velvet dress and a silver choker, adding a casual touch in platform trainers Standing out: Adding a splash of colour she wore a multi-coloured anorak over the ensemble Penning another commentary on an Instagram post about the incident, she revealed that she 'broke down in tears' and 'was made to feel like a cheap whore'. Meanwhile, Ashley was joined by her pal Charlotte De Carle, who also looked trendy in funky dungarees. Other attendees at the drinks event included Daisy Lowe, who made a sartorial statement in a pair of high-waisted leopard print trousers. Biker chic: Ollie Proudlock teamed black skinny jeans with a leather jacket and a bright red shirt Edgy: Jamie Lisa opted for ripped black skinny jeans and a cropped Tommy Hilfiger top while radio presenter Nick Grimshaw chose jeans and a blazer Leggy: Lucy Watson showed off her bronzed pins in a baby blue suede jacket and thigh-skimming skirt The model flashed her abs as she teamed the bottoms with a cropped jumper. A bold red lip, gold chain and pair of strappy black heels completed her hard to miss look for the night. The Saturdays' Mollie King was also present and looked sensational in a lilac printed vest top, which was neatly tucked into a pair of high-waisted seventies inspired trousers. She wants to get spotted: Other attendees at the drinks event included Daisy Lowe, who made a sartorial statement in a pair of high-waisted leopard print trousers Enviable frame: The model flashed her abs as she teamed the bottoms with a cropped jumper Fashionable: A bold red lip, gold chain and pair of strappy black heels completed her hard to miss look for the night Loving the night: The Saturdays' Mollie King was also present and looked sensational in a lilac heart printed vest top Style queen: The quirky top was neatly tucked into a pair of high-waisted seventies inspired trousers He recently returned from a 10-week stint in rehab in Thailand, showing off an impressive weight loss. And James Argent, also known as Arg, has now reportedly turned to god. The TOWIE star, 29, is said to be hoping regular church trips will keep him on the right path. Scroll down for video Finding faith: James Argent, also known as Arg, has now reportedly turned to god after his staggering weight loss at a Thai rehab A source told The Sun Online: 'Arg has been working hard on himself and is determined to stay well. 'He's always been a spiritual person but he found faith while he was away. It's something he wanted to continue when he came back to the UK and now he's attending church regularly. 'It shocked some of his mates because they had no idea he was into that but if it works for him then everyone is going to support him.' The Only Way Is God: The TOWIE star, 29, is said to be hoping regular church trips will keep him on the right path After returning from Thailand recently, Arg looked slimmer than ever as he posted a snap with his old friend Joey Essex - causing a flurry of comments from fans who were staggered by his impressive weight loss. The reality star sported a Nike T-shirt, which hung off his noticeably slender frame. Fans were quick to praise Arg's amazing results. Nick_baker1986 commented: 'f***ing hell you look like you've been through a bread slicer your so thin. Well done mate' (sic). He's come so far: Arg has struggled with his weight in the past, but he's looking healthier and happier than ever before Louisegodwin86 wrote: 'You look so much younger and healthier amazing keep it up' (sic) Angelaswatson wrote: 'Look at you now you are half the size you were... you should be proud of yourself arg!' Arg has received many congratulatory statuses from his friends, who have welcomed him home with open arms. He quipped that he did not know 'what he had done to deserve a kiss' from inked hunk Pete, 28, also spent time catching up with Jon Clark and Tommy Mallet on Saturday. Arg took to social media to thank his pals for all the support as he touched down in Essex, sporting a slimmer, healthier look after spending the time abroad getting professional help with his fluctuating weight and wild lifestyle. Looking good: Arg has won praise from fans congratulating him on his impressive weight loss The reality star posted snap of himself looking coiffed and tanned and grinning from ear to ear while Megan McKenna's ex Pete Wicks puckered up. The inked hunk, who was dressed down in a denim jacket and T-shirt, looked genuinely thrilled to have his buddy home. Wearing his hair loose and out of its man bun, 'The Pirate' Pete planted a kiss on his friend's cheek. Arg captioned the shot with a jokey line, writing: 'A @towie bump in at its best haha... Great to see The Pirate himself @p_wicks01 What did I do to deserve a kiss!? Lol #essex' BFFs: Arg captioned a photo with Jon with the grateful comment: '@jbclark_ got me out of bed when I was fast asleep last night but as if I'd turn down a good goss & catch up lol!' It is not the first time the star's long-term friends have welcomed him home. This is Arg's second stint in rehab; he checked into the Priory in early 2015 after testing positive for cocaine and being suspended from TOWIE. He allegedly fell off the wagon last year, resulting in his relationship with long-term love Lydia Bright coming to an end. Home safe and sound: The future looked bright for Arg as he spent time catching up with Jon Clark and took flattering selfies with Tommy Mallet But everything looked bright as Arg spent time catching up with Jon Clark and took flattering selfies with Tommy Mallet. Arg captioned a photo with Jon with the grateful comment: '@jbclark_ got me out of bed when I was fast asleep last night but as if I'd turn down a good goss & catch up lol! Overwhelmed at how many Visitors/Calls/messages I've had as well as love & support from you guys! #meanseverything #thankyou' He then added: 'FRIENDS REUNITED!!! So nice to catch up with #manlike @tommy_mallet God damn I've missed him! X' Fit and healthy: A recuperative ten week stay in Thailand has clearly had the desired effect on James 'Arg' Argent, whose slimmer physique has already won an enthusiastic response from fans Then and now: Argent's fluctuating weight was well in evidence during a trip to Spain in 2014 (L), but he looked comparatively slimmer while visiting a Thai water park in April (R) And the reality star's slimmer physique has already won an enthusiastic response from his legions of fans. For although Arg did not go all out on the health kick - the star shared photos of himself sampling local delicacies during his time in Thailand - he is sporting a notably more svelte figure. In fact, the reality king shared so many selfies - several topless or with skin-tight shirts - that his co-stars jokingly poked fun at his camera-toting ways. One such shot, in which his soaked T-shirt clings to his body following a jungle hike undertaken in sweltering conditions, perfectly illustrates his healthy new lifestyle. 'My favourite excursion so far. I went on a jungle trek, climbing up & down waterfalls! A day I will never forget' he raved in an accompanying caption. A video pays testament to Argent's outdoor endeavours, with the reality star filmed while clambering up a waterfall. Step by step: The TV personality has also shared images of himself clambering up a waterfall in his quest to get fitter and stronger In another the affable star looks even slimmer as he lets his hair down at a local waterpark, writing: 'I don't quite know the though process behind this pic but I'm clearly enjoying myself lol!' Elsewhere he looks tanned and trim as he took a break during a visit to mountainous Thai city Chiang Mai. Reflecting on his quest to shape up, a seemingly philosophical Argent captioned the snap: 'It's easy to get carried away with Goals, Achievements and dreams I know I'm gonna kill it but I have to take each day as it comes!' She's a mother of five kids, ages 15 to 27. And on Wednesday, Nicole Murphy stepped out in a skintight dress for the Mother's Day Luncheon, held by the Associates for Breast and Prostate Cancer Studies. The 49-year-old model flashed her cleavage in the curve hugging dress while arriving to the event at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Scroll down for video Red hot! On Wednesday, Nicole Murphy stepped out in a skintight dress for the Mother's Day Luncheon, held by the Associates for Breast and Prostate Cancer Studies in Beverly Hills The fitness enthusiast, who was married to Eddie Murphy from 1993 until 2006, paired the knee-grazing number with layers of jewelry and mesh black Christian Louboutin heels. Also joining at the event was Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star Lisa Rinna. The mother of two, 53, looked chic in her pink dress, complete with a thin white belt and strappy heels. Lisa highlighted her fit form in the body hugging look, adding smokey eye makeup and pink lipstick. What a look! The 49-year-old model flashed her cleavage and derriere in the curve hugging dress while arriving to the event at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills Lovely in pink: Also joining at the event was Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star Lisa Rinna Sharon Stone cut an elegant figure for the luncheon, opting for loose white trousers and a navy blazer. The 59-year-old mother of three added a colorful silk scarf, a red handbag and glasses to finish off her daytime look. The movie star sported short blonde locks with a deep part and red lipstick on her full pout. Beaming: Sharon Stone cut an elegant figure for the luncheon, opting for loose white trousers and a navy blazer She's got style: The 59-year-old mother of three added a colorful silk scarf, a red handbag and glasses to finish off her daytime look The event was organized by the Associates for Breast and Prostate Cancer Studies, which has raised $15 million for research since 1990. Upon arrival, Nicole took to Instagram to share a clip of herself as she walked inside; she told her followers about the charitable cause. She even shared a snap of herself posing with fellow attendee, hairstylist Chaz Dean. Good looking lady: Upon arrival, Nicole took to Instagram to share a clip of herself as she walked inside; she told her followers about the charitable cause She was at the centre of drama throughout season one of The Real Housewives of Sydney. But during the reunion show, Lisa Oldfield, 41, claims she took the high road while also admitting she once faked a dramatic fight with one particular co-star. Speaking to OK! magazine this week, the outspoken reality star revealed that the reunion show was filmed over 19 hours which left everyone feeling drained and 'hangry.' Reunion show secrets: Lisa Oldfield revealed this week that the reunion show was filmed over 19 hours, which left everyone feeling drained and 'hangry' 'We filmed for almost 19 hours and we were all hangry,' she said. 'I'd gotten to the stage where you can't reason with idiots or argue with morons so I just let all the other Housewives vent.' Last week viewers watched Lisa's co-star Matty Samaei storm out during the finale after the pair clashed and Lisa admitted that some of their feud was staged for the show. Candid: 'I'd gotten to the stage where you can't reason with idiots or argue with morons so I just let all the other Housewives vent,' she said Fake feud? Last week viewers watched Lisa's co-star Matty Samaei (pictured) storm out during the finale after the pair clashed and Lisa admitted that some of their feud was staged for the show 'We'd planned it! Matty said to me in the car beforehand, 'can I get in a fight with you for drama?' I was like 'sure,'' she said 'That was the only time we manufactured something, though.' The revelation comes after The Daily Telegraph claimed co-star Athena Levendi, 40, had to be physically restrained after threatening to 'f**king smash' her rival Victoria Rees, 53, during an off camera incident. 'Athena just really wound herself up': Levendi physically restrained during Real Housewives Of Sydney reunion after threatening to 'f**king smash' Victoria Rees in off camera incident Athena had to be held back by one of the show's producers as she tried to physically attack Victoria. The spat began after Victoria had told Athena that she had behaved like an 'a**hole' during the series. The Greek-raised artist fired back at Victoria: 'You better wash your f**king mouth out. Ill f**king smash you.' Didn't hold back: The spat began after Victoria had told Athena that she had behaved like an 'a**hole' during the series Last minute move: The near physical altercation occurred after filming on the emotional reunion had wrapped for the day and the cast were preparing to leave The near physical altercation occurred after filming on the emotional reunion had wrapped for the day and the cast were preparing to leave. Real Housewives Of Sydney executive producer Kylie Washington said Athena's sparring was unlike anything she had seen during her time on the franchise in Melbourne and Auckland. 'Athena just really wound herself up ...[and] you need to break them apart and just go, "okay, enough now",' she said. Might not return? Meanwhile Krissy Marsh told News Corp Australia she was 'unsure' as to whether she will return to the franchise for a second reason Meanwhile, Krissy Marsh told News Corp Australia she was 'unsure' as to whether she will return to the franchise for a second reason. Athena was equally undecided and said she would have to think about things on a higher level before going back on television. 'Id have to go into a very deep meditation, go into another dimension and hopefully meet my guides and ask them,' she explained. The Real Housewives of Sydney Reunion Special will air on Sunday, May 14, at 8.30pm 'Id have to go into a very deep meditation': Athena said she would have to think about things on a higher level before going back on television Jakarta's Christian governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (C), popularly known as Ahok, was jailed for two years on May 9 after being found guilty of committing blasphemy, capping a saga seen as a test of religious tolerance in the Muslim-majority nation Jakarta's Christian governor, who was jailed for blasphemy Tuesday, won much praise for his efforts to clean up the traffic-choked megacity but his popularity could not save him from Islamic hardliners angered by his comments about the Koran. With his outspoken, combative style and can-do attitude, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama cut an unusual figure among the political elite in Muslim-majority Indonesia, where politicians typically take a more gentle, persuasive approach. But the tall, bespectacled politician, who was the city's first non-Muslim governor for half a century and first ever ethnic Chinese leader, quickly overcame any doubts about his leadership as he took concrete steps to improve the city of 10 million. The 50-year-old -- known by his nickname Ahok -- regularly railed against corruption in one of the world's most graft-ridden countries and led sting operations to catch lazy bureaucrats, drawing praise from a public weary of the city's inefficiences. The former deputy governor inherited the top job in 2014 after his predecessor Joko Widodo won the presidency. On Purnama's watch, roads were repaired, pavements improved, more parks started appearing in the city and its notoriously filthy rivers were cleaned up. Some of his policies -- particularly a drive to evict poor, riverside communities -- caused anger, but many Jakartans said their lives had changed for the better since he took power. Until the blasphemy controversy, he was favourite to win last month's gubernatorial election in Jakarta. - 'Fearless leader' - Aleksius Jemadu, a political expert at Pelita Harapan University near Jakarta, praised Purnama for his "courageous attitude". "Ahok is a rare figure, he's fearless. He appeared when the Indonesian people were thirsting for an honest leader," he told AFP. But it was never going to be easy for someone from a religious and ethnic minority to hang on to such a powerful position, particularly when he was not elected to it in the first place. His aggressive, outspoken style, an advantage when taking on bungling officials, turned out to be a double-edged sword that contributed to his downfall. In September last year, in a speech to a group of fisherman during early campaigning for the elections, he accused his opponents of using a Koranic verse to trick them into voting against him. The comments were filmed and went viral online -- providing ammunition for fringe hardline groups who had long railed against a non-Muslim leader ruling the capital and his political opponents who were keen to oust him from the job and embarrass his ally Widodo. Despite his apologies and insistence that he only intended to attack his rivals, not the Koran itself, hundreds of thousands of conservative Muslims took to the streets of Jakarta in mass rallies last year, organised by hardliners and encouraged by his rivals. Under intense public pressure, authorities put him on trial for blasphemy and his popularity slumped. He lost last month's election to a Muslim challenger and Tuesday was jailed for two years for blasphemy, a shock decision after prosecutors recommended only probation. Purnama was born into a well-off family on Belitung island in western Indonesia, and studied geology at university in Jakarta, before returning to his village and going into business. His father urged him to use his talents to help those less fortunate than himself, and he entered local politics in 2004. He was elected to the national parliament in 2009, where he met Widodo. President of Tunisia's electoral body, Chafik Sarsar, holds a press conference on April 3, 2017, in Tunis Tunisia's election chief Chafik Sarsar resigned Tuesday for being unable to work "independently and impartially" just months before the country is due to hold its first post-revolution municipal elections. "According to the oath we took" in which "we committed to work towards free and transparent elections and to carry out our duty independently and impartially... we have decided to resign," Sarsar said, announcing he, his deputy and another member of the electoral commission were quitting. "We were compelled to resign" over disagreements on "the founding values and principles of democracy", he said at a news conference. Sarsar did not elaborate and AFP was unable to reach him afterwards. Sarsar's deputy Mourad Ben Mouelli and another member of the electoral body, Lamia Zargouni, also resigned. Zargouni told AFP said there had been "great clashes within" the commission. A commission employee, who asked to remain anonymous and had attended a meeting with Sarsar after the news conference, told AFP the outgoing electoral chief had said he refused to "witness fraud". Sarsar and the commission were praised for their organisation of legislative and presidential elections in 2014, following the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He had in recent months been pushing hard for the holding of long-awaited municipal polls, which after a series delays were finally set for December 17. "Whatever the reason for this resignation, it's serious and will have considerable repercussions," said political analyst Selim Kharrat. The commission "showed it was capable of successfully overseeing an electoral process in an emerging democracy. It's also one of the rare independent institutional bodies in the new Tunisia," he said. Tunisia, which set off the Arab Spring uprisings with its overthrow of Ben Ali, has been hailed for a relatively smooth democratic transition since the revolution. You are here: Home Some 5,594 companies, or 66.2 percent of those examined, violated environmental standards during the latest round of air pollution inspections, China's environmental authority announced Tuesday. The findings came after a month of inspections across 28 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and other nearby areas, which resulted in the discovery of problems including excessive emissions and insufficient pollution control equipment. Inspectors reported the issues to the local authorities for further investigation, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said in a statement. As of May 2, local authorities had shut down 131 companies and halted production at another 213 due to failure to meet environment protection standards. Chinese enterprises were fined around 264 million yuan ($38 million) for violating standards in the first quarter of this year, the MEP said last month. The ministry issued punishments in nearly 5,000 cases related to violations of environmental protection regulations and laws in Q1, up around 200 percent year on year. In 224 cases, companies had to pay between 10,000 and 100,000 yuan per day after failing to rectify violations within the time frame set by the MEP. US President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the COP 21 United Nations conference on climate change in 2015 The United States and China have to lead the way in the fight against climate change, former US president Barack Obama said Tuesday. Speaking as the future of the landmark Paris climate accord hangs in the balance, he acknowledged differences with his successor Donald Trump but said the private sector also had a role to play. "It's important that big countries that are big emitters like the US and China... lead the way," he told a conference in the Italian city of Milan, saying developing countries were watching them. "The current administration has differences with my administration in terms of environmental policy," he said, referring to Trump. "The good news is the private sector has already made a determination that the future is clean energy. Those things are locked in now, into the energy sector." "Because of the debates taking place in the current administration the steps may be taken more slowly than they would have been done, but I'm confident," he added. While campaigning last year, Trump called climate change a hoax perpetrated by China, and promised to cancel the deal if he won the presidency. Now, after months of uncertainty, he appears to be edging toward a decision on whether to honour the landmark 2015 agreement to limit global warming. A key White House meeting scheduled for Tuesday to discuss whether the United States will honour the Paris accord was postponed, with no new date set. In West Virginia workers are hoping President Donald Trump can deliver on promises to bring back mining jobs When Donald Trump promised hopeful voters in Charleston, West Virginia to bring back mining jobs to the heart of American coal country, out-of-work miner Craig Branham was all ears. Three months into Trump's presidency, Branham has been rehired, as have many of his friends in Mingo County on the border with Kentucky -- as previously-idled mines reopen or working ones expand operations. Things are looking up, and Branham believes his change of fortune is down to the Republican leader, who won a resounding 68 percent of the vote in West Virginia, once a reliably Democratic state. "So far Trump is keeping his promises. I mean we see a whole lot happening, just because he is in office," he said. "And we think we have a little bit of hope." Trump had blamed the decline in coal jobs on Obama-era environmental rules, and one of his first acts as president was to reverse clean water and air rules coal companies complained about. The uptick in mining jobs began before the Republican took office: about 700 were added in the final three months of 2016, and the small increase appears to have continued into early this year. But can coal really hope for a lasting revival in West Virginia? Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, is upbeat. Coal production, employment in West Virginia He says regulatory "overreach" by the previous administration "paralyzed the coal industry," but that since the start of the year "the attitude has been very, very positive." Economists are not so optimistic: many say the gains are illusory -- and warn against equating a small, short-term improvement with a genuine resurgence. "The chances of it coming back are slim to none," summed up Ted Boettner, head of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. "I think people were very hopeful that President Trump would be able to do that. They might have rose-colored lenses. We just go by the numbers." - Unique challenges - Despite Trump's promises, mining employment in West Virginia has been shrinking for decades: it topped out at 125,000 in 1948 and is down to less than 13,000. West Virginia's coal production last year was the lowest since the late 1800s. The mountainous state just west of the nation's capital, with a population of just under two million, has unique characteristics that made it more vulnerable to downturns than other coal mining states. Perhaps most important is that it has little economic diversity to cushion it from changes in the once-dominant industry. It is one of the only US states where the population is falling, as those who are able, especially the highly educated, leave in search of opportunity elsewhere. The labor force has shrunk from 820,000 at the start of 2009 to just over 780,000 at the start of this year. Despite President Donald Trump's promises, mining jobs in West Virginia have been shrinking for decades: from 125,000 in 1948 to less than 13,000 now With few other businesses hiring, health care is now the state's biggest industry, with about five times as many workers as coal. - 'Costing more and more' - For Elias Johnson of the Energy Information Administration's coal and uranium analysis team, West Virginia's biggest challenge stems from "the economics of mining production." Mining has been going on for well over 100 years, "so all of the coal that's cheap or easy to get to has been mined and it's costing more and more" to pull out what's left, Johnson told AFP. Most mines in West Virginia are underground -- as opposed to the far cheaper surface mining practiced in western states like Wyoming. That type of mining, including mountain-top removal -- which faces stiff opposition from communities in West Virginia -- is highly mechanized and requires far fewer workers. "In Wyoming, once you've exposed the seam of coal, it's basically bulldozer and dump truck," Johnson said. But for West Virginia, "the greatest single factor, has been competition with natural gas." The fracking boom has drastically lowered prices, leading natural gas to overtake thermal coal in US electricity generation, shrinking the share of coal to 30 percent. - 'It's a curse' - Industry officials say even Trump's lifeline to coal-fired power plants, with the suspension of clean air rules, will not alter the move towards using the cleaner fuel in new plants. And with an huge oversupply of steel in the world market, even demand for higher-price metallurgical coal is not expected to pick up -- unless domestic demand for steel jumps dramatically, for example if Trump follows through on promises of a massive infrastructure project. Chuck Nelson is a fourth-generation miner -- now retired -- whose whole life was intertwined with the West Virginian coal industry. He watched as a major coal company built a cleaning plant 200 feet from the house he was born in. And he eventually had to sell his house to the company due to failing health. Nelson has sympathy for miners hoping to get rehired at newly activated sites. "This is the only life they've known," he said, while acknowledging that for younger men being hired by the mines, any job is better than none at all. Yet Nelson, like many retired miners, believes the time has come for West Virginia to look beyond coal. "I don't wish for coal to come back," he said. "It's a curse." Basuki Tjahaja Purnama was jailed Tuesday for two years after being found guilty of blasphemy against Islam, a shock decision after prosecutors recommended only probation Supporters of Jakarta's Christian governor staged a colourful rally outside city hall Wednesday a day after he was jailed for blasphemy, in a case that has damaged Indonesia's image as a bastion of tolerant Islam. A crowd wearing red and white -- the colours of the Indonesian flag -- gathered outside the colonial-era building calling for Basuki Tjahaja Purnama's release, and singing the country's national anthem. "Let's fight for justice," said acting governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat, who was Purnama's deputy and has taken over his powers, to cheers from the crowd. Purnama was jailed Tuesday for two years after being found guilty of blasphemy against Islam, a shock decision after prosecutors recommended only probation. The jail sentence and his loss in last month's Jakarta's election to a Muslim rival amid the blasphemy controversy have stoked concerns that a much-vaunted brand of tolerant Islam in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country is under threat. The United Nations and European Union have expressed concerns over the verdict while Amnesty International said it "will tarnish Indonesias reputation for tolerance". Despite the claims he insulted Islam, Purnama, 50, retained a loyal following due to his determined efforts to clean up the chaotic Indonesian capital. Over 1,000 supporters packed out the courtyard of city hall at the rally, chanting "Free Ahok". "I admire Ahok, the way he leads, regardless of his religion," said Diana Sari, 49, adding she was a Muslim. Acting governor Hidayat added: "Last night I met with Ahok and he wants me to convey this message: 'We have to respect whatever the judges have decided, but the fight is not over yet'." Purnama, Jakarta's first Christian governor for half a century and its first ethnic Chinese leader, was transferred early Wednesday to a high-security detention facility outside the capital after hundreds of supporters descended on the jail where he was initially sent. Islamic hardliners -- who led a series of mass protests last year against Purnama -- celebrated after the verdict was handed down, although some were angry the governor did not receive the maximum jail term of five years. The blasphemy allegations stemmed from comments that Purnama made in September in a pre-election speech, in which he accused his rivals of using a Koranic verse to trick people into voting against him. Moon Jae-In of the centre-left Democratic party won Tuesday's presidential election in a landslide, taking 41.1 percent of the vote, far ahead of his nearest rival South Korea's new president is a former pro-democracy activist and special forces soldier whose electoral victory caps a turbulent political career -- he was jailed by his predecessor's father. Moon Jae-In of the centre-left Democratic party won Tuesday's presidential election in a landslide, taking 41.1 percent of the vote, far ahead of his nearest rival. The vote followed the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye, who was sacked in March after a sprawling corruption scandal prompted millions to take to the street for months to call for her resignation. The irony is that Moon was once chief of staff to president Roh Moo-Hyun, who committed suicide in 2009 after himself being questioned over allegations of graft. Moon was born on the southern island of Geoje in 1953 during the Korean War after US forces evacuated his parents -- and 100,000 other refugees -- from the Northern port of Hungnam. His father was a menial worker at a prisoner-of-war camp while his mother peddled eggs in the nearby port city of Busan, with the baby Moon strapped to her back, the politician wrote in his autobiography. He was awakened to social issues at an early age, he wrote in another book published this year. "As the oldest son on whom my family was pinning their hopes, I was supposed to study hard, but school lessons focused on college entrance exams appeared meaningless to me," he wrote. "I was always in a dilemma." No caption He entered law school in Seoul in 1972 but was arrested and expelled for leading a student protest against the authoritarian rule of dictator Park Chung-Hee -- the ousted president's father. In 1975 he was detained for months and convicted of taking part in illegal protests. Once released, he became a special forces soldier during his compulsory military service. His unit took part in Operation Paul Bunyan, when the US and South mounted a vast show of force, including the deployment of B52 bombers, to cut down a tree in the Demilitarized Zone where two American soldiers trying to trim its branches had been axed to death by North Korean troops. Moon returned to school in 1980 only to be arrested again. Kim Jung-sook, the college classmate who took care of him after he was injured by a tear gas canister shot by police, later became his wife. - Heal the wounds - He and his liberal mentor Roh opened a law firm in Busan in 1982 focusing on human and civil rights issues. Both became leading figures in the pro-democracy protests that swept the country five years later and led to South Korea's first direct presidential elections. South Korea When Roh entered politics, Moon -- whose criminal conviction meant he could not become a judge -- continued in legal practice, defending students and workers arrested for leading protests and labour strikes. But a year after Roh's unexpected election victory in 2002, Moon joined the administration as a presidential aide, tasked with weeding out official corruption and screening candidates for top government posts. Later he defeated an attempt to impeach Roh, before rising to become his chief of staff -- a job so stressful that he had to have 10 teeth replaced. He spearheaded preparations for the second inter-Korea summit between Roh and then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in 2007, part of the "Sunshine policy" of engagement with Pyongyang begun by Roh's predecessor Kim Dae-Jung. Two years later Roh was dead, throwing himself from a cliff after he was questioned over corruption allegations following the end of his term. It fell to Moon to arrange his high-profile funeral, when millions turned up in central Seoul to bid him a tearful farewell to Roh. Kim Dae-Jung, seen weeping uncontrollably in a wheelchair during the event, died three months later. "I became desperate, and decided to become stronger to heal the wounds of people," Moon said. - Blue House - Reserved, earnest and mild-mannered, 64-year-old Moon is often said to be bland and lacking the charisma of the two ex-leaders whose signature oratorical skills and firebrand style captivated many. Opponents say he is narrow-minded and surrounded by jealous loyalists, whose strong factionalism contributed to his party splitting while in opposition. Conservative critics accuse Moon of being too soft towards nuclear-armed North Korea, with which he advocates dialogue and reconciliation as a precursor to negotiations But supporters describe empathy and calm perseverance as key strengths. Conservative critics also accuse him of being too soft towards nuclear-armed North Korea, with which he advocates dialogue and reconciliation as a precursor to negotiations. He has insisted he was the best candidate to reform chaebols -- the powerful, family-run conglomerates that dominate Asia's fourth-largest economy -- saying he owes them "nothing", unlike other politicians brought down by corruption scandals. Moon himself has often described his personality as unfit for cutthroat politics, saying he preferred other civic duties as a lawyer and was "happy" to regain his "freedom" when Roh left the Blue House. Now he returns to office. A Greens senator has made Australian political history by becoming the first person to breastfeed a baby in the nation's parliament A breastfeeding senator has made Australian political history by becoming the first woman to nurse her newborn baby in the nation's parliament. Greens' senator Larissa Waters returned to the upper house Senate for the first time Tuesday since giving birth to her second child, and brought her in for a feed during a vote. "So proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal Parliament! We need more #women & parents in Parli," she wrote on Twitter. Being able to breastfeed in the chamber follows new rules introduced last year to create a more a "family friendly" parliament in the wake of what has been described as a "baby boom" among politicians. Under previous rules, children were technically banned. "In 2003 Kirstie Marshall, a Victorian MP, was ejected from state parliament for breastfeeding her 11-day old baby girl," Waters added. "Sometimes its difficult not to get disheartened by the sexism women still face in the workplace. But sometimes it pays to look back and see how far we have come." Breastfeeding in public has become a hot topic in many countries, and female lawmakers have been criticised for taking their babies to parliamentary sessions. Last year, a politician in Iceland spoke in parliament while breastfeeding her baby daughter, and infants are allowed in the European and Spanish parliaments. Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher said the moment deserved to be acknowledged. "Women have been doing it in parliaments around the world... It is great to see it is able to occur now in the Senate," she told Sky News. "Women are going to continue to have babies and if they want to do their job and be at work and look after their baby... the reality is we are going to have to accommodate that." Waters has changed her Facebook profile to an image of herself breastfeeding in parliament, attracting dozens of mostly positive comments. "Thank you for sharing this beautiful picture and helping to normalize breastfeeding in our society!" one user wrote. Another added: "yessss, you are such a legend. thanks for being such a strong, groundbreaking woman." It has been a turbulent first year in power for Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen as relations with Beijing have soured and her approval ratings have plummeted It has been a turbulent first year in power for Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen as relations with Beijing have soured and her approval ratings have plummeted. And in the face of an intransigent China and warming ties between Beijing and the United States -- Taiwan's most powerful ally -- observers say there is more trouble ahead. Tsai was inaugurated as the island's first female leader on May 20 last year, defeating the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) party by a landslide. Her victory spelled the end of eight years of cross-strait rapprochement as she refused to acknowledge the concept that Taiwan is part of "one China", unlike her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou. Beijing still sees self-ruled democratic Taiwan as a renegade province to be reunified, and is deeply suspicious of Tsai. Her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is traditionally pro-independence and there is little hope of finding middle ground. Tsai has said she feels Taipei has shown "good will" towards China and she has repeatedly urged Beijing to break with its "old thinking" on cross-strait dealings. But the message has fallen on deaf ears -- Beijing has cut off all official communication with Taipei and upped its military drills. Observers say China has yet to really flex its muscles and that could happen in the year ahead. The two sides are in a tense "holding pattern", says Jonathan Sullivan, director at the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute. Beijing is currently preoccupied with domestic issues ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this year, which could cement President Xi Jinping's grip on power for years to come. After that, the gloves may come off. "Given the consolidation of both Xi's position and the relationship that seems to be emerging with (US President Donald) Trump, I don't see that Beijing's own position is going to soften," Sullivan told AFP. Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University, agrees. Beijing "will be tempted to use all sorts of ways to increase its pressure on Taiwan -- economic, political, and military -- to force it to give in", he said. - Trump ties - Tsai was praised for putting Taipei back on Washington's agenda in December when then president-elect Trump took a protocol-busting congratulatory phone call from her. A direct conversation between the two leaders was unprecedented -- although it is Taiwan's main ally and biggest arms supplier, the US has had no official diplomatic relations with the island since switching recognition to Beijing in 1979. The call infuriated China, but ties between Trump and Xi have since improved as Washington courts Beijing's cooperation in handling North Korea and other issues. Trump last month rebuffed Tsai's suggestion that another call could take place, in what was widely seen as a slap in the face. Washington will be "more cautious" in the year ahead to avoid rocking the boat with Xi, predicts Tang Shao-cheng, a political analyst at National Chengchi University. "Tsai is in an awkward position as she doesn't have bargaining chips," he added. In winning the leadership, Tsai capitalised on a sense of indignation at what many saw as Taiwan kowtowing to China under Ma. Now some voters fear the repercussions of increasingly frosty ties. "I hope the government will soften its stance in order to resume communication with China," restaurateur Michael Liu told AFP. "Otherwise relations will continue to worsen and it's bad for Taiwan's economy." Economic woes were one of the main reasons Tsai was elected, as low salaries failed to compete with cost of living. But although GDP has rallied, up 2.88 percent in the last quarter of 2016, Tsai's initial 70 percent approval rating has sunk to below 30 percent in some polls. Residents say despite promised reforms and incentives, such as better social welfare and tax cuts, there has been little real improvement in day-to-day lives. "For young people, we need to make more money, we need pay rises. We need hope that we can live better lives," said Taipei salesman Yu Ya-han, 27. Last month there were violent protests against proposed public-sector pension cuts. Some analysts say Tsai must work harder to strike a chord with the public in her second year, with policies that have a more immediate impact. But her supporters in the DPP remain philosophical. "The Tsai government is cleaning up the house in the first year," said lawmaker Wang Ting-yu. "The direction is right and the things they are doing are not easy. It's inevitable that dust is flying." Frank Stewart McLean warned that former FBI director James Comey would leave New Zealand "in a wooden box", according to reports A New Zealand man has admitted making online death threats to former FBI director James Comey when he visited the South Pacific nation for an intelligence conference last month, reports said Wednesday. Frank Stewart McLean warned that Comey, who was dramatically sacked by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, would leave New Zealand "in a wooden box", Fairfax NZ reported. Citing court documents, it said McLean also threatened to bomb the US embassy in a post on the Wellington mission's Facebook page, forcing it to be evacuated. "The FBI director... will not leave this country alive," said one message. "This meeting has been infiltrated already, there is (sic) bombs placed around the meeting by someone." Comey was in New Zealand for a meeting of the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing network, comprising the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. NZME reported that McLean, 32, pleaded guilty in Rotorua District Court to making a false statement. He told the news organisation that he could be described as a "troll or keyboard warrior" and had been angered by coverage of Comey's visit. "The headlines just tipped me over the edge. I did say something stupid. It was just pure frustration and stupid," he said. The Justice Department said McLean would appear in court again on June 7, when he is expected to be sentenced. The maximum penalty is three months' jail or an NZ$2,000 ($1,380) fine. The wreck of the Sewol ferry arrives at a port in Mokpo on a semi-submersible ship in March Suspected human bones were recovered Wednesday from South Korea's sunken Sewol ferry, officials said -- after having to embarrassingly withdraw a similar assertion after the ship was salvaged in March. The 6,800-ton vessel sank off the country's southwestern coast three years ago, claiming more than 300 lives, mostly high school students on an excursion. One of the country's worst-ever maritime disasters, it dealt a crushing blow to now-ousted president Park Geun-Hye, and nine of the victims' bodies have yet to be recovered. Raising it in one piece was a key demand of their families, and workers have since been painstakingly sifting through the silt piled up inside the hull. Two bones were retrieved Wednesday from a passenger cabin on the fourth floor, the maritime ministry said. Citing forensic experts on the scene, it said they were apparently human and had been sent to the National Forensic Service for DNA tests. Last week, a diver combing the sea bed where the ferry had been lying found a bone fragment believed to be from a human shin. In March, soon after it was salvaged the ministry announced that human bone fragments had been found under the hull of the ship. But DNA tests confirmed they were from pigs, to the ministry's embarrassment. Wednesday's announcement was the first time suspected human bones had been found inside the wreck. Investigations concluded the disaster was the result of numerous human factors, including an illegal redesign, an overloaded cargo bay and inexperienced crew. Irish police had launched a probe into whether British actor and presenter Stephen Fry blasphemed in a 2015 television interview when he denounced God as "utterly evil, capricious and monstrous" New Zealand plans to scrap the crime of blasphemy after calls from across the political spectrum for reform in response to an Irish investigation into British comic Stephen Fry. David Seymour, leader of ACT, a minor opposition party, who has instigated the move, said lawmakers of all stripes wanted to end what they saw as an archaic curb on freedom of speech. "New Zealanders cherish the fact that we have strong separation between church and state," he told AFP on Wednesday. "So when people discovered that there was a law that meant you could spend a year in jail for offending someone of a religious persuasion there was widespread condemnation." Seymour will notify parliament on Thursday that he intends to include blasphemy on a list of laws that are scheduled to be scrapped. He added that the government had agreed to the move and the repeal should be complete by the end of the month. Seymour said the bid to repeal the law was prompted by an Irish police probe into whether Fry blasphemed in a 2015 television interview when he denounced God as "utterly evil, capricious and monstrous". While the investigation was reportedly dropped this week, it led to New Zealanders reviewing their laws and finding blasphemy was still on the statute books. The news came as a surprise to many, including conservative Prime Minister Bill English. "It's basically an accident of history... I can't imagine a use for it," English, a devout Catholic, told reporters this week. "I think laws that over-reach on addressing robust speech are not a good idea... frankly, I didn't think we had it, I thought it had gone." Lawmakers from the majority of political parties, including opposition Labour leader Andrew Little, all voiced support for repealing the law. Anglican Archbishop Philip Richardson also backed the move, telling Fairfax New Zealand: "My view is, God's bigger than needing to be defended by the Crimes Act." Blasphemy has been an offence since 1840, when New Zealand became a British colony, and was included in a revamp of the criminal code in 1961. But no one has ever been convicted of the crime. US President Donald Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and said, "We're going to stop the killing and the death (in Syria)" President Donald Trump brushed aside concerns over his wooing of Russia on Wednesday and laid on a White House welcome for Moscow's top diplomat to seek help to end the war in Syria. As Washington reeled at the dismissal of FBI chief James Comey, who had been probing Russia's alleged interference in the US election, a beaming Trump met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov's American counterpart Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has admitted that US-Russian relations are at their lowest ebb since the Cold War and that there is almost no trust left. Diplomats are working to thaw ties by resolving small issues, which officials told AFP includes day-to-day battles such as US complaints that its officials posted to Russia are subjected to low level covert harassment. But Trump remains hopeful that Putin can be convinced to help end the Syrian civil war by reining in Russia's ally President Bashar al-Assad and his other key foreign backer -- Iran. Trump "emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia," the White House said. Lavrov is the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Washington since Trump came to power in January, and earned a rare invitation to the Oval Office for a head-to-head. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are to discuss Ukraine and Syria This followed a similar visit last month by Tillerson to Moscow, where he was received at the Kremlin by Putin. Before visiting the White House, Lavrov and Tillerson huddled to discuss the crises in Syria and Ukraine -- talks qualified by the veteran Russian diplomat as "constructive." "We had a very, very good meeting" Trump said shortly after seeing Lavrov. "We're going to stop the killing and the death." Trump, the White House said, told Lavrov Moscow should "rein in the Assad regime, Iran and Iranian proxies." Lavrov said he had sought support for a plan to create safe zones in Syria. "As active players in the diplomatic process regarding Syria, we are going to pursue these contacts together and with other key countries, especially those in the region," Lavrov said. Lavrov, who last set foot in Washington in August 2013, dismissed all claims of election meddling as "fabrications" -- echoing Trump's claim that they amount to "fake news". "President Trump clearly confirmed his interest in building mutually beneficial, business-like pragmatic relations," he told journalists. - Tense ties - In Moscow, Putin met with his security council to discuss US-Russian relations in the context of Lavrov's meeting with Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. A protest demanding an independent investigation of the Trump administration's possible ties to Russia on May 10, 2017 Relations between the two former Cold War foes soured under former president Barack Obama over Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its unyielding support for Assad. Since March 2011, the Syrian conflict has caused more than 320,000 deaths and forced millions of refugees to flee. A car loaded with belongings of a displaced Syrian family drives past destroyed buildings in a rebel-held area of the southern city of Daraa Neither Washington, which backs the opposition, nor Moscow, a longtime ally of the Syrian regime, have managed to find a solution to the conflict. Since the end of Obama's presidency in January, the United States has gradually withdrawn from the diplomatic process, leaving Russia to take the lead. The US was not part of a deal by Damascus backers Russia and Iran, and rebel supporter Turkey, signed Thursday in the Kazakh capital Astana on establishing safe zones in Syria. - 'De-escalation zones' - The agreement calls for the creation of four "de-escalation zones" to shore up a ceasefire, ban flights and allow for humanitarian aid deliveries. Washington gave the deal a skeptical welcome, rejecting Tehran's proposed role as a guarantor even as it expressed hope the agreement could set the stage for a later settlement. "We will look at the proposal, see if it can work," Pentagon chief Jim Mattis said Monday. Several ceasefires have been agreed on since Syria's conflict broke out, but they have failed to stem the fighting. After the talks, Lavrov and Tillerson set off for Alaska and a meeting of the Arctic Council, a forum for cooperation on the environment, oil and mining, shipping, fisheries and tourism. Flash In their first telephone talk, President Xi Jinping and French president-elect Emmanuel Macron agreed on Tuesday to maintain contact and meet each other at an early date. The phone conversation, reaffirming a shared commitment to tackle a range of global issues, came a day after Xi sent a congratulatory message on Monday to Macron on his victory the day before. Macron scored a landslide victory in Sunday's runoff vote of the presidential election. In the phone call, Xi congratulated Macron and said China "has always viewed France as a cooperative partner of great significance and priority". Macron appreciated Xi's call and said he attaches great importance to ties with China, according to an official release from the Foreign Ministry. The new French government will continue friendly relations with China and uphold the one-China policy, Macron said. Xi said that by raising the relationship between China and France to the next level, as Macron takes office, both peoples and the international community will be served. Xi said he hopes the two countries will support each other on major issues and deepen cooperation in various fields. China welcomes France's participation in building the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said, referring to the ongoing development of building the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which has won support from more than 100 countries and organizations. Macron echoed Xi's point, saying the new administration will deepen cooperation with China regarding diplomacy; the economy, trade and industries; and collaboration within the framework of building the Belt and Road. Cui Hongjian, director of the department for European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said the brief interval between Xi's message and the phone conversation "mirrors the strong readiness shared by both sides to establish a good working relationship between the two leaders quickly" and to manage a smooth transition of the ties. "As the two countries share a great common ground on many issues, continuity (of policies) should be ensured to promote bilateral cooperation," Cui said. He said it is possible the two sides may arrange a first meeting between Xi and Macron on the sidelines of a multilateral international meeting, such as the G20 Leaders Summit. On regional and global topics, Xi said Beijing "will continue supporting the integration process of Europe". Both Xi and Macron highlighted further communication and coordination between the two countries over regional and global issues, including the cooperation within the framework of the G20. Xi said the two countries should further promote the reform of global governance and champion the fruits of global governance, such as the agreement reached at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015. Both Xi and Macron agreed to exchange their views on the development of ties between their two nations develops and issues of common concerns are raised from both sides. Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen (C) takes a selfie with supporters in Phnom Penh on January 7, 2017 Cambodia's strongman premier Hun Sen warned Wednesday that he would not hesitate to quash protests with military might if they turn violent, raising tensions as the country braces for elections. Hun Sen is preparing for local polls in June and a 2018 national election after clamping down on opposition figures trying to break his 32-year grip on power. The warning was a reference to opposition protests that broke out during the last election in 2013, when a crowd destroyed at least two police cars over allegations of voter fraud. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) also accused Hun Sen of rigging the poll in his favour and led a months-long protest over the election results. Dressed in a military uniform, Hun Sen told a gathering of former soldiers such protests would not be tolerated this time around. "Remember, in the 2017 and 2018 (elections), if your group does such activities again, armed forces will crack down on them immediately. If war happens, let it be," he said. "I still insist that war will happen if the (ruling) Cambodian People's Party isn't in power," he added. Hun Sen has long maintained that violence would break out if his party were ousted in elections. The former soldier first took office in 1985, when Cambodia was emerging from the ravages of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Through a mix of strongarm tactics and political guile, Hun Sen has dominated the country ever since, amassing extensive control over its judicial system, security forces and economy. He portrays himself as the only force who can bring stability to the nation. But there is growing disillusionment at the corruption and political repression associated with Hun Sen's rule, as well as his family's enormous wealth -- boosting opposition groups in recent years. In the last year the premier has responded with a crackdown on his rivals. More than a dozen activists and opposition politicians have been thrown in jail since the 2013 election that challenged the ruling party's majority. The longstanding leader of the opposition movement, Sam Rainsy, was also forced into self-exile and recently stepped down from his official party role under pressure from the mounting number of court cases brought against him. Chen Guiqiu (3rd L), the wife of detained human rights lawyer Xie Yang, is seeking US asylum after fleeing China on foot and brazenly escaping a Thai jail with her two daughters, aided by US officials Chen Guiqiu fled China on foot with her two daughters, only to end up in a Thai prison until US officials helped them sneak out dramatically through a back door. Now Chen is safe in Texas with her daughters, hoping to obtain US asylum after her extraordinary caper across the world. But her husband, prominent human rights lawyer Xie Yang, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to inciting subversion during a one-day trial in central China this week. While US President Donald Trump has been accused of glossing over human rights abuses in certain countries, Chen's account shows US officials went to great lengths to help her escape China's clutches. Chen had been a vocal defender of her husband, whose case drew international concern after he accused the police of torturing him. She said that because of her activism authorities interrogated her repeatedly, harassed her family members and threatened to evict her and get her fired from her job as professor of environmental engineering at Hunan University. She and her daughters, who are aged four and 15, first tried to take a train to Hong Kong from southern Guangdong province earlier this year. "That's when I realised we were on a travel blacklist. At the train station, they prevented us from boarding then separated me from my older daughter and detained her somewhere I couldn't see. My heart hurt, not knowing what she was feeling," Chen told AFP. They left their home in central China again in mid-February with only bare essentials in their backpacks. They spent four days walking long distances to evade border guards. On their way to Thailand, supporters escorted them on different legs of the journey, travelling by foot and car, until they arrived in a safe house in Bangkok. - 'A miracle' - But Thai officials took them to an immigration court, which ordered them to leave the country. Chen was not worried because they had permits to travel to the US. But while they were in the immigration detention centre, Chinese agents showed up to take them away, Chen said. "I was in shock and my daughters were terrified. Inside the immigration prison, my phone was taken away and I was not expecting any rescue... I really can't thank the Americans enough," she said. The US diplomats convinced Thai officials to let the family leave the facility. But the Chinese agents pursued them to the Bangkok airport, where the three countries' representatives engaged in a noisy argument. The incident happened on March 3 -- weeks before Trump met Xi at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where their conversations seemingly had little to do with human rights. Chen said she can't say what happened after the airport standoff, because of "diplomatic sensitivities", but confirmed they arrived safely in Texas on March 17. Now, Chen and her older daughter have started the process to seek asylum in America. "We have a lawyer. ... We met with staff from the Trump administration, who were very supportive," Chen said. Chen's four-year-old daughter is an American citizen by birth. Her nationality meant the US was exercising a legitimate consular role in staging the dramatic intervention. "It's a problem only if the Chinese government chooses to see it that way. It's normal and indeed obligatory for the US and other governments to assist citizens in distress," said Sophie Richardson, China director for New York-based Human Rights Watch. Bob Fu, an American activist who planned the daring escape, said: "It was the most challenging rescue I have ever done. Indeed a miracle." Asked about Chen's escape, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said authorities had already released information on Xie's case, adding: "If you are interested in that, you can check it on the internet. I have no more information to offer." - A 'sham' trial - Xie had worked on numerous politically sensitive cases, such as defending mainland supporters of Hong Kong democracy activists. He pleaded guilty on Monday to charges of inciting subversion of state power after telling the court he had been brainwashed while receiving training in Hong Kong and South Korea to "overthrow" China's system. Xie also told the court he had not been tortured by Chinese authorities. Amnesty International called the trial a "sham." Chen has not seen her husband since his arrest in 2015. "Even if he is released from jail, as long as he is in China, he will never be free," she sighed. Her daughters "like it a lot in Texas because there are no police following them anymore," she said. Indonesian protesters chant slogans against Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama following his trial on May 9, 2017 Indonesia is facing renewed calls to repeal its controversial blasphemy law after the jailing of Jakarta's Christian governor, with critics pointing to a sharp increase in its use to target minorities. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama -- known by his nickname Ahok -- was jailed for two years Tuesday for blasphemy over comments he made about Islam while campaigning for re-election to the capital of the Muslim-majority nation, a far harsher sentence than had been expected. Critics viewed the case as unfair and politically motivated. The allegations were pushed by hardliners who opposed a non-Muslim as governor, and sparked a series of mass protests that dented Purnama's popularity and contributed to him losing the race for the Jakarta governorship to a Muslim rival last month. The allegations against Purnama centred on a lighthearted remark he made about his rivals using a Koranic verse to trick people into voting against him, which judges ruled amounted to blasphemy against Islam. The blasphemy legislation has been on the statute books since 1965 but was rarely used before 1998, when three decades of authoritarian rule under brutal dictator Suharto -- who sought to run the country along largely secular lines -- came to an end. His downfall brought with it new democratic freedoms and increased interest in more conservative forms of Islam. But it also gave space for the growth of hardline Muslim groups and an increase in attacks on religious minorities, fuelling concerns that the country's inclusive brand of Islam was under threat. Activists say the growing use of the blasphemy law curbs free speech and is one example of minorities coming under increased pressure. Local rights group the Setara Institute said of the 97 blasphemy cases brought to court since the law was enacted, 89 of them were since 1998. - 'Inherent injustice' - Phelim Kine, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division, said Purnama's conviction made him "exhibit A of the law's danger and the urgent need for its repeal". "The blasphemy law has been used to prosecute and imprison members of religious minorities and traditional religions," he said. Champa Patel, Amnesty International's director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, criticised the "inherent injustice of Indonesia's blasphemy law, which should be repealed immediately", while the United Nations urged a review of the legislation. A recent case was the jailing in March of three leaders of a banned sect called Gafatar under the blasphemy law, with the men accused of luring followers to practise a deviant brand of Islam. Another example was in 2012 when Tajul Muluk, a cleric from the Shiite Muslim minority, was sentenced to two years in prison for blasphemy, with judges saying that his teachings deviated from mainstream Islam. The blasphemy law states that anyone found guilty of "expressing feelings of hostility" towards religion can be jailed for up to five years. It applies to any of the six officially recognised religions in Indonesia but in reality most prosecutions are brought against people accused of blaspheming Islam. About 90 percent of Indonesia's 255 million people are Muslim but most practise a moderate form of Islam and the country is also home to substantial minorities of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. Despite growing pressure to repeal the law, this seems unlikely any time soon. Religious affairs ministry spokesman Matsuki, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, conceded there were concerns of misuse but said the government wanted to improve the legislation rather than axe it. "If we abolished it, more problems would arise," he told AFP. "If blasphemy happens and we have no guidelines, there will be chaos." The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) is seen by Washington as the best ally against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and the prime attacking force in any assault on their stronghold of Raqa President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday urged the United States to reverse a decision on arming Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Turkey considers terrorists, saying he would raise the issue in talks with Donald Trump next week. The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) militia applauded a "historic" move that would speed up the defeat of Islamic State (IS) extremists but the issue risks stoking tensions between the two NATO allies ahead of Erdogan's critical visit to Washington. US forces, accompanied by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters, drive armoured vehicles near the northern Syrian village of Darbasiyah, on the border with Turkey on April 28, 2017 The YPG is seen by Washington as the best ally against Islamic State group jihadists in Syria and the prime attacking force in any upcoming assault on their stronghold of Raqa. But Ankara regards the YPG as a terror group and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged an insurgency inside Turkey leaving tens of thousands dead. "I hope very much that this mistake will be reversed immediately," Erdogan said in Ankara alongside Sierra Leone counterpart Ernest Bai Koroma. "We want to believe that our allies would prefer be side by side with ourselves rather than with the terror groups," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said "I will personally express our worries in a detailed way when we talk with President Trump on May 16," he added, saying the issue would also be discussed at the NATO summit in Brussels on May 25. "We want to believe that our allies would prefer be side by side with ourselves rather than with the terror groups," he added. Erdogan's statement capped a day of alarmed comments by Turkish officials, with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu saying that "every weapon that turns up in their hands is a threat directed toward Turkey". - 'Informed in advance' - Pentagon chief Jim Mattis sought to allay Turkish concerns, saying at a news conference in Lithuania the US would work very closely with Turkey over security on its border with Syria. "We have very open discussions about options and we will work together, we will work out any of the concerns," he said. "I will personally express our worries in a detailed way when we talk with President Trump on May 16," Turkish President Erdogan said In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon had said Trump had authorised the arming of Kurdish fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) "to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa". The YPG hailed the move as "historic" and said it would now play "a more influential, powerful, and decisive role" in fighting IS. YPG spokesman Redur Xelil described the move as "somewhat late", but would still "provide a strong impetus" to all forces fighting IS. The SDF, a US-backed group dominated by YPG but which also contains Arab elements, said that receiving US arms and military equipment would "hasten the defeat" of the jihadists. It remains to be seen what shadow the issue will cast over the talks between Trump and Erdogan, which have been touted as chance to forge a new partnership between the two NATO allies. While the government expressed predictable anger, the deputy head of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Ozturk Yilmaz said it should go even further by postponing Erdogan's visit to the US A US officer, from the US-led coalition, speaks with a fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) at the site of Turkish airstrikes near northeastern Syrian Kurdish town of Derik, known as al-Malikiyah in Arabic, on April 25, 2017 The timing of the announcement was especially delicate as a high-level Turkish delegation including Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkey's spy chief Hakan Fidan had been in the US laying the groundwork for the meeting. According to the New York Times, the delegation was informed of the decision to arm the YPG by Trump's national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Turkish media said the three met McMaster at the White House on Monday but gave no details over the content of the talks. Both Washington and Brussels classify the PKK as a terror group but do not regard the YPG as such. Myanmar riot police patrol Yangon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt township after scuffles broke out between Buddhist nationalists and Muslims on May 10, 2017 Police in Myanmar fired warning shots to break up scuffles between Buddhist nationalists and Muslims in Myanmar's biggest city in the early hours of Wednesday after a crowd went hunting for "illegal" Rohingya. The incident comes as nationalists from Myanmar's Buddhist majority have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the country's hard-pressed Muslim minority. Police in Yangon said they were forced to fire in the air to break up the confrontation between dozens of hardliners, including several monks, and local Muslims that left at least one man injured. The Rohingya, a group of more than a million Muslims who live mainly in western Rakhine State, are particularly maligned as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and their movements are heavily restricted. Late on Tuesday night a group of nationalists complained to police that several Rohingya, pejoratively known as "Bengalis," were illegally hiding in a house in Yangon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt township. Tempers started to fray when police who had gone to investigate refused to arrest the men, saying they were local, non-Rohingya Muslims who were allowed to be there. "While they (the nationalists) were complaining to the police, Muslims from the area gathered and the groups started quarrelling," said one officer on condition of anonymity. "Although police asked both sides to go back, they punched each other. So police fired shots in the air to disperse the groups." Myanmar riot police said they were forced to fire in the air to break up clashes between Buddhist nationalists and Muslims in Yangon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt township on May 10, 2017 Kyaw Nyein, a legal advisor to Muslim group Jamiat-Ulama-El Islam, said the incident was "heart-breaking and worrying". "It was just an attempt to incite anger without any firm evidence," he told AFP. "They are looking for trouble." In recent months nationalists in Yangon have held protests, stopped Islamic religious ceremonies and most recently forced two schools to close temporarily over accusations they were illegally doubling up as mosques. Thuseitta, a monk from the Yangon chapter of the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, accused the police of treating them "like animals" and said the Muslims had attacked them with sticks and knives in a video shared on social media. Tensions have boiled over since militants attacked police posts in northern Rakhine, sparking a brutal army crackdown that has sent more than 70,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh. UN investigators who spoke to escapees say the campaign was so brutal it may amount to crimes against humanity. According to UN estimates the civil war in Yemen has killed more than 7,700 people in since March 2015 Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh is open to negotiations with rival Saudi Arabia, two years into a deadly war between Saleh's Huthi rebel allies and the Saudi-backed government. "We have no choice but dialogue," Saleh said at a meeting of his General People's Congress party in the capital Sanaa on Tuesday. "We are ready to go to Riyadh, Khamis Mushit, Muscat or elsewhere to start dialogue and to reach an understanding," Saleh said, referring to cities in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Oman. Saleh however reiterated his rejection of the government of internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and said Saudi Arabia would have to find "new leadership". Members of Saleh's circle have been meeting unofficially with Saudi delegates for weeks in Berlin, a Yemeni government official told AFP Wednesday. The Yemeni leader also said he hoped to "form an alliance with Iran that would serve the interests of Yemen". Shiite-dominated Iran is a key supporter of Yemen's Huthi rebels and the main regional rival of Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia. Saleh, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011, has repeatedly said he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia. But he ruled out mediation by UN special envoy Ismail Ould Sheikh Ahmed, who aims to resume stalled peace talks by the end of May, accusing him of bias. Government spokesman Rajeh Badi told AFP Ould Sheikh Ahmed is currently in Riyadh for talks on the Yemeni crisis, which the UN estimates has killed more than 7,700 people since March 2015. Saleh on Tuesday said 11,000 rebels had been killed and more than 25,000 injured in the past two years. While Saleh resigned under massive popular pressure in February 2012, he remains highly influential in Yemen. He was succeeded by Hadi, previously his vice-president. Parts of the army remained loyal to Saleh after his resignation and he solidified his position as a crucial player in 2014 when he forged an alliance with the Huthi rebels. The Huthis currently control Yemen's capital, the northern region bordering Saudi Arabia and a string of key ports along the Red Sea coast. The Hadi government is based in Aden, Yemen's second largest city. The president himself mainly resides in Saudi Arabia. US forces accompanied by Kurdish People's Protection Units fighters near the northern Syrian village of Darbasiyah on the border with Turkey on April 28, 2017 Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State group in Syria said Wednesday that the "historic" US decision to provide them with arms and military equipment would speed up the jihadists' defeat. Washington said Tuesday it would provide weapons and equipment to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which is a key force in the fight against IS in Syria. "From now on, after this historic arming decision, our units will play a more influential, powerful, and decisive role in fighting terrorism at a faster pace," YPG spokeman Redur Xelil said in a statement. He said the move had come "somewhat late," but would still "provide a strong impetus" to all forces fighting IS. The YPG makes up the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters advancing on the northern city of Raqa, the last main stronghold for IS in Syria. The SDF receives air support and training from the US-led coalition and is backed by special advisors on the ground. Until Tuesday, official US policy was to supply weapons only to the Arab components of the SDF. "The US decision to arm the YPG... is important and will hasten the defeat of terrorism," SDF spokesman Talal Sello told AFP. Sello said the US announcement "is the result of the effectiveness of the YPG and SDF in the fight against terrorism". The US decision has however angered Turkey, which views the YPG as a "terrorist" group because of its ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK). "The supply of arms to the YPG is unacceptable," Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told A Haber television. "Such a policy will benefit nobody," he said. "We expect that this mistake is to be rectified." US President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Jordan's King Abdullah II (left) at the White House on April 5, 2017 King Abdullah II of Jordan, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Niger's Mahamadou Issoufou are among leaders invited by Saudi King Salman for a summit with US President Donald Trump. The Arab-Islamic-American Summit will be among a series of talks expected to be held in Riyadh on May 20-21, Saudi officials said. Trump has frequently been accused of fuelling Islamophobia but aides described his decision to visit Saudi Arabia as an effort to reset relations with the Muslim world. There will also be a separate meeting between monarchs of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and Trump, as well as bilateral talks between the Saudi and US leaders, Riyadh's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has said. In addition to heads of state from Jordan, Algeria and Niger, the official Saudi Press Agency reported that Salman asked Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and Morocco's King Mohammed VI to attend. The leaders of Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq and Tunisia have also received invitations, the Arab News daily reported on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia -- which is home to Islam's holiest sites -- will be Trump's first foreign stop since becoming president in January. "It is a clear message to the world that the United States and the Arab and Islamic countries can form a partnership," Jubeir said in Washington, according to SPA. "We believe that it will strengthen cooperation between the United States and Arab and Islamic countries in the fight against terrorism and extremism, and the visit will have enormous benefits for the region and the world." The Saudis have found a more favourable ear in Washington under Trump, who has echoed their concerns about Iran's influence in the region. An Italian soldier from NATO's Resolute Support Mission (2L) trains Afghan National Army soldiers at the Kabul Military Training centre on the outskirts of Herat NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that military chiefs wanted a few thousand more troops from the alliance to be deployed in Afghanistan to help combat Islamist insurgents. The troops were needed to train local forces, Stoltenberg told reporters following talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May at her Downing Street office in London. "We have received a request from our military authorities to increase our military presence in Afghanistan with a few thousand troops," he said. "We are now assessing that request. We will make decisions on the scale and the scope of the mission within weeks. "But this is not about returning back to a combat operation in Afghanistan. "It will be a train, assist and advise operation, because I strongly believe that the best answer we have against terrorism, the best weapon we have against terrorism, is to train local forces against terrorism and to stave ISIL (the Islamic State jihadist group) off." There are currently around 13,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan training local forces. The issue will be high on the agenda at the NATO annual summit in Brussels on May 25. US authorities have written to NATO allies and partners about the future of the 28-country alliance's presence in Afghanistan. Stoltenberg said: "We will address our presence in Afghanistan at the leaders' meeting but we will also address what NATO can do to step up its efforts to fight terrorism, including providing support to the counter-ISIL coalition." "I strongly believe that the best thing you can do to fight against terrorism is to train local forces, enabling them to stabilise their own country and to fight terrorism themselves," he said. Since NATO's combat mission in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014, Taliban attacks have intensified and Afghan military and civilian casualties have risen. Taliban dressed in Afghan army uniforms last month slaughtered at least 135 young recruits at a northern base. The US, which is also targeting Islamic State group's affiliate in Afghanistan, dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on the group's hideouts earlier this month. A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The UK keeps its contribution in Afghanistan under regular review to ensure it remains suited for the needs of the mission." The freshwater turtle, also known as the southern river terrapin, was thought to be extinct in Cambodia until 2000 The birth of nine Cambodian royal turtle hatchlings has sparked hope for the future of a species on the brink of extinction, conservationists said Wednesday. The baby turtles hatched this week, three months after a villager discovered a 14-egg nest in sand along a river in southwestern Koh Kong Province -- the only place where the reptile is still found in Cambodia. The freshwater turtle, also known as the southern river terrapin, was thought to be extinct in Cambodia until 2000, when a small population was re-discovered in the Sre Ambel river. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC) and Cambodian government have been desperately trying to protect the species ever since with a program that hires former egg collectors to search for and protect nests, instead of harvesting the eggs. "I am proud of the result, especially to be part of conserving Cambodias royal turtles from extinction," villager Long Sman, who helped guard the nest of the latest hatchlings, was quoted as saying by the WSC. Royal turtle hatchlings in a nest at the Kaong River in Cambodia's Koh Kong province The turtle species acquired its name because only Cambodia's royal family was historically allowed to consume its eggs. The nine new hatchlings will join around 200 others in a nearby conservation centre "for feeding, raising and possibly breeding in the future," the WSC said in a statement. The group warned that sand dredging, illegal logging and fishing remain critical threats to the small number of royal turtles in the wild. Only one nest was found this year compared to two nests found in 2016 and three nests in 2015, said WSC's technical advisor Som Sitha. "This is a big concern for royal turtle conservation," he added. Deforestation and poaching have devastated many species in Cambodia, one of Asia's poorest and most corrupt nations. Last year tigers were declared "functionally extinct" in the country, with the last big cat seen on a camera trap in 2007. Conservationists sit next to a container holding nine Cambodian royal turtle hatchlings at the Kaong River in Koh Kong province, on May 9, 2017 In its haste to develop, the government has been criticised for allowing firms to clear hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest land -- including in protected zones -- for everything from rubber and sugar cane plantations to hydropower dams. Flash Social media company Facebook has been forced to delete hate posts worldwide following a ruling in the Higher Regional Court (OLG) of Vienna, local media reported on Tuesday. Up until now Facebook had only been required to block the posts in the country in which they were made. The case was spearheaded by the Austrian Greens Party, who used a fake Facebook profile that had made defamatory posts about their party leader Eva Glawischnig as a basis for their complaint, the Upper Austria OO Nachrichten reported. Initially the Commercial Court in Vienna had ordered the posts be deleted, prompting a legal challenge from Facebook. On Monday the OLG rejected this, and issued an interim injunction. Lawyer for the Greens Maria Windhager said the social media giant claims it can only be legally challenged in either California or in Ireland, where its European Union headquarters is based. She said should the company not follow the OLG ruling, legal action will then be pursued in Ireland, that could result in fines or the company having its servers switched off. The OO Nachrichten cited media legal expert Winfried Sattlegger as being sceptical the Greens initiative would have its intended outcome, however. He said it would be difficult, given the varying legal systems around the world, and the lack of umbrella regulation. In addition the material exists on a number of servers and could therefore not see a straight-forward deletion on a global scale, he argued. Eighty-two Nigerian schoolgirls were released from Boko Haram captivity on Saturday after months of talks, in exchange for a number of suspected Islamist militant fighters in government custody Eighty-two Nigerian schoolgirls who were released from Boko Haram captivity after more than three years face a wait to be reunited with their families, a town elder said on Wednesday. Yakubu Nkeki, head of the Abducted Chibok Girls Parents' group, said parents of the girls would only be able to see their daughters once government approval was given. "This may take some time, as the girls are now undergoing medical and mental evaluation to ensure they are in the best of condition," he told AFP. "We don't mind waiting... Their health and wellbeing is paramount to us and such evaluation takes time, especially with such a huge number of girls." The 82 were released on Saturday after months of talks, in exchange for a number of suspected Islamist militant fighters in government custody. A total of 276 girls were seized in April 2014 from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, triggering global condemnation. Fifty-seven escaped in the hours that followed and of the 219 who remained hostages, 21 were released in a deal last October and three others have been found. Nkeki said he had met the 82, including his niece, whom he said was "in good condition and in high spirits". He said he established that all of those released were from the Chibok school. Photographs of the girls have been sent to the remote town in Borno state and surrounding villages for their parents to verify their identities. On Saturday, one of the released girls was seen on crutches and another with her arm in a sling. Nkeki said seven of the 21 students freed previously had shrapnel wounds, which needed surgical treatment. "Time is required to heal such wounds. The 82 girls will not be different. They will undergo the same procedure," he added. Presidency spokesman Garba Shehu gave an indication of the potential difficulties facing those who were freed by disclosing that one girl had refused to leave. She declined to be part of the release deal because she had married a Boko Haram fighter. Analysts said it was likely others may have developed sympathies for their captors over time. Thousands of women and young girls have been abducted in the eight-year insurgency, which has left at least 20,000 people dead and displaced more than 2.6 million. Mausi Segun, from Human Rights Watch in Nigeria, said the released girls were likely to have to deal with issues such as their abduction, the effects of conflict and prolonged isolation. "Addressing the psychological effects of captivity and the entire conflict itself is one that the Nigerian government and several humanitarian organisations have struggled with," she said. "The initial assessment is that existing services have reached only a few people. In addition, there are concerns about the quality and effectiveness of what has been offered." File picture of a man running past a poster of Palestinian hunger-striker and prominent prisoner Marwan Barghouti in the West Bank city of Ramallah on May 3, 2017 The wife of the leader of a hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has written to Pope Francis calling on him to intervene "before it is too late". Fadwa Barghouti, wife of Palestinian leader and prominent prisoner Marwan Barghouti, has called on the pope to "speak up, because freedom and dignity are God given rights, and no human group should deprive another of these rights." "Your call for respect of the rights of the Palestinian people, including the rights of our political prisoners, would allow the voice of those placed in isolation to reach the world," the letter says. The Vatican has recognised Palestine as a state. The hunger strike began on April 17, led by Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences over his role in the second Palestinian intifada. Israeli authorities say 894 Palestinian prisoners have kept up the strike, though Palestinian officials say it is more than 1,000. 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. Israel has vowed not to negotiate with the hunger strikers, with Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan calling them "terrorists and incarcerated murderers." In her letter, Fadwa Barghouti said "the Israeli courts are instruments of oppression not justice, especially Israeli military courts with their conviction rate of 90 percent to 99 percent for Palestinians." Marwan Barghouti, called the "Palestinian Mandela" by supporters, is a popular figure among Palestinians. The European Parliament has called for his release, saying he could potentially help peace efforts. While many Palestinians view him as a hero, Israelis point to the bloody suicide attacks of the second intifada of 2000-2005 and his role in that uprising. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte pulled all police off the drug war at that time and vowed to "cleanse" the force Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday launched another tirade against corrupt police who are the frontline troops in his deadly drug war, after four more officers were accused of kidnapping and extortion. The arrest of the four from Manila's financial district of Makati was the latest in a series of scandals involving police that have raised concerns about their suitability to prosecute the drug war. "I was reading, coming here, another spot report of four policemen again (linked to) kidnapping. These policemen, sons of whores!" Duterte said at Manila airport before flying to Cambodia. The 160,000-member police force is the main enforcer of Duterte's 10-month-old drugs crackdown that has claimed thousands of lives and led to warnings he may be orchestrating a crime against humanity. Duterte admitted early this year that the force was "corrupt to the core", after several anti-drugs policeman were arrested on charges of kidnapping and murdering a South Korean businessman as part of an extortion scam. Duterte pulled all police off the drug war at that time and vowed to "cleanse" the force. But after a brief lull he allowed the police to resume the anti-drug crackdown without major reforms. Duterte said Wednesday he planned to appoint the armed forces' chief of staff, General Eduardo Ano, as interior secretary when the general retires late this year, to help clean up the police force. "I need him (Ano) because I have a problem with the police," Duterte said. The force again came under fire last month after a dozen people, mainly drug suspects, were discovered inside a closet-sized secret cell at a Manila police station. Acting on a tip-off, staff from the Commission on Human Rights, an independent government agency, made a surprise visit to the police station and uncovered the cell. The detainees told them that the police were demanding money to release them. The commission on Wednesday filed a complaint with the ombudsman in that case, accusing police of illegal detention. In the latest case that attracted Duterte's ire, the four Makati police officers were arrested late Tuesday for allegedly extorting money from a businessman and his girlfriend whom they had detained the previous day. "They demanded 400,000 pesos (about $8,000) in exchange for their release," Senior Superintendent Chiquito Malayo, head of a police anti-corruption unit, told reporters. He said victims made an initial downpayment. "The agreement is that they have to complete the remaining balance the following day, or on May 10, or else the family (of the victims) will be killed," Malayo said. US President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey (pictured) The Kremlin on Wednesday described the firing of the FBI director James Comey by US President Donald Trump as an internal matter that had nothing to do with Russia. "This is absolutely a domestic matter for the United States, a sovereign decision by the US president which has absolutely nothing to do with Russia and cannot have anything to do with it," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. The US president stunned Washington by firing Comey, the man who leads the agency charged with investigating whether Trump campaign aides colluded with Russia to sway the November elections. Asked how the change of leadership would affect bilateral relations, Peskov said "we hope that it won't affect them at all." The head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian senate Konstantin Kosachev earlier called Trump's firing of Comey "quite elegant" in comments to Interfax news agency. "He removed a figure who was inconvenient for him using the same accusations that Trump's own opponents had previously presented against the FBI director," Kosachev said. Trump's rival in the election Hillary Clinton blamed Comey for her defeat after he revealed just before the polls that he was re-opening a probe into Clinton's use of a personal email server while serving as secretary of state. Earlier this week two wasp nests were removed from a Sri Lankan tea plantation as part of preparations for a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Fifty pilgrims in Sri Lanka were taken to hospital Wednesday after being attacked by a swarm of wasps as they celebrated Buddhism's holiest day. Police said a monk was among those hospitalised after the cloud of insects descended on a temple at Mundal, 110 kilometres (68 miles) north of the capital Colombo. The attack came as pilgrims celebrated the festival of Vesak honouring the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha. Earlier this week two wasp nests were removed from a Sri Lankan tea plantation as part of preparations for a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There was a risk helicopters landing nearby could stir up the nests and provoke an angry response. Modi arrives in Sri Lanka on Thursday to join Vesak celebrations before touring the tea country on Friday. The Jerusalem skyline The Israeli parliament gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill defining the country as the "national home of the Jewish people" that critics say discriminates against the state's Arab minority. The bill, supported by 48 against 41 of the Knesset's 120 members, seeks to "defend (Israel's) status as a Jewish and democratic state", said Avi Dichter, the bill's sponsor, of the ruling Likud party. On Sunday, ministers gave the bill the initial green light. It needs to be debated by a parliamentary committee and voted on three more times in the plenum before it becomes part of the country's so-called "basic laws", which are similar to a constitution. It would give special status to the "Jewish and democratic" nature of Israel, to the Jewish calendar and to Hebrew as Israel's official language. The bill's explanatory notes said such legislation was "especially crucial in times like these, when there are those who seek to undermine the Jewish people's right to a national home in its land". Some 17.5 percent of Israel's population are Arab, and are descendants of Palestinians who remained after Israel's creation in 1948. Public signs and government services are typically in Arabic as well as Hebrew, but it was unclear if the new bill would change that. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is seen as the most right-wing in the country's history, and Arab Israelis allege widespread discrimination. Defining Israel as the "national home of the Jewish people" has also raised concerns among rights activists and others worried over discrimination and attempts to further mix religion and state. "No apartheid law, as racist and nationalistic as it may be, will erase the fact that two peoples live here," parliament member Ayman Odeh, who heads the mainly Arab Joint List alliance, said. "The extreme right-wing government is trying to spark a fire of nationalistic hatred, but I still believe there lives a majority here that wants to live in peace, equality and democracy", he said. Masud Ganaim, of Odeh's list, questioned the need to legislate the principles that already appear in Israel's Declaration of Independence, accusing the bill of being an attempt to target Arabs. Dichter, however, rejected claims that the law would harm Arabs or the Arabic language, saying in the debate ahead of the Wednesday vote that Hebrew would be the national language but Arabic would have a "special status". The late former Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen answers reporters' questions in Paris in 1994 Former Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen, who rebuilt relations with the international community after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, has died at the age of 89, state media said Wednesday. Qian died Tuesday in Beijing, Xinhua news agency quoted a government statement as saying. It described him as "a time-tested and loyal communist soldier and proletarian revolutionist, and an outstanding leader in diplomacy of the country". Qian, who spoke Russian and English, was foreign minister from 1988-1998 and handled the diplomatic fallout from the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators which attracted international condemnation. On June 4, 1989 the authorities sent in troops and tanks to disperse demonstrators who had occupied the Beijing square for a month and a half in protest at corruption and the lack of democratic freedoms. Hundreds of protesters were killed in the city. During his tenure as foreign minister, Qian was the first Chinese diplomat to attend a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. His presence at the 1991 ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting paved the way for future cooperation with the bloc, which had been founded in 1967 partly as a bulwark against communism. Qian also served as Vice Premier of the State Council from 1993 to 2003. Located downtown next to the gated North Korean embassy, Cityhostel Berlin offers beds for as little as 16 euros ($17) a night The German government said Wednesday it will shut down a Berlin hostel after it emerged that the site is North Korean embassy property and had been leased in violation of UN rules. Located downtown next to the gated North Korean embassy, Cityhostel Berlin offers dorm beds for as little as 16 euros ($17) a night. But it came under scrutiny after German media reported that the North Korean embassy was not just the hostel's neighbour but also owner of the prime real estate. Rented out since 2004, the property fetches Pyongyang some 38,000 euros per month in rent, public broadcaster ARD said. Foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer cited a UN Security Council resolution that requires member states to only allow "North Korean foreign representations to carry out diplomatic and consular activities". "Any kind of commercial activity on the site of the embassy or in relation to the embassy is prohibited," he said. "Cityhostel in Berlin constitutes neither a diplomatic nor consular activity of a North Korean foreign representation," said Schaefer, adding that the government will move to "shut down the financial source to the North Korean regime as quickly as possible". Over the past 11 years, the Security Council has imposed six sets of sanctions on Pyongyang -- two adopted last year -- to significantly ramp up pressure and deny the North Korean regime the hard currency revenue needed for its rocket and atomic programmes. But UN sanctions experts have repeatedly told the council the measures have had little impact because they have been poorly implemented. Pyongyang is seeking to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five nuclear tests, two of them last year. Religious students and activists gather for a protest against social media in Islamabad on March 8, 2017, demanding the removal of all blasphemous content from social media sites in the country Millions of Pakistanis have been receiving text messages from the government warning them against sharing "blasphemous" content online, a move rights activists said would encourage more vigilante attacks. It comes amid a surge in mob violence linked to accusations of insulting Islam including three attacks within the past month. "Uploading & sharing of blasphemous content on Internet is a punishable offense under the law. Such content should be reported on info@pta.gov.pk for legal action," read the SMS sent by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to all mobile phone subscribers. A similar note was posted on the agency's website in Urdu. A PTA spokesman said the agency was acting on a court order. Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in conservative Muslim Pakistan, with unproven allegations leading to dozens of mob attacks or murders since 1990. The law was originally inherited from Pakistan's former colonial masters Britain, but strengthened by former dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1986 to include a provision for capital punishment in cases of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Activists said the initiative would likely encourage lynchings, such as the killing of a 23-year-old student known for his liberal views at the hands of hundreds of fellow students last month. "This mass messaging will only further fuel hatred among different sects and segments of the society. It is a very very bad move," digital rights activist Shahzad Ahmad told AFP. "PTA's mass texting on 'blasphemy' smacks of insincerity & political exploitation of religion; it will embolden public to greater violence!," tweeted popular television anchor Moeed Pirzada. Last week a 10-year old boy was killed and five others were wounded when a mob attacked a police station in an attempt to lynch a Hindu man charged with blasphemy for allegedly posting an incendiary image on social media. Weeks earlier a mob attacked a mentally ill man claiming to be a prophet at his local mosque. He was later saved by police. The issue of blasphemy came to the fore in January when five secular activists known for their outspoken views against religious extremism and the powerful military were disappeared, presumed abducted by state agencies according to opposition parties and international rights groups. Four of them were later returned to their families weeks later, but not before they were tarnished by a virulent campaign to paint them as enemies of Islam deserving execution. One of them later told AFP they had been held and tortured by the shadowy Inter Services Intelligence agency which had conceived the blasphemy campaign in order to silence critical voices. The agency denied involvement. A Yemeni soldier stands watching vehicles driving past at a checkpoint amid fears of attacks by militant organizations, on August 9, 2014, in the Yemeni capital Sanaa A suspected Al-Qaeda suicide bombing on Wednesday killed a Yemeni soldier in the southeastern province of Hadramawt, a security official said. Six other people, including three civilians, were wounded when the assailant detonated his explosives at a checkpoint in the village of Duaan, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) northwest of the port city of Mukalla, the official said. The attack comes days after government forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition mounted an operation against Al-Qaeda militants suspected of being behind the recent bombing of two abandoned police stations. Al-Qaeda extremists remain active in the vast region of Hadramawt after taking advantage of more than two years of conflict between the government and Shiite rebels. The United States has intensified its air attacks on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni branch that it considers the global terror network's most dangerous. Flash Soldiers salute during the Victory Day parade in St. Petersburg, Russia, May 9, 2017. Russia marks on Tuesday the 72nd anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. (Xinhua/Irina Motina) Russia on Tuesday staged a military parade on Moscow's Red Square to celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the victory in World War II (WWII). About 10,000 Russian servicemen from the ground force, the navy, the air force, the airborne troops and the Federal Security Service participated in the parade, and dozens of military vehicles and armaments were displayed in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, senior officials and war veterans. In an address prior to the parade, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, Putin congratulated all on the Victory Day, saying that the victory will forever remain in the history of humankind as "a supreme triumph of life and reason over death and barbarity," to which Russian people made a huge contribution. "We will never forget that it was our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who won back Europe's freedom and the long-awaited peace." Putin said while paying tribute to the soldiers who fought and died for their country. The president underlined that Russia will strengthen the traditions of patriotism and loyalty to the fatherland, and that Russian servicemen, ready for any sacrifice for their homeland and people, "will forever guard Russia as the soldiers of Victory did." "The lessons of the war teach us to be vigilant, and Russian Armed Forces are ready to counter any potential aggression," Putin said. Warning that the world is still being plagued by neo-nazism, terrorism, extremism and other threats, Putin called on the strengthening of combat potential and concerted efforts from the international community to meet common challenges. "We are open to such cooperation. Russia will always side with the forces of peace, with those who stick to equitable partnership," he added. The parade started at 10 a.m local time (0700 GMT). Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, riding in an open-roof limousine, reviewed the neatly-dressed troops in orderly alignment, before the 27 foot formations marched across the ribbon-decorated Red Square to Russia's national anthem played by the military band. Following the troops were dozens of pieces of armaments, including a Tigr armored vehicle, a T-14 Armata tank, BMD-4 M Sadovnitsa infantry fighting vehicles, a Msta-S self-propelled howitzer, and the S-400 Triumf air defense missile system, among others. The Pantsir-SA air defense system and Tor-M2 air defense system were showcased for the first time during the military parade. The air show that traditionally serves as the conclusion of the parade was canceled due to unfavorable weather conditions. After the parade, Putin laid flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers outside the Red Square. Apart from Moscow, 25 Russian cities including St. Petersburg, Volgograd and Murmansk had their own military parades to commemorate the victory. In addition to celebration, the Russians also see the annual commemoration as a good opportunity for their country to showcase its military forces and to stir up national pride. "I'm spending the Victory Day with my family," well-known vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva told Xinhua, "The military parade is of great significance to our country, and I feel extremely proud and honored." The Victory Day is one of the most ceremonious festivals in Russia. Members of the Commonwealth of Independence States have been following the tradition since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. US President Donald Trump sent a series of morning tweets criticizing Democrats President Donald Trump lashed out against his critics in a fresh Twitter attack Wednesday following his unprecedented firing of FBI chief James Comey. Democrats have pounced on the president amid a massive backlash over his sudden decision to fire Comey on Tuesday as the agency investigates whether Trump's campaign aides colluded with Russia in an attempt to sway November's US election in the Republican's favor. "The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" Trump said in a series of morning tweets. He referred to Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as "cryin' Schumer" late Tuesday. The FBI director had antagonized all sides -- first angering Republicans by closing a probe into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's emails last summer, and then Democrats by reopening it days before the November presidential election. She has said the move helped Trump win. President Donald Trump cited FBI Director James Comey's handling of the investigations of Hillary Clinton's emails and possible Russian election meddling to justify his decision to fire him The president cited Comey's handling of both investigations -- into Clinton's emails and possible Russian election meddling -- to justify his decision to fire him. "The question is why did it happen last night?" Schumer said on the Senate floor. "We know director Comey was leading an investigation in whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, a serious offense. Were those investigations getting too close to home for the president?" He called for a briefing on Comey's firing before the full Senate. - 'Cried like a baby' - Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said the reasons the Trump administration gave for firing FBI Director Comey were "laughable" Senator Richard Blumenthal joined other Democrats in calling for an independent counsel and special prosecutor to look into the allegations of Russian election meddling. "What we have now is really a looming constitutional crisis that is deadly serious because there is an investigation ongoing... and ultimately there may be subpoenas to the president of the United States," Blumenthal told CNN. Trump then turned on Blumenthal, saying he should be the one to be investigated due to past controversial statements he made about his own military service during the Vietnam War. "Watching Senator Richard Blumenthal speak of Comey is a joke. 'Richie' devised one of the greatest military frauds in US history," Trump wrote. "For years, as a pol in Connecticut, Blumenthal would talk of his great bravery and conquests in Vietnam - except he was never there. When caught, he cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness... and now he is judge & jury. He should be the one who is investigated for his acts." Blumenthal dismissed Trump's accusations, saying: "his bullying won't silence my calls for an independent special prosecutor." The president also labeled as "fake news" reports that his former advisor Roger Stone -- who is under FBI scrutiny as part of its Russian election interference probe -- was among those who recommended firing Comey. And he retweeted a link from the conservative-leaning Drudge Report website about "10 scandals" during Comey's tenure. Rebel fighters from the Jaish al-Fatah (or Army of Conquest) brigades sit in the back of a truck as they take part in a major assault on Syrian government forces West of Aleppo city on October 28, 2016 An alliance dominated by Al-Qaeda's former Syrian branch has warned rebel groups against implementing a deal on safe zones, saying they would be considered traitors. Tahrir al-Sham, led by the jihadist Fateh al-Sham Front, made the threat late Tuesday in response to an agreement signed by rebel backer Turkey and regime supporters Iran and Russia in Kazakhstan last week. The agreement calls for the establishment of four "de-escalation zones" where rebels and government forces will halt hostilities, including air strikes, for six months. But it carves out an exception for the continued targeting of jihadist groups like the Islamic State group and Fateh al-Sham, previously known as Al-Nusra Front. "Accepting the Astana deal is tantamount to betrayal... and a conspiracy to destroy jihad and revolution in Syria," Tahrir al-Sham said. It called on its allies to "fight any criminal gangs and spend every effort to prevent" rebel groups trying to advance on its territory. Neither Syria's government nor the rebels are direct signatories to the Astana deal. While the foreign ministry in Damascus has said it accepts the agreement, the opposition has expressed concerns. The exact borders of the de-escalation zones are to be delineated by June 4, but a ceasefire in the rough areas affected came into effect on Friday night. The four main battlegrounds included are: the northwestern province of Idlib, parts of the central province of Homs, the south, and the opposition enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. But Fateh al-Sham is a powerful force and a regular ally for rebels in several opposition-controlled areas, particularly in Idlib. Analysts expect the close relationship will complicate the implementation of the deal, which was reached in Astana during a fresh round of talks on Syria's war brokered by Ankara, Moscow, and Tehran. Under the agreement, the three powers are responsible for "separating" jihadist groups like IS and Fateh al-Sham from other rebel factions. The first round of the Astana talks in January was marred by fierce fighting between Fateh al-Sham and other rebel groups that left dozens of fighters dead in Idlib. The conflict broke out with protests in 2011 against the Damascus government, but has since evolved into a multi-front war that has killed more than 320,000 people. University lecturer Stella Nyanzi has been detained for more than a month on charges of insulting Uganda's president A Ugandan court ordered the release on bail Wednesday of a prominent academic charged after she called President Yoweri Museveni a "pair of buttocks" in a Facebook post. Outspoken university lecturer Stella Nyanzi, 42, who had been detained for more than a month, collapsed as she entered the court in Kampala for the hearing. Nyanzi was initially arrested a month ago for posting critical comments about the president's wife Janet Museveni, who is also education minister, after the government reneged on plans to supply free sanitary pads to poor schoolgirls. She was subsequently charged with cyber harassment for calling Museveni "a pair of buttocks" on social media. Chief magistrate James Mwanda granted Nyanzi bail until May 25 when she is due to reappear in court to respond to prosecution claims she is mentally unwell. Wednesday's hearing was delayed by two hours after the collapse of Nyanzi, whose lawyers said needed medical attention after contracting malaria in jail. A research fellow at Makerere University in Kampala, Nyanzi has drawn attention in the conservative country for using explicit language in high profile campaigns to defend the rights of women and girls. The court denied state attorney Jonathan Muwaganya's request to order Nyanzi to refrain from making cyber attacks or derogatory statements against the president or members of his household as a condition of Nyanzi's release. Defence lawyer Nicholas Opiyo said Nyanzi's legal team feared she would be re-arrested by plain-clothed security agents after she left court. "We pray that they do not make an attempt to re-arrest her. That would be ill-advised and cast the criminal justice system in a bad light," he said. Outside the court, police arrested four protesting university students who were calling for Nyanzi's release. Last week, US ambassador Deborah Malac mentioned Nyanzi's case in a speech on World Press Freedom Day. "Dr Nyanzi's case shows that... constitutional rights and freedoms apparently have limits, particularly when those opinions are critical of the countrys leaders," she said. Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo condemned the ambassadors comments and compared Nyanzi's case to the treatment of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange by US authorities. "Though Uganda continues to uphold freedom of expression as guaranteed by our constitution, the government shall apprehend and prosecute those involved in suspected criminal transgressions in all its forms," he Opondo. Children at a camp for internally displaced persons on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on April 15, 2017 A UN official warned Wednesday that up to half a million people could be displaced as conflict escalates and the humanitarian situation worsens in Yemen's southwestern Taez province, mainly in Hodeida. "Between 100,000 and half a million people could be displaced as the conflict and humanitarian situation continue to worsen," said Shabia Mantoo, Yemen spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR. "The humanitarian situation alone continues to worsen even without the conflict intensifying," Mantoo told AFP from the Red Sea city of Hodeida. Fears of large-scale displacement are exacerbated by rampant food insecurity in Hodeida that the UNHCR says has reached critical levels. Mantoo said more women and children were begging in the streets of Hodeida, where people displaced mainly from southwestern Mokha and the city of Taez have for two years sought refuge. The United Nations estimates more than 7,700 people have been killed and millions displaced since a Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 against Huthi rebels in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. The fighting has left 19 million people -- or 60 percent of the population -- struggling to find food, the United Nations says, with a third of the country's provinces on the brink of famine. An image released in 2016 by Al-Manara al-Bayda, the official news arm of Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, allegedly shows the group's chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani The United States is offering a $10 million reward for information to identify or locate the head of Al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate the Fateh al-Sham Front. The State Department's Rewards for Justice reward for information on Abu Mohamed al-Jolani is its first for a leader of the group. He has been named a "specially designated global terrorist" by the State Department and is also listed at the United Nations Security Council. In its notice, the State Department indicates that Jolani pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda in April 2013 after falling out with the Islamic State group. He praised Al-Qaeda again in an online video posted in July 2016. Fateh al-Sham Front, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, split from Al-Qaeda in July 2016 from Al-Qaeda in a move analysts said was an abortive attempt to end its blacklisting by the United Nations and Western governments. It has a contentious relationship with some rebel groups, but many others have allied with it against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, despite its jihadist ideology. Fateh al-Sham has been excluded from the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), as well as previous talks between rebel groups and the government. "Under Jolani's leadership, ANF has carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians," the State Department notice read. "In April 2015, ANF reportedly kidnapped, and later released, approximately 300 Kurdish civilians from a checkpoint in Syria. In June 2015, ANF claimed responsibility for the massacre of 20 residents in the Druze village Qalb Lawzeh in Idlib province, Syria." More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the country's multi-layered conflict erupted with anti-government protests in March 2011. South Korea's President Moon Jae-In waves to his supporters as he arrives near the presidential Blue House in Seoul South Korea's new President Moon Jae-In and US President Donald Trump agreed Wednesday on "close cooperation" in dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, Seoul's presidential office said. In their first phone call since Moon's inauguration, the two leaders "agreed on close cooperation in resolving security concerns on the Korean peninsula including North Korea's nuclear ambitions," the Blue House said in a statement. Calling Pyongyang's atomic weapons programme a "a difficult problem that can be solved", Trump invited Moon to visit the United States "as early as possible", according to the statement. Moon was sworn in Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory following the ouster of his predecessor Park Geun-Hye over a massive corruption scandal. Moon backs engagement with the nuclear-armed North in the quest for peace -- in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks -- and has immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang. "If needed I will fly to Washington immediately," Moon said in an inauguration speech after taking the oath of office in front of lawmakers at Seoul's National Assembly building. "I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances." But Trump recently appeared to offer the prospect of a diplomatic off-ramp last week, saying he would be "honored" to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un under the right conditions. Nearly every person in Puerto Rico -- 99.5 percent of the population -- was served by water systems that had violations in 2015 The US territory of Puerto Rico has the worst drinking water in the nation, and the majority of the island's water supply is in violation of federal standards, a report said Wednesday. Nearly every person in Puerto Rico -- 99.5 percent of the population -- was served by water systems that had violations in 2015, including failure to test for contaminants or report problems to the public, said the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. "Puerto Rico suffers the worst rate of drinking water violations of any state or territory in the United States," said co-author Erik Olson, director of NRDC Health Program. More than 2.4 million people in 2015 -- or 69.4 percent of the population in Puerto Rico -- got their water from community water systems that violated the federal health-based standards, said the report, based on data from Puerto Rico's Department of Health. Nearly half of the island's water systems were found to have violations that included "unlawfully high levels of contaminants such as volatile organic compounds, total coliform bacteria, and disinfection byproducts," or otherwise broke water treatment rules, said the report. These contaminants can cause cancer, birth defects and cognitive impairments. "We found that there are serious problems with outdated and deteriorating water infrastructure, and poor implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act," said Olson. Problems also include "poor enforcement by states and territorial governments and the EPA, under-reporting of violations, and frankly, weaknesses in drinking water standards for contaminant like arsenic and lead," he told reporters on a conference call. Increased investment is needed for drinking water infrastructure, which could protect people's health and create jobs fixing Puerto Rico's water system, the report said. Olson warned that deep cuts proposed by the White House to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could further harm the water supply. "The Trump administration has proposed massive budget cuts that could make the problem worse nationally, and particularly worse in Puerto Rico," he said. These include slashing nearly a third of the EPA, and eliminating $500 million in funding for rural drinking water supplies and sewers. "That would hit rural areas very badly," he said. Earlier this month, the governor of Puerto Rico announced the US territory would seek a form of bankruptcy protection to restructure its $70 billion debt, the largest municipal restructuring in US history. By declaring bankruptcy, the US commonwealth in the Caribbean can prevent any interruption in services to island residents, Governor Ricardo Rossello said. Babar Azam of Pakistan plays a cover shot as West Indies wicketkeeper Shai Hope looks on during the first day of play, of the 3rd and final test match at the Windsor Park Stadium in Roseau, Dominica on May 10, 2017 An unbeaten 85 by Azhar Ali and 55 from Babar Azam put Pakistan in a solid position at 169 for two at stumps on a rain-shortened first day of the third and final Test against the West Indies at Windsor Park in Dominica on Wednesday. Fresh from a workman-like first innings century despite defeat in the second Test, Ali was again a model of composure in progressing towards another significant innings after over five hours at the crease during which he faced 219 deliveries, stroking two sixes and seven fours. His confidence dented after enduring the indignity of a "pair" in that loss in Barbados, Azam was less assured at the start of his innings and needed a generous slice of luck to get to his second half-century of the series. Leg-spinner Devendra Bishoo should have claimed his wicket but the right-hander, on 28, was badly missed by wicketkeeper Shane Dowrich just as play resumed in the early afternoon following the first of two stoppages for a steady, persistent drizzle. That lapse added to the increasing list of costly errors in the field for the West Indies during this 2017 international season in the Caribbean as the pair extended their second-wicket partnership to 120 when Azam eventually departed in a long final session, offering a simple catch to Kieran Powell at first slip off Alzarri Joseph. West Indies wicketkeeper Shai Hope dives but misses the catch from batsman Babar Azam of Pakistan during the first day of play, of the 3rd and final test match at the Windsor Park Stadium in Roseau, Dominica on May 10, 2017 Younis Khan, who together with captain Misbah ul Haq is playing his farewell Test, will resume in partnership with Ali on the second morning, weather permitting. Further compounding the home side's woes after Jason Holder won the toss and chose to bowl first in heavily overcast conditions was the lack of potency of his prime opening bowler, Shannon Gabriel. Although economical, Gabriel could not recapture the hostility that wrecked Pakistan's second innings on the final day of the second Test in Barbados. Sharing the new ball with Gabriel, Joseph was completely out of sorts in his first spell, prompting the introduction of Roston Chase's off-spin within the first hour's play. That resulted in the visitors' only casualty of the morning. Shan Masood, playing his first match of the series in place of the unwell Ahmed Shehzad, reached nine off 30 deliveries and prodded indecisively at a delivery from Chase for Holder to take the straightforward catch at second slip. Apart from the recall of Masood, Hasan Ali is making his debut at the expense of leg-spinner Shadab Khan, who struggled in his first appearance in the second Test. Pakistan have never won a Test series in the Caribbean on seven previous tours while the West Indies are seeking a first Test series triumph in five years against a team ranked higher than themselves. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said tech developers have a responsibility to prevent a dystopian '1984' future as the US technology titan unveiled a fresh initiative to bring artificial intelligence into the mainstream. At the start of its annual Build Conference, Microsoft sought to showcase applications with artificial intelligence that could tap into services in the internet 'cloud' and even take advantage of computing power in nearby machines. Nadella spent time on stage at the Seattle conference stressing a need to build trust in technology, saying new applications must avoid dystopian futures feared by some. Scroll down for videos Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella (pictured) opened the tech giant's Build conference by telling developers artificial intelligence does not need to lead to a dystopian future THE AI RACE Microsoft rivals including Amazon, Apple, Google and IBM have all been aggressively pursing the promise and potential of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is getting a foothold in people's homes, with personal assistants answering questions and controlling connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs. Digital assistants already boast features such as reminding people of appointments entered 'Microsoft is trying to use AI for businesses to solve business problems and app developers to make applications better,' said Moor Insights and Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead. 'Which is different from Amazon, Facebook, and Google whose primary business model is to mine personal information using AI to sell you things or put ads in front of you.' Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted during the firms annual Build Conference that developers have a responsibility to prevent a dystopian '1984' future. They should build technology that is inclusive and empowers people, all while building trust. Advertisement Nadella's presentation included images from George Orwells '1984' and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' to underscore the issue of responsibility of those creating new technologies. 'What Orwell prophesied in '1984,' where technology was being used to monitor, control, dictate, or what Huxley imagined we may do just by distracting ourselves without any meaning or purpose - neither of these futures is something that we want,' he said 'The future of computing is going to be defined by the choices that you as developers make and the impact of those choices on the world.' There is much discussion in the tech world about what AI will mean for society, especially since it is quickly driving change that could eliminate jobs, with applications such as self-driving trucks or 'bots' which take over many skilled functions. 'What happens to lower-level, blue-collar jobs that might be impacted?' Gartner research director of app design and development Jason Wong asked rhetorically. 'That is part of the dystopia that can occur because of the abruptness of AI; in less than a generation we will be seeing things like driverless cars.' Microsoft is infusing all of its products and services with AI, and enabling those who develop on its platform to imbue creations with customized capabilities, according to executive vice president of artificial intelligence and research Harry Shum. 'We've been creating the building blocks for the current wave of AI breakthroughs for more than two decades,' Shum said. Microsoft research has gone deep into areas such as machine learning, speech recognition, and enabling machines to recognize what they 'see.' 'Now, we're in the unique position of being able to use those decades of research breakthroughs,' Shum said. Nadella's presentation included images from George Orwells '1984' and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' to underscore the issue of responsibility of those creating new technologies Microsoft rivals including Amazon, Apple, Google and IBM have all been aggressively pursing the promise and potential of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is getting a foothold in people's homes, with personal assistants answering questions and controlling connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs. Digital assistants already boast features such as reminding people of appointments entered into calendars and chiming in with advice to set out early if traffic is challenging. Microsoft's aim on Wednesday was on businesses and software developers, whether they be students building mobile games or professional technology teams. FACEBOOK WANTS TO READ YOU MIND Facebook revealed the first details of a secretive project to develop a radical 'mind reading' system last month, which would allow people to communicate via thought and 'hear' through their skin. It is developing optical sensors to allow people to type at speeds of 100 words per minute simply by thinking, and radical touch interfaces that transmit information by putting pressure on skin, rather like a 'super braille'. According to Regina Dugan, the head of Facebook's secretive building 8, the system would allow users to 'text a friend without taking out your phone, or send an email without leaving the party'. 'To be clear, we are not talking about decoding your random thoughts,' she said. 'You take many photos, you choose to share some of them. 'Similarly, you have many thoughts, you choose to share some of them.' The project has only recently begun, she revealed. 'Six months ago we had the idea this might be possible, and today we have a team of 60, and we are just getting started,' she said. 'Together we have a goal of typing 100 words per minute straight from your brain.' However, Dugan admits that much of the technology needed simply doesn't yet exist. Advertisement 'Microsoft is trying to use AI for businesses to solve business problems and app developers to make applications better,' said Moor Insights and Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead. 'Which is different from Amazon, Facebook, and Google whose primary business model is to mine personal information using AI to sell you things or put ads in front of you.' Microsoft is taking a unique approach by letting developers customize gesture commands, voice recognition and more instead of making them conform to settings in 'off-the-shelf' AI, according to the analyst. A week after President Donald Trump's inauguration, George Orwell's '1984' is the best-selling book on Amazon.com, as many are comparing it to today's America. However, a researcher believes 2017 is much stranger than Orwell could have imagined Microsoft executives used demonstrations to depict a near future in which artificial intelligence hosted online works with internet linked devices such as construction site cameras to alert workers of dangers, available tools, or unauthorized activities. Devices like smart surveillance cameras, smartphones, or factory floor machines were referred to as 'edge computing,' with the coordination of cloud power and intelligent edge devices improving productivity and safety on the ground. Nadella also told developers that some 500 million devices now run on Microsoft's latest Windows 10 operating system, creating a huge audience for their software creations. Microsoft's online Office 365 service has some 100 million commercial users monthly, while its Cortana digital assistant is used by 140 million people monthly. 'The future is a smart cloud,' Nadella said, predicting that mobile devices will take back seats to digital assistants that follow people from device to device. 'It is a pretty amazing world you can create using intelligent cloud and intelligent edge.' The White House has already given the Pentagon the green light to deliver weapons to the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG), a group of Kurdish fighters battling IS extremists The United States will soon start delivering weapons to Syria's Kurdish fighters, despite furious Turkish objections, a US military spokesman said. A first consignment of weapons is already in place for delivery and could be dispatched to the Kurds "very quickly," said US Colonel John Dorrian, a military spokesman for the anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition in Baghdad. The White House has already given the Pentagon the green light to deliver weapons to the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG), a group of Kurdish fighters battling IS extremists. The decision to arm the Kurds had already provoked anger in Turkey, which says the YPG are linked to its own domestic Kurdish separatist group the PKK, or Kurdish Workers Party. The PKK has been waging a bloody armed campaign since 1994 that has left thousands of dead, and is deemed a terrorist organization by both Ankara and its western allies. Turkey fears weapons delivered to Syrian fighters could end up in the hands of the PKK and be turned on Turkish targets. But the US insists the arms being delivered are carefully calibrated to the needs of an anticipated offensive against the main IS base in the Syrian town of Raqa, and that they will keep tabs on all the weapons being deployed. "Every single one of these weapons that are being provided to our partner force, we intend to account for them, and to ensure that they are pointed at ISIS," said Dorrian, referring to the Islamic State group. The US shipments will include heavy machine guns to be used against IS truck bombs, mortars, small arms and ammunition, as well as armored vehicles and equipment to detect landmines, Dorrian said. The dispute over how best to tackle IS in Syria has soured ties between the two NATO allies during the past year. Last month, Turkish warplanes bombed YPG positions in northeastern Syria, angering Washington. You are here: Home Flash China firmly opposed a U.S. congressional delegation's visit to the Dalai Lama, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Wednesday, telling U.S. lawmakers to use caution when dealing with issues related to Tibet. Media reported that a U.S. congressional delegation, led by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, visited the Dalai Lama in India Tuesday. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told a routine press briefing that the Dalai Lama is a political exile who has long engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the guise of religion. In meeting with the Dalai Lama, U.S. lawmakers sent an incorrect message to the world and violated the U.S. government pledge not to support "Tibetan independence," Geng said. "U.S. lawmakers should cease contact with the Dalai Lama and take measures to rectify the negative impact of their actions," Geng added. Protesters hold placards and chant in front of the White House during a protest demanding an independent investigation into the Trump administration/Russia ties on May 10, 2017 For many in Washington, US President Donald Trump's shock firing of FBI director James Comey has sparked instant comparisons to the actions of Richard Nixon and the Watergate era's infamous "Saturday Night Massacre." On October 20, 1973, Nixon crossed a fateful line by trying to rid himself of the independent special prosecutor who was investigating the Watergate scandal. The prosecutor, Archibald Cox, had issued a subpoena for copies of secret tape recordings of Nixon's Oval Office conversations. The tape recordings were key to proving Nixon's complicity in a sweeping cover-up of a break-in the year before at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate, an office and residential complex on the Potomac. Stung, Nixon reacted by ordering his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest, so the president ordered the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, to do his bidding. But Ruckelshaus also resigned rather than carry out the order. Both men had promised Congress that Cox would not be fired, except for just cause. That left Cox's firing to the solicitor general, Robert Bork, who was next in line as acting attorney general. Bork, who had made no promises to Congress, dismissed Cox. The episode was a political and public relations disaster for Nixon. For the first time, polls taken after Cox's firing showed the public was shifting in favor of Nixon's impeachment. Cox was replaced by another special prosecutor, and Nixon eventually agreed to release transcripts of many of the tapes. But the momentum toward impeachment became insurmountable, and Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974. - Nixon smiling? - Students of the era see striking similarities to Trump's firing of Comey, but also differences. On October 20, 1973, Nixon crossed a fateful line by trying to rid himself of the independent special prosecutor who was investigating the Watergate scandal "In both, an angry and besieged president acted to remove an independent figure who was aggressively investigating people in the president's inner circle," Andrew Kent, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, told AFP. One significant difference is that the president has full authority to fire the FBI director whereas, by law, Cox could only be fired "for cause." Yet, only one other FBI director has been fired -- in 1993, then president Bill Clinton sacked William Sessions, and that was over relatively small-bore ethics infractions. FBI directors traditionally have had enormous independence, and have guarded it jealously. Democrats argue that Comey's firing underscores the need for a special counsel to investigate Russia's alleged meddling in the US election. "Let's remember that we face a looming constitutional crisis, very much like happened in 1973, the midnight massacre. This episode has very much the feel of that chapter in our history, one that we should not repeat," Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said on CNN. John Dean, Nixon's former White House counsel and a central protagonist of the Watergate scandal, on the other hand, says Trump's actions don't have the same feel at all. "Archibald Cox was defying the president and taking his own course of action and making a decision that was very much placing Nixon in jeopardy," he said on PBS News Hour Tuesday. The FBI is investigating whether Trump's campaign aides colluded with Russia to try to tilt the US election in his favor. But the Trump administration cited "serious mistakes" in the director's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email as the reason for his dismissal. "Somewhere Dick Nixon is smiling," Roger Stone, a Trump associate who once worked for Nixon, told The New York Times. "Comey's credibility was shot. The irony is that Trump watched him talk about bumbling the Hillary investigation, not the Russia investigation -- and decided it was time to get rid of him." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said a special prosecutor for the investigation into Russian election interference "could only serve to impede the current work being done" US President Donald Trump's decision to sack FBI director James Comey unnerved members of Congress Wednesday, dividing Republicans and infuriating Democrats who have begun pushing back against the White House after its bombshell announcement. Comey's ouster has raised urgent questions over the future of the FBI probe into what US intelligence has called Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's team. With tensions running high on Capitol Hill, the Democratic opposition called for the Justice Department to appoint a so-called special counsel to oversee the investigation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected that suggestion. "Today we will no doubt hear calls for a new investigation which could only serve to impede the current work being done," McConnell told the chamber. Comey was officially sacked for mishandling a high-stakes probe into the emails of Trump's presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. But the White House explanation was greeted with overwhelming skepticism from Democrats, and some Republicans. Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, leading calls for a special counsel, said there was "little reason to think" it was the true reason Trump fired Comey. "We know director Comey was leading an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians," Schumer said. "Were those investigations getting too close to home for the president?" Republicans seeking to steady a listing ship focused on some of their more prominent priorities, notably health care. But the Comey crisis has rocked Capitol Hill. Newly installed acting FBI director Andrew McCabe testifies Thursday in an open hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of three Senate panels investigating the Russia allegations. And committee aides confirmed that Comey has been invited to testify Tuesday in a closed-door session. - Subpoena issued - In a sharp new development in the Russia probe, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced Wednesday it issued a subpoena to Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn for Russia-related documents. Former US National Security Advisor Michael Flynn attends a press conference by Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House on February 13, 2017 The committee said in a statement that it "first requested these documents in an April 28, 2017 letter to Lieutenant General Flynn, but he declined, through counsel, to cooperate." Flynn was sacked after lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to Washington, leaving him vulnerable to leverage from Moscow. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr told reporters he did not feel an independent inquiry was necessary. Even though the timing and reasoning of Comey's firing "doesn't make sense to me," he said, he was proceeding with the committee probe. "I hope to do it in a bipartisan way, but the investigation will run its course," Burr said. Schumer signaled his anger with McConnell's refusal to back an independent special prosecutor by giving the green light to a Democratic work slowdown, which drew on an obscure Senate rule that bars committee hearings from operating beyond mid-day. Democrats threw up another hurdle when Senator Ron Wyden announced a "hold" on a US Treasury nomination until the department provides documents related to Russia and its financial dealings with Trump. Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal suggested another far more consequential tactic, as he indicated he would vote against any new FBI director nominee "until there was support for a special prosecutor." Several Republicans meanwhile joined Democrats in expressing concern about the details of Comey's dismissal. Senate Republican John McCain said he has long-backed a "special congressional committee," while moderate Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski said they were studying the option. "There's no question that we are in a very volatile, sensitive and fragile time in this nation," Senator Tim Scott said. "The White House's timing of the firing was less than impeccable," added fellow Republican Senator John Kennedy. Migrants whose boat was intercepted by the Libyan coastguard in the Mediterranean arrive at a naval base in the capital Tripoli on May 10, 2017 Libya's coastguard on Wednesday intercepted a wooden boat packed with almost 500 migrants after duelling with a German rescue ship and coming under fire from traffickers, the navy said. The migrants, who were bound for Italy, were picked up off the western city of Sabratha, said navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem. The German non-governmental organisation "Sea-Watch tried to disrupt the coastguard operation... inside Libyan waters and wanted to take the migrants, on the pretext that Libya wasn't safe," Qassem told AFP. Sea-Watch posted a video on Twitter of what it said was a Libyan coastguard vessel narrowly cutting across the bow of its ship. "This EU-funded Libyan patrol vessel almost crashed (into) our civil rescue ship," read the caption. Qassem also said the coastguard had come under fire from people traffickers, without reporting any casualties. The 493 migrants included 277 from Morocco and many from Bangladesh, said Qassem, and 20 women and a child were aboard the boat. All were taken to a naval base in Tripoli. There were also migrants from Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan, Chad, Mali and Nigeria, he added. According to international organisations, between 800,000 and one million people, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, are currently in Libya hoping to make the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe. Between 7,000 and 8,000 migrants are being held in Libyan detention centres after entering the country illegally, an immigration official said on Tuesday. The North African country has long been a stepping stone for migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Smugglers have stepped up their lucrative business in the chaos which has engulfed Libya since its 2011 revolution. The CIA created its first single country-focused mission center, pulling together resources from a range of units to collect and analyze information on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons The US Central Intelligence Agency said Wednesday it had formed a special unit dedicated to assessing North Korea's nuclear weapons threat. The CIA created its first single country-focused mission center, pulling together resources from a range of units to collect and analyze information on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile technology that could extend its military threat across the Pacific. The move comes as North Korea appears poised to undertake its sixth nuclear test, a move that would exacerbate jitters across East Asia. The US has not ruled out a military strike to prevent Pyongyang from advancing its nuclear capabilities. "Just as the threats facing our nation are dynamic, so too must the CIA continue to evolve to address them," CIA spokesman Jonathan Liu said. In 2015, the CIA created 10 mission centers in a modernization effort to break down the "stove-piping" of its different operations. The units bring together people from different sides of the agency -- analysis, operations, cyber and others -- who previously may have not cooperated closely into six regional and four subject-focused groupings. "Creating the Korea Mission Center allows us to more purposefully integrate and direct CIA efforts against the serious threats to the United States and its allies emanating from North Korea," said CIA Director Mike Pompeo in a statement. LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) - It's not a movie set, but visitors to Disney World's new Pandora-World of Avatar land are in for a cinematic experience. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida in late May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars to build. The marquee attraction is Flight of Passage, where a 3-D simulator plunges riders into a cinematic world. You feel like you're riding on the back of a banshee, a bluish, gigantic, winged predator that resembles something out of the Jurassic era. Wearing 3-D glasses and straddling what resembles a stationary motorcycle, you're strapped in, then the lights go out, a screen in front lights up and you're swooped into a world of blue, gigantic aliens called Na'vi, with moon-filled skies, plunging waterfalls, jumping marine animals and towering ocean waves. In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, the Na'vi Shaman of Songs celebrates with music in Na'vi River Journey ride at Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) The ride provides an enchanting and intoxicating five minutes that touches all the senses. Blasts of air and spritzes of mist hit your face, and as you fly through a lush forest, a woodsy aroma wafts through your nostrils. A visitor could go on the ride 20 times and not catch half the visual details. Disney designers are quick to say the new land is the star of the action, not the backdrop. "The character is being portrayed and played by the place itself and that's different than a set," said Joe Rohde, the design and production leader of Pandora -World of Avatar. Other aspects of Pandora can't quite compete with the excitement and immersion of Flight of Passage. Much of Pandora, at least during the daytime, is hard to distinguish from the rest of Animal Kingdom, Disney's almost 20-year-old zoological-themed park with lush landscaping, an emphasis on conservation and a Noah's ark range of animals. At night, though, Pandora transforms into a sea of color with glowing lights on artificial plants and even in the pavement. The enormous blue Na'vi aliens from the "Avatar" movie appear sparingly, really just on Flight of Passage and a second attraction called Na'vi River Journey. Before going on Flight of Passage, visitors walk through a tunnel in a faux mountain until they stumble upon a laboratory that includes a Na'vi floating in a tank. "It's not as simple as a guy in a costume painted blue walking around out here," Rohde said of the aliens. "We know they are culturally present around us but we will meet them when we go on an excursion." The other main attraction, Na'vi River Journey, is an indoor river ride in the dark, lit up by glowing creatures and plants. The ride culminates with a Na'vi animatronic woman beating on drums as a chorus of voices reaches a crescendo. Images of the Na'vi riding horse-like creatures appear behind lush foliage, glimpsed in the distance from the river. Disney has been building attractions themed on movies since Disneyland opened in 1955 with rides inspired by Snow White, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. Often, as with Pandora, the attractions open years after the movies debut. "Avatar" came out in 2009. Director James Cameron's sequel isn't due out until 2020. Lands based on "Star Wars" are scheduled to open in Disney parks in California and Florida in 2019. Pandora-World of Avatar isn't tied to a narrative from the film but rather tells a story set in the future, after humans degraded the jungle through industrial folly and a resurgence of nature overtakes the human-built environment. That theme is a recurring architectural motif, for example with a beverage stand and cantina made to look like they were built for industry by humans but then overrun by plant life. Throughout Pandora, real plants intermingle with artificial plants that resemble alien pods or Dale Chihuly glass sculptures. It's difficult to distinguish what is real. "We were trying to get as close as possible to fool the eye," said Zsolt Hormay, a Disney creative executive. At the entrance, visitors hear a cacophony of bird chirps and animal cries. A circle of drums connected to faux tree roots allows visitors to drum and then get a response of drumming or pulsing lights. The focal points are a 135-foot (41-meter) mountaintop where Flight of Passage is located as well as "floating mountains" that appear to be suspended in air but are actually made of concrete. Engineers use tricks to make the park appear bigger than it is. The artificial foliage gets smaller as it goes higher on the mountain to give it the illusion of distance. Disney also is testing out a new way to order food at Pandora. Before going to the park, visitors can pull up a menu on the My Disney Experience mobile app, order lunch and go about visiting the park. When it's time to eat hours later, they can go to the canteen, tap on an app a button that notifies the cooks they are present. Several minutes later their food will be ready in a special line. Jon Landau, executive producer of the original movie, says he hopes Pandora does for visitors what the film did for movie-goers. "I hope when people come to Pandora and their eyes will be open and they will look at the world a little differently when they go back across the bridge," Landau said. In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, a water creature floats in a pond at Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, Joe Rohde, design and production leader for Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction, explains about the caverns and the meaning of the cave drawings of the Na'vi, the native inhabitants of the planet Pandora at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, landscaping consisting of real Earth plant species mixed with sculpted Pandora artificial flora is surrounded by ponds and gentle waterfalls at the Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, some of the menu items are displayed at the Satu'li Canteen restaurant at Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, landscaping consisting of real Earth plant species mixed with sculpted Pandora artificial flora is surrounded by ponds and gentle waterfalls at the Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, park guests will see a Na'vi in a science lab while in the queue for the Avatar Flight of Passage ride at Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, landscaping consisting of real Earth plant species mixed with sculpted Pandora artificial flora is surrounded by ponds and gentle waterfalls at the Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars. (AP Photo/John Raoux) In this Saturday, April 29, 2017 photo, floating mountains are part of the scenery at Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the "Avatar" movie, opens in Florida at the end of May at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars.(AP Photo/John Raoux) PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) - In a story May 8 about the remains of a sailor killed at Pearl Harbor being returned to Michigan for burial, The Associated Press reported erroneously the date that graveside military honors will be held. They will be Saturday, May 20, not this Saturday. A corrected version of the story is below: Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor to be buried in Michigan The remains of a Michigan sailor killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor will be returned to Port Huron, Michigan, for burial on his family's cemetery plot PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) - The remains of a Michigan sailor killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor will be returned to Port Huron, Michigan, for burial on his family's cemetery plot. Karrer-Simpson Funeral Home released a statement Monday saying the Navy recently identified the remains of Fred M. Jones. The 30-year-old was aboard the USS Oklahoma during the attack on Dec. 8, 1941. The funeral home says his escorted casket will arrive at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and graveside military honors will be conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Navy on May 20 at Lakeside Cemetery in Port Huron. A grandniece of Jones, Sue Nichols of Burton, Michigan, tells the Port Huron Times Herald (http://bwne.ws/2pUPi1Y ) the family is grateful for the discovery of his remains. AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A pastor at a Dallas-area megachurch says Texas Gov. Greg Abbott contacted him and leaders at nine other churches, urging them to drum up support for a hotly debated "bathroom bill" currently bottled up in the Legislature. Robert Morris, of Gateway Church in Southlake, instructed his congregation over the weekend to pressure state lawmakers to advance a bill prohibiting schools and local communities from creating ordinances designed to protect transgender Texans using public bathrooms. Morris said the measure is "being held up right now" by Republican House Speaker Joe Straus, who opposes it. Senators passed a bill requiring transgender people to use public restrooms corresponding to their birth-certificate sex. A separate House version hasn't reached a floor vote. Morris was part of Donald Trump's presidential campaign's evangelical advisory board. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Tuna-canning company Bumble Bee Foods has agreed to pay a $25 million fine after pleading guilty to conspiring with competitors to fix prices, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday. The San Diego-based company will also cooperate with an ongoing antitrust investigation into the packaged seafood industry, the federal agency said. The fine will increase to $81.5 million if the company is sold. The criminal charge reflects broader concerns about competition within the industry. Federal civil litigation in California has alleged price-fixing collusion by Bumble Bee and its competitors. The Justice Department said in December that Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, a rival company, were abandoning a planned merger after the department raised concerns that the transaction would harm competition. "Companies small and large hold a great deal of the American peoples' trust and this type of unfair, greedy behavior will not be tolerated," said FBI agent John Bennett, head of the agency's San Francisco office, which is leading the investigation. Two Bumble Bee executives pleaded guilty to price-fixing charges last year and have agreed to cooperate with the federal investigation. Company general counsel Jill Irvin said Bumble Bee hired a chief compliance officer last fall and recently reformed its guidelines and policies. "The company has taken this matter very seriously and fully cooperated with the DOJ from the start of the investigation," Irvin said. "We accept full responsibility for needing to earn back any lost trust in our company and will do so by acting with integrity and transparency in every way we operate our business." RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The first federal appeals court to hear a challenge to President Donald Trump's revised travel ban appeared unconvinced that it should ignore the Republican's repeated promises on the campaign trail to bar Muslims from entering the country. An attorney for the president urged the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday to focus on the text of the religiously neutral executive order rather than use campaign statements to infer that the policy was driven by anti-Muslim sentiment. But that idea was challenged by some members of the 13-judge panel, which is examining a ruling that blocks the administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Protesters hold signs and march in front of the State Capitol across the street from the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., Monday, May 8, 2017. The court will examine a ruling that blocks the administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It's the first time an appeals court will hear arguments on the revised travel ban, which is likely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.(AP Photo/Steve Helber) "Is there anything other than willful blindness that would prevent us from getting behind those statements?" asked Judge Henry Floyd, who was appointed to the court by President Barack Obama. The 4th Circuit ruling is crucial for Trump, whose travel ban is expected to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. The 4th Circuit is the first appeals court to examine the revised travel ban, which Trump's administration rewrote in an attempt to thwart legal challenges. It's unclear when the judges will issue their written decision. Trump's attorneys likely see the moderate court as friendlier territory than the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which conservatives have long attacked for being too liberal. The 9th Circuit is scheduled to hear another challenge to the revised travel ban next week. The 4th Circuit "is historically quite conservative and quite pro-government, so for the Trump administration to lose before the full 4th Circuit I think would be quite a body blow for the second version of the executive order," said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas law school. A federal judge in Maryland who blocked the revised travel ban in March cited Trump's comments as evidence that the executive order is a realization of Trump's promised Muslim ban. The administration argues that the court shouldn't question the president's national security decisions based on campaign statements. The countries were chosen because they present terrorism risks and the ban applies to everyone in those countries regardless of religion, it says. "This is not a Muslim ban. Its text doesn't have to anything to do with religion. Its operation doesn't have anything to do with religion," Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall told the court. Omar Jadwat, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, noted that Trump's call for a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the U.S. remained on his campaign website even after he took office. That call, which was still online earlier Monday, appeared to have been taken down by the afternoon hearing. Jadwat said the administration has failed to provide a legitimate national security reason for the policy. "The order is completely unprecedented in our nation's history," Jadwat said. Judge Paul Niemeyer repeatedly challenged Jadwat's arguments, questioning the wisdom in opening the door to using a president's past to evaluate the constitutionality of a policy. "Can we look at his college speeches? How about his speeches to business men 20 years ago?" asked Niemeyer, who was tapped by President George H. W. Bush. The first travel ban in January triggered chaos and protests across the country as travelers were stopped from boarding international flights and detained at airports for hours. After a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit refused in February to let the travel ban take effect, the administration tweaked the order and issued a new one. The new version made it clear the 90-day ban covering those six countries doesn't apply to those who already have valid visas. It removed language that would give priority to religious minorities and erased Iraq from the list of banned countries. But critics said that although the new executive order affects fewer people, it remains a realization of Trump's promised Muslim ban and cannot stand. Even if the Trump administration wins in the 4th Circuit, the travel ban will remain on hold unless it also overturns a federal judge's decision in Hawaii. Vladeck said the Supreme Court may be more willing to hear the case if there's a split among the appeals courts. But Richard Primus, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Michigan law school, said he thinks the Supreme Court will ultimately hear the case no matter what the appeals courts decide. "A case this big, a case this salient, is one that some of the justices are not going to want to pass up," he said. ___ Associated Press writer Sarah Rankin contributed to this report. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer at http://twitter.com/aedurkinricher . Read more of her work at http://apne.ws/2hIhzDb . Protesters hold signs and march outside the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., Monday, May 8, 2017. The court will examine a ruling that blocks the administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It's the first time an appeals court will hear arguments on the revised travel ban, which is likely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.(AP Photo/Steve Helber) American Civil Liberties Attorney, Omar Jadwat, gestures as he speaks after a hearing before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., Monday, May 8, 2017. The court is examining a ruling that blocks the administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It's the first time an appeals court is hearing arguments on the revised travel ban, which is likely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) Protesters hold signs and march outside the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., Monday, May 8, 2017. The court will examine a ruling that blocks the administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It's the first time an appeals court will hear arguments on the revised travel ban, which is likely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.(AP Photo/Steve Helber) People protest outside the federal courthouse in Richmond, Va., Monday, May 8, 2017. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday is examining a ruling that blocks President Donald Trump's administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It's the first time an appeals court is hearing arguments on the revised travel ban, which is likely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Steve McMillan) Protesters hold signs and march outside the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., Monday, May 8, 2017. The court will examine a ruling that blocks the administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It's the first time an appeals court will hear arguments on the revised travel ban, which is likely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.(AP Photo/Steve Helber) FILE - This Tuesday Sept. 27, 2016 file photo shows Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Chief Justice Roger Gregory during an interview in his office in Richmond, Va. Gregory will preside over the full 15-judge court will hear the a lawsuit challenging President Trump's travel ban. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) FILE - This Tuesday Sept. 27, 2016 file photo shows Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Chief Justice Roger Gregory, during an interview in his office in Richmond, Va. Gregory will preside over the full 15-judge court will hear the a lawsuit challenging President Trump's travel ban. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) ROME (AP) - Two wrecks of migrant ships in the Mediterranean have claimed as many as 245 lives, including those of at least five children, according to survivor accounts given to U.N. agencies and authorities in Sicily, where dozens of rescued migrants were taken. Survivors of one wreck, some of them hospitalized in Pozzallo, Sicily, where they were being treated for hypothermia and exhaustion, told authorities who interviewed them that their traffickers had crammed some 130-140 people, apparently all from central African countries, into a motorized rubber dinghy designed to hold at most 20 people. The dinghy started deflating on one end, the passengers quickly shifted their positions in the boat, and the craft tipped over, authorities said, based on numerous survivors' descriptions. A woman carrying a baby disembarks from the Norwegian ship Siem Pilot, at the Salerno harbor, southern Italy, Tuesday May 9, 2017. The ship was carrying 991 migrants and the body of a three-year old child. (Massimo Pica/ANSA via AP) The officials spoke on condition of anonymity since the shipwreck is being investigated. The dinghy wasn't equipped with any distress signaling equipment. The 50 or so survivors clung for hours to the wreckage of the dinghy until they were spotted by a patrol plane and rescued by a Danish cargo ship, which was dispatched to their aid by the Italian Coast Guard, which coordinates rescue operations. One survivor is a Nigerian woman, whose 5-month-old baby died. The infant's corpse was one of the few bodies so far recovered, authorities said. Police in Sicily said in a statement that many of the survivors recounted that among the 80 or so who drowned was one of the smugglers who had been steering the boat. "They couldn't even remember who saved them. They were completely shocked and traumatized," said Carlotta Sami, Rome-based spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency. Meanwhile, at its Geneva headquarters, the refugee agency said that one of its partner agencies, the International Medical Corps, reported a shipwreck on Sunday off the Libyan coast in which 163 people are missing and feared dead. The U.N. agency said one woman and six men were rescued by the Libyan Coast Guard. That boat was intercepted by the Libyan coast guard, said the UNHRC's Sami, who had no other details. Many of those who brave the risky central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy are migrants from Africa seeking to flee from conflicts, political persecution at home or to find better economic opportunities in Europe. Overall, UNHCR said Tuesday that more than 1,300 people have disappeared and are believed to have died this year while crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa to Italy, while some 43,000 migrants and asylum-seekers reached Italy. The International Organization for Migration, in separate remarks, gave a lower estimate of the total number of migrant lives lost - 190 - in the two shipwrecks. It estimated about 80 people died from the sinking of the dinghy off Italy, and at least 113 following the shipwreck off the coast near Az Zawiyah, Libya. IOM said its Rome branch, meanwhile, was reporting operations to help 6,612 people rescued from a dozen locations off Italy since Friday. IOM spokesman Joel Millman feared the better weather has been feeding the Mediterranean's traditional summer migration surge. "There is normally pent-up demand," Millman said. "The summer tends to be very, very busy because sea conditions are better." And in Spain on Tuesday, officials said about 300 migrants tried to scramble across the 6-meter (20-foot) border fence separating Spain's North African enclave of Melilla from Morocco, with many throwing stones and other objects at police. Melilla's Interior Ministry said most of the migrants were pushed back by Spanish and Moroccan police, but about 100 managed to enter the city. It said three officers and three migrants were treated for injuries. Many of the thousands of economic migrants or refugees who have been brought to Italy after rescue at sea told authorities that they spent months in inhumane detention facilities in Libya, often suffering torture, sexual abuse or labor exploitation, before the smugglers sent them out to sea. A Rome-based IOM spokesman, Flavio Di Giacomo, said in an interview in Tuesday's La Stampa newspaper that there have been recent indications that some migrants have decided to flee the harsh conditions in Libya to return to their homelands, renouncing their dream of reaching Europe and safety, although "the majority take the risk of the sea." And that voyage is getting ever riskier. Sami told The Associated Press in an interview that the smugglers no longer provide satellite phones so the migrants can call for help, "nor engines or even fuel." "They are completely adrift" and at the mercy of sea, Sami said. In some cases, migrants have recounted that their smugglers removed the dinghy's motor and sped off in another dinghy after traveling a few miles out from Libya. The IOM said 41,196 migrants have arrived in Italy this year, up from around 31,000 in the same period last year. Some 1,222 have died. The figure for the Mediterranean as a whole, including Greece, Cyprus and Spain, was 49,310 as of Sunday. For the same period last year, the total number of sea arrivals was far higher - 187,569. That was because some 155,000 arrived in Greece from Turkey, compared with only 5,555 this year. ___ Keaten reported from Geneva. Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed. Frances D'Emilio is on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/fdemilio A coffin is carried off the Norwegian ship Siem Pilot, at the Salerno harbor, southern Italy, Tuesday May 9, 2017. The ship was carrying 991 migrants and the body of a three-year old child. (Massimo Pica/ANSA via AP) A coffin is carried off the Norwegian ship Siem Pilot, at the Salerno harbor, southern Italy, Tuesday May 9, 2017. The ship was carrying 991 migrants and the body of a three-year old child. (Massimo Pica/ANSA via AP) CLEVELAND (AP) - The wife and three children of a bedridden man who authorities say died from gross neglect have pleaded guilty to charges in a Cleveland courtroom. Sixty-year-old Debora Brichacek (brik-AY'-sik) pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter on Monday in the December 2015 death of Richard Brichacek, who suffered from a neurological disorder. Wendi Brichacek, Debbi Brichacek and Brian Brichacek pleaded guilty to attempted felonious assault on Monday. All four were originally charged with murder. This undated photo provided by the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Office of the Prosecutor in Cleveland shows Debora Brichacek, who pleaded guilty Monday, May 8, 2017, to involuntary manslaughter in the December 2015 death of Richard Brichacek, of Euclid, Ohio. Prosecutors say Richard Brichacek had maggot-infested bedsores that exposed a bone in his leg, was severely malnourished and weighed just 93 pounds when he died, and the family's home was declared unfit for habitation. Children Wendi Brichacek, Debbi Brichacek and Brian Brichacek pleaded guilty to attempted felonious assault Monday. All four were originally charged with murder. (Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor via AP) Prosecutors say 63-year-old Richard Brichacek had maggot-infested bedsores that exposed a bone in his leg. He weighed just 93 pounds when he died and was severely malnourished. The family's home in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid was declared unfit for habitation. Sentencing is set for June 7. None of the Brichaceks' attorneys were immediately available for comment Tuesday. This undated photo provided by the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Office of the Prosecutor in Cleveland shows Wendi Brichacek, who pleaded guilty Monday, May 8, 2017, to attempted felonious assault in the December 2015 death of her father, Richard Brichacek, of Euclid, Ohio. Prosecutors say Richard Brichacek had maggot-infested bedsores that exposed a bone in his leg, was severely malnourished and weighed just 93 pounds when he died, and the family's home was declared unfit for habitation. Debora Brichacek pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter Monday, May 8, 2017, and children Debbi Brichacek and Brian Brichacek also pleaded guilty to attempted felonious assault Monday, May 8, 2017. All four were originally charged with murder. (Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor via AP) This undated photo provided by the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Office of the Prosecutor in Cleveland shows Debbi Brichacek, who pleaded guilty Monday, May 8, 2017, to attempted felonious assault in the December 2015 death of her father, Richard Brichacek, of Euclid, Ohio. Prosecutors say Richard Brichacek had maggot-infested bedsores that exposed a bone in his leg, was severely malnourished and weighed just 93 pounds when he died, and the family's home was declared unfit for habitation. Debora Brichacek pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter Monday, May 8, 2017, and Wendi Brichacek and Brian Brichacek also pleaded guilty to attempted felonious assault Monday, May 8, 2017. All four were originally charged with murder. (Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor via AP) FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - The Latest on fights that broke out a Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights (all times local): 12:15 p.m. Less than a day after skirmishes broke out in Spirit Airlines' Fort Lauderdale terminal because of canceled flights, a federal judge has sided with the carrier and ordered its unionized pilots to stop boycotting flights as part of a labor action. Airport Security and a Broward Sherriff's Deputy keep an eye on the line at Spirit Airlines, Tuesday, May 9, 2017, at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Skirmishes involving irate passengers broke out at the Florida airport Monday following the cancellation of multiple Spirit Airlines flights. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP) District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas issued the order Tuesday, saying Spirit likely would win its lawsuit charging that the Airline Pilots Association was engaged in work slowdowns that violated federal law. The union has denied the accusation. Three New York residents were arrested Monday night after scuffles broke out Spirit's terminal at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Sheriff's reports released say about 500 people were in the terminal when 22-year-old Desmond Waul of Selden and 24-year-old Janice Waul and 22 year-old Davante Garrett, both of Brentwood, were seen by deputies threatening the airline's front counter employees. They are charged with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. They were being held Tuesday at the Broward jail in lieu of $10,000 bond each. Records do not show if they have attorneys. ____ 10:30 a.m. The Broward Sheriff's Office says three New York residents were arrested as irate passengers skirmished at Fort Lauderdale's airport after Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights. Sheriff's reports released Tuesday say about 500 people were in the Spirit terminal late Monday night when 22-year-old Desmond Waul of Selden and 24-year-old Janice Waul and 22 year-old Davante Garrett, both of Brentwood, were seen by deputies threatening the airline's front counter employees. Deputies say their actions caused the crowd to become increasingly aggressive to the point of near violence and that they wouldn't leave when ordered. The three are charged with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. They were being held Tuesday at the Broward jail in lieu of $10,000 bond each. Records do not show if they have attorneys. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was the scene of a January mass shooting that killed five people and wounded six. 8:30 a.m. Skirmishes involving irate passengers broke out at a Florida airport following the cancellation of multiple Spirit Airlines flights. Broward Sheriff's officials tell ABC News that deputies were called to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Monday to deal with angry passengers. Videos posted online show deputies trying to break up fights and detaining some unruly passengers. CBS News reports nine flights were canceled. In a statement, airline officials say they're "shocked and saddened" to see videos of the airport incident. They blame the Airline Pilots Association for the cancellations, adding they've filed a lawsuit against the pilots association over an "unlawful job action." The association tells CBS that Spirit pilots aren't engaged in any job action with Spirit and that the airline's operations "have experienced significant problems over the past several days." Latreece Smith rests as her friend Tamari Cameron checks flight information, Tuesday, May 9, 2017, at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Skirmishes involving irate passengers broke out at the Florida airport Monday following the cancellation of multiple Spirit Airlines flights. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP) BERLIN (AP) - The German government is planning on clamping down on North Korea, which has been using parts of its Berlin embassy as a youth hostel and conference center, amid growing concerns about its nuclear program. The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday confirmed a report from Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung paper and NDR and WRD broadcasters that the operations were to be soon shut down in line with increased U.N. sanctions against North Korea. The outlets reported the embassy receives a "high five-figure" monthly sum from the operator of the facilities, located in the middle of Berlin not far from landmarks like the Brandenburg Gate. Deputy foreign minister Markus Ederer said in a statement that Germany "needs to increase pressure to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table." PORT RICHEY, Fla. (AP) - Authorities say a Florida man who made death threats against Iowa's governor and other state officials has been arrested. The Tampa Bay Times (https://goo.gl/iz5kQ4) reports that Pasco County deputies arrested 59-year-old Richard Gillow on Monday and charged him with making written threats to kill. Authorities say the Port Richey man posted on Facebook and sent emails saying he was going to kill Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, Attorney General Tom Miller, Guardian Ad Litem Kim Ayotte and an employee of the state's Department of Human Services. An investigator in Iowa tipped off Florida authorities to the threat. Officials say Gillow believed the Iowa officials were involved in the removal of his grandchildren from his daughter's custody. Jail records didn't list an attorney for Gillow. He was freed on $10,000 bail. ___ Information from: Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.), http://www.tampabay.com. LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Dallas Stars have acquired the rights to goalie Ben Bishop from the Los Angeles Kings for a fourth-round pick in the upcoming draft. The clubs made the deal Tuesday involving Bishop, who will be an unrestricted free agent this summer unless Dallas signs him before July 1. Bishop played just seven games after the Kings acquired him as a backup for Jonathan Quick. Los Angeles failed to make the playoffs. The two-time Vezina Trophy finalist spent parts of the past five seasons with the Tampa Bay Lightning, reaching the 2015 Stanley Cup Final. He also has played for Ottawa and St. Louis. Bishop spent the 2004-05 season with the NAHL's Texas Tornado, playing in the same rink that holds the Stars' training complex in suburban Frisco. OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) - Democrat Heath Mello lost his race for Omaha mayor Tuesday in a setback for supporters who argued that the Democratic National Committee and abortion rights groups were wrong to attack the anti-abortion former state senator. Mello, a 37-year-old Catholic from Omaha's working-class south side, had become a flashpoint for the internal Democratic battle over whether a candidate's position on reproductive rights should disqualify him from support by the national party after its crushing losses around the country last year. Tuesday, Mello acknowledged the "completely different dynamic" the campaign took on in the closing weeks, but noted what he described as unified support across ideological lines. FILE - In this April 14, 2017, file photo, former Nebraska Democratic state Sen. Heath Mello speaks during a mayoral debate against his Republican challenger, incumbent Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert in Omaha, Neb., ahead of the May 9, 2017, election. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File) "We tried to run a campaign that was inclusive from the beginning regardless of political affiliation, regardless or ideology under the banner of change," Mello told hundreds in a west Omaha hotel ballroom. Republican Jean Stothert, a 63-year-old former nurse and city council member elected in 2013, was elected to a second term. It was another near miss for Democrats fighting to take back typically Republican territory. Last month, James Thompson lost a special election for a House seat in Kansas. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff narrowly missed an outright win in a special election. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League slammed the Democratic National Committee for supporting Mello, who voted for abortion restrictions during his eight years in the Nebraska Legislature. Responding to the criticism, Democratic party chair Tom Perez declared that, "every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices." His comment sparked a fierce debate within the party over whether there should be an abortion litmus test, with Mello caught in the middle. "It's astounding that our party chairman would say pro-life Democrats are not welcome," Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb told The Associated Press Tuesday as Mello conceded. A CBS News poll taken in January found 15 percent of Democrats nationally believed that abortion should not be permitted. Omaha Democratic voter Adam Gouttierre, a 45-year-old business developer, said Democrats in Nebraska didn't have the luxury of being choosy. "Abortion is one item on the menu of progressive concepts," he said, frustrated at the backlash. "You can't have them all!" At the April 20 rally in Omaha, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, endorsed Mello, telling thousands, "Are you ready for a political revolution?" Mello had cast himself as a next-generation Democrat focused on economic opportunity, while embracing GOP-friendly ideas such as public-private partnerships as a way to solve the city's vexing streets problem. "That's the future of the Democratic Party, in my mind, looking at that pro-growth, progressive, future-focused mentality." A Mello win would have given Democrats a leg up in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, more than two-thirds of which is in Omaha, as the party hopes to claw its way back to the majority next year. In thanking supporters, Mello hinted he was hardly finished by Tuesday's defeat. "Our work does not stop tonight," he said. "It only begins." MILWAUKEE (AP) - The city of Milwaukee has reached a tentative $2.3 million settlement with the family of a mentally ill black man who was fatally shot in a 2014 confrontation with a white police officer. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (http://bit.ly/2qPbxYu ) reports the tentative agreement with Dontre Hamilton's family was made public Tuesday when a resolution authorizing it was assigned to the city's Judiciary and Legislation Committee. The settlement needs approval from the committee, the full Common Council and Mayor Tom Barrett. A Hamilton family attorney, Jonathan Safran, told the newspaper a tentative agreement has been reached in that amount but that "we will not be making further comments until after the proposed settlement is approved." Barrett's chief of staff, Patrick Curley, said the mayor could not comment due to ongoing negotiations. ___ Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, http://www.jsonline.com WASHINGTON (AP) - Starting with Hillary Clinton herself, Democrats have blamed James Comey for her loss to President Donald Trump. And yet when Trump fired the FBI director Tuesday, those same Democrats rushed to defend his job. "Twilight zone," Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook wrote on Twitter. "I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me." Behind the apparent Democratic turnabout on Comey: While his pronouncements about his probe into Clinton's handling of emails infuriated them, he's also the man who'd been looking into whether Trump's campaign had colluded with Russians. That left many blasting the firing as an abuse of power, even if as they did not quibble with the reasons the White House put forward as cause. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., second from right, accompanied by, from left, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of N.Y., left, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., speaks to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May 9, 2017, following a policy luncheon. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Comey "inflicted severe damage on the institution of the FBI," said Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign's press secretary, an interview. Still, he said, the timing and manner of his dismissal suggests Trump was "feeling the heat on the ongoing Russia investigation" rather than executing "a well-thought-out response to the inappropriate handling of the Clinton investigation." Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's primary opponent, said Trump's sudden termination of Comey "raises serious questions about what his administration is hiding." Republicans were quick to point out the paradox: "Ds were against Comey before they were for him," tweeted John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate's No. 2 Republican. Justice Department officials said they recommended that Trump fire Comey citing his handling of the FBI's review of whether Clinton mishandled her emails while she was secretary of state. Even so, Trump's letter dismissing Comey held a stark reminder of another matter. He wrote that he appreciated Comey informing him "on three separate occasions" that he's not under investigation. Since July, the FBI has been investigating whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia in an effort to interfere in the U.S. election. One week ago, Clinton said during a forum that she was "on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey's letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off." She did not immediately weigh in on Comey's termination. Some Democratic lawmakers compared Tuesday to the Nixon-era "Saturday night massacre." During the Watergate investigation, President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of the independent special prosecutor overseeing the case, forcing the resignations of his attorney general and deputy attorney general who refused to carry out the order. "This is Nixonian," tweeted Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. Senator Edward J. Markey, of Massachusetts said in a statement: "This episode is disturbingly reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal and the national turmoil that it caused." Many renewed calls for a special prosecutor. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he told Trump "you are making a big mistake" when the president called to inform him about the informing. The New York senator called on the deputy attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor, saying: "This investigation must be run as far away as possible" from the president." Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings said Congress should have immediate emergency hearings, adding that Comey was the one independent person to investigate Russian connections to Trump. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the firing made "clear to me that a special counsel also must be appointed. That's the only way the American people will be able to trust the results of any DOJ investigation," referring to the Department of Justice. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said in a statement he'd long been critical of Comey's FBI tenure. "But Donald Trump's decision to fire him now, in the midst of an investigation into Trump associates and their ties to Russia, is outrageous," he said. "There can be no question that a fully independent special counsel must be appointed to lead this investigation." MIDLOTHIAN, Va. (AP) - Critics of Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Brat and the House health care bill he voted for packed a raucous town hall meeting in his Virginia district Tuesday night, booing and shouting down the congressman from start to finish. Brat is the latest in a series of lawmakers across the country who have gotten an earful from constituents at town hall meetings since last week's passage of the House health care bill that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Hundreds of people packed the suburban Richmond church for the meeting Brat co-hosted with a Republican state senator, and dozens of protesters lined up outside ahead of its start, many of them holding signs shaped like tombstones. Inside, opponents appeared to far outnumber supporters. Congressman Dave Brat speaks during a town hall at Clover Hill Assembly of God in Chesterfield County, Va., Tuesday, May 9, 2017. (Mark Gormus/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP) The jeering and shouting began after the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance - while Brat was on stage but before he'd begun speaking - and it never let up. A former economics professor who defeated then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a historic 2014 upset, Brat briefly discussed the health care bill before seguing into dozens of audience questions. Most of them were about the measure. Critics shouted him down as he talked, sometimes to the point where his answers became indistinguishable or got cut off. Audience members also turned to yell at one another. Brat frequently admonished the audience for the noise. "Everybody asks for town halls so we can have civil discourse, and so that's what we're trying to do," Brat said. "I'm trying to listen to the people right now on the key issues of our day." His co-host, Sen. Amanda Chase, at one point called for security to move toward the main doors, though it didn't appear anyone was removed. Afterward, Arthur Bailey, 48, said he thought Brat had been evasive and not answered several questions. Bailey was wearing a black T-shirt with the word "Resist" across it, which he said he'd made himself. He said he sees health care as "the primary issue of our time," and hopes the enthusiasm on display Tuesday night will carry on through the 2018 elections. Craig DiSesa, 57, came out to support Brat, who he said did the best he could to deal with the constant disruptions. "Dave was trying to give them the facts. I'm not sure they were listening," he said. Lawmakers across the country have faced angry constituents at town halls since President Donald Trump's election, and several other meetings have turned testy since last week's passage of the health care bill. Over the weekend, Republican Rep. Tom Reed of New York was booed during a meeting. In Iowa, Rep. Rod Blum, stormed out of a TV interview when pressed about why he screens those who attend his public meetings. He then held a town hall, where he was booed and jeered by constituents. And in Idaho, a Friday meeting erupted in boos after U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador said no one has died because they didn't have access to health care. Tensions also ran high at a town hall hosted Tuesday night in Moneta by fellow Virginia GOP Rep. Tom Garrett, who also voted for the health care bill. Constituents shouted, interrupted and jeered, and one woman was escorted out by law enforcement, The Roanoke Times reported. Tuesday was Brat's second town hall of the year. He held another in Blackstone in February, where he was loudly heckled when he defended Trump and his policies on health care and immigration. A member of the Freedom Caucus, Brat voted against the first iteration of the House Republican health care plan but for the most recent version. The bill would eliminate the fines President Barack Obama's law imposed on people who don't buy coverage, and erase tax increases in the Affordable Care Act on higher-earning people and the health industry. It would cut the Medicaid program for low-income people, transform Obama's subsidies for millions buying insurance, and allow states to get federal waivers freeing insurers from other Obama coverage requirements. EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) - A court has ordered Michigan State defensive end Demetrius Cooper to undergo daily alcohol testing after he consumed alcohol last month in violation of his bond. Cooper in November accepted a plea deal on misdemeanor assault charges for spitting in the face of an East Lansing parking officer. The deal was for the assault charge to be dismissed in favor of a littering fine if Cooper complied with conditions including no alcohol. According to District Court documents, 22-year-old Cooper of Chicago consumed alcohol around April 21. On Tuesday, he was ordered to undergo daily alcohol testing between 5 and 9 a.m. and provide a weekly log to his probation officer. The 6-foot-5, 253-pound Cooper started at defensive end last season. The fifth-year senior was projected as a starter this fall. WASHINGTON (AP) - With James Comey ousted as FBI director, President Donald Trump will have an opportunity to select a replacement for a new 10-year term. The FBI in the interim will be led by Comey's top deputy, Andrew McCabe. But Trump is likely to reach outside the bureau to find someone to run the storied law enforcement agency. "The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions, and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement," Trump said in a statement issued by the White House. Here are some possible candidates: FILE - In this April 26, 2013, file photo, Raymond Kelly speaks to the media opposite 51 Park Place in New York. With James Comey ousted as FBI director, President Donald Trump will have an opportunity to select a replacement for a new 10-year term. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano) - RAY KELLY: The longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, Kelly oversaw the force in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks when terror threats were routine. His tough-on-crime stance, including support for provocative tactics like stop-and-frisk, could make him a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a go-to-guy for a fellow New Yorker like Trump. Kelly as commissioner defended a police operation, exposed by The Associated Press, that conducted secret surveillance of Muslims. He could partner with Trump and Sessions on anti-terrorism efforts. - CHRIS CHRISTIE: Though his relationship with Trump has been topsy-turvy, the governor of New Jersey has known the president for years and could bring law enforcement bona fides to the job. Christie is a former Republican-appointed United States attorney in New Jersey, and he cited that background time and again during his 2016 presidential campaign. His legacy as governor took a hit, however, with a Bridgegate scandal that was investigated by the FBI, prosecuted by the Justice and brought down some of his allies. - DAVID CLARKE: A wild-card, but the outspoken and polarizing Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff has been a fierce supporter of Trump and even landed a speaking spot at last summer's Republican National Convention. A conservative firebrand known for his cowboy hat, Clarke has called himself "one of those bare-knuckles fighters" and has been critical of what he called the "hateful ideology" of the Black Lives Matters movement. But he'd be a long shot given that a county jury recently recommended criminal charges against seven Milwaukee County jail staffers in the dehydration death of an inmate who went without water for seven days. - TREY GOWDY: The South Carolina Republican led the House committee investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's actions surrounding the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Gowdy is also a former federal prosecutor who boasts of his work on drug trafficking, bank robberies and child pornography cases. He was among lawmakers critical of Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton in the email server investigation, saying other government officials would have been prosecuted if they handled classified information like Clinton did, but federal officials disagree with that assessment. Gowdy said after Comey's firing that though he had differences with the former FBI director on some matters, he "never lost sight of the fact that he had a very difficult job." ___ Associated Press writer Sadie Gurman contributed to this report. FILE - In this March 23, 2017, file photo, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks about jobs during a news conference in a QuickChek convenience store in Cedar Knolls, N.J. With James Comey ousted as FBI director, President Donald Trump will have an opportunity to select a replacement for a new 10-year term. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File) FILE - In this Feb. 23, 2017, file photo, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke gestures as he speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Md. With James Comey ousted as FBI director, President Donald Trump will have an opportunity to select a replacement for a new 10-year term. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) Trump firing Comey shrouds Russia probe in doubt, turmoil WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's stunning firing of FBI Director James Comey throws into question the future of a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign's possible connections to Russia and immediately raised suspicions of an underhanded effort to stymie a probe that has shadowed the administration from the outset. Democrats likened Tuesday's ouster to President Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" and renewed calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor, and some Republicans also questioned the move. In his letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. The administration paired the letter with a scathing review by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein of how Comey handled the investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices, including his decision to hold a news conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about Clinton. While Comey has drawn anger from Democrats since he reopened the email investigation in the closing days of last year's campaign, they didn't buy that justification for his firing Tuesday. Several Republicans joined them in raising alarms of how it could affect probes into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Trump will now appoint a successor at the FBI, which has been investigating since late July, and who will almost certainly have an impact on how the investigation moves forward and whether the public will accept its outcome. ___ The Latest: Trump assails critic as 'Cryin' Chuck Schumer' WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the firing of FBI Director James Comey (all times local): 4:40 a.m. Amid the clamor surrounding the firing of FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump singled out one another Washington fixture for his scorn. The president went to his Twitter account late Tuesday to chide Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a fellow New Yorker, for comments the Democrat made about the stunning dismissal. Trump had telephoned Schumer earlier to inform him of the decision. Schumer said he told Trump that "you are making a big mistake." Schumer also questioned why the firing occurred on Tuesday and wondered whether investigations into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia were "getting too close for the president." He said unless a special prosecutor is named, Americans could rightfully wonder whether the move was "part of a cover-up." ___ AP Analysis: Trump thrusts US presidency into perilous area WASHINGTON (AP) - With his stunning firing of FBI Director James Comey, Donald Trump is propelling the presidency into rarely traversed territory. His surprise announcement Tuesday flouts decades of presidential deference to the nation's top law enforcement agency and its independence. It earns Trump the dubious distinction of being the first president since Richard Nixon to fire the official overseeing an investigation involving the commander in chief. And it cements a clear pattern of a man willing to challenge - in dramatic fashion - the institutions created to hold the president accountable. "That's why this is unprecedented," said Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian. "He's showed signs of not having a great deal of respect for the system by which this investigation has been operating." Sen. Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican who is overseeing one of the congressional investigations into Russia's election interference, said: "I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Comey's termination." Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he'd spent hours trying to find "an acceptable rationale" for Trump's decision. "I just can't do it," he said. ___ 10 Things to Know for Today Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today: 1. WHAT TRUMP'S FIRING OF COMEY SIGNALS It throws into question the future of a counterintelligence probe into his campaign's possible connections to Russia and raises suspicions of an underhanded effort to stymie it. 2. TRUMP MEETING WITH PUTIN'S TOP DIPLOMAT White House talks with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov marks the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia of his young presidency. ___ S. Korea's leader willing to visit North, talk to US, China SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - New South Korean President Moon Jae-in said as he took office Wednesday that he was open to visiting rival North Korea under the right conditions to talk about Pyongyang's aggressive pursuit of nuclear-tipped missiles. Moon's softer stance on North Korea could create friction with Washington, which has swung from threats of military action to hints of dialogue as it seeks to formulate a policy under President Donald Trump. South Korea's first liberal leader in a decade, Moon also said he'll "sincerely negotiate" with the United States, Seoul's top ally, and China, South Korea's top trading partner, over the contentious deployment of an advanced U.S. missile-defense system in southern South Korea. The system has angered Beijing, which says its powerful radars allow Washington to spy on its own military operations. In a speech at the National Assembly, Moon pledged to work for peace on the Korean Peninsula amid growing worry over the North's expanding nuclear weapons and missiles program. "I will quickly move to solve the crisis in national security. I am willing to go anywhere for the peace of the Korean Peninsula - if needed, I will fly immediately to Washington. I will go to Beijing and I will go to Tokyo. If the conditions shape up, I will go to Pyongyang," Moon said. ___ AP Analysis: S. Korea's Moon floats summit; will North bite? TOKYO (AP) - First it was an off-the-cuff offer from then-candidate Donald Trump to have hamburgers in Washington. Now, South Korea's new president says he is willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un - if, of course, the conditions are right. The problem is, they pretty much never are. Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated dramatically in recent years, and Pyongyang is almost certain to take whatever positions newly elected President Moon Jae-in may assume toward increased engagement with a good deal of caution. North Korea, as of Wednesday afternoon, had yet to comment officially on the election of Moon, a liberal who was deeply involved in Seoul's "sunshine policy" of increased engagement and cooperation with the North back in the 2000s. He even helped arrange a summit between his mentor, former President Roh Moo-hyun, and then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in 2007. That was the second Korean summit. South Korea's late President Kim Dae-jung won a Nobel Peace Prize for setting up the first one, in 2000. It was later alleged that he paid $500 million to make it happen. ___ Trump to meet top Russian diplomat at the White House WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump will meet Wednesday with Vladimir Putin's top diplomat at the White House, officials say, marking the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia of the American leader's young presidency. It would also signal that the two countries have improved ties that Trump recently described as being at an "all-time low." Trump's talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take place after the Russian's meetings earlier in the day with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. A Russian plan to stabilize Syria after more than six years of civil war is the most urgent foreign policy topic on the agenda. But the meeting will be impossible to separate from the Trump administration's unfolding political drama in Washington, where FBI and congressional investigations are looking into possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and the Kremlin related to last year's presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have asserted that Moscow meddled in the election to help Trump's chances of victory. The stigma of the Russia probes has been impossible for Trump to shake. Trump on Tuesday abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of the bureau's investigation into Trump's ties with Russia. Less than a month into Trump's presidency, he fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying Flynn misled senior administration officials about his pre-inauguration talks with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador in Washington. ___ Descendants of syphilis study subjects emerging from shadows TUSKEGEE, Ala. (AP) - Decades later, it's still hard to grasp what the federal government did to hundreds of black men in rural Alabama - even if you're among their descendants, lighting candles in their memory. For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the segregated South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward. Finally exposed in 1972, the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement. Twenty years ago this May, President Bill Clinton apologized for the U.S. government. It seemed to mark the end of this ugly episode, once and for all. Except it didn't. Relatives of the men still struggle with the stigma of being linked to the experiment, commonly known today as the "Tuskegee Syphilis Study." For years they have met privately to share their pain and honor the victims. ___ Tunnel collapse latest safety issue at nuclear site RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - The collapse of an underground tunnel containing radioactive waste that forced workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to shelter in place is the latest incident to raise safety concerns at the sprawling site that made plutonium for nuclear bombs for decades after World War II. Officials detected no release of radiation Tuesday and no workers were injured, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology. No workers were inside the tunnel when it collapsed, causing soil on the surface above to sink 2 to 4 feet (half to 1.2 meters) over a 400 square foot (37 square meters) area, officials said. The tunnels are hundreds of feet long, with about 8 feet (2.4 meters) of soil covering them, the U.S. Department of Energy said. The anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear said the incident helped show "radioactive waste management is out of control." ___ Iraqi boys' harrowing tale of captivity, training by IS KABARTO CAMP, Iraq (AP) - They made the captive children, malnourished and weak from hunger, fight over a single tomato. Then the Islamic State group militants told them, "In paradise, you'll be able to eat whatever you want. But first you have to get to paradise, and you do that by blowing yourself up." The lesson was part of the indoctrination inflicted by the militants on boys from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority after the extremist group overran the community's towns and villages in northern Iraq. The group forced hundreds of boys, some as young as 7 or 8, into training to become fighters and suicide bombers, infusing them with its murderous ideology. Now boys who escaped captivity are struggling to regain some normalcy, living in camps for the displaced along with what is left of their families. After surviving beatings, watching horrific atrocities, being held for months or years apart from their parents, losing loved ones and narrowly escaping death themselves, they are plagued by nightmares, anxiety and outbursts of violence. "Even here I'm still very afraid," said 17-year-old Ahmed Ameen Koro, who spoke to The Associated Press in the sprawling Esyan Camp in northern Iraq, where he now lives with his mother, sister and a brother, the only surviving members of his family. "I can't sleep properly because I see them in my dreams." Ahmed was 14 when the militants stormed into the Yazidi heartland around the northern town of Sinjar in the summer of 2014. OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) - Democrats again fell just short in a closely-watched election as Heath Mello lost the Omaha mayoral race on Tuesday after a fierce debate within the national party over his anti-abortion views. His loss was a setback for supporters who argued that the Democratic National Committee and abortion rights groups were wrong to attack the anti-abortion former state senator. It was also another near miss for Democrats fighting in typically Republican territory since Donald Trump's presidential election victory. Democrats lost a special election for a House seat in Kansas and narrowly missed an outright win in a special election in Georgia. Republican Omaha mayor Jean Stothert, right, hugs a supporter after defeating Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello in the contest for mayor, in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, May 9, 2017. The race has drawn national attention as Democrats seek new energy given huge Republican gains in local, state and federal offices across the country. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) Mello, a 37-year-old Catholic from Omaha's working-class south side, had become a flashpoint for the internal Democratic battle over whether a candidate's position on reproductive rights should disqualify him from support by the national party after its crushing losses around the country last year. Tuesday, Mello acknowledged the "completely different dynamic" the campaign took on in the closing weeks, but noted what he described as unified support across ideological lines. "We tried to run a campaign that was inclusive from the beginning regardless of political affiliation, regardless or ideology under the banner of change," Mello told hundreds in a west Omaha hotel ballroom. Republican Jean Stothert, a 63-year-old former nurse and city council member elected in 2013, was elected to a second term. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League slammed the Democratic National Committee for supporting Mello, who voted for abortion restrictions during his eight years in the Nebraska Legislature. Responding to the criticism, the Democratic committee chairman Tom Perez declared that, "every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices." His comment sparked a fierce debate within the party over whether there should be an abortion rights litmus test, with Mello caught in the middle. "It's astounding that our party chairman would say pro-life Democrats are not welcome," Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb told The Associated Press Tuesday as Mello conceded defeat. A CBS News poll taken in January found 15 percent of Democrats nationally believed that abortion should not be permitted. Omaha Democratic voter Adam Gouttierre, a 45-year-old business developer, said Democrats in Nebraska didn't have the luxury of being choosy. "Abortion is one item on the menu of progressive concepts," he said, frustrated at the backlash. "You can't have them all!" At the April 20 rally in Omaha, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, endorsed Mello, telling thousands, "Are you ready for a political revolution?" Mello had cast himself as a next-generation Democrat focused on economic opportunity, while embracing GOP-friendly ideas such as public-private partnerships as a way to solve the city's vexing streets problem. "That's the future of the Democratic Party, in my mind, looking at that pro-growth, progressive, future-focused mentality." Republican Omaha mayor Jean Stothert smiles during a television interview after defeating Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello in the contest for mayor, in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, May 9, 2017. The race has drawn national attention as Democrats seek new energy given huge Republican gains in local, state and federal offices across the country. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) Republican Omaha mayor Jean Stothert smiles at her election night party after defeating Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello in the contest for mayor, in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, May 9, 2017. The race has drawn national attention as Democrats seek new energy given huge Republican gains in local, state and federal offices across the country. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) With wife Catherine by his side, Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello concedes the election to the incumbent, Republican Omaha mayor Jean Stothert, in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, May 9, 2017. The race has drawn national attention as Democrats seek new energy given huge Republican gains in local, state and federal offices across the country. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello kisses his wife Catherine, after conceding the election to the incumbent, Republican Omaha mayor Jean Stothert, in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, May 9, 2017. The race has drawn national attention as Democrats seek new energy given huge Republican gains in local, state and federal offices across the country. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A man who squashed a lemon meringue pie into Qantas Airways chief executive Alan Joyce's face during a public address in Australia said Wednesday he was protesting Joyce's advocacy for same-sex marriage. Joyce, a gay, Irish-born 50-year-old, was giving a speech to 500 people in a Perth hotel on Tuesday when Tony Overheu approached from behind, pressed the pie in his face then fled. Overheu, a 67-year-old Christian and former sheep farmer, released a statement accusing Qantas and other companies that support marriage equality of "corporate bullying aimed at social engineering." He was charged with giving police a false name. Qantas Airways chief executive Alan Joyce speaks to media Wednesday, May 10, 2017, at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. A man who squashed a lemon meringue pie into Qantas Airways chief executive Joyce's face during a public address in Australia says he was protesting Joyce's advocacy for same-sex marriage. Joyce was giving a speech to 500 people in a Perth hotel on Tuesday when Tony Overheu approached from behind, pressed the pie in his face then fled.(AP Photo/Rod McGuirk) Joyce accused Overheu of "bullying" corporate leaders in an effort to suppress their views. "I have every intention to continue to be vocal on these social and community issues," Joyce told reporters. "It's important for our shareholders, our employees, our customers - it's called good corporate social responsibility." Joyce has been singled out for criticism by government ministers for joining 30 chief executives of high-profile Australian companies who wrote a letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in March calling for Parliament to legalize same-sex marriage. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, a gay marriage opponent, told the CEOs to "stick to their knitting" and keep out of the political debate. Joyce said he had overwhelming shareholder support for his public stance. On Wednesday, Overheu told Perth Radio 6PR he hid behind a screen at the back of a stage for several hours before Joyce rose to give his speech to a business breakfast. Overheu said he chose lemon meringue from a cake shop the night before because is "appeared to be the softest, least likely to do any injury." He later sent Joyce an email apologizing. "Our family is outraged, my wife is down my throat, I didn't understand that I'd breached the state's Criminal Code and the police are dealing with it. Clearly I regret that," Overheu told 6PR. Police said Overheu was charged with giving officers false details, and the investigation was continuing. Joyce confirmed the apology, but added: "I'm not sure there's any regret at the issue that has occurred." "My intention is to send a message that this type of behavior isn't acceptable and I have every intention of pressing charges," Joyce said. "Nobody should be ... intimidated, nobody should be bullied, nobody should certainly have an incident like occurred yesterday to try to stop people having that freedom of speech," he added. YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Police in Myanmar's main city fired warning shots overnight to break up a confrontation between dozens of Buddhists and Muslims that left at least one person injured. It was the latest manifestation of years of rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the predominantly Buddhist nation, where ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks and their supporters forced the closure of two Muslim schools in Yangon last month. The confrontation began after midnight Wednesday when Buddhist hard-liners entered a Muslim neighborhood claiming some ethnic Rohingya Muslims were hiding "illegally" in the area, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Myanmar riot police patrol to provide security on a road in Mingala Taungnyunt township where Buddhist hard-liners confront with Muslim community in Yangon, Myanmar. Police in Myanmar's main city fired warning shots overnight to break up a confrontation between dozens of Buddhists and Muslims. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw) Rohingya in Myanmar are largely denied citizenship and basic rights. The majority of them - more than 1 million - live in western Myanmar's Rakhine state and cannot travel without special permission. An Associated Press reporter in Yangon saw around 30 Buddhists on the streets, including monks. Some were armed with stones, as were Muslims who were poised to defend themselves. Police fired two warning shots to disperse the crowds. At least one Muslim man was hospitalized with injuries to his head. Tensions between Buddhist and Muslims has spread across Myanmar since violent conflict broke out between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya in 2012. Violence in Rakhine state flared again last year when Rohingya launched a small insurgency, leading to massive retaliation by Myanmar's army, which rights groups say has killed hundreds of people and forced around 75,000 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Myanmar police officers sit in a truck as they provide security on a road in Mingala Taungnyunt township where Buddhist hard-liners confront with Muslim community in Yangon, Myanmar. Police in Myanmar's main city fired warning shots overnight to break up a confrontation between dozens of Buddhists and Muslims. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Myanmar police officers stand to provide security on a road in Mingala Taungnyunt township where Buddhist hard-liners confront with Muslim community in Yangon, Myanmar. Police in Myanmar's main city fired warning shots overnight to break up a confrontation between dozens of Buddhists and Muslims. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, a resident takes a photo with mobile phone while Myanmar police officers provide security on a road in Mingala Taungnyunt township where Buddhist hard-liners confront with Muslim community in Yangon, Myanmar. Police in Myanmar's main city fired warning shots overnight to break up a confrontation between dozens of Buddhists and Muslims. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw) WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration has announced it will arm Syria's Kurdish fighters "as necessary" to recapture the key Islamic State group stronghold of Raqqa, despite intense opposition from NATO ally Turkey, which sees the Kurds as terrorists. The decision is meant to accelerate the Raqqa operation but undermines the Turkish government's view that the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPG is an extension of a Kurdish terrorist organization that operates in Turkey. Washington is eager to retake Raqqa, arguing that it is a haven for IS operatives looking to plan attacks on the West. Dana W. White, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman, said in a written statement that President Donald Trump authorized the arms Monday. His approval gives the Pentagon the go-ahead to "equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIS" in Raqqa, said White, who was traveling with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Europe. US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, pauses during a press conference after a meeting , in Copenhagen, Denmark, Tuesday, May 9, 2017. Mattis said he had open and useful discussions with Turkish officials Tuesday, and said the two countries are working out differences over America's continuing support for Syria Kurds as the fight against Islamic State militants moves closer to group's headquarters in Raqqa. (Stine Tidsvilde/Ritzau Foto via AP) The U.S. sees the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, as its most effective battlefield partner against IS in northern and eastern Syria. White said they're "the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future." While White did not mention the kinds of arms to be provided to the Kurds, other officials had indicated in recent days that 120mm mortars, machines guns, ammunition and light armored vehicles were possibilities. They said the U.S. would not provide artillery or surface-to-air missiles. The officials weren't authorized to publicly discuss the matter and demanded anonymity. They described no firm timeline, with the American intention to provide the new weapons to the Syrian Kurds as soon as possible. A congressional aide said officials informed relevant members of Congress of the decision on Monday evening. The Obama administration had been leaning toward arming the Syrian Kurds but struggled with how that could be done without torpedoing relations with Turkey, a key political actor in the greater Middle East. The issue has come to a head now because battlefield progress this year has put the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces nearly in position to attack IS in Raqqa, although they are still attempting to isolate the city. In a reflection of the sensitivities in Ankara, White issued a follow-up statement hours after her initial comments. In her second statement she emphasized U.S. solidarity with Turkey and said the U.S. does not envision a long-term Kurdish presence in Raqqa. She said Mattis spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Fikri Isik, by telephone to reiterate a U.S. commitment to "protecting our NATO ally." Also, the State Department said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with his Turkish counterpart on Monday night. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, said he is not worried about how Turkey will react. "No. Sorry," Corker said, adding that Washington is going to "have a little bit of a rub with Turkey for a period of time." Even with the extra U.S. weaponry, the Kurds and their Syrian Arab partners are expected to face a difficult and perhaps lengthy fight for control of Raqqa, which has been key to the extremists' state-building project. Senior U.S. officials including Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have met repeatedly with Turkish officials to try to work out an arrangement for the Raqqa assault that would be acceptable to Ankara. The Turks have insisted that the Syrian Kurds be excluded from that operation, but U.S. officials insisted there was no real alternative. In her second statement, White said "equipment" provided to the YPG will be "limited, mission specific and metered out incrementally as objectives are reached." Other officials said these safeguards are intended to reassure the Turks that the additional U.S. weaponry and equipment will not be used by the Kurds in Turkey. The intent is to restrict the distribution and use of the weaponry and then require the Kurds to return it to U.S. control, the officials said. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit President Donald Trump in Washington next week. An Erdogan adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, met on Tuesday with Thomas Shannon, the State Department's No. 2 official. And in Denmark earlier Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the U.S. and Turkey are working out their differences. ___ Baldor reported from Copenhagen and from Vilnius, Lithuania. Associated Press writers Richard Lardner and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report. US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, right, shakes hands with Danish Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen, during a press conference, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Tuesday, May 9, 2017. Mattis said he had open and useful discussions with Turkish officials Tuesday, and said the two countries are working out differences over America's continuing support for Syria Kurds as the fight against Islamic State militants moves closer to group's headquarters in Raqqa. (Stine Tidsvilde/Ritzau Foto via AP) MANILA, Philippines (AP) - The Philippine navy welcomed on Wednesday a second Indonesian-made amphibious landing dock as part of the military's modernization program. The new ship named BRP Davao del Sur arrived at Manila's South Harbor to a ceremony led by Rear Adm. Gaudencio Collado Jr., commander of the Philippine Fleet. The delivery completes a 3.8 billion peso ($76 million) procurement of two such vessels from Indonesian shipbuilder PT PAL Indonesia, said navy spokesman Capt. Lued Lincuna. The ship sailed from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, with 120 Filipino sailors and a 10-man Indonesian delivery crew. The BRP Tarlac, the first of the two Indonesian-made ships, arrived in the country last year. It has already taken part in missions including a naval blockade against militants, seajackings and kidnappings in southern Philippine waters. Both ships serve as command-and-control vessels during humanitarian operations as well as for military sealift and transport, Lincuna said. CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was set to be released Wednesday from an Arizona halfway house, marking the end of his one-year prison term for to his criminal conviction in the April 2010 explosion that killed 29 men at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. Four investigations into the disaster found that worn and broken cutting equipment created a spark that ignited accumulations of coal dust and methane gas at the underground mine in Montcoal. Broken and clogged water sprayers allowed what should have been a minor flare-up to become an inferno. Here is a timeline of major events in the Upper Big Branch disaster: -April 5, 2010: A huge explosion ripped through the underground corridors of the Upper Big Branch mine, killing 29 men in the worst U.S. coal mining disaster in 40 years. -April 25, 2010: In a eulogy, a somber President Barack Obama told the families of the workers that the nation would honor their memories by improving safety in the mines. -May 14, 2010: Federal prosecutors announce criminal investigation. -Dec. 3, 2010: Don Blankenship, CEO of Upper Big Branch owner Massey Energy, announces his retirement. -Jan. 29, 2011: Massey Energy agrees to be taken over by Alpha Natural Resources in a $7.1 billion deal. -Sept. 22, 2011: Former Massey employee Thomas Harrah is sentenced to 10 months in prison for faking a foreman's license and lying to federal authorities. -Dec. 6, 2011: In the biggest settlement ever reached in a U.S. mining disaster, Alpha Natural Resources agrees to pay $210 million to compensate grieving families, bankroll cutting-edge safety improvements and pay for years of violations by Massey Energy. Under the deal with federal prosecutors, Alpha is not criminally charged. -Feb. 29, 2012: Former mine security chief Hughie Elbert Stover is sentenced to three years for lying to investigators and ordering a subordinate to destroy security-related documents. -Jan. 17, 2013: Former Upper Big Branch superintendent Gary May is sentenced to one year and nine months in prison on charges he defrauded the government through his actions at the mine, including disabling a methane gas monitor and falsifying records. -Sept. 10, 2013: Former Massey executive David Hughart is sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for conspiring in an illegal scheme to warn miners and other subsidiaries of surprise safety inspections. Hughart implicated Blankenship in the conspiracy during his plea hearing. -Nov. 13, 2014: Federal prosecutors announce an indictment against Blankenship. -Oct. 1, 2015: Blankenship's trial opens in Charleston. -Dec. 3, 2015: A federal jury convicts Blankenship of a misdemeanor count of conspiring to willfully violate mine safety standards and acquits him of felony charges. -April 6, 2016: Blankenship is sentenced to one year in prison and fined $250,000. -May 12, 2016: Blankenship reports to a California prison. -Oct. 5, 2016: Blankenship declares himself an "American political prisoner" on his blog and announces plans to distribute 250,000 copies of the 67-page manifesto in booklet form. -Jan. 19, 2017: The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, affirms Blankenship's conviction. -March 27, 2017: Blankenship is moved to a halfway house in Phoenix, Arizona. -May 10, 2017: Blankenship scheduled to be released from halfway house. Many of the graduating students turned their backs on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and boos nearly drowned out her commencement speech Wednesday at Bethune-Cookman University. DeVos carried on with her keynote address to the historically black university, praising its founder Mary McLeod Bethune as someone who 'refused to accept systemic and repulsive racism,' and had 'the courage to change old ideas.' 'Let's choose to hear one another out,' DeVos said, reading her prepared text in a measured tone despite continuing waves of boos, catcalls and scattered applause. 'I am here to demonstrate in the most direct way possible that I and the administration are fully committed to your success and to the success of every student across this great country,' she said. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Controversial: Betsy DeVos was booed as she delivered the commencement speech to graduates at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach Snub: Graduating students turned their backs as DeVos spoke - and were told that if they didn't stop they would get their degrees mailed to them Takeover: The college's president, Edison Jackson, took interrupted DeVos' speech to tell students to either stop their protest or face getting their degrees by mail Law enforcement: Dayotna Beach PD officers led one protester out of the hall as DeVos spoke Gesture: The protester led away by cops appeared to be making a black power salute as he was escorted from the commencement Protest: One of the demonstrators was escorted out of the commencement speech venue as graduating students turned their backs As the crowd kept trying to shout her down, university president Edison Jackson briefly took over the microphone to lecture the students before she continued. 'If this behavior continues, your degrees will be mailed to you. Choose which way you want to go,' Jackson warned. DeVos, a Republican fundraiser without classroom experience, offended many African-Americans in February when she said historically black colleges are the 'real pioneers when it comes to school choice.' After a storm of criticism, she acknowledged that these colleges were 'born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism.' DeVos has continued since then to cite historically black colleges as alternative options for quality education, her stated goal for promoting the diversion of tax money to private and charter schools. Controversial pick: Betsy DeVos has endured a string of controversies since Trump made her his education secretary Some alumni and African-American leaders had called the invitation insensitive and misguided. Students gathered petitions demanding she not be allowed to speak. Before the address, activists lined a sidewalk. One sign said 'DeVos is not worthy.' Jackson had been accused of selling out the school by inviting DeVos. Before she left, he gave her a hug, then took back the podium to comment on the spectacle. 'As we have said repeatedly, be careful of the people you let in your place,' Jackson said, acknowledging the criticism. But he said 'Bethune-Cookman University can't do it alone. We need everyone to be a part of this continuation of our institution.' SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Which of South Korea's neighbors and allies stand to benefit most from liberal Moon Jae-in's ascension to the presidency this week? It might be North Korea, which sees Moon as an advocate of a softer approach to ridding the North of nuclear weapons. This in turn could set off alarms in a more conservative Washington. Beijing, meanwhile, likely hopes to win big concessions from Moon, and Tokyo worries he'll upset a delicate arrangement meant to settle the two countries' difficult past. Here's a look at how South Korea's neighbors see Moon, Seoul's first liberal leader in a decade, as he seeks to put an ambitious, possibly jarring foreign policy into play. South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in waves from a car after his inauguration ceremony outside of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Moon said Wednesday he was open to visiting rival North Korea under the right conditions to talk about Pyongyang's aggressive pursuit of nuclear-tipped missiles. (Hong Hae-in/Yonhap via AP) ___ NORTH KOREA North Korea, as of Wednesday afternoon, had yet to comment officially on Moon's election, but experts say there's no reason for it to dislike his win. Even so, North Korea's relations with Moon's conservative predecessor, Park Geun-hye, were extremely bad, so it is almost certain to be cautious about any Moon proposals for increased engagement. It may welcome a controlled boost in economic ties - or even a bilateral summit in its capital under the right conditions, an idea Moon has already floated - but its primary worry is likely to remain national security. On that front, Moon's options to generate major change could be severely limited by South Korea's alliance with the United States and whatever position toward North Korea that President Donald Trump decides to take. Park's decision to allow the United States to base a state-of-the-art missile defense system known by the acronym THAAD in South Korea's territory to cope with North Korean nuclear threats is a major irritant. There's widespread opposition in South Korea to the THAAD deployment and loud protests from China, which also sees the system as a security threat. But challenging Washington over THAAD might be difficult for Moon. ___ UNITED STATES Trump administration officials may worry about Moon's softer approach to North Korea, but they also likely know he won't push for any radical policies on the North or any other issues that would hurt the decades-long alliance. During his campaign, many conservatives worried that Moon's election would cause problems with Washington, Seoul's most important ally, because of his engagement policy on North Korea would clash with Trump's push to maximize pressures on the country. Moon also said he would review the THAAD deployment. But North Korea's nuclear weapons program has made remarkable progress since Moon worked for a liberal government that engaged the North with big aid shipments and economic cooperation projects 10 years ago. It's highly unlikely that Moon will pursue the same level of rapprochement that past liberal governments took. Earlier this month, South Korean officials said the THAAD system was already operating, and experts say it will be extremely difficult now for Moon to ask Washington to withdraw it. Taking the oath of office in Seoul on Wednesday, Moon said he will further bolster the alliance and "immediately fly to Washington if necessary" for the sake of peace on the Korean Peninsula. ___ CHINA Beijing will be hoping for concessions from Moon to get relations back on track after months of Chinese fury over South Korea's decision to deploy THAAD. China maintained an unyielding stance even after the deployment went ahead, apparently hoping that Moon would either reverse that decision or be chastised sufficiently to eschew any similar steps in the future. South Korean experts say Moon will try to show he's making efforts to soothe Chinese anger but that it's too late to call for THAAD's withdrawal. Beijing says the system threatens China's own security because its radar system is able to peer deep into the country's northeast and monitor its flights and missile launches. Recent months have seen widening commercial retaliation against South Korean business interests in China, ranging from the cancellation of visits by popstars and actors to boycotts of the Lotte chain of department stores and the shutdown of work on an amusement park being built in China by the company. Chinese group tours to South Korea have also been canceled, while anti-Korean sentiment has proliferated online. Beijing may also be heartened by renewed South Korean outreach to North Korea because that could divert attention from China's own role as the North's most important diplomatic and economic partner. ___ JAPAN After the obligatory congratulations, Japan is cautiously watching to see how relations with South Korea evolve under Moon, known for his tough stance on wartime history and territorial issues. Moon's more conciliatory approach to North Korea adds to uncertainty in bilateral and trilateral cooperation with the United States, given Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's vocal support for Trump's increased pressure on the North. Japan is particularly concerned about the "comfort women" issue, a legacy of Japanese atrocities during the war that still haunts relations between the two sides. Moon opposes a 2015 agreement signed by Park that was heralded as a final settlement for Korean women who were among many sexually enslaved in Japanese military brothels before and during World War II. Moon has called for a renegotiation of the pact. The two countries are also at odds over a "comfort woman" statue that was built outside the Japanese consulate in the southern South Korean city of Busan after the agreement was signed. Moon has also raised skepticism over closer security cooperation with Japan, such as a bilateral military information sharing agreement, and emphasized Seoul's territorial claim on a disputed island between the two countries. "Will Mr. Moon pursue a 'pro-North, anti-Japan' stance?" the conservative Yomiuri newspaper said in an editorial Wednesday. South Korea plays a crucial role in regional stability, it said. "We hope the new administration values cooperation with Japan and the U.S. and develops realistic security and foreign policies." ___ Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report. County Administrator Frank Pascarella on Tuesday gave the Chippewa County Board an update about the soaring costs to replace the Cobban Bridge. Some board members didnt like what they heard. The cost estimates in 2015 to demolish the current bridge and replacing it was $7.2 million. This year the estimate is $11 million and would rise to $12.9 million if the project is not built until 2025, according to a report by consultants AECOM. $7.2 million to 12 million, thats not in the same ballpark, Supervisor Jason Bergeron said. He said he wants AECOM to make a presentation to the board on why they were so far off on their estimation. Supervisor Tom Thornton said: If the funding is astronomical now, why are we investing more money into that bridge? ... Why is it open? Once the project went over $5 million, the project was shifted by the federal government to the High Cost Local Bridge Program, where the federal government would pay 33 percent, the county a third of the costs and the towns of Arthur and Eagle Point the rest. Falling into that funding formula would translate into $1.9 million for each town if the bridge was replaced this year or $2.2 million if the project was pushed off to 2025. Pascarella said county officials will meet with both the Eagle Point and Arthur town boards on Monday to discuss the situation. He said the county has reached out to local legislators to see if more state funding would be available for the project. He said all funding options to replace the bridge will be examined, including possibly holding a referendum. Pascarella said the height of vehicles allowed on the bridge will be reduced from 12 to 8 feet as of Thursday. The administrator said if the county decided with demolishing the bridge without replacing it the county would be responsible for the full cost of about $1.1 million.The Cobban Bridge was built in 1908 and moved to its current site in 1918-1919. The Modern Steel Structures Company of Waukesha built it on a low bid of $12,744. Positions get boost Increases in the use of meth in Chippewa County let the County Board on Tuesday to approve a new full-time social work position, which will cost $95,509. It will be paid with $49,665 in state funding and $45,844 from the county. Data from last year showed county social workers handled between 21 to 23 cases, with the standard caseload is 12-14 families. The board also approved creating a full-time social workers job in the county Aging and Disability Resource Center with a salary of $61,638 and benefits of $33,871. A federal match and state funding is paying for the position. The ARDC said in the past five years the number of people needing to enroll into the long-term care organization more than doubled. The positions were approved on 12-1 votes, with Supervisor Annette Hunt abstaining. Sadler gets OK Jaclyn Sadler is the new Chippewa County Clerk after being appointed by the County Board in a 10-3 vote Tuesday. Voting against were Supervisors Leigh Darrow, Larry Willkom and Thornton. Sadlers term starts Monday, June 5. She succeeds Sandi Frion, who resigned to become Bloomers city administrator-clerk-treasurer. I know some of you felt out of the loop with the hiring decision, she said, adding she hopes to work with those supervisors in the future. Sadler, a 2003 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, has worked for Manpower since 2005. She has worked as a client relations leader. Airport funding Retaining federal aid to the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport was supported on a 13-0 vote by the board Tuesday. Charity Zich, the airports director, said President Donald Trumps 2018 budget calls for eliminating federal Essential Air Service funding. Zich said eliminating the federal funding would mean the loss of airline service in 173 communities in 36 states, or 30 percent of airports with scheduled airline service. In the local airports case, it would mean a loss of $350,000 in revenue.The airport, in far southern Chippewa County, is served by United Express. The airline flies to and from OHare International Airport in Chicago.Supervisors Steve Gerrish and Jared Zwielfelhofer were absent from Tuesdays meeting. KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) - A Ugandan academic detained for calling the president "a pair of buttocks" was freed on bail Wednesday after spending over a month in jail. Stella Nyanzi, a research fellow at Makerere University, appeared frail and had to be assisted by prison warders. Nyanzi faces charges of offensive communication and cyber harassment over her Facebook posts targeting President Yoweri Museveni and his wife, Janet, Uganda's education minister. The posts criticized the president for not providing sanitary napkins for schoolgirls, a campaign promise that the first lady later said could not be fulfilled because of lack of money. In a photograph taken on Monday April 13, 2017, Makerere University researcher Dr Stella Nyanzi, left, is led by police to Buganda Road Court in the capital Kampala, Uganda. A Ugandan court has released Nyanzi on bail after being jailed for more than a month for calling the president "a pair of buttocks", charged with offensive communication and cyber harassment because of her Facebook posts targeting the country's long-time president, Yoweri Museveni, and his wife Janet, who is education minister.(AP Photo) Nyanzi called the first lady "foolish" and out of touch with ordinary Ugandans. Many families cannot afford sanitary napkins, one reason often cited for girls dropping out of school. The case is widely followed in this East African country where few people dare to publicly criticize the first family in bold terms. Amnesty International and several Ugandan rights groups have called for Nyanzi's unconditional release. "The government's attempt to prosecute her for speaking out for the rights of Uganda's women and girls is an affront to freedom of expression," Amnesty's Sarah Jackson said after Nyanzi was released. "The continuation of this farcical case blatantly violates Uganda's constitution." Museveni has ruled Uganda since 1986 and is increasingly accused of aiming to rule for life. His opponents are frequently jailed or beaten by police. A prosecutor has argued it is possible Nyanzi has a mental illness and should be subjected to a psychiatric exam. Her lawyers have opposed an exam, saying it is intended to strip her of her dignity. The U.S. ambassador to Uganda, Deborah Malac, recently called Nyanzi's case "the latest of serious and growing constraints" faced by the media in Uganda. The government called her comments "condescending." CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Police in West Virginia's Capitol arrested a journalist who they said was trying "aggressively" to get past Secret Service agents and yelling questions at U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. It happened as Price and senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway came to the state Capitol in Charleston on Tuesday to learn about efforts to fight opioid addiction in a state that has the nation's highest overdose death rate. Capitol police said in a criminal complaint that Daniel Ralph Heyman, 54, "was aggressively breaching the secret service agents to the point where the agents were forced to remove him a couple of times from the area" in a Capitol hallway. It also says he was "causing a disturbance by yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price." In this Monday, May, 9, 2017 image made from video released by Eli Baumwell with the ACLU of West Virginia, Daniel Ralph Heyman, 54, left, and his attorney, Tim DiPiero, speak to the media in Charleston, W.Va., after his arrest by capitol police. Police arrested the journalist who they said was trying "aggressively" to get past Secret Service agents and yelling questions at U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price during his visit to the state. (Eli Baumwell/ACLU-WV via AP) Price and Conway later took reporters' questions at a scheduled news conference. Heyman, who is based in Charleston and works for the independent Public News Service, was charged with willful disruption of governmental processes, a misdemeanor, and later was released on $5,000 bond. No court hearing was immediately set. The charge carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $100 fine. Heyman told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he believes he did nothing wrong. He said he was arrested after he repeatedly asked Price about whether domestic violence is a pre-existing condition under the Republican health care proposals and got no response. Heyman, a journalist for three decades and a Public News Service employee since 2009, said he was wearing a press badge and his questions were directed only at Price, not at Conway. He was recording audio on his cellphone and said he reached the device past Price's staffers. Public News Service CEO Lark Corbeil and Heyman's attorney, Tim DiPiero of Charleston, said on a conference call Wednesday that the charges should be dropped. "There is no reason for this," Corbeil said. "It's an overreach." DiPiero called the state statute "very vague" and said he's "never had a case in which a guy got in trouble for speaking, for talking loud." Robert W. Jensen, a media law and ethics professor at the University of Texas School of Journalism and a former newspaper reporter and editor, said reporters have limits on their actions in public places with politicians and public officials, especially those protected by the Secret Service. "You can't break through the Secret Service line because you want to ask a question and then claim a First Amendment right to break through a Secret Service line," he said. "Everyone understands there are safety concerns about public officials, and journalists are routinely respectful of those things. It appears he was a very insistent questioner. Did that insistent questioning somehow cross the line that threatened the safety of the public official?" However, Jensen also said he's concerned that President Donald Trump's administration "has engaged in something like open warfare with journalists. Every time there is a further infringement on the rights of journalists who both collect and disseminate information in this type of atmosphere, it's troubling." Lawrence Messina, a spokesman for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, which oversees the Capitol police, said that based on the criminal complaint, Heyman "was physically trying to get his way past the Secret Service agents. And he did so repeatedly. And after one time too many, the Capitol police stepped in." A call to the Secret Service public affairs office in Washington, D.C., went unanswered Wednesday. Kristen O'Sullivan, a breast cancer survivor from Athens, West Virginia, was among a small group in the hallway hoping to talk to Price about the health care overhaul. As Heyman asked questions of Price, police officers "grabbed him by the scruff of the neck" and led Heyman away, she said. "It could have been handled completely differently," O'Sullivan said. "I saw him as doing his job and asking tough questions and Secretary Price trying not to pay attention to anyone that was there." At an appearance Wednesday in Concord, New Hampshire, Price said police in West Virginia "did what they felt was appropriate" and that arresting Heyman was "not my decision to make." The American Civil Liberties Union's West Virginia chapter said in a statement that Heyman's arrest "is a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press. The charges against him are outrageous, and they must be dropped immediately." The statement added, "What President Trump's administration is forgetting, and what the Capitol Police forgot today, is that the government works for us. Today was a dark day for democracy. But the rule of law will prevail. The First Amendment will prevail." According to its website, Boulder, Colorado-based Public News Service manages independent news services in 36 states, reporting on social, community and environmental issues for print and radio customers. ___ Associated Press reporter Kathleen Ronayne in Concord, New Hampshire contributed to this report. BERLIN (AP) - The German city of Hamburg has unveiled a memorial to Jewish and Roma residents who were killed during the Nazi Holocaust. The site of the memorial is a former train station, from where 8,071 people were deported on 20 trains to ghettos and concentration camps. The deportations took place from 1940 to 1945. Few survived. A plaque lists the names of more than 7,700 identified victims. The memorial also includes a piece of the original tracks and a special path leading to a nearby documentation center that is slated to open in 2020. People place white roses on a memorial that was unveiled in the German port city of Hamburg to Jewish and Roma residents who were killed during the Nazi Holocaust, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (Christophe Gateau/dpa via AP) Hamburg's mayor, Olaf Schulz, said during the opening ceremony Wednesday that the location "is a place of shame and grief, but from now on also a dignified place of remembrance," the German news agency dpa reported. RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina would end the automatic prosecution of 16- and 17-year-old suspects as adults and steer some to juvenile court, under legislation that's starting to wind its way through the state legislature. A House committee unanimously agreed Wednesday to advance the "raise the age" legislation, which would prevent North Carolina from becoming the only remaining state that automatically treats these teens as adults in the courts system. In April, New York lawmakers agreed to a two-year phase out of the practice. The proposal, which has support from law enforcement groups and lawmakers in both parties, would shift the cases for those teens accused of misdemeanors and certain nonviolent felonies to the juvenile court system, where records are confidential. The change would take effect in 2019. This bill is "something that some of us have been fighting for and wanting for many years and I'm glad to see that all of the stakeholders are now on board and hopefully this will become a reality," Democratic Rep. Jean Farmer-Butterfield of Wilson County said. The action in the House came as the Senate began debating a budget plan that also would eliminate automatic adult court for these youth. That measure differs from the House proposal by limiting the exemption to misdemeanors only and implementing the shift a year later. "I think the fact that it's in the budget indicates that there's broad support for addressing that issue and I think that's something that you will see when all is said and done with this General Assembly - something will be done about that," Senate leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, said at a news conference Tuesday. The House bill doesn't yet have the full support of some lawmakers, like Republican Rep. Sarah Stevens of Surry County, who raised concerns over which levels of crime are exempt or included in the measure. Stevens said that she is concerned whether the juvenile court system is prepared to take in some of the more serious felonies that are included in the bill, such as involuntary manslaughter. How to pay for the change is also a key issue. "This is a hard issue because you've got to put money into the juvenile system before you see the benefits of it on the backend," said Republican Rep. Chuck McGrady of Henderson. According to a document from nonpartisan General Assembly staff, it would cost the state about $25 million to implement the preliminary bill in its first year, with costs growing to roughly $44 million annually in the early 2020s. "There are all sorts of ways that we could fund this in different ways depending on where you draw the line," McGrady said. "We seem to now have agreed on the principle and that's huge." The proposal has also been pushed by North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin. Martin told legislators earlier this month that ending the practice would do away with the lasting stigma of a public criminal record for those who commit nonviolent teenage misdeeds. VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - A middle school student has been arrested after authorities say they found explosives in his school locker. The Virginian-Pilot reports (http://bit.ly/2pvUKFN) that the Virginia Beach Fire Department said in a release on Tuesday that the 13-year-old student was taken into custody Friday. The juvenile is charged with two counts of manufacturing and possessing chemical explosive devices. The teen is a student at Landstown Middle School. Macie Allen, a spokeswoman for the commonwealth's attorney, says school administrators received a report about the suspicious material and immediately contacted the school's resource officer. Fire officials say investigators have found no evidence thus far that would lead them to believe the teen had malicious intent. The student also faces disciplinary action from the school. It's unclear if the teen has an attorney. BERLIN (AP) - Austria's vice chancellor announced his resignation on Wednesday amid persistent infighting in his center-right party, saying that he is also stepping down as its leader. The country's chancellor said he regrets Reinhold Mitterlehner's resignation, but signaled that he hoped to keep the governing coalition alive until an election that is due late next year. Mitterlehner, who is also Austria's economy minister, said in a hastily arranged news conference that he would quit all his posts May 15. FILE - In this May 10, 2016 file photo Vice Chancellor and head of the Austrian Peoples party, OEVP Reinhold Mitterlehner addresses the media during a news conference at the federal chancellery in Vienna, Austria. Mitterlehner, who is also Austria's economy minister, announced to resign from his posts effective May 15 in a hastily arranged statement at the headquarters of his center-right Austrian People's Party on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak, file ) Mitterlehner's Austrian People's Party is the junior partner in an often bad-tempered "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats of Chancellor Christian Kern. The two parties are traditional rivals but have governed Austria together for the past decade, and for much of the time since World War II. Last year, neither party's candidate made it into the runoff vote for the Austrian presidency. Austria is due to hold a parliamentary election in the fall of 2018, though there has been long-running speculation that the date might be moved forward. The two governing parties and the anti-immigration Freedom Party are the country's strongest. People's Party leaders are expected to meet over the weekend to choose an interim leader, Mitterlehner said. It wasn't immediately clear who that will be. The ambitious foreign minister, 30-year-old Sebastian Kurz, is widely viewed as a likely future leader. However, he recently said he didn't want to take over the party at this point. Mitterlehner, the fourth leader of the Austrian People's Party since it lost the chancellery in 2007, criticized the behavior of some party members. "I think it is impossible ... to do government work on the one hand and at the same time be our own opposition," he said. Kern said that the upcoming "clarification" in the People's Party "may be an opportunity for Austria and an opportunity for this government." "I am convinced that it makes sense to use the more than a year ahead of us to bring about the necessary changes in our country," he said. NEW YORK (AP) - After a backlash over programming Netflix films, the Cannes Film Festival said that it will, beginning next year, only accept theatrically released films for its prestigious Palme d'Or competition. In a statement Wednesday, the French festival announced that it has adapted its rules to require that films in competition be distributed in French movie theaters. The festival said it was "pleased to welcome a new operator which has decided to invest in cinema but wants to reiterate its support to the traditional mode of exhibition of cinema in France and in the world." Cannes this year for the first time selected two films in its official competition from Netflix: Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories" and Bong Joon Ho's "Okja." FILE - In this Tuesday, May 10, 2011, file photo, a yacht is seen behind a logo for the 64th international film festival, in Cannes, southern France. After a backlash over programming Netflix films, the Cannes Film Festival said it will, beginning next year, only accept theatrically released films for its prestigious Palme d'Or competition. In a statement Wednesday, May 10, 2017, the French festival said it has adapted its rule to require films in competition to be distributed in French movie theaters. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File) The selections prompted immediate criticism from French exhibitors. In France, the theatrical experience is passionately defended. Films are prohibited from streaming or appearing on subscription video on demand for three years after playing in theaters. On Tuesday, France's National Federation of Films Distributors said the Netflix films at Cannes were "endangering a whole ecosystem." Reed Hastings, Netflix chief executive, responded to the festival's move Wednesday on Facebook. "The establishment is closing ranks against us," wrote Hastings. He called "Okja" ''an amazing film that theater chains want to block us from entering into the Cannes Film Festival competition." The streaming service has been discussing possible deals, including a brief temporary theatrical release, with French exhibitors. The festival said it was "aware of the anxiety aroused" by the Netflix films and has lobbied for a solution. "Hence the Festival regrets that no agreement has been reached," the festival said. Netflix has previously cited its subscribers as its most important audience. It has offered theaters the opportunity of a day-and-date release (opening a movie in theaters simultaneously as it debuts on the service), something large exhibitors have thus far rejected. The rule change comes just a week before the 70th Cannes Film Festival is to open. Netflix, along with Amazon, has been an increasingly powerful player at film festivals, actively acquiring films and using festivals as glitzy international launchpads for its movies. Nowhere has Netflix's arrival been received more warily than at Cannes, a staunch guardian of cinema, and in France, the birthplace of the art form. This year's festival also includes television series and virtual reality, but those works aren't playing in competition. When announcing this year's lineup, festival director Thierry Fremaux acknowledged Netflix presents "a unique and unheard of situation for us." But after lengthy discussion, Fremaux said he and organizers determined "the Cannes festival is a lab." ___ Samuel Petrequin in Paris contributed to this story. WASHINGTON (AP) - All but ignoring the unfurling drama over Russia and the U.S. election, President Donald Trump on Wednesday sought to advance prospects for cooperation between the former Cold War foes in Syria and elsewhere in a rare Oval Office meeting with Vladimir Putin's top diplomat. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's talks with Trump were already destined to be a closely watched affair, given the dire state of U.S.-Russian relations and diplomatic wrangling going on over a Moscow-backed deal to stabilize Syria. Yet Trump's stunning decision on the eve of the meeting to fire the FBI director overseeing a Russia-related investigation injected further intrigue into Lavrov's first visit to Washington since 2013. Trump "raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere," according to a White House statement. U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, next to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since he took office in January. (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP) Trump and Lavrov met in private, though both sides cast the session as a sign of ties having improved since the U.S. leader's assessment of them last month as at an "all-time low." On Wednesday, they focused on areas of budding agreement and Lavrov sought to blame the recent acrimony on former President Barack Obama. "The previous administration bent over backwards to undermine the solid foundation of our relations," Lavrov told reporters at the Russian Embassy after meeting Trump. "We have to start at a very low level." In contrast, he credited Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom he met earlier in the day, with taking a "businesslike" approach that is "free from ideology," focused on reaching agreements. None were apparently reached Wednesday. The meeting was Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian official since taking office and in itself represented modest progress. The last time Lavrov visited the American capital was before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and intervened militarily in Syria to help President Bashar Assad - actions that fueled U.S.-Russian tensions. The Russian diplomat steadfastly refused to weigh in on Trump's decision to fire James Comey, the former FBI director, who had been overseeing investigations of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election and possible collusion by Trump's campaign. Lavrov called it a U.S. decision, echoing Putin, who said Russia had nothing to do with Comey's dismissal. "Was he fired? You're kidding," Lavrov said sarcastically, feigning surprise as he started his day of meetings in Washington. Comey's dismissal escalated concerns in both parties that Trump may be trying to undermine an investigation that appears to be gaining steam. Trump insisted that wasn't the case. He said Wednesday he fired Comey because he "was not doing a good job." Still, the overlap between the investigation and Trump's diplomatic efforts made for uncomfortable optics. Russia's Foreign Ministry tweeted a photo of Trump shaking hands with Lavrov and the Russian Embassy posted another of the president greeting another participant in the meeting: Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a central character in various Russia-related investigations because of his contacts with several individuals close to Trump. Lavrov chalked up the controversy to "noise" and to "false news" - invoking Trump's frequent references to the Russia allegations as "fake news." On Syria, where Russia has backed President Bashar Assad's forces and the U.S. has supported anti-Assad rebels, the talks appeared to indicate a slight narrowing of differences. Russia, Turkey and Iran last week agreed on a plan for four "de-escalation zones" in the Arab country to quell a civil war that has killed some 400,000 people and contributed to global refugee and terror crises since erupting in 2011. The U.S. isn't party to the deal and has reacted cautiously, especially given its misgivings about Iran's role. But Lavrov said he detected a U.S. willingness to participate, especially with a zone being formed in Syria's south, near the border with Israel and Jordan. "We believe the U.S. is really interested in that," Lavrov said, acknowledged details of the plan still needed to be worked out. The zones would not cover areas where the U.S.-led coalition is fighting the Islamic State group, but enforcement and other questions remain unanswered. In his earlier meeting with Lavrov, Tillerson emphasized the U.S. wouldn't lift sanctions on Russia related to Ukraine until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered the punishment - namely, its Crimea annexation. Moscow wants the elimination of those and election-related sanctions imposed by Obama. Nevertheless, Lavrov struck a conciliatory tone and said Russia isn't intending to retaliate. "Putin doesn't want to follow the lead of those who are trying to poison our relations to the point of no return," he told reporters. ___ AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace in Washington and AP writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed. ___ Follow Vivian Salama at http://twitter.com/vmsalama and Josh Lederman at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP US President Donald Trump, right, meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since he took office in January. (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP) U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, second left, at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since he took office in January. Fourth from right is Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak. (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP) WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Washington visit of Russian's top diplomat for meetings with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (all times local): 12:55 p.m. The White House says President Donald Trump stressed several issues in a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SEHR'-gay LAHV'-rahf), including ending the civil war in Syria and improving U.S.-Russia relations. US President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since he took office in January. (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP) The White House says Trump made clear for the need for Russia to "rein in" the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, along with Iran and its proxies. Russia and Iran are both aligned with Assad against rebel factions that want to remove Assad from office. The leaders also discussed Ukraine, and Trump stressed Russia's responsibility to fully put in place a peace agreement. The White House says Trump emphasized his desire for better relations with Russia. Trump recently described relations as being at an "all-time low." ___ 12:50 p.m. The State Department says Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SEHR'-gay LAHV'-rahf) are affirming their support for U.N.-led talks to resolve the Syrian crisis. The diplomats met Wednesday in Washington - and there's a new Russian-led agreement to create safe zones in Syria. The U.S. isn't a part of that agreement, and has had concerns about the U.N. process being circumvented. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says Tillerson and Lavrov agreed that the U.N. process is "central to international efforts to bring about an enduring resolution." Nauert says the leaders also discussed the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria. She says Tillerson told Lavrov that sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine will remain in place until Russia changes course. ___ 12:40 p.m. Russian President Vladimir Putin (POO'-tihn) says there "will be no effect" on U.S.-Russian relations in the wake of the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Putin was suited up for a hockey game in Sochi, Russia, when a CBS correspondent found him and asked what he thought of President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. Putin said: "Your question seems very funny to me. Please don't be angry with me." He spoke in Russian and his remarks were translated by his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. Putin said Trump "is acting in accordance with his competence." ___ 12:35 p.m. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SEHR'-gay LAHV'-rahf) says Russia wants the U.S. to play an active role in helping secure four de-escalation zones in Syria. Those zones are envisioned under a deal struck by Russia, Iran and Turkey. Lavrov is speaking in Washington after meeting with President Donald Trump. The diplomat says it's in Russia's interests for the United States to contribute, and that he believes the U.S. is genuinely interested. Lavrov says that's especially true regarding a zone in Syria's south, near the border with Jordan and Israel. But Lavrov says the countries must work out who will control security around the safe zones. He says he hopes the current "fireworks" will evolve into an acceptable agreement for all sides, including Syria's opposition. The U.S. has reacted cautiously to the Russia-led agreement on safe zones. ___ 12:10 p.m. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SEHR'-gay LAHV'-rahf) says it's "humiliating" for the American people to hear that Russia is controlling the political situation in the United States. Lavrov is speaking at the Russian Embassy in Washington after meetings with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Lavrov says American politicians who are raising questions about Russian interference in the 2016 election are damaging the U.S. political system by suggesting it's being controlled by outsiders. He's brushing off the questions as "noise" about Russians' contacts with people in Trump's campaign. He says through a translator that "there is not a single fact" or piece of compelling evidence proving Russia's intervention in the election. Lavrov notes that Trump dismisses the matter as "false news." THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Police searching a barn in the southern Netherlands have discovered a large quantity of a synthetic drug that is popular in the Arab world. In a statement, police say they are investigating whether the pills bearing the logo "captagon" were destined for the Middle East. They pills were discovered last month as authorities raided a farm in the southern town of Brunssum. They also uncovered laboratory equipment, a pill making machine and some 80 kilograms (176 pounds) of amphetamines and MDMA, also known as ecstasy. Tests by forensic experts showed that the pills with captagon logos contained amphetamines and caffeine. Police say they have arrested a 40-year-old man and his 39-year-old girlfriend in connection with the raid and are hunting two other men. WASHINGTON The voters of France acted responsibly and decently on Sunday. But they also sent a warning. Frances new president-elect is Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old centrist whose 2-to-1 victory over the National Fronts Marine Le Pen offered yet another sign that the rise of President Trump is not the harbinger of a new and unhinged form of nationalism. For now, the center is holding, pluralism is hanging on, and the far right is being held in check. As they had in recent elections in Austria and the Netherlands, the friends of liberal democracy prevailed while Trump, who publicly tilted toward Le Pen, suffered another rebuke. The fact that hackers went after Macrons campaign and dumped emails publicly just before the vote underscored the elections international stakes. Russia strongly favored Le Pen and subsidized her party while ultra-right groups across the West saw a Le Pen victory as a chance to break up an alliance system that includes the European Union and NATO. The latest cyberattack increases the urgency of understanding Russias role in the 2016 election in the United States. Macron ran as a confident and unflinching advocate of pluralism and openness, and he will become, instantly, a major global voice for those values. But he will have to govern a deeply torn nation in a surly mood. Le Pens share of the vote, while not as high as her supporters had hoped and her detractors had feared, was still a major breakthrough for what had once been a pariah party long dismissed as a neofascist movement rooted in unsavory aspects of French history. Like Trump, Le Pen rallied voters in once prosperous but now ailing industrial towns. Macron swept Frances prospering and cosmopolitan big cities. The creator of a political party that is only a year old, Macron faces significant challenges reflected in the unusually large number of blank protest ballots. He will have to take on or work around the countrys established parties in Junes legislative elections. He will also have to square the many circles of his neither-left-nor-right campaign platform. He promised both a more flexible regulatory climate for business and solid social protections for a 21st-century economy. Macron is both a former investment banker and a moderate social democrat. Demonstrating how these two sides of him fit together will define the drama of his presidency. A particular test will be whether he is willing and able to nudge Germany toward a less austere and constraining economic approach to southern Europe. Macrons election could signal a renewed Franco-German alliance. This would be a tonic for the E.U., but only if it becomes the engine for both reform and more widely shared growth. German Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly expressed her pleasure over Macrons victory. None of this will be easy, and if Macron is unsuccessful and the mainstream French right fails to revive itself, many in France fear that Le Pen (who is only 48 years old) could win the next election five years from now. Macron was endorsed by former President Barack Obama, and their similarities are striking: youth, a hopeful attitude toward the future, a vaguely progressive spirit of moderation and a well-advertised desire to overcome traditional divides. Less remarked upon is their shared political luck. When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2004 the job that, along with his Democratic National Convention speech that year, propelled him to the national stage two of his strongest rivals were forced out of the running by sex and marital scandals. Macron would likely not even have made it to Sundays runoff but for the troubles of two key competitors: Francois Fillon, the candidate of the mainstream right, was caught in a scandal involving paid no-show jobs for his family. The more moderate Socialist alternative, former prime minister Manuel Valls, lost his partys primary, opening new room in the political center. But it took more than luck for the new French president to accomplish something most students of French politics thought impossible: From scratch, he built his own political party of the center, En Marche! Its name can be roughly translated as Onward, though it might best be seen as a compact Gallic version of John F. Kennedys Lets get this country moving again. While presidents of both the left and the right in France have often pursued moderate policies, the loyalties to political tribes and to the very concept of left vs. right a French invention, after all have typically stranded centrist politicians in a nowhere land. Macron grasped that the old left/right divide is an increasingly imperfect construct for the new fissures in a Western politics organized around openness, pluralism and a transnational approach on the one side, and nationalism, more closed economies and a rejection of pluralism on the other. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of creating a Third Way in politics between an old left and a new right. Under far more trying circumstances, Emmanuel Macrons victory gives the Third Way a second chance and liberal democracy a much-needed reprieve. COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Noting he had just gotten his driver's license the last time Congress overhauled the nation's tax system, House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday insisted lawmakers will act soon even as he deals with deep divisions in his own Republican Party. During a roundtable discussion Wednesday at a central Ohio contract packaging plant, Ryan focused on reducing the number of tax brackets to three, eliminating tax breaks and simplifying the code to cut rates for individuals. "In every generation you have an opportunity," Ryan, 47, said. "The last time we did this - this being, reform our tax system - was the year I got my driver's license: 1986. We have not done this is a long, long time and it's high time in coming." House Speaker Paul Ryan, center, tours a packaging facility in West Albany, Ohio, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Ryan also plans to hold a roundtable discussion on tax reform with local business leaders. (AP Photo/Dake Kang) President Donald Trump has proposed reducing the top corporate tax rate by 20 percentage points and allowing private business owners to claim the new lower rate for their take-home pay. It would whittle the number of tax brackets for individuals from seven to three, lower the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent and double the standard amount taxpayers could deduct. The proposal would significantly add to the deficit and eliminated some popular tax breaks enjoyed by millions of families and businesses. House Republicans and the Trump administration have already called for getting rid of 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. Several Republicans in those states already have announced their opposition to scrapping that tax break. Ryan used the appearance at Accel Inc., a manufacturer in New Albany, Ohio, to promote overhaul of the tax code. "We are taxing businesses, employers, jobs more than 50 percent in many cases," he said. "How can we compete with the likes of all the rest of the world when we tax our job creators and our employers at much, much higher tax rates than our competitors tax theirs? This is why we have got to get tax reform." At his appearance, Ryan refused to answer questions about Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. QUINCY, Mass. (AP) - A Massachusetts real estate mogul who defrauded investors of millions of dollars is headed to prison. The Patriot Ledger (http://bit.ly/2pwerNd ) reports that Daniel Flynn III, of Quincy, was sentenced to four years in federal prison and three years of probation on Tuesday. Flynn pleaded guilty to criminal fraud in February. Authorities say he bilked at least $9.5 million out of 10 victims by using false representations of his real estate business in a Ponzi scheme. Prosecutors earlier claimed Flynn squeezed $21 million out of 150 people. However, Flynn admitted to cheating 10 victims as part of the plea deal. A judge imposed a lesser sentence than the nearly six-year sentence recommended by prosecutors as part of the deal. Flynn was also ordered to repay his victims. ___ Information from: The (Quincy, Mass.) Patriot Ledger, http://www.patriotledger.com KANAB, Utah (AP) - U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will visit a sweeping southern Utah monument that's been a source of ire for local officials and Republican leaders for two decades. Zinke's trip to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on Wednesday caps his four-day visit to Utah to inspect two national monuments in a review ordered by President Donald Trump. President Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase monument in 1996. Residents and Utah officials say the 1.9 million acre (7,700 square kilometers) monument closed off too much land to development. During Zinke's trip Monday and Tuesday to the newly-named Bears Ears National Monument, environmental groups and Native American tribal members urged him not to rescind its protections. Local business owners and residents who support the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument plan to rally in its defense. TIRANA, Albania (AP) - Albania's opposition, which is boycotting the June 18 national parliamentary election, has complained at the Electoral College that the registration of candidates from the political parties is overdue. The main opposition has not registered for the vote, claiming the government will manipulate the ballot in which 15 political parties are running. The opposition's stance, announced on Wednesday, may block or create obstacles in the process. The opposition has boycotted parliament since February, also blocking the justice reforms that Albania, a NATO member since 2009, should start before being able to launch full membership negotiations with the European Union. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The Latest on former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown's fraud trial (all times local): 11 a.m. A juror accused of making a questionable comment has been excused from deliberations in former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown's fraud trial. James W. Smith II, left, attempts to clear a path as his client, former Congresswoman Corrine Brown, center, leaves the Bryan Simpson United States Courthouse after another day of jury deliberation. Brown was indicted in July on 22 counts involving conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, filing false tax returns and hiding income.(Bruce Lipsky/The Florida Times-Union via AP) News outlets report that U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan excused the person Wednesday morning after the juror made comments during deliberations about Brown and "higher beings." The issue came to light after another juror called the court Tuesday night to report concerns over the excused juror's comments. An alternate juror has been put in place and deliberations are starting over. Brown is a Democrat who represented the Florida district including the city of Jacksonville from 1993 to 2016. Prosecutors say she funneled money from a nonprofit education fund into her personal accounts. Brown has pleaded not guilty. She says it was her former chief of staff Elias "Ronnie" Simmons who stole the money. ___ 2 a.m. Jurors will return for a third day of deliberations in the fraud and tax evasion trial of former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown. The jury will return Wednesday. Prosecutors and defense attorneys made their closing arguments Monday before giving the case to jurors. The jury met all day Tuesday without reaching a decision. Prosecutors say Brown, a Democrat who represented the Florida district that included Jacksonville since 1993, funneled money from One Door for Education into her personal accounts. She has pleaded not guilty, blaming her former chief of staff Elias "Ronnie" Simmons for stealing. Rogue + Jaye, "Pent Up" (Tropicali Records) Zach Rogue and Courtney Jaye express themselves just fine on their debut, sprinkling "Pent Up" with a little indie dust over a graceful mix of pop, country and folk. Rogue has released a handful of albums with San Francisco band Rogue Wave since 2003, from near-solo lo-fi to more polished efforts. Jaye has also recorded a few albums while making stops everywhere from Georgia and Hawaii to Tennessee and southern California. This image released by Tropicali Records shows "Pent Up," a release by Rogue + Jaye. (Tropicali Records via AP) Their songwriting partnership began in Los Angeles in 2013, though "Pent Up" was made at Nashville's Fleetwood Shack studios. Jaye's voice combines shades of Stevie Nicks' earthy tones with the piercing velvetiness of Natalie Maines and it's skillfully complemented by Rogue's own expressive yet economical vocals and layers of guitars. "Golden Lady," a possible Nicks tribute, has a riff and beat echoing Bob Seger's "Night Moves" and features Jaye's voice at its most soaring. On the gentle "Forces of Decay," one of the best songs here, the pair's harmonies slide gently over fingerpicked guitars and dry percussion. Rogue's singing comes to the fore on "Little Relief," while "Til It Fades," the first tune they wrote together, also finds them harmonizing and makes it easy to understand why they decided to continue the partnership. "Spider and Fly" returns to folkier territory and "Claws" closes the record with Jaye's voice sounding as if through a filter of crystals and underpinned by Rogue's ghostly backing. Rogue + Jaye don't sound repressed, inhibited or confined on "Pent Up," a winning release inhabited by confident songwriting. COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Members of Ohio's growing African immigrant community say they're hopeful a decade-long wait for their own state advocacy board is almost over. Immigrant groups backing the board say they've submitted names of potential commission members several times over the years to the House and Senate, which then make recommendations to the governor for appointment. The New African Immigrants Commission would advocate for people from countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Somalia, among others. Mahdi Taakilo, editor of Somalilink newspaper, discusses how important it is for the state to finally activate a commission representing the interests of new African immigrants to Ohio almost a decade after the commission was created, on Tuesday, May 9, 2017, in Columbus, Ohio. Taakilo, from Somalia, said the commission will ensure that immigrants are connected with all branches of state government. (AP Photo/Andrew Welsh-Huggins) State lawmakers created the 11-person board in 2008, with the law enacting it taking effect the following year. Among the commission's duties: to "gather and disseminate information and conduct hearings, conferences, investigations, and special studies on problems and programs concerning sub-Saharan African people." The commission was "a common-sense way to take the refugees that are coming to our country and help them assimilate and become productive members of our society," said Republican state Sen. Kevin Bacon, who supported the idea a decade ago as a state rep as a way to help better integrate central Ohio's growing population of Somali refugees. He says he doesn't know why the commission was never activated. There has been little interest in filling the commission since Republican Rep. Cliff Rosenberger became speaker of the Ohio House in 2015, said House GOP spokesman Brad Miller. "Therefore, in the spirit of finding individuals who are both interested and qualified to serve these positions, the Speaker will continue to welcome members and the general public to recommend and review applicants," Miller said. Both the House and Senate have examined new appointees as recently as March and April. Gov. John Kasich agrees the process has taken too long, said spokeswoman Emmalee Kalmbach, who added that appointments should be coming soon. Ohio has about 110,000 immigrants from sub-Saharan African, up from about 75,000 in 2005, according to Census data. Central Ohio has the country's second-largest population of Somalis after the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Had the board been in existence, it would have provided useful coordination among immigrants during the Ebola crisis, said Kay Wilson, a Columbus youth advocate and board proponent who spent seven years in Nigeria. In 2014, Ohio health officials temporarily monitored several hundred travelers coming from West African countries that had Ebola outbreaks. No quarantines were necessary. Many Somali doctors who are unable to practice in this country would benefit from someone advocating for them here, said Jibril Mohamed, executive director of the Columbus-based advocacy group SomaliCAN. Mahdi Taakilo, a Somali native, says the commission will ensure that immigrants are connected with all branches of state government. Somehow the commission has never been empaneled, despite the fact that, "We always have enough people apply, we always have enough people getting approved," Taakilo said. ___ Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/andrew-welsh-huggins BEIRUT (AP) - With the Trump administration's decision to supply Syria's Kurdish fighters with heavier weapons, U.S. troops inside Syria are in the crossfire between Turkey, a powerful NATO ally, and the Kurdish fighters that Ankara deems as terrorists. In only a few months under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has almost doubled the number of troops in northern Syria, taking a highly visible role that also risks a backlash from militants such as the Islamic State group and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, and even pro-Turkey Syrian fighters angered by the U.S. move to arm the Kurds. Tuesday's decision to arm the Kurds is a public rebuff to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a week before he meets Trump in Washington. For months, Erdogan has been trying to convince the U.S. to cut off its support for the Kurds and partner instead with Turkey-backed fighters to liberate the Islamic State group stronghold of Raqqa. FILE -- This undated image posted online Monday, May 1, 2017, by supporters of the Islamic State militant group on an anonymous photo sharing website, purports to show an Islamic State fighter firing his weapon during clashes with U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in the northern Syrian province of Raqqa. A top Syrian Kurdish official said Wednesday, May 10, 2017, that the U.S. decision to arm Kurdish fighters with heavier weapons will help legitimize the force, which is denounced as a terrorist organization by Turkey. The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will arm the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces "as necessary" to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. (Militant Photo via AP) The dispute could ignite more fighting between Turkey and the Kurds as they gear up for a major operation to retake the city, with U.S. troops smack in the middle. The growing U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war stands in sharp contrast to the caution adopted by former President Barack Obama and has alarmed officials in Damascus and its backers in Tehran. Last month, Trump gave orders to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at an air base in central Syria in response to a devastating chemical weapons attack blamed on Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. It was the first time the U.S. has attacked Syrian forces in the six-year civil war. Although U.S. officials have said repeatedly since then that the war against the Islamic State group in Syria remains the priority, that strike - coupled with the buildup of forces in the north - has raised speculation of longer term U.S. ambitions in Syria and concerns about a more permanent project. Under Trump, the Pentagon has made quiet, incremental additions to troop levels in Syria, adding hundreds of Marines to provide artillery support and sending more advisers to work with Kurdish units ahead of the fight for Raqqa. The official limit on U.S. troops has remained at 503 since shortly before Obama left office, but U.S. commanders this year have added hundreds of troops, including a Marine artillery unit, on what they call a temporary basis, raising the total to about 900. These have taken on a more visible role, often aimed at keeping Turkey and the Kurds from battling each other and focused instead on the fight against IS. On April 30, U.S. forces accompanied by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) began patrols along the Turkey-Syria border, acting as a buffer after Turkish airstrikes in the area killed 20 Kurdish fighters. The spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against IS, Col. John Dorrian, said U.S. troops were about 6 miles from the strikes and put American forces at risk. Images of U.S. troops in armored personnel carriers with American flags and maneuvering down rural roads in northern Syria spread quickly on social media, triggering alarm in a region where there are political sensitivities about the footprint of U.S. troops and fears about occupation forces. In a crowded battlefield like Syria, the growing U.S. presence brings with it a greater risk of confrontation with competing players. U.S. special operations forces are embedded with the Kurdish-led fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces as they prepare for battle around Raqqa. "There is a concern that American forces in Syria can be targeted because there are many who are not happy about their presence," said Mutlu Civiroglu, a Washington-based Kurdish affairs analyst. "Although American forces are well-protected by the Kurds, still such possibly always exists." Earlier this month, Islamic State group militants staged a surprise attack at a crossing frequently used by Iraqi and Syrian civilians seeking safety in northeastern Syria, killing nearly 40 people, mostly civilians. The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said militants struck four YPG positions in Hasakeh province in northeastern Syria. Ominously, it added that two of the targeted locations were "suspected of hosting U.S. troops." Also concerned about the growing U.S. presence is northern Syria is Iran, which has bankrolled the presence of thousands of Shiite militiamen in Syria to bolster Assad's military and seeks to secure a land route from Beirut to Tehran that goes through Damascus and Baghdad. Iran views the prospect of permanent U.S. bases in Syria with a high degree of unease, reflected most recently by comments by officials of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group. Earlier this month, Sheikh Ali Daamoush, a senior Hezbollah official, warned the U.S. against "trying to regain a presence in the region" via direct intervention in Syria and Iraq, and setting up bases there. He said the "Axis of Resistance" - a reference to an alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah - "will not allow Syria to fall in the hands of America and Israel." Although there is no immediate danger in the U.S. presence and the alliances that Washington has formed there, Iran and Syria are concerned about the growing American sphere of influence and what it could mean for Iranian dominance in Syria and Iraq in the long term, according to Hassan Hassan, a Syria expert. "That is why we are seeing more pro-Iranian militias being built in or for northern and eastern Syria in recent months," he added. "For now, things look tolerable for Iran, but it is not clear what the U.S. could do with their buildup in that region. It can go different ways, depending on the U.S. thinking down the road." ___ Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed. FILE -- This April 30, 2017 photo provided by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), shows a fighter from the SDF carrying weapons as he looks toward the northern town of Tabqa, Syria. A top Syrian Kurdish official said Wednesday, May 10, 2017, that the U.S. decision to arm Kurdish fighters with heavier weapons will help legitimize the force, which is denounced as a terrorist organization by Turkey. The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will arm the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces "as necessary" to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. (Syrian Democratic Forces, via AP, File) RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva struck a defiant note after testifying for five hours Wednesday, telling thousands of supporters that the corruption case against him has been big on suspense but little on substance. Minutes after emerging from face-to-face testimony with the federal judge overseeing a mammoth bribery investigation that has upended Latin America's largest nation, Silva blasted the entire process and ridiculed prosecutors' allegations that a construction company bought him an apartment as a kickback. "After being massacred for two years, I was expecting to see a document showing that I bought the apartment," Silva said. "But there was nothing, nothing at all." Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks to supporters after giving his testimony to a federal judge overseeing a bribery investigation in Curitiba, Brazil, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Lula da Silva struck a defiant note after testifying for five hours Wednesday, telling thousands of supporters that the corruption case against him had been big on suspense but little on substance. (AP Photo/Denis Ferreira Netto) The hearing was closed to the press and not broadcast live, two of the many measures taken by Judge Sergio Moro and authorities in the southeastern city of Curitiba amid concerns of violence. Authorities began releasing portions of the video an hour after the session finished. Thousands of supporters - both of Silva and Moro - were separated by a few miles (kilometers), and hundreds of police in riot gear controlled several square blocks around the federal courthouse. "Brazil's most popular politician in the last 30 years is going before a judge like any regular citizen," said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. "That is very rare in Brazilian politics." Silva, president between 2003 and 2010, testified about allegations that he received a beachfront apartment as a kickback from construction company OAS. Prosecutors also allege OAS did repairs to the apartment and paid to store Silva's belongings. The former president denies the charges, along with those related to several other cases of corruption against him. During his testimony, Silva lectured prosecutors, took swipes at his enemies and repeatedly claimed his innocence. "I want to ask my accusers to take into the account that you are very young, you have a long road before yourselves," Silva said during his testimony, a direct critique of the young team of investigators leading the probe. "The prosecutors' office was not made for that. Accusations need to be serious, well grounded, not speculation." Moro, who has become a national hero to many Brazilians while overseeing the "Car Wash" investigation, kept a respectful tone but also pushed back against Silva. "I have no personal issue with the former president," Moro said in his usually calm voice. "What will be decisive in the end is the collected evidence and the law." Silva's testimony came after several attempts by his defense team to postpone the hearing. The last appeal, to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, one of Brazil's top courts, was denied about an hour before his testimony began. Silva's defense team argued it needed more time to analyze the case. Silva's opponents countered that it was an excuse to prolong the matter. The defense has also said it wants to call more than 80 witnesses. Silva, who Brazilians simply call Lula, has reason to drag the process out. He has signaled his interest in running for president in 2018, and leads in polls. He would be ineligible, however, if he should be convicted and the conviction was upheld on appeal. Moro is known for reaching judgments relatively quickly and then denying the release of convicts while they appeal. "Lula and those by his side got rich overnight," said Surei Assad, a 57-year-old demonstrating in support of the Car Wash investigation. "And then if you go to a public hospital, you will be horrified at the conditions" and lack of resources. Since it was launched in March 2014, the investigation centered on state oil company Petrobras has led to the convictions of dozens of top politicians and business executives. Many more are being investigated in the kickback scheme, which prosecutors say involved more than $3 billion in bribes over more than a decade. The probe has also spread beyond Brazil to several Latin American countries. The event was being closely followed nationwide. Television stations transmitted live from various parts of Curitiba, and politicians of all stripes weighed in. Silva "has been the victim of a media witch hunt, a massacre of accusations and more accusations," Sen. Fatima Bezerra, an ally of the former president, said in a statement. "Up until now, there is no proof" that he committed a crime. In a sign of the pressure surrounding Silva's case, last week Moro posted a video in which he asked supporters of the investigation not to come out. During a public appearance this week, he also played down the hearing, saying that it was procedural and that no decision would be reached Wednesday. For his part, Silva has started hinting at getting revenge for what he insists is nothing more than an effort to keep him from returning to the presidency. "If they don't arrest me soon, maybe one day I'll arrest them for lying," Silva told members of his Workers' Party during a gathering last week, according to newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. ___ Peter Prengaman on Twitter: twitter.com/peterprengaman Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks to supporters after giving his testimony to a federal judge overseeing a bribery investigation in Curitiba, Brazil, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Lula da Silva struck a defiant note after testifying for five hours Wednesday, telling thousands of supporters that the corruption case against him had been big on suspense but little on substance. Second from right is Brazil's former President Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached. (AP Photo/Denis Ferreira Netto) Demonstrators stand near a large inflatable doll depicting former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in prison garb in Curitiba, Brazil, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Silva on Wednesday testified at the Federal Justice building in Curitiba in a corruption case against him, coming face-to-face for the first time with the federal judge overseeing a mammoth probe that has upended Latin America's largest nation. (AP Photo/Denis Ferreira Netto) Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, center, is greeted by supporters as he arrives to the Federal Justice building in Curitiba, Brazil, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Silva is to appear Wednesday before Judge Sergio Moro, who is overseeing the so-called "Car Wash" investigation that has led to the convictions of dozens of politicians since it began three years ago. He is a defendant in several corruption cases and on Wednesday is to testify about allegations he received a beachfront apartment as a kickback from a construction company. (AP Photo/Denis Ferreira Netto) Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, center, arrives to the Federal Justice building in Curitiba, Brazil, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Silva is to appear Wednesday before Judge Sergio Moro, who is overseeing the so-called "Car Wash" investigation that has led to the convictions of dozens of politicians since it began three years ago. He is a defendant in several corruption cases and on Wednesday is to testify about allegations he received a beachfront apartment as a kickback from a construction company. (AP Photo/Denis Ferreira Netto) Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, center left, is greeted by supporters as he arrives to the Federal Justice building in Curitiba, Brazil, Wednesday, May 10 2017. Silva is to appear Wednesday before Judge Sergio Moro, who is overseeing the so-called "Car Wash" investigation that has led to the convictions of dozens of politicians since it began three years ago. He is a defendant in several corruption cases and on Wednesday is to testify about allegations he received a beachfront apartment as a kickback from a construction company. (AP Photo/Denis Ferreira Netto) MANCHESTER, England (AP) - Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has described the second leg of his team's Europa League semifinal against Celta Vigo on Thursday as "the most important match of our history." United, a three-time European champion and 20-time English champion, leads 1-0 from the first leg in Spain last week. The winner of the Europa League earns a place in next season's Champions League, increasing its significance for a United side that has only played in Europe's top competition for one of the last three seasons. Manchester United's manager Jose Mourinho watches over his team's training session at the team's training complex in Manchester, England Wednesday May 10, 2017. United will play against Celta Vigo in a Europa League semifinal second leg soccer match on Thursday. (Martin Rickett//PA via AP) "For Celta, it's - in their words - the most important match of their history," Mourinho said Wednesday. "My feelings, it's also the most important match of our history. It doesn't matter what happened before, how big the matches we played before." "I don't believe Celta dreams more than us, wants (to win) more than us," Mourinho added. "I really don't believe. In this aspect, I don't think there will be a difference between both teams." Mourinho has played weakened teams in recent Premier League matches, despite United still being in with a chance of a top-four finish and gaining Champions League qualification via that route. It seems that for Mourinho, it's Europa League or nothing. "The situation is simple: 17 matches in seven weeks, with 16 players, is impossible," Mourinho said. "It's not a gamble, it was a simple decision, a decision based on common sense and a consequence of our situation. "We are giving everything we can, the players, myself, everyone. We are giving everything so when you give everything, no problem." The Europa League is the only major trophy that United hasn't won - and might be the last one captured by the club's captain, Wayne Rooney. Rooney committed his future to United in February amid interest from Chinese clubs, while Everton manager Ronald Koeman has also stated he would be keen to sign the England international. However, Rooney is no longer a first-choice player at United and has only made 22 starts this season, fueling the belief his future lies elsewhere. "I haven't thrown my toys out of the pram. I haven't made a big fuss of it," Rooney said. "But of course I'm a football player, I want to play football and the more I can play obviously the better for me and the more I feel I can help the team." Ajax leads Lyon 4-1 going into the second leg of their semifinal in France. Inspirational Christian Marriage Music Contact: IAM Music Company, 301-758-0300, 301-758-1360 mobile, docpearson1@mac.com WASHINGTON, May 10, 2017 / "I Still Do" Songs For A Biblical Marriage is a collection of romantic love songs and inspirational musical messages intended to strengthen, inspire and encourage the marriage community. Award winning producer/songwriter Derrick Doc Pearson has produced an amazing collection of music covering the spectrum from romance to inspiration. These musical messages are birthed out of scripture and lessons learned over Derrick and his wife Lamar's 34 years of marriage. Their marriage experiences and testimonies are set to masterful songwriting and soulful music productions that will inspire couples the world over. Stand out tracks include the title track: I Still Do, Intimacy, Through Jesus Christ, Thank God 4 U, Heart In God's Hand and Quiet Christmas Night. Quiet Christmas Night is a new Christmas holiday song for couples destined to become a Christmas classic. "I Still Do" Songs For A Biblical Marriage can be downloaded or streamed at iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, Beats Music, Pandora and CD Baby, or visit Download Links: iTunes - Amazon - Apple Music: Title: "I Still Do" Songs For A Biblical Marriage Artist: Derrick Doc Pearson Label: IAM Music Company UPC- 853899004174 Format: CD, Streams and Downloads Genre: Inspirational/Urban AC For additional information contact : Derrick or Lamar Pearson IAM Music Company P.O. Box 2200 Clinton, MD 20735 Email. Office: 301-758-0300 Mobile: 301-758-1360 Share Tweet Contact: Derrick or Lamar Pearson 301-758-0300,301-758-1360 mobile,WASHINGTON, May 10, 2017 / Christian Newswire / -- IAM Music Company releases music for the Christian marriage community in the new Digital/CD project, "I Still Do" Songs For A Biblical Marriage from Derrick Doc Pearson."I Still Do" Songs For A Biblical Marriage is a collection of romantic love songs and inspirational musical messages intended to strengthen, inspire and encourage the marriage community. Award winning producer/songwriter Derrick Doc Pearson has produced an amazing collection of music covering the spectrum from romance to inspiration. These musical messages are birthed out of scripture and lessons learned over Derrick and his wife Lamar's 34 years of marriage. Their marriage experiences and testimonies are set to masterful songwriting and soulful music productions that will inspire couples the world over.Stand out tracks include the title track: I Still Do, Intimacy, Through Jesus Christ, Thank God 4 U, Heart In God's Hand and Quiet Christmas Night. Quiet Christmas Night is a new Christmas holiday song for couples destined to become a Christmas classic."I Still Do" Songs For A Biblical Marriage can be downloaded or streamed at iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, Beats Music, Pandora and CD Baby, or visit iammusiccompany.com Download Links:iTunes - itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-still-do/id1215936826 Amazon - www.amazon.com/Still-Do-Derrick-Doc-Pearson/dp/B06XP5R8YJ/ref=sr_1_1?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&qid=1491592491&sr=1-1-mp3-albums-bar-strip-0&keywords=derrick+doc+pearson Apple Music: itunes.apple.com/album/id1215936826 Title: "I Still Do" Songs For A Biblical MarriageArtist: Derrick Doc PearsonLabel: IAM Music CompanyUPC- 853899004174Format: CD, Streams and DownloadsGenre: Inspirational/Urban ACFor additional information contact :Derrick or Lamar PearsonIAM Music CompanyP.O. Box 2200Clinton, MD 20735Email. ddpearson@iammusiccompany.com or docpearson1@mac.com Office: 301-758-0300Mobile: 301-758-1360 WASHINGTON (AP) - More than a dozen Republican senators voiced concerns Wednesday over President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, in a series of statements suggesting the GOP was not yet prepared to close ranks behind its president. But most Republicans also refused to embrace Democratic calls for a special counsel and it was not clear their hand-wringing would result in any action. "The timing of this and the reasoning for it doesn't make sense to me," said Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee, which like the FBI is investigating Russian ties to the Trump campaign and meddling in the 2016 election. Burr said Comey's firing could complicate his investigation. "I think we need to find out what's happened and why," said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., leaves the chamber after a vote on Capitol Hill in Washington, early Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said: "I do have questions about why he was dismissed at this time given his service and performance." The unease expressed by key committee chairs and rank-and-file lawmakers alike came even as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., echoed White House talking points on the issue and tried to shut down talk of a special prosecutor to investigate Russia issues. Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell noted that Democrats themselves had repeatedly criticized Comey over his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email issues. And he said that with the FBI and Senate intelligence committee already investigating Russian interference, nothing further was needed. "Today we will no doubt hear calls for a new investigation which could only serve to impede the current work being done," McConnell said. He remarked that Democrats had "consistently complained" about Comey, though he notably failed to reveal his own views on the firing. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., stood firmly behind Trump. Ryan said the president, members of both parties and top Justice Department officials had lost confidence in Comey, and said "it is entirely within the president's role and authority to relieve him." Ryan spoke on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier." The firing came after Comey had requested more resources from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for the Russia investigation, The Associated Press and other news outlets reported. The Justice Department disputed that report. For their part, Democrats voiced outrage over the abrupt firing, suggesting Trump was trying to impede the FBI's probe into his own campaign's ties with Russia. "We know Director Comey was leading an investigation in whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians - a serious offense. Were those investigations getting too close to home for the president?" Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York asked on the Senate floor. "What should happen now ... what must happen now ... is that Mr. Rosenstein appoints a special prosecutor to oversee this investigation." Schumer tried various tactics to draw attention to his demand, including summoning all 48 members of the Senate Democratic caucus to gather on the Senate floor as the day began to listen to McConnell's opening remarks. Most of them showed up, but McConnell made use of the circumstance to lecture them about the failings of "Obamacare" and invite them to join GOP efforts to repeal and replace the law. Democrats then convened a special caucus meeting and indicated they would attempt to delay committee hearings or in other ways slow down the business of the Senate to highlight their demands. Schumer requested that McConnell convene an all-senators briefing to hear directly from Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the matter. The administration's stated reason for the firing was that Trump had lost confidence in Comey, and administration officials pointed to a letter from Rosenstein harshly criticizing Comey's leadership of the Clinton email investigation. That explanation left unanswered questions for a number of GOP senators. The reaction was notable given that most Republicans have risen to the president's defense in the past, or at least avoided critical commentary, on issues from the immigration travel ban to Trump's false claims that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower. This time around, GOP senators seemed more willing to voice concerns. "It would have been easier to explain if the president had fired the FBI Director earlier when Sen. Schumer and other Democrats said they'd lost confidence in Mr. Comey," said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a senior Republican. He said that the Senate must ensure "that the new FBI director is a person of unquestioned integrity." Confirmation of the next FBI director will require a simple majority vote in the Senate. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a statement that: "Whether or not you are a supporter of Mr. James Comey's actions as FBI Director, the timing of his firing - in the middle of an investigation into Russia's interference in our election - is serious cause for concern." ___= Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor and Richard Lardner contributed. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A judge has granted a divorce decree to a lesbian couple after a custody battle that was targeted by dozens of conservative Tennessee lawmakers who tried to intervene in the case. The same-sex divorce and custody case became a political flashpoint after a Knoxville judge initially ruled that one of the women had no parental rights to a child conceived by artificial insemination because she did not meet the legal definition of "husband." The judge changed his mind, granted the divorce and approved a plan for Sabrina and Erica Witt to split custody. The attorneys for the two women did not respond to calls seeking comment. Their divorce came May 2 as the state Legislature was pushing through a bill that gay rights groups say encourages judges to deny rights to same-sex couples when defining words such as "husband" and "wife" or "father" and "mother." The case of the two women whose marriage fell apart became not just a private family matter but one where state officials repeatedly butted in. Dozens of Tennessee lawmakers filed court papers to intervene in the case. They were represented by the head of Family Action Council of Tennessee, which supports one-man, one woman marriage. The lawmakers argued that they had to protect their ability to set domestic policy. However, Knox County Circuit Court Judge Greg McMillan repeatedly refused to let them intervene. The Tennessee attorney general's office also got involved in the divorce case, arguing that Tennessee law should not be interpreted in a way that runs afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. One of the state's largest LGBT rights organizations says the legislators should have minded their own business and not interfered in one of the most important and personal decisions a couple can make. "What's next?" Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, asked. "Are they going to pick and choose other marriages and other divorces to get involved in? It's really startling." A spokeswoman for FACT did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The organization's president has said publicly that it is challenging the assumption that the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage changed state laws. The organization supported a newly enacted statute that tells Tennessee judges to use the "natural and ordinary meaning" of words that are otherwise undefined in state law. Those words include "husband" and "wife." The new law tries to circumvent the protections that the U.S. Supreme court gave to same-sex couples, Sanders said. Four married lesbian couples expecting children through artificial insemination filed a lawsuit Monday over concerns that the new law could strip them of their parental rights. ___ Jonathan Mattise in Nashville contributed to this report. RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - The Latest on a tunnel collapse at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state (all times local): 3:30 p.m. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry says his agency will conduct a study to determine what led to the collapse of a tunnel at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. A structure is seen at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Benton County, Tuesday, May 9, 2017, in Washington state. A portion of an underground tunnel containing rail cars filled with radioactive waste collapsed at a sprawling storage facility in a remote area of Washington state, forcing an evacuation of some workers at the site that made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades after World War II. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes) Perry said Wednesday that the tunnel obviously deteriorated and the question that needs to be answered now is why that was allowed to happen. Perry made the comments during a tour of Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico, another one of the federal sites dealing with the cleanup of Cold War-era waste from decades of bomb-making and nuclear research. Los Alamos was among the federal installations that helped develop the first atomic bomb during World War II. Perry acknowledged the problem with nuclear waste, saying the nation can no longer kick the can down the road since American lives and the health of some citizens are in jeopardy. He said the federal government has failed over the years to remove the waste in a timely manner. He pledged to make progress on a multibillion-dollar problem that has transcended previous administrations. ___ 12:50 p.m. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says the state plans to issue an order requiring the federal government to determine the cause of a tunnel collapse at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. The enforcement action announced Wednesday also requires the Energy Department to assess if there's an immediate risk of failures in any other tunnels and take actions to safely store waste in the tunnels until a decision is made about how to permanently handle the material. The federal agency was expected to take those actions without prodding, but the state made the move in its role as the regulator of a massive, ongoing cleanup of the site. Inslee says the state has an obligation to protect its residents and that the action is appropriate and necessary. The state and federal government signed an agreement in 1989 setting deadlines for Hanford cleanup activities. The state monitors activities at Hanford as part of that deal. The Energy Department says no one was injured in the unoccupied tunnel, and no radioactive material escaped into the environment. ___ 11:50 a.m. The White House said Wednesday that the response to a tunnel collapse at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state "is moving from the emergency phase toward the recovery phase." Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House deputy press secretary, says the federal government remains confident there was no airborne release of radiation and no workers were exposed after Tuesday's collapse of an underground tunnel containing waste. Non-essential workers at the Hanford site near Richland, Washington, which employs some 9,000 people, were told to stay home Wednesday. ___ 8:10 a.m. Workers on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are making preparations to fill a 400-square foot (37 square meters) hole that has developed over a tunnel containing radioactive waste stored on the former plutonium production site. The U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday that workers were building a gravel road to reach the cave-in, located in the middle of the sprawling reservation in eastern Washington state. The agency says the road will give workers a clear path to fill the collapsed portion of the tunnel, which was discovered Tuesday morning. The Energy Department says no one was injured in the unoccupied tunnel, which has been sealed for decades, and no radioactive material escaped into the environment. But non-essential workers at the Hanford site, which employs some 9,000 people, were told to stay home Wednesday. ___ 12:30 a.m. The collapse of an underground tunnel containing radioactive waste that forced workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to shelter in place is the latest incident to raise safety concerns at the sprawling site that made plutonium for nuclear bombs for decades after World War II. Washington state Department of Ecology spokesman Randy Bradbury says officials detected no release of radiation Tuesday and no workers were injured. Officials say no workers were inside the tunnel when it collapsed, causing soil on the surface above to sink 2 to 4 feet (half to 1.2 meters) over a 400 square foot (37 square meters). Worker safety has long been a concern at Hanford, which is located about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southeast of Seattle. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit last fall against the Energy Department, contending vapors released from underground nuclear waste tanks posed a serious risk to workers. A vehicle drives by the hillsides neighboring the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Benton County, Tuesday, May 9, 2017, in Washington state. A portion of an underground tunnel containing rail cars filled with radioactive waste collapsed at a sprawling storage facility in a remote area of Washington state, forcing an evacuation of some workers at the site that made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades after World War II. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes) This image provided by the U.S. Department of Energy shows a 20-foot by 20-foot hole in the roof of a storage tunnel at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash., Tuesday, May 9, 2017. An emergency was declared Tuesday after the partial collapse of the tunnel that contains rail cars full of radioactive waste. (U.S. Department of Energy via AP) FILE--In this July 9, 2014, file photo, a sign warns of radioactivity near a wind direction flag indicator at the "C" tank farm on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash. An emergency has been declared Tuesday, May 9, 2017, at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after a portion of a tunnel that contained rail cars full of nuclear waste collapsed. Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology, said officials detected no release of radiation and no workers were injured. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, file) UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations says this week's attack on U.N. peacekeepers by a Christian rebel group was the biggest for the mission in the Central African Republic, leaving four soldiers dead, 10 injured and one missing. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday that U.N. troops and "local actors" were continuing to search for the missing soldier. He said nine Moroccans and one Cambodian were wounded, none with life-threatening injuries. Dujarric said U.N. General Assembly President Peter Thomsen arrived in the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, on a pre-scheduled visit Wednesday and visited the wounded peacekeepers. He said Tuesday that eight fighters from the Christian anti-Balaka rebel group were also killed in Monday's battle near Bangassou, about 474 kilometers (295 miles) east of Bangui. The country descended into sectarian conflict in 2013. PRAGUE (AP) - Tens of thousands of people rallied on Wednesday in the Czech Republic's capital and other major cities against President Milos Zeman and Finance Minister Andrej Babis. The protesters gathered at Wenceslas Square in downtown Prague demanded Babis' firing and Zeman's resignation in the latest development of the Czech political crisis. The public demonstrations follow Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka asking the president last week to get rid of the finance minister over his unexplained business dealings, especially charges that he hadn't properly explained suspicions that he avoided paying taxes. A large crowd take part in a protest at Prague's Wenceslas Square, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Tens of thousands of people are rallying in the Czech Republic's capital and other major cities demanding Finance Minister Andrej Babis' firing and President Milos Zeman's resignation. (Katerina Sulova/ CTK via AP) Babis, one of the richest people in the country, has denied wrongdoing and refused to resign. He owned two major national newspapers, a radio and the Agrofert conglomerate of some 250 companies before he transferred them to a fund earlier this year after a new law limited the business activities of government ministers. Zeman so far has refused to fire his ally, claiming the government's three-party ruling coalition first would have to dissolve their coalition agreement. Sobotka's left-wing Social Democrats are rivals of Babis' ANO centrist movement in a parliamentary election scheduled for October. ANO is a favorite to win the most seats, paving the way for Babis to become the next prime minister. Zeman invited the leaders of the coalition parties to discuss the political crisis late Wednesday. Meanwhile, the lower house of Parliament approved a resolution alleging that Babis had "repeatedly lied" to the public and "misused his media" empire to damage his opponents. The vote on the resolution followed a long and heated debate over recordings recently posted on social media that appeared to capture Babis and a journalist from his newspaper planning a press campaign against his rivals, including the Social Democrats. Babis said Wednesday he "made a huge mistake" by meeting with the man in the recordings, but claimed it was a provocation to discredit him. The journalist was fired. Babis is sometimes dubbed the "Czech Berlusconi," a comparison to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon who dominated Italian politics for many years. Demonstrators hold a cartoon of Czech President Milos Zeman as a clown as they take part in a protest at Prague's Wenceslas Square, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Tens of thousands of people are rallying in the Czech Republic's capital and other major cities demanding Finance Minister Andrej Babis' firing and Zeman's resignation. (Katerina Sulova/ CTK via AP) A cartoon of Czech President Milos Zeman is seen painted on red pants as demonstrators take part in a protest at Prague's Wenceslas Square, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Tens of thousands of people are rallying in the Czech Republic's capital and other major cities demanding Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis' firing and Zeman's resignation. (Katerina Sulova/ CTK via AP) Demonstrators hold a banner with a cartoon of Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis that reads "Babis is a liar" as they take part in a protest at Prague's Wenceslas Square, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Tens of thousands of people are rallying in the Czech Republic's capital and other major cities demanding Babis' firing and President Milos Zeman's resignation. (Katerina Sulova/ CTK via AP) Eighteen members of the now-shuttered Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Penn State University face charges in connection with the Feb. 4 death of sophomore Timothy Piazza of Lebanon, New Jersey. Eight face the most serious charge of aggravated assault, a felony that carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison. They also are charged with involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor punishable by 2 1/2 to 5 years in prison. Piazza consumed what prosecutors said was a life-threatening amount of alcohol during a hazing ritual on Feb. 2 in State College, Pennsylvania, and fell down stairs at least twice during the course of the night. His fraternity brothers did not call an ambulance until the next morning. Prosecutors said the actions by some of them may have worsened his injuries and suffering. He died of a traumatic brain injury. In this Friday, May 5, 2017 photo, Jonah Neuman of Nashville, leaves Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa. Neuman is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Joe Hermitt/PennLive.com via AP) The students have not entered pleas, and most of their attorneys have not yet commented. An attorney for one fraternity brother charged with aggravated assault said that prosecutors wrongly assume that the students should have been able to tell the difference between extreme intoxication and a life-threatening head injury. The defendants, and their charges, according to court documents: __ Brendan Young, 21, of Malvern, Pennsylvania: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, evidence tampering, hazing, alcohol-related charges. Daniel Casey, 19, of Ronkonkoma, New York: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, evidence tampering, hazing, alcohol-related charges. (His attorney, Steven Trialonas of State College, told Newsday: "The government assumes that these young men, many of whom were intoxicated themselves, should have been able to differentiate symptoms of extreme intoxication from symptoms of a life threatening head injury. That is an impossible burden to place on them.") Jonah Neuman, 19, of Nashville, Tennessee: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, hazing, disorderly conduct, alcohol-related charges. Nicholas Kubera, 19, Downingtown, Pennsylvania: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, hazing, alcohol-related charges Michael Bonatucci, 19, of Woodstock, Georgia: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, hazing, alcohol-related charges. Gary Dibileo, 21, of Scranton, Pennsylvania: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, hazing, alcohol-related charges. Luke Visser, 19, of Encinitas, California: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, hazing, alcohol-related charges. Joseph Sala, 19, of Erie, Pennsylvania: Aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, reckless endangerment, hazing and alcohol-related charges. Michael Schiavone, 21, of Yardley, Pennsylvania: Reckless endangerment, hazing and alcohol-related charges. Parker Yochim, 19, of Waterford, Pennsylvania: Reckless endangerment, hazing, alcohol-related charges. Craig Heimer, 21, of Port Matilda, Pennsylvania: Reckless endangerment, hazing, alcohol-related charges. Lars Kenyon, 19, of Barrington, Rhode Island: Reckless endangerment, hazing, alcohol-related charges. Edward Gilmartin, 20, of Scranton, Pennsylvania: Evidence tampering. Ryan McCann, who turns 22 on May 11, of Pittsburgh: Evidence tampering. Lucas Rockwell, 21, of Washington, D.C.: Evidence tampering. Braxton Becker, 20, of Niskayuna, New York: Evidence tampering. Ryan Foster, 21, of Bedford, Massachusetts: Evidence tampering. Joseph Ems Jr., 20, of Philadelphia: Reckless endangerment. (His attorney, William Brennan of Philadelphia, called what happened a tragedy, and said: "I think as the facts shake out, my client hopefully will be in a position to be extricated from this troubling case.") In this Friday, May 5, 2017 photo, Nick Kubera, of Downingtown, Pa., leaves Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa. Kubera is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Joe Hermitt/PennLive.com via AP) In this Friday, May 5, 2017 photo, Gary Dibileo, of Scranton, Pa., leaves Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa. Dibileo is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Joe Hermitt/PennLive.com via AP) In this Friday, May 5, 2017 photo, Luke Visser, of Encinitas, Calif., leaves Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa. Visser is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Joe Hermitt/PennLive.com via AP) In this Friday, May 5, 2017 photo, Joe Sala, of Erie, Pa., leaves Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa. Sala is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Joe Hermitt/PennLive.com via AP) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Michael Schiavone leaves the Centre County Courthouse after a preliminary arraignment in Bellefonte, Pa. Schiavone is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Abby Drey/Centre Daily Times via AP) In this Friday, May 5, 2017 photo, Craig Heimer of Port Matilda, Pa., leaves Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa. Heimer is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Joe Hermitt/PennLive.com via AP) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Lars Kenyon leaves the Centre County Courthouse after a preliminary arraignment in Bellefonte, Pa. Kenyon is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Abby Drey/Centre Daily Times via AP) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Ed Gilmartin leaves the Centre County Courthouse after the preliminary arraignment in Bellefonte, Pa. Gilmartin is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Abby Drey/Centre Daily Times via AP) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Ryan McCann, left, leaves the Centre County Courthouse after a preliminary arraignment in Bellefonte, Pa. McCann is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Abby Drey/Centre Daily Times via AP) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Lucas Rockwell leaves the Centre County Courthouse after a preliminary arraignment in Bellefonte, Pa. Rockwell is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Phoebe Sheehan/Centre Daily Times via AP) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Braxton Becker leaves the Centre County Courthouse after the preliminary arraignment in Bellefonte, Pa. Becker is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Phoebe Sheehan/Centre Daily Times via AP) In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 photo, Ryan Foster leaves the Centre County Courthouse after the preliminary arraignment in Bellefonte, Pa. Foster is one of 18 Penn State Beta Theta Pi fraternity members charged in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza. (Phoebe Sheehan/Centre Daily Times via AP) LOGAN, Utah (AP) - A judge in Utah ruled Wednesday that a teenage boy accused of shooting a 14-year-old girl will be tried in adult court. First District Juvenile Court Judge Angela Fonnesbeck said that the 16-year-old boy's alleged actions were premeditated, and that it is clear he intended to kill Deserae Turner. "He planned and he acted," said Fonnesbeck, after a two-day hearing on the matter this week. "He pulled the trigger." The teenager's family said on Tuesday that the boy was a kind peacemaker, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. But a local detective testified that authorities found hyperlinks on the boy's phone connected to a website featuring such extreme violence as executions. The boy is one of two teenagers accused of plotting to kill Turner. The judge ruled on Monday that the second teenager, who was charged with helping his friend plot to kill Turner, will also be tried in adult court. The Associated Press is not naming the boys because they are juveniles. Turner nearly died after being shot in the head and left in a ditch in the small northern Utah town of Smithfield in February. Authorities have said the two 16-year-old boys concocted the plan while playing video games and discussing their desire to "get rid" of Turner, who was texting one of them. Turner was found in the early morning of Feb. 17 in a dry canal about 90 miles north of Salt Lake City. Turner spent more than two months in a hospital. Both boys have been charged with attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and obstruction of justice. TULSA, Okla. (AP) - An Oklahoma judge has awarded $2 million to the family of a man who was fatally shot at a Tulsa motel by an off-duty state trooper, court records show. The settlement approved Tuesday by Tulsa County District Court Judge Rebecca Nightingale requires former trooper Sheldon Robinson to pay the amount to the estate of Michael Swatosh. The money is to be put in a trust so Swatosh's widow, Mykelynn Vasquez, can raise her two young daughters, who are now 6 and 7 years old. "Money is never going to replace Michael," Sabah Khalaf, the Tulsa-based attorney for Vasquez, said Wednesday. "It's a win in that there's a sense of some accountability for Sheldon Robinson, but more than anything, we'd like to see charges brought against Sheldon Robinson." He said he'll push for the county's current district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, to re-examine the case. Vasquez said she's glad to "have some kind of justice," but worries about the long-term effects Swatosh's 2013 killing will have on her girls. "At family gatherings, they'll disappear a little bit and kind of go in the corner and cry because they know someone's missing," she said. "They've seen a counselor every week for four years. "They have their dad's ashes around their neck," she added, fighting back tears. The state Department of Public Safety settled its part of the wrongful death lawsuit for $25,000, said Terri Watkins, a spokeswoman for Oklahoma's attorney general. Robinson hasn't been criminally charged in the shooting. He was fired by the highway patrol in 2014 after investigators said he lied to them about why he was at the motel. Robinson didn't appear at the settlement hearing. Court records show that since last year he hasn't attended several hearings in the matter. He had said he shot Swatosh because he thought Swatosh and at least one other person were pointing guns at motorists. But highway patrol investigators said there was no reason Robinson should have been in that high-crime area even if he was off duty. An attorney listed in court records as recently representing Robinson didn't immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday. Robinson had told investigators that he climbed a flight of stairs at the motel and confronted Swatosh, eventually shooting him six times with a personal firearm, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the ex-trooper. Investigators found Swatosh had a BB gun and had been drinking the day of the confrontation. Former Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris declined to file criminal charges against Robinson. Harris, who recently announced he was a candidate for Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District, did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Kunzweiler, the current district attorney, is in court this week prosecuting the manslaughter trial of a Tulsa police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man last year. He said in a text message Wednesday that his office would consider another review in the case involving Robinson "if new facts are developed which were not known previously" and if the statute of limitations has not expired. COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Dylann Roof had his first appeal of his death sentence for killing nine people in a racist attack on praying worshippers in a Charleston church rejected Wednesday by the same judge who presided at his trial. U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel also ordered the release of hundreds of pages of Dylann Roof's psychological records as well Wednesday. They included Roof's insistence he would rather die than have an autism diagnosis made public and he wanted a federal trial so his picture - and what he thought was his unusually large forehead - would be kept off television. FILE- In this April 10, 2017, file photo, Dylann Roof appears in the Charleston County Court to enter his guilty plea on murder charges in Charleston, S.C. Roof had his first appeal of his death sentence for killing nine people in a racist attack on praying worshippers in a Charleston church rejected Wednesday, May 10, by the same judge who presided at his trial. (Grace Beahm/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool, File) In his first appeal, Roof argued that his crime didn't fit the definition of interstate commerce needed to make a federal case because he bought the gun and bullets in South Carolina and did not travel out-of-state to the church. But Gergel ruled Roof used a telephone to call the church, GPS to find it and the bullets and gun were manufactured in a different state. The 23-year-old white supremacist is expected to file other appeals, something his lawyer David Bruck spoke about in a competency hearing. "He has no intention of waiving his appeals because this will give enough time for the world to turn upside down," Bruck said, according to a court transcript. The newly released documents reinforce how little Roof thought of his victims. He told a psychologist that no one would have paid attention if he killed black criminals, so that's why he sought out worshippers at a church. "Why would I be sorry for what I planned and did?" Roof told the psychologist. "You don't feel sorry for people that you don't identify with." Roof also told his lawyers and psychologists who examined him that he expected white supremacists to take over the U.S. within several years, pardon him for the killings and make him governor of South Carolina. But during a November competency hearing, Roof told Gergel he figured there was a less than half a percent chance of that happening. At a different hearing in November, Roof insisted his lawyers not be allowed to publicly say a psychologist found evidence he might have autism. Roof said that would discredit his crime. "Because once you've got that label, there is no point in living anyway. You see what I am saying?" Roof told the judge. After a federal jury found him guilty of hate crimes and obstruction of religion, Roof took over his own defense and refused to put in any evidence in an attempt to have jurors spare his life. He said he did not want embarrassing information about his family to be made public. In a pretrial hearing, Bruck gave more insight into Roof's thinking and why he looked the way he did. The defense lawyer said Roof worried his forehead was too large and unsightly and that's why Roof kept his bowl-shaped haircut. Roof was also more comfortable with a federal trial because television cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom, Bruck said. "He did not want the television camera trained on his face and his forehead for the public and the world to see," Bruck said. "He could not tolerate the anxiety and distress that that causes. He is on a different planet from the rest of us." ___ Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/jeffrey%20collins WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Trump administration's response to the victory of Moon Jae-in to be South Korea's new president (all times local): 4:17 p.m. President Donald Trump is extending an invitation to the new president of South Korea. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, center, is greeted by officials upon his arrival at presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Moon said Wednesday he was open to visiting rival North Korea under the right conditions to talk about Pyongyang's aggressive pursuit of nuclear-tipped missiles. (Baek Seung-ryul/Yonhap via AP) The White House says Trump spoke with President Moon Jae-in to congratulate him on his election victory and his country's "peaceful, democratic transition of power." Trump and Moon agreed to continue to work toward strengthening relations between the two countries. The date was not set for a potential visit by Moon. ___ 4:00 a.m. A liberal leader in South Korea seeks warmer ties with North Korea, clashing with the Republican in the White House intent on snuffing out the North's nuclear weapons program. The election victory of Moon Jae-in (MOON JAAH IHN) in South Korea confronts Washington with a scenario it faced a decade-and-a-half ago, when differences on how to deal with Pyongyang fueled tension with an ally that hosts U.S. forces. Only now, the stakes are much higher. North Korea is approaching the capability to threaten America with a nuclear-tipped missile. President Donald Trump wants to tighten an economic vise around the country and has even raised the possibility of military force. Moon has a very different perspective, believing confrontation has done nothing to stop North Korea from expanding its nuclear arsenal. LOS ANGELES (AP) - U.S. authorities have said they are reducing the amount of time they will delay deporting the few immigrants in the country illegally awaiting congressional decisions to legalize their immigration status after lawmakers file so-called "private bills" supporting their last-ditch bids to remain in the country. In a letter to lawmakers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Thomas Homan said the agency will only hold off deporting immigrants with legislation pending on their behalf for up to six months with the possibility of one 90-day extension. In the past, authorities held off deporting people much longer, in some cases years, while these bills wound through one or more sessions of Congress. FILE - In this March 22, 2017, file photo, Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. returns on Capitol Hill in Washington, to hear testimony from Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch. U.S. authorities have said they are reducing the amount of time they will delay deporting the few immigrants in the country illegally awaiting congressional decisions to legalize their immigration status after lawmakers file so-called "private bills" supporting their last-ditch bids to remain in the country. Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Feinstein criticized the decision to change longstanding practices they said was made without consulting lawmakers. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) In addition, the agency said congressional leaders of the judiciary committees or key subcommittees must now formally ask authorities to delay carrying out deportations, Homan wrote in the letter late last week. The move changes how federal immigration authorities handle cases of immigrants with cases compelling enough for U.S. lawmakers to sponsor bills on their behalf in final efforts to help them avoid deportation. The change affects few people but comes as the Trump administration seeks to tighten immigration enforcement and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Few of these bills are offered by lawmakers, and fewer still pass. Only 94 private immigration bills were enacted between 1986 and 2013, according to a Congressional Research Service report that analyzed the bills that passed. Democratic Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California criticized the decision to change longstanding practices they said was made without consulting lawmakers. "To threaten to deport a handful of immigrants before Congress can act to protect them shows just how far this Administration will go," they said in a statement. The immigration agency said in a statement the change sought to prevent authorities from being blocked from carrying out deportations if the bills are introduced repeatedly. Authorities granted at least 70 stays of deportation over the last six years because of bills filed on immigrants' behalf, the agency said. Examples of immigrants who avoided deportation and got congressional approval in 2010 to stay in the U.S. included the Japanese widow of a U.S. Marine who gave birth to their son after he was killed in Iraq and a man whose mother was killed in a U.S. car crash when he was teen who had never been legally adopted. Gregory Chen, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said immigrants could now be deported before lawmakers review bills on their behalf. The agency "is really tightening down on all aspects, including areas where Congress might be able to engage on extraordinary cases," he said. "It wants greater latitude to deport more people." FILE - In this June 12, 2013, file photo, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., right, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., listen to testimony from Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and head of the U.S. Cyber Command before the Senate Appropriations Committee. U.S. authorities have said they are reducing the amount of time they will delay deporting the few immigrants in the country illegally awaiting congressional decisions to legalize their immigration status after lawmakers file so-called "private bills" supporting their last-ditch bids to remain in the country. Senators Durbin and Feinstein criticized the decision to change longstanding practices they said was made without consulting lawmakers. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) Jeremy Corbyn has rowed back from suggestions he could remain Labour leader even if he fails to gain power in the general election. Mr Corbyn was quoted by BuzzFeed News as saying he would be carrying on regardless of the result on June 8, telling the website: I was elected leader of this party and Ill stay leader of this party. But after he officially launched Labours General Election campaign, he claimed he meant he would be leader because he would have won the poll and become prime minister. No, I told them I would carry on as leader because well have won the election by then, Mr Corbyn told BBC News. Asked by journalists if he would stay on if he loses the election, he added: The answer is were fighting to win this election. In his Manchester speech in front of cheering supporters, Labour MPs and the shadow cabinet, Mr Corbyn insisted Brexit is settled, in an attempt to reassure Leave voters in the partys heartlands that internal party splits have been resolved and the UK would leave the European Union if he becomes PM. A senior Labour source reiterated Mr Corbyns point after BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg asked him at least five times if the UK would leave come hell or high water and whatever the outcome of the negotiations. Jeremy Corbyn says the NHS, housing, pollution and workers rights are among policy priorities as he launches Labour's election campaign pic.twitter.com/8kpeIg9I72 PA Media (@PA) May 9, 2017 Replying, the Labour leader said there was a clear vote and stressed he would enter negotiations looking to achieve the partys primary goal of tariff-free access to the single market, stressing at one point well get the good deal with Europe. The source said Mr Corbyns position has not changed, adding: The issue is settled and rejected suggestions the interview had raised questions about Labours position. In his speech, the Opposition leader vowed that a Labour government would give British people the chance to take our wealth back from tax cheats, rip-off bosses and greedy bankers. At the set-piece event, Mr Corbyn warned there will be a reckoning if he wins power in the June 8 poll and breaks up a system rigged in favour of the wealthy and against ordinary workers. He was joined on stage by Andy Burnham, who last week missed a photocall with the leader on the evening of his election as metro mayor of Greater Manchester in one of the few points of light in Labours gloomy local elections. And he was introduced by Coronation Street and Broadchurch actress Julie Hesmondhalgh, who told cheering activists that they had a month to ensure that a Labour victory turned the UK into a society that truly gives a toss about stuff. Mr Corbyn said that in the coming days Labour would be spelling out the details of a plan for Britain to transform the country and change an economy which was still rigged in favour of the rich and powerful. Today, I say to tax cheats, the rip-off bosses, the greedy bankers; enough is enough, he declared. Mr Corbyn noted the Sunday Times Rich List last weekend found the 1,000 best-off people in the country had seen their wealth grow by 14% in the last year. Imagine the outcry if public sector workers put in for a 14% pay rise, he said. But its no surprise that the richest have got even richer after the tens of billions the Tories have handed them in tax cuts. Mr Corbyn acknowledged Labour faced a big challenge following last weeks local elections, which saw the party shed more than 380 councillors. On the campaign trail today Jeremy Corbyn is to visit Yorkshire (Chris Radburn/PA) Labour and the Liberal Democrats unveil their plans for education on Wednesday. Jeremy Corbyn and shadow education secretary Angela Raynor will be in Yorkshire, launching Labours plans to transform schools and the education system with a hike in corporation tax. Tim Farron will attend several events in the south-west, while Theresa May will be campaigning in the East Midlands. The Green Partys co-leader, Jonathan Bartley, will announce its policy on mental health. Whats in the news? The Financial Times reports that one of Mrs Mays closest advisers held talks in No10 with Ed Milibands 2015 election policy guru in a sign the Tories are moving aggressively to win the Labour middle ground abandoned by Jeremy Corbyn. The Daily Telegraph reports that as many as 100 Labour MPs are set to form a breakaway group in order to depose their leader after polling day. The Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express all carry images from Mrs Mays appearance alongside husband Philip on the BBCs One Show on Tuesday evening. The PMs pledge for a new vote on fox hunting is covered by the Daily Mirror and The Times, with the latter also carrying a picture of Mr Corbyn as he unveiled Labours battlebus in Manchester. Who is saying what? Treasury minister David Gauke (Paul Faith/PA) People of all ages are being held back by a lack of funding for education, and this in turn is holding back the economy by depriving industry of the untapped talent of thousands of people Mr Corbyn attacking the Tories record on education spending. Jeremy Corbyn cant deliver any of this - theyre just made up promises on the back of nonsensical spending plans Tory Treasury minister David Gauke. Social media lit up following the PM and her husbands television appearance, with #TheresaMayIn5Words and #foxhunting top trending hashtags. Donald Trumps swift firing of FBI director James Comey amid the bureaus investigation into allegations his campaign had ties to Russia raised many questions and reaction. Democrats called for an independent prosecutor and at least one Republican welcomed the news as a chance for a fresh start. Others were mystified by the decision to fire a director once lauded by both parties for his independence and integrity. Mr Trump told Mr Comey in a letter that he was following the recommendations of attorney general Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who criticised Mr Comeys controversial handling of an investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission, Mr Trump wrote. Mrs Clinton has blamed that investigation in part for the election result that put Mr Trump in the White House. The termination letter from President Donald Trump to FBI Director James Comey Mr Trump in his letter also said Mr Comey repeatedly told him that he was not part of the probe into Russia contacts, something that has not been publicly stated before and which would be extremely unusual for an FBI director to say. While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau, Mr Trump wrote. When asked last week during a Senate hearing whether the president was part of the probe, Mr Comey declined to answer. Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein wrote a scathing three-page memo titled Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI, that attacked almost every aspect of Mr Comeys handling of the Clinton probe. He said the director broke with long-standing tradition and protocol by holding a news conference in July where he announced Mrs Clinton would not be charged but denounced her sloppy handling of classified information. Mr Comey should not have made his own conclusions about the nations most sensitive criminal investigation without the Justice Departments express approval. But instead he laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial, Mr Rosenstein wrote. He called it a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do. Then during the closing days of last years election, Mr Comey announced the FBI was reopening the probe based on newly-discovered emails, saying concealing that information would be worse. Mr Rosenstein called that a loaded term because federal law enforcement officials have a long-standing practice of not speaking publicly. In that context, silence is not concealment, he wrote. The way the director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. The memo is also significant because Mr Rosenstein is overseeing the Justice Departments investigation into potential co-ordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, after Mr Sessions recused himself. This administration cant be trusted. RT if you agree that we need an independent investigation & special prosecutor NOW. https://t.co/8QulJzrwDX The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) May 9, 2017 Democrats decried the firing, comparing it with former president Richard Nixons Saturday Night Massacre decision to fire the independent special prosecutor overseeing the Watergate investigation, prompting the resignations of the Justice Departments top two officials. They expressed deep scepticism about the stated reasons of the firing, publicly raising the prospect of a White House effort to stymie a pressing investigation. This is Nixonian, Senator Bob Casey declared on Twitter. Outrageous, said Senator Ron Wyden, calling for Mr Comey to immediately be summoned to testify to Congress about the status of the Trump-Russia investigation. Representative Adam Schiff said the White House was brazenly interfering in the probe. My statement on James Comey pic.twitter.com/NWBR8FGTCf Senator Roy Blunt (@RoyBlunt) May 9, 2017 Some welcomed news of the dismissal. Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well, said Lindsay Graham, chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating the Russian campaign interference. Senator Roy Blunt said Mr Comey served the country well, but many, including myself, have questioned his actions more than once over the past year. I believe new leadership at the FBI will restore confidence in the organisation and among the people who do the hard work to carry out its mission. Senator John McCain said Congress must form a special committee to investigate Russias interference in the election. James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington The head of a professional association of FBI agents said it appreciated Mr Comeys leadership and support. He understood the centrality of the agent to the Bureaus mission, recognising that agents put their lives on the line every day, FBI Agents Association president Thomas OConnor said. He said Mr Comey worked to ensure the FBIs investigations were constitutional and that agents performed their mission with integrity and professionalism. The association wants a say in who will be the next director. United States President Donald Trump Mr Trump will now appoint Mr Comeys successor. The White House said the search for a replacement was beginning immediately. Mr Comeys deputy, Andrew McCabe, has been named interim director. An eminent plastic surgeon has suggested that avocados should carry warning labels following a rise in the number of knife injuries from cutting into the fruit. Simon Eccles, honorary secretary of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said he treated about four patients a week at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for wounds caused by an avocado accident, with staff dubbing the injury avocado hand. Mr Eccles told The Times: People do not anticipate that the avocados they buy can be very ripe and there is minimal understanding of how to handle them. We dont want to put people off the fruit but I think warning labels are an effective way of dealing with this. Surgeons are treating around four patients a week at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for avocado-related injuries (Jonathan Brady/PA) It needs to be recognisable. Perhaps we could have a cartoon picture of an avocado with a knife, and a big red cross going through it? David Shewring, vice-president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand, also told the newspaper: Recently the health benefits of avocado have been advocated, with an increase in their popularity and a consequent increase in related injuries. Figures from New Zealands accident compensation scheme show 303 people lodged claims over three years for avocado injuries, with NZ dollars 87,527 (47,000) paid out in that period. Actress Meryl Streep injured her hand while cutting an avocado in 2012 (Dominic Lipinski/PA) Actor Meryl Streep was photographed with a bandaged hand in 2012, later revealing she injured herself while cutting an avocado. The generally accepted safest way to cut an avocado is to slice it in half length-ways before lowering the knife firmly into the stone and lifting it out. The Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project needs to be given an immediate go-ahead, the Liberal Democrats have said. The party called for the project to be the start of a string of such initiatives at Cardiff, Colwyn Bay and Newport. Such a move would create more than 34,000 jobs across Wales and boost supply companies, the Lib Dems said. Ed Davey and Tim Farron ( Jonathan Brady/PA) Good morning everyone! Beautiful day as our battle bus drives through Cornwall. @timfarron is on board and ready to meet more great people! pic.twitter.com/quOXMtbrHI Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) May 10, 2017 The call came as leader Tim Farron prepared to launch the partys Welsh General Election campaign in Cardiff on Thursday. Former energy secretary Sir Ed Davey said: Tidal Lagoons are vital for creating Britains low carbon future and will provide extremely reliable and consistent energy for at least 120 years. Its a disgrace that the Conservatives have refused to commit to giving Swansea Bay the go-ahead, when the case for it is clear. Even their own commissioned report said it should proceed, yet they have remained silent. Liberal Democrats would go ahead immediately with the lagoon at Swansea Bay and start planning for further lagoons in Wales and other parts of the UK. Theresa May has to make it clear in the campaign is she in favour of the Swansea Lagoon happening, or not? Her Government has delayed too long. PRAGUE, May 10 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Wednesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 2 hours) =========================ECONOMIC DATA========================== Real-time economic data releases.................... Summary of economic data and forecasts........... Recently released economic data.................. Previous stories on Czech data............. **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: http://emea1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/Apps/CountryWeb/#/2E/events-overview =========================EVENTS================================= PRAGUE - Ruling coalition parties meet in the morning as they seek a way out of a political crisis. Related news: PRAGEU - Telecoms group O2 Czech Republic holds annual general meeting. Vote on shareholder payout of a total 21 crowns a share. Related news: =========================NEWS=================================== CEZ APARTMENTS: CEZ said it would sell its Prague-Pisnice apartments to a CIB Group company for 1.276 billion crowns. Story: Related stories: CEZ'S INVEN: CEZ said its unit INVEN CAPITAL has become a minority shareholder in Dresden-based Cloud&Heat Technologie. Story: Related stories: POLITICS: Under-fire Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis signalled his ANO party might stay in government if it retained control over his ministry, according to an interview in daily Pravo on Tuesday that appeared to a offer a way out of the country's political crisis. Story: Related stories: CENBANK: The Czech central bank bought 19.26 billion euros from the market in March, a record monthly size of purchases of foreign currency as the bank's policy of keeping the crown weak drew to an end, data showed on Tuesday. Story: Related stories: CEE MARKETS: Banks led Central European shares higher on Tuesday, helped by earnings and stock recommendations, as attention shifted to local factors following the French presidential election. Story: Related stories: ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change close on day in 2017 vs Euro 26.582 27.018 1.61 1.57 vs Dollar 24.385 24.998 2.45 4.92 Czech Equities 1,010.96 1,010.96 0.5 9.69 U.S. Equities 20,975.78 21,012.28 -0.17 6.14 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1500 GMT ========================PRESS DIGEST============================ VODAFONE: The new chief executive of the Czech unit of Vodafone , Jiri Baca, said the firm will concentrate on data services in its future strategy. Hospodarske Noviny, page 12 (Reuters has not verified the stories, nor does it vouch for their accuracy.) For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX For updates on CEE currencies TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets Prague Newsroom: +420 224 190 477 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (Reporting by Prague Newsroom) WELLINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) - A Chinese-born New Zealand citizen on China's most-wanted list was sentenced to five months home detention for money laundering on Wednesday after years of investigation by police from both countries. The cooperation between the two countries comes as China seeks to drum up Western help in a campaign dubbed "Operation Fox Hunt" to track down corruption suspects who have fled overseas. Businessman William Yan last year struck a deal with police to forfeit a record NZ$42 million ($29 million) in assets allegedly obtained through fraud in China, but did not admit guilt at the time. He pleaded guilty on Wednesday in Auckland District Court. Home detention is the New Zealand equivalent of house arrest. China has been pushing for extradition treaties with various countries but many Western nations have been reluctant to help, not wanting to send people to a country where rights groups say mistreatment of suspects is a concern. Yan is on China's list of top 100 most-wanted international fugitives and New Zealand Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Hamilton said in a statement that the case showed the effectiveness of New Zealand's relationship with Chinese law enforcement agencies. "It demonstrates we have the legislation and investigative capability to hold those to account who profit from offending overseas, even when they are living in New Zealand," Hamilton said. Yan, through his lawyer, declined to comment. His lawyer, Paul Wicks, said in an email there were "issues that are to be taken up by Mr Yan with police regarding the contents of their press release". He did not elaborate. Police said that almost NZ$28 million of the seized assets would go to China and New Zealand would keep the rest. (Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Nick Macfie) BERLIN, May 10 (Reuters) - Police carried out anti-terrorism raids in four German states on Wednesday morning, targeting Islamic State sympathisers, prosecutors said in a statement, but said no arrests had been made, contradicting earlier media reports. The raids targeted the homes of suspects as well as other properties in the states of Bavaria, Berlin, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, prosecutors said. Two of the individuals were suspected of belonging to IS, one of supporting it, and two of firearms offenses. (Reporting By Thomas Escritt, editing by Madeline Chambers) SOFIA, May 10 (Reuters) - Bulgaria plans to re-launch a tender to run and operate Sofia airport, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said on Wednesday. Last month, Bulgaria's interim government cancelled the tender saying the plans to grant concession rights for 35 years at the country's main airport were not in the public interest. The tender was launched in May 2016 by the previous government of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov. "We have no reason to change the strategy for the management of Sofia airport. The procedure to grant Sofia airport on concession will be launched again," Goranov told reporters after the first cabinet meeting of the new government, led by Borisov. The Sofia airport, which was used by 5 million passengers last year, is currently operated by the state. (Reporting by Angel Krasimirov; editing by Jason Neely) By Tulay Karadeniz and Tuvan Gumrukcu ANKARA, May 10 (Reuters) - Turkey warned the United States on Wednesday that a decision to arm Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State in Syria could end up hurting Washington, and accused its NATO ally of siding with terrorists. The rebuke came a week before President Tayyip Erdogan is due in Washington for his first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, who approved the arms supply to support a campaign to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State. Turkey views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Turkey and Europe. "We want to believe that our allies will prefer to side with us, not with a terrorist organisation," Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara, saying he would convey Turkey's stance to Trump next week and at a NATO summit later this month. He said he hoped that recently taken decisions would be changed by the time he visits the United States. Earlier, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters the U.S. failure to consider Turkey's sensitivities "will surely have consequences and will yield a negative result for the U.S. as well". The United States regards the YPG as a valuable partner in the fight against Islamic State militants in northern Syria. Washington says that arming the Kurdish forces is necessary to recapturing Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital in Syria and a hub for planning attacks against the West. That argument holds little sway with Ankara, which worries that advances by the YPG in northern Syria could inflame the PKK insurgency on Turkish soil. Weapons supplied to the YPG have in the past fallen into PKK hands, said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. "Both the PKK and YPG are terrorist organisations and they are no different apart from their names," he told a televised news conference. "Every weapon seized by them is a threat to Turkey." The YPG said Washington's decision would bring swift results and help the militia "play a stronger, more influential and more decisive role in combating terrorism". The Pentagon said on Tuesday it was aware of concerns in Turkey, which has given vital support to a U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State insurgents in Syria and Iraq. Jets carrying out air strikes against the jihadist group have flown from Turkey's Incirlik air base. Erdogan has repeatedly castigated Washington for its support of the YPG. "SAME SACK" Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli said the United States should review its move. "We hope the U.S. administration will put a stop to this wrong and turn back from it," he said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster A Haber. "Such a policy will not be beneficial; you can't be in the same sack as terrorist organisations." But U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he was confident the United States would be able to resolve the tensions. "We'll work out any of the concerns. We will work very closely with Turkey in support of their security on their southern border. It's Europe's southern border, and we'll stay closely connected," Mattis told reporters during a visit to the Pabrade Training Area in Lithuania. Ankara has argued that Washington should switch support for the Raqqa assault from the YPG to Syrian rebels Turkey has trained and led against Islamic State for the past year - despite U.S. scepticism about their military capability. "There is no reality in the comments that a ground operation against Daesh (Islamic State) can only be successful with the YPG. I hope they turn back from this mistake," Canikli said. Despite the angry language, Erdogan's government has little prospect of reversing Washington's decision, and any retaliatory move would come at a cost. Cavusoglu said Trump would address the issue with Trump during his planned May 16-17 visit to Washington, suggesting there were no plans to call off the talks in protest. "Turkey doesn't have much room to move here," said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and analyst at Carnegie Europe. "I think Washington made such an evaluation when taking this decision." While Turkey could impose limits on the use of the Incirlik base, that would hamper operations against Islamic State, which also menaces Turkey itself and has claimed responsibility for attacks including the bombing of Istanbul airport. Turkey could also step up air strikes on PKK targets in northern Iraq. Turkish warplanes attacked Kurdish YPG fighters in northeastern Syria and Iraq's Sinjar region late last month. But Cavusoglu and Canikli both pointed to a diplomatic, rather than military, response to Trump's decision. "We are carrying out, and will carry out, all necessary diplomatic communications," Canikli said. "Our wish is that the U.S. stops this wrong and does what is mandated by our friendship." (Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler in Istanbul and Phil Stewart in Lithuania; writing by Dominic Evans and David Dolan; editing by Mark Heinrich) By Shadia Nasralla and Kirsti Knolle VIENNA, May 10 (Reuters) - Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern urged his conservative coalition partners on Wednesday to stay in the government after its leader unexpectedly quit, raising the prospect of a snap election while the far-right leads in opinion polls. A new election would give the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) a chance of entering national government less than a year after its candidate lost a close-fought presidential race. Polls regularly show the FPO running first on about 30 percent, with Kern's Social Democrats (SPO) a close second. "I am convinced that it makes sense to use the more than a year ahead to make the necessary changes in our country," Kern told a news conference. "The concepts are there ... It is just a question of having the will to make those changes." The FPO criticised what it branded the government's "paralysis" and called for a snap election. The coalition government's term runs until autumn 2018. Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner, leader of the conservative People's Party (OVP), said earlier on Wednesday he was quitting after having failed to quell party infighting and speculation about its future leadership. Mitterlehner's surprise resignation raises pressure on Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, 30, to take over as head of the OVP, as he is widely expected to do before the next election. Kurz has said he has no interest in taking over the OVP at present but several polls suggest that it would boost the party's ratings and thrust it into first place if he did. The OVP said its leadership would meet on Sunday to decide on Mitterlehner's successor. In an interview with APA news agency, Kurz expressed his support for Mitterlehner but gave little indication of his plans. His spokesmen were not available for comment. Kern appeared to suggest that Kurz was already in charge. "I am offering the OVP and Sebastian Kurz a reform partnership for Austria," Kern told reporters, without elaborating. BICKERING The two parties already announced a new coalition agreement in January that included several law-and-order measures aimed at eroding support for the FPO and giving their fractious government a new lease of life. But squabbling between the SPO and OVP has continued. Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka, an OVP hawk, accused Kern in an interview this week of "failure as chancellor", prompting SPO ministers to round on Kurz. Such quarrels have fuelled a view among many voters that the government is ineffective, which has helped the FPO. "This government is marked by paralysis and division -- that is embarrassing and unacceptable," FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache told APA, calling for a snap election. Mitterlehner's inability to quell indiscipline and persistent speculation about when Kurz might replace him appeared to have prompted his decision to quit. "I am not a place-holder," Mitterlehner told a hastily convened news conference on Wednesday. Where his resignation leaves the party and the coalition remains unclear. "The likelihood of a snap election has now increased," political analyst Thomas Hofer said. "There are various possible scenarios: that the new OVP leader calls (an election) immediately at the weekend, or someone takes over in the interim until Kurz takes over before elections," he added. "Of course, Kurz can take over now and say ... 'We will pull through together with the SPO'." (Writing by Francois Murphy; Editing by Gareth Jones) By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA, May 10 (Reuters) - Kosovo lawmakers voted on Wednesday to dismiss the government of Prime Minister Isa Mustafa in a no-confidence motion, triggering a snap parliamentary election next month. Seventy-eight MPs in the 120-seat parliament voted to dismiss the cabinet, which the opposition had accused of failing to meet its campaign pledges and creating public distrust. Following the vote, President Hashim Thaci dissolved parliament. According to the constitution, the election has to be held within 45 days. A new election will further postpone the adoption of a demarcation deal with Montenegro, key for the European Union to lift its requirement of needing a visa to travel to Kosovo. It will also temporarily stall EU-sponsored talks between Kosovo and Serbia, key for both countries to progress towards membership in the European Union. "Regret today's no-confidence vote of the Kosovo Assembly. Pol leaders, institutions mustn't lose sight of great challenges Kosovo faces," EU Commissioner for Enlargement Johannes Hahn tweeted. In a speech to the parliament ahead of the vote, Mustafa said his government has done a good job in tackling unemployment and maintaining a low public debt. "In my government there are no corrupt people," he said. However, in the past 18 months, the work of parliament has been interrupted by incidents including street riots, opposition deputies throwing teargas and firing of a rocket-propelled grenade at the building. Valdete Bajrami, from the opposition party NISMA who initiated the motion, told parliament: "Our country needs a new direction." The 78 lawmakers who voted out the government included the biggest party in the governing coalition, but not the prime minister's own party. Thaci is expected to set an election date in the coming days. Kosovo broke with Serbia in 1999 after a NATO bombing campaign halted a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" directed against ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces trying to stamp out a two-year insurgency and declared independence in 2008. It has been recognised by more than 100 countries, including Western powers, but not by Serbia and its big-power ally Russia or several EU members such as Spain. (Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Writing by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Alison Williams) By Ed Upright LONDON, May 10 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Criminal gangs are tricking East Europeans into sham Scottish marriages with Asian men - selling the women for sex, labour and passports - in an expose that campaigners say reveals the extent of human slavery worldwide. The cross-border story of how destitute women are lured from Romania and Slovakia with the promise of work in Western Europe, then sold in Scotland as slaves is told in a BBC television documentary to be aired on Wednesday. Anti-slavery activists said the story was no surprise, with an estimated 46 million people living in some form of modern slavery around the globe. "Sadly, the issue of sham marriage and sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and girls is not a new phenomenon," said Justine Currell, Executive Director at Unseen, an anti-slavery group. "This story highlights the depths that these gangs will go to make a profit, regardless of the terrible consequences for the individual," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We must put a stop to this horrendous practice by locking up those responsible and protecting those most at risk of exploitation." HUMANS FOR SALE In the documentary - "Humans for Sale" - Europe's police agency Europol said Scotland was being targeted by non-European nationals, often men from Pakistan and India, who need to marry a European national to stay in Britain. The expose showed how the women are sold to the men by East European criminal gangs, and can end up facing sexual abuse and domestic servitude. "After the marriage, they (the women) are kept under control by the traffickers and are exploited as domestic service by the husband, but also raped and sexually exploited by fellow nationals of the traffickers," said Angelika Molnar, head of the agency's trafficking unit. British government figures estimate between 10,000 and 13,000 people are living as slaves in Britain alone. In 2015, it passed the Modern Slavery Act, introducing life sentences for traffickers and forcing companies to disclose efforts to make their supply chains free from slavery. Worldwide, the estimate leaps to 45.8 million, according to the Global Slavery Index, which is an annual study of slavery around the world. Women and girls are especially vulnerable, and the documentary found one Slovakian girl who had been trafficked to Glasgow on three separate occasions. The programme looked into dozens of suspicious marriages in Scotland and analysed how many of the couples were divorced after five years - the minimum time an applicant must live in the country before applying for permanent residency. Of 70 suspicious marriages that were registered in one Glasgow district, 40 percent ended in divorce just after five years, according to the investigation. The BBC team also visited Roma communities in Slovakia where poverty and desperate living conditions make women particularly vulnerable to trafficking gangs. (Reporting by Ed Upright, Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) DUBAI, May 10 (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said it was determined to help its government retake all areas held by Houthi militia, including the key port of Hodeidah, but would ensure alternative entry routes for badly needed food and medicine. The United Nations has warned the Arab alliance fighting the Iran-aligned Houthis against any attempt to extend the war to Hodeidah, a vital Red Sea aid delivery point for millions of Yemenis in danger of slipping into famine. Around 80 percent of Yemen's food imports arrive via Hodeidah, and the United Nations said last month a surge in fighting there would only cause "more displacement, more institutional collapse, and more suffering". In a statement sent to Reuters, a coalition source said that military operations were progressing well as part of Yemeni government efforts to recapture territory seized by the Houthis since 2014. "Hodeidah and its port will remain an unwavering demand for regaining legitimacy in Yemen and extending the legitimate government's authority over all lands of the Yemeni republic," the source said, referring to the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. "With determination and insistence from the (Hadi government), and with support from the coalition forces, all Yemeni territories will be liberated from the coup forces," the source added, referring to the Houthis. Coalition forces remain at least 100 km (60 miles) from Hodeidah. The source said the coalition was preparing facilities in Aden and Mukalla in south Yemen as an alternative in the event that Hodeidah port was affected by military operations. "The leadership of the coalition is working on the rehabilitation of ports and border crossings for the entry and transportation of food and medical supplies to all Yemeni cities," the source said. $300 AID PACKAGE AGREED Saudi Arabia and the World Bank agreed on Wednesday to commit $300 million toward an aid package that would address Yemen's immediate food security needs including rice and wheat, officials told a news conference in Riyadh. That was about $200 million short of what the World Bank said was needed. A U.N. pledging conference for Yemen last month raised promises of $1.1 billion, about half of what it said was necessary this year to head off a famine. Saudi Arabia and its mostly Gulf Arab allies intervened in Yemen in 2015 to try to roll back the Houthis, who had captured the Arabian Peninsula country's main population centres in the northwest including Hodeidah and the capital Sanaa. Fearing the Houthis are a proxy of arch-foe Iran, the coalition has accused them of using Hodeidah as their lifeline for arms and funds to withstand thousands of air strikes carried out so far, something the group denies. Five cranes have been destroyed by coalition air strikes on Hodeidah's port, forcing dozens of ships to line up offshore because they cannot be unloaded. The coalition source said it was developing capacity to deliver aid at the southern ports and at a land crossing in central Yemen - all under the control of its allies in the country's internationally recognised government. But those areas are all several hundred kilometres away from Yemen's principal population hubs and imports would need to wend their way through vast mountain ranges and battle zones. Rights groups and other critics say that coalition air strikes appear to have caused many of the estimated 10,000 deaths in the war, half of them civilians, and that famine and disease loom in the hardest hit areas. The coalition says much of the civilian suffering in the Hodeidah area is caused by the Houthis diverting humanitarian aid supplies to their own forces, a charge the Houthis deny. The high civilian toll in the conflict has drawn scrutiny of continued U.S. and British military support for Saudi Arabia. The United States has provided aerial refuelling of coalition jets while the British defence industry has been an important supplier of aircraft and arms to the kingdom. (Reporting by William Maclean and Noah Browning in Dubai, Katie Paul in Riyadh; editing by Sami Aboudi and Mark Heinrich) By Danilo Masoni MILAN, May 10 (Reuters) - Greek stocks rose for a 12th straight day on Wednesday, the longest run of gains since 1991, outperforming broadly flat European markets as Athens looked set to clinch vital bailout loans. While the pan-European STOXX 600 index edged up 0.2 percent and the euro zone STOXX index closed flat, Greek's main equity index rose 1.8 percent. The gains brought Athens' benchmark index close to erasing all the losses it made after reopening following an emergency five-week bourse closure in the summer of 2015. The biggest risers were refiner Motor Oil and National Bank of Greece, up 4.8 and 2.4 percent respectively. The increases came as Greek government borrowing costs hit their lowest level in more than five year. Elsewhere in Europe, some solid earnings updates and gains among commodity-related stocks on the back of rising crude oil prices provided support. With the European earnings season more than halfway through, financials are among the strongest performers so far, with almost 70 percent of those financial firms which have reported beating expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data. Overall, more than 71 percent of European firms have beaten earnings expectations. Shares in Belgian hygiene products maker Ontex rose 3.6 percent after the firm reported higher revenue in all of its five divisions. Well-received earnings boosted shares in French energy firm Rubis, which jumped 6.3 percent to hit a record high. A better than expected earnings update at A2A lifted shares in Italy's biggest regional utility up 5.4 percent, But HeidelbergCement fell 1.2 percent after the cement maker reported its first-quarter operating profit slipped 3 percent as a decline in emerging markets failed to offset a significant rise in Europe and North America. Banks were mixed with BPER Banca falling 5.7 percent after its first-quarter net profit halved as a result of the writedown of its stake in Italian bank rescue fund Atlante. "The main share price driver for BPER remains excess capital... and its use. Little has changed on this front with this set of results as there was no news on strategy," analysts at UBS said in a note. Traders cited worries BPER might may end up buying fellow Italian lender Unipol Banca, hurting its core capital. ING rose 1.5 percent after its first-quarter underlying pre-tax profit came in ahead of expectations. Deutsche Bank rose 0.9 percent with a trader citing a Bloomberg report saying Qatar had asked German regulators to allow it to lift its stake in the bank above 10 percent. Two financial sources denied the report. (Reporting by Danilo Masoni and Kit Rees; Editing by Ken Ferris) By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK, May 10 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Activists on Wednesday urged U.S. authorities to extend a special immigration status for 50,000 refugees from earthquake-hit Haiti, fearing they may be thrown out of the United States. The special status dates back to 2010, when an earthquake devastated Haiti, and it has been extended ever since. Now activists fear this might end after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was advised that the poor nation no longer qualifies for emergency immigration protection. DHS's Secretary John Kelly must decide by May 23 whether to prolong Haiti's Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which has been renewed every 18 months and is due to expire on July 22. TPS beneficiaries can live and work in the United States. Past extensions of TPS for Haiti have been based on the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that wrecked the economy of the Caribbean nation, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and its current humanitarian conditions. A DHS spokeswoman said in an emailed statement that Kelly had not yet made a decision. But an internal memo published by the Miami Herald showed that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of DHS, last month recommended an end to Haiti's TPS designation. The move has been decried by several immigration advocacy groups and Haitian diaspora associations that have scrambled for support from elected officials and religious leaders. More than 400 faith leaders and organisations last week delivered a letter to Kelly, urging him to extend the temporary protection for Haitians affected by the earthquake. At the New York-based Church World Service, one of the two groups behind the missive, spokeswoman Meredith Owen said Haiti faced the same conditions that earned it the original TPS. Hurricane Matthew, which slammed into Haiti last October and left some 1.4 million people in need of assistance, had only compounded existing problems of reconstruction and resurrected a deadly cholera outbreak, she said. "Allowing TPS to expire before Haiti has had a chance to recover violates our obligation that we set for ourselves and that we pledged to Haiti," said Owen in a phone interview. A Boston-based activist group, the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), said it had been successful in lobbying lawmakers for their support. So far, the group had prompted some 90 members of Congress to publicly voice their support for the preservation of Haiti's status, said Steve Forester, a spokesman for IJDH. "If there was ever a classic textbook case for TPS, it is Haiti," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. "Not granting TPS would increase despair, the destabilising (of Haiti) and be contrary to the national security of the United States." Last week, Haiti's President Jovenel Moise told Haitian media he too backed the renewal of the TPS for his country. (Reporting by Sebastien Malo, Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org) By Lisandra Paraguassu CURITIBA, Brazil, May 10 (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a fiery defense against corruption charges leveled against him during five hours of testimony on Wednesday in his first appearance before a crusading anti-corruption judge trying the case. The plain-spoken Lula, who remains a hero to many working-class Brazilians, flatly dismissed the charges and called the case "illegitimate" and a "farce." He railed against the Brazilian media for having "massacred" his character, saying the media "wants to get me dead or alive." Lula is accused of receiving a beach apartment in return for helping the OAS construction firm win government contracts, and of hiding his ownership of it. He strongly denied ever wanting or having ownership of the apartment. Lula, a former union leader who organized massive strikes in the early 1980s that helped end more than two decades of military dictatorship, made an impassioned final statement. He accentuated his gruff speech before Judge Sergio Moro, who has spearheaded Brazil's biggest-ever corruption probe, by pounding his fist and documents on a table and saying prosecutors had failed to produce any concrete evidence against him. "When I became president in 2003, I made a faithful promise. I was aware that I could never do wrong," said Lula, who rose from childhood poverty to lead Latin America's biggest nation for eight years. "If I did wrong, the workers' class would never again vote for somebody from a lower level." Moro, who is not expected to make a ruling on Lula's case before July, on several occasions interrupted the 71-year-old former president to point out that his closing statement should not stray into political theater or be used to rail against the media. "The press has no role in this case whatsoever," the 44-year-old judge told Lula. "The judgment will be made on the basis of law and exclusively according to the proof presented." FOUR OTHER CASES Lula, who is charged in four other corruption cases, is the highest-profile defendant in a sprawling corruption probe known as "Operation Car Wash." The investigation centers on construction firms that have already admitted to paying billions in kickbacks in return for lucrative contracts at state-run oil company Petrobras. The former president and his lawyers have repeatedly said that he is innocent of all charges, and aides said after the hearing that Lula was extremely satisfied with his performance. Lula sits atop recent polls for the 2018 presidential election, but he also scores the highest rejection rate of any candidate. Lula has said he wants to run for president in 2018, but if convicted could not run. The investigation has greatly expanded since it began three years ago and now encompasses several state-run companies. More than 90 prominent businessmen and politicians have been convicted, while scores of sitting federal congressmen as well as one-third of President Michel Temer's cabinet are being probed. On his way to the hearing, Lula emerged from a car a block away from the courthouse, where he was met by supporters chanting "Lula, warrior for the Brazilian people!" As he made his way to the building, a stern-faced Lula grabbed a Brazilian flag and began waving it high above his head, but made no comments as he pushed through the crowd. Thousands of Lula supporters traveled to Curitiba, mostly members of activists groups and unions, arriving in nearly 200 chartered buses from across the country. They set up makeshift tents along railroad tracks a few kilometers from the federal courthouse and held a nighttime rally in a central plaza as the hearing dragged on. "Even if they were to prove that everything he has done was wrong, I would still vote for him," said Gabriel Marshall, an 18-year-old member of the Landless Workers Movement who made a 10-hour bus trip from his cooperative farm in Parana state. "He was the only one in power who has not robbed from the poor." A small group of supporters of the Car Wash investigation gathered in a different area of Curitiba. Last week, Moro released a video on Facebook asking that those backing the inquiry not travel to Curitiba to avoid the chance of clashes with Lula supporters. During two terms in office, Lula, Brazil's first working-class president, greatly expanded the social safety net. Helped by a booming economy and an innovative cash-transfer program, his administration yanked tens of millions of people out of poverty into the middle class. Lula left office in 2010 with an 83 percent approval rating. Lula was deeply involved in the graft scheme, according to federal prosecutors and former Petrobras executives who negotiated plea deals or are seeking them. Millions in bribes allegedly were funneled into the campaign coffers of his Workers Party as well as nearly every major political party, they say. (Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks and Eduardo Simoes in Sao Paulo; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Andrew Hay and Leslie Adler) LIMA, May 10 (Reuters) - Peru's poverty rate dipped by 1.1 percentage points in 2016 to 20.7 percent, government data showed on Wednesday, in line with modest declines seen the prior two years after several years of sharp poverty reduction. Some 264,000 Peruvians left poverty last year, more than the 221,000 who emerged from poverty in 2015 but less than the 289,000 in 2014, in the first test of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski's ambitious pledge to cut poverty in half by the end of his term in 2021. State statistics agency Inei defines poverty as the inability to purchase a basket of goods that would satisfy basic needs. Nearly 1.2 million Peruvians, or 3.8 percent of the population, were in a condition of extreme poverty in 2016, defined as the inability to purchase a basic basket of food and beverage products. More than half of Peruvians were poor at the start of the century, but a mining boom led to swift declines in the poverty rate in the world's No. 2 copper producer. Since 2014, however, poverty reduction has slowed as lower commodity prices hurt one of Latin America's fastest-growing economies. "The speed of poverty reduction has been lower and lower," said Inei chief Anibal Sanchez Aguilar, though he noted that the poor were, on average, closer to the poverty line in 2016 than in 2015. "The poor, despite not having exited poverty, have improved their level of consumption." Poverty fell more in rural areas than urban areas in 2016, though the divide remains high with 43.8 percent of rural dwellers in poverty, compared with 13.9 percent of urban residents. Poverty dropped 1 percentage point in 2015 and 1.2 percentage points in 2014. Kuczynski, a former investment banker, took office last July pledging to restore annual growth to 5 percent with new infrastructure projects and lower taxes. He has said he wanted the poverty rate to be no more than 10 percent at the end of his term. The government now expects a lower growth of 3 percent this year due to devastating floods and a graft scandal that has paralyzed public works. Inei advisor Javier Herrera said it was too early to measure the impact the floods -- which killed more than a hundred people and damaged thousands of homes -- would have on the poverty rate, but noted that for many, the floods damaged "the means of production that allow them to increase their incomes." (Reporting by Luc Cohen and Teresa Cespedes; Editing by Sandra Maler) By Fabian Cambero SANTIAGO, May 10 (Reuters) - Workers at BHP Billiton's Cerro Colorado copper mine in Chile will strike for 24 hours in the coming weeks to protest recent layoffs and the company's general attitude toward miners, the main union told Reuters on Wednesday. Earlier on Wednesday, workers briefly blocked the access road to the mine for the same reasons, and later met with the mine's manager. The recent protests come roughly a month and a half after a fractious 43-day strike at BHP's much larger Escondida copper mine in Chile, and just hours after BHP officially started a sale process for Cerro Colorado, one of its smaller operations in South America. BHP did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "We let them know that the mine is going to be shut for 24 hours in a rejection of the company's attitude ... It won't be very far in the future, within the coming weeks," union president Marcelo Franco told Reuters. "We think there's a clear anti-union message," he added. Among the workers' various complaints is that BHP is transporting workers to the mine earlier in the morning than previously agreed upon and failing to pay severance to employees. Cerro Colorado, which together with the Spence mine forms BHP's Pampa Norte division, produced 74,000 tonnes of copper in 2016. Banking sources have named Chile's Empresas Copec SA and Canadian companies such as Lundin Mining Corp as possible buyers for the deposit. (Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by Gram Slattery; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) A total of 550 inmates in various prisons from across the country had been released this morning under the Presidential pardon to commemorate the UN Vesak Day celebrations, Department of Prisons said. Speaking to Daily Mirror Prisons Department Commissioner said the prisoners who were not convicted in serious crimes had been released under the programme. The inmates had been selected after a proposal made by the Prison Reforms Minister D M Swaminathan to the Justice Ministry following a list prepared by the Prisons Department. According to the Prisons Department the inmates had been selected under four categories depending on their offence, age and conduct. (Thilanka Kanakarathna) A Chinese national was taken into custody by the Bambalapitiya Police today when he was found brewing illicit liquor (Kasippu) in a room on the third floor of an apartment in Bambalapitiya. At the time of the arrest, the suspect was in possession of 650 litres of Goda, 160 litres of illicit liquor, 168 sticks of foreign cigarettes and other equipment used to brew arrack, police said. Investigations revealed that the suspect had been living in Puttalam for two years, and had shifted to Bambalapitiya about an year ago. Police said the suspect had distributed liquor (in cans) to hotels and construction sites islandwide for the consumption of Chinese nationals working in Sri Lanka. (Ajith Siriwardana) A ship load of tramadol allegedly from India on its way to be sold to ISIS fighters via Sri Lanka was seized by the Italian Police, Heat Street news website reported yesterday. Italian investigators have traced the tramadol shipment consisting 37 million tablets to an Indian pharmaceuticals company called Royal International. The company has allegedly sold the pills for US$250,000 to a Dubai-based importer. The ship had sailed from India to Sri Lanka where they disappeared from the ships documents. The containers were then shipped to Genoa, ready to be delivered to two companies in Libya, which the US Drug Enforcement Administration has informed us are linked to ISIS, an Italian investigator has told the Times of London. Tramadol is a painkiller which some use as a cheap alternative to cocaine. Its thought the tablets are frequently sold to ISIS fighters for about $2 each, meaning the haul was worth some US$75 million to whoever was planning to push them. The tablets were found hidden in three containers in the port of Genoa. They were labelled as blankets and shampoo on a vessel destined for Misrata and Tobruk, Libya. Isis is making a fortune from this traffic, giving it to its fighters to make them feel no pain, the investigator said. According to the article, those who attacked the Bataclan music club in Paris in 2013, slaughtering 89 people, were said to be high on the amphetamine Captagon which suppresses hunger, fear and fatigue. Man is a social animal. According to Buddhism, nothing in this world just happens, takes place, comes up Nyamas, and exists on its own. Interaction or mutual cooperation is necessary for anything to happen. The phenomena which interact for the existence of various things are called cause members. These cause members interact for the origin of anything. This is the law of causation in philosophy. In Buddhism, this state is explained as Hethu Phala Dharma or cause and effect. Although Buddhism attributes the inequality of mankind to Karma as one of the chief causes. It does not assert that everything is due to Karma. External forces affecting man In this connection it may be useful to examine the external forces which affect the birth, existence and death of a human being. According to Buddhism there are five orders or processes, Nyamas which operate in the physical or mental realms. They are Uthu Niyama (physical inorganic order);Baja Niyama (physical organic order or order of germs and seeds etc.); Kamma Niyama (Order of action and result); Damma Niyama (order of norm); and lastly Chitta Niyama (order of mind or psychic law) Physical inorganic order (Uthu niyama) Physical inorganic order includes natural physical order (Uthu niyama) order of seasons, characteristic seasonal changes and events, causes of wind, rain and heat etc. Physical organic order (Bija Niyama) Physical organic order is the order of germs and seeds etc. Rice for instance is produced from the Rice seed; babies are born to parents and calves are born to cattle etc. This is the scientific theory of cells and genes. Because of this there is the physical similarity of the children in the same family. Order of action and result (Kama Niyama) Order of action and result (Kama Niyama) is the virtuous or desirable acts producing good results and undesirable acts or deeds producing bad results. Kamma produces inevitable results not as rewards made or punishments imposed by a supernatural being or someone who is believed to be the Creator. The sequence of deeds and effects is as natural and necessary as the way of the sun and the moon. Order of Norm (Dhamma niyama) Order of Norm (Dhamma niyama) or situation or way of behaviour that is usual or expected such as the natural phenomena occurring at the advent of a Bodhisattva in his last birth, gravitation or other similar laws of nature, the reason for being good and so forth may be included in this group. Order of mind or psychic law (Chitta niyama) Order of mind or psychic law (Chitta niyama) examples of which are the process of consciousness, arising and perishing of consciousness, constituents of consciousness, power of mind, etc. Telepathy, retro-cognition, premonition, clairvoyance and thought reading. These psychic phenomena which are inexplicable to modern science are included in this class. Every mental or physical phenomenon could be explained by all these five embracing orders or processes which are laws in themselves. In spite of all these Niyamas or orders it is this doctrine of Karma that gives consolation, hope, self alliance and moral courage to a Buddhist. Rebirth takes place due to Karma. Past Karma conditions the present birth and the present Karma is added to the past Karma to condition the future birth. Good and bad volition (Kusala Akusala Cetana) Kamma means good and bad volition (Kusala and Akusala Cetana). It is the voluntary action, thought or word other than Buddha and Arahants who do not accumulate fresh Kamma as they have destroyed passions. Kamma is the law of moral causation. Kamma is essentially followed by Vipaka, a result or effect. Kusala Kamma, meritorious or virtuous action brings good results in the same birth or in births to come. Similarly Akusala Kamma bad or demeritorious deeds bring misfortune or affliction. Kusala Kamma There are ten kinds of Kusala Kamma such as Dana (Generosity), Seela (Morality), Bhavana (Meditation), Apacayana (Reverence), Veyyavachana (Service), Pattidana (Transfer of Merit), Pattanumodana (Rejoicing in others merit), Dhamma savanna (Hearing thee Doctrine), Dhamma Desana (Expounding the Doctrine) and DitthijjuKamma (Strengthening ones confidence). Dana is the act of giving or offering with generosity. This yields wealth in the present life or in the future lives. Seelais morality or virtuousness, the observation of which result in birth of noble families and states of happiness. Bhavanais meditation which gives to births in form and formless realms and tends to gain higher knowledge and emancipation. Apacayanais reverence, respect and salutation or the act of paying honour and respect to those who worthy of it. Pujata pujaneyanan Effects of reverence are many one of which is noble parentage. Veyyevacca is service rendered for others. This includes the support provide to parents, cherishing of wife and children and helping relatives and others. This ends to produce a large retinue. Pattidana is the act of transferring merit or giving merit by one who has acquired it to other persons. This serves as a cause to get in abundance in future births. Pattanumodana is rejoicing in others merit. This is to share the acts of merit performed by others although it has not been able to play the principal role oneself. This is productive merit wherever one is born. Dhamma savanna is hearing of Dhamma or listening to Dhamma and learning it for the realization of Nibbana. This Kusala Kamma promotes wisdom. Dhamma Desana is expounding the doctrine to enlighten others. This promotes the wisdom of the person concerned. Lastly, Ditthijju Kamma is the act of getting ones views strengthened. The mind of the doer of merit does not get fluttered. He or she is sorrow less, stainless and secured. This strengthens ones confidence. For Buddhists to have false view is to hold wrong views that block the way to Nibbana. This is not to have faith in the Triple Gem, Buddha, His doctrine, and His disciples the Sangha. It is to hold the view that there is no rebirth and that everything happens according to the wish and will of the supernatural person who has created the world. The Blues had on May Day come to terms with a reality that they had long skirted: they will never come to power again if they remain splintered. Following the dawning of this reality on all and sundry, a small group of party seniors the other day decided to bring pressure on both factions to bury the hatchet for an early merger. They also nominated several seniors as members of a delegation to meet both leaders to negotiate a peace settlement. However, a party senior from Uva who was nominated as a member of the peace delegation immediately declined saying: Apoi! No matter what you think about that man, I cant be a party to a mission expected to talk peace with him again! This Blue senior who backed out shifted his political base from Colombo to Badulla sometime ago. However, he lost his constituency at the last poll, but managed to make it to Diyawanna thanks to the preferential vote. The other seniors, however, firm in their resolution to carry out their mission to a successful conclusion decided to pursue their goal come hell or high water. The son who quit office in protest against the ouster of his father who is a senior in the Blue party needs no introduction to those in touch with the recent political developments in the country. The young politico who suddenly found himself in the limelight for demonstrating his filial affection the other day called on invitation on a very powerful figure in the media sector. The media tycoon responsible for paving the way for several blue-eyed boys of his to enter active politics in the country had had a one-on-one discussion with the young guest after giving him a right royal welcome. He later walked up to the vehicle of the young guest, a rare gesture of courtesy to wish him good bye, they say. Meanwhile, some people trying to put two and two together about the unusual meeting, say that they could look forward to a significant political move by the young politico in the near future. President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey on Tuesday, at the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials who said he had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly and in doing so damaged the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department. The startling development comes as Comey was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with the U.S. presidential election last year. It wasnt immediately clear how Comeys ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Comeys deputy, Andrew McCabe, would be the acting director of the FBI. As a presidential candidate, Trump explicitly criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in the Clinton probe while at other points praising Comey for his guts. The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in the White House briefing room. The firing is effective immediately, he said. Comey was in Los Angeles on Tuesday on a recruiting trip. Officials said Comey was fired because senior Justice Department officials concluded that he had violated Justice Department principles and procedures last year by publicly discussing the investigation of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. Democrats have long argued that Comeys decisions in the months and days before the election hurt Clintons standing with voters and affected the outcome, but the president and his closest advisers had argued that Comey went too easy on Clinton and her aides. Just last week, Trump publicly accused Comey of giving Clinton a free pass for many bad deeds when he decided not to recommend criminal charges in the case. Officials released a Tuesday memo from the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, laying out the rationale behind Comeys dismissal and attributing it all to his handling of the Clinton case. Officials said Rosenstein began examining Comeys conduct shortly after being sworn into office two weeks ago. (Washington Post) Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sumbuddhassa!Siddharta Gautama, the crown prince of Kapilavastu was born on a Vesak full moon day, at the Lumbini Park of the Nepalese border in 623 BC. The prince was the only son of Queen Mahamaya and the Sakyan King Suddhodana. At the age of 29, the strongly determined prince left his palace, leaving his loving princes Yasodara and his one-day-old son Rahula. Abandoning all royal luxuries he renounced the World, becoming a penniless ascetic philosopher and wandered into forestry retreat. Being a hermit, he strenuously suffered and struggled stupendously, to realize the sublime truth for six long years. In the company of distinguished ascetics Alara Kalama, Uddaka Ramaputra and in association with five great ascetics Kondanna, Bhadiya, Vappa, Mahanama and Assaji, Ascetic Siddhartha engaged in spiritual practices. He equalled and even surpassed the standards of his teachers but remained unsatisfied with whatever discipline, doctrine and high degree of mental concentration which did not answer his problems of disgust, detachment, cessation of suffering, tranquillity, intuition, Enlightenment and Nibbhana. Thence, he declined to accept the offer made to him to be the head of all ascetics and realized that the austerities and mortifications were extremity and fruitless. Though he had achieved the mastery of mind in their association, his quest to seek the highest truth remained unachieved. His mission was to seek the highest goal Nibbhana! The complete cessation of suffering, the total eradication of all forms of craving thus he decided to continue his great efforts through the moderate Middle Path (Majjhima patipada), in solitude. Abandoning the practices of indulgence in sensual pleasures (Kamasukhallikanuyoga), as well as addiction to self mortification (Attakilamatanuyoga), the two extremes. He followed the Majjhim Patipada, being the only path which leads a recluse to tranquillity, realization, enlightenment and Nibbhana. Relying on his own efforts on a glorious Vesak full moon day, Sakyamuni Tathagata Gautama, aged 35, attained Supreme Enlightenment under the shade of the Jaya SriMaha Bodhi at Gaya, 2640 years ago. The intensity of this serene joy and pious emotion was so overwhelming that it permeated His entire Golden Hued Body and the Six-coloured glorious rays, emanated from the Body downwards penetrating the Earth, water and Air, and further blazed forth upwards like the Rays of the Glorious Sun into the different realms of existence extending as far as the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception. This rare and extraordinary phenomenon is thus described as the Buddha Rashmi. The Purity and Sublimity, the Serenity and Tranquillity of His mind generated sparkling and wholesome material qualities which left their imprint on His Personality and the colour of His Blood became Pure, Pellucid and Clear and as a result Rays of Six Colours Indigo, Gold, Red, White, Tawny and Dazzling issued from the Body of the Blessed One. In his bliss of Emancipation and transcendental moral victory the Buddha uttered his delightful maiden words the Paean of joy. Anekajati samsaram sandhavissam anibbisam Gahakarakam gavesanto dukkha jati punappunam Gahakaraka, dittho si puna geham na kahasi Sabba te phasuka bhagga gahakutam visamkhitam Visamkharagatam cittam tanhanam khayam ajjhaga Thro many a birth in existence wandered I. Seeking, but not finding, the builder of this house. Sorrowful is repeated birth. O housebuilder, thou art seen. Thou shalt build no house again. All thy rafters are broken. Thy ridge-pole is shattered. Mind attains the Unconditioned. Achieved is the End of Craving. Buddha having spent the significant seven weeks (Satsati), remained in contemplation on the subtleties and intricacies of his unique discovery. He experienced ecstatic bliss & unalloyed happiness. The Buddha appears in this World out of boundless compassion, for the good benefit and happiness of gods and men. Being surface seers the average society fails to diagnose the eternal factors that the life is suffering. Always a Buddha who rarely appears in the World, reveals the eternal truths to the deluded World that life is suffering and sorrowful. As a treatment, to overcome this painful sansarik journey or the cycle of rebirth, the Buddha expounded the Four Noble Truths as well as the Eightfold Noble path for benefit of all recluses (Pabbjitena). Meanwhile the hosts of divine beings of many realms were eagerly awaiting to listen to the message of the Buddha. Thereupon, the chief of divine society Maha Brahma, paid his highest obeisance to the Enlightened One! and invited the Buddha, to disclose the Sublime Truths, to the World and to salvage endless suffering, beings who were intelligent and competent to realize the Dhamma. Thereupon, the Buddha set forth to visit to Mighadaya (dear park), Isipatane of the Uruwela Dannawwa, to preach the five Brahmin ascetics, who were his past companions. On seeing the Buddha coming back to them, the five ascetics took a decision not to greet him or welcome him warmly. However, as the Buddha approached closer they automatically performed the preliminaries and respectfully offered him a seat. Still unaware that the Buddhahood Gautama, was now Enlightened, they began to address him as an equal. Then the Buddha explained to them that it was improper to address the Tathagata, by name or treat him as an equal. The Tatgagata, O Bhikkhus! is not luxurious has not given up striving and has not turned into a life of abundance. An Exalted One is the Tathagata. A fully Enlightened One is He. Listen Bhikkhus! Deathlessness has been attained. I shall instruct and teach you the Dhamma. The adamant ascetics who were initially reluctant to give ear, finally yielded to learn. O, Bhikkhus: There are these two extremes (anta), O Bhikkhus, which should be avoided by one who has renounced (pabbajitena). Kamasukallikanu Yoga, (1) Indulgence in sensual pleasures this is base, vulgar, worldly, ignoble and profitless; and, Attakilamatanu Yoga, (11) Addiction to self-mortification this is painful, ignoble and profitless. Abandoning both these extremes the Tathagata has comprehended the Middle Path (Majjhima Patipada) which promotes sight (Cakkhu) and knowledge (nana), and which tends to peace (vupasamaya), higher wisdom (abhinnaya), Enlightenment (sambodhaya), and Nibbana. What, O Bhikkhus, is that Middle Path, the Tathagata has comprehended which promotes sight and knowledge, and which tends to peace, higher wisdom, Enlightenment, and Nibbana? The very Noble Eightfold Path namely, (1) Right Understanding (samma ditthi), (2) Right Thoughts (samma sankappa), (3) Right Speech (samma vaca), (4) Right Action (samma kammanta), (5) Right Livelihood (samma ajiva), (6) Right Effort (samma vayama), (7) Right Mindfulness (samma sati), and (8) Right Concentration (samma Samadhi), This O Bhikkhus is the Middle Path which the Tathagata has comprehended. (The Buddha continued): Now this, O Bhikkhus, of the Four Noble Truths, Suffering is dukkha-ariya-sacca! Birth is suffering, decay is suffering, disease is suffering, death is suffering, to be united with the unpleasant is suffering, to be separated from the pleasant is suffering, not to get what one desires is suffering. In brief the five aggregates of attachment are suffering. Thefive aggregates compose the Pancupadanakkhandha According to Buddhism this so-called being is composed of five groups, viz: Rupa (matter), Vedana (feeling), Sanna (perception), Samkhara (mental states) and Vinnana (consciousness). These are the five psycho-physical component parts that constitute an individual. Matter is composed of forces and qualities. Mind too, is composed of mental states (cetasikas). They are fifty-two in number. Of them vedana, and Sanna are treated as two distinct groups. The remaining fifty are collectively called Sankhara. Now, this, O Bhikkhus, secondly is the Noble Truth of the cause of suffering (dukkha-samudaya-ariyasacca): It is this craving which produces rebirth (ponodhavika), accompanied by passionate clinging, welcoming this and that (life). It is the craving for sensual pleasures (kama tanha), craving for existence (bhava Tanha) and craving for non-existence (vibhava tanha). Now this, O Bhikkhus, thirdly is the Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering (dukkha nirodha ariyasacca). It is the complete separation from, and destruction of, this very craving, its forsaking, renunciation, the liberation therefrom, and non attachment there to. Now, this, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering (dukkha-nirodha-gamini-patipada-ariya-sacca). It is this Noble Eightfold Path namely, Right Understanding, Right Thoughts, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. (1).This is the Noble Truth of Suffering. Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This Noble Truth of Suffering should be perceived (parinneyya). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This Noble truth of suffering has been perceived (parinnata). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. (2).This is the Noble Truth of the cause of suffering. Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This is the Noble Truth of the cause of suffering should be eradicated (pahatabba). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This Noble Truth of the cause of suffering has been eradicated (pahinam). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. (3).This is the Noble Truth of cessation of suffering. Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering should be realized (sacchikatabba). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering has been realized (sacchikatam). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. (4).This is the Noble Truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering. Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things, unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This Noble Truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering should be developed (bhavetabbam). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. This Noble Truth of the Path leading to the cessation of suffering has been developed (bhavitam). Thus, O Bhikkhus, with respect to things unheard before, there arose in me the eye, the knowledge, the wisdom, the insight, and the light. (concluding His discourse, the Buddha declared): As long, O Bhikkhus, as the absolute true intuitive knowledge regarding these Four Noble Truths under their three aspects and twelve modes was not perfectly clear to me, so long I did not acknowledge in this world inclusive of gods, Maras and Brahmas and amongst the hosts of ascetics and priests, gods and men, that I had gained the Incomparable Supreme Enlightenment (anuttaram samma-sambodhim). When, O Bhikkhus, the absolute true intuitive knowledge regarding these Four Noble Truths under their three aspects and twelve modes, became perfectly clear to me, then only did I acknowledge in this world inclusive of gods, Maras, Brahmas amongst the hosts of ascetics and priests, gods and men, that I had gained the Incomparable Supreme Enlightenment. And there arose in me the knowledge and insight (nanadassana) Unshakable is the deliverance of my mind. This is my last birth, and now there is no existence again. Thus the Exalted One discoursed, and the delighted Bhikkhus applauded the words of the Exalted One. When this doctrine was being expounded there arose in Ven. Kondanna, the dustless, stainless, Truth seeing Eye (Dhammacakkhu), and he saw that whatever is subject to origination all that is subject to cessation. When the Buddha expounded discourse of the Dhammacakka, the earth-bound deities exclaimed: - This excellent Dhammacakka which could not be expounded by any ascetic, priest, god Mara or Brahma in this world has been ex-pounded by the Exalted One at the Deer Park, in Isipatana, near Benares. Hearing this proclamation the Devas Catummaharajika, Tavatimsa, Yama, Tusita, Nimmanarati, Paranimmitavasavatti, and the Brahmas of Brahma Parisajja, Brahma Purohita, Maha Brahma, Parittabbha, Appamanabha, Abhassara, Parittasubha, Appamanasubha, Subhakinna, Vehapphala, Aviha, Atappa, Sudassa, Sudassi, and Akanittha, also raised the same joyous cry. Thus at that very moment, at that very instant, this cry ascended as far as the Brahma realm. These ten thousand world systems quaked, tottered and trembled violently. A radiant light, surpassing the effulgence of the gods, appeared in the world. Then the Exalted One! declared, indeed, Kondanna has indeed understood. Kondanna has indeed comprehended The Truth Accordingly Venerable Kondanna, was named Annata Kondanna. Dhammacakka Pavattana Suttantum, means the sermon of the Establishment of the Wheel of Truth. Thus, the Buddha for full 45 years fulfilled his duties as the Buddha until he reclined at the age of 80, on a Vesak full moon Day 2561 years ago, at Mallas Sala grove at Kusinara. Sabba Papassa Akaranam Kusalassa Upasampada Sacitta Pariodapanam Etam Buddhana Sasanam! Refrain from all evil acts - cultivate meritorious deeds, maintain good governance of ones mind is the doctrine of the Buddha! (The article is based on facts gathered from the texts of noted authors Ven. Narada, Ven. K. Dhammananda, Max Muller, Rhys Davids Dr. Ambedkar, Alex Robertson etc.) The Tamil Nadu (TN) government will send over one hundred Bachelor of Science (Bsc) degree holders to Sri Lanka to fill in teaching vacancies at Tamil medium schools in the estate sector, State Minister of Education V. Radhakrishnan said. The Minister said the decision was made by the TN government in line with a request made by the Sri Lankan government. The proposal is to be discussed further during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit this week. The proposal was made by the government to the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka to bring down over one hundred Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree holders from Tamil Nadu to fill in vacancies for Tamil medium teachers in estate schools, he said. Speaking to Daily Mirror, the Minister said there were 844 estate schools in the Central, Sabaragamuwa, Uva, Southern and Western provinces which had a scarcity of Tamil medium teachers for subjects such as science, mathematics and English. These are our people who fled the country in 1983/84 and who are now living in Tamil Nadu. We found many of their children are BSc degree holders. In addition to them, the Tamil Nadu government has agreed to send additional teachers to fill in these vacancies. They also promised to bear the cost of their salary. The government has to provide accommodation for the teachers, he said. State Minister Radhakrishnan said that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had instructed him to resolve issues in the estate sector with the help of the Indian government. Meanwhile, trade unions in the education sector criticized the State Ministers move to seek BSc graduates from Tamil Nadu to fill in the vacancies. Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) Secretary Joseph Stalin said the State Ministers move to bring down teachers from Tamil Nadu was questionable. We are not against India. But there are large numbers of Tamil graduates in Ampara, Batticaloa and Jaffna who are demanding the government provide them with employment. The National Colleges in the country also have the authority to award a BSc degree under the 1987 National College Act number 30, he said. The vacancies could be filled in by increasing the number of Tamil students in the National Colleges and generating the Tamil Speaking Teacher population. The graduates from the Northern and Eastern provinces were insufficient to fill in the vacancies and many were not BSc graduates, the State Minister countered. (Thilanka Kanakarathna) Vesak 2017 will be a little more than thrice-blessed for Sri Lanka with the United Nations deciding to celebrate the Vesak festival here, with Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nepals President Bidhya Devi Bhandari being among the VIPs attending it.The three-day international Vesak conference at the BMICH here will have a significant theme, A peaceful and just society. Significantly it was the then Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, who 14 years ago played a key role in getting Vesak declared as a UN holiday. This is a good sign for inter-religious harmony, for all religions to work together on some of the worlds key issues poverty alleviation, the battle against climate change and the peaceful resolution of conflicts without resorting to war or violence. For poverty alleviation, a key issue is a simple and humble lifestyle. Political and religious leaders specially need to set an example -- by practising alpechchethawaya, not just preaching it. Religious leaders specially need to regularly remind devotees of the need to avoid wasteful expenditure, luxuries and extravagance. By saving more, the people could share more and contribute at least a little towards a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources. This is vital for poverty alleviation because in the world today we see the monstrous horror where eight super-billionaires are known to have more wealth than 90% of the population. In Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena is personally working out various dimensions of the poverty-alleviation programme. Among others we need to see major structural changes whereby the development programmes will provide benefits not just to the rich and ruling elite but to all, mainly the rural people. The National Unity Government is stressing that its development strategy will be sustainable, eco-friendly and all-inclusive. We hope this vital promise will go beyond words. So far this has not happened to a significant extent and one indication of it was the record crowd that turned up for the joint oppositions May Day rally at the Galle Face Green. Some analysts say that at former president Mahinda Rajapaksas rally the crowd was more than the combined number at the rallies organized by the Pro-Sirisena Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP). The turnout apparently jolted the Government and reports say immediate steps are being taken to win the hearts and minds of the people because most people, even those who worked hard and enthusiastically voted for the Maithripala Sirisena Government, seem to think that though much was promised little has been produced. Of course, this is the first time the two major parties, the UNP and the SLFP, are working together. Not surprisingly, there are reports of friction and factionalism on various issues including the Hambantota Port deal with China and the Memorandum of Understanding to give India access to economic assets in the East. May Day 2017 was a wake-up call for the National Unity Government that it should work effectively towards all-inclusive development, inter-religious and inter-racial dialogue, unity and co-operation. In finding eco-friendly solutions to climate change issues, religious leaders could take steps for solar-energy panels to be installed in their places of worship. For instance, instead of spending vast amounts on various festivals, the expenses could be cut down and the money used to install solar-energy panels. If the religions set the example then most private institutions and some families may also set up solar energy panels. If thousands of schools also do this, it will be like sunshine at midnight instead of darkness at noon. As Pope Francis is doing, more religious leaders also need to come forward and speak out strongly for a peaceful resolution of conflicts among countries and communities through dialogue and compromise on the middle path, instead of war or violence. Nine countries possess nuclear weapons, some of them known to be about 50,000 times more powerful than the atom bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Non-proliferation is good but not enough. There needs to be disbanding because the nuclear weapons threat is more devastating than all the threats from climate change. Reflections on these and related key issues at the International Vesak Conference here this week could be a source of enlightenment for the world, going far beyond traditional pandals, lanterns and other Vesak festivities. A letter was submitted to the Indian High Commission by the Professionals' National Front (PNF), condemning what was seen as the Indian governments unwarranted influence on Sri Lanka to sign a new Free Trade Agreement with the South Asian giant. In the letter submitted to the high commission yesterday the PNF said it was forced to oppose the move as the new FTA would not be advantageous to Sri Lanka. It further added that as professionals they were forced to oppose and condemn the Indian governments insistence on Sri Lanka to sign the Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) which has generated strong opposition in our country. As professionals, we cannot agree on your government influencing the Sri Lankan government to enter into a new Free Trade Agreement (ETCA) to include Services in addition to Trade, without taking any tangible steps to solve the existing serious issues with the prevailing ISFTA, the letter read. The PNF went on to say that the Indo-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISFTA) which had already been signed between the countries was of no use to Sri Lankan exporters due to the non-tariff barriers (NTBs) that are operative through the State Governments of India. As a result, the trade balance between Sri Lanka and India has expanded exponentially over the years and the trade deficit has increased to more than $ 3.5 billion by year 2016. it said. (Thilanka Kanakarathna) As soon as the news of killing and mutilation of two Indian soldiers along the LoC in Jammu & Kashmir's Poonch district broke out on May 1, the entire country seethed in anger and demanded that Pakistan be taught a lesson. In what is said to be a highly provocative act by Pakistan, it marks the third such incident since October 28, 2016, when a soldiers body was found mutilated in Kupwara. While retaliation is often the popular demand in such cases, in our knee-jerk reaction we often fail to appreciate the options that are available to India under the international humanitarian law (IHL). There are ways in which India can use the IHL to create international pressure on Pakistan so that despicable acts of torture and mutilation are not repeated. The international law on mutilation The four Geneva Conventions of 1949 along with its additional protocols are the treaties constituting the IHL that regulate the behavior of state and non-state parties during war. On mutilation of dead persons (including soldiers), we have Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions that prohibits violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It is often claimed that beheading enemy soldiers in border skirmishes (even when no war is declared) is violation of the IHL and would tantamount to war crimes under the Rome Statute, making the said perpetrators open to trial by the International Criminal Court. This proposition, however, is not true. At least for India and Pakistan. The problem is in the scope of application of the IHL. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that the IHL applies only to the armed conflict and does not cover internal tensions or disturbances such as isolated acts of violence. The law is applicable only when a conflict has begun, applying equally to all the parties. It protects the wounded and sick in armed forces, the shipwrecked personnel, prisoners of war and civilians. What has been happening on India-Pakistan borders with regards to killing and mutilation of soldiers body, can be classified as isolated acts. The IHL does not directly apply in these circumstances as it presumes them to be occurring during peacetime. Uncertainty about application and reluctance of states States have been reluctant to accept that obligations under the IHL that do not only apply during an armed conflict may also persist in times of peace. For example, Trond Giske, the Norwegian minister of culture and church affairs denied any accountability under the Geneva Conventions for lackadaisical management of war graves of foreign military personnel in Norway. This concern was raised by the ICRC on the ground that the dead of the war must be treated respectfully. The effect of this response was considered as rejection of the Geneva Conventions during the time of peace. States have been reluctant to accept that obligations under the international humanitarian law that do not only apply during an armed conflict may also persist in times of peace. Now, Common Article 2 of the Geneva Conventions stipulates the provisions that ought to be implemented during peacetime. The travaux preparatoires (preparatory works) do not elaborate on what those provisions are. But the ICRC Commentary categorises some of them as applicable even beyond the termination of the conflict. Article 34 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (AP-1) for instance, falls in this category. Article 34 is closely associated with the Fourth Geneva Convention since its text reads as gravesites shall be respected, maintained and marked as provided for in Article 130 of the Fourth Convention. According to the 2009 International Review of the Red Cross, this technical linkage between the two provisions, containing the same core ideas, makes both of them applicable even in situations where armed conflict is absent. Similar technical linkage is missing in the cases of mutilation and torture. Article 75 of the AP-I enlists the fundamental guarantees putting acts of torture, mutilation and murder in the prohibited bracket. It is very clear about the prohibition even in the peacetime when it says that these acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by civilian or by military agents. But unfortunately, neither India nor Pakistan have ratified the AP-I. Both of them are therefore not bound by its obligations. There is also no clear documentation of customary international law by the ICRC that can ensure permanent application of the IHL regarding mutilation. Violation of the ceasefire agreement The Ministry of Home Affairs data show that in 2016, Pakistan violated the mutually agreed 2003 ceasefire agreement as many as 437 times along the international border and Line of Control (LoC) in J&K. Since 2001, 4,675 Indian soldiers have lost their lives in ceasefire violations on LoC. There have been similar allegations from the side of Pakistan too. What then is the legal status of the 2003 ceasefire agreement? Its rationale was to put an end to hundreds of firing incidents that were occurring every year since 1972. But the agreement has largely remained unenforced. On a radical side, it may imply that a low-intensity version of the 1971 war is still on. In "Prosecutor versus Tadic (1996)", decided by the Appeals Chamber of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, it was held that the IHL applies from the initiation of such conflicts and extends beyond the cessation of hostilities, until a general conclusion of peace is reached. Does it mean that protraction of the 1971 war in the form of sustained firing incidents calls for the IHLs application to the Indo-Pak LoC? If the answer is in affirmative, then it would solve the difficulty of desperately stretching the IHL to the so-called peacetime situation. It will automatically cover every kind of military atrocity done by either party. Minimising casualties Ceasefire violations are frequent because the agreement is not yet formalised. It was agreed through a telephonic communication between the director-generals of military operations (DGMOs) of both the countries. When India and Pakistan share contested boundaries and are engaged in protracted conflicts and territorial disputes, it is imperative for both the parties to seriously write down a formalised ceasefire agreement, carrying inbuilt mechanisms to ensure compliance and verification. The parties are free to incorporate all the important principles of the IHL in it. It will be more enduring and sustainable than any unwritten ceasefire agreement. Secondly, India must ratify the AP-I to the Geneva Conventions. It will give us a higher moral standing internationally, which can then also induce Pakistan to ratify the same. This would help in implementation of crucial provisions related to murder, mutilation and torture, even during peacetime. Institutional good offices of the ICRC and the United Nations can be utilised once the parties undertake the AP-1 obligations. Ratifying would also put considerable diplomatic pressure on both the parties because even with some enforcement issues, the IHL enjoys a high normative value and respect. Thirdly, both the states must undertake to at least implement peacetime provisions of the Geneva Conventions that call the parties to widely disseminate the IHL related material and make the soldiers aware of their rights and duties under the international law. Inculcation of humanitarian values will go a long way in moral regulation of the soldiers on field. The verdict by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague staying the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former Indian naval officer kidnapped by the Pakistan Army in Balochistan, is only the latest setback in Islamabads unhinged strategy against India. For decades, Pakistan has sought strategic depth in Afghanistan. That policy is in danger of coming off the rails. Afghanistan is no longer willing to offer its real estate to a country, Pakistan, that its people and government detest. Trouble on Pakistans western border with Iran has complicated matters. Last month Sunni terrorists based in Pakistan fired long-range guns to kill ten Iranian border guards. Tehran has warned Islamabad that it will strike at terror safe havens within Pakistan unless the terrorists are arrested and their bases shut down. Irans army chief General Mohammad Baqeri specifically threatened surgical strikes on the Sunni terror group Jaish-al-Adi in Pakistan which has attacked Shia Iran with increasing frequency. Simmering tension has meanwhile boiled over between Kabul and Islamabad. A series of terror attacks by Pakistan-sponsored groups on Afghanistans police and army camps last month killed over 200 Afghan officers and civilians. The most vicious attack took place on April 21 at an Afghan army command centre a few miles from Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province. It could prove an inflection point in the fraught relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Last week Afghan troops killed ten Pakistani paramilitary and census officials near the Chaman border crossing in southwestern Balochistan. The Pakistani census team was escorted by the Frontier Corps (FC). Afghan troops opened fire on the Pakistanis after the FC initiated the gun battle, according to General Abdul Raziq, police chief in Kandahar province. Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has subsequently declined Islamabads invitation to visit Pakistan. I will not go to Pakistan, he said. until the perpetrators behind the attacks on Mazar-e-Sharif, the American University in Kabul, and Kandahar, are handed over to Afghanistan. An unrepentant Pakistan Army claimed to have killed 50 Afghan soldiers in retaliation for the attack on the Pakistani census team. Afghanistan denied the claim, saying it had lost two soldiers in the attack. The border clashes on the Afghan-Pakistan border drew a worried response from China, concerned over the growing impact of terrorism on the $46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). As a close neighbour of Afghanistan and Pakistan, China hopes that both sides can properly settle this incident and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability, said Lu Kang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman. Landlocked Afghanistan has been the target of the Great Powers for centuries. In the 19th century, Russia and Britain engaged in the Great Game, as it was dubbed, to gain influence in south and central Asia. In 1979, the Soviet Union spent a fruitless decade to subvert Afghanistan during the Cold War. Americas Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded, armed and trained Islamist terrorists to fight the occupying Soviet army. When the weary Soviets left after a decade in 1989, two unintended consequences flowed. One, the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev unravelled. Two, an armed, trained and hardened force of Islamist terrorists created by the CIA with Pakistani help was now available on hire. Islamabad seized the opportunity. It poured the Islamist terrorists into the Kashmir Valley. Following the rigged 1987 Jammu and Kashmir election, anger was already rising in the Valley. Terror struck the land of the Sufis in 1989. The Islamisation of the Kashmir Valley had begun. By 1990, 4,00,000 Kashmiri pandits, who had lived in peace with their Muslim neighbours for centuries, had been driven out of their homes and out of their land. It was the biggest ethnic cleansing of a minority community since the exodus of Jews before, during and after the Second World War. The 1990s were among the Valleys most traumatic and violent years. After the terror attack by al-Qaeda on the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001, President George W Bush threatened then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that the US would bomb Pakistan into the stone age if it didnt cooperate in Americas war on al-Qaeda. With over 1,30,000 US and NATO troops stationed in Af-Pak for the next decade, violence in the Kashmir Valley moderated. The venal ISI had other things on its mind, gaming the Americans as Pakistan chased with the US hounds and ran with the Taliban hares, extracting meanwhile $33 billion (Rs. 2.30 lakh crore) from the Americans. After 2014, with US and NATO troop numbers in Afghanistan falling from 1,30,000 to 13,300, Pakistan again began strengthening the Taliban. The objective is to put a Taliban-friendly government in place in Kabul so that Afghanistan can once again provide Pakistan strategic depth in its jihad against India. Islamabad has long tried to include the Taliban in peace talks to legitimise its role in a future government-sharing formula. That is akin to asking Dawood Ibrahim to tutor the Mumbai police (which ironically he did, metaphorically, for a while in the 1980s while Maharashtrian politicians looked benignly on). The problem for Islamabad is that the Afghan people and the Ashraf Ghani government despise Pakistan as much as they despise the Taliban. For India, the priority now must be to greatly increase its presence in and support of Afghanistan: infrastructure, diplomacy and covert operations. An Afghan-India axis will undermine Rawalpindis strategy in the region, including Kashmir, even as it struggles to pacify an angry Iranian government and battles multiple insurgencies within Pakistan. With unrest simmering in Balochistan, protests rising in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), hostilities spiking with Afghanistan and tension growing with Iran, Pakistans strategic depth theory could fall apart. Historically, no nation can choose its neighbours. It is determined by geography. Geopolitics, on the other hand, determines the relative importance of nations in the strategic sphere. No nation can prosper in isolation. It needs trade and development to prosper. For this, nations need to maintain cordial relations with neighbours. A nation at discord with all those in its proximity would only engulf its population in misery and poverty, irrespective of its military might. Germany in the Second World War and North Korea today are prime examples. Hence nations need to evolve policies of maintaining peaceful relations in their neighbourhood. Europe changed after two world wars. It learnt its lessons the hard way. Germany is and would never become a threat. The EU now revolves around the German economy. Even nations belonging to the erstwhile Soviet Union have managed to re-discover themselves and their strategic space, despite pressures from Russia - Ukraine being a prime example. This lesson has reduced threats in most regions; however Pakistan still lives in a delusionary world, in the belief that being a nuclear state it can control its own strategic sphere. In recent days, it has enhanced border tensions with all its major neighbours - India, Afghanistan and Iran. It has had military confrontations with India and Afghanistan. It is heading towards one with Iran. While relations with India have been strained due to historical baggage, religion, ideological differences and failure in every war, relations with the others are poor only due to its own faulty approach and failed policies. The fact that it is attacked even by a less powerful neighbour, Afghanistan, should have sent a message to the powers that be in the country, that it needs to recalibrate its policies; however, it is unlikely to change. Diplomacy, mainly concerning neighbouring countries, left in the hands of power-seeking military generals, who believe in supporting terror organisations, can put any nation at risk. The political leadership, with more experience in handling international relations in Pakistan, is pushed to the background, either intentionally or by creating artificial obstacles in its path. The deep state, comprising the army and the ISI, appears to believe that, it alone, is the saviour of the nation. Thus, it has alienated almost all surrounding it, opening doors for its strategic encirclement by countries inimical to it. North Korea is equally isolated. Photo: Reuters India and Pakistan have been traditional enemies. Kashmir has been a flashpoint, with militants, trained and supported by Pakistan operating along with financial support to the Hurriyat. The present Indian government has taken a strong stand, irrespective of domestic and international suggestions. It refuses to even contemplate talks with Pakistan. India anyway has limited choices. It refuses to talk to the deep state, while their polity has no control over India-Pakistan relations. Hence, status quo would remain. A lesson which Pakistan has failed to learn is that though India and China have a border dispute, it remains controlled and is being diplomatically addressed. The fact that there has been no firing for decades speaks volumes about political engagement between two strong and internationally competing adversaries. Pakistan has always considered Afghanistan as its strategic backyard, hence seeks a favourable government. Its continued support to the Taliban has been with the hope that when talks do take place, it is likely to become a part of the government. The US has made its intentions clear. It seeks a longer engagement in the country and is unwilling to cooperate with Russia and China on talking to the Taliban. The US will have a face-off with Pakistan in some timeframe, once patience runs thin. Pakistan knows what happens when terror groups turn inwards - it has enough experience with the Pakistan Taliban, hence cannot change its present policies in a hurry. Border skirmishes with Afghanistan and the refusal of President Ashraf Ghani to visit Islamabad shows how their policy has failed. This destructive policy opens doors for Indian entry into the country, thus opening a new front for Pakistan to handle. Iran and Pakistan did maintain cordial ties. It never had any border issues with Iran. The international border, however, divides the Baloch community, which reside on either side. Iran blames Pakistan for supporting groups seeking to destabilise the Sistan-Balochistan region of the country. Pakistan, on the other hand, blames Iran for interfering in Balochistan and southern Afghanistan. Anti-Iran terror group Jaish-al-Adl, based in Pakistan, has regularly struck Iranian border guards. In 2014, after five of its border guards were kidnapped, Iran threatened to move in troops, but was dissuaded. The situation was resolved by a local cleric; four guards were returned, but one was killed. In October, a Pakistan Frontier Corps soldier was killed by Iranian Border Guards, rekindling tensions. Recently ten Iranian border guards were killed in a terrorist raid from the Pakistani side of the border. This time, Iran has openly warned Pakistan on launching a surgical strike. The diplomatic situation is also tense since the former army chief of Pakistan, Raheel Sharif, took over the Saudi-led alliance. Iran and Saudi Arabia are natural enemies. Pakistan had border disputes with both India and Afghanistan since its independence. In either case, its deep state prevented the political leadership from taking a lead to resolve issues, seeking to succeed by employing terror groups. The policy has only increased tensions, added to its own problems, as it is regularly targeted by remnants of the same groups it created. The fact that most of the western world has begun ignoring its pleas and cries against India or Indian involvement in Afghanistan, indicates Pakistan's own international standing. 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Taylor Inc., West Coast Communications, Winco Helicopters, Winco Inc., Winco Inc. an Oregon Based Corporation, Winco Powerline Services, Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Services Inc., World Fiber Inc., and mmit Line Construction Inc.. Read More On Tuesday, James B Comey was fired as the FBI Director by President Donald Trump, after officials in the Department of Justice recommended the firing. Officials said Comey had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly and by doing so had damaged the Justice Department and FBI credibility. Get Warning: Undefined variable $CompanyName in /home/acctdp/public_html/wp-content/themes/responsalambre/single.php on line 65 alerts: The surprising development arrives as Comey was heading up an investigation of counterintelligence to determine if associates of Trump might have been coordinating with Russia to interfere with the presidential election in November of last year in the U.S. It was not clear how the ouster of Comey would affect the probe of Russia, but Democrats expressed concern his ouster would derail that investigation. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that Andrew McCabe, who was Comeys deputy director, would act as director of the FBI until a replacement for Comey was found. While campaigning for the presidency, Trump criticized Comey as well as McCabe for the roles they played in the probe of Clinton while at other times praising Comey for the guts he showed. The attorney general and deputy attorney generals recommendation was accepted by the president regarding dismissing the FBI director, said Sean Spicer the White House press secretary. He added that the firing took effect immediately. Wednesday morning Trump lashed back at the Democrats who expressed outrage at the firing of Comey. Trump tweeted that the Democrats said worse things about Comey, including he should be fired, but now play sad. In another tweet, Trump posted that Comey lost the confidence of nearly everyone in Washington, Democrat and Republican alike. Trump defended his decision by saying that Comey was to be replaced by someone who will do much better and who will restore the prestige and spirit of the Bureau. Comey was attending a recruiting trip on Tuesday in Los Angeles when he received word of his firing. Officials said he had been fired due to senior officials in the Justice Department concluding he violated procedures and principles of the DOJ in 2016 when he publicly discussed the Hillary Clinton investigation over her using a private email server while serving as secretary of state under former President Barrack Obama. Democrats long argued that the decisions by Comey in the days prior to the presidential election hurt the standing of Clinton with voters and had affected the election outcome, but Trump and advisors said Comey was too easy on Clinton and her aides. Valero Energy Corporation manufactures, markets, and sells transportation fuels and petrochemical products in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and internationally. The company operates through three segments: Refining, Renewable Diesel, and Ethanol. It produces conventional, premium, and reformulated gasolines; gasoline meeting the specifications of the California Air Resources Board (CARB); diesel fuels, and low-sulfur and ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuels; CARB diesel; other distillates; jet fuels; blendstocks; and asphalts, petrochemicals, lubricants, and other refined petroleum products, as well as sells lube oils and natural gas liquids. As of December 31, 2021, the company owned 15 petroleum refineries with a combined throughput capacity of approximately 3.2 million barrels per day; and 12 ethanol plants with a combined ethanol production capacity of approximately 1.6 billion gallons per year. It sells its refined products through wholesale rack and bulk markets; and through approximately 7,000 outlets under the Valero, Beacon, Diamond Shamrock, Shamrock, Ultramar, and Texaco brands. The company also produces and sells ethanol, dry distiller grains, syrup, and inedible corn oil primarily to animal feed customers. In addition, it owns and operates crude oil and refined petroleum products pipelines, terminals, tanks, marine docks, truck rack bays, and other logistics assets; and owns and operates a plant that processes animal fats, used cooking oils, and inedible distillers corn oils into renewable diesel. The company was formerly known as Valero Refining and Marketing Company and changed its name to Valero Energy Corporation in August 1997. Valero Energy Corporation was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. Rep. Dave Brat, R-7th, spent nearly 90 minutes answering questions at a Chesterfield County town hall meeting Tuesday evening before a largely Democratic crowd that interrupted, booed and yelled at him during much of the event. The forum at Clover Hill Assembly of God church in Midlothian was Brats second town hall meeting of the year, and he fielded about 60 questions most of them pointed at times dodging answers. Questions were written on cards and asked by a moderator, not asked directly by constituents. When asked about President Donald Trumps firing Tuesday of FBI Director James Comey and Trumps desire for a new wall on the Mexican border, Brat either didnt answer or gave nonresponsive answers that led to booing from the audience. Brat did try to explain his reason for voting with his party for the American Health Care Act the controversial legislation that would repeal major parts of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and passed the House of Representatives last week. His answers were mostly interrupted with jeers. You may disagree with me on policy, but on the facts ... Ill tell you the truth the best I can, he said. Everybody asks for town halls so we can have civil discourse, he said. Im trying to listen to the people right now. He was joined onstage by state Sen. Amanda F. Chase, R-Chesterfield, who scolded the audience and at one point asked for sheriffs deputies to move positions. Im going to ask you one time. Do not talk over me. Or you will be escorted out, Chase said. This is private property. But the crowd did talk over her. And no one was escorted out. When Brat asked the crowd for a show of hands by presidential choices, an overwhelming majority expressed support for Hillary Clinton in last years election. Brat defended his health care vote, reading from the bill at times. He said he has been trying to fight the notion that the plan will eventually hinder the ability of people with pre-existing conditions to get health coverage. That is in dispute between Republicans and Democrats. Brat said he agreed with the crowd that the bill should have undergone an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office before the House voted. Brat is part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and he opposed the legislation when it first came up in March. Members of the caucus supported a changed version last week, one that was sprung quickly on the public and is expected to face significant changes in the Senate. Brats district stretches from Culpeper down to the town of Blackstone in Nottoway County, where he held a town hall meeting earlier this year. But Chesterfield and Henrico counties make up the bulk of the districts population. Brat easily defeated Democrat Eileen Bedell in November with 57 percent of the vote, but Trumps presidency has helped create a movement among Democrats and progressives thats putting public pressure on Brat and Republican members of Congress nationally. It has been likened to a reverse tea party movement the opposite of the conservative groups that formed after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 and the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. There were more than 650 tickets issued for the town hall, and they were required for entry. But there were empty seats in the church by the start time. Across the street, more than 100 protesters held signs and chanted. Among them were Joe and Karen Brower of Chesterfield. The tea party is over, Joe Brower said. Karen Brower said she was stunned that the House Freedom Caucus had initially opposed the health care bill but reversed course. She said her health insurance is not a problem, but said its those less fortunate shes worried about. The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the first version of the bill projected that millions would become uninsured because of the health care changes. Im a citizen, and we are supposed to look out for those in our country who cant take care of themselves, she said. Carey Mason Perkins of Henrico, a lifelong Democrat, attended the forum, but her partner couldnt because he didnt have a ticket. She said she was annoyed to see 50 empty seats inside and felt that Brat failed to answer questions, which is kind of his M.O. When asked whether he supported Trumps request for a new border wall, Brat hedged. That wall hasnt been defined in any way, shape or form in legislation yet, so there is no simple yes or no, he said. Brat said he agreed with the audience that Congress should pass a budget and not rely on continuing resolutions which bring repeated risks of a government shutdown. When asked why he thinks its not important for citizens to see Trumps tax returns, many in the audience stood and cheered. The premise of the question is wrong. I do think it is important, Brat said. But he said Congress doesnt vote on that issue. Its not a matter of law. There are conflicts of interest coming out by the day having to do with, and he paused. Russia! several people yelled. Brat continued: Russia. With China. With Iran. With elites all over this country. I want more transparency on all of (it). Brat said House and Senate oversight committees will review questions about ties between Russia and Trumps campaign. Give me the evidence of Trump collusion, he began, and then the boos drowned him out. In this country, youre innocent until theres evidence, he said, a statement defending Trump. When asked again about Russia and about Trumps personal enrichment at the expense of people, he asked the crowd to provide him with any evidence. Were looking for any probable evidence on any of it, and if you have any, share it with me, he said, asking members of the crowd to share any content they had. Brat also declined to answer what he thought of Trumps travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries, a second version of which is on hold in court and is being reviewed by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Brat blamed the Obama administration for Trumps action, drawing loud boos, but Brat didnt take a position himself. Deb Giffin, a tea party activist from Henrico, attended the town hall and said the Trump opposition does seem like a mirror image of the tea party. But its more run by hate instead of love, she said. I think this is fueled by hatred of Trump, above all, and it just boiled over to everybody with an R behind their name. Hes been honored by the Army, veterans groups and church ministries. He served as the grand marshal in Culpepers 2015 July 4 parade. He was recognized as one of the regions 5 Over 50 by Aging Together and he gave a eulogy at the graveside of a four-star general. But the Rev. Ludwell Brown, Sr. says that receiving Culpepers Good Scout award is one of the greatest things that has happened to me since Ive lived in Culpeper County. The 71-year-old pastor credits God and the community for providing him the tools to relentlessly help others in need. Its the people you come in contact with that help you keep on keeping on, said Brown. Brown, a retired U.S. Army E-9 sergeant major, served his country for 32 years. After years of dedication as a military chef and aide, the Fauquier County native turned minister took his calling to Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Haywood where hes led his flock for almost 24 years. Brown is also a member and past president of the NAACP, forging relationships between many organizations and the areas African American community, and he sits on the board of the Culpeper Heat Shelter. Last year, he added acting as moderator for the Wayland Blue Ridge Baptist Associationa union of 38 member churches from Culpeper, Fauquier, Orange, Greene, Madison and Rappahannock countiesto his lengthy resume. On Wednesday morning at a special breakfast held at Germannas Daniel Technology Center, Brown received the 18th annual Culpeper Good Scout Award for service to his community and exemplifying the traits of a Boy Scout. Event chairman Steve Nixon, who serves on the committee to select the Good Scout recipient, said that naming Brown was an easy choice this year. Each year the committee meets in early January to discuss the potential recipient for the Good Scout Award. Our criteria is pretty simple; who has unselfishly donated their time, talent and labor for the benefit of the community. We could think of no one more deserving than Ludwell, said Nixon. Brown also serves on the board of Culpeper Human Services and personally acts as a guardian to those nearing the end of their lives that may not have family members to visit them, make medical decisions and enforce their last wishes. He spends many hours just talking to elderly residents in nursing homes, taking notes, and coordinating community resources to insure that Culpepers seniors receive the best care. Youre usually their last contact before God calls them home, Brown said. I just want to make them comfortable in their last days. Recently, he helped a woman with stage 4 cancer who didnt want to be cremated as her brother had been. She wanted her body returned to New York where her parents were buried. Brown mustered assistance and was able to provide a wake with the help of St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Culpeper. Moser Funeral Home then flew her body back to Johnson City, New York where she was interred in a cemetery alongside her parents. Brown performed the graveside ceremony and was pleasantly surprised to see about 17 people turn out relatives of the Culpeper woman for her service. As he turned to leave, Brown noticed the tombstones of her parents very close to the spot theyd just laid her to resta welcome sight he hadnt expected. It was like the good Lord had showed me their names, he said. In Culpeper County, you have all the help you need to get a job done. What you need is already within your grasp when youre doing the right thing. Brown is the countys 18th honoree by the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America for exemplifying scouting ideals, benefiting his fellow man and taking an active role in the community. He has been a man who has put others first, for their benefit seeking no recognition or compensation for himself. He has spent many days and sleepless nights helping others overcome tragedy and crisis, said Nixon. At the award breakfast, Culpeper Human Services Director Lisa Peacock described Browns method of enlisting help for those less fortunate. Brown, she said, will always spend time getting to know everyone that crosses his path. Hell ask questions, learning what he needs to know about a persons community connections, interests and abilities. And eventually, when the time is right, hell make a phone call. If this happens to you, youre hooked into his resource directory/friends list, Peacock said. Brown recalls trying to help his eldest son earn the Arrow of Light award in scouting. The father-son team managed to get lost near Mountain Run Lake and Brown remains convinced it was the Lord, not his own scouting skills, that helped the pair cross back over the water and find their way without incident. In every task, Brown says, trust in God with all of your heart. The pastors future goals include installing an elevator in Waylands building off Route 229 to make it handicapped accessible and a site for more varied types of community events. I want to open it up to the community, especially for my wounded warriors and my seniors, he said. And Ill be doing the cooking. Were going to hook them up. Brown has been married to Evelyn for 48 years and the couple has three sonsLudwell Jr., Lenell and Lanceas well as three grandchildren and two godchildren. COLUMBUS Central Community College-Columbus music instructor Jeff Kitson received an email from an unusual source. It was the Vatican, asking if his choir could perform during Mass. That was quite the email, Ill tell you, he said. His first thought was also unusual. Boy, I dont want to do this," he recounted. Its a lot of work, its a lot of preparation, a lot of pushing the students. I sat on it a long time before passing it along. Kitson said the Vatican probably heard about CCC-Cs audition choir, called Spectrum, after they performed in Greece two years ago. You get on a list, he said. Its the schools that can pull off an international trip. Eventually he decided to go for it, despite the challenges. This is something we cant pass up, Kitson said. Spectrum member Courtney Anderson remembers her reaction when Kitson broke the news to the 19 students in the group. At first I thought he was joking, she said. Once she realized it was actually happening, it pushed her and her classmates to work harder. It was a big motivator throughout the year, she said. I think weve all put in a lot of time in and outside of the classroom to properly learn the music that we would be singing while we are over there. For Catholic students like Gabe Gomez and Shiy Delp, the chance to perform at the epicenter of their religion is deeply meaningful. As far as religious experience, I think itll be pretty eye-opening, said Gomez. When I told my parents that I was going to sing at the Vatican they were so excited. The Vatican is such a powerful symbolism for our religion. It means a lot to my family, said Delp, "so to go there and make them proud is really nice. Anderson isnt Catholic, but she still appreciates the significance of singing at the Vatican. I know that it is one of the holiest places in the world, she said. Its a huge honor even though its not my denomination. In addition to the Vatican, the choir will perform at concerts in Rome and Pisa. Delp said shes excited because this will be her first time on an airplane and first time traveling outside the United States. I didnt have a passport, I didnt have anything, she said. Delp and Gomez said theyre excited to experience Italian culture. Im looking forward to getting a taste of a new culture and getting to know how other cultures compare to ours, said Gomez. Im looking forward to eating pasta, Delp said. Anderson is excited about the performances. Just sharing our music and our talents with the Italian people, she said. The trip will be June 3-12, and with less than a month remaining Anderson said shes having mixed feelings. (Im) nervous but excited at the same time, she said. Its a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so you just have to take it. Officials had asked the ministries concerned to ensure availability of maintenance funds and make budgetary changes for VVIP flights. New Delhi: The Central government owes Rs 451.75 crore to Air India for VVIP flights carrying the president, vice president and the prime minister, as well as special missions, according to the latest data provided under the Right To Information Act. As per the information provided in response to the RTI query filed by retired Commodore Lokesh Batra, senior officials of the Civil Aviation Ministry, including Union minister Ashok Gajpathi Raju, had written 31 letters between 2014 and 2017 to various ministries asking them to make timely payments to the national carrier for accruing dues at various points in time. The officials had asked the ministries concerned to ensure availability of maintenance funds and make budgetary changes for VVIP flights and other special missions run by Air India, yet the outstandings were never cleared completely, it said. Air India keeps three Boieng 747-400 aircraft for running chartered services for the president, vice president and the prime minister during their visits abroad. It also runs special evacuation missions and provides other services for foreign dignitaries. "The outstanding bills on account of the chartered VVIP flights, maintenance of the aircraft and evacuation missions by the External Affairs Ministry (MEA) remained at Rs 451.75 crore as on March 31, 2017 with some bills dating back to 2006," the letters in response to the RTI query said. They said Rs 47.37 crore was pending towards six visits of the prime minister to the United States, African countries, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Thailand between November 9, 2016 and February 10, 2017. "Bills of Rs 206.19 crore towards 22 visits of the vice president between June, 2008 and March 18, 2017 are still pending with the MEA," they said. Additional bills of Rs 145.63 crore towards the maintenance of Boeing 747-400 aircraft in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 for the vice-president's flights are yet to be cleared by the ministry, they said. Bills for services offered by the national carrier to evacuate Indians from war zones of Iraq, Malta, Cairo and relief sent to the USA during Katrina hurricane in September, 2005 have also not been cleared by the ministry till now, the letter stated. The MEA is yet to pay Rs 23.57 crore pending on account of 27 flights for foreign dignitaries, the RTI response showed. "The ministry had not cleared bills for four flights for the president from November 2008 to September 2016 amounting to Rs 26.02 crore and the maintenance cost of Rs 83.70 crore for the aircraft till March 31 this year," it said. The Centre had claimed that Air India had posted an operating profit of Rs 105 crore in FY 2015-16, but the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had disputed the figure saying the national carrier had in fact incurred a loss of Rs 321 crore. Satyendra Mishra, Joint Secretary of Civil Aviation Ministry, had this year written to the Home Ministry seeking to clear Rs 45.97 crore on account of dues for the flights of the prime minister. "Air India has shortage of cash flow and is unable to meet its various financial obligations. So, I shall be grateful if you could kindly look into the matter personally to ensure that the outstanding dues of AI are cleared at the earliest," Mishra's letter to Additional Secretary, Home Ministry on April 10, 2017 stated. Similar letters were sent to the MEA and the Defence Ministry on April 10, 2017 seeking clearance of bills for the VVIP visits, operations and maintenance. The records show that Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju had to intervene to recover the pending dues. In his letter dated December 21, 2015 to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Raju had said Air India was operating under Turn Around Plan and Financial Restructuring Plan approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for its financial and operations turn around. "However, despite improvement in many of its parameters, it is still incurring losses and is facing financial crunch," he had said. The minister had requested Jaitley's intervention in ensuring that the dues of all the four ministries were released to Air India. "Whatever need be, the requisite amounts may be allocated to these ministries in their budget at the third supplementary stage," he wrote. Batra, who filed the RTI query, said he was sad to find that Air India had not made desirable improvement in cutting down the time in preparing invoices after VVIP visits. "The authorities responsible for paying bills initially do not project adequate funds for the year. For example, MHA has been initially projecting only Rs 200 crore for the year and later seeks more allocation at revised estimate stage of budget," he told PTI. The activist said it could result in the payments being delayed until the funds were available in the next financial year. Boston Scientific Corp stands to lose millions of dollars on its high-end heart stent in India after a government panel rejected its request to increase a cap on the price that it can charge for the device. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in February slashed prices of drug-releasing stents, small mesh devices used to pop open blocked arteries, by as much as 75 percent, setting a price cap of 29,600 rupees ($450). The move was part of an aggressive push by the government to make life-saving drugs and devices more affordable. The panel's rejection comes amid a growing tussle between medical device makers and the Indian government. Industry is worried that price ceilings could be introduced on other medical devices as well, eating into their future profits and growth. In letters sent to government agencies in March and April, Boston Scientific argued that the cap was much lower than what it cost the company to import the device, called Synergy, and would lead to losses of at least $7 million this year. The company asked for the price cap to be raised to around 75,000 rupees ($1,160), higher than its cost of 48,877 rupees. It argued that the government had ignored the "exhaustive and persuasive" data which demonstrated Synergy's superiority, according to the letters, which have not been reported previously. Although India accounts for just a fraction of Boston Scientific's global drug-releasing stent sales of $1.2 billion, the Synergy stent is seen by analysts as one of the key growth drivers for the Marlborough, Massachusetts-based company. India also serves as a research base for Boston Scientific from where it develops products for emerging markets. A panel of the country's federal drug pricing authority rejected the request on Monday, saying there was "no major innovation" involved in the stent to warrant a higher price. The final decision will be taken by the federal health ministry. A Boston Scientific spokeswoman said the company "will continue to engage in a constructive dialogue with the government on the availability of our next generation stents". Public health advocates defend the government's moves, saying the industry charges exorbitant prices for essential, life-saving drugs and medical devices. Modi's government has already announced price curbs on drugs used to treat critical ailments such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and diabetes. Before the price order on stents, Boston Scientific's Synergy stent used to cost 195,000 rupees ($3,000) in India, according to the letters. Denny John, a public health expert at the Campbell Collaboration, said the government should ask Boston Scientific how it could offer to settle for a price cap of around 75,000 rupees for a stent that it used to sell for 195,000 rupees before the government order. The company did not answer questions about pricing. Some experts defended the industry. Shamika Ravi, senior fellow at Brookings India, said price caps reduce incentives in the private market for innovation. "Long-term it will bite patients in a much bigger way as it dries competition," Ravi said. Boston Scientific competes with Abbott and Medtronic in India's $500 million stent market, where about 500,000 such devices were used in 2015. It sold nearly 5,000 Synergy stents in India last year. "The operations, careers of employees, training and education on the latest techniques for better patient care, new innovations will all be effected in this environment," the company wrote in a March 6 letter to India's drug pricing regulator. In representations, which add up to nearly 200 pages and include court documents and clinical studies, the company had cited examples of court orders where judges set aside price fixation orders. It told the health ministry that it had the right to avail "other remedies" under Indian laws. New Delhi: IndiGo today announced plans to buy 50 ATR turbo-prop planes worth USD 1.3 billion as the no- frills airline seeks to tap the regional aviation market by starting flights with new aircraft by the year end. Eyeing "tremendous growth opportunities in tier 2 and 3 cities," IndiGo is expected to be part of the government's ambitious regional air connectivity scheme UDAN in a "big way" by inducting the ATR planes. As per France-based ATR, the 72-600 plane -- powered by Pratt & Whitney engine -- would have 68-78 seats. The largest domestic airline in terms of market share, IndiGo would be only the third scheduled carrier after Air India and Jet Airways to have ATR planes in its fleet. A term sheet has been signed between IndiGo and Avions de Transport Regional GIE (ATR) for purchasing 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft, the two companies said in separate releases. IndiGo would have the "flexibility to reduce the number of aircraft deliveries based on certain conditions". The term sheet is subject to reaching a mutually satisfactory final purchase agreement with ATR and the engine manufacturer, the airline said. "Assuming that both the intended final purchase agreement are reached, IndiGo plans to launch its turbo-prop operation at the end of calendar 2017 and expects to induct up to 20 ATR aircraft by December 2018," it added. IndiGo President and Whole Time Director Aditya Ghosh said that in support of UDAN mission, "we are embarking on a journey to build a nation-wide regional network and connect cities that have not benefited from the growth in Indian aviation". The ATRs' low operating costs would help the airline build a large regional air travel network with reasonable fares, Ghosh said. UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) seeks to connect un-served and under-served airport as well as make flying more affordable for the masses. Announcing the signing of term sheet, France-based ATR said the deal is "valued at over USD 1.3 billion at list price". At current foreign exchange rate, USD 1.3 billion translates to more than Rs 8,400 crore. The airline is currently preparing for an ambitious development of its regional footprint, ATR noted. The country's domestic aviation market has been witnessing robust growth and sees close to 100 million passengers. It is expected to become world's third largest market by 2020, according to ATR. "IndiGo is one of the most respected, efficient and demanding airline in the world. Today they have selected the ATR 72-600s as the best solution to effectively implement their ambitious plans to build a nationwide regional network," ATR Chief Executive Officer Christian Scherer said. At the end of March the airline had 131 aircraft from Airbus, including 19 A320 neos. By next March, Indigo expects to have a total of 170 A320 planes. During a conference call to discuss the latest quarterly results, a senior IndiGo official said there are "tremendous growth opportunities in tier 2 and tier 3 cities". When asked about specific plans with new ATR planes, the official said it would be too early to comment on route planning. "We will announce (the plans) in some time," he added. "Assuming we reach a final agreement with ATR, expect to have up to 7 ATR-72-600 aircraft by March 2018," IndiGo said in the release. About the airline's ATR strategy, a senior official said the synergies of having Airbus as well as ATR fleet would be captured even as he indicated that there would be separate operations. Having separate operations would allow the airline to ensure that "complexity does not creep into either of the two operations (Airbus and ATR)", the official noted. Aviation think tank CAPA said that while the ATR order is not surprising, it is possible to see this operating under a separate subsidiary. On the sidelines of an event in the national capital, Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said IndiGo has told the Ministry that it would be participating in the second round of UDAN in a "big way". The second round of bidding under UDAN is expected in three months while in the first round, five airlines won bids to operate on 128 routes connecting 70 airports. At present, Jet Airways and Air India are the only scheduled domestic carriers that operate ATR aircraft. Jet Airways has 18 ATR planes in its fleet, while Air India group has eight such aircraft, according to their websites. There are 15 ATR 72-500 and 3 ATR 72-600 planes with Jet Airways. The national carrier's fleet has 3 ATR 42 and ATR 72 aircraft. For three months ended March 31, 2017, IndiGo's parent InterGlobe Aviation posted nearly 25 per cent decline in profit to Rs 440.31 crore as higher expenses, especially steep jump in fuel costs, took a toll on its bottom line. Mumbai: Godrej Group patriarch Adi Godrej of late has made changes in top leadership at the $4.5 billion consumer goods major. On Tuesday, Godrej named his daughter Nisaba as executive chairperson of Godrej Consumer Products Ltd, flagship company of Godrej group firms. Earlier in April, Godrej had appointed his son Pirojshah Godrej as executive chairman of company's realty arm Godrej Properties and retained for himself post of a chairman emeritus. Nisaba who has been touted as one of the youngest chairpersons in corporate India will take it upon herself to handle a consumer goods major that has a consolidated revenues of Rs 9,600 crore, according to a report in The Times of India. The report says Godrej's eldest daughter Tanya Dubash is already heading Godrej Nature's Basket, which is not listed on stock market. Adi Godrej, the 75-year old patriarch, is gradually bringing in his younger generation to the business. He is also making way for them to assume significant roles at the company. "It is now widely speculated that Godrej Industries (GIL) would announce the next leadership change," the report said. The GIL board which has Dubash and Nadir, Adi's younger brother, as directors will meet in two week to declare company's financial results, TOI report added. New Delhi: Tata Motors today reported over 9 per cent decline in global sales in April at 73,691 units, including that of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) vehicles. The company had sold 81,333 units in April 2016, Tata Motors said in a statement. In the passenger vehicles category, global sales stood at 54,847 units last month as against 51,749 units during the same period in 2016, up 6 per cent. Sales of luxury brand Jaguar Land Rover grew 2.41 per cent to 41,923 units in April compared with 40,933 units in the same month of 2016. However, sales of commercial vehicles declined by 36 per cent to 18,844 units as against 29,584 units in the year-ago month. COLUMBUS A Platte County judge told Donlee Gillespie he better steer clear of a local grocery store if he wants to remain free on bond while awaiting a hearing stemming from his fourth arrest for shoplifting. Judge Frank Skorupa told the 31-year-old Columbus man not to step foot inside Hy-Vee for any reason as a condition of a $10,000 personal recognizance bond during a brief hearing in county court. Youre going to have to find somebody else to buy your groceries for you, said Skorupa while reminding the local man that he had been permanently banned from the grocery store at 3010 23rd St. after his arrest for a shoplifting offense in November 2015. The judge also barred Gillespie from entering any liquor store or business that sells alcohol. Gillespie is charged with theft by shoplifting $0-$500-third or subsequent offense and second-degree trespassing in the most recent case. The shoplifting offense is a Class IV felony, punishable by up to two years in prison and 12 months of post-release supervision. The trespassing charge is a Class II misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Gillespie was also convicted of shoplifting in October 2015 and January 2016. A Columbus Police investigation began April 14 with a report just before 4 p.m. from a Hy-Vee cashier that a possible shoplifting had just occurred in the stores liquor department. A male suspect was observed entering the beer cave" before quickly leaving the store without paying for anything while keeping his hands tucked inside the front of his hooded sweatshirt, Officer Jeff Anderson wrote in his arrest statement. Anderson said store surveillance video provided a clear photo of the suspect, who the officer recognized through previous contacts. It was later determined that the suspect took a bottle of Jack Daniel's Downhome Punch valued at $1.99 from the beer cooler. Mumbai: The momentum has increased at DY Patil stadium, as the stage has been set on fire by the gorgeous host and actress Elarica Johnson of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince fame. While the Beliebers have filled the stadium, the energy that youll see in this video will drive you crazy. Dont believe us? Watch it for yourself in the video posted below: #purposetour #justinbieber A post shared by Ashish Sufi (@ashish_sufi) on May 10, 2017 at 4:24am PDT Earlier, when we asked the host Elarica about her expectation of hosting the concert for Indian audience, she told us, The best thing about Indian audiences they are loud and excited! When you ask them how they are doing, they shout back with excitement and that makes my job easier. I think the atmosphere will be ecstatic. The actress, who has plans of trying her hand at Bollywood films, told us that she wants to be a friend to the crowd. Fun one, I hope. I want to be a friend to my audience and the one who gets everyone excited. The concert should go smoothly. According to the concert's schedule, Justin is supposed to perform at 8 pm. He landed in Mumbai on May 10, by his private jet and immediately headed to hotel St. Regis, where he is stationed currently. He is expected to fly down to the stadium in his private jet, in order to avoid traffic and save time. Check out few pictures from the stadium: New Delhi: Reminiscing the nostalgic memories, actress Deepika Padukone says she misses the countless shoot memories of 'Piku'. Deepika posted a video of a collage of pictures on Instagram and captioned it as, "2 years and countless memories... I miss you PIKU #2YearsOfPiku (sic)." 2 years and countless memories...I miss you PIKU #2YearsOfPiku A post shared by Deepika Padukone (@deepikapadukone) on May 8, 2017 at 4:57am PDT 'Piku' is touted as probably the best performance by Deepika and she feels no different. The 31-year-old played a simple, independent woman, who lived life on her terms. 'Piku' was a very realistic character, who got irritated, frustrated over her father Amitabh Bachchan's childlike behaviour. Piku was not a fancy movie but it was a simple story of a daughter and her relationship with her father. The movie also stars Irrfan Khan. Mumbai: After an eight year gap, 'Superstar' Rajinikanth will meet his fans for four days here next week starting from May 15. The actor will meet his die-hard fans in batches, between May 15 and 19, sources close him said. The 66 year-old 'Kabali' star will not hold any discussions with the fans, but will only pose for photographs with them, the sources said. His fans have often asked their 'Thalaivar' (leader) to take the political plunge, even as he has been wooed by many political parties on account of his mass appeal. Invitations have been sent to respective fan clubs to attend the various sessions allotted to them between May 15 and 19. The 'Superstar' was slated to hold a similar meeting last month, but had postponed it on a request made by them for individual photographs for which more number of group interactions was required. The last such meeting with fans was in 2009, post his 'Sivaji' success. It looked as though the THC treatment turned back the molecular clock (Photo: AFP) Washington: German researchers have found that small dose of cannabis taken in older age can reverse the ageing of the brain and boost memory. The study further opens up new options when it comes to treating dementia. Scientists at the University of Bonn with their colleagues at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) found regular, low doses of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis - impaired memory and learning in young mice, but boosted the performance of old ones and can help in treating dementia. The team administered a small quantity of THC to mice aged two, twelve and 18 months over a period of four weeks. Afterwards, they tested learning capacity and memory performance in the animals - including, for instance, orientation skills and the recognition of other mice. The results suggested that mice, who were only given a placebo displayed natural age-dependent learning and memory losses. In contrast, the cognitive functions of the animals treated with cannabis were just as good as the two-month-old control animals. Andreas Zimmer from the University of Bonn said the treatment completely reversed the loss of performance in the old animals. These cannabinoid 1 (CB1) receptors are proteins to which the substances dock and thus trigger a signal chain. Zimmer added that when the activity of the cannabinoid system declines, we find rapid ageing in the brain. The findings were surprising: the molecular signature no longer corresponded to that of old animals, but was instead very similar to that of young animals. The number of links between the nerve cells in the brain also increased again, which is an important prerequisite for learning ability. It looked as though the THC treatment turned back the molecular clock, Zimmer noted. The study has appeared in the journal Nature Medicine. The results appeared in the journal Nature Medicine. Hyderabad: Union minister and BJP leader Bandaru Dattatreya on Tuesday asked the Congress to clarify its stand on its general secretary Digvijaya Singh's controversial comments on the Telangana Police. The Congress veteran, in a twitter post on Monday, alleged the Telangana Police have set up a "bogus" ISIS website to radicalise Muslim youth and encourage them to join the terrorist outfit. The TRS government denied the charge. "Why is the Congress party silent on Digvijaya's comments? It should make its stand clear on the issue. A responsible leader like him (Singh) should not have made such comments," Dattatreya said. "Many police personnel have lost their lives while discharging their duties. I request the Telangana government to act suitably (in the case)," he told reporters here. Following the comments two complaints were filed against the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister. Meanwhile, Dattatreya said the Telangana government has sought over Rs 2,300 crore fund from the Centre for bifurcating agricultural and non-agricultural power feeder lines. Dattatreya, the Lok Sabha MP from Secunderabad, said he will discuss the issue with Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal soon. The white Mercedes in which Nishit Narayana (inset) was travelling with his friend Raja Ravi Varma. (Photo: ANI Twitter) Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister Dr P Narayanas son Nishit Narayana, 23, and his friend Raja Ravi Varma were killed in a horrific accident in Hyderabad in the wee hours of Wednesday. The Mercedes in which the duo were travelling crashed into a Metro rail pillar. The accident occurred at a sharp curve on the Jubilee Check Post to Peddamma Temple stretch. Police said the duo were driving towards Peddamma temple in a white Mercedes. While taking a sharp curve near Peddamma temple in Jubilee Hills, the driver lost control on the wheel and crashed into the Metro rail pillar. The air bags in the vehicle opened up but could not save the duo. Police rushed to the spot and shifted them to the hospital where they were declared brought dead. New Delhi: Planning for a grand celebration on its third anniversary, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all set for a humongous 15-day grand merrymaking starting from May 26 to June 15. The government will also launch a new campaign under the name 'New India' on May 25. Stretching for over a fortnight, the celebration will begin with Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation on May 26 in Guwahati. The Prime Minister will then visit four other cities of India. The four cities might be out of these five cities, namely - Bengaluru, Delhi, Jaipur, Kota, Kolkata and Pune. The celebration will take place in 900 cities across India and every minister will visit four cities each. Also 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas' programme will be held in 500 cities. Prime Minister Modi will also be writing two crore letters to common people. 10 crores SMSs will be done within a span of 15 days. Also, on May 26, first page of 400 newspapers will carry advertisements displaying the Centre's achievements. There will be 30 and 60 seconds advertisements on television and radio as well. It is also expected that 'Bharat Ubhar Raha Hai' will be added to the party's tag line 'Desh Badal Raha Hai'. On May 27-28, all the Cabinet ministers will be briefing the media. They will also be meeting non-political people. The BJP will be holding 300 multimedia exhibitions in the states where its holding is not strong and in those states which are in queue for elections. Every ministry will launch a booklet of its achievements, under the name 'Then and Now (UPA and NDA)'. The government will also concentrate its attention on farmers, labourers, women, youth, Dalits, backward classes. On the other hand, the Congress Party is planning to deploy its senior leaders to highlight the failures of the NDA Government. According to sources, senior leaders of the Congress are likely to address the media for 10 days to highlight failed political, economic, defence, and security related policies of the Centre. Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre said that allegations made against Kulbhushan Jadhav by the Pak govt are 'baseless'. (Photo: AP/File) Dhule (Maharashtra): While crediting the Indian government for maintaining international pressure on Pakistan leading to stay on alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav's execution, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre on Wednesday said they don't agree with Islamabad's decision and would rather term it as 'murder.' Bhamre also maintained that the allegations levelled against Jadhav are 'baseless'. "The allegations levelled against Kulbhushan Jadhav are baseless. Our Home Minister and External Affairs Minister have always maintained the same. The punishment of execution announced by Pakistan Military Court is wrong and we don't agree to it. We would term it as a murder. The Indian Government always tried to maintain international pressure on Pakistan. It is the result of the same that we have got stay. All Indians are happy with this," Bhamre said. The International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, put a stay on the death sentence given by Pakistan to Jadhav. The development came after India instituted proceedings against Pakistan, accusing the latter of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in the matter of detention and trial of Jadhav, and sought a stay on his death sentence. India on Monday contended that it was not informed of Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights, an official release from the ICJ said. India further said that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the authorities of Pakistan were denying it its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite its repeated requests. It's also pointed out that India learned about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. India submitted that it had information that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy, and was then shown to have been arrested in Baluchistan on March 3, 2016, and that the Indian authorities were notified of that arrest on March 25, 2016. India also asked the ICJ to declare the decision illegal being violative of international law and treaty rights and restrain Pakistan from acting in violation of the Vienna Convention and international law by giving effect to the sentence or the conviction in any manner, and directing it to release the convicted Indian National forthwith, if Pakistan is unable to annul the decision. Pakistan had claimed that Jadhav was arrested from the Baluchistan province in 2016. A military court sentenced him to death, alleging he was involved in espionage and anti-national activities. Pakistan also claimed that he was a serving officer in the Indian Navy. This led to an outrage in India and other countries, which criticised Pakistan for sentencing Jadhav to death without formally informing New Delhi. India outrightly denied the claims, saying Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was running a business, and adding he was a retired Navy officer. Pakistan has turned down 16 requests from India for consular access to Jadhav. Chennai: In a grisly end to an illicit affair, a 47-year-old government school teacher from Coimbatore was killed by her lover, who is a fireman, in Chennai. Harbouring a suspicion that she was having an affair with another man, who was her Facebook friend, the fireman (30) mowed her down in her own car in Anna Nagar on Monday evening. The deceased was identified as a Nivedha of Kolavanpalaylam in Coimbatore. A divorcee and mother of a 24-year-old chemical engineer son and a 23-year-old daughter who is working in Mahindra City near Chennai. She divorced her husband Raghu, 20 years ago. Police said that the fireman Ilayaraja, working in the Fire and Rescue Service in Coimbatore, had killed Nivedha by running over her using her car. He is a native of Theni and both have known each other for the last six years. Ilayaraja married another woman last year and has a child. Nivedha and Ilayaraja had come to Chennai to meet Ganapathi, an engineer working in a private firm and resident of Vajravel Nagar in Kolathur. Ganapathi and Nivedha, who came to know each other through Facebook, became intimate friends after Ilayaraja got married. Though Ganapathi was married and is a father of a two-year-old child, he had told Nivedha that he was separated from his wife. As Nivedha and Ganapathi maintained an intimate relationship, Nivedha used to give him money as well. On coming to know about Nivedha's friendship with Ganapathi, Ilayaraja objected while insisting that she end the connection. On Monday, he travelled to Chennai with Nivedha to meet Ganapathi so that he could persuade both of them to end their relationship. They met at New Avadi Road - Anna Nagar III avenue junction as planned. After the meetingt, Nivedha got on to Ganapathi's bike saying they were going to meet someone and she would be back soon. Trailing them after seeing Nivedha riding pillion with Ganapathi, Ilayaraja became furious and he hit their bike from behind. Though Nivedha was taken to hospital, she died without responding to treatment. Initially police thought it was just an accident. But a detailed enquiry with Ilayaraja and Ganapathi finally brought out the fact that it was murder and Ilayaraja was arrested on Tuesday and remanded to judicial custody. Bengaluru: AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), an NGO, has started a unique bank called free condom store, aimed to tackle the taboos attaching in buying condoms. Through this initiative it intends facilitate easy availability of condoms across the country. Though condoms play a vital role in helping reduce chances of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, their usage continues to be low, especially among the high risk groups. A mid-term appraisal of National Aids Control Programme (NACP IV) in 2015 - 16 revealed that only 16 per cent target have been achieved in terms of condom distribution. The factors that deter its usage include lack of availability, affordability and various taboos. Activists and NGOs in city have been working towards senstising masses and female sex workers about HIV can now seek help of this condom store. "Stigma and discrimination have always hampered the usage of condoms and it is still considered a taboo. Hence the need for such a store becomes important. Here the distributor does not want to see your face and would not charge anything, but take heed to your request," said Dr V Sam Prasad, Country Programme Director, AHF. He claimed that within five days of the official launch more than 5,000 condoms have already been shipped and another 400 packets would be dispatched on Tuesday. "We have been getting a lot of calls and requests from NGOs activists and volunteers from Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil Nadu. There is a dire need to continue intense public awareness to tackle inhibitions and taboos associated with condoms and encourage their usage. The team has already got some 3,000 emails and many calls on their toll free number," he said. This response shows the need for such an initiative which overcomes the stigma attached to condom, he added. Etawah: Indirectly criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav asked why is it that soldiers from all parts of the country are sacrificing their lives, except for those hailing from Gujarat. Akhilesh asked,"Many soldiers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and even from southern India have sacrificed their lives for the country, but do tell me if any soldier from Gujarat has done so?" Referring to the recent ceasefire violation by Pakistan in the Krishna Ghati sector of Jammu and Kashmir, where two Indian soldiers were killed and mutilated by Pakistan's Border Action Team (BAT), Akhilesh questioned the lack of debate over the matter. The Samajwadi Party (SP) leader further alleged that the Modi government was indulging in politics of martyrs, nationalism and Vande Mataram. This is not the first time that Akhilesh has targeted the Prime Minister. Earlier, in the run up to the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Yadav had urged Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan not to advertise 'donkeys' of Gujarat. The Prime Minister was doing massive campaigning in UP elections, and Akhilesh took political battle to a new low. "There is an advertisement on donkeys. I will ask the biggest superstar of this century (Amitabh Bachchan) not to promote the donkeys of Gujarat," Akhilesh said. Akhilesh's Samajwadi Party lost heavily in the recently held Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections wherein Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured a clear-cut majority and formed a government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. An image of Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was arrested in March 2016, is shown during a press conference by Pakistan's army spokesman and the Information Minister, in Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photo: AP) New Delhi: India decided to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the issue of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav as he is in illegal detention in Pakistan and his life is under threat, the External Affairs Ministry said today. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the decision was taken in the case after careful deliberation. He said India made 16 requests for consular access to Jadhav but there was no response from Pakistan on the demand. Islamabad has also not responded to India's request for papers relating to Jadhav's case. There is also no information on the status of appeal by Jadhav's family against the order of a Pakistan military court which sentenced him to death on charges of "spying". Baglay also said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had written to Pakistan Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz on April 27 requesting visa for Jadhav's family. Minister of State (MoS) for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir stated that the development signalled a major victory for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Government. Ahir said that the stay ordered by the international court has put Pakistan in its place. "This is a big success for India and a big loss for Pakistan. Pakistan doesn't work the legitimate way. It was about to punish an innocent person. This is a big win for the Narendra Modi government," Ahir told. The International Court of Justice on Tuesday stayed the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order by the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month, official sources said. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, right, shakes hand with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin after making a joint statement in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (Photo: AP) New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday stated that New Delhi's relations with Moscow are one of the strongest pillars of India's foreign policy. "Our relations with Russia are one of the strongest pillars of India's foreign policy. We are celebrating the 70th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations," Sushma said in a joint statement with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dimitry Rogozin. She further said that India and Russia are unanimous in their resolve to further strengthen the special and privileged strategic partnership. "I just had very fruitful and productive talks with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. We were unanimous in our intention to further strengthen the special and privileged strategic partnership that exists between India and Russia," Sushma added. The EAM also highlighted that both India and Russia are working closely to take forward many collaborative ideas. "We agreed to work closely to take forward many of the collaborative ideas that emerged in diverse fields including security, nuclear, space, disaster management, trade and economy , science and technology and people to people linkage," she said. India and Russia today agreed to work closely in various sectors including security, nuclear energy and disaster management. Swaraj said the progress made in implementation of agreements signed between the two countries in Goa last year during the BRICS Summit was discussed. She said, the future roadmap is being implemented enthusiastically and over 100 items have been identified, adding that Ministries, Departments and private sectors are coming together to celebrate 70th year of Indo-Russian diplomatic relations. The forthcoming visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to St. Petersburg was also discussed during the meeting. In his statement, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dimitry Rogozin said, the relationship between India and Russia is very dynamic and strengthening trade and economic cooperation was discussed between him and Swaraj. Rogozin, who arrived in New Delhi to take part in a meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Bilateral relations, upcoming Prime Minister Modi's visit to Russia and ways to boost bilateral trade and investment are the key aspects to be discussed. Kulbhushan Jadhav, the 46-year-old former naval officer, has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court for alleged espionage and subversive activities. (Photo: AP) Mumbai: After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) put a stay on the execution order by a Pakistan military court to former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, his friends on Wednesday expressed gratefulness to the government, media and the people of the country and are hopeful of his victorious and safe return back to the country. Appreciating the government's swift move of reaching out to the ICJ, Jadhav's friends feel he is going to be back home soon. Tulsidas Pawar, one of Jadhav's friends, told ANI, "The government's move is laudable and the triumphant fruits that we are bearing today, are all owed to their efforts and the plethora of prayers showered upon by the citizens. There is a strong gut feel that he can be back home any time soon." His friends also expressed gratitude to the media for giving adequate coverage to Jadhav. Vandana Pawar, one of Jadhav's friends, said, "We are grateful to the Indian media as they stood beside Jadhav formidably. Back in the yore days, during Sarabjeet's time, media did not give him this type of coverage, thereby, we all know he had to meet his fateful end. I just wish to have a tiny bit of glimpse of Jadhav." "Right from the beginning Pakistan attempted setting up Jadhav using the manipulative ways, thereby international court supported us. I believe, his mother should be allowed to meet him now," added she. Echoing similar views, Arvind Singh, another friend of Jadhav, demanded a fair trail and urged Pakistan to mend its ways. Singh said, "Pakistan is under immense international pressure and will now have to mend its disingenuous ways. We demand a fair trial, just the way, we gave it to Kasab. We express our heartfelt gratitude to the citizens, government and the ICJ. We won the first step and are hopeful of winning many battles ahead as well." Pakistan had claimed that Jadhav was arrested from the Baluchistan province last year. A military court sentenced him to death, alleging he was involved in espionage and anti-national activities. Pakistan also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." New Delhi: With the International Court of Justice (ICJ) putting a stay on Kulbhushan Jadhav's execution, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Wednesday hailed the precision and the legal action taken by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the matter. MoS (External Affairs) V K Singh said, "ICJ's approval to our stand proves that India was always right in saying that Pakistan was unnecessarily playing politics by giving a penalty of death sentence to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav." Singh applauded External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for putting her special attention on this matter. "First and foremost we should all compliment our external affairs minister Sushma ji for taking very keen interest and a great concern she has exhibited," Singh said. "Swaraj called all people who could give legal advice, she herself is a lawyer and based on the legal advice we were able to file our petition to the ICJ and they have agreed to our stand," he added. Following, Swaraj remarks in Rajya Sabha, Singh echoed similar sentence saying that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by Jadhav, adding that this is an act of premeditated murder. Jadhav, who was arrested in March last year by Pakistan and accused of espionage, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court triggering tension between India and Pakistan. Chennai: After giving a long rope to the controversial judge, the Supreme Court has finally awarded six months imprisonment to Justice C.S. Karnan for committing contempt of the judiciary. Following his continuous allegations against the Madras high court Chief Justice and other judges, the Supreme Court had on February 8 initiated contempt proceedings against him. Thereafter, it gave several adjournments for his personal appearance or through his lawyer to defend his case. It emerged as a huge controversy in January 2017, when Justice Karnan named 20 sitting and retired Supreme Court and high court judges of being corrupt. He released the list in an open letter addressed to the prime minister. The Supreme Court was so magnanimous to grant more time to Justice Karnan. Perhaps, the apex court wanted to avoid blot on the higher judiciary. Early this month, the apex court also sent a medical team to assess him. But, he refused to oblige to the medical test. Finally, the apex court slapped six months imprisonment on him. It is Justice Karnan, who invited trouble for himself. Born in a small village in Cuddalore district on June 12, 1955, Karnan completed his law degree in 1983 from Madras Law College and was appointed as a judge of Madras high court in 2009. In 2011, when he was a judge of the Madras high court, he called a press conference in Chennai to accuse one of his fellow judge of caste discrimination. He alleged that the fellow judge deliberately touched him with his foot as he was a Dalit. He barged into a court hall, where a division bench was hearing a case of judicial appointment, and demanded that he be allowed to be heard in the case. In 2015, he initiated contempt proceedings against the then Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul. He accused him of harassing him for being a Dalit by not assigning any better portfolios. However, the Supreme Court stayed the contempt proceedings. He also made several allegations including educational qualification, suppression of facts and sexual harassment against his fellow judges. Finally, in February 2016, he was transferred to the Calcutta High Court. However, suo motu, he stayed the transfer order. A division bench of the Supreme Court vacated the stay. Meanwhile, he sent a letter tendering apology to the Chief Justice of India T.S.Thakur saying his suo motu stay order on his transfer was passed by him out of frustration resulting in loss of mental balance. On February 15, 2016, I had sent an erroneous order due to my mental frustration resulting in loss of mental balance, since I was disturbed through various incidents. My disturbances can be summarized in two instances. For example, in one instance, a brother judge had intentionally kicked me and then apologized. This took place at a marriage reception at Anna Arivalayam Marriage Hall, Teynampet. Now, the same brother judge played another prank by untying the arm chair reservation slip of my chair, placing it on the ground and trampling it with his feet. The same was noticed by a brother and a sister judge who silently ridiculed me. I sent an official complaint to the SC/ST commission chairman and other higher dignitaries. Justice Karnan always played the Dalit card whenever he landed in trouble after his tirade against the judges. S.Prabakaran, co-chairman, Bar Council of India. Under Article 129 of the Constitution, SC shall be a court of record and shall have all the powers of such a court including the power to punish for contempt of itself. The contempt of Court jurisdiction is a special jurisdiction and must be used to uphold the dignity of courts and majesty of law and to keep the administration of justice unpolluted. Justice Karnan had exceeded his limit and without knowing the judicial consequences, he played with the SC. Therefore, the action of the SC is justifiable and it should be a welcome one. Otherwise, the judiciary will become a mockery of this country. No authority, executive or any individual including politicians should undermine the judicial power and whatever the order passed by the Supreme Court is the law of the land. If anyone including the lower judiciary violates any principles or constitution, the Supreme Court can deal with it in a proper manner. The majesty of judicial institution is to be ensured so that it may not be lowered and the functional utility of the constitutional edifice is preserved from being rendered ineffective. 'SC order not right, impeachment only answer' When the Supreme Court does not welcome a non-reasoned crisp order coming from other courts, how can they (Supreme Court) justify this order against Justice Karnan? I don't approve of the acts of Justice Karnan, but then the Supreme Court has not followed the due procedure of law in awarding him jail term. Supreme Court does not have any supervisory jurisdiction over the high courts; so, in as much as Justice Karnan had committed the mistakes of ordering punishment against the Supreme Court judges, the Supreme Court has also committed the same kind of mistake by punishing Justice Karnan in summary manner. Impeachment is the only answer. Also, the gag order against publishing Justice Karnan's pronouncements is a blow against the freedom of speech and expression. On the whole, the Supreme Court has ordered in haste and may repent in leisure Sudha Ramalingam Going by official data, the state had only 64,909 police personnel as against the sanctioned strength of 94,478 last year and the situation has hardly changed since then. While horrific crimes like murders and rapes are reported with regularity in Bengaluru and elsewhere in the state, the police in Karnataka are badly short-staffed to deal with them. With their numbers nowhere matching the requirement, the police are often known to suffer from exhaustion and stress. Going by official data, the state had only 64,909 police personnel as against the sanctioned strength of 94,478 last year and the situation has hardly changed since then. What this means is that there is only one policeman for every 830 people in the state when in countries like the USA, Spain and South Africa, the police to people ratio is one police for every 436 people, one for 198 and one for 347 respectively. In fact, going by the United Nations, there must be one police for every 454 people. The poor police strength of the state has not gone unnoticed as only last month the Supreme Court pulled up six states with the highest vacancies in the police departments, including Karnataka which has a staggering shortage of around 30,000 police personnel. A bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar summoned the home secretaries or officers not below the rank of the joint secretary in April to speak of the vacancies. But this is not the first time that the court has pulled up the state for shortage of police in its villages towns and cities. It had issued a notice to it in 2013 as well, but nothing was done to make up for the shortfall even then. While admitting that the department is short of staff, a police officer says it can do nothing unless the government takes the issue seriously. That the shortage is impeding investigation is clear with the High Court making a mention of it in a recent judgment. About two lakh cases/FIRs, final reports have not been submitted by the police, which means the cases must be still under investigation. It was found that main reason for the delay in the investigation of criminal cases is the large number of vacancies in the police. With such few police personnel it is impossible for the department to conduct investigations expeditiously and submit the final reports to the courts, it said. But its observations too dont seem to have woken up the government to the need to fill up vacancies in the department, which remains as ill equipped as ever to deal with the increasing crime on the streets in terms of staff. Home Minister, G. Parameshwar recently promised to fill up 90 percent of the vacancies in the posts of police sub-inspectors (PSIs) and constables (PCs) over the next few years. Speaking to the Deccan Chronicle a few months ago he admitted there was an urgent need to minimize the work pressure on the constables, who were overworked on account of the vacancies that arose annually because of retirement and other reasons. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, there should be one police for every 547 Indians. However, official data for 2016 says there is only one policeman for every 720 people in the country. Understaffed and drowning in paperwork! The overworked police in Karnataka have more work awaiting them. While they are already dealing with a huge number of road accidents with the state ranking second in the country and Bengaluru listed at number four among cities in this category, they now have the onerous task of filling up a massive report on each of them, even if they are minor. In addition to rushing the injured to hospitals, taking bodies for postmortems and handing them over to their families, filing challans, FIRs and other mandatory requirements to pursue cases against the guilty, the traffic police have now been presented with a 17-page format to detail every accident, that has been sent to all the director generals of police by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) with instructions for immediate compliance. Five of the pages will have to be filled by the overworked local traffic police and the rest will have to be dealt with at the state level. The 17-page format is the handiwork of a committee constituted by the ministry to review the existing 17 items format for reporting of road accidents. The committee, which included experts from IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kharagpur, World Health Organisation, senior officers of the police and transport departments of the states, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and officers of the Road Transport and Highways Ministry, recommended a uniform accident recording format to be adopted by the police in all the states and Union Territories Based on its recommendations, the ministry requested the state governments in January this year to immediately adopt the new road accident recording format to help it compile the annual road accident data for 2017. All states, Union Territories and cities are now required to furnish the annual road accident data to the Transport Research Wing (TRW) of MoRTH within a month of the completion of a calendar year going by the ministry's website. Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), R. Hithendra, when contacted, said the instructions had been received and conveyed to the policemen in the field in the state. "We have received the instructions and forwarded them to our lower rank officers," he added. Hyderabad: In a significant political development in Andhra Pradesh, the main Opposition YSRC, which has been maintaining a neutral stand, said on Wednesday that it would vote for the BJP-sponsored candidate in the Presidential election. Party president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who had tried unsuccessfully to get an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his last trip to Delhi, suddenly got a call from the Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday informing him that an appointment has been fixed for Wednesday. Immediately after the meeting, Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy announced that his party would support any BJP candidate. There has been speculation that the YSRC will have a tie-up with the BJP in the 2019 elections by leaving as many as 15 to 18 Lok Sabha seats to the BJP while retaining a majority of seats in the Assembly. Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy first met with the Prime Minister for a few minutes with the Prime Minister, along with party MPs Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy, P. Mithun Reddy and V. Vijay Sai Reddy. Then Mr Reddy had a one-on-one meeting with Mr Modi lasting for more than 40 minutes. Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy said there should not be a contest for such a high constitutional post like that of the President and the choice should be unanimous. There is no scope of victory for the Opposition candidate. I dont know what Ms Sonia Gandhi is going to do, but I feel there should be no election for such a high post. I have told the Prime Minister that my party will extend full support and vote for the BJP candidate in the election, he said. He said that though the Congress was responsible for putting him behind bars during the last Presidential election, he had voted for the Congress's Presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee. This time Mr Reddy has announced his support for the BJP's choice without the party naming its nominee. The YSRC, which commands majority support among minorities, SCs, STs, and a few prominent upper castes, had denied all speculation of a possible tie-up with the BJP on the eve of the 2014 general election, stating that it was a secular party that cannot align with the communal BJP. But, on Wednesday, Mr Reddy said: There are no major differences for me with the BJP except on two issues special category status to Andhra Pradesh, and the land acquisition Bill. Except for these two, we have been supporting the BJP in all its pro-people issues and there is no question of support to anti-people issues. If they offer special category status, we will further support the BJP. Wednesdays developments have not gone down well with Telugu Desam in AP. How can the Prime Minister give appointment to Jagan when he is facing several criminal and corruption charges, asked a senior TD functionary. TD leaders have been openly critical of Mr Reddy meeting the Prime Minister on earlier occasions, alleging that it was for the purpose of begging Mr Modi not to rush the corruption cases against him and not to put him behind bars again. The TD is understandably worried that a BJP-YSRC tie-up for the 2019 elections is a possibility. Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy says he told PM of Naidu graft During his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, YSRC president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, demanded a CBI probe into alleged corruption in the Agri Gold assets auction allegedly involving ministers, including IT minister Nara Lokesh. Mr Reddy submitted a booklet, 'Emperor of Corruption', brought out by the YSRC some time ago, on the corruption allegations against AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. Speaking to the press in New Delhi after meeting the Prime Minister, Mr Reddy said that a copy of the booklet had been given to the Prime Minister earlier, but today I personally handed over the same to Modiji and demanded action. He said he had complained to the Prime Minister that Mr Naidu had lured 20 YSRC MLAs to join the Telugu Desam and four of these MLAs were taken into the Cabinet in a fraudulent manner. In a representation submitted to the Prime Minister, he mentioned the cash-for-votes scam in which Mr Naidu is allegedly involved. He said Mr Naidu had spent crores of rupees of his ill-gotten wealth and bought YSRC MLAs into the TD fold. Mr Reddy said he has sought a CBI inquiry into the Agri Gold scam in which TD leaders and ministers, including Mr Lokesh, are alleged to be involved. He said the CID inquiry did not go into all aspects of the scam. He said he also told the Prime Minister to consider special category status for Andhra Pradesh as was promised by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha. New Delhi: Launching an integrated case management information system in the Supreme Court which will enable digital filing of cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed confidence that the combination of information technology and Indian Talent would create India Tomorrow. Speaking at a function at Vigyan Bhavan, Mr Modi said it is a step towards paperless Supreme Court. Mr Modi also hailed the judiciary for its decision to hear cases during the summer break, and said it would strengthen the sense of responsibility among people towards their work. Mr Modi recalled the Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehars appeal at Allahabad on April 2 for the higher judiciary to take up hearing of cases, at least for some days during the vacation. He said the appeal was inspirational, and he has heard very encouraging news in this regard from the Supreme Court and the high courts. He said this spirit brings about a positive change and engenders a sense of responsibility. Mr Modi said it also creates trust among the common people, which is the key to New India. Digital filing in all High Courts soon Launching an integrated case management information system in the Supreme Court which will enable digital filing of cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed confidence that the combination of information technology and Indian Talent would create India Tomorrow. Mr Modi urged lawyers to become part of the pro bono scheme launched by the Law Ministry under which advocates can fight cases for the poor for free. He said several gynaecologists now offer free services to poor pregnant women on 9th of every month on his request. 42,000 students from IT worked for 36 hours non-stop to give solutions to 400 issues the government had flagged, he recalled. Mr Modi uploaded the integrated case information management system, marking the introduction of digital filing. Introducing the system, the CJI said digital filing of cases would make the judicial system extremely transparent and rule out any manipulation of records. Explaining the benefits of the digital filing application, the Chief Justice of India described the initiative as the biggest leap towards introducing technology in the judicial system. The website aims at integrating the website of all high courts and subordinate courts in the country so that petitions, appeals, applications etc. can be filed through the electronic modem, thus avoid use of paper to make filling system a paperless. The CJI said he intended to put the digital filling process system in place in all the 24 high courts after it is introduced here and would like to see that it takes place in the lower courts across the country. Justice Khehar said this means a litigant will file one case only in his lifetime, in sofar as the paper book is concerned. This is a process which will ensure a transparent system. A system which cannot be breached. A system where the documents cannot be manipulated. This digitised process replaces the pleadings. The ministerial level talks were held for the first time nearly three years after bifurcation. Telangana transport minister Mahender Reddy took the lead and called his counterpart K. Atchennaidu, who responded by inviting Mr Reddy to Vijayawada. Vijayawada: The inter-state agreement on sharing of routes by the RTCs of the two states continues to be a problem. A high-level meeting of the two transport ministers, higher officials of the department, and RTC officials of both states to resolve bifurcation issues concluded without a solution on Wednesday. It was decided to hold executive director level talks later to find a way out of the logjam.The ministerial level talks were held for the first time nearly three years after bifurcation. Telangana transport minister Mahender Reddy took the lead and called his counterpart K. Atchennaidu, who responded by inviting Mr Reddy to Vijayawada. The meeting focused on five major issues that have remained a problem for both states. After the formation of Telangana state, the TSRTC has not been able to ply its buses on par with APSRTC. APSRTC used to ply its buses in TS on 3.37 lakh kilometres before TSRTC was formed. This has now come down to 2.3 lakh kilometres. The TSRTC plies on 1.2 lakh kilometres in Andhra Pradesh. To make the distance covered by the bus companies equal, the APSRTC has to reduce its services in TS, which would adversely affect its prospects. The AP corporation is opposed to withdrawing its services at once as 84 per cent of its long distance services are to Hyderabad. The APSRTC is resisting the move both due to its financial inconvenience and problems to passengers. APSRTC managing director M. Malakondaiah said that the decision to withdraw the services from AP should not be sudden as the services to Hyderabad from AP were based on passenger demand. He wanted the withdrawal of services to take place over a period of time as Hyderabad still serves as the common capital for both the states. He said modalities must be worked out between the two states so as to accommodate TSRTC services in Andhra Pradesh with this having a minimum effect on APSRTC. The size of the Problem APSRTC runs 720 services to Hyderabad and other places in TS TSRTC runs 490 services to various destinations in AP. APSRTC buses cover 2.3 lakh km of distance in TS whereas TSRTC buses cover 1.2 lakh km of distance in AP. An inter-state agreement on transport issues is likely to be signed in the next meeting to be held in Hyderabad. Executive directors and traffic inspectors of both RTCs are to hold continuous talks to work out modalities on RTC services. States make a little headway Though the RTC issue remained unresolved in talks between the TS and AP transport ministers, there was a breakthrough on various other issues. Both states have agreed to reduce tax on goods-carrying trucks, from Rs 48,000 to Rs 8,000 per quarter. Both ministers agreed to waive tax on school buses plying in border districts of both the states. School buses from Khammam district in TS come to Krishna district in AP, and buses from Mahbubnagar in TS ply to Kurnool district in AP. The AP government has agreed to waive the tax on school buses. There will no change in tax slabs for private tourist buses. The private buses of each state have to pay Rs 3,750 per seat per quarter to ply in the other state. 1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war. 2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war. 3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength. 4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war. 5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites. 6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination. 7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N. 8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N. 9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress. 10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N. 11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.) 12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party. 13. Do away with all loyalty oaths. 14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office. 15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. 16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. 17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. 18. Gain control of all student newspapers. 19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack. 20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. 21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms." 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art." 24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press. 25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy." 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch." 28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state." 29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. 30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man." 31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over. 32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc. 33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus. 34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. 35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI. 36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. 37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business. 38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand. 39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals. 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. 41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. 42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems. 43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government. 44. Internationalize the Panama Canal. 45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike. Mohit Yadav is my name..., said the 24-year-old, before slapping sub-inspector Jitendra Kumar. Etah/Lucknow: A nephew of UP legislative council chairman and SP leader Ramesh Yadav today slapped a sub-inspector in a police station in Etah after he was held for allegedly assaulting hospital staffers who refused to give in to his demand for 'VIP treatment'. Bragging of his political links, Mohit Yadav, who was said to be in an inebriated state, was also caught on camera hurling abuses at the cops, prompting rival BJP to accuse the Samajwadi Party of suffering from 'hangover' of power. "Mohit Yadav is my name...," said the 24-year-old, before slapping sub-inspector Jitendra Kumar in Etah. He was immediately arrested and charged with assault and obstructing an official from carrying out his duty. Three separate FIRs have been registered against Mohit Yadav, Etah Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Sathyarth Aniruddha said, adding that they will ensure that the accused gets stringent punishment. Mohit, who is unemployed, had visited the district hospital with a relative and 'demanded VIP treatment' for an X-ray, refusing to wait for their turn, hospital staff alleged. He allegedly assaulted a lab technician and a doctor after which the hospital called in the cops. When he was brought to the police station, he abused Kumar and hit him before being overpowered. Mohit shouted abuses and threatened other police officers. As police officers rushed to control him, he grabbed the collar of one of them. "It seems he was under the influence of alcohol. He claimed to be the Legislative Council Chairman's nephew and was asking for this and that and misbehaved with the hospital staff. He misbehaved with the police officers too," a senior police officer said. Distancing himself from his nephew's actions, Ramesh Yadav said, "He will be beaten if he slaps policemen.... I have nothing to do with it." "I was not there. I am in Lucknow," Yadav said, and even described Mohit as a 'brat'. Incidents of political leaders and their kin flaunting their links to get their way are not new. Just days earlier, a ruling BJP MLA publicly snubbed a woman IPS officer in Gorakhpur, leaving her in tears. But the ruling party was today quick to target the Samajwadi Party over the incident involving Mohit Yadav. "They are yet to come out of their hangover. They should realise that gone are the days of Samajwadi Party's hooliganism," BJP spokesperson Shalabhmani Tripathi said. The Samajwadi Party was ousted from power in the recent Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. After a string of incidents under Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lambasted it for 'failure' to maintain law and order and had even said that "police stations have become Samajwadi Party offices". The SSP said one case has been registered against Mohit and two others based on a complaint filed by Brahmananda, the lab technician of the district hospital. Two other FIRs have been filed against him by the Kotwali police station SHO for offences of assault or use criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace and voluntarily causing hurt, he said. Mr Avanish Kumar Awasthi, principal secretary, (Information) UP, said the state subsidy for films such as Jolly LLB 2, Nil Battey Sannata, Bareilly Ki Barfi and Behen Hogi Teri is put on hold as of now. Subsidy for another 200 films might also get a affected because of this decision. Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government that had touted its film-friendly status in the previous Akhilesh regime, will no longer be participating in the upcoming Cannes Film festival. The Film Facilitation Office of the National Film Development Corporation had sent an invitation to the UP government to participate in the Marche Du Film (Cannes Film Market/Marche) which is held alongside the Cannes Festival. The same has been turned down by the Yogi Adityanath government. Mr Avanish Kumar Awasthi, principal secretary, (Information) UP, confirmed that there will be no participation from the state at the French film festival. The Cannes Film Festival will be held in the middle of this month and we are in the process of reviewing out film policy. Hence we will not be attending the event this year, he said. He added that the government will review whether the state had benefitted from the Cannes visit last year He further said that the UP film policy was under the scanner. The Akhilesh government had doled out a subsidy of `2 crore to every filmmaker who shot more than 75 per cent of the film in the state. Uttar Pradesh has also conferred the Most Film Friendly State award in the 64th National Awards, this year. When asked about the subsidy to be given to films like Jolly LLB 2, Nil Battey Sannata, Bareilly Ki Barfi and Behen Hogi Teri, Mr Awasthi, who is also the chairman of the UP Film Bandhu unit, said that the papers of these films are yet to be scrutinised. This decision, sources said, will affect around 200 filmmakers who have submitted their papers for subsidy for their films. Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra speaks to representatives from media after attending the special session of Delhi Assembly in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Sacked Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra on Wednesdy began his hunger strike, demanding that Aam Aadmi Party leaders disclose the details of funding for their foreign tours. "I'm sitting on a satyagraha till I get clarification on details of international travel expenses of some senior AAP leaders. "It is not a dharna but a satyagraha. I would like to send a message to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to put out the details of the foreign tours of his five leaders-- Satyendra Jain, Ashish Khetan, Raghav Chaddha, Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak--in public domain," Mishra told reporters. Mishra was suspended from the AAP after his startling allegation that he witnessed Kejriwal accepting Rs 2 crore in a dodgy transaction. Today, he further alleged that details of the foreign trips by AAP leaders would reveal a lot about alleged corruption by them. Yesterday, in another letter, Mishra challenged the AAP chief to contest elections against him. "You are trying to remove me from the assembly, I challenge you to contest elections against me from any seat. Let's fight the election from my Karawal Nagar seat or even your New Delhi seat. If you believe that people are with you, then I'm ready to resign," Mishra said in the letter. Bengaluru: Amidst rumours of his quitting the party, veteran Congress leader A. H.Vishwanath has shot off a letter to AICC general secretary in-charge of Karnataka K.C. Venugopal, accusing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of being arrogant and lamenting the lack of democracy in the party. In his three-page letter sent on Tuesday, Mr Vishwanath warned that like many senior leaders, who were leaving the party, he too might quit if it did not stop humiliating leaders like him. He also cautioned against making too much of the partys victory in the recent by-elections, saying it won the two bypolls because the rival party was on weak ground. The Congress needs to revive itself by being more tolerant within the party frame work. After the appointment of Mr Siddarmaiah as CM, there is growing intolerance and this is resulting in desertion by a large number of senior leaders, he said. Not sparing KPCC president, Dr G. Parameshwar either, he accused the committee of not giving enough publicity to the pro-people schemes launched by the ruling party. This is nothing but a form of non-co-operation. The KPCC, which should have been the flag-bearer of propaganda for the ruling party, has failed to publish material on several schemes. Besides this, the KPCC has not come up with a plan to attract youth and women who are game- changers in recent times, to the party, he alleged in his letter. No comments Responding to the charges made against him by former Mysuru MP A.H. Vishwanath, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that he had not spoken to Vishwanath on this matter. Answering a query by mediapersons near his residence at Sharadadevinagar in Mysuru on Tuesday morning, Mr Siddaramaiah said, Neither has Vishwanath spoken to me, nor have I spoken to anyone. No comments was his response when asked about Vishwanath complaining to All India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge of Karnataka K.C. Venugopal that he had been shabbily treated by the Chief Minister. Let the high command decide if my political steps are right or not. And the high command will decide on Mr Vishwanaths political steps, he quipped. CM ignoring us: MLAs A section of MLAs reportedly expressed their displeasure over the functioning of ministers in general and CM Siddaramaiah in particular for not taking them into confidence while framing policies, during their interaction with K.C. Venugopal on Tuesday. This has been the common grouse against Siddaramaiah and his cabinet colleagues in the last four years. Speaking to DC, a senior legislator from North-Karnataka observed that several MLAs are upset with ministers like T.B. Jayachandra for not handling crucial issues or taking the Land Reforms Bill to its conclusion. Siddaramaiah and Jayachandra are responsible for the delay in getting this bill passed. This is a pro-people bill, though it was passed two months ago, it has not been sent to the Governor for approval yet, the legislator said. According to him there are many such issues that are being sidelined in the party forum. Ministers do not even inform MLAs or DCC chiefs about their visit to their home districts, which not only irks us but also our supporters, the source contended. Vijayawada: AP ministers Devineni Uma Maheswara Rao and K. Atchannaidu on Wednesday criticised YSRC chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy for meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mr Rao slammed Mr Reddy for extending his support to the NDA when he had challenged their MPs to resign after the Parliament session. He said Mr Reddy was in fact extending support to the TD government as there are two of their ministers in the Centre while the BJP has two ministers in AP. While speaking to media here, Mr Rao asked how Mr Reddy could face them. He said the YSRC chief and party Rajya Sabha member V. Vijay Sai Reddy had rushed to Delhi to escape jail, as earlier he had bowed to Congress president Sonia Gandhi to avoid being in prison. The TD would go for elections with the BJP in 2019 elections as in 2014, he said. He claimed within one hour of Mr Reddys meeting with Mr Modi and addressing a press conference, YSRC leaders had contacted TD saying that they were ready to defect. As Mr Reddy has raised the white flag, the post of opposition leader has become vacant, Mr Uma said. Mr Atchennaidu asked why Mr Reddy did not raise a condition that he would support the BJP only if AP was granted special status. This clearly shows his personal motive, Mr Atchennaidu said. He pointed out that Mr Reddy had earlier said that the BJP and TD were cheating Muslims. Mr Atchennaidu condemned the YSRC chief for saying that the CMs foreign visits were picnics. He said Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan had supported the TD and no party would ally with the YSRC. New Delhi: To woo the upper castes in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is all set to bring back a Brahmin face as its state unit chief. After facing drubbing in UP Assembly elections, Congress chief Raj Babbar had already taken responsibility for the partys defeat. Reports say he will now be replaced by an upper caste Hindu face. Though there are several options with the Congress, the party wants to shed its pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu image as was branded by the BJP and Sangh. Leading the race for the top post is Rajya Sabha MP and former UP Congress chief Pramod Tewari and former Lok Sabha MP from Varanasi, Rajesh Mishra. Incidentally, Mr Tewaris daughter, Aradhana Tewari, is one of the seven MLAs who were elected in the Assembly elections. She is in the race to become the party leader in the Assembly, though the party looks keen on making Ajay Singh Lallu the leader, said sources, adding: If the daughter loses, the father can be accommodated as the state chief. Mr Tewari is the old Congress warhorse of UP. He holds the record of maximum successive wins from one Assembly constituency. After he was elected to the Rajya Sabha, he vacated his Assembly seat for his daughter, who has been winning ever since. While Rajesh Mishras name has also been doing the rounds for long. He has been a student leader in Benaras Hindu University. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station experience decreased physical fitness because of a decrease in the way oxygen moves through the body, according to a Kansas State University kinesiology study. Photo courtesy of NASA. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have decreased physical fitness because of a decrease in the way oxygen moves through the body, according to a Kansas State University kinesiology study. Carl Ade, assistant professor of exercise physiology, and collaborators partnered with the Johnson Space Center to find that astronauts' exercise capacity decreases between 30 and 50 percent in long-duration spaceflight because the heart and small blood vessels are not as effective at transporting oxygen to the working muscle. "It is a dramatic decrease," Ade said. "When your cardiovascular function decreases, your aerobic exercise capacity goes down. You can't perform physically challenging activities anymore. While earlier studies suggest that this happens because of changes in heart function, our data suggests that there are some things happening at the level of the heart, but also at the level of the microcirculation within capillaries." In addition to improving astronaut health and providing valuable information for future long-duration spaceflights, the research also can help Earth-bound clinical patients with heart failure, Ade said. The NASA-funded research appears in the Journal of Applied Physiology in the publication "Decreases in maximal oxygen uptake following long-duration spaceflight: Role of convective and diffusive O2 transport mechanisms." The journal also featured the research in a recent podcast. Other Kansas State University researchers involved include Thomas Barstow, professor of kinesiology, and Ryan Broxterman, 2015 doctoral graduate in physiology and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah. Alan Moore, associate professor of health and kinesiology at Lamar University, also contributed. While in outer space or on the International Space Station, astronauts have to perform many physically demanding tasks, from the simpler task of opening a capsule door to potentially more intense future planetary tasks such as helping a fallen crew member. Just as important is making sure astronauts can perform life-saving tasks when they return to gravity tasks that could include an emergency landing on Earth or performing extravehicular activities on the surface of Mars, Ade said. For the study, the researchers used Johnson Space Center data on nine male and female astronauts who spent about six months aboard the International Space Station. The data included exercise measurements before and after their time in outer space. The astronauts performed a stationary bike exercise test several months before they launched to the International Space Station. The researchers established the astronauts' exercise capacity through measurements such as oxygen uptake, cardiac output, hemoglobin concentration and arterial saturation that illustrate how effectively the body transports oxygen to the muscle mitochondria. Within a couple of days of returning to earth, the astronauts performed the same stationary bike exercise test to determine changes in aerobic exercise capacity. By comparing the two sets of data, the researchers saw a 30 to 50 percent decrease in maximal oxygen uptake. Maximal oxygen uptake is the maximum rate of oxygen that is consumed during exercise and shows the cardiorespiratory health of a person. The researchers attribute this decrease to the way that microgravity changes the interaction between blood vessel capillaries and red blood cells, but say that more research is needed to understand what is happening in the capillaries. "This decrease is related to not only health, but performance," Ade said. "If we can understand why maximal oxygen uptake is going down, that allows us to come up with targeted interventions, whether that be exercise or pharmacological interventions. This important new information can help these astronauts and prevent any adverse performance changes in their job." While the research is key to planning for future long-duration spaceflights, such as journeys to Mars or deep space, it also can help understand blood vessel function in older patients or patients with heart failure. "We have seen similar situations happen with heart failure and with aging," Ade said. "If we can better understand what is happening in the astronaut and how to prevent it, then we might be able to do the exact same thing in a patient who is older or who has heart failure." Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Spherical bubbles preserved in 3.48 billion-year-old rocks in the Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia provide evidence for early life having lived in ancient hot springs on land. Photo: UNSW Fossils discovered by UNSW scientists in 3.48 billion year old hot spring deposits in the Pilbara region of Western Australia have pushed back by 580 million years the earliest known existence of microbial life on land. Previously, the worlds oldest evidence for microbial life on land came from 2.7- 2.9 billion-year-old deposits in South Africa containing organic matter-rich ancient soils. Our exciting findings don't just extend back the record of life living in hot springs by 3 billion years, they indicate that life was inhabiting the land much earlier than previously thought, by up to about 580 million years, says study first author, UNSW PhD candidate, Tara Djokic. UNSW PhD student Tara Djokic in the Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia. Photo: Dale Anderson This may have implications for an origin of life in freshwater hot springs on land, rather than the more widely discussed idea that life developed in the ocean and adapted to land later. Scientists are considering two hypotheses regarding the origin of life. Either that it began in deep sea hydrothermal vents, or alternatively that it began on land in a version of Charles Darwin's "warm little pond. The discovery of potential biological signatures in these ancient hot springs in Western Australia provides a geological perspective that may lend weight to a land-based origin of life, says Ms Djokic. Our research also has major implications for the search for life on Mars, because the red planet has ancient hot spring deposits of a similar age to the Dresser Formation in the Pilbara. Of the top three potential landing sites for the Mars 2020 rover, Columbia Hills is indicated as a hot spring environment. If life can be preserved in hot springs so far back in Earths history, then there is a good chance it could be preserved in Martian hot springs too. The study, by Ms Djokic and Professors Martin Van Kranendonk, Malcolm Walter and Colin Ward of UNSW Sydney, and Professor Kathleen Campbell of the University of Auckland, is published in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers studied exceptionally well-preserved deposits which are approximately 3.5 billion years old in the ancient Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia. L-R: Tara Djokic and Professor Martin Van Kranendonk in the Pilbara in Western Australia. Photo:Kathy Campbell They interpreted the deposits were formed on land, not in the ocean, by identifying the presence of geyserite a mineral deposit formed from near boiling-temperature, silica-rich, fluids that is only found in a terrestrial hot spring environment. Previously, the oldest known geyserite had been identified from rocks about 400 million years old. Ridges in the ancient Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia that preserve ancient stromatolites and hot spring deposits Image: Kathleen Campbell Within the Pilbara hotspring deposits, the researchers also discovered stromatolites layered rock structures created by communities of ancient microbes. And there were other signs of early life in the deposits as well, including fossilised micro-stromatolites, microbial palisade texture and well preserved bubbles that are inferred to have been trapped in a sticky substance (microbial) to preserve the bubble shape. A microscopic image of geyserite textures from the ancient Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. This shows that surface hot spring deposits once existed there 3.48 billion years ago. Photo: UNSW This shows a diverse variety of life existed in fresh water, on land, very early in Earths history, says Professor Van Kranendonk, Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology and head of the UNSW school of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. The Pilbara deposits are the same age as much of the crust of Mars, which makes hot spring deposits on the red planet an exciting target for our quest to find fossilised life there. A modern day geyser erupting at Geysir Hot Springs in Iceland. Photo: Tara Djokic In September 2016, Professor Kranendonk was part of an international team that found what is possibly the oldest evidence of life on Earth 3.7 billion-year-old fossil stromatolites in Greenland deposits that were laid down in a shallow sea. He has also given geological advice to NASA on where to land the rover on the 2020 Mars Exploration Mission. The Pilbara provides us with a rich record of early life on Earth and is a key region for developing exploration strategies for Mars to try and answer one of the greatest enigmas in science and philosophy did life arise more than once in the universe? says Professor Walter, founding director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. Thats why we are working to gain World Heritage listing for its main fossil sites. Professor Martin Van Kranendonk and Tara Djokic at Lake Rotokawa in New Zealand studying modern hot springs. Photo: Kathleen Campbell Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. The UK government recently passed a new Digital Economy Act, under which the British Board of Film Censors will check if the users logging onto porn websites are over 18 years of age and monitor the ban of extreme porn. The term extreme porn includes realistic depictions of rape, or sexual acts likely to cause harm or death. According to Metro, privacy groups say that the new law is unworkable as it could see normal porn sites banned alongside extreme ones. The definition of sexual acts likely to cause death is incredibly vague and could include fictionalised practises like asphyxiation, for example, Myles Jackman, legal director of Open Rights Group told Mashable. A spokesman for Open Rights Group said, The DEAct may result in legal pornographic content being blocked either because a site has failed to implement age verification or because the BBFC decide some of a sites content falls within the definition of extreme pornography. This has implications for the freedom of expression of thousands of UK web users, he added. Users maybe forced to enter their credit card details, mobile numbers or even register their age at the Post Office in order to log into a porn website. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. But many experts doubt that the X-37 B is the prototype for a true weapon of war or espionage. (Photo: AFP) Washington: After a nearly two-year sojourn in space, the US military drone X-37 B is back on Earth, fuelling wild ideas about its mystery mission. Looking like a small version of an old NASA space shuttle, the craft touched down on Sunday in Florida, ending a 718-day voyage around the Earth, the US Air Force announced. Just under 30 feet (9.1 meters) long and with a nearly 15-foot wingspan, the X-37 B was blasted into low Earth orbit atop a rocket. Since its first flight in 2010, it has sparked all kinds of speculation about its real purpose. Some think it might be a space-based bomber that could strike objectives on Earth at a moment's notice. Others suspect it is a potential "killer satellite," capable of destroying or damaging enemy satellites. Or perhaps it is a super spy plane, orbiting Earth to keep watch on enemy territory as needed. Fears that the world is on the brink of an arms race in space is behind some of those theories. Satellites are crucial to the functioning of national economies as well as military operations, and the United States, China and Russia are all thinking about ways to defend them against attack. No doubt they are also looking at ways to attack their adversaries' satellites. In 2015, the mysterious behaviour of a Russian satellite fuelled speculation that Moscow was developing attack satellites capable of manoeuvring in space to zero in on other satellites. But many experts doubt that the X-37 B is the prototype for a true weapon of war or espionage. "The X-37 is the size of a pick-up truck -- it would be difficult to have an effective weapon on board," says Victoria Samson, an expert with the Secure World Foundation, an advocate of sustainable development in space. Moreover, the X-37 B would not be very manoeuvrable once in space, because its only source of power are solar panels. "Generally speaking, to manoeuvre up in orbit requires a tremendous amount of fuel. So I can't imagine that they would be doing a lot of manoeuvring," Samson said. Mark Gubrud, a physicist and expert on military space technologies at the University of North Carolina, says the idea that it is a manoeuvrable spy satellite doesn't make much sense either. "It has very little manoeuvre capability in orbit, and it can't reach high altitudes, only low Earth orbit," he said in an email. "If you want to make a stealthy, manoeuvring satellite, you will not weigh it down with wings and landing gear and make it so visible from Earth that even amateurs are able to track it." The X-37 B's fourth flight was spotted six days after its launch in 2015 by a network of amateur satellite trackers, according to the website Spaceflight101.com. It disappeared for several months in 2015 following a change in orbit, and again in February 2017 after another manoeuvre, but was later found again, the website said. In reality, experts today think the X-37 is more likely a test bed rather than a potential weapon, just as the Air Force said it was in one of its few public statements about the system. They think it is being used to test sensors and equipment in space that can then be brought to the ground to see how they have performed. Rocketdyne, a US company, announced that on the latest flight, it tested an ionic thruster used by satellites to move in space. "If the US military wanted to quell concerns, they could," simply by putting out more information about the X-37 B, said Samson. "Maybe it's in their interest to keep people guessing." Joe Crowley, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that the situation on the Indo-Pak border has been volatile for the past few months due to activities by Pakistan-backed militant groups. (Photo: AP) Washington: Asking Pakistan to clamp down on extremist groups inside its territory, a top US lawmaker has cautioned Islamabad that India would not sit idly if its soldiers or citizens were being attacked. Joe Crowley, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that the situation on the Indo-Pak border has been volatile for the past few months due to activities by Pakistan-backed militant groups, and called on the Trump administration to put more pressure on the country. "(They) are backed by Pakistan. They (Trump administration) need to be more towards putting the pressure on Pakistan to go after LeT and other militant groups within Pakistan that are causing tensions on the India-Pakistan border," he said in response to a question. "I think the emphasis here is that they (Pakistan) need to do more to clamp down on those violent and extremist groups within Pakistan themselves, because India will not sit by idly while it's soldiers or it's citizens are being attacked," said Crowley, a former co-Chair of the House India Caucus. The Congressman said these issues should be handled in a bilateral manner by the two countries. "But I do think there's a role that the United States can play as both a friend to India and Pakistan to put the pressure on our friends to find a way forward to help keep peace in the region and to bring about reconciliation," the Democratic lawmaker from New York said. Crowley also hoped that the Trump administration would take inputs from India on its Afghanistan policy, which is believed to be in its last stages of being finalised. "I would certainly hope that the President and the State Department take into consideration the opinion of the Indian government. The Indian people and its government have sustained terrorist attack after terrorist attack," he said. He said that the historical ties between the Afghan people and Indian people are important things to consider in terms of creating a doctrine, which has been lacking. "I don't know of a doctrine from the Trump administration as pertained to the entire region, let alone Afghanistan. Or what it's doctrine is towards India or toward Pakistan...so I do hope that whatever is formulated, is articulated and understood by the members of the Congress, like myself, who care about that part of the world," he said. Such a doctrine, he said, needs to promote peace and reconciliation in the region while also continuing to fight in a mutual front against terrorism. "And that includes acts committed against India by fundamentalists working inside Pakistan," Crowley said. "When we do work towards a solution in Afghanistan, it (should) incorporate the Indian government as well as the Pakistani government in terms of helping formulate and foster a long-term commitment to peace and reconciliation within the area," he said. Crowley hoped there would be an India-specific doctrine in place before the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump. Observing that Indo-US relationship has been bipartisan in the past, he hoped that this would continue to be the case under the Trump administration as well. The worlds heaviest man, who at one point weighed almost 600 kg, has undergone successful gastric bypass surgery, his doctors in Mexico said. The procedure on Juan Pedro Franco is intended to reduce his weight by half, and is expected to be followed up with another operation, his surgeon Jose Castaneda said. The surgery was quite successful. Now we have to wait and see how he responds to the (systemic) change. Lets hope everything goes well, he said. The procedure has left the patient quite delicate, and he is being closely monitored, Castaneda said. Franco, who at his peak tipped the scales at 595 kg, was told that in order to be eligible for surgery, he had to lose a large amount of his initial bulk. Prosecutor Gulmaini Wardani said the men were guilty of the crime of having homosexual sex (Photo: AFP) Banda Aceh: Prosecutors in Indonesia's Aceh Wednesday recommended 80 strokes of the cane for two men accused of having sex in contravention of sharia law, the first such punishment of a gay couple in the conservative province. The pair, both in their early 20s, were caught together in bed by a group of vigilantes who raided a boarding house in the provincial capital Banda Aceh in late March. Police later arrested the couple and said they had admitted to being in a relationship and having had sex three times. Prosecutor Gulmaini Wardani said the men were guilty of the crime of having homosexual sex and should each receive 80 strokes of the cane. Wardani was speaking to journalists after a hearing at a special sharia court in Banda Aceh. The hearing was closed to the public and the men's identities were not revealed due to the sensitivity of the case. The father of one of the defendants, who requested anonymity, said he did not know his son was gay before he was caught. "This is an ordeal for our family," he said. "After this problem is resolved, we will send him to an Islamic boarding school to be educated so he won't be deviant any more." A sentence recommendation is a usual step in an Indonesian court case and is typically followed soon afterwards by a verdict. Judges do not have to follow the recommendation but often do. Aceh is the only province in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country which implements sharia law. People caught gambling and drinking alcohol have for some years been punished with public canings. Under a local law that came into force in 2015, people can also be punished for having gay sex with up to 100 strokes of the cane. The recently arrested couple will be the first to be caned for breaking the regulation if the punishment goes ahead. Gay sex is not illegal in the rest of Indonesia, which mainly follows a criminal code inherited from former colonial ruler the Netherlands. Left-leaning Moon, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with Pyongyang in the quest for peace -- in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks. (Photo: File) Seoul: South Korea's new President Moon Jae-In was sworn in on Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory, and immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang amid high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Left-leaning Moon, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with Pyongyang in the quest for peace -- in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks. "If needed I will fly to Washington immediately," Moon told lawmakers after taking the oath of office in Seoul's National Assembly building. "I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances." Moon will have a difficult diplomatic path to tread in his approach to the North, which dreams of a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States, and has vast artillery forces trained on Seoul. He also begins his term facing multiple domestic challenges, including the aftermath of the huge corruption scandal that saw his conservative predecessor Park Geun-Hye impeached and swept him to power, but leaves the country bitterly divided. "I will be a president to all people," Moon said, promising to "serve even those who did not support me". "I will become a president who is at eye-level with the people," he added, saying he would talk to market traders on his way home from work. The low-key ceremony -- which began with him walking into the building to a drum roll, accompanied by his wife -- came hours after he was formally declared the winner of Tuesday's election. Moon took 41.1 percent of the vote, far ahead of Hong Joon-Pyo of Park's Liberty Korea party, on 24.0 percent, and centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo on 21.4 percent. Ahead of the swearing-in, Moon met with leading lawmakers of Liberty Korea -- which advocates a hard line on the North and has repeatedly accused him of being a Pyongyang sympathiser who would "hand the whole country to the North once elected." "I'd like to show our people that all of us are moving forward together," Moon told them, saying he would seek their opinions on matters of national security. "I am begging for your cooperation." Since the beginning of last year the North -- which says it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against invasion -- has mounted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches. In recent months the Trump administration has suggested a military option is on the table, sending fears of conflict spiralling -- although the US president changed tone last week, saying he would be "honoured" to meet the North's young ruler, Kim Jong-Un. Moon, 64, is expected to have his first conversation with Trump in a phone call Wednesday, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul diplomats. He is also expected to name his prime minister, spy chief and presidential chief of staff Wednesday, his aides said. Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Moon over his election victory, saying he would be willing to work with him on a basis of "mutual understanding and mutual respect", according to China's official Xinhua news agency. The phrasing is Beijing's diplomatic code for acceptance of its stance. The South's biggest trading partner, China has been infuriated by the deployment of the US anti-missile system THAAD in the country, which it sees as a threat to its own military capability. It has taken a series of moves against South Korean firms seen as economic retaliation. Washington, which remains Seoul's most important ally and has a large security presence in the South, on Tuesday congratulated Moon on his landslide victory. (Photo: AP) Seoul: Left-leaning former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-In won South Korea's presidential election by a landslide on Tuesday, according to official figures, sweeping to power on a yearning for change after a tumultuous scandal. The ballot was needed after Park Geun-Hye was ousted and indicted for corruption, and took place against a backdrop of high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Voters were galvanised by anger over the sprawling bribery and abuse-of-power controversy that brought down Park, which catalysed frustrations over jobs and slowing growth. They gave Moon, of the Democratic Party, who backs engagement with the North, 40.2 percent support -- some 11.4 million votes -- according to the National Election Commission (NEC). Conservative Hong Joon-Pyo -- who dubs Moon a "pro-Pyongyang leftist" was far behind on 25.2 percent, with centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo third on 21.5 percent. Fewer than 4.2 million votes cast in the election were still to be counted and the NEC was expected to name Moon the president-elect after its official vote count was completed. The result was "a great victory of great people" who wanted to create "a country of justice... where rules and common sense prevail", Moon told cheering supporters on Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul -- where vast crowds gathered for candlelit protests over several months to demand Park's removal. The graft scandal plunged the country into political turmoil and bitter division, but Moon promised healing, telling the crowd: "I will be president for all South Koreans." On the square among the crowd, Koh Eun-Byul, 28, said: "I am so happy because now there is hope for some meaningful change." Washington, which remains Seoul's most important ally and has a large security presence in the South, on Tuesday congratulated Moon on his landslide victory. "We look forward to working with president-elect Moon to continue to strengthen the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea and to deepen the enduring friendship and partnership between our two countries," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. National elections are public holidays in South Korea and figures showed a turnout of 77.2 percent -- the highest for 20 years in a presidential poll. The campaign focused largely on the economy, with North Korea less prominent. But after a decade of conservative rule Moon's victory could mean significant change in Seoul's approach towards both Pyongyang and key ally Washington. The 64-year-old -- accused by his critics of being soft on the North -- advocates dialogue to ease tensions and to bring it to negotiations. He is seen as favouring more independence in relations with the US, Seoul's security guarantor with 28,500 troops in the country. Their presence, he told reporters during the campaign, was "important not only to our own security but also to the global strategy of the US". The North has carried out two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the start of last year in its quest to develop a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the US mainland. Washington has said military action is an option, sending fears of conflict spiralling. More recently US President Donald Trump has softened his message, saying he would be "honoured" to meet the North's leader, Kim Jong-Un. Moon also says he would be willing to visit Pyongyang to meet Kim and advocates resumption of some of the inter-Korean projects shuttered by his predecessors, including the Kaesong joint industrial zone. But corruption, slowing growth, unemployment and even air pollution from China topped voters' list of concerns. South Korea's rapid growth from the 1970s to 1990s pulled a war-ravaged nation out of poverty but slowed as the economy matured, and unemployment among under-30s is now at a record 10 percent. Frustration over widening inequality in wealth and opportunities fuelled anger over Park's scandal, which exposed the cosy and corrupt ties between regulators and powerful family-oriented conglomerates, known as chaebols, that have endured for decades. Park is in custody awaiting trial over corruption for offering governmental favours to top businessmen -- including Samsung heir Lee Jae-Yong -- who allegedly bribed her secret confidante, Choi Soon-Sil. Moon, Ahn and other candidates promised to reform the chaebols, which dominate the economy and have long been criticised for operating with little scrutiny. The initial sentence upset the victim Bobby Webbers parents, who felt that Nolan didnt 'deserve to breathe' and felt there was no justice served. (Photo: Representational) Sydney: A man in Australia who was arrested for brutally assaulting his partners baby nephew, had his prison sentence increased by three years on Wednesday. The infant became a quadriplegic for life due to severe injuries to his skull and subsequent brain damage, said a report in Daily Mail. He also suffered brutal injuries to his ribs, along with bite marks and retinal bruising. The court had initially sentenced 34-year-old Andrew Nolan to eight-and-a-half years behind bars in 2016, who had related four versions of the incident that took place in 2014, during the hearing. He had also denied thrashing seven-month-old Bobby Webber when he was questioned by the police after the incident. The sentence upset the victim Bobby Webbers parents, who felt that Nolan didnt 'deserve to breathe' and felt there was no justice served. The incident took place on the NSW (New South Wales) Central Coast when Bobby was alone with Nolan, whose partner, Bobbys maternal aunt went to a drive in. Nolan tried putting the blame on an intruder but later admitted stamping the child on the back and dragging him along the carpet, said the report. However, he could not tell the court why he had assaulted the child. On Wednesday, Court of Appeal judges increased Nolans minimum sentence to 11-and-a-half years. His maximum sentence has also been increased from 12-and-a-half-years to 15 years and 3 months, and he will be eligible for parole in April 2026. With little hope left, Bobby was initially taken off life-support but later managed to breathe by himself. The angry reply came a week before President Tayyip Erdogan is due in Washington for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump (Photo: AP) Ankara: Turkey urged the United States on Wednesday to reverse a decision to arm Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State (IS) in Syria, saying every weapon supplied to the YPG militia constituted "a threat to Turkey". The angry reply came a week before President Tayyip Erdogan is due in Washington for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, who approved the arms supply to support a campaign to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State. Turkey views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Turkey and Europe. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking while on a visit to Montenegro, said weapons supplied to the YPG had in the past fallen into PKK hands. "Both the PKK and YPG are terrorist organizations and they are no different apart from their names," he told a televised news conference. "Every weapon seized by them is a threat to Turkey." The United States sees the YPG as a valuable partner in the fight against Islamic State militants in northern Syria, and says that arming the Kurdish forces is necessary to retaking the city of Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital in Syria and a hub for planning attacks against the West. The YPG said Washington's decision would bring swift results and help the militia "play a stronger, more influential and more decisive role in combating terrorism". The Pentagon said on Tuesday it was aware of concerns in Turkey, a NATO ally that has given vital support to a U.S.-led campaign against IS in Syria and Iraq. Jets carrying out air strikes against IS have flown from Turkey's Incirlik air base. Erdogan has not yet responded to Trump's decision, but has repeatedly castigated Washington for its support of the YPG. Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli said the United States should review its decision. "We hope the U.S. administration will put a stop to this wrong and turn back from it," he said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster A Haber. "Such a policy will not be beneficial, you can't be in the same sack as terrorist organizations." LIMITED OPTIONS Ankara has argued that Washington should switch support for the Raqqa assault from the YPG to Syrian rebels Turkey has trained and led against Islamic State for the past year - despite Washington's scepticism about their military capability. "There is no reality in the comments that a ground operation against Daesh (Islamic State) can only be successful with the YPG. I hope they turn back from this mistake," Canikli said. Despite the angry language, Erdogan's government has little chance of reversing Washington's decision, and any retaliatory move would come at a cost. Cavusoglu said Trump would discuss the issue with Trump during his planned May 16-17 visit to Washington, suggesting there were no plans to call off the talks in protest. "Turkey doesn't have much room to move here," said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and analyst at Carnegie Europe. "I think Washington made such an evaluation when taking this decision." While Turkey could impose limits on the use of the Incirlik base, that would hamper operations against Islamic State, which also menaces Turkey itself and has claimed responsibility for attacks including the bombing of Istanbul airport. Turkey could also step up air strikes on PKK targets in northern Iraq. Turkish warplanes attacked Kurdish YPG fighters in northeastern Syria and Iraq's Sinjar region late last month. But Cavusoglu and Canikli both pointed to a diplomatic, rather than military, response to Trump's decision. "We are carrying out, and will carry out, all necessary diplomatic communications," Canikli said. "Our wish is that the U.S. stops this wrong and does what is mandated by our friendship." Kulbhushan Jadhav was arrested in March 2016 in the restive Balochistan province and was accused of being a RAW agent. (Photo: Screengrab) Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday said it was analysing the International Court of Justice's authority in freezing the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said Pakistan would issue a statement on the issue in the next few days. "We are analysing the Indian petition and the ICJ's authority in this case", Aziz said after the Hague-based ICJ stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav. Earlier, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif in a tweet accused India of using Jadhav's death conviction to "divert" attention from its "state-sponsored" terrorism in the country. "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security," Asif tweeted. The order by the ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. Pakistan's media rejected India's claim over the order. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online reported that ICJ has received the application of India, but did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhav's sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learnt about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that China would warmly welcome all the participants including the scholars from India. (Photo: YouTube) Beijing: With India yet to confirm its participation in the Silk Road summit to be held here, an article in a state-run Chinese daily has said that by skipping the high-profile meeting the country could miss out on a slew of benefits for its domestic economic development. "India, the South Asian giant, is noticeably missing from the list of guests. That's not because India was not invited, but because it has been reluctant to join the initiative," the article in the Global Times said. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media here on Tuesday that "as far as India's participation is concerned, some Indian scholars have registered to attend the high-level meeting during the belt and road forum. As the host country, China will warmly welcome all the participants including the scholars from India." 28 heads of state and government including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are scheduled to take part in the summit to be held here from May 14-15. India, which has already protested over the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as it goes passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, so far has not confirmed its participation. "By skipping the summit and maintaining its wary stance on the initiative -- which has drawn interest from more than 60 countries and is expected to reshape economic and trade relations in the Eurasian region -- India could miss a slew of benefits for its domestic economic development as well as an opportunity to take part in the reshaping process," Chinese officials and experts were quoted as saying. They, however, said the door was "still open for India". "India still appears to be reluctant to join the initiative, mostly because of political reasons. Some people in India think that the CPEC, a key element of the Belt and Road that passes through the Kashmir region claimed by both India and Pakistan, is a threat for its sovereignty issues, while others are worried that China wants to dominate trade in the region," the article said. The Belt and Road initiative could help India address several pressing economic issues, including imbalanced trade with China and the need to find new markets for its growing manufacturing sector throughout South Asia and beyond, Wang Jun, an expert at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, was quoted as saying. India's trade deficit with China, which has climbed to USD 52 billion "could definitely be solved through cooperation under the Belt and Road initiative," he said. "Through the Belt and Road, China can help India produce goods that are needed in the Chinese market and both sides can work on further expanding market openness," Wang said. More broadly, the Belt and Road initiative could open a larger market for Indian businesses, he said. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" of Kulbhushan Jadhav was carried out. (Photo: AP) Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday accused India of using Kulbhushan Jadhav's death conviction to "divert" attention from its "state-sponsored" terrorism in the country. Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif's allegation against India came a day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security," Asif tweeted. It was the first response from Pakistan after the order by the Hague-based ICJ. The order by ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. Earlier, Pakistan's media rejected India's claim over the order. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn Online did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhav's sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learnt about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Page Content The Vice-President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), Karl-Heinz Lambertz, participated yesterday in a citizens' dialogue entitled "Europe is our future. It's up to all of us!" ("Europa ist unsere Zukunft. Es liegt an uns allen!") in Innsbruck, organised by the President of the Tyrol Regional Parliament, Herwig van Staa. As part of the ongoing political reflection on the future of Europe, the CoR launched a bottom-up consultation process "Reflecting on Europe" last year. Through citizens' dialogues and town hall debates, citizens have the opportunity to share their concerns and expectations on the past-present and future of Europe. The event is the second of a series of "citizens' dialogues" organised in Austria within the " Reflecting on Europe " campaign. CoR Vice-President Karl-Heinz Lambertz (BE/PES) and CoR members Herwig van Staa (AUT/EPP) and Hanspeter Wagner (AUT/EPP) engaged with representatives of "Pulse of Europe Innsbruck" and 100 pupils of the region of Tyrol on the future of Europe. They held an open discussion on the key challenges facing the EU, such as growth and employment, social development, the rise of populism and EU's security. "It is very encouraging to see so many young people gathering together today to come up with new ideas for the future. The youth is the main driver of change for the European Union and we need them to bring in fresh ideas and perspectives for a more united and promising Europe." said Karl-Heinz Lambertz. "The European policies and institutions must be at the service of the citizens to achieve the EU's goals and foster its values. Discussions on how to rebuild trust in the Union with the help of regions and cities must therefore be a real dialogue, where we do not only listen but converse with our citizens. We must first listen and discuss, then elaborate together concrete actions .", he added. Citizen's concerns and expectations are collected at grassroots level and taken into account during city council debates and regional parliamentary sessions, with the aim of reporting them back to the European institutions. This bottom-up consultation follows up from a request by the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to the CoR to send its recommendations on the future of Europe through the voice of cities and regions. " There is a loss of trust towards the European institutions. That is why the gap between what people expect and what Europe is able to deliver needs to be filled. The outcomes of these citizens' dialogues will be concrete political recommendations to the Council and the other institutions, in order to fully address the main concerns of our citizens and the challenges faced by regions and cities" said Karl-Heinz Lambertz. Ahead of the annual celebration of Europe's Day (9 May), six other citizens' dialogues have been organised these past two days in Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain. Three debates on the future of the EU were held in Spain by Irujo Amezaga Mikel (ES/EA) and Barkos Berruezo Uxue (ES/NI) in Pamplona, by Jesus Gamallo Aller (ES/ EPP) in Santiago de Compostela and by Juan Jose Sota Verdion (ES/ PES) in Santander. Marco Dus (IT/PES) also organised a debate in the Italian city of Vittorio Veneto and two more were held in Austria by Hanspeter Wagner (AUT/EPP) in Breitenwang and by Petr Osvald (CZ/PES) in Vienna. Contact: Diandra Vanigioli Tel. +32 2 282 22 99 diandra.vanigioli@cor.europa.eu Pakistani students of Islamic seminaries take part in a rally in support of blasphemy laws, in Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photo: AP) Islamabad: Millions of Pakistanis have been receiving text messages from the government warning them against sharing "blasphemous" content online, a move rights activists said would encourage more vigilante attacks. It comes amid a surge in mob violence linked to accusations of insulting Islam including three attacks within the past month. "Uploading & sharing of blasphemous content on Internet is a punishable offense under the law. Such content should be reported on info@pta.gov.pk for legal action," read the SMS sent by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to all mobile phone subscribers. A similar note was posted on the agency's website in Urdu. A PTA spokesman said the agency was acting on a court order. Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in conservative Muslim Pakistan, with unproven allegations leading to dozens of mob attacks or murders since 1990. The law was originally inherited from Pakistan's former colonial masters Britain, but strengthened by former dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1986 to include a provision for capital punishment in cases of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Activists said the initiative would likely encourage lynchings, such as the killing of a 23-year-old student known for his liberal views at the hands of hundreds of fellow students last month. "This mass messaging will only further fuel hatred among different sects and segments of the society. It is a very very bad move," digital rights activist Shahzad Ahmad told AFP. "PTA's mass texting on 'blasphemy' smacks of insincerity & political exploitation of religion; it will embolden public to greater violence!," tweeted popular television anchor Moeed Pirzada. Last week a 10-year old boy was killed and five others were wounded when a mob attacked a police station in an attempt to lynch a Hindu man charged with blasphemy for allegedly posting an incendiary image on social media. Weeks earlier a mob attacked a mentally ill man claiming to be a prophet at his local mosque. He was later saved by police. The issue of blasphemy came to the fore in January when five secular activists known for their outspoken views against religious extremism and the powerful military were disappeared, presumed abducted by state agencies according to opposition parties and international rights groups. Four of them were later returned to their families weeks later, but not before they were tarnished by a virulent campaign to paint them as enemies of Islam deserving execution. One of them later told AFP they had been held and tortured by the shadowy Inter Services Intelligence agency which had conceived the blasphemy campaign in order to silence critical voices. The agency denied involvement. Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday accused "certain forces" of stalling Islamabad's efforts for political settlement in war-torn Afghanistan and appealed to the Afghan Taliban to shun violence and join the peace process. Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz issued the appeal to Taliban while addressing a conference on 'Achieving Peace in Afghanistan: Challenges & Prospects' organised by Islamabad Policy Research Institut a think-tank. He said Pakistan has been making sincere efforts for facilitating talks between the Afghan government and Taliban to achieve peace through talks. However, he accused "certain forces" who shot down efforts by Pakistan. Aziz said "a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan is in our interest. We believe that a politically negotiated settlement will be the most viable option for bringing lasting peace to Afghanistan". He said challenges in Afghanistan have multiplied since January, 2015, when the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) ended its combat mission and Afghan forces assumed direct security responsibilities. Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are low after a series of terrorist attacks in the two countries for which both sides blame each other. "The lack of progress on peace process, emerging threat of Daesh (Islamic State), drugs trafficking, the resettlement of returning refugees are some of the issues that have been making it difficult for Afghanistan to create a stable country," he said. He said relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan were also being affected due to these factors, despite centuries-old bonds of common culture, heritage, traditions and religion. He said terrorism was a major threat to regional and international peace. He claimed that Pakistan has been a victim of brutal terrorism. He also talked about connectivity with Afghanistan and said that projects like Peshawar-Kabul motorway and Quetta-Kandahar Rail link were in pipeline but peace and stability was needed to complete them. Islamabad has been under international pressure to try and bring Taliban leaders, who have been based in Pakistan since their rule in Afghanistan was overthrown in the 2001 US invasion, into some form of negotiations with Kabul. Jadhav, the 46-year-old former naval officer, has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court for alleged espionage and subversive activities. (Photo: AP) Islamabad: Pakistan army on Wednesday said it will respond at an "appropriate level" to any query by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the death sentence given to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav by its military court on the charges of "spying". Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor told the media that Jadhav was sentenced by a military court after "due process of law". "If the ICJ requests Pakistan anything about Jadhav, then the government of Pakistan will respond to it at an appropriate level," he said. He said "the process is continuing within the army over the decision by the (military) court against Jadhav. However, he did not explain the nature of "process". The statement came after Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and discussed the ICJ's stay order on the execution of Jadhav. Earlier, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said the government was analysing the Hague-based ICJ's authority in freezing the execution of Jadhav. Aziz said the government would issue a statement on the issue in the next few days. "We are analysing the Indian petition and the ICJ's authority in this case", Aziz said after the Hague-based ICJ stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav. Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif in a tweet accused India of using Jadhav's death conviction to "divert" attention from its "state-sponsored" terrorism in the country. "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security," Asif tweeted. The order by the ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. Pakistan's media rejected India's claim over the order. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online reported that ICJ has received the application of India, but did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhav's sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learnt about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa on Wednesday agreed to settle the Dawn leaks issue after the military withdrew its tweet which rejected the earlier notification of the government. General Bajwa held a meeting with Mr Sharif here to exchange views on Dawn leaks issue, officials said. According to PM House spokesperson, the meeting was held in a cordial atmosphere and both sides agreed to amicably resolve the matter. Meanwhile, the army also emphasised its commitment to democracy in a country where the army has often seized power. Army spokesman major general Asif Ghafoor told a news briefing there was no cause for concern. We will continue to work with all government institutions to do what is best for the country he said. An Army officer from Kashmir was abducted and shot dead by militants in Shopian district where he had gone to attend the wedding ceremony of a relative. Lieutenant Umer Fayaz was abducted by five to six militants from his relative's house in south Kashmir's Shopian last night. His bullet riddled body was found in Harmain area of Shopian this morning, a police official said. Hailing from Kulgam district, Fayaz was in the Infantry and was posted in Akhnoor area in Jammu. He was commissioned in the Army in December last year. "In a dastardly act, some unidentified terrorists yesterday abducted and then killed a young Army officer, Lt Umer Fayaz," an army official said. He said the officer, who was unarmed, had come to his native Kulgam district on leave for attending a wedding in his family. "The Army salutes the braveheart and stands by the bereaved family in this hour of tragedy," the official said, adding, "we are committed to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act of terror to justice". President Donald Trump today abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey who was leading an investigation into whether his election campaign had links to Russia's alleged interference in the US polls, a surprise move that has created a political furore. In a letter, Trump told Comey, 56, that he was no longer effectively able to lead the bureau and it was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in it. "You are hereby terminated and removed from the office, effective immediately," Trump said in the letter. The shock move comes days after Comey testified on Capitol Hill about the FBI's investigation into Russia's meddling into the US elections and a possible collusion between Trump campaign and Moscow. In the letter, Trump acknowledged that Comey had informed him "on three separate occasions" that he was not under investigation. "I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau," he added. The White House said the search for a new FBI director would begin immediately. Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters: "The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General (Jeff Sessions) and the Deputy Attorney General (Rod Rosenstein) regarding the dismissal." In a statement released by the White House, Trump said: "The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement." Comey had courted controversy during the 2016 presidential polls when he revealed a renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton's email use, which the Democrats claimed had hurt her chances of becoming president. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in his letter to Trump, criticised Comey's handling of the Clinton probe, including the director's decision to hold a press conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about her. In a separate letter, Sessions said he has concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI, based on his evaluation as well the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General. "It is essential that this Department of Justice clearly reaffirm its commitment to longstanding principles that ensure the integrity and fairness of federal investigations and prosecutions," Sessions said. Comey was addressing FBI agents in Los Angeles when he was handed a note by one of his team informing him he had just been fired. He was four years into his 10-year term. It wasnt immediately clear how Comey's ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation. "I told the president, 'Mr President, with all due respect you are making a big mistake,'" Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, told reporters. The Senate Minority Leader demanded that the Department of Justice appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russia's alleged influence on the 2016 elections. "The firing of top officials like Sally Yates and Preet Bharara, and now Comey does not seem to be a coincidence," Schumer said. Schumer also questioned the timing of the decision. "If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the president got into office. But they didn't fire him then. Why did it happen today?" he asked. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley said Comey's dismissal is extremely troubling. "President Trump fired the man investigating him and his cohorts. I strongly support calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor," he said. Terming the move as "nearly unprecedented", Indian- American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said it was extremely disturbing that the Chief Executive is interfering with an ongoing investigation into his administration by firing the person charged with conducting it. Republican Senator John McCain, the Chairman of Armed Services Committee, said he was disappointed by Trumps decision to dismiss Comey. "James Comey is a man of honour and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances. I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election," he said. "The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee," McCain said. In a tragic incident the 22-year-old son of Andhra Pradesh Municipal minister and founder of Narayana educational institutions Narayanas son Nishith Narayana and his friend Ravi Chandra were killed in an accident here during the wee hours of Wednesday. Nishit has recently taken over as the Director of Narayana institutions. According to Banjara Hills police the Benz jeep in which Nishit and his friend Ravi Chandra who were occupying the front seats, rammed into a pillar of the Metro rail way on Road number 36 of Banjara Hills at a very high speed. Few onlookers immediately rushed the two young men to Apollo hospitals where they were declared dead. Minister Narayana who is on an official tour to the UK has been informed and he is rushing back, family sources said. The police believe that the jeep took a steep turning at the accident site when the accident occurred. They also suspect that the heavy rain and low visibility at the time of the mishap could have contributed to the accident. Indian Naval Ships Karwar and Kakinada both minesweepers with over three decades of service, were decommissioned on Tuesday evening. These minesweepers, belonging to the Flotilla, were bid adieu at a solemn ceremony in Mumbai. The Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sunil Lanba, who was the second Commanding Officer of Kakinada, was the Chief Guest for the occasion. INS Karwar (M67), was the first of the Natya class minesweepers acquired from the erstwhile USSR. She was commissioned on 14 July, 1986 at Riga (Russia) under the command of Commander RK Sinha. The ship operated from Vishakhapatnam till 2013 after which she was based at Mumbai. Manned by a crew of six officers and 90 sailors, INS Karwar has stood proud by her motto Hamesha Tayyar even as the last Commanding Officer Cdr Kaushik Dhar saluted the naval ensign for the last time on 9 May 2017. INS Kakinada (M70), was the second of the class and also commissioned at Riga on 23 December, 19 86. Like her sister ship, Kakinada also operated from Vishakhapatnam till 2013 before shifting base port to Mumbai. Her first Commanding Officer, then Lieutenant Commander Satish Soni, rose to the rank of Vice Admiral and retired as the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief Easter Naval Command in 2016. Commander Amarjit Singh Yumnam, the last Commanding Officer, and her Better Than the Best crew bid an emotional farewell to INS Kakinada. Both ships have rendered over 30 years of stellar service to the nation. The ships have undertaken countless mine-sweeping missions using both, the older mechanical sweeps as well as the modern Side-scan SONARS. The Army has foiled an infiltration bid by militants along the Line of Control in Baramulla district of Kashmir, an official said today. There were no casualties in the incident and the militants were forced to retreat to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. "Army troops opened fire on a group of terrorists attempting to sneak into our territory yesterday night and forced them back across the Line of Control in Rampur sector of Baramulla district," the official said. The Army has launched a combing operation in the area to ensure that none of the militants managed to get in. Page Content About 200 robotics experts and local, regional, and national authorities will consider how to develop regional innovation strategies based on robotics at a meeting in Brussels on 10 May. The "Smart Regions with Smart robots" event, at the EUs Committee of the Regions, will discuss how to exploit the particular potential that robotics has for Europes regions, whether in manufacturing, inspection, agriculture, mining or health, to name a few. Robotics has the potential for raising productivity in every regions specific industrial and civil competencies. Hence, the European Commissions Smart specialisation of regions programme helps regions to foster research and innovation, attract investment, spark entrepreneurship, create jobs, involve local SMEs and authorities, and attract new users to test technology in public spaces. The EC, strongly supported by the European Committee of the Regions, is developing a network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) , which will involve multiple partners cooperating to provide companies with access to digital technologies and expertise nearby within their regions. The EC will provide 500 million from the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme to support the development of DIHs. The Commission wants every region to have a DIH, through which companies, mainly small and medium-sized, start-ups and research and educational institutions can come together to develop competences in digitisation, including robotics, and build on them to boost innovation. At the European Committee of the Regions meeting, robotics experts from around Europe and public authorities will present latest robotics applications and successful regional initiatives, and explore funding possibilities and ways for regions to cooperate. The event will be streamed live: http://live.eesc.europa.eu/2017-05-10-jde62/ The meeting will addressed by high level speakers: "Europe's regions and cities play a strategic role in developing and implementing the future of Europe by renewing EU policies. Cities and regions should build on their local strength and develop new competences, expertise and entrepreneurial mindset. Smart regions with smart robots have a great potential for growth. To keep Europe on a sustainable and intelligent path, we should translate new research findings into new market solutions and make new innovations based automation and robotics part of our normal life. The smart cities and regions represented at the meeting are pioneers in areas such as healthcare, transport, energy and circular economy," says Markku Markkula, President of the European Committee of the Regions. "With this event, our goal is to bring together the robotics community with local, regional, national authorities and to join forces at all levels, from local to EU level, in order to exploit all benefits this technology can offer. This directly contributes to our strategy on Digitising European Industry, in particular in stimulating the development of Digital Innovation Hubs," explains Khalil Rouhana, Deputy Director-General, DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (CONNECT), European Commission. Robotics is now sufficiently mature to improve productivity in many industrial and civil applications. This is a particular chance for regions with high unemployment, since robots create jobs, which has been proven by economists. With clever ideas, robots can be set up or designed to help humans, even craftsmen, to bring about positive developments for economy and society. Even industries which have been lost to countries in Asia, but where old competencies still exist, can be brought back with robots, because of the high increase in productivity, says Dr. Bernd Liepert, President of the European robotics association euRobotics. Tuscany, Bristol , Ile-de-France , Madrid RoboCity 2030 , At the Brussels meeting, three workshops will cover: the impact of robotics on local economies and societies; regional robotics ecosystems success stories; and the development of a network of Digital Innovation Hubs in robotics. Participating regions and cities sharing their success stories are: Odense Andalusia and RoboValley of Delft. The conference is organised jointly by the European Committee of the Regions, the European Commission and the European robotics association, euRobotics. Read more about robotics and regions: About SPARC - the Public-Private Partnership for Robotics in Europe SPARC is an initiative to maintain and extend Europes leadership in civilian robotics. Its aim is to strategically position European robotics in the world, thereby securing major benefits for Europes economy and society at large. It also leads the driving strategy behind the largest civilian robotics research and innovation programme in the world, with 700 million in funding from the European Commission from 2014 to 2020 and triple that from European industry, to yield a total investment of 2.8 billion. SPARC will stimulate a more vibrant and effective robotics community that collaborates in development and commercial exploitation in all regions. euRobotics is a non-profit organisation based in Brussels with more than 250 members, representing the Robotics community in Europe. SPARC is the Public-Private Partnership for Robotics in Europe, between the European Commission and euRobotics. Controversial Justice C S Karnan of the Calcutta High Court, who questioned the judiciary and was sentenced six months jail term by the Supreme Court for contempt, left the State Guest House in the city where he was staying since Tuesday. Justice Karnan, who arrived Chennai on Tuesday and was staying in the State Guest House at Chepauk in the city, left the room in the morning. Though Sources from the State Guest House said that Justice Karnan left for Srikalahasti temple, which is located in Andhra Pradesh, another sources from police side also told that the justice had left to his native Virudhachalam in Cuddalore district. However, Justice Karnan, who came along with two lawyers, did not vacate his room officially till now. The room bill is yet to be settled by, a staff from the guest house said seeking anonymity. Meanwhile, a four-member police team from Kolkata arrived Chennai airport to arrest Justice Karnan with the help of Tamil Nadu authorities following apex court's direction that the Director General of West Bengal Police to constitute a team for the implementation of its order forthwith. Accordingly, the Kolkata police is expected to meet Chennai police Commissioner before proceeding to arrest Justice Karnan. Taking note of his past controversial judgement and orders passed despite being stripped of judicial activities, the Supreme Court has restrained the media from reporting his statements in the future. On Tuesday morning, Supreme Court held Justice Karnan guilty of contempt of court, judiciary and judicial process and sentenced him to six months imprisonment. Solar power tariff has dropped to a record low of Rs 2.62 per unit in the auction conducted for Bhadla solar park in Rajasthan. Another milestone towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of clean affordable power for all: Bhadla Solar Park achieves tariff of Rs 2.62/unit, Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal tweeted on Wednesday. This price is lower than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs 3.20 per unit. Bhadla Ph-IV Solar Park results in a historic lowering of tariffs. Phelan Energy (50MW) and Avaada Power (100 MW) have bagged projects at Rs 2.62/unit. Softbank Cleantech has won 100 MW capacity at Rs 2.63/unit, said an official from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The solar power tariff going down drastically from Rs 10.95-12.76 per unit in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs 3.15 per unit in an auction last month to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. Earlier in February, the lower capital expenditure and cheaper credit had pulled down solar tariff to a new low of Rs 2.97 per unit for the first year in an auction conducted for 750 MW capacity in Rewa Solar Park in Madhya Pradesh. However, the levelised tariff for Rewa project has worked out to be Rs 3.30 per unit. Experts, however, believe that the prices may further fall with the increased competition among companies. Officials from the New and Renewable Ministry in their presentation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi early this week said the total renewable generation capacity has crossed 57 GigaWatts, with an increase of 24.5% being registered in the last fiscal year. The capacity addition in solar energy in 2016-17 was the highest-ever. The Prime Minister also suggested the officials to set up model solar cities, where the power requirement is fulfilled solely by solar energy. India aims to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy by 2022 and in which 100GW from solar power projects. China today lodged a diplomatic protest with the US over a Congressional delegation's meeting with the Dalai Lama in India, saying the move sent a "wrong signal" to the world and violated America's commitment not to support Tibet's independence. "The 14th Dalai Lama is a political exile who has long been engaged in anti-China separatist activities in foreign countries under the pretext of religion, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing. He was replying to questions on a US bipartisan Congressional delegation headed by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi meeting the 81-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. "The Dalai Lama is also the head of the Tibetan independence group," Geng said when asked whether the US delegation's visit, which is the first after US President Donald Trump took over office in January, signals his administration's policy towards Tibet. Geng said the US delegation's visit to Dharamshala and their meeting with the Dalai Lama has "sent a very wrong signal to the outside world about supporting Tibetan independence and violated the US government's commitment not to support Tibets independence." "We are firmly opposed to that and has lodged solemn representation with the American side. We urge the relevant Congressmen of the US to properly deal with the Tibetan related issues and stop all kinds of contacts with the Dalai Lama and take immediate measures to remove the negative impact," he said. Earlier reports said China has urged Trump, who also had a summit meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, not to hold any meeting with the Dalai Lama. Previous American Presidents, including Barack Obama, had met the Dalai Lama. After the meeting, Pelosi said, "As we visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama, our bipartisan delegation comes in his spirit of faith and peace. We come on this visit to be inspired by His Holiness and demonstrate our commitment to the Tibetan people, to their faith, their culture and their language." The Dalai Lama told the delegation that he is "the longest guest of the Indian government". He said he would be willing to visit China but it was not possible because Beijing considered him a "dangerous splittist." China routinely protests to countries hosting the Dalai Lama or world leaders meeting with him. Last month, China lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the Dalai Lamas visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of Southern Tibet. In an apparent retaliatory measure, China also announced "standardised Chinese names for six places in Arunachal Pradesh. India decided to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the issue of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav as he is in illegal detention in Pakistan and his life is under threat, the External Affairs Ministry said today. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the decision was taken in the case after careful deliberation. He said India made 16 requests for consular access to Jadhav but there was no response from Pakistan on the demand. Islamabad has also not responded to India's request for papers relating to Jadhav's case. There is also no information on the status of appeal by Jadhav's family against the order of a Pakistan military court which sentenced him to death on charges of "spying". Baglay also said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had written to Pakistan Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz on April 27 requesting visa for Jadhav's family. The Tamil Nadu government today urged the Madras High Court to modify its recent order restraining it from relocating or opening liquor shops in residential areas. Seeking modification of the May 8 order, AAG Venkatramani said the governments revenue has been affected and there is a huge loss to the exchequer. The special mention was today made before the bench, comprising Justice K. Kalyanasundaram and Justice S.M. Subramaniam. The court had restrained the government from relocating liquor shops to residential areas, saying the sentiments of people, mostly women, agitating on the issue should be accorded paramount importance as they were the victims of liquor consumption. The court had also said the state-run TASMAC liquor shops should not be opened wherever there was a 'grama sabha' resolution against their location in villages or town or any local body. The bench then directed the AAG to file a petition which will be taken up for hearing. Six months after the announcement of demonetisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the RBI has declined to share details of the note ban process, saying it would be detrimental to the country's economic interests. Replying to an RTI query, the central bank said disclosing such details may impede future economic or fiscal policies of Government of India. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was asked to provide a copy of the minutes of the meetings held in its office during which the decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes was taken. It was also asked to share a copy of the correspondence made with the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Finance Ministry on demonetisation issue. "The information sought in the query carries sensitive background information including opinions, data, studies/ surveys etc. made prior to the completion of the process of withdrawal of legal tender character of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. "Disclosure of such information would detriment economic interest of the country from the viewpoint of the objectives sought to be achieved by such decision," the RBI said in reply to the RTI application filed by a PTI correspondent. It is also likely to impede future economic or fiscal policies of Government of India, the central bank said. The disclosure of information, therefore, qualifies for exemption under section 8 (1) (a) of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, it said. The section bars sharing of information which would "prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an offence". The RBI also said no part of the record (sought by the applicant) can be provided as contemplated in section 10 of the transparency law. The section allows access to that part of the record which can reasonably be severed from any part that contains exempted information. Modi had on November 8, 2016 announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes as a step aimed at curbing black money. Pakistan's media rejected India's claim over the order. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online reported that ICJ has received the application of India, but did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhav's sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learnt about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistan Army today said it will respond at an "appropriate level" to any query by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the death sentence given to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav by its military court on the charges of "spying".Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor told the media that Jadhav was sentenced by a military court after "due process of law". "If the ICJ requests Pakistan anything about Jadhav, then the government of Pakistan will respond to it at an appropriate level, he said.He said "the process is continuing within the army over the decision by the (military) court against Jadhav. However, he did not explain the nature of "process". The statement came after Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and discussed the ICJ's stay order on the execution of Jadhav.On the beheading of two Indian security force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, he said, "We are a disciplined force and dont believe in such things. We would not have returned an Indian soldier with respect if we were involved in mutilations." Pakistan sent back an Indian soldier who crossed the Line of Control last year.Earlier, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said the government was analysing the Hague-based ICJ's authority in freezing the execution of Jadhav. Aziz said the government would issue a statement on the issue in the next few days."We are analysing the Indian petition and the ICJ's authority in this case, Aziz said after the Hague-based ICJ stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav.Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif in a tweet accused India of using Jadhav's death conviction to "divert" attention from its "state-sponsored" terrorism in the country. "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security," Asif tweeted.The order by the ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. The Forensic Science Laboratory that was examining the samples of meat seized from a Jaipur hotel has ruled out any possibility that the meat was from a cow. The hotel, Hayat Rabbani was sealed on March 19 after more than 150 cow vigilantes protested outside the hotel and thrashed its staff alleging that beef was cooked and served there. Nearly two months after the incident, Jaipur police said that the FSL report reveals that the meat samples which underwent testing does not belong to a cow. Deputy commissioner of police (west) Ashok Gupta said, The reports suggest that meat was not beef. Police had taken samples from the hotel on the night of March 19th and sent it to the forensic science laboratory (FSL) for testing. Reacting to the FSL report, the owner of the sealed Hotel, Nayeem Rabbani told DH, Now after the reports have arrived, administration should believe in it and unseal the hotel. When I tried to convince Police and administration, none of them were in the mood to listen to me. I have suffered a huge monetary loss from last two months. On April 29th, a lower court in its order had instructed Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) to unseal the hotel within seven days. But its been ten days and the administration is yet to unseal the hotel. Hotel Owner demands action against Sadhvi Kamal Didi The Hotel owner has also demanded action against self claimed Sadhvi Kamal Didi of the Mahila Gauraksha Dal for creating ruckus and thrashing the hotel staff. Police should take action against Kamal Didi who with her supporters stormed into the hotel and thrashed my employees. She and her supporters raised slogans against us. This was a mere stunt of attempting another move towards saffronisation, Nayeem Rabbani added. Kamal Didi had also lodged an FIR against the hotel administration at the Sindhi Camp police station. Under section 295A (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the IPC. On the midnight of March 19, more than 150 cow vigilantes surrounded the Hotel Hayat Rabbani situated near the Bus Stand in Jaipur. Vigilante led by Kamal Didi protested outside the hotel for two days alleging that the establishment sold beef, which is banned in Rajasthan. Also, two of its staff members were arrested for alleged improper disposal of meat remains. His first leave home became his last. And a wedding gathering that he wanted to join turned into his funeral procession. Lieutenant Umer Fayaz, 23, from the troubled region of Kulgam district, was posted with 2 Rajputana Rifles and had applied for leave to attend a cousin's wedding. He was on leave when he was picked up from his house at Harmein in Kulgam, 60 kilometres from here, last night. The body of the young officer was later found three kilometres from his house. Fayaz, who studied at Navodaya Vidyalaya, a branch of government schools for gifted students, at Ashmuquam in South Kashmir, joined the Army after being commissioned in December last year. He belonged to the 129th batch of cadets from the prestigious Pune-based National Defence Academy. This was for the first time that he had taken leave after joining the Army, a senior official said. He was supposed to have returned to his unit in the Akhnoor area of Jammu on May 25. The autopsy report showed marks on his body, indicating that he had resisted the suspected militants who had abducted him. He was fired at from a close range, and the bullets had hit his head and stomach or chest region. Locals said two masked men entered the house at 8 last night. The men asked Lt Fayaz, who was unarmed, to accompany them, and warned the family not to inform the police. The killing caused anger among locals who demanded that the men responsible be identified and punished. Major General B S Raju, the General Officer in Command of the Victor Force, responsible for counter-terrorism in South Kashmir, has directed all its units in and around the area to launch a manhunt for the killers. The body of the officer was laid to rest with full military honours. His funeral was attended by several people from his village. Defence Minister Arun Jaitley described the abduction and killing as "a dastardly act" of cowardice. "This young officer from J&K was a role model," Jaitley said in a tweet The government should consider according national animal status to the cow, Jamiat Ulema-i- Hind president Maulana Syed Arshad Madani said today while expressing concern at the "atmosphere of fear" following violence by 'gau rakshaks'. "The government should give national animal status to the cow and we will support it," Madani, who heads the influential body that represents a large number of Islamic scholars in the country, said at a press conference. An "atmosphere of fear" prevails in the country due to incidents of violence, that included even murder, by cow vigilantes, he said. "These young gau rakshaks are exploiting religion to loot and murder people and taking law into their own hands. We respect the religious sentiments of our Hindu brethren but no one can be allowed to take law and order into their own hands," he said. Referring to the issue of triple talaq that is likely to come up in the Supreme Court tomorrow, he said it was a religious matter and could have only a religious solution. "If the Supreme Court comes out with such an acceptable solution, we will welcome it," Madani said. The apex court, he added, should ask the ulemas, or Islamic scholars, to discuss its objections and come out with solutions before direct intervention in the matter. "... the court should give a chance to the ulemas to discuss and sort out its objections over triple talaq. Then they (Supreme Court) may consider those solutions and give judgement. Such a judgement based on religious interpretation will be acceptable to us," he said. The matter was being "blown out of proportion" by the media and now even the Supreme Court was inclined to intervene in it, Madani said. "The way triple talaq is being talked about these days, it appears as though there are divorced women in every household and each Muslim man has four wives." Islamic law gives 14 rights to a married woman who can seek talaq if she feels any of these rights are infringed by her husband. The Jamiat president also referred to the Guwahati High Court order on citizenship in Assam. It had created a situation where 48 lakh married women in the state stood to lose their citizenship, he said. The Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind has challenged the High Court order on residency certificates in the Supreme Court, he added. The transfer of USD 40 million Vijay Mallya had received from British firm Diageo to his three children reflected the beleaguered businessman's intent to put the funds beyond the reach of the courts, the Supreme Court has said. The apex court, which held Mallya guilty of contempt of court, said the USD 40 million fund, which was in his control, was completely covered and governed by the judicial orders directing him not to transfer, alienate or dispose of any movable and immovable properties till further orders. "The explanation that the funds now stand transferred in favour of the trusts over which Mallya has no control at all, in fact, aggravates the extent of violation. It is clear that the funds which were in control of Mallya have now been sought to be put beyond the reach of the processes of court, which is reflective of the intent," a bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit said. The bench further said the least that was expected of Mallya was to disclose the relevant facts pertaining to receipt and disbursement of USD 40 million. As per the details placed before the bench, out of the USD 40 million, USD 13,333,331.33 each was transferred to his children Siddartha Mallya, Leena Mallya and Tanya Mallya in February 2016 on his instructions. Mallya's counsel had earlier told the court that the money which came from Diageo belonged to his children and not him. The top court has held Mallya guilty of contempt for disobeying its orders by not disclosing full particulars of his assets and also violating the orders of the Karnataka High Court by transferring USD 40 million received from Diageo to his three children. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Or so it seems when Lalu Prasad on Wednesday supported Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals charge that EVMs could be tampered with. Its a very serious matter. Kejriwals MLA has demonstrated on Tuesday how an EVM can be tampered with by simply feeding a secret code, said Lalu. He added that the RJDs national spokesperson Manoj Jha will represent his party at the all-party meeting convened by the Election Commission on this issue on May 12. AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, a computer engineer, had demonstrated (using a replica of EVM) in Delhi Assembly on Tuesday how an EVM could be rigged. Though the Election Commission rejected the demonstration and said that the machine used was duplicate and extraneous, the legislator maintained that he had done extensive research on the issue and there was no machine in the world which cannot be hacked. While leaving for Vaishali on Wednesday to attend a private function, Lalu said, The AAP MLA has shown that EVMs can actually be hacked. This is a very serious matter. And if the issue remains unresolved, it could pose a danger to the Indian democracy.Lalu, however, remained evasive on his alleged phone conversation with the incarcerated former MP Mohammad Shahabuddin.Breaking his silence on the Supreme Court ruling which reinstated criminal conspiracy charges against him in fodder scam case, Lalu said, My lawyers are looking into the ruling. They will give an appropriate response.Lalu, who is facing the charge since 1996, has different lawyers representing him in different courts. While senior lawyer Chitranjan Sinha looks after his fodder scam case in Ranchi and Patna courts, Prabhat Kumar represents him in Jharkhand High Court (which, in 2014, ruled that Lalu cannot be tried twice for the same offence). Senior-most lawyer Ram Jethmalani and Surendra Singh handles his case in the Supreme Court. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa today discussed the International Court of Justice's stay order on the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, media reports said. During the meeting, which lasted for around 90 minutes, Sharif was briefed on the "latest situation" regarding Jadhavs case, the Geo News reported. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order by the Hague-based ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. In the meeting, Sharif and Bajwa also discussed other issues including the Dawn leaks controversy and Pak-Afghan relations, the channel said. The meeting between the army chief and the premier is the second one within a week and is significant in light of the civil-military row over Dawn's leaked report that had angered the powerful army. On May 6, Prime Minister Sharif had met the army chief and both discussed the Dawn Leaks issue, among other things. Sharif and the army chief had agreed that the issues surrounding Dawn leaks would be dealt with amicably. In October, a columnist for Dawn newspaper wrote a front-page story about a rift between civilian and military leaderships over militant groups that operate from Pakistan but engage in proxy war against India and Afghanistan. The army took strong exception to the Dawn story. The military had called the leak of the meeting a breach of national security and urged strong, punitive action against those responsible for leaking information to the newspaper. According to police sources, Mohit and his two friends were brought to the police station after they assaulted doctors and other staff at the district hospital. ''Mohit and his friends jumped the queue at the hospital....when the staff objected, they assaulted them,'' said a hospital employee in Etah. A police team, which later reached the hospital, brought the three to the police station. Mohit, while being quizzed, suddenly got up and slapped the SHO Jitendra Singh. The entire incident was caught on camera. As the video clipping went viral on the social networking sites, authorities directed the police to take stern action against the accused persons. Sources said that Gangster's Act had been slapped on the three accused and they were sent to jail. Samajwadi Party (SP) leader and UP Legislative Council chairman Ramesh Yadav's nephew Mohit Yadav was caught on camera slapping a senior cop inside a police station in state's Etah district, about 300 kilometres from here. Rajasthan health minister and senior BJP leader Kalicharan Saraf on Wednesday made a controversial statement saying that police cannot be deployed outside each house in the city to stop incidents of rape. He was answering a question related to the rape of a four-year-old girl by one of her fathers helpers in Jaipur on Saturday. Saraf who went to JK lone hospital to meet the victim told media, "Should government deploy police outside every home? Why should we hold police responsible if a Jeweller's servant who has access to the house enters and rapes his daughter?." The health Minister was replying to media questions about Congress President Sachin Pilot statement that the government should be held responsible for rise in rape incidents and crime against women. "Their allegations are baseless and they are pretentious. Do they want to make a statement that no rapes took place during their tenure", Saraf added. Saraf who also met the doctors in the hospital assured that victim is being provided best-possible treatment. Pilot Condemns Saraf's remarks While condemning Saraf's remarks, Congress President Sachin Pilot told DH, "The minister has not only made a controversial remark but its a irresponsible statement coming from a senior leader. Rajasthan is at the third position in cases of atrocities against women, Instead of trying to bring down the crime rate which has increased during BJP's tenure they are showing an insensitive approach. Ministers are public representatives and in such sensitive cases, people expect the government/administration to console them but such remarks from responsible people certainly hurt public sentiment." On Saturday a four year old girl was raped by a 19-year-old servant who visited the house for regular work. The minor who was found injured by her parents who then took her to a hospital. Medical examinations conducted in hospital confirmed that minor has been sexually assaulted. Minister for Public Works, Ports, Inland and Water Transport H C Mahadevappa termed communalism and fundamentalism as a threat to the Constitution and democratic set up of the country. To overcome the forces of fundamentalism and communalism, one need to take the political path followed by Buddha, he added. He was speaking after inaugurating the programme marking the 2561st Buddha Poornima organised by the Dakshina Kannada Jilla Baudha Maha Sabha in the city on Wednesday. Buddha and Ambedkar had opined that communal forces would take a stand against human rights which, in turn, would work against the principles of egalitarianism. Buddha had believed in the principles of humanity, love and equality and had opposed dictatorship of any kind, said Mahadevappa. The minister said that the people of Dakshina Kannada should not give scope for anti-democratic activities in the name of moral policing but work towards fulfilling the aspirations of the Constitution, thereby upholding the principles of democracy. Terming Gauthama Buddha a great democrat, Mahadevappa said that Buddha had laid the foundation for a strong administrative setup by protecting the underprivileged from the hands of the haves. Wisdom and love are the pillars of Buddhism. During the time of Buddha, society was divided not on the lines of caste and religion but on the lines of profession. However, after the introduction of the Varnashrama system, society was divided on the lines of caste, creed and religion, which created further confusion, he felt. Mahadevappa said that Ambedkar, through his life principles and writings, strove to protect the rights of the underprivileged. Ambedkar was a nationalist. As he could not bring in reforms in Hinduism by breaking the barriers of the caste system, he embraced Buddhism and propagated the principles of Buddhism across the country effectively. Like Buddha, Ambedkar too believed in equality and sustainable development, the minister pointed. In his introductory remarks, Maha Sabha treasurer M V Padmanabha appealed to the PWD minister to grant land for the Sabha to set up a Buddhist Vihara and an education centre in the district. As a part of Buddha Poornima celebrations, Damma Deepa Yathre, a cultural procession was held from Light House Hill Road to Town Hall. Dakshina Kannada Jilla Baudha Maha Sabha president Kanthappa Alangar presided over the programme. Mayor Kavitha Sanil, Khanthipala Bhantheji and Sivuli Bhanthejiravara of Maha Bodhi Society were present. Kannada Development Authority (KDA) Chairman S G Siddaramaiah has said closure of Kannada medium schools as one of the reasons for the steep increase in school dropouts, and suggested the Education department officials to take necessary measures to stem the rot. Addressing the district-level officers at a progress review meeting organised at ZP auditorium here on Friday, Siddaramaiah said, the authorities have failed to ensure quality education in government schools. As per the government notification, schools with less than ten students have to be closed, and the students should be shifted to another school in the adjoining area. But, many students, particularly girls, fail to join the schools for certain reasons and thus the number of dropouts keeps increasing. He pointed out that 11,874 schools in the state have been closed in last 10 years. Deputy Director for Public Instructions (DDPI) H R Basappa clarified that no school in Mysuru district has been closed from 2010-2011. The district has 59 schools with an enrolment of less than 10 students, he said. Siddaramaiah also said that a few private English medium schools are imposing fine on the students for speaking Kannada in the school and the authorities must take strict action against the school administration. I have observed a few schools displaying boards warning students not to speak Kannada in the campus, he said. KDA chairman also asked the DC to take measures to introduce Kannada as an additional subject in Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV). CFTRI Siddaramaiah said that the authority has received several complaints about the ill-treatment being meted out to Kannadigas working at Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) and poor implementation of Kannada in administrative matters. He told Deputy Commissioner D Randeep to take necessary steps to safeguard the interests of Kannadigas and effective implementation of Kannada in adminstration. Default language Siddaramaiah directed the district administration to ensure that Kannada is used as the default language in government websites. He also asked the DC to serve notice to the officials, including Superintendent of Police (SP) Ravi D Channannavar and ZP CEO P Shivashankar for not attending the meeting. No need for RTE Interacting with reporters later, Siddaramaiah said that there is no need for Right to Education (RTE) Act if government schools are strengthened. The government has been spending Rs 290 crore under RTE every year and if the same amount is spent on the development of government institutions, it would benefit many, he said. Currently, only a few are benefited by RTE. If the government schools are strengthened then all economically weaker students will be benefited. The authority will include this point in the report to be submitted to the government, he said. In Mysuru district, as many as 3,828 children have been identified so far under RTE for the year 2017-18, and 2,239 have already been enrolled, said DDPI. KDA Secretary Murali, District Kannada Development Authority nominated members Sudharshan, Maddikere Gopal, Pramod, Kannada Sahitya Parishat President Y D Rajanna were present. The city traffic police, who tracked down the ambulance that got stuck in the traffic on J C Road while the chief ministers convoy was heading to Ravindra Kalashektra for Bhagiratha Jayanti on May 2, have found that the vehicle was ferrying the body of a woman to her native place in Tumakuru district. The woman from Kunigal was declared brought dead by doctors at Jayadeva Hospital. The ambulance driver Devaraj has been arrested for creating chaos by switching on blaring sirens and flash-lights of the ambulance when he was transporting a body. Devaraj, a resident of Srirampuram has been booked for violation of permit rules as well as driving in a rash and negligent manner, the police said. The incident created a furore blaming VIP culture as well as debates over right to way for ambulances. After the incident that also made Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to state that he was unaware of an ambulance getting blocked due to his convoy movement, the Halsuru Gate police tracked down the ambulance on the basis of CCTV footage. They found out that it was not an ambulance, but a hearse van, the police said. They then questioned the driver and he confirmed that he was ferrying a body. The deceased woman, aged around 60, was Huchamma, mother of the ambulance owner and aunt of Devaraj. We also verified the time when she was declared dead at Jayadeva Hospital, which was around 5 pm, said Nataraj, ACP (Traffic Central). Huchamma was brought to Jayadeva hospital where an ECG was performed, which confirmed that she was dead. The body was then taken in Devarajs hearse van to Kunigal via J C Road where the traffic was held up for a few minutes, Nataraj added. While ferrying bodies, ambulance drivers should not switch on sirens or flash-lights which attracts unnecessary attention and cause inconveniences to others, the officer said. The opposition to the proposed widening of Jayamahal Road continues with protesters now urging the Mysuru royal family not to translocate trees on Palace Grounds to make way for road widening. The Jayamahal Residents Welfare Association, with Citizens for Bengaluru, has written an open letter to the Mysuru royal family in this regard. More than a thousand people had protested the move to cut trees and the BBMP received 30,000 objections as emails and letters. These facts are being disregarded in an attempt to ramrod the project in violation of the Town and Country Planning Act, said the letter signed by Srinivas Alavilli of CfB. BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said there was no question of cutting any tree. We have already made this clear. We want to translocate all the 112 trees, he said. Noting that translocation has a success rate of a mere 1%, the association said the whole operation amounted to cutting trees. When asked about the protesters claim, the commissioner said, There are agencies which have the experience of translocating over 5,000 trees successfully. We will take their help and make sure the environment is not harmed, he said. The protesters said people using Jayamahal Road and residents do not consider road widening a solution to traffic congestion. A BBMP official familiar with the project, however, refuted the claim. The protesters are disconnected from road users and reality. Widening of the road is necessary for the current traffic situation let alone future needs. Why would the high court set the September 2017 deadline for completion of the project if it was unnecessary? the official said. He said the BBMP has permitted Indrakshi Devi of the royal family to translocate five trees on private land. After this pilot project, we will decide on shifting the remaining trees, he said. Students from Delhi Public School (DPS), Bengaluru raised funds for pediatric heart surgeries. More than 50 students from DPS raised Rs 40,000 each for 50 underprivileged children from various parts of rural Karnataka for their heart surgeries. With a target of Rs 20 lakh in 60 days, around Rs 14 lakh was collected by the students of DPS. The students who have taken up the initiative are from classes 9, 10 and 12. There is so much that children want to do, said Manju Balasubramanyam, principal of Delhi Public School. The campaign was undertaken with the help of Fueladream, a crowdfunding platform based in Bengaluru. The surgeries are executed with the help of Rotary Club and Needy Heart Foundation, which has tied up with Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiology and Fortis Hospital, Bengaluru. Speaking to reporters, founder and CEO of Fueladream, Ranganath Thota said that students collecting money for a social need makes them realise that they have the ability to do it. Chairman and managing trustee of Needy Heart Foundation O P Khanna said, this is a chance to give a healthy life to people who cannot afford. A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court is all set to begin hearing arguments from Thursday to decide the Constitutional validity of the practice of triple talaq. Nikah halala and polygamy, practised among Muslims in the country, would also be examined during the hearing. Triple talaq is a practice where a husband can divorce his wife by saying talaq thrice, while nikah halala is barring remarriage with a divorced husband without an intervening marriage as mandated by the Muslim Personal Law. Chief Justice J S Khehar will preside over the bench, which would also comprise Justices Kurian Joseph, R F Nariman, U U Lalit and S Abdul Nazeer. The main matter is listed as Muslim Womens Quest for Equality started suo motu by the apex court in 2015. Five other writ petitions filed by Muslim women, led by Shayara Bano, are also awaiting the apex courts consideration, along with a special leave petition against the Allahabad High Court's order that triple talaq is unilateral and bad in law. The Union government had said in the court that triple talaq and polygamy denied the Muslim women full enjoyment of fundamental rights and should therefore be declared unconstitutional. Such practices impact the social status and dignity of women and did not enjoy the sanction from Islam, the government claimed, saying they existed due to norms that prevailed several centuries ago. The government also claimed many Islamic countries have stopped such practices. Prominent NGO All India Muslim Personal Law Board and others have intervened in the matter, saying the court cannot adjudicate on a communitys personal laws. A youth claiming to be an AAP worker attacked sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra during his hunger strike on Wednesday. The ousted minister began the strike demanding that AAP disclose details of funding for foreign tours of some of its leaders. According to Mishra, the youth approached him at the strike venue around 5.30 pm and grabbed him by his neck. Mishras supporters rushed towards him and freed him from the youth, identified as Ankit Bhardwaj. I am an AAP worker. Nobody sent me. Mishra is harming the party, Bhardwaj said as he was led away. However, the AAP claimed that Bhardwaj was BJPs Yuva Morcha Delhi executive committee member and retweeted a series of tweets in this regard. But the tweets were later removed. AAP leader Sanjay Singh also said Bhardwajs social media profile and posts showed that he was a BJP supporter. But, the BJP has denied any links with the incident or the person who targeted Mishra. The BJP, for its part, presented before the media the activist associated with the organisation. The BJP youth wing leader claimed that the AAP had deliberately created the confusion. Meanwhile, Mishra said he would not name anyone, though he indicated that two to three people who would be affected by his actions could be behind it. I will not say it is a conspiracy by the party or the leaders, he added. Mishra also claimed that he had got a phone call on Tuesday night, threatening he would be shot. His hunger strike comes a day after he approached the CBI seeking a probe into the foreign tours by ministers Satyendar Jain, Sanjay Singh, Ashish Khetan, Raghav Chadha and Durgesh Pathak. The Union government has set up special academies at seven centrally-funded technical institutes to improve the quality of engineering faculty. The ministry of electronics and information technology has set up these academies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, IIT-Guwahati, IIT-Kanpur, National Institute of Technology Patna, NIT-Warangal, MNIT-Jaipur and Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur. The eventual objective of the move is to increase the employability of engineering graduates in the electronics and information technology sector. Under the faculty development and mentoring programmes, the newly set up electronics and ICT (information communication technology) academies will provide specialised training on basic and advanced level topics for engineering streams as well as domain-based training on the use of ICT tools and techniques for non-engineering streams. Besides, it will offer training and consultancy services for industry as well as continuing education programme for students and working professionals. The academies will also support incubation of innovative projects and entrepreneurial activities as well as help technical institutes update curriculum to produce industry-ready engineering graduates. The ministry has earmarked Rs 35 crore for running these seven academies, aiming to train at least 22,000 faculty in four years. The seven academies are set to start with short-term training programmes for the faculty from this month. India and Pakistan have always used legal caveats to prevent one another from using the mechanism of the International Court of Justice to act against them on the ground that ICJ does not have jurisdiction on matters involving the two Commonwealth countries. In September 1974, New Delhi made it clear that India does not accept the ICJs jurisdiction over disputes with the government of any state which is or has been a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. On August 10, 1999, Pakistani navys Atlantique plane was shot down for straying into Indian air space over the Rann of Kutch. On September 21, 1999, Pakistan instituted proceedings before the ICJ against India regarding the destruction of the aircraft. Pakistan relied on Article 17 of the General Act for Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, signed in Geneva on September 26, 1928, on the declarations of acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the court made by the parties and on para 1 of Article 36 of the courts statute. But India reiterated its stand outlined by the declaration of 1974. Finally, in June 2000, the ICJ said Indias declaration contained, inter alia, a reservation according to which disputes with the government of any state which is or has been a member of the Commonwealth of nations are excluded from the court's jurisdiction. Similarly, India could not sue Pakistan over the murder and mutilation of Captain Saurabh Kalia and five other soliders during the Kargil War in 1999. This time, India has taken Pakistan by surprise. It has knocked at the doors of the ICJ at The Hague to pressurise Pakistan from carrying out its military courts verdict handed to Kulbhusan Jadhav, a former Indian naval officer, held for spying. This was after Islamabad refused consular access to him. India believes the ICJ can look into Jadhavs case as both the countries are signatories to the optional protocol of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR), which deals with facilities that are to be provided to anyone held in a foreign country. The protocol says any dispute arising out of the interpretation or application of VCCR shall lie within the jurisdiction of the ICJ. The Election Commission has released the agenda for Fridays all-party meeting on electronic voting machines. The poll panel released the agenda a day after AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, to buttress the partys claim, demonstrated in the Delhi Assembly that EVMs can be tampered with to make them deliver results in favour of a particular party. The commission will seek the views of political parties on changing the rules of counting the paper slips generated by the Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) devices linked to EVMs. The poll panel is planning to deploy EVMs with VVPATs across the country during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The VVPAT systems generate paper slips for all the votes cast on the EVMs linked to them. At present, the poll panel is not counting the paper slips in all the cases. According to the provisions under Rule 56 D of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, if a candidate or his agent makes a request for counting the papers slips of any polling station, the returning officer decides the request as per the guidelines issued by the commission. Some suggestions have been made to revisit the rules regarding counting of paper slips from the VVPAT system. The political parties may give their views in this regard, the commission noted. During the meeting, the panel will also discuss other issues, including proposals to make bribery in elections a cognizable offence, to insert a new section 58B in the Representation of the People Act, 1951, to deal with cases of bribery of electors, for disqualification on framing of charges for the offence of bribery in elections, and enhancing transparency in funding of political parties. V V Rao, convener of Election Watch, and Congress leader Tehseen Poonawala on Wednesday demanded that the poll panel should allow international experts to probe the credibility of EVMs. Why doesnt the Election Commission open up this challenge for international hackers, media and election commissioners of foreign democracies to witness? Poonawala said in a press conference. He also sought to know why the poll panel was posing a challenge to the theory of EVM hacking when it had already been exposed in 2010 that the machines could be tampered with, which led to the use of VVPATs. India moved the International Court of Justice to save the life of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav as his chances of getting justice in Pakistan were slim. It (moving the ICJ) is a carefully considered decision in the interest of a citizen of India as he is facing threat to his life, Gopal Baglay, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, said on Wednesday. His comment came a day after President of International Court of Justice, Judge Ronny Abraham, wrote to Pakistan Prime Minister M Nawaz Sharif, calling upon his government not to carry out the death sentence awarded to Jadhav till the court decided on the merit of the case. It was a decision to save the life of a son of India, added Baglay. New Delhi told the ICJ that Jadhav had been abducted from Iran, where he had been running a business. Islamabad later claimed that he had illegally entered Pakistan from Iran and was arrested from Balochistan. A 22-year-old army officer was kidnapped from a wedding and brutally killed in south Kashmir late on Tuesday. Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz, a native of Kulgam district, joined the army in December and was serving in the Akhnoor area in Jammu. He was on leave till May 24. Fayaz was kidnapped from the village in Shopian district at 10 pm on Tuesday. Three or four masked militants went up to the first floor of his woman cousins house and dragged him out, a source said. The terrified family didnt report the kidnapping to the police or the army as they had been threatened not to do so. Early in the morning, his bullet-riddled body was found in a village nearby. He had bullet injuries in his head and chest, a source said. The post-mortem showed bruises on his body, indicating he had resisted the militants before they killed him. Calling the killing a dastardly act, the Indian Army said it would bring the perpetrators of this heinous act of terror to justice. This was the first time Fayaz had taken leave after joining the army. He was to have returned to his Rajputana Rifles unit in Akhnoor on May 25. Survived by his father, mother and two sisters, Fayaz had passed out of the prestigious National Defence Academy. Since insurgency began in 1990, he is the first Kashmiri army officer to be killed while on leave in his home state, an officer said. The kidnapping and murder is part of a new trend where militants target security personnel even when they are off duty. Last month, the Jammu and Kashmir Police chief had advised his men not to visit their homes, especially in southern Kashmir. A senior police officer said Fayaz was probably not aware of the advisory, and hadnt thought twice about going to his village unarmed. Disturbed funeral Meanwhile, reports said the army marched into the village of the slain officer after a group pelted stones at the security forces during Fayazs funeral. The stone-pelting began after police fired gunshots in the air. The officer was laid to rest with full military honours later. An army officer said support for militants was growing in the four districts of south Kashmir. They openly roam the villages. Public support for them is worrying security agencies, he said. Fayaz, who would have turned 23 on June 8, was likely to go to Mhow in September to attend a course for young officers. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has condemned the killing. A five-member team of the Kolkata Police arrived in Chennai on Wednesday morning to arrest Justice C S Karnan, but the controversial Calcutta High Court judge was not traceable till late in the night. The team, headed by a DySP, landed in Chennai around 10:30 am, but Karnan, who was staying at the State Guest House in Chepauk, left along with two lawyers early in the morning. Justice Karnan has not vacated his room and is yet to settle the bill, a guest house employee said. On arrival, the Kolkata Police met officials at the Chennai Police Commissioners Office and proceeded to the guest house. On hearing that the judge had left for Srikalahasti, about 120 km from here, the team rushed to the temple town in Andhra Pradesh. They, however, returned empty-handed in the evening. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court had ordered the Director General of Police of West Bengal to forthwith arrest Justice Karnan for contempt of court. It was immediately not known whether the team would also go to Karnans native of Virudhachalam in Cuddalore district, about 220 km from here. There were rumours that the judge has left for his home town. Our search will continue till we find him (Justice Karnan), a senior police officer said. Tension prevailed for a while when a group of lawyers protested outside the guest house, alleging that Justice Karnan was being victimised. There was divided opinion over the kidnapping and killing of an unarmed local army officer by militants on social media in Kashmir on Wednesday with some condemning the murder while others saying a solider is never out of uniform. All Kashmiris should mourn and condemn (Lieutenant) Umar Fayaz's death. he was a brilliant and dear son of soil... (sic), Hawa Bashir, a social activist wrote on her facebook. Her views were acknowledged by Prof Mohammad Aslam, who teaches English Lit in Central University of Kashmir, but with a rider. Nobody has the right to take a life. This is only God's prerogative. Why would militants kill him? I would like to know. Can't it be an act if smdy else to malign militants? Anything is possible in Kashmir. But, it is SAD), he wrote in response to Hawa Bashirs post However, Najeeb Mubaraki, a journalist while commenting on the killing wrote on his facebook wall, A 'soldier' is never out of uniform, as isn't a 'militant', the latter, however, using counter violence unravels state violence; and the two are never equal. this is basic theory, and practice. Another facebook user Aasif Farooq while condemning the killing in the same statement said the slain officer belonged to the same Rajputana Rifles which raped dozens of women at Kunan Poshpora in Kupwara in 1991. I strongly condemn the brutal killing of young Umar Fayaz, who served in the Indian Army as a Lieutenant. I also condemn the gruesome mass rape of dozens of Kashmiri women by Rajputana Rifles of Indian Army at Kunan Poshpora. Umar Fayaz served in the same Rajputana Rifles, he said. Shaliendra Mishra, a young IPS officer questioned: Kidnap and kill, an unarmed soldier on a holiday. Whose jihad is this? Opposition National Conference leader and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted his anger over the killing. Very sad and alarming. Condolences to the family. May Lt Umay Fayazs soul rest in peace, Omar wrote. By Anna Momigliano 9 May 2017 MILAN (The Washington Post) Almost four years ago, 268 Syrian refugees including 60 children lost their lives in a shipwreck about 60 miles south of Lampedusa, a small Italian island that sits between Sicily and Tunisia. It was considered one of the worst tragedies of the European refugee crisis, but a leaked audiotape published Monday by the magazine LEspresso suggested that Italian authorities let the Syrians drown despite being alerted several hours earlier that the refugees ship was in danger. On the evening of Oct. 10, 2013, a ship carrying at least 480 people left Zuwarah, in northwestern Libya, headed for Lampedusa. Most of the passengers were Syrians who had left their country for Libya when conflict erupted at home in 2011, and were then forced to flee Libya when fighting broke out there as well. Their ship sailed until 5 p.m. the next day, when it capsized 61 nautical miles south of Lampedusa. While some of the passengers were rescued by Italian and Maltese ships, the majority died before rescuers arrived. The incident caused a media uproar that contributed to the creation of Mare Nostrum, the now-defunct Italian navy search-and-rescue operation (that program was replaced in late 2014 by a smaller-scale E.U. program called Triton). But, until Monday, the public did not know that the refugees had alerted Italian authorities that they were in distress as early as five hours before their ship sank. Even though the refugees ship called the Italian coast guard and warned that it was floating adrift, taking on water and had wounded children aboard, Italian authorities refused to intervene for several hours. LEspresso published five recordings of separate telephone conversations from the day of the incident. In the first, at 12:39 p.m., passenger Mohanned Jammo, a doctor who survived the shipwreck and who had a smartphone with him, calls the headquarters of the Italian coast guard in Rome asking for help. The boat is going down and water is coming into it, he says. A woman can be heard asking for his position, which he gives. [] In a third conversation, at 1:48 p.m., Jammo again calls the coast guard, saying he called Maltese authorities and was told he is closer to Lampedusa. Lampedusa is Italy? he asks. We are dying, please. [more] Scientists are promising to engineer a solution to a chronic stomach problem common in people with type 1 diabetes. Researchers from Western Sydney University have been awarded a $150,000 grant from JDRF to study a treatment for diabetic gastroparesis. Diabetic gastroparesis is a long-term condition that develops when the stomach is unable to empty itself properly. This means that food passes through slowly, leading to problems such as becoming full too early, nausea and vomiting. Another key problem is that it can make timing of insulin doses more difficult, increasing the risk of hypoglycemia. Currently treatment for gastroparesis, which affects up to 40 per cent of people with type 1 diabetes, is limited because existing medications do not always work. Patients who do not respond to conventional therapies can become upon dependent upon feeding tubes for Nutrition, but the universitys researchers hope this JDRF funding could lead to a game changing new treatment. Principal investigator Dr Vincent Ho said: As a result of this grant, we are able to take a clinical issue into the laboratory in order to engineer a solution. We will be investigating the use of a new endoscopic device for the treatment of diabetic gastroparesis which is a vexing clinical problem. This would be in the form of a uniquely designed stent that aims to better empty food contents through the pylorus. The pylorus is the opening at which the end of the stomach joins the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. Ho, a specialist in gastrointestinal motility disorders, said treatment for diabetic gastroparesis was very limited, adding: We are hopeful that this grant can produce a tangible outcome to aid patients suffering from gastroparesis. People with diabetic gastroparesis are advised to try and maintain good blood glucose control because this can lessen damage to the vagus nerve, which moves food through the digestive tract. Microsoft has unveiled a number of new tools and services at build 2017 aimed at helping developers modernize existing apps and build more intelligent ones At its annual Build developer conference, Microsoft has announced new tools and services aimed at helping developers modernize existing apps and build more intelligent ones. This includes new Azure data and cloud services, IoT edge, AI services and more. Microsoft also announced that there were 500 million monthly active devices using Windows 10. For businesses, Microsoft showcased a preview of Azure IoT Edge, which is described extending the intelligence and other benefits of cloud computing to edge devices. It also announced extensions to Microsoft Graph, which would combine information from work with device insights and contextual awareness. For developers, the company introduced Azure Cosmos DB, which is built from the ground up to power planet-scale cloud services and data-intensive applications ranging from IoT to AI. Microsoft says that it is the industrys first globally distributed, multi-model database service to deliver horizontal scale with guaranteed uptime, throughput, consistency and single-digit millisecond latency at the 99th percentile The company also unveiled new MySQL and PostgreSQL-managed services, which join Azure SQL Database and offer developers more choice and flexibility. Further, the company showcased an early preview of the companys new database migration services which are aimed at allowing Oracle and SQL Server customers to easily move their data and modernise their apps faster. The Azure SQL Database has been improved. The company has unveiled a new Managed Instance private preview, which offers SQL Server instance-level compatibility and makes it easier for organisations to migrate from existing SQL Server apps to Azure SQL Database. It also announced the general availability of Threat Detection and a preview of Graph support. Microsoft announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2017 for Mac, which would allow developers to work across Windows and Mac environments with support for mobile, web and cloud workloads. There are also previews of Docker tools, Azure Functions, and Xamarin.IoT support. Further, the company announced support for containers of nearly every type on every platform along with general availability of Windows Server Containers support in Azure Service Fabric with Visual Studio tooling as well as a preview of the ability to use Docker Compose support Service Fabric. The company unveiled its plans to help developers connect with Office 365 customers. The company says that now any developer can publish for Microsoft Teams and that apps in Teams will soon become more discoverable to end users via a new app experience. Developers will be able to add new capabilities to Teams app like third-party notifications, compose extensions and actionable messages. The company will make its new Microsoft Graph APIs available to developers. These APIs will include SharePoint and Planner. The company says that developers and ISVs who host their production SaaS applications on Microsoft Azure and sign up through the Azure website can now have data from their apps and workflow automatically extended to authorised Office 365 customers through their standard connector for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. Microsoft also highlighted its plans to bring AI to developers. The company has added 29 new cognitive services for developers, with unique customisation options. These new services include Bing Custom Search, Custom Vision Service, Custom Decision Service and Video Indexer. Microsoft launched a new Cognitive Services Labs, which are aimed at enabling developers to experiment with new services like Gesture API. The company says that developers can now write cards using new adaptive cards supported by the Microsoft Bot Framework. This will allow developers to publish to new channels like Bing and Cortana. Microsoft also announced a new Azure Batch AI Training which is available in private preview only. This will allow developers and data scientists to configure an environment with parameters and run their models against multiple CPUs, multiple GPUs and eventually field-programmable gate arrays. Besides showcasing Harman Kardons new Invoke intelligent speaker that comes with Cortana. Microsoft also signed partnerships with HP and Intel for devices and reference platforms respectively. The aim is to deliver more Cortana-enabled devices. 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 SALEM, Ore. (AP) The Oregon State Land Board has ditched its plan to sell the Elliott State Forest, deciding to keep it in public hands and ordering the Department of State Lands to examine suggested options, including selling it to Oregon State University as a research forest while allowing timber harvesting, public access and protection of endangered species. Supporters of a drive to keep Oregon's oldest state forest in public hands cheered Tuesday after the board, composed of the governor, secretary of state and state treasurer, made the unanimous decision. . . . The Bonagee Link, which is seen as an essential element in solving Letterkennys traffic problems, could be long as 15 years away, it has been claimed. The claim came after a meeting between local councilors, council engineers, gardai and representatives from Transport Infrastructure Ireland in Letterkenny on Tuesday. Mayor of the Letterkenny Municipal District, Cllr James Pat McDaid, pictured, called for a further meeting with Oireachtas members and council officials to help to secure funding for projects to deal with the traffic problems in the town. Cllr Liam Blaney welcomed the meeting which he said dealt with short term solutions to the problems. He said a council engineer put the best case scenario for the completion of the Bonagee link at eight to 15 years. If an engineer said that I would put it at 15 years and it is very disappointing to hear that, he said. Cllr McDaid said councillors need to highlight the issue as it is beyond a joke. It is beyond a joke at this stage the pressure that Letterkenny is under with the traffic and we are coming now into tourist season and the rally, he said. We have to get the ball rolling and I am very disappointed that our own minister is not delivering in the area, and he is delivering in other parts of the county, he said. We are crying out for funding and we need to work together to get funding to ensure ensure that traffic is flowing more freely. This weekend sees the return of a unique international Donegal photography festival that celebrates imagery and and visual creations made in rural areas. The second edition of the Remote Photo Festival takes place in a number of locations including Letterkennys Regional Cultural Centre and County Museum, as well as the Nerve Centre in Derry, over this Friday and Saturday, May 12 and 13. A diverse range of works will be on display over the weekend, as well as a host of workshops, events, screenings and competitions. Remote Photo is a festival dedicated to photographers creating work in a remote or rural context. Festival founder, photographer Paul McGuckian, says that the inspiration to found the festival isto invite those interested in photography to come and explore Donegal. He explains: There is a lot of events on over the weekend and we have something for everyone. We try and add something more to the actual landscape here and get people to come and get an experience of Donegal, he stated. He says that the first event took place in 2015 and this is the second edition of it and he is seeking to bring an experience similar to a music festival to the area and help it stand out from other international photography festivals that are almost exclusively held in cities and urban areas. We are trying to get the music festival feel and help form communities of those attending over the weekend, Paul added. On Friday with: Ulster University MFA Group Exhibition and panel discussion in the Regional Cultural Centre (RCC), followed by a talk from award winning landscape photographer, Gareth McCormack. This is followed by discussion called Remote Control: Unpicking the myth of the gallery as gatekeeper. Or not chaired by Curator of the Gallery of Photography in Dublin, Trish Lambe. On Saturday the RCC will host a day long seminar with Gareth McCormack. At 10.30am a panel of artists are set to discuss Is the photobook the new vinyl? At 3pm in the County Museum there will be the opening of the Remote Photo Single Image Competition exhibition and a free screening of the documentary Glass Mountain: the Story of Muckish Sand including a discussion with the filmmakers At 7pm in the RCC sees Time for Tea. Official Openings a finale event to celebrate how Ireland and China come together over a cup of te to share stories and history. It involves a tour of two exhibitions including Seamus Murphys Republic and Kurt Tongs The Queen, The Chairman and I, followed by a traditional Chinese tea making ceremony and authentic Chinese food. See http://remotephotofestival.com for booking information. X At first blush, the plight of Desiree Fairooz, a retired librarian from Virginia, sounds chilling and draconian. An opponent of the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general, Fairooz was in attendance at the confirmation hearing. She laughed out loud when Sen. Richard Shelby characterized the then-junior Senator from Alabama as having a well documented and extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law. Fairooz was removed from the chamber, charged and convicted of two misdemeanors: disorderly conduct; and parading or demonstrating on capitol grounds. The right of protest is a hallmark of American democracy. There are those who want to promote the idea that a sardonic laugh at a public official could result in prosecution and possible jail time with the hope of conjuring images of a bleak, iron-fisted regime, not a free society. However, thats not the full picture. While Fairooz is a retired librarian, shes also a seasoned protestor. A cursory Internet search turns up a striking decade-old image of Fairooz yelling war criminal! and waving bloodied hands in the face of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2007. She is a member of Code Pink, an advocacy group, and joined other Code Pink protestors in the chamber with placards to protest Sessions confirmation. They wore pink outfits reminiscent of the garb of the Statue of Liberty. According to reports, two other protestors, men dressed in robes meant to invoke the image of Klansmen, had already been ejected for being disruptive. After Fairooz laughed out loud, an officer asked her to leave. When she did not, other officers came to usher her out. Following her conviction, jurors said the decision to convict had more to do with her disruptive behavior after the laugh than the laugh itself. Fairooz and others ejected from the chamber that day violated the decorum and sanctity of the proceeding. From our perspective, free speech is not under fire, and the conviction of Desiree Fairooz has more to do with how she protested than whom she protested. Mid-sized sedans are hardly the flavour of the month right now, with the SUV phenomenon taking the world by storm instead. But for a while there, the medium sedan was enjoying a bit of a resurgence with newcomers like the Mazda6 and Ford Mondeo joining the established sellers such as the Honda Accord Euro, Subaru Liberty and, of course, the Toyota Camry. So it wasn't too strange when, in 2007, Dodge joined the party Down Under with the Avenger model. Sharing the same platform as the Chrysler Sebring, the Avenger was, if anything, a tiny bit bigger than most of the cars it was selling against. But even better than that was the fact that it was quite a tough looking car. For those who know their latter-day American performance sedans, there was actually a bit of Dodge Charger in the overall four-door form and some of the design cues such as the distinct hip-line and the big, bold grille. But if the looks said compact muscle-car, the underbonnet picture revealed it to be all smoke and mirrors. When launched in 2007, the Avenger was only available with a four-cylinder engine. A choice of two, to be precise, but neither of which caused much of a stirring in the minds (or anywhere else) of performance-car enthusiasts. Photo: Ted Reed The entry-level engine was a two-litre unit with just 115kW at its disposal, while the 2.4-litre version had 125kW. Neither was particularly smooth or entertaining to use, and here's where it gets really weird: The 2.0-litre could only be had with a manual gearbox while the 2.4 was auto-only. And the automatic was a stodgy old four-speed unit when it really should have been a five or six-speed (as was the case in the opposition). If you really must have an Avenger, then the ones to have are the turbo diesel with a six-speed automatic or the V6 petrol with 2.7-litres and a similar, six-speed, transmission. The catch is, you'll be lucky to find either as by the time they rolled into showrooms in 2008, the Aussie car-buying population had more or less written the Avenger off as a dud joke. Most Avengers in second-hand car yards right now, then, are fitted with the 2.4-litre engine and its flaky old four-speed automatic. One thing Dodge got kind of right with the Avenger was some clever additions in the form of convenience gear. The North Americans are very good at this stuff, and the chilled glove-box, decent stereo and even a heated and cooled centre-console cup-holder shows attention to detail. Even so, the Avenger has to go down as a fair old flop here in Australia and there are a variety of reasons for that. Mainly, it just never hit the right note with Aussie buyers who were starting to embrace the SUV movement anyway. Arguably, the Dodge helped in that process. Fundamentally, the Avenger was simply too American to work here, and that's really a function of the priorities that the North Americans place on car design and execution. You see, in the USA marketplace, there's no real objection to front-wheel-drive. And while it's true that many sectors of the market here have accepted front-drive technology just as strongly, when a car looks like a mid-sized muscle car, then some expect it to be rear-drive. But that was hardly the Avenger's biggest problem. No, that would be the fact that American buyers are really not fussy when it comes to fit and finish. Externally, the Dodge wasn't too bad, but inside, where Japanese and now South Korean makers pay particular attention to the look, feel and fit of all those plastic parts, the Dodge looked like it had been thrown together from the next suburb. The plastic looked super-cheap, the gaps didn't line up and the graphics (and fake chrome) were seriously off the pace. Residents of Fossmark in Norway were both amused and confused by a group of tourists who came to their place when they were looking for the Preikestolen cliffs which are 19 miles away. The culprit was Google Maps which directed the foreign visitors to a small, idyllic town rather than a geological formation in western Norway. The tourists consulted Google Maps to find a route going to the Preikestolen cliffs. But a technical glitch led the visitors to the other side of the fjord from the cliffs, The Next Web reports. They were told to use the Lysefjord bridge that brought them to Fossmork instead. The road to Fossmork was narrow. When told by locals that it was not the Preikestolen cliffs and they must turn back, some of the Chinese and Japanese tourists were upset after they discovered they were in the wrong side of the fjord because of the Google Maps glitch. However, an American tourist found Fossmork fantastic and even wanted to purchase a cabin he saw. The Purple Rock, as Preikestolen is known, is 604 meters over the Lysefjord. Lonely Planet and CNN Go has named the Pulpit Rock one of the most scenic views in the world. But the tourists were deprived of an opportunity to go to the cliffs and take selfies because of the Google Maps error, Sputnik News reports. Due to the confusion caused by the glitch of Google Maps, it is not just Fossmark which gets confused and lost visitors but also Gunnar Bo, its neighboring town. Roy Jarle Johansen, from the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, says the agency would probe what happened. He adds something must be done to point tourists to the cliffs, but not signs since people often trust Google more than signs. The real Preikestolen is a 30-minute drive away from Lysefjord. It is not the first time that Google Maps sent tourists the wrong way. In 2012, after the service was launched, tourists in search of a New Jersey state park ended up in the driveway of a harassed homeowner. Jason Neary from Dundalk, and ten of his colleagues from the Irish army - all based out of Gormanstown Camp in County Meath are undertaking a 80km cross country hike through Connemara on May 29th to raise funds for the Stroke Unit in Beaumont Hospital. In 2011, Jason suffered a stroke at age twenty seven, and spent several weeks in the care of the Stroke Unit at Beaumont Hospital. Six years on, and Jason has made a full recovery from his stroke and is once again fit for action! He and his fellow soldiers want to support the Stroke Unit following Jasons experience and have devised this challenge which will see them set off at midday and hike through the night to complete their challenge while carrying 40kg packs. Speaking about their plans, Jason says, We will set out from Maum Village at midday and the plan is that we finish at Croagh Patrick some fifteen hours later. The lads and I have been training hard for the challenge and are confident that we can complete the distance in this time. Our real objective will be to raise as much funds as we can for the Stroke Unit in Beaumont Hospital where I was looked after so well. If you would like to sponsor them you can you can donate online at www.idonate.ie/80khike or call Beaumont Hospital Foundation on 01 809 2161 to make a donation by phone or see www.beaumontfundraising.ie. Sinn Fein Louth TD Gerry Adams has raised his concerns in the Dail with the Taoiseach about the spiralling cost of rents. Louth has seen the highest quarterly rent increase in Leinster in the last year of 4.3% and a year on year increase of 13.3%. Teachta Adams said: In its snapshot of rents Louth performs very badly in comparison with other counties. A single bedroom apartment now costs 700. This is an annual increase of 20.9%. A three bed house costs an average of 977 a month. This is a 17.9% increase. And this trend is sustained across all sizes of accommodation. "The reality is that under this government average rents have soared to a new record high. Rents are rising while supply remains at an all-time low. There are only 3,084 properties available to rent today across the entire state. "The introduction of rent pressure zones last December was supposed to restrain rents and limit annual increases. This lacklustre attempt at cooling the rental market is not working. It is creating a two tier rental sector and struggling renters are caught in the middle. That is what the government, with the support of Fianna Fail, has delivered. "All the while, more than 91,000 families are on local authority housing lists. 4,875 adults and 2,546 children are in emergency accommodation and five families a day are losing their homes. Behind the statistics there is real human suffering. "Currently I am trying to help a pregnant mother, whose current accommodation will not be suitable after her baby is born, and is desperately seeking more suitable affordable accommodation. So far to no avail. She has two other children and she is on the housing list seven years. "I am also advocating for another citizen with two children. She is living at home with her parents and sister in a three-bedroom house. She is sharing a small bedroom with her two children. She is on the housing list since 2013. She is in this situation because there is no suitable accommodation to rent. "This is a direct result of the governments housing policies. When the state stops building social housing, it forces everyone into the private rental sector. Increased demand and a refusal to embrace rent certainty is a guarantee of runaway rents. "The cross party Dail housing and homeless committee recommended the state provide 10,000 real social housing units annually. Last year the government delivered less than half of that. The cross party Dail housing and homeless committee recommended real rent certainty, linking rents to an index such as the Consumer Pay Index. The government rejected that also. The committee also recommended a moratorium on home repossessions. The government ignored that also. "If the government is serious about tackling the housing and homeless crisis it needs to provide for rent certainty. The Minister also needs to introduce the Focus Ireland amendment to stop the flow of rental properties from the markets and stop renting families being pushed into homelessness. By any stretch of the imagination this is a national emergency. But not for this government. Its housing policy is a national disgrace. The Minister of State for Tourism and Sport Patrick ODonovan has announced 400k in funding from Failte Irelands Capital Grants Allocation for 2017 to the Office of Public Works (OPW) for the development of King John's Castle in Carlingford, a key project within Irelands Ancient East. Todays investment seeks to boost the castles visitor experience and appeal to tourists. In addition the project includes the provision of performance infrastructure which will allow for the castle to be used as a setting for cultural events providing an ideal platform for arts events against the dramatic backdrop of Carlingford Lough and the Cooley Mountains. Speaking today, Minister of State ODonovan said - I am delighted to announce this grant today as a serious boost to the development of Irelands Ancient East in the north east. While the new brand, is gaining traction both domestically and internationally, it is crucial that the brands appeal is matched by visitor experiences on the ground hence, investment such as this is vitally important. Todays funding is the latest part of a significant 1.2 million refurbishment project carried out by the OPW at King John's Castle in Carlingford. The project seeks to enhance the castle with better internal access, attractive landscaping and improved visitor facilities including information and interpretation. Todays grant focuses on bringing the castle experience to life. Welcoming the news, Sean Canney, Minister for the Office of Public Works and Flood Relief said "I am delighted that Failte Ireland has invested in King John's Castle in Carlingford. It is a wonderful project that will enable visitors to enter the interior of the Castle for the first time, thereby, increasing tourism potential in the beautiful medieval town of Carlingford. The funding under the Tourism Investment Programme will allow the story of the history of this 12th Century Castle to be brought to the visitor and will provide a platform for a range of events, creating an ideal location to begin your exploration of Ireland's Ancient East." Stressing the importance of capital funding for the ongoing evolution of Irelands Ancient East, Failte Irelands Jenny de Saulles said - We have an abundance of great stories to tell in the north east but we must also ensure that we have the top class tourism infrastructure, facilities and interpretation to match them. Todays grant will help ensure that. Storytelling is vital in making the connection with visitors and while we have the assets, we still need to bring them to life. A signature theme within the Irelands Ancient East brand is Castles and Conquests and this funding will allow us to develop the visitor experience in Carlingford to bring this historic castle to life and to animate the history that lies within its walls. Businesses with an annual turnover of up to $10 million will benefit from the $20,000 instant asset tax write-off scheme for a further 12 months, the Government announced in the Federal Budget. The extension has generally been welcomed, although there have been calls to make the measure permanent and increase the write-off threshold to benefit more businesses. Originally set to conclude at the end of 30 June 2017, the scheme allows small businesses to immediately deduct assets costing less than $20,000, instead of claiming deductions over numerous years. It is on a per asset basis allowing multiple claims for assets costing less than $20,000 to be deducted. Tim Reed, the CEO of accounting software provider MYOB, described the governments decision as welcome news for SMEs, explaining that it would encourage business growth. However, he said the Government should go one step further in next years budget and make the scheme permanent. Kate Carnell, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO), also welcomed the extension of scheme; however, she said her office would have liked a lift in the $20,000 threshold for the instant asset write-off because for some industries, like farming, the $20,000 threshold is too low to enable them to purchase equipment. Referring to decision to maintain the write-off threshold at $20,000 for another year, Andrew Conway, CEO of the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA), said common sense has prevailed. He continued, The increase in the accelerated depreciation write-off threshold to $20,000 has been of great assistance to small business cash flow. The reversion to $1,000 would have had a negative impact on the broader economy as the incentive for small businesses to reinvest in their future would be taken away; restricting potential growth, employment and prosperity. Small businesses Australia-wide should be very pleased with this outcome; it brings an injection of economic growth, giving small businesses the confidence to buy new equipment, reinvest in their operations and grow. Echoing the sentiment of MYOB CEO Tim Reed, Conway said the higher instant asset write-off should be a permanent feature of our tax system going forward. Rob Hango-Zada, co-founder and co-CEO of logistics start-up Shippit.com said the continuation of $20,000 instant asset write-off is great for conventional SMBs that are at the stage of turning a profit but less so for tech start-ups, which are inherently capital heavy to establish with most running at a loss for the first 2 years through the establishment phase. He continued, Given that new age SMBs or startup businesses would lack the P&L characteristics to benefit from the write off, what more is being done around innovation grants / funds to help finance innovation in tech. Or alternatively is this being driven by tax breaks for investors as per the Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnerships (ESVCLP) initiative? Hango-Zadas assessment was in line with that of Michael Jankie, chief executive of social Wi-Fi start-up PoweredLocal. Jankie said the extension of the $20,000 instant asset write off is a big deal for traditional small business, less so for tech-sector and research and development type companies. Government to spend $300m worth on red tape cuts In addition to the extension of the $20,000 instant asset write-off scheme, other Federal Budget measures with implications for small businesses include a $300 million incentive to the States and Territories to cut red tape, according to Small Business Minister Michael McCormack The Government will provide up to $300 million over two years to States and Territories through the National Partnership on Regulatory Reform to reduce regulatory burdens and remove unnecessary restrictions on competition, Small Business Minister Michael McCormack explained. Whilst the Federal Government has delivered red tape reduction and simpler paperwork especially the simpler BAS, which begins from 1 July I want to work with the States and Territories to continue this good work, Mr McCormack said. Across Australia I have heard similar stories of how compliance costs can prevent small businesses from investing in themselves or spending time with family and friends. This $300 million incentive over two years will help us work with the States and Territories to make the business of doing business even simpler. According to David Spurritt, Executive Director Taxation Consultant, Bentleys SA, while a reduction in compliance costs is a key priority in terms of what small businesses want, he was curious as to how the $300 million would actually translate to benefits for SMEs. He added, The Federal Government has delivered a Budget with some wins for small to medium businesses but aside from the extension of the $20,000 write-off scheme, there isnt a lot there for SMEs. Businesses that employ foreign workers will be subject to a new levy that will be used bankroll a fund for training Australian job seekers, the Government announced in the Federal Budget. From March 2018, businesses will be subject to a levy of $1200 per foreign worker or $1800 if theyre on a temporary skilled visa. In addition, there will be a $3,000 one-off levy for foreign workers on certain permanent skilled visas. This one-off levy rises to $5000 if a businesss turnover exceeds $10 million. With the introduction of the new levy, the government is seeking to raise between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion, over a four-year period, for its new Commonwealth-State Skilling Australians Fund. It expects the Fund, when matched with State and Territory funding, will support up to 300,000 apprentices, trainees, pre-apprentices and higher level skilled Australians. In a statement addressing the new levy, Treasurer Scott Morrison said the goal was ensuring at Australians come first for Australian jobs and that businesses become less reliant on foreign workers in the future Dynamic Business received comment on the new levy from several businesses, including tech start-ups, with the operator of one describing it as a real Homer Simpson dohhhh moment. Jeff McAlister, CEO of ticket platform TryBooking: We have long claimed that we could not hire enough local workers to grow our business. Also, we were unable to meet the training requirements for 457 sponsorship. It is good to hear that this will be replaced with a $1,200 levy per foreign worker per year. This will help us grow our local workforce and global business aspirations. Michael Jankie, chief executive of social WiFi start-up PoweredLocal: Foreign worker levies seem like pure politicking, but it makes the visa issue seem like it will go the right direction, allowing Australian companies to attract great people to our shores. Well just have to pay a fee (fine) to do it. Luke Taylor, managing director of digital marketing firm Mpire: Creating a fine which appears to support apprenticeships will do nothing in terms of helping grow the kinds of skills that we need to develop technology talent in Australia. For us this fine is a wasted cost, we are still a young company and are frugal about wherever we spend our money and this is essentially charging us for being unable to access local talent. Like many startups, our fast growth trajectory means we just cant afford to wait to train and hiring from overseas remains essential to our growth. Tony Wu, Head of Growth at on-demand recruitment platform Weploy: This policy will make it harder for the businesses who desperately need skilled staff to hire. It sends a message that Australia does not value the skills of foreign workers. Weploy will pay the levy either way because we need to be able to hire skilled foreign workers (alongside local Weployees) so we can provide the best talent available to our clients. Its just an unnecessary tax that will not be beneficial to many businesses including our own. This years Federal Budget is notable for its lack of focus on start-ups, innovation and entrepreneurship, according to Alex McCauley, CEO of Australias peak advocacy group, StartupAus. That will certainly cause some frustration, because the Government has done a lot to build expectations that it is committed to making Australia one of the best countries in the world for innovators, McCauley said in a statement. In his budget speech last year, on the back of the launch of the Governments laudable National Innovation and Science Agenda, Treasurer, the Hon. Scott Morrison, said that harnessing the power of innovation and entrepreneurship, to create our own ideas boom, lies at the heart of our plan to support jobs and create growth. In this years speech, entrepreneurs were not mentioned. Start-ups seem to have dropped off the radar. Technology will play a big role in delivering economic value around the world in coming years in order for Australia to benefit we must maintain a strong commitment to supporting the development of young, high-growth, innovative Australian businesses. Echoing McCauleys comments, Anna Rooke, CEO of QUT Creative Enterprise Australia, said the budget had diluted down the Federal Governments ideas boom rhetoric, which had included a focus on innovation and start-ups. She continued, Its disappointing, but this is a budget built around traditional skills and traditional industries like housing and transport infrastructure. We need a plan that focuses on enabling our startups to compete globally, and that empowers companies to capitalise creative industries contributes which contributes $90 billion to the Australian economy. Dynamic Business heard from several businesses, expressing disappointment in the lack of budgetary measures to support innovation. Stuart Richardson, co-founder of co-working space York Butter Factory: A balanced, responsible budget with the delivery of a surplus in 2021 they say. Just like short-termism is hurting our corporate sector, so will a shallow focus on jobs and short-term growth, at the cost of sustainable high-value jobs created by changing industries to be globally competitive. We need to create jobs for the next generation and to maintain competitiveness on a global stage. This can only be achieved through the creation and stimulation of innovation precincts which create density of industry focussed innovation. It appears the innovation agenda has been forgotten in this budget. When it comes to R&D, its disappointing to see nearly nothing has been done to address the fact Australia is research heavy and commercialisation light. Lagging dead last in the OECD for commercialisation is surely impetus enough to drive action and intervention. Unfortunately, those with entrepreneurial drive and innovative zeal, those who shape and support the future of the economy have been given little by this budget at a critical juncture when we can least afford to kick innovation to the side. Mike Pritchett, CEO and Co-founder of video production company Shootsta: It is a disappointment there is no push for extra funding or anything to do with startups, which is a massive oversight. Once again, the innovation hype has been all talk. It was pushed and pushed as being so important, and it hasnt been reflected in the budget. If you compare Australias attitude towards startups as compared to the rest of the world, its typical. Its just a joke. Karen Taylor-Brown, CEO and Co-founder of publishing company Refraction Media: Its disappointing that after all the energy and the excitement of NISA in December 2015 (National Science and Innovation Agenda), this budget has completely shied away from the future skills-conversation. Weve seen in the US how technology and innovation became a political pariah, but I expected more from a Turnbull government, especially with the Prime Minister made his money in the heady dotcom boom days of the 90s. Its expected that 44% of jobs are at high risk of being affected by computerisation and technology in less than 20 years, and yet our children are still not required to learn computational thinking in schools. Industries based on technology will be the major employers of our future and I worry that not only our children, but more immediately, and our existing workers dont have access to the skills to help them succeed in a digital future. Michael Jankie, chief executive of social Wi-Fi start-up PoweredLocal: Im disappointed that this is a budget that is more about safe politics than forward thinking policy that will promote growth and development. Tax breaks for first home buyer deposit only adds demand on housing and pushes up pricing, it doesnt solve the real affordability issue and any benefits will be wiped out before someone saves for a deposit. In an Australian startup we see the real side effects of this, investors are more than ever flocking to property and not to backing companies. We recently had an investor tell us that they would rather invest $500,000 in a couple of developments to see a $5 million return than put $500,000 into a startup, even if it was likely to get a 10x return. It shows that the property is generating too higher gains and that is and for the rest of the economy. Tony Wu, Head of Growth at on-demand recruitment platform Weploy: Hiking up taxes to recoup costs may seem like a good short term solution however the Budget lacks investment into future. Tech is the future. If you neglect that, youre not motivating people to innovate. Small businesses tax breaks are nice, but that mainly targets mum and dad SMBs. If we want to create businesses of global scale, global reach and solve global problems, we need to create much stronger policies to support this. This Budget shows how much tech is talked about but not properly backed up. We need more action, and action means cash. Bane Hunter, Executive Chairman at logistics management platform, GetSwift: What is disappointing is that there has been no mention of the further government innovation agenda. For businesses like ours, it all comes down to what is happening with R&D in Australia as well as the plans for corporate tax rate changes. President Donald Trump has already mentioned that he will lower the corporate tax rate in the US. If this happens and Australia doesnt follow suit, we will see a range of Australias companies jump ship to be further incentivised by the US government. Its unclear why the gov has not addressed this concern or the potential of lowering our own tax rate to follow suit. Clinical study highlights savings worries risk to mental health As the nation continues to open up on mental health issues, research released today as part of Mental Health Awareness Week (8-14 May 2017) by Scottish Widows shows that one in six of us has suffered psychological problems as a result of money concerns. Nearly half (49%) say financial worries regularly impact their personal relationships and affect their ability to sleep (54%), with one in ten (11%) having their sleep hampered nightly. A further 30% of the 5,000 people polled said they get stressed just thinking about their financial situation in retirement, yet only 56%[1] of the population is saving enough for a comfortable retirement. To further probe the findings, Scottish Widows commissioned a clinical study that suggests those people who are not saving enough for retirement feel it is too abstract or distant in the future to take action. The Scottish Widows study, Mindful Retirement, is part of its annual Retirement Report research andprovides a unique illustration of the nations psychological and financial preparedness for later life. The clinical experiment was designed by behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings and involved observation of 54 men and women aged between 35 and 45 from across the UK as they watched films illustrating two opposing retirement situations. The first film painted a happy picture of retirement while the second film drove home the financial hardship and unhappiness of poverty in later life. Wired up to oximeters that measured their pulse rates, the scientists monitored signs of relaxation and stress, including facial movements and body language. The group was then asked to share their feelings and whether the videos would make them revise their retirement savings. An overwhelming majority of participants demonstrated clear signs of stress, including body twitching, uncomfortable fidgeting, crying and increased pulse rates, while watching the video highlighting the effects of not having adequate money for retirement. Over three quarters (78%) said that the video had made them worried about how much they were saving towards retirement and their own financial prospects later in life. But what was most surprising was that it took just 3.5 minutes of footage to make 90% of participants say they would review how much they are saving towards retirement. On average, the impact of the video resulted in participants pledging to increase their monthly pension contributions by an average of between 2-5%. The experiments scientific lead, Jo Hemmings, explains: We were surprised that such a high proportion of participants said they would save more money towards their retirement after watching a mere three minutes of film. This kind of situation suggests that prior to the experiment the vast majority of participants had given little or no consideration to the financial reality of their retirement. Yet the stress they demonstrated showed that they did identify with aspects of the film they watched, and this created fear that it would become their reality unless they took action to do something about it. Denial of a situation that feels too distant in the future can create a false sense of security that prevents people taking action to resolve it. This is certainly true of retirement planning. The purpose of putting money away for a distant older life can feel too abstract and unreal in younger life and can therefore be ignored. But this study shows that the smallest injection of reality, in this case a short video, can change peoples priorities and mind-set. David Holton, retirement expert at Scottish Widows added: The link between every day money worries and mental health is well known. What is less well known is the extent to which longer term retirement savings, and engagement with their associated issues, contribute to the nations mental health. Whats clear is that when people are forced to consider the reality of retirement they do recognise the need to be more prepared and are willing to put more money aside. This study shows that more needs to be done to help the UK face up to the reality of retirement and to save more money as early as they possibly can. Cindy Brown, a 42 year old who lives in London and took part in the study certainly agrees: I became teary watching the second video as I realised that this is an actual reality. When you become faced with certain possibilities it makes you think differently, so Ill definitely start saving more towards my retirement now. Read the speech delivered at the EBRD 2017 Annual Meeting The EBRD is a strong and successful bank which has consistently delivered results that benefit the economies and people of the countries it supports, EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti said on Wednesday. He was speaking at the opening session of the Board of Governors at the Banks Annual Meeting in Cyprus where the EBRD has been investing since 2014. Only a truly strong and successful Bank could point to our achievements in Cyprus in the short period we have been active here, the EBRD President said. Only a truly strong and successful Bank could point to the impact we have had across all the countries where we work, both last year and in the quarter of a century which preceded it. Sir Suma also outlined a clear vision for the Banks future: To deliver yet more impact, to enhance our financial sustainability and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of everything we do. The results of work to achieve these goals are there for all to see. In 2016, the EBRD produced another set of record investments, providing finance as in 2015 of 9.4 billion in projects that made a strong contribution to progress towards the development of effective market economies. This EBRD was aiming for even greater impact with the adoption of a set of investment criteria that ensure EBRD projects help economies become not only more competitive, but also better governed, greener, more inclusive, more resilient and more integrated. These are the six transition qualities the EBRD believes best help to equip the economies of its regions to address the challenges of the 21st century. Sir Suma told the Governors, who represent the EBRDs 67 shareholders, that the Bank was determined to maintain its considerable financial strength, a prerequisite of delivering transition impact. Indeed, our net profit of 1 billion last year, some 25 per cent up on 2015, is proof of our strength in this area. And this pleasing trend continues with our profits rising even more sharply in the first quarter of 2017, he said. In this context he noted that all major international rating agencies had consistently and repeatedly reaffirmed the EBRDs triple-A rating with a stable outlook. I am proud of this achievement and determined to safeguard it, he said. Sir Suma also stressed that the Bank was working to deliver its support in as effective and efficient a manner as possible. We are focused on both the effective delivery of our mission, making sure we spend our time on achieving greater transition impact, and the efficiency of our work, streamlining and simplifying as much as we can, he said. The President said the EBRDs unique business model, with its focus on the private sector, was particularly well placed to support the Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted worldwide in 2015 as a blueprint for global development up until 2030. The EBRD was able to help specifically in the mobilisation of much-needed private finance. And it was open and eager to share our business model, approaches and lessons learned with other multilateral development banks. As the development finance landscape continues to change, so do the needs and ambitions of recipient countries. I strongly believe that the multilateral development bank system must also evolve, he said. EBRD to invest in West Bank and Gaza The EBRD Board of Governors has approved the engagement of the EBRD in the West Bank and Gaza for an initial period of five years to support the development of the economy with investments through a trust fund. The West Bank and Gaza are in the EBRDs southern and eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) region, which also includes Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, where the EBRD has been investing since 2012 and engaged in policy dialogue. To date, the Bank has provided some 4.8 billion to these four countries alone in the form of loans and equity. Eighty per cent of these investments are in the private sector. EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti welcomed the decision to extend the Banks activities to the West Bank and Gaza, saying: The EBRD can make an important contribution to the economy alongside other international financial institutions and donors. Building on the strong entrepreneurial tradition our goal is to strengthen the private sector. Operating in the West Bank and Gaza from the EBRD office in Amman, the Bank will provide support for private sector competitiveness and innovation, increasing access to finance for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, fostering a sustainable supply of energy and promoting private sector participation in energy efficiency and infrastructure. Azzam Shawa, Governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, said: We welcome the EBRDs engagement in West Bank and Gaza. The Banks financing model and policy advice could provide valuable support for private entrepreneurship and market-oriented transition in the West Bank and Gaza. To date, the Bank has invested some 4.8 billion in 120 projects across the SEMED region in natural resources, financial institutions, agribusiness, manufacturing and services as well as infrastructure projects such as power, municipal water and wastewater and upgrading transport services . The EBRD was established in 1991 with the goal of supporting market economies and promoting the private sector. Having started in central and eastern Europe, today the Bank operates on three continents and in 36 countries, from Morocco to Mongolia and from Estonia to Egypt. This guest blog comes to us from Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros. I see the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, as a great opportunity for scientific developments, and a unique opportunity for scientists and the public to work together to make awesome discoveries. Just knowing approximately how many people will see this event and that in many ways each member of the public will be a scientist (at least for a day) fills me with energy. Thats why Im honored to be part of the Eclipse Megamovie Project This first-of-its-kind citizen science project will produce a high definition, time-expanded video of the August eclipse whose zone of totality will cross North America from Oregon to South Carolina. The video will be pieced together from images collected by over 1,000 carefully selected volunteers at various points along the eclipse path. This expanded coverage will provide continuous datasets that far exceed what any one person could capture from a single location, where the longest duration of totality possible would be under three minutes. The Eclipse Megamovie, by contrast, will be closer to 93 minutes long, or the time it takes for the Moon's shadow to cross the U.S. The project will add a new dimension to our studies of the Suns faint outer atmosphere the corona and potentially help us understand more about the size and inner workings of the Sun. The Megamovie will also be freely available to scientists and educators, as well as anyone who would like mementos of the 2017 total solar eclipse. As is usual for any observational campaign, testing the equipment is one of the most important steps. I was thus asked to go to the Argentinean Patagonia for the annular solar eclipse that occurred on February 26, 2017, to test some of our ideas for equipment that our project volunteers might consider using in addition to their own cameras, tripods, etc., for the August 21st eclipse. This optional equipment includes a customized Raspberry Pi circuit board for helping one determine their correct GPS coordinates, as well as certain special camera lens filters. This was a long trip starting in Berkeley, with a short stop in sunny Bogota, Colombia, my original hometown, for some preparation. After four days of tuning and a bit of redesign with the help of the students and professors at the National Astronomical Observatory in Bogota, I was ready to fly to Buenos Aires. The flight to Buenos Aires was very nice on a clean and comfortable Airbus 330. I managed to watch at least five movies during the flight. I landed in Buenos Aires at about 1 a.m. local time and discovered that I had forgotten my SD card, without which my Raspberry Pi experiment would not work. So I ran to the airport store and bought one. It was a long day, but the gods must not have been happy, because they made me wait for another two and half hours for a taxi! I slept for a few hours in a hotel and fixed my Raspberry Pi, but to get to the eclipse location, another shorter flight to the city of Comodoro Rivadavia, in the province of Chubut, was next on my schedule. I thus took an Uber to the domestic airport in Buenos Aires. My driver was very interested in astronomy and astrophysics and asked very good questions, which kept my enthusiasm level high. At 10am I was onboard a Boeing 737 that took me to Comodoro Rivadavia, a small city in the Argentinean Patagonia with an economy based on the oil industry. Quite a few people here reminded me that many of the planes and sorties to defend (or attack, depending on your point of view) the Malvinas Islands from the British forces took off from their city. I did some final testing in Comodoro, and after a short nights sleep, woke up at 5 a.m. on February 26 and drove my rental car to the village of Facundo. It took me about 4 hours to get there and was a real adventure given the terrain and that I had never driven a manual-transmission car before - what a ride! Following Provincial Road 43 (a dirt road) as suggested by Google Maps, I stopped about 20 minutes south of Facundo where I found other people getting ready to observe the eclipse. I set up my equipment, a Google Pixel with a 20x lens and a Raspberry Pi with a photo lens, and was ready to start my tests. The Pixel had a draft version of the Eclipse Megamovie Android app that I am helping to develop, so I could test the optical setup and app together. The Raspberry Pi setup was a more complicated system then I had envisioned, but in the end, everything worked as expected and I got some great eclipse photos. Not only was this eclipse observation test a success but also a fun adventure. I definitely felt a little like Indiana Jones going to these out of the way places and overcoming the obstacles I encountered. But in Facundo, other solar scientists invited me to a celebratory party and many people were very interested our Eclipse Megamovie Project. I came back to Comodoro Rivadavia after the eclipse and then took a plane back to Buenos Aires. I felt invigorated! The day was amazing with an eclipse in the morning and a beautiful sunset at night. Besides the results I obtained, I was also amazed by the curiosity of the people I met throughout the trip, and how they wanted answers to questions that are often not simple to explain. It was wonderful to see so many people embracing a natural phenomenon as their own, especially in Facundo. Though I am sure the August 2017 eclipse that is set to cross North America will equally demonstrate that this desire for knowledge is not exclusive to a small village in the middle of the Argentinean Patagonia. How to Join the Eclipse Megamovie Project Our aim is to recruit over 1,000 photographers with the appropriate equipment and skills* who will be on the path of totality on August 21, 2017. Team members receive training and submit a practice image before the eclipse. Once you qualify, you will receive a pin to designate your status as a member of the official Megamovie Photo Team. Your name will also be included in the credits of the final Eclipse Megamovie. If you want to participate, visit our website andto apply! Basic equipment and skills necessary for participating in the Eclipse Megamovie Project Camera: interchangeable lens digital camera (DSLR or mirrorless) Telephoto or zoom lens: minimum focal length of 300mm A stable and level tripod The ability to identify the GPS coordinates and time of your photographs to the nearest second About the Author Dr. Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros is a Colombian astronomer who currently works at the University of California, Berkeleys SPace Sciences Laboratory (SSL). In addition to joining SSLs Multiverse education team on the Eclipse Megamovie Project, Juan is also a scientist on NASA's Solar Probe Plus mission , studies type II and III solar radio bursts using radiometers onboard the NASA twin spacecraft STEREO A and B, and uses data from NASAs RHESSI and Solar Dynamics Observatory missions for his research on solar flare physics and the challenging problem of sunquake generation. East-West growth gap narrowing Economic growth is expected to pick up across the EBRD regions this year and next, supported by higher oil prices and Russias recovery from recession, according to the EBRDs latest Regional Economic Prospects report. On the back of developments in Russia and on the commodity markets, growth in eastern Europe and the Caucasus is also forecast to accelerate and activity in Central Asia is likely to stabilise at slightly higher levels. Turkey, however, is expected to see a slowdown in growth during 2017, partly reflecting security and geopolitical risks that have also led to a downward revision in EBRD forecasts for countries in the southern and eastern Mediterranean. On average, economic growth in the 36 EBRD countries of operations is seen rising to 2.4 per cent in 2017 and to 2.8 per cent in 2018, compared with expansion of 1.8 per cent last year. The latest forecasts reveal a narrowing of an East-West growth gap that has characterised the economies of the EBRD regions in recent years following a stronger upturn of growth in the East. Countries further east had previously suffered from weak commodity prices and the Russian downturn and countries to the west had benefited from the softer oil price and accommodative monetary policies in the eurozone. In those western regions, growth in central Europe and the Baltic states is now expected to accelerate slightly in 2017 to around 3 per cent following an investment-driven dip in 2016. It is projected to remain at the same level in 2018. In south-eastern Europe, average growth is also forecast to reach the 3 per cent mark. Greece is expected to return to growth as reforms advance further and business confidence gradually improves. The report says the latest forecasts are subject to major risks related to geopolitical tensions in and around the region, set against a backdrop of increased political uncertainty. The economic outlook for the region remains materially affected by terrorism, geopolitical tensions and the refugee crisis. Over the last six months Egypt, Jordan, Russia and Turkey saw several terrorist attacks while Syria remains in a humanitarian crisis. The outlook for China is also cited as a risk as the country seeks to rebalance its economy and any reversal of the recent oil price recovery would be a major source of risk to Russia and to the countries which with it has close economic links. The report also notes that capital flows to the EBRD regions were stronger than expected in the first months of 2017, despite the gradual tightening of monetary policy in the United States of America. This reflects the fact that the pace of monetary tightening is now slower than previously anticipated. As a result, the post-US-election depreciation of the regions currencies against the US dollar has been fully reversed in most countries, with the notable exception of Turkey where domestic factors have played an important role. Levels of non-performing loans remain elevated across many of the EBRD regions despite some improvements in south-eastern Europe. Russia After contracting by a total of around 3 per cent over the past two years, Russias economy is now expected to recover, underpinned by increasing oil prices. In 2017 and 2018 growth is forecast to pick up to 1.2 and 1.4 per cent, respectively, also supported by recovering private consumption and investment. The main risks for these projections come from oil price developments, a lack of business environment reforms supporting investment, and from geopolitical tensions and a continuation of sanctions. Without significant reforms, long-term growth will remain at around 1 to 2 per cent annually due to low investment, the report warns. Turkey The Turkish economy has slowed significantly since 2015, with growth halving to 2.9 per cent in 2016 due to a sharp fall in tourism receipts, to Russian sanctions, and to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Weak consumption and investment following the attempted military coup in July 2016 compounded these earlier problems. Growth is projected to moderate further to 2.6 per cent in 2017, reflecting worsening investor sentiment compounded by the downgrade of Turkeys sovereign rating to sub-investment-grade level. A pick-up to 3 per cent is expected in 2018. In the southern and eastern Mediterranean region (SEMED), projected growth in 2017 has been revised downwards slightly, to 3.7 per cent, owing to a worse-than-expected performance across all the countries of the region, but with national variations. Average growth in SEMED is expected to reach 4.1 per cent in 2018, on the back of a rebound in agricultural output in both Morocco and Tunisia, higher domestic demand in Jordan driven by the refugee crisis, and an improvement in competitiveness and the business climate in Egypt. Growth in Central Asia in 2017 is expected to rise slightly to 3.8 per cent, compared with 3.5 per cent in 2016, reflecting the improved external environment. Commodity-exporting countries will benefit from the pick-up in oil prices and other key commodities, while countries with strong economic links with Russia are expected to be supported by a rebound in remittances, leading to a recovery in domestic demand. In 2018 real GDP growth in the region is forecast to increase to 4.6 per cent, driven mainly by a stronger performance in commodity-exporting countries. Growth in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus as a whole is expected to turn positive in 2017 after last years stagnation. However, both Azerbaijan and Belarus are projected to remain in recession. A gradual recovery in the region is set to continue in 2018. Cyprus After a return to growth in 2015 of 1.7 per cent, the economy in Cyprus continued to perform well in 2016, with GDP growth reaching 2.8 per cent, above expectations. Tourism was one of the main drivers of the economy, while other sectors such as construction and professional services are also contributing to the recovery. Overall growth is likely to continue in 2017 and 2018 at between 2 and 2.5 per cent. However, high levels of indebtedness in the economy and a large legacy of non-performing loans remain major challenges. Real GDP Growth (In per cent; EBRD forecasts as of 10 May 2017) Actual Estimate Current forecast Current forecast EBRD Forecast in November 2016 EBRD Forecast in November 2016 2015 2016 2017 2018 2017 Change Nov.-May EBRD Region 1.3 1.8 2.4 2.8 2.5 -0.1 Central Europe and the Baltic states 3.4 2.6 3.1 3.1 3.0 0.1 Croatia 1.6 2.9 2.9 2.6 2.0 0.9 Estonia 1.4 1.6 2.4 2.7 2.4 0.0 Hungary 3.1 2.0 3.0 3.0 2.4 0.6 Latvia 2.7 2.0 3.1 3.2 3.1 0.0 Lithuania 1.8 2.3 2.9 3.0 2.9 0.0 Poland 3.8 2.7 3.2 3.2 3.2 0.0 Slovak Republic 3.8 3.3 3.2 3.5 3.2 0.0 Slovenia 2.3 2.5 2.5 2.2 2.3 0.2 South-eastern Europe 2.4 2.9 3.1 3.0 3.0 0.1 Albania 2.6 3.5 3.5 3.7 3.5 0.0 Bosnia and Herzegovina 3.0 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.0 0.0 Bulgaria 3.6 3.4 3.2 3.0 2.8 0.4 Cyprus 1.7 2.8 2.5 2.2 2.2 0.3 FYR Macedonia 3.8 2.4 2.4 3.0 3.0 -0.6 Greece -0.2 0.0 2.0 2.2 2.0 0.0 Kosovo 4.0 3.4 3.5 3.5 3.5 0.0 Montenegro 3.4 2.5 3.0 3.3 3.5 -0.5 Romania 3.9 4.8 4.0 3.5 3.7 0.3 Serbia 0.8 2.8 2.9 3.0 2.7 0.2 Eastern Europe and the Caucasus -4.8 0.0 1.1 2.4 1.7 0.6 Armenia 3.0 0.2 2.5 3.0 2.0 0.5 Azerbaijan 1.1 -3.1 -0.5 2.0 1.0 -1.0 Belarus -3.8 -2.6 -0.5 2.0 1.0 -1.5 Georgia 2.9 2.7 3.9 4.2 3.9 0.0 Moldova -0.5 4.1 3.0 3.5 2.5 0.5 Ukraine -9.8 2.3 2.0 3.0 2.0 0.0 Turkey 6.1 2.9 2.6 3.0 3.0 -0.4 Russia -2.8 -0.2 1.2 1.4 1.2 0.0 Central Asia 3.7 3.5 3.8 4.6 3.9 -0.1 Kazakhstan 1.2 1.0 2.4 3.5 2.4 0.0 Kyrgyz Republic 3.9 3.8 3.9 4.1 2.6 1.3 Mongolia 2.4 1.0 1.4 2.8 3.2 -1.8 Tajikistan 6.0 6.9 3.8 4.0 4.1 -0.3 Turkmenistan 6.5 6.2 5.7 6.0 7.1 -1.4 Uzbekistan 8.0 7.8 6.2 6.5 6.2 0.0 Southern and Eastern Mediterranean 4.0 3.4 3.7 4.1 4.0 -0.3 Egypt 4.4 4.3 3.8 4.5 4.0 -0.2 Jordan 2.4 2.0 2.3 2.5 2.8 -0.5 Morocco 4.5 1.5 4.2 3.8 4.8 -0.6 Tunisia 1.1 1.0 2.2 2.7 2.5 -0.3 Average "East": EEC, CA, Russia -2.1 0.4 1.6 2.1 1.7 -0.1 Average "West": CEB, SEE, SEMED, Turkey 4.2 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.2 -0.1 1 All averaged use weights corresponding to countries' nominal GDP values in US dollars at PPP. 2 Egypt's growth numbers are for the fiscal years ending June. In the course of reviewing emails obtained from Michigan Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette in response to a Freedom of Information Act request last year, staff at Progress Michigan, Michigans primary progressive watchdog group, found nearly two dozen emails originating from the private email accounts of Schuette and some of his top staff. Based on this proof that they were violating state law that compels government officials and staff to conduct all state business using their state government email accounts, Progress Michigan then submitted a new FOIA request for all emails related to government business that were sent and received from these private accounts. Despite the fact that there is tangible proof that these emails exist, Schuettes department refused to comply. After going through all of the procedures in place to appeal the decision, Progress Michigan made no errr progress. So, their only recourse was to sue Schuette and his department to force them to comply with the law. Progress Michigan has filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims regarding the use of personal emails to conduct state business by Attorney General Bill Schuette and his staff. Progress Michigan has found evidence of Schuettes office using personal email accounts to conduct state business and sought the emails through the Freedom of Information Act, but Schuette is claiming his office has no information of that sort. [] The lawsuit states that, while doing previous FOIA requests, Progress Michigan discovered numerous personal emails being used by Schuette and his staff to conduct state business. Progress Michigan sent a FOIA request asking for the emails that used those personal emails to conduct state business. Schuettes office denied the request saying the department does not possess the emails, despite the fact that Progress Michigan has proof that such emails exist. Progress Michigan discovered nearly two-dozen emails that used personal not state email accounts from 13 AG office staffers, including Bill Schuette, to conduct State of Michigan business. Read more about their lawsuit HERE. Lonnie Scott, Progress Michigan executive director, explains why his group is taking the action: The public deserves a transparent and accountable government and thats why were seeking the disclosure of these emails, he said . Clearly theres a problem when we find numerous examples of an elected official like Bill Schuette, and members of his staff, using personal emails to conduct state business but for them to then deny the existence of documents which we have proof exist, we knew we had to take further action to find the truth. Lonnie was on our podcast this week talking about this lawsuit and you can listen to it HERE. Lawsuits like this are expensive and Progress Michigan, like most progressive groups, operates on a shoestring budget compared with their conservative counterparts. In order to help defray the costs of this undertaking, they have started at CrowdJustice crowd-sourcing fundraiser. Please support their effort by clicking HERE and making a donation. The fight for transparency and honesty, particularly from our states top law enforcement official, is crucial to a functioning democracy. Please help them with a donation today. 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One notably popular subject this session is that of microbeads, which are teeny tiny bits of plastic put in consumer products such as toothpastes and facial scrubs, which (likely unbeknownst to consumers!) wash down the drain, are frequently not captured by wastewater treatment facilities (because theyre too small, do not biodegrade, and float), simply pass through wastewater treatment facilities, and eventually enter our waterways and pollute our oceans. These microplastics are found in all ocean gyres, bays, gulfs and seas around the world. Microplastics are found in all ocean gyres, bays, gulfs and seas around the world. Photo credit: Surfrider Foundation This is problematic for a multitude of reasons. First, plastic does not biodegrade into elements or compounds commonly found in nature like other organic materials, but instead, photodegrades into smaller pieces of plastic causing pollution that is virtually impossible to remediate. Second, microplastic debris absorbs toxic, environmentally persistent chemicals such as DDT, PCBs, PAHs, and flame retardants found in our waterways. In 2011, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association found that plastic debris accumulates pollutants such as PCBs up to 100,000 to 1,000,000 times the levels found in seawater. Thus, aside from the negative effects of plastic consumption by marine life such as intestinal clogging and starvation, fish can become contaminated by the plastics absorbed toxins, which bioaccumulate up the food chain. These toxins pose dangerous threats to humans and wildlife who consume them. Microplastics? Megaproblem. Currently, there are at least 15 microbead bills pending at various stages across the country. Below is a sampling of some of these bills. While, as explained below, Surfrider Foundation has concerns associated with some of the bills, Surfrider is hopeful that states will carefully draft bills that will address the very serious threats that microplastic pollution poses to our coastal resources and water quality. Connecticut Connecticut currently has four microbeads bills in the works: House Bill (H.B.) 6081, H.B. 5206,H.B. 5403, and H.B. 5727. On March 10, 2015, Surfrider Foundation submitted testimony to the Joint Committee on the Environment supporting the bills, with amendments. Surfriders concerns with the bills primarily focus on any exceptions or exemptions for over the counter drugs or biodegradable particles. First, there must not be any exemptions for over the counter products, as this creates a huge industry loophole, rendering any microbeads ban futile, since the number of over the counter drugs is incredibly broad, and contains numerous types of products such as fluoride and whitening toothpastes, acne scrubs, moisturizing cleansers, and wrinkle creams, which are the exact kinds of products which typically utilize microbeads. Secondly, any exemptions for biodegradable particles are concerning, because biodegradable can be a misleading term. Any microbead legislation should only include a biodegradable exception if the term is carefully defined in a way to ensure that only products which are truly able to break down into natural elements in the marine environment or in wastewater treatment are considered biodegradable. Hawaii Recently, on March 18, Surfrider Foundation submitted testimony in strong support of Hawaiis microbead bill, H.B. 621, with amendments, to the Energy and Environment Committee, and Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee. The bill gradually (i.e. between December 31, 2017 and December 31, 2019) phases in the prohibition on the manufacture and sale of personal care products that contain synthetic plastic microbeads. Synthetic plastic microbead means any intentionally added non-biodegradable solid plastic particle measuring less than five millimeters in size and used to exfoliate or cleanse in a rinse-off product. Violations are punishable by civil penalties up to $1,000 for a first violation, and up to $2,500 for subsequent violations. As noted above, this microbead definition, which excludes non-biodegradable particles is potentially problematic. Thus, the Surfrider Foundation proposed in its testimony that the legislators must either remove the vague, misleading term non-biodegradable in the definition of synthetic plastic microbead and replace it with non-compostable, or define biodegradable as capable of decomposing back into natural elements. Oregon Similarly, in Oregon, H.B. 3478 was first read March 2, 2015, and was referred to the Energy and Environment Committee March 9, 2015. The bill phases in the prohibition on the manufacture and sale of personal care products and over the counter drugs that contain synthetic plastic microbeads. Currently, the definition of synthetic plastic microbead means a solid plastic particle that a manufacturer intentionally incorporates into a personal care product and that: (A) Measures less than five millimeters in diameter; (B) Is not biodegradable; (C) The manufacturer intends as a method for exfoliating skin or otherwise cleaning the human body; and (D) The manufacturer intends for the consumer to rinse off from the body after use. Thus, the definition excludes particles which are biodegradable. As noted above, this is potentially vague and problematic, and any microbead legislation should ensure that the ban applies to all microplastic particles, and that only products which are truly able to break down into natural elements are excepted. The Surfrider Foundation, on behalf of the Oregon Surfrider Foundation Chapter Network, and the individual Oregon chapters have expressed these concerns in personal letters to their state legislators, and Surfrider Foundation staff will be participating in a work group on this bill in the future. Washington Meanwhile, Washingtons microbead bill, Senate Bill (S.B.) 5609 passed the Senate unanimously on March 11, 2015. In the House, the bill had its first reading and was referred to the House Committee on the Environment on March 13. The Committee recently held a public hearing on the bill on March 23, 2015. Unfortunately, S.B. 5609 passed the Senate with a potential biodegradable loophole, similar to Hawaii and Oregons microbeads bills. The definition of the banned synthetic plastic microbead excludes biodegradable particles (i.e., synthetic plastic microbead means an intentionally added nonbiodegradable solid plastic particle measuring less than five millimeters in size and used to exfoliate or cleanse in a rinse-off product), which, again, could be problematic without further clarifying what is biodegradable and what is nonbiodegradable. The Surfrider Foundation will continue to monitor these, and other proposed microbeads bills, and bring awareness to these issues such that legislators will be encouraged to craft effective bills that serve their intended purposes. Go here for more information on the dangers of marine plastic pollution, and on Surfrider Foundations Rise Above Plastics campaign. Visit 5 Gyres I Want Plastic Off My Face information page to learn how you can get involved. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE 10 Reasons to Be Hopeful This Spring Will Rachel Carson Be the First Woman on the $20 Bill? What is Kefir and Why Is It So Good for You? Deep in the soils of permafrost lurks unknown and archaic bacteria that could potentially spawn viruses and disease that the human race has never been exposed to, at least, not in the recent history of penicillin. But with climate change rapidly heating up the poles, the permafrost is melting away, and we may have to face whatever is beneath the ice. There are few cases of deadly bacteria emerging from the ice, but in one case a 12-year-old boy from Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic Circle died from anthrax poisoning, which was believed to come from a thawed carcass of a reindeer that died 75 years ago after contracting anthrax. As ice melts, it enters bodies of water that are used for drinking water, which is why scientists are worried about unknown disease the ice may be harboring. Permafrost is a very good preserver of microbes and viruses, because it is cold, there is no oxygen, and it is dark, evolutionary biologist Jean-Michel Claverie told BBC. Pathogenic viruses that can infect humans or animals might be preserved in old permafrost layers, including some that have caused global epidemics in the past. The biggest concern is that the hosts of disease like bubonic plague, Spanish flu and smallpox are buried very near the surface of the ice. As a consequence of permafrost melting, the vectors of deadly infections of the 18th and 19th Centuries may come back, Boris Revich and Marina Podolnaya wrote in a 2011 study, especially near the cemeteries where the victims of these infections were buried. One such burial site is in Siberia, where one town lost 40 percent of its population to smallpox. Its a haunting thought, but the ice is melting in the area where they were buried and its not impossible that the disease lives beneath the ice. Scientists have revived dormant bacteria from corpses that are thousands of years old. In 2005, NASA brought to life bacteria that were in a frozen Alaskan pond for 32,000 years. With just a little heat, the ice melted and the bacteria began floating around. Melting ice isnt the only threat to bringing these microbes back to life. Shipping and offshore drilling could also disrupt these frozen environments. At the moment, these regions are deserted and the deep permafrost layers are left alone, Claverie said. However, these ancient layers could be exposed by the digging involved in mining and drilling operations. If viable virions are still there, this could spell disaster. The biggest fear is that these bacteria wont be affected by modern-day antibiotics because the medicines werent designed to tackle that type of bacteria. Essentially, its possible that we wouldnt be able to keep up with the influx of an emerging bacteria without proper treatments put into place. It would be like starting from scratch. The risk for such a epidemic is unknown, but it could be anywhere from scarlet fever to your regular seasonal flu. But, there is enough evidence to show that scientists should be giving extra attention to the area of study and putting safeguards in place in the off chance that our next glass of water contains a deadly pathogen. A U.S. Coast Guard said that catastrophic transformer failure at a Con Edison station in downtown Brooklyn, New York caused 37,000 gallons of dielectric fluid, or transformer insulating oil, to leak onto property grounds and into the East River on Sunday. As reported by Gothamist, witnesses said the oil slick could be seen all the way in the Queens borough. The exact amount of oil released into the river is currently unclear, but the New York City Patch reported the Coast Guard needed to declare a safety zone in waters around the Greenpoint, Midtown and Red Hook neighborhoods as the discharge spread into the river Monday night. The safety zone was still in effect on Tuesday. Recreational and human powered vessels may not enter, remain in, or transit through the Safety Zone during the enforcement period unless authorized by the Coast Guard Captain of the Port or designated Coast Guard personnel, a spokeswoman said. Mariners are requested to exercise caution while in the area. Coast Guard spokeswoman Allyson Conroy told Patch that while dielectric fluid is considered hazardous, it is not as toxic as diesel fuel or petroleum. However, Conroy added that if humans do get in contact with it, they should immediately wash their skin and avoid touching their eyes. In a statement, Con Edison said employees and environmental contractors are working on the cleaning and containing the spill. The company is also working cooperatively with the U.S. Coast Guard, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and other agencies. Crews are using skimmers and absorbent materials to soak up as much fluid as possible. The New York utility noted that the equipment failure also caused a system voltage dip that impacted the MTAs signaling systems on Sunday, resulting in a disruption to some train service. We continue to assess the volume of oil that migrated to the East River, and how much oil remains in the ground on our property, Con Edison stated. The Coast Guard has issued reduced speed restrictions for commercial vessels operating in the area, and banning recreational vessels, to assist the cleanup process. We are taking all actions to contain and clean up the oil as safely and as quickly as possible. Friday, June 2, 2017; 6 11 pm; N of the Washington Monument; 15th Street NW and Constitution Ave. across from the National Museum of African American History and Culture See the Sun, Moon, Saturn, and Jupiter at the Largest Astronomy Event on the National Mall In Washington, DC, on Friday June 2th from 6 to 11 pm, visitors will be a given a free guided tour of the sky at the 8th Annual Astronomy Festival on the National Mall. Rain location: School Without Walls High School 2130 G St. NW. This free public stargazing is organized by Dr. Donald Lubowich, Coordinator of Astronomy Outreach at Hofstra University. The Astronomy Festival on the National Mall (AFNM) will feature solar, optical, and radio telescope observations of the Sun, Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn; hands-on activities, demonstrations, hand-outs, posters, banners, and videos; a planetarium show with a portable blow-up dome, speakers from scientific and educational organization, and a chance to mingle with astronomers. Dr. Lubowich and local amateur astronomers will set up twenty telescopes on the Mall. Starting at 6 pm, visitors will be able to view sunspots with the help of specially filtered telescopes. After dusk and until 11 p.m. telescopes will provide close-up views of the Moon, Saturn with its beautiful rings, Jupiter and its moons, colorful double stars, and star clusters that sparkle like diamonds on black velvet. Bringing astronomy to the National Mall and partnering with astronomical organizations gives us a very special opportunity to encourage children to pursue their interest in science or math and to promote public understanding of science, said Dr. Lubowich. Gazing at the rings of Saturn or the Moons craters captures the imagination, no matter how old you are. AFNM started as part of a NASA-funded Music and Astronomy Under the Stars program, which brought an astronomy festival to outdoor concerts throughout the US, and was co-sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The AFNM will present Voyager, a dance interpretation of the NASA Voyager 1 and 2 missions and the golden records which traveled with them, by Neshamah - a modern dance company. The purpose of the piece is to take on the broad theme of astronomy and investigate it through music, dance, and visual elements in a collaboration of the arts and science. The phonograph records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them. Representatives from some of the nations foremost scientific institutions, organizations, and universities will present exciting demonstrations and answer questions about the latest astronomical discoveries or careers in science. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association of Physics Teachers, American Physical Society, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Carnegie Science/Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE), Celestial Charts, Hubble Space Telescope, International Dark Sky Association, Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center, National Air and Space Museum, National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, National Science Foundation, Naval Research Laboratory, Science for Society & the Public, Society of Physics Students, the US Naval Observatory. Colleges and Universities: American University, Catholic University of American, Eastern Carolina University, Georgetown University, George Mason University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Montgomery College, Rice University/E-planetarium. Astronomy clubs and organizations who will bring telescopes: Astronomical Association of Greenbelt, Astronomy Meetup, Goddard Astronomy Club, National Capital Astronomers, Northern Virginia Astronomy Club, Rappahannock Astronomy Club, Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. Endorsing organizations: American Astronomical Society, American Geophysical Union, Association of Science-Technology Centers, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Astronomy Magazine, Marian Koshland Science Museum, National Science Teachers Association, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Public parking is available at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center Building, entrance on 14th Street NW just 1/4 block North of Constitution Avenue, for $13.00 from 5 p.m. until 1 a.m. Updates at www.hofstra.edu/dcstars Hofstra University | Hempstead, New York|11549 | www.hofstra.edu By Kevin Kalhoefer Conservative outlets are highlighting a pro-fracking groups attempt to convince Google, which recently promised to alter its search algorithm to demote fake news, to also tweak it to purge or demote websites critical of fracking. On May 8, Texans for Natural Gas, an industry group funded by Texas energy companies, published an open letter addressed to Google titled ANTI-FRACKING ACTIVISM IS FAKE NEWS. The letter, which was highlighted in the industryfunded outlets The Daily Caller and The Daily Signal, referred to Googles recent move to alter its search algorithm to demote misleading, false, and offensive articles online before claiming, We believe many of the most prominent anti-fracking websites have content that is misleading, false, or offensiveif not all three. As a result, we urge you to consider purging or demoting these websites from your algorithm, which in turn will encourage a more honest public discussion about hydraulic fracturing, and oil and natural gas development in general. The pro-fracking group claimed that environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Earthworks and others were peddling fake news about the link between fracking and drinking water contamination. The letter cited a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study to support its claims, saying that the EPA study found no evidence of widespread water contamination. The group subsequently urged Google to examine other sites that contradict the findings of the EPA report, stating, There are certainly other environmental groups that have made similarly false claims about fracking and groundwater risks, despite the conclusions of the EPA and other scientific experts. Yet for all the grandstanding the letter makes about rooting out misleading information online, it is full of misleading statements. Though the group claimed that the EPA study found no evidence of widespread water contamination from fracking, it neglected to mention that the EPA subsequently removed that sentence from the report on the advice of its Science Advisory Board because the findings of the report did not support that conclusion. Additionally, according to Cleveland.com, a study conducted by Stanford researchers in 2016 found that common practices in the industry may have widespread impacts on drinking water. Texans for Natural Gas also said in the letter that statements linking fracking to worsening climate change are further examples of a false claim peddled by anti-fracking groups and environmentalist websites, adding that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cited the U.S.s increased use of natural gas as an important reason for a reduction of GHG emissions in the United States. But this claim ignores more recent studies, including one by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that found that methane emissions were actually one-fifth higher than IPCC estimates, as well as numerous studies that have concluded that methane leakage from natural gas production could negate the climate benefits of natural gas. The term fake news has been wildly misused recently, and Texans for Natural Gas is only adding to the trend. If the group wants to cast itself as an ally in Googles effort to root out misleading information, it would do well to provide an honest accounting of scientific research in its letter. Kevin Kalhoefer is a senior researcher with Media Matters Climate & Energy program. This summer, hundreds of homes Brooklyn and Queens will be recruited in an experiment to create a clean virtual power plant that feeds the utility grid with solar energy. New York utility Consolidated Edison (ConEd) is partnering with solar companies SunPower and Sunverge on a $15 million pilot program that offers high-efficiency rooftop PV panels plus a lithium-ion battery to more than 300 participating homeowners in the two New York City boroughs. The aim is to build a mini power plant synchronized by a massive fleet of residential solar and energy storage systems. If everything goes to plan, the virtual power plantwhich will be operated with cloud-based technologywill have a total capacity of 1.8 megawatts of solar power and 4 megawatt-hours of storage, making it the largest residential energy storage project in the U.S., as Bloomberg reported. This ambitious program with Con Edison represents a significant milestone in U.S. energy delivery, demonstrating that combining solar and energy storage can result in a stronger, more resilient grid while providing end customers the opportunity to save on electricity bills, Howard Wenger, SunPower president of business units, said. This experiment could mean big things for clean power production in the U.S. If it all works out, as CleanTechnica wrote, New York Cityand the New York State power gridcould provide the model for practically every other metropolis to follow. ConEd explained in its executive summary of the project that while solar energy has many benefits, from improved air quality to reduction in greenhouse gases, a solar systems peak generation hours do not coincide with the utilitys peak load hours, which typically occur after 5 p.m. Because of this, high-carbon peaking turbines are still being used in the evenings, negating the environmental benefits of solar. CleanTechnica noted that these speaker plants probably burn natural gas from fracking operations. But with the implementation of this clean virtual power plant, ConEd will be able to dispatch stored solar power to customers during peak periods instead of electricity generated by fossil fuels. Voltage fluctuations from partly cloudy days are also negated. Homeowners in the program will receive a 7-9 kilowatt rooftop PV system and a 6 kilowatt/19.4 kilowatt-hour storage system. If a blackout occurs, these homes can tap into the energy stored by their batteries, meaning they no longer have to rely on a central power station. When a grid outage occurs, the integrated system will provide the customers participating in this demonstration continued power to critical components in their home automatically, ConEd said. This solution offers a simpler, cleaner alternative to the gasoline backup generators available in the market today. Batteries, such as the ones manufactured by Tesla for homes, businesses and utilities, are clearly beneficial because they supply power after the sun sets or when the power is out. Beyond that, batteries can potentially help the world transition to a carbon-free grid and ensure a cleaner future. https://twitter.com/Sunverge/status/739875050845786112 resource, with direct control room integration, not just a lower power load modifying source, Sarah Singleton, senior vice president of marketing at Sunverge, told Green Tech Media. So how does a homeowner qualify for the program? According to SI Live, Under the program, qualified participants will have leased high-efficiency SunPower solar systems installed on their homes to help reduce monthly electricity costs For an additional low monthly payment, participants will have Sunverge Energy battery systems, owned by Con Edison, installed and connected to their SunPower systems. In the event of an outage, solar power stored in a participants battery storage system will be available to power certain appliances in the home. ConEd residential homeowner customers interested in participating in the program should click here. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE Apple Is Generating So Much Renewable Energy It Plans to Start Selling It Worlds First Large-Scale Carbon-Neutral Brewery Now in Operation Solar Added More New Capacity Than Coal, Natural Gas and Nuclear Combined Solar War Continues in North Carolina: Nonprofit vs. Duke Energy The town of Hanover, New Hampshire voted Tuesday night to establish a goal of transitioning to 100 percent clean and renewable energy by 2050. The article approved at Tuesdays town meeting sets a community-wide goal of transitioning to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and a 2050 goal of transitioning heating and transportation to run on clean, renewable sources of energy. Tuesdays vote makes Hanover the 29th city in the country to commit to 100 percent renewable energy and the first in New Hampshire to establish this goal. The vote comes after the Sustainable Hanover Town Committee in December endorsed a transition to 100 percent renewable energy in Hanover for electricity, heat and transportation by 2050. Earlier on Tuesday, the Town of Southampton, New York similarly established a goal to transition to 100 percent renewable energy. As town manager for the Town of Hanover, I am overjoyed that the town meeting voted unanimously to support a goal of 100 percent renewable energy, said Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin. We look forward to working with Sierra Club and Sustainable Hanover to achieve this goal. Town meetings like Tuesdays Hanover town vote have long been a form of direct democracy across New England. Unlike the other 28 cities and towns that have committed to 100 percent clean energy, however, Hanover represents the first municipality in the U.S. to have a goal of 100 percent renewable energy voted on and approved by the residents of that community. Tuesdays vote builds on Hanovers growing investment in renewable energy. In 2014, Hanover was named the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys first Green Power Community in New Hampshire. The town is currently at 22 percent renewable electricity through partnerships with Dartmouth College and other businesses and institutions and town residents. This is a great day for Hanover. I am so proud to be a resident of Hanoverthe first town in New Hampshire to make a commitment to 100% renewable energy and the first municipality in the country to have done it by a vote of its citizenry, said Judith Colla, a member of the Sierra Club Upper Valleys Executive Committee. I look forward to supporting next steps here in Hanover and helping to spread this campaign to our neighbors throughout the Upper Valley. Other cities to commit to 100 percent clean and renewable energy include major metropolises like San Diego and Atlanta, along with small towns including Abita Springs, Louisiana and Moab, Utah. Burlington, Vermont is the first city in the U.S. to run entirely on clean, renewable energy. With more plastic than fish expected in our oceans by 2050, cleaning up this mess seems like an impossible task. But a team of inventors from Sussex, England have developed a novel solution. The SeaVax is a solar- and wind-powered ship that can suck up plastic waste. The inventors at Bluebird Marine Systems LTD unveiled their proof of concept at the government-funded Innovate UK show in London in November. The inventors are entering prototype phase, the Express reported. The ship purportedly works by funneling plastic waste as it moves forward. According to this mockup posted to the Innovate UK website, once built, the vessel will be around 144 feet long and fully autonomous. Deck-mounted solar panels and two wind turbines will feed power to electric pumps and filters that can suck up plastic solids and micro plastics. An onboard shredder rips and breaks up larger pieces of debris. The builders calculated on their website that the finished robovac will be able to generate enough energy to treat an average of 89.9 million liters of seawater in a year, translating to 22,400,000 kilograms of plastic from a body of water that has high concentrations of surface solid plastic, such as river estuaries. Working in a fleet, these autonomous robotic boats could keep plastic buildup contained and significantly reduce the existing ocean gyres in around 5-10 years, cost effectively, the inventors said. The captured plastic is temporarily stored in a cargo hold that can carry around 150 tons of weight until it can be off-loaded or recycled, the inventors said. With our system all sizes of rubbish, from huge fishing nets to deadly micro particles, can be swept or sucked up, ground down and stored in SeaVaxs tanks, project director Chris Close explained to the Express. The project has reportedly cost 138,000 (roughly $198,000) and a year to develop. There are various ocean cleanup projects already underway, but Dr. Marcus Eriksen, research director at 5 Gyres Institute, explained to EcoWatch that many of the open ocean techno-fixes have died down in the last five years. Its mostly because the science of plastic pollution tells us plastics fragment quickly, are mostly small particles widely distributed across the globe and are highly toxic after time at seamore akin to a smog of plastic rather than a consolidated patch, he said. Recovery is much more challenging than we thought, and the ocean is rapidly beaching it and sinking the smallest particles. Dr. Eriksen also pointed out that by-catch and the unintended killing of passively floating organisms that cant swim away is a big issue around any cleanup contraption. Another issue, he said, is the PR challenge of not letting post-consumer cleanup distract the attention of the public and policymakers from circular economy thinking, like upstream design innovations and policy intervention that prevent the problem in the first place. For what its worth, Bluebird Marine Systems said their finished SeaVax will feature automatic shutdown in case marine life is detected, as well as an SOS beacon to alert rescue workers of any marine life-threatening situations. The company also said on their website, We agree with most others, that we must begin to look closer to home, to try to prevent our rivers from feeding the oceans in the first placeand we should use less plastic for packaging. Open-ocean clean up devices are better for capturing persistent plastic products like fishing gear thats designed to last years or decades, Dr. Eriksen noted. Catching that before it fragments into microplastic is worthy, he said. The biggest advantage to these clean-up contraptions is deployment upstream. Thats where the waste really is the worst. Youll get your biggest bang for your buck, and you will save our seas from the greatest source of contamination. The further upstream you go, the more success you will have. According to the Express, Bluebird Marine Systems has already received interest from people in India trying to develop a clean-up solution for the polluted Ganges river. There was also interest from Nigeria and Australia who might want to use the device for oil cleanup. By John Moore President Trump has finally announced his intent to nominate candidates for two of the three open seats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and send their names to the U.S. Senate for approval. Assuming they are confirmed, the two new commissioners will help shape Americas energy future. We encourage them to continue FERCs bipartisan tradition of clean energy progress for the electricity grid amid todays rapidly evolving energy landscape. FERCthe independent federal agency that oversees the high power electric grid, natural gas pipelines and hydroelectric dam licensinghas been without a quorum since Feb. 3, when then-Chairman Norman Bay resigned, leaving the remaining Democratic commissioners (Acting Chairman Cheryl LaFleur and Colette Honorable) in two of the five seats. The two new nominees are Neil Chatterjee (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells energy advisor) and Robert Powelson (commissioner on the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and current president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners). There also are rumors that Kevin McIntyre, an energy attorney at the large international law firm Jones Day, also will be nominated in the near future. (More about all three of them here). As long as there are only four members of FERC, the possibility exists for a 2-2 deadlock. Adding more uncertainty is that Commissioner Honorables term expires June 30. Shes announced her decision not to seek another term, although she could agree to stay on until her replacement is named. Meanwhile, the White House has not announced who it wants to chair the commission. Our simple message to the nominees: FERC needs to keep up with the fast-changing electric grid and avoid creating new barriers through inaction or new limitations. FERC has a strong bipartisan tradition of removing electricity market and planning barriers to new energy resources. With wind and solar hitting new output peaks daily, and energy storage coming on strong, FERC-regulated energy markets and planning must continue to evolve to reflect the new reality of a more efficient, cleaner, and affordable grid. Pending Challenges FERC has a full plate of energy challenges before it. For example: One of the hottest issues in the world of electricity this year is whether state renewable energy standards and numerous other energy policies can coexist peacefully with FERC-regulated energy markets. FERC held a two-day public meeting in early May on the topic, which is going to be a growing focus for FERC and the regional grid markets around the country for the remainder of this year and well into the future. But we believe well-designed FERC markets can co-exist with, rather than undermine, state energy policies. Another hot issuethe Department of Energys hurried review of the effects of clean energy on grid reliability. Neither FERC nor the grid operators responsible for keeping the lights on were consulted before Energy Sec. Perry announced the study last month, EnergyWire reported. As we and many others have said, wind and solar power contribute to a dependable power supply, help to prevent blackouts and other grid disturbances, and create a more flexible and diverse generation fleet. FERC could play a critical role in the Department of Energys review by separating fact from political agenda. Yet another critical topic: Last fall FERC proposed an important new standard to remove barriers to market entry for the electricity generated from rooftop solar panels, electric vehicles plugged into the grid and other customer-owned energy storage and distributed energy resources. Critically, FERCs proposal includes allowing storage and other DERs to combine for the purposes of participating in power marketsin other words, aggregating or pooling resources for administrative and operational efficiency. Its a smart, commonsense reform. Once the Commission regains its quorum, it should move forward and issue the final rule, including the aggregation provisions, to prevent ongoing discrimination against customer-owned resources in FERC-regulated electricity markets. Infrastructure is a hot topic in Washington, and here FERC also has an important role to play. While America has some of the worlds best renewable energy resources, there is a need for environmentally protective transmission infrastructure to connect the top wind resources, located predominantly in remote areas, to distant cities and communities with a demand for low-cost clean energy. A major barrier is the lack of a single planning framework among regional grid planning regions for these projects. With relatively minor changes to planning rules, FERC can spur new clean energy-focused transmission projects. As an added benefit, these projects will reduce the need for new natural gas plants (which emit carbon pollution) and pipeline development, as well as the health and other problems associated with natural gas extraction. Speaking of natural gas, FERC continues to face criticisms for its approvals of new interstate natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. FERC can and should take significant additional steps to improve gas market efficiencies and maximize the use of existing pipelines over new pipes. As the nomination process moves forward, we encourage these nominees to keep FERCs responsibility to protect the public interest uppermost in their minds. This, plus a healthy bipartisan approach, will provide reason for optimism about the commissions future. This blog provides general information, not legal advice. If you need legal help, please consult a lawyer in your state. John Moore is the director of the Sustainable FERC Project and Energy & Transportation Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ECSU Graduates Are Named Teachers of the Year Its no surprise that Elizabeth City State University makes great teachers. Thats the 126-year-old institutions legacy. So when the Elizabeth City Area Chamber of Commerce honored the areas teachers of the year on May 3, ECSU graduates could be counted among them. During a ceremony at Mid-Atlantic Christian University, ECSU graduates were among the top honorees as the areas Teachers of the Year, as well as nominees from area schools. The Teacher of the Year from Camden County Schools, Karen McPherson, College of the Albemarle's Lucretia White, and Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Schools, Rachel Benton, are all ECSU alums. ECSU professor of history, Glen Bowman, was also among those honored for excellence in education. ECSU graduates who were nominees for the annual award are H.L. Trigg Community School teacher Sharron Bell, J.C. Sawyer Elementary teacher Stella Duhaime, River Road Middle School teacher Tia Carver. During the ceremony, McPherson was lauded as a great teacher who brings joy to the classroom, and to her students. College of the Albemarle President Robert Wynegar said Lucretia Whites students see her as a calming force as they navigate their way through their education. For Whites part, she says making a difference in her students lives is the most exciting part of being named Teacher of the Year. During his presentation, ECPPS Superintendent Larry Cartner stated that Rachel Benton was a teacher with a passion for her students and education, and that comes through in what she does. For Benton, the fact that she teaches is reward enough, she said. Chancellor Thomas Conway celebrated Dr. Glen Bowmans honor and observed that this is just one of several honors given to the popular history professor this year. Bowman was also chosen as one of the UNC Systems 2017 Teacher of Excellence honorees. ECSUs tradition of educating teachers began as a part of its core mission upon its founding in 1891. The need for African American teachers was great, and the Elizabeth City State Normal School (now ECSU) was created as a place to educate the educators. That tradition lives on today. As the need for more teachers across North Carolina rises, ECSU continues to provide its students with the opportunity to excel as educators and bring the same excellence to education that these alums have over the years. (Photo: REUTERS / Beawiharta)Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (L) poses beside Indonesia's President Joko Widodo after his swearing-in at the Presidential palace in Jakarta, November 19, 2014. Jakarta's first Christian governor in nearly 50 years was sworn in on Wednesday, despite protests from religious hardliners opposing a non-Muslim taking over one of Indonesia's most powerful political jobs. Thousands of Indonesians gathered outside Cipinang prison in East Jakarta on May 9 to express solidarity with Basuki Tjahaja Purnama who, just hours earlier, had been serving as the governor of Jakarta but was sentenced to two years imprisonment for blasphemy. Purnama, widely known by the nickname Ahok, was earlier sentenced by a court and taken to the prison for blasphemy, not the common crime of corruption, which is rife in Indonesia, The Washington Post reported. Some protesters on May 9 were angry at the sentence and felt it was too lenient and the ethnic Chinese and Christian governor was taken into custody after the verdict was read out, Agence France-Presse reported. Many in Jakarta believe the case against Purnama is politically motivated but near the court the atmosphere among the governor's critics - a coalition of Islamic groups - was one of anger, the BBC reported. Ahok was Jakarta's first Christian governor in decades and had suggested late last year that Jakarta's imams were misusing Quranic verses to discriminate against Christian candidates. The remarks created a furor in Muslim-majority Indonesia, prompting huge rallies by Islamists opposed to Purnama and leading, eventually, a lopsided electoral defeat for him on April 19. Purnama deputy Djarot Saiful Hidayat will take over his duties until his term finishes in October. HARSHER THAN EXPECTED SENTENCE The sentence is harsher than most observers had expected and prosecutors had called for a suspended one-year sentence, the BBC reported. The governor was "found to have legitimately and convincingly conducted a criminal act of blasphemy, and because of that we have imposed two years of imprisonment," the judge told the court. Security was tight as protesters and supporters gathered at the court in Jakarta and around 15,000 security personnel from the police and military are providing security at the scene, with riot police and armored vehicles separating rival groups. Sofyan Tan, an ethnic Chinese Christian member of parliament from Medan, in North Sumatra province, said Islamist fury against Purnama reminded him of the time he ran for mayor of Medan but lost after a hate-filled campaign spearheaded by Muslim religious leaders, The Washington Post said. "There was nothing weird about this," he said of the Islamist campaign against Purnama. "Racist attitudes are still with us." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and about 85 percent of its population are Muslim, but the country officially respects six religions. PRESS RELEASE STARMUS IV FULL PROGRAMME ANNOUNCMENT THE IMPRESSIVE LINEUP INCLUDES STEPHEN HAWKING AS KEYNOTE SPEAKER, 10 NOBEL LAUREATES, BUZZ ALDRIN, LARRY KING, OLIVER STONE AND BRIAN COX June 18th - 23rd 2017 The Starmus board consists of Stephen Hawking, Brian May, Peter Gabriel, Richard Dawkins, Alexei Leonov, Jill Tarter, Robert Williams, David Eicher, Jack Szostak and the festivals founder, Garik Israelian these great minds have devised an incredible programme, recruiting the most intelligent, creative and artistic beings on the planet. Under the title Life And The Universe Starmus will once again celebrate a synthesis between science and music. The festivals theme will be broad covering origin and evolution, the human brain, society, technology and global issues. This years programme will open with a fascinating conversation between three of the last of the surviving lunar astronauts from the historic Apollo programme; Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt will come together for the first time in front of an audience for a thrilling hour-long debate. The moonwalkers will explore their incredible landings and will share their different views on future missions to Mars. Stephen Hawking, as the festivals keynote speaker, will captivate audiences with a new lecture on Black Holes and Time Warps. In his 75th year the eminent Professor will make his first ever visit to Norway. Starmus is an important and very unique interdisciplinary festival of people working in different fields astronomers, astronauts, cosmologists, physicists, philosophers, musicians, artists, biologists etc., who share an interest in the universe, how it began and is now and how we may explore and use its many facets. Professor Stephen Hawking Oscar winning filmmaker Oliver Stone will speak on the subject of decoding truth in film, while Larry King will speak frankly about the media industry. Economist Jeffrey Sachs will explore the very topical How we can survive Trump, climate change and other global crisis. A highlight this year will be The Nobel Laureate Panel Discussion: 10 Nobel laureates from across the globe will be discussing The Role of Science in the 21st Century. There has never, in the history of festivals, been so many Nobel Prize winners taking part in one panel discussion. The line up is: Edvard Moser, Adam Riess, Chris Pissarides, Finn Kydland, George Smoot, May-Britt Moser, Robert Wilson, Stefan W. Hell, Susumu Tonegawa and Torsten Wiesel. Carlos Moedas, the EC Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, will open the debate with a keynote address. The Starmus IV programme will celebrate outstanding contributions from women to the world of science and astronomy. Nobel Laureate May-Britt Mosers performance, Into Whiteness will be a first a groundbreaking artistic and musical presentation of her scientific discoveries related to the brain. While Lisa Randall will explore Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Jill Tarters discussion title (Sufficiently Advances Technologies: Indistinguishable from Magic, or from Nature?) will intrigue festivalgoers. Emmanuelle Charpentier, who Time Magazine designated as one of the 100 most influential people in the world will grace the Starmus stage. A core aim of Starmus is to encourage and inspire more women to take an interest in science by presenting role models who are changing the world. Technology will also be a more significant part of the programme this year with innovative ideas shared by leaders who have changed the way we communicate, such as Skype co- founder Jaan Tallinn, who will explore artificial intelligence. Brian Greene who The Washington Post refer to as the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today, will take the stage to discuss String Theory and the Fabric of Spacetime. He will also participate in the highly anticipated Stephen Hawking Medal Ceremony. A major highlight will be the second Stephen Hawking Medal Ceremony, which will include unique performances from musicians and scientists more to be announced on this shortly. The Conference Programme starts at 1.30pm every day; The Venue: Spektrum For the full programme and list of speakers please click on this link: www.starmus.com/programme2017 Morning Entertainment Programme 10am 12.30pm During the mornings there will be a fascinating choice of activities and panel discussions to attend in Spektrum as well as other locations in Trondheim. There will be opportunities for festivalgoers to meet speakers and astronauts and to embrace interactive experiences: RT News Television Network will deliver an innovative concept The RT Space 360 Experience which will take place in a specially designed RT Virtual Reality cinema. Festivalgoers will be given VR glasses and will see the firstever panoramic content from on board The International Space Station. RTs cutting edge, immersive Space 360 project is a collaborative effort between RT, Roscosmos State Corporation, Energia Rocket and Space Corporation that will run throughout 2017. Space 360 is an impressive mixture of astounding, never-before-seen visuals and unique, first-hand storytelling. Kaspersky Lab will install a major cybersecurity education hub, from which daily education sessions will be delivered by experts in the fields of both cybersecurity and science. During the festival, Eugene Kaspersky will be joined by other experts for a panel discussion about 'Industry 4.0', which will examine the relationship between science, modern industry and cybersecurity. BBC Radio 4 will be bringing it's multi-award winning science/comedy show "The Infinite Monkey Cage" to STARMUS for a very special recording of this hugely popular series and podcast. Professor Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince will be taking to the stage to chair a truly out of this world panel of guests. A film covering Alexei Leonovs first incredible space walk in 1965 will be screened and there will be an exhibition of previously unseen images capturing the cosmonauts incredible career. Alexei Leonov will make an appearance. Notes to Editor: The previous three Stamus festivals were held in The Canary Islands and this fourth event will take the festival to Trondheim, the thrilling scientific capital of Norway. This new location will enable Starmus to flourish in a vibrant cultural setting. The coastal city of Trondheim combines beautiful landscape with scientific and cultural centres, including a Nobel Prize winning university with nearly a thousand years of academic traditions. It is viewed as the technological and scientific capital of the Land of the Midnight Sun and will provide the perfect backdrop for a festival that showcases the best from both the academic and cultural world. The festivals audience will triple in size. Starmus is renowned to be the world's most ambitious science and music festival the Guardian stated that the festival has enough brains to fill a multiverse. Tickets on sale www.starmus.com Starmus and its scientific and musical legacy: Starmus Festival was born in 2011, the brainchild of astrophysicist Garik Israelian. His aim was to make the most universal science and art accessible to the public and that he achieved with three festivals that reached full capacity with participation from the worlds most influential scientists and astronomists along with superstar musicians. The magic of Starmus is not confined to science - music is also an essential component of the festival. One of the most prominent members of the Advisory Board, the great Peter Gabriel, former leader of UK band Genesis, highlights the close ties between astronomy and music: "Musicians explore and define what exists inside us, astronomers explore and define what exists outside of us. That's precisely what I love about Starmus: the combination of the two worlds". With an unbeatable panel of great minds, the countdown begins to Starmus IV, amid considerable international expectation. About Trondheim: Trondheim is a renowned location for students and academics. It has been ranked several times as Norways most impressive student city and has long standing traditions in education with a Cathedral School that has been in existence since 1152. The roots of todays university go all the way back to 1760, with the establishment of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS). The city has a population of more than 188,000, with 33,000 students attending and nearly 7000 employees working at the university, NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The University contributes an incredibly high level of science, education and innovation. The university and its spin-offs is one of the main reasons why the city is referred to as the science and technology capital of Norway. Trondheim also has a vibrant cultural life. The city hosts festivals in genres including jazz, blues, chamber music, world music, rock and pop all year round with a peak during the summer when the light almost never leaves. During the Starmus festival in Trondheim in June 2017, the sun will go down at midnight and rises at 3am. Situated just above 63 degrees north, the coastal city which was founded more than a thousand years ago (997), with its strong academic traditions combined with a culture-loving population is the perfect location for a festival such as Starmus, which brings out the best of both worlds. For further information please contact: Nicole Ettinger Ettinger PR E. nicole@ettingerpr.com T. +44 7515 39410 Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken I am sure that we could add more pictures to this list but these are considered ten o... Stephanie Jackman spends a lot of time evaluating her 44 teachers at Lafayette Elementary School in Colorado. Like her fellow principals across the country, she sits in on their classes, jots down notes, and provides feedback on what areas teachers could improve. Often thats where the conversation ends. But Jackmans school district, Boulder Valley, has gone a step further, merging its vast catalog of professional-development courses with its teacher evaluation system to create one resource. Through a program the district launched last fall called MyPassport , teachers and their evaluators use an online platform to pick out which of the districts educator-effectiveness standards the teacher is going to tackle during the year. Then they see the specific professional learning opportunities across the sprawling 500-square-mile district that will help teachers reach their goals. Just visually, its all linked, Jackman said. While teacher evaluations and professional-development programs are ubiquitous in school districts around the country, rarely do the two meet. Evaluators may accurately pinpoint the areas where a teacher needs to improve, but thats often the end of the conversationteachers are left to their own devices to figure out what kinds of professional development they need to better their craft. MyPassport is meant to eliminate the need for teachers to guess whether a given PD opportunity will really help them. The idea is not to play gotcha with teachers who are not excelling on all 25 teacher effectiveness standards, but to instead support them in improving their craft, said Mary Jo Bode, the professional learning director in the district, which serves 31,000 students in 56 schools that run the gamut from one-room schoolhouses to large, comprehensive high schools. As for professional development, all we were doing was compliance. In our old system, we were just tracking how many hours you had toward getting recertification, said Bode. Now a teacher sits down with an evaluator for a conversation around this question of what are the areas that would benefit you and your students the most? In 2010, Colorado passed Senate Bill 191, a contentious educator-effectiveness law that requires that at least 50 percent of a teachers evaluation score be based on a measure of student growth, and made sweeping changes to teacher tenure rights. The bill forced the district to overhaul its teacher evaluation system. Around the same time in Boulder, a pair of local philanthropistsSuzanne Hoover, who had been a teacher and school board member in another community, and her husband Daviddonated $1 million to Boulder Valley to build a professional-development academy. Bode said that as the district saw these dual initiatives coming down the pike, it decided to merge the two efforts. What we realized was, if we are asking someone to show improvement in an area and we dont offer anything to help them, thats a very hollow and disappointing message, said Bode. By December, just a few months after launching the system, BVSD staffthe MyPassport program has expanded beyond teachers to include all employeescould already choose from 376 classes available on the MyPassport platform. The course list is constantly growing as Bodes three-person team works with employees across the district. Theres a knife-skills class that was requested by food-service employees, an email-writing course that some staff members who speak English as a second language asked for, and even a course to teach high-flying educators how to design and launch their own MyPassport courses. While Bode now heads the operation, a committee she co-chairs with Tina Mueh, the president of the Boulder Valley Education Association, the district teachers union, built MyPassport. Both Bode and Mueh agree that this work would have been a lot harder without getting the buy-in of the teachers union. Mueh, for her part, was happy to see the district link its evaluation and professional-development systems. Ive been in this district for about 25 years, and I can say that we never had an evaluation system that was tied to anything, or really even meaningful, said Mueh. And as for our professional-development system, you would take all of these little classes, but the district wasnt tracking that. You would turn scraps of paper in, but no one was tracking if this was helping you reach your goals, or improving outcomes for students, or helping the district reach its goals. By collecting data on what professional development is working and tying it into information on teacher performance and student outcomes, the district is identifying what professional-development programming is and isnt working. The district has already reined in what kinds of courses teachers can take to reach their evaluation goals and climb the salary scale. For instance, after establishing tougher criteria for what courses would count for climbing the salary ladder, the number of courses eligible for salary credit dropped from 400 to 60, though that number is growing again as the system adds new, more-rigorous courses. There was pushback, Mueh admitted. But as I think about our committee, the people with the highest standards for their colleagues are members of the [education] association. They are teachers themselves who are saying, our profession needs this if we are going to be taken seriously. We cant tolerate professional development that doesnt live up to the standards that we hold ourselves to as professional educators. Education policy has become as polarized as the rest of American politics. In the new administration, disagreements over standards, funding, school choice, and students civil rights are sure to intensify. Yet despite this polarized state of affairs, liberal and conservative education priorities are converging in a number of important respects, driven in part by mounting research findings. Common ground is emerging where conservative commitments to character formation, strong families, and local solutions meet liberal commitments to services that help low-income families overcome obstacles to improving their quality of life. Borrowing a term from the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, I suggest that a number of educational priorities, described below, are purple"they resonate with both red and blue constituencies. Further, these priorities animate a powerful reform movement that is spreading across the country. 1) Address the whole child. Last May, eight U.S. representativesfour Republicans and four Democratsintroduced a bipartisan resolution calling for a whole-child approach to education to ensure that children are physically and emotionally healthy and safe . Supporting the whole child means providing additional supports for childrens health and social-emotional skills while continuing to improve the teaching and learning of cognitive and academic skills. This is a high bar, and as the resolution recognizes, it requires coordination among education, health, and social services. Research, however, increasingly shows the importance of reaching this bar. It is easy to see how physical and mental-health issues interfere with a students ability to learn, and in recent years, interest among liberals and conservatives in noncognitive skills has soared. In his 2012 book How Children Succeed, Paul Tough synthesizes exciting new research on the importance of character skills, including social-emotional and executive-function skills, grit, and conscientiousness. Psychologists have shown that these skills are both valuable and malleable. Further, the relationships and practices found in high-quality programs have been shown to make a significant and long-term difference in the lives of children and youths. 2) Deepen family engagement and support. In a 2015 New York Times op-ed essay, Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin suggests that a truce has been called in the war over family whereby conservatives acknowledge that a changing economy is taking a toll on families and liberals acknowledge the value of marriage for child-rearing . Both sides agree that family stability is declining among low-income families and that this decline has negative consequences for children, an agreement that opens up the possibility of bipartisan solutions. Schools, preschools, and community organizations can play a key role in promoting family stability by deepening partnerships that encourage family engagement and provide support services and parenting education. One promising approach that can appeal to both sides of the aisle is the Strengthening Families framework produced by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, which includes free curriculum and professional-development resources. Used in more than 30 states, Strengthening Families is based on research-supported protective factors, including parental resilience, social connections, and knowledge of parenting and child development. All of these efforts will be more successful if communities start in the earliest years of childrens lives." 3) Strengthen neighborhoods and communities. Inspired by the Harlem Childrens Zone and similar initiatives, so-called cradle-to-career partnerships of schools and social service agencies are proliferating. These partnerships are premised on the conviction that addressing poverty requires improving schools and improving the delivery of existing social services. A recent Wallace Foundation report suggests that such partnerships move past the debate between conservative-leaning proponents of no-excuses school reforms and liberal-leaning advocates for bigger, bolder social services. Cradle-to-career partnerships fit with the emphasis found in both conservative and liberal thought on local decision making and strengthening neighborhoods and communities. They attempt to improve the quality and coordination of services and relationships within a defined geographic area to create a concentration of mutually reinforcing activities. 4) Start early. All of these efforts will be more successful if communities start in the earliest years of childrens lives. Here, too, there is strong consensus. The First Five Years Fund reports that 78 percent of Donald Trump supporters and 97 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters favored federal action to increase access to early-childhood education . James J. Heckmans well-known research on the economic returns of investment in high-quality early education and other researchers work on the importance of the early years for young brain development undergirds this consensus. An extensive body of research also shows that preschool alone is not sufficient. Improving the quality and continuity of childrens experiences throughout the entire continuum, beginning with prenatal care and extending through 3rd grade, is critical to improving outcomes for children in poverty. These four purple priorities go hand in hand: Family stability is critical to addressing the needs of the whole child, community partnerships are required to coordinate multipronged approaches to serving children and families, and early childhood is the ideal time to begin this work. These priorities form the spine of a growing movement to create P-3 partnerships devoted to improving childrens experiences along the entire prenatal-through-3rd-grade continuum. P-3 partnerships bring together school districts, community-based preschools, home-visiting programs, and other early-childhood programs. They implement a coherent set of strategies to build the capacity of their member organizations to improve quality and align services with a core set of goals in mind: academic learning, good health, social-emotional learning, and family engagement and support. School districts in Union City, N.J., and Montgomery County, Md., have produced some of the best results raising achievement for low-income students in the country. Integral to their approaches were P-3 initiatives to align standards, make deep improvements to curricula and professional development, and develop strong partnerships with families and community-based organizations. States across the country, supported by a number of federal initiatives, have embraced P-3 approaches and are supporting local P-3 innovation and cross-community learning. These partnerships are not a quick fix that makes for snappy partisan sound bites. The community-by-community approach that P-3 partnerships represent may not satisfy liberal desires for a bold federal program, and they require more government support for education and social services than some staunch fiscal conservatives may condone. But they do bring together purple education priorities in ways that should appeal to pragmatically minded superintendents, mayors, city council members, state legislators, and governors. Spanning political and organizational boundaries, purple partnerships that support whole-child development in stable families and strong communities represent one of our greatest opportunities to improve the lives of low-income children and their families. Small, quiet Linfield Collegeset in bucolic Oregon wine country, about an hour outside Portlandis not for every student. On a rainy Monday morning here in April, an introductory environmental-studies class has just one attendee. Only two other students are on the roster, and, as the professor points out, one is at a track meet. The main campus of the private, nonprofit liberal arts college is on 185 mostly green acres and has only 1,700 students, most of whom live in the residential halls. Its a stark contrast to the better-known large public universities where commuting is common, and lecture halls often hold several hundred students. Yet Linfield is the kind of postsecondary institution that Oregons version of GEAR UP, a federally funded college-access program, is now trying to get more rural, low-income, and first-generation college-going students to see as an option. We believe, based on [national] research, that theres a great importance in students finding a good fit for college, said Adrienne Enriquez, a program manager for Oregon GEAR UP, which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. Students and faculty in the rural GEAR UP schools didnt necessarily have as much knowledge and information about the private colleges in the state as they might have about the four-year public universities, she said. Oregon GEAR UP has partnered with The Alliance , a consortium of 18 small private nonprofit colleges in the state, to help educators and students from remote areas learn about these schools. There are a lot of myths out there about private education that just arent true, said Brent Wilder, the vice president of The Alliance. That its only for affluent individuals, that our campuses arent diverse. We have the highest graduation rate in Oregon among students of color. Through the GEAR UP program, small groups of teachers, administrators, and counselors come together from different parts of the state to visit private college campuses over a few days. GEAR UPwhich was slated for a slight funding increase under a budget agreement expected to be approved by Congress last week, but is among the education programs President Donald Trump would like to cut in a 2018 budgetpays for their travel and lodging and reimburses districts for substitute teachers. For the third straight summer, Oregon GEAR UP is also running a Private College Week camp , during which high school students visit several colleges, staying on campus at one of them, and learn about admissions processes and financial aid. Research on Fit The program also aims to inform college faculty and admissions officers about the small, rural schools GEAR UP students are coming from. Its a two-way street, said MorraLee Keller, the director of technical assistance for the National College Access Network, which is not involved in the program. Its important for colleges to understand more about the high schools other than looking at a paper transcript that comes in ... to understand characteristics that might be unique or perhaps the academic rigorousness of the district. In describing the need for this kind of program, which is unique to the Oregon version of GEAR UP, Enriquez said that visits to the larger universities were scaring off some students from rural communities. Theyre visiting classrooms that hold more people than live in their town. They go through the lunch line and they have to go through turnstiles, and theyve never seen those, she said. A few years ago, a group of students from the tiny logging community of Powers came off a tour of the 20,000-student University of Oregon not wanting to go to college at all. In a post-visit survey, they indicated, College is not for me. Its too big and too scary, Enriquez said. The colleges that students see during the weeklong summer camp generally have between 1,000 and 4,000 students. College fit, including the financial, cultural, social, academic, and geographic factors that make an institution a good choice or not for a student, has been the subject of much research over the past decade. In the 2016 book Matching Students to Opportunity: Expanding College Choice, Access, and Quality , Jessica Howell and her co-authors explain that college fit, and in particular going to a school that matches a students academic credentials, is positively associated with earning a degree. By and large, we know that when students enroll in a college that isnt a good fit for them, thats usually because they didnt consider colleges that would have been a better fit, Howell said in an interview. We need to open up students eyes early in the process so they know their options. Graduation-Rate Advantage Private schools can be an especially good option for first-generation and low-income students, advocates for college access note, because graduation rates there tend to be higher than at the public universities. For example, at Linfield, the four-year graduation rate in 2014 was 61 percent. (Nationally, its about 55 percent for private, nonprofit schools.) At Oregon State University, which has more than 20,000 students, it was 31 percent, according to the Education Trusts College Results Online tool. Sometimes, students dont know about the private colleges, perhaps because no one from their area has ever gone to them, or because their school counselors and teachers are more familiar with state schools. And other times, students, as well as their families and counselors, believe they simply cant afford anything other than a state school. I have some kids this year that were interested in some of the private colleges, and the only thing I knew about them really is that theyre really expensive, said Elizabeth Rosen, a high school counselor in Boardman, who was on the recent Linfield tour with GEAR UP. Its true that private schools tend to be quite expensive. The total cost of tuition and housing at Linfield, for instance, is about $50,000 a year. For students living on campus at OSU and the U of O, its about half that.But experts say private institutions can put together hefty financial-aid packages that often bring the cost below what a student would pay at a state university. The private school model tends to be high sticker price, high discount rate, said Howell, who is the executive director of policy research at the College Board. Students dont realize its like shopping for carsthe sticker price isnt what youre going to pay. In addition to need-based aid, federal and state grants, and college work-study, private colleges often give merit-based scholarships. Merit awards can be harder to get at large institutions given the sheer number of applicants, said Keller of the NationalCollege Access Network. You may find that a student who may not have hit the benchmark at a big four-year public may hit it at a small private, she said. But even with a generous aid package, the numbers dont always work out. The average net price for low-income students at the Oregon state universities is about $13,000. At private schools including Linfield, Lewis & Clark College in Portland, and Pacific University in Forest Grove, its closer to $20,000. However, at Reed College, among the nations most academically prestigious private colleges, low-income students only tend to pay about $9,000. Daniel Urdelas, a freshman at the private, nonprofit Pacific University, said he realized he wanted to go to a small school while attending the GEAR UP summer camp two years ago. When I thought about the college experience, I mainly only thought about the big schoolsOSU and U of O, he said. Upon seeing the private colleges, I think what appealed was the intimateness of the atmosphere. It was really much more toned down, casual, and comfortable. The University of Oregon did offer to pay his tuition, but Pacific seemed like they kept throwing grants at me and scholarships, he said. The state option may have been several thousand cheaper in the end, but Urdelas, who is from Lincoln City,a small coastal town, decided it made sense to pay more for the right fit. At Pacific, which has fewer than 2,000 students, I feel comfortable talking to my professors outside of class in office hours. I feel like I mesh OK with the vibe here, he said. I might have gotten a little lost at a bigger school. Indonesia targets to reduce corn imports to 900,000 tonnes To encourage farmers to increase their production, Indonesia plans to prohibit corn imports this year, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said, according to a report carried by the Jakarta Post. With this new policy, the Indonesian government hopes to reduce its corn imports to only 900,000 tonnes, down from 3.6 million tonnes last year. Widodo said that to encourage farmers to increase their productivity, the corn floor price was set at Rp2,700 (20 US cents) per kilogramme. Farmers have complained about the price of corn, which goes for as low as Rp1,500 (11 cents) due to the pressure from corn imports. "With the instruction, farmers have been encouraged to produce more corn because it promises good profits," Widodo said in a statement issued by the Presidential Office last weekend, according to Jakarta Post. The notorious Northern Arizona University now has signs outside of on-campus restrooms that ask students to consider whether they have pee privilege. Do you have pee privilege? one sign questions, informing restroom-goers that if they never have to think about gender identity, ability, or access when peeing, then [they] do. HARRISBURG A rally was held on the steps of the Capitol Tuesday where attendees asked for fair insurance coverage of Lyme disease treatments. There is such a thing as chronic Lyme disease, said Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf, R-Montgomery/Bucks. Weve been struggling for years to get well, Nika Corwin said. Corwin and her children have Lyme disease and serious co-infections caused by the disease. It is such a misunderstood disease, she said. Lyme patients are suffering, and we dont have many treatment options. Right now, the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention recommends 30 days of antibiotics. Insurance companies are not required to cover the cost of treatment after that, and they often consider the treatments experimental. According to the Pennsylvania Lyme Resource Network, 40 to 50 percent of Lyme cases do not respond to short-term antibiotics, which leads to a lot of out-of-pocket expenses. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket, said Susan Pogorzelski, another Lyme patient. The disease itself is so overwhelming, and then when you add the financial burden and the lack of support from the medical community, it just exacerbates everything, Corwin said. Senate Bill 100, sponsored by Greenleaf, would require insurance companies to cover longer term antibiotic treatments, closing the insurance gap and giving families some financial relief. Some people lose their houses, some people lose their livelihoods, their jobs. Our whole lives are basically upended by this disease and it doesnt have to be that way, Pogorzelski said. In a memo to legislators, the Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania said: We respect the challenges faced by those suffering from Lyme disease, but whether long-term antibiotic therapy is appropriate isnt a question for either the General Assembly or insurance companies. It is a question for the medical research community, and it should be answered (and covered) only based upon rigorous examination and evidence from that community. Senate Bill 100 is in the Banking and Insurance Committee. There is no vote scheduled at this time. An information meeting Wednesday night at the South Middleton Township building will get residents and community organizations up to speed about what is being done to locally fund repairs and restoration at Childrens Lake. Jorie Hanson, a Boiling Springs resident who has been working behind the scenes to organize efforts for the lake, said the meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday will bring everyone together and recognize those who have already donated. The township previously reported that local fundraising, as well as funds from the township and the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission, was enough to jump-start the design work on repairs at the lake. The water level at Childrens Lake has been 2 feet below normal since last summer after water was found to be piping into the ground, making it unstable. The dam partially collapsed, and the Fish & Boat Commission estimates the price tag to repair it is $1.8 million. Hanson said there is a line item in the state budget that will allow for that funding. But should the budget not be passed as is, or that line item is taken out, its possible the state funding may not come through. To prepare for that, Hanson said residents with the backing of the Bubbler Foundation have created a Save the Lake fund, where charitable, tax-deductible donations can be made by the community and corporate sponsors. Hanson said she and other volunteers are looking to continue the push for fundraising and for seeking grants to help build funds for the lake. Even if the dam repair is funded by that state budget line item, she said residents already have other ideas as to what can be done with the lake. Were also looking at ways to improve the lake, she said. Theres already a consensus on silt removal. It will be an incredible opportunity to do that with construction of the dam. Hanson said Fish & Boat will have to drain the lake to fix the dam, and during that time, volunteers can look at projects including silt removal. The commission has helped volunteers with measurements to give an estimate on how much silt needs to be removed. Hanson said they hope to have a grant for that removal, which could be around $400,000 to $450,000. Other projects bandied around by residents include habitat restoration to make fishing more challenging and to create natural aerators for better oxygenation in the lake. Another idea involves a handicapped-accessible pier with overhead cover. Before they get working on those ideas, however, Hanson said fundraising is the priority for much of this year. A Save the Lake T-shirt is in the works, as is a special print by local artist Gerald Putt, whose art regularly won the Pennsylvania Duck Stamp contest. The painting will be the first one Putt has made of Boiling Springs since 1995. The limited edition print and the T-shirts will be on sale starting on Foundry Day on June 3. Hanson said other fundraising events are being planned for this year, a GoFundMe page will be set up, and a Save the Lake sign will be posted at the clock tower near the lake. 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trademark crackdown. Manx Crafters Gifts were informed the store included items which breached its trademark, sending a representative to inspect the shop, which sells goods from a number of local crafters. The crafters have been told they can buy a licence to use the TT initials, but one crafter took to social media to describe the cost as "crazy". It was recently revealed that the RNLI had to pay to use the TT name on its charity pins, while Bushy's Brewery was threatened with legal action before reaching an agreement with the DED earlier this year. The Kiwanis Club of Carlisle has kicked off its annual blueberry fundraising campaign to benefit local school children. Now through June 30, the public can order blueberries for $31 per 10-pound box by calling the dedicated phone line of 243-6800 and leaving a message. Please remember to speak clearly and specify your name, phone number and number of boxes. Orders can also be placed by visiting the clubs website at www.carlislekiwanis.org now through July 5. They will get confirmation of the order and about a week before the delivery date they will get another email that the berries are officially coming, said Clyde Forbes, who co-chairs the blueberry committee with fellow club member Bill Jacobs. Checks should be made out to the Carlisle Kiwanis Foundation. Delivery of the blueberries is expected from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 11, at the Project SHARE food bank, 5 N. Orange St., Carlisle. The club mobilized its effort during a kick-off event Tuesday. Members will be collecting orders and contacting past buyers to ask for their support this year. Its our major fundraiser, said Jacobs, adding the club also hosts a cranberry sale in the fall using produce harvested from the same south New Jersey farm as the blueberries. Proceeds from the blueberry sale go to the foundation that funds several programs for local children and their families. The largest recipient is the Learn 2 Read, Read 2 Learn program where four books are given every year to each kindergarten and second-grade student in the Carlisle Area School District. We are building personal libraries for every child in the district, said Helen Milliron, club secretary. A major focus of Kiwanis is early education. We are hoping to expand the program into the South Middleton School District starting this fall, Jacobs said. The Kiwanis also donates to Project SHARE and its programs that feed needy children, Forbes said. The more money we can get to Project SHARE, the more it is going to help the kids. The Carlisle club uses the food bank as a distribution point and uses its refrigeration unit to store the blueberries. Sale proceeds also cover the administrative costs associated with the Kiwanis Club managing the annual Warm the Children campaign, which is supported by The Sentinel. Warm the Children collects monetary donations for children in need of winter clothing and shoes. Volunteer shoppers then use the money to take children on a shopping spree at a local store. Its another thing we do that is very well received in the community, Milliron said. In 2016, the Kiwanis Club of Carlisle raised about $29,000 for the foundation and its programs. This year the goal is to sell 3,101 boxes of blueberries, at least one more box than the record set in 2015. If successful, this would yield $10 in profit on each box sold or a total of $31,010. The need is there, Forbes said. We are hoping for an increase [in sales] because the problems are increasing. The Kiwanis Club also uses money from the blueberry sale to support an annual scholarship for a Carlisle High School senior along with an annual honors banquet where the top 5 percent of graduating seniors from Carlisle, Boiling Springs and Big Spring high schools are recognized. In the times of neo-liberalism, the protection and deepening of private property rights is propagated as essential to human dignity and freedom, and considered fundamental to accelerate growth and development. Harvey (2005) suggests that this neo-liberal regime has so far only resulted in strengthening the class power of business elites through regressive redistribution, that is, by favouring corporate interests above all else and promoting commodity culture to its severest end with legal backing. One such legal mechanism is the intellectual property regime which privileges property-owning elites by transferring intellectual assets from public domains of common use to private ownership, enabling the extraction of exclusive monetary gains. The book under review seeks to unpack this imperialistic nature of copyrights. Another theme of equal import, highlighted in the book, is the mode of resistance in creative arts. Ghosh scholastically ventures to analyse copyright laws from historical, social, political and economic perspectives and their changing contours informed by the emerging forms of capitalism. This analysis successfully traces the use of copyrights as a primary mechanism to control dissent, reflected in the works of intellectuals seeking to establish nonconformist truths and wisdom. Copyrights continue to be subservient to the monetary interests of the capitalist classprinters, producers, publishersgiven their earliest institution by Queen Mary in 1557, when they started extending their arms to engulf knowledge. All this resulted in stifling creativity and eroding creative essence. Ghoshs analysis extends logically to delineate the creative arts indebtedness to society and thus, questions the very basis of intellectual property and copyright. HARRISBURG Legislation approved by the Pennsylvania state Senate on Wednesday seeks to clear legal hurdles for police departments to expand their officers' use of body cameras, and it gives departments the discretion to refuse public requests for copies of audio or video recordings by officers. The bill, which passed 47-1 after brief comments on the Senate floor, would add Pennsylvania to a growing list of states that are setting statewide policy over the collection of audio and video by officers, including from dashboard and body cameras. Perhaps the most controversial aspect is the bill's exemption of recordings from requests under Pennsylvania's open-records law, although a court still could order the release of a police recording. The bill also sets limits on requests. In particular, it provides a window of just 20 days after an incident to submit a request for a copy of an officer's audio or video recording. It is grounds for a denial if a police department or prosecutor's office decides the recording could contain evidence in a criminal matter or the identity of a confidential informant or victim, and that it cannot safely protect that information by removing or obscuring it. A similar bill died in the House last year after the Senate passed it in the legislative session's final days. The sponsor, Judiciary Committee Chairman Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, said the measure would help promote transparency in incidents involving camera-wearing officers. Several Democrats who backed the measure for that reason also criticized some of its elements, and Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, said he hoped the House would change the bill to make the recordings more publicly accessible. The bill initially gave a window of 60 days for public requests, but senators changed it Tuesday to 20 days at the request of Gov. Tom Wolf's office and the Pennsylvania State Police, Greenleaf's office said. Wolf's office said he supports the use of body cameras to "promote transparency and increase public safety," but he did not offer an endorsement. "We will continue to monitor the bill as it moves through the legislative process," Wolf's office said in a brief statement. It is supported by law enforcement organizations, including the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association and the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association. But it is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the bill would make it nearly impossible for the public to obtain video. The use of body cameras is limited in Pennsylvania, with law enforcement organizations unable to name more than a few departments that use them. The state police do not use body cameras, while departments in Pennsylvania's two largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, use body cameras on a limited basis. The bill aims to remove a couple legal hurdles that police departments have cited as potential problems. It clarifies that officers can gather body camera footage inside a private residence while on duty, an effort to address concerns about violating the state's surveillance law, and it makes clear that uniformed officers can legally record any conversation while using a state police-approved device. The bill does not address when a police camera must be turned on and how long data must be stored before it is erased, although it assigns the Pennsylvania State Police with writing guidelines for the storage of the recordings. May 9 Europe Day is traditionally held every year to mark the anniversary of the historical Schuman Declaration and to celebrate peace and unity in Europe. Every year in May, the European Union institutions and agencies across the old continent as well as in its offices all over the world organize a variety of activities for all ages to mark the day and raise awareness about the EU. The idea behind the European community was that its founding members France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg would pool their steel and coal resources by lifting import and export duties. The rationale behind was both economic and political. French foreign minister Robert Schumans proposition came just five years after World War II with the intention to boost post-war economy and the idea that by merging the economic interests of France and Germany, risk of conflict between the two rival powers would be reduced in the future. The Schuman declaration pledged that the solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible. The EUs foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, began her Europe Day 2017 address on the defensive: The future of the European Union is a choice a choice that belongs to every European citizen and matters to the entire world. This year the European Union has turned sixty: sixty years of peace, of protection for our workers, of opportunities for our business, of liberty and rights. But the future of Europe is not something we inherit from our founding fathers and mothers. The European Union is the values we believe in, the partnerships we build in the world, the mirror of our European society. Europe is what we, Europeans, make of it every single day, each one of us. Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 20 October 2022 with a view to the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down specific provisions for the 20142020 cooperation programmes supported by the European Neighbourhood Instrument and under the European territorial cooperation goal, following programme implementation disruption Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 4 October 2022 with a view to the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EC) No 851/2004 establishing a European centre for disease prevention and control Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 4 October 2022 with a view to the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the European Union Single Window Environment for Customs and amending Regulation (EU) No 952/2013 Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 15 September 2022 with a view to the adoption of Decision (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council providing exceptional macro-financial assistance to Ukraine, reinforcing the common provisioning fund by guarantees by Member States and by specific provisioning for some financial liabilities related to Ukraine guaranteed under Decision No 466/2014/EU, and amending Decision (EU) 2022/1201 Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 14 September 2022 with a view to the adoption of Directive (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council on adequate minimum wages in the European Union Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 13 September 2022 with a view to the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) 2019/833 laying down conservation and enforcement measures applicable in the Regulatory Area of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 13 September 2022 with a view to the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 and Directive 2014/59/EU as regards the prudential treatment of global systemically important institutions with a multiple-point-of-entry resolution strategy and methods for the indirect subscription of instruments eligible for meeting the minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 13 September 2022 with a view to the adoption of Directive (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council on uniform procedures for checks on the transport of dangerous goods by road (codification) Documents : POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT adopted at first reading on 13 September 2022 with a view to the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2022/ of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down conservation and management measures applicable in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention Area and amending Council Regulation (EC) No 520/2007 On May 8 2017, the ELN and Chatham House co-hosted a research event on The Asia-Pacific Region and its Role in Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiatives. ELN Director Sir Adam Thomson chaired the event and the speaker was Professor Ramesh Thakur, Director, Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Crawford School, The Australian National University; Co-Convenor, Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. The Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament is a sister network of the European Leadership Network (ELN). According to the Chatham House report, the participants discussed the fact that the Asia-Pacific region is the most likely theatre for nuclear weapons exchange. They also tackled how to reduce nuclear risks regionally and globally. Professor Thakur provided the Asian perspective for bridging the gap between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states, especially with regards to nuclear disarmament initiatives. On 11-13 November 2015, ELN Research Fellow Thomas Frear participated in the NATO Parliamentary Assemblys 90th Rose-Roth seminar on Moldovas European Future: Regional Context and Internal Challenges. According to the seminars report, Thomas reminded the participants that the current 5+2 negotiation format (Moldova and Transnistria as conflict parties; Russia, Ukraine and OSCE as moderators; the EU and the United States as observers) has not made any constructive progress since it was instituted in 2006. Unfortunately, Transnistria has never been more unstable than now, he suggested. This is largely due to the change of Kyivs approach as the Russian actions in Crimea and in the east of Ukraine led the Ukrainian government to reassess Transnistria, where the Supreme Council of Transnistria issued a request that the region be incorporated into the Russian Federation alongside Crimea. As a result Kyiv policymakers began to view Transnistria as a possible entry-point for Russian Special Forces and provocateurs into Odessa Oblast. He also argued that the Ukrainian and Moldovan governments acceptance of an EU Association Agreement (AA), and its accompanying DCFTA is likely to result in Transnistria losing access to the EU market, with additional consequences for its trade with Ukraine and Moldova. This is particularly relevant as the Transnistrian economy relies heavily on the export of a few key products, such as electricity exported to the Republic of Moldova and steel and textiles to the European Union. These products remain regionally competitive due only to heavily subsidised gas imports from Russia, thus any Ukrainian actions aimed at inhibiting the import of Russian gas would cripple the Transnistrian industry. This would leave Transnistria totally reliant on direct subsidies from the Russian state, which have recently been reduced, and on the remittances of Transnistrian migrant workers working abroad. A video of the seminar is available here. 1 copie integrale de votre acte de naissance avec indication de votre filiation, 1 copie integrale de l'acte de naissance de chacun de vos parents, tous documents concernant vos parents justifiant de la possession d'etat de Francais (carte nationale d'identite, passeport, carte d'immatriculation consulaire, certificat de nationalite, livret militaire, carte d'electeur...), 1 copie integrale de l'acte de mariage de vos parents ou s'ils ne sont pas maries 1 copie integrale de l'acte de reconnaissance prouvant votre filiation. Attention : l'acte de naissance doit etre recent, car un acte ancien ne permet pas de verifier un eventuel changement de nationalite (jugement d'extraneite, renonciation a la nationalite francaise...). Attention :l'acte de naissance doit etre recent, car un acte ancien ne permet pas de verifier un eventuel changement de nationalite (jugement d'extraneite, renonciation a la nationalite francaise...). Click to expand... I wouldn't count on it. Based on my application for nationality, I'd say you need to expect that none of the documents will be returned. (Somewhere, they are kept in a file with your name on it, I'm sure. )The only time I've had documents returned like that is when something is missing and they send you the whole file back to resubmit "when complete."Take a look here at the Service Public page: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1051 Even if you check that you live abroad, they seem to say that you must present your dossier in person. There is an exception for those who cannot appear in person, but it seems to be limited.See also the list of documents you area asked to provide.For the most part they ask for "copie integrale" - which means a recently issued copy of the appropriate documents. Translations normally are not returned (and must also be dated recently) - so keep a copy for yourself if you want to have one.Cheers,Bev Hi there, i am not too sure what sort of information i am trying to find by posting this thread but any information and points of view would be much appreciated. My mum and dad purchased a cottage and barns with around 5 acres of land, my dad would love for us to move to france, when i say us that would be my husband and 2 children (aged 6 and 2). We are currently remting with no hope of ever really having enough money to purchase our own home, so this was we can live rent/mortgage free! My daughter has already started school and is in year 1 so i am fearful of pulling her out and away from her friends, i know deep down she will probably settle fine and make new friends. My other worry is work, ive worked office jobs all my life and my husband works on the roads (although he is not limited to this and would work another job) we would learn the frencg language although we are looking to move quite quickly to get our daughter started in a school in September. Any, any, any advice would be fabulous. Thank you Leanne Raria said: Thanks Bev, The plan with the $10K deductible is for people who are traveling internationally (its a US Blue Cross program) so its definitely applicable to my stay in France. The big question for me is: a) Are my children covered by the French national health care program as they are more likely to get sick. b) What's the chances of racking up a health bill of $1000s? I agree that visiting a doctor is cheap ($21 as I understand) and seeing them a dozen times is cheaper than buying insurance. But how expensive is it if you stay over night at a hospital or have to do a battery of tests. Thanks again. Raria Click to expand... There are Blue Cross policies that cover International care and treatment. And I assume that your policy would cover your children if it covers you over here. Relying on PUMA is tricky, as it requires first 3 months of residence and getting enrolled can take "several" months past the date you submit your application. During this time you want to have coverage - and it's entirely possible that by the time you get a decision on your PUMA application, it's nearly time to return back home again.Visiting a doctor (GP at least) is now 25 (of which 70% is reimbursed by the French health care system). To be covered for the remainder, you need a mutuelle, which will run you another 100 per month per adult, and perhaps 50 - 75 a month per child.Hospitalization costs can run up a few thousand euros, depending on what you are hospitalized for, but still much, much less than the US costs. On the Ameli site you can access lists of the "official" rates the national health care service uses for reimbursement purposes. (And basically what you would be charged in a public hospital.)Or you could look into something like AARO's group coverage. https://aaro.org/medical-insurance They offer a family plan, though I'm not entirely sure how that works. I do know that their coverage is supposed to fulfill the visa requirements, and that you would have to take out a membership in AARO to qualify. But, AARO provides lots of handy information for American expats in France, so a membership could be a good investment.Cheers,bev President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey, sweeping away the man who is responsible for the bureau's investigation into whether members of his campaign team colluded with Russia in its interference in last year's election. The bombshell announcement that sent shock and surprise ricocheting through Washington ends the career of the man who was once seen as the unimpeachable and nonpartisan ideal of how a law enforcement officer should behave. But Comey saw his reputation tarnished when he was dragged into the toxic politics of the 2016 campaign. In recent days, he again came under fire for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Many Democrats believe that his announcement that he was re-opening the probe 11 days before the election cost the former secretary of state the presidency. The Trump administration his dismissal was the direct result of his handling of the Clinton probe. But Democrats rejected that notion, immediately raising comparisons to the Watergate era and claiming that the FBI chief was fired because his investigation got too close to the White House. The Trump administration however said Comey was fired based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions has recused himself from the Russia investigation since he was a member of Trump's campaign team. In a signed letter, Trump informed Comey that he was "hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately," explaining that he reached the conclusion that Comey is "not able to effectively lead the bureau." "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," Trump told Comey in the letter. "I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors." In a separate letter, rich in irony, Rosenstein laid out the reasons for Comey's firing, arguing that it was his transgressions over the Clinton email investigation that were the cause of his dismissal. At the center of Rosenstein's rationale for recommending Comey's firing was the director's handling of the investigation into Clinton's private server, namely his decision to recommend no charges be filed and the news conference he held to explain his reasoning. Rosenstein accused Comey of attempting to "usurp the attorney general's authority" by publicly announcing why he felt the case should be closed without prosecution. "Compounding the error, the director ignored another longstanding principle: We do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation," Rosenstein argued in his memo. "We should reject the departure and return to the traditions (of the bureau)," Rosenstein said. "The way the director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them." But Senate Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer said he told Trump on the telephone that he had made a terrible mistake. "Were these investigations getting too close to home for the President?" Schumer asked. CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, was also not buying the idea that Comey was sacked over the Clinton investigation, saying it was "absurd." Toobin branded the move a "grotesque abuse of power by the President of the United States." "This is not something that is within the American political tradition," Toobin said, comparing the sacking of Comey to President Richard Nixon's firing of special prospector Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal. "This is not normal. This is not politics as usual," Toobin said though added that Trump did have the legal authority to fire an FBI director. The White House however said that the impetus for the firing of Comey came from Rosenstein, noting that he was a career prosecutor who served under President Barack Obama as the US Attorney for Maryland, and was confirmed in his new job on April 25. A senior administration official said that Rosenstein assessed the situation upon taking office and concluded the FBI director had lost his confidence. He sent his recommendation to Sessions who forwarded it to Trump, who accepted it on Tuesday. But former officials of the Clinton campaign, accused Trump of using the furor over Comey's handling of the email server as a ruse to get out from under the Russia investigation. "I was as frustrated, concerned and disappointed as anyone with Director Comey's handling of the email investigation, but President Trump just fired the man investigating how Russia meddled in our election and whether members of his campaign were involved, an investigation President Trump called "charade" only 24 hours ago," said Clinton's former campaign manager Robby Mook. "It's equally concerning that our attorney general, who lied about his own meetings with the Russians, approved Director Comey's firing," he said. One Trump loyalist, who worked on the campaign and the transition gave his reaction to CNN's Jim Scuitto. "I firmly believe the Russia angle is fake news. But this gives me pause," the person said. Senior Justice and FBI officials say they were unaware of the Comey decision until the announcement. Officials who spoke to CNN said they are shocked by the development. Comey's term was due to run until 2023. The decade-long tenure was introduced to shield FBI directors from being drawn into politics. The firing of Comey sent shockwaves through Capitol Hill. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is leading one of four investigations into Russia's interference in the election, said he supported Trump's decision. "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well," Graham said in a statement Tuesday. "I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests." But Democrats, like Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey blasted the move. "This is Nixonian. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein must immediately appoint a special counsel to continue the Trump/Russia investigation," he said. While Democrats renewed their demands for a special counsel, arguing that the Trump Justice Department could not be trusted to oversee the case, Republicans insisted that one was not needed. "I think Rod Rosenstein, the new deputy attorney general is competent to lead that effort," said Texas Sen. Joh Cornyn, a member of the GOP leadership. But Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said that though Rosenstein's rationale for removing Comey was sound, it, would "raise questions." "It is essential that ongoing investigations are fulsome and free of political interference until their completion, and it is imperative that President Trump nominate a well-respected and qualified individual to lead the bureau at this critical time," Corker said in a statement. And Sen. John McCain added: "While the President has the legal authority to remove the director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office." The Arizona senator renewed his request for a special congressional committee to review the Russia allegations. Comey's last appearance on Capitol Hill last week exacerbated doubts about his position. Just before news of his dismissal broke aiming to clear up his statement that former Clinton aide Huma Abedin "forwarded hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband's laptop. The note, signed by Gregory Brower, assistant director of the FBI's Office of Congressional Affairs, clarified that the "hundreds and thousands of emails" that Comey said were 'forwarded" from Abedin to her husband's email "included emails transferred via backups as well as manual forwarding." The White House said it will immediately launch the search for a new FBI director. Comey was appointed FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013. In so doing, he elevated a Republican law enforcement veteran who had been critical of the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush to the top domestic investigative and surveillance organization, among the most powerful posts in the world. In the decades since former FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, the controversial director who brought FBI into the modern era, law enforcement has avoided the appearance of influencing politics the way Hoover did. But Comey's decision to thrust himself repeatedly into the 2016 election, put him at odds with the FBI's general decision to stay away from the political spotlight. Comey made the decision in July to go public with his recommendation that the Justice Department not pursue any charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or her former staffers over her email practices as secretary of state. However, he also took the opportunity to rebuke Clinton at length as being "extremely careless" with sensitive information. Then-candidate Trump had talked up the investigation until this point, at which time he and his campaign derided Comey for the "political" decision. Just days away from the election, Comey jumped into the race again. He informed Congress, via letter, that the FBI had re-opened its investigation into Clinton. The decision was made because of its investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is married to Clinton confidant Huma Abedin. Comey followed up days later with another letter, informing Congress that the FBI didn't find anything and continued to believe Clinton's practices did not merit the pursuance of any criminal charges. After Clinton's loss, former President Bill Clinton blamed Comey for it, as have many Clinton staffers, at least in part. After taking office, Trump met with Comey at the White House. He offered a cryptic remark to the FBI chief. "Oh, here's Jim," Trump said in January. "He's become more famous than me." CNN's Sara Murray, Ted Barrett, Eli Watkins, Shimon Prokupecz and Scott Glover contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON By the topsy-turvy standards of Donald Trumps White House, the day started quietly. Few outside Trumps inner circle Tuesday had reason to believe it would end with the firing of FBI Director James Comey, perhaps the biggest Washington shakeup since 1973, when President Richard Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Trump had only two public meetings on his daily schedule: An intelligence briefing at 10 a.m., followed by a closed-door meeting with national security adviser H.R. McMaster. As expected, the daily news briefing with White House spokesman Sean Spicer in the afternoon largely was devoted to former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the subject of a Senate hearing the day before on Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. One reporter brought up Comey: Does the president still have confidence full confidence in FBI Director James Comey? Spicer was circumspect: I have no reason to believe I havent asked him. So I dont I have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about this. The reporter pressed: And the last time you spoke about it, you said he did have confidence, but youre not sure to say that again now? Answered Spicer: Well, I dont in light of what youre telling me, I dont want to start speaking on behalf of the president without speaking to him first. Two hours later, at 4:39 p.m., White House staffers called a lid usually taken as a sign that the presidents public work day is over, releasing reporters and photographers who serve in the daily press pool. Over at the Capitol, with the House in recess, the halls were mostly empty. The sun was starting to fade over the Potomac. Then around 5:30 p.m., with rush hour in full swing, Spicer returned to the White House briefing room with a statement, surprising a small group of reporters who had stayed behind: The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It hit like a thunderclap on an otherwise sunny, cool spring day. A typical reaction came from Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been looking into the FBIs investigation into alleged ties between Trump campaign associates and Russian intelligence agents. Im flabbergasted he told Fox News. It wasnt just Democrats who were taken by surprise. Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who serves on both the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI, also reportedly received no heads-up. He found out on his iPhone. Cornyn, talking to reporters later in the Capitol, gave a guarded response. He serves at the pleasure of the president, and while I believe Director Comey to be a good man and an honorable man, I hope the president can now find somebody who can be a strong independent leader for the department. Its really important for the country. Cornyn added this about the FBI director who has variously been accused by Republicans and Democrats of dragging the FBI into the 2016 election through his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation: Obviously hes been the focus of a lot of controversies, and I think it is important that we have an independent director. Texas Republican junior senator, Ted Cruz, was similarly cautious. When reporters caught him in the hallway, he declined comment, saying only: I want to wait to review the basis of the firing and the facts and circumstances behind it. Other conservatives made clear they thought Comeys departure was overdue. The FBI must be beyond reproach and cannot even be perceived as being politically weaponized, said Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning. But Democrats reacted with alarm, including some from Texas. President Trumps actions are not politics as usual, said Houston Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. At best, they represent an egregious overreach of his authority. At worst, they are a blatant attempt to derail the investigation into the collusion of Trump campaign officials with Russias interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of San Antonio was among Democrats who likened Comeys firing to Watergate. This Nixonion dismissal is designed to obstruct further inquiry into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Doggett said in a statement. It is long past time for my Republican colleagues to stop covering up and start exposing Trump to an independent, nonpartisan commission as I have urged since November. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, called the firing extremely suspicious, adding his belief that an independent commission should be appointed to investigate Russias meddling last year in U.S. elections. Castro said that when asked since last year if he believed Comey should be fired, he has replied that despite Comeys missteps, he trusted him more than any person President Trump would nominate. Castro added in a statement: Above all else, the FBIs investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 election must continue. Because Attorney General (Jeff) Sessions has recused himself from that investigation, I urge Deputy Attorney General (Rod) Rosenstein to reaffirm the agencys commitment to seeking the truth in this matter. U.S. Rep Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, said he supported the firing. President Trump is exercising his rightful authority to put a new director in place, Smith said in a statement. This is a fresh start for the new administration and I look forward to the nomination process. U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, D-San Antonio, who is on a fact-finding trip in the Ukraine, said in a statement that Comeys firing will create new concerns around the public trust in the Department of Justice. "While I understand the desire to maintain the public trust in the FBI, the timing of James Comey's firing is troubling, especially since the Justice Department Inspector General was conducting an independent investigation into Comey's handling of the Clinton email case, said Hurd, who is on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Dear Editor: Many in Cumberland County know me for my years of service with the Silver Spring Township Police Department, where I worked hard every day to "protect and serve" local residents. I am running for prothonotary to bring that same level of commitment, professionalism and service to local families. I began my career in law enforcement over 30 years ago after graduating first in my class from the Pennsylvania Municipal Police Officers Academy. During my career in law enforcement, I served on the Cumberland County Drug Task Force and received commendation from former Attorney General Tom Corbett. In my role, I was responsible for coordinating complex investigations and was required to maintain detailed and precise records. I was also the Evidence Custodian responsible for the collection, documentation, storage and disposition of all departmental evidence. This proven attention to detail and oversight of important records are skills I will use as prothonotary to ensure the publics trust. I was born and raised here in Cumberland County, and grew up in a hard-working family from Hampden Township, where I learned the values of hard work and helping others. Those are just two of the values I will bring to the prothonotary office. As a fiscal conservative and taxpayer, I understand that local residents cannot afford to pay higher taxes. I am committed to running an office that always puts taxpayers first, and I will work to utilize new technology and procedures which will ensure cost efficiency and top-notch constituent service. I am very honored to have received the endorsement of the Cumberland County Republican Committee and many other dedicated members of our community. I humbly ask for your vote on election day on May 16. Dale Sabadish Candidate for Cumberland County prothonotary Ohio FFA convention speakers encourage FFA members to overcome obstacles, find their passion and know their value. COLUMBUS, Ohio This was my second year attending the Ohio FFA convention out of the blue jacket and behind a notepad and camera instead. Convention has definitely grown since I donned the blue and gold around 10 years ago. Over 8,000 FFA members and guests walked the Ohio state fairgrounds, participated in career development contests and agriscience fairs, and thousands of FFA members crossed the stage to be recognized for their accomplishments. See more photos from the Ohio FFA Convention in these photos for day 1 and day 2. I am always blown away by the dedication of students to the FFA program and the agriculture industry. As keynote speaker Matt Rush said, FFA members are valuable they are the future of agriculture. Although the keynote speakers are typically geared toward getting FFA members excited for their futures, I cant help but find myself a little more inspired by the personal stories and words of wisdom of the speakers. This years keynote speakers focused on overcoming obstacles, finding your passion and knowing your value. Overcoming obstacles I was particularly inspired by the words of Amberley Snyder, 26, a barrel horse racer paralyzed from the waist down after a car accident. In 2010, Snyder was on her way to the Denver Stock Show and Rodeo when she glanced down to look at the map display on her phone. When she looked up, she had drifted over the center line, headed for a metal pole. In a panic, she overcorrected her truck, which slid of the road, rolled, and ejected her she wasnt wearing her seat belt. When she came to, she sat up only to find she could not move her legs or toes. Upon ejection from the truck, her body slammed into a fence post, breaking her back. The doctors told her if she had been wearing her seatbelt, she might still have the use of her legs. Their diagnosis: Snyder would never use her legs again. But that wasnt good enough for Snyder. She loved her horses and she loved the rodeo more than anything. So, she set three goals for herself: walk, ride, rodeo. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference, Snyder said. After 18 months, she was back on her horse. Before her accident, Snyder had won over 70 buckles in rodeo events, but the one that means the most to her is the one she won six years after her accident. Snyder now travels America, telling her story and encouraging everyone to get back on the horse. Her wheelchair is merely an obstacle she has learned to overcome. I have no doubt in my mind, I am going to walk, she said. Its not a matter of if, its just a matter of when. Is FFA for me? FFA members also heard from National FFA Secretary Victoria Harris, who almost didnt join her schools FFA chapter. Harris explained she didnt grow up on a farm and assumed a city girl like herself didnt belong in a classroom full of those who did. She worked up the courage to finally attend a meeting and even apply for a chapter office, when she found herself frozen outside the ag room door. A fear of rejection and embarrassment overcame her and she couldnt turn the knob. She had already made up her mind to turn and run when a couple of her friends walked up. They opened the door and walked in together. From then on, Harris dedicated herself to learning those things in agriculture she didnt understand and found her own place within the FFA organization. Her message: FFA can be for anyone and you can find your own place within it. Happiness It was the final session of convention and Mary Buehler was set to give her retiring address as president. You could hear the emotion in her voice as she called the convention hall to order for the final time, and tears glimmered in her eyes. Although a little sad as she took her final bow as president, they were also tears of happiness for all she had been able to accomplish as a state officer. Happiness was the theme of Buehlers speech creating your own happiness and doing things that make you happy. Throughout the two days of convention, Buehler enlisted the help of a select number of FFA members to pass out business cards with the word happiness and a definition. By the final session of the FFA convention, Buehler asked anyone who had received a card to stand. There were over 8,000 people in the convention hall for the final session, and almost everyone rose from their seats. Buehler said the cards represented the ability to touch thousands of people in a short amount of time, which could lead to the happiness of someone who needs it most. She concluded her speech by sharing how being a part of the FFA organization, creating new friends and being able to reach out to other FFA members across Ohio as a state officer, was a way for her to find her happiness. Hundreds of FFA members overcame obstacles, to share their passions and earn valuable recognition for their hard work and dedication to their FFA projects throughout the year. And 910 FFA members crossed the stage to receive their state FFA degrees the highest award the state FFA association can bestow upon its members. I hope these FFA members found some level of happiness and a drive to continue to do great things in the FFA organization and agriculture industry. Related 2017 Ohio FFA officer team and award winners 2017 Ohio FFA convention gallery day 1 2017 Ohio FFA convention gallery day 2 WASHINGTON The Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council (NOPEC) received a $1 million loan May 10, the first loans the U.S. Department of Agriculture is making through its Rural Energy Savings Program. NOPEC is the largest governmental retail aggregator in the nation and serves more than 200 communities in 13 counties: Cuyahoga, Lake, Ashtabula, Lorain, Huron, Summit, Medina, Portage, Trumbull, Columbiana, Mahoning, Seneca and Geauga. NOPEC, a nonprofit regional council of governments, will provide energy improvement loans to small businesses in 206 rural communities in northeast Ohio. USDA is providing zero-interest loans to two rural energy providers to help business and residential customers lower energy use and costs. They are being provided through the Electric Program of USDAs Rural Utilities Service. The Electric Program makes loans and loan guarantees in rural areas to nonprofit and cooperative associations, public bodies and other utilities to help finance the construction of electric distribution and generation facilities. In addition to the NOPEC loan, USDA is awarding a $13 million loan to South Carolinas KW Savings Co. ICJ Stays Kulbhusan Jadhav's Hanging Published: May 10, 2017 India has received a stay order preventing Pakistan from executing the death sentence awarded to the former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav from the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Indias team of lawyers led by senior advocate Harish Salve accused Pakistan of gross violations of international laws. They also pointed out the violations of the Geneva convention that deals with Consular relations. Pakistan had denied consular access to India despite 15 attempts. It also refused to give any details of Jadhavs arrest and trial until the death sentence was passed. India has rarely approached the ICJ especially when it comes to Pakistan. India is always hesitatant to internationalise its bilateral relations. But given the nature of Jadhavs case in which Pakistan refused to follow any established principle India was forced to take the extreme measure of taking the case to the ICJ. ICJ International Court of Justice was established in 1945 via the UN Charter and its jurisdiction is worldwide. It is located in The Hague in Netherlands. It is a part of the United Nations. The International Court of Justice acts as a world court. The judgement passed by the ICJ have binding force and are without appeal for the parties concerned. The major functions of the International Court of Justice are to settle legal disputes submitted to it by states and to provide advisory opinions on legal questions submitted to it by duly authorized international organs, agencies, and the UN General Assembly. Month: Current Affairs - May, 2017 Topics: ICJ India- Pakistan International Latest E-Books Wheat: Net sales of 258,400 metric tons for delivery in marketing year 2016/2017 were up noticeably from the previous week, but down 30 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for the Philippines (66,900 MT, including 57,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 2,000 MT), Thailand (52,000 MT), Nigeria (32,600 MT, including decreases of 900 MT), Malaysia (30,700 MT, switched from unknown destinations), and Mexico (29,800 MT, including decreases of 7,100 MT). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (113,200 MT), Costa Rica (15,200 MT), Leeward Windward Islands (600 MT), and Barbados (500 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 563,400 MT were reported primarily for unknown destinations (157,000 MT), Algeria (90,000 MT), South Korea (76,400 MT), and China (63,000 MT). Exports of 622,900 MT were up 2 percent from the previous week, but down 2 percent and from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily the Philippines (164,900 MT), Japan (115,700 MT), Mexico (98,500 MT), Nigeria (65,100 MT), and Guatemala (34,300 MT). Exports for Own Account: The current exports for own account outstanding balance of 24,900 MT is for Canada. Corn: Net sales of 771,600 MT for 2016/2017 were down 22 percent from the previous week and 15 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Japan (184,800 MT, including 51,700 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 5,800 MT), Mexico (153,100 MT, including decreases of 23,800 MT), South Korea (123,600 MT, including decreases of 1,400 MT), Saudi Arabia (73,600 MT, including 70,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), and Taiwan (73,400 MT). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (80,200 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 24,100 MT were reported for Peru (15,000 MT) and unknown destinations (9,200 MT). Reductions were reported for Panama (100 MT). Exports of 1,226,100 MT were down 11 percent from the previous week and 10 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Japan (390,900 MT), Mexico (229,500 MT), South Korea (189,000 MT), Peru (75,100 MT), and Saudi Arabia (73,600 MT). Optional Origin Sales: For 2016/2017, options were exercised to export 68,000 MT to South Korea from the United States. The current optional origin outstanding balance for 2016/2017 of 294,000 MT is for unknown destinations (163,000 MT) and South Korea (131,000 MT). The current outstanding balance for 2017/2018 of 58,000 MT is for unknown destinations. Barley: Net sales of 100 MT for 2016/2017 were reported for Japan. Exports of 200 MT were reported to South Korea. Sorghum: Net sales of 102,500 MT for 2016/2017 were up 62 percent from the previous week and 30 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for unknown destinations (55,500 MT), China (46,400 MT, including decreases of 6,600 MT), and Mexico (600 MT). Exports of 73,100 MT were up noticeably from the previous week, but down 39 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were China (49,900 MT), Mexico (23,100 MT), and South Korea (100 MT). Rice: Net sales of 60,300 MT for 2016/2017 were down 50 percent from the previous week and 14 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Mexico (46,800 MT, including decreases of 9,500 MT), unknown destinations (5,000 MT), Colombia (2,500 MT), Canada (1,800 MT, including decreases of 200 MT), and Hong Kong (1,500 MT). Reductions were reported for Guatemala (400 MT) and Taiwan (400 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 700 MT resulted as increases for Saudi Arabia (1,000 MT), were partially offset by reductions for the United Arab Emirates (300 MT). Exports of 70,100 MT were down 13 percent from the previous week and 12 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily Japan (29,200 MT), Haiti (14,500 MT), Mexico (9,400 MT), South Korea (6,500 MT), and Canada (3,100 MT). Exports for Own Account: The current exports for own account outstanding balance of 300 MT is for Canada. Soybeans: Net sales of 318,500 MT for 2016/2017 were down 57 percent from the previous week and 25 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for the Netherlands (144,800 MT, including 66,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), Indonesia (88,200 MT, including 68,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 4,400 MT), China (69,600 MT), Bangladesh (55,000 MT), and the Philippines (27,100 MT, including 25,000 MT switched from unknown destinations). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (99,000 MT), Mexico (16,200 MT), and Costa Rica (14,700 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 12,800 MT were reported for Japan (6,000 MT), unknown destinations (5,500 MT), South Korea (1,300 MT). Exports of 640,400 MT were down 9 percent from the previous week, but up 2 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily the Netherlands (144,800 MT), China (137,500 MT), Mexico (120,000 MT), Indonesia (92,900 MT), and the Philippines (39,400 MT). Exports for Own Account: For 2016/2017, new exports for own account were reported to Canada (25,000 MT). The current outstanding balance of 69,900 MT is for Canada. Exports Adjustments: Accumulated exports of soybeans to Germany were adjusted down 75,478 MT for week ending April 20th. The correct destination for this shipment is the Netherlands and is included in this weeks report. Soybean Cake and Meal: Net sales of 103,600 MT for 2016/2017 were down 8 percent from the previous week and 35 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Bangladesh (25,000 MT), Honduras (10,000 MT, including 8,700 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 900 MT), Venezuela (10,000 MT), Canada (9,700 MT), and Mexico (9,200 MT, including decreases of 100 MT). Reductions were reported for Guatemala (2,800 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 6,300 MT were reported for unknown destinations. Exports of 231,000 MT were up 35 percent from the previous week and 14 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily Colombia (62,300 MT), the Philippines (47,500 MT), Mexico (38,900 MT), Honduras (21,400 MT), and Canada (15,700 MT). Soybean Oil: Net sales of 10,600 MT for 2016/2017 were up noticeably from the previous week, but down 42 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases reported for Mexico (8,700 MT, including decreases of 100 MT), the Dominican Republic (900 MT), Trinidad (700 MT), and Canada (300 MT), were partially offset by decreases for Haiti (100 MT). Exports of 28,200 MT were down 14 percent from the previous week and 1 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily South Korea (23,000 MT), Mexico (4,500 MT), Canada (400 MT), and France (100 MT). Cotton: Net upland sales of 152,400 RB for 2016/2017 were up 32 percent from the previous week, but down 34 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Vietnam (48,400 RB, including 500 RB switched from Japan and 1,000 RB switched from South Korea), Indonesia (35,200 RB, including 1,200 RB switched from Japan and decreases of 100 RB), Turkey (28,800 RB), South Korea (12,500 RB, including decreases of 2,100 RB), and China (9,600 RB, including decreases of 100 RB). Reductions were reported for Thailand (4,100 RB), Japan (2,400 RB), and Colombia (100 RB). For 2017/2018, net sales of 97,200 RB were reported primarily for China (37,400 RB), Vietnam (33,600 RB), Pakistan (8,800 RB), Thailand (6,200 RB), and Taiwan (4,500 RB). Exports of 357,300 RB were up 18 percent from the previous week, but down 8 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Vietnam (74,300 RB), Turkey (60,700 RB), Bangladesh (35,000 RB), Indonesia (32,100 RB), and China (24,300 RB). Net sales of Pima totaling 1,600 RB for 2016/2017 were down 74 percent from the previous week and 85 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were primarily for Vietnam (900 RB, switched from China), Japan (500 RB, including decreases of 100 RB), Thailand (300 RB, including 100 RB switched from Japan), and Turkey (300 RB). Reductions were reported for China (800 RB). Exports of 18,100 RB were up 17 percent from the previous week and 21 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily India (5,300 RB), China (4,500 RB), Peru (2,000 RB), and Vietnam (2,000 RB). Exports for Own Account: For 2016/2017, new exports for own account were reported to Taiwan (2,200 RB), Vietnam (1,000 RB), Indonesia (1,000 RB), and South Korea (600 RB). Decreases were reported to Vietnam (2,200 RB) and Indonesia (600 RB). The current outstanding balance of 101,300 RB is for Indonesia (51,900 RB), China (24,300 RB), Taiwan (14,100 RB), South Korea (3,200 RB), Bangladesh (2,500 RB), Thailand (1,900 RB), Vietnam (1,600 RB), India (1,300 RB), and Pakistan (500 RB). Hides and Skins: Net sales of 536,900 pieces reported for 2017 were down 3 percent from the previous week, but up 61 percent from the prior 4-week average. Whole cattle hide sales totaling 533,700 pieces were primarily for China (270,200 pieces, including decreases of 30,500 pieces), Thailand (118,600 pieces), South Korea (102,400 pieces, including decreases of 700 pieces), Mexico (22,000 pieces, including decreases of 6,700 pieces), and Brazil (9,700 pieces). Reductions were reported for Vietnam (100 pieces). Exports of 422,500 pieces reported for 2017 were down 3 percent from the previous week, but up 5 percent from the prior 4-week average. Whole cattle hides exports of 420,900 pieces were primarily to China (230,200 pieces), South Korea (89,400 pieces), Thailand (36,500 pieces), Mexico (23,200 pieces), and Taiwan (18,600 pieces). Net sales of 184,100 wet blues for 2017 were up noticeably from the previous week and 36 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Italy (58,500 unsplit and 16,100 grain splits), China (32,100 unsplit and 5,900 grain splits), and Vietnam (21,300 unsplit). Reductions were reported for India (100 grain splits). Exports of 141,700 wet blues for 2017 were down 7 percent from the previous week, but unchanged from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Italy (50,400 unsplit and 8,100 grain splits), China (32,500 unsplit and 5,900 grain splits), and Mexico (10,900 grain splits and 1,000 unsplit). Net sales of splits totaling 580,500 pounds for 2017 were up noticeably from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Vietnam (410,700 pounds), China (158,400 pounds) and South Korea (15,000 pounds). Reductions were reported for Taiwan (3,600 pounds). Exports of 422,600 pounds were up 39 percent from the previous week and 70 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were China (411,600 pounds) and South Korea (11,000 pounds). Beef: Net sales of 16,600 MT reported for 2017 were down 22 percent from the previous week and 12 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Japan (8,000 MT, including decreases of 700 MT), Hong Kong (3,100 MT, including decreases of 100 MT), Taiwan (1,500 MT, including decreases of 100 MT), the Philippines (800 MT), and South Korea (800 MT, including decreases of 200 MT). Reductions were reported for Chile (100 MT) and the Republic of South Africa (100 MT). Exports of 12,800 MT were down 7 percent from the previous week and 6 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Japan (4,000 MT), South Korea (2,800 MT), Hong Kong (1,600 MT), Mexico (1,500 MT), and Canada (1,100 MT). Pork: Net sales of 13,800 MT reported for 2017 were down 40 percent from the previous week and 48 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Mexico (3,500 MT), Canada (2,700 MT), South Korea (1,700 MT), Japan (1,300 MT), and the Philippines (800 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 300 MT were reported for South Korea. Exports of 25,100 MT--a marketing-year high--were up 23 percent from the previous week and 22 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily Mexico (8,000 MT), Japan (3,900 MT), South Korea (3,300 MT), China (2,200 MT), and Canada (1,500 MT). Source : USDA They were told their futures as Parmalat suppliers and whether they were offered new contracts from June would be decided in Brisbane before the end of the week and would depend on the responses of the rest of the suppliers to the proposals put to the meetings. 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 Prime Minister to attend UN Vesak Day Celebrations in Sri Lanka Published: May 10, 2017 Prime Minister Modi will travel to Sri Lanka to attend the Buddhist festival Vesak Day (Buddha Jayanti) that commemorates birth, enlighten and death of Buddha. This will be Prime Minister Modis second visit to Sri Lanka since becoming the Prime Minister. International Day of Vesak celebrations will be held in Colombo from May 12 to 14. As a part of the celebrations, International Buddhist Conference will be held in which over 400 delegates from more than 100 countries will participate. Vesak is the most important day in the Buddhist calendar. This is the first time Sri Lanka will host the festival. Background The Buddhist link between India and Sri Lanka dates back to 2nd century BC. During the reign of Emperor Ashoka, Buddhism was made as the official religion of India. Ashokas daughter Sanghamitta is believed to have brought a branch of original Bodh tree to Anuradhapura. Theravada Buddhism is widely practiced in Sri Lanka. During last year Vesak celebrations held in Lumbini, China taking advantage of strained relation between New Delhi and Kathmandu partnered with Nepal to celebrate Vesak. China has been aggressively pursuing a strategy of staking claim to the legacy of Buddhism to boost its cultural influence. India to counter Chinas strategy has been actively engaging with South East Asian countries like Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos to showcase its heritage. Month: Current Affairs - May, 2017 Topics: Cultural Diplomacy India-International Relations India-Sri Lanka International Latest E-Books , 14 : 40 ; 3 Nearly 100 percent of the FCPA Blogs readers have experienced traveling in a car when it broke down. But how many have experienced a commercial airplane breakdown while in flight? Almost zero percent. Why the difference? The answer has everything to do with federal compliance policy. We might like to think that commercial aviation is 99.999 percent safe. But if it were only this safe, wed see over 2,000 deaths per day from airliner mishaps. In fact, air travel is 99.9999999 precent safe. Why? One of the reasons, in effect, is federally mandated compliance. Airline companies are required by law to invest very heavily in training personnel and monitoring operational systems. Governments make these requirements so high, despite their extraordinary expense, because the consequences of an operational failure are catastrophic. With automobiles, by contrast, we require little more than introductory driver training and cursory periodic vehicle inspections. But we certainly could do much better. The co-author of this post is a former Marine Corps pilot and three-time winner of the Baja 1000. He knows first-hand how to design and maintain vehicles that, even in the most grueling conditions, will almost never break down. If we all drove such cars, the highways would certainly be much safer. But the vehicles alone would cost around half a million dollars each. And thats just the start-up costs: wed have to train people to properly drive them, and wed have maintenance costs too. Instead, we tolerate countless accidents and traffic jams, not to mention the roughly 1.25 million automobile-related deaths worldwide per year. There is a reason governments do not require aviation-type compliance for automobile driving. We have determined that although the likelihood of a breakdown is high, its consequences just arent sufficiently severe to justify the costs. And those costs are two-fold: the private costs of maintaining aviation-type compliance, and the public costs of lost transportation when those private costs forced most of us out of driving altogether. All but the very richest would be taking the bus (and the bus would be more expensive too!). Analogize to anti-corruption compliance. Is accepting some corruption sensible because the marginal costs of trying to eradicate it at every level just become too high? Imagine the cost of detecting and prosecuting the ubiquitous corruption that exists in the bureaucracies of less developed countries. Anti-corruption compliance programs that were 99.9999999 percent effective would put most companies out of business; that seems self-defeating. But should we do better than modern automotive compliance? We could look at transnational corruption in two basic ways: like an absolutist who believes this is a long-term fight for a human right to live without being abused by those whom weve trusted to govern, and requiring the highest conceivable compliance costs; or like a utilitarian, who believes in balancing the costs of preventing bribery against the value of allowing companies to continue providing goods and services even in high-risk environments. Ultimately, our federally mandated compliance requirements depend on three factors: the assessed harms of bribery, the costs of preventing it, and the value of keeping companies in business. This, in turn, has implications for numerous areas of compliance policy. How high should we set the bar for a reasonable compliance program? How often would a truly compliant company, which had in good faith implemented gold-standard programs, experience noncompliant events? How quickly do we assume that a noncompliant event is evidence of an inadequate compliance program? Ultimately, what measures should we take to incentivize compliance, and punish noncompliance? Anti-bribery policy thus ultimately rests on our answer to this question: do we think of bribery as aviation serious, or automotive serious? Or perhaps something in between? _________ Kent Kroeker is a former Marine Corps pilot, professional race car driver, mountain climber and international lecturer on risk management in hostile environments. Andy Spalding is a lecturer at the International Anti-Corruption Academy, Professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, and Senior Editor of the FCPA Blog. Two Singaporean executives of Glenn Defense Marine Asia pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday for submitting bogus bids, phony claims, and inflated invoices to the U.S. Navy. Neil Peterson, 39, and Linda Raja, 44, were arrested by authorities in Singapore at the request of the U.S. government and extradited in October 2016. Each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Sentencing for Peterson and Raja is set for August 11 in San Diego. At Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia or GDMA, Peterson served as the Vice President for Global Operations. Raja was General Manager for Singapore, Australia and the Pacific Isles. They admitted conspiring with GDMAs owner, Leonard Glenn Francis, to defraud the U.S. Navy. Francis, 51 also known as Fat Leonard is a Malaysian national. He pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to bribing dozens of Navy officials with travel, meals, cash, electronics, parties, and prostitutes. Hes waiting to be sentenced. His company provided port services to U.S. Navy ships in Asia. Peterson and Raja helped GDMA submit bids to the Navy that were either entirely or partially fictitious. The DOJ said the phony bids . . . . . . ensured that GDMAs quote would be selected by the U.S. Navy as the supposed lowest bidder. As a result, GDMA could control and inflate the prices charged to the U.S. Navy without engaging in any competitive bidding, as required. Once GDMA won work from the Navy, Peterson and Raja inflated GDMAs invoices. In one case in October 2012, Peterson and others marked up invoices for services GDMA provided to during the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richards visit to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. The full amount billed to the U.S. Navy for this visit was $1,232,858, of which approximately $877,413 was fraudulently inflated, the DOJ said. Overall losses to the Navy were more than $34.8 million. So far the DOJ has charged 20 current or former U.S. Navy officials with taking bribes from Fat Leonard and GDMA. The defendants allegedly accepted luxury travel and hotel stays, elaborate dinners, electronics, cash, and the services of prostitutes. In exchange, they allegedly gave Francis and his company classified and internal U.S. Navy information. Fifteen defendants including Francis have already pleaded guilty. A half dozen have been sentenced to prison. Sentences range from 30 months to more than six years. ______ Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. An Italian mayor has reportedly offered 2,000 to anyone who will move into a deserted village. Italian plan Daniele Galliano is desperate to prevent a quaint area in north west Italy named Bormida, Liguria, from becoming completely uninhabited, and in a bid to save the small area where less than 400 people live he has set up a plan to encourage people to flock there. And it is believed property in the area will cost the equivalent of just over 40 a month to rent accommodation in Bormida, although he has taken to his Facebook page to reveal he is still waiting to receive approval from the local council. Speaking about the plan, a councillor told The Guardian newspaper: ''We're still working out the plan, but anyone is welcome to come and live here. ''We're a small community but very welcoming. ''We're high up in a mountain area but also not far from the sea - it's a healthy lifestyle, the air is very clean.'' Gisele Bundchen mediates when she's in a taxi. Gisele Bundchen The 36-year-old supermodel insists spending time in heavy traffic doesn't have to be a stressful experience and if she can "centre herself" during the hectic journeys, it makes for a better travel experience. Speaking at the David Lynch Foundation's Women of Vision Humanitarian Awards, she said: "The back of the taxi seems an unusual spot to meditate but sitting in traffic while rushing around the city is the perfect time to centre yourself because it makes the ride better." The blonde beauty - who has children Benjamin seven, and Vivien, four, with husband Tom Brady - has been meditating since she was in her early 20s and thinks its easy to make time for it wherever she is and whatever she's doing. She told Vogue: "The thing about meditation is that you can do it anywhere. And I've done it everywhere. On planes, the back of a taxi, sitting in hair and make-up - because of my job, sometimes you're doing make-up for hours and hours and hours - in my bed in the morning, in nature, anywhere. "All you need is 20 minutes. Even with a schedule like mine, I can find 20 minutes. For me, I love to do it early in the morning before the kids are up. The energy is very calm." And Gisele believes her morning meditation sessions before the rest of her household are up help make their home a more calm place. She said: I like to do it in the mornings because the energy is very calm. It's dark; I like to put a candle on. For me, it's a ritual. The way I see it is that you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can put the oxygen mask on the people around you. If I nourish myself in the morning, when the house energy starts revving up, you have so much more to give. "As a mother, you're always giving. It's important to give something to yourself, so you can give from a place of being full, instead of giving from a place of being depleted, which isn't healthy for you or for the family. "If I don't do it in the morning, it's a very different energy--the dogs are barking, the kids are saying they are hungry, it's so chaotic, there's this and that . . . when I wake up just 30 minutes before everyone else, it makes a world of a difference. It pays off." Photograph: sean pavone/123RF Portugals capital city is vibrant. On any visit to Lisbon, you can expect plenty of sun and stellar sights, and still not as many tourists as Europes other big cities. Like Rome, for instance, Lisbon, too, has seven hills, a historic centre thats been preserved very well, warm weather, and friendly locals. Yet, the city hasnt climbed to the top of the tourism ladder just yet, which is good, because that means you still get to see it all without jostling for space with other visitors. What should you do there, you ask? Portugal, as is well known, was one of the worlds richest colonial powers. And Lisbon, the capital of this erstwhile power, brims with fine churches and palaces icons of the wealth that was gathered back then. Youll see this when you walk through the Belem District. But dont just seek out the grand monuments, spend time in the charming neighbourhoods of Alfama and the Bairro Alto as well. Walk in the streets, sip on a glass of wine, and wind down the day with the soothing sounds of a gentle fado. Weve got the low-down on the best ways to soak in this historic city listed below. Its best to plan ahead, of course. Make sure to check local websites and stay up to date with the citys events calendar so you dont miss out on the big highlights. Lisbon can get very hot and crowded in the summer, though the heat is not as oppressive as elsewhere in the Mediterranean. June is a good month for festivals in the city be sure to catch the street parties for the Festas dos Santos Populares in Alfama. The Association of Italian Textile Machinery Manufacturers (ACIMIT), a private body promoting Italian textile machinery, has announced that 2017 has started offf on a positive note for Italian textile machinery manufacturers. For the first quarter, orders have increased both in Italy and abroad. ACIMIT consists of an industrial sector with 300 manufacturers.The orders index for textile machinery compiled by ACIMIT for the period from January to March, grew 24 per cent compared to the same period in 2016. The index value stood at 113.7 points (basis 2010 = 100). The Association of Italian Textile Machinery Manufacturers (ACIMIT), a private body promoting Italian textile machinery, has announced that 2017 has started offf on a positive note for Italian textile machinery manufacturers. For the first quarter, orders have increased both in Italy and abroad. ACIMIT consists of an industrial sector with 300 manufacturers.# This growth regarded mostly markets abroad, where the index came in at an absolute value of 124.1 points (+26 per cent). In Italy, the increase compared to the period from January to March 2016 was 16 per cent, with an absolute value of 71.5 points.ACIMIT president Raffaella Carabelli said, Orders for the start of 2017 confirm a positive trend in major foreign markets, and a climate of trust for Italys textile industry that is on the upswing. The index data for the first three months of the year confirm the positive signs ascertained by our businesses in various foreign markets.A renewed climate of enhanced trust is currently perceived in the textile sector triggered by the governments commitment to enact a range of significant incentives for the Countrys manufacturing system, she added. (GK) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India With Vidarbha region all set to occupy an important place in the area of textiles, an Ethiopian delegation, including government officials and textile industry representatives, visited the Government Polytechnic Nagpur (GPN) in Nagpur. The visit was part of a study tour on cotton growing methods and development in cotton textiles in India."It was an industry-institute interaction meet on cotton growth and development in Vidarbha region. The delegation from Ethiopia included eight top officials from Ethiopian Industry Input Development Enterprise, Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute, Cotton Producers, Ginners and Exporters Association Ethiopia, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural resources and Ministry of Industry," Deepak Kulkarni, GPN's head of textiles manufacturing department, said, according to a leading daily report. With Vidarbha region all set to occupy an important place in the area of textiles, an Ethiopian delegation, including government officials and textile industry representatives, visited the Government Polytechnic Nagpur (GPN) in Nagpur. The visit was part of a study tour on cotton growing methods and development in cotton textiles in India.# The purpose of the meet was to bring experts in the field of cotton growth and development on one platform. Vidarbha region, which comprises 11 districts in eastern Maharashtra, is the largest cotton producer in the state."Vidarbha region could be the next emerging zone for textile operations. We have a strong agriculture base. The region has attracted number of diverse industries ranging from food processing, textiles, power engineering, logistics etc. The cotton growth and development has seen a significant progress in last few years in the region," Kulkarni was quoted as saying.According to Shrikant Gadge, a local textile consultant, Vidarbha contributes up to 30 per cent of cotton crop in India. "Maharashtra has sanctioned Rs 2000 crore recently for the region for farm-to-fashion drive project. The state has also attracted huge investment in the textile sector during last 4-5 years. Cotton related small and medium scale industries would be promoted in the region." (SV) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL) has announced that through its indirect subsidiary Indorama Netherlands BV, it has signed a definitive share purchase agreement with Sinterama S.p.A. its joint venture partner to acquire its 25 per cent stake in Trevira Holdings GmbH in Germany. With this acquisition, IVL will hold 100 per cent of Trevira. IVL had acquired 75 per cent of Trevira in July 2011. The 100 per cent ownership will provide incremental synergies within the IVL Group's high value added portfolio. The value of the acquisition, calculated in accordance with the regulations of the Capital Market Supervisory Board and the Stock Exchange of Thailand, as prescribed by the regulations of the Stock Exchange of Thailand is less than 15 per cent and the total size of transactions in the past 6 months is also less than 15 per cent. Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL) has announced that through its indirect subsidiary Indorama Netherlands BV, it has signed a definitive share purchase agreement with Sinterama S.p.A. its joint venture partner to acquire its 25 per cent stake in Trevira Holdings GmbH in Germany. With this acquisition, IVL will hold 100 per cent of Trevira.# "Trevira with its renowned brand is an integral part within our specialty portfolio strategy. We see further growth potential especially in the hygiene and automotive segments, as well as in the high-end home textiles business," said Uday Gill, CEO of IVL's fibres business. "For Trevira and its customers and suppliers, this consolidation reflects Indorama Ventures' commitment to investing in the company and ensuring a continued strong and reliable partnership. IVL has supported us from the very beginning in all our activities and has integrated us in its global network. We cooperate in joint projects and benefit significantly from the synergies within the IVL group. We would like to thank the Sinterama team for their ongoing support in ensuring a seamless transition," said Klaus Holz, CEO, Trevira. Trevira GmbH is an innovative European manufacturer of high-value branded fibres and filament yarns for technical applications and hygiene products as well as for home textiles, automotive interiors and functional apparel. In 2016, sales of the company amounted to around 230 million. (KD) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Pakistan Government plans to supply 100 per cent certified cotton seeds to farmers during the current Kharif season in order to get maximum output. In this connection, a campaign will be launched so that only certified seeds are sown across the country. Arrangements have been made to make available about 38,000 metric tonnes of certified and approved seeds.The move is aimed at increasing per acre crop output in the country, according to Pakistani media reports. Pakistan Government plans to supply 100 per cent certified cotton seeds to farmers during the current Kharif season in order to get maximum output. In this connection, a campaign will be launched so that only certified seeds are sown across the country. Arrangements have been made to make available about 38,000 metric tonnes of certified and approved seeds.# The total requirement of cotton seeds was recorded at 40,000 metric tonnes for the sowing season 2017-18, an official in the Ministry of Textile Industry said, according to the reports.In order to ensure availability of certified seeds, seed dealers have been directed to market cotton seeds as per standard germination of 75 per cent. They have also been asked to ensure the quality and quantity of the, the reports said.During the current kharif season, cotton would be cultivated over 3.118 million hectares of land across the country to fulfill domestic requirements as well as exports, the official said.Cotton crop production targets for the current season have been fixed at 14.40 million bales against 14.1 million bales last year. Cotton would be cultivated over 2.429 million hectares of land in Punjab, 0.650 million hectares of land in Sindh, 0.038 million hectares in Balochistan Province and about 0.001 million hectares in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the official said, according to reports. (SV) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Justin Bieber Arrives In Mumbai Several hundreds of media-persons and fans had parked themselves at various points outside the Mumbai Airport for a glimpse of Bieber. He Might Fly In A Private Helicopter For His Concert Bieber is likely to fly in a private helicopter to the D.Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai for his concert scheduled this afternoon. Justin To Perform At 8 P.M. The concert venue, reported to be fully sold out with over 45,000 tickets, will open at 3 p.m. and Bieber is expected to give his performance at 8 p.m., according to the tour organisers, White Fox India. The Place Is Under High Security Navi Mumbai Police has deployed massive security, including surveillance by drones for the event by the 23-year-old Canadian pop singing sensation and Grammy Award winner. Expecting a turnout in excess of 45,000 for the live show, Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale said around 500 police personnel and 25 officers would be deployed for security and emergency disaster management at the venue. Justin To Promote His Next Album, 'Purpose' The tour is to promote his fourth album, the critically-acclaimed Purpose', in which he has experimented with more adventurous electronic sounds. Inside the stadium, plainclothes police would be on watch, a special police control room would be functional and a CCTV surveillance system with a command centre would monitor the event. Central High Schools Class of 2017 will be joined by some special guests at the graduation ceremony coming up later this month. A special seating section has been reserved for members of Central High Schools Class of 1967 during the ceremony on May 25 at the schools T.J. Foulon Field House, where the class will be recognized as part of the commencement program. Then on May 27, the Class of 1967 will meet for its 50th year reunion in the high school cafeteria, beginning at 4 p.m. with a social hour, followed by dinner at approximately 5 p.m. A meal of mostaccioli or roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, bread, drinks and desserts will be served. The cost to attend is $20 per person. Barbara Kennon, one of the 1967 Central graduates and an organizer for their 50th reunion, said the social hour will include a viewing of a rather special film, along with other activities. Were going to have the original movie from our senior trip, she said. And we also have some games planned and some door prizes that were going to give out. And there will be someone thats going to be playing some music from the 60s one of our classmates is putting together some tapes to play. Were gonna have a good time. Kennon said there were 139 students in the class and hopes this reunion will be the largest assembly of 1967 class members of the last 50 years. Many classmates, mostly those who live locally, have gotten together on occasion in between formal reunion events, including participating in Central High Schools autumn homecoming parade, but with this being the 50th year since they graduated, Kennon anticipates half or more of them will make it to the reunion. We havent had a big one like this in about, Id say, at least 10 years, she said, and that one wasnt real big because we were all in different places. This one has a lot of people coming from out of state from Texas and California and Washington. Theyre coming in from all over, so theyre kinda spread out And a lot will be coming in from way on the other side of the state. So far, weve got about 74 thats confirmed theyre coming in. Kennon said reunion organizers have been doing their best to contact everyone from the class who is still alive theyve lost about 13, as far as she knows. Were all anxious to get together again to see how everybodys doing and what theyre doing and how manys in their family, she said. Just kinda catch up. Reservations are requested for both events the graduation ceremony and the reunion so enough seating, door prizes and food are available for everyone. Contact Kennon at 573-760-5378 or barbkennon@yahoo.com to let her know youre coming. Vinod Khanna passed away on April 27, 2017 and several Bollywood stars paid their last respects to the late actor by attending the funeral and only a handful of younger generation actors were present. Furious at this, Rishi Kapoor sent out a Twitter rant blasting the younger stars and accused them of just partying and not having an emotional connect with anything else. However, Kriti Sanon hit back at the comments made by Rishi Kapoor and said, "I would like to believe it was situational. I don't think the present generation is less attached. I personally am emotional about people who I know and I am around." She further commented, "There can be individual reasons for people who knew Vinod Khanna and worked with him, but still were not there (funeral). There might be people who were not in Mumbai or were travelling. I can't comment on someone as to why they didn't turn up." Mohanlal, the complete actor of Malayalam cinema is currently on a break from films. The actor is enjoying a mini-vacation with his family at Capetown, South Africa. The latest talk on social media is Mohanlal's recent Capetown click. The actor had recently posted a new picture on his official Facebook page, which was clicked during the Capetown vacation. The Mohanlal fans are going gaga over the actor's cool look, and the picture has been going viral on social media. The fans point out that the actor has visibly lost lots of weight, and looks fitter than ever. Mohanlal left for the vacation with wife Suchitra, son Pranav and daughter Vismaya, after receiving the Special Award at the 64th National Film Awards ceremony. As per the close sources, Mohanlal and family will return from the vacation by the upcoming weekend. The actor is expected to join the sets of his upcoming Lal Jose directed comical entertainer, immediately after he comes back to Kerala. Mohanlal is said to be planning to join the final schedule of the upcoming B Unnikrishnan movie Villain, after completing the first schedule of Lal Jose project. Pranav Mohanlal, on the other hand, will kickstart his debut movie, after returning from Capetown. Hina Khan Hina Khan has been preparing for the show since a long time. She shared the picture and wrote, "Addressing the press for a new season of #khatronkekhiladi8." Nia Sharma Nia had shared a video clip a few days ago, in which she was seen doing a stunt. She also shared a picture and wrote, "My version of truth is always true!! Sometimes modified." Ravi Dubey & Karan Wahi Nia Sharma's co-actor from Jamai Raja, Ravi Dubey will also be seen on the show. Karan Wahi, who hosted Indian Idol 7 will be seen performing stunts on KKK 8. Karan and Ravi were seen performing during the launch. Shiny Doshi We will see Shiny Doshi impressing the audiences with her stunts on KKK 8. Shiny was also seen on Jamai Raja. We are sure that the audiences will be excited to watch their favourite Jamai Raja actors Shiny, Nia and Ravi competing on KKK. Rithvik Dhanjani Rithvik shared a picture and wrote, "Khatron Ke Khiladi is back with #PainInSpain @Colors tv it's surely promises to be a mad season this year...Lets set the ball." Shantanu Maheshwari & Lopamudra Raut Shantanu Maheshwari had already impressed the viewers with his dance performance. It has to be recalled that his dance performances also had a few stunts sequences and we assume it won't be difficult for him on KKK 8. Manveer Gujjar Also, Bigg Boss 10 contestant Lopamudra Raut will be seen giving a tough competition to others on KKK. Manveer Gujjar had impressed the viewers and bagged Bigg Boss 10 trophy. Sharing the picture, Manveer wrote, "New Challenges New Task New Project and I am ready for Pain in Spain.. #KKK8 need all ur love and support in my new beginning ... #harharmahadev." Geeta Phogat India's finest wrestler Geeta Phogat will be seen on the show. We are sure she will be a tough competitor to the other celebrities. Rohit Shetty With Contestants During the launch, staying true to the theme of daredevilry, Rohit Shetty performed a few stunts as a part of his entry on the stage. He injured himself in the process. Rohit With His KKK 8 Team The director was quoted by a leading daily as saying, "If I can do this to me, just imagine what I can do with you contestants." Naagin 2 actor Karanvir Bohra and his wife Teejay Sidhu were blessed with the twins on October 19, 2016. The babies were born in Vancouver, where Teejay's parents live. Recently, Karanvir had been to Vancouver to meet his family, and returned to India with his wife and twins. When KVB's little princesses came down to Naagin 2 set to meet their daddy, the team showered their love over the dotting babies. Also, the actresses visited Karanvir's house to meet the cuties. Check out pictures... Mouni With Karanvir's Babies Sharing the picture, Mouni wrote, "My Aayu Miko Nonu I And lots of yummy food :) Also Miko had her first mango @aamnasharifofficial @bombaysunshine @karanvirbohra." Mouni & Aamna Sharif Aamna Sharif along with her son also visited Karanvir and Teejay's son. Mouni shared a picture snapped with Karanvir's lilttle munchkins. Surbhi Jyoti With KVB's Little Babies Surbhi shared a few pictures snapped with Karanvir Bohra's babies. She wrote, "When finally she meets her favourite Maasi ." Shweta Tiwari KVB shared this picture and wrote, "Mama @shweta.tiwari with all her kids, including me @bombaysunshine was so happy as mama got books for #Miko n #Nonu and like good girls they started reading immediately. While #reyansh was being smothered by me. I realised, I need to buckle up, coz by the time they are 5, they would have completed more books than me " Nia Sharma Nia shared this picture and wrote, "And she's beyonddddd adorableeee.. @karanvirbohra @bombaysunshine it's KV and Teejay for them not mommy daddyy." Surbhi Jyoti & Surbhi Chandna Karanvir shared the picture and wrote, "Visiting this set was like a thunderbolt of a memory jolt. #Nonu loved the set, she seemed so comfortable and at home, in literall sense too.coz masi @surbhijyoti and @officialsurbhic were fighting over her, but sorry chandu she seemed at home with Jyoti Love you all you girls....." Sudha Chandran & Adaa Khan Karanvir wrote, "Abs how is it possible that they don't come and visit masi @adaakhann and badi Maa @sudhaachandran..... It was the cutest look she was giving adaa as she seemed all decked up in her Naagin avatar. The jewelery, lashes, lipstick....sigh! I can already see what's going to happen in a couple of years " Sudha Chandran Naagin 2 actress Sudha Chandran shared this picture and wrote, "Tryng to copy kv daughter's expression.....oh my god nonu is so cute.....lv u my chakree...chakree is sugar in malayalam." A couple of days ago, Teejay shared a picture with her little one and wrote, "I love mornings like this! :) Since last October, every morning has been like this - pure joy. :)" "I wake up, I feed and change a baby, I put her to sleep. Then I do the same for the other baby. But before putting them down, I do my morning mediation with each one. For twenty minutes, I do deep breathing and imagine white light flowing into me and my child." "I imagine every little baby part of hers being healed. I imagine God's love flowing into her little heart, so that she can give love to whoever needs it during the day. :) After our meditation, I find the babies sleep so peacefully." "And they remain peaceful throughout the day. When they're old enough, I'll teach them to meditate on their own, but for now, it'll be a little group activity. :) Time for them to get back to sleep, and for me to get up!! :) Haha! #twincesses." She also shared a picture of her baby playing with Karanvir and wrote, "Every day with you is a #blessing. It's a new chance to create more beautiful memories. You are God's greatest gift and we treasure every single moment with you. In case we didn't say it today - thank you #baby girl, for existing. :) #daddysgirl." Karanvir's babies have already become celebrities! Aren't they adorable? WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The following are some of the biotech stocks that made their way onto the Day's Gainers & Losers' list of August 7, 2017. GAINERS 1. Myokardia Inc. (MYOK) Gained 83.38% to close Monday's (Aug.7) trading at $31.45. News: The Company reported positive topline data from the first patient cohort of its phase II study of Mavacamten in symptomatic, obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients, dubbed PIONEER-HCM. The first patient cohort of the study met the primary endpoint of change in post-exercise peak left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) gradient from baseline to week 12 as well as key secondary endpoints, including peak oxygen consumption (peak VO2). MyoKardia is planning to initiate a pivotal study of Mavacamten, dubbed EXPLORER-HCM, by the end of this year. When we alerted our premium subscribers to MYOK on April 5, 2017, the stock was trading around $12.50. 2. NxStage Medical Inc. (NXTM) Gained 28.22% to close Monday's trading at $29.67. News: The Company is all set to be acquired by Fresenius Medical Care for $30.00 per common share, in a transaction valued at approximately $2.0 billion. The acquisition enables Fresenius Medical Care to further leverage its manufacturing, supply chain and marketing competencies across the dialysis products, services and care coordination businesses in a less labor- and capital-intensive care setting. The deal is expected to close in 2018. 3. Marinus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (MRNS) Gained 12.79% to close Monday's trading at $2.39. News: No news Near-term catalysts: -- Top-line data from phase II trial of Ganaxolone in children with CDKL5 genetic disorder are expected to be reported this quarter. -- A phase II study of Ganaxolone IV in women diagnosed with severe postpartum depression, dubbed Magnolia study, is underway - with data expected in the second half of this year. -- A phase II study of Ganaxolone capsules in women with moderate postpartum depression, dubbed Amaryllis Study, is expected to be initiated later this year. -- A phase II study of Ganaxolone in patients with Status Epilepticus is also planned for initiation later this year. 4. Pacific Biosciences of California Inc. (PACB) Gained 11.47% to close Monday's trading at $4.47. News: No news Recent event: On August 3, 2017, Pacific Biosciences and Novogene Corp. inked a new agreement, under which, Novogene will purchase 10 more Sequel Systems for DNA sequencing services. Novogene purchased 10 Sequel Systems from Pacific Biosciences in January of this year. 5. Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ARWR) Gained 10.87% to close Monday's trading at $2.04. News: No news Recent event: On August 3, 2017, the Company reported fiscal 2017 third quarter results. The net loss for the three months ended June 30, 2017 narrowed to $5.3 million or $0.07 per share from $19.4 million or $0.32 per share in the comparable year-ago period. Revenue for the three months ended June 30, 2017 rose to $9.4 million from $40 thousand for the three months ended June 30, 2016. This increase is driven by the upfront payments received from collaboration agreements with Amgen, and these payments will be recognized as revenue over the next several quarters, the Company noted. The Company had cash of $75.1 million at June 30, 2017. 6. Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc. (PRTK) Gained 10.51% to close Monday's trading at $21.55. News: No news Recent event: On August 2, 2017, the Company reported second quarter 2017 financial results and provided clinical update. The net loss shrunk to $18.2 million or $0.66 per share in Q2, 2017 on revenue of $7.5 million. This compared with a net loss of $30.3 million or $1.69 per share and nil revenue in the year-ago quarter. Rolling submission of NDA for Omadacycline, the Company's oral investigational antibiotic, is expected to begin in December 2017. Omadacycline is being developed for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI). NDA submission completion expected in the first quarter of 2018. 7. Editas Medicine Inc. (EDIT) Gained 9.09% to close Monday's trading at $18.61. News: The gene editing company is expected to provide a corporate update and results for the second quarter of 2017 on Wednesday, August 9th, 2017. LOSERS 1. Zynerba Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ZYNE) Lost 55.71% to close Monday's trading at $6.61. News: The Company's phase II study of ZYN002 cannabidiol (CBD) gel in adult epilepsy patients with refractory focal seizures, dubbed STAR 1, did not meet the primary endpoint. ZYN002 cannabidiol (CBD) gel did not demonstrate a statistically significant reduction of focal seizures during the treatment period compared to placebo. Near-term catalysts: -- Top line data from a phase II study of ZYN002 CBD gel for the treatment of osteoarthritis, dubbed STOP, are expected to be reported soon. -- Top line data from a phase II trial of ZYN002 CBD Gel in pediatric Fragile X Syndrome patients, called FAB-C, are expected to be released in September. 2. Gemphire Therapeutics Inc. (GEMP) Lost 46.78% to close Monday's trading at $9.93. News: The Company reported top-line results from phase 2b trial of Gemcabene in hypercholesterolemia patients, dubbed ROYAL-1. In ROYAL-1, Gemcabene met the primary endpoint and demonstrated a statistically significant lowering in LDL-C, but the magnitude of LDL-C lowering was less than observed in certain prior studies of Gemcabene. Near-term catalysts: -- Top-line results from phase 2b trial of Gemcabene in subjects with severe hypertriglyceridemia, dubbed INDIGO-1, are targeted for the first quarter of 2018 based on current pace of enrollment. -- Initiate phase 2 clinical development program of Gemcabene in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, known as AZURE-1, in the second half of 2017 with top-line results targeted for second half of 2018. 3. Fluidigm Corp. (FLDM) Lost 13.97% to close Monday's trading at $2.71. News: No news Recent event: On August 3, 2017, the Company reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017. Non-GAAP net loss for the second quarter of 2017 slightly narrowed to $9.0 million or $0.31 per share from $9.9 million or $0.34 per share for the second quarter of 2016. Revenue for the recent second quarter declined 15% to $23.9 million from $28.2 million in the second quarter of 2016. 4. Cara Therapeutics Inc. (CARA) Lost 8.63% to close Monday's trading at $14.93. News: No news Near-term catalysts: -- End of Phase 2 meeting with the FDA in the third quarter of 2017 to finalize pivotal program for I.V CR845 for the treatment of chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus (CKD-aP) in hemodialysis patients; initiation of a Phase 3 pivotal trial expected in the fourth quarter of 2017. -- Initiation of a Phase 1 trial of Oral CR845 in CKD-aP non-hemodialysis patients expected in fourth quarter of 2017. -- Investigational New Drug application submission for Oral CR845 in patients with chronic liver disease-associated pruritus expected in the fourth quarter of 2017. -- Completion of enrollment for CLIN-3001, the Company's ongoing adaptive pivotal Phase 3 trial of I.V. CR845 for the treatment of acute postoperative pain, expected in the fourth quarter of 2017. 5. Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc. (DRNA) Lost 6.94% to close Monday's trading at $3.35. News: No news Near-term catalyst: The Company is slated to release its second quarter 2017 financial results after market close on Thursday, August 10, 2017. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de DEARBORN (dpa-AFX) - The board of directors of Ford Motor Co. (F) is turning up the pressure on Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields to explain the company's fading fortunes and his plan to turn things around, according to reports citing people familiar with the matter. The reports noted that the directors scheduled extra time in their meetings this week in advance of Thursday's annual shareholders meeting so they could question Fields on his strategy as Ford's stock continues to stall. The shares have fallen 35 percent since Fields became CEO July 1, 2014. Investors have been indifferent to Fields' plan to pour billions into new technologies like driverless cars and robo-taxis to take on upstarts like Uber Technologies Inc. and Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving spinoff. Ford's traditional automotive business has struggled more than crosstown rival General Motors Co. as the U.S. auto market declines following seven years of growth. 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. China National Chemical Corporation ("ChemChina") today announced the definitive interim results for the tender offers to purchase all publicly held registered shares ("Common Shares") of Syngenta AG ("Syngenta") and all outstanding American Depositary Shares representing Common Shares ("ADSs"). At the end of the Main Offer Period on May 4, 4:00 p.m. CEST, around 82.2 percent of Common Shares (including those represented by ADSs) have been validly tendered in, and not withdrawn from, the offers. The Minimum Acceptance Rate condition of 67 percent of issued Syngenta shares has been satisfied and the offers have been successful. An additional acceptance period will begin on May 11, 2017. Shareholders of Syngenta and holders of ADSs who have not tendered their Common Shares or ADSs into the offers during the main offer period may accept the offers during the additional acceptance period, in which case they will receive the offer price in the second settlement. Such shareholders and holders of ADSs are advised that the additional acceptance period will end on May 24, 2017, 4:00 p.m. CEST 10:00 a.m. New York City Time. Shareholders of Syngenta and holders of ADSs should be aware that their custodian bank may set a deadline for tendering their Common Shares and ADSs that ends prior to May 24, 2017, 4:00 p.m. CEST 10:00 a.m. New York City Time. ChemChina, the offeror and Syngenta have no control over such deadlines that are set by custodian banks for their clients. Shareholders and holders of ADSs are advised to consult with their custodian bank in case of any doubt or if they have not received specific instructions in this regard. The prospective timetable for the closing of the offers is as follows: Thursday, May 11, 2017 Start of the Additional Acceptance Period Tuesday, May 16, 2017 Payment of Special Dividend Thursday, May 18, 2017 First Settlement Wednesday, May 24, 2017 End of the Additional Acceptance Period Friday, May 26, 2017 (at the latest) Provisional notice of the end result of the Offer Wednesday, May 31, 2017 Definitive notice of the end result of the Offer Wednesday, June 7, 2017 Second Settlement Further, as soon as permitted by law and applicable regulation, it is intended to de-list the shares from the SIX and to de-list the ADSs from the NYSE. About Syngenta Syngenta is a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources. Through world class science and innovative crop solutions, our 28,000 people in over 90 countries are working to transform how crops are grown. We are committed to rescuing land from degradation, enhancing biodiversity and revitalizing rural communities. To learn more visit www.syngenta.com and www.goodgrowthplan.com. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Syngenta. About ChemChina ChemChina, which is headquartered in Beijing, China, possesses production, R&D and marketing systems in 150 countries and regions. It is the largest chemical corporation in China, and occupies the 234th position among the Fortune Global 500. The company's main businesses include materials science, life science, high-end manufacturing and basic chemicals, among others. Previously, ChemChina has successfully acquired 9 leading industrial companies in France, United Kingdom, Israel, Italy and Germany, etc. To learn more visit www.chemchina.com and www.chemchina.com/press. Disclaimer This press release is not an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. Additional information and where to find it This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell company securities. The solicitation and offer to buy company securities is only made pursuant to the Swiss offer prospectus and the offer to purchase and other documents relating to the U.S. offer that have been filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). At the time the US Public Tender Offer was commenced, ChemChina and a designated direct or indirect subsidiary filed a tender offer statement on Schedule TO with the SEC and thereafter, the company filed a solicitation/recommendation statement on Schedule 14d-9 with respect to the offer. Investors and security holders are urged to read these materials carefully since they contain important information, including the terms and conditions of the offer. Investors and security holders may obtain a free copy of these materials and other documents filed by ChemChina and the company with the SEC at the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. Investors and security holders may also obtain free copies of the solicitation/recommendation statement and other documents filed with the SEC by the company at www.syngenta.com Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements Some of the statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the expected consummation of the acquisition, which involves a number of risks and uncertainties, including the possibility that the transaction will not be completed and other risks and uncertainties discussed in the company's public filings with the SEC, including the "risk factors" section of the company's form 20-F filed on February 16, 2017 as well as the tender offer documents filed by the offeror and the solicitation/recommendation statement filed by the company. These statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any forward-looking statements. These statements are generally identified by words or phrases such as "believe", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "plan", "will", "may", "should", "estimate", "predict", "potential", "continue" or the negative of such terms or other similar expressions. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results and the timing of events may differ materially from the results and/or timing discussed in the forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on these statements. The offeror, ChemChina and the company disclaim any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the period covered by this press release or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170509006881/en/ Contacts: Syngenta International AG Media Office Tel: +41 61 323 2323 Fax: +41 61 323 2424 www.syngenta.com or Media: Leandro Conti, +41 61 323 2323 Switzerland or Paul Minehart, +1 202 737 8913 USA or Analysts/Investors: Jennifer Gough Switzerland, +41 61 323 5059 USA, +1 202 737 6521 BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Cabinet office is set to release preliminary Japan leading economic indicators data for March at 1:00 am ET Wednesday. The leading index is expected to show a score of 105.5, up from 104.8 in February. Ahead of the data, the yen fell against its major rivals. As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 123.93 against the euro, 147.34 against the pound, 113.04 against the Swiss franc and 113.79 against the U.S. dollar. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. CAMARILLO, California, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- All amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless otherwise indicated: FIRST QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS In the first quarter of 2017, the Company drilled and fracture stimulated the Chandler 8-6H well, the first well in its 2017 drilling program, in which it holds a 99.9% working interest. The Company also drilled the Hartgraves 1-6H well and the Brock 9-2H, in each of which it holds a 100% working interest.The Company expects to begin fracture stimulation on the Hartgraves 1-6H well in the second quarter, with the Brock 9-2H well to be fracture stimulated after the Hartgraves 1-6H well is completed. Average production for the first quarter of 2017 was 753 BOEPD, a decrease of 44% compared to first quarter 2016 average production of 1,352 BOEPD due to three wells that were still shut-in during the first quarter, as a result of offset fracture stimulation operations on 19 wells by another operator in the Woodford formation beneath the Caney and also due to the normal production decline. The shut-in wells decreased first quarter 2017 production by over 300 BOEPD.Production improved throughout the quarter with the addition of the Chandler 8-6H well and March 2017 production was over 1,000 BOE per day even without the three wells returning to full production. production was over 1,000 BOE per day even without the three wells returning to full production. In the quarter, the Company continued to reduce its costs.G&A expenses decreased by another 15% in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the first quarter of 2016 due to continuing cost cutting efforts. Funds from continuing operations was approximately $0.9 million in the first quarter 2017 compared to $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2016.The decrease in funds from continuing operations was mainly due to the shut-in wells as well as lower realized gains from commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 2016, partially offset by the pricing increase. in the first quarter 2017 compared to in the first quarter of 2016.The decrease in funds from continuing operations was mainly due to the shut-in wells as well as lower realized gains from commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 2016, partially offset by the pricing increase. Net income for the first quarter of 2017 was approximately $1.0 million compared to a net loss of $1.3 million for the first quarter of 2016 due to the unrealized gain of $1.5 million from hedged commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2017. compared to a net loss of for the first quarter of 2016 due to the unrealized gain of from hedged commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2017. Revenue, net of royalties was $2.2 million in the first quarter of 2017 compared to $2.1 million for first quarter of 2016, an increase of 5%, as average prices increased by 91% between the quarters, which offset the production decrease. in the first quarter of 2017 compared to for first quarter of 2016, an increase of 5%, as average prices increased by 91% between the quarters, which offset the production decrease. Average netback per barrel for the first quarter of 2017 was $25.81 , an increase of 110% from the prior year first quarter due to the higher prices in 2017.Over 80% of first quarter 2017 oil production was hedged which resulted in substantially higher netbacks when the impact of commodity hedges are included.If the commodity contract hedges are included in the computation, the average netback per barrel increases 27% to $32.92 in 2017 compared to $25.89 in the first quarter of 2016. , an increase of 110% from the prior year first quarter due to the higher prices in 2017.Over 80% of first quarter 2017 oil production was hedged which resulted in substantially higher netbacks when the impact of commodity hedges are included.If the commodity contract hedges are included in the computation, the average netback per barrel increases 27% to in 2017 compared to in the first quarter of 2016. Cash totaled $7.0 million and working capital totaled $1.1 million at March 31, 2017 . BNK's President and Chief Executive Officer, Wolf Regener commented: "During the first quarter, we used the proceeds from our 2016 equity offering to begin our 2017 drilling program. We drilled and completed the Chandler 8-6H well (99.9% working interest) and drilled the Hartgraves 1-6H well (100% working interest) and the Brock 9-2H well (100% working interest).We expect to perform the fracture stimulation of the Hartgraves 1-6H well in the second quarter, with the Brock 9-2H well to follow. We are looking forward to the completion of these wells which we believe will outperform all of our previous wells due to both wells having full length laterals available for stimulation, improved placement of the laterals in the Caney based on previous learnings and both being located in areas where we have excellent calculated original oil in place numbers. Our net revenue increased by 5% in the first quarter 2017 as average prices increased by 91% compared to the prior year quarter.The price increase offset the impact of our decline in production due to the three shut-in wells during the first quarter, which reduced production by over 300 BOEPD during the quarter.However, our production increased throughout the quarter as the Chandler 8-6H well started production in late February and the shut-in wells were brought back online.Our March 2017 production was over 1,000 BOEPD.All the shut-in wells are still pumping off the offset operator's frack water and, at the end of the quarter, were still about 230 BOEPD below expected production levels.We don't expect any impact to the long-term production of the wells even though they are recovering slower than we originally expected them too. The Company continues to succeed in its cost-cutting efforts.In the first quarter of 2017, a reduction of general and administrative expense of 15% was achieved over the first quarter of 2016.These continued cost savings coupled with a 91% increase in average prices compared to the prior year quarter contributed to the Company generating funds from operations of $0.9 million despite the loss of production from the shut-in wells. The Company's hedging position has continued to allow us to realize higher prices than current market levels for a portion of our production.During the first quarter 2017, the Company was able to realize an average price of $63.99/bbl on more than 80% of its oil production.We expect a comparable level of hedging in the rest of 2017 as the Company has commodity contracts in place to recognize an average price of $61.55/bbl on 80% of existing 2017 production going forward, excluding the new production coming on-line from the 2017 drilling program. Average netbacks for the first quarter of 2017 were $25.81, an increase of 110% compared to the prior year due to higher prices. If we include the impact of the realized gains from the commodity contracts, our average netbacks for 2017 would be $32.92, which is an increase of 27% compared to the first quarter of 2016. In the first quarter of 2017, the Company generated a net income of $1.0 million compared to a net loss of $1.3 million in the first quarter 2016." 1st Qtr 2017 1st Qtr 2016 % Net income (loss): $ Thousands $984 $(1,250) 179 $ per common share assuming dilution $0.01 $(0.01) - Capital Expenditures $10,544 $131 7,949 Average production per day (Boepd) 753 1,352 (44) Average Product Price per Barrel $41.45 $21.69 91 Average Netback per Barrel $25.81 $12.29 110 Average Price per Barrel including Commodity Contracts $48.56 $35.29 38 Average Netback per Barrel including Commodity Contracts $32.92 $25.89 27 3/31/2017 12/31/2016 Cash and Cash Equivalents $6,988 $11,101 Working Capital $1,108 $10,640 First Quarter 2017 versus First Quarter 2016 Oil and gas gross revenues totaled $2,809,000 in the quarter versus $2,669,000 in the first quarter of 2016.Oil revenues increased $354,000 or 17% as average oil prices increased $18.71 per barrel or 62% to $48.95 offset by a 27% decrease in oil production per day to 545 boepd. Natural gas revenues decreased $142,000 or 47% to $157,000 as average natural gas prices increased $1.23/mcf or 64% to $3.16 which was partially offset by a 68% decrease in natural gas production of 1,702 cubic feet per day (mcf/d) to 552 mcf/d. Natural gas liquids (NGLs) revenues decreased $72,000 or 22% as NGL production decreased 64% to 116 boepd while average NGL prices increased 119% to $24.05. Average first quarter 2017 production per day decreased 44% from the first quarter of 2016 due to the 3 shut-in wells as well as the normal production decline. Production and operating expenses decreased to $427,000 and the per barrel production and operating costs increased by 40% to $6.30/barrel due to the Company's cost cutting efforts. The per barrel operating expense increase of 40% is due to the decrease in production from the shut-in wells as well as additional water hauling costs once the shut-in wells were returned to production.If these water hauling costs are excluded, the per barrel operating expenses for the first quarter of 2017 would be reduced to $5.87 per BOE. Depletion and depreciation expense decreased $714,000 or 43% due to a decrease in production in 2017. General and administrative expenses decreased $161,000 or 15% due to cost cutting efforts which included reduced salary and benefits and legal and professional fees. Stock based compensation increased slightly by $5,000 or 13% due to the timing of stock awards granted to employees. Finance income increased $361,000 in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to unrealized gains on commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2017 offset by lower realized gains compared to the prior year quarter. Finance expense decreased $853,000 in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to unrealized losses on commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2016 and reduced interest expense on the credit facility in 2017. Capital expenditures of $10,544,000 were incurred in the first quarter of 2017 relating to the 2017 drilling program in the US. BNK PETROLEUM INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION (Unaudited, Expressed in Thousands of United States Dollars) ($000 except as noted) March 31 December 31 2017 2016 Current Assets Cash $6,988 $11,101 Trade and other receivables 1,709 1,163 Other current assets 569 614 Fair value of commodity contracts 991 650 10,257 13,528 Non-current Property, plant and equipment 142,980 133,476 142,980 133,476 Total Assets $153,237 $147,004 Current Liabilities Trade and other payables $9,149 $2,888 9,149 2,888 Non-current liabilities Loans and borrowings 20,272 20,229 Asset retirement obligations 905 785 Fair value of commodity contracts 218 1,417 21,395 22,431 Equity Share capital 289,522 289,549 Contributed surplus 22,246 22,195 Deficit (189,075) (190,059) Total Equity 122,693 121,685 Total Equity and Liabilities $153,237 $147,004 BNK PETROLEUM INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE LOSS (Unaudited, expressed in Thousands of United States dollars, except per share amounts) ($000 except as noted) Three months ended March 31, ($000's) 2017 2016 Oil and gas revenue net of royalties $2,177 $2,064 Other income 1 1 2,178 2,065 Production and operating expenses 427 552 Depletion and depreciation 957 1,671 General and administrative expenses 937 1,098 Share based compensation 44 39 $2,365 $3,360 Finance Income 2,039 1,678 Finance Expense (471) (1,324) Net income (loss) and comprehensive income (loss) from continuing operations $1,381 $(941) Net loss and comprehensive loss from discontinued operations (397) (309) Net income (loss) 984 (1,250) Net income (loss) per share $0.01 $(0.01) BNK PETROLEUM INC. FIRST QUARTER 2017 (Unaudited, expressed in Thousands of United States dollars, except as noted) Quarter Ending March 31, 2017 2016 Oil revenue before royalties $2,401 $2,047 Gas revenue before royalties 157 299 NGL revenue before royalties 251 323 Oil and Gas revenue 2,809 2,669 Cash flow provided by operating activities 6 1,544 Capital expenditures (10,544) (131) Statistics: Average oil production (Bopd) 545 744 Average natural gas production (mcf/d) 552 1,702 Average NGL production (Boepd) 116 324 Average production (Boepd) 753 1,352 Average oil price ($/bbl) $ 48.95 $ 30.24 Average natural gas price ($/mcf) 3.16 1.93 Average NGL price ($/bbl) 24.05 10.96 Average price per barrel $41.45 $21.69 Royalties per barrel 9.34 4.91 Operating expenses per barrel 6.30 4.49 Netback per barrel $25.81 $12.29 Average price per barrel including commodity contracts $48.56 $35.29 Royalties per barrel 9.34 4.91 Operating expenses per barrel 6.30 4.49 Netback per barrel including commodity contracts $32.92 $25.89 The information outlined above is extracted from and should be read in conjunction with the Company's unaudited financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and the related management's discussion and analysis thereof, copies of which are available under the Company's profile athttp://www.sedar.com. NON-GAAP MEASURES Netback per barrel and netbacks including commodity contracts, net operating income and funds from operations (collectively, the "Company's Non-GAAP Measures") are not measures recognized under Canadian generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP") and do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by GAAP. The Company's Non-GAAP Measures are described and reconciled to the GAAP measures in the management's discussion and analysis which are available under the Company's profile athttp://www.sedar.com. Cautionary Statements In this news release and the Company's other public disclosure: (a) The Company's natural gas production is reported in thousands of cubic feet ("Mcfs"). The Company also uses references to barrels ("Bbls") and barrels of oil equivalent ("Boes") to reflect natural gas liquids and oil production and sales. Boes may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A Boe conversion ratio of 6 Mcf:1 Bbl is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. Given that the value ratio based on the current price of crude oil as compared to natural gas is significantly different from the energy equivalency of 6:1, utilizing a conversion on a 6:1 basis may be misleading as an indication of value. (b) Discounted and undiscounted net present value of future net revenues attributable to reserves do not represent fair market value. (c) Possible reserves are those additional reserves that are less certain to be recovered than probable reserves. There is a 10% probability that the quantities actually recovered will equal or exceed the sum of proved plus probable plus possible reserves. (d) The Company discloses peak and 30-day initial production rates and other short-term production rates. Readers are cautioned that such production rates are preliminary in nature and are not necessarily indicative of long-term performance or of ultimate recovery. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information This release contains forward-looking information including information regarding the proposed timing and expected results of exploratory and development work including production from the Company's Tishomingo field, Oklahoma acreage, the future performance of wells following shut-in and restart, the expected effects of cost reduction efforts, availability of funds from the Company's reserves based loan facility, expected hedging levels and the Company's strategy and objectives. The use of any of the words "target", "plans", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking information is based on management's expectations and assumptions, including that the Company's geologic and reservoir models and analysis will be validated, that indications of early results are reasonably accurate predictors of the prospectiveness of the shale intervals, that previous exploration results are indicative of future results and success, that expected production from future wells can be achieved as modeled, declines will match the modeling, future well production rates will be improved over existing wells, that rates of return as modeled can be achieved, that recoveries are consistent with management's expectations, that additional wells are actually drilled and completed, that design and performance improvements will reduce development time and expense and improve productivity, that discoveries will prove to be economic, that anticipated results and estimated costs will be consistent with managements' expectations, that all required permits and approvals and the necessary labor and equipment will be obtained, provided or available, as applicable, on terms that are acceptable to the Company, when required, that no unforeseen delays, unexpected geological or other effects, equipment failures, permitting delays or labor or contract disputes are encountered, that the development plans of the Company and its co-venturers will not change, that the demand for oil and gas will be sustained, that the Company will continue to be able to access sufficient capital through financings, credit facilities, farm-ins or other participation arrangements to maintain its projects, that the Company will continue in compliance with the covenants under its reserves-based loan facility and that the borrowing base will not be reduced, that funds will be available from the Company's reserves based loan facility when required to fund planned operations, that the Company will not be adversely affected by changing government policies and regulations, social instability or other political, economic or diplomatic developments in the countries in which it operates and that global economic conditions will not deteriorate in a manner that has an adverse impact on the Company's business and its ability to advance its business strategy. Forward looking information involves significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to: any of the assumptions on which such forward looking information is based vary or prove to be invalid, including that the Company's geologic and reservoir models or analysis are not validated, anticipated results and estimated costs will not be consistent with managements' expectations, the risks associated with the oil and gas industry (e.g. operational risks in development, exploration and production; delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration and development projects or capital expenditures; the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates and projections relating to production, costs and expenses, and health, safety and environmental risks including flooding and extended interruptions due to inclement or hazardous weather), the risk of commodity price and foreign exchange rate fluctuations, risks and uncertainties associated with securing the necessary regulatory approvals and financing to proceed with continued development of the Tishomingo Field, the Company or its subsidiaries is not able for any reason to obtain and provide the information necessary to secure required approvals or that required regulatory approvals are otherwise not available when required, that unexpected geological results are encountered, that completion techniques require further optimization, that production rates do not match the Company's assumptions, that very low or no production rates are achieved, that the Company will cease to be in compliance with the covenants under its reserves-based loan facility and be required to repay outstanding amounts or that the borrowing base will be reduced pursuant to a borrowing base re-determination and the Company will be required to repay the resulting shortfall, that the Company is unable to access required capital, that funding is not available from the Company's reserves based loan facility at the times or in the amounts required for planned operations, that occurrences such as those that are assumed will not occur, do in fact occur, and those conditions that are assumed will continue or improve, do not continue or improve and the other risks identified in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form under the "Risk Factors" section, the Company's most recent management's discussion and analysis and the Company's other public disclosure, available under the Company's profile on SEDAR athttp://www.sedar.com. With respect to estimated reserves, the evaluation of the Company's reserves is based on a limited number of wells with limited production history and includes a number of assumptions relating to factors such as availability of capital to fund required infrastructure, commodity prices, production performance of the wells drilled, successful drilling of infill wells, the assumed effects of regulation by government agencies and future capital and operating costs. All of these estimates will vary from actual results. Estimates of the recoverable oil and natural gas reserves attributable to any particular group of properties, classifications of such reserves based on risk of recovery and estimates of future net revenues expected therefrom, may vary. The Company's actual production, revenues, taxes, development and operating expenditures with respect to its reserves will vary from such estimates, and such variances could be material. In addition to the foregoing, other significant factors or uncertainties that may affect either the Company's reserves or the future net revenue associated with such reserves include material changes to existing taxation or royalty rates and/or regulations, and changes to environmental laws and regulations. Although the Company has attempted to take into account important factors that could cause actual costs or results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause actual results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The forward-looking information included in this release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, other than as required by applicable law. About BNK Petroleum Inc. BNK Petroleum Inc. is an international oil and gas exploration and production company focused on finding and exploiting large, predominately unconventional oil and gas resource plays. Through various affiliates and subsidiaries, the Company owns and operates shale gas properties and concessions in the United States. Additionally the Company is utilizing its technical and operational expertise to identify and acquire additional unconventional projects. The Company's shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the stock symbol BKX. Media Contacts: Wolf E. Regener President and Chief Executive Officer +1-(805)-484-3613 Email: investorrelations@bnkpetroleum.com Website: http://www.bnkpetroleum.com BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Estonia's foreign trade deficit decreased in March from a year ago, as exports grew faster than imports, figures from Statistics Estonia showed Wednesday. The trade deficit fell to EUR 138 million in March from 153 million in the corresponding month last year. In February, the shortfall was EUR 100 million. Exports surged 15.0 percent year-over-year in March and imports climbed by 12.0 percent. The highest growth took place in the exports of mineral products, wood and articles of wood, base metals and articles of base metal and agricultural products and food preparations, the agency reported. Exports to EU countries rose 11.0 percent annually in March and those to non-EU countries grew by 26.0 percent. During the first quarter of this year, total trade deficit of the country was EUR 647 million versus a shortfall of EUR 448 million in the same period of 2016. 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. Country Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Canada Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cuba, Republic of Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Dominican Republic Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Haiti, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Jamaica Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Mexico, United Mexican States Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu US Virgin Islands Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. 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 GOTHENBURG, Sweden, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Honeywell Process Solutions and SKF have launched a joint pilot project aimed at developing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions. The pilot project, at a copper mine in Latin America, aims to create a digital standard for improved machine efficiency, reliability and competitiveness for industrial customers. As part of the pilot project, SKF's expertise in bearings, lubrication and condition monitoring will be combined with Honeywell's capabilities in data consolidation and software development. The project's ambition is the joint development of a user-friendly digital ecosystem that captures and analyses large amounts of data from a plant operator's machinery. Based on the analysis of this data, operators will be able to determine methods to reduce or even eliminate manufacturing inefficiencies and unplanned down-time. Alrik Danielson, President and CEO, SKF, says: "The number of potential data collection points in a modern factory is increasing exponentially, but this data will only generate value for operators if it is analysed and acted upon to improve a machine's performance and profitability. Our collaboration with Honeywell will make this possible." Shree Dandekar, Vice President and General Manager, Honeywell Connected Plant, says: "Leveraging the IIoT gives manufacturers real-time access to operating information from an incrementally larger data-set across not only one site or plant, but across an entire enterprise. By creating an ecosystem of software and hardware manufacturers with unmatched domain experience, we will be able to better understand the risks and demands on the operating units and ultimately provide a higher level outcome for our customers." Aktiebolaget SKF (publ) For further information, please contact: Press: Theo Kjellberg, Director, Press Relations tel: 46-31-337-6576 mobile: 46-725-776576 E-mail: theo.kjellberg@skf.com Investor relations: Patrik Stenberg, Head of Investor Relations Tel: 46-31-337 2104 or46-705-472-104 E-mail: patrik.stenberg@skf.com This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/skf/r/honeywell-and-skf-launch-industrial-internet-of-things-pilot-project,c2260791 The following files are available for download: ARLINGTON (dpa-AFX) - BAE Systems Plc (BA.L) said that trading for the period has been consistent with management expectations at the time of the 2016 results announcement and the Group's outlook remains unchanged with 2017 underlying earnings per share expected to be about 5% to 10% higher than the 40.3 pence in 2016. The company noted that it will hold its Annual General Meeting today at 11 a.m. in Farnborough, Hampshire, UK. At the meeting, Chairman, Roger Carr, and Chief Executive, Ian King, will comment on the performance of the Group in 2016. Ian King, Chief Executive, will say, 'We have started the year with good momentum building on a strong operational performance in 2016 and the business is performing well. Our strategy is well defined, we have a large order backlog, long-term programme positions and a well balanced portfolio. With an improving outlook for defence budgets in a number of our markets, in 2017 and beyond we are well placed to continue to generate attractive returns for shareholders.' BAE Systems said it will announce its financial results for the half year ending 30 June 2017 on 2 August 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. LONDON and MONTREAL, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Public Sector Pension Investment Board ("PSP Investments"), one of Canada's largest pension investment managers, today signalled its continued commitment to Europe with the launch of its European hub. This new London-based office solidifies PSP Investments as a truly global pension investment manager, uniquely positioned to seize new investment opportunities. Increased European exposure across asset classes PSP Investments' growing local team will focus on high-quality, long-term investments predominantly in the Private Equity, Private Debt, Infrastructure and Real Estate asset classes. The team has deep industry knowledge and a diversified skill set. It will combine long-term capital, with financially oriented insight from our partners and management teams, to form strategic industry specialized investment platforms across Europe. In the last year alone, the team has made significant acquisitions, in line with its mandate to continue to increase PSP Investments' exposure in the European market. "PSP Investments' vision is to be a leading global institutional investor that delivers on its risk-return objective by driving a total fund perspective," said Andre Bourbonnais, President and CEO of PSP Investments. Establishing a European hub is a strategic milestone for us and demonstrates our confidence and commitment to the region." PSP Investments' has seen numerous successful investments in Europe. These include: Cerba HealthCare, a leading European operator of clinical pathology laboratories (Private Equity); a joint venture with Aviva that includes 12 office buildings in Central London (Real Estate); and AviAlliance, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PSP Investments and one of the world's leading private industrial airport platforms (Infrastructure). In line with its investment strategy, PSP Investments has partnered with numerous top-tier organizations in the region, such as Partners Group, SEGRO European Logistics Partnership, BC Partners, Permira and CVC Capital Partners. The European hub will further enable PSP Investments to capitalize on opportunities while further developing strategic partnerships locally. The European hub currently has a team of 28 professionals. It is located in a PSP Investments' majority owned, newly constructed building located in Victoria at 10 Bressenden Place. About PSP Investments The Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) is one of Canada's largest pension investment managers with C$125.8 billion of net assets under management as at September 30, 2016. It manages a diversified global portfolio composed of investments in public financial markets, private equity, real estate, infrastructure, natural resources and private debt. Established in 1999, PSP Investments manages net contributions to the pension funds of Canada's federal Public Service, the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Reserve Force. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, PSP Investments has its principal business office in Montreal and offices in New York and London, its European hub. For more information, visit http://www.investpsp.com, Twitter @InvestPSP or LinkedIn. About PSP Investments' European leadership team Simon Marc, Managing Director of Private Equity, has over 20 years of sector experience having previously worked for top-tier private equity firms in both Paris and London before joining PSP Investments in 2015. Oliver Duff, Managing Director of Principal Debt and Credit Investments, has over 20 years of experience in leverage finance, with a strong track record of building relationships with syndicate desks, private equity firms and credit funds in European markets. Patrick Charbonneau, Managing Director of Infrastructure Investments, has over 15 years of experience in the infrastructure sector. Prior to joining PSP Investments in 2006, he worked in infrastructure advisory services for a global accounting firm. Stephane Jalbert, Managing Director of Real Estate Investments, is responsible for real estate investment activities in the UK and Europe. Having joined PSP Investments in 2009, Stephane has over 20 years of global real estate investment management experience. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Medgold Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE: MED) (the "Company" or "Medgold") is pleased to announce that preminary results have been received for the first six lines of an 18 line ground induced polarization & resistivity geophysical survey at the Tlamino Project in southeastern Serbia. The survey results appear to show a significant chargeability anomaly, consistent over several hundred metres, close to surface and coincident with historical drilled mineralization at the Liska occurrence. The survey is ongoing and the anomaly appears to be flat-lying and trending towards the Barje occurrence, located approximately 1.5 km to the northeast, and host to high-grade outcropping Au-Ag mineralization. Dan James, President of Medgold, commented: "We're pleased with the progress of the survey at Tlamino. We have already identified a significant near-surface and flat-lying chargeability anomaly, which we interpret to be associated with the disseminated sulphide mineralization. We are particularly pleased as this anomaly demonstrates a clear association between chargeability and known sulphide-bearing mineralization, as identified from historical drilling at the Liska occurrence. The survey is progressing in a northeast-direction, towards our high-grade Barje occurrence, and so far is corroborating our proposed geological model of flat-lying mineralization, associated with a major regional detachment fault. We hope the survey may provide significant blind drill targets, between the Liska and Barje occurrences, which will be drill-tested in this summer." The Tlamino Gold Project is located in southern Serbia, and includes two historical showings: Liska and Barje, which lie on a northeast trend separated by 1.5 km. Both showings are associated with a regional east-west striking detachment fault, which in the vicinity of these showings has been overlain by conglomerates. Mineralization is located at the contact of the basement metamorphic rocks and the base of the conglomerate cover. At Liska, the mineralization is Pb-Zn dominant and Au-Ag poor, but at Barje the mineralization is high-grade Au-Ag and relatively poor in Pb-Zn. Historical drilling from Liska, completed by the Yugoslav government in the 1970s for Pb-Zn mineralization, identified a significant flat-lying and northeast-elongate body of Pb-Zn mineralization which is open to the northeast; towards Barje. The chargeability anomaly from our ongoing IP survey is broadly consistent with the morphology of the Liska drilling results and also demonstrates continuation to the northeast towards Barje. Medgold's diamond drilling program at Tlamino is expected to commence in late July or early August and will drill-test the high-grade outcropping mineralization at Barje, and its possible continuity towards the Liska occurrence, as well as test newly identified chargeability anomalies. The ongoing IP survey at Tlamino is expected to be complete by the end of May before relocating to the Karamanica prospect, located approximately 8 km to the west-northwest from the Liska-Barje occurrences. About Medgold Medgold is a European-focused, TSX-V listed, exploration company targeting gold properties in Serbia. Run by a highly experienced management team with a successful track record of building value in resource companies, Medgold is aiming to become a leading European gold company. Qualified Person Mr. David Clark, M.Sc., P.Geo., is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Mr. Clark approved the disclosure of the technical information contained in this news release. Additional information on Medgold can be found on the Company's website at www.medgoldresources.com and by reviewing the Company's page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Daniel P. James, President & Director Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-looking statements Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and include, without limitation, statements about the exploration plans for the Tlamino Project. Often, but not always, these forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "estimate", "estimates", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "upgraded", "offset", "limited", "contained", "reflecting", "containing", "remaining", "to be", "periodically", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and factors include, among others, the exploration plans for the Tlamino Project; changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; the Company or any joint venture partner not having the financial ability to meet its exploration and development goals; risks associated with the results of exploration and development activities, estimation of mineral resources and the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; unanticipated costs and expenses; and such other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's quarterly and annual filings with securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR 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 to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Forward-looking statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to: that the proposed exploration of the Tlamimo Project will proceed as intended; that the Company's stated goals and planned exploration and development activities will be achieved; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its properties; and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. 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, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Contacts: Medgold Resources Corp. Dan James (UK) President +44 7972 579188 dj@medgoldresources.com LONDON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Former SevenVentures executive Tayab Hasan has joined international growth marketing specialist DCMN to lead the company's UK operations, as the Berlin-headquartered company continues to expand its presence across Europe, the US and Asia. Mr Hasan joins DCMN from SevenVentures, the venture capital investment arm of ProSiebenSat.1, Germany's largest media group, where he served for two years as UK Managing Director. Prior to this, he worked as Head of International Expansion for startup incubator Rocket Internet. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/509829/Tayab_Hasan.jpg ) Mr Hasan will be based in London where he will focus on growing the team and existing client base of UK companies looking to expand their presence across Europe, and UK businesses looking to enter the TV and media space. In the UK, DCMN has secured media campaigns for digital brands including fashion retailer ASOS, online mattress dealer Eve and secondhand clothing marketplace Vinted. DCMN Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Matthias Riedl, said: "Tayab is the perfect match for DCMN UK at its current growth stage. With extensive experience on both the investment and operational side of the digital industry, he will speerhead our UK operations and drive our business to the next level." Since 2015, DCMN has launched international hubs in the US, India, France and the UK, with further openings planned for Europe and Asia this year. Recently ranked among the fastest-growing European companies on the FT1000, DCMN has registered 100% annual revenue growth each year since 2010. Mr Hasan said: "It's no secret that many UK companies have their eye on expansion to European markets, and DCMN is there to give digital brands in the UK a leg-up when it comes to growing their business on the continent. This international focus of DCMN's work was particularly exciting to me and I'm looking forward to seeing what we can achieve together." About DCMN DCMN helps digital brands to grow their business on a global scale with data-driven and creative marketing solutions. The full-stack growth specialist executes campaigns across all media with services spanning creation and production, media planning and buying, and campaign optimization with their in-house technology. With an international team of over 110+ experts in creative, media, technology and digital business, DCMN is operating across the globe. Founded by Andreas Dengler and Matthias Riedl in 2010, the company has its headquarters in Berlin and offices in Paris, London, New York, Bangalore, Kochi, Gurgaon, Hamburg and Munich. DCMN counts more than 90 digital brands in its portfolio including Jimdo, Wayfair, eToro, Made.com, Com2Us, Gameloft, Outfittery and Glossybox. Press contact DCMN Zilke Grogan E-Mail: z.grogan@dcmn.com Telephone: +49-30-2084-990-58 Mobile: +49-159-040-17-581 DUBLIN, May 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Osteoporosis Market and Forecast Analysis" report to their offering. Osteoporosis is the most common metabolic bone disorder, and is characterized by low bone mass accompanied by microarchitectural deterioration of bone tissue. The consequent increase in bone fragility results in osteoporosis patients being prone to sustaining fractures. Although the majority of osteoporosis patients are postmenopausal women, it is not a female-only disease. It is estimated that one in three women and one in five men aged over 50 years will sustain an osteoporosis-related fracture, and the associated complications represent a huge socioeconomic burden. Treatment of osteoporosis can be a challenge as bone loss is essentially symptomless until a fracture occurs, which can lead to difficulties with diagnosis and patient compliance. Key Topics Covered: 1. EPIDEMIOLOGY: OSTEOPOROSIS Forecast: Osteopenia Forecast: Osteoporosis Epidemiologist Insight Strengths and Limitations 2. MARKETED DRUGS: OSTEOPOROSIS Product Overview Bisphosphonates Estrogens and SERMs Calcitonin Other Drug Classes Product profile: Forteo Product profile: Prolia 3. PIPELINE: OSTEOPOROSIS Clinical Pipeline Overview Comparator Therapy Recently Discontinued Drugs Product profile (late stage): Evenity Product profile (late stage): abaloparatide For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3sh4lf/osteoporosis Media Contact: Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 LONDON, May 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Subdued pay projections of just 1% and rising inflation heighten fears of fall in living standards Workers face a squeeze on their earnings as employers anticipate awarding median pay rises of just 1% in the year ahead, according to findings from the latest CIPD/The Adecco Group Labour Market Outlook survey. The survey of more than 1,000 employers suggests that the UK economy is about to be hit by a fall in basic pay awards and real wages. According to the survey data, employers' median basic pay expectations in the 12 months to March 2018 have fallen to 1% compared to 1.5% three months ago, which is lower than at any time during the past three and a half years. This is consistent with recent Labour Market Outlook reports, which have indicated a slowing in the rate of basic pay growth, and with official labour market data. While pay expectations are weakening, the survey finds that demand for labour remains robust for the second quarter of 2017. The report's net employment balance, which measures the difference between the share of employers expanding their workforce and the share of employers reducing their workforce, remains positive. However, it has softened slightly since the previous report, down to +20 from the previous quarter's figure of +23, which is consistent with a modest deterioration over the past two years. Labour demand is highest in the manufacturing and production sector (+38), but it seems that manufacturing and production employers are also having particular difficulty filling vacancies. Meanwhile, the net employment balance in the public sector has turned negative (-6) since the previous report (+6) as more public sector employers expect to reduce the size of their workforce in the second quarter of 2017, compared with the number who plan to increase it. Gerwyn Davies, Labour Market Adviser at the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, comments: "The good news in this latest survey is that employment confidence remains positive, with sectors like manufacturing and production proving particularly buoyant. The bad news is that there is a real risk that a significant proportion of UK workers will see a fall in their living standards as the year progresses, due to a slowdown in basic pay and expectations of inflation increases over the next few months. This could create higher levels of economic insecurity and could have serious implications for consumer spending, which has helped to support economic growth in recent months. "The weak pay data is no surprise given the continued weak productivity growth in the UK. However, this is being exacerbated by many employers' passive attitude towards workforce development and training, despite reporting hard-to-fill vacancies. At the same time, private sector employers are proving stubbornly unresponsive to labour market changes that should, in theory, act to increase wages, such as the number of unfilled vacancies. The data suggests that the introduction and increase of various labour costs, such as the government's auto-enrolment scheme and the apprenticeship levy may be part of the explanation. It's crucial therefore that we see a pick-up in employer investment in workforce skills development to support and sustain productivity growth." The survey also found that around two-thirds (68%) of organisations are planning to recruit employees in the next three months and almost half (45%) of vacancies in the manufacturing sector are for new roles, reflecting optimism amongst employers. Alex Fleming, Managing Director, Adecco UK & Ireland commented: "One of the key trends in the report is that demand for labour continues to remain robust. Not only is employment confidence high in some sectors but also, promisingly, this quarter's net employment balance remained positive. Employees are however set to continue to experience subdued wage growth in the year ahead. "Workforce planning continues to be vital as Brexit becomes a closer reality for the UK. Skills shortages continue to be evident in the UK labour market and employers need to be addressing this issue head-on with thorough planning. Interestingly, one in ten firms indicate that the UK's decision to leave the European Union has made them consider relocating some or all of their business operations to outside of the UK. Amongst those who have considered relocating to outside of the UK, one-in-three don't know which country they would relocate to or say it is too soon to say. UK employers need to take investment in skills and people seriously to protect the future of our economy." Further findings from the report include: TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/30/17 -- First Cobalt Corp. (TSX VENTURE: FCC)(OTCQB: FTSSF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the nominees listed in the management information circular dated September 29, 2017 were elected as directors of First Cobalt, including three directors who will join the board upon completion of the mergers with Cobalt One Ltd. and CobalTech Mining Inc. Detailed results of the vote for the election of directors held at the annual and special shareholders meeting October 26, 2017 are set out below. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nominee Votes For % For Votes Withheld % Withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jason Bontempo 6,715,694 99.57% 29,118 0.43% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Cross 6,739,027 99.91% 5,785 0.09% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Matysek 6,739,427 99.92% 5,385 0.08% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trent Mell 6,739,152 99.92% 5,660 0.08% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ross Phillips 6,715,819 99.57% 28,993 0.43% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Pollesel 6,739,552 99.92% 5,260 0.08% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bryan Slusarchuk 6,739,152 99.92% 5,660 0.08% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey Swinoga 6,739,552 99.92% 5,260 0.08% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- All other resolutions provided for in the management information circular were also approved. The continuation of the Company under the Canada Business Corporations Act and the new long-term incentive plan remain subject to receipt of final acceptance from the TSX Venture Exchange. Following the conclusion of the Company's mergers with Cobalt One and CobalTech, the Company's board of directors will be reconstituted to include Mr. Paul Matysek, Mr. Robert (Bob) Cross, and Mr. Jason Bontempo. Cobalt One shareholders will meet to approve the transaction on November 17 and CobalTech shareholders will meet on November 21. The two transactions are expected to close shortly thereafter. Mr. Paul Matysek is a corporate entrepreneur, professional geochemist and geologist with over 30 years of experience in the mining industry. He is currently Executive Chairman of Lithium X Energy Corp. and has previously held senior executive and director positions with several natural resource exploration and development companies and is a proven company builder. Mr. Matysek was recently President and CEO of Goldrock Mines Corp. which sold to Fortuna Silver Mines for $178M in July 2016. He was previously CEO of Lithium One, which merged with Galaxy Resources of Australia via a $112M plan of arrangement to create an integrated lithium company. He also served as CEO of Potash One, which was acquired by K+S Ag for $434 million in a friendly takeover in 2011. Mr. Matysek was also the founder and CEO of Energy Metals Corporation, a uranium company that grew from a market capitalization of $10 million to approximately $1.8 billion when sold in 2007. Mr. Bob Cross is an engineer with 25 years of experience as a financier and company builder in the mining and oil & gas sectors. He co-founded and serves as Chairman of B2Gold, a top performing growing gold producer which will achieve almost one million ounces of low cost gold production in 2018. He was also co-founder and Chairman of Bankers Petroleum Ltd., co-founder and Chairman of Petrodorado Energy Ltd., and until October 2007, was the Non-Executive Chairman of Northern Orion Resources Inc. Between 1996 and 1998, Mr. Cross was Chairman and CEO of Yorkton Securities Inc. From 1987 to 1994, he was a Partner, Investment Banking with Gordon Capital Corporation in Toronto. Mr. Cross has an Engineering Degree from the University of Waterloo (1982) and received an MBA from Harvard in 1987. Mr. Jason Bontempo is a mining executive with 18 years' experience in public company management, corporate advisory, investment banking and public company accounting, qualifying as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young. He has worked primarily providing corporate advice and the financing of resource companies across multiple capital markets including resource asset acquisitions and divestments. Mr. Bontempo has also served on the board and the executive management of minerals and resources public companies focusing on advancing and developing mineral resource assets and business development. About First Cobalt First Cobalt's objective is to create the largest pure-play cobalt exploration and development company in the world. Upon completion of the mergers with Cobalt One Ltd. and CobalTech Mining Inc., First Cobalt will control over 10,000 hectares of prospective land and 50 historic mining operations in the Cobalt Camp in Ontario, Canada as well as a mill and a permitted refinery facility. On behalf of First Cobalt Corp. Trent Mell, President & Chief Executive Officer Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release may contain 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. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "plans", "expects', "estimates", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance and opportunities to differ materially from those implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements include Cobalt One and CobalTech receiving the requisite shareholder approvals for the transaction and risks set out in First Cobalt's public documents, including in each management discussion and analysis, filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although First Cobalt believes that the information and assumptions used in preparing the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed times frames or at all. Except where required by applicable law, First Cobalt disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Contacts: Heather Smiles Investor Relations info@firstcobalt.com +1.416.900.3891 www.firstcobalt.com LONDON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- African utilities will have a strong representation at the Africa Energy Forum in Denmark this June as CEOs from Kenya, Ethiopia, Morocco, Mozambique, Ghana, SAPP, WAPP, APUA, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Tunisia take the lead in targeted country sessions exploring the unique environments for energy investment and capacity building across the continent. 12 African Ministers of Energy & Infrastructure and the Danish Minister for Development Cooperation will also meet participants at the Forum which arrives in Copenhagen from 7-9 June to discuss energy incentives and projects with the world's most prolific investors and international partners. The Ministers and government officials will address the conference audience for the first time when they open the conference and exhibition on the evening of 6th June, which delegates will attend following a networking city cruise of Copenhagen - the city which boasts being the most energy efficient in the world, drawing on a multitude of technologies and partners. Development Finance Institutions from the Nordic region and many from across the world have also confirmed their support for the Forum, demonstrating a united focus on Africa as a destination for long-term project investment over the coming years. As the Development Finance Institution of Sweden, Swedfund's Gunilla Nilsson, Senior Investment Manager, commented on their support for the Forum: "Access to sustainable energy is one of the key drivers for development. That is why Swedfund is committed to continue contributing to the expansion of clean energy in our countries of operation." Mark Davis, Vice President of Clean Energy at Norfund commented; "Considerable investments are needed to meet the rising demand for electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa and in other developing countries. Norfund contributes by investing in electricity generation where the need for capital is large." Helena Teppana, Associate Director of Finnfund commented, "Energy is playing a major role in the development of African countries. Both on-grid and off-grid solutions can create great opportunities and impacts in all levels of society - ranging from climate change mitigation to individual families gaining access to energy in their everyday lives. As an impact investor we strongly believe that investing in sustainable energy is both a good financial investment and a cornerstone for development." Simon Gosling, Managing Director of EnergyNet, the company behind the Africa Energy Forum, summed up the support to date; "The global outpouring of commitment, willingness and cooperation to invest in Africa's electricity sector has been magnified by the Forum being hosted in Copenhagen and the Nordic region. It highlights the fact that Africa remains the world's number one opportunity for investors, the world's priority for international corporations looking at their bottom lines over the next 20+ years and the world's most important partner for increasing global security. The fact that so many of the decision makers from across Africa will be with us next month further highlights their commitment to make these partnerships work." https://youtu.be/Y1Mu3zljgm0 About EnergyNet EnergyNet arranges investment forums, investment meetings and conferences focusing on the energy and industrial sectors in emerging markets, including both conventional and sustainable energy. For more information please visit http://www.energynet.co.uk Contact: Amy Offord - Marketing Manager Event dates: 7-9 June 2017 (Government Opening on 6th June) Event location: Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark Organisers: EnergyNet, part of Clarion Events Ltd Email: AEF@energynet.co.uk Tel: +44(0)20-7384-8068 Visit: http://www.africa-energy-forum.com DUBLIN, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Automotive Adhesives Market - By Resin Type, Application, Vehicle Type, Region - Market Size, Demand Forecasts, Industry Trends and Updates (2016-2022)" report to their offering. The global automotive adhesive market was valued at USD 4.03 billion in 2016, and is expected to reach USD 6.53 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 8.41%. The current usage of automotive adhesives range from 30 pounds to 40 pounds per vehicle (13.6 kg to 18.0 kg). Automotive adhesives are the products which help the automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) bond different substrate of metal, hence eliminating the need for welding and mechanical rivets. These are making strong inroads in the industry due to their associated benefits and related cost savings. Asia-Pacific held the largest share in the global automotive adhesive market in 2016. It is expected to remain the largest market due to increase in production of cars and light commercial vehicles in China and India. Europe is also expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period due to rise in automotive production. The major drivers for this market are increasing use of lightweight materials in vehicle manufacturing and replacement of mechanical fasteners, such as screws, nuts, bolts and welds, with adhesives to make vehicles lighter and to meet higher fuel economy requirements. Use of adhesives provides superior bonding without compromising the structural disruption of automotive components leading to the integrity of the bonnet. Some constraints of using adhesive are the curing time, environmental issues with using adhesives which may affect its market. The key companies operating in the global automotive adhesive market include Dow Chemical Co., Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, 3M Company, Kommerling, PPG Industries, Inc., Permatex, Krayden, Inc., and Sika AG.BMW and Volkswagen are incorporating different substrates into their vehicles, hence, requiring more adhesives and sealants volume. Key Topics Covered: 1. Research Methodology 2. Market Overview 3. Market Dynamics 4. Global Automotive Adhesives market Segmentation, Forecasts and Trends - by Revenue 5. By Resin type Polyurethane Epoxy Acrylic Silicone SMP Polyamide 6. By Application Body-in-White Paint Shop Powertrain Assembly 7. By Vehicle type Buses Trucks LCVs 8. By Region 9. Vendor Market Share Analysis 10. Company Profiles 3M Company Dow Chemical Co. Henkel AG & Co. KGaA Kommerling Krayden, Inc. PPG Industries Inc. Solvay S.A Illinois Tool Works Corporation Jowat AG Permatex Bostik S.A. Sika AG H.B. Fuller 11. Industry Structure Industry M&As, Consolidations Investment Opportunities Global Automotive Adhesives Market-Road Ahead For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/vn8phq/global_automotive Media Contact: Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 NEW YORK, NY and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- WHO: WCN, a leading pioneer of innovative recruitment technology with College Recruiter and Stinson Leonard Street WHAT: Will host a seminar and networking event, "Eye-Opening Tactics for Better Diversity Recruiting," designed for recruiting leaders. WHEN: Wednesday, May 17, 2017 from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m. CDT WHERE: Stinson Leonard Street 150 South Fifth Street, 16th Floor Minneapolis, Minn. Space is limited; to register, visit: https://static.wcn.co.uk/company/wcn/marketing/201705/Minneapolis_form.html. DETAILS: Despite the benefits, diversity hiring continues to challenge and elude organizations. During "Eye-Opening Tactics for Better Diversity Recruiting," Jeanette Maister, managing director - Americas for WCN will join Anna Peters, content manager for College Recruiter plus Jennifer Ives, partner and Ann Jenrette-Thomas, chief diversity and inclusion officer for Stinson Leonard Street to offer best practice guidance on reinvigorating diversity hiring efforts. From this interactive seminar, attendees will learn more about the value of recruiting and hiring diverse applicants and how diversity helps organizations make better decisions to increase productivity and profits. In addition, the event will explore leveraging big data and candidate engagement as part of diversity hiring strategy and complying with non-discrimination laws to reduce legal risk. Talent acquisition professionals, recruiters and hiring managers interested in overcoming diversity recruiting challenges and helping their organizations better engage with diverse candidates are encouraged to attend this interactive seminar and networking event. Space is limited and pre-registration is required. To reserve a spot, please visit: https://static.wcn.co.uk/company/wcn/marketing/201705/Minneapolis_form.html. About WCN WCN is a leading pioneer in the field of innovative recruitment technology. With over 20 years' experience, WCN solutions are built to accelerate and improve recruiting from start to finish, creating a more meaningful and transparent experience for recruiters and candidates. Using WCN talent acquisition technology, organizations can drive real change by accelerating and improving the entire process of finding, assessing and managing events and hiring the best talent at every level -- from emerging to lateral hires, veterans and diversity. To learn more, visit: www.wcnsolutions.com. DENVER, CO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Ubiquitech Software Corp. (OTC PINK: UBQU), through its subsidiary HempLife Today an innovative and growing Company offering the finest CBD (Cannabidiol), products derived from Hemp, is announcing that it is renewing its giveaway of a free Trial-Pack of six (6) CannazALL CBD GelCaps to the general public. Company to give away 500 Trial-Packs per day This free Trial-Pack will consist of six (6) 25mg CannazALL CBD GelCaps, derived from Hemp, and packed with up to 200% more important plant Terpenes for added benefit, along with instructions and additional information about the company and its products. This free offer will be limited to the first 500 people who request it daily and this offer will continue on a daily basis. The Company may increase the number of free Trial-Packs offered daily and will announce this if an increase is made. Everyone is eligible to receive a free trial size of six (6) CannazALL CBD GelCaps by simply clicking on the link or visiting www.HLTFreeOffers.com This giveaway will continue on a daily basis so for those who are not in the first 500 the Company recommends they check back after midnight eastern the following day to see if they are eligible. CEO James Ballas said, "Our last Trial-Pack giveaway in April was overwhelmingly positive but was so successful it crashed our site and many people did not have the chance to take advantage. But, by capping this giveaway to the first 500 requests per day we can manage the growth and those who get through will get their free Trial-Pack. This is a great way to get the word out about our products and let people experience them too." COO Luke Dreyer added, "After the site crashed last month the Company advanced the previous plan to move the HempLifeToday site to a larger server which was completed and announced on April 13th. Since then we have up to 500% more capacity with up to ten times faster speed, so we can now handle the volume of this offer as it grows and we encourage everyone to spread the word." The Company filled over 5,000 orders for its previous giveaway in April within the first 72 hours, and expects to easily be able to reach its limit of 500 per day under this ongoing daily campaign. The Company believes this new campaign will be a strong addition to its marketing platforms and add up to 15,000 customers to its data base monthly. The Company reserves this offer to one free Trial-Pack per person and two per household, but otherwise encourages everyone to share this giveaway with as many others as possible. About HempLife Today Hemp Life Today was created by a group of highly motivated, skilled and health minded people who have learned that Hemp and Hemp related products can be a great source of increased health, vitality, and overall well being in our lives. We also believe that high grade CBD (Canabidiol) could very well be the miracle supplement the world has been waiting for as more and more people discover the health benefits of this remarkable extract. hempLife Today offers its quality CBD products @ www.HempLifeToday.com About Ubiquitech Ubiquitech Software Corp, through its subsidiaries is a dynamic multi-media, multi-faceted corporation utilizing state-of-the-art global internet marketing, Direct Response (DRTV) Television, Radio and traditional marketing to drive traffic to the new and emerging multi-billion dollar industries like its subsidiary HempLifeToday. HempLifeToday focuses on the exciting and dynamic new thinking in the world today that recognizes the important health and life enriching enhancement that CBD Oil from the Hemp plant can bring. Through its network of quality USA growers HempLifeToday.com has developed multiple and proprietary CannazALL CBD oil products that include its popular CBD Tinctures, Oils, GelCaps, CBD Powder, Skin Salve, Wax Honey, and e-liquid, all offered @ www.HempLifeToday.com This press release contains forward-looking statements. Words such as "expects", "intends', "believes', and similar expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements, but are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including the timely development and market acceptance of products and technologies, the ability to secure additional sources of finance, the ability to reduce operating expenses, and other factors described in the Company's filings with the OTC Markets Group. The actual results that the Company achieves may differ materially from any forward-looking statement due to such risks and uncertainties. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward- looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release. Contact Investor relations IR@HempLifeToday.com DRUMMONDVILLE, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- NAPEC Inc. ("NAPEC" or "the Corporation") (TSX: NPC) reported its results today for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. All amounts are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Financial highlights Three months ended March 31, (in thousands of dollars, except the number of shares and per-share data) 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues 109,350 92,633 EBITDA(1) 8,823 6,565 Net earnings (loss) 594 (376) Per share - basic and diluted ($) 0.01 0.00 Weighted average number of outstanding shares (basic, in thousands) 103,923 79,866 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not an IFRS measure. See "Non-IFRS Measure" below for a (1) reconciliation. "NAPEC posted a strong increase in business volume and profitability in the first quarter of 2017. Revenue growth was robust in the United States as a result of our increased presence in services related to natural gas networks following the acquisition of PCT Contracting LLC ("PCT") on November 30, 2016, and strong activity in most of our major markets. Our increased profitability also reflects our strategy of placing greater emphasis on higher value-added services," said Pierre L. Gauthier, President and Chief Executive Officer of NAPEC. FIRST QUARTER RESULTS Revenues for the first quarter of 2017 were $109.4 million, up 18.0% from $92.6 million a year earlier. The increase reflects the addition of PCT's activities in the construction, maintenance and repair of natural gas networks, which represented revenues of $12.0 million in the first quarter of 2017. In addition, revenues from contracts for the construction, maintenance and repair of electricity distribution lines, as well as from contracts for electricity projects for industrial, commercial and institutional customers increased. The currency conversion effect resulting from fluctuations in the value of the Canadian dollar reduced the value of U.S.-dollar-denominated revenues by approximately $3.6 million in the first quarter of 2017, compared to the same period in 2016. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA") for the first quarter of 2017 amounted to $8.8 million or 8.1% of revenues, compared to $6.6 million or 7.1% of revenues in the first quarter of 2016. The increase in monetary terms was mainly due to higher business activity, while the increase as a percentage of revenues reflected lower selling, general and administrative expenses as a percentage of revenues, and a foreign exchange loss of $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2016. NAPEC concluded the first quarter of 2017 with net earnings of $594,000 or $0.01 per share, basic and diluted, compared to a net loss of $376,000 or $0.00 per share, basic and diluted, a year earlier. As at March 31, 2017, NAPEC had a backlog of $563 million, up from $467 million as at March 31, 2016. The value as at March 31, 2017 includes contracts worth close to $60.0 million that were disclosed on April 12, 2017 by way of a press release. FINANCIAL POSITION As at March 31, 2017, long-term debt including the current portion was $94.1 million versus $98.0 million three months earlier. The decrease mainly reflects the repayment of $4.0 million in long-term debt in the first quarter of 2017. As a result, the long-term debt to equity ratio was 0.77 as at March 31, 2017, down from 0.80 three months earlier. As at March 31, 2017, the Corporation had a cash balance of $13.0 million and an amount of $34.3 million was available on its $50.0 million authorized renewable credit facility. It should be noted that subsequent to the end of the quarter, in April 2017, NAPEC received a $6.0 million payment resulting from the settlement of litigation reached in March 2017. OUTLOOK "The first quarter results underscore the strong demand for our services in most of our markets. In addition, revenues from certain activities are generally higher during the summer quarters, particularly in the gas sector and road matting services. Given these factors and the acquisition of PCT, NAPEC remains confident to see revenue growth in fiscal 2017. We are continuing the process of integrating the businesses acquired over the past two years to foster cross-selling across our network and increase the scope of our high value-added services," concluded Mr. Gauthier. CONFERENCE CALL NAPEC will hold a conference call to discuss its results on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 beginning at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Interested parties can join the call by dialling 647-788-4922 (from Toronto and overseas) or 1-877-223-4471 (from elsewhere in North America). Those unable to participate can listen to a recording by dialling 1-800-585-8367 and entering the code 4720566 on the telephone keypad. The recording will be available from 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17, 2017. Those interested in participating in the webcast with presentation should click on this link: http://www.napec.ca/en-CA/investor-relations/calendar-financial-activities/upcoming-activities NON-IFRS MEASURE EBITDA is a measure that has no standardized meaning under IFRS and is therefore considered a non-IFRS measure. As a result, this measure may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. This measure is presented and described in this press release in order to provide additional information regarding the Corporation's liquidity and its ability to generate funds to finance its operations. The following table is a reconciliation of EBITDA as used by the Corporation to reported net earnings (loss). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reconciliation of EBITDA to net earnings (loss) Three months ended March 31 (in thousands of dollars) 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net earnings (loss) for the period 594 (376) Plus: Finance charges 1,603 1,375 Income tax expense (recovery) 565 (227) Depreciation and amortization 6,061 5,793 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA 8,823 6,565 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This document contains forward-looking statements that reflect management's current expectations regarding future events. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of factors and include risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ from forecast results. Management assumes no obligation beyond what is required under the law to update or revise forward-looking statements pursuant to new information or future events. OVERVIEW OF THE CORPORATION NAPEC is a company operating in the energy sector. The Corporation is a leading provider of construction and maintenance services to the public utility and heavy industrial markets, mainly in Quebec, Ontario and the eastern United States. NAPEC and its subsidiaries build and maintain electrical transmission and distribution systems, solar panel farms and natural gas networks. The Corporation also installs gas-powered and electric-powered heavy equipment for utilities, gas-fired industrial power plants and petrochemical facilities in North America. The Corporation also offers environmental construction and road matting services. Additional information on NAPEC can be found in the SEDAR database (www.sedar.com) and on the Corporation's website, at www.napec.ca. Contacts: Source: NAPEC Inc. Pierre L. Gauthier President and Chief Executive Officer 819-479-7771 p.gauthier@napec.ca Mario Trahan, CPA, CMA Chief Financial Officer 819-479-7771 m.trahan@napec.ca MaisonBrison Martin Goulet, CFA 514-731-0000 martin@maisonbrison.com AMSTERDAM (dpa-AFX) - PPG (PPG) said it has reviewed AkzoNobel's May 8, 2017 response to the company's revised proposal of April 24, 2017 to form a combined company. PPG continues to believe that its proposal is vastly superior in shareholder value creation compared to AkzoNobel's new standalone plan. 'AkzoNobel has chosen not to engage in meaningful discussions, has refused our invitation for a meeting of our respective antitrust counsels and has provided no transparency in concluding its standalone plan is superior to PPG's proposal,' said Michael McGarry, PPG Chairman and CEO. PPG said it remains willing to meet with AkzoNobel to engage in meaningful discussions, but without productive engagement, the company will assess and decide whether or not to pursue an offer for AkzoNobel. PPG said it will continue to examine all of its options and make decisions for the benefit of its shareholders. 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. CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- United Hydrocarbon International Corp. (the "Company" or "United") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement (the "Agreement") with Delonex Energy Ltd. ("Delonex") for Delonex to acquire the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, United Hydrocarbon Chad Ltd. ("UHCL"). UHCL holds United's Production Sharing Contract ("PSC") in the Republic of Chad ("Chad"). This transaction ensures UHCL's long-term commitment to Chad and maintains United's exposure to future project successes. Under the terms of the Agreement, Delonex will commit to a comprehensive exploration program with a minimum spend of US$65 million in the PSC in Chad. This will include 2D and 3D seismic programs and three exploration wells which represents a significant increase in activity compared to UHCL's current obligations. The Agreement is based on the acquisition of UHCL by Delonex in exchange for a cash consideration of US$35 million. United will retain a continuing economic interest in the Chad PSC and benefit from future commercial success in both the Doba basin and the Lake Chad Block H through deferred consideration to be paid at agreed milestones. The Agreement is a very positive development for United and Delonex but more importantly for the Government and people of the Republic of Chad ("Chad"). The transaction will catalyse rapid exploration and development of Chad's hydrocarbon resources across the PSC including in Block H where there has been virtually no activity since the mid-70s. United's President and Chief Executive Officer, Gabriel Ollivier, commented: "The transaction is transformational for Chad in that our Agreement requires an active exploration program to be initiated immediately upon approval. With industry-leading and proven project execution skills, access to advanced technologies and financial strength, Delonex is the right partner for United and for the Government of Chad as we seek to increase oil production, boost export capabilities and create value for Chad and for United's shareholders." Mr. Ollivier further added: "Following threshold exploration success, UHCL will under Delonex ownership have the experience, and financial backing to fast-track the appropriate crude export infrastructure for Termit basin production to global markets. This Agreement retains significant valuation creation potential for United shareholders through continued exposure to the PSC. In Doba, UHCL will continue to rapidly evaluate the production potential of the discoveries made to date and the prospects for further exploration. An immediate exploration program will also commence in Block H located in the Lake Chad and Kanem region where little exploration has taken place in recent years. We look forward to continuing to work closely with the Government of Chad, its associated agencies and with Delonex to conclude this transaction and start the exploration program by the third quarter of this year." Mr. Rahul Dhir, Chief Executive Officer of Delonex, said: "This Agreement represents an important strategic step for Delonex. We are very pleased to partner with United on their blocks in the Doba and Termit basins. United has a very strong position in Chad and over the past five years has invested significantly in exploration in their PSC. We are committed to a fast-track exploration and appraisal program in these blocks to target early production and benefit for all stakeholders. With the support of our investors Warburg Pincus and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), we look forward to working closely with the Government of Chad and the local communities to further develop United's onshore interests in Chad and deliver value for the nation." The transaction is subject to a number of conditions including approval from the Government of Chad and United shareholder consent. United's Information Circular will contain further transaction details and will be mailed out by late May 2017, and a special meeting of the United shareholders to approve the Agreement is anticipated to be held by June 30, 2017. GMP FirstEnergy acted as financial advisor to United. ABOUT DELONEX Delonex is a Sub-Saharan oil and gas company focused on exploration, development and production. Delonex is currently active in Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique and the proposed transaction in Chad is part of the company's strategy for expanding its portfolio in Central & West Africa. Delonex Energy is led by a management team with a proven track record in discovering, developing and operating world-class, onshore basins and building and operating pipeline infrastructure. Their core leadership team previously worked together at Cairn India, where they established a recoverable resource base of 1.2 billion barrels of oil onshore in Rajasthan, India, with plateau production of c. 200,000 barrels of oil per day. They also managed the successful financing and execution of integrated upstream and midstream development projects with a combined capital spend of over US$4 billion. The projects included development wells, processing facilities and the world's longest (c.700 km) continuously heated and insulated oil pipeline with an export terminal. Delonex is backed by a group of global investors with extensive oil & gas experience, led by global private equity firm Warburg Pincus and the International Finance Corporation (a part of the World Bank group). For further information on Delonex Energy Ltd. view Delonex Energy's website: www.delonexenergy.com. ABOUT UNITED United is a private junior exploration company with all of its assets located in Chad, comprised of four land blocks which are contained in one Production Sharing Contract. United's recent efforts have been dedicated to providing clear and informative scientific data to the world's oil industry participants to express Chad's immense potential with the objective of securing a partner(s) to convert the company's sizeable resource potential into reserves, production and cash flow. United is very proud of its partnership with both the government of Chad and now with Delonex and is similarly dedicated to creating value in Chad for all stakeholders. For further information on United, view United's website at: www.unitedhydrocarbon.com. FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS This press release contains forward-looking statements. More particularly, this press release contains statements concerning the terms of the Agreement, the timing and completion of the Agreement, the timing of the special meeting of United shareholders and anticipated benefits of the Agreement to United shareholders and other stakeholders. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by United and Delonex, including expectations and assumptions concerning the prevailing market conditions, the actions and decisions by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in Chad, other decisions and approvals of the Chad government, commodity prices and the availability of capital. Although United and Delonex believe that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because United and Delonex can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to, risks associated with adverse market conditions, the inability of United or Delonex to complete the Arrangement at all or on the terms announced, not obtaining the required court, shareholder, government, and regulatory approvals, and the risks associated with the oil and gas industry in general (e.g., operational risks in development, exploration and production; delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures; the uncertainty of reserves estimates; the uncertainty of estimates and projections relating to production, costs and expenses; and health, safety and environmental risks), uncertainty as to the availability of labour and services, commodity price and exchange rate fluctuations, unexpected adverse weather conditions, general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties, capital market conditions and market prices for securities and changes to existing laws and regulations. More information about certain of these risks are set out in the documents and will be covered in the United's Information Circular regarding the Delonex Agreement. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and opinions of management of United and Delonex at the time the statements are presented. United and Delonex may, as considered necessary in the circumstances, update or revise such forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, but United and Delonex undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities laws. Contacts: Delonex Energy Ltd. Steve Torode Regional Director, Africa +44 20 7024 4700 Stephen.Torode@delonexenergy.com Delonex Energy Ltd. Mike Walsh General Counsel + 44 20 7024 4700 Mike.Walsh@delonexenergy.com www.delonexenergy.com United Hydrocarbon International Corp. Gabriel Ollivier President and Chief Executive Officer 403-774-9950 gollivier@unitedhydrocarbon.com www.unitedhydrocarbon.com Signifies delivery of AerCap's 55th 787 AerCap Holdings N.V. ("AerCap") (NYSE: AER) has announced it has delivered a Boeing 787-9 to Chinese carrier, Hainan Airlines. The delivery signifies AerCap's first 787-9 to deliver to the airline and its 55th delivery of the aircraft type. Hainan Airlines now operates twenty 787s, of which ten are 787-9 aircraft. With over 80 aircraft owned and on order, AerCap is the world's largest 787 lessor. AerCap President and Chief Commercial Officer Philip Scruggs said, "We are very pleased to deliver our first 787 to Hainan Airlines. This is our 55th Dreamliner. The 787 is a perfect choice for Hainan Airlines, offering unparalleled levels of passenger comfort to support the airline's high quality service standards and innovation. In addition, the Dreamliner provides exceptional value to airlines due to its advanced technology and fuel efficiency. We wish Hainan Airlines continued success." 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/20170510005778/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 BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- ProGreen US, Inc. (ProGreen), (OTCQB: PGUS), www.ProGreenUS.com, @ProGreenUS, is a US company engaged primarily with investments in agricultural and real estate projects in Baja California, Mexico, both through its joint venture partnership with Inmobiliaria Contel S.R.L.C.V. (Contel) and through its majority-owned Mexican subsidiary Procon Baja JV (Procon), www.CieloMarBaja.com. It was previously disclosed, that ProGreen was planning to move its headquarters to San Diego by the end of summer 2017. As a result of the strong progress and milestones achieved with the agriculture as well as the real estate projects, the company is now planning the move for the month of June. Moving our operations to San Diego will considerably improve our ability to manage the Company's quickly expanding activities in Baja. Due to increased efforts to sell our property portfolio in Michigan, the sale of the company's largest property was closed on April 28, and two more are now under contract. ProGreen is also pleased to announce that the company has established an office location in Ensenada, that will serve as headquarters for all of our activities in Baja California. Both Procon and Contel will operate from this location. Once the master plan for the 5000-acre oceanfront resort community is completed and the marketing of Cielo Mar commences, the office will also host a permanent property exhibition for the development. "We are excited about the fast pace of progress, and with the move to San Diego, I will be able to have a more 'hands on' approach in the growth of the business," states Jan Telander, President and CEO. Additional information on ProGreen's activities in the Baja agriculture industry and Cielo Mar can be found on the websites and social media listed below. Websites: www.ProGreenUS.com www.CieloMarBaja.com Follow us on social media: https://www.facebook.com/ProGreenFarms/ https://www.facebook.com/cielomarbajacamx/ https://twitter.com/ProGreenUS https://progreenus.wordpress.com/ About ProGreen US, Inc. PROGREEN US, INC., www.ProGreenUS.com, based in Bloomfield, Michigan, is engaged primarily with investments in agricultural and real estate projects in Baja California, Mexico, both through its joint venture partnership with Inmobiliaria Contel S.R.L.C.V. (Contel) as well as through its majority-owned Mexican subsidiary Procon Baja JV (Procon). Contel is now active in the high margin produce industry, growing crops for exporters to the US market, with an abundance of land available for expansion under our JV partnership. Procon has recently acquired 5,100 acres of land with 4.7 miles of oceanfront on the Bay of El Rosario, for which a master plan is being drawn for the development of a very large, totally green, international vacation and retirement community called "Cielo Mar." Independent Stock Message Forum: http://investorshangout.com/ProGreen-US-PGUS-65470/ This press release might contain information, which may constitute 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. 'Forward-looking statements' are based upon expectations, estimates and projections at the time the statements are made that involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated. CONTACT INFORMATION ProGreen US, Inc. Jan Telander President and CEO Jan@ProGreenUS.com Phone: 1 (248) 805-3652 www.ProGreenUS.com BOSTON, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Last night, during a reception at the ASU+GSV Summit, Navitas Ventures announced the launch of the Global Edtech Census, an open-data, multi-lingual initiative to comprehensively map the global education innovation and technology landscape. "The Summit is the most important assembly of leading innovators across education," notes Patrick Brothers, CEO of Navitas Ventures. "It was important to us to launch the census at the center of this universe, to ensure we build a critical mass of excitement and energy around this initiative." The census -- with an ambitious goal of identifying over 30,000 education companies from around the world -- will be used to map the emerging landscape, track the evolution and performance of the global ecosystem and better inform founders, investors, schools, institutions and governments on ways to more effectively foster innovation. "Education technology is on pace to reach a quarter of a trillion dollars investment in the next five years - the space is enormous and can be difficult to navigate," says Deborah Quazzo, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at GSV Acceleration. "This open-source data will not only be essential for the larger community, but also for GSV as we continue to identify up-and-coming entrepreneurs and discover bold ideas around the globe." Mapping the global edtech landscape calls for participation from the whole edtech community. The census will launch in thirteen languages, with the goal to translate to additional languages as needed to ensure it is as comprehensive and inclusive as possible: English, Mandarin, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Hebrew, Hindi, Punjabi, Russian and Bengali. Entrepreneurs are invited to contribute to the census by visiting GlobalEdTechCensus.org. About Navitas Ventures: Navitas Ventures elevates the ideas, people, and businesses that will advance innovation in education globally to meet the needs of students in a rapidly changing world. As the venturing arm of Navitas Limited, Navitas Ventures is backed by 20+ years of experience crafting an approach that prioritizes student outcomes and quality. CONTACT: Dany Rossman Communications Strategy Group 303-590-4954 drossman@wearecsg.com VANCOUVER, BC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Future Farm Technologies, Inc. (the "Company" or "Future Farm") (CSE: FFT) (OTCQB: FFRMF) is pleased to announce that the previously announced state-of-the-art extraction machine, purchased by the Company's majority owned subsidiary, FFM Consulting Services, LLC for the manufacture of concentrated cannabis oil and purified distillate, has been delivered to the California extraction facility. Mr. John Sweeney, Future Farm's COO, was on site for the delivery and oversaw the installation with the equipment vendor. He expects the secondary processing equipment to be set-up on May 11th, at which time Mr. Sweeney will perform the first shakedown run and simultaneously begin training staff. Data generation and process development is expected to commence on May 12th with the first independent run expected to occur on Monday, May 15th. For this initial test run 20 pounds of high quality trim is being processed. The extraction equipment is designed to be able to rapidly scale the manufacture premium cannabis oil to supply the growing demand for cannabis concentrates in the state of California. The equipment utilizes a closed-loop system to produce high quality oil in a high throughput system with minimal maintenance and labor. Now that the equipment is delivered and installed, the Company expects the facility to be in full production within 90 days. Projected vendor recommendations with respect to the state-of-the-art extraction equipment is as follows: Load Capacity per 1 hour run = 20lb Run Time = 1 hour (24 potential runs daily) Oil yield = 10% on average (potential for 15%-20% based on the quality of input material) Estimated oil yield per 1 hour run = 908 grams Estimated wholesale price per gram = $10-$20 Potential revenue per hour = 908 x $10 = $9,080 to $18,160 "We believe this alcohol extraction machine is the best extraction equipment on the market today, which allows us to be able to process large amounts of cannabis flower into highly pure concentrates from day one," says Bill Gildea, CEO of Future Farm. "This equipment will immediately allow for high-volume and highly pure extraction production, which will benefit California's medical marijuana community. Also, due to the significant processing power of the equipment, our subsidiary expects it will be able to offer contract manufacturer services for other brands and cultivators across the state of California." Cannabis concentrates and edibles are the largest and fastest growing segments of the cannabis market, which many experts believe will overtake cannabis whole flower sales by 2020. The market for cannabis concentrates is booming because they are used to make edibles, topical ointments, capsules and other packaged products that require a more professional extraction. As the recreational industry gets underway in California, many in the concentrates niche believe it's going to continue to explode in popularity. "We are excited to begin creating unique extraction products that are very high in quality as defined through a full complement of technical laboratory analysis," says John Sweeney, Future Farm's COO. "We will make data driven decisions that guide us in further refining our processes to maintain the very best cannabinoid, flavonoid and terpene profiles. The chosen method of extraction is safe, non-pressurized, reliable, and easy to use. The low temperatures and short residence times helps to preserve all of the essential oils and the consistency of operations including temperature, vacuum, and feed rates make it an ideal solution for scaling up." For further information, contact William Gildea, Director, at 617.834.9467. On behalf of the Board, Future Farm Technologies Inc. William Gildea, CEO & Chairman About Future Farm The Company's business model includes developing and acquiring technologies that will position it as a leader in the evolution of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) for the global production of various types of plants. Future Farm provides scalable, indoor CEA systems that utilize minimal land, water and energy regardless of climate, location or time of year and are customized to grow an abundance of crops close to consumers, therefore minimizing food miles and its impact to the environment. The Company holds an exclusive, worldwide license to use a patented vertical farming technology that, when compared to traditional plant production methods, generate yields up to 10 times greater per square foot of land. The contained system provides many other benefits including seed to sale security, scalability, consistency due to year-round production, cost control, product safety and purity by eliminating environmental variability. The Company is also in the business of designing and distributing LED lighting solutions utilizing the COB and MCOB technology. The Company is focused on delivering cost efficient lighting to North America via advanced e-commerce sites the Company owns and operates. LEDCanada.com which caters to B2B customers is a supplier of the newest and highest demand LED solutions. The Company also owns and operates COBGrowlights.com which caters to both large and small agriculture green houses and controlled cultivation centers. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not in any way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. This news release may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable laws. FUTURE FARM TECHNOLOGIES INC. William Gildea CEO & Chairman 617.834.9467 bill@futurefarmtech.com LAKEWOOD, CO--(Marketwired - May 10, 2017) - Today, FirstBank, Colorado's second-largest bank and one of the nation's largest privately held banks, reported first quarter financial results for 2017. As of March 31, FirstBank's net income increased 10.6 percent to $48 million compared to the same period last year. Total assets grew to $17.3 billion, an increase of 7.8 percent, and total deposits increased to $15.6 billion, up 8.1 percent. Net loans totaled $9.6 billion, an increase of 8.5 percent. "The first quarter of the year was successful and noteworthy for a number of reasons," said Jim Reuter, CEO of FirstBank. "In addition to significant growth across the board, we also launched our new 'banking for good' brand campaign that reflects our commitment to customer service and corporate citizenship, and will serve as a guide for our company for many years to come." FirstBank also reported the following first quarter results in Arizona and California: Arizona Across FirstBank's Phoenix-area branches, total deposits significantly increased from $347 million in 2016 to $436 million, a gain of 25.6 percent. Loans grew 14.4 percent from $680 million to $778 million, and assets increased 11.8 percent from $746 million to $834 million. California Among FirstBank's branches in the Palm Desert area, total deposits increased from $372 million in 2016 to $381 million, a gain of 2.3 percent. Loans grew 5 percent from $285 million to $299 million, and assets increased 4.7 percent from $296 million to $310 million. FirstBank offers a variety of checking and savings accounts, mortgages, home equity loans and a full range of commercial loans and business accounts and services. For more information, visit efirstbank.com. About FirstBank FirstBank operates more than 115 locations in Colorado, Arizona and California. FirstBank is the largest locally owned banking organization in Colorado, serving more than 750,000 customers. Since 2000, FirstBank has contributed more than $57 million and thousands of volunteer hours to charitable organizations. FirstBank is unique in that a majority of its stock is owned by management and employees. For more information, go to efirstbank.com. Member FDIC Equal Housing Lender MEDIA CONTACT: Chandra Brin FirstBank Chandra.Brin@efirstbank.com 303-235-1402 Dani Row Linhart Public Relations drow@linhartpr.com 303-951-2588 BEVERLY, MA--(Marketwired - May 10, 2017) - BioVie Inc. (OTCQB: BIVI), a clinical-stage company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative drug therapies for liver disease, today welcomed Dr. Hari Kumar, a highly accomplished biopharmaceutical industry executive, to its Board of Directors as an independent director. In addition, Dr. Kumar purchased common shares of BioVie stock through a private placement. After earning a PhD in immunology in 1984, Dr. Kumar embarked upon a successful career in the biopharmaceutical industry. He held positions of increasing responsibility at Roche Pharma culminating in serving as Global Business Development Director, and in 2007 assumed the role of Chief Business Officer for Amira Pharmaceuticals. He led the sale of Amira to Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2011 for $475 million. He then served as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Panmira Pharmaceuticals LLC, which is developing anti-inflammatory compounds, and in 2013 became CEO for Adheron Therapeutics, which Roche Pharma acquired in 2015 for $580 million. Beyond his impressive track record, Dr. Kumar brings deep experience in fibrotic and liver diseases to the Company. "We are very pleased that Hari is joining our team," said BioVie CEO Jonathan Adams. "He has expertise in our therapeutic area and will contribute to planning the clinical development of our Orphan Drug candidate BIV201, which is about to enter a Phase 2 clinical trial. On a strategic level he will assist with seeking to build substantial company value. His enthusiasm for BioVie was apparent from our first discussion about four months ago." Dr. Kumar commented: "Speaking with the Company's core team members, including their preeminent medical advisor Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao MD, reinforced my opinion that BIV201 has the potential to become an important medical breakthrough for patients at risk of life-threatening complications due to advanced liver cirrhosis. I look forward to working with the team at BioVie to pursue success for this potential new therapy and for the overall company." BIV201 is a continuous infusion of the peptide terlipressin, initially being developed by BioVie for the treatment of refractory ascites. It will soon commence a Phase 2a trial in 6 patients with liver cirrhosis and ascites refractory to, or intolerant of, diuretic therapy requiring large-volume paracentesis. Terlipressin, dosed differently, is approved in about 40 countries for other complications of liver cirrhosis arising from a similar disease pathway. Terlipressin is not available in the US and currently there are no FDA-approved drugs specifically for treating ascites. More information about the trial may be found at clinicaltrials.gov, identifier: NCT03107091. About BioVie Inc. BioVie Inc. is a clinical-stage company pursuing the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative drug therapies. The Company is currently focused on developing and commercializing BIV201, a novel approach to the treatment of ascites due to chronic liver cirrhosis. In March 2017, BioVie received notification from the FDA that it could initiate a Phase 2a US clinical trial. BIV201 has the potential to improve the health of thousands of patients suffering from life-threatening complications of liver cirrhosis due to hepatitis, NASH, and alcoholism. It has Orphan Drug designation for the most common of these complications, ascites, which represents a significant unmet medical need. The FDA has never approved any drug specifically for treating ascites. For more information about BioVie and BIV201, please visit our website: www.biovieinc.com. About Liver Cirrhosis and Ascites More than 600,000 Americans and millions worldwide suffer from liver cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is the 12th-leading cause of death due to disease in the US, killing an estimated 40,000 people each year. The condition results primarily from hepatitis, alcoholism, and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) linked to fatty liver disease and obesity. Ascites is a common complication of advanced liver cirrhosis. With no medications approved by the FDA specifically for treating ascites, an estimated 40% of patients die within two years of diagnosis. Certain drugs approved for other uses may provide initial relief, but patients often fail to respond to them as ascites worsens. In addition to patient suffering, US treatment costs for liver cirrhosis, including ascites and other complications, are estimated at more than $4 billion annually. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause BioVie's actual results and experience to differ materially from anticipated results and expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements. BioVie has in some cases identified forward-looking statements by using words such as "anticipates," "believes," "hopes," "estimates," "looks," "expects," "plans," "intends," "goal," "potential," "may," "suggest," and similar expressions. Among other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements are BioVie's need for, and the availability of, substantial capital in the future to fund its operations and research and development; and the risks that BioVie's compounds may experience delays or difficulties in commencing or completing clinical studies, may not successfully complete pre-clinical or clinical testing, or may not be granted regulatory approval to be sold and marketed in the United States or elsewhere. A more complete description of these risk factors is included in BioVie's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission under its former name. In addition to the risks described above and in BioVie's filings with the SEC, other unknown or unpredictable factors also could affect BioVie's results. No forward-looking statements can be guaranteed and actual results may differ materially from such statements. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. BioVie undertakes no obligation to release publicly the results of any revisions to any such forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by applicable law or regulation. BioVie cannot guarantee the completion or success of its planned Phase 2a clinical trial. CONTACT INFORMATION: BioVie Inc. Email contact June 1, 2017 (Vancouver, Canada) Lundin Gold Inc. ("Lundin Gold" or the "Company") (TSX: LUG, Nasdaq Stockholm: LUG) is pleased to report the voting results from the Company's 2017 Annual Meeting of Shareholders ("Annual Meeting"), which was held earlier today in Vancouver, British Columbia. Election of Directors The nominees listed in the management proxy circular for the Annual Meeting were elected as directors of the Company. The detailed results of the vote for the election of directors held at the Annual Meeting are set out below. Nominee Votes For % For Votes Withheld % Withheld ----------------------------------------------------------------- Carmel Daniele 94,464,408 99.91 85,730 0.09 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ian W. Gibbs 94,531,089 99.98 19,049 0.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Chantal Gosselin 94,531,178 99.98 18,960 0.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley Heppenstall 91,627,042 96.91 2,923,096 3.09 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ron F. Hochstein 94,532,298 99.98 17,840 0.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Lukas H. Lundin 91,628,986 96.91 2,921,152 3.09 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Paul McRae 94,538,068 99.99 12,070 0.01 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Pablo J. Mir 94,535,068 99.98 15,070 0.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------- The eight nominees will serve on the Company's board of directors until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. Approval of Amendments to and Unallocated Options under Stock Option Plan Shareholders approved the amendments to, and unallocated options under the Company's stock option plan, as more particularly described in the Company's management information circular. The voting results were as follows: Votes For % For Votes Against % Against ------------------------------------------- 88,897,725 94.02 5,652,413 5.98 ------------------------------------------- Appointment of Auditors Shareholders reappointed PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditor of the Company for the upcoming year, and authorized the directors of the Company to fix the remuneration of the auditor. The voting results were as follows: Votes For % For Votes Withheld % Withheld --------------------------------------------- 96,391,171 99.95 43,923 0.05 --------------------------------------------- About the Company Lundin Gold Inc. owns the Fruta del Norte ("FDN") gold project located in southeast Ecuador. FDN is one of the largest and highest grade undeveloped gold projects in the world. The Company is advancing FDN in order to realize the significant potential of this asset. The Company believes that the value created will not only greatly benefit shareholders, but also the Government and people of Ecuador who are the Company's most important stakeholders in this project. Lundin Gold views its commitment to corporate social responsibility as a strategic advantage that enables it both to access and effectively manage business opportunities in increasingly complex environments. Lundin Gold is committed to addressing the challenge of sustainability - delivering value to its shareholders, while simultaneously providing economic and social benefits to impacted communities and minimizing its environmental footprint. Additional Information The information in this release is subject to the disclosure requirements of Lundin Gold under the EU Market Abuse Regulation and the Swedish Securities Market Act. This information was publicly communicated on June 1, 2017 at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time. For more information, please contact: Lundin Gold Inc. Lundin Gold Inc. Ron F. Hochstein Sophia Shane President and CEO Corporate Development 593 2-299-6400 604-689-7842 604-806-3589 info@lundingold.com www.lundingold.com Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=634046 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 18, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:SYH) (OTCQB:SYHBF) (Frankfurt:SC1P) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company's option partner Azincourt Energy (TSX-V:AAZ) ("Azincourt") has announced details for an upcoming exploration program at the East Preston Uranium Project located in the western Athabasca Basin near NexGen Energy Ltd.'s high-grade Arrow deposit hosted on its Rook-1 property and Fission Uranium Corp.'s Triple R deposit located within their PLS Project area. Preston Uranium Project Claims Map: http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/maps/SYH_Patterson_Lake_Area_Promo_20161212_blue_hi_res.pdf (http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/maps/SYH_Patterson_Lake_Area_Promo_20161212_blue_hi_res.pdf) Skyharbour and Clean Commodities entered into an Option Agreement (the "Agreement") with Azincourt which provides Azincourt an earn-in option to acquire a 70% working interest in the East Preston Property (see news release dated March 28th, 2017). Under the Agreement, Azincourt has issued to Skyharbour and Clean Commodities each 2,250,000 common shares and will contribute cash and exploration expenditure consideration totaling up to CAD $3,500,000 in exchange for up to 70% of the applicable property area over three years. Of the $3,500,000 in project consideration, $1,000,000 will be in cash payments to Skyharbour and Clean Commodities. East Preston Program Highlights: Extensive reinterpretation of historical helicopter-borne VTEM and ground geophysical data by expert geophysical consultant highlights untested conductor systems and corridor trends Ground geophysical program planned to refine drill targets over with grid establishment, Horizontal Loop Electromagnetic (HLEM) and Gravity surveys to be used Work to commence after freeze-up in November Azincourt may earn a 70% interest in East Preston totaling 25,329 hectares, which represents the eastern region of the larger 74,965 hectare Preston Project through the upfront issuance of 4,500,000 shares as well as $3,500,000 of total project consideration over three years, including up to $2,500,000 of exploration work programs and $1,000,000 of cash payments to Skyhabour and Clean Commodities to be split equally. In addition to the Azincourt Agreement on the Preston East Property, Skyhabour also announced an option agreement with AREVA Resources Canada whereby AREVA may earn up to a 70% interest in a separate 49,635 hectare portion of the Preston Project. East Preston Project 2017 Geophysical Program: Skyharbour's option partner Azincourt engaged a highly experienced geophysical consultant, Mr. Lawrence Bzdel, PGeo, to interpret the extensive historical airborne and ground geophysical data set and build on the already extensive previous work. The reinterpretation work has identified and prioritized numerous conductor trends, with the highest priorities being the A, B and D trends, respectively (see figure in link below). East Preston Survey Grid Location Map: http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/maps/Low-res-Figure-2---East-Preston-Survey-Grid-Location-Map-with-mid-time-channel-VTEM-440-us.pdf (http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/maps/Low-res-Figure-2---East-Preston-Survey-Grid-Location-Map-with-mid-time-channel-VTEM-440-us.pdf) Trend A is a very long, wide N to NE trending conductive corridor with an observed flexure bound and crosscut by interpreted E-W cross-faults. Trend B is a long linear conductor system coincident with an interpreted NE trending fault. Trend D is a NNW trending conductor system parallel to an interpreted fault. The East Preston geophysical program is expected to commence in November following freeze-up in northwestern Saskatchewan. Grid establishment will precede the planned surveys. The grid lines will be perpendicular to the interpreted VTEM conductive trends. The HLEM and Gravity surveys will consist of 47 line km of each method. The HLEM data will be collected with a 200 m Transmitter-Receiver separation, and 50 m station intervals. The survey is designed to accurately identify multiple conductor systems in this shallow depth to basement environment. Unconformity-related uranium deposits are often associated in proximity to basement conductive trends, and represent a first order criteria for discovery. The Gravity survey will record measurements at 50 m station intervals. Subtle gravity low anomalies can highlight areas of alteration and structural disruption. Gravity highs may represent basement topography, which are also associated with unconformity-related uranium deposits. This initial ground geophysical program is expected to yield drill targets within previously untested corridors. Skyharbour and its option partner Azincourt expect to generate enough targets for several drill programs. Overview of East Preston: The significant potential of the Western Athabasca Basin has been highlighted by recent discoveries in the area by NexGen Energy Ltd. (Arrow), Fission Uranium Corp. (Triple R) and a joint-venture consisting of Cameco Corporation, AREVA Resources Canada Inc. and Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. (Spitfire). More than $4.7-million in expenditures on the entire Preston Uranium Project have been incurred to date, including over $2 million at East Preston. This exploration has consisted of ground gravity, airborne and ground electromagnetics, radon, soil, silt, biogeochem, lake sediment, and geological mapping surveys, as well as two exploratory drill programs. Several high-priority drill target areas associated with multiple prospective exploration corridors have been successfully delineated through this methodical, multiphased exploration initiative, which has culminated in an extensive, proprietary geological database for the project area. Preston Uranium Property Map and Regional Exploration Corridors: http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/SYH_Regional_Corridors.jpg (http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/SYH_Regional_Corridors.jpg) Furthermore, on March 9th, 2017, Skyharbour announced an option agreement with AREVA Resources Canada which provides AREVA an earn-in option to acquire up to a 70% working interest in a 49,635 hectare portion of the total 74,965 hectare Preston Uranium Project (see News Release dated March 9th, 2017). Under the agreement, AREVA can contribute cash and exploration program consideration totaling up to CAD $8,000,000 in exchange for up to 70% of the applicable project area over six years. Qualified Person: The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101 and reviewed and approved by Richard Kusmirski, P.Geo., M.Sc., Skyharbour's Head Technical Advisor and a Director, as well as a Qualified Person. About Skyharbour Resources Ltd.: Skyharbour holds an extensive portfolio of uranium and thorium exploration projects in Canada's Athabasca Basin and is well positioned to benefit from improving uranium market fundamentals with five drill-ready projects. In July 2016, Skyharbour acquired an option from Denison Mines, a large strategic shareholder of the Company, to acquire 100% of the Moore Uranium Project which is located approx. 15 kilometres east of Denison's Wheeler River project and 39 kilometres south of Cameco's McArthur River uranium mine. Moore is an advanced stage uranium exploration property with high-grade uranium mineralization at the Maverick Zone with drill results returning 6.0% U3O8 over 5.9 metres including 20.8% U3O8 over 1.5 metres at a vertical depth of 265 metres. Skyharbour recently signed option agreements with AREVA Resources Canada and Azincourt Energy whereby AREVA and Azincourt can earn in 70% on the Preston Project through a combined $9,800,000 in total exploration expenditures, as well as $1,700,000 in total cash payments and 4,500,000 Azincourt shares. Preston is a large, geologically prospective property proximal to Fission Uranium's Triple R deposit as well as NexGen Energy's Arrow deposit. The Company also owns a 100% interest in the Falcon Point Uranium Project on the eastern perimeter of the Basin which contains an NI 43-101 inferred resource totaling 7.0 million pounds of U3O8 at 0.03% and 5.3 million pounds of ThO2 at 0.023%. The project also hosts a high-grade surface showing with up to 68% U3O8 in grab samples from a massive pitchblende vein, the source of which has yet to be discovered. The Company's 100% owned Mann Lake Uranium project on the east side of the Basin is strategically located adjacent to the Mann Lake Joint Venture operated by Cameco, where high-grade uranium mineralization was recently discovered. Skyharbour's goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions. Skyharbour's Uranium Project Map in the Athabasca Basin: http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/SYH_Landpackage_2014.jpg (http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/SYH_Landpackage_2014.jpg) To find out more about Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:SYH) visit the Company's website at www.skyharbourltd.com (http://www.skyharbourltd.com/). SKYHARBOUR RESOURCES LTD. "Jordan Trimble" Jordan Trimble President and CEO For further information contact myself or: Nick Findler Corporate Development and Communications Skyharbour Resources Ltd. Telephone: 604-639-3850 Toll Free: 800-567-8181 Facsimile: 604-687-3119 Email: info@skyharbourltd.com (mailto:info@skyharbourltd.com) NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THIS NEWS RELEASE. This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com (http://www.sedar.com/) for further information. 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: Skyharbour Resources Ltd via Globenewswire VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/09/17 -- Finning International Inc. (TSX: FTT) ("Finning" or the "Company") reported 2nd quarter 2017 results today. All monetary amounts are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. HIGHLIGHTS -- EPS(1) was $0.34 per share. -- Revenue increased by 21% from Q2 2016, with higher new equipment and product support revenues in all operations. -- Market recovery and improved operating performance drove higher profitability in Canada and UK & Ireland. -- South America delivered solid results, with significant growth in Argentina. -- Equipment backlog(2) rose by almost 30% from Q1 2017 to over $900 million. All operations reported higher backlog in Q2 2017. -- Annualized dividend increased by 4% to $0.76 per share, reflecting the expectation for positive annual free cash flow(2) and sustainable earnings recovery. "Our second quarter results demonstrate strong operating leverage as we continue to benefit from operating performance improvements and a reduced cost base. Strengthening demand for equipment and product support in all our regions had a positive impact on our results, and we now expect our annual revenues to increase modestly over 5% compared to 2016," said Scott Thomson, president and CEO of Finning International Inc. "To meet stronger demand, we are purchasing inventories while maintaining capital discipline. Continued progress to optimize our supply chain is driving improvements in our working capital to sales ratio(2). Importantly, our consistent focus on profitability and capital discipline generated higher return on invested capital(2) in each of our regions during the quarter," concluded Mr. Thomson. Q2 2017 FINANCIAL SUMMARY ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quarterly Overview $ millions, except Q2 2016 % change per share amounts Q2 2017 Q2 2016 % change Adjusted(3) Adjusted ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenue 1,581 1,310 21 1,310 21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBIT(1) 98 29 232 63 54 EBIT margin 6.2% 2.3% 4.9% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA(1)(2) 146 77 87 111 31 EBITDA margin(2) 9.2% 6.0% 8.5% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net income 56 5 n/m 33 72 Basic EPS 0.34 0.03 n/m 0.20 72 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Free cash flow (131) 64 (304) 64 (304) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- n/m - percentage change not meaningful ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q2 2017 EBIT and EBITDA by Operation $ millions, except per South UK & Corporate Finning share amounts Canada America Ireland & Other Total EPS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBIT / EPS 57 43 11 (13) 98 0.34 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBIT margin 7.2% 8.4% 4.1% - 6.2% ----------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA 83 58 18 (13) 146 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA margin 10.5% 11.2% 6.6% - 9.2% ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There were no significant items in Q2 2017. Included in Q2 2016 results were the following significant items that management does not consider indicative of operational and financial trends either by nature or amount. These significant items are summarized below and described in more detail on page 3 of the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A"). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q2 2016 EBIT and EBITDA by Operation $ millions, except per South UK & Corporate Finning share amounts Canada America Ireland & Other Total EPS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBIT / EPS 28 38 (26) (11) 29 0.03 Severance and restructuring costs 1 1 11 - 13 0.07 Impact from Alberta wildfires - unavoidable costs 11 - - - 11 0.05 Estimated loss on disputes - UK power systems - - 5 - 5 0.02 Write-down - UK non-core business sale - - 5 - 5 0.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted EBIT(2)(3) / Adjusted EPS(2)(3) 40 39 (5) (11) 63 0.20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted EBITDA(2)(3) 65 54 3 (11) 111 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- EBIT margin 4.4% 8.8% (10.5)% - 2.3% ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted EBIT margin(2)(3) 6.3% 9.1% (1.9)% - 4.9% ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted EBITDA margin(2)(3) 10.3% 12.5% 1.2% - 8.5% ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Revenues increased by 21% from Q2 2016, driven by higher new equipment sales in all regions (up 46% on a consolidated basis). Product support revenues grew by 13%, with all operations reporting improved demand for parts. Canada's product support revenues were particularly strong compared to Q2 2016, which was impacted by Alberta wildfires. -- Gross profit increased in line with revenues. While margins improved across all lines of business, a shift in revenue mix to a higher percentage of new equipment sales resulted in a similar gross profit margin compared to Q2 2016. -- EBIT increased by $35 million or 54% from Adjusted EBIT in Q2 2016, driven by higher revenues and improved profitability in Canada and UK & Ireland. SG&A(1) as a percentage of revenue declined by 140 basis points from Q2 2016, excluding significant items, mainly due to leverage of higher revenues on fixed costs in Canada and UK & Ireland. -- EPS was $0.34 per share, up from Adjusted EPS of $0.20 in Q2 2016. -- Q2 free cash flow was a use of cash ($131) million due to purchasing inventories to meet stronger demand in all regions - mainly parts inventory in Canada and South America, and equipment inventory in South America and UK & Ireland. Reflecting improved revenue outlook and higher backlog, including some purchases of large equipment packages for delivery in early 2018, the Company has lowered its annual free cash flow expectation to a range of $150 to $200 million. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Invested Capital(2) and ROIC(1)(2) Q2 2017 Q4 2016 Q2 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Invested capital ($ millions) Consolidated 3,094 2,797 3,041 Canada 1,764 1,595 1,695 South America (U.S. dollars) 802 741 824 UK & Ireland (U.K. pound sterling) 178 130 153 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Invested capital turnover(2) (times) 1.98 1.90 1.78 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted ROIC(2)(3) (%) Consolidated 11.2 9.3 9.4 Canada 11.2 9.3 9.3 South America 15.9 15.0 14.2 UK & Ireland 14.0 5.9 3.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- An increase in invested capital from Q4 2016 was mostly attributable to higher parts and internal service work in progress inventories in Canada in line with growing product support, including component rebuild activity, as well as higher equipment inventories in South America and UK & Ireland to meet improved demand. -- Despite an almost $200 million increase in inventory levels, inventory turns remained relatively unchanged compared to Q4 2016, reflecting progress on supply chain efficiencies. Working capital to sales ratio declined to 28.9% in Q2 2016 from 30.4% in Q4 2016. -- Invested capital turnover improved to 1.98 times from 1.90 times in Q4 2016, driven by higher revenues. -- Adjusted ROIC increased across all regions compared to Adjusted ROIC in all quarters of 2016 and Q1 2017. Q2 2017 HIGHLIGHTS BY OPERATION Canada -- Revenues increased by 25%, with higher revenues in all lines of business except used equipment. New equipment sales were up 50%, driven by engine sales to gas compression customers, and higher deliveries of mining equipment. Product support revenues grew by 21%, reflecting stronger demand for parts and component rebuilds in the oil sands, as well as improved product support activity in other mining and general construction sectors. In Q2 2016, Canada's product support revenues were negatively impacted by the Alberta wildfires which caused interruption in oil sands activity. Excluding the estimated impact of the wildfires, product support revenues were 11% higher compared to Q2 2016. -- EBIT of $57 million increased by 42% from Adjusted EBIT in Q2 2016, mainly due to leverage of higher revenues on fixed costs. An increase in variable SG&A costs was associated with revenue growth, particularly in product support. EBIT margin was 7.2%, up from Adjusted EBIT margin of 6.3% in Q2 2016, driven by lower relative SG&A costs. South America -- Revenues were up 20% (up 15% in functional currency, US dollars), driven mostly by stronger new equipment sales. New equipment sales grew by 82% in functional currency and were primarily attributable to higher construction equipment sales in Argentina. In functional currency, product support revenues increased slightly from Q2 2016, driven by improved parts volumes in construction and mining industries in Argentina. -- EBIT of $43 million was up 10% from Adjusted EBIT in Q2 2016. EBIT margin of 8.4% was below Adjusted EBIT margin of 9.1% in Q2 2016, mostly due to a significant shift in revenue mix to new equipment sales, which typically generate a lower margin. United Kingdom & Ireland -- Revenues grew by 12% (up 21% in functional currency, UK Pound Sterling), with higher revenues in all lines of business. New equipment sales were up 30% in functional currency, driven by stronger power systems performance in the electric power generation market, as well as higher equipment deliveries. Product support revenues increased by 12% in functional currency, reflecting stronger parts sales across both equipment and power systems businesses. -- EBIT of $11 million and EBIT margin of 4.1% were significantly ahead of Adjusted EBIT results in Q2 2016, driven by higher revenues, positive impact on margins from improved execution in power systems, and lower SG&A costs. ROIC of 14.0% was the highest in the last two years, reflecting improved operating performance in a very competitive market environment. CORPORATE AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTS Dividend The Board of Directors has approved a 4% increase in the quarterly dividend to $0.19 per share from $0.1825 per share, payable on September 7, 2017 to shareholders of record on August 24, 2017. This dividend will be considered an eligible dividend for Canadian income tax purposes. SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL INFORMATION ---------------------------------------------------- $ millions, except per Three months ended June share amounts 30 Six months ended June 30 ---------------------------------------------------- % % 2017 2016 change 2017 2016 change ---------------------------------------------------- New equipment 550 377 46 973 892 9 Used equipment 96 101 (6) 169 199 (15) Equipment rental 54 53 2 105 109 (4) Product support 877 775 13 1,729 1,596 8 Other 4 4 7 8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total revenue 1,581 1,310 21 2,983 2,804 6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gross profit 422 343 23 815 724 13 Gross profit margin 26.7% 26.2% 27.3% 25.8% SG&A (330) (315) (4) (637) (652) 2 SG&A as a percentage of revenue (20.8)% (24.1)% (21.3)% (23.3)% Equity earnings of joint ventures & associate 5 6 4 7 Other income (expenses) 1 (5) 2 (5) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBIT 98 29 232 184 74 148 EBIT margin 6.2% 2.3% 6.2% 2.7% Adjusted EBIT 98 63 54 184 130 41 Adjusted EBIT margin 6.2% 4.9% 6.2% 4.7% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net income 56 5 n/m 103 20 429 Basic EPS 0.34 0.03 n/m 0.62 0.12 428 Adjusted EPS 0.34 0.20 72 0.62 0.39 61 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA 146 77 87 277 173 59 EBITDA margin 9.2% 6.0% 9.3% 6.2% Adjusted EBITDA 146 111 31 277 229 21 Adjusted EBITDA margin 9.2% 8.5% 9.3% 8.2% Free cash flow (131) 64 (304) (207) 94 (320) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dec Jun 30, 31, 2017 2016 -------------------------- Invested capital 3,094 2,797 Invested capital turnover (times) 1.98 1.90 Net debt to invested capital(2) 37.4% 32.0% ROIC 9.4% 5.6% Adjusted ROIC 11.2% 9.3% -------------------------------------------------- n/m - percentage change not meaningful To download Finning's complete Q2 2017 results in PDF, please open the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/FinningQ217results.pdf Q2 2017 INVESTOR CALL The Company will hold an investor call on August 9 at 10:00 am Eastern Time. Dial-in numbers: 1-800-319-4610 (Canada and US), 1-416-915-3239 (Toronto area), 1-604-638-5340 (international). The call will be webcast live and archived for three months at http://www.finning.com/en_CA/company/investors.html. Finning no longer provides a phone playback recording; please use the webcast to access the archived call. ABOUT FINNING Finning International Inc. (TSX: FTT) is the world's largest Caterpillar equipment dealer delivering unrivalled service to customers for over 80 years. Finning sells, rents, and provides parts and services for equipment and engines to help customers maximize productivity. Headquartered in Vancouver, B.C., the Company operates in Western Canada, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, the United Kingdom and Ireland. FOOTNOTES (1) Earnings Before Finance Costs and Income Taxes (EBIT); Basic Earnings per Share (EPS); Earnings Before Finance Costs, Income Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA); Selling, General & Administrative Expenses (SG&A); Return on Invested Capital (ROIC). (2) These financial metrics, referred to as "non-GAAP financial measures" do not have a standardized meaning under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which are also referred to herein as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. For additional information regarding these financial metrics, including definitions and reconciliations from each of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable measure under GAAP, where applicable, see the heading "Description of Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Reconciliations" in the Company's MD&A. Management believes that providing certain non-GAAP financial measures provides users of the Company's consolidated financial statements with important information regarding the operational performance and related trends of the Company's business. By considering these measures in combination with the comparable IFRS measures set out in the Company's MD&A, management believes that users are provided a better overall understanding of the Company's business and its financial performance during the relevant period than if they simply considered the IFRS measures alone. (3) Reported metrics may be impacted by significant items management does not consider indicative of operational and financial trends either by nature or amount; these significant items are summarized on page 2 of this news release and described on pages 28 to 30 of the Company's MD&A. The financial metrics that have been adjusted to take these items into account are referred to as "Adjusted" metrics. There were no significant items adjusted in Q2 2017. FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER This report contains statements about the Company's business outlook, objectives, plans, strategic priorities and other statements that are not historical facts. A statement Finning makes is forward-looking when it uses what the Company knows and expects today to make a statement about the future. Forward-looking statements may include words such as aim, anticipate, assumption, believe, could, expect, goal, guidance, intend, may, objective, outlook, plan, project, seek, should, strategy, strive, target, and will. Forward-looking statements in this report include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: expectations with respect to the economy, markets and activities and the associated impact on the Company's financial results; expected revenue levels compared to last year; expected annual free cash flow; and the expectation of sustainable earnings recovery. All such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the 'safe harbour' provisions of applicable Canadian securities laws. Unless otherwise indicated by us, forward-looking statements in this report reflect Finning's expectations as at the date of this report. Except as may be required by Canadian securities laws, Finning does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Forward-looking statements, by their very nature, are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties and are based on several assumptions which give rise to the possibility that actual results could differ materially from the expectations expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements and that Finning's business outlook, objectives, plans, strategic priorities and other statements that are not historical facts may not be achieved. As a result, Finning cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements include: general economic and market conditions; foreign exchange rates; commodity prices; the level of customer confidence and spending, and the demand for, and prices of, Finning's products and services; Finning's ability to maintain its relationship with Caterpillar Inc.; Finning's dependence on the continued market acceptance of its products, including Caterpillar products, and the timely supply of parts and equipment; Finning's ability to continue to improve productivity and operational efficiencies while continuing to maintain customer service; Finning's ability to manage cost pressures as growth in revenue occurs; Finning's ability to reduce costs in response to slowing activity levels; Finning's ability to attract sufficient skilled labour resources as market conditions, business strategy or technologies change; Finning's ability to negotiate and renew collective bargaining agreements with satisfactory terms for Finning's employees and the Company; the intensity of competitive activity; Finning's ability to raise the capital needed to implement its business plan; regulatory initiatives or proceedings, litigation and changes in laws or regulations; stock market volatility; changes in political and economic environments for operations; the integrity, reliability and availability of, and benefits from information technology and the data processed by that technology; and Finning's ability to protect itself from cybersecurity threats or incidents. Forward-looking statements are provided in this report for the purpose of giving information about management's current expectations and plans and allowing investors and others to get a better understanding of Finning's operating environment. However, readers are cautioned that it may not be appropriate to use such forward-looking statements for any other purpose. Forward-looking statements made in this report are based on a number of assumptions that Finning believed were reasonable on the day the Company made the forward-looking statements. Refer in particular to the Outlook section of the MD&A for forward-looking statements. Some of the assumptions, risks, and other factors which could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements contained in this report are discussed in Section 4 of the Company's current AIF and in the annual MD&A for the financial risks. Finning cautions readers that the risks described in the MD&A and the AIF are not the only ones that could impact the Company. Additional risks and uncertainties not currently known to the Company or that are currently deemed to be immaterial may also have a material adverse effect on Finning's business, financial condition, or results of operations. Except as otherwise indicated, forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any non-recurring or other unusual items or of any dispositions, mergers, acquisitions, other business combinations or other transactions that may be announced or that may occur after the date of this report. The financial impact of these transactions and non-recurring and other unusual items can be complex and depends on the facts particular to each of them. Finning therefore cannot describe the expected impact in a meaningful way or in the same way Finning presents known risks affecting its business. Contacts: Finning International Inc. Mauk Breukels Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs (604) 331-4934 mauk.breukels@finning.com www.finning.com Orlando - Vom 7.-11. Mai findet das weltweit grosste Service Management Event des Jahres in Orlando, Florida statt: Die ServiceNow Knowledge17 mit uber 12'000 internationalen Service-Management-Experten. Am Anlass stellte ServiceNow ein Bundel neuer Produkte und Dienstleistungen vor. HR: Im Durchschnitt wird der erste Tag eines neuen Mitarbeiters uber 5-10 Abteilungen koordiniert. Mit einer neuen Anwendung ermoglicht ServiceNow schnelleres und effizienteres Onboarding neuer Mitarbeiter uber eine einzige Plattform. CSM: Communities sind der Schlussel zum Kundenvertrauen. Sie begeistern jedoch nicht alle Kunden im gleichen Mae. Diese Ankundigung stellt eine Losung fur personalisierte Service-Erfahrung vor, mit einer Community aus Experten und Kollegen, weniger Anfragen und hoherer Reichweite zu potentiellen Kunden. Sicherheit: Sicherheitsteams haben Cyber-Bedrohungen isoliert abgewehrt, so dass andere Abteilungen moglichst nicht involviert waren. Diese Mitteilung erklart, wie Unternehmen kontrollieren konnen, wie sie mit den verschiedenen Abteilungen zusammenarbeiten, und Cyberangriffe proaktiv abwenden. Cloud Management: Der Cloud-Markt fur neue Unternehmensdienste wachst rasant, doch die Art und Weise, wie Unternehmen die Cloud verwalten, hat sich nicht weiterentwickelt. Mit ServiceNow erhalten Mitarbeiter jetzt schnell freien Zugang zu Cloud-Anwendungen und konnen diese auf jedem Gerat verwalten. Software Asset Management: Lizensierte Software macht ein Drittel des IT-Budgets aus und ihre Verwaltung ist kompliziert. Kunden konnen nun auf das komplette Management ihres lizensierten Software-Katalogs zugreifen, indem Anbieter-Audits so einfach wie moglich gemacht werden. Aus Aktualitatsgrunden hier der englische Originaltext: ServiceNow Launches Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions for Human Resources ServiceNow today announced ServiceNow Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions. For many employees, getting onboarding and other services from HR can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. HR departments want to provide great service, but are too often bogged down with repetitive, transactional tasks. For the first time, enterprises can easily set up and manage employee lifecycle events across multiple departments on a single service delivery platform. The new application orchestrates and automates employee onboarding, offboarding, relocation, leaves of absence and other processes that begin in HR but span multiple systems and departments such as IT, facilities, finance and legal. Now, the efficiency of onboarding and lifecycle processes is drastically improved, and fast, consumer-like service makes it easy for employees to be employees. The delivery of many HR services like employee onboarding start in HR, but can require the coordination of five to 10 departments to complete them. Traditional onboarding solutions support HR related tasks such as capturing employee information, compliance and I-9 forms but do not manage the work required from other departments. A recent Gartner research report, indicates that, "organizations have begun to realize the significant impact that onboarding has on employee engagement and retention. Application leaders responsible for HR must work with multiple business functions to expand process scope and reach more worker types through all phases of the workforce life cycle1." "The new hire onboarding experience is a critical first impression for incoming employees," said Deepak Rammohan Bharadwaj, General Manager of Human Resources Product Line, ServiceNow. "ServiceNow provides a system of action for organizations to streamline and automate the complex services needed from multiple departments beyond just HR to give employees the onboarding experience they deserve." ServiceNow Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions breaks complex processes down into individual activities such as getting a workspace, credit card, security access, computer, and phones - and then distributes these to different departments for approvals and action. It tracks the status of each activity, and reminds people automatically if they are behind schedule. If an activity is stalled, it is escalated automatically so that problems can be resolved. If exceptions occur, employees can easily open a case in the application as part of the onboarding workflow. Some manual processes can be eliminated entirely - for example ServiceNow can create email accounts, and even automatically update Core HR and other departmental systems of record. In addition to improving the service delivery efficiency of HR and other departments, this new application provides a consumer-like service experience to employees. Foundational to this experience is the Employee Service Center. It provides a single place for employees to interact and communicate with HR for all service needs. Employees can get information, such as new hire policies either by searching for it or by HR proactively pushing it out. If employees need help or more information, they can submit a request. HR can even task employees to take certain actions like signing documents. "Our employees are saving lives every day. It is imperative to have processes in place to create a smooth and efficient experience for new hires. ServiceNow transforms previously cumbersome and manual onboarding processes and simplifies the experience for both the employee and the company," said ServiceNow customer Carlie Bush, director of HR Shared Services at Envision Healthcare, a leading provider of physician-led, outsourced medical services. ServiceNow Launches Customer Service Communities ServiceNow today announced ServiceNow Communities, a major new application in its Customer Service Management solution. More than ever, companies rely on loyal customers for business growth. Yet many aren't delivering the service customers expect - personalized, relevant, and always-on. ServiceNow Communities provides a personalized, self-service experience for every customer. Their profile, cases, products, services, and notifications are there for real-time access. Customers get the information most relevant to them by engaging with peers and experts and from contextual search. A customer-specific activity stream ensures they only get desired updates. Now, companies can reduce case volumes, obtain new perspectives into product use or customer needs, and expand overall reach to new prospects. Research shows that engaged customers are more loyal to businesses. Customers who engage in online communities have higher satisfaction and tend to buy more than those who do not. "Communities are key to driving loyalty," said Abhijit Mitra, general manager of the Customer Service Management business unit, ServiceNow. "But not all communities are equal in their ability to engage customers. With ServiceNow, every customer gets a community of experts and peers, and a personalized, integrated experience enabling companies to build much-desired, long term relationships." ServiceNow Communities includes core capabilities such as managed forums, curated topics, support for multiple content types, moderation, and granular permissions. Additional features include: Personalized self-service experience is delivered through the integration of Communities with the ServiceNow Customer Service Portal. Customers can see or edit their profile details, cases, products, services, and notifications in the same place where they can engage in the community. Seamless contextual searching enables customers to get information or answers faster with a single search that works across ServiceNow Knowledge Management and Communities. Customer-specific activity stream provides content and updates customers desire from the community to reduce information overload and to ensure relevant information is in the forefront. Global ... Den vollstandigen Artikel lesen ... DENVER, CO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- ENSERVCO Corporation (NYSE MKT: ENSV), a diversified national provider of well-site services to the domestic onshore conventional and unconventional oil and gas industries, today announced the appointment of Ian Dickinson as president, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. Dickinson succeeds Rick Kasch, who is retiring from his positions as president, CEO and board member. Dickinson is a well-rounded senior executive who brings a strong track record in the areas of private equity, oilfield service equipment, M&A and finance. He was previously president and CEO of Premier Oilfield Equipment, where he expanded the geographic reach and product offerings of the business via strategic partnerships and strong relationships with oil and gas exploration and production companies throughout the U.S. He is a former partner with Caddis Capital Investments, a private equity firm where he had asset management responsibilities, including acquisitions, asset optimization and divestitures. Prior assignments include CFO and vice president of finance positions with a number of emerging growth companies. "I'm pleased and honored with my appointment as CEO of ENSERVCO," said Ian Dickinson. "I'm joining the Company at an exciting time in its history. Industry activity is rebounding, our financial performance is improving, our core well enhancement service segment is once again growing, and demand is very strong for our new water transfer service, which is an exciting extension of our service offerings. In my view, the Company's market value does not accurately reflect the intrinsic value of the Company, our growth prospects and the resurgence we're beginning to see in the industry. I intend to take a very active role in managing the business for continued profitable growth. My early priorities will be refinancing our debt, strengthening new and existing business development activities and increasing efficiencies throughout the organization. "Prior to the industry downturn more than two years ago, ENSERVCO was arguably one of the top performing small oilfield services companies in the industry, achieving consistent growth in revenue and EBITDA and performing at a very high level," Dickinson added. "The downturn has been tough on all companies in our sector, but ENSERVCO has weathered the storm. Today, with the industry on the rebound, we have the advantages of a much larger, relatively young fleet, an expanded and more diversified services portfolio, enhanced geographic reach and solid customer relationships. Accordingly, assuming stable to steadily increasing commodity prices, we believe we're well positioned to achieve our growth objectives and deliver enhanced shareholder value." Rich Murphy, Chairman of the Board of ENSERVCO, added, "We are very pleased to have attracted someone of the caliber of Ian Dickinson. He has demonstrated strong leadership in all his prior assignments and is well known and well regarded in the oilfield services equipment industry. We believe he's the right person to help ENSERVCO achieve its potential and we look forward to supporting his efforts in every way possible. On behalf of the board of directors, we also want to thank Rick Kasch for his years of service to ENSERVCO and wish him well in his retirement." About ENSERVCO Through its various operating subsidiaries, ENSERVCO provides a wide range of oilfield services, including hot oiling, acidizing, frac water heating, water transfer, bacteria and scaling treatment, water hauling and oilfield support equipment rental. The Company has a broad geographic footprint covering seven major domestic oil and gas basins and serves customers in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Wyoming and West Virginia. Additional information is available at www.enservco.com Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains information that is "forward-looking" in that it describes events and conditions ENSERVCO reasonably expects to occur in the future. Expectations for the future performance of ENSERVCO are dependent upon a number of factors, and there can be no assurance that ENSERVCO will achieve the results as contemplated herein. Certain statements contained in this release using the terms "may," "expects to," and other terms denoting future possibilities, are forward-looking statements. The accuracy of these statements cannot be guaranteed as they are subject to a variety of risks, which are beyond ENSERVCO's ability to predict, or control and which may cause actual results to differ materially from the projections or estimates contained herein. Among these risks are those set forth in ENSERVCO's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, and subsequently filed documents with the SEC. Forward looking statements in this news release that are subject to risk include expectations for, and sustainability of, the industry recovery; ability to grow the well enhancement service business and sustain high demand for the water transfer service; the ability to build shareholder value and achieve profitable growth; the assertion that ENSERVCO's market value does not accurately reflect the intrinsic value of the Company; prospects for stable to steadily increasing commodity prices; and the ability to refinance debt, strengthen new business development activities and increase efficiencies. It is important that each person reviewing this release understand the significant risks attendant to the operations of ENSERVCO. ENSERVCO disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statement made herein. Contacts: Pfeiffer High Investor Relations, Inc. Jay Pfeiffer Phone 303-393-7044 Email: jay@pfeifferhigh.com 10 May 2017 DORIEMUS PLC ("Doriemus" or the "Company") Audited Final Results for Year Ending 31 December 2016 Chairman's Statement incorporating the Strategic Report 2016 and the early part of 2017 (post reporting period) has seen significant advances towards oil production from both our Brockham and Horse Hill oil assets in the UK's onshore Weald Basin near London's Gatwick Airport and as we move towards drilling the second production well at the Lidsey Oil Field this year. Overview: The Company owns three valuable oil and gas assets in the new UK onshore oil province centred around the new Kimmeridge oil discoveries in the Weald Basin south of London. We firmly believe that all of these assets hold a very real chance of being significant UK onshore oil producing areas over the coming year with Doriemus set to benefit significantly with the commencement of positive cash flow from at least Brockham and Lidsey. We also believe that the new oil production from the Weald Basin may well prove to be of significant strategic importance to the UK in the years to come, especially considering the recent declines seen in the UK's North Sea offshore oil production and as the country moves to separate from the European Union, making indigenous oil production more important. Brockham Oil Field: (Doriemus holds a direct 10% interest in Brockham, operated by Angus Energy Plc, the "Operator") The 8.9km2 Brockham Oil Field ("Brockham"), in the Weald Basin, is held under UK Licence PL235 (Production Licence). On 3 March 2017 (post year end), it was announced that the Brockham X4Z well, designed to evaluate the Portland, Corallian and Kimmeridge formations at Brockham (including an evaluation of the Kimmeridge reservoir that had been demonstrated by the Horse Hill discovery only 8km to the South), was drilled to a total depth of 1,391m. The Brockham X4Z well was intended to establish whether the reservoir reported at the adjacent Horse Hill discovery extended further north into the Brockham Licence. The preliminary results from Brockham X4Z well confirmed very similar thickness of reservoir and properties to those reported at Horse Hill. The gross thickness of Kimmeridge in Brockham X4Z was found to be some 385m thick. The two limestone intervals (each around 30m) tested in Horse Hill are also seen in the Brockham well and the reservoir properties appear to be very similar to Horse Hill, based on electrical logging evidence. The Operator used Weatherford's Ultra Wave Acoustic borehole imaging tool for first time in Europe. This tool made it possible to directly see fractures in the borehole. The Ultra Wave information confirmed not only evidence of natural fractures in the two main limestones intervals previously tested at Horse Hill, but also confirmed abundant natural fractures were evident in sections of the interbedded shales and limestones between and below the two main limestones. Around 200m of the reservoir showed this potential. Geochemical analysis on the drilling samples showed total organic content through the Kimmeridge section of between 2-12%, exceeding Horse Hill in places. Furthermore, evidence showed that the highest organic content corresponds to the limestones and, in particular, the intervals in between the limestones which have natural fracturing. Whilst organic content is not the same as oil content, it is indicative of those sections where oil content will be the highest. This supports the potential for some 200m of reservoir of interest. Initial Tmax and Hydrogen Index readings also corresponded with Horse Hill's data. Therefore, based on the evidence so far, the Operator has confidence that the well will be similar to Horse Hill and perhaps, given that the reservoir is potentially much thicker in zones not previously tested, the final flow results could be even better. In addition, oil shows were observed in the Portland and Corallian formations whilst drilling the Brockham X4Z well. Currently, the Brockham number 2 well is a temporarily suspended producer from the Portland reservoir and the Operator is confident of additional oil production from the Portland reservoir from the Brockham X4Z well in due course. The good indications of both gas and oil in the Corallian formation, below the Kimmeridge, is still being evaluated. After a major surface refit of the site infrastructure to accommodate extra oil production, steps are now in hand to install new production facilities for the well and to prepare for the production as soon as the necessary OGA approvals are in place. The Operator is targeting completion for production in spring/summer 2017. Lidsey Oil Field: (Doriemus holds a direct 20% interest in the onshore Lidsey Oil Field. Operated by Angus Energy Plc, (the "Operator") The 5.3km2 Lidsey Oil Field ("Lidsey"), is located in the southern portion of the UK's onshore Weald Basin, and is held under UK Licence PL 241 (Production Licence). On 2 May 2017 (post year end) the Operator announced that following the West Sussex County Council approval, it had also received permission from the UK Environment Agency to drill the Lidsey-X2 horizontal production well at the Lidsey production oil field, license PL 241. The Group will now seek the required approvals from the Health and Safety Executive ("HSE") and Oil and Gas Authority ("OGA"). The Lidsey Oil Field has planning consent for the development and operation of a three wellhead and beam pump oil production facility plus ancillary works at its Lidsey Oil Field. As permitted by the site planning consent, the first well has already been drilled at the site (Lidsey-X1) and the tophole/cellar is completed and installed to enable a second well to be drilled (Lidsey-X2). This second well has not yet been drilled and is planned to be drilled to a depth of approximately 1,000 metres and will target the upper crest of the Great Oolite reservoir that has been producing oil from the Lidsey-X1 well which was first discovered in 1987, and until now has been temporarily suspended back in February 2016 to allow for site works. Lidsey-X2 will also assess the Kimmeridge formation which is located above the Great Oolite reservoir. Investment in Horse Hill Developments Limited ("HHDL"): (Doriemus holds a 10% interest in HHDL. Operated by HHDL) The Company currently owns a 10% interest in a special purpose company, Horse Hill Developments Limited, which is the operator and 65% interest holder in two Petroleum Exploration and Development Licences ("PEDL") PEDL137 and PEDL246 in the northern Weald Basin between Gatwick Airport and London. The PEDL137 licence covers 99.29 square kilometres (24,525 acres) to the north of Gatwick Airport in Surrey and contains the Horse Hill-1 ("HH-1") discovery well. PEDL246 covers an area of 43.58 square kilometres (10,769 acres) and lies immediately adjacent and to the east of PEDL137. The HH-1 well is located approximately 7.5 kilometres southeast of Doriemus's producing Brockham Oil Field. In August 2015, Schlumberger independently verified Huston based Nutech's previous Horse Hill OIP estimates contained in PEDL137 and PEDL246. Schlumberger estimated a Mean Oil in Place ("OIP") of 10,993 billion barrels of oil ("mmbbl"), with Kimmeridge OIP of 8,262 mmbbl. Schlumberger's Mean OIP estimates are therefore 19% higher in total than Nutech's P50 OIP estimate over the two Horse Hill licences and they were 58% higher in the Kimmeridge. After receiving permits from the Environment Agency and the Oil and Gas Authority for the flow testing of the Horse Hill-1 discovery well, flow testing operations commenced in February 2016 and were completed in March 2016. Flow testing far exceeded all expectations resulting in an aggregate stable oil rate of 1,688 barrels ("bbl") per day of very high quality oil, from the Lower Kimmeridge, Upper Kimmeridge and Upper Portland reservoirs. The produced oil contained no water and no clear indication of any reservoir pressure depletion was observed during the original flow testing. Based on analysis of published reports from all significant UK onshore discovery wells, the 1,688 bbl per day flow rate is likely to be the highest aggregate stable rate recorded from any onshore UK discovery well. The way forward on Horse Hill will now involve seeking regulatory permissions to conduct extended production tests from all 3 zones at the site, followed by a horizontal sidetrack in the Kimmeridge and a possible new Portland development well. (Note: All of the reviews and reports mentioned above state that the OIP volumes estimated should not be construed as recoverable resources or reserves.) Investment in Greenland Gas & Oil Plc (2.82% interest in GGO) The Company currently owns 2.82% equity shareholding in Greenland Gas & Oil Plc ("GGO"), a UK based oil and gas exploration company focused solely on Greenland, which in June 2015 was granted oil exploration and exploitation licences over 4,200km2 located onshore in south-eastern Greenland in a region known as the Jameson Land Basin. Public Trading Platform for the Company's shares: On 15 March 2016, the Company's ordinary shares commenced trading on the ISDX Growth Market (Now called NEX Exchange) under the ticker DOR and ceased trading on the London AIM market. The Company's Board had determined that due to the possible delisting of trading of its shares on the London AIM market, and to keep the Company's shares trading on a regulated platform and given the size and stage of development of the Company, that the London ISDX Growth Market provides shareholders with the most appropriate listing platform on which to promote the Company's growth strategy. The Reason for the Move from AIM to ISDX: Going back a number of years, the Company had previously announced on 12 September 2014 that the disposal of TEP Exchange ("TEP") had been completed. This concluded the transition of the Company from the historical TEP Exchange Group Plc, whose primary business was unsuccessful in the licensing and on-line advertising of TEP's proprietary electronic platform, to a company with a new focus of investing in conventional oil and gas production and exploration activities in Europe. This disposal constituted a change of business for the purpose of Rule 15 of the AIM Rules for Companies and therefore the Company was, with effect from 12 September 2014, re-classified as an investing company. As an investing company it was required to make an acquisition or acquisitions which constituted a reverse takeover under the AIM Rules or otherwise implement its investing policy within the next 12 months. The existing investments in HHDL, Lidsey and Brockham made by the Company prior to the disposal of TEP and the adoption of the new investing policy pursuant to AIM Rule 15 did not count towards the consideration as to whether the Company had implemented its investing policy pursuant to AIM Rule 8. The Company attempted to otherwise implement its investing policy by investing the majority of its available cash in suitable investments. The investment committee conducted due diligence on several further investment opportunities in the oil and gas sector in Europe with potential for growth in relation to implementing its investing strategy. However these minority investments were not deemed sufficient for the Company to be considered to have implemented its investing policy pursuant to AIM Rule 8. It was considered, under the circumstances, that the investment in GGO and potential reverse takeover of GGO represented the best opportunity for the Company to implement its investing strategy. On 11 September 2015, the Company announced that it had acquired an initial 2.82% equity shareholding in Greenland Gas & Oil Plc ("GGO"), a UK based oil and gas exploration company focused solely on Greenland, and had entered into an option agreement (the "Option") to acquire a further 60.56% of the existing share capital of GGO which expired on 31 March 2016. Exercise of the Option in full would have constituted a reverse takeover under AIM Rule 14 and the Company therefore requested that dealings in its Shares be suspended from trading on AIM with immediate effect. However, as a reverse takeover was not completed the Company's Shares were cancelled from AIM pursuant to AIM Rule 41 on 14 March 2016. The Company had elected not to exercise the Option following further due diligence and due to the current low oil price environment. On 15 March 2016, the Company was admitted to trading on the ISDX Growth Market in order to take advantage of that market's profile, broad investor base, liquidity and access to institutional investors. The Directors believe that the Admission will (i) provide liquidity for current and future investors in the Company; and (ii) provide the Company with the flexibility to implement its Investing Policy going forward in order to create greater Shareholder returns. New Public Trading Platforms: The Company is cognizant of the limited level of trading activity of its shares on the NEX Exchange, and in order to address this the Company is working with its advisors to seek a potential listing on the LSE Standard List and also considering dual listing the Company's shares on a senior recognised stock exchange outside of the UK. The paperwork required to apply for a move to the LSE Standard List is both complex and complicated due primarily to the requirements of the UKLA listing rules obtain full Competent Persons Reports on all of the Company's oil assets and work in this regard remains ongoing. Board Changes: On 27 June 2016, Mr David Lenigas was appointed as the new Executive Chairman of the Company with Grant Roberts assuming the position of Non-Executive Director. David Lenigas has extensive first hand corporate and operational experience with all of Doriemus's oil assets, having previously served as Executive Chairman of UK Oil & Gas Investments Plc. Results for the period: Loss for the year to 31 December 2016 amounted to 1,032,000 (2015: 310,000 loss) which included 380,000 loss (2015: nil) on the full equity swap settlement, a share based payment charge of 207,000 (2015: nil) and approximately 215,000 (2015: nil) of professional fees in relation to the Company's AIM de-listing and listing on the NEX Exchange Growth market. 55,000 (2015: 99,000) related to Oil Field expenses and the remaining 176,000 (2015: 268,000) related to regulatory costs and other corporate overheads. Total revenue for the period was 1,000 (2015: 57,000). Outlook: Oil Production on its way! 2017 and beyond should prove to be an exciting period ahead for the Company and its shareholders as Doriemus moves towards being a serious contributor to new UK onshore oil production and being an active player in opening up the ultimate potential of the Weald Basin. The past few years has seen a significant amount of shareholders funds spent on drilling and evaluating new oil wells in the Weald Basin and it is now time to see oil production lifted from the reservoirs discovered in the Kimmeridge near Gatwick Airport. We will hopefully see our Brockham Oil Field producing substantial amounts of oil from very wide pay intervals in the Kimmeridge formation and will work closely with our partners on the possibility of drilling a number of new production side-tracks and new production wells once the Brockham X4Z well comes in to full production over the spring/summer of 2017. We will continue to seek out further investments in line with the Company's investing strategy and will also work closely with HHDL and Angus Energy on potentially increasing our oil production and reserves from the existing operating fields. Also as per our investment strategy, the board will also look opportunistically at investing in or acquiring, an appropriate percentage holding, possibly including management, of a company or companies and businesses in the global oil and gas sector. The directors would like to take this opportunity to thank our shareholders, staff and consultants for their continued support. David Lenigas Executive Chairman 9 May 2017 The directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement. For further information please contact: Doriemus Plc: www.doriemus.com David Lenigas (Executive Chairman) +44 (0) 20 74400640 Hamish Harris (Non-Executive Director) Peterhouse Corporate Finance Limited +44 (0) 20 7469 0930 Guy Miller Fungai Ndore Square 1 Consulting (Public Relations) +44 (0) 20 7929 5599 David Bick Statement of Comprehensive Income for the year ended 31 December 2016 2016 2015 '000 '000 Revenue 1 57 Cost of sales (54) (99) Gross (loss)/profit (53) (42) Administrative expenses (442) (251) Share based payment charge (207) - Depletion & impairment charge (1) (4) (Loss) from operations (703) (297) Finance expense - (13) (Loss) on equity swap settlements (380) - Unrealised gain on AFS investments 51 - (Loss) before income tax (1,032) (310) Income tax expense - (Loss) attributable to the owners of the company and total comprehensive income for the year (1,032) (310) Other comprehensive income Fair value adjustment of equity swap - (34) Transfer to income statement on equity swap settlement 314 - Other comprehensive income for the year net of taxation 314 (34) Total comprehensive income for the period attributable to equity holders of the company (718) (344) Earnings per share Basic earnings per share (0.01)p (0.004)p Diluted earnings per share (0.01)p (0.004)p Statement of Changes in Equity for the year ended 31 December 2016 Share capital Share premium Share based payment reserve Hedging reserve Retained earnings / Accumulated losses Total '000 '000 '000 '000 '000 '000 At 31 December 2014 57 2,940 236 (280) (1,032) 1,921 Issue of Share capital 20 1,180 - - - 1,200 Share issue costs - (82) - - - (82) Transactions with owners 20 1,098 - - - 1,118 (Loss) for the year - - - - (310) (310) Unrealised (loss) on equity swap - - - (34) - (34) Total comprehensive loss for the year - - - (34) (310) (344) At 31 December 2015 77 4,038 236 (314) (1,342) 2,695 Issue of Share capital 48 1,278 - - - 1,326 Share issue costs - (95) - - - (95) Share based payment charge - - 207 - - 207 Share options cancelled - - (202) - 202 - Transactions with owners 48 1,183 5 - 202 1,438 (Loss) for the year - - - - (1,032) (1,032) Transfer to income statement - - - 314 - 314 Total comprehensive loss for the year - - - 314 (1,032) (718) At 31 December 2016 125 5,221 241 - (2,172) 3,415 Statement of Financial Position at 31 December 2016 2016 2016 2015 2015 '000 '000 '000 '000 Assets Non-current assets Intangible assets 250 - Oil & gas properties 1,101 1,047 Available for sale investments 1,058 850 2,409 1,897 Current assets Trade and other receivables 730 437 Cash and cash equivalents 537 719 Total current assets 1,267 1,156 Total assets 3,676 3,053 Liabilities Current liabilities Trade and other payables (261) (244) Derivative financial instruments - (114) Total current liabilities (261) (358) Total liabilities (261) (358) Net assets 3,415 2,695 Equity attributable to owners of the parent Share capital 125 77 Share premium account 5,221 4,038 Share based payment reserve 241 236 Hedging reserve - (314) Retained earnings (2,172) (1,342) Total equity 3,415 2,695 The financial statements were approved by the Board of Directors and authorised for issue on 9 May 2017. David Lenigas Donald Strang Director Director Statement of Cash Flows for the year ended 31 December 2016 Trans World Corporation ("TWC" or the "Company") (OTCQB: TWOC), a premier owner and operator of casinos and hotels in Europe, today reported its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017. Mr. Rami Ramadan, Chief Executive Officer, remarked, "TWC's first quarter revenues were flat compared to the same period last year, primarily as a result of severe winter weather in our market area that negatively affected our operations in the Czech Republic and Germany. The harsh winter, which brought low temperatures not experienced in the Czech Republic in the last 50 years, as well as exceptionally heavy snow, resulted in icy road conditions, and prevented many of our repeat and new customers from visiting our establishments on those days. Additionally, we experienced a below-average win percentage. These unanticipated factors contravened our forecast of an approximate 6.0% increase in casino attendance and an increase of approximately $1.4 million in casino revenue versus the same quarter a year ago. As evidenced by an attendance rebound in April and early May 2017, casino metrics now appear to be tracking as expected for the second quarter 2017 to date. Despite the winter's disruption, due to the strong loyalty of our clientele, our exceptional customer service, and the continued success of our Players' Club incentive program, our casino segment was able to maintain overall revenue comparable with last year's first quarter." Mr. Ramadan continued, "Excluding Hotel Kranichhohe in Much, Germany, and Steigenberger Hotel in Linz, Austria, that were acquired by the Company in December 2016 and March 2017, respectively, our hotel segment displayed revenue resiliency during the winter, posting a marginal improvement over the first quarter last year. "During the quarter, TWC began building the Trans World Hotels brand, inclusive of the marketing and standardization processes, which will encompass all five hotels in its portfolio, something the Company has successfully accomplished with its American Chance Casinos brand. The standardization steps include a common hotel logo, room amenities, room type standards, market segments, and promotional materials. TWC has also begun implementing centralization of the hotel sales function as well as the yield management system. "In addition, during the quarter, we made significant progress executing on our hotel investment initiatives in line with our stated hotel acquisition strategy. Most notably, we commenced the multi-unit, multi-phase renovations of our newly acquired hotels, Hotel Kranichhohe and Steigenberger Hotel." The Company acquired the Steigenberger Hotel at what it believes is a particularly favorable purchase price as a result of a bank required sale. 2017 First Quarter Net income was $594,000, or $0.06 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2017 versus $1.0 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, for the same prior year period. The net income decrease was primarily due to additional gaming taxes paid. Total revenue increased by 11.1% to approximately $13.6 million, compared with $12.2 million for the same quarter of the prior year. The quarter's results benefited from the inclusion of a full three months of revenue from Hotel Kranichhohe and one-month of revenue from the newly acquired Steigenberger Hotel. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA") in the first quarter 2017 declined by 22.5% to approximately $1.6 million, versus $2.0 million in the prior year's first quarter. Excluding the extraordinary weather and win percentage noted above, EBITDA would have been up in the period. A table reconciling EBITDA, a non-U.S. GAAP (United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) financial measure, to the appropriate GAAP measure is included with the Company's financial information below. Balance Sheet Highlights The Company's stockholders' equity at March 31, 2017 increased by 4.5% over the prior year's comparable period, to $5.38 per share. Non-U.S. GAAP Financial Measures This press release utilizes EBITDA to express certain financial information about the results of our operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2017. EBITDA is a non-U.S. GAAP financial measure. Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Management believes that this non-U.S. GAAP financial measure reflects the results of our operations or financial condition in other ways that are common to the gaming and hotel industries, and that are commonly used by lending institutions and investors in evaluating our performance in comparison to our competitors and the market in general. This belief is based on conversations and meetings our management has had with our lenders and investors where the substance of these talks has typically centered on historical and prospective EBITDA measurements. Based on management's observations, even though EBITDA measurement is not U.S. GAAP, it does enhance investors' understanding of the Company's business. In addition, management presents, and uses for its own analysis, EBITDA as a supplemental disclosure because management believes that it is widely used in the gaming and hotel industries to measure performance and serves as the basis for valuation of our Company in the market. EBITDA measures our ability to meet our working capital requirements and debt obligations, make capital expenditures and perform analyses on possible acquisitions that may include the need for additional debt service requirements. In short, this performance measurement gives an analytic view of the Company's operational earnings and reflects our earnings on a cash-basis, excluding the impact of our debt obligations, taxes and non-cash depreciation and amortization. In addition to EBITDA, management may use other non-U.S. GAAP financial measures to describe our business in press releases, on earning calls and in meetings with stockholders and investors. The following defines the other non-U.S. GAAP financial measures that may be used in TWC's press releases, earnings calls or meetings: "Drop per head" is the per guest average dollar value of gaming chips purchased. "Live game attendance" is the number of patrons who played at our table games during a particular period. "Live games (business)" is the total dollar value of revenues generated by our table games. "Slot business" is the total dollar value of revenues generated by our slot machines. "Slot attendance" is the number of patrons who played our slot machines during a particular period. "Win percentage" is the ratio of net win (the difference between gaming wagers and the amount paid out to patrons) to total drop (the dollar value of gaming chips purchased in a given period). The Company has presented the table below to reconcile EBITDA, a non-U.S. GAAP financial measure, to its most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measure. For further information regarding our results of operations and financial condition for the three months ended March 31, 2017, please refer to our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. About Trans World Corporation Trans World Corporation, founded in 1993, is a publicly-traded, Nevada corporation, headquartered in the U.S., with all of its gaming and hotel operations in Europe. Additional information about TWC can be found on the Company's website at www.transwc.com. The press release herein contains certain forward-looking statements and data regarding forecasts, operating trends and future results of operations. For this purpose, any statements and data contained herein that are not historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking data. Without limiting the foregoing, words such as "may," "will," "expect," "believe," "anticipates," "estimates," or "continue" or comparable terminology or the negative thereof are intended to identify certain forward-looking statements. These statements, by their nature, involve substantial risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, and actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks include but are not limited to, our dependence on our current management, the regulatory environment in which our operations reside, uncertainties over the development and success of our current and future gaming and hotel operations, general global macroeconomic and local economic conditions, extreme weather, and changes in tax or gaming laws or regulations. Additional information concerning potential factors that could affect the Company's financial results, including other risks and uncertainties, is disclosed in our periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016. The Company undertakes no obligation (and expressly disclaims any such obligation) to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or data whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. TRANS WORLD CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME AND COMPREHENSIVE INCOME Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 (in thousands, except for share and per share data) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) REVENUES: Gaming 10,776 10,670 Rooms 1,395 785 Food and beverage 1,184 634 Other 230 144 13,585 12,233 OPERATING EXPENSES: Gaming 6,251 5,776 Rooms 644 305 Food and beverage 1,036 584 Other 138 35 Depreciation and amortization 570 500 Selling, general and administrative 3,935 3,494 12,574 10,694 INCOME FROM OPERATIONS, before other expenses and income taxes 1,011 1,539 OTHER EXPENSES: Interest expense (83) (62) INCOME BEFORE INCOME TAXES 928 1,477 INCOME TAX EXPENSE (334) (471) NET INCOME 594 1,006 Other comprehensive income, foreign currency translation adjustments, net of tax of $0 649 1,862 COMPREHENSIVE INCOME 1,243 2,868 WEIGHTED AVERAGE COMMON SHARES OUTSTANDING: Basic 8,859,289 8,829,011 Diluted 9,889,113 9,438,871 EARNINGS PER COMMON SHARE: Basic 0.07 0.11 Diluted 0.06 0.11 TRANS WORLD CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS March 31, 2017 and December 31, 2016 (in thousands, except for share data) ASSETS March 31, 2017 December 31, 2016 (Unaudited) CURRENT ASSETS: Cash and cash equivalents 11,541 12,868 Prepaid expenses 956 227 Loan receivable 4,215 Other current assets 1,260 853 Total current assets 13,757 18,163 PROPERTY AND EQUIPMENT, net 47,179 41,524 OTHER ASSETS: Goodwill 4,925 4,857 Deferred tax assets 100 99 Deposits and other assets 5,201 1,461 Total other assets 10,226 6,417 TOTAL ASSETS 71,162 66,104 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY CURRENT LIABILITIES: Long-term debt, current maturities 1,278 832 Accounts payable 1,186 1,169 Czech gaming tax accrual 3,370 3,305 Foreign income tax accrual 894 956 Accrued expenses and other current liabilities 2,485 3,540 Total current liabilities 9,213 9,802 LONG-TERM LIABILITIES: Long-term debt, less current maturities 14,257 10,646 Total long-term liabilities 14,257 10,646 COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY: Preferred stock, $0.001 par value, 4,000,000 shares authorized, none issued Common stock, $0.001 par value, 20,000,000 shares authorized, 8,879,011 shares in 2017 and 8,854,011 shares in 2016, issued and outstanding 9 9 Additional paid-in capital 55,063 54,270 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (4,352) (5,001) Accumulated deficit (3,028) (3,622) Total stockholders' equity 47,692 45,656 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY 71,162 66,104 Reconciliation of Non-U.S. GAAP Measures to U.S. GAAP The table below reconciles EBITDA, a non-U.S. GAAP (United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) financial measure, to its most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measure. The EBITDA performance measurement gives an analytic view of the Company's operational earnings on a cash-basis, excluding the impact of debt obligations, taxes and (non-cash) depreciation and amortization. The Company believes that this non-U.S. GAAP financial measure provides useful information to its investors as well as to others who might be interested in purchasing shares of TWC's common stock. This belief is based on conversations and meetings TWC's management has had with its investors and lenders. Based on management's observations, it appears that, even though this measurement is not "U.S. GAAP," it does enhance investors' understanding of the Company's business. TRANS WORLD CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES EBITDA RECONCILIATION Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 (in thousands) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) NET INCOME 594 1,006 Add: Interest expense 83 62 Add: Income taxes 334 471 Add: Depreciation and amortization expense 570 500 EBITDA 1,581 2,039 EBITDA margin (% of revenues) 11.6% 16.7% View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170510005224/en/ Contacts: Trans World Corporation Jill Yarussi, 212-983-3355 Manager of Communications JYarussi@transwc.com www.transwc.com -Newly Signed $1 Trillion Spending Bill Includes Key Protections for Medical Cannabis - Safeguards for State Laws that Have Passed Medical Cannabis Initiatives DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / May 10, 2017 / AmeriCann, Inc. (OTCQX: ACAN), an Agricultural-Technology company that is developing sustainable, state-of-the-art medical cannabis cultivation properties discussed the recently enacted federal spending bill and its implications for medical cannabis. President Donald Trump on Friday signed a $1.1 trillion bill that includes a provision that is intended to prevent the Justice Department, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, from using funds to arrest or prosecute patients, caregivers, and businesses that are acting in compliance with state medical marijuana laws. "It is significant that the very first piece of major legislation signed into law by the new administration protects medical marijuana patients and the states that have approved medical cannabis," stated AmeriCann CEO Tim Keogh. "The continuation of bipartisan policies that preserve patient access to cannabis is very positive." Section 537 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017 states that, "None of the funds made available in this Act to the Department of Justice may be used, with respect to any of the (regulated) Statesto prevent any of them from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana." "Congress appears to be growing increasingly comfortable with states adopting their own marijuana policies," said Robert Capecchi, Director of Federal Policies for the Marijuana Policy Project. The provision that allows states to implement their own cannabis laws was first approved by the House in May 2014. The provision stems from an amendment originally sponsored by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and former Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA). Congress has extended the current version of the Rohrabacher - Farr Amendment thru September 2017, but many experts agree that the upcoming 2017 spending bill will continue with the established cannabis protections. AmeriCann is developing a 53-acre property in Massachusetts as the Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center (the "MMCC"). The MMCC is approved for 1 million square feet which will be developed in phases and is expected to be one of the most technologically advanced cultivation facilities in the nation. MMCC Rendering : A Quinnipiac University Poll released on February 23rd, 2017 shows that 93% of Americans support medical marijuana. With the results of the November 2016 election results, over 60% of the US Population now live in states where medical cannabis is now legal. Of the 28 states that have implemented legal cannabis programs, only 8 have approved Adult-Use. About AmeriCann AmeriCann (OTCQX: ACAN) is a publicly traded Ag-Tech company that is developing and sustainable, state-of-the-art medical cannabis cultivation properties. The Company has over 1,000,000 square feet of facilities in the planning and design stages of development. The Company has designed a proprietary line of cannabis infused products which will be branded and licensed to companies in regulated markets. AmeriCann, Inc. is a Certified B Corp, an acknowledgment of the company's commitment to social and environmental ethics, transparency and accountability. AmeriCann became the first public cannabis company to earn this respected accreditation. More information about the Company is available at: www.americann.co or follow AmeriCann on Twitter @ACANinfo About Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center The Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center is approved for nearly 1,000,000 square feet of medical cannabis cultivation and processing in Freetown, Massachusetts. The state-of-the-art, sustainable, greenhouse project will consist of multiple planned phases for tenants in the Massachusetts medical marijuana market. AmeriCann's Cannopy System uniquely combines expertise from traditional horticulture, lean manufacturing, regulatory compliance and cannabis cultivation to create superior facilities and procedures. The first phase of the project consists of 130,000 sq. ft. of cultivation and processing infrastructure. AmeriCann can expand the first phase to approximately 600,000 sq. ft., based on patient demand. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act") (which Sections were adopted as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "prospects," "outlook," and similar words or expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any anticipated results, performance or achievements. The Company disclaims any intention to, and undertakes no obligation to, revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, a future event, or otherwise. For additional uncertainties that could impact the Company's forward-looking statements, please see the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2016, which the Company has filed with the SEC and which may be viewed at http://www.sec.gov. Contact Information: Corporate: AmeriCann, Inc. 3200 Brighton Blvd. Unit 114 Denver, CO 80216 (303) 862-9000 info@americann.co www.americann.co @ACANinfo on Twitter Investors: Hayden IR hart@haydenir.com (917) 658-7878 SOURCE: AmeriCann, Inc. TORONTO, ONTARIO and MUNICH, GERMANY -- (Marketwired) -- 10/05/17 -- TANTALEX Resources Corporation (CSE: TTX)(CSE: TTX.CN)(CNSX: TTX)(FRANKFURT: 1T0) ("TANTALEX" or the "Corporation"), is pleased to announce the delivery of the preliminary maps and a first interpretation of the airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys flown over the entire 920km2 of its Buckell Lithium Project (the "Property"), located in the Manono-Kitotolo region of the DRC. Interpretation indicates that the major SW geologic trend which hosts the lithium bearing spodumene pegmatites known as Manono and Kitotolo adjacent to the east of the Buckell Property, extends on strike into and through the Buckell Property. The NE pegmatite body, generally referred to as Manono, is some 5 km in strike length (12 km2 surface area), and the SW body, referred to as Kitotolo, shown as being slightly longer, is some 13.5 km2 in surface area, and its westernmost extension lies only 4.5km from the eastern boundary of Tantalex's Buckell Property. The width at surface of these pegmatite bodies is reported to be from 50 m to 700 m. (see NI 43-101 for Buckell Property issued January 25, 2017). The Company expects to receive the final maps and report within the next few weeks. Aeromagnetic Survey Rock formations found at the Buckell Property contain various amounts of magnetic minerals, from traces to high content, and the differing intensities give rise to patterns on the plotted maps that permit identification of prospective formations hidden by overburden. Features like folding and bedding trends in sedimentary as well as lava flow layers and faults cutting across trends, show unmistakeable patterns and traces, which permit geological interpretation. Intrusive rocks like granite show irregular outlines as well as dykes often issuing from the main granite mass and cutting across the bands of other formations. (See map at the following address: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/171005_TTX_Map1.pdf) Radiometric Survey Rock formations found at the Buckell property have varying intensities of radioactivity and the instrument measures three separate kinds, each with their own map: uranium, thorium and an isotope of potassium. Potassium is a major constituent of potash feldspars and mica, which occur in granites, pegmatites and a variety of sedimentary rocks. Uranium, at least in trace amounts, occurs in virtually all rock types. Thorium occurs almost always with rare-earth elements and both are found at least in trace amounts in granites, pegmatites, beach sands, sandstones and a variety of alkaline intrusive rocks. In pegmatites, they often concentrate at the contacts and are a proxy for Tin, Tantalum, Niobium and rare earths. Unlike aeromagnetics, radiometrics only measure the surface response and don't penetrate any thickness of soil cover except that which formed by weathering of the underlying rock. A map is available at the following address: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/171005_TTX_Map2.pdf Interpretation of the results received to date indicate that: a. The South-West trend of the adjoining property's formations containing the major spodumene (Li, Sn, Ta) pegmatites known as Manono and Kitotolo, to the east side of the Buckell property, extends on strike through the Buckell Property. b. A granite body, which was found to assay lithium, tantalum and tin, outcrops in the central southern border area of the Property. This strongly suggests a parent granite to lithium pegmatites. This is defined in detail by the aeromagnetic map. The potassium radiometric map shows evidence of granite dykes on strike with the main pegmatite body, 22 km to the SW within the western half of the Buckell Property and underscores that there is exposed outcrop or weathered remains of outcrop in this area. c. Northwest trending faults extending from the interior of the granite cut across the sedimentary trend and show some offsets in formation boundaries. What appear to be South-West trending shearing following the main geological trend, crosses the top third of the Property, suggesting a target area for extension of bodies similar to the Manono and Kitotolo Li, Sn, Ta pegmatites onto Buckell. d. Thorium, potassium and uranium maps faithfully trace out the rivers and tributaries, indicating alluvial heavy minerals and the feldspar and mica in the alluvial gravels and sands. e. Coincident strong anomalies of all three radiometric maps indicates outcrop is very close to the surface, particularly in the western half of the Property. f. Refinements of the interpretation will be made when the final maps are prepared. Dave GAGNON, Chief Executive Officer commented, "These results are very important as they are the first step in confirming what the historical data had indicated to us from the beginning. We will continue work on the Buckell property in the next few weeks in order to reinforce our findings and to better delineate targets suggestive of Manono-Kitotolo - type pegmatites on our property." Quality Control and Reporting Protocols The survey was flown by New Resolution Geophysics (NRG) of Capetown, S. Africa using their "Xact" fixed wing horizontal gradient magnetometer system with a 9.8m horizontal sensor separation for magnetics and Radiation Solution Spectrometers sampling at 2Hz for high resolution mapping. Qualified Person The scientific and technical content of this news release has been reviewed, prepared and approved by Mr. Gary Pearse MSc, P. Eng, who is a "Qualified Person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). About TANTALEX Resources Corporation TANTALEX is a mining company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development and distribution of Lithium, Cobalt, Tantalum and other high-tech mineral properties in Africa. The Company is listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange (symbol: TTX) and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (symbol: 1T0). Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-ooking Statements The information in this news release includes certain information and statements about management's view of future events, expectations, plans and prospects that constitute forward looking statements. These statements are based upon assumptions that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Because of these risks and uncertainties and as a result of a variety of factors, the actual results, expectations, achievements or performance may differ materially from those anticipated and indicated by these forward-looking statements. Although TANTALEX believes that the expectations reflected in forward looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurances that the expectations of any forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Except as required by law, TANTALEX disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward-looking statements or otherwise. The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed this news release and does not accept responsibility for its adequacy or accuracy. For further information, please contacts Investor relations: ir@tantalex.ca Or visit us at: WWW.TANTALEX.CA Contacts: TANTALEX Resources Corporation Dave Gagnon Chief Executive Officer +16479637476 dg@tantalex.ca TANTALEX Resources Corporation Kyle Appleby Chief Financial Officer +14164179176 ka@tantalex.ca TANTALEX Resources Corporation Christina Lalli Manager, Investor Relations +14379924114 cl@tantalex.ca Jean Boulle Luxury is pleased to announce an agreement with AkzoNobel for the production of its aviation grade Sun King Diamond Coating for the private and commercial jet markets. Under the agreement AkzoNobel will be the exclusive supplier of the aviation grade Sun King Diamond Coating. AkzoNobel is a global leader in the manufacture, development and supply of coatings for the aviation sector and provides innovative, reliable and efficient services to customers worldwide. Jean Boulle Luxury's patent pending Sun King Diamond Coating has been applied to super cars produced by some of the world's foremost luxury car marques and dramatically alters the luxury vehicle's visual appearance whilst maintaining full functional capabilities. Sun King Diamond Coating is created through Jean Boulle Luxury's proprietary technique which transforms ethically sourced natural diamonds into a high quality finish that guarantees the highest quality and brilliance within precisely defined tolerances. The aviation grade Diamond Coating has been subject to stringent testing and meets the AkzoNobel aerospace specifications. It is expected that a superyacht natural grade diamond coating will be available soon. Commenting on the announcement, Bertrand Boulle CEO of Jean Boulle Luxury said: "I am delighted to be working with AkzoNobel, a company with an unparalleled track record in the aviation sector. AkzoNobel's technical expertise and global network will enable us to reach customers around the world whilst guaranteeing a constantly excellent level of service." Tsjip Boersma Marketing Director of AkzoNobel Speciality Coatings said: "We are proud to be partnering with Jean Boulle Luxury on this innovative natural diamond coating solution, Boulle's international depth of expertise in diamond mining and marketing combined with AkzoNobel's technical expertise creates a truly unique premium coating for the aviation industry." End View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170510005814/en/ Contacts: Jean Boulle Luxury http://www.jeanboulleluxury.com/ or Aura Financial Michael Oke/James Harvey Tel: +44 (0)207 321 0000 E: james.harvey@aura-financial.com or AkzoNobel - Speciality Coatings Roger Soler Palau Tel: 34 687 90 32 13 E: roger.solerpalau@akzonobel.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. DUBLIN, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global In-Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) Market: Analysis and Forecast 2017-2023 (Focus on Product Type, Test Type, Application, and Competitive Landscape)" report to their offering. IVD is expected to increase to $76 billion by 2023 and increase its influence over healthcare spending globally. The research study has segmented the entire IVD market into product and services type, technology, application and geographical region which enables the user gain a multi-dimensional view of the market. Geographically, the report identifies North America as the leading market in the industry owing to the advanced nature of the healthcare systems in United States and Canada, rising adoption rates of technologically advanced products and increase in the rate of acceptance of precision medicine. The research report employs an exhaustive and analytical approach to estimate and understand the market thus provides an all-inclusive insight into various forms of developments, market trends and strategies. While underlining the key driving and restraining factors for the IVD market, the report also provides a comprehensive understanding in terms of competitive landscape, market share analysis, competitor benchmarking (matrices), and their positioning within the global in-vitro diagnostics market. The In-Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) sector is playing a central role in the shifting the healthcare and drug discovery landscape. Invigorated by the demand for changes in the healthcare environment and driven by a wave of molecular advances, the in-vitro diagnostic sector is actively engaged in innovation of new tools and technologies. Present day healthcare systems are already strained under the burden of a rising demand and soaring costs; and this trend is projected to exacerbate in coming years. The current challenges tend to be chronic age-related conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and neurological diseases, and these will grow more prevalent as population demographics shift upwards. The increase in healthcare costs due to these conditions creates a need for improved tools for clinical decision-makingones that are more specific, faster, more accurate, more informative, more affordable and less invasive than those in current practice. These tools hold promise to help shift the emphasis in medicine from reaction to prevention. The category's rate of growth is accelerating due to a number of key macro forces, such as demand from emerging economies, aging population, evolving clinician attitudes, and a much needed push towards theranostics and personalized medicine. The molecular diagnostics (MDx) segment has continually outperformed the broader IVD category, and is a key driver of this market's growth. IVD is uniquely positioned at the convergence of the life science and healthcare sectors. Diagnostics provide 60-70% of all the information doctors use worldwide, but make up just 2% of current global healthcare spending. Molecular diagnostics offer critical, personalized information to inform patient care. Diagnostics information is driving an increasing proportion of healthcare expenditure. The MDx market is projected to grow at the fastest CAGR projected at 7.3%. Commercial introduction of innovative technologies will be the key driver of growth in these segments. Tools enabling earlier, more accurate diagnosis, improved treatment decision and better treatment monitoring will encourage further adoption of innovation. Automation has been the driving growth across almost all segments. While the Infectious and Blood Screening markets are showing initial signs of development, significant growth is occurring in the Oncology and Genetic segments. Clinical validation of molecular tests and associated biomarkers are creating new emergent markets (e.g. HIV tests) and replacing some existing IVD assays. Genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have generated a new source of biomarkers that are increasingly gaining clinical acceptance. Oncology is expected to comprise roughly 30% of the overall MDx spending in IVD by 2023. Immunoassays are testing procedures that employ specific antibody binding for measuring an analyte in a test sample. Since the mid-1960s, immunoassays continue to make a major contribution to clinical lab. In 2016, immunoassays of all types (automated, manual, ELISAs, enzyme immunoassays, bead arrays, and microarrays) dominate the IVD products offerings and represent about a third of the testing in the clinical laboratory. Immunoassays have become one of the primary and indispensable tools in the diagnosis and monitoring of all areas of medicine. By 2023, the market for immunoassay test market will grow by 5.9% annually. Complicated and limited availability of reimbursement options will restrain the growth of the market. The emergence of epigenomics-based diagnostics is expected to drive the IVD market in the future. The ability of molecular diagnostics to detect diseases at an early stage of development will also fuel the future growth of the market. North America's huge market share is attributed to the well-structured healthcare system in the U.S. and Canada as well as to the large amount of public as well as private healthcare expenditure. The presence of a large patient pool and the increasing healthcare expenditure in the Asia-Pacific region are particularly fueling the growth in this market. Asia-Pacific is expected to outperform all geographies in terms of growth and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.7% from 2017 to 2023. In 2015, Roche Diagnostics, Siemens Healthcare, Abbott Laboratories, and Danaher had 47.5% of the market share. There are a number of future challenges for both the market leaders and niche suppliers. Large global IVD companies will continue expansion through acquisition, but will struggle to deliver organic growth, which also occurred in 2012. The competition will further intensify for niche suppliers as growing numbers of their customers, namely physician practitioners, are unable to maintain their profitability. Market Dynamics Market Drivers Demand for Rapid, Minimally Invasive and Non-Invasive Diagnostics Tools & Techniques Upsurge in the Number of Patients with Infectious and Chronic Diseases Increasing Global Healthcare Expenditure Demand of POC Testing Market Challenges Reimbursement Challenges Uncertain and Ambiguous Regulatory Environment Restraints IVD market Ethical Issues Market Opportunities Upsurge in the Demand of Molecular Diagnostics Epigenomics Based Diagnostics Expected to be an Emerging Segment Companies Mentioned Abbott Laboratories Agilent Technologies Becton, Dickinson and Company Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. Danaher Corporation F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG Financial GE Healthcare GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) Illumina, Inc. Johnson & Johnson Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings Myriad Genetics, Inc. Novartis International AG Ortho Clinical Diagnostics Qiagen, Inc. Quest Diagnostics Incorporated Siemens Healthineers Thermo Fisher Scientific For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/jvppv2/global_invitro Media Contact: Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SAINT PETERSBURG, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- HempTech Corp. (OTC PINK: HTCO), a provider of advanced Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) with sophisticated automation and analytical tools for the agricultural industry including legal medical cannabis, announces today that HempTech will be exhibiting in 3 marijuana related shows in May and June 2017. In May 2017 May 17 through 19 - Come visit us at the Marijuana Business Conference & Expo in Washington, D.C. In June 2017 June 10 through 11 - We are exhibiting at the 1st Southeast Cannabis Conference & Expo in Ft. Lauderdale/Miami. June 15 through 16 - Quick turnaround to NYC to exhibit at 4th Annual Cannabis World Congress & Business Exposition in NY. "HempTech, a leader in automation and analytics in CEA, will showcase the grow.droid platform at these leading industry trade shows. As we expand in the various regions we provide plug and play options for cannabis growers across North America. Producing high quality medical grade cannabis with repeatable, consistent results is our primary focus and goal," Mr. Verghese, COO of HempTech, stated. HempTech is committed to bring cutting edge technology to cannabis growers everywhere. Through the perfect blend of technology and human experience, HempTech bring you the best in automation systems. For more information on products offered by HempTech, please contact; info@hemptechcorp.com. About HempTech Corp HempTech Corp (OTC PINK: HTCO), a Nevada corporation, is a provider of advanced Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) with sophisticated automation and analytical tools for the cultivators of legal industrial hemp and cannabis. We design and engineer specialized products using advanced sensors, process control techniques, big data aggregation, analytics and security solutions so cannabis growers can easily and effectively control every aspect of their operation. Through HempTech technologies, virtually every component of the plants' vegetative growth matrix and flower harvest is automated, documented and available in visible format both in real time and historically. This simplifies operations and ensures that the baselines set by the master grower are adhered to by the cultivation staff. The Intelligent Automation Technology engineered for agricultural operations featuring CognetiX Cultivation Automation & Analytic Software drives improvement in productivity, efficiency, quality and sustainability. This industrial grade advanced Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) with analytical technology software, is being made available to small and large size cultivators that are not yet available in the Cannabis market. HempTech's goal is to provide cost effective and efficient cultivation of indoor cannabis through intelligent technologies and process control platforms. HempTech's mission is to establish a reputation in the cannabis industry as a one-stop-shop that provides all the infrastructure elements required by growers in a manner that is fully integrated, state-of-the-art, and secure. Products include the SPIDer (Secure Perimeter Intrusion Detection), SmartSense, SmartEnergy, and analytics dashboard CognetiX through which HempTech Corp. provides growers unparalleled data analysis capabilities to Know Your Grow! HempTech -- America's Future Taking Root Today. To request further information about HempTech, please email us at info@hemptechcorp.com, log onto our website at http://www.hemptechcorp.com or visit us at our Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/hemptechcorp or on Twitter @hemptechcorp. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements covered within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, plans and timing for the introduction or enhancement of our services and products, statements about future market conditions, supply and demand conditions, and other expectations, intentions and plans contained in this press release that are not historical fact and involve risks and uncertainties. Our expectations regarding future revenues depend upon our ability to develop and supply products and services that we may not produce today and that meet defined specifications. When used in this press release, the words "plan," "expect," "believe," and similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current expectations. They are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, changes in technology and changes in pervasive markets. This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 27E of the Securities Act of 1934. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Actual performance and results may differ materially from that projected or suggested herein due to certain risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, ability to obtain financing and regulatory and shareholder approval for anticipated actions. Media Contact HempTech Corp. Http://www.hemptechcorp.com info@hemptechcorp.com (727) 474-1810 Twitter - @hemptechcorp Facebook - hemptechcorp PUNE, India, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new market research report "Mobile Encryption Market by Component (Solution and Services), Application (Disk Encryption, File/Folder Encryption, Communication Encryption, and Cloud Encryption), End-User Type, Deployment Type, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets', the market size is expected to grow from USD 761.4 Million in 2017 to USD 2,917.9 Million by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 30.8%. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 66 market data Tables and 59 Figures spread through 148 Pages and in-depth TOC on"Mobile Encryption Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/mobile-encryption-market-120317676.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. The key forces driving the Mobile Encryption Market include the proliferation of smartphones and tablets across enterprises, need for stringent compliance and regulatory requirements, and increased concerns for data security and privacy issues. Moreover, with the subsequent increase in the adoption rate of cloud-based mobile encryption solutions, the Mobile Encryption Market is expected to gain a major traction during the forecast period. Request Report Brochure@ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=120317676 "Disk encryption application is expected to have the largest market share in 2017." Disk encryption is expected to have the largest market share and dominate the Mobile Encryption Market from 2017 to 2022, due to growing demands for hardware-based encryptions that ensure data security at the source. With the increase in the BYOD trend, employees have the freedom to carry personal devices and exchange of critical data via personal devices is made possible. Adoption of strong encryptions can protect the confidential data, even if an employee's device is lost or stolen. "Telecom sector is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period." Telecom and healthcare sectors are expected to grow at the highest CAGRs from 2017 to 2022, in the Mobile Encryption Market, due to the increase in the amount of personal and health-related data being stored on cell phones, tablets, and the Internet. The majority of the telecom companies rely on communication encryption for securing the data in motion, such as calls and messages for their customers. "North America is expected to contribute to the largest market share; Asia Pacific to grow the fastest during the forecast period." North America is expected to have the largest market share and dominate the Mobile Encryption Market from 2017 to 2022, owing to the early adoption of new and emerging technologies and the presence of a large number of players in this region. APAC offers extensive growth avenues in the Mobile Encryption Market, owing to a widespread presence of SMEs that are implementing enhanced mobile encryption solutions to prevent unauthorized access to critical business data and unethical use of confidential information. The major vendors providing mobile encryption solutions are Adeya SA (Morges, Switzerland), AlertBoot Data Security (Las Vegas, US), Becrypt, Ltd. (London, UK), BlackBerry Ltd. (Ontario, Canada), CSG, Inc. (Washington, US), Certes Networks, Inc. (Pennsylvania, US), Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel), DataMotion, Inc. (New Jersey, US), Dell Technologies, Inc. (Texas, US), ESET (Bratislava, Slovakia), Gold Line Group Ltd. (Israel), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (California, US), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (Shenzhen, China), IBM Corporation (New York, US), Intel Corporation (California, US), KoolSpan, Inc. (Maryland, US), MobileIron, Inc. (California, US), Open Whisper Systems (California, US), Proofpoint, Inc. (California, US), SecurStar (Munich, Germany), Silent Circle, LLC (Le Grand-Saconnex, Switzerland), Sophos Ltd. (Abingdon, UK), Symantec Corporation (California, US), T-Systems International GmbH (Frankfurt, Germany), and Zix Corporation (Texas, US). Make an enquiry @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=120317676 Browse Related Reports Encryption Software Market by Application (Disk Encryption, File/Folder Encryption, Database Encryption, Communication Encryption, Cloud Encryption), Service, Deployment Type, User Type, Industry Vertical, Region - Global Forecast to 2021 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/encryption-software-market-227254588.html Cloud Security Market by Service Type (IAM, DLP, IDS/IPS, SIEM, and Encryption), Security Type, Service Model (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), Deployment Type (Public, Private, and Hybrid), Organization Size, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cloud-security-market-100018098.html Know More About our Knowledge Store @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Knowledgestore.asp About MarketsandMarkets' MarketsandMarkets' provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets' for their pain points around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets' are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets' now coming up with 1,500 Micro Quadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets' is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Rohan MarketsandMarkets' 701 Pike Street Suite 2175, Seattle, WA 98101, United States Tel: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Visit Our Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/telecom-it Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets TORONTO, ON -- May 10, 2017 -- Patriot One Technologies Inc. (TSX VENTURE: PAT) (OTCQB: PTOTF) (FRANKFURT: 0PL) ("Patriot One" or the "Company"), developer of the revolutionary award-winning PATSCAN CMR concealed weapons detection system, today announced a reseller agreement with Information Technology Communications contracting firm JJB Federal LLC and its specialty sales division UnitedEye Inc., based in the Washington, DC area. Patriot One CEO Martin Cronin said, "We are pleased to have entered into a reseller agreement with JJB Federal, a highly credible industry partner. With today's announcement, and in just four weeks since our launch in Las Vegas, we have now achieved a number of contractual commitments totalling over $1.1 million USD. Access to government and military contracts require years of experience and an established network of contacts in any region; Washington DC is particularly unique and complex. The JJB Federal team has the connections, reach and proven experience to accelerate Patriot One product sales. We are delighted to welcome JJB Federal to our growing sales network, and to help protect the public and those who serve." Having initially taken note of Patriot One at the International Chiefs of Police Conference (IACP) in October 2016, and upon seeing live product demonstrations of Patriot One's PATSCAN CMR system at the recent ISC West event, JJB Federal Manager Marshal Plotner commented, "The emergence of this technology is a breakthrough in advanced threat detection that positively identifies those with intentions to cause harm; who, up until this technology arrived would go undetected until the threat was imminent. With this heightened capability, we are now able to proactively react to an aggressor and, simultaneously, protect potential targets, bystanders and/or property. The added strength and advantage that Patriot One's CMR1000 brings is crucial in disrupting violence and safeguarding the populace. To say this faculty is simply necessary is to greatly understate its impact!" Cronin added, "We will be shipping several units to JJB Federal in support of demonstrations to U.S. government agencies. Our reseller agreement includes an initial commitment of 50 units, and we anticipate very strong federal interest and demand to follow." Mr. Plotner adds, "JJB Federal, LLC. and UnitedEye, Inc. have a history of supporting our federal government and men and women in uniform both at home and abroad. Our desire to serve our nation is seconded by our desire to protect it. This partnership with Patriot One gives us an increased and unique capacity to augment existing security measures and to offer new capabilities and security for the public. We see our relationship with Patriot One as the instrument with which to offer counter-threat protection in any location with entry and exit points where there is a mass gathering; educational institutions, financial institutions, public transit locations, domestic municipalities, just to name a few." About JJB Federal. LLC JJB Federal is a veteran-owned Information Technology Communications contracting company. Headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, JJB Federal serves the United States Government both domestically and internationally. The firm's clients include the U.S. Dept. of the Navy, Dept. of Defense, Dept. of Education, and many other strategically important agencies. The JJB Federal team possess expertise encompassing all facets of the IT Infrastructure Industry, including Military Infrastructure. The company facilitates projects from inception to installation and deployment. Its services include project design, installation and maintenance of electronic security systems (ESS), as well as audio/visual, network infrastructure and information management systems. To learn more, visit www.jjbfed.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Martin Cronin" President & Director About Patriot One Technologies, Inc. (TSX VENTURE: PAT) (OTCQB: PTOTF) (FRANKFURT: 0PL): Patriot One has developed PATSCAN the next generation of its award-winning Patriot One Technologies NForce CMR1000 software and radar solution. PATSCAN is a first-of-its-kind Cognitive Microwave Radar concealed weapons detection system as an effective tool to combat active shooter threats before they occur. Designed for cost-effective deployment in weapon-restricted buildings and facilities, the Patriot One software solution and related hardware can be installed in hallways and doorways to covertly identify weapons and to alert security of an active threat entering the premises. Owner/operators of private and certain public facilities can now prominently post anti-weapons policies with compliance assured. The Company's motto Deter, Detect and Defend is based on the belief that widespread use of its technology will act as an effective deterrent, thereby diminishing the epidemic phenomena of active shooters across the globe. For more information, visit: www.patriot1tech.com. Patriot One Technologies are proud winners of the 2017 Anti-Terrorism / Force Protection category of the Security Industry Association's New Product Showcase at ISC West. CAUTIONARY DISCLAIMER STATEMENT: No Securities Exchange has reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to product development, licensing, commercialization and regulatory compliance issues and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. 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. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include the failure to satisfy the conditions of the relevant securities exchange(s) and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulations. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by applicable law. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information, please contact: Patriot One Inquiries +1 (888) 728-1832 info@patriot1tech.com www.patriot1tech.com John Wood Group PLC ("Company") Annual General Meeting - Voting Results Issued share capital at meeting date: 383,175,384 Number of votes per share: 1 vote per share At the Annual General Meeting of John Wood Group PLC held on 10 May 2017, all resolutions put to shareholders were passed on a poll with the required majorities. The full text of each resolution is contained in the notice of Annual General Meeting, which is available on the Company's websitewww.woodgroup.com The final vote received in respect of each resolution was as follows: Votes For (Including Discretionary) % Votes Against % Votes Total % of Issued Share Capital Voted Votes Withheld* 1 Report & accounts 308,319,678 100.00% 753 0.00% 309,550,272 80.79% 1,229,841 2 Declaration of final dividend 308,241,560 99.58% 1,305,812 0.42% 309,550,272 80.79% 2,900 3 Remuneration report 299,365,264 96.85% 9,737,501 3.15% 309,550,272 80.79% 447,507 4 Remuneration policy 290,409,885 94.23% 17,782,054 5.77% 309,550,270 80.79% 1,358,331 5 Re-elect Ian Marchant 307,121,508 99.22% 2,419,550 0.78% 309,550,271 80.79% 9,213 6 Re-elect Jan Brown 306,263,877 98.94% 3,274,871 1.06% 309,550,272 80.79% 11,524 7 Re-elect Thomas Botts 308,879,643 99.79% 659,106 0.21% 309,550,273 80.79% 11,524 8 Re-elect Mary Shafer-Malicki 308,499,024 99.66% 1,040,499 0.34% 309,550,273 80.79% 10,750 9 Re-elect Jeremy Wilson 304,184,216 98.41% 4,913,598 1.59% 309,550,272 80.79% 452,458 10 Re-elect Robin Watson 308,835,002 99.77% 708,027 0.23% 309,550,272 80.79% 7,243 11 Re-elect David Kemp 308,570,955 99.69% 971,475 0.31% 309,550,272 80.79% 7,842 12 Elect Richard Howson 308,789,952 99.76% 746,849 0.24% 309,550,273 80.79% 13,472 13 Elect Jacqui Ferguson 308,868,582 99.78% 668,218 0.22% 309,550,272 80.79% 13,472 14 Re-appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as auditors 306,909,698 99.16% 2,595,765 0.84% 309,550,271 80.79% 44,808 15 Authorisation of auditors' remuneration 307,111,372 99.31% 2,145,590 0.69% 309,550,272 80.79% 293,310 16 Authority to allot shares 273,371,894 88.62% 35,121,227 11.38% 309,550,272 80.79% 1,057,151 17 Disapplication of pre-emption rights 309,140,514 99.88% 360,602 0.12% 309,550,273 80.79% 49,157 18 Additional authority to disapply pre-emption rights 294,438,765 95.13% 15,059,630 4.87% 309,550,271 80.79% 51,876 19 Authority to purchase own shares 304,970,359 98.58% 4,403,547 1.42% 309,550,271 80.79% 176,365 20 Adopt Articles of Association 304,552,453 99.44% 1,712,359 0.56% 309,550,270 80.79% 3,285,458 21 Notice of general meetings 274,969,009 88.84% 34,544,234 11.16% 309,550,272 80.79% 37,029 * A vote withheld is not a vote in law and is not counted in the calculation of the proportion of votes 'For' or 'Against' a resolution. These votes are available on the Company's website at: www.woodgroup.com In accordance with Listing Rule 9.6.2 a copy of the resolutions passed at the General Meeting will be submitted to the National Storage Mechanism and will shortly be available for inspection at: www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/nsm Notification authorised by: WILLIAM SETTER COMPANY SECRETARY SAN DIEGO, 2017-07-17 16:11 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paul Davey, an executive with more than 30 years of experience in engineering, design and management has been appointed as GM of the Neology Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) and related technology business, and Managing Director of its UK operation. Mr. Davey is a senior management addition to enhance Neology's growth and presence in Europe as part of the completed acquisition of the 3M Tolling Business announced June 30th. Neology is a subsidiary of SMARTRAC, an investment managed by One Equity Partners (OEP), a middle-market private equity firm. "Paul is a key addition to the team," said Francisco Martinez De Velasco, CEO of Neology. "He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience leading engineering teams and growth-focused organizations. His past experience in ITS and PIPS technology will enable him to make an immediate positive impact." "I am excited to join Neology and lead this new region for the company," said Davey. "I am particularly enthusiastic to work with many of the same staff I had known in my previous roles and I look forward to the new product introductions now possible with our combined organization," concluded Davey. Mr. Davey has past experience in the industry and served in various senior management roles with PIPS Technology Ltd both before and after the merger with 3M UK. He has worked as a consultant in the ITS space for a number of years and as an engineer in several technical roles. Davey holds an MBA from Kingston University Business School and a Physics degree from the Imperial College, London. About Neology: A fully-owned subsidiary of SMARTRAC N.V., Neology is a leading provider of integrated solutions for the tolling, electronic vehicle registration (EVR) and public safety markets. The company is a pioneer and leader in the development of passive RFID technology owning some of the earliest and most significant intellectual property (IP) in the industry. SMARTRAC is the leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of RFID products and services suitable for a large number of applications. For more information visit www.neology-rfid.com and www.smartrac-group.com. About SMARTRAC: SMARTRAC is a leading developer, manufacturer, and supplier of RFID and NFC transponders and inlays and owns a vast RFID patent portfolio. The company produces both ready-made and customized transponders and inlays used in access control, animal identification, automated fare collection, border control, RFID-based car immobilizers, contactless payment cards, electronic product identification, industry, libraries and media management, laundry, logistics, mobile and smart media, public transport, retail, and many more. SMARTRAC was founded in 2000, went public in July 2006, and trades as a stock corporation under Dutch law with its registered headquarters in Amsterdam. The company currently employs approximately 3,600 employees and maintains a global research and development, production, and sales network. Forward-Looking Statements: All forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on assumptions, planning, and forecasts at the time of publication of this press release. Forward-looking statements always involve uncertainties. Business and economic risks and developments, the conduct of competitors, political decisions, and other factors may cause the actual results to be materially different from the assumptions, planning, and forecasts at the time of publication of this press release. Therefore, SMARTRAC N.V. does not assume any responsibility relating to forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Furthermore, SMARTRAC N.V. does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. About One Equity Partners: OEP is a middle-market private equity firm focused on the industrial, healthcare, and technology sectors in North America and Europe. The firm builds market-leading companies by identifying and executing transformative business combinations. OEP is a trusted partner with a differentiated investment process, a broad and senior team, and an extensive track record generating long-term value for its partners. Since 2001, the firm has completed more than 140 transactions worldwide. OEP, founded in 2001, spun out of JP Morgan in 2015. The firm has offices in New York, Chicago, and Frankfurt. For more information, please visit www.oneequity.com. Press Release and Media Contact: Eric M. Redman Vice President, Sales & Marketing Neology, Inc. 858-391-0260 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de PLYMOUTH, MN--(Marketwired - June 06, 2017) - TruStone Financial Federal Credit Union welcomes two new branch managers to their eastern Wisconsin locations, Teresa O'Brien as the Oak Creek Branch Manager and Dan Dzikowski as the Cudahy Branch Manager. Both new managers have impressive backgrounds within the financial industry and will play essential roles on their TruStone Financial teams. Teresa joins TruStone Financial with nearly 20 years of financial institution experience from her tenure at an Illinois-based credit union. "Teresa brings a wealth of credit union knowledge and management experience to our Oak Creek branch," stated Kacie Osten, Director of Wisconsin Branches. Dan is highly qualified as well with more than 25 years in the financial services industry. Most recently, Dan served as TruStone Financial's Assistant Branch Manager in Cudahy. Regarding Dan's promotion, Kacie remarked, "Dan's dedication and commitment to our membership during his previous role as the Assistant Branch Manager will serve him well in his new role. We are thrilled to have Dan lead his team." The Oak Creek branch is located at 2121 East Rawson Avenue. Also in Wisconsin, the Cudahy branch is located at 5570 S. Packard Avenue. Both neighborhood credit union locations offer a full selection of convenient banking services and solutions. About TruStone Financial TruStone Financial is one of the fastest growing credit unions in the Midwest with assets of $1.19 billion and exceeding 105,433 members. There are 14 branches across Minnesota and Wisconsin. The credit union is headquartered in Plymouth, Minnesota. For more information and full membership criteria, visit TruStoneFinancial.org. Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/6/6/11G140560/Images/Teresa_O_Brien-3a53e6771c0bb0d6ae2e656e7a56f400.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/6/6/11G140560/Images/Dan_Dzikowski-4df57c6d538bb3d69583bf99f45d54b1.jpg Contact: Katie Grindeland Senior Vice President, Director of Marketing and Communications Phone: 763.595.4002 Email contact 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. PYONGYANG (dpa-AFX) - The US Government has strongly warned its citizens not to travel to North Korea following the arrest of a fourth US citizen in the reclusive Communist nation. In a Travel Warning issued Tuesday, the Department of State warned that U.S. citizens are at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea's system of law enforcement. At least 16 U.S. citizens have been detained in North Korea in the past ten years. Those who decide to enter North Korea against the advice of this Travel Warning have been advised not to expect any privacy in that country. All electronic and multimedia devices including USB drives, CDs, DVDs, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, Internet browsing histories, and cookies are subject to search for banned content. Since the United States does not maintain diplomatic or consular relations with North Korea, the U.S. government has no means to provide normal consular services to U.S. citizens. The Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang is the Protecting Power for U.S. citizens there, providing limited consular services to U.S. citizens who require emergency assistance. 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. SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - May 10, 2017) - Roost, an innovator in smart home technology and creator of the Roost Smart Battery and Roost Smart Water Leak Detector, today announced its partnership with Hippo Insurance, a Northern California based insurance company specializing in smart home insurance for modern households. Each new policyholder will receive a free Roost Smart Water Leak Detector whenever they sign up for a new home policy with Hippo Insurance. The award-winning Roost Smart Water Leak Detector is designed to sense water leaks as well as humidity and freezing temperature situations and then deliver smartphone alerts to help minimize water damage. Hippo Insurance is disrupting the home insurance market by redefining the way that insurance is offered to homeowners for the first time in years. Potential policyholders will be able to purchase their insurance online and benefit from transparent coverage. Hippo is also strategically working to help customers focus more on proactive prevention of home perils such as water damage. The Roost partnership enables Hippo to deliver on this focus. New policyholders will receive a free Roost Smart Water Leak and Freeze Detector which will send smartphone notifications at the first sign of water damage or freezing conditions. "We are excited to be partnering with Roost and their new water leak sensor. One of our core strategies at Hippo Insurance is to help our customers prevent losses and to avoid losses in the first place," said Assaf Wand, CEO and Co-Founder of Hippo Insurance. "The early detection of water leaks by Roost's smart sensor device certainly accomplishes this." "Hippo is a perfect partner for Roost," said Roel Peeters, Roost CEO and Co-Founder. "We are aligned on the same disruptive journey to transform the consumer-insurer interaction into a more engaging and tangible relationship. Introducing to the home, simple smart devices that are easy to install and that deliver proactive early warnings to their customers enable a great new solution that provides peace of mind." The Roost Smart Water Leak and Freeze Detector incorporates water, temperature and humidity sensors that diagnose and alert consumers to four major home emergencies directly to their smartphone, including: (1) Water damage due to leaks from broken pipes, appliances and basement leaks (2) Frozen pipe water damage (3) Mold and mildew damage caused by high humidity conditions (4) Inefficient energy use due to abnormal home indoor temperature, caused by problems with heating and cooling systems or gaps in home seals to the outside Roost's Home Telematics solution is changing the way that insurers engage with their policyholders, mitigate fire & water claims and drive new business growth. About Roost Roost is a technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. Creators of the Roost Smart Battery, Roost Smart Smoke Alarms and the new Roost Smart Water Leak and Freeze Detector, Roost has developed a unique, patented, connected platform of sensors that deliver the ultimate in installation simplicity and the most affordable way for insurers to deliver Home Telematics solutions. For more information, please visit www.getroost.com. About Hippo Hippo Insurance has raised over $14 million from leading FinTech veterans to reinvent home insurance for the modern household. Founded in 2015 by Assaf Wand and Eyal Navon, Hippo is the first, entirely online home insurance product designed for the modern household. Hippo is headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information, visit: www.myhippo.com Media Contact: David Henry Roost CMO +1 (510) 708-3164 david@roostlabs.com SACRAMENTO, CA--(Marketwired - May 10, 2017) - State Treasurer John Chiang and ScholarShare, California's 529 college savings plan, are celebrating National 529 Day with a three-day promotion to help families jumpstart their college savings efforts. "Higher education has never been more vital to future economic success, but it also has never been more costly. Crushing student debt is a toxin to the American Dream, which is why it is crucial families start setting money aside today," said state Treasurer John Chiang, chair of the ScholarShare Investment Board. The steep increase in cost to obtain a four-year degree has resulted in a student loan crisis in our country. At $1.3 trillion, student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt in the United States, only behind mortgage debt. According to the Federal Reserve, that number was just $589 billion in 2007. "We have to do whatever we can to step up and help all of California's families create a realistic pathway to a higher education," Chiang said. "Our ScholarShare 529 Day matching promotion is a great way to start saving for college and head off the prospect of future graduates being saddled with a lifetime of debt." National 529 Day is a push by various states to raise awareness about the importance of saving for college with state-sponsored 529 plans. The Matching Promotion To be eligible for the matching promotion, families must open a new ScholarShare account between Wednesday, May 24 and 26, 2017 with a minimum $50 deposit -- to be contributed and invested at the time the new account is opened -- and sign up for a $25 Automatic Contribution Plan for six months. The matching deposit of $50 will be made to the eligible ScholarShare account on or before 11:59 p.m. PST on January 30, 2018. There is a limit of one matching deposit per new ScholarShare account opened for each new beneficiary. Visit www.ScholarShare.com/529day for more information and complete terms and conditions. Celebrate National 529 Day In addition to the matching contributions, ScholarShare is celebrating National 529 Day by hosting various initiatives for new and current account holders, including "529 Crib Notes," a free college savings webinar for moms with Rosie Pope and ScholarShare. The webinar will take place at 12 p.m. PT on Thursday, May 18, and cover what is a 529 plan, how 529 college savings plans work, the different investment options, and a live Q&A session. To register for the webinar, visit: https://cc.callinfo.com/r/107s7lp9402hd&eom. ScholarShare is also hosting local events at the LA Zoo in Los Angeles on Saturday, May 13, 2017, and the New Children's Museum in San Diego and the Oakland Zoo in Oakland on Saturday, May 20 and Sunday, May 21, 2017, where attendees can learn more about the matching promotion and take photos at an on-site photo booth. For more information about the National 529 Day events, please visit, https://www.scholarshare.com/buzz/?cat=3. The Facts A recent study found that among parents who want to pay for college, 25 percent are confident about affording it, while 43 percent are nervous. The confident parents are nearly twice as likely to have basic knowledge about a 529 college savings plan and were also more likely to be using a 529 plan for their college savings. Parents who are confident about affording college are those who already have a college savings account of any balance -- even if they are only saving $25 per month. ScholarShare offers a diverse set of investment options to a family's priorities and college savings goals. The plan provides tax-deferred growth and withdrawals are free from federal and California state taxes when the funds are used to pay for qualified higher education expenses, such as tuition and fees, books, computer equipment, or certain room and board costs. Any U.S. citizen with a valid social security number or taxpayer identification number can open a new account, with as little as $25. ScholarShare has no annual account maintenance fee, no income limitation, and offers a maximum account contribution limit of $475,000. Through ScholarShare's "Give a Gift" option, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends can open a new account as a gift or make a contribution to an existing one. About the ScholarShare 529 College Savings Plan To sign up for an account, or for more information about the plan, visit www.ScholarShare.com. For information about the ScholarShare Investment Board (SIB), visit www.treasurer.ca.gov/scholarshare. Like ScholarShare on Facebook at www.facebook.com/scholarshare529 and follow us on Twitter at @ScholarShare529. Named for the section of the IRS code under which they were created, 529 plans offer valuable tax advantages. Contributions are made with money that has already been taxed. Once funds are placed in the account, investment earnings, if any, are not federally or state taxed, if withdrawn to pay for qualified higher education expenses. The ScholarShare 529 College Savings Plan Twitter and Facebook pages are managed by the State of California. For more news, please follow the Treasurer on Twitter at @CalTreasurer, and on Facebook at California State Treasurer's Office. Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/5/9/11G138377/Images/treasurer_news_release_logo-77ff9f8aec759714b30101c2636cc214.jpg Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recentglobal commercial waffle maker market 2017-2021report. This market research report also lists eight other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170531005714/en/ Technavio has published a new report on the global commercial waffle maker market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire) Competitive vendor landscape According to the research analysis, the global commercial waffle makermarket comprises of key players, who are trying to differentiate their product offerings on the basis of key parameters such as heat control type, buzzer, or alarms at the end of baking and even heat distribution. Efficiency in the heating process is the main area of focus for manufacturers, and it is the main means to upgrade their offerings. Market players need to adhere to safety and quality standards so as to make their products compliant to NSF and ETL certifications. "Most players in the market are trying to offer waffle makers with enhanced features that help to minimize the bake cycle time with increased productivity. Manufacturers are also offering commercial waffle makers in different shapes and sizes," says Manu Gupta, a lead analyst for food serviceresearch at Technavio. This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free Technaviomarket research analysts identify the following key vendors: Waring Waring is the leading manufacturer of professional-quality appliances for foodservice equipment, home, and laboratory industries. The company has years of expertise in manufacturing culinary appliances for different end-users in two different segments comprising of waring commercial and waring pro. Waring professional provides large-volume food processors, blenders, heavy-duty appliances such as griddles, grills, waffle makers, fryers, and a variety of specialty products for commercial purposes. Krampouz Krampouz has expertise in producing crepe makers, waffle makers, planchas, and grills. The company is the first to introduce the gas and electric crepe maker; it is engaged in offering professional range as well as consumer range quality cooking appliances. Krampouz produces three different waffle makers such as Belgian, Brussels, and Liege and is equipped with "easy clean" system with instant disassembly of waffle iron plates for easy and fast cleaning. Nemco Food Equipment Nemco Food Equipment is involved in manufacturing food service equipment with innovative designs. It offers a wide range of 75 different products in the industry like waffle and cone makers, food preparation equipment, food warming, ovens, and boiling units. Star Manufacturing International Star Manufacturing International is involved in manufacturing and marketing commercial food service equipment to the food service establishments. It offers commercial cooking equipment like waffle makers, omelet makers, conveyor, contact and pop-up toasters. It also provides after-sales service to its customers. Wells Manufacturing Wells Manufacturing supplies numerous types of commercial cooking equipment to end-users such as family-owned restaurants, fast food chains, and hotels. Some of the commercial FSE offered by the company include waffle makers, floor fryers, countertop refrigeration, countertop griddles, countertop char broilers, and countertop griddles. Browse Related Reports: Global Commercial Beverage Dispensers Market 2017-2021 Global Commercial Combi Ovens Market 2017-2021 Global Commercial Bread Slicer Market 2017-2021 Become a Technavio Insights member and access all three of these reports for a fraction of their original cost. As a Technavio Insights member, you will have immediate access to new reports as they're published in addition to all 6,000+ existing reports covering segments like foodalcoholic beverages, and non-alcoholic beverages. This subscription nets you thousands in savings, while staying connected to Technavio's constant transforming research library, helping you make informed business decisions more efficiently. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170531005714/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com Washington D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - May 10, 2017) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an enforcement action requiring Barclays Capital to refund advisory fees or mutual fund sales charges to clients who were overcharged. In a settlement of more than $97 million, Barclays agreed to settle three sets of violations that resulted in clients being overbilled by nearly $50 million. The SEC's order finds that two Barclays advisory programs charged fees to more than 2,000 clients for due diligence and monitoring of certain third-party investment managers and investment strategies when in fact these services weren't being performed as represented. Barclays also collected excess mutual fund sales charges or fees from 63 brokerage clients by recommending more expensive share classes when less expensive share classes were available. Another 22,138 accounts paid excess fees to Barclays due to miscalculations and billing errors by the firm. "Barclays failed to ensure that clients were receiving the services they were paying for," said C. Dabney O'Riordan, Co-Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division's Asset Management Unit. "Each set of clients who were harmed are being refunded through the settlement." The SEC's order finds that Barclays violated Sections 206(2), 206(4) and 207 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and Rule 206(4)-7 as well as Sections 17(a)(2) and 17(a)(3) of the Securities Act of 1933. Without admitting or denying the SEC's findings, Barclays agreed to create a Fair Fund to refund advisory fees to harmed clients. The Fair Fund will consist of $49,785,417 in disgorgement plus $13,752,242 in interest and a $30 million penalty. Barclays will directly refund an additional $3.5 million to advisory clients who invested in third-party investment managers and investment strategies that underperformed while going unmonitored. Those funds also will go to brokerage clients who were steered into more expensive mutual fund share classes. The SEC's investigation was conducted by Gwen Licardo of the Asset Management Unit, and the case was supervised by Valerie A. Szczepanik of the New York Regional Office. An SEC examination that led to the investigation was conducted by investment adviser examiners in the New York Regional Office. PARIS, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --This press release is distributed by EDL Holding Company, LLC; Euro Disney Investments S.A.S.; and EDL Corporation S.A.S. in accordance with the provisions of Articles 231-27, 1 and 2, and 231-28 of the general regulation of the Autorite des marches financiers (the AMF ). In accordance with Article L. 621-8 of the French Monetary and Financial Code and of Article 231-23 of its general regulation, the AMF, pursuant to its clearance decision dated May 9, 2017 of the simplified cash tender offer initiated by EDL Holding Company, LLC; Euro Disney Investments S.A.S.; and EDL Corporation S.A.S. for the shares of the company Euro Disney S.C.A. (the "Offer"), has granted visa n 17-186 dated May 9, 2017 on the offer document prepared by EDL Holding Company, LLC; Euro Disney Investments S.A.S.; and EDL Corporation S.A.S. (the "Offer Document"). The information relating to the legal, financial, accounting and other characteristics of EDL Holding Company, LLC; Euro Disney Investments S.A.S.; and EDL Corporation S.A.S., will be contained in a document made available on May 10, 2017 (the "Information Document"). Based on the indicative timetable contained in the Offer Document, the Offer is scheduled to be open from and including May 11, 2017 through June 8, 2017. The Offer Document and the Information Document have been made available on the websites of the AMF ( www.amf-france.org ) and of Euro Disney S.C.A. (http://corporate.disneylandparis.com), on May 10, 2017. Copies of these documents may be obtained free of charge by simple request from : EDL Corporation S.A.S. BNP Paribas 1 rue de la Galmy 4 rue d'Antin 77700 Chessy 75002 Paris Additional information regarding the Offer is available at www.eurodisney-opa.com The Offer referred to in this press release is exclusively made in France, the United-Kingdom, the United States and in any jurisdiction legally permissible. The release, publication or distribution of this press release in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by laws or regulations. Persons in such jurisdictions into which this press release is released, published or distributed must inform themselves about and comply with such laws or regulations. Contacts: RIMOUSKI, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Puma Exploration Inc. (TSX VENTURE: PUM)(SSE: PUMA) (the "Company" or "Puma") is to begin its initial Exploration Program on the Murray Brook Project located in the famous Bathurst mining camp of northern New Brunswick, Canada. Puma has received all necessary permits to proceed with the projected work program which includes a first phase reconnaissance operation followed by trenching, stripping and drilling operations. The Murray Brook Project consists of three (3) distinct contiguous areas that cover more than 18 kilometers of the favorable rock hosting the operating Caribou Mine (Trevali Mining Corporation), the Murray Brook Deposit and the past operating Restigouche Mine. From east to west, they are the Murray Brook East Property (4925), The Murray Brook Mining Lease (# 252) and the newly acquired Murray Brook West Property (7846). These areas have been subject to various degrees of exploration work but share the same potential to increase the mineral resources defined at the Murray Brook Deposit. Murray Brook East (4925) The Murray Brook East Property (4925) consists of 245 claims (5326 Hectares). Its eastern boundary is contiguous to the Caribou Mining Lease (# 246) and is located only four kilometres west of the producing Caribou mine owned and operated by Trevali Mining Corp. The previous operators of the Murray Brook Property conducted extensive preliminary exploration work from 2012 to 2015 which included geophysical surveys (Magnetic-Electromagnetic-Gravity) and geochemical surveys (soils) to bring the property to drill-ready targets. The surveys identified 5 first priority targets to be explored. The previous drilling operation along the 7 km long favorable horizon was conducted in 1956 and included only 10 short holes. Murray Brook Mining Lease (# 252) The Murray Brook Mining Lease is located in the center of the area of interest and hosts the Murray Brook Deposit. The underground sulphide mineral resource estimate of the Murray Brook Deposit comprises measured and indicated mineral resources totalling 5.28 million tonnes averaging 5.24 per cent zinc, 1.80 per cent lead, 0.46 per cent copper, 68.9 grams per tonne silver and 0.65 g/t gold. It contains 610 million pounds of zinc, 209 million pounds of lead, 54 million pounds of copper, 11.7 million ounces of silver and 111,000 ounces of gold at an $85 per-tonne net-smelter-return cut-off in the sulphide measured and indicated categories. On February 20th 2017, the NI 43-101 report was accepted and filed on SEDAR. After reviewing the current drill hole database, Puma's geologists have defined first priority targets to verify the extension of the deposit along strike and also at depth. An EM survey defined 2 geophysical anomalies to be tested as well. On the south-west side of the deposit, a previous hole drilled in 2012 intersected 5.26% cu over 9.75 meters at the outer edge of the deposit and is open to the south. Murray Brook West (7846) The Murray Brook West Property recently acquired by map staking contains 86 claims (1,870 Hectares). It is located west and contiguous to the Murray Brook Deposit Mining lease toward the past operating Restigouche Mine over a strike length of six (6) kilometers. It covers drill-ready targets contained within a similar geological setting as the one of the Murray Brook Deposit. Puma's geologists are currently compiling the data to prioritize those surface targets. Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) Concurrent with the field work program, Puma is working on an updated preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on its Murray Brook Deposit. The updated PEA will assess the best means of extracting mineralization and will place a capital expenditure figure on the project. Different mining scenarios are possible at Murray Brook, as the deposit starts at surface and goes at depth to 300 meters, and the higher grade sulphide zone is located between 200-300 meters deep. Puma's engineer is proceeding with the review and the evaluation of different metallurgy reports previously done on the Murray Brook Deposit to define the best flowsheet to be applied at the Murray Brook Deposit in order to enhance the recovery of polymetallic sulphide mineralization but also to evaluate the potential Cu-Rich oxide zone located at the top of the deposit which should improve the economics of the entire in situ mineralization. About Puma Exploration Inc. Puma Exploration is a Canadian mineral exploration company with advanced precious and base metals projects in Canada. The Company's major assets are the 100% per-cent beneficial interest in the Murray Brook Property, the Turgeon Zinc-Copper Project, the Nicholas-Denys Project in New Brunswick and an equity interest in Black Widow Resources related to the Little Stull Lake Gold Project in Manitoba. Puma's objective for the coming year is to focus its exploration efforts in New Brunswick. You can visit us on Facebook and Twitter. Learn more by consulting www.explorationpuma.com for further information on Puma Exploration Inc. The contents of this press release were prepared by Marcel Robillard, P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101. 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 press release may contain forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Puma Exploration Inc. to be materially different from actual future results and achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date the statements were made, except as required by law. Puma Exploration undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are described in the quarterly and annual reports and in the documents submitted to the securities administration. Contacts: Puma Exploration Inc. Marcel Robillard, President (418) 724-0901 president@explorationpuma.com S-1 Registers 5 Million Shares of UCANN Common Stock in Conjunction with $10 Million Commitment by Tangiers Global DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / May 10, 2017 / United Cannabis Corporation (OTCQB: CNAB) (the "Company" or "United Cannabis"), the creator of Prana Bio Nutrient Medicinals, today announced that its S-1 registration statement (the "Prospectus") was declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The Prospectus covers the resale of United Cannabis' common stock in connection with the Company's December 2016 Investment Agreement (the "Agreement") with Tangiers Global, LLC ("Tangiers"). Under the terms of the Agreement, Tangiers has committed to purchase up to $10 million in shares of the Company's common stock, at a 15% discount to the market price. This release does not constitute an offer to sell, nor is it a solicitation of an offer to buy the Company's securities, which may only be made by means of a prospectus. The full registration statement can be viewed at the SEC website: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1436161/000155335017000425/cnab_s1.htm About United Cannabis Corporation United Cannabis Corporation is a biotechnology company dedicated to the development of phyto-therapeutic based products supported by patented technologies for the pharmaceutical, medical, and industrial markets. The Company is a pioneer in the application of cannabinoids for medical applications and is building a platform for designing targeted therapies to increase the quality of life for patients around the world. The Company's products are patent protected, first in class medicines with applications to a global market. United Cannabis trades on the OTCQB under the symbol CNAB. For further information, please visit www.unitedcannabis.us. Contact: Staff@UnitedCannabis.us Phone: 303-386-7321 SOURCE: United Cannabis Corporation MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Emerillon Capital and Sanderling Ventures announced they are joining forces to finance PreciThera Inc, an emerging Montreal based precision medicine company dedicated to the design and the development of innovative biological agents for the treatment of orphan diseases. PreciThera was recently founded by two internationally renowned scientists and successful entrepreneurs, Drs. Philippe Crine and Susan Schiavi. This initial financing is aimed at launching the company and securing a significant Series A round with several top tier Canadian and foreign investors. "At Sanderling, we believe that Precision Medicine represents significant opportunity to develop better medicines for patients who, up until now, had very limited options" said Dr. Pierre Beauparlant, Venture Partner at Sanderling Ventures. He added. "PreciThera can count on the drug development team of our portfolio company, Therillia Development Company Inc. to complement the expertise of its founders and rapidly advance its program". "While PreciThera is at an earlier stage that we typically invest in, we decided to support the founders of the company right at its inception, as they have impressive track records of having brought to the market very successful therapies. This is in line with our philosophy of patient capital intended to initiate and create value in innovative projects, with the goal of being an integral part of the innovation ecosystem." said Dr. Nicola Urbani, Investment Director at Emerillon Capital. "We are extremely pleased and grateful to Emerillon and Sanderling for having provided seed funding to PreciThera. We take this initial investment as a sign of confidence from investors in PreciThera's precision medicine approach to drug development. The support of the Therillia team is particularly appreciated at this early stage of the company as it will help us reach our initial milestones in a timely fashion. "said Dr. Philippe Crine, CEO of PreciThera. About Emerillon Capital Based in Montreal, Emerillon Capital is a venture capital fund dedicated to investing and supporting companies with strong technological expertise that are positioned in sectors with strong growth potential. It aims to accelerate commercial start-up and support their expansion. Emerillon Capital invests primarily in Canada. By leveraging the network of CIC Capital, the Canadian subsidiary of CM-CIC Investissement, its lead sponsor, Emerillon Capital offers entrepreneurs a gateway to support their development projects in Europe. For more information, visit www.emerilloncapital.com/en/ About Sanderling Ventures Founded in 1979, Sanderling Ventures is amongst the oldest and most established North American venture firms focused exclusively on biomedical investing. We invest in therapeutics, medical devices and information health. Sanderling has consistently high rates of return across multiple vintage years with multiple top quartile funds. In Canada, Sanderling utilizes Therillia Development Co., a Sanderling portfolio company based in Montreal, to manage the development of therapeutic assets held by other Sanderling portfolio companies. This model of "active management" utilizes the expertise of Therillia's seasoned drug development team and has been successful in advancing multiple projects in a cost-effective manner. For more information, visit www.sanderling.com. Contacts: Emerillon contact: Nicola Urbani +514 281 8707 nicola.urbani@emerilloncapital.com Sanderling Ventures contact: Pierre Beauparlant +514 564-6474 x 230 pbeauparlant@therillia.com VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 10, 2017 / Abattis Bioceuticals Corp. (CSE: ATT) (OTCQB: ATTBF) (the "Company" or "Abattis") is pleased to announce the addition of Siobhan McCarthy as Sales & Marketing Manager for the Company's subsidiary Northern Vine Canada Inc. ("Northern Vine"). Ms. McCarthy brings more than 20 years of direct sales and marketing experience to the Company and will lead the drive in generating testing and service revenues in Northern Vine. Ms. McCarthy has developed a comprehensive online strategy for Northern Vine, which will complement an in-depth marketing campaign to target and educate her existing, extensive network within the legal cannabis sector. "We are very happy to welcome Ms. McCarthy to our team in Northern Vine," said Robert Abenante, Northern Vine and Abattis President and CEO. "Ms. McCarthy's industry experience, existing sales pipeline and vast network of Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations ("ACMPR") license holders and producers will play a central role in growing our client base." Ms. McCarthy's impressive career spans across several industries including, natural eco-conscious cosmetics, film production and cannabis. Over the years, her dedicated work ethic and pursuit of perfection in each industry, has given her a loyal following and extensive network. "I am thrilled to join Northern Vine," boasts Ms. McCarthy. "I am eager to apply my skill set and network to a Company that is so talented and puts an emphasis on the health and safety aspect of this dynamic industry. We will begin by launching an exciting educational campaign called KnowYourMedicine, which will educate and highlight the importance of third party lab testing for a safe, reliable and regulated legal cannabis industry in Canada. I believe this is an important time where we can marry established trusted relationships within the industry, to the benefits of scientific proof." With the addition of Ms. McCarthy to its talented pool of scientists, the Company wishes to be at the forefront of setting the highest standards for testing and analysis in the cannabis industry while pushing the awareness and education of the many benefits of cannabis products. "Our lab can act as a third party seal of quality approval to licensed growers, producers and patients under the ACMPR," continues Ms. McCarthy. "We are well positioned to provide a great service to the many players in this industry so that all Canadians may have access to safe medicine." In another development at Northern Vine, Senior Manager of Operations, Dr. Jaclyn Thomson has received the approval of Health Canada as an Alternate Qualified Person in Charge (AQPIC). Dr. Thomson's' Ph.D in Chemistry along with her extensive background and experience in regulatory compliance have shaped the standard operating procedures at Northern Vine ensuring all testing methods with controlled substances meet or exceed regulations mandated by Health Canada. Dr. Thomson joins Northern Vine's Senior Scientist and Qualified Person in Charge (QPIC), Katie Maloney and Senior Science Advisor, Dr. David Galvez. The team is focused on establishing Northern Vine as the premier testing facility which strives to be at the forefront of quality control and safety within the legal cannabis industry. Northern Vine is also proud to announce Katie Maloney's contribution towards the recently published scientific research paper titled " Leaner and Greener Analysis of Cannabinoids. " The research paper illustrates that existing methods of analyzing Cannabinoids are inefficient and environmentally damaging. The Company congratulates Ms. Maloney on her contribution to develop and validate an accurate method for analyzing cannabinoids in cannabis raw materials and finished products that is more efficient and uses fewer toxic solvents. This is a significant improvement over previous methods and is suitable for a wide range of applications including regulatory compliance, clinical studies, direct patient medical services, and commercial suppliers. The report, being released in the May 2017 edition of the Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry Journal, thoroughly examines every aspect of the current system for cannabinoid lab testing. "I am very proud to have talented members such as Ms. Maloney on our team at Northern Vine," proclaims Mr. Abenante. "Her hard work, along with the other distinguished authors on this research paper, have produced a thoughtful, pro-active and clearly written report that makes a strong case for the importance of standardization across the field of cannabinoid testing. As a Company, we remain committed to environmentally friendly solutions of analyzing cannabinoids." The Northern Vine team has received special acknowledgements for their efforts and contributions in the development and validation of an analytical method suitable for the intended purpose of conducting routine analysis. With the rapid expansion of the cannabis industry, it is essential to have robust, versatile and efficient analytical methods that comply with all safety, health and environmental standards. The latest addition of Ms. McCarthy and acknowledgement of Ms. Maloney further add to the wave of positive momentum in the Company. The Company recently announced the launch of its Northern Vine Lab as well as signing an exclusive agreement for a proprietary extraction technology. The Company is now poised to shift their attention from development to revenue generation. About Abattis Bioceuticals Corp. Abattis is a specialty agricultural technology and biotechnology company which aggregates, integrates, and invests in agricultural technologies and biotechnology services for the legal cannabis industry developing in Canada. The Company has successfully developed and licensed natural health products, medicines, extractions, and ingredients for the biologics, nutraceutical, bioceutical, and cosmetic markets. The Company is also seeking to acquire exclusive intellectual property rights to agricultural technologies to be employed in extraction and processing of botanical ingredients and compounds. The Company follows strict standard operating protocols, and adheres to the applicable laws of Canada and foreign jurisdictions. About Northern Vine Canada Inc. Northern Vine Labs is licensed by Health Canada (Dealers License) for the possession of Cannabis and related active ingredients, as well as the production of extracts for the purpose of analysis. Northern Vine Labs product certification and quality assurances programs incorporate global best practices and procedures for application in the legal Canadian cannabis market. For more information, visit the Company's website at: www.abattis.com or www.northernvinelabs.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Rob Abenante" Robert Abenante, President & CEO For further information, contact the Company at (604) 336-0881 or at news@abattis.com. FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION This press release contains forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include statements regarding the expected timing of opening of the Company's lab, the activities to be undertaken at the lab, the Company's short and long-term growth plans, the Company's goal to become one of the premier companies in the cannabis sector. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including that the Company will not be able to execute its proposed business plan in the time required or at all due to regulatory, financial or other issues. Additional risk factors are included in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis, available under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements are made as at the date hereof and the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, where as a result of new information, future events or results, or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. SOURCE: Abattis Bioceuticals Corp. CIOReview highlights the leading companies and revolutionists that are selected based on unprecedented level of performance and demonstrated ability to create remarkable customer experience and far-reaching positive impacts. CIOReview has named Smart Communications, the pioneering innovator in customer and business communications, to its "20 Most Promising Insurance Technology Solution Providers 2017." CEO of Smart Communications, George Wright, is recognized as CIOReview's CEO of the Month "We are delighted to honor Smart Communications among the 20 companies that are featured in the Insurance Technology 2017 special edition of CIOReview," said Jeevan George, Managing Editor of CIOReview. "Smart Communications has been on our radar for quite a long time and this year, it became clear that Smart Communications was the customer communications management (CCM) company to showcase among Insurance Technology must-haves." Smart Communications was selected for its suite of solutions, recognized as the most innovative technology available for businesses seeking to communicate in meaningful ways and across multiple conversational channels with their various customer segments. The company's patented technology provides a host of unique IP offerings that stood out to CIOReview, including a patent that allows only Smart Communications technology to manage a single design template, and then adapt the contents to different business use-case requirements based on standard variables including languages, delivery channel (text, email, voice, video, print, etc.), and legal jurisdiction. CIOReview Insurance Technology Special Magazine This year's CIOReview Insurance Technology Special edition highlights an extraordinary list of companies and prominent leaders who are pioneering in this arena. The chosen 20 companies demonstrate strength and leadership in their categories for delivering outstanding creative, tangible, and revolutionary changes to the Insurance industry. In addition to Smart Communications, others included on the list of 20 selected companies include Guidewire, Benovate, and BriteCore. As CEO of the month, George Wright was selected by CIOReview for his leadership in stewarding the company through its separation from its parent company in September 2016, and helping to position Smart Communications as the leader in enterprise CCM solutions the only cloud-based enterprise solution recognized as a leader by Gartner in its 2017 CCM Magic Quadrant, and by CIOReview in its 'Most Promising Companies' list. Under Wright's leadership, this stand-alone company has taken its long-earned product recognition and converted it into an enviable reputation for top-notch solutions, a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and a client roster that includes the who's who inside insurance providers, healthcare payers, government agencies, telecommunications and financial services organizations, including all of the G15 investment banks. To read the feature article on CEO of the month, George Wright, visit pages 14 and 15 of this month's CIOReview magazine, and to view this year's list, visit pages 16 and 17 of the magazine, or check out http://banking-insurance.cioreview.com/vendors/2017/ About Smart Communications Smart Communications helps the world's largest enterprises simplify their customer and business communications while making those communications do even more. In 2004, Smart Communications pioneered the new generation of CCM solutions, and today they're still leading the industry as the only cloud/hybrid-cloud solution in the Gartner leaders' quadrant. Smart Communications customers rely on the team for the undivided attention of the only independent company 100% focused on enterprise CCM. No one does more to simplify template management and put so much control in the hands of the user. That's why more than 300 global brands many in the world's most highly regulated industries rely on Smart Communications to scale the conversation. Smart Communications is headquartered in London and New York, and serves its customers from offices located in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The company offers a range of solutions including SmartCOMMTM, SmartDXTM, SmartCORRTM for Salesforce, and SmartCaaSTM for Partners. To learn more, visit www.smartcommunications.com. About the CIOReview magazines' Most Promising Companies CIOReview magazine annually identifies, selects and ranks the Most Promising Insurance Providing Companies to reveal the business practices that had made these companies both highly regarded and successful. For more information about the full list of 20 Most Promising Insurance Technology Solution Providers 2017, please visit: www.cioreview.com Alongside this study, each year CIOReview carries out additional research to expose what makes these companies so successful in today's market. The magazine features Senior Executives, CEOs and Professionals of leading organizations, who participate in each year's Most Promising Companies rankings to share their view points on a wide range of business priorities, technologies and practices. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170510006434/en/ Contacts: CIOReview: Alena D'Souza Tel: 510.556.2284 Email: alena@cioreview.com CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Freehold Royalties Ltd. (Freehold) (TSX: FRU) announced first quarter results for the period ended March 31, 2017. Results at a Glance Three Months Ended March 31 -------------------------------- FINANCIAL ($000s, except as noted) 2017 2016 Change ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Royalty and other revenue 41,091 24,933 65% Net income (loss) 7,088 (8,590) 183% Per share, basic and diluted ($) 0.06 (0.09) 167% Funds from operations 32,069 15,500 107% Per share, basic ($) 0.27 0.16 69% Operating income (1) 37,084 20,292 83% Operating income from royalties (%) 91 97 -6% Acquisitions 33,352 219 - Capital expenditures 712 2,084 -66% Working interest dispositions 288 - - Dividends declared 15,338 17,845 -14% Per share ($) (2) 0.13 0.18 -28% Net debt 76,030 149,197 -49% Shares outstanding, period end (000s) 118,018 99,284 19% Average shares outstanding (000s) (3) 117,956 99,093 19% OPERATING ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average daily production (boe/d) (4) 12,753 11,974 7% Oil and NGL (%) 56 63 -11% Average price realizations ($/boe) (4) 34.88 22.23 57% Operating netback ($/boe) (1) (4) 32.31 18.62 74% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) See Non-GAAP Financial Measures. (2) Based on the number of shares issued and outstanding at each record date. (3) Weighted average number of shares outstanding during the period, basic. (4) See Conversion of Natural Gas to Barrels of Oil Equivalent (boe). President's Message Freehold achieved record production and solid cash flow results again this quarter, marking the 13th consecutive quarterly production increase and the third consecutive on a per share basis. We are maintaining our 2017 production forecast between 11,300 - 11,800 boe/d after adjusting for the disposition of non-core working interest assets (see Subsequent Events), aligning with our royalty focus. After increasing our dividend by 25% earlier this year, we are forecasting an adjusted payout ratio for 2017 of 62%, safely at the lower end of our target adjusted payout range of 60%-80%. As a leading royalty oil and gas corporation, Freehold's objective is to deliver growth and low risk attractive returns to shareholders over the long term which we have continued to provide in this reporting period. Tom Mullane, President and CEO Subsequent Events With our continued emphasis on royalties, in April 2017 Freehold sold all of its working interest assets located in southeast Saskatchewan for $29 million, including adjustments. Total production and operating income associated with these assets in 2016 was approximately 750 boe/d and $4.3 million respectively. Related decommissioning liabilities removed as a result of this sale amounts to $4.8 million (over 300 gross wells plus related facilities). These dispositions reduce capital expenditure requirements and cash costs, further improving our risk profile. With the objective to reduce cash costs, Freehold made the decision to reduce its credit facilities to $180 million (from $260 million). This decision aligns with keeping our net debt to funds from operations between 0.5-1.5 times. We currently have over $110 million of unused capacity and in addition, we have the ability to increase our credit facilities should it be needed. 2017 First Quarter Highlights -- Freehold's production averaged a record 12,753 boe/d, a 7% improvement over Q1-2016 and 1% over Q4-2016. Gains in production were largely driven by royalty acquisitions, drilling activity on our royalty lands and a strong quarter from our audit function (over 300 boe/d of prior period adjustments). -- Royalty production was up 13% compared to Q1-2016, averaging 10,701 boe/d. Royalty production increased 3% on a per share basis versus Q4- 2016. -- Royalty interests accounted for 84% of total production and contributed 91% of operating income in Q1-2017, reinforcing our royalty focus. -- Wells drilled on our royalty lands totaled 150 (8.6 net) in the quarter, up from 85 (3.4 net) in Q1-2016 and 125 (7.8 net) in the previous quarter. -- In Q1-2017, Freehold issued 25 new lease agreements with 11 companies, compared to 9 issued in Q4-2016 and 2 leases in Q1-2016, highlighting the success of our recently created leasing team. -- Freehold closed a $34 million acquisition of various gross overriding royalties and mineral title lands in the greater Dodsland area of Saskatchewan. Freehold acquired 32,000 acres of royalty lands with estimated production of 185 boe/d (91% oil) at the time of closing. -- Funds from operations totaled $32.1 million, an increase of 107% compared to Q1-2016 largely due to the increase in revenue. On a per share basis, funds from operations was $0.27/share in Q1-2017 up from $0.16/share in Q1-2016. -- Freehold generated $17.2 million in free cash flow (1), over and above our dividend, which we applied to outstanding debt. At March 31, 2017, net debt totaled $76 million resulting in a net debt to 12-month trailing funds from operations ratio of 0.7 times. -- Cash costs (1) for the quarter totaled $7.66/boe, down from $8.65/boe in Q1-2016. These costs are typically higher in the first quarter and with the April 2017 disposition of our southeast Saskatchewan working interest assets, we expect cash costs to continue to trend downwards, enhancing our netback. -- Dividends declared for Q1-2017 totaled $0.13 per share, up slightly from the previous quarter and down from $0.18 per share one year ago. In March 2017, Freehold announced an increase to its monthly dividend from $0.04 to $0.05 per share. -- Basic payout ratio (1) (dividends declared/funds from operations) for Q1-2017 totaled 48% while the adjusted payout ratio (1) ((cash dividends plus capital expenditures)/funds from operations) for the same period was 46%. (1) See Non-GAAP Financial Measures. Sustained Momentum on our Lands Including drilling associated with acquisitions, 150 (8.6 net) wells were drilled on our royalty lands during Q1-2017, a 153% increase versus 2016 (on a net basis). The first quarter continued a resurgence in activity on our land as 275 gross (16.4 net) locations have been drilled over the past two quarters, representing a 134% increase over the same period one year ago (on a net basis). Activity through the quarter was focused in the greater Dodsland area with the operator drilling 17 gross wells. We also had continued drilling in southwest Saskatchewan (Shaunavon formation), southeast Saskatchewan (Bakken, Mississippian), the Deep Basin (Montney and other liquids rich bearing zones) and central Alberta (Viking). ROYALTY INTEREST DRILLING Three Months Ended March 31 (1) 2017 2016 ------------------------------------------- Equivalent Equivalent Gross Net(2) Gross Net (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Non-unitized wells 140 8.5 48 3.2 Unitized wells (3) 10 0.1 37 0.2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 150 8.6 85 3.4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Counts include wells drilled on acquired lands from January 1st (this may differ from the closing date of the acquisitions). (2) Equivalent net wells are the aggregate of the numbers obtained by multiplying each gross well by our royalty interest percentage. (3) Unitized wells are in production units wherein we generally have small royalty interests in hundreds of wells. Guidance Update The table below summarizes our key operating assumptions for 2017. -- We are maintaining our 2017 production range of 11,300-11,800 boe/d, after adjusting for the disposition of working interest volumes described in Subsequent Events. -- Volumes are expected to be weighted approximately 55% oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) and 45% natural gas. -- We continue to improve our royalty focus with royalty production accounting for 87% of forecasted 2017 production (up from 84%) and 94% of operating income (up from 91%). -- We are maintaining our West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Western Canadian Select (WCS) price assumptions at US$52.00/bbl and $49.00/bbl and our AECO natural gas price assumption at $2.60. -- Our operating costs forecast is revised downwards to $2.50 per boe (from $3.25 per boe) as a result of the working interest property dispositions which closed in April 2017. -- Based on our current $0.05 monthly dividend level, we expect our 2017 adjusted payout ratio ((cash dividends plus capital expenditures)/funds from operations) to be approximately 62%. -- We forecast year-end net debt to funds from operations of approximately 0.3 times based on our revised key operating assumptions. Key Operating Assumptions Guidance Dated Nov. 8, 2017 Annual Average May 10, 2017 Mar. 2, 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Daily production boe/d 11,300 - 11,800 11,300 - 11,800 11,000 West Texas Intermediate crude oil US$/bbl 52.00 52.00 50.00 Western Canadian Select crude oil Cdn$/bbl 49.00 49.00 46.00 AECO natural gas Cdn$/Mcf 2.60 2.60 3.00 Exchange rate Cdn$/US$ 0.76 0.76 0.75 Operating costs $/boe 2.50 3.25 3.25 General and administrative costs (1) $/boe 2.60 2.60 2.65 Capital expenditures $ millions 4 6 6 Weighted average shares outstanding millions 118 118 118 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Excludes share based and other compensation. Recognizing the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry, we continue to closely monitor commodity prices and industry trends for signs of deteriorating market conditions. We caution that it is inherently difficult to predict activity levels on our royalty lands since we have no operational control. As well, significant changes (positive or negative) in commodity prices (including Canadian oil price differentials), foreign exchange rates, or production rates may result in adjustments to the dividend rate. Based on our current guidance and commodity price assumptions, and assuming no significant changes in the current business environment, we expect to maintain the current monthly dividend rate through the next quarter. We will continue to evaluate the commodity price environment and adjust the dividend levels as necessary (subject to the quarterly review and approval of our Board of Directors). Conference Call Details A conference call to discuss financial and operational result for the period ended March 31, 2017 will be held for the investment community on Thursday, May 11, 2017 beginning at 6:00 am MT (8:00 am ET). To participate in the conference call, approximately 10 minutes prior to the conference call, please dial 1-800-273-9672 (toll-free in North America). Availability on SEDAR Freehold's 2017 first quarter interim unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and accompanying Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) are being filed today with Canadian securities regulators and will be available at www.sedar.com and on our website. Forward-looking Statements This news release offers our assessment of Freehold's future plans and operations as at May 10, 2017, and contains forward-looking statements that we believe allow readers to better understand our business and prospects. These forward-looking statements include our expectations for the following: -- our outlook for commodity prices including supply and demand factors relating to crude oil, heavy oil, and natural gas; -- light/heavy oil price differentials; -- changing economic conditions; -- foreign exchange rates; -- drilling activity during 2017 and the impact on our production base; -- capital expenditures and development of working interest properties; -- estimated capital budget and expenditures and the timing thereof; -- the April 2017 dispositions improving our risk profile; -- the ability to increase our credit facilities should it be needed; -- our expected adjusted payout ratio for 2017; -- average production for 2017, contribution from royalty lands and weighting of oil, NGL and natural gas; -- 2017 percentage of production and operating income from royalties; -- key operating assumptions including operating costs and general and administrative costs; -- forecast year-end net debt to funds from operations; -- expected production additions from our audit function; -- our dividend policy and expectations for future dividends; and -- maintaining our monthly dividend rate through the next quarter. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control, including the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, currency fluctuations, imprecision of reserve estimates, royalties, environmental risks, taxation, regulation, changes in tax or other legislation, competition from other industry participants, the lack of availability of qualified personnel or management, stock market volatility, and our ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources. Risks are described in more detail in our Annual Information Form. With respect to forward-looking statements contained in this news release, we have made assumptions regarding, among other things, future commodity prices, future capital expenditure levels, future production levels, future exchange rates, future tax rates, future legislation, the cost of developing and producing our assets, our ability and the ability of our lessees to obtain equipment in a timely manner to carry out development activities, our ability to market our oil and gas successfully to current and new customers, our expectation for the consumption of crude oil and natural gas, our expectation for industry drilling levels, our ability to obtain financing on acceptable terms, shut-in production, production additions from our audit function and our ability to add production and reserves through development and acquisition activities. The key operating assumptions with respect to the forward-looking statements referred to above are detailed in the body of this news release. You are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. Our actual results, performance, or achievement could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. We can give no assurance that any of the events anticipated will transpire or occur, or if any of them do, what benefits we will derive from them. The forward-looking information contained in this document is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. To the extent any guidance or forward looking statements herein constitute a financial outlook, they are included herein to provide readers with an understanding of management's plans and assumptions for budgeting purposes and readers are cautioned that the information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Our policy for updating forward-looking statements is to update our key operating assumptions quarterly and, except as required by law, we do not undertake to update any other forward-looking statements. You are further cautioned that the preparation of financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which are the Canadian generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for publicly accountable enterprises, requires management to make certain judgments and estimates that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenues, and expenses. These estimates may change, having either a positive or negative effect on net income (loss), as further information becomes available and as the economic environment changes. Conversion of Natural Gas To Barrels of Oil Equivalent (BOE) To provide a single unit of production for analytical purposes, natural gas production and reserves volumes are converted mathematically to equivalent barrels of oil (boe). We use the industry-accepted standard conversion of six thousand cubic feet of natural gas to one barrel of oil (6 Mcf = 1 bbl). The 6:1 boe ratio is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip. It does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead and is not based on either energy content or current prices. While the boe ratio is useful for comparative measures and observing trends, it does not accurately reflect individual product values and might be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. As well, given that the value ratio, based on the current price of crude oil to natural gas, is significantly different from the 6:1 energy equivalency ratio, using a 6:1 conversion ratio may be misleading as an indication of value. Non-GAAP Financial Measures Within this news release, references are made to terms commonly used as key performance indicators in the oil and natural gas industry. We believe that, operating income, operating netback, basic payout ratio, adjusted payout ratio, free cash flow and cash costs are useful supplemental measures for management and investors to analyze operating performance, financial leverage, and liquidity, and we use these terms to facilitate the understanding and comparability of our results of operations and financial position. However, these terms do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by GAAP and therefore may not be comparable with the calculations of similar measures for other entities. Operating income, which is calculated as royalty and other revenue less royalties and operating expenses, represents the cash margin for product sold. Operating netback, which is calculated as average unit sales price less royalties and operating expenses, represents the cash margin for product sold, calculated on a per boe basis. Payout ratios are often used for dividend paying companies in the oil and gas industry to identify its dividend levels in relation to the funds it receives and uses in its capital and operational activities. Basic payout ratio is calculated as dividends declared as a percentage of funds from operations. Adjusted payout ratio is calculated as dividends paid in cash plus capital expenditures as a percentage of funds from operations. Free cash flow is calculated by subtracting capital expenditures from funds from operations. Free cash flow is a measure often used by dividend paying companies to determine cash available for payment of dividends, paying down debt or investment. Cash costs is a total of all recurring costs in the statement of income (loss) and deducted in determining funds from operations. For Freehold cash costs are identified as royalty expense, operating expense, general and administrative expense, interest expense and share based and other compensation expense (if paid out in the period). It is key to funds from operations, representing the ability to, sustain dividends, repay debt and fund capital expenditures. We refer to various per boe figures which provide meaningful information on our operational performance. We derive per boe figures by dividing the relevant revenue or cost figure by the total volume of oil, NGL and natural gas production during the period, with natural gas converted to equivalent barrels of oil as described above. Contacts: Freehold Royalties Ltd. Matt Donohue Manager, Investor Relations 403-221-0833 or Toll Free: 1-888-257-1873 403-221-0888 (FAX) mdonohue@rife.com www.freeholdroyalties.com BOISE, ID / ACCESSWIRE / May 10, 2017 / U.S. Geothermal Inc. (NYSE MKT: HTM) (TSX: GTH) will host a conference call and live webcast to discuss the results of the first quarter 2017, to be held Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. Live Event Information To participate, connect approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the beginning of the event. Date, Time: May 11, 2017 at 1:00 PM ET Toll Free: 877-407-8133 International: 201-689-8040 Live Webcast: www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=175876 Replay Information The replay will be available beginning approximately 2 hours after the completion of the live event, ending at midnight Eastern on May 16, 2017. Toll Free: 877-481-4010 International: 919-882-2331 Replay ID#: 10347 Webcast: www.investorcalendar.com About U.S. Geothermal Inc. U.S. Geothermal Inc. is a leading and profitable renewable energy company focused on the development, production and sale of electricity from geothermal energy. The Company is currently operating geothermal power projects at Neal Hot Springs, Oregon, San Emidio, Nevada and Raft River, Idaho for a total power generation of approximately 45 MWs. The Company is also developing an additional estimated 115 MWs of projects at: the Geysers, California; a second phase project at San Emidio, Nevada; at Crescent Valley, Nevada; and the El Ceibillo project located near Guatemala City, Guatemala. U.S. Geothermal's growth goal is to reach over 200 MWs of generation by 2021 through a combination of internal development and strategic acquisitions. Please visit our Website at: http://www.usgeothermal.com. SOURCE: Investor Network DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / May 10, 2017 / ENSERVCO Corporation (NYSE MKT: ENSV) will host a conference call and live webcast to discuss the results of the 2017 first quarter, to be held Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. Live Event Information To participate, connect approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the beginning of the event. Date, Time: May 11, 2017 at 1:00 PM ET Toll Free: 877-407-8031 International: 201-689-8031 Live Webcast: www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=175900 or www.enservco.com Replay Information The replay will be available beginning approximately 2 hours after the completion of the live event, ending at midnight Eastern on May 18, 2017. Toll Free: 877-481-4010 International: 919-882-2331 Replay ID#: 10363 Webcast: www.investorcalendar.com or www.enservco.com About ENSERVCO Through its various operating subsidiaries, ENSERVCO provides a wide range of oilfield services, including hot oiling, acidizing, frac water heating, water transfer, bacteria and scaling treatment, water hauling and oilfield support equipment rental. The Company has a broad geographic footprint covering seven major domestic oil and gas basins and serves customers in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Wyoming and West Virginia. Additional information is available at www.enservco.com. SOURCE: Investor Network MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Midland Exploration Inc. ("Midland") (TSX VENTURE: MD) is pleased to announce that the Board of Directors has approved the nomination of Mr. Paul Archer as Director of the Company. "It is a privilege to have Mr. Archer join our team, which already boasts considerable expertise. Mr. Archer brings to our board his extensive experience gained while working at Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd ("Osisko") and Virginia Mines Inc. ("Virginia"), and his remarkable success in exploration with the discovery of the Eleonore gold deposit. We are thrilled to know that the Company will benefit from his knowledge and skill set in the years to come", commented the President and CEO, Mr. Gino Roger. Midland announces that it has granted incentive stock options to Mr. Archer to acquire 100,000 common shares at $1.04 per share, for a period of 10 years. These incentive stock options have been granted in accordance with Midland's Stock Option Plan. About Mr. Paul Archer Mr. Paul Archer has a Bachelor's degree in Geological Engineering and a Master's degree in Earth Science. He has more than 35 years of experience in the mining industry, particularly in exploration for gold and base metals in Archean terrains. He developed his expertise working with various companies, including Shell Minerals, Noranda Exploration, Northgate Explorations, Westminer Canada and SOQUEM, where he was Regional Manager for Northern Quebec. On May 1, 1996, Mr. Archer joined Virginia Mines as Vice-President of Exploration and Acquisitions and Director. Mr. Archer was actively involved in the discovery and development of the Eleonore project, from the preliminary field campaign through to the sale of the deposit to Goldcorp. In November 2014, he joined Osisko's management team following the Osisko/Virginia merger. He was elected President of the Quebec Prospectors Association in 1996 and 1997. Over the years, Mr. Archer has received, on behalf of Virginia, several prestigious prizes, including the Bill Dennis Award from the PDAC in 2006 for the discovery of the Eleonore deposit. Mr. Archer is also a member of various professional associations, including the Ordre des Ingenieurs du Quebec. After a successful and compelling career, Mr. Archer recently announced he would be retiring from Osisko in early July 2017. About Midland Midland targets the excellent mineral potential of Quebec to make the discovery of new world-class deposits of gold, platinum group elements, base metals and rare earth elements. Midland is proud to count on reputable partners such as Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, Teck Resources Limited, IAMGOLD Corporation, Osisko Mining Inc., Altius Minerals Corp., SOQUEM INC., Japan Oil and Gas and Metals National Corporation, and Abcourt Mines Inc. Midland prefers to work in partnership and intends to quickly conclude additional agreements in regard to newly acquired properties. Management is currently reviewing other opportunities and projects to build up the Company portfolio and generate shareholder value. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially from targeted results. Such risks and uncertainties include those described in Midland's periodic reports including the annual report or in the filings made by Midland from time to time with securities regulatory authorities. Contacts: Midland Exploration Inc. Gino Roger President and Chief Executive Officer 450 420-5977 450 420-5978 (FAX) (FAX) info@midlandexploration.com www.explorationmidland.com NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OR REGULATIONS OF THAT JURISDICTION. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10 May 2017 RECOMMENDED OFFER FOR INNOCOLL HOLDINGS PLC BY GURNET POINT L.P. ACTING THROUGH ITS GENERAL PARTNER WAYPOINT INTERNATIONAL GP LLC (through Lough Ree Technologies Limited ("Gurnet Bidco"), its wholly owned subsidiary) to be implemented by means of a scheme of arrangement under Chapter 1 of Part 9 of the Irish Companies Act 2014 Announcement relating to convening of Scheme Meeting ATHLONE, Ireland, May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On April 4, 2017, Innocoll Holdings plc, a public limited company incorporated in Ireland ("Innocoll" or the "Company") and Gurnet Point L.P. (acting through its general partner Waypoint International GP LLC) ("Gurnet Point") announced that they had reached agreement on the terms of a recommended offer to be made by Gurnet Point, through Gurnet Bidco, for the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of the Company (the "Acquisition"). As outlined in that announcement, the Acquisition is to be implemented by means of a scheme of arrangement under Chapter 1 of Part 9 of the Irish Companies Act of 2014. Innocoll announces that earlier today the High Court of Ireland made an order directing that the Scheme Meeting be convened and notes that details in relation to the date, time and place of the Scheme Meeting and related Extraordinary General Meeting are as set out below. The Scheme Meeting and the Extraordinary General Meeting will commence at 2.00 p.m. and 2.10 p.m. (or, if later, as soon thereafter as the Scheme Meeting shall have been concluded or adjourned), respectively, on June 28, 2017 at 6th Floor, 2 Grand Canal Square, Dublin 2, Ireland. All references to time in this announcement are to Dublin time. Innocoll expects to publish and mail to Innocoll Shareholders a scheme circular relating to the Acquisition (the "Definitive Proxy Statement") in the coming days. ENQUIRIES Innocoll Holdings plc Anthony Zook, Chief Executive Officer TZook@innocoll.com Statements Required by the Irish Takeover Rules The Company's Directors accept responsibility for the information contained in this announcement. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the Company's Directors (who have taken all reasonable care to ensure that such is the case), the information contained in this announcement for which they accept responsibility is in accordance with the facts and does not omit anything likely to affect the import of such information. Piper Jaffray & Co., which is a securities broker-dealer registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and subject to regulation by the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ("FINRA"), is acting as financial adviser exclusively for the Company and for no one else in connection with the Acquisition and the other matters referred to in this announcement, and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections afforded to clients of Piper Jaffray or for providing advice in relation to the Acquisition or any other matters referred to in this announcement. This announcement is not intended to, and does not, constitute an offer to purchase, sell, subscribe for or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to purchase, sell, subscribe for or exchange or an invitation to purchase, sell, subscribe for or exchange any securities or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction pursuant to the Acquisition or otherwise, to or from any person to whom it is unlawful to make any such offer or solicitation in such jurisdiction nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction in contravention of applicable law. This announcement does not constitute a prospectus or an equivalent document. Rule 8 Dealing Disclosure Requirements Under the provisions of Rule 8.3 of the Irish Takeover Rules, if any person is, or becomes, 'interested' (directly or indirectly) in 1% or more of any class of 'relevant securities' of the Company, all 'dealings' in any 'relevant securities' of the Company (including by means of an option in respect of, or a derivative referenced to, any such 'relevant securities') must be publicly disclosed by not later than 3:30 p.m. (New York time) on the 'business day' following the date of the relevant transaction. This announcement will continue until the date on which the 'offer period' ends. If two or more persons cooperate on the basis of any agreement, either express or tacit, either oral or written, to acquire an 'interest' in 'relevant securities' of the Company, they will be deemed to be a single person for the purpose of Rule 8.3 of the Irish Takeover Rules. Under the provisions of Rule 8.1 of the Irish Takeover Rules, all 'dealings' in 'relevant securities' of the Company by Gurnet Point or Gurnet Bidco or by any party acting in concert with any of them, must also be disclosed by no later than 11:59 a.m.(New York time) on the 'business day' following the date of the relevant transaction. A disclosure table, giving details of the companies in whose 'relevant securities' 'dealings' should be disclosed, can be found on the Panel's website at www.irishtakeoverpanel.ie. 'Interests in securities' arise, in summary, when a person has long economic exposure, whether conditional or absolute, to changes in the price of securities. In particular, a person will be treated as having an 'interest' by virtue of the ownership or control of securities, or by virtue of any option in respect of, or derivative referenced to, securities. Terms in quotation marks are defined in the Irish Takeover Rules, which can be found on the Irish Takeover Panel's website. If you are in any doubt as to whether you are required to disclose a dealing under Rule 8, please consult the Irish Takeover Panel's website at www.irishtakeoverpanel.ie or contact the Panel on telephone number +353 1 678 9020 or fax number +353 1 678 9289. General Certain capitalized words used in this announcement and not herein defined have the meanings given to such words in the Rule 2.5 Announcement dated April 4, 2017 issued by the Company and Gurnet Point (the "Rule 2.5 Announcement"). The bases and sources set out in the Rule 2.5 Announcement have been used in this announcement, unless otherwise stated or the context otherwise requires. A copy of this announcement will be available, free of charge (subject to certain restrictions relating to persons resident in Restricted Jurisdictions) on the Innocoll website at www.innocoll.com by no later than 12.00 p.m. on the business day following this announcement and throughout the course of the Acquisition. Neither the contents of Innocoll website nor the contents of any other website accessible from hyperlinks are incorporated into, or form part of, this announcement. Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de IRVINE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Burnham Benefits Insurance Services -- one of California's most dynamic employee benefits brokerage firms -- today announced the promotion of Scott Aston to senior vice president and partner. Aston, who joined Burnham Benefits in 2012 as a vice president, has been leveraging his extensive knowledge and experience on both the brokerage and carrier sides of the business to bring a unique and valuable perspective to clients and to the company as a whole. In his new role, Aston's core responsibilities will be new business production and account retention and he will work with CFO's and HR directors to develop strategic plans to achieve desired outcomes for their benefits programs. Part of the strategic division of the company, Aston's input will be imperative for the future direction of the company and to the investments that support its core business. "Scott's background and knowledge base have been invaluable assets to the company," said Kristen Allison, president and CEO of Burnham Benefits. "Our company's technology, communications and employee wellness programs are amongst many that are stronger thanks to his insights and input. I look forward to the additional ways in which he will further build upon our best-in-class service and support continued growth for our offices in LA and Orange County whilst also continuing to support the thriving culture at Burnham Benefits." Prior to joining Burnham, Aston served as vice president of employee benefits for BB&T Insurance Services of California. Before that, he worked for Great-West Healthcare and New England Financial and earned a degree in business administration from Pepperdine University. He holds the Group Benefits Disability Specialist (GBDS) accreditation and belongs to the Blue Shield Broker Advisory Council, the Orange County Employee Benefits Council, and the Employee Benefit Planning Association of Southern California. He is also active in CFO Alliance, a community for senior financial leaders and decision makers. "I believe I've been successful at Burnham because I am client-focused and passionate about being a resource and advocate for my clients," said Aston. "Burnham has afforded me the opportunity to work with a very diverse set of public and private sector customers, and because of that exposure, I have a widened range of experience when it comes to customers in need." "Burnham Benefits is deeply committed to its clients and employees and provides a culture that makes it easy to do my job well," he continues. "I am not only proud to work for this company, but I am excited to help advance its mission." About Burnham Benefits Insurance Services: Burnham Benefits Insurance Services, Inc. is a privately held, full-service employee benefits consulting and brokerage firm headquartered in Irvine, Calif. The firm is among the largest in the state to specialize solely in strategic employee benefits consulting and brokerage services. With a comprehensive offering of client-first health and wellness programs, Burnham effectively manages over $1.7 billion in premiums for more than 475 clients. A certified Benefits Corporation (B Corp), the firm maintains a more than 93 percent client retention rate and has averaged 23 percent growth annually over the past 10 years. Because Burnham Benefits does not have outside shareholders, it can easily adapt and create customized solutions that fit clients' best interests -- investing in cutting-edge technology and the tools and resources needed to provide the specialized level of service that today's rapidly challenging climate demands. Its team of more than 80 highly skilled industry professionals includes in-house underwriters, compliance officers, healthcare reform consultants, communications specialists and wellness experts. Through a strategic partnership with Burnham Gibson Wealth Advisors, Inc., Burnham also provides retirement planning and wealth management services. Burnham Benefits' footprint currently spans offices in Orange County, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Sacramento and San Diego, Calif., as well as a satellite office in the Washington D.C. metro area. Burnham Benefits holds national recognition as Business Insurance's #1 Best Places to Work in Insurance 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, has been ranked a Best Place to Work by the Orange County Business Journal for six years running. Burnham Benefits president and CEO Kristen Allison earned the Distinguished Founders Award from the Annual Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) in 2016. For more information, visit www.burnhambenefits.com. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3138145 MEDIA CONTACT: Leslie Licano Beyond Fifteen Communications, Inc. 949.733.8679 leslie@beyondfifteen.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFM) announced, for fiscal 2017, the company now targets: sales growth of 1.0% or greater; comps decline of approximately 2.5% or better; EPS of $1.30 or greater; and EBITDA margin of approximately 8%. The company's outlook excludes $76 million, or $0.14 per share, in charges incurred in the first and second quarters, as well as potential future LIFO adjustments and share repurchases. The company expects to return to positive comparable store sales and earnings growth by the end of fiscal year 2018. For fiscal 2020, the company targets: total sales of over $18 billion; comps greater than 2.0%; EBITDA margin greater than 9.5%; and cash flow from operations of over $1.2 billion. Whole Foods Market also announced the appointment of Keith Manbeck as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, effective May 17, 2017. Manbeck brings to Whole Foods Market more than 20 years of financial and operational experience at leading companies, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Digital Finance, Strategy Management and Business Transformation at Kohl's Corp. since 2014. Glenda Flanagan will retire as CFO, coincident with Manbeck's appointment. Whole Foods Market also announced a significant refreshment of its Board of Directors by appointing five new independent directors, effective immediately: Ken Hicks; Joe Mansueto; Sharon McCollam; Scott Powers; and Ron Shaich. The company also announced that Gabrielle Sulzberger has been appointed the new Chair of the Whole Foods Market Board of Directors and Mary Ellen Coe has been appointed the new Chair of the Nominating & Governance Committee. The company's Board announced a new capital allocation strategy expanding its commitment to return capital to shareholders. As part of this strategy, the Board announced a 29% increase in the regular quarterly dividend to $0.18 per share and authorized a new $1.25 billion share repurchase program, with the intent to opportunistically utilize the authorization over the next 18 months. The new authorization will replace the company's existing program. The next quarterly dividend to be declared is expected to be payable on July 11, 2017 to shareholders of record as of June 30, 2017. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Canacol Energy Ltd. ("Canacol" or the "Corporation") (TSX: CNE)(OTCQX: CNNEF)(BVC: CNEC) is pleased to report its financial and operating results for the three months ended March 31, 2017. Dollar amounts are expressed in United States dollars, except as otherwise noted. "During the first quarter of 2017, Canacol achieved significant growth in realized contractual sales volumes to 18,043 boepd, a 61% increase over the same quarter in 2016," commented Charle Gamba, President and CEO of Canacol. "Adjusted funds from operations for Q1 2017 increased 56% to $20.9 million compared to $13.5 million for the same quarter in 2016. Work on the private pipeline project that will lift Canacol's natural gas production to 130 MMscfpd in December 2017 is advancing very well. The right of ways required for the pipeline continue to be acquired, and the major tubular contract has been awarded to FlexSteel for delivery to Colombia in mid-July 2017. The SPV has also negotiated a contract with Enerflex Ltd. for compression which is expected to be delivered to Colombia in early August 2017. We anticipate construction of the pipeline to commence in September 2017, with first gas by December 1, 2017. Canacol is in the final stages of evaluating three separate financing proposals for this pipeline and anticipates finalizing terms with the preferred option by the end of May 2017. The productive capacity of the Corporation's currently producing wells is approximately 195 MMscfpd, and that of the Corporation's gas processing facilities approximately 200 MMscfpd, more than adequate to lift production to 130 MMscfpd in December 2017 when construction of the private pipeline is complete. As previously announced, Canacol executed a ten year take-or-pay contract for 40 MMscfpd of gas at contractual terms comparable to the Corporation's current US dollar denominated gas sale contracts which is expected to be transported by the new pipeline in December 2017. Meanwhile we continue to encounter solid exploration success, announcing our seventh consecutive natural gas discovery at Canahuate-1 that tested 28 MMscfpd of dry gas, and an oil discovery at Mono Capuchino-1ST that tested 1,013 bopd of light oil. Throughout the remainder of 2017, we plan to drill two more high impact reserves add natural gas exploration wells, Toronja-1 in June 2017, and Pandereta 1 in October 2017. The reserves from Canahuate-1, and the potential reserves from Toronga and Pandereta, will move us closer to our goal of lifting production to 230 MMscfpd by December 2018 via the new pipeline expansion to Cartagena and Barranquilla that Promigas S.A. has initiated. Canacol also replaced its $255 million BNP Senior Secured Term Loan and Apollo Notes with a $265 million seniorr secured term loan with a syndicate of banks led by Credit Suisse ("2017 Senior Secured Term Loan"). This refinancing and consolidation achieved the following benefits: a) it defers amortization payments until March 2019, allowing the Corporation to dedicate capital to high netback production related projects instead of debt service; b) it reduces the total annual interest costs as compared to the combined BNP Senior Secured Term Loan and Apollo Notes by approximately 1.1%; and c) it harmonizes compliances and administrative deliverables under one facility. Although the Corporation's current contemplated 2017 capital budget lies within its 2017 cash flow and existing cash, the new credit agreement also allows an additional $40 million of greenshoe funds available within 12 months post-funding, allowing Canacol increased financial flexibility as it pursues its states gas production target of 230 MMscfpd by late 2018." Highlights for the three months ended March 31, 2017 (Production is stated as working-interest before royalties) Financial and operational highlights of the Corporation include: -- Realized contractual sales volumes increased 61% to 18,043 boepd for the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to 11,220 boepd for the same period in 2016, primarily due to increase in gas production in Esperanza and VIM-5 as a result of the additional sales related to the Promigas pipeline expansion. -- Average production volumes increased 55% to 16,992 boepd for the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to 10,933 boepd for the same period in 2016, primarily due to increase in gas production in Esperanza and VIM-5 as a result of the additional sales related to the Promigas pipeline expansion. -- Adjusted funds from operations for the three months ended March 31, 2017 increased 56% to $20.9 million compared to the same period in 2016. Adjusted funds from operations are inclusive of results from the Ecuador Incremental Production Contract (the "Ecuador IPC") (see full discussion in MD&A). The increase in adjusted funds from operations is primarily the result of additional sales related to the Promigas pipeline expansion. -- Total petroleum and natural gas revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2017 increased 83% to $41.6 million compared to $22.7 million for same period in 2016. Adjusted petroleum and natural gas revenues, inclusive of revenues related to the Ecuador IPC, for the three months ended March 31, 2017 increased 62% to $47 million compared to $29 million for the same period in 2016. The increase in revenues reflects the additional sales related to the Promigas pipeline expansion and an increase in benchmark crude oil prices. -- Total production expenses per boe increased 9% to $3.75/boe for the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to $3.45/boe for the same period in 2016, despite a 55% production increase in the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to the same period in 2016 as the increase in natural gas production did not increase production expenses significantly due to the majority of the natural gas production expenses being fixed. -- Net loss of $7.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017 is mainly driven by non-cash expenses related to depletion and depreciation ($9.8 million), stock-based compensation ($3.3 million), unrealized loss on financial instruments ($2.3 million) and unrealized loss on foreign exchange ($1.7 million), offset by non-cash deferred tax recovery of $5.6 million. -- On March 24, 2017, the Canahuate-1 exploration well was spud. The Canahuate-1 well is located three kilometers ("kms") north of the Corporation's Jobo gas processing facility and is targeting gas-bearing sandstones within the Cienaga de Oro reservoir ("CDO"). The well encountered 124 ft. md (86 feet true vertical depth) of net gas pay with average porosity of 18% within the primary CDO reservoir target. Two different zones were completed and flow tested at a combined rate of 28.4 MMscfpd of dry gas. Work is underway to tie the Canahuate-1 well into the Corporation's gas processing facility at Jobo. -- The Mono Capuchino-1ST exploration well was spud on December 17, 2016, reaching a total depth of 10,023 ft. md before experiencing mechanical difficulties that required the well to be sidetracked. The Mono Capuchino-1ST well reached a total depth of 10,245 ft. md within the La Luna formation on February 22, 2017. The well encountered approximately 103 feet of net oil pay within the Tertiary Basal Lisama sandstone reservoir, and approximately 406 feet of net oil pay within the Cretaceous La Luna formation, which consists of shale and limestones and open fractures visible on image logs. Approximately 769 feet of open hole section within the La Luna was tested and recovered uncommercial heavy oil. The Mono Capuchino-1ST well will be tied into the permanent production facilities located at Mono Arana and brought on full time production from the Tertiary Basal Lisama sandstone reservoir, which tested at 1,013 barrels of oil per day ("bopd") (gross), in the second quarter of 2017. -- Net capital expenditures including acquisitions for the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $24 million, while adjusted capital expenditures including acquisitions, inclusive of amounts related to the Ecuador IPC, was $24.8 million. -- At March 31, 2017, the Corporation had $44.8 million in cash and $62.5 million in restricted cash and continues to be well within all of its banking covenants. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Financial Three months ended March 31, 2017 2016 Change ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total petroleum and natural gas revenues, net of royalties 41,583 22,700 83% Adjusted petroleum and natural gas revenues, net of royalties(2) 46,975 29,000 62% Cash provided by operating activities 17,539 7,249 142% Per share - basic ($) 0.10 0.05 100% Per share - diluted ($) 0.10 0.05 100% Adjusted funds from operations (1) (2) 20,947 13,451 56% Per share - basic ($) 0.12 0.08 50% Per share - diluted ($) 0.12 0.08 50% Net (loss) income and comprehensive (loss) income (7,942) 461 n/a Per share - basic ($) (0.05) - n/a Per share - diluted ($) (0.05) - n/a Capital expenditures, net, including acquisitions 24,000 15,548 54% Adjusted capital expenditures, net, including acquisitions(1)(2) 24,818 15,949 56% March 31, December 31, 2017 2016 Change ---------------------------------- Cash 44,778 66,283 (32%) Restricted cash 62,518 62,073 1% Working capital surplus 52,678 64,899 (19%) Bank debt 254,485 250,638 2% Total assets 786,164 787,508 - Common shares, end of period (000's) 174,422 174,359 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three months ended March 31, Operating 2017 2016 Change ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Petroleum and natural gas production, before royalties (boepd) Petroleum (3) 3,505 4,526 (23%) Natural gas 13,487 6,407 111% Total (2) 16,992 10,933 55% Petroleum and natural gas sales, before royalties (boepd) Petroleum (3) 3,517 4,578 (23%) Natural gas 13,409 6,329 112% Total (2) 16,926 10,907 55% Realized contractual sales, before royalties (boepd) Natural gas 14,526 6,642 119% Colombia oil 2,014 2,856 (29%) Ecuador tariff oil (2) 1,503 1,722 (13%) Total (2) 18,043 11,220 61% Operating netbacks ($/boe) (1) Esperanza (natural gas) 25.74 27.53 (7%) VIM-5 (natural gas) 19.70 21.75 (9%) LLA-23 (oil) 21.25 8.78 142% Ecuador (tariff oil) (2) 38.54 38.54 - Total (2) 24.56 23.90 3% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Non-IFRS measure - see "Non-IFRS Measures" section within MD&A. (2) Inclusive of amounts related to the Ecuador IPC - see "Non-IFRS Measures" section within MD&A. (3) Includes tariff oil production and sales related to the Ecuador IPC. This press release should be read in conjunction with the Corporation's unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements and related Management's Discussion and Analysis. The Corporation's has filed its unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements and related Management's Discussion and Analysis as of and for the three months ended March 31, 2017 with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. These filings are available for review on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Canacol is an exploration and production company with operations focused in Colombia and Ecuador. The Corporation's shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol CNE, the OTCQX in the United States of America under the symbol CNNEF, the Bolsa de Valores de Colombia under the symbol CNEC and the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores under the symbol CNEN. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "target", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur, including without limitation statements relating to estimated production rates from the Corporation's properties and intended work programs and associated timelines. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. The Corporation cannot assure that actual results will be consistent with these forward looking statements. They are made as of the date hereof and are subject to change and the Corporation assumes no obligation to revise or update them to reflect new circumstances, except as required by law. Information and guidance provided herein supersedes and replaces any forward looking information provided in prior disclosures. Prospective investors should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements. These factors include the inherent risks involved in the exploration for and development of crude oil and natural gas properties, the uncertainties involved in interpreting drilling results and other geological and geophysical data, fluctuating energy prices, the possibility of cost overruns or unanticipated costs or delays and other uncertainties associated with the oil and gas industry. Other risk factors could include risks associated with negotiating with foreign governments as well as country risk associated with conducting international activities, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Corporation. Other risks are more fully described in the Corporation's most recent Management Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") and Annual Information Form, which are incorporated herein by reference and are filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Average production figures for a given period are derived using arithmetic averaging of fluctuating historical production data for the entire period indicated and, accordingly, do not represent a constant rate of production for such period and are not an indicator of future production performance. Detailed information in respect of monthly production in the fields operated by the Corporation in Colombia is provided by the Corporation to the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Colombia and is published by the Ministry on its website; a direct link to this information is provided on the Corporation's website. References to "net" production refer to the Corporation's working-interest production before royalties. Use of Non-IFRS Financial Measures - Due to the nature of the equity method of accounting the Corporation applies under IFRS 11 to its interest in the Ecuador IPC, the Corporation does not record its proportionate share of revenues and expenditures as would be typical in oil and gas joint interest arrangements. Management has provided supplemental measures of adjusted revenues and expenditures, which are inclusive of the Ecuador IPC, to supplement the IFRS disclosures of the Corporation's operations in this press release. Such supplemental measures should not be considered as an alternative to, or more meaningful than, the measures as determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of the Corporation's performance, and such measures may not be comparable to that reported by other companies. This press release also provides information on adjusted funds from operations. Adjusted funds from operations is a measure not defined in IFRS. It represents cash provided by operating activities before changes in non-cash working capital and decommissioning obligation expenditures, and includes the Corporation's proportionate interest of those items that would otherwise have contributed to funds from operations from the Ecuador IPC had it been accounted for under the proportionate consolidation method of accounting. The Corporation considers adjusted funds from operations a key measure as it demonstrates the ability of the business to generate the cash flow necessary to fund future growth through capital investment and to repay debt. Adjusted funds from operations should not be considered as an alternative to, or more meaningful than, cash provided by operating activities as determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of the Corporation's performance. The Corporation's determination of adjusted funds from operations may not be comparable to that reported by other companies. For more details on how the Corporation reconciles its cash provided by operating activities to adjusted funds from operations, please refer to the "Non-IFRS Measures" section of the Corporation's MD&A. Additionally, this press release references working capital, EBITDAX and operating netback measures. Working capital is calculated as current assets less current liabilities, excluding non-cash items, and is used to evaluate the Corporation's financial leverage. EBITDAX is defined as consolidated net income adjusted for interest, income taxes, depreciation, depletion, amortization, exploration expenses, share of joint venture profit/loss and other similar non-recurring or non-cash charges. Consolidated EBITDAX is further adjusted for the contribution to adjusted funds from operations, before taxes, of the results of the Ecuador IPC. Operating netback is a benchmark common in the oil and gas industry and is calculated as total petroleum and natural gas sales, less royalties, less production and transportation expenses, calculated on a per barrel of oil equivalent basis of sales volumes using a conversion. Operating netback is an important measure in evaluating operational performance as it demonstrates field level profitability relative to current commodity prices. Working capital, EBITDAX and operating netback as presented do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and therefore may not be comparable with the calculation of similar measures for other entities. Operating netback is defined as revenues less royalties and production and transportation expenses. Realized contractual gas sales is defined as gas produced and sold plus gas revenues received from nominated take or pay contracts. Boe Conversion - The term "boe" is used in this news release. Boe may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A boe conversion ratio of cubic feet of natural gas to barrels oil equivalent is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. In this news release, we have expressed boe using the Colombian conversion standard of 5.7 Mcf: 1 bbl required by the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Colombia. As the value ratio between natural gas and crude oil based on the current prices of natural gas and crude oil is significantly different from the energy equivalency of 5.7:1, utilizing a conversion on a 5.7:1 basis may be misleading as an indication of value. Contacts: Canacol Energy Ltd. Investor Relations +1 (214) 235-4798 IR@canacolenergy.com www.canacolenergy.com Weekly net asset value ("NAV") is calculated as of the close of business on each Tuesday and posted on the following business day. In the event that Tuesday is not a business day, the Company will calculate the close-of-business NAV as of the business day immediately preceding that Tuesday. The end-of-month NAV is calculated as of the close of business on the last day of the month and posted on the following business day. For weeks that include a month-end NAV report, PSH will provide only the month-end NAV and not report the Tuesday NAV. Monthly NAVs are published in accordance with the Decree on Conduct of Business Supervision of Financial Undertakings under the Wft (Besluit Gedragstoezicht financiele ondernemingen Wft). Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/23/17 -- Silver Bear Resources Inc. ("Silver Bear" or the "Company") (TSX: SBR) is pleased to announce that shareholders have voted in favour of all items of business brought before them at the Company's Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") held in Toronto, Ontario on June 23, 2017. At the Meeting, among other things, the re-domiciliation of the parent company of the corporate group of Silver Bear to the United Kingdom pursuant to a court supervised plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") with Silver Bear Resources plc ("Silver Bear UK") was approved by shareholders of the Company. The special resolution approving the Arrangement was approved by 99.92% of the votes cast by shareholders of the Company. On closing of the Arrangement, Silver Bear UK will become the listed parent company of the Silver Bear group, whereby shareholders of the Company will exchange their existing Silver Bear common shares for Silver Bear UK ordinary shares, on a one-for-one basis. The Arrangement is subject to the final approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") and the Supreme Court of Ontario, whose hearing for the final order to approve the Arrangement is scheduled to take place on June 28, 2017. Provided the remaining conditions to the arrangement are satisfied, the effective date of the Arrangement is expected to be on or about June 30, 2017. Details of the Arrangement are set out in the press release of the Company dated May 15, 2017 and the management information circular of the Company dated May 23, 2017 (the "Circular") available under the Company's corporate profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Also at the Meeting, all of the nominees listed in the Circular were elected as directors of the Company. Detailed results of the vote for the election of directors held at the Meeting are set out below. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Votes % Votes Votes For % Votes For Withheld Withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trevor Eyton 85,960,740 99.92% 70,850 0.08% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boris Granovsky 85,967,090 99.93% 64,500 0.07% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Dominic Gualtieri 85,966,090 99.92% 65,500 0.08% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Graham Hill 85,980,090 99.94% 51,500 0.06% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexey Sotskov 85,981,090 99.94% 50,500 0.06% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Westdal 85,973,740 99.93% 57,850 0.07% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- In accordance with the policies of the TSX, the disinterested shareholders of the Company also approved certain amendments to the Company's existing facilities agreement, including the drawdown of the previously drawn US$10 million tranche D, the drawdown of a new US$5 million tranche E and payment by the Company of interest on the tranche D and tranche E funds up to the maturity date of the facilities agreement. A total of 92,498,643 common shares were voted in connection with the Meeting, representing approximately 56.77% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company. The results of other matters considered at the Meeting are reported in the Report of Voting Results as filed by the Company on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. About Silver Bear Silver Bear (TSX: SBR) is focused on the development of its wholly-owned Mangazeisky Silver Project, covering a licence area of approximately 570 km2 that includes the high-grade Vertikalny deposit (amongst the highest- grade silver deposits in the world), located 400 km north of Yakutsk in the Republic of Sakha within the Russian Federation. The Company was granted a 20-year mining licence for the Vertikalny deposit in September 2013 and announced an updated Feasibility Study in October 2016. Project construction and permitting is advancing with first silver production targeted for Q4 2017. Other information relating to Silver Bear is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com as well as on the Company's website at www.silverbearresources.com. Cautionary Notes This release and subsequent oral statements made by and on behalf of the Company may contain forward-looking statements, which reflect management's expectations. Wherever possible, words such as "intends", "expects", "scheduled", "estimates", "anticipates", "believes" and similar expressions or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, have been used to identify these forward-looking statements. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this release reflect management's current beliefs based upon information currently available to management and based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, Silver Bear cannot be certain that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. A number of factors could cause events and achievements to differ materially from the results expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Such risk factors include, but are not limited to: failure to complete the Arrangement; failure to receive any required regulatory approvals or other approvals; and risk factors identified by Silver Bear in its continuous disclosure filings filed from time to time on SEDAR. These factors should be considered carefully and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve significant known and unknown risks, assumptions and uncertainties that may cause Silver Bear's actual results, events, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although Silver Bear has attempted to identify important risks and factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors and risks 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, prospective investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this release, and Silver Bear assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, unless otherwise required by law. Contacts: Silver Bear Resources Inc. Graham Hill President and Chief Executive Officer +7 916 731 5673 info@silverbearresources.com Silver Bear Resources Inc. Judith Webster Investor Relations Manager & Corporate Secretary +416 453 8818 jwebster@silverbearresources.com Buchanan UK Bobby Morse + 44 (0) 20 7466 5000 Buchanan UK Anna Michniewicz +44(0) 20 7466 5146 GeneSort, a Herzliya, Israel-based medical diagnostic company, is being acquired by Hong Kong-based investment group AID Partners, for $23m. The deal will support GeneSort in its expansion into southeast Asia and other global markets. Led by Dr. Gil Pogozelich, Chairman and CEO, GeneSort is a medical diagnostic company that has created technology that identifies genetic mutations related to specific cancers, helping doctors recommend personalized and targeted treatment strategies. The company has recently signed a development contract with the government of Malta, as well as with the Israeli government to deploy diagnostic testing in the country. The lead investor in GeneSort was Singulariteam. FinSMEs 10/05/2017 The competitive intensity unleashed by Reliance Jio Infocomm since September last year continues to roil the Indian telecom market. Market leader Bharti Airtel has reported a sharp 26 per cent sequential drop and a huge 72 per cent year-on-year decline in profits for the March quarter and again blamed RJio (without specifically naming the rival) for its piteous financial performance in this quarter. But some analysts are now saying the RJio scare could already have begun to abate. Remember, this was the second straight quarterly decline in profitability for Bharti and the near term does not look promising, with more bloodbath foretold. But in the long run, perhaps, things may not look so gloomy. UBS analysts Navin Killa, Namrata Penta and Curtis Li said in a recent note to clients that though competition remains intense, incumbents see a plateauing of RJio impact for now. Of course, incumbents Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea remain wary of further competitive reactions as RJio starts charging for services, which could anyway slow down RJio's subscriber take-up. But the fact that some of these large telcos see RJios disruptive effect dissipating or lessening already is quite interesting. Bhartis net profit of Rs 373 crore for the three months ended March was the smallest in four years, against Rs 504 crore in the immediate preceding quarter. Revenue fell over 12 per cent to Rs 21,935 crore from a year earlier as data and voice rates fell. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortizationan indicator of operating profitabilitydeclined 13 per cent to Rs7,992.8 crore from Rs 9,188.1 crore a year ago. The average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) fell to Rs 158 in the March quarter from Rs 194 a year ago. Average data revenue per user also declined to Rs 162 from Rs 196. But the telcos subscriber base widened, which should be good news going forward as each telecom market players bleeds to retain subscribers. On the positive side, incumbents have already started to see operating trends such as subscriber adds, data usage and prepaid top-ups improving in recent weeks versus the last few months. Overall, we believe sector revenues could decline by mid to high single digits QoQ in 4QF17 but see some signs of stability in 1QF18 as RJio starts charging, the three UBS analysts said. This means the current quarter would be the key to the RJIo conundrum for Indias fragmented telecom market. A CRISIL analysis noted that sharp price cuts and free services offered by RJio for almost 6 months accounting for over 55 per cent of total wireless data consumption resulted in flat adjusted (excluding inter connect charges and service tax) gross revenue growth for telecoms . While overall data traffic has grown 5 times in the past one year, 60 per cent fall in 4G data prices since launch of RJio in September has resulted in muted 2 per cent growth in adjusted gross revenue last fiscal. The same analysts have additionally pointed out that even if the incumbent biggies continue to bleed, they must strive to retain market leadership. In a note to clients, CRISIL analysts have pointed towards the financials and business dynamics of leading global telcos in key, high data consuming markets, to say there is a premium in market leadership. They have given the example of Verizon, the largest US wireless telecom player, which boasts of a sustained high market share and best-in-class network coverage in the price-competitive and mature market. Its strong cash flows have enabled it to invest in network quality, which, in turn, has ensured the lowest postpaid churn (less than 1 per cent) for the company. Consequently, Verizon enjoys much higher profitability (average EBITDA margin of 37%) and returns (average RoC of 15%) than its peers. Another example is Telkomsel of Indonesia, which is jointly owned by the government and Singapore-based SingTel. The company has among the highest EBIDTA margins and returns anywhere, given its widespread network, and a 75-80% market share in non-Java areas (rural areas). It also has twice the number of subscribers to its closest competitor, ensuring significant pricing advantage that also reflects in its financial profile. Ditto South Koreas SK Telekom and Australias Telstra. Returns of Indian players also indicate a similar trend. Bhartis India operations have average returns closer to 10% compared with 6-8 % for the next two players. So the point really is that Bharti at least should prefer bleeding to losing out on market leadership in the long run. The cries of intense competition and competitive pressures should not deflect attention away from what the market leader is doing to remain in the numero uno position. For one, Bhartis recent shopping spree has given it added muscle. It has struck a deal to buy out Norwegian telco Telenors Indian operations and then signed a definitive agreement with Tikona Digital Networks to acquire its 4G business, including the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum and multiple sites. The Tikona pact is a smart buy since this acquisition will enable Bharti to fill BWA spectrum gaps in the 2300 MHz band, thereby securing a pan India footprint in the band. That the future telecom wars will be fought in the fourth generation (4G) airwaves space has been quite clear from the day RJio entered the market with its 4G ready network and eye-popping freebies to lure data hungry customers away from incumbent telecom operators. RJios USP, besides the pricing, has been its 4G-ready network and the speed with which Indian subscribers have ramped up data usage since Rjios entry last September is the stuff of legends. This rapid transformation of a primarily voice market into a rapidly scaled up data market has forced incumbent telecom operators to bolster their 4G footprint. Now, when in addition to the RJio threat, Bharti is also set to face competition from the merged entity being formed after the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, it makes sense for the market leader to stock up on 4G spectrum. This is precisely what it has done with the Tikona deal. So while quarterly results paint a picture of a hapless market leader struggling against an aggressive new entrant, it would be wise to also keep in mind that Bharti is quietly consolidating its leadership through acquisition of networks and spectrum. ends Frankly, we have no prior experience to judge this but I believe it is the best option under the circumstances, said one of the former RBI governors when asked whether the recent ordinance promulgated by the Narendra Modi-government will help resolving the stressed asset crisis in Indian banking sector. RBI is respected and feared and so it should produce better results than efforts so far, he said requesting not be to be identified. But not many in the financial sector shares this view. In a note on Tuesday, global rating agency, Moodys made some pertinent remarks about the new NPA ordinance. It said. These measures (Ordinance) improve the efficacy of NPL resolution mechanisms and are a credit positive. However, they do not address the lack of capital at the state-owned banks, that has prevented them from writing down NPLs to realistic levels. We continue to expect NPL resolution to be a relatively long drawn out process. In a way, the NPA (non-performing asset) ordinance is seen as the final act from the Modi-government and the RBI to find an answer to the NPA problem. It has tried many things in the past, but nothing has worked well to crack the NPA problem. Right now, the bad loan scenario in the banking sector can be termed nothing short of a crisis situation with at least 10 percent of the total loans given by banks in the stressed category. This is a conservative estimate that takes into account. But according to certain industry experts such as former RBI deputy governor, K C Chkrabarty, the total chunk of problematic assets in the banking system would be around Rs 20 lakh crore, much higher than what the official estimates are. Some of the government-owned banks are in too bad situation with dangerously high level of NPAs. Just yesterday, IDBI bank informed the bourses that the RBI has invoked the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework on IDBI Bank Ltd as its bad loans have surged. The lender has been barred from taking further large credit exposure, hiring and even opening new branches. The corrective action came after gross NPAs of the bank shot up 80 percent to Rs 35,245 crore and it booked a loss Rs 2,255 crore in December quarter and losses mounted. IDBI bank is not the only lender facing PCA. In the recent years banks like Indian Overseas Bank and private lender Dhanlaxmi Bank too have faced restrictions from the RBI on account of bad business performance. As at end December last year, at least 20 public sector banks (PSB) in India now have their GNPAs above 10 percent of their total advances, six of them above 15 percent and one bank has reported GNPA at 22.42 percent. Among the lenders with highest level of gross bad loans are Indian Overseas Bank (22.42 percent), State Bank of Patiala (19.33 percent), Uco Bank (17.18 percent), United Bank of India (15.98 percent), IDBI Bank (15.16 percent) and Bank of Maharashtra (15.08 percent). Over 90 percent of the total bad loans in the banking industry is on the books of government-owned banks, which puts the onus of recapitalising these lenders directly on the government. Just to meet the Basel-III norms, government banks need about Rs 1.8 lakh crore by 2019. That apart, the hole created by the bad loans on balance sheets needs to be filled by forking out a substantial chunk of money. If the government fails to do that, state-run banks will have to either shrink their businesses to preserve capital or find investors to raise funds on their own. Except large banks like SBI, not many state-run banks have succeeded in raising large funds from the market for the simple reason that investors are not too keen to approach these lenders with broken balance sheets. Can the NPA ordinance work to resolve the current NPA mess? For sure, the ordinance is an acknowledgement from the government that bad loan situation needs urgent attention and quick action, which is a positive signal. But, empowering the RBI to involve directly on bad loan cases is unlikely to help. In fact, by passing the job to RBI, the government has put too much at stake. If RBI fails to make a difference on the NPA scene despite the additional power, the institution will risk losing its face. This is because banking business is predominantly the job and expertise of a bank, not the regulator. Banks lend money, monitor the repayment and act to recover money from the defaulter. A lot of this is based on the banker-borrower relation and viability of a particular proposal. When the RBI issue directions to bank on a specific case, there is a possibility that these aspects concerning the business of banking will be overlooked. Also, large scale bad loan resolutions will also require capital support for the bank. Can the RBI assure this to any bank? Also, the RBI will face questions on conflict of interest being the regulator and a party involved in the business. Remember, the RBI has already tried multiple measures to tackle the bad loan situation. It has tried corporate debt restructuring (CDR), 5:25 scheme, strategic debt restructuring (SDR) and, the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed asset (S4A)all these have largely failed to resolve the problem of sticky assets. The insolvency code empowers the bank consortium to wind up a company if majority lenders agree. Passing that power to the RBI wouldnt do any additional help. According to Moodys, the reason for the limited success of the various regulatory measures so far is that they do not address two related structural factors. First, the operating environment in key stressed sectors remains quite challenging. For instance, in the power sector, which is the biggest stressed sector, plant load factor remains at multi-decade lows, leading to projects run at much lower capacity than originally assumed in the project financing. Also, the actual cost of project completion has often been much higher than originally planned. Operating conditions in other stressed sectors such as steel and construction remain challenging as well, although not to the extent seen in power, Moodys said. Second, in part because of these challenging operating conditions, the market value of stressed assets is typically much lower than what the banks currently reflect on their balance sheets. Hence, successful resolution, either by through debt relief or asset sale, will require banks to take a big hit when they write-down the value of these assets to market value. However, the state-owned banks' weak capital levels mean that they do not have the capacity to take these sort of write-downs, the agency said. With the fundamental factors that resulted in the build-up of bad loans remaining, things are unlikely to change in the banking sector. As Moodys points out, bad loan resolution will take time and the RBIs direct involvement is unlikely to bring out any miraculous results. More importantly, once the bad loan clean-up is done, the core problem that will haunt banks will be to find massive amount of capital. Considering the fiscal situation and the past evidence, the government will not be able to fill this gap. The better alternative is to privatise these banks and let them compete in the market. The fact that majority private banks have managed to stay unhurt in the bad loan crisis compared with state-run banks show that there is merit in government letting go of the control of these lenders. This will also empower these banks with long-promised autonomy. If the Narendra Modi-government is serious in its intent to save ailing state-run banks, it should look for radical reform steps to save the banks and initiate the privatisation process without delay. Time is running out fast. Fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya has consulted Clare Montgomery, the Queens Counsel (QC), to fight against Indian government's attempt to extradite him to India. The Business Standard reported that Montgomery will most likely defend Mallya at the hearings in British courts. Matrix Chambers, a barristers chambers located in London and Geneva, describes the QC who specialises in criminal, regulatory and fraud law as: "Clare has had extensive experience in extradition, international mutual legal assistance and international criminal law, representing both governments and individuals. She works with lawyers outside the UK on national and international criminal cases assisting with strategy and legal challenges." Ranked in 2017 by Chambers & Partners, Legal 500, Montgomery has also been described as, "One of the finest minds at the Bar, a brilliant mind, an amazingly quick thinker, but nonetheless very approachable, "the most formidable member of the bar." She has not only been admitted in Northern Ireland and specially admitted in the courts of the Bahamas, Bermuda, Brunei, Hong Kong, Mauritius and the Turks and Caicos Islands but has also received several awards. She was named 'Crime Silk of the Year' in 2005, 2013 and she was nominated twice as 'Lawyers Barrister of the Year'. In an interview with First 100 Years, Montgomery said: "Frankly, the number of cases which Ive transformed from losing cases to winning cases I can count on the fingers of one hand. High profile cases can present a particular danger to the barrister because of the press, and responding to scrutiny takes your focus off convincing the jury, the court, or the judges." Montgomery also appeared for the Swedish Judicial Authority in the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange extradition case. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India has directed the Union Home Ministry to "secure and ensure" the presence of Mallya, who is currently in the United Kingdom, before it on 10 July for the hearing on the quantum of punishment for contempt of court. The top court has held Mallya guilty of contempt of court for disobeying its orders by not disclosing full particulars of his assets and also violating the orders of Karnataka High Court by transferring $40 million received from British firm Diageo, to his three children. India had recently asked Britain to ensure early extradition of Mallya, who is an accused in a bank loan default case of over Rs 9,000 crore involving his defunct Kingfisher Airlines. With Montgomery's stellar credentials, it won't be easy for the Indian government to bring back Mallya. "We direct the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi to secure and ensure presence of Mallya before this court on 10 July, 2017. A copy of this judgment be sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs for compliance," a bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit said. With inputs from PTI It was earlier reported that a UAE-based Indian businessman is investing Rs 1,000 crore to produce the cinematic adaptation of The Mahabharata. The film, based on the classic novel Randamoozham, will star Malayalam superstar Mohanlal as the central character Bhima and will be helmed by noted ad man VA Shrikumar Menon. Now, Mumbai Mirror reports that three producers have joined forces to translate the other epic, The Ramayana, onto the silver screen. Bankrolled by Madhu Mantena, Allu Aravind and Namit Malhotra, it will be made at yet another astronomical budget of Rs 500 crore. The same report quotes Aravind as saying, "Its a huge responsibility but The Ramayana needs to be told on the big screen in the most magnificent way possible. We are committed to delivering a spectacular extravaganza." It will be a three part series and will be shot in 3D. Also, it will be a trilingual project and will be released in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. While it may seem that the thought of making a film on the epic would have only come after the announcement of The Mahabharata project and the earth shattering success of SS Rajamouli's war epic Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, the report states that the three producers have been planning this mega project for over a year. The Ramayana has never been depicted on the silver screen though it has seen a couple of versions on the small screen. The most notable one being back in 1987-88 when Ramanand Sagar made Ramayan with Arun Govil and Deepika Chikhalia as Ram and Sita that aired on Doordarshan. The most recent adaptation was aired in 2008 starring Gurmeet Choudhary and Debina Bonnerjee. It was produced by Sagar Arts. There is no word out on the possible star cast or when the project will go on floors or release in theatres. It was earlier reported that filmmaker Anand L Rai had flown to Meerut in order to scout the locations for his next directorial starring Shah Rukh Khan as a dwarf. Now, Rai has decided to make some production changes for the sake of feasibility. DNA reports that Rai has now decided to recreate the small town of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh in the Goregaon Film City in Mumbai itself. The same report attributes the reason behind the decision to be the VFX that needs to employed in order to make Khan look like a dwarf. Since the crew will have to play with VFX-style shooting, it will be impossible to film in the crowded locales of Meerut, given Khan's massive popularity across India. Thus, the town of Meerut is being recreated in the film city including its famous landmark - Ghanta Ghar or the clock tower. Rai is known for bringing to life the small town charm, particular that of Uttar Pradesh, with films like Raanjhanaa of 2013 and the Tanu Weds Manu franchise. However, Khan will not have to travel all the way to Uttar Pradesh now. It will also come as a sigh of relief for the actor who has been touring across Europe to shoot for Imtiaz Ali's next, tentatively titled The Ring. There is still no official word of confirmation on the leading lady cast opposite Khan in Rai's next. While the names of Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt were considered, Pinkvilla reports that the former was ruled out as she was busy shooting for the delayed schedule of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period drama Padmavati. The same report quotes Rai's spokesperson as saying, "A lot of names have been thrown in but at the moment the female lead has not been finalised. The casting is underway and is taking time as it is a difficult role, in fact, one of the most challenging that Anand has ever worked on. The role needs a lot of prep time as well has shoot time for which a substantial chunk of dates is required. It's not just about finishing this film but making it." Dubai: Director Ali Abbas Zafar is shooting for his upcoming film Tiger Zinda Hai at a cement factory in the UAE. The 36-year-old filmmaker took to Twitter to share the picture from the sets of the movie and thank the authorities for their support. "Shooting @TigerZindaHai at the stunning Arkan cement factory thank you authorities for your priceless support, trust me it looks beautiful," wrote Zafar. Shooting @TigerZindaHai at the stunning Arkan cement factory thank you authorities for your priceless support, trust me it looks beautiful pic.twitter.com/otNNpYoBsv ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) May 8, 2017 They had earlier shot in Tyrol, Austria. The movie, which is the sequel to the 2012 film directed by Kabir Khan, will see Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif reprise their roles as spies Tiger and Zoya. Salman will be also be seen in Kabir's Tubelight based on the 1962 Indo-China War, which releases this year. After Morocco and Vienna, the team of Tiger Zinda Hai are shooting in Abu Dhabi over a 65-day schedule from 4 May at multiple locations in the city. A set is being designed by some of those workers who helped to build the Star Wars set in 2013. The Yash Raj Films (YRF) project is a sequel to the blockbuster film Ek Tha Tiger. Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, it features superstar Salman Khan and actress Katrina Kaif, who are both happy to be shooting there. Salman said in a statement, "Tiger Zinda Hai is a film of sizeable scale and context. Abu Dhabi, with a variety of locations and gracious hosts, is ideal to shoot for a film like this one. I hope that the entire unit will enjoy our time here." Katrina feels the city fits in perfectly with the movie's story."I look forward to shooting in eye-catching locations and on the impressive set here," she added. Last day of location scout @TigerZindaHai . Shoot begins tmrw, once again nervous and excited pic.twitter.com/UCeGhHwa4x ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) May 3, 2017 Work has begun on the construction of a 20,000 sq metres backlot for the movie's shoot. The set is being designed by Rajnish Hedao from Acropolis DMG, and over 150 workers will be on site to create the main set of the film. The production unit will also film at several other locations around Abu Dhabi before moving onto the set. twofour54's Film and TV Services division will provide production services for the movie, with a crew of 300 expected to work on the movie. Government support will come from the UAE military, which will provide military equipment, including choppers during the shoot. Zafar said, "A film like Tiger Zinda Hai requires a certain scale, which we found in Abu Dhabi. Keeping all the practical measures in mind, the kind of support we got on the infrastructure was phenomenal. That along with some stunning real locations, makes shooting in Abu Dhabi special." Officials in Abu Dhabi note the increasing attraction of the Hindi film industry towards the city as a shooting destination. Maryam Al Mheiri, CEO of Media Zone Authority - Abu Dhabi, said, "Abu Dhabi is gaining traction in India as the emerging new home of Bollywood, as a result of what we can offer this dynamic industry: a generous 30 per cent rebate, a huge variety of locations, and crew with Bollywood experience." With inputs from agencies. Indian cinema is growing by leaps and bounds. There are so many genres to explore, so many things to talk about. There's horror, history, documentaries, rom-coms, avant-garde. But there is a need to bring into focus the narrative which is the most integral part of cinema. Whether it is a narrative about cinema or something that can be adapted into a audio-visual format, stories are sacrosanct to cinema. That is why the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival has highlighted two segments that take a look at storytelling. There's a segment called 'Word to Screen' which was started in 2016, which helps writers and publishers translate their books into films by bringing them in direct contact with production houses, content creators and directors who might want to adapt their narratives onto the silver screen. For 2016, Abhishek Kapoor (who has helmed films like Fitoor, Kai Po Che!) and Jabeen Merchant (editor for films like NH10) were the jury members who helped decide the final shortlist. This year, which marks the 19th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival, has Arpita Das as the curator of the segment. Das, who owns the independent publishing house Yoda Press, will use her expertise in the world of books to help publishing houses and studios find the right match. Das says about the segment, "The idea of the segment is the hope that the most exciting content can make it to the studios on that one day by pitching the most important point of the book." Smriti Kiran, the creative director of the Jio Mami Film Festival, says about the Word to Screen Market, "The Word to Screen market was started last year... we have been wanting to do this for a very long time because the publishing world and the world of cinema need to come closer ... there is a lot of material already available in literature, not only classics, but also in contemporary writing. There are so many books available out there that would translate beautifully into a film or a web series." Kiran adds, "So what we want to do with our Word to Screen market is to create a dialogue, to marry these two industries and take the cause of narratives forward. The people in the film industry constantly complaining that there is a dearth of good stories, but if we looked harder we will realise that there is a treasure trove of stories out there in the form of the written word. We want to curate a number of manuscripts that we feel are sort of adaptable to screen and we call top notch creators from production houses, and anyone who is in the business of acquiring content to join the conversation.In the west the exchange between the publishing world and the world of films is very systemised, and we are trying to bring the same in India to slowly systemise the exchange so that books can be seamlessly adapted to the screen." What is the criteria for selecting a book? Kiran says, "The larger, broader criteria is always how compelling the story is. Now the selection is subjective. We have a long list that might be 50 or 40 or 30 books which are shortlisted by our curator, Arpita Das." Along with bring the written word to life, there's also the task of appreciating the written word about the silver screen. Because writing on films is so rare, Jio Mami's segment, Excellence in Writing on Cinema honours the writers who choose to write about the silver screen. Started in 2015, the first Excellence in Writing on Cinema award went to Gaata Rahe Mera Dil by Balaji Vittal and Anirudha Bhattacharjee, which was a look at the behind-the-scenes of 50 classic hindi songs. In 2016, there was an award introduced for writing in Hindi too, The Excellence in Writing on Cinema Award (Hindi) went to Anil Bhargava for which looked at the history of hindi and regional cinema in India. The Excellence in writing on Cinema Award (English) in favour of Jai Arjun Singh for The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee which took a look at the life and works of the filmmaker who made Anand, Chupke Chupke and Gol Maal. Kiran says about the awards, "We began the Book Awards, that is also known as theExcellence in writing on Cinema in 2015. One of the things that we want to do is encourage engagement in writing about cinema, which is so rare. In 2015 when we started the awards, it was only open to english language books, but since there are great books on cinema in Hindi too, we started a segment for hindi books. The award is our way of saying thank you for encouraging more people to write on cinema. Because writing a book is a labour of love. If you know the kind of effort that goes into writing a book, it is exhausting, the amount of research and effort it involves. " Arpita Das, who is curating this segment as well says, "We hope with this award publishers become keen to commission books on new kinds of cinema. For example, books on conversations, or books on the behind the scenes experience. These are the sort of genres we haven't seen in India and we are hoping with this award we can help bring forth new genres. Since this award is becoming a calendar award in the publishing industry that everyone looks forward to, maybe it can help." Jio Mami is open for entries in both the segments today. 18:58 (ist) Quick questions, answered: Where can I watch the Justin Bieber India concert and at what time? Here's the answer: If you aren't at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai at this moment, you're unfortunately not going to be able to view the concert. Bieber's performance, as we mentioned earlier, begins at 8 pm and will go on for 90 minutes. Is the concert being live-streamed or broadcast online? No. However, you can follow our LIVE updates from within the arena, and we'll be sharing as many vignettes from the concert as we can. At this moment, all drones and professional camera crews have been sent outside the venue for security reasons. It was earlier reported that the makers of S Shankar's science fiction entertainer 2.0 decided to push the release date of the Rajinikanth starrer in order to lend more time to their post production and VFX. This averted a clash with Rohit Shetty's comedy Golmaal Again which is scheduled to release this Diwali. Now, Shetty has heaved a sigh of relief as his film will enjoy a wider release with less competition. Mumbai Mirror quotes him as saying, "My film has shaped up well and Im glad we have a good window to add to the business. All the Golmaal films have come on Diwali." Golmaal Again will be no different though it will still clash with Advait Chandan's Secret Superstar which is backed by Aamir Khan. With the release five months away, Shetty and his team are working towards the timely completion of the film but ensuring that they have fun while doing so. "Im shooting Golmaal Again till 17 May and the following morning Im taking off to Spain for Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi. Once Im back in July, Ill resume shooting for the film for another 10-15 days. We have to be ready for a Diwali release," he says, as quoted by Pinkvilla. Shetty, who is returning to the adventure reality show, will replace Arjun Kapoor as the host in the eighth season. Life will come full circle as it was Kapoor who had replaced him in the previous season. "Arjun actually called to ask me what he should say at the press conference and I told him to say that he was going to be hosting the show in the seventh season because I was busy with Dilwale," says Shetty, as per the report by Mumbai Mirror, clarifying that there is no bad blood between the two. Also, he confirmed that he is in talks with Kapoor's Gunday co-star Ranveer Singh for a film. But it will not be the remake of Subhash Ghai's Ram Lakhan, as rumoured, since Shetty has decided to shelve that project. Guwahati: The Assam government's decision to disband the State Madrasa Board and Sanskrit Board invited flak from minority groups on Wednesday, with All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) leader Aminul Islam terming the decision "anti-Muslim". Another group announced that it will organise a statewide protest on 11 May to oppose the decision. "To mainstream madrasa education, we're disbanding Madrasa Education Directorate and making it part of Secondary Education Directorate," Assam Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has tweeted on Tuesday. "The Madrasa Board too will be dissolved and academic part will be handed over to Board of Secondary Education. Restructuring to reform," he added. To mainstream Madrasa education, we're disbanding Madrasa Education Directorate & making it part of Secondary Education Directorate/1 Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) May 9, 2017 The Madrasa Board too will be dissolved and academic part will be handed over to Board of Secondary Education. Restructuring to reform/2 Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) May 9, 2017 He had also told the state assembly that the government wanted to "mainstream" madrasas and Sanskrit tols and introduce modern learning like computers in these institutions. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted the report on the review of the human rights situation in India on Tuesday with as many as 250 recommendations by 103 foreign governments. Indias human rights record which was reviewed on 4 May at the UNHRC, had delegates making statements on a range of issues that are recorded in the report from the need for India to ratify the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) as well as the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance to enforcing the 1951 Refugee Convention, repealing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ratifying the ILO Convention on the decent work for domestic workers, criminalising marital rape and honour crimes, decriminalising consensual same-sex relations, taking effective measures to combat rising instances of religious intolerance, violence and discrimination, having a national plan to combat Afrophobia and abolishing the death penalty, among other recommendations. Before the adoption of the report, the Haitian delegate intervened twice asking for oral revisions to its recommendations for India. "Establish a national plan for combatting hate crimes, racism and negative stereotypes against people of African descent inside its territory, including appropriate programmes of public awareness that will address the problem of racism and Afrophobia in full consultation with those particularly affected," reads the amended statement that was corrected by the Fillipino deputy permanent representative to the UN office at Geneva. The Philippines along with South Africa and Latvia was part of the troika that facilitated Indias Universal Periodic Review (UPR). New Delhi will now examine the recommendations and respond to the HRC latest by its next session in September 2017. "The fact that over 100 delegations took the floor indicates the level of interest this council has in India," said Paramjit Singh Patwalia, Additional Solicitor-General of India, reading a statement on behalf of Attorney-General of India Mukul Rohatgi, after Indias UPR report was adopted. "The vision of our nations founding fathers who framed our Constitution was a strong commitment to human rights with special emphasis for development and protection of the girl child, women and minorities, he added. "In our entire UPR journey, we have adopted a broad-based consultative approach," said India's new permanent representative to the UN in Geneva Rajiv Kumar Chander. India will take an 'informed decision' after extensive inter-ministerial consultations. New Delhi is free to accept or reject some or all of the recommendations. However, sifting through and responding to the 250 recommendations will be a tricky task for the Indian government. Consider the Haitian statement of devising a national plan to combat racism and Afrophobia. Since the recent attacks on Nigerian students in Uttar Pradesh, the government while condemning the incidents has refrained from terming them as 'racist' attacks. Not all acts of violence should be construed as racial attacks, India had said at its UPR, adding that it is the land of Gautam Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi and that "we cannot have a racial mindset". Given such a stance, it would be surprising if India accepts this recommendation. Similarly, Swedens recommendation of ensuring that "any measure limiting freedom of expression, assembly and association on the internet, is based on clearly defined criteria in accordance with international law including international human rights law" will be a difficult suggestion to negotiate, even though the HRC last year had passed a resolution declaring internet access a human right. The maximum number of recommendations was around the issue of India ratifying the CAT. And this has been asked of India in previous UPRs as well. India signed the CAT in 1997, but is yet to ratify it. It has reasoned with the HRC since that it is bringing its domestic legislations in line with international obligations under CAT. Patna: Following reports of "rats guzzling down liquor" stored in police stations of Bihar, the authorities have now started destroying seized contraband, with a staggering 28,000 litres being destroyed on Tuesday and Wednesday, officials said. In "dry Bihar", as the state government prefers to call it, while 10,000 litres of illicit liquor was destroyed on Tuesday, the very next day, they destroyed another 18,000 litres of liquor seized by the Excise Department. The total 28,000-litre liquor -- valued at Rs 2.5 crore -- destroyed by the authorities was seized from Vaishali and Patna districts of the state. The seized liquor, mostly Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) bottles, was stored in "maalkhanaa" (store room) of police stations in both districts. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was scheduled to hold a top-level meeting of officials on Wednesday evening here to review prohibition in the state. Since clamping of the prohibition on the state in April 2016, Vaishali police first time on Wednesday destroyed 18,000 litres of liquor. Interestingly, last week it was reported that rats had finished nine lakh litres of alcohol seized by police. But later, the police headquarters refuted the claim and ordered a probe into it. According to official reports, ever since total prohibition was imposed on 5 April 2016 in Bihar, the government has seized around 9.15 lakh litres of liquor, out of which eight lakh litres is still in the store rooms of various police stations in the state. Police officers from a large number of police stations have conveyed to top police officials the problem of a space crunch in storing such huge quantities of liquor. Over 45,000 people have been arrested in a year in Bihar for violating the liquor prohibition law imposed by the Janata Dal-United-led grand alliance government in the state. Bihar had acted tough against the violators of prohibition law, Excise and Prohibition Minister Abdul Jalil Mastan said. "The law enforcement agencies have been directed to act tough against those violating the law." The state police have raided 2,18,722 locations and seized liquor valued at Rs 50 crore the last year alone, a state Excise and Prohibition Department official said. According to a police report, 40,413 cases were registered for prohibition violations. Beijing: China on Wednesday lodged a diplomatic protest with the US over a Congressional delegation's meeting with the Dalai Lama in India, saying the move violated America's commitment not to support Tibet's independence. "The meeting has sent very wrong signal to the world about supporting Tibetan independence," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. "The meeting violated the US governments commitment not to support Tibet's independence," Geng said. US Congressmen should stop all kinds of contacts with the Dalai Lama, he said. The Congressional delegation headed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi met Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday in Dharamshala. China views the Dalai Lama as a separatist working to split Tibet from China. It objects to any world leader or government official meeting the 81-year-old leader. Arvind Kejriwal and team showed in Delhi Assembly on Tuesday how an EVM prototype machine can be hacked. It all looked nice on TV. However, its not that easy to hack thousands of machines across polling stations in favour of a single party. Candidates of any party do not get the same slot in EVM machines across seats so it is humanly very tedious to hack in a populous country like ours. Still, it doesnt mean that EVMs cannot be hacked. They carry the same risk as hacking of emails, bank accounts, and social media accounts etc. Were they hacked in recent elections is another topic though and yet to be proved in any court of law. However, this has always been a matter of debate. BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao wrote a book 'Democracy at Risk, Can we Trust our EVMs' highlighting their vulnerability. Subramaniam Swamy has also raised concerns regularly. The Election Commission is renowned globally for conducting free and fair elections. UNDP facilitated the visit of representatives from the Election Commission of 20 different countries to witness the management of Indias 2014 mammoth national elections. Its integrity cannot be questioned. Recently a team from Russia was in India to observe the five state elections as they want to use EVM technology for presidential elections in 2018. AAP and opposition have constantly raised the issue that developed countries like Germany, UK, and Netherlands use ballot paper and not EVMs. In 2006, a pilot project was used in Italy for elections through voting machines. However, this was shelved due to high costs and complexity. In October 2006, the Netherlands banned the use of EVMs stating that they lack transparency. In 2009, the Republic of Ireland declared a complete stoppage on their use citing it to lack of trust and transparency in the voting machine. In March 2009, Supreme Court of Germany held that voting through EVMs was unconstitutional. It passed a historic judgement stating transparency is a constitutional right but efficiency is not a constitutionally protected value. In UK and France many pilot projects have been undertaken but the government has preferred using ballot papers. It's true that in various parts of the US as well as Venezuela EVMs are used. However, these are backed by paper trails which are missing in India. Some experts suggest that many systems used in other countries were computer based with internet connectivity, hence vulnerable to hacking. Since 2000, EVMs have been used in 107 state polls and three Lok Sabha polls held in 2004, 2009 and 2014 as per the poll panel. The issue of EVM tampering has been raised in various courts in the past which have held they are credible, reliable and tamper-proof. "There is no question of introducing any virus/bugs for the reason that EVMs can't be compared to PCs," the Madras High Court had said in 2001a>. The Election Commission also referred to a Karnataka High Court ruling of 2004 where it said, "This invention is undoubtedly a great achievement in the electronic and computer technology and a national pride." In 2009, Delhi High Court expressed satisfaction with the representation made by EC as to why EVMs cannot be rigged. However, in a recent case, Uttarakhand High Court has ordered for the first time in electoral history, seizure of EVMs of seven seats on appeals made by people who lost elections. In another instance, Bombay High Court has ordered a forensic scan of EVMs used in 2014 assembly elections of a polling booth of Parvati assembly seat in Pune. It has asked nine technical questions to Hyderabad FSL. ECI has regularly rubbished allegations of EVM tampering. It has put forth forcefully that it has in place an elaborate administrative system of security measures and procedural checks-and-balances. The safeguards are implemented by EC transparently with active and documented involvement of political parties. Candidates and their representatives at every stage check EVMs to build confidence in its efficacy and reliability. Any signal from outside or BlueTooth or WiFi is ruled out as the machine does not have any high-frequency receiver and data decoder. To build in further transparency, EC started consultation with political parties in 2010 to explore the use of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). Under this process, a paper slip is generated bearing name and symbol of the candidate along with the recording of the vote in the control unit. In the case of any dispute, paper slip and EVM results can be reconciled. This would bring the elections up to global benchmark. In June 2014, EC proposed to implement VVPAT at every polling station in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls asking for funds to the tune of Rs 3,174 crore from the government. In an ongoing case in the Supreme Court, EC in March 2017, submitted that it can get the requisite number of VVPATs manufactured in 30 months from the time of release of funds by the government. The Narendra Modi government has been sitting on this proposal for past three years and only after this issue heated up, in mid-April it accepted releasing funds. However, it remains to be seen whether by April/May 2019 all VVPATs will be ready for all 930,000 polling booths. Looks difficult! The focus now moves to the 12 May meeting which EC has called for the seven national and 48 regional parties including AAP have been invited. It will invite suggestions on how to conduct a hackathon of EVMs. The date of the challenge is not yet finalised. While EC has strongly rebutted AAPs display in Delhi assembly citing real EVM was not used, AAP has responded by claiming machine was built by IIT graduates. It goes on to make a bigger claim that it will hack EVM in 90 seconds at hackathon event whenever it is held. To sum up, after the hackathon event, all concerns about EVM misuse should be put to rest. Even an iota of a doubt should not remain in anyone's minds. If AAP cant hack, it should keep its mouth shut from then on. If AAP manages to hack, it will lead to mayhem. Fingers crossed! The Gujarat High Court recently ruled that a person who avails of the services of a prostitute in a brothel is liable to be punished under Section 370 of Indian Penal Code (IPC). The said section criminalises human trafficking, including slavery and sexual exploitation. The present case is related to quashing of FIR against a customer in a brothel who had been charged with "trafficking of persons" under Section 370. By stating that customers in a brothel are covered by section 370, the High Court presupposes that prostitution in a brothel is coerced. This reasoning is fallacious and directly impacts the livelihood of sex workers in brothels while also refusing to recognise the dignity of "prostitution" as a profession. Trafficking of persons under Indian law The primary legislation dealing with the prevention of immoral traffic in India is The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 (hereinafter 1956 Act) which makes "sexual exploitation or abuse of persons for commercial purposes or for consideration in money or in any other kind" a punishable offence in India. Further, sections 372 and 373 criminalised the selling or buying of minors for prostitution. Prior to The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 Section 370 of the IPC only dealt with slavery in India without any reference to sexual exploitation. It was only in 2013 after the Jyoti Singh gangrape case that the scope of Section 370 was expanded (by the enactment of The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013) to criminalise not only slavery but any form of human trafficking of minors and adults. Accordingly, any act of "physical exploitation or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the forced removal of organs" is now punishable under Section 370. It bears noting that neither the 1956 Act nor the IPC criminalises prostitution. What is punishable under Indian law is the "trafficking of persons" or the exploitation of prostitution. The Gujarat High Court, in this case, held that it is not only those who actively traffic humans (such as brothel owners) who are liable under Section 370, but even customers at a brothel as they are said to "receive" a person for the purpose of exploitation under Section 370. Differentiating voluntary sex work from coerced prostitution In its judgment, the high court noted that Section 370 would not apply where sex workers "engaged in prostitution of their own volition, and not pursuant to any inducement, force or coercion". The court based its observation on a clarification issued by the Justice Verma Committee which was constituted in the wake of the Jyoti Singh incident to submit its recommendations for reform of sexual assault laws in India. The clarification was issued by the committee to address concerns that Section 370 could be used as a tool to harass sex workers and their clients where sex workers engaged in prostitution of their own free will. The Justice Verma Committee clarified that section 370 is not meant to punish prostitution, but the "exploitation of prostitution" and therefore, Section 370 would not apply where a sex worker undertook activities on their own (ie, in cases of voluntary sex work). What is confusing about the Gujarat High Court judgment is that while the court stated that the question of whether prostitution was voluntary or coerced would depend on the facts, the court ruled that Section 370 would apply to a customer in a brothel. In doing so, the court has indirectly presumed that any prostitution which takes place in a brothel is coerced. This reasoning is flawed for the following reasons: firstly, it is conceivable that a particular sex worker in a brothel could be engaging in prostitution voluntarily to earn a livelihood. Recent articles on The Quint and The Economist highlight instances of voluntary prostitution, especially with the emergence of online escort websites. The articles highlight how prostitution (even within brothels) is not necessarily coerced and women may make a conscious choice to engage in prostitution for economic reasons such as financial support for their families. Interestingly, the euphemistic phrase, "Mrs Warrens Profession" (which refers to prostitution), was originally the title of a play written by George Bernard Shaw. Shaw in his play explored the notion that prostitution is caused not by depravity but due to economic reasons. Secondly, the Gujarat High Court explanation to Section 370 clearly states that consent of the victim is immaterial in determining the offence of prostitution. Going by the explanation, a customer would not be able to raise the defence that the victim (prostitute in question) had consented to prostitution. This means that all forms of prostitution in a brothel would be treated as forced prostitution under Section 370 irrespective of whether the sex work was indeed voluntary in nature. The possible reason for excluding consent from Section 370 can be found in the Justice Verma Committee Report which notes: offences committed initially on them (victims of human trafficking) never come to light. Over time, the sexual abuse becomes part of their lives. It then gets termed as prostitution and then the abuse borders on being consensual." In other words, victims who have been habituated to sexual abuse may engage in little or no protest against sexual abuse, thereby becoming a "consenting victim"; this makes it desirable to treat consent as immaterial under Section 370. Although Indian law does not criminalise prostitution, by holding the customers/clients of sex workers liable, the livelihood of sex workers in brothels stands to be threatened. Another harm that results from assuming prostitution in brothels to be coerced is the failure to recognise that women could engage in the profession of "prostitution" of their own accord; such thinking goes against the notion of the dignity of the profession. A possible outcome of the Gujarat High Court judgment could be harassment of clients of voluntary sex workers by law enforcement agencies through Section 370, which would give rise to the very same mischief which the Justice Verma Committee had sought to cure. Devika Agarwal is a Research Fellow at Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. She is also a Volunteer at Strategic Advocacy for Human Rights. Views expressed are personal. India shouldn't get too comfortable with the ICJ verdict staying the execution of former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav in Pakistan. So long as he is in the custody of Pakistan and denied a defence in appeal or even the basic permission to access consular services, it would be wrong to feel there is a victory in it. Pakistan may be a signatory to the Geneva and Vienna conventions and other grand multilateral treaties but that didnt produce any sense of regret or apology over the mutilation of two soldiers killed on the Line of Control (LoC). The cruel fact is that if something untoward were to occur to Jadhav while in prison what can the ICJ or India do by way of consequences? The answer is pretty much nothing. You cannot bank sanctions and they mean very little. The ICJ is a pleasant little legal interlude. It's like a country club membership, well-meaning and enormously gracious in its service but with no real teeth to bite into injustice. Even Pakistan knows it is simply playing cat and mouse with an Indian citizen and its reaction to the international court not even 24 hours after the verdict is distinctly hostile. Pakistan's defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif tweeted on Monday that the Indian letter to ICJ attempts to divert attention from the state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan and that Jadhav was convicted of offences against national security. The ICJ, he said, has crossed its limits, thereby indicating its scorn for this legal entity. Asifs statement is aggressive and Pakistan will find a loophole in the Indian effort to go to the world body because New Delhi has often questioned the authority of the ICJ on bilateral Indo-Pak issues. This stance from the past may be a prickly pear for us now because we need global backing to save Jadhavs life. He's clearly being a pawn on this chessboard. India has made a strong case based on the premise that the sentence of the military court was in "brazen defiance" of the Vienna Convention under Article 36. So, that card will be played, but what is a matter of concern is Pakistans indifference to global opinion and the way that attitude might push it to ensure a clever accident or ailment on the prisoner. Much as that possibility is an anathema, it exists, and because it exists India has to up the stakes to a "hold it" level which includes the option of freezing the reception by the president of the new Ambassador to India, Sohail Mahmood, who is leaving his appointment in Turkey for New Delhi later this month. Unless Pakistan assures India of a fair treatment and consular access while this issue is being argued at the ICJ, the government should keep the diplomat at bay. The thing is, we have let the rope go on the atrocities and no one seems to be doing much about that. If something happens to Jadhav what will India do in the aftermath? Rather than making mewling sounds of condemnation, India should pre-empt them by moving on the diplomatic front and showing genuine intent. An army officer was reportedly assasinated by militants on Wednesday in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. The body of the Lieutenant rank officer was found with bullet wounds in Hermain area of Shopian district in south Kashmir, police sources told PTI. The slain army officer, was identified as Ummer Fayaz Parry who was posted in Akhnoor, according to News18. Hailing from neighbouring Kulgam district, Fayaz had gone to Shopian to attend the marriage function of a relative. The report further said that 11 injury marks were found on the army officer's body. Meanwhile, clashes broke out during the funeral proceedings of Fayaz as villagers pelted stones at the army and policemen who were present at the funeral, according to CNN-News18. The news channel reported that the protesters were apparently miffed with the Indian Army trying to give the slain soldier a proper state burial. Even as the police tried to bring the clashes at Fayaz's hometown under control, politics runs askew as parties traded barbs over the issue. BJP leader Ram Madhav, who was the point person for the BJP-PDP alliance, said, "People understand that these militants are loyal to no one and they kill their own people in the most dastardly and brutal ways. This is an act of absolute cowardice and I condemn it. The perpetrators will be brought to the books." National Conference leader Junaid Mattu blamed the government for the incident stating that not only the incident was reminiscent of early 1990s but it also showed how the current government has maligned the mainstream politics and reduced people's faith in it. Mattu offered his condolence to the bereaved family. Defence Minister Arun Jaitley also condemned Fayaz's killing and offered his condolence to his family. Abduction & murder of Lt. Ummer Fayaz by terrorists in Shopian is a dastardly act of cowardice. This young officer from J&K was a role model Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) May 10, 2017 Lt. Ummer Fayaz of 2RAJRIF was an exceptional sportsman, his sacrifice reiterates nation's commitment to eliminate terrorism from the Valley Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) May 10, 2017 We share the grief of family of Lt. Ummer Fayaz & stand in solidarity. Lt. Ummer Fayaz will continue to inspire youth from the Valley. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) May 10, 2017 Fayaz, commissioned in the Indian Army only in December last year was only 22. His friends from the National Defence Academy recalled that he was a cheerful, agile young man who was extremely fond of sports. He also played on the NDA's volleyball team and was quite popular in his hometown. A few months ago, Fayaz was invited to inaugurate a school in Kulgam. According to CNN-News18, Fayaz was abducted from the function and later murdered. This incident stokes concerns as thus far militants have been indulging in direct face-offs with the security forces. However, targetting army officers, when off duty, and murdering them is not very common. There has been a spike in militant activities in most districts of south Kashmir including, Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag and Kulgam. News18 reported that the Jammu and Kashmir police has been on a high alert in south Kashmir after increased incidents of militancy. An advisory was also issued by the state police asking its personnel not to visit ancestral homes, especially in south Kashmir areas till it was withdrawn. Fayaz was reportedly picked up by five to six militants from his relative's house in south Kashmir's Shopian on Tuesday nigh and later taken to Herman Chowk where he was shot. An army official in Srinagar said that they have received an input and are verifying the circumstances in which the officer was found dead. The security forces have launched search operations in the area to nab the militants. With inputs from PTI New Delhi: The International Court of Justice on Tuesday stayed the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order by the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month, official sources said. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on 3 March, 2016. Reacting to the development, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said, "I have spoken to the mother of Kulbhushan Jadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Art 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court." Swaraj said senior advocate Harish Salve was representing India before the ICJ in the Jadhav case. ICJ President Ronny Abraham has reportedly written a letter to Pakistan government, asking it to act in such a way which would enable the implementation of any order the ICJ may issue in the case. India, in its appeal, contended that it was not informed of Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further asserted that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the Pakistani authorities were denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite repeated requests. "Referring to 'the extreme gravity and immediacy of the threat that authorities in Pakistan will execute an Indian citizen in violation of obligations Pakistan owes to India', India urges the Court to deliver an order indicating provisional measures immediately, 'without waiting for an oral hearing'," India's appeal said. Jadhav, 46, was given death sentence last month by the Field General Court Martial in Pakistan, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learned about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. "India claims that 'linking assistance to the investigation process to the grant(ing) of consular access was by itself a serious violation of the Vienna Convention'," the ICJ release said. The ICJ said India urged it to restrain Pakistan from carrying out the death sentence, and direct Islamabad to take steps to annul the decision of the military court. Pakistan claims its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on 3 March last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. The appeal on behalf of Jadhav was given last month 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. New Delhi: The abduction and murder of a Kashmiri army officer by terrorists in Shopian is a dastardly act of cowardice, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday. Expressing anguish over the killing of 22-year-old Lt Ummer Fayaz, whose bullet-riddled body was found in Harmen area of Shopian on Wednesday morning, Jaitley conveyed his condolences to the family and said he would continue to inspire youth from the Valley. "Abduction & murder of Lt. Ummer Fayaz by terrorists in Shopian is a dastardly act of cowardice. This young officer from J&K was a role model," Jaitley said in a tweet. Fayaz, who had been commissioned in the army only five months ago in December 2016, had gone to attend his cousin's wedding in Batapura when he was reportedly abducted by terrorists around 10 PM yesterday, officials said. Jaitley said Fayaz's sacrifice reiterates the nation's commitment to eliminate terrorism from the Valley. "Lt Ummer Fayaz of 2RAJRIF was an exceptional sportsman, his sacrifice reiterates nation's commitment to eliminate terrorism from the Valley," he said. Chennai: A Kolkata police team reached Chennai on Wednesday to arrest Calcutta High Court Judge Justice C S Karnan, a day after the Supreme Court of India sentenced him to six months' jail in a contempt case. According to unconfirmed reports, Justice Karnan is at present not in Tamil Nadu but at Srikalahasthi in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. He is expected to return to Chennai this evening. The judge was staying at a guest house after he arrived at Chennai on 9 May before the apex court delivered its verdict. Later, he addressed the media in his room. The Kolkata police personnel have spoken to their Tamil Nadu counterparts on executing the arrest order, the local police said. As a group of advocates protested outside the state guest house, alleging that Justice Karnan was being victimised, the police said they had closed the main gate to the state guest house to forestall trouble. This is the first time that a sitting high court judge has been awarded a jail sentence by the apex court on charges of contempt. A seven-judge Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar, had also disallowed the media, print and electronic, from publishing or airing the contents of further orders passed by Justice Karnan. "The sentence shall be executed and he be taken into custody forthwith," the bench had said. The International Court of Justice at the Hague in the Netherlands suspended the death sentence against the alleged spy Kulbhushan Jadhav. Jadhav was given a death sentence by a Pakistani military court on 10 April on the charges of espionage and waging war against Islamabad. Jadhav, a former Indian naval officer, was allegedly arrested in Balochistan in March 2016 and Pakistan said Jadhav worked for the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) fuelling the Baloch separatist movement and attempting to sabotage the CPEC project. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the ICJ said: "On 8 May, 2017, the Republic of India instituted proceedings against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, accusing the latter of aegregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations' (hereinafter the Vienna Convention') in the matter of the detention and trial of an Indian national, Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court in Pakistan," the ICJ said in a statement on Tuesday. Harish Salve will be representing India in this matter. Salve is the former solicitor general of India and has represented many high profile cases. Salve comes from an illustrious family of lawyers, his grandfather PK Salve was a successful criminal lawyer who was also a part of the Freedom Movement in India. Early in his career, Salve assisted Nani Palkhivala, a notable tax lawyer in Mumbai and then went on to work with Soli Sarabjee. In 1992, he was made a senior counsel by the Supreme Court and in 1999, he was appointed to be the Solicitor General of India. However, in 2002 when he was given a second term, Salve declined. According to Hindustan Times, it was because of his difference with then then ruling party's stand in the Best Bakery Gujarat riots case. He cited personal reasons for declining this second term, according to The Hindu and is quoted as saying, "In fact, I had a difficult time convincing the government to give me a short break to attend to my personal problem. I will be back after a short break." In 2011, Salve recused himself from an illegal mining case citing that he had represented one or more parties, reports Hindustan Times. Notable cases Salve represented Vodafone in a tax case against the government and helped the company win the Rs 11,000 crore case. Mohan Parasaran, who represented the government in this case, has said that Salve presented his case from both macro and micro perspectives and that the argued extensively. According to the profile on Salve, written shortly after this win, by Forbes: "If you had to prepare a list of the top 10 lawyers in the country...Salve would easily figure on it. He is described by some as a legal robot, which is perhaps a recognition of his methodical execution. Salve has represented most high profile politicians, big business...and even states. He is counsel for Kerala in the Mullaperiyar Dam case." According to Forbes, Salve also ensured that the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act (POTA) charges were dropped against the Godhra accused. According to India Today, Salve is also the amicus curiae (friend of the court) in the Gujarat riot case and in the matters pertaining to environment. He helped Ratan Tata in a privacy petition in the Niira Radia tapes matter. Salve represented the Delhi police in a case regarding the crackdown on Baba Ramdev and his followers during their protest against corruption. Salve, according to a report in The Hindu, questioned the event's organisers for pointing fingers at the Delhi Police. More recently, however, Salve was disallowed by the Supreme Court of Singapore from appearing before it on behalf of Ranbaxy. The corporate was hoping to find an alternate solution to the award in the tune of more than $500 million that it would have to pay Daiichi for failing to disclose risks involved in buyout. How much do his services cost? Salve is one of the most expensive lawyers in the country. According to Legally India, he charges between Rs 6,00,000 to Rs 15,00,000 per court appearance. With inputs from agencies New Delhi/The Hague: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will on 15 May hold public hearings in the case of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court. The announcement was made by ICJ tonight, a day after it stayed Jadhav's execution following India's initiation of proceedings against Pakistan, accusing it of "egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations". "The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, will hold public hearings on Monday, 15 May 2017... in the proceedings instituted by India on 8 May 2017 against Pakistan. "The hearings will be devoted to the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by India," the ICJ said in a release. India had told ICJ that Jadhav "will be subjected to execution unless the court indicates provisional measures directing the government of Pakistan to take all measures necessary to ensure that he is not executed until the court's decision on the merits" of the case. India also pointed out that Jadhav's execution "would cause irreparable prejudice to the rights claimed by India". Noting that India has been informed by the ICJ that an action has been initiated on the "provisional measures" sought by New Delhi, External Affirs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay in New Delhi said there is "legal juridical procedure" that will be followed. Earlier, the ICJ president wrote to Pakistan prime minister, saying, "In my capacity as president of the court,... I call upon Your Excellency's government, pending the court's decision on the request for the indication of provisional measures to act in such a way as will enable any order the Court may make on this request to have its appropriate effects." On whether the "provisional measures" granted by the ICJ including a halt to Jadhav's execution was binding on Pakistan, Baglay referred to the clauses in ICJ rules which said, "a request for the indication of provisional measures shall have priority over all other cases". India had submitted that it has information that Jadhav was "kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy and was then shown to have been arrested in Baluchistan" on 3 March 2016, and that the Indian authorities were notified of that arrest on 25 March 2016, a ICJ press release had said on Tuesday. Jadhav, 46, was given death sentence last month by the Field General Court Martial in Pakistan, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Indian Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. New Delhi: The next hearing in the case of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav at the International Court of Justice that has stayed his execution in Pakistan, may take place on 15 May, senior lawyer Harish Salve, who is representing India at the Hague, has said. He said Pakistan's immediate reaction to the stay, pronounced on Monday, was essentially "political" and that India will respond if it raises any legal issue. "We moved (the ICJ) for provisional relief. The case depends on also how much time Pakistan wants to put in its response to the petition which we have filed. Tentatively it will be on 15 (of May). We may have to be there and we have informed the court we are available any day next week," he told Times Now. On consular access to 47-year-old Jadhav, Salve said there are provisions in the Vienna Convention under which when a person is arrested in a foreign country, the counsel of his country has to be informed. "The counsel of the country to which the man belongs has the right of access to that person. The basic idea is that if you are caught in a place where you are a stranger, people from your country are there to help you," he said. Jadhav has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order of the Hague-based ICJ staying Jadhav's execution came a day after India approached it against a Pakistan Field General Court Martial decision last month sentencing him to death, according to official sources. India, in its appeal before the ICJ, has accused Pakistan of "egregious" (shocking) violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The plea has said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy, but Pakistan claimed he was arrested from Balochistan on 3 March, 2016. After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) reportedly stayed the death sentence of Kulbhushan Jadhav, former Indian naval officer who later became a businessman, the Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday said that it was a "carefully considered decision" of the Indian government to move the top United Nations court, taken in the interest of a citizen (Jadhav) facing threat to his life. Talking to media persons, MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that India had to apprach the ICJ after its 16 requests for consular access to Jadhav was rejected by the Pakistan government, while adding that the "illegal detention" of an Indian citizen made New Delhi on the grounds of seeking consular relief. Terming the death sentence and the process adopted by Pakistan as a "contravention of international law", Baglay said that India got "no response" from Pakistan on getting the documents of the case and the charge sheet. The spokesperson said that they have got no response on the appeal as well as the visa application filed by Jadhav's mother. Baglay added that the Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had written to Pakistan Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz on 27 April requesting visa for Jadhav's family. When questioned about the future course of action, Baglay did not give details but said that the court proceedings will begin soon and that the president will convene the court at the end of the month. On the issue of the exact details of the execution, as to whether it was stayed or not, Baglay said that it is privileged information between the government of India and the ICJ. He also added that the measure was a provisional in nature as part of Article 73 and 74 of the ICJ. On Pakistan's possible reaction to the verdict, Bagalay tried to side-step the question and called it a hypothetical question. He also added that a possible case of non-compliance of verdict by both countries is a conjectural matter. On being asked whether the MEA has any information on the health status of the former navy officer, the spokesperson answered in the negative. On 27 April, India had sought from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court in Islamabad. India had moved the court on Monday seeking a set of reliefs including "by way of suspension of the sentence of death awarded to the accused", and "restraining Pakistan from giving effect to the sentence awarded by the military court". Jadhav, a former Indian naval officer, was allegedly arrested in Balochistan in March 2016. Pakistan said Jadhav worked for the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). A military court sentenced him to death on April 10 on charges of espionage and waging war against Islamabad. New Delhi had warned that if Jadhav was hanged, it would be considered "premeditated murder" by Islamabad. With inputs from agencies Recently, two decisions taken by the BJP governments on the role of madrassas have emerged in the press. One of these, announced by Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, shows the intellectual bankruptcy of the Narendra Modi government on the issue. The second, announced by Assam's education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, reveals a revolutionary move by the BJP government in Assam. Let's take the first case. On 18 March, Naqvi announced: "We have decided that the madrassas which are providing mainstream education or those that want to, we will help such madrassas on a big scale. And we have a formula of 3Ts teachers, tiffins and toilets." He added, "We also plan to modernise a few madrassas by including imparting of education of science and technology." On 24 April, speaking in Ghaziabad, the minister for minority affairs, said: "One lakh madrassas (traditional learning centres) will be upgraded with new technology. A total of 25,000 madrassas have been identified, including 12,000 in Uttar Pradesh, to introduce the 3T formula of teachers, tiffin and toilets." So, when Naqvi was talking of "a few madrassas" in his 18 March statement, he actually meant this: one lakh madrassas. So, the Modi government, like the counterfeit secular governments previously led by the Congress, believes in upgrading madrassas and organising Sufi conferences (not a school-level mathematics Olympiad). It strikes at the secular nature of the Constitution, which requires the Indian State to maintain distance from all religions and favour no one. However, to look good, the Modi government too is unwilling to adopt a progressive path different from that of previous governments. So, if I am a Muslim parent, both the secular and dharmic governments are telling me this: our Hindu children will go to proper schools where we will teach them mathematics, sciences and economics from grade one through Class 12, but you send your children to madrassas, more so because this is what you and your leadership led by Islamic clerics desire. We have reached a stage in the life of the Indian republic where both dharmic Hindus and fake secular leaders are happily adopting policies which keep Muslims separate from India's social mainstream: for example, each political party has established a minority wing to keep Muslim sin their cocoon. This means: Only Hindus can be "Indian" political leaders in India; Muslims must remain minority leaders. The ideas leadership of Muslims remains in the hands of Islamic clerics. Though some leaders like Asaduddin Owaisi, Asim Azami and Azam Khan are not Islamic clerics, yet the intellectual leadership offered by them is based on the corpus of ideas essentially derived from Islamic clerics. When the non-Muslims of Mecca invited Prophet Muhammad to live together and share power, he declared: "To you your religion, to me mine." This declaration revealed in the Quranic verse number 109:6 is today being followed by Muslims and equally by Hindus insofar as government policies are concerned. For example, the Congress government enacted the Right to Education (RTE) Act under which children aged 6-14 must be in proper schools. However, the government exempted the madrassas from the ambit of RTE Act, pushing Muslims into their cocoon. The Article 21A of the Indian Constitution states: "The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine." By giving exemption to madrassas, the RTE Act violates a Muslim child's fundamental right to education. The RTE Act is not a fundamental right, the right to education is. Also, Article 45 states: "The State shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years." Though part of the Directive Principles of State Policy, Article 45 has been interpreted as a fundamental right by the Supreme Court. Therefore, the Constitution makes clear that the Indian State cannot hand over the education of children to non-governmental institutions like madrassas and gurukuls till the age of 14 years. The Article 21A needs to be revised to include all Indians under 18 within its ambit. Further, the Article 21A, being a child's fundamental right, cannot be subject to some other rights like right to religion, which is available to the Indian citizen, not to communities. While the Indian State abdicates its duty to educate children and hands over this responsibility to madrassas and gurukuls in violation of the Constitution, madrassas hegemonise Muslim children's minds at a vulnerable age when their rights are sought to be protected by the Indian State. In their role, madrassas are centres of excellence and religious orthodoxy. Madrassas cannot be banned, but children below 18 are the Indian State's responsibility. In several states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and others, government-funded madrassas are teaching religious orthodoxy to children, thereby preventing them from acquiring skills in critical thinking, skills for social living and independent thought. Also, madrassas graduates go on to dominate the thinking of Muslim community. In Bihar, the Nitish Kumar government has made madrassas at par with government-run schools just for the salary purposes. Naqvi is dishonest when he mentions that some madrassas "are providing mainstream education." During my recent tour of Uttar Pradesh, Maqbool Ahmad Falahi, the deputy principal of Jamiatul Falah madrassa at Bilariyaganj in Azamgarh district, said, "Taleem hi khud uddeshya naheen hai (education is not the only purpose of madrassas). The role of madrassas is to nurture the identity of Muslims." Madrassas are counter-liberty movements, not educational institutions. Madrassas excel in teaching religious orthodoxies. Adding the teaching of computer and mathematics in their syllabus will only fuel religious orthodoxies. Some madrassas teach some mathematics, computer science and English, but it's to propagate Islam not to prepare students to meet the needs of social life. Further: the secular Indian State cannot fund the teaching of religion. However, Muslims can run madrassas, without government money, for those above 14 years of age, ideally above 18. It is within this context that the announcement by Assam's education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma that the BJP government in Assam is determined to end the isolation of Muslims from social mainstream and to lead them on the path of national integration. On Tuesday, Sarma tweeted: To mainstream Madrasa education, we're disbanding Madrasa Education Directorate & making it part of Secondary Education Directorate/1 Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) May 9, 2017 The Madrasa Board too will be dissolved and academic part will be handed over to Board of Secondary Education. Restructuring to reform/2 Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) May 9, 2017 (Editor's note: Biswa's second tweet should be read as "The Sanskrit board too will be dissolved... (emphasis added)). Ideally, madrassas must be declared non-schools and the Indian State must not run madrassas. Until that happens, the governments are empowered to manage them, change their textbooks and make them part of the boards of secondary educations so that their students attain the same metrics of education which students from mainstream schools achieve. Also, subjects like Islamic theology and Quranic studies must not be assessed at examinations for the award of school certificates. Sarma, who should ideally be inducted into the Union cabinet as the human resource development minister, has demonstrated innovative thinking to force madrassas to standardise their education by disbanding the madrassa board. Education is a liberating force and a guarantee against radicalisation; it is also an insurance for economic uplift of all citizens. Sarma's decision shows that this is for the first time in history the Indian State is beginning to take baby steps for the care and education of Indian children. The author, a former BBC journalist, is a contributing editor at Firstpost and executive director of the Open Source Institute, New Delhi. He tweets @tufailelif After years of armed struggle with the Indian State for Naga sovereignty, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM), has finally conceded to signing a peace accord promising shared sovereignty, according to The Times of India. The NSCN-IM has been involved in an armed struggle since past 35 years and negotiation efforts for the last 20 years have not yielded many results until after over 80 rounds of talk since 1997, a breakthrough was achieved as the Indian government signed a "framework of agreement." Following this, in an official statement, quoted by The Times of India, NSCN-IM chairman has said that the Nagas have agreed to co-exist together under shared sovereignty, adding that the political dialogue process was "progressing smoothly." Earlier this year in March, the organisation had created ripples in North East India after the organisation said that Narendra Modi had conceded to the demand for greater Nagaland an autonomous state integrating all the Naga-inhabited areas of neighbouring Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and some portions Myanmar, which it considers to be the rightful homeland of the Nagas a charge that the Indian government vehemently denied. NSCN(IM) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah had said, "The historic Framework of Agreement recognises the unique history, the identity, the sovereignty, the territories of the Nagas. It also recognises the legitimate right of the Nagas to the integration of all Naga territories." However, the Indian government had clarified that no such decision was made."Such reports are erroneous. It is clarified that there is no such agreement or decision by the government of India," a home ministry spokesperson had said. The NSCN-IM has always demanded an independent state consisting of all the territorial regions with Naga majority across several northeastern Indian states and have insisted on calling it, Nagalim, or greater Nagaland. It came into existence as a movement formed to resist the Shillong Accord of November 1975, signed between the government of India and Naga National Council. Therefore, when the government on Monday announced that a historic 'framework of peace agreement' has been signed, it was natural that speculations stir up in neighbouring states whose interests are closely interlinked with any peace initiatives that the Indian government undertakes with the Nagas. The government has, however, said that the signed agreement is only "initial and preliminary" and will only set the foundation for future negotiations with the rebel organisation. The Centre has said that NSCN-IM's preliminary and most controversial demand of carving out a Nagalim, has been "set aside for now," according to a report in Hindustan Times. However, it has kept mum on the leaner details of the agreement signed. PIB, which often puts out copious records of all government decisions, has a brief report that says, "Details of the final settlement are being worked out within the parameters of the Framework Agreement. Hence it would be premature to make public the Framework Agreement." One reason for the government's silence could be that, under the federal structure of India, it could not tinker with the existing boundaries of other northeastern states, parts of which the NSCN-IM claims, without their approval. And the traditional stand of political parties in these regions make it amply clear that neither of them will accede even an inch of their land. This, in contrast to the fact that NSCN-IM was born as a resistance movement against the Shillong Accord, makes matters extremely complicated. At the most, the government can negotiate for greater autonomy in the Naga-majority regions to bring the rebel organisation under its fold, but as if now, that's a far-fetched dream. Besides this, another problem is that there are several armed groups, representing various tribal groups in the region, and he government has been successful in bringing only NSCN-IM to the table. Although NSCN-IM is the largest Naga rebel group but it mostly represents the Tangkhul tribe; it lacks representation and recognition among other tribes. And there are 17 major tribes and over 20 sub-tribes in Nagaland, and even the insurgent groups are divided along the tribal lines, according to a report in News18. The active terror groups in Nagaland include Federal Government of Nagaland-Non-Accordist (FGN-NA), Federal Government of Nagaland -Accordist (FGN-A), National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) NSCN (K), Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Reformation (NSCN-R), Non-Accordist faction of Naga National Council (NNC-NA), Naga National Council-Accordist (NNC-Accordist) and Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF). Therefore, the peace process remains on the surface of the problem, at best. NSCN (K), is still one of the deadliest armed rebel group in the region. However, the perception that some progress has been made, after the Narendra Modi-led government signed the 'historic' Naga peace accord in August 2015, has helped in trust-building and setting the tone for future negotiations. Hyderabad: Son of a Cabinet Minister of Andhra Pradesh died in a road accident in Hyderabad early Wednesday, police said. Nishit Narayana (22), son of Municipal Administration Minister P Narayana, and his friend Raja Ravi Varma (23) died when the Mercedes Benz SUV in which they were travelling rammed into a pillar of Hyderabad Metro. The accident occurred on Road Number 36, Jubliee Hills, a posh locality, around 3 am. Police said though the air balloons had opened, such was the impact of the collision that the duo sustained critical injuries, resulting in their death. Police suspect that the car was being driven at a high speed. It was not clear who was driving the vehicle. Narayana's family members rushed to Apollo Hospital, where the bodies were kept. The Minister, who was on a visit to London, is rushing back. Telangana's Irrigation Minister Harish Rao also visited the hospital and consoled the family members. P Narayana is the Head of Narayana Group of Institutions and he was inducted into the cabinet of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu in 2014. His son had recently taken over as the Director of the group. This is the latest in a series of accidents in recent years involving children of VIPs. Sons of former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin, former ministers Babu Mohan and K Venkat Reddy and veteran actor and BJP leader Kota Srinivas Rao were killed in different accidents in and around Hyderabad. Mumbai: Slamming the statement made by Maharashtra BJP chief Raosaheb Danve for seeking a guarantee from the Opposition that loan waiver will stop suicide by farmers, its ruling ally Shiv Sena had said that it showed he has no sympathy for farmers. Danve, while talking to reporters after visiting Sai Baba temple at Shirdi in Ahmednagar on Monday, asked the Opposition to "give in writing" that a loan waiver would stop farmers' suicides in Maharashtra. The Opposition NCP and Congress had last month organised a statewide 'sangharsh yatra' campaign seeking farm loan waiver. The Sena too had supported the demand. "Danve made the comments while he was on a trip to Shirdi. This shows how much reverence he has for farmers," quipped an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana'. "Loan waiver is not a permanent solution but it is an immediate help that should be given to ensure that farmers live, it said. The Sena also said that asking for a guarantee is equivalent to making fun of the plight of farmers. "Questions are now being raised if there is somebody behind Danve who is stinging the Chief Minister with his comments. It is the responsibility of the government to make sure the farmers live. But the state has become a cemetery for farmers," it charged. The Sena claimed that 4,000 farmers have committed suicide in the state in last two years. It said farmers take debt to grow crops, which are at times destroyed by unseasonal rains, hailstorm or drought. Even if the natural conditions are favourable, they do not get the minimum support price, which results in the farmers dumping their produce in protest of the government's farm policies, the editorial said. Recently, a group of farmers dumped tur dal, bananas and onions at the gate of the state secretariat here to highlight the problems being faced by agriculturists. The Sena said if a farmer commits suicide to get out of this circle, it is the failure of the government. "These are the people who will not come forward to offer a glass of water to a dying farmer, but will seek their votes. On the contrary, they will ask for a guarantee that the farmer won't die if offered a glass of water," it taunted. The International Court of Justice at the Hague in the Netherlands has put a stay on the death sentence of Kulbhushan Jadhav by Pakistani military court. In a tweet on Tuesday, Ministry of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj said that she has spoken to Jadhav's mother and she has been informed about the order of President, ICJ. She also added that Harish Salve will be representing the country. I have spoken to the mother of #KulbhushanJadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Art 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court. Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) May 9, 2017 Mr.Harish Salve, Senior Advocate is representing India before International Court of Justice in the #KulbhushanJadhav case. Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) May 9, 2017 In a statement issued on Tuesday, the ICJ said: "On 8 May, 2017, the Republic of India instituted proceedings against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, accusing the latter of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations' (hereinafter the Vienna Convention') in the matter of the detention and trial of an Indian national, Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court in Pakistan." "The Applicant contends that it was not informed of Mr. Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights," the statement said. Under Article 74, paragraph 4 of the ICJ rules, which says "pending the meeting of the Court, the President may call upon the parties to act in such a way as will enable any order the Court may make on the request for provisional measures to have its appropriate effects", ICJ President Justice Ronny Abraham has written to Pakistan seeking the suspension of the sentence. According to Hindustan Times, India has approached the ICJ for the first time in 46 years. In 1971, following a hijacking incident, India suspended Pakistan's overflights. Pakistan had claimed that India cannot suspend it's overflight and land rights. The ICJ had ruled in India's favour. The ICJ's judgment stated: "In its judgment in the case concerning the Appeal relating to the Jurisdiction of the ICAO Council (India v. Pakistan), the Court, by 13 votes to 3, rejected the Government of Pakistan's objections on the question of its competence and found that it had jurisdiction to entertain India's appeal." Pakistan has taken India to the ICJ twice, once in 1973 and then again in 1999. The application was on the jurisdiction rights over 195 Pakistani nationals accused of committing genocide in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and transfer of their custody to Bangladesh from India. Pakistan, however, withdrew the case the next year. In 1999, Pakistan had approached the ICJ stating that India should be held responsible under the international law for shooting down an aircraft of the Pakistan navy and demanded that India should make reparations. The ICJ ruled in favour of India. Regarding the case, The American Society of International Law website states: "Rejecting Pakistan's arguments, the Court pointed out that, whatever may have been the reasons causing India to limit the scope of its acceptance of the Court's compulsory jurisdiction in the way it did, it must abide by this limitation expressing the intention of India as the declarant State. Given that Pakistan and India are both members of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Optional Clause provides no basis of jurisdiction in this case." In the Marshal Islands vs India case, Marshal Islands (applicant) "claimed India breached customary international law obligations concerning negotiations relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race and to nuclear disarmament." In in its judgment, the court said: "But the Court has found that no dispute existed between the Parties prior to the filing of the Application, and consequently it lacks jurisdiction to consider these questions." In the 1955 case concerning the right of passage over India territory between India and Portugal, the court rejected India's argument. In Jadhav's case, India has approached ICJ on the ground that the Vienna Convention on Consular relations are being flouted by Pakistan and "India can invoke the jurisdiction of ICJ from the protocol", according to News18. Meanwhile, Salve said, "We may have a hearing on Monday or a scheduling on Monday. We needed immediate relief. Whenever Pakistan is willing to be engaged we are ready." Pakistani officials on Wednesday said that it is looking into the judgment of the ICJ and would submit a formal response in two days. With inputs from agencies New Delhi: The Supreme Court will commence hearing from 11 May on a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of 'triple talaq', 'nikah halala' and polygamy practices among Muslims. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice J Khehar will commence hearing on seven petitions, including five separate writ petitions filed by Muslim women challenging the practice of triple talaq prevalent in the community and terming it unconstitutional. The bench, also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph, R F Nariman, U U Lalit and Abdul Nazeer, will also take up the main matter on its own as a petition titled "Muslim Women's quest for equality". The members of the bench are from different religious communities including Sikh, Christian, Parsee, Hindu and Muslim. The hearing assumes significance as the apex court has decided to hear the case during the summer vacation and even suggested that it is likely to sit on Saturdays and Sundays to expeditiously decide the contentious and sensitive issues arising in the matter. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi will assist the bench which will also examine to what extent the court can interfere in the Muslim personal laws if they are found to be violative of the fundamental rights of citizens enshrined in the Constitution. The apex court had on its own taken cognizance of the question whether Muslim women faced gender discrimination in the event of divorce or due to other marriages of their husbands. The top court will examine the issue to give an authoritative pronouncement on the constitutional and legal validity of 'triple talaq', 'nikah halala' and polygamy practices among Muslims. The hearing holds importance as the Allahabad High Court in its verdict pronounced in the last week of April, had held the practice of triple talaq as unilateral and bad in law. The High Court verdict had come while dismissing a petition filed by one Aaqil Jamil whose wife had filed a criminal complaint against him alleging that he had tortured her for dowry and when his demands were not met, he gave her triple talaq. The copy of High Court verdict was made available only yesterday. The apex court had on 30 March said that the Muslim practices of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy are issues that are "very important" and involve "sentiments" and a constitution bench would hear the petitions from 11 May. Influential Muslim organisations like the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) have opposed court's adjudication of these matters, maintaining these practices stemmed from the Holy Quran and were not justiciable. The Muslim women who have filed the petitions have challenged the practice of triple talaq in which the husband, quite often, pronounces talaq thrice in one go, sometimes even by phone or text message. On other hand, Nikah Halala is a practice intended to curb the 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. The apex court while referring to the matter to a larger bench had observed that "sentiments" were involved in the matter pending before it and a five-judge constitution bench would adjudicate the issue, which required a detailed hearing. The apex court had earlier said it would decide issues pertaining to the legal aspects of the practices of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy among Muslims, but would not deal with the question whether divorce under Muslim law needs to be supervised by courts as it fell under the legislative domain. The Centre had on 7 October last opposed in the Supreme Court the practice of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy among Muslims and favoured a relook on grounds like gender equality and secularism. On 27 March, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) had told the apex court that pleas challenging such practices among Muslims were not maintainable as the issues fell outside the realm of judiciary. The Board had also said the validity of the Mohammedan Law, founded essentially in the Holy Quran and sources based on it, cannot be tested on the particular provisions of the Constitution. It had said there was a need for "judicial restraint" before going into constitutional interpretation of these unless such an exercise becomes unavoidable. The Ministry of Law and Justice, in its affidavit, had referred to constitutional principles like gender equality, secularism, international covenants, religious practices and marital law prevalent in various Islamic countries to drive home the point that the practice of triple talaq and polygamy needed to be adjudicated upon afresh by the apex court. Chennai: The whereabouts of Calcutta High Court judge CS Karnan, sentenced to jail for six months by the Supreme Court, remained a mystery on Wednesday, even as a West Bengal police team reached Chennai. Some sources in Chennai said he had left the State Guest House for the famed Shiva temple in Srikalahasti town in Andhra Pradesh. But an official at the temple, about 120 km from Chennai, told IANS over telephone that there was no trace of the judge. "He did not arrive yesterday or today. We have no idea if he will reach the temple tomorrow," the official said. Another temple official had earlier said that the judge was likely to reach the Andhra town on Wednesday evening and offer prayers on Thursday morning. Justice Karnan checked into the Chennai Guest House on Tuesday after leaving his home in Kolkata. But he has not officially vacated the guest house room and his bill remains to be settled. Officials said two other advocates who came with the judge have been asked to vacate their rooms in the Chennai guest house. The apex court has ordered the Director General of West Bengal Police to set up a team to implement its arrest order "forthwith". Justice Karnan was found guilty of contempt for hurling corruption charges against Supreme Court judges including the Chief Justice. Patna: A woman in Bihar's Buxar district refused to marry a dark-complexioned groom, saying he was not 'smart' enough for her, a police official said on Wednesday. The groom, Anjani Chouhan, was shocked after his would-be-bride refused to marry him citing his dark complexion at the marriage mandap in Ramrekha Ghat in Buxar town, about 125 km from Patna, on 9 May. "After Anjani was informed that she had refused to marry him, he requested elders from his family and the bride's side to talk to her and persuade her not to do so as it is matter of honour and dignity in society. But the girl made it clear that she would not marry a dark complexioned man," a district police official said. According to police officials, the bride was happy during the rituals related to marriage but suddenly told her close family members and friends that she will not marry Anjani because of his dark complexion. Two members of the groom's family approached the police for help. "We told them that police cannot do anything if the girl has refused to marry," an official said. The upset groom had to return empty-handed along with the marriage party. It is the second such case in Bihar within two weeks. In a similar case in the last week of April, a woman refused to marry a dark complexioned groom in Samastipur district. Over half a dozen cases of brides refusing to marry "unsuitable" grooms, on grounds they were illiterate, drunk, deaf or unemployed, have been reported over the past one month. "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. Several such cases across the state 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 of 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. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday termed Rajput warrior Maharana Pratap as a role model for the society. Adityanath said this during an event held in Lucknow on the occasion of 477th birth anniversary of Maharana Pratap. "Maharana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh and Chhatrapati Shivaji are our role models, and we must follow the path shown by them. Youngsters must learn a lesson from the self-respect and strength of character from Maharana Pratap. Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar were invaders. The sooner we accept the truth, all the problems of our country will vanish," he said. Urging the audience to treasure the rich history of the country, the UP CM said, "A community which does not have the capacity to treasure its rich history, can never keep its geography safe." Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik and Minister of State for External Affairs General (retd) VK Singh were also present on the occasion. New York: Neither Bill Clinton nor James Patterson has ever tried something like this before. The former president and the best-selling novelist are collaborating on a thriller, The President is Missing, to come out June 2018 as an unusual joint release from rival publishers Alfred A Knopf and Little, Brown and Co. In a statement Monday provided to The Associated Press, the publishers called the book "a unique amalgam of intrigue, suspense and behind-the-scenes global drama from the highest corridors of power. It will be informed by details that only a president can know." Knopf has long been Clinton's publisher, and Patterson has been with Little, Brown for decades. The President is Missing is the first work of fiction by Clinton, whose best-known book is the million-selling My Life. For Patterson, it's the chance to team up with a friend who knows as well as anyone about life in the White House. "Working with President Clinton has been the highlight of my career, and having access to his firsthand experience has uniquely informed the writing of this novel," Patterson said in a statement. "I'm a storyteller, and President Clinton's insight has allowed us to tell a really interesting one. It's a rare combination readers will be drawn to the suspense, of course, but they'll also be given an inside look into what it's like to be president." "Working on a book about a sitting president drawing on what I know about the job, life in the White House and the way Washington works has been a lot of fun," Clinton said in a statement. "And working with Jim has been terrific. I've been a fan of his for a very long time." A political release from the 1990s had a similar arrangement: Random House and Simon & Schuster jointly published the nonfiction All's Fair by husband-and-wife campaign consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin. Knopf and Little, Brown declined to offer any more details about the book, including whether it refers to President Donald Trump, who last fall defeated Clinton's wife, Hillary Clinton. Financial terms for the novel, which the authors began working on late in 2016, were not disclosed. Clinton and Patterson share the same literary representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, who negotiated the deal. "The President is Missing" will be co-written, co-published and co-edited Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group chairman Sonny Mehta is working on the manuscript with CEO Michael Pietsch of Hachette Book Group, the parent company of Little, Brown. "This is a blockbuster collaboration between two best-selling authors," Mehta and Pietsch said in a joint statement, "and the pages we've read to date are riveting, full of intricate plotting and detail. This is a book that promises to entertain and delight millions of readers around the world, and we are thrilled to be working on it together and with our esteemed houses supporting us." Presidents and ex-presidents have been turning out books for a long time, but novels are rare. Jimmy Carter, a prolific and wide-ranging author since leaving the White House in 1981, released the historical novel The Hornet's Nest in 2003. A presidential daughter, Margaret Truman, had a successful career with her Capital Crime mystery series. Clinton's other books include Giving and Back to Work. Patterson and various co-authors complete several works a year, ranging from young adult novels to the Alex Cross crime series. Penguin Random House which has published both Clinton and Patterson has UK, Commonwealth and European rights to the collaboration. "This unprecedented collaboration with its compelling mix of insider knowledge and edge-of-the-seat suspense is utterly irresistible," said Susan Sandon, divisional managing director at Penguin Random House in a statement. Kapil Mishra is now on a fast. He is trying to be the new Arvind Kejriwal whatever perceived good the Delhi chief minister stood for in the past few years anyway. He may not have the sort of following that the original Kejriwal had between 2012 and 2015 but the former minister in the Delhi government has struck the right cord with a section of people and also with a section of workers in the Aam Aadmi Party. Mishra would not be able to emerge as the new anti-graft hero unless he was to effectively finish off Kejriwal's self-proclaimed reputation as an anti-corruption crusader. In the past four days, he has not only taken away the moral halo and incorruptible sheen of the AAP convenor, but has also put set him on silent mode. If Kejriwal claimed that he left the lucrative job of an officer in the Income Tax Department to take a crack at public life, then Mishra can safely claim that he didn't care for the highly-coveted post of a minister to be the people's voice against graft in the corridors of power whether in his own party or the government. He came out with a sensational charge that as a minister in the government, he saw Kejriwal take Rs two crore in cash from tainted ministerial colleague Satyendra Jain. In a matter of seconds, he painted Kejriwal as yet another corrupt politician who even took a bribe from his own colleague. In one single stroke, Mishra positioned himself as a young idealist who cared less for his ministerial position than speaking the "truth", and waged a no-holds barred war against his onetime guru-cum-leader, whom he needed to expose and ensure that he was booked as per the relevant provisions of the law. AAP's politics was of symbolism. Mishra as founder member of AAP and India Against Corruption, and an activist had mastered the artful politics of symbolism. He thus first went to Rajghat, drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and vowed in name of the Father of the Nation to make the charge that stunned the nation: Kejriwal is not just making money for himself, but is a nepotist of the highest order who would make his minister swing a seven-acre Rs 50-crore farmhouse land deal for his now deceased brother-in-law SK Bansal. Jain has also been accused of clearing suspected bills worth Rs 10 crore for the same relative of Kejriwal. It is interesting to note that despite a number of reports and leaks of investigative agency inquiries on hawala and benami land deals against Jain, he continues to be the most trusted minister for Kejriwal. Jain holds seven important portfolios health, industries, PWD, power, home, transport and urban development. Jain's name figures in all the charges that Mishra has made against Kejriwal. He is trying to convey why Jain remains to be so useful to Kejriwal. The VK Shunglu Committee report had earlier pointed out how a relative of chief minister was appointed as OSD to Jain in violation of rules. The report was full of details of other instances of nepotism, favouritism and cronyism. Mishra's style and form in making sensational charges is almost a carbon copy of what used to be the trademark Kejriwal style. But then there are a few differences: First, unlike Kejriwal, Mishra is not making a charge against someone high and mighty, with whom he has nothing to do whether in working or within his domain of review. He is making a charge against his own chief minister for something he allegedly witnessed as a minister in the same government. He is making a charge against a person to whom he looked up and with whom he worked closely since the days of the Anna Hazare movement, at India Against Corruption, in AAP and his supreme boss in the Delhi government. Next, Kejriwal had nothing to lose when he made wild charges against people in high places. Unlike Kejriwal, Mishra had a lot to lose when he made a personal corruption charge against the Delhi chief minister. Third, unlike Kejriwal, Mishra is not making a charge and moving onto the next thing. Mishra is attempting to pursue his charge, at least as he is being seen for now, to its logical end. He is not just a complainant at the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) of the Delhi government and CBI, but is also willing to be a sarkari gawah (prosecution witness) in the charges he has made against Kejriwal and Jain. That makes this a very different from a casual allegation, which is the norm in politics. After visiting the CBI office to formally lodge corruption complaints against Kejriwal, Mishra said, "I have registered three complaints. The first is in connection with the Rs 50-crore land deal of Kejriwal's relative. The second is against the cash exchange of Rs two crore between Kejriwal and Jain. And the third is against five AAP leaders who misused funds for foreign trips." Mishra may be getting the same sort of media attention as Kejriwal used to receive, but his current style of politics or supposed crusader zeal, however, is problematic. He will be neither able to spilt AAP, nor would any other party (the BJP or Congress included) like to invite Mishra with his outwardly fiercely moralistic independent streak to its fold. He can be an activist, but again unlike his guru Kejriwal he can't be a modern day politician. He had been a minister for the past years, but failed to learn the tricks of trade in politics, particularly the art of the possible. Corruption allegations against a political leader by a comrade can prove more harmful than those shot by a rival because conspiracy theories forwarded to neutralise the impact of such accusations hardly prove of any effect in these cases. This is what seems to have happened with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, after a Cabinet colleague and a close aide since the days of India Against Corruption movement, Kapil Mishra, accused him of bribery and forgery. Aam Admi Party was grappling for a befitting reply to these allegations which delivers a solid blow to Kejriwal's public image of incorruptibility. Since the results for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi were announced, the public discourse around AAP has been about Kejriwal's political ineptitude. But the discourse has drastically shifted to corruption after Mishra's allegations against the chief minister surfaced accepting a bribe of Rs 2 crore from water mafia and of being involved in a conspiracy to pass fake bills worth Rs 10 crore and misusing official power to make land deals. In fact, the party's allegations on EVM tampering made against BJP in the Delhi Legislative Assembly on Tuesday seemed like an attempt to deflect the issue to a more convenient issue. When AAP fared miserably in the recently-concluded civic polls, Kejriwal's rise to grace and fall from it was compared to Prafulla Kumar Mahanta's, the leader of Asom Gana Parishad, who once rode to power in Assam on the tides of a mass-hysteria left by historic 'Assam Movement'. The two were compared because Kejriwal, like Mahata, formed the AAP on the pedestal of a mass movement 'India Against Corruption'. However, Mishra's allegations set the two apart Mahanta, who was Assam chief minister for two terms, faced numerous charges of corruption but none of them came from his cabinet colleagues. "Certainly, betrayal of public trust was a serious allegation against Mahanta, as severe charges of corruption were levelled against him and his government in his very first term as the chief minister (1985 to 1990). But it is noteworthy that no member from his cabinet or legislative party went on record to lodge a complaint against him," said Naba Thakuriya, a senior journalist based in Guwahati, underscoring the difference in the way how both the leaders fell from grace. From its formulation days, the AAP has been following the trajectory of AGP, albeit inadvertently. "Aam Admi Party's oath taking ceremony at the Ram Lila Maidan instead of Raj Bhawan, fiery speeches by it's leaders in the ceremony, and subsequent rise of dissidence in the government and party all seemed repetition of the heydays of AGP," said Naba Thakuriya. AGP that was formed by the leaders of the historic 'Assam movement' which took the state by storm for nearly six years from the year 1979 to 1985 rose to powe on the aspirations of Assamese to be free from infiltrators from Bangladesh. Nearly three decades later, AAP was conceived on the pedestal of the 'India Against Corruption' agitation led by Anna Hazare in Delhi's Ram Lila Maidan, with the lofty goal of eradicating corruption. Both the agitations appealed to the people's aspirations for freedom, which they believed were hindered by factors such as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and corruption and the public trusted the likes of Kejriwal and Mahanta on the belief that leaders of both the agitations were incorruptible. Kumud Sharma, once an activist in the Assam movement told Firspost that such was the intensity of people's trust on Mahanta that they would keep fasts for his good health and success. "But this is not the image that he enjoys now," he promptly to added. It was almost same for Kejriwal. Former AAP member and psephologist Yogendra Yadav, who was ousted from the AAP two years ago, had refused to believe corruption charges against Kejriwal. "I might agree with charges of power greed, arrogance, authoritarianism against Kejriwal, but charge of taking bribe need solid evidence," he tweeted. Barring his 49-day-long stint as the Chief Minister of Delhi in 2013, Kejriwal too did not have any prior experience in politics just like Mahanta,when he held the reigns of the state with a thumping majority in the assembly in 2015. The results of holding political power without any political experience became evident in the very first few months in power, as both the leaders faced serious threats from dissidents. If Mahanta fell apart with his cabinet colleague, home minister and long-time aide in Assam Movement Bhrigu Kumar Phukan, just after rising to power for the first time in the year 1985, Kejriwal witnessed dissidence being brewed by Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav just a few months after the elections. India Today had reported the difference between Mahanta and Phukan in their first term in power in Assam: "Differences between Mahanta and Phukan, both of whom showed admirable acumen and tenacity -during the students movement, had been simmering for some time. The chief minister suspected that his home minister was growing too ambitious and was garnering support among dissidents to dethrone him. According to AGP sources, Mahanta also had suspicions that Phukan had covert links with the Bodo agitators in the state." It also cited an interview given by Mahanta, where he reportedly said, "The problem is that Phukan sometimes tries to act like a chief minister. The problem with the AGP government is that every ministry wants to project its own image. Nobody is bothered about the collective image of the government." Though differences between Mahanta and Phukan were sorted out between the two after Mahanta suspended three dissident leaders, an uneasy calm prevailed between the two. Phukan was even quoted in the media as saying, "My differences with the chief minister were never personal and I will sort them out within the party. I believe in party discipline and will never go to the press with grievances and also never compromise on the issue of corruption." Kejriwal, too, tried to contain dissent by expelling Yadav and Bhushan but failed miserably as allegations of corruption and mis-management within the party continued to find its way through. Another AAP MLA Devinder Sehrawat alleged corruption and exploitation of women during Punjab election by some party members. Arvind Kejriwal suspended him too after which Shehrawat tweeted, "Repeated reports of molestation of women and sexual abuse, ring master, Arvind Kejriwal obliging his lecherous cotrie (sic) & adding more such candidates." The final blow came from Mishra, who not only accused Kejriwal of accepting bribe but also lodged a formal complaint with the CBI. Just like Kejriwal, Mahanta's first term as the chief minister was marked by severe allegations of corruption and political ineptitude. But in his very first term, Mahanta showed remarkable command over his colleagues within the party, which is missing in the case of Kejriwal. Even though Mahanta won a second term to power, he failed to recover his earlier image. In fact, in his second term, Mahanta launched 'extra constitutional killings' to contain ULFA militancy by killing the relatives of the insurgents. Mahanta's second term as the chief minister of Assam heralded the darkest period in the state's contemporary history which saw many innocent people being killed by state-sponsored assassinations. The charges of secret killings decimated Mahanta and his party to near-irrelevance. Only in 2016, AGP emerged as a junior partner in the present BJP-led alliance government in Assam after 15 years of exile from power. Mahanta ensured his second trysts with power by managing to keep the party together. But would Delhi give Kejriwal a second chance? The electronic voting machines can be rigged, theoretically, at least. Every technology could be hacked into and tampered with but there has to be scientific proof to establish the vulnerability of voting machines, the Supreme Court said about a month ago while hearing a plea from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on the issue. Worldwide, every complaint against EVMs has stuck to the basic argument that since computer chips control the machines and these are susceptible to manipulation, they cannot be fully trusted. Different countries have responded differently to the question of trustworthiness of EVMs. Germany has done away with the use of machines altogether as have Netherlands, Ireland and Italy on the ground of transparency. Countries such as England and France have not embraced it despite pilot trials. In some other countries electronic voting is backed by paper ballots. Behind their action is the acknowledgement of the possibility, however remote, of rigging technology for desired result. Any such action amounts to fraud on the voter, hence unacceptable. Representing the BSP as a lawyer in the top court, P Chidambaram, made the similar argument, maintaining there was no way the voter could ascertain his vote had gone to the right person. He implied that his votes could get channelised to another person or the party he represents. He was seeking rapid implementation of the Supreme Court judgment of 2013 where it sought introduction of Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) where the person concerned would be in no doubt about where his vote went. BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao, who is also a psephologist, had raised the possibility of voting machines getting manipulated a few years ago. When AAP legislator Saurabh Bhardwaj demonstrated in the Delhi Assembly that manipulation at the booth level was possible he was only raising an old doubt. According to him, and his party, the process is simple. The hacker presses the unique code that is the same as the voting machines software after he receives the bleep following voting and the machine stands rigged. All the votes following then go to one particular party. Bhardwaj has been mocked for his effort. Maybe justifiably so. This could have been an act of desperation from a party trying to save face after repeated poor performances in polls or just a tactic to divert attention from the recent turmoil in the party. However, its a problem that needs to be resolved to everybodys satisfaction. The AAP is not the only party that has raised it, the BSP and the Congress have done it too. Whatever their compulsion behind blaming the machines, the point is, it is the electoral process that finally gets a bad name. The Election Commission on its part has clarified that the EVMs in Bhardwajs demonstration is a lookalike machine and not the type used in elections. Elaborate technical security features have been built into the commissions machines and these are backed by strict administrative protocol to prevent any tampering. It had earlier clarified that the EVMs in India are different from those in use in foreign countries, especially on security parameters, and are tamper-proof. But as the controversy gets bigger it needs to much more. The best way is to accept the challenge of the AAP and ask it to change the motherboard in 90 seconds to manipulate test voting and results. It should also find out any other loophole in the technical system which is criticised and needs to be plugged. It would not only settle the doubts over EVMs once for all, but also save the commission from unnecessary criticism. India has one of the worlds best conducted elections despite its geographical spread and vast population. This reputation should not be allowed to be sullied through motivated attacks. When its elections, even the theoretical possibilities need to be dealt with. Panaji: Siddharth Kuncalienkar, the BJP MLA from Panaji constituency has resigned from the Legislative Assembly, apparently paving way for Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to contest a bypoll from the seat. Kuncalienkar tendered his resignation to Assembly Speaker Pramod Sawant. The legislator was first elected from the seat in the by-election held in December 2015 when Parrikar was elevated to the Union Cabinet. He got re-elected from the constituency during the state Assembly elections held in February 2017 by defeating United Goans' candidate Atanasio Monserratte. Parrikar, who took oath as chief minister in March after resigning as defence minister, is heading the BJPled coalition government in his home state. He was sworn-in as Goa's chief minister on 14 March this year. He has to get elected to the Assembly within six months of taking charge as the chief minister. Parrikar was earlier representing the Panaji seat as chief minister at the time of his elevation as defence minister in November 2014. Kuncalienkar and another BJP MLA Nilesh Cabral (Curchorem) had earlier volunteered to vacate their seats for Parrikar. Chandigarh: Former convenor of AAP's Punjab unit Gurpreet Singh Waraich 'Ghuggi' on Wednesday resigned from the primary membership of the party, expressing displeasure over the process of Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann's appointment as the new state unit chief. He said the entire election process of appointing the new state chief was "fake and unfair" and said the party adopted a "pick and choose policy" while inviting members for the election to the post. "...I'm resigning from the primary membership with a heavy heart. For Punjab, Punjabiyat whatever needs to be done, I will do that, but this party has deviated from its principles and it has become difficult for me to continue with this party," Ghuggi told reporters in Chandigarh. The resignation came two days after the party appointed Mann as the new state chief of AAP at a meeting held in Delhi. Ghuggi had then also questioned the "urgency" of the party leadership in appointing Mann and had asked under "what pressure" was the decision taken. Waraich was made the state convenor in September 2016, replacing Sucha Singh Chhotepur who was sacked from the post on the charge of allegedly accepting money from a party volunteer. Lucknow: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Wednesday expelled its legislator Naseemuddin Siddiqui and his son from the party for carrying out "anti-party" activities. BSP general secretary and Rajya Sabha member Satish Chandra Mishra said Naseemuddin has also been accused of accepting money from people in return for work. "Siddiqui and his son Afzal have been expelled from the party. He has a partnership in a number of slaughter houses and 'benami' properties in his name. He also took money during assembly polls due to which party had to suffer defeat", said BSP General Secretary and Rajya Sabha member Satish Chandra Mishra, adding that the BSP will not tolerate such indiscipline. This comes only days after Naseemuddin, who hails from Banda and was seen as an important Muslim face in the party, was removed from the post of party in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and was instead given charge of BSP's Madhya Pradesh unit. Mayawati had in April announced a major organisational rejig when she took away the major responsibility from Naseemuddin and introduced her brother Anand Kumar in a big way. Kumar was made the party's national vice-president, according to a report in The Financial Times. Mayawati had also dissolved the existing team of zonal, divisional and district coordinators and brotherhood committees set up to woo different castes and communities like Brahmins, Thakur and Muslims. Naseemuddin was considered to be a close aide of BSP supremo Mayawati. The news of his expulsion comes at a time when reports of rifts within the party are surfacing. According to a report in The Indian Express, increasing voices of dissent have surfaced within the party, despite Mayawati's authoritarian control over the BSP. The report said that after the recent poll rout, party workers are not ready to buy the EVM narrative and are miffed over inaction from the party supremo. Many in the party also feel that Mayawati has toned down her image as a Dalit rights crusader to appeal to a larger voter base but successive poll debacles prove that the move has been counterproductive. Many also feel that OBC leaders were being ignored in favour of Muslim leaders, while other parties, especially BJP has successfully managed to garner their support. After the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in which BSP failed to open its account, the BSP again suffered a humiliating defeat in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections where the party had managed to secure only 19 seats out of the total 403 seats. Mayawati had blamed EVMs for her party's poor performance. On the AAP's demonstration on EVMs in Delhi Assembly on Tuesday, Mishra said, "BSP was the first to raise the issue of misuse of EVMs". With inputs from PTI Tehran: Iran's supreme leader warned on Wednesday that anyone trying to foment unrest around the upcoming presidential election "will definitely be slapped in the face" a sign authorities want to avoid a repetition of the violence that followed the country's disputed 2009 poll. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's comments came as the country's intelligence minister said his agents already disrupted one plot to cause disruptions. Meanwhile, windows at a campaign office of President Hassan Rouhani were broken by vandals. So far, however, there has been no sign of major problems ahead of the 19 May election. Khamenei spoke during a graduation ceremony in Tehran for cadets in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, a hard-line paramilitary force. He warned that enemies of Iran seek "to create tension and sedition to disrupt order and security." "Those who ignore the country's security will definitely be slapped in the face," Khamenei said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. His comments mirror those of others in the run-up to the election, in which Rouhani faces five opponents. In 2009, former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election led to months of unrest and dozens of deaths. Authorities blocked Ahmadinejad from running in next week's election. Khamenei also mentioned a "wealthy American Zionist merchant" trying to interfere in Iran's 2009 election in his comments, likely referring to liberal billionaire George Soros. In 2008, hard-liners in Iran became increasingly paranoid about Soros and his work promoting democracy in a number of countries, with the Intelligence Ministry going as far as including Soros in a computer-animated public service announcement about its new hotline to report suspicion activity. Soros' Open Society Foundations, based in New York, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an interview aired Tuesday night, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said his agents broke up a plot that would involve gangs of paid youths fighting each other. Alavi also said the ministry detained suspected members of an Iranian opposition exile group, without elaborating. Candidates must manage their campaigns "in a way that protects national solidarity and integrity while not damaging ethics and values of the society," Alavi said. Meanwhile, local news outlets in Tehran reported that windows had been smashed at one of the many campaign offices of Rouhani. They said another office previously had been targeted as well. Rouhani, whose moderate administration struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, is campaigning for another four-year term as Iran's top elected official. He faces five opponents, chief among them hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, a close ally of Khamenei. Raisi has criticized Rouhani, but said he wouldn't pull out of the nuclear deal. "There is no evidence that the US and the Western countries are abiding by their commitments," Raisi told an Iranian-backed news agency in Lebanon in a report released today. Phnom Penh: Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen warned on Wednesday that he would not hesitate to quash protests with military might if they turn violent, raising tensions as the country braces for elections. Hun Sen is preparing for local polls in June 2017 and a 2018 national election after clamping down on opposition figures trying to break his 32year grip on power. The warning was a reference to opposition protests that broke out during the last election in 2013, when a crowd destroyed at least two police cars over allegations of voter fraud. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) also accused Hun Sen of rigging the poll in his favour and led a months-long protest over the election results. Hun Sen told a gathering of former soldiers that such protests would not be tolerated this time around. "Remember, in the 2017 and 2018 (elections), if your group does such activities again, armed forces will crack down on them immediately. If war happens, let it be," he said. "I still insist that war will happen if the (ruling) Cambodian People's Party isn't in power," he added. Hun Sen has long maintained that violence would break out if his party were ousted in elections. The former soldier first took office in 1985, when Cambodia was emerging from the ravages of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Through a mix of strongarm tactics and political guile, Hun Sen has dominated the country ever since, amassing extensive control over its judicial system, security forces and economy. He portrays himself as the only force who can bring stability to the nation. But there is growing disillusionment at the corruption and political repression associated with Hun Sen's rule, as well as his family's enormous wealth boosting opposition groups in recent years. In the last year the premier has responded with a crackdown on his rivals. More than a dozen activists and opposition politicians have been thrown in jail since the 2013 election that challenged the ruling party's majority. The longstanding leader of the opposition movement, Sam Rainsy, was also forced into self-exile and recently stepped down from his official party role under pressure from the mounting number of court cases brought against him. By Stephanie Nebehay | GENEVA GENEVA As many as 450,000 civilians are trapped in Mosul's Old City, caught up in house-to-house fighting between Islamic State and Iraqi government forces and cut off from aid, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday.The Iraqi army says it is in the final stages of its campaign to rout the Islamist militants from their last major urban redoubt in Iraq, seven months after the U.S.-backed operation to recapture the city began.Patrick Hamilton, ICRC deputy director for the Middle East, said civilians were facing "very stark choices" as food and water run out."This population is not only exposed to the immediate dangers of the conflict itself and being either targeted or hit as collateral damage, but is also facing the effects of just no longer really having much access to the basic essentials that they need to live," Hamilton said after a trip to Iraq.Thousands have fled every day since the U.S.-backed forces opened up a new front last week in the northwestern corner of the city, which includes the historic Old City centre, where the militants are besieged. The ICRC said Iraqi authorities were already overwhelmed by the exodus of 600,000 people from the city, Iraq's second largest, since October. Another 100,000 to 200,000 could flee the final battle for the Old City, it said, citing U.N. figures.The agency has deployed mobile surgical teams close to the frontline but has not been able to access the Old City. "People don't have enough to eat, don't have water," Hamilton said. "Babies, elderly and so on of course they are very vulnerable and may already be dying."Hamilton said the battle for Mosul had been a "very long, attritional fight". The final phase was expected to be the most difficult in a densely populated ancient city with narrow alleyways, he said.Iraq is the ICRC's second largest humanitarian operation after Afghanistan, with 150 expatriate staff and 1,000 nationals deployed. ICRC surgeons are working in the Rozhawa hospital in west Erbil, which received 80 percent of war wounded from east Mosul, Hamilton said. ICRC officials are also monitoring the screening of men fleeing Mosul as the Iraqi authorities seek to identify fleeing militants, and have visited 45,000 people detained across the country.He said the agency had concerns about the "de facto screening that is done at the first point of contact" between troops and civilians on the frontline, rather than the screening carried out at designated sites further back.Hamilton said that while the ICRC was engaged in confidential dialogue with Iraqi authorities and the U.S.-led coalition on the rules of war, including the conduct of government-allied militias, it had no contact with Islamic State. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Richard Lough) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Washington: President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, dramatically ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's meddling in the election that sent him to the White House. In a letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. Comey has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for his public comments on an investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices, including a pair of letters he sent to Congress on the matter in the closing days of last year's campaign. Trump made no mention of Comey's role in the Clinton investigation, which she has blamed in part for the election result. But in announcing the firing, the White House circulated a scathing memo, written by Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein, criticising Comey's handling of the Clinton probe, including the director's decision to hold a news conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about Clinton. Since Attorney-General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the bureau's Trump-Russia probe, Rosenstein, his deputy, has been in charge. This is only the second firing of an FBI director in history. Former president Bill Clinton dismissed William Sessions amid allegations of ethical lapses in 1993. Democrats slammed Trump's action, comparing it to former president Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" decision to fire the independent special prosecutor overseeing the Watergate investigation in 1973, which prompted the resignations of the Justice Department's top two officials. "This is Nixonian," Senator Bob Casey, D-Pa, declared on Twitter. "Outrageous," said Oregon senator Ron Wyden, calling for Comey to immediately be summoned to testify to Congress about the status of the Trump-Russia investigation. Representative Adam Schiff of California, top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the White House was "brazenly interfering" in the probe. Republican senator John McCain of Arizona said Congress must form a special committee to investigate Russia's interference in the election. Democrats expressed deep skepticism about the stated reasons for Tuesday's firing, raising the prospect of a White House effort to stymie the investigations by the FBI and congressional panels. Trump will now appoint Comey's successor. The White House said the search for a replacement was beginning immediately. Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, would presumably take over in the interim. Trump has ridiculed the investigations as a "hoax" and has denied that his campaign was involved in Russia's meddling. In his letter to Comey, he asserted that the FBI director had informed him "on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation." Tuesday's stunning announcement came shortly after the FBI corrected aspects of Comey's sworn testimony on Capitol Hill last week. Comey told lawmakers that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary, had sent "hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband's laptop, including some with classified information. On Tuesday, the FBI told the Senate Judiciary Committee that only "a small number" of the thousands of emails found on the laptop had been forwarded there while most had simply been backed up from electronic devices. Most of the email chains on the laptop containing classified information were not the result of forwarding, the FBI said. Some lawmakers did welcome news of the dismissal. "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well," said Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating the Russian campaign interference. Comey, 56, was nominated by President Barack Obama for the FBI post in 2013 to a 10-year term, though that appointment does not ensure a director will serve the full term. Praised frequently by both parties for his independence and integrity, Comey has spent three decades in law enforcement. But his prominent role in the 2016 presidential campaign raised questions about his judgment and impartiality. Although the FBI did not recommend charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information, Comey was blisteringly critical of her decision to use a personal email account and private internet server during her four years as secretary of state. Comey strongly defended his decisions during the hearing last week. He said he was "mildly nauseous" at the thought of having swayed the election but also said he would do the same again. Clinton has partially blamed her loss on Comey's disclosure to Congress less than two weeks before Election Day that the email investigation would be revisited. Comey later said the FBI, again, had found no reason to bring any charges. Trump disagreed with Clinton's assessment, tweeting that Comey actually "was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!" Clinton's advisors were stunned by Trump's decision on Tuesday. Former campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said that while he believed Comey had "inflicted severe damage" on the FBI, "the timing and manner of this firing suggest that it is the product of Trump feeling the heat on the ongoing Russia investigation and not a well thought out response to the inappropriate handling of the Clinton investigation." Although Comey was well-liked within the bureau, his independent streak occasionally rankled the Obama administration, including his repeated contention that a spike in violent crime might be linked to police officer anxiety over public scrutiny. Before the past months' controversies, Comey, a former deputy attorney general in the George W Bush administration, was perhaps best known for a remarkable 2004 standoff with top officials over a federal domestic surveillance program. In March of that year, Comey rushed to the hospital bed of Attorney-General John Ashcroft to physically stop White House officials in their bid to get his ailing boss to reauthorize a secret no-warrant wiretapping program. Comey described the incident in 2007 testimony to Congress, explaining that he believed the spy program put in place after the 11 September, 2001, terror attacks was legally questionable. When he learned that Andrew Card, the president's chief of staff, and Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, were heading to Ashcroft's hospital room despite Ashcroft's wife's instructions that there be no visitors, Comey told Congress, Comey beat them there and watched as Ashcroft turned them away. "That night was probably the most difficult night of my professional life," Comey said. Washington DC: US President Donald Trump will receive Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday even as a political firestorm has put Moscow's alleged meddling in the US election back in the spotlight. Lavrov's visit, confirmed by the White House late on Tuesday, centers on a Russian proposal to de-escalate the violence in Syria's civil war. But it comes just a day after the president stunned Washington by firing James Comey as director of the FBI amid an investigation into whether Trump campaign aides colluded with Russia to sway the November elections. The sacking prompted angry Democrats to call for the Russia probe to be placed in the hands an independent prosecutor or commission. The uproar seemed certain to complicate Lavrov's mission in search of US support for a Russian plan to create safe zones in Syria. He first holds talks with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then goes on to the White House to meet Trump. Lavrov, who last set foot in Washington in August 2013, would be the highest ranking Russian official to meet with Trump since he took office. Relations between the two former Cold War foes soured under former president Barack Obama over Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its unyielding support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Since March 2011, the Syrian conflict has caused more than 320,000 deaths and forced millions of refugees to flee. Neither Washington, which backs the opposition, nor Moscow, a longtime ally of the Syrian regime, have managed to find to a solution to the conflict. Since the end of Obama's presidency the United States has gradually withdrawn from the diplomatic process, leaving Russia to take the lead. The US was not part of a deal by government backers Russia and Iran, and rebel supporter Turkey, signed last Thursday in the Kazakh capital Astana on establishing safe zones in Syria. De-escalation zones The agreement calls for the creation of four "de-escalation zones" to shore up a ceasefire, ban flights and allow for deliveries of humanitarian aid. Washington has given the deal a skeptical welcome, citing concerns about Iran's role as a guarantor even as it expressed hope the agreement could set the stage for a later settlement. "We will look at the proposal, see if it can work," said Pentagon chief Jim Mattis on Monday. Several ceasefires have been agreed on since Syria's conflict broke out in 2011, but they have failed to permanently stem the fighting. Over the past six years Moscow and Washington have sparred multiple times over the conflict in Syria, especially concerning Assad's fate. Donald Trump's White House takeover has not brought the former Cold War adversaries closer to seeing eye to eye -- and in early April the US even launched direct military action against the Syrian regime in retaliation for a chemical attack attributed to it. Both countries have recently indicated that relations under Trump have never been so bad. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday that Moscow expected "above all coming to a common understanding on the need for de-escalation in Syria." 'Common position' "If we manage to find... a common position with the United States on this issue, it will be the most important result," he said, quoted by the state news agency Interfax. The US State Department said that "on Syria, the secretary intends to discuss efforts to de-escalate violence, provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, and set the stage for a political settlement of the conflict." Regarding Ukraine, the State Department also said "the sides will discuss the need to stop the violence in eastern Ukraine and resolve the conflict through the full implementation of the Minsk agreements." After talks on Wednesday the two diplomats will again meet Thursday in Fairbanks, Alaska for the Arctic Council meeting, an intergovernmental forum for cooperation on the environment, oil and mining, shipping, fisheries and tourism. It brings together the eight countries bordering the Arctic Ocean Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, the US, Iceland, Sweden and Finland. Tillerson and Lavrov's meeting in Alaska comes 150 years after Washington purchased the US state from Moscow. Washington: President Donald Trump delayed a decision to honor or walk away from the Paris climate accord until he returns from Europe late this month, leaving global partners in limbo today. Divisions within Trump's administration have left in doubt the participation of the world's number two carbon polluter after China in the landmark 2015 agreement to limit global warming. After months of uncertainty, Trump had appeared to be edging toward a decision. But the White House postponed a key meeting scheduled for Tuesday that could have determined the fate of the 196-nation accord, and hours later said there would be no decision before the end of the month. Trump will "not be making an announcement regarding that agreement until after he returns from the G7," said White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Tuesday, referring to a meeting in Sicily that ends 27 May. Despite hardline pre-election rhetoric against the deal, Trump's inner circle has been tasked with providing the president with a range of policy options. The group includes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, White House strategist Steve Bannon, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, as well as Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Administration officials said the crunch sit-down may now take place next week, before Trump departs for a bumper first foreign trip that will take in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican and Brussels before ending in Sicily. "The president wants to make sure he has an opportunity to continue to meet with his team to create the best strategy for this country going forward," said Spicer. One option said to be under consideration is full withdrawal from the Paris accord, fulfilling Trump's campaign promise to "cancel" the deal as president. Bannon and Pruitt are said to be among those arguing for a tough line, rejecting global agreements they believe tie the hands of US industry. Pruitt, the US government's leading environmental official, has rejected the scientific consensus that humans are the "primary contributor" to global warming. Ivanka Trump has meanwhile become a talisman for those who believe she can be a moderating influence on her father. But her stance on the Paris accord and her influence inside the cut-throat world of White House politics are unclear. Full withdrawal would roil Washington's allies and seriously undermine global efforts to limit carbon emissions, which the vast majority of experts say are changing the climate in dangerous ways. For US allies, Trump's wavering has uncomfortable echoes of president George W. Bush's decision to withdraw from the 1992 Kyoto Protocol. That move scuttled a carefully worked global compromise and effectively delayed climate action by two decades. It would also wreck Trump's careful diplomacy with China, which the White House wants on-side to tackle North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The core of the Paris deal was an agreement between Chinese President Xi Jinping and then US president Barack Obama. Both men have pressed Trump to stay on board. "It's important that big countries that are big emitters like the US and China... lead the way," Obama told a conference Tuesday in Milan, in one of his first public appearances since leaving office. Another possible option for Trump, according to officials, is to remain within the agreement, but rework US emissions targets. Obama set targets to reduce emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Sue Biniaz, a former State Department legal adviser who supports the accord, said Trump does not need to make a binary choice between leaving or staying. "It is clear from the agreement that if you do change your target, you are encouraged to change it in a more ambitious direction," she said. "But it is equally clear that you are not legally prohibited from changing it in any direction that you choose." The US wavering left UN climate negotiators who happened to be gathered in Bonn to thrash out the nuts-and-bolts of the deal in limbo. By Isabel Coles | HAMMAM AL-ALIL CAMP, Iraq HAMMAM AL-ALIL CAMP, Iraq Thousands more people are fleeing Mosul every day since Iraqi troops began their push into the last Islamic State-held areas of the city last week, with food and water running out and the fighting killing increasing numbers of civilians.More than 22,000 people have fled Mosul since the U.S.-backed forces opened a new front in the northwest of the city on May 4 to try to finally dislodge the militants, the United Nations said on Wednesday, citing Iraqi government figures.In the past two days alone, more than 11,000 people have passed through a screening site at the Hammam al-Alil camp south of Mosul.Islamic State fighters are shooting people who try to escape, although some men have been allowed to go in exchange for taking militants' families with them, said 40-year-old Umm Abdul Rahman, who fled the Musherfa district on Tuesday night. One man waiting to be checked by security at Hammam al Alil had streaks of blood on his clothes from carrying a woman hit by an Islamic State sniper.They join an exodus from Mosul of more than 600,000 people in the seven months since Iraqi forces began their offensive there. Roughly 400,000 of those are from the western side of the city which is bisected by the River Tigris. The militants are now besieged in the northwestern corner, which includes the historic Old City centre, the medieval Grand al-Nuri Mosque, and its landmark leaning minaret where their black flag has been flying since June 2014. About ten families, some forced out of other areas of Mosul as Iraqi forces advanced, were now crammed into every house in the northwest, Abdul Rahman said. "There is no water, no food. The bombardment is continuous," she said, and the militants were setting civilian cars and trucks on fire to create smokescreens. People are surviving on ground wheat boiled in water, 31-year-old Qatra al-Nada Abdullah said, because Islamic State fighters were keeping any food or water that is left for themselves. "Even wheat is scarce," she said. Islamic State fighters are forcing people from their homes to use them as fighting positions, 62-year-old Umm Mohammed said as she clutched a packet of cigarettes forbidden under the militants' rule. She and her family had burned everything, even their own shoes, to cook over after fuel ran out."We saw fear and hunger and death. I am an old woman and I have never seen anything like this."The Sunni Muslim militants seized Mosul in a shock offensive across northern and western Iraq in 2014 but have lost much of that territory to resurgent government forces in the past year. The campaign to recapture the city, Iraq's second largest, began last October.Defeat in Mosul, the militants' last urban stronghold in the country, would still leave Islamic State in control of swathes of Syria and Iraqi territory near the Syrian border. (Reporting by Isabel Coles; Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Louise Ireland) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Dustin Volz and Susan Cornwell | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON FBI Director James Comey sought to expand his agency's probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election before President Donald Trump fired him on Tuesday, a congressional source said on Wednesday.Facing criticism from members of Congress, the Trump administration denied the firing was related to the FBI probe of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign's possible collusion with Moscow to sway the election.The Republican president, who met Russia's foreign minister at the White House on Wednesday, defended his decision to abruptly fire Comey from a law-enforcement post he had held since 2013. Trump's firing of Comey stunned Washington and plunged the president deeper into controversy. Democrats intensified accusations that Comey's removal was intended to undermine the FBI probe and demanded an independent investigation. Some of Trump's fellow Republicans called the action troubling.A congressional source with knowledge of the matter said Comey told lawmakers within the past few days that he had asked the Justice Department for more funding for the Russia probe. Comey informed lawmakers of that request after the Senate intelligence committee had asked the FBI to speed up its Russia inquiry, the source said.Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters she understood that Comey was seeking more resources for the FBI investigation. "We know that there are subpoenas being requested in the Eastern District of Virginia, and that this investigation has been going on," Feinstein told reporters. She said she met with Comey on March 15 along with Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. At the time Comey said it was "a big counter-intelligence and criminal investigation," Feinstein said. Responding to media reports that Comey had asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last week for a significant boost in resources for the agency's probe, Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior said in an email, "Totally false." (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Patricia Zengerle, David Morgan, David Alexander and Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry and Howard Goller) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Sue-Lin Wong | HUNCHUN, China HUNCHUN, China In August, 2014, planners in the northeastern Chinese city of Hunchun argued in state media that it should be included in the "One Belt, One Road" project, Beijing's vision laid out the previous year of a new Silk Road across Asia to Europe.In 2015, the official Xinhua news agency ran stories about how Hunchun was accelerating its "OBOR" plans, and early in 2016, China's cabinet released a list of Chinese cities included in "OBOR": Hunchun was on the map.The fact that the list came about slowly, and that some cities felt moved to lobby to be included, underlines how the pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping is as amorphous as it is ambitious.The challenge of defining exactly what OBOR means will come to the fore later this month, when heads of state and senior officials from around the world gather in Beijing for the first major summit dedicated to the project."Frankly, I don't really know what the belt and the road are. The reason being that I think Beijing doesn't know either," said Tom Miller of Gavekal Dragonomics, who recently wrote a book on the New Silk Road.In theory, incentives for cities, companies and countries to be involved are strong: hundreds of billions of dollars are expected to be spent on roads, railways, pipelines, ports and industrial zones stretching from Sri Lanka to Djibouti.But as Hunchun shows, the reality of OBOR can be complicated and requires buy-in from other countries.The city's position at the apex of Russia, North Korea and China is a blessing and a curse. While Russia is gradually opening up to more trade, North Korea has stalled.Tantalisingly close to the sea but without a sea port after Russia's annexation in 1860, local businesses said they wanted to ship more goods via Rason, a nearby North Korean port earmarked as an export hub to China, Japan, South Korea and beyond.That would open a shipping route to southern China, but with sanctions in place against Pyongyang, global tensions rising over its arms programme and Rason developing slowly, expectations of progress are low. "We currently transport goods by rail to southern China. We'd like to ship from Rason, but at present that's not happening," said Wang Hai, general manager of Guanghai Import and Export Trading Company in Hunchun, a small firm with 12 staff, both Chinese and Russian."Hunchun is a hub for northeast Asia, so in theory it should play a big role in 'One Belt, One Road', but for now it hasn't been able to get its act together."RUSSIA MORE PROMISING? North Korea remains largely shut to the outside world, and China, while remaining its main economic and diplomatic backer, has signed up for tough U.N. sanctions against it.But China said on Tuesday that North Korea would be sending a delegation to the upcoming OBOR summit.Russian President Vladimir Putin will also attend, reflecting his country's importance in China's OBOR strategy; in Hunchun, some enterprises are already seeing benefits from mutual trade. Xingyang Seafood, for example, imports 90 percent of its seafood from Russia and 10 percent from North Korea, said chairman Zhao Yang."The main advantage of being in Hunchun is that we are close to Russia," Yang told Reuters. The company is headquartered in northern China's Shandong province, but in 2015 it opened a branch in Hunchun to exploit its proximity to Russia."How does North Korea help us? It doesn't help us at all, they have hardly any seafood left there."Hunchun's spokesman Hao Qiang declined to comment about the city's relationship with North Korea, because of the "current political situation", and would not say how many North Koreans were working in the city."But we can talk about Hunchun's trade with Russia, the city's clean air and successful tree-planting initiatives." In addition to oil and gas export opportunities between Russia and China, Putin has spoken of roads and bridges being built to strengthen links.Russia has struggled, however, to lure enough people to sparsely populated regions bordering China's northeast, and there are concerns among Russians of creeping colonisation if too much land is leased to the Chinese."They (Chinese) will live there, their relatives will come, they will deepen their roots there, they will take Russian women as wives," firebrand opposition politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in 2015, when proposals to lease Russian land to Chinese farmers were put forward."We will only have problems. I see no advantages."For Hunchun, OBOR is the latest in a series of development programmes aimed at revitalising Jilin province and China's northeast.In the 1990s, the United Nations backed the Tumen River Area Development Project, which became the Greater Tumen Initiative linking China, Mongolia, South Korea and Russia.The benefits of large-scale state investment are clear. From 25th place among smaller cities in Jilin in terms of economic growth, Hunchun now stands third. Foreign trade has doubled since 2011, according to city statistics.Whether OBOR can add value over the longer term is uncertain, Peter Cai wrote in a report for the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank."If the Chinese government fails to connect its domestic projects with overseas components, OBOR will be little different from other domestic infrastructure programmes, greatly diminishing its economic and strategic value." (Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in MOSCOW and by the newsroom in BEIJING; Editing by Mike Collett-White) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Washington: The simmering controversy over Russia's alleged meddling in last year's US election returns to the spotlight on Tuesday, with a former top Justice Department official set to testify on links between President Donald Trump's advisors and Moscow. Former acting attorney general Sally Yates, a Barack Obama appointee held over for the start of the new administration, could offer new details about how Trump handled concerns that national security advisor Michael Flynn lied about his ties with Russian officials. She is expected to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that she explicitly warned Trump's team in January that Flynn could be compromised by his communications with Russia's US ambassador. Yates will be speaking publicly for the first time on what she knew of Russia's interference in the November election, a scandal that has dogged the Republican president from the start of his four-year term. Trump, who fired Yates soon after taking office, fired off a series of pre-emptive strikes ahead of her appearance on Capitol Hill, accusing Obama of enabling Flynn and assailing Yates for allegedly leaking classified information. "General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration," Trump tweeted early on Tuesday. "Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to WH Counsel," he added. According to multiple news reports, Yates warned the White House that Flynn's phone calls with Moscow envoy Sergey Kislyak, which US intelligence secretly monitored, could leave him open to blackmail. Yet despite those warnings, Trump named the former military intelligence chief his White House national security advisor, only to end up firing him after a month because Flynn had not been forthcoming about those calls. Yates, known as a tough and independent prosecutor, has been a target of Trump's ire since he fired her at the end of January for refusing to support his controversial immigration ban on nationals from six Muslim majority nations. Also testifying today will be former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who has repeatedly warned about the need to get to the bottom of Russia's intervention in the election last year, which US intelligence believes was aimed at intentionally damaging Trump's rival Hillary Clinton. "I will be asking the question that is are really on the minds of Americans," Democratic committee member Senator Richard Blumenthal said today ahead of the hearing. "They want the truth uncovered about Russian interference and the last election and potential collusion of Trump associates," Blumenthal told CNN. The focus on Russia's alleged "active measures" campaign against Western democracies has intensified following the leak of potentially damaging files from the campaign of Emmanuel Macron just days before he won France's presidential election on Monday. While it appeared to have little effect on the French election's outcome, that paralleled the leak of Democratic party files last year ahead of the US vote, which hurt Clinton and boosted Trump. Trump has repeatedly branded the issue "fake news" despite Clapper and the other leaders of the US intelligence community all having concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself was behind the interference operation. The Senate Judiciary Committee is one of several bodies in Congress probing Russian interference. But progress has been slow amid Democratic accusations that Republicans are stalling the investigation to protect the White House. Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has an active counter-intelligence probe into the scandal which is examining whether any Trump campaign official colluded with Moscow. United Nations: A Christian rebel group in the Central African Republic ambushed a United Nations convoy, sparking a firefight and kidnappings that left four peacekeepers dead, eight injured and one missing, the United Nations said on Tuesday. United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said eight fighters from the anti-Balaka rebel group were also killed in the battle Monday night. The United Nations peacekeeping mission said the remaining attackers fled into the bush. The United Nations mission sent a helicopter and additional troops to secure the site near Bangassou, about 474 kilometers (295 miles) east of the capital, Bangui, and were continuing to search for the missing peacekeeper, Dujarric said. In the initial ambush and firefight, one Cambodian peacekeeper was killed and seven Moroccans and one Cambodian were injured, he said. Three Cambodian soldiers and one Moroccan peacekeeper were also reported missing, according to United Nations and Cambodian officials. Dujarric said three of the missing peacekeepers were later found dead. He said he did not know their nationalities. The injured peacekeepers were evacuated by helicopter to the capital and are now receiving medical aid, he said, and the United Nations is coordinating with government officials "to ensure the perpetrators are arrested and brought to justice." United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement late on Tuesday strongly condemning the attack and stressing "that attacks against United Nations peacekeepers may constitute a war crime." He urged Central African Republic authorities "to swiftly bring those responsible to justice." The country descended into sectarian conflict in 2013 when Muslim rebels overthrew the nation's Christian president. The United Nations launched a peacekeeping mission there in 2014 and now has more than 12,000 troops deployed to protect civilians from violence between Christian and Muslim factions. Some 890,000 people have been displaced inside the country and into neighboring Cameroon, the United Nations says. The latest fighting began in February and Human Rights Watch said last week that at least 45 people have been killed and 11,000 displaced in attacks by armed groups that have also targeted civilians. One predominantly Peul faction of the mostly Muslim Seleka group has been fighting since late 2016 with another faction that has aligned itself with the Christian anti-Balaka group as they vie for control of the central part of the country, the rights group said. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced news of the attack in video remarks published on his official Facebook page. He said the Cambodians were part of an engineering unit that was helping to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure. The ambush took place as the Cambodians were on the way back to their base with an escort of Moroccan soldiers. Chhum Socheath, a spokesman for the Cambodian National Defense Ministry, said the slain peacekeeper was a captain and his body was being sent home. Cambodia has deployed 12 soldiers to the central African nation in recent months, he said. Over the weekend, four international aid groups said they would temporarily withdraw their workers from parts of northern Central African Republic because of increasing attacks targeting them. The four Solidarites International, Intersos, Danish Church Aid and Person in Need Relief Mission said they were moving to Bangui. New Delhi: Days after Pakistan raised the issue, India on Wednesday clarified that it has not stopped giving medical visas to Pakistani nationals, but has asked that such requests be vetted at the top level. In reply to a question on the issue, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was getting a lot of mails and requests on social media from patients in Pakistan for medical visas. "We have not stopped medical visas..." Baglay said. "In previous years, thousands of medical visas have been issued to Pakistani citizens. What has happened is the External Affairs Minister herself was receiving these requests addressed to her," Baglay said. Sushma is active on social media in addressing problems faces by Indians abroad. "She was receiving requests on email and social media. In order to ascertain that these are genuine requests we have suggested that their foreign minister or Foreign Affairs Advisor gives a recommendation letter," he said. "On social media it is difficult to ascertain if the request is genuine. If the letter comes, we will immediately issue a visa, but we need recommendation from the Pakistan government," the spokesperson said. On Saturday, Pakistani media reported that thousands of Pakistanis seeking treatment for liver and heart-related ailments at major hospitals in New Delhi, Chennai and other Indian cities have been affected due to non-issuance of medical visas. "India has made it impossible for Pakistanis to get medical visas," an official was quoted as saying by Geo News. It said that Pakistan summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale and expressed concern over the issue. However, there was no official confirmation of the meeting by India. Washington: Key moments in the career of James Comey, the FBI director fired by President Donald Trump: Hospital standoff Comey was at the center of a dramatic confrontation in 2004 when he rushed to the bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in a darkened hospital room. Comey, serving as acting attorney general while Ashcroft was hospitalized, went there to block senior Bush administration officials who had hoped to make an end run around him by getting Ashcroft's permission to reauthorize a secret no-warrant wiretapping program. "That night was probably the most difficult night of my professional life," Comey testified before Congress in 2007. Clinton emails, part I Comey publicly lifted a big legal threat to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in July 2016 when he announced that he was recommending no criminal charges for her handling of classified material in a private email account. At the same time, Comey leveled scathing criticism at Clinton for her "extremely careless" handling of classified material, giving Republicans ammunition to use against her in the campaign. His announcement was highly unusual: Comey revealed his recommendation on live television from FBI headquarters rather than privately to Justice Department prosecutors, as is normally the case. Clinton emails, part II Just 11 days before Election Day 2016, Comey dropped what amounted to a political bomb on the Clinton campaign when he announced the FBI was investigating whether new emails involving the Democratic presidential nominee contained classified information. Two days before the election, Comey lifted the cloud when he announced that the new emails had not changed the FBI's decision that Clinton should not face charges. Critics said Comey never should have made public the renewed review so close to the election. Clinton said last week that she was "on the way to winning" the election before Comey's announcement about the new email review and the WikiLeaks release of hacked emails. Trump-Russia questions Comey in March delivered an extraordinary public confirmation that the FBI was investigating whether Donald Trump's associates coordinated with Russian officials in an effort to sway the 2016 election. Comey said the collusion inquiry began last July as part of a broader probe into Russian meddling in American politics. That meant Trump was elected president as his associates remained under investigation for possible connections to Russia, a probe that was unannounced in this case. Comey's confirmation of the investigation was striking given the FBI's historic reluctance to discuss its work. But Comey said the intense public interest in the matter made it appropriate to do so. "I can promise you, we will follow the facts wherever they lead," he said in Senate testimony. Mildly nauseous Comey testified before senators last week that he'd felt "mildly nauseous" to think he might have tipped the election outcome but in hindsight would change nothing about how handled the election-year investigations. Comey offered an impassioned public defense of how he'd handled the cases, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee the FBI must not take into account how its actions might benefit or harm politicians. "I can't consider for a second whose political futures will be affected and in what way," he said. "We have to ask ourselves what is the right thing to do and then do that thing." Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Wednesday held a meeting amid the stay order from the International Court of Justice against the hanging of Indian "spy" Kulbushan Jadhav. The meeting between Bajwa and Sharif was the second within a week and is significant in the light of the prevailing civil-military relations in the country. Sources, quoted by Geo News, said that the Prime Minister was briefed on the ICJ order. Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General Inter-Services Intelligence Lt. Gen Naveed Mukhtar while Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was also present at the meeting. Reacting to the stay order, Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister Sartaj Aziz here said: "We are analysing the Indian petition and the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) authority (on the case)." Earlier, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, India's decision to move the ICJ to halt the death sentence awarded to Jadhav was an attempt to divert attention from "state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan". The ICJ on Tuesday told Pakistan not to hang Jadhav, sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of promoting terrorism in its territory and spying for India. Asif tweeted: "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbushan convicted of offences against national security." JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.You should upgrade or use an alternative browser Islamabad: Pakistan Army on Wednesday said it will respond at an "appropriate level" to any query by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the death sentence given to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav by its military court on the charges of "spying". Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor told the media that Jadhav was sentenced by a military court after "due process of law". "If the ICJ requests Pakistan anything about Jadhav, then the government of Pakistan will respond to it at an appropriate level, he said. He said "the process is continuing within the army over the decision by the (military) court against Jadhav. However, he did not explain the nature of "process". The statement came after Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and discussed the ICJ's stay order on the execution of Jadhav. Earlier, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said the government was analysing the Hague-based ICJ's authority in freezing the execution of Jadhav. Aziz said the government would issue a statement on the issue in the next few days. "We are analysing the Indian petition and the ICJ's authority in this case, Aziz said after the Hague-based ICJ stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav. Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif in a tweet accused India of using Jadhav's death conviction to "divert" attention from its "state-sponsored" terrorism in the country. "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from sstate-sponsoredterrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security," Asif tweeted. The order by the ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. Pakistan's media rejected India's claim over the order. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online reported that ICJ has received the application of India, but did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on 3 March, 2016. Jadhav's sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learnt about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistani officials on Wednesday said that it is looking into the judgement of the International Court of Justice staying the execution of Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a military court on charges of "spying". The foreign ministry officials also said that it would give a formal reply to the UN court in the matter of two days. mum over the International Court of Justice's Pakistan has not officially reacted to the Hague-based ICJ's order. On the other hand, Pakistan defence minister Khawaja M Asif called India's move a diversionary tactic. Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention frm state sponsored terrorism in Pak.Kulbushan convicted of offences against Nat security Khawaja M. Asif (@KhawajaMAsif) May 10, 2017 Meanwhile, the local media, which was initially slow to respond, rejected India's claim. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online did not report about the Indian claim of the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. Jadhav, 46, was awarded the death sentence by a Field General Court Martial last month. India moved the ICJ against Pakistan, accusing the latter of violating the Vienna Convention in the case of Jadhav. India, in its appeal, contended that it was not informed of Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further asserted that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the Pakistani authorities were denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite repeated requests. The ICJ through a statement on 8 May confirmed that it received an application from India. In New Delhi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday said that she spoke to the mother of Jadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Article 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court." Pakistan claims its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on 3 March last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. The International Court of Justice at The Hague may have asked the Pakistan government to stay the execution of alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, but Islamabad is not bound to honour it. If the Pakistan Army wants to go ahead with it, considering that the civilian government had little hold on the military court, it can do it with impunity. The UN in many ways is a toothless tiger. Whether it is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court or the Permanent Court of Arbitration, none can enforce its will on member states. Not going by the ICJ ruling has not caused grief to any government, and there are scores of examples of national governments disregarding UN directives. Yes, because this is a case of a death sentence, which most democratic governments in Europe have abolished, there will be some noise. Apart from that, there will be no price to pay except perhaps condemnation for a death sentence. The UN Security Council becomes important when peace and security of the world are affected. In such cases, the five permanent members US, China, Russia, UK and France can order punitive action. Jadhavs case is more a humanitarian issue than something that would immediately trigger a war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. India has gone to the ICJ because Pakistan has turned down Delhis request for counsellor access sixteen times. Islamabad said that Jadhav is not an ordinary prisoner straying into Pakistan, but a spy charged with trying to cause death and destruction in the country. Neither the civilian government nor the foreign office can dictate terms to the army. In fact, after the Panamagate revelations with charges of corruption against Nawaz Sharif and his family members, the prime ministers position had weakened even further. Though there is no doubt the army will finally take a call on the matter, even if the civilian prime minister was on a strong wicket. One thing going for India is the fact that it has invoked the Vienna Convention on Counsular Relations which mandates states that have signed the protocol to allow access to nationals of each others countries if a citizen is in jail. Though the ICJ has no means at its disposal to enforce its directive, the matter can be taken to the UNSC. There the Security Council members will decide on the case. In the case of Pakistan, China is certain to veto such a move. So unless the Pakistan Army for reasons of its own decides to withhold the death sentence, there is little other nations can do. Pakistan will certainly say that Jadhavs case is one of espionage and Pakistans national security. However, if India can persuade Pakistans friends like China to intervene perhaps things could have been better. The US too may be reluctant to do so. President Donald Trump is still finding his feet in the White House and may not be inclined to do much. At best international pressure can save Jadhav from execution but whether he can be freed is another matter altogether. The major world powers have flouted UN resolutions whenever it did not like a ruling. The most recent example is that of China and the Philippines. The latter dragged China to the Permanent Court of Arbitration last year, over its sweeping claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea. The PAC ruled in favour of Philippines, as it too had historical claims to some portions of the waters. But China refused to abide by the PAC ruling. Many decades earlier in the 1980s, when the US was fighting the Left-wing rebels in Nicaragua, virtually its backyard, the government went to the ICJ to hear a case against the US mining its harbour. The ruling went in favour of Nicaragua and the US was asked to pay compensation. The US rejected the claim and said the court had no jurisdiction over it. Russia too had earlier rejected the ICJ ruling in another case. Pakistan took India to the ICJ in 1999, when a Pakistani Breguet Atlantique patrol plane crossed into Indian air space in the Rann of Kutch. All the crew members were killed. The ICJ, however, ruled in favour of India. The ICJ is not something that India favours, especially when it comes to dealing with Pakistan. However in this case, with Islamabad proving adamant and the fear of execution hanging in the air, Delhi had no other option. Delhi is generally loath to go to a third party in India-Pakistan matters, with Islamabad always trying for third party intervention on Kashmir. But in this case, there was perhaps no other option. India is likely to work the diplomatic channels to put pressure on Pakistan to save Jadhavs life. But with the Pakistan Army emboldened about Chinas stand, especially after the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor bait, chances of the army relenting is not bright. The International Court of Justice on Tuesday stayed the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order by the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month, official sources said. The Indian government was represented by senior advocate and eminent lawyer Harish Salve. I have spoken to the mother of #KulbhushanJadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Art 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court. Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) May 9, 2017 Mr.Harish Salve, Senior Advocate is representing India before International Court of Justice in the #KulbhushanJadhav case. Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) May 9, 2017 India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on 3 March, 2016. What happens next? With the apex international court ordering a stay on the death sentence given to Jadhav, it seems that Jadhav has received a temporary relief. However, there is another verdict which is expected from the International Court of Justice and that pertains to the violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which grants consular access to people detained in foreign countries. India has been alleging that Jadhav, a former navy officer, was not granted access to officials from the Indian High Commission in Pakistan. India's consular access to Jadhav too have been denied 19 times since 2016. According to India Today, a 15-judge bench will now hear the case whether Jadhav was denied consular access by Islamabad. The report also noted that if the verdict is unfavourable to Pakistan, then the issue might spill over to the UN security council too. The ICJ's judgement are binding on all countries which are signatory to the Vienna Conventions. However, the top court does not have direct role in implementation of its ruling. The onus of ensuring the implementation of the verdict lies with the aggrieved party, who can move to the UN Security Council for relief. In Jadhav's case, an unfavourable verdict for either parties will lead to a diplomatic standoff in the UNSC, where at least China is expected to veto any anti-Pakistan measure. India and Pakistan at the ICJ The case in The Hague is complicated by Pakistan's insistence that ICJ verdicts won't apply on issues which take place within the borders of Pakistan. Its refusal to allow consular access to Jadhav lies on the premise that he was caught on the charges of espionage, an act which does not allow anyone to enjoy consular access according to Pakistani law. However, India and Pakistan are signatories to the "optional protocol" of the Vienna Convention, which makes it mandatory for both countries to accept the verdict of the top UN court. As noted by Hindustan Times, India has never been keen to go to the ICJ on matters relating to Pakistan, owing to fear of internationalisation of the Kashmir issue as well as New Delhi's declaration that issues involving another Commonwealth nation won't be binding on it. However, the 8 May decision is major break from New Delhi's 1974 declaration. Long journey at the ICJ The legal process however is a long one at the ICJ. With the case now formally open, the India Today report stated that the court will take written statements from both parties before it hears the oral arguments of both sides. The final judgement then takes place in a public sitting. However, both countries can't appeal for a repeal of the judgement, like it is the case in most countries. The ICJ verdicts are only subject to revisions and subjective interpretations. Other options with India On 26 April, the Indian envoy to Islamabad, Guatam Bambawale met Pakistan foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua to hand over the appeal made by the mother of Jadhav. If the Pakistan authorities allow India's appeal against the 11 April verdict, then it would go through the Pakistani justice system. If the appeal is squashed by the Pakistan Supreme Court, then Jadhav can file for a mercy petition with Pakistan president Mamnoon Hussain. With the latest ICJ verdict, India might have bought some time on its side to save Jadhav. With inputs from agencies By Ahmed Elumami | TRIPOLI TRIPOLI Libya's coastguard intercepted about 300 migrants packed onto a wooden boat and returned them to Tripoli on Wednesday after warning off a ship that was preparing to pick them up for passage to Europe.Footage filmed by Sea-Watch, a non-governmental organisation, showed a Libyan coastguard vessel coming within metres of its own ship as it sped to stop the migrants. Tripoli coastguard spokesman Ayoub Qassem said the incident had occurred about 19 miles (30 km) north of Libya's coast. "An international rescue organisation called Sea-Watch tried to hinder the work of our coastguard ... in a bid to take the migrants, claiming Libya is not safe for migrants," he said.Qassem added that the coastguard had also exchanged fire with smugglers, but gave no details.Ruben Neugebauer, a spokesman for Sea-Watch, said the NGO had received instruction from Italy's coastguard control centre in Rome that the Libyan coastguard would be taking over "on-scene command", and that the Sea-Watch ship had stopped to await further instructions. "Without any warning, they crossed our bow on the way to the migrant boat," Neugebauer said. "They made an extremely dangerous manoeuvre. They nearly hit our boat, they endangered our crew."Libya is the main departure point for migrants hoping to reach Europe by sea. The country has been in turmoil for years and migrants living there or passing through say they are subject to a range of abuses. A record 181,000 made the trip in 2016 and arrivals in Italy so far this year are up 30 percent. PERILOUS JOURNEY Most migrants attempt the perilous journey on flimsy inflatable boats provided by smugglers that are barely equipped to make it to international waters. Larger wooden boats carrying several hundred migrants are rarer.Some migrants are turned back by the Libyan coastguard, which generally delivers them to detention centres notorious for poor conditions and ill-treatment. The coastguard is receiving training from the European Union as it seeks to limit migrant departures and deaths. Other migrants are taken to Italy after being picked up by NGO ships that run rescue missions, European or Italian naval and coastguard patrols, and other international vessels. The wooden boat intercepted on Wednesday was carrying a large number of Moroccans, as well as other migrants from North Africa and the Middle East.Migrants on board said they had left the western Libyan city of Sabratha on Tuesday night. They said there were more than 100 Moroccans, including about 15 women, some five of whom were being taken for medical treatment as they arrived in Tripoli. One appeared to be seriously ill.One 24-year-old Moroccan man said he had come to Libya five weeks earlier in order to try to reach Europe. A 28-year-old man, also Moroccan, said he had been working in Libya for four years, but had decided to leave because the situation was deteriorating.A Syrian woman on board said she had travelled through six countries to reach Libya, paying $1,000 in each and leaving two sons aged 12 and 13 behind in Jordan."I wanted to leave for Europe," she said. "It was an attempt to get a better life and reunite my whole family in Europe, but unfortunately we couldn't make it." (Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Gareth Jones) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. A man arrested near the British parliament last month has been charged with terrorism offences, as well as two historic charges relating to explosives in Afghanistan, police said Tuesday. Khalid Mohammed Omar Ali, a 27-year-old from north London, is accused of preparing terrorist acts after being arrested not far from Prime Minister Theresa May's Downing Street office on 27 April. In two further charges, dating to January and July 2012, he is accused of having explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property or to enable any other person to do so. "Counts two and three relate to activity in Afghanistan in 2012," the statement from London's Metropolitan Police said, without giving further details. He is due to appear in court on Wednesday. His arrest came the month after five people were killed in an attack on parliament. Khalid Masood, who was British, drove his car along a pavement before stabbing a policeman to death, before being shot dead by armed officers. The court heard that his fingerprints were alleged to have been found on parts for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) recovered in Afghanistan that year by US intelligence. Ali, from north London, told the magistrate: "I don't recognise the charges." He remains in custody and will appear at the Old Bailey court in London on 19 May. Seoul: Left-leaning former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in began his five-year term as president of South Korea on Tuesday, following a landslide election win after a corruption scandal felled the country's last leader. Monday's ballot was called after Park Geun-Hye was ousted and indicted for corruption, and took place against a backdrop of high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Voters were galvanised by anger over the sprawling bribery and abuse-of-power controversy that brought down Park, which catalysed frustrations over jobs and slowing growth. Moon, of the Democratic Party, who backs engagement with the North, promised unity after final results from the National Election Commission (NEC) showed he took 41.1 percent of the vote some 13.4 million ballots. Conservative Hong Joon-Pyo who dubbed Moon a "pro-Pyongyang leftist" was far behind on 24.03 percent, with centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo third on 21.4 percent. Voter turnout was at its highest in 20 years, the Yonhap news agency reported. Moon's inauguration ceremony was expected to take place at the National Assembly at midday, the agency said, after the NEC confirmed the start of his mandate. The result was "a great victory of great people" who wanted to create "a country of justice... where rules and common sense prevail", Moon told cheering supporters on Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul where vast crowds gathered for candlelit protests over several months to demand Park's removal. The graft scandal plunged the country into political turmoil and bitter division, but Moon promised healing, telling the crowd, "I will be president for all South Koreans." On the square among the crowd, Koh Eun-Byul, 28, told AFP, "I am so happy because now there is hope for some meaningful change." Washington, which remains Seoul's most important ally and has a large security presence in the South, on Tuesday congratulated Moon on his landslide victory. "We look forward to working with president-elect Moon to continue to strengthen the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea and to deepen the enduring friendship and partnership between our two countries," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. Tokyo, which has strained relations with its neighbour over issues including territory and Japan's wartime sex slavery, also congratulated Moon. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he looked forward to meeting the new leader, adding: "Japan and South Korea are facing common challenges in East Asia, led by responses to the North Korean issue. "I believe the two countries can further contribute to peace and prosperity of the region by working together." The campaign focused largely on the economy, with North Korea less prominent. But after a decade of conservative rule Moon's victory could mean significant change in Seoul's approach towards both Pyongyang and key ally Washington. The 64-year-old accused by his critics of being soft on the North advocates dialogue to ease tensions and to bring it to negotiations. He is seen as favouring more independence in relations with the US, Seoul's security guarantor with 28,500 troops in the country. South Korea's new president is a former pro-democracy activist and special forces soldier whose electoral victory caps a turbulent political career he was jailed by his predecessor's father. Moon Jae-In of the Centre Left Democratic party won Tuesday's presidential election in a landslide, taking 41.1 percent of the vote, far ahead of his nearest rival. The vote followed the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye, who was sacked in March after a sprawling corruption scandal prompted millions to take to the street for months to call for her resignation. The irony is that Moon was once chief of staff to president Roh Moo-Hyun, who committed suicide in 2009 after himself being questioned over allegations of graft. Moon was born on the southern island of Geoje in 1953 during the Korean War after US forces evacuated his parents and 100,000 other refugees from the Northern port of Hungnam. His father was a menial worker at a prisoner-of-war camp while his mother peddled eggs in the nearby port city of Busan, with the baby Moon strapped to her back, the politician wrote in his autobiography. He was awakened to social issues at an early age, he wrote in another book published this year. "As the oldest son on whom my family was pinning their hopes, I was supposed to study hard, but school lessons focused on college entrance exams appeared meaningless to me," he wrote. "I was always in a dilemma." He entered law school in Seoul in 1972 but was arrested and expelled for leading a student protest against the authoritarian rule of dictator Park Chung-Hee the ousted president's father. In 1975, he was detained for months and convicted of taking part in illegal protests. Once released, he became a special forces soldier during his compulsory military service. His unit took part in Operation Paul Bunyan, when the US and South mounted a vast show of force, including the deployment of B52 bombers, to cut down a tree in the Demilitarized Zone where two American soldiers trying to trim its branches had been axed to death by North Korean troops. Moon returned to school in 1980 only to be arrested again. Kim Jung-sook, the college classmate who took care of him after he was injured by a tear gas canister shot by police, later became his wife. Heal the wounds He and his liberal mentor Roh opened a law firm in Busan in 1982 focusing on human and civil rights issues. Both became leading figures in the pro-democracy protests that swept the country five years later and led to South Korea's first direct presidential elections. When Roh entered politics, Moon whose criminal conviction meant he could not become a judge continued in legal practice, defending students and workers arrested for leading protests and labour strikes. But a year after Roh's unexpected election victory in 2002, Moon joined the administration as a presidential aide, tasked with weeding out official corruption and screening candidates for top government posts. Later he defeated an attempt to impeach Roh, before rising to become his chief of staff a job so stressful that he had to have 10 teeth replaced. He spearheaded preparations for the second inter-Korea summit between Roh and then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in 2007, part of the "Sunshine policy" of engagement with Pyongyang begun by Roh's predecessor Kim Dae-Jung. Two years later Roh was dead, throwing himself from a cliff after he was questioned over corruption allegations following the end of his term. It fell to Moon to arrange his high-profile funeral, when millions turned up in central Seoul to bid him a tearful farewell to Roh. Kim Dae-Jung, seen weeping uncontrollably in a wheelchair during the event, died three months later. "I became desperate, and decided to become stronger to heal the wounds of people," Moon said. Blue House Reserved, earnest and mild-mannered, 64-year-old Moon is often said to be bland and lacking the charisma of the two ex-leaders whose signature oratorical skills and firebrand style captivated many. Opponents say he is narrow-minded and surrounded by jealous loyalists, whose strong factionalism contributed to his party splitting while in opposition. But supporters describe empathy and calm perseverance as key strengths. Conservative critics also accuse him of being too soft towards nuclear-armed North Korea, with which he advocates dialogue and reconciliation as a precursor to negotiations. He has insisted that he was the best candidate to reform chaebols the powerful, family-run conglomerates that dominate Asia's fourth-largest economy saying he owes them "nothing", unlike other politicians brought down by corruption scandals. Moon himself has often described his personality as unfit for cutthroat politics, saying he preferred other civic duties as a lawyer and was "happy" to regain his "freedom" when Roh left the Blue House. Now he returns to office. London: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that the military chiefs wanted a few thousand more troops from the alliance to be deployed in Afghanistan to help combat Islamist insurgents. The troops were needed to train local forces, Stoltenberg told reporters following talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May at her 10,Downing Street office in London. Stoltenberg said, "We have received a request from our military authorities to increase our military presence in Afghanistan with a few thousand troops. We are now assessing that request. We will make decisions on the scale and the scope of the mission within weeks.But this is not about returning back to a combat operation in Afghanistan.It will be a train, assist and advise operation, because I strongly believe that the best answer and the best weapon we have against terrorism, is to train local forces against terrorism and to stave ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) off". There are currently around 13,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan training local forces. The issue will be high on the agenda at the NATO annual summit in Brussels on 25 May.US authorities have written to NATO allies and partners about the future of the 28country alliance's presence in Afghanistan. He said, "We will not only address our presence in Afghanistan at the leaders meeting but will also address what NATO can do to step up its efforts to fight terrorism, including providing support to the counterISIL coalition." "I strongly believe that the best thing you can do to fight against terrorism is to train local forces, enabling them to stabilise their own country and to fight terrorism themselves," he said. Since NATO's combat mission in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014, Taliban attacks have intensified and Afghan military and civilian casualties have risen. Taliban dressed in Afghan army uniforms last month killed at least 135 young recruits at a northern base. The US, which is also targeting Islamic State group's affiliate in Afghanistan, dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on the group's hideouts earlier this month. A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The UK keeps its contribution in Afghanistan under regular review to ensure it remains suited for the needs of the mission". New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka to attend the biggest Buddhist festival 'Vesak Day' as its chief guest. The 'International Day of Vesak' celebrations, to be held in Colombo from 12 to 14 May, will include an International Buddhist Conference in which over 400 delegates from more than 100 countries will participate. Vesak, the most important day in the Buddhist calendar, marks the commemoration of Lord Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing away. Briefing reporters on Modi's visit, Joint Secretary (Indian Ocean Region) in the External Affairs Ministry, Sanjay Panda said no formal talks have been scheduled, but Modi will be interacting with the Sri Lankan leaders. "We do not envisage any formal talks but he will be interacting with the leaders and review the relationship in its entirety. Nothing is specifically earmarked for discussion during the current visit," he said. During the two-day trip, his second to Sri Lanka since becoming the Prime Minister, Modi will also visit Kandy in the Central Province, which is famous for production of Ceylon Tea. Panda said India's ties with Sri Lanka have witnessed a qualitative transformation in the last few years and both the countries are willing to strengthen and diversify the relationship further. "We feel our destinies are intertwined. We hope the Prime Minister's visit will be able to provide further momentum in the ties between the two countries," Panda said. Modi had travelled to Sri Lanka in March 2015. His visit to Sri Lanka comes close on the heels of a trip by his counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe here. During that visit, the two countries had signed a pact to boost economic ties as Modi and Wickremesinghe discussed a range of bilateral issues and matters of mutual interest. The pact provided a framework to identify the infrastructure projects where India could invest. ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Army says authorities have executed four Islamic militants convicted of terrorism by military courts. The Army says the members of the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group of several local militant groups, confessed to their involvement in attacks against civilians, the military and a mosque. The executions were carried out early Wednesday. Pakistan has executed 432 prisoners since 2014, when it lifted a ban on executions following a Taliban attack that killed 150 people, mostly schoolchildren. Most of those executed were convicted criminals and not militants. Forty of those executed were convicted by military courts. Rights groups say the closed-door trials deny due process, raising doubts over their legitimacy. Pakistan's Army says it gives convicted militants the right to appeal. Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday said it will send back an Indian woman, who was allegedly sexually abused after her forced marriage with a Pakistani man at gunpoint, as soon as the legal issues in the case are resolved. Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said the real problem in her case was legal issues and not the travel documents. The problem is not related to her travel documents, but stems from legal issues, Aziz said. "she will be sent back to India as soon as the legal problems are resolved, he said. Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria on Tuesday said that FO and Indian authorities were in touch over the issue and the woman would be allowed to go back once her legal issues are settled. He said the Indian High Commission have provided details about the woman and has also sought documents of her marriage. However, a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court told PTI on condition of anonymity due to sensitivity of the issue that the woman, identified Uzma, can be repatriated immediately if she is issued a new passport by Indian High Commission and Pakistans interior ministry issues a visa to legalise her stay. "Marriage or court proceedings are not a legal bar on her going back to India. She can delegate power of attorney to anyone to contest her case with the help of a lawyer," he said. The lawyer also said that marriage contracted through force can be dissolved by the court, if she testifies. "Even if it is legal marriage, she can file case for Khula (a kind of divorce right exercised by Muslim woman) and her marriage would be dissolved by the court," he said. Uzma on 8 May filed a plea with a court in Islamabad against her husband Tahir Ali alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him. She also recorded her statement before magistrate Haider Ali Shah. She told the magistrate that she came to Pakistan to see her relatives and not for marriage, a court official told PTI. "I was forced to marry at gunpoint and my immigration documents were also taken away from me," she said, according to the official. Uzma, who was brought to the court under strict security, also alleged in her statement that she was subjected to violence and sexual abuse by Tahir, said the court official. She further said she does not want to leave the Indian High Commission premises till she could safely travel back to India. The court adjourned the case till July 11 and issued notices to Tahir to appear for next hearing. It also summoned cleric Humayun Khan, who solemnised the marriage, to appear in person in the court on the next hearing. The cleric has said that he had asked Uzma if she was marrying by free will and she responded in affirmative. Tahir in his application to local police station on 5 May had said they had come to Indian High Commission to get visa as Uzma's brother in India had invited them for honeymoon. He said he stayed outside and Uzma went inside the High Commission but never came back. He had asked police to help recover his wife who in his opinion was held against her will. Uzma reached Pakistan on 1 May and travelled to Buner district in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtukhwa to marry Tahir on 3 May. The couple reportedly met in Malaysia, where Tahir was working as taxi-driver. However, the story took a turn when Uzma claimed she was forcefully married to Tahir and that she was unaware about him being already married. Washington: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday held talks in Washington with President Donald Trump and his American counterpart Rex Tillerson on a host of issues, amid a raging political storm over the abrupt sacking of the FBI chief who was probing Russia's meddling in the US polls. "I want to welcome Foreign Minister Lavrov to the State Department and express my appreciation for him making the trip to Washington so that we can continue our dialogue and our exchange of views that began in Moscow with the dialogue he hosted on a very broad range of topics," Tillerson said. This was the first public appearance of the two leaders who held talks on issues like Syria and Ukraine. The meeting came following the surprise sacking of FBI Director James Comey by Trump yesterday. Peppered with questions on Comey's firing during his brief media interaction at the State Department, Lavrov joked around. "Does the Comey firing cast a shadow of your talks, gentlemen?" a reported asked. "Was he fired?" Lavrov questioned. "Yes", the reporter responded. "You are kidding. You are kidding," replied Lavrov. Trump welcomed Lavrov to the White House marking his highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since taking office. The two leaders held discussions at the Oval Office on a host of issues and the US president described his meeting with Lavrov as "very, very good". "We had a very, very good meeting. We're going to stop the killing and the death (in Syria)," " Trump said, shortly after the meeting. "I think that we are going to do very well with respect to Syria, I think things are happening - they are really, really, really positive," Trump said. About Comey's sacking, Trump said the FBI chief "was not doing a good job". Lavrov said Trump was seeking "mutually beneficial" and "pragmatic" relations with Russia. "President Trump clearly confirmed his interest in building mutually beneficial, business-like pragmatic relations," he said. An angry Opposition has called for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate into the alleged Russian influence in last year's general elections. On the Senate floor, Senate majority leader Senator Mitch McConnell ruled out any such appointment. "Today we'll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which could only serve to impede the current work being done to not only discover what the Russians may have done - also to let this body and the national security community develop countermeasures and warfighting doctrine to see that it doesn't occur again," McConnell said. What everyone thinks of the manner in which Comey handled the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unauthorised use of a private server and her mishandling of classified information, it is clear what the Democrats thought of it, both at that time and consistently thereafter, McConnell said. "Last year, the current Democratic leader said it 'appeared to be an appalling act', one that he said 'goes against the tradition of prosecutors at every level of government'," McConnell said. "And the prior Democratic leader, when asked if James Comey should resign given his conduct of the investigation, he replied, 'Of course. Yes. It's also clear what our Democratic colleagues think of the man who evaluated Mr Comey's professional conduct and concluded that the bureau needed a change in leadership," McConnell said. Senate Minority Leader Senator Charles Schumer continued with his demand of appointing a special prosecutor. "The dismissal of Director Comey establishes a very troubling pattern. This administration has now removed several law enforcement officials in a position to conduct independent investigations of the president and his administration, from Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to Preet Bharara, and now, Jim Comey," he said. "What should happen now, what must happen now, is appoint a special prosecutor to oversee this investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein sat in the judiciary committee and promised to appoint a special prosecutor at the appropriate time," Schumer said, asserting that if there was ever a time when circumstances warranted a special prosecutor, it was right now. A special prosecutor is not subject to day-to-day supervision by the attorney general or anyone else at the Justice Department. That means the special prosecutor would have much greater say in who he can subpoena, which questions they ask, how to conduct an investigation. The special prosecutor can only be removed for good cause such as misconduct, not to quash the investigation, the opposition leader argued. The appointment of a special prosecutor would be a welcome step in the right direction, but it is not the only action that should be taken. "There are a great many outstanding questions about the circumstances of Director Comey's dismissal, the status of the executive branch investigation into the Trump campaign ties to Russia, and what the future holds for these investigations," Schumer said. After nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the progressive or 'liberal' Democratic Party has returned to power in the Republic of Korea, better known as South Korea. With around 43 percent of votes, its candidate Moon Jae-in won the presidential elections held on Tuesday, defeating three centrist-to-conservative contenders. The division of opposition votes helped him win what was exactly a by-election, caused due to the unprecedented impeachment of the former conservative president Park Geun-hye in March after a series of political and corruption scandals. Moon's victory is of global significance because one of his principal electoral promises has been to negate the emerging consensus among the major global powers, including India, not only on the nature of the regime in the Democratic Republic of North Korea, better known as North Korea but also on the danger its dictator Kim Jong-un poses for the global peace and stability. Kim has threatened to fire nuclear-tipped missiles on the United States and has detained an American citizen as human shield amid fears of a US attack targeting his nuclear and missile programmes as part of a new form of "hostage diplomacy". Incidentally, 64-year-old Moon is the son of a North Korean refugee. He has promised to pursue a friendlier course towards North Korea than his immediate predecessors did. He has said that he would love to travel to Pyongyang to meet dictator Kim and reopen the Kaesong joint industrial park where South Korean companies employ North Korean labourers to build products. Moon has argued that South Koreas principal ally the United States policy on sanctions and pressure on North Korea are ineffective and that he will call for a review of the Pentagons deployment of an anti-missile defence system in South Korea (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence or THAD), a deployment that has drawn objections from China too. He repeatedly pledged during his campaign that South Korea would have an independent voice in the international community. No wonder why North Korea had indicated that Moon was its favoured candidate, with state media urging the South Korean voters to "punish the puppet group of conservatives." In short, Moon favours engagement and greater dialogue with North Korea. He, in fact, wants to revive "the sunshine policy" that Kim Dae-jung, one of his Democratic party predecessors, had enunciated on his inauguration as president in February 1998. This policy has three basic principles and basic tasks. The principles are: "First, no armed provocation by North Korea will be tolerated under any circumstances; second, we will not undermine North Korea or unify the country by absorbing it; and third, we will pursue across-the-board exchanges and cooperation with North." The five tasks are: implementing the 1991 "Basic Agreement in reconciliation, non-aggression and exchanges and cooperation between the South and the North"; desirability of the United States and Japan improving and normalising relations with North Korea; all nations in the world, including the four countries (the US, Japan, Russia and China) whose interests intersect on the Korean peninsula, should interact with North Korea so as to make it a responsible member of the international community; eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the Korean peninsula; and changing the Armistice Agreement of 1953 that brought the Korean War to a halt(not an end) into a peace regime. Korean scholar Lee Hun-kyung assesses the sunshine policy based on Abraham Maslow's "motivational theory", which is premised on the fact that in general, all human beings tend to satisfy needs such as food and shelter that are essential to their survival. When such fundamental needs are met, people then try to pursue other desires. In other words, human beings have the basic instinct to first ensure survival, then security, followed by affiliation, self-esteem and finally self-realisation. Applied to North Koreas case, the sunshine policy could be seen in the context of the fact that the communist nation depends for the very survival of its people on the global food aid on which there are now many sanctions; it is only China which provides substantial food aid to North Korea. Already short on food 40 percent of North Koreas population is undernourished and depends on food rations chaos broke out recently in six major cities, with more than 400 people killed in food riots. Reportedly, in an army base near the Chinese border, a group of 700 rioting North Koreans stormed the food pantries, killing 60 soldiers in the process and taking some of their weapons. Another aspect of the sunshine policy is that its targets are North Korean people, not their totalitarian leader Kim as such. As South Koreas president, Moon will adopt a strategy to ensure the survival of the North Korean people. The policy, thus, is supposed to promote an approach of brotherly love and humanitarian compassion. In short, the policy is that of engagement, not confrontation; it is based on the concepts of gradualism and separation of economics and humanitarian issues from politics. In the long term, the policy, it is assumed, will encourage North Koreans, including their leader, to reform and open up to outside influences and create economic ties with the outside world in general and South Korea in particular. However, the fact remains that the sunshine policy pursued by the previous Democratic party-led government in South Korea did not meet with any lasting success. It failed precisely because the North Korean regime went back on its promise of not escalating tensions it, instead, went for the proliferation of nuclear and missiles (it has conducted five nuclear tests and refused to re-accede to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), leading to various international sanctions. Besides, unlike the situation in the late 1990s when countries like the United States (under president Bill Clinton), Japan and China blessed the sunshine policy, this time all the three countries, including even China, are not sanguine about the intentions of Kim Jong-un. China, North Koreas biggest trading partner and the main source of food and energy, has always sustained the North Korean regime; but, Pyongyangs fifth nuclear test and ongoing missile launches have complicated the ties with Beijing. As already argued in this platform, North Korea, like Pakistan, excels in blackmailing the rest of the world; it demonstrates its nuclear and missile prowess with a conviction that the rest of the world, nervous with its destructive capabilities, will accede to its security and economic assistance. One doubts whether Presidents Moons revival of the sunshine policy will mellow Kim Jong-un. Besides, Pyongyang suspects that efforts by South Korea to reach North Korean people, if taken to the logical conclusion, could create conditions conducive for the eventual unification of the country(to which both the North and South are committed) as a democratic nation, and thus be detrimental to the survival of the communist regime. Pyongyang fears that the flow of external information into the North could fuel a notion of openness among the North Korean people, resulting in social instability. This being the case, it is difficult to believe that Kim Jong-un will respond to new South Korean Presidents desire for government-level talks. Kims happiness over Moons victory is limited mainly on the civilian-level economic cooperation (reopening of the Kaesong joint industrial complex, for instance) as a way to make money (resources) for developing more weapons of mass destruction. Trumps shock sacking of FBI director James Comey has sparked a firestorm in the American media but for Trumps favourite newspaper Breitbart, its an open and shut case dismissed in a 300 word lead story - Put simply, if Trump had fired Comey while there were still serious questions about Russia, then it would have been more plausible to accuse him of trying to interfere in the investigation or cover up whatever happened. It is now clear that nothing, in fact, happened, is the Breitbart view. Are you frustrated, the out and out Trump supporting Breitbart asks the liberal media on its Twitter handle about the outpouring on the Comey exit. The bombshell was delivered in an innocuous manila envelope at the FBI headquarters in Washington D.C Tuesday. CNN's Kevin Liptak goes behind the scenes of the epic firing in this gripping story. Although the alleged Russian involvement to tilt the US election is the leading narrative in the Comey story, Trump's recent hostility is directed towards Comeys hardline that there's not a shred of proof that Obama wiretapped Trump's offices in Manhattan. As Obama returns with a bang to the speaking circuit, Trump is reportedly keen not to let Obama's popularity overshadow his or his family's. As for the man at the centre of the storm, Comey reportedly learnt of his sacking from telly news while he was mentoring field officers in Los Angeles. Trump Wanted the James Comey sacking to be a public execution and got it done to perfection. Trumps Twitter handle, now far quieter, has a single tweet on Comey with the hashtag #draintheswamp. The room went quiet, there was complete shock, sources are now saying about the moments just after Comey saw the news break on television. The FBI director now joins acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as senior law enforcement officials who have been fired by Trump. James Comey's firing is a "grotesque abuse of power," says CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. Trump wanted to sack Comey, his administration created a paper trail is the dominant theme playing in the American media on the Comey firestorm that broke Tuesday afternoon. "This is a warning from Trump. You'll be next if you get after me". So, Comeys out of a job but not broke, he took a pay cut to join the government in 2013. He was earlier on a profit sharing deal with boutique hedge fund in Connecticut Bridgewater Associates where he worked as the firms general counsel. He earned nearly $ 6 million for his final full year with the company, according to Open Secrets. The FBI paid Comey $185,000 per year. Trump told Comey the FBI needed new leadership and he was being "terminated" with immediate effect in a shock move that political watchers are comparing with the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon in 1973. Not since Watergate has a president dismissed the person leading an investigation bearing on him, reports New York Times. For that too, Breitbart has an answer - those trying to hype the Comey firing as the new Watergate and revive the Russia conspiracy theory are making fools of themselves and actually helping Trump. The Washington Post has a useful annotated version of how the file was prepared to kick out Comey. Just like the Saturday Night Massacre during Watergate, says The Economist: Many commentators are comparing the dramatic dismissal of Mr Comey to a decisive moment in the Watergate scandal: the Saturday Night Massacre of October 20th 1973, when Richard Nixon ordered the sacking of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into the burglary that would eventually lead to Nixons downfall. Ever since Watergate, presidents have been reluctant to pick a battle with directors of the FBI. Mr Comeys case is different from Mr Coxs, in that he was not specifically appointed to look into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Moreover, as Mr Trump pointed out in his letter, Mr Comey had assured the president three times that he himself was not under investigation by the FBI. Donald Trump acted like a despot, says New Yorker: With Comey out of the way, Trump can now pick his own man (or woman) to run the Bureau, and this person will have the authority to close down that investigation. WASHINGTON President Donald Trump urged Russia to "rein in" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a meeting with Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the White House said on Wednesday. "Trump emphasized the need to work together to end the conflict in Syria, in particular, underscoring the need for Russia to rein in the Assad regime, Iran, and Iranian proxies," the White House said in a statement. (Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday to discuss Syria and a wide range of international issues, a senior U.S. official said. It will be the highest-level contact between Trump and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin since Trump took office on Jan. 20. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on the agenda would be Syria as well as U.S.-Russian relations and other global issues. Relations deteriorated between the United States and Russia after U.S. air strikes against a Syrian airfield in response to a chemical weapons attack that Washington blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian ally. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Sandra Maler) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. TUNIS Tunisian police fired tear gas to break up rioting by hundreds of protesters who took to the streets after a fruit seller set himself on fire when police stopped him working, local residents said.In an incident similar to the self-immolation in 2011 that sparked the uprising that toppled autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, the street vendor in a small town west of the capital poured gasoline over himself and set it ablaze. A crowd of young men in Tebourba, about 35 km (22 miles) from Tunis, then threw rocks at police. "Hundreds of angry youths have clashed with police who have been firing tear gas," said Anis Mabrouki, a local resident. The vendor was being treated for his injuries in hospital.The economic malaise and frustration that helped fuel the 2011 uprising against Ben Ali still simmers in Tunisia especially in marginalised central and southern regions where unemployed youths say they have few opportunities. (Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Patrick Markey and Robin Pomeroy) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Istanbul: Turkey on Wednesday reacted furiously to a United States plan to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Ankara considers terrorists, but the force battling jihadists said the move would hasten the extremists' defeat. The issue risks further stoking tensions between Ankara and Washington less than a week before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan heads to Washington to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump in their first face-to-face encounter as heads of state. The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) is seen by Washington as the best ally against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and the prime attacking force in any assault on their stronghold of Raqa. But Ankara regards the group as a terror group and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged an insurgency inside Turkey leaving tens of thousands dead. The dispute poisoned ties between Turkey and the United States under the administration of former president Barack Obama but commentators had hoped for a smoother ride under Trump. "The supply of arms to the YPG is unacceptable," Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told A Haber television. "Such a policy will benefit nobody," he said. "We expect that this mistake is to be rectified." 'Ensure clear victory' In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon said Trump had authorised the arming of Kurdish fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) "to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa." The SDF, a United States-backed group dominated by YPG but which also contains Arab elements, hailed the move and said that receiving US arms and military equipment would "hasten the defeat" of the jihadists. "The US decision to arm the YPG... is important and will hasten the defeat of terrorism," an SDF spokesman told AFP. The Kurdish-Arab SDF has been the main faction fighting Islamic State on the ground in Syria, but Turkey dismisses it as a front for the YPG. It remains to be seen what shadow the issue will cast over the talks between Trump and Erdogan, which have been touted as chance to forge a new partnership between the two NATO allies. A high-level Turkish delegation including Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkey's spy chief Hakan Fidan has been in the United States laying the groundwork for the meeting. Canikli said Turkey would take the diplomatic initiative to convince Washington "to do what friendship requires." "The argument that a ground operation in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State) would be successful only with YPG has nothing to do with reality," he said. Both Washington and Brussels classifies the PKK as a terror group but has never regarded the YPG as such. 'Graveyard for jihadists' Turkey has said it is keen to join the battle to recapture Raqa but on condition the offensive does not include Syrian Kurdish fighters. Last month, Erdogan said if Turkey and the United States joined forces, they could turn Raqa into a "graveyard" for jihadists. Turkey is hoping for better relations with Washington after tensions during the Obama administration but their disagreement over Syrian Kurdish forces has proven to be one of the thorniest issues. On 27 April, Turkish warplanes struck YPG forces in Syria and also hit Kurdish forces in neighbouring Iraq in what Ankara described as "terrorist havens". Pentagon chief Jim Mattis had on Tuesday taken part in a summit in Copenhagen for senior leaders from the top 15 countries in the anti-IS coalition, including Turkey. Mattis, who is now in Vilnius as part of a European tour, gave a positive assessment of the role Turkey will play in the lead up to the Raqa fight. "Our intent is to work with the Turks, alongside one another to take Raqa down," he said. Meanwhile, Trump was to receive Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday to discuss a Russian plan to establish safe zones in Syria and help end the six-year conflict. Istanbul: Turkey on Wednesday slammed as "unacceptable" a US announcement that Washington would supply arms and military equipment to Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State jihadists in Syria. "The supply of arms to the YPG is unacceptable," Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told A Haber television. "Such a policy will benefit nobody". "We expect that this mistake is to be rectified," he said, days ahead of a crunch meeting in Washington between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US counterpart Donald Trump. The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) has been seen by Washington as the best ally against jihadists in Syria. But Ankara regards the group as a terror outfit, as it does the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who have waged an insurgency since 1984 inside Turkey that has left tens of thousands dead. Trump on Monday "authorised the Department of Defence to equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement. The weapons are being delivered for use by Kurdish fighters ahead of the upcoming offensive to recapture Raqa, the last major bastion for IS in Syria. The US announcement came just ahead of Erdogan's visit to Washington next week for talks with Trump, the first time the two men will meet as heads of state. A Turkish high-level delegation made up of Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkey's spy chief Hakan Fidan have already been in the US to lay the groundwork for the visit. Turkey has said it is keen to join the battle to recapture Raqa but on the condition that the offensive does not include the Syrian Kurdish fighters. Last month, Erdogan said if Turkey and the United States joined forces, they could turn Raqa into a "graveyard" for the jihadists. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called on the United States to immediately reverse a decision on arming Syrian Kurdish fighters considered by Ankara to be a terror group. "I hope very much that this mistake will be reversed immediately," Erdogan said after Washington announced it would arm the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) in the fight against jihadists in Syria. Erdogan vowed to bring up the issue in talks with US President Donald Trump on 16 May in Washington, their first face-to-face encounter as heads of state. "I will personally express our worries in a detailed way when we talk with President Trump on 16 May," he added, saying the issue would also be discussed at the NATO summit in Brussels on 25 May. "We want to believe that our allies would prefer be side by side with ourselves rather than with the terror groups," he added, saying that whatever happens in Syria and Iraq was a matter of "national security" for Turkey. By Mark Hosenball | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Hackers with connections to the Russian government played a role in an effort to damage centrist French politician Emmanuel Macron's presidential campaign by hacking and leaking emails and documents ahead of the election, according to two U.S. intelligence officials.Separately, Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that Washington became "aware of Russian activity" in the French election long before purported campaign emails were leaked two days before Sunday's vote that Macron won in a landslide."We gave them a heads up ... "Look, we're watching the Russians, we're seeing them penetrate some of your infrastructure'," Rogers said.The two officials and four others familiar with intelligence agency findings acknowledged that they have not found conclusive evidence that the Kremlin ordered Russian intelligence agencies to do the hacking, or that they directed it. But it was conducted by "entities with known ties to Russian intelligence," said one of the officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity.The Russian government has repeatedly denied any involvement in hacking of the French election.Macron campaign digital director Mounir Mahjoubi told Reuters in an interview that he had no proof that Russian government-backed hackers were behind the attacks."We have no precise information on who did this," he told Reuters. "I have no confirmation, no proof." He said he was speaking in a personal capacity and not officially on behalf of the campaign.Two of the U.S. government sources and one European official said there is clear evidence that Russia targeted Macron's campaign going back at least to February. Pro-European Union Macron defeated far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen, who wanted to take France out of the EU and supports Russian policy on Ukraine. Flashpoint, a U.S. cyber intelligence firm, said over the weekend that early indications suggested the Macron leaks were the work of a hacking group known as APT 28, or Fancy Bear, which intelligence officials and cyber experts have concluded is linked to the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.That group is one of two that U.S. intelligence officials have concluded was behind the hacks of Democratic Party emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential election to undermine the campaign of candidate Hillary Clinton in favour of Republican Donald Trump, who supported a warmer relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Congressional committees are investigating the allegations and whether there was collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia. Moscow has repeatedly denied meddling.U.S. SENATOR'S QUESTIONS ON FRANCE On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin sent the Justice Department, FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a letter expressing deep concern about the events in France. He asked for a "detailed accounting of the Trump Administration's assessment of the attack on the French election and the Administration's response to this attack." Two of the U.S. officials said Russian hackers and propagandists accelerated their efforts near the end of the campaign to help Le Pen."After the election came down to her and Macron, they did what they could to boost her chances, and that included hacking, as well as using the French-language versions of RT and Sputnik [two Russian government-controlled media outlets] to spread propaganda and fake news," one of the officials said.In the final days of the French election campaign, U.S.-based, pro-Trump bloggers and Twitter activists were among the most aggressive promoters of the purported Macron data leaks, which included what appeared to be private emails along with what Macron claimed were forged offshore bank account records, other officials told Reuters.Some of the officials said U.S. government experts are puzzled by the clumsiness of the hackers who targeted Macron, noting that the major dump of Macron-related materials came shortly before the start of a two-day black-out on media coverage of the election. Others said the hackers may have miscalculated the effect of their efforts on French voters."Europeans may be more resistant to Russian meddling because they've been on the front lines and have experienced more of it since World War II," one of the U.S. officials said. Nevertheless, two officials said, France has been what one called "ground zero" in an extensive Russian espionage campaign in western Europe that began soon after Putin, a former officer in the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service, returned to the Russian presidency five years ago.The Russian activities accelerated sharply after the EU imposed sanctions on Russia after it seized Crimea in 2014, the officials said.In addition to hacking and other forms of cyber espionage, the efforts include attempts by the SVR, the KGB's successor, to recruit French politicians, academics, and government and industry officials, especially in the military and intelligence services.Russian intelligence officers in France are even more numerous and active now than they were during the Cold War, and H4, the domestic counterintelligence unit of France's General Directorate for Internal Security, or DGSI, has "ramped up" to meet the threat, two of the officials said."During the Cold War, the U.S. was the main threat," said one of the officials. "Now EU sanctions and NATO expansion are Putin's main concerns. At the same time, the rise of far right and nationalist parties and political figures provides an opportunity to disrupt European unity." (Additional reporting by John Walcott and Dustin Volz in Washington and Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Grant McCool) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Venezuelan military courts have ordered the detention of at least 50 civilians involved in the deadly mass protests against the embattled government of President Nicolas Maduro, a non-governmental organisation said Monday. Alfredo Romero, an attorney with the NGO Foro Penal (Criminal Justice Forum), told AFP that military hearings involving civilian suspects were known to have been taking place for several days. "So far, 75 people have been brought before Venezuelan military courts. Fifty of those remain in custody," said Romero, who is representing the detained civilians. Another forty or so people were expected before judges later Monday, said the lawyer, who denounced what he called an "illegal" bid by a military court to try civilians. Government officials have not confirmed the arrests, or the military processing of civilian suspects. The 50 people being held are in Guarico state, according to legal expert Luis Betancourt with Foro Penal. Luis Almagro, the head of the Organization of American States, lashed out at the reported detentions in a video. "Venezuela's part military, part civilian regime represents the very worst of a dictatorship," Almagro said. In particular, "having military judges charge civilians is utterly out of proportion, legally speaking," said Almagro, a Uruguayan diplomat who leads the US-based regional policy coordinating body. Riot cops fired tear gas Monday as thousands pressed ahead with a weeks-long campaign of protest against Maduro's efforts to reform the constitution. Clashes at protests have left 36 people dead and hundreds injured since the unrest erupted on April 1, according to authorities. Demonstrators blame Maduro for an economic crisis that has caused food shortages in the oil-rich state and say his constitutional move is a ploy to resist calls for early elections. Maduro says the crisis is a US-backed capitalist conspiracy against his elected socialist government. His own chief prosecutor has spoken out against the detention of protesters. Samsung has expanded support for Samsung Pay to Mswipe PoS (Point of Sale) terminals across India. The mobile payment service will now be available at over 200,000 terminals of Mswipe PoS terminals in the country. As these terminals are NFC enabled, they can now accept payments through Samsung Pay compatible smartphones. In order to make payments, Samsung Pay customers need to choose their preferred debit / credit card when accessing Samsung Pay, scan their fingerprint and tap their device on an Mswipe terminal to complete a purchase. Samsung officially launched Samsung Pay, contactless mobile payments service in India in March. Last month, the service enabled UPI payments on its platform. Manish Patel, Founder and CEO, Mswipe said, Payment technology is evolving rapidly and Samsung Pay is a great example of how innovation will continue to make digital payment more convenient and desirable for customers. At Mswipe, we have anticipated this and built terminals that are future-ready so that our merchants can accept payments seamlessly, even when there is a technology shift. Sanjay Razdan, Director Product Planning Samsung India Electronics, said, Samsung Pay has been designed to be the smartest and most convenient method to make digital payments today. This tie-up will enable us to make Samsung Pay ubiquitous and acceptable at even the smallest and remotest of merchants across the country. Earlier this month, Sodexo, the meal voucher and employee service company teamed up with Mswipe that will allow employees to use Sodexos Meal Card at some Mswipe merchants like grocery stores, restaurants, cafes and food delivery services. Source Image source: Getty Images. Health insurance costs are skyrocketing throughout most of the U.S. Obamacare insurance premiums for 2017 jumped by double-digit percentages in 31 states. The average increase was a whopping 25%. Some states have especially high health insurance costs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) calculated monthly premiums assuming a 27-year-old purchased the second-lowest cost silver plan on the Obamacare exchange. Here are the six states where the monthly premium is more than $400. Image source: Getty Images. Nebraska The average monthly cost of a typical health insurance premium in Nebraska is $411. That's 51% higher than the average premium paid by Cornhusker State residents in 2016. A family of four in Nebraska would pay $1,487 per month for similar coverage. There are only two available Obamacare plans available in Nebraska -- Aetna (NYSE: AET) and Medica. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska, the state's largest health insurer, pulled out of the Obamacare marketplace after losing $140 million from 2014 through 2016. UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), the largest health insurer in the U.S., also exited the Nebraska exchange as part of a broader pullback from Obamacare. Why are premiums so high in Nebraska? Prior to its decision to exit the state's Obamacare marketplace, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska said the problem boiled down to higher-than-expected healthcare utilization. Image source: Getty Images. Wyoming The hypothetical 27-year-old purchasing a silver Obamacare plan in Wyoming would pay $413 per month in health insurance premiums -- 9% higher than the rate in 2016.A family of four with the same silver plan would pay $1,487 per month. Wyoming has only one insurance company offering coverage through the Obamacare exchange: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming. The state held that distinction by itself in 2016. However, for 2017, four other states joined the single-insurer club. Wyoming fits the general profile of states that have extraordinarily high premiums. It's heavily rural with a small population. Wyoming also didn't expand Medicaid with federal assistance provided through Obamacare. Image source: Getty Images. Arizona The monthly cost for Obamacare premiums for a 27-year-old in Arizona is $422. That's only a little higher than the rate for Wyoming. However, unlike Wyoming, Arizona's health insurance premiums soared in 2017 -- increasing 116%. That huge jump is the largest of any state in the country. When Obamacare first started, Arizona had eight health insurers participating with some of the lowest premiums of any state. Now, that number has dwindled to just two -- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona and Health Net, which was acquired by Centene (NYSE: CNC) in 2016. The problem in Arizona is similar to those in other states. Younger, healthier individuals aren't enrolling as much as sicker patients who cost health insurers a lot of money. As the losses mounted, health insurers pulled out of the state -- with rates skyrocketing. Image source: Getty Images. Oklahoma An Oklahoman 27-year-old would need to shell out $424 per month to buy the second-lowest cost silver Obamacare plan. That's 69% higher than the monthly premium in 2016. A family of four would spend $1,536 each month for similar coverage. As is the case in Wyoming, only one health insurer participates in the Obamacare marketplace in Oklahoma. Also like with Wyoming, that one participant is the state's Blue Cross Blue Shield plan. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma has offered coverage through the state's Obamacare marketplace since 2014. During the past three years, the insurer has accumulated losses of more than $300 million as a result of its participation. Image source: Getty Images. North Carolina The Tar Heel State claims the dubious distinction of having the second-highest health insurance premiums in the country with individual coverage for the standard plan used by HHS costing $446 per month. The monthly premium for a family of four in North Carolina is $1,613. There are two participating insurers in the North Carolina Obamacare marketplace following the withdrawal of UnitedHealth Group and Aetna. But residents in most of the state's counties will only have one plan from which to choose -- Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. Cigna (NYSE: CI) is the other insurer participating in the state's Obamacare exchange. However, the company opted to offer plans in only five counties in North Carolina's growing Research Triangle region. Image source: Getty Images. Alaska Alaska is the top state on a map of the U.S. -- and it's also at the top of the list of states with the highest health insurance costs. Obamacare premiums for single coverage in Alaska are a whopping $760 per month. For a family of four, that cost jumps to $2,750. Only one insurer participates in the state marketplace -- Premera Blue Cross. Premera lost so much money from its Obamacare plans in 2015 that the Alaskan legislature had to shift money to essentially bail the company out so that it could continue to provide coverage. The challenges that Premera Blue Cross faced in the past aren't likely to be resolved anytime soon. There simply aren't enough healthy members in the Alaskan market to offset the costs of others with high medical costs. Image source: Getty Images. What does the future hold? Some might argue that the federal subsidies help reduce the actual amount of premiums paid by many Americans. That's true. However, the fact remains that many still must pay the increasingly high monthly amounts. The health insurers that continue to participate in Obamacare marketplaces won't be able to sustain losses indefinitely. Either the federal government will have to fix Obamacare or replace it with something else. Which alternative will be chosen is still up in the air. 10 stocks we like better than AetnaWhen 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 Aetna 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 May 1, 2017 Keith Speights has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends UnitedHealth Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. HALSEY Members of the Central Linn School Board have declared a vacancy following the death of board member Chris Wyne and stand ready to appoint a successor. But Edward J. Sherwood, 70, of Brownsville is hoping it doesn't get that far. He's running as a write-in candidate for Wyne's position. Wyne, who was first elected to represent Zone 7 on the board in 2005, had filed for re-election before his death April 10 at age 60. He was running unopposed for a four-year term. If no write-in candidate receives a majority of the vote, the board will appoint someone to fill Wyne's position. That person then holds the position for two years, at which point another election will be held to fill the remaining two years of Wyne's term. Sherwood, however, said he hoping to receive that majority write-in vote and serve Wyne's full term. An employee of the U.S. Forest Service who retired this past January, Sherwood said he's been doing some self-evaluation to form new goals. "I realized my passion is to reform the educational system to where it benefits the needs and desires of the parents, the students and the taxpayers are represented," he said. "I had no idea how I was going to do that, but then I received my ballot for the current election." Sherwood said when he realized Wyne was not going to be able to serve, he decided to try to be his replacement. "I looked in the mirror figuratively and the guy there said, 'You want to reform education? How bout a little less talk and a lot more action?' As Elvis so eloquently put it." Sherwood has a bachelor of science degree in naval science from the University of Wisconsin and received a commission as a Navy officer following graduation. He served in the Tonkin Gulf during the Vietnam War. The board position would be his first foray into public office. Sherwood said the three biggest challenges he sees facing the district are finding a way to replace the Central Linn High School building, how to handle future enrollment growth and how to reduce dropout rates. He said he might favor more charter schools as an answer to growing enrollment, or more educational vouchers for home-schoolers. Sherwood said he supports the initiative that diverted state dollars for vocational programs. He advocates more coordination with local trade unions to offer apprenticeship courses. He said he'd also like to see more electives, flexibility in schedules and more classes with mixed ages, so older students who are struggling can study at the same level as younger students who are progressing more quickly. "Make school more like a mall and less like a prison. The more a thing is compelled, the more strongly it is resisted," he said, adding: "Beyond basic reading, writing, math and computer competence, let students and their parents help pick the curriculum." Sherwood said he also favors teaching classes with basic life skills, such as cooking, budgeting and maintaining a clean living space, "so they can successfully live on their own either in a dorm or their own place." He also advocates critical thinking courses with logic, argument, debate and research so students can "discover the truth on their own and recognize when theyre being manipulated." Sherwood said his passion is to reform the educational system, and for those reforms to be so successful they inspire other districts, the state as a whole and eventually the nation. "Id like to be your candidate so we can together make a small start on this big idea," he said. Corning Inc.'s (NYSE: GLW) Q1 earning's announcement showed strong results that very well may be the start of a strong year for the company. As the chart below shows, strong sales growth across its core businesses yielded 14% top line growth on a non-GAAP constant currency basis. Non-GAAP core earning's growth of 20% was outstanding, and coupled with management's buyback program which yields a lower share count, non-GAAP core EPS was up a hefty 39% year over year. Metric Q1 2017 Q1 2016 % Growth (YOY) Core sales $2.485 billion $2.171 billion 14% Core earnings $407 million $340 million 20% Core EPS $0.39 $0.28 39% Weighted-average common shares outstanding-diluted 925 million 1103 million (14%) Core performance metrics (non-GAAP) are adjusted to exclude the impact of changes in Japanese yen and Korean won foreign exchange rates, as well as other items that do not reflect ongoing operations of the company. Data source: Corning. Chart by author. But even after Corning's banner quarter, there's still plenty for investors to like looking forward for the company. Image source: Corning. Corning is giving money back to shareholders A key item for investors to watch is management's plan to return $12.5 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks by the end of 2019. During Q1 Corning paid shareholders a cumulative $168 million in dividends and bought back 15.3 million shares of stock for an additional $408.3 million in capital returns. Chairman and CEO Wendell Weeks summed up the progress made to date on the capital return program. Fiber optics is booming Below is a chart showing Corning's Q1 results for its five core businesses. Operating Business Q1 2017 Core Sales Q1 2016 Core Sales % Core Sales Growth (YOY) Q1 2017 Core Earnings Q1 2016 Core Earnings % Core Earnings Growth (YOY) Display Technologies $846 million $829 million 2% $256 million $223 million 15% Optical Communications $818 million $609 million 34% $93 million $26 million 258% Environmental Technologies $275 million $264 million 4% $37 million $37 million 0% Specialty Materials $300 million $227 million 32% $48 million $32 million 50% Life Sciences $210 million $204 million 3% $20 million $18 million 11% Core performance metrics (non-GAAP) are adjusted to exclude the impact of changes in Japanese yen and Korean won foreign exchange rates, as well as other items that do not reflect ongoing operations of the company. Data source: Corning. Chart by author. Corning's Optical Communications business showed strong growth in North America. Fiber-to-the-home propelled 34% YOY revenue growth and helped more than triple the segment's year-over-year non-GAAP core earnings. A week prior to the earning's release Corning made a joint announcement withVerizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)that Verizon would be purchasing up to 12.4 million miles of fiber optic cable from Corning each year from 2018 through 2020. The deal is valued at a $1.05 billion minimum purchase commitment.Verizon, like other carriers is working on building out its network and preparing for the rollout of 5G. Although this should not effect this year's revenue, it is excellent news for the future of Corning's Optical Communications business going forward. Gorilla Glass The other piece of good news for the company is reflected in the strong growth of Gorilla Glass sales. Gorilla Glass is accounted for in the company's Specialty Materials business which had 32% YOY sales growth and 50% YOY non-GAAP core earning's growth in the first quarter. In early April DisplayMate gave the Samsung Galaxy 8 an A+ rating for its OLED display. Corning's Gorilla glass protects the display and has a curved design for this smartphone. New wireless charging smartphone designs are expected to have glass backs to accommodate the new technology. This innovation could in effect double the industry's requirement for Gorilla Glass for phones that have the wireless charging feature. Corning looks like a company with a lot going for it Corning's results for the quarter are impressive. The company's obsession with returning capital to shareholders is steadfast. At the same time, the infrastructure requirements from the likes of Verizon and other carriers focused on rolling out 5G networks puts Corning's fiber business in the spotlight for more growth. Couple that with the growth in Gorilla Glass and investors are doubly rewarded -- a growing technology company with an excellent capital return program. It looks like that profile won't be changing any time soon. 10 stocks we like better than CorningWhen 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 Corning 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 Frank DiPietro has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool recommends Corning. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Every day, Wall Street analysts upgrade some stocks, downgrade others, and "initiate coverage" on a few more. But do these analysts even know what they're talking about? Today, we're taking one high-profile Wall Street pick and putting it under the microscope... The week is still young, but already, it's been a bad week for investors in the commercial dry bulk shipping sector. On Monday, Genco Shipping & Trading Limited (NYSE: GNK), one of the biggest publicly traded dry shippers in the world ($135 million in annual revenue), reported fiscal Q1 2017 earnings that broadly disappointed investors. Genco's $0.66 "adjusted" per-share loss missed analyst targets by $0.02 per share. Combined with a weak revenue performance ($38.2 million when, according to StreetInsider.com, analysts had expected more than $38.85 million), this was enough to send Genco shares down as much as 6% in trading yesterday. It also probably doesn't bode well for other participants in the dry bulk shipping market, such as Star Bulk Carriers,Diana Shipping,Eagle Bulk Shipping, andScorpio Bulkers -- all of which had down months in April. And yet, hope springs eternal on Wall Street. Here are three things you need to know about that. Genco stock got rocked this week, but can Wall Street refloat this boat? Image source: Getty Images. 1. Wall Streets's got hi-i-igh hopes... In March, if you recall, Wall Street banker Morgan Stanley was first to sound the all-clear on dry bulk shipping stocks. With the Baltic Dry Index soaring past 1,300 and looking likely to head higher, Morgan Stanley declared that the BDI had "passed through its cyclical lows" and was ready to enter a new era of high prices. Older, fuel-inefficient cargo vessels were getting scrapped and taken out of circulation, argued Morgan. Construction of new ships to replace them was down, and growing at only 1% annually. Overcapacity was a thing of the past -- and profits would be the story of the future. Except that's not what happened. SinceMorgan Stanley declared the boom days for dry shipping were upon us, the BDI has dropped 25%, indicating a 25% reduction in the average rates that cargo shippers could charge for their services. The BDI hit bottom at 994 points on May 5, and has rebounded somewhat since, but Morgan's "cyclical lows" argument is in tatters. 2. Hope springs eternal It's lucky for the dry shippers, then, that they've got other friends on Wall Street. Just this morning, for example, two more bankers -- Jefferies & Co. and Seaport Global Securities -- responded to Genco's gloomy earnings report with glowing recommendations of their own. Jefferies, which was already bullish on the stock, argued that "with spot charter rates and asset values firming and likely to continue to firm ...GNK shares have further upside." The value of Genco's assets alone, says Jefferies, are worth more than the company's entire market capitalization today. Indeed, Jefferies calls Genco stock's current valuation of just 60% of net asset value "ridiculously" low. Rather than going down, Jefferies believes Genco stock should double -- to a new price target of $22 a share. Seaport Globalagrees. Far from discouraged by Genco's report, it's upgrading the shares to buy (with a $16 price target) and predicting Genco will begin buying out weaker rivals as charter rates for dry bulk shippers resume moving higher. 3. What Genco says -- and what the BDI says, too Interestingly, Genco itself made no mention of plans to buy out other dry bulk shipping companies in its earnings statement earlier this week -- in fact, Genco gave no guidance, whatsoever, for what investors should expect as the year goes on. (Although management did confirm Jefferies' theory that spot charter rates for dry bulk shippers are "higher" this year than last, confided that it sees "heightened Chinese demand for iron ore cargoes," and cited the same 1,338 BDI price that attracted Morgan Stanley's attention two months ago as evidence that things may be looking up). Which brings us back to the BDI itself. What can we see here that might support, or deflate, analysts' enthusiasm for Genco stock? Honestly, not much. While the BDI did hit that oft-mentioned high at the end of March, it hasn't come close to repeating that high since mid-April. And as I've already noted, the BDI currently reads 25% below its late-March high. Whether it will get back there any time soon is, really, anybody's guess. What it means to investors Meanwhile, investors in Genco stock are stuck holding a stock with negative profits for the past 12 months, a stock unlikely to earn any profit at all this year, and a stock valued at 35 times what even optimistic analysts see as its likely profits for next year. On top of all that, Genco is continuing to burn cash (negative free cash flow of more than $50 million last year) and to pile up debt ($507 million at last report -- three times Genco's debt of four years ago, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data). Call me a pessimist if you will, but I just can't bring myself to agree with Wall Street's best and brightest this morning. With so much debt on its books, hypothesizing that Genco might go on an acquisition spree (as Seaport says) seems like a pipe dream to me. And unless Genco can find a way to earn a profit in this still-down shipping market, I can't agree with Jefferies' idea that Genco stock will double, either. 10 stocks we like better than Genco Shipping & TradingWhen 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 Genco Shipping & Trading 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 May 1, 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. Robert Murray, chief executive at Murray Energy, the largest coal mining company in America, says coal remains essential for low cost energy and the "reliability of our electric power grid." In fact, he says, the country can't get through winter without it. We must have at least 30 percent of our electricity generation mix, or we will wind up with people freezing in the dark with unreliable electricity, and very high cost electricity. Mr. Branson is not a person that I would want to listen to for any advice, Murray told the FOX Business Network. Sir Richard Branson, British billionaire and Virgin Group founder recently bashed the coal industry, saying I cant think of anything more stupid than to talk about bringing coal back." Murray, who said Branson had no "pulpit to verse an opinion at all," on coal, was also "not a person that I would want to listen to for any advice." President Trump promised to put miners back to work in March as he signed an executive order that withdrew Obama-era regulations on energy, ushering an end to the war on coal. The industry, which lost nearly 10,000 jobs from 2014, employed roughly 65,971 people in 2015 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Were still in the doldrums in the thermal side because were still under many of the Obama Democrat regulations, Murray said. Mr. Trump has made a tremendous progress in eliminating a number of those regulations already but, there are many yet to go. Murray noted that there is an energy poverty problem in this world, and the only way developing countries, such as India can have a lightbulb, is through coal. They have no other way to get electricity into India other than through coal. And we must deal with this energy poverty issues. That means growth, that means export growth for American goal, Murray said. Recently-merged Dutch-Belgian supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize, operator of U.S. chains including Stop & Shop and Giant, says its operating profit rose 12 percent to 553 million euros ($602 million) in the first quarter compared with the pre-merger companies' combined profits in the same period last year. The company said Wednesday that, using the same basis of comparison, sales rose 3 percent to 15.8 billion euros ($17.2 billion) thanks in part to a strong performance in the Netherlands. In the United States, savings caused by synergies helped offset price deflation, the effect of poor weather and the timing of Easter. CEO Dick Boer says that 10 months after Ahold and Delhaize merged, "we are fully on track with the integration and we are delivering on our synergy targets." The Agriculture Department is forecasting a far smaller U.S. winter wheat crop than a year ago, led by a downturn in expected production out of Kansas. The department's National Agricultural Statistics Service on Wednesday predicted the 2017 crop would be 25 percent smaller, at 1.25 billion bushels. Its forecast average wheat yield of 48.8 bushels per acre is 6.5 fewer bushels per acre than last year's record yield. The outlook is worse for the nation's hard red winter wheat. The agency forecast U.S. hard red wheat production would be down 32 percent from a year ago, to 737 million bushels. Hard red is the type of wheat most commonly grown in Kansas. Kansas farmers are expected to harvest 289.8 million bushels this year. They harvested 467.4 million bushels last year. The projection for Kansas represents a 38 percent drop in the size of the state's wheat crop, reflecting smaller yields from fewer acres. In Kansas, growers were projected to harvest an average of 42 bushels per acre, which would be about 15 fewer bushels per acre than they brought in last year. They also are expected to cut 6.9 million acres of wheat, or about 1.3 million fewer than were harvested last year. An unknown factor for Kansas is how big of an impact the recent snowfall will have on wheat production. Jim Shroyer, Kansas State University Extension wheat specialist emeritus, examined fields in west central and southwest Kansas on Tuesday. He found that while much of it initially looks great, closer examination found damaged stems. It is still unknown whether many of those stems will produce harvestable grain. Some fields are "quite devastated," while others may just produce fewer bushels, he said. If the weather stays cool, the damaged plants will have a higher chance of survival. "I am just worried people think the crop is out of the woods no damage, wheat is coming back up," Shroyer said. "That is not true." While the debate continues between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill as to whether the Trump administration made the right decision in firing FBI Director James B. Comey, it was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who penned the letter recommending the firing. The way the Director handled the conclusion of the [Hillary Clinton] email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and Congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions, Rosenstein wrote in a memo released by the White House Tuesday. Here is what you need to know about Rosenstein. His Appointment Rosenstein, nominated by President Trump in January, was confirmed by the Senate as deputy attorney general last month, in a nearly unanimous vote, 94-6. Six Democrats voted against his confirmation, stating they would not support him unless he agreed to appoint an independent, special prosecutor to lead the probe into Russian interference in the U.S. election. Rosenstein, during his confirmation hearing, said he couldnt make any promises on that front until he was fully briefed on the situation. He is in Charge of the Russia Investigation Rosensteins boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, recused himself in March from investigations of Russian interference in the U.S. election and Russian ties to the Trump administration, leaving the deputy secretary general in charge of deciding the course of action. Sessions recused himself after disclosing he had contact with Russian officials during the election, details he left out during his testimony before Congress. His Career Rosenstein, 52, previously served as the top federal prosecutor for the state of Maryland, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005. He served in that position under the Obama administration until his recent promotion. He worked with the Department of Justice and the attorneys office for 26 years. Throughout his tenure, Rosenstein has also been a part of several high-profile probes, including the Whitewater investigation that led to the impeachment of then President Bill Clinton. He was also part of the 2012 federal investigation into a sensitive leak case involving retired Marine General James Cartwright, who pled guilty last year to lying to the FBI about discussions he had with reporters related to Irans nuclear program. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says reports he was a target of Obama Administration spying raises troubling questions about abuse of power. If the intelligence community is being used for politics, that is a very, very serious crime." Paul says reporters have told him they have evidence that surveillance happened. Ive asked the White House and Ive asked the House Intel Committee and Ive asked the Senate Intel Committee, Paul told the FOX Business Networks Charles Payne. Paul says the reports of widespread surveillance raise concerns over the potential political fallout of the executive branch spying on members of Congress. There is supposed to be a procedure called a Gates notification and if someone is listening to someone in Congress in the executive branch that has a potential great danger to disrupt the freedom of the legislative branch to criticize the executive branch. Paul said the illegal use of intelligence community resources for political purposes raises chilling questions. They have so much power to collect, I mean they have the power to collect information, invade your privacy but also to destroy you. Paul pointed to Gen. Michael Flynn as an example of how surveillance can impact someones reputation. Gen. Flynn, like him or not, agree or not, he was destroyed by an illegal listening, illegal surveillance of his phone conversation. If thats going to go on, can you imagine what would happen to an ordinary citizen if the governments ever to listen in on them." China's increasingly crowded roads might not seem like the ideal location for hulking military derived off-road vehicles, but don't tell Bob Lutz or his company that. VLF Automotive is officially selling carbon copies of the Hummer H1 in the people's republic. Wealthy Chinese customers have commissioned VLF to build new Hummer H1 SUVs, Car and Driver reports. Though they don't wear the "Hummer" name, they are indeed H1s. AM General, the vehicle's contract manufacturer, has been offering Humvee C-Series kits since 2013, three years after General Motors sent the Hummer brand to the automotive graveyard. Following AM General's decision to sell the C-Series kits, Humvee Export appeared, ready to place a powertrain in the unfinished C-Series SUVs. That's where VLF comes into play. VLF is assembling the entire vehicle at its factory in Auburn Hills, Michigan, alongside the VLF Destino, an LS9 V-8 powered Fisker Karma creation, and the company's rebodied Viper and Mustang offerings. Theres a niche market, president of Humvee Export, John Costin, said. There are people who want to have the most fun at 5 or 6 miles per hour. The Humvee C-Series looks exactly as it did when it arrived as a pedestrian vehicle years ago, too. By that, we mean large, bulky, and super inefficient. VLF and Humvee Export plan to build around 100 C-Series this year for wealthy Chinese buyers. Each C-Series will use either a 6.5-liter diesel V-8 engine (in three output configurations of 190 horsepower and 385 pound-feet of torque, 205 hp and 440 lb-ft and 250 hp and 440 lb-ft) or a 6.2-liter LS3 V8 with 430 hp and 424 lb-ft engine, which previously served in the C6 Corvette and fifth-generation Chevrolet Camaro. Despite the Hummer H1 being the embodiment of America (can you not picture an H1 without bald eagles and stars and stripes?), it's not destined for U.S. consumption. The Humvee C-Series doesnt qualify under the recently passed Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act. The law allows for the reproduction of a vehicle if it's 25 years old and it exempts it from crash tests and EPA certification. Despite meeting the age requirement, technically, the Humvee hasn't exited production. HUMMER H4 CLONE ON SALE NOW: Darrell Miklos seemed to be getting closer in his long quest to find an ancient shipwreck tied to Christopher Columbus. On Tuesday's episode of "Cooper's Treasure" on Discovery Channel, adventurer Miklos finally hit the high seas after days struggling to put together a reliable crew and get a search permit. But while Miklos felt on the verge of exciting discoveries, his former adventurer father Roger hit him up for money to pay his electric bill! As show viewers know, Miklos, who befriended the late Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, one of NASA's seven original Mercury astronauts, said that Cooper had observed what he believed were shipwrecks from low Earth orbit. Cooper left Miklos maps and other information about possible sites and the adventurer decided to use it to find long-lost treasure. On the new episode, Miklos met the minister of foreign affairs for Turks and Caicos to request a permit to sail to possible treasure wreck sites. Earlier, Miklos had confirmed that the Pinzon brothers, who had sailed with Columbus, had indeed traveled through Turks and Caicos in 1501. Miklos also visited Eric Schmitt, an experienced treasure hunter who has recovered shipwreck coins worth millions. Miklos needed to recruit a crew but noted that it could be dangerous: "Nobody trusts anybody in this business. There are modern day pirates.your best friend will steal from you. Gold fever sets in. "People would do anything for this info," Miklos told the cameras about Cooper's charts. Miklos said, "I need a crew I can trust with Gordon's secret." Schmitt relieved Miklos' mind with his independent attitude. Miklos liked that Schmitt was a proven discoverer and a lone wolf type and he later agreed to join the hunt. But then, Miklos was dragged down by his dad Roger, who was once a successful treasure hunter himself. Roger needed $222 dollars so his electricity wouldn't get shut down; his son Miklos gave him $260 and fumed afterwards that he had his own family to take care of. "There was time my dad was on top of the worldhe had gold and jewelrythen he lost it all. I don't want to wind up like that," Miklos told the cameras. And so he pressed on, crunching Cooper's numbers and charting where ancient Spanish ships might have sank. In the Turks and Caicos islands, Miklos recalled Cooper was there for Mercury splash down tests in the early '60s; he vowed not to let his old pal down. He assembled a crew of six people and sonar equipment on his ship. "Let's do it for Gordon," Miklos said, emotional as they sailed off. Miklos had 13 target locations, and used a magnetometer to find metal-based shipwreck material. The first area came up empty, but at the next target, Miklos and Schmitt dived again. Suddenly, they found something! Schmitt started shouting, "I see it! I have located it!" as the episode ended. John Cena shows no signs of slowing down. The 40-year-old wrestler and actor has a new movie out called "The Wall" and he recently became engaged to fellow wrestler Nikki Bella when he proposed during Wrestlemania 33. The "Trainwreck" actor spoke to Fox News about his new film, in which he plays a U.S. soldier, and his upcoming wedding plans. Fox News: Tell us about your new movie. John Cena: It's a very powerful action movie called "The Wall." The cast is very long, it's two people - myself and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It's directed by Doug Liman, and I believe that it's a wonderful film that everyone who sees it will be talking about. It is powerfully honest and I believe the end leaves you with the ability to have conversations with the person next to you. I believe there will be a lot of different opinions about this movie because it is so powerful and leaves it open ended a little bit and allows you to come up with your own conclusions and opinions, and I think it's something that will invoke some decent conversation. Fox News: Did you meet with anyone in the military for research? Cena: Yes, I have had the luxury to be able to meet many of our servicemen and women on many of the expeditions of WWE tribute to the troops. I've been to Afghanistan, to Iraq. I've seen many of our servicemen and women on local bases on a national scale and I've talked to them on about their daily lives. I used a good friend of mine, Nicholas Irving, an army ranger as a resource for this one. And as far as prep I wanted to talk to him about the daily life of a soldier, not necessarily tactics. Fox News: What makes you proud to be an American? Cena: I could waste all the time that you have answering that question. I will simply say I believe this is the greatest country in the world because of the freedoms that it allows us. It is directly because of the men and women who fight to protect those freedoms and that is what Memorial Day is about. Remembering those who fought and made the ultimate sacrifice. Fox News: You just got engaged to Nikki Bella. Why did you choose to propose in such a public manner? Cena: It was a very public manner but the WWE is my home and I consider the WWE universe my family and that was a big, big moment in my life and I guess I just wanted to share it with my family. Fox News: Were you nervous that maybe she wouldn't say yes? Cena: That was the most nervous I have ever been in my entire life and not only was I worried about her response but I was worried about the reaction of the 75,000 people of the Camping World Stadium. I didn't know that they would react in such a positive way, and I'm forever indebted to our fans for being able to allow me to celebrate the greatest moment of my life. Fox News: You really thought fans would boo? Cena: If you watch WWE programming, sometimes they like me, sometimes they don't. Our audience has an interesting way of letting you know how they feel. When you are genuine, you take a genuine risk. Fox News: It must be great that you both understand each other's jobs. Cena: Our relationship is not only built off from understanding. She is a harder worker than I am. Everyday she inspires me to be a better human being. Fox News: Have you started making wedding plans yet? Cena: Yes, they're very ground floor right now but as it gets more and more refined it's going to be more and more fun. Fox News: Will it be a big or small wedding? Cena: You'll have to ask the boss! I'm very, very excited about the day, don't get me wrong but I certainly want to make it a day she'll never forget. Fox News: So whatever she wants? Cena: No, no. I'm actually in charge of the budget and my guideline is not whatever [she] wants. I'd like to make it a day she'll never forget but she very much understands the value of a dollar and I think that's a very important trait to have. Fox News: Do you see yourself retiring from wrestling? Cena: As far as the performance level it's definitely a business for the young and I am on the older side of young but I don't think I'll ever not be involved with the WWE. They will have to tell me that they no longer need my services because it is my home. A stop-work order on a Millersburg subdivision issued Thursday was lifted by the Oregon Department of State Lands on Tuesday, after state workers visited the site and determined that construction was not being done in wetlands. DSL was able to confirm that the developer built up to, but not into, the delineated wetland area, said Kirk Jarvie, southern field operations manager for the Department of State Land's Aquatic Resources Management Program, in an email to local officials. The agency issued the order after receiving a complaint about the 34-lot Sweetwater Estates subdivision on May 2. Two other Millersburg developments still have cease and desist orders in place due to construction in wetlands, according to State Lands. When I was a kid, brown rice felt like punishment. Like the ever-increasing amount of whole wheat flour that would appear in my moms pancakes and waffles, brown rice with dinner felt like we had done something really wrong. My mom would always scorch it, informing us that, in other parts of the world, kids fight over who would get the crispy rice at the bottom of the pot. Charred rice cinders were the one thing my sister and I never felt compelled to fight over. My mom was right about one thing, though: Brown rice is better. It just took me 15 years to come around. There are some things, like sushi, that Ill still choose white for, because its flavor is so unobtrusive. But I actually prefer the nutty intensity of brown rice in stir-fries, grain bowls, and as my go-to grainy side dish. When it comes to how to actually cook brown rice, though, theres a shocking amount of bad info out there. I want to go out on a limb and assume that you like your brown rice pleasantly al dente, not mushy. Unfortunately, everything from the directions on the bag of rice to your rice cooker are working against you. If you gave up on brown rice ever being good, you are not alone. We are here to show you the way. These are the three failsafe approaches to making the best brown rice of your life. Method #1: The Rice Cooker Say you have one of those fancy rice cookers with a computer chip and a special setting for brown rice. Dont use it. Cook brown rice on the white rice setting and you'll get better rice in nearly half the time. In the Bon Appetit test kitchen, our fancy rice cookers have always worked perfectly for white rice. Brown rice, however, tends to come out a bit mushy and overcooked. But, as I recently discovered, if you cook brown rice on the white rice setting, it comes out perfectly, with distinct chewy-tender grains. I called up Zojirushi, the brand of rice cooker weve always sworn by, and spoke with Marilyn Matsuba, their marketing manager. It turns out shes been hearing this feedback every so often, specifically from users outside Japan. She said that, in Japan, people often prefer their brown rice to be a good bit softer and stickier, while Americans tend to prefer a much firmer grain. She confirmed that, as long as theres enough water in the rice cooker (i.e., add water to the mark indicated for brown rice inside the cooking pot), cooking it on the white rice setting is perfectly fine. Side note: You know what that brown rice setting is actually great for? Cooking super-dense whole grains like spelt, rye, einkorn, whole barley and whole farro. We simply mix handfuls of several types that we have on hand and cook them all together. Method #2: The Fast Stovetop Do you want the most distinct, perfectly cooked grains possible in half an hour? The best thing about this method is that it's the fastest possible way to cook brown rice, and the amount of water you use doesnt matter. Thats because we are talking about just boiling the rice like pasta in a pot of salted water until its al dente (25-30 minutes), then draining it and returning it to the pot for 10 minutes, covered, to steam out and get even fluffier and drier. I was very skeptical about this before trying it. It somehow felt like violating the rice to treat it like pasta, but thats actually how I like to cook quinoa and most other grains, so I dont know why I would be giving rice special treatment. It creates the most beautifully separated fluffy-tender grains of rice possible, but some of the rices flavor does get lost to the boiling water. Chances are you wont notice. Method #3: The Standard Stovetop If you want maximum nutty flavor and dont mind a slightly longer cook time or pleasantly sticky grains, the standard method is there for you. This is the method thats on the back of the bag of rice, but probably not the ratio you'll find there. We recommend 1 cups water to 1 cup rice. No need to rinse, but salt is essential. Bring the rice to a simmer in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to a simmer and cook, covered, until rice is tender and water has evaporated, about 4045 minutes. Fluff gently and let sit, covered, for 10 minutes to make it as light and fluffy as possible. Phew. You made it. Welcome to the world of people who love brown rice. A woman's photo of her newborn baby just delivered, and with the intrauterine device (IUD) that failed to prevent her pregnancy clenched in his tiny fist has gone viral. But how does a woman get pregnant while using an IUD? The woman, Lucy Hellein of Fort Mitchell, Alabama, posted the photo of her newborn son to Facebook last week with the caption Mirena fail!" according to Metro.co.uk . (The photo has since been removed, but not before it was shared tens of thousands of times on social media.) A surgeon discovered the IUD behind the placenta during the delivery, according to Metro. Hellein told Metro that this was her third Mirena IUD, which she had inserted last summer. But in December, she found out she was 18 weeks pregnant. Her doctors initially assumed the IUD had fallen out, but then it turned up during her C-section. An IUD is a type of long-acting, reversible contraception that is inserted into the uterus to prevent pregnancy. Pregnancy among women who have IUDs is very rare. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), IUDs are one of the most effective forms of birth control , with a failure rate of less than 1 percent during the first year of typical use. That's about the same rate as sterilization procedures such as "tube tying," ACOG said. According to Mirena, which makes a hormonal type of IUD, fewer than eight out of 1,000 women (0.8 percent) become pregnant over five years using the device. Still, in rare cases, pregnancy can occur. For example, the IUD can slip partly or completely out of the uterus, which happens in about 5 percent of users during the first year, ACOG said. This is most likely to occur soon after the device is inserted, and if this happens, a woman can get pregnant. Mirena advises its users to check about once a month to see if the device is in the right place. Women can do this by feeling for the threads attached to the device that extend down from the uterus into the top of the vagina. Less commonly, the IUD may move and become embedded in the uterus, and very rarely, the device may pierce the uterus. If this happens, the device also does not protect against pregnancy and must be removed, according to Medscape. Some IUDs also do not necessarily protect against pregnancy as soon as they are inserted. IUDs made from copper start working right away, but hormonal IUDs protect against pregnancy right away only if they are inserted during the first seven days of a woman's period, according to Planned Parenthood. If a hormonal IUD is inserted at another time in a woman's cycle, it takes seven days before the device is effective, and women should use another type of birth control, such as condoms, during this time, Planned Parenthood says. Women who do become pregnant while they have an IUD inserted face a higher risk of an ectopic pregnancy , which occurs when an embryo implants outside of the uterus, according to Planned Parenthood. Up to half of pregnancies that occur with the Mirena IUD in place are likely to be ectopic, according to the company. In clinic trials with the device, 0.1 percent of users had an ectopic pregnancy in a single year, the company said. If a woman becomes pregnant with an IUD and the pregnancy is inside the uterus, she has a risk of a severe infection, miscarriage and premature delivery, Mirena said. Because of this, doctors may try to remove an IUD if a woman becomes pregnant. Hellein's son, Dexter Tyler, was born on April 27, weighing about 9 pounds. "Although he wasn't planned, my family and I feel incredibly blessed," Hellein told Metro. Original article on Live Science . President Donald Trump finally made a tough call on which both Republicans and Democrats should agree. On Tuesday, he fired James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, years short of his full 10-year term. Trump removed a director who believed himself above regular Justice Department procedures and traditions and took the unprecedented step of publicizing three times decisions that affected the course of the 2016 presidential elections. But, unfortunately, Democrats will likely continue their scorched earth tactics and portray a decision for the best interests of the nation as a Nixonian effort to interfere with the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the Trump administration. If not fired by either President Barack Obama, a President Hillary Clinton, or President Trump, Comey should have resigned last year. Last summer, Comey publicly announced a decision not to refer Hillary Clinton and her aides to the Justice Department for prosecution. According to Comey, Clinton was extremely careless by diverting classified information through a home-brewed computer network which deliberately avoided the official system of the State Department even though the FBI found that Clinton had sent 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains that contained classified information, that she had not turned over all relevant e-mails, that she had used her private e-mail system while visiting our adversaries, and that her system had probably been hacked by them. But Comey found that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges because the FBI could find no clearly intentional or willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or an obstruction of justice. Comeys decision badly misinterpreted the law at issue, Section 793(f) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which required only gross negligence. Comey also turned a blind eye to the circumstantial evidence: why would Clinton create a private e-mail system other than to evade the secure, classified system that the law required her to use?. Comey also ignored past prosecutorial decisions: the Justice Department had prosecuted former CIA directors (John Deutch), national security advisors (Sandy Berger), and generals (David Petraeus) for mishandling classified documents. We should not seek the removal of a federal official for making a bad decision; if that were the standard, Washington, D.C. would quickly become a ghost town. More important than the decision was Comeys arrogation of power. Under the traditional division of authority between the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors, the former investigate the facts of a case, but the latter make the decision on whether to bring federal charges in court. Comey seized the power over making the decision whether to charge Hillary Clinton and her aides from the career Justice Department prosecutors who handle such difficult cases and made the decision himself. For that decision alone, Comey should have resigned, and if he would not go willingly, the White House properly had grounds to remove him. After publicly closing the case, Comey suffered a bout of cold feet shortly before the election. He publicly re-opened the investigation with a few days to go before the election, on the grounds that FBI agents had found that Clinton aide Huma Abedin had forwarded classified information to her husband, Congressman Anthony Weiner. Then, days later, he publicly closed the case again. It is difficult to blame Hillary Clinton for blaming Comey for her defeat, or, as she put it, "I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey's letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off." Comeys three interventions in the election could well have decided the outcome of the case. His initial choice to prematurely close the investigation as well as reports that his aides have attempted to shut down inquiries into the Clinton Foundation thrust the FBI into partisan politics in the middle of a presidential election. He compounded the problems by publicly announcing his decision each time, which ran clearly against Justice Department practice not to criticize or even explain when prosecutors choose not to bring charges against any target. As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein properly observed in recommending Comeys removal, I cannot defend the directors handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clintons emails. Mr. Rosenstein wrote in another letter released by the White House, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Comey further demonstrated his desire for the spotlight, but his instinct for the wrong decision, in the continuing saga of Russian interference with the 2016 elections. According to media reports, he recently exaggerated the number of classified emails that Abedin forwarded to Weiner when he testified before Congress last week. He also has publicly announced that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for possible involvement with the Russians, even though it is unclear what laws might have been broken by Trump or his White House advisors. At the same time, it appears Comey has refused to publicly announce that President Trump himself was not a target, although Trump yesterday claimed that Comey had told him three times that he was not. The reputation of the FBI would be injured if Comey had remained, even if he acted out of the noblest of intentions. He has shown an unerring instinct for publicity in a job where the occupant is best seen but not heard. He has made law enforcement decisions that probably influenced the outcome of the presidential election, a terrible precedent for our democracy. It is best for the nation that the White House place the FBI in new hands as part of its mission to restore integrity to the Justice Department. The FBI needs a fresh start. If Democrats cared about the integrity of our institutions, rather than scoring partisan points against the White House, they should applaud Trump hard as it would be for them to do so. White House aides would be out of their minds if they were truly seeking to obstruct the investigation into Russian meddling in the elections. The investigation will continue and firing Comey in the midst of it will only stoke concerns about presidential interference and give rise to even more conspiracy theories. For Trump to fire Comey with these political costs, he must have made this tough decision for the good of the country, despite the heavy, and predictable, criticism it will bring. Late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey over the beleaguered directors handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Director Comey suggested that long-time Clinton aide Huma Abedin regularly forwarded email messages from the Clinton server, some of which contained classified information, to her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who would subsequently print hard-copies for Abedin and Clintons use. In Comeys words, there were possibly hundreds or thousands of emails of this nature. However, FBI officials informed ProPublica, the independent, non-profit news organization which first cited sources asserting Comeys inaccuracies, that Director Comey had in fact misstated Abedins role. The political implications of the Comey firing and the consequences it holds for the future of the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaigns connection to Russia are immense. The Trump administration may have valid reasons for firing Comey. Nonetheless, with the investigation of Russia's possible complicity with the Trump campaign ongoing, Comeys termination appears very much like the Saturday Night Massacre when President Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the midst of the Watergate investigation. Professionally, I am no fan of Director Comey. I believe he could well have recommended that the Justice Department indict Hillary Clinton in July 2016 over her handling of her private email server. Additionally, I believe Director Comey should not have disclosed the reopening of the email investigation in late October 2016, in light of specific evidence of possible malfeasance by Secretary Clinton and her aides. Third, I believe Director Comey should have opened an investigation of possible links of the Trump campaign to Russia sooner. That being said, firing Director Comey at the behest of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who has in fact had to recuse himself from the FBIs active investigation into the Trump campaign is inappropriate and wrong. Above all, Director Comeys dismissal provides the Trump administration with the dubious opportunity and political cover to appoint a new FBI director. Despite Comeys most recent misstatements, it was his public role in the Clinton email scandal that posed the most striking questions to the Presidents mandate to lead the nation. After all, Secretary Clinton suggested just one week prior to Comeys termination that if it were not for the Directors October 28th letter stating that the investigation into her email server had been reopened, then she may very well be in the Oval Office today. More importantly on the significance of the Comey firing, the Trump administration must now appoint a new FBI director at a time when the Trump campaign is under active FBI investigation for its possible links to the Russian government and state-sponsored hackers. Put another way, President Trump may now handpick the official who oversees the bureau which is actively investigating his presidential campaign. Of course, this establishes very steep challenges for whomever the new director may be and how he or she must thoroughly and effectively investigate the role which the United States foremost adversary, Russia, played in influencing the 2016 election. Thus, the political minefield over the FBI directorship, as well as the bureaus active investigation into Russian election meddling, will remain treacherous for the foreseeable future. James Comey deserved to be fired. It should have happened a long time ago. Specifically, July 5, 2016 when he held a very public news conference to announce Hillary Clinton should not be criminally prosecuted for mishandling classified information and jeopardizing national security. He should have been fired again when he sent a letter to congressional leaders reopening the Clinton case, knowing full well it would be made public just days before the presidential election. In both instances Comey acted without authorization and in dereliction of his duty to follow the policies and regulations established by both the FBI and the Department of Justice. In so doing, he demeaned the work of the agency he led, damaged the integrity of the nations premiere law enforcement organization, and breached the publics trust. Comey offered a variety of excuses for why he thought extraordinary circumstances demanded him to engage in extralegal actions. But none of them can justify violating the fundamental rule of law as Comey did not once, but twice. Comey deserved to be fired not because he arrived at the wrong conclusion in the Clinton investigation last July. After laying out a compelling case of how Clinton repeatedly violated the law, he speculated that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. It was tortured logic that made little legal sense. But this was not Comeys firing offense. The Director of the FBI had no business making such public pronouncements. He usurped the authority of the Attorney General by announcing the case should be closed. He had no such power. It matters not that Loretta Lynch all but recused herself because of her conspicuous conflict of interest in meeting privately with Bill Clinton. There are clear procedures for other DOJ leaders to make the ultimate decision on whether to prosecute Clinton, not Comey. Again, months later, Comey compounded his mistake by issuing a statement to Congress which he knew might impact the outcome of the presidential election. No amount of exculpatory explanations by him can overcome his decision to ignore established federal regulations governing his conduct. President Obama had the power to fire Comey for his transgressions but chose not to. He has never said why. Would it have been better for his successor to take the appropriate, albeit belated, action to terminate the FBI Director soon after he was inaugurated? Politically, perhaps. But it took time for the Justice Department to put its new staff in place. The U.S. Senate a scant two weeks ago confirmed Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who authored the analysis that recommended Comeys firing. The FBI Director reports directly to the Deputy A-G. So in that context, President Trump acted expeditiously in accepting Rosensteins counsel. Democrats, of course, were quick to condemn the President for terminating Comey. Many of them are the same politicians who denounced the Director last October for abusing his authority and unduly influencing the election. But in Washington, hypocrisy is endemic. And memories are fleeting. Yet the greatest hysteria has emanated from the media. Comparisons to Richard Nixons infamous Saturday Night Massacre abound, demonstrating only that most talking heads know little about presidential history. The analogy is ludicrous. One particular reporter/analyst became apoplectic on air as he described how President Trump is perpetrating a lie, using the Clinton investigation as a pretext for firing Comey in order to quash any investigation into collusion between Russia and Trump associates. The FBI was closing in on Trump, he screamed. That is not how the process works. The Directors departure will likely have little real effect on how the FBI moves forward on the Russian probe. Comey was fired, not the career professionals at the Bureau. Moreover, congressional investigations will proceed full steam ahead. The bipartisan work of the Senate Intelligence Committee stands the best chance of reaching a conclusion that will be seen as fair and impartial. But the frenzy will continue unabated because so many in Washington and beyond harbor an unabashed scorn for President Trump and his unconventional approach to governing. This is why he should consider the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate any Russian ties. If he truly believes there was no collusion, he has nothing to worry about. At the same time, President Trump should fulfill his campaign promise to have his Attorney General appoint a special prosecutor to reexamine the evidence in the Hillary Clinton email case and decide anew whether she should be criminally charged. There are plenty of reasonable prosecutors who would bring that case. Clintons violation of the Espionage Act was flagrant. A jury should decide whether she belongs behind bars. Editor's note: The following column originally appeared on NewsBusters.org, the blog of the Media Research Center. Democrats are in an uproar after President Trump, under advisement from the Department of Justice, fired FBI Director James Comey Tuesday night, calling the surprise firing an obstruction of the FBIs investigation into Trumps ties to Russia. Yet, this same political party called for Comey to be fired back in October, when he was investigating Hillary Clintons emails. But instead of calling out the Democrats for the flip-flop, ABC News towed the line for the party, coming to their defense over conservative criticism that the party wanted Comey to be fired just a few months ago. Wednesday on Good Morning America, ABC invited Democratic Senator Tim Kaine (Va.), Clintons former running mate, as their first guest to bash Trump for the decision. Midway through the interview, anchor George Stephanopoulos does bring up that the Justice Department echoed many of the same criticisms of Comey that you, and other Democrats have made, asking if then Comeys firing was justified. Kaine responded: KAINE: Look, I have been critical of Jim Comey. But thats why the FBI Director gets a ten year term. I didnt say he should be fired. Afterwards, co-anchor Robin Roberts noted that while Democrats did criticize Comey during Clintons FBI Investigation, that didnt mean they wanted him fired. The Democrats have said theyve been critical of him, as Tim Kaine said, but didnt mean they wanted him fired. This is a blatant lie. Many prominent Democrats came out in recent months charging Comey of committing a crime and calling for his firing outright. Here are just a few examples: "Maybe he's not in the right job," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told CNN, Nov. 2. "I think that we have to just get through this election and just see what the casualties are along the way." When asked by MSNBC in December if Comey should resign, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid responded, Of course, yes. Reid also called Comey a Republican operative, and wrote a letter accusing him of breaking the Hatch Act, essentially saying he broke the law and should be fired. "I called on FBI Director James Comey to resign his position after his recent communication with members of Congress regarding the bureau's review of emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton's personal email server. -Rep Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) told The Hill, November 3. During a briefing on Russian hacking in January, Democrats angrily stormed out, but not before placing blame on Comey. The FBI director has no credibility, stated Rep. Maxine Waters. My confidence in the FBI directors ability to lead this agency has been shaken, said Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia. I do not have confidence in him any longer, Chuck Schumer told Bloomberg, November 2nd, calling Comeys decision to reopen the investigation appalling. And of course, these same Democrats are now demanding justice for Comey, accusing Trump of an abuse of power, when, if Clinton had won the election, they wouldve still been calling for his firing. The networks themselves also towed the Democrat line back then as well, when they were taking the opposite position on Comey. By a ratio of three to one, the networks ran negative coverage of Comey, touting Democrat complaints about him and accusations that he broke the law. James Comey, the now-former FBI director, was lucky that President Trump kept him around as long as he did, given his unhinged and very erratic behavior. He had become a national embarrassment. Comey failed the American people on a spectacular level. At every turn, he disrespected the Constitution and showed he does not care about the equal application of the rule of law. He stood by while our Fourth Amendment rights were trampled. Worst of all, he created a two-tiered justice system, one for Hillary and Bill Clinton, and one for the rest of America. Consider the facts. Hillary Clinton used a private email server to circumvent congressional oversight and sunshine laws. That server contained top-secret special access programs -- in other words, the highest level of classified information on her computer. She deleted over 30,000 emails on that computer, claiming they were personal. Back in July, when Comey made his big announcement on Hillary Clinton and the investigation, he acknowledged all of these facts. In doing so, he acknowledged that crimes had been committed. After noting that hundreds of emails found on the unsecured server were classified or top secret, Comey told us why it was such a dangerous situation. None of these emails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, he said. But their presence is especially concerning because all of these emails were housed on unclassified personal servers, not even supported by full- time security staff, like those found at agencies and departments of the United States government or even with a commercial email service like Gmail. In 13 minutes, Comey laid out an airtight legal case against Hillary Clinton. And then, inexplicably, he let her off the hook. Comey completely ignored all the laws that Hillary Clinton broke. If you or I had done anything close to what Hillary Clinton did, we would be perp walked, fingerprinted, mugshotted and put in jail. In the end, Comey proved himself to be nothing more than a political hack. Was it because Comey thought Hillary was going to win and become the president? Did he like the power of holding the trajectory of the election in his hands? We may never know. But we do know there was more than enough to drop the hammer on the Clintons. Through the Clinton Foundation, they lined their pockets with millions of dollars -- while Hillary was serving as secretary of state. Comey sat on the sidelines, despite overwhelming evidence. And Clinton even give up 20 percent of this nation's uranium to Vladimir Putin in this corrupt Uranium One deal. She personally, as secretary of state, had to sign off. Like the alt-left, destroy-Trump propaganda media, Comey gave Clinton a pass. But there was no pass for Gen. Michael Flynn, who was spied on, had his identity unmasked and his name leaked to the press. Whomever did that committed a felony, but Comey was remarkably uncurious about getting to the bottom of that one. Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, the Department of Justice lawyer who refused to enforce President Trumps travel ban, is one of a few people who was in a position to leak that information about Flynn. Comey never talked to her about it. About the only investigation Comey ever seemed to get excited about is the one into supposed Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. No evidence has come to light, but Comey told anyone who would listen that he was on the case. In his letter firing Comey, the president revealed Comey told him on three separate occasions he's not being investigated. Why didn't the FBI director tell us that? Especially since he was so quick to divulge information exonerating Hillary Clinton. To James Comey, good riddance. You deserve everything you got. Adapted from Sean Hannity's monologue on "Hannity," May 9, 2017 Another American hero vet has committed suicide. Except this one is personal. This one hits home. This one isnt just a statistic, or generic. His name was Sgt. Eric Thomsen. Ill get to his tragic story in a moment. President Obama ignored vets like Sgt. Thomsen for eight long years. A massive scandal engulfed the Veterans Administration during Obamas presidency. Vets died on fake waiting lists. Fraud was committed because there wasnt the money to treat our heroes. So, government employees committed criminal acts to make them go away. Vets died. Obama chose to fire or punish none of the VA employees involved. The media said nothing. Now President Trump has decided to right a terrible wrong. President Trump signed a powerful Executive Order last week that received very little fanfare in the media. Trump created a new office to reform the VA and root out bad employees. The Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection will identify any barriers that might exist to removing bad employees from the VA. Once again, the media response was Crickets. Why didnt this wonderful news receive any media coverage? Why didnt President Trump receive any positive headlines or congratulations? Because patriotic vets being mistreated and dying because of government incompetence, indifference or criminal negligence, just doesnt interest liberal journalists or media executives. Liberals are right when they complain we have two Americas. We do. This country is badly divided. On one side, we have salt of the earth patriots, with generations of family members willing to sacrifice their lives and limbs for a country they love and greatly appreciate. And on the other side we have the media elite - spoiled brat liberal intellectuals who would never even consider dying for their country; spend all of their time and energy complaining about their country; dont find America exceptional; and have no one in their entire family who has ever served in the military. Heres just one tragic and personal vet story that proves President Trump is on the right track. Draining the swamp starts with the VA. Because hero vets dying in battle is a tragedy. But allowing our heroes to die at the hands of the VA is a national disgrace. This story isnt about a generic vet. This is the story of Sgt. Eric Thomsen, United States Air Force. Eric lost his battle. He committed suicide only weeks ago. He was loved by his family - including my wonderful friends, his sisters Erika Lipton and Capt. Roxie Merritt, US Navy (Ret.). Eric was the loving father of Heather, Robert, and Joseph, and a grandfather at the time of his death. Eric was a typical courageous American hero. He was 100% prepared to give his life for his country on a faraway battlefield. What he never expected was to lose his life here at home, because of the indifference of his own government. Eric was a typical American kid. His story could be your son, your brother, your husband, your father. Eric grew up with a dream of joining the Air Force, just like his father. His moral code was always about sacrifice, duty and honor. Eric married his high school sweetheart when she became pregnant. He was 19 years old in 1974 when he left college and enlisted in the Air Force to provide for his new son. While in the Air Force, Eric put himself through college and became an air traffic controller. He retired as a Master Sergeant in the early 90s. Because of hearing loss he experienced early on in his Air Force career, he was forced to give up his vocation as an air traffic controller once in the private sector. He was hired by Sprint to oversee the governments communications. Then his problems really became acute. Eric suffered from depression. He was put on so many medications by the VA hospital in Phoenix, including amphetamines and various tranquilizers, to the point of being addicted to the prescriptions, which worsened his depression. Eventually he moved to Virginia. While there, the VA performed Electro Shock Therapy (ECT) on him as an outpatient (even though he lived alone which is not recommended). ECT should always be performed on an inpatient basis because of the potentially dangerous side effects. Because of a bad combination of so many drugs prescribed by the VA and the unsupervised effects of ECT, Erics depression became crushing. His personality changed to the point his friends and family no longer recognized him. Unable to work, Eric was forced to retire in the early 2000s. He applied to the VA for a disabled designation. Eric had to agree to have a VA Fiduciary assigned to take over his finances -- even though he was quite capable of handling them himself. But that was the VAs rule for psychiatric disability. This was the beginning of the end for Eric. The nightmare for this American hero spiraled out of control as Eric claimed to witness his assigned VA Fiduciary destroy his finances. Eric complained repeatedly to his VA caseworkers. They did nothing. It was just his word against the VA Fiduciary. Erics family -- including his sister Roxie, a retired U.S. Navy Captain, witnessed the entire situation and they back up his story. Eric pleaded for help from a U.S. Senator, who proclaimed to be an advocate for veterans. Eric wrote and called the U.S. Senators office many times. The assistants who answered the phones at the Senators office admitted they were overwhelmed with calls from vets in crisis. He was told to wait. But for Eric waiting wasn't an option - he was unraveling by the day. No one from the Senators office ever called back. The worst part for Eric was that nobody at the VA would believe him about the assigned VA Fiduciary stealing from him. By this time, with his lifelong savings taken, Eric lost his home - because payments were never made by the VA Fiduciary. Finally, Eric got an Arizona state representative to listen to him and help him. The VA Fiduciary was not fired, but rather "reassigned." To Erics family it appears this whole episode was handled just like the Catholic Church scandal, where dangerous pedophile priests were never fired, but just reassigned down the road to the next church, to destroy the lives of more innocent victims. Erics VA Fiduciary was never prosecuted or firedjust "reassigned." No money was ever returned to Eric. He received no compensation of any kind. At this point, Eric had enough of the Arizona VA, and relocated. He was extremely dependent on his many VA drug prescriptions and could not function without them. Unfortunately, there wasnt a VA hospital near him, so he often drove long distances to pick up his prescriptions. He always had to be there exactly on the last day, because of VA scheduling, and never had any medicine as a cushion to allow any flexibility. As his depression continued to worsen, he got very frustrated and often couldnt even get out of bed, let alone travel so far to pick up meds. VA rules didnt allow him to use civilian doctors or hospitals. If he missed his appointment, he was out of luck (and out of meds). He spiraled from disaster to disaster. In the last few months of his life, this year, Eric was consumed with bitterness and depression over his treatment by the VA. He finally couldnt take it anymore. Sgt. Eric Thomsen committed suicide at the beginning of this year. The pain, shame, depression and desperation was finally over. Sadly, nothing has changed. Erics story happens every day at the VA. Since his tragic suicide, many of Erics military vet buddies have called his family to offer condolences. All of them recite similar experiences. All of them express extreme frustration at the VAs lack of caring, and huge bureaucratic red tape. They all feel like they are up against a brick wall when it comes to getting any attention to their plights. Many of them admit to having constant thoughts of suicide. Twenty-two vets a day commit suicide in the United States. Each of them - like Eric- gave their lives for their country. Just not the way they expected. President Trump is trying to right these wrongs. Hes trying to help our American heroes - people just like Eric. Hes trying to save lives. Hes trying to fire the bad guys who allow 22 heroes (like Eric) a day to commit suicide due to incompetence, indifference, or pure criminal negligence. President Trump understands we cant make America great again until we drain the VA swamp. Until we end this national disgrace of veteran addiction, homelessness, mental illness and suicide. That doesnt attract headlines. Because the reality is The mainstream media doesnt care. They don't personally know any vets. To journalists, those 22 suicides a day are just another statistic. They didnt know Sgt. Eric Thomsen. Now you do. Rest in peace Eric. In honor of Sgt. Eric Thomsen, please drain the VA swamp, President Trump. North Korea is surging to the brink. Advancements in their missile technology and nuclear weapons program will soon put the United States in the crosshairs. As Senator John McCain recently remarked: A North Korean missile tipped with a nuclear warhead, capable of reaching our homeland is no longer a distant hypothetical, but an imminent danger. A policy built around angry diplomatic statements and passive observation is no longer viable. The United States must seriously anticipate the use of force to eliminate this rogue nations offensive nuclear capacity. This is far from a simple task. When dealing with North Korea, it is critical to appreciate everything comes down to keeping Kim Jong Un and his family in power. That is why diplomatic measures, economic isolation, and international commendation have proven ineffective. As long as the leadership structure remains intact, everything else is of a secondary concern. While China, North Koreas primary ally, controls 90% of its trade, Chinese leaders are reluctant to take a hard line on the North, fearing a collapsed regime that would precipitate a refugee crisis and a potentially hostile unified Korea. Nuclear weapons are deemed the penultimate point of leverage preventing the United States and its allies from toppling North Korean regime. Make a move against Kim Jong Un and you will likely face a nuclear response. Nor are nukes North Koreas only ace in the hole. They have fortified the border with a huge array of offensive conventional armamentsartillery, missiles, and more. Should a conflict erupt, Seoul, South Korea, which lies just thirty five miles from the boarder, will be subject to an overwhelming attack. This leaves the United States in a difficult position. Lacking economic or diplomatic points of leverage, military action increasingly looks like a likely path. Unfortunately, the capabilities required to successfully defeat North Korea are in short supply. Ever since the Berlin Wall fell, the United States has failed to invest in a balanced set of military technologies necessary to engage against a potent foe like North Korea. While it is true that significant funds were expended for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, capabilities optimized for counter-insurgency warfare are wholly inadequate for a high-end conflict. A surface campaign fighting mile-by-mile up the peninsula would afford Kim Jong Un more than enough time to decimate the South and launch nuclear strikes. Instead, the United States needs to consider options that would collapse the North Korean threat as fast as possible. That means hitting targets in a concurrent, decisive fashion to prevent wholesale devastation in Seoul and a nuclear launch. Doing so demands Americas most advanced combat aircraft--the B-2 bomber, F-22 fighter, and F-35 fighter. Their stealth technology is necessary for survival and their advanced sensor capabilities will allow them to locate their targets in an incredibly dynamic environment. There is just one catch: the US failed to procure enough of these airplanes because they were deemed to be outdated, expensive Cold War assets. While it is true that the Cold War is over, that does not mean adversaries stopped investing in advanced defenses. In fact, the world is far more dangerous than it was thirty years ago. This is a major problem given that the United States only has 20 B-2s, 185 F-22s, and a handful of F-35s in the inventory. Out of these, the F-35 is the only one currently in production. It is time for the nation to acknowledge this capability gap and accelerate their acquisition. The same holds true for the newly designed B-21 stealth bomberan aircraft that will replace planes that are decades old. The threat posed by North Korea is not theoretical, it is reality. Decisions made over the last several years have left the country in a precarious position. While the bravery of our men and women in uniform is beyond question, dedication to duty and sacrifice can only go so far. We must properly equip them to fight and win. Failing to make such investments will leave the country woefully unprepared to execute a mission where the alternative to a rapid, decisive victory is unthinkable. Democrats eager to reunite and recover from years of election defeats hoped the Omaha mayoral race Tuesday would be a start, but their candidates anti-abortion stance has widened the party divide and put the local race in the national spotlight. Democrats seemed largely pleased that candidate Heath Mello, a Catholic with a populist economic message, had a shot at winning the seat, considering Republicans control every congressional and statewide office in Nebraska. However, his anti-abortion stance exposed the cultural divides within the Democratic Party over the decades-old issue. Newly-installed Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez planned to take the partys multi-state unity tour last month to Omaha to rally for Mello. However, he skipped the event amid backlash from abortion rights groups like the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Perez later tried to correct the situation by saying, "Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices," and called on Democrats to speak with "one voice." However, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, an abortion rights supporter, insists that there is room in the party for abortion foes. "This is the Democratic Party, the California Democrat told The Washington Post. This is not a rubber-stamp party. I grew up in a very devout Catholic family. My family, extended family are not pro-choice. You think I'm kicking them out of the Democratic Party?" The 37-year-old Mello backed a half-dozen abortion restrictions during eight years in the legislature. He is trying to defeat Republican incumbent Jean Stothert -- forced into runoff after failing last month to get at least 50 percent of the vote in their first contest. Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, attended the Omaha event, in which he told thousands of attendees, Maybe, just maybe, it's time to change one-party rule in Nebraska. And we can start right here by electing Heath Mello as the next mayor." Perez, who was instead campaigning in Georgia, has also angered several moderate Democrats and frustrated others with his actions as the party struggles for relevance. In the last decade, Democrats have lost about 1,000 elected posts from the White House to Congress to the 50 statehouses. And the highest-ranking Democrat in Nebraska outside of the state legislature is the mayor of Lincoln. Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan has described Perez's reaction to Mello as "really damaging." "Requiring everybody to fit some purity test is a recipe for disaster," said Ryan, who unsuccessfully challenged Pelosi for her House leader post after Democrats failed in the November elections to keep or win the support of middle-America voters. "There are going to be people who are Democrats who may not check all the boxes. But they are with you 80 percent of the time and can win in tough places, said Ryan, a former abortion-rights opponent. Anti-abortion Democrats have almost disappeared in Congress. Only three senators fit the description, and all three -- Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- are up for re-election next year in states President Trump won in 2016. In the state legislature, Mello represented an older, ethnically diverse, working-class district in south Omaha, a few miles from the nation's onetime railroad and meatpacking epicenter. But Mello has projected what he calls a "pro-growth, progressive, future-focused" style, which reflects Omaha's moderate tendency. He favors a government partnership with private industry, a concept often associated with Republicans, for Omaha's crumbling streets. He also has campaigned heavily in Omaha's troubled north side, where most of the city's homicides occur. Mello's campaign fundraising co-chairwoman, Andy Holland, is the past president of Planned Parenthood of Nebraska. The Associated Press contributed to this report. For all the questions swirling around President Trumps abrupt decision to fire James Comey, one stands out above all: Why now? If the administration rationalethat the FBI director botched the investigation of Hillary Clinton last summeris accurate, why didnt the president-elect dump him during the transition? To say there is media skepticism about this rationale would be a colossal understatement. In the hours after the bombshell announcement, Foxs Charles Krauthammer said the explanation was highly implausible and almost inexplicable. MSNBCs Chris Matthews branded it the Tuesday night massacre, likening it to Richard Nixons Saturday night firing of the Watergate special prosecutor, because Trump fired the guy investigating his team. CNNs Jeff Toobin called it a grotesque abuse of power. The journalistic assumptionpushed by Democrats like Chuck Schumer, who demanded a special prosecutoris that Trump dumped Comey to impede the FBIs investigation of Trump associates and any improper contacts with Russia. Lets take a deep breath and look at what we know. Trump says he relied on the recommendation of Jeff Sessions (who has recused himself from the Russia probe) and the new deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Indeed, Trump brought up the probe in his letter to Comey: While I appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, he agreed with DOJs judgment that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau. Rosensteins memo said Comey usurped the attorney generals authority last July by holding a news conference once had decided not to bring an indictment against Clinton. That included derogatory information, and we never release it gratuitously. The memo also said Comey should not have announced the reopening of the Clinton probe last October because for prosecutors, silence is not concealment. And Rosenstein said his view was shared by DOJ officials from Democratic as well as Republican officials. Comey has little support in Washington, having angered Republicans for not prosecuting Clinton and Democrats for throwing that monkey wrench at the end of the campaign. But the erupting debate is all about Trump. The president fired the head of the FBI because he wasnt nice to Hillary? Who will Trump appoint to run the bureau, and can that person be credible in taking over the Russia investigation (which may have been going nowhere in any event). Will it smell like a coverup? Trump knew this would be an explosive move, and he was willing to take the heat. But just when it seemed that the administration was settling down to cruising speed, the Comey firing is going to dominate the news for weeks to come. Reaction to President Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey was split along partisan lines Tuesday, with Republicans claiming that Comey's dismissal would mark a fresh start for the bureau, even as Democrats called for a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump campaign's contacts with Russian officials. Comey told lawmakers in March that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election campaign, an investigation that included possible links between members of the Trump campaign and Moscow. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he told Trump "you are making a big mistake" when the president called to inform Schumer that he was firing the FBI director. "The first question the administration has to answer is, Why now?" Schumer told reporters. "Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?" Schumer then called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor, saying "America depends on you to restore faith in our criminal justice system, which is going to be badly shattered after the administrations actions today." Other Democrats attributed sinister motives to Comey's firing, with two Senators, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, describing it in press statements as "Nixonian." Another Democratic senator, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, said the firing "is disturbingly reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal and the national turmoil that it caused," later adding "We are careening ever closer to a Constitutional crisis." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the firing "raises the ghosts of some of the worst Executive Branch abuses" and called for "an independent, bipartisan commission" to continue the Trump-Russia investigation. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. said that Comey "should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of the investigation into Russia and Trump associates at the time he was fired." However, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., told Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier" that claims Comey was fired to blunt the Russia investigation were "patently absurd." "This is just one person. It's the director," Collins said. "The investigation is going forward, both at the FBI and in the Senate Intelligence Committee in a bipartisan way." The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said he was "troubled by the timing and reasoning" for Comey's dismissal. "In my interactions with the Director and with the Bureau under his leadership, he and the FBI have always been straightforward with our Committee," Burr said in a statement. "Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees. His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation." Burr's statement was echoed by Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who said "the timing of this firing is deeply troubling." "Jim Comey is an honorable public servant, and in the midst of a crisis of public trust that goes well beyond who you voted for in the presidential election, the loss of an honorable public servant is a loss for the nation," Sasse said. "As the chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Oversight Subcommittee, I have reached out to the Deputy Attorney General for clarity on his rationale for recommending this action." Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. tweeted that he had "spent the last several hours trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comey's firing. I just can't do it." Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supported Comey's ouster, citing Comey's actions during the 2016 election campaign: "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nations interests." Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acknowledged that the timing of Comey's firing "will raise questions." "It is essential that ongoing investigations are fulsome and free of political interference until their completion," Corker added, "and it is imperative that President Trump nominate a well-respected and qualified individual to lead the bureau at this critical time." Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he was "disappointed" in Trump's decision to fire Comey, calling the dismissed director "a man of honor and integrity" who "has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances." "I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election," McCain added. "The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee." Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also weighed in, saying in a brief statement, "I have immense respect and admiration for Jim Comey. This is a tremendous loss for the FBI and the nation." Andrew McCabe became acting FBI director Tuesday after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. McCabe had been the bureau's deputy director since January 2016. His then-boss, FBI Director Comey, described him at the time as "a perfect fit for the job," citing McCabe's "vision, judgment, and ability to communicate." McCabe joined the FBI in 1996 and began his career investigating organized crime in the New York Field Office. As his career progressed, McCabe held leadership positions in the bureau's Counterterrorism Division, the National Security Branch, and the Washington Field Office. When profiled by the Los Angeles Times in May of last year, McCabe told the paper was preventing terror attacks inspired by ISIS or other groups. "That is the scariest thing for me right now," McCabe said at the time. "Its the broadening and intensity of the terrorism threat, the crowd-sourcing of terrorism, the flood of propaganda, the enormous number of folks who have become swept up in that propaganda." McCabe was at the center of a political controversy related to hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds his wife received from a political action committee linked to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of Hillary Clinton, during her unsucessful run for Virginia State Senate. FBI NO. 2 DID NOT DISCLOSE WIFE'S TIES TO CLINTON ALLY, RECORDS SHOW In March, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked for a detailed description on McCabe's involvement in the investigation of Russian ties to Trump associates and whether the donations to McCabe's wife's campaign represented a conflict of interest. The matter is being investigated by the Justice Department's Inspector General. President Trumps seemingly abrupt decision Tuesday to fire FBI Director James Comey was made at the recommendation of top Justice Department officials who claimed that his controversial handling of the Hillary Clinton email case last year rendered him unfit for the position. A senior White House official told Fox News it was purely coincidental that the firing occurred on the same day Comey faced scrutiny for giving faulty testimony about emails sent from Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Anthony Weiner. Rather, Comey had been the subject of a review by the very top of the Trump Justice Department. Newly confirmed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein penned an extensive memo for Attorney General Jeff Sessions outlining concerns with Comeys conduct during and after the Clinton email probe. The memo said almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes. Rosenstein wrote that he could not defend Comeys handling of the end of the investigation, and could not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. The first count against Comey, according to Rosenstein, was his July 5, 2016 announcement during which he alleged Clinton and her colleagues were extremely careless in handling classified material on her personal email and server but also said the FBI would not recommend charges. The memo said Comey was wrong to usurp then-Attorney General Loretta Lynchs authority. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement, Rosenstein wrote, adding that Comey at most should have said the FBI had finished its investigation and presented findings to prosecutors. The memo said Comey compounded the error by holding a press conference to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation, suggesting he did so gratuitously. The memo said: The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial. Rosenstein called it a textbook example of what prosecutors and agents are taught not to do. The second count against Comey concerned his Oct. 28, 2016 notification to Congress that the bureau was taking another look at the Clinton case in light of newly discovered emails. While Comey has said he did not want to conceal information, Rosenstein said simply refraining from publicizing non-public information would not have been concealment. He countered Comeys position by citing numerous former Justice officials who called the move inappropriate. Comey adamantly defended his handling of the case, and that October letter, at a Senate hearing last week. As referenced by Rosenstein, he said, Concealment in my view would have been catastrophic. Clinton herself has continued to criticize Comey, suggesting his announcement helped tilt the election toward President Trump. It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election, Comey said at the hearing, standing by his actions. Rosenstein referenced Comeys statements since the election in his memos conclusion: The way the Director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions. The memo set off a quick chain reaction all the way up to the White House. Sessions told Trump that a fresh start is needed, attaching the Rosenstein memo and recommending Comeys removal. Trump cited that recommendation in his letter to Comey, informing him he is hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately. Former FBI spokesperson John Iannarelli told Fox News he thinks Comey got bad counsel from those close to him, and that in the end, Comey was perceived as too political. Iannarelli told Fox News the firing was virtually "unprecedented," aside from William Sessions being dismissed by then-President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s. Fox News Serafin Gomez, Brooke Singman and John Roberts contributed to this report. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spent the first day of his listening tour of the countrys national monuments visiting the famed Anasazi ruins in Utahs Butler Wash and trying to assuage concerns of Utahns that undoing or shrinking the designation of the controversial 1.3-million acre Bears Ears National Monument would not automatically result in lots of oil rigs or mining equipment. The legacy and what I've seen should be preserved. The issue is whether the monument is the right vehicle," Zinke said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. "What vehicle of public land is appropriate to preserve the cultural identity, to make sure the tribes have a voice and make sure you preserve the traditions of hunting and fishing and public access?" Zinke -- a former Navy SEAL and congressman from Montana who calls himself a "Teddy Roosevelt Republican" -- was tasked last month by President Trump to review 27 national monuments across the country designated since 1996 that total 100,000 acres or more. In the executive order signed by Trump, the interior secretary also has been directed to produce an interim report in 45 days and issue a final report within 120 days. Despite Zinkes assurances on Monday, many Native Americans in the Southwest say that any change in Bears Ears status would be a major setback after years of lobbying to have the area named a national monument. The national monument has already been justified and there is no need for a review, Cassandra Begay, a Navajo and the tribal liaison for the Native American advocacy group PANDOS, told Fox News. Bears Ears is the first time that Native Americans played a crucial role in the creation of a national monument in the United States. The 1906 Antiquities Act authorizes the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use. After long-term discussions with Native American groups in the southwest, President Obama designated Bears Ears and Nevadas Gold Butte as monuments in the waning days of his presidency. The move was widely praised by environmentalists and Native Americans, but Republican lawmakers in Western states along with ranchers and those in the oil and gas industries widely panned the so-called midnight monuments, arguing that they do not represent the interests of the people in those states and will in time do more harm than good to the environment. Trump has called the national monument protection efforts of his predecessors a massive federal land grab, saying Obamas designations unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control. Zinke faced criticism from Native American groups for traveling to Bears Ears for his four-day tour with an entourage of anti-monument politicians, including Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, and for only meeting with tribal leaders for a one-hour, closed-door meeting. Davis Filfred of the Navajo Nation said that the meeting on Sunday in Salt Lake City wasn't enough time for the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition to make their points to Zinke. Filfred added that it seems Zinke is listening more to opponents of the monument than people who want it preserved. Upon arriving at the Butler Wash trailhead on Monday, Zinke was greeted by PANDOS Begay and numerous other Bears Ears supporters. A video posted on YouTube shows Begay following Zinke and questioning him on why he wont meet with tribal leaders before the interior secretary turns around, points his finger at her and chides her to be nice. My heart was racing when he came at me because I thought he was going to hit me, Begay said. It felt like he was about to snap! Certainly not what I expected from the interior secretary who is here on a listening tour. Others at the trailhead, however, had positive interactions with Zinke. Hank Stevens, president of the Navajo Mountain Chapter, spoke to Zinke during his stop at Butler Wash and said Zinke promised to return to Utah to discuss the issue with tribal leaders. He reassured me that he is as worried about the issues as Native Americans are, Stevens told Fox News. This may be a fault of mine, but I always give people the benefit of the doubt. With the clock ticking on Zinke to hand in his recommendations to Trump, it is not entirely clear what powers the president actually has regarding Bears Ears. Congressional leaders and courts have in the past contested many national monument designations Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example, took heat for Jackson Hole National Monument, which later became Grand Teton National Park. 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. 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. For his part, Stevens said the Trump administration could avoid all the legal tie-ups and protests if it just focused its attention somewhere a little farther away. President Trump seems to be all about space exploration, Stevens said, noting the president signed a $19.5 billion spending bill for NASA. I say they should go that way and leave us down here alone. Senate Democrats intensified efforts Wednesday to pressure Republicans who control the chamber to support the appointment of a special prosecutor for the probe into Russias alleged election meddling and ties to the Trump campaign, vowing to block President Trumps appointees and apparently try to disrupt meetings and other official business. Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he would vote against the confirmation of any Trump appointee unless Republicans commit to appointing a special prosecutor. Blumenthal spoke the morning after the president fired FBI Director James Comey, whose agency was investigating whether Trumps 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. I'm hoping the outcry will prompt Republicans to join me, Blumenthal added. The American people want the truth uncovered. I am talking with my colleagues about what the strategy will be to prompt a special prosecutor. The Comey firing triggered calls from Democrats for a special prosecutor. They argue that the Trump administration cannot fairly or independently conduct such an investigation on its own president. Such critics scored a significant victory in March when they forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the Justice Departments Russia probe. However, with only 48 Senate votes, compared to the Republicans 52, Democrats have few if any opportunities to keep a Trump appointee from getting the 50 votes needed to win confirmation. Right now, there are roughly 40 appointees formally awaiting Senate confirmation, with about 100 others yet to even enter the confirmation process. On Wednesday, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senates No. 2 Democrat, objected to a standard request to allow the Senate Judiciary Committee to meet about nominations, which resulted in the meeting being cut short. Fox News asked Senate Democratic leaders whether they plan to continue with such tactics, but they did not respond. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said early Wednesday that she plans to work closely with Blumenthal on the appointment of an independent prosecutor. A Feinstein staffer told Fox News that the senator, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was referring to legislation, not trying to block Trump appointees. Feinstein says the legislation would be to ensure that a truly independent prosecutor can be appointed but has provided no specifics. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled Wednesday that he has no intentions of calling for -- or appointing -- a special prosecutor. Today, well no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which will only serve to impede the current work being done to not only discover what the Russians may have done [but] also to let this body and the national security community develop counter measures to see that it doesnt happen again, the Kentucky Republican said. South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said a special investigator isnt needed for a counter-intelligence investigation. If it became a criminal investigation, then we'd have a discussion, he said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested the Russian investigation probes were getting too close to home for Trump and called for a special prosecutor. If there was ever a circumstance that warranted a special prosecutor, it is now, he said. Trump said he fired Comey on the recommendations of Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In a three-page memo released by the White House, Rosenstein argued that Comey mishandled two now-closed investigations into Clinton emails sent and received on a private server system while she was secretary of State. Clinton supporters say the probes largely contributed to her loss to Trump. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that the adminstration was "very confident" that Rosenstein could now lead the Russia probe. Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine acknowledged Wednesday that Senate Democrats cannot appoint a special prosecutor because Republicans control Congress. We can't do that as a minority, he said. But we can insist upon it. And we think we'll have the American public strongly behind us. He declined to say what congressional Democrats might do to force the GOP to appoint a special prosecutor but said, There are things we are already doing, including the Senate Intelligence Committees probe on the Russian matter. Top Senate Republican Chuck Grassley backed President Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday and had a strong message for outraged media outlets: suck it up and move on. Grassley, R-Iowa, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on "Fox & Friends" that he supports Trumps decision to fire the controversial FBI chief. Of course I support it, he said. Trump fired Comey late Tuesday, telling him in a brief letter that Comey could not effectively lead the bureau and calling for new leadership that restores public trust and confidence in law enforcement. Comey had come under fire for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe in 2016. But some Democrats expressed outrage at the decision, noting that the FBI is investigating whether Trumps campaign had ties to Russia. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to take over the Russia probe. This is part of a deeply troubling pattern from the Trump administration, Schumer told reporters. Earlier Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., called the move Nixonian, while a coalition of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called it a shocking decision and called on the Department of Justice and FBI to preserve all documents relating to the Russia probe. But Grassley said that Democrats are jumping on the issue as it gives them a chance to renew their calls for a special prosecutor. I think it gave them a chance to get back to something they argued about a month ago and it was losing steam to have a special prosecutor or have a commission to look into it, Grassley said. But theres committees of Congress, including my own committee, investigating this and it gives them an opportunity to bring those issues up again. Grassley added that Democrats arguments are damaged based on their criticisms of Comeys decision in October to temporarily re-open the investigation into Clintons private email server. I dont think they have much credibility, he said. Asked for what he thought of media outlets calling the firing "Nixonian" and reminiscent of President Richard Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, Grassley dismissed the claims. My message is this suck it up and move on, he said. The White House on Wednesday defended President Trumps decision to fire James Comey, saying the former FBI director threw a stick of dynamite into the Department of Justice, and committed atrocities in his handling of the Clinton email saga. White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked at the daily press briefing why Trump had soured on Comey, despite recent statements by Press Secretary Sean Spicer that Trump had confidence in the FBI director. Sanders denied reports that Trump had put Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein up to recommending the firing, which caught Washington by surprise Tuesday evening. Instead, Sanders said, Rosenstein himself recommended the firing in a Monday meeting with Trump over Comeys handling of the Clinton email scandal. The White House says that Trump then asked Rosenstein to put that recommendation into writing, which he did. I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, Rosenstein wrote in his subsequent letter to Trump, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives. Trump told reporters Wednesday the decision came because Comey was not doing a good job. Some Democrats have expressed concern that the firing is related to the FBIs investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Sanders said Trump had been considering letting Comey go from his role since the election, and that there had been an erosion of confidence, but indicated that the final straw for Rosenstein and Trump was Comeys testimony last week before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. At that hearing, Comey answered wide-ranging questions about his controversial handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server last year. Sanders said Comeys testimony showed that he had committed "atrocities in circumventing the chain of command at the Department of Justice and said he had thrown a stick of dynamite by going around then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in calling a press conference in July 2016 to announce his recommendation not to press charges against Clinton. When you...throw a stick of dynamite into the Department of Justice, that cannot be ignored, Sanders said. When a reporter at the briefing argued that there was little in Comeys testimony that was not already widely known, Sanders said it was the first time Comey had "publicly and openly" made clear how he handled the probe. Sanders also took a shot at Democrats complaining about Comeys firing, saying it was the purest form of hypocrisy considering their frequent past criticisms of the former FBI director. She said it was startling that Democrats arent celebrating the move, I think its startling that Democrats arent celebrating this since theyve been calling it for so long, she said. James Comey, the FBI director fired Tuesday by President Trump, learned of his ouster while addressing agents at the FBI field office in Los Angeles, a source said. Comey was talking to the agents when news of his firing appeared on televisions tuned in to news channels, a source told Fox News. Television screens in the field office began flashing the news of his firing, and Comey initially chuckled at the report. He continued to brief the agents, finishing his speech before heading into a separate office. Shortly after the speech, President Trumps letter was given to FBI headquarters in Washington, The New York Times reported. Comey was set to be the keynote speaker at an FBI recruitment event in Los Angeles, but his motorcade brought him back to the airport. Comey did not comment on his dismissal. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla, said in a tweet that nobody should be fired over television. Trump fired Comey earlier Tuesday abruptly ending a rocky year-long stretch for the top law enforcement officer who came under fire for his handling of the Clinton email probe -- and whose agency has been investigating whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia. The president told Comey in the brief letter that he could not effectively lead the bureau and called for new leadership that restores public trust and confidence in law enforcement. Fox News Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Republican Jean Stohert was re-elected to a second four-year term as mayor of Omaha, Neb. Tuesday, defeating a Democratic candidate whose anti-abortion views had become a flashpoint for an ongoing internal party battle. Stohert, a 63-year-old former nurse and Omaha city council member, defeated 37-year-old Heath Mello by just under 6,500 votes out of more than 96,000 cast. "Im thrilled, Stothert told the Omaha World-Herald. Weve worked very hard the last four years, not just during the campaign." Moderate Democrats had cast the Catholic Mello as an independent, next-generation Democrat who could win high office in GOP-dominated Nebraska. However, his pro-life stance drew backlash from abortion activists. During his eight years in the Nebraska legislature, Mello voted to support half a dozen bills restricting abortions. Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez skipped a rally for Melo last month that would have been part of his multi-state unity tour. "Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices," Perez said at the time, calling on Democrats to speak with "one voice" on the issue. However, Perez's comments drew a backlash of their own, this time from moderate and pro-life Democrats who said the chairman's abortion litmus test was damaging to a party struggling to gain traction after the 2016 election defeat. "Requiring everybody to fit some purity test is a recipe for disaster," Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio said at the time. "There are going to be people who are Democrats who may not check all the boxes. But they are with you 80 percent of the time and can win in tough places." Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders did campaign for Mello, calling on voters to "change one-party rule in Nebraska." Stothert also called on national political figures for help, bringing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to one of her rallies. Rod Rosenstein, who recommended to President Trump that he fire FBI Director James Comey, is widely respected by both career civil servants and members of both political parties. The Justice Department's newly appointed deputy attorney general earned praise from Democrats during confirmation hearings earlier this year before getting overwhelming approval, 94-6, in the Senate. At no point in those hearings was Rosenstein asked whether he felt that Comey was up to the task of leading the FBI throughout multiple, highly politicized investigations. Democrats did press him, repeatedly, to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of Russian influence on the U.S. presidential election and alleged collusion with the Trump campaign. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., for example, said that Rosenstein has impressive credentials and she does not question his integrity. But she said: We need steel spines and there is a real danger the Justice Department could become politicized. TRUMP FIRES COMEY: POSSIBLE REPLACEMENTS FOR TERMINATED FBI DIRECTOR So it came as a surprise to some when his letter explaining his decision regarding Comey pointed at the former FBI directors questionable handling of the Clinton probe. I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, Rosenstein wrote, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives. Interviews with former colleagues and attorneys who know Rosenstein professionally all say he is a prosecutor who is working to defend the integrity and the independence of the Justice Department. Rosenstein has a long track record in high-profile cases that bolster his reputation for independence. TRUMP DEFENDS COMEY FIRING, SLAMS DEMS FOR ACTING 'SAD' As a young attorney in the 1990s, Rosenstein was tapped to join Kenneth Starrs team of prosecutors investigating shady Clinton real estate dealings in Arkansas. Attorney Megan Brown worked with Rosenstein at DOJ and in the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office. I lived through incredibly stressful situations at the senior levels of DOJ firsthand. He can lead and make the tough calls, Brown, who now works in private practice in Washington, D.C., told Fox News. He's unflappable, with rock-solid ethics. Former Attorney General Eric Holder appointed Rosenstein to investigate who was leaking classified information about the Obama administrations role in cyberattacks against Iran. The DOJ later attained a guilty plea from retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright for making false statements about a covert cyberattack on Irans nuclear facilities. The New York Times decried the result, saying it would have a chilling effect on government employees leaking to the press. Outside the Beltway scandals, Rosenstein also has prosecuted local corruption cases, including against former Prince Georges County Executive Jack B. Johnson, who received a seven-year term for extortion and for witness and evidence tampering. Rosenstein also has prosecuted allegedly corrupt Baltimore cops, along with vicious gangs like MS-13. The Maryland criminal defense bar knows that knowing Rod will get you nowhere when it comes to trying to influence decisions in his office. He simply does what is right and just and does not take personal relationships into account, said Baltimore criminal defense attorney Steve Silverman, who has known Rosenstein professionally for years. The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn Wednesday for papers related to the panel's investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 election. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee of Democratic vice chairman, said the panel had first requested the papers from Flynn on late on April 28. Burr and Warner said in a joint statement Flynn declined, through counsel, to cooperate with the Committees request. COMEY TOSSED 'STICK OF DYNAMITE' INTO THE DOJ, SAYS WHITE HOUSE Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla, a member of the Senate intel committee, said Wednesday on Fox News' "The Story with Martha MacCallum" the panel has "subpoenaed a large number of documents and everything related to the questions weve given him." "We have a large document research that weve pursued for him," Lankford said. "He didnt turn those documents over, so weve subpoenaed those documents and we do expect them to be delivered to us." Flynn attorney Robert Kelner declined to comment on the newly issued subpoena to the Associated Press. Flynn had previously been in talks with the committee about agreeing to be interviewed as long as he was granted immunity. Flynn was fired by Trump after less than a month on the job, ater the White House said he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials about his communications with Russia's ambassador to the United States. Flynn's Russia ties are also being scrutinized by the FBI as it investigates whether Trump's campaign was involved in alleged election interference by Russia. Other congressional committees and the Pentagon's inspector general are separately examining whether Flynn was fully forthcoming about his foreign contacts and earnings from organizations linked to the governments of Russia and Turkey. On Monday, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told senators that Flynn's misstatements about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. raised concerns that Flynn could be targeted for blackmail. Yates also cited the possibility that Flynn could have broken federal law by operating as a paid foreign agent for the Turkish client without U.S. government permission. COMEY WANTED MORE RESOURCES FOR RUSSIA PROBE, SOURCES SAY The U.S. foreign agent law requires disclosure of all written and verbal contracts and modifications. National security law experts have said the failure to disclose such discussions could spur additional scrutiny of Flynn if Justice Department officials were to determine the missing material was legally significant. The Associated Press contributed to this report. President Trump is expected to nominate a replacement for fired FBI Director James Comey "in the coming days," a senior White House official told Fox News late Tuesday. The official did not specify how soon Trump would nominate someone for the position. The official also did not indicate who was being considered for the position, but told Fox News to expect candidates who were non-political and could restore credibility to the position. Here are some possible candidates to run the storied law enforcement agency: -- RAY KELLY: The longest-serving police commissioner in New York City, Kelly oversaw the force in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks when terror threats were routine. His tough-on-crime stance, including support for provocative tactics like stop-and-frisk, could make him a natural ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a go-to-guy for a fellow New Yorker like Trump. Kelly as commissioner defended a police operation that conducted secret surveillance of Muslims. He could partner with Trump and Sessions on anti-terrorism efforts. -- CHRIS CHRISTIE: Though his relationship with Trump has been topsy-turvy, the governor of New Jersey has known the president for years and could bring law enforcement bona fides to the job. Christie is a former Republican-appointed United States attorney in New Jersey, and he cited that background time and again during his 2016 presidential campaign. His legacy as governor took a hit, however, with a so-called "Bridgegate" scandal that was investigated by the FBI, prosecuted by the Justice Department and which brought down some of his allies. -- DAVID CLARKE: A wild-card, but the outspoken and polarizing Milwaukee County, Wis., sheriff has been a fierce supporter of Trump and even landed a speaking spot at last summer's Republican National Convention. That support has been cited as media outlets and pundits floated him as a possible Comey replacement overnight. A conservative firebrand known for his cowboy hat, Clarke has called himself "one of those bare-knuckles fighters" and has been critical of what he called the "hateful ideology" of the Black Lives Matters movement. But he'd be a long shot given that a county jury recently recommended criminal charges against seven Milwaukee County jail staffers in the dehydration death of an inmate who went without water for seven days. -- TREY GOWDY: The South Carolina Republican led the House committee investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's actions surrounding the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Gowdy is also a former federal prosecutor who boasts of his work on drug trafficking, bank robberies and child pornography cases. He was among lawmakers critical of Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton in the email server investigation, saying other government officials would have been prosecuted if they handled classified information like Clinton did, but federal officials disagree with that assessment. Gowdy said after Comey's firing that though he had differences with the former FBI director on some matters, he "never lost sight of the fact that he had a very difficult job." Fox News' Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report. President Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Wednesday, amid a firestorm on Capitol Hill over Trumps Tuesday firing of FBI Director James Comey. Trump told reporters that the two had a "very very good meeting" and talked about the crisis in Syria. "[W]e want to see the killing, the horrible killing, in Syria stop as soon as possible and everybody is working toward that end," Trump said, ahead of a separate meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Lavrov first met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, before traveling to the White House and meeting with Trump. The Russian Foreign Ministry tweeted out a picture of the pair, as well as a picture of Trump with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was fired in February after it was revealed he misled Vice President Pence about his discussions with Kislyak. Lavrovs visit risked being overshadowed by the firing of Comey. As Lavrov met with Tillerson, Democrats continued to express their outrage at the ouster, raising questions as to whether it was connected to the FBIs current investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 race and Trump campaign officials' alleged ties to Russia. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., renewed his calls for a special prosecutor to take over the investigation. We need to get a bottom of this and get a handle on all the facts, Schumer said on the Senate floor. The Trump administration and GOP lawmakers say Comey was fired for other reasons, including his handling of the Clinton email probe. Tillerson and Lavrov were asked about the Comey firing by reporters at the State Department during the photo opportunity. Tillerson did not respond, but Lavrov chose to engage. "Was he fired? You are kidding!" he joked. Lavrov held his own press conference after the meeting and told reporters of his hopes for good relations with the Trump administration. He praised Trump for trying to build a "business relationship" with Russia, and dismissed claims that Russia was controlling the U.S. as "ridiculous." "Its ridiculous ... to think a great country like the United States is being controlled by someone else," he said. Lavrov said that much of the meeting was spent on the Syria crisis, and that he was hopeful that Russia and America can work to "turn the tide and improve the situation." The meetings followed a period during which U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated. While Trump had expressed hopes for a good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail and in the early days of his presidency, Trump said in April that relations with Russia may be at an all-time low -- a sentiment later also expressed by Tillerson. Relations soured between the two countries when Trump ordered airstrikes on a Syrian airfield in response to a chemical attack in northern Syria by Russian ally and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Russian government condemned the attack. Fox News' Rich Edson contributed to this report. President Trump is set to meet Wednesday with Vladimir Putins top diplomat at the White House, marking the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia of the American leader's young presidency. Trump's discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take place at the White House after the Russian meets earlier in the day with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The meetings come a day after Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, dramatically ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of the bureau's investigation into Trump's ties with Russia and Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election. It would also signal that the two countries have improved ties that Trump recently described as being at an "all-time low." Trump made the comments right around the time the U.S. launched missiles into Syria after a chemical gas attack that the U.S. blamed on the Syrian government. Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment, Tillerson said. Either Russia has been complicit or simply incompetent on delivering its end of that agreement. Besides Syria, there are multiple investigations into Russias influence into Novembers election. Sen. Chuck Schumer said he wants a special prosecutor in the investigation. "I have said from the get-go that I think a special prosecutor is the way to go, but now with what's happened it is the only way to go," Schumer told reporters on Tuesday. The Associated Press contributed to this report Grammy Award-winning country music star Alan Jackson is trying to offload his lakefront home in Clarkesville, Ga., for $6.4 million. Sitting on 1.2 acres of land in a gated community, the 7,687-square-foot home has five bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms, according to a listing with Harry Norman Realtors that went online earlier this month. The homes open floor plan affords large space for social gatherings, with a family room, dining area and a lakeside screened porch with fireplace wrapping around a professionally equipped kitchen. Outdoors, there is a terrace with another family room and a bar and game area, a flagstone patio with firepit, and a two-story boathouse with swim dock, according to the listing. Mr. Jackson, 58, was inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum this April. He won Grammy Awards in 2002 with Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) and in 2011 for As Shes Walking Away. His hit songs include Chasin That Neon Rainbow(1990), When Somebody Loves You (2000) and Angels and Alcohol (2015). He has owned the property under a trust named after his business manager, Debbie Doebler, public records show. Listing agent Julie Barnett confirmed his ownership. He bought the property in 2014 for an undisclosed amount. Mr. Jackson did major renovations to the house, including opening up the great room, updating the kitchen, putting in a fireplace on the porch and redesigning the landscape, Ms. Barnett said. The floor-to-ceiling windows offers spectacular views of sunsets, boats on Lake Burton and Appalachian mountains, she added. Mr. Jackson was not immediately available to comment. Amid renewed scrutiny of how airlines treat passengers, a mother of two from Missouri claims she was forced to urinate in a cup after a flight attendant reportedly refused to let her use the restroom during a United Airlines flight in April. Nicole Harper, who says she suffers from an overactive bladder, was traveling from Houston back home to Kansas City, Mo. on April 10. "I get out of my seat to go to the bathroom, the flight attendant gets on the intercom and says I need to return to my seat, Harper recalled to FOX 4. Harper says she attempted to make her way to the restroom multiple times but was continuously told to stay seated. UNITED PASSENGER CLAIMS TRIP WAS CANCELED AFTER FILMING FIGHT OVER LUGGAGE "They very rudely [said] that I was not allowed to get out of my seat and at that point I said `well I`m either going to need to go to the bathroom or you`re going to have to give me a cup to pee in or something,'" she said. Shockingly, Harper says, the attendant then handed her two cups. While she was still seated, Harper proceeded to relieve herself surrounded by other passengers. "It`s so degrading because there are passengers, strangers, that I have to basically do this in front of," she said. After going to the bathroom, Harper claims she was then taken back to the planes restroom to empty the cups and forced to hold onto them until she left the plane. The mother of two says that the crewmembers were unapologetic, extremely rude and proceeded to basically treat me as if I was a criminal for doing this. United says that the plane had already started its final descent and, per FAA regulations, crewmembers had alread instructed all passengers to remain seated for the duration of the flight. According to KSHB, Harper has since filed a complaint with both United Airlines and the Department of Transportation. The incident occurred just one day after a 69-year-old passenger was infamously dragged off a United flight for refusing to give up his seat to airline crewmembers on a full flight to Kentucky. Harper hopes that sharing her story will bring more awareness to how airlines are really treating people. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS "The more that people speak out about situations that have happened and being mistreated that hopefully there will be a shift in a way that these companies do business," she said. This isnt the first time an airline passenger claims to have been mistreated for needing to use the restroom. In April, a Milwaukee man was reportedly kicked off a Delta Air Lines flight after going to the restroom while the plane waited to takeoff on the runway. United Airlines sent the following statement to FOX 4: Customer safety is always our first priority. Initial reports from the Mesa Airlines flight attendants indicate that Ms. Harper attempted to visit the lavatory on final descent and was instructed to remain seated with the seat belt fastened per FAA regulations. The situation as described by Ms. Harper and our employees is upsetting for all involved. We have reached out to Ms. Harper and our flying partner Mesa Airlines to better understand what occurred. A representative from United Airlines was not immediately available for comment. More from FOX 4. If youre starting to feel airline video fatigue, youre probably not alone. After the early April incident where a passenger was involuntarily and violently removed from a United Airlines flight, It seems like every person with a mobile phone has been seeking their 15 minutes of fame. Were going to spare you and not recount the many, many incidences that have been captured for posterity and replayed ad naseam. Today, however, were celebrating along with the rest of the internet at a totally feel-good moment captured on board a Southwest Airlines flight from Denver bound for Pittsburgh. Captain John Charles Ritchie, a former Air Force pilot, who has been flying with Southwest for more than 22 years, has apparently been keeping a running score of how many passengers hes flown. And this particular flight, he was proud to note, was carrying his one millionth passenger. In a video captured by Jennifer Todd, a flight attendant for the airline, Captain Ritchie makes the announcement to the at-capacity flight. As the passenger cheer and applaud, he proceeds to shower the lucky passenger with a bottle of champagne and an autographed copy of her boarding pass. He also said he did some snooping and found out how much the passenger paid and reimbursed her for her flight costs out of his own pocket. The video has already been viewed more than 2 million times and shared more than 22,000 times. Particularly interesting are the comments following the video on Todds Facebook page. In a month where theres been little else but rage and hatred towards the airline industry in general, most of these comments express passengers' deep-seated appreciation for Southwest Airlines. Many commenters reflected the sentiment of Facebook user Stephanie Alvarez, who commented, That's why we love flying only Southwest Airlines if there are no tickets available for my date I will not fly elsewhere #loyalcustomer my kids love this airline. Others chimed in on other examples of Southwests customer service, such as Darina Gilley Chesterton, who wrote, I was on SW flight recently and there were a number of servicemen and women returning from overseas duty. The Captain welcomed them home, thanked them for their recent service and then sang 'America the Beautiful' in their honor. There wasn't a dry eye on board. Although Southwest does not fly to Canada, the airline has its share of Canadian fans, including Todd Cluthe, who commented, Southwest is a fantastic airline. I live in Canada and travel the extra hour to Buffalo instead of Toronto for all my flights to the south. All employees are extremely accommodating and friendly, flights arrive and depart as scheduled, and I never worry about my luggage. Kudos to Captain Ritchie for your long-standing service. And hats off to both Ritchie and Jennifer Todd for helping to remind the public just why Southwest Airlines Stock symbol is LUV. The headaches for United Airlines continue with yet another recorded confrontation, but this time a passenger claims the airline canceled his flight for filming a dispute. Navang Oza, 37, said he was checking in Monday for a flight home to San Francisco from New Orleans when he complained to a United Airlines agent about a $300 charge for his luggage. Oza said he paid $125 to check the same bag on the first leg of his trip. Unable to get an explanation, Oza said he decided to do what many other frustrated passengers have done and film the dispute. You do not have my permission to videotape, the United Airlines employee says in the video shared to Twitter. The agent tells a colleague to cancel the reservation. She then turned the tables on Oza and starts recording him. I was shocked because I didnt know she had the right to cancel my flight because I started recording, Oza told news station KNTV. The California resident said that he ultimately re-booked his flight on a different airline. United told news station KNTV that it is investigating the incident. The video does not reflect the positive customer experience we strive to offer, and for that we apologize. We are reviewing this situation, including talking with Mr. Oza and our employees to better understand what happened, United said in a statement. This story originally appeared on NYPost.com. One person was arrested after a brawl erupted aboard a Southwest Airlines jet deplaning in Burbank after arriving from Dallas. A statement Tuesday from the Dallas-based air carrier said the incident happened Sunday aboard Flight 2530 during deplaning at Burbank Bob Hope Airport in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles. The fight involved three passengers aboard the Boeing 737. Southwest spokeswoman Alyssa Eliasen says police were summoned and one passenger was arrested, while another incurred minor injuries that didn't prevent further travel. There was no word on what prompted the quarrel. The Southwest statement says flight crews are trained to de-escalate conflict. President Donald Trump's travel bans have been largely blocked by the courts, but they've caused the number of refugees entering the U.S. to plummet in the last two months. The number of refugees arriving dipped to a six-year low in March, aside from a period in 2013 when the federal government was shut down. April's number was only a bit higher. An executive order signed by Trump in January decreased the refugee limit from 110,000 to 50,000 this fiscal year, but the cap was not blocked in court until mid-March. That caused the State Department to tightly rein in monthly arrivals when the cap was in effect. Many approved refugees had their travel documents expire during that time, forcing them to restart the whole process and leaving them in limbo. A Spartanburg County school bus driver was being called a hero after her bus caught fire Tuesday morning. Spartanburg County School District Five Superintendent Scott Turner said 56 students were on the bus when the fire broke out just after 7 a.m. District spokesperson Melissa Robinette told Fox Carolina the bus was carrying students to three different Spartanburg schools on Tuesday morning when two pupils in the rear noticed smoke rising outside the bus. Bus driver Teresa Stroble parked the bus and helped students evacuate before firefighters arrived. "She is our hero today," Turner said of Stroble. The superintendent said that he had feared the worst when he saw plumes of smoke rising from the bus. "There was so much black smoke, when I saw it, my heart sank," he told Fox Carolina. Robinette says the 56 students on board were taken to their respective schools by another bus and no one was hurt. Pictures showed the inside of the bus gutted and part of the front and the roof scorched. Authorities are investigating what caused the fire. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from FoxCarolina.com. A 17-year-old aspiring firefighter is being hailed a hero for saving the life of an off-duty police officer. Thalia Rodriguez, a high school senior in Hialeah, was driving along an expressway on Sunday morning when she saw a man bleeding on the side of the road. That man turned out to be Miami-Dade Police Major Ricky Carter, a 21-year police veteran who had crashed his motorcycle. Rodriguez, who is training to be a first responder, immediately jumped into action, according to the Miami Herald, which first reported the story. She came across a scene that few could stomach a bleeding man who lost is left leg and whose right one was almost completely severed. 8-YEAR-OLD BOY SAYS 'ANGELS' HELPED HIM SAVE HIS FATHER'S LIFE I knew I could be of some help and I thought I could do whatever I could do until paramedics arrived, she told Fox News. People asked me if I was scared when I saw him. I wasnt. I believe I was there for a reason and I was going to do whatever I could to help him. As a nurse pulled over to help, Rodriguez applied a tourniquet on his leg to staunch the bleeding. That decision, officials say, may have saved the officers life. Carter, who is still in critical condition, is a well-respected officer who is loved in the community. Rodriguez is a student at Westland Hialeah, a health science magnet school in Miami-Dade County. She is training to become a medical responder. The principal at her school, Giovanna Blanco, said Rodriguez told no one about her heroics. The school learned what she did through medical responders at the scene. NORTH CAROLINA TEEN RESCUES INFANT COUSIN FROM BURNING HOME She was amazing and so humble about it, Blanco said. She did what she was trained to do. Rodriguez said she plans to attend college in the fall and eventually wants to be a firefighter and paramedic. She said it is one thing to be trained on how to handle a traumatic scene another to actually take action. I was at the scene, and it was all on me. It was a lot of pressure, she said. But I just did what I was there to do. Boos, catcalls and the turning of backs welcomed the commencement speaker at Wednesdays Bethune-Cookman University graduation ceremony. For 20 minutes, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, President Trumps most opposed cabinet secretary nominee during confirmation hearings, endured jeers from the graduates and interruptions from the university president to calm down the crowd. At one point, President Edison Jackson even threatened to send your diplomas in the mail if the noise didnt stop. DEVOS DELIVERING COMMENCEMENT SPEED DESPITE UNREST For most of her speech, and during her receipt of an honorary degree in Human Letters, the students continued the past 10 days of contention that, of all people, she won the invite for the keynote address. In her speech, DeVos directly addressed the controversy. "As I said, I'm grateful to be with you today, said DeVos. "While we will undoubtedly disagree, let us do so respectfully, and let us hear each other out." When the historically black university announced May 1 that DeVos would be the speaker, the local NAACP, National Federation of Teachers and Florida Education Association immediately voiced outrage, arguing shes an enemy of public education, a champion of school choice, favors using tax dollars to pay for kids to attend religious, private schools and is ignorant about the origins of historically black colleges and universities. MONEY TO PREP POOR KIDS FOR COLLEGE? SORRY, WRONG SIZE TYPE That opinion comes from a statement DeVos released in February, referring to historically black colleges and universities: HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Many historically black school leaders expressed shock and dismay that DeVos didnt also mention how segregation, racism and Jim Crow forced the creation of black colleges in the first place, i.e., there was no choice. Students, alumni and the NAACP organized an online petition drive calling on DeVos to be disinvited and for Jackson and Board Chairman Joe Petcock to resign. On Wednesday, President Jackson defended the DeVos invitation, saying Its important to understand that people will disagree, but that does not mean that you roll over and play dead because you disagree. This is a good day for us. Can you imagine how many institutions would love to have the secretary of education, the highest educational officer in the land, to be their commencement speaker and hopefully open new doors for this institution? Jackson added that the Department of Education controls 87 percent of Title IV funding and money is needed at historically black colleges and universities to help students graduate with degrees and impact their communities. Caylin Mason, one of Bethune-Cookmans 300-plus 2017 graduates, said she was excited about graduation: Four years..it all paid off. But when asked about the controversy over DeVos, Mason had two words. No comment. Emergency crews helped a crane operator who apparently suffered a medical episode nearly 200 feet in the air during a dramatic rescue in downtown Tampa on Wednesday. Tampa Fire Rescue told Fox 13 that someone working in the cab of the crane needed immediate medical attention. Emergency personnel climbed up the crane and trapped the worker to a stretcher, which was lowered to the ground with a firefighter also aboard. An ambulance was waiting on the ground. POSTAL SERVICE, CITING LOSSES, SEEKS HIGHER STAMP PRICES The worker has not been identified and his condition has not been revealed. The crane was located at the construction site for an Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn was at the scene during the rescue. "When you think about what the men and women of Tampa Fire Rescue do every day...it just really is a testimony to the skill set and the courage of those men and women who serve us and put that uniform on every day," he said. The mayor said the man appeared to be conscious, coherent, and calm before he was loaded into the ambulance. Read more news at Fox 13. A Pennsylvania day care worker charged with coaxing 3- and 4-year-old children to use obscenities on camera has died while awaiting trial. An attorney for 25-year-old Rashanna Gyles tells The (Easton) Express-Times (http://bit.ly/2r1lMGc ) that Gyles died April 28 from unspecified health problems. She'd been awaiting trial on a misdemeanor count of corruption of minors. She told The Associated Press, "I don't know what I was thinking," when asked about the charge filed last year when she was a bus monitor at Creative Minds Daycare Academy in Allentown. Lehigh County prosecutors say Gyles had a half-dozen children direct obscenities toward another child, then made videos of that and sent one to a friend, which wound up on Facebook. The day care is appealing its state license suspension. ___ Information from: The (Easton, Pa.) Express-Times, http://www.lehighvalleylive.com A man who jumped into action to try to rescue a father and daughter from a sinking van in Florida gave a chilling account of his efforts to save the pair before they drowned. Police in Venice said the incident happened Monday afternoon around 4:20 p.m., when the van left the roadway, hit a park bench, stopped, then backed up and ended up driving over rocks into the Venice Inlet leading to the Gulf of Mexico. The driver, 64-year-old Carol Hayden, and her father, 88-year-old Eugene Harden, didnt make it out of the van, according to police. Tim Cobb told FOX 13 Tampa he jumped into the water off a jetty after he saw the van go in. "They were frozen with fear, but they were trying to get out," Cobb told FOX 13. "I want the family to know they did everything to try and get out." 2 BODIES PULLED FROM CENTRAL PARK WATERS IN 2 DAYS, POLICE SAY Witness video obtained by the Venice Police Department and posted on the city's Facebook page shows rescuers and bystanders frantically trying to gain access to the van as the tidal current dragged the submerged vehicle out towards the Gulf of Mexico. One person in the video used a hammer to break out a back window of the van, and Cobb can be heard yelling to ask someone to break another window as nearby boats tried to help. Cobb told FOX 13 he made eye contact with Eugene when he swam up to the vehicle. "He was pulling on the handle," Cobb said. "I had both of my feet up against the van trying to get the door open, but with thousands of pounds of water pressure it just wouldn't budge." CRANE OPERATOR RESCUED NEARLY 200 FEET ABOVE DOWNTOWN TAMPA The whole incident happened within minutes, but Cobb said it felt much longer. "It was the most disappointing thing I've ever gone through in my life," Cobb said. "It felt like an hour by the time the van actually went down. It was heart wrenching, frustrating. I really thought I could do something to help." Several hours later, police were able to locate the vehicle and activate the airbags to help pull it from the water. The crash is still under investigation pending further review and a Medical Examiners Report, according to police. Read more from FOX 13 News. A fraternity at the University of Arizona has been booted off campus for at least four years for allegedly hazing pledges by forcing them to assemble puzzles while boozed-up and blindfolded and witnesses were warned that rats would be killed. Pledges of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity at the university in Tucson were blindfolded by frat brothers during a puzzle night in March designed to bond prospective members by having them work together in groups of three. PENN STATE FRATERNITY BROTHERS CHARGED IN CONNECTION WITH STUDENT'S DEATH TO BE ARRAIGNED The lined-up pledges were then led down a hallway to a dark room while one student was violently shoved into a pillar, causing serious injury, according to a letter to the fraternity from the schools dean of students. A witness was allegedly told by members of the fraternity the night of the assault, that we kill rats, and stated that new members were forced to consume alcohol and placed in a room where music was blaring, the letter reads. The pledges had been playing a game that required them to drink alcohol during a game called Dont F Your Brother during the March 23 event that violated the universitys code of conduct and led to the arrest of a 19-year-old student identified by the Arizona Republic as 19-year-old Cody Ward. Read more at the New York Post. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 A Georgia couple officially turned their family of three to 10 on Tuesday when they adopted seven siblings who spent 1,359 days in foster care. Jessaka Clark and her husband, Josh, met the seven siblings -- Maria, Elizabet, Guillermo, Jason, Kristina, Katerin, James -- in April 2016 after a case worker asked the couple if they would be interested in adopting them. "My husband Josh and I both knew that we wanted to adopt children. We had decided this before we even met each other," Clark told Fox News in an email on Wednesday. "Josh has a heart for the thousands of children that don't have parents and knew he wanted to bring some of them into his home." INDIANA FAMILY HANDS DOWN RED PROM SUIT ACROSS GENERATIONS Clark said her parents where the ones who inspired her to adopt. They spent several years as foster parents while she grew up in New York. She also has two adopted brothers. "They continue to have open doors to children who have aged out of foster care (most of whom were at the children's home they worked at) and give them a place to live and be loved while they go through difficult times in their lives," Clark said. Clark explained that the adoption process took more than two years -- starting in January 2015. After waiting a year and two months, they were finally approved to adopt. A few weeks later, they met the siblings, which they have nicknamed the "Super 7." They moved in to the couple's Georgia home in August 2016, and on Tuesday, the Super 7 were officially part of the Clark family. "We waited 10 long months to finalize what we already knew in our hearts!" Clark added. OHIO COUPLE ADOPTS 6 FOSTER CHILDREN TO ADD TO THEIR HAPPY FAMILY The Clarks also have a biological son, Noah. They said Noah welcomed his new siblings in immediately and that there was an "instant bond." "When we told the children about getting a court date, Noah jumped up and down with them because he thought he was getting adopted as well," Clark joked, adding that it took a while for her son to understand the situation. On Tuesday, Noah, dressed in a button down with a bowtie and suspenders, held up a poster that read: "I was an only child for 1,426 days. But today, May 9, 2017, I became a little brother." The Clarks hope their story will bring awareness to the need for adoption and foster parents in the United States. May also happens to be national Foster Care Month. A family friend also started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the couple to help them upgrade their home for their expanded family. A Georgia mother is seeking answers after her middle school son was allegedly choked by another student while a substitute teacher snoozed during class a nap that was caught on camera and posted to social media. According to WRDW-TV, Mikiline Lester, a sixth-grader, was in his math class at Hephzibah Middle School in Richmond County when he claims that a classmate grabbed him by the throat. Mikiline fought back, an action that got him in trouble. CLICK TO SEE THE SNOOZING SUB. "They [school officials] said well, he punched another child and struck blood; because he did that he is going to be sent to tribunal," Janice Williams, Mikilines mother, told the station. Williams said that Mikiline has breathing problems and also sees a neurologist. She said her son told her that he couldnt breathe, so he punched the student choking him. When Williams asked Mikiline where the teacher was during the confrontation, she was told: Asleep. A picture of the sleepy educator was snapped by a student and posted to social media. Williams said she complained to the school, and was told there is nothing that can be done. The substitute teacher reportedly will not return to the Hephzibah Middle School, but is still eligible to work in other Richmond County schools. A 9-year-old girl was reportedly attacked by a kangaroo at an animal park in Alabama on Saturday, in a harrowing incident caught on what is now a viral video. The animal bit Cheyenne White at Harmony Park Safari, in Madison County, according to WAFF. She required more than a dozen stitches in her head. "You blame yourself sometimes, like, you know, "Why did I take her to the park that day?" "Why did I take her to see the kangaroo?" mother Jennifer White told the station. In the incident caught on cell phone video, a kangaroo reaches through the holes of a large fence to grab Cheyenne by the hair. Screams can be heard in the footage. WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO Signs warning visitors that the kangaroo "bites" could be seen on the fence of the animal's enclosure. LION ATTACKS TRAINER AT CIRCUS AS AUDIENCE LOOKS ON IN HORROR Cheyenne wouldn't have been bitten if there was a better barrier or fencing, her mother claimed. "He's been here nine years, since he was a baby," a park spokesman named Lewis told Al.com of the kangaroo, named Erwin. "He's real gentle." The park is happy the girl is alright, according to Lewis. Park operators are going to install another barrier between visitors and the pen, they told AL.com. The park did not immediately return a phone call from Fox News seeking comment. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A Texas woman is suing T-Mobile after a caretaker looking after her son was put on hold while attempting to contact 911. The lawsuit claims that 6-month-old son Brandon, the son of Bridget Alex, would not have died if T-Mobile used technology that would have directed the call to the Dallas emergency call center, according to the Dallas Morning News. Brandon fell from a bed and appeared to have trouble breathing. His caretaker allegedly contacted 911 three times - but spent a total of 40 minutes on hold. His caretaker did not have a car, and the boy's mother came home to bring her son to a hospital. Brandon died on March 10. PENN STATE FRAT MEMBER: PLEAS TO CALL 911 FOR UNCONSCIOUS PLEDGE WENT UNHEARD "While Brandon Alex lay there in distress, struggling to survive, neither police nor EMT ever arrived at Bridget Alex's apartment to assist Brandon Alex," the lawsuit was quoted as saying. Dallas officials had said that T-Mobile and MetroPCS phones were apparently making "ghost calls" to 911 and overwhelmed the system. T-Mobile performed technological upgrades after Brandon died and found the issue was partially from abandoned calls. T-Mobile declined to comment to Fox News. Minnesota students walked out of class on Tuesday to protest a city councils decision to disband the towns police department. Police believe about 1,300 students from the Forest Lake High School, Century and Southwest junior high schools walked out of class in a show of support for the police after the Forest Lake City Council voted 3 to 2 on Monday to disband the Forest Lake Police Department, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Twenty-three police officers will lose their jobs, according to CBS Minnesota. Law enforcement services for the area will be contracted with the Washington County Sheriffs Office. STUDENT PROTESTERS TAKE OVER UC SANTA CRUZ ADMINISTRATION BUILDING The Forest Lake City Council said the choice will save roughly $387,000 per year and expand police service positions from 25 to 27, but many residents opposed the decision, according to Fox 9. Hundreds of the towns citizens crowded into the councils office during Mondays vote in support of keeping the local police force. This is a community who loves its relationship with the police department, Forest Lake City Council member Mara Bain, who voted against the plan, told Fox and Friends." Mayor Ben Winnick of Forest Lake who favored the move, broke the city council's tie vote. The decision is not finalized until the contract is approved by the Washington County Board of Commissioners on May 16. REPUBLICAN STUDENTS PROTEST AT BOARD MEETING, DEMAND TRUSTEES PROTECT POLITICAL DIVERSITY ON CAMPUS Our teachers have always told us you have voices, so use them, and make yourselves heard, said 17-year-old Forest Lakes High School junior Clara Olson, who helped arrange the walkout, in an email to Fox News. If the city council was truly doing their job, this would never have progressed this far. They havent been listening to the people, Olson said. Olson hopes the county commissioner will see how the community came together and peacefully protested. Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said now-former FBI Director James Comey would have been fired by a 'President Hillary Clinton.' Huckabee Sanders said Comey "lost the confidence of the rank and file within the FBI" as well as that of both sides of the political aisle. (WATCH: A LOOK BACK INTO COMEY'S CAREER) 'HANNITY': FIRING COMEY WAS THE RIGHT MOVE WHO'S NEXT? President Trump is expected to nominate a replacement for fired FBI Director James Comey "in the coming days," a senior White House official told Fox News late Tuesday. The official did not specify how soon Trump would nominate someone for the position. The official also did not indicate who was being considered for the position, but told Fox News to expect candidates who were non-political and could restore credibility to the position. 'SPECIAL REPORT' CRITICS QUESTION TIMING OF COMEY'S DISMISSAL BRIT HUME ON POLITICAL FIRESTORM OVER COMEY FIRING FOX NEWS OPINION JOHN YOO, professor of law at UC Berkeley, writes that the reputation of the FBI would be injured if Comey had remained, even if he acted out of the noblest of intentions. TRUMP TAKES ON SCHUMER President Trump late Tuesday took to Twitter to fire back at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for comments the New York Democrat made in response to the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Schumer held a press conference Tuesday evening and told reporters that he had a phone conversation with the president prior to Comey's firing, and told Trump that he is "making a big mistake." (READ TRUMP'S LETTER TO COMEY) LOS ANGELES SANCTUARIES Los Angeles public schools passed a resolution Tuesday making campuses sanctuaries for illegal immigrants in danger of being deported. The school boards resolution was shaped as a reaffirmation of a measure passed last year that designated Los Angeles public schools as a safe place for illegal immigrants and their families, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. COMING UP ON FOX NEWS 1:30 PM ET: White House press briefing with Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders COMING UP ON FOX BUSINESS 6 AM ET: Terry Turchie, the former deputy assistant director of FBI's counterterror division, to appear on "Mornings With Maria" 7 AM ET: James Kallstrom, former FBI assistant director, to appear on "Mornings With Maria" 8 AM ET: Rep. John Ratcliffe, former U.S. attorney, to appear on "Mornings With Maria" United States military veterans should be treated with more respect, a North Carolina Navy vet told Fox News after he discovered a hateful note placed on his car that was parked in a veteran-designated spot on Saturday. Rod Boyle, 56, said he parked his car in a "reserved for veterans" spot at a Harris Teeter location in Wake Forest at about 5:45 p.m. to quickly grab a few items. "I was kind of in a hurry so I used the veteran parking spot because I am a veteran. I served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years," Boyle told Fox News on Thursday. As he was pulling away from the parking lot, he discovered the note flapping under his windshield wiper. "You are a [expletive] moron! I hope karma visits you often! (this is parking for our veterans)," the note said. Boyle said he was initially angry that someone would assume he wasn't a veteran and place such a scathing note "written using colorful metaphors." "Why would somebody do this? This is just such a hateful note," Boyle said. "Why is someone assuming based on my car that I didn't serve in the military?" Boyle served in the Navy from 1981 to 2001. He told Fox News he joined the military because he felt "it was the right thing to do" to protect his country, his family and to honor his grandfather, who was his only family member to serve in the military at the time. "I am a veteran. I served in the United States military. What business is it for a customer to do that?" VETERANS BLAST VA HOSPITAL IN DC TOWN HALL MEETING Boyle didn't want the incident to go unnoticed, so he drove back to the store and called for the store manager. "I told him, 'First of all, before you say anything, I want you to know that there's nothing you can do for me,' but I wanted him to know the nature of the situation," Boyle said. The retired Navy veteran said he hopes his story will make others think twice before jumping to conclusions, but to also remind people to show more appreciation for veterans. "I take it to heart that growing up as a child I saw how Americans treated Vietnam veterans it wasn't great," Boyle recalled. "Today, that viewpoint really hasn't changed." He added, "Somebody should be rewarding veterans rather than handing out a hateful message." But Boyle said he doesn't hold it against the individual for speaking out because that person had the right to do so. "However, where is the line of standards between rights and moral/ethic conduct?" he wondered. Boyle said he still doesn't know who left the note on his car, but joked that he wanted to thank that person for bringing awareness to a situation that often goes unnoticed. WWII VETERAN GOES SKYDIVING FOR 96TH BIRTHDAY Harris Teeter has offered veteran-designated parking spaces since October 2014. Boyle said the company reached out to him to thank him for his service and apologize for the incident. He will be meeting with Harris Teeter representatives on Thursday. "It is extremely unfortunate anyone would receive a note like this, and we are certainly disappointed it happened while this veteran was shopping in our store," a company spokeswoman said in a statement to Fox News. Boyle said he doesn't blame the supermarket chain at all, but thanked it for offering veteran-designated parking spaces. The man dubbed by police as the Serial Street Shooter has left behind few signs of what his life was like before he was arrested in Phoenix's first serial killings in a decade. Aaron Saucedo, 23, didn't have a criminal record, as many people accused of murder often have. He didn't have a visible presence on social media as most millennials do. And he still lived with his mother and had held a series of low-paying jobs. This hazy portrait of Saucedo emerged as police said Saucedo was a serial killer responsible for 12 nighttime shootings from August 2015 until July 2016 that unnerved residents of a largely Latino neighborhood. Saucedo declared to a judge "I'm innocent" as he made a brief court appearance Monday night. Saucedo has held various jobs over the years, including working as a laborer for a home remodeling company and as a city bus driver. In court documents, he said he made $1,000 a month. Police say Saucedo knew only his first victim a man who was in a relationship with his mother and was gunned down outside the victim's home in August 2015. Police say he used a 9mm pistol that he sold at a pawn shop two weeks later. Less than a month after the killing, Saucedo was ticketed for failing to stop at a red light while driving a city bus in the Maryvale neighborhood the section of Phoenix where most of the victims were killed. He pleaded guilty to the red light violation in February 2016 and was fined $238, according to records from Phoenix Municipal Court. Saucedo went to a public high school in Phoenix and also attended one specializing in troubled youth. Karen Callahan, executive director of Genesis City, a nonprofit group that runs the school, said it is unknown whether he moved onto another high school or dropped out. She did not remember him getting into trouble at school "I really don't remember much about him," Callahan said. The school tries to help students who are homeless, struggling in school, expecting or caring for children, or have been released from the juvenile criminal justice system. Saucedo's lack of a criminal record and his apparent life in the shadows of society fits the profile of many serial killers, who usually do not have known prior criminal records, experts said. "Without a criminal record and lacking a psychiatric history, they are not the people you suspect, and that's how they get away with murder," said Jack Levin, a retired professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston and the author of several books on serial killings. Police while searching for the killer last year made pleas to the public to identify a man they portrayed in a sketch that is remarkably similar to Saucedo. They also said their suspect was driving an older model dark BMW sedan. Saucedo, police said after his arrest, had a BMW and stopped using it and changed his appearance after police made the information public. Saucedo's apparent behavior is in keeping with how serial killers follow their cases and attempt to avoid detection. "He enjoys the cat and mouse chase with the police," added Mike Rustigan, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at San Jose State University who has studied serial killings. The killings stumped investigators for months, but they got a break last month when Saucedo was arrested in connection with the August 2015 fatal shooting of 61-year-old Raul Romero, who had a relationship with Saucedo's mother. Authorities investigated Saucedo more closely and connected him to the other killings. Police gave no details on a motive. Saucedo knew none of the victims except for Romero. Police have said the killer stalked neighborhoods in his car after dark, selecting victims who were standing outside homes or sitting in their cars before approaching them and opening fire. Efforts to reach relatives of Saucedo were unsuccessful. Dean Roskosz, Saucedo's court-appointed lawyer, has not returned repeated phone messages seeking comment. Evidence outlined in documents that police submitted to a judge to justify the charges have been sealed at the request of prosecutors because the case is considered an ongoing investigation. Maryvale resident and former state lawmaker Lydia Hernandez said that authorities should make the information public to be transparent about the case. Relatives of victims said they were pleased an arrest was made but wished it happened sooner. "It was about time," said Graciela Beltran, breaking down in tears in her living room as she recounted the life and death of her son, 32-year-old Horacio de Jesus Pena. He was shot dead outside his home on June 3, 2016 just after he returned home from work at his job at an assisted living facility. Questions abound after a judge erased ex-NFL star Aaron Hernandez's murder conviction in a 2013 killing. Chief among them: What, if any, wealth did the former New England Patriots tight end leave behind when he hanged himself in prison on April 19? And could the team be back on the hook for nearly $6 million it withheld from Hernandez after he was charged in the killing and the team released him? There are no clear answers. A lawyer who represents the family of the man Hernandez was convicted of killing says he's seeking copies of Hernandez's contract with the Patriots and grievances he filed after the team withheld a $3.25 million deferred signing bonus payment and base salary of $2.46 million. Hernandez was acquitted in a 2012 Boston double slaying days before he killed himself. A Massachusetts real estate mogul who defrauded investors of millions of dollars is headed to prison. The Patriot Ledger (http://bit.ly/2pwerNd ) reports that Daniel Flynn III, of Quincy, was sentenced to four years in federal prison and three years of probation on Tuesday. Flynn pleaded guilty to criminal fraud in February. Authorities say he bilked at least $9.5 million out of 10 victims by using false representations of his real estate business in a Ponzi scheme. Prosecutors earlier claimed Flynn squeezed $21 million out of 150 people. However, Flynn admitted to cheating 10 victims as part of the plea deal. A judge imposed a lesser sentence than the nearly six-year sentence recommended by prosecutors as part of the deal. Flynn was also ordered to repay his victims. ___ Information from: The (Quincy, Mass.) Patriot Ledger, http://www.patriotledger.com The brother of a victim in a quintuple homicide had to be dragged by deputies from a Cleveland courtroom after trying to attack a defendant who had pleaded guilty in the fatal shootings to avoid a possible death sentence. Twenty-one-year-old James Sparks-Henderson entered guilty pleas to aggravated murder and other charges Wednesday in the November 2014 slayings at a home in Cleveland. A judge sentenced him to five consecutive life prison terms. Authorities say Sparks-Henderson fatally shot 41-year-old Sherita Johnson, her unborn child, 60-year-old Lemon Bryant; 19-year-old Ja'Rio Taylor and 17-year-old Shaylona Williams. Johnson's brother lunged at Sparks-Henderson after telling him he was glad he'd suffer in prison every day for the rest of his life. Sparks-Henderson's attorneys couldn't be immediately reached for comment. Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was set to be released Wednesday from an Arizona halfway house, marking the end of his one-year prison term for to his criminal conviction in the April 2010 explosion that killed 29 men at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. Four investigations into the disaster found that worn and broken cutting equipment created a spark that ignited accumulations of coal dust and methane gas at the underground mine in Montcoal. Broken and clogged water sprayers allowed what should have been a minor flare-up to become an inferno. Here is a timeline of major events in the Upper Big Branch disaster: April 5, 2010: A huge explosion ripped through the underground corridors of the Upper Big Branch mine, killing 29 men in the worst U.S. coal mining disaster in 40 years. April 25, 2010: In a eulogy, a somber President Barack Obama told the families of the workers that the nation would honor their memories by improving safety in the mines. May 14, 2010: Federal prosecutors announce criminal investigation. Dec. 3, 2010: Don Blankenship, CEO of Upper Big Branch owner Massey Energy, announces his retirement. Jan. 29, 2011: Massey Energy agrees to be taken over by Alpha Natural Resources in a $7.1 billion deal. Sept. 22, 2011: Former Massey employee Thomas Harrah is sentenced to 10 months in prison for faking a foreman's license and lying to federal authorities. Dec. 6, 2011: In the biggest settlement ever reached in a U.S. mining disaster, Alpha Natural Resources agrees to pay $210 million to compensate grieving families, bankroll cutting-edge safety improvements and pay for years of violations by Massey Energy. Under the deal with federal prosecutors, Alpha is not criminally charged. Feb. 29, 2012: Former mine security chief Hughie Elbert Stover is sentenced to three years for lying to investigators and ordering a subordinate to destroy security-related documents. Jan. 17, 2013: Former Upper Big Branch superintendent Gary May is sentenced to one year and nine months in prison on charges he defrauded the government through his actions at the mine, including disabling a methane gas monitor and falsifying records. Sept. 10, 2013: Former Massey executive David Hughart is sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for conspiring in an illegal scheme to warn miners and other subsidiaries of surprise safety inspections. Hughart implicated Blankenship in the conspiracy during his plea hearing. Nov. 13, 2014: Federal prosecutors announce an indictment against Blankenship. Oct. 1, 2015: Blankenship's trial opens in Charleston. Dec. 3, 2015: A federal jury convicts Blankenship of a misdemeanor count of conspiring to willfully violate mine safety standards and acquits him of felony charges. April 6, 2016: Blankenship is sentenced to one year in prison and fined $250,000. May 12, 2016: Blankenship reports to a California prison. Oct. 5, 2016: Blankenship declares himself an "American political prisoner" on his blog and announces plans to distribute 250,000 copies of the 67-page manifesto in booklet form. Jan. 19, 2017: The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, affirms Blankenship's conviction. March 27, 2017: Blankenship is moved to a halfway house in Phoenix, Arizona. May 10, 2017: Blankenship scheduled to be released from halfway house. About 200 U.S. Marines qualified for a rare Navy Arctic Service Ribbon this week after training in the first deployment to Norway since World War II. In Norway on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. John Wissler, commander of Marine Corps Forces Command, congratulated the Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., on earning the rare decoration, after their somewhat Cold War-era six-month deployment--this is the first time foreign troops have been allowed to be stationed in Norway since the 1940s. Theres a lot of ribbons you dont have to do s to get; this isnt one of them, Wissler said. As a Marine Corps, weve been very used to operating in sort of jungle and desert environments, but were not as good at operating in Arctic environments as we need to be. According to Military.com, Marines who were part of the training said they learned how to dry sweat-dampened clothes using their own body heat, slaughter reindeer and drink their blood and practice melting and boiling snow to prepare freeze-dried food. This company of Marines, and those Marines that accompanied you in your training, are capable of engaging and locating, closing with and destroying by fire and maneuver any enemy that we would encounter in an Arctic environment, Wissler said. So my heartiest congratulations to you. U.S. officials downplayed any link between the operation and NATOs concerns over Russia, but the deployment came at the same time as thousands of troops were sent to Poland to strengthen Eastern European allies concerned over Russias aggression. A spokesman for the Norwegian Home Guards who hosted the Marines told Reuters that U.S. troops would learn about winter warfare and that it has nothing to do with Russia or the current situation. The deployment was part of a bilateral agreement between Oslo and Washington. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 Former coal executive Don Blankenship jumped back on Twitter on Wednesday, renewing his feud with U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin on the day Blankenship was to finish a one-year prison sentence arising from the deadliest U.S. mine explosion in decades. Even before the U.S. Bureau of Prisons listed Blankenship as leaving a halfway house in Arizona, the ex-Massey Energy CEO rattled off a series of tweets. He took swipes at a federal mine safety agency and Manchin, the senator from West Virginia where the Upper Big Branch mine exploded in 2010. Blankenship also re-offered his version of what happened at the mine. "I challenge Sen. Manchin to debate UBB truth," Blankenship wrote, referring to the mine with initials. "A U.S. Senator who says I have 'blood on my hands' should be man enough to face me in public." Blankenship was referring to an April 2014 statement from Manchin, six months before federal prosecutors announced an indictment against the mine executive. A Bureau of Prisons spokesman didn't return requests for comment, and Blankenship was still listed late Wednesday afternoon as being at the halfway house. Blankenship still must serve one year of supervised release. Manchin said in a statement that he hopes Blankenship "chooses to do the right thing and disappear from the public eye." Blankenship was sentenced last year for a misdemeanor conviction of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards at Upper Big Branch, where 29 workers died. He was acquitted of felonies that could have stretched his sentence to 30 years. "I'm glad he had time to reflect on the pain he caused," former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin, whose office in Charleston prosecuted the case, said in a text message to The Associated Press ahead of Blankenship's release. "I hope he used it wisely and will come out of prison ready to make amends." It wasn't immediately clear where Blankenship will serve his supervised release. After his indictment, federal prosecutors indicated Blankenship owned homes in several states, and Blankenship said he lived in Las Vegas. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Charleston referred questions to the Bureau of Prisons. Blankenship's attorney, William Taylor, didn't return requests for comment. Former Upper Big Branch miner Tommy Davis, who lost a son, brother and a nephew in the explosion, said Blankenship should still be in prison. "He didn't get what he deserved," Davis said. Four investigations found worn and broken cutting equipment created a spark that ignited accumulations of coal dust and methane gas at Upper Big Branch. Broken and clogged water sprayers then allowed what should have been a minor flare-up to become an inferno. Blankenship has said natural gas, and not methane gas and excess coal dust, was at the root of the explosion. Authorities dismissed that argument. Massey was later bought by Alpha Natural Resources of Bristol, Virginia. Alpha agreed in 2011 to pay $210 million to compensate the grieving families, bankroll cutting-edge safety improvements and pay for years of violations by Massey Energy. Alpha announced in 2012 that the mine would be permanently sealed. Blankenship, 67, served most of his sentence at Correctional Institute Taft near Bakersfield, California. While there, he wrote a 67-page blog before his appeal was heard in which he called himself an "American political prisoner." During the trial, prosecutors called Blankenship a bullish micromanager who meddled in the smallest details of Upper Big Branch. They said Massey's safety programs were just a facade never backed by more money to hire additional miners or take more time on safety tasks. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 The German rapper who became a grisly poster boy for ISIS fell for the oldest trick in the book, according to a report that said the woman "Deso Dogg" thought was his wife was an FBI spy. The spy transmitted critical information about the rapper, who was born Denis Cuspert and now goes by Abu Talha al-Alman, as well as his Islamic State colleagues before slipping into Turkey, where she was arrested and then turned over to the U.S., according to the German newspaper Bild. The paper cited German and American intelligence sources as confirming the operation. We were already a long time in the bedrooms of the terrorists. German intelligence official We were already a long time in the bedrooms of the terrorists, Bild quoted one security official as saying. The unidentified woman left Syria as Islamic State began a hunt for infiltrators, and her handlers told her it was no longer safe. She is believed to now be in the U.S. Cuspert may have been ripe for the tried-and-true espionage technique. According to Bild, he was a womanizer in Germany, where he fathered three children with three women, including one who he dumped before embarking on his terrorist career. Cuspert arrived in Syria in 2013 from a so-called German jihadi colony in Egypt. It was not clear when he "married" the spy, but Bild reported that she informed her U.S. handler via secret methods on regular basis about Islamic State activities. It was unclear how she transmitted the information to her handler. The timing of the honey trap revelations coincided with last week's designation by the U.S. of Cuspert as a global terrorist. "Denis Cuspert stands in the focus of security circles because of his essential role for Islamic State, a German law enforcement official told FoxNews.com. He is propagandist of IS." The material gleaned by the spy served as the basis for the U.S. State Department's designation, according to Bild, which reported that Germanys top prosecutorial office benefited from the seduction mission. Germanys federal prosecutor has used the material to launch an investigation into Cusperts Islamic State activities. FBI officials did not return requests for comment. FoxNews.com reported last week that Cuspert, who was seen in an ISIS propaganda video in November hoisting the severed head of an "enemy of Islamic State," was deeply involved in the radical German Salafist scene before his departure for the Middle East. According to Germanys domestic intelligence agency, there are nearly 7,000 active Salafists, who adhere to a strict, hard-core anti-Western interpretation of Sunni Islam. Cuspert, the son of a Ghanian father and a German mother, serves as a recruiter of German-speaking Islamists. Numerous YouTube videos show him encouraging Germans to embrace jihad in Syria and to bring jihad to Germany. The most recent German intelligence data estimates 500 German Muslims have traveled to the Iraqi and Syrian war theaters. Roughly 150 radical Islamic fighters are back in Germany, posing an enormous challenge for the countrys taxed counter-terrorism officials. Albania's opposition, which is boycotting the June 18 national parliamentary election, has complained at the Electoral College that the registration of candidates from the political parties is overdue. The main opposition has not registered for the vote, claiming the government will manipulate the ballot in which 15 political parties are running. The opposition's stance, announced on Wednesday, may block or create obstacles in the process. The opposition has boycotted parliament since February, also blocking the justice reforms that Albania, a NATO member since 2009, should start before being able to launch full membership negotiations with the European Union. Albanian police say a journalist has been arrested for making calls for violence against a European Union diplomat. Kastriot Myftaraj, 51, also a lawyer politically affiliated with the center-right opposition, wrote on Facebook against Romana Vlahutin, EU ambassador to Tirana, considering her a "terrorist." A statement Wednesday said Myftaraj was arrested the previous night "after publishing an article where he makes open calls to commit violent acts against constitutional order." A local online media site, www.syri.net republished Myftaraj's story, writing that "any Albanian citizen loving his country may kill Romana and that would be an anti-terrorist act, not a terrorist one." Myftaraj faces up to three years in jail. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 Austria's vice chancellor has announced his resignation from the job, and from his post as leader of the country's junior governing party, amid persistent infighting. Reinhold Mitterlehner, who is also Austria's economy minister, announced his decision effective May 15 in a hastily arranged statement at the headquarters of his center-right Austrian People's Party on Wednesday. Mitterlehner's party is the junior partner in a "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats of Chancellor Christian Kern. The Austria Press Agency reported that party leaders are expected to meet over the weekend. It's not immediately clear who might replace Mitterlehner. Austria is due to hold a parliamentary election next year. The two governing parties and the anti-immigration Freedom Party are the country's strongest. Police in northern China say 18 people were injured when a man attacked people on a city street with a knife. The Changchun police department said on its microblog that the 50-year-old suspect in Tuesday's attack was taken into custody after being shot. It said none of the injuries were life-threatening and officers were looking further into any possible motivations. The police microblog cited family members as saying that the suspect, Wang Yunwei, had formerly been hospitalized for mental health issues. China has seen numerous such incidents usually blamed on people with mental health issues or who bore grudges against their neighbors or society as a whole. Because Chinese law tightly restricts the sale and possession of firearms, mass attackers generally use knives or homemade explosives. Many of those incidents have occurred at schools, dating back to a series of attacks in 2010 in which nearly 20 children were killed, prompting a response from top government officials and leading many schools to beef up security. Last year, a knife-wielding assailant injured seven students outside a primary school in a northern city. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday congratulated Moon Jae-in on his election as South Korea's leader and said he is willing to work with Seoul to improve relations, at a time when ties have sunk to their lowest point since diplomatic relations were established in 1992. Xi said that cooperation and exchanges over the past 25 years have "brought tangible benefits to the people of both countries and positive contributions to regional peace and development," according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry. China would like to "preserve these achievements obtained through great effort," it said. "I am willing to work together with you so that the development of China-South Korea relations can better benefit the two countries and two peoples," Xi said in the congratulatory message, according to the statement. Initially close relations between the two under former President Park Geun-hye rapidly deteriorated because of China's anger at Seoul's deployment of a sophisticated U.S. missile-defense system intended to counter North Korean threats. Beijing says it threatens China's own security because its radar system is able to peer into the country's northeast and monitor its flights and missile launches. The dispute has sparked retaliation against South Korean businesses in China, where South Korean consumer goods and cultural products are hugely popular, along with the canceling of Chinese group tours to South Korea. Anti-Korean sentiment has proliferated online in China, while surveys show South Koreans' opinions of China have taken a major hit as a result of Beijing's actions. Moon has said Seoul should reconsider its deployment of the missile defense system known as THAAD, saying the security benefits might not justify worsened relations with China, whose help Washington and Seoul are trying to enlist to pressure Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear ambitions. A B-list German rapper who found stardom when he joined ISIS, cheated death and embarrassed the Pentagon topped himself when he got the girl an FBI translator who set out to catch him and became his wife. Germanys fascination with Denis Cuspert, who found modest fame a decade ago as Deso Dogg, a rapper who once toured with American rapper DMX, spiked when he resurfaced in Syria as a high-visibility leader of ISIS. He was dubbed the black-clad terror armys top recruiter, trading on his credibility with a generation of young, disaffected loners and appearing in numerous propaganda videos. Then the Pentagon announced in October 2015 that the man now known as Abu Talha al-Almani had been killed by an airstrike near the Islamic State-controlled city of Raqqa, Syria. Cuspert was a foreign terrorist fighter and operative for ISIL [Islamic State] who used social media to take advantage of disaffected youth and potential Western recruits, Defense Department spokeswoman Elissa Smith said at the time. It was not the end of Deso Dogg. Germanys domestic intelligence agency Verfassungsschutz -- the rough equivalent of the FBI -- publicly disputed the Pentagons account. Information about the death of Cuspert has circulated a number of times and up until now cannot be confirmed, wrote the German intelligence officials in their annual intelligence report in 2015. The Germans knew that prior reports of Cusperts demise had been greatly exaggerated. German media had reported him dead in 2014, only to see him reappear in a propaganda video, triumphantly hoisting the severed head of an infidel. "Cuspert is the most well-known of Islamic State German fighters, said a German terrorism expert who has tracked Cuspert. If he is not killed, he will remain a long time [as a member of] the Islamic State. The Pentagon reversed itself in August 2016, stating Cuspert survived the airstrike. What the U.S. government did not acknowledge, until last week, was that Cusperts biggest humiliation of the West had been going on all along. That report corroborated one published on FoxNews.com more than two years ago. In 2014, Cuspert seduced a turncoat translator who had been part of a Detroit-based FBI team that set out to track him down. Daniela Greene fell in love with her quarry online and left for the small northern Syrian city of al-Rai armed with an AK-47. She eventually left, returned to the U.S. and served two years in prison before her story got out. Now, fresh details about her time with the man who went from forgettable rapper to jihadi rock star have emerged in the German publication BILD. Greene flew to Istanbul and made her way to Gazientep in Southeastern Turkey where she crossed the border into Syria. Cuspert personally picked up Greene once she crossed into Islamic State territory in late June of 2014, BILD reported. According to a BILD interview with a German ISIS fighter, Greene said she hailed from Canada and the Germans at the Islamic State's former stronghold did not know she spoke fluent German. "Cuspert said that he still had to take care of something and needed to borrow a sport utility vehicle from a German fighter," said the German Islamic State member. Greene quickly drew attention to her behavior. "When the Germans left the room for a short period of time and returned, she had rummaged through the closet and searched for things," the source told BILD. Still, she received special treatment due to a combination of her beauty and her marriage to a terrorist VIP. It was talked about how beautiful she [Greene] looked and that she could have participated in Germanys Next Top Model show, said BILDs source, who lived in al-Rai, a town of a little over 4,000 people, while Greene was there. Greene wore a black abaya -- a robe-style dress -- and hijab to cover her hair, choosing not to veil her face like other women in Islamic State-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria. Her role was to stay within the German Jihadi colony in Syria, where she received extra attention. "Melons, cold water and Pepsi were brought to her," the source said. Long before Cuspert became an ISIS leader, he was a petty criminal whose rap lyrics revealed a dark and twisted mind. The son of a Ghanian father who left Cusperts German mother, he recorded three albums for a Berlin-based gangsta rap label and scored a minor hit with "Willkommen in meiner Welt" (Welcome to my World) in 2010. Welcome to my world full of hate and blood, went part of the song. Childrens souls weep softly when the black angels sing. According to a report in Vice.com, he converted to Islam in 2010 following a near-fatal car accident. In 2012, Cuspert left Germany for Egypt, before eventually making his way to Syria where he joined Al Qaeda. When Islamic State broke away from the terror group behind 9/11, Cuspert pledged his loyalty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In 2016, the Turkish Army, along with Syrian rebels, evicted the Islamic State from al-Rai. The whereabouts of Cuspert, who named a son after Al Qaeda founder Usama bin Laden and once threatened to slit former President Obama's throat, are unknown. Until his distinctively tattooed body turns up, he is presumed very much alive. Police searching a barn in the southern Netherlands have discovered a large quantity of a synthetic drug that is popular in the Arab world. In a statement, police say they are investigating whether the pills bearing the logo "captagon" were destined for the Middle East. They pills were discovered last month as authorities raided a farm in the southern town of Brunssum. They also uncovered laboratory equipment, a pill making machine and some 80 kilograms (176 pounds) of amphetamines and MDMA, also known as ecstasy. Tests by forensic experts showed that the pills with captagon logos contained amphetamines and caffeine. Police say they have arrested a 40-year-old man and his 39-year-old girlfriend in connection with the raid and are hunting two other men. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said he hopes the United States will reverse its decision to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters who are perceived as terrorists by Ankara. Erdogan said the "fight against terrorism should not be lead with another terror organization" and that "we want to know that our allies will side with us and not with terror organizations." Erdogan's plea came the same day U.S.-backed Syrian Kurd forces said they've taken Syria's largest dam and a nearby town from ISIS. The U.S. announced Tuesday it would arm Syrian Kurdish fighters in a bid to recapture the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa despite Turkey's opposition. Ankara considers the Syrian Kurds as an extension of Kurdish rebels in Turkey that have led a three-decade long insurgency against the authorities. "We are keenly aware of the security concerns of our coalition partner Turkey," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement obtained by Reuters. We want to reassure the people and government of Turkey that the U.S. is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally. Erdogan spoke during a joint news conference with the visiting president of Sierra Leone. Erdogan said he would take up the issue during a planned meeting with President Trump on May 16. "I hope that they will turn away from this wrong," Erdogan said. Earlier Wednesday, Turkeys defense minister said the decision to supply arms to Kurdish fighters could develop into a crisis between the U.S. and Turkey. Fikri Isik told NTV television that Turkey had the power to defend its national interests in Syria, but he didnt elaborate further on what he meant. Isik said it's out of the question for Turkey to support any operation involving the Syrian Kurdish fighters. The Associated Press contributed to this report. When Pope Francis travels to the Portuguese town of Fatima this weekend, he will be lending his blessing to a religious phenomenon that has captivated Catholics for a century: It involves visions of the Virgin Mary, supernatural meteorological events and apocalyptic prophesies of hell, Soviet communism and the death of a pope. For doubters, the Fatima story is a trumped-up tale built around hallucinations. For believers, Fatima's message of peace, prayer and conversion from sin is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago, when three illiterate shepherd children first reported seeing visions of the Madonna. The pope will canonize two of those children on Saturday and is likely to make his own Fatima message of peace and conversion as a weapon against secularism and the persecution of Christians today. Here are details about Francis' Friday-Saturday trip to Fatima. ____ WHAT HAPPENED AT FATIMA? The three shepherd children, siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lucia aged between 7 and 10 at the time, said the Virgin Mary appeared to them six times in 1917 and confided to them three secrets. The first two described an apocalyptic image of hell, foretold the end of World War I and the start of World War II, and the rise and fall of Soviet communism. In 2000, the Vatican disclosed the long-awaited third secret, describing it as foretelling the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt against St. John Paul II in St. Peter's Square. John Paul credited the Virgin Mary with saving his life. One of the bullets fired at him rests in the crown of the statue of the Virgin at the shrine. Portuguese church officials initially doubted the veracity of the apparitions. Many doubters, though, became believers after the so-called "Miracle of the Sun" on Oct. 13, 1917. According to legend, the Fatima "seers" had predicted that the Virgin would perform a miracle that day, and tens of thousands of people flocked to Fatima and saw what witnesses reported was a vision of the sun "spinning" in the sky and zigzagging toward Earth. The Portuguese church declared the visions authentic in 1930. ___ WHAT WAS GOING ON AT THE TIME? At the time of the apparitions, Europe was still in the grip of World War I and Portugal's Catholic Church was facing a crisis after Portugal became a republic in 1910. The republican government introduced a host of anti-clerical laws, including prohibiting religious teaching at schools. Priests and bishops were exiled. In that context, the visions helped reinvigorate a persecuted church, giving it "a strong eruption of the supernatural in that difficult moment," said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who headed the commission that compiled 15 volumes of Fatima documentation. Church officials point to the reported secrets about a Second World War, the dangers of Soviet communism and the persecution of the pope and Christians in general, as evidence of Fatima's prophetic message. ____ WHAT DO PEOPLE DO IN FATIMA? Like the shrine at Lourdes, France, Fatima draws millions of pilgrims from around the world about 6 million annually to give thanks to Our Lady of Fatima, or to pray for help. Many walk to the town, which is 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Lisbon. Some complete the last few hundred meters (yards) on their knees. Others toss wax limbs into a fire beside the Chapel of the Apparitions as they recite prayers for healing. The shrine also contains dozens of shops where trinkets are sold alongside rosaries, bibles and assorted images of the Virgin Mary, including one that changes color with the weather. ____ WHY IS THE POPE GOING NOW? Initially, Francis had planned to travel to Fatima merely to mark the 100th anniversary of the apparitions. Francis added a bonus event to his visit by announcing in March that he had approved the miracle needed to make saints of Francisco and Jacinta Marto who died of influenza within two years of the initial apparitions. He will be the fourth pontiff to visit Fatima, after Pope Paul VI marked the 50th anniversary in 1967, John Paul came three times and Benedict XVI visited once, in 2010. After becoming a nun, Lucia became the main raconteur of the Fatima secrets. She died in 2005. In February of this year, Portuguese church officials completed the first phase of her beatification cause by sending more than 15,000 pages of testimony and documentation to the Vatican for review. ____ WHAT WILL THE POPE DO IN FATIMA? Francis arrives on Friday afternoon and meets privately with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. After a spin in his popemobile at Fatima, he'll pray at the chapel dedicated to the apparitions and send a greeting out to the crowd, which is expected to number up to 1 million people. On Saturday, Francis meets with Prime Minister Antonio Costa and visits the basilica built on the site where the children reported the first apparition. He'll celebrate the canonization Mass in the main square, lunch with his bishops, and return to Rome in the evening. ___ Barry Hatton reported from Fatima, Portugal. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Kosovo's government has lost a no-confidence vote, setting up the possibility of an early election. Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's government lost in a 78-34 vote Wednesday, with three abstentions. Opposition parties had blamed his Cabinet for being unable to carry out its program and pass important laws. The government had been hobbled by its inability to secure a majority in parliament over a border demarcation deal with neighboring Montenegro, despite pressure from the U.S. government. The government hasn't had enough lawmakers to pass the deal, which was signed in 2015, and Mustafa withdrew the draft bill last year. The opposition has claimed that Kosovo would lose territory under the deal, an accusation denied by the government and local and international experts. The Latest on the no-confidence vote on Kosovo's government (all times local): 4:13 p.m. The speaker of Kosovo's parliament is supporting the collapse of the country's Cabinet in which his political party was a partner. Kadri Veseli posted a tweet after the government lost a no-confidence vote on Wednesday that the country needs a new beginning. Veseli says the 78-34 vote "is needed for Kosovo to open exciting new chapters of our history." The vote sets the scene for an early election, about a year before it was due. The president is expected to set an election date within 30-45 days. It also revealed disagreements between Veseli's Democratic Party of Kosovo and Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's Democratic League of Kosovo. Each currently holds 69 seats in the 120-member parliament. ___ 2:43 p.m. Kosovo's government has lost a no-confidence vote, setting up the possibility of an early election. Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's government lost in a 78-34 vote Wednesday, with three abstentions. Opposition parties had blamed his Cabinet for being unable to carry out its program and pass important laws. The government had been hobbled by its inability to secure a majority in parliament over a border demarcation deal with neighboring Montenegro, despite pressure from the U.S. government. The government hasn't had enough lawmakers to pass the deal, which was signed in 2015, and Mustafa withdrew the draft bill last year. The opposition has claimed that Kosovo would lose territory under the deal, an accusation denied by the government and local and international experts. The Latest on Syria (all times local): 11 a.m. Turkish media are quoting Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli as saying the U.S. decision to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters viewed as terrorists by Turkey is "unacceptable." The U.S. said it would provide arms to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to help them drive Islamic State militants from the extremists' de facto capital, Raqqa. Turkey says the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPG, which forms the backbone of the force, is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Worker's Party, or PKK, which is waging an insurgency in Turkey. Turkey, the U.S. and other Western allies view the PKK as a terrorist group. Hurriyet newspaper quoted Canikli as saying Wednesday: "The United States is providing every kind of aid to the PKK through (Syrian Kurdish forces)." Canikli expressed hope that Washington would reverse its decision, saying "there is no truth to the claim that the fight against Daesh can only succeed with the (Syrian Kurdish forces)." Daesh is the Arabic acronym for IS. ___ 9:30 a.m. A top Syrian Kurdish official says the U.S. decision to arm Kurdish fighters with heavier weapons will help legitimize the force, which is denounced as a terrorist organization by Turkey. The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will arm the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces "as necessary" to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. NATO ally Turkey strongly objects to the alliance because it sees the Kurds as an extension of the insurgency raging in its southeast. Ilham Ahmed, a top official in the Syrian Democratic Forces' political office, tells The Associated Press Wednesday the decision means the SDF is the force designated to recapture Raqqa. She said the decision is likely to be met with "aggression" from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is to visit Washington next week. Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in Germany's September election is giving a cautious welcome to French President-elect Emmanuel Macron's calls for a joint eurozone budget, but is suggesting it's unlikely to happen. Martin Schulz, the center-left Social Democrats' leader, was quoted Wednesday as telling weekly Die Zeit that "if the eurogroup states are to tackle joint tasks, then joint budget financing would make sense." But he added that "such a eurozone budget ultimately would not fail because of Germany or France, but because of opposition from those states that have other interests." Schulz said he's a realist and "we must start with what's possible without treaty changes." Schulz's party has argued for concessions on matters like austerity to help Macron but Merkel has argued that "German support can't replace French policy." next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Parents of the 82 Nigerian schoolgirls released over the weekend from Boko Haram captivity said Wednesday they still were awaiting word from the government on when they will be able to see their daughters. One father said he was thrilled to find out his daughter was among those released in exchange for five Boko Haram commanders. But Abana Ishaya said he cannot travel the long distance from his home in northern Nigeria to the capital without the government's invitation and assurance that he will see her. NIGERIA SCHOOLGIRLS: 82 CHIBOK GIRLS WERE SWAPPED FOR 5 BOKO HARAM COMMANDERS Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in April 2014, bringing the extremist group's deadly rampage in northern Nigeria to the world's attention. A first group of 21 girls was freed in October and they have been in government care since then, despite calls by families and human rights groups for them to be released to their loved ones. "I'm very anxious to meet her so I can celebrate with her and others that were freed, and also to pray for the remaining ones who are still missing so they can be rescued," Ishaya told The Associated Press. "I really want to see my daughter, but I can't come unless with government invitation." Families say 113 of the Chibok schoolgirls remain missing. They are among thousands kidnapped by Boko Haram during its eight-year insurgency that has left thousands dead and driven millions from their homes. Nigeria's government has said the first group of 21 Chibok girls has been receiving medical attention, trauma counseling and rehabilitation. TIMELINE: NIGERIA'S KIDNAPPED CHIBOK GIRLS, 3 YEARS LATER During a meeting with the 82 newly released schoolgirls on Sunday night, President Muhammadu Buhari promised that he personally would oversee their rehabilitation and that they would be able to pursue their education. But families remain in Chibok, some 900 kilometers (559 miles) from the capital, Abuja. Allen Manasseh, a spokesman for the Chibok parents, said he hopes the latest round of family reunions are better managed this time around. "Some parents were airlifted from Chibok and brought to Abuja only for them to discover that it wasn't their daughters," he said, adding it was equally upsetting for the girls who thought they would see their loved ones. The government "should open those girls up, you know, to their families to interact with, open them up to any other citizens or members of the global community that are ready to assist them," Manasseh said. A group of United Nations human rights experts on Tuesday called on Nigeria's government to ensure the girls' rehabilitation and reintegration, saying release was only a first step in their recovery. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which helped negotiate the girls' release along with the Swiss government, on Sunday said they soon would see their families. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 South African police have fired rubber bullets at rioters on the third day of street protests over government services in parts of Johannesburg. The violence on Wednesday in the Finetown neighborhood of South Africa's biggest city followed unrest this week in nearby Eldorado Park and Ennerdale. Protesters in Finetown threw stones and burned tires. They are demanding land and housing, a common grievance in many poor areas of South Africa where people live in makeshift homes. In separate violence, the African News Agency says protesters burned a police station and two police vans in Thohoyandou, a town more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Johannesburg. The South Africa-based agency says protesters were angry over the disappearance of a resident. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Three shepherd children in Portugal were jailed and threatened with being boiled alive in olive oil when they claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to them 100 years ago. The Catholic Church doubted their story too. From that unpromising start, the children's reported visions would go on to strengthen the faith of Portugal's persecuted Catholics and make the small farming town of Fatima one of the world's foremost pilgrimage sites, with around 6 million visitors a year. Now, the Portuguese youngsters' long-ago testimony is giving the Catholic Church its youngest saints who did not die as martyrs. Pope Francis plans to observe the centenary of their visions by canonizing Francisco and Jacinta Marto this weekend when he makes his first pilgrimage to Fatima. During the Friday-Saturday visit, Francis will also likely seek to make Fatima's message of peace and prayer resonate today, church officials say. According to church lore, the Virgin Mary urged penance, sacrifice, and turning away from sin during her appearances to the children. "At Fatima, the pope could make an appeal to humanity that 'If you don't change your criteria, be it political or economic, the world will suffer,'" said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who led the church commission that compiled the 15 volumes of documentation about the Fatima phenomenon. Jacinta was 7 years old and Francisco 9 when they first witnessed the apparitions on May 13, 1917 along with their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia dos Santos. While the Marto siblings died two years later during the Spanish flu pandemic, Lucia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005. Efforts are underway to beatify her, too, but couldn't begin until after she died. According to Dos Santos' written accounts, the Virgin appeared to the three children six times in 1917 in a field near Fatima where they grazed their sheep. The visits culminated in October with the "Miracle of the Sun," when others in Fatima at the time reported seeing the sun spinning in the sky. For believers, it was proof that the apparitions were authentic. Three months after the first reported vision, with news of their claims spreading through word of mouth, local administrative officials placed the children in separate cells and attempted over three days to coerce them into recanting. They were told they would be fried in olive oil if they continued with their lies. But the children held firm. "Authorities said it was a prank," said Francisco Marto, 78, whose father was Jacinta and Francisco's older brother. Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the retired head of the Vatican's saint-making office, said the children's steadfast faith and refusal to disavow their visions made them worthy of sainthood. Himself Portuguese, Saraiva Martins pushed through the Martos' beatification in 2000 and will travel with the pope to Fatima to see them canonized. "Before, we couldn't even talk about the beatification of children in the history of the church because the principle prevailed that they didn't yet have the skills to exercise the heroic level of Christian virtues," required as a first step, Saraiva Martins said in an interview. Portuguese history helps explain the authorities' initial hostile reaction to the children's story. The country was proclaimed a republic after the 1910 assassination of King Carlos I, and the first republican governments in Lisbon were determined to curb the Catholic Church's influence. Religious teaching at schools was banned, and many bishops went into exile. Portugal also had entered World War I in 1916. Food shortages brought widespread hardship, and people hungered for spiritual sustenance. The Fatima apparitions coincided with that need. "It was a strong moment of an eruption of the supernatural, in that difficult moment," said Azevedo, now a Vatican official. The Virgin purportedly revealed three secrets to the children, containing apocalyptic warnings that seemed to foreshadow World War II and the rise of communism. The contents of the secrets went undisclosed for many years the third secret wasn't revealed until 2000. The mystery furthered Fatima's appeal even as the government tried to curb its popularity. In 1921, with crowds numbering in the tens of thousands turning up on apparition anniversaries, the government tried in vain to outlaw large-scale religious gatherings. After the church recognized the apparitions as authentic in 1930, people flocked in greater numbers to the site. Eventually, church-friendly governments assumed power, the anti-clerical laws were rescinded and Portugal re-emerged as the mostly Catholic country that it is today. Francisco, the 78-year-old nephew of the future saints, runs a souvenir store across the road from the tiny stone house where the Marto family lived in the secluded village of Aljustrel, about 2 kilometers (1 mile) outside Fatima. He remembers his grandfather sitting on the stone stoop and telling stories about his children to pilgrims visiting the shrine. The old family house is well-preserved, with dry-stone walls, bare timber roofs, small windows and ill-fitting wooden doors. Some of the nine Marto children Francisco and Jacinta had seven siblings had to sleep in the barn with the farm animals. Only four would make it to adulthood. The children's parents didn't seek out celebrity and were reluctant centers of attention. Lucia's parents complained that pilgrims trampled their crops. "Life didn't change much. They kept on farming," Francisco said. His father, though, did get a construction job at the Fatima basilica where the three seers are entombed. The shrine, with its basilica overlooking a vast square, is now the economic lifeblood of this otherwise unremarkable town. Stores selling souvenirs statues of the Virgin Mary, rosaries, even wax limbs line the streets while hotels, restaurants and cafes rely on a steady parade of tourists and pilgrims, 1 million of whom are expected for Francis' two-day visit. Many come to toss wax limbs into a huge fire pit as they pray for healings. The shrine's Church of the Holy Trinity, dedicated in 2007, can seat 8,633 people. "Everyone used to be poor and humble" in the town, said Antonio Vieira, 79 and another nephew of the new saints. "Who'd have guessed that Fatima would turn out like this?" ___ AP writer Nicole Winfield contributed from Vatican City. Thousands of students are demanding that the interim president of Puerto Rico's largest public university resign amid looming budget cuts. The students voting at Wednesday's mass meeting are upset that she's supporting a modified version of cuts being forced on the school due to the territory's budget crisis. A federal control board has proposed $450 million in cuts and students have been on strike for a month. The previous president of the University of Puerto Rico was among several top-level officials who have resigned in protest. An appeals court has ordered the university to reopen tomorrow following a lawsuit filed by students seeking to resume their studies. Gov. Ricardo Rossello has proposed that the cuts sought by a federal control board be reduced to $241 million. Japanese internet, robot and solar company SoftBank Group is reporting a 12-fold climb in quarterly profit, as a turnaround at its U.S. mobile unit Sprint helped it on its way to a record annual profit. Tokyo-based SoftBank reported Wednesday a January-March profit of 580.5 billion yen ($5.1 billion), up dramatically from 45.2 billion yen the same period a year earlier. Quarterly sales rose nearly 2 percent to 2.32 trillion yen ($20 billion). For the year through March 2017, SoftBank, which acquired Britain's ARM Holdings, an innovator in the "internet of things," last year, reported a record 1.4 trillion yen ($12.5 billion) in profit, tripling from 474 billion yen in the last fiscal year. Much of that came from the sale of part of its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. But cost reductions at Sprint, which had been dragging on its earnings, also helped, while a strong yen was an unfavorable factor, the company said. Softbank's sales at its domestic wireless carrier service and its Yahoo Japan business also thrived, it said. ARM's operations were also going strong, it said. SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son, a University of California, Berkeley graduate, drew attention for hobnobbing with President Donald Trump, late last year and promising to create jobs and invest in the U.S. SoftBank, founded in 1981, also has within its sprawling investment empire financial-technology and ride-booking services. It also sells the Pepper human-shaped companion robot and operates a solar power business. Also Wednesday, SoftBank, Sprint and Qualcomm Technologies, a U.S. semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company, said they will work together to develop 5G wireless technology, with plans to offer services and devices from late 2019. SoftBank, the first carrier to offer the Apple iPhone in Japan, set up a private fund last year for global investments in the technology sector, called Vision Fund, with the potential to grow to as much as $100 billion. Some media reports said the fund was being closed soon, having reached that target, but SoftBank denied the reports as speculation. ___ Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama Her work can be found at https://www.apnews.com/search/yuri%20kageyama The new South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that he'd be willing to visit rival North Korea under the right conditions. Moon, speaking Tuesday during his formal oath of office, didn't elaborate. But he favors a softer approach to dealing with North Korea and its nuclear and missile ambitions than his conservative predecessors. Moon also said that he will negotiate with the United States, the South's top ally, and China, Seoul's top trading partner, over a contentious U.S. missile-defense system deployed in the South. Beijing says the system allows Washington to spy on China's military operations. Earlier this month, President Trump said that he absolutely would meet with North Koreas Kim Jong Un under the right circumstances. If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it, Trump told Bloomberg News, adding: If its under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that. The comments come as he and his advisers grapple with how to rein in the North Korea threat. Trump has declined to take military action off the table, but has been urging China to pressure Pyongyang into changing its behavior -- as Congress moves on a separate front to apply new sanctions. The Associated Press contributed to this report next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance is considering sending several thousand more troops to Afghanistan, but not in a direct combat role. Stoltenberg said Wednesday that "we have received a request from our military authorities to increase our military presence in Afghanistan with a few thousand troops." He said NATO would decide "on the scale and the scope of the mission within weeks." After meeting British Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing St., Stoltenberg said NATO was not considering returning to combat operations in Afghanistan, where security forces are battling attacks from Taliban and Islamic State group militants. Stoltenberg said NATO troops would "train, assist and advise" Afghan forces. NATO currently has about 13,000 troops in Afghanistan, more than half of them American. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 A top Syrian Kurdish official says the U.S. decision to arm Kurdish fighters with heavier weapons will help legitimize the force, which is denounced as a terrorist organization by Turkey. The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will arm the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces "as necessary" to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. NATO ally Turkey strongly objects to the alliance because it sees the Kurds as an extension of the insurgency raging in its southeast. Ilham Ahmed, a top official in the Syrian Democratic Forces' political office, tells The Associated Press Wednesday the decision means the SDF is the force designated to recapture Raqqa. She said the decision is likely to be met with "aggression" from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is to visit Washington next week. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 A Ugandan court has released on bail a Ugandan academic who has been jailed for calling the president "a pair of buttocks." Stella Nyanzi, a research fellow at Uganda's Makerere University, has been in custody since April 7. The charges against Nyanzi offensive communication and cyber harassment stem from her Facebook posts targeting the country's long-time president, Yoweri Museveni, and his wife Janet, who is education minister. In her posts Nyanzi criticized the president and his wife for not providing sanitary napkins for schoolgirls. Amnesty International and several Ugandan rights groups had called for her unconditional release from jail. The case against Nyanzi is being widely followed in this East African country where few people dare to publicly criticize the first family. Museveni has ruled Uganda since 1986. Carls Jr. And Hardees Spice Up Their Value Menus With The Jalapeno Double Cheeseburger Pioneering Fast Food Chains Turn Up The Heat On Value-menu Competition With New Burger Featuring Jalapenos And Santa Fe Sauce May 10, 2017 // Franchising.com // FRANKLIN, Tenn. - Carls Jr. and Hardees, the sister quick service restaurant (QSR) chains known for pioneering incredible quality, iconic American burgers at affordable prices, today announce their latest - and spiciest - value innovation yet: the Jalapeno Double Cheeseburger, now available at participating restaurants nationwide for only $2.49. Built on two of the brands world-famous charbroiled beef patties, the Carls Jr. Jalapeno Double Cheeseburger features five jalapeno coins, two slices of Pepper Jack cheese, a swirl of Santa Fe Sauce, lettuce and tomato on a soft, classic-style bun; the Hardees burger packs all the same spicy punch. In most quick-service restaurant chains value burgers, there is no flavor, but our Jalapeno Double Cheeseburger packs a flavorful punch with its spicy combination of Jalapenos and Santa Fe Sauce, said Jason Marker, chief executive officer for Carls Jr. and Hardees. I dare anyone to try this burger and not say wow it tastes incredible and is an amazing value at just $2.49. Over the past several months, the chains have made a concerted effort to expand their footprint in the value menu space, recently launching products such the acclaimed $4 Real Deal, the Carls Jr. California Classic Double Cheeseburger and the Hardees Classic Double Cheeseburger; the Jalapeno Double Cheeseburger is the latest such offering. The Jalapeno Double Cheeseburger is available at both Carls Jr. and Hardees as an entree for $2.49, and as a combo meal with fries and a drink for $4.99; prices may vary by location. Follow Carls Jr. and Hardees on Facebook (www.facebook.com/carlsjr and www.facebook.com/hardees), Twitter (@CarlsJr and @Hardees) and Instagram (@CarlsJr and @Hardees) for the latest product news and promotional offers. Download the Super Star Rewards app from the iTunes Store and Google Play and check in to redeem Carls Jr. and Hardees products on the spot, save points for a high-value reward, check out the full menu, and use the store locator to find any Carls Jr. or Hardees in the U.S. About CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. (CKE) is a privately held company headquartered in Franklin, Tenn. CKE is not a franchisor and conducts substantially all of its restaurant activities and operations through its subsidiaries. Carls Jr. Restaurants LLC and Hardees Restaurants LLC own, operate and franchise the Carls Jr., Hardees, Green Burrito and Red Burrito concepts. Carls Jr. and Hardees operate as one brand under two names, acknowledging the rich regional heritage of both banners. After recent international openings in Chile, Cambodia and Kenya, Carls Jr. Restaurants LLC and Hardees Restaurants LLC now have over 3,800 franchised or company-operated restaurants in 44 states and 40 foreign countries and U.S. territories. Known for its one-of-a-kind premium menu items such as 100 percent Black Angus Thickburgers, Made from Scratch Biscuits and Hand-Breaded Chicken Tenders, as well as an award-winning marketing approach, the Carls Jr./Hardees brand continues to deliver substantial and consistent growth in the U.S. and overseas. The Carls Jr./Hardees system is now 94 percent franchised, with international restaurants representing 21 percent of the system. For more information about CKE, please visit www.ckr.com or its brand sites at www.carlsjr.com and www.hardees.com. Media Contact: Kate Franklin Public Relations Director Coast Public Relations 818.606.9784 (direct) Kate@coastprgroup.com SOURCE Carls Jr. ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Kinderdance Is Named On Entrepreneurs Hot List Of Childrens Franchises To Own US Franchise Organization brings movement education To young children Worldwide May 10, 2017 // Franchising.com // Roanoke, VA - Kinderdance International Inc, a leader in developmental dance, gymnastics and fitness programs for young children, continues to prove that movement programs standout as a highly popular childrens franchise. Entrepreneur Summer Sizzle 2017 edition, has recognized Kinderdance International as a Top Hot Childrens Enrichment Franchise to own, setting the stage for another stellar year expanding in several new US states and countries. Kinderdance International has rapidly expanded international with two new franchises in Hong Kong and Guatemala and new expansion in the US in the state of Kentucky along with continued growth in the states of California, New Jersey and Texas. The Kinderdance business model translates well in diverse markets; our movement programs are developmentally designed blended with academics, which seems to attract customers anywhere. says Kinderdance President/ CEO, Richard Maltese. About Kinderdance Kinderdance, established in 1979 is a worldwide recognized dance, gymnastics and fitness program for children ages two to twelve. Their 131 Franchisees currently teach thousands of children weekly at thousands of various locations in 31 states including DC and 11 countries. Kinderdance places emphasis on building self-confidence and self-esteem in children through learning to share, lead, interact and respond to others needs as well as their own. The programs incorporate the arts, movement, education, music, fitness and the fun of learning into a young childs life while helping in the worldwide fight against childhood obesity. The company offers their educational movement programs on site to child-care centers, recreational centers, churches, fitness centers, corporate child care, community centers, military bases, public and private schools and many other viable locations. For more information on Kinderdance please contact Richard Maltese at 1-800-554-2334 Or visit their website at www.kinderdance.com. Contact: Richard Maltese President / CEO Kinderdance International 1-800-554-2334 SOURCE Kinderdance ### Add to Request List Added Request Information Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus As I unpacked from a recent camping trip, I noticed the pouch of trail mix had never been opened. Bags of chips were untouched, and I hadnt even bothered to pack hot dogs. This time, my friends and I had decided to go for gourmet grub. Colemans The Outdoor Adventure Cookbook serendipitously landed on my desk a few weeks before my brothers 17th annual spring camping and kayaking trip at Downriver Canoe Companys campground in Bentonville. My brother, his wife and many of their friends are consummate campers. I figured helping review an outdoors cookbook was right up this groups alley. So over brunch the following weekend, some of us pored over the books pages and picked a handful of recipes. Alex, my camping expert brother, said some of the recipes sounded impractical and too complex for camping. We forged ahead anyway. THE BOOK The Official Cookbook from Americas Camping Authority includes how-to features and tips in addition to the recipes. As an amateur camper whos not an outdoors aficionado like my brother, I found the hints hugely helpful. From guides on packing and setting up to tips on critter control, cooking, cleaning and packing up, the book provides plenty of practical information. In addition to the expected photos of food, there are also stunning pictures from parks and other scenic spots across the country. And while Coleman not-so subtly hawks its equipment on the pages, I didnt find the promotions obtrusive. Most recipes called for a camp stove or grate, a cast iron skillet and/or a Dutch oven. The 100 campsite recipes are divided into chapters according to meal type, and each recipe is accompanied by a full-page photograph. PREPARATION Our efforts to follow the recipes to the letter, with no substitutions, for the sake of the reviews, caused some grocery store anxiety. When youre test driving recipes and cant do any substitutions, you may find yourself wandering around the grocery store muttering, Pre-cooked rice? What the bloody h--- is pre-cooked rice? my sister-in-law, Peggy Hyland, opined on Facebook after trying to locate two 8.8-ounce pouches of precooked rice. (Store employees pointed her in the direction of the the steamable, pre-boiled rice.) The same recipe called for two 8-ounce packages of prechopped tomato, onion and pepper mix. You dont want the tomatoes juices to ruin your other veggies if you mix them beforehand, so she bought the tomatoes separately, and chopped them on site. Another chef may have used kosher salt instead of the specified table salt in his casserole. These slight complications and minor substitutions aside, the recipes were a resounding success. BREAKFAST The morning meal we tried was one I cooked on-site: BlueberryAlmond Pancakes. It was my first time cooking on a camp stove, and I had trouble getting the temperature just right. One charred pancake fell victim to my inexpertise. The pancakes, made with Bisquick, dried blueberries, milk, eggs and some spices, were topped with a sprinkling of toasted almonds and warm syrup made with fresh blueberries. They got rave reviews, and Im sure to make them again, whether Im out in the great outdoors or at home in my kitchen. DRINKS, SNACKS & APPS The Chori-Queso, cooked by Peggy, was the perfect treat to greet kayakers as they came back to camp after spending hours on the Shenandoah. The appetizer comprises Mexican chorizo, green chiles, garlic, cream cheese, milk and Monterey Jack. Yum. It is reminiscent of the famous RotelVelveeta dip, but much better, with the added zing of chorizo and without the overly processed flavor. Everyone who dipped in loved it, and I dont think it lasted long enough for all the kayakers to taste. SANDWICHES & SALADS Move over, Manwich. My mom prepared Fireside Sloppy Joes at home and reheated the mixture on the camp stove. The results were amazing, and it fed more than four hungry campers. Another hit was Peggy and Alexs Brussels sprouts salad, made with bacon, cider vinaigrette and herbs. This one was prepared on site. The char flavor, the savoriness, the saltiness and the bitterness hit all parts of the flavor palate, raved one camper. HOT MAINS While James McClenathen did much of the preparation for his crowd-pleasing Chopped Pepper, Mozzarella, and Pork Casserole at home, cooking it at the camp still took some time. But it was worth it. This dish was amazing. Some taste-testers, including James, said they would consider replacing the mozzarella with a different type of cheese. But it was one of my favorites of the night, as it was. Alexs Campfire Creole Gumbo, while enjoyed by all, sparked the most conversation, and was the most complex to cook. At one point, three people were chopping or otherwise preparing ingredients, which included spicy sausage, tomatoes, lager, catfish, rice and more. Some campers said it was their favorite among the dishes offered during the trip, while others said the unseeded jalapeno slices left the dish too spicy. Im not typically a fan of spicy foods, and certainly not jalapeno, but I thought the heat perfectly suited this Creole medley. DESSERTS Desserts and Side Dishes are the two chapters we didnt get to. Despite an abundance of delicious-looking dessert recipes, including a Smores Cookie Cake, we opted for plain old marshmallow-chocolate-and-graham cracker concoctions. Because sometimes the basics are the best. PARTING THOUGHTS The experiment was a smash hit. My fellow campers had so much fun making and tasting the food, they requested I bring another cookbook to review next year. The truth is, this one offers enough to keep us cooking during several years worth of camping trips. The culinary creations in this book are sure to delight any camp crowd. It takes outdoor cooking and ramps it up to the next level, providing ideas and dishes youd never expect to see during a camping trip. You are sure to be the star of any campsite if youre serving up these meals. However, novices and even experienced outdoorsmen should beware. Most of these meals are not simple, and they require forethought and focus, both ahead of the trip and while cooking. While the directions are easy to follow, there are no accompanying lists of equipment needed to make each recipe, so chefs must read each one carefully to make sure they have the required dishes, cutlery, and measuring and cooking devices. Still, this book is perfect for the camper whos willing to leave the canned beans and hot dogs at home and put time and effort into creating new and extraordinary dishesand memories, too. When cattle farmer Chad Young discovered one of his cows had given birth to tripletsand later was ailing from all she had been throughhe knew it was time to ask for divine intervention. Im gonna be honest with you, its the first time I ever prayed for an animal in my life, Young said. Whether it was from his pleas or medicine from the veterinarian, the cow seems to have recovered from her labors. News of her delivery spread quickly as most farmers have to wait until the proverbial cows come home to see something that unusual. Some online sites proclaim the odds of cattle triplets as high as one in 8 million births while a more acceptable estimate seems about one in 105,000. The Young cow is known by her ear tag, No. 55, and shes a cross between a black Angus and the bigger boned breed, Charolais. Her larger frame may have helped support three fetusesand kicks from 12 hooves. Can you imagine the trauma when they were born? wondered Young, who runs his cow-calf operation on a breezy knoll appropriately named Windy Haven Farm in Stafford County. Probably none of them had much room, said Youngs father and No. 1 helper, Wayne Young. Neither knew that the cow, considered smoky colored in Charolais circles, was carrying a small herd. Shes given birth, one at a time, to at least four other calves, and there didnt seem to be anything unusual about this pregnancy. Their veterinarian, Dr. Robert Franck of Hanover County, said conceiving triplets is not a deal. Having them survive is. There are a fair number that actually conceive as triplets, but most are aborted along the way, and its rare that triplets are born alive, he said. PLAYING TIC-TAC-TOE Chad Young rents land from his neighbors, who called the morning of April 23 to say there were baby calves in the field. When he investigated, he saw two bull, or male, calves by themselves. A short distance away, in the woods with a female baby, or heifer, was the mother. The farmer brought the three calves to No. 55, and they all nursed. Young, his wife, Cristina, and their 5-year-old daughter, Rebecca, began bringing bottles to the babies to make sure they were getting enough to eat. That was on a Sunday, and the calvesnamed Tic-Tac-Toeseemed to be doing fine. Their mother wasnt. She drank a little water but wasnt eating. The vet visited on Tuesday and pumped her full of medicine. Thats the same day that Chad Young voiced a few appeals, praying the cow would be able to raise her offspring. By the next day, she was enjoying fresh spring grass, and in the days since then, has started to fill out from the hollow look Chad Young said she had after giving birth. REALLY WORRIED Franck said the cows uterus was so large, and so full of babies, it pressed against her stomach. Even though cattle have four stomachs to process their food, females in the situation of No. 55 have a hard time getting enough to eat because they simply dont have anywhere to put it, the vet said. Because she was expending more energy than she was consuming, her body had to draw on reserves. Things get toxic quickly in those situations, and the mother cow developed a pregnancy-related infection, the vet said. The medicine seemed to clear it up, and the vet was as relieved as the farmers. Theyre doing a good job with those animals, Franck said. They really worried about them. CLOSE TO NORMAL SIZE The Youngs arent new to the cattle world. Wayne Young and his brother, Jerry Young, maintained Staffords last dairy farm until they sold it in 2003. Their grandfather, Edwin Young Sr., started the dairy herd in 1943, and Chad Young says he never heard about a cow having triplets. He wishes he could farm full time like his predecessors, but has to do landscaping work, along with hay and cattle farming, to pay the bills. Even more unusual than the incidence of triplets is the bulk of the bovine trinity. The vet guessed they weighed about 50 pounds each, close to normal size. Sometimes, twin calves are as little as 25 or 30 pounds, Franck said. The female calfand the Youngs arent sure if shes Tic, Tac or Toehas the shiniest black coat. Shes also got the Greta Garbo complex, as in she wants to be alone. Shes usually a few feet from her brothers, who stick pretty close to their mother. All three seem to be getting the nourishment they need from mothers milk. Soon after birth, the triplets were tripping over themselves to get to the bottle, but as their mother got better, the babies turned up their black and pink noses at powdered milk. Meanwhile, No. 55 truly has become a cash cow as shes given the farm three times as many offspring in one pregnancy. The Youngs will sell the calves as feeder calves when they reach about 600 pounds. The cow isnt the only one whos increasing the herd on Windy Haven Farm. Chad and Cristina Young are expecting their second child in early September and were scheduled to get more details, such as the babys gender, during an ultrasound soon after the calves arrived. Could triplets be in the cards for them? Chad Young practically had a cow at the mere thought. We hope its only one, he said. There has been another delay in the case of a Northern Virginia man charged with killing an intruder in a Fredericksburg home last fall. The trial for Christopher John Hardbower was scheduled for Wednesday in Fredericksburg Circuit Court, but the defendant became ill in what was described as a possible case of an allergic food reaction. A new trial date was not set. Instead, a status hearing was scheduled for May 19. The trial for Hardbower, 43, of Burke has been postponed twice because of delays in obtaining medical records. Hardbower has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and use of a firearm in the shooting of Geoffrey Barksdale, a 43-year-old Spotsylvania County resident who died several days after the shooting. Police say Hardbower shot Barksdale multiple times on Sept. 21 at a residence in the Hazel Hill apartment complex off of Princess Anne Street. The medical examiner recovered five bullets from Barksdales body, according to a search warrant. The warrant, filed in November by Fredericksburg police Detective Johnny Wright, alleges that Hardbower admitted to shooting Barksdale multiple times. According to earlier testimony in Fredericksburg General District Court, Hardbower was at the home of a woman the night of the shooting when Barksdale knocked on the door and entered when the woman opened it. The woman testified that Barksdale would not leave and started following her up the stairs. Then he saw Hardbower, who had been in the womans bed. She said Barksdale hit her while she was holding her baby, and then punched Hardbower. She testified that Hardbower got a gun, loaded it and fired about six shots at Barksdale. Barksdale was taken to Mary Washington Hospital before eventually being transferred to VCU Medical Center in Richmond, where he died. An alert King George County resident and her grandson helped police apprehend three people who are suspected of breaking into neighbors home early Tuesday, authorities said. Sheriffs spokeswoman Kecia Wharton said deputies went to Oakland Park subdivision in the western part of the county about 4 a.m. after receiving a 911 call from a woman who believed there were intruders in her neighbors residence. The caller reported that her grandson had seen flashlights in the neighbors home and she knew that the neighbors were out of town. Deputy Wayland Carter was the first to arrive, Wharton said, and he heard noises coming from the residence. Carter and his police dog, Axel, apprehended two suspects inside the house, authorities said. A third suspect ran from the scene, but Carter and Axel tracked him and took him into custody a short distance from the home. Dylan Michael Walthall, 24, Justin Michael Scott, 19, and Jacob Caine Hudson, 19, all of King George, were charged with nighttime breaking and entering and conspiracy to commit breaking and entering. All three were placed in the Rappahannock Regional Jail. The owner of a used-car lot has withdrawn his defamation lawsuit against a former candidate for Spotsylvania County sheriff. Gary Fredo, the owner of Cambridge Auto Sales on Courthouse Road, filed the $1 million suit in October 2015 after then-sheriff candidate Bill Gill alleged the dealership received preferential treatment from the Sheriffs Office. His attorney submitted paperwork Friday to drop the suit against Gill, and Circuit Judge Victoria Willis signed the motion to nonsuit Tuesday. A three-day jury trial had been scheduled for this week. Attorney Jason Pelt, who represented Gill, said he thought the suit was an attempt to suppress free speech ahead of the November 2015 election between Gill and Sheriff Roger Harris. Freedom of speech, and especially political speech, is a hallmark of the Constitution, Pelt stated in a news release he sent to The Free LanceStar. Gill, a lieutenant with the University of Mary Washington Police Department, said in the release that he was disappointed with the election result, but not in my team that fought hard to bring accountability to the Sheriffs Office. He said in an interview Wednesday that the lawsuit was an attempt to force him to spend money to defend himself. The lawsuit arose from Gills claim that the Sheriffs Office purchased vehicles from Cambridge Auto because of an alleged business relationship between Fredo and Maj. Carter Wells. Gill also noted that Fredo had contributed to Harris campaign. The suit called the allegations false and said they hurt Cambridge Autos reputation. Its unclear why Fredo withdrew the lawsuit or if he plans to refile it. His attorney, Garrett F. Jagtiani of Dycio & Biggs in Fairfax County, did not immediately reply to requests for comment. In his release, Pelt reiterated the claim that Wells is in business with Fredo. But a special prosecutor assigned to review a Virginia State Police investigation of the allegations wrote that the probe found no business links between Wells and Fredo. In short, Wells business interests and Fredos appear completely separate and distinct, Fairfax County Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Brandon Sloane wrote in a letter early last year to state police Capt. Gary Wilson. Wells emailed Sloanes letter to The Free LanceStar on Wednesday. The special prosecutor cleared the Sheriffs Office of any wrongdoing under the state Conflicts of Interest Act, saying none of the documents he reviewed showed preferential treatment for Cambridge Auto. At this point in your investigation no evidence exists to support the allegations, and we are accordingly declining to prosecute, Sloane concluded From 2012 to 2015, the Sheriffs Office purchased 12 cars from Cambridge Auto at a total cost of $204,050. Sloane said in his letter that the department complied with the countys procurement policy, noting the dealership also submitted three losing bids to sell vehicles to the Sheriffs Office. The 3 losing bids weigh strongly against the allegations, he wrote. Teacher salaries were in the spotlight during the Stafford County School Boards meeting Tuesday evening. At the meeting, the board voted 61 to approve the $278.9 million budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. George Washington District representative Dewayne McOsker was the only board member to vote against the budget. He said the market-based compensation model does not provide enough of a pay increase for senior teachers, who he fears could leave Stafford schools for better-paying jobs in northern counties. When your most educated and experienced employees leave a system, the system failsand it fails miserably, McOsker said. That failure will trickle down to the students. The approved budget provides $250,000 for teacher scale enhancement and $1.1 million to maintain the teacher scale adjustment from fiscal 2017. During a May 4 work session, Superintendent Bruce Benson said a market-based compensation model comparing Stafford to nine other school districts revealed that experienced teachers were receiving competitive pay, but starting teachers were way out of market. The goal is to close that gap. Several teachers attended Tuesdays meeting to voice their concerns about teacher compensation. Lou Wendling, a substitute teacher at Brooke Point High School, echoed McCoskers concerns. She said if Stafford loses its teachers, the countys schools will become second-rate. In turn, this could prevent businesses and people from coming to Stafford, since they look for areas with good quality schools. Sadly, the high caliber of our schools has been maintained on the backs of our teachers, Wendling said. If you wont pay them what they deserve, I will be first to tell them to pack their bags and leave Stafford County. Craig Vann, a teacher at Rodney Thompson Middle School, spoke in favor of a 1 percent cost-of-living adjustment. He said even a 1 percent increase wouldnt even make up for the cost of the dental insurance he now has to purchase because it is no longer covered in his health insurance plan. I suggest you make cuts to items like student programs and textbooks instead of teacher salaries, which are always first to be cut, Vann said. Lack of funding has been on backs of teachers for over 10 years. Falmouth District representative Scott Hirons said a COLA should be a board priority in future budgets. He recalled a Stafford Board of Supervisors meeting several years ago where a man brought a jar of rocks to use as an analogy to support teacher compensation. He said when you fill the jar with the small rocks first, the large rock doesnt fit. But if you start with the large rock and then pour in the small rocks, everything fits in the jar. In this analogy, teacher compensation was the large rock. Hirons suggested the board make it a priority starting in fiscal 2019 to add a 1 percent COLA each year. One percent doesnt sound great, but it gets us started and becomes the baseline, he said. So getting to 3 percent eventually wont be as big a hurdle. Pamela Joan Thomas passed away peacefully Saturday, May 6, 2017 surrounded by her loving family at Mary Washington Hospital. Pamela was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 6, 1947. She was a devoted and loving daughter, sister and wife. She spent the majority of her life living in Virginia and quickly went from high school to the life of an independent career woman. Working in the field of law, she was a devoted senior legal secretary to DeViere Pierson of the law firm Pierson, Seemes, and Finley in Washington, D.C. for eighteen years. Pamela was loving, giving, generous and quick-witted. She was a determined, dedicated and loyal employee and friend. She was an advocate and lover of all animals, especially dogs, and showed that through her work volunteering at Deepwood Veterinary and Deep Run Breeding Farm. She was a volunteer at the Sunrise Retirement Community helping the elderly. Survivors include her husband, James W. Thomas; daughters Tammy Fisher (Ernest Jr.) and Kelly Thomas; son Paul E. Thomas; grandchildren Alexandria, Conner and Taylor; sister Patricia Holland (Walt); and nephew Chris Holland. The family will receive friends from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, May 11 at Covenant Funeral Service, Fredericksburg. A service will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, May 12 at the funeral home. Interment will follow in Laurel Hill Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to K-9 Lifesavers Dog Rescue, Lifesavers Legacies 259 Thorny Point Rd., Stafford, VA 22554 or online at http://k-9lifesavers.org/. Online guest book is available at covenantfuneralservice.com. LAST WEEK, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the American Health Care Act, a bill that repeals the Affordable Care Acts individual and employer mandates and tax increases while phasing out the ACAs health insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion, replacing them with refundable tax credits and a more effective Medicaid funding model. The AHCA is the first step in a legislative and administrative process that will give individuals and families more control over their health care decisions while increasing flexibility for states to deliver quality, affordable health care options to their residents. Where the ACA has failed, the American Health Care Act will deliver. President Obama promised that the ACA would expand health care choices, increase access to care, and reduce costs. And while it did allow more people to purchase health insurance, it has denied them the fundamental promises made about choice, access and costs. We are seeing this unfold in Virginia with Aetnas decision to leave the insurance exchanges in 2018, meaning that Virginians in 50 of our 95 counties will have one fewer insurance option. In 24 counties where Aetna operates, there is just one other insurer selling Obamacare plans. This means Virginians will have fewer choices and face increased costs. Most are familiar with the stories of families being dropped from their insurance or having their coverage significantly changed as a result of the ACA, all things the American people were told would not happen. The ACA is failing before our eyes, even prompting the CEO of Aetna to say the law is in a death spiral. The American Health Care Act is a good first step in the right direction towards reversing the failures of the ACA and enacting patient-centered reforms that will finally deliver on Obamacares promises. Heres how: First, we return freedom of choice to Americans by eliminating the individual and employer mandates. Rather than punish those who dont buy Washington-mandated insurance, we incentivize individuals to purchase an insurance plan that works for them by providing refundable monthly tax credits of up to $14,000 per year for those 7 percent of Americans who do not get their insurance through an employer or government programs. Our bill gives flexibility to states to cover the unique needs of their populations and empowers individuals and families to spend their health care dollars the way they want and need by enhancing Health Savings Accountsnearly doubling the amount of money people can contribute and broadening how people can use it. Next, the AHCA guarantees that anyone who wants to buy health insurance can do so, especially at-risk populations like those with pre-existing conditions. The bill guarantees coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions and bans health insurers from charging a patient with pre-existing conditions higher premiums as long as they maintain continuous coverage, or sign up for new coverage within 63 days of exiting a previous insurance plan. And to ensure no one falls through the cracks, the AHCA establishes the Patient and State Stability Fund and the Federal Invisible Risk Sharing Program, which provide states with $130 billion to design programs to meet the needs of their populations, help low-income Americans afford health care, and provide a safety net for those with pre-existing conditions. In addition, the UptonLong amendment adds $8 billion solely to reduce premiums and other out-of-pocket costs for patients in the individual market with pre-existing conditions who do not maintain continuous coverage. Finally, we know that seniors require more robust health insurance coverage. But under the ACA, the cost of the most generous plan for older Americans is limited to three times the cost of the least generous plan for younger Americans. However, many health economists say the true cost of care is closer to a 4.8-to-1 ratio. So Section 135 of the AHCA raises the permissible age variation to a 5-to-1 ratio so that seniors have coverage that matches the true cost of care. And the bills age-adjusted tax credit provision ensures the largest tax credits go to older Americans. Simply put, seniors will be able to purchase a plan that meets their health care needs. I believe this legislation does what is necessary to protect individuals with pre-existing conditions, meets the principles for health care reform I laid out several months ago, and puts in place policies that will expand choices, increase access to care and reduce costs. Passage of this bill is a step toward reforming our health care system so it works for all Americans. In the weeks ahead, the House will advance legislative items adding to the improvements of the AHCA. I expect these to include policies Ive supported in the past like purchasing insurance across state lines and allowing small businesses to band together to purchase insurance. And Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, a physician, will enact administrative policies that will further expand choice, increase access and reduce costs. The AHCA will be considered in the Senate. Once a bill passes the upper chamber, the differences in the versions must be worked out and the new legislation must be passed again by both chambers before going to the president for signature. So we still have work to do. We must not allow our nations health care system to fail. And I will continue working to make it better. I remain committed to the constituents of the 1st District and will continue working on behalf of their best interests. Rep. Rob Wittman represents the 1st District of Virginia. He serves on the House Natural Resources Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. 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. Farmlife Framed is Farmers Weeklys photo feature which puts readers centrestage. It showcases your pictures whether theyre of family, friends, landscapes or livestock. From the scenic and the serious to the fun and the funny, your pictures are a great insight into agriculture and rural living across the UK and further afield. See also: More Farmlife Framed photos Here are just a few of the lovely images youve shared with us recently. Olee Morris shared this pic of a group of lambs looking remarkably indifferent to the early morning frost at Coneygar Farm, Quenington, Gloucestershire in late April. Frozen lamb, she called it. Geraint Davies from Thirsk in North Yorkshire recently visited Iceland with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren, Joshua and Phoebe. No holiday is complete without taking ones Farmers Weekly and what better place to read it, than waiting for the hot tub to fill outside our log cabin? In this picture, Joshua is checking that grandad is reading every article! The Chapmans from Saltfleetby in Lincolnshire sent us this picture of their two Border Terriers, Bracken and Briar, sat looking most unimpressed that one of our sheep was benefiting from our sons sandwich and not them! This one, called Through the eye of a hay rack, came from Jayne Eglington of Eye in Suffolk. This shows a proud mother with her lambs near Haltwhistle, Northumberland. They were the 175th pair of lambs we started with red numbers up to 100 then moved onto blue, says Max Johnson. Hattie and Louise Leach from Shropshire holding twin sisters from their small flock of Easycare sheep. Can you guess what day we got married on? says Richard Smith, who tied the knot with Catherine in Boddington, Cheltenham. Jones said plan is to play Friday since also chance of rain Thursday The Indians playoff motto is a familiar and simple one: Survive to play another game. The Indians did just that with a 60-23 win over Rock Hill this past Friday... Story Highlights 91% who email outside of working hours say amount is reasonable Most say after-hours emailing doesn't affect their well-being After-hours emailing not seen as important for advancement WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Checking email outside of normal business hours does not appear to be a burden for U.S. workers. About six in 10 workers say they check email outside of normal business hours. Of these, few claim the amount of emails they have to respond to during off hours is unreasonable, or that it negatively affects their personal well-being or relationships with friends and family. Less than a third of employees who check email outside of normal working hours say their ability to get their job done would suffer if they quit doing it. Additionally, of those who use email at work, just 21% say it is extremely or very important to check email outside of normal working hours in order to advance, get promoted and get ahead at their company. Results are based on interviews conducted March 9-29 with more than 800 adults who work either full or part time for an employer. Checking email outside of normal working hours has been an issue in France, which recently passed a law requiring employers with 50 or more employees to develop policies allowing workers the right to disconnect from email after hours. After-work emails have been called a "national epidemic" in Canada, and some companies and government agencies in Canada, Germany and Brazil have taken steps to curtail emailing outside of normal working hours. When asked about the French law, described as giving "employees in larger companies the right to disconnect from email and other digital communication outside of normal working hours," six in 10 U.S. workers say they would favor that type of law in the U.S. However, workers who already use email frequently outside of normal working hours are the least likely to favor such a law. Four in 10 U.S. Workers Don't Use Work Email Outside of Business Hours The impact of email is not an issue to the one-quarter of American workers who say that they don't have access to work email to begin with. Of the three-quarters of workers (74%) who have an email account for work, 15% say they never check it outside of normal working hours. That leaves 59% who both have a work-related email and say they check it outside of normal working hours, even if just rarely. The American Workforce and Email % Don't have access to work email 26 Have work email but never check it outside of normal working hours 15 Have work email and check it rarely outside of normal working hours 12 Have work email and check it occasionally outside of normal working hours 20 Have work email and check it frequently outside of normal working hours 27 Gallup, March 9-29, 2017 Workers who check email outside of normal working hours say they either just glance at it to see if anything important has come up, or read it but only respond to critical things until returning to work. That leaves one in five workers (21%) who report checking email outside of normal working hours and reviewing and responding to it the same way they would during normal working hours. Even among those who frequently check email outside of working hours, only 11% say the amount of emails they have to respond to during that time is unreasonable. Most also say that using email outside of work doesn't have much of an effect on their personal well-being or relationships with friends or family. Bottom Line Overall, these results suggest that email use outside of normal working hours isn't a burden on most U.S. workers at this point. It is possible that U.S. workers accept checking email at night and on weekends as a part of their job -- possibly more so than workers in other countries -- or that workers enjoy their job and find it pleasurable to remain connected regardless of normal working hours. For others, email traffic may be limited enough on nights and weekends that it isn't a problem. This new research builds on previous Gallup research showing that workers felt the ability to work outside of normal business hours was positive. But that study also found that those who checked emails outside of work experienced the most stress. In the previous research, the increased stress associated with email use outside of work was correlational, based on the relationship between measures of daily stress and email use outside of work. In the current study, workers were asked directly about the impact of email use outside of normal working hours. The workplace in the U.S. is changing rapidly, making it difficult to predict how important the use of email outside of traditional business hours will be in the future. The definition of "normal working hours" may become fuzzier as the prevalence of gig workers, remote workers and workers with flexible schedules increases. Email clearly remains the major form of communication in today's workplaces. The question of how email should be used most effectively to keep workers engaged and to help companies reach their objectives will most likely become more relevant going forward. Story Highlights People in 10 out of 11 countries see more benefit than harm in EU membership Positive views of EU membership rise in Hungary; Greeks most euroskeptical WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While Britons were voting to leave the European Union last summer, residents in all of the 11 EU member states in Eastern Europe -- except Greece -- were more likely to see benefit than harm in their country's EU membership. Half of Greeks in 2016 said EU membership harms their country rather than benefits it, contrasting sharply with their views just one year earlier. Eastern European EU Member States' Views of Membership, 2016 In general, does membership in the European Union benefit or harm this country? Benefit Harm Neither/Both Don't know/Refused % % % % Poland 65 11 15 9 Hungary 62 16 17 5 Croatia 59 20 14 7 Lithuania 59 15 23 4 Romania 58 17 20 5 Estonia 51 13 32 4 Latvia 49 22 24 6 Bulgaria 45 20 27 8 Slovakia 42 23 31 4 Czech Republic 39 25 29 7 Greece 34 50 13 3 All countries except Greece had once belonged to the Communist bloc and joined the European Union less than 15 years ago. Gallup World Poll Between 2015 and 2016, views on EU membership remained fairly stable in nine of the 11 countries. In Hungary, the proportion of those who said EU membership benefits the country increased by nine percentage points. The gains in support likely stem from the declining number of those ambivalent or uncertain about membership (respondents who answered "both" or "neither"). More Hungarians formed clear opinions about EU membership over the course of the year. Eastern European Member States' Change in Views of EU Membership, 2015-2016 2015 2016 Change % "benefit" % "benefit" Pct. pts. Poland 63 65 +2 Hungary 53 62 +9 Croatia 53 59 +6 Lithuania 64 59 -5 Romania 63 58 -5 Estonia 54 51 -3 Latvia 45 49 +4 Bulgaria 53 45 -8 Slovakia 48 42 -6 Czech Republic 37 39 +2 Greece 54 34 -20 Gallup World Poll But in Greece, public opinion on EU membership took a dive after the country's economic breakdown and associated austerity measures. Greece has also been at the forefront of the refugee crisis since its onset in the summer of 2015. At that time, a majority of Greeks already viewed the common currency negatively, but this perception did not extend to EU membership. Fifty-four percent of the population still felt membership benefited the country, while only 35% said it harmed Greece. By summer 2016, this proportion had essentially reversed, and half of the population viewed EU membership negatively. Economy, Refugee Crisis Both Matter to Views on Membership Many Eastern European economies are among the fastest-growing in the EU, but all 11 countries are still in the bottom half of the EU28 in terms of gross domestic product per capita -- so economic concerns are high on people's minds in the region. Across the region, people who evaluated the economic conditions in their country as "excellent" or "good" were more likely to see the benefit of EU membership (65%) than were those who evaluated their economies as "poor" or "only fair" (51%). However, the divide was stronger in perceptions of living standards. Among those who thought their standard of living was "getting worse," only 43% evaluated EU membership positively. At the height of the European refugee crisis in the summer of 2015, EU member states struggled to agree on a common refugee policy. Eastern European adults surveyed after the EU's agreement with Turkey in March 2016 also appeared divided on the issue. Among people who believed that their country should not accept any Syrian refugees, 47% viewed EU membership positively. Still, in five out of nine countries, clear majorities of those who said their country should not accept any refugees were more likely to see benefit than harm in EU membership. Approval of Germany's and Russia's Leadership Related to EU Membership Views Roughly three-quarters of those surveyed who approve of the EU's leadership see the benefit of EU membership, while 9% think it brings their country harm. The relationship between approval of Germany's leadership and EU membership support is similar. In recent years, Germany has taken a leading role in high-profile EU negotiations such as the Greek economic bailout and the refugee deal with Turkey. Among those who approve of Germany's leadership, 70% said EU membership benefits their country, while 14% said it brings their country harm. EU Membership Views by Leadership Approval Benefit Harm Neither/Both Don't know/Refused % % % % EU's leadership: Approve 76 9 12 3 EU's leadership: Disapprove 33 37 26 4 Germany's leadership: Approve 70 14 14 3 Germany's leadership: Disapprove 42 29 24 4 Russia's leadership: Approve 53 27 18 3 Russia's leadership: Disapprove 60 18 19 4 Gallup World Poll Germany's leadership under Chancellor Angela Merkel is firmly supportive of European integration, but euroskeptical and far-right leaders across the EU have often expressed positive views of Russia. The link between euroskepticism and support for Russian policies among political elites is particularly strong in Eastern Europe, where Russia and the European Union are often viewed as offering two alternative paths to the region's future. Eastern Europeans' approval of Russia's leadership is negatively related to their views about EU membership; 53% of those who approve of Russia's leadership say EU membership benefits their country, while 27% think it brings their country harm. There are large subregional differences among the 11 countries -- in central and southeast Europe, views of Russian leadership are less related to EU membership views than they are among residents of Baltic countries. Implications Despite disagreements over the need for austerity, an unprecedented refugee crisis and a wave of populist movements, views on EU membership remain fairly positive in the newer member states in -central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In Hungary, support for EU membership has moderately increased from 2015 to 2016, indicating that the occasional friction between the Hungarian government and EU leadership is not mirrored in public views. The Greek trend of plummeting EU membership support paints a less optimistic picture. A recent analysis also found Greece has the highest proportion of citizens in the EU who do not trust their government and who are not hopeful for the future. Low life ratings, combined with high distrust of both national and European institutions, are not encouraging signs for Greece's stability and its future place in the EU. Story Highlights 20% of Americans approve of Congress, same as April 74% disapprove, also unchanged Congressional approval among Republicans down 22 points since February WASHINGTON, D.C. -- One in five U.S. adults (20%) in May approve of the job that Congress is doing, remaining unchanged from last month. Nearly three in four (74%) disapprove. These data come from Gallup's survey of 1,011 U.S. adults conducted from May 3-7. On May 4, during the course of the polling, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The survey also occurred within a week of Congress' adoption of a spending package to avert a potential government shutdown. In the midst of these events, Congress' current approval rating is down from 28% in February. The February spike, measured shortly after President Donald Trump's inauguration, was the highest approval rating for Congress among Americans since 2009 and was up from 19% in January. Approval of Congress remained elevated, at 24%, in March but fell to 20% -- nearly the pre-inauguration level -- in April, where it remains. Gallup observed a similar pattern after Barack Obama's inauguration in February 2009, with Americans' approval of Congress rising from 19% in January 2009 to 31% the next month. However, unlike this year when Congress' post-inauguration bump lasted only two months, in 2009, the increase lasted eight months. Congressional job approval remained higher than 30% through September 2009, then dropped to roughly a pre-inauguration level of 21%. Republicans' Approval Down by Nearly Half Since February Twenty-eight percent of Republicans say they approve of the job Congress has been doing, similar to the 31% who approved in April. However, this is down 22 percentage points from 50% in February, the highest approval rating for Congress among Republicans since November 2006 (50%). The reasons for this collapse in approval among Republicans may include frustration with Congress' inability to pass much of the legislation that Trump and the GOP favor. The U.S. House of Representatives was initially unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Trump's plans for tax reform, as well as increasing spending on infrastructure, remain stalled. The poll dates span the House's successful vote to repeal the ACA, meaning it is unclear what effect, if any, that legislative achievement may have had on Republicans' views of Congress. Among Democrats, approval of Congress has been steady at 10% in April and May. Democrats' approval of Congress has only fluctuated slightly since Trump's inauguration, hovering between 10% and 12% since February. Bottom Line Republicans had high hopes for the passage of policies they supported after the GOP captured the presidency and Congress in the November elections. Those hopes translated into a spike in approval for Congress among members of the party after Trump's inauguration in January. However, the realities of the difficulties of governing, even when a single party is in control of the legislative and executive branches, appear to have negatively affected Republicans' approval of Congress. The recent House vote to repeal the ACA may yet result in an increase in approval for Congress among Republicans, but no immediate effect was evident in the May survey. The initial spike in approval among Republicans had driven overall support for Congress up in recent months. However, with Republican optimism waning, Congressional approval among the public as a whole has dwindled back down to the pre-inauguration level. Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics. An image from the 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow, in which New York City is flooded by a storm surge caused by global climate change. Its one of many cli-fi movies, TV shows and books dealing with environmental apocalypse, Hartmann says. LIONSGATE The America Syndrome, by Seven Stories Press, is the new book by former Hampshire College professor Besty Hartmann. In her new book, The America Syndrome, retired Hampshire College professor Betsy Hartmann says the U.S. has a long history of approaching issues from an apocalyptic standpoint that hurts practical efforts to solve problems. GAZETTE STAFF / KEVIN GUTTING In her new book, The America Syndrome, retired Hampshire College professor Betsy Hartmann says the U.S. has a long history of approaching issues from an apocalyptic standpoint that hurts practical efforts to solve problems. GAZETTE STAFF / KEVIN GUTTING In her new book, The America Syndrome, retired Hampshire College professor Betsy Hartmann says the U.S. has a long history of approaching issues from an apocalyptic standpoint that hurts practical efforts to solve problems. GAZETTE STAFF / KEVIN GUTTING Author and retired Hampshire College professor of Development Studies Betsy Hartmann of Amherst has a new book, "The America Syndrome: Apocalypse, War and Our Call to Greatness. Zombies roaming the land, hunting the last surviving humans. Violent storms and temperature swings ravaging the planet, leaving hundreds of millions dead and countless others on the verge of starvation. U.S. politicians painting dire pictures of our nation overrun by illegal immigrants and Muslim terrorists who threaten our very existence. If it seems like apocalyptic themes and images have become all too common in America today, whether in cli-fi novels and movies or in newspaper headlines, its really nothing new, says Betsy Hartmann. In her most recent book, the Hampshire College professor emerita of development studies suggests that the end is nigh thinking has a long, troubled history in the United States, dating back to the days of Pilgrim settlement. And in The America Syndrome: Apocalypse, War and Our Call to Greatness, Hartmann argues that those doomsday beliefs have contributed to some of the nations biggest problems from persistent inequality, to exploitation of natural resources, to the growth, since World War Two, of a powerful military-industrial complex. Theres no doubt that contemporary issues such as climate change and terrorism are serious problems that must be addressed, Hartmann said during a recent interview in her Amherst home. But couching these and other topics in apocalyptic terms, she added, can prevent the development of pragmatic solutions or effecting social change that could also address such issues. We need to return to the world of the practical, said Hartmann, who retired from Hampshire last year but continues to write and do research in her field. Theres a long history in this country of casting our choices in this either-or dualism we must take this particular course of action, or society and the world will collapse, she noted. That kind of thinking doesnt do anyone any good. Born under the bomb In The American Syndrome, Hartmann offers a mix of memoir, social history and political review that makes for an engaging read, not a dry, academic tome. One of the chapters examines what she calls the myth of overpopulation an area she devoted much of her career to, including two previous books. In her 1987 book Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control, Hartmann argued that people in poorer nations, and women in particular, have long been demonized in the western world for producing too many children. Yet those same women have been denied access to birth control and, in some countries, been the target of enforced sterilization and state-mandated family limits, she writes. Today, she says, fears of the earths overpopulation a claim she says has been consistently debunked but yet keeps coming back have been coupled to those of climate change to raise the spectre of hordes of climate refugees from poor countries adrift on the ocean or appearing on some other nations borders. Yet she understands the impulse to think in apocalyptic terms, she said with a laugh, because Ive been guilty of some of that myself. As she writes in her new book, Hartmann was born in 1951 and grew up during the Cold War, during which she absorbed much of the fear people had of a cataclysmic nuclear war. And by the early 1970s, with the U.S. riven with protests against the Vietnam War and the assassination of national leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the country seemed on the cusp of breakdown, she writes. The solution at the time for her, her boyfriend (now her husband) and other young people was to go back to the land and find refuge in rural America from the coming meltdown. The prospect of nuclear annihilation added to our sense of urgency, she writes. For the most idealistic of our generation, the task was nothing less than saving the human race and the planet. We would build sturdy arks to survive the apocalypse. But end-of-the-world thinking in America goes back far further than the 1960s and 70s. In 17th century New England, she says, religious fervor and bloody wars with Native Americans combined to produce a basic tenet of the American syndrome. As she writes of one part of that early framework, War is Gods will, and while its depredations punish us, they also cleanse; theyre necessary for the spirital purging and revitalization of the Chosen People. God condones the use of extreme violence if it serves divine ends. Indeed, Hartmann sees the America syndrome as based on principles that have been passed down over the centuries: our sense of exceptionalism and superiority to other nations and cultures; our susceptibilty to sermonizing; a conflicted attitude toward wilderness in which nature is both balm for the soul and something to be tamed and exploited; and our acceptance of the necessity and inevitability of war. Recent polls, Hartmann notes, consistently show large percentages of Americans as many as 49 percent in some cases believe end times are coming, whether from climate change, war or the return of Jesus Christ, compared to 6 to 8 percent of respondents in countries in western Europe. The population bomb? Hartmann says she began thinking of her new book around 2009-10, when some of the talk about climate change first began to seem over the top. I wanted to try and see where this was coming from, she said. She notes that in conferences and meetings in which shes spoken about the issue, shes sometimes been attacked for not being sufficiently apocalyptic. In her view, fears of climate change have revived a false idea that first gained credence in the late 1960s: that the worlds population was approaching a tipping point. Its an argument shes consistently rebutted. In her book, she describes an acrimonious debate she had at Stanford University in 1994 with Paul Erlich, author of the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, whose predictions of widespread famine, war and disease from overpopulation all proved completely wrong. Her fear now is that worries over climate change and overpopulation will cause a further militarization of the issue, with the U.S. and other wealthier nations deploying troops to close their borders. Climate change, serious as it is, she says, is not the main problem the poor in places like India and Africa face rather its factors like unequal land distribution, lack of access to education and health care, political repression and forced marriages for young girls. Furthermore, she notes, its wealthy nations like the United States that use vast amounts of energy, not poorer nations that use much less, which are driving the increases in greenhouse gases behind climate change. And when environmentalists and even liberal politicians like Bernie Sanders and John Kerry invoke dark images of whole populations displaced by climate change, Hartmann adds, Its clear we need to rethink these issues and look at practical and positive steps to address them. As she writes in her conclusion, All this entails developing a new and different mindset, less prone to fear and more prone to action Breaking free from apocalyptic thinking can help restore faith in our common humanity and solidarity with those most affected and afflicted by climate change, wherever they may be. Betsy Hartmann will read from The America Syndrome June 1 at 7 p.m. at Amherst Books. Councilwoman Suzie Price and Vice Mayor Rex Richardson are in the running for the city's top political post. 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. Detours and changed bus stops : Canal work to affect Weberstrae traffic for six months Bonn Beginning next week, private motorists, bicyclists and city buses will face detours due to canal work on Weberstrae. The construction is expected to last until November. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Beginning this Monday, May 15, canal work on Weberstrae will affect both private motorists and public bus service. According to the city, a construction zone will be set up between Bonner Talweg and Goebenstrae. This will cause Weberstrae to become a one-way street in that area in the direction of Argelanderstrae. Cars and bicycles which are riding in the opposite direction will be re-routed over Goebenstrae and Ermekeilstrae. Work is expected to continue until November 3. Bus service will also be affected. Bus and tram stops: -The Wilhelm-Levison-Strae bus stop which serves lines N6 and 600 will be taken out of service. Alternatively, commuters can use tram line 61/62 on Bonner Talweg. -The Luisenstrae bus stop for Line 600 will also be taken out of service in both directions. The Geilerstrae bus stop for Line 600 will also be taken out of service. Alternatively, travelers can use Tram Line 61/62 at Ritterhausstrae or Graf-Stauffenberg-Strae stop. -The bus stop Weberstrae of Bus Lines 600 and N6 (in both directions) will be moved to the Tram Line 61/62 stop on Bonner Talweg. Detours: -Line N6 towards Poppelsdorf, Lengsdorf and Bruser Berg will leave from the stop Sankt Petrus-Krankenhaus and run to Bonner Talweg, Kessenicher Kreisel, Luisenstrae, Argelanderstrae to the stop Luisenstrae and then on to the regular route. -Line N6 in the opposite direction runs from the stop Argelanderstrae to Sternenburgstrae, Argelanderstrae, Luisenstrae, Kessenicher Kreisel, Eduard-Otto-Strae, Hausdorffstrae, Reuterstrae, Bonner Talweg until the stop Sankt Petrus-Krankenhaus and then on to the regular route. -Line 600 which runs to Venusberg will leave from the stop Sankt Petrus-Krankenhaus to Bonner Talweg, intersection at Reuterstrae, Kessnicher Kreisel, Graf-Stauffenberg-Strae and then on to the regular route. This is also the detour route in the opposite direction. The content you are looking for has either been removed or requires you to login to view Please login below or register for an account With Naijapals.com Female Activist Who Was Charged For Calling Uganda President 'Pair Of Buttocks' Collapse In Court felicilin at 10-05-2017 03:36 PM (5 years ago) (f) The bail hearing for the Ugandan activist who is charged in connection with calling President Yoweri a "pair of buttocks" has been adjourned for 20 minutes because Ms Nyanzi collapsed as she tried to get up, the BBC's Patience Atuhaire reports. She was helped up and led away by prisons officers One of her lawyers told Patience that Ms Naynzi has been diagnosed with malaria. Her lawyers are arguing that she needs to be released on bail to get medical attention. The bail hearing for the Ugandan activist who is charged in connection with calling President Yoweri a "pair of buttocks" has been adjourned for 20 minutes because Ms Nyanzi collapsed as she tried to get up, the BBC's Patience Atuhaire reports. She was helped up and led away by prisons officersOne of her lawyers told Patience that Ms Naynzi has been diagnosed with malaria. Her lawyers are arguing that she needs to be released on bail to get medical attention. The case has been seen as a test for the boundaries of freedom of speech in the country. People are sharing pictures of some of her supporters outside the court. The case has been seen as a test for the boundaries of freedom of speech in the country.People are sharing pictures of some of her supporters outside the court. Post Reply Posted: at 10-05-2017 03:36 PM (5 years ago) | Hero livinus5 at 10-05-2017 03:50 PM (5 years ago) (m) abba,how can you call your president a pair of buttocks na Posted: at 10-05-2017 03:50 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming abba,how can you call your president a pair of buttocks na Reply Larry28 at 10-05-2017 04:42 PM (5 years ago) (f) Pele Posted: at 10-05-2017 04:42 PM (5 years ago) | Hero Pele Reply morgan1 at 10-05-2017 05:01 PM (5 years ago) (m) Posted: at 10-05-2017 05:01 PM (5 years ago) | Hero Reply schmit at 10-05-2017 06:05 PM (5 years ago) (f) Posted: at 10-05-2017 06:05 PM (5 years ago) | Hero Reply starzx at 10-05-2017 09:33 PM (5 years ago) (f) Quote from: livinus5 on 10-05-2017 03:50 PM abba,how can you call your president a pair of buttocks na YOU CNT CALL HIM PAIR OF BUTTOCKS BT HIM CAN RUB U OF YR DESTINY ABI? NT ONLY THT HE IS A PIECE OF SHIT AND A HARDENED CRIMINAL. I HAIL U MADAM. DO U KNW HW MANY CURSE OBAMA RECEIVED WHEN HE WAS IN POWER? DID HE ARRESTS ANYBODY? FRUSTRATED AFRICAN RULER , CRIMINALS IN POWER. Posted: at 10-05-2017 09:33 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming YOU CNT CALL HIM PAIR OF BUTTOCKS BT HIM CAN RUB U OF YR DESTINY ABI? NT ONLY THT HE IS A PIECE OF SHIT AND A HARDENED CRIMINAL. I HAIL U MADAM. DO U KNW HW MANY CURSE OBAMA RECEIVED WHEN HE WAS IN POWER? DID HE ARRESTS ANYBODY? FRUSTRATED AFRICAN RULER , CRIMINALS IN POWER. Reply starzx at 10-05-2017 09:37 PM (5 years ago) (f) Quote from: livinus5 on 10-05-2017 03:50 PM abba,how can you call your president a pair of buttocks na YOU CNT CALL HIM PAIR OF BUTTOCKS BT HIM CAN RUB U OF YR DESTINY ABI? NT ONLY THT HE IS A PIECE OF SHIT AND A HARDENED CRIMINAL. I HAIL U MADAM. DO U KNW HW MANY CURSE OBAMA RECEIVED WHEN HE WAS IN POWER? DID HE ARRESTS ANYBODY? FRUSTRATED AFRICAN RULER , CRIMINALS IN POWER. Posted: at 10-05-2017 09:37 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming YOU CNT CALL HIM PAIR OF BUTTOCKS BT HIM CAN RUB U OF YR DESTINY ABI? NT ONLY THT HE IS A PIECE OF SHIT AND A HARDENED CRIMINAL. I HAIL U MADAM. DO U KNW HW MANY CURSE OBAMA RECEIVED WHEN HE WAS IN POWER? DID HE ARRESTS ANYBODY? FRUSTRATED AFRICAN RULER , CRIMINALS IN POWER. Reply jereva at 10-05-2017 10:51 PM (5 years ago) (m) He's an A*#S as well. Posted: at 10-05-2017 10:51 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming He's an A*#S as well. Reply Tracking Time This tool helps the companies manage their projects, track working times and measure productivity. It also has features including Tasks Tracking, Task Comments, Subtasks and much more that helps you in increasing your productivity. It is used importantly for project managers and those, who value time more. Wunderlist This tool helps you in creating task management, to-do list, read later and many other options. You can share the list with your friends and can sync it to your phone, tablet or computer so that you can access from anywhere. Besides writing, users can also attach photos, PDFs, presentations and more to any to-do list or shopping list. SEE ALSO: India is the top country to make WhatsApp video calls; spend 50 million minutes per day Manage It This tool comes handy when the team works on the same projects. In this tool, it is easy to create tasks and subtasks and can be customized as well. Additionally, once synced, you can access your projects wherever and whenever you want either in tablet, phone, or computer. In this version, you can manage up to 2 projects simultaneously. Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides With this tool, you can now edit Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and more without having to open Microsoft office. You can drag the Office files into Chrome, open in Gmail, Google Drive, and will be opened in Docs, Sheets, and Slides for viewing and editing. Additionally, you can save the file in original format after editing through this extension. Lucidchart Diagrams Are you the one who plans with a flow chart and other diagrams? Then this tool will help you to do it easily. Lucidchart can help you create and edit flowcharts, process flows, network diagrams, and more, both online and offline. You can integrate it with Drive, Slack, Box. Leaked purported Meizu MX7 image exposes thin bezels News oi -Chandrika Meizu might unveil the phone in July An image of the alleged Meizu MX7 has just surfaced online. It is the successor of popular Meizu MX6, which was launched last year. Needless to say, we can guarantee you the authenticity of this picture. So you are recommended to take this with a grain of salt. Taking a look at the image, the device looks quite similar to other Meizu phones, shape-wise. However, unlike the previous Meizu models, it has quite thin bezels around the display, especially on the sides. We can also see the company's multifunctional physical button housed just below the display. Presumably, it will function as a fingerprint scanner as well. Nokia 6 First Impressions: The great comeback? The top bezel holds the earpiece and the front-facing camera. Another thing that has caught our attention is that the sides of this handset appear to be a bit curved. This means the display may come covered with a 2.5D curved glass. Unfortunately, the rear part of the device has not been revealed from this image. Coming to the specifications of the Meizu MX7, we have not seen many leaks about the phone. The Meizu MX6 comes equipped with a 64-bit Deca-core MediaTek Helio X20 processor, which makes us believe the upcoming Meizu phone will have the Helio X30 chip inside. However, it can even carry a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor as the company signed a deal with the Chinese smartphone manufacturer at the end of 2016. Since the Meizu MX7 is most likely to be mid-ranger, it will feature 4GB of RAM. Besides this, we don't have any other information about the features and specs of the phone. Source Via Best Mobiles in India Military Strikes Continue Against ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 9, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 27 strikes consisting of 84 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 16 strikes consisting of 20 engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed an ISIS oil rig. -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, four strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit; destroyed four ISIS oil tankers and an ISIS wellhead. -- Near Raqqa, three strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit; destroyed five weapon storage caches and an ISIS barge. -- Near Tabqah, eight strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units and destroyed five fighting positions. Additionally, two strikes were conducted on May 7 that closed within the last 24 hours: -- Near Tabqah, two strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed a fighting position. Strikes in Iraq In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 11 strikes consisting of 64 engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Huwayjah, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed two ISIS-held buildings. -- Near Mosul, six strikes engaged five ISIS tactical units and a sniper; destroyed 12 fighting positions, seven rocket-propelled grenade systems, four medium machine guns, three mortar systems, two vehicle bomb facilitation areas, two front-end loaders, a sniper position, a weapons cache, an improvised explosive device facility, a roadblock and a vehicle bomb; damaged 13 ISIS supply routes and three fighting positions; and suppressed a mortar position. -- Near Rutbah, two strikes destroyed a bunker and a vehicle bomb facility. -- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed a weapons cache. -- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed a vehicle bomb factory. 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 Counter-ISIS Campaign to Intensify, Mattis Says By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, May 9, 2017 The U.S.-led coalition will accelerate its campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said today in a joint press conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen. "We will further accelerate this fight to free people from ISIS' crushing occupation and [the] enemy's terror threat to Europe and beyond," Mattis said. The secretary is on his first stop of a three-country trip to Europe. In Copenhagen, he and Fredericksen co-chaired a 15-country defense ministerial on defeating ISIS, officials said. The Danish defense minister described the effort to defeat of ISIS as one of Denmark's highest priorities. Denmark agreed during the ministerial to substantially increase its defense budget to aid in the counter-ISIS campaign. "We are committed to working together -- all of us -- and that was reinforced today in our meeting with many partners: to defeat [ISIS] wherever it attempts to establish its roots," Mattis said. ISIS Won't Escape The secretary said the coalition in Raqqa, Syria, is getting into position to surround the city. "The idea, ladies and gentlemen, is that the foreign fighters not be allowed to escape and return to constitute a threat against free and innocent people elsewhere, whether it be in the Arabian Gulf, North Africa, and certainly Europe," he said. ISIS has lost a significant amount of territory that it once held -- more than half in Iraq and in Syria, Mattis said. "ISIS has lost two-thirds of its strength in Afghanistan," said the secretary, who also noted the death in Nangarhar province of the ISIS-Khorasan emir over the past weekend. "In our anti-ISIS campaign, we are dealing that group one more significant blow with the loss of their leader," Mattis said. And the fight will go on, he emphasized. "We continue to integrate our military and nonmilitary efforts," Mattis said. "You have to remember the battlefield we are fighting on is also a humanitarian field where innocent people live [and] are sometimes forced to stay on a battlefield by ISIS. We're doing everything humanly possible to limit the suffering and any casualties among those innocent people." Bilateral Meeting Mattis said he and Frederiksen also conducted a "substantive" bilateral meeting in Copenhagen. "Denmark has always been a stalwart ally and friend of the United States, and the close defense relationship between our two countries reflects the enduring strength of NATO's transatlantic bond, [with us] having stood by each other in good times and in bad," Mattis said. "The American people are truly heartened by your government's commitment to share the cost of the common defense through a substantial increase in defense spending," Mattis said to Frederiksen. "Times have changed; 2014 was an eye-opener for all of us, minister, and we have to change with the times." Mattis said he and the Danish defense minister also recognized that Denmark occupies a "rather unique role" as a member of NATO, as a member of the European Union and as a member of the Arctic Council. "In our NATO affiliation, I affirmed that the U.S. commitment to Article 5 [of the North Atlantic Treaty] is ironclad," Mattis said. Article 5 established the alliance in 1949, and states that an attack on one allied country is an attack on all. "We stand together, minister, visible and indivisible, in the face of any threats to international law or to a peaceful, international order," the secretary said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Officials Studying Force Size in Afghanistan, Dunford Says By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity JERUSALEM, May 9, 2017 No decisions on whether to increase U.S. forces in Afghanistan have been made yet, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters in Israel today. Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford said national security leaders have not gone to President Donald J. Trump yet with Afghanistan troop recommendations for 2017 and beyond. "One of the key discussions we are going to have is what are the horizons for the mission in Afghanistan and how do we articulate it," Dunford said in an interview. "I expect [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis and I, and others, will brief the president, soon." Any increase in the NATO and U.S. mission to Afghanistan must be viewed in context, the general said. In the past year, Afghan forces have taken a lot of casualties in battling the Taliban and other groups. Army Gen. John M. Nicholson, the commander of Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan, described the situation in Afghanistan as a "stalemate" during testimony before Congress last month. Secure, Stable Afghanistan Dunford said the situation is clearly not moving in the direction Afghan President Ashraf Ghani wants it to. Last year, Ghani announced a four-year plan, which looked at what was possible for the future of his country. It included a listing of the goals for a secure and stable Afghanistan. Nicholson took this plan and reviewed the campaign to identify what he would need to assist the Afghan government in realizing Ghani's plan. His recommendations are in the Pentagon and are being discussed among high-level officials across the U.S. government. "It is fair to say that we have looked at all the potential ways to accelerate the campaign and meet President Ghani's objective outlined in his four-year plan," Dunford said. The president has spoken with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and the organization has begun conversations with troops contributing nations. The chairman will be in Brussels next week to speak with fellow NATO chiefs of defense. And on his three-day trip, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has been meeting with the ministers of defense for the counter-ISIS coalition. Besides force levels, new authorities, new capabilities, economic reforms and political aspects must also be addressed, Dunford said. "It's all of those things being reviewed" and they all have to be looked at holistically, he said. Regional Threats ISIS-Khorasan is active in Afghanistan, as well as almost 20 other designated terror groups in the Central Asia/South Asia region. "I know from personal experience that the pressure we put on al-Qaida and those terror groups every day for the last 16 years is the reason they have not regenerated and conducted attacks," he said. "I also know they have aspirations to conduct attacks, and an ungoverned space in Afghanistan or South Asia would be contrary to our interests." Meanwhile, the fight against global terrorism continues, Dunford said. "We can be tired, but war is a clash of wills," the chairman said. "Who wins and who loses? Who loses is [he] whose will is lost first. What we need to be mindful of is not low long we've been there, but what is the remaining threat to the United States and coalition partners." The American presence in South Asia is necessary to stop Afghanistan from becoming an ungoverned space again, Dunford said. "It's pretty clear to me that Afghanistan could possibly be a place where there are proxy wars with various regional actors, as well," he said. Counterterrorism Mission The Afghanistan campaign is a counterterrorism mission under U.S. auspices, Dunford said. That mission must continue "as long as there is a threat -- and I am not going to put a timeline on that," he said. It will end, he said, when the underlying conditions that give rise to terrorism are addressed. "That doesn't reflect the size of the mission, but I would expect some influence, some presence is going to be necessary for an extended period of time," Dunford said. "Some people call this a generational war. If that's the case, we need to be prepared as a nation to deal with it." Still, the form of the American presence in Afghanistan will change, the chairman said. "We have a 'by, with and through' strategy meaning what we're trying to do is enable local forces, in this case Afghans, to provide security inside Afghanistan," he said. "I do believe Afghan forces are making progress." He noted that when he took over as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul four years ago, there were 120,000 American service members in the country. When he left, there were 28,000. Now there are around 9,000 Americans in-country. "The first two seasons the Afghans have been providing security on their own, it has been a pretty tough fight," Dunford said. If the Taliban think all they have to do is hold out one more year and then the international forces leave and the capabilities that the coalition gives the Afghan forces will be gone, then they will hang on, the chairman said. "But if there is an extended commitment by the international community that says we are prepared to do what has to be done as long as it takes to get the Afghans where they need to be that's a different story," he said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Dunford, Israeli Leaders Discuss Regional Issues By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity TEL AVIV, Israel, May 9, 2017 Israeli officials today welcomed Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the country and presented him with an award for his personal leadership in strengthening U.S.-Israeli military-to-military ties. Israeli army Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the chief of the General Staff for the Israel Defense Forces, presented the medal of appreciation to Dunford in a ceremony before a full day of talks here. The chairman will also meet with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. This is Dunford's third trip to Israel as chairman. The leaders will discuss the situation in the tri-border region, where Israel, Jordan and Syria come together, officials said. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has a presence in the region and is expanding its influence. Meanwhile, Iran continues to support groups opposed to Israel's existence, officials said. The United States designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984, and earlier this year, Dunford said that from his perspective "the major export of Iran is actually malign influence across the region." The Iranian government also sponsors the terror group Hezbollah, officials said. Hezbollah has developed significant conventional military power as well as funding terrorist cells. Officials said that without Iranian money the group would not be able to survive. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Airborne unit brings new perspective to network modernization event By Nancy Jones-Bonbrest May 9, 2017 FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. -- Just four months after the last Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (2/101 Air Assault) returned home from an advise and assist mission in Iraq, the 2/101 "Strike" Brigade is gearing up for a new mission as they bring a light infantry perspective to integrating and evolving communications systems during the Army's signature operational network exercise. Known as the Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) and taking place at Fort Bliss, Texas, in July, the exercise is designed to help the Army keep pace with rapid advances in communications technologies and deliver integrated network and mission command capabilities to support readiness. This is the first time since the 2011 inception of the NIE series that a light infantry force will serve as lead test unit at the NIE. During the almost two-week evaluation taking place across the harsh, mountainous desert terrain of Fort Bliss, the 2/101's 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment (1-26) will employ a full range of military operations, including a platoon live-fire exercise and artillery air assault, as it pushes its network and communications equipment across vast distances and austere locations. At the same time it will face a free-thinking opposing force, or OPFOR, that will receive intelligence to help them disrupt operations through both traditional and non-traditional means. "The NIE is an excellent opportunity to train on infantry-related skills and also develop the mission command systems I need, overlaid on a new set of technological devices that are going to enable my communications infrastructure across the battalion," said Lt. Col. Keith Carter, who took command of 1-26 in April. "This is just a great opportunity to exercise those systems. Then we'll get to establish the battalion in an austere environment and exercise some of our core infantry tasks. We also have to evaluate these systems for potential fielding in the Army, and that's a huge responsibility." Created to drive technology advances and network integration on the battlefield, the NIEs have incorporated Soldier feedback from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, stationed at Fort Bliss, into system design, performance and functionality. For future NIE events, and the companion Joint Warfighting Assessment (JWA) exercises, the Army is rotating in different formations, providing new perspectives on how they use tactical networks and mission command systems for their unique missions. For example, since light infantry units are often the first in to an operation and are often called upon to maneuver through restrictive terrain such as swamps, villages and mountains, having reliable communications at the platoon and company echelons is vital. "The proliferation of communications systems down to increasingly lower levels of the chain of command facilitates flattening the organization so you can accelerate the speed of communication, which generates increased situational understanding of what's happening on the battlefield so you can gain response time," Carter said. "On a battlefield as complex as the one is today, where multiple things are happening, the speed of communications and having that common operating picture is just going to be essential to winning." The 1-26 Battalion is now in the midst of training and integration activities at Fort Campbell before the actual event takes place at Fort Bliss in July. This year the NIE 17.2 features formal tests for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) Tactical Communications Node-Lite (TCN-L)/Network Operations and Security Center-Lite (NOSC-L), and the WIN-T Tri-Band Line of Sight (TRILOS). Several systems are also under informal evaluation, including electronic warfare prototypes for dismounted and mounted Soldiers. Sergeant First Class Frank Dill, the lead electronic warfare officer with the 2/101, said he is looking forward to evaluating mounted and dismounted prototype electronic warfare systems that enhance the ability to execute ground maneuver in contested environments. The prototypes are some of the first to come out of the Army Rapid Capabilities Office, which was established last year to accelerate capabilities to the field in response to urgent and emerging threats. "Having these systems down at that lower level, we will be able to expedite the sensing and targeting process and engagement," Dill said. "At the NIEs, we'll get a much better understanding of, 'Will all these systems work together?' I think commanders will also start to really understand EW more and how it supports the fight." The Army uses events such as the NIEs to refine capabilities, working to simplify systems for general purpose users. While complexities remain, the evolving technologies' operational effect has made a difference on the battlefield, Soldiers said. Capt. Zachary Jones, 1-26 Headquarters and Headquarters Company commander, used communications equipment that had been evaluated at previous NIEs in his most recent assignment in Iraq. These included radios that passed routes digitally to Soldier-worn devices, eliminating the need to manually write out and disseminate routes; and the ability to take photos of potential targets and digitally pass them to the battalion intelligence officers for instant analysis. "That's something we didn't have before, so I think that's critical to our fight and us as a light infantry being able to do what we do," Jones said. "This allows me to make decisions on the battlefield quicker. I think [the NIE] is a great opportunity, especially for us, to get a better understanding of these systems and then to say, 'Yes. This is it.'" The Army continues to adapt the NIE and JWA construct. While the annual NIEs focus mainly on formal testing and evaluation of programs of record, the complementary JWAs provide an experimental environment to help assess and refine requirements and improve emerging capabilities in a joint and coalition environment. Both events work to promote innovation, modernization, readiness, training and developing capabilities for the future force, as well as generate feedback on tactics, techniques and procedures. Next spring, the JWA will take place in Europe. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US, Romanian engineers build firing range for Resolute Castle By Capt. Colin Cutler U.S. European Command May 9, 2017 CINCU, Romania -- Rainy weather in early May is just another obstacle to overcome for the soldiers of Resolute Castle 2017, an engineering exercise underway here and in Poland. Resolute Castle 17 is a NATO initiative designed to increase shared operational understanding between soldiers at all levels of the armed forces and reaffirm member-nations' commitment to their mutual safety and sovereign borders. For three weeks in Romania, soldiers with the South Carolina Army National Guard's 124th Engineer Company and the Army Reserve's 381st Engineer Company are working with soldiers from Romania's 10th Engineer Brigade to build a nonstandard live-fire range at the Joint National Training Center here. The range will have multiple lanes and fighting positions for NATO armored gunnery exercises. MUDDY CONDITIONS When rain turned local roads into muck that endangered the trucks hauling rock for the tank trails, the engineers built a new road, which enabled them to continue work and will prevent future delays. To support the tanks that will eventually rumble over its roads, constructing the range requires a constant supply of rock. "It takes 150 truckloads per working day," said Army Capt. Darin Larson of the 926th Engineer Brigade, the officer in charge of engineering projects here. That long line of civilian trucks ground to a halt as the rain began and their tires became stuck in the mud. The engineers laid rip-rap as a road for the trucks, but the drivers, Romanian contractors from the area, were wary of the large rocks with their sharp edges. "They could easily pop a tire," said Army 1st Lt. Hillman Dorn, a member of the 124th Engineer Company. With their front-end loaders, rollers and graders, the engineers compacted dirt, laid down a finer rock to cover the rip-rap and graded the road. Eventually, the dump trucks began moving again. ADAPTING TO TERRAIN Engineers have to adapt to the terrain as they shape it. Earlier rotations brought in a significant number of articulated concrete mats -- concrete blocks joined by a flexible material -- to support a low-water crossing. The engineers had to place the mats before they could begin laying rock for the road. Once that access was established, they began clearing and grubbing out the dirt. "The first 8 to 12 inches is bio matter and old roots that will make the road sink over time," Dorn said. "You have to cut it out, compact the dirt, and build the road up from there." Army Sgt. 1st Class Antonie Lott, with the 124th Engineer Company, said he has enjoyed the opportunity to participate in Resolute Castle 17. "I like meeting new people and learning new things, and you do that here," he said. Lott said he sees the challenges of weather and terrain as inconvenient but also an opportunity to adapt and train his soldiers on other skills. "You do whatever you can as the weather permits," he said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Alaska National Guard hosts hazardous response exercise By 2nd Lt. Marisa Lindsay May 9, 2017 JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- The Alaska National Guard's 103rd Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Team tested its ability to react to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive threats in Anchorage May 1-3 in conjunction with four other civil support teams from other states and several other agencies. The exercise is held every other year in an effort to bring together first responders and emergency management communities in an all-hazards scenario. Exercise Orca 2017 scenarios provide opportunity for multiple agencies to tandemly react to several national CBRNE threats, requiring quick reaction and response by the players. This year, the exercise simulated a state-sponsored terrorist network armed with CBRNE capabilities and located within Anchorage city limits. 103rd WMD-CST responders reacted in support of the U.S. Coast Guard, Anchorage Fire Department, Anchorage Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation at six locations within the Anchorage bowl to protect and defend the home front and citizens. "This is the third Orca exercise the 103rd WMD-CST has conducted and every year it seems to get bigger with more CSTs and local, state, and federal agencies who want to participate," said Lt. Col. Richard Mohammadi, commander of the 103rd WMD-CST. "This exercise helps prepare the unknown by allowing all agencies a chance to practice their established processes in responding to an unknown event, thus validating what works and what needs to be improved upon." Located in every U.S. state, territory and Washington, D.C., CSTs are a key element of the Department of Defense's overall program to provide support to civil authorities in the event of an incident involving weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the country. Civil support teams consist of 22 highly skilled, full-time National Guard members who are federally resourced, trained and exercised. "Exercises such as these are an essential aspect of our mission," said Mohammadi. "Training ensures seamless integration with other responders allowing us to operate with each other effectively and efficiently." Additional agencies who participated in Exercise Orca 2017 were: Alaska National Guard's Joint Operations Center and 176th Civil Engineer Squadron, the Guam-based 94th WMD-CST, Nebraska-based 72nd WMD-CST, North Dakota-based 81st WMD-CST, Rhode Island-based 13th WMD-CST, Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Alaska Public Health lab, Anchorage Police Department (SWAT), Anchorage Fire Department (HAZMAT), Palmer Fire Department, Anchorage Harbor, Providence Hospital, Alaska Native Hospital, Anchorage Water & Wastewater Utility, University of Alaska, Alaska Railroad, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Federal Bureau and Investigation, U.S. Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, JBER Counter-Improvised Explosive Device, National Weather Service and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Wyoming National Guard & Tunisia continue to perfect partnership By Capt. Megan Hoffmann May 9, 2017 CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- In the early nineties the Department of Defense stood up the National Guard-managed State Partnership Program whose goal was to connect NG units from each state with a partner nation in hopes of mutually beneficial civil-military affairs. After a NG unit was paired with a partner nation, they would assist them with tasks such as: engineering, military personnel training and development, aviation, security and disaster preparedness. The Wyoming National Guard and Tunisia partnership is now just one of 73 partnerships that has formed since 1993. The 2004 Wyoming-Tunisia pairing wasn't incidental. The process is akin to that of a dating website which asks someone a host of questions with the overall goal of matching people who share similar interests, goals and lifestyle choices. The SPP looks at the particular NG unit, to include their size, location and mission, and then analyzes that information in order to determine which partner nation might be the best match for that particular state's NG unit(s). Tunisia and Wyoming have many commonalities: climate, economy and military equipment - with both having C-130s, UH-60s and field artillery. In 2016, the Wyoming National Guard began the Humanitarian Mining Action mission, a SPP-leveraged program, in Tunisia. The HMA is a Department of Defense program that provides education and training in finding, clearing and securing land mines and other explosive remnants of war. "We get to help Tunisia develop the skill set to remove mines on their own," said Capt. Michael McGee, director for the Wyoming National Guard State Partnership Program. "Right now as part of the HMA we are helping Tunisia build a schoolhouse which will allow them to have a place to train their own personnel on finding and clearing various types of mines or other explosive materials," said McGee. Soldiers and Airmen with the Wyoming National Guard don't conduct the actual finding and removal of explosives, nor do they build facilities or carry out engineering projects for the Tunisians. They simply act as facilitators, advising them on how to present explosive ordnance disposal lesson material and build their own facilities so that when Wyoming Soldiers and Airmen leave the country, the Tunisians are able to complete various engineering projects and instruct EOD courses on their own accord. "If our engineers construct buildings or complete projects for them, not much learning occurs. However, if we show up and advise them on how to develop specific training areas, such as digging training lanes and filling them with different kinds of material so that they can bury fake landmines and learn how to safely and effectively find and neutralize them, then they learn a great deal more. It's all about enabling and empowering them to learn these tasks on their own so they become better at what they do," said McGee. The Wyoming National Guard has several three-person teams, all engineers from the 133rd Engineer Company, based out of Laramie and Rock Springs, Wyoming, to complete HMA missions where they will assist and advise the Tunisians how to construct buildings or training areas. The task of the three-person team is to complete a given HMA mission, start to finish, during their allotted two-week timeframe. The 2016 HMA missions consisted of building lanes - training areas about 10 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 75 feet long, filled with various material such as gravel, sand and top soil. Using those training lanes, instructors teach the Tunisians how to find, neutralize and secure various types of landmines and improvised explosive devices. "Last year when we were there developing lanes with them, it actually came up that the Tunisians were interested in training their people to clear culverts from explosive hazards. So, based on that development, this last project centered around building a culvert to use as a training lane to clear hazards," said McGee. The culvert work started at the end of March and ran through the beginning of April 2017. 2nd Lt. Eric Jacobs, Sgt. 1st Class Cindy Johnson and Sgt. 1st Class Steven Hiser, all from the 133rd, were the personnel who went over to assist with the project. "It's definitely an experience. It was my first time out of the country. I knew what to expect because many of our 133rd soldiers have been to Tunisia helping with various projects," said Jacobs, engineer platoon leader with the 133rd. "Our main effort was putting in a culvert so they could do explosive hazards clearing of their culverts. The culvert wasn't meant for actual drainage but they wanted it there so they could train their EOD guys and infantry guys on how to deal with those when they come across them," said Jacobs. Building classrooms, constructing culverts and instructing the Tunisians on various projects isn't the only mission of the Wyoming personnel while in Tunisia. "The work was good, but getting to know those soldiers over lunch and talking to them about their outside jobs and families - they love talking about their families and hearing about ours - that's the best part by far. I could put them in a culvert in Wyoming with our guys and it'd be the same work as we do in Tunisia, but it's just better being over there and building those relationships with the Tunisians," said Jacobs. "We did two events last year, already did two this year and have two more planned for the remainder of this year. We are helping them develop the skills they need to keep themselves and their community safe. Helping them become better at neutralizing hazards is what our goal is," said McGee. "I really like sending people who haven't been overseas or deployed. Once they get over there, they tell me how great it was to work with the Tunisians. I think there is some goodness to meeting another culture and realizing how they function. By the end of the two weeks, the Wyoming solider and Tunisian soldiers are making jokes and talking about their families and teaching each other sayings from each other's culture. It's just really fun to be a part of that," McGee added. "Although the Tunisians are enormously grateful for the training we provide, more than anything, they value the relationship aspect of us being over there. Over 13 years, we have built that trust with them. It's cool to have built relationships like that," said McGee. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations News Release No. NR-169-17 May 09, 2017 Readout of Secretary Mattis' Meeting with New Zealand Minister for Defense Mark Mitchell Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W. White provided the following readout: Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met with New Zealand's Minister for Defense Mark Mitchell in Copenhagen today to discuss the U.S.-New Zealand defense relationship. The two discussed shared collaboration on regional security issues and potential areas to strengthen U.S.-New Zealand defense cooperation. Secretary Mattis expressed appreciation for Minister Mitchell's participation in the D-ISIS ministerial and thanked him for New Zealand's continued collaboration on the D-ISIS mission. http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1177892/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations News Transcript Presenter: Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen May 09, 2017 Remarks by Secretary Mattis and Prime Minister Rasmussen in Copenhagen, Denmark PRIME MINISTER LARS LOKKE RASMUSSEN: It's a great honor and a great pleasure to welcome the secretary of defense, Mr. James Mattis, to Copenhagen. I'm sure we'll have a fruitful meeting. And from our talks, while we entered the room and made the steps, you -- (inaudible) -- told me that you had had -- (inaudible) -- conversations with -- (inaudible) -- minister of defense. So I'm -- (inaudible) -- to our meeting. This meeting takes place just a few days after two of your citizens most tragically were, died in (inaudible) -- accidents in -- (inaudible). I want you to accept my condolences. Just a couple of weeks ago, I met with your president in the Oval Office. It was I think he would say a great meeting. It was a great meeting. It was a very constructive meeting. And I remember that he emphasized the way he regards Danish soldiers in a most positive way. He also praised you as his new minister of defense secretary of defense. I just want to say that I agree with him in both remarks, the Danish soldiers and you as the secretary of defense. You are a close friend to Denmark in your former capacity as officer -- (inaudible) -- and in your new capacity, and we stand behind you -- (inaudible) -- freedom and democracy -- (inaudible). And for that, we -- (inaudible) -- we are ready to give our military spending -- (inaudible) -- and -- (inaudible) -- substantially increased -- (inaudible) -- my government. And in the meanwhile, we are doing our utmost- to participate in the fight against ISIS in Afghanistan, in Iraq where we have had and still have soldiers who train with the local security forces. We also have special forces present with a -- (inaudible) -- mandate so that they can cross the fault lines. So we stand ready. And you are most welcome here, and -- (inaudible) -- look very much forward to our meeting today. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE JIM MATTIS: Prime minister, thank you for taking time from your schedule. And I will just tell you, sir, that we stand fully with Denmark as far as being a member of NATO. You've been an ally of ours for a long time, and we think that we've been a good ally for you. Your troops, I've personally seen them in combat zones. And I would just tell you that the skill of your troops is matched by their ethical performance, which is critical when you're fighting on battlefields where innocent people are mixed in among a very -- a very merciless enemy. And it takes a special kind of soldier to master that battlefield. And you have fielded very high-quality troops. In terms of our commitment to defense, the year 2014 was an eye-opener for all of us, I think. And we now confront concerns from the east and threats from the south. And we're going to have to stand visible, but also indivisible as we deal with these issues. I'm on my way from here, sir, to Lithuania where I'll observe the NATO troops together under the German framework nation there as we make very clear that these problems we have between us and Russia will be solved by diplomats and no other way. So coming to Denmark at a time when you've created a substantial increase in your defense spending, it shows that the trajectory recognizes the reality as it's been revealed since 2014. And that trajectory received 100 percent of our government's support as you increased appropriate to the situation you face now. So thank you again. I look forward to our meeting, Mr. Prime Minister, but also thank you for the very good meetings that your country hosted this morning for the defeat ISIS campaign. I look forward to continuing our relationship together here. Thank you. P.M. RASMUSSEN: Thank you, sir. SEC. MATTIS: Thank you. http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1177910/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations News Transcript Presenter: Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; Danish Minister of Defence Claus Hjort Frederiksen May 09, 2017 Joint Press Conference with Secretary Mattis and Minister Frederiksen in Copenhagen, Denmark MINISTER OF DEFENSE CLAUS HJORT FREDERIKSEN: Welcome, Secretary Mattis. You are the first secretary of defense to visit Denmark in -- in nearly a decade, and that gives me great pleasure to welcome you here in Copenhagen. We are thankful for your leadership. Today's meetings have truly confirmed the very special bond there is between our two countries, between the U.S. and Denmark. U.S. stood bulwark against the new dark age of Germany during the Second World War. And U.S. won the Cold War from a position of strength, never wavering in the fight for freedom. And we will always remember -- remember that and be grateful for that. We stood by the U.S. in the aftermath of the 9/11 when NATO's Article 5 was invoked for the first time. And the -- the fight against radical Islamic terrorism is as important to us as it is to you. We are still in Afghanistan as I speak. We are standing shoulder to shoulder in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Today, the secretary and I chaired a meeting within the coalition against ISIS. It was very successful meeting which confirmed that we are on the right path. We will eventually defeat ISIS. But we must almost be patient. It'll take time. And therefore, it is important to keep our resolve and continue to provide the needed military contributions. The fight against ISIS is one of the Danish government's highest foreign policy priorities. Today, we have had -- been discussing our bilateral cooperation. We will -- we have agreed that we will deepen our fruitful cooperation even further, including care for our veterans, challenging new threats from Russia, and working together on the Arctic dimension. Both of our countries are concerned about the rising cyber threats, and we are determined to strengthen the cooperation in conquering these threats. We also discussed the upcoming NATO summit and burden sharing. And we agreed that we, in Europe, must do more. The world has become more unpredictable, and it is in our own interest to lift our fair share. This includes our own Baltic Sea region. We are both engaged in reassuring Baltic countries and Poland, and provide for an effective deterrence. Therefore, the Danish government is ready to substantially increase our defense budget. Jim, I pass the floor to you. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE JIM MATTIS: Well, that was a good introduction. Thank you, Minister Frederiksen for the warm welcome. And good afternoon to all of you, ladies and gentlemen. It's a real privilege to be here in Copenhagen and to pay the respects of the American people to the Danish people. And alongside Minister Frederiksen, as he mentioned, we co-hosted a meeting of the coalition to defeat ISIS. And our meeting was timed, ladies and gentlemen, to take stock of where we're at right now of the accelerated campaign against this maligned threat. It's a threat to all of civilization. We examined the enemy situation and discussed our next steps to make certain we're all on the same sheet of music. And we're going to further accelerate this fight and to free the people currently suffering from Daesh's crushing occupation and our enemy's terror threat to Europe and -- and beyond. ISIS has lost well over half its territory in Iraq and in Syria. In Afghanistan, the enemy has lost about two-thirds of its strength. And this past weekend, President Ghani announced the death of the Emir of ISIS- Khorasan. This is the ISIS group in Nangarhar and up there in eastern Afghanistan. In our anti-ISIS campaign, we are dealing that group one more significant blow with the loss of their leader. This fight will go on as the minister said. We continue to integrate our military and our non-military efforts. You have to remember that the battlefield that we are fighting on is also a humanitarian field where innocent people live right now, sometimes forced to stay on the battlefield by ISIS. We're doing everything possible -- everything humanly possible to limit the suffering and any casualties among those innocent people. We are committed to working together, all of us. And that was reinforced today in our meeting with many partners to defeat Daesh wherever it attempts to establish its roots. In addition to the Defeat ISIS ministerial, we did hold a substantive, I thought, bilateral meeting together. Denmark has always been a stalwart ally and friend of the United States. And the close defense relationship between our two countries reflects the enduring strength of NATO's trans-Atlantic bond, having stood by each other in good times and bad. And I would add that the American people are truly heartened by your government's commitment to share the cost of the common defense through a substantial increase in defense spending. The times have changed. 2014 was an eye-opener for all of us, Minister, and we have to change with the times. We also recognize that Denmark occupies a rather unique role as a member of NATO, but also as a member of the European Union and as a member of the Arctic Council. And in our NATO affiliation, I affirm that the U.S. commitment to Article 5 is iron clad. We stand together, minister, visible and indivisible in the face of any threats to international law or to a peaceful international order. But thank you again for having me, minister, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. MIN. FREDERIKSEN: Thank you very much. Yes. We will take some questions. Q: Secretary Mattis, you -- (inaudible) -- in the fight against ISIS (inaudible), but you agreed upon more long term solution or strategy when the fighting ends. SEC. MATTIS: The only reason we're fighting right now is to free the people and throw the threat off balance. Once we get that threat subdued, then the real work begins, as some people put it, to actually exploit the enemy being banished. And how do we do that? Bottom line is we've got to restore government services, and that means we all have to work together. Daesh has done horrible damage. They leave numerous mines in their wake when they pull out, and you've got to actually help return to normalcy, otherwise you simply breed the next problem. So we're 100 percent aligned with where your thinking is. I'll tell you that occupies an awful lot of our attention. Six weeks ago in Washington D.C., the U.S. secretary of state hosted 68 countries that are committed to looking to the day after. Q: Mr. Secretary, you had some meetings with a number of people today, including the Turkish government representative was here. The Turks have expressed a great deal of concern about the prospects of the U.S. working with the Kurds in Turkey. As you get closer to the Raqqa fight, what were your discussions today with the Turks and how close is the U.S. to determining whether or not there will be arms for the Syrian Kurds? SEC. MATTIS: Yes, they -- we had very open discussion with the Turks. It's a NATO ally, and NATO allies stick together. That's not to say, we all walk into the room with exactly the same appreciation of the problem or the path forward. We work that out through extensive dialogue. We've been conducting military and diplomatic dialogue with the Turks, and it was a very, very useful discussion today. We're getting -- as you know -- into the position where we will have Raqqa surrounded. The idea is, ladies and gentlemen, that the foreign fighters not be allowed to escape and return to constitute a threat against free and innocent people elsewhere, whether it be in the Arabian Gulf, North Africa, and certainly Europe. By taking, for example, Manbij away from the enemy, that was the spoke of the hub and spoke of their terrorist effort against Europe, and that's how they conducted the attacks against Brussels and Paris. So our intent is to work with the Turks, with -- alongside one another to take Raqqa down and we're going to sort it out and we'll figure out how we're going to do it, but we're all committed to it and that's what came out of today's discussion. Q: On the arming of the Kurds. STAFF: Go ahead, please. Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. You have earlier... SEC. MATTIS: You need to ask this man some of the questions. (Laughter.) Please, go ahead. Q: You had earlier mentioned -- you repeated the American demand that every member state of NATO should pay a fair share. Now, your Danish colleague, Mr. Frederiksen, tells us this would give a substantial raise to the Danish defense budget. Is that enough for you, and would you still demand that we would use 2 percent of our GDP on our military spendings? SEC. MATTIS: I have not heard your government put a limit in terms of the growth. I think we have to adjust to the times and your government has shown the responsibility to recognize 2014 changed things and they're doing something about it. NATO has got to remain visible and indivisible in the face of this threat. It's a threat from the east. It's a threat from terrorism. It's a threat from cyber. And by staying united, we buy time for the diplomats to solve these issues. But we -- we must stay united. And right now, the growth in the budget is exactly what we are looking for. It's the right trajectory. And we're going to stand together here. So, we're -- we're on a very -- in a very good place on this. Q: Thank you, minister. I was wondering if you could tell me if Secretary Mattis or NATO have asked you directly for any additional Danish troop contributions for Afghanistan. And Secretary Mattis, I realize that precise numbers are still perhaps pre-decisional, but in the event of a significant troop increase in Afghanistan, how would things turn out differently this time? And, you know, more than 15 years on, what gives you confidence that you'd be able to break the stalemate? And also just a follow-up from Lita's question, when you were talking about working alongside the Turks, do you envision the Turks actually going into -- into Raqqa themselves? So -- (inaudible). SEC. MATTIS: First of all, in Afghanistan, we're up against a determined enemy. As I said, ISIS has been thrown back there. Al-Qaida has been unable to mount attacks out of Afghanistan. The government under President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah are committed to working in a responsive way with their citizens, and therein lies the path forward. When a government wins the affection, the respect and the support of their people, then no enemy can stand against them. And as far as Raqqa, again, we will continue the campaign. There is plenty of work to do for all of us there. And the actual tactical activities on the ground, I don't want to go into details right now. We owe a degree of confidentiality about our -- our plans. But we will work it out to our NATO allies and on our best way forward. War sometimes doesn't give you all good options. That's the nature of war. It's not a good situation. Q: And then a question -- (inaudible). MIN. FREDERIKSEN: And we will, of course, we have a favorable attitude to increase our troops in Afghanistan if necessary. But we haven't reached the conclusion yet. But I can generally say that we are positively thinking of adding our presence in Afghanistan. MIN. FREDERIKSEN: Mr. Mattis has a very heavy program. He's going to visit the prime minister right now, and then fly to Lithuania to visit the German troops there and the Lithuanian president. Thank you very much. SEC. MATTIS: Thank you very much. http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1177882/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Secretary General discusses the fight against terrorism with Tunisian Foreign Minister NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 09 May. 2017 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui to NATO Headquarters on Tuesday (9 May 2017) for talks on regional security and the partnership between the Alliance and Tunisia. The Secretary General and Minister Jhinaoui discussed the strong partnership between NATO and Tunisia, and agreed on the importance of regular political dialogue and practical cooperation. Mr. Stoltenberg highlighted that the Alliance is committed to strengthening its cooperation with Tunisia, including in the fight against terrorism. NATO has provided support for the training of Tunisian Special Operations Forces and is also providing advice to the Tunisian authorities on the development of a Tunisian Intelligence Fusion Centre NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address USS Abraham Lincoln Underway for Sea Trials Navy News Service Story Number: NNS170509-18 Release Date: 5/9/2017 1:30:00 PM By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Mark Logico NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (NNS) -- Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) got underway for sea trails, May 9, following a four-year refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) at Newport News Shipbuilding, Newport News, Virginia. The four-day sea trails marks Abraham Lincoln's first time underway since March 2013. The ship spent its last days in the shipyard completing a five-day "fast cruise," May 2-7, making final preparations for its transit to Naval Station Norfolk. "We are looking forward to taking the ship out on the open water where we belong," said Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, Lincoln's executive officer. "I am honored to serve with our crew. This dedicated and impressive group put an incredible amount of work into revitalizing this ship. We are grateful for their efforts and to our partners at Newport News Shipbuilding, and eagerly anticipate completing successful sea trials and returning to the fleet ready for tasking later this year." During sea trials, the Abraham Lincoln crew will undergo multiple training scenarios and qualification evolutions to include engineering maneuvers designed to evaluate the performance of the ship after the extensive maintenance period. "Our team has worked hard to get USS Abraham Lincoln ready to redeliver to the fleet," said Rear Adm. Brian Antonio, program executive officer for aircraft carriers. "She has undergone significant combat systems modernization and will also be the first CVN capable of accommodating the F-35C Lightning II. This RCOH enabled the ship to meet future missions and continued service life requirements for many years to come." During RCOH, more than 2.5 million man-hours of work were conducted aboard the ship, including refueling the reactors, upgrading ship's infrastructure and modernizing combat systems and air wing capabilities to increase combat effectiveness. Abraham Lincoln is the fifth Nimitz-class aircraft carrier to complete RCOH, a major lifecycle milestone at Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News. She returns to the fleet as one of the most modern and technologically-advanced Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in service and will continue to be a vital part of the nation's defense for an additional 25 years. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pacific Fleet Commander Stresses Commitment to Region, Strong Defense Ties During Visit to Singapore Navy News Service Story Number: NNS170509-16 Release Date: 5/9/2017 10:51:00 AM From Task Force 73 Public Affairs SINGAPORE (NNS) -- Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, visited the Republic of Singapore May 6-8 to reaffirm the U.S. Navy's strong partnership and ties with the Singapore Armed Forces. The visit followed leadership engagements in Indonesia, India and participation in the 75th Battle of Coral Sea commemoration in Australia. During his Singapore visit, Swift met with the Republic of Singapore Chief of Defense Lieutenant-General Perry Lim and Chief of Navy Rear Adm. Lai Chung Han, where he stressed the U.S. Pacific Fleet's resolve as enduring sources of security and stability while highlighting the strong defense ties between the U.S and Singapore. Swift also thanked the leaders for Singapore's support in hosting the rotational deployment of the U.S. Littoral Combat Ship and P-8 Poseidon aircraft under the ambit of the 1990 Memorandum of Understanding and 2005 Strategic Framework Agreement. "The Republic of Singapore Navy is a valued and enduring partner of the United States Navy," said Swift. "I have known Adm. Lai for many years and have great confidence in his leadership of the RSN (Republic of Singapore Navy) as one of the region's most capable navies. As the RSN celebrates its 50th anniversary, I look forward to building even stronger ties in the years to come." Leaders from both nations said the U.S. and Singapore defense partnership is founded on a mutually beneficial relationship. "The U.S. Pacific Fleet and the RSN are excellent partners and enjoy a high level of cooperation," said Lai. "I thanked Adm. Swift for his personal leadership and efforts, which has provided strong assurance of continued US commitment to the region. As the RSN turns 50, we look forward to working even more closely with our friends and partners to strengthen regional peace and security." Swift also met with U.S. Navy personnel and their families during his Singapore visit, thanking them for serving their nation overseas. "Our Sailors, civil-service employees and their families serving overseas are the anchor of our Navy's forward presence," said Swift. "They are ambassadors for our nation and their hard work ensures we can maintain strong partnerships with nations like Singapore and other countries throughout the region." Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific is the U.S. 7th Fleet's provider of combat-ready logistics, operating government-owned and contracted ships to keep units throughout 7th Fleet armed, fueled and fed. Additionally, Task Force 73 conducts advanced planning, organizes resources and directly supports the execution of maritime exercises engagements such as Pacific Partnership, the bilateral CARAT series, the Naval Engagement Activity (NEA) with Vietnam and the multilateral Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training (SEACAT) with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address USS Ross hosts Israel Defense Forces for Reception Navy News Service Story Number: NNS170509-04 Release Date: 5/9/2017 8:31:00 AM By Ensign Nicholas Tsusaki, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet Public Affairs HAIFA, Israel (NNS) -- The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) hosted Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) representatives for a reception aboard the ship, May 8, 2017. The Ross crew welcomed more than 90 host-nation guests including IDF Brig. Gen. Hadi Zilberman, head of Planning Division, and Rear Adm. Ido Ben Moshe, head of Naval Operations. The Charge d'Affaires, U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv, Ms. Leslie Tsou, was also in attendance. Ross is currently moored in Haifa for a scheduled port visit to enhance U.S.-Israel relations as the two nations work together for a stable, secure and prosperous region. Quote: "Our presence here is a demonstration of our partnership with Israel. Our crew understands the importance of our commitment to this region. This is our fifth multi-mission patrol to the Eastern Mediterranean - we've operated very closely with the Israeli Navy, a very capable and professional force and we look forward to continuing to work with you in this area of operations. I'd also like to thank the U.S. embassy in Israel for their fantastic support. This has been an outstanding opportunity for our crew to experience the culture of Israel. One of the reasons people join the U.S. Navy is to see the world, and our visit to Haifa has been seamless thanks to the hard work of the U.S. embassy staff." - Cmdr. Bryan S. Gallo, commanding officer, USS Ross (DDG 71) "We look forward to continuing the great collaboration we've had with your crew. We feel really secure that you are here in Haifa Port." - Israeli Navy Rear Adm. Ido Ben Moshe, head of Naval Operations Quick Facts: * Strengthening partnerships during the port visit to Haifa demonstrates enduring relationships and our shared commitment to promoting safety and stability within the region, while seeking opportunities to enhance our interoperability. * The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde recently visited Israel in March 2017, and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook visited Israel in June 2016. * U.S. 6th Fleet, headquartered in Naples, Italy, conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied, joint, and interagency partners, in order to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US officials recommend 3,000 to 5,000 more troops for Afghanistan Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 12:53PM US military officials and the State Department have recommended sending 3,000 to 5,000 additional troops, including hundreds of Special Operations forces, to Afghanistan, according to American media reports. American officials said the US military needs a bigger role in Afghanistan to push the Taliban militant group back to the negotiating table. They have also called for authority to target Taliban leaders with airstrikes. The proposal has yet to be approved by US President Donald Trump, but according to The New York Times, Trump was close to signing off on the recommendation, which is the result of a broad review by the Pentagon, the State Department, intelligence community and other government agencies on the Afghan war. The US currently has around 8,400 soldiers in Afghanistan with about another 5,000 troops from NATO allies. NATO countries would also be asked to send 3,000 to 5,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, and the precise number of US troops deployed would probably depend on what those allies were prepared to do, The New York Times reported. One American official said on the condition of anonymity, "NATO needs to contribute the majority of the forces." In February, Gen. John Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, told a Senate committee there was "a shortfall of a few thousand." "We would like to be able to advise below the corps level," Nicholson said. "It's strictly a question of manning at this point." The US-led occupying force officially announced to end its combat operations against the Taliban in the country at the end of 2014, and its current mission is to "train, advise, and assist" Afghan troops. But General Raymond Thomas, commander of the US Special Operations Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week that the new Trump administration could permit more direct engagement between US forces and the Taliban. "Changes to the rules of engagement are being considered," he said. The United States -- under Republican George W. Bush's presidency -- and its allies invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 as part of Washington's so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban regime from power, but after more than one and-a-half-decade, the foreign troops are still deployed to the country. Trump, who has spoken against the Afghan war, has dubbed the 2001 invasion and following occupation of Afghanistan as "Obama's war", but now his administration is sending thousands of more troops to the war-torn country, signaling a policy shift. American political analyst E. Michael Jones told Press TV on Monday that oligarchs have taken control of Trump "and basically putting him at the service of the foreign policy that the people who voted for him wanted him to reject." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ex-attorney general says had warned Trump of Flynn's contacts Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 1:13AM The former US acting attorney general says she had warned about contacts between President Donald Trump's ex-national security adviser and Russian government officials. Sally Yates revealed during an open hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday that she had warned the Trump administration against appointing General Michael Flynn as national security adviser. Yates told the panel, which is investigating Russia's alleged interference in the US presidential election last year, that former national security adviser had created a "compromise situation" and could have been "blackmailed" because he lied to his bosses about his contacts with Russians. "We weren't the only ones that knew all of this," Yates said, referring to revelations that Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence about the true content of a December call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. "The Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done. The Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others," she said. "This was a problem because not only do we believe that the Russians knew this, but that they likely had proof of this information and that created a compromise situation, where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians." Flynn was forced to resign from his position as Trump's first national security adviser in February. The alleged conversation with Kislyak, which took place before Trump's inauguration, centered on lifting then-President Barack Obama's sanctions against Russia. Any discussion of sanctions at that time would have amounted to a breach of US law banning private citizens from engaging in foreign policy. Flynn, later rejected such claims and was backed by the vice president, who said the calls "had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions." The FBI, as well as the Senate and House intelligence committees, are investigating Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and any possible ties between Trump's associates and Moscow. Yates herself was fired in January for betraying the Department of Justice by defying Trump's Muslim ban and refusing to enforce "a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United State." Obama had warned Trump against Flynn Meanwhile, US media announced on Monday that Obama had warned the businessman-turned-politician against hiring Flynn for national security adviser during their meeting after the election. Three former Obama administration officials confirmed to NBC News that the warning had been made during an Oval Office meeting less than 48 hours after the November 2016 election. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told the media outlet that Obama did talk to Trump, making clear he was "not exactly a fan of General Michael Flynn." A former senior Obama administration official also told CNN that, "Given the importance of the job, the President thought there were better people for it, and that Flynn wasn't up for the job." Flynn began advising Trump on national security in early 2016 and soon became a constant presence by Trump's side as he attended most rallies across the country. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. May Send Thousands Of Additional Troops To Afghanistan, Media Report May 09, 2017 Senior officials in President Donald Trump's administration and the U.S. military are recommending sending at least 3,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to fight Taliban militants, U.S. media report. The extra troops would allow U.S. advisers to work with a greater number of Afghan forces, and closer to the front lines, The New York Times cited officials as saying in a report on May 8. Other NATO members would also be asked to send matching troops, according to The Washington Post. There are 13,000 NATO troops currently in the country, including about 8,400 Americans. The recommendation has yet to be approved by Trump, who the reports said is expected to make a decision before a May 25 NATO summit. In February, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, told Congress there was "a shortfall of a few thousand" troops and that more personnel would enable the U.S. military to advise the Afghan army more effectively. U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban from power after invading following the attacks carried out in the United States on September 11, 2001 by Al-Qaeda, whose leaders were harbored by the militant group in Afghanistan. But the Taliban has been resurgent in recent years and controls large portions of the country. U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan officially ended in 2014, but special forces have continued to provide support to Afghan forces. Based on reporting by The New York Times and The Washington Post Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-may-send-thousands-of-additional- troops-to-afghanistan/28476210.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 Trump Fires FBI Director Comey Amid Probe Of Russian Election Meddling RFE/RL May 09, 2017 U.S. President Donald Trump made the shocking decision to fire FBI director James Comey on May 9, the man who leads the agency charged with investigating his campaign's ties with Russia. The president cited as his reason what he said was Comey's mishandling of an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's e-mails last year, saying both Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had recommended Comey's ouster over that matter. Trump told Comey in a letter that "while I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation [in connection with the Russia probe], I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau." "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," he said. But while Trump appeared to ally himself with Democrats who are angry with Comey for announcing a new twist in the Clinton e-mail investigation only days before the election -- which Clinton said turned undecided voters against her at a crucial moment-- Democrats in Congress nearly unanimously denounced the president's decision to fire Comey as "outrageous" and "Nixonian." With Comey having testified only days ago about about the FBI's ongoing investigation into Russian efforts to help Trump get elected, Senator Patrick Leahy said the firing brings back memories of former President Richard Nixon's firing of his attorney general during a "Saturday night massacre" in the middle of the Watergate investigation. "It's nothing less than Nixonian," said Leahy. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer said he told Trump it was a "big mistake" to fire Comey. Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin said any attempt by Trump to undermine the Russia investigation through Comey's dismissal "would raise grave constitutional issues." Durbin called on the White House to immediately say whether the administration intends to continue the Russian investigation under a new FBI director. The firing revived Democratic calls for the Congress to appoint an independent, special prosecutor to investigate the allegations of Russian election meddling, saying the White House cannot be trusted to appoint someone who will retain such independence. At least one prominent Republican -- Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman John McCain -- agreed that a "special committee" is needed to take over the Russia investigation. But other Republicans in Congress appeared more supportive of Trump's decision, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promising to move quickly to confirm Comey's replacement. Underscoring the abruptness of the firing, the White House apparently had not even begun to field candidates to replace Comey and said it would begin the search "immediately." Comey, 56, is only the second FBI chief to be fired. FBI directors normally are appointed to serve a single, 10-year term. Comey was popular within the agency and was well-regarded by both Republicans and Democrats when former President Barack Obama appointed him four years ago. The White House in defending its ouster of Comey released a highly critical memo written by Rosenstein that found fault with Comey's handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation on many points. "I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's e-mails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken" to make an announcement about the investigation just days before the election, Rosenstein wrote. With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-fires -fbi-director-comey-amid-probe-russian -election-meddling-/28477002.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 Abbas Confirms Readiness to Meet Netanyahu Under US Auspices Sputnik News 20:25 09.05.2017 Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday said he was ready to carry out talks with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under the auspices of US President Donald Trump. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Abbas' statement on his readiness for talks with Israel comes for the second time over one month. On April 19, he told in an interview to Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, that he was willing to meet with Israel's prime minister in the United States. We affirmed to [Trump] that we are ready to cooperate with him and meet the Israeli prime minister under his auspices in order to make peace," Abbas said at a joint press conference with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as quoted by The Jerusalem Post newspaper. On Wednesday, a meeting between Abbas and Trump took place in the White House. During the talks, Trump said he was committed to helping Israel and the Palestinians reach peace. According to Thursday's statement by the White House, Trump is expected to visit the Palestinian Authority during a trip to the Middle East later in May. Over the decades, Palestinians have been seeking diplomatic recognition for their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which is partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government refuses to recognize Palestine as an independent political and diplomatic entity and continues to build settlements in the occupied areas, despite objections from the United Nations. The recent direct peace talks between the countries collapsed in 2014. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address India-Indonesia Joint Patrol of Indian Ocean Kicks Off Sputnik News 19:11 09.05.2017 Hoping to win consent from countries patrolling the Strait of Malacca, India and Indonesia have begun coordinated patrol near Andaman and Nicobar Islands. An Indonesian Maritime Patrol Aircraft and naval vessel KRI Sutedi Senoputra have arrived in Port Blair for the 29th series of IND-INDO CORPAT. NEW DELHI (Sputnik) Sputnik had reported earlier that India had got a positive response from member countries of Malacca Straits Patrol (MSP) Framework and will join the group. The Malacca Straits link the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand launched MSP in 2006 to ensure the security of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. "Apart from securing the trade sea route, the Coordinated Patrol (CORPAT) also serves to enhance mutual understanding and interoperability between the two navies. The CORPAT thus reflects the shared concerns between the two countries for a peaceful Indian Ocean for the benefit of the international community," an Indian Navy statement said. Once India is authorized to patrol Malacca, real-time data of commercial ships and naval platforms will be available. New Delhi can monitor the movement of Chinese Navy in the Indian Ocean as well because India's Andaman Nicobar Islands are some 100 km from the western edge of the Malacca Straits. The Indonesian Navy and the Indian Navy have been carrying out coordinated patrolling twice a year since 2002 near the International Maritime Boundary Line to keep this part of the Indian Ocean region safe, and secure for commercial shipping and international trade. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Briefing on Nigeria Special Briefing Nathan Holt Deputy Director, Office of West African Affairs, Bureau of African Affairs Via Teleconference Washington, DC May 9, 2017 MS NAUERT: Thank you so much. Well, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for the call on Nigeria. We're joined by Nathan Holt, the deputy director of the Office of West African Affairs in the Bureau of African Affairs. Thank you, sir, for joining us. As a reminder, today's call is on the record and it will be embargoed until the conclusion of the call. And with that, I'll turn it over to our speaker, Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy. MR HOLT: Thank you. MS NAUERT: Excuse me, Holt. (Laughter.) Pardon me. MR HOLT: Murphy is a fine name. Thank you very much, Heather, and it's a pleasure to be here. The title of our discussion is Nigeria, a critical U.S. partner. Nigeria is indeed a critical U.S. partner. Nigeria matters to us because it's Africa's most populous country, and depending on the price of oil, it's either the biggest or the second biggest economy on the continent. With a current population of 182 million, Nigeria is projected to grow to over 400 million over the next few decades, which will leave it by the middle of this century as the fourth-largest country in the world. About half the population is Muslim. Nigeria has influence, as many of you know, not only as an economic power, as a military power. It's got a vibrant emerging, entrepreneurial class which is the future of that country's economy. It has also got a vibrant film and music industry which has influence well beyond its borders. And I'd like to point out it has traditions of democracy and free press and religious tolerance, all of which contribute to its resilience and its strength. In 2015, Nigeria had a very important election. It elected Muhammadu Buhari as president. This represented the first time in Nigerian history that there was a peaceful, democratic transfer of power from one party to an opposition party. It was a milestone not only for Nigeria, but really for Africa as a whole. President Buhari's electoral platform was that he wanted to fight insecurity, particularly the depredations of Boko Haram and other forces in the northeast. He wanted to grow the Nigerian economy, create jobs for its growing population, and he wanted to fight corruption. Well, the nice thing about that agenda is that it meshes very well with our own. That is those are areas of focus that very much are consistent with U.S. interests in Nigeria. We too want to partner with Nigeria and its neighbors to fight terrorism. We too support private-sector-led economic growth. And we are very much in favor of President Buhari's campaign against corruption. With that as kind of an overview, I'd like to open it up to questions. MS NAUERT: Okay, let's take the first question, please. OPERATOR: And once again, to ask a question, please press * then 1 on your touchtone phone at this time. The question and answer session is open. Once again, to ask a question, please press * then 1 at this time. MR HOLT: As we wait as we wait for further questions, a couple of additional points to make to sort of frame the conversation and set a little bit of the context. Nigeria is a very important place for us and it faces enormous obstacles, enormous challenges moving forward. I don't want to give the impression that any of this is going to be easy. In fact, one of our ways of approaching this country is to point at that perhaps nowhere else on the continent, and maybe few places on the planet, is the gap between the upside potential and the downside risk greater. The future of Nigeria matters not just for Nigeria, but very much for its neighbors and I would argue for this planet. The good news is that on issue after issue, we've gone from a place where we were often not on the same page with Nigeria to a place where we see things very much in the same terms. Some folks may be aware of the humanitarian situation in northeastern Nigeria and its neighboring countries in the Lake Chad Basin. We are a leading donor of humanitarian assistance there, as the countries involved struggle to deal with a food crisis, which is itself a consequence of the Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa insurgency. Many of you will have also followed the news of the release of the Chibok girls over the weekend. Obviously, that was a heartwarming and positive development for the young women involved and for their families. We'd like to point out that they're among thousands of victims of Boko Haram and its offshoot, ISIS West Africa. We are engaged with Nigeria and its neighbors not only to provide humanitarian relief to the victims of this insurgency, but to help them as security partners and as intelligence partners to address the security dimensions of this problem and to get at some of the drivers of insecurity. Because at the end of the day, I think we and our partners all recognize there's no purely military solution. The end of the day, the hopes and aspirations of the people need to met; education and water and basic governance needs to be provided in areas where it has not been provided before. And it's a joint effort. There are no easy solutions, but we're in this for the long haul. That's a little bit of additional context. I'd like to point out that United States has worked closely with Nigeria. We provide a range of assistance to Nigerian authorities in their efforts to combat Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa. That includes intelligence sharing, training, advice on strategic communications, and various services to support victims of Boko Haram. And as I said, we've provided close to $500 million in humanitarian assistance over the last two years to those affected by the conflict in northeastern Nigeria and its neighbors neighboring countries of Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. Again, that's an overview of where we are in a very important bilateral relationship for us. I'd like to point out as well that we've worked together closely in the United Nations. We've worked together on issues of arms proliferation, nuclear questions. So Nigeria has a voice in Africa that is quite influential. And I've worked on Africa for most of my professional career, and it's very good to be in a good place with this group. One of the critical consequences of the Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa insurgency, which has been going on since 2009, is that it has produced terrible, terrible consequences for the population. As the militaries have begun to coordinate their activities more effectively, they and other not just military authorities but civilian authorities have gained access to areas previously under the control of Boko Haram. And as that happens, we have all come to understand more clearly the true dimensions of the humanitarian crisis. So the United Nations has pointed out that there are more people facing famine-like conditions in northeastern Nigeria and in neighboring regions. We're working as hard as we can and as fast as we can to deliver food assistance and other support to those people. I've quoted the numbers on our own humanitarian assistance a couple of time. I think I would add that just on April 28th the United States announced an additional $30 million to support the people of northeast Nigeria through contributions to the World Food Program. The World Food Program, I would add, has expanded the numbers of people it is feeding by tenfold over the last two to three months. So the numbers have gone from roughly 200,000 to close to 2 million. The World Food Program needs additional assistance; we're working with other donors and partners to get that assistance to them. It's a collective effort, and none of it's going to get fixed until the insurgency is defeated and the specter of terrorist violence is eliminated from that area. I believe there are people online for questions, and I'm happy to answer. MS NAUERT: And with that thank you, sir. With that, we'll take our first question, please. OPERATOR: Then we go to Matthew Lee with the Associated Press. Please, go ahead. QUESTION: Yeah, hi. Thanks for this. I realize you probably won't be able to give an exact answer on this, but with all the discussions about cuts coming to foreign aid, cuts coming to U.S. assistance, U.S. payments to UN programs. Are you able to commit to the continued continued robust U.S. assistance to Nigeria and other countries in West Africa? MR HOLT: We're, again, very we are very pleased that we are the lead humanitarian donor in the Lake Chad Basin region. We've got a vigorous bilateral development assistance program that's dominated by health assistance, including the PEPFAR program, which has really helped turn back the tide of HIV/AIDS not just in Nigeria but across the African continent. You're absolutely right, Matt; I'm not the person who can answer your questions about the future of the U.S. Government budget. We follow that process with great interest. But for now, the focus not only here at State but in partner agencies is to deliver the assistance that we do have available smartly and effectively so that it achieves the results that we intend. QUESTION: Thank you. MS NAUERT: Next question, please. OPERATOR: And ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press * then 1 at this time. There appear to be no further questions at this time. MS NAUERT: Okay. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and Nathan Holt, the deputy director of the Office of West African Affairs in the Bureau of African Affairs. Sir, thank you for joining us. MR HOLT: Thank you, ma'am. MS NAUERT: Thank you, everyone. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Update: air strikes against Daesh 9 May 2017 The RAF are continuing to take the fight to Daesh in Iraq and Syria. Summary - Wednesday 3 May Tornados assisted Iraqi forces in west Mosul, striking three Daesh firing positions. - Thursday 4 May Tornados destroyed a command post west of Kirkuk, and a truck-bomb factory inside Mosul. - Saturday 6 May Typhoons supported Syrian Democratic Forces at Tabqah, to the west of Raqqa. - Sunday 7 May Tornados attacked a Daesh firing position in Mosul. - Monday 8 May Typhoons took part in a coalition attack on a truck-bomb factory in western Iraq, while Tornados struck nine targets in Mosul, including a Daesh headquarters. Detail The RAF is continuing to support Iraqi forces in their effort to liberate western Mosul. While the operating environment in the city is very challenging, particularly given the closely-packed buildings, very narrow streets, and the density of the urban population, our aircrew have continued to deliver precision strikes in close support of Iraqi troops on the ground. Daesh's current tactics, including the illegal use of civilians as human shields, and fighting from sites such as schools, hospitals, religious sites and civilian neighbourhoods, increases the risk to innocent life. While no military operations come without risk, particularly in dense urban environments and against such inhuman Daesh tactics, the RAF continues to take all steps necessary to minimise civilian causalities. As Coalition Defence Ministers meet today in Copenhagen to discuss progress in the campaign against Daesh, the RAF has continued to provide air support over Iraq and Syria. With Iraqi forces continuing their operations to clear Daesh from areas of western Mosul which they still occupy, two flights of Royal Air Force Tornados provided close air support on Wednesday 3 May. Direct hits were scored with Brimstone missiles on two rooftop firing positions. A third terrorist position was also struck with a Paveway IV guided bomb in an attack carefully planned to minimise the potential risk to the Iraqi troops who were very close by. On Thursday 4 May, a Tornado flight used a Paveway IV to destroy a command post some 15 miles west of Kirkuk. Meanwhile a second Tornado mission attacked a truck-bomb factory at the north-western edge of Mosul. Four Paveway IVs struck one large and two smaller buildings. Typhoons supported the Syrian Democratic Forces to the west of Raqqa on Saturday 6 May, delivering a successful Paveway attack on a building defended by a number of Daesh fighters. The following day, Tornados were again in action over Mosul, when they used a Brimstone missile to engage a Daesh firing point. Two Typhoons joined other Coalition aircraft in a strike mission on Monday 8 May, against a Daesh truck-bomb factory in western Iraq, north-west of Ar Rutbah. Our aircraft targeted five buildings within the complex, which were all destroyed or severely damaged. The same day, two flights of Tornados continued their operations over Mosul. One pair conducted a series of attacks to support the Iraqi infantry, hitting Daesh fighters firing from rooftops and within buildings, and demolishing a local Daesh headquarters. The second pair of Tornados used Paveway IVs to cut the road network at three key choke-points to prevent Daesh moving vehicles, particularly truck-bombs, towards districts liberated by the Iraqis. UK contribution to the fight against Daesh Map of UK forces committed to Operation Shader Campaign against Daesh Map of Daesh losses and gains in Iraq and Syria since September 2014 Previous update Sunday 2 April: Tornados, supported by a Voyager air tanker, patrolled over western Mosul. When Iraqi forces came under Daesh mortar fire, the Tornados' aircrew were able to identify the mortar team firing their weapon out of the ground floor of a large building. This allowed the Tornados to achieve a clear line of fire for a Brimstone missile, which scored a direct hit on the mortar team while causing minimal damage to the rest of the building. Monday 3 April: Tornados and Typhoons conducted attacks in western Mosul, also against Daesh mortars. The Typhoons had to bomb through cloud, but the Iraqi ground forces, only metres away, reported that the terrorist position had been struck accurately. The Tornados, also hampered by cloud, targeted a mortar that was firing on an Iraqi unit from the top storey of a tall building. A Paveway IV was employed with a carefully selected fuse setting, and it successfully demolished just the uppermost storey, leaving the rest of the building intact. Wednesday 5 April: Royal Air Force Typhoons provided close air support to Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as they consolidated their hold on the huge Tabqah Dam to the west of Raqqa. Daesh had tried, in their desperation, to counter-attack with suicide truck-bombs, so the Typhoons conducted an air strike to cut the approach road to the SDF positions and make any further truck-bomb attacks much more difficult. Given attempts by both Daesh and Russia to claim falsely that Coalition air attacks have been directed at the dam itself, it is important to emphasise that the Typhoons' target was two miles to the south-east and posed no threat whatsoever to the dam's structural integrity. A pair of Tornados meanwhile supported the Iraqi forces driving Daesh out of western Mosul, and used a Paveway IV guided bomb to engage a mortar position. The Tornados then flew down to Iraq's western desert, where other Iraqi troops were operating against Daesh to the south of Al Qaim. A Brimstone missile was used to destroy a motorcycle combination carrying three terrorists at speed over the desert and a second Brimstone eliminated a light machine-gun position. Thursday 6 April: A Tornado and a Typhoon flew as a pair, armed with a mix of Paveway IVs and Brimstone missiles. Over north-western Mosul, they engaged a Daesh motor team who were moving to a new position on a truck. A number of unidentified individuals were seen on foot nearby, so our aircrew waited patiently until they had moved away from the immediate proximity of the vehicle. A Brimstone missile, which has a smaller warhead than a Paveway, was then used to destroy the target. The RAF flight then patrolled an area some 25 miles west of Kirkuk, where they were able to track a truck carrying a terrorist team who had been planting booby traps, scoring a direct hit on the moving vehicle with another Brimstone missile. Friday 7 April: A Reaper remotely piloted aircraft flew overwatch for Iraqi troops in west Mosul. Coalition surveillance aircraft identified two Daesh mortar teams: one firing from the doorway of a building, the other from a small courtyard. The Reaper's crew were able to conduct successful attacks with Hellfire missiles which accounted for both teams. Saturday 8 April: A Tornado and Typhoon pair used two Paveway IVs to strike a truck-bomb factory in Mosul. Sunday 9 April: Two Tornados patrolled the Iraqi border with Syria, where they bombed a stockpile of home-made explosives near Al Qaim. Wednesday 12 April, two Typhoons came to the assistance of Iraqi troops when they came under fire from a sniper team in Mosul. A single Paveway IV guided bomb successfully dealt with the threat. Thursday 13 April: Typhoons patrolled over Raqqa. North of the city, Syrian Democratic Forces reported being in very close combat with a group of seven, strongly defended, Daesh positions. Despite heavy cloud, the Typhoons were able to destroy one position on their first pass, then having confirmed the exact location of the other six targets, struck all of those simultaneously with Paveway IVs on a second pass. Friday 14 April: Tornados focused their efforts over Mosul, where Iraqi troops identified a car-bomb that had been positioned on a road leading out of the north of the city. A Brimstone missile destroyed the booby-trapped vehicle with a direct hit. Saturday 15 April: A further Tornado patrol supported Iraqi forces engaged in a firefight with Daesh positioned in a large building in western Mosul. Two Paveway IVs silenced the terrorist fire. Meanwhile, Typhoons continued their support for the SDF as they pushed east from Tabqah towards Raqqa, bombing a terrorist-held building. Sunday 16 April: Two flights of Tornados active over Mosul. Each flight conducted a successful attack with a Brimstone missile, accounting for a terrorist position on top of a building and an engineering vehicle used by Daesh to construct defensive positions. Monday 17 April: Tornados operated over western Iraq, where a heavy machine-gun had been spotted, concealed within a grove of trees at Rawah. A single Paveway IV destroyed the weapon. Typhoons continued their support to the SDF west of Raqqah, and conducted a successful Paveway attack on a group of terrorists positioned in a treeline to the south of Tabqah. Thursday 20 April: The RAF assisted Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). A pair of Typhoons struck a Daesh-held building to the north-west of Raqqa. The Typhoons then hit a Daesh mortar team hiding in a tunnel in the east of the country. Friday 21 April: RAF Tornados provided close air support over western Mosul. A pick-up truck used by Daesh was destroyed with a Brimstone missile. The Tornados then struck a group of Daesh fighters in a building which had been firing on Iraqi troops. Saturday 22 April: Tornado patrols over Mosul continued, when the aircraft used Brimstone missiles to destroy two vehicles used by Daesh. Two other Tornados struck a group of Daesh buildings to the south-east of Rawah, in western Iraq. Sunday 23 April: Typhoons assisted the SDF, destroying an armed truck near Tabqah, west of Raqqa. In western Mosul, a Daesh-held building was struck by a Paveway IV, released by a Tornado flight, after Iraqi troops came under fire from the building. Monday 24 April: Two Royal Air Force Typhoons provided close air support to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). A Paveway IV guided bomb was used to demolish a building in eastern Syria that was held by a group of Daesh fighters. On the same day in northern Iraq, Tornados provided similar support to the Iraqi forces, striking a Daesh position in western Mosul. Thursday 27 April and Friday 28 April: Tornados were active again over Mosul, striking further Daesh positions. Sunday 30 April: Typhoons once more flying in support of the SDF west of Raqqa, where they struck a group of Daesh fighters along the bank of the Euphrates. The Tornados then flew over Mosul, demolishing two Daesh-held buildings which the Iraqi ground forces had encountered. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Central African Republic: UN Mission condemns deadly attack on peacekeepers 9 May 2017 The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR) has strongly condemned yesterday's attack on one of its convoys in the country's south that killed one Cambodian peacekeeper. "MINUSCA vigorously denounces this odious attack on peacekeepers whose presence on Central African soil has no other objective than to help the country to protect its population and to allow the Central African Republic to emerge from the cycle of violence caused by armed groups," said a press release, referring to the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in CAR by its French acronym. Eight peacekeepers were also injured, including one Cambodian and seven Moroccan, near Bangassou, about 474 km east of the nation's capital, Bangui, with four peacekeepers missing in action, according to MINUSCA. The Mission said it has sent a helicopter and peacekeepers to secure the site and search for those missing in action. A medevac plane evacuated the injured peacekeepers, who have arrived in Bangui and are receiving medical care. The Mission said it will do everything possible to ensure that the perpetrators of the attack who fled into the bush are arrested so that they can be brought to justice. MINUSCA recalled that "harming the life of a peacekeeper can be considered a war crime and subject to prosecution." The Secretary-General's Special Representative and head of MINUSCA, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, extended condolences to the family of the victim, his contingent and his country, while expressing his gratitude for the work and sacrifices of the peacekeepers in protecting the population in the country. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address At Least 13 Killed in Somalia Fighting By Mohamed Olad Hassan May 09, 2017 At least 13 people were killed in fighting Tuesday between government forces and Islamist insurgents in southwestern Somalia, according to witnesses and officials. The fighting began early in the day when insurgents attacked the Somali National Army base in the district of Goofgaduud, about 35 kilometers outside, Baidoa, 250 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Mogadishu. "About 100 heavily armed militants attacked the base with rockets and heavy machine-guns. The fighting lasted about an hour. The government forces in the camp were forced to retreat, but came back to their base immediately," a witness told VOA on the condition of anonymity. Another witness said he saw the dead bodies of four militants and three uniformed government soldiers lying in the streets of the district. During the fighting, the militants ambushed a government forces convoy from nearby Baidoa town heading to the camp for reinforcement killing at least six government soldiers, a Somali military commander have confirmed to the VOA. "The militants ambushed a convoy of government soldiers heading to Goofgaduud as a reinforcement. First, they attack with a land mine and then gunfire. They killed six soldiers and wounded two, and seized one of our military vehicles," the commander told VOA on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. In a statement aired by al-Shabab's mouthpiece, Radio Andalus, the group claimed it had seized control of the entire town of Goofgaduud, killing 16 government soldiers. Shiina Moalim Nuurow, the commander of the regional special police forces involved in the fighting, said the government soldiers remain in control of the town and repulsed the militant attack. The group, which once ruled much of Somalia, has been fighting for years to impose its strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia. African Union and Somali troops say they have driven the militants from urban strongholds and ports, but they have often struggled to defend smaller, more remote areas, like Goofgaduud, from such surprise and often deadly attacks. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump Fires FBI Director Comey By Steve Herman May 09, 2017 The director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, has been fired. President Donald Trump, in a blunt letter to Comey Tuesday, told him: "You are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately." The president added that Comey "is not able to effectively lead the bureau." FBI directors are appointed for a single 10-year term. Comey was appointed four years ago. Comey was speaking to a group of FBI employees in California when he learned he had been fired. Media reports say he saw mention of his dismissal on TV screens but initially thought it was a prank. So far, he has not made any public statement. The reasons for Comey's dismissal were outlined in two separate letters written by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein. They essentially accused Comey of taking the law into his own hands. Comey "made serious mistakes" handling the conclusion of the investigation of emails of Trump's general election opponent Hillary Clinton, wrote Rosenstein, accusing the FBI director of usurping the attorney general's authority when Comey concluded there should be no prosecution of the former secretary of state. It is not clear why President Trump took the action now concerning events that occurred months before he won last November's presidential election. A Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham, said "given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well." But for some other Republican members of Congress the president's action caused a breach. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he is "troubled by the timing and reasoning" of the Comey firing. He called the dismissal "a loss for the bureau and the nation." John McCain, a Republican who sits on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee, said in a statement that "while the president has the legal authority to remove the director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the president's decision to remove James Comey from office." Another Republican senator, Jeff Flake, on the Twitter social media network said he "had spent the last several hours trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comey's firing. I just can't do it." Congressman Justin Amash, a Republican member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said on Twitter he is "reviewing legislation to establish an independent commission on Russia" and termed "bizarre" Trump's reference in the termination letter to Comey noting the FBI director had assured the president repeatedly he was not under investigation. Why Now? Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called Trump's action "Nixonian" -- a reference to President Richard Nixon's firing of officials investigating him during the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. Democratic Party senators are calling for appointment of a special prosecutor to continue the Justice Department's investigation into alleged ties between Trump's presidential campaign last year and Russia. On the Senate floor, Dick Durbin, a Democrat who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, said any attempt to halt or undermine the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the presidential campaign "would raise grave constitutional issues." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he told Trump "you're making a very big mistake" by firing Comey, amid various investigations connected to the president's 2016 campaign. "Why now?" added Schumer. "Are people going to suspect coverup? Absolutely." "The Rosenstein memorandum is based on long-standing principles governing criminal investigations, but the timing - that is so problematic and concerning," George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told VOA. Hours after Comey's firing CNN reported that grand jury subpoenas were recently issued in Alexandria, Virginia relating to the FBI's Russia probe seeking business records from associates of Michael Flynn, who Trump fired as national security advisor. The subpoenas would be the first known significant escalation of activity in the government investigation into possible connections between the associates of the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Earlier Tuesday, the FBI notified Congress that Comey overstated a key finding in the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails during his congressional testimony last week. It said Comey erred when he told a congressional investigative panel that a Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, had sent "hundreds and thousands" of Clinton's emails from the 2009 to 2013 period she was the U.S. Secretary of State to Abedin's estranged husband, disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner. The actual number was far fewer, officials said. VOA's Pete Heinlein contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Statement from the Press Secretary The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release May 09, 2017 Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office. President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "The FBI is one of our Nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement," said President Trump. A search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China tests new missile near Korean Peninsula Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 1:43PM China's military has tested a new type of missile in an area close to the Korean Peninsula, where tensions have been running high over Washington's deployment of a missile system in South Korea. China's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that the test of the guided missiles was conducted "in recent days" in the northeastern Bohai Sea. It said the tests, carried out by the People's Liberation Army's Rocket Force, were meant to increase the operational capability of the country's military to better deal with major national security threats. The statement would not elaborate on what those threats could be but China has become increasingly sensitive to the US deployment of the missile system, known as THAAD, in eastern South Korea, which came last month. China has said that the installation, which Washington and Seoul defend as a bid to counter rising missile threats from North Korea, would destabilize the region and lead to increased arms race. The drills in Bohai came one day after the Chinese army showcased some of its modern weapons and military equipment in a drill conducted in the South China Sea. China claims the key waterway in its entirety but several other countries dispute the matter. The United States has backed those claims against China. Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly called on the country's military to expedite efforts for the modernization of the armed forces and has emphasized technological innovation and naval capability to project greater power in the South China Sea. The drills in Bohai come as Chinese officials earlier warned that they would test new weapons in the area, apparently seeking to remind the US and South Korea that the deployment of THAAD would not go unnoticed. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ex-French PM Valls Wants to Be Majority Candidate at Legislative Election Sputnik News 12:40 09.05.2017 Former French PM Manuel Valls would like to participate in the upcoming parliamentary election as part of President-elect Emmanuel Macron future support group. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday he would like to present his candidature at the upcoming parliamentary election as part of the future majority to support President-elect Emmanuel Macron. "I will be the candidate of the presidential majority [at the election] I would like to be part of [Macron's] movement La Republique En Marche [also known as En Marche!]," Valls told the RTL broadcaster. Benjamin Griveaux, the spokesman of the En Marche! movement, told the Europe 1 broadcaster on Tuesday that the procedure for declaring one's intention to run was the same for everyone and that Valls' candidature had not yet been confirmed by the party's responsible committee. On Monday, Macron resigned as the leader of En Marche! political movement, with Catherine Barbaroux appointed as an interim leader. The movement's Secretary General Richard Ferrand also officially confirmed the change of the name to La Republique en Marche. En Marche! was founded by Macron in April 2016, a few months before he resigned from his post of the minister of the economy. The party does not currently hold any seats in the French parliament. In late March, Valls declared his support for Macron rather than for the candidate of his own Socialist Party (PS), Benoit Hamon, who ended up eliminated in the first round of the presidential election. The former prime minister's move was harshly criticized by the PS. The legislative election will take place on June 11 and June 18. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqi CTS forces wrest control over another west Mosul neighborhood Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 4:17PM Members of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) have established full control over another district in western Mosul as government forces, backed by volunteer fighters from Popular Mobilization Units, are battling to force Takfiri Daesh terrorists out of their last urban stronghold in the country. Commander of Nineveh Liberation Operation, Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Yarallah, said in a press statement on Tuesday that CTS had liberated the Northern Industrial Area, and raised the national Iraqi flag in the area after inflicting heavy losses on Daesh ranks and their military hardware. The territorial gain came a day after Iraqi troops retook Wadi Akkab and Ghanim al-Sayyid industrial areas in the western part of Mosul. Meanwhile, a local source told Arabic-language Shafaaq news agency that Iraqi security personnel have assumed control over half of Hawi al-Kanisah area in western Mosul. Mahmoud Surchi, a spokesman for Popular Mobilization Units, also told the Arabic service of Russia's Sputnik news agency that the pro-government fighters, commonly known by the Arabic word Hashd al-Sha'abi, had taken control over an area in western Mosul, where Daesh terrorists had set up laboratories and were producing dangerous chemicals. Over 400,000 Iraqis displaced amid west Mosul battle Meanwhile, the United Nations says more than 400,000 people have been displaced amid an operation by Iraq's military and volunteer fighters to drive the Daesh terrorists out of western Mosul. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday that almost 435,000 civilians had experienced forced displacement in the face of the military campaign, noting that some 31,000 people have also returned to their homes in liberated areas. Dujarric added that there have been some cases of acute malnutrition among infants arriving with their families from western Mosul. "Residents of the liberated parts of western Mosul also rely on humanitarian assistance, as basic public services and market activities have yet to be restored," the senior UN official pointed out. Iraqi army soldiers and popular fighters have made sweeping gains against the Takfiri elements since launching the operation to retake Mosul last October. The Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19. Iraqi forces shoot down town Daesh VTOL drones in Diyala Separately, Iraqi army forces have shot down two vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drones of Daesh terror group in the country's eastern province of Diyala. Odai al-Khadran, governor of Khalis town, told Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network that government forces the unmanned aerial vehicles near al-Wahda village on the outskirts of al-Azim region, which lies roughly 65 kilometers north of the provincial capital city of Baqubah. Daesh executes 40 people in northern Iraq Moreover, Daesh extremists have killed nearly four dozen people in the town of Hawijah, situated about 282 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad. Police captain Hamed al-Obeidi said the terrorists executed 40 victims after accusing them of fleeing battles against security forces. Elsewhere in the troubled western province of Anbar, Iraqi fighter jets struck Daesh militants positions in Anah and al-Qa'im towns, killing 100 extremists in the process. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tokyo Seeks Tomahawk Cruise Missiles to Offset Pyongyang Nuke Threats Sputnik News 22:28 09.05.2017(updated 22:38 09.05.2017) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is continuing Japan's pivot from a pacifist security policy to a more active defense posture. Abe is eyeing the addition of land-attack Tomahawk missiles to neutralize the threat of a missile attack from North Korea, according to the Sankei Shimbun Japanese newspaper. Tomahawks have evolved to be used for long-range targets, though earlier versions were mainly for short-range attacks. Multiple published reports indicate North Korea has up to 200 Rondong medium-range missiles; the country's military may also have as many as 60 nuclear warheads by 2020, according to nuclear physicist David Albright, president at the Institute for Science and International Security and former UN weapons inspector. To deal with this threat possibility, Tokyo wants to be able to destroy warheads before they even get into the air, and to take out missile launch platforms. It's not clear how many Tomahawk missiles Japan is looking to acquire, but they would likely coordinate well with Japan's Aegis missile destroyers, which can accommodate Tomahawk launches. If Japan makes this deal it would constitute a "major change in the country's security policy," Popular Mechanics reported. Japan maintains only a self-defense force, but getting these missiles would render the country more of an offensive threat to its neighbors. Japan has no shortage of potential conflicts. In the East China Sea, Tokyo and Beijing have long been at odds over two islands. And, of course, across the Sea of Japan, a rogue nuclear power exists in North Korea. If North Korea were to attempt a nuclear attack, Japanese drones would spy on the missile fueling process, which takes several hours, and Japan could send pre-emptive Tomahawk precision missiles into the battlespace to strike first. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Abe Wants to Strengthen Cooperation With Seoul to Counter N Korea Threat Sputnik News 13:56 09.05.2017 The Japanese prime minister said that Tokyo hoped to consolidate cooperation with Seoul on addressing the threat posed by North Korea. TOKYO (Sputnik) Tokyo hopes to consolidate cooperation with Seoul on addressing the threat posed by North Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday amid the ongoing presidential election in South Korea. "To counter the North Korean threat, I would like to reach an agreement with the new South Korean president on cooperation between Japan and South Korea, as well as on the trilateral cooperation between Japan, South Korea and the United States in the security sphere," Abe said, speaking in the budget committee of the parliament's lower chamber. South Korea is holding snap election Tuesday after the state's Constitutional Court upheld on March 10 the parliament's decision to impeach President Park Geun-hye over a corruption scandal. Moon Jae-in of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea, Ahn Cheol-soo of the center-left People's Party and conservative Hong Joon-pyo are considered to be the front-runners in the presidential race. What is termed as North Korean "threat" has apparently increased after Pyongyang carried out a number of ballistic and missile launches, violating the corresponding resolution adopted by the United Nations, over the past two months. Namely, during the time North Korea launched four ballistic missiles in the direction of the Sea of Japan, reportedly launched another from Sinpho, South Hamgyong province, and conducted a failed missile launch on April 16. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistan Criticizes Iran for Threatening Cross-Border Military Action By Ayaz Gul May 09, 2017 Pakistan has criticized Iran for threatening to launch cross-border military strikes against suspected Sunni militants whom Tehran says are plotting attacks in the Shi'ite-majority nation. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry says the Iranian ambassador in Islamabad was summoned Tuesday following the reported remarks by the Iran's military chief. A ministry statement said, "The Iranian side was urged to avoid issuance of such statements that could vitiate the environment of fraternal relations." Iran's state media on Monday quoted Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the head of the armed forces, as saying Pakistan is expected to control its own border and take action against the terrorist bases. "If the terrorist attacks continue, we will hit their safe havens and cells, wherever they are," the general warned. The warning came days after an alleged cross-border militant raid killed at least 10 members of the Iranian security forces. An anti-Iran Sunni Muslim militant group called Jaish al Adl, or the Army of Justice, claimed responsibility for the April 26 ambush in the southeastern border province of Sistan-Balouchestan. Pakistani officials have urged Iran to share evidence to enable them to go after the suspects. Shortly after the attack, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wrote to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, calling for the perpetrators to be arrested and handed over to Tehran. Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Islamabad and raised the issue with Pakistani leaders, urging them to strengthen security along their shared border of nearly 1,000-kilometers. An official statement issued after the meetings said the two sides agreed to enhance border security coordination, including deployment of additional Pakistani troops to prevent illegal crossings. Officials said the two governments also agreed "in principle to revive a hotline" between their border security forces to resolve any issues at the frontier. Tehran has long alleged that anti-state militants use Pakistani soil for plotting terrorist attacks against Iran. Islamabad maintains it is extending full cooperation to the neighboring country to deal with the terrorist threat and has in the past handed over fugitive Iranian militants. The issue of alleged anti-Iran militant sanctuaries inside Pakistan remains a source of tension in bilateral relations. Pakistan's recent decision to join a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition of 41 predominantly Sunni Muslim nations also has upset Iran. A former Pakistani military chief, retired General Raheel Sharif, is already in Riyadh, where he is preparing to take charge as the first commander-in-chief of the alliance. Defense ministers of member nations also are due to hold an inaugural meeting later this month. Tehran sees the military alliance as an anti-Iran group and an attempt to expand Saudi influence in the region. Saudi and Pakistani officials reject the assertions as unfounded. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Moon Jae-in leads exit polls in S. Korean presidential election by large margin People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 19:32, May 09, 2017 SEOUL, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Moon Jae-in of the liberal Minjoo Party led media exit polls in South Korea's presidential election by a large margin, an official survey from three local broadcasters showed Tuesday. Moon came closer to becoming the country's 19th president with 41.4 percent support, beating conservative and centrist rivals by a wide margin. Hong Joon-pyo of the conservative Liberty Korea Party, with which ousted President Park Geun-hye was affiliated, won 23.3 percent support, trailed by Ahn Cheol-soo of the centrist People's Party garnering 21.8 percent. Yoo Seong-min of the conservative Righteous Party gained 7.1 percent support, and Sim Sang-jung of the liberal Justice Party had 5.9 percent. The exit polls were conducted for 13 hours to 7 p.m. local time (1000 GMT) at 330 polling stations with around 89,000 voters. It has 0.8 percentage points in margin of error. The final turnout was 77.2 percent, or 32,808,377 voters among the electorate of 42,479,710 people. It was higher than the previous election's 75.8 percent in 2012. An early voting, which was introduced in 2013 and first applied to this year's presidential election, was conducted from May 4 to May 5. The early voting rate was 26.06 percent. The elected president will have no 70-day transition period as it is the first by-election caused by the removal of former President Park Geun-hye from office over corruption allegations. The election commission is forecast to declare the winner early Wednesday after completing the vote count. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Moon Jae-in Winner Declares Victory in S. Korean Election By Brian Padden May 09, 2017 Liberal Moon Jae-in has declared victory in South Korea's presidential election, vowing to represent all of the country's people. "I will be president for all South Koreans," the Liberal Democratic Party of Korea candidate told cheering supporters in Seoul, after his two closest rivals conceded defeat. Exit polls indicated Moon had more than 41 percent of the vote, far ahead of his closest competitors, Liberty Korea Party candidate Hong Joon-pyo who had 23 percent and centrist People's Party candidate Ahn Cheol-soo who gained 21 percent. Voter turnout was historically high following a tumultuous political period in which revelations of ex-President Park Geun-hye's alleged a multi-million dollar influence peddling scheme led to weeks of massive public protests that pressured the National Assembly to force her removal from office and call for a new election. The National Election Commission announced that voter turnout of the 42 million Koreans registered to vote was on track to reach over 80 percent, which would be the highest since President Kim Dae-jung was elected in 1997, with 80.7 percent of eligible voters casting ballots. Moon's closest competitors in the exit polls were conservative Liberty Korea Party candidate Hong Joon-pyo winning 23 percent and centrist People's Party candidate Ahn Cheol-soo gaining 21 percent. Official results are expected to be announced early Wednesday morning in Seoul, but the wide margin of Moon's victory in the exit polls is unlikely to be so far off the official count to change the outcome. Protest vote Strong public anger directed at Park over the corruption scandal seemed to energize the liberal base while depressing support for conservative candidates. Hwang Eui-soon, who attended the past rallies demanding Park's ouster, said Moon's support for their cause and calls for anti-corruption reforms influenced him to vote for the Democratic Party candidate. "I didn't know at that time, but how Mr. Moon played a role as a leader during the protests was very impressive," said Hwang after voting at the Hongeun-dong polling station in the North of Seoul. Moon's victory with just 40 percent of the vote also reflects deep ideological divisions in South Korea. In the South Korean election system the candidate who gains the most votes is declared the winner, even if that total is less than a majority of the electorate. His Democratic Party holds 119 seats in the 299 member National Assembly. The South Korean parliament usually has 300 members but Ahn Cheol-soo dropped out to run for president and has not yet been replaced. The two main conservative parties hold 126 seats. While Moon does not have a super majority in the legislature, he should be able to implement his polices with support from other liberal leaning parties. National security Many of Moon's supporters said they like his domestic policy agenda to increase government spending for jobs and education. But some are ambivalent about his pro-engagement polices on North Korea that his conservative opponents have labeled as weak on national security. "[Some people] said [candidate Moon] is pro-North, but I think we don't need to worry about it," said Kim Eun-hee after she voted for Moon in Seoul. Despite the impeachment scandal many older voters like Lee Bong-ho still supported the conservative parties due to their strong national security positions that emphasize sanctions, military deterrence and support for the U.S. alliance to restrain the North Korean nuclear threat. "I've been supporting conservatives, because I consider stability [as a priority]. Looking back at previous administrations, conservatives secured stability," said Lee. Sunshine 2.0 Moon advocates a two-track policy on North Korea that promotes dialogue while maintaining pressure and sanctions to encourage change. But many liken his approach to the Sunshine Policy Of Engagement initiated in the early 2000s by late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. That attempt to build inter-Korean trust through assistance and cooperative projects eventually ended in the face of the North's refusal to suspend its nuclear programs and its continued military provocations. Moon ran against the conservative Park in 2012 presidential election but narrowly lost in part because she was seen as stronger on national security. During this presidential campaign Moon criticized the conservative punitive approach toward North Korea for not only failing to stop Pyongyang's nuclear weapons development, but for also allowing it to accelerate under their watch with increased ballistic missile and nuclear tests. Moon said on Tuesday that the next South Korean president should take on a more active diplomatic role in working with both the United States and China to bring North Korea to international talks to resolve the nuclear standoff. The new president will have to deal with erupting diplomatic crises with U.S. President Donald Trump's $1 billion dollar demand for the THAAD missile defense system being deployed on the Korean Peninsula, and with China's economic retaliation against South Korea, limiting tourism and imports, for supporting THAAD that Beijing sees as a threatening increase of the U.S. military presence in the region. Youmi Kim contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey to play role in battle for Raqqah: Pentagon chief Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 4:49PM US Defense Secretary James Mattis says the United States will work with Turkey to liberate the Daesh-held northeastern Syrian city of Raqqah. "Our intent is to work with the Turks, alongside one another to take Raqqah down," Mattis said on Tuesday while speaking at a news conference following an anti-Daesh summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. "We are going to sort it out and figure out how we are going to do it, but we are all committed to it," he added. The US military has said that talks are underway with Turkey on the role Ankara might play in the operation to liberate Raqqah, which Daesh has held for more than two years. Last month, Turkish fighter jets bombed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) forces in Syria fighting against Daesh militants, drawing rebuke from the US State Department and the Pentagon. Turkey says YPG fighters are linked to Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants, who have killed more than 40,000 people in Turkey since 1984. The Turkish military said the April 25 attacks centered on Mount Sinjar in Iraq and Mount Karakoc in Syria. The strike in Syria reportedly hit the area, where the headquarters of the US-backed YPG forces are located, killing and wounding an unspecified number of fighters. US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militants have largely surrounded Raqqah and are expected to begin an offensive soon. It is not yet clear what role the YPG militia will play in the operation. US military provides air support members of the SDF - a Kurdish-dominated and anti-Damascus alliance. "The tactical activities on the ground -- I don't want to go into details right now," Mattis said. "We examined the enemy situation and discussed the next steps to make sure we are all on the same sheet of music. We are going to further accelerate this fight," Mattis said after the Copenhagen summit. This is despite the fact that Washington has stressed that any US- or Turkish-backed military offensive against Raqqah must be coordinated with the Syrian government otherwise it would be illegitimate. Washington currently has about 500 Special Operations troops in Syria. However, their activities have been limited to what the Pentagon describes as training and assisting Kurdish forces in their battle against Daesh and other terrorist groups. The Pentagon has said more US troops might be needed in Syria to step up their so-called campaign against Daesh. Since March 2011, the US and its regional allies, in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, have been conducting a proxy war against Syria. The years-long conflict has left hundreds of thousands of Syrians dead and half of the country's population of about 23 million displaced within or beyond its borders. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US, UK, Jordan deploy troops, tanks in southern Syria: Reports Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 4:28PM Reports coming out of Syria suggest that a joint military force of US, British, and Jordanian troops, equipped with tanks and helicopters, have reportedly been deployed in the war-torn country's southern border areas from Jordan's northern region. The troops are now reportedly positioned in a long strip region across the border zones of Syria's southern provinces of Dara'a and Suwayda, from Tel Shahab rural area, just a few hundred meters from the Jordanian border, to al-Nasib Border Crossing and Khirbet Awad village. The forces have also been seen near Ramtha, a Jordanian city, located in the far northwest of the Arab country close to the Syrian border. The media bureau of Syria's Joint Operation Command also released a number of aerial photos (shown below), taken by drones, which purportedly showed the presence of a large number of British Challenger tanks, UK's main battle tank (MBT), and American Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters. The exact number of the ground troops is not known, but according to local reports, some 2,000 soldiers have been deployed along the border between Syria and Jordan. Other reports said some 4,000 troops, trained in Jordan, are positioned in al-Tanf border area. Syrian and Jordanian officials have not yet commented on the alleged deployment of the multinational military force. Hussain Mortaza, the head of al-Alam bureau in Syria, said on Monday that Damascus and its allies were closely monitoring military activities of the US, UK and Jordan in the southern regions of Syria. He described the move as a multinational military exercise allegedly held to eliminate threats posed by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group. He said, however, that the move was meant to prepare for attacks against the Syrian capital. Mortaza said Daesh terrorists were not present in the area and the real mission of the multinational force, reportedly commanded from Jordan's Al Zarqa military base, was actually hidden under the cover of the so-called Daesh threat. Back in March, an AP report revealed that Washington had spent to date more than $11.5 billion on its intervention in Syria, including the training and advising of local militants and foreign mercenaries, aimed at overthrowing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in alliance with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and the Israeli regime. It added that the White House was even considering expansion of its military presence in the Arab country. The military action, coupled with American officials' change of tone over Assad's future, stirred speculation that the United States and its Western allies were ready to put boots on the ground in Syria. The US has already sent several hundreds of its special operation forces to Syria under what it claims to be a training mission with Kurdish fighters. The US and its allies have also been carrying out airstrikes against purported Daesh positions in Syria since 2014, without permission from Damascus. On April 12, US President Donald Trump, however, ruled out the possibility of deploying American troops to Syria to fight Assad, saying that curbing Daesh remained Washington's first priority. On April 28, Kurdish activists reported that they had spotted a convoy of armored vehicles with US flags on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border in Syria's northeastern province of Hasakah. The deployment pitches relatively inexperienced American soldiers into the middle of a highly toxic, multi-fronted battlefield that includes several foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists who are supported by allies of the US. The West has also been pressuring Russia to withdraw its support for Syria. Both the UK and the US have proposed more sanctions against the Russian government in case the support continues. Moscow launched its campaign against Daesh and other terror outfits in Syria upon the Damascus government's request. Russia's strikes have helped Syrian forces advance against foreign-backed militants operating in the Arab country since 2011, and played a deceive role in weakening ISIL terrorists. The latest reports came three days after a deal on forming four de-escalation zones across eight of Syria's 14 provinces came into force. The four zones are only safe for the so-called armed opposition factions and exclude the Takfiri terrorist groups of Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al-Nusra Front. The deal took effect at the stroke of midnight local time on Saturday. It came two days after Iran, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement during the fourth round of Syria peace talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana. The co-sponsors have until June 4 to finalize the zones' exact borders. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address IS Video Purportedly Shows Beheading Of Russian Officer In Syria RFE/RL May 09, 2017 The extremist group Islamic State (IS) has issued a video showing the beheading of a man it described as a Russian intelligence officer captured in Syria, but the Russian Defense Ministry suggests no such killing has taken place. The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said on May 8 that the Russian-language video showed a man dressed in a black jumpsuit kneeling in a desert landscape and urging other Russian agents to surrender. A bearded man later beheaded the alleged intelligence officer, identified as Colonel Yevgeny Petrenko, with a knife. Without referring to any specific incident or to anyone by name, the Russian Defense Ministry said, "All armed forces service members from the Russian group of forces in Syria are alive and well and are carrying out tasks in the fight against international terrorism," Russian news agencies reported. The ministry suggested the video was terrorist propaganda and criticized media that reported on the video. The identity of the man and the authenticity of the recording, which was released ahead of Russia's May 9 celebrations of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, could not be independently verified. Russia has been a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war. The Russian Defense Ministry says about 30 Russian servicemen have died in Syria since September 2015, when Moscow stepped up its military backing of Assad by launching air strikes and other operations. Russia says it is targeting IS and other extremist groups, but Western governments say the main purpose of the operations is to support the government's operations against rebels. With reporting by Reuters, Interfax, and TASS Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/is-video-purportedly-shows- beheading-of-russian-officer-in-syria/28475913.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 Says Russian Military, Not UN Troops, To Police Safe Zones RFE/RL May 09, 2017 Syria's foreign minister said on May 8 that Russian troops, not UN-supervised international forces, will enforce the cease-fire in safe zones established under a Russian-led agreement. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters that Damascus would not agree to admit any foreign troops to monitor whether the cease-fire, the delivery of aid, and other activities slated to occur in the zones are being carried out. The zones, to be set up by next month, are expected to include checkpoints to ensure easy movement of unarmed civilians and safe delivery of humanitarian assistance. "There will be no presence by any international forces supervised by the United Nations," Moallem said. "The Russian guarantor has clarified that there will be military police and observation centers." Moallem said that while the Syrian government has agreed to establish the safe areas or "deescalation zones" as proposed last week by Russia, Iran, and Turkey, government forces would continue to respond "harshly" to any violations by rebel groups. "We will see the extent of commitment to this agreement" by rebel groups, Moallem said. Leaders of Syria's main rebel groups voiced serious concerns about the safe zone plan presented by Russia at peace talks in Astana last week. They particularly objected to the role Iran was slated to play as co-guarantor of the cease-fire. The agreement to implement a cease-fire within the safe zones went into effect over the weekend, bringing a general reduction in violence. But sporadic clashes continued, particularly in central Syria. Russia and Iran -- which support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- and Turkey -- which backs the rebels -- have indicated they will deploy armed forces to secure the four so-called "deescalation zones," in what would amount to unprecedented coordination between the three regional powers. While Russia has not asked for UN involvement in the zones, it has asked for a UN Security Council vote early this week on a resolution supporting the safe zone deal, said the council's president, Uruguay Ambassador Elbio Rosselli. Rosselli told reporters in New York on May 8 that council members are negotiating over the text of a possible resolution of support. The United States did not sign onto the de-escalation agreement. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on May 8 that he is closely examining the plan, which he said leaves many questions unanswered. The borders of the safe zones are "still being worked out," among other things, Mattis said, though "the general locations are well understood." Mattis said it is not clear overall whether the plan will work. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are due to discuss the safe-zone plan on May 10. Moallem said he hopes the agreement will, as a start, achieve a separation between Syrian rebel groups and extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda, which has been allied with various armed opposition groups fighting Assad in the past. Moallem said moderate rebel groups must push their extremist allies out of the safe zones, otherwise the government will continue to bombard the extremist groups within the zones. With reporting by AP and dpa Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/syria-moallem-minister -says-russian-military-not-un-foreign-troops- to-police-syrian-safe-zones/28475549.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 U.S. Approves Supplying Weapons To Syrian Kurdish Fighters RFE/RL May 09, 2017 The United States has agreed to supply weapons to the main Kurdish opposition group in Syria, a move likely to anger Turkey just days before a meeting between the U.S. and Turkish leaders in Washington. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White announced the move in a May 9 statement, saying President Donald Trump a day earlier had authorized the Defense Department "to equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqqa, Syria." The statement came shortly after news agencies cited an unidentified senior U.S. official as saying that the White House had approved arming the People's Protection Units (YPG) as the battle to dislodge Islamic State (IS) militants from its stronghold in Raqqa nears. Raqqa, in northern Syria, is the de facto capital of the IS group but is being surrounded by opposition forces fighting IS militants government forces. An unidentified U.S. official was quoted by AFP as saying prior to the Pentagon statement on May 9 that the approval has immediate effect "but the timeline for weapons delivery is to be refined." Washington considers the YPG to have been critical in defeating IS fighters in northern Syria. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurds to be a terrorist group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting a decades-long insurgency against Turkish forces for greater autonomy. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House in mid-May. White said in her statement that Washington was "keenly aware of the security concerns of our coalition partner Turkey." "We want to reassure the people and government of Turkey that the U.S. is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally," she added. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on May 9 that he had "useful" discussions in Denmark with Turkish officials about Washington's alliance with the YPG in the fight against the IS in Syria. "We're going to sort it out," Mattis said. With reporting by Reuters, The New York Times, AP, and AFP Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-arm-syria-kurds- over-turkey-objections/28476889.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 Trump Approves US Plan to Arm Syrian Kurds Over Turkish Objection - Pentagon Sputnik News 20:56 09.05.2017(updated 21:04 09.05.2017) According to a statement issued by Pentagon, the US president approved a plan to arm Kurdish groups fighting Daesh in Syria despite objections from Turkey. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) US President Donald Trump approved a plan to arm Kurdish groups fighting Daesh in Syria despite objections from Turkey, Department of Defense spokesperson Dana White said in a statement. "Yesterday, the president authorized the Department of Defense to equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIS [Daesh] in Raqqa, Syria," White stated. White said the United States is aware of Turkey's security concerns over Kurdish groups in Syria. The US will continue to prioritize Arab elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighting Daesh in Syria amid President Donald Trump's approval to arm Kurdish SDF elements, White added. "The US continues to prioritize our support for Arab elements of the SDF," White stated. "Raqqa and all liberated territory should return to the governance of local Syrian Arabs." The Pentagon said Trump had approved its plan to further equip and arm Kurdish groups within the SDF amid the battle to recapture Raqqa from Daesh. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Arming Syrian Kurds By Carla Babb May 09, 2017 President Donald Trump has authorized the Pentagon to equip the Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a move that places the United States at odds with NATO ally Turkey. Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Dana W. White said Tuesday the Kurdish component, which makes up more than half of the SDF fighters, would be armed "as necessary to ensure a clear victory" over Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria. "The SDF, partnered with enabling support from U.S. and coalition forces, are the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future," White said. White House spokesman Sean Spicer confirmed the green-lighted equipping plan. A military official told VOA the U.S. will provide Kurdish forces around Raqqa with small arms, machine guns, ammunition, armored vehicles to counter improvised explosive devices, and construction equipment. "Weapons will be metered out to achieve limited military objectives," the military official said. Ankara opposes Washington's alliance with Syrian Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State. Turkey contends the SDF's Syrian Kurdish militia, known as the YPG, is a terrorist group affiliated with the outlawed PKK the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a terror group that has been battling the Turkish state for many years. White said the Pentagon is "keenly aware" of Turkey's security concerns and reassured that the U.S. is committed to "preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally." Turkey's top general, Hulusi Akar, met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford on Friday. Lt. Commander John Fage, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told VOA that Dunford and Akar "discussed issues of mutual concern, as well as the current security situation in the Middle East, including the campaign to defeat ISIS." ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State. The latest White House authorization provides U.S. support for the entire Syrian Democratic Force, Syrian Kurds (YPG) and the Syrian Arab Coalition, which American forces have openly supported for months. The SDF includes about 27,000 Kurdish fighters and about 23,000 Arab fighters. "However, in the operation to isolate Raqqa, the preponderance of SDF forces there are Arab," Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway told VOA. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address IS Video Shows Execution of Alleged Russian Intel Officer By VOA News May 09, 2017 The Islamic State group released a video Monday night through its social media channels purporting to show the beheading of a Russian intelligence officer in Syria. IS claims the video shows the brutal murder of Capt. Yevgeny Petrenko, 36, whom the group accuses of infiltrating Islamist organizations in Russia's North Caucus region. The Russian Defense Ministry reportedly has denied one of its service members was captured and killed by IS jihadists, according to Russian media. The man identifying himself as Petrenko in the video claims he was sent by the Russian government to infiltrate the highest levels of IS leadership and accuses the Russian Federal Security Service of abandoning him. "One of my orders was to gain access to Omar al-Shishani or to his circle. But during this I was discovered and arrested by the security services of the caliphate," the man said. Shishani was a Georgian Chechen jihadist and a former commander of the IS group in Syria. He is believed to have been killed in 2016. Some IS supporters claim the video was shot in Syria, but its authenticity is in question. Russia has been waging a military operation since September 2015 against the IS group in Syria on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. IS has lost about two-thirds of the land it captured in Iraq and Syria. The jihadist group is seen as having resorted to producing a larger amount of execution videos in an apparent attempt to project its power. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address I am a retired newspaperman. I am 69 and live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 45 years, Lou Ann. We grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather. More on who I am is here. Report all errors to DonSurber@GMail.com Military conducts live-fire rehearsal in Penghu ROC Central News Agency 2017/05/09 22:44:51 Taipei, May 9 (CNA) Taiwan's military, including the Army, Navy and Air Force, conducted its first live-fire rehearsal on the shores of Penghu County on Tuesday. The event was a preview to the Han Kuang series of military exercises held to demonstrate the capability of the nation's armed forces in defending Taiwan's offshore islands. Gen. Wang Shin-lung (), commander of the Republic of China Army who oversaw the rehearsal, commended the armed forces for achieving the day's objectives. Air traffic from Magong Airport was briefly disrupted as a result of the rehearsal, with three flights in and out of Penghu delayed, affecting 792 passengers. According to the Ministry of National Defense, the county's military base will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on May 10, 13-14, and 17. Visitors will be able to view some of the armed forces' latest weaponry, including the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, UH-60 Black Hawk, missiles and so forth. The second stage of the Han Kuang military exercises, which is expected to involve live fire drills, will be held May 22-26. (By Chen Chi-ching and Ko Lin) Enditem/AW/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Two Perry-class military frigates to arrive in Taiwan soon ROC Central News Agency 2017/05/09 18:20:49 Taipei, May 9 (CNA) Two Perry-class guided missile frigates Taiwan purchased from the United States are expected to arrive in Kaohsiung later this week and be commissioned into service next year, according to the military. The two frigates, built in the 1980s, were formally transferred to the Republic of China navy at a ceremony held March 9 in the U.S. state of South Carolina. They are expected to arrive at Zuoying Military Harbor in southern Taiwan's Kaohsiung May 13, the military said Tuesday. After the two ships arrive in Taiwan, they will join the Navy's 146th fleet, which is based on the outlying island of Penghu, and are responsible for patrolling the Taiwan Strait, the military said. A series of weapons system testing and personnel training will be carried out before the two frigates are formally commissioned into service, the Navy has said, adding that a commissioning ceremony is slated for July 2018. The Perry-class frigates have high mobility and are equipped with the SQQ-89 undersea warfare combat system, a naval anti-submarine warfare system for surface operations, and the SQR-19 sonar system, which the military said will beef up the Navy's anti-submarine capabilities. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama signed a bill into law in December 2014 that authorized the sale of four Perry-class frigates to Taiwan. Taiwan budgeted about NT$5.5 billion (US$174.8 million) in 2014 to purchase two of the frigates. (By Elaine Hou and Lu Hsin-hui) ENDITEM/J NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. calls for constructive dialogue, flexibility across Taiwan Strait ROC Central News Agency 2017/05/09 09:20:45 Washington, May 8 (CNA) The United States on Monday reiterated its support for Taiwan to expand its contributions to the world community and urged Taipei and Beijing to engage in dialogue as Taiwan looked set to be excluded from the World Health Assembly gathering later this month due to China's obstruction. "The United States remains committed to supporting Taiwan as it seeks to expand its already significant contributions to addressing global challenges," said Grace Choi, spokesperson of the State Department's Bureau for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. "We encourage authorities in Beijing and Taipei to engage in constructive dialogue, on the basis of dignity and respect," she said in response to CNA questions. "We continue to urge patience, flexibility, and creativity on both sides." "We support Taiwan's membership in international organizations that do not require statehood," Choi said in line with a longstanding U.S. position on Taiwan's bid to participate in international affairs. "In organizations that require statehood for membership, the United States supports Taiwan's meaningful participation." Choi made the comments after Zhang Zhijun (), the top Chinese official responsible for Taiwan affairs, said explicitly that the basis for Taiwan's continued participation in the WHA was gone since Taiwan has refused to comply with Beijing's demand for Taipei to accept the so-called 1992 consensus. Her comments also came at a time when the deadline was expiring for the registration of the WHA meeting, which will open May 22 in Geneva. As of Monday morning in Taipei, Taiwan still had not received an invitation that would allow it to complete the registration. The WHA is the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, in which members are countries enjoying a seat in the U.N. China considers self-governing Taiwan as part of its territory and has obstructed Taiwan's bid to take part in world organizations. From 2009 to 2016, when Taiwan was under the leadership of President Ma Ying-jeou (), the WHA issued an invitation each year for Taiwan to attend its meeting as an observer. Ma and his Kuomintang party recognize the 1992 consensus, under which China and Taiwan agree there is only one China, with both sides free to interpret what that means. The government of President Tsai Ing-wen () of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party would only go so far as to say that it would maintain the status quo in relations across the Taiwan Strait. (By Rita Cheng) Enditem NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tsai regrets exclusion from World Health Assembly ROC Central News Agency 2017/05/09 21:29:50 Taipei, May 9 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen () on Tuesday tweeted a message criticizing the World Health Organization (WHO) for "excluding Taiwan from WHA" (World Health Assembly), saying such an act "contravenes the very founding principles of" the WHO. In a statement, the Presidential Office of the Republic of China (ROC) expressed "our strong disappointment and displeasure following Taiwan's lack of invitation to this year's WHA." The statement called on the WHO to recognize the fact that "Taiwan is an integral part of the global disease prevention system and that the 23 million people of Taiwan have an inalienable right to equal treatment in health." The statement was attached to a tweet Tsai posted at about 5 p.m. on Tuesday. The annual WHA meeting will open in Geneva on May 22, while the deadline for the meeting's online registration expired at 6 a.m. Tuesday Taiwan time. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said several countries have indicated they would like to meet with Taiwan's representatives on the sidelines of the WHA meeting. Health and Welfare Minister Chen Shih-chung (), who is scheduled to head a delegation to Geneva at the time of the WHA meeting despite the lack of an invitation, will hold a press conference and meet with representatives of other countries in Geneva, according to the MOFA. Taiwan attended the WHA meeting as an observer from 2009 to 2016, under the name Chinese Taipei. The WHO's "goal is to build a better, healthier future for people all over the world," while the WHO's "primary role is to direct and coordinate international health within the United Nations' system." The Republic of China (ROC) was one of the founding members of the United Nations in 1945 and one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council until 1971, when it was replaced by the People's Republic of China (PRC). (By Sophia Yeh, Wang Cheng-chung and Kuo Chung-han) Enditem/ AW/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tsai policy to blame for Taiwan's absence at World Health Assembly People's Daily Online By Yang Sheng (Global Times) 13:28, May 09, 2017 Taiwan's leader Tsai Ing-wen tweeted nine times for Taiwan's participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA) and claimed that "health issues don't stop at the border," but experts said she was playing politics to gain sympathy. E-registration to the WHA ends on Monday, but Taiwan has yet to receive an invitation. Tsai has posted repeatedly on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, explaining that "Taiwan should not be excluded from WHA this year for any reason. Health issues don't stop at border and Taiwan's role is impt (important) to global health." The Xinhua News Agency reported that Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration should bear full responsibility for the island's absence from this year's WHA, a Chinese mainland spokesperson said Monday. "The DPP administration refuses to recognize the 1992 Consensus, which embodies the one-China principle. This places an obstacle to Taiwan's participation in the WHA," An Fengshan, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said. An urged the DPP administration to reflect on why Taiwan is unable to attend this year's WHA, saying that any attempt to pass the buck or shift public focus would fail. "Tsai and her DPP administration's political stance is sacrificing the interests of the Taiwan people. The one-China principle will never change, and if she really cares about the Taiwan people, she needs to change her attitude rather than blame the mainland. The one-China principle is the key to solving almost every problem in Taiwan, but Tsai refuses to recognize it," Wang Jianmin, a Taiwan-affairs expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday. "Tsai is also trying to generate false sympathy from the island's people and international community by saying that Taiwan's health affairs would be damaged if the WHA refuses to invite Taiwan. But Taiwan's health issues won't be affected at all," Yuan Peng, vice president of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said. The island can only participate when it respects the one-China principle and the Chinese mainland allows its participation as part of China, Yuan said. "Taiwan still can join other non-political health organizations. Therefore, it is a political issue rather than a health issue," he said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey must inform Iran of any border wall construction: Source Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 1:7PM An informed source at the Iranian Foreign Ministry says Turkey must keep Iran updated on any construction of a wall along the two countries' border. The source added on Tuesday that Iran welcomes Turkey's plan and does not oppose it; however, Ankara must notify Tehran before any move. The Iranian official further said the Islamic Republic has no problem with Turkey adopting a new measure in the Iranian-Turkish border as part of what Ankara describes as security strategies. The source added that the construction of the wall would prevent smuggling of billions of dollars of goods from Turkey to Iran and expressed hope the plan would be implemented as soon as possible. A high-level Turkish official told Hurriyet daily on Monday that Ankara plans to build a wall on its border with Iran to prevent Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants from entering the country from a camp in Iran. This as Iran is also fighting a PKK offshoot in its northwestern border region with Turkey. Iranian forces killed five PJAK terrorists in an ambush there last June. PJAK randomly carries out hit-and-run attacks on Iranian targets, after which they retreat to their lairs in Iraq and Turkey. Turkey has previously built more than 550 kilometers of wall along the Syrian border in order to prevent the PKK and Daesh Takfiri terrorists from carrying out acts of terror. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey, Qatar agree on terms of joint military base deal: Official Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 8:21AM Turkey and Qatar have agreed on the terms of a deal to set up a joint military base in Doha and deploy hundreds of Turkish forces to the camp, an official in Ankara says. "Within the framework of the agreement, it is envisaged that a joint Turkish-Qatar divisional tactical headquarters should be established in Doha," Turkey's Defense Ministry Deputy Undersecretary Major Ihsan Bulbul said on Monday. A Qatari major general would be the commander of the base and a Turkish brigadier would be his assistant, Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News quoted Bulbul as saying. The official also put the number of the Turkish troops to be deployed to the Doha base at 500-600. He further announced plans to train the Turkish forces concerning the disposal of explosives, saying, "A training staff with 25 to 30 people will be established and training will be provided there." However, Turkey's main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), criticized the agreement as "arbitrary in nature" and questioned Ankara's interests in setting up the military base in Doha. "We are sending troops to Qatar and setting up bases and Qatar pays for it. What is Turkey's interest in this business? What is Qatar's interest in it? We need to further investigate Turkey's relations with Qatar," said Oguz Kaan Salici, a CHP lawmaker. The establishment of the Doha base is part of an agreement signed by Turkey and Qatar back in 2014. In April 2016, Turkey's then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at Qatar University that Turkey's first overseas military installation in the Middle East would be established in Qatar. He claimed that the base would help counter threats to both countries, adding, "The security and stability of Qatar is like the security and stability of Turkey." Turkey's ex-ambassador to Qatar Ahmet Demirok said some 3,000 ground troops would be stationed at the Doha base as well as air and naval units, military trainers and special operations forces. Qatar and Turkey are viewed as strong supporters of militant groups that are wreaking havoc in Syria. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Germany gives asylum to 'coup-linked' Turkish soldiers: Media reports Iran Press TV Tue May 9, 2017 6:10AM Germany has reportedly granted refugee status to several Turkish soldiers and their families based in NATO facilities as Ankara keeps up its massive purge in the aftermath of last July's failed military coup. Local media reports, including Suddeutsche Zeitung daily, cited sources as saying on Monday that the country's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) had previously held back on reviewing the applications, pending the result of Turkey's April constitutional reform referendum. The BAMF has not confirmed the reports. The asylum seekers are reportedly Turkish officers with diplomatic passports who used to be stationed at NATO bases in Germany, but were later sacked or recalled by Ankara. The asylum applications, however, received a green light following the April 16 referendum that granted Turkish President Recep Erdogan sweeping executive powers. Overall, nearly 40 Turkish military officers applied for asylum in Germany following the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, according to the German-based Der Spiegel magazine. Ankara regards the asylum seekers as supporters of elements in the military that attempted to overthrow Erdogan. The botched coup led to a massive crackdown on opposition figures across Turkey and saw the detention of thousands of people, including military officers, judges and academics. The development comes as Turkey's Defense Minister Fikri Isik stated in January that "our expectation from Germany is that they will never accept the asylum requests." The reported move to grant asylum to the Turkish nationals in Germany will likely lead to further tensions in ties between Ankara and Berlin, which had already grown tense in the lead-up to the April referendum. Erdogan accused German officials of acting like "Nazis" and "fascists" as several cities in Germany banned rallies by Turkish ministers and expatriates in the country to drum up support for a 'Yes' vote in referendum The Turkish president warned NATO member nations last November against granting asylum to military officers suspected of links to the plotters of the failed coup after dozens of Turkey's NATO officers sought asylum in Europe. "How can a terrorist, a terrorist soldier, a soldier who has been involved in plotting a coup, be employed in NATO?" Erdogan said at the time, as quoted by the country's Milliyet daily. Meanwhile, Germany has so far received 414 asylum applications from Turkish citizens fearing prosecution in connection to the failed coup, according to local press reports. In late March, four Turkish NATO officers and a military attache were offered refugee status in Norway. They, like their colleagues in Germany, decided to ignore orders to return home following the attempted coup and filed for asylum. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Threats of cyber attack, natural disaster and supply chain failure inform new country-by-country resilience rankings May 2017 by FM Global New insights have emerged around three of the most pressing risks to business performance in the 21st centurycyber attack, natural hazards and supply chain failurewith the release today of the 2017 FM Global Resilience Index. The annual index, which is online and interactive, ranks 130 countries and territories by their enterprise resilience to disruptive events. Now in its fourth year, the index provides a unique resource to help business executives site facilities, select suppliers, evaluate established supply chains and identify customers who may be vulnerable. For companies concerned by the increasing incidence of cyber attack, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has emerged as a country with above-average inherent cyber risk. Its high internet penetration, combined with a limited cyber security industry, make it a more vulnerable target. Developing India, by contrast, with its growing information technology industry, emerges as a country with below-average inherent cyber risk. For companies aware of the heavy toll of natural disasters, Sweden has above-average resilience due, in part, to its lower-than-average exposure to hazards such as windstorms, flood and earthquakes. On the other hand, flood-prone Bangladesh, a major manufacturing hub for apparel and textiles, ranks toward the bottom of the index. For companies with global supply chains, Germany, a major exporter and importer, ranks near the top in resilience, driven in part by its strong ability to demonstrate where parts, components or products are in transit. Russia ranks below average in this respect. Users of the index can now investigate 12 quantified resilience drivers related to each countrys economic strength, risk quality and supply chain condition. The index also ranks countries in overall enterprise resilience. Wealthy Switzerland occupies the number-one ranking, reflecting high scores for its infrastructure, local supplier quality, political stability, control of corruption and economic productivity. Hurricane-ravaged Haiti ranks at the bottom of the index due in part to its high natural hazard exposure and poor economic conditions. Many of the insights above originate from three new resilience drivers added to the index this year: Inherent cyber risk Reflects a countrys vulnerability to a cyber attack and its ability to recover. Urbanization rate Serves as a proxy for stress (on water supplies, power grids and other infrastructure) that would be exacerbated by natural disasters such as windstorms, flood and earthquakes. Supply chain visibility Reflects the ability to track and trace consignments across a countrys supply chain. Other drivers of resilience that form the index include: productivity, political risk, oil intensity, exposure to natural hazard, natural hazard risk quality, fire risk quality, control of corruption, quality of infrastructure and quality of local suppliers. Key country rankings for overall resilience: Our clients have found the index valuable when making important decisions about their properties, business strategies and supply chains, said Bret Ahnell, executive vice president at FM Global, one of the worlds largest commercial property insurers. We upgraded the index this year to reflect escalating threats that can make a lasting impact on business performance. FM Global will continue to improve the index and make the data publicly available to any business, client or not. English Estonian Tallinn, Estonia, 2017-05-09 21:08 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AS PRFoods (registry code 11560713, of Viru 10, 10140 Tallinn, Estonia), hereby announces the annual general meeting of shareholders. This meeting will be held on the 30th of May, 2017 at 3 p.m. in the conference room Arcturus at the Nordic Hotel Forum hotel (address: Viru valjak 3, Tallinn, Estonia). The list of shareholders entitled to vote at the general meeting will be determined seven days before the meeting, i.e. by 11:59 p.m. on the 22nd of May, 2017. Registration to attend the meeting will start at the location of the meeting on the 30th of May, 2017 at 2 p.m. and will finish at 3 p.m. In order to register, shareholders are asked to bring the following documents: Shareholders who are private individuals must bring a passport or government-issued identity card. A representative of a shareholder must also submit a written power of attorney in written form which authorizes the proxy to attend and/or vote on the shareholders behalf. Representatives of shareholders that are legal entities must bring an extract from the respective register where the legal entity is registered which confirms the authority of the legal entitys representative to represent the legal entity (representation by virtue of law). The representative must also bring a passport or government-issued identity card. If the legal entity is represented by a person who is not the legal representative of the legal entity, a written power of attorney is also required. The documents of a shareholder located abroad shall be legalized or certified with an apostille, unless a relevant international agreement stipulates otherwise. Prior to the annual general meeting, a shareholder may notify AS PRFoods of the appointment of a representative or revoke authorisation of a given representative by sending a digitally signed notice to AS PRFoods by e-mail to investor@prfoods.ee or by delivering the respective document(s) personally on business days from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the location of the Company at Viru 19, 10140 Tallinn by 4 p.m. on the 25th of May, 2017. According to the decision of the supervisory board of AS PRFoods dated the 8th of May, 2017, the agenda of the annual general meeting along with the proposal of the supervisory board is as follows: 1. Approving the Companys 2016 annual report The supervisory board of AS PRFoods proposes to the annual general meeting to approve the annual report of the Company for the financial year 2016 in the form submitted to the annual general meeting. 2. Decision on sharing the profit The net profit of AS PRFoods was 715,000 euros in year 2016 and retained profit as at the 31st of December, 2016 is EUR 1,881,000. The supervisory board of AS PRFoods proposes to the annual general meeting to transfer 1/20 of the net profit, EUR 35,750 to the reserve and not to distribute the remaining profit. 3. Appointment of auditor for the financial year 2017 and determining auditors remuneration The supervisory board of AS PRFoods proposes the appointment of AS PricewaterhouseCoopers as auditor of AS PRFoods for the financial year 2017 and to determine the remuneration of the auditor pursuant to the agreement to be executed with the auditor. All documents relating to annual general meeting of shareholders of AS PRFoods, including the 2016 annual report of the Company, the sworn auditors report, proposal on covering the loss and the draft resolutions are made available at the website of AS PRFoods www.prfoods.ee from the date of publication of this notice. This announcement of the annual general meeting as well as the total number of shares and voting rights relating to shares as of the date of publication of the announcement will also be published on the website of AS PRFoods www.prfoods.ee. Inquiries regarding the agenda of the annual general meeting of shareholders can be sent to the e-mail address investor@prfoods.ee A shareholder has the right to receive information about the activities of AS PRFoods from the management board at the general meeting. However, the management board may refuse to disclose the information if there are sufficient grounds to presume that the disclosure may adversely affect the interests of the company. If the management board refuses to disclose the information, the shareholder may compel the general meeting to decide on the lawfulness of the shareholder's request or file within two weeks a petition to a court in order to oblige the management board to disclose the information. Shareholders whose shares represent at least 1/20 of the share capital of AS PRFoods may propose draft resolutions with respect to each item on the agenda at least 3 days prior to the annual general meeting, i.e. by the 24th of May, 2017, by submitting a proposal in writing to the following address: AS PRFoods, Viru 19, 10140 Tallinn, Estonia. Shareholders whose shares represent at least 1/20 of the share capital of AS PRFoods may request that additional items be added to the agenda of the annual general meeting if the request is submitted at least 15 days prior to the General Meeting, i.e. by the 15th of May, 2017, in writing to the following address: AS PRFoods, Viru 19, 10140 Tallinn, Estonia. The general meeting of the shareholders of AS PRFoods will be broadcasted and additional questions will be answered during the broadcast via web solution We are committed to full business transparency and therefore the general meeting of the shareholders will be broadcasted and questions will be answered during the broadcast. The live broadcast will be hosted by the Member of the Board Indrek Kasela, who will share information in regards to agenda of the general meeting and introduce the results of the company for the year 2016. Shareholders may send their questions before the broadcast until May 26th by 23.59 by email hannele@voting.ee or ask questions during the broadcast via web solution. To join the broadcast, please register by 26th May by 23.59 via email hannele@voting.ee. The list of shareholders entitled to monitor the meeting via live broadcast and ask questions will be fixed on 22 May 2017 at 23:59. After registration you will be provided with instructions how to join the broadcast and ask questions during the meeting. Exercising shareholders rights (i.e. voting) is not possible via live broadcast. The broadcast of the shareholders meeting will be recorded and will be available online for everyone at the companys website on www.prfoods.ee. Indrek Kasela AS PRFoods Member of the Management Board T: (+372) 6 033 800 indrek.kasela@prfoods.ee www.prfoods.ee A significant plurality of French voters (43%) who cast their ballots for Emmanuel Macron Sunday told pollsters that had done so primarily to stop Le Pen-- more of the ole "lesser of two evils" vision of politics, generally espoused by the Democratic Party to such ill-effect . Everyone I know-- in Europe and here at home-- was rooting for Le Pen to lose (except for Monsieur Trumpanzee, Bannon, and neo-fascist Congressmen Steve King and Dana Rohrabacher ). But no one-- no one I know-- was rooting for centrist former banker Macron to win. He was just the way to stop Le Pen. (He's already talking about naming right-wing Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppe as prime minister.) are people-- even if I don't know them-- who are actually excited about Macron right here in America. Early Monday morning a group calling itself the Centrist Project sent out an e-mail celebrating. Do you know who Nick Troiano is? In 2014 he ran as an independent centrist against Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino and got 13% of the vote. He's now the executive director of the Centrist Project and wrote that "Macron's election to the French presidency as a first-time, independent candidate demonstrates that constructive political disruption can come from the political center. And it can happen here, too. A similar En Marche! movement in France has already begun at the state level, where several But, therepeople-- even if I don't know them-- who are actually excited about Macron right here in America. Early Monday morning a group calling itself the Centrist Project sent out an e-mail celebrating. Do you know who Nick Troiano is? In 2014 he ran as an independent centrist against Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino and got 13% of the vote. He's now the executive director of the Centrist Project and wrote that "Macron's election to the French presidency as a first-time, independent candidate demonstrates that constructive political disruption can come from the political center. And it can happen here, too. A similar En Marche! movement in France has already begun at the state level, where several centrist independent candidates were elected in 2016. Since the Centrist Project's public launch last month, we have already begun fielding dozens of inquiries from potential independent state and federal candidates for the next election. With a majority of Americans now holding an unfavorable view of both parties, we believe the political moment is ripe to challenge the two-party duopoly in the United States, and win." Financial Times, the Le Pen only one two departments across France-- Pas-de-Calais (52.1%) and Aisne (52.9%) in the northeast. She lost all 8 southern departments where polls had shown her leading before the Kremlin's cyberattack on Friday. Macron beat her 20,753,798 (66.1%) to 10,644,118 (33.9%). Macron picked up the majority of first round supporters of the two left-wing candidates, Jean-Luc Melenchon and Benoit Hamon. More surprisingly, Macron won almost half of the votes of those who went with cconservative right-winger Francois Fillon in round one. According to the, the strongest predictor of voter preference was education . Areas with higher numbers of university degrees is where Macron found his biggest support. This pattern echoes the findings of a Financial Times analysis of the predictors of the Leave vote in 2016 Brexit referendum, US presidential election and recent Dutch election. In each of the plebiscites, education emerged as the strongest predictor of vote for a populist option, where the less educated chose it more often than those with degrees. First-round voting projections and research reported on by the FT indicated that higher income voters were more likely to vote for Macron. This trend reinforces the narrative of the presidential race as a battle of haves versus have-nots, embodied respectively by Macron and Le Pen... Like education, income was also a factor in the recent Dutch election, in which less affluent areas voted in proportionately higher numbers for the populist Geert Wilders. This was also true in the UK's EU referendum, where analysis suggested lower income voters were more likely to vote Leave. ...Macron did well where life expectancy is higher, in line with the theory that [lack of] health and wellbeing are proxies for pessimism-- a known predictor of support for Le Pen. There is a growing school of thought that health metrics, including life expectancy, can be used as precision proxies for imprecise concepts such as wellbeing and pessimism, allowing researchers to identify social breakdown without resorting to large-scale surveys and self-reported measures. This allows us to interpret the positive relationship between life expectancy and the Macron vote as additional evidence that general wellbeing and a positive outlook on life lead voters to reject Le Pen's appeals to negative emotions, and vote instead for a candidate with a more positive message. NY Times The analysis of Macron's win , which "brought joy from Europes political establishment," was less in the weeds, claiming that "the French presidential runoff transcended national politics. It was globalization against nationalism. It was the future versus the past. Open versus closed." But Macron's victory has it also be seen in what is unique in French history-- Nazi occupation and collaboration. 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 Paul Pass alleged murderer has taken the stand to deny he is a drug dealer or that he attacked the Gloucester man after being robbed by him and his friends, a court has heard. Rezwan Islam, 19, of Derby Road, Gloucester, stands accused of murdering Mr Pass in his flat after allegedly kidnapping him and his friend Mark Andrews before subjecting them to a string of attacks. Mr Pass was beaten and killed after bleeding to death from a stab wound to the leg in his Marian Court flat, near Archdeacon Street. During the same incident on October 7 his friend Mark Andrews was stabbed twice and forced to drink urine and soap and had a cigarette put out on his head, the court has heard. The incident took place after the pair and other friends allegedly attempted to rob Islam and his drug-dealer friend Abdulmalik Adua, 17, of heroin, crack cocaine and about 1,500 in cash. But today at Bristol Crown Court, wearing a bright orange polo shirt and jeans, Islam denied any involvement in dealing drugs with Adua. He also denies recruiting friends to help him and Adua find and attack the robbers before frog-marching Mr Pass and Mr Andrews back to the flat to force them to give the location of the loot. But he did admit stabbing Mr Andrews in the hand at the flat, calling it an accident. He (Mark) was wasting time so I just made to threaten him, to scare him. I didnt mean to cut him, he said. It was a knife that was just on the side. He moved his hand and I cut him by accident. I didnt mean to do it, I grabbed a towel for him and then left. Even Adua was surprised. He denies committing any other violence in the flat before leaving and said he did not see anybody else use violence while he was there. He said Adua came out of the flat shortly after him and did not tell him he had stabbed both Mr Pass and Mr Andrews in the leg until they were dropped off in the car elsewhere in Gloucester and did not know he had died until the next day. But on cross examination prosecutor Adam Vaitilingam QC accused Islam of lying throughout his testimony. What you are saying is you were very unlucky in all of this, because you did not do anything wrong apart from accidentally stabbing Mark Andrews in the hand? Apart from that none of this is down to you, is that right? You were not prepared to answer police questions in interview and explain that the charges of murder kidnapping, assault and drug dealing when actually it was nothing to do with you? You have carefully fashioned your case to fit the evidence. While he denied these claims, Islam admitted he had lied several times to his solicitor in his defence statement given a month before the trial started. This included that he was not at the flat during the robbery and had not stabbed Mark Andrews. Prosecutor Vailigham said You changed your account to fit the evidence and you have changed it again. You have just made it up during this trial like the rest of your evidence. Locations of interest in the lead up to the death of Paul Pass View fullscreen Its just utter nonsense isnt it, its a complete and utter lie what you are saying. You were there all the time. You saw Adua stab them both. It was part of an attack that continued for a long time by both you and Adua. The prosecution also revealed Islams criminal history, having pleaded guilty to assault in 2014 and battery in 2015. The evidence in the trial has now finished and each barrister is expected to sum up their respective clients case tomorrow. The judge is then expected to summarise the law that the jury will have to consider, which will then retire to consider their verdicts for each of the charges. THE CHARGES Rezwan Islam Profile: 19, Derby Road, Gloucester Charges: Murder of Paul Pass Section 18 GBH wounding with intent against Mark Andrews GBH against Mark Andrews Kidnap of Paul Pass Kidnap of Mark Andrews Section 18 GBH wounding with intent against Gary Cole Robbery of Clinton Thomas Supply of Class A drugs cocaine Supply of Class A drugs diamorphine Bilal Moosajee Profile: 19 and of Podsmead Road, Gloucester Charges: Kidnap of Paul Pass (Pleaded guilty) Kidnap of Mark Andrews (Pleaded guilty) Abdulmalik Adua Profile:17-year-old from Woolwich in London Charges: Section 18 GBH wounding with intent against Mark Andrews Section 18 GBH wounding with intent against Gary Cole Manslaughter of Paul Pass (pleaded guilty) Committing GBH against Mark Andrews (pleaded guilty) Supply of Class A drugs cocaine (pleaded guilty) Supply of Class A drugs diamorphine (pleaded guilty) 17-year-old from Gloucester Profile: Cannot be identified because of his age Charge: Assisting an offender WhatsApp Gloucestershire Live will be following the trial through the coming weeks and will be publishing details as they come in via its WhatsApp channel. It will provide up to the minute developments in the case as well as help explain the technical elements of a criminal trial. If you would like to receive these messages on your WhatsApp simply save number 07816 996213 as a contact on your phone. Next send a message expressing interest in the group by messaging "PAUL" via WhatsApp. It may take some time to add you to the messaging group so do not worry if you do not see updates straight away. We hope to send between three and five posts a day but this may vary depending on how court is proceeding. If you no longer want to receive the messages send "STOP PAUL". 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 accused with another of an attempted killing in Cheltenham town centre has appeared before a court. Uzoma Izenwa, who is alleged to have tried to stab Lewis Hawker to death with co-accused Jordan Weston was told by magistrates that he will continue to be remanded in custody before another hearing next month. Weston, 24, of Southend Lane, London SE6 is also accused of grievous bodily harm in relation to an alleged stabbing in Gloucester Park on July 4 last year. Today Izenwa of Sumner Road, Croydon faced an attempted murder charge of Mr Hawker in Cheltenham High Street on August 12, 2016, before Cheltenham Magistrates Court. Weston appeared in the same court on Wednesday, May 3, charged with the same offence. Both have been remanded in custody and will appear before Gloucester Crown Court on June 2 for a plea and trial preparation hearing. 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 The Crime Prosecution Service has said it will not bring charges against 14 Tory MPs over election expenses in 2015. In a move that has been welcomed by the Conservative Party, the CPS confirmed no action will be taken over evidence sent in from 14 police forces, including Gloucestershire. A 15th file, from Kent Police, is under consideration and a CPS decision is due within the next few weeks. Nick Vamos, CPS Head of Special Crime, said: "We have considered files of evidence from 14 police forces in respect of allegations relating to Conservative Party candidates' expenditure during the 2015 General Election campaign. "We considered whether candidates and election agents working in constituencies that were visited by the Party's 'Battle Bus' may have committed a criminal offence by not declaring related expenditure on their local returns. Instead, as the Electoral Commission found in its report, these costs were recorded as national expenditure by the Party. "We reviewed the files in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors and have concluded the tests in the Code are not met and no criminal charges have been authorised. He added: Although there is evidence to suggest the returns may have been inaccurate, there is insufficient evidence to prove to the criminal standard that any candidate or agent was dishonest. "The Act also makes it a technical offence for an election agent to fail to deliver a true return. By omitting any 'Battle Bus' costs, the returns may have been inaccurate. "However, it is clear agents were told by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted knowingly or dishonestly. "Therefore we have concluded it is not in the public interest to charge anyone referred to us with this offence. Conservative Party Chairman Patrick McLoughlin said: We are pleased that the legal authorities have confirmed what we believed was the case all along: that these Conservative candidates did nothing wrong. "These were politically motivated and unfounded complaints that have wasted police time. "We are glad that this matter is finally resolved. A number of false and malicious claims continue to be spread on the internet. "People should be aware that making false claims about a candidates personal character and conduct is an electoral offence, as well as being defamatory. 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 drink-drive pub chef who won an appeal to get out of jail in February will soon be back behind bars after flouting his chance of freedom. At Gloucester Crown Court today a judge issued a warrant for 24 year old Jake Prosser's arrest after hearing he has failed to comply with the community order he received from an appeal panel three months ago. Prosser, of Tobyfield Road, Bishops Cleeve, was due before the crown court today to face breach proceedings but did not attend. The court heard he had not replied to a letter from the probation service giving him today's date. The judge, Recorder Richard Smith QC, said "I have read the probation service breach proceedings papers and there is talk of him being given another chance but he is not grasping that with both hands at the moment." He granted an arrest warrant, not backed for bail. In February Prosser won an appeal against an eight week jail term imposed for drink-driving just eight days after he had been banned from the road. Cheltenham Magistrates had passed the jail term on January 27 after deciding that Prosser's blatant disregard of his ban meant they had no alternative. In February, Judge Michael Cullum, sitting with two magistrates, allowed the appeal by suspending the sentence for a year and ordering Prosser to do 150 hours of unpaid work. But now he faces being returned to jail for flouting that order. The court had been told in February that on December 19 last year Prosser had been banned for 14 months for drink driving. Just eight days later, on December 28, police saw him driving a Ford Ka in Bishop's Cleeve and he parked in the Tesco car park. They approached and smelt alcohol so breathalysed him. He gave a reading of 76mcgs - more than twice the limit. He then went before magistrates and admitted drink driving, driving while banned, having no insurance, and having no MoT. At his appeal, the court was told that Prosser had lost his job and accommodation in a local pub after being arrested for the first offence. He went to live with his mother for a short while but then had to leave just before Christmas when her boyfriend moved in and there was no room for him. Unable to find anywhere else to live, she said, he slept rough in the car in the Tesco car park. On the day of his offence he was driving it just to warm it up inside. The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel We have more newsletters 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 Firefighters have been praised for doing a wonderful job by getting a difficult house fire in a residential street under control. Three fire engines from Cheltenham and an aerial ladder platform attended Evesham Road at 7.10am this morning after reports smoke was coming from the roof of Albion Cottage. A team of 14 firefighters attended and quickly contained the blaze, after police had cordoned off the road. They have been at the scene for several hours, investigating the course and making sure the property is safe to return to the owner. Pictures show the roof of the old-fashioned brick building, opposite a new estate of houses, had collapsed and was almost completely destroyed. Inside the house was said to be completely gutted by the blaze. Crews quickly dealt with the fire which had spread to first floor level and the aerial ladder platform has been dealing with it in the roof, said the fire services local risk manager for Tewkesbury borough, Steve Maginn, 50. There was no-one in the property at the time. The crews did a wonderful job as visibility was poor. They got the fire under control very quickly. We are cutting away and ensuring small pockets of fire are out from the roof. Then we will hand over to the occupier who is aware of the incident. The house is severely damaged. Thankfully this is an extremely rare occurrence. He added that the countys fire service has reduced its response calls to below 4,000 for 2016/17, which he described as a huge achievement. Firefighters have been reassuring residents in the immediate local area, giving them details of the incident and checking their homes have smoke detectors. Lucie Smith, 43, lives opposite the scene of the fire and she assisted as best she could by making tea and coffee for members of the emergency services. Its quite a bit of drama for a street like this, she said. It was about 7.15am when the fire service turned up. I thought someone was having something delivered actually. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel Play now The house was smoking through the roof. I saw a firefighter go in through the top left window. I couldnt do a lot else (to help) so I made the firefighters a cup of tea. Eyewitness Rob Collins, 42, saw the fire when he drove down Evesham Road this morning. "I was just taking my son to school and I saw smoke and flames coming out of the roof, he told Gloucestershire Live. "It's a shame to see the cottage like that." 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 Strictly Come Dancing stars Natalie Lowe, Louis Smith and Jay McGuiness will be jitterbugging and jiving into Cheltenham Town Hall later this year when they bring their 1950s inspired stage show to the town. Rip It Ups has been described as an explosion of song and dance that will see Natalie, Jay and Louis swing, bop, jitterbug, lindy hop, jive and ballroom their way through the greatest hits from the era. Their nationwide, 42-date tour will start in Aberdeen and come to a rousing end at Cheltenham Town Hall on Sunday October 22. The team behind the 2017s Remembering Fred tour, which stars Come Dancings Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec,are producing Rip It Up which will feature Radio 2 DJ Leo Green and his 50s all-star band. (Image: PA) Professional dancer Natalie, who has announced that she is retiring from Strictly, said she is looking forward to choreographing the routines to songs from musics greatest decade. Jay McGuiness is best known as a vocalist in the boy band The Wanted, whose debut single All Time Low was number one in 2010, is delighted to be back on the dance floor. In 2015, Jay partnered professional dancer Aliona Vilani to Glitterball vicitory with their infamous jive to the Pulp Fiction-inspired medley which has become the shows most watched routine ever, amassing over five million hits on YouTube. He said: We have some great ideas and are looking forward to bringing them to the theatres around the country, singing and dancing to some of the greatest songs from one of the greatest decades. Sporting superstar Louis Smith MBE took part in Strictly after the London 2012 Olympics and won with professional dance partner Flavia Cacace. Although he is about to start training for his fourth Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020, he says he is delighted to be part of the cast of Rip It Up. A lot of people think of the music of the 50s as just rock n roll, he said. Whilst this was the decade that brought us Elvis, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Little Richard and more, we will also be celebrating the music of Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and all the beautiful vocal harmony groups from that special decade. Classics likely to be included are Why Do Fools Fall In Love, La Bamba, Put Your Head On My Shoulder, Mona Lisa, Unchained Melody, Dont Be Cruel, Hound Dog, Shout, Unforgettable and many more. Tickets go on general sale on Friday May 12 here. 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 He's a zany clown with a trademark red quiff, along with endless energy and a mastery of slapstick comedy; shes a studious grammar school pupil often found engrossed in a book. On paper they appear polar opposites, but the resemblance and clear mutual affection between Tweedy and 15-year-old Willow Digweed clearly mark them out as father and daughter. Calling ones dad a clown is a rite of passage for many a disgruntled teenager, but whats it like actually to have Gloucestershires favourite funny man as the head of the family? To be honest, I havent really known anything else, explains Willow. Dad was a clown before I was born and I couldnt imagine him any other way. I am proud of him and my friends think hes hilarious, but at times life can be a bit surreal. People ask me what hes like when hes not performing and Id say hes a bit less exaggerated but exactly the same as he is on stage. I find dad funny when he does things wrong. Sometimes he asks me my opinion on one of his new ideas but to a point I think hes given up because I generally roll my eyes. When I was younger I treated him as a little brother, and then a dad. Sometimes I feel I am a bit more like a parent. I remember having a trampoline as a kid and dad used it more than me - he would roller skate on it. I used to try and show him how to do up the net. When Tweedy affectionately refers to his daughter as Little Miss Health and Safety, Willow teases him about the time he got stuck in a tree. Thats because you dont climb as high as I do, he replies. Tweedys latest capers have included climbing scaffolding to get to a vent outside Willows bedroom and calling her name in a ghost-like voice. He came back upstairs and asked why I hadnt been scared, she laughs. Another time he enlisted his daughters help to test his latest gunge recipe. He paid me 5 to stand in the bath so that he could throw this concoction at me; at this stage it was still quite lumpy, she recalls. Tweedy, whose real name is Alan Digweed, says audiences dont realise quite how much is involved in being a clown. I was trying out a new recipe, he explains. Its important to get the consistency right. People dont think about all these little things being a clown is isnt just a case of going out there and falling over. Mum Sharon, a former trapeze artiste, places herself firmly in the middle of the family dynamic: I love having fun but I know when its time to be sensible, she explains. Willow often finds herself laughing at Tweedy, sometimes when shes not trying to. Most of what Tweedy does is what hes accidentally come across while playing with something. He never stops. A while back we told him we were taking a month off. At the end of the four weeks we realised it was not a good idea; he was bouncing off the walls. Willow remembers her dad using his collection of ladders to build a fort during his break. Dad has lots of ladders, hes into double figures with them, she says. He also collects musical instruments; there are seven in my room. There are times when Tweedy channels his creative energies into drawing and writing poetry and songs. We used to play a lot of music together too, says Willow. Now a stalwart member of the cast at Giffords Circus, and a regular face at pantomimes at Cheltenhams Everyman Theatre every year, Aberdeen-born Tweedy firsts exploration of his comedic talents came when he was a teenage Redcoat at a Butlins holiday camp. He went on to perform at Zippos Circus and it was here that he met Sharon. Willow, who was born in 2001 and christened by clown minister Rev Roly Bain under the big top a few months later, and would accompany her parents as they toured the British Isles. Tweedy first joined Giffords in 2004 and it was there that he stopped wearing make-up and over-sized shoes and instead created a more natural character loosely based on his comedy heroes Laurel and Hardy. In 2009 the family crossed the Atlantic to spend a couple of years in the United States with Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey, well known for its greatest show on earth motto, during which time they visited no fewer than 92 American cities. Over the years Willow has appeared in various shows, including performing as her dads stooge when she was just four years old. Tweedy would be balancing on a piece of wood on top of a pipe and the idea was that he would call Willow out of the audience to pick up his squeeze box and she would walk off with it, Sharon explains. A lot of what she did was ab-libbing, such as holding it out to him and then, as he reached out, pulling it back. Later on she chucked the squeeze box between his legs and wandered off. In 2011, when she was nine, she joined other circus children as soldiers and peasants during the Giffords show War and Peace. Spending so much time on tour has provided Willow with an upbringing thats very different to that of her peers, but her parents believe its made a huge contribution to the confident and outgoing daughter they have today. Theyre especially proud of the way shes able to rub along with people of all nationalities and children from across a wide age range. Circus kids have a confidence a lot of kids dont have, says Tweedy. I think it comes from mixing with so many adults the whole time. Sharon describes circus people as a family that looks out for one another. Theres an old-fashioned community feel about it and there was always somebody looking out for the children, she says. You could let your kids wander around and play with their friends; Willow always knew she wasnt allowed beyond the circle of caravans. Willows early education was a mixture of home-schooling and attending more formal establishments, but at the age of nine she decided she wanted to go to a mainstream primary. I did a survey of where we lived and checked the Ofsted reports, she explains. It was my choice to go to school full time rather than be in a show. Eventually she settled on Powells Primary School in Cirencester and the family rented a house in the town while she was there, before moving to Cheltenham when she got a place at Pates Grammar School. Shes kind of rebelled and gone academic, jokes Tweedy, who recently raised 5,000 for Pates with a comedy show. Willows commitment to her GCSE studies is such that her dad is more likely to be found encouraging her to take a break than nagging her to do more. My chair is on wheels and sometimes dad comes and wheels me out of my room, she laughs. The arts and drama departments at school quite like him, although it gave me a strange feeling when a teacher was holding an Everyman schedule with my dads face on the cover. While clearly wanting their daughter to receive a good education, Tweedy and Sharon appear thrilled by her apparent U-turn in her choice of future career. Up until recently Ive wanted to do something involving psychology and mental health, but over the past couple of months Ive been leaning more towards the theatre: as a family we go to the theatre a lot and I realised I had watched too much theatre not to be interested in it, says Willow. With a life like hers, its unlikely that Willow could ever claim to feel bored, but she admits there have been times when shes asked her parents to be a bit more normal. To be honest, the way my parents are is what Im used to and it would be odd to have it any other way, she says. With Giffords Circus about to take to the road with their latest show Any Port in a Storm, Willows looking forward to joining her dad on tour and meeting up with old friends and making new ones. I used to spend a lot of time with dad when he was on tour, she says. Now Im there at weekends and during school holidays. Its an international environment but I never really noticed it as a child because its how I was brought up. I look forward to the circus season, partly because its the summer but also because I have so many great memories of different towns and villages and the grounds where we have stayed. Sidebar: Giffords will be visiting the Spanish court of the 17 Century for this years circus Any Port in a Storm. Audiences can look forward to a thrilling, candle-lit international gymnastic show with dancing horses, a live band and the king of mis-rule, Tweedy the Clown. The circus, produced by Nell and Toti Gifford and directed by Cal McCrystal, kicks off on May 12 at Fennells Farm in Stroud. See here for more information. Jonathan Christopher Good, a 38-year-old former teacher at Westover Christian Academy, charged with four counts of taking indecent liberties, turned himself in to police Wednesday. He is currently being held in the Danville City Jail under no bond, police said. On Tuesday, a grand jury issued indictments against Good. In April, Westover Christian Academy contacted police about inappropriate texts being exchanged between a teacher and a 16-year-old female student, according to a news release. Police said the incidents occurred in March. Republican candidate for lieutenant governor Glenn Davis made an appearance Tuesday in Danville holding a meet-and-greet with local leaders at Golden Leaf Bistro. Davis, who traveled the region on Tuesday on an unleash Southside Virginia tour, said the economy continued to be the most pressing issue for residents. It truly is about jobs and the economy, Davis, a Virginia Beach delegate, said. Its people are hurting. Small businesses still have not recovered from the recession. Davis said he believed listening to localities and investing in infrastructure would be the most beneficial to the region. Theres so much economic opportunity here, Davis said. Danville City Council member Lee Vogler said Davis wasnt just paying lip service to struggling areas of the state, and was actually visiting places like Danville. I like the energy that he brings and hes made the area a great focus for the campaign, Vogler said. Davis will face off against fellow Republicans Jill Vogel and Bryce Reeves in the June 13 primary. Candidates Justin Fairfax, Gene Rossi and Susan Platt are on the ballot for the Democratic primary. Fairfax attended Sunday service at Bibleway Cathedral on Sunday in Danville, and also greeted supporters afterward. A suspect in Januarys purse snatching incidents entered an Alford plea last week. Jasmine Lee Jackson, 18, entered the plea Friday afternoon in Danville Circuit Court. She was scheduled to appear before a Danville jury on Monday. An Alford plea means the defendant maintains his or her innocence, but acknowledges there is enough evidence to convict him or her of the crime. Jacksons attorney, Jason Eisner, said Monday that Jackson is still asserting her innocence. She was charged with two counts of robbery, simple assault and petty larceny for the Jan. 4 robbery incidents in the 200 block of Courtland Drive and the 100 block of Martin Drive. Danville Commonwealths Attorney Michael Newman said Tuesday that Jackson was the driver in the robbery incidents. She and Jawantez Waddell, 18, followed elderly women twice from Wal-Mart on Mount Cross Road to their Danville homes on Jan. 4, he said. The first incident happened to a 68-year-old woman around 6:40 p.m. that day in the 200 block of Courtland Street. The woman told Danville police officers she exited her vehicle to go to her residence when she was approached by a man later identified as Waddell who grabbed her and took her pocketbook, according to a news release issued in January. A 14-year-old male helped for the second incident later that evening in the 100 block of Martin Avenue. A 61-year-old woman pulled into her driveway and parked her vehicle. Three suspects approached her drivers side door, pulled it open and took her purse, a news release stated. The teenagers still have charges pending in Pelham, North Carolina, for a robbery incident from the same day. The 14-year-old minor is serving his sentence at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center. Jackson and Waddell will be sentenced next month. In a Joint Local Declaration issued on April 25th, the European Union, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Embassy of France, the Embassy of the United States of America and the Representative Office of Switzerland expressed concern over the recent arrests of civil society activists in Chad. We are concerned by the detention of several civil society activists, by the lack of information concerning the charges against them, as well as the conditions of their detention, and wish to reiterate our support for the respect for fundamental liberties, among them the freedom of expression and right to demonstrate, essential elements of democracy, the signatories declared. Members of civil society should play a central role in reinforcing democracy and the rule of law. The declaration also responded to reports that, on the night of April 11, a convoy of two vehicles containing between 86 and 100 prisoners was attacked by heavily armed gunmen, resulting in the death of nine prisoners; among the dead were eight individuals implicated in the death of President Idriss Debys nephew in January. The signatories noted that the attack against the prisoner convoy and the assassination of prisoners during their transfer are also a source for concern. Believing in the right to a fair trial, which permits the prevention of impunity and protection against abuses, we hope that these acts are clarified so that those responsible can be brought to justice. The Prosecutor-General and members of civil society have also condemned the attack. The United States and the other signatories to the Local Declaration encourage Chad to ensure respect of the rights enshrined in its Constitution and by the international agreements to which it is signatory, which contribute to peace and stability. It is with a deeply saddened heart to announce the passing of William Edward Broach III, MD, after a hard fought battle with cancer. Dr. Broach was surrounded by the love of family when his body finally found rest on Monday May 8, 2017. He was 71. Dr. Broach was born on March 21, 1946, to William "Willie" and Mavis Broach of Waycross, Georgia. He and his family moved to Tampa, Fla., Dr. Broach's love of rhythm earned him the drum major position in the Robinson High School Marching Band. After graduating from the University of South Florida with a Bachelor of Arts in 1968, Dr. Broach began teaching High School Chemistry and Biology in Tampa, FL. Feeling unfulfilled, he decided his talents and caring personality would be better suited by helping others in a medical capacity. In 1975, he began his journey to become a physician in Guadalajara, Mexico by attending University bilingual medical school. His experience with a malnourished population leading to high-risk pregnancies enabled him to enhance his specialties. While attending the University of Alabama's School of Medicine, Dr. Broach chose to follow a path that would mold him into an instrument to help bring life into the world. After completing his residency at the West Virginia University Medical Center in Morgantown, W.Va. in 1985, Dr. Broach started his professional medical career at OB-GYN Associates of Danville in Danville, Va. Since that time, Dr. Broach has touched the lives of countless patients, their family members, and fellow doctors and nurses alike. He humbly tasked himself with the privilege of delivering thousands of sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, cousins, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren. Playing a major role in one of the most important moments in a person's life wasn't enough for Dr. Broach. Since 1988, when not in the office, on-call, or in the hospital, he spent his free time helping patients at The Free Clinic of Danville. He enjoyed this sense of giving back to the community so much so that he became the Board Chairman. After 31 years of dedication and service to his patients and to the Danville area, Dr. Broach formally retired from practicing medicine in February 2017. Although Dr. Broach has parted ways with his earthly body, he is resting easy knowing that his memory will endure through the loved ones he cherished so very deeply. The emphasis he placed on the importance of family and the joy it brings will continue to live on through his children and grandchildren. He is survived by his son, William "Bill" Edward Broach, IV of Staunton, Va.; his daughter, Nicole Luisa Broach Lynn and her husband, Gene of Danville, Va.; his son, William "Tyler" Broach of Williamsburg, Va. and his daughter, Audra Leigh Broach of Marietta, Ohio. He also leaves his grandchildren, Isabella Lynn, Owen Lynn, Rebekah Lynn, and Kasey Lynn; his sister, Nancy Stewart of Blue Ridge Mountain, Va.; and brother, Steven Broach of Danville, Va. To honor the life and memory of William Broach III, the family will be hosting a Celebration of Life event at the Danville Science Center on Thursday, May 11, 2017, from 5 until 9 p.m. All those who have been touched by the love and kindness of Dr. Broach are welcome to join in the celebration, including children. The family humbly asks that in lieu of flowers, please send any donations to The Free Clinic of Danville, Inc. at 133 South Ridge Street Danville, VA 24541. Townes Funeral Home is assisting the Broach family. Online condolences may be made at www.townesfuneralhome.com. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 10, 2017) - THIS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES Prospero Silver Corp. (TSX VENTURE:PSL) (the "Company" or "Prospero") is pleased to announce that it has closed the C$1.5-million strategic investment from Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. ("Fortuna") which was announced on April 17, 2017. Fortuna has purchased 5,357,142 units at C$0.28 per unit. Each unit comprises one common share in Prospero and one warrant entitling Fortuna to acquire one additional Prospero common share at C$0.35 for a period of 36 months. Prospero will allocate C$1.2 million to drill testing selected projects and C$300k will be allocated towards Prospero's generative efforts in Mexico. Fortuna will have the right to select one of the projects within 18 months from signing of the definitive agreement to joint venture with Prospero, potentially earning in to a 70% interest by spending US$8 million over 6 years and completing a Preliminary Economic Analysis on the selected property. All shares and warrants issued in connection with the Offering will be subject to a four month hold period expiring September 11, 2017. Tawn Albinson, the President of Prospero commented: "With today's closing, we now have the funding to drill test 3 key projects in our portfolio - Matorral, Petate, and Pachuca SE- and we'll be advancing the projects as promptly as possible. In anticipation of this deal closing, we have expedited permitting work on four projects. We will begin drilling at Matorral first, and we hope to award the drill contract in the next few weeks. I'd like to thank our new strategic partner, Fortuna Silver, for backing us and I'm looking forward to working with their exploration team in the coming 18 months." Prospero's Project PortfolioSanta Maria del Oro Project, Durango State Matorral and Lineament targets The Matorral target, with over 7km of prospective structures, is one of two targets on the 9,066 hectare Santa Maria del Oro claims. A drill permit has now been received by Prospero for 20 drill pads in 3 different areas to test for down-dip precious metal mineralization. Prospero's sampling has returned silver values form trace up to 460g/t Ag at surface. Surface access permits have been obtained and drill permitting is now in progress for the second target, the Magistral Lineament on the western side of the district, which is approximately 1.8km away from the historic Santa Maria del Oro mine. The Lineament structure was located by geophysics (see news release dated November 23, 2011). Petate, Hidalgo State The 6,868 hectare Petate property is the most advanced of Prospero's projects, with drill permits in progress for 30 drill sites and surface access secured from the land owners. High-level epithermal alteration is exposed over a 5x4 km area with highly anomalous gold and silver hosted in extensive outcrops and float of steep to strata-bound jasperoid. The significant size of the silicified zones indicates that Petate is a robust mineralized system with excellent potential to host a replacement type deposit at depth. Pachuca Southeast, Hidalgo State The Pachuca SE target consists of high-level epithermal-style alteration exposed in clay pits adjacent and on-strike from the historic Pachuca mining district. Prospero has received approvals from the Mexican archaeological agency (INAH) which paves the way for obtaining title on the 7,256 hectare claim. The anomalous geochemistry and clay alteration at Pachuca SE target are very similar to that seen in the Vizcaina structure above the historic Pachuca Mine. The target has size potential, strong hydrothermal alteration and a number of geochemical anomalies have been identified associated with structures that could host a preserved Pachuca-type epithermal deposit at depth. Bermudez, Chihuahua The 430 hectare Bermudez project is in Chihuahua, about 150km west of the City of Chihuahua. Additional mapping and sampling has been completed on the 2.5km strike length of the high-level low-sulfidation vein system. Based on assay results of 51 new samples, the best locations for 4 drill sites have been selected to test the potential for deeper mineralization. Acquisition of New Projects Prospero's geologists have been in the field for the last 3 months reviewing targets from the Company's data base. A number have been successfully identified for possible staking. The acquisition of the 100% owned Florida project was reported by news release dated December 7, 2016. One other project is in the advanced stage of staking and Prospero is currently in the process of completing the relevant paperwork. Management Changes Prospero wishes to announce that Martin Soto Moran will step down as the Vice President, Exploration effective immediately. Mr Moran will, however, remain with the Company as a senior geologist. The Company exploration efforts will continue to benefit from his extensive knowledge of Mexican mineral deposits and metallogeny. Qualified Person Tawn Albinson, M.Sc., President of the Company, is a Qualified Person, as defined in NI 43-101, and is responsible for the technical content of this news release. Mr. Albinson is a Member of the American Institute of Professional Geologists and a Certified Professional Geologist (CPG) No. 11368. About Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. Fortuna is a growth-oriented, precious metals producer focused on mining opportunities in Latin America. The company's primary assets are the Caylloma silver mine in southern Peru, the San Jose silver-gold mine in Mexico and the Lindero gold project in Argentina. About Prospero Silver Corp. Prospero is a Mexico-focused project generator listed on the TSX.V under the symbol PSL.V. Prospero's aim is to discover world-class precious metal projects in the major mineral belts of Mexico. The Company applies a unique blend of practical exploration experience, cutting-edge mineral deposit science, and an extensive knowledge of Mexicos geology to find new gold and silver systems. Our exploration programs are run by a small but highly-focused geological team based in Mexico. Forward-Looking Statement Cautions: This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, relating to, among other things, the Company's proposed use of the financing proceeds. 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 statements that are not historical facts; they are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "projects," "aims," "potential," "goal," "objective," "prospective," and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will," "would," "may," "can," "could" or "should" occur, or are those statements, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions that Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made and they involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include, possible, accidents and other risks associated with mineral exploration operations, the risk that the Company will encounter unanticipated geological factors, the possibility that the Company may not be able to secure permitting and other governmental clearances necessary to carry out the Company's exploration plans, the risk that the Company will not be able to raise the additional funds in the future to continue to carry out its business plans, and the risk of political uncertainties and regulatory or legal changes that might interfere with the Company's business and prospects. The reader is urged to refer to the Company's reports, publicly available through the Canadian Securities Administrators' System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) at www.sedar.com for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of securities of the Company in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful, including any of the securities in the United States of America. The Company's securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 (the "1933 Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. 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. VAL-D'OR, QC, May 10, 2017 /CNW/ - Orbit Garant Drilling Inc. (TSX: OGD) ("Orbit Garant" or the "Company") today announced its financial results for the three and nine-month periods ended March 31, 2017. All dollar amounts are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. Percentage calculations are based on numbers in the financial statements and may not correspond to rounded figures presented in this news release. Summary ($ amounts in millions, except per share amounts) Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended March 31, 2016 Nine months ended March 31, 2017 Nine months ended March 31, 2016 Revenue $29.9 $28.1 $87.8 $74.1 Gross Profit (loss) $1.2 $1.3 $5.6 $5.9 Gross Margin (%) 3.9 4.7 6.3 8.0 Adjusted Gross Margin (%) 10.7 14.9 14.1 17.5 EBITDA2 $(0.5) $0.3 $2.0 $3.2 Net earnings (loss) $(2.2) $(2.6) $(4.3) $(4.6) Net earnings (loss) per share - Basic and diluted $(0.06) $(0.07) $(0.12) $(0.13) Total metres drilled 313,184 313,469 917,194 817,595 1In accordance with IFRS, reported gross profit and margin include certain depreciation expenses. For comparative purposes, adjusted gross margin is also shown excluding these depreciation expenses. 2 EBITDA is defined as earnings (loss) before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. "With the strengthening of gold and base metals prices since the beginning of 2016, combined with a significant improvement in financing activity for mining and mineral exploration companies, we are experiencing strong growth in demand from new and existing customers in Canada. We recently renewed and obtained three important drilling contracts with a major customer for projects in Nunavut, representing potential revenue of more than $100 million over the next five fiscal years. We expect our surface drill utilization rates in Quebec and Ontario to be at or near full utilization by the end of our fiscal year," said Eric Alexandre, President and CEO of Orbit Garant. "Our margins and profitability in the quarter continue to reflect lower pricing on existing contracts in Canada, as well as increased employee training and project mobilization costs as we continue to ramp up our operations to meet customer demand. We now expect to see a positive impact from our increasing utilization rates and pricing increases on our new contracts in Canada towards the end of fiscal 2017 and into fiscal 2018." "We are pleased with the performance of our international business, particularly in Chile, where we are seeing increased opportunities to bid on projects. We experienced a slight decrease in international revenue in the quarter primarily due to a decline in drilling activity on a project in Guyana. Towards the end of the quarter, we commenced a new drilling contract in Burkina Faso. We currently have drilling operations in Chile, Guyana, Kazakhstan, Ghana and Burkina Faso, demonstrating the strong progress we have made in expanding our international market presence," added Mr. Alexandre. "Looking ahead, with our sound balance sheet, expanded international market presence, our focus on technological innovation and a comprehensive service offering, combined with strong customer demand and new project opportunities, we are well positioned for profitable growth." Third Quarter Results For the three months ended March 31, 2017 ("Q3 FY2017") revenue increased 6.5% to $29.9 million, compared to $28.1 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2016 ("Q3 FY2016"). Drilling Canada revenue increased 9.6% to $23.4 million, from $21.4 million in Q3 FY2016, reflecting an increase in metres drilled. International revenue was $6.5 million, compared to $6.7 million in Q3 FY2016. The slight decline in international revenue resulted from a decline in drilling activity on a project in Guyana compared to the third quarter a year ago. Orbit Garant's fleet drilled a total of 313,184 metres in Q3 FY2017, compared to 313,469 metres in Q3 FY2016. Consolidated average revenue per metre drilled was $95.17, up from $87.86 in Q3 FY2016. The increase in consolidated average revenue per metre drilled in Q3 FY2017 is attributable to the Company's specialized drilling activity in Chile, which is priced at higher rate than conventional drilling. Gross profit for Q3 FY2017 was $1.2 million, compared to $1.3 million in Q3 FY2016. Adjusted gross margin, excluding depreciation expenses of $2.0 million, was 10.7%, compared to adjusted gross margin, excluding depreciation expenses of $2.9 million, of 14.9% in Q3 FY2016. The decrease in gross profit and adjusted gross margin was primarily attributable to lower pricing on existing contracts in Canada and to increased employee training and project mobilization costs, reflecting increasing customer demand for the Company's drilling services. General and administrative (G&A) expenses were $3.8 million (12.6% of revenue) in Q3 FY2017, compared to $3.9 million (13.9% of revenue) in Q3 FY2016. The decline reflects the Company's disciplined cost controls in growing its business. Earnings (loss) before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA")1 was $(0.5) million in Q3 FY2017, compared to $0.3 million in Q3 FY2016. The Company's net loss for Q3 FY2017 was $2.2 million, or $0.06 per share, compared to a net loss of $2.6 million, or $0.07 per share, in Q3 FY2016. The decline in gross profit and adjusted gross margin resulting from Orbit Garant's increased investment in employee training and new project mobilization costs contributed to the net loss for the quarter. During Q3 FY2017, the Company generated $5.4 million from financing activities, compared to a negligible amount in Q3 FY2016. The Company withdrew a net amount of $6.0 million during Q3 FY2017 on its secured, three-year revolving credit facility (the "Credit Facility") with National Bank of Canada Inc. (the "Lender"), compared to a draw of $1.1 million in Q3 FY2016. In addition to the above, the Company provided a letter of credit to a bank of one of its subsidiaries for US$1.0 million (or approximately CAN$1.3 million) from the Credit Facility. As at March 31, 2017, the Company had $14.8 million drawn under the Credit Facility, compared to $7.4 million as at June 30, 2016, with the full amount re-classified from long-term debt to current debt, as the Credit Facility matures on December 19, 2017. Accordingly, working capital declined to $35.1 million from $42.9 million as at June 30, 2016. The Company is currently in discussions with the Lender to renew and extend the Credit Facility, at which point the debt would again be classified as long-term. In December 2016, the Company entered into a credit facility with Export Development Canada in the amount of $2.5 million. The purpose of the loan was to assist in financing capital expenditure requirements for the Company's international operations. As at March 31, 2017, there were 36,093,419 common shares of Orbit Garant issued and outstanding. Orbit Garant's unaudited consolidated financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the three and nine-month periods ended March 31, 2017 are available via the Company's website at www.orbitgarant.com or SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Conference call Eric Alexandre, President and CEO, and Alain Laplante, Vice President and CFO, will host a conference call for analysts and investors on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. (ET). The dial-in numbers for the conference call are 647-427-7450 or 1-888-231-8191. A live webcast of the call will be available on Orbit Garant's website at: http://www.orbitgarant.com/en/sites/fog/investors.aspx. The webcast will be archived following conclusion of the call. To access a replay of the conference call dial 416-849-0833 or 1-855-859-2056, passcode: 8396015. The replay will be available until May 18, 2017. About Orbit Garant Headquartered in Val-d'Or, Quebec, Orbit Garant is one of the largest Canadian-based mineral drilling companies, providing both underground and surface drilling services in Canada and internationally through its 221 drill rigs and more than 1,000 employees. Orbit Garant provides services to major, intermediate and junior mining companies, through each stage of mining exploration, development and production. The Company also provides geotechnical drilling services to mining or mineral exploration companies, engineering and environmental consultant firms, and government agencies. For more information, please visit the Company's website at www.orbitgarant.com. (1) Management believes that EBITDA is a useful supplemental measure of operating performance before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. However, EBITDA is not a recognized earnings measure under IFRS and does not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. Investors are cautioned that EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to net income or loss (which is determined in accordance with IFRS) as an indicator of the performance of the Company or as a measure of liquidity and cash flows. The Company's method of calculating EBITDA may differ materially from the methods used by other public companies and, accordingly, may not be comparable to similarly named measures used by other public companies. Forward-looking information This news release may contain forward-looking statements (within the meaning of applicable securities laws) relating to business of Orbit Garant Drilling Inc. (the "Company") and the environment in which it operates. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as "believe", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "plan", "will", "may" and other similar expressions. These statements are based on the Company's expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections. They are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Company's regulatory filings available at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate as actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Readers, therefore, should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Further, a forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any such statement or to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances. SOURCE Orbit Garant Drilling Inc. Betsy Hodges is running for re-election as mayor of Minneapolis this year on a fairly progressive record. She's devoted some $40 million to affordable housing, put an emphasis on care for young children and signed an ordinance mandating that employers provide paid sick leave.Nonetheless, Hodges faces several serious challengers running to her left. Hodges has opened herself up to progressive criticism due to her shifting positions on a prospective minimum-wage increase and handling of a high-profile police shooting."Even though she's the most progressive mayor in Minnesota, most of her rivals are to the left of her," says Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. "There's no doubt there's a kind of Robespierre moment in the Democratic Party, where if you're not sufficiently pure, you're suspect."Robespierre was a leader in revolutionary France who launched a "reign of terror" to enforce political purity. Democrats are not going anywhere near that far. But there's no doubt progressives are challenging party leaders and officeholders not just to oppose President Trump at every turn, but to adhere to liberal positions across the board.Parties tend to return to their bases after losing the presidency, says Lara Brown, a political scientist at George Washington University. "What opens up is this huge strategic debate about what should we stand for and who should be our leader."Indeed, contemporary parties that have suffered losses seem to go through a phase where there's an internal argument about identity. Much as the Republican Party became more conservative following the election of President Barack Obama, Democrats now are insisting that their leaders adhere strictly to liberal doctrine, threatening to punish officeholders who break from orthodoxy. New progressive groups such as Our Revolution and Indivisible rose from the ashes of the party's defeat last year, recruiting liberal candidates and holding elected Democrats' feet to the fire.There was a symbolic fight along these lines immediately after the election, when the Democratic Party picked Tom Perez as its new chair. Because he had served in the Obama administration, Perez was seen as the "establishment" choice over progressive Congressman Keith Ellison, who happens to represent Minneapolis.The framing of that debate has already colored other party contests.In Virginia, for instance, former Congressman Tom Perriello is challenging Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam for the gubernatorial nomination in next month's primary, painting himself as the more progressive choice on economic issues. This past weekend, former congressional candidate Kathleen Matthews was selected to chair the Maryland Democratic Party, with her opponent complaining she was an establishment choice who would do things the same old way.Elected Democrats such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also find themselves castigated from the left, even when they've put a lot of progressive points on the board on issues such as environmental protections, minimum wage and gay rights. "The dynamics within the Democratic Party have created a demand for more progressive governance," says Karen Scharff, executive director of Citizen Action of New York, a liberal advocacy group.Arguments about party orthodoxy spilled out into the open in yesterday's election for mayor of Omaha . Democrat Heath Mello launched a strong challenge to GOP Mayor Jean Stothert, but he lacked the full backing of his party. Prompted by votes Mello had cast in the Nebraska Legislature against abortion rights, party chair Perez stated that all Democratic candidates had to respect women's reproductive rights.That stance was too doctrinaire for Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the U.S. House. She said last week that the party shouldn't demand that candidates pass a litmus test on any particular issue.Now Pelosi herself has drawn a challenge from the left, an environmental attorney named Stephen Jaffe. "Jaffe suggests Pelosi is not liberal enough or, for that matter, even a true liberal, a proposition that would be dismissed as outlandish anywhere other than San Francisco," noted theJaffe won't give Pelosi a serious scare, but his challenge illustrates two of the main dynamics driving this push for progressive purity.Democratic voting strength and the party's remnants of power are not exclusively, but mainly limited to the major cities, college towns and the coasts. If you live in a blue enclave, you're more likely to believe that a progressive vision provides not just a winning but a necessary message."New York should be a triple-blue state, given our makeup," Scharff says. "It's been true forever that New York could be more of a leading progressive state than it's been, and it's more true than ever now that New York has to play that role, taking the lead in the way other states are leading in a moment when we desperately need state governments to protect us against a right-wing federal government."A number of progressive candidates who are now lining up, including Jaffe, were energized by the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. Many Democrats now believe Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, could have succeeded against Trump where the more moderate Hillary Clinton failed.It's the mirror image of Republicans who complained that they lost to Obama because their presidential nominees weren't conservative enough. Some progressive activists have openly compared themselves to the Tea Party , which succeeded in pulling the GOP to the right. "What happens is the loss opens up the fractures [within the party] that had been forming, that get papered over when you have the presidency," says Brown, the George Washington University professor.It's already clear that progressives aren't going to win every battle they pick. But Michael Quinn Sullivan, who runs a conservative advocacy group called Empower Texans, gives Democrats credit for having the "nerve" to hold a discussion about what their convictions are and how they have to stick to them. "The Democrats are definitely in a state of existential crisis," he says.His warning for the other side is that, by insisting on orthodoxy among elected officials, progressives risk not only chiding candidates, but putting off potential supporters. "That's going to translate to voters as saying, 'if you have beliefs that are at odds with the party platform, you're not welcome any more,'" Sullivan says.It's clear from the amount of ongoing protests and striking fundraising numbers being posted by traditional party organizations and the new groups that Democrats have been highly energized by the Trump presidency. Getting their core supporters excited about voting is the first step in returning to power -- and may be enough to propel the party to big victories in the midterm elections next year.But regaining strength on a national basis requires more than firing up the base. Winning requires building coalitions, an act that by its nature means making peace with individuals and groups who hold different perspectives. Politics is all about creating as big a movement as possible among actors whose beliefs overlap, but don't line up entirely. "This quest for purity at the end of the day is a self-defeating strategy, because you end up narrowing your appeal, not increasing it," Brown says.Partisans on the left may argue that the presidency was lost because people who shared their ideological beliefs were insufficiently motivated by Clinton's candidacy to turn out to vote. There may be some truth to that, but Brown warns that parties can seldom recover voters whose affections they've lost. "You have to go forward and start pushing into the opposing party's base," he says, "where they have started to ignore their supporters." Description GIS 10 May 2017: The Financial Services Promotion Agency (FSPA) showcased Mauritius as the jurisdiction of choice for investing in Africa at the Africa Financial Services Investment Conference 2017 (AFSIC) held in the United Kingdom (UK) from the 2 to 5 May 2017. The Financial Services Promotion Agency (FSPA) showcasedat the Africa Financial Services Investment Conference 2017 (AFSIC) held The United Kingdom is, and remains, one of the priority markets for the Mauritius International Financial Centre and to tap into opportunities arising for Mauritius, following recent global developments, the FSPA led a strong delegation of 20 companies represented by more than 30 professionals to the UK last week. I n the margins of the participation of the Mauritian delegation at AFSIC, the FSPA hosted a highly-targeted Mauritius IFC Business Meet on the 5th of May in London to showcase and reinforce the image of Mauritius as the investment hub for Africa and FINTECH related activities. The Business Meet was officially opened by Mr Girish Nunkoo, High Commissioner of Mauritius to the UK. It was attended by more than 100 highly targeted UK based operators in the fields of investment banking, asset and fund management, wealth management, family offices, legal services and Fintech, amongst others. Speaking at the Business Meet, Mr. Nunkoo stated that as financial centres, London and Mauritius have a lot in common and underlined that by developing collaboration models, both countries can create, through the relevant institutions, opportunities for all. Mauritius has the requisites to be used and act as a platform for investments into Africa and other emerging markets, he added. The Business Meet also featured two focussed panel discussions on the theme Mauritius-Access Centre of Choice for Africa and Other Emerging Markets. Description GIS 10 May 2017: Based o n the new guidelines prepared by the National CSR Foundation, 235 project proposals from 156 NGOs, have been received by the closing date 2 May 2017, said the Minister of Social Integration and Economic Empowerment, Mr Alain Wong, on 9 May 2017 at the National Assembly. The Minister was replying to a Parliamentary Question on the Corporate Social Responsibility and representations made by NGOs pertaining to their financial difficulties in maintaining the provision of services as well as proposed solutions. According to Mr Wong, the Foundation had invited NGOs and non-profit making organisations to submit project proposals and, following representations from stakeholders, the closing date for submission of projects has been extended to 12 May 2017. The Foundation is currently processing applications which have already been received. Minister Wong pointed out that eleven NGOs have made representations to his Ministry and the Foundation to the effect that they are facing financial difficulties to maintain their level of services. Government acknowledges the good work being undertaken by the NGOs and would like to provide them with all possible assistance so that they can continue their operations, he said. The Minister recalled that this year, businesses are allowed to use 50% of their CSR funds according to their own CSR framework and that NGOs would continue to benefit from contributions from the private sector. In addition, Mr Wong stated, Government provides direct financial support to NGOs yearly from the Government Budget. For the Fiscal Year 2015/2016, an amount of Rs 275 million was provided and for Fiscal Year 2016/2017 the total amounted to Rs 322 million. Moreover, NGOs can seek funding of their projects under the Decentralised Cooperation Programme (DCP) which is a European Union funded initiative operating under the aegis of the Ministry of Social Integration and Economic Empowerment. The latest DCP initiative for a total amount of Rs 80 million has started in January 2016 and will last till October 2019. Under this initiative, a call for proposal was launched in August 2016 where grant of a maximum amount of Rs 4 million each will be funded. The award of the grant is expected by mid-June this year. A new CSR Framework was announced in the Budget 2016/2017 with a view to ensuring greater transparency and better outcomes in the implementation of the CSR programmes whereby businesses would be required to contribute 50% of their CSR funds to the National CSR Foundation in 2017 and at least 75% in 2018. The remaining balance would be used by businesses to implement their CSR programmes according to their own CSR framework. Description GIS - 10 May, 2017: An awareness day on safety and security of children organised by the National Childrens Council was held this morning at the Queen Elizabeth College in Rose Hill, in the presence of the Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, Mrs Fazila Daureeawoo. In her opening address, Mrs Daureeawoo, underlined that children are vulnerable and prone to social ills. She emphasised on the importance of empowering youths through proper sensitising and education which in turn will help them overcome scourges and stay safe. Governments aim, highlighted the Gender Minister, is to uphold the best interests and rights of children as well as shoulder the responsibility of promoting their well-being. She added that Government has set up systems to protect and prioritise the rights of children and is looking forward to further promote the welfare of children by setting up a Childrens Bill. Minister Daureeawoo concluded by underlining the importance of good parenting as this will ensure better childcare and foster a supportive environment for children. She urged parents to provide quality parenting time to their children so that the transmission of core values is completed. The awareness programme is in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Governments mission to promote the welfare of children and foster their development in a safe and secure environment. It aims to r aise awareness about various scourges that pervade in the society related to drugs and violence, amongst others. Resource persons for the awareness programme are representatives from the Mauritius Police Force, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure and Land Transport, the Ministry of Health and Quality of Life, and the Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research. (TNS) - the Fayetteville, N.C., police camera surveillance system, which has been plagued with power and network problems since Hurricane Matthew, has gone dark.The city's Information Technology staff hastily reinstalled part of the camera network for the Fayetteville Dogwood Festival downtown in late April, but a heavy rain storm afterward knocked the entire system off line again.The network, with a little more than 100 cameras along major thoroughfares, was installed in 2014-15 by grants and hailed by then-Police Chief Harold Medlock as a force multiplier that helped lawmen nab suspects caught on footage and reduce crime.But according to recent interviews with city officials and the vendor that installed the cameras and WiFi network to operate them, the system is over capacity. It cannot handle the reams of data from the video captured and then sent to the Police Department, where the cameras are controlled by computers and images are shown on large monitors on a wall.The city and the vendor, which is Wildfire Camera Networks of Rock Hill, South Carolina, have been in a dispute for months.Deputy City Manager Kristoff Bauer has acknowledged the city stopped paying Wildfire Camera Networks over a disagreement with how the company was maintaining the system.And we have a dispute with the contractor, due to the lack of service, so we are on the legal side and looking to enforce the contract provisions, Bauer said at a small council group budget meeting last week.Bob Dunlap, the chief executive officer for Wildfire, said he warned city officials last year the network was rapidly approaching capacity. He said he submitted several proposals to upgrade the system, but the city never responded to them.According to Dunlap, the city owes Wildfire about $35,000 for work repairing the system after Matthew, which dumped nearly 15 inches of rain in October and caused widespread damage in eastern North Carolina.We think we were doing very good work under the circumstances, and we were just frustrated by not being paid, and they were not responding for six months, Dunlap said.Bauer and Dunlap agreed the network was built with a focus on speed rather than long-term durability.They pressed us all the time, Dunlap said, referring to police under Medlock's administration.The chief retired in December.Bauer and Dunlap, however, offer different accounts on why Wildfire is no longer maintaining the network. Bauer said when officials tried to hold the vendor accountable, they revoked our right to use their service.They basically shut down the network, Bauer said.Dunlap, in a phone interview Tuesday, said the city's IT department informed his company in January it would be taking over the network, and Wildfire was locked out of the system the next day.Dunlap said his company's engineers in January warned the city the rapidly growing camera network was reaching its bandwidth and overall operational capacity and would require a significant upgrade to continue to function properly.Lt. Todd Joyce, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said Matthew knocked out the camera system by cutting off power and causing problems to its wireless network on which it relied. He said the most of the system was back up by around Christimas-time.But problems with it festered after the holidays.It was never 100 percent, Joyce said.Then, a week before Easter, Joyce said, the system went down another victim of a storm and network problems.The system's troubled status came to light last week at a budget meeting when Mayor Pro Tem Mitch Colvin said he had heard the cameras weren't working.That was a major asset to the community, so I'm concerned about it, Colvin said Monday.According to Bauer and Joyce, the city is looking to find another vendor to upgrade the system and getting it running again. Neither knew off-hand Tuesday the timeline for restoring the camera network.Staff writer Andrew Barksdale can be reached at abarksdale@fayobserver.com or 486-3565.2017 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)Visit The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) at www.fayobserver.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. (TNS) -- Almost 100 hospitals reported suspicious data on dangerous infections to Medicare officials, but the agency did not follow up or examine any of the cases in depth, according to a report by the Health and Human Services inspector generals office.Most hospitals report how many infections strike patients during treatment, meaning the infections are likely contracted inside the facility. Each year, Medicare is supposed to review up to 200 cases in which hospitals report suspicious infection-tracking results.The IG said Medicare should have done an in-depth review of 96 hospitals that submitted aberrant data patterns in 2013 and 2014. Such patterns could include a rapid change in results, improbably low infection rates or assertions that infections nearly always struck before patients arrived at the hospital.The IGs study, released last week, was designed to address concerns over whether hospitals are gaming a system in which it falls to the hospitals to report patient-infection rates and, in turn, the facilities can see a bonus or a penalty worth millions of dollars. The bonuses and penalties are part of Medicares Inpatient Quality Reporting program, which is meant to reward hospitals for low infection rates and give consumers access to the information at the agencys Hospital Compare website.The report zeroes in on a persistent concern about deadly infections that patients develop as a result of being in the hospital. A recent British Medical Journal report identified medical errors as the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. Hospital infections particularly threaten senior citizens with weakened immune systems.Rigorous review of hospital-reported data is important to protect patients, said Lisa McGiffert, director of the Consumers Unions Safe Patient Project.Theres a certain amount of blind faith that the hospitals are going to tell the truth, McGiffert said. Its a bit much to expect that if they have a bad record theyre going to fess up to it.Yet there are no uniform standards for reviewing the data that hospitals report, said Dr. Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine.There are greater requirements for what a company says about a washing machines performance than there is for a hospital on quality of care, and this needs to change, Pronovost said. We require auditing of financial data, but we dont require auditing of (health care) quality data, and what that implies is that dollars are more important than deaths.In 2015, Medicare and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a joint statement cautioning against efforts to manipulate the infection data. The report said CDC officials heard anecdotal reports of hospitals declining to test apparently infected patients so there would be no infection to report. They also warned against overtesting, which helps hospitals assert that patients came into the hospital with a preexisting infection, thus avoiding a penalty.In double-checking hospital-reported data from 2013 and 2014, Medicare reviewed the results from 400 randomly selected hospitals, about 10 percent of the nations more than 4,000 hospitals. Officials also examined the data from 49 targeted hospitals that had previously underreported infections or had a low score on a prior years review.All told, only six hospitals failed the review, which included a look at patients medical records and tissue sample analyses. Those hospitals were subject to a 0.6 percent reduction in their Medicare payments. Medicare did not specify which six hospitals failed the data review, but it did identify dozens of hospitals that received a pay reduction based on their reports on the quality of care.The new IG report recommended that Medicare make better use of analytics to ensure the integrity of hospital-reported quality data. A response letter from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma says Medicare concurs with the finding and will continue to evaluate the use of better analytics as feasible, based on (Medicares) operational capabilities.Questions about truth in reporting hospital infections have percolated for years, as reports have trickled out from states that double-check data.In Colorado, one-third of the central-line infections that state reviewers found in 2012 were not reported to the state by hospitals, as required. Central lines are inserted into a patients vein to deliver nutrients, fluids or medicine. Two years later, though, reviewers found that only 2 percent of central-line infections were not reported.In Connecticut, a 2010 analysis of three months of cases found that hospitals reported about half 23 out of 48 of the central-line infections that made patients sick. Reviewers took a second look in 2012 and found improved reporting about a quarter of the cases were unreported, according to the state public health department.New York state officials have a rigorous data-checking system that they described in a report on 2015 infection rates. In 2014, they targeted hospitals that were reporting low rates of infections and urged self-audits that found underreporting rates of nearly 11 percent.Not all states double-check the data, though, which Pronovost said underscores the problem with data tracking the quality of health care. He said common oversight standards, like the accounting standards that apply to publicly traded corporations, would make sense in health care, given that patients make life-or-death decisions based on quality ratings assigned to hospitals.Youd think, given the stakes, youd have more confidence that the data is reliable, he said. (TNS) -- CHEYENNE Mayor Marian Orr on Tuesday announced a plan to bring high-speed broadband internet access to the downtown and West Edge district of Cheyenne.Speaking downtown at the Array School of Technology & Design, Orr announced her plan to seek a six-month moratorium on public right-of-way fees for the installation of the fiber optic cables high-speed internet connections rely on.The idea, she said, is to provide incentive to broadband internet service providers who have wanted to come into Cheyenne, but have been put off by the existing fees. Orr noted the fees downtown come to $2.50 per linear foot, which she said is a needlessly onerous expense and a barrier to proper redevelopment in the downtown and West Edge areas.I believe high-speed internet availability to every location in downtown and the West Edge is every bit as critical as the ability to turn on the lights, Orr said.Eric Trowbridge, the headmaster for Array, said that as his school has grown, so too have its broadband needs. But without the sort of gigabit-speed access enjoyed by Wyoming towns like Worland and Thermopolis, he and his students wireless devices can only do so much before they hit a data bottleneck.As a school, this is not, Oh it'd be nice, this is We need this, Trowbridge said. We're proud of Array and have a lot of big dreams and visions for our school. In three to five years we want to be one of the nations best tech and design schools. This fiber network is the first step to ensuring we can do things like that.Dave Teubner, the co-founder of West Edge marketing agency Warehouse Twenty One, agreed that opening the door to affordable high-speed internet will be critical to growing his own business and helping to foster new ones in a portion of town that has great potential to be a hub for tech business.You're not eating into a competitive advantage with this, you're getting to a baseline, Teubner said. This is need-to-have infrastructure, and I think this (fee moratorium) is a game changer.Orr said any moratorium on fiber right-of-way fees would need to be formally approved by the City Council, and she hopes to see a resolution work its way through the body over the coming weeks, in time to have the moratorium in place through the last six months of this year. She noted that shes already gotten an enthusiastic response from councilmen Scott Roybal, Jeff White and Pete Laybourn, who represent the ward where the moratorium would be in effect.As to whether the moratorium might actually spur broadband providers to come to Cheyenne, Orr said shes been in talks with several such providers about what sorts of incentives theyre looking for.There's been interest expressed, but the right-of-way fees have really been an extreme barrier, she said, adding that with Tuesdays announcement, I have two companies that are very excited.Once a company is able to get approval to install fiber optic lines in the downtown or West Edge area, Orr said they may pursue a franchisee agreement with the city that would allow them to continue operating and expanding without any further fear of right-of-way fees in the future.Hopefully within six months they could start laying fiber, Orr said. The city would then get a portion of the revenue they get from their monthly fees and contracts with individuals.Talking with provider companies, they're very excited about coming in and providing this opportunity, Orr added. And I think were going to have some really exciting conversations here in the next couple of weeks. Timo Glock has admitted that hinting he is set to return to formula one was a "joke". The German contested almost 100 grands prix for Jordan, Toyota and Marussia, but since 2013 has been a works BMW driver in the German touring car series DTM. This week, some reporters became excited when the 35-year-old wrote on social media that he did a seat fitting with a F1 team. "Will let you know soon which will be the first race!" Glock added as the caption to a photo depicting him sitting in a single seater-style cockpit. But it quickly emerged that Glock was actually not doing a F1 seat fitting, but simply at the wheel of a single seater simulator. He told German media that his social media post had simply been a "bit of a joke". "I will not replace anyone anywhere," Glock clarified. "This took off like a rocket! Lots of fans saw it's not a seat fit. I am the happiest guy being able to drive DTM for BMW with such a great partner like Deutsche Post, so don't worry." (GMM) The 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee mid-size SUV has become the second gasoline-driven, US-made, US-brand vehicle to qualify for Japans Eco-Car tax break. The 2016 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk was first. Jeep is Japans top-selling US vehicle brand; sales hit a record high of 9,388 in 2016a 31.7% jump, year-over-year. Equipped with versions of the award-winning Pentastar V-6 engine, the 2017 Grand Cherokee and its predecessor met the strict fuel-efficiency and emissions standards allowing them to be eligible for the consumer tax incentiveworth between 58,000 and 66,000 (US$510 to $580) to Grand Cherokee buyers. The Grand Cherokee that qualifies for Japans Eco-Tax incentive is powered by an upgraded version of the award-winning Pentastar V-6. Among the key elements of the upgraded 213-kW (295-horsepower) is two-step variable valve lift (VVL), which boosts fuel economy and Pentastars refinement. The system is designed to remain mostly in low-lift mode until the customer demands more power. Then it responds by switching to high-lift mode, which helps deliver more air to the cylinder. The result is less overall pumping work. Other features of the engine include: Cooled exhaust-gas recirculation (EGR) delivers greater efficiency and enables knock-free operation at higher, real-world loads. New intake manifold, longer runners enable torque boost; increased compression ratio; high-tumble intake ports and shrouded combustion chambers. Fuel-saving Engine Stop-Start (ESS) reduces fuel consumption by shutting off the engine whenever the vehicle comes to a complete stop. When the driver lifts his/her foot from the brake pedal, the engine restarts automatically. Meanwhile, the vehicles radio, gauges, heating/air-conditioning system and other equipment, remain operational. The smooth-shifting TorqueFlite eight-speed automatic transmission also contributes significantly to the fuel efficiency of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which achieves a 9.6 km/L (22.6 mpg US, 10.4 l/100 km) fuel-efficiency rating in Japan. The gearbox is from a family of transmissions available in more than a dozen FCA vehicles. The combined efficiency of the Grand Cherokees Pentastar-TorqueFlite pairing is primarily responsible for its 4-Star emissions rating in Japan, a key requirement of the Eco-Car tax incentive program. Globally, the Jeep brand recorded 1.42 million sales in 2016a year-over-year increase of 9%. The Jeep Grand Cherokee is produced at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit. Nitin Gadkari, Indias Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, recently inaugurated Prajs cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant near Pune, India. The plant is Indias first integrated bio-refinery, built to showcase Prajs proprietary process technology to produce ethanol from agricultural waste. The demonstration plant has the capacity to produce 1 million liters (264,000 gallons US) of ethanol annually from a variety of biomass such as rice and wheat straw, cotton stalks, sugarcane trash, bagasse, corn cobs and stover. Backed by its expertise and experience of well integrated first-generation technologies, Praj is confident that its second-generation ethanol technology will produce ethanol at the lowest cost and GHG emissions. Praj has invested close to US$30 million for the development of cellulosic ethanol technology over the last seven years. Praj has already signed MoUs with Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd to be their technology partners for certain projects in India. In the first phase, about 10 to 12 projects based on second-generation ethanol technology are being planned across the country, each with a capital outlay of approximately US$100 million and average capacity of 100,000 liters of ethanol per day. The future is electric. We intend to be the N 1 in e-mobility by 2025 , said Muller at the meeting. At the same time, the Volkswagen Group is continuing to develop diesel and gasoline engines, targeting making them a further 10 to 15 percent more efficient and cleaner by 2020. Diesel , said Muller, will remain indispensable for the foreseeable future . In total, the Volkswagen Group will be investing around 10 billion (US$10.9 billion) in these technologies by 2022. The Volkswagen Group has invested some 3 billion (US$3.3 billion) in alternative drive technologies over the past five years and will triple this amount in the course of the next five years, said Matthias Muller, CEO of Volkswagen AG, at the Groups Annual General Meeting in Hanover. In order to provide affordable, sustainable mobility on a large scale we will continue to deploy the complete spectrum of drive types: from conventional to fully electric. Matthias Muller The Volkswagen Group will introduce more than 10 new electrified models by the end of 2018, Muller said. By 2025, the Group will and more than 30 more BEVs.The newly-established Center of Excellence in Salzgitter will bundle Group-wide competence in battery cells and modules. At the same time, the Group is negotiating partnerships in the field of battery cells in Europe and China. Muller also highlighted how the realignment of the Group from an automaker into a globally leading mobility provider was gaining a foothold, citing further initiatives. A central element of the program for the future is partnerships to develop new business opportunities or advance new technologies. Muller referred to several examples such as the plans to enter the economy segment with Tata, the envisaged joint venture with JAC in China to develop attractively-priced electric cars, and numerous cooperation projects in the field of mobility services. Shortly after setting up an interview with Lily Zerihun, the Duke graduate from Greensboro who got into a remarkable 11 medical schools (heres the story from Sundays paper), I panicked: What if its really easy to get into med school? Law schools and MBA programs are like undergraduate colleges and universities some are selective, but many accept half or more of their applicants. Med school, however, is a whole different ball of cerumen, which is, I assume, what doctors call the yellow crap in your ears. (You know, because doctors know the Latin words for things.) Acceptance rates to U.S. med schools are microscopic. I had no idea it was so hard to get in. So I reached out to the Association of American Medical Colleges (aka the Double-A Em Cee) for some answers about applying to med school. Heres what I learned: Med schools are extremely hard to get into. The 10 hardest med schools to get into, according to U.S. News & World Report, range from the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine in Minnesota (1.8 percent acceptance rate) to the University of California-San Diego (3 percent). Even the easiest-to-get-into med schools accept fewer than 10 percent of their applicants. One caveat: I had trouble finding good data on med school acceptance rates. AAMC doesnt publish them for individual schools, and individual schools dont trumpet their numbers. But I did manage to dig up a few. The acceptance rate at Wake Forest is 3 percent. At Carolina, its about 3 percent, maybe a tick higher. (UNC doesnt report number of applicants that I could find.) At Columbia, where Zerihun will go in the fall, its a very detailed 4 percent. Most med school applicants arent accepted anywhere. According to this AAMC chart, fewer than half of applicants about 41 percent, actually get into med school somewhere. Roughly a quarter of all applicants are applying for at least the second time. That's how competitive this process is. Most students apply to a lot of med schools. One reason acceptance rates are so low: Students applied to a ton of med schools 16 (!) on average, according to the AAMC. (Zerihun applied to 21.) For the class that started med school this fall, 53,042 applicants produced 830,016 actual applications for 21,030 seats. That's a lot of math to explain how individual schools can accept fewer than 10 percent of their applicants but 40-some percent of applicants get in somewhere. Med schools are small. There are 147 accredited medical schools in the U.S. (Im talking allopathic medical schools, which award the traditional M.D., and not osteopathic medical schools.) Med school enrollment averages about 600 students; only eight schools have more than 1,000. That means each incoming class is roughly 150 students, give or take. The small size is by design because a med school's infrastructure is limited, Geoffrey Young, the AAMC's senior director of student affairs and programs, told me in a recent interview. Faculty, classrooms and labs cost money and take space. Also, med students need clinical spots during their third and fourth years and residencies after they graduate. Those things aren't unlimited, either. The AAMC notes that med school enrollment has grown by about 25 percent since 2002. However, from 2007 to 2016, applications (up 25 percent) have grown faster than the number of seats for first-year students (up 18 percent). Med students usually come from elite schools. The top 10 producers of med students for fall 2016, by my count: UCLA, Florida, Cal-Berkeley, Michigan, Texas, UC-San Diego, Cornell, Ohio State, Washington and UC-Davis. UNC-Chapel Hill was 13th; Duke was 21st. (I extrapolated those numbers from here, in case you're curious.) Not surprisingly, these schools are either state flagships, big research schools or top-shelf private universities in other words, places where wealthy families send their kids. Thats because Applying to med school is unbelievably expensive. Students start with the AMCAS, short for the American Medical College Application Service. (Think of it as the Common App for med school.) AAMC charges $160 to use the service and apply to one school; subsequent applications are $38 each. (Remember how the average student applies to 16 med schools? Ouch.) Med schools often require a secondary application that can cost up to $200 each. The MCAT (the med school equivalent of the SAT or ACT) is another $310. And we havent even gotten to interviews, which means travel and overnight stays. Grades and test scores arent everything but they mostly are. Med schools want well-rounded students who not only have great grades and test scores but also have experiences as volunteers and in health care and research settings. Soft skills, such as communication, are big, too. (Heres how UNC describes its ideal candidate.) Young said many med schools are adapting what he called a holistic approach. "They're not only looking at metrics GPA in science courses and overall, and MCAT scores but what other experiences and attributes they may bring to school that supports their mission," he said. But at the end of the day, according to this chart, grades and test scores still matter the most. An A average and a great MCAT score doesn't guarantee admission, but it sure does seem to help. More students are taking a gap year. Zerihun did, and it's something she recommends, especially after seeing a Duke classmate trying to meet some early med school deadlines while on a summer trip to India. (The Wi-Fi there was spotty, she said.) Young said: "They want to strengthen their records, or they need to work, or they want additional life experiences." Apply early. Most med schools have fall application deadlines and will start sending out acceptance letters starting in mid-October. (Zerihun got half of her acceptances before Christmas.) Young, the former admissions dean of the Medical College of Georgia, said his predecessor filled each class as he went. When he got 190 acceptances, he called it a year. Young said he overbooked each class slightly he'd accept, say, 260 or so students for 230 seats, and try to fight for some students who would be competitive elsewhere. He knew he wouldn't win every recruiting battle, but, he said, "my hope is that I'd be in the running." Getting into 11 med schools is remarkable ... Update, 1:45 p.m. Thursday: The N&O also interviewed Zerihun. Here's the story that was published Thursday morning. Want to make sure you see these blog posts? Like me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter. Have something to say? Email me at john.newsom@greensboro.com. WASHINGTON The Senate intelligence committee has asked ousted FBI Director James Comey to appear before the committee next week. It is the first time Comey has been asked to appear before Congress as a private citizen since he was fired by President Donald Trump on Tuesday. Rebecca Watkins, a spokeswoman for the committee, said Wednesday that Comey has been invited to meet in a closed session next Tuesday. Comey had been slated to appear before the committee later this week to discuss ongoing threats to U.S. security. But the committee says acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe will stand in for Comey at Thursday's hearing. Several high-ranking intelligence officials will join McCabe at that open hearing. __ 1:55 p.m. The White House says that President Donald Trump had considered firing FBI Director James Comey "since the day he was elected president." White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that the president had "lost confidence" in Comey and acted on the advice of the deputy attorney general and others when he decided to fire him on Tuesday. Sanders said, "I think it's been an erosion of confidence" and that there were a lot of "missteps and mistakes" leading up to the decision to let Comey go. ___ 1:35 p.m. More than a dozen Republican senators voiced concerns about President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, in a series of statements suggesting that, on this issue, the GOP was not yet prepared to close ranks behind its president. The unease expressed by key committee chairs and rank-and-file lawmakers alike on Wednesday came even as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell echoed White House talking points on the issue and tried to shut down talk of a special prosecutor to investigate Russia issues. Said West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito: "I think we need to find out what's happened and why." Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell noted that Democrats themselves had repeatedly criticized Comey over his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email issues. And he said that with the FBI and Senate intelligence committee already investigating Russian interference, nothing further was needed. ___ 1:30 p.m. President Donald Trump is considering four high-ranking FBI officials to serve as the bureau's interim director following the firing of James Comey. Among the candidates is Andrew McCabe, who was elevated to acting director after Comey's ouster Tuesday. A White House official says Trump is also considering assistant FBI director Paul Abbate, Chicago special agent Michael J. Anderson and Richmond, Virginia, agent Adam Lee. The Justice Department is overseeing the interview process for the interim director, which is separate from Trump's decision-making process on a permanent replacement. ___ 1:25 p.m. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe will appear at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Thursday in place of ex-FBI Director James Comey. The Senate intelligence committee has confirmed that McCabe will be at the hearing instead of Comey, who was fired on Tuesday by President Donald Trump. The hearing is about current and projected national security threats to the United States and U.S. interests both domestically and abroad. Others scheduled to testify are National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency. Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, who heads the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, also will be questioned by lawmakers on the committee. The hearing will move into closed session following the open hearing. ___ 12:25 p.m. Three U.S. officials say fired FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers that he asked the Justice Department for more money for the bureau's investigation into Russia's election meddling. President Donald Trump fired Comey Tuesday. The officials say Comey told lawmakers he had made the request to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. The Justice Department is denying that Comey asked for more resources. The White House has wielded a critical memo from Rosenstein to justify President Donald Trump's decision to fire Comey on Tuesday. Rosenstein's memo focused only on Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices. It does not mention the Russia investigation. The officials were not authorized to disclose the meetings publicly and insisted on anonymity. If President Donald Trump wants to see oil rigs off the Southeast coast, hell have to roll over opposition from beach towns first. The Obama administration withdrew Atlantic tracts from oil and gas exploration because of concerns expressed by coastal residents and property owners. Trump should listen just as attentively. Unfortunately, hes not. The administrations proposal is disappointing and at odds with the overwhelming chorus of voices at home speaking out against offshore drilling, Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina said in a statement after the administration reversed the Obama decision. I have joined local leaders, advocates, organizations, and individuals up and down the South Carolina coast in opposing offshore drilling because it poses a real threat to tourism, quality of life, and our environment. The same is true of North Carolina, even if our states Republican congressional delegation wont stand up to Trump. Sanford will. Following the presidents executive order opening the Atlantic to exploration, Sanford filed a bill that would suspend such operations for 10 years. It deserves support. Some Florida politicians of both parties are taking similar positions in regard to the administrations proposal to allow drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Floridas west coast. The explosion and spill at a BP oil rig, the Deepwater Horizon, in 2010 caused economic damage to Florida in the billions of dollars. This tragedy was a painful reminder that Floridas beaches and economy are at risk even when oil rigs are hundreds of miles away from its shores, a group of 11 Republican and three Democratic U.S. representatives wrote to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke urging him to deny drilling in the eastern gulf. To no avail. Trumps policy is drill everywhere. But he isnt likely to see it happen. First, Congress might intervene. Enough Republicans, like Sanford and Floridas delegation, will fight to protect the lucrative industries they already have, including tourism and fishing. In addition, Trumps action only begins a long regulatory process. More studies are needed, more public hearings must be held and,legal challenges could be litigated. Trumps presidency, even if he serves two terms, wont last that long. Finally, the economics dont add up. Its cheaper to extract oil and natural gas from shale underground than to drill anywhere from 50 to 100 miles offshore. And ask BP about the price of an accident. Last year, it put the figure at $62 billion. President Barack Obama made the right decision for the right reasons. Energy is abundant and inexpensive already. Coastal communities are doing well with their clean economies. If theres oil offshore, it will still be available to meet future needs, if required. For now and the foreseeable future, its not. It was 7 a.m. when six sheriff's deputies stormed into the Manning family home in Canton, Miss. last June, according to a new lawsuit. They demanded that the Mannings sign witness statements for a crime in their neighborhood they claimed not to have seen. When Khadafy Manning, 35, refused, deputies allegedly handcuffed, choked and beat the man, who uses a cane because of a nerve condition. They called him "Mr. Cripple," his wife said, and proceeded to drag him out of the house, down the stairs and into a patrol car, beating him until he wrote a witness statement. Khadafy and Quinnetta Manning are among those suing the sheriff's department in the Jackson suburb of Madison County, claiming the department used unconstitutional checkpoints, unlawful searches of homes, and excessive force as part of what they call "a coordinated top-down program" to illegally target black residents. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi seeks a court order to stop the sheriff's department from using such tactics. It also asks that a civilian board review complaints against the department. Ten black residents - men and women ages 27 to 62 - are plaintiffs in the case. Some black residents are so afraid of being pulled over or stopped at a checkpoint that they avoid leaving their homes, the lawsuit says. "In effect the policing program has placed the Black community of Madison County under a permanent state of siege," the lawsuit states. Sheriff Randy Tucker, who is white and has been in office since 2012, would not immediately comment Monday because he had not seen the lawsuit, spokesman Heath Hall told the Associated Press. "For decades, black people in Madison County have been dealing with the constant barrage by the Madison County Sheriff's Department," ACLU Mississippi executive director Jennifer Riley-Collins said at a news conference Monday at the ACLU office in Jackson. Roughly 57 percent of Madison County residents are white, and about 38 percent are black, the most recent Census estimates show. Home to about 105,000 people, it ranks as the wealthiest county in Mississippi. Per capita income in 2015 was just shy of $58,000, according to the state department of employment security. The county's wealth is concentrated among its white residents, according to the complaint. In the City of Madison, which is 85 percent white, the average household income is almost double the average income for Canton, the county's largest majority-black city, the lawsuit says. The ACLU argues the county has harbored a long history of "racial animus" toward its black residents. It notes that a previous sheriff was on the board of a citizens group that opposed desegregation in the 1950s, and says other authorities had used racially discriminatory policing tactics. Citing census figures, the complaint says that the arrest rate for black people in the county is nearly five times the rate for white people. The disparity can't be explained by nonracial factors, the ACLU argues. The lawsuit alleges the county's roadblocks and pedestrian "checkpoints" are designed and placed to target black people for searches and seizures in majority-black neighborhoods and outside of majority-black housing complexes, even when they are not suspected of crimes. Quinnetta Manning, 29, said in the Monday news conference that she feels afraid to leave her home and no longer trusts the sheriff's department to protect her family. "I am scared all the time that the sheriff's department will hurt me or family," Quinnetta Manning said. "I feel unsafe in my own home." mississippi Washington Post News Service (DC) 5/9/2017 6:35:18 AM Central Daylight Time This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate HARTFORD Medical professionals are now prohibited from using a discredited method called conversion therapy in attempt to change the sexual orientation and gender identity of young teens, under legislation approved on Wednesday in the state Senate and immediately signed into law. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy quickly called legislative leaders and LGBT advocates into his Capitol office to sign the bill into law, which took effect as the ink was drying. This is supported by the science, Malloy said. This is supported by our cultural awakening and awareness that we are a society of very different players, of different folks, and we shouldnt try to make people just like us and should recognize that some people are simply not us. But that doesnt make them bad, and it certainly doesnt make them mentally ill. And it certainly should not subject anyone to therapies that dont work and arent supported by science. The bill, which was previously approved in the House, passed unanimously after a 90-minute Senate debate with tough questioning from conservative Republicans. Apparent opposition during the floor debate evaporated and the bill, aimed at protecting gay, lesbian and transexual young people under 18 years of age, passed 36-0. It prohibits licensed professional therapists from practicing the coercive therapy tactics, which include electro-shock therapy on those under 18, although it does not ban the practice among adults and does not restrict religious leaders from offering guidance. This bill recognizes the integrity of persons that shouldnt be tampered with, said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven. California, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, D.C. have also banned the therapeutic tactic. The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld Californias law. The reason that Connecticut is taking this step is really the confluence of evidence about this treatment, said Sen. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, a lesbian who cited that 40 organizations, including all mental-health professionals, supported the legislation. Its very difficult to deny a persons biology, said Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton. Sen. Len Suzio, R-Meriden, and Sen. Michael A. McLachlan, R-Danbury, held the floor for much of the debate, questioning the need for the law. If there appears to be disagreement in the professional community worldwide, not just the United States, why are we putting this in state statute? McLachlan asked Bye, who disagreed with the Republicans premise. I would say theres widespread agreement that coercive therapy is not good for patients, Bye replied. I got the impression through my research that sometimes its not coercive therapy, McLachlan said. Suzio said that only isolated incidents have been reported in Connecticut and asked for statistics on the methods use, to which Bye said that many who have undergone the therapy are reticent to speak publicly. I anecdotally heard of a couple of cases from constituents, but this kind of data is very difficult because there are laws that protect the privacy in a therapeutic and a medical and public health setting, appropriately Bye said. I know that I have and a number of friends have heard of very sad stories about children who have been subjected to this kind of therapy. Sen. Craig Miner, R-Litchfield, said he doesnt remember contemplating the issue of gender identity when his three kids were growing up. I believe in my heart we are born predisposed, generally, one way or the other, Miner said. If I believe that, I must have some understanding of the possibility that some might be on the bubble for some time. It was shocking to me that there is actually a process by which youd make an appointment and someone would make a direct process to convert someone who was born that way. kdixon@ctpost.com; Twitter: @KenDixonCT WASHINGTON -- Last week, then-FBI Director James Comey requested more resources from the Justice Department for his bureau's investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, according to two officials with knowledge of the discussion. Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, made the request in a meeting last week with Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed on the request Monday, the officials said. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said reports that Comey had requested more funding for the Russia investigation are "totally false." Such a request, she said, "did not happen." Rosenstein wrote the memo that was used to justify Trump's swift and unexpected firing of Comey on Tuesday evening. The news was first reported by The New York Times. Asked by reporters Wednesday whether she was briefed by Comey on requests for additional funding for the investigation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the judiciary committee, said, "I was not. But I understand that there have been additional requests. That's all I can say." It's unclear where the FBI investigation stands. Comey acknowledged publicly in March that the FBI was looking into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, and he said the investigation had begun in late July. Comey said that for a counterintelligence probe, "that's a fairly short period of time." Last summer, the FBI obtained a secret court order to monitor the communications of Carter Page, who was an early adviser to the Trump campaign, as part of its investigation. Page has not been accused of any crimes, and it is unclear whether the Justice Department will eventually seek charges against him or others in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Law enforcement officials are also examining contacts between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian officials. --- Sean Sullivan and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report. The ninth issue of Cherry Bombe hits newsstands soon, and it includes a feature story, written by co-founder and editor-in-chief Kerry Diamond, on the ever-entertaining Martha Stewart. (Her advice to people concerned about the state of the world: Buck up!) Plus, you can find articles on Dimes chef Alissa Wagner, who wrote about unexpected motherhood; Jen Pelka, the owner of new San Francisco Champagne bar with 33 female investors; Sarah Simmons, who just shuttered Birds & Bubbles; and plenty of other inspiring women in the female-focused food magazine. (As if Marthas glow isnt inspiring enough.) Peter Hoffman is often credited as one of the pioneers of farm-to-table cooking (before it became a cliche) in New York, but the chef left the restaurant world last year, after closing his restaurant Back Forty West. On May 19, hell make his triumphant return for one night, anyway. That night, the Wythe Hotels Reynard and owner Andrew Tarlow will host the chef for a pop-up dinner (tickets are $115) marking Calcotada, the Catalan festival celebrating (what else?) the harvest of spring onions called calcot. In the hotels backyard, hell be grilling lamb and, of course, calcots on a 36 Asador grill and serving them with romesco, butifarra sausage, beans, and charred greens. Plus, there will be crema Catalana for dessert and unlimited cans of Scribe Una Lou rose. Not a bad way to say whats up to a chef youve missed. The patty melt at Bell Book & Candle. Photo: Liz Clayman In its ideal form, a patty melt is a beef patty, Swiss cheese, and caramelized onions on griddle-toasted rye bread, and thats it. The sandwich, its said, was invented in California sometime during the 1940s or 50s at one of William Tiny Naylors coffee shops by Tiny himself who, at six-foot-four and 320 pounds, was anything but. The beauty of the patty melt is that, when done right, no other condiments are necessary, as the defining flavor-enhancing characteristic derives from lavishly buttering the outside of the bread and cooking the sandwich until it becomes one gooey, greasy, meaty, crisp-but-tender synergistic package. Here are the absolute best patty melts in New York. The Absolute Best 1. Bell Book & Candle 141 W. 10th St., nr. Waverly Pl.; 212-414-2355 If theres a flaw in the design of the patty melt, its the bread. Well, not the bread (which is actually key), but the shape of the bread, which is typically Jewish rye and oval. Which does not make for the best fit with a beef patty, beef patties being typically round. Thats why no one ever says, This suit fits like a burger on rye. And also the reason God created the hamburger bun. Enter chef John Mooney, who in what should be recognized as one of the greatest moments in culinary history, right up there with the harnessing of fire for cooking purposes devised a square patty melt a few years back. How does he do it? He custom-orders Pullman-style rye loaves baked in perfect rectangles by Tom Cat Bakery in Long Island City, and he molds his patties to match the shape of the bread when sliced. Everything else about this sandwich is as carefully considered: the grass-fed beef ground in-house; the sharp cheddar nicely melted; the onions cooked to an extra-dark, supersweet fare-thee-well. Even the pickles (from cucumbers grown on the roof of the restaurant) make an impression. 2. Steak n Shake 1695 Broadway, nr. 53rd St.; 212-247-6584 The Manhattan branch of the midwestern burger chain is a claustrophobes worst nightmare, seemingly designed by someone who graduated at the bottom of his feng shui class. But its also home to one of the citys best patty melts a streamlined model called a Frisco Melt, made with two griddle-smashed patties, American and Swiss cheeses, and a Thousand Islandlike dressing. No onions, though. 3. Nix 72 University Pl., nr. 11th St.; 212-498-9393 Are we kidding? No, were not kidding. The patty in the No. 3 patty melt on this list is made from black beans, brown rice, and oats. The great vegivore chef John Fraser cuts it with Dijon mustard, tomato powder, and a judicious mix of secret spices. Add melted Swiss, caramelized onion, Thousand Island dressing, and rye bread, and what you get is something as good and greasy, and probably terrible for you, as anything thats ever been slapped onto a flattop griddle and butter-toasted to a deep golden brown. Lunch and brunch only. 4. Shopsins 120 Essex St., nr. Rivington St.; no phone Its double-cheesed on better-than-usual rye, with a fine beefy flavor and a proper patty melt whole is greater than the sum of its parts aesthetic. Is there a classic sandwich or burger style that Kenny Shopsin and crew does not excel at? Probably not. 5. Cannibal Liquor House 11 E. 29th St., nr. Park Ave. S.; 212-685-5585 Francis Derbys Mamas Burger is no ordinary burger, nor is it a tribute to his mother. Instead, its a patty-melt salute to a bit in Eddie Murphys late-80s stand-up film, Raw, which recounts the shame and sorrow endured by a young Murphy when his mom cooked him a giant, hulking, meatballlike green pepper welfare burger on Wonder Bread, instead of buying him McDonalds. Derbys interpretation is far from literal, thankfully, involving a big, funky puck of 60-day-dry-aged LaFrieda beef with onions, provolone, and harissa mayo on butter-griddled Pullman. And instead of comedian-traumatizing bell peppers, theres a sliced-shishito garnish on top. Honorable Mentions Black Iron Burger Multiple locations This undersung burger bar griddles a nice, no-frills patty melt with a choice of Swiss or cheddar. Its well-constructed with good balance, but the five-ounce patty is a little small for the size of the rye. Burger Heaven Multiple locations A relentlessly juicy, half-inch patty and two expertly melted slices of American cheese, positioned on the top and bottom of the meat, render the griddled rye almost as soft as a Martins potato roll. Which is to say that its a good one for those with sensitive patty-melt palates. Free sauteed onions by request. Five Guys Multiple locations Ask for the secret off-menu patty melt and theyll look at you like youve escaped from a home. But break out your Five Easy Pieces Jack Nicholson impression and request a grilled cheese (which comes on a squishy hamburger bun) with an add-on beef patty, plus grilled onions, and theyll spring into action. The great grease-bomb result is technically not a patty melt, since its on a bun not bread, but it is delicious. Harlem Shake Multiple locations High marks for the two thin patties are better than one beef bomb construction; the loose and crumbly smash-burger technique; and the classic-coffee-shop proportions. If they bumped up the amount of cheese, and the meat had more fatty flavor, theyd really have something. Also noteworthy: the Fatty Melt two grilled-cheese sandwiches with two beef patties shoved in between them, creating what is essentially three sandwiches in one. It may sound like a prank or the work of a lunatic burger flipper, but despite the predictably off-kilter bread-to-beef ratio, its pretty good. Maison Pickle 2315 Broadway, nr. W. 84th St.; 212-496-9100 Special sauce. Lettuce. Pickled peppers. American cheese. And whats this on the side? A cup of dipping jus? There are things going on here that would have given Tiny Naylor a conniption. And yet, whats not to like? The patty is loose and crumbly, the cheese well-melted, and the bread crisp and greasy. And there are worse crimes against foodstuffs than dunking patty melts into cups of jus for instance, putting ketchup on steak, or penne on pizza. No, we take that back, penne-topped pizza is delicious. Quality Eats 19 Greenwich Ave., nr. 10th St.; 212-337-9988 Quality Eats Patty Melt Club Burger is just that: a patty melt crossed with a triple-decker club sandwich, cut into quarters, and run through with bamboo meat-temperature markers. Were giving it bonus points for innovation and for the spicy coleslaw they dump right on top of the thing. But patty-melt purists will surely tut-tut and pooh-pooh this one. St. Anselm 355 Metropolitan Ave., nr. Havemeyer St., Williamsburg; 718-384-5054 This grilled-not-griddled artery-clogger is the brawniest patty melt in town, with Swiss Emmenthaler and caramelized onions as sweet and deeply flavored as a crock of French onion soup. Toss on an optional fried egg, if you dare. Weekend lunch; dinner, Monday and Tuesday. The Spaniard 190 W. 4th St., at Barrow St.; 212-918-1986 Thick slabs of Pullman overwhelm the patty, and the sandwich-defining caramelized onions are replaced by bacon and pickles, but you can smell the funk rising off the cooked-to-temperature dry-aged beef, and the cheddar is suitably melted. Dont mistake the stuff on the side for Heinz: Its a chutneylike tomato jam, recipe courtesy of chef P.J. Calapas Indian mother-in-law. Sunday in Brooklyn 348 Wythe Ave., at S. 2nd St., Williamsburg; 347-222-6722 Melted Swiss, a swipe of mustard, plus a double dose of onions inside the patty and on top of it. This is a Long Island patty melt, or at least, thats what its called on the menu, and its pretty good, provided you really like onions. One quibble: The patty itself, while rich and crusty, suffers the fate of many patty-melt patties before it perceived shrinkage, made all the more apparent by spacious slices of rye. Whitmans Multiple locations By almost every measure, this ones a contender: good proportions; great griddle-blackened, grease-soaked texture; masterful melting of the blend of smoked Gruyere, American, and cheddar. Spot-on sour pickle and waffle chips, too. If only the short-rib patties werent quite so bland. The Google Assistant in the company's Allo smart messaging app has been updated with support for two new languages. The languages in question are Spanish and French. The announcement regarding the former was made by Amit Fulay, who is Head of Product (Allo and Duo) at Google. Also rolling out Assistant in #GoogleAllo in Spanish Amit Fulay (@amitfulay) May 9, 2017 On the other hand, announcement related to support for French was made by the Canadian arm of the search giant in a blog post. "Today, were adding support for these features in French, thanks to our latest update," the post said. "Were now adding support for Smart Reply in French, so you can quickly send a Oui in response to a friend asking Es-tu en chemin pour la partie de soccer?." In additional to the two newly supported languages, Allo already offers support for English, German, Hindi, Japanese, and Portuguese. According to Google Canada, the feature is being rolled out to both Android and iOS clients of the app, and should be available to all Canadian users in the next few days. Source 1 2 | Via These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. It's definitely been a while since the Nokia 3310 (2017) stole the show at MWC in Barcelona in February. The feature phone that's also a publicity stunt by HMD Global, the company now making Nokia handsets, has been very well received indeed. Perhaps too well, seeing as how it's not a smartphone. And it's been hotly anticipated too, with certain retailers saying they were "astonished" by the pre-order numbers they've seen. And now, many months later, we're almost at the point where the new 3310 finally goes on sale, at least in some parts of Europe. It will arrive in the UK first, on May 24, priced at 49.99, SIM-free and unlocked of course. Then two days later, on May 26, it shall make its way to Germany, retailing for 59.99. On June 5 it will become available in Belgium and the Netherlands too. The phone will be offered in four colors: red, yellow, blue, and grey. This information comes straight from HMD Global, so it's as official as it can be. Unfortunately though the company hasn't confirmed release dates for any other markets yet. Source Haiti - Economy : Demonstration of anger and blockade at the Haitian border Early in the morning, angry Haitian shopkeepers and drivers demonstrated violently at the Jimani-Malpasse border crossing, where they blocked traffic for several hours. Barricades consisting of burning tires, large rocks and carcasses were erected on the Haitian side at the entrance to the Malpasse border gate. The large trucks carrying everyday goods from the neighboring territory and the buses traveling between the two countries remained blocked. The demonstrators were protesting against the constant increase of the taxes demanded to them by the Haitian customs authorities on goods imported from the Dominican Republic and denounced arbitrary taxes varying between 20,000 and 60,000 Gourdes on goods that were not even evaluated in order to be taxed normally. The protesters demanded the withdrawal of this practice, which they believe could aggravate their already precarious economic situation and claim that they will continue their means of pressure until obtaining satisfaction. Following a meeting between the leaders of the National Federation of Transport and Haitian Workers (FENATRATH) and the customs authorities, the traffic was able to resume its normal course after 2 long hours. At the end of the meeting, no information on the decisions reached between the two parties was revealed. SL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Politics : Adoption of the Penal Procedure Bill Our Criminal investigation code, inspired by Napoleon, was promulgated in 1835, in the 19th century and underwent no major changes in 180 years. The provisions contained in this Code, in addition to their obsolescence, do not allow the fundamental rights of citizens to be fully respected within the framework of the guarantees enshrined in the Constitution and the international conventions ratified by the Haitian State. This explains why the revision of this code is necessary, for this purpose President Jovenel Moise and the Government Lafontant adopted, in the Council of Ministers, the "draft law on the code of penal procedure" with a view to providing response to the main dysfunctions of the current penal justice system. Remember that the draft bill was handed over to the Executive in October 2015 under the Martelly administration https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-15467-haiti-justice-the-draft-of-the-new-code-of-criminal-procedure-is-ready.html The bill, which is the fruit of the work of the Joint Technical Committee on the Elaboration of the new Penal Code and of Code of Criminal procedure, this bill takes into account the concern for the respect of the fundamental rights of the individual and the protection of the society. Download the Bill (PDF) : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/projet-de-loi-portant-code-de-procedure-penale.pdf HL/ S/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... Students vandalize the offices of the North West DDE On Tuesday, during the second day of a strike launched by the National Union of Haitian Normaliens (UNNOH) of students who were demonstrating with anger for the return of their teachers in class, vandalized the offices of the Departmental Directorate of Education (DDE) in the Northwest. Minister of Education asks for a truce On Tuesday, Pierre Josue Agenor Cadet, the Minister of Education once again reiterated his request for a truce to teachers' unions, pending the vote of the amending budget in Parliament to respond to their demands https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-20889-haiti-education-threat-of-unlimited-strike.html 214 arrests Commissioner Jackson Hilaire, North West Departmental Director of the National Police of Haiti (PNH), revealed that by April 2017 the PNH had made 214 arrests, 14.21% more than in teh month of March, pointing out that in this number, several individuals are alleged criminals actively sought by the police. Vote of the law on UCREF Senators voted in the same terms, the law on the organization and operation of the Central Financial Intelligence Unit (UCREF) already voted in the lower house https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18553-haiti-politic-ratification-of-important-legislation-failure-in-the-senate.html This law will now be transmitted to the Head of State for publication in the official newspaper Le Moniteur". Parliamentary Security Unit On Tuesday, the security of the country and the establishment of the parliamentary police were at the center of a working meeting between the Senate office, some senators and Michel-Ange Gedeon, the Director General of the Haitian National Police (PNH), who expressed his preference concerning the establishment of a parliamentary "security unit" in place of a parliamentary "police" in order to avoid confusion https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-20090-haiti-security-towards-a-special-police-unit-to-protect-parliamentarians.html "Promotion 2016-2020 Gerald Oriol Jr." "It was a great pleasure for me to participate on May 6th at the ceremony of taking of habit of the 'Promotion 2016-2020 Gerald Oriol Jr.' of the Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences of the Episcopal University of Haiti in Leogane. I am quite honored by the fact that the Promotion has chosen to bear my name. I can not avoid to wonder why such an honor ? I want to believe that this is a sign of recognition of all the efforts that are being made in the area of disability under my leadership and that of my colleagues at the BSEIPH. To students, I encourage you to take your training very seriously. Get trained, the country has great need of you. I wish you every success !" declared the Secretary of State for Integration of Persons with Disabilities Gerald Oriol Jr. HL/ HaitiLibre Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news Login Sign Up New Ad-free Subscriber Login Email Password Password Username Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password. Stay logged in Help >There is still some way to go before gender parity is reached, writes Michael HortonFew people would disagree that there needs to be more women in senior management roles within Australian organisations. What's less clear, however, is how this can be achieved.While there has been some progress in recent years, there is still much work to be done. According to research by the Institute of Company Directors, women account for just 25% of board positions within ASX 200 listed companies. While there is a goal to increase this to 30% by the end of 2018, there is clearly still a long way to go before gender parity is reached.The dominance of men in senior management positions has been a feature of the Australian business landscape for decades. Boardroom tables are filled by suited males, as are the vast majority of top management roles.Much of this situation can be attributed to organisational cultures. Having men at the top has been the case for so long, it's become the norm. Unless purposeful steps are taken, the current status quo is unlikely to change any time soon. According to a recent survey:* 76% of Australian CIOs recognise the need to encourage more women into their IT departments. 27% of Australian CIOs have no women in IT management 21% of CIOs have no women in their technical and development teams.In the technology industry, the situation is made more concerning by the falling number of women entering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies. The reasons for this trend are somewhat unclear, however the result is that there are fewer women graduating and accepting jobs within the sector. This, in turn, is resulting in fewer climbing the corporate ranks and accepting senior management roles.There is clearly no silver bullet to overcome these challenges, but that doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done. Taking thoughtful, positive steps now will pay dividends in the future.As one the fastest growing 21st century technology companies, HCL Technologies has been globally committed to gender diversity and inclusion, and has been contributing to increasing the participation of women leaders within the IT and Technology sectors. In an effort to assist in bridging the senior management gender gap in Australia, HCL Technologies has been a proud supporter of the Women Lead Australia program. HCL Technologies conceptualized and implemented this first of its kind initiative in corporate Australia history. The programme saw participation from 30 senior leaders from 18 Top Australian organisations.Now in its second year of operation, the program provides one-on-one mentoring support for business women across a variety of different industry sectors.Typically, women leadership/mentoring programs being run by technology services companies in Australia are directed towards internal employees and not the larger corporate community as a whole. However, over the course of 13 weeks, the Women Lead Australia program allows for each mentee to meet regularly with a specially selected mentor. Pulled from senior management in some of Australia's largest companies, the mentors bring with them a wealth of experience and knowledge to be shared. The program concludes with a graduation dinner to acknowledge the progress made by mentees and celebrate their future ongoing success.To be accepted into the program, mentees must already be enjoying a successful career in their chosen area. They need to be able to identify where their skills need to be enhanced to give them the best possible chance of rising up the corporate ladder.Mentors must be prepared to allocate a certain amount of time to the program, typically approximate 12 hours of a commitment spread over 13 weeks. However, there are no restrictions on any associations these pairs may wish to have from a mentoring perspective even after the program.The program is not designed to be a one-off event after which mentees simply return to their day-to-day roles and continue as normal. Each is encouraged to formulate a plan by which they can position themselves for future advancement.During the mentoring sessions, any roadblocks that are being experienced can be examined and strategies formulated for them to be overcome. Mentors are able to draw on past experiences and offer practical examples of steps that have worked - and any that may have not.Topics for discussion can include how to overcome entrenched company cultures and how to deal with boards that are less open minded when it comes to issues such as overcoming gender imbalances. Other discussions may cover steps to attaining an effective work/life balance and what some areas for future professional development might be.The program was intentionally not designed to be prescriptive and so force all mentees to follow a similar path. Rather, all are encouraged to focus on the areas of most use to them and formulate a unique personal plan to match their circumstances.Participants also benefit from the fact that their mentor may well have come from an organisation and industry sector very different to their own. Getting a fresh perspective from someone outside your usual circle of influence can spark new ideas and plans.Previous mentees have reported it can be a surprise to find out how many issues they face within their area are actually shared across the wider business landscape. This can help in the process of strategy development and identifying the next steps to take.The program mentors also report receiving significant benefits from their involvement. Being able to give back by offering support and guidance to ambitious young women can deliver a sense of satisfaction that spills over into other parts of their professional lives. Many continue their mentoring relationships once the official program has concluded, adding further value to the process.While it's not complete answer to narrowing the gender divide with Australian companies, programs such as Women Lead Australia can provide worthwhile advice and support that can make a significant difference for participants. They also help create a unique womens leadership development platform for Australia, but also build a model for mentoring which can be replicated globally.As greater numbers of women attain senior management and board-level roles, they in turn will be able to help to nurture the next generation. Taking practical steps like these now will ensure the gender gap becomes a piece of history in the not-too-distant future. Source: Harvey Nash Survey Australia & CEDA survey.Michael Horton is Senior Vice President and Country Head ANZ Region, HCL Technologies ELKO The Elko County Sheriffs Office had a very busy year in 2016. Dispatch calls totaled 25,494 for the year, and overall reports jumped from 5,286 to 7,194. Ive really stressed being proactive since I took office, said Sheriff Jim Pitts. A lot of these come from self-initiated activities rather than dispatch calls. Pitts pointed to examples like checking on suspicious vehicles, making sure windows are shut on commercial buildings at night, and things that crop up in the course of a regular shift. The county currently has 51 sworn deputies on the street, 29 in the jail, 14 support staff, and two part-time workers all to cover the fourth largest county in the United States in terms of square mileage. Areas of crime where numbers are up include felony arrests at 262; drug arrests at 141; and animal calls at 2,432. Our animal calls have slowly gone up, said Pitts. We are having a big problem in Spring Creek with animals running at large. The sheriffs office only has one dog catcher for the entire county. We are working with Spring Creek now to see if they will pay for an extra dog catcher for the area, said Pitts. Overall investigations the deputies covered for the year were broken into 14 categories. Personal crimes including homicide, questionable suicides, sexual offenses child abuse, assaults, and elder abuse were tallied separately. The county processed two homicides in 2016. One was domestic and the other involved the murder and decapitation of a local woman. The suspects are awaiting trial in the Elko County Jail. Unfortunately over my career we have had a lot of homicides unsolved over the years, said Pitts. We seem to be a dumping ground for bodies. All suicides are investigated but questionable ones take extra time and effort. Pitts described the investigative process, which begins with the premise that the case could be a homicide. There were four questionable suicides in the county this year which were determined to be suicides. There were 98 coroner cases in 2016. We handle all of the coroner cases, even if it happens in the city, said Pitts. The sheriff by statute is the county coroner. All deaths receive an investigation, excluding hospice and hospital cases where a doctor will sign off on it. A total of 19 of these deaths went to autopsy in Reno at the Washoe County Regional Medical Examiners Office. In the report, sexual offenses include all encounters involving rape, incest and molestation. We have had a rash of these cases coming to a head, said Pitts about the renewed vigor in the Elko District Attorneys Office concerning sex-based crimes. A total of 29 such cases were handled by the sheriffs office in 2016. The team investigated 12 child abuse cases and 12 assaults over the course of the year. There were zero elder abuse cases. Property crimes, including fraud, embezzlement, burglary and theft, were up. We have a lot of phone frauds, said Pitts. We always try to get the word out right away but it seems like there is always somebody who falls for that. Investigated fraud cases topped out at 23. Burglaries and thefts totaled 77. A lot of our crimes go back to drugs, said Pitts. Although some drug seizures were down significantly, including meth, heroin, and prescription pills, amphetamines and hashish went up. The Elko Combined Narcotics Unit appropriated 56 grams of amphetamines and 282.90 grams of hashish. New narcotics cases opened for the year numbered 98, 20 above what the four-person narcotics unit handled in 2015. The group has made 65 arrests this year. The sheriffs office also handles the county jail, which nearly maxed out its 200-bed capacity at 189 inmates at one point. The average daily population was 163 compared with 152 the previous year. The female population was the highest it has been in the last three years. Our female population has really gone up, said Pitts. We have had to redo our jail and move cells. He attributes this fact to drugs and sees this as a big impact on families. Day-to-day tasks in the department may not seem as important as the criminal cases yet the workload is immense. With a staff of 14 the office handles the fingerprinting, warrants, concealed weapons carry permits, registering ex-felons and sex offenders, and a myriad of other tasks. We are doing a ton of concealed carry weapon permits, said Pitts. Its increased a lot. A lot of this has to do with the election. Everybody wants their CCW. The permits went from a total of 464 in 2015 to 756 in 2016. Statistics for the Elko County School Police, a relatively new program, were not available at the time of the interview. Ever since I got elected I wanted school resource officers, said Pitts. If you watch the police officers interact with the kids its really heartwarming, said Pitts. They are building bonds. The F.L.E.E.T. Academy is in its second year. The program goes over some law enforcement in the week-long training but a lot of it is just teaching leadership and good morals. We try to help kids from different schools bond with each other. The program has 20 youths currently signed up for the onsite experience but is still accepting applicants. Call 738-3421 for details. The departments workload continues to be a challenge as crime statistics for 2017 start piling up. My guys are out there being very proactive and we hope to bring these numbers down, said Pitts. I know its cliche to say it, but we need more people. Im running six people for the whole county and with sick leave and vacation I am sometimes running just four per shift. My people do an excellent job. We are covering over 17,000 square miles. Finland, the report indicates, is currently spending approximately four billion euros a year on business subsidies, a total consisting of 2.9 billion euros of tax-based and 1.1 billion euros of direct business subsidies. The Ministry of Employment and the Economy has published its contentious report on business subsidies and their impact on economic growth . The report also presents a plain-spoken assessment of the current business subsidy system. The current business subsidy system is not optimal for supporting the productivity of the public economy and, consequently, economic growth in the long term. Only roughly ten per cent of the total amount of subsidies is encouraging businesses to modernise themselves, the ministry officials write. The Finnish government was intent on discussing the business subsidy system and was reportedly prepared to reduce direct business subsidies in its mid-term session at the end of last month. Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre), however, announced that no changes would be made to direct business subsidies, as they have been agreed on for the remainder of the electoral term. Petteri Orpo (NCP), the Minister of Finance, defended the decision by estimating that cutting the subsidies could have undermined the budding economic growth in Finland. The government is planning on revisiting tax-based business incentives in its framework session later this year. The report proposes that spending on tax-based business subsidies be reduced from the current 2.9 billion euros and that direct business subsidies be re-adjusted in an attempt to encourage businesses to develop their competences and adopt more advanced means of production. It also encourages decision makers to re-examine the effectiveness and necessity of business subsidies on a regular basis. The controversy surrounding the report, which was intended as a tool for the mid-term session, was kindled after Mika Lintila (Centre), the Minister of Economic Affairs, announced that the report was ready for publication. Antero Vartia (Greens) said the decision to seemingly postpone the publication raises suspicions. Im really starting to suspect that [the report] may contain that experts have advised us against doing but us policy-makers lack the courage to [take action], he said in an interview with Uusi Suomi on 25 April, 2017. These kind of reports should be made public without anyone even having to ask, he added. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Martti Kainulainen Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi The children of Timothy Fleming, Aishling, Caroline, Catherine and Jeremiah, at Dublin Coroners Court The four children of a man who died on an operating table in a Dublin hospital are to meet with hospital staff to explore ways of improving care for patients. Timothy Fleming's daughter, Caroline, said they hoped lives will be saved by the lessons learned from his death. Mr Fleming (69), an Irishman living in England, died after a tear in the lining of his aorta led to a rupture of the artery on February 6, 2015. His death was the result of "medical misadventure", a jury found at his inquest yesterday. "We welcome the invitation of Tallaght Hospital to meet with them to explore what can be learned from our father's death," Caroline said afterwards. "The lessons came at a huge cost to our family but he will not have died in vain." Regret A lawyer for Tallaght Hospital offered his family the hospital's "sincere regret" for aspects of the care provided to him. Mr Fleming was admitted suffering from severe abdominal pain the day before he died. The two-day inquest at Dublin Coroner's Court heard that Mr Fleming, from Fossa, Killarney, was living in Middlesex and had travelled to Dublin for a meeting. He began experiencing severe pain and was taken by ambulance to Tallaght Hospital. The court heard he was seen by a number of doctors during the course of the afternoon and evening, and received morphine to relieve his pain. Doctors gave evidence that a number of possible causes were explored, but there was no definite diagnosis on that date. An "aortic dissection", which is a tear within the lining of the aorta - a very rare condition - was just one of many possible explanations considered. However, Mr Fleming was discharged from the hospital at 2.30am after doctors held telephone conversations with on-call surgical registrar Dr Donal O'Connor. Senior house doctor Alaa Mustafa said the surgeon told him that it appeared to be a case of gastritis. He said, as such, the wish of the patient to leave the hospital and return home to the UK to receive follow-up treatment should be granted. Mr Fleming suffered severe pain shortly after leaving the hospital and was re-admitted at 4am. An ultrasound scan showed signs of a tear within the aorta, as did an X-ray. Conflicting recollections were given to the inquest by the doctors who attended Mr Fleming and surgeon Dr O'Connor. Dr O'Connor arrived at the hospital shortly before 6am. Resuscitated Mr Fleming's vital signs dramatically worsened when he was undergoing a CT scan and he had to be resuscitated. Specialists at the hospital did not have the skills to carry out a specialised surgical procedure, so he was transferred to St James's Hospital with a garda escort. When he was administered an anaesthetic there, he suffered a rupture of the artery and a cardiac arrest. His aorta was quickly repaired while surgeons tried to resuscitate him, but he died on the operating table. The jury confirmed the death was the result of the tear and subsequent rupture of the aorta. The verdict does not apportion blame. Damage to the window of the apartment after the blast. Photo: Collins A homeowner had a lucky escape after parts of a pipe bomb planted on a car near his apartment smashed through the kitchen window. The device exploded outside an address in the Fernleigh estate in Castleknock at 11.30pm on Monday. In a previous incident, on April 20, a shotgun blast was fired at a ground-floor apartment of the same building, causing damage to the front door. Gardai believe that pipe bomb was placed on a car outside the apartment targeting the same apartment targeted in the shotgun blast. When it went off, however, shrapnel was blasted up into the window of the apartment of the innocent man. "It's by luck that there was nobody in the kitchen. The cap of the pipe bomb came straight through the window and it would have hit anyone if they were there," the shocked homeowner told the Herald. "Anybody walking by on the street could have been hit." Two panes of glass in the apartment were broken by the pipe bomb fragments. The car that was targeted was also extensively damaged. "It's worrying as this is the second attack on the street. We just hope it ends now," said the man. In the first attack, the man living in the targeted apartment told the Herald he did not know why his home had been singled out. Fired In that incident, two men pulled up outside on a black motorbike. One of them fired a shot at the door before speeding away from the scene in the direction of Diswellstown Bridge and Coolmine. Gardai said at the time they believed that the gunman had targeted the wrong house. "This seems to be very much a case of mistaken identity. Gardai are at a loss to know why that house was shot at. It was a very reckless act," a senior source said. "There is absolutely no intelligence to suggest that the occupants of that house are under any threat." Speaking the day after the shooting, as he cleaned up the broken glass, the middle-aged man who lives in the targeted apartment said he was shocked at what had happened. "I was in my bedroom when I heard a loud bang. I didn't know what it was," he said. "Then I came out into the hall and I could see the broken glass and smell smoke, which I thought was strange. "The neighbours and a taxi driver said two guys had driven away on a motorbike, and then I saw the damage to the door. "It's frightening. I really don't know why this happened," said the man, who added that he has been living in the property for two years. He said he was not involved in any dispute. He added that whoever fired the shot may have received the wrong address. Gardai are investigating both incidents. The mans arrest is linked to seizures by specialist gardai A man arrested over the weekend by specialist gardai investigating the activities of the Kinahan cartel was caught after "letting his guard down" and attending a meeting, according to sources. The 28-year-old suspect, who is originally from Co Kildare, was arrested at a hotel in Gorey, Co Wexford, at about 2pm on Sunday and was taken to a west Dublin garda station. He was still being questioned last night about his major role in moving firearms and drugs for the deadly mob. The arrested man is suspected of having "direct knowledge" of a number of cartel murders. The suspect was arrested following a surveillance operation, when detectives realised he was attending a meeting at the respected hotel. He had only arrived back in the country from Spain's Costa del Sol hours before his arrest. Weapons He has been "strongly linked" to two major firearms seizures gardai made against the cartel in January, in which officers recovered 15 weapons - including an AK-47, revolvers and semi-automatic pistols - as well as a large quantity of cocaine. The suspect fled the country shortly after these seizures but sources have revealed that he "let his guard down" by attending Sunday's meeting. It is believed officers are "very hopeful" of being able to bring criminal charges. "This man was on the radar of gardai for moving drugs, firearms and cash. He is not considered a hitman or anything like that, he is above that level," a senior source said last night. "He has been strongly linked to those big seizures last January as well as organising other serious cartel activities. He spent a number of months out of the country but he has now been arrested." The arrest of the man is considered "very significant". It was carried out by officers from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, who have been monitoring his activities for months. "This is part of the relentless campaign by gardai to dismantle the Kinahan crime gang," a source said. A garda spokesman said he was being held "on suspicion of enhancing the ability of a criminal organisation to commit or facilitate a serious offence". The chief suspect in the murder of a man who was brutally stabbed to death in his Dublin city centre home may not face justice for the savage crime because Brazil refuses to extradite its own citizens. The Herald can reveal that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has directed that a Brazilian national aged in his 30s be charged with the murder of businessman John Maguire (51). The well-respected victim was murdered at his home at Ormond Square, Smithfield, on September 23, 2013. Mr Maguire was found by a female neighbour with stab injuries to his neck, chest and back after the attack shortly before 2.30am. A Brazilian national was quickly identified as a chief suspect in the case, which was the subject of an investigation by gardai based in the capital's Bridewell station. Once their probe was completed, officers submitted a detailed file to the DPP, who directed that the Brazilian national be charged with murder. However, the suspect, who fled Ireland for Brazil just hours after the murder, is "extremely unlikely" to face trial here because the Brazilian constitution states that the country should not extradite its own citizens. It is understood that gardai and the Brazilian authorities are aware of the suspect's identity and his location in Brazil, but he has not been arrested. Warrant This is despite the fact that an international arrest warrant has been issued for the suspect in relation to the murder. In March, the Brazilian Supreme Court decided - for the first time in its history - to extradite a Brazilian-born citizen. However, in that case the court ruled that the female defendant had lost the prerogatives of Brazilian citizenship when she obtained an American passport. It is understood that the ruling will not apply to the suspect in this case. Gardai seized a number of items from the suspect's home for a technical examination, including clothing, shoes, a home computer and a mobile phone, as well as a rucksack. Officers also identified the suspect when they trawled through a large amount of footage taken from CCTV cameras in the Smithfield area and along Ormond Quay. They also recovered an iPhone, which they believe was stolen by Mr Maguire's killer. Mr Maguire's murder occurred during a premeditated robbery at his home and it is believed that he knew the suspect as a passing acquaintance. The victim lived at the property on Ormond Square with his partner, Jim Hynes. Mr Hynes, then chief operations officer for Concern Worldwide, was at work at the time of the attack, with gardai having to inform him of the tragedy. The couple previously ran the Modern Green Bar on Camden Street. The Centra shop in Cabra that was targeted in the raid. Photo: Caroline Quinn A man threatened two young shop staff with a blood-filled syringe during a terrifying armed robbery on the capital's northside. The incident took place at the Centra store on the New Cabra Road, Cabra, at around 9.40pm on Sunday, when the suspect entered the shop and demanded money. He walked behind the counter and is understood to have told staff members that he had "the virus", before threatening to stab them with the syringe and demanding that they open the tills. The suspect fled with around 600 in cash. Thankfully, the two staff members were not injured. Ordeal They were a 21-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man, both of whom have been left shaken by their ordeal. The case is being investigated by Mountjoy gardai, but there have been no arrests so far. Gardai yesterday said the suspect wore a black jacket, a grey tracksuit and blue runners. "This was a particularly frightening robbery and gardai are anxious to catch the culprit," a source said. Staff at the supermarket did not wish to comment yesterday when approached by the Herald. Syringe robberies have been relatively rare in Ireland in recent years. However, in a separate incident, a mother-of-five was sentenced to three years in jail in February, with the final six months suspended, following a 700 robbery in which her accomplice pierced the skin of a taxi driver with a syringe. Threatened Amanda Daly (36) was caught after she dropped her purse, containing a social welfare receipt, near the scene. Daly, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the robbery at Summer Street South on April 15, 2015. Her co-accused, Jason Hynes (43), of Neilstown Park, Clondalkin, received a four-and-a-half-year sentence earlier this year for his role in the incident. Last December, Finglas drug addict Carl McGuinness (21) was jailed for four years after he admitted robbing a taxi driver of his car in August 2015 to get money for drugs. McGuinness got out of the taxi in Glasnevin Avenue and went round to the driver's door, where he threatened the victim with a syringe and asked him if he wanted HIV. Nevadas Democratic lawmakers in Carson City are seeking to enforce their egalitarian philosophy on everyone: All people are equal and deserve equal rights and only equal amounts of those rights. You have the right to free speech, but no more than anyone else. This past week an Assembly committee heard testimony on Senate Joint Resolution 4, which would urge Congress to amend the Constitution to strike the free speech portion of the First Amendment. SJR4, sponsored by Las Vegas Democratic state Sen. Nicole Cannizzaro, would erase the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which held that it was unconstitutional to forbid the broadcast of a movie critical of then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just because it was paid for by a corporation. But SJR4 goes even further. It limits spending by individuals as well. The summary reads: Urges Congress to propose an amendment to the United States Constitution to allow the reasonable regulation of political contributions and expenditures by corporations, unions and individuals to protect the integrity of elections and the equal right of all Americans to effective representation. It basically declares democracy is dead because the citizens are too stupid to hear vigorous and boisterous debate and make rational decisions. The resolution argues that large political donations corrupt candidates and dilute the power of individuals. Pay no heed to the fact that in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump was outspent by Hillary Clinton by two-to-one $600 million to $1.2 billion. The resolution would not only overturn Citizens United but also McCutcheon v. FEC. Democrats think all money belongs to the state except what the state allows you to keep, and now they demand to take control of how you spend that. In addressing an Assembly committee on her bill Cannizzaro said it addresses a growing and rather troubling influence of large donations by corporations and other organizations in our sacred policymaking process as a result of significant and uncontrolled political contributions. Jeff Clements, president of American Promise, an organization pressing for such a constitutional amendment, testified to the Assembly committee by phone. He said we need to get back our constitutional foundation that really has gone back in a non-partisan and cross-partisan way for over a century. It is not to say there is anything bad about corporations and unions or the very, very wealthy If we allow unlimited deployment of the financial resources from those and other sources, it overwhelms the rights we have as Americans and the duties we have to participate in our self-governing republic, as equal citizens with equal representation. He argued that politics is not a marketplace to be bought and sold. Yes, it is a marketplace one of ideas. But no matter how much someone spends trying to persuade us to buy, we dont have to buy. As for it being a non-partisan issue as Clements claimed, the vote on SJR4 in the state Senate was on a party-line vote of 12 Democrats for and nine Republicans against. Lets hear what the court had to say about free speech in McCutcheon: The Government has a strong interest, no less critical to our democratic system, in combatting corruption and its appearance. We have, however, held that this interest must be limited to a specific kind of corruption quid pro quo corruption in order to ensure that the Governments efforts do not have the effect of restricting the First Amendment right of citizens to choose who shall govern them. In Citizens United, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: The (First) Amendment is written in terms of speech, not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion. We are therefore simply left with the question whether the speech at issue in this case is speech covered by the First Amendment. No one says otherwise. A documentary film critical of a potential Presidential candidate is core political speech, and its nature as such does not change simply because it was funded by a corporation. Nor does the character of that funding produce any reduction whatever in the inherent worth of the speech and its capacity for informing the public, Indeed, to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. Ill put those words up against the Democrats bleating about money corrupting. 'They truly believe in luck': Winning Powerball ticket worth $2.04 billion sold in LA area Barely 13% of Spanish high school graduates can boast about knowing intermediate English, while 35% remain stuck at beginners level, meaning they are unable to hold a conversation in that language, according to Eurostat figures. In a bid to improve standards, the education department of the regional government of Catalonia has decided to set up a pilot project called Avanzamos (We advance) in 40 public high schools. English language students in Spain. Samuel Sanchez For the last two years, language teachers (English, French, German, Latin, Spanish and Catalan) have been working together to avoid duplicating content and to help students better understand the cultural differences that lie behind languages. The traditional approach to teaching languages doesnt work. We have to take a risk, explains Montserrat Montagut, the head of foreign languages at the Catalan Education Department. Motivation has to be based on understanding cultural differences, and that can only be done by getting teachers to work together Olga Esteve, foreign language expert Languages cannot be taught in isolation and the least important things are grammatical structures. This is a new approach and that is why we need time to measure the impact on students, says Olga Esteve, an expert in foreign language learning methods at Barcelonas Pompeu Fabra University. To acquire a second language, you use the knowledge you already have from your mother tongue. Motivation has to be based on understanding cultural differences, and that can only be done by getting teachers to work together, says Esteve, explaining that the idea is to apply project-based learning to languages. Spanish schoolchildren spend their lives learning English, yet have little to show for it. Samuel Sanchez She offers an example: students studying conversational techniques need to understand the origin of expressions in different languages; which means thinking about similarities between languages. It is also important to grasp that verb tenses do not function the same way in all languages. We shouldnt teach verb conjugations by heart, but instead the culture of each country and why one tense is used and not another, says Esteve. This requires foreign language teachers to program their studies jointly, to decide who will explain what, and to try not to duplicate content. The teachers at the 40 schools in Catalonia taking part in the pilot project receive 50 hours of training during the first two years. In elementary schools, teachers do coordinate their efforts, but this never happens at the secondary level, says Esteve. Jordi Satorra is the principal at Institut Antoni de Marti i Franques High School, one of the centers taking part in the pilot project. He explains that students of German study subordinate clauses during their third year of secondary school, when they are 14 or 15, whereas they do not do so in Spanish or Catalan until their fourth year. Teachers need to know these details about the academic program and agree to reserve one or more sessions to explain new concepts first in the mother tongue, he explains. The traditional approach to teaching languages doesnt work. We have to take a risk Montserrat Montagut, Catalan education department So far, tests on students show that their motivation levels have increased. Its easy to see why. Kids connect with languages and dont study them like math tables: another example of the end of memorization, says Esteve. Kristina Cunningham, head of the European Commissions multilingualism unit, says that Spains main problem when it comes to learning languages is lack of proficiency by the teachers. Any measure designed to improve the quality of teaching is welcome, but until Spanish language teachers spend time abroad, their ability to teach will be reduced. One short-term solution could be to include teachers in the Erasmus+ program, which foresees teacher exchanges. English version by Nick Lyne. Argentinas Congress is often the stage for long, intense debates, yet these hardly ever attract the kind of media attention reserved for the executive in this country where the presidency is all important. But Tuesday was a special day in the lower house, with the plenary session dominated by the memory of the worst military dictatorship (1976-1983) ever suffered by Argentineans. Argentinean Congress during the debate on Tuesday. During a highly emotional session, deputies who are children or siblings of some of the disappeared delivered moving speeches that vied in intensity with the words of Ricardo Alfonsin, the son of Raul Alfonsin the president during whose term the dictatorships leaders went on trial. For one afternoon, Congress resonated with the spirit of Nunca Mas (Never Again), the investigation into the atrocities committed by the regime. The entire world admired the Argentinean people; I saw it among Latin American and European politicians who visited my father, because we were the only country that convicted its dictators, said Ricardo Alfonsin to a round a enthusiastic applause. Many of you know my story, the story of the deputy Remo Carlotto [son of the leader of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo movement], the story of Juan Cabandie, with whom I dont share a lot politically, but we have something in common: the place where we were born, at the same table, said Victoria Donda, a leftist deputy who, like the kirchnerist Cabandie, was born inside a detention center and taken from her mother right after birth, then handed over to a family with ties to the dictatorship. Her mother, like Cabandies, was never heard from again. Some say that the mood is changing. Its not true Ricardo Alfonsin, son of former president Raul In a country where division is the norm, all congressional groups unexpectedly came together to reject a recent Supreme Court ruling that opens the door to a sentence reduction for convicted regime leaders. The court decision adopts a two-times-one approach that makes any time spent in preventive detention worth twice as much as any time spent serving the sentence proper. On Tuesday, Congress negotiated a law to limit the application of this doctrine and prevent a sentence reduction for individuals doing time for crimes against humanity. We want a law that says that genocides are not pardoned here, that their convictions will not be overturned. We are demanding justice. This is one of the most aberrant rulings in the history of the Supreme Court, cried Donda. It was a rollercoaster afternoon that yielded many unexpected moments, including the moment when Carlos Kunkel, a renowned ex-member of Montoneros, a violent far-left guerrilla group from the 1970s, issued a critique of his groups armed struggle. I belong to a generation that responded with violence to the violence we had suffered since 1955, said Kunkel, who spent most of the dictatorship behind bars. We committed excesses, and we were wrong. Ever since the restoration of democracy we have proven that we will never again go down that road. We have conveyed to the new generations that we disagree with that, and we have exercised self-criticism where it is needed: in practice. Ricardo Alfonsin, son of former president Raul Alfonsin, in a file photo. Cordon Press But it was Ricardo Alfonsin who truly had lawmakers on their feet. Some say that the mood is changing. Its not true. All of Argentinean society defends our fundamental values, and believes there is nothing more cruel than a dictatorship, he said. That is why all parties are opposing this ruling, which is a step back. Alfonsin, whose Radical Civic Union is part of the coalition that supports President Mauricio Macri, rejected the notion that the government was behind the Supreme Courts decision two out of the three justices who delivered the decision were appointed by the president. But he did criticize some of the messages sent out by the conservative president in recent times. Whats the point of arguing over the number of disappeared people that Argentinean society believes to be 30,000? ...How can the culture minister [Pablo Avelluto] say that his generation is lucky not to have to carry around the emotional baggage of the dictatorship? Imagine a leader of the Jewish community saying that they dont have to carry the baggage of the Holocaust; we all carry it, because it is a crime against humanity. Finally, Congress passed a law setting limits on the Supreme Courts two-times-one doctrine. There were 211 votes in favor, and only one against. The opponent: the controversial deputy Alfredo Olmedo, who is a household name ever since he proposed building a Trump-like wall between Argentina and Bolivia, a spot considered an entry point for drugs and illegal immigrants. English version by Susana Urra. To date, at least 39 people have died in the wave of protests against the government of President Nicolas Maduro that have rocked Venezuela over the last six weeks. There have also been more than 700 people injured and hundreds of arrests. Artist Tomas Vivas, 29, holds up a traditional Venezuelan 'cuatro' instrument during a protest in Caracas. Raul Romero More information La mujer de la tanqueta y otros simbolos de la resistencia pacifica en Venezuela Despite being met by military police firing tear-gas and live ammunition, as well as armed civilians working with the authorities, some protesters have taken a resolutely non-violent approach in registering their opposition to the ruling United Socialist Partys attempts to sideline the National Assembly by creating a new assembly to rewrite the Constitution in the South American country. Tomas Vivas, a 29-year-old artist, moved to Caracas from the southern state of Merida. Where I come from there are fewer employment opportunities, he says, adding that during the first mass street protests in early 2014 he decided to take his cuatro, a traditional Venezuelan four-stringed guitar, along to demonstrations, where he improvises songs. I played joropo (a form typical of Venezuela and Colombia). A lot of the time people dont listen, particularly when I am trapped in the firing line between demonstrators and police. But it doesnt matter, I keep playing, he says, adding: Everybody should stage the protest that suits them, but I think that pacifism is the most effective way. Hans Wuerich at a protest in Caracas on April 20th. Raul Romero Hans Wuerich, aged 27, has been hailed as a hero after he decided, more than two weeks ago to strip naked during a baton charge by police in Caracas. I had thought about different ways to protest peacefully. I dont believe in violence as a way out of this crisis, because that gives the government excuses to crack down, he says. As chaos erupted around him during the military assault on protesters who had staged a road block, Wuerich removed his clothes, and holding a Bible, approached an armored car surrounded by soldiers and called on them to stop. In response, they fired buckshot at him. President Maduro ridiculed Wuerich during a recent speech broadcast on television and radio: There is no limit to your ridiculousness Thank goodness he didnt drop the soap because the photo would have been detestable. Horrible. Wuerich says Maduros comments reveal weakness: Peaceful protests hit dictatorships hard. Maduro can try to insult us, but he knows that he is a demon who has been weakened. Other protesters have approached Wuerich during the protests to have their photograph taken with him and to show support. His opposition to the government is based on the same reasons as most other protesters: an economy in free-fall, in part due to lower oil prices, in part due to disastrous policies; food and medicine shortages, growing numbers of political prisoners, and moves to shut down the National Assembly, among others. Wuerich left his parents home a year ago. Like most Venezuelans, I cant make ends meet. I was living alone for four months. The crisis makes it hard for young people to leave home and make a life for themselves, he explains. Maria Jose Castro brings an armored car to a halt by standing in front of the vehicle on May 3rd. MIGUEL GUTIERREZ (EFE) Maria Jose Castro, a 54-year-old Portuguese national who lives in Caracas, was taking part in a march on May 3 when troops began firing tear gas canisters into the crowd. Wrapped in a Venezuelan flag, she began walking toward an armored car. I felt that I had become the mother of those kids who were protesting. It hurt me to see how they fired on them! When I heard the soldiers order the armored cars to move forward, I thought a massacre was going to take place and so I moved, she says. I felt I had become the mother of those kids who were protesting Maria Jose Castro, protester By standing her ground, she brought an armored car to a halt, echoing the photograph of the student who halted a tank during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. Since then, she has become the tank woman and a powerful symbol of the resistance to the Maduro regime. My life was in the hands of God, not the soldiers. When I was very young I had to leave Portugal because of a dictatorship, now I know that we have to fight. We cannot allow a tyrant to seize control of a nation. Venezuela has given so much to the world, taken in foreigners like myself, and that is why I will not abandon my country, concludes Castro. English version by Nick Lyne. MORGANTON Lake James Environmental is asking its members to contact their state legislators as soon as possible to stop a proposed Senate bill that would do away with buffers along the Catawba River and its lakes. N.C. Senate Bill 434 passed in the chamber April 24, with Sen. Warren Daniel (R-Burke/Cleveland) voting for it. In an email to its membership, the environmental group says the bill could have a potentially devastating impact to Lake James and the entire Catawba River Basin. The bill crossed over to the state House of Representatives and has been in the committee on rules, calendar and operations of the House since April 26. The day it passed a first reading in the House, N.C. Rep. Hugh Blackwell (R-Burke) said he wont support the bill and will oppose it if its not changed. I really dont expect 434 to pass the House without changes, Blackwell said. Im working to exempt or grandfather our rules if we consider the bill at all. Not only would the bill take away the 50-foot protective buffer on the Catawba River and its lakes, it also would take away local governments ability to set buffers in their ordinances. The bill would do away with the setbacks (buffers) 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. While the environmental group says it would like to see the entire proposed bill die in the House, its email to members said the language that would remove buffers and prevent local governments from implementing buffers in its ordinances needs to be removed. N.C. Sen. Andy Wells (R-Catawba/Alexander), who is a primary sponsor of the bill, calls buffers veneer environmentalism, which he defined in a blog as environmentalism that sounds good and feels good but creates problems. However, Lake James Environmental says buffers have been scientifically proven to work. It says buffers stabilize shoreline to preventing erosion, filter nutrients and contaminants, provide habitat, cool water and preserve a natural aesthetic. The environmental group says the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality acknowledges and supports the benefits of buffers. In addition to removing buffers along the Catawba River, the bill would repeal yard waste permitting requirements, repeal the plastic bag ban at the Outer Banks and gives the Marine Fisheries Commission the ability to adopt rules establishing shellfish aquaculture enterprise areas. Lake James Environmental says updates on the proposed bill will be posted to the Catawba Riverkeeper Facebook page, website and eNews. 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 employability of engineering graduates in India has been a matter of concern for the last several decades. Many reports have stated that only 20-25% of the graduates are employable in industry. A recent report has mentioned that only 5% of computer science and information technology graduates (a majority of our engineers are in these disciplines) have any reasonable programming skills, which is the most basic skill for such a graduate. Another 15% can still be trained to perform tasks in IT industry. Whenever a new report comes out, there are immediate calls for greater interaction between industry and academia and to have more industry-focussed curricula in colleges. And seeing that such calls have not had any impact on the ground level, AICTE has announced that such interaction will now be mandatory. Each college must have an industry consultation committee to rework the curriculum of each course taught there every year. AICTE appears to have forgotten that it regulates only affiliated colleges, and it has very little regulatory control over universities. Affiliated colleges have no control over their curriculum. They teach the curriculum that the affiliating university decides. These universities are expected to have a Board of Studies for each program, and that board invariably has members from industry as well. So there is already an industry input to the curriculum design. Now, if a college creates such a committee and the industry person advises even small modifications to the courses, can the college implement these modifications? The answer, unfortunately, is in the negative for all colleges, barring a few autonomous ones. More fundamentally, do we even know whether unemployability is because of an outdated syllabus, or is it due to poor quality education? How many of our graduates know what they have learnt in existing courses? GATE (graduate aptitude test in engineering) results show that almost half the graduates get a zero in the exam. How are they getting a degree at all? I have been involved with drafting of computer science syllabi in several universities and even AICTE model syllabus. I can confidently say that even if the syllabus is not changed for 10 years, there will be no impact on employability. AICTE should focus on finding out why someone who has never written even a single line of code is not just passing a course on programming, but passing it with distinction. A majority of our engineering graduates do not deserve their degrees. For computer science, that number could be as high as 95%. Talking about industry, how many people in the industry are capable of understanding the impact of various curricular and pedagogical interventions on learning? How many of these people will be able to understand the interplay of various courses, recognise the gaps, and then suggests revisions to plug those gaps? This is difficult even for experienced academics. Very few people in the industry are capable of this. In the absence of such people, these committees will become another ritual, as most AICTE directives have become. If the AICTE wants to improve the quality of engineering education and ensure that a larger number of graduates are employable, it has to stop coming up with new regulations. Instead, every month, it should send a note to all colleges on what all previous regulations it is junking. If you dont control every aspect of a college, they will figure out how to survive in a market where supply is more than demand. For now, their only hope is that AICTE will allow them to close. Dheeraj Sanghi is dean of academic affairs and external relations, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (on leave from IIT Kanpur) The views expressed are personal Bilkis Bano. The name and the face have been haunting me since the judgment was announced on her case by the Bombay High Court on May 4. In March 2002, our group of six women arrived in Ahmedabad to document what had happened to the Muslim women in course of the Gujarat carnage. We were Muslims, Christians and Hindus, although faith was not a factor in our selection. We were bound to one another by a bond that defies definition. It propelled us from camp to camp, from taluka to taluka. We divided ourselves in two groups so that we could cover more ground. We wanted to meet as many people and families as we could, to authenticate our account and try to seek justice for the people who had lost their families, homes and above all, hope. The report we drafted, pointed out compelling narratives of the most extreme forms of sexual violence during the 2002 riots. Testimonies of rape, gang rape, mass rape, stripping and molestation were cited. Many of the rape victims had been burnt alive so that there would be no evidence to trace back to the perpetrators. The pattern of sexual violence one sees during pogroms is a part of what Paul Brass would call the institutionalised riot system through which violence in produced and re-produced. One needs to pay attention to the spirit behind the transgressions that becomes the driving force in the hypermasculinity towards women. The framework of this spirit does not tolerate timidity, but instead, provokes men from majority communities to act. We live in a social regime where women are seen as an embodiment of mens izzat (honour). Attacking their women then becomes the undoing of the whole community. Over the years, we have not seen the media consistently report gory details of the sexual violence faced by Bilkis, Yasmin, Zarina, Kausar and the multitude of other Muslim women and children, being repeated or debated for getting them justice. We have not seen these dangerous mechanisms of provocation, through speeches and symbolic gestures, having any place in the passionate table-thumping prime time television debates. It is curious how the collective consciousness of the people is not aroused when there is not one but multiple crimes murder, gang rape, burning alive, stripping in public committed. What is the responsibility of print, electronic, digital and social media in influencing the mass opinion into selective consciousness? Does this consciousness vary if the location of violence is rural or urban? Does this consciousness lessen if the woman belongs to a minority or other marginalised community? Is sexual violence against minority women normalised to a fearful degree? One may not have a yes or no answer to these questions, but these are necessary to be asked. Necessary for remembering the womens bodies which were a site of gruesome violence and now a site of protest and struggle, necessary to determine whether the media display of these incidents influence the way pressure builds up in our courtrooms for deciding the quantum of punishment, necessary so that we the people are solidly behind brave women like Bilkis who continue to fight for justice. While addressing the press conference, Bilkis said mujhe insaaf chahiye, badla nahi (I want justice, not revenge), reminding us of the indomitable Queen of Sheba, who in the Koran bears the name, Bilkis. Syeda Hameed is the founder member and current president of the Muslim Womens Forum. Salina Wilson is a senior fellow with the Muslim Womens Forum. The birthday of Gautam Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, is celebrated as Buddha Purnima across the world. It falls on a full moon day in the month of Vaisakh (April/May) according to the Hindu calendar. In Theravada Buddhism, it is also observed as the day Buddha, born as prince Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563-483 BCE), attained Nirvana (salvation) under the Mahabodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, Bihar, and as his death anniversary. Buddha Purnima is a major festival celebrated with great fervour in countries like Sri Lanka (where it is called Vesak), Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Tibet, China, Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Mongolia, Cambodia, Singapore and Indonesia, though celebrations vary from country to country. Monks light candles and pray to Buddha statue in Phan Tao temple , Chiang mai ,Thailand. (Shutterstock) Devotees visit temples, light candles and incense sticks, pray and offer sweets and fruits before the statue of Lord Buddha. Sermons on the life and teachings of Buddha are held and attended by followers in larger numbers. People usually dress in white and distribute kheer as according to Buddhist lore, on this day a woman named Sujata had offered Buddha a bowl of milk porridge. A monastery altar with deities of Padmasambhava, Buddha and Maitreya. (Shutterstock) In India, a large fair is held in Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, a major Buddhist pilgrimage site where Buddha delivered his first sermon after attaining enlightenment. The relics of the Buddha are taken out for public display in a procession. The day is also marked by prayers and festivities in Gaya and Kushinagar (UP) and across India, especially in Sikkim, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, North Bengal (Kalimpong, Darjeeling, and Kurseong). Many Hindus believe Buddha to be the ninth incarnation of Lord Vishnu. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more The astounding success of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, the final instalment of a two-part fantasy-adventure, has made its producers richer by a few hundred crores, but they are not the only ones to reap benefits. Most of the crew members, including the actors, have raised their remuneration for future projects. The epic battle movie has trumped Bollywood by becoming the countrys highest-grossing film to date. Baahubali 2 has made more than Rs 10 billion ($156 million) worldwide since hitting screens on April 28, according to experts. Reports said Prabhas, who was paid Rs 25 crore for Baahubali 2, is now asking for Rs 30 crore per film. He will soon start shooting for Saaho that will hit the screens in 2018. Not many in the Telugu film industry would be able to match Prabhas salary, but he is still nowhere close to the big shots of Bollywood. Salman Khan, the reigning king of Bollywood, is charging a whopping Rs 60 crore per film. Most of the time he produces his own films so his actual profit could be much higher. Aamir Khan also charges in the bracket of Rs 55-60 crore and Shah Rukh Khan is asking for Rs 40-45 crore for each film. Akshay Kumar, the master of the Rs 100 crore club, goes for Rs 35-40 crore every film, but he releases 4-5 films in a year, so his actual profit could be way more than most of the actors listed here. Among actresses, Kangana Ranaut (Rs 10-12 crore) and Deepika Padukone (Rs 8-10 crore) are leading the charge. Kareena Kapoor Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Anushka Sharma also figure in the list of highest paid Indian actresses. Hema Malini, unlike her Bollywood colleague Rishi Kapoor, does not believe that actors and filmmakers that followed her own generation lack respect for their seniors. The question of respect came up when Rishi wrote anguished social media posts about how none of the current crop of actors (barring Abhishek Bachchan and Randeep Hooda) attended the funeral of veteran actor Vinod Khanna, who died on April 27. Recalling an incident involving herself and actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan they both were felicitated at the Dadasaheb Phalke Awards held in Mumbai last month Hema tells us, After the ceremony was over, I was waiting for a while for my car to come. I guess the driver had parked it some distance away, and it took him some time [to reach me]. I realised that Aishwarya was just standing there with me, refusing to leave. When I asked her, Why are you still here? she replied, Aapki gaadi aane do (Let your car come). I will leave after that. Rishi Kapoor was furious after young actors didnt turn up for actor Vinod Khannas funeral. (Amlan Dutta/HT) Aishwarya even became Hemas bouncer for a while and helped manage the crowd around her. There were so many people who were trying to click photos and were trying to take selfies. [Aishwarya] was making sure that I dont get pushed or nudged by them. Then, after [my] car came, she opened the door, made sure I sat inside the car, and only then did she move to her car, which had been waiting for a while, she recalls. Touched by Aishwaryas gesture, Hema, 68, believes that younger actors or filmmakers understand and give due respect to the industry legends. Actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was last seen in the Karan Johar directorial Ae Dil Hai Mushkil . I was so touched by that, Hema says of the way Aishwarya kept her company and also kept the over-enthusiastic fans under control. Now whod do such a thing? It shows that theres a lot of respect and regard for me. I dont know if everyone in the industry is like her, but there are people who, just like Aishwarya, understand and give due respect to those who are senior to them. I dont think its right to say that everyone is the same, she adds. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Shahid Kapoor, today, completes 14 years in Bollywood and because of his Shaandaar performances over these years, Dil always Maange More. Fans took to social media to congratulate the Haider star for this milestone, to which the actor replied, Thanks peeps for the many wishes. 14 years of doing what I love. Beauty of cinema,you always feel like a student. Too much to learn. Adding, Too much to achieve. Too little time. Time to put my blinders on and run like theres no tomorrow. Gratitude and love. For believing in me. On a related note, the Rangoon star is currently shooting for the magnum opus Padmavati which is being helmed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. It also stars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh. Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor went on a twitter rant lashing out at young actors for not attending Vinod Khannas funeral, who died on April 27 after battling bladder cancer. In his angry tweets, Kapoor expressed his disgust at how no one from the present generation turned up at the funeral [except actors Abhishek Bachchan and Randeep Hooda], while most of them were spotted at actor Priyanka Chopras party the previous night. Kriti was last seen in filmmaker Rohit Shettys Dilwale (2015), which also starred late Vinod Khanna playing the role of Varun Dhawan and Shah Rukh Khans father. The 26-year-old doesnt feel that the present crop of actors dont respect the veterans in the industry. Kriti, further shares that shes rather close to many senior actors and so are her colleagues. I would like to believe it was [no show at Khannas funeral] situational. I dont think the present generation is less attached. I personally am emotional about people who I know and I am around, she told us. Shameful. Not ONE actor of this generation attended Vinod Khanna's funeral. And that too he has worked with them. Must learn to respect. Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 Why this? Including mine and thereafter.When I die, I must be prepared.None will shoulder me. Very very angry with today's so called stars. Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 Angry. Met so many chamcha people last night at Priyanka Chopra's do last night. Few at Vinod's. So fuckn transparent. So angry with them. Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 Ask her what could probably be the reason why many young actors did not turn up for the funeral, despite some of them having worked with Khanna, Kriti says that it was an individual decision. There can be individual reasons for people who knew Vinod Khanna and worked with him, but still were not there [at the funeral]. There might be people who were not in Mumbai or were travelling. I cant comment on someone as to why they didnt turn up, adds Kriti. Thank you my film brethren for your solidarity shown towards the Khanna family. Hum mein ab bhi insaniyat baaki hai. Love you all Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) May 3, 2017 Although her Dilwale co-actor Shah Rukh Khan did attend the late actors prayer meet, which was held on May 3, actor Varun Dhawan, who played the role of Khannas son in the film was nowhere to be seen. Reports suggest that Varun is shooting for his film Judwaa 2 in London, and thats why he was unable to attend. Other celebrities who attended the prayer meet included Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek bachchan, Aishwarya Rai bachchan, Aamir Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Arbaaz Khan, Alia Bhatt and Farhan Akhtar. Meanwhile, Kriti is gearing up for her film Raabta alongside actor Sushant Singh Rajput. We have just started promoting, as the release is still a month away. We will pace up slowly and promotions have become such an important part of films. Its always hectic, but fun at the same time, says Kriti. Follow @htshowbiz for more 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 Actor Suniel Shetty has bounced back, fitter and more optimistic than ever, but he accepts that in the past three years, his career graph had dropped because of his wrong choices. He adds that he is not insecure about the success of his contemporaries, Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan, who were delivering blockbusters at a time when Suniel was doing little or nothing in films. Im not unhappy or cribbing about where they are in their career. Im not where they are because I screwed up. So, who is to blame for that? I cant blame anybody else for that. If I made the wrong choice of films, then they are my choices, says Suniel, who is back in showbiz as the host of the adventure reality show Indias Asli Champion. He adds, I strongly believe that to undo what Ive done, I have to work hard to choose the right film. I dont need to be greedy. The media have been very kind to me and have kept me alive [in the public eye] in the past three-and-a-half years. Elaborating on the wrong choices, Suniel says, I supported people who were not financially very strong. Believing that a film would be very good, I went ahead with it. The problem, adds the actor, is that a producer whose finances are weak would make mistakes such as changing shots; releasing the film without publicity; and without the right theatre. There is a whole math that goes into it, and when somebody doesnt understand the math, things dont work out, he says. Suniel, who has been part of big films such as Border (1997), Dhadkan (2000), Hera Pheri (2000), and Main Hoon Na (2000), had his last proper release with Thank You (2011), co-starring Akshay Kumar, Bobby Deol, Irrfan Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Celina Jaitley, and Rimi Sen. Meanwhile, Suniel, who is also a film producer, made the films Rakht (2004) and Mission Istaanbul (2008), and was busy managing his restaurant business in Mumbai, established over a decade ago. Suniel is thankful to his friends in the industry who have always supported him. The actor says, Salman, Ajay or Akshay all of them supported me. Somewhere I feel that buzz was also created by them [in the media]. I honestly believe that when youre content and dont hold anything against anybody, not the Almighty, nor your contemporaries, everything falls in place. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Actor Ranbir Kapoor recently took off for a holiday to London and he was accompanied by his mother Neetu Kapoor. While initial reports claimed that it was a casual break that the actor after wrapping up the shooting for his upcoming film, the rumour mills are now abuzz that it was not just any other vacation. Reportedly, the Kapoors went there to meet a girl for Ranbirs matrimonial alliance. The London visit could very well be for a meet and greet with a well-known family in London for the actors marriage. Though nothing is confirmed as of now, but time will tell, Deccan Chronical quoted a source as saying. Ranbir has just wrapped up shooting for filmmaker Anurag Basus Jagga Jasoos, also starring his ex-girlfriend Katrina Kaif. There were reports that their breakup in January 2016 affected the films shoot, however, Basu had already put an end to those speculations. A post shared by Anurag Basu (@anuragsbasu) on Apr 30, 2017 at 9:45pm PDT Rather they (Ranbir and Katrina) became more professional so that the work doesnt get affected. They were more concerned that their personal equation or relationship doesnt become a hurdle for the film. I was surprised. They acted as if nothing is wrong and they are absolutely fine. I was concerned with what was being captured on camera and not with what happened between them. They are so professional. In the past (also), we have seen actors, who have broken up and still worked together, said Basu. Follow @htshowbiz for more The International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gujarat International Finance-Tec City (GIFT IFSC) has signed an agreement with Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) to collaborate on efforts for skill development in the field of international financial services. As per the MoU, GIFT IFSC and GNLU would work jointly towards courses, training and certificate programs in the field of international financial services law, the company said in a statement today. The association would promote the deeper acceptance of financial laws with regards to global financial markets, it said. IFSC being new a concept, theres a pressing need to enhance understanding its various aspects. Through this MOU, we hope to help edify law professionals on IFSC rules, arbitration and regulations concerning global financial transactions, said Dipesh Shah, Head of IFSC and strategy, GIFT IFSC. Our aim is to reach out to all relevant stakeholders in India and make them proficient in this relatively new field of financial law, said Shah. Under the MoU, GNLU will introduce a new course on International Financial Services Centre from its June 2017 semester. It will also organise a program for lawyers covering IFSC, international arbitration and related fields. GNLU will also encourage its masters/ degree students to undertake certification program in the field of international law and international financial services. The MOU will also look into developing and conducting programs in financial market along with GIFT and other institutions based out of GIFT IFSC, the release stated. Since one of the agenda of the MoU is to create more awareness about the fundamentals of an IFSC, a knowledge series will be routinely organised under the banner of GIFT IFSC and GNLU, he said. GNLU Director Bimal Patel said, our partnership opens new doors to gain experience on international financial laws and regulations. We would the first university in India to start a regular course on IFSC. This will also provide hands on international experience in financial law to our students and given them a competitive edge in placement. India has for the first time ever signed a contract to import LPG from Iran as it looks at additional sources of cooking fuel to meet rising domestic demand. State-owned oil firms will import one very large gas carrier (VLGC), or 44,000 tonnes, per month for an initial six-month period, industry sources said. India imports almost a million tonnes of LPG every month to meet rising demand that has been further fuelled by the government drive to give free gas connections to poor women. LPG consumption in 2016-17 rose 9.8 per cent to 21.55 million tonnes. Of this, 11 million tonnes came from imports. India mainly imports LPG via term contracts from major Middle Eastern producers Saudi Aramco, Qatars Tasweeq, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Read more | India to boost investment in Iranian oil and gas sectors Sources said LPG imports will rise over the next three years to 16-17 million tonnes as the government pushes for making available cooking gas cylinders to the poor and wean them off polluting fuels. The country is looking to import LPG from Bangladesh. India had imported 8.8 million tonnes of LPG in 2015-16. Imports last year made India the worlds second-largest importer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), behind China. It overtook Japan, which imported 10.6 million tonnes. Last May, the government launched a programme to provide free cooking gas connection to poor women with a view to cut on use of firewood and polluting fuels like dried cow dung. LPG demand is projected to grow by 9.7 per cent to 23.7 million tonnes in the current fiscal and is likely to touch 35 million tonnes by 2031-32. Read more | India to invest $20 billion in Irans Chabahar port development A record 3.45 crore LPG connections were given during the fiscal ended March 31, 2017, including 2.2 crore free connections to poor women. This has taken the number of LPG consumers to 20.08 crore. As many as 6 crore connections have been given in last three years, taking LPG to 72.84 per cent of the population. The government is targeting giving out 3 crore connections including 1.5-2 crore under the free LPG connection scheme during the 2017-18 fiscal and another 4 crore in the following year. This would help take LPG coverage to 95.49 per cent of the population. President Donald Trump is delaying a decision on whether to withdraw from a landmark climate deal until after an international summit later this month. The move means the president will head to the G7 summit in Italy at the end of May amid continued global uncertainty over whether the United States will remain in the emissions-cutting deal struck in Paris under the Obama administration. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump wants to continue to meet with his team, seeking advice from both an economic and an environmental perspective as he works to make a decision. A meeting for top advisers to discuss the deal had been set for Tuesday afternoon but was postponed. Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to renegotiate the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency. His top officials have appeared divided about what to do about the deal, under which the United States pledged to significantly reduce planet-warming carbon emissions in the coming decade. Leading up to the expected Tuesday meeting, a number of high-profile businesses spoke out in favor of remaining part of the agreement. A group including Apple, Google and Walmart signed a letter sent to Trump last week. And this week, a larger coalition signed on to ads run in the Washington editions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. On Instagram Tuesday, renowned jeweler Tiffany and Company wrote a message to the president, saying were still in for bold climate action. Please keep the U.S. in the Paris Climate Agreement. Ted Halstead, president of the Climate Leadership Council, said that there is a nearly unanimous position on the part of big business. Halstead co-authored an opinion piece that ran in the New York Times Tuesday, titled The Business Case for the Paris Climate Accord. American business leaders understand that remaining in the agreement would spur new investment, strengthen American competitiveness, create jobs, ensure American access to global markets and help reduce future business risks associated with the changing climate, said the piece, written with George P. Shultz, who served as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. Opponents of the deal have also lobbied the president this week, with a group of conservative organizations signing a letter saying the treaty is not in the interest of the American people and the U. S. should therefore not be a party to it. Signatures on the letter include veteran anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and Myron Ebell, who led transition efforts at EPA prior to the presidents swearing in. The Paris accord, signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, was never ratified by the Senate due to the staunch oppositions of Republicans. It therefore does not have the force of a binding treaty, and the United States could potentially withdraw from the deal without legal penalty. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chief executive of the oil company Exxon, said at his Senate confirmation hearing in January that he supports staying in the deal. But Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has said the Paris pact is a bad deal for America that will cost jobs. Like Trump, Pruitt has questioned the consensus of climate scientists that man-made carbon emissions are the primary driver of global warming. A senior administration official said the presidents inclination has been to leave the pact, but Ivanka Trump set up a review process to make sure he received information from experts in the public and private sector before a making a decision. The official requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. Ivanka Trump, who serves as an adviser to her father, was supposed to meet separately Tuesday with Pruitt, but that meeting was also postponed, according to a White House official who requested anonymity to discuss private talks. American companies continue to bet big on India, a top US corporate leader has said, noting that the worlds two largest democratic countries have incredible opportunities to come closer through digitisation. At a time of global uncertainty, the only constant element that businesses and markets across the world will continue to face is technological disruption, USIBC chairman and CISCO executive chairman John Chambers said yesterday. The US and India have incredible opportunities to come closer through digitisation; creating jobs, driving citizen engagement and transforming the lives of 1.3 billion people in India and over 300 million in the US, he said. We have strong partners in the government of India. Leaders like Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi, (Andhra Pradesh) Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, and (IT) Secretary (Aruna) Sundararajan understand the urgency to bring about digital transformation of India. That is why Cisco and so many other American companies continue to bet big on India, Chambers said in his address to the West Coast Summit of the USIBC. The summit in Silicon Valley was attended by approximately 200 senior-level business leaders and investors including those from Amazon, PayPal, Deloitte, Facebook, iCreate, Nuveen, Mastercard, Mobility Infrastructure Group, Varian Medical and Visa Inc. Naidu was awarded the Transformative Chief Minister Award, in recognition of his achievement in championing US- India ties in the areas of trade, politics and culture. The companies that are here - you are at the global level, with global knowledge. You are all doing well. I invite you to take technology and best practices, and together we can take it to India to transform India, Naidu said. I am with you. We are prepared to implement; we will produce a pilot project, then produce on a larger scale for overall benefit of the country, he said. USIBC president Mukesh Aghi said with Indias move towards a cashless society, plans to build smart cities and the explosive growth of e-commerce, it is imperative that there are deliberations on what the challenges are towards creating a digitally driven economy and how American companies can help in this endeavour. Maintaining a strong and healthy relationship between the US and India is critical, and USIBC facilitates closer collaboration as both nations look to harness the power of digital transformation to accelerate economic growth and social progress, said Punit Renjen, Deloitte Global CEO and USIBC board member. The actions we take have profound implications not only on our respective economies but have ramifications around the world. As someone who grew up in India and lived all of my adult life in the US, I have experienced the first-hand opportunities that can result from deep bilateral ties. We are two of the largest democratic forces on the globe and can set the standard for how nations work together toward transformative results, Renjen said. Senior vice president of Global Government Relations, Visa Inc Demetrios Marantis said, Visa applauds Indias bold move toward a less cash society and we remain committed to supporting Indias continued economic growth. PayPals Chief Technology Officer Sri Shivananda said India is on an unprecedented growth path, boosted by Modi-led Digital India, Startup India and Make in India initiatives. The progress made is visible across sectors. The vision of the government to make India a less cash, digitally empowered society and leading digital economy is commendable. India continues to be a strategic market for PayPal, he said. There is an interesting wave of experienced, mid-career professionals who are entering the start-up space in India using advanced technology components to deliver innovative, low cost solutions, said Anupam Jalote, CEO of iCreate. A day after the murder of bouncer Amit Sharma alias Meet at Panchkulas Saketri area, SAS Nagar police got two days remand of one of the prime accused named in this murder case after he was brought to the SAS Nagar court on the production warrant from Nabha Jail, where he was currently lodged in connections with the Arms Act. While SAS Nagar police claimed that the accused Gagandeep Singh was taken in custody for regular interrogation, his interrogation in bouncers murder case was not ruled out. SAS Nagars senior superintendent of police Kuldeep Singh said that he would be questioned for his involvement in all the cases he was booked so far. Panchkula police commissioner RC Mishra added that his team will also interrogate him in coordination with SAS Nagar police and confident of some leads in days to come. The preliminary investigation reveals that Gagan had threatened to kill his arch business rival Amit Sharma after he was humiliated by latters bouncers last year and even made unsuccessful attempt to kill him also. Later, he was arrested by the Punjab Police for carrying illegal weapons near Kurali. First he was kept in Ropar jail and then transferred to Nabha jail. Gounder connection One theory being projected is that Gagan planned Amits murder allegedly with the help of Punjabs dreaded criminal Vicky Gounder and his gang. Gagan met Gounder and his associates during his stay at Ropar and Nabha Jail. The latter fled the high-security Nabha jail in November last year and is still on the run. Panchkula police, however, are still not confirmed about Gounders involvement. A senior official said that the leads they managed so far suggest that Gagan and his associates had planned the murder due to old rivalry with Amit Sharma. The investigation is still underway and anything is possible, he added Two other accused still at large Besides Gagan, Panchkula police had booked two more of his associates, including Sonu Shah and Surjeet Singh, who were yet not been nabbed despite five police teams tracing them since Monday. The identity of two masked assailants, who fired shots at him multiples times on Monday, is also unknown so far. Deputy commissioner of police Ashok Kumar said that the police were expecting major lead in a day or two. Amit Sharmas body cremated The body of Amit Sharma was cremated at the Manimajra cremation ground after his autopsy was done at Panchkula government medical hospital. His medical report revealed that three bullets were recovered from inside the body while one bullet was stuck in the belt. A huge rush of his associates gad gathered as his body was brought to his house in Manimajra for last rites. Amits mother, who was with him when he was shot dead, was still in shock and unable to come out of the trauma. He is survived by wife and a two-year-old son. BLURB Panchkula police not sure of Punjabs dreaded criminal Vicky Gounders link in the case SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON There were huge traffic jams around DY Patil Stadium before and after Justin Beibers concert on Wednesday. Though 300 traffic officials were deployed there, the approximately 50,000 people who came in from all across the country and abroad for the show, and regular commuter endured traffic jams at Nerul as many service roads were shut for the day. Many people also had trouble crossing the Sion-Panvel highway because a signal in front of the stadium was defunct. A footbridge provided some respite, as a steady stream of Beliebers used it to cross the highway and reach the stadium. A few hours before the concert, the highway was packed with hundreds of illegally parked vehicles even as the traffic police deployed towing vans. Inside the stadium, police officials went undercover to prevent women from being harassed and molested, and to provide intelligence inputs during the concert. To manage security, the police divided the stadium into four sections and each was overseen by an officer of the level of deputy commissioner of police (DCP). Two squads from the anti-narcotics cell were also present, keeping an eye out of drug peddlers and other suspicious activities. A senior officer said that a special squad of around 50 personnel kept tabs on people, while the riot control force, quick response team and reserve police force were on standby nearby. The police had planned to deploy drones to keep an eye on the crowd, but were forced to use drones provided private security agencies as their own drones malfunctioned. Two of the drones were equipped with night-vision cameras. Tushar Doshi, DCP, special branch, said, Our drones have developed some technical problems but we are monitoring the crowd using those provided by private agencies. There were around 50 officials in the police control room to monitor about 200 CCTV cameras. We set up a temporary control room inside the stadium and everything went off smoothly, Doshi said. About 50 officials at the police control room in CBD Belapur got taking updates on the situation at concert through walky-talkies from officers posted at the stadium. Hemant Nagrale, Navi Mumbai police commissioner, said, While the organisers hired private security agencies, our job was to provide overall security and act swiftly in case of an emergency. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Speaking to a military audience in 1973, the eminent war historian Michael Howard said that he was tempted to declare dogmatically that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have got it wrong. But he went to add: It does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives. I was reminded of this speech after reading the recently unveiled Joint Doctrine for the Indian Armed Forces. The first such doctrine to be published by the Indian military, it has been panned by many perceptive analysts of military affairs. All the same, the doctrine is an important attempt by the armed forces to inform and influence public debates on strategic issues. From this standpoint, the most curious part of the document is an appendix on Civil-Military Relations. These couple of pages lay out the militarys perspective on what is wrong with our existing institutional arrangements of civil-military relations and how to set it right. Civil-military relations in India have been on the brink of a crisis over the past few years. Controversies over one-rank one-pension and the latest pay commission were symptoms of deeper problems. Yet successive governments have done nothing to address them. The doctrines attempt to flag this issue in public attests to the militarys deepening disquiet on this front. The appendix on civil-military relations opens with a quote from an air marshal: Direction in the Civil-Military Relationship in any democracy is strictly the right of the political leadership and not bureaucracy. This harks to the militarys longstanding complaint that civilian control has turned into civil service control. There is something to this claim, though it tends to be overstated in military discourse. Nevertheless, the doctrine is right in observing that it is prudent that institutional and structural mechanisms exist that facilitate free flowing communication between the two, thereby enabling critical and timely decision making. The functionaries in the MoD ought to be enablers of this relationship. More problematic is the militarys own view of how these arrangements should function when it comes to such critical areas as the use of force. The doctrine states: Military professionals are experts in the use of force under the political institution of the State. Apropos, it would always be essential for the civilian authority, in consultation with military (as part of decision making process) to decide the Military Objective and then leave it to the military professionals to decide upon the best way of achieving the objective. In other words, the military should have a say in deciding the aims and should be left free to pursue it. The underlying premise about military professionalism is not as compelling as it sounds. As scholars of civil-military relations have pointed out, the military is quite unlike other professions. Few military officers have actual experience of fighting wars: our top military leadership, for instance, joined the services well after the 1971 war. Treating them as experts in the management of violence is a bit like entrusting a crucial surgery to a doctor who has prepared all his life to perform a surgery without ever having done one. Equally dodgy is the subsequent claim about operational independence for the military. Earlier, the doctrine quotes Clausewitzs famous dictum about war being a continuation of politics. But the demand for operational independence is inconsistent with the Clausewitzian view. If war is a continuation of politics, then politics will influence and intervene at levels of warfare down to the tactical. It is curious that on one hand the military wants greater say in policy matters, but on the other it wants to keep the civilians out of its domain. The former demand is entirely understandable, but the latter is incompatible with any properly integrated system of civil-military relations. The military cant have its cake and eat it too. If strategy is the bridge between political ends and military means, then it will have to be jointly constructed by the civilians and the military. Srinath Raghavan is senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi The views expressed are personal The Uttarakhand prison department will install high-end closed circuit television (CCTV) camera surveillance system in jails across the state to ramp up security, a top official said on Wednesday. As a part of the plan, full HD (high-definition) cameras will be installed at all the 10 jails of the state, including in district jails in Dehradun, Haridwar, Chamoli, Nainital, Pauri, Tehri and Almora, central prison in Sitarganj and sub-jails in Haldwani and Roorkee, said state inspector general of prisons PVK Prasad. Some jails already have camera set ups and we are looking to extend it to all the prisons now. The move (to establish a functioning CCTV camera surveillance system in each of the prisons) is a part of long-pending plan to modernize the prisons, he told Hindustan Times. According to the Uttarakhand jail authorities, each barrack in the prisons will have one or two cameras --depending upon the size of barracks--while motion detection cameras will be installed along the periphery of the inner and outer wall of the prisons to detect any movement in the areas. Cameras will be installed both inside and outside the jails, with the latter being weather-proof and equipped with night vision. A trained jail staff will man the system. The installation work is expected to cost more than 5 crore, Prasad said. More than 4,600 inmates are currently lodged across the 10 jails in Uttarakhand. Instances of prisoners escaping from jails or police custody, beside suicides by inmates and suspicious activities by prisoners have been reported in the state in the past. Last month, a murder convict, serving life sentence, escaped from the Sampoornanand open jail in Udham Singh Nagars Sitarganj. In January this year, a prisoner allegedly committed suicide in Haridwar jail. In November 2016, a jailer of the Chamoli prison was suspended after it was found that his mobile phone was allegedly used by a criminal lodged there, for threatening a Roorkee-based businessman. In January 2015, two inmates committed suicide in Haridwar and Chamoli jails while in the same year, two others escaped from the Sitarganj open jail. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The forest departments in Uttarakhand and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh are gearing up to count the elephants in their respective territories as part of national census beginning May 23. The census will continue till May 27. Field staff in both states is being trained in the methodology that will be used during the census. In the Himalayan state, there are nearly 40 forest divisions besides protected areas that have flourishing elephant population. As per the records, the state had 1,797 elephants during a count done in 2015. Currently, the field staff is being trained about the analysis that will be done during five days of census. The census would be crisp and precise for which we need the staff to be fully trained. We are teaching them of transits, how blocks will be decided, and how analysis of dung would be done, Sanatan Sonkar, director Rajaji told Hindustan Times. Rajaji reported 309 elephants during the last count. In fact, an orientation workshop for UP and Uttarakhand officials was also organized in April to discuss various details of the census. Some forest divisions do not have a continuous spread of elephants. Thus engaging staff for census work in such pockets would be a waste, officials said. We are identifying areas that have limited or no records of elephant presence. This would help us strategise the census, Sinkar added. Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh the census will largely focus on border areas of Nepal as well as Uttarakhand. There are roughly 169 elephants in the state. Amangarh division adjoining Corbett, Dudhwa and Katarniaghat adjoining Nepal and Najibabd division adjoining Lansdowne will be key areas for study. The Corbett landscape, home to over 1,000 elephants, is an important link connecting the terrain from Lansdowne covering Rajaji and Dehradun. The staff will identify the trails on the first day of census following which dung analysis would be done for three days and on the last day direct count would be done. The raw data would be directly sent to an institute in Hyderabad for interpretation. (A BOX ITEM ON ELEPHANT STATS WILL BE SENT THROUGH MAIL) EOM SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON New Delhi Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra started an indefinite hunger strike at his official residence in north Delhis Civil Lines on Wednesday demanding that chief minister Arvind Kejriwal should release details of foreign trips made by five Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders. Mishra, who was sacked as the water and tourism minister on May 6, said in an open letter to Kejriwal that he was staging a satyagraha and not a dharna . He demanded details of foreign travel by AAP leaders Sanjay Singh, Ashish Khetan, Satyendar Jain, Raghav Chaddha and Durgesh Pathak. I am not seeking anyones resignation or any other political demand. I am only seeking information about foreign trips by these five people. We were always told there was no money to fight elections, then how did these people go on foreign trips, he said. Later in the day, Mishra was allegedly attacked by a man who claimed to be an AAP volunteer. The party, however, denied it and said he was a BJP activist. The man jumped on Mishra before police officials and his aides caught hold of him. The guy came running, put his hands on my neck and said he would kill me. My aides caught hold of him and the police came and whisked him away, said Mishra. He said his hunger strike would continue. The former minister, who filed a complaint against Kejriwal with the CBI on Tuesday, said he wasnt aware of all the foreign trips undertaken by his former colleagues when he was a minister. I didnt have so many details while I was a minister. Even in the last few days, I have been receiving calls from people giving me details of corruption in the party, he said. Mishra wrote that if the details he is seeking are made public, then people will let Kejriwal continue in the government. Where did the money come for these foreign trips and how much money was spent? Where did all these people go and why? And whose money was it? We were told there was no money to fight elections then where did the money come for these trips? Its a small demand. If there is nothing to hide then it will take only five minutes to release the details, he stated in the letter. Mishra said the AAP should stop saying he is a BJP agent. Why are you asking today? Why didnt you ask earlier, wrote Mishra, whose mother, Annapurna Mishra, is a former BJP mayor. A section of Aam Aadmi Party insiders have come to view Kapil Mishras rebellion as a sub-plot in what they see as a BJP-inspired game to oust Arvind Kejriwal as chief minister through a leadership change in the Delhi Assembly. Terming as baseless the charges levelled by Mishra against the CM, they pointed to the possibility of the Centre dangling the threat of Presidents rule, citing breakdown of constitutional machinery in the Capital. The objective behind such tactics will be to foment dissension against Kejriwal to make legislators elect a new leader, they averred. BJPs Delhi unit president Manoj Tiwari dismissed such claims, insisting that Kejriwal cannot blame anyone except himself for losing control of his partys legislators. Theyre speaking out of a sense of guilt over their misdeeds that have caused cracks in the partyEven the thought of what theyre insinuating hasnt crossed our mind, he told HT. The sections that saw Kejriwals leadership in peril also apprehended the arrest of deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and health minister Satyendar Jain in cases under investigation. The scenario they painted was of an AAP regime without the incumbent CM at the helm. They claimed Mishra was doing a hatchet job. Or else, the Lt Governor who doesnt entertain visitors on weekends wouldnt have met him on a Sunday. In their assessment, the disqualification of 20-odd AAP MLAs on the office of profit issue wont happen anytime soon. Reason: There is no court order yet even on preliminary objections over whether the EC can hear the case. Mishra had been attempting Kejriwals ouster to create room for a new leader for quite some time. As he himself wasnt popular among legislators, the effort was to build a consensus on an AAP leader who is perceived as ideologically close to the BJP-RSS but isnt a member of the Assembly. This leader himself was quite active - with Mishra talent scouting on the sly for support for him. Together they approached individual legislators with the assertion that the strength of pro-change MLAs was as high as 34 - the number required for a majority within the legislative party. While on possible, wider implications of the Mishra episode, a leader privy to internal party affairs recalled an earlier demand by some MLAs that Kumar Vishwas be made AAP convener in place of the CM who held two posts. They said as the conveners slot lay in the jurisdiction of the partys national executive, the real purpose was to raise the leadership question within the legislature party. Six out 66 AAP MLAs, including Mishra, are either suspended, sacked or have turned renegade. Forty-odd legislators will constitute two-third strength of the party for a legitimate split and a new leader under the anti-defection law. vinodsharma@hindustantimes.com lalita.panicker@hindustantimes.com A day after AAP raised the pitch on the EVM issue by holding a demonstration in the Delhi Assembly, AAP leader Saurabh Bhardwaj said that the party was waiting to be invited by Election Commission to hold the same demo. He said the party will successfully conduct the same test on an EC machine or ask people for forgiveness. We are waiting for an invitation from Election Commission. Tomorrow, if the election commission invites us, we will go and hack their machines, or else apologise to people, said AAP leader Saurabh Bhardwaj in a television channel interview. The election commission is trying the hide the vulnerability of EVMs by saying it is kept in a secured environment. But the hacking happens after the EVM reaches the polling booth, he said. Stepping up the heat on the EVM issue, Congress sympathiser Tehseen Poonawalla held his own show in the Capital on Wednesday. Clarifying that the Congress was not with the AAP, Poonawalla said that he had collaborated with the party on the issue as the Election Commission had refused to pay heed to his concerns. Poonawalla was accompanied by activist VV Rao who said that over 500 complaints over EVMs were lying pending with the poll panel. Poonawalla questioned the reliability of EVMs and asked the Election Commission to bring in experts to dispel doubts. At the press conference at Delhis Constitution Club, Poonawalla claimed that a day before local elections in Pune, ECI issued a notice saying the code for an EVM was wrong without even sealing or verifying the machine. The first proof: Votes did not tally in 41 wards in Pune, he said, adding, I first realised about EVM tampering when an MP in Mumbai had told me the exact number the party was winning by, which turned out to be true. The debate is not whether EVMs can be hacked, its about how to make it fool-proof in future, he said. VV Rao, who is an election watch activist and the main petitioner in the PIL filed in the Supreme Court on EVMs, said, I appreciate what AAP did yesterday. For the first time EVM tampering was discussed in an Assembly House. People sitting in Election Commission know nothing about technology. They are mere administrators. Even VVPATs are not verifiable. It still fails to ensure protection of votes cast by citizens. Rao flagged the alleged malfunctioning of the EVM in Bhind and said that no expert was sent to conduct the enquiry. Chips used in our EVMs come from Japan, the technology is from US, then why cant the ECI bring experts from abroad to verify, Rao said. He also added that in 2013, SC made it mandatory to use EVMs only through VVPATs. ECI is blatantly violating this. It is contempt of court, he said. Meanwhile, rebel AAP leader Kapil Mishra began hunger strike at his home. Mishra, on Wednesday, wrote another letter to Kejriwal urging him to reveal detail of foreign trips by the party leaders. I am sitting on a satyagraha till I get a clarification on details of international travel expenses of some senior AAP leaders. It is not a dharna but a satyagraha. I would like to send out a message to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to put out the details of the foreign tours of his five AAP leaders - Satyendra Jain, Ashish Khetan, Raghav Chaddha, Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak in public domain, Mishra said SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Aam Aadmi Party insisted on Wednesday that the dummy EVM used in the live demonstration in Delhi assembly was put together by its own team of engineers, amid intense speculation over where the machine had come from. Hacking an EVM belonging to the Election Commission is a criminal offence, and though the party carried out the experiment inside the Delhi Assembly to avoid legal consequences, sources within AAP said they were aware of the implications of hacking a real EVM. They said that the prototype they had developed looked exactly like the ECs original EVM but they changed its look before the demonstration. The idea, the party said, was to show that the machine can be manipulated to favour a particular party. AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj conducted a mock poll with the EVM replica to demonstrate that the can be manipulated. The party says the demonstration strengthens their claim that the system can be rigged. Sources said the party knew about the parts of EVM and companies who manufacture it and import it and similar parts and software were used in the replica. Whether they had an original EVM or not is something they dont want to confirm but party sources said that some EVMs were found in the scrap in 2009 so it is not difficult to get access to EVMs. The EC also imports parts of EVMs from Japan and the US. There is no science behind it. In 2009, 4,000 EVMs were stolen in Vijaywada and some of them were later found in scrap. If an EVM can reach the scrap market then it can reach a technology enthusiast also, an AAP source said. The Election Commission, however, junked these claims and said that any machine carried out of their premises ceases to be an EVM used for polling. An EC official told HT on Wednesday: The contention (that an EVM can be procured easily is) absolutely baseless and misleading. Whenever EVMs get stolen and FIRs lodged. Such EVMs cannot enter back into our ECI stock. The sources said after managing the parts motherboard, display unit, cable and micro control and EEP ROM, the party members, who have engineering background, assembled it. The party sources refused to divulge details of sources of these parts but said that EVMs can be hacked through these parts also. There are volunteers of AAP who are from IIT and worked with micro processing companies. They have helped us in assembly and carrying out the trial runs. We showed just one method of hacking, there could be many more, said a party member. The machine was assembled and several trial runs were carried out to find how it can be hacked. The party has now challenged the poll panel to give them the voting machines so that they could show how to hack them, which is enough to understand that they knew everything about the original EVMs. People with a lot of good intentions are behind it and are a part of our system. Exposing them will be dishonouring them, Greater Kailash MLA Bhardwaj said when asked about the source of EVM displayed in the assembly. Bhardwaj said after breaking the code last week, the team carried out dummy runs at least 25 times. On Tuesday, after reaching the assembly, Bhardwaj and the team carried a test run to avoid glitches. If you see the chief ministers tweet of the past few months, you will realise that we were working on this, Bhardwaj added. Kejriwal has alleged that EVM manipulation helped the BJP win the massive mandate in Uttar Pradesh and also blamed the machines for the AAPs defeat in the recent by-polls and civic elections in Delhi, a charge challenged by some of his own party leaders. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON After south Delhi, women and children in north and east Delhi too could have free access to toilets of any hotel or restaurant. The north and east Delhi municipal corporations are planning to replicate the ideas in their areas soon. North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) commissioner PK Gupta on Tuesday had called a meeting with the hotel/restaurant associations from Karol Bagh, Chandni Chowk, Paharganj and other prominent markets to work out a road map. Apart from allowing free access to their hotels/guest houses/restaurants, we also requested the association members to adopt public toilets in and around their areas. They were asked to contribute in the maintenance of these places so that people can use them in large numbers. We are expecting to implement the decision by this weekend in north Delhi, said Gupta. He said while the hoteliers and guest owners agreed to adopt public toilets, they were concerned about security issues when it comes to free access for public inside their complexes to use toilets. The hotel associations shared mixed views on the issue. They said unlike south Delhi, there are not many big hotels or restaurants in north Delhi, and guest houses in Paharganj and Chandni Chowk have washrooms attached to the rooms. I dont think any restaurant owner would be happy to allow a queue inside the complex for using its toilet. Even visitors coming to the place wont feel uncomfortable to dine here. Ideally, the civic agency should develop such facilities on their own, said Arun Gupta, a member of Delhi Hotel Mahasangh, Paharganj. But another restaurant owner, who wished not to be named, said that women in any case are allowed access to toilets. But it is important to not make the decision compulsory. The owners should be given freedom to restrict entry in certain cases/circumstances, he said. Meanwhile, officials maintained that the civic agency will chalk out a plan taking all these points into consideration. Also, we will fix certain radius/distance within which they would need to adopt all the public conveniences, said a senior North Corporation official. There are about 10,000 licensed hotels/restaurants/guest houses in north Delhi and if the decision is implemented, people would be widely benefitted. Once the concept is implemented in North, we will put all effort to start the facility in East Delhi too, said Gupta, who has taken charge of East Corporation for the time being. On May 1, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation issued directions to all hotels, restaurants and eateries under its jurisdiction to make their washrooms accessible to public. The decision received appreciation from people in south Delhi considering there are few toilets constructed for women and these are not maintained well. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A 45-year-old Delhi Police inspector shot himself with his service pistol at the Chittaranjan Park police station on Wednesday evening. The incident took place around 6pm, 10 minutes after the inspector, Kushal Ganguly, was issued a pistol by the Malkhana (store) of the police station as he was supposed to be on duty for Thursdays Shab-e-barat procession arrangements, said police. Ganguly was posted in the district investigation unit (DIU) of the southeast district police. He was transferred in the DIU only one-and-a-half months ago. Before that he was posted in the X-branch (arrangement branch) at the office of the deputy commissioner of police (southeast district). The exact reason behind Gangulys extreme step could not be ascertained till the filing of this report. No suicide note was recovered from the crime scene or from the possession of the inspector. Sources, however, said that inspector was allegedly under depression because of his poor performance as an investigator. Also, he was allegedly having a property dispute with his brothers, they said. Romil Baaniya, deputy commissioner of police (southeast), said that Gangulys office was on the first floor of the police station. The DUI office was closed on Wednesday because of Budha Purnima, a gazetted holiday, but still Ganguly reached office around 4.15pm. He spent more than an hour having a conversation and a cup of tea with inspector Ravinder Rajput at the police station. At 5.50pm, Ganguly got the pistol issued saying he will be on Shab-e-barat arrangements duty on Thursday, said Baaniya, adding Ganguly later went to his office. Around 6pm, a senior police officer said, Ganguly locked himself in the bathroom on the first floor and shot himself in his head. The bullet exited from the other side of the head, piercing his brain. The other police staff on the floor heard the gunshot sound and rushed to the bathroom. They broke open the door and rushed Ganguly to Max Saket hospital where he was declared brought dead, said the officer. According to the DCP, during the initial probe it was learnt that Ganguly had spoken to his friend, who goes by the surname Negi, in the morning and had told him that he was depressed. Ganguly told Negi that his mind was getting weaker and because of that he was not able to work properly. He was certainly not under workload pressure as he was only investigating four cases whereas each inspector in DIU is probing at least 20 to 25 cases, said Baaniya. Sources said that Ganguly was recently reprimanded by one of the DCPs of the district who was unhappy with his slow work and because he was not doing his duty seriously. They said despite being an inexperienced investigator, Ganguly was transferred in the DIU and was being asked to give results. A native of Uttarakhand, Ganguly joined the force in 1997 as a sub-inspector. He was promoted to the rank of inspector in November 2016. He is survived by his wife, a nurse in Safdarjung hospital, and two children. The family lives in Delhis Arjun Nagar. His family members were informed about his death. The autopsy on his body will be conducted on Thursday, added the DCP. A man, who allegedly attempted to attack sacked AAP minister Kapil Mishra at his home at Civil Lines in north Delhi was thrashed by his supporters on Wednesday evening. Though Mishra escaped unhurt, the man, identified as Ankit Bhardwaj, was caught on the premises and handed to the police. Bhardwaj told the media that he was an AAP supporter though the party claimed he belonged to the BJP. Soon after, BJP issued a statement distancing itself from the incident. From the information that we have till now, he is a not a member of the party. We totally disassociate ourselves from such an act and we would like to condemn the violence, said BJP spokesperson Rajiv Babbar. Bhardwaj tried to speak to the media present in the house even as he was being roughed up. His hair was pulled and clothes torn. He was pushed to the ground and even kicked and punched, despite a police personnel trying to guard him. Some people tried to attack me but they were stopped by my followers. I do not know who these people are but I told my supporters that if they manhandle anyone, even the person who came to attack me, I will give up water, Kapil Mishra later told reporters, lying on a mattress in his house. Mishra has been on a hunger strike since Wednesday morning and has demanded to know details of the foreign travel by AAP leaders, Sanjay Singh, Ashish Khaitan, Satyendar Jain, Raghav Chaddha and Durgesh Pathak. Earlier in the day, Mishra, who was sacked from the post of water and tourism minister on May 6, wrote an open letter to Arvind Kejriwal stating that he was staging no dharna but a Satyagraha. Mishra was sacked from the primary membership of the party after he made corruption charges against partys national convener Arvind Kjeirwal. Delhi Universitys plan to start the admission process earlier this year doesnt seem to be working out as the university is yet to declare the dates for start of undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate courses (PG) admissions. Officials said they are still sorting out technical issues and finer policies and dates for both UG and PG admissions will be announced soon. The UG admissions usually start between May-end and June first week, while the PG admissions start by April end. We are still working on the finer details. There are some issues we need to sort out as we dont want to leave any last-minute glitch. Admissions will start soon, said a member of the admission committee. Officials were earlier planning to start the UG admissions earlier than usual. They were planning to start it in March-end but later said they will start the process in the third week of April, a month sooner than it is usually held, to stop last-minute rush at top colleges. The idea behind starting the UG admissions earlier was to help applicants get a relief from last-minute rush as it would have allowed them to start filling their forms even before their Class 12 results were announced. But we are still working out the policy changes and then these decisions have to be approved in academic council, officials said. The PG admissions are already delayed as they usually start by April-end and entrance tests are held in first and second week of June. This year, the university is planning to conduct online entrance test. But the plan has not gone down well with students with the Delhi University Students Union opposing the move. Sources said one reason for the delay in announcement of admission dates for PG admission is because the university is trying to find a solution. Students are opposing as they say applicants from rural area will find it difficult. We are working on a plan to allow applicants to practice sample online tests at their nearby center. But a concrete plan is yet to be made, sources said. Sources said there are technical issues as well because this will be the first time for the university to conduct online tests for PG courses. We want it to be glitch-free so some technical issues are being sorted, sources said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A team comprising an IIT graduate, tech experts and MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, who is himself a computer engineer, were working for the past two months to crack the secret code through which, the AAP claims, an electronic voting machine (EVM) could be hacked. The process took pace after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lost the Punjab elections in March but the team got success last week when they claimed to have successfully hacked a replica of an EVM. Party sources, however, refused to reveal the source of the EVM and how they prepared the replica but challenged the Election Commission to give them voting machines so that they could show how to hack them. People with lot of good intentions are behind it and part of our system. Exposing them will be dishonouring them, said Bhardwaj. Bhardwaj said after breaking the code last week, the team carried out dummy runs at least 25 times. On Tuesday, after reaching the assembly, Bhardwaj and the team carried a test run to avoid glitches. If you see the chief ministers tweet of the past few months, you will realise that we were working on this, Bhardwaj added. Sources said the look and feel of the EVMs replica was changed before it was taken to the assembly. The sources said it was assembled. The EC also imports parts of EVMs from Japan and the US. There is no science behind it. In 2009, 4,000 EVMs were stolen in Vijaywada and some of them were later found in scrap. If an EVM can reach the scrap market then it can reach a technology enthusiast also, said an AAP source. Around 2:55 pm on Tuesday, Bhardwaj, after taking permission from the speaker, brought an EVM replica to demonstrate how it could be hacked. Because of the BJP, I left my engineering job and now, because of the BJP, I am again involved in engineering. Democracy is dependent on the election process and if a simple engineer like me can hack an EVM, then it can easily be hacked, Bhardwaj said in the assembly. The returning officer usually calls all candidates before the poll to shows that EVMs are safe. On the day of voting too, it calls polling agents and conducts a mock test. But it is during the voting process when EVMs are hacked. For instance, if the BJP changes the motherboard of an EVM earlier, a BJP member can enter the polling booth as a voter and enter the six-digit code, following which every vote cast will go to the BJP. There can be different codes for the party and for every constituency, the code needs to be different, Bhardwaj added. If you give us the machine for three hours, leave the seat, you will not be able to win a single booth, he added. VV Rao, an election watch activist and the main petitioner in the PIL filed in the Supreme Court on EVMs, was present in the assembly. Deputy CM Manish Sisodia thanked him and said, He has been our technocrat activist who is not only written book on EVMs but also fought the movement for eight years now. The PIL filed by VV Rao had questioned the functioning of EVMs and sought a direction to the EC to stop using them till the machines are made tamper-proof. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON 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 Indias efforts to save former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav from the gallows got a boost after the international court of justice (ICJ) at The Hague intervened and stayed his execution by Pakistan. The Indian government has filed a lawsuit in the world court challenging the findings of a Pakistani military court which accused and convicted Jadhav of terrorism and spying. Indias contention in the world court is that despite an international treaty the Vienna convention on Consular Relations there has been an egregious violation of it by Pakistan. According to the treaty, any person arrested or detained in a foreign country has the right to have their embassy notified of the same. However, in Jadhavs case no consular access was given. Now the question arises on the sanctity of the world courts ruling. Are the courts orders binding? The answer to this has been given by the world court in its previous judgments. Lets take the example of the LaGrand case- where two German brothers Karl-Heinz and Walter Bernhard LaGrand were accused and tried for armed burglary and murder in the state of Arizona, US. Subsequently the brothers were charged and convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The LaGrands were German nationals. As foreigners, they should have been informed of their right to consular assistance, under the Vienna Convention but United States did not do so. Germany filed a law suit against US and got a stay on execution of one of the brothers as an interim measure. And for the first time the world court ruled that provisional measures orders issued by the Court are binding on the parties. Similarly, in 2003, Mexico approached the ICJ seeking a stay on the executions of 54 Mexicans on death row in the United States on the same grounds. The world court passed an interim order directing the US to take all measures necessary to ensure that the three Mexican death row convicts are not executed pending the final disposal of the case. While earlier rulings of the world court suggest that the order granting interim relief will be binding on Pakistan, it does not bar Pakistan from raising issues like jurisdiction and other questions in the dispute subsequently. And lets not forget the 1999 incident where India shot down a Pakistani military plane over the Rann of Kutch. The matter was taken to the world court and Indias argument was based on the fact that the world court has no jurisdiction over the matter. It looks like Pakistan will abide by the interim orders, because non- compliance may give rise to new political tensions in the region. While criticism will flow from some quarters on Indias move to approach the world court it opens new vistas for conflict resolution. Students of Chennai-based Loyola Institute of Business Administration have won the third spot in the recently held UK-India Social Innovation Challenge 2017 for their project that can provide clean water to villages affected by fluoride contamination. The challenge was a UK-India Social Entrepreneurship Education Network (UKISEEN) initiative and witnessed a total of 50 submissions by students from universities throughout the United Kingdom and India. Eight Indian projects were shortlisted among the top 10. The challenge was to propose a business model for a social enterprise that could tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No 6: Clean water and sanitation. Claire Scott from UK-based Cranfield University won the top prize and her project A BCD Egg focused on reducing the risk of using unsafe drinking water. The first runner-up was University of Southamptons Alexandre Beardshall for Juamaji, an Enactus Southampton project providing a reliable source of water and fish using solar distillation to communities in Kenya and Malawi. A cash prize of 1,500, 1,000 and 500 was awarded to the first, second and third place holders respectively. Scott will also receive a 6-month mentorship from members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) - CIIs director and head-UK Shuchita Sonalika, deputy high commissioner of India to the UK Dinesh Patnaik and head of European and Global Engagement, Innovate UK, David Golding. The project of the team from Loyola focused on two solutions providing domestic water filter based solutions and providing defluoridated water for agricultural and irrigational purposes using fly ash as the raw material. The team was supported by their institute as well as the Chennai Water Board. It was a great experience for the team, we got the exposure which has heightened our confidence in our purpose. Our success has given us the hope to implement this project on a commercial scale now, Monica M, one of the 6 students from the Loyola, said. This was the first competition launched by UKISEEN with the aim to find, fund and support innovative and sustainable solutions to the global problem of providing clean water and sanitation. It was a collaboration between the Social Impact Lab at the UK-based University of Southampton, the Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, the open innovation platform Babele, the British Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The UK-India Social Innovation Challenge shows how our two countries can work shoulder to shoulder to tackle the pressing challenges of our age. Clean water and sanitation is an urgent problem for our world, and through this challenge, we hope to find some game-changing innovations which can improve the lives of millions, Pathik , director of Social Enterprise at the University of Southampton and the founding director of its Social Impact Lab, said. The challenge was open from January 17 to February 24 and students could participate in the competition either as an individual or in a team. With the withdrawal of all permissions to Banur-based Gian Sagar medical college, the state government has set in motion the process to shift 1,500 students to other colleges in Punjab. Medical education secretary Vikas Partap told HT a formal communication pertaining to withdrawal of permissions will be sent to the Union government and medical, dental and nursing councils of India to seek permission to facilitate shifting of Gian Sagar students. According to the procedure, the Union health ministry, on the recommendation of the Medical Council of India, Dental Council of India and Nursing Council of India, will give sanction for increasing seats in other colleges for adjusting Gian Sagar students. Read | Gian Sagar students will be shifted to other medical colleges of Punjab as govt withdraws essentiality certificate Once the permission is granted, the Punjab medical education department will conduct fresh counselling before shifting Gian Sagar students to other colleges. The students will be shifted to other colleges on the same pattern they were admitted to Gian Sagar, said an official. For example, a student enrolled under the government quota at Gian Sagar will be shifted in the same category in other colleges, said the official. Sources said a preliminary meeting has already been held with the central agencies last month to apprise them about the ongoing crisis in the Gian Sagar college. The classes in the college have been suspended since February 1 as faculty and staff are yet not paid their wages. NOT AN EASY TASK At the face of it, the shifting exercise is not an easy task since the college has 500 students each in the MBBS, dental and nursing courses. However, officials are confident that they will manage it since they have adequate infrastructure in place in other colleges. The state has 109 nursing, 16 dental and nine medical colleges, both in government and private sectors. Parents and students want quick shifting so there is no further academic loss. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON More than a week after getting the appointment letters, newly appointed junior basic training (JBT) teachers are still waiting for their postings. Sources in the education department said government schools do not have required vacancies to accommodate all the 9,455 JBT teachers as the government had already appointed guest teachers against most of the vacant posts. I got the appointment letter on May 3, but I do not know where I will be appointed. I am still waiting for my posting, said a newly appointed teacher in Yamunanagar on the condition of anonymity. As of now, our attendance is being marked in the office of district elementary education officer, he added However, the development can benefit serving JBT teachers who have been waiting for their promotions for several years. To create vacancies for the new JBTs, the government is likely to promote senior JBT teachers to trained graduate teachers (TGTs). We cannot remove guest teachers as it will start a new controversy in the state. We will accommodate new teachers by clearing the pending promotions of JBT teachers to TGTs, said a senior official of the Haryana education department. He added that the posting of teachers will take some time. Meanwhile, district elementary education officers are working hard to find out a solution to the problem and make way for the new recruits. The problem is reportedly more complex in districts such as Yamunanagar, where the number of new JBT recruits is above 1,000. It will be difficult for the education department to accommodate all the newly appointed teachers in the district as the number of vacancies is around 600. Similarly, In Karnal about 363 new teachers have got appointment letters but the vacancies in district schools are only 260. For a few months, teachers may also get appointment in nearby districts on provisional basis. Haryana additional chief secretary (education) PK Das told Hindustan Times, We have issued directions to all district-level officers to provide details of the vacancies and submit proposals for postings of the new JBT teachers. Initially, they will be posted as per the existing vacancies as provisional cadre allotment and adjustments will be done after final cadre allotment. However, sources said the delay in postings will not have any impact on the salary of the newly appointed teachers as they will get salary from the day they got the appointment letters. The BJP government in the state had issued appointment letters to 9,455 JBT teachers, recruited during Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government in 2014, after the Punjab and Haryana high court vacated stay on their appointment last month. STRAP 9,455 Haryana teachers who got appointment letters recently are still waiting for their postings as govt had already appointed guest teachers against most of vacant posts SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Students writing the school leaving examinations rampantly used mobile phones as well as notes to cheat at several centres in Pakistans Karachi city, a report said on Wednesday. On Tuesday, desperate authorities imposed prohibitory orders to prevent people from gathering at examination centres across Sindh province. This was aimed at preventing strangers from entering the centres and barring everyone from using or taking mobile phones inside the premises. Despite a crackdown on WhatsApp groups where solved papers are circulating, they continue to be accessed in certain exam centres, Geo TV reported. Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah and education minister Jam Mahtab Hussain Dahar visited several exam centres and found smartphones with students and even an invigilator, the channel said. Cheating in exams is fairly common in countries such as Pakistan, China and India, where lakhs often battle limited seats in prestigious institutions, as well. After pictures of cheating went viral during the board examinations in Indias Bihar in 2015, the school examination board decided to introduce video recording. According to officials, the board also issued tenders for nine multi-storey examination halls in nine divisions with CCTVs, to conduct various examinations. Last year, the Chinese government said students could be jailed for up to 7 years if found cheating during the highly competitive university entrance exams in its attempts to crack down on a pervasive problem. A crackdown was also launched to target wireless devices used to cheat and also the problem of substitute exam-sitters. Vaibhav Juneja and Mohit Adnani, both 27, were one of the many students at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Vile Parle, who craved homemade food but had to settle for bland canteen meals on campus. However, unlike others, Juneja and Adnani transformed their cravings into a WhatsApp-based food delivery service. In June last year, in the final year of their two-year course, they launched Daily Bread to help fellow students get freshly made home-cooked lunches on campus. The duo hired a cook, a delivery boy and rented a shared kitchen to offer cooked meal to their college mates. They now deliver food to at least 80 students a day. For students who are dreaming up big ideas while still in college, summer is the best time to shape them into real businesses. Vacations leave more time to invest in a start-up, and social media is a great, inexpensive platform on which to find users and shape promotions. Debashis Sanyal, dean of NMIMSs School of Business Management says online platforms are now the go to arenas for young entrepreneurs. They also help an individual showcase the skills that boost their resumes. It shows that they can keep up with the times. Looking to set up a business? Start small, dont blow the budget and work fast, advise Juneja and Adnani We chose WhatsApp over creating a mobile app as we wanted to start quick and spend the least amount of money on marketing, says Juneja. We were delivering food to 36 students per day from Day 1. Uday Wankawala, mentor for early-stage start-ups, advisor at academic incubators and business evangelist at Lemon Ideas, calls digital platforms new-age business tools. But theyre not the only tools you need. Involve or inform parents and take advice from experienced professionals at the early stages too, he says Here are some student entrepreneurs took their first steps in digital business while still studying. Crafting designs Riya Bakliwal, a 23-year-old, finished her Masters in Commerce this year and is preparing for her MBA entrance exams. Shes also proprietor of the stationery and lifestyle accessories brand, PapelJam, which decorates passport covers with images of holiday drinks and hats, illustrates animal figures on notebooks and creates colourful tinted lines on A4 folders. The business is entirely online her store is on Instagram and Facebook. Riya Bakliwals stationery and lifestyle brand Papel Jam does business entirely online through Facebook and Instagram. Bakliwals venture started out as a photo-blog in 2015, when shed document her art for fun. Friends noticed and besieged her with orders, planting the idea that her hobby could make money. She started her own retail brand in July last year, when she was in the second year of her Masters course. Going online made it easier to connect with potential customers, she says. I would get enquiries on Instagram and Facebook and that took care of the marketing part of it, she says. I simultaneously started my website, to make the purchasing exercise easier, she says. PapelJam now has 2,800 followers on Instagram. Managing studies and the business is not easy, Bakliwal admits. She recommends preparing a timetable to manage your time her own schedule dedicates the afternoons and late nights to plan for her products, with the rest of the day devoted to MBA preparations. Be sure of your product line and give importance to both studies and business, she advises. It is tough but not impossible. The city as muse Ankita Chakraborty, 19, a second year sociology student at St Xaviers College, Kolkata, and Rishi Ghosh, 20, a hospitality management student, have a unique business celebrating Kolkata. The two run Calcutta Cacophony, a social media publicity firm aimed at soaking in and preserving the citys artistic traditions. It all started with a Kolkata-themed Facebook page in December 2015. As popularity grew, several brands approached Chakraborty and Ghosh to publicise their products to their many viewers. Last April, the duo turned the page into a content-based portal, adding on an Instagram account that now has 30,000 followers. We only accept projects that promote art in some form and is relevant to an audience in Kolkata, says Chakraborty. Calcutta Cacophony is a Facebook page dedicated to celebrate the city and its artistic traditions. This means business is either a barter deal for cross promotion or an out-an-out commercial contract, depending on the value of the brands. Both graduate next year. Until then, most off-campus hours are devoted to brainstorming their next strategy. It is never difficult to squeeze out time if you are focused enough, Chakraborty says. This initiative has helped us network, build important contacts and learn from our mistakes. We are more confident as entrepreneurs now. Feeding the campus Last June, MBA students Vaibhav Juneja and Mohit Adnani, both 27, set up a business in the unlikeliest of places a kitchen. Daily Bread, their food-delivery service is aimed at outstation students at their college NMIMS, who miss home-cooked food. They circulated the menu every day on Whatsapp and Email to a student base of 1,000 on campus and accepted payments through PayTM. For 2 pm lunch, we would open orders a day before and close at 11 am on the day, says Juneja. A typical vegetarian meal of rice, three chapatis, dal and gravy costs not more than Rs 79, and there are days when there are special items such as paneer or masala rice. We had to concentrate on three areas procurement of food items, delivery and payment and marketing, says Juneja. We hired a cook and a delivery boy, and rented a shared space to save costs. t was a lot of effort managing studies and operations every day, but its the kind of management they needed to study about for their course as well. Taking care of finances was our biggest learning, says Juneja. Theyre keen to keep Daily Bread a campus initiative and now that they have both graduated, they hope to hand the reins over to students in the next batch. Creating clink Annesha Ghosh, 17, first-year engineering student from KIIT School of Biotechnology, Bhubaneshwar, was fond of handmade jewellery. One time, she even tried to replicate a pair of earrings she liked. The results caught the eye of friends, who suggested she start her own line. And in April last year, just after she finished appearing for her Class 12 board exams, Chics and Artsy was born. The label sells junk jewellery such as earrings, bracelets, neckpieces and rings and sold on Facebook, where she has 1,500 followers, and Instagram. My target audience is school and college students. So, my prices are between Rs 30 and Rs 300, says social media jewellery businesswoman Annesha Ghosh. My target audience is school and college students. So, my prices are also very low, Ghosh says. A pair of earrings can cost anywhere between Rs 30 to Rs 300. Because of social media, I get orders from all across the country. As soon as I put up a post, I receive at least five to six orders. Ghosh takes customised orders too. To manage studies and business, she dedicates two hours (12 am to 2 am) to make her stuff and post updates. Its my first year of college, so I dont want to miss out on studies, so I have judiciously divided my time. Bharat Bhushan Gogia, the sub-divisional magistrate, (North) Gurgaon, said he will try to amicably resolve the grievances of Ardee City residents against the builder, Ardee Infrastructure Limited, over the clubbing of bills. He said the matter is sub judice. Gogia met the residents on Tuesday and heard their complaints. The residents said the builder clubbed the maintenance and electricity bills and they even moved the administration demanding action. They said they even held protests over the issue twice over the last few weeks. The SDM had summoned the residents and representatives of Ardee Infrastructure for a meeting on Wednesday in a bid to thrash out a solution to the dispute. We heard both the parties, but since the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitaran Nigam (DHBVN) is the third party involved here, I will have to hold another round of meeting with the developer and the DHBVN before arriving at a solution, the SDM said. I will sit with them (developer and DHBVN officials) next Tuesday. I have urged the developer not to disconnect the power connections of residents till then, the SDM said. The residents said they produced an order of the Haryana electricity regulatory commission (Herc) to the SDM in support of their claim that the clubbing of electricity and maintenance bills is illegal. Read I Gurgaon: Ardee City residents protest against inadequate power supply I have summoned the DHBVN officials and representatives of the builder, Ardee Infrastructure, to specifically discuss the legality of the clubbing of bills, the SDM said. The residents, however, stuck to their stand saying they wont pay for maintenance till the issue is resolved. A resident, who asked not to be named, told HT that the SDM advised them to pay the bills separately as usual. The SDM told us we can pay electricity bill as before. However, we will wait for final directive from the SDM next week, the resident said. Even till April, the residents used to get separate bills of maintenance and electricity from the developer. However, in May, they got a common bill and were up in arms alleging a violation of the HERC order. Anil Hasija, vice president, Ardee Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, said, The move (to combine the two bills) was aimed at cost cutting. Generating separate bills requires more manpower. Its not good news for the residents of New Palam Vihar, as they will soon have to pay for some people indulging in electricity theft. The Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitaran Nigam (Dhbvn) said it will cut electricity supply for four hours daily in the area to compensate for the line-loss from Wednesday. The residents made their misgivings known over the utilitys power cut plan. The department has failed to fix the power theft problem of the city. We are surprised to hear that they will cut down on electric supply to compensate for line loss. We have not received any information from the department in this regard, said Azad Kataria, a resident. The officials can check every house for meter tampering and illegal connections at night. There are several other ways to deal with power theft, Kataria said. Lokesh Sharma, another resident, said, The residents of New Palam Vihar are being targeted because this locality is yet to be regularized by the Haryana government. Power theft is happening across the city and even in posh localities. Read I Gurgaon reels under 8-hour power cuts, officials cite maintenance work Navin Verma, superintending engineer (SE) Dhbvn Gurgaon Circle I, said that New Palam Vihar has reported 35 percent line-loss. We have direction from the government to consider the line loss percentage while supplying power. The line loss is less than 20% in areas where the DHBVN supplies power for 24 hours, while it goes up to 20-25% in areas where the supply is for 22 hours. The line loss is anywhere between 25% and 35% in areas where the DHBVN supplies power for 20 hours. The supply is further reduced to 18% in areas where the line loss has been reported at between 35% and 50%. In areas where the loss is more than 50%, the supply is reduced to 12 hours, Verma said. The DHBVN official said the residents will have to cooperate in order to check power theft, as it has emerged as a major cause of concern for the Haryana government. It has issued strict directions to utilities to check power theft and boost supply. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, Indias largest power plant equipment manufacturer and a Maharatna company, has been blacklisted by the largest sovereign fund in the world over environmental concerns. The companys biggest international order, the contract to build the Rampal power plant in Bangladesh, was a liability as far as Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, that manages the fund worth about $900 billion. On Friday it removed BHEL from its portfolio in view of environmental concerns regarding the Rampal power plant that BHEL is building in Bangladesh. The Executive Board in Norges Bank has decided to exclude Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd from the Government Pension Fund Global. The company is excluded based on an assessment of the risk of severe environmental damage, the bank said. The Council on Ethics finds that there is an unacceptable risk of the company contributing to or being responsible for severe environmental damage, the statement added. Officials at the BHEL confirmed that they had been removed from the list because of environmental concerns regarding the Rampal project but said that since BHEL was Indias biggest power plant equipment manufacturer they were still trying to figure out the implications. A new Greenpeace report found that the 1,320-megawatt power plant being built in close proximity to the Sunderbans could lead to premature deaths of 6,000 people over a 40-year period, including people in the neighbouring Indian state of West Bengal. Bangladesh has rejected the findings. We do not take the report into cognizance, Bangladesh Energy Minister Nasrul Hamid told local news channels this week. They are doing their job and we are doing our job. The plant site in Rampal, Bangladesh is 14 km from the Sundarbans and 65 km from Sundarbans world heritage site. It is a unique ecosystem that supports the largest population of Royal Bengal tigers in India and the endangered Gangetic dolphin. A UNESCO expert committee in 2016 recommended that the project be relocated because of growing concerns about its environmental impact on the Sundarbans. The power project is a joint collaboration between the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDP) and the National Thermal Power Corp (NTPC) under a partnership established in 2012 called the Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Co. Ltd. NTPC will set up and operate the plan. BHEL won the NTPC contract for engineering procurement and construction of the plant. This is not the first time the plant has come under scrutiny, environmental groups have been up in arms against the plant since its inception. To feed the plant, nearly 5 million tonnes of coal will be imported along waterways that pass through the Sundarbans. There is a possibility that coal-carrying vehicles could scatter fly ash, coal and dust, sulphur and other harmful emissions, numerous environmental assessments have found, there is a need to account for possible accidents because of manmade and natural factors like tidal waves and cyclones, that are frequent in this region. Locals have also staged demonstrations against the project over fears that it will impact their livelihoods. A report last year found that the plant may also face financial risk making it economically unviable. It listed the higher cost of power compared the prevalent prices in Bangladesh and the costs associated with the plant are likely to increase because of opposition from local communities. The plant is expected to cost $1.7 billion and construction of the power plant is expected to be completed by 2020. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON New Delhi: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMMS) demands Lupus, an autoimmune disease that Congress MP Shashi Tharoors late wife, Sunanda Pushkar, was reportedly suffering from, be included in the health ministrys list of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The demand is to highlight the need for intensifying governments focus on the disease that affects about five million people worldwide, which will bring down the cost of treatment. The condition commonly affects women in their reproductive age group (20-40 years). The NCD list hasnt been reviewed for a long time. It should be updated to include lupus, says Dr Uma Kumar, head of department of rheumatology, AIIMS. Despite a high burden of the disease, awareness about lupus is dismal among public, policy makers and even physicians in developing countries, particularly in India. Even WHO, which monitors prevalence of chronic diseases, doesnt mention lupus, highlighting the urgent need to spread awareness about it. Close to 20% of all patients who visit the out patient departments (OPDs) of rheumatology suffer from lupus and still people do not even know what are the basic factors that trigger the disease that results in deformity and irreversible organ damage. Patients require lifelong treatment once they get lupus and sometimes the patient does not respond to the first line drugs. In such cases second line drugs that include biological agents have to be prescribed, which escalates the cost, she says. Diseases under the Union health ministrys NCD list have special programmes and adding Lupus to the list would help in creating awareness about the condition and getting medicines at subsidised rates. The disease is known to cause organ damage kidneys, heart etc., and even the skin. Though the exact cause of Lupus is not yet known, the factors that jointly contribute to occurrence of the disease are exposure to ultra violet rays, air pollution, toxic substances such as pesticides, vitamin D deficiency and even hereditary factors. Symptoms could include prolonged fever, oral ulcers, excessive hair fall, skin rashes and joint ache. Also, the state of ongoing inflammation in the body leads to premature atherosclerosis (hardening and narrowing of the arteries), hyper tension, coronary artery disease, and reduced lifespan in the long run. Famous people with lupus Selena Gomez Lady Gaga Michael Jackson Seal Sunanda Pushkar SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Aliyev Family Plunders Azerbaijans Oil Revenue By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com The government of Azerbaijan allocates its multi-billion dollar oil and gas revenue in four ways: 1) Bribery; 2) Theft by Pres. Aliyevs family and his cronies; 3) Military purchases; and 4) Other budgetary matters. No wonder the majority of the people in Azerbaijan live in abject poverty, despite the billions of petrodollars earned by Aliyevs autocracy. Last week, we covered Azerbaijans bribery at the Council of Europe and throughout the world. This week, we present examples of how large amounts of Azerbaijans wealth are stolen by the Aliyev family and members of the ruling clan. A U.S. State Department report on human rights referred to the pervasive corruption of Azerbaijans increasingly authoritarian regime. Transparency International, in its 2016 global survey of corruption, ranked Azerbaijan among the most corrupt nations -- 123rd out of 176 countries. Last month, reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia revealed in her website that the three largest clients of Pilatus Bank in Malta are from Azerbaijan: Kamaladdin Heydarov, Azerbaijans Minister of Emergency Situations, followed by the young son and daughter of Pres. Aliyev, whose names are Heydar Aliyev and Leyla Aliyeva. Galizia reported: Heydar Aliyev [Presidents son] had first tried to open an account at the Bank of Valetta [in Malta], but was refused on the grounds that he is a major politically exposed person from one of the most corrupt countries, and a serious money-laundering risk. She further revealed: 60% of Pilatus Banks deposits belong to Azerbaijani politically exposed persons. We can therefore safely assume that the amount of money deposited by these three Azeris is in the millions of dollars! Interestingly, the owner of Pilatus Bank is an Iranian by the name of Seyed Ali Sadr Hashemenijad who was caught on camera removing bags of documents from his banks premises last Thursday night [April 20, 2017], accompanied by the banks risk manager, Antoniella Gauci. Unfortunately, the Maltese bank is not the only one where the Aliyevs and their clan have stashed tons of money. There are scores of off-shore companies set up by the Aliyevs and their intermediaries to launder large amounts of cash difficult to trace back to the leaders of Azerbaijan. There are so many financial scandals involving the Aliyevs that it is hard to pinpoint a specific one; but one of their biggest scandals involves the purchase of luxury real estate in Dubai for $75 million by the three Aliyev children, according to the Washington Post. Heydar Aliyev, the then 11-year-old son of Pres. Aliyev, bought nine waterfront mansions for $44 million in 2009! His two sisters, Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, bought several more mansions for an additional $31 million. These properties were paid for upfront. Where do children of their young age get $75 million given that they have no income and their father Pres. Aliyevs annual salary is only $228,000! The Washington Post article exposing these scandalous details explained that the rush to move assets overseas, often with scant regard for returns, is a common feature of many oil-producing nations, where corrupt elites seek to ensure that their wealth is safe just in case political winds at home change. OCCRPs website (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) includes dozens of articles about examples of major corruption in Azerbaijan. In 2012, OCCRP named Pres. Ilham Aliyev its Person of the Year for his links to crimes and corruption. OCCRP reported that Mehriban Aliyeva, Pres. Aliyevs wife, is owner, director or shareholder of a web of offshore companies that were reportedly used by the family to conduct lucrative business dealings worth many millions of dollars. Indeed, Pres. Aliyev and his family own a multitude of expensive properties around the world. OCCRP reported that a building in Bucharest, Romania, purchased for $7.3 million, became the headquarters of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, named after Pres. Ilham Aliyevs father who ruled Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003. The Foundation is run by the family of Pres. Aliyev. According to OCCRP, the purchase of this building involved offshore transactions, links to corrupt officials and organized crime, insider deals and a peculiar cult of personality for a dead leader. The Aliyevs also own expensive buildings and houses in London (worth at least $25 million), Moscow (worth tens of millions of dollars), Dubai, and the Czech Republic. Finally, Pres. Aliyevs daughters Leyla and Arzu own some of the most luxurious hotels in Baku, according to OCCRP, including the Four Seasons, Sheraton, and the Marriott, among others. An Azerbaijani real estate expert told OCCRP that the high-end Baku hotels owned or closely connected to the family are valued at $10 billion. OCCRP concluded that the Aliyev dynasty has been involved in numerous secretive business operations across several continents in recent years! Using offshore companies and middlemen, the First Family took over considerable chunks of the Azerbaijani economy -- including gold mines, tourism, telecom companies and banks -- while buying up luxury properties in various European and Gulf states. Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot has thanked action star Vin Diesel for giving her her first chance in Hollywood. The Israeli star made her foray into Hollywood with 2013 film Fast and Furious 6. The 32-year-old actor, who played Gisele Yashar in the sixth installment of the action franchise, recently presented the MTV Generation Award to Diesel along with the other Fast and Furious team members. Gadot took to Twitter to extend her congratulations to Diesel where the actor wrote she was overjoyed to hand over the award to him. You gave me my 1st chance in the film world. I am so grateful. I was SO happy to present this to u. Well deserved #fastandfurious @vindiesel pic.twitter.com/F9zaXSZfQ4 Gal Gadot (@GalGadot) May 9, 2017 Apart from Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Jordana Brewster were also present at the ceremony to accept the golden popcorn statue on behalf of the entire cast and crew. In the acceptance speech, Diesel also remembered his co-star Paul Walker, who died in a car crash in November 2013 during filming Furious 7. Follow @htshowbiz for more Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday asked belligerent BJP MLA Radha Mohan Das Agarwal to meet him Lucknow shortly after he warned senior police officials that they would be skinned alive if they failed to take action against woman IPS officer Charu Nigam for violating service rules. Agarwal had drawn flak after he was caught on camera berating Nigam during a agitation by women against unlicensed wine shops on Sunday. If you fail to act against the woman IPS officer for violation of service rules, I will raise the issue in the assembly following which not only will Charu Nigam lose her job, but you will also be skinned alive, the lawmaker warned the inspector general of police (IGP), deputy inspector general and senior superintendent of police (Gorakhpur) while staging a sit-in beneath the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Town Hall in the city. The chief minister spoke to Agarwal on the phone after which the MLA ended his sit-in against unlicensed liquor shops in Gorakhpur at 3.30pm instead of 4 pm as originally scheduled. Agarwal said he would hand over to the chief minister a memorandum seeking action against the unlicensed liquor vends. The BJP distanced itself from the MLAs sit-in. Barring a few party workers, no senior functionary extended support to him. Read more: My training hasnt taught me to be weak: Woman cop berated by BJP MLA on FB On Sunday, Agarwal had asked Nigam not to cross limits after police attempted to remove anti-liquor protesters in his constituency which is also the chief ministers base. The MLAs alleged abrasive behaviour had left the police officer teary eyed, although she later said it should not be seen as a sign of weakness. On Wednesday, Agarwal asked senior police officials to go through Nigams Facebook posts in order to book her for violation of service rules. A government official, no matter how big his status is or which department he belongs to, has no right to express his views openly through newspapers or the social media, he said. Unfazed by Agarwals warning, Nigam told HT: Let him do whatever he can. I dont like to comment on such people. Nigam, who had earlier termed the MLAs sit-in a publicity stunt, again rejected the legislators charges of police brutality on women agitators. I reiterate that no lathi charge was done that day. He is lying, she said. Had the police unleashed brutality on women, would the issue have gone uncovered by the media? she asked. When asked to respond on MLAs allegation that posting on social media to put forth her stand was violation of government service rules she said, Service guidelines dont curtail my freedom of expression. After Jayapur, another village adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi is set to be illuminated by solar power. Uttar Pradesh New and Renewable Energy Development Authority (UP NEDA) is in the process of setting up a 50 KV solar plant in Nagepur, the second village adopted by the PM, Earlier, NEDA had set up two solar plants of 25 KV each in Jayapur in association with a private company. NEDA, which is the implementing agency, has already acquired land for the plant which will come up at an estimated cost of over Rs 1 crore. The solar power plants were installed in Jayapur around one-and-a-half year ago during the Samajwadi Party government in the state. Following the PMs initiative, a company under its corporate social responsibility, installed the plant under the monitoring of NEDA. Jayapur is the only village in the district to have solar power connection in each house. Being the PMs adopted village, the plants were set up here on priority. More than 50 streetlights have already been set up in Nagepur. On an average, 30 solar streetlights have been set up in around 150 villages across the district. Project officer, UP NEDA, Varanasi, RB Singh said: The Centre will provide 30 per cent subsidy for the plant while the company will bear the remaining cost. A piece of land has been acquired for the solar power plant on lease for next 30 years. The plant will be ready in next five months. Each household will get a free solar power connection that operates a mobile charging point and two LED bulbs. Plan is also afoot to provide connection to over 450 houses in the village. NEDA officials are regularly in touch with the company. Local residents look after the solar streetlights in villages and ensure security during the night. On an average, there is a solar light on every 30 houses, Singh added. Each solar power plant at Jayapur is of 25 KV. One plant is in the north while another is in southern part of the village. These plants were set up at an estimated cost of about Rs 70 lakh. A line was laid with the help of poles and connections were given to 675 houses. Charging mobiles was a big problem due to poor power supply. After we got solar power plants, the problem has come to an end, said Satish Singh, a local resident. We can charge our mobile phones anytime and our houses illuminate in solar light during the night even if power supply is interrupted, he said. Another resident Manoj Kumar said the people were getting solar power free of cost. They dont have to pay monthly bill for it. Each house has solar power connection in the village. It is of great support to the students who may study as long as they want during night, he said. Nagepur village head Parasnath Rajbhar has welcomed the decision and thanked the Prime Minister for efforts for the development of the village. Head of Jayapur village Srinarayan Patel hailed NEDA for installation of plants and said the solar power plant in villages would help families from economically weaker background as they would get free power. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made more foreign trips than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah said recently in Palampur, Himachal Pradesh. Shahs statement is wrong on all counts, according to this report by Factly.in, a data journalism portal, based on ministry of external affairs data. Modi made more foreign trips in his first three years as the Prime Minister than Singh made either during his entire first term as Prime Minister (2004-2009) or his entire second term (2009-14), data show. Singh made 80 trips spanning 303 days When Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister between 2004 and 2014, he made 80 foreign trips spanning 303 days. He made at least 10 trips in 2005, 2009, 2011 and 2013. He made at least five foreign trips during every year of his tenure except in 2012 and 2014. He made only one foreign trip before demitting office in 2014. Singh was abroad for at least 30 days in 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. On average, each foreign trip lasted around 3.8 days. He made slightly greater number of trips in his second term compared to his first term. Source: Ministry of External Affairs Modi made 54 trips spanning 132 days Modi has made 54 foreign trips lasting 132 days in the first three years of his tenure. He made nine foreign trips in 2014, 27 in 2015 and 18 in 2016. His trips lasted 32 days in 2014, 64 days in 2015 and 18 days in 2016. Each trip, on average, lasted 2.5 days. Source: Ministry of External Affairs Comparing first three years of Singh & Modi Not only did Singh make fewer trips than Modi in the first three years of both his terms, he was abroad for fewer days than Modi in the first three years of both his terms. In his first three years of term 1, Singh made fewer trips than Modi made in 2015 alone. The average duration of each trip made by Modi is shorter than that of Singh. Source: Ministry of External Affairs (Dubbudu has been working on issues related to the Right to Information for a decade. He is a data/information enthusiast & is passionate about governance/policy issues. Factly.in is dedicated to making public data meaningful.) FactChecker.in is fact-checking initiative, scrutinising for veracity and context statements made by individuals and organisations in public life. The son of a senior Andhra Pradesh minister was killed in an accident caused by heavy rain that lashed Hyderabad in the early hours of Wednesday, police said. Twenty two-year old P Nishit, son of Andhra Pradesh municipal administration minister P Narayana, was driving home in a Mercedez Benz car around 3am when he tried to negotiate a turn on a partially inundated road and hit a metro rail pillar, police said. The incident occurred in the posh Jubilee Hills area that had plunged in darkness at the time as power lines had snapped, and large chunks of the road were under water, sources added. It wasnt immediately clear if he was drunk . According to Jubilee Hills police inspector S Venkat Reddy, Nishit and his friend Raja Ravi Varma suffered serious injuries. Local residents rushed them to the Apollo Hospitals, where they were declared brought dead. Nishit is the director of Narayana Group of Institutions, which produces several engineering and medical students every year. The minister, who was visiting London, rushed to Hyderabad. He is expected to land in Chennai in the evening and from there, he would go to Nellore, where the last rites of his son would be performed on Thursday. Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhara Rao and several others expressed shock and extended condolences to the bereaved family. The unseasonal rain, coupled with thunder and hailstorm, wreaked havoc across the city and brought traffic to a standstill as people struggled to wade through knee and waist-deep water in several areas. Hailstones as big as cricket balls caused extensive damage to vehicles and glass panes of several houses. Gales with a speed reaching up to 100 km per hour uprooted trees and electric poles at many parts of the city. Several billboards and flexes were torn apart. The upscale areas of Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Madhapur, Punjagutta, Ameerpet, Yousufguda, Khairatabad, Begumpet and Secunderabad, were marooned. Trees and electric poles were uprooted at several places. Power supply was stopped in several areas for hours. As a precautionary measure, electrical lines were deactivated in many places. There were reports of vehicles getting stranded on roads for hours together. On Raj Bhavan road, a truck overturned causing injuries to one person. There were no reports of any other casualties from any parts of the city. An electric pole collapsed on the Taj Krishna road at Erramanzil, electric wires snapped at GTS Colony near TS Genco Office, and several trees fell on major roads. In the old city, heavy rain resulted in disruption of power in Saidabad, Madannapet , Yakutpura areas. Municipal administration and urban development minister KT Rama Rao directed Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to deploy emergency teams in different areas across the city. He also appealed to people to call 100 or 040-2111-1111 in emergency. According to Met department sources, the reason for the rain was a trough extending from the North Vidarbha region in Maharashtra to South Tamil Nadu across Telangana and Rayalaseema. The weather conditions will continue for another 48 hours. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday appeared to question the patriotism of the people of Gujarat when he said no soldier from the state was martyred, in remarks that BJP says have stemmed from frustration. UP, Madhya Pradesh, Dakshin Bharat, har jagah se shaheed huye hain, Gujarat ka koi jawan shaheed hua ho toh batao (Jawans from UP, Madhya Pradesh, South India and other parts of the country have sacrificed their lives but tell me if anyone has been martyred from Gujarat), he said. Without naming BJP, he said, They play politics in the name of martyrs, vande matram and nationalism. What is their definition (of nationalism)? They do not even consider us Hindus. He was apparently targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Gujarat politician whose rise in national politics has been blamed by his detractors for the growth of aggressive nationalism. Reacting sharply to Yadavs statement, UP deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya said, His talk and politics have been discarded by the people of the state. That is the reason why he is making such statements in frustration. Denouncing the comments of Yadav as unwarranted, Maurya said that those laying down their lives for the country were Indians first. The bullet-riddled body of a young Indian Army officer hailing from Kashmir was found in Shopian district on Wednesday morning, police said. The army officer was identified as Lt Ummer Fayaz, a resident of Kulgam who had come to Shopian for a wedding. He was posted in the militancy-hit state. Police said Fayaz was missing since Tuesday night and may have been abducted by militants but the family did not inform the authorities. They must have thought he would be released. Lt Ummer Fayaz, a resident of Kulgam, had come to Shopian for a wedding. (Photo courtesy: Fayazs family) Calling it a dastardly act, the Indian Army, in a statement said it salutes the braveheart and stands by the bereaved family in this hour of tragedy. The army said it was committed to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act of terror to justice. It said some unidentified terrorists abducted and killed the officer, who was in his native place on leave to attend a wedding in the family. Commissioned in 2016, the officer was presently serving in Akhnoor. Residents of Kashmir took to social media to condemn the killing of the army officer. The killing of the army officer comes just a few days after militants killed five policemen and two bank guards in an attack on a cash van in Phambai area of Kulgam. The five Jammu and Kashmir policemen and the two guards killed in the attack were locals. The incident also comes amid increasing tension in the Valley between civilians and security forces following a series of videos that allegedly showed human rights excesses by security forces. Last week, a Pakistani army team killed and beheaded two security personnel, triggering outrage across the country and prompting the government to vow a strong response. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The murder of Kashmiri army officer Ummer Fayaz by suspected militants is a watershed moment in the Valley and local residents will turn the tide against terrorism, a senior army official said on Wednesday. Defence minister Arun Jaitley said Fayaz would continue to inspire youth from the Valley. Abduction & murder of Lt. Ummer Fayaz by terrorists in Shopian is a dastardly act of cowardice. This young officer from J&K was a role model, he tweeted, hours after the officers bullet-riddled body was found in south Kashmirs Shopian. We share the grief of family of Lt. Ummer Fayaz & stand in solidarity. Lt. Ummer Fayaz will continue to inspire youth from the Valley. Lt. Ummer Fayaz of 2RAJRIF was an exceptional sportsman, his sacrifice reiterates nation's commitment to eliminate terrorism from the Valley Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) May 10, 2017 Lieutenant general Abhay Krishna of the Rajputana Rifles said in a statement that the army stood shoulder to shoulder with the bereaved family, hours after the 22-year-old officers bullet-riddled body was found in south Kashmirs Shopian. Fayaz had returned home to attend a wedding and was reportedly abducted on Tuesday night. This marks a watershed moment in Kashmir valley and people of Kashmir will decisively turn the tide against terrorism, the statement read. The statement came as panic struck mourners at an official ceremony to honour Fayaz at his home in Kulgam after two gunshots were heard. BJP general secretary Ram Madhav also condemned the murder, saying the brutal killing exposed the dastardly nature of terrorism. Brutal killing of Lt. Umar Fayaz exposes d dastardly nature of terrorism in d Valley.Nation mourns. let it b clear no terrorist wl b spared Ram Madhav (@rammadhavbjp) May 10, 2017 The incident also comes amid increasing tension in the Valley between civilians and security forces following a series of videos that allegedly showed human rights excesses by security forces. (With inputs from Toufiq Rashid in Srinagar) Patna/Muzaffarpur In another embarrassment to the government, an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) of police was arrested in an inebriated condition while trying to create ruckus at a marriage ceremony in Muzaffarpur, 70 km north of Patna, early on Tuesday. ASI Vishwajit Tiwari was remanded to 14-day judicial custody after being produced before chief judicial magistrate on Tuesday. Tiwari was arrested when he was being abusive at a marriage ceremony, which was being solemnized at a stone throws distance from the Karja police station, where he was posted. Interestingly, cops at the Karja police station initially refused to take cognizance when people complained to them. It was only when they escalated the matter to senior superintendent of police (SSP) Vivek Kumar, who directed the station house officer (SHO) to arrest the deviant cop. This is the second incident in the district of a cop being arrested under the states prohibition law. Earlier, Rameshwar Singh, SHO of Kazi Mohammadpur police station, was arrested in an inebriated condition on May 4. He, too, was remanded to 14 days judicial custody. Confirming the arrest, SSP Kumar said, Tiwari was initially detained and subjected to breathalyzer test. He was placed under suspension immediately after his medical tests confirmed that he had consumed liquor. He may lose his job if charges framed against him under the new prohibition law are found true, added Kumar. Tiwaris arrest came two days before chief minister Nitish Kumar went back to the drawing board on Wednesday evening to plug gaps in the states prohibition law. The law has, of late, come under strident opposition attack amid unconfirmed reports that rodents guzzled 9 lakh litres of the 16 lakh litres alcohol, which the government had seized and kept at police stations. Though the police have dismissed the allegation, the denial has not done enough to change public perception that the government was floundering in enforcement of the prohibition law. To make matters worse, six cops have so far been either arrested or suspended on charges of consuming alcohol. Many believe, this explains the theory of rodents consuming liquor in Bihar. As stories of tipsy rodents began floating around, district administration in Nalanda and Patna destroyed huge quantities of seized liquor during the last two days. In doing so, they also invoked the provision to confiscate vehicles used to transport illegal liquor, existent in the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016. The government would now initiate steps to auction all such seized vehicles. As the government tries to work out an effective strategy to nip the inter-state racket in its bud by targeting the big fish, the bigger challenge for it is on the legal front. Of the 48,000 arrests under the prohibition law since it came into existence on April 1, 2016, only 3,000 are now in jail, a fact inspector general (prisons) Anand Kishor accepted. Others have been enlarged on bail. The fact that liquor, despite the ban, is being seized with disconcerting frequency is indication enough that it was still available in dry Bihar. The stringent prohibition law, with provision to book offenders under the crime control act it allows authorities to detain a person under suspicion imposing community fine and confiscating property, have not been able to prove effective deterrent for those who enjoy patronage from the powers that be. STRINGENT Officials say cop may lose job if charges framed against him under new prohibition law are found true BLURB Tiwari was arrested when he was being abusive at a marriage ceremony being solemnized at a stone throws distance from Karja police station, where he was posted Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar goes back to the drawing board on Wednesday evening in an effort to plug gaps in the states prohibition law. The law has, of late, come under strident opposition attack amid unconfirmed reports that rodents guzzled 9 lakh litres of the 16 lakh litres alcohol, which the government had seized and kept at police stations. Though the police have dismissed the allegation, the denial has not done enough to change public perception that the government is floundering in the enforcement of prohibition law. To make matters worse, six cops have so far been either arrested or suspended under the prohibition law. Many believe, this explains the rodents consuming liquor theory. As stories of tipsy rodents began floating around, district administration in Nalanda and Patna destroyed huge quantities of seized liquor during the last two days. In doing so, they also invoked the provision to confiscate vehicles used to transport illegal liquor, existent in the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016. The government would now initiate steps to auction all such seized vehicles. As per the provisions of excise act, we will confiscate godowns, houses and vehicles where alcohol is recovered, Patna district magistrate Sanjay Agarrwal said. As the government tries to work out an effective strategy to nip the inter-state racket in its bud by targeting the big fish, the bigger challenge for it is on the legal front. Of the 48,000 arrests under the prohibition law since it came into existence on April 1, 2016, only 3,000 are now in jail, a fact inspector general (prisons) Anand Kishor accepted. Others have been enlarged on bail. The fact that liquor, despite the ban, is being seized with disconcerting frequency is indication enough that it was still available in dry Bihar. The stringent prohibition law, with provision to book offenders under the crime control act it allows authorities to detain a person under suspicion imposing community fine and confiscating property, have not been able to prove effective deterrent for those who enjoy patronage from the powers that be. For the law abiding, however, even talking about alcohol is a taboo what with a Congress MLA having to face prohibition heat for talking about liquor during a sting operation carried out by a TV news channel last year. With anti-prohibition drive losing steam, the officers will once again look up to the chief minister to infuse a new lease of life into what many had called a draconian law while the government cited its positive social impact. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Bihar government has roped in anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare to draw nationwide attention to the issue of siltation in the Ganga in Bihar, which causes the river to overtop its banks during the monsoon season. Hazare will be among the main speakers at a two-day conference being organized by the state water resources department (WRD), on the siltation problem in New Delhi, beginning May 18. The government expects him to lead a mass movement on the cause. The topic chosen for the meet is Sedimentation, a colossal impediment to incessant flow of river Ganga: problem and solution. The conference will be inaugurated by chief minister Nitish Kumar. The problems of the Ganga cant be solved by government alone and it requires public participation. Hence, to provoke a mass movement, Anna Hazare will guide us in a positive way, said Bihar water resources minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh on Wednesday. The other prominent speakers at the conference include Swami Avimukteshwaranand, who will discuss the religious aspects of the river, former Union minister Jairam Ramesh, environmental expert Dr GD Agrawal and water expert Rajendra Singh. The conference will be organised at India International Centre, New Delhi. Earlier this year, the WRD had organised a conference on incessant Ganga in Patna. About the coming meet, the minister said it would be a step forward to explore ways to handle the problem of sedimentation, which had caused floods in the state last year with devastating impact in many parts of Bihar. Talking to newsmen here on Wednesday, the minister said since the problem of siltation was of national concern, as it affected all the Ganga riparian states, the WRD has planned to provide a common platform to all those who were affected. Singh said the conference would deliberate on future policy issues, technical solutions and long term perspective plans to conserve the Ganga and the echo-system related to it. Expressing anxiety over continued silt deposit in the river, he said this would pose a serious threat to the Ganga riparian districts in the state in the years to come. We raised the issue at various levels and also took up the matter strongly with the Centre, but the Union government has not taken note of our concern, he claimed. But we will pursue our movement relentlessly and try to bring it to a logical end, he added. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA in Rajasthan on Wednesday drew intense flak after he posted a selfie on Facebook taken during a fire incident in which several houses were gutted in his constituency in Bharatpur district. Bachchu Singh, who represents the Bayana assembly seat, later removed the picture and claimed that he had posted it only to inform the officials that he was on the site. It was not a selfie, he insisted, when asked if it was proper for him to have acted in such a way while he was surrounded by victims of the fire incident on Tuesday. After he was informed about the fire incident in Nagla Moroli Daang area of Bayana town, the MLA rushed to the spot to take stock of the situation. He assured the victims of all necessary help. Standing in middle of the crowd, the MLA, however, took out his mobile phone for a selfie, eyewitnesses said. Though many present on the spot were surprised by the MLAs action, no one spoke at that time, they said. But after he posted the photo on Facebook, objections started flooding. This is not the time to take selfie, one user said while another added, It would have been better if you had poured two buckets of water to douse the fire. The MLA initially tried to explain on the social media website, but later removed the photograph. The SDM was not picking up my call. Then I called up the ADM saying that I am on spot and I am sending you live photograph so that you can act, he said, dismissing queries on why he chose to use the front camera and not the back camera. Among the ranks of suspected sympathisers of the Islamic State is a 23-year-old man from Bengaluru, who was arrested in December last year. Dozens of Indian youth have been held for owing allegiance to the terror group, but what sets Abid Khan apart from the others is his history as revealed to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). According to an interrogation report accessed by HT, Khan used to question the very nature of God and had spent many a session discussing his spiritual quandary with Christian pastors. In fact, before getting swayed by the Islamic State, Khan would often spend hours mulling over the true nature of God. He was also an avid watcher of Bollywood movies. Khan had completed most of his education from madrassas, staying with his family in Bengaluru. He remained with the Tablighi Jamaat from 2007 to 2010, and later taught at a madrassa for a lowly pay of Rs 1,500 a month. He first began reading on middle-eastern politics including the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2013. Two years later, he learnt about the Islamic State through Twitter. One such Twitter handle that shaped his ideology was the Ahwaal Ummat. Within no time, he found himself in Telegram groups filled with Islamic State sympathisers, where they would discuss the caliphate and its workings. Interestingly, one of these conversations accessed by the NIA had Khan recommending Sonam Kapoor-starrer Neerja the cinematic depiction of a real-life flight purser during the hijacking of a plane at Karachi in 1986 to Sameer, a resident of Chennai. When confronted by NIA officials, Khan said his interactions with Islamic State recruiters were aimed at examining the veracity of their claims. Khan wanted to confirm if the claims of an established caliphate in Mosul were true, documents of his interrogation read. However, his dream of travelling to Syria crashed with the arrest of three youngsters Asif Ali, Mohammed Afzal and Syed Mujahid in 2016. Following this, Khan changed tack. He approached pastors at the All Nations Church in Bengaluru, with whom he had been in touch since 2013, and convinced them that he wanted to convert to Christianity. The pastors were so impressed with Khan that they even sponsored an evangelical trip to Sri Lanka, and later posted him at a church in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh. He was in the process of convincing pastors about his dream to build a church in Indonesia, a country where his girlfriend supposedly resided, when NIA personnel finally picked him up in December last year. According to investigators, Khan was just looking for a way to get out of the country. His interrogation has prompted the NIA to take a hard look at the background of suspected Islamic State recruits. Earlier this year, the investigation agency had conducted a first-of-its-kind socio-economic analysis of 52 suspected Islamic State radicals. One-fifth of them had been educated in madrassas, and almost everybody was radicalised online. They wanted to either flee India or carry out violent attacks in the country, officials claimed. The rising number of such terror suspects in India has prompted Animesh Roul, an expert on the Islamic State, to conduct an extensive study of its recruitment methods. There are people who question Gods existence, and then there are those willing to die or take lives for the sake of an angry God. Recruits to the so-called holy war are drawn from both physical and virtual echo chambers, be it social media platforms or madrassas. Some youngsters, who have minimal knowledge of Islam, suddenly start thinking of themselves as saviors of fellow-Muslims everywhere. Scanning every piece of Islamic State propaganda used for targeting Indian and South Asian Muslims will help us understand how they go about motivating the more vulnerable, he told HT. NIA inspector general Alok Mittal says Indias response to the Islamic State movement should not be restricted to just investigating suspects and potential recruits. Prevention is key. Engagement with the youth is essential to the extent that when radical propaganda reaches them, they should be able to judge bad from good, he said. Terrorism expert Kabir Tanjeja believes there is more than one factor that could spur a person to embrace the Islamic States ideology. While some recruits are driven by the idea of a global caliphate, others are radicalised by past experiences. For instance, the Paris attacker was influenced more by his own violent past than strong political leanings. Ideologies like that of the Islamic State attract such individuals, and thats dangerous, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Over a week after BSF head constable Prem Sagar was beheaded by Pakistani intruders along the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir, his wife has received donations amounting to Rs 15 lakh through a website launched by the Union home ministry in collaboration with filmstar Akshay Kumar. She is the first dependent of a deceased paramilitary man to cross the cap of Rs 15 lakh fixed for donation on the portal, called Bharat Ke Veer (Indias Bravehearts). The money has been deposited directly into the bank account of Sagars wife, providing her with immediate relief. Donations received through the website are over and above what dependents of paramilitary personnel killed in action receive through central and state governments. Once the dependents get Rs 15 lakh, their details are removed from the website. Officials said they received many enquiries from NRIs, rickshaw pullers and even school-going children on the mode of donating money through the website. Though the payment gateway would not accept donations from abroad initially, the problem was soon sorted out. The Union home ministry has now written to the Reserve Bank of India to facilitate donations through Paypal for non-resident Indians who dont have a domestic bank account. Encouraging response to Bharat Ke Veer website. Within a month the portal has received more than Rs 2 crore for helping martyrs families, tweeted Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday. CRPF director in general Vijay Kumar, who is coordinating with the management of the website, told HT that more than 35,000 transactions have taken place on the website so far. Details of 114 personnel from eight central paramilitary forces the BSF, CISF, CRPF, ITBP, Assam Rifles, NDRF, NSG and SSB are currently displayed on the website. As per the available information, two dependents (the wife and three-year-old daughter) of Lt Colonel Niranjan EK, who was killed while sanitising the Pathankot airbase, have received Rs 8.51 lakh in donations so far. While three dependents (the wife, mother and father) of CRPF constable N Senthil Kumar who was killed in a Maoist attack on April 24 in Sukma have received Rs 11.52 lakh until now, the wife, daughter and son of his colleague, Narayan Prasad Sonkar, benefited from funds amounting to Rs 5.17 lakh. The mother of 24-year-old Arup Karmakar, who also died in the Sukma attack, has received Rs 3.04 lakh in donations. Those willing to donate may visit the Bharat Ke Veer website here. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The rubble of damaged Dalit houses tells the story of fear and arson that had engulfed Shabbirpur and turned it into a ghost village after a violent clash with Thakurs five days ago. The men have either fled to safer places or are attending injured family members at Saharanpurs district hospital while the women are left to pick the broken pieces of their lives. Subhash Chandra Dubey, senior superintendent of police, Sahranpur said 25 houses were set on fire, but Dalits of the village 25 km from Saharanpur insist 55 houses and five shops were burnt down on May 5 after a Thakur youth was killed in caste clashes. Relatives of affected Dalit families fear more attacks after the terror allegedly unleashed by Thakurs following a procession to honour Rajput ruler Maharana Pratap that triggered the clash last Friday. Saharanpur district has 26% Dalit population spread across villages and 10% Thakurs. But in Shabbirpur village which home to 572 families, the total population of the village is 4,000 which include 2500 Thakurs and 600 Dalits and this lop-sided ratio worries the Dalits. Thakurs were always dominant as a caste in the area which also have Jatav Dalits in good numbers, said Dalit activist Ram Kumar. Only women, who could manage to escape the wrath on that day are living in these ransacked houses. Most of the men have fled to safer places due to the fear, said Nafe Singh at the house of his relatives Dal Singh and Kamla Devi, both of whom are undergoing treatment along with their four-year-old son Badal. Another house allegedly damaged by Thakurs following a clash with Dalits in Shabbirpur village over a procession to commemorate Maharana Pratap. (Gulam Jeelani/HT PHOTO) The Dalit houses and five shops in Shabbirppur were seemingly attacked one by one. The strewn grocery, cattle with burn injuries, damaged motorcycles, remains of utensils and other furniture still lie around in the half-burnt homes. Ratan, 55, one of the eyewitnesses recalled how a mob of over a 1000 youths on two-wheelers armed with swords and rods wreaked havoc and vandalised everything that came in their way till the row of Thakur houses started. All this, he alleged, in broad day light and amidst police presence. Sadly, incidents like these are not new in Saharanpur, a communally sensitive district of western Uttar Pradesh. The Thakur-Dalit animosity had also played out ahead of 2017 UP assembly polls when the BJPs state vice-president Dayashankar Singh made derogatory remarks against BSP chief Mayawati. Dayashankar was expelled only to be reinstated later after his wife Swati Singh won the Assembly election from a Lucknow seat. In April, similar clashes were reported from Sadak Dudhli village of Saharanpur when the BJP took out a procession, without permission, to mark the birth anniversary of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar. Dalits fear that violence may erupt again any time. Thakurs will try to assert their dominance. They have already spread the word that a Jatav has killed a Thakur. No Dalit would dare to live here in future, said Virendra Kumar, a resident of the village who works with a construction firm. Main Lal, a member of the Bhim Army, a group of youth behind the Dalit protests said that they have more reasons to worry as police sided with the Thakurs and would implicate Dalits in false cases. A motorcycle lies damaged in a house which was vandalised in Shabbirpur village on May 5. (Gulam Jeelani/HT PHOTO) Virendra Rana, a local Thakur leader who switched from SP to BJP recently said Dalits were being instigated by some vested interests to resort to violence. Otherwise what is wrong in commemorating Maharana Pratap Jayanti. He was a national icon, not of any particular community, he said. But experts say that the fresh violence against Dalits is a tactical move by the ruling BJP ahead of civic polls scheduled in next two months. Even during the historic assembly mandate, BJP lost both assembly seats-Saharanpur and Saharanpur nagar to SP-Congress alliance. The party thus had only one representative-Raghav Lakhan Pal in the region, said political analyst, Prof Sudhir Panwar. Dalit activists also see a larger political motive behind the violence and blame the BJP. They apprehend that the fear may spread in 80 villages of the district with predominant Dalit population. It is pre-planned in accordance with consolidation of BJP votes. They (BJP) tried Dalit vs Muslims in April Sadak Dudhli but failed. Now they are putting up Dalits against Thakurs. It has been there since long, said Ram Kumar. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Chhattisgarh woman jail official suspended last Saturday for an objectionable Facebook post that spoke of rights violations and rapes in Maoist hotbed Bastar has defended her action in another post. Suspended assistant jail superintendent Varsha Dongres Facebook post on Tuesday is likely to earn her the displeasure of seniors who had asked her to explain her earlier post, which she has since deleted. The post which led to her suspension was put up after the Sukma Maoist attack on April 24 in which 25 CRPF troopers were killed. Dongres post urged officials to introspect on the situation in Bastar, while citing instances of rights violations she had seen during her posting in the region. Dongre, a Dalit, stated in Tuesdays Facebook post she had said nothing unconstitutional in the earlier one and would fight her suspension in a constitutional way. She expressed surprise that her first Facebook post was regarded as spreading wrong and misleading facts in media. She also claimed she was suspended without being given a chance to reply. Dongre has given authorities the explanation sought and it runs into 376 pages. She has attached various government reports and judicial decisions which note state police atrocities in Bastar. Dongres combative second Facebook post has annoyed senior officials. I heard she alleged in her Facebook post that she was not given enough time. It is not true. She has again posted something on Facebook even after warning and inquiry, and again committed the same mistake. We will look into the issue and take strict action, said Girdhari Nayak, director general (Jail). SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Congress will not project any chief ministerial candidate in Guajarat in run up to the state assembly elections due later this year, the partys newly- appointed state in-charge Ashok Gehlot said here on Wednesday. The party is gearing up to contest elections in Prime Minister Narendra Modis home state where it is out of power for over two decades. Gehlot on Wednesday attended the executive committee meeting of the state Congress along with senior leader Ahmed Patel. Ahead of the elections, a fierce race has started between the state Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki and the leader of opposition in the Assembly Shankarsinh Vaghela to become the partys CM face. Vaghela camp also wants that he should be declared the head of the election committee but Gehlot today said the decision on the issue would be taken later. The poster wars and social media campaigns between the two camps have already started with several state leaders and MLAs, owing allegiance to the one or the other camp urging the the high command to declare their favourite leader the CM candidate before the polls, as was done in Punjab recently. We are out of power in the state for the last 22 years. There is speculation in the media on who will be declared the chief ministerial candidate, Gehlot said at the executive committee meeting. Let us unitedly capture the power and then the high command will decide who will be the chief minister, he said. If we cannot unite after being out of power for 22 years, when will we be united? Nobody should talk about naming of chief ministerial candidate. First you all should work together to get us back to power, he said. Ahmed Patel said, I know Vaghela and Solanki personally. They might put their views forward at party forum, but when they have to fight for Congress, they always stand united. Later, talking to the reporters, Gehlot said there were no differences between the Congress leaders. On question of choosing the state election committee members, Gehlot said these names will be decided later after discussions. Both Gehlot and Patel asked the party workers to fight the elections with full force and conviction. This is a very crucial election for the entire country. The BJP government here and at the Centre is on the verge of ruining the country and it is our duty to stop them, Patel told party workers. Gehlot said, This is a fight of ideology. The Congress strengthened the democracy in the country and that is the reason Modi could become the prime minister. If Congress had not strengthened the democracy, he could not have become (even) the chief minister. Solanki later said various resolutions on issues concerning farmers, fishermen and students were passed in the state executive meeting. Bihar cadre IAS officer Jitendra Gupta was on Wednesday a relieved man. The ordeal he had been facing for more than a year since his arrest in an alleged bribery case ended with the Supreme Court directing the department of personnel and training (DoPT) of the Union government to change his cadre. I am relieved. When peoples/officers dignity is not there, it becomes difficult to work. My social respect and dignity had taken a beating due to irresponsible and negligent act of state authorities. The Supreme Court order will help restore that, the 2013 batch officer, who will now join the Haryana cadre, told HT on Wednesday. The top court on Tuesday, while hearing the writ petition of the 2013 batch officer, ruled that his fundamental rights had been trampled upon and directed the Centre to transfer him to another state. The SC judgment, which reconfirmed that the officer was falsely implicated in the case, is a serious indictment of Bihar government. Taking a serious note of the matter, the Supreme Court expressed displeasure over the administrative inaction on Guptas representation The top court had last week upheld a Patna high court order exonerating him of all charges ruled that Gupta had been framed. Gupta had filed the petition in April, saying his and his familys fundamental rights had been brutally violated and he was facing extreme hardship, including threat to life in Bihar. ALSO READ: Strong evidence against arrested IAS officer: Police The officer had also written to the DoPT to transfer him to another cadre as he was very much unsafe in the present cadre. In his representation, Gupta elaborated how, upon state governments direction, he had acted tough against the entry mafia. The mafia, in connivance with the vigilance department, implicated him in a false case, Gupta said, and demanded exemplary monetary compensation for damages and defamation, action against those who violated the law and his immediate cadre transfer. I was afraid of the entry mafia. The vigilance department was hand in glove with them, Gupta, a native of Firozabad (UP), said. The entry mafia had lodged a vigilance complaint against the young officer, alleging that he seized four trucks on July 3, 2016 and later demanded bribe for releasing them. The IAS officer, who was then posted as subdivisional magistrate of Mohania in southwest Bihar, was wrongly implicated in a case of bribery and had to spend a month in jail. After being released on bail, Gupta moved the Patna high court, stating that the FIR against him was fabricated. Subsequently, the high court quashed the FIR on October 28, 2016. ALSO READ: Bihar: IAS body decides to petition guv, CM on officers arrest In the HC, it was proved that the alleged seizure of trucks by me never actually happened. The prosecution also admitted this. They tried to change the story, which contradicted their own previous version and the truckers affidavits. This convinced the court that the FIR was false, Gupta recalled. The SC also ruled that Gupta was falsely implicated as demand, acceptance and recovery of bribe, which are the three essentials of a corruption case, were missing in his case, the IAS officer said. Gupta, who has been working as officer on special duty, department of environment and forest, since his suspension was revoked in September 2016, was candid enough to say that administrative atmosphere is not there to work once you are subjected to such types of humiliation. But I am indebted to the people of Bihar and the IAS Association for standing behind me. People of the state are very good and affectionate. The association stood behind me from very beginning, said Gupta, a holder of MBBS degree from Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi and MS (orthopedic) from Lady Harding Medical College, also in the national capital. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The state government would confer Haryana Vigyan Ratna and Haryana Yuva Vigyan Ratna awards on eminent scientists of the state on the occasion of National Science Day on February 8 every year, and also double the award money from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Wednesday. He was speaking at a function in which governor Kaptan Singh Solanki conferred Vigyan Ratna awards upon 11 eminent scientists of the state at Haryana Raj Bhavan. Solanki conferred Haryana Vigyan Ratna Award for 2012-13 on K C Bansal, former director, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (ICAR), Pusa, New Delhi, for his contributions in the field of plant biotechnology. Genes discovered by him are used by national laboratories of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in developing drought/stress tolerant transgenic rice, wheat, chickpea, mustard, groundnut, tomato and tea. His pioneering work as director of the ICARs premier institute National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), Pusa on evaluation of the entire wheat germplasm also got accolades from international wheat community and found an entry in the Limca Book of Records. Similarly, Satish Kumar Gupta, emeritus scientist, J C Bose fellow and former deputy director, reproductive cell biology laboratory, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, was also honoured with Haryana Vigyan Ratna Award for 2013-14 for producing the first pregnancy detection kit sold for public use in the country, among other achievements. The scientists were presented with cash prize of 2 two lakh, citation, trophy and shawl. Solanki also conferred Haryana Yuva Vigyan Ratna Award on nine young scientists aged below 40 years and presented them with cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, citation, trophy and shawl, each. They were Abhineet Kaushik, deputy general manager in BrahMos Aerospace, New Delhi; Pradeep Kumar, scientist-E, research centre Imarat (RCI), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Hyderabad; Deepak Sharma, assistant prof, department of biotechnology, IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand; Parveen Kumar, Scientist-E, (DRDO), Delhi; Savita Chaudhary, assistant proffessor, department of chemistry, Panjab University, Chandigarh; Abhinav Grover, assistant prof, school of biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Sandeep Kumar, assistant prof, department of bio and nano technology, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar; Vinod Kumar, assistant prof, department of chemistry, Maharishi Markendeshwar University, Mullana, Ambala; and Anurag Kuhad, assistant prof of pharmacology, University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Panjab University, Chandigarh. KNOW THE WINNERS Abhineet Kaushik, who hails from Bhaproda village of Jhajjar, works as deputy general manager in BrahMos Aerospace (An India-Russia Joint Venture, under Ministry of Defence), New Delhi. He was awarded for his significant role in evolving the crucial methodology for alignment of Brahmos missile launcher for a ship based naval platform. He was honoured the Young Scientist Award in the year 2012 by defence minister. Pradeep Kumar, who was born in Gujarwas village in Mohindergarh district, is currently working as a scientist at Research Centre Imarat (RCI), DRDO, Hyderabad. He has expertise in fiber optic sensors and components. He led the indigenous development of sensor optics for different grades of FOG for control, tactical and navigation applications of missiles, aircrafts, tanks etc. Deepak Sharma, a resident of Gurugram, studied B Sc, M Sc and Ph D from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, and is currently working as assistant prof in the department of biotechnology, IIT Roorkee. His research work had won him the prestigious INSA Medal for Young Scientist 2008. He was invited as a visiting faculty at the University of Maryland, USA and was selected as a founding member of the Indian National Young Academy of Science (INYAS). Parveen Kumar who was born in village Nanhera of Panipat, is graduate from Regional Engineering College (REC) Kurukshetra in electrical engineering with gold medal and post graduate from IIT-Delhi. Currently, he is working as scientist-E at DRDO, New Delhi contributed as telemetry expert in the test, evaluation of missiles under Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP-Prithvi, Agni, Akash, Trishul, Nag) and other DRDOs programme such as Brahmos, Pilot less tracking aircraft. Savita Chaudhary comes from a humble backgrond from village Farmana, Sonepat. She did her initial schooling in village and then shifted to Chandigarh. She completed her M Sc and PhD from Panjab University. Currently, she is working as assistant professor in department of chemistry, Panjab University and has made significant contributions in the field of nanochemistry. She has developed efficient means for the treatment of polluted water by using functionalised nanomaterials. She is credited with more than 50 publications. Abhinav Grover, from Kurukshetra, did his graduation, masters and Ph D from IIT, Delhi. Presently, he is working as assistant professor and group leader, molecular modeling; biotherapeutics production laboratory at School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. He is a recipient of the prestigious NASI Young Scientist Award in 2014, INSA Medal for Young Scientists in 2013, Indo-Swiss Joint Research Fellowship, besides several others. Sandeep Kumar, who is from Chandigarh and who did his M Tech and Ph D from Panjab University, is working as an assistant professor at Guru Jambeshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar. He holds specialisation in nanotechnology for healthcare applications. He is working in the areas of water purification, environmental and healthcare sector and has published his research work in SCI journals. Vinod Kumar, who was born in Butan Kheri village, Indri of Karnal, Haryana, did his M Sc and Ph D from Kurukshetra University. He is currently working as an assistant professor at Maharishi Markendeshwar University, Mullana, Ambala, Haryana and has made a significant contribution in the field of organic synthesis particularly Azoles chemistry. He has developed greener synthetic routes in some cases. Anurag Kuhad did his bachelors of pharmacy from Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar, Haryana, masters of pharmacy in Pharmacology and PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Panjab University, Chandigarh. He is working as an assistant professor of pharmacology at University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Panjab University, Chandigarh. His research is focused towards development of phytochemicals for management of diabetic complications like neuropathy, nephropathy and associated cognitive decline. A top US lawmaker has cautioned Pakistan that India would not sit idly if its soldiers or citizens are being attacked, asking Islamabad to clamp down on extremist groups inside its territory. Joe Crowley, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, told PTI that the situation on the Indo-Pak border has been volatile for the past few months due to activities by Pakistan-backed militant groups, and called on the Trump administration to put more pressure on the country. (They) are backed by Pakistan. They (Trump administration) need to be more towards putting the pressure on Pakistan to go after LeT and other militant groups within Pakistan that are causing tensions on the India-Pakistan border, he said in response to a question. I think the emphasis here is that they (Pakistan) need to do more to clamp down on those violent and extremist groups within Pakistan themselves, because India will not sit by idly while its soldiers or its citizens are being attacked, said Crowley, a former co-Chair of the House India Caucus. The Congressman said these issues should be handled in a bilateral manner by the two countries. But I do think theres a role that the United States can play as both a friend to India and Pakistan to put the pressure on our friends to find a way forward to help keep peace in the region and to bring about reconciliation, the Democratic lawmaker from New York said. Crowley also hoped that the Trump administration would take inputs from India on its Afghanistan policy, which is believed to be in its last stages of being finalised. I would certainly hope that the President and the State Department take into consideration the opinion of the Indian government. The Indian people and its government have sustained terrorist attack after terrorist attack, he said. He said that the historical ties between the Afghan people and Indian people are important things to consider in terms of creating a doctrine, which has been lacking. I dont know of a doctrine from the Trump administration as pertained to the entire region, let alone Afghanistan. Or what its doctrine is towards India or toward Pakistan...so I do hope that whatever is formulated, is articulated and understood by the members of the Congress, like myself, who care about that part of the world, he said. Such a doctrine, he said, needs to promotes peace and reconciliation in the region while also continuing to fight in a mutual front against terrorism. And that includes acts committed against India by fundamentalists working inside Pakistan, Crowley said. When we do work towards a solution in Afghanistan, it (should) incorporate the Indian government as well as the Pakistani government in terms of helping formulate and foster a long-term commitment to peace and reconciliation within the area, he said. Crowley hoped there would be an India-specific doctrine in place before the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump. Observing that Indo-US relationship has been bipartisan in the past, he hoped that this would continue to be the case under the Trump administration as well. A group of Indian workers have been held captive by a company in Saudi Arabia over salary-related disputes, prompting the Indian embassy in the gulf country to make efforts for their repatriation. The embassy intervened in the matter after Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik sought help from external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and the Prime Ministers Office. According to reports, 24 Indian workers have been allegedly held captive by a Saudi company. Of the 24, twelve labourers are from Odisha, 8 from Andhra Pradesh and 4 from Tamil Nadu. Deeply concerned about Odia workers held captive in Saudi Arabia; Request @SushmaSwaraj ji @PMOIndia to intervene for their safe return (sic), Patnaik said in a tweet. @Naveen_Odisha @SushmaSwaraj @PMOIndia Embassy cognizant of it; vigorously pursuing with the Company n agents towards their repatriation; hope to send them soon @ajxtopcop India in SaudiArabia (@IndianEmbRiyadh) May 10, 2017 In response to the tweet, the Indian embassy said, Embassy cognizant of it; vigorously pursuing with the Company n agents towards their repatriation; hope to send them soon (sic). Swaraj instructed the Indian envoy in Saudi Arabia to keep the chief minister informed about the steps being taken by the embassy. The Indian Army has foiled an infiltration bid by militants along the Line of Control in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, an official said on Wednesday. The incident took place in Rampur sector, an army spokesperson said. Alert troops opened fire on a group of terrorists attempting to sneak into our territory yesterday (Tuesday) night and forced them back. Search of the area continues, the spokesperson said. There were no casualties in the incident and the militants were forced to retreat to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The army launched a combing operation in the area to ensure that none of the militants managed to get in. (With agency inputs) The International Court of Justice, which has stayed the death sentence of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav by Pakistan, will hold public hearings in the case on Monday. The hearings will be devoted to the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by India, the ICJ said in a release. Pakistan said earlier on Wednesday it will make a decision within the next few days on Indias appeal before an international court to stay the execution of the Indian national accused of spying, even as New Delhi defended its move saying an innocent mans life was under threat. Islamabads reaction came after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stayed on Tuesday the execution of former Indian naval officer Jadhav, who was convicted of espionage and sabotage by a Pakistani military court on April 10. The ICJs intervention is being seen by some as a reprieve for Jadhav. But efforts by India to secure the 46-year-old mans release will have to navigate increasingly tense ties with its arch rival. Pakistan is reviewing the move by India and a decision in this regard will be issued accordingly, Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs adviser to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said, adding a statement will be issued in the next few days. He also said the Pakistani government will review the ICJs jurisdiction in the case. But the Pakistani army appeared defiant. Pakistani military spokesman Asif Ghafoor said it will respond at an appropriate level to any query by the ICJ on Jadhav. His comments came shortly after their army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa met Sharif to discuss the court order. Defence minister Khawaja Asif also accused India of using Jadhavs death sentence to divert attention from what he said was New Delhis state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Jadhav was allegedly arrested in Balochistan in March 2016. Pakistan accused Jadhav of spying for his countrys external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). India warned that if Jadhav was hanged, it would be considered premeditated murder. In New Delhi, the foreign ministry defended its decision to move the international court for the first time since 1971. Kulbhushan Jadhav is in illegal detention in Pakistan and his life is under threat, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. We made 16 requests for consular access to Jadhav but there was no response from Pakistan on the demand. India believes the ICJ can look into Jadhavs case as the two countries are signatories to the optional protocol of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). The protocol says any dispute arising out of the interpretation or application of VCCR shall lie within the jurisdiction of the ICJ. Indian lawyers seemed divided over Indias decision. I am not sure it is a wise move to go to the ICJ. Pakistan could cite precedence when India said the ICJ has no jurisdiction in a case in 1999 involving Pakistan, said Narendra Singh, the secretary general of the Indian Society of International Law. New Delhi listed in 1974 subjects linked to India that the ICJ can adjudicate. India does not accept the ICJs jurisdiction on disputes with the government of any state which is or has been a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1999, a Pakistani military plane was shot down in Indian airspace over the Rann of Kutch. When Pakistan approached the ICJ, India said the international court didnt have the jurisdiction to hear the case. The court accepted the argument. Shashank Kumar, who previously worked with the ICJ said: As the bases for jurisdiction are separate, a comparison with what happened in the aerial incident case, in my view, does not really answer whether Pakistan may at present comply or not. Senior lawyer Harish Salve will represent India when the ICJ hears the Jadhav case. India will seek directions to Pakistan to annul the execution order issued in violation of international law. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, said to be instrumental in moving the international court, tweeted that she spoke to the Jadhavs mother about the ICJ order. PATNA Following an uproar over dishonouring of a cheque handed over to the widow of a CRPF jawan killed in a Maoist ambush at Sukma (Chhattisgarh) on April 24, an embarrassed Bihar government, on Wednesday, resorted to instant damage control and transferred the Rs 5-lakh amount in the designated account, through online transaction. Sunita Devi, wife of slain CRPF jawan Ranjeet Kumar, had deposited the cheque of HDFC Bank, issued to her by the district administration, in her account at the State Bank of India branch at Aliganj in Jamui district of south eastern Bihar. However, the branch returned the cheque to her, claiming that the authorised signatorys initials did not match the records at the branch. As soon as the news regarding the return of the cheque spread, the government swung into action to remedy the situation. However, this was enough to give the opposition BJP ammunition to attack the Nitish government for its insensitivity. The BJP had made it an issue earlier this month when none of the ministers of the Nitish cabinet was present to pay respect to the six slain jawans from Bihar, when their bodies arrived at the Patna airport. The government had to face another embarrassment when the BJP criticised it for keeping the procession with martyrs bodies waiting at the airport, to provide passage to the carcade of the CM who was attending a function nearby. I was informed by the bank that the signature on the district magistrates cheque did not match (the specimen signature in the branch records) and so it was being returned, said Sunita Devi. The Supreme Court has ruled that in case of a cheque bounce, a mismatch of signatures will be treated on par with insufficiency of funds, payment stopped and closure of account, which are offences under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. Sheikhpura district magistrate Dinesh Kumar, however, insisted that the problem lay at the level of HDFC Bank and action would be taken against it. If the signature did not match, the HDFC Bank should have informed those concerned immediately or replied to the query of the SBI. We have taken a written apology from the HDFC Bank and legal action will also follow, he added. BJP leader Mangal Pandey, however, wasted no time in hitting out at the Nitish government. There is no sensitivity in Nitish government. If they cannot honour martyrs, who else will they pay respect to? he wondered. In response, JD(U) spokesman Neeraj Kumar said the government could not be blamed for a banking error, which was promptly sorted out. On April 24 last, 25 jawans of the CRPF were killed in an encounter with Maoists in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh. Among them six jawans were from Bihar. The deceased were members of the 74th battalion of the CRPF. BLURB Slain CRPF jawans wife had deposited HDFC Bank cheque issued by distt admn, in her SBI account at Aliganj, Jamui. But the bank returned it claiming authorised signatorys initials did not match bank records . SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON India said on Wednesday it was a carefully considered decision to approach the International Court of Justice in Kulbhushan Jadhav case. The Hague-based ICJ has stayed the hanging of Indian national Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of spying. External affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the move was in the interest of saving the life of an Indian citizen, who is in illegal detention and whose life is under threat. Baglay also said India made 16 requests for consular access to Jadhav which were denied by Pakistan and that there was no information on status of appeal by Jadhavs family against the order of the Pakistani military court. The spokesperson added India had no information about Jadhavs location and health so far. Meanwhile, Pakistans defence minister Khawaja M Asif called Indias action an attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in that country. Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention frm state sponsored terrorism in Pak.Kulbushan convicted of offences against Nat security Khawaja M. Asif (@KhawajaMAsif) May 10, 2017 India has accused Pakistan of kidnapping Jadhav from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhav (46) was sentenced to death last month, evoking a sharp reaction in India. New Delhi warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the pre-meditated murder was carried out. Pakistan on Wednesday accused India of using its national Kulbhushan Jadhavs death conviction to divert attention from state-sponsored terrorism in the country. Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asifs allegation against India came a day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of spying. Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security, Asif tweeted. It was the first response from Pakistan after the order. The order by the Hague-based ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistans Field General Court Martial last month. Earlier, Pakistans media rejected Indias claim over the order. Geo TV said the ICJ had no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue did not mention the stay. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhavs sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India.India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the pre-meditated murder was carried out. The International Court of Justice late on Tuesday stayed the hanging of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of spying. The order came a day after India approached by The Hague-based ICJ against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistans field general court martial in April, sources said. India has accused Pakistan of violating the Vienna Convention and said Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Here are five things about the ICJ and India-Pakistan disputes: After 46 years This is the first time after 1971 that India has turned to the ICJ, established in 1945 by the United Nations charter, in a dispute with Pakistan. In 1971 India withdrew Pakistans overflight rights after the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight to Lahore in January. Pakistan, citing the jurisdiction of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), said India could not deny it the overflight as well as landing rights. The court ruled in favour of Pakistan. Fear for Jadhavs life India moved the ICJ because it feared Pakistan could execute Jadhav without allowing him the legal remedies available to him in that country. The Indian challenge is primarily based on Pakistan violating Vienna convention on consular relations. Among other things, the agreement allows diplomatic representatives to visit their nationals held prisoner by the host country. India also argued that Pakistan had ignored a bilateral treaty on consular access. Senior advocate Harish Salve is representing India. Pakistans first move Before Tuesday India had taken Pakistan to the ICJ only once. Pakistan has done it twice. The first time was in 1973. Pakistan wanted to stop the repatriation of 195 of its nationals to Bangladesh from Indian custody after the 1971 war to stand trial on charges of genocide. But, a year later Pakistan withdrew the case. The 1971 India-Pakistan war led to the creation of Bangladesh. The second move Pakistan took India to the ICJ in 1999 after its military plane was shot down in Indian air space over the Rann of Kutch. India contested the case on the issue of jurisdiction and the ICJ upheld New Delhis position. Why India is shy of ICJ There is a reason why India hasnt moved the ICJ in all these years. In September 1974, India spelt out the matters over which it would accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ, replacing a similar declaration made in 1959. Among the matters over which India does not accept the ICJ jurisdiction are: Disputes with the government of any state which is or has been a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Pakistan is a member of the Commonwealth, a grouping of 53 countries most of which are former British colonies nation. Also, moving the ICJ amounts to taking disputes with Pakistan to a multilateral forum, which New Delhi tends to avoid. But, India believes the ICJ can look into Jadhavs case as both the countries are signatories to the optional protocol of the Vienna convention on consular relations (VCCR). The protocol says any dispute arising out of the interpretation or application of VCCR shall lie within the jurisdiction of the ICJ. The ICJ was established by the UN charter in 1945. The statute of ICJ guides its work. All UN members are technically parties to the ICJ but each country has made a declaration on the issues they would accept the courts jurisdiction. The courts role is to settle legal disputes and give advice on questions referred to it by various UN bodies and specialised agencies. The court has 15 judges, who are elected for a nine-year term by the UN general assembly and security council. Judge Ronny Abraham of France is the court president and judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf the vice-president. Justice Dalveer Bhandari of India is one of the 15 judges serving the court. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Mango production in Uttar Pradesh is likely to see a 65% drop this year due to frequent dust storms that have hit the crop hard and the king of fruits is likely to come at a royal price this year. Mango growers estimate that the production could be just 15 lakh metric tonnes this year as compared to 44 lakh metric tonnes last year. Last year there was a record 44 lakh metric tonne production in the state. But this time, the situation is grim as production is likely to see a 65% decline, All India Mango Growers Association (AIMGA) President Insram Ali told PTI. He said the maximum yield this year in the state, considered the countrys mango bowl, could be just 15 lakh metric tonnes. The reason behind the poor output is strong humid winds due to which mango growers had to double pesticide sprinkling to save the trees from pests, he said, adding dust storms made the scenario more bleak for the growers. Due to decline in production, the price of mangoes are likely to be high this time making it out of reach of the common man, he said. In Uttar Pradesh, mango is produced in an area of 2.5 lakh hectares. Lucknow, Pratapgarh, Allahabad, Bulandshahar, Saharanpur, Faizabad, Varanasi, Moradabad, Barabanki, Meerut, Unnao, Sitapur, Hardoi, Gorakhpur, Basti, JP Nagar and Mathura are the major mango producing belts in the state. Popular varieties like chausa, dusheri, fazli, gulab khas, langra, mallika and amrapali are produced in the state. Due to the anticipated poor production, the AIMGA has demanded that mango be covered under the prime ministers crop insurance scheme. The state government has started waiving loans of farmers but no such arrangement has been done for mango growers. We have written to chief minister Yogi Adityanath to give mango growers the status of farmers, Insram said. We have also demanded inclusion of mangoes in the PM crop insurance scheme to protect us from onslaught of nature and crop loss, he said. Mango growers this year have to suffer heavy losses due to which it is going to be a difficult time for them, he added. AIMGA should be given more powers and its representatives should be included in various committees to voice the grievances of mango cultivators, he said. We want to be part of committees drafting policies for mango growers and our suggestions should be taken. We want government to waive electricity charges for tubewells used for irrigation of mango orchards. Besides, mango exporters should be encouraged by the government, he said. Due to bumper produce last year, juicy mangoes were in the reach of the common man and the rates hovered between Rs 20 and 40 a kg. Meat seized from a Jaipur hotel that was sealed after cow protector vigilantes attacked it two months ago was not beef as alleged by the Hindu mob, police told HT on Tuesday. The Forensic Science Laboratory that was examining samples seized from the Hayat Rabbani hotel ruled out any possibility that the meat was from a cow or its progeny, police officers added. From the very first day, I have been saying that it was chicken but no one from the administration listened to me. The report confirms all allegations leveled on us were false, said Naeem Rabbani, owner of the hotel. On March 19, more than 100 cow vigilantes surrounded the Rabbani hotel in the heart of Jaipur around midnight and protested in front of it for six hours, alleging that the establishment sold beef, which is banned in Rajasthan. Fiery chants of Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Narendra Modi Zindabad rang out from the protesters, who had been unable to explain how they knew beef was served. We sent the meat samples taken from the hotel to the forensic science laboratory (FSL) for testing. The reports have revealed that the meat was not beef, deputy commissioner of police (west) Ashok Gupta told HT. Within hours of the attack, the hotel was sealed by the Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) under the supervision of local councilor Nirmala Sharma, and hasnt opened since despite a court order. The attack on the hotel and its subsequent shutting down had triggered nationwide condemnation and the incident was seen as the latest push by cow vigilantes, who have grown in power and expanded rapidly since the BJP stormed to power at the Centre in 2014. A Muslim man was lynched in Uttar Pradesh two years ago and a dairy farmer thrashed to death last month on similar beef-related suspicions by alleged cow protection vigilantes. The cow is considered holy by many Hindus but the violent vigilantism is seen by experts as a proxy war against Dalits and Muslims. The Hindu leader who led the mob, Sadhvi Kamal Didi, appeared unhappy with the forensic tests. I will speak with the police to verify that whether the forensic test of the meat sample has been done correctly or not. Only after that, I will decide the next course of action, said the 39-year-old president of the Rashtriya Mahila Gauraksha Dal. But the forensic test results may have come too late for the hotel owner, who used to chalk up tens of thousands of rupees in daily sales but says he has bled money in recent weeks. I have incurred loss of lakhs of rupees and in the past one and a half month and the people who worked in the hotel are also jobless as it is sealed even today, said Rabbani. He added that the district and sessions court in Jaipur had issued an order on April 29 ordering the JMC to open the hotel within seven days and submit a compliance report in the court. Its been more than seven days now but the JMC hasnt opened the seal, Rabbani told HT. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday blamed TV channels for spreading false propaganda about the state, projecting the Valley as a dangerous area which she said was preventing people from travelling to the state. Inaugurating a two-day national medical conferences here, Mufti said: I would like to put on record my appreciation of distinguished doctors who have come from outside the state, despite the propaganda we see on electronic media every night 24x7. I am many a times told by the tourists that We are amazed and amused when we are sitting in shikharas or hotels and watch the evening news. They have to pinch themselves to know that they are in the same place that is called Kashmir which television is talking about. They make it seem so dangerous. The chief minister inaugurated the second Jammu and Kashmir Medical Sciences Congress and the first annual conference of Metabolic Syndrome, Pre-diabetes, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (MPPCOS) Society here, which was slated to be attended by over 2,000 medical experts and researchers. However, only 1,200 delegates are attending due to the ongoing tensions in the state. A senior doctor associated with the organising committee said of the total delegates registered, 250 are national faculty while only 15 international faculty are attending the event against the total registration of 100. Speaking on the health issues concerning Kashmir Valley, Mufti called for collective and collaborative efforts by researchers and medical practitioners to address the spread of non communicable diseases (NCD) in society. She said massive health programmes and awareness about the spread and causes of these diseases are what can deliver the desired results. Present on the occasion were director general of Indian Council of Medical Research Soumaya Swaminathan; director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences Randeep Guleria, director of Sher-i- Kashmir Institute of Medial Sciences(SKIMS) Prof Ahangar, and Ashraf Ganie, professor of endocrinology at SKIMS, who was also the convener of the conference. The chief minister also launched the official website of MPPCOS society on Wednesday. The theme of the conference is Non-Communicable Diseases in Developing Countries. The three-day event will include thematic medical sciences exhibition, panel discussions, paper presentations, workshops and plenary lectures. Medical achievers and young scientists would be awarded at the conclave. Pakistani officials kept mum over the International Court of Justices stay over the execution of Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on charges of spying. The local media, which was initially slow to respond, rejected Indias claim. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online did not report about the Indian claim of the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. Jadhav, 46, was awarded the death sentence by a Field General Court Martial last month. India moved the ICJ against Pakistan, accusing the latter of violating the Vienna Convention. India, in its appeal, contended that it was not informed of Jadhavs detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further asserted that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the Pakistani authorities were denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite repeated requests. The ICJ through a statement on May 8 confirmed that it received an application from India. In New Delhi, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said that she spoke to Jadhavs mother and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Article 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court. 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. Jadhav was sentenced to death for espionage and subversive activities. India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhavs mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistani nationals seeking medical visa to India will now have to furnish a letter of recommendation by Pakistan foreign affairs advisor Sartaj Aziz, the external affairs ministry said a move reflective of the strained ties between the two neighbours. Though MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay termed as baseless reports that India has stopped giving medical visas to Pakistani citizens, he made it clear that only a recommendation letter by Aziz will be cleared immediately. We have suggested that their foreign minister or foreign affairs advisor Sartaz Aziz give a recommendation letter and it will be cleared immediately, without any delay, he said, adding the insistence on a recommendation letter would enable to ascertain that the requests received from Pakistan are genuine. He also referred to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj herself receiving these requests on social media and on emails. It is difficult to ascertain authenticity of such requests, he added. He also asserted that in previous years, thousands of medical visas have been issued to Pakistani citizens to come to India and benefit from the health facilities here. Indias decision to impose the condition on medical visas for Pakistani nationals comes in the backdrop of growing tension with Islamabad. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Emmanuel Macron, congratulating him on his victory in the French presidential election. The Prime Minister on Tuesday said he was looking forward to working with Macron to further deepen the cooperation between India and France. Called President @EmmanuelMacron to convey my congratulations on his victory in the French Presidential election: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) May 9, 2017 Modi had earlier greeted Macron on his emphatic victory. I look forward to working with President @EmmanuelMacron to further deepen cooperation between India and France: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) May 9, 2017 The pro-European centrist leader was elected President last week. The 39-year old former investment banker, who has never held elected office, became the youngest President and occupant of the Elysee Palace. At a victory party in Paris on Tuesday, Macron said the country has sent an incredible message to itself, to Europe and the world, adding that he would guarantee the unity of the nation and defend and protect Europe. Marine Le Pen, his far-right opponent, called Macron to concede her defeat after voters rejected her French-first nationalism by a large margin. The French interior ministry said that with 93% of the votes counted, Macron had about 19.3 million votes, while Le Pen secured about 10.4 million. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will meet in New Delhi next week to chalk out the strategy for the upcoming Presidential election. Sources said Gandhi called Banerjee from the capitals Ganga Ram Hospital, where the senior Congress leader was admitted. Banerjee, who enjoys excellent personal rapport with Gandhi, will arrive in Delhi on Monday and is likely to meet the Congress chief on Tuesday. Even as the Opposition swiftly moved to secure Banerjees support in the Presidential pollto be held in JulyYSR Congress party president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy met Prime Minister here and promised support. We will support any candidate the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fields as we have very less difference in opinion. Except for differences on the land acquisition bill and special status for Andhra Pradesh, we share similar opinions on various issues which we think are pro-people, Jagan said. Jagan, the son of late Congress chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, formed his own party after allegedly getting a raw deal from the Congress leadership. While the Congress never counted on Jagan Reddys support, it is banking on Trinamool Congress, which has more than 64,000 votes, to join the Opposition ranks. Trinamool Congress votes are crucial for the Opposition to give a close fight to the BJP. In 2012, Banerjee had proposed former President APJ Abdul Kalams name to Gandhi but the proposal didnt find any support from other parties. Finally, the Congress fielded the then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. This year, the Congress is unlikely to field any party candidate as it is keen to rope in other Opposition parties for a consensus candidate. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON GAYA Once known as a Maoist liberated zone where Left wing extremists held sway, a development initiative has brought about peace and increased footfalls of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain devotees to Kauleshwari hills, also known as Kolhua and Kolahal, in Chatra district of Jharkhand, bordering Bihar. The initiative to make Kauleshwari hills - 60km south of Bihars Gaya district and 10km from Chatra town - a tourist hub, came two years back from peoples representatives of the two states. The Chatra administration implemented the development schemes with the active support of the locals, forcing the Maoists to shift their hideouts to the adjoining jungles. The chanting of religious hymns has replaced the booms of the Maoist guns. Mainly famous for a temple dedicated to Goddess Kauleshwari, an incarnation of Hindu goddess Durga, Jain pilgrims are now frequenting a shrine dedicated to their 23rd Tirthankar, atop the hill. Buddhist devotees also flock the place round-the-year to see a rock where Buddha is believed to have rested. Footfalls increase heavily during Navratra when Durga is worshipped across India, with a large number of devotees from neighbouring Bihar and West Bengal visiting the shrine located at a height of 1575 feet. Although the history of the Kauleshwari shrine is still uncovered and lie in the many sculptures lying around, local legends ascribe it to the Mahabharat period. The drive to cleanse the Kauleshwari hills of Reds began two years ago when Gaya MP Hari Manjhi, wrote to Jharkhand tourism department and sought development projects for the area, contending that 75% of pilgrims were from Bihar. Manjhi said his efforts found support from Chatra MP Sunil Kumar Singh and his Aurangabad counterpart, Sushil Kumar Singh, following which a temple management committee, headed by the Chatra sadar subdivisional officer,was formed in 2015. It organised the first Kauleshwari Mahotsav the same year. Since then, Maoists of Koluha zone, who had earlier carried out a series of massacres in Bihar, have been keeping a low profile, the Gaya MP said. The extremists, then members of the erstwhile Maoist Communist Centres Kolhua zone, had killed 54 persons at Dalelchak-Baghaura in Aurangabad on May 29, 1987; 35 at Bara in Gaya on February 12, 1999 and 34 others at Senari in Jehanabad on March 18, 1999, he said. In 2004, the MCC merged with the Communist Party of India (MarxistLeninist) Peoples War to form CPI (Maoist). The temple management committee has launched renovation and beautification projects to develop the place into a tourist spot. Two ponds on the hill top, which remain full of water throughout the year, are being beautified with the cooperation of the forest department, an elated Chatra MP said, adding that a ropeway and a safari had also been planned there. We are happy and hope that development initiatives will ensure that Maoists do not return here, said Abhay Singh, Bhavani Singh, Jaydrath Singh and Borendra Tiwari of Hunterganj, 10km from Chatra. DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE BLURB The drive to cleanse Kauleshwari hills of Reds began two years ago when Gaya MP Hari Manjhi wrote to Jharkhand tourism deptt for development of the area, contending 75% pilgrims were from Bihar SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON India may be breathing easy after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stayed the hanging of its national Kulbhushan Jadhav but the past and fractured ties with Pakistan will likely come in the way of getting the Indian national home safely. Late on Tuesday, the court, based in the Dutch city of The Hague, stayed the death sentence handed down to the former naval official by a military court in Pakistan that found him guilty of spying. India in the past has questioned the ICJ authority to decide on the dispute between the two countries. Moreover, ties between the two countries are tense following a string of border clashes and terror attacks in India. Here is what lies ahead: Will Pakistan accept the ICJ order? Technically, it should but if the past is anything to go by, it may not. India believes the ICJ can look into Jadhavs case as both the countries are signatories to the optional protocol of the Vienna convention on consular relations (VCCR). The protocol says any dispute arising out of the interpretation or application of VCCR shall lie within the jurisdiction of the ICJ. But, last time India won a case against Pakistan was by arguing the court didnt have the jurisdiction on matters involving two Commonwealth countries. I am not sure it is a wise move to go to ICJ. Pakistan could cite precedence of India citing ICJ having no jurisdiction in a case in 1999 involving Pakistan, said Narendra Singh, secretary general, Indian Society of International Law. Singh, a former head of foreign ministrys legal and treaty division, was referring to India taking Pakistan to The Hague-based court in 1999. A Pakistani military plane had been shot down in the Indian air space over the Rann of Kutch. India told ICJ it didnt have the jurisdiction to hear the case, an argument accepted by the court. In September 1974, New Delhi spelt out the issue over which it would accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ, replacing a similar declaration made in 1959. Among the matters over which India does not accept the ICJ jurisdiction are: Disputes with the government of any state which is or has been a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. India and Pakistan are both members of the Commonwealth, a grouping of 53 countries most of which are former British colonies nation. What India wants New Delhi has asked for these provisional measures from the ICJ till the case is decided: Pakistan should take all steps necessary to ensure Jadhav is not executed. It reports to the ICJ measure taken to secure Jadhav. Pakistan should not take any action that could prejudice the rights of India or Jadhav. India also asked the ICJ president to exercise his power under Article 74, section 4 of the rules of the ICJ. According to section 4, Pending the meeting of the court, the president may call upon the parties to act in such a way as will enable any order the court may make on the request for provisional measures to have its appropriate effects. Final outcome Now, both sides will argue their case and India, represented by senior lawyer Harish Salve, wants immediate suspension of the death sentence and directions to Pakistan to annul the execution order issued in violation of international law. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Robert Vadra hit out at the media after reports that police personnel have been posted for years at his family home in a posh Delhi locality where his mother Maureen Vadra resides. A section of the media had reported that six Delhi Police personnel have been deployed at the Vadra residence in New Friends Colony for the last 13 years, starting from the UPA-I regime. Really!! We have to stoop to the levels of now demeaning and harassing, elderly people...With all respect, please stop going after my mother..., Vadra, who is Congress chief Sonia Gandhis son-in-law, said in a Facebook post. Please remove my security and anything provided for me... no matter what the assessment, I will take every risk in the book, but lets have some level of decorum....Journalism at the worst Ive seen, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday evolved a new formula - IT plus IT is equal to IT or Information technology plus Indian talent is equal to India tomorrow - for the country to adapt to new technologies and stay ahead of others. Launching an Integrated Case Management Information System (ICMIS) at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi that will enable the Supreme Court of India to go paperless, the Prime Minister said there is a generation gap in adoption of technology that could be solved with a change in mindset. ICMIS will enable digital filing of the cases called e-filing and allow litigants to easily access the information online. Modi lauded the adoption of technology in the judiciary, saying it was helpful particularly in criminal cases where the introduction of forensic sciences has helped render justice to a large number of people. Noting that a piece of A4 size paper takes 10 litres of water to prepare, Modi said courts adopting technology and going digital will help save jungle, electricity which in turn will address various environmental issues. The Prime Minister said though India is lauded the world over for its fine space technology, the country is lagging behind in application of science. He said the hurdle in adopting new technology does not lie in software or hardware, but in mindsets. He also made a reference to Indias Moon mission and how it was a success on the first try with a budget less than most Hollywood films. He added India must also cope with the new technology to avoid being left behind. Modi also referred to a recently held 36 hours non-stop hackathon event, in which about 42,000 students participated to solve about 400 problems faced by various government departments. Modi said the students, aged 18 to 22 years, were able to solve most of the problems, solutions to which have been adopted by many departments. #WATCH PM Modi speaking at inauguration of seminar on Supreme Court's journey towards becoming Digital Court https://t.co/gQ9IVafAEy ANI (@ANI_news) May 10, 2017 The Prime Minister requested the legal fraternity to register themselves with the department of justice to provide pro-bono help to poor litigants across the country without any charge. Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar said he proposes to integrate the system with all the 24 high courts and the subordinate courts in the future. It will be the biggest and highest leap forward into introducing technology in the judicial system, the CJI said adding that it will be an absolute transparent system, a system that cannot be manipulated. The system will tell litigants how much money is spent (on court fees), what will happen on the next date of hearing, he added. Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said access to justice has got a huge digital push with the launch of ICMIS. He said the government was committed to giving all necessary supports that the courts need. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A nephew of UP legislative council chairman and SP leader Ramesh Yadav on Wednesday slapped a sub-inspector in a police station in Etah after he was held for allegedly assaulting hospital staffers who refused to give in to his demand for VIP treatment. Bragging of his political links, Mohit Yadav, who was said to be in an inebriated state, was also caught on camera hurling abuses at the cops, prompting rival BJP to accuse the Samajwadi Party of suffering from hangover of power. Mohit Yadav is my name..., said the 24-year-old, before slapping sub-inspector Jitendra Kumar in Etah. He was immediately arrested and charged with assault and obstructing an official from carrying out his duty. Three separate FIRs have been registered against Mohit Yadav, Etah senior superintendent of police (SSP) Sathyarth Aniruddha said, adding that they will ensure the accused gets stringent punishment. Mohit, who is unemployed, had visited the district hospital with a relative and demanded VIP treatment for an X-ray, refusing to wait for their turn, hospital staff alleged. He allegedly assaulted a lab technician and a doctor after which the hospital called in the cops. When he was brought to the police station, he abused Kumar and hit him before being overpowered. Mohit shouted abuses and threatened other police officers. As police officers rushed to control him, he grabbed a cops collar. It seems he was under the influence of alcohol. He claimed to be the Legislative Council chairmans nephew and was asking for this and that, and misbehaved with the hospital staff. He misbehaved with the police officers too, a senior police officer said. Distancing himself from his nephews actions, Ramesh Yadav said, He will be beaten if he slaps policemen.... I have nothing to do with it. I was not there. I am in Lucknow, Yadav said, and even described Mohit as a brat. Incidents of political leaders and their family members misbehaving are not new. Days before, a ruling BJP MLA publicly snubbed a woman IPS officer in Gorakhpur, leaving her in tears. The ruling-BJP government in UP was, however, quick to target the Samajwadi Party over Wednesdays incident. They are yet to come out of their hangover. They should realise that gone are the days of Samajwadi Partys hooliganism, BJP spokesperson Shalabhmani Tripathi said. The Samajwadi Party was ousted from power in the recent assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. After a string of incidents under Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lambasted it for failure to maintain law and order and had even said that police stations have become Samajwadi Party offices. The SSP said one case has been registered against Mohit and two others based on a complaint filed by Brahmananda, the lab technician of the district hospital. Two other FIRs have been filed against him by the Kotwali police station SHO for offences of assault or use criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace and voluntarily causing hurt, he said. The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) has decided to support a student, who took part in protests against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as its head in 2015, for her film selected to be screened at the film festival in Cannes after it denied scholarships to her colleagues with similar charges of indiscipline. The FTII has issued a letter of support and agreed to bear the travel expenses of third-year film direction student Payal Kapadia, against whom an FIR was filed for holding then director Prashant Pathrabe captive, for the 70th Festival De Cannes, which will be held from May 17 to 28. Afternoon Clouds, a 13-minute film directed by Kapadia has been chosen under short film category known as Cinefondation forum open to film schools across the world. The film depicts a 60-year-old widow living with her Nepali maid. It features Usha Naik and Trimala Adhikari and revolves around a single afternoon in a house. Last year, FTII denied 8 students scholarships and opportunity to participate in a foreign exchange program. Among the 8 students, 4 were part of the same group that surrounded Pathrabe while 4 others had other disciplinary issues pending against them. FTII director Bhupendra Kainthola said its decision came after the Pune-based institute observed Kapadia being disciplined on the campus. He said it is a matter of pride for the institution as an FTII students work has been chosen for Cannes film festival for the first time. Our decision to support students or deny them scholarship previously was based on how their conduct has been on the campus, Kainthola said. FTII students protest against appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as chairman. (HT File Photo) Few days after the protest got over, many students came to me and said they never realised that their past actions will haunt them through their life. Some of them even cried and regretted their actions, he added. Kapadia was part of the group that held Pathrabe captive in his office as students challenged his decision to go ahead with the assessment of incomplete projects of students from 2008 batch. All the 35 students were later charge sheeted by Pune Police. After her film was selected for the festival, Kapadia while reluctant to speak about the protests had said the FTII administration was very helpful. FTII students held protests for 139 days from June to October 2015, in one of its longest strike in the premier film institutes history, and abandoned classes to oppose the appointment of Chauhan, a television actor turned politician. Students even went on an indefinite strike on June 12 as they questioned his professional credibility to lead the institute due to lack of stature and vision. Chauhans tenure got over on March 3 and the government did not extend it. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Union of Informed Citizens: Lavrov's statement contradicts interstate treaties On May 5th interview with the Russian TV channel Mir 24 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that the military units of CSTO member states stand ready to act against the Islamic State. "The military bases in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia are in state of permanent readiness. As long as that evil has not been eradicated, our priorities will be maintained," he said. Lavrov's statement leads to two basic question. Doesnt attracting the attention of the most dangerous terrorist organization to the territory of the Russian military base in Armenia endanger Armenias security? And second, does Lavrov have the right to make such statements? In accordance with Article 3 of the Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Armenia on the Russian military base in the territory of the Republic of Armenia, "the use of military formations of the Russian military base is carried out by bilateral agreement of the Parties, the Collective Security Treaty of 1992, May 15, the Treaty of Friendship,Cooperationand Mutual Assistance of 1991 December 29 and in accordance with the Legislations of the Parties." Article 24 of the same Agreement stipulates that "the Russian side will not use the Russian military base for the purposes not defined by this Agreement." The fight against the Islamic State far from the borders of Armenia is not enshrined in any of the above mentioned agreements signed between Armenia and Russia. That is, if you believe the words of Sergey Lavrov, it can be stated that Russia, violating the interstate agreement on the 102nd military base, has decided to prepare his base for the fight against the Islamic State. Moreover, such statements once again demonstrate Armenia as a non-sovereign country in the eyes of the international community, with the military base on its territory being used by Russian side as it sees fit, violating the provisions of the intergovernmental agreement. Anna Pambukhchyan Union of Informed Citizens SASARAM:Two teenaged boys were seriously injured after being hit by bullets during celebratory firing at a post-wedding reception in Bihars Rohtas district. The incident occurred late Tuesday night when some youths, allegedly in inebriated condition, fired during a dance programme organised to celebrate the wedding at Dhanpurawa village in Sasaram Mufassil police station area of the district, 137 km south west of Patna. The injured boys, Satyam Raj, 16, and Golu Kumar, 17, were first taken to the government hospital at Sasaram, which referred them to Varanasi, about 136 km away, in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. ALSO READ: Bihar: 1 killed, 2 injured in celebratory firing at wedding Police have registered an FIR against Butan Sonkar, who had organised the dance programme to celebrate his sons wedding, and three others. Raids were on to arrest them, Sasaram Mufassil police station SHO Jag Niwas Singh said. The injured Golu Kumar. (HT photo) This is the fourth such incident in the district and third in Mufassil police station area since January this year. On April 5 night, a 19-year-old dancer from Chhattisgarh, Chandani Kumari, was killed when some villagers opened fire during Chaiti, a programme based on semi-classical music and performed in the Hindu calendar month of Chaitra, at Ghorwaksh village in Dinara police station area. The assailants were reportedly under the influence of liquor. ALSO READ: Woman dancer among 2 shot at by inebriated revellers in dry Bihar A youth had been critically injured in firing allegedly by some drunk persons, at Amaratalab in Sasaram Mufassil area in the last week of April. On January 30, another dancer Naina Kumari,20, was shot dead in celebratory firing by inebriated persons during tilak, a pre-marriage ritual, at Ugar Bigaha village in Sasaram Mufassil police station area. ALSO READ: Dancer shot dead at Bihar doctors pre-marriage ceremony Rohtas superintendent of police Manavjeet Singh Dhillon did not respond to HTs calls. He, however, texted, saying Law takes its own course when such incidents are reported. Bihar became a dry state on April 5, 2016. Under the states prohibition law, consuming, keeping or dealing in liquor is an offence, which attracts imprisonment up to 10 years. There was a time when Hanif S Parkar, a fisherman from Dhabol Khadi village in the coastal district of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, could net 25 different kinds of fish from Vashisthi, the local river. For the past 25 years, factories in the neighbouring industrial belt of Lote Parshuram have been dumping untreated effluents in the river, destroying all living forms in it. The fish are dying and the river no longer offers a livelihood option for Parkar and others like him in the village. I now work as a daily wage worker and my wife as a tailor. I had a comfortable life when I was fishing. Today, I am struggling to make ends meet, said Parkar. For the last 15 years, Parkar has been campaigning against river pollution in the area, engaging with the officials of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) as well as the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) which maintains the belt. Toxic waste has been choking the states rivers, and fishing communities complain that their daily catch is only 10% of what it used to be. Maharashtra, the state with Indias biggest economy, also has the highest number of polluted river stretches in the country. And, at 161, it also has the most number of cities and towns along polluted stretches, according to a 2015 report of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Of the 156 locations where the CPCB has set up its monitoring units on the 49 rivers and tributaries in the state, 153 do not meet the water quality criteria, according to the CPCB. The MPCB has issued more than 5,300 show-cause notices to erring factories between 2011 and 2017. The MPCB has limited powers to discipline errant units, and hence the state has been unable to contain river pollution along its industrial zones. The board can issue notices or levy a small fine. But these measures are not strong enough to deter factories from emptying their waste into rivers. As IndiaSpend investigations detailed in later sections show, MPCB ends up issuing multiple and repeated notices to polluting factories and these are often ignored by the defaulters. Queries sent by IndiaSpend to the member secretary of the MPCB did not evoke a response, despite repeated reminders. The story will be updated if and when we receive a response. Pune-Chinchwad region has the most offenders The state has more than 75,000 manufacturing units that include automobile, tyre, textiles, chemicals and steel industries. Many of them are in the Pune-Chinchwad region. Pune attracted 45% of the notices (2,392 of 5,276) issued to polluting factories between 2011 and 2016. This is thrice the number served to the region that attracted the second-mostKolhapur (673). Pune also has the most polluted rivers in the state, according to a joint survey on water quality conducted in 2014 by the MPCB and The Energy and Resources Institute. DP Desai, 55, a resident of Kolhapurs Navraswadi, said the sugar industry in the area is a known offender. Sugar industries brazenly dump chemicals into the Vedganga tributary. We receive dark murky water for drinking and even the crops are adversely affected, he said. In 2007, the state government had drawn up a plan to develop infrastructure in the state to facilitate industrial growth. The plan included Pune, Nashik, Nagpur, Kolhapur, and Aurangabad. These regions, along with Navi Mumbai, are among the top six in the list of regions served the most notices by the MPCB. Factories in the Mumbai Metropolitan Regioncomprising areas such as Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Raigad and Kalyanreceived about 20% of the notices. Most defaulters are heavy polluters The MPCB classifies factories on the basis of a pollution index, calculated by factoring in how much their operations pollute air and water, and generate hazardous waste. They are then classified into red, orange and green categories, red being heavily polluting. Of the 5,276 notices issued by the MPCB between 2011 and 2016, 65% (3,445) went to factories in the red category. Orange and green categories attracted 1,599 and 232 notices respectively. A look at the list of erring companies showed that large-scale units were served with 47% of the red-category notices. The rest were served to medium and small-scale industries. In Kolhapur, which has the second-highest number of defaulting factories, 64% of red-category notices were issued to medium and small-scale units. In Navi Mumbaithird in the list of regions that got the most number of noticesof the 282 factories categorised as red, 80% are medium and small-scale. DB Boralkar, former member secretary of the MPCB, explained why a large number of medium and small units made it to the list of defaulters: Large-scale units have their own effluent treatment plants (ETPs) but smaller ones depend on a common ETP. If one such common ETP went defunct, all the companies depending on it are served notices, he explained. Copies of the MPCBs directives to erring companies reveal that many factories have been discharging untreated effluents into rivers such as Warna, Sonpatra and Panchganga in Kolhapur, Ghot in Navi Mumbai, Savitri in Raigad, Godavari in Nashik and Krishna in Sangli and Satara. Effluents reduce the oxygen content of water bodies because it is used up by the chemicals to decompose. This fall in oxygen levels kills the fish and other living forms in the river. One malfunctioning effluent plant can raise pollution levels down an entire belt The lax monitoring of and prosecution for water pollution in the state means that Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) routinely flout environmental guidelines on discharging untreated effluents into rivers. Managements of factories are responsible for water contamination because they allow below-par functioning of ETPs, according to a 2014 MPCB study on groundwater contamination in Pimpri Chinchwad industrial cluster in Pune. As Boralkar pointed out, medium and small-scale industries depend on common plants for the mandatory treatment of their chemical waste. But the malfunctioning of even one can raise the levels of pollution caused by all the units dependent on the CETP. Currently, Maharashtra has 24 CETPs; five more are set to come up. Of five CETPs in the Dombivli-Ambernath belt, four were not working, according to a March 2016 affidavit submitted by the CPCB to the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Three years before that, in 2013, the level of pollutants in treated effluent was found to be dangerously high at three CETPs in Pune. Of the 24 plants, 11 are not following the environmental norms, the MPCBs own latest report on the status of CETPs, available on its website, shows. Data for one plant were not available. Thousands of notices to defaulters but barely any impact Experts allege that the MPCB doesnt implement rules and regulations in letter and spirit. Time and again, social activists and NGOs have blamed the board for laxity in the enforcement of environmental norms. IndiaSpend analysed 150-odd notices served by the MPCB to erring units and found that in many cases, multiple directives had to be issued to the same company because it simply did not respond to an earlier alert. But merely serving notices means little, said experts. Industries know they can continue doing what they want to, said Geetanjoy Sahu, an assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, who is researching on compliance and enforcement of environmental laws in India. While the MPCB has issued directives to erring units, it hadnt taken any legal action against them, he pointed out. Polluting companies only needed to give an assurance to the MPCB that they would comply with the norms and pay a small fine, IndiaSpends investigations found. But law requires that any company found polluting its surroundings ought to be penalised and directed to restore the environment within a stipulated time. Notices are mostly ignored by defaulters The Bombay High Court too had taken note of such violations in an order passed after hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) in December 2011. The high court had observed that whenever the MPCBs regional officer sought to act against the polluting units in MIDC, Mahad, the chairperson of the board would modify the closure notice. The chairperson would then impose certain conditions on the company and levy a fine to let it continue its operations, the court observed. The companies in question would then continue to flout pollution control norms. That is not a satisfactory manner of dealing with the problem. The damage is being caused to the rivers by the polluting industries, the high court noted while issuing a show-cause notice to the MPCB chairperson. Nizamuddin Jalal, a resident of Raigad, has filed two PILs in the Bombay High Court over pollution caused by the MIDC factories in his region. He said the sustainability aspect of development was lost on the government. For Maharashtra, the year 2015 began with the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government scrapping the 15-year-old Rivers Regulation Zone policy. This was seen as a step towards the governments bid to promote manufacturing under its Make in Maharashtra campaign. The move enabled all industries to set up their factories near rivers, sparking fears of aggravating water pollution. Besides widespread protests and PILs, even the NGT asked the state why the decision shouldnt be considered invalid from the outset. Industrial units in Maharashtra = 75,000, employees at pollution board = 565 The pollution control board has a sanctioned strength of 840 employees. Of these, 275 were vacant, as on January 01, 2017. On average, 150 posts were vacant each year during the last five years, an analysis of annual reports shows. Of the 840-strong workforce, only about 350 belong to technical and scientific teams. Boralkar said the technical teams are particularly overworked and understaffed, given the scope and volume of their work. The commensurate capacity-building and the technical leadership is not sufficient to handle the volume of the problem, he said. The MPCB is required by law to grant or refuse consent to the operation of new factories within 120 days of a request for permission. If the board doesnt give its verdict in this period, consents are deemed granted. As of January 2013, more than 17,500 consents had been pending for more than 120 days, according to the boards own records. This is an alarming situation. These 17,500 factories can start operations without having the mandatory environment protection guidelines from the board, said Sahu, the assistant professor with TISS. Sugar factory effluents are destroying sugarcane fields A district environment committee, appointed by the Bombay High Court, criticised the MPCB in November 2016 for failing to check water pollution by sugar mills and medium and small-scale industries. Some units that had been closed for violating norms had been given permission to resume operations and that untreated effluent was being discharged into the river, the committees report noted. Mahadev Sawant, 43, who grows sugarcane on four acres of land in Sanglis Tasgaon city, complained that his crops were irrigated by polluted water. Sugarcane factories, sand mining and human waste from the towns have contributed to the degradation of Krishna river. The salty water has destroyed crops in the area, he said. In April 2016, the NGT had directed the union environment ministry to intervene, noting that the MPCB had failed to check the discharge of untreated effluent into Ulhas river in Mumbai metropolitan region. In view of the MPBCs inability to do its job, the CPCB had requested permission to monitor Maharashtras CETPs. In May 2016, seven of 24 CETPs were not in conformity, the MPCBs own record shows. Companies shirk waste treatment cost The treatment of liquid waste is a costly affair for any factory, more so for a chemical unit, a former senior official of the pollution control board, on condition of anonymity, told IndiaSpend. A bribe could help keep costs low, said the official. As many as 1,726 industrial units in Maharashtra that are prone to polluting water have only partial facilities to treat their effluents, according to the Comptroller and Auditor Generals 2011 report on the MPCB. The report said 356 units have no treatment facility at all. The ministry of environment & forests has given a standing instruction to various state pollution control boards to examine the need for setting up CETPs in their industrial zones. The MPCB does not have a mechanism to refuse the factories the consent to operate, the CAGs 2011 report highlighted. The most that may happen is that companies shut down for three days and then resume work. Or they pull down shutters but continue work inside, said Jalal, the Raigad resident. He doesnt think much of the MPCB issuing 5,000-odd notices to erring industrial units in five years. Five thousand or five lakh, the problem is that there is no accountability, he said. (Paul & Sood are Bengaluru-based independent reporters associated with 101reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroot journalists.) Indiaspend.org is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit. Police forces across cities scrambled on Wednesday to find and arrest Calcutta high court judge CS Karnan, a day after he was sentenced to six months in prison by the Supreme Court for contempt. A five-member team of Kolkata Police reached Chennai in the morning to arrest the 61-year-old judge, who travelled to the Tamil Nadu capital on Monday night. But sources told HT that Karnan left for the Andhra Pradesh temple town of Srikalahasti, about 120 kilometres from Chennai, on Wednesday morning. The judge is expected to be at the shrine at 4 pm, sources added. The judge stayed the night at a guest house near central Chennais Chepauk and sources added that he hadnt vacated the guest house. Kolkata Police were learnt to have reached out to Chennai counterparts. This is the first time a serving judge would be arrested. The police action appears to be the final stage of a months-long, and sometimes farcical, standoff with the top court that saw the two sides issuing a string of orders against each other. Karnans arrest orders had come a day after he sentenced Chief Justice of India J S Khehar and six other judges of the Supreme Court to five years in jail under the SC/ST act. Karnan retires next month. The Supreme Court has ordered the media to refrain from reporting any of Karnans statements. BJP leader Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, who drew criticism for publicly humiliating an IPS officer Charu Nigam, will stage a sit-in protest on Wednesday in Uttar Pradeshs Gorakhpur to demand the closure of all unlicensed liquor shops in the city - an act the policewoman said was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Agarwal, an MLA from Gorakhpur Sadar, asked the Indian Police Service officer not to cross limits after police attempted to remove anti-liquor protesters in his constituency, also the base of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, on Sunday. The MLAs alleged abrasive behaviour had left the police officer teary eyed, although she later said it should not be seen as a sign of weakness. Read | My training hasnt taught me to be weak: Woman cop berated by BJP MLA on FB Woman IPS calls dharna a publicity stunt Woman IPS office Charu Nigam who took to social media to counter Radha Mohan Das Aggarwal on Wednesday told HT that dharna staged by MLA was a publicity stunt. I think he is resorting to such tactics to gain publicity, said Charu . When asked to respond on MLAs allegation that posting on social media to put forth her stand was violation of government service rules she said, Service guidelines dont curtail my freedom of expression. I think he is resorting to such tactics to gain publicity. I have nothing more to comment on it, Nigam, who took to social media to counter Agarwals allegations of police brutality, told the Hindustan Times on Wednesday. Agarwal said people, who have an objection to the sale of liquor in their locality, have been asked to come to the protest site and hand over the memorandums signed by people of their areas to him. He will protest beneath the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Town Hall in the city from 10am to 4pm. Every second day people launch a movement against liquor in their locality. As a public representative, I am forced to join their movement and raise their voice. Since attending every movement is not possible every day, I have decided to receive liquor complain collectively from people, the MLA said. These complaints will be handed over to the DM with an instruction to carry out a probe of all such liquor shops under UP liquor act. The next course of action will be decided on the basis of support we receive from people, he added, saying Mahatma Gandhi was against liquor and thats why he chose his statue to hold the dharna. Agarwal, popularly called RMD, accused the police of providing patronage to liquor mafioso across the city during a press conference on Monday. Earlier, he had accused the police of kicking a pregnant woman in her abdomen, assaulting an elderly woman and pushing a minor into a pit, a charge denied by Nigam. The 5-month pregnant woman Seema, 8-year-old Prince and 70-year-old Phoola Devi were present during the press conference and backed the four-term MLAs allegations of police brutality against anti-liquor protesters. Read | Logic is failing: Meet Charu Nigam, the UP cop who was berated by BJP lawmaker Agarwal also requested the media not to hype his protest as a conflict between him and the government when asked about the reason behind his action when his own party was in power. He added that as a public representative it was his duty to raise the voice of people. Nigam on Tuesday posted a fresh message on her Facebook wall, questioning the allegations levelled against her by Agarwal. Nigam, the circle officer at the Gorakhnath police station, claimed that no incident of such brutality would have gone unnoticed by the media. Agarwal termed Nigams act of expressing outrage through the social media as a serious violation of service guidelines laid down by the government. Service guidelines dont curtail my freedom of expression, Nigam said when asked to respond the MLAs allegations. Kings XI Punjab have kept their play-off chances alive by defeating Kolkata Knight Riders in a crucial IPL 2017 match in Mohali. This has ensured that the status-quo when it comes to the teams qualifying for the play-off remains. Following Sunrisers Hyderabads win over Mumbai Indians in Uppal, Delhi Daredevils are now mathematically out of the race for the play-offs. This leaves five teams to contest the remaining three spots in the points-table, with Mumbai Indians already securing the play-off spot. Here is what each team needs to do in order to qualify for the play-offs. 1) Mumbai Indians P - 12, W - 9, L - 3, Points: 18 Games remaining: vs Kings XI Punjab (May 11), vs Kolkata Knight Riders (May 13) What they must do: Mumbai Indians are assured of a place in the play-offs. However, in order to finish in the top two, they must win one out of their remaining games. If they lose both, they will at worse slip to third spot. 2) Kolkata Knight Riders P - 13, W - 8, L - 5, Points: 16 Games remaining: vs Mumbai Indians (May 13) What they must do: Kolkata Knight Riders failed to seal a spot in the play-offs after their loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad. A win in their last game against Mumbai Indians will seal their spot in the play-offs. However, if they lose their last league game, they must hope that Kings XI Punjab lose one of their remaining games. They must also hope that Rising Pune Supergiant also dont win their remaining games. 3) Rising Pune Supergiant P - 12, W - 8, L -4, Points: 16 Games remaining: vs Delhi Daredevils (May 12), vs Kings XI Punjab (May 14) What they must do: Rising Pune Supergiant must win one of their games to seal qualification. If they lose both games, they must hope that Kings XI Punjab lose to Mumbai Indians and that Sunrisers Hyderabad lose their last game against Gujarat Lions in order to seal qualification. Sunrisers Hyderabad face a must-win situation against Gujarat Lions as they look to seal their place in the play-offs. (AFP) 4) Sunrisers Hyderabad P - 13, W - 7, L - 5, N/R - 1, Points: 15 Games remaining: vs Gujarat Lions (May 13) What they must do: This is a vital game for the defending champions. If they win, they are through. A loss puts their play-off hopes in jeopardy. In the event of a loss, they must hope Kings XI Punjab lose one out of their remaining two games. 5) Kings XI Punjab P - 12, W - 6, L - 6, Points: 12 Games remaining: vs Mumbai Indians (May 11), vs Rising Pune Supergiant (May 13) What they must do: Kings XI Punjab have kept their play-off hopes alive with victory over Kolkata Knight Riders. If they win against Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiant, Sunrisers Hyderabad lose their games against Delhi Daredevils and Gujarat Lions respectively, then Kings XI Punjabs last league game against Rising Pune Supergiant becomes a shoot-out for the fourth spot. Mumbai Indians had settled into a nice pattern as the 2017 Indian Premier League progressed. Skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss on six occasions, opted to bowl each time, and won five of those matches. On Monday, against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Rohit won the toss for the seventh time but opted to go against the pattern and chose to bat. And the outcome was disastrous as Mumbai Indians suffered their most humiliating defeat of this IPL edition. On Thursday, they will be up against Kings XI Punjab, who need to win their remaining matches and hope other teams drop points to help them qualify for the playoffs. KXIP finished the proceedings in Mohali with a thrilling win over Kolkata Knight Riders on Tuesday. After Mumbai, Kings XI Punjab travel to Pune for their last group match against Rising Pune Supergiant. Shikhar Dhawans fifty helped Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Mumbai Indians but Rohit Sharmas team have qualified for the play-offs. (BCCI) Regaining momentum The loss against Hyderabad didnt harm Mumbai Indians position at the top of the points table, but they will have to stick to their tried and tested strategies in the remaining two group matches to regain the momentum going into the playoffs. With matches coming thick and fast, it is easy to lose your way and the Mumbai think-tank will be aware of that. After their last home game against Kings XI Punjab, Mumbai Indians travel to Kolkata, and it could be a potential shootout for the top spot in the table with Knight Riders Rohits team slip up on Thursday. Target top two While MI have already qualified for the playoffs, finishing in the top two will be vital as it will not only give them two chances to qualify for the final but also the home advantage in Qualifier 1. They have won five of their six matches at the Wankhede Stadium this season. Mumbais bowlers have done well but their batting unit has blown hot and cold. While they have scored 200-plus in a couple of matches, they failed to chase 160 at home against Rising Pune Supergiant, and almost blew their chase of 153 against Gujarat Lions in Rajkot before winning in the Super Over. Kieron Pollard slammed a magnificent, unbeaten 63 against Delhi Daredevils. (BCCI) The form of Nitish Rana, who had a lightning start, may also be a concern. In the last four innings, the left-handed bats highest score has been 27, which is nothing near impressive for a No 3 batsman. Mumbai Indians tinkered a bit with their batting line-up in the last two games, but the results were mixed. Against Delhi Daredevils, Kieron Pollard was promoted to No 3 and did well while Rana didnt get a look in. Batting reshuffle In the last match against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Rana batted at No 3 and Pollard at No 6, but both failed. Hardik Pandya, who has done well as a finisher, was sent ahead of Pollard but struggled while trying to steer Mumbai to safety with Rohit. Mumbai rested the injured Krunal Pandya for the last couple of matches and will hope he is available for the last two group games. Mumbai dont look thin in batting like they do when his replacement Karn Sharma plays. The Baroda all-rounder has done well at No 5, adjusting his game according to need -- playing the role of an anchor as well as bringing out those big hits when required. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) has recently issued a new form for those seeking to renew their licence for their meat shop or apply for a new licence. According to the new form, the person has to give an undertaking that he or she will not slaughter any animal or bird (including chicken) at the shop. The rule leaves no place for meat sellers to slaughter chicken as the only slaughterhouse in Jaipur does not have the facility. The slaughterhouse only has facility for slaughtering goats, sheep and buffaloes, said Kamlesh Meena, senior veterinary officer, JMC. He clarified that the portion about prohibiting slaughter of birds at the shop was added by mistake and the corporation is in the process of diluting it. Another condition may be done away with is one which requires the applicant not to have a criminal record and have no criminal case pending against him in any court. Meat sellers of Jaipur are already suffering after JMCs crackdown on illegal meat shops, which came close on the heels of Yogi Adityanath governments crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses in Uttar Pradesh. Since April, the Jaipur civic body is strictly enforcing its rules, which include prohibition of slaughter of any animal at the shop. As a result, meat sellers have to take the animals to the citys only slaughterhouse in Chainpura, which is about 25-30 kms from Jaipur city and which, by JMCs own admission, faces water shortage. The enforcement has also come with another set of problems. It opens only between 4 am and 8 am and the roads to the place are broken. In addition, the policemen pull us up on the way at night and extort money, says Abdul Rauf Qureshi, president of the New Jaipur Meat Merchants Association. Qureshi added that the city has some 2,000 meat sellers and the slaughterhouse is not sufficient for them. The JMC veterinary officer said that at present some 1,200 animals are being slaughtered at the place every day. Before the JMC started enforcing its rules, around 20 animals were being brought to the facility every day. JMC cannot increase the operational timings of the slaughterhouse because of the objections raised by the people living near it. Meanwhile, the licence fee for meat shops has also gone up from 10 to 1,000. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Newborns at 11 government hospitals in Rajasthan, which have Aanchal Mothers Milk Bank, will be breastfed or given human milk free. The health department issued an order on Wednesday to ban formula, dairy (packed and open), cow, goat and other milk for newborns at the hospitals. The newborns have to be breastfed; if a mother is unable to feed the newborn, or the baby is premature and unable to suck, then human milk will be provided free to the child, the order said. For the first time in India, all kinds of milk have been banned in 11 government hospitals other than human milk, which is a big achievement in Rajasthan, said Devendra Agarwal, adviser to the state health department for the mother milk bank project. Rajasthan is the first state to invest 10 crore in human milk banking with an operation cost of 5 crore per annum. Mothers milk reduces neonatal mortality by 22% and recovery of newborns admitted to intensive care units increases by 40%, Agarwal told Hindustan Times. The state has 13 human milk banks at Rabindranath Tagore Medical College in Udaipur, 10 district hospitals in Bharatpur, Alwar, Chittorgarh, Beawar, Banswara, Bhilwara, Bundi, Tonk, Baran and Churu, at Sawai Man Singh Medical College in Jaipur run by the Norway government, and one in private Mahatma Gandhi Medical College in Jaipur. Agarwal said, Newborns (up to 28 days), admitted in hospitals and not getting mothers milk, will be provided milk from Aanchal Mothers Milk Bank. Milk will be provided to family members on requisition from the nursing staff. Aanchal Mothers Milk Bank started operating in 11 government facilities, except SMS Medical College and Mahatma Gandhi Medical College in Jaipur, between February 2016 and April this year, Agarwal said. In all, 3576 lactating mothers donated 6,32,753ml milk at the 11 hospitals till April 30; as many as 1669 newborns were provided 10628 units (one unit is 30ml) of mother milk and 8715 units are stocked now. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Restrict yourself to sticks or water cannons. At the most you can fire tear gas shells, but dont open fire no matter how grave the provocation -- West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has set out clear instructions to the police as they gear up to control the Left mega agitation to march to the state secretariat on May 22. Pushed to near irrelevance by continuously dipping vote share, the peasant wings of CPI(M) and other left parties have announced the biggest agitation programme in recent times against the Mamata Banerjee government. Read: Is a Modi-Mamata secret truce helping the Left chart a comeback in Bengal? Incidentally, Trinamool Congress has always highlighted how the police under Jyoti Basus rule, opened fire on a similar movement on Congress workers killing 13 persons on July 21, 1993, a date Mamata Banerjees party observes as a Martyrs Day every year as their annual flagship event. After she came in power, she constituted an inquiry commission into the police firing on that day. Mamata Banerjee has always highlighted police firing on the youth Congress agitation on July 21, 1993 as one of the worst cases of police atrocities during the 34-year Left rule in Bengal. (HT Photo) The chief minister is extremely sensitive that there should not be any such allegation against her administration. Therefore, strict instructions have gone out to the police to keep their fingers away from the trigger no matter whatever be the situation, said a senior member of the state cabinet who wanted to remain anonymous. The agitation on July 21, 1993 was led by Mamata Banerjee who was then the youth Congress leader. Though the proposed Nabanna ghearo on May 22 is basically a CPI(M) affair, the agitation has been given the label of protest of farmers. So any tragedy on that day will give CPI(M) to allege that the Mamata Banerjee government even opens fire on farmers. She really cannot take any chance, the member of the state cabinet said. Read: Election results: Why BJPs sweep in UP could be ominous for Mamata Banerjee According to the Trinamool secretary general and state education minister, Partha Chatterjee, the state government will not fall into any trap of CPI(M). No other state government had done so much for the farmers as the West Bengal government, he said. According to her cabinet colleagues, firing tear gas shells is what the chief minister can allow at the most. Wielding lathis and deploying water cannons are acceptable. (HT Photo) According to the West Bengal unit secretary of CPI(M)s peasant wing, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), a turnout of around 3.5 lakhs of farmers is expected at the protest march to Nabanna (in Howrah) on May 22. Meanwhile, sources from the police directorate said that they have already started working out the blueprint on ways to stop the procession much before the state secretariat. Enough police will be deployed at all the points that lead to state secretariat both on Kolkata and Howrah side. Most senior officials will be on the streets on that day, a senior official of the directorate said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Bengali TV actor Bikram Chatterjee, who was driving the car that met with an accident and killed model Sonika Chauhan, admitted that he had consumed alcohol, but was not drunk enough to lose control, during questioning by the police. His confession was in sharp contrast to his claim at a press conference on May 6 that he had not consumed alcohol. He had also told the police that he was not over-speeding, and was driving at about 60 kph. Police officers, however, wondered how a car could cause so much impact at a moderate speed, and how Chatterjee could lose control if he was not drunk as he claimed, and summoned him for questioning again on Wednesday afternoon. The accident had happened around 3:30 am on April 29 when Bikram (29) and Sonika were returning from a late night party. The car veered out of control, and hit a pavement. Sonika (27) was rushed to a hospital about six km away where she was declared dead. Bikram was summoned to Tollygunge police station late on Tuesday night and questioned past midnight. The Bengali TV serial and film industry are split over the incident, with a number of people questioning the apparently callous attitude of the police towards the investigation. The actors blood samples were taken nine days after the incident and many questioned whether it would reveal anything at all. Police sources said they are waiting for the blood sample report. The police have so far taken the statements of 18 people. Cops are now trying to find out who all attended the party where the duo went. As the news spread on the morning of April 30, minister Aroop Biswas rushed to the hospital, raising questions as to whether that restrained the police from carrying out investigation normally. Some have also questioned as to why Chatterjee and Chauhan were taken to a private hospital six km away from the accident site on Rashbehari Avenue when there were other hospitals closer. Sonikas family have lodged a police complaint against Bikram, whose father earlier alleged the airbags of the Toyota sedan did not open on impact. EaP CSF Armenian National Platform concerned over misuse of EU grants Armenian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum expresses its deep concern over the criminal cases- already completed or still in the phase of investigation- related to the facts of corruption and fraud within the EU-funded projects. We welcome the steps taken by the EU Delegation to Armenia, aimed at detecting crimes and violations of law. International organizations, and in particular the European Union as Armenias largest assistance donor, provide extremely valuable support in the implementation of various reforms in the country. Civil society organizations also contribute to the effective and consistent execution of these reforms. Unfortunately, the cases of dishonest and irresponsible treatment to allocated funds cast a shadow on the tremendous work carried out both by the European Union and the CSOs. And certain circles, not interested in the progress in deeper relations between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union, use these cases for defaming the Armenian civil society, the European Union and EU-Armenia cooperation. As an association of non-governmental organizations, that values the cooperation of Armenia and EU as unconditional priority, EaP CSF Armenian National Platform strongly supports full investigation of specific cases of violations of law, fair and impartial trial and the application of appropriate legal measures against the perpetrators. At the same time, we believe that the European Union should be more consistent in its approaches towards the issues related to the effective spending of financial aid provided both to the state and non-governmental institutions, as well as the activities and the set of values of potential beneficiaries. In particular, we are convinced that there is an urgent need for implementation of monitoring by independent and competent NGOs on all the funded projects. Great attention should be paid to the transparency in the organization of grant competitions and in the events organized by the grantees. In our opinion, when determining the winners of such competitions, it is necessary to pay particular attention to the biography of applicants and the commitment towards their mission in the previous activities. Not taking into consideration all this reduces the efficiency of implemented programmes, slows down the efforts of civil society as an engine of reforms and, as shown by the ongoing investigation, may increase the risks of corruption. In its turn, EaP CSF Armenian National Platform pledges to self-critically evaluate its role in shaping a healthy atmosphere within the Armenian civil society. We are ready to exert maximum efforts to prevent manifestations of such unscrupulous and irresponsible attitude by the member organizations of the Platform. We are open for cooperation in all these areas and determined to contribute to further analysis and elimination of the problems resulting in the misuse of the funds allocated by the European Union. May 10, 2017, the 160th anniversary of the revolt of 1857, is a historic day for Bareillys Free Will Baptist Church. Standing opposite the Bareilly club, the structure houses rich history associated with the countrys freedom struggle. On May 10, 1857, it became the first church to be attacked by the revolutionaries. But thats not all. What adds to the historic importance of the structure, considered one of the oldest churches of Uttar Pradesh, is the decision that the British Government took in the aftermath of the attack. The government allowed British officers to carry their rifles inside churches - a practice that was forbidden earlier. Priests and others associated with the church are observing May as a month of historic significance. Reverend Dr Emmanuel M Lal, 88, the moderator of the Free Will Baptist Church, said, This church is no less than a time machine for us. Plaques bearing its history, graves in its backyard, traces of being set afire...all of it reminds us of the outbreak that it was once subjected to. It was in May when the confrontation reached its peak in Bareilly. On May 31, 1857 (Sunday), the scene turned ugly when the rebels attacked the British officers who were offering prayers here. The Sunday mass was on when the rebels barged in. Some hurled crude bombs, some opened fire with countrymade weapons, while the others butchered them and set fire to the church, said Lal, going through archives. George Davy Raikes, the founder of the church, died in the same incident, he added. A plaque that reads In the memory of George Davy Raikes, who was killed at Bareilly by rebels on the day of outbreak on May 31st 1857, Aged 39 stands as a solemn testimony to that day. Raikess wife Margaret Julia got him buried on the churchs premises. A few historians who hail from Bareilly say that the church was initially known as the Christ Church. It was erected in 1838 by a group of Englishmen who had come here for trading purposes. Professor Abhay Kumar Singh, head of department of ancient history and culture, MJP Rohilkhand University, said, Records suggest that the cost incurred in constructing the church was Rs 7,692. Of the total amount, the British government gave a grant of Rs 1,000. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Kolkata was appointed as the first priest. The church continued its services for another 19 years after which it was completely destroyed by the revolutionaries, he said. The attack shook the British government as it was first instance of a church being targeted. They not only decided to allow British officers to carry their rifles inside but also modified the benches in churches across the state. The traditional furniture was replaced with special benches that were fitted with rifle holders, said Singh who has extensively studied the history of Bareilly. That kind of furniture still exists in many British-era churches. After the mutiny, the church, which was with the Church of England, was restored in 1858. It was then passed on to Church of North India and a few decades later was handed over the Free Will Baptist Church of India, Singh added. At present, the church has a congregation of around 400 people. To the locals, it also stands as a reminder to the countrys first war of independence. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A special team of STF sleuths and the administrative officials found yet another petrol pump duping its customers in the state capital on Tuesday. The petrol pump, Sahni Fuel Centre, located in Gomti Nagar, was found to be using remote-operated chips. Officials with the district administration said, the fuel dispensers have been sealed and FIR is being lodged against the petrol pump owner for fraud. Officials raided the Sahni Fuel Centre during the noon hours. During inspection, the officials who were accompanied by technicians and officials of the weight and measurement department found that of the total 16 nozzles, 12 were found tampered. Barring four, all of its nozzles were found tampered. It was also found that the pump was weighing 150ml less fuel for every 5 litres of petrol and that is too much, said an administrative officer. Besides, the district administration is also going to launch a drive against adulteration. District magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma, on the day made a detailed discussion with the officials, to launch a drive in a big way. The drive will fight against adulteration in petrol or kerosene. Officials said, the drive is expected to take off by mid May that will cover the petrol pumps, both in the urban and rural part of the district. So far the team has conducted raids at more than 28 petrol pumps and at least four gas agencies. Officials said, the drive would be continued for another couple of weeks until all the petrol pumps in the city are checked. City altogether has around 182 petrol pumps. Read more| Cheat chips: Oil companiesshow a poor strike rate At a time when chief minister Yogi Adityanath has assured law and order in the state, two MPs and five newly-elected MLAs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are taking part in a Dalit mahapanchayat convened to finalise strategy against police atrocities on Dalits. The panchayat is scheduled to be held on Wednesday to protest against the attempt by the police to save four accused belong to upper caste in the murder case of a 12-year-old Dalit boy in Girdharpur village of Manda block of Allahabad last month. The mahapanchayat, organised under the banner of All-India Confederation of SC/ST Employees Association, will be attended by BJP MP from Delhi North Udit Raj, who is also national chairman of the confederation. BJP MP from Kaushambi Vinod Sonker will lead the proceedings. The BJP MLAs who will voice their protest against police atrocities on Dalits include MLAs Rajmani Kol from Koraon, Ajay Bharti from Bara, Rahul Kol from Chanbe in Mirzapur, Jamuna Prasad Saroj from Soraon and Lal Bahadur from Manjhanpur in Kaushambi. Convenor of Dalit Mahapanchayat and advocate, Allahabad high court, Pradeep Kumar Verma alleged that members of Brahmin community murdered a Dalit boy Sonu Sonker on April 27 last, scooped out one of his eyes and tied a stone around his waist. The boys father Nebulal Sonker, a labourer, is an eyewitness in another murder case which took place eight months ago. The accused were trying to pressurise Nebulal not to testify in the case but when he refused, they killed his son and hid the body in a room filled with husk, said Verma. Verma said after the body was recovered, Nebulal lodged a complaint against the accused. The police lodged a complaint of missing which was later converted into a case of suicide to save the accused. When BJP MP Vinod Sonker intervened, the police converted it into a murder case but the accused are still roaming freely and threatening Dalit villagers, he said. To suppress growing discontent, the police lodged an FIR against 44 identified and 70 unidentified Dalits. The police also seized around a dozen vehicles of Dalit families and allegedly looted money and belongings from their houses in the name of raid, he said. Superintendent of police (trans-Yamuna) AK Rai said the boy died of drowning and the police would not act on directives of any MP. However, he refrained to comment on the stone found tied to the boys waist, his missing eye and clothes. About 5,000 members of Dalit community from Mirzapur, Kaushambi, Chitrakoot, Fatehpur, and Banda are expected participate in the mahapanchayat. BJP MP Vinod Sonker has also forwarded a memorandum to the chief ministers office. Read more| Saharanpur violence: 24 arrested for rioting, meeting called to ensure peace SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Yogi Adityanath cabinet on Tuesday pushed its saffron agenda further and decided to set up Ayodhya Nagar Nigam (Ayodhya Municipal Corporation) and Mathura-Vrindavan Nagar Nigam to provide better public amenities to the pilgrims visiting these places. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath presided over the meeting of the state cabinet that also decided to adopt Uttar Pradesh Vendors Rules-2017 to regulate roadside vendors. Briefing media persons, minister Shrikant Sharma said the municipal bodies of Ayodhya (Nagar Palika Parishad) and Faizabad (Nagar Palika) would be merged and upgraded to Ayodhya Nagar Nigam. Similarly, the municipal bodies of Mathura (Nagar Palika) and Vrindavan (Nagar Palika) would be merged and upgraded to Mathura-Vrindavan Nagar Nigam, he said. Crores of people have faith in Lord Ram and foreigners also visit Ayodhya for pilgrimage. The state government was committed to provide better public amenities and road, rail and air connectivity to the pilgrims visiting Ayodhya, said Sharma. The state government is also committed to provide better amenities to pilgrims visiting Mathura and Vrindavan. Both the places do not have sufficient number of toilets and efforts will be made for cleaning of the Yamuna. Both the places are of international significance, said Sharma. Replying to a question, Sharma said both the municipal corporations would be constituted soon. He said the elections to both the corporations would be conducted along with forthcoming elections to other urban local bodies. About ongoing agitation against merger of Mathura and Vrindavan municipal bodies, Sharma said the state government would take everybody along while setting up the new municipal corporation. Minister Siddharth Nath Singh said the cabinet approved the UP Vendors Rules 2017 to regulate street vendors. He said though the Modi government had formulated law for the benefit of street vendors in 2014 the previous Samajwadi Party regime did not implement the law. He said the new regulations would check extortion from the street vendors and a committee comprising street vendors would be constituted to oversee implementation of the regulations. Police have lodged more than a dozen cases of rioting and arrested 24 rioters on Tuesday night after a clash between Dalits and police in Uttar Pradeshs Saharanpur. Meanwhile, the district administration has begun initiatives to build harmony among members of different communities especially Dalits and Thakurs who were at loggerheads since the incident in Shabbirpur village on May 5. A Thakur youth was killed in brick-batting between members of the two communities, and in retaliation, the Thakurs torched over 20 dwellings of Dalits. Saharanpur DM, N P Singh has convened a meeting of Dalit and Thakur leaders of all political parties on Wednesday evening to discuss the issue and revive harmony between two communities. Singh hoped that the meeting of leaders would help in reviving their trust for each other. He said 24 rioters have been arrested from different areas and raids are underway to nab the perpetrators of violence. Saharanpur SSP, Subhash Chand Dubey said more than a dozen cases have been registered against rioters and their number could be higher as individual victims are also approaching police to lodge their cases. Dalits went on rampage against official banned their proposed mahapanchayat, convened to demand justice over the torching of their homes in Shabbirpur. Activists and local Dalits set at least 20 vehicles and a police post on fire and thrashed passengers of buses and other passersby at different places of the district. They also engaged in brick-batting with cops and allegedly fired from illegal weapons which resulted in injuries to at least five policemen and an ADM. The rioters also damaged the boundary wall of a Rajput Bhawan near Mallipura locality. Police then resorted to lathi-charging to disperse the mob. Dalits claimed that more than 100 members of the community sustained injuries in lathicharge and threatened to intensify their movement against police atrocities. Meanwhile, the state government has appointed Prabal Pratap Singh and Vidyasagar Misra as the new SP (city) and SP of rural area respectively. Terming the Pune techie rape and murder case the rarest of the rare and heinous, three accused were sentenced to death by a sessions court on Tuesday. As accused Rajesh Choudhari had turned approver earlier, he was released. Advocate B S Aalur, who represented the accused Yogesh Ashok Raut, Mahesh Balasaheb Thakur and Vishwas Hindurao Kadam said they would appeal against the decision in the Bombay high court. Eight years after the crime, special sessions Judge L L Yenkar pronounced the verdict after hearing arguments from both sides for more than six hours. He said he wanted to send out a strong message to society as the case involved the safety and self-esteem of women. Long road to justice October 2009: Pune techie Nayna Pujari was kidnapped, gang raped and murdered. October 2009 : Her body was found at Jarewadi near Rajgurunagar on the Pune-Nashik Road. October 2009:The three accused were arrested. January 2010: A charge sheet was filed against them. July 2010: Accused Rajesh Choudhari turned approver. February 2011: A fresh charge sheet was filed against the three accused. September 2011: Yogesh Raut escaped from police custody May 2013: Raut was nabbed at Shirdi. May 2017: The accused were sentenced to death. The hearing was delayed as the main accused, Raut, escaped from police custody in September 2011. Police traced him 18 months later. Raut, Thakur and Kadam were emotionless when the verdict was delivered. The family of the victim, Nayna Pujari, seemed relieved, said sources. The accused were held guilty of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, robbery, gang rape and murder under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Though they were charged with destroying evidence, the court did not hold them guilty. When the court had asked them to make statements, Raut said the case against him was fabricated. He admitted that the Indica car used in the crime belonged to him, but added Choudhari had used it on the day of the crime.Raut added that he was the only earning member of his family. I stay with my wife, daughter and mother. Please consider my family while deciding the punishment, he said. Read: Pune Infosys techie murder: IT workers stunned, question outsourced security While Thakur remained silent, Kadam demanded that Chaudhari be punished because of his involvement in the crime. Raut and Kadam expressed resentment over Chaudharis release. Rauts lawyer B S Allur told reporters that Chaudharis release was unfair and based solely on the fact that he had turned approver. Read: Driver, guard raped engineer: Police Special public prosecutor Harshad Nimbalkar demanded that the accused be sentenced to death. Drawing parallels to the December 16 rape case, he termed the crime a cold blooded criminal conspiracy.The accused were supposed to take Pujari home, but they kidnapped her instead. They took away her belongings and withdrew money from an ATM. They took her to a deserted place, raped her one by one in the moving car, killed her and then tried to destroy the evidence, he said. Terming the crime an inhuman act, Nimbalkar said the accused did not regret their actions, which was evident from Rauts escape from police custody. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Not just fans or Beliebers as they are called, but undercover policemen in plainclothes too will throng DY Patil stadium in Navi Mumbai where Canadian popstar Justin Bieber will perform today. Around 50,000 people from across India and abroad are expected to attend the concert. The police have given priority to undercover agents for collecting intelligence inputs during the concert. A special squad of around 50 officials has been formed to keep a tab on people around the stadium, a senior police officer said. CCTV cameras are being closely monitored from the police control room at CBD Belapur. Extra manpower has been provided at the CCTV command centre for his purpose. The officials will also monitor the cameras attached to the drones. Police officials have also been deployed at all entry and exit points of the city. They are allowing vehicles to enter the city only after checking their documents. Special attention is being paid to Vashi and Airoli toll naka and Panvel, the main entry points of the city. A senior police officer said, There was no such concert in Navi Mumbai earlier. Along with the venue, every corner of the city is under surveillance. Hemant Nagrale, Navi Mumbai police commissioner, said, While the organisers have engaged private security agencies, the main job of police is to provide overall security and act swiftly in case of any disaster. During the show, plainclothes police personnel will be keeping a watch. A police control room has also been set up at the venue. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The police have made special arrangements to monitor vehicles on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway today as thousands of people from Pune and other cities of Maharashtra are coming for Canadian popstar Justin Biebers show at DY Patil stadium at Nerul. The Canadian popstar will perform at the stadium as a part of the Asia leg of his world tour. Nitin Pawar, deputy commissioner of police of Navi Mumbai traffic department, said, Most fans will take the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. We will deploy traffic policemen to ensure smooth traffic flow. We have also discussed the show with Raigad and Pune police and have sought their cooperation. If need be, we will divert the traffic at some places, said another senior officer from the police commissioners office. A Delhi-based company White Fox is managing the event. More than 50,000 people are expected to attend the concert. A crime branch official said, Almost all senior officers from city zone I and II are at work. Week-offs of several officials have been cancelled . Riot control police (RCP) platoons,too, have been deployed. A source from the stadium told Hindustan Times they have arranged for a medical team for providing services in case of an emergency. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON While the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) claimed to have completed 48.26% of the desilting works before the monsoon, activists and corporators have complained that the silt removed from the drains have been left piled up along roads across the city. If the BMC had to leave the silt piled up along roads then desilting was a futile activity as the silt is going to flow back into the nullahs with the rainwater, said James John an activist. He added that he found accumulated silt in areas like JB Nagar, Chimatpada in Andheri, at Marol Church road and parts of Vile Parle and Juhu. The BMC plans to complete 60% of the desilting work by the end of the month to prevent water logging during monsoon. Nikhil Desai, a citizen activist said, When I questioned BMC officials about not transporting the silt away from the sites, they said that they had no contractors for the job. LS Vhatkar, chief engineer of the storm water drains department in BMC said, The silt is transported two to three days after a nullah is desilted. Our work is underway and many NGOs are helping us to complete the work. The Bombay high court has directed the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Law and Justice to appoint one nodal officer each to keep track of notices or processes issued by Indian courts to people living in foreign countries. In a large number of matters, the court sends notices or processes to foreign countries either through the Ministry of Home Affairs or through the Ministry of Law and Justice. However, neither ministry has made arrangements to tell the registrars of the high court what progress is made after the notice has been served, said the division bench of justices Abhay Oka and Anjua Prabhudessai. The directive came after a Pune resident filed a plea seeking custody of his minor child, who currently lives in America with the mans estranged wife. The couple got married at London in September 1999 and their son was born in June 2002. The couple moved to North Carolina in USA, but soon decided to stay separately, citing frequent fights over petty issues. They initiated matrimonial litigation soon after. While the woman preferred to continue litigation in the USA, the man moved an application before the Pune family court, seeking permanent custody of his son. He approached the high court after the family court rejected his plea. Last year, the high court directed his wife to bring the son to India give his father temporary custody during his vacations in August 2016. However, this order could not be implemented owing to various reasons. Now, the bench has directed the woman to bring the child to India in August 2017 and give his father temporary custody for 10 days between August 10 and August 19. The court has also directed the Union ministries to ensure that the order is served to the wife and the agency engaged by US authorities to serving foreign summons, notices and orders to US nationals - Process Forward International. Friends of Kulbhushan Jadhav, the retired Indian Navy officer sentenced to death in Pakistan on charges of spying, have termed the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision to stay the sentence boost to their morale. According to Pakistan army, Jadhav alias Hussein Mubarak Patel was arrested on March 3, 2016 from Mashkel area of Balochistan for his involvement in espionage and sabotage actives in Pakistans restive Balochistan province and Karachi city. A Pakistani military court sentenced him to death on April 10, 2017. The ICJs decision has boosted our morale. We are happy. Our enthusiasm has increased. We will now try and intensify our efforts to free Jadhav . We plan to meet more officials of the Indian government to highlight his plight , his friend Tulsiram Pawar told HT. Read more: Kulbhushans friends in Mumbai remember him: He was generous, taught us English Pawar said the efforts taken by the Indian government to expose how Pakistan did not have any evidence against Jadhav were commendable. We are thankful to the government. They need to put more pressure on Pakistan. The ICJs decision is a slap on their face. Pawar and Jadhav grew up together in Parel in Central Mumbai. Jadhavs family lived in police quarters, as his father was a police officer, while Pawar stayed in the building opposite to it. We had a small celebration after hearing about the stay. We hope our friend is freed soon, he said. Read more: Kulbhushan Jadhavs friends start signature campaign to secure his release Jadhavs family, his father Sudhir and uncle Subhash Jadhav, are incommunicado. Earlier, Pawar along with others had started a signature campaign to build pressure on Pakistan. Pawar told HT that they spoke to Sudhir Jadhav a few days ago. His father told us our campaign was great and we should keep up the efforts, Pawar said. Several political parties also held rallies and protests in support of Jadhav. Who is Kulbhushan Jadhav? Kulbhushan Jadhav is a retired Indian Navy officer, who Pakistan claimed to have arrested from the Balochistan province. Pakistan later released Jadhavs confessional video statement and accused him of being a RAW officer, who was supporting Baloch rebels in Pakistan The MEA has rubbished Pakistans claims and said Jadhav had no links with the RAW or the government A Pakistani military court sentenced him to death on April 10, 2017 on charges of spying. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Maharashtra has decided to exempt deemed medical and dental institutes in the state from following the domicile reservation for undergraduate admissions. However, government-run and private institutes will have to reserve seats for students from the state. A resolution to this effect will be released in the next couple of days. Theres no domicile reservation for seats under the all India quota (AIQ) and NRI quota. We have decided to drop deemed institutes from following the policy because the Supreme Court has already passed an order to exempt deemed institutes from following the domicile reservation, said a senior official from the state medical education department. He added that this decision comes after a review of former SC orders on this topic by law experts. Maharashtra has the second highest number of medical and dental institutes in the country after Karnataka and this decision of reserving seats for the state domicile will bring cheers to lakhs of students in the state. Our children deserve to get first preference, especially since Karnataka government already follows a domicile rule. We just hope this move doesnt rile up private institutes and lead to a long fights in courts, said a parent. According to a government resolution (GR) released by the medical education department on April 27, the state has decided to keep aside more than 67% of seats in private and deemed institutes for candidates with the state domicile. Also, for the first time, 25% of the seats in deemed medical and dental universities will now be reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), Vimukta Jati, Nomedic Tribes (VJNT) and Other Backward Classes (OBC). Within three days, the Bombay high court called for a stay on this GR and a week later, the apex court upheld the stay. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The city did not flood last year and wont flood this year either, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray claimed on Tuesday. With monsoon a month away, Thackeray, whose party is in power in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), along with Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray and municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta, inspected the progress of the desilting work in the city. Mumbai didnt flood last year and it will not flood this year too, said Thackeray. Asked whether the pre-monsoon desilting work would be completed before monsoon, Thackeray said that desilting work was an ongoing process. I have no interest in the percentage of silt removed as desilting is a continuous process and the civic body will continue the work in monsoon too. The aim is for a flood-free monsoon and the civic body is working on that, said Thackeray. In 2015, the civic bodys inquiry into the drain desilting work found malpractices and shoddy work. The Sena and the BJP have been fighting to take credit for unearthing the scam. Taunting its former ally, BJP, Thackeray said that every year cities such as Chennai, Ahmedabad and Delhi (BJP is the governing party) sees heavy floods, but not Mumbai. The cleaning of big storm water drains in the city started from April 1. The ward officials started work on small nullahs on April 7. The BMC claimed to have finished 48.26% of nullah-cleaning work and expects to finish the work by June. Opposition leader Ravi Raja also inspected the nullah-cleaning work and released photographs of dirty nullhas, refuting BMCs claims. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON While investigating the firing case in which four men pumped 17 bullets into one contractor, while injuring another, the police found that a teenage boy who used to work for the victims has gone missing after the incident. The boy has been identified as Mahimadas Wilson,19, and he used to work with them," said the police. A 30-year-old driver, the eyewitness in the incident, said that on Tuesday around 11.30am, the two contractors Kishore Choudhary,45, and Nitin Joshi,45, were working along with Wilson at a flat in Shiv Amrut building, Balaji Nagar in Thakurli The four men allegedly barged into the flat and shot at the contractors, killing Choudhary, and took Wilson along with them while fleeing the spot. They also threatened the eye witness, who's identity is withheld. Four men pump 17 bullets into Mumbai contractor, cops suspect business dispute behind murder The police said the four shooters had six accomplices, who stood guard outside the ground-floor flat. The 10 men fled in a four-wheeler, police said. Four of the accused were identified as Shankar Gowardhan Bhoir, Dilip Gowardhan Bhoir, Sagar Dilip Bhoir and Suraj Dilip Bhoir, the police said. We have registered a case of rioting , attempt to murder , and murder under the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Fire Arms Act. We suspect the accused have fled to their hometowns, said S Nagarkar, senior police inspector, Thane crime branch. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Bombay High Court recently turned down the plea of city resident for a divorce, saying his wife was frigid and psychologically impotent. The court said it could not accept the mans plea as the couples marriage had been consummated and they even had a son. A bench of justice AS Oka and justice Anuja Prabhudessai set aside a 2008 family court order that granted the couple divorce, primarily on the mans allegations of cruelty, desertion and psychological impotence against the his wife. The court said that in such cases where allegations of desertion were being made by the husband, the onus to prove it lies on him. As for allegations and counter allegations of cruelty, the court said the parties asking for a divorce must prove they were treated with such cruelty by their partners that continuing to live with them would be injurious to their lives. The matter came to the HC bench, after the wife challenged the family court order. She denied all allegations her husband made against her and said even though she tried to mend their relationship, her husband never reciprocated, instead, his family ill-treated her. The husband had claimed in the family court that despite his apprehensions, his wife chose to work late night shifts, and would frequently quarrel with him and his mother and insult them. He alleged that she would often visit her parents house without informing him or his family. The HC bench dismissed his allegations holding they were either trivial in nature or vague, and therefore, inadequate for granting divorce. It noted that since the wife had refuted every allegation levelled against her, the onus lay upon the husband to produce corroborative evidence to prove his claims. In the absence of any such evidence, the family court had erred in granting the divorce. These allegations are not corroborated and furthermore, they are nothing more than ordinary wear and tear of married life. The evidence does not indicate the wife was psychologically impotent and had left the matrimonial home without any reasonable cause or with an intention of bringing cohabitation to an end. Hence, we are of the view that the conduct attributed to the wife does not amount to cruelty, the bench said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A day after the school education department banned on the sale of junk food in school canteens across the state, Mumbai schools said this alone would not cut off childrens access to junk food. They said that junk food should be banned in lunch boxes and at eateries around schools. The departments decision was based on a recommendation by a working group formed by the ministry of women and child development to stop schools from serving food high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS). Fried food, pizzas, burgers, noodles, carbonated drinks, bread, pastries and all kinds of sweets will not be sold in school canteens from now. But the department has not said anything about food students bring from home. Schools said it was necessary to extend the ban to childrens tiffins as junk food is an easy option for working parents. Most international schools do not serve junk food in their cafeterias, but students have always had instant noodles and frozen food in lunch boxes that they bring from home. Parents often demand that we serve junk food at least twice a week, said Kavita Aggarwal, chairperson of the Members of International Schools Association (MISA), a group of more than 300 international schools. She said this was causing obesity among students. This can only be prevented if parents also teach their children to eat healthy, she said. Another recommendation of the group that schools want implemented is a ban on eateries selling junk food within 100m of the school, and set up canteen management committees to monitor the food served in schools. Officials should ensure that no junk food is sold near schools, said Uday Nare, a teacher at Hansraj Morarji Public School, Andheri. Nutritionists said schools should incorporate more physical exercise in their timetables. Schools need to ensure students get enough exercise, keeping in mind their age, climatic conditions and other factors. Two periods a week would be a good start, said Dr Ushakiran Sisodia, clinical nutritionist, Nanavati Superspeciality Hospital, Vile Parle. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Members of the Student Action Front Union, Kalyan, protested against the Mumbai University on Tuesday for its failure to open a sub-centre that was inaugurated in 2011. The centre at Mauje-Gandhare in Kalyan (West) has been under construction since 2006, a source said. The students have been demanding the facility for over a decade claiming that for every university-related work, they either visit its Churchgate or Kalina campus, which is time consuming. The varsity authorities had promised to open the centre in June 2014. We protested against the varsitys failure to open the sub-centre. It is the need of the hour. Though the centre was inaugurated six years ago, the authorities have missed multiple deadlines to open, said Prashant Ingle, president of Student Action Front Union. The students called off their strike after the university authorities met them. The authorities have assured us of starting engineering and distance-learning courses at the sub-centre. They have also arranged a meeting with the VC on May 11. Besides courses, we also want the varsity to start administrative work also at the sub-centre. We will protest again if our demands are not met, said Ingle. Last week, vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh had assured to open the facility before the commencement of the upcoming academic year. The only work pending if related to plumbing following which well receive completion certificate (CC) from the civic body. We have plans to start the facility from this academic year itself, said a varsity official. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The change in land-use rules to convert 33 hectares of Aarey Colony a green lung and no-development zone to a metro car shed will be allowed only if stakeholders like the forest and environment ministries and the 227-member Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation give no-objection certificates, the BMC has told the state government. The Shiv Sena, the BMCs ruling party, has been against the plan to build a car shed inside Aarey. Citizens too have been campaigning against the governments plan, worried that it may destroy one of the few green spaces Mumbai has left more than 2,000 trees will have to be cut to make way for it. READ: Hundreds of trees cut, water bodies destroyed for Mumbai Metro, says NGO In December 2016, the state urban development department issued a notification for the change in land-use rules for the 33 hectares. It invited suggestions and objections from government agencies and citizens. A senior BMC official said the change in land-use rules had to be notified under the Development Plan (DP) 1991, which had marked the entire area a no-development zone. The DP 2034, however, while marking Aarey as a no-development zone, has already reserved the 33 hectares for the metro car-shed. BMCs statement to the government has now been sent to the improvements committee, which will meet on Thursday. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Two Nepali teenagers drowned in a pond near their home in Ghansoli on Tuesday. According to the police, Hitesh Chetry, 12, and Yuvraj Thapa, 15, had left home in the afternoon to take a dip in the pond but did not return home in the evening. Their parents then went out to look for them. Around 7.30pm, a few residents spotted a body floating in the pond and alerted the families, said an officer from Rabale police station. Local fishermen then started searching for the other body and found it late at night, he added. The families rushed the bodies to NMMC Hospital in Vashi but they were declared brought dead. The bodies were later handed over to the families after a postmortem. The police have registered a case of accidental death. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Farmers, one way or the other, may yet be the undoing of the BJP-led government in Maharashtra. It was hardly likely that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis would give in to the demand by the combined opposition to waive off the loans of farmers the political advantage would clearly have gone to the opposition parties. But he could have drawn lessons from his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanaths book and be visibly seen to have brought relief to some farmers at least on small loans, as the Yogi has done. The UP government is seeking to fund these loan waivers through corporate bonds and while Fadnavis avowed he would consult Yogi and evolve the same methods in Maharashtra, it turns out that the government felt Australia and New Zealand would have better solutions than Uttar Pradesh for our farmers. The junket by an all-party delegation to these countries is nothing short of brazen tourism at the tax payers expense the legislators are accompanied by their wives and will also stop by Singapore, where there is no farming. It is a shoppers paradise, however. But how does the homestead and corporate farming in Australia or New Zealand have anything in common with Indian farmers, I simply fail to understand. The junket comes just as farmers have given notice to the Maharashtra government of mass suicides and a strike wherein the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees across the state will be boycotted by farmers unless the government waives off their loans. These farmers of ours are starving and dying because of misplaced government policies but, very soon, the people of Maharashtra could be starved too or at least have to pay huge prices for cereals and vegetables that will have to be brought in from other states if the farmers do end up acting on their threat. The fact that the farm land crisis has united the entire opposition could not have escaped the attention of the government and I wonder whether the all-party delegation to Australia and New Zealand was, in fact, meant to break this unity. Opposition parties seem to be well aware of this, for former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan chose to target only the agriculture and food ministers of the state, asking Narendra Modi and not Fadnavis to recall them for such a show of disrespect to the dying farmers. Chavan has not clarified if it is okay by him if his party legislators go junketeering at government expense at a time when it cannot even find the small change to bring relief to farmers. This quite unnecessary junket reminds me of one that nearly happened, and was called off amid media outrage, in Goa during the last term of the government when legislators were headed to Brazil for the Rio Olympics. They could have brought back as little to the country and their state as did the delegation from Uttar Pradesh a year earlier when they went to Turkey and other exotic nations under the pretext of studying how to tackle droughts! For all that we have accused the previous governments in the state of corruption, I do not have any recollection of such junkets by the then legislators, though the chief minister and individual minsters did travel together or individually to different nations to ink deals on behalf of their governments. But when legislators travel abroad under the pretext of study with no memorandum of understanding coming forth at the end of their tours, one can be sure the `study was euphemism for a pleasure trip on tax payers money. In view of the agrarian crisis in Maharashtra, this is nothing short of cavalier, thoughtless and even heartless. Australian farming and even that in New Zealand is an entirely different ball game from the kind of pressures our own farmers labour under. There is nothing these two nations can teach us in this department unless and until we teach ourselves how to deal with the market forces that are driving down farmers, and until we compel these nations, and particularly the United States, to remove the subsidies to their farmers which are driving down prices of agricultural produce in international markets. In the absence of such initiatives from our own government, these legislators might as well go hunting for some famed Australian fig leaves (the natural kind, not the lingerie brand). They would need the cover against farmers ire when they get back! SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A 27-year old software engineer was found dead near a railway track in Badalpur area of Greater Noida on Monday. He allegedly had jumped in front of a train and his body was found crushed. Police said Rajeev Kumar Verma, a resident of Bisrakh, was working as a software engineer with Myntra Designs Private Limited in Bengaluru. Some police personnel had spotted him sitting along the railway track. Around 6.30 am, Verma stood up and jumped in front of the train. Police said his body was crushed by the train, so much so that it was difficult to identify him. Police said they recovered a flight ticket from Bengaluru to Delhi from the body. Verma had boarded a flight late Sunday evening for Delhi and on Monday committed suicide. His family members told an investigating officer that Verma had spoken to them on Sunday, but he had not discussed anything related his visit to the town. On Sunday, Verma had a small conversation over the phone with his brother and other family members. His habit was to call them in the evening every day. He quickly cut the call with his brother and called his father Sohanpal Singh, a retired assistant development officer. Singh was attending a function and could not talk to his son due to the noise. He told Verma that he will call him once he reaches home. When he did call Verma , his phones were switched off and that made his family uneasy. The family members began trying his number repeatedly, but to avail. On Monday, at 7:15am, the call got connected, but this time it was a police officer asking the father to visit the police station in Badalpur. The family members rushed there only to be told that Verma is no more. Vermas body was found 9km from his home in Bisrakh, police said adding that no suicide note was recovered from him. Anand Dev Mishra, station house officer of Badalpur police station, said, The family members said Verma did not seem upset and never discussed any problem with them. His father has requested us to check his call details record and his locations. We will collect the details and investigate the matter accordingly. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON As the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) hiked fares on Wednesday, metro stations in Noida witnessed a heavy rush of commuters recharging their smart travel cards. People were seen lining up outside counters and vending machines to ensure a hassle-free journey. Officials said on a daily basis, they see a low number of people recharging smart cards. However, on Wednesday, all the re-charge machines and counters - from Rs 200 to Rs 2000 - were jam-packed. To avoid congestion inside the metro station premises, marshals were deployed to maintain the queues. Though it was holiday today (Wednesday) people were seen jostling to recharge. In view of this, I think the influx of people will rise by Thursday. Most of the people who recharged cards with Rs 500 and Rs 200 will exhaust early, said Anuj Kumar, an attendant of DMRC at Noida City Centre metro station. Earlier, the cost of travelling on the metro from Noida City Centre to Rajiv Chowk was Rs 19. It is now Rs 30 . Within Rs 38, we would go up to Rajiv Chowk and come back to Noida. On the same route, a card of Rs 200 would last for five working days. Now that the rates have been revised, the card lasts for only three days said Manik Sinha, a commuter. Commuters said that with the rise in fares, the DMRC should also focus on improving the service of the Blue line. They said the line often faces technical snags and people get stuck for an hour during commutes. During the monsoons, every spell of rain sees the trains get stuck. If people are being charged, they deserve good service as well. There is a huge rush of people from Dwarka till Noida and there should be an increase in the frequency as well, said Taranjeet Singh, another commuter. Meanwhile, students said that DMRC officials should introduce a special policy for them as the metro was a feasible option, but the rise in ticket prices may now make it too costly. They said that like the DTC buses in Delhi which offer students concession passes, DMRC too should have a special provision for students. Metro is suitable for every student, but fares have made it difficult for us. We believe students should have a special provision. It will be difficult for us to bear the expenses, said Neha Grover, a CA student who studies at Lakhsmi Nagar. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate BN Singh on Wednesday conducted an inspection and directed engineers to expedite work on the 135-km Eastern Peripheral Expressway, which is meant to decongest roads of the national capital. A 22km stretch of the expressway falls in Gautam Budh Nagar. The expressway, which will be like a ring road, will pass through Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and parts of Delhi and is likely to take at least 70,000-80,000 vehicles off Delhi roads. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) needed land from 39 villages in Gautam Budh Nagar for the expressway, which was first proposed in 2005. NHAI officials have set October, 2017, as the deadline for completion of the expressway. We conducted an inspection at five construction sites on the 22km under-construction stretch in Gautam Budh Nagar. I decided to carry out the inspection because we wanted to understand how we can expedite work and finish the project within the deadline. We spent around two to three hours at the construction sites and instructed the team to expedite work in order to be able to meet the deadline, said Singh, district magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar. NHAI has roped in Ashoka Buildcon Limited for constructing the 22km stretch in Gautam Budh Nagar and a budget of Rs 800 crore has been allocated for the stretch. A small section of farmers, however, have opposed the road construction alleging that they were unhappy with the land compensation given to them by the government. A group of farmers are also sitting on a dharna at a construction site near Bil Akbarpur on NH-91 in order to demand more compensation for their lands. I did not meet the farmers today. But, we will address all issues that pose hurdles to the expressway project before its completion. I also convened a meeting with National Highways Authority of India officials and reviewed the progress, said Singh. Officials said Singh was accompanied by Gautam Budh Nagar SSP Love Kumar during Wednesdays inspection and visited villages like Fatehpur Atta, Bela Kala, Murshadpur and Jaganpura. I have asked the NHAI and district officials to work in coordination with the farmers so that their issues are settled properly, said Singh. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The family members of a 23-year-old man has approached Indirapuram police and forwarded a complaint alleging foul play in his death. The mans body was found on Tuesday afternoon in Chijarsi near NH-24 and had burn marks made by an iron-press on his hands and back, the police said. Sonu Kumar, the victim, haled from Hardoi district and worked in the iron-press department of an export unit in Sector 63 Noida. His uncle, Shiv Kumar, who stayed with Sonu at Lal Kuan in Ghaziabad, has alleged that his nephew was murdered and accused the export unit officials of foul play. He had left home on Tuesday morning and we dont know what happened to him later. We got a call from the police who got our number from his mobile phone and informed us about his death. His back and hands have several burn marks made by an iron-press. But the marks were not there on his clothes. It seems as if his clothes were removed before the burn injuries were inflicted, said Shiv Kumar. Read I Ghaziabad police hands over Audi crash case to crime branch Some bits of skin were peeled off due to the burns. We have forwarded a police complaint and have named officials of his company as suspects, he said. Following the complaint, the police on Wednesday registered an FIR against the unit owner and others under section of murder at the Indirapuram police station. Station house officer PK Tripathi confirmed that the body had burn marks and said the police are investigating the matter. We have come across information that the victim suffered an electrocution at the unit. But, it is to be found out how he was found dead at Chijarsi which is some distance from his work unit in Noida Sector 63. We are also trying to connect the two incidents, Tripathi said. Senior superintendent of police HN Singh said an investigation has been launched into the mysterious death. We have sent the body for a post-mortem examination in order to ascertain the nature of injuries on the body. Once we receive reports, detailed investigations will follow, the SSP said. The Noida authority and police are making adequate arrangements to ensure a peaceful meeting between homebuyers and Uttar Pradesh industries minister Satish Mahana. The meeting is scheduled to be held on Thursday. Sources said that the challenge for the police would be to ensure peace during the meeting, with homebuyers miffed with both government officials and builders who had failed to deliver their flats on time. The authority has asked superintendent of police (Noida) Dinesh Yadav for taking required steps to ensure that there are no untoward incidents during the meeting with the minister in Sector 6 administrative building. I have issued necessary instructions to my staff to ensure that the meeting takes place peacefully on Thursday, said Dinesh Yadav, SP city for Noida. Mahana is scheduled to meet a delegation of 20 homebuyers from Greater Noida west on Thursday. The homebuyers delegation are also scheduled to meet the industries minister to file complaints about their respective builders, who have failed to deliver flats even after delays. We have made arrangements so that homebuyers can meet the minister in the board room of the building. We will allow only the delegation of homebuyers to enter so that issues can be discussed properly, said Amit Mohan Prasad ,chief executive officer of the Noida authority. Homebuyers are also likely to bring Mahana up to speed about how builders were not willing to restart work on realty projects that are stuck, despite instructions to do so being issued by UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath. After our meeting with Adityanath in Lucknow, officials had assured that builders will change their attitude. But we have realized that some of the builders are not in a mood to deliver their realty projects still. Also, around 10 builders in Greater Noida have gone underground and the buyers are unable to get a refund. We will take up all these issues with the industry minister, said Abhishek Kumar, president of Noida Extension flat owners welfare association. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Ghaziabad police on Wednesday arrested six persons in connection with the murder of a priest (mahant) at a temple in Nehru Nagar. The police said motive for the murder was to loot the temple money and also allow another mahant to take control of the temple. On the intervening night of April 28 and 29, mahant Nasik Giri was tied up and then strangled to death at his quarters inside the temple. The body was found the next morning. During investigation, the police got clues that several men has barged into the temple, located 20 metres from Nasirpur police post under Sihani Gate police station area in Ghaziabad. The five men were sent by the victims nephew Pappu Rajbhar, who is a regular at the temple. He told the gang that his uncle was in possession of nearly Rs 20 lakh-Rs22 lakh. One of the accused told us that Pappu told them that another priest in their area wanted Nasik Giri dead in order to take control of the temple, said HN Singh, senior superintendent of police (SSP), Ghaziabad. The accused persons, Pappu, Deepak Mishra, Avadh Ram Mishra, Ashok Puri, Tribhuvan and Dinesh Kumar Passi, hail from Bahraich and Shravasti districts and were known to the victim. On the night of the incident, we barged inside the temple complex and went upstairs in search of money. Later, the priest woke up and began shouting for help. At the same time, a train was passing behind the temple (the railway track is nearby) and we caught hold of the victim. His shouts were muffled by the sound of the passing train and we strangled him. However, we could not find any money in his room. Thereafter, we took a train to our native places, said Avadh Ram Mishra, one of the accused, told HT. The police said Pappu, the key conspirator, had stayed home in Bahraich at the time of the incident. We are also trying to ascertain the role of the other priest, who also hails from Bahraich, the same district as the victim. In case his role comes to light, he will also be arrested and made an accused in the case, SSP added. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON It has been raining medical certificates at the departments of Panjab University (PU) these days as this is the time when roll numbers are being distributed for taking exams. Nine medical certificates by five doctors have come under scanner so far. A team of doctors under chief medical officer of PU health centre, Dr Devinder Dhawan, took a call on validity of these medical certificates. 75% attendance is mandatory in all the subjects. The medical certificate helps one in getting a relaxation in lectures. About 40 to 50 medical certificates are being submitted on a daily basis, according to PU health department. Medical certificates under scanner Five medical certificates of a Sector 38 west based doctor, Dr Romesh Kumar Sofat, are under scanner for issuing these for different days for viral fever. In the first case, seven days medical certificate has been issued, while in the second case it is for 20 days for viral. For another student claiming to be suffering from viral fever, it is for eight days and in fourth and fifth case, it is for five days each. No one picked up the telephone at the numbers provided on the prescription slip of Dr Sofat. Doctors at PU say that when a number of medical certificates are from the same doctor they get suspicious.Two more medical certificates, one of a doctor in Sector 44 and another from Ambala came under scanner on Tuesday. When the doctors at the health centre called up the Ambala doctor, he said it was not for eight weeks but for three weeks for backache. The medical certificate submitted by the student had been sent back to him. Till the medical certificates are not accepted the concerned students would not get any relaxation in attendance shortage. The doctors at PU had also rejected a medical certificate issued by a Nabha-based radiologist for Prolapsed Intervertibral Disc (PIVD) this semester. The student then produced medical certificate from another doctor. The doctors have now reported the matter to the higher authorities. It also pointed out a case of private hospital issuing medical certificate to a student for severe depression over three semesters, including this session also. The doctors questioned why the patient was not being referred to hospital like PGI, Chandigarh, when the concerned doctor could not treat it for over three semesters. Earlier also, a number of fake medical certificates have come to light at PU. The issue was highlighted in the same columns in HT as students even submitted apology for providing fake medical certificates because a lot had been prepared by the same doctor. Though Dean University Instructions (DUI) have issued clear cut guidelines that when students join back the department, they have to submit medical certificate within seven days, yet they have not been adhered to. The medical certificates are being submitted towards the end of the semester. Strap Desperate measures 75% attendance is mandatory in all subjects to get the roll number for exams and 40 to 50 medical certificates are being submitted on daily basis, says PU health department. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Sunil Jakhar took charge as the new president of the Punjab Congress on Wednesday with notes of caution, both for his party and officers running the government. It was the first official function of the Congress after the new government took over on March 16. While some speakers tried to sing peans to Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, crediting him for leading the party to a stupendous victory, others, including Jakhar, had a different message the crown should not sit easy on the head. Former minister and senior vice-president of the Punjab Congress Lal Singh, who was anchoring the low-key ceremony, dubbed the partys victory in the state nothing less than a miracle. He (Amarinder) is a miracle man. We were routed in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Punjab is the only salvation for the Congress. For the first time in the states history, the Congress was able to win 77 seats. He (Amarinder) defeated BJPs number two, Arun Jaitley, the most powerful man in the BJP after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from Amritsar in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. One man has made all these miracles possible, Lal Singh said. Though Rajya Sabha MP Ambika Soni too said Punjab has kept Congress alive, but she credited partys every worker for the victory. All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in-charge of Punjab, Asha Kumari, did not mince words on who appointed Jakhar and what was his role. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has appointed him to shoulder a big responsibility as whenever a party forms government in a state, the attention towards party suffers, she said. RESTLESS WORKERS GATECRASH Jakhars first words on his appointment that he would be a bridge between the party and government, seemed to be proving true on ground zero. At the partys headquarters in Chandigarh on Wednesday, hundreds of workers had lined up to meet the new chief. Ironically, as the leaders thanked workers and the CM asked them to gear up for municipal polls, they were made to stand outside as the venue was bursting at its seams with people. After the CMs security paraphernalia left with him, they literally gatecrashed into the office. The doors hinge of Jakhars office came off as workers mobbed him for selfies. The CM had recently held three-hour long meetings with sets of MLAs from each district as disenchantment grew among them over having no say in the government. As the bridge, pacifying restless party leaders, MLAs and workers will also be Jakhars biggest challenge. Unlike every leader who recounted Jakhars family legacy for his appointment, AICC secretary in-charge of Punjab Harish Chaudhary, Rahuls close aide, made no allusion to it while saying why Jakhar was chosen for the job. His performance as the leader of Opposition was laudable. It was even more laudable when he was not on the post, he said. Jakhar started by thanking party president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Amarinder for bestowing the honour and responsibility on him. You made me Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader and now the state chief. You have bailed out both the party and Punjab with your able leadership, he said. But he soon sounded notes of caution. It is not the time to celebrate our victory. It is Punjabs tryst with destiny. We have to deliver all that we promised to the people of Punjab. We have a long battle ahead and have to pull up our socks, he said. He then went on to caution the civil and police officers on public dealings. The politicisation of police has gone so deep that even their thinking has been coloured in blue (Akali colour code). They will have to become people-friendly, he said. Concluding the ceremony, Amarinder said Jakhar speaks his mind and their association goes back a long away to their fathers. We will fulfil our promises but we cannot clean the filth of 10 years (Akali-BJP governments regime) in seven weeks. It will take more time. They have also left us with a legacy of debt, which has reached nearly 2.5 lakh crore, he said. The CM then asked party workers to ensure they win each and every municipal council and corporation in the elections. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON They may have been born thousands of miles apart but Jharkhands dhaba (highway eatery) owner, Rahul Sahu and Pakistans chaiwala (tea vendor) turned-model, Arshand Khan, have several things in common. Both sold tea, had very humble beginnings, before their stunning looks transported them to the glamour world and turned them into hot fashion models. However, unlike the illiterate Khan, this Indian dhaba owner-turned-model is educated, holds a master degree in computer science, speaks good English and has tremendous business acumen. HT caught up with Sahu, 29, recently at his Ma Dhaba, now a prominent landmark on NH33 near Tamar between Jharkhand capital Ranchi and steel city, Jamshedpur. Seated on the cash counter, he was directing the waiters to attend to customers with courtesy, even as he sat down for a chat. Shuttling between Ranchi and Mumbai-- for his modelling assignments and a massive female fan following- the handsome young man has his feet firmly planted on the ground. With his elder brother, Vicky Sahu, who is also his mentor and guide, Rahul spends most of the time innovating so that his eatery can be more of a delight to customers. Many customers love to see him and even pose with him for a pix. Rahul Sahu at his dhaba, Ma Hotel located on NH33 near Tamar (HT Photo) How did he take to modelling? It was a winter afternoon in 2013. I was at the dhaba when a customer from Mumbai came to me, handed me a visiting card and asked me to come to Mumbai if I was interested in modelling. I left for Mumbai in February 2013 and immediately bagged a few offers, said Rahul, calm and composed. There has been no looking back since as he was sucked into the glamour world doing print shoots and walking the ramp. Tall, fair and muscular, Rahul has worked for Mufti, did modelling shows for international designer Daniel Syeim, did innumerable print shoots and also walked the ramp at Hotel Taj. As a child, Rahul was a good student. Despite running a dhaba, his father ensured his younger son went to a good school and got the best education. He did his tenth from the reputed Bishop Westcott, Saiko and plus two from Gossner College, Ranchi before he went to Pune for further studies. Out of collegeand armed with a master degree, he took up his first job with KPIT Cummins, Pune when he heard the heartbreaking news of his fathers demise. Suspected Maoists had killed his dad on November 1, 2010. Police have still not been able to crack the case , or arrest the killers. I had lost my mother too early. I wanted my dad to live with us longer. But destiny had kept our association too short, said Rahul, as his eyes welled with tears. He quit his job of three months and with his elder brother took charge of the dhaba which his dad had started. The modelling offer came three years later. Presently, with the dhaba business taking off well and his elder brother left alone to handle the responsibilities of both business and family, Rahul listened to his conscience and retuned home last year from Mumbai. He now takes modelling as a pastime and is devoting his time and energy in developing his dhaba into a model resort. Directors, producers and Bollywood personalities crossing the highway and stopping at the Ma Dhaba for tea and snacks often suggest to him return to Mumbai and stay there for a big career break, but home is where his heart is. A bachelor still, Rahul has no airs about his looks. He attributes it to God and parents. Actor-filmmaker Prabhudhevas last Hindi outing was Singh Is Bling, and since then he has shifted his focus to Kollywood. With his last Tamil release Devi turning out to be a decently successful film; Prabhudheva has signed two films -- including his return to direction in Tamil filmdom after a hiatus of six years. Gearing up to helm the multi-starrer Karuppu Raja Vella Raja and also act in an Indiana Jones-like action adventure Gulebakavali, the Action Jackson director has signed a new Tamil project with filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj. Apparently, Karthik was supposed to work with Dhanush, and their project was to be produced by Sri Thenandal Films. However, since Dhanush will commence work on his Hollywood project, The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir from this month, he has put the project with Karthik on the back-burner and plans to revive later. In the interim, Karthik plans to work with Prabhudheva, and has also pitched a script which was instantly liked by the latter. While an official announcement is awaited, it is being rumoured that Prabhudheva might produce the film in his own banner. In the last two years, he has produced by five films. Karthik is one of the promising filmmakers in Kollywood, and is best known for films such as Pizza, Jigarthanda and Iraivi. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop On his to-do list for his trip to Istanbul, Palestinian tourist Jameel wants to visit the Blue Mosque and take a tour on the Bosphorus, like any other tourist. But he has one more, less conventional purpose to have 1,500 strands of hair implanted one by one, in an increasingly popular anti-hair loss treatment in the Turkish metropolis. With over 300 clinics specialised in hair transplant alone, Istanbul is fast becoming a hair transplant hub and attracting patients from all over the world but mainly from the Middle East and the Gulf. Experienced surgeons, advanced technology and relatively low prices are a plus for many tourists. And the growth of this industry in the last couple of years has come as a boon for a city where foreign tourism has fallen drastically since a spate of terror attacks in 2016. I came to Turkey for the hair transplant and a bit of tourism. Turkey has an excellent reputation when it comes to hair implants, 27-year-old Jameel said, after the surgery at an Istanbul hospital, on condition of not using his full name. Faisal Abu Ahmad, from Saudi Arabia, said his uncle underwent the treatment in Turkey and so he followed suit. Rapid hair loss pushed me to undergo the operation. I started getting bald spots, he said. Symbol of Istanbul At the tourist hubs of Istanbul such as Taksim Square, it is hard to miss the men wandering around with shaved heads and bandages after their operations, proudly sporting the branded headbands of their clinics. They have become so ubiquitous that residents of Istanbul joke that a man with a bandaged head could be the citys new symbol. Prices are very, very attractive. However, the second most critical element is the quality of this treatment, said Talip Tastemel, the general manager of Clinic Expert. Turkey is very advanced in cosmetic surgeries and hair transplantation, so the patients are buying a very high quality treatment at a quarter of the normal cost in some other countries. Industry insiders say about 5,000 foreign patients undergo hair transplants in Turkey every month. (Shutterstock) Package offers for foreign patients include pickup from the airport, hotel accommodation, the surgery itself and tourism. Around 1,200 euros (Rs 84, 420 approx) would get a patient three days in Istanbul and a top quality medical treatment, whereas the same surgery could cost up to 6,000 euros (Rs 4, 22, 108 approx) in Europe, or only slightly less in the Middle East. The operation is carried out with Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) where tiny hairs are taken out one by one from areas where the patient still has hair like the nape of the neck. After the harvesting, they are implanted in the areas where the patient has lost hair. The procedure takes around eight to 10 hours, while the tiny transplanted hairs can take weeks or months to take root and grow. Bucking the trend Emre Ali Kodan, consultant for the Health Tourism Association, said 5,000 foreign patients undergo hair transplants in Turkey every month, with the vast majority coming from the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. We are setting our sights on a 10-percent increase in hair transplant alone (in 2017). It would not be a dream to reach up to 6,500 patients a month, he said. Patients from Greece, Italy and Russia are also showing interest, he said. Despite the decline in the tourism sector in 2016, we see a 5% growth in health tourism, based on statistics, Kodan said, adding that the aim was to achieve up to seven billion dollars in revenue this year. Tastemel said the hair treatment sector was showing a resilience lacking in other branches of the tourism sector, which saw revenues plummet more than 17% in the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2016. Even when there were problems in the tourism industry, it didnt affect the medical tourism domain very much, he said. We kept doing a high number of operations even during the crisis period. Cars, watches and hair A pharmacist himself, Jameel said he tried many medicines to stop hair loss but they didnt work. At this age, losing your hair has a big impact on your looks. Thats why when you lose it, you start looking for solutions to fix this hair problem, he said. Tastemel said men need to be proud of their hair. To be honest, men dont have many accessories to present themselves with. It is mainly our cars, our watches and our hair at the end of the day, he said. We are not able to use make-up. The look that we have comes mainly from our hair, so when you lose it, it is like something is taken from you. Clinic Expert offers a range of cosmetic surgeries but hair transplants are its main business and Tastemel said success rates tended to be good. In medicine you cannot guarantee a result, you can expect some failures occasionally, but in hair transplantation this is at the very minimum, Tastemel said. Anybody who does this in a decent clinic with a decent doctor, and a decent technique should expect 100% success. As part of the promotions of her Hollywood debut Baywatch, Priyanka Chopra recently dropped by on The Jimmy Kimmel Show. Tonight on #Kimmel Danny McBride @PriyankaChopra @RoyalBloodUK & a group of kid #RubeGoldberg winners show us their giant Band-Aid machine pic.twitter.com/J9yDQ6ecSR Jimmy Kimmel Live (@JimmyKimmelLive) May 10, 2017 The Quantico star, who is back in the US after a quick visit to South Africa for an event as the Global Ambassador for UNICEF, informed his fans before going on the show saying, @baywatchmovie #BeBaywatch @jimmykimmellive. This is the third time that Priyanka would be appearing on Jimmys show. First time she came to promote Quantico, the second time she graced the show after winning a Peoples Choice Award. Directed by Seth Gordon, Baywatch is slated for a global release on May 25. China lodged a diplomatic protest with the US on Wednesday over a Congressional delegations meeting with the Dalai Lama in India, saying the move violated Americas commitment not to support Tibets independence. The meeting has sent very wrong signal to the world about supporting Tibetan independence, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. The meeting violated the US governments commitment not to support Tibets independence, Geng said. US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi meets Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala on Tuesday. (REUTERS) US Congressmen should stop all kinds of contacts with the Dalai Lama, he said. The Congressional delegation headed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi met Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday in Dharamshala. China views the Dalai Lama as a separatist working to split Tibet from China. It objects to any world leader or government official meeting the 81-year-old leader. In an entirely unforeseen and stunning move, President Donald Trump dismissed FBIs controversial director James Comey on Tuesday over his handling of the criminal investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clintons use of a private email server as secretary of state. The director was overseeing FBI investigations into ties between Trump campaign aides and Russia in the context of alleged meddling by latter in the 2016 presidential election to defeat Clinton, and whether there was any collusion. Questions were inevitably raised thus if the firing was an attempt to shut down the Russia probe that has dogged Trumps young presidency since the start and had caused the dismissal of Trumps first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the recusal from the investigations of attorney general Jeff Sessions. Comparisons were drawn, inevitably also, to one of the darkest chapters in recent American political history the Watergate scandal, at the height of which, in 1973, then embattled President Richard Nixon had fired the special prosecutor investigating him triggering what is now remembered as the Saturday Night Massacre. The White House was not prepared for the backlash and Trump defended his decision in a Tweet on Wednesday in a string of tweets. Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!, he wrote in one. In another, he accused Democrats of flip-flopping saying they they had said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad! Trump informed Comey of his decision to fire him in a letter Tuesday: While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau, Trump wrote. He added, It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission. In a separate statement the White House said Trump informed Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office, based on the recommendations of both deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and attorney general Jeff Sessions. The FBI is one of our Nations most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement, said President Trump, according to the statement. Comey, who learned of his firing while speaking to FBI employees at the agencys field office in Los Angeles, is a life-long Republican and was appointed director by President Barack Obama for a standard 10-year tenure, of which he completed only three and a half years. His reputation for uprightness and standing up to political pressure took a severe knock last July when he, first, called a press conference to announce the FBI had found not prosecutable against Clinton, but had chastised her for her use of a private email server. Months later, and just days ahead of the November 8 election, he told congress the case was being reviewed, which in Clinton world doomed her run. He eventually gave her a clean chit, but the damage had been done. While the White House did not give details in its statement, nor did Trumps letter to Comey, it released a memo by Rosenstein Sessions, the attorney general, has recused himself rom the Russia probe that gave reasons for Comeys firing: I cannot defend the Directors handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clintons emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney Generals authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. The Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. The Clinton campaign, which has blamed Comeys untimely statements for their candidates defeat among other reasons, was not impressed. Im not shedding any tears for Comey personally -he hurt FBIs reputation- but I do worry whether we ever get to the bottom of Russia now, Brian Fallon, the campaigns erstwhile spokesman wrote on Twitter, adding. The only thing that could do more to erode faith in independence of FBI than Comey staying is Comey being fired. This is 100% political. This is Nixonian, Democratic senator Bob Casey wrote on Twitter. This is Nixonian. Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein must immediately appoint a special prosecutor to continue the Trump/Russia investigation. Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) May 9, 2017 Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the senate, alleged a pattern in Trumps dismissals starting with that of acting attorney general Sally Yates, who had told the White House about Flynns lying, then New York US attorney Preet Bharara, whose office was reportedly investigating Trumps health secretary, and now Comey. Even Republicans were critical. While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the Presidents decision to remove James Comey from office, Senator John McCain said in a statement. Industrialist Lord Swraj Paul believes that the investment climate in West Bengal has improved considerably under chief minister Mamata Banerjee enough to encourage him to invest in the state if he were younger. Paul recently visited Kolkata, where he opened a new wing at Loreto College named after his wife Aruna Paul, a college alumnus. He told Hindustan Times on Tuesday that much had improved in the city in recent years. Kolkata has never looked cleaner. I would invest in the state if I were 50 years younger, but at 86 I am not sure I have the capacity to see a project to completion. But I would love to do something which would be of service to the people of West Bengal, he said. A member of the British House of Lords, Paul, who has long-standing business and personal links with Kolkata, said West Bengal had a much better investment climate than the chief minister was given credit for. In New Delhi, Paul met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several ministers and said he got the clear signal that corruption had become a bad word in India today. According to him, India has now become more respectable in business and corporate circles abroad. Much, of course, remains to be done, but I am now very positive about India. The status of India and its people has been raised at the international level. We can see this in the public discourse in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, he said. Known for his proximity to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Paul a Padma Vubhushan awardee has been a close observer of politics in India and the UK, besides being a key investor in both countries. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Greens senator has made Australian political history by becoming the first person to breastfeed a baby in the nations parliament. Larissa Waters returned to the upper house Senate for the first time on Tuesday since giving birth to her second child, and brought her in for a feed during a vote. So proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal Parliament! We need more #women & parents in Parli, she wrote on Twitter. So proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal Parliament! We need more #women & parents in Parli #auspol pic.twitter.com/w34nxWxG0y Larissa Waters (@larissawaters) May 9, 2017 Being able to breastfeed in the chamber follows new rules introduced last year to create a more a family friendly parliament in the wake of what has been described as a baby boom among politicians. Under previous rules, children were technically banned. Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher said the moment deserved to be acknowledged. Women have been doing it in parliaments around the world... It is great to see it is able to occur now in the Senate, she told Sky News. Women are going to continue to have babies and if they want to do their job and be at work and look after their baby... the reality is we are going to have to accommodate that. President Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey throws a huge cloud of doubt over the bureaus investigation into allegations of Trump campaign ties to Russia. The FBI and three congressional committees have been investigating Russias interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump connections. As head of the FBI, Comey had been leading the complex counterintelligence investigation that has dogged the Trump White House since Inauguration Day. The White House said Tuesday its search for a new FBI director had already begun. And the person Trump appoints will likely have a huge impact on how the investigation moves forward and whether the public will accept its outcome. But given concerns by members of Congress in both parties over Comeys dismissal, its unlikely a permanent director will be in place soon. A new director chosen by Trump could decide to drop the FBI investigation altogether, or not pursue it as aggressively as Comey has. He or she could also decide not to fully cooperate with the congressional investigations, which rely on information from the FBI. Timothy Flanigan, a former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, said, It does seem to me, however, that, if investigations are underway, they will likely continue. He said acting FBI directors have limited abilities to derail an ongoing investigation. Trump said his decision to fire Comey had nothing to do with Russia. But the impact of removing an independent FBI director who was leading an investigation with potentially dire ramifications was not lost in the dramatic removal of the nations top law enforcement official. I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comeys termination, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. said in one of the strongest statements from a Republican. As chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Burr is leading one of the three congressional investigations and has been in regular contact with Comey. His dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the committee, Burr said. Comeys firing was the latest and most significant White House-driven distraction from the Russia investigations. Trump has ridiculed the probes, calling them a hoax, and he has denied that his campaign was involved in Russias election meddling. In his brief letter to Comey, Trump thanked him for telling him three times that I am not under investigation. The FBI has not confirmed that Comey ever made those assurances to Trump. In public hearings, Comey has declined to answer when asked if the president was under investigation, urging lawmakers not to read anything into that statement. But its hard to see Comeys firing as anything other than political, said Frank Montoya Jr., a former FBI agent who worked on counterintelligence investigations and led the bureaus Seattle office. Montoya said other counterintelligence investigations were important but never got the level of attention that the Russia investigation has. They were fought in the shadows. It was spy versus spy, Montoya said. He said there would be no question about the current investigation continuing if not for the political implications. Others questioned whether Trumps actions amount to interfering in an ongoing investigation. Already, Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who was active in the Trump campaign, has recused himself. The decision to fire Comey, raises profound questions about whether the White House is brazenly interfering in a criminal matter, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a statement. Schiff is the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, which is also investigating. Schiff and other Democrats said it is imperative that the Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor. The executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, Danielle Brian, said Trumps move whether or not so intended undermines the independence and credibility of that investigation. This is a deeply troubling development for our system of checks and balances and the rule of law, Brian said in a statement. The FBIs deputy director, Andrew McCabe, was named the acting director until Trump appoints a replacement and the Senate confirms the appointment. McCabe was dragged into the spotlight of the Russia investigation in February when the White House said he rejected media reports that Trumps campaign advisers were frequently in touch with Russian intelligence agents during the election. The FBI never confirmed that McCabe and Comey gave the White House the go-ahead to knock down the stories. While unlikely, Comeys ouster also could lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a recommendation Democrats have been pushing for months. Pakistan said on Wednesday it is reviewing the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, whose death sentence for alleged involvement in espionage has been stayed by the Hague-based institution. Sartaj Aziz, adviser on foreign affairs to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, told reporters in Islamabad the government is examining Indias move to approach the Hague-based ICJ regarding Jadhavs case and an appropriate decision will be taken in the matter. Pakistan is reviewing Indias application and the ICJs jurisdiction in the case, he said. The Foreign Office will issue a statement about any decision taken in the matter in the next few days, he added. Earlier, defence minister Khawaja Asif contended India was using Jadhavs death sentence to divert attention from state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention frm state sponsored terrorism in Pak.Kulbushan convicted of offences against Nat security Khawaja M. Asif (@KhawajaMAsif) May 10, 2017 Asifs remarks came a day after the ICJ stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav in response to an application from India. Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security, Asif tweeted. Pakistani media outlets rejected Indias stance regarding the ICJs order. Geo News channel said the ICJ had no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of matters with the consent of both parties. The website of Dawn newspaper did not report on the ICJs stay order. The Express Tribune, in its report on the issue, did not mention the stay. India, in its application to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and said Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran, where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy. It added that it learnt about the death sentence from a press release. Pakistan has said Jadhav was arrested from the restive Balochistan province on March 3, 2016. Jadhavs conviction and sentencing during a secret trial by a military court evoked a sharp reaction from India, which said his execution would be tantamount to pre-meditated murder and could further damage bilateral ties. India has initiated the process of formally appealing against Jadhavs death sentence after more than a dozen requests for consular access were rejected by Pakistan. It has also asked Pakistan to issue visas to Jadhavs parents so that they can visit him. Left-leaning former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-In began his five-year term as president of South Korea on Wednesday, following a landslide election win after a corruption scandal felled the countrys last leader. Tuesdays ballot was called after Park Geun-Hye was ousted and indicted for corruption, and took place against a backdrop of high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Voters were galvanised by anger over the sprawling bribery and abuse-of-power controversy that brought down Park, which catalysed frustrations over jobs and slowing growth. Moon, of the Democratic Party, who backs engagement with the North, promised unity after final results from the National Election Commission (NEC) showed he took 41.1% of the vote -- some 13.4 million ballots. Conservative Hong Joon-Pyo -- who dubbed Moon a pro-Pyongyang leftist was far behind on 24.03%, with centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo third on 21.4%. South Korea's President Moon Jae-in writes on a visitor's book at the National Cemetery in Seoul. Moon visited the cemetery where he honoured former presidents, independence fighters and war heroes. (AP) Voter turnout was at its highest in 20 years, the Yonhap news agency reported. Moons inauguration ceremony was expected to take place at the National Assembly at midday (0300 GMT), the agency said, after the NEC confirmed the start of his mandate. The result was a great victory of great people who wanted to create a country of justice... where rules and common sense prevail, Moon told cheering supporters on Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul -- where vast crowds gathered for candlelit protests over several months to demand Parks removal. The graft scandal plunged the country into political turmoil and bitter division, but Moon promised healing, telling the crowd: I will be president for all South Koreans. South Korea's President Moon Jae-in greets supporters in Seoul. (REUTERS) On the square among the crowd, Koh Eun-Byul, 28, told AFP: I am so happy because now there is hope for some meaningful change. Washington, which remains Seouls most important ally and has a large security presence in the South, on Tuesday congratulated Moon on his landslide victory. We look forward to working with president-elect Moon to continue to strengthen the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea and to deepen the enduring friendship and partnership between our two countries, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. Tokyo, which has strained relations with its neighbour over issues including territory and Japans wartime sex slavery, also congratulated Moon. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he looked forward to meeting the new leader, adding: Japan and South Korea are facing common challenges in East Asia, led by responses to the North Korean issue. South Korea's President Moon Jae-in leaves his house in Seoul on Wednesday. (REUTERS) I believe the two countries can further contribute to peace and prosperity of the region by working together. The campaign focused largely on the economy, with North Korea less prominent. But after a decade of conservative rule Moons victory could mean significant change in Seouls approach towards both Pyongyang and key ally Washington. The 64-year-old -- accused by his critics of being soft on the North -- advocates dialogue to ease tensions and to bring it to negotiations. He is seen as favouring more independence in relations with the US, Seouls security guarantor with 28,500 troops in the country. Their presence, he told reporters during the campaign, was important not only to our own security but also to the global strategy of the US. The North has carried out two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the start of last year in its quest to develop a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the US mainland. Washington has said military action is an option, sending fears of conflict spiralling. Acute division South Koreas rapid growth from the 1970s to 1990s pulled a war-ravaged nation out of poverty but slowed as the economy matured, and unemployment among under-30s is now at a record 10%. Frustration over widening inequality in wealth and opportunities fuelled anger over Parks scandal, which exposed the cosy and corrupt ties between regulators and powerful family-oriented conglomerates, known as chaebols, that have endured for decades. Park is in custody awaiting trial over corruption for offering governmental favours to top businessmen -- including Samsung heir Lee Jae-Yong -- who allegedly bribed her secret confidante, Choi Soon-Sil. Pakistans civilian government and the powerful military on Wednesday resolved a row over a newspaper report on differences between the two institutions on tackling terrorism, with the army saying it is committed to backing the democratic process. Statements issued by the government and the military said the Dawn Leaks issue a reference to a report in Dawn newspaper about a high-level meeting on October 3, 2016 during which civilian leaders had spoken out about the growing international isolation of Pakistan for failing to act against some terror groups had been settled. Analysts said the settlement followed intense discussions between the civil and military leadership following fears of a confrontation. It also followed a meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa that was attended ISI head Naveed Mukhtar and finance minister Ishaq Dar. The militarys chief spokesman had created a flutter by tweeting on April 29 that the action taken by the Prime Ministers Office in the matter was being rejected because it was incomplete. Following an official inquiry, the government had sacked Tariq Fatemi, the Prime Ministers special assistant on foreign affairs, and initiated disciplinary action against a senior official for their purported role in leaking information about the meeting in October 2016. The army took a step back on Wednesday, with a brief statement saying the Dawn Leaks issue had been settled as the inquiry reports recommendations had been implemented. The statement added that military spokesmans tweet was withdrawn as it was infructuous. The tweet on April 29, 2017 was not aimed at any government office or personPakistan Army reiterates its firm commitment and continued resolve to uphold the constitutionand support the democratic process, it added. A separate statement issued by the government referred to the need to develop a code of conduct for the print media, especially on issues of national security. It also said the role of Dawns editor Zafar Abbas and columnist Cyril Almeida should be referred to the All Pakistan Newspapers Society for disciplinary action. Minister of state for information Marriyum Aurangzeb told the media a mature and sensible decision had been taken to avert any impression of confrontation between the two organs of state. She said the armys statement would go a long way in strengthening democracy. The chief military spokesman, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, told a news conference that an environment of division between the civil and military leadership had been created after his tweet on April 29. What happened after the (tweet) is regrettable, he said, adding the two sides were pitted against each other and this should not have happened. The report in the Dawn newspaper had referred to purported differences between the military and the civilian government over countering terror groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Haqqani Network, which have strong ties to the army. Zainab Ahmad is one of Americas top counterterrorism prosecutors, specialising in extra-territorial cases, trying bad characters not present in the United States or gathering evidence related to crimes committed in far off lands to present before juries here. Ahmad, 37, was born in New York to immigrant parents from Pakistan, that international slouch on counterterrorism that could not have done more to sully its record on the issue. It was her dogged pursuit over years and across time-zones that forced Alhassane Ould Mohamed, a Malian also known as Cheibani, to plead guilty in 2016 to murdering an American diplomat in Niger in 2000. She had 18 witnesses flown in to the US from Niger and Mali. In November 2015, a New York jury agreed with Ahmad to convict a Pakistani man, Abid Naseer, who had been arrested in a connection with an al-Qaeda plot in Britain. We were a bit desperate before Zainab showed up here, a British police officer told The New Yorker. When Zainab walked in the room, we said, Crikey, she looks awfully young. Is this a junior sent here to fact-find? Within a few minutes, though, it was, like, Whoa, she knows what shes doing. There was no comparison with UK prosecutors. Zainab stayed four days with us on that first visit, and left us a big list of evidence she wanted, and exactly how she wanted it packaged up. She has fought 13 such cases and is yet to lose a case. Her stellar reputation among prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York was bound to attract the attention of Washington. And when her boss Loretta Lynch took over as the attorney general, she sent for Ahmad to the head office. She has returned to the Eastern District after the new team of President Donald Trump and attorney general Jeff Sessions took over, back to wrestling with extraterritorial counterterrorism. But the country has changed too, Ahmad told The New Yorker. If I were fifteen now, growing up where I didI dont know. Everythings changed, meaning the level of mistrust that Muslims in America face, according to the magazine. And about Pakistan, she said growing up she couldnt find it on the map when asked at school. She would be embarrassed, but felt better because even teachers couldnt. But now, Pakistan is closely identified with terrorism in American public memory, especially since May 2011, when Osama bin Laden was killed in his hideout in Abbottabad. Id kind of like to go back to a time in America when teachers didnt know where Pakistan is, Ahmad said. President Donald Trump will host Russias top diplomat Sergei Lavrov for talks at the White House on Wednesday, his highest-level encounter with a Russian official since taking office. The two men will meet in the Oval Office at 10:30 am (1430 GMT), according to the White House. The Russian foreign minister, making his first trip to Washington in four years, will also meet his counterpart Rex Tillerson as he seeks US support for Moscows plan to establish safe zones in Syria. The United States was not part of the deal signed by Syrian government backers Russia and Iran, and rebel supporter Turkey, last Thursday in the Kazakh capital Astana. Washington has given the plan an extremely cautious welcome, citing concerns about Irans role as a guarantor. The high-level meetings come a day after Trumps firing of FBI chief James Comey threw allegations of Russian meddling in the US election dramatically back into focus. The FBI has concluded that President Vladimir Putin approved a wide-ranging campaign to tilt last years vote in Trumps favor, and Comey was heading a wide-ranging investigation into whether the Republicans aides colluded with the Russian effort. ec/mdl The Donald Trump administration has announced it will arm Syrias Kurdish fighters as necessary to recapture the key Islamic State group stronghold of Raqqa, despite intense opposition from NATO ally Turkey, which sees the Kurds as terrorists. The decision is meant to accelerate the Raqqa operation but undermines the Turkish governments view that the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPG is an extension of a Kurdish terrorist organization that operates in Turkey. Washington is eager to retake Raqqa, arguing that it is a haven for IS operatives to plan attacks on the West. Dana W White, the Pentagons chief spokeswoman, said in a written statement that President Donald Trump authorised the arms on Monday. His approval gives the Pentagon the go-ahead to equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqqa, said White, who was travelling with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Europe. The US sees the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, as its most effective battlefield partner against IS in northern and eastern Syria. White said theyre the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future. While White did not mention the kinds of arms to be provided to the Kurds, other officials had indicated in recent days that 120mm mortars, machines guns, ammunition and light armoured vehicles were possibilities. They said the US would not provide artillery or surface-to-air missiles. The officials werent authorised to publicly discuss the matter and demanded anonymity. They described no firm timeline, with the American intention to provide the new weapons to the Syrian Kurds as soon as possible. A congressional aide said officials informed relevant members of Congress of the decision on Monday evening. The Obama administration had been leaning toward arming the Syrian Kurds but struggled with how that could be done without torpedoing relations with Turkey, a key political actor in the greater Middle East. The issue has come to a head now because battlefield progress this year has put the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces nearly in position to attack IS in Raqqa, although they are still attempting to isolate the city. In a reflection of the sensitivities in Ankara, the Pentagon spokeswoman, Dana White, issued a follow-up statement hours after her initial comments. In her second statement she emphasised US solidarity with Turkey and said the US does not envision a long-term Kurdish presence in Raqqa. She said Mattis spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Fikri Isik, by telephone to reiterate a US commitment to protecting our NATO ally. Also, the State Department said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with his Turkish counterpart on Monday night. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen Bob Corker of Tennessee, said he is not worried about how Turkey will react. No. Sorry, Corker said, adding that Washington is going to have a little bit of a rub with Turkey for a period of time. Even with the extra US weaponry, the Kurds and their Syrian Arab partners are expected to face a difficult and perhaps lengthy fight for control of Raqqa, which has been key to the extremists state-building project. Senior US officials including Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have met repeatedly with Turkish officials to try to work out an arrangement for the Raqqa assault that would be acceptable to Ankara. The Turks have insisted that the Syrian Kurds be excluded from that operation, but US officials insisted there was no real alternative. In her second statement, White said equipment provided to the YPG will be limited, mission specific and metered out incrementally as objectives are reached. Other officials said these safeguards are intended to reassure the Turks that the additional US weaponry and equipment will not be used by the Kurds in Turkey. The intent is to restrict the distribution and use of the weaponry and then require the Kurds to return it to US control, the officials said. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit President Donald Trump in Washington next week. An Erdogan adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, met on Tuesday with Thomas Shannon, the State Department No 2 official. And in Denmark earlier Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the US and Turkey are working out their differences. The US State Department has issued a sharp warning to Americans against travel to North Korea after the arrest of a fourth US citizen, cautioning against the serious risk of lengthy detention and unduly harsh sentences. Kim Hak-Song was detained over the weekend for hostile acts, the official KCNA news agency said, adding he had worked for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). The arrest put the number of Americans held in North Korea at four, as Washington and Pyongyang remain at loggerheads over the Norths nuclear and missile ambitions. While a travel warning already was in effect for US nationals, the State Department offered a more detailed statement about the pitfalls of heading to North Korea. The Department of State strongly warns US citizens not to travel to North Korea, the warning said on Tuesday. US citizens in the DPRK are at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Koreas system of law enforcement, the department said. This system imposes unduly harsh sentences for actions that would not be considered crimes in the United States, it added, reminding Americans that the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. Pyongyang has carried out two nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches since the beginning of last year in its quest to build a rocket capable of delivering an atomic warhead to the US mainland. Washington has suggested military action could be on the table but President Donald Trump has softened his message more recently, saying he would be honoured to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. US President Donald Trump has promised to replace former FBI director James Comey by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI. Who could it be? Names in circulation included Rudy Giuliani: The former New York mayor and US attorney had earlier thrown his hat into the ring for attorney general and secretary of state. He has been a staunch Trump supporter. Chris Christie: The New Jersey governor and former US attorney and one-time head of Trump transition team who was once said to be a shoo-in for a senior cabinet position. Mike Rogers: The former FBI agent and Republican member of House of Representatives headed the house intelligence committee and had figured on Obamas list of probables before the former President settled on Comey. Trey Gowdy: The former federal prosecutor headed the Benghazi committee that investigated alleged missteps in Hillary Clintons handling of the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya. John Pistole: The former head of the transportation security administration was a long-time FBI agent. Ken Wainstein: The former head of the justice departments national security division, he is among the favourites for the job. Frances Townsend: A former national security adviser in the George W Bush administration, she figured as an unconventional pick on The Wall Street Journals list. Trump likes her, and if she gets the nod, will be the first woman to head the FBI. Mark Philip: Former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson: Former deputy attorney general Robert Conrad: US attorney Stephen Murphy: US attorney On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, 29-yearold Hawila Kaleohano stepped outside his home on the privately owned island of Niihau, the westernmost inhabited isle in the Hawaiian chain. From out of nowhere, a small plane came in low and fast and slammed into the rough soil, kicking up clouds of dirt until finally skidding to a stop in front of his house. The pilot, who appeared to be Japanese, had sustained minor injuries and was barely conscious. Kaleohano pulled him from the smoking wreckage and searched through the cockpit for identification. He discovered a pistol and a stash of documents. The pilots name was Shigenori Nishikaichi, and he was 21. Villagers rushed to the scene. They spoke only Hawaiian, so someone sent for Ishimatsu Shintani, who had been born in Japan and spoke the language fluently. By the time he arrived, the pilot was alert. The two had a brief conversationand then Shintani left without explanation. Next, the villagers turned to Yoshio Harada, a Hawaiian-born man who, like his wife, Irene, was of Japanese ancestry. The pilot confided to Harada that the Imperial Navy had just bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States and Japan were now at war. Harada shared none of this. The islanders had no electricity or phone lines, and none of them knew that the U.S. naval base on the main island of Oahu was under attack. Nishikaichi had flown in on the invasions second wave. His plane was struck by enemy fire, and the pilot was forced to crash-land on Niihau. Hours later, the villagers heard about Pearl Harbor over a crackling, battery-powered radio and realized that Nishikaichi was an enemy combatant. They decided to detain him until the islands owner, Aylmer Robinson, arrived for his regular visit from his main residence on Kauai. He could then take Nishikaichi back to the proper authorities. The Haradas, Robinsons island caretakers, offered to house the pilot, and the villagers agreedso long as he remained under close watch. The U.S. Navys travel ban in the area delayed Robinson for several days, giving Nishikaichi time to gain the trust of his keepers. On Friday, December 12, Ishimatsu Shintani, the first translator, met with Kaleohano and offered him $200 for the pilots papers. Kaleohano refused the deal. Later that afternoon, Harada and Nishikaichi attacked the lone villager standing guard, locked him in a warehouse and gathered up a shotgun and pistol before setting out to get Nishikaichis papers from Kaleohano. Kaleohano spied the men approaching and dashed toward the village, shouting that Harada had helped the Japanese pilot escape and they were both armed. Then he and five other villagers seized a decrepit boat and headed for Kauai. Unaware that Kaleohano had left the island, Harada and Nishikaichi continued searching for him. As the sun rose on December 13almost a full week since the assault on Pearl Harborthe exhausted and desperate men captured a cowhand named Ben Kanahele and his wife, Ella, and threatened to shoot them if they didnt reveal Kaleohanos hiding place. Kanahele knew Kaleohano was gone but played dumb and assured Harada that theyd locate him together. Around 1 p.m., still holding the captives at gunpoint, Nishikaichi lowered his guard as he passed the shotgun to Harada. Kanahele pounced. Nishikaichi reached for the pistol stashed in his boot and shot Kanahele three times at close range. Kanahele lunged toward Nishikaichi, lifted him off the ground and then slammed him into a stone wall. Before the stunned pilot could recover, Ella cracked his skull with a rock and Ben sliced his throat with a hunting knife. When they turned around, Harada was facing them with the shotgun in hand. After a few tense moments, he turned it on himself and pulled the trigger. Meanwhile, after 15 excruciating hours paddling to Kauai, Kaleohano and the others tracked down Aylmer Robinson. Robinson and 12 armed soldiers from Company M, 299th Infantry, rushed to Niihau by boat. They arrived in time to hurry Kanahele back to Kauai for medical treatment. He survived and was later awarded the Purple Heart. Shintani and Irene Harada were taken into custody. By December 16, the Niihau incident was front-page news across the country: HAWAIIAN WOMAN BRAINS JAP PILOT, one headline blared. A month later, when Congress released the findings of its Pearl Harbor investigation, including the Niihau incident, terrified Americans received a federal stamp of approval for their fears. It is worthy of note that neither SHINTANI nor HARADA had previously exhibited un-American tendencies, the report stated. However, there was a strong possibility that Americans of Japanese descentmay give valuable aid to Japanese invaders. Buried in the report was the fact that the U.S. soldier who led Company M to Niihau was a Japanese-American lieutenant named Jack Mizuha. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent, many of them American-born citizens. The Niihau incident was not solely responsible for the order, but it galvanized the public and fortified Roosevelts decision to uproot thousands of families from their homes for the duration of the war. Originally published in the December 2013 issue of American History. To subscribe, click here. Dubbed as the world's largest offshore wind farm, the Dutch officials opened "The Gemini." The wind farm notably, comprises of 150 wind turbines and can generate 600 megawatts power. With more offshore wind farms coming up, the Dutch government is making an effort towards becoming carbon neutral. The Dutch officials opened the world's largest offshore wind farm on Monday, named "The Gemini." The wind farm has 150 turbines spinning far out in North Sea, about 85 kilometers from the Groninger coast, in the Netherlands, Dutch News reported. It has a capacity of generating 600 megawatts and for the next 15 years, it will be meeting the needs of 1.5 million people. Matthias Haag, the managing director of the company has said that the wind park is currently in operational stage and will be supplying renewable energy to 785000 Dutch homes. According to Business Times, this 2.8 billion euro project is collaborated between Northland Power, an independent renewable energy company; Siemens, the wind turbine manufacturer; Dutch maritime contractor Van Oord and HVC, a waste processing company. Notably, though the project was conceived in 2010, work on the offshore wind park started only in 2015. It is worth mentioning here that about this new off shore wind farm will contribute about 13 per cent of the total renewable energy requirement of the country and 25 per cent of the total wind power. Additionally, it will also reduce the carbon dioxide emission by 1.25 million tons. According to a 2016 report, it has been stated that The Netherlands is primarily dependent on fossil fuels, providing 95 percent of the energy supply. But, the Dutch government now wants to ensure that 14 percent of its energy is met from renewable sources by the year 2020, 16 percent by 2023 and by the year 2050, it aims be become carbon neutral. Moreover, to achieve this aim, the cabinet has also passed five more offshore wind farms. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A Londoner hoping to avoid repossession of her five-bedroom home in south-east London wants to raffle it off by selling 3.75million of tickets at 5 each. The detached property is in a conservation area near Greenwich Park in Blackheath, where the average asking price is 613,634. Owner Renu Qadri, who has five children, has struggled to pay the mortgage because of disability, which has also made climbing stairs difficult. However, after putting the home on the market for 1.25 million in March, she has been unable to find a buyer and is now hoping to sell 750,000 raffle tickets through her website, which has been live since Sunday. Entrants will also have to answer a question about the property. READ MORE: Blackheath house raffle falls through after council complaint The house is offered fully furnished, including lead crystal chandeliers worth 12,000, leather sofas, kitchen appliances and bedroom furniture. Fixtures and fittings: 12,000 of lead crystal chandeliers are included in the prize We want to take the sale into our own hands and give somebody else the chance to enjoy this wonderful house, Ms Qadri told the News Shopper. London is the hardest place to buy a home and it is time for somebody else to live here, I think it is time we downsize. If not all the raffle tickets are sold by this November, an undisclosed cash prize (minus expenses) will be offered instead. The house is still listed at the full price via an online estate agent, which is charging a flat fee up front, whether or not the property sells through them. Are property raffles legal? If not run correctly, property raffles can land sellers in trouble with the law The Gambling Commission oversees competitions that could be classed as property raffles It is legal to run a competition for profit so long as there is an element of skill for participants This is why property raffles often require entrants to answer a question Many rafflers have run into difficulties with the Commission if the question is deemed too easy to answer Raffle entrants should also be wary of scams Most schemes state that if not all tickets are sold, the winner will receive the cash raised from sold tickets minus expenses (which can be a significant percentage of the profit) Stamp duty hikes and overheated pricing have caused the market for large properties to stall in recent months, especially in London, where the average asking price for homes with five bedrooms or more fell 7.3 per cent in the year to April, according to latest Rightmove figures. As a result, some cash-strapped sellers are turning to property raffles as a way to recoup their costs. PROPERTY RAFFLES: A NEW TREND? A Georgian manor house in Lancashire which failed to sell is being raffled for 2 a ticket and has raised over 600,000 of the 1 million target. After the 2008 property crash, there was a spate of property raffles. A Devon couple struggling to sell their 1 million five-bedroom house, complete with fishing lake and four holiday lodges, sold 25 raffle tickets. A 36-year-old German man who bought a single ticket was named the winner in 2009. Another couple in the Wirral attempted to raffle off their 725,000 six-bedroom house in West Kirby. After an investigation by the Gambling Commission, they managed to sell only 400 tickets, barely covering their costs, and struggled to reimburse angry ticket holders. The vendor of the Blackheath property has been contacted for comment. Greenwich Council have halted the raffle and ticket holders will be refunded through PayPal. homeraffler.com 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 AUSTIN - Houston-based Karbach Brewing Co. on Tuesday told state lawmakers that its plans to build new breweries around the state are imperiled by a proposal to change the way Texas breweries operate their taprooms after exceeding a state-set size limit. Houston-based Karbach was considering opening satellite breweries with taprooms in at least some of the eight metro areas it believes could support one, general manager David Greenwood said. The moves, he said, were part of Karbach's longer-term plans before it was acquired last fall by Anheuser-Busch InBev and they were part of the discussions leading up to the deal. An AB-InBev representative estimated Karbach would have spent $6 million to $8 million on each of the new facilities. But a bill that was approved overwhelmingly by the Texas House on Saturday would halt those expansion plans by moving Karbach into a category of larger breweries by virtue of its new corporate ownership, Greenwood explained. That bill is now before the Senate Business & Commerce Committee, which hosted testimony Tuesday. The state's wholesale beer distributors pushing the bill say it is designed to help smaller craft breweries from being overwhelmed by AB-InBev and other conglomerates by not granting them exceptions to the state's three-tier system. Keith Strama, counsel for the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas, said the measure is critical to prevent large, vertically integrated global breweries from becoming too powerful. Afterward, Strama acknowledged the difference of opinion but said the existing system, which gives distributors almost total control over how beer moves from producer to retailers, is the "best possible environment to protect small craft breweries." The brewers in attendance Tuesday snorted at that logic, insisting they never asked for such help and noting that they are unified in opposition. "I don't need this protection, if someone wants to call it that," Chip McElroy, founder/owner of Austin's Live Oak Brewing Co., said in response. "In fact, I'd call it taking my property." McElroy said he hopes to one day be large enough, through growth and perhaps making acquisitions of his own, to exceed the production limit. The wholesalers have often fought legislative efforts favored by craft brewers. Four years ago, however, they agreed to a compromise measure that allows those making less than 225,000 barrels of beer annually to sell up to 5,000 barrels in their own taprooms, directly to customers. The new bill responds to large-brewery takeovers that have occurred since the 2013 legislation by expanding the size limit to any company whose corporate parent or partner breweries combine to produce that much beer. Karbach, for example, currently produces fewer than 100,000 barrels. But AB-InBev produces many millions of barrels of Budweiser, Bud Light and other brands across the globe. The bill originally would have forced Karbach and the others to shutter their taprooms. A revised version allowed them to continue operating them, but it would require breweries above the limit to first sell their beer to a distributor and buy it back - at a markup of around 30 percent - before selling it on site. In addition, Greenwood said the 5,000-barrel limit on taproom sales would be spread among any potential new Karbach facilities, rather than given to each separately. The small brewers and the Texas Craft Brewers Guild say the bill would discourage investors from supplying capital to fuel growth and penalize breweries that eventually grow to that level. The bill initially would affect only a handful, including Independence Brewing Co. The Austin brewery currently produces around 20,000 barrels annually, but it sold a non-controlling stake last summer to an investment arm of California's Lagunitas Brewing Co. Lagunitas recently announced it was being acquired by Heineken, the global brand. Amy Cartwright, who co-founded Independence with her husband in Austin in 2004, said having to pay a premium for her own beer to sell on site would leave her with unattractive choices. Independence would either pass along the price increase to customers or reduce its taproom hours, currently four days a week, to reduce the amount of less-profitable beer it sells. In addition to the impact on consumers, she said, it would also hurt Independence's marketing efforts. Since the taproom sales were approved by the 2013 Legislature, Cartwright said, sales have grown at an average rate of 30 percent annually. She attributes that at least in part to the expanded exposure the company has gotten through on-site sales. Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, a national trade group, said the proposal sounds like a regression for a place that ranks near the bottom of states in terms of breweries per capita. Senate Bill 2083, identical to the House measure approved Saturday, "could be a bit of a backward step after some steps forward four years ago," Gatza said. The Business & Commerce Committee also took testimony on a bill proposed by state Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, to allow craft breweries to sell to-go beer on site. Buckingham told committee members that Texas is the only state in the U.S. that does not currently allow such sales. Wineries and distilleries here also have that right. Strama and Rick Donley, president of the state's other major wholesalers group, the Beer Alliance of Texas, both voiced their opposition to that measure. A federal court granted Spirit Airlines a temporary restraining order Tuesday, compelling the pilots union to return to status quo after what the airlines says has been "a pervasive illegal work slowdown" that caused hundreds of flight cancellations and disrupted travel for more than 20,000 passengers in the past week. The pilots union said Spirit Airlines pilots will fully comply with the court to help restore normal operations. "We are hopeful that we can put this moment behind us and get back to serving our customers," Spirit Airlines spokesman Paul Berry said. The U.S. District Court ruling comes a day after anger and confusion boiled over at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Monday night as nine Spirit Airlines flights were canceled, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded, according to airport officials. What followed was chaos as frustrated passengers clashed with Spirit employees, and law enforcement officers tried to maintain order. Video from the Florida airport showed crowds clustered around Spirit Airlines ticket counters, with people pushing, screaming and cursing. More Information Southwest fight One person was arrested after a brawl erupted aboard a Southwest Airlines jet deplaning in Burbank after arriving from Dallas. The incident happened Sunday aboard Flight 2530 at Burbank Bob Hope Airport in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles. The fight involved three passengers aboard the Boeing 737. Southwest said police were summoned and one passenger was arrested. Another had minor injuries. There was no word on what prompted the quarrel. - Associated Press See More Collapse At one point in one of the videos, the stanchions holding in the line were knocked over and a Broward County, Fla., sheriff's deputy was shoved to the ground. Sheriff's deputies detained three passengers and charged them with disorderly conduct, according to arrest reports. The chaos was the latest instance of airlines dealing with high-profile customer frustration. The flight cancellations were reportedly the result of a legal dispute between the budget airline and the Air Line Pilots Association International (ALPA). In a statement, Spirit Airlines blamed its pilots for the cancellations and the resulting chaos. About 300 Spirit Airlines flights have been canceled in the past week, according to a lawsuit Spirit lawsuit filed against ALPA on Monday. ALPA disputed the airline's accusations. But on Tuesday it said Spirit pilots "are committed to helping impacted passengers and the company restore normal operations. "The court has spoken and Spirit pilots will fully comply with the order handed down, which is completely in line with our overriding goal: the resumption of normal operations. We call on the company to join forces with ALPA and the Spirit pilots to do just that," ALPA said in a statement The pilots' actions have affected about 15 percent of flights across the network, Spirit said. "We sincerely apologize to our customers for the disruption and inconveniences they have suffered," Berry said. "We believe this is the result of intimidation tactics by a limited number of our pilots affecting the behavior of the larger group." Authorities say the behavior of a few passengers at Fort Lauderdale Monday night caused a crowd of about 500 to "become enraged, fearful, or visually upset." The incident, an arrest report said, "resembled the start of a riot." One of the passengers became "increasingly aggressive to the point of near violence" toward an airline employee, according to the arrest report. The passenger then "challenged deputies with threatened physical violence," the report said. "All of a sudden, one particular flight got canceled, and a mob ensued up here at the front counter, in front of everyone else who had been waiting in line," passenger Paul Smith told a Fox News affiliate. Another passenger told the station that Spirit employees "couldn't handle what was going on, so they called in for the police." Spirit, a carrier based in Miramar, Fla., often advertises fares as low as about $20 or $30 each way. If you are counting on 401(k) savings to keep a roof over your head when you retire, don't take your eye off tax reform negotiations in Washington. Your 401(k) is vulnerable. And worse yet, if tax changes play out as some are proposing on Capitol Hill, you may have the extra burden of picking up the tab for millions of Americans who will go into retirement without enough saved to cover food, housing and other basic needs. In the halls of Congress, one frequently mentioned way to raise more tax money for the federal government is to drastically change the way about half of Americans save for retirement. Roughly 54 percent of Americans have 401(k)s or other retirement savings plans at work, and the government currently tries to entice workers to participate in those plans by rewarding savers with a tax deduction on whatever they sock away. But the deductions could be on the chopping block as Congress looks for revenue sources to make up for other tax cuts. The possibility came up in 2014, as Congress looked at tax reform and government researchers calculated more than $144 billion in new revenue over 10 years if some 401(k) deductions were cut, said Brigen Winters, an attorney for Groom Law of Washington, D.C., which lobbies for groups that want to retain the current 401(k) structure. Winters said last week that "we keep hearing whispers" in the halls of Congress that the 401(k) proposals remain alive. The council is a nonprofit trade group supporting employer-sponsored retirement plans. There are other possibilities too, such as freezing maximum 401(k) contributions so that workers won't shelter additional money from taxes in the future. Deductions for individual retirement accounts also could be cut. While there is nothing formal on the table now, Congress can't make tax cuts unless the cuts are offset by finding other sources of tax revenue, Winters said. And retirement funds are the second-largest potential source of revenue, behind the exclusion employers are given for providing health insurance to workers. Meanwhile, the only deductions the Trump administration has promised to preserve are those for home mortgages and charitable contributions. Still, although getting rid of retirement saving deductions could instantly give the government a huge new revenue source, there could be costly consequences for taxpayers. Already the nation is facing a looming retirement crisis because millions of workers aren't saving enough to cover basic needs like food and housing when they can no longer work. Ultimately, if these people need welfare, Medicaid or other aid, taxpayers could be asked to pick up the burden. The Employee Benefit Research Institute has estimated that workers currently between the ages of 35 and 64 are on their way to being short over $4 trillion in retirement money. And that estimate assumes that those with 401(k) plans keep saving as they have been doing. It's clear that if the government cuts out the carrot that entices employees to put money into 401(k)s,many people will stop saving or will save less, said Jack VanDerhei, the director of research for the institute, a nonpartisan group. In an institute survey, 88 percent of people said getting a tax break on their 401(k) contributions was important to them. And moderate- and lower-income people - who currently save less than more-affluent people on average - are likely to cut back even more, VanDerhei said. "The more budget-constrained they are, the bigger the negative effect" if they don't get to lower their taxes, he said. "If you are barely scraping by and putting $2,000 into a 401(k), and you lose the deduction and have to come up with an extra $200, you may decide against it." In the past, both Democrats and Republicans have been tempted to cut back tax deductions for 401(k) contributions. Some Democrats have argued that because affluent people are able to save more in 401(k)s than middle-income workers, 401(k)s give the rich a bigger tax benefit. But VanDerhei said that's short-sighted and ignores behavior. In surveys, lower-income people seem to be as anxious to get a tax deduction as higher-income people. While the possibilities for change remain numerous at this point, Winters said a compromise that's been discussed would alter some 401(k) deductions. He said individuals could be required to put half of their contributions in Roth 401(k)s and the other half in traditional 401(k)s. The Roth contributions wouldn't be eligible for a tax deduction. Chicago Tribune This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Most people don't realize that current federal and state budgets already have enough money to provide free health care to every man, woman and child in America. In fact, if our political leaders spent our money more wisely, corporations and American workers could stop paying insurance premiums tomorrow. Just check the numbers from 2015: Medicare, the health insurance plan for the elderly, cost $646.2 billion. Medicaid, which goes mostly to children, women and the impoverished elderly, cost $554.3 billion. The Veterans Administration spent $64.6 billion, while the Department of Defense paid out $41.7 billion. The Children's Health Insurance Program, an expanded program for poor kids, was another $14 billion. That's $1.32 trillion in taxpayer money spent on health care for just 148 million Americans. Divide that among 321 million Americans, and it comes to $4,110 each. Other industrialized countries manage to cover all citizens for an average of $3,620 each, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the U.S. spends $9,024 a year, the highest in the developed world, and still has 28.5 million people without insurance. For that high, high price, we get an unhealthy population, short life expectancies, high infant mortality and very low patient satisfaction. But there is a bright spot for some: American doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug manufacturers are the most profitable in the world. So what do other countries do to get lower health costs and healthier populations? That's the question Robert Morgan, professor of management at the University of Texas School of Public Health, asks graduate students every year. Morgan's students analyze health care delivery systems in Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. At the end of the semester, they draft plans for applying those systems to the United States to improve health and guarantee universal coverage. Morgan allowed me to sit in on three student presentations where the class discussed each system's pros and cons. In Taiwan and the UK, the government pays the bills, eliminating the need for insurance companies. In the UK, doctors and hospitals are operated by the government, eliminating another middle man for what Americans call socialized medicine. In Taiwan health care providers are independent, which is similar to the Medicare for All model. Germany and Japan also mandate coverage, but allow nonprofit insurance companies to administer plans. Health care providers remain private. Switzerland also mandates coverage, but allows each canton, or province, to customize a health system that fits. Mandatory coverage was the biggest cost-saver, boosting efficiency through preventative care and electronic health records linked to ID cards. Universal access where providers can access any patient's records also boosted satisfaction rates. All the systems also keep costs down by capping prices, similar to Medicare. But the problems with each plan are the interesting part. The UK's national system creates an economy of scale to keep costs down, but the program doesn't cover all treatments and waiting lists for elective procedures can get long. Politicians in Taiwan, meanwhile, have created a huge deficit because they don't want to raise taxes or limit benefits. Germany, Japan and Switzerland can also skimp by American standards. For example, patients with basic coverage must share hospital rooms. Patients can pay more for premium services, but that comes at a significant cost on top of the basic plans, which are expensive compared to other rich nations. Taiwan had the lowest cost per person at $2,546 a year, while Switzerland had the highest at $6,787. Only Taiwan's system ranked lower than the U.S. for patient health, according to The Lancet, Britain's top medical journal. I asked the students for their conclusion, and they agreed that the U.S. has the worst system, both medically and economically. And they are right, because Americans are getting price-gouged at every step of our for-profit health system. If we are serious about improving the American economy, health care can no longer consume 17.8 percent of gross domestic product. That means slashing prices everywhere, from doctor and hospital fees, to insurance premiums and deductibles, to drugs and medical devices. Neither Obamacare nor Trumpcare, though, even attempt such an overhaul because well-financed lobbyists won't allow it. The bill passed by the House last week, in fact, does not cut costs and will only guarantee that Americans will get less care for each dollar spent. Health care industry profits, though, will soar. No health care system is perfect. But ours is particularly inefficient and needs bigger changes than anyone is talking about right now. In the meantime, we're getting ripped off. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 Bebeto Matthews/STF Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Seth Wenig/STF Show More Show Less WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court has upheld as lawful the government's bailout of American International Group in the heat of the financial crisis. It overturned a lower-court decision favoring the insurance giant's former CEO. The ruling Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said a company controlled by ex-AIG chief Maurice Greenberg, Starr International, didn't have a legal right to pursue its claim against the government. Greenberg had alleged that the $85 billion bailout of the teetering AIG in September 2008 violated the Constitution's Fifth Amendment by taking control of the company without "just compensation." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Steve Wozniak took the stage Tuesday at the Marriott Marquis Houston to unveil new products on a slowly spinning pedestal. It wasn't a set of smarter gadgets, but two Serta Simmons mattresses sold only at Mattress Firm. The Apple co-founder brought Silicon Valley flare to the event, meant to bolster the Houston-based bedding retailer's reputation for innovative products despite its recent split with one of the nation's most prominent mattress makers. Mattress Firm is marketing technology. One of the new products, the Serta iComfort TempTouch, is designed to address overheating with memory foam containing gel coolant. The other, the Simmons Beautyrest Black Hybrid, targets comfort and support with memory foam and pocketed coils. "The most successful tech companies understand human life better and make it easier," Wozniak said. "What does a person need in their sleep? That's an important part of your life." The debut comes less than four months after Mattress Firm lost a key contract with Tempur Sealy, a major mattress manufacturer that produces well-known, higher-margin lines including Tempur-Pedic. The company terminated its relationship with Mattress Firm earlier this year after the retailer demanded costly contractual changes. In response, Mattress Firm expanded its partnership with Serta Simmons, the nation's largest mattress maker. As part of the five-year deal, the companies agreed to develop new product lines and jointly invest $100 million in marketing. Some of those marketing dollars came into play Tuesday, the official launch of Mattress Firm's "Technology to Power Off" campaign. Wozniak, intrigued by the cooling technology, admitted in an interview that he often sheds layers, once venturing outside in Antarctica wearing shorts. In sleep, he said, he tends to reject the covers while his wife huddles beneath them. "I care so much about finding a decent bed," he said. With the new product lines, Serta Simmons will sell even more products through Mattress Firm, the nation's largest bedding retailer with more than a 20 percent market share. The manufacturer has boosted its U.S. production to meet higher demand from the retailer as it purges its stores of Tempur Sealy brands. "Clearly, Mattress Firm thinks it can replace a lot of the lost sales volume with these products," said Wedbush analyst Seth Basham. Already, Serta Simmons has produced some of the retailer's fastest-growing product lines in recent years. The manufacturer makes several premium memory foam lines, including the Beautyrest Black series, that compete with popular Tempur Sealy brands. Still, analysts predicted that both Mattress Firm and Tempur Sealy would face significant challenges immediately after the split. Tempur-Pedic, which acquired Sealy in 2013, sold mattresses through the retailers for more than a decade and became one of its largest suppliers. Mattress Firm CEO Ken Murphy admitted that the shift had been tumultuous but ultimately provided his company an "opportunity to reset." Tempur Sealy, he added, "no longer carried the degree of innovation and value" his company plans to deliver to customers through its new partnership. "If you have to go through a little near-term pain with all the change and transition, we think we're better for it in the end," he said. As part of its product launch, Mattress Firm also announced a limited partnership with Purple Bed, a manufacturer that ships its products directly to consumers. Bed-in-a-box manufacturers have gained market share in recent years, but many customers still seek to test a mattress before buying it, Murphy said. The new products up the competition in the mattress market. Basham said manufacturers, which have long promoted "revolutionary" sleep technology, have made strides in recent years in developing better support and comfort systems with memory foam, coils or a combination of the two. Tempur Sealy, for example, also has hybrid lines with cooling systems. The company last week reported lower earnings in the first quarter, but it noted sales to retailers other than Mattress Firm increased nearly 20 percent in March, an indication that it could recoup some of its lost sales in the coming months. I have a friend who's an adventurous eater and loves a nice glass of wine. The problem is, we are not good dining companions for one reason only: She refuses to eat at a restaurant bar. This friend finds distasteful the very things I love about bar dining - she isn't interested in making conversation with a bartender or the people around her; she dislikes sitting on bar-height chairs; she doesn't want to see the theatrical "guts" of an open kitchen or mixology machinations. And, to me her most egregious lapse in judgment, she thinks bar menus are a restaurant's sloppy seconds. Her loss. Although, given today's strong bar-food programs, I might be able to change her mind about the last of her complaints. Throughout the country, chefs are placing a greater emphasis on bar menus with shareable plates and "snack size" portions loaded with creativity - perfectly paired for wines by the glass, craft cocktails and boutique beers. Modern bar bites have grown up considerably from simple wings and sliders, and they come as restaurants are reporting a growing business in afternoon snacking. The NPD Group says visits to restaurants during snack occasions (think weekday happy-hour times) rose 3 percent last year at the same time that lunch business fell 2 percent. In Houston, a growing number of chefs are finding new life in the bar menu. They're creating items specifically for the bar - and not offered in the main dining room - or available only during happy-hour times and at happy-hour prices. These menus are not culinary castoffs but imaginative directions designed to shine in an atmosphere where the energy is high and the conversations sparkle like a glass of happy-hour prosecco. In Montrose, Riel restaurant from chef Ryan Lachaine recently introduced a small-bites menu available from 5-7 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. Though aimed at building a happy-hour business, the menu is a way to taste the Riel experience before the dining room fills up for dinner. And with plates priced at $8 plus discounted wine, the foodie customer comes out the winner. Though it would have been easy to simply "cop out and just do cheap alcohol," Lachaine said there was thought put into bar food that is a festive extension of his well-reviewed dinner menu. That means a Montreal smoked brisket sandwich, crawfish rolls, tempura cauliflower and alligator karaage. "We wanted something different and a little more fun," he said. "And it's fun for us, too, to do those cool bar snacks; it helps us stay creative." The mobbed upstairs lounge at Le Colonial opened without a specific bar menu. Instead, hungry drinkers had to order appetizers from the downstairs dinner menu. That changed recently when the River Oaks District restaurant began a new "social hour" with a dedicated bar-bites menu (each $8) available only in the lounge. Already, the banh mi sliders are a hit, said Martin Theis, director of operations. That menu, available 5-7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, includes food aimed at drinkers who want a nibble instead of committing to options off the dining-room menu. The bar dishes include crispy chicken wings stuffed with minced pork and served with tamarind lemongrass sauce; shrimp and rice vermicelli rolls; and Vietnamese-style french fries dusted with five spices and served with a spicy aioli. "There's a desire for the lounge experience," said Theis, explaining that the menu is suited for those who prefer the bar scene and want to eat lighter. And, he added, reservations can be made for the bar area. "Over the past month, we've seen more of a shift toward reservation to eat in the lounge." Those same barflies are why some of the city's most popular restaurants have bar-specific menus. At Kiran's, chef Kiran Verma is offering Kingfisher beer-battered fried calamari with vindaloo aioli, lamb sliders with masala fries, spinach chips with tamarind chutney, vindaloo meatballs and tandoori chicken satay with spicy peanut sauce - all at the bar in her handsome new restaurant. Newly minted James Beard Award-winning chef Hugo Ortega has bar menus at all his restaurants, including his Oaxacan-flavored Xochi, where guests can nibble on toasted masa pancakes with chicken and black mole; crispy pork ribs in red chile mole; shrimp tostadas; and braised beef cheeks with mole pasilla. The prices are $7-$8. The bar-only happy-hour menu is truly a happy thing at State Fare Kitchen & Bar, where all bites are $5 (3-6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays), including jalapeno poppers, salmon crudo, smoked chicken nachos, short rib poutine and spicy chicken tenders. SaltAir's happy-hour menu continues chef Brandi Key's love of familiar bites treated with creative flair. There are mini yellowfin tuna tacos; grilled beef satay with ginger, garlic and spicy peanut sauce; shrimp tempura with ponzu sauce; and a half avocado with corn salad, lime and cotija cheese. All are deliciously priced at $6 and can be had with a $5 glass of wine from 3-6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. And at Killen's Steakhouse, chef Ronnie Killen has bar-only delights available during happy hour that are worth the drive to Pearland: shrimp po'boy sliders, chicken-fried steak bites with shoestring onions, lobster tacos and brisket chili nachos built with house-made tortilla chips. Killen's happy-hour food ($8-$14) isn't limited to a narrow window: It's available 3:30 p.m. to closing Mondays and Tuesdays and 3:30-6 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays. The evolution of the bar-food menu has reached a new significance with the opening of Better Luck Tomorrow, the new "bar with food" concept from former Oxheart chef Justin Yu and Houston bartending sage Bobby Heugel. The Heights hot spot - offering 10 plates that marry well to 10 proprietary cocktails - serves essentially bar-style dishes presented as the bar's only food offerings. So no matter where you sit, you are eating what is essentially bar food. But how many bar-bites menus in this town are created by a James Beard Award-winning chef? At BLT, Yu's guiding theme was to offer plates with one main flavor intensified - a zing intended to be as direct and tasty as the cocktails that Heugel created with seasonal, farm-fresh produce and herbs. The food options include marinated East Coast oysters served with rye crackers; a salad of warm snap peas, celery, mint and horseradish; a flatbread of yogurt-marinated cucumbers seasoned with dukkah and lemon; a salad of heritage chicken, greens, and warm bread crumbs; and a plate of charred spring squash with herb dressing. There's also spiced crispy fried potatoes; burrata with spring onions and bagna cauda; a Tuscan-style stew of beans and wilted greens; crispy chicken with pickled cabbage; and a patty melt (called the Party Melt). Dishes are $8-$16. "Bobby pushes himself and his employees on the bar side. And then for us to try to match the intensity with the food is something that ends up being a little more thoughtful," said Yu, adding that he loves eating at restaurant bars. "We came up with a menu that is fun to eat, fun to share, and fun to take pictures of. We just wanted to bring a level of joy to the food." A male suspect is at large after robbing a Jack in the Box in the Heights on Tuesday night. The robber headed around 9:35 p.m. to the Jack-in-the-Box at 2001 North Shepherd Drive, said Houston Police Department spokesman Victor Senties. An employee at the register was helping another customer. The robber banged on the front counter to get the employee's attention, Senties said. The employee spun around to find the robber pointing a gun at him. The robber demanded money from the register. The employee gave it to him. The robber then fled the fast food joint without firing a shot. REPEAT OFFENSE: Alvin gun store hit by robbers, again There were no injuries, Senties said. Police believe the robber may have left in a vehicle, but did not have a description Wednesday morning. The robber's face was covered with a stocking while he was inside of the restaurant. Tuesday's robbery comes just weeks after a police shootout at a northwest Houston Jack in the Box that left a teen dead and landed three others behind bars. Despite the recent crime spree, HPD data has shown a drop in restaurant robberies over the past two years. In the first three months of 2017, there were 52 robberies of Houston fast-food restaurants, down by a third compared to the same period in 2016. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Like any good huntsman, Chris Shepherd can be methodical about his prey. He finds out-of-the-way spots where trophy specimens might lurk; he makes maps and plots out often lengthy courses of attack; and he waits patiently for just the right time to pull the trigger. But the James Beard Award-winning chef isn't toting a shotgun when he goes out on his quests. Instead, it's a wallet full of cash. This might be the lucky day he bags a biggie by running into a well-hidden cache of bourbon. Shepherd, the chef/owner of the acclaimed Underbelly and the inventive One Fifth in Montrose, is rather a new convert to the connoisseur sport of collectible whiskey. Although the deep stash in the bungalow he shares with his girlfriend, publicist Lindsey Brown, may suggest otherwise. Shepherd began collecting about three years ago, after friends introduced him to some midcentury-bottled bourbon whose taste was "mind blowing." That revelatory experience - something that most brown spirits collectors share - set Shepherd on a course of acquisition that soon started filling his house with bottle upon bottle of whiskey; mostly bourbon, with some good rye, scotch and Japanese whiskey thrown into the deep amber mix. Soon his collection was gaining in variety, including a shelf devoted to High Wire New Southern Revival Bourbon, made by a craft distiller out of Charleston, S.C., using heirloom corn and Carolina Gold rice. It's the type of hooch his friend, Charleston-based superchef Sean Brock, would approve of - something with indigenous roots that speaks of a place and a particular craft. Shepherd's taste for bourbon led him to start seeking out-of-the-way neighborhood liquor stores where old bottles of whiskey, cloaked in dust, were hiding in untrafficked corners or forgotten in stockrooms and attics. (He won't divulge his "honey holes," not even to his friends.) "At first, I didn't drink a lot of bourbon, but I wanted to taste what people are making - the different styles and flavors," he says. "Then it became all about the hunt. I like to hunt." For someone who says he "was always the vodka/soda guy," Shepherd fell easily into whiskey. That drive to amass was probably with him since childhood when, as a pre-teen, he owned a lot of "Star Wars" action figures. As an adult and young chef there was a passion for knives. "Oh, and shoes," he admits. "I have a small addiction to New Balance sneakers." Shepherd's evolved palate quickly had him discerning flavors from homegrown spirits of yore that suggested distinctly American terroir. "It's tasting history for me," he says of some of his more prized bourbons. "This is Southern history at its best. It's an American thing, and an American Southern thing. This is our past; our history. It's part of our lives." There's a bottle of Nathan Stone Kentucky Straight Bourbon bottled by Julian Van Winkle III in 1990 that Shepherd's trying to get his hands on. It was bottled for only one year for the Japanese market and never made again. Shepherd by no means considers himself an expert in the field. "I have tons to learn," he says. But with that learning comes more collecting. "I just don't know where to put it anymore." One problem with the thrill of the hunt: it can get intense. "I have the same problem with wine, too," he admits. Good thing Shepherd and Brown have recently purchased a larger home nearby, which they plan to customize. On the list of must-haves? A bourbon and wine room. *** A few of Shepherd's favorites, from his collection: Henry McKenna 10 Year Straight Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey "Such an amazing bottle for the price. Bottled-in-bond bourbon for around $30, and very few people know about it." High Wire Distilling Jimmy Red Corn Cask Strength Bourbon "High Wire is in Charleston, one of my favorite cities in the country. These guys are producing amazing spirits using heirloom corns and grains. The Jimmy Red is one of the most delicious whiskeys I have tried as of late." Ancient Age 10 Year Old "Traditionally, a bottom shelf bourbon. In the early 2000s, they dropped one of the Ancients and the 10-year designate. They still release small amounts, and it is worth the hunt." W.L. Weller 12 Year Old Bourbon "A few years back, this was an easy find. Then someone said it was "baby Pappy (Van Winkle)," and it's now become a mythical creature." Pre-1980s Old Grand Dad "You have to find your own way when finding the old dusties. It's not easy but worth it. But be careful, it's a rabbit hole that you might not want to go down." Immigrants in Houston commemorated Mothers' Day on Wednesday, May 10, the date it is celebrated in Mexico, with a march against the SB 4, the "show me your papers" bill recently signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Also known as "the sanctuary city bill," it penalizes local police agencies that refuse to perform certain immigration-enforcement duties. About a hundred people, mostly mothers dressed in white, marched along Harwin Street on the west side of Houston, an area heavily populated by immigrants. "In many of our families, our mothers are our leaders," said march organizer Cesar Espinosa, director of FIEL Houston (Immigrant Families and Students in the Struggle). "This is only the beginning of a long legal battle," he said. "It is our duty to support our community in their efforts to organize and fight for their right to live free in the state which they call home." Critics say that SB 4 is similar to a controversial law passed in Arizona in 2010 requiring officers to ask for documentation to verify the immigration status of detainees. Under SB 4, officers can verify the immigration status of detainees at any time, including during traffic stops, and turn undocumented people over to immigration authorities. Currently, that's done only when a person is jailed. With the new bill, "more than 800,000 Texas children are in danger of losing one or both parents," Espinosa said. "A massive deportation of parents could cause a major strain on the Texas system, since many families could be left in jeopardy with children relying on government assistance." "Don't separate our families," Wendy Barrientos, a Honduran mother of three, shouted during the march. "We have no future in our country [of origin]," she said. "Our U.S. citizens children have rights to stay together with their parents. We come to this country to work and we are not criminals. We are good people." Maria Gonzalez, a Mexican mother of four, said she wants to tell Gov. Abbott that the new law "is going to be a disaster for individuals, for the police, and for the state. No one is going to win. The only winners with this law are going to be the criminals... What confidence we are going to have to talk with the police when we are in fear of being deported?" Aura Espinosa, a Mexican mother of three children who participated in the march, said she is concerned that the law would allow racial profiling: "Hard-working people are going to be asked for documents just because of the color of their skin; people are going to be frightened and scared of the police." Ximena Magana, a student of the University of Houston from Mexico, said she was marching to "protest for my mother's rights as a working woman in this country who doesn't deserve to be discriminated by the SB 4." Magana added that "we have to recognize that mothers work arduously and Latino mothers are going to be the most affected by the SB 4. With this march, we want people to see their faces -- the faces of our working mothers." SB 4 has generated numerous protests. At one on May 1, in front of Abbott's office, more than 20 people were arrested. The bill is expected to face several challenges in court. The first one was announced on Monday, filed in court by members of the League of United Latin American Citizens in the town of El Cenizo, near Texas' border with Mexico. Critics argue that the bill will discourage undocumented immigrants from cooperating with local authorities in detriment of the safety of local communities. They also say the law will overload the work of police officers and drain resources from already underfunded agencies. Supporters of the bill disagree. While signing the bill Sunday, Abbott said that his top priority is public safety, and "this bill furthers that objective by keeping dangerous criminals off our streets." *** Ana Khan-Dorante contributed to this story. Olivia.Tallet@chron.com Twitter: @oliviaptallet The letter reads: Dear Governor Abbott: On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the undersigned national civil and human rights organizations, we write to express our strong disappointment over the enactment of S.B. 4, a bill that threatens to drastically and unwisely expand the involvement of state and local law enforcement authorities in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. This bill raises profound legal, constitutional, and public policy concerns that must be addressed. S.B. 4 was initially described by proponents as a measure to stop so-called "sanctuary city" policies, such as those that prevent state and local law enforcement agencies from complying with "detainer" requests i.e., requests to hold suspected immigration law violators in custody longer than they would normally be detained in criminal justice proceedings issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This in itself is highly problematic, as detainer requests have been found by multiple courts to violate the Fourth Amendment because they do not provide the same due process protections as the issuance of judicial warrants. As enacted, however, S.B. 4 is significantly more expansive. It now allows law enforcement officers to investigate the immigration status of individuals during traffic stops and other routine interactions. It even goes so far as to allow the questioning of children, and even allows such questioning of vulnerable populations at places such as domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, and potentially at public schools. S.B. 4 was also amended to impose fines and possible jail time for law enforcement officials who fail to comply with detainer requests. As such, S.B. 4 will promote widespread racial profiling and outright discrimination against individuals who are perceived to be undocumented immigrants, even if they are legally present or are United States citizens. It will undermine community policing efforts by making immigrant and Latino residents afraid to report crimes or otherwise cooperate with police out of fear that they will themselves be targeted. The chiefs of police of several of Texas' largest cities voiced identical concerns that S.B. 4 as amended will make communities "more dangerous, not safer." In addition to S.B. 4's harmful consequences on public safety efforts, the legislation will also have significant and negative economic consequences for the state of Texas. After Arizona Page 2 of 3 enacted a similar law (S.B. 1070), that state was widely criticized and even boycotted for being an unwelcoming state to immigrants and those perceived to be immigrants. The negative publicity resulted in the loss of $490 million in tourism revenue in a single year, as well as the loss of 3,000 tourism-related jobs. Another similar law in Alabama (H.B. 56) wound up costing the state up to $11 billion, including drastic losses in tax revenues, and resulted in the loss of some 140,000 jobs. Texas runs the risk of a similar economic fallout now that S.B. 4 has been enacted. Finally, S.B. 4 raises significant legal and constitutional concerns that will be closely scrutinized in the courts. For these reasons, we condemn the enactment of S.B. 4. If you have any questions, please contact Rob Randhava, Senior Counsel at The Leadership Conference, at (202) 466-3311, or any of the organizations listed below. Sincerely, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (and 58 other organizations). Throughout the 2016 presidential election, both Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump were featured as exemplary progeny. In fact, when asked at the second debate to "name one positive thing you respect" about your opponent, Hillary Clinton was quick to answer: "I respect [Trump's] children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald." The behavior of the children of presidential candidates (and presidents) has always fascinated the media and general public. But what is notable in this campaign, and the subsequent Trump presidency and post-campaign life of Clinton, is the distinctive media treatment Chelsea and Ivanka have received. Both Chelsea and Ivanka are well-educated, successful businesswomen and mothers. And both have worked to support their parents' political and economic futures during the 2016 campaign. But the media treats each woman very differently. Chelsea has taken over for her mother as a "nasty woman" outspoken, willing to demand that men (and women) change their worldview. Meanwhile, Ivanka is ultrafeminine, inoffensive, nonthreatening to men (or the status quo). Both of these representations come from the wrong-headed notion that women can never be seen as equal to men, and if they begin to receive equal status (jobs, wealth, power), they must be contained. The media is quick to position Ivanka as a vapid, unworldly twit who uses femininity to forward her career. Reviews of her new book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules of Success have been dismal. Adjectives used to describe the book include "insufferable," "innocuous," and "bland." Constance Grady discusses how Ivanka's book attempts to strike a different tone and set of values from her brazen (or vitriolic) father, but in many ways what she produces is far more sinister than his bigoted rants. Grady states: Insofar as she has one, [Ivanka] Trump's signature move is to find a name that signifies cosmopolitan prestige that tells readers that she is educated and polished and thoughtful and then sand away any undesirable thoughts or attitudes that might accompany those names. Everything [...] is subsumed into inoffensive, vague niceness. Much like her handbag and clothing line, Ivanka is presented to the U.S. public as a facade, a knockoff something easy on the eyes, but eminently forgettable. Getty Images At the same time the media is diminishing Ivanka Trump, they are vilifying Chelsea Clinton by branding her a self-indulgent shrew. In a particularly ruthless article in Vanity Fair, T.A. Frank states: "What comes across with Chelsea, for lack of a gentler word, is self-regard of an unusual intensity. And the effect is stronger on paper." The article goes on to critique her first book (a memoir) where, according to Frank, she provides examples of her own narcissism, a trait that leads her to desperately seek out "fashionability." Instead of seeing Chelsea as a product of her upbringing, Frank sees her as a myopic liberal, but a potentially dangerous one after all, the Clintons might be poised to be the next U.S. political dynasty. Frank's sentiments echo those of other media outlets, many of them demanding that Clinton firmly declare whether she is running for political office in the near future. The claims regarding Chelsea's outspoken, liberal self-indulgence are quite different from the invalidation of Trump's business savvy. After all, Ivanka has landed a key advisory role in the current administration. But the representations of both women serve to undermine their current political and economic contributions. For Chelsea, it is the same rhetoric her mother faced a strong woman is a nasty woman, one you don't want to deal with. But the rhetoric surrounding Ivanka is in some ways much more insidious. As long as she is bland or innocuous, what does it matter that she might be one of the few people President Trump actually listens to? Her position as an inoffensive woman, unlike her brazen counterpart Chelsea, allows her access to even the highest levels of power without question. And it is this underestimation of Ivanka that should be called into question. Dr. Jennifer Wingard teaches rhetoric at the University of Houston. She is the author of Branded Bodies, Rhetoric, and the Neoliberal Nation-State (Lexington Books, 2013) and has been interviewed as an expert on Trump's rhetoric for stories published in USA Today, the Washington Post, ProPublica, Texas Standard and other outlets. She published "What Trump's Rhetoric Says About His Leadership" in Fortune. Bookmark Gray Matters. What comes across is a self-regard of an unusual intensity. President Donald Trump just cut off the head of Washington's most apolitical investigation into Trump campaign associates connections with Russia. To make up for it, Democrats think Congress should appoint a special investigator unbeholden to them or the Trump administration. Except, it looks like that's not going to happen. On Wednesday, one of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., basically flat-out said he wouldn't support a special investigation. The various committees in Congress already launching their investigations into Russia meddling will suffice, he said: "Today we'll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which could only serve to impede the current work being done." Republicans control the majority in both chambers of Congress, so the power to set up an outside investigation is in their hands. A growing number of Senate and House Republicans don't like that Trump fired James Comey, but only one GOP senator so far - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. - has said he'd support an independent investigation. And he's held that position for months now. There are several moderate House Republicans who also want to see a special investigation, but same thing - almost all of them already thought there should be one. No one in Washington's mind has been changed by the firing of Comey, it seems. People who were calling for a special investigator before are still calling for one after. People who weren't, still aren't. "We have a bipartisan commitment to get to the bottom of this Russian investigation," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the Senate's No. 2, said on Fox News. "Nothing will change by virtue of Director Comey's termination." Perhaps the most damning reaction so far to Comey's firing comes from the senator leading one of those investigations that GOP Senate leaders are championing. But even this person hasn't gone so far as to join Team Democrats/McCain to call for a special investigation. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said he's "troubled" by the firing of Comey, who was helping the Senate committee get necessary documents and people to conduct its own investigation. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Burr warned that the firing would "be harmful" to the committee and would likely delay their efforts to complete their investigation. But losing Comey isn't a fatal blow to his investigation, he said. "I've intended from the beginning, regardless of the hurdles that have been thrown, to finish this investigation," Burr said. Minds can change, of course. Polls taken around Trump's 100 days show that the public is hungry for an independent investigation into Russia meddling. Nearly 4 in 10 of Americans think Trump's campaign intentionally helped Russia meddle in the U.S. presidential election, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. And Americans don't really trust Congress to conduct their investigation impartially. (Caveat: Almost all this changes when you break it down along partisan lines.) Count almost every single Democrat in Congress as a skeptic of Congress's ability to do its job. After Trump fired Comey, Democrats were practically screaming that now, more than ever, there needs to be an independent investigation to keep a check on a Trump administration run amuck. Chris Van Hollen tweeted: Firing Comey has the foul stench of an attempt to stop an ongoing investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. --- "I hope the majority leader agrees with me that we need to get to the bottom of this," Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Wednesday, the entire Senate Democratic caucus seated in their desks behind him nodding their approval. "Hope" is pretty much all Democrats can do right now. Democrats took away the minority party's ability to filibuster presidential appointments in 2013, so now Trump's new FBI director will need just a majority vote in the Senate. Republicans have a slim 52-vote majority. "Basically all they can do is take their case to the public and hope that has an effect on congressional Republicans," said Josh Chafetz, a Cornell Law professor and author of an upcoming book about the reach of Congress's powers. Democrats' only other option is to try to grind the Senate to a halt on everything else, to basically frustrate McConnell and Republicans into giving in. Already, Senate Democrats have reached for a little-used tool to limit Senate committee hearings to two hours, which isn't enough time for the Senate to consider many of the top-level appointments missing from Trump's federal government right now. And Democrats can still filibuster legislation. But their leverage on both those fronts is limited, says Molly Reynolds, a congressional expert with the Brookings Institution: "It's not clear what work is pending that Senate Republicans really want to move on to that Democrats could obstruct." Republicans can get pieces of health-care reform and tax reform done without Democrats, and they were already planning to do that. What we're left with is what we started with before Comey got fired: a Senate hopelessly divided about how to move forward on a key issue, and a slight edge to Republicans on what to do next since they're the ones in power. --- The Washington Post's Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report. --- https://youtu.be/QeDvPvR_lS4 Democrats hate the fact James Comey is no longer the director of the FBI (and head of the investigation into the Trump administration's ties to Russia), but they are in a position to do little about it. President Donald Trump can nominate a replacement, and Senate Republicans could conceivably appoint that replacement over every single Senate Democrats' objections. It only takes a majority vote to approve presidential nominations (thanks to Democrats ending this part of the filibuster in 2013). Senate Republicans have a slim, 52-vote majority. But this is not a given. Senate Republicans are not universally applauding Trump's firing of his FBI director in the middle of the FBI's investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Nor are they universally condemning it. Where GOP senators fall on either side of that line could mean the difference for Trump whether he gets his wish of a new FBI director, or the opposite of what he wanted: Republicans agree to appoint a special prosecutor. Here's an early rundown of where GOP senators stand. - - - Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, which is doing its own investigation into Russia, is "troubled" Trump fired Comey. From Burr's perspective, there was no justifiable reason to let him go in the middle of a critical investigation. He tweeted: Dir. Comey has been more forthcoming w/ information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intel committees. In a second tweet, Burr added: His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation. Here's Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Director Comey has been the public face representing thousands of committed law enforcement officers and civil servants within the intelligence community. In the days ahead, the American people need clarity and deserve an explanation for his immediate firing." Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: ""While the President has the legal authority to remove the Director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office. James B. Comey is a man of honor and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances." And Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "While the case for removal of Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James B. Comey laid out by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein was thorough, his removal at this particular time will raise questions. It is essential that ongoing investigations are fulsome and free of political interference until their completion, and it is imperative that President Trump nominate a well-respected and qualified individual to lead the bureau at this critical time." These Senate Republicans are giving early indications they're not comfortable with Trump firing Comey in the first place, so it's a safe assumption they're going to be very circumspect about whom Trump nominates to replace him. And that could be a big problem for Trump, since the other option for Senate Republicans is to appoint an independent committee or prosecutor instead to investigate Russia. Some House Republicans - who don't get to vote on Comey's replacement - are backing these skeptics up. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., a conservative House Freedom Caucus member, said he's considering drafting legislation for Congress to set up an independent commission to investigate Trump and Russia. (But there are a whole lotta steps in between "considering drafting" and actually successfully getting Congress to vote to set up an independent commission.) - - - But other Senate Republicans saw things through Trump's perspective: Comey had made several mistakes with political implications (like mis-testifying to Congress last week about his reason for re-upping Hillary Clinton's emails before the election), and maybe it'd be better to start over. Here's Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of Senate leadership: "Director Comey has served the country well in a number of different roles. Many, including myself, have questioned his actions more than once over the past year. I believe new leadership at the FBI will restore confidence in the organization and among the people who do the hard work to carry out its mission." And here's Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., normally a Trump antagonist: "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests." Trump needs pretty much all but two Senate Republicans to fall into this list. So far, most are staying silent - - - Perhaps the Senate Republican with the most say in what happens next had not much to say at all in the hours after Comey's firing. Here's Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., being noncommittal one way or the other: "Once the Senate receives a nomination, we look forward to a full, fair and timely confirmation process to fill the Director position. This is a critical role that is especially important as America faces serious threats at home and abroad." What McConnell and all GOP senators say in the days ahead will likely determine whether Trump's decision to fire Comey plays out well for the president - or backfires. WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, at the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials who said he had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly and in doing so damaged the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department. The startling development comes as Comey was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with the U.S. presidential election last year. It wasn't immediately clear how Comey's ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, would be the acting director of the FBI. As a presidential candidate, Trump explicitly criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in the Clinton probe while at other points praising Comey for his "guts." "The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in the White House briefing room. The firing is effective "immediately," he said. Matt McClain/The Washington Post Comey was in Los Angeles on Tuesday on a recruiting trip. Officials said Comey was fired because senior Justice Department officials concluded that he had violated Justice Department principles and procedures last year by publicly discussing the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Democrats have long argued that Comey's decisions in the months and days before the election hurt Clinton's standing with voters and affected the outcome, but the president and his closest advisers had argued that Comey went too easy on Clinton and her aides. Just last week, Trump publicly accused Comey of giving Clinton "a free pass for many bad deeds'' when he decided not to recommend criminal charges in the case. Officials released a Tuesday memo from the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, laying out the rationale behind Comey's dismissal and attributing it all to his handling of the Clinton case. Officials said Rosenstein began examining Comey's conduct shortly after being sworn into office two weeks ago. "The FBI's reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice," Rosenstein wrote. "I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives." - - - But Democrats immediately linked the dismissal to the Russia probe. "The decision by a President whose campaign associates are under investigation by the FBI for collusion with Russia to fire the man overseeing that investigation, upon the recommendation of an Attorney General who has recused himself from that investigation, raises profound questions about whether the White House is brazenly interfering in a criminal matter," Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. The House committee is looking into Russian interference in the election. Some Republicans were also concerned. "I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also examining Russian meddling. "I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee." There were multiple calls by Democrats on Tuesday night for the appointment of a special prosecutor to lead the Russia investigation and take the matter out of the hands of Justice Department leadership. In an attempt to pressure Republicans to join calls for an independent prosecutor, Senate Democrats have been asked by Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to be in the Senate chamber at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday when the legislative day begins. In a late-night tweet Tuesday, Trump targeted Schumer. "Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp," the president wrote. Trump plans to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday. It will be the first face-to-face contact between the president and a senior official of the Russian government. Rosenstein wrote in the memo that when Comey announced on July 5 that he had decided not to recommend charges in the Clinton case, he did so "without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders. Compounding the error, the director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation . . . we never release it gratuitously . . . It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do." Rosenstein was also critical of Comey's decision to reveal in late October that the Clinton email probe had resumed, and he dismissed the FBI director's recent defense to Congress that not doing so would have effectively been to "conceal" important information. " 'Conceal' is a loaded term that misstates the issue," Rosenstein wrote. "When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment." In a letter to Trump, Sessions said that he agreed Comey had to go. "I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI,'' Sessions wrote. "I must recommend that you remove Director James B. Comey, Jr. and identify an experienced and qualified individual to lead the great men and women of the FBI.'' But in October - when Sessions was a senator supporting Trump, and Comey revealed less than two weeks before the election that he had reopened the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server - Sessions applauded the decision in an appearance on Fox Business Network. "He had an absolute duty, in my opinion, 11 days or not, to come forward with the new information that he has and let the American people know that, too," Sessions said at the time. Nothing in the Rosenstein memo suggests that the Clinton investigation will be reopened. Tuesday afternoon, White House aide Keith Schiller, who has long served Trump as a bodyguard, visited FBI headquarters to hand-deliver Trump's dismissal letter to Comey's office, although the director wasn't there to receive it, officials said. Trump wrote to Comey: "You are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately.'' The president added: "While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.'' The news stunned Washington. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Comey's decisions "have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI.'' The senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, compared Tuesday's developments to the Watergate scandal and said the actions "reek of a coverup and appear to be part of an ongoing effort by the Trump White House to impede the investigation into Russian ties and interference in our elections.'' Over the past two years, Comey had assumed an extraordinary role in Washington - overseeing not one, but two investigations involving presidential candidates. In some ways, that made him more powerful than the Justice Department officials to whom he reported. After Clinton lost to Trump, many Democrats blamed Comey for what they viewed as his unprecedented interference in the election process, but most later came to see him as an independent figure in the Trump administration who would be critical to a fair and thorough investigation of any possible ties between Russia and Trump associates. - - - Several current and former officials said the relationship between the White House and the FBI had been strained for months, in part because administration officials were pressuring Comey to more aggressively pursue leak investigations over disclosures that embarrassed the White House and raised questions about ties with Russia. That pressure was described as conversational challenges to FBI leadership to pursue the source of leaks seen as damaging to the administration, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Although the FBI is investigating disclosures of classified information, the bureau has resisted calls to prioritize leak investigations over the Russia matter, or probe matters that did not involve leaks of classified or otherwise sensitive information, the officials said. "The administration has been putting pressure on the FBI to focus more on the leaks and weren't satisfied with the results,'' said a former senior U.S. official familiar with the matter. A current official said administration figures have been "very aggressive'' in pressuring the FBI. The Justice Department inspector general has been investigating how Comey and his top deputy handled the Clinton probe, though that investigation is expected to continue for months. Shortly before the announcement, the FBI notified Congress by letter that Comey had misstated key findings involving the Clinton email investigation during testimony last week, but nothing about that issue suggested it might imperil Comey's job. - - - The Washington Post's David Weigel and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report. --- Video: Comey testifies on Clinton emails, Russia and WikiLeaks: Short URL: http://wapo.st/2pZp2Vl - - - Video: Trump fires FBI Director Comey President Trump informed FBI Director James Comey he had been dismissed on May 9, stemming from a conclusion by Justice Department officials that he had mishandled the probe of Hillary Clinton's emails. (Bastien Inzaurralde / The Washington Post) Short URL: http://wapo.st/2q41v2U Embed code: This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate After three months at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, it seemed Cynthia McGuffie had run out of time. Her heart was failing. No replacement had come. And, like many patients, her petite frame had disqualified her from receiving a bulky artificial heart, which wouldn't have fit in her shallow chest cavity. She had weeks, if not days, to live. Then her doctors came to her with an idea: If she agreed to participate in an experimental trial, she might qualify for an artificial heart, after all. The operation in September lasted five hours. Within days, McGuffie was sitting up in bed, wires protruding from her chest, connecting the electronic device inside her to a portable, battery-powered pump. In November, shortly before Thanksgiving, she became just the third patient in the country and the first in Texas to be sent home from a hospital after receiving a new, smaller version of the standard artificial heart. "How has your life changed since receiving this device?" her surgeon, Dr. Jeffrey Morgan, asked during a checkup in December. "Say again," McGuffie said, asking the doctor to raise his voice to be heard over the constant sound of the backpack-sized pump she must carry everywhere. Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! The noise now defines her life. "I wouldn't have a life without it," McGuffie said. Nearly four decades after acclaimed surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley performed the first implantation of a wholly artificial heart at St. Luke's, the life-saving technology remains out of reach for many. Although the devices have gotten smaller and more efficient since then, they are still too big for many patients, including children, Morgan said. "Fortunately for Miss McGuffie, we've seen a couple of significant advances recently in artificial heart technology, giving new hope to a lot of patients," said Morgan, the director of mechanical circulatory support and cardiac transplant at Texas Heart Institute. "It's only been for a year or two that a patient can actually go home with an artificial heart. That - combined with this new development of a smaller artificial heart - has really been a game changer." The device, the 50cc SynCardia Total Artificial Heart, has not been formally approved by the Food and Drug Administration but can be used as part of clinical trials. Baylor St. Luke's is among only a few hospitals in the country that has implanted the device. Artificial hearts often are used as a temporary fix, keeping patients alive long enough to receive a traditional heart transplant. But in some cases, Morgan said, the machines are used as a "destination therapy." In other words, patients rely on the device for the rest of their lives. Some survive for years like that, Morgan said. That could be the case for McGuffie, 55, whose small size and high antibody count have made it difficult to find a suitable donor heart, though she's still holding out hope. She carries the battery-powered pump in a backpack at all times, its rhythmic whooshing trailing her through the house. Since returning to her home in Houston last month, she and her husband, Ed McGuffie, have gotten used to the sound. "We sleep right through it now," he said. McGuffie said she feels nearly as well as she did before she was diagnosed with heart disease three years ago. "I'm back to 90 percent," she told Morgan during the December checkup. She's working to rebuild strength after so many months confined to a bed. It feels good to exercise, she said. She even likes to get up and jog. "You're jogging with the device?" Morgan said, sounding shocked. "Just in place," McGuffie said. "That's about all I can do for now." Six months, even that would have been unthinkable. FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress last week he found "hundreds and thousands" of Hillary Clinton-related emails from Clinton aide Huma Abedin on Abedin's then-husband and former sexting congressman Anthony Weiner's computer. It turns out that's wrong. ProPublica and now The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the FBI found a much smaller number of Abedin-Clinton emails on her ex-husband's computer than "hundreds and thousands." Besides severely damaging Comey's nonpartisan reputation, here's why the number of emails on Weiner's computer matters: It risks undercutting the FBI's entire reason for notifying Congress 11 days before the election that it had found new information regarding its criminal probe of Clinton. Top Democrats are pretty sure that letter cost them the election. So to learn that Comey's decision to send it may have rested on far fewer emails than he claims adds rocket fuel to their argument that President Donald Trump didn't win fair and square: Comey helped him by dinging Clinton for no good reason. The FBI technically never reopened its criminal probe into whether Clinton should be charged with a crime for her, in Comey's words, "extremely careless" treatment of classified information. But "the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation," Comey told Congress in an earth-shattering Oct. 28 letter that immediately leaked to the media. More for you Trump dismisses FBI director Comey Two days before the election, Comey updated Congress that the emails amounted to nothing that would lead the FBI to change its recommendation that the government not charge Clinton with a crime. But Democrats believe the damage was done: Voters skeptical of Clinton were reminded of why they didn't like her, and voters who already weren't going to vote for Clinton had a fresh reason to go to the polling booth. "I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey's letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off," Clinton said recently. Comey will probably spend the rest of his life defending his decision to tell Congress about the new Clinton emails. And the crux of his defense is that what he found on Weiner's computer necessitated it. Here's just some of Comey's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to that effect: --- [My investigators] laid out for me what they could see from the metadata on this fella Anthony Weiner's laptop that had been seized in an unrelated case. What they could see from the metadata, was that there were thousands of Secretary Clinton's emails on that device, including what they thought might be the missing emails from her first three months of secretary of state. We never found any emails from her first three months. She was using a Verizon BlackBerry then and that's obviously very important, because if there was evidence that she was acting with bad intent, that's where it would be in the first three months. . . . Somehow, her emails are being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information by her assistant, Huma Abedin. And so they found thousands of new emails and then called me the Saturday night before the election and said thanks to the wizardry of our technology, we've only had to personally read 6,000. We think we can finish tomorrow morning, Sunday. And so I met with them and they said we found a lot of new stuff. We did not find anything that changes our view of her intent. So we're in the same place we were in July. It hasn't changed our view and I asked them lots of questions and I said okay, if that's where you are, then I also have to tell Congress that we're done. Look, this is terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election. But honestly, it wouldn't change the decision. --- Democrats already weren't buying Comey's justification. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Calif., the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a top Comey skeptic, said last week: "As it turned out, not one email on the laptop changed the FBI's original conclusion that no prosecution was warranted." Now, Comey's misleading testimony has given Democrats even less of a reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Sometimes, when Judge Darrell Jordan looks down from the bench at the person before him in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit, he says he sees himself - and what could have easily been his life. The 40-year-old man in the black robe, with a custom suit and boots embroidered with his name, remembers the boy growing up in Georgia whose father was always gone and whose mother was always high. He remembers food stamps, welfare and cheap hotels. He remembers the frequent beatings, and the rudderless existence as he and his siblings virtually raised themselves. Most vividly, he recalls the day in his teens when he and a friend were walking down a grocery store aisle and a pile of fruit suddenly toppled to the ground. "We didn't touch it. It was just stacked the wrong way," Jordan says. The store manager demanded that they pick it up, and didn't believe the boys when they said they weren't responsible. He called police. Officers eventually gave the boys a ride home, but the helplessness in that moment was profound. "After that, I was just like: 'I want to be a lawyer. I never want to be in that position again.' " Of the 16 Harris County criminal court at law judges being sued for jailing people merely because they are poor, Jordan is the only one to publicly acknowledge that the entrenched system is wrong. The judge, who took the bench in January, voluntarily changed his own bond procedures, testified in federal court against the unconstitutional system utilized by his colleagues, and just days ago, tried, unsuccessfully, to unilaterally settle the individual case against him in a class-action lawsuit seeking bail reform. As I read about him, I wondered: what motivates this guy? Is it lofty ideals, a sense of justice, self-righteousness? What guides him seems to be an acute understanding of what it means to be poor, and the notion that even poor people have rights. "Even though I'm here," he told me, "I don't forget where I came from." Procession of inmates He invited me to sit beside him Monday morning as he worked through his docket. A procession of inmates came before him, charged with low-level crimes, ranging from trespassing to assault. Jordan is at the helm in his robe with a friendly, deferential manner for a former criminal defense lawyer and major in the U.S. Army Reserves. Before he begins, he leans over to explain that on this day, it won't be about proving guilt or innocence. "We're just here to talk about the bonds." One by one, they come forward. The judge asks if they have anyone to bail them out, or if they can pay. Sometimes, he says, he has to call mamas at home, right from the bench, to see how much they can afford. If no one has the money, and they pass certain criteria - no immigration holds or mental health issues - he grants a "PR bond," letting them go without cost, on their own recognizance. The judge gives one man, charged with trespassing, a PR bond. "I have a question about that," the man says. "I got a PR bond Friday. And it got denied." "Well, I approve it," Jordan says. He explains later that even if the "pre-trial services" division of the county court system recommends a PR bond, other judges often deny it. That's one of the reasons they're being sued, and one thing Jordan has tried to change. A little later, a man approaches whom the judge has seen before. He had previously given him a PR bond. "Your old case was a what?" the judge asks. "Theft," the man says. "What's the new case?" "Theft." "We're not talking about your guilt or innocence," the judge says. "I'm just saying - you're back." Jordan knows he can't keep the man locked up just to prevent him from racking up another charge Texas law doesn't allow preventative detention. But the man says he can't pay his bond, either. So the judge grants another PR bond, but this time with conditions - a curfew and a leg monitor - and sends him home to his uncle. "And hopefully, I don't see you again," says Jordan. "Can we make that agreement?" The man nods. 'No way to know' Legally, I know it's the right thing to do. But I acknowledge to Jordan later that it's a hard thing to watch. How does he know people aren't lying to his face just to go home? "There's no way to know," Jordan says. But he counters: if the guy had money, he'd have already been out. The county jail isn't a resort with all-you-can-eat shrimp and steak. It's a place most people leave as quickly as they can - if they can. He reminds me: "If a person with means comes down here and picks up a DWI today, goes back out this weekend and picks up another DWI and repeats that three weekends in a row, if they have money, they go home. That's just the nature of the system." He says programs designed to help low-level offenders - such as pretrial interventions for DWIs that could get a case dismissed - often are out-of-reach to poor people, because they require reference letters or proof of work or school enrollment. "You can't do any of that stuff if you're locked up in jail," he says. "So it is literally a justice system, one for rich people and one for everybody else." Jordan says he didn't grasp the unfairness right away. He knew, as an attorney, that many judges routinely denied PR bonds, and some would double or triple bail as punishment for being late. Jordan says he engaged in similar practices early on, until his name was added to the federal lawsuit and he took a deep dive into the law governing bail. Then he set about creating a constitutional system in his court. With the help of God As we talk in Jordan's dim office, I look around at the empty shelves and the portraits yet to be hung of Martin Luther King and the late Congressman Mickey Leland. I ask what brought him to this place. The streets, he says. And God. Eventually, in his teens, Jordan says he went to live with his father, a social worker who gave him two great gifts: structure and church. The community at the Church of Christ supported him, and he was soon leading songs, reading scripture and attending youth conferences. Rules were strictly enforced, and even on prom night, he had to be home by 10, so he wouldn't fall asleep in the pew on Sunday morning. For the first time in his life, he said, "I had a purpose." This year, when he became a judge, he found the power he craved as a child. But it's power he won't abuse - even if it means battling county leaders, and his colleagues. Other judges are adopting reforms, and some grant PR bonds - but none have spoken out as he has. "I don't condone anybody breaking the law," he says, "but I'm not going to sit here and continue an unfair system." It hurts poor people, he says, whose lives can be devastated by unnecessary jailing. But it also hurts people who will never set foot in a criminal courthouse. "We send somebody out of here hopeless and helpless," he says, "then they're coming to a neighborhood close to you." A man accused of killing his sister-in-law by beating her with a board was in the country illegally after a 2012 deportation, federal officials said Wednesday. Moises Rodriguez Ayala, 25, was charged with capital murder Monday in the April slaying of Zuleika Hernandez, 23, who was married to Ayala's brother. WASHINGTON - By the topsy-turvy standards of Donald Trump's White House, the day started quietly. Few outside Trump's inner circle on Tuesday had reason to believe it would end with the firing of FBI Director James Comey, perhaps the biggest Washington shake-up since 1973, when President Richard Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Trump had only two public meetings on his daily schedule: An intelligence briefing at 10 a.m., followed by a closed-door meeting with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. As expected, the daily press briefing with White House spokesman Sean Spicer in the afternoon was largely devoted to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the subject of a Senate hearing the day before on Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. One reporter brought up Comey: "Does the President still have confidence - full confidence - in FBI Director James Comey?" Spicer was circumspect: "I have no reason to believe - I haven't asked him. So I don't - I have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about this." The reporter pressed: "And the last time you spoke about it, you said he did have confidence, but you're not sure to say that again now?" Answered Spicer: "Well, I don't - in light of what you're telling me, I don't want to start speaking on behalf of the president without speaking to him first." Two hours later, at 4:39 p.m., White House staffers called a "lid" - usually taken as a sign that the president's public work day is over, releasing reporters and photographers. Over at the Capitol, with the House in recess, the halls were mostly empty. The sun was starting to fade over the Potomac. Then around 5:30 p.m., with rush hour in full swing, Spicer returned to the White House briefing room with a statement, surprising a small group of reporters who had stayed behind: "The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General and the deputy Attorney General regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." It hit like a thunderclap on an otherwise sunny day. A typical reaction came from Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee which has been looking into the FBI's investigation into alleged ties between Trump campaign associates and Russian intelligence agents. "I'm flabbergasted," he told Fox News. It wasn't just Democrats who were taken by surprise. Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who serves on both the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI, also reportedly received no heads-up. He found out on his iPhone. Cornyn, talking to reporters later in the Capitol, gave a guarded response. "He serves at the pleasure of the president, and while I believe Director Comey to be a good man and an honorable man, I hope the president can now find somebody who can be a strong independent leader for the department. It's really important for the country." Cornyn added this about the FBI director who has variously been accused by Republicans and Democrats of dragging the FBI into the 2016 election through his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation: "Obviously he's been the focus of a lot of controversies, and I think it is important that we have an independent director." Texas' Republican junior senator, Ted Cruz, also a member of the Judiciary panel, was similarly cautious. When reporters caught Cruz in the hallway, he declined comment, saying only, "I want to wait to review the basis of the firing and the facts and circumstances behind it." Other conservatives made clear they thought Comey's departure was overdue. "The FBI must be beyond reproach and cannot even be perceived as being politically weaponized," said Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning. But Democrats reacted with alarm, including some from Texas. "President Trump's actions are not politics as usual," said Houston U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. "At best, they represent an egregious overreach of his authority. At worst, they are a blatant attempt to derail the investigation into the collusion of Trump campaign officials with Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election." U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of San Antonio was among Democrats who likened Comey's firing to Watergate. "This Nixonian dismissal is designed to obstruct further inquiry into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Doggett said in a statement. "It is long past time for my Republican colleagues to stop covering up and start exposing Trump to an independent, nonpartisan commission." AUSTIN - Texas lawmakers have sent Gov. Greg Abbott a bill banning the state from ever setting a target on the number of students who can enroll in special education, formally rejecting the state's decade-old practice of capping how many students with disabilities would receive services. The Texas House passed Senate Bill 160 on a 145-0 vote Tuesday, following a unanimous vote in the Senate last month. The bill next heads to the governor, who has indicated he would sign the bill. The measure is the first to pass out of both chambers in reaction to a 2016 Houston Chronicle investigation that found tens of thousands of students with disabilities were denied access to special education under an arbitrary target set by the Texas Education Agency. The TEA has since discontinued the policy. "SB 160 symbolizes the thousands of children who were denied access to their rights, as well as the parents, advocates, and teachers who fought tirelessly for them only to be stymied by a misguided TEA policy," read a statement from Disability Rights Texas, which first discovered the cap. "However, the bill is more than a symbol it also statutorily holds TEA officials to their promise. The bill ensures that future TEA commissioners have no latitude to disregard students with disabilities, thereby protecting students for generations to come." The "Denied" series revealed the TEA set a de facto 8.5 percent cap for special education enrollments and punished school districts that exceeded the cap. While the nation averages 13 percent of students receiving special education services, Texas now serves the lowest percentage of special education services of any state in the country. Although the TEA has already said it would no longer use the policy, the bill would ban the state from ever again using a monitoring standard that limits a school district's or charter school's number or percentage of students enrolled in special education services. The bill does not ban the collection of data on special education, such as race or ethnic background students, tracking types of impairments, placements of students in certain special education settings and types of disciplinary actions taken against students. The series found that students with disabilities were turned away for services like tutoring and therapy due to the policy, which the TEA quietly enacted in 2004 while dealing with a $1.1 billion state budget cut. The agency imposed the policy without telling lawmakers, federal officials or the public. As many as 250,000 more students with dyslexia, autism, speech impairments and other disabilities would have received special education services had the state stayed at the national average. The U.S. Department of Education is in the midst of an investigation of the state's special education operations. Abbott tweeted last month that "Texas will fix flaws in special education." Should he approve the bill, the measure would take effect immediately. The bill is one of 16 filed in reaction to "Denied," including measures to offset the cost to school districts that see a significant increase in special education evaluations, assemble a parent advisory committee and require additional teacher training. Lawmakers in the House have since voted on a school funding bill that would give schools more money to address students with dyslexia, although that bill appears to be in jeopardy in the Senate. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN - Using teddy bears, bathing suits and puppets as tools, students as young as 5 years old could be required to undergo annual sexual assault protection training in school as a growing number of children fall prey to sexual offenders. The Texas House last week approved the idea, which comes as sexual assaults against children have risen to a high of 51,000 allegations in the last fiscal year, along with increased reports of human trafficking and record numbers of teachers accused of having inappropriate relationships with students. "It's unbelievably sick when you think about what's happening in society, my friends," said Rep. Tan Parker, a Republican from Flower Mound. In a move to counter that trend, the Texas House passed House Bill 1342, a bill supported by anti-sexual assault groups around the state that say children should be learning in school to say no to unwanted touch and feel empowered to tell a teacher or parent when someone steps over the line. Action is pending in the Senate, which would have to approve the measure before it goes to the governor's office for his consideration. The annual trainings are much like "stranger danger" lessons, experts say, although 95 percent of sexually abused children were assaulted by someone they knew, such as a relative or a neighbor. "It's soul murder," said Madeline McClure, a former therapist who said she counseled victims as young as 2 years old as they worked through sexual assault trauma. Now the president and CEO of Tex Protects, which focuses on child abuse and prevention, McClure is pushing the bill, which would allow the Texas Education Agency to select age-appropriate researched-based curriculum counselors would present to students every year from kindergarten to 12th grade. For example, one second grade lesson would teach students the difference between safe touch, like a wanted hug, and an unsafe touch, like a pinch, and an unwanted touch, like covering someone's eyes in an unwanted game of Guess Who. "How do you talk about that to kids? We have puppets," said Sylvia Orozco-Joseph, national director of WHO, or We Help Ourselves, and director of the Adolescent Symposium of Texas. 'Think their way out' WHO offers curriculum in use in Texas, including the Houston area in Cypress-Fairbanks, Spring and Fort Bend independent school districts. The lessons, which are broken up into different age levels, rely on playing out scenarios, like analyzing why one of three boys are opposed to visiting a teacher's house, or what to do when the father of a child an eighth grader baby-sits puts his hand on her shoulder in the car before driving her home. "That's what we want kids to do - to think their way out of a situation," said Orozco-Joseph, who said high school lessons include dramatizations about date rape and teen dating violence. In the lower grades, she uses puppets, like Kimberly Koala, who helps kids talk about not keeping secrets from adults, and Billy Brown Bear, who talks about touch. The state would have the power to review curriculum like this and other programs that rely on animated video lessons or scripted instruction for school districts to choose. "I have really mixed feelings about it," said Sarah Becker, an active parent at Houston Independent School District, after putting her 6, 4 and 2-year-old children to bed. "I would argue we should be teaching people not to rape people, not teaching people how to avoid it." HISD does not provide this kind of training yet and declined to comment for this story. But to Becker, requiring high school students learn how to avoid sexual assault equates to sex education, which is a good thing, and needs to be more comprehensive. Not sex education Lawmakers in the House sent the bill to the Senate on a 128-15 vote last week, but not before stripping language that referenced combating child pregnancy as part of the purpose to make the bill more palatable to Republicans. "This is not about sexual education training," said Parker, who sponsored the bill. "That is not what this is; not at all, no way, shape or form. It is exclusively training to prevent child sexual abuse. Period." Roughly 10,000 girls under 18 gave birth in Texas in 2014, the latest year which data is available, according to the Wright Family Foundation, which focuses on education for at-risk youth. Of those pregnancies, nearly 500 were to girls between 10 and 14 years old. While the number of accusations of sexual assault has climbed in recent years, the number of confirmed cases of abuse have slowly dropped to 5,640 from 5,721 last year, leaving mounds of debunked and unconfirmed cases behind. The last year saw 283 allegations of child sex trafficking, 25 of them confirmed. "It is a very touchy subject, but we cannot run from the seriousness of this issue," Parker said. "We can't sweep it under the carpet. This is very real." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON Amid the political skirmishing over President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, the White House received the backing Wednesday of Texas' two Republican senators. But not from one other Texas Republican, Will Hurd, who called the firing "troubling, especially since the Justice Department Inspector General was conducting an independent investigation into Comey's handling of the Clinton email case." Hurd, just returned from a fact-finding mission to Ukraine, added this in a statement: "Due to the ongoing criminal investigation into Russian interference in our elections, I'm concerned that Comey's firing is going to create new concerns around the public trust in the Department of Justice." Hurd, just reelected narrowly to his second term, represents a swing district spanning from San Antonio to El Paso. He is one of only three Texas Republicans in districts won in November by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Despite his stand questioning Comey's firing, Texas Democrats faulted him Wednesday for not calling for an independent prosecutor. "Anything less allows the political cover-up to continue," said Texas Democratic Party Deputy Executive Director Manny Garcia. After withholding comment Tuesday night, Sen. Ted Cruz issued a statement echoing the White House narrative that the FBI that had lost the public's trust after Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. "The Director of the FBI needs to be above reproach, with an unquestioned reputation for fairness and impartiality," Cruz said. "Unfortunately, Mr. Comey had lost the confidence of both Republicans and Democrats, and, frankly, the American people." PUBLIC REACTION: People flood Congress on Twitter with comments about Comey's firing Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn also defended the president's action in an interview on Fox News' America's Newsroom: "This was within the president's authority but it is really important, it's absolutely essential, that we have a new FBI Director that shares the confidence, not only of the president but of Congress and the American people." Story continues below Cornyn also dismissed Democratic outrage over Comey's firing, tweeting "Ds were against Comey before they were for him." Some Texas Democrats said they were surprised by the attack from Cornyn, who is usually seen as the less partisan of the state's two senators. "It tells me that they have made the decision to not try to straddle, but go full-bore pro-Trump and try to hang with him," said Matt Angle, executive director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic group in Texas. Neither Cornyn nor Cruz joined in the calls of many Democrats and some Republicans for a special prosecutor to investigate alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The issue has dogged Trump as the FBI probe expanded into possible Russian links of Trump campaign associates, including former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. NEW DEVELOPMENT: Ex-FBI director Comey sought more money, help for investigation Among those joining the call for a special prosecutor Wednesday was U.S. Rep. Gene Green of Houston. Apart from Hurd, House Republicans from Texas have largely remained silent on the Comey affair. Cornyn, for his part, praised the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which he serves. "Clearly the bipartisan investigation of the Senate Intelligence Committee under the chairmanship of Senator Burr and the Vice Chairman Senator Warner, a Democrat we have a bipartisan commitment to get to the bottom of this Russian investigation," he said. The committee is scheduled to hear testimony from Comey next Tuesday. "Nothing will change by virtue of Director Comey's termination," Cornyn said. Some Texas Democrats said they were surprised by the attack from Cornyn, who is usually seen as the less partisan of the state's two senators. "It tells me that they have made the decision to not try to straddle, but go full-bore pro-Trump and try to hang with him," said Matt Angle, executive director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic group in Texas. Houston U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, announced plans to introduce legislation requiring the appointment of a special prosecutor or independent counsel to take over the Russia investigation. "This legislation is imperative because at the time of Director Comey's firing, he was engaged in an active investigation into collusion of Trump campaign officials with Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," she said. "This Administration cannot be allowed to investigate itself." Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, who is leading the Senate's Russia probe, said he was "troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination." The North Carolina Republican also praised Comey in a tweet, saying that "Dir. Comey has been more forthcoming w/ information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intel committees." But GOP voices for an independent investigation seemed muted on Wednesday as Republican lawmakers rallied around the president. That made Jackson Lee's effort appear a long-shot, at best, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell all but foreclosing on the possibility of an independent counsel, and House GOP leaders similarly opposed, on the grounds that it would be counterproductive. "Today we will no doubt hear calls for a new investigation which could only serve to impede the current work being done to not only discover what the Russians may have done, but also to let this body and the national security community to develop the countermeasures and war-fighting doctrine to see that it doesn't occur again" McConnell said in a floor speech. Scroll through the gallery above to see Congressional reaction to James Comey's firing as well as key moments that led up to it Michael Ciaglo/Staff Harris County wants to develop a training program on indoor, vertical farming as part of its effort to reduce childhood obesity in north Pasadena. Commissioners Court this week approved an agreement with the non-profit Association for Vertical Farming to develop a one-semester course that could be taught at an indoor farm in Pasadena. The county has been working with the city of Pasadena to set up the effort. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Harris County will fight a federal court rulingthat its bail practices unconstitutionally jail poor people accused of low-level crimes, doubling down on a costly and fractious legal battle that has pitted top county officials against each other over attempts to reform the local justice system they all agree needs to be fixed. After a heated exchange and a protracted closed-door meeting, Harris County Commissioners Court cast a party-line, 4-1 vote to appealthe federal judge's ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, the lone Democrat, who has vocally backed the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, cast the lone dissenting vote. The county also asked Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal to suspend a May 15 deadline for Harris County to begin releasing from jail hundreds of people accused of misdemeanors who cannot afford even nominal bail payments. Rosenthal responded with an order giving all parties until 5 p.m. Wednesday to respond to the county's request for a stay. The May 15 deadline was included in a temporary injunction Rosenthal issued in late April. If her order for inmates to be released is rejected by the 5th Circuit, the case will proceed to trial. Tuesday's Commissioners Court vote also authorized the county attorney to work toward settling the case. County Attorney Vince Ryan said a settlement always has been the goal and there have been ongoing negotiations, even a two-day mediation last summer, but the parties could not agree. Elizabeth Rossi, an attorney with Civil Rights Corps, said her clients "are disappointed to learn that the county and the judges are appealing Chief Judge Rosenthal's thorough and comprehensive decision but we are confident that every judge to review it will agree with her and uphold it." Rossi said her team would "vigorously" oppose a motion for a stay. The lawsuit - and Tuesday's appeal - put on public display a growing rift between local leaders who have formulated vastly different conclusions of how justice should be meted out in the third-largest county in America. The closely watched case, experts note, has broad implications for people awaiting trial around the country. "It's like a roadmap for other jurisdictions to bring their own lawsuits, which could impact easily thousands of pretrial detainees across the country," said Sarah R. Guidry, executive director of the Earl Carl Institute at Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law. 'Arguably not legal' Several of the defendants in the lawsuit, including 15 of 16 of the county criminal court at law judges who set the bail schedule, six hearing officers who preside over bail hearings, and Commissioners Court, support fighting Rosenthal's ruling. County attorney Ryan said Rosenthal's detailed, 193-page ruling was impractical to implement and unlawfully dictated that the sheriff take over the role of a judge by deciding who to release from jail. "We believe the system she wants to implement is arguably not legal,' Ryan said. Other concerns for Ryan and county officials include: the risk that releasing someone on a personal recognizance bond could pose to the public, as well as an inability to increase the bail amount for a reoffender. "There are pieces of this that I just don't think can be agreed to," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said. Sheriff backs judge Ryan said he believed the county's efforts at criminal justice reform would satisfy Rosenthal's critiques. He pointed to a new assessment process set to go into effect July 1, to help judges determine the risk of releasing individual defendants awaiting trial. That same day, the county also plans to launch a pilot program that will include public defenders at bail hearings. Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who is a named defendant in the lawsuit, declined to join other county officials in appealing the order Tuesday, saying in an interview that he agreed with Rosenthal's ruling, even though it put a burden on his office to implement new procedures by May 15. "Ideally, if we had some additional weeks to implement what's been ordered by the judge, it would be better," he said. "We're trying to ask some clarifying questions from the court and then determine the next steps for us." A chorus of local officials have called for the county to settle the lawsuit, including Ellis and County Criminal Court at Law Judge Darrell Jordan. The sheriff and District Attorney Kim Ogg also have supported changes in the bail system to eliminate cash bail for poor misdemeanor defendants who do not have other charges or warrants. Two civil rights groups - Texas Fair Defense Project and Civil Rights Corps - are handling the lawsuit with local law firm Susman Godfrey on behalf of Maranda ODonnell, a single mother who was held for two days on a charge of driving without a valid license because she could not afford a $2,500 bail. Similar lawsuits involving two others were merged into the case last August. "Money does not make people safe," Jordan told commissioners court Tuesday, advocating to end cash bail. "If you are a dangerous person, you are a dangerous person." Questions fees Ellis said he believed it would be an "uphill climb" to get an appeals court to overturn Rosenthal's ruling, and that a trial on the merits would help bring needed change to the county, even if the ruling is overturned. "Harris County has made some big changes over the years," Ellis said. "But there is still a very long way to go." Ellis also questioned the amount of money already paid to outside counsel representing defendants in the case, some $2.85 million as of latest estimates. Also Tuesday, Commissioners Court approved a plan to spend nearly $1 million to add more than a dozen positions to its pretrial services department and three additional pretrial hearing officers to preside over bail hearings, as part of the forthcoming risk assessment process. In the meantime, challenges to cash bail have continued to pop up in jurisdictions around the country, according to Guidry, at Thurgood Marshall law school. "We are a huge city with a huge jail population and this is a huge ruling from a federal court judge. Implementation here will impact the country, I'm convinced of that," she said. Brian Rogers contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With pension reform in sight, Mayor Sylvester Turner on Tuesday proposed a combination of departmental cuts, one-time fixes, deferred payments and a dip into city reserves to close next year's $123 million budget gap. Turner aims to erase the deficit with $51 million in spending cuts - largely from police and fire overtime - $35 million in one-time revenues or deferred payments, and $38 million drawn from city reserves. The mayor said he anticipates eliminating vacant positions across departments and making fewer than 10 layoffs. The proposed $2.38 billion general fund budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is about $35 million more than this year's spending plan, due in part to a $51 million spike in debt costs. "Like anything, there are limited dollars, and I think what the public expects for us to do is to operate in a very prudent fashion," Turner said. "I think we have submitted a budget that can at least maintain our core city services." The city's budget projection is predicated on the state Legislature's passage of Houston's pension reform deal with a two-thirds majority and Gov. Greg Abbott's subsequent approval, which would put the changes into effect at the start of the fiscal year. The mayor has said the budget gap would increase to roughly $234 million without pension reform, potentially requiring hundreds of employee layoffs. The deficit also would grow if the Legislature passes the pension bill with some of the House's amendments attached or with less than a two-thirds majority, which would delay implementation until September. The city's general fund pays for most basic city services, such as police protection, trash pickup, libraries and parks. Police and fire, whose allocations make up more than half of the general fund budget, would see cuts of $20 million and $14 million, respectively, largely in overtime costs. The mayor's proposal also funds four police cadet classes, down from five training classes this year. "It makes it even more critical to look at data and crunch data to deploy according to what's going on and try to even be in a predictive model of policing," Police Chief Art Acevedo said. Still, he added, residents may feel the cuts. "It probably will impact our response times, especially at the end of shifts where we're going to have to put off some calls or going to have to hold," Acevedo said. "We just won't have the mechanism, the ability to actually pay our officers overtime, not to mention the support staff." Fire Chief Samuel Pena anticipated being able to stay within the department's overtime budget at least through the beginning of the fiscal year. "Depending on if we have a mass exodus of retirees, it may be different," he said. Some have worried publicly that the city's proposed pension reforms could prompt a spate of police and firefighter retirements. Another $16 million in cuts would be distributed across departments, pending City Council's approval. One-time fixes include selling city land for $12.5 million, transferring $6.1 million from special revenue funds, deferring $5 million owed to the Houston Zoo, putting off a $4.7 million lease payment for 611 Walker, the city's main administrative building, withholding $3.1 million from the maintenance replacement and renewal fund, transferring $1.5 million less to the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care shelter and refinancing $1.1 million in debt. Zoo spokeswoman Jackie Wallace declined to comment on the potential impact of the deferral, saying the zoo's board of directors still was reviewing the mayor's proposal. Turner would fill the remaining budget gap by pulling $38 million from savings, leaving 9.3 percent of the budget in reserve, above the minimum standard of 7.5 percent. At-large Councilman Jack Christie, who chairs council's budget and fiscal affairs committee, dubbed the budget "skinny." "But," he added, "I don't know how much longer we can keep trimming these budgets and not reduce services like police and fire." Turner noted that his plan does not address the city's aging fleet or $500 million in deferred facility maintenance. He intends, if pension reform is enacted, to ask voters in November to repeal the city's cap on property tax collections. The restriction has forced tax cuts the last three years, costing the city an estimated $220 in revenue and, together with rising pension and debt costs, eroding city services. Tom Reel/Staff AUSTIN The Texas House on Tuesday delayed final approval of a bill that would revoke pensions of elected officials convicted of felonies related to their office. State Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, postponed a vote until Sunday. By a voice vote, the House had approved SB 500 on second reading on Monday. AUSTIN A move to keep alive the most significant open-government legislation of the legislative session stalled in the Texas Senate on Tuesday because of a technicality. Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said he had planned to amend a House bill on open government to include Senate-passed bills that would mandate public disclosure for government contracts and the details of public funding provided to non-profits and quasi-governmental agencies. He said he also planned to add three House bills that are stalled in the lower chamber regarding open-government. VOTING RULES: House eliminates straight-ticket voting in Texas The Senate bills were prompted by two Texas Supreme Court decisions last year that overturned years of precedent in making public contracts and spending details. As Watson started the process to amend House Bill 2328 that is designed to expedite the state's Public Information Act process, senators questioned whether he could do so since the House-passed bills that not been reviewed by a Senate committee. The debate stopped. CONSTITUTIONAL REWRITE: House approves call for 'Convention of the States' After extended consultation at the podium, Watson agreed to delay further consideration of the House bill until Monday. Watson said he plans to vet the House bills on Thursday in the Senate Business and Commerce Committee so they can be properly be considered as amendments. Watson said he thinks he has the voted to pass the House bill with the amendments on Monday. "If this legislation does not pass, we will have slammed the door on a whole lot of public business the taxpayers have a right to see," Watson said. Long ago and far away, when I was a young special assistant first to Attorney General William French Smith and then to Attorney General Edwin Meese, the young staff would automatically stand up whenever William Webster, then head of the FBI, walked into a room. At Friday morning round-table briefings in the attorney general's massive conference room, when Webster spoke, everyone leaned in. He had the bearing, the competence and the character of the nation's top and trusted cop. Last summer an old D.C. hand took me to one of those Beltway places of lore for lunch and a cigar and talked candidly about how shocked he was at then-FBI Director James B. Comey's decision to publicly discuss the Hillary Clinton email investigation and to walk the public through a hundred details of the case and then conclude she should not be prosecuted. Agree or disagree with that decision, he said, it's not what the FBI does. Ever. Agents present facts to prosecutors. They may nudge or even push in one direction or the other, but they don't decide. My interlocutor, a former assistant U.S. attorney and then-senior official in numerous positions and companies, was not so much outraged by Comey's actions at the time as puzzled, perhaps even shocked. Apparently, new Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein shared exactly that view and expressed it succinctly in his three-page memo to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Confidence in the FBI would not come back until a new director was in place, and that, of course, requires that Comey be fired. Not a decision to be taken lightly, Rosenstein argued, but one he recommended that Sessions make. Sessions reviewed the recommendation, concurred and forwarded a joint recommendation to the president, who agreed. Anyone who thinks this is connected to a cover-up of "Russian collusion" has to believe that both Rosenstein and Sessions would participate in such a corrupt scheme. I don't. It is, in fact, absurd to think that. Reread the Rosenstein memo - a few times. There's the story. Comey was wrong in July, wrong in subsequent statements, wrong as recently as last week and refused to admit error. The story is a straight-line one, and it's about Rosenstein. In fact, just last week Comey said this in response to a question from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., about whether Rosenstein should appoint a special prosecutor in the Russian investigations: "That's a judgment he'll have to make. He is, as I hoped I was as deputy attorney general, a very independent-minded, career-oriented person, but it'd be premature for me to comment on that." That's Comey on Rosenstein. Last week. Under oath. Which doesn't mean that questions about the investigation of Russia's attack on our election are any less serious or the need for a thorough inquiry into charges of collusion between Russia and anyone in the many circles of President Trump is any less pressing. It just means that the FBI has to be led by someone like Webster to assure that both sides of deeply divided D.C. accept the results of all facets of the investigation. Moreover, at last week's hearing Comey told Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., that there are 2,000 investigations into would-be "violent extremists" - half home-grown and in the "lone wolf" category, the other half in contact with foreign organizations (of whom about 300 are immigrants to the United States). That's a massive threat. The FBI is the chief bulwark against it as well as against all cybercrime from abroad (government-sponsored and private criminal activity) and organized crime at home. The director simply cannot lack the confidence of the deputy attorney general or the attorney general. So whom to turn to? Most definitely someone in the Webster mold, which means a current or former federal judge of stellar reputation for both character and competence, and perhaps with some charisma that could prove useful in rallying the FBI and the Justice Department. Someone like J. Michael Luttig, former 4th Circuit judge and now-general counsel for Boeing; U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who has handled scores of terrorism cases; or Stephen Larson, one of my law partners, a former federal judge and formerhead of the organized-crime division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for California's Central District. There are, in fact, plenty of superb candidates in the mold of these three that must bring stature and independence to the job. But first we have to endure a few days of over-the-top takes from the always overwrought mainstream media. This isn't the "Saturday Night Massacre." There are no tapes, no subpoenas for presidential documents, no resignations from the Justice Department, but instead recommendations from the Justice Department. It's four months into an administration, not four years. In short, the overwrought media has toppled into hysteria again. President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday. And while the termination happened rather quickly - mere hours after Comey's faulty testimony to Congress was revealed - it wasn't altogether a shock. Over the past several weeks, Trump has seemed to be in the market for a reason to get rid of Comey. This was an Obama appointee whom Trump derided during the 2016 campaign for not recommending charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server. Then, in March, Comey announced that the FBI was investigating alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. He also cast doubt on Trump's claim that the Obama administration wiretapped him during the campaign. Against that backdrop, Trump firing Comey is bound to look suspicious. And Democrats are already crying foul, with Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., quickly labeling the move "Nixonian." But it's also true that if there was any time to fire Comey, Comey gift-wrapped it to Trump and served it on a platter. A couple of weeks after Comey made those announcements, Trump talked about his job security at length in a pretty conspicuous way, relitigating the FBI chief's handling of the Clinton investigation. "Don't forget, when Jim Comey came out, he saved Hillary Clinton," Trump told Fox Business in an interview airing April 12. "People don't realize that. He saved her life, because - I call it Comey won. And I joke about it a little bit. When he was reading those charges, she was guilty on every charge. And then he said she was essentially OK. But he - she wasn't OK, because she was guilty on every charge. "Director Comey was very, very good to Hillary Clinton, that I can tell you. If he weren't, she would be, right now, going to trial." It was pretty clear at that point that Trump harbored hard feelings about Comey's decision - even though he had praised Comey's announcement of newly discovered Clinton emails late in the 2016 campaign. Then last week, Trump fired off a couple of tweets that made the same case about Clinton. He wrote on Twitter, "FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony... "...Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?" he continued with another Tweet. Asked in the Fox Business interview whether Comey's job was safe, Trump offered no assurances: "It's not too late, but, you know, I have confidence in him. We'll see what happens. You know, it's going to be interesting." "We'll see what happens." Well, we just saw what happened. Trump has a tendency to signal publicly to people when they are on thin ice. Think Stephen Bannon. And in retrospect, that's pretty clearly what was happening with Comey. Trump said he had confidence in Comey, but the rest of his comments suggested otherwise. This was a wild card in charge of the FBI - a wild card who had the ability to make Trump's life quite difficult, depending on the decisions he made - and Trump clearly didn't trust him. But firing him was also very, very difficult -- and will be a highly controversial decision. Yet the beauty of what transpired Tuesday for Trump is that he had a great set of circumstances under which to do it. Comey's foul-up - misstating facts about the Clinton investigation at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week - looked like he was overselling that case against Clinton, not Trump. It was actually Democrats who could be righteously indignant about Comey's botched claims that top Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds of thousands of emails - some with classified information - from Clinton's server to her then-husband, disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. In firing Comey, Trump doesn't look like he was covering his own behind - at least not transparently so. But from the outside looking in, it sure looks like Trump didn't have much regard for Comey and was, in fact, suspicious of him and what he might do. And then Comey gave him a golden opportunity to cut bait. Mayor Sylvester Turner's pension reform effort has hit political hurdles at nearly every turn. Over the weekend, the snag came from state Rep. Dwayne Bohac, R-Houston. The 15-year representative sponsored an amendment to the pension legislation in the Texas House that would exempt more than 3,100 retired firefighters from benefit cuts. Beyond the curious novelty of a supposedly conservative Republican aligning himself with a labor group, Bohac's amendment would add an estimated $400 million to the unfunded liability burden borne by Houston taxpayers. And it comes from a guy whose website brags that his colleagues gave him a "Taxpayer's Best Friend" award. As Bohac rightly points out, firefighters were promised these retirement benefits. That's part of the deal they signed up for, and it's a measure of how much respect they've long commanded for the dangerous job we've always counted on them to do. But the simple truth is that a generation of city leaders irresponsibly left the next generation of Houston taxpayers a pension bill that cannot be paid without substantial tax increases or drastic cuts in services to the citizens of Houston. Here's what the Taypayer's Best Friend is defending: Quit your job and double your pay. That's the retirement deal city officials say some Houston firefighters can get under their current pension plan. It's an arrangement that would continue to be mandated by state law. The Legislature needs to say no. All those huge numbers tossed around in discussions about Houston's pension problems can get mighty confusing. So let's take a look at some figures that can help us understand why the firefighters' pension system in particular needs attention. Turner sent his old colleagues in the Texas Legislature a memo last week explaining just how much typical retirees are collecting under the current system. A Houston firefighter retiring after 40 years receives an average pensionable salary of $87,000 a year, the mayor wrote. After he retires, the memo added, that firefighter can collect an annuity worth twice his salary: $174,000 a year. Of course, most firefighters don't stick around for four decades. But the benefits available to some other retirees are also quite generous. A firefighter who retires after 35 years reportedly can collect an annual annuity worth 160 percent of his salary: $137,600 a year. After 30 years, the potential payoff is 84 percent of his annual salary: $71,400 a year. After 25 years, it's 55 percent of the annual salary: $57,960 a year. That's far more than the pensions provided to Houston police officers. After 40 years with the Houston Police Department, data from the city's chief financial officer indicates a typical officer making $98,000 can collect an annuity worth 80 percent of his pay, roughly $78,400 a year. For a 35-year HPD veteran making $93,000 a year, it's a 75 percent payout worth $69,750 a year. For a 30-year HPD officer making $93,000 a year, it's 65 percent or $60,450. After 25 years, an officer making $93,000 a year can collect 55 percent of his salary, roughly $51,150 a year. The benefits offered to non-uniformed employees, like the people who work in our libraries or pick up our trash, are much smaller, ranging from $17,280 annually after 25 years to $39,000 after 40 years. It's no wonder firefighters have not wanted to compromise on this matter; under the reform package that Turner is trying to get passed in the Legislature, their retirement benefits would drop, making them more comparable to the salary percentages paid to police officers. Police officers and nonuniformed city workers understand the current system is unsustainable, and their representatives agreed to the "shared sacrifice" deal diligently negotiated by the mayor. Firefighters, whose pension benefits will break the city's bank, need to recognize the same painful reality. The pension reform legislation is heading to a conference committee, which will try to reconcile it with the version passed by the Senate. So there's still time to strip this amendment out of the bill. Allowing this provision to survive would be an insult to Houston police and civilian workers, who agreed to give up some of their benefits for the good of the city. Our state lawmakers should kill this costly amendment. Meanwhile, Houston taxpayers need to start wondering who our real friends are in Austin. Cool under fire Regarding "Texas senators question Yates on Muslim travel ban" (Page A14, Tuesday), what an embarrassment tor Texans that not one, but two U.S. senators from the Lone Star State were schooled on the government and the U.S. Constitution by former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee aired on national television on Monday. Not only was it clear that these two gentlemen place their political agenda above the national security of their country, but it was even more clear that Yates enlightened them both about the Constitution and the role of the Department of Justice. Robert L. Mark, Houston Operatic joy Regarding "'Requiem' wrestles with history" (Page A2, Monday), even without this thought-provoking critique of the 'Requiem,' Gabriela Lena Frank made me sit up and take notice of her genius from the first note onward. That her mind could conceive the story line and hear this music in her head and commit it to score-paper is amazing. What a great gift to the city of Houston: We heard it first! Thank you, Gabriela. Naomi Mitchum, Houston Sunday signing Regarding "Abbott enacts sanctuary cities ban" (Page A3, Sunday), I am very disappointed in Governor Abbott. Not so much that he signed the bill; we knew that was coming ahead of time. Instead I am disappointed that he chose to schedule the signing ceremony on a Sunday (who in government works on Sunday?), and to broadcast it live on Facebook, thereby avoiding the press and his critics on the bill. If this bill was so important, then he should have had the courage to face his fellow Texans in person during regular business hours. Cathy Newman, Meadows Place Power plays in business Regarding "Kushner's ties compelling to Chinese lenders" (Page B4, Monday), I am disappointed in Kushner Cos.' efforts to entice Chinese to invest in Kushner properties. My dad fought in World War II at the Battle of the Bulge. My wife's father fought in Germany, my uncles in Italy. After the war, they and millions of others returned to help build this country into the largest economic engine the world has ever known. This was the greatest generation; they sacrificed for each other and then built the envy of the world. While it is called the Greatest Generation, every generation before and after made similar contributions to making America a guiding force for humanity. To have fallen to the point where we no longer care about what America stands for but rather what that reputation can do to enhance our personal wealth is disappointing. We now have, at the very pinnacle of power, a group of individuals who are only focused on how they can make things better for themselves. Gary Randazzo, Spring Placing proper blame Regarding "When you win so much, you must be a winner" (Page A32, Sunday), Kathleen Parker's column blasts President Trump celebrating a hurried win in the repeal-and-replace legislation for the Affordable Care Act. Parker claims that "winning" is all Trump is about and therein lies his fatal flaw. I would suggest that the flaw in this whole matter was established by the Democrats in 2009/2010. It was then that the dangerous precedent of "you have to pass the law to know what is in it" was uttered by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was the Democrats and President Obama that needed to "win" with the takeover of the health care industry. They won by bald-faced lying. The ACA chickens have come home to roost and the inevitability of the collapse of the health care system is real. The collapse will then put millions of average citizens at higher health risk than before the Democrats passed the ACA. How soon people like the erudite Parker conveniently forget. Edward A. Vesely, West University Place I am the mother of a stillborn child. At a routine ultrasound during our longed-for pregnancy, my husband and I thought the baby looked perfect. But our obstetrician sadly showed us the fluid in the baby's body. We were sent directly to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, who confirmed our greatest fear: The fluid was squeezing our baby's heart, and soon her heart would stop. But that was not the end of the story. Pregnancy is no longer a black box, during which nothing can be changed or improved. Just as the past few decades have produced amazing innovations in child and adult medicine, there is a growing field dedicated to repairing fetal problems while the baby is still inside the mother's uterus. The sterling example is in-utero surgery for fetuses with spina bifida, but there are also experimental interventions for specific abnormalities of the heart, lungs, placenta and more. There were interventions available for our baby's condition. There was still hope. I was admitted to the hospital, and our doctors performed the first procedure less than 24 hours after the devastating ultrasound. Sadly, despite our doctors' best efforts, our baby died before birth. I grieve for her, and I take solace in knowing we did everything we could. We fought for her life to the very last day. Right now, this fundamental parental right to fight for our unborn baby's life is under attack in the Texas Legislature. The so-called "wrongful birth" bills (SB25 and HB434) would override the Texas Supreme Court's Jacobs decision, which recognized the wrongful-birth cause of action against doctors who fail to disclose fetal abnormalities to the patient. I testified against these bills - I was horrified that Texas would protect a doctor who, in an effort to manipulate the family away from abortion, failed to inform them that their fetus was in danger. This family would have no reason to seek treatment during pregnancy, and this could cause the death or lifelong disability of the baby. For many fetal conditions, waiting until birth to start treatment means waiting until it's too late. After my testimony, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, author of SB25, assured me that a family in this situation could still sue their doctor through other legal avenues. With all due respect to Sen. Creighton, this is a distortion of the truth. To help unravel the probable outcome of this complicated legislation (including the recent text changes to the bills), I spoke with Professor Dov Fox, Director of the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics at the University of San Diego School of Law. Certainly, this family, as Creighton suggests, could sue their doctor without the wrongful-birth cause of action, but they would be much less likely to win. Under the Texas Civil & Remedies Code, alleging fraud and gross negligence, the family would have to show that their doctor took positive steps to conceal the fetal abnormality, because mere failure to disclose a material fact is generally not enough to show misrepresentation. Creighton claims a motivation of his bill is to protect physicians from legal pressure to recommend that patients undergo abortion. But the existing wrongful-birth cause of action doesn't impose liability for the failure to advocate for abortion, nor is it based on comparing a life with defects with no life at all. Fetal intervention will not be the right choice for every family. It might involve expense, travel or risk to the mother. It could be impossible to estimate the likelihood of success, and even if successful, the child might still have medical problems after birth. If the family enrolls in a clinical trial, they will have to accept the possibility of being in the placebo group. However, like the cancer or Alzheimer's patient, we as parents have the right to fight for our unborn babies to the very last day if that is best for our family. It is our decision to make, not the doctor's. And it is certainly not the decision of the Texas Legislature. Texas SB25 has already passed in the Senate, and it's now in the House State Affairs committee. HB434 is currently in the House Calendars committee, and may soon be considered by the full House. If, like me, you are appalled at this overreach by the Texas government into parental rights, call your state representative and the members of the House Calendars and State Affairs committees. Lawmakers should say NO to the "wrongful birth" bills. Tittle, a native Texan, holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience and works as a scientific consultant in Austin WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired the director of the FBI, James Comey, abruptly terminating the law enforcement official leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into whether Trump's advisers colluded with the Russian government to steer the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The stunning development in Trump's presidency raised the specter of political interference by a sitting president into an ongoing investigation by the nation's leading law enforcement agency. It immediately ignited Democratic calls for an independent prosecutor to lead the Russia inquiry. Trump explained the firing by citing Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, even though the president was widely seen to have benefited politically from that inquiry and had once praised Comey for having "guts" in his pursuit of Clinton during the campaign. But in his letter to Comey, released to reporters by the White House, the president betrayed his focus on the ongoing inquiry into Russia and his aides. "While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau," Trump said in a letter to Comey dated Tuesday. The White House said Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, pushed for Comey's dismissal. "I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails," Rosenstein wrote in a letter that was released by the White House, "and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken." Reaction in Washington was swift and fierce. In a call with Trump, Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, told the president he was making a big mistake; publicly, Schumer called the firing a cover-up. Many Republicans assailed the president for making a rash decision that could have deep implications for their party. Comey, who is three years into a 10-year term at the helm of the FBI, learned from news reports that he had been fired while addressing bureau employees in Los Angeles. While Comey spoke, television screens in the background began flashing the news. In response to the reports, Comey laughed, saying that he thought it was a fairly funny prank. But shortly after, Trump's letter was delivered to FBI headquarters in Washington. Firing angers FBI insiders The sudden dismissal of one of Washington's most prominent officials added to the sense of chaos in a White House that has been roiled by controversy, dogged by scandal and engaged in a furious fight with adversaries. Trump had already fired his acting attorney general for insubordination and his national security adviser for lying to the vice president about contacts with Russians. But firing Comey raises much deeper questions about the independence of the FBI and the future of its investigations under Trump. FBI officers were enraged by the firing and worried openly that Trump would appoint someone seen as a White House ally. Comey was widely liked in the FBI, even by those who criticized his handling of the Clinton investigation, and officers regarded him as a good manager and an independent leader. Comey was on Capitol Hill last week when he offered his first public explanation of his handling of the Clinton email case. He said he had no regrets about the decisions he made, but said he felt "mildly nauseous" that his actions might have tipped the election to Trump. In July, Comey broke with long-standing tradition and policies by publicly discussing the Clinton case and chastising her "careless" handling of classified information. Then, in the campaign's final days, Comey announced that the FBI was reopening the investigation, a move that earned him widespread criticism. Yet many of the facts cited as evidence for Comey's dismissal were well known when Trump kept him on the job: Comey was three years into a 10-year term. And both Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had praised Comey back then for reopening the Clinton investigation by saying his public announcement "took guts." On Tuesday, that action was at the heart of Comey's firing. "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," Trump wrote. Status of Russia inquiry eyed Under the FBI's normal rules of succession, Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, a career FBI officer, becomes acting director. The White House said the search for a director will begin immediately. The firing puts Democrats in a difficult position. Many had hoped that Clinton would fire Comey soon after taking office, and blamed him for costing her the election. But under Trump, the outspoken and independent-minded Comey was seen as an important check on the new administration. "Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-lll. "We await clarification by the White House as soon as possible as to whether this investigation will continue and whether it will have a credible lead so that we know that it'll have a just outcome." Trump's decision to fire Comey marks the second time since taking office that the president has fired a top law enforcement official. In early February, Trump fired Sally Q. Yates, who had worked in the Obama administration but was serving as acting attorney general. But the president's firing of Comey was far more consequential. Yates was a holdover, and would have served in the Trump administration for only a matter of days or weeks. A longtime prosecutor who served as the deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, Comey came into office in 2013 with widespread bipartisan support. He has essentially been in a public feud with Trump since long before the presidential election. In a Twitter message this week, Trump accused Comey of being "the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton," accusing him of giving her "a free pass for many bad deeds." An intensifying feud Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a post on Twitter that Comey "should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of Russia/Trump investigation at the time he was fired." The president's decision to fire Comey appeared to be the culmination of the bad will between the men that intensified in early March, when the president posted Twitter messages accusing former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his office. The next morning, word spread quickly that Comey wanted the Justice Department to issue a statement saying that he had no evidence to support the president's accusation. The department did not issue such a statement. For weeks after, Trump insisted that his accusation was correct. In dramatic testimony later in March, Comey said that he had no information to back up the president's allegations. That set up a remarkable dynamic - an FBI director directly contradicting a sitting president at the same time that the bureau was pursuing a possible criminal investigation into the president's aides. In case youre not aware, Monday, May 15 is Peace Officers Memorial Day and the entire week its in is National Police Week. Both are nationally recognized since the early 1960s. The single-day and week-long holidays were created on Oct. 1, 1961, when Congress asked President John F. Kennedy to designate them for honoring peace officers across the nation. Kennedy signed the bill into law a year later on Oct. 1, 1962. I like the idea that Kennedy and Congressional members at the time decided law enforcement officers were worthy of official, nationwide appreciation. I think they deserve all the appreciation that comes their way and more. Sure, that flies in the face of recent trends, which have most mainstream media sources throwing law officers under the bus for reasons that more often than not amount to doing their jobs. Heck, even a lot of citizens (mainly in the big cities) act like cops are enemies, rather than protectors of their freedom, physical well-being and possessions. Mind you, those would be uninformed (a.k.a. ignorant) and misguided citizens, not the majority who give more credibility to whats real than whats trendy. Yep, majority; right now statistics show that more than 95-percent of people in rural communities and more than 70-percent in cities approve of what law enforcement officers are doing and whole-heartedly support them. I submit this rudimentary question: How could you not? These men and women put themselves in harms way every time they go to work, and they do it for the sole purpose of keeping life safe and manageable for the people in their given communities, counties, states or country. In other words, they toil for the benefit of the rest of us. And today more than ever, providing that benefit means dealing with a constant threat of danger. I mean, every single response is heavily laden with an element of the unknown. You might be dispatched regarding a complaint that someones dog keeps dropping calling cards on the neighbors lawn, a report that a man threw a paper cup at a woman or to investigate why someones shovel is on the wrong side of the outbuilding, but you have absolutely no idea whats going to happen when you arrive at your destination, and maybe have to knock on the door to make contact with someone. Thats scary stuff, no mater how you want to spin it. Of course, there are going to be exceptions, and a few outlying crooked, self-righteous individuals surely exist within the entire sphere of law enforcement. But that certainly goes for every segment of society, and Im going to say its less prevalent in the law enforcement segment than in most others. Anyway, my little corner of Texas County has given me the pleasurable opportunity to get to know a lot of people in the law enforcement field, and if I may say so I have in turn compiled a large set of building blocks from which to construct a viewpoint of what they do. For the record, that viewpoint is positive big-time and to me, theres no way to express an appropriate level of gratitude or provide enough commendation and adulation to law enforcement personnel. But on behalf of the many of us who feel that way, I want to simply say thank you to all of you. Youre special people performing a special duty thats an integral (and extremely important) part of the lives of everyone who calls America home. Even the folks who dont like you. Please forgive them. They just dont get it. The Texas County Commission hosted a law enforcement appreciation event in May 2017 in the multi-purpose room at the Texas County Justice Center in Houston. From left, associate circuit judge Doug Gaston, Rep. Robert Ross, TCSD Sgt. Travis Davis, Mountain Grove police officer Shawn Jones, Texas County Sheriff James Sigman, Texas County Presiding Commissioner Fred Stenger (also a Mountain Grove police officer), Licking Police Chief Scott Lindsey, TCSD detective Rowdy Douglas, TCSD deputy Shane Reynolds and Rep. Shawn Rhoades. Joint Resolution 76 Stat. 676. To authorize the President to proclaim May 15 of each year as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the calendar week of each year during which such May 15 occurs as Police Week. Whereas the police officers of America have worked devotedly and selflessly in behalf of the people of this Nation, regardless of the peril or hazard to themselves; and Whereas these officers have safeguarded the lives and property of their fellow Americans; and Whereas by the enforcement of our laws, these same officers have given our country internal freedom from fear of the violence and civil disorder that is presently affecting other nations; Whereas these men and women by their patriotic service and their dedicated efforts have earned the gratitude of the Republic: Now, therefore, be it: Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President is authorized and requested to issue proclamations (1) designating May 15 of each year as Peace Officers Memorial Day in honor of the Federal, State, and municipal officers who have been killed or disabled in the line of duty, (2) directing the officials of the Government to display at half-staff the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on such day, as provided by section 3(m) of the Act of June 22, 1942 (Chapter 435; 56 Stat. 377; 36 U. S. C. 175), (3) designating in each year the calendar week during which such May 15 occurs as Police Week, in recognition of the service given by the men and women who, night and day, stand guard in our midst to protect us through enforcement of our laws, and (4) inviting the governments of the States and communities and the people of the United States to observe such day and week with appropriate ceremonies and activities, including the display at half-staff of the flag of the United States. Approved October 1, 1962. Doug Davison is a writer, photographer and newsroom assistant for the Houston Herald. Email: ddavison@houstonherald.com. The alarming video of a Georgia teenager live streaming her own suicide attempt stayed up long enough on Facebook Live for sheriffs deputies to find and save her a repeat phenomenon that has prompted mental health experts and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to further investigate how they can use social media as a possible platform to help save lives. The 15-year-old girl took pills and put a plastic bag over her head during her suicide attempt May 2, officials from the Bibb County Sheriffs Office said. A sheriffs sergeant found the girl unresponsive but with a pulse and shes expected to recover. In April, Facebook was alerted to another possible suicide and made the decision to keep the video up, Zuckerberg said in a conference call last week. That allowed law enforcement to use that live video to communicate with that person and help save their life, he said. So a lot of what were trying to do is not just about taking the content down but also about helping people when theyre in need on the platform. In Georgia, a viewer watching the teens livestream called 911. Only the teens friends could view the video because of the girls privacy settings, but Bibb County sheriffs Sgt. Linda Howard had a nephew who was friends with her on Facebook. She immediately called her nephew, who viewed the video and let his aunt know it wasnt a prank. It was very serious and we needed to get to it right away, Howard said. Deputies got three possible addresses for the girl from her high school and sent officers speeding to all three homes. She was found in a bathtub at one of them. She was unresponsive, but one of our sergeants was able to find a pulse, Howard said. The girl is recovering and Im just happy that we can give her back to her family. Facebook spokeswoman Andrea Saul said she couldnt discuss details of the Georgia case because of privacy reasons, but said the company in March unveiled a series of initiatives designed to help people who go online and contemplate suicide. Mark Zuckerburg Facebook is testing how computers can quickly identify posts where its likely someone is expressing thoughts of suicide, and provide resources to the person even if someone on Facebook has not reported it yet. Its new ground, new territory but really important, said Dan Reidenberg, a psychologist who is working with Facebook on the initiatives and is executive director of the Minnesota-based suicide prevention group SAVE. Anytime we have an opportunity to intervene, we never know what the right thing thats going to be said by the right person at the right moment is going to be that saves someones life. Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook will hire 3,000 more people to review videos of crimes and suicides. Whenever someone contemplates suicide, online or anywhere else, listening is key, said Kevin Briggs, a retired California Highway Patrol sergeant who often spoke with people as they stood on a small metal pipe outside the Golden Gate Bridges railings, one step from falling into the Pacific Ocean. What happens with these kids is they are so impulsive that they dont see into their future, they dont see a way out, Briggs said. More than 1,400 people have leaped to their deaths from the bridge since the famed California span opened in 1937. But scores of others have been saved when Briggs and other officers intervened. Briggs wrote a book about his experiences, Guardian of the Golden Gate: Protecting the Line Between Hope and Despair. We need to take in every word, he said. When you get into one of these conversations, every word can mean something. 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. For the second consecutive year, the University of Missouri expects a drop in enrollment for the fall freshman class. About 4,000 first-time college students are expected to enroll in August, according to an MU news release Friday. As of this past Monday, 4,009 students paid the fall enrollment deposits, which is the figure officials used to make their projection. Last year at this time, that number was 4,738 students. That represents about a 15 percent drop. Most freshmen are first-time college students, and when MU talks about the freshmen class, it means all first-time college students. Students can continue to enroll throughout the summer, so the projection could fluctuate. MU hasnt enrolled fewer than 4,000 first-time students since 1999, according to MU enrollment data. From fall 2015 to fall 2016, MU saw its freshman class decrease by 1,605 students, according to MU enrollment data. MUs fall 2016 class, which includes first-time students as well as transfer students, was 5,995 students compared to 7,600 the year before. First-time college students decreased from 6,191 in 2015 to 4,772 in 2016. Every department at MU saw enrollment decreases from 2015 to 2016 except for the College of Human Environmental Science. Officials have attributed the decreases to several causes. One factor was the Concerned Student 1950 protests in fall 2015, which generated national media coverage and led to the resignations of then-UM System President Tim Wolfe and then-MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. During a UM System Board of Curators meeting last week, new UM System President Mun Choi said the system is anticipating a $9 million decline in revenue across its four campuses, according to previous Missourian reporting. The system could increase tuition and fees for current students to make up for the shortfall. The increase would add about $200 to undergraduate resident students and about $500 to out-of-state students. In preparation for the lower enrollment at MU, Residential Life decided to temporarily close seven residence halls for the 2017-2018 school year: Center, Responsibility, Discovery, Respect, Excellence, Schurz and McDavid, according to previous Missourian reporting. Center was built in 2006, and Respect, Responsibility, Discovery and Excellence were built in 2004. Schurz was renovated in 2008, and McDavid was renovated in 2007. Mun Choi MU is taking a proactive approach to turn around its enrollment by creating the Strategic Enrollment Management Committee. Pat Okker, interim dean of the College of Arts and Science, and Pelema Morrice, vice provost for enrollment management, will co-chair the committee. The committee will also have at least four faculty members, two staff members and two students. Committee members will review student recruiting plans, tuition and financial models, student success planning and student yield, retention and degree persistence, with the goal being to create strategies and policies to aid MU enrollment efforts, according to a news release. This committee will help us create our strategy for the future in the years to come, Morrice said in the release. We continue to expect high-quality, but fewer, first-time college students for the next year or two. We expect this committee to complete its work over the next 12 to 18 months. To increase enrollment, MU will look into creating alternative student pipelines and increasing student retention, MU Interim Chancellor Garnett Stokes said in the release. In 2014, MUs student retention rate was 84 percent, which ranked 10th in the Southeastern Conference, according to MU enrollment data. From the fall 2016 semester to the spring 2017 semester, MUs retention rate was 94 percent, according to the release announcing freshman enrollment. MUs fall 2015 freshman class was bigger than the classes at other colleges in the region such as the University of Arkansas, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Kansas, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa. Freshman enrollment in fall 2016 was smaller than the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa and was about the same as the University of Nebraska. While the University of Kansas and University of Arkansas had smaller freshman classes than MU, both schools have been growing for the past five years, according to enrollment data from both universities. Overall undergraduate enrollment in four-year public universities decreased by 0.3 percent from fall 2015 to fall 2016, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. 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. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. British Columbians elected a record four indigenous MLAs Tuesday in a tense vote that brought in the provinces first minority government in 65 years. Melanie Mark, the NDP candidate who made history last year as the first female MLA from a First Nation, won her seat again in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant. Advertisement The mother-of-two is of Nisgaa, Gitxsan, Cree and Ojibway descent. She overcame a tough childhood of poverty and sexual abuse to become an advocate for children on Vancouvers Downtown Eastside. She continued to campaign for the underprivileged, focusing on housing and child care in this election. Former B.C. NDP leader re-elected The B.C. NDPs former leader, Carole James, was elected in a fourth straight victory to represent Victoria-Beacon Hill. Advertisement Its overwhelming to once again have the confidence of the people of Victoria, its humbling, she told The Times Colonist on Tuesday, adding she will fight for B.C.ers regardless of which side of the legislature were on." James was born in England and her father is Metis from Saskatchewan. Her husband, First Nations artist Albert Gerow is also chief of the Burns Lake First Nation. She previously served five terms as president of the B.C. School Trustees Association and spent 20 years fostering kids and adults with special needs. 'My life's work has been getting First Nations to the table' First-time contender Ellis Ross took the riding of Skeena for the B.C. Liberals, who last held the seat in 2005. Ross has served as chief councillor of the Haisla Nation and was the first chair of the provinces Aboriginal Business and Investment Council. Advertisement My lifes work has been getting First Nations to the table with industry and government, so that all British Columbians can benefit from economic development, Ross said on the B.C. Liberal Party website. As a supporter of LNG development, Ross felt his campaign promise of creating jobs resonated with voters, reported the Terrace Standard. I could really feel the anxiety in the Skeena riding. People didnt want to leave and go to Alberta for jobs. Thats one reason why I did this, he said in a speech to supporters. Fought against LNG project In Saanich North and the Islands, Adam Olsen was elected for the B.C. Greens in one of the closest races in the province. Advertisement Olsen was raised on the Tsartlip First Nation and served as a municipal councillor in Central Saanich. According to the Times Colonist, he credited an 18-month stint as interim party leader for readying him for his new MLA job. Greens across BC have so much 2 celebrate tonight. We are now the first green caucus in North America! Thank you Vancouver Island! 5/5 Adam Olsen (@AdamPOlsen) May 10, 2017 The father-of-two led an effort against the proposed Malahat LNG project, writing that its, bad for our local environment, its bad for tourism, its bad for food harvesting, bad for real estate, bad for climate change. Last year, B.C. had three sitting MLAs of indigenous heritage: Mark, James, and Marc Dalton. Tuesday's provincial results saw the ruling B.C. Liberal party capturing 43 seats to the NDPs 41. The B.C. Greens picked up three seats, a major breakthrough for the party that previously held just one. Advertisement The 2015 federal vote that brought Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into power also saw a record number of indigenous representatives elected. Ten indigenous candidates became MPs, representing three per cent of the House of Commons. With files from the Canadian Press Follow HuffPost B.C. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram Also on HuffPost OTTAWA Don Meredith will be able to collect an annual pension because former Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed him to the Senate, not because of Liberal government policies, Treasury Board President Scott Brison said Wednesday. The Senate pointed the finger at the Treasury Board Secretariat when HuffPost Canada asked Tuesday morning whether Meredith would gain any financial advantage if he resigned rather than wait to be expelled from the upper chamber by his colleagues. Advertisement Senate spokeswoman and Conservative staffer Jacqui Delaney responded these were very broad, open ended questions and referred all calls to the government department that oversees parliamentary pensions. Hours later, Meredith signalled his intent to quit. His lawyer, William Trudell, forwarded a letter titled Media statement on letterhead stating that the senator had decided to move forward with my life with the full support of my wife and my children It is my hope that my absence from the Senate will allow the Senators to focus their good work on behalf of all Canadians. The path of expulsion being considered by my colleagues will have major implications for the Senate of Canada. This is a constitutional fight in which I will not engage. Advertisement Wednesday afternoon, Senate Speaker George Furey received official notice from Rideau Hall that Meredith had resigned. Senator says ball is in feds' court In an email to HuffPost, Sen. Leo Housakos, the chair of the powerful internal affairs committee and the person who directs the Senates communication office and its talking points wrote: As for the pension issue, we can not deal with it because it falls under treasury act. It's crystal clear. That ball is in court firmly of the Government and Treasury Board. But Brison told reporters Wednesday there was nothing in the law that allows his department to deny pension benefits to a senator or member of Parliament who resigns with six years of pensionable service. Its an Act of Parliament. It is not a policy of Treasury Board, he said. If the Conservatives are looking to blame someone for Senator Merediths pension, they should look at themselves in the mirror because it was the Conservatives and Stephen Harper who named Senator Meredith to the Senate. The Treasury Board Secretariat noted that if a senator is disqualified, or if an MP is expelled, members are only entitled to receive a return of their contributions plus interest. Advertisement "If the Conservatives are looking to blame someone for Senator Merediths pension, they should look at themselves in the mirror." Treasury Board President Scott Brison It remains unclear, however, whether disqualification only refers to issues such as a senator no longer meeting the Senates eligibility requirements by, for example, no longer having $4,000 worth of property. The Secretariat noted that it does not have the unilateral authority to intervene or change the pension entitlements under the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act. Any changes would require a legislative amendment by Parliament, they said in a statement. The law was last amended in 2012, when Harper reduced parliamentary pensions. Sen. Housakos is either ignorant of Senate policy and the law that governs this, which is an Act of Parliament, or hes spinning this, Brison said. And even if an Act of Parliament were changed, it would not apply retroactively. Like several other embattled senators who resigned before him, including Liberals Raymond Lavigne and Mac Harb, Meredith gets to keep a pension that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimates is worth about $24,420 a year. Advertisement Were he to start collecting benefits in July 2019 at age 55 and continue to age 90, Meredith would earn about $1.1 million with cost of living increases factored in, based on the watchdog group's calculations. But Meredith is also entitled to other benefits which the Senate could possibly try to strip from him, several sources said. Meredith can keep health benefits By resigning, Meredith is allowed to maintain his health benefits if he wants to. Although, when he retires we will have to pay 100 per cent of the contributions. He is also allowed to keep four travel points which allow him to travel to and from Ottawa to close his office. He can also keep a staff member on for two months to handle correspondence and oversee the shuttering of his workspace. These issues could be reviewed by Housakos internal economy committee. Delaney, however, insisted that was not the case. Any action dealing his travel points, access to his office, his moving expenses and staff for two months "would have to be a decision by the Senate." Advertisement "This has nothing to do with Internal Economy," she wrote in an email. That puzzled a few senators and staffers who wondered how the Senate would talk about it without a recommendation from the committee. One senator on the internal economy committee noted that someone could bring it up at its next meeting, Thursday, but he suggested there was little appetite to keep the Meredith issue going. Last week, following an explosive report outlining Merediths sexual relationship with a teenager, the Senate ethics committee recommended he be expelled from the chamber an unprecedented move in the red chambers history. Meredith remains the subject of two ongoing ethics inquiries including a workplace harassment probe investigating claims of bullying and sexual assault towards his employees. It remains unconfirmed by the Senate Ethics Office and by the Senate ethics committee if those reports will be permanently shelved. With files from the Canadian Press Also on HuffPost Margaret Atwoods dystopian world in The Handmaids Tale is on par with the horrific reality women in Saudi Arabia face today, a Conservative MP said Wednesday. Advertisement Kelly Block rose in the House of Commons to say shes shocked and appalled by Saudi Arabias election to the UNs Commission on the Status of Women last month. Saudi Arabia is a gender segregationist theocracy where women are regularly harassed by religious police, Block said, evoking Atwoods seminal 1985 novel as a point of comparison. Women are treated as property, and those who dare speak out are permanently maimed, she said. What is fictional in Canada is reality in many parts of the world. The Carlton Trail Eagle Creek MP also accused the government of being unwilling to confront the wealthy gulf nation over its human rights record, in particular to women. Advertisement What is fictional in Canada is reality in many parts of the world. Block made her comments in a member statement, so the government did not respond to her remarks. Saudi women are subject to the countrys guardianship system, where every woman is required by law to obtain a male guardians consent every time she seeks government services. Women are also barred from driving in the country. In Atwoods book, set in a totalitarian theocracy in the not-so-distant future, women are stripped of their rights and are subject to systems of institutionalized sexual violence. A new television adaptation of Atwoods book, starring former Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss, has attracted a new audience for its topical motifs that some perceive as a cautionary tale amid a Donald Trump-era of politics. Trudeaus feminist reputation criticized In April, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for not speaking out against Saudi Arabias appointment to the commission. Advertisement If you really are a feminist, if you purport to stand up for womens rights, that means all women around the world, she said. Rempel brought up the issue again last week, calling Trudeau a self-professed feminist and urged him to express his disapproval over the UN secret vote. The prime minister responded by saying Canada strongly disagrees with Saudi Arabias election to the commission, and conceded that unfortunately, it was the only candidate from that region. Canada does not have a voice on that particular body, Trudeau said. We are happy to defend human rights anywhere in the world repeatedly, directly with the leaders and in public. Advertisement The issue has also been brought up by other Tories including MPs Rachael Harder, Peter Kent, and leadership contender Kellie Leitch. Also on HuffPost Testosterone is often seen as the driving force behind a man's sexual prowess but with new research showing its effects on the brain, it could also be the reason why couples aren't having sex. A study, soon to be published in Psychological Science, from researchers at Caltech, the Wharton School, Western University, and ZRT Laboratory looked at how testosterone affected men's behaviour when it came to cognitive reflection or in layperson's terms, how much a man thought about his actions before reacting. Advertisement The 243 male participants were given either topical testosterone gel or a placebo, and were tested in various ways, including an activity that asked them a question that seemed to be simple, but required a bit more thought, as well as math questions. "What we found was the testosterone group was quicker to make snap judgments on brain teasers where your initial guess is usually wrong," says Caltech's Colin Camerer, one of the study's researchers, in a press release. "The testosterone is either inhibiting the process of mentally checking your work or increasing the intuitive feeling that 'I'm definitely right.'" As the study notes, there's an evolutionary basis for testosterone levels to rise, prompting instinctive responses, in competitive situations, such as when a man is being challenged to a fight or when competing for a mate. However, those same situations don't quite work in a 21st century context, when the challenge is, say, who the last person was to take out the garbage. Advertisement "Testosterone's effect on cognition is an evolutionary vestige (or repurposing) that blunts careful deliberation in favour of rough and rapid processing," the authors write. So the bullheadedness that results when men and likely women with elevated testosterone levels as well are challenged is biological. But that doesn't mean it can't be overcome, and you can use a similar science to control it. According to Oprah magazine, a great way to calm down when you're angry is to take a seat, as the body associates being upright with being aggressive. Sitting down, on the other hand, relaxes the physical response and reduces stress hormones. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ducked the same query nearly 20 times in the House of Commons Wednesday while trying to showcase what it might be like if one question period a week was dedicated entirely to his answers. Trudeau used many of the same words to stonewall opposition MPs repeatedly asking how many times hes met with the federal ethics commissioner. The watchdog is probing his New Years vacation to the Aga Khans island in the Bahamas, including the use of a private helicopter. Advertisement For months, Trudeau has responded to inquiries about the investigation by saying he is happy to answer whatever questions the ethics commissioner has for him. The government even used that response in an order paper question from a Conservative MP. But in question period, Tories and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair tried to get a new answer to what theyve dubbed a simple question. Trudeau, who has recently been fielding all queries on Wednesdays to promote his proposed prime ministers question period, brushed them off. Quebec MP Jacques Gourde started by asking in French: How many times has the prime minister met the ethics and conflict of interest commissioner to discuss his elastic version of ethics? Advertisement Trudeau responded that he was perfectly pleased to answer any questions the commissioner might have for him. Unsatisfied, Gourde asked again and received a near-identical answer from Trudeau. It's possible the prime minister has chosen not to answer because he has been asked not to talk about the probe by Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson. Margot Booth, spokesperson for Dawsons office, told HuffPost Canada in an email that the subject of an examination under the Conflict of Interest Act or any inquiry under the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons is asked to keep any information related to it confidential. Trudeau is being investigated for possibly violating the code and the act. Regardless, the Conservatives kept hammering. I will repeat the question in English because the question is not if he is happy or satisfied or feeling good about meeting the ethics commissioner, Tory House Leader Candice Bergen said. Has the prime minister met with the commissioner and if so, how many times? Very simple. Advertisement Mr. Speaker, Im pleased to work with the ethics commissioner and conflict of interest commissioner to answer any questions she may have, Trudeau said. Thats what Canadians expect of the prime minister and thats exactly what Im doing. Youre a joke, Justin, a Tory MP shouted. Youre a joke. House Speaker Geoff Regan asked Alberta MP Blake Richards identified by at least one journalist as the heckler to cool it. Bergen advised Trudeau to provide a clear answer, lest any Canadians think he has something to hide. Again, Trudeau told the House he was very happy to meet with the watchdog. 'How many times, how many times, how many times...' Ontario MP John Brassard tried a new tack in order to cut to the chase. For the sake of my colleagues, Ill ask it again. How many times, how many times, how many times, how many times, how many times, and how many times has he met with the ethics commissioner? Brassard said. When asked the same question, I will give the same answer, Trudeau shot back. I will work with and answer the questions that the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner may have. Advertisement Mulcair then decided to give an assist to the Tories, saying the prime minister should prove he believes in transparency and the importance of question period by giving a basic answer. 'Answer the question': Mulcair He is being investigated by the ethics commissioner. How many times has the prime minister communicated with the ethics commissioner? Answer the question, Mulcair said. Again, Trudeau said hell give the same answer to the same questions, and pointedly noted he was interested in taking questions from all MPs in the House, not just party leaders. Im happy to work with the ethics commissioner on any questions she may have. Some Tories got creative with their approaches. For instance, Quebec MP Alain Rayes, a former teacher, said Trudeau sounded like a child who was happy to see the principal but was unwilling to say how many times. Zero times? One? Two? Three? I know its below five. The questions a simple one, Rayes said. Is it zero or one? I get the impression the answer is probably zero. Advertisement "When asked the same question, I will give the same answer." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Trudeau, again, said he was pleased to sit down with the ethics and conflict of interest commissioner. B.C. MP Cathy McLeod tried a multiple choice question, asking if Trudeau had met with the ethics watchdog: a) zero times, b) one to five times, or c) six to 10. I am happy to work with the ethics commissioner on any questions that she might have, Trudeau responded, before noting how his government is investing in infrastructure and lowering taxes for the middle class. Alberta MP Michelle Rempel tried quoting French writer Andre Malraux, who said: Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides. She urged Trudeau to stop hiding and show Canadians what he is actually made of by answering the question of the day. Advertisement I am happy to work with the ethics commissioner to answer any questions she may have, he said. Again, the prime minister listed off what he deems the main achievements of his government. The whole episode evidently irked the prime ministers senior adviser, Gerald Butts, who tweeted that Mulcair joining the Tories to attack Trudeau felt a lot like the 2015 campaign. MPs from all over Canada finally get a chance to ask the prime minister a question, and were asking only about his vacation, Butts wrote. MPs from all over Canada finally get a chance to ask the Prime Minister a question. They all ask about his Xmas vacation. It's May. Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) May 10, 2017 Advertisement By convention, the prime minister typically only answers questions from other party leaders during question period. There is nothing to stop a prime minister, however, from answering the questions of other members, at any time. With files from Althia Raj What's Happening In Ottawa? Stay on top of the biggest political stories of the day with our newsletter Also on HuffPost When it comes to the topic of gender, some folks have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact than more than two boxes can be checked. But the reality is that while we can't control the biological sex we were assigned at birth, gender is very much a social construct, which can vary across cultures. Advertisement So for those who are cisgender (meaning their sex at birth matches the gender with which they currently identify), how exactly can one go about navigating the concept of gender identity without judging others for being who they are, and most importantly, remaining kind without overstepping boundaries? It's simple be respectful. According to The National Center For Transgender Equality, a U.S.-based social justice advocacy organization, having trouble understanding gender ideals (or lack thereof) from another person's perspective is fine, so long as you can maintain benevolence. The group suggests avoiding making assumptions about someone's gender, advocating for non-binary friendly policies (i.e. being supportive of someone using whichever washroom they feel most comfortable in), and calling them by the name they currently use. Advertisement But when it comes to actually asking about preferred gender pronouns, writer and poet Jayy Dodd, who doesn't identity with any gender, tells HuffPost Canada that it's probably a good idea to skip that question altogether. remembering the time the universe held me down? A post shared by they dodd (@jayydodd) on Apr 23, 2017 at 8:53pm PDT "They are how people claim and identify themselves through language," they share. "Seeing them as a preference reduces peoples agency. Its a human decency." "The hardest thing for me is seeing how gender polite language is [using maam, sir, Mr., Mrs., Ms.]," they add. "Its just disheartening how formal codes of respect are limiting and erase those living beyond or between gender." If you're still wondering what to say, the 25-year-old suggests to just say "them." They explain that's what many members of the LGBTQ+ community are already using to refer to those who don't conform to a specific gender. Advertisement "Its just disheartening how formal codes of respect are limiting and erase those living beyond or between gender." Despite the fact that as a society, changing our vocabulary to use more inclusive language in an effort to make others feel comfortable arguably isn't that strenuous, some people just refuse to comply. Back in October 2016, University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson made it clear he wouldn't adhere to using gender-neutral pronouns, despite the action violating an Ontario Human Rights Code. "I don't believe that people have the right for that kind of special treatment," Peterson, who also works as a clinical psychologist, said at the time. Advertisement Professor Jordan Peterson at University of Toronto. But U of T spokesperson Althea Blackburn-Evans had other thoughts. "He's required to follow the law," she told Mississauga News reporters. "He's required to ensure that he's contributing to an environment that's free from discrimination." So why are some cis people so hard-headed when it comes to respecting gender when it typically will not have any negative impact on their lives? "Its easier to dehumanize someone when you can blame it on tradition, [maybe]?" Dodd says contemplatively. Thankfully, it seems as though younger generations are far more open to non-binary views of gender and sexuality in comparison to their older counterparts. "Its easier to dehumanize someone when you can blame it on tradition." According to Broadly, a survey published in 2016 suggested that 81 per cent of those belonging to Generation Z, people aged 13 to 20, believe that "gender doesn't define a person as much as it used to." Advertisement "That was an intriguing statistic that got a lot of attention in the media, but we weren't sure quite what it meant: Were they just saying, for example, that men or women could pursue any career they wanted to?" pondered Shepherd Laughlin, director of trendspotting at marketing communications company J. Walter Thompson. "Or did this reflect the more radical idea that gender itself isn't as important to personal identity as it used to be, or that gender shouldn't be seen as a binary? This new research shows that the latter idea is gaining significant traction among Gen Zers." But what we all can do, regardless of whatever societal boxes we fit or don't fit into, is to simply have compassion for our fellow human beings. Writer and trans activist Janet Mock in Brooklyn, New York. "We exist in a culture where trans people are constantly delegitimized," activist Janet Mock said during a Rainbow Alliance panel discussion in April, speaking on her experiences as a trans woman. "So seeing a trans persons journey as a part of your own in some way and seeing how deeply linked our liberations are to one another, though we may not see or view the same kind of people, is understanding." Advertisement Also on HuffPost The Ontario Liberals have just announced a pharmacare plan targeted at youths aged 25 and under which will provide full coverage for a wide range of prescription drugs. This is welcome news, to be sure. One hopes that the youth plan will be the first step towards public drug coverage for Ontarians of all ages. The policy case for universal pharmacare is overwhelming. It is scandalous that in 2017 many Canadians die for lack of affordable access to basic drugs like insulin. Increasingly, even those of us with private health insurance coverage are facing limits on what we can claim, so that our insurance does not protect us when we need it the most. Even those covered by other publicly funded drug programs, such as the elderly, are facing increasing co-payments in many provinces. Advertisement A well-designed pharmacare scheme can deliver huge savings by leveraging the bargaining power of an entire population. Canadians pay some of the highest drug prices in the world under our existing patchwork scheme of drug coverage -- employment-based private insurance for the majority of Canadians, combined with public coverage for seniors and low-income people. As a point of comparison, New Zealand has tasked an agency at arm's length from government, PHARMAC, with purchasing drugs for its entire population. The cost savings are staggering. An annual prescription for the common blood-pressure drug Amlodipine costs New Zealanders about $10 a year, as compared to about $130 for patients in Canada. Such an agency would not be swayed as much by short-term politics, not to mention requests and petitions by drug companies. The aggregate savings are significant, with New Zealand spending only US$297 per capita on drugs annually, to Canada's CA$771, according to the most recent OECD data. With prescription drug costs now nearly matching spending on physicians in Canada, this is a low-hanging fruit for achieving significant cost savings for our strained health-care budgets. Advertisement But if, in implementing its recently announced plan, the Ontario government permits spending to gallop out of control, this will undermine efforts to examine coverage to all those in Ontario and across Canada. Out-of-control spending on drugs could mean there are precious fewer dollars to spend on other important things, like reducing wait times or long-term care beds. The key to success here is to adopt a business-like, hard-nosed approach to price negotiations with drug companies, similar to that seen in New Zealand. To achieve this, we first need to move responsibility for buying drugs away from the Ontario Ministry of Health to an arm's-length agency. Such an agency would not be swayed as much by short-term politics, not to mention requests and petitions by drug companies. It is also important that the legislation setting up this agency require it to work within a fixed budget. The budget should be allocated to it each year by the government after calibrating the money it has for different demands within health care. If it doesn't operate within a fixed budget, our public buyer cannot credibly threaten to walk away from drug companies' demands for inflated prices, which would be to the detriment of us all. A fixed budget each year will improve decision-making about which drugs to fund or not fund. It would also necessarily require an assessment about the relative benefits of one drug over another in improving our overall health. Such an assessment of the evidence would benefit us all. Advertisement People will, of course, complain that this means all drugs are not covered. But there would be nothing to prevent those who wish to buy drugs not included in the public plan to do so -- as is currently the case -- either with private health insurance or out-of-pocket payments. The public plan must cover the most important and cost-effective drugs for the entire population. We must ensure that policies enacted today carry forward to the longer-term goal. Drug companies may complain that their industry will lose out if government drives a hard bargain on prices. But if drug companies need subsidies to exist, then this should be considered on the same footing with other industries (e.g., car, aircraft, farming) who seek public assistance. Hidden subsidies should not happen in the form of excessive prices levied on Ontarians when they are sick. The architects of Canadian medicare stressed from the beginning that public health insurance must grow to include pharmaceuticals. Over the intervening half-century, drugs have come to represent a much larger component of health-care spending, yet little progress has been made towards universal coverage. If history is any guide, it will be the provinces that break this stasis. We celebrate Ontario's move to meaningfully deal with inequitable gaps in access to pharmaceuticals. But we must ensure that policies enacted today carry forward to the longer-term goal of equitable and cost-effective health care for all. A hard-headed business approach is now required. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: Afolabi Sotunde / Reuters One of the 21 Chibok school girls released by Boko Haram carries her baby during their visit to meet President Muhammadu Buhari In Abuja, Nigeria October 19, 2016. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY We've been down this road previously on a number of occasions here and here. The name Boko Haram has become synonymous with the worst kinds of humanity since their 2014 abduction of 276 girls from a high school in Chibok, Nigeria. The kidnapping resulted in some serious outrage and even led to an international campaign with its own hashtag -- #BringBackOurGirls. But, as is often the case in a highly distracted Western world, the campaign increasingly fell out of view and out of mind. This was occurring even as reports were leaking out of the horrible fate of the schoolgirls -- rape, forced labour, isolation, and physical beatings. Yet because it took months for such details to emerge, the initial interest and cries for action eventually died down as the world moved on to its next concern. Advertisement But not everyone tuned out. The Obama administration had focused its intelligence and military resources in an effort to locate the girls and attempt an intervention. And quietly, behind the scenes, the Nigerian government diligently worked through its contacts in order to dialogue with Boko Haram leaders and reach a deal about the girls' release. Suddenly last week great enthusiasm resulted with the release of some 80 of the schoolgirls as a result of negotiations between the government and perpetrators. Add that to the 20 who had managed to escape last year and the number now free amounts to over one-third of the original group kidnapped. The world was right to rejoice at the news. But troubling realities remain largely unmentioned in the euphoria of last week's celebration. First and foremost, what is the fate of the remainder of the girls whose location still hasn't been ascertained? Their families still fret as to their condition, or even if they remain alive. And in addition to the Chibok girls, hundreds more have been held captive in the northern part of Nigeria by the same group. Little is ever heard of their plight. Advertisement And how do we feel knowing that five Boko Haram commanders were released as a means of securing the girls' release. This is a terrorist group we are talking about, not some isolated group of rebels seeking to gain some notoriety. Boko Haram has killed some 20,000 people and displaced 2,000,000 in their eight-year campaign of bloodshed and human rights abuses. Like ISIS, they remain committed to establishing an Islamic caliphate and are willing to use terror tactics to achieve that end. So, despite the remarkable release of the schoolgirls last week, the situation on the ground has changed little. This can only mean that further abductions, killings and displacements will continue to threaten the average Nigerian family. Yet is the world, or even Donald Trump, as his predecessor did, willing to put together the kind of resources necessary in order to protect an innocent population from ongoing injustices? Sadly, that answer, at least for the moment, is no. As an increasing number of governments, like the Trudeau administration in Canada, place pronounced emphasis on the fate of women and girls in their global foreign aid and development commitments, such efforts will forever remain stained by the presence in Nigeria of hundreds of women and girls who have endured the worst of treatment by the worst of humanity with little international coordinated effort to rescue them. This is our modern world in all its complexity, and it says something about intergovernmental lack of capacity to collaborate and of the inability of citizens to retain their outrage and activism for long enough to bring an end to the outrage. Famed advertising pioneer and guru, William Bernbach, understood well enough our penchant to get tired of things quickly. "In communications, familiarity breeds apathy," he said in a speech one day, and modern events continue to bear out his observation. Could this reality underlie the reason why more isn't being done for the women and girls held in Nigerian captivity? Have we grown so used to the story that it no longer arouses us to action? If so, then the fate of the Chibok schoolgirls hinges just as much on the indifference of the West as the inhumanity of Boko Haram. happydancing via Getty Images Female hands typing on keyboard of laptop Recently, my "blogging anniversary" popped-up on my LinkedIn profile and several friends and colleagues congratulated me on this random milestone. A quick Google search indicates that the blog industry is booming and the blogosphere is buzzing with interest and innovation. As to their evolutionary trajectory? I leave that question to the social media trend forecasters. So many media avenues for sharing information and opinions have morphed into blogs, and for better or worse, I too have been swept up into the wonderful whirlwind of blogging. I wonder, what is truly the beauty of blogs? Advertisement Here's my blurb on the beauty of blogs: Blogs connect ideas and information succinctly through a simple and accessible social media platform. We all crave simplicity and accessibility in a complex, turbulent and fragile world. The blogger is connected with readers in a dynamic way allowing for meaningful feedback and dialogue. We all crave meaningful connections. Why I (and countless others) are drawn to blogging (as opposed to other media): Twitter is too concise (my blabbering cannot be adequately condensed into 140 characters.) Journalism requires too much research and preparation. Essay writing is too long-winded and formal, and I did my share in my student life. Personal Journal writing is too reclusive. Book writing / publishing is daunting. Facebook and Instagram obviously lack the power of verbose paragraphs. Vlogging is too revealing, almost creepy. How and why I blog. It seems that blogging has just the right blend of creativity and structure basically a user-friendly template with some wiggle room to establish our own signature style. Many of us are attracted to the particular mix of style, tone and template produced by blogs. Ultimately, we entice the reader with an aperitif and tasty appetizer, offer a few nuggets to chew on and conclude with a delicious digestif perhaps a satiating remark or a tantalizing question suggesting more food for thought. Ta da! A terrific recipe for a zesty blog post. It seems like blogs are taking over the world of information media. Sometimes, I wonder about the future of all other forms of written media; are they in fact becoming obsolete? Morphing into the universal uber blog? Then again, blogging might just be another passing trend. Not likely, as the hyper-connected, short-attentioned Millennials seem to be wired perfectly for a blog infused world. And apparently many of us Gen Xers are catching the blogger bug too. Advertisement It can take hours, days or weeks to percolate a notion worthy of sharing. Typically, (scenario #1) I'm sweating it out on the loathsome elliptical and a potential idea for a blog post wondrously pops into my head in between familiar tunes on my favourite 70s playlist. Sometimes, I get pleasantly distracted with the budding idea and I manage to complete the otherwise challenging and monotonous elliptical routine without despair. Typically, I can sustain approximately 30-50 minutes on the elliptical, as such, creative ideas don't fully flush out all that often. Then again, (scenario #2) as my middle-aged body sustains a boundless stretch and I am surrounded by an awesome natural landscape and the peaceful sounds of silence, a creative impulse may be gently stirring. The flushing out process is a reconfiguration of my random, sometimes Rorschach-like ambiguous thought patterns into a more sensible Venn diagram type schema. My sense is that our shared human experiences are somewhat universal; and hopefully, the blog posts offer a decoded glimpse of my mind that in fact somehow connects all of our tangled minds. It's comforting to know that even in the depths of our sometimes warped thinking; we are likely more similar than different. We tend to blog about our passions and our seminal experiences; hence my blog posts have included candid personal narratives about my family, food, music, travel, mental health and my current stage of life: adjusting to the empty nest in the absence of a plunge into a major mid-life crisis. Long before the evolution of the current digital lingo we have hoped to share our ideas and "click" with others. Certainly, sharing our passions, insights and experiences (even if they are not epic or legendary) brings us together into a wonderful community; and now the blogging community is an extension of that network. In the meantime, let's download several creative iblog apps: plug in the desired content, hone an enticing theme and zoom in on an intended audience and poof! The perfect blog will appear. Not that simple; the blog hosts remind us of an essential caveat to readership: as authentic bloggers, we must reveal an inner layer of ourselves, essentially exposing our flaws, fears, woes and wishes. Definitely, some transparency is required. Personal but not too private; descriptive yet not too graphic. We are bloggers, real people; let's remember there is just a fuzzy and transient line between bloggers and readers. And that's precisely the blog-appeal! Author: Liz Pearl, M.Ed., is an educator and therapist with a particular interest in psychogeriatrics and expressive arts therapy. She is the founder of PK Press and the editor of several collections of personal narratives including Mourning Has Broken and the Living Legacies series. You can read more of Liz's blogs at Her Magazine. Advertisement Read More Blogs: Abide by the truth even if your shadow deserts you ~ Amin Ahsan Islahi Mainstream Muslim institution stakeholders often ignore the contributions of progressive Muslims. They believe that the contributions of progressive Muslims are limited to women rights and LGBTQ rights. However, despite their small numbers, progressive Muslims have been relentlessly working on issues that include Syria, Palestine, racism, human rights abuses and Islamophobia. Often accused of watering down the religion or acting upon their desires, progressive Muslims are reduced to a caricature. They are often ignored in the Conferences hosted by mainstream Muslim institutions. However, given the increasing calls for the persecution of liberal Muslims in Malaysia and Pakistan, the importance of intra-faith dialogue cannot be understated. The umbrella of progressive Muslims is quite large. It includes practicing Muslims and cultural Muslims, straight and LGBTQ, women who wear the headscarf and those who avoid it, and Muslims of various religious bents. However, what unites them all is their common affiliation with Islam. Advertisement While progressive Muslims adopt viewpoints that go against the classical grain on issues related to women and LGBTQ Muslims, it is important to reject caricatures by highlighting their many contributions beyond these two issues. Muslim academic Dr. Adis Duderija writes that progressive Muslim discourse "refuses to accept either a hegemony of Western secularism or a hegemony of Islamist fundamentalism." He also asserts that, "progressive Islam has a very robust, systematic and authentic theoretical underpinning." Progressive Muslims are forging their own narrative, one that is radically inclusive and counters zulm (oppression) in its multiple manifestations. The following provides a snapshot of five leaders in the progressive Muslim movement. 1)Ani Zonneveld Advertisement Affectionately called Anitollah, she is the founder and President of Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) in the U.S. Despite receiving threats, she has been relentlessly working on fundraising for Syrian refugees, highlighting human rights abuses in the Middle East and challenging the basis for radicalism while undermining Islamophobia. She is concerned that instead of acknowledging progressive Muslim efforts, some non-Muslims simply regurgitate the line that Muslims are not speaking out against radicalization. She highlights the importance of amplifying the voices of reform minded Muslim men and women who are imprisoned in the Middle East by authoritarian regimes. In the aftermath of the Syrian children who were gassed, she harrowingly reminded people on the need for intersectional work. "As gay rights activists, do you only support your rights and not that of others? As a Muslim, are you just going to narrow your concerns around anti-Islam/Muslim hate? And people of the Jewish faith, are you only going to care about your history and the survival of your people and the security of Israel?" 2)Shahla Khan Salter Advertisement A lawyer and a single mother of three, she is the director of Universalist Muslims in Canada. She takes a broad look at the economic and political forces that cause oppression in the Muslim world and the West. She has consistently raised concerns on Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and the role of ISIS, Saudi Arabia and Israel in inflicting oppression in the Middle East. As head of a small grass roots community, she has called for sanctions against regimes complicit in human rights abuses, while standing up against Islamophobia here in the west She has highlighted the plight of Christians in Pakistan, human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, black lives and anti-Semitism in the West and the role of American drones that target innocent civilians as collateral damage. Like Ani, she emphasizes the need for intersectional work. "Under wide threat of injustice, supporting one another, regardless of faith is essential. Those with other beliefs are defending us -- we must defend them as well. How? By supporting Standing Rock while demanding peace for Syria. By attending multi-faith gatherings at our local synagogue. By marching behind Black activists because Black Lives Matter." 3)Frank Parmir Advertisement The septuagenarian, anti-nuclear weapons activist is the President of MPV Columbus. With a predilection for universal Sufism he has written passionately on human rights abuses inflicted on Palestinians. He is also a strong proponent of economic justice. He declares: "In a competitive economy, until each child born has equal access to the nurturance needed to prosper, no personal wealth is fairly earned, justly owned, or rightly defended." 4)Imtiaz Popat Leading the LGBTQ support group Salaam Vancouver, he is a community radio and television host and an equal rights activist. Like other progressive Muslims, he is concerned about the role of the West, especially Canada, in selling arms to regimes like those in Saudi Arabia despite their human rights abuses. He is also concerned about the rise of right wing militia in the West and emphasizes intersectional activism including indigenous communities. 5)Nakia Jackson Advertisement A proud mother of an autistic son and a strong supporter of many causes including Black Lives Matter, she reminds us that progressive activism also includes nurturing healthy communities. She has written about reaching out to Muslim children through story telling, drama, architecture, design, and games. On home-schooling her son, she writes: "I shape lessons to tell the story of humanity as we experience it; not as the vast majority of humans waiting around for European men to bring civilization, but as stars in their own stories. ... Our book selections place people who are like him at the forefront of their own stories, so he learns that he is not an elective or a sidebar that he will learn about in later grades, but a main character in a powerful story, one that began before he was born and whose chapters he will have the opportunity to write." There are many other progressive Muslim voices, which include Kelly Wentworth and Pamela Taylor, who are actively contributing to Muslim communities in multiple ways. It would be a shame to not have their voices represented in the annual conventions and conferences hosted by mainstream Muslim institution stakeholders. Photos used with permission of these leaders At seven am the phone rings, lifting me out of a food-induced sleep. Day five of my luxury getaway on the Mayan Riviera is dawning and I am beyond irritated to receive an early morning phone call during my fancy-lady escape from reality. My opulent room comes into focus through my one opened eye. Face glued to the pillow, I reach for the phone, clear my throat and prepare to mutter, "No," and hang up. Did I agree to an off-resort day out with my travel companions? Yes. But that was before the full-service resort treated me to a Spanish dinner celebration prepared by Michelin Star Chef, Manuel Berganza. He came all the way from New York City, guys. I had to! Advertisement After being stuffed with nine courses paired with Spanish wines and signature cocktails, I returned to my room to sleep off food-triplets. Before entering my food coma, I packed my bag and set an alarm for the next day's excursion. But somewhere between lights out and the wakeup call, all bets were off. Or so I thought. You see, I am Constanza-level ensconced at the ultra-luxe Iberostar Grand Hotel Paraiso on the Riviera Maya. I have a butler, a private terrace, a beachfront cabana and they bring me breakfast in bed. Mix that with last night's welcome overindulgence and I have become a stage-four bailer. I'll apologize, pay my share of the rental car and be snacking by the ocean by noon, I think to myself. Advertisement Ring number two beckons. "Hello," I mutter. "Are you sleeping? Get up, we're going to leave soon. You still have time to make it. We'll wait for you," replies the chipper voice on the phone. I deliver my regrets and an apology and prepare to relax back into sleep. "No. You're coming. You have to. It's going to be fun," the voice persists. My unrelenting travel companion perseveres, chipping away at my dream of floating in the pool between naps and coffees. I need this person when I'm on deadline, not when I'm on vacation, I think to myself. "No, thank you." Moments later I am sat,eyes burning, in the front seat of our rental car, clutching an Americano onroute to breakfast in Playa del Carmen. The Jungle Cook We travel a short distance down the highway to our first stop: brunch at La Cueva del Chango, a jungle-esque eatery just off the main pedestrian strip. Advertisement Serving up proper Mexican dishes, La Cueva del Chango is built seamlessly into the surrounding vegetation to deliver a whimsical jungle tree-house atmosphere. Tables set under the sunny sky are surrounded by large palm trees, fish ponds, lush green vegetation and blossoming vines. I'm told the food here is great but the juice is legendary. I try the orange and guava juices and forget momentarily about my empty beach cabana back at the resort. Breakfast is Chilaquiles, lightly fried tortillas topped with eggs and shredded chicken simmered and dressed in green sauce. A waiter sets the thoughtfully prepared dishes on the wood table creating an earthy and delicious food-tableau. Advertisement Nourished and enchanted I find myself in good-ish spirits and ready for the next stop. The Ancient Estates of Tulum Back in the car we head for legendary Tulum in search of the area's ancient seaside ruins. We arrive to find ourselves in a buzzing market filled with Mexican blankets, maracas and skulls all awaiting emigration to their new owner's home country. As we leave the tourist pre-game area, headed for the ruins proper, we happen on an unusual scene: five men in traditional clothes free-climbing a four-storey blue pole. At the top, the eldest man takes a seat and begins casually playing music while the remaining four tie themselves off with ropes incapable of meeting Canadian safety standards. Tied in, the men launch themselves off the pole, each spinning high above the ground forming a human mobile. They spin, twisting into acrobatic shapes, ropes unravelling and approaching the ground until each makes a gentle, if not bored-looking, landing. Satisfied that this is the strangest thing we'll see today, we make our way down a path to an ancient stone wall built seven metres thick. We enter the ruins through a narrow, dark tunnel in the wall. It gives way to a wide open space peppered with ancient stone structures dotting a seaside cliff. Advertisement Here you won't find the massive, scary-stepped temples typical of the Mayan Riviera, but rather a series of smaller structures. I'm just going to say it: this place is stunning. Perched on a cliff above the crystal blue ocean and home to a seemingly untouched beach it's no wonder the Mayans chose this site for their temples and homes. We explore the ruins and leave under what has become an intense midday sun to enjoy a sunset. Sunset at Sea Our last adventure, not far from Playa Paraiso will test my second worst travel deficiency: sea sickness. Gravol in my belly, I board a nimble catamaran bound for a two-hour sunset tour. I warn my fellow travellers that today might be remembered as the day I ruined by barfing on someone. Our captain is beyond tanned and has the look of a person with no occasion to wear socks and shoes, which is to say, he's relaxed. Advertisement We set sail bounding from one pontoon to the other over high, rolling waves the sun falling in the sky behind us. The ocean is exquisite and the shoreline puts Mexico's incredibly beauty on full and glorious display. Further out to sea, the water is rough. This makes me nervous but a look back at Captain Relaxed--who is looking very relaxed indeed--sets me at ease. At the midway point, we sail into a quiet bay and drop anchor. Here, we are free to jump off the catamaran, swim around, drink beer and enjoy the remaining daylight. Gravol doing it's job, I dive off the boat several times, splash around and eat some chips. Pretty good day for me. Moments later, we up-anchor and head back out into the waves to catch the sunset. Captain Relaxed positions us perfectly in front of a glowing sun hanging just over the horizon. There, we sit quietly, bobbing on the ocean until the radiant orb disappears. Advertisement Day done, I sit reflecting on our activities. Someone barfs. It is not me. It's late when we arrive back at the resort. I head to the spa for a coffee and a soak in the hot tub grateful for the day I nearly missed. DISCLOSURE: The writer was a guest of Iberostar Grand Hotel Paraiso. The hotel did not approve this article. The 2017 Ontario Budget has suggested some proposals which are expected to have substantial effects on the lives of Ontarians. This budget is a balanced budget and this trend of a balanced budget is expected to continue for the next two years. A balanced budget will be beneficial for the Ontario economy. The province has eliminated a deficit of more than $19 billion at the height of the recession. The net debt-to-GDP ratio was 37.8 per cent in 2016-17, which is predicted to decline. A lower net debt-to-GDP ratio can be a positive indicator of the health for the province's economy. One of the highlights of this budget is the launch of OHIP+, which allows free prescription drugs for people under 25 regardless of their family income. This radical proposal will be very beneficial for young people and families with children. It will lead to healthier children and young adults, which may have positive effects on school attendance and performance, and contribute towards a young and healthy workforce. Investments on the future citizens of the province will definitely pay rich rewards in both the short and long runs. Another noticeable highlight of the budget is the proposed reduction of hydro costs by 25 per cent. The high level of hydro bills has been a concern for both individuals and businesses in Ontario. A decrease in hydro costs will benefit 500,000 small businesses and farms, approximately. Lower hydro bills will decrease their cost of operations and may improve their businesses, leading to higher business activity in Ontario. Advertisement The budget has proposed a 15 per cent tax on properties bought by non-Canadians. This proposal will be judicious in reducing the effect of speculation in the Ontario real-estate market. Also, real estate prices have been increasing significantly in Toronto. The proposed Non-Resident Speculation Tax (NRST) may dampen the price increase as it will make it more expensive for non-Canadians to purchase property. It may stem real estate bubble and help Canadians to afford properties in Ontario. Health care has received attention in this budget. The budget proposes an additional investment of $7 billion over the next three years compared to last year's budget. This will reduce wait times, access to care and improve patient experience. Investments in health care will improve the health of Ontarians and lead to a healthy population and workforce. This will improve the quality of life of Ontarians as well as make positive impacts on the Ontario economy. Also, the budget proposes an additional $9 billion in new capital grants over 10 years in the construction of several new major hospital projects. This will improve access to health care. Again, the needs of a growing aging population will be better met with this investment. Education is very important for Ontarians and the budget proposes investment to the sector. It has proposed allocation of almost $16 billion over 10 years to help build and improve schools. Also, the Ontario Student Assistance Program has been revamped. The new program will allow 210,000 students in postsecondary education across the province to attend for free. As expenses can be a hurdle for people to access education, particularly postsecondary education, this is a very prudent program. More people can access education, which will lead to more educated Ontarians and a more educated workforce. Investments on education are predicted to benefit the province socially and economically in the short and long runs. Ontario has proposed investments of more than $190 billion over a 13-year period in public infrastructure. The largest infrastructure investment in its history, it started in 2014-15 and invests in building child-care spaces, hospitals, public transit, highways and roads. This massive investment is predicted to generate employment, improve health care, reduce cost of business and boost Ontario's economy in the short and long runs. Advertisement In Ontario, job growth is quite robust. It is expected to increase by 1.3 per cent, or 94,000 jobs in 2017 and 900,000 jobs between 2010 and 2020. These job growth figures are impressive and this budget will certainly play a role in making it a reality. This balanced budget is an ambitious budget with important allocations to education, health care and infrastructure spending. It is predicted to pay important rewards in terms of better education and health care, higher employment and improved quality of life for Ontarians in the short-run to the long-run. The five things you need to know on Wednesday, May 10 1) THE WON SHOW Prime Ministers Questions come in many forms these days. Last night we saw the softer sofa version on BBCs The One Show, as Theresa and Philip May talked about bins, boys jobs and girls jobs, fake pregnancy reports, her long-standing leadership ambition and Red Boxes banned from the No.10 bedroom. The real takeaway: Philip has been a member of Theresa Mays Team long before it was a new name for Tory candidates. And like those candidates, he takes his orders well. Advertisement But the grittier questions came during the PMs campaign event in Leeds as the party allowed a proper grilling from factory workers. May handled it well, being candid about what she can deliver and giving blunt answers on issues like overseas aid and benefit cuts. But the Yorkshire workers get full marks for forcing the PM to admit she cant wave a wand to stop all energy bill rises and for her refusal to say NI wouldnt go up. One bloke even dismissed her childcare plans and said only Corbyn was promising him real cash with a 10/hour minimum wage. And there will be questions of a different sort at 11am today when the Crown Prosecution Service finally rules on whether there will be charges over the 2015 Tory election expenses saga. May could argue those are queries for a previous PM named Dave, but lets see how she responds on the stump in Nottinghamshire. Team May are getting increasingly irritated at claims her campaign is too tightly stage-managed. They claim she has taken 47 questions from journalists after speeches in a Q and A format more than seven times the amount taken by Jeremy Corbyn. For his part, Corbyn may see the Tory election expense row as proof of his claim that Britain is run by a rigged system where big money buys politics (we saw that too in Labour claims that 1m of Tory spending secured the wafer-thin West Midlands Metro Mayoral victory). But Labour has rigging issues of its own, with a defeated candidate in the Liverpool Walton race claiming the selection of Len McCluskeys aide Dan Carden showed the party was not always a meritocracy. I also revealed last night that on Monday Unite agreed a big new donation to Labour for key seats. Unite points out the cash was approved more than 24 hours before Cardens selection. 2) MR INCREDIBLE Jeremy Corbyn this morning gets both barrels from a Guardian leader article: Barely a month from polling day, it seems there is no platform Labour could adopt that would address the doubt in many voters minds about Mr Corbyns credibility as a potential prime minister. Tory HQ could barely hide their glee. Advertisement When youre a leader behind in the polls, elections are all about suspending disbelief that you can actually become PM to carry out your manifesto plans. I predicted yesterday that Gentle Jezza would become Angry Jeremy on the Manchester launch platform and he duly did so (though he was back to Cardigan Corbyn mode soon after, singing Stand By Me with this busker). Corbyn has learned how to control his irritation with difficult interviews, but he couldnt resist having a dig at Laura Kuenssberg yesterday after she pressed him seven times to say he would definitely lead the UK out of the EU (aides later confirmed he would). It wasnt aired in prime time, but he added at the end: The next four weeks youre going to hear plenty about our policies. And I cant ask you what your own opinions are, but Im sure in your heart of hearts youll like some of them. Was that a passive-aggressive dog whistle to all those Corbyn supporters who pile vile abuse on the BBCs political editor online? Or was it just banter with no undertone? Given the bizarre decision by aides to ban BuzzFeed yesterday for reporting fairly his words on the leadership, who knows? 3) SPLITTING HEADACHE Will Labour split if Jeremy Corbyn refuses to go, even after a huge general election defeat? Yesterday, Peter Mandelson told the Times Rachel Sylvester that Emmanuel Macrons win showed how you could quit one party and start another and win. The simple truth of Macrons victory is that he won by leaving his party, not despite doing so, the Dark Lord said, adding with mischievous glee: We have to understand just how fed up people are with traditional party structures. That splitter not a fighter talk only fuelled the rumours that Blairs new anti-Brexit grouping plus Open Britain plus the Lib Dems could merge into some SDP Mark II for the 2010s. Chris Hope in the Telegraph picks up on chatter that up to 100 moderate Labour MPs could remove themselves from the party whip if Corbyn doesnt go, forming a new independent Labour grouping in the Commons with a pledge to rejoin the PLP after hes gone. Given that this may instantly lead to them being expelled, and remove any nomination rights in any leadership race, it may not be a runner of an idea. Advertisement But the FT has an altogether more intriguing alliance, revealing that former Miliband aide Lord Glasman had No.10 talks with Mays policy chief Nick Timothy. It was two thinkers getting together over a cup of tea, said one insider. Glasman has long been out of the Miliband circle but his blue Labour politics is not far from the red Tory instincts of Timothy. Thatcherite ministers arent amused by Mays energy price cap. But senior Tory sources moved swiftly to deny Energy Secretary Greg Clark had expressed dissent in Cabinet (Clarks reasoned questions may have been misinterpreted by colleagues). May herself summed up her philosophy yesterday quite well: Sometimes people say to me that doing something like that doesnt sound very Conservative. My response to that is when it comes to looking at supporting working people what matters is not an ideology, what matters is doing what you believe to be right. BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Watch Theresa May use her favourite s-words to sum up her childhood. 4) DILATED PUPILS Labour and the Lib Dems are both rolling out their education policies for the general election today. Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to halt Tory cuts to school budgets and reduce currently dilated class sizes for under-8s in a radical 20bn education plan. Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner has blogged for us that when in 2017 headteachers are sending letters to parents begging for cash, you know that something is wrong. And shes right, with the IFS saying theres a real terms spending cut. Corbyn has revived his National Education Service plan that was a plank of his leadership campaign but has been little seen since. The wish list could prove popular, but the exact funding of some of its seems hazy. Yes, theres a full costing for the first time of reversing 20bn in corporation tax cuts, but is the overall spending figure 30bn (theres a pledge for 6bn/year for five years)? A mystery sum for capital spending on buildings will come from borrowing. LBC's Nick Ferrari wasn't happy that Rayner didn't know exactly how many children under-8 were in classes large than 30 pupils (He cited his own figure of 520,000 kids in primaries had classes of 30 or more, but Rayner said she was not going to play the numbers game). The Lib Dems also have plans to use corporation tax hikes to protect schools from real terms cuts, pledging 7bn. Both are ways to keep up pressure on one of the Tories true weak points in the election and the real battle is the one that has gone on behind the scenes over getting extra money for education in the manifesto. Raising the floor, rather than dumping the vexed new funding formula, was being pushed by Tory MPs. Advertisement 5) COMEY ISLAND President Donald Trump has fired the FBI chief who was overseeing an investigation into his links with the Russians. Thats a sentence you have to really pinch yourself when writing (or reading) it, as a reminder that this is real, not fake news. Director James Comey found out about his sacking from TV and initiallly thought it was a joke. Hes not laughing now. Now Comey has few friends on either side of the political divide in the US, not least as Democrats were furious with his conduct in publicising claims about Hillary Clintons emails in the key run-up to polling day last year (while keeping quiet about his Russia probe). And his defence of his actions to Congress had to be clarified earlier yesteray by the FBI. Read our HuffPost US story for a quick catch-up. But with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Washington to meet Trump today, the sacking has caused an outcry and prompted claims the President used the Hillary issue as an excuse to remove him. Lots of people reached for the comparison with Richard Nixon, who ordered the firing of a Watergate investigator (via his attorney general). Yet the Nixon Library tweeted that even tricky Dicky never fired his FBI director. Politico has some superb detail: [Trump] repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldnt disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said. Yes, the most powerful man on the planet really is Mr Angry who loses it when watching telly. That makes Jeremy Corbyn look pretty mild. If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox. Not a lot of people know this, but back in 2012, I harboured a dirty secret. Every Wednesday lunchtime, for about a year, I sloped off from my office desk, alone. Away from the shiny soulless glass buildings of Canary Wharf, towards the fishy world of Billingsgate Market, and the little bobbing private narrowboats of the marina. I would check behind me before making my way down the steps to the water, like a private detective, or an unfaithful spouse. And then I'd board one of the houseboats. Advertisement An hour later I'd re-emerge, heading back to work as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But it had. Because in that hour, on that boat, I had been with her: My Woman On The Boat. And no, it wasn't a lesbian affair. She was my therapist. Hmm... Therapy. Counselling. Psychoanalysis... Meh! Don't get me wrong. I'd always thought going to see a counsellor could be very worthwhile for someone. I just couldn't see how it would help me. I mean, wasn't therapy just for people who didn't have friends they could talk to? For folk who had trouble opening up, processing stuff, understanding themselves? Well that certainly didn't apply to me. Oh no, siree! I had friends I could talk to, friends so close I considered them family. And I've always been pretty sorted thanks very much - open, self-aware, emotionally intelligent - oh and of course, modest. Advertisement Nope, as far as I was concerned, therapy applied to other people's worlds, not mine. But the truth was - I was struggling, and the little voice inside knew, I just didn't want to admit it. Confessing I can't cope has always been my particular shade of kryptonite. I'm proud to be capable, sorted, strong. That's my thing God damn it! I'm the one who's always okay, can handle anything, rolls with life's punches and then gets up cracking a joke. And I'm also a bit of a control freak - I rarely ask for help. I never stop for directions. Oh, and I'm always right. But enough was enough; I was going under. When Mum got her out of-the-blue terminal diagnosis the year before, I just got on with it. It was the only thing I could do. I just managed, did what I needed to do, became who I needed to become, for her. But underneath it was all silently whirring away: the shock, the trauma, the injustice that my mum was losing her life, and that I was losing my mum. Advertisement I was one floundering daughter, with no clue which way was up. It was like being caught in an almighty wave. Having that moment of panic of which direction to swim. Except it wasn't just one moment, it was continuous. Then, add to the mix, six months later - my partner of almost ten years, upping and leaving - effectively a divorce. Another crushing wave. Another onslaught of loss, grief, anger. And another chunk of my identity missing. I was completely lost. I didn't know who I was, let alone how I felt. And then these three words saved me: "I need help" For three small words, of one syllable each, they didn't half pack some punch. Just admitting it to myself was an enormous relief. It almost felt better right there, without doing anything about it. The waves still crashed into me, knocked me about, directionless, but I realised I could still breath. And I could still ask for help. I took the first three counsellors I found operating near my office and sent them an email. All of the replies said the same thing: "yes, I can help you", "yes, I have availability", "yes, I can do weekday lunchtimes". But only one of them added words to this effect: "I do need to inform you however that I operate my practice from a houseboat and that I have a small, but affectionate, dog. If that doesn't put you off, please do let me know" Advertisement Put me off?... Hmm, let me see: houseboat; dog; small but affectionate. It was a done deal. I'd found her - my woman on the boat. That first appointment I was riddled with nerves. Who was I supposed to be? What was I meant to talk about? I had no idea. She went through a list of questions: Had I ever been clinically depressed? Had I considered ending my own life? Was I on any sort of antidepressants? No. No. No I felt like such a fraud. What was I doing there? I didn't have any real problems! My habitual self gripped on tight, trying to keep that control, to stay 'strong'. But then slowly, week by week, I started to trust my instincts - a little more each time - and eventually I gave in and let her guide me. She allowed me to open up, to at last voice some of the things I'd locked away, all in the name of being capable and strong. I managed to express the inexpressible. She taught me how to manage my feelings - those intense almighty waves that from nowhere would suddenly consume me. I learnt how emotions didn't need to be held on to, or built on, and that I could choose to experience the waves, have them wash over me, and then let them pass. Advertisement They still crashed into me, made me unable to breath or know which way was up. But the trick was not to struggle and instead to trust the wave to do its thing and let it pass, the way waves do. Grasping that one simple idea changed everything. It liberated me from the almost constant stream of noise and pain that I felt inside and allowed spaces for moments of lightness and sometimes, even joy. I practised it whenever I wasn't with my mum - in the office, on the commute. I became quite the Jekyll and Hyde, regularly in tears one moment and then laughter the next. Dipping in and out of the waves as they came at me. Oh and as for the dog - his name was Frosty; a Labradoodle and indeed, both small and affectionate. In fact so affectionate that when I cried he'd lollop over to me, concerned, and then plonk his bottom on my feet. Every Wednesday I'd arrive back at my desk after lunch with red swollen eyes, smelling of dog and feeling a little less lost. Advertisement I still struggle with it - almost five years on from Mum's death - this idea of staying 'strong'. But I now know that real strength is partly about letting yourself be vulnerable. It's about admitting you need support. And most of all: it's about asking for help. To read more from Angela Brightwell, visit www.funnymatters.co.uk When Ukraine won Eurovision last year, Graham Norton grimaced at the thought of having to spend time in Kyiv to host the contest. And I felt a defensive surge of annoyance. He was doubtless imagining a city of grey Soviet monoliths and grey surly folk, while in reality nothing could be further from the truth. The capital of Ukraine is simply stunning. A city of sumptuous buildings, ornate churches, magnificent squares and, at its heart, a vast boulevard more impressive than the Champs Elysees. At this time of year every pavement is smothered with lilac trees, their cones of mauve, pink and cream lighting up the city. In short, if you think Prague is a beauty then I'd urge you to check out Kyiv. Ukraine is a country I know well. Just after the fall of communism, back in the 1990s, I worked on an overseas aid programme to help transfer Western know-how, and was a frequent visitor. It was all about supporting Ukraine's transition to the free market - and eventually to democracy. We worked not only with the government, but also with universities, trade unions, the media and the embryonic NGOs. I soon fell in love with Ukraine, and travelled widely around the country. I spent a memorable weekend in Odessa, enthralled by its pastel buildings draped in grapevines, and lulled by its Black Sea beaches. I visited Lviv in the far west, with its UNESCO-protected old town, and Kharkiv in the east, where we were helping local authorities take on the housing and schooling once provided by paternalistic Soviet enterprises. Advertisement Memories of my trip to Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant which exploded over thirty years ago, also linger. A silent journey through the 20km exclusion zone, free of humans (apart from a few old souls who refused to leave) but now populated with wild boar, wolves, lynx and even the odd bear. A tramp across ground we feared was still radioactive, but still did not later dispose of our shoes. However, Donetsk was the place my work took me to most often. Back then Donetsk was a benign and busy city at the heart of the Donbas coal region, full of hope and potential renewal. Yet it also faced great upheaval; half the coalmines were earmarked for closure. We set about designing an aid project which might help those mining communities begin to cope with the thousands of expected job losses. We drove around the Donbas region, cutting through sunflower fields, the wheels of coalmines rising starkly against cobalt skies. We held workshops with all the local stakeholders, including miners, hefty men with pinpricks of blue coal-dust emblazoned in their foreheads. They seemed bewildered by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As is often the case, it was the women of the Donbas who were key in activating renewal, and we were keen to encourage initiatives where they played significant roles. Particularly at grass roots level, in self-help community groups, or with the emerging NGOs. For these people, hardship was part and parcel of their lives, and yet their hospitality towards us as visitors was humbling. My memories of receptions in local cafes are vibrant; the tables laden with platters of chicken legs, pork cutlets, stuffed pancakes, and tomato salads with no trace of a pesticide. The toasts with cognac would come at us fast and furious, the traditional Ukrainian third toast being made to the ladies. After this I'd be up on my feet, several shots in, to add my own tribute to their kindness, their ingenuity, their resilience. Advertisement Well that was all a long time ago. I hope that we perhaps brought some benefits to people's lives back then, but now life in that coal region has been transformed by war. For more than the past three years, the Donbas has been the focus of a conflict, which sadly has seen the death of an estimated 10,000 people. It leapt onto our screens - and then disappeared again, leaving many of us to believe perhaps that it has ended, while in fact it rages still and the death toll rises daily. Young men who would have been babes in arms when I last visited the region, I may even have met their mothers. I think about those I did meet often. While I moved on twenty years ago, a little piece of Ukraine climbed into my heart and has stayed there. So much so that my first novel, The Road to Donetsk, was set in Ukraine. Written as an affectionate portrait of a country and people in transition, I hoped the book would bring this nation and its people vividly to life. The novel is set just after the fall of communism and features a group of resourceful women in a mining community faced with pit closures. It is also a sweeping love story, between an idealistic English woman who wants to change the world, and a cynical American who is convinced that you can't. The Road to Donetsk won The People's Book Prize for Fiction in 2016, and I dedicated the splendid glass trophy to the people of Ukraine. I returned to Kyiv last year, invited to speak at the annual Book Festival, and was struck by how the city had changed. Despite the ongoing conflict, small enterprise was flourishing, a cafe culture was evident, and the young people definitely walked with a spring in their step. A friend living there recently told me that it is looking lovely, the fountains are in full flow, the weather is glorious and people are optimistic about their future. As you will doubtless see for yourself from the clips of Kyiv they'll show if you happen to watch Eurovision this coming Saturday 13th May. I'll be tuning in, if only to enjoy those vignettes - and I know I'll be watching with a poignant sense of nostalgia. It's no secret that the number of women studying and working in STEM subjects is woefully low. In Scotland, it's estimated that women make up just 25% of the sector. Recent research suggests that up to 73% of women who qualify in a STEM subject leave the sector. This results in a gender imbalance in senior roles and a huge loss of talent. Much has been written about why the sector remains a largely male domain, with personal and societal reasons highlighted like a lack of confidence from a young age, isolation and discrimination. But what if the barriers are more deep-seated? How can a female engineer like me work to redress the imbalance? Current research suggests that women don't choose to study or work in STEM because it's 'incompatible' with the values they see as most important to their daily lives. If psychologist Amanda Dickman from Miami University in Oxford is correct, women are seeking careers that help, serve humanity or connect with other people. Advertisement This week, I'll be travelling to Colombia where I've been working with a community that lives in a shantytown perched high on a steep slope in Medellin city. Over the coming days, I'll help to train a selected team from the community to identify early warning signs of a landslide, an event that could devastate their community and similar neighbourhoods below them on the hillside. Colombia is a country with a serious landslide problems; the combination of the ground composition, topography, hydrology, active tectonics, occasional earthquakes and intense rainfall means that the level of hazard is high. Added to this is a vulnerable population and the rapid urban expansion. The casualties from landslides are high and growing in numbers. Over the past decade, it is estimated that there has been over 1,000 casualties from landslides in Colombia. The area that we'll be working in is at huge risk of landslides. Working with this community is not a one off. It's an on-going partnership that has allowed us to get to know the local community, create partnerships and friendships, train them and seek their feedback. We'll use all the tricks available in my civil engineering toolkit to keep this community safe. So for today's female pupils who seek a future career that will serve humanity and connect with other people, I would like to share my personal experience about how civil engineering has provided very rewarding pathways. As an academic, I'm no longer looking to change the fundamental mind-sets of young women about studying STEM but instead, I want to help them to appreciate how the sector might fulfil their existing dreams and aspirations. Earlier this year, we launched the Women's Engineering Society at Heriot-Watt University and will hold an event on 23rd June to support with International Women in Engineering Day. As an institution, we're leading by example. We're working hard to correct our own gender imbalance. 42% of the university executive are women and we have a 50:50 balance on the university court, our internal regulatory body. As one of the members of the Athena SWAN charter, which recognises work undertaken to address gender equality, we hope to achieve a silver award by 2020. Advertisement Many ask how can we resist the rising tide of nationalism and populism around the world? Is resistance possible when extremists pre-empt condemnation of their failures, by blaming enemies within and without? Theresa May this week declared war on Brussels and prominent Leave supporters on social media have started blaming Remainers for Brexit failures to come. Let us start by acknowledging the difficulties. Liberal internationalism suffered a heavy defeat with the election of Trump in the USA. It sustained a serious blow by the Brexit vote. These are things we cannot change. Enough people have revolted against social liberalism that mandated political correctness and acceptance of others as equals. People resent women, foreigners, other races, religions. They always have and they probably always will. They also strongly resent being told they are inferior and wrong, even though these behaviours are inferior and wrong. Enough people had enough of elites that supposedly operate in the pursuit of own interests. Enough people feel threatened by things outside their control shaping their lives. All this we knew. What we did not appreciate was the political establishment's ability to co-opt this rebellion for its own purposes. So, how does one fight back against this irreversible (it seems) lurch to the right, towards populism, towards a darkness with echoes of the 1930s? After Trump's victory I no longer believe this descent can be halted. Greece elected ignorant self-serving populists in an act of rebellion against 'foreign occupiers'. The British chose to throw themselves off a cliff in the hope of something new. The Americans elected perhaps the least appropriate person to ever run for the Presidency. Advertisement What does one do then? The answer is capturing and controlling the narrative of the extremists' failure. What is so dangerous about this global phenomenon is not the fact that the extremes are taking power, it is how they will use their failures to create a narrative that leads inexorably to conflict. Let us take the example of Brexit. The idea of Brexit is based on a series of un-achievable dreams. During the EU Referendum we failed to convince the majority of voters that wishing for a unicorn does not create one. Our task post-referendum is to convince people that the unicorn did not appear because it does not exist, not because we Remainers did not join in wishing for one. There is no upside to Brexit and no silver lining, at least not for the people who voted Leave. What is important is how a narrative explaining this failure develops. A careful, fact-based, relentless effort needs to be made to demonstrate that the failure of Brexit is due to incompetent government, unrealistic aims, incoherent promises and contradictory policy goals. This needs to be homed-in on a daily basis for weeks, for months, for years. It may not prevent (and will not prevent) Brexit from happening, but it will lay the blame squarely where it belongs: at the hands of those who argued for Leave and carried it out. Failing to control the narrative will lead to a surging nationalist right placing the blame at the hands of "Remoaners", pro-EU traitors, evil vindictive Europeans, bribed or bamboozled foreigners, Enemies-of-the-People Judges. Failing to demonstrate, carefully and thoroughly that the Brexit government is responsible for the disruption that is to follow will lead to an entrenchment of the worse aspects of Leave: The racism, the anger, the violence. It will lead to violent conflict. A similar process operates in the US. The Trump Presidency will spectacularly sink under the weight of its incompatible, incoherent, un-achievable promises. Who gets the blame for the failure will determine the nature of US politics and the shape of the world for generations to come. Failed governments, bad policies, rotten ideologies crumble and fall. Look at Soviet Communism if you need any examples. Trump's rotten politics should not take 70 years to disintegrate. They should not outlast his first term. Advertisement The job of Democrats, of progressives, of liberals in the USA and the world is to highlight, publicize and fact-check day in and day out the failures of the Trump regime. It will be difficult in this supposedly post-fact, post-rationality, expert-hating political environment, but people are not that blind to the reality around them. Blaming others only works for a little while and regimes based on lies burn out fast. Hitler came to power in 1933 and would not have lasted till 1945 were it not for the war. America is not Nazi Germany. When Trump fails, it will be obvious. When Brexit fails it will be impossible to hide. The task is to control the narrative and prevent the extremists from spinning it as the fault of 'wreckers' and traitors within. Resistance is possible and it is your job to resist. You can start by listening to this podcast. Pulse of Fashion Industry report outlines the environmental impacts of fast fashion. Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world. Since you're reading this article, I'm sure that statement is familiar. But while it might shock, it doesn't do anything to explain why. And if we don't understand why the industry is so polluting, it makes it very difficult to understand how we could begin to change things. How much do you know about how a piece of clothing is made? Here's a simple breakdown: Lifecycle of a garment, own image This week, The Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group released a report clearly and simply setting out the ways in which our addiction to fast fashion is affecting the environment and global society. Advertisement It's pretty hard hitting - if you have a spare morning, enjoy bar charts, graphs and a healthy dose of statistics, I'd recommend a read. But I'm guessing you're a little short on time and would really appreciate a summary - and a helpful one. So I'm going to give it a shot. Planetary Boundaries: what are they and why should I care? A Planetary Boundary is a boundary 'within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come.' There are four key boundaries to consider in the case of fashion: water consumption, energy emissions, chemical usage and waste creation. And our actions until this point in all aspects of life have meant that we have exceeded all but one of these boundaries. Our incessant buying of fashion is an overwhelming contribution to this. Advertisement But don't panic. While the current situation should shock anyone, there are particular elements that we as consumers could have a disproportionately positive effect on, should we choose to do so. And really, we have to. Because if we don't choose to now, we will be forced to later. Your ultimate guide to buying better clothes Water Whereabouts in the clothing supply chain do we use so much water? Mainly in the raw materials phase, in particular in the growing of cotton. However, water is also used in the processing stages (dying, cleaning etc) and again, in considerable volumes, when we wash our clothes. How can your choices help change things? Think about the materials your clothes are made of. Organic cotton, for example, can use up to 91% less water then conventional cotton. Think twice before washing your clothes - try airing them for a while first. What/where to buy when needed: Look for organic cotton wardrobe basics from The White T-Shirt Company or People Tree. Energy Whereabouts in the clothing supply chain do we use a lot of energy and why? In the raw material phase (use of oil in the production of polyester for example), and the processing stage (all the mechanical equipment being operated). But again, it is highly significant in the usage stage in the way we choose to care for our garments by washing, drying and ironing. What simple things can you do today that would be better? Again, don't wash your clothes so often, and when you do, wash at a lower temperature (they'll still be clean!). Choose to air-dry your clothes when you can (this will also affect how long they may last, as mechanical drying affects quality). What/where to buy when needed: Go for a brand that uses recycled materials (thereby reducing energy consumption as they don't require virgin fibre). Brands like Ecoalf and Patagonia are leaders in this field and produce functional, good-looking clothing. Brands like Reformation and the smaller Starch Slides use fabrics that are destined to go to waste to make something new and, consequently, very limited in quantity. Chemicals Whereabouts in the clothing supply chain do we use a lot of chemicals and why? Mainly in the growing of raw materials and, in particular, cotton. Fertilisers and pesticides are used in the growing of conventional cotton and run off into the waterways, harming communities and environments. The processing phase (dying in particular) can also be listed here, as lack of water treatment (releasing water into the environment when still full of chemicals) has the same effect. And once again, our usage; chemicals in detergents and micro-plastics are released through washing. What changes can I make today? By choosing to buy clothing made from recycled fibres or organic cotton (that prohibits the use of any chemicals), you are sending a signal to brands that you want more environmentally friendly fibres in your clothes. Also, by buying clothing that uses fibre in its natural colour. Alpaca wool, for example, produces a wide variety of natural colours - 22 shades in total, more than any other natural fibre. What/where to buy when needed: Go for a brand that you know is dedicated to the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit. Companies like Veja and Finisterre hone in on all parts of their supply chains. Smaller brands like Eight Hour Studio use exclusively organic cotton and Seeker x Retriever use only natural dyes. Waste Whereabouts in the clothing supply chain do we produce a lot of waste and why? This part is overwhelmingly to do with us, the consumers, more than any other factor. By buying too many cheap clothes and throwing them away, we, more than anyone else in the supply chain, are contributing massively to this problem. Only 20% of clothing produced today is reused or recycled in some way. There are others involved too of course. Brands that churn out cheap, disposable clothing that cannot be recycled at the end of its life, are also guilty of waste. What can I do today? Don't buy into fashion trends so readily and only buy things that you really need. If you do need to buy something, only buy it if it suits you and you are comfortable wearing it (really think about how may times you will realistically wear it too). Make sure it is versatile (goes with lots of things you already have) and is good quality so it will stand the test of time. Look after the clothes you have so that they last longer; don't over wash them and try to repair instead of replace them. Buy second hand. Donate clothes (that are in good condition) that you no longer want, or give them to someone you know would like them. What/where to buy if needed: Think about your personal style and invest in simple pieces that are not trend lead, but rather the building blocks of your wardrobe. For me, these are pieces from Kowtow, The White T-shirt Company, Veja and Levi's for example. Invest in items made for you and that can be tailored to your preferences (Veryan), or something made from recycled or biodegradable fibres (Freitag). Activism never looked so good The report unearthed an additional insight worth mentioning, that only goes further to support the need for action on our side. It revealed that 'a third of Millennials strongly agree that they are more likely to buy from companies that are mindful of their social responsibilities', but that 'only a tiny proportion of fashion shoppers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products.' In additional to that, 'one in four firms named consumers' unwillingness to pay such a premium for preventing them from revising their practices.' And finally, when a group of managers from a range of fashion firms were asked the question 'to whom would you attribute the major responsibility for driving the industry towards more sustainability?' Their answer was... us, the consumers. The industry suggests that we, the consumers, have the biggest part to play in making the fashion industry a more responsible one, yet our understanding of how we can do that is still arguably low. Advertisement I hope this article has gone some way to inspire your action. As consumers, the price of a product disproportionately determines whether we buy it. But I have learnt first hand over the past few years, that by buying clothing in a more mindful manner, I have spent a markedly lower amount per year than I have before. And yet, I have never been happier or more comfortable in my clothing by buying fewer items, of higher value, and supporting brands who are doing something interesting and worthwhile. In a recent article in Womankind magazine, Lucy Treloar quoted American novelist Alice Walker as having written 'activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.' And today, activism in fashion has never looked so good. RyanKing999 via Getty Images France's recent election is a vote of confidence in the EU. In an address to the nation on May 8, newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron said he will, "...work to mend ties between Europe and its citizens," as fears of a "Frexit" dissipate. A recent blog piece on the London School of Economics and Political Science site titled, "Brexit Has Given an Impetus to Reshape Europe's Foreign, Security, and Defense Policies," states that the EU member states despite finding it "...difficult to give up the driver's seat when it comes to strategic foreign policy decisions," do in fact see cooperation on these matters as an important issue. Dr. Benjamin Kienzle and Inez von Wietershausen have laid out a simpler version of the complex policies and scenarios Brexit may have on Europe's foreign, defense, and security implication by creating the Brexit Reader on Security and Defense. Advertisement One such piece, "What Future for Europe's Security and Defense Policy" also discusses various claims of what Brexit will mean for Europe's security and defense policies. Whereas some argue that Brexit will weaken the EU's capacity to have a comprehensive plan and force a return to the model of a 'civilian power Europe', others suspect that Brexit will force even closer cooperation with the EU member states. Sven Bishop, argues that it will call for more "flexible cooperation amongst its most willing and able member states" forcing them to no longer hide behind the U.K. And when the other member countries will no longer be able to hide behind Britain's defiance they will have to be more bold in making it clear what they are bringing to the table and may even find it easier to form consensus. They will face new challenges but perhaps the shareholders on both sides will also be more invested. A more optimistic view is given by Christopher Hill who states that both London and Paris will be driven by their desire to be seen as leaders and will continue to play a crucial role in the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy. Brexit may also foster competition between NATO and the EU. The UK has traditionally pushed for closer ties of Europe with NATO while other member states saw the EU as the "primary actor" providing security in Europe." The U.K. has tried to block permanment military structures in the EU, which some say points to the U.K's "negative or minimal" impact on the CSDP. But post Brexit others believe the continued cooperation of Britain, the EU, and individual members states will be crucial. The U.K. desire to be seen as a legitimate leader in the sphere of world politics has allowed it, or perhaps even forced it, to stand its course even while in the EU. It has not been seen as an easy partner but one which makes its interests known. In such a way one can argue it can stay inside the EU and still get its way. But while outside the EU it may force other EU member states to be more accountable not just to the EU but also to its own constitutiencies in order to maintain the legitimacy of the EU and reap benefits of collaboration. Advertisement One of the most powerful physical experiences I've ever had was doing a 90-minute yoga flow session with my eyes closed. As someone who's naturally visually oriented, it was a revelation to tune into pure sound, sensation and internal awareness. And because I needed all of my concentration to ensure I didn't fall over or crash into my neighbour, it also turned into an exercise in mindfulness, forcing me to completely cut the inner chatter that so often accompanies my yoga practice. The lessons from this experience are something I now take into my work as both a yoga teacher and a writer. In my yoga classes, I encourage people to focus on the internal sensations of each pose, and to move in a way that feels good, while remaining within the bounds of safe alignment. And in my writing, I'm learning to spend longer connecting with the feeling behind the words before trying to articulate it. In both cases, really feeling something from the inside out - and guiding others to do the same - allows a movement to arise from impulse rather than thought. It's an intuitive approach that puts me in touch with the innate intelligence of my body, and with the less rational parts of my mind. This gives me a far richer experience than when I am processing on a purely mental level. And it also helps me to understand at a deeper level what's truly good for my body, and to connect to my own unique sense of expression. Advertisement So I was interested when a friend recently introduced me to Circle Retreats, a new retreat company that combines yoga classes with art workshops. Founded by therapeutic arts specialists Gabriel Marshall and Krysia Howard, the company uses creative techniques aimed at helping people to tap into these same principles of inner awareness and intuitive expression. "A lot of people are very scared of the word 'creativity' because they relate it to being talented at the arts," says Marshall. "Yet there's no correlation at all between being creative and being talented at life drawing. You can find a creative flow in life drawing, which is lovely, but a feeling of pressure and fear about having to get it right and create something 'good' actually takes you away from that creative flow." Instead, the pair believe that the creative process is a powerful tool for self-discovery and wellbeing. "It's really about unlocking and expanding potential," says Howard. "We're interested in reconnecting the mind and body - which is so often completely off-balance." This link between the mental and physical is what I find most fascinating about Marshall and Howard's approach. Daily yoga sessions are a fundamental part of their retreats, alongside somatically led art workshops. "Creativity and the body are so linked," explains Marshall. "When you're accessing your creativity, it opens up the right side of the brain, which is naturally linked to our feelings and sensations. And so when you're in a creative process you're using the same part of the brain which is linked to emotion, feeling, all those things which are so part of a yoga practice or a body-led practice." Advertisement One of their workshops involves asking people to draw in response to different sounds from nature - first while blindfolded, and then with eyes open. "When we did this recently, it was quite shocking for everyone to see how their critical brain inhibits them creatively when it clicks in," says Marshall. "Not one person preferred what they had drawn when they were able to see. It looked more literally like a raindrop, it had disconnected them to the feeling sense - they weren't feeling it, they were just drawing what they thought it should be. And that was so fascinating to see." Other activities range from painting outlines of the body and then being given free rein to fill it in using numerous creative materials, to drawing with a finger on the back of a partner, who tries to recreate the drawing on paper. These simple yet powerful techniques are all designed to tap into a sense of somatic awareness and playfulness. This approach, say the pair, helps people to shift out of judgement and goal-oriented thinking, and instead to focus on the process itself with an attitude of curiosity. The benefits are profound. "When both the mental and physical parts can feel nurtured simultaneously, that's when there's room for big transformation and healing," says Marshall. "And that's the gift of the creative process, to re-engage the wires, to share the processing between the left and right sides of the brain." Getty 'Bookshops are time machines, spaceships, story-makers, secret keepers, dragon tamers, dream catchers, fact finders and safe places' - Jen Campbell Book shops can create a spell on you. It transfuses in you the magical feeling of exploring unknown worlds, of experiencing the trials and triumphs of losing and winning everyday battles, and of witnessing the invincibility of love. In a book shop you can be anything and everything. They showcase knowledge; warm rich words and deep thoughts. They are chroniclers of time, carefully documenting the rhythms of history that effects each one of us and the nation altogether. Old bookshops are chemical factories where the breakdown of cellulose and lignin in paper makes the aura fragrant of vanilla flowers and almonds. Advertisement And it is with this motley of feelings that I entered Karachi's oldest book shop, The Pioneer Book House, standing tall on MA Jinnah Road since 1945. The road itself, the oldest and perhaps most important in the city runs through the city to the docks. The book shop's close proximity to the city courts makes it a heaven for books on law and other official government publications. Entering the squeezed ground floor of the book shop was like travelling in a time capsule to the past with the place bustling with old and young readers alike queuing up to feed their voracious appetites for knowledge. But the vagaries of time led to a fall in customers, financial difficulties and eventual decline and deterioration. Mr. Zafar, the owner of the shop grew despondent of the failing business in equal proportions and decided to close it. It was almost God sent that internationally acclaimed author Maniza Naqvi, after reading an article in a local newspaper about the book shop closing down found it her calling to stop it from doing so. A sense of belonging engulfed her as most of her novels are set in old town Karachi, the same area where Pioneer Book House is located. Having never visited the book shop nor known its owner, it seemed an arduous task to say the least. But as they say where there is a will, especially that of a dedicated soul, there is a way. She not only managed to convince the owner not to sell it but personally swept the bookshop, fixed the lighting to make the place alive and rearranged the upper floor from a huge storage space into a spacious meeting space for book readings and an art gallery. Besides books on law she added books on Urdu and English fiction. Her narratives on social media generated an interest and following and resulted in the book shop being a venue for this year's Karachi Biennale. "I think I have thrown at this effort everything that I have to give to it from sweat, to my writing skills, to my work experience in development, marketing and management, a small bit of financing, books of off my own bookshelves, my creative instincts, and my social capital and networks", Maniza shared with me. Advertisement Authors like Maniza have championed causes to save bookshops around the globe. In 2013, British novelist Michelle Lovric and Strega Prize-Winner Tiziano Scarpa were amongst a large group of authors backing a campaign to save Venice's bookshops. The book shops were endangered due to rising rates and rents. Only a year later in 2014, best-selling crime writer James Patterson announced he is making a 250,000 donation to help independent book sellers in the UK and Ireland. More recently, New Beacon Books in London, UK's first book shop on black British history was appealing for help to secure its premises. Founded in 1966 by Trinidadian John La Rose and his partner Sarah White the book shop soon became a hub for activism, education about black history and hosted its very own independent publishing house. Bookshops that have passed the test of time are heritage spaces. Undoubtedly, that creates a need for institutions to come forward and protect them. A key example is that of Hatchards, London's oldest bookshop existing since 1797. It occupies Building 87 at the world-famous Piccadilly Street for the past two centuries. Perhaps one of the key factors behind its survival has been the owners' ability to forge links between themselves as booksellers and publishers and the royal households of Britain and Europe. Jason Bean valued being able to become bowl eligible with Kansas Hawk Zone Fyre Festival: Six Lawsuits And Counting, Blood Stained Mattresses Organizers of the purportedly swanky, yet failed Fyre Festival are facing increasing legal challenges as the number of lawsuits they are facing over the scuttled event expand to six. ____________________________________ The six lawsuits against the failed Fyre Festival include a $100 million class-action suit filed by celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, as well as several new suits filed on behalf of festival attendees, according to a collation by Billboard. Chelsea Chinery, Shannon McAuliffe, and Desiree Flores have sued the festival, claiming breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, and fraud against defendants Ja Rule, Billy McFarland and Fyre Media. The suit also alleges that the festival's social media campaign ignored Federal Trade Commission rules that require social media influencers to disclose compensation for advocacy. Matthew Herlihy and Anthony Lauriello have filed suit alleging negligence, fraud, and violation of consumer protection law after they were unable to access money deposited into the festival's cashless wristband system. They also allege that the event failed to provide adequate security, leading to Lauriello being robbed of his clothes and other belongings on the island. Andrew Petrozziello is pursuing legal action against the festival in New Jersey. Petrozziello says he was stranded in Miami after his flight was canceled and said that he has not received a refund despite promises to that effect. "Blood Stained Mattresses" Nation Event Services, an event staffing company who claims to have been retained to provide medical services for the festival is also in court. According to Billboard, Nation is seeking $250,000 in damages, alleging breach of contract, and fraud. Moreover, the company claims that festival organizers failed to obtain cancellation insurance despite not fully funding the event. NES reported that it's staffers discovered the island in disarray with accommodations that were "bug infestation" and which had "blood-stained mattresses." Fyre Festival: Six Lawsuits And Counting The company says its team stayed despite the chaos due to the obvious need for medical services. North Carolina couple Kenneth and Emily Reel have filed a $5 million class-action lawsuit against Ja Rule, McFarland and public relations agency, 42West LLC and advertising company, Matte Projects, LLC. The couple maintains that the defendants "did nothing to ensure that what they were marketing, and in turn what people were relying upon in purchasing tickets, was or even could be true." via Celebrity Access Share on: Hairpin Turn Collision Sends Two to Hospital A collision at the Hairpin Turn slowed traffic for about a half-hour. PreviousNext CLARKSBURG, Mass. A two-car collision at the curve of the Hairpin Turn sent the drivers to the emergency room. Police Chief Michael Williams said the injuries appeared non-life-threatening but both individuals were taken by ambulance to the emergency facility at Berkshire Medical Center's North Adams campus. The accident occurred shortly after 3:30 and the scene was cleared at 4:08 p.m. It initially was reported as a head-on crash involving three people. A gray Toyota Corolla heading east apparently took the V-shaped corner too wide and too fast and collided with a black Chevy Impala heading west. The Toyota's front end hit the Chevy's driver's side door, close to the yellow line, Williams said. The Toyota was travelling higher than the posted speed of 15 mph but not at a high speed, he said. The airbags deployed in both vehicles and the drivers were only passengers. The Toyota suffered heavy damage on the driver's side front end and the Chevy's driver's side door was buckled. They were towed from the scene by Mohawk Auto and Dean's Quality Auto. The sharp curve was reduced to one lane traffic for the half hour or so responders were at the scene. Clarksburg Police were assisted by North Adams Police and state police. Clarksburg Fire Company also responded as did North Adams Ambulance Service. The accident was still under investigation. The new Board of Health reorganized last week. Adams Board of Health Asks Adams Auto Mill to Clean Up Property ADAMS, Mass. The Board of Health issued orders to the Adams Auto Mill to clean the property and secure a tarp on the roof that is littering the neighborhood. A Grove Street resident came to the board Wednesday with a bag full of shredded blue tarp that she dug out of her yard. She said the tarps on the roof of the old mill are shredded by the wind and litter the entire neighborhood. Code Enforcement Officer Thomas Romaniak said Steven Blanchard owns the property and although he was served orders in mid-April, he has yet to hear back from him. "It is his property, and it is blowing all over the place. It is his responsibility and after the May 18 if nothing is done we can take him to court," he said. "I was hoping he would talk to us so we could explain what we need to be done but he hasn't reached out to us." Board of Health member Bruce Shepley told the concerned resident that although things are in motion there is little the board can do at this point. "Unfortunately, on your side of this issue it is painful and it equally painful to stand here and say the process is ongoing," he said. "But justice takes a very slow sometimes curving winding road and we are limited ... it is not a fair system but it does work." Shepley told the resident to keep a log of any services she has to hire to clean her yard because the expenses could be part of a settlement. The board agreed to invite Town Administrator Tony Mazzucco to next month's meeting to clear up the board's role in the plastic bag ban enforcement. "How do the unanswered questions impact us, and if we are going to be enforcing this, we have to have a clear understanding of what we are enforcing," Chairman Peter Hoyt said. The issue arose last month when Kelly Cross from Chee's Chinese Cuisine asked the board if the restaurant could use biodegradable bags. The board felt the regulation, which was passed last town meeting, did not define biodegradable or clarify if the ban affected restaurants. Although charged with enforcement, the Board of Health had no part in writing the regulation and did not have an answer for Cross. Shepley on Wednesday said it was OK to use the bag and at this point, all questions about the ban will be referred to Mazzucco. Because the board was unclear if this was the proper process, they invited Mazzucco to a future meeting. Shepley also brought forth a new draft regulation that would force all trash haulers operating in town to have identification on their vehicles. Planners Eric Booth, left, Audry Matys, Gary Pierce and Carl McKinney, stepping in as interim until the town election, vote to reject a special permit to allow Verizon to site a cell tower on Route 8. Clarksburg Denies Special Permit for Verizon Cell Tower CLARKSBURG, Mass. The Planning Board on Tuesday unanimously rejected a proposal by Verizon to site a 140-foot monopole at the former North Adams Country Club. The decision came after an hour of deliberations, half of which was taken up by member Carl McKinney reading through the town's wireless telecommunications bylaw to explain both the bylaw and his reasoning for what would eventually be a no vote. "We don't make it lightly," McKinney said the planners' decision. "It is my understanding our purpose is to determine whether this meets the zoning bylaw." The four-person board decided it did not. The main drivers appeared to be two elements of the bylaw passed at last year's town meeting: "That the applicant has proven that it cannot provide adequate coverage or capacity by installing its equipment on an existing tower or structure or by using repeaters in conjunction with existing facilities"; and that the facility "will not have an undue adverse impact on historic resources, scenic view, residential property values and natural and man-made resources." If the proposal did not meet those, then it failed, according to the bylaw, to "comply with all requirements set forth in this bylaw." McKinney said Verizon had failed to convince him during the public hearing and informational sessions that a cell tower was necessary within five miles of another telecommunication facility as outlined in the bylaw. Verizon has antennas on a facility owned by North Adams Tower Co. on Florida Mountain; the siting at the country club on Route 8 put the proposed tower closer than five miles. The single tower on Florida Mountain covers a huge geographical area but that can also limit its ability to provide reliable service even with a good connection, Verizon's experts had argued. The secondary tower would allow better capacity and quality to meet growing demands for data connections in that part of Clarksburg and the Route 8. Residents countered that the telecommunications company could expand its service along Route 8 by using other locations or "mini repeaters"; but the company said putting towers in other locations like the town landfill or farther up Route 8 into Stamford, Vt., wouldn't suffice. "The applicant was repeatedly questioned whether that facility [on Florida Mountain] could not be modified or used," McKinney said. "The applicant did not appear willing to modify or adapt that facility." There was also concern over a lawsuit North Adams Tower Co. has filed suit against Verizon for losses sustained in the collapse of its two cell towers in 2014. The tower company says Verizon added equipment that caused the collapse of one tower, which then toppled its twin. The carrier brought in a shorter, temporary tower that was used for nearly a year before the tower company installed a new monopole. Residents have accused the company of trying to use Clarksburg as way to counter the suit brought by the tower company. Verizon representatives repeatedly said they still had access to the mountain tower and had no plans to abandon it. But McKinney, also the town administrator, did not think Verizon has been clear enough on that issue. Planner Eric Booth had problems with how the tower might affect property values, but was worried that the board had approved solar arrays that might also be considered eyesores. "I get a little hung up on that ... if it's OK to approve for some people but not others," he said. "What's good for every resident needs to be the same for every resident." McKinney agreed that it might not be as fair to evaluate the cell tower but not a solar array, but noted that may change as soon as proposed solar bylaw can be approved. And as a real estate broker, he didn't believe Verizon's report that property values would be unaffected to be true. "It's one of the most scenic roads in this town and the house across the street was built in the 1770s," he said. "I have a problem with how it will affect the values of neighboring homes." Planner Audrey Matys wondered if this was an issue town meeting should take up but McKinney said the passage of the bylaw itself meant town meeting had authorized them to make the decision. No questions or other comments were taken during the meeting at the Senior Center; a number of abuttors attended but not as many as at last month's public hearing . The board has been pushing to get through the permitting process as a mostly brand-new Planning Board will be elected in two weeks. Planners have been taking information on the cell tower since last August. In the end, all four planners determined that Verizon did not meet "all requirements," and McKinney motioned to deny the special permit with Planner Gary Pierce seconding. PEDA Executive Director Corydon Thurston said not much has changed in the last month or so on either project. PEDA Waiting On BIC, Walmart Plans to Progress PITTSFIELD, Mass. PEDA is in a waiting game for the two most highly publicized efforts to redevelop the William Stanley Business Park. The Pittsfield Economic Development Authority officials say they've done their part in bringing in Waterstone Realty and the Berkshire Innovation Center, but both projects had faced delays. PEDA is now waiting for the state to help fill a funding gap for the innovation center, and Waterstone is still waiting for Walmart corporate to approve the latest redesign of the proposed supercenter. "The BIC is where everybody knows it is at, looking for money. We formed a partnership with the city and BIC, formed a lease agreement, and established everything this board needed to do to get that initiative off the ground. Then it was the BIC board's responsibility to design and implement a plan to get it built," said PEDA Chairman Mick Callahan. "We are all looking forward to a ribbon cutting and shovel ceremony. But in the meantime, everybody is working at trying to close that funding gap." The BIC is a planned research and development facility to assist businesses with access to equipment, technology, and provide higher education opportunities to local institutions. It is headed through a collaborative of those businesses and institutions and the construction the facility itself stems from a 2014 grant from the Massachusetts Life Science Center. However, the price tag for the building was more than the $6.5 million in construction dollars available so officials scaled the building back somewhat. Even then the bids in 2016 came in too high. The BIC is now seeking state support to the tune of $3 million to build what was envisioned for the site on the park, off East Street. PEDA had agreed to grant a quarter of a million dollars to help fund startup costs for the organization, which was matched by the city. And the City Council had approved a tax increment financing agreement. PEDA also still holds onto a $236,000 grant to assist with any environmental issues presented during construction. "We've been reassured that grant will remain in place as a grant," PEDA Executive Director Corydon Thurston said. While construction on the building has been on hold, the BIC has been continuing its operations. The organization had already ordered equipment for the building, which is being used at Taconic High School right now and has organized a number of training courses and seminars. "It is not like the BIC is standing still but we've got to have that bricks and mortar soon," Thurston said. According to BIC member Douglas Crane, the BIC is rolling out 10-week training courses on the advanced technical equipment for the business community. He said those are "high-level" courses to help advanced the existing company's workforce skills. Callahan said some of the manufacturing prospects interested in the William Stanley Business Park note the BIC as a reason to do so. He said it will help address company's workforce needs. "This is a domino effect. Let's get a couple of them up in the air and start making them happen," Callahan said. Meanwhile, the ball is in Waterstone's court when it comes to the planned Walmart project. Waterstone and PEDA have previously reached a lease, and a purchase-and-sales agreement for the parcel known as the teens. The company wants to construct a 190,000 square foot Walmart Supercenter and had put down a $20,000 deposit on the land. It has been almost a year since Waterstone was first approved by the PEDA board. A month and a half ago, Don Harr from Atlantic Retail Properties, which is part of the development team, told PEDA that there was a delay because Walmart had asked to increase the project. Harr said the company reviewed previous plans and decided to add a grocery pickup, which in turn changed the parking plans. That new site plan then had to be reviewed by a significant number of engineers from Walmart and Waterstone. Those changes have yet to be approved by Walmart headquarters, Thurston said. "As I understand it, they are still waiting for corporate approval of the new elevations and renderings as part of the new site plan which has to be presented to the city," Thurston said. The delays may have created some uneasiness among supporters of the project. The project had faced opposition and debate at the City Council level already. The town of Lanesborough is making calls to see if the developers would rather build there as of Monday, the Lanesborough town manager said he had not been in contact with either Walmart of Waterstone yet. And in October, Walmart announced that it was significantly scaling back the number of new stores it is opening. The corporation is expected to open about half as many, which includes relocations like this one, as it did the year before. That level of decrease was expected to continue into the future. "I think it is just a timing issue. I don't sense there is any rush to another community or rethinking this decision," Thurston said. PEDA may be waiting on those two projects, but Thurston said a third potential prospect took a turn for the positive recently. In what he has been calling "project 40" to have a manufacturer develop along Kellogg Street, Thurston said he is now in the process of putting together a specific proposal for the company to consider. "We're continuing to move forward and putting some financial numbers together and figuring out how fast to potentially construct a factory over here on the slab," he said. The unnamed company had its chief executive officer and executive vice president visit the site and meet with the mayor recently. The company is looking to construct a 120,000-square-foot factory with rail access. Not only is PEDA currently looking to craft a financial package, it is also seeking grant funds to improve the rail access. "We'll keep our fingers crossed. There are still a number of hurdles to go over and get through," Thurston said. Thurston said a financial package should be delivered to the company within six months and then the company will have to decide where to go from there. Letter: BAtT Fundraiser Success Because of Community Support To the Editor: On Saturday, April 8, Berkshire Arts & Technology Charter Public School hosted our 10th annual "Get BART Smart" fundraiser and raised $27,843 (net) for the school's college preparatory programs. Over 130 people attended and re-lived their high school years through our team trivia game. A huge "thank you" to all who played and made it a great evening! This night would not have been possible without the support of over a hundred local organizations and businesses. Our High Honor Roll sponsors: Aladco Linen Services; Berkshire Bank; Cord Master Engineering; Primary Venture Partners; Shine Wire Products Inc.; Smith Watson & Company, LLP; and MountainOne Bank all played an important part in the evening's success. We also thank our Honor Roll sponsors: Adams Plumbing and Heating; Amanda Jones Photography; Berkshire East Ski Resort; DuFour Inc.; Interprint; Mezze Catering and Events; Seitel Lighting, LLC; Scarafoni Associates; and Whitman's Crystal Clean. Patrice Smith Williamstown, Mass. Smith is on the school's board of trustees Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts 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 IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Senator Bernie Sanders will speak at venues across the UK next month, during a visit in support of his book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In, that falls just days before the General Election. The almost-Democratic presidential candidate will kick things off at Brighton Festival on 1 June, before heading on to Cambridge Union, Oxford Sheldonian, Brixton Academy, Bristol Festival of Ideas and Hay Festival in Powys, Wales. He is expected to recount experiences from the campaign trail, on which he created a seismic shift in leftist politics, and outline how to move forward with progressive agendas in a post-Trump, post-Brexit world. His brother Larry, the Green Party candidate for Oxford East in the General Election, said it "will be lovely" to see him. "All the venues are very big and very sold-out - fortunately, the family are getting free tickets," he told the Press Reader. "I will certainly be at the Oxford one. I am going to go to Bristol too, but I won't probably sit in the audience, and I will drive with him to Hay so we will have a chance to be together and to talk. It will be lovely." Jeremy Corbyn is hoping for an endorsement. Asked whether he thinks he will get one, he said: I cant say. I hope he will. I think he probably will, actually. But we mustnt predict these things. 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 }} Orson Welles will forever be remembered for Citizen Kane, his first feature film and one that is regarded by many as the very best in the mediums history. The filmmaker was an outsider to the studio system and struggled to maintain creative control on subsequent projects, many of which were either heavily edited or remained entirely unreleased. Despite this, his oeuvre does not begin and end with his debut offering and, with masterpieces like Touch of Evil, the director proved he was no mere flash in the pan. Mr Arkadin (1955) was based on three episodes of the radio series The Lives of Harry Lime (itself based on the character portrayed by Welles in the iconic The Third Man). The plot concerns a petty criminal named Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) whose life intertwines with the titular Arkadin (Welles), a wealthy businessman and socialite who claims to have no memory of any events prior to 1927. Van Stratten is hired by Arkadin to investigate his past and prepare a confidential report, an investigation that leads to London, Paris, Munich, Madrid and beyond. Difficulties arise, however, when the individuals Van Stratten interviews end up dead and the investigator begins to fear for his life. There is something almost Dickensian about the array of grotesques presented in Mr Arkadin. Michael Redgrave is just one of the acclaimed character actors cast as a mysterious figure from Arkadins past and each of these scenes is a masterpiece of economy and intrigue. Welles is typically excellent as a giant of man whose unhealthy relationship with his daughter might just have caused Freud to choke on his cigar. The film is not without its faults and a great many of them can be attributed to the troubled nature of the production. At times the plot is almost incomprehensible and this is unsurprising given Welles made such slow progress in the editing room that the producer took the film off his hands and released a number of different versions. The auteur denounced the film since he felt none of the seven versions did justice to his ambitions for the project. This is a pulpy noir made in a contemporary European style and this combination is not always successful despite the genius of the man at the helm. Welles considered it the biggest disaster of his professional life, yet the unfinished product is a compelling watch for fans of Touch of Evil, a trial run that would eventually result in a masterpiece. 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 }} Manhattan is the pinnacle of Woody Allens success. Released again this week, his 1979 film borrows grandeur from a fellow New York Jewish genius with its George Gershwin score, lets you bathe in the black-and-white cinematography of Gordon Willis, and settle back in the company of Allen at his most urbanely sharp, alongside his greatest screen partner (and former lover) Diane Keaton. This was the culmination of Allens determined progress from 1950s gag-writer to 1960s stand-up, to writer-director-star of satires such as Sleeper. Keaton had been crucial in warming up his screen personas nervous, nebbish misanthropy, especially in Annie Hall (the anti-Star Wars hit of 1977). They are iconic together again in Manhattan, kissing in silhouette at dusk under the Queensboro Bridge. This was the film where Allens serious themes and comic expression achieved perfect balance. His performance is understated and wise. At home in the US especially, its been downhill ever since. Other widely praised films were scattered through Allens prolific output of the 1980s and 1990s, including the multiple-Oscar-winning Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). But fans already mourned the loss of the early, funny ones, in Allens own dismissive phrase from 1980s Stardust Memories. And in the 21st century, even critics gave up the ghost. Some of his 17 films this millennium have been better reviewed than others; some considered a return to form, others not. But there is a melancholy, unspoken acceptance that these are the works of a former great. Just when, the underlying question goes, did Woody Allen lose it? Allen in 2016, approaching 50 years of movie-making (Rex) The real schism in his work came with Husbands and Wives (1992), released into the heart of the storm of Allens break-up with his long-time partner and co-star Mia Farrow, after she found his naked photos of her 21-year-old adopted daughter with former husband Andre Previn, Soon-Yi Previn, forcing him to admit their affair (they married in 1997). The subsequent accusation of sexual abuse of seven-year-old Dylan Farrow, one of Mia and Allens adopted children, was investigated and dismissed in 1994. Though puzzled by the fuss, Allen knew his work was in peril. Maybe people are angry that I was having a relationship with a young woman, he told The New York Times. Maybe very few people will ever come to see a movie of mine again. Finished by Allen and Farrow before this catastrophe, Husbands and Wives hand-held cameras matched its jangled, furious yet comic response to romantic fracture and self-deception. Instead of darkening further, Allens 1990s continued with the comforting return of Keaton in the lovely screwball thriller Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), and a cathartic release of comic energy and genre invention, from the musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996) to the fictional jazz biopic Sweet and Lowdown (1999). The latter was his funniest script of the decade, one not coincidentally written in the 1970s. The legendary facility for one-liners hed found too easy when attempting Bergmanesque depths in dull, unloved dramas such as Interiors (1978) proved hard to relocate. Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen in 'Scoop' (2006) which wasn't released in the UK but is hugely enjoyable But Allens late period really started this century. Its then that his relentless productivity burned out audiences, distributors and critics. Hollywood Ending (2002) and Scoop (2006) werent even released in the UK. And few could still be bothered to distinguish between Anything Else (2003) and Whatever Works (2009), as repetitive in theme as they sound. There was a practical reason for this precipitous decline. American distaste at the Soon-Yi affair damaged his relationship with US studios, forcing drastic budget-cutting in 1998. Crucial crew members could no longer afford to work for him, with the loss of long-time editor Susan Morse especially disastrous. Twenty-first century Woody looked plainer and cheaper. And it could plod. Recoiling from the complex shoot for Radio Days in 1987, Allen had anyway told Rolling Stone he looked forward to more relaxing film-making. My work doesnt have the sense of labour to it, he noted; he felt no guilt making choices where, This may be worse but its easy. Ewan McGregor voiced his surprised delight at going home at 4.30pm from an Allen shoot in 2007, and Colin Firth described the rarity of one of those days when [Allen] got involved on-set in 2014. This was a director who gave actors no preparation time, and preferred first takes. Half-arsed moments could result. So would a quality of light, life-like spontaneity in later Allen, from actors whod barely read their script. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in Woody Allens Cassandras Dream, which looked like an EastEnders episode If one film signalled fatally blown talent, though, it was The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), a comic take on The Maltese Falcon. To his own dismay, Allen couldnt afford to reshoot scenes that looked haphazardly unconsidered. Swapping his trademark black-framed glasses for rimless ones, Allen the till-then-ageless icon looked every weary one of his 66 years. Three further US flops Hollywood Ending, Anything Else and Melinda and Melinda (2005) followed, forcing Allen into long-term career exile in Europe, where the French, Italians and Spanish still loved him. Melinda and Melindas laboured debate on comic and tragic narratives, with Will Ferrell wildly miscast as a substitute Woody, was a grim goodbye to New York. Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up But The Curse of the Jade Scorpion wasnt the end. While his reputation as a director of Bergmanesque profundity grew tattered, Allens writing for his own persona, as immortal in its way as Chaplins, revived. Anything Else saw Allens character, Dobel, give life-lessons to American Pie star of the moment Jason Biggs, adding a darkly hilarious edge to his long-time screen paranoia at anti-Semitism, as he made jaw-dropping Holocaust jokes rooted in real fear. A move to the UK then began with a hit thriller starring Scarlett Johansson, Match Point (2005), before diminishing returns reached their nadir with Cassandras Dream (2007), a morose rehash of the far superior Crimes and Misdemeanours in which Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor are all at sea as depressed cockney killers. Though tarted up with a Philip Glass score, it even looked like an EastEnders episode. Emma Stone with Colin Firth in 'Magic In the Moonlight' A Spanish trip with Johansson for Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) revived Allens fortunes, and gained co-star Penelope Cruz an Oscar. But the least remarked of his three films with Johansson, Scoop, was also hugely enjoyable. Another comic thriller, it saw Allen form his most charming double-act since Keaton with Johanssons klutzy journalism student, two Jewish New Yorkers pretending to be dad and daughter as they take anarchic potshots at the English aristocracy, and amateurishly sleuth Hugh Jackmans Ripperish lord. I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, Allen informs his posh English hosts, but when I was older I converted to narcissism. The wordplay again poured forth from a man whose early jokes entered the language, Shakespeare-style. Allen literally writes his film ideas on the backs of envelopes, he once told Empire, and Scoop was especially daffy, hinging on Ian McShanes late Fleet Street hack picking up a killers identity in the afterlife, and rematerialising to pass on the scoop. Careless plots and outrageous coincidence mar recent scripts, as do clumsy pick-up lines unsuited to the new century. A penchant for writing stupid or aggravating female parts has also been attacked. Allens barely disguised portrait of Keatons early, ditzy ways, Annie Hall, was softened by mutual love, in a truly romantic film. Lately, though, Mira Sorvinos dim prostitute in Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Christina Riccis seductive, selfish girlfriend in Anything Else, and Evan Rachel Woods intellectual derision by Woody-surrogate Larry David in Whatever Works have fared less well. And yet, in the hands of fine actresses, these often dislikeable parts are more sizeable and interesting than the anaemic Hollywood norm (Sorvino won an Oscar for hers). The problem is the perception of Allen since 1992, more than real changes in his films. When Jason Biggs mentions that Riccis character was attracted to her father, or Allen or one of his substitutes attempts seduction, real life rears up. This was literally so when Cate Blanchett was Oscar-nominated for the acclaimed Blue Jasmine (2014). Her chances were torpedoed when Dylan Farrow repeated her allegation of being abused. Midnight In Paris (2011), with Owen Wilson as the latest ersatz Woody, only had one good joke, a ratio barely bettered by To Rome With Love (2013), the one-line well perhaps at last dry. But the former stop on Allens culturally superficial, budget-led Euro-tour was a surprise hit, which even revived his US fortunes. Allen has hit a deft, middlebrow groove since with Magic In the Moonlight and Cafe Society, both set between the wars in his version of heritage cinema, though with melancholy untapped by Downton Abbey. Irrational Man (2015), though, threw another curve, with Emma Stone following up Magic In the Moonlight as co-star, and Joaquin Phoenix as a depressed, pot-bellied philosophy professor, who suicidally swoons towards a loaded gun. Late Woody is flawed, difficult, but dizzyingly unpredictable and sometimes still dazzling. Maybe he hasnt yet lost it at all. Distrust of his real life has instead made us lose touch with him. Manhattan is rereleased on 12 May 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 }} Not long after Donald Trump was elected president, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson flirted with the idea of running in 2020, telling Vanity Fair he "wouldn't rule it out" and that it would be "a great opportunity to help people". The idea has clearly stayed with him, and was stirred again this week by a Washington Post piece that posited that, if he ran for POTUS, Johnson would stand a good chance of winning, noting his likability, his ancestry and more. The Rock posted a screen grab of the article on Instagram today, describing the prospect as "very alluring" and signing off with a presidential pin-esque US flag: "Interesting piece from The Washington Post on if I ran for POTUS I could actually win. Writer Alyssa Rosenberg did some pretty good research into my background (slave descendants fighting for their freedom, Revolutionary War etc). Much more to uncover but well done. More and more pieces like this are popping up due to the Presidential election and they're cool/fun to read... I care DEEPLY about our country... and the idea of one day becoming President to create real positive impact and global change is very alluring. Buuuuut until that possible day, the most important thing right now is strong honest leadership from our current and future leaders of this country. Thanks again Washington Post." A wrestling president wouldn't really be a shock anymore - hell, President Trump has experience in the ring. 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 }} Bow Wow appears to have been caught out after bragging about a glamorous trip in a private jet on Instagram. The American rapper posted a photo of a jet on tarmac with a car outside and captioned it: "Travel day. NYC press run for Growing Up Hip Hop. Let's goooo. I promise to bring y'all the hottest show EVER." Unfortunately for him, a fan later spotted the rapper flying on a normal commercial plane... and he wasn't even in first class. They took a photo of him in his seat and it made its way onto Twitter. "So this guy lik bow wow is on my flight to NY," they wrote. "But on instagram he posted a picture of a private jet captioned 'travelling to NYC today' smh." It got worse after someone else did a reverse-image search and found that the picture of the jet Bow Wow posted is actually a stock photo. The image originally appeared on a Fort Lauderdale website that provides VIP transport. Suffice to say fans had no mercy. Whoops. Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A scrawled, white and turquoise highway is immediately recognisable as the artwork of Radiohead's seminal album OK Computer, but what's not remotely recognisable is the location it depicts. Until now, that is, as a Radiohead fan has cracked it with help from "road geeks". Recently released concept art for the album offered a slightly better look at the vista and appeared to confirm it was based on reality as opposed to being a sketch of an invented highway. Intrigued by this, Redditor u/Jordan117 headed over to AARoads.com where a forum members cracked the case just six hours after the query was posted. The location depicted is: the eastbound junction of I-84 (a.k.a. the Yankee Expressway) with I-91 in Hartford, Connecticut, just before it crosses the Connecticut River. "Took about 10 minutes," Mapmikey said. "The middle BGS [Big Green Sign] has a two word control city with just a single letter as the first word. The BGS on the right has a two word city but two actual words. I figured that it was east of the Mississippi because of the (IMO) tight footprint of the interchange. "So what interstate junctions in the east might fit the that BGS criteria? E Hartford and New Haven. "I'm pretty decent at puzzles and also have a fair amount of experience taking older road photos and figuring out where they were..." A Google Earth search showed that the photo would have been taken from a Hilton hotel beside the intersection and, sure enough, the band played near it on 20 August, 1996, shortly before they recorded OK Computer (so they like stayed at the hotel after the show). The above GIF of the artwork laid over a photo taken from the right angle makes this all but open-and-shut. "Twenty-year-old mystery: solved," u/Jordan117 wrote. "Now to figure out where the heck that Kid A mountain range is..." 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 }} Trance DJ Robert Miles, the legendary producer best-known for his instantly recognisable track Children, has died aged 47, it has been reported. The Italian, who was born Robert Concina in Switzerland, was celebrated for the Nineties hit that became one of the biggest dance music tracks in history, making it to number one in more than a dozen countries around the world. Miles said in interviews that the song was inspired after his father showed him pictures of child victims of the war in Yugoslavia in 1994. First released in Italy in 1995 as part of the Soundtracks EP, Children failed to chart but was then brought by Miles to a Miami nightclub, where it was heard by Simon Berry of Platipus Records. The song was re-released as the lead single on Miles' album Dreamland in November that same year, and went on to be certified gold and platinum in several countries. Miles' death was first reported by DJ Mag Italia, which said that he had died from an unreported illness aged just 47. Fans, friends and fellow artists have been quick to pay tribute. Joe T Vannelli, a longtime friend of Miles, said: "The tragic news of the death of a very talented artist of our time makes me incredulous and upset. "I will miss the fights, brawls, criticisms, judgements but especially your talent in finding sounds and melodies unparalleled." 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 }} If artistic merit and popularity were in tandem, the human race wouldve had to build new stadiums to accommodate Deftones shows years ago. In a world that celebrates banality over creativity, the alt-metal Cali-quintet have never quite managed to fill the rooms that they deserve to. After the success of their career defining album White Pony, the band had a brief dalliance playing the UKs vast concrete arenas. But 2006s poorly received (though severely under-appreciated) Saturday Night Wrist relegated them to playing umpteen shows at the 5,000 capacity Brixton Academy whenever they made their way to the English capital. Its little wonder that after 8 albums released over 22 years, Deftones (or more likely, their management) have decided to make the push back into the UKs arenas. Last years show at Wembley was generally well-received (certainly in comparison to their first attempt playing the soulless North-West London concrete shed back in 2003) and with fellow Californian natives AFI in tow, tonight should be a triumphant display that re-establishes Deftones rightful place as the premier act in alternative metal - if only life were so simple ... An ominous pulsating beat ushers in AFIs first show in the United Kingdom for seven years and Messrs Carson, Puget, Burgan and Havok emerge one by one to a raucous cheer. Whilst this is undoubtedly Deftones show, the fellow Californian natives are (quite rightly) a big draw for a sizeable portion of this evenings audience, despite the fact that their sprawling cinematic horror punk bares little musical DNA with the headliners. To anyone with a sensible head on their shoulders, this is clearly no bad thing; variety is the spice of life and good music is good music. AFI's Davey Havok stalks the stage at London's Alexandra Palace (Derek Bremner) Unfortunately, it immediately transpires that this wont be the glorious return to these shores that the band so thoroughly deserves. The technical logistical nightmare of making a loud rock band sound powerful and clear in a cavernous 144-year old room that was built for no such purpose becomes apparent about 6 seconds into AFIs opening song Girls Not Grey. What should sound like a defiant, rebel-rousing call-to-arms descends into a muddy slushy mess that echoes around these cavernous walls like a fart in a cave. You cant fault the band themselves however, who play with a fevered energy throughout and traverse the stage as if it were made of hot coals. Frontman Davey Havok in particular treads a charismatic, idiosyncratic line between theatrical flamboyance and searing truth. Part Morrissey, part Glenn Danzig, his presence is utterly captivating, whether crooning through the synth-wave influenced Aurelia or screaming hoarse over The Leaving Song Pt. II. These songs in particular showcase AFIs secret weapon; Jade Puget exhibits guitar skills and lead lines that are far beyond the majority of his peers. AFI guitarist Jade Puget, left, and vocalist Davey Havok, right, perform at London's Alexandra Palace (Derek Bremner) The dark industrial stomp of I Hope You Suffer is an outstanding example of a band retaining their dark twisted heart whilst maturing with grace and the irresistible infectious strains of Miss Murder elicits a response worthy of the modern rock anthem that it is, but its a hollow victory. Support sets, in theory, should provide a platform for excellent bands to play in front of vast audiences and win over yet more fans. Tonight AFI were robbed and rather than gain new ground, they were merely given the chance to preach to the converted. The sooner they return to the country for some headline shows playing at full strength, the better. After several years of being an incredibly hit or miss live act, this decade has seen Deftones really step up to the plate to the point where a bad performance has become about as rare as an honest Tory. The bands decision to mix things up and play a different set each night is extremely welcome, especially considering the wealth of rarely played gems they break out this evening. Its a bloody good thing too; tonight, Deftones are saved from the same sound problems that plague AFI by the strength and consistency of their extraordinary and inimitable back-catalogue. The sound doesnt so much hit one in the gut as swirl around ethereally in the cavernous space above our heads, an unfortunate situation that completely robs opener Korea and the usually ferocious Elite of their sonic power. Things do improve marginally once they break into the timeless My Own Summer (Shove It), but the struggles with the PA are a constant battle for Deftones this evening. Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter during the band's performance at Alexandra Palace, London (Rex / Michael Jamison) Thankfully, a brave dive into rare cuts and songs that have been conspicuously missing from their sets for many years saves tonight from being a colossal waste of everybodys time. The twisting, time-signature-shifting barbarity of Hexagram is glorious, as is Cherry Waves, an unexpected gem that highlights the elegiac shoegaze elements that lift this band far above their peers. Sextape is performed so undisputedly beautifully this evening it could illicit an emotional response from the dead and vocalist Chino Morenos unorthodox vocal melodies on the grievously underrated Kimdracula positively boggle the mind, cementing his position as one of the finest vocalists of all time. Teething, a song not played for 10 years prior to its reinstatement on this tour, is a very welcome addition, and whilst the band were always keen to distance themselves from the cookie-cutter nu-metal of the late 90s, its undeniable that when Moreno drops the chorus to the seminal Lifes a Bitch by Nas midway through the song, it sounds more vital and invigorating than 90% of that genres output. A phenomenal light show, particularly captivating during a momentous Swerve City and the aforementioned Teething and Cherry Waves, shows some concession to the size of this show, although its enticing to wonder how far Deftones could push the larger arena-sized elements at future gigs. Sound problems threatened to derail an otherwise sublime Deftones performance (Derek Bremner) Of course tonight doesnt only consist of rarities; Passenger is played with relish and received with fanaticism (although a duet with Davey Havok covering Maynard James Keenans vocal parts seems a missed opportunity). A stellar Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) bulldozes straight into a cataclysmic rendition of Headup, an inspired pairing that will no doubt provide a sizeable chunk of this crowds most potent adrenaline rush of the year. The usual encore cuts from 1995 debut Adrenaline are superseded by the rhythmic tour-de-force of Rocket Skates and the record-label appeasing Back to School (Mini Maggit). Tonight we witness an exceptional band at half their strength. If as much consideration had been taken with the sound as it had over the set-list, wed be talking about a historic show, one that firmly and undeniably justifies the Sacramento quintets place as an arena band but watching Deftones this evening is sublime and irritating in equal measure. 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 peer-to-peer insurance app that donates unclaimed money to charitable causes and is backed by actor Ashton Kutcher, has launched in its third US state. Lemonade Inc, which says it uses an artificial intelligence bot to help customers design a personalised insurance policy in as little as 90 seconds, became available in California on Wednesday. The startup is one of a spate of fledging financial technology companies or fintechs - both in the US and elsewhere, that are aiming to disrupt their more established competitors and shake up the way in which consumers do business. In a reversal of the traditional insurance model, Lemonade does not base its profits around unclaimed policies, but instead takes a flat 20 per cent fee and returns any unclaimed money to charitable causes selected by its customers. Lemonade is also a fully licensed insurance carrier in its own right, meaning it underwrites its own policies, unlike many other entrants in the growing insurance technology space. Most Americans view insurance as a necessary evil, rather than a social good, said Lemonade co-founder and president Shai Wininger. Thats something Lemonade is determined to change. Expanding to California is a key milestone on Lemonades journey. The company was founded by Daniel Schreiber, the former president of Powermat, a mobile technology firm that helps customers locate nearby charging spots, and Mr Wininger, the co-founder of Fiverr, a marketplace for creative and professional services. It raised $60m in capital during its first year thanks to backing from venture capitalists such as Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst and Ashton Kutchers Sound Ventures. Menlo Park, California-based Sequoia Capital is one of the best known venture capital firms in the world of tech, having invested in hundreds of companies since the 1970s, including in Silicon Valley stalwarts Apple, Google, YouTube and Yahoo. Mr Kutcher said: Californians will find Lemonades unique combination of value, values and simplicity hard to resist. I know I did. The app was founded in New York City in 2015, and rolled out in Illinois last month. Mr Schreiber told Reuters that California, which is the third-largest US market for homeowners coverage, was one of the biggest prizes. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} On paper, afternoon tea should be extinct, a relic of a slower time before email, social media, and Netflix took over our lives. Does anyone really have the time in the middle of the afternoon to switch off and pour a second cup of Darjeeling tea while nibbling on a crustless cucumber sandwich? Actually, it turns out that a lot of us do and were defying our 24/7 world by carving out a bit of screen-free time to prove it. The practice of afternoon tea dates back to 1840 and Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford. At the time, there were typically two main meals of the day: breakfast and dinner. Anna, probably like many, felt a bit peckish in the afternoon and ordered tea and slices of bread and butter to tide her over. Friends were invited to join her and soon it was the thing, often followed by a brisk stroll outdoors. Today, afternoon tea might conjure up images of Miss Marple, sensible shoes and plates of scones, and that may not be a bad thing, according to master patissier and author of Afternoon Tea, Eric Lanlard. If you go down to the countryside, it hasnt changed that much and thats what I like about it, to be honest. When I go down to Cornwall and Devon or the middle of nowhere and you see the sign for cream tea or afternoon tea, you know what to expect. Recommended The best food and drink events in May But if youre hungry for something different, then youre spoiled for choice. Today you can sample a Suffolk cream tea while on board the sailing barge Victor cruising on the River Orwell in Ipswich. Or, if youd like something more literary, there is the Mad Hatters Tea Party at the Sanderson Hotel in London, where you can sip Alices cinnamon, apple and peach Drink Me potion (or a glass of bubbles for the adults in the group). For Lanlard, afternoon tea brings back memories of travelling from France to the UK and having afternoon tea with his Mum. Its all about the glamour that makes it something special. Mention the words afternoon tea and even if youre in a canteen or on a train and they say, Were going to serve afternoon tea, immediately you want to sit up properly and wear something nice to it. Food and drink news Show all 35 1 /35 Food and drink news Food and drink news Healthy living makes us more inclined to binge, research suggests Gluten-free breads, dairy-free milks and other plant-based products have been some of the most favoured foods in British supermarkets this year. However, while were busy filling our shopping trolleys with gluten-free goodness, were also jamming it with junk food and alcohol, new research suggests Getty/iStock Food and drink news Growing list of Vegan celebs Making the switch to veganism is a major lifestyle choice, one that many claim can improve energy levels, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and clear up any skin issues. Beyonce, Natalie Portman and Jessica Chastain are among the growing list of Hollywood stars who have eschewed animal products from their diets in recent years. Theres also been an increasing number of professional athletes who have gone vegan, such as boxing champions Mike Tyson and David Haye, thus debunking the myth that following a plant-based diet will leave you feeling weak and malnourished. AFP/Getty/NARAS/iHeartMedia Food and drink news McDonald's has announced the launch of a new vegan burger on its menu in Germany This will mark the first time the German franchise of the fast food chain has offered a vegan burger to its customers. The Big Vegan TS burger consists of a patty made from soy and wheat. It is served in a classic sesame seed bun, and contains salad, tomato, pickles and red onion. McDonald's Germany Food and drink news Drinking too many protein shakes could lead to an increased risk of obesity and a reduced lifespan, a new study has claimed Researchers from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre carried out an investigation to determine the impact excessive consumption of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) has on the body. BCAA supplements are often consumed in the form of powder, which is then added to water to make a shake. Published in journal Nature Metabolism, the study found that while BCAAs help to build muscle, they can also negatively impact an individual's temperament, cause weight gain and lead to a shortened lifespan Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Britain consumes more chocolate than any other country Most people love chocolate but it turns out no one does more than the Brits with the average Brit found to have consumed 8.4 kg of chocolate in 2017, according to new data. Chocolate consumption around the world is on the rise, according to Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD), which found that in the past year alone, Easter chocolate production has risen by 23 per cent Food and drink news 'Easter eggs should be banned for children under four' Dr Becky Spelman, chief psychologist at Harley Streets Private Therapy Clinic, is calling for Easter eggs to be banned for consumption for children under the age of four, claiming that giving them the opportunity to binge on chocolate so young will give them an unhealthy relationship with food later on. "This is a nightmare situation for parents of this generation as they have no idea how to teach their children to delay their response to cravings, she said, explaining that too many young kids binge on these chocolates because their parents dont know how to stop them. "Once a child starts overeating behaviour at a young age its very hard to turn things around for them in terms of food and their eating habits moving forward, leading to obesity from at very young age," she added PA Food and drink news Pineapple overtakes avocado as the UK's fastest-selling fruit According to Tesco, pineapple has overtaken avocado as the UKs fastest-selling fruit, with sales increasing by 15 per cent in 2017. In comparison, avocado sales rose by just under 10 per cent last year. The popular supermarket says the surge in popularity comes as shoppers buying the versatile fruit are beginning to use it as a main ingredient in everything from curries and barbecues, to juices and cocktails Getty Food and drink news Marks & Spencers launches stoneless avocados Rather than the result of genetic modification, the avocados are formed by an unpollinated avocado blossom. The fruit develops without a seed which in turns stops the growth, creating a small, seedless fruit. Whats more, the skin is actually edible, unlike a regular avocado. The flesh is much like that of a normal avocado - smooth and creamy, pale in colour and rich in flavour M&S Food and drink news Office teabags contain 17 times more germs than a toilet seat, reveals study The average bacterial reading of an office teabag was 3,785, in comparison to only 220 for a toilet seat. Other pieces of kitchen equipment also stacked up highly in their findings, with the bacterial readings averaging at 2,483 on kettle handles, 1,746 on the rim of a used mug and 1,592 on a fridge door handle Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New study shows drinking more coffee leads to a longer life There is good news and a final hope for coffee addicts and lovers. You will now be able to drink coffee for longer as new study shows its can lead to a prolonged life. Scientists showed that those who drank between two and four cups of coffee a day had 18% lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers. PA Food and drink news Coke Zero is replaced with Coke Zero Sugar Coca-Cola is pulling the plug on its Coke Zero. The much loved drink will be replaced with a new improved taste. The move, backed with a 10 million campaign, is said to come from Coca-Cola supporting people to reduce their sugar intake. Coca-Cola want people make this move while not sacrificing sugary taste of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Food and drink news Starbucks introduce new avocado spread The avocado craze has grown from hipster brunch restaurants to Starbucks. Starbucks have introduced their new avocado spread earlier this year and it has the internet in debate. Some argue that it not a spread but guacamole while others question if there is any avocado in there at all. When buying the new spread you can also buy an optional toasted bagel. It is a must try for all avocado connoisseurs. Starbucks Food and drink news New Mars chocolate bar The iconic British chocolate bar is about to get its partner in crime. The new bar, named Goodness Knows, will replace the gooey caramel goodness of the mars bar with oats. It is said to be more like a Florentine biscuit with a thin dark chocolate bottom. While being moderately healthy Mars says that is has good intentions. One pack has 154 calories and will sell for about 90p. Mars Food and drink news Wine prices could increase because of Brexit Wine lovers across the UK might soon have to shell out close to a quarter more for their favourite tipple after Brexit, as a weaker pound and sluggish economy takes its toll, a new study shows Rex Food and drink news Chocolate may be good for the heart A new study, published in the British Medical Journal: Heart, found that moderate chocolate intake can be positively associated with lessening the risk of the heart arrhythmia condition Atrial Fibrillation Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Brits throw away 1.4 million bananas each year British families are throwing away 1.4 million bananas that are perfectly good to eat every day at cost of 80m a year, new figures have shown PA/Armin Weigel Food and drink news Rosemary sales spike over exam time There has been a surge a surge in sales of the herb rosemary after a recent study found it helps improve memory. According to high street health food chain Holland & Barrett, sales of the herb have increased by 187 per cent compared to the same time last year Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Gluten-free diets 'not recommended' for people without coeliac disease Avoiding wheat, barley and rye in the belief that a gluten-free diet brings health benefits may do more harm than good, according to a team of US nutrition and medicine experts Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Starbucks launches two new coffee-based drinks Starbucks is launching two new coffee-based drinks in the UK, as it strives to tap into consumers growing appetite for healthy beverages. The Cold Brew Vanilla sweet cream and the Cappuccino Freddo, will both be available in stores throughout the UK from the start of May Twitter/@SbuxCountyHall Food and drink news Cadburys Dairy Milk Tiffin is making a permanent comeback after 80 years The Cadbury Dairy Milk Tiffin, first produced in 1937, is making a permanent comeback to the UK. The raisin and biscuit-filled chocolate bar is being launched after a successful trial last summer saw 3 million chocolate treats at the cost of 1.49 for each 95g bar- purchased by nostalgic customers Cadburys Food and drink news Pizza restaurant makes worlds cheesiest 'Scottie's Pizza Parlor' in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Facebook/Scottie's Pizza Parlor Food and drink news A pizza joint in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Why not eating before a workout could be better for your health A study published in the American Journal of Physiology by researchers at the University of Bath found you might be likely to burn more fat if you have not eaten first Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New York restaurant named best in the world A New York restaurant where an average meal for two will cost $700 has been named the best in the world. Eleven Madison Park won the accolade for the first time after debuting on the list at number 50 in 2010. The restaurant was praised for a fun sense of fine-dining, blurring the line between the kitchen and the dining room Getty Images Food and drink news Why you crave bad food when youre tired Researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago recently presented their results of a study looking into the effects of sleep deprivation upon high-calorific food consumption. Researchers found that those who were sleep-deprived had specifically enhanced brain activity to the food smells compared to when they had a good nights sleep Shutterstock Food and drink news Drinking wine engages more of your brain than solving maths problems Drinking wine is the ideal workout for your brain, engaging more parts of our grey matter than any other human behaviour, according to a leading neuroscientist. Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, said sniffing and analysing a wine before drinking it requires exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news British dessert eating surges after people ditch healthy eating in February : In heartening news for anyone feeling guilty about quitting their New Year diet, it seems lots of us have given in to our sweet tooths once again. New data from nationwide food-delivery service Deliveroo reveals there was a surge in Brits ordering desserts in February compared to the first month of 2017 Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news US congress debates definition of milk alternatives A new bill has been created that seeks to ban dairy alternatives from using the term milk. Titled the DAIRY PRIDE Act, the name is a tenuous acronym for defending against imitations and replacements of yogurt, milk, and cheese to promote regular intake of dairy every day. It argues that the dairy industry is struggling as a result of all the dairy-free alternatives on the market and the public are being duped too Getty Images Food and drink news Cadburys launches two new chocolate bars UK confectionary giant Cadbury has launched two new chocolate bars, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and perhaps help combat some of the challenges it faces from rising commodity prices and a post-Brexit slump in the value of the pound.The companys new products will be peanut butter and mint flavoured. They will be available in most major super markets as 120g bars, priced at 1.49, according to the company Cadburys Food and drink news You can now get a job as a professional chocolate eater The company responsible for some of your favourite chocolate brands think Cadbury, Milks, Prince and Oreo have officially announced an opening to join their team as a professional chocolate taster. The successful candidate will help them to test, perfect and launch new products all over the world. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news MSG additive used in Chinese food is actually good for you, scientist claims For years, weve been told MSG (the sodium salt of glutamic acid) - often associated with cheap Chinese takeaways - is awful for our health and to be avoided at all costs. But one scientist argues it should be used as a supersalt and encourages adding it to food. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Lettuce prices are rising Not only are lettuces becoming an increasingly rare commodity in supermarkets, but prices for the leafy vegetables seem to be rising too. According to the weekly report from the Governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a pair of Little Gem lettuces had an average market price of 0.86 in the week that ended on Friday, up from an average of 0.56 in the previous week thats an almost 54 per cent increase. Getty Images Food and drink news Do-It-Yourself restaurant To encourage more people to cook and eat together, IKEA has launched The Dining Club in Shoreditch a fully immersive Do-It-Yourself restaurant . Members of the public can book to host a brunch, lunch or dinner party for up to 20 friends and family. Supported by their very own sous chef and maitre de, the host and their guests will orchestrate an intimate dining experience where cooking together is celebrated and eating together is inspirational Mikael Buck / IKEA Food and drink news Ping Pong menu with a twist Gatwick Airport has teamed up with London dim sum restaurant Ping Pong to create a limited edition menu with a distinctly British twist; including a Full English Bao and Beef Wellington Puff, to celebrate the launch of the airports new route to Hong Kong Food and drink news Zizzi unveil the Maamgharita Unique pizza art has been created by Zizzi in celebration of the Queens 90th birthday. The pizza features the queen in an iconic pose illustrated with fresh and tasty Italian ingredients on a backdrop of the Union Jack Food and drink news Blue potatoes make a comeback Blue potatoes, once a staple part of British potato crops, are back on the menu thanks to a Cambridge scientist turned-organic farmer and Farmdrop, an online marketplace that lets people buy direct from local farms. Cambridge PhD graduate-turned farmer, Adrian Izzard has used traditional growing techniques at Wild Country Organics to produce the colourful spuds, packed with healthy cell-protecting anthocyanin, which had previously disappeared from UK plates when post-war farmers were pushed towards higher-yielding varieties Whats the recipe for the perfect afternoon tea? A nice setting, good company and time to relax, he says. Everything is laid out in front of you and you get all the beautiful cutlery and silverware and teas and thats what I really like about it that unrushed moment. Its the spirit that he aims to capture at his south London cafe, Cake Boy. Its really, really popular. I remember someone saying that afternoon tea is the new lunch and I kind of agree. I much prefer to go and celebrate with someone for afternoon tea rather than a rushed lunch somewhere. Afternoon tea can cost the same as lunch out and restaurateurs are less likely to need to turn the table, so there isnt a feeling of being hurried back out the door. Afternoon tea isnt just a British institution anymore. Weve successfully exported it to countries everywhere so its become a worldwide phenomenon. And its not all about the sandwiches and sweets. More hotels and restaurants are thinking about the tea they serve. Lanlard encourages diners to try different teas with different dishes as you would with wine. So perhaps a white tea with a soft and subtle flavour at the beginning of the meal and something more robust, like an earthy tea from Kenya, for a richer, savoury dish. And what are his top picks for afternoon tea? Claridges, London (iconic) The Goring, London (a British tradition) St Regis, Abu Dhabi (an exotic treat) The Royal Crescent, Bath (my favourite hotel) Afternoon Tea by Eric Lanlard (Mitchell Beazley) 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 }} Microsofts CEO has warned the technology industry against creating a dystopian future, the likes of which have been predicted by authors including George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Satya Nadella kicked off the the companys 2017 Build conference with a keynote that was as unexpected as it was powerful. He told the developers in attendance that they have a huge responsibility, and that the choices they make could have enormous implications. Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty Im an unrepentant tech optimist, theres no question of that, said Mr Nadella. But Im also grounded. There are unintended consequences of technology. And its not that we can just use more technology to solve those problems, and technologies by themselves cannot solve these. But I do believe that its up to us to ensure that some of the more dystopian scenarios dont come true. At this point in the speech, the main screen in the conference hall displayed Orwells 1984 and Huxleys Brave New World. [Think about] what Orwell prophesied in 1984, where technology was being used to monitor, control, dictate, continued Mr Nadella. Or what Huxley imagined we may do by just distracting ourselves without any meaning or purpose. Neither of these futures is something that we want. So the question is: what are we going to do? Are there practical ways we can make progress? According to Nadella, technology should be inclusive and empower people, but build trust too. I think it starts with us taking accountability. Taking accountability for the algorithms we create, the experiences that we create, and ensuring that there is more trust in technology with each day. Facebook has come under heavy fire recently, amid widespread belief that fake news stories spread on its platform manipulated public opinion and influenced the 2016 US presidential election. The companys algorithms also failed to spot graphic footage of murders that had been posted on the site. The videos were eventually pulled, but only after hundreds of thousands of people had watched them. We want to think about people, concluded Mr Nadella. But we also want to think about the institutions people build. 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 }} WhatsApp conversations backed up in Apples iCloud are now protected by encryption. The messaging app reportedly introduced the security measure in 2016, but only confirmed the move this week. Its designed to protect the privacy of iPhone users, and should make it harder for government agencies to access their messages. Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty WhatsApp conversations are protected by end-to-end encryption, a technique that scrambles content and ensures that nobody but the sender and the intended recipient can decipher it. Many messaging apps only encrypt messages between you and them, but WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp, explains the company. This is because your messages are secured with a lock, and only the recipient and you have the special key needed to unlock and read them. For added protection, every message you send has its own unique lock and key. However, before the update, WhatsApp conversations backed up by iPhone owners using iCloud were stored in readable form. Though iCloud accounts are encrypted, cyber criminals and authorities could have potentially accessed a WhatsApp users private messages by hacking or issuing a court order to Apple, which hold the decryption keys. That avenue is now blocked by a second layer of protection. When a user backs up their chats through WhatsApp to iCloud, the backup files are sent encrypted, a WhatsApp spokesperson told Forbes. The news emerged after a company called Oxygen Forensics claimed to be able to get around the security measure, though only if it has access to a SIM card with the same mobile number as that of the targeted user. Its a welcome piece of news for privacy advocates, considering the governments recent attacks on encryption. A draft document leaked last week revealed that the UK government is secretly planning to force technology companies to build backdoors into their products, to enable intelligence agencies to read peoples private messages. The measures would enable government agencies to spy on one in 10,000 citizens around 6,500 people at any one time. 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 }} Hurricanes, earthquakes, terror and political upheaval mean that Haiti, Venezuela, Nepal, Ethiopia, Chad and Pakistan are now the riskiest countries in the world to do business, according to a new study. The report, published by property insurance group FM Global, based on data from the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum and the World Bank, found that Switzerland is the safest destination for business. That reflects the fact that the Alpine country is among the best in the world for its infrastructure and local suppliers, its political stability, control of corruption and economic productivity, FM Global says. Luxembourg took second spot, having risen from eighth in 2013, partly as a result of its reduced reliance on oil for economic productivity and continued growth in the importance of its services sector. Luxembourg enjoys a strong reputation for its financial sector, its network of service providers, and its responsive, business-friendly regulations, according to the report. FM Global also said that Luxembourg is well-placed to benefit from financial institutions that may be seeking a new home, post-Brexit, following the United Kingdoms departure from the European Union. Overall, the UK ranked 16th, behind countries like Australia, Belgium, Qatar, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Sweden, Austria, Germany and Belgium took third, fourth and fifth spot respectively. China and the US were both subdivided into regions for the ranking, taking into account their vast geographical spreads encompassing very disparate exposures to natural hazards, like wind, floods and earthquakes. As a result, the US ranked 9th, 10th and 18th and China ranked 68th, 72nd, 66th. In Haiti, ranked 130th, more than 1,000 people were killed by Hurricane Matthew last October, which was one of many reasons for its poor score. Especially in the Middle East, FM Global said that cyber-crime was one of the driving factors of risk in the 2017 ranking. The study found that in general, countries ranking high in internet penetration and low in civil liberties were most at risk of succumbing to a cyber-attack, which in turn would place them further down the overall ranking. The four countries ranking lowest in the index for inherent cyber risk were Saudi Arabia, ranked 56th out of 130 in the overall index, Bahrain, ranked 44th, United Arab Emirates, ranked 32nd and Qatar, ranked 13th. Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year. In Asia, FM Global said that the disruption caused by the 2011 floods in Thailand continue to have an impact on businesses. The six Asian countries in the index that have the largest area devoted to economic activities exposed to riverine flood are Pakistan, ranked 125th, Laos, ranked 113th, Bangladesh, ranked 111th, Thailand ranked 97th, Vietnam, ranked 95th and China. 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 }} Fast-food giant McDonalds has honoured an employee with Downs syndrome, as he retired after 33 years of loyal service. Daniel Lybrink, a 62 year-old, this week retired as a lobby manger at a McDonalds branch in Brighton, Michigan, where he started working in 1984, according to local media reports. His family and friends along with members of the community, who reportedly had been touched by his kindness and smile over the years, threw him a surprise party to celebrate his retirement. Mr Lybrink, the youngest in a family of six, recently had to cut back to one shift a week after two heart attacks and a knee injury forced him to slow down. However his colleagues praised him, saying he was an inspiration. David Glynn, general manager at the McDonalds outlet, who worked with Daniel for more than 10 years, told local paper the Livingston Daily that he makes everybody feel special. Other colleagues described him as "hard worker" and a "big help wherever you needed him". His brother, Harry Lybrink, told the paper he was grateful that Mr Lybrinks position at McDonalds had helped him find purpose for years. Back then, they didnt know what to do with someone who had Down Syndrome, Harry Lybrink told the Livingstone Daily. He never got to go to public school, he added. 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 }} After a decade presenting Deal or No Deal, Noel Edmonds is finally taking on the banker himself by presenting Lloyds with a 100m proposition of his own. Mr Edmonds has written to Lloyds Banking Group chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio demanding millions in compensation from his former lender, HBOS. The letter alleges that Lloyds subsidiary HBOS, and its former employee Mark Dobson, destroyed Mr Edmonds 70m business empire ten years ago. Mr Edmonds said that he hopes to be fairly, swiftly and appropriately compensated, and if not he will pursue his claim against Lloyds via the courts. Last month, Lloyds set aside a total of 100m to settle a number of claims after Mr Dobson and fellow HBOS bank manager Lynden Scourfield were convicted for their part in ripping apart customers small businesses. Mr Edmonds claim is seeking 50m for the collapse of his business, Unique Group, as well as 10m for loss of income from motivational speaking fees which the presenter says he could no longer collect because of irreparable damage to business reputation. He is also demanding money for legal fees, interest and compensation for personal distress and humiliation. Mr Edmonds lawyer, Jonathan Coad, of Keystone Law, says in the letter: My client has both suffered immense economic loss as well as (to put it very mildly) distress and inconvenience at the hands of your bank as a direct result of the actions of these individuals. The presenter claims his business was marred only as a result of the unlawful actions of rogue individuals at HBOS. Unique Group, the TV stars business, was placed into compulsory liquidation after HBOS refused to allow the company to sell shares to pay off its debts, according to the letter. The letter goes into detail about his, long and distinguished career lasting over forty years as both a broadcaster and entrepreneur in the media industry, which included a plethora of very successful and high profile programmes such as Top of the Pops, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop... Noels House Party, Noels Christmas Presents and most recently the hugely successful Deal or No Deal. 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 The claim marks the latest twist in the HBOS fraud scandal. The two convicted bank managers were found to have referred customers to their friends, businessmen David Mills, 60, and Michael Bancroft, 73, who claimed to be turnaround consultants providing assistance struggling businesses. Instead they bullied them, squeezed them for large fees and stripped them of assets. In exchange, Mr Mills arranged sex parties, cash and lavish gifts. Sentencing in February, Judge Martin Beddoe said Mr Scourfield was an utterly corrupt senior bank manager who had sold his soul to Mr Mills in exchange for sex, bling and for swag. 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 next Government should give investors more power to crack down on bumper executive pay packets at Britains largest companies, the Institute of Directors has said. The organisation, which represents approximately 30,000 business leaders, is urging whatever Government is voted in on 8 June to adopt a new rule which forces stock-market listed firms to give shareholders a second vote if a large proportion rejects the companys proposed pay report. Under the proposal, if at least 30 per cent of investors oppose the remuneration report at the annual meeting, the company would have to reconsider their pay policy and give shareholders another vote. Despite widespread public outrage at bumper pay packets, executive pay is still normally waved through at annual general meetings and the IoD says that only 3 per cent of FTSE 100 firms suffered a majority vote against executive pay in 2016. UK corporate governance is highly regarded across the world, but there is still a pressing need to rebuild public trust in big business to work in the long-term interests of investors and employees, rather than the short-term interests of managers, Oliver Parry, head of corporate governance at the Institute of Directors, said. Now is the time for sensible reforms which increase transparency and draw more engagement from shareholders, he added. According to data published by the Equality Trust earlier this year, bosses of the UKs biggest 100 companies take home an average of 5.3m each year, which is a staggering 386 times higher than what a worker earning the national living wage pockets. The figures from the charity, which is dedicated to fighting income inequality, also show that over two thirds of FTSE 100 CEOs are paid more than 100 times the average UK salary. Some UK companies are reportedly considering scrapping so-called long-term incentive plans and shifting towards a simpler, share-based bonus system that could reduce the divide between the highly-paid chief executives and other workers. Earlier this year BlackRock, the worlds largest asset manager, weighed in on the debate, demanding an end to rises in pay packets for top executives that drastically outpace those of ordinary employees. But under the existing system, introduced by the Coalition in 2013, UK-listed firms are only required to subject their general pay policies to a binding vote once every three years. An annual vote on actual remuneration packages for directors is only advisory. The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Show all 10 1 /10 The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Lecturer - 36,513 Almost 10,000 more than the median UK salary. Experience required. Istock Photo The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Business analyst What do they do? Nobody knows, but they are handsomely rewarded for it. Must speak fluent jargon. Istock Photo The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Teaching assistant - 20,300 Istock Photo The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Research assistant - 21,370 The world of academia pays surprisingly well according to the survey. Reuters The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Warehouse worker - 16,800 Despite what Mike Ashley might be paying. Reuters The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Tutor - 16,500 Private tutors can command upwards of 50 per hour. Istock Photo The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Beauty consultant - 15,000 Reuters The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Brand ambassador - 15,020 This is actually Max Verstappen representing several brands. He earns more than 15,020. rex features The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Office assistant - 14,560 Harder than it looks. Istock Photo The top 10 best-paid part-time jobs Front desk manager - 14,520 Front of house. The face of the operation. Reuters According to information compiled by the Equality Trust, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising giant WPP, was the highest paid of all FTSE 100 bosses in 2016, taking home over 70m. Other companies that rank in the top five for CEO compensation are Reckitt Benckiser, Sky, Shire and BP. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trumps Vice President has claimed the president made the correct decision in firing FBI Director James Comey. He also denied suggestions the move was linked to the ongoing Russian investigation. Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Mike Pence said it was time for a fresh start at the bureau. Let me be very clear that the Presidents decision...was based solely and exclusively on his commitment to the best interest of the American people, he said. Speaking a day after Mr Trump fired Mr Comey, who was overseeing a federal probe of possible links between Mr Trumps campaign and alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Mr Pence said that the president had made the right decision at the right time. He said the administration now looking forward to finding someone to lead the law enforcement agency. Comey firing 'sends a chill throughout federal bureacracy', former CIA boss says Mr Trump said that he had fired Mr Comey on the recommendation of his senior law officers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who had criticised Mr Comeys handling of a probe into Hillary Clintons use of private email server. Mr Pence said that Mr Comey had lost the confidence of the American people. He said Mr Trump took strong and decisive leadership to put the safety and security of the American people first. 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 "I'm grateful for the action has has taken. I'm confident that as we move forward, the president will appoint someone who can restore the confidence of our nation in our leading law enforcement agency." Mr Trump himself also defended his decision, saying that the man whose performance he had previously praised and for having displayed "guts" by pursuing a probe of Hillary Clinton's use of private email server, "was not doing a good job". Mr Trump briefly spoke to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday after a closed meeting with Russia's foreign minister. His remarks come as the White House has been defending the decision to dismiss Mr Comey. Administration officials have said the firing was not related to the investigation into possible contacts between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A man has been arrested after trying to enter a kosher shop in north London brandishing a meat cleaver and large knife and threatening to kill two young girls. The unnamed man is alleged to have entered a kosher shop in the predominantly Orthodox Jewish area of Stamford Hill, north London, waving the weapons and shouting Where is the boss, I will kill him. When he was told the owner was not there, he reportedly ran out of the shop towards two Jewish girls, aged eight and 14, shouting You Jews run away from here before I kill you. The man, who was described as a white and in his 60s, had reportedly tried to get into another kosher deli minutes before but staff had barricaded the door. The Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood watch group in Stamford Hill, said they received numerous calls from frightened members of the public. Chaim Hochauser, a supervisor with the community group, said: "On Tuesday at just after 4pm, Shomrim in Stamford Hill responded to reports of a male making threats and brandishing a meat cleaver and a large knife, on Upper Clapton Road in Hackney E5. "Shomrim contained the area where the suspect had fled, and liaised with local and armed police who cordoned off the area, and the suspect was subsequently arrested. Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign against anti-Semitism, said: This is an extremely frightening incident and it is very fortunate that there are no injuries reported. We commend Stamford Hill Shomrim and the Metropolitan Police Service for their bravery in rushing to the scene to protect the public." UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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 A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: A 61-year-old has been arrested by police in Hackney. Police were called at 16:06hrs on Tuesday, 9 May, to a man armed with two knives who had threatened a shopkeeper in Upper Clapton Road, E5. Officers attended the location, and detained a man nearby at an address in Rossington Street. He was arrested on suspicion of affray and possession of an offensive weapon, and taken to a north London police station where he remains in custody. There are no reports of any injuries. 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 }} Media coverage of the EU referendum campaign was acrimonious and divisive and dominated by overwhelmingly negative reports about the consequences of migration to the UK, a report has found. After analysing more than 15,000 articles published online by 20 national news outlets, researchers at Kings College London found that most coverage on immigration was framed, primarily by Leave campaign leaders and the Leave-supporting press, in almost entirely negative terms. Language invoking fear was increasingly prominent throughout the campaign, with both sides adopting the Project Fear label over the 10-week campaign, the report found. Coverage of immigration tripled over the course of the 10-week campaign, rising faster than any other political issue. Almost half of all referendum-related articles in the final four weeks which referred to the economy also referred to immigration. That compared with just over a quarter during the first six weeks, according to the report. There were more leading front pages about immigration during the campaign than about the economy, with six in 10 of them published by three newspapers the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. Immigration and immigrants were blamed by these outlets for many of the UKs political, economic and social problems, the report says. Prominent politicians like Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, and Nigel Farage all frequently made negative claims about immigration and about the damaging effect of migrants on the UK, which the report adds were covered copiously and prominently in the press. The findings show that three metaphors were dominant in the coverage of refugees and migrants. Words related to water, like floodgates or waves were often used along with those used in relation to animals or insects like "flocking" and "swarming". Project fear and scaremongering were also widely used during the campaign by both the Leave and Remain camps to predict frightening outcomes should voters decide to opt for the other side. From 15 April until the vote on 23 June, project fear was referred to in 739 articles - 250 times in the final fortnight of the campaign. Scaremongering was also mentioned in 737 Brexit-related articles. Other political issues were dwarfed by coverage of the economy and immigration, the report states. The implications of Brexit on each of the UKs devolved nations, the environment, foreign policy, defence and education were all reported and editorialised far less than these two primary political issues. The study infers that the campaign leading up to the EU referendum was the UKs most divisive, hostile, negative and fear-provoking of the 21st century, and that this was encouraged and enflamed by a highly partisan national media. It concludes: Much of the acrimony, partiality and suspicions of dishonesty that characterised the campaign has remained. The consequences of the EU Referendum campaign are still being played out, and will continue to be throughout the period that Britain negotiates its departure from the EU and beyond. Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty The implications of a divisive, antagonistic and hyper-partisan campaign by the campaigners themselves as much as by many national media outlets is likely to shape British politics for the foreseeable future. Gordon Ramsay, co-author of the report, said it showed "that the referendum campaign was divisive, negative, and filled with accusations of dishonesty and bad faith." He added: "While much of this was driven by the campaigners themselves, a significant amount of the coverage adopted a similar approach. Negative campaigning like this can alienate and polarise the electorate, as well as accentuate divisions after the vote itself." 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 }} The practice of separating elderly couples against their wishes when one or both go into care is "inhumane", according to a High Court judge. Sir James Munby, the president of the family division at the High Court, has urged social workers to apply "common decency" and do their best to keep couples together whether in their own home or in residential care. In a speech to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Sir James said officials should giver a higher priority to the happiness of those in its care and focus less on procedure or safety rules. He said forcing frail people to leave their homes was not always the best decision if it would substantially impact their happiness. The 68-year-old, who is the UK's most senior family judge, said it was "absolutely shocking and a profound indictment of our society" that elderly couples who had been together for decades were still sometimes refused shared accommodation. "I read with personal outrage reports of cases where the results of the operation of the system is that people may have been together for 30,40 or maybe 50 years are separated in their final years", he said. Nearly 300,000 elderly people are currently living in residential care in England and Wales where local authorities have a duty to meet both their physical and mental needs. Sir James said he believed that being suddenly separated from a loved one after such a long time together meant that people really could die of a "broken heart". He said he has read stories of couples who had enjoyed a 50 or 60-year marriage and after one dies "the other dies two days later", saying this was "not a coincidence". UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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 Age UK director, Caroline Abrahams, backed Sir James' intervention, telling The Times: "Even if the local council is arranging and paying for care, they cannot just tell someone where they have to live. "In some cases partners may have different care needs but except in rare situations couples want to stay together should be allowed to do so". It follows a social media campaign at the end of last year for an elderly couple who had been together for 70 years to be allowed to stay in the same care home. Jessie and Ray Lorrison, from South Shields, were separated when Mr Lorrison was taken to Westoe Grange Care Home after Ms Lorrison was taken into hospital after a fall. The 95-year-old has Alzheimer's Disease and could no longer live at home. But the couple's family said social services had initially told Ms Lorrison she would have to go home without him because she did not meet the criteria to be with him at his nursing home. Recommended Heartbreak of couple married for 62 years forced to live apart One of their grandchildren, Lee Bates, then started an online petition urging South Tyneside Council to reconsider their decision. It received more than 21,000 signatures in just a few days. Mr Bates told the Shields Gazette: My grandfather sits and waits for her everyday confused, anxious and lonely without the woman who has been by his side for 70 years. The council then said it had had time to finish the formal assessments of Ms Lorrison and found that she also required 24-hour care because she could not go to the toilet by herself and suffered from a number of physical problems. As a result, the couple were reunited when she left hospital. Mr Bates: "We are incredibly relieved and happy that the decision has been made and my grandparents are going to be back together and that my grandmother is going to get the care that she deserves." Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Labour could be split in two after the election with many as 100 MPs reportedly plotting to form their own breakaway group to force Jeremy Corbyn to resign. MPs on the moderate and right-wing of the party are said to be in talks with potential donors about forming a new progressives grouping in Parliament after the expected rout by the Conservatives in the election on 8 June. One poll released today by French firm Kantar Media showed the Conservatives lead over the Labour has been cut by eight points, but the party is still well behind and looking at losing dozens of seats. Recommended Corbyn refuses to say UK will definitely leave EU under Labour Under the plans reportedly being discussed by rebels, the MPs would resign the whip and sit as independents until Mr Corbyn is removed as leader. They would then rejoin the parliamentary Labour Party, The Daily Telegraph reported. In this scenario they would retain Labour Party membership and would not create a new party formally. Sources told the Telegraph that potential leaders of the breakaway group being discussed include shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer, former leadership candidate Yvette Cooper and popular backbencher Dan Jarvis although there is no suggestion any candidate has been approached. 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 A spokesman for Mr Corbyn dismissed the report as "another silly story from a Tory paper and anonymous source to distract from Labour's policies for the many not the few". The news comes as Mr Corbyn has attempted to row back on comments he made to BuzzFeed News when he suggested he would stay on as party leader even if Labour suffers a landslide defeat. Out on the campaign trail in Leamington Spa, he said: "I was elected leader of this party and Ill stay leader of this party." He insisted the criticism and poor poll ratings were not getting to him and he said no matter what he will be carrying on after the vote. But in an interview with the BBC, Mr Corbyn attempted to claim he had never said that and the party banned a BuzzFeed News reporter from a campaign event in Manchester. BuzzFeed News later published the recording where Mr Corbyn is heard saying he plans to stay on. Mr Corbyn has already survived one attempt to oust him as leader, while The Independent last month revealed intentions for him to remain in post even if the party loses. Britain's Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbynposesfor a picture with his campaign bus in Manchester (EPA) Proposed changes which are expected to be put to the party's annual conference in the autumn will lower the threshold needed for an MP to get onto the leadership ballot. The current threshold 20 per cent of MPs and MEPs is currently too high for most MPs on the hard left. Mr Corbyn was only able to get onto the leadership ballot the first time in 2015 after he was lent support by moderates. It is believed that if Mr Corbyn gets his changes through he may step down in favour of one of the new generation of his supporters, with shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey among potential contenders. 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 }} Jeremy Corbyn is hoping he will be endorsed by Bernie Sanders when the veteran US senator visits the UK days before the 8 June general election. Mr Sanders is planning a whistle-stop tour of the UK to help promote his book and will speak at events in Cambridge, Oxford, south London and Bristol, as well as at the Hay Festival. Mr Corbyn said he was hoping the former Democratic presidential nominee who was eventually beaten by Hillary Clinton, would give his support to Labour during the visit. Asked by The Guardian whether he was expecting Mr Sanders to endorse him, the Labour leader replied: I cant say. I hope he will. I think he probably will, actually. But we mustnt predict these things. Members of the campaign team that helped propel Mr Sanders from relative obscurity to international prominence are now believed to be helping Labour in its quest for victory on 8 June. We are in touch with Bernies team, Mr Corbyn said. They are over here helping us. We also, during the leadership campaign, looked at a lot of their campaigning methods and again some people came over and gave us advice. I think Bernie Sanders ran an incredible campaign and it had a massive effect, he added. Who would have thought that in 2017 somebody self-describing themselves as a socialist would get within a whisker of winning the Democratic nomination and, had he been the candidate, who knows, who knows. We will never know the answer to that question. But what a formidable guy. I have a lot of time for him. 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 Mr Corbyn will be hoping to replicate some of Mr Sanders success during the presidential race. The maverick socialist senator was considered a rank outsider but ended up winning widespread support, and 13 million votes, with his anti-establishment message. Mr Sanders could provoke family tensions should he endorse Labour. His brother, Larry, is the Green Partys health spokesperson and its parliamentary candidate in the Oxford East constituency. While some members of Mr Sanders campaign team are in the UK helping Labour, others played down any comparison between the senator and Mr Corbyn. The obvious parallels are in political orientation but I see them as different figures, Tad Devine, the chief strategist on the Sanders campaign, told The Guardian. Bernie Sanders had a great ability to connect with people at a basic level. People connected with him. Jeremy Corbyn does not strike me as someone who makes that kind of connection. I think Hillary Clinton did not make that kind of connection. 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 }} Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to pump money into the nations cash-strapped schools as part of a 20bn education package paid for reversing Conservative corporate tax giveaways. The ambitious proposals will also see Labour promise to ban 30-plus class sizes, scrap adult learners course fees and bring back student grants. Labour claimed it could fund the ambitious proposals by undoing Conservative plans to cut corporation tax to 17 per cent by 2020 and instead raising it to 26 per cent still lower than in other EU countries. It throws down the gauntlet to Theresa May who herself faces a Tory rebellion over tight school funding, while polling for The Independent shows ditching corporation tax cuts to fund better services is hugely popular with the public. Mr Corbyn also confirmed plans to give all primary school children free meals and restore education maintenance allowance for college students as part of his plan for a National Education Service. The Labour leader has vowed a government run by him would mean a reckoning for Britain's elites and do away with an economy rigged in favour of the rich and powerful. He said: People of all ages are being held back by a lack of funding for education, and this in turn is holding back the economy by depriving industry of the untapped talent of thousands of people. The Conservatives have spent seven years starving schools of funding, meaning head-teachers are having to send begging letters to parents to ask for money. 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 He added: We will reverse the Conservatives tax giveaways to big business and put money back where it belongs, in our schools, our colleges and our communities. Ex-Chancellor George Osborne charted a course for corporation tax to fall from its 2010 rate of 28 per cent, to 19 per cent today and down to 17 per cent by 2020. Ms May has signalled she will go ahead with the giveaway to businesses, despite the current British rate already being below that of other big European nations with comparable rates in Germany above 30 per cent and in France, at 33 per cent. Yet a recent report from the Public Accounts Committee showed how per-pupil school funding is falling in real terms, with head-teachers being forced to find 3bn in savings 8 per cent of the total schools budget by 2020. In April research revealed how half of schools in England have been forced to ask parents for some form of financial help as a result of crippling budget cuts to education. In 90 seconds: Corbyn launches Labour's official General Election campaign In a survey of around 1,200 teachers and school leaders, almost three-quarters of respondents reported seeing cuts to spending on books and equipment in school, and almost half reported cuts to special educational needs provisions. A BMG Research poll for The Independent showed that 77 per cent of voters including 69 per cent of those planning to back Ms May agreed that corporation tax reductions should be scrapped if the money was going to the NHS. Ms May has also faced calls from many Tories likely to be re-elected to abandon the Governments school funding reforms amid fears that a proposed draft formula could see thousands of schools losing out, while others would gain. Conservative Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke said: Jeremy Corbyn cant deliver any of this. Theyre just made up promises on the back of nonsensical spending plans. Hes spent this damaging tax rise on businesses on 12 different things and hes already dropped numerous things hes said hed do before. Jeremy Corbyn slams Conservative and Ukip leaders in passionate speech Labour said the extra funding would allow for a reduction in class sizes, leading to the commitment that all five- to seven-year-olds would be taught in classes of fewer than 30 pupils. The party would increase the adult skills budget to 1.5bn in 2020 to abolish upfront fees and increase course funding by 20 per cent per year to allow for an expansion of places. Labour has already committed to extending free school meals for all primary children, costing between 700m to 900m and paid for by putting VAT on private school fees. They have also previously announced a 582m plan to reintroduce Education Maintenance Allowance for 16- to 18-year-olds and restore grants for university students costing between 1.6bn and 1.8bn. The Lib Dems also announced they would bring forward 7bn of extra school and college funding in the next parliament. 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 Labour Party will scrap tuition fees once and for all if the party wins power, the shadow Chancellor has said. In interviews today, the party refused to say whether or not axing fees of up to 9,250 per year at English universities will be in the partys manifesto. But footage has emerged of John McDonnell, the shadow Chancellor, revealing the policy during a speech in Mansfield. Its not a commodity to be bought and sold, Mr McDonnell said, of education, at the event two weeks ago. So we want to introduce just as the Attlee government with Nye Bevan introduced the National Health Service we want to introduce a National Education Service. Free at the point of need throughout life. And that means ending the cuts in the schools at primary and secondary level. It means free childcare. It means free school training when you need it throughout life. And yes it means scrapping tuition fees once and for all so we dont burden our kids with debt for the future. The Coalitions tripling of tuition fees in 2012 forced a collapse in the Liberal Democrats poll ratings, which all but wiped out Nick Cleggs party three years later. 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 Labours policy at the last election merely to cut tuition fees from 9,000 to 6,000 a year was criticised as timid. In the 2015 party leadership campaign which followed, Mr Corbyn said he would get rid of tuition fees by hiking either National Insurance for higher earners or corporation tax. In recent weeks, Labour has been criticised for appearing to indicate several priority areas it would fund from hiking corporation tax. But it insists an annual 20bn will eventually be raised by increasing corporation tax from its current 19 per cent rate to 26 per cent by 2021-22. That would more than cover a 5.7bn cash injection for beleaguered English schools, restoring both university maintenance grants and the education maintenance allowance and axing fees on courses for adult learners, Labour says. Meanwhile, critics of high tuition fees argue they will soon cost the public purse more than before they were tripled, as more students fail to earn enough to pay back their loans. The write-off costs have topped 45 per cent of the more than 10bn of student loans made each year, all but nullifying any savings to the public purse. Today, Angela Rayner, the shadow Education Secretary, said watch this space when asked if a pledge to axe tuition fees would quickly follow. She didnt want to give too much of the manifesto away on a day when Labour was focusing on its plans to spend billions boosting schools and further education. Labour enjoys 55 per cent support among students, according to a poll last week. The party appears to be succeeding in a voter registration drive. In his speech, Mr McDonnell said scrapping tuition fees would help make Britain radically fairer, radically more equal, adding: What do you call that? I call it socialism? 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 Liberal Democrats are pledging to invest an extra 6.9 billion in schools over the next Parliament. The party says cut the cash injection will be fully costed in its manifesto, which is due out soon but offered not clue into where they would find the cash. Tim Farron's party says it will spend 3.3 billion to protect per pupil funding in schools, 660 million to protect further education per pupil funding, and 1.26 billion to ensure no school loses out from the National Funding Forumla. Recommended Former MP photoshops Lib Dem rival out of picture but forgets his legs Tim Farrons party also says it will spend 415m on protecting the pupil premium, introduced by the Coalition government, and 165 million to invest in continuous professional development for teachers. Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary Sarah Olney said: Children are being taught in overcrowded classes by overworked teachers - but Theresa May doesn't care. While funding per pupil is set to see the biggest cuts in a generation, billions of pounds are being spent on divisive plans to expand grammars and free schools. This extra 7 billion of funding would ensure no school and no child loses out. We will reverse crippling Conservative cuts to school budgets and invest to ensure every child has the opportunity to succeed. Announcing the policy, the party cited figures from the National Audit Office showing that the Conservatives will be slashing the school budget by 3 billion in real terms by 2019-20. The policy is being announced on the same day as Labour spells out its plans for a National Education Service. 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 Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron said: A landslide for the Conservatives would allow Theresa May to take parents across the country for granted and cut our schools to the bone. Only the Liberal Democrats can provide the strong opposition Britain needs to stand up for your community. Vote for the Liberal Democrats and you can change Britains future. 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 }} Nigel Farage has repeatedly refused to say why he met Wikileaks founder Julian Assange before terminating a heated interview. The former Ukip leader told Germanys Die Zeit newspaper he visited the Ecuadorian Embassy for journalistic reasons, not political reasons in March. I will not say any more about that, Mr Farage added. It has nothing to do with you. It was a private meeting. Mr Assange has been living inside the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 (AP) He declined to say whether any kind of article would be published but described the meeting as very brief and said he talked about a lot of things with Mr Assange. Leaked emails later revealed long-standing contacts between Ukip and the Australian activist, who the party has publicly supported through a sexual assault investigation in Sweden. Mr Assange claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June 2012 - a month after the UKs Supreme Court ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over the allegations. The Europe of Freedom and Democracy group, led by Mr Farage, tabled a motion in the European Parliament attacking the possible abuse of the European Arrest Warrant for political purposes following a meeting between Mr Assanges lawyer and Ukip MEP Gerard Batten. Mr Farage has also used his LBC radio to repeat the WikiLeaks founders denial of Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee email hack. When asked whether his meeting with Mr Assange was on behalf of his ally Donald Trump, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was evasive, replying: I don't keep [Farage's] schedule. I generally don't worry about what's going on across the pond. Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Show all 12 1 /12 Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he unveiled that 'breaking point' poster during the referendum Mr Farage was accused of deploying Nazi-style propaganda when he unveiled a poster showing Syrian refugees travelling to Europe under the next Breaking point. Users on social media were quick to compare the advert to a Nazi propaganda film with similar visuals and featuring Jewish refugees. The poster was particularly controversial because it was unveiled the morning of the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox Rex Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said hed be concerned if his neighbours were Romanian In May 2014 Mr Farage was accused of a racial slur against Romanians after he suggested he would be concerned living next to a house of them. I was asked if a group of Romanian men moved in next to you, would you be concerned? And if you lived in London, I think you would be, he told LBC radio during an interview. Asked whether he would also object to living next to German children, he said: You know the difference Bongarts/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the EU campaign was won 'without a bullet being fired' Nigel Farage has said the next Prime Minister has to be a Leave supporter AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he resigned as Ukip leader and came back days later After failing to win the seat of South Thanet at the general election, Nigel Farage stepped down as Ukip leader as he had promised to do during the campaign. Days later on 11 May he un-resigned and said he would stay after being convinced by supporters within the party. Well see how long his resignation lasts this time AP/Matt Dunham Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he blamed immigrants for making him late Mr Farage turned up late to a 25-a-head meet the leader style event in Port Talbot, Wales in December 2014. Asked why he was late, he blamed immigrants. It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four, he said. That has nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he wanted to ban immigrants with HIV from Britain Mr Farage has used his platform as Ukip leader call for people with HIV to be banned from coming to Britain. Asked in an interview with Newsweek Europe in October 2014 who he thought should be allowed to come to the UK, he said: People who do not have HIV, to be frank. Thats a good start. And people with a skill. He also repeated similar comments in the 2015 general election leadership debates Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he defended the use of a racial slur against Chinese people Defending one of Ukips candidates, who used the word ch**ky to describe a Chinese person, Mr Farage said: If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" When he was told by the presented that he honestly would not use the slur, Mr Farage replied: A lot would Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said parts of Britain were like a foreign land The Ukip leader used his 2014 conference speech to declare parts of Britain as being like a foreign land. He told his audience in Torquay that parts of the country were unrecognisable because of the number of foreigners there. Mr Farage has also previously said he felt uncomfortable when people spoke other language on a train Screengrab Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the British army should be deployed to France At the height of trouble at Britains Calais border Mr Farage proposed a novel solution. The Ukip leader called for the British army to be sent to France to put down a migrant rebellion. In all civil emergencies like this we have an army, we have a bit of a Territorial Army as well and we have a very, very overburdened police force and border agency, he said. If in a crisis to make sure weve actually got the manpower to check lorries coming in, to stop people illegally coming to Britain, if in those circumstances we can use the army or other forces then why not AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said breastfeeding women should sit in the corner Mr Farage sparked protests from mothers after he told women to sit on the corner if they wanted to breastfeed their children. I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isnt too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that's not openly ostentatious, Mr Farage said. He added: "Or perhaps sit in the corner, or whatever it might be AFP/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the gender pay gap exists because women are worth less At a Q&A on the European Union in January 2014 Mr Farage said there was no discrimination against women causing the gender pay gap. Instead, he said, women were paid less because they were simply worth far less than many of their male counterparts. A woman who has a client base, has a child and takes two or three years off - she is worth far less to her employer when she comes back than when she went away because that client base won't be stuck as rigidly to her portfolio, he said Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he actually couldnt guarantee 350m to the NHS after Brexit During the EU referendum campaign the Leave side pledged to spend 350 million a week on the National Health Service claiming that this is what the UK sends to Brussels. Nigel Farage didnt speak out against this figure and also pledged to spend EU cash on the health service and other public services himself. Then the day of the election result he suddenly changed his tone, saying he couldnt guarantee the cash for the NHS and that to pledge to do so was a mistake Getty Mr Farage has faced questions over the extent of his links with the US President, as well as with Russia after describing his political admiration of Vladimir Putin. He rejected conspiracy theories over Russian funding for his Brexit campaign ahead of the EU referendum but would not tell Die Zeit how much he was paid for appearances on state-run broadcaster Russia Today. I [go on air] twice a year, or three times last year, he told the newspaper. I am doing global media. Mr Farage later terminated the interview, which saw him call the German interviewer mad, deluded and a "nutcase" as a press officer attempted to direct questions to trade. The MEP, who has unsuccessfully run for Parliament several times, quit as Ukip leader following the UKs vote for Brexit and claimed the British political establishment will always hate him. He has said he will not be standing in Junes snap general election, following the resignation of Ukips only sitting MP Douglas Carswell. Mr Farage said he would keep his focus on Brexit negotiations in Brussels and use his profile in European politics to exert pressure, while appearing as a media pundit on Fox News. 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 refused to apologise for the Conservative expenses scandal at the last election, insisting the partys candidates did nothing wrong. The Prime Minister brushed off a record fine imposed by the elections watchdog to claim Tories about to face the voters had emerged from the affair without a stain. Ms May was asked to say sorry after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) while pressing no charges against Tory candidates found evidence to suggest the returns may have been inaccurate. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police is still investigating the former Tory treasurer, Simon Day, for allegedly knowingly or recklessly making a false declaration. But, on the campaign trial, Ms May said: The CPS has decided they are an independent body they have decided that no charges will be brought against any candidate in relation to this matter. Candidates did nothing wrong. Its very important and I repeat that I have said it many times candidates did nothing wrong. Speaking in Nottinghamshire, the Prime Minister claimed the CPS statement had confirmed what we believed all along that local spending was properly reported. She declined to repeat the incendiary claim made by her party chairman, Patrick McLoughlin, who attacked politically motivated and unfounded complaints that have wasted police time. However, she did say: Of course, police time has been taken up in relation to this issue. Those who made those complaints will have to consider the basis on which they made those complaints. The Prime Minister did acknowledge the record 70,000 fine imposed by the Electoral Commission for inaccurate returns. The watchdog also criticised the Tories for not cooperating with its investigation. Referring to punishments imposed on other parties, she said: We have paid our fine and I sincerely hope that the other parties are paying theirs. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP First Minister who had claimed the general election was called in part because Ms May feared prosecutions reacted with fury to her claim that the SNP had also broken rules. PM should apologise for this attempt to smear @theSNP unlike Tories, we abide by rules and have never been fined by Electoral Commission, she tweeted. Jeremy Corbyn said he was surprised that no Conservatives have been charged as part of the investigation into election expenses adding money cant buy power. The Labour leader said the Electoral Commission and the Crown Prosecution Service are independent, adding: They have to make a judgement on it. But our election laws must be enforced and must be adhered to. There are strict spending limits for a reason so that money cant buy power, only votes in the ballot box should be able to get power. Earlier, the CPS said no charges were being brought against 2015 Conservative candidates for breaches of expenses rules, after it examined files from 14 police forces. However despite Ms Mays claims they did nothing wrong it said there was evidence of inaccurate spending declarations, but it did not meet the test for further action. The statement said: In order to bring a charge, it must be proved that a suspect knew the return was inaccurate and acted dishonestly in signing the declaration. Although there is evidence to suggest the returns may have been inaccurate, there is insufficient evidence to prove to the criminal standard that any candidate or agent was dishonest. The allegations centred on the expenses claims of the partys 2015 battle bus, which triggered the 70,000 fine at a national level. Candidates were accused of labelling spending on hotels and campaign material as national spending potentially allowing them to increase their local constituency campaigning without breaking spending rules. The CPS is still investigating the Conservative campaign in South Thanet. 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 }} Kellyanne Conways attempt to defend Donald Trumps decision to fire James Comey has elicited a visibly exasperated eye roll of disbelief from the host. President Trump has sparked shock and outrage for firing Mr Comey the FBI director who was leading an investigation into alleged links between President Trump and Russia. Ms Conway, the senior Trump advisor who has been noticeably absent from media appearances in recent weeks, sought to defend President Trump on Monday night on CNN. However the host Anderson Cooper appeared less than impressed with her explanation. Ms Conway insisted the praise Mr Trump heaped upon Mr Comey for his handling of Hillary Clintons email saga during the presidential campaign was wholly unrelated to his decision to now sack him for the email furore. Mr Cooper said: As a candidate, Donald Trump praised James Comey, he talked about this on the campaign all the time." All of a sudden, the White House is concerned about James Comeys handling of Hillary Clintons emails? Why now are you concerned about the Hillary Clinton email investigation when as a candidate, Trump was praising it from the campaign trail? Ms Conway, who coined the now-infamous phrase alternative facts, interjected: I think youre looking at the wrong set of facts here. Mr Cooper hit back and argued the reasoning included in the memo sent to Mr Trump was bogus and ridiculous. He asked: You dont think it looks odd at all that the President of the United States is firing the guy whos leading the investigation into the Presidents White House and the people around the president? Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad But Ms Conway argued President Trump was not under investigation, saying: Im around the President, Im not under investigation. I can name several people in that same situation. Later in the interview, Cooper played a series of clips from the campaign trail in which President Trump commended Mr Comey for how he dealt with the Clinton email saga but Ms Conway continued to argue the divergent responses to the same investigation were unrelated. Recommended Comey found out Trump had fired him from TVs playing as he spoke She said: Youre conflating two things that dont belong together. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I was on your show often last fall saying we were going to win Michigan and how we were going to do it, so that was fun. Cooper reacted with what The Daily Beast dubbed the largest eye roll from Cooper ever seen on cable news. His eye roll sparked immediate interest on Twitter with people terming it an instant classic and suggesting it would become a popular gif. The anchor added: So that person doesnt exist anymore, candidate Donald Trump, thats a fictional character we are no longer allowed to refer to? We can now only refer to the Donald Trump that exists today? Ms Conway has been notably absent from media appearances in recent weeks since a string of on-air gaffes. These include using a TV interview to invent a terrorist attack that never happened termed the Bowling Green massacre, making a sales pitch for Ivanka Trumps line of products on live TV, and claiming National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, had the full confidence of President Trump hours before he too was fired. Noting her absence, Saturday Night Live recently featured a sketch called Where in the World is Kellyanne Conway?, a spoof of 90s American game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? 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 }} Chelsea Manning, the longest-serving whistleblower in US history, is set to be released from prison this week. The transgender US Army private was sentence to 35 years behind bars in 2013, for her role in leaking more than 700,000 secret diplomatic and military documents and videos, to Wikileaks. They included video footage of an Apache helicopter killing 12 civilians in Iraq's capital, Baghdad in 2007. Ms Manning, born Bradley Manning, had her sentence commuted by Barack Obama in one of his last acts as president. President Obamas act of commutation was the first time the military took care of this soldier who risked so much to disclose information that served the public interest, Ms Mannings attorneys said in a statement. We are delighted that Chelsea can finally begin to enjoy the freedom she deserves. The attorneys did not specify Ms Mannings exact release date, but a statement from the White House in January said her prison sentence is set to expire on 17 May. Ms Manning confirmed the release was going ahead on her Twitter feed, saying: "Freedom was only a dream, and hard to imagine. Now it's here! You kept me alive". She added: "For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world." Serving in Iraq in 2010, Ms Manning gained access to hundreds of thousands of documents from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which she subsequently passed to Wikileaks. They cast doubt on official civilian death counts and exposed abuses of prisoners at Guantanamo. Their release raised the whisteblowing website's profile immeasurably, but later that year Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was detained in the UK after Sweden issued an international arrest warrant over allegations of sexual assault. After almost two years of legal wrangling, Mr Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he remains after being granted political asylum by the South American country on 16 August 2012. Ms Manning meanwhile was sentenced in the US, to 35 years in 2013 for her role in leaking diplomatic cables to the anti-secrecy group. Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Show all 12 1 /12 Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence torbakhopper/Flickr Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Garry Knight/Flickr Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence People hold signs calling for the release of imprisoned wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning while marching in a gay pride parade in San Francisco, California June 28, 2015. Manning has appealed to an Army court to overturn her court-martial conviction, a court filing released on Thursday said. Reuters Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Around twenty activists associated with the Chelsea Manning support group rally in front of the White House in Washington DC, Sunday May 11, 2014. Stephen Melkisethian/Flickr Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Daily Chalkupy/Flickr Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Around twenty activists associated with the Chelsea Manning support group rally in front of the White House in Washington DC, Sunday May 11, 2014. Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Twitter Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Abigail Edward holds up a sign advocating the release of WikiLeaks whistle blower Chelsea Manning along the Gay Pride parade route in San Francisco, California on Sunday, June, 26, 2016. Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Demonstration for Chelsea Manning in London, England, United Kingdom. Chelsea Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning) is a United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly three-quarters of a million classified or unclassified but sensitive military and diplomatic documents. Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years imprisonment, with the possibility of parole in the eighth year, and to be dishonorably discharged from the Army. Manning is a trans woman who, in a statement the day after sentencing, said she had felt female since childhood, wanted to be known as Chelsea, and desired to begin hormone replacement therapy. From early life and through much of her Army life, Manning was known as Bradley; she was diagnosed with gender identity disorder while in the Army. Mike Kemp/Getty Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Chelsea M Queer Friends/Twitter Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Instagram Protesters urge Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence Jil Love Revolution/Instagram Commuting Ms Mannings sentence in January, Mr Obama said he felt comfortable that justice has been served. Many Republicans, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, criticised the decision as setting a "dangerous precedent" for national security leaks in the future. Complicating Ms Mannings sentence were her requests for the Department of Defence to pay for her gender reassignment surgery. Ms Manning served seven years in an all-male prison after announcing her transition from male to female in 2013. The military allowed her to take cross-sex hormones and wear cosmetics, but had not allowed her to grow out her hair past military protocol. 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 23-year-old woman, who was forced to pretend to be disabled from childhood, ordered her mother to be stabbed to death before announcing on Facebook the b**** is dead. Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who had been wheelchair-bound for 10 years, was found guilty, along with her boyfriend, for her role in the murder of her 48-year-old mother Dee Dee Blanchard in June 2015. However she accepted a 10-year plea deal for second degree murder after Blanchards attorney revealed her mother had forced her to pretend to be disabled since childhood. Rod Blanchard, Blanchard's father and Ms Blanchard's ex-husband, told the New York Post he was in "total shock" when he saw his daughter walk into the courtroom, the first time he realised she was not actually disabled. Blanchard was forced into a wheelchair and held prisoner for years in the home she shared with her mother in Springfield, Missouri, her attorney told the court at the time. Her mother had claimed she had been suffering from a host of illnesses, including leukemia as a young child, and later muscular dystrophy. I really, genuinely believed that she had some issues, Mr Blanchard said. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Dee Dee was really good at convincing me that there was a problem. I never, ever can fathom that she was really in the hospitals, and the doctors wouldnt have caught on to something at some point over the years. The unimaginable story has now become the subject of a new HBO documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest. The film explores the relationship between mother and daughter and Ms Blanchards motivation for making her daughter pretend she was disabled. Munchausen by proxy syndrome has been offered as an explanation for Ms Blanchards behaviour, a psychological condition in which a person acts as if an individual in their care has a physical or mental illness despite them being in fine health. However others claim Ms Blanchard imprisoned her daughter in order to collect thousands of dollars in benefits payouts and donations from wellwishers. The documentary will air on 15 May on HBO. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump should face a Congressional investigation into the possible abuse of power of his office, according to George W Bushs former ethics lawyer. Richard Painter has called for an urgent meeting of the House Judiciary after the US President dismissed FBI Director James Comey, who was leading an investigation into allegations of Russian collusion in Mr Trumps election campaign. Richard Painter served as President George W Bush's ethics lawyer between 2005 and 2007 (University of Minnesota Law School) It comes just weeks after Mr Painter called for Mr Trump to be impeached if he refused to fully comply with the Russian probe by releasing documents relating to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Nixon had to go through three AGs to fire the man investigating Watergate. POTUS should not be allowed to fire the man investigating him, he wrote on Twitter. House Judiciary should convene tomorrow morning to hold a hearing on abuse of power by the President. Mr Painter, who served as the White House chief ethics lawyer between 2005 and 2007, called the scandal a lot worse than Watergate. "We cannot tolerate this for the president to be firing people who are investigating him and his campaign and its collusion with the Russians, it's a lot worse than Watergate, he told Rolling Stone. 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 Watergate was a third-rate burglary. It was purely domestic in nature. This situation involves Russian espionage, and we've got to find out who is collaborating." Mr Trump ordered his private security guard to hand-deliver Mr Comeys termination letter on Tuesday, claiming errors made in the FBI investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server during the election campaign left Mr Trump no choice but to dismiss him. The decision sent shockwaves through Washington, as many accused him of trying to gag the Russian investigation, citing the many instances on the campaign trail where Mr Trump offered his support to the investigation into Ms Clinton. 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 }} U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday he wants to know more about President Donald Trump's business dealings in relation to Russia, but that congressional investigations may have to avoid the matter if they conflict with an FBI probe. Graham asked former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Monday whether he had concerns about Russian ties to Trump's business interests. Clapper said he could not comment because the issue could be a subject of an ongoing investigation. Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Show all 17 1 /17 Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing An empty podium is seen as an off camera briefing is held with a small group of reporters and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instead of the normal on camera briefing in the White House February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing New York Times reporter, Glenn Thrush works in the Brady Briefing Room after being excluded from a press gaggle by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, on February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing New York Times reporter, Glenn Thrush works in the Brady Briefing Room after being excluded from a press gaggle by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, on February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing The Brady Briefing Room is shown after reporters were excluded from a press gaggle by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, on February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Reporters in the Brady Briefing Room listen to a tape from a press gaggle by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, on February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Glenn Thrush, chief White House political correspondent for the The New York Times, works in the briefing room after being excluded from an off camera "gaggle" meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 24, 2017. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Journalists work in the briefing room at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 24, 2017. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Journalists leave after several major news organizations including CNN, The New York Times and Politico were excluded from an off camera "gaggle" meeting with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer in his office that was held in place of the regular daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 24, 2017. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing An empty podium is seen as an off camera briefing is held with a small group of reporters and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instead of the normal on camera briefing in the White House February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing The entrance to the Brady Briefing Room after reporters were excluded from a press gaggle by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, on February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing A small group of reporters leave an off camera briefing held with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instead of the normal on camera briefing in the White House February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing A small group of reporters leave an off camera briefing held with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instead of the normal on camera briefing in the White House February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Reporters wait to try and get access to an off camera briefing with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instead of the normal on camera briefing at the White House on February 24, 2017, in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Reporters wait to try and get access to an off camera briefing with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instead of the normal on camera briefing at the White House on February 24, 2017, in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Reporters wait to try and get access to an off camera briefing with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instead of the normal on camera briefing at the White House on February 24, 2017, in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Reporters leave after failing to get access to an off camera briefing with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and a small group of reporters instead of the normal on camera briefing at the White House on February 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Reporters blocked from off-camera White House briefing Reporters talk after failing to get access to an off camera briefing with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and a small group of reporters instead of the normal on camera briefing at the White House on February 24, 2017, in Washington DC. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images CNN reported on Tuesday that Graham intended to look into Trump's business ties to see if any connections exist between Russia and the Trump campaign or the president's associates. The White House said it would welcome any fact-finding by Graham and the subcommittee, which he chairs, saying the president has no business ties to Russia. "He has no business in Russia; he has no connections to Russia," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. "So he welcomes that." Spicer added that Trump had directed a law firm to send Graham a certified letter stating as much. Recommended While Graham expressed interest in finding out whether Trump's business interests had any Russia ties, he said the subcommittee may have to "steer clear" of the issue if it conflicts with the FBI's probe of Russia and the Trump campaign. He clarified later that he had not taken any new actions. "This is nothing new here," he told reporters at the Capitol. "I'm not a prosecutor. But if you ask me if I want to know if there are any Trump business ties to Russia that are inappropriate, the answer would be 'yes.'" Graham told CNN it would be helpful to see Trump's tax records but that it was too soon to say whether he would be willing to subpoena them, the network said. Reuters Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump was so frustrated by the ongoing investigation into his administration's links with Russia he would sometimes scream at television when news concerning it came on, according to one of his advisers. The US President has been growing increasingly enraged at his inability to control the probe exploring allegations of collusion between the Kremlin and his presidential campaign, two advisers told Politico. According to the unidentified staff members, Mr Trump repeatedly asked aides why the allegations would not disappear and demanded they defend him publicly. Why did Donald Trump fire James Comey? The account emerged as the former real estate mogul dismissed FBI director James Comey, who was leading the investigation into Mr Trumps alleged ties to the Kremlin. Mr Trump ordered his private security guard to hand-deliver Mr Comeys termination letter, claiming errors made in the FBI investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server during the election campaign left Mr Trump no choice but to dismiss him. Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad However many have criticised his reasoning and accused him of trying to gag the Russian investigation, citing the many instances on the campaign trail where Mr Trump offered his support to the investigation into Ms Clinton. The president did not mention the word Russia in his four-line letter informing the FBI director that he was being summarily removed from his post. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that is carrying out its own probe, said he believed the action amounted to a looming constitutional crisis. The president of the United States has just fired the Director of the FBI who was carrying out an investigation into him, he said. Another Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy, said Mr Trumps actions were nothing less than Nixonian". Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump will meet Vladimir Putin's senior diplomat at the White House on Wednesday in a signal that US relations with Russia have improved. The US president recently described them as being at an "all-time low" but his talks with Sergey Lavrov mark the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia of the American leader's term in office. Mr Trump's talks with Moscow's foreign minister will take place after the Russian's meeting earlier in the day with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. A Russian plan to stabilise Syria after more than six years of civil war is the most urgent foreign policy topic on the agenda. But the meeting will be impossible to separate from the Trump administration's unfolding political drama in Washington. FBI and congressional investigations are looking into possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and the Kremlin related to last year's presidential election. US intelligence agencies accuse Moscow of meddling to help Mr Trump's chances of victory. The stigma of the Russia investigations has been impossible for Mr Trump to shake. The president on Tuesday abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, dramatically ousting the nation's most senior law enforcement official in the middle of the bureau's investigation into Mr Trump's ties with Russia. Less than a month into Mr Trump's presidency, he sacked his national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The president said Mr Flynn misled senior administration officials about his pre-inauguration talks with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador in Washington. In a Senate hearing on Monday, former acting attorney general Sally Yates said she warned the White House in January that Mr Flynn "essentially could be blackmailed" by the Russians because he apparently had lied to his bosses about his contacts with Mr Kislyak. Mr Trump has said he has no ties to Russia and is not aware of any involvement by his aides in any Russian election interference. He calls the various investigations a "hoax" driven by Democrats still bitter that their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was defeated last year. But in the meantime, his hopes for a possible rapprochement with Moscow, so regularly repeated during the campaign, have been derailed. Relations soured further in April after the US blamed Syria's president Bashar Assad, a key Russian ally, for a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians and Mr Trump fired some 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response. Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad After Mr Tillerson visited Mr Putin and Mr Lavrov in Moscow on April 12, Mr Trump said: "Right now we're not getting along with Russia at all." Mr Lavrov will be coming to the American capital with a Russian plan to end the violence in Syria, after hashing out an agreement with Iran and Turkey last week. The Russian diplomat has not visited Washington at all since 2013, a year before Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and two years before it intervened militarily in Syria to help Assad remain in power. AP 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 man who has been accused of murdering his girlfriend has claimed she accidentally choked to death while performing oral sex and offered to show the jury his penis as evidence. Richard Henry Patterson, 65, has never denied choking his girlfriend, Francisca Marquinez, 60, to death. But it is only recently that he has revealed how she was killed in October 2015. The pensioner from Margate, Florida, has now asked a judge for permission to show the jury his penis in a bid to clear his name, according to the Sun Sentinel newspaper. His attorney Ken Padowitz said the unusual request was key to his defence, which will argue Ms Marquinez died by accident while engaging in consensual sexual activity. A legal motion filed on his client's behalf states that medical examiner Dr Ronald Wright will testify that Ms Marquinezs death is consistent with being accidentally sexually asphyxiated during oral sex. Its material and relevant," Mr Padowitz wrote of his client's penis. "The view by the jury is essential for them to fully understand Dr Wrights testimony and the defense in this case. If the judge decides to grant his request, the court room would be closed to public with only the judge, lawyers, a bailiff, the jury and the defendant present. A similar defence was offered in the UK by Philip Martins in 2011, but he was convicted of smothering and strangling Linda Bakewell to death and sentenced to life at Chester Crown Court. 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 If the judge turns down Mr Pattersons request, Mr Padowitz said he would consider making a mould. Ms Marquinezs son, Omar Andrade was less than impressed with the unique defence, The 41-year-old told the Sun Sentinel: Its a desperate man trying a desperate tactic. Hes just trying to get off the hook. Ms Marquinez's autopsy showed no signs of trauma and no bruises were found on her neck. But her body was found in an early stage of decomposition, making bruises more difficult to detect. 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 now fired three people who were carrying out investigations linked to either him or his campaign - something the presidents critics have said represents a troubling pattern. Before the president dismissed FBI Director James Comey, claiming that he had been obliged to act because of the way he handed an investigation into Hillary Clinton, he had previously fired Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Preet Bharara, the New York US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. They fired Sally Yates. They fired Preet Bharara. And they fired James Comey, the very man leading he investigation. This does not seem to be a coincidence, said Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer. Any person who he appoints to lead the Russian investigation will be concerned that he or she will meet the same fate as Director Comey. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin took to the Senate floor on Tuesday evening to urge the White House to clarify whether the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the presidential campaign would continue now that Comey has been fired. Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues, Mr Durbin said. We await clarification by the White House as soon as possible as to whether this investigation will continue. Those Mr Trump has fired - and why: Former FBI Director James Comey (Getty Images) James Comey: When was he fired: Mr Comey was fired by a four-line letter dispatched by Mr Trump on May 9 2017. He had actually seen the news breaking on television while speaking in Los Angeles. What was he investigating: The FBI Director had testified before congress that he was probing possible collusion between Mr Trumps election campaign and Russias alleged meddling in the 2016 election. What was the official reason: Mr Trump claimed he was not doing a good job. His senior law officials issued memos criticising Mr Comeys handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton and that it was time to restore confidence in the FBI. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testifies on Capitol Hill (AP) Sally Yates: When was she fired: Ms Yates served as Acting Attorney General for just ten days, from January 20 2017, until she was dismissed by Mr Trump on January 30 2017. What was she investigating: While investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump campaign, Ms Yates told the Trump administration that then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had not told the truth about his meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and was vulnerable to blackmail. What was the official reason: It seems she was dismissed for failing to defend and implement the first of Mr Trumps executive orders relating to a Muslim travel ban. The White House said: The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. US Attorney Preet Bharara announced on Twitter he was fired after he failed to resign (Reuters) Preet Bharara: When was he fired: Mr Bharara was reportedly told by Mr Trump that his job as a US Attorney General was safe, even though the president intended to fire the other 45 individuals appointed by Barack Obama. As it was, he was also fired, on March 11 2017. What was he investigating: Mr Bhararas office had several ongoing investigations, including one of Fox News, and a probe into claims made by Mr Trump that Mr Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. What was the official reason: The White House said he was being fired as part of a wholesale replacement of Mr Obamas appointments. Senator Hillary Warren said at the time that he was removed in part because he had authority over Trump Tower. 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 }} Former President Barack Obama says that taking selfies with fans when he goes out is almost as bad as the isolation of living in the White House, which he said was kind of like a nice prison. Mr Obama, when asked what he doesnt miss about being president, chuckled before saying that the security apparatus around an American president makes it difficult to live any semblance of a normal life. The burdens of leadership are true in any country but in part because of the security apparatus around a US president, you live in what is called a bubble. It is a very nice, uh, prison, Mr Obama told an interviewer during a trip to Milan this week. So you dont have the freedom of movement to be able to just take a walk or to sit in a cafe because theres always this security concern around you, he said. I dont miss that. Mr Obama joked that, while he doesnt have the same security in the post presidency, hes still not quite as liberated as he was before becoming president. Now Im only captive to selfies. So, I which is almost as bad I can walk anywhere as long as Im willing to take a selfie every two steps, he said. Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Show all 15 1 /15 Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Joe Biden and Dr Jill Biden watch Barack Obama's farewell speech on 11 January. Obama called Biden his 'brother' Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years US President Barack Obama speaks alongside US Vice President Joe Biden about the Affordable Care Act AFP/Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama Getty Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years President Obama listens to Joe Biden speak of his work on defeating cancer on 18 October in the White House Reuters Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years U.S. President Barack Obama is applauded by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden while delivering his final State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in Washington Reuters Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years U.S. Vice President Joe Biden interjects as President Barack Obama delivers remarks at a reception for the 25th anniversary of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics at the White House in Washington REUTERS Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Obama and Vice President Joe Biden react after a heckler was removed for their extended interruption (Reuters) Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R) as Vice President Joe Biden looks on Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Barack and Michelle Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden observing a moment of silence outside the White House to mark the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Barack Obama and Joe Biden putt on the White House putting green Getty Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years President Barack Obama and Joe Biden in April 2013 AFP/Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years January 1, 2013: U.S. President Barack Obama winks as he arrives with Vice President Joe Biden (L) in the briefing room Reuters Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and others receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House May 1, 2011 in Washington, DC Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Vice-President Joe Biden, right, confirmed that the US was looking at ways of taking legal action against Julian Assange - back in December 2010 GETTY IMAGES Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Joe Biden, left, and retired military officers watch President Barack Obama sign orders to close down the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2009 GETTY IMAGES Mr Obama is in Milan this week on his first public foreign trip since leaving the White House. He used his appearance in Italy to defend the importance of the Paris climate change agreement, which he played an important role in negotiating and which is on the chopping block under his successor Donald Trump. During the course of my presidency, I made climate change a top priority because I believe that of all challenges that we face, this is the one that will define the contours of this century, more dramatically perhaps than any other, he said. The former president isnt the only Obama to have described the White House as a prison. Michelle Obama hit the headlines for saying that living in the White House has prison-like qualities in 2013 during an event in which she also said being a first lady was a great job because she can work on issues shes passionate about. 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 and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says that Donald Trumps sudden firing of former FBI Director James Comey has raised serious questions about what the President is trying to keep secret. Donald Trumps decision to fire FBI Director James Comey raises serious questions about what his administration is hiding," Mr Sanders said in a statement. "Why did President Trump fire the person leading the investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian government? Mr Sanders said that he was troubled by the timing of the firing of Mr Comey, which came a day after former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified that she had warned the White House about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynns ties to Russia. Mr Comey was scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee several days later. President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to kill inquiries into Russias involvement in the US election, Vermont Senator Mr Sanders said. It is clear that whomever President Trump handpicks to lead the FBI will not be able to objectively carry out this investigation. We need an independent investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia. Mr Comey was fired unexpectedly by Mr Trump on the advice from the Justice Department. A memo written encouraging the former FBI officials removal argued that Mr Comey had violated the publics trust last year when he publicly announced that his bureau wasnt recommending pressing charges against former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for the use of a private email server as secretary of State. Comey expects Russia to return to hack in 2018 and 2020 Mr Comey said then that the FBI had not found information indicating Ms Clinton or her team had acted in any way that would qualify criminal charges. The memo also indicated that Mr Comey had violated the public trust once more in October when he released a letter announcing that the FBI was reopening the investigation after finding new emails. He closed the case again days later. 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 }} Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has ruled out installing a special prosecutor or committee to look into Russian election hacking and possible links between the Trump campaign and Moscow, saying any new investigation would "impede" current active investigations. Today well no doubt hear calls for a new investigation which could only serve to impede the current work being done, Mr McConnell said. ...Partisan calls should not delay the considerable work of Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Warner. Too much is at stake. Vice President Mike Pence echoed these statements, telling reporters on Capitol Hill he would not support calls for an independent prosecutor. Democrats, and several Republicans, began calling for an independent prosecutor to investigate Russian meddling the US election after Mr Trump unexpectedly fired FBI Director James Comey. Mr Comey had recently announced that the FBI was investigating possible Trump campaign ties to the country. Republican Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was "troubled by the timing and reasoning of Jim Comeys termination. Republican John McCain said the decision bolsters calls for a "special congressional committee" to investigate the Russia issue. Still, Mr McConnell on Wednesday dismissed the criticism as "partisan." He noted that Democrats had repeatedly criticised Mr Comey in the past, and even calling for his removal. He pointed out that current Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer had once called Mr Comeys handling of the email investigation an appalling act, one that he said goes against their tradition of prosecutors at every level of government. Mr Schumer responded by repeating his calls for a special prosecutor, saying Mr Comey's dismissal "establishes a very troubling pattern." "If there was ever a time when circumstances warranted a special prosecutor, it is now," Mr Schumer said. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Mr Schumer suggested a special prosecutor would probe questions about what exactly Mr Comey had uncovered in his investigation, and about the motives of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in suggesting his firing. In closing, the Democratic leader cautioned Mr McConnell and his fellow Republicans that "nothing less is at stake than the American peoples faith in our criminal justice system and the integrity of the executive branch of our government." Outside of the FBI, both the House and Senate are conducting probes into Russian meddling. Just before Mr Comey's firing, a grand jury issued subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for business records. The Senate Intelligence Committee also sent requests to the Treasury Department for information on Mr Trump and his associates. The White House maintains that Mr Comey's firing was not related to the Russia probe, but due to the director's handling of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. 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 }} James Comey apparently learned he had been fired while he was speaking to a group of FBI employees in Los Angeles. Several media reports said Mr Comey was addressing staff in the Los Angeles field office when television screens in the background began flashing the news of his fate. At the same time, Donald Trumps former bodyguard, Keith Schiller, who now serves as the presidents director of Oval Office operations, delivered by hand a letter to the FBI headquarters in Washington. The letter informed Mr Comey that he was hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately, with Mr Trump saying he had reached the conclusion that that he was not able to effectively lead the bureau. It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission, Mr Trump said. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours. Trump tweets that he is vindicated during Russia hearing, Comey asked about truth of what he says ABC News said Mr Comey had been in Los Angeles for a field office inspection and a recruitment event, scheduled for Tuesday evening, that was part of the FBI's efforts to boost diversity. One FBI official said that Mr Comey was surprised, really surprised and was caught flat-footed, when he learned the news. It seemed that Mr Comey decided to scrap his speaking engagement in Los Angeles and return to Washington. CNN showed footage of Mr Comeys vehicle convoy travelling a Los Angeles freeway. A letter from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to the president was also released by the White House. Mr Sessions - who was forced to recuse himself from the investigation into Mr Trumps alleged links to Russia - said he had concluded a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI. 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 It is essential that this Department of Justice clearly reaffirm its commitment to longstanding principles that ensure the integrity and fairness of federal investigations and prosecutions, it said. The Director of the FBI must be someone who follows faithfully the rules and principles of the Department of Justice and who sets the right example for our law enforcement officials and others in the Department. While testifying in front of the House Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, Mr Comey took the rare step of confirming the FBI was investigating alleged Russian interference in the US election and any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. The White House also said Mr Comey had erred by revealing that Hillary Clintons use of a private email server was being probed. A letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein credited Mr Comey with being an articulate and persuasive public speaker about leadership but goes on to note that he cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. 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 }} A former White House ethics lawyer has called Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey - who was heading an investigation into alleged Russian ties to the 2016 election - a scandal "worse than Watergate." Mr Trump fired writing in the letter used to dismiss Mr Comey, said that the FBI Director had eroded public confidence and trust in the bureau. Mr Comey was set to serve the usual 10 year term, having only been confirmed to the position in 2013. Richard Painter, who worked for President George W. Bush, told Rolling Stone that the 1972 scandal involving a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office complex and the subsequent attempted cover-up by President Richard Nixon was just a "third-rate burglary" compared to what Mr Trump is doing. "It was purely domestic in nature. This situation involves Russian espionage, and we've got to find out who is collaborating," Mr Painter said. Mr Painter was wary of Mr Trump saying he followed the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Mr Rodenstein wrote a memo to Mr Sessions regarding Mr Comey's "wrong" handling of an investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to send classified information. Mr Painter claimed that Mr Sessions "was also part of the contacts made by the Trump campaign with Russia. The attorney general lied about that to the Senate at his confirmation hearing". There is no evidence that Mr Sessions had any Russian ties while he worked on Mr Trump's 2016 campaign, however he did recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference with the election on the advice of DOJ lawyers. Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad "It was an abuse of power," Mr Painter said, noting that the president does have the legal right to fire the FBI Director. He drew comparisons to Mr Nixon firing then-special prosecutor Archibald Cox who was looking into the Watergate burglary and White House cover up. It prompted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus because they refused to fire Mr Cox themselves. The difference between the two story lines is that Mr Nixon's attorney general was not party to the scandal unlike Mr Sessions, said Mr Painter. Mr Painter called for the House Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing and begin the impeachment process. Republicans, despite some critics of the president among the ranks, have been reluctant to set up an independent commission to take over the Russia investigation. "I think that Republicans in Congress need to think about whether they want to go down with the ship," said Mr Painter. 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 fired FBI Director James Comey, the person leading an investigation into alleged links between Russia and Mr Trump's campaign team. His letter to Mr Comey (below) has been described "eyebrow-raising". Past presidents have normally accepted the resignation of senior government officials as a sign of respect for their years of public service and to keep administration in-fighting out of the public eye. Mr Trump did not mince words in his letter that he was sacking Mr Comey. Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad While Mr Trump wrote that he "appreciate[s]" Mr Comey telling him he was not under investigation in three separate instances, the president followed the recommendation of the Department of Justice. Read the full text below: Dear Director Comey, I have received the attached letters from the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of the United States recommending your dismissal as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have accepted their recommendation and you are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately. While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores the public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours Donald J Trump 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 }} A journalist has been arrested after attempting to question Donald Trumps health secretary over controversial healthcare reforms. Dan Heyman said he was detained for doing my job as Tom Price and presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway visited the West Virginia State Capitol. He had followed Mr Price as he entered the building, holding out his phone to record while repeatedly asking whether domestic violence would be considered a pre-existing condition barring affected women from receiving health insurance. The US Secretary of Heath did not reply but minutes later, Mr Heyman was handcuffed by police and taken away. He didnt say anything, so I persisted, said the journalist, who is a health specialist at the non-profit Public News Service (PNS). At some point I think they decided I was just too persistent in asking this question and trying to do my job so they arrested me. Mr Heyman said he was holding his phone out towards Mr Price to record audio and was not doing anything that could be considered violent. He was detained on the charge of wilful disruption of state government processes and was released on a $5,000 bail (3,900). A criminal complaint seen by the Washington Post accused Mr Heyman of aggressively breaching an area protected by Secret Service agents and causing a disturbance by yelling questions at Ms Conway and Secretary Price. Its first time Ive ever seen anyone arrested for asking a question, said Mr Heyman, who has been a reporter for 30 years. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, after the House pushed through a health care bill. (AP) I think its a terrible example, I think its dreadful. This is my job, this is what Im supposed to do. Im supposed to go and find out if somebody is going to be affected by this healthcare law. Early proposals for Trumpcare have hit hurdles in Congress amid controversy over the definition of some pre-existing conditions, although supporters have emphasised that states already have protections in place for victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse. Senate Democrats leader Chuck Schumer said the bill currently being considered by the House is discriminatory against women amid anger over an all-male working group on health policy. Mr Price and Ms Conway had been visiting Charleston to discuss efforts to combat opioid addiction in West Virginia, meeting privately with local politicians and representatives from groups including an addition centre and helpline. Mr Heyman had been interviewing protesters outside before their arrival and said he was not informed that he was in the wrong place, while wearing a Capitol press pass and shirt bearing his employers logo. Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad His lawyer, Tim de Piero, described the complaint against his client as really bizarre. Ive never had a client arrested for talking too loud or anything similar to that, he told an informal press conference. He had no intention of doing anything but asking a tough question. He persisted in asking that question and we just dont understand why he got arrested, it seems way over the top. The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia said Mr Heymans arrest was part of a dangerous time for freedom of the press, citing the Presidents attacks on fake news. Mr Heymans arrest is a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press, a spokesperson said. The charges against him are outrageous, and they must be dropped immediately. What President Trumps administration is forgetting, and what the Capitol Police forgot today, is that the government works for us. Today was a dark day for democracy. At least 15 journalists have been arrested in US this year, according to a count by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. 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's firing of FBI director James Comey "sends a chill throughout the federal bureaucracy", according to a former director of the CIA. Michael Hayden said the move gave the "optic" that the US president's administration was involved in some form of cover-up. "In the last 110 days, this President has fired a National Security adviser, an acting Attorney General and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," he told the BBC's Today programme. The retired US Air Force general who also served as a director on the National Security Agency (NSA), added: "The last two were fired after they said something that disagreed with the President that sends a chill throughout the federal bureaucracy and we may now be requiring that bureaucracy to have uncommon courage in its dialogue with the President." Trevor Noah on Comey firing: 'If hes gone, who is going to investigate Russias ties to oh!' Mr Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates from the Department of Justice in January, after she ordered federal attorneys not to defend his controversial immigration order. Ms Yates said earlier this week that she warned the White House on 26 January that then national security adviser Michael Flynn was compromised and open to blackmail by the Russian government. Mr Comey was leading an investigation into allegations that Mr Trump's presidential campaign team colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, when he was dismissed. The White House said he was fired because the US President had lost confidence in him over his handling of an email scandal involving former Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. But the former CIA head said he did not believe this explanation. "If that was a problem, that should have been handled by the President during the transition, when Presidents are expected to make personnel changes," he said, "I suspect that public explanation wasnt the heart of the issue." He added: "The reasons so far articulated just dont seem to pass a test of logic." Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad Mr Hayden described Mr Comey as "a principled guy and his own man", saying he could have been fired for his independent mind-set. He agreed with presenter John Humphries that the move had the optic of a cover up. I always expected this investigation to end up in a cloud," he said, adding: "But the more these kinds of things happen, the more seriously I take the possibility that there might be something here." 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 replace FBI Director James Comey - the man leading an investigation into links between the President's team and Russia - with "someone who will do a far better job". The former real estate mogul sent a series of tweets at 7am justifying his decision to dismiss Mr Comey from his position, citing a lack of confidence "of almost everyone in Washington". He claimed he would bring in a new Director that would restore the "spirit and prestige" of the Bureau. He aimed his first attack at the opposition after Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer said the first question the Trump administration should answer is "why now?" "The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" Mr Trump wrote. "James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI." Mr Trump posted a series of messages to his personal Twitter account addressing the scandal, interspersed with unrelated retweets to articles on Mexico being the "second deadliest country in the world" and "Major FBI scandals on Comey's watch." "Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!" Mr Trump wrote. Mr Trump ordered his private security guard to hand-deliver Mr Comeys termination letter on Tuesday, claiming errors made in the FBI investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server during the election campaign meant he could no longer be trusted. However, many have accused him of using the email scandal as a scapegoat to try to gag the Russian investigation. 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 Even those who vehemently opposed Mr Comey's investigation into Ms Clinton's emails expressed concern at the news of his dismissal. Ms Clinton's former campaign manager Robby Mook said "this terrifies me." "Twilight zone. I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me," he wrote on Twitter. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that is carrying out its own probe, said he believed the action amounted to a looming constitutional crisis. Another Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy, said Mr Trumps actions were nothing less than Nixonian". 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 United States would pay a diplomatic price for withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change, a leading Chinese expert has warned. Dr Chai Qimin, a director at the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, which is funded by the Chinese government, told the Climate Home website that doing so would affect talks at the G7 and G20 groups of wealthy nations. In the past there have been suggestions that the rest of the world should impose a carbon tax or other form of tariff on products made by countries which refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While Dr Chai did not go this far, he said: Definitely it will impact on other diplomatic arenas, already on G7 and G20, the Major Economies Forum as well,. President Xi [Jinping] and our ambassador to the United Nations have said several times that withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is irresponsible, which will harm the mutual trust in the multilateral mechanism. Donald Trump is currently considering whether to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement with the President having said in the past that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by China. However several leading figures in his administration, including his daughter Ivanka, are believe to be in favour of staying a signatory. Ethiopian diplomat Gebru Jember Endalew, head of the 48 least-developed countries negotiating group taking part in a United Nations climate summit in Bonn, Germany, told Climate Home that if the US left the Paris Agreement it would be a betrayal. At this stage when most of the political leaders are actively engaged, they are well aware of the issue, he said. So, I feel that if the US withdraws, its a betrayal to the global community especially the least developed countries and the most vulnerable groups of countries. And an island state negotiator, speaking anonymously, added: The diplomatic consequences of the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement cannot be overstated. Every leader stood up in Paris and pledged to transform their economies, and every part of their governments are now engaged in that effort. Every conversation with the US at every level would therefore be touched by a decision to withdraw and the ill feeling that it would generate. US global leadership, and the US economy, would be the biggest victims. It simply makes no sense, especially at a time when the US needs all the new jobs it can generate, and all its allies to be working together. 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 }} President Donald Trump has caused a constitutional crisis by firing FBI Director James Comey, a leading Democrat has warned, with Mr Comey having also been the head of an investigation into alleged ties between Moscow and the Trump campaign. We are witnessing a constitutional crisis unfold before our very eyes, said Representative Keith Ellison, the Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). In terms of the Russia probe, the next head of the FBI appointed by Mr Trump will not have the independence or confidence of the American people to continue this investigation, Mr Ellison said. In order to preserve the integrity of the investigation and the government, we need a special prosecutor to probe the possible collusion between Donald Trumps campaign and Russian government officials, he added. Recommended Comey found out Trump had fired him from TVs playing as he spoke Tom Perez, the DNC Chairman said that Mr Trumps firing of Mr Comey is a brazen and disgraceful abuse of power. Shortly after the White House announced that Mr Comey had been dismissed, Senator Dick Durbin said on the Senate floor that the firing of Mr Comey raises questions as to whether the Russian interference in the last presidential election... will also be investigated by the FBI. Mr Durbin called on the White House to clarify whether the investigation will continue, adding that any attempt to stop or undermine the FBI probe would raise grave constitutional issues. 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 Representative John Conyers, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said that todays action by President Trump completely obliterates any semblance of an independent investigation into Russian efforts to influence our election, and places our nation on the verge of a constitutional crisis. Creating a constitutional crisis would mean that the president has disregarded checks on the executive branch. While the president appoints the head of the FBI, the bureau is meant to be an independent and non-political agency under the Justice Department. Democratic senator Ed Markey said the episode is startlingly reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre, when former President Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal. That night, the attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned in protest to Nixon firing Cox. Other Democrats have also called the situation Nixonian. We are careening ever closer to a constitutional crisis, and this development only underscores why we must appoint a special prosecutor to fully investigate any dealings the Trump campaign or administration had with Russia, Mr Markey said. According to documents released by the White House, Mr Trump fired Mr Comey over his handling of a separate probe into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. The White House said the president had made his decision based on recommendations from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Mr Sessions has recused himself from the Russia investigation. 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 }} If Donald Trump sacked FBI director James Comey it would "strike a blow against an important check on the modern presidency", lawyers warned in November. Two days after he won the November election, research fellows at influential think-tank the Brookings Institution wrote on its Lawfare legal blog, that Mr Comey's fate was a key indication of the state of the government. "Were Trump to fire Comey it would be a serious aberration; if he were to do so for mere political preference, in retaliation for Comeys professional judgement that Clinton should not be prosecuted, or out of fear of Comeys independence it would strike a blow against an important check on the modern presidency," authors Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey warned. "And nobody who believes in the rule of law, even those most angry at Comey, should be hoping for it right now." At the time it was written, Mr Comey was facing heavy criticism from the Democratic Party for releasing a letter days before the presidential election which said the FBI had reopened an investigation into the private email server that Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state. Ms Clinton has subsequently said she took responsibility for her election loss but believes the investigation played a key part in her defeat. The article has received renewed attention in the wake of the President's firing of Mr Comey, which critics of the Trump administration have said is evidence of corruption. At the time of his dismissal, Mr Comey was leading an investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and Mr Trump's campaign team. Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad The lawyers said: "For those concerned that President Trump will trample the rule of law liberals and conservatives alike Comeys fate is one potential canary in the coal mine. "If Trump chooses replace Comey with a sycophantic yes-man, or if he permits Comey to resign over law or principle, that will be a clear bellwether to both the national security and civil libertarian communities that things are going terribly wrong." After firing the FBI director, Mr Trump announced on Twitter: "James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI." 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 }} Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer has called for a special prosecutor to investigate alleged ties between Donald Trump's team and Russia in response to the President firing FBI Director James Comey. Responding to the firing at a press conference, Mr Schumer questioned the timing of the announcement, and called for a "fearless" independent special prosecutor to continue the investigation into any alleged links between Trump campaign members and Russia. "Mr President, with all due respect, you're making a big mistake," Mr Schumer said he told the president of his decision to fire Mr Comey. "Why now? Why did it happen today?" Mr Schumer further said that the sudden termination may have been part of a "cover up." "Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?" Mr Schumer asked, saying that an independent investigation to answer that question was necessary. Democrats lined up behind Mr Schumer in insisting on an independent prosecutor. Senator Kamala Harris of California tweeted: I've said it before and will again we must have a special prosecutor to oversee the FBI's Russia investigation. This cannot wait. Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee said our democracy is in danger, and he pressed Speaker Paul Ryan to appoint a bipartisan commission to investigate the Trump-Russia relationship. Senator Dick Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, stood on the Senate floor and said he would await word from the White House on whether the investigation will continue. 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 Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel. Mr Casey called the dismissal reminiscent of the Watergate scandal surrounding the presidency of Richard Nixon and the national turmoil during that time. Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings said Congress needs to have immediate emergency hearings. Mr Cummings said Mr Comey was the one independent person to investigate Trump and his campaign's possible coordination with Russia. 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 }} There was a time when doing the right thing seemed pretty simple to James Comey, the FBI director whom President Donald Trump fired on Tuesday. There's right, and there's wrong and it ain't hard to tell the difference, he once said flatly. That was before Mr Comey lobbed a stink bomb into the 2016 presidential race just before the November election by announcing investigators had found more emails that might or might not relate to Hillary Clinton's use of a private email setup as secretary of state. And it was before Mr Comey publicly confirmed in March that the FBI since last summer had been investigating contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Before Mr Comey put himself at odds with Mr Trump by contradicting presidential tweets in which Trump asserted his phones had been ordered tapped by President Barack Obama. Before Mr Comey confessed last week that he felt mildly nauseous at the thought that he might have tipped the election outcome. Before the FBI had to correct the record on Tuesday regarding misstatements he'd made in his latest testimony on the Clinton email case. Whew. After months of tumult and tension between Mr Comey's FBI and the White House, Trump said he was acting to restore public trust and confidence in the nation's top law enforcement agency. The administration cited Mr Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation as justification for his dismissal. By the time Trump cut short Mr Comey's 10-year appointment, the FBI director who prided himself on his squeaky-clean reputation was catching criticism from all directions. Comey expects Russia to return to hack in 2018 and 2020 Senator Lindsey Graham said after the firing that given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. Democrats accused Mr Trump of using the email scandal as a fig leaf for getting rid of the head of the FBI as it investigates possible Trump campaign connections to the Russians. Mr Comey has found himself in the spotlight before for standing on what the 6-foot-8 lawyer saw as the moral high ground. Before the 2016 presidential campaign, mr Comey was best known for the tale of his dramatic rush to the bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in a darkened hospital room in 2004 for a standoff with senior White House officials over federal wiretapping rules. Mr Comey, serving as acting attorney general during Mr Ashcroft's illness, dashed to the bedside to block Bush administration officials from making an end run to get Mr Ashcroft's permission to reauthorise a secret no-warrant wiretapping programme. That night was probably the most difficult night of my professional life, Mr Comey testified before Congress in 2007. He's experienced plenty of turmoil since. Former Justice Department officials and lawmakers from both parties called Mr Comey's revelation about Ms Clinton's emails just 11 days before the election an improper, astonishing and perplexing intrusion into politics in the critical endgame of the 2016 campaign. 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 It was an unexpected predicament for the man who had painted ethical decision-making as an easy call. But Mr Comey's internal certitude has led the FBI official to freelance his positions at times. In 2015, he broke from the White House in suggesting a possible link between rising homicide rates in some American cities and police officers' anxieties about taking actions that could be recorded for viral videos. The White House distanced itself from those remarks, saying there was no scientific evidence to support a connection, or to show that officers were pulling back from their responsibilities. Mr Comey, a former Republican who is no longer registered with a political party, spent 15 years as a federal prosecutor before serving in the George W Bush administration. His office brought the case that led to Martha Stewart's conviction on obstruction of justice and lying to government investigators. As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, he handled the investigation of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 members of the US military. Obama, when he nominated Mr Comey to the FBI job in 2013, cited his willingness to stand up to power at key moments when it's mattered most, referencing the hospital-room standoff. But the Obama White House left Comey dangling after his much-criticised announcements regarding Clinton, saying it was up to Mr Comey to defend himself in the face of what Obama spokesman Josh Earnest called significant criticism from a variety of legal experts, including individuals who served in senior Department of Justice positions in administrations that were led by presidents in both parties. Clinton last week said she was on the way to winning until Mr Comey's letter and the WikiLeaks release of internal campaign emails scared off voters. During a Senate hearing last week, Mr Comey testified that, faced with whether to disclose the information about Clinton late in the campaign or conceal it, he had to choose between really bad and catastrophic and he decided to walk into the world of really bad. It is longstanding Justice Department protocol to avoid taking investigative action in the run-up to an election that could affect its outcome. But Mr Comey told colleagues he felt obligated to go public after having told Congress over the summer that the investigation had been concluded without prosecution. Christine Chung, a New York lawyer who worked with Mr Comey when he was the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, described him last year as ever determined to do the right thing. The criticism he's faced over the email disclosure, she added, is a lesson for why good people shouldn't go to Washington. Associated Press Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Russia's foreign minister used a media appearance alongside his US counterpart in Washington to mock Donald Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey. Mr Trump had unceremoniously fired Mr Comey, on the eve of his meeting with Mr Lavrov at the White House. Mr Comey was leading an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign team's alleged ties to Russia as well as Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the matter was an "internal affair of the US" and that it will not affect the US-Russia relationship. He has said in the past that the allegations of Russian hacking the Democratic National Committee during the US election was "indecent" without sufficient evidence. This is Mr Lavrov and Mr Trump's first face-to-face meeting, set to take place in the White House later today. 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 }} It is hard to keep up with the number of people likening what has played out in Washington to events more than four decades ago during the term of Americas most notorious president. One of them, Jeffrey Frank, a former senior editor of the New Yorker who had a close-up view of Richard Nixons downfall and eventual resignation 44 years ago, believes the parallels are strong, and has said he believes that as with Nixon, Donald Trumps action in firing FBI Director James Comey carries the odour of something being covered up. The occasion Mr Frank has in mind is the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, carried out on October 20 1973, when Nixon fired Archibald Cox, a special prosecutor who was looking into the burglary that would build into the Watergate scandal. Until Mr Trump dispatched a four-line letter to Mr Comey informing him he had been fired, the four decades ago episode was the last occasion that a president had fired somebody who was investigating him. It is natural to compare the dismissal of Coxto do the deed, to the firing of James Comey, the FBI director, carried out by Trumps Attorney General, the all-too-willing Jeff Sessions, he wrote. If only because the dismissals, in both cases, were accompanied by a powerful odour: of something being covered up, along with a fear that what Americans treasure most, the values contained in the Constitution, the idea that America is indeed a nation of laws, were being undermined by the very people entrusted with protecting those values. Mr Frank pointed out that there were some differences. Whereas Mr Trumps action involved Mr Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, as accomplices, Nixons officials chose to fall on their swords rather than carry out his order to fire Mr Cox. Why did Donald Trump fire James Comey? In 1973, the then Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, resigned when he was informed that Mr Cox - whom he had appointed - was to be ousted. His deputy, William Ruckelshaus, also quit. Nixons chief of staff, Alexander Haig, then ordered Robert Bork, the Solicitor General, to fire him. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty In the Nixon era, the corruption, encouraged by the White House, was aimed at perceived enemies of the administration, wrote Mr Frank. In a time so short that it doesnt quite deserve to be called the Trump era, the current corruption includes possible attempts by a foreign power, Russia, to influence and subvert an American election. The odour this time includes the curious behaviour of Trump and others in reacting to reliable information that General Michael Flynn, Trumps national-security adviser, had lied about his pre-election contacts with the Russians. He added: Was Comey getting close to something more? Thats a natural suspicion in a time when conspiracy theories, many of them promoted by Trump and his followers, have become so commonplace. 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 been accused of trying to shut down the ongoing investigation into possible links between him and Russia by his firing of James Comey. The president did not mention the word Russia in his four-line letter informing the FBI Director that he was being ousted. Indeed, with no small irony, Mr Trump claimed it was errors made by Mr Comey over his investigation of Hillary Clinton that had led him to conclude he had to be replaced. He alluded to a memo produced by Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein who said Mr Comey should not have revealed details of that investigation. But as Washington was left reeling by Mr Trumps actions - a move said to have no parallel since 1973 - there were mounting claims that Mr Comey had been forced out because of his role in probing the presidents alleged links to Russia. Many pointed out that the president had regularly cited Mr Comey's investigation on the campaign trail and was unlikely to have been troubled by it. Comey confirms FBI is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election Hello! This letter from Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein claims that Comey has been fired for a press conference in July 2016. Thats preposterous, said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. Trump quoted from that press conference. Its not just rationale that Donald Trump fired James Comey for being mean to Hillary Clinton. Its not just possible. He added Hes heading an investigation thats getting too close for comfort. He said that Mr Comey would not be replaced by someone who would take up the pace of the probe but rather by "a stooge". Obama takes dig at Trump during award acceptance speech: 'We need courage to stand up to hate' Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that is carrying out its own probe, said he believed the action amount to a looming constitutional crisis. The president of the United States has just fired the Director of the FBI who was carrying out an investigation into him, he said. Another Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy, said Mr Trumps actions were nothing less than Nixonian". Mr Trump claimed in his letter to Mr Comey that the FBI Director had told him three times that he was not the subject the bureaus investigation. Yet he added: It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission. Mr Trump told Mr Comey in the letter he accepted the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he could no longer provide effective leadership. Mr Comeys term was to run through September 2023, Reuters said. The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters The White House also released a memo from Mr Rosenstein, claiming it provided justification for firing Mr Comey. I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgement that he was mistaken, Mr Rosenstein wrote. Mr Comey had said last July that a probe into Ms Clintons improper use of a private email server should be closed without prosecution, but then declared - 11 days before the election - that he had reopened the investigation because of a discovery of a new trove of Clinton-related emails. Ms Clinton and other Democrats said they believed Mr Comeys decision help cost her the election. But few observers of Washington believed the move by the White House was simply related to his probe into alleged Russia links. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin took to the Senate floor on Tuesday evening to urge the White House to clarify whether the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the presidential campaign would continue now that Comey has been fired. Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues, Mr Durbin said. We await clarification by the White House as soon as possible as to whether this investigation will continue. 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 }} Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is trying to downplay criticism of his decision to only choose men to take charge of crafting the Senates healthcare bill, and says that all of the 52 Republicans in the legislative chamber have a voice. Mr McConnell had been criticised for choosing a group of 13 men to craft the Senates version of a healthcare repeal and replace bill following the Houses passage of their own version last week. Democrats had seized on the criticism of the 13-member boys club to say that it shows Republicans are pushing healthcare measures that will hurt women needing medical care. Republican women signalled a willingness to accept Mr McConnells decision as the leader of their party in the Senate. Recommended Jimmy Kimmel responds to backlash against his ACA monologue Thats really about leadership, Senator Susan Collins, the longest-serving Republican senator, told the Associated Press. It seems to me theyve already made their decision. The panel has apparently been meeting for some time, and Im not a member of it. Others are keen on ensuring women voices are heard. I just want to make sure we have some women on it, Senator Lisa Murkowski, also a Republican, said. Republicans have been under fire for several provisions in the recently passed House healthcare bill that could take away healthcare services for women. Under a provision that would allow states to opt out of provisions that restrict insurance companies for charging higher rates for health insurance, several health protections for women could be lost. The Senate has vowed to make significant changes to the language of the bill that the House sent over, and that they may entirely rewrite their own bill. The Senate may take significantly longer to negotiate their own bill, however, since senators are harder for party leadership to corral and tend to have outsized political personalities than their House colleagues. Some Republicans think that undoing the Affordable Care Act could be difficult because Americans are resistant to losing government services once they are given out. Things might be complicated in the Senate because once the public is on the dole, theyll take every dime they can", Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said recently. 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 student has died after jumping from his hotel balcony while reportedly under the influence of magic mushrooms. Tourist Ong Chee Seng, from Singapore, is said to have been drinking orange juice laced with the hallucinogens with a friend on Saturday at the Terrace Hotel in Bali, Indonesia. Within moments of drinking the liquid, the 23-year-old was reportedly overwhelmed by the urge to jump from the fifth floor of their hotel room. His friend, believed to be a classmate, attempted to hold Mr Ong back but he broke free and jumped to his death. He died instantly from his injuries. According to the Tribun Bali, the victim and his friend had bought the mushrooms outside their hotel at approximately 6pm, before consuming them three hours later. A security guard reportedly heard the sound of the student's fall like a beaten object, and found his body upon a search of the hotel premises. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty A spokesperson for Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said "the Singapore Embassy in Jakarta is rendering consular assistance to the family of the deceased Singaporean". Magic mushrooms are classified as a Type 1 narcotic in Indonesia. The sale and consumption of the fungi in Bali is illegal, with authorities warning that if found guilty, offenders face prison terms of up to 12 years. Mr Ong had reportedly just arrived in Singapore, with the hotel a seven-minute walk from popular tourist destination, Kuta Beach. Police said they were investigating the circumstances around the death. 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 gay couple could be punished with 80 lashes after vigilantes filmed them having sex in Indonesia, amid international alarm over growing restrictions on the countrys LGBT community. They would be the first men to be caned for same-sex relations under a new code of Sharia law implemented in Muslim-majority Aceh province. The lead prosecutor, Gulmaini, claimed the two defendants aged 20 and 23 had confessed to being in a gay relationship during a court hearing on Wednesday. They were arrested after local vigilantes in the city of Banda Aceh suspected them of being a couple and set out to catch them having sex. Mobile phone footage circulated online and used as evidence for the prosecution shows one of the men naked and visibly distressed as he calls for help on his mobile phone. The second man is seen being repeatedly pushed by another man who is preventing the couple from leaving the room as he begs: Please brother, please stopmy parents want to talk to you, they can pick me up. Human Rights Watch called for the couple to be released immediately, saying the punishment sought by prosecutors constitutes torture under international law. Gay couple filmed beaten and insulted after neighbours report them to police in Indonesia These men had their privacy invaded in a frightening and humiliating manner and now face public torture for the 'crime' of their alleged sexual orientation, said Phelim Kine, the groups deputy Asia division director. The arrest and detention of these two men underscores the abuse imbedded in Acehs discriminatory, anti-LGBT ordinances. Recommended Chechen leader claims no gay people exist in region just fake Chechens A panel of three Sharia judges will announce its verdict next week, with Gulmani claiming the defendants turned down the courts offer of a defence lawyer. Acehs Shariah code allows up to 100 lashes for morality offences including homosexual sex, adultery, gambling, drinking alcohol, women who wear tight clothes and men who skip Friday prayers. It is the only province in Indonesia to practice Sharia law brought in two years ago as a concession made by the national government in 2006 to end a war with separatists. Reforms allow members of the public as well as the special Sharia police to publicly identify and detain anyone suspected of violating its rules, which specifically outlaw liwath (sodomy) and musahabah (lesbian sex). They have seen several LGBT suspects detained, including two teenage girls arrested in 2015 on suspicion of being lesbians after embracing in public, as the state parliament has gradually adopted hardline laws to criminalise women who do not wear headscarves, drinking alcohol, gambling, and extramarital sex. Local government officials have been accused of stoking homophobia with statements including a deputy mayors claim that the LGBT community is a threat and must be trained to return to a normal life. LGBT+ rights around the globe Show all 9 1 /9 LGBT+ rights around the globe LGBT+ rights around the globe Russia Russias antipathy towards homosexuality has been well established following the efforts of human rights campaigners. However, while it is legal to be homosexual, LGBT couples are offered no protections from discrimination. They are also actively discriminated against by a 2013 law criminalising LGBT propaganda allowing the arrest of numerous Russian LGBT activists. AFP/Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Brunei Brunei recently introduced a law to make sodomy punishable by stoning to death. It was already illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison AFP/Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Mauritania Men who are found having sex with other men face stoning, while lesbians can be imprisoned, under Sharia law. However, the state has reportedly not executed anyone for this crime since 1987 Alamy LGBT+ rights around the globe Sudan Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal under Sudanese law. Men can be executed on their third offence, women on their fourth Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Saudi Arabia Homosexuality and gender realignment is illegal and punishable by death, imprisonment, whipping and chemical castration Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Yemen The official position within the country is that there are no gays. LGBT inviduals, if discovered by the government, are likely to face intense pressure. Punishments range from flogging to the death penalty Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Nigeria Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal and in some northern states punishable with death by stoning. This is not a policy enacted across the entire country, although there is a prevalent anti-LGBT agenda pushed by the government. In 2007 a Pew survey established that 97% of the population felt that homosexuality should not be accepted. It is punishable by 14 years in prison Reuters LGBT+ rights around the globe Somalia Homosexuality was established as a crime in 1888 and under new Somali Penal Code established in 1973 homosexual sex can be punishable by three years in prison. A person can be put to death for being a homosexual Reuters LGBT+ rights around the globe Iraq Although same-sex relationships have been decriminalised, much of the population still suffer from intense discrimination. Additionally, in some of the country over-run by the extremist organisation Isis, LGBT individuals can face death by stoning Getty Reports of homophobic attacks in Indonesia have increased since the start of 2016, raising alarm at the UN with police raids, crackdowns on LGBT activists and political rhetoric, despite public denouncements of discrimination by President Joko Widodo. Government institutions including the National Broadcasting Commission and the National Child Protection Commission have also issued censorship directives banning information and broadcasts that portrayed the lives of LGBT people as normal, similar to Russias gay propaganda law. The countrys reputation for practicing a moderate form of Islam has been damaged in the past year due to attacks on religious minorities, a surge in persecution and a polarising election campaign for Jakarta governor that highlighted the growing strength of fundamentalist groups. Basuki Ahok Purnama, the outgoing governor of Jakarta and a member of the citys Christian minority, was sentenced to two years prison for blaspheming the Quran this week. The case was prompted by an incorrectly subtitled video of comments on his opponents use of the holy book in political campaigning, which went viral on social media. There are growing fears that Islamists including the extremist Islamic Defenders Front are in the ascendancy in a country home to sizeable communities of Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and other minorities. As well as home-grown groups, Indonesia is among the Asian nations targeted for expansion by Isis, which launched an attack in Jakarta in January 2016. 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 North Korean defector has argued the countrys leader Kim Jong-un would launch a nuclear attack if his rule was threatened. Song Byeok, a former state propaganda artist, said the supreme leader would issue an attack even if it were to result in the destruction of himself and his country. The political refugee, who now lives in South Korea where he critiques the regime through dissident artwork, said he hoped US President Donald Trump would find a way to remove Mr Kim from ruling the one-party state. I think Kim Jong-un could wage nuclear war if his power is threatened and that is why he needs to be removed as soon as possible, the 48-year-old told The Independent in a wide-ranging interview. He would wage nuclear war even if he knew it would mean finishing himself and harming the North Korean people because he is young and ambitious and doesnt care about the lives of North Koreans. He also doesnt know anything about their lives. Although there is significant doubt around whether North Korea has the technological capacity to launch a direct attack on America, experts warn they are getting closer and are still able to target Seoul or Tokyo. Mr Song, who escaped the hermit kingdom in 2002, said he was not concerned about mounting tensions between the US President and the North Korean leader and was happy to see Mr Trump taking a tough stance on the regime. I do not worry about the relationship between Trump and Kim Jong-un. I really hope that Trump will remove Kim Jong-un - that is the only way that North Korean people can be free and happy. In April I was demonstrating in front of the White House holding a picture of Kim Jong-un calling on Trump to remove him. 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 But Mr Song was not wholly positive about the US President, saying: I think Trump and Kim Jong-un are similar types of people. Hostility between the President and Mr Kim has come to a head in recent weeks. The Trump administration has warned the Obama-era policy of strategic patience with North Korea is over and Mr Trump has adopted an increasingly tough tone. Pledging to properly deal with Pyongyang and solve the problem with or without Chinas help, the President has raised alarm bells over a pre-emptive strike that could potentially elicit a nuclear response. At the end of April, he said he would like to resolve the situation peacefully but warned that a major, major conflict with North Korea is absolutely possible. The response from North Korea has been equally aggressive, with Pyongyang threatening a merciless response to any US provocation. At the end of last month, Mr Kims government threatened to sink a US nuclear submarine that had been deployed to South Korean waters. Mr Song, who lost all of his family members in the famine which struck North Korea in the 1990s, predicted that North Koreas regime would fall, claiming that increasing numbers of people are starting to doubt Mr Kims grip on power. Kim Jong-un is the third generation and even North Korean people are gaining access to foreign media, so they know what is going on, so they probably pretend to be loyal in front of him, but inside they dont agree, he concluded. He argued the wealth of an emerging class of elite North Koreans was ceasing to trickle down into the pockets of the masses. While the majority of North Koreas 25 million citizens endure starvation due to struggles with food production, there is a burgeoning demographic of elite North Koreans. Living in what has been termed Pyonghattan, the upper echelons of society, who tend to hold official government positions, adopt a highly different lifestyle to the rest of country. While others struggle to subsist, they spend money on designer clothes, eating in fancy restaurants and enjoying a range of new amusements Mr Kim has built for them. The North Korean government builds these things [the water park in Pyongyang and other luxury developments] just for show. Its just one per cent of the population using that kind of facilities. But life remains stark for the overwhelming majority of citizens living under a regime a UN report accused of crimes against humanity, including systematic extermination, torture, rape, forced abortions and starvation. 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 }} Life in North Korea remains something of a mystery to those on the outside. While we get glimpses of fist-pumping rallies, military weapon parades and Pyongyangs deserted grey streets on the news, much about the hermit kingdom still remains unknown. For this reason, Song Byeok has dedicated his life to educating the world about what it is like to live under the Kim regime. The former official state propaganda artist does this with the help of his paintbrush using artwork to depict a dystopian lifestyle. I paint because I lived in North Korea for 30 years so I want to represent what life is like there, the 48-year-old tells The Independent. Satire was not always a medium available to Mr Song. Under the iron-clad rule of the late Kim Jong-il, artists were not granted the freedom to paint what they wanted, instead having to adhere to a strict list of instructions. Although it was poverty which initially spurred Mr Song to try his hand at painting, the elite classes quickly noticed his talent, and at the age of just 24 he was selected to become an official state propaganda artist. I got into it because my family was too poor to send me to university and I had an interest, he explains. But then I started painting propaganda posters which included sculptures, labourers, and political slogans. Song Byeok has dedicated his life to educating the world about what it is like to live under the regime (Helen Hoddinott) Growing up in the most secretive and isolated country in the world, Mr Song did not once doubt the regime he lived under. According to the UN the overwhelming majority of North Koreas 25 million citizens live with the threat of the Gulag, forced labour camps and public execution but Mr Song remained wholly unaware of this as a teenager. Growing up I would work hard to show my loyalty to the government and prove I could be helpful. Back then I believed our leader was the best man in the world, like a god, he recalls. We were educated that they [the ruling Kim family] were the best people and without them, we could not maintain our country. From the age of elementary school, everyone has to march in military parades. Compulsory participation in marches is unsurprising when you consider that North Korea has the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel relative to its population of any country in the world. 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 It was when the famine of the 1990s hit that Mr Song started massively doubting the regime. While the country continues to struggle with food production, the famine which is known as the Arduous March is estimated to have killed three million people. As a teenager in North Korea, I remember people dying from starvation, he says managing to remain calm despite recalling unthinkable hardship. Many children lost their families so ended up living on the streets. There was no food to eat. I couldnt sleep from the hunger. We would boil a tree in a pot until it was soft enough to eat. I stopped believing in the regime during the famine. I saw many of my neighbours starve to death, including my mother and one of my younger sisters. It was then that Mr Song became so desperate that he attempted to cross into China to get food alongside his father. It goes without saying that this was a massively dangerous endeavour because it is illegal for citizens to freely travel around North Korea let alone go abroad. All of my family members had already died in the famine, but my father and I tried to escape across Tumen River but he was swept away and drowned. I tried to find his body and even asked a soldier to help me find it. Thats when I was captured. Mr Song was then taken straight to a prison in North Korea. There he endured slave labour and beatings with one incident so bad his finger was amputated despite no anaesthetic being available. I was held in a prison specifically for North Koreans in China who were captured between the borders of China and North Korea. I was released after six months because there were so many people dying in prison, and they were tired of getting rid of the dead, so they told the prisoners to go home and die there. After he was released from prison, his friends agreed that there was no hope in North Korea so they supported his decision to leave. I made up my mind that if I was captured again I would commit suicide and kept some poison in my pocket, he says. During my escape, the moonlight was so bright I was even afraid of being shot by a soldier at night. I hid for two days in the mountains, until one day the soldiers were having lunch and I managed to get to the river and then I swam across to China. Inside the daily life in North Korea Show all 19 1 /19 Inside the daily life in North Korea Inside the daily life in North Korea People reading a newspaper at the metro station Inside the daily life in North Korea Thoughts of the leaders on the tram. They have about a dozen of these on every tram, all with different thoughts Inside the daily life in North Korea Young people training for a big upcoming festival Inside the daily life in North Korea People at the Pyongyang's annual marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea Many stars on one of the trolleys in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea An intimidating poster in a primary school in North Korea. Inside the daily life in North Korea Solar panels installed on a street lamp. Inside the daily life in North Korea A poster on the window next to one of the venues we visited in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Kids playing football next to the Arch of Triumph. After a while tourists were allowed to join, so some of us did Inside the daily life in North Korea Class in an educational center in Pyongyang (where people over 17 years old can attend any classes they choose after school, for free) Inside the daily life in North Korea People waving at me during the Pyongyang marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea People having a great time dancing at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea A metro driver in a metro station in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Fireworks to mark the birthday of the Eternal President Kim Il Sung on our last night in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea My wonderful tour guide at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea One of the parks in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea A person rowing some boats for the day at a river in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea The National War Museum Inside the daily life in North Korea Public park in Pyongyang Once in China, he went into hiding but says he was fortunate enough to meet some people who helped him find his way to South Korea where he now works as a painter. Mr Song now dedicates his life to shining a light on North Korea's human rights violations - injustices which international organisations argue have no parallel in the contemporary world. While his most famous painting continues to be an iconic image of Marilyn Monroe holding down her dress which has been replaced with Kim Jong-ils head, he has expanded his dissident work to critique other oppressive regimes. Like so many defectors, Mr Song has no contact with the friends he left behind in North Korea because he fears they will be tortured by the regime if he is in touch. It is too dangerous now to contact anyone I know in North Korea. Its also expensive - Ive heard brokers charge 1000 euros to pass messages. Mr Songs work is being shown for the first time in the UK at an exhibition hosted by Connect: North Korea which is being held at Amnesty International's offices in east London. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has courted controversy with its latest front cover, which shows newly elected president Emmanuel Macron next to his pregnant wife Brigitte with the caption: He will do miracles. Taking to social media, some users called it disgusting, and "a disgrace, while some accused it of being sexist. On the magazines Facebook page some accused the publication of being backwards. The Macron's story has been widely covered both in France and abroad. Ms Macron, 24-years his senior and married, was a teacher at the new French president's school when the pair began their relationship. Ms Macron confided in Paris Match last year: At 17, Emmanuel told me Whatever you do, I will marry you.' Love carried everything with it and led me to divorce. In October 2007, the pair married in the upmarket town of Le Touquet, where they have a home. Now, 64, Ms Macron has three children from a previous marriage and seven grandchildren. The couple have no children and given Ms Macron's age they are unlikely to do so - something which was picked upon by Charlie Hebdo. The front page cartoon signed by Riss, the magazines editor. It depicts Mr Macron with his hand on his pregnant wifes abdomen. She is grinning. "He will do miracles," the caption reads. The magazine routinely targets French politicians and public figures, so Mr Macron was always likely to feature on its cover. French crowd goes wild as Macron is announced election winner However, some have criticised the cartoon on social media. Magali Cazo said: What a regressive cartoon. How stupid! He [Mr Macron] is being mocked because he has no children with his wife. I found Charlie much too old school. Nathalie Marchadier wrote: This drawing could never be made by a woman. Only a man could draw something of such bad taste. Others defended the cartoon, which they argued was not an attack on Ms Macrons age but rather a barb at the newly elected president, who they say believes he will be able to transform Frances political landscape and achieve miracles. 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 cover comes after Mr Macron hit back at speculation he was gay and could not be in love with his older wife. Mr Macron blamed misogyny and homophobia for assumptions that he could not be in love with his wife and claimed that if his wife was 20 years younger than him, nobody would question the relationship. Charlie Hebdo, which was victim of a terror attack in January 2015, when a pair of gunmen walked into the magazine's offices and opened fire, killing 12 people with their automatic rifles. Controversial caricatures of the prophet Mohammed which had been published by the magazine, were thought to have been the reason for the attack. 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 Danish politician has been accused of homophobia after referring to Emmanuel Macron a pretty little gay boy during a television debate. Sren Krarup, who was a Danish Peoples Party MP between 2001 and 2011, said he would have voted for Marine Le Pen during a debate on public broadcaster DRs Debatten programme. I would have given her a vote in the absence of [a better option], he said, according to a translation by The Local. I would never vote for that pretty little gay boy. When asked to clarify his remark, Mr Krarup appeared to backtrack, adding: Ah, thats also wrong. I would have used a slightly nicer expression, but when standing face to face with you here, it can often be difficult to find it. I would have said well-behaved little schoolboy. The politician appeared to be attacking Mr Macrons relationship with his wife his former drama teacher and 24 years his senior as well as false rumours of a gay affair circulated by opponents. Macron: If I was 20 years older than my wife, no one would have questioned my relationship Danish politicians called on Mr Krarup to apologise for his remark, with DR also coming under fire for inviting him to speak. Jesper Petersen, an MP for the Social Democrats, tweeted: Homophobia and disrespect is un-Danish. Jakob Engel-Schmidt, a spokesperson from the centre-right Venstre party, described the comments embarrassing and disappointing, adding that he should apologise immediately. Mr Krarup claimed he had used a stupid word that it was not my intention to use to describe the newly elected French President when questioned by Politiken newspaper. He said Mr Macron was a smart guy but stopped short of a full apology, adding that he does not like homosexuality. It is not something I have any sympathy for, Mr Krarup said, claiming he feels sorry for the LGBT community. 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 Mr Macron, whose campaign was targeted with a huge cyber attack days before the final vote, was the target of false rumours of a gay affair with a well-known French journalist during the election. Stories were circulated by supporters of Ms Le Pen, far-right websites and Russian state media, which hosted an opinion piece claiming Mr Macron was backed by a wealthy gay lobby. Earlier this week, Mr Macron told Le Parisien rampant homophobia was behind the smear campaign, which assumed homosexuality was a stain or a hidden disease. He said the people who peddled or accepted such rumours had lost their sense of reality and had a big problem with homosexuality. The French President blamed misogyny for assumptions he could not truly be in love with his older wife, saying their relationship would not have been questioned if the age gap was reversed. He first met his wife, Brigitte Trogneux, when he was a 15-year-old drama student and she was married with three children, but they developed a closer relationship when they worked together to re-write a play. The couple married in 2007, when he was almost 30 and she was 54. 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's reluctance to reveal who he will appoint as Prime Minister is causing speculation to mount over his pick for the key office. Grilled over his plans last week, the President-elect gave no hints and refused to announce the name until after the transfer of power from Francois Hollande. That means the pressure will build until 14 May at the very earliest. Mr Macron said he had already made up his mind and that the proposed PM "will have experience in the political field, the ability to lead a parliamentary majority and the ability to drive a thoroughly renewed government which will also include some experienced men and women". The defeated far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, revealed her pick for France's second-highest office before the election's decisive second round on Sunday. According to an Opinionway poll on 7 May, International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde was the public's most wished-for choice in the case of a Macron win, with 13 per cent support. 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 Retired former ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo was next, just ahead of centrist Francois Bayrou, a former education minister who endorsed Mr Macron. Mr Bayrou, 65, is the head of the Democratic Movement. France's parliamentary elections are due to take place next month and Mr Macron, whose political party En Marche! was founded a little over a year ago, must work hard to build a majority in the country's 577-seat legislative chamber. 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 }} Defeated French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen's niece has temporarily retired from politics for personal and political reasons. Marine Marechal-Le Pen said the decision was a heartbreak in a letter published in a regional newspaper, but she wanted to spend more time with her three-year-old daughter. The 27-year-old, had been seen as the rising star of the Front National party, after she became France's youngest MP in modern political history in 2012, when she won the Vaucluse's third constituency. After her resignation the party, which was founded by her grandfather Jean-Marie Le Pen, will only have one remaining MP in France's National Assembly. Ms Le Pen said she was interested in working in civil society because she loves the world of business. As a result, she will not seek re-election in June's local elections and will step down as the party's leader in Frances southern region of Provence-Alpes-Cote dAzur. She has also renounced her role in the partys political bureau. It is thought that her resignation, which comes with days of her aunt Marine Le Pen's defeat by Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election, will come as a huge blow to the party, "I think the era of politicians disconnected from the real with decades of elective offices behind them is gone," she said. In recent years Ms Marechal-Le Pen had found herself at odds with her aunt and the politics of the Front National. French newspaper Le Monde reported that her political commitment was also the reason for her divorce. Often described as more radical and traditional then her aunt, she situated herself on the right of the party, as a pro-business, conservative, who stood in defence of traditional family values. Her decision was nonetheless supported by her aunt, who tweeted: As a political leader, I regret the decision of Marion but as I mum, I understand. Her grandfather and Front National founder Jean Marie Le Pen was more damning about her decision. If there hasnt been a serious reason for this decision, I consider it to be desertion, he told French newspaper Le Figaro. If we had asked my opinion, I would be completely against it. That she is pulling out of the front line saddens me." World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty In her letter, Ms Marechal-Le Pen nonetheless suggested she would return to political life one day. "I do not give up political fighting definitively," she wrote. "I have the love for my country chained to my heart and I could never remain indifferent to the suffering of my compatriots. The idea I have of a good political leader means I have to have benefit from more experiences that just the success of an election." 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 }} Richard Dawkins has challenged Irish police to arrest him for blasphemy after they investigated Stephen Fry for calling God capricious, mean-minded [and] stupid. In an article for The Irish Times, the outspoken atheist and evolutionary biologist said he would be available for arrest on a charge of blasphemy as he gave a public lecture in Ireland. I shall be giving a public lecture in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on June 12th, and I shall therefore be available for arrest on a charge of blasphemy, he wrote. Recommended Stephen Fry blasphemy investigation prompts New Zealand to repeal law To show solidarity with Fry, Dawkins quoted a sentence from his book, The God Delusion: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. On Twitter, Dawkins added: The Irish blasphemy law must go. An embarrassment to the civilised world, it encourages the uncivilised one. Police dropped their investigation into Mr Fry after failing to find enough people who were outraged by his remarks. The row prompted New Zealand to commit to repealing its blasphemy laws. It also led Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to demand a referendum in Ireland to allow Stephen Fry or anyone else to air their views on God without fear of criminal charges. Under the Defamation Act, blasphemy is punishable by a fine of 25,000 (21,000) in an offence rooted in the Irish constitution. Stephen Fry under police investigation for blasphemy after branding God an 'utter maniac' In Dublin's parliament, Mr Adams said a single complaint had led to the "spectacle of Mr Fry being investigated by the gardai on a criminal charge of blasphemy". "This story was widely reported in the international media with appropriate mocking commentary and some disbelief," he said. "Blasphemy should have no place in the constitution." Mr Adams urged Taoiseach Enda Kenny to arrange a referendum - which is needed to change the constitution - as soon as possible to remove the blasphemy clause. Referencing a famous remark from the surreal Irish sitcom Father Ted, he asked: "Will you give citizens the opportunity to say clearly, 'down with that sort of thing', and allow Stephen Fry or anyone else to express an opinion without threat of criminal proceedings?" Across the chamber, Mr Kenny said the last known prosecution for blasphemy in Ireland was thought to have been in 1855. There have been no such prosecutions under the Defamation Act, introduced in 2009, he added. Mr Kenny said it had already been agreed by government to hold a referendum on the issue, and it was simply a case of "finding an opportunity to deal with this". Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes Show all 19 1 /19 Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Being Bipolar "Theres a moment in the film where I recognised that this was the last moment we filmed before this wave of depression came over me, and I was idiotic or victim enough, or whatever one wants to call it, of this mad compulsion." Getty Images Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Taking Cocaine At Buckingham Palace "I take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly, to the owners, managers or representatives of the noble and ignoble premises and to the hundreds of private homes, offices, car dashboards, tables, mantelpieces and available polished surfaces that could so easily have been added to this list of shame." Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On His Age "I don't need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me." Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Swearing "It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing and without enjoying swearing." Getty Images Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On TV "I don't watch television. It destroys the art of talking about oneself." PA Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Happiness "Having a great intellect is no path to being happy." Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Technology "One technology doesn't replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators." PA Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Being On Stage "You are who you are when nobody's watching." Geraint Lewis Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Education "Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars." Getty Images Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Creativity "An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them." Getty Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Journalism "Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good." PA WIRE Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Love "Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave." PA Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On The English Accent "A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there." REX Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Being An Author "I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book." Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Homosexuality "Ive never wanted one extra gay person in the world, there are plenty of us around." Susannah Ireland / The Independent Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Christmas "Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better to arrive." Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Cliches "It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me." BBC Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Smoking "I think I have always linked smoking and sex. Maybe this is where I have been going wrong all my life." Getty Images Stephen Fry's Finest Quotes On Homophobia "Homosexuals are not interested in making other people homosexuals. Homophobes are interested in making other people homophobic." The row erupted after a member of the public contacted police about Fry's interview on Irish broadcaster RTE's show The Meaning Of Life in February 2015. The footage went viral after it was aired and has now been seen more than seven million times on YouTube. Asked what he would say if he was confronted by God, Fry replied: "How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. "Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?" Questioned on how he would react if he was locked outside the pearly gates, he responded: "I would say, 'Bone cancer in children? What's that about?' "Because the God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. "Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of God would do that?" 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 }} Theresa May has condemned the persecution of gay men in the Russian territory of Chechnya, calling the reported atrocities utterly barbaric. A crackdown on gay people in the region, first reported in newspaper Novaya Gazeta, alleged that more than 100 Chechen men were rounded up and at least three killed. Responding to a demand from a cross-party group led by Labour MEP Seb Dance and Conservative MEP Ian Duncan, Ms May said the issue was deeply troubling. Hundreds protest at Russian embassy over 'gay concentration camps' in Chechnya Officials from the UK embassy in Moscow have raised concerns at a senior level with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ms May said, adding that the diplomats were exploring possibilities for a joint demarche with our international partners in country". Urgent action is also being taken to explore how best to provide support to the LGBT+ community in the region," she wrote. You are right to raise concerns about the unacceptable statement issued by the regional government in Chechnya. The UK Government has made clear that this response, implying that such treatment towards LGBT+ people is tolerable, is particularly abhorrent. More widely, the issue of LGBT+ rights is one that the UK raises regularly with the Russian authorities. I can reassure you that we have raised concerns, particularly about the Russian law prohibiting the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations to minors since it came into place in June 2013. 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 Abuses in Chechnya allegedly include men being kept in concentration camps where they were beaten several times a day, electrocuted and forced to sit on bottles. Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov has denied an anti-gay purge was taking place. He has been supported by the Kremlin, which has said it has no information that back up the reports. German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to investigate. 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 }} President Trumps decision to provide weapons to the Syrian Kurds, who are fighting Isis, potentially marks a crucial change in the political geography of the Middle East. In effect, the US is choosing to support its Kurdish ally in Syria, in defiance of Turkey, whose aim is to prevent the establishment of a quasi-independent Kurdish state there. Mr Trump approved a plan on Monday to arm the Kurds directly, in order to enable the Peoples Mobilisation Units (YPG) Kurdish militia and its Arab allies to assault and capture Raqqa, the de facto capital of Isis in Syria. The US will send heavy machine guns, anti-tank weapons, mortars, armoured cars and engineering equipment to bolster the attack. Recommended Fall of Raqqa and Mosul will not spell the end for Isis Turkey has sought in vain to persuade the US to break its alliance with the Syrian Kurds, accusing the YPG of being the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has been waging a guerrilla war against the Turkish state since 1984. Both the PKK and the YPG are terrorist organisations and they are no different, apart from their names, said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavasoglu on Tuesday. Every weapon seized by them is a threat to Turkey. Mr Trump has always said that he gives priority to defeating Isis, leading him to agree to a long-delayed plan to capture Raqqa with ground forces led by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This was said by a US official last December to have 45,000 fighters of whom 13,000 are Arabs and the rest Kurdish. It has defeated Isis repeatedly when backed by air strikes by the US-led air coalition ever since Isis besieged but failed to take the Kurdish city of Kobani in late 2014. The US wants to inflict a double defeat on Isis by capturing both Raqqa and Mosul in Iraq over the next few months. Isis fighters are still holding out in the Old City of Mosul after a siege by Iraqi government forces that has lasted almost seven months. Most of the city has already fallen with heavy casualties on all sides and severe destruction. The loss of Raqqa and Mosul will not be the end for Isis, which is reverting to being a guerrilla organisation, but the self-declared caliphate will no longer exist as a state with an administration and extensive territory. Raqqa, once a city of 300,000 people on the northern bank of the Euphrates River, is already isolated from the south bank by air strikes destroying bridges. The road south to Deir Ezzor, the biggest city in eastern Syria, has been cut by the SDF. Isis fighters can only move in and out of Raqqa by boat, though they have proved in Mosul that they are skilled in urban warfare using sniper teams, suicide bombers and booby traps to slow down and inflict losses on a more numerous and better armed enemy. But the fate of Raqqa is not the only issue being decided in the fighting in northern Syria. Turkey is facing a disastrous outcome of the wars in Syria and Iraq which it once hoped would extend its influence in the northern Middle East. Since 2011, it has been seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and to stop the two million Syrian Kurdish minority gaining control of a broad band of territory along Turkeys southern frontier. Children of Mosul describe life under Islamic State Turkish efforts to stop the Kurdish advance have largely failed and the intervention of Turkish ground troops west of the Euphrates in August 2016 has only been a qualified success. Its local Arab and Turkman allies were unable to take the Isis stronghold of al-Bab without Turkish army intervention. Though Turkey has offered its services to the US as an ally capable of replacing the YPG in the battle against Isis, this always looked a dubious option. It has long been obvious that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is more interested in targeting the Kurds than in fighting Isis. Turkeys response to the YPG and SDF successes has been to step up military engagement in northern Syria and to threaten much tougher action. On 25 April, Turkish planes launched air strikes against YPG positions killing 20 fighters, half of them women. Mr Erdogan threatened that similar action might happen at any time. The US said the Turkish action was unacceptable and was so concerned about a Turkish ground invasion that it sent patrols of US special forces in vehicles to monitor the Syrian side of the border. For their part, the Syrian Kurdish leaders said they would not take Raqqa if Turkish military action continued. The public decision by Mr Trump to send heavier weapons to the YPG is important primarily as a sign that the US is ignoring Turkish threats and will stick to its military alliance with the Syrian Kurds, which has served it well. This makes it difficult for the Turkish army and air force to escalate its attacks on the YPG. Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad Mr Erdogan is to see Mr Trump for the first time in Washington on 16-17 May and will seek to persuade him to reverse his policy towards the Syrian Kurds, but he is unlikely to succeed. In his final days in office, President Obama had also decided to send heavier equipment to the YPG, indicating that the pro-Kurdish policy has broad support in the US. At the same time, the Americans are trying to reassure the Turks by saying that the new weapons will be only used against Isis and the quantity of ammunition delivered will be limited to what is needed for that operation. The Turks say they fear that the arms will be handed over to the PKK and used against their soldiers. The Syrian Kurds are worried that, once Isis is defeated, the US will no longer need them and will revert to its old alliance with Turkey as a member of Nato and a major power. This would leave them vulnerable to a Turkish ground attack aimed at extinguishing their semi-independence. For now, however, the Kurds in Syria will be relieved that the US has decided to stick with them. 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 }} Palestinians and activists are calling for a boycott of Pizza Hutt after it ran an advert mocking the leader of a mass hunger strike taking place in Israeli prisons. The restaurant's Israeli branch posted a picture released by Israeli police allegedly showing prisoner Marwan Barhgouti breaking his fast by eating a chocolate bar. In Hebrew superimposed on the image, Israel's Pizza Hut wrote: "Barghouti, if you're going to break a strike, why not pizza?" The chain also Photoshopped a pizza box onto the floor of the prison cell along with a slice of pizza in the sink. Pizza Hut Israel Photoshopped a pizza box onto the floor of the prison cell along with a slice of pizza in the sink (Pizza Hut Israel/Facebook) More than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike to call for an end to the Israeli practice of detention without trial, and to demand better conditions. Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists called for a global boycott of the chain on social media. Some shared a modified version of the Pizza Hut logo featuring barbed wire and a prison. The post has since been removed from Pizza Hut Israel's Facebook page. Apologising on its international Facebook page, Pizza Hut said: Pizza Hut International apologises for any offence caused by a recent post on Pizza Hut Israels Facebook page. "It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect the values of our brand. The local franchise in the country removed it immediately and the relationship with the agency that posted it was terminated, and we truly regret any hurt this may have caused. A post on Pizza Hut Israel's page said: It was intended to be a humorous post marketing Pizza Hut Israels delivery services and was removed after a request from the management of the international chain." The protest is led by Mr Barghouti, a leader from the Fatah movement of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, who is serving five life terms after being convicted of killing Israelis in the 2000-2005 uprising known as the Second Intifada. He has reportedly gone without food since 17 April but Israeli prison authorities claim he broke the strike twice by eating cookies and a chocolate bar. The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child An anonymous prison official told local media the video was obtained as part of a scheme to induce the leaders of the hunger strike to eat by hiding food in their cells. Most of them resisted the temptation, the official added. A representative of the Palestinian prisoners called the claims "false rumours" and an attempt by Israel at "psychological warfare". Israeli right-wing activists hold a barbecue outside the Israeli-run Ofer military prison, north of Jerusalem, in the occupied West Bank, where a number of Palestinian prisoners are on a hunger strike (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images) The hunger strikers have already faced taunts from a far-right Israeli group holding a barbecue near the prison. The group said the prisoners would "enjoy breathing in the smoke and suffer from the smell of the meat." Leaders in the West Bank have warned of a "new intifada" if any of the striking inmates die. 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 }} American visitors to Cuba could increase by seven times by 2025, according to a new report putting the Caribbean islands infrastructure under enormous strain and sparking fears for the future of the country as US investors move in. The report, drawn up by the Boston Consulting Group, notes that Cuba represents a huge but challenging opportunity for US cruise, airline and hotel companies as American visitors continue to spiral. As many as 2 million Americans could visit in the future up from 285,000 last year, excluding Cuban Americans the BCG study published on Wednesday estimated. Recommended These 6 idyllic places are being destroyed by tourism Given tourism infrastructure is already creaking, that means there are business opportunities aplenty but US companies must learn to navigate a centrally-planned economy with its quirks. US travel to Cuba has already surged, albeit from very low levels, in the last two years since the former Cold War allies announced a detente and the Obama administration eased travel restrictions to the island. The reality is that U.S. travel to Cuba is in its nascent stages, and all the players are still learning how to make it work, the report read. Success, as with most things Cuban, will require unusual - and often unorthodox - approaches. BCG did not address the uncertainty cast by the election of US President Donald Trump who has threatened to row back on the normalisation of relations. The Cuban government aims to double hotel capacity by 2030 through partnerships with foreign companies, it pointed out. So far, Starwood is the only US hotel company operating in Cuba. Instilling a hospitality mindset in tourism workers who were mostly state employees, even at US-owned companies, on low wages could be challenging, it noted. Poor service sat particularly badly when rooms were extremely expensive for the region. The risk is that US travellers who visit Cuba and stay at a hotel that is part of a brand they trust will experience prices much higher than usual - and more customer service, the report read. Meanwhile there was also an opportunity for expanding cruise lines to Cuba, BCG said. Nearly two thirds of 500 US travellers surveyed would consider one to Cuba. Several US cruise operators have started offering lines to Cuba in the past year. They have to deal with different challenges such as including a cultural element to their trips to comply with US government rules on travel to Cuba, BCG noted. Recommended Suddenly every major cruise line is descending on Cuba US companies should work together with the Cuban government to resolve some of these issues. As for airlines, they needed to deal with excess demand for flights to Havana. They could carry out campaigns to lure Americans to other Cuban cities, BCG advised, and tap into Cuban demand for flights to the United States. Meanwhile, the bid to make tourism in Cuba sustainable continues. Not only does the island lack infrastructure; but restaurants are buying up food, meaning locals are being priced out. In February, Justin Francis, CEO of Responsible Travel, told The Independent that tourists are literally raiding food off the plates of the Cubans. Today, he added: Cuba has been sold in the past few years with the line, 'You'd better get there quick before the Americans visit in big numbers.' It's proved to be a very effective marketing strategy because there is a genuine fear that Cuban culture, which is so attractive in part because it hasn't be changed by tourism, is about to suffer. While many in Cuba live in poverty and need income from tourism, some forms of tourism, such as cruises, return little to local people. Cuba needs responsible forms of tourism and would be wise to note how Venice and Barcelona are reeling from the effects of overtourism which detracts from both local peoples and tourists experience of a destination. Cuba is a prime overtourism candidate and needs to avoid that. Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh, Reuters Find hotels and resorts in Cuba and book your perfect getaway! 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 }} It wasnt your average cruise. The ships first officer, walking very briskly, showed us to the small, dorm-like room we had been assigned. It had one single bed and a couch that had been made up into a second bed. There was also a desk, a small armoire and a very tight bathroom all very clean but very modest. We had just boarded a Grimaldi cargo ship to spend five days sailing from Ashdod in Israel to Salerno. Jamie, my boyfriend, looked at me and smiled. We both knew this had been his idea. The trip was a fulfillment of Jamies dream and his love of massive industrial things. I was promised that I would have fun, too, but we both know that my idea of fun involves circulating canapes. Wed booked the journey through a shipping agent with relative ease. At 1,230 for the cabin, it wasnt overly cheap, and the information online was sparse, but as soon as we stepped onboard I realised exactly what this was: we were going to spend five days sailing on a massive steel parking garage, dropping new Fiats and used Mercedes in Limassol and Alexandria before docking in Italy, where we would disembark. Cruising on a cargo ship Show all 9 1 /9 Cruising on a cargo ship Cruising on a cargo ship The cruise went from Israel to Italy via Cyprus Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship Cargo cruising gives you different travel mates than normal cruises Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship The Grimaldi ship was transporting cars Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship A first glimpse of their ride Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship The boat was a slightly rougher-round-the-edges cruise ship Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship Life on the open waves Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship The cabin had a single bed and sofabed Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship Sarah was never allowed onshore during the cruise Jamie Levin Cruising on a cargo ship The majestic ship Jamie Levin Our cabin was on the tenth floor, as were all the facilities we had access to: a dining room, lounge, and super-depressing gym complete with unplugged treadmill and ping pong table. We dumped our stuff and wandered down the hall to take our first meal. Before embarking, Id had visions of hobnobbing with a bunch of handsome Italian officers who would regale me with tales of giant squid sightings while pouring me limoncello. Instead, I found an austere room with one long table for the dozen or so officers (there was a similarly-sized group of mostly Filipino crew who had separate eating and sleeping quarters) and one small table for passengers. We introduced ourselves to the only other passenger: a middle-aged, sandal-wearing German, whod just spent six months driving around Israel: the land of the Bible. He went on to explain that he had spent "a night or two on the West Bank. I can see now, he said, imparting the deep expertise that can only be summoned from a night or two in a place, why Israel can never give it back. Under normal circumstances, Id have rolled my eyes and excused myself, but on the ship, we were stuck. For five days, we tried not to bring up politics. Many meals were eaten in near-silence with only occasional requests to pass the bread or salt. Life on the open waves (Jamie Levin) Unlike the conversation, though, the food on the ship was both competent and plentiful. Breakfast was homemade bread and plum jam, but lunch and dinner involved multiple courses of pasta or soup, followed by fish or meat, plus a small lettuce salad with the occasional carrot or tomato. Dessert was always fruit. We were each given one adorable 250ml bottle of red wine with dinner. On the first slow-moving day at sea, with no access to WiFi on the ship, I read and then reread all of the remaining tabs open in my internet browser. I thought of it as akin to fondly re-examining pictures of someone who recently died. Soon, though, we found our rhythm. Days revolved around meals, for which in true cruise style I was never hungry but always ate. We watched fuzzy BBC World News in the lounge. We sat on deck and watched the lovely nothingness of the open sea. Occasionally, we were allowed on the bridge, where the captain made us a cup of black tea blended with spices hed collected around the world. There were pre-dinner cocktails, mixing vodka wed brought ourselves with juice pressed from Italian oranges. We were in bed most nights by 9pm, squeezed into one of the single beds to watch a movie. Pulling into the ports at Limassol and Alexandria was thrilling. Disappointingly, we werent allowed off the boat, but loved every minute of standing on deck to watch the verdant Cypriot coastline or chaotic Egyptian city slowly come into focus while surrounded by working ships from around the world. The tiny cabin (Jamie Levin) Unlike a conventional cruise, where an abundant staff bends over backwards, the officers were nice but preoccupied by the ship. Even with dozens of people on board, we were most often alone. It was just Jamie, me and the sea along with some decent but not great Sicilian wine that we bought from the ships avuncular chef for 5. Gradually, small intimacies emerged. On the third day, the chef blew me a kiss when I thanked him for lunch. The next day, filling handmade cannolo shells with sweetened ricotta, he beckoned us into the kitchen. He handed us each a finished cannolo, filled a bowl with four more and thrust it towards us, nodding towards our room. Shhhhhhh, he said. On the fourth day, with two days at sea stretching ahead of us, I finally got restless. The lack of activity worked like a sedative, and I was keen to be reconnected to the world. The next morning, when I woke in the Tyrrhenian Sea to a view of Calabrias spectacular mountains, I had a burst of cabin fever and a thought popped into my head: how long would it take to swim to shore? Luckily, we docked in Salerno a few hours later. But when we finally disembarked and I was back on dry land, I turned back to look at the old ship and realised that I would do it all again. Only Id want to disembark at every port next time. Also, I would bring more vodka. Travel essentials Sarah travelled with Allalouf, an Israeli shipping agent. The total voyage (including all meals) cost 615 per person. Two of the most popular global booking agents are The Cruise People and Freighter Expeditions, but you can also book directly through some many operators, including CMA-CGM and Marine Link Tours. Unlike conventional cruises, itineraries often arent firmly set until six to eight weeks before the journey, so dont expect an early bird special. Additional expenses can include specialised transport to and from ports, security clearance fees, and wine. 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 }} In the autumn of 2010, over 50,000 students marched through the streets of London to protest against a trebling of tuition fees proposed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and as the then-President of the Cambridge University Students' Union, I led a huge number of them. We were furious, not just at the fee proposals themselves, but because we had once agreed with Nick. Wed agreed with him so much that wed used our first ever votes for him. Needless to say, that betrayal led to those same voters brutally punishing the Liberal Democrats in the election five years later, with a decisive 30-point swing in the student vote. By the fees protests rolled around, loudspeaker in hand, with an obligatory sense of wounded betrayal, I would never have thought that I would ever encourage people to vote Liberal Democrat again. But in 2017, I am a fully paid-up member of the Lib Dems, and proud of it. Last years Brexit referendum result was a catastrophe for Britains young people, with almost 75 per cent of us voting to remain. As the initial shock subsided, the Tories clarified their plans to crash us out of the single market, restrict our rights to live, work and study throughout the EU, and leave us isolated on the world stage at a time when, in Theresa Mays own words, the world needs the liberal, democratic values of Europe. By September, as Eurosceptic Corbyn obstinately stayed put while his MPs deserted him, and as Theresa May declared that if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere and the Conservatives demanded that companies publish the numbers of foreigners they employed, I saw that the only party that would fight for our values and battle against a hard Brexit was the Liberal Democrats. Like thousands of others, I signed up. Tim Farron and the Lib Dems: All you need to know Brexit is the defining issue of this election and of our political generation. The way it is conducted will go to the heart of all the issues we protested about in 2010. Back then, the broadest aim of our protests was to give our young people the best chance of success in an open, prosperous, tolerant Britain. We must now support the Liberal Democrats to continue that wider campaign; a Tory Brexit undermines the existence of the Britain we believe in, not to mention the very existence of the UK. The Lib Dems are and have always been proudly European, and (unlike the policy issue of tuition fees) this is fundamental to the party. Labour, despite its sudden clarity on scrapping tuition fees, remains hopelessly divided on its own vision of Brexit. The Liberal Democrats are the only party left to stand up for the 48 per cent, for the millions of voters, particularly the young, who voted to remain part of Europe, to be free to study in Paris or Berlin, to marry in Rome or Amsterdam and to work in Stockholm or Sofia. Following the narrow victory of the Brexiteers, it seems that is only the views of the most extreme of the 52 per cent that matter to the Tories, who offer only chaos and confusion under the banner of strong and stable leadership. As a person of Indian descent, I cannot help but be alarmed by Theresa Mays increasingly Ukip-esque promises on immigration, which will have a devastating effect on universities and on public services more generally. Although many voted for Brexit with decent motives, the referendum result, aided by political and newspaper rhetoric on immigration, unleashed some of the worst elements of our society, with hate crime reaching record levels last summer I got off relatively lightly with an aggressive woman on a bus demanding I go back to where I came from (and I dont think she meant Barnet). 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 And, of course, Labour is collapsing into itself, with Corbyns team too interested in the ideological purification of their own party to be even a barely competent opposition, let alone to form a government to defend Britains place in Europe. Despite Tory and Labour attempts to paint the Liberal Democrats as weak, they are now the only party that is strong in its defence of economically fair, socially liberal values. Students and young people will make a difference in this election. For those of us who felt so keenly betrayed in 2010, it is time for us to forgive the mistakes that the Liberal Democrats made in office. This election is about more than tuition fees. The Liberal Democrats are the only party that is fighting for an open, tolerant Britain in Europe. Supporting them is the only way to show that we do not want a disastrous, closed, hard Brexit. 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 }} It feels that almost every week, an historian appears on television scratching to find a precedent for the latest actions or comments of Donald Trump. Frequently they have to reach back decades; sometimes they can find no parallel. As James Comey boarded a jet in Los Angeles and flew back to Washington, having learned while speaking to field office staff a few hours earlier that he had been fired as FBI Director, focus turned to October 20 1973. It was then, in an incident that has come to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre, that Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox, a special prosecutor who was looking into the burglary that would snowball into the Watergate scandal. This is Nixonian, Democratic Senator Bob Casey said in a statement. His colleague from Vermont, Patrick Leahy, said pretty much the same, pointing out that Trump fired Comey in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country. This is nothing less than Nixonian, he said. With a bravado nothing short of stunning, the White House has claimed Comey was fired because of the way he handled the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server - something Trump had previously praised. During the election campaign, it was Comeys probe of Clinton, something that ultimately led to no prosecution, that inspired Trump to lead his supporters to chant lock her up. On more than one occasion, he praised what he termed Comeys "guts". It is hard to believe, then, that something Comey first talked about in the summer of 2016, should necessitate his dismissal. Indeed, with the country spinning from Trumps action, many observers of Washington have concluded Trump has fired the man investigating alleged links between his campaign and Moscow because he wanted to slow down or divert the probe. Trump tweets that he is vindicated during Russia hearing, Comey asked about truth of what he says Its not just rational that Donald Trump fired James Comey for being mean to Hillary Clinton. Its not just possible, said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. He added Hes heading an investigation thats getting too close for comfort. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University, accused Trump of a stunning abuse of power. Donald Trump has just acted like a tyrant, he said. Comey was leading one of several probes into Trumps alleged links to Moscow. In his letter to the FBI Director informing him he had been fired, Trump claimed that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation. 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 Yet earlier this year, Comey testified on Capitol Hill that there was an ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Trumps campaign and Russias alleged interference in the 2016 election. He said the probe, which he said began last July, included investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. It is unclear what will happen now to the FBI investigation. Various officials said it would proceed. Others were less convinced. Democrat Dick Durbin said on the Senate floor the news that had broken just hours earlier, raised questions as to whether the Russian interference in the last presidential election... will also be investigated by the FBI. Trump said he acted on clear recommendations from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Nixon did not have it so easy; his Attorney General and then his Deputy Attorney General, refused to go along with the firing of Cox. In the end it fell to Solicitor General Robert Bork. Even the Nixon Presidential Library pointed out that there were differences between what happened in 1973 and the action of Mr Trump. President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI, the library tweeted. If history is a lesson of what may be in store, Trump might wish to be a little concerned. For now, his officials are remaining loyal. But there are likely to be many more twists to this story. Nixons firing of Cox proved increasingly unpopular. Nine months later, with the two houses of Congress preparing to impeach him, Nixon stood down. 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 }} When Donald Trump was elected last November, I joked with my friends that if I disappeared they should look for me in an internment camp in the Utah desert. Since taking office in January, my grandmother has become increasingly nervous that, through writing critically about this administration, I would incur the wrath of the vengeful and petulant president. If this seemed a tad hysterical before, it shouldnt have; Trump has shown an authoritarian streak since he announced his bid for the White House. But with his sacking of FBI Director James Comey, who was leading an investigation into ties between his campaign and the Russian government, Donald Trump has taken his biggest step yet towards becoming the first American dictator. Since taking office, Trump has been sprinting towards his dictatorial destiny. He had undermined the judiciary by threatening to break up the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after so-called judges struck down his unconstitutional and immoral ban on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries. He has dispatched his cronies Kellyanne Conway to espouse alternative facts and Stephen Miller to warn the country that the powers of the president will not be questioned. He has vilified the press for not toeing his party line. He banned journalists from covering his campaign and later the White House. Why did Donald Trump fire James Comey? None of this should be surprising. Trump has a history of praising authoritarian strongmen. During the campaign he praised Saddam Husseins strength in killing terrorists, called Vladimir Putin talented and an absolute leader, described in glowing terms Kim Jong Uns ruthless elimination of his rivals in North Korea, and openly admired the Chinese governments show of strength over Tiananmen Square. Attempting to emulate these evil men, he has been accused of inciting violence against protestors at rallies. He threatened to imprison his political opponent. Oh, and lets not forget that his campaign is currently under investigation by the FBI for colluding with the Russian government to sway the election in his favour. Trump has now sacked the man leading that investigation, ostensibly because of how unfairly he handled the investigation into Hillary Clintons e-mails (the same Hillary Clinton he pledged to imprison). This is such an obviously ad hoc reason that it would be laughable if it werent so utterly frightening. Are we really meant to believe that the man who criticised Comey for going too easy on Clinton is now concerned he went too hard on her? Its insulting that the President wouldnt, or couldnt, come up with a credible reason for dismissing the FBI Director, and indicative of a nasty and terrifying tendency. Trump doesnt think he needs to give a credible reason because he doesnt think it matters. Hes the President. Hes in charge. His power, as we were told, will not be questioned. 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 Donald Trump thinks hes a dictator, and hes acting like one. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has called for a special prosecutor to continue the investigation. This isnt good enough. At the very least, an independent counsel, reporting not to the Justice Department but directly to Congress, should be created to ensure the American people get the answers they not only deserve, but required so that we know for certain our democracy is sound. Our last, best line of defence is the checks and balances the framers placed in the constitution to avoid just this scenario. Congress, including the Republicans who control it, must act as unlikely as it seems, considering the party has placed partisanship over patriotism. If Congress doesnt act, the country and history will judge them guilty as complicit in the death of American democracy. 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 }} Finished with the last meeting of the day in New York, Joe Crowley, the fourth most senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, was headed to an intimate fundraiser in a private home on the Upper West Side when the news, and his jaw, dropped: Trump fires Comey. The guests had been promised an evening of song from the musically inclined Crowley, whose district encompasses large chunks of Queens and the Bronx. But first he felt the need to express his befuddlement about what had just occurred. I cant figure out what this White House is up to half the time, he said. A voice at the back cried, Half? Youre doing well then. Recommended Trump agrees to arm Kurds in hugely significant move for Syria Theories about the Comey dismissal the reasons for it, the timing of it and the likely fallout multiplied quickly enough to plug the hole in the ozone layer. Television pundits writhed in pain, their bloviatory bladders threatening to explode if they were not allowed to say Trump and Nixon in the same sentence. CNN became the Cardiac Care Network because their ppl are having heart attacks over Trump, former Governor Mike Huckabee quipped in a cheeky Tweet. (Never mind that his CNN is suddenly CCN.) The only thing making sense to his critics was that Trump had become so fearful of the FBIs investigation into possible collusion between his campaign last year and Russia that he, along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, had concluded he had to sabotage it. Fire Comey! How brilliant is that? All you need to do next is find a poodle to run the FBI. Problem over. Vladimir Putin responds to James Comey firing: 'We had nothing to do with it' Pressed at the fundraising party, Crowley said he really didnt know what had been in Trumps head but quickly added that two words instantly came to his lips. They were cover and up. He added hastily that he had never considered himself prone to conspiracy theories. Trump loyalists were plumbing, with varying amounts of desperation, for more innocent scenarios, including the White House claim that the President was displeased with the way Comey had handled the email allegations against Hillary Clinton last year and believed the FBI needed new leadership. But even in super-contorted Trumpworld this is not quite believable. Comey, by some accounts, did more than anyone to help Trump win the presidency, notably with his bombshell letter to Congress days before the vote revealing he was looking again at the Clinton case even after saying months before he was done with it. Each time Comey did something to hurt Clintons chances, Trump praised him. Now, suddenly, he feels sorry for Clinton and wants him punished? The timing is weird too. Actually, its awful. Trump has returned the spotlight to the whole Russia-collusion fandango at the very moment when the early constipation of his administration was starting to ease, notably with the House getting over the hump with replacing Obamacare. As if to add a little icing, he does it the evening before a scheduled meeting with Russias foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in the Oval Office. Why, if not because there was a real reason to panic about what Comey and his team of investigators were getting close to finding? This is what lies behind the screeching comparisons of what Trump wrought here with the Saturday Night Massacre when Nixon sacked the special prosecutor responsible for probing Watergate which triggered the resignations of the Attorney General and his deputy at the Justice Department. These are probably overblown for a number of reasons. Above all, we should not forget that, as yet, we have seen no evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election. And while Nixon faced a Democrat-controlled Congress already convinced at the time he had done wrong, Trump has the backing of his party on the Hill. Mostly, he has their backing. But the other result of putting Comey in the ejection seat and pulling the lever is that demands for a more aggressive investigation into the alleged Trump-to-Kremlin axis have roared back to the fore just when they had been fading. For Democrats that means appointing a special prosecutor, an outcome that Trump surely cannot want. As yet no Republicans have called for that, but some, including Senator John McCain, are now arguing that its time for a special congressional committee to look into the issue. If such an amped-up investigation were to begin and if it were to find that indeed crimes were committed last year that deformed the electoral process and impacted on the outcome of the election and that Trump, or people close to him, were involved both in those doings and in subsequently trying to cover them up, the consequences for this young presidency would be catastrophic. But notice the string of ifs. For now, at least, I prefer an explanation that derives from two other ingredients: stunning incompetence and sheer, base nastiness. Why did Donald Trump fire James Comey? Add to that a self-destructive love of drama. Trump forged a whole reality TV career priming ratings by firing people. He may be suffering from a lingering addiction to that simple act. Since becoming President he has fired one national security adviser as well as the former, and highly influential, attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara (after telling him he was safe in the job). He fired Sally Yates, the acting Attorney General before Sessions was confirmed, and now he has fired an FBI chief who was in the midst of investigating possible malfeasance by his campaign last year lest we forget, that last, rather salient, point who also had been told he was safe in his job and would hold it for another six and a half years. The incompetence barely needs commenting on. For all the reasons discussed, it is looking already like this will backfire on the President in all manner of ways. That there has been such a pounding backlash from all quarters, even from some Republicans, seems to have caught this White House by surprise. Comey, meanwhile, was given no prior warning and found out through news alerts on TV screens playing at the back of a room of his own agents he was addressing in Los Angeles at the time. FBI directors deserve a bit better than that, surely. That comes from the playground nastiness that fills this Oval Office. Possibly, someone told the President that Comey would be unprepared for what was coming and grinned. We do know the tenor of the Twitter spats he has engaged in in the hours since. He has lashed out at cryin Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat leading the calls for a special prosecutor, and laid into Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another leading figure in the special prosecutor camp, resurfacing old reports suggesting he once lied about his record in Vietnam. When caught, he cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness, Trump jabbed. Edifying stuff. In time well know if cover-up properly applies to the latest Washington doings. But what does, however the dust finally settles, is cock-up. Nobody wins from this and certainly not Trump. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The recommendation by the environment committee of the Walloon region to ban meat that is slaughtered without pre-stunning is a good example of people asking the right questions, but coming up with the wrong answers. The key issue is how to ensure that animals are killed as painlessly as possible, which certainly accords with Jewish values and, from my conversation with imams over the years, I am assured applies equally to Islamic tenets. But the committee has made three errors. First, it has put Jewish and Muslim procedures in the same category, and directed its judgement at both simultaneously. They may share the same ethos of minimising distress, but the Jewish method is highly regulated, with precise guidelines, meticulous training and strict monitoring. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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 It means that the animal is killed with a single cut to the carotid artery using an ultra-sharp blade, that cuts off blood supply to the brain immediately so that the animal loses consciousness within seconds. It needs almost no strength, merely great skill, which is why Jewish slaughterers, far from being sturdy giants, are often slender figures. The Muslim process is similar, but is not centrally controlled under one supervisory authority, nor regulated to the same extent. That would be a good move to ensure that standards are maintained and that there can be public confidence in them. The second error is to ignore the fact that the very reason for this method of Jewish and Muslim slaughter is to cause the least possible pain to animals. In this respect, they have been far superior to other methods of animal slaughter for centuries. It also explains the reticence to change now, for the various types of stunning have not yet been perfected. Sometimes they are very effective and save animals suffering, sometimes they either do not work or are administered wrongly, leaving animals immobile but conscious, and even more terrified. We are not yet at the moment when stunning is without doubt superior to Jewish and Muslim methods. When that times comes, religious leaders of both faiths will need to weigh the moral principle of animal welfare against the traditional procedures. I have no doubt that, although there will be fierce debate, ultimately the former will prevail over the latter, as ethics always trumps rituals. That is a religious value. Recommended Belgian region votes to ban kosher and halal meat The third error, or rather, puzzle, is why the Walloons are concentrating their energy on stunning, where the difference in the loss of conscious between it and Jewish/Muslim methods is only a few seconds. If they are truly concerned with animal rights, why are they not banning definite malpractices, such as force-feeding of calves, or cooping up chickens in tiny crates, or transporting animals long distances in highly unpleasant conditions. These are not only obvious examples of cruelty, but affect far more animals. Why not start with these? It is worth noting, of course, that any form of slaughter involves a certain degree of suffering, with even the act of animals being herded in the abattoir causing panic at the smell and noise they encounter. I suspect that if most meat eaters spent just five minutes watching how their food is obtained, they might abstain from eating it that day, if not permanently. In fact, for centuries, long before it became popular in the West, Judaism has regarded vegetarianism as a respectable option. Meat is permitted for those who so wish, but with the condition that the killing has to be done humanely. Pre-stunning may one day become the best way, but it has not yet superseded the religious method, and so banning it is premature. Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue and author of Confessions of a Rabbi (Biteback) Investigations are continuing into both seizures Two dozen kilos of cannabis have been seized by authorities in separate operations. The first took place in Dublin Port when Customs officials found 16 kilos of herbal cannabis, estimated to be worth about 320,000 euro, in a container that had come off a boat from Spain. The cargo was labelled mixed goods and the unit had been profiled for X-ray scans. In the second, eight kilos of the same drug, estimated to have a street value of about 160,000 euro, was found in Dublin Airport by Customs officers and their detector dog Scooby. The illicit cargo had also arrived in Ireland from Spain. Investigations are continuing into both seizures, a Revenue spokeswoman said. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has claimed the Government is playing "catch-up" on Brexit. He argued in the Dail there was no evidence of the Government seriously engaging with Brexit until after the referendum. Mr Martin warned that core strengths Ireland has built up over decades won't be enough to avoid dramatic economic disruption. He said the Government needed to move from general statements to specific proposals, adding: "Too much time has already been wasted." He made the criticisms after Taoiseach Enda Kenny briefed the Dail on the upcoming negotiations for the UK leaving the European Union. The Government has repeatedly insisted that preparations for a potential Brexit began long before the 2016 referendum. In his earlier statement to the House, Mr Kenny said the Government had been preparing thoroughly for Brexit for more than two years. European Parliaments Agricultural Committee has voted to support the introduction of a Voluntary Milk Reduction Scheme as part of the policy toolbox or permanent crisis instrument to be deployed in the event of price falling below an agreed level. The news has been welcomed by the ICMSA President John Comer who said that there was little doubt but that the introduction of the scheme late last year had been a decisive factor in bringing the 2015/2016 milk price collapse to an end and initiating the slow process - still ongoing, he noted of returning farmer milk price to a sustainable level. Efforts are continuing to bring a fire at one of the biggest forests in the country under control in Co Galway. Officials from Coillte and fire crews monitored the massive forest and bogland fire across a vast expanse of Connemara throughout the night. Coillte staff and fire services have been on site since 5.30am and civilian and army corps helicopters have been carrying out water drops since early this morning. Army personnel have been mobilised to assist in brashing, as the focus of this mornings activity is to control the fires on a number of fronts including fire events in the proximity of the 169MW Galway Wind Park construction site. Gardai in Galway have asked members of the public to refrain from entering the Cloosh Valley area. It has said persons and vehicles entering the area are posing difficulty for the Emergency Services. In particular the Seanafeastin Road should be avoided except for Emergency vehicles and local residents as it is dangerous to enter and there is a possibility of becoming trapped. Expand Close Sean Kelly fights the blaze in the Cloosh Valley in Connemara, Co Galway. Photo: Andrew Downes / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sean Kelly fights the blaze in the Cloosh Valley in Connemara, Co Galway. Photo: Andrew Downes Over 1,500 hectares of forestry and 2,000 hectares of bog land have been destroyed in the fire to date. While the cause of the fire at Cloosh Valley has yet to be definitively established, Coillte says that it is believed that the fire originated from deliberately set gorse fires, which subsequently spread onto Coillte owned forestry and the Galway Wind Park site. Fire crews, who were aided by local farmers in addition to Coillte officials and two Aer Corps helicopters, managed to get a substantial part of the fire on the 4,000-hectare forest under control yesterday. But a combination of swirling winds, tinder-dry vegetation and warm temperatures combined to see the fire go out of control again by yesterday evening. By then tens of thousands of litres of water had been doused on the wildfire by a Coillte aircraft and the two Aer Corps helicopters, which dropped 1,200 litres of water at a time from their Bambi-buckets. Read More Plumes of smoke could be seen in a vast area from Oughterard to Spiddal, while the increasingly strong winds resulted in the smoke drifting 30km away to Galway city and Salthill by late yesterday evening, blocking out the evening sunshine in a cloud of dense smog. Earlier in the afternoon, the smoke was blowing in the opposite direction, westward and south to Roundstone and Ballyconneely. The damage has been estimated by Coillte at millions of euro and it will take years to replace. Many of the trees destroyed were 20 years old. The main priority for fire fighters last night was to ensure that the fire did not spread to houses and other dwellings in areas such as Seanafeistin and Costello. Kevin Tracey of Galway Fire Service said pockets of the fire kept breaking out during the day. "The wind direction kept changing so all we could do was stop it at the roads, stop it crossing and getting to houses and property," he said. Farmers and other bog-owners joined in the battle to put out the fire, surveying the damage. "It's a huge danger to wildlife and other animals and you'd hate to think of them being hurt," said Costello resident Seamus MacDonnacha. Sheep wandering the road is a familiar site throughout Connemara, with their fleeces making them particularly vulnerable. "They tend to know how to stay ahead of the fire but you'd fear other animals mightn't be as lucky," he added. The forest had provided plenty of employment over the years and Oughterard resident Seamus Geoghegan, who found work in the Cloosh Valley forest when he returned from England, lamented the loss of the trees he had helped plant. "It's heart-breaking to see the trees gone like that after years planting them," he remarked. Micheal Lynch from Leitir Mor said: "It's destroyed, gone, millions of euros worth of trees gone." Last year Derek O'Connor conducted a series of one-day training courses for up-and-coming young jockeys and these are taking place once again throughout May, with the next one scheduled for tomorrow. Delivered by the Racing Academy and Centre of Education (RACE) in Kildare, and co-ordinated by several of RACE's leading instructors, the objective of this course is to improve the technical and tactical riding skills of qualified riders. It also emphasises the importance of fitness and race-riding preparation. "There are so many young jockeys starting out and it's important that they get some extra grounding for the point-to-point circuit, especially," says Derek. Even riders at the top of their game can make mistakes and face the stewards on any given day. Rules in racing are there to protect all and Derek stresses that in order to succeed, these young jockeys really need to be fully up to speed when it comes to race tactics and common sense. With regard to the amount of young jockeys on the Irish racing scene, Derek believes that more could be done to keep them in Ireland. "We have some fantastic young jockeys here in Ireland, especially females, but so many others have left here for opportunities abroad. Ideally if we had more races for these youngsters it would encourage them to stay at home." In a bid to further strengthen relationships with jockeys in the UK, in the coming weeks Derek will team up with another former champion in Jamie Codd, in addition to current leading rider Barry O'Neill and Noel McParlan for the annual Bicester Office Park Anglo-Irish Point-to-Point Challenge. This takes place at Kingston Blount in Oxfordshire on Friday, May 26. The riders will compete in four races - two for men and two for women - twice the number of previous years. This will be the fifth year the challenge has taken place, with Great Britain having won on the previous four occasions, including in Co Cork last year. Meeting chairman Rodney Mann commented: "It is really good to see the top point-to-point amateurs in Ireland coming over and it will be a pleasure to welcome them to Kingston Blount. We expect to see some very competitive racing." Stan McCarthy of Kerry Group joins the board of Ryanair Outgoing Kerry Group CEO Stan McCarthy is to join the board of Ryanair. Mr McCarthy will assume the non-executive role at the end of the month, as the airline releases full-year results. Shareholders will get to vote on his appointment at the company's annual general meeting in September. Mr McCarthy is stepping down as CEO of Kerry Group at the end of September. Ryanair's other non-executive board members include chairman David Bonderman, former EU Commissioner and finance minister Charlie McCreevy and PayPal executive Louise Phelan. Former Ryanair executives Howard Millar and Michael Cawley are also non-executive board members. Mr Bonderman said he believed Mr McCarthy will be a "significant and valuable addition" to the Ryanair board. Meanwhile, Ryanair announced yesterday that it's opening a third travel lab, which will be located in Madrid. The digital and IT innovation hub will employ 250 people. Ryanair already has labs in Dublin and Wroclaw, Poland. Ryanair chief technology officer John Hurley said that Madrid is a major tech city and home to some of Europe's biggest tech innovators. Ryanair has invested heavily in its labs division over the past couple of years, hiring hundreds of staff to develop its app and website. Kerry Group CEO Stan McCarthy is to join the Ryanair board Shareholders in Grafton Group have overwhelmingly endorsed the company's pay and incentive structure for directors including CEO Gavin Slark. At the company's annual general meeting in Dublin yesterday, 96.9pc of votes cast were in favour of its new remuneration policy. The outcome was despite the influential UK shareholder advisory group PIRC last month criticising plans to increase the amount that Mr Slark and other key management can earn under Grafton's long-term incentive plan. Grafton was the latest Irish firm to come under the spotlight of shareholder advisory groups. PIRC had also argued that the change in Mr Slark's total pay over the past five years was "not commensurate" with the total change in the company's total shareholder return on the same period. But Mr Slark's increased 30pc between 2012 and 2015, while the total shareholder return in the same period was 300pc. At the annual general meeting, 99.5pc of votes cast endorsed Grafton's remuneration report. Grafton Group reported a strong start to the year, with revenues up 7.7pc to 851m (1bn) and by 6.1pc on a like-for-like basis in the first four months of the year. It warned that prospects in the UK remain highly uncertain given political and economic developments there. But it said that its UK merchanting business performed well in the first four months, with revenue rising 2.5pc in the period. Average daily like-for-like store growth was up 4.8pc. Grafton said its UK merchanting arm benefited from measures designed to improve profitability, including a restructuring plan implemented late last year. Grafton noted that its merchanting business in Ireland continued to outperform in what it said was a strong market. "The recovery in construction activity was broadly based with positive demand trends in both residential and non-residential markets," it said. Permanent TSB is expected to show a small increase in its share of the mortgage market today as the partially-nationalised lender releases first-quarter figures ahead of its annual general meeting in Dublin. After a painful period of restructuring, the bank has begun a renewed push for growth but its efforts to regain territory face intense competition from resurgent rivals. PTSB's market share fell to 9.3pc in 2016 from 9.5pc in 2015. Chief executive Jeremy Masding acknowledged the weaker performance earlier this year, when the bank reported its annual results but argued the "turnaround story" had hampered growth. Now that PTSB has concluded its restructuring phase, investors are keen to see evidence the bank is gaining traction in the rapidly-expanding mortgage market. The Irish Independent understands the bank, which remains 75pc owned by the taxpayer, will show marginal progress on this front. Others are more sceptical. Eamonn Hughes, an analyst with Goodbody Stockbrokers, argued the lender should aim for a market share of 12-12.5pc over the next two years, given the relatively strong performance from the larger banks. But in a report published yesterday he predicted PTSB's foothold on the market is likely to come under pressure given industry-wide mortgage drawdowns for the first three months of the year rose by 39pc or 1.39bn, compared to the same period in 2016. He said PTSB "must approach or beat" that figure to "hold its own". Analysts are also pencilling in an improvement on a key profit measure, with last year's sale of the non-core UK loan books expected to deliver a higher net interest margin. Investec is forecasting net interest margin (NIM) - the difference between what PTSB receives on lending and what it pays out on savings - will reach 1.7pc to 1.75pc in the first quarter. For the full year it expects NIM to hit 1.77pc - below rivals but a significant improvement on its 2016 number of 1.46pc. While PTSB's AGM last year was dominated by anger over the tracker mortgage debacle - an issue that has bedevilled the bank in recent years. Stubbornly high levels of bad loans may dominate proceedings this year. Analysts are predicting a decline of 200m to 300m on the bank's 5.9bn non-perfoming loans over the first quarter, although Masding is likely to remain tight-lipped on the bank's final clean-up strategy. Investors may draw comfort from the easing of another sources of anxiety - the level of provision for the tracker mortgages scandal, which Invstec describes as sufficient. The bank's share prices of 2.50 remains well below its listing price of 4.50. A new artificial intelligence service has been launched to help female entrepreneurs find resources and advice to grow businesses. Hello Alice is aimed specifically at women entrepreneurs and was developed by Circular Board with Dell and Dell-owned Pivotal. Under 3pc of venture capital goes to female entrepreneurs, said Elizabeth Gore, Dells entrepreneur-in-residence. We can change this together. The system, available at HelloAlice.com, is designed to source expert help on issues such as recruitment, funding, pitching and other issues facing young businesses. Only 2pc of women entrepreneurs have reached more than $1m in revenue, said Ms Gore. Alice and her partners will work to flip this stat to 98pc. Ms Gore was speaking at Dell EMC World, the tech giants annual conference with over 13,000 registered attendees. Expand Close Elizabeth Gore, entrepreneur on residence, Dell / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Elizabeth Gore, entrepreneur on residence, Dell In Ireland, a tiny proportion of available private venture capital funding goes to female founders. A recent analysis by the Irish Independent showed that under 3pc of tech venture capital in Ireland goes to companies led by women, with the average individual investment ten times less than for male-run firms, an Irish Independent investigation shows. And while almost one in eight VC-funded tech firms here has a female co-founder, only one in 20 has a female chief executive. Read More Despite rising numbers of female tech founders in Ireland, the research shows a lack of female participation in top executive roles. According to 2016 figures last year, two-thirds of the tech companies founded or co-founded by women also choose a male chief executive to run the business. The current startup ecosystem continues to cycle resources among a very small percentage of well-connected entrepreneurs, making it difficult for less traditional founders to navigate," Carolyn Rodz, founder and chief executive of Circular Board, the company that initiated Hello Alice. "Alice instantly filters millions of resources down to the personalised, verified content that enables founders to scale to the highest heights, no matter where they are located or who they know. Driven by data analytics, Alice is a virtual advisor that connects women entrepreneurs in real time with the resources needed to scale based on startup stage, location, industry, revenue and individual needs. As this system fills out, machine learning allows it to predict founders' needs to guide them to referrals, events, mentors and access points to capital and ecosystems. Features offered by the system include a conversational user interface to express different areas where the entrepreneurs need help, such as financing, legal assistance, marketing or technology. The system adopts machine learning based on user input and offers personalised dashboards with real-time modules based on user activity. Expand Close Caroline Rodz, founder and chief executive of Circular Board / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Caroline Rodz, founder and chief executive of Circular Board Read More It has user profiles with data collection capabilities for personal and company demographics and search pages with stored results that sort and filter by location, industry, annual revenue, employee count, years in business and content publication source. "Alice is a female founder's best mentor, guide and consultant, said Ms Rodz. In 2016, Ms Rodzs company approached Dell with an idea to disrupt the startup world by building a new ecosystem for women founders. Dell took the project on. "We're always looking for ways to bring entrepreneurs the best technology solutions to help empower them in the new world of digital transformation," said Karen Quintos, Dells chief customer officer and a senior Vice President at the company. "Through the power of the Dell Technologies network and the expertise of the Circular Board, we're driving innovation to help women entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level." Circular Board has already helped 250 founders raise a total of over 25m in capital through the first virtual accelerator for women entrepreneurs. It has also built a community of more than 13,000 female founders around the world. The battle for control of Dulux paint maker AkzoNobel escalated after activist investor Elliott Advisors asked a Dutch court to back its bid to oust the chairman over his refusal to negotiate with US suitor PPG Industries. Elliott asked the Enterprise Chamber of the Netherlands - a specialist division of the Dutch courts that deals with shareholder disputes - to enforce its request for a vote on firing chairman Antony Burgmans, who the New York-based hedge fund claimed in a statement Tuesday is in "flagrant breach" of his duties to investors for rebuffing PPG's third takeover offer worth about 27bn. In response, the Amsterdam-based company reiterated its support for Mr Burgmans and said he has played a crucial role in evaluating and rejecting PPG's latest bid. The company doesn't see how the dismissal of the chairman would benefit AkzoNobel or its shareholders in any way, a spokesman said by phone. The move by Elliott came a day after AkzoNobel rejected PPG's latest takeover bid, raising the prospect that the US rival will go hostile with its offer for the coating and chemical company. After taking two weeks to evaluate the sweetened proposal, AkzoNobel said it's flawed and riddled with risk, defying pressure from shareholders including Elliott and Causeway Capital Management LLC to negotiate. A spokesman for the Enterprise Chamber confirmed it received Elliott's petition on Monday. The court in central Amsterdam handles corporate disputes and its rulings are binding. At the crux of the case is AkzoNobel's refusal last month to call an extraordinary shareholders' meeting requested by Elliott and other shareholders to vote on the chairman's ouster. Elliott is leading a campaign to push AkzoNobel to enter talks with PPG, a move the fiercely independent Dutch company has rejected with the backing of the government in the Netherlands and labour unions. Elliott contends that under Dutch law, AkzoNobel investors have the right to request a vote on the chairman's dismissal at a special meeting. AkzoNobel has said such as move would go against the spirit of the law and would be "irresponsible, disproportionate, damaging and not in the best interests of the company." AkzoNobel has said Dutch law allows its board to refuse to put a motion before shareholders for a vote for a number of reasons including if the motion is aimed at changing strategy or goes against "reasonableness and fairness". PPG has threatened to take the offer directly to investors, and is reviewing its response to Akzo's rebuff. The Dutch company has said it wants to carry out a breakup strategy to create two companies focused on chemicals and coatings. AkzoNobel shares rose 0.2 percent to 77 in Amsterdam. (Bloomberg) Energy groups E.ON and EnBW are tearing down their nuclear plants at massive cost following Germany's decision to abandon nuclear power by 2022, but they are seeking to turn a burden into business by exporting their new-found dismantling skills. Germany is the only country in the world to dump the technology as a direct consequence of Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011, a decision that came as a major blow to the two energy firms which had owned most of Germany's 17 operational nuclear stations. E.ON and EnBW have already shut down five plants between them and must close another five by 2022. Not only are they losing a major profit driver - a station could earn 1m a day - but are also facing combined decommissioning costs of around 17bn. This tough new reality has nonetheless forced them to rapidly acquire expertise in the lengthy and complex process of dismantling nuclear plants - presenting an unlikely but potentially lucrative business opportunity in a world where dozens of reactors are set to be closed over the next 25 years. EnBW formed its plant decommissioning division following the Fukushima disaster and it has about 500 staff. More recently, the division launched a consultancy service aimed at pitching for external work, including internationally. A source familiar with the matter said that the group had advised all three Swiss nuclear plants operators - BKW Energie, Axpo and Alpiq - in dismantling projects last year and was still actively working for one of them. E.ON and EnBW, which both regard decommissioning as a growth business, did not give figures for their decommissioning division's financial performance or targets, saying they did not break them out from the wider group. E.ON and EnBW are, however, entering a crowded global market where they will have to compete with bigger rivals including market leader Areva, which has a 5,000-strong decommissioning team, privately-held Bechtel, Aecom and Fluor. With US nuclear services provider Westinghouse's Chapter 11 filing in March hitting one of the biggest names in the sector, all of the players are hoping to increase their slice of the action. The International Energy Agency reckons that about 150 gigawatts of nuclear capacity, more than a third of the world's total, will be retired by 2040, with Europe accounting for the bulk at more than 40pc. "Within the next few decades, the majority of nuclear plants currently in operation will approach the end of their useful lives, requiring either refurbishment or decommissioning," said Randy Wotring, president of Technical and Operational Services at US-based Aecom. The market for nuclear-decommissioning services is expected to nearly double to 8.6bn by 2021, from 4.8bn last year, according to research company MarketsandMarkets. But only about a quarter is being outsourced by utilities, which prefer to keep much of the dismantling work in-house, industry sources told Reuters. Based on current estimates from plant operators and consultancy Callan Associates, the average cost of dismantling a nuclear plant with a capacity of about 1 gigawatt is up to 800m over 10 to 40 years. (Reuters) Actors Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard delighted patients, families and staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital with a surprise visit. The Guardians Of The Galaxy star said it was a tremendous pleasure to make some new friends at the London childrens hospital. He shared a photo of the pair meeting young fan Elle on Tuesday on Instagram, with the heartfelt caption: Bryce and I had the tremendous pleasure of spending some time with our new buddy Elle and a few other patients at Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital in London. 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 Ill never fail to be moved by the unbreakable spirit of a child. #godisgood Psalm 107:8-9 Let them praise the LORD for his loving kindness, for his wonderful deeds to the children of men! For he satisfies the longing soul. He fills the hungry soul with good. No doubt. Today my longing and hungry soul is filled. He also posed for a picture with employees, adding the special tribute: Huge shout out to the loving staffThank you for all that you do!!! #angels 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 Gold star Bryce also thanked the staff for their warm welcome 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 who thanked them back for a very special day on the ward. Video of the Day Irish actor Jamie Dornan is set to star in a new HBO film, alongside Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage. Emmy-award winning actor Dinklage has just secured his first post-Game of Thrones role. The 47-year-old actor, who plays Tyrion Lannister in the epic fantasy series, is teaming up with the Fifty Shades Darker star for a TV film that has just been greenlit by HBO, although no premiere date has yet been announced. My Dinner With Herve, follows the story of the real life of French actor Herve Villechaize, who starred in 70s TV series Fantasy Island, and who killed himself at 50 in 1993. Expand Close Cast member Peter Dinklage attends the premiere for the sixth season of HBO's "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles April 10, 2016. REUTERS/Phil McCarten / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cast member Peter Dinklage attends the premiere for the sixth season of HBO's "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles April 10, 2016. REUTERS/Phil McCarten Dornan will play struggling journalist Danny Tate, who has a life-changing encounter with Villechaize when the pair meet up during a wild night in LA. Sacha Gervasi (Hitchcock), will direct the project and Dinklage will star as executive producer. Meanwhile, Dornan is lined up to star in a movie based on the biggest prison break in Irish or British history. He'll team up with his Anthropoid co-star Cillian Murphy and Navan actor Pierce Brosnan for the movie H-Block, which follows the story of the 38 republican inmates who fled the maximum security Maze Prison in 1983. Expand Close Herve Villechaize / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Herve Villechaize Dornan will play a violent prisoner who starts discovering weaknesses in the prison and is one of the last to agree to escape and when he does he leaves with a vengeance on the way out. Maze is currently in post-production and its makers were accused of "romanticising the violence" of the breakout. Expand Close Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan at the Irish Premiere of Anthropoid at Cineworld, Dublin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan at the Irish Premiere of Anthropoid at Cineworld, Dublin Adam Clayton (left) and The Edge from U2 playing at Croke Park in Dublin in 2008 Photo: Julien Behal/PA Wire Ticketmaster has objected to the possible legislation to govern the sale of tickets on the secondary market. Sinn Fein TD Maurice Quinlivan has put forward a Bill that would see those who resell tickets at inflated prices face fines of up to 5000 if they are found to be in breach of the 10 percent profit limit. Aiken Promotions and the GAA have supported the Bill, which the Government has said it will not oppose, but Ticketmaster and Seatwave have criticised the proposed legislation. This follows the controversy around the number of high-profile concerts taking place in Ireland this year that have sold out in record time, before appearing on secondary ticketing websites for inflated prices. However, in a submission sent to the Government as part of a public consultation, Ticketmaster said that the issue around ticket resales has been exaggerated by the Irish media. In its statement, it said there's "no evidence to support the view that any of our clients are placing tickets directly onto the resale market. Expand Close Tickets for Ed Sheeran's 3Arena gig sold out in record time. Photo: Damien Eagers / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Tickets for Ed Sheeran's 3Arena gig sold out in record time. Photo: Damien Eagers "Our data shows that less than one percent of the tickets that Ticketmaster Ireland sells on behalf of its clients are subsequently resold - a vastly different story to what is told in the Irish press." It also argued that "the media frenzy around ticket resale has only served to confuse the public and sensationalise the issue." Seatwave, a secondary ticketing website that charges sellers a 10 percent commission, also outlined its apprehension about the Bill. The company which is owned by Ticketmaster, argued that the proposed legislation will push the problem onto the black market. The submission stated: "In Ireland, the ticket resale market used to take place underground or offshore - out of reach of any consumer protection. "There is often rhetoric in the media that the resale market is broken, but this is not the case. The resale market is an example of an efficient market with ticket prices clearing at their market level. Video of the Day "Event organisers can look to the resale market to give them an indication of how they should be pricing their tickets." The Bill will be debated this Thursday. A similar Bill was introduced in January by Fine Gael TD Noel Rock but a glitch in his total ban on online ticket resales would have penalised ordinary people and blocked them from selling tickets to family and friends through social media if they were unable to attend the event. Meanwhile, the issue around ticket touting continues to leave many Irish music fans disappointed. It took just minutes for the majority of tickets for U2's Croke Park gig in July to be snapped up when they went on sale in January and it wasn't long before they appeared for sale on secondary sites in excess of 2,000. It was a similar story for sold-out concerts and festivals, including Ed Sheeran, Eddie Vedder, Electric Picnic and more. A spokesperson for Ticketmaster declined to comment and said the "submission speaks for itself". Italian trance producer Robert Miles, whose real name was Robert Concina, has passed away aged just 47. The artist, who was born in Switzerland but lived in Italy, was best known for his track, 'Children', which was released in 1995 and hit number one in 12 countries around the world. It featured on his debut Dreamland album which also spawned tracks One and One and Fable. In more recent years he produced and opened a Balearic radio station. Italian magazine DJ Mag Italia reported the news of his death, stating he passed away from an unreported illness. "The tragic news of the death of a very talented artist of our time, makes me incredulous and upset, said his friend, Joe T Vannelli. I will miss the fights, brawls, criticism, judgements but especially your talent in finding sounds and melodies unparalleled." 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 Tributes have been pouring in: 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 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 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 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 Video of the Day 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 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 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 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 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 An Estonian man charged with conspiracy to murder a friend of the Hutch family has been further remanded in custody. Gardai from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau supported by members of the Special Crime Task Force, Emergency Response Unit and Armed Support Unit raided a premises in west Dublin on the morning of April 4. Three men were arrested as part of an investigation into the Hutch-Kinahan feud. Imre Arakas (58), with an address at Sopruse, Tallinn, Estonia, was charged on April 6 last and then remanded in custody. He is accused of conspiring with others not before the courts to murder James Gately in Northern Ireland between April 3 and April 4. The offence is under Section 71 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006. He faced his fourth hearing on Wednesday when he appeared at Cloverhill District Court. Judge Victor Blake further remanded him in custody to appear again on May 24 next. He has not yet indicated how he will plead to the charge. Expand Close James Gately / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp James Gately At his first hearing, on April 6, a court was told he made no reply to the charge and due to the nature of the charge a bail application could only be made in the High Court. Directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) have been sought. Legal aid was allowed following submissions that he was unemployed and unable to pay a lawyer. The other two other men arrested in connection with this investigation have been released from Garda custody without charge. A file is being prepared for the DPP. A man charged with killing a man told gardai: "Im so, so sorry he passed away, I was only trying to defend myself". Christopher Fitzgerald, a 34-year-old father, suffered serious injuries following an incident in Swords, in north Co. Dublin in the early hours of Sunday morning. Emergency services were called to the scene where Mr Fitzgerald was being attended to by night club staff. Fitzgerald, originally from Dublin but living in Drogheda, Co Louth, was then rushed to Beaumont Hospital where he later died. The scene of the attack was sealed off pending a forensic examination while gardai appealed for information. The accused, Daniel Fitzgerald (33) from Whitestown Avenue, Blanchardstown, Dublin, was arrested and detained at Swords Garda Station under the provisions of Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984. He was charged on Wednesday at 3.55pm with the unlawful killing of Christopher Fitzgerald at Airside Business Park on May 7. He was then brought to appear before Judge Michael Walsh at Dublin District Court. Detective Sergeant Ian Brunton told the court that Daniel Fitzgerald was handed a true copy of the manslaughter charge and he replied: Im so, so sorry he passed away, I was only trying to defend myself. Read More Det Sergeant Brunton told the court that there was consent to bail with certain conditions including a minimum 5,000 independent surety. The defendants solicitor said that with such short notice his client's family were not in a position to get the amount sought by the garda but had come to court with 2,000. Det Sergeant Brunton said that he had numerous concerns that Daniel Fitzgerald was a flight risk and 2,000 had been found in his bedroom. He said he was wondering if it was the same 2,000 that had been brought to court. The accuseds solicitor asked the judge to note that in principle there was no objection to bail and it was appreciated that it was a serious charge but Daniel Fitzgerald has a defence which will be born out in due course. Judge Walsh set bail in his own bond of 250 with a 7,500 independent surety which has to be approved. He also said that instead of the independent surety the court would accept a 5,000 cash lodgement instead. Read More Daniel Fitzgerald, who was wearing a black jumper, blue jeans and red runners, remained seated during the hearing and did not address the court. He was remanded in custody with consent to bail to appear again at the same court on Friday. Judge Walsh agreed to impose the other bail conditions sought by Det Sergeant Brunton. The accused was told that he cannot have any contact directly or indirectly with prosecution witnesses, he has to sign on every Tuesday and Thursday at Blanchardstown Garda station, surrender his passport and not apply for a duplicate or any other travel documents and that any change of address has to be approved by Det Sergeant Brunton. His solicitor Donough Molloy deferred making an application for legal aid. A retired teacher was jailed for a year for sexually assaulting a nine-year-old former pupil who described the abuse as leaving him enduring "a living hell". Leo Hickey (77) was jailed as Judge Sean O'Donnabhain told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that Hickey's acts were "disgraceful". "He took advantage of a very young and impressionable boy. This was a substantial breach of trust," he warned. Judge O'Donnabhain imposed a three-year prison sentence but agreed to suspend the final two years in light of Hickey's advanced age and health issues. The retired primary school teacher was convicted last February on eight counts of sexually assaulting former student Daniel Kelleher in a Cork primary school in 1991 and 1992. Last February, complainant Daniel Kelleher (34) waived his right to anonymity. Expand Close Don Kelleher, a childhood victim of teacher Leo Hickey, speaking after Hickey was sentenced yesterday. Photo: Provision / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Don Kelleher, a childhood victim of teacher Leo Hickey, speaking after Hickey was sentenced yesterday. Photo: Provision In a victim impact statement read out on his behalf, Mr Kelleher of Ballincollig, Co Cork, said the abuse had change the entire course of his life. "I put on a tough exterior but inside I was crying over my dirty secret," he said. "I went off track in my life. I had a disdain for authority. I felt so ashamed (over what happened). It had a devastating effect on me." Mr Kelleher said he wished Hickey of Realt na Mara, Skevanish, Innishannon, Co Cork had admitted the incidents so as not to force him to relive what happened during the trial. John Devlin BL, for Hickey, said his client was someone of "national notoriety" because of a previous conviction. Hickey was jailed for three years in June 1998 after he pleaded guilty abusing 21 girls at Dunderrow National School between 1964 and 1973. One of those he abused was Louise O'Keeffe, who later took a successful action against the State to the European Court of Human Rights. Last night, Ms O'Keeffe called for a full investigation into Hickey's move between the national schools in Dunderrow and Ballincollig. "The damage that was done to young boys and young girls inside in national schools should never have happened," she said. A senior garda said he called for backup to the Jobstown water charge protest because he was "concerned for the safety" of then-Tanaiste Joan Burton as she attended a graduation ceremony in a church. Detective Inspector Derek Maguire said he realised he needed extra resources after the Tanaiste had been confronted by protesters as she made her way to the ceremony. He was giving evidence while video footage of the protest was played to the jury as the prosecutions case against Paul Murphy TD and six other men continued today. The seven allegedly falsely imprisoned Ms Burton and her advisor Karen OConnell in cars they were taken to after the events in the footage. Mr Murphy (34), south Dublin councillors Michael Murphy (53) and Kieran Mahon (39) and the four other men all deny the charges. Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard the incident happened at Fortunestown Road, Jobstown, Tallaght on November 15, 2014 after an adult education graduation ceremony. Several video clips were played back to the jury, with De Insp Maguire commenting on what was happening. The footage in the first video showed the procession of graduates emerging from An Cosain, turning left onto the Fortunestown Road and walking toward the gates of the church. Initially, people were heard chanting out, out out and traitor, traitor, traitor, then applause began as the graduates walked out. As the procession travelled down the road, a group of men and women and some children were seen to walk alongside Joan Burton and others. Many were carrying placards, booing and shouting shame on you. Insp Derek Maguire identified himself in the video to the jury. Padraid Dwyer SC, representing Frank Donaghy, then addressed the jury saying he was making an admission of fact that Mr Donaghy was visible in the footage. He added that it was not alleged that Ms Burton or Ms OConnell were falsely imprisoned at this point - that was alleged to have happened elsewhere. The clip continued, with protesters heard shouting Bitch - answer the question. CCTV footage of the outside of the church was played and Det Insp Maguire explained that the conferring ceremony was taking place inside. At this point, he said, he made contact with Tallaght Garda Station. I was concerned for the safety of the Tanaiste and the people there in the ceremony and members of An Garda Siochana, he told the jury. So I needed to get extra resources there, I needed to get more garda members to the scene. Several people carrying placards were seen moving around the side of the building. An unmarked garda Toyota Avensis was seen arriving from Tallaght Station. At 1.46pm on the video, Det Insp Maguire said the side door of the church was opened and four people were seen going to the car - two gardai, Ms Burton and Ms OConnell. A large crowd of people surround the back of the car, holding placards and banging on the car, he said. More and more people are coming to the back of the car. Det Insp Maguire said gardai were then seen providing a human cordon around the car. The other four accused are Frank Donaghy (71) of Alpine Rise, Tallaght, Ken Purcell (50) of Kiltalown Green, Michael Banks (46) of Brookview Green and Scott Masterson (34) of Carrigmore Drive, all in Tallaght. The trial continues before a jury and Judge Melanie Greally. This program has been launched in Vietnam (in Hanoi, the northern port city of Hai Phong and the northern province of Hung Yen) since 2016, boosting the Vietnam-Japan relation. The first trip took place at the same time last year. Ten Vietnamese teenagers to attend friendship visit to Japan in 2017 (Source: CPV) Continuing with annual plan, in 2017, the second trip offers ten Vietnamese pupils the chance to approach Japan culture in reality and become more independent and active in life. They are all at grade 7 or grade 8, healthy, sociable, in normal conditional family, hardly have chance to study oversea without the program. The trip is scheduled to take place from August 1st to 7th./. An uninsured driver who led gardai on a high speed chase because he panicked has avoided a custodial sentence. Josh Redmond (20), who had no licence or insurance, had just purchased the car but was told by his mother to return it. He was on his way to do this when he encountered gardai and panicked. Redmond, of Dunedin Close, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to endangerment, dangerous driving and driving without insurance at locations in the Dun Laoghaire area on June 7, 2016. He has no previous convictions. Judge Karen O'Connor said she considered it to be an aggravating factor that this had occurred in the early afternoon when roads and pavements tend to be busy. She told him his conduct had been extremely dangerous and he had put the public and gardai at risk. Judge O'Connor told him he was very lucky to have a supportive family and a mother who was ensuring he stayed on the straight and narrow. She noted there was a positive probation report before the court. She imposed an 18 month sentence which she suspended in full and disqualified him from driving for two years. Garda Ian Cummins told Fionnuala O'Sullivan BL, prosecuting, that the Renault Megane driven by Redmond took off at speed after his patrol car drove behind it at Rochestown Park. He said during the pursuit Redmond drove above 100 kilometres per hour on a road where there was a speed limit of 50kmph. The car overtook and undertook other vehicles in a dangerous manner and broke traffic lights. Gda Cummins said a pedestrian had to jump out of the car's path and the patrol car was also forced to take evasion action to avoid being hit as the car was swerving from side to side. He said the car came to a stop at Mackintosh Park estate after getting jammed between poles designed to stop vehicles from crossing a bridge. Redmond was arrested following a foot chase and told gardai: I am sorry, I panicked. He admitted he did not have a driving licence or insurance. Barry Ward BL, defending, said Redmond had bought the car that evening but had been told by his mother to return it to its previous owner. He said he was on his way to do this when he encountered the gardai and panicked. He said Redmond was working and had a supportive family environment. He said this appeared to be a step out from normal behaviour. He said his client was not an experienced driver and had shown a staggering lack of judgement. Some 27,000 households have been urged to conserve water in parts of Donegal, north Galway and Westmeath due to a lack of rainfall over recent months. Irish Water has urged households and businesses to reduce consumption where possible because rainfall levels are way below monthly averages. Met Eireann has said April was "exceptionally dry", and while March was wet, rainfall was below average in February and January. Last autumn was also below average. Some of the towns affected by shortages include Mullingar and Moate, Co Westmeath, Ramelton, Co Donegal, and Mountbellew, Co Galway. In all, more than 3,000 households are affected in Galway, 3,700 in Donegal and more than 20,000 in Co Westmeath. Businesses, including the hospitality trade, are also being urged to reduce consumption. The warnings to conserve water come due to a lack of rainfall, which has also impacted on water levels in reservoirs. Irish Water said any period of prolonged dry weather could potentially impact on the volumes of raw water sourced from lakes, rivers and boreholes available for treatment. It added that reservoir levels were being closely monitored. "Overall, the current supply situation is sustainable but Irish Water and the local authorities are continuing to monitor and manage the situation on a daily basis," the utility said. "Consumers have been advised in small pockets, including parts of Donegal, north Galway and Westmeath, to conserve water. Production can be increased in non-affected areas where capacity allows to safeguard storage levels in the affected reservoirs. "If water levels at a source are dropping and there is a concern about the ability of that plant to provide sufficient treated water, Irish Water with the local authority will look into options for the at-risk water supply." Among the areas affected include the Aran Islands, where water is at a "historically low" level for this time of year. Night-time restrictions affecting around 250 people on Inis Oirr have been in place since Monday. The company is planning to build two new water storage tanks on Inis Oirr, and tenders are currently being evaluated. Also in Co Galway, households in Williamstown, Mountbellew and Glenamaddy are affected, but no restrictions are in place. In Co Donegal, where April has been the driest in 67 years, consumers connected to the Lough Colm and Lough Fad source are affected. Towns include Milford and Ramelton, Quigley's Point and Redcastle. In Co Westmeath, low water levels in Lough Owel are leading to potential shortages in Mullingar, Kinnegad, Rochfortbridge, Tyrrellspass, Kilbeggan, and Moate. Family and friends of murdered Donegal woman Danielle McLaughlin have donated 5,000 to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust to thank the charity for its assistance. The charity aims to help bereaved families to repatriate the bodies of their loves ones and helped raised thousands of euro to bring Danielle home to Donegal after she was brutally murdered in India. Andrea McLaughlin, Danielle's mother, said: "I Would like to extend my deepest sympathies to Colin and Eithne who also suffered the loss of a loved one overseas..... and to also extend appreciation for their efforts and to everyone involved in the arduous process of repatriating Danielle from India." Ms McLaughlin, who was from Buncrana but had lived in Liverpool before travelling overseas, had been celebrating Holi, a Hindu spring festival, in Palolem, a coastal village in Goa. She left the village late at night and her naked body was found in a nearby field the next day with injuries to her head and face. The investigation into her murder is still ongoing. Expand Close Danielle McLaughlin was murdered while travelling in Goa / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Danielle McLaughlin was murdered while travelling in Goa Christy Duffy, chairman of the fundraising trust 'Truth For Danielle', said their main aim now is to "bring Danielle's killer or killers to justice." "We ourselves have begun local fundraising efforts to assist in the expenses of building a successful legal team both here and in India and are so thankful to all who have donated to date and also to those who have donated their time to help organise the upcoming events. "Both myself, Louise (Mc Menamin secretary of the trust) and the other members of the trust hope to raise as much as we can in an effort to get to the truth of the events leading up to the tragic death of our dear friend on March 13th." Humming can improve lung function and improve your health in the long run. This discovery is part of research that will be presented at a Los Angeles conference by Leaving Cert student Caolann Brady. Caolann will represent Ireland at the Intel ISEF 2017 conference - the world's largest international pre-college science competition, involving some 1,700 students from over 75 countries competing for a prize fund totalling $4m (4.75m). Caolann secured her place at the international competition when she won the top award, the Science Foundation Ireland Intel ISEF award, at the SciFest 2016 national final last November. Her project focused on the treatment of asthma through humming and breathing techniques. The student at St Wolstan's Community School, Celbridge, Co Kildare, was born with asthma and has suffered many asthma attacks which were treated by nebulisers. This sparked her interest in the area and led to her award-winning project 'Hum your way to better health'. Research has shown that the ventilation of the paranasal sinuses (inhaling and exhaling) increases greatly when a person practised specifically defined humming techniques. Caolann set about exploring whether this was true by conducting a series of experiments with 175 participants. Her results indicated that the prescribed humming technique improves lung function across a range of ages, genders and breathing capabilities by an average of 10pc. "I am very excited to travel to California and to present my work to some of the top STEM professionals in the world," Caolann said. "I am also looking forward to meeting young people from all over the world and seeing the different projects that they are working on." The program has been run annually since 2012 by Visa and the Central Committee of Vietnam Students Association (CCVSA), with support from the State Bank of Vietnam. The launch of the 2017 program comes just after the Vietnamese government announced an upcoming major overhaul of the economy: by 2020, the majority of financial transactions in the country are to be completed electronically. However, according to a recent survey conducted by Visa, only half (51%) of Vietnamese respondents gave themselves a pass (6-10 points) on their knowledge of personal financial management. Photos: Huyen Trang Vietnams economy has been changing rapidly in recent years, with more people now moving into the countrys middle and upper classes. As the Vietnamese government seeks to reshape the economy in the next three years, its vital that consumers have a solid grasp of how to manage their finances -whether its simple things like creating a weekly budget, or more complex issues like taking out a loan for a vehicle or property, said Mr Sean Preston, Visa Country Manager for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The first round kicked off on May 9th and tasks students with telling stories about personal financial management through captioned photos. This could include everything from photos depicting struggles with the weekly shopping list, to not overspending when socializing with friends, to saving money for a holiday. The best 50 entrants will be selected to compete in the second round on September 1st. Exhibitions and financial literacy seminars will be held in six destinations with the largest number of participants. The finalists will stand to win a range of exciting prizes worth up to VND15 million in Visa prepaid cards and two air tickets to Singapore - the biggest financial center in Southeast Asia region. This year, the organizing board also offers opportunity for Vietnamese students that are studying overseas via the CCVSAs network./. A barbeque that fell over is believed by residents to have caused an apartment fire that left people running for their lives. Dublin Fire Brigade were called to the scene at the Verdemont Apartment of the Snugborough Road in Blanchardstown in West Dublin at approximately 5.10pm on Wedensday. Locals living within the complex have claimed that the cause of the fire was due to the flames of a residents barbeque falling into his home on the fourth floor. The blaze quickly spread to the adjoining building causing detrimental damage to the inside. We're attaending a large domestic fire in #Verdemont off the Snugborough Road. 6 pumps, Turntable Ladder and Command Support. #fire pic.twitter.com/biQFNDmXLX Dublin Fire Brigade (@DubFireBrigade) May 10, 2017 Reports have also suggested that the apartments on the bottom floor were damaged by water as the fire services extinguished the flames. Brycen Cluster and his roommate Taylor Thompson from Utah said that their home was one of those destroyed by the blaze. We were living in the flat next door to the apartment that initially caught fire and heard a big bang and kids screaming outside. We then walked to our window and saw the flames. We grabbed our shoes and managed to leave, but sadly didnt manage to take any of our possessions with us. Expand Close Dublin Fire Brigade tend to a fire at the Verdemont apartments in Blanchardstown / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dublin Fire Brigade tend to a fire at the Verdemont apartments in Blanchardstown 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 The two 19 year olds who have been living in Ireland for two years added that a lot of sentimental items have been destroyed. We dont know the extent of the damage yet, but just looking at our apartment from the outside its clear that not much will be saved. We had a lot of family photos and personal things that are now gone. Its still setting in to be honest, but I suppose its out of our control. At this stage and theres nothing you can do. We have to just move on, he said. Christina Farrell, a resident who lived near the affected apartment, said she helped alert her neighbours about the fire. I was getting ready for the gym and when I came outside I saw a man on a balcony trying to put the fire out with a glass of water. I then rang the fire brigade and they asked me what the situation was and how bad it was. They said just alert everyone and get them out I went inside [the burning apartment] and started knocking on doors telling people to evacuate. By the time we got to the top floor there was so much smoke that it was hard to see so we had to get out of there. Dublin Fire Brigade Tweeted photos showing flames and plumes of black smoke coming from the property. DFB captioned the image: Were attending a large domestic fire in #Verdemont off the Snugborough Road. 6 pumps, Turntable Ladder and Command Support. #fire Firefighters are attacking the #fire from a 100ft Turntable Ladder. We advise residents in the #Verdemont area to keep windows closed. There is a water tanker to supplement supplies, a command support vehicle, plus ambulances and the AP car at the #Verdemont fire #fireEMS Motorists have been advised that diversions are in place. A garda spokesman said in a statement: Gardai and other emergency services are currently at the scene of a major fire at the Verdemont apartment block, off the Snugborough Rd in Blanchardstown Dublin 15. A number of significant traffic diversions are in place. Residents have been offered alternative accommodation nearby tonight. President Michael D Higgins will host Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at a private dinner tonight, but when he's not mingling with the Royals, he can be spotted chatting to parrots. Michael D Higgins was recently out for a stroll on the promenade in Salthill, Co Galway when he was pictured having a casual chat with a man and his pet parrot. The picture was taken by Noel McDonagh from Bohermore, who had been out for dinner with his girlfriend. Ireland's president is known to pop up in random environments. #michaelDhiggins it was my image which was the original pic.twitter.com/JVtg48frVj Noel McDonagh (@NoelMcDonagh) May 9, 2017 Last month, a video of him joyously celebrating a last gasp winner by Galway United in the League of Ireland also went viral. While in 2014, a picture of him queueing to use an ATM also made headlines. Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar will strip Fine Gael headquarters of powers in relation to candidate selection if he succeeds Enda Kenny as taoiseach. Mr Varadkar believes party bosses have too much influence in relation to selection conventions, according to senior sources involved in his leadership campaign. Any move to dilute Fine Gael headquarters of some of its control is likely to put Mr Varadkar on a collision course with the party's general secretary Tom Curran. However, the pledge to overhaul the structures within the party will attract significant support among members as the campaign to succeed Mr Kenny steps up a gear. There were several instances prior to the General Election which saw Fine Gael headquarters issue diktats in relation to candidate selection. A number of candidates were also imposed on constituencies in order to ensure Fine Gael met its obligations under the strict gender quota rules. In relation to Mr Varadkar's plans, a senior source in his campaign team said the minister believes there is "too much central control" within Fine Gael and he will pledge to ensure all conventions are fair. The leadership issue continued to dominate discussions among TDs in Leinster House yesterday. However, it is unclear whether Mr Kenny will spell out his intentions at tonight's parliamentary party meeting. Both Mr Varadkar and his main rival Simon Coveney are planning further visits across the country in the coming days in a bid to drum up support. Mr Varadkar is to visit Donegal on Friday, while Mr Coveney is planning to meet councillors and supporters in Galway. Meanwhile, Mr Varadkar yesterday backed the Taoiseach in his decision last week in Canada to dodge questions on when he intends to step aside. Mr Varadkar said domestic issues such as the Fine Gael leadership should not be raised on such overseas visits. "I also think that ministers shouldn't be asked about it domestically because we always get asked about it whether we raise it as an issue or not," Mr Varadkar said. "I think when somebody's representing the country abroad, particularly when the prime minister of another country or the president of the country is standing beside them, I think that as a country we shouldn't be trying to embarrass them. We should be asking questions relevant to their visit," he said. Mr Varadkar said that separate media opportunities can be arranged for domestic issues. It was put to him that polls have shown him ahead of Mr Coveney in the race to succeed Mr Kenny, and that this suggests he has momentum. "I'll answer that when the vacancy arises if that's okay," he said. He added: "The polls are encouraging... but they're only polls and there isn't a vacancy yet." The news came as Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe declined to be drawn on an Irish Independent report that said he will back Mr Varadkar over Mr Coveney. Sources in both the Varadkar and Coveney camp have conceded Mr Donohoe will eventually lend his support to his Dublin colleague. Asked about his intentions at a media briefing at Government Buildings yesterday, Mr Donohoe replied: "I'm anything but a kingmaker." The Dublin Central TD added: "I will be deciding myself what I'm going to do at a point in the future. "And when I've done that I'll be delighted to bring all the speculation to an end and inform you all what I'm doing." Has Syria reached the climax of the crisis? What are the possible scenarios? I do not see an eminent stabilization of the situation in Syria: Syrian territory is in the process of being divided into zones of influence. The direct intervention of the Americans in Syria is in this sense a major development. The Russians and regional actors (Iran, Turkey) are intervening just like Israel, in the south of the country. These countries have no interest in finding an immediate solution. Is there a risk of contagion to neighbouring countries? The divergence between the Russians and the Iranians, though hidden, is real. I do not think the Syrian crisis is going to a near end, unfortunately. Daesch's agitation as a scarecrow is dissipating, but we have not yet emerged from the crisis and new threats arise. Iraq sets the tone with the creation of Kurdistan and its implicit recognition. We may fear a sharp fragmentation of Syrian space. President Erdogan has repeatedly denounced the Lausanne agreement. It calls into question the formal legal basis for defining borders in the region. France and Great Britain, signatories of this agreement, did not react to this denunciation. What similarity do you see between the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria? I note significant differences. The more the power is concentrated, the less likely it counts sub-state nets. In this case, the collapse of the regime is brutal. The Lebanese State, by its structure, adapts better to a situation of war. The Syrian state, which is stronger in power, is therefore more fragile. We saw that once its grip was broken, the institutional sub-state structures did not serve as a net. We can draw a parallel between Tunisia and Egypt, or Syria and Libya. In Tunisia, the presence of the administration, the universities and the unions constitute those needed nets that mitigate the effects of the collapse of the regime. In Lebanon, the society was able to adapt quickly to the situation, which was not the case in Syria where the damage is devastating. Lisa Corrigan and her husband Mark had their first child when she was 37 (Eabha 4) and her second when she was 40 (Fionn, 1) Women have long been warned of their 'ticking biological clock' and encouraged to have children as early as possible. A young, fit mother is perceived to be far more equipped to deal with the demands of a young child than someone of more advanced years. But if a new Danish study is to be believed, delaying motherhood until late thirties and beyond is actually a good thing, and may result in more balanced and easy-going children. With the help of almost 5,000 participants, researchers from Aarhus University monitored the behaviour of children at various stages of their childhoods and discovered that the older the mothers were, the fewer emotional problems their children had, despite the fact that they were disciplined less than the children of younger mothers. The research also revealed that older mothers were more relaxed while pregnant and were better equipped to provide behavioural boundaries for their children. Dion Sommer, author of the study explained the findings. "We know that people become more mentally flexible with age, are more tolerant of other people and thrive better emotionally themselves." But Dr David Carey, director of psychology at City Colleges and dean of the College of Progressive Education in Dublin, says being 'relaxed' about parenting isn't a determining factor to doing the job well. "Being a 'relaxed' parent is about as influential in the role of parenting as being a vegetarian parent," he says. "I have met a lot of parents who were far too relaxed about their parenting job to the point of being neglectful - having said that, being an overly anxious parent is equally ineffective. "But there is no need for any parent to prove anything to anyone. Just be loving, emotionally available, provide good examples of living on the useful side of life and know the difference between genuine discipline and punishment - that's called being a 'good enough parent'. "Parenting has a lot more to do with being a good human being than anything else. However, an anxious parent makes for an anxious child so I would advise parents to simply be themselves, which involves hopefully, being patient, kind, understanding, firm and able to listen without being a dictator," Dr Carey adds. Anna Kilkenny had her first child a year ago with husband Daniel Sissling. Now 38 years old, the mother-of-one agrees with Dr Carey and says it is personality rather than age which influences your parenting technique. "I think it's character and experience which determines what kind of parent you might be," she says. "In our case, we weren't older parents by choice. We experienced five years of infertility and treatment before we had Finn, and those years certainly built character and made parenthood a very deliberate and determined choice - and it brought with it a lot of patience which has translated into our parenting style. "But having said that, I think older parents may feel less concerned about the possible impact of having a family on their career progression. By the time I had Finn, I had already been working over 15 years, travelled and lived overseas and undertaken a Masters. This made it easier to avail of a two-year career break to spend more time with Finn, which I would have been more hesitant to do at an earlier stage in my career or life." Kilkenny, who is on a career break from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, says plenty of life experience is an added bonus to having children later in life. "As an older parent, you have the opportunity to benefit from seeing others who have raised their families when you're just starting out," she says. "This lends itself to an 'a la carte' parenting approach, borrowing from the experience of others and merging it with your own preconceptions of what kind of parent you'll be." But Lorraine O'Connell, who is over a decade younger and has a three-month-old daughter with her partner Mark, says having youth on her side can make parenting easier. "I see plenty of benefits to having children at a younger age, provided you are in an emotionally, financially and physically stable position to do so," says the primary school teacher. "When it comes to the birth itself, somebody in their 20s would surely be more physically capable than somebody older. I certainly think that my physical fitness, stamina and youth had a big part to play in Katie's natural, gentle birth and indeed, my quick and easy recovery afterwards. Expand Close Lorraine O'Connell says having youth on her side can make parenting easier. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lorraine O'Connell says having youth on her side can make parenting easier. "Younger parents have plenty of energy to meet the demands of a newborn and grow with their children as they go through childhood. To put it into perspective, when I am 48, Katie will be celebrating her 21st birthday, whereas some mothers are only preparing their children for First Holy Communion at 48. "If people are leaving it later and later to start their families, this will lead to an ageing population, which in itself causes huge issues in society. As it is, Katie's grandparents are all still very young (in their 50s) and are fantastic with all they do to help. So because Katie has young grandparents, too, I feel that this is yet another added bonus to having your children at a younger age." Lisa Corrigan and her husband Mark had their first child when she was 37 (Eabha, 4) and her second when she was 40 (Fionn, 1). She believes that being an older mum can have its disadvantages too. "Raising kids is the most joyous and also the most demanding thing you will ever do, and age does not prepare you for that," says the 41-year-old yoga teacher. "No matter what age you are, there will be days when you miss your old pre-kids life but at the same time feel mad for even thinking something like that. "But younger parents may have the advantage of having extra family support - something I really miss having lost my mum to cancer when I was just 25. I also sometimes wonder, do older parents with established careers feel they have to be able to juggle everything: career, family, home and social life. "Having had my kids later, I felt a pressure for them to fit into the life I already had before they existed, and it took me a while to negotiate with myself and make changes as well as accepting that I had to let some things go. Some older parents with more established careers may be more financially secure and this can definitely reduce the stresses of things like childcare and general day-to-day expenses of having children, however, it doesn't make them better equipped to care for their baby. "But I don't think anything prepares you for your first child - both the love you feel and the overwhelming sense of responsibility." Tracy Donegan, midwife and founder of gentlebirth.com agrees and believes there is no set rule when it comes to what age is best to become a parent as everyone is individual, but there are some advantages to being a 'mature' mum. "For most women, it's easier to become pregnant in their twenties compared to thirties and forties but we may feel emotionally more ready for the challenges when we're older," she says. "We can't stereotype all parents, but life experience can definitely be an advantage. Older parents are more likely to be settled into their careers and have most likely faced challenges in their lives that they can call on to help them through the intense early weeks of parenting with the knowledge that it won't last forever. Also, they're more likely to be flexible in their parenting and have less financial stresses and be in more stable relationships. "Likewise, a woman in her forties who is healthy and fit may have more energy than her counterpart in her thirties. But setting realistic expectations is so important, no matter what your age, especially when it comes to adjusting to life on minimal sleep for a few months." Young mum Lorraine O'Connell says becoming a parent may be a daunting role, and lack of sleep can take its toll, but it is a wonderful experience, no matter what age it happens. "Parenthood is a gift - a precious, precious gift and a blessing," she says. "And should people decide to have their children in their twenties, or older, in their thirties, and even forties - it is completely up to them. But it is interesting to see different opinions, and to see the change in Ireland in recent times, with lots of people leaving it later to start their families. This was not the case for us, and I am glad we decided to start our family when we did. Katie is the best little girl, we are completely besotted with her and don't know what we ever did without her." Latest figures from National Perinatal Statistic Report Published June 2016 The average age of mothers has increased from 30.5 years in 2005 to 31.8 years in 2014 33% of mothers were aged 35 years or older, up from 26% in 2005 21% of first births were to women aged 35 years or older, compared to 13% in 2005 2% of total mothers giving birth were aged under 20 years, compared to 4% in 2005 38% gave birth for the first time, with an average age for first-time mothers of 30.0 years Grattan at the Tizi n'Tichka pass (2,260m up the High Atlas) half-way from Marrakech to Ouarzazate. An Irish man has driven an electric car 9,500km from Galway to Morocco - and back. In a drive that will forever banish fears of range anxiety in electric vehicles, Grattan Healy and his partner, Simona, travelled to Ouarzazate in Morocco (via Edinburgh) in his Tesla Model S. Now he and Simona are thinking about driving the Tesla to eastern Iran for their next major trip. He told Independent Motors: "We'd love to go to Tabriz, eastern Iran, but it would be a bit of a job. Turkey is in a bit of a mess. We'd have to take a ferry across the Black Sea. But it is on my bucket list." Expand Close Grattan outside the Berbere Palace Hotel in Ouarzazate. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Grattan outside the Berbere Palace Hotel in Ouarzazate. Grattan is an energy specialist. He was adviser to the Green Party in the European Parliament for six years up to the end of 2001. He told us: "We have been doing these kind of trips for years (Istanbul and Norway) in other cars, but this is the first time we made a serious trip in an electric car." Deeply involved in the whole area of renewable energy, he says he "lives between Inverin and Ballsbridge", but likes to get away to warmer climes for part of the winter. Hence the trip to Morocco. As you may know, Tesla recently set up an Irish store at Sandyford, Dublin, but Grattan already had a Model S and had driven it extensively around the country. He said the "ease of living" with the car led him to consider what might be possible. They had previously driven as far as Marrakech in a petrol Audi Allroad. "After that trip, we were keen to go further and get across the High Atlas to the next large town of Ouarzazate, 200km further on to explore the 'other Morocco," he said. They planned the trip and route thoroughly, but left enough loose ends to have "some adventure". "Considering you can charge at almost any power source, and there are probably more electrical sockets in Morocco than petrol stations, we just needed to make sure we had the right equipment to be able to charge," Grattan explained. "I only require a Type2 cable to charge my car in Ireland, though we also carry a Tesla adaptor for the faster CHAdeMO chargers. "After some research, we got the necessary adaptors and cables from Tesla to use along the way." The couple travelled to Belfast, onto Edinburgh to visit family, down through the UK, onto the Chunnel, through central France and then hitting the east coast of Spain (thanks to the growing network of Tesla superchargers). They also used Tesla Destination Chargers at hotels along the way. Their route then took them through Tangier and onto Casablanca. They arrived at Marrakech with more than half-a-tank left. A few days later, they headed for the High Atlas mountains. "That first half of the journey used 40pc of our battery, so we were at least confident of reaching Ouarzazate," Grattan said. "We had anticipated the descent would use very little battery, and indeed it only took a further 8pc to reach the Berbere Palace Hotel in Ouarzazate." He reports that the hotel staff were surprised to learn they had crossed the High Atlas in an electric vehicle. "The reception manager claimed ours was the first electric vehicle in Ouarzazate," he added. The hotel's technicians, within an hour, had come up with a temporary Schuko socket with which to charge the Model S."That enabled us to explore the wonderful Dades and Draa valleys over the following two days," Grattan said. They celebrated New Year at the hotel before heading back across the Atlas to Marrakech. Then they followed the same route to Spain. In total, they covered 9,500km and at "minimal cost". Range anxiety? Never again. The 317m Celebrity Eclipse cruise arrives on her maiden call to Dublin on Wednesday, 10th May 2017. File Photo: Conor McCabe Photography. Passengers from the 317m Celebrity Eclipse cruise ship on her maiden call to Dublin Wednesday, 10th May. Picture: Conor McCabe Photography. One of the world's most decadent ships kicked off Dublin's 2017 cruise season as it made its maiden visit to the city port. Passengers and crew were greeted by Irish dancing, live music and impressive drum displays as they disembarked the Celebrity Eclipse at Ocean Pier 33. Passengers were given the day to explore the city, which Celebrity Cruises CEO & President Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said was fast becoming a top destination for cruisers. Ireland is an amazing place full of wonderful, friendly people," she told Independent.ie. "Our guests want to come to Ireland. The destination is becoming more and more popular and in-demand." We are looking to increase the number of times we visit this part of the world next year and well be home-porting in Dublin for the first time. Eclipse is just one of five Solstice Class ships operated by Celebrity, with premium features including a rooftop lawn with real grass, a high end spa, a professional photo studio and an in-house glass blowing show performed for passengers. Read More A record-breaking 130 cruise ships are set to dock in Dublin this year, carrying 200,000 passengers and crew, and Eclipse is one of the largest, stretching 313m in length. Because of its size, the ship was 'reversed' stern-first into Dublin Port. This practice will be eradicated by 2020 however, when ongoing development work on the Alexandra Basin Redevelopment Project will be complete. The project will see ships even larger than Eclipse able to dock as far up the Liffey as the East Link. This will cement Dublins emerging status as a home port where ships will begin and end their journeys, according to Pat Ward, Head of Corporate Services for Dublin Port. Its really good for tourism; its going to boost tourism numbers because the statistics show that people generally come in about two to three days ahead [of their cruise], or stay two to three days after, so its going to obviously give an increase of bedrooms occupied in the city in 2018, he said. Celebrity Eclipse will home port in Dublin from April through June of next year, offering five cruises that begin and end in the city, rather than simply visiting for a day. Mr Ward said: The economic benefit is good for retailers, its good for jobs, its good for tourist attractions.The city is the real beneficiary of cruise tourism and today is, in many ways, a taster of whats to come. Expand Close The spa in Celebrity Eclipse / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The spa in Celebrity Eclipse Celebrity Eclipse began its current, 10-day President's cruise from Southampton and will end its Western-European voyage in Iceland. Passengers from the 317m Celebrity Eclipse cruise ship on her maiden call to Dublin Wednesday, 10th May. Picture: Conor McCabe Photography. The 317m Celebrity Eclipse cruise arrives on her maiden call to Dublin on Wednesday, 10th May 2017. File Photo: Conor McCabe Photography. Celebrity Cruises is bringing its X-Factor to Dublin today, in the shape of a maiden visit for the giant luxury liner Celebrity Eclipse. The 2,850-passenger Solstice Class ship, a star of Celebrity's fleet, docked for her first ever call to Dublin Port at around 12.30pm today. Passengers disembarked from Ocean Pier 33 for a day in the city, with the option of enjoying an Irish dancing show hosted by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, before continuing on their 12-night cruise around the UK, Ireland and Iceland. Celebrity Eclipse is billed as one of "the most stylish ships at sea", with passengers enjoying Lawn Clubs with real grass, a Canyon Ranch SpaClub and a duty-free Michael Kors boutique among other high-end indulgences. At 317m in length, the ship is more than twice as long as the playing field at Croke Park, which measures a measly 145m by comparison. Cruise tourism is booming in Dublin, with a record 130 ships expected to bring 200,000 passengers and crew in 2017, according to Dublin Port. By 2020, its Alexandra Basin Redevelopment Project will allow ships of Eclipse's size (and larger) to dock as far upriver as the East Link, and the city has also been marketing itself as a 'Home Port' in which cruise ships can start and end journeys. Between April and June of next year, Celebrity will become the first major cruise line to home port in Dublin, with Celebrity Eclipse offering a 'mini-season' featuring five Northern European cruises from Dublin Port. Expand Close Passengers from the 317m Celebrity Eclipse cruise ship on her maiden call to Dublin Wednesday, 10th May. Picture: Conor McCabe Photography. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Passengers from the 317m Celebrity Eclipse cruise ship on her maiden call to Dublin Wednesday, 10th May. Picture: Conor McCabe Photography. "Modern luxury" is Celebrity's USP - the line distinguishes itself from other mainstream cruise ships through multi-million dollar artworks, a crew to guest ratio of 1:2 and plush 'Suite Class' staterooms, among other premium experiences. The line's hotly-anticipated ' Edge' Class ships is set to launch next year. As we publish, 13-night cruises to Scandinavia and Russia on start from around 1,629pp for an inside cabin on Celebrity Eclipse this summer. Wait until autumn, however, and you could nab a lower rate. A 10-night Lisbon & Canaries cruises departing on September 28 starts from 1,159pp. Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close The main dining room on Celebrity Eclipse Celebrity Sihouette's Lawn Club cabanas. Photo: Celebrity Cruises Celebrity Eclipse: Ocean view stateroom / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The main dining room on Celebrity Eclipse Read more: Mark Wright and Michelle Keegan attend the National Television Awards on January 25, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images) Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright attend the Pride Of Britain awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel on October 31, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) LMichelle Keegan and Mark Wright attend The BRIT Awards 2017 at The O2 Arena on February 22, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images) Mark Wright has insisted that he and wife Michelle Keegan can "make it work," despite months of separation. Reality tv star Wright wed the former Coronation Street actress in 2015, with Michelle travelling abroad for several months ahead of their second wedding anniversary this year. Michelle (29) will travel to Nepal, South Africa and Malaysia for the third series of Our Girl. Speaking to Christine Bleakly on Lorraine, Wright said that he will visit his wife when he can. Expand Close Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright attend the Pride Of Britain awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel on October 31, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright attend the Pride Of Britain awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel on October 31, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) "Michelle goes away very shortly for a few months. "Ill be going back and forward when I can fit it in with work. Shell be travelling Nepal, South Africa and Malaysia but we can make it work." While the pair frequently travel for work, the tv presenter said that they are happiest at home in Essex. "We live in Essex but work takes us everywhere," he said. Expand Close Mark Wright and Michelle Keegan attend the National Television Awards on January 25, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mark Wright and Michelle Keegan attend the National Television Awards on January 25, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images) "Home is our favourite place, shut the door, pyjamas on, takeaway." Earlier this year, Michelle quashed rumours that her marriage was in trouble. Video of the Day "Why can't a woman work away and have a separate career from her husband and still have a good marriage?" she told the Sunday People. "That's the frustrating thing. What do people think goes on? Everything is fine with us. Expand Close Michelle Keegan in Our Girl / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Michelle Keegan in Our Girl "We have separate careers. Why is it a bad thing? I speak my mind and it gets me into trouble. "I'm just a normal girl. I'm just doing my job... I am married but I don't have to sit at home. "That's the frustrating thing and it is going to happen again. Me and Mark know that. "I've got to go away for work. But we know what to expect now. He will come visit me and it will be fine." Illegal migrants arrive at a naval base after they were rescued by Libyan coastguard in the coastal city of Tripoli, Libya Migrants in Libya have been forced by smugglers to bury alive fellow migrants who are too sick or injured to board boats setting off across the Mediterranean towards Italy, it was revealed yesterday. Migrants often spend months in Libya, held captive in squalid compounds or trying to earn enough money for their passage, and suffer knife and gunshot wounds at the hands of Libyan militia or ruthless gangs of traffickers. They are even sold as cheap labour in modern-day slave markets, humanitarian organisations say. If they are too badly injured to walk to the beaches from where the rubber dinghies set out or if they are perceived as being too much trouble because of illness, then they are killed, said Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). We have recently heard of cases where migrants who are wounded or sick have been buried alive by other migrants, on the orders of the traffickers, Mr Di Giacomo said. Its horrific to think that traffickers can be so cruel. But they dont care about the lives of migrants. If a migrant is a problem, they will kill them. A lot of migrants are shot dead on the beaches if they refuse to board the boats. It might be they see the boats are overcrowded or the weather conditions are very bad. They are scared of the sea. A lot of these people come from small African villages and its the first time they have seen the sea. A young Gambian migrant named Ousmane said: My friend got very sick in Libya. He was sick, but not dead. They buried him alive. They said he couldnt have survived anyway. I heard him shout my name from the ground. I ran to him and saw them throwing dirt on top of him. I tried to save him, but they cut me with a knife. Before they even reach the coast, some migrants are sold in slave markets held in town squares or car parks for the equivalent of 200 each, after which an even worse fate awaits them. Their new owners torture them in a bid to extract money out of their traumatised families back home. Sometimes they are tortured while they are on the phone to their families, so their relatives know they are suffering, said Mr Di Giacomo. Trafficking gangs are making millions of euro extorting money out of migrants who dream of reaching Europe, but many of the asylum seekers pay the ultimate price. Up to 200 migrants were feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent days after two vessels carrying them towards Italy capsized, the UNs refugee agency said. On Sunday, a smuggling boat went down off the Libyan coast, with around 113 people missing. Just six men and one woman were rescued by the Libyan Coast Guard, according to the UNHCR. In the second incident, a rubber dinghy carrying an estimated 132 people sank, also off the coast of Libya. Around 50 people were rescued and 80 were still missing. So far this year, more than 1,100 people are believed to have died while attempting the crossing from Libya towards Sicily, either in rickety fishing boats or overcrowded, cheap rubber dinghies. There were reports that an African migrant woman died while giving birth on a beach on the Libyan coast, just as a boat was about to leave. Her husband was forced by armed smugglers to leave her corpse on the sand, scoop up their newborn baby and board the dinghy. The man and his baby daughter were rescued at sea by a boat run by a Spanish NGO and brought to the Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday. So far this year more than 43,000 migrants have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy, an increase of 38pc compared with the same period last year. Donald Trumps sacking of FBI Director James Comey is the latest in a line of high-profile sackings since taking up office. Heres a look back at those whove been fired from their jobs by President Trump, working backwards: James Comey May 9 Comey apparently found out hed been sacked from his post while giving a speech to agents. In a letter, Trump said he was following the recommendations of attorney general Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who criticised his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons private emails something she has since partly blamed on her losing the US election. Most recently Comeys focus had turned to investigating whether Russia had interfered with the election. Trump said the sacking was necessary to restore public trust and confidence in the FBI. But critics were quick to compare the presidents actions to those of one of his predecessors, Richard Nixon, during the Watergate cover-up scandal. Angella Reid May 5 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 The White House chief usher was sacked almost a week ago yet the circumstances behind it are a bit of a mystery. Her colleagues, including former chief of staff to the Obamas Tina Tchen, took to Twitter once the news broke. Hired in 2011, Reid was the first woman to hold the post, which involved overseeing the running of household staff, working closely with the first family, and making sure the entertaining of guests goes smoothly. Like Comey, her firing appeared to come completely out of the blue. Preet Bharara March 11 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 Bharara was fired as the US attorney for the southern district of New York after refusing Trumps call to resign. The Justice Department told 46 prosecutors, nearly all of whom had been appointed by Barack Obama, that they should step down from their posts. While this can be fairly standard practice for a new administration coming in, its sometimes carried out in phases rather than all in one go. Furthermore, theres the issue that Trump had reportedly previously told Bharara that he would keep his job. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted at the time linking the firing to the location of his jurisdiction. 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 Mike Flynn February 13 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 The controversial national security adviser who was dismissed by Obama as head of the Defence Intelligence Agency in 2014 was forced to resign just three weeks into his new job following allegations that he had mislead VP Mike Pence about his ties with Russia. Pence, relying on information from Flynn, publicly vouched that the retired army lieutenant general didnt discuss sanctions with Moscows ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. But Flynn later told the White House that sanctions might have come up in the calls. Sally Yates January 31 The US attorney general, appointed by Obama, faced the chop at the end of January. Yates questioned the legality of Trumps executive order for his infamous travel ban days after his inauguration. But she paid the price she was dismissed with a White House statement accusing her of betraying the justice department. Chris Christie November 19 2016 The New Jersey governor has been a long-term friend of Trump but that proved to be of little use when he was demoted as chairman from Trumps presidential transition team and replaced by Pence. Pence then went about fulfilling Trumps plan to drain the swamp of lobbyists from his team which meant aides Christie had personally brought in. Its not quite as serious a hit as Yates but a big blow nonetheless for someone who seemed destined for the higher ranks of American politics. Pizza Hut has apologised after its Israeli branch came under fire for mocking a Palestinian hunger strike leader. Pizza Hut Israel shared a still image taken from a video released by Israel Prison Service of a man purported to be Marwan Barghouti allegedly secretly eating in his cell. 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 A Pizza Hut box and a slice of pizza had been superimposed on the original image, underneath writing which, according to BBC News, read in Hebrew: Barghouti, if you are going to break your strike, isnt pizza the better choice? Pizza Hut said the advert which has now been deleted from Pizza Hut Israels social media pages was completely inappropriate and did not reflect the values of the brand. Pizza Hut International apologises for any offence caused by a recent post on Pizza Hut Israels Facebook page. It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect the values of our brand. The local The Facebook statement read: Pizza Hut International apologises for any offence caused by a recent post on Pizza Hut Israels Facebook page. It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect the values of our brand. The local franchisee in the country removed it immediately and the relationship with the agency that posted it was terminated, and we truly regret any hurt this may have caused. 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 The advert had been criticised by many Arabs who accused it of ridiculing Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike, with many calling for a boycott of Pizza Hut. The Israel Prison Service were also accused of attempting to undermine the fast which more than 880 Palestinian prisoners are said to be taking part in with the leaked prison surveillance footage. Qadoura Fares, who heads an advocacy group for Palestinian prisoners, argued Barghouti has no access to food within the solitary confinement cell hes being kept in. He said: This is a fabrication. This is psychological warfare that we expected Israel to wage against the strike. The prisoners will not buy this account from the Israeli side, and they will continue their strike. 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 However Assaf Librati, a spokesman for the prison service, said Barghouti had eaten cookies on April 27 and a candy bar on May 5. Palestinians say the mass hunger strike is an attempt to improve conditions inside the jails and gain more family visits. However, Israeli officials have dismissed the strike as a bid by Barghouti to burnish his credentials in an internal Palestinian power struggle. Australian Senator Larissa Waters reacts as she breastfeeds her baby in the Senate Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, May 9, 2017. AAP/Mick Tsikas/via REUTERS An Australian senator has made history by breastfeeding her newborn baby in parliament. Greens co-deputy leader Larissa Waters attended the Australian senate with her daughter Alia Joy and fed her during a vote on a Greens motion. 'So proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal Parliament! We need more #women parents in Parli,' she wrote on Twitter. The senator campaigned for changes last year to allow new mums and dads to briefly care for their infants in the chamber. So proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal Parliament! We need more #women & parents in Parli #auspol pic.twitter.com/w34nxWxG0y Larissa Waters (@larissawaters) May 9, 2017 Here is Kirstie Marshall before she was ejected from the Vic Parliament for breastfeeding her 11-day old bub. Look how far we have come! pic.twitter.com/LrzZcIFBXq Larissa Waters (@larissawaters) May 10, 2017 Greens colleague Sarah Hanson-Young made headlines back in 2009 when her two-year-old daughter Kora was taken from her arms and ejected from the senate chamber. An 11-year-old girl has died after falling from a ride at Drayton Manor Theme Park, Staffordshire Police said. The girl, who was from the Leicester area in the UK, fell from the Splash Canyon water ride at Tamworth-based Drayton Manor Theme Park yesterday afternoon. Reading a statement from the park, a visibly shaken company director George Bryan said: "We are all truly shocked and devastated, and our thoughts are with the family and friends at this horrendously difficult time." A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said crews arrived on the scene and discovered a girl with serious injuries who had been rescued from the water by park staff. The spokesman added: "Ambulance staff administered advanced life support before she was flown to Birmingham Children's Hospital with the doctor continuing treatment en route. "Unfortunately, shortly after arrival at hospital the girl passed away." Police Superintendent Carl Ratcliffe said: "Specially trained officers are supporting the girl's family at this difficult time. Our thoughts are very much with her family and friends following this tragic incident." The ride was closed following the incident. It is believed the girl was on a school trip at the time of the incident. The theme park's website states the ride, which opened in 1993, features up to 21 boats, each with up to six people in. It is open to anyone at least 0.9m tall, although those under 1.1m must be accompanied by an adult. The website promises "a wild ride" with "fast-flowing rapids". It adds: "Swerve around corners, splash through the waves, and get soaked as your boat is swept along our fast-flowing rapids. No two experiences are ever the same... You'll feel like you're in the middle of the jungle as you speed, bounce, and splash your way around our river." Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is greeted by supporters as he arrives at the Federal Justice building in Curitiba, Brazil (Denis Ferreira Netto/AP) Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has given evidence in a corruption case against him. Silva came face-to-face for the first time with the federal judge overseeing a mammoth probe that has rocked Latin America's largest nation. The hearing was closed to the press and not broadcast live, two of the many measures taken by Judge Sergio Moro and authorities in the south-eastern city of Curitiba amid concerns of sparking violence. Globo News captured images of Silva arriving at court in a black car with a police escort. Thousands of supporters - both of Silva and Judge Moro - were separated by a few miles and hundreds of police in riot gear controlled several streets around the federal courthouse. "Brazil's most popular politician in the last 30 years is going before a judge like any regular citizen," said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. "That is very rare in Brazilian politics." Silva, president between 2003 and 2010, was giving evidence about allegations that he received a beachfront apartment as a kickback from construction company OAS. Prosecutors also allege that OAS did repairs at the apartment and paid to store Silva's belongings. The former president denies the charges, along with those related to several other cases of corruption against him. His testimony came after several attempts by his defence team to postpone the hearing. The last appeal, to the Supreme Federal Tribunal, Brazil's highest court, was denied about an hour before his evidence began. Silva's defence team argued it needed more time to analyse the case. Opponents counter that it was an excuse to prolong the case. The defence has also said it wants to call more than 80 witnesses. Silva has reason to drag the process out as h e has signalled his interest in running for president in 2018, and leads in preference polls. He would be ineligible, however, if he is convicted and that conviction is upheld on appeal. Judge Moro, who has become a national hero to many Brazilians while overseeing the so-called Car Wash investigation, is known for reaching judgments relatively quickly and then denying the release of convicts while they appeal. Since it launched in March 2014, the investigation centred at state oil company Petrobras has led to the convictions of dozens of top politicians and businessmen. Many more are being investigated in the kickback scheme, which prosecutors say involved more than three billion dollars (2.3 billion) in bribes over more than a decade. The probe has also spread beyond Brazil to several Latin American countries. In a sign of the pressure surrounding Silva's case, last week Judge Moro posted a video in which he asked supporters of the investigation not to come out. During a public appearance this week, he also downplayed the hearing, saying it was procedural and that no decision would be reached on Wednesday. For his part, Silva has started hinting at getting revenge for what he insists is a witch-hunt aimed at keeping him from returning to the presidency. "If they don't arrest me soon, maybe one day I'll arrest them for lying," Silva told members of his Workers' Party during a gathering last week, according to daily Folha de S Paulo. AP An Italian news magazine has obtained recordings of telephone calls surrounding a deadly migrant boat sinking, revealing how a Syrian father's desperate calls for help went unheeded for hours as Italy and Malta argued over who should mount the rescue. Some 221 people survived the October 11 2013 sinking but 27 bodies were recovered and a n unknown number of people went missing. The sinking was one of two in the span of a week that prompted the Italian government to launch the Mare Nostrum rescue operation, which won praise internationally for saving thousands of lives and was eventually replaced by a broader EU-wide operation. The Italian coast guard responded to the report on the L'Espresso magazine website by noting that the incident occurred in Malta's area of search-and-rescue responsibility. In addition, Italian prosecutors investigated the case and said it should be shelved for lack of a crime, according to a statement. The recordings begin at 12.39pm on October 11 with a call to the Italian coast guard from Mohanad Jammo, who reports that his boat, carrying some 300 people, is taking on water and gives his coordinates. L'Espresso said the boat was about 61 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, 118 miles south-west of Malta. The Italian coast guard told Mr Jammo that the boat was closer to Malta and he should call Maltese authorities, according to the recordings. An increasingly frantic Mr Jammo calls again and again - "We are dying! Three hundred persons. We are dying!" - begging the Italians to call the Maltese themselves because his phone was running out of credit. At 4.44pm, Maltese authorities tell the Italians that an Italian patrol ship is closest to the scene. The Italians responded that if they dispatched it, it would not be in place to spot other emergencies and would have to take survivors to the nearest port. At the time, Lampedusa was still reeling from a capsizing off its shores the previous week in which some 369 people died. The recordings end with the Maltese ringing the Italian operations centre back at 5.07pm to report that their plane had spotted the migrant boat capsizing, and that people were in the water. "The boat has sunk," a voice says. In the end, both Maltese and Italian ships, as well as a fishing boat, responded to the disaster. L'Espresso said Mr Jammo, his wife and child were rescued, but that his two other children drowned. The number of migrants attempting dangerous sea crossings accelerated after 2013. Non-governmental organisations have joined rescue efforts with their own ships patrolling the edge of Libyan territorial waters. Their presence has drawn the scrutiny of Frontex, the EU border patrol agency, as well as Italian prosecutors who have suggested some aid groups were somehow in contact with migrant smugglers. Ambrogio Cartosio, prosecutor in Trapani, Sicily, told a parliamentary committee he is investigating some employees of aid groups - not the groups themselves - but that the alleged contacts would not be a punishable offence since saving lives at sea was paramount. The groups have denied they are in cahoots with the traffickers and have criticised prosecutors for spreading rumours without providing proof. Mr Cartosio also said migrants arriving in Trapani have reported that Libyan coast guard officials - recently entrusted with Italian patrol boats and know-how to try to stem the migrant flows - have instead demanded bribes to let the boats continue their journeys north. AP South Korea's new president Moon Jae-in and his wife Kim Jung-suk at the National Cemetery in Seoul (Kim Hong-ji/Pool Photo via AP) Newly elected South Korean president Moon Jae-in takes an oath during his inauguration ceremony in Seoul (Ahn Young-joon/AP) Moon Jae-in has taken the oath of office in Seoul hours after starting work as South Korea's new president. He won the presidential by-election to replace ousted leader Park Geun-hye, who now awaits a corruption trial in jail. The election commission said Mr Moon gained 41% of the votes, comfortably beating conservative Hong Joon-pyo and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, who gathered 24% and 21& respectively. After celebrating his victory with thousands of supporters in wet Seoul streets, he began the job of leading a nation deeply split over its future and faced with growing threats from North Korea and an uneasy alliance with the United States. He said he is willing to visit North Korea's capital Pyongyang under the right conditions. Mr Moon also said that he will negotiate with the US and China, Seoul's top trading partner, over a contentious US missile-defence system deployed in the South. Beijing says the system allows Washington to spy on China's military operations Mr Moon took the oath of office in a ceremony at the National Assembly, and among his first tasks will be naming his nominee for prime minister, the country's second most important job, which needs the approval of politicians. His election victory followed one of the most turbulent political stretches in the nation's recent history and set up its first liberal rule in a decade. The new president visited the National Cemetery in Seoul with his wife, Kim Jeong-sook. After bowing to honour the former presidents, independence fighters and war heroes at the cemetery, Mr Moon wrote in the visitor book: "A country worth being proud of; a strong and reliable president!" South Korea might see a sharp departure from recent policy under Mr Moon, who favours closer ties with North Korea. He says hardline conservative governments did nothing to prevent the North's development of nuclear-armed missiles and only reduced South Korea's voice in international efforts to counter Pyongyang. This softer approach might put him at odds with South Korea's biggest ally, the US. The Trump administration has swung between threats and praise for North Korea's leader. Mr Moon, the child of refugees who fled North Korea during the Korean War, will lead a nation shaken by the scandal that felled Ms Park, whose criminal trial is scheduled to start later this month. Without the usual two-month transition, Mr Moon initially will have to depend on her cabinet ministers and aides, but he is expected to move quickly to replace them with people of his own. He will not serve the rest of Ms Park's term but rather will serve out the typical single five-year term. AP FBI director, James Comey, allegedly found out that he had been fired after seeing it on the news while he gave a speech in Los Angeles. According to the New York Times, Mr Comey was addressing a group of FBI employees when he saw the news of his termination flash on a TV screen. Mr Comey was then allegedly taken into a nearby office where his staff confirmed that he had been fired. Shortly after, a letter from Mr Trump was delivered to the FBIs headquarters, just seven blocks from the White House. The US President abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey last night, dramatically ousting the nations top law enforcement official in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether Trumps campaign had ties to Russias election meddling. Read More In a letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore public trust and confidence in the FBI. Comey has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for his role in an investigation into Democrat Hillary Clintons email practices, including a pair of letters he sent to Congress on the matter in the closing days of last years election. A memo was also released by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about Comey's actions. "I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken," Rosenstein wrote. Rosenstein identified several areas in which he said Comey had erred, saying it was wrong of him to "usurp" then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch's authority by announcing the initial conclusion of the email case on July 5. Comey "announced his own conclusions about the nation's most sensitive criminal investigation, without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders," Rosenstein wrote. Comey also "ignored another longstanding principle" by holding a news conference to "release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation." With reporting from Press Association Bookies have installed embattled Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan at odds of 500-1 to become the next director of the FBI. Also available at similar odds is the fictional policeman from The Simpsons TV series, Chief Wiggum. The bookies have put in acting director Andrew McCabe to replace the sacked James Comey at 3-1 favourite. Paddy Power think White House chief strategist Steve Bannon could be next for the chop in the Trump administration at 13-8 with press secretary Sean Spicer available at 5-2 and presidential "mouthpiece" Kellyanne Conway at 6-1. Expand Close FBI Director James Comey. Photo: Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp FBI Director James Comey. Photo: Reuters Punters, meanwhile, continue to wager that Donald Trump will not complete his first term in office at 4-6 and the US president is 10-11 to be impeached. Read More The firm's spokesman, Paddy Power said today: "So, Donald Trump sacks the man leading an investigation into him - man, we gave the system a kick. "I think he'll put Ivanka in charge of the FBI. Then we can refer to it as daughter-gate." President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey last night, dramatically ousting the nations top law enforcement official in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether Trumps campaign had ties to Russias election meddling. In a letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore public trust and confidence in the FBI. Comey has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for his role in an investigation into Democrat Hillary Clintons email practices, including a pair of letters he sent to Congress on the matter in the closing days of last years election. Democrats denounced Trumps move, which some compared to the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973, in which President Richard Nixon fired an independent special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. Todays action by President Trump completely obliterates any semblance of an independent investigation into Russian efforts to influence our election, and places our nation on the verge of a constitutional crisis, said Representative John Conyers, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers and other Democrats renewed their calls for an independent commission or a special prosecutor to investigate Russian influence in the 2016 election. Read More Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, has said an independent special prosecutor must appointed into the Russia investigation to restore the American peoples faith into the countrys justice system. Mr Schumer said it was important for the country to have faith that an investigation as serious as this one is being conducted impartially without a shred of bias. He said that should Rod Rosentein, the deputy attorney general, fail to appoint a special prosecutor, every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire director Comey was part of a cover up. Mr Schumer said he warned Mr Trump that the decision to fire Mr Comey was a mistake. He also called it troubling that Jeff Sessions, the attorney general who has recused himself from the Russia investigations, had a hand in firing the FBI director who is leading those very investigations. Read More Trump made no mention of Comeys role in the Clinton investigation, which she has blamed in part for the election result that put him in the White House. But in announcing the firing, the White House circulated a scathing memo, written by deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, criticizing Comeys handling of the Clinton probe, including the directors decision to hold a news conference announcing its findings and releasing derogatory information about Clinton. Trump has ridiculed the FBI investigation, as well as concurrent congressional investigations, as a hoax and has denied that his campaign was involved in Russias election meddling. In his letter to Comey, he asserted that the FBI director had informed him on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation. The White House said the search for a new FBI director was beginning immediately. Protesters run for cover as police officers fire rubber bullets in Johannesburg, South Africa (AP/Themba Hadebe) South African police have fired rubber bullets at rioters on the third day of street protests over government services in parts of Johannesburg. The violence on Wednesday in the Finetown neighbourhood of South Africa's biggest city followed unrest this week in nearby Eldorado Park and Ennerdale. Protesters in Finetown threw stones and burned tyres. They are demanding land and housing, a common grievance in many poor areas of South Africa where people live in makeshift homes. In separate violence, the African News Agency said protesters burned a police station and two police vans in Thohoyandou, a town more than 310 miles north of Johannesburg. The South Africa-based agency said protesters were angry over the disappearance of a resident. Qantas Airways chief executive Alan Joyce speaks to the media about the incident (AP/Rod McGuirk) A man who squashed a lemon meringue pie into the face of Qantas Airways chief executive Alan Joyce in Australia said he was protesting against his advocacy for same-sex marriage. Irish-born Mr Joyce, who is gay, was giving a speech to 500 people in a Perth hotel on Tuesday when Tony Overheu approached from behind, pressed the pie into his face and then fled. Overheu, a 67-year-old Christian and former sheep farmer, released a statement accusing Qantas and other companies that support marriage equality of "corporate bullying aimed at social engineering". He was charged with giving police a false name. Mr Joyce, 50, accused Overheu of "bullying" corporate leaders in an effort to suppress their views. "I have every intention to continue to be vocal on these social and community issues," Mr Joyce said. "It's important for our shareholders, our employees, our customers - it's called good corporate social responsibility." Mr Joyce has been singled out for criticism by government ministers for joining 30 chief executives of high-profile Australian companies who wrote a letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in March calling for Parliament to legalise same-sex marriage. Immigration minister Peter Dutton, a gay marriage opponent, told the CEOs to "stick to their knitting" and keep out of the political debate. Mr Joyce said he had overwhelming shareholder support for his public stance. On Wednesday, Overheu said he hid behind a screen at the back of a stage for several hours before Mr Joyce rose to give his speech to a business breakfast. Overheu said he chose lemon meringue from a cake shop the night before because it "appeared to be the softest, least likely to do any injury". He later sent Mr Joyce an email apologising. "Our family is outraged, my wife is down my throat, I didn't understand that I'd breached the state's criminal code and the police are dealing with it. Clearly I regret that," Overheu said. Police said Overheu was charged with giving officers false details, and the investigation was continuing. Mr Joyce confirmed the apology, but added: "I'm not sure there's any regret at the issue that has occurred." "My intention is to send a message that this type of behaviour isn't acceptable and I have every intention of pressing charges," Mr Joyce said. "Nobody should be... intimidated, nobody should be bullied, nobody should certainly have an incident like occurred yesterday to try to stop people having that freedom of speech." AP US President Donald Trump meets Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in the White House (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP) President Donald Trump has sought to advance prospects for co-operation between Russia and the US in Syria and elsewhere in a rare Oval Office meeting with Vladimir Putin's top diplomat. Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov's talks with Mr Trump were already destined to be a closely watched affair, given the dire state of US-Russian relations and diplomatic wrangling going on over a Moscow-backed deal to stabilise Syria. Mr Trump's decision on the eve of the meeting to fire the FBI director overseeing a Russia-related investigation injected further intrigue into Mr Lavrov's first visit to Washington since 2013. Mr Trump "raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere", according to a White House statement. Mr Trump and Mr Lavrov met in private, though both sides cast the session as a sign of ties having improved since the US leader's assessment of them last month as being at an "all-time low". On Wednesday, they focused on areas of budding agreement and Mr Lavrov sought to blame the recent acrimony on former president Barack Obama. "The previous administration bent over backwards to undermine the solid foundation of our relations," Mr Lavrov told reporters at the Russian embassy after meeting Mr Trump. "We have to start at a very low level." In contrast, he credited Mr Trump and secretary of state Rex Tillerson, whom he met earlier in the day, with taking a "businesslike" approach that is "free from ideology", focused on reaching agreements. None were apparently reached on Wednesday. The meeting was Mr Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian official since taking office and in itself represented modest progress. The last time Mr Lavrov visited the American capital was before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and intervened militarily in Syria to help President Bashar Assad - actions that fuelled US-Russian tensions. The Russian diplomat steadfastly refused to weigh in on Mr Trump's decision to fire James Comey, the former FBI director, who had been overseeing investigations of alleged Russian interference in the US election and possible collusion by Mr Trump's campaign. Mr Lavrov called it a US decision, echoing Mr Putin, who said Russia had nothing to do with Mr Comey's dismissal. "Was he fired? You're kidding," Mr Lavrov said sarcastically, feigning surprise as he started his day of meetings in Washington. Mr Comey's dismissal escalated concerns in both parties that Mr Trump may be trying to undermine an investigation that appears to be gaining steam. Mr Trump insisted that was not the case. He said on Wednesday he fired Mr Comey because he "was not doing a good job". Still, the overlap between the investigation and Mr Trump's diplomatic efforts made for uncomfortable optics. Russia's foreign ministry tweeted a photo of Mr Trump shaking hands with Mr Lavrov and the Russian embassy posted another of the president greeting another participant in the meeting - ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a central character in various Russia-related investigations because of his contacts with several individuals close to Mr Trump. Mr Lavrov chalked up the controversy to "noise" and to "false news" - invoking Mr Trump's frequent references to the Russia allegations as "fake news". On Syria, where Russia has backed Assad's forces and the US has supported anti-Assad rebels, the talks appeared to indicate a slight narrowing of differences. Russia, Turkey and Iran last week agreed on a plan for four "de-escalation zones" in the Arab country to quell a civil war that has killed some 400,000 people and contributed to global refugee and terror crises since erupting in 2011. The US is not party to the deal and has reacted cautiously, especially given its misgivings about Iran's role. But Mr Lavrov said he detected a US willingness to participate, especially with a zone being formed in Syria's south, near the border with Israel and Jordan. "We believe the US is really interested in that," Mr Lavrov said, acknowledging that details of the plan still needed to be worked out. The zones would not cover areas where the US-led coalition is fighting Islamic State, but enforcement and other questions remain unanswered. In his earlier meeting with Mr Lavrov, Mr Tillerson emphasised the US would not lift sanctions on Russia related to Ukraine until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered the punishment - namely, its Crimea annexation. Moscow wants the elimination of those and election-related sanctions imposed by Mr Obama. Nevertheless, Mr Lavrov struck a conciliatory tone and said Russia is not intending to retaliate. "Putin doesn't want to follow the lead of those who are trying to poison our relations to the point of no return," he told reporters. AP The woman killed in Saturdays crash on Interstate 85 has been identified as a resident of Sherrills Ford. Caitlin Ashley Palmieri, 25, was backed up in traffic at the Bruton Smith Boulevard exit off I-85 North on Saturday, May 6, when another car slammed into the back of her vehicle and killed her on impact. It just appears that this was just a true accident, just due to the fact that it was an unexpected thing, Trooper Ray Pierce with N.C. Highway Patrol said. I dont think he realized that traffic was at a dead stop. It just kind of snuck up on him. The four-vehicle collisionoriginally documented as involving three carscame as a result of heavy congestion. At about 11 a.m., traffic started backing up due to the Carolina Rebellion tour at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Between that and just regular mall traffic, traffic was heavy and congested, Pierce said. It had spilled back onto the interstate to where the right two lanes were at a standstill. Though the Bruton Smith Boulevard exit sits in Cabarrus County, Pierce said cars stretched back about a half mile, bringing them into Mecklenburg County. A 2015 Dodge Ram pickup traveling north on I-85 slammed into the waiting cars. It collided with the last vehicle in line, a 2002 Saturn, which Palmieri was driving. The Saturn collided with the car in front of it which hit the car in front of it. Palmieri was killed on impact. Kevin Zane Lumpkins of Greensboro was driving the Dodge and has been charged with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle and failure to reduce speed. Pierce said that troopers dont suspect any alcohol or drug impairment but will conduct a blood test to be safe. In this edition of India Briefing Magazine, we make the case for why now is the right time for foreign firms t... New York, May 10 (Just Earth News): As a new front opens in the fight between Iraqi forces and the group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daaesh) in north-western Mosul city, United Nations humanitarian staff are raising concern about hundreds of thousands of civilians still living in the area. Speaking to reporters in New York, the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General said that some 360,000 people are believed to be caught between the fighters. Families continue to arrive at the newly established mustering point at Badoush, northeast of Mosul, along the Syrian highway, where emergency assistance and basic services are being provided by humanitarian partners, Stephane Dujarric said, citing information from UN humanitarian authorities. Aid workers are responding to these and families still trapped inside wherever access allows. They are providing emergency response packages with basic food, water and hygiene iteSome 2.6 million people have received aid since October. The UN and partners is trucking 3.1 million litres of water per day into eastern Mosul to meet water shortages. That figure was about 2.3 million litres at the end of April. In addition to aid, the UN is concerned about the high trauma and casualty rates. Since 17 October, health care partners report over 12,000 people have been referred to hospitals in Mosul and neighbouring governorates, and nearly half of these reported cases were from west Mosul only, Dujarric said. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said that new field hospitals have also been created, one for emergency reproductive and obstetric healthcare. Photo: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi Source: www.justearthnews.com Prevent Unauthorized Transactions in your demat / trading account Update your Mobile Number/ email Id with your stock broker / Depository Participant. Receive information of your transactions directly from Exchanges on your mobile / email at the end of day and alerts on your registered mobile for all debits and other important transactions in your demat account directly from NSDL/ CDSL on the same day." - Issued in the interest of investors. KYC is one time exercise while dealing in securities markets - once KYC is done through a SEBI registered intermediary (broker, DP, Mutual Fund etc.), you need not undergo the same process again when you approach another intermediary. No need to issue cheques by investors while subscribing to IPO. Just write the bank account number and sign in the application form to authorise your bank to make payment in case of allotment. No worries for refund as the money remains in investor's account." www.indiainfoline.com is part of the IIFL Group, a leading financial services player and a diversified NBFC. The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others. Former Bigg Boss contestants, Monalisa and her husband Vikrant Singh Rajpoot were the latest couple to get evicted from dance reality show, Nach Baliye season 8. Twitter/Nach Baliye The duo has been getting immense love after Bhojpuri actress Mona Lisas stint on Salman Khan hosted show Bigg Boss and it only got bigger after she got married to her long-time boyfriend Vikrant on national television. While many people thought of this as a publicity stunt including filmmaker Karan Johar, nothing has deterred the couple and they have only been going strong. After Mona-Vikrant's Nach Baliye elimination, we spoke to them about reality shows, their life post TV marriage, their take on Om Swami and all things quirky. Read on. We will go to Singapore in July since it's Vikrant's birthday For The Love Birds... How amazing love birds they have created... Thanks to the housekeeping team for this... You all are superb.. Having a super comfortable stay .... A post shared by MONALISA (@aslimonalisa) on May 7, 2017 at 5:17am PDT Well, we recently went to Goa, it was a sort of mini honeymoon. Vikrant and I were thinking of going to some place outside India but the minute we stepped out of Bigg Boss, we were offered Nach Baliye so our proper honeymoon is technically still pending but we will go to Singapore sometime in July since it's Vikrant's birthday then. 'We are yet to throw a big fat reception for our industry friends and family' The duo was one of the first couples to have got married inside the Bigg Boss house. They had a traditional wedding and saw the presence of their friends and family along with the existing Bigg Boss contestants. Twitter Vikrant who married the Bhojpuri actress said, "Lot of people are wondering if we will get married again outside the Bigg Boss house but I want to tell them that our wedding inside the Bigg Boss house was a proper Hindu one. There was a pandit present from Varanasi who did the rituals and customs the way we wanted. So there is no question of a second wedding, but we do agree, we are yet to throw a big fat reception for our industry and media friends We were caught up with back to back reality shows but now we will chalk out a plan for the same." 'Swami Om is not from this planet, he has to be an alien' Om Swami was one of the contestants in the Bigg Boss house this season who created quite a chaos during his stint there. After throwing his pee on fellow contestants, abusing the ladies of the house and breaking rules, host Salman Khan had little choice but to throw him out of the house. Not much has changed after he moved out of the house, Om Swami has been seen dancing on sleazy songs with bikini girls, calling Salman a terrorist and fighting with Rakhi Sawant on TV. Twitter/Om Swami Trollers Mona is not surprised with Om Swami's behaviour. She said, "I know him very well and I dont want to comment on him at all. He is the most disgusting person I have ever met as he can stoop to any level for TRPs. Inside the house, he was still better as he would apologise but now he's unbelievable." Twitter Vikrant further added, "He has no family and people are right when they call him an alien or from another planet. He is old and you happen to respect him like a father figure but he misuses that card too. He should not be called a baba. He is taking sheer advantage of the baba" factor. 'Sanaya and Mohit are our favourite couple on Nach Baliye' If we looking at purely dance and performance, then it has to be Abigail and Sana but since Nach Baliye is an overall package of having the right chemistry with your partner along with dancing, we want Sanaya and Mohit to win the show. Monalisa and Vikrant unitedly love Terence Lewis as a judge. "His feedback is accurate, he gives the right numbers and helps you grow as a dancer. Sonakshi, on the other hand, is sweet to talk to." I miss Salman Khan calling out my name Twitter/Bigg Boss Asked what they would choose out of Bigg Boss and Nach Baliye, Mona and Vikrant said, Bigg Boss. "It's an enriching experience and listening to your name from Salman Khan makes us want to go back into the house." Jo Bheji Thi Dua was our favourite performance from Nach Baliye Before signing off, Vikrant and Mona remembered their most heartfelt performance from their Nach Baliye stint. Jo Bheji Thi Dua is something that got them emotional. Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor who is currently shooting for Sanjay Dutt's biopic has got the moves and grooves just like the legendary actor. While it required months of training and rehearsals, there was one important person who helped Ranbir Kapoor get into the skin of Sanjay Dutt's character. While you might think it was Sanjay Dutt itself, but it was actually a comedian who frequently comes on The Kapil Sharma Show. Twitter That's right folks, Sanjay Dutt's walk, talk and body language were taught to Ranbir by Dr. Sanket Bhosle. Yes, he's the same comedian who imitates Sanjay Dutt to immense accuracy in plenty of comedy shows. As per a report in mid-day, "I first met Ranbir Kapoor, about four months ago. Initially, he was shocked to know that I was a doctor. We sat for almost three hours at a suburban hotel and only discussed Sanju Sir he was fascinated by my videos and asked me how I could imitate him [Dutt] so easily, said Sanket. The comedian also spoke about Sanjay Dutt's acting style, "Sanju sir has a peculiar style of walking and talking, and Ranbir wanted to learn everything. He was impressed with the way I impersonate Sanju sir rolling his eyes while talking; he wanted to learn that too. I have heard that Ranbir still refers to my online videos." Sanket is a doctor by qualification but has made a career mimicking Bollywood actors. His videos on social media are quite popular but he actually made his TV debut with Laugh India Laugh. He is usually seen on The Kapil Sharma Show along with his rumoured beau Sugandha Mishra. Yes, if reports are to believed then, Sugandha is madly in love with Dr. Sanket and is pushing hard to make her boyfriend a big name in the world of comedy. Sources close to the couple say that a marriage is on the cards. Sugandha and Sanket have been dating for a year and it was Sugandha who got Sanket the role of Baba in The Kapil Sharma Show. After basking in the glory of Bollywood as a top-notch actress, Priyanka Chopra is turning out to be a rising star in the west too. From Quantico to Baywatch, her journey hasnt been long, but it has been rewarding, for sure. Besides, striking a balance between her professional and personal life and hopping between two different countries altogether, Priyanka, who is the UNICEF goodwill ambassador too, was recently seen bonding with the victims of child sexual abuse. She shared quite a lot of photos and videos with them. From telling them they are all beautiful in a different way to teaching them Thumkas, PC warmed our hearts with her adorable gestures towards them. Sindi(3) was very curious about my tattoo.. I told her we r all daddy's little girls... a lot of these girls are vulnerable to predators who are father figures. Its heartbreaking. But she was just precious. My tail all day. Following me around like lil bo peep. A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on May 7, 2017 at 9:42am PDT Ask Priyanka Chopra, if she ever feels burdened with so many responsibilities, and she says: Not at all. Its what I have chosen to do and every one of them is something I am passionate about. Using my time and influence to do good is a human beings social responsibility and I take mine seriously, said Priyanka. (Also Read: Priyanka Chopra Pens An Emotional Note On Nirbhaya Verdict, Feels Proud That Justice Has Prevailed) Mbali showed me around this amazing Safe Park that gives kids a chance to be kids in a safe environment . She is the Vice Chairman of her park (Freedom Park.) At all of 11! She takes her responsibilities very seriously. Thank u Mbali. A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on May 7, 2017 at 7:31am PDT On her trip to Zimbabwe, PC met the victims of child sex abuse and heard their harrowing stories too. Now, she has called for their protection. No woman, and most definitely no child, should ever have to experience sexual violence especially from someone they trust for protection, such as a family member. As a society, it is on us to provide and take care of our children as citizens of the world, to educate children at a young age that its not OK to be inappropriately touched and that underage sex can lead to unwanted teen pregnancy or HIV. After they taught me their dance moves I showed them one of mine.. it's called the "thumka" #DanceParty #EndViolence #UNICEF #thistimeforafrica #SafePark A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on May 7, 2017 at 6:54am PDT Furthermore, she was also made acquainted with Childline Zimbabwe, which a service that runs 24 hours in the nation, providing counselling to children who have been exploited, abused or violated. Priyanka was so impressed by it that she now wants it to be incorporated in every country, particularly those having higher rates of violence against children, so that children, with ease, can take their grievances and worries to compassionate person who will take their complaints seriously and respond. Keep up the good work, PC! About a fortnight ago, model-actress Sonika Chauhan was killed in a car accident. Thereafter, several people speculated that his actor friend Vikram Chatterjee who was driving the car was apparently drunk. While earlier he denied all the charges in the same regard saying that he was neither intoxicated and nor speeding at that time, now he has eventually admitted that he was drunk on the day of the accident. silverscreen.in Admitting that he was drunk, Vikram said that he drank within limits and that he was sober while driving. Furthermore, he also revealed during police interrogation that he was not intoxicated. Twitter The police have claimed that he was driving at a speed of 60-70 km when the tragic incident had taken place. filmymama.com Moreover, several eyewitnesses revealed to Times Now that they saw him drinking, while he had been earlier denying of the same. The channel also got access to a video from the party they attended the same day in which he can be seen holding a drink in his hand. Later, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee ordered a probe in the case. Perhaps, this is what instigated him to reveal the truth. The incident took place on April 29. While Sonika died on spot, Vikram suffered head injuries. He was booked for rash driving. However, he was later released on bail. After Bengaluru's Bellandur Lake, residents of Dodda Basavanahalli village woke up to the sight of lake go up in flames. Environment officer of Karnataka State Pollution Control Board KV Shivakumar claimed that the fire was caused by fire-tankers being cleaned in the area. "Deposits of petrol and diesel must be the reason for the fire. It seems empty tankers that carry petrol and diesel are washed in the lake," he told the Hindu. #WATCH: Fire rages on a patch of a lake near Dodda Basavanahalli in Hassan, Karnataka. (May 8) pic.twitter.com/u9g45HlcJ9 ANI (@ANI_news) May 9, 2017 Residents immediately informed the police and fire station. Industrial effluents infesting water bodies has been the main reason for this bizarre phenomenon. After the Bellandur lake fire, the National Green Tribunal, ordered industrial units to shut down near lakes. To no avail, just a few days ago the 1,000-acre Bellandur Lake, caught fire all over again. Factories surrounding the lake have been blamed for contaminating the water. The Nitish Kumar government has been left embarrassed after it emerged that the compensation to a Sukam martyr was a sham. The government had announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the family of Ranjit Kumar who hailed from Sheikhpura district. BCCL The district administration handed over the cheque to the family as directed by the government. CNN News 18 reported that the cheque has bounced as the account has no sufficient balance in it. According to the report, five days after the family deposited the cheques bank authorities informed them about the trouble in cashing it. The government is yet to respond to the matter. This is not the first time the Nitish Kumar government has come under criticism over the way it dealt with Sukma martyrs. BCCL Earlier it was alleged that the truck carrying the Sukma martyrs' mortal remains was stopped for around 15 minutes near Patna airport to allow Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's cavalcade pass through that route. Union Minister Ram Kripal Yadav who made the allegation had also claimed that not a single representative of the Nitish cabinet were present at the airport when the bodies were brought. Out of the 25 soldiers who were killed in the Maoist attack last month, six hailed from Bihar. Members of Dalit and Thakur communities are up against each other in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Fresh clashes took place today for the third time in the last couple of weeks. The violence that is getting worse by the day began after a procession on Maharana Pratap Jayanti was stalled in Shabbirpur village last week. Indian Express According to police, around 1,000 people gathered under the banner of Bheem Army. The protest turned violent and a private bus, 10 motorcycles and a car were torched in two villages in Saharanpur district. Three policemen and a journalist were also injured. Past incidents NBT On May 5, violence broke out in the Shabbirpur village of Saharanpur district after a few from the Dalit community objected to loud music being played by Thakurs at a procession. A man from the Thakur community was killed and as a result, 25 Dalit homes were burnt. It has been alleged that Bhim Sema, a Dalit group, stopped the procession on grounds that they were not allowed to do the same on Ambedkar Jayanti. Following this, protestors set about a dozen two-wheelers, police vehicles, roadways bus and several cars on fire, and also torched a police outpost. Madhyamam Two police officials have reportedly suffered head injuries. This fresh bout of violence comes two days after DGP Sulkhan Singh and other senior officials had visited Saharanpur to analyse the situation. What happened on Ambedkar Jayanti? sify On April 20, communal clashes broke out during a Dalit procession to celebrate BR Ambedkar's birth anniversary. The authorities in the state have so far failed in bringing peace to the district. About a dozen of people were injured, it was reported. Following the incident, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said, I can say with confidence that everyone in the state will be safe. There will be no discrimination and the rule of law is the priority of the state government." Ukraine's Infrastructure Ministry has drawn up a draft order proposing to cut and annul some airport charges. Minister Volodymyr Omelyan wrote on his Facebook page that it is proposed to cut the fee for servicing passengers in the international flights terminal, annul the fee for limit-exceeding parking of the aircraft that have aircraft base contracts with the airport for some period of time, apply decreasing coefficients to the charges for charter and new flights and determine the airport charge calculation formulas. "It occurred that these charges were approved in 2008 for the last time and then their growth was explained by the necessity of building new terminals. Of course, no one has sought to revise them since then. We believe that the reduction of airport charges, relaxing of the tariff policy would allow Ukrainian citizens to receive cheap tickets, increasing passenger flow, attracting new airlines and finally increasing income of the airports using a market-based and competitive model," Omelyan said. He said that airports should learn how to earn on non-aviation operations. In a huge relief for India, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has stayed the death sentence awarded to Kulbhushan Jadhav by a Pakistan military court. bccl This came after India instituted proceedings against Pakistan at the court, accusing Pakistan of "egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations" in the detention and trial of Jadhav. I have spoken to the mother of #KulbhushanJadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Art 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court. Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) May 9, 2017 Mr.Harish Salve, Senior Advocate is representing India before International Court of Justice in the #KulbhushanJadhav case. Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) May 9, 2017 India has so far rarely approached ICJ in disputes with Pakistan, fearing that any such move could allow Islamabad to seek the intervention of the same court in other bilateral disputes. Also Read: Pakistan Should Release Kulbhushan Jadhav, Says India After Islamabad Failed To Prove That He Was A Spy It remains to be seen how Pakistan reacts as its high commissioner Abdul Basit has already declared that Pakistan's domestic laws will take precedence over any international convention in Jadhav's case. Also Read: Pakistan Just Sentenced Captured Former Indian Navy Officer Kulbhushan Jadhav To Death Without Proof India had sought relief by way of suspension of the sentence of death awarded to Jadhav, who is accused of promoting terrorism, said the ICJ. India had stated that the sentence of the military court was in brazen defiance of the Vienna Convention rights under Article 36 and elementary human rights of an accused. bccl It alleged Pakistan authorities are denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav despite its repeated requests. "The applicant also points out that it learned about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. India submits that it has information that Jadhav was `kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy and was then shown to have been arrested in Baluchistan' on 3 March 2016, and that the Indian authorities were notified of that arrest on 25 March 2016," said the ICJ in a press statement before it stayed the death sentence. Also Read: Curious Case Of Kulbhushan Jadhav: Everything To Know About Former Indian Navy Officer Who's In A Pakistani Jail The Narendra Modi government's move to encourage the use of renewable energy has seen a rapid increase in the amount of solar power generated in the country. Subsequently, it has also affected one of the biggest factors in power generation - cost per unit. With the increase in number of solar power plants and increase in efficiency in production, the prices have been dropping steadily. Now it has dropped to a record low of Rs 2.62 per unit in the auction conducted for Bhadla solar park. The price is even lower than NTPCs average coal-based power tariff of Rs 3.20 per unit. BCCL/Representational Image Bhadla Ph-IV Solar Park results in a historic lowering of tariffs. Phelan Energy (50MW) and Avaada Power (100 MW) have bagged projects at Rs 2.62/unit. Softbank Cleantech has won 100 MW capacity at Rs 2.63/unit, a senior official said. ALSO READ: IIT Roorkee's Scientists Create Low-Cost Solar Cells Using Jamuns Reuters Last month, the levelised solar power tariff had dropped to all-time low of Rs 3.15 per unit in an auction of a 250 MW project at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. Earlier in February, the lower capital expenditure and cheaper credit had pulled down solar tariff to a new low of Rs 2.97 per unit for the first year in an auction conducted for 750 MW capacity in Rewa Solar Park in Madhya Pradesh. ALSO READ: ISRO's Android App Helps You Find The Perfect Spot For A Solar Panel Installation BCCL/Representational Image However, the levelised tariff for Rewa project has worked out to be Rs 3.30 per unit. In January last year, solar power tariff had dropped to a new low, with Finnish energy firm Fortum Finnsurya Energy quoting Rs 4.34 a unit to bag the mandate to set up a 70-MW solar plant under NTPCs Bhadla Solar Park tender. In November 2015, the tariff had touched Rs 4.63 per unit following aggressive bidding by US-based SunEdison, the worlds biggest developer of renewable energy power plants. ALSO READ: Coming Soon: An Indoor Solar Panel That Can Generate Electricity From The Lights In Your Home In yet another gruesome killing by the terrorists in Kashmir Valley, a 23-year-old army officer was found dead with several bullet injuries, this morning. ANI According to reports, the officer, identified as Lieutenant Umar Fayaz Parry was abducted by terrorists on Tuesday evening from Kulgaon where he was attending a family function. Lt. Umar, who had joined the army in December 2016 was posted with 2 Rajputana Rifles in Akhnoor. The killing comes at a time when the Kashmir valley is witnessing a spike in militancy and terror attacks, especially targeting the security forces. With the increase in militant activity, Indian security forces had carried out a massive door-to-door search operation in the Shopian, the first of its kind in the valley since the 1990's. Last week two Indian soldiers were killed and beheaded by the Pakistan Army at the LoC, triggering strong condemnation from New Delhi. Pressurising Pakistan, US has asked the country to clamp down on terror and extremists group. A top US lawmaker has cautioned Pakistan saying that India will not sit idly if its soldiers or citizens were being attacked. BCCL Joe Crowley, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus said that the situation on the Line of Control - de facto border between India and Pakistan - has been volatile for the past few months due to activities by Pakistan-backed terrorist groups, and called on the Trump administration to put more pressure on the country. He added that the US can play a friendly role and put pressure to keep peace in the region. BCCL "(They) are backed by Pakistan. They (Trump administration) need to be more towards putting the pressure on Pakistan to go after LeT and other militant groups within Pakistan that are causing tensions on the India-Pakistan border," he said in response to a question. "I think the emphasis here is that they (Pakistan) need to do more to clamp down on those violent and extremist groups within Pakistan themselves, because India will not sit by idly while it's soldiers or its citizens are being attacked," said Mr Crowley, a former co-Chair of the House India Caucus. He said that these issues should be bilaterally handled by the two nations. As refugees from war-torn Syria continue to suffer, stories of their ill-treatment in Europe emerge regularly. In yet another gruesome tale of their death a phone call, which decided the fate of dozens of refugees, has been obtained by an Italian newspaper. The distressed phone call from the Mediterranean Sea in 2013 reveals a conversation between an Italian coast guard and a Syrian refugee on the boat. In the audio, the Italian guard in charge tells the refugee from the sinking boat to call Malta even though an Italian Navy patrol boat was just miles away. Representational image/Reuters The boat eventually capsized and drowned 260 people including 60 children. Though it was in the territorial waters of Malta, it was still 118 miles away and only about 61 miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa. During the call, the man identifies himself as a Syrian doctor called Mohamed Jammo. Hes asking for help as the boat is sinking. Please hurry. The boat is going down, hes heard saying. He calls the Italian Coast Guard back for an update, but Jammo is told to call Malta. Representational image/Reuters "Because you are near Malta. Call Malta directly very quickly, they are close, OK?" says the Coast Guard. Jammo once again called the Coast Guard to tell him that Malta had told him that they were closer to Lampedusa. "We are dying, please," hes also heard saying. Representational image/Reuters But once again he is told to call Malta. All this while, the Italian Navy's patrol boat, Libra, is waiting for a call-to-action about 10-19 miles away. The Armed Forces of Malta and the Italian Coast Guard exchange a call where the latter says that if they send a patrol boat, the refugees will have to be transferred to the nearest coast Lampedusa. Representational image/Reuters He says, I think it is not the best way to operate. Malta conspicuously told Italy that their boat was closest. Five hours later, the boat drowned. In war torn Syria, it's the civilians that have it worst. Hospitals been destroyed and basic needs are not being met either. One of the most important being fuel. Reeling under the constant assaults by the regime and IS, they have now resorted to making their own fuel! By collecting plastic, and using a crude form of fractional distillation they turn waste into usable fuel. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. 1. Abu Fahad (2nd R) rests with colleagues inside a workshop in the rebel-held besieged Douma neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria. The workshop uses plastic from bottles and other waste materials to produce liquid and gas fuels. The liquid is refined into gasoline, diesel and benzene fuels which are sold for domestic and commercial use. Reuters 2. A man checks the heat of a pipe pouring with fuel, inside a workshop in the rebel-held Douma neighbourhood of Damascus. The workshop has operated for some three and a half years, since government forces began their siege of rebel-held eastern Ghouta, a district on the outskirts of the Syrian capital where Douma is located. Reuters 3. Men work with bags filled with gas extracted from plastic at the workshop. Using methods learned from instructional videos posted on the internet, they take plastic bottles, rubble from damaged buildings, plastic from cooking utensils, water and even sewage pipes to produce liquid and gas fuels. Reuters 4. A man works on broken-down pieces of plastic at the workshop. The plastic will be turned into fuel to be sold. Reuters 5. Khodor, 20, stands inside the fuel workshop where he works in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Damascus. Reuters 6. Khodor, reacts to burning plastic inside a workshop where he works in the rebel-held besieged Douma neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria April 1, 2017. Reuters 7. Abu Fahad, working in conditions that can only be termed 'dangerous'. Reuters 8. A young man fills a container with locally-made fuel. It is sold in bottle by the road side to locals. Reuters 9. A copybook with delivery orders for fuel lies on a table inside the workshop. Reuters 10. A boy and a man sort through plastic inside the workshop. Reuters 11. Khodor, extracts fuel made from plastic waste at his workshop in Damascus. Reuters 12. Khodor, watches the fire burn and break down the plastic into basic hydrocarbon fuels. Reuters 13. Two men collect fuel made in a crude workshop in Damascus. Reuters 14. A young man fills bottles with fuel that was produced from plastic waste inside a small workshop in Damascus. Reuters 15. Fuel drips into a container at a workshop for extracting fuel from plastic in the rebel-held Douma neighbourhood of Damascus in Syria. Reuters According to security researchers, hundreds of Android apps are using ultrasonic beacons to subtly spying on users every day. The report indicates that the beacons, embedded into various apps, can track a user via their microphone without their knowledge. In a research paper titled Privacy Threats through Ultrasonic Side Channels on Mobile Devices, researchers from the Brunswick Technical University in Germany say that that various firms have begun exploring new tech options to track user habits and activities. Several among them have millions of downloads or are part of reputable companies, such as McDonalds and Krispy Kreme, they said. At least 234 apps have been found to be spying on users, as well as 4 of 35 stores in two European countries specifically using location tracking. First created by app developer SilverPush in 2015, the number of Android apps now using the publicly available software has climbed from just 5 that year to more than 200 (that we know of). The apps listen for ultrasonic sounds that marketers use in television and other targeted audio ads and then use them to track you on the real world. Ultrasonic side channels on mobile devices can be a threat to the privacy of a user, as they enable unnoticeably tracking locations, behavior and devices," researchers said. The apps can in this way spy on a users TV-watching habits and even what other devices you own. It can also let them track your movements indoors, without the need for GPS, and de-anonymize Tor users, leaving them vulnerable to attacks. Basically, an app with ultrasonic beacons can compile a profile of you, using only your smartphones microphone, without your knowledge. However, SilverPush founder Hitesh Chawla told Ars Technica that the reports findings surprised him, because his company abandoned the ad-tracking platform in 2015. Even when we were live, our SDK was not present in more than 10 to 12 apps. So there is no chance that our presence in 234 apps is possible. Every time a new handset gets activated with our SDK, we get a ping on our server. We have not received any activation for six months now. However, the Brunswick Technical University researchers stand by their numbers. Even if the technology is not currently in use, the growth in the number of apps containing the code sets up a possibility for it to be exploited in the near future. To make matters worse, 234 apps with the SilverPush SDK were spotted from a collated list of 1.3 million Android apps, meaning that number could be even higher, while its also still not clear how many instances of it also exist on iOS. A consortium of international companies headed by Rothschild & Co. will be involved in restructuring and return of loans of PrivatBank (Kyiv) issued to affiliated persons (insider loans), the press service of PrivatBank has told Interfax-Ukraine. "The supervisory board of PrivatBank on April 13 selected a consortium of companies consisting of Rothschild, Ernst & Young LLC (EY) and FinPoint LLC winners of the tender to select the international recognized company to hold talks on restructuring, adding more collateral and restoring the cost of troubled loans, other loans and financial leasing liabilities provided to former ultimate beneficiaries of PrivatBank or persons who are directly or indirectly linked to the former ultimate beneficiaries of the bank. The cooperation agreement between the bank and the above-mentioned companies will be signed early May. The Ukrainian government on December 18, 2016 decided to nationalize Ukraine's No. 1 bank, PrivatBank. It became wholly owned by the state. After the government became its owner, the Finance Ministry additionally injected UAH 116.8 billion into it, including UAH 9.8 billion in 2017. Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Valeriya Gontareva said on April 10 that the post-audit of PrivatBank after its nationalization has revealed additional problems at the bank, which would require an additional capitalization of the bank by the state. She said that the post-audit established that not 97%, but 100% of the corporate portfolio was issued to affiliated persons. The vast majority of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) board of governors agreed at a meeting on Wednesday that the bank followed its own rules in interactions with Russia, the bank's head Suma Chakrabarti said at a press conference. In mid-2014 the EBRD froze new projects in Russia for political reasons and Russia believes that this decision was a violation of the bank's rules. Trump Fires FBI Boss James Comey - It's About Time... By Moon Of Alabama May 10, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - President Trump dismissed the Director of the FBI James Comey on recommendation of the Deputy Attorney General, who had served under Obama, and the Attorney General. The dismissal and the recommendation memos can be read here . Comey is accused of usurping the Attorney General's authority on several occasions. In July 2016 Comey decided and publicly announced the closing of the Clinton email-investigations without a recommendation of prosecution. He publicly announced the reopening of the investigation in October only to close it again a few days later. At the first closing of the investigation Comey held a press conference and said : our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. That, by far, exceeded his competency, Since when can a police officer decide how "reasonable" a prosecutor may or may not be, and make public announcements about that? Clinton's running of a private email server broke several laws. Anyone but she would have been prosecuted at least for breaching secrecy and security regulations. It is not the job of the police to decide about prosecutions. The police is an investigating agent of the public prosecutors office. It can make recommendations about prosecutions but not decide about them. Recommendations are to be kept confidential until they are decided upon by the relevant authority - the prosecutor. The formal dismissal of Comey is, in my view, the right thing to do. It should have been done earlier. But the political dimension of the dismissal is not about the Clinton email affair at all. It is about the "Russia interfered with the election" nonsense Clinton invented as excuse for her self-inflicted loss of the vote. The whole anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign run by neocons and "Resistance" democrats, is designed to block the foreign policy - detente with Russia - for which Trump was elected. The anti-Russia inquisition is dangerous groupthink . No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter There is no evidence - none at all - that Russia "interfered" with the U.S. election. There is no evidence - none at all - that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign. The Democratic Senator Dianna Feinstein, who sits on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, recently confirmed that publicly (vid) immediately after she had again been briefed by the CIA: Blitzer mentioned that Feinstein and other colleagues from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had visited CIA headquarters on Tuesday to be briefed on the investigation. He then asked Feinstein whether she had evidence, without disclosing any classified information, that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. "Not at this time," Feinstein said. Blitzer was stunned. There is no evidence. But the FBI Director keeps an investigation open on the issue and talks about it. He does not make any recommendation to the prosecutors. After six month of investigation the FBI has no evidence for any of the rumors about Russian interference that are thrown around. It should have closed the case with a clear recommendation not to prosecute the issue. (That the former Trump NSA General Flynn once took money for a gig at Russia Today is a none issue. He took ten times as much money from Turkey but no one seems to be interested in the background of that deal.) That Comey kept the case open was political interference from his side. Hearings and public rumors about the case blocked the political calendar. Instead of following the facts, and deciding based upon them, he was running a political campaign by himself. John Edgar Hoover demonstrated how much damage an unrestricted FBI director on political witch hunt can cause. No such dictatorial power should ever again be vested in that position and in a person who is prone to exceed his competencies. The Clinton partisans and the Russia hawks will howl about Trump's decision for a day or two. They fear losing their current hobby horse. They will soon find a different one. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Obama Pockets $3.2 Million For Speaking Gig In Milan By Tyler Durden May 10, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - President Obama, the preeminent crusader against the evils of Wall Street, took some heat from his Progressive pals a few weeks ago when it emerged that as his first paid speech appearance he would receive $400,000 for roughly an hour of his time from, well, Wall Street, or rather Cantor Fitzgerald. But the irony didn't end there. In an effort to combat the public outcry, the beloved former President defended his efforts by arguing that the decision to take $400,000 from Cantor Fitzgerald couldn't possibly mean that he's a sellout because, well, he already sold out to Wall Street during his initial Presidential campaign back in 2008. You can't sell out again if you've already sold out before...come on people, it doesn't work that way. Here is part of his actual statement : "With regard to this or any speech involving Wall Street sponsors, I'd 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." But, according to the Express , the $400,000 fee from Cantor is nothing compared to the $3.2 million that President Obama got for his speech in Milan at the Seeds and Chips gathering in Milan today , a conference on the impact that technology, innovation and climate change will have on food availability and production worldwide. Thanks this edition of Seeds&Chips and thanks to President Barack H. Obamas extraordinary participation in the Global Food Innovation Summit, the city of Milano - and Italy are once again the world hub of food and food innovation, a journey that began with Expo 2015, stated Marco Gualtieri, founder and Chairman of Seeds&Chips. New technologies can offer us the solutions to tackle some of the major global challenges: food security, nutrition, combatting waste, sustainability and climate change. I believe that Italy can be a key player in this sector by joining innovation and our long-standing tradition of excellence in food. There are hundreds of startups, businesses and companies who are active in this field and at Seeds & Chips our overall goal is to gather them all under one roof with a synergistic action that will enable Milano and Italy to become an international reference point for innovation in food and food-tech. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter So why is this possible? Can Obama really drop $3.2mm worth of knowledge in 1.5 hours? Of course not. Dilbert creator Scott Adams describes the post-presidency speaking circuit best as a "Pre-bribe" : It is illegal to bribe a president. But it is totally legal to pre-bribe one. Heres how a pre-bribe works. When a president leaves office, you offer the ex-president an enormous speaking fee. Lets say $400,000. The ex-president does the speech and banks the money. The ex-president has no power at that point, so the speaking fee cant be seen as a bribe because there is no quid pro quo. But what about the president that is in office while this happens? Do you think the current president notices when the the prior president gets a $400,000 payday for an hour of work? It would be hard to miss. So lets say the company that hired the ex-president asks for a meeting with the current president. Do you think the company gets that meeting? And do you think the current president bends over backwards to get them whatever they need? He does if he wants a $400,000 payday after leaving office. Thats a pre-bribe. Totally legal. And here is what $3.2 million will buy you...1.5 hours of invigorating knowledge transfer from the former POTUS: This article was first published by Zero Hedge In other war zones, as I have explained in previous articles (here and here), the kind of passive reports of civilian deaths compiled by Airwars have only ever captured between 5 percent and 20 percent of the actual civilian war deaths revealed by comprehensive mortality studies. Iraqbodycount, which used a similar methodology to Airwars, had only counted 8 percent of the deaths discovered by a mortality study in occupied Iraq in 2006. Airwars appears to be collecting reports of civilian deaths more thoroughly than Iraqbodycount 11 years ago, but it classifies large numbers of them as contested or weakly reported, and is deliberately conservative in its counting. For instance, in some cases, it has counted local media reports of many deaths as a minimum of one death, with no maximum figure. This is not to fault Airwars methods, but to recognize its limitations in contributing to an actual estimate of civilian deaths. Allowing for various interpretations of Airwars data, and assuming that, like such efforts in the past, it is capturing between 5 percent and 20 percent of actual deaths, a serious estimate of the number of civilians killed by the U.S.-led bombing campaign since 2014 would by now have to be somewhere between 25,000 and 190,000. The Pentagon recently revised its own facetious estimate of the number of civilians it has killed in Iraq and Syria since 2014 to 352. That is less than a quarter of the 1,446 victims whom Airwars has positively identified by name. Airwars has also collected reports of civilians killed by Russian bombing in Syria, which outnumbered its reports of civilians killed by U.S.-led bombing for most of 2016. However, since the U.S.-led bombing escalated to over 10,918 bombs and missiles dropped in the first three months of 2017, the heaviest bombardment since the campaign began in 2014, Airwars reports of civilians killed by U.S.-led bombing have surpassed reports of deaths from Russian bombing. Because of the fragmentary nature of all Airwars reports, this pattern may or may not accurately reflect whether the U.S. or Russia has really killed more civilians in each of these periods. There are many factors that could affect that. For example, Western governments and NGOs have funded and supported the White Helmets and other groups who report civilian casualties caused by Russian bombing, but there is no equivalent Western support for the reporting of civilian casualties from the Islamic State-held areas that the U.S. and its allies are bombing. If Airwars reporting is capturing a greater proportion of actual deaths in one area than another due to factors like this, it could lead to differences in the numbers of reported deaths that do not reflect differences in actual deaths. Shock, Awe and Silence To put the 79,000 bombs and missiles with which the U.S. and its allies have bombarded Iraq and Syria since 2014 in perspective, it is worth reflecting back to the more innocent days of Shock and Awe in March 2003. As NPR reporter Sandy Tolan reported in 2003, one of the architects of that campaign predicted that dropping 29,200 bombs and missiles on Iraq would have, the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on Japan. When Shock and Awe was unleashed on Iraq in 2003, it dominated the news all over the world. But after eight years of disguised, quiet, media-free war under President Obama, the U.S. mass media dont even treat the daily slaughter from this heavier, more sustained bombardment of Iraq and Syria as news. They cover single mass casualty events for a few days, but quickly resume normal Trump Show programming. As in George Orwells 1984, the public knows that our military forces are at war with somebody somewhere, but the details are sketchy. Is that still a thing? Isnt North Korea the big issue now? There is almost no political debate in the U.S. over the rights and wrongs of the U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. Never mind that bombing Syria without authorization from its internationally recognized government is a crime of aggression and a violation of the U.N. Charter. The freedom of the United States to violate the U.N. Charter at will has already been politically (not legally!) normalized by 17 years of serial aggression, from the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. So who will enforce the Charter now to protect civilians in Syria, who already face violence and death from all sides in a bloody civil and proxy war, in which the U.S. was already deeply complicit well before it began bombing Syria in 2014? In terms of U.S. law, three successive U.S. regimes have claimed that their unconstrained violence is legally justified by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed by the U.S. Congress in 2001. But sweeping as it was, that bill said only, That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. How many of the thousands of civilians the U.S. has killed in Mosul in the past few months played any such role in the September 11th terrorist attacks? Every person reading this knows the answer to that question: probably not one of them. If one of them was involved, it would be by sheer coincidence. Any impartial judge would reject a claim that this legislation authorized 16 years of war in at least eight countries, the overthrow of governments that had nothing to do with 9/11, the killing of about 2 million people and the destabilization of country after country just as surely as the judges at Nuremberg rejected the German defendants claims that they invaded Poland, Norway and the U.S.S.R. to prevent or preempt imminent attacks on Germany. U.S. officials may claim that the 2002 Iraq AUMF legitimizes the bombardment of Mosul. That law at least refers to the same country. But while it is also still on the books, the whole world knew within months of its passage that it used false premises and outright lies to justify overthrowing a government that the U.S. has since destroyed. The U.S. war in Iraq officially ended with the withdrawal of the last U.S. occupation forces in 2011. The AUMF did not and could not possibly have approved allying with a new regime in Iraq 14 years later to attack one of its cities and kill thousands of its people. Caught in a Web of War Propaganda Do we really not know what war is? Has it been too long since Americans experienced war on our own soil? Perhaps. But as thankfully distant as war may be from most of our daily lives, we cannot pretend that we do not know what it is or what horrors it brings. This month, two friends and I visited our Congresswomans office representing our local Peace Action affiliate, Peace Justice Sustainability Florida, to ask her to cosponsor legislation to prohibit a U.S. nuclear first strike; to repeal the 2001 AUMF; to vote against the military budget; to cut off funding for the deployment of U.S. ground troops to Syria; and to support diplomacy, not war, with North Korea. When one of my friends explained that hed fought in Vietnam and started to talk about what hed witnessed there, he had to stop to keep from crying. But the staffer didnt need him to go on. She knew what he was talking about. We all do. But if we all have to see dead and wounded children in the flesh before we can grasp the horror of war and take serious action to stop it and prevent it, then we face a bleak and bloody future. As my friend and too many like him have learned at incalculable cost, the best time to stop a war is before it starts, and the main lesson to learn from every war is: Never again! Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump won the presidency partly by presenting themselves as peace candidates. This was a carefully calculated and calibrated element in both their campaigns, given the pro-war records of their main opponents, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The American publics aversion to war is a factor that every U.S. president and politician has to deal with, and promising peace before spinning us into war is an American political tradition that dates back to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. As Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering admitted to American military psychologist Gustave Gilbert in his cell at Nuremberg, Naturally, the common people dont want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. There is one difference, Gilbert insisted, In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. Goering was unimpressed by Madisons and Hamiltons cherished constitutional safeguards. Oh, that is all well and good, he replied, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. Our commitment to peace and our abhorrence of war are too easily undermined by the simple but timeless techniques Goering described. In the U.S. today, they are enhanced by several other factors, most of which also had parallels in World War Two Germany: Mass media that suppress public awareness of the human costs of war, especially when U.S. policy or U.S. forces are responsible. A media blackout on voices of reason who advocate alternative policies based on peace, diplomacy or the rule of international law. In the ensuing silence regarding rational alternatives, politicians and media present doing something, meaning war, as the only alternative to the perennial straw man of doing nothing. The normalization of war by stealth and deception, especially by public figures otherwise seen as trustworthy, like President Obama. The dependence of progressive politicians and organizations on funding from labor unions that have become junior partners in the military industrial complex. The political framing of U.S. disputes with other countries as entirely the result of actions by the other side, and the demonization of foreign leaders to dramatize and popularize these false narratives. The pretense that the U.S. role in overseas wars and global military occupation stems from a well-meaning desire to help people, not from U.S. strategic ambitions and business interests. Taken altogether, this amounts to a system of war propaganda, in which the heads of TV networks bear a share of responsibility for the resulting atrocities along with political and military leaders. Trotting out retired generals to bombard the home front with euphemistic jargon, without disclosing the hefty directors and consultants fees they collect from weapons manufacturers, is only one side of this coin. The equally important flip-side is the medias failure to even cover wars or the U.S. role in them, and their systematic marginalization of anyone who suggests there is anything morally or legally wrong with Americas wars. IMF to Greece: Sorry Well Destroy You Bond holders, banks, and IMF bear responsibility for having made irresponsible loans to Greece, so it is not right for them to force yet more austerity on Greece, says Michael Hudson. By Michael Hudson May 10, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Sharmini Peries: Its the Real News Network. I am Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The European Commission announced on May 2, that an agreement on Greek pension and income tax reforms would pave the way for further discussions on debt release for Greece. The European Commission described this as good news for Greece. The Greek government described the situation in similar terms. However, little attention has been given as to how the wider Greek population are experiencing the consequences of the policies of the Troika. On May Day thousands of Greeks marked International Workers Day with anti-austerity protests. One of the protesters a 32-year-old lawyer perhaps summed the mood, the best when he said Speaker 2: The current Greek government, like all the ones before it, have implemented measures that has only one goal, the crushing of the workers, the working class and everyone who works themselves to the bone. We are fighting for the survival of the poorest who need help the most. Sharmini Peries: To discuss the most recent negotiations underway between Greece and the TROIKA, which is a European Central Bank, the EU and the IMF, heres Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished research professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of many books including, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage the Global Economy and most recently J is for Junk Economics: A Survivors Guide to Economic Vocabulary in the Age of Deception. Michael its been a while, good to have you back. Michael Hudson: Good to be here. Sharmini Peries: Michael, lets start with whats being negotiated at the moment. Michael Hudson: I wouldnt call it a negotiation. Greece is simply being dictated to. There is no negotiation at all. Its been told that its economy has shrunk so far by 20%, but has to shrink another 5% making it even worse than the depression. Its wages have fallen and must be cut by another 10%. Its pensions have to be cut back. Probably 5 to 10% of its population of working age will have to immigrate. The intention is to cut the domestic tax revenues (not raise them), because labor wont be paying taxes and businesses are going out of business. So we have to assume that the deliberate intention is to lower the governments revenues by so much that Greece will have to sell off even more of its public domain to foreign creditors. Basically its a smash and grab exercise, and the role of Tsipras is not to represent the Greeks because the Troika have said, The election doesnt matter. It doesnt matter what the people vote for. Either you do what we say or we will smash your banking system. Tsiprass job is to say, Yes I will do whatever you want. I want to stay in power rather than falling in election. Sharmini Peries: Right. Michael you dedicated almost three chapters in your book Killing the Host to how the IMF economists actually knew that Greece will not be able to pay back its foreign debt, but yet it went ahead and made these huge loans to Greece. Its starting to sound like the mortgage fraud scandal where banks were lending people money to buy houses when they knew they couldnt pay it back. Is it similar? Michael Hudson: The basic principle is indeed the same. If a creditor makes a loan to a country or a home buyer knowing that theres no way in which the person can pay, who should bear the responsibility for this? Should the bad lender or irresponsible bondholder have to pay, or should the Greek people have to pay? IMF economists said that Greece cant pay, and under the IMF rules it is not allowed to make loans to countries that have no chance of repaying in the foreseeable future. The then-head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, introduced a new rule the systemic problem rule. It said that if Greece doesnt repay, this will cause problems for the economic system defined as the international bankers, bondholders and European Union budget then the IMF can make the loan. This poses a question on international law. If the problem is systemic, not Greek, and if its the system thats being rescued, why should Greek workers have to dismantle their economy? Why should Greece, a sovereign nation, have to dismantle its economy in order to rescue a banking system that is guaranteed to continue to cause more and more austerity, guaranteed to turn the Eurozone into a dead zone? Why should Greece be blamed for the bad malstructured European rules? Thats the moral principle thats at stake in all this. Sharmini Peries: Michael, The New York Times has recently published an article titled, IMF torn over whether to bail out Greece again. It essentially describes the IMF as being sympathetic towards Greece in spite of the fact as you say, they knew that Greece could not pay back this money when it first lent it the money with the Troika. Right now, the IMF sounds rational and thoughtful about the Greek people. Is this the case? Michael Hudson: Well, Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister under Syriza, said that every time he talked to the IMFs Christine Lagarde and others two years ago, they were sympathetic. They said, I am terribly sorry we have to destroy your economy. I feel your pain, but we are indeed going to destroy your economy. There is nothing we can do about it. We are only following orders. The orders were coming from Wall Street, from the Eurozone and from investors who bought or guaranteed Greek bonds. Being sympathetic, feeling their pain doesnt really mean anything if the IMF says, Oh, we know it is a disaster. We are going to screw you anyway, because thats our job. We are the IMF, after all. Our job is to impose austerity. Our job is to shrink economies, not help them grow. Our constituency is the bondholders and banks. Somebodys going to suffer. Should it the wealthy billionaires and the bankers, or should it be the Greek workers? Well, the Greek workers are not the IMFs constituency. It says: We feel your pain, but wed rather you suffer than our constituency. So what you read is simply the usual New York Times hypocrisy, pretending that the IMF really is feeling bad about what its doing. If its economists felt bad, they would have done what the IMF European staff did a few years ago after the first loan: They resigned in protest. They would write about it and go public and say, This system is corrupt. The IMF is working for the bankers against the interest of its member countries. If they dont do that, they are not really sympathetic at all. They are just hypocritical. Sharmini Peries: Right. I know that the European Commission is holding up Greece as an example in order to discourage other member nations in the periphery of Europe so that they wont default on their loans. Explain to me why Greece is being held up as an example. Michael Hudson: Its being made an example for the same reason the United States went into Libya and bombed Syria: Its to show that we can destroy you if you dont do what we say. If Spain or Italy or Portugal seeks not to pay its debts, it will meet the same fate. Its banking system will be destroyed, and its currency system will be destroyed. The basic principle at work is that finance is the new form of warfare. You can now destroy a countrys economy not merely by invading it. You dont even have to bomb it, as youve done in the Near East. All you have to do is withdraw all credit to the banking system, isolate it economically from making payments to foreign countries so that you essentially put sanctions on it. Youll treat Greece like theyve treated Iran or other countries. We have life and death power over you. The demonstration effect is not only to stop Greece, but to stop countries from doing what Marine Le Pen is trying to do in France: withdraw from the Eurozone. The class war is back in business the class war of finance against labor, imposing austerity and shrinking living standards, lowering wages and cutting back social spending. Its demonstrating whos the winner in this economic warfare thats taking place. Sharmini Peries: Then why is the Greek population still supportive of Syriza in spite of all of this? I mean, literally not only have they, as a population, been cut to no social safety net, no social security, yet the Syriza government keeps getting supported, elected in referendums, and they seem to be able to maintain power in spite of these austerity measures. Why is that happening? Michael Hudson: Well, thats the great tragedy. They initially supported Syriza because it promised not to surrender in this economic war. They said they would fight back. The plan was not pay the debts even if this led Europe to force Greece out of the European Union. In order to do this however, what Yanis Varoufakis and his advisors such as James Galbraith wanted to do was say, If we are going not to pay the debt, we are going to be expelled from the Euro Zone. We have to have our own currency. We have to have our own banking system. But it takes almost a year to put in place your own physical currency, your own means of reprogramming the ATM machines so that people can use it, and reprogramming the banking system. You also need a contingency plan for when the European Union wrecks the Greek banks, which basically have been the tool of the oligarchy in Greece. The government is going to have to take over these banks and socialize them, and use them for public purposes. Unfortunately, Tsipras never gave Varoufakis and his staff the go ahead. In effect, he ended up double crossing them after the referendum two years ago that said not to surrender. That lead to Varoufakis resigning from the government. Tsipras decided that he wanted to be reelected, and turned out to be just a politician, realizing that in order to he had to represent the invader and act as a client politician. His clientele is now the European Union, the IMF and the bondholders, not the Greeks. What that means is that if there is an election in Greece, people are not going to vote for him again. He knows that. He is trying to prevent an election. But later this month the Greek parliament is going to have to vote on whether or not to shrink the economy further and cut pensions even more. If there are defections from Tsiprass Syriza party, there will be an election and he will be voted out of office. I wont say out of power, because he has no power except to surrender to the Troika. But hed be out of office. There will probably have to be a new party created if theres going to be hope of withstanding the threats that the European Union is making to destroy Greeces economy if it doesnt succumb to the austerity program and step up its privatization and sell off even more assets to the bondholders. Sharmini Peries: Finally, Michael, why did the Greek government remove the option of Grexit from the table in order to move forward? Michael Hudson: In order to accept the Eurozone. Youre using its currency, but Greece needs to have its own currency. The reason it agreed to stay in was that it had made no preparation for withdrawing. Imagine if you are a state in the United States and you want to withdraw: you have to have your own currency. You have to have your own banking system. You have to have your own constitution. There was no attempt to put real thought behind what their political program was. They were not prepared and still have not taken steps to prepare for what they are doing. They havent made any attempt to justify non-payment of the debt under International Law: the law of odious debt, or give a reason why they are not paying. The Greek government has not said that no country should be obliged to disregard its democratic voting, dismantle its public sector and give up its sovereignty to bondholders. No country should be obliged to pay foreign creditors if the price of that is shrinking and self destruction of that economy. They havent translated this political program of not paying into what this means in practice to cede sovereignty to the Brussels bureaucracy, meaning the European Central Bank on behalf of its bondholders. Sharmini Peries: All right Michael, we will keep an eye on this. It looks like its going to get more heated in Greece. At least the people and the movements are planning to protest this new deal. I thank you so much for joining us and I hope you can join us again. I understand you are on your way to Greece in a few weeks and well be expecting a report back from you about what you find there. Thank You. Michael Hudson: Thanks for having me on. Sharmini Peries: Thank you for joining us here on the Real News Network. Note: Wikipedia defines Odious debt : In international law, odious debt, also known as illegitimate debt, is a legal doctrine that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable. Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of J is Junk Economics (2017), Killing the Host (2015), The Bubble and Beyond (2012) http://michael-hudson.com Greece Passes New Austerity for New Loans , The Real New Network, May 6, 2017. A local government worker who reportedly abducted and r*ped a 15-year-old girl, was on Wednesday, sentenced to life imprisonment by a High Court sitting in Ado-Ekiti. An Ado-Ekiti High Court on Wednesday sentenced a local government worker, Ojo Ayodele, to life imprisonment for abducting and raping a 15-year-old girl. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Mr. Ayodele abducted the minor in Ijero-Ekiti and took her to a secret location in the town where he subjected her to continuous sexual assault for 21 days. Justice Oluwatoyin Abodunde, in her judgment, found Mr. Ayodele guilty as charged and sentenced the accused to life jail. The judge, who also found Mr. Ayodele guilty of abduction, sentenced him to seven years for the offence. The jail terms are, however, to run concurrently. The Director of Public Prosecution, Gbemiga Adaramola, said that Mr. Ayodele was first arraigned on February 2, 2016 on a two-count charge of rape and abduction. The prosecution called seven witnesses during trial and tendered exhibits which included statements of the victim and that of the convict and a medical report that established the rape. The convict did not call any witness in the course of the trial although his counsel, Tosin Osundahunsi, was in court during sentencing. The prosecution had told the court that a concerned resident who saw blood stains on the victims clothes took her to Ijero Local Government Immigration Office to report the case. Mr. Ayodele was later caught at the council secretariat after the victim identified him as the abductor who subjected her to serial raping. The immigration officers promptly arrested the convict and took him to Ijero Police Station where the case was reported. NAN reports that prior to the incident, the victim was living with her stepmother after her father and mother divorced, with the latter relocating to Port Harcourt. She was said to have met the convict who promised to take care of her after she ran away from home. Four Nigerians are in the midst of an ongoing investigations into credit card theft and stolen mail, Canadian authorities said in a statement on Tuesday. Adedayo Ogundana, 45, also known as Oladipupo Ogund; Adekunle Johnson Omitiran, 37; Duro Akintola, 44, of Toronto, who is also known as Michie Noah; and Emmanuel Salako, 47, who is also known as Gee Salaq, are said to be involved in fraud amounting to over $10m. According to reports, Toronto police arrested Ogundana and Omitiran during an investigation which began in 2016. Ogundana was arrested on December 13, 2016, and has been charged with two counts of fraud of over $5,000; 10 counts of fraud under $5,000; possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000; and possession of proceeds of crime. He will appear in court on Thursday. Omitiran surrendered to police on April 27. He is charged with fraud of over $5,000; four counts of fraud under $5,000; two counts of identity theft; trafficking identity information; possession of credit cards obtained by crime; possession of proceeds of crime; and failure to comply with probation. He will appear in court on Friday. Police believe that Omitiran had ties to people with legitimate access to identity information. Those people, police allege, sold information to Omitiran. Police are trying to track down those people. A warrant has been issued for Akintola; while Salako, who has been indicted by the United States Postal Inspection Service in Chicago under the name George Salako, is also wanted in the U.S. Police claimed the four used funds from identity theft and fraud to fund a lavish lifestyle that included $10,000 crocodile skin shoes and $150,000 watches. Items seized during the investigation include 37 stolen credit cards, hundreds of pieces of presumably stolen mail, and a number of notebooks containing the personal information of at least 5,000 GTA residents. Thousands of individuals across the GTA have had their information compromised, said Det. Const. Mike Kelly. According to The Star, The evidence was found April 24 after police executed a search warrant at a Yorkville condominium that is believed to be under the control of Adekunle Johnson Omitiran. Police also found $39,000 in cash, $310,000 worth of watches and about $390,000 worth of clothing, jewelry, accessories and liquor. Sources: Toronto-based The Star; City News A popular radio preacher in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis area of Ghana, Nana Nkwantabisa, has been allegedly stabbed to death by a taxi driver, Adom News reports. The sad incident occurred during a highway brawl between the two which resulted in the untimely death of the pastor. The driver is currently on the run. According to eye-witnesses, the incident happened at Race Course Junction around Appremdo at about 9 pm on Monday. The deceased, about 40 years, who also owns a church at Assakae, was driving a Benz saloon when he picked a quarrel with the taxi driver as to who had the right of the way. In the ensuing exchanges, the taxi driver was said to have pulled a knife from his car and stabbed the pastor on the chest. Onlookers quickly moved to the scene and rushed the pastor, who was bleeding profusely, to the Jemimah Hospital at Kwesimintsim but he was pronounced dead on arrival. The body has since been deposited at the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital morgue for autopsy. Meanwhile, the police have mounted a man hunt for the taxi driver. Public joint-stock company VTB Bank (Kyiv) has claimed an attempt to illegally deprive the bank of non-residential premises in Odesa by a group of persons consisting of a public registrar and a private notary. The bank said that on April 11, 2017 public registrar of Odesa-based branch of State Institute of Forensic Studies O.Kravets using fake sale and purchase agreements registered ownership right to non-residential premises of 653.3 square meters and 1,298 square meters in Odesa belonged to the bank to Triniti Invest Group LLC. Later on April 18, 2017, Triniti Invest Group via private notary O.Yarosh sold the premises to Teplokomungroup Ltd. Currently the company is the unlawful owner of this property. VTB Bank on April 28 challenged the fraud in the commission of the Justice Ministry and achieved the removal of registration data from the register. On April 29, 2017, the bank banned anyone from applying any register actions to its property. However, on April 30 Kravets made a new entry to the register saying that Teplokomungroup owns the premises. On May 3, 2017, Teplokomungroup sold some premises to two individuals V.Akimenko and O.Korniyenko. On May 5, unknown persons tried to seize the premises threatening employees of the VTB Bank branch. VTB Bank was founded in 1992. Its main shareholder is OAO Bank VTB (Russia, 99.9959%). VTB Bank ranked 15th among 93 Ukrainian banks as of January 1, 2017 in terms of overall assets (UAH 20.64 billion), according to the National Bank of Ukraine. A police sergeant has shot his lover and killed himself, in Potiskum town, Potiskum local government area of Yobe State, because of alleged cheating. An operative of the Nigerian Police Force identified simply as Kennedy has on Tuesday, shot dead his girlfriend and turned the gun on himself, in Potiskum town, Potiskum local government area of Yobe State. According to a report by DailyTrust, the tragic incident happened inside the Police sergeants apartment located at old secretariat building, adjacent Potiskum police station. While conforming the incident to a correspondent, the Commissioner of Police in Yobe State command, Abdumaliki Sunmonu, said that the incident happened in the Sergeants house, adding that the officer was in the room with his girlfriend when the gunshots were heard. Later on, it was discovered that the sergeant shot his girlfriend, and shot himself. They were taken to hospital, the Sergeant was confirmed dead, while the girlfriend was in critical condition, he said. He said that the sergeant was alone with the girlfriend in the room when the incident happened so only preliminary investigation will revealed what actually transpired. Also speaking to a reporter, a neighbor of the Sergeant said that the deceased usually have problem with the girlfriend. They were having some issues these days, blaming the Margi lady of having extra affairs, but nobody suspected he will do something like that. he said. A Nollywood actor has told of what happened to him when he was kidnapped and how he was able to escape n*ked from captivity. Mcdonald Oti, a Nollywood actor, has explained how he escaped n*ked from a gang that kidnapped him about two weeks ago in Ebonyi State, Daily Post reports. Oti is also the Special Assistant to the Chairman of Ebonyi State Universal Basic Education Board, ESUBEB. The actor was kidnapped from his home in Abakaliki, the state capital on April 22, 2017 about 8.30 pm and driven away in his Toyota Highlander SUV, to Ohatekwe forest in Ezza North Local Government Area of the state. Accordin g to him, his abductors took everything he had on him and then stripped him n*ked. While narrating his ordeal, Oti told newsmen that he was abducted by three serious looking men, who forced him into the boot of his vehicle. He said, They were three persons, two came down from their car while the third person who drove their own car remained inside the vehicle. The two men got into my vehicle. One drove my car while the other pointed a gun at my head where I was in the boot section of the SUV. They told me that someone sent them to kidnap me, warning that I should cooperate so that they would not kill me. They took everything I had with me and then asked for the PIN of my ATM card. They also asked me where I work and inquired whether the vehicle has a tracking device. They drove through Abakaliki metropolis without any policeman stopping them. Their own vehicle, a Toyota Sienna, was behind us. Oti said when they stopped near a forest, a vehement argument broke out between the kidnappers as to whether he should be shot or not. At this point, he felt an overpowering urge to run for his life. As the argument continued between the gang, he ran into the dark forest, discountenancing any thought to slow down. As he was running in the darkness, he sustained injuries. Fortunately for him, the kidnappers could not chase him through the forest in the dark. According to him, I came out from the forest completely nude and traumatized. I approached a woman for assistance but she immediately took to her heels. I met another man and he took off too. While I looked for safety and cover, I saw a flex banner that announced a burial that had taken place. I tore off the banner and wrapped it around my waist, to cover my nakedness. Then I walked across the expressway and got to the secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. After identifying myself and explaining what happened, the people I met gave me boxer shorts to wear. I honestly dont know the last time the boxer shorts had been worn, but I was very grateful for it. It was when I got to the police station that succour came to me. What actually helped the situation was that my wife was not also abducted with me. When I was taken away, she raised the alarm, and informed the police and my associates. Men of the police force sprang into action and were able to recover my SUV. And since then, they have been working hard to arrest the culprits. I am quite grateful to my neighbor, who is a retired naval officer. He alerted police and other security agents when he was informed about the abduction. The headquarters of the Ebonyi State Police Command, sent signals to all police divisions and stations as well as patrol teams and alerted them to watch out for the vehicle. He said on getting to the express, he reported to the police traffic post along Enugu-Abakiliki expressway and the policemen there reported to the police command headquarters about it. According to him, he was taken to the headquarters where he met with the Commissioner of Police. He added, I want to commend the police for their indefatigable effort to recover my SUV and their continuing operations to track down and arrest the kidnappers. I am thankful to all the people who kept praying for my safe rescue. I owe all a huge debt of gratitude. I pray that the Lord God will bless every one of them. I am deeply thankful to my wife, for the right and prompt steps she took immediately after I was taken away. In fact, I cant thank God enough for her, The Anti-kidnapping Unit of the Imo State Police Command on Tuesday stormed the dreaded Avu Forest in the Owerri West Local Government Area of the state and rescued three kidnap victims unhurt. Southern City News learnt that the policemen equally arrested the victims suspected abductors, numbering seven, who held them for days without food and water in the bush. Parading the suspects at the scene of the crime, the state Police Public Relations Officer, Andrew Enwerem, said the victims were abducted on Saturday. Enwerem gave the names of the suspects as Chukwuebuka Augustine, 22, from Egbeada, Owerri; Romanus Ukabi, 28, from Isiagwu in Ebonyi State; Ikechukwu Nwachukwu, 34, of the Ezinihitte Mbaise LGA and Chikamso Onyewuchi, 25, of Ejemekuru in the Oguta LGA of the state. Others were Collins Nwaekwe, 24, of Obizi, Aboh Mbaise LGA, Chibuike Maduba, 26, of Umukoronekwenye and Ikechukwu Okere, 20, of Umukoronopelu in the Ngor Okpala LGA of the state. According to the police spokesperson, the kidnap victims Francis Ugorji of Awaka, Chika Ahanonu of Works Layout, Mbieri Road, in the Owerri North LGA and Chibuike Nwaozo of Awo-Omamma, of the Oru East LGA of the state were tied and blindfolded in the forest for days. Enwerem said one Toyota Highlander belonging to one of the victims, which was used during the operation, was recovered. Other exhibits recovered, according to the PPRO, are two wraps of a substance suspected to be hemp, two machetes, pieces of clothes used in blindfolding the victims, four phones, one blue pair of jeans and three empty bottles of hot drink. He said, In the early hours of Tuesday between 2am and 2.30am, operatives of the Imo State Anti-Kidnapping Unit stormed kidnappers hideout in the Avu Forest in the Owerri West LGA of Imo State in an effort to rescue three victims, who were kidnapped last Saturday. During the operation, the operatives were confronted by a gang of kidnap suspects, who were holding the three victims for ransom. In the heated operation, seven kidnap suspects were overpowered and arrested. Three kidnap victims, who were tied and blindfolded, were rescued in the forest unhurt and with exhibits recovered in the process. The police spokesperson said the state Commissioner of Police, Chris Ezike, had ordered that all kidnappers hideouts in the state be ransacked. The CP is committed to eradicating kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism and all forms of crimes in the state, Enwerem added. Source: ( Punch Newspaper ) An Ekiti State High Court, Ado-Ekiti, has sentenced a local government worker, Ojo Ayodele, to life imprisonment for abducting and raping a 15-year-old girl. Ayodele was accused of abducting the teenager in Ijero-Ekiti and taking her to a secret location in the town where he subjected her to continuous sexual assault for 21 days. The victim was living with her stepmother after her father and mother divorced with the latter relocating to Port Harcourt. The court was told how the victim left the house due to alleged maltreatment by her stepmother before meeting the convict who promised to take care of her. A good Samaritan who saw blood stains on the victims cloth took her to Ijero Local Government Immigration Office to report the case. Ayodele was arrested by immigration officers at the council secretariat where the victim identified him as her abductor before the matter was reported at Ijero Police Station. Justice Oluwatoyin Abodunde in her judgment found Ayodele guilty of rape and abduction as charged and sentenced him to life jail. The Director of Public Prosecution, Gbemiga Adaramola, prosecuted the case on behalf of the State while the convict was represented by his counsel, Tosin Osundahunsi. Ayodele was first arraigned on February 2, 2016, on a two-count of rape and abduction. The prosecution called seven witnesses during the trial and tendered exhibits which included statements of the victim and the convict, as well as a medical report which established the rape, among others. The convict did not call any witness apart from himself in the course of the trial. Source: ( Punch Newspaper ) A Nigerian and Romanian man accused of cross-border drug smuggling, have been sentenced to life in prison by a Cambodian court on Tuesday, May 8. The Romanian, Adrian-Calin Varadi, 40, was caught on Aug. 14, 2016 when he arrived at the Phnom Penh International Airport from Brazil with 4.96 kg of cocaine hidden in his luggage. The Nigerian, Chukwuemeka Ibe, 35, was arrested later that day while he waited at his hotel room to receive the drugs to take them to neighboring Thailand. The duo were charged with illegally transporting the drugs under the countrys Drug Law, said a verdict read by Phnom Penh Municipal Courts Presiding Judge Im Vannak. The court decides to sentence each of them to life in prison and to fine them 40 million riel (10,000 U.S. dollars) each, the verdict said. During a trial last month, Varadi confessed to the crime, but Ibe denied the charge, claiming that he did not know the package he supposed to receive was carrying drug. Under the Cambodian law, the convicts have one month to appeal against the ruling. Source: Naijaloaded It was a battle ground at Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, Sango-Ota, Ogun State, between smugglers and Custom officers, one of the smugglers is been feared dead. The identity of the person killed could not be ascertained, but the victim was believed to be a suspected smuggler. Our correspondent gathered that pandemonium broke out when hoodlums, suspected to be smugglers, attacked the convoy of the customs operatives from the Federal Operations Unit, Ikeja, conveying seized 45 bags of rice and 258 cartons of turkey alleged to have been smuggled through the Idiroko end of the Republic of Benin. The Public Relations Officer, Ogun State Area Command of the NCS, Mr. Abdullahi Maiwada, said NCS operatives were conveying the seized goods to the NCS warehouse in Ikeja, Lagos, when the clash occurred. He said the vehicles conveying the contraband were a Mazda car, with number plate, KTU 504 AL, and an unregistered Volkswagen Passat. He said, Our operatives had intercepted two vehicles conveying the contraband a Mazda, with number plate, KTU 504 AL, which conveyed 45 bags of smuggled rice; the other car was an unregistered Volkswagen Passat, which conveyed 258 cartons of poultry product. It was while our operatives were taking the seized goods to a government warehouse in Ikeja that hoodlums attacked them around the Tollgate area in Sango-Ota. Our officers had to save their lives and protect the seized contraband. It was during the ensuing clash that one of the hoodlums was shot dead. Maiwada said following the clash, hoodlums who were irked by the killing of the victim, stormed the customs checkpoint at Atan, along Sango-Idi Iroko Road, and destroyed about five vehicles. He lamented that one of the patrol Hilux vehicles belonging to the NCS was set ablaze, while another had its screen smashed. He added that three other cars belonging to residents were vandalised. He said one of the officers of NCS was also attacked and he was receiving treatment in an undisclosed hospital. He said, One of our officers had to take refuge at a nearby police station during the clash. The customs spokesman said the situation has been brought under control, while investigation had started. The state Police Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, also confirmed the incident. He said, The clash occurred this morning (Tuesday) between smugglers and the operatives of the Nigeria Customs Service, Federal Operations Unit. Ikeja, at the Tollgate end of the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway and one of the smugglers was killed in the clash. Policemen from the Sango-Ota Police Station in Ogun State and Alagbado Police Division in Lagos State, were deployed in the area to restore law and order. Source: ( Punch Newspaper ) President Muhammadu Buhari has allegedly ordered the resignation of the former Governor of Rivers State who is now the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi. Also alleged to have been asked to resign are Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola and Chief of Staff to the president, Abba Kyari over various allegations of corruption, DAILY POST exclusively gathered. A source in the Presidential Villa told DAILY POST that Buhari worried that having these persons in his cabinet could put so much to question about his personality and frustrate the present anti-corruption war had advised them to quietly resign. The source also said the President reminded them of his earlier warning that if he sacked any of his appointees, such would be prosecuted. It would be recalled that there had been several allegations of corruption flying in and outside the media about Ameachi. A leading Newspaper in the United Kingdom, UK, The Mail Daily, on Sunday, May 15, 2016 published a report revealing how Rotimi Amaechi allegedly looted Nigerias treasury. The report claimed that President Muhammadu Buharis fantastically corrupt friend, spent over $140 million on the presidents 2015 campaign and has been accused of stealing 500 million. Also a Judicial Commission of Inquiry in Rivers State had allegedly indicted the former governor for looting the treasury of the state, when he served as Governor for eight years. Amaechi had, however, denied these various allegations. His contemporary, Babatunde Fashola, had equally been petitioned over mismanagement of Lagos state funds. It would be recalled that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was petitioned by the Civil Society Network Against Corruption, a coalition of anti-corruption organisations in Nigeria, over an alleged questionable expenditures of the administration of Babatunde Fashola. He allegedly approved before he left office, N78.3 million from the states treasury for an upgrade of his personal website, an allegation he had since denied. Relatively, it has been alleged that the Chief of Staff (CoS), Abba Kyari, took N500m from operators of MTN to help the telecommunications giant mitigate the fine imposed on it by the federal government. The chief of staff was also allegedly involved in a deal of taking money from Jide Omokore, a shady businessman who was allegedly involved in corruption in the oil sector during the preceding administration. The president has been waiting patiently for them to resign, The source stressed. When DAILY POST contacted the Senior Special Adviser to the president on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, he simply said in a text message thus; I am sorry I am in Abuja and I cant confirm or deny the report with the president who is now in London. If you can leave me out of this, I will appreciate. Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari recently suspended the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Mr David Babachir Lawal and ordered an investigation into the allegations of violations of law and due process made against him in the award of contracts under the Presidential Initiative on the North East (PINE). The President had equally ordered a full scale investigation into the discovery of large amounts of foreign and local currencies by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in a residential apartment at Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, over which the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) made a claim, hence suspending the DG, Ambassador Ayo Oke. The investigation is also to enquire into the circumstances in which the NIA came into possession of the funds, how and by whose or which authority the funds were made available to the NIA, and to establish whether or not there has been a breach of the law or security procedure in obtaining custody and use of the funds. Meanwhile, when DAILY POST contacted Fasholas Media aide, Bello Hakeem, he listened carefully but hung up. He rejected all other calls put across to him to get Fasholas reaction. Effort to reach Ameachis media aides failed as mobile phones were permanently switched off. Source: Naijaloaded Igbo traders and angry youths of Biogbolo in Yenagoa have clashed after the shocking murder of a 17-year-old girl by an Igbo trader. The death of a 17-year-old girl in Bayelsa state has caused serious controversy resulting in brutal attacks on Igbo traders by angry youths in Biogbolo community in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital. According to ChannelsTV, the youths staged a protest against the alleged murder of a 17-year-old girl from the community, Amusoro Zedibe, by a 31-year-old man identified simply as Tochukwu. One of the deceaseds relatives, Bobby Gabriel condemned the purported killing and demanded for government intervention, alleging that the incident was not unconnected to ritual purposes. The Caretaker Chairman of the Yenagoa Local Government Area, Oboku Oforgi, told reporters that a meeting with the chiefs and youths of the community had been convened to appeal for calm. He added that Igbo traders in the community have been advised to stay away from their business premises, to avoid any breakdown of law and order. Although the Bayelsa State government is yet to make any official comment on the incident, the Commissioner of Police, Amba Asuquo, explained what transpired between the dead girl and her alleged murderer. He assured the angry locals that efforts are on by the State Police Command to investigate the incident and restore calm to the community. The Police Commissioner added that they have launched a manhunt in order to apprehend the suspected killer who is said to be at large. Apostle Suleman of the Omega Fire Ministries Worldwide has been given a royal welcome in Liberia where he visited to preach the gospel. Apostle Johnson Suleman has arrived Monrovia, Liberia for a 2-day Help from Above Crusade. A lady was pictured kneeling down to welcome him as a show of strong respect and admiration for the cleric whose ministry is in 16 countries across the world. The fiery cleric was handed a flower gift by a nicely dressed little girl. Also, Liberian newsmen all came out to have a glimpse of what he has to say on his arrival. The year 2017 has been challenging for Apostle Suleman on a reputational basis with his alleged mistress, Stephanie Otobo accusing him of having an illicit romance with her. See more photos: IMF reps to arrive in Ukraine on May 16 to study bill on pension reform Next Tuesday, on May 16, representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will arrive in Ukraine to be presented with a bill on pension reform, Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine Andriy Reva said. "On May 16, they (representatives of the IMF) should come again to see the bill," the minister said in a commentary to Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday. According to him, almost all the details of the pension reform project are coordinated with the IMF, and representatives of the Fund want to see how these are formulated in the draft law. Reva noted that soon after the transfer of the bill to the IMF representatives, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman will present the pension reform to the Ukrainian public. A brutal street fight has broken out over a girl in a Lagos community which ended up leading to the death of a young man. The Lagos State Police Command on Wednesday said it arrested eight suspects following a street fight at Iyana-Ipaja which claimed a young mans life. NAN reports that the Commissioner of Police, Mr Fatai Owoseni, told newsmen that the fighting broke out at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday and lasted until about 2 a.m on Wednesday. At about 10 p.m., we received distress call that some youths are on rampage at Iyana-Ipaja and we sent the police response team there. The fight raged and continued till 2 a.m when normalcy was restored. Eight suspects were arrested and one person was killed in the course of the fight. Investigation, however, revealed that fighting ensued over a girl, who resides at Abule-Oki area of Iyana-Ipaja. The girl had gone to a party at Elere, Agege, where she was molested. On getting back to her area, she told the youths who later blocked the road and led a fight towards Elere during which the police moved in to stop them. Investigation is still on and will be extended to both sides of the community and those involved will be brought to book, the police boss said. Patch Tuesday has hit with a vengeance. Microsoft's Official Security Update Guide lists 243 Windows patches, 81 of which are critical. If you click on the Details button to show individually identified security problems (typically CVE numbers), the list swells to 997 entries. Be of good cheer. You can download the whole list into an Excel spreadsheet with a click on the Download button. Microsoft has also published its list of May patches for Office: 36 security updates and 28 nonsecurity updates. Wait, that's not all. In addition to the Security Update spreadsheet and the Office list, there's also a list of new nonsecurity patches on the old Windows Update list site. I count a Servicing Stack update (but only for Windows 8.1), two so-called Dynamic Updates for Win10 1703 (see Gunter Born's description of Dynamic Updatesthey're used during installation of an upgrade), a security update for the Scripting Engine in Windows Server 2008, and the usual Malicious Software Removal Tool. I don't know how to count all of those. I swear, I took off my shoes and socks, and ran out of digits. There's an enormous potful of patches. The short list: Windows 10 1703 to build 15063.296 -- short list of fixes 1607 to build 14393.1198 -- huge list of fixes 1511 to build 10586.916 -- medium list of fixes 1507 to build 10240.17394 -- another medium list of fixes. This should be the last cumulative update for 1507. Note that the patches for deprecating SHA-1 for IE11 and Edge SSL/TLS Authentication are listed separately. Looks like a Security Bulletin to my jaundiced eye. Windows 7 KB 4019263 Security-only update (Group B) KB 4019264 Monthly Rollup (Group A) Windows 8.1 KB 4019213 Security-only update (Group B) KB 4019215 Monthly Rollup (Group A) In the Lounge, @PKCano and @NetDef note that the odd new terminology is proliferating, where patches for Win7 and 8.1 are now preceded by the year and month. For example, we have "2017-05 Security Only Quality Update for Windows Embedded Standard 7, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 (KB4019263)." That's not to be confused with names that include dates that go the other way around, such as "May, 2017 Security Only Update for .Net Framework 3.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2 on Windows Embedded Standard 7, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 (KB4019108)" or names that don't mention dates, such as "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (KB4018271)." Some day that naming system will helpit's much easier to sort patch lists by year and month with the yyyy-mm format. For now, though, it's a real head-turner. As promised, Microsoft released delta-only patches for Win10 1607 and 1703. If you are all caught up on cumulative updates through last month and want to download the smallest possible update file, take a look on the Microsoft Update Catalog. Most folks can (and should) ignore it. Thx to @abbodi86. Microsoft has also released four Security Advisories in the past two days: 4022345 Identifying and correcting failure of Windows Update client to receive updates 4021279 Vulnerabilities in .Net Core, ASP.Net Core Could Allow Elevation of Privilege 4010323 Deprecation of SHA-1 for SSL/TLS Certificates in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 4022344 Security Update for Microsoft Malware Protection Engine The last one is the Security Advisory I mentioned earlier this morning. In addition, Microsoft announced last week that .Net Framework 4.7 is now available on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and all versions of Win10. Thanks to @MrBrian. If you're looking for even more detail, Martin Brinkmann at gHacks.net has an extensive list and analysis. The ZeroDay Initiative has a chart organized by CVE number. Personally, I would love to see a small chart that groups similar CVEs into, well, Security Bulletins. Microsoft recenlty published a Security Advisory that looks something like an old-fashioned Security Bulletin, to centralize the discussion of SHA-1 deprecation in IE11 and Edge. I'd pay to have another column in the Security Update Guide with a link to a collection of aggregating articles. Security Bulletins, if you will. Note: I do not recommend that you update yet. It's much, much too early to tell which patches are causing problems. Help us sort this giant mess out on the AskWoody Lounge. Mixed Midday in Hog Market Barchart - 1 hour ago Lean hog futures are trading within 60 cents of UNCH so far for the midweek session. Dec, June 23 and July 23 are down by as much as 22 cents. The spring delivery months are gaining 20 to 55 cents.... HEZ22 : 85.050 (-0.61%) HEJ23 : 94.425 (+0.24%) KMZ22 : 95.325 (-0.68%) Cotton Down Double Digits at Midday Barchart - 1 hour ago Front month cotton futures are trading with midday losses of 189 to 214 points. USDA reduced their average farm price for cotton by a nickel to 85 cents/lb. Monthly USDA projections had a 13 lb/acre cotton... CTZ22 : 86.29 (-1.59%) CTH23 : 84.49 (-1.46%) CTK23 : 83.48 (-1.60%) Cattle Prices Red at Midday Barchart - 1 hour ago The midweek cattle market is down $1.15 in the Dec contract with a 30 to 50 cent loss in the other front months through midday. The midweek FCE auction sold none of the 1,081 head listed, with $151-$152... LEZ22 : 151.650 (-0.91%) LEG23 : 154.175 (-0.39%) LEJ23 : 157.725 (-0.33%) GFX22 : 177.550 (-0.41%) GFF23 : 179.525 (-0.21%) Corn Futures Markets are Red at Midday Barchart - 1 hour ago Corn prices are off their initial reaction lows, but still trading down by 1 to 3 cents in the front months following the USDA report. The monthly USDA updates showed corn yields were raised 0.4 bpa to... ZCZ22 : 665-2 (-0.34%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.6292 (-0.38%) ZCH23 : 671-2 (-0.37%) ZCK23 : 671-0 (-0.41%) Beans Near UNCH after Report Barchart - 1 hour ago Soybean prices are off their initial reaction lows into midday. Prices were working in the black going into the report. Front month soybeans are trading 3 1/2 to 5 cents in the red. Meal futures are down... ZSX22 : 1460-4 (+1.14%) ZSPAUS.CM : 14.1903 (+0.36%) ZSF23 : 1450-4 (+0.28%) ZSH23 : 1456-0 (+0.19%) Coffee Prices Fall as Rabobank Boosts its Brazil 2023/24 Coffee Crop Estimate Barchart - 1 hour ago December arabica coffee (KCZ22 ) this morning is down -0.55 (-0.33%), and Jan ICE Robusta coffee (RMF23 ) is down -18 (-0.98%). Coffee prices this morning extended this week's losses, with arabica and... KCH23 : 162.35s (-1.10%) RMF23 : 1,819s (-0.66%) WASDE Day! The Corn & Ethanol Report 11/09/2022 The PRICE Futures Group - 1 hour ago We kickoff the da 12:00 P.M. and Dairy Products Sales at 2:00 P.M. with MBA Purchase Index (04/Nov), MBA Mortgage Applications (04/Nov) and MBA 30-Year Mortgage Rate (04/Nov) at 6:00 A.M., Wholesale Trade... The Russian Federation at a meeting of the Board of Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in Cyprus on May 10 unsuccessfully tried to achieve the abolition of restrictions on financing projects in Russia imposed in 2014, Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk has said. "At the meeting the absolute majority of shareholders supported the extension of restrictions on EBRD projects in Russia," the minister wrote in his Facebook blog. According to him, the main argument of the Russian manager was the damage caused by these limitations for the development of the private sector of the Russian economy and, allegedly, their negative impact on the results of the EBRD's work. Danyliuk said the situation when one shareholder of the EBRD carries out military aggression against another shareholder grossly violates the norms of international law and is unacceptable. "In addition, Russia's military and economic aggression against Ukraine is harmful not only to Ukraine but also Russia, including the private sector, which the Russia representative so worried about," Danyliuk said, advocating the extension of the EBRD's restrictive measures against Russia. GU Self Storage has opened for business in Harmon, Guam. The two-story, climate-controlled facility comprises 40,000 square feet in 270 units inside the former Guam Power Authority (GPA) building. It has an onsite partnership with Mail Hub, which sells a full line of moving and packing supplies in addition to offering postal and office services, according to a source. The storage facility is compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act and offers unit sizes from 25 to 540 square feet, according to a GU press release. It features a fully covered loading/unloading entrance and parking area as well as vehicle access on the second level. Security features include barbed-wire perimeter fencing, keycode access, LED lighting and more than 100 video cameras. Tenants have access to an assortment of carts, dollies, hand trucks and pallet jacks. They can also use their mobile devices as keypads to access secured dates and doors, the release stated. GUs collaboration with Mail Hub will provide storage customers with access to a conference room, business workstations, document services and a notary public, according to sources. A grand-opening ceremony on May 6 included facility tours and special guests, including Lt. Gov. Ray Tenorio. Leonard P. Calvo, vice president of GU Self Storage affiliate Calvo Enterprises Inc., and Dan Paulino, manager of Mail Hub, spoke to attendees about the project. The self-storage property is near existing retail, including a McDonalds fast-food restaurant. When Calvo Enterprises announced the project in 2015, it indicated a portion of the GPA parking area would be converted to 60,000 square feet of drive-up self-storage. Based in Hagatna, Guam, Calvo Enterprises is a diversified company with interests in alcohol and beverage distribution, building materials, insurance, real estate management and sales, and various retail projects including a drug store and supermarkets, according to a Guam Chamber of Commerce listing. In an unlikely marriage, activist investors are increasingly seeking to partner with index providers when they campaign for changes at public companies. With index investors representing a growing portion of the market, activists need to combine with other shareholders to get managements attention. At the same time, passive managers want to differentiate their offerings, which for the most part vary only by their price tags. State Street Global Advisors, one of the largest passive managers, is one. We take those calls all the time, said Ronald OHanley, CEO of SSGA. SSGA is getting increasingly involved in governance issues ranging from public company policies on voting rights of shareholders, to board diversity, to climate change. The company has devoted more resources to analyzing environmental, social, and governance factors as it has grown in size, owning larger stakes in public companies. SSGA, BlackRock, and Vanguard, the three dominant index fund providers, together can often own 20 percent of a stock. We are listening to good ideas, said OHanley. Passive managers like SSGA invest in all companies included in a specific benchmark, regardless of their future prospects. Activists, meanwhile, are the ultimate active manager. They buy stakes in companies and then push for changes in strategy, including spinning off profitable divisions or returning idle cash to shareholders. In contrast, few index funds get involved in any governance at all, said Alex Roepers, founder and CIO of activist investor Atlantic Investment Management. But Roepers expressed interest in talking to SSGA. The firm, for its part, is responding to investors growing interest in using ESG criteria to assess whether to own certain stocks. OHanley said SSGA can be more influential than even active managers, which own stocks on average for nine to 18 months. Index funds, on the other hand, are a source of permanent capital, he explained. You cant turn the S&P500 into the S&P499, he said. Although many activists seek changes that are long term in nature, many want companies to make moves that will result in a quick uptick in the stock price. SSGA would vote against activist proposals that work against long-term company goals. We will vote against short-term people, OHanley said. Jeffrey Ubben, CEO and CIO of activist ValueAct Capital, agreed that SSGA and other passive managers governance efforts could help focus activists on the long term. Right now, he said, too many hedge funds execute activist strategies with money tied up for only a year when five years is a better time frame. Ana Marshall, CIO of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, said she believes good policies could help index funds stand out. There is an information opportunity for passive shops to say we do corporate governance, she said. Her fund currently invests with a number of activists in part because index funds are increasingly dominant and plow money into stocks regardless of their fundamental advantages or disadvantages. The more the market goes passive, Marshall said, the more important activism becomes. It appears the worst is over.The Ottawa River has crested, water levels are decreasing on the streets of Laval, while the federal government has committed to covering the costs of soldiers and sandbags.However, the shockwaves of the flooding that has rocked many parts of Canada continue to be felt. One man died after attempting to drive across a washed out gravel road and a young girl is missing following days of catastrophic flooding from St. Catharines, Ontario to Gaspe, Quebec. The warming weather has also raised river levels in B.C.Donna Ince, RSA Canada s senior vice president of personal insurance said the insurer was beginning to survey the impact on its clients nationwide.RSA Canada has received about a total of 130 claims in Ontario related to the rain events which swept through several provinces this weekend, she said. We are currently assessing our impact in Quebec. In BC, we have been minimally impacted.We are seeing a number of claims with water in the basement and some with water infiltration through roofs. This event has been well-managed throughout the weekend to ensure our customers received the assistance they needed urgently.Canadians living in flood zones likely dont know theyre in danger, according to a University of Waterloo study released during the height of Eastern Canadas flooding, that found 94% of respondents who were in a flood zone werent aware.Another study from the University of Waterloo, this one from 2016, said 70% of Canadians hadnt been approached by their broker about overland flood insurance.Given global climate change, water-related damage is becoming an increasingly prevalent issue for home and small-business owners in Canada. Yet nearly one in three Canadians dont know what type of water coverage they have or need, Ince said.We always encourage our brokers to use recent and relevant examples of flood-related events to bring awareness of the importance of overland flood coverage to their clients. Based on broker feedback, RSA developed Waterproof Coverage in November 2015. The endorsement was designed to offer brokers home insurance clients an affordable option for flexible coverage thats clear and simple to understand, and is comprehensive of damage caused by both overland flooding and sewer backup.Many communities have been built on flood plains, in part because the federal government stopped making flood maps in 1996 and only recently began issuing national standards again.The call from resilient communities, particularly urban ones, has been growing louder in light of the recent deluge.We believe that risk prevention and insurance go hand-in-hand, Ince said.Insurers have an important role to play in encouraging governments to take action. Whether it is through measures to make cities more resilient to severe weather, investing in technology such as flood mapping to better design customized coverage across a region, insurance companies can and should aim to make a difference in influencing and informing national policies and regulations. A federal judge has tossed a racketeering suit against several major auto insurers, saying claims that theyve forced repair shops to accept inadequate payments lacks support.Geico, Liberty Mutual , State Farm and other insurers were sued by Crawfords Auto Center of Pennsylvania and K&M Collision of North Carolina. The plaintiffs claimed that the insurers forced repair shops to accept low payments by saying that the prices they pay their direct program shops are market norms. The plaintiffs werent direct repair shops, but claimed that the rates paid to such shops artificially forced down payments to market rate shops.But US District Judge Gregory Presnell called the shops allegations bloated and said that they failed to include elements necessary for a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) claim even after several chances.The reader who slogs through all 172 pages of the second amended complaint will be left almost entirely in the dark as to what role any of the 70-plus individual defendants played or what actions any of them took in furtherance of the RICO enterprise or in furtherance of anything else, for that matter, Presnell said. There is no description of the role played by the individual insurers in the alleged enterprises, or the reason they played that role.The judge also said that nothing in the plaintiffs oral arguments suggested they could state a valid RICO claim. He granted the defendants motion to dismiss the case with prejudice. The managers of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will discuss the investment climate in Ukraine and the ways to improve it at an annual meeting being held, according to a press release from the Finance Ministry of Ukraine. The corresponding question will be raised during the panel discussion "The Future of Investing in Ukraine," in which Minister of Finance Oleksandr Danyliuk will participate. In addition, Danyliuk intends to meet with EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti, EBRD Vice President Alain Pilloux, EBRD Chief Economist Sergei Guriev, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Cyprus Harris Georgiades, U.S. Treasury representative Clay Berry and other representatives of EBRD member countries. The ministry noted the 26th annual meeting of EBRD governors is held in the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, on May 9-11. About 2,000 participants take part in it. The main theme of the current meeting is "Targeting Green and Inclusive Growth Meeting Regional and Global Challenges." The EBRD provides support to Ukraine for implementing reforms that are important for the economy. Currently the bank participates in numerous projects in Ukraine. Most of them are aimed at developing the private sector and infrastructure. The total funding for the existing projects is about EUR 4 billion. The population is getting older and people are living longer. This represents an opportunity for insurers an opportunity theyre not yet taking.A recent report by the Swiss Re Institute has again highlighted the challenges and opportunities to the insurance industry of the aging population. The over-65 population is expected to grow by 50% from 2015 to 2050.Yet insurance globally has just 5% of the market share of the $11 trillion aging wallet; while in the US, the domestic insurance market the largest market share internationally still has only 11% of its $3.1 trillion wallet.Domenico Savarese, head of aging at Swiss Re, said the industry needs to re-evaluate its approach to insuring the elderly if it is to capitalize on that aging wallet.It needs to be made relevant to consumers, he explained. If the product today exists and people dont buy it, then something must be changed. There are a number of insurance solutions already available, but are they really addressing all the needs that people have? Are they too big to solve one problem, or are they too small? I think thats the next level of sophistication that our industry needs to [look at]. How can they be made more relevant, I guess, is the real challenge for us.Insurance for the over-65s could include any number of coverages, including long-term care, emergency medical, savings decumulation support, or other customized approaches.Savarese said insurers need to become more customer-centric to pick up and retain the aging wallet.We do believe that customer-centricity is an area where insurance needs to step up. How do you become more relevant? ... We argue that you need to be really understanding what people need, he noted. The share of insurance [in the US] is 11%. Do we wish it was higher? Clearly. We argue it can be higher, because there is value that can be unlocked by insurance by managing better the uncertainties that will happen as we age. As an industry, I dont think we are doing enough.The report poses more questions than answers. But the important question implied throughout is: what can the industry do to improve its offering to the aging wallet?By addressing the need for greater resilience of the over 65s, the industry could access an underserved market, the report stated. While the number of traditional insurance customers (those aged 30-49) in the developed world will fall by about 40 million, the over-65 population will grow by 116 million between 2015 and 2050. Thats a 50% increase, and a market ripe for opportunity. An emergency has been declared at a nuclear-contaminated site in Washington state after a portion of a tunnel caved in on rail cars contaminated with nuclear waste, according to an NPR report.The Hansford Site, a former nuclear production complex, is about 150 miles southeast of Seattle. Regarded as the most contaminated nuclear site in America, its the home of a long-running cleanup operation, according to NPR. The site contains millions of tons and hundreds of billions of gallons of nuclear waste, making it the governments most challenging nuclear cleanup project, according to the Department of Energy.Earlier today, a 20-foot-by-20-foot section of soil caved in where two underground tunnels meet next to the sites Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, also called the PUREX plant. The tunnels were storing rail cars that once carried nuclear fuel from reactors to production facilities when the site was used to manufacture nuclear weapons, according to NPR.Some employees were evacuated, while others were told to move indoors as a precaution. The Northwest News Network, an area public radio station, reported that about 3,000 workers were taking cover indoors at one point.All personnel in the immediate area have been accounted for they are safe and there is no evidence of a radiological release, Destry Henderson, spokesperson for the Hansford Sites emergency operation center, said in a Facebook post.The Department of Energy has also said that there was no indication of contamination from the collapse. This week is Hurricane Preparedness Week, which seems a pretty good time to examine the impending hurricane season, and explore some advice for agents and brokers selling hurricane-related products.Indeed this year also marks the fifth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which cost $65 billion, making it the second-costliest storm ever in the US behind Hurricane Katrina.When it comes to hurricane season, Andrew Higgins, technical manager of the Americas for Allianz Risk Consulting, gives one ultimate piece of advice: ignore the forecasts and simply be prepared.This year, pretty much all of [the forecasts] are saying that it should be a pretty normal hurricane season, or normal to slightly-below-normal in terms of the frequency and intensity of storms that are supposed to occur, Higgins says.Now, to give you my opinion on the whole forecasting thing to be blunt, its sort of a waste of time. They simply dont have the modelling ability to be able to predict, with any accuracy, what is going to happen. They miss it as much as they hit it.The forecasts attempt to predict the number of hurricanes that may occur but they dont say how many are expected to actually hit landfall, Higgins says, which is the crucial aspect.All it takes is one storm like Superstorm Sandy to make landfall and, even in a hurricane season that may have been light, then youve got incredible losses, he says. What I always tell people is: no matter what the forecast is, you need to be prepared.The last major hurricane to make landfall in the US was Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, killing more than 1,800 people and creating $125 billion in damages, mainly in Louisiana and Mississippi.When you think of a hurricane, most people think of wind damage, but Sandy was an example of a storm where wind damage was very, very light, but the flooding is what created most of losses, he explains. We have to remember that [Like Katrina too] storm surge and flooding can, and typically does, cause more damage than the actual wind itself.Higgins says that rising global water levels will continue to make hurricane season, and flooding, worse. With higher sea levels, were going to see higher damages, he notes.But he has four tips brokers should impart on their clients beyond just ignoring the forecasts.The first one is to make sure that you have an emergency preparedness plan that is up to date, that encompasses all the nat cat losses and fire losses that could occur, and make sure that plan includes a wind storm, he suggests.Two: I would recommend that everyone review their business continuity plan, or business contingency plan, to make sure that plan is up to date, that people know how to implement it.The third thing I would do, sit down with the clients and go through the policy to really understand what it covers and what it doesnt. Flooding isnt always covered, sometimes it is, sometimes it isnt.And the fourth issue is: for those facilities that are in harms way along the coast I would really, really encourage those clients to consider making improvements to the building and the site to enable that facility to withstand both the high winds and the flooding. Setting a cap on no-fault benefits Establishing fee schedules for the upper limit that doctors and clinics can charge for no-fault procedures and services Adopting restraints on lawyer compensation in legal disputes Cutting the time limit for starting treatment after an accident Proactively preventing and pursuing fraudulent cases Three thousand dollars can easily burn a hole in a motorists pocket. And it does in Detroit, where the average driver pays that much in annual premiums for car insurance.But something has to give. The no-fault insurance system in the city and in Michigan as a whole is proving to be such a burden that even its supporters are calling for reforms to ease the astronomical rates in the state. Detroit suffers from the highest car insurance rates in the country due to the current system, but some say it will be tough to totally do away with it."Dont throw out the baby with the bathwater and get rid of no-fault," said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson in a Detroit Free Press special report.Mark Bernstein, president and managing partner at the Sam Bernstein law firm, supports reform."The tragic truth is that no-fault was a noble experiment with the best intentions to help accident victims and to reduce lawsuits, and it has gone off the rails," Bernstein told the Free Press.According to the report, some of the other states that have successfully curbed ballooning rates in a no-fault system, did some of the following:Bernstein said that Michigan does not have to totally supplant its current system. Rather, he said, there need to be checks and balances to ensure that those that really need the insurance benefit from it."How do we eliminate bad actors and still protect the legitimate interests of injured people? Its a very difficult balancing act," he said. The insurance industry will be reshaped and reorganized due to blockchain for sure.Magdalena Ramada, senior economist at Willis Towers Watsons Research and Innovation Centre, made this observation in a recent phone interview with Insurance Business.Recently, Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani wrote in Harvard Business Review that with blockchain, we can imagine a world in which contracts are embedded in digital code and stored in transparent, shared databases, where they are protected from deletion, tampering, and revision. In this world every agreement, every process, every task, and every payment would have a digital record and signature that could be identified, validated, stored, and shared. Intermediaries like lawyers, brokers, and bankers might no longer be necessary. Individuals, organizations, machines, and algorithms would freely transact and interact with one another with little friction. This is the immense potential of blockchain.With this in mind, Ramada observed that the applications that sit on top of the technology will create powerful efficiencies that will change the way insurance is structured and delivered.Potentially, she said, the peer-to-peer model can help insurers and participants enable the market without the need for third party authorities or intermediaries. For instance, she said, blockchain makes it possible to underwrite risk without the need for traditional underwriters.However, blockchain still faces roadblocks.One obstacle in the US market, Ramada observed, is the regulatory and licensing issues that many insurtech companies face today. She explained that some regulators are resistant to current developments, which may make it difficult for players wanting to use the technology to deliver their products.Today, its very difficult to regulate them because theyre acting like banks and its like banking without capital, she noted. Still, she said that some start-ups have been good at connecting with regulators and working with them.Ramada further emphasized that regulation will need to evolve to accommodate the changes in the insurance industry as it adopts the technology. For instance, the possibility of enabling underwriting without an underwriter begs the question of accountability.If something goes wrong theres no-one you can go after, she pointed out. Its more of a social evolution than an industry evolution Regulators need to be aware of thatRegulators really should have that long term perspective.Ramada added that the insurers role will have to be redefined as more players foray into insurance and more cost efficiencies are created to allow the industry to viably tap previously underserved markets.Well be able to assess risk in a better way, (and) well be able to provide risk mitigation services in a better way, she noted. It will really make everything more transparent and more efficient and more robust. A woman who was severely burned by a propane heater at a Connecticut bible camp has been awarded $1.4 million in a negligence lawsuit. Nicole Andrew was visiting her boyfriend at the Mountain Lake Bible Camp in Warren, Conn., in January 2014 when her flannel shirt caught fire while she was standing about an arms length away from the heater. Andrew was 19 at the time and suffered burns on 90 percent of her back. The Connecticut Law Tribune reports that a six-person jury awarded Andrew $1.4 million last month in her lawsuit accusing the camp of failing to warn her of the potential dangers of the heater. The camps lawyers have asked a judge to overturn the verdict, saying there wasnt enough evidence to prove the camp was negligent. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Connecticut The Massachusetts Appeals Court has affirmed the Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA) reviewing boards decision in a case involving how interest should be assessed on unpaid workers compensation claims. The DIA is responsible for overseeing the workers compensation system in Massachusetts. This particular case served to define the meaning of the word claim as it appears in Massachusetts workers compensation law, which requires that interest be calculated on unpaid workers compensation claims from the date of the receipt of the notice of the claim by the department. The DIA reviewing board concluded that in the circumstances of this case, interest was to be accrued from the date the department received notice of the claim ultimately resulting in the order awarding benefits, the Appeals Court decision document stated. The board rejected the injured employees argument that interest should instead run from the filing date of an earlier, similar claim that had been terminated by agreement prior to an award of benefits, the decision document added. This case comes after an employee was injured in 1993 while working. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company (Liberty) the successor to Wausau Insurance Company, the insurer on the date of the injury accepted liability and paid the employees benefits for total incapacity until he returned to work. Liberty then paid partial incapacity benefits to the employee until March 10, 1995, and the employee continued to work until October 2, 1995, when he suffered a second injury. The insurer for the second injury is now the Massachusetts Insurance Insolvency Fund (MIIF), which assumed the risk when Eastern Casualty Insurance Company the insurer at the time of the second injury became insolvent, the Appeals Court document said. With the advice of his treating orthopedic physician, the employee stopped work on December 26, 1995, and has not returned to work since. The employee then filed a claim for the second injury on April 1, 1996, and MIIF filed a denial of that claim. In May 1996, Liberty also filed a complaint for recoupment of almost $35,000 it had paid for the first injury, alleging the employee earned more than his average weekly wage while receiving the benefits. The employee moved to join two claims against Liberty for the first injury. Liberty in turn moved to join MIIF as the insurer for the second injury. After a reviewing board conference on the motions, an administrative judge denied Libertys request for recoupment of overpayment, allowed Libertys motion to join MIIF and denied the employees claims against Liberty for the first injury, without adjudicating MIIFs liability, the Appeals Court document said. Liberty and the employee both appealed. Over the next eleven years, although a number of hearings were scheduled, for reasons unknown, they did not take place and the litigation languished, the court document stated. On July 10, 2008, the parties entered into two agreements one agreement was between the employee and Wausau (now Liberty), and the other was between Wausau and Eastern (now MIIF). In both agreements, Wausau agreed to withdraw its appeal of the order denying recoupment. In the agreement between the employee and Wausau, the employee agreed to withdraw his appeal of the conference order denying disability, reserving the right to raise a disability claim in the future. The employee also stipulated to an overpayment by Wausau of almost $35,000. Wausau agreed not to pursue the employee for the overpayment unless the employee filed a future claim for disability and that claim was resolved. The agreements did not mention interest or the date from which it would accrue if the employee ever received an order for unpaid benefits. In short, the effect of the agreements, which were filed with the department and approved by the administrative judge, was to terminate the pending proceedings without final adjudication and without prejudice in the event the employee again filed a claim, the court document said. The employee decided to do just that. He first filed claims again in 2008, but withdrew them in 2009. He then refiled the claims in 2009, and then again withdrew them. The employees present claims were filed on January 25, 2010, seeking benefits from April 1, 1996, until now. Ultimately, through a series of rulings, MIIF was ordered to pay the employee benefits for permanent and total incapacity from April 1, 1996, the date the employee first filed a claim relating to the second injury. Those benefits were ordered to be paid through the present and continuing, the court document explained. Although the reviewing board affirmed the administrative judges award of benefits, it assessed interest only from January 25, 2010, the filing date of the employees most recent claim. On appeal, the employee argued that he should have been awarded interest from December 17, 1996, the date the department received notice of his claim for the second injury. According to the Appeals Courts decision, Massachusetts workers comp law imposes interest only if there is an order awarding unpaid benefits. Without that, it does not apply. The employee is not entitled to interest simply because he filed a notice of claim; that act merely supplies the date from which interest will be calculated in the event an award of unpaid benefits is ultimately made in the employees favor, the decision document stated. Thus, in this case, the employee was not entitled to interest until the order awarding unpaid benefits on his January 25, 2010, notice of claim. Before that point, although there had been several notices of claim, none had been adjudicated to resolution, let alone in the employees favor. Pointing to additional language in the statute that the Appeals Court deemed unambiguous, the court sided with the reviewing board in its decision. We are sensitive to the fact that the employee made his initial claim on April 1, 1996, and that he has been deprived of his benefits for many years, the decision document stated. Had he not terminated his 1996 claim, and had it resulted in a favorable award, he would have received interest from the date of the 1996 filing. But, in fact, his 1996 claim for benefits was denied after conference, and he thereafter agreed to terminate it. That claim never led to an order awarding unpaid benefits. For these reasons, we affirm the decision of the board. Topics Lawsuits Carriers Claims Workers' Compensation Massachusetts For companies and organizations, an attack by hackers can inflict financial losses, corporate embarrassment and legal action. For insurers jumping into the brave new world of cyber crime insurance, its free marketing for what could be a $10 billion opportunity. High-profile computer breaches like the hack of the Democratic National Committee and the Twitter Swastika Hack are reinforcing the need for protection against cyber threats, and companies such as Allianz SE and Beazley Plc are eager to step in. Insurers see coverage against hackers as one of their most promising markets, estimating that premiums will triple over the next four years. We are optimistic that it can develop into Allianzs and the industrys next blockbuster, Hartmut Mai, chief underwriting officer for corporate lines at Allianzs industrial insurance arm, said in an interview. Cyber insurance is our key growth area at the moment. A new breed of coverage couldnt come at a better time for insurers, which are struggling to expand in most of their established markets amid slow economic growth and low catastrophe claims that weigh on prices. Insurance premium income stagnated in Europe last year and is expected to grow 1.3 percent next year, according to reinsurer Munich Re. The company estimates that cyber insurance premiums could rise to between $8.5 billion and $10 billion by 2020 from about $3.4 billion currently. A further boost to demand may come from rules to be introduced next year by the European Union that will require companies to report cyber breaches to regulators and affected individuals. Allianz currently writes a double-digit million-euro amount of cyber insurance premiums and recorded 28 percent growth last year, according to Mai. He said the product may evolve into an industry bestseller comparable to directors-and-officers liability insurance, which became a top offering during the last decade and now accounts for about 10 billion euros ($11 billion) in global premiums. Boardroom Issue Cyber risk has become a boardroom issue over the past years, following some high profile hacker attacks, Paul Bantick, head of cyber insurance at Beazley, said in an interview. We havent seen the big breaches at the retailers such as in 2015 or the large health-care breaches that occurred in 2016. Yet, theres still a high frequency of smaller losses. Cyber attacks involving ransomware in which criminals use malicious software to encrypt a users data and then extort money to unencrypt it increased 50 percent in 2016, according to a report from Verizon Communications Inc. Criminals increasingly shifted from going after individual consumers to attacking vulnerable organizations and businesses, the report said. Government organizations were the most frequent target of these ransomware attacks, followed by health-care businesses and financial services, according to data from security company McAfee Inc., which partnered with Verizon on the report. While companies have had decades, and in some cases centuries, to work out the risks of fire, natural catastrophes and physical theft, cyber crime is relatively recent, with new and more sophisticated schemes being developed every year. With damages on the rise, the biggest challenge for insurers is to set the right price and limits for their coverage. One in four medium-sized businesses in Germany have suffered a loss from a hacker attack, according to a survey published March 28 by Germanys GDV insurance lobby group. For insurers to stay relevant in an ever more technology-driven business environment, they need to embrace the opportunity while properly managing the risks, Thomas Seidl, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London, said in a note to clients on April 24. Like Munich Re and Allianz, Beazley also sees rapid growth in cyber insurance. The Lloyds of London insurer partners with Munich Re to provide the product and its running the book at a profit. To make sure that continues, insurers are careful not to take overly large risks in the nascent market. We limit our coverage to $100 million per client, of which both Munich Re and Beazley take $50 million, Beazleys Bantick said. In bigger programs, the $100 million is just a first part, with others providing additional coverage. The scope of cyber insurance varies from one provider to the other. Typically, it protects against data and network security breaches and associated losses, and insurers limit their capacity to between $5 million and $100 million per client. A customer fact sheet prepared by insurer Chubb Ltd., which counts the U.S. as its largest market, described a claim where hackers gained access to a school districts network to steal names, addresses and account information from 20,000 past and present faculty and students. Compensation included settlements from compromised individuals, costs of responding to a regulatory investigation and public relations fees. Other cases included a data center for an online retailer that was forced to shut down temporarily and a car components maker whose system was encrypted to extort ransom. Global Event One concern is that a global cyber event such as a devastating virus spreading from Asia to Europe and the U.S. or a global cloud computing provider breaking down could affect a large number of companies covered by one insurer. A hurricane with a probability of happening once in 25 years could cost us as much as $150 million and the whole industry about $30 billion, said Hiscox CEO Bronek Masojada in an interview. Due to the lack of history, the question with cyber is whether a $30 billion loss happens once in 25 years or once in 100 years. The most important question is whether we will be alive after it. In terms of growth, cyber is by far the most important part of the business at Hiscox right now, he said. The London-based insurer will write more than $100 million in cyber premiums this year at a growth rate of 20 percent to 30 percent, Masojada estimated. Cyber insurance premiums at Beazley already exceed $400 million, excluding broker commissions, Bantick said. Munich Res premium income from the product rose to $263 million last year from $191 million in 2015. The Munich-based reinsurer aims to keep a market share of 8 percent to 10 percent going forward, reinsurance head Torsten Jeworrek said. Europe Awakes Beazleys Bantick says his company is starting to see shoots of demand in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Allianzs Mai agrees, adding that he sees last years strong growth rates as the products final breakthrough in Europe. Prices are on the rise as well. In the U.S., cyber-liability rates climbed for the tenth consecutive quarter at the end of last year while rates continued to decline in most other global insurance lines, according to a report by broker Marsh & McLennan Cos. While there are a lot of companies buying cyber coverage, most of them are data-breach driven, Beazleys Bantick said. But clients are looking for large, holistic cyber programs that cover whatever happens from data breach to property damage and business interruption. Leoni AGs experience is a lesson in the complexity of cyber risks. The German cable manufacturer lost 40 million euros [US$43.6 million] last year when fraudsters used fake electronic communication to trick an executive into transferring the cash to foreign accounts. In the end Leoni got about 5 million euros [$5.5 million] from fidelity insurance it had. Even though the company had sufficient cyber insurance in place, it didnt apply because the fraudsters didnt hack the companys systems. Related: Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Carriers USA Trends Cyber Fraud Europe London Allianz Reinsurers Munich Re and Hannover Re both reported that first quarter results are on track to meet their annual targets, despite Q1s higher level of catastrophe claims. Munich Re reported consolidated first quarter profit rose 22 percent to 557 million (US$607 million), compared with 436 million ($475.4 million) reported in Q1 2016. Despite a significant increase in major property/casualty-based losses, Munich Re achieved a gratifying quarterly result, which was due in large part to the good investment result, said CFO Jorg Schneider, who noted that the company is on track to meet its full-year profit target. The groups reinsurance property/casualty business was hit by several major natural catastrophe claims and hence saw a 20 percent drop in Q1 profit to 340 million ($370.8 million), compared with 425 million ($463.4 million) reported for the same period last year. Cyclone Debbie is Munich Res largest single nat cat loss with a price tag of 100 million ($109 million). The company said its results also were hit by an unusual accumulation of significant but localized natural catastrophe events in the USA. Overall major-loss expenditure (manmade and nat cat) increased significantly during Q1 2017 to 403 million ($439.4 million), compared with 100 million ($109 million) during Q1 2016. With a combined ratio of 97.1 percent (2016: 88.4 percent), Munich Re said it is on track to achieve its target of 97 percent for the full year. The reinsurance business reported a 5.5 percent increase in Q1 gross premiums written to 8.1 billion ($8.8 billion), compared with 7.6 billion ($8.3 billion) reported in Q1 2016. April Renewals Pressure on prices and terms and conditions remained intense during the April 1 renewals, although some easing was seen. The overall decline in prices was 0.5 percent for the April renewals, and thus much less pronounced than for the renewals as at April 2016. Munich Re was able to take advantage of selective opportunities in certain markets, such as in Japan, the company said. Hannover Re Results Meanwhile, Hannover Re said it has made a good start to the year, reporting a 2.4 percent decline in Q1 group net income to 264.8 million ($288.8 million), compared with last years level of 271.2 million ($295.7 million). Hannover Re CEO Ulrich Wallin said the quarterly result provides a good basis for achieving the companys annual targets. The successful completion of the first quarter further supports the raising of the guidance for the full-year group net income from more than 950 million ($1 billion) to more than 1 billion ($1.1 billion), added Wallin. Hannover Res property & casualty reinsurance business reported net income of 215.4 million ($234.9 million), an increase of 5.4 percent over last years net income of 204.3 million ($222.8 million). Major losses during the first quarter came to 133.7 million ($145.8 million), compared with 55.5 million ($60.5 million) during the same quarter last year. Similar to Munich Re, the largest single loss for the company was Cyclone Debbie at 50 million ($54.5 million). The P&C reinsurance business reported a combined ratio of 95.6 percent, compared with 94.7 percent reported during Q1 2016. Gross written premiums for the P&C business rose by 12.5 percent to 2.8 billion ($3.1 billion) during the quarter, compared with last years total of 2.5 billion ($2.7 billion). In comments on the April renewals, the company said it concentrated on its existing business in order to safeguard the continued good quality of the property and casualty reinsurance portfolio, given the predominantly soft state of the market. The premium volume booked from the treaty renewals as at April 1, 2017 contracted by 4.9 percent, Hannover Re said in a statement. Topics Profit Loss Claims Reinsurance Property Casualty An Iowa judge has awarded nearly $750,000 in damages to a woman who reported what she thought was abuse of a student at a Keokuk boarding school for troubled youths. The Hawk Eye reports that the award was announced for 22-year-old Cheyenne Jerred. She filed her whistleblower lawsuit against Midwest Academy in December 2015, saying shed been fired because shed reported the incident to the Iowa Human Resources Department. Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies subsequently executed search warrants at two Midwest Academy locations in Lee County. The academy closed shortly afterward. Associated Press attempts to reach academy owner and director Ben Trane to comment were unsuccessful. An attorney listed for him in online court records didnt immediately return a message. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Iowa Ukrainian authorities detained 49 people for breakdown of public order on May 9, including 33 in Kyiv, Ilya Kyva, adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said. "Forty-nine people have been detained for committing a breach of public security and order. Dnipro: six people, Odesa: six people, including two for [exhibiting] prohibited symbols. Another 173 people [have been detained under] Article 185 of the Administrative [Offences Code of Ukraine]. Khmelnytsky: two people for [forbidden] symbols. Chernihiv: two people for [forbidden] symbols. Kyiv: 33 people for [forbidden] symbols," Kyva said on the 112. Ukraina television on Tuesday. Six policemen and three civilians were traumatized in Dnipro, he said. One policeman was injured in Kyiv and one law enforcement agent in Zaporizhia, he added. A total of more than 400,000 people were there to take part in the May 9 mass events and more than 30,000 police troops were there to keep order, Kyva said. A federal appeals court threw out a ruling that the U.S. government illegally bailed out insurer American International Group Inc. during the 2008 financial crisis, in a defeat for former chief executive officer Maurice Hank Greenberg. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington said Greenbergs Starr International Co. had no legal right to challenge the bailout because that right belonged to AIG, which chose not to sue. Tuesdays decision by a three-judge panel was a victory for the government in a lawsuit testing its power to bail out companies, including those deemed too big to fail. David Boies, Starrs lawyer, said we respectfully disagree with the decision and they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Department of Justice had no immediate comment. AIG was rescued in September 2008 after running up huge losses from insurance on shoddy mortgage securities. Starr said the government harmed shareholders through an unconstitutional exaction, by taking a 79.9 percent stake in the stricken insurer in exchange for a high-interest $85 billion loan from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. While punitive measures against a corporation may ultimately be borne by its shareholders, a finding that those measures targeted shareholders directly is a wholly different matter, Chief Judge Sharon Prost wrote for the appeals court. The alleged injuries to Starr are merely incidental to injuries to AIG, and any remedy would go to AIG, not Starr, she added. Starr had been New York-based AIGs largest shareholder, with a 12 percent stake. It sought more than $40 billion of damages for shareholders. In June 2015, Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas Wheeler agreed with Starr that the New York Fed overstepped its authority in arranging the $85 billion loan, but he refused to award damages because AIG would have gone bankrupt without it. The judge also rejected damages for a subsequent reverse stock split. Wheeler ruled after a trial featuring testimony from former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, and former Treasury secretaries Henry Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner. Greenberg appealed Wheelers damages ruling. The government appealed his standing and exaction rulings. Dennis Kelleher, CEO of nonprofit Better Markets, in an interview welcomed the decision, saying the case may help regulators address future financial system shocks without worrying about courts second-guessing them years later. AIGs bailout eventually totaled $182.3 billion but was repaid, leaving taxpayers with nearly $23 billion of profit. Greenberg, 92, led AIG for nearly four decades before being ousted in March 2005. The case is Starr International Co v U.S., Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, Nos. 2015-5103, 2015-5133. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Andrew Hay) Related Topics USA New York Three schools canceled classes due to smoky conditions from a nearby wildfire as Floridas agriculture commissioner said the state is in the midst of its worst wildfire season in years with no end in sight. Commissioner Adam Putnam said in a news release that nearly 125 active wildfires were burning Monday morning. Officials in Pasco County near Tampa, on Floridas Gulf Coast, called off classes Monday at an elementary, a middle and a high school near fire that burned some 2,300 acres (930.8 hectares) over the weekend. The National Weather Service said dense smoke could quickly drop visibility near the wildfires. Fire officials say the fire was 70 percent contained on Sunday night. Some residents north of the Jacksonville area also are on fire alert due to a wildfire in south Georgia. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Florida Wildfire Jessica Boldin and her family evacuated 15 horses, six dogs and other animals from their ranch in rural Georgia as a vast wildfire emerging from the Okefenokee Swamp blackened trees behind their home. Flames that pushed within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of St. George over the weekend continued spreading Monday after jumping a state highway not far from the center of their southeast Georgia community. But Boldin said her family wasnt ready to leave yet, though the entire community was under a mandatory evacuation order. We dont budge on our property very easy, Bolin said Monday afternoon. If its down on top of us, were ready to leave. Were not going to burn down with the house. But were staying until its on our behinds. Shes not alone. Many in this community of about 2,000 near the Georgia-Florida state line stuck around Monday in spite of the evacuation order, not yet ready to leave everything to the mercy of the flames. With temperatures forecast to climb into the 90s amid low humidity and no chance of rain, firefighters worried what would come next. Its going to be ideal for extreme fire behavior and a high potential for fire growth, said Tom Stokesberry, a spokesman for the multi-agency team combatting the fire. Emergency officials in south Georgias Charlton County ordered a mandatory evacuation Sunday for all of St. George and for nearby Moniac, small rural communities on the southeastern edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. Lightning sparked a wildfire April 6 inside the vast Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. The blaze posed little threat to people or homes until Saturday, when strong winds pushed the flames across the fire breaks plowed along the refuge perimeter. As of Monday, the fire had burned 210 square miles (about 545 square kilometers), including about 37 square miles (95 square kilometers) in Charlton County. Mason Pair and his wife had packed up their valuables and had a ladder standing by to put sprinklers on their roof Monday in St. George. They also sent their son to stay with relatives outside the county. Pair said perhaps half of his neighbors had heeded the weekend order to evacuate. But he wasnt ready to join them _ yet. Its a little unnerving, said Pair, 26. But the flames are going to have to push people out of here. Officials arent forcing people to leave their homes, but are urging them to get out before the fire gets any closer, said Susan Heisey, supervisory ranger for the Okefenokee refuge. As the week opened, more than 600 firefighters and support personnel were fighting the fire. Helicopters dumping water and tanker planes spraying fire retardant managed to keep the fire from spreading to homes in St. George over the weekend. Firefighters with tractor plows worked to carve a path of bare soil around the town as a barrier to the flames. Local schools were closed Monday because of the blaze and a shelter was opened at a recreation center farther away. Heisey said there was no way to know how long the evacuation order would stand. Emergency officials in neighboring Nassau County, Florida, were urging some residents to prepare in case they need asked to evacuate. James and Lisa Burnsed drove the 10 miles from their home in Moniac to the four-way stop with a small grocery on one corner thats the center St. George. The fire had jumped across Georgia Highway 94, their main evacuation route, late Sunday and they wanted to see if there was still a clear way out Monday. Its going to have to get pretty close to the house, I think, before we just head out, James Burnsed said. Weve got too much at stake just to leave it. His wife said they had important documents, family photos and spare clothing packed and ready to go. But weve got goats and chickens, Lisa Burnsed said. And we dont know how were going to get them out. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Georgia Insurance startup Lemonade is now selling homeowners and renters insurance in California. California marks the third state of entry for the insurtech that is built on artificial intelligence and behavioral economics. It first launched in New York last September and in Illinois six month later. The company said it hopes to become available to 97 percent of the U.S. population during 2017. It has filed for licenses to operate in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Lemonade uses software, called bots, to deliver insurance through its app and at lemonade.com. Consumers also file claims with the bot, which can pay claims instantly and without human intervention. Renters policies start at $5 per month and homeowners at $25 per month. Homeowners insurers collected more than $7.4 billion in premiums in 2015 in California, according to data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. State Farm, Farmers, Allstate, CSAA and Auto Club are the largest writers. Shai Wininger, president and cofounder, Lemonade, said expanding to California is a key milestone for the peer-to-peer company. The tech capital of the world deserves insurance powered by AI, and the people of California deserve to see insurance underwriting profits funding their nonprofits, he said. Lemonade takes a flat 20 percent fee and donates any underwriting profit to causes chosen by customers. The amazing tech and social impact of Lemonade was the reason we joined the company as investors, said actor Ashton Kutcher, co-founder of Sound Ventures. Lemonade founders Daniel Schreiber and Wininger have attracted veteran insurance executives from AIG and ACE for Lemonades executive team. In 2015, Lemonade attracted $13 million in seed funding from outfits including Californias Sequoia Capital and Aleph. Last December, Lemonade disclosed that it raised $34 million in new venture funding. General Catalyst led the round, with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures), Thrive Capital and Tusk Ventures. Existing investors XL Innovate (the investment arm of XL Catlin), Aleph and Sequoia also participated. Everest Re, Hiscox, Lloyds of London, XL Catlin and Berkshire Hathaways National Indemnity are among Lemonades global reinsurance partners. Related: Topics California Trends InsurTech Homeowners New Markets Former San Francisco 49er Joe Montana has filed a lawsuit against the developers of a luxury high-rise condominium tower in Northern California that is sinking at an unexpected rate. San Jose television station KNTV reported Montana filed the last suit last week alleging Millennium Partners hid the buildings troubles when he and his wife bought a unit in 2013. The high-rise that opened its doors in 2009 has sunk about 16 inches into landfill and is tilting several inches to the northwest. Montanas is the latest in a string of lawsuits against the tower that became a haven for the well-heeled. Tenants have included the late venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Giants outfielder Hunter Pence. The building has a sprawling indoor lap-pool, a health club and spa, an in-house cinema, and a restaurant and wine bar run by celebrity chef Michael Mina. Penthouses have sold for more than $13 million. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Leah Robinson and Counsel Amy Nogid joined Mayer Brown after working for Eversheds Sutherland LLP in New York. The third person in the team is an associate. The expansion of the tax team will strengthen Mayer Browns capacities in state and local tax. Since 2008, Leah Robinson has hosted the New York state tax ladies lunch group, a networking group for women focusing on SALT matters that meets 10 times a year. The womens group will continue to meet at Mayer Browns office in New York. Top News - Investor Idea Breaking AI Stock News: GBT's (OTCPK: GTCH) Facial and Body Recognition Patent Application Received a Notice of Allowance San Diego, CA - November 9, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) with GBT Tokenize Corp. ("GBT/Tokenize") received a notice of allowance for its facial and body recognition non-provisional patent application. Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Enters into Agreement with Newgate Motor Group, one of Ireland's most Recognized Auto Groups, to Distribute the Mullen I-GOTM in Ireland and United Kingdom BREA, Calif. - November 9, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle manufacturer, announces today that it has entered into an agreement to appoint Newgate Motor Group, one of Ireland's most recognized dealership groups, as marketing, sales, distribution and servicing agent for the Mullen I-GO in Ireland and the United Kingdom. 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. Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas: Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by Investorideas.com Newswire: Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire Ukraine's president expects final approval of visa-free travel for Ukraine by EU on May 11 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko expects that the European Union will finally approve a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens on May 11 this year. "On May 11 the Council of the EU should finally approve visa-free travel to Europe, to the countries of the Schengen zone for Ukrainian citizens," he said during the First Minute of Peace event at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. According to him, this is a historic event. "This means our final return to the single European civilizational space," the president said. Leading IoT event highlights the trends, case, studies and complexities of IoT operations Trumbull, CT May 10, 2017 TMC and Crossfire Media today announced IoT Operations content at IoT Evolution Conference and Expo being held July 17-20, 2017 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. IoT Evolution Expo has evolved to become the leading educational and networking forum for businesses looking to understand how to develop and implement IoT solutions that drive measurable results and business transformation. The event will feature a robust exhibit floor, powerful keynotes, case studies, live demos, unique sessions, special events, networking opportunities and much more. The IoT Operations track will explore the ways to enable operators to leverage remote management and asset tracking to maximize operations, lower costs, be more effective and find new revenue opportunities. Here, enterprise executives will learn how to build systematic IoT strategy, engineers will learn where to focus their efforts for the greatest returns and business development professionals will see the trends that will shape the industry. Does IT really need to speak OT? Operations usually implements IoT quickly and based on their specific needs. Often the metric of the failure or success are intangible within operations based metrics, said Carl Ford, CEO, Crossfire Media, executive director of content, IoT Evolution. MTTR and other efficiencies from using IoT are jus in there. The speakers at our event are crossing the chasm of IT/OT requirements to show the real benefits of IoT in the field. Sessions and speakers include: How to Use Market Research to Optimize Your IoT Strategy James Brehm, James Brehm & Associates Remote Monitoring and Management Arthur Lozinski, Oomnitza Randy Van Buren, Nokia Asset Management Sudhakar S Marthi, ZOHO Corporation Oil and Gas: Pipelines and Drills Get IoT Louis Desroches, Intel IoT Gateway Solutions Robert Lutz, Systech Corporation IoT Agriculture Christopher Celiberti, InField Group Robert Dolci, AizoOn US Ana Sancho, Libelium Tanks Cisterns and Liquid Management Whats Up with these CATS? IoT on the Shop Floor To view the full IoT Evolution Expo agenda, click here. Speakers, sessions and events are updated daily. IoT Evolution Expo is supported by diamond sponsor Cradlepoint, platinum sponsors Clearblade and Centri, gold sponsor Ingenu and corporate sponsors Gemalto and Tellient. Registration for IoT Evolution Expo is now open. For more information, contact Scott Kargman. For media registration, contact Diana Stein. Companies interested in exhibiting, sponsorship or advertising packages should contact Matthew Gleeson at 203.852.6800 ext. 145. For the latest IoT Evolution Expo news, updates and information, follow the event on Twitter at @IoTEvolution. About TMC Global buyers rely on TMCs content-driven marketplaces to make purchase decisions and navigate markets. This presents branding, thought leadership and lead generation opportunities for vendors/sellers. TMCs Marketplaces: Unique, turnkey Online Communities boost search results, establish market validation, elevate brands and thought leadership, while minimizing ad-blocking. Custom Lead Programs uncover sales opportunities and build databases. In-Person and Online Events boost brands, enhance thought leadership and generate leads. Publications, Display Advertising and Newsletters bolster brand reputations. Custom Content provides expertly ghost-crafted blogs, press releases, articles and marketing collateral to help with SEO, branding, and overall marketing efforts. Comprehensive Event and Road Show Management Services help companies meet potential clients and generate leads face-to-face. For more information about TMC and to learn how we can help you reach your marketing goals, please visit www.tmcnet.com. About Crossfire Media Crossfire Media is an integrated marketing company with a core focus on future trends in technology. We service communities of interest with conferences, tradeshows, webinars and newsletters. Crossfire Media has a partnership with Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) to produce events and websites related to disruptive technologies. Crossfire Media is a division of Crossfire Consulting, a full service Information Technology company based in New York. Media and Analyst Contact: Diana Stein Director, Digital Marketing & Engagement 203.852.6800 ext.122 [email protected] Edited by Ken Briodagh He wrote: I dont need to say that these are lies as the Iranians elections have nothing to do with the well-known rules of democracy and theyre rather a funny and fabricated charade that hides pure dictatorship behind it. The dictatorship is run by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who holds absolute power within the country and in unaccountable. Khamenei controls the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government and anyone who opposes him (or who might oppose him) will be executed as an enemy of God. He asks if it is really a democracy if all of the candidates are vetted (and either approved or rejected) by a small council appointed by the Regime, rather than the people? This, Shaikh notes, is a fabricated charade and merely a formality as the President cannot exact any power in Iran; he is more like the secretary to the real leader. Shaikh wrote: The relationship between the president and the guardian of the jurist resembles the relation between a minor and a headmaster as he does not dare discuss anything with him and he does not ask him about anything he does or says because according to the Iranian constitution, the guardian of the jurists status is like Gods representative on earth so who dares object against God? He continued: Therefore, anyone who discusses his decisions let alone object to them whether its the president or anyone else, would be objecting to God almighty. This is exactly how Catholic popes governed Europe during the Dark Middle Ages. He also compared the Revolutionary Guards in Iran to the churchs guards in Europe. He wrote: Back then the pope governed on the basis that he was Gods representative on earth. I dont think theres any difference between the pope of the Catholic Church back then and the Islamized pope of the Shiite church in Tehran. Theres no difference no matter how much Irans agents try to market this fake democratic Islamic republic. However, he notes, the days of the Regime are numbered; much like the role of the Pope has been reduced to a religious role rather than a government one. He writes that Irans links to terror (both direct and indirect) will be its downfall. He wrote: Sunni Islamic terrorism (like ISIS) would not have emerged and solidified if it hadnt been for the sahwa (awakening) phenomenon which emerged after the success of the Khomeini revolution in Tehran. This phenomenon imitated the latter revolution and politicised Islam on Sunni bases. Terrorism was born out of the womb of sahwa and it grew in incubators to politicise Islam. Therefore, the world will sooner or later realise that eliminating terrorism cannot be achieved unless by eliminating the phenomenon of both Sunni and Shiite political Islam. The United States might join the Normandy format of negotiations on a peaceful settlement of the Donbas conflict, the TSN.Ranok program aired by the 1+1 TV channel quoted Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin as saying. The U.S. might join Ukraine, Germany and France in the Normandy format negotiations with Russia, but what is really important is efficiency of these negotiations rather than their format, Klimkin, who is visiting the United States, said. Klimkin will stay in Washington DC until Wednesday evening, when U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to discuss Ukraine and Syria. Klimkin expects Tillerson to act as Ukraine's advocate in the negotiations with Russia, the television channel said. Tillerson "understands not just the logic of our common stand in general but is also aware of details. It falls on him now to pressure Lavrov. I very much hope that he will succeed... We have had a very detailed phone call; perhaps it makes sense for us to meet [to address] the results of the latest contacts with the Russian side," the channel quoted Klimkin as saying. A 34-year-old man who was seriously injured during an assault outside a Dublin night club has died in hospital. The incident took place outside a club in the Airside Retail Park in Swords in the early hours of Sunday. Donald Trump will meet Vladimir Putin's senior diplomat at the White House on Wednesday in a signal that US relations with Russia have improved. The US president recently described them as being at an "all-time low" but his talks with Sergey Lavrov mark the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia of the American leader's term in office. Mr Trump's talks with Moscow's foreign minister will take place after the Russian's meeting earlier in the day with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. A Russian plan to stabilise Syria after more than six years of civil war is the most urgent foreign policy topic on the agenda. But the meeting will be impossible to separate from the Trump administration's unfolding political drama in Washington. FBI and congressional investigations are looking into possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and the Kremlin related to last year's presidential election. US intelligence agencies accuse Moscow of meddling to help Mr Trump's chances of victory. The stigma of the Russia investigations has been impossible for Mr Trump to shake. The president on Tuesday abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, dramatically ousting the nation's most senior law enforcement official in the middle of the bureau's investigation into Mr Trump's ties with Russia. Less than a month into Mr Trump's presidency, he sacked his national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The president said Mr Flynn misled senior administration officials about his pre-inauguration talks with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador in Washington. In a Senate hearing on Monday, former acting attorney general Sally Yates said she warned the White House in January that Mr Flynn "essentially could be blackmailed" by the Russians because he apparently had lied to his bosses about his contacts with Mr Kislyak. Mr Trump has said he has no ties to Russia and is not aware of any involvement by his aides in any Russian election interference. He calls the various investigations a "hoax" driven by Democrats still bitter that their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was defeated last year. But in the meantime, his hopes for a possible rapprochement with Moscow, so regularly repeated during the campaign, have been derailed. Relations soured further in April after the US blamed Syria's president Bashar Assad, a key Russian ally, for a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians and Mr Trump fired some 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response. After Mr Tillerson visited Mr Putin and Mr Lavrov in Moscow on April 12, Mr Trump said: "Right now we're not getting along with Russia at all." Mr Lavrov will be coming to the American capital with a Russian plan to end the violence in Syria, after hashing out an agreement with Iran and Turkey last week. The Russian diplomat has not visited Washington at all since 2013, a year before Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and two years before it intervened militarily in Syria to help Assad remain in power. AP An Italian news magazine has obtained recordings of telephone calls surrounding a deadly migrant boat sinking, revealing how a Syrian father's desperate calls for help went unheeded for hours as Italy and Malta argued over who should mount the rescue. Some 221 people survived the October 11 2013 sinking but 27 bodies were recovered and an unknown number of people went missing. The sinking was one of two in the span of a week that prompted the Italian government to launch the Mare Nostrum rescue operation, which won praise internationally for saving thousands of lives and was eventually replaced by a broader EU-wide operation. The Italian coast guard responded to the report on the L'Espresso magazine website by noting that the incident occurred in Malta's area of search-and-rescue responsibility. In addition, Italian prosecutors investigated the case and said it should be shelved for lack of a crime, according to a statement. The recordings begin at 12.39pm on October 11 with a call to the Italian coast guard from Mohanad Jammo, who reports that his boat, carrying some 300 people, is taking on water and gives his coordinates. L'Espresso said the boat was about 61 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, 118 miles south-west of Malta. The Italian coast guard told Mr Jammo that the boat was closer to Malta and he should call Maltese authorities, according to the recordings. An increasingly frantic Mr Jammo calls again and again - "We are dying! Three hundred persons. We are dying!" - begging the Italians to call the Maltese themselves because his phone was running out of credit. At 4.44pm, Maltese authorities tell the Italians that an Italian patrol ship is closest to the scene. The Italians responded that if they dispatched it, it would not be in place to spot other emergencies and would have to take survivors to the nearest port. At the time, Lampedusa was still reeling from a capsizing off its shores the previous week in which some 369 people died. The recordings end with the Maltese ringing the Italian operations centre back at 5.07pm to report that their plane had spotted the migrant boat capsizing, and that people were in the water. "The boat has sunk," a voice says. In the end, both Maltese and Italian ships, as well as a fishing boat, responded to the disaster. L'Espresso said Mr Jammo, his wife and child were rescued, but that his two other children drowned. More ships at sea The number of migrants attempting dangerous sea crossings (as in picture below) accelerated after 2013. Non-governmental organisations have joined rescue efforts with their own ships patrolling the edge of Libyan territorial waters. Their presence has drawn the scrutiny of Frontex, the EU border patrol agency, as well as Italian prosecutors who have suggested some aid groups were somehow in contact with migrant smugglers. Ambrogio Cartosio, prosecutor in Trapani, Sicily, told a parliamentary committee he is investigating some employees of aid groups - not the groups themselves - but that the alleged contacts would not be a punishable offence since saving lives at sea was paramount. The groups have denied they are in cahoots with the traffickers and have criticised prosecutors for spreading rumours without providing proof. Mr Cartosio also said migrants arriving in Trapani have reported that Libyan coast guard officials - recently entrusted with Italian patrol boats and know-how to try to stem the migrant flows - have instead demanded bribes to let the boats continue their journeys north. - AP The UK's most senior family judge has hit out at the "shocking" practice of separating elderly couples against their wishes in care homes. Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division of the High Court, said he felt "personal outrage" that "people who may have been together for 30, 40 or maybe 50 years are separated in their final years", The Times reported. Moon Jae-in has taken the oath of office in Seoul hours after starting work as South Korea's new president. He won the presidential by-election to replace ousted leader Park Geun-hye, who now awaits a corruption trial in jail. The election commission said Mr Moon gained 41% of the votes, comfortably beating conservative Hong Joon-pyo and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, who gathered 24% and 21& respectively. After celebrating his victory with thousands of supporters in wet Seoul streets, he began the job of leading a nation deeply split over its future and faced with growing threats from North Korea and an uneasy alliance with the United States. He said he is willing to visit North Korea's capital Pyongyang under the right conditions. Mr Moon also said that he will negotiate with the US and China, Seoul's top trading partner, over a contentious US missile-defence system deployed in the South. Beijing says the system allows Washington to spy on China's military operations. Mr Moon took the oath of office in a ceremony at the National Assembly, and among his first tasks will be naming his nominee for prime minister, the country's second most important job, which needs the approval of politicians. His election victory followed one of the most turbulent political stretches in the nation's recent history and set up its first liberal rule in a decade. The new president visited the National Cemetery in Seoul with his wife, Kim Jeong-sook. After bowing to honour the former presidents, independence fighters and war heroes at the cemetery, Mr Moon wrote in the visitor book: "A country worth being proud of; a strong and reliable president!" South Korea might see a sharp departure from recent policy under Mr Moon, who favours closer ties with North Korea. He says hardline conservative governments did nothing to prevent the North's development of nuclear-armed missiles and only reduced South Korea's voice in international efforts to counter Pyongyang. This softer approach might put him at odds with South Korea's biggest ally, the US. The Trump administration has swung between threats and praise for North Korea's leader. Mr Moon, the child of refugees who fled North Korea during the Korean War, will lead a nation shaken by the scandal that felled Ms Park, whose criminal trial is scheduled to start later this month. Without the usual two-month transition, Mr Moon initially will have to depend on her cabinet ministers and aides, but he is expected to move quickly to replace them with people of his own. He will not serve the rest of Ms Park's term but rather will serve out the typical single five-year term. AP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he hopes the United States will reverse its decision to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters perceived as terrorists by Ankara. Mr Erdogan's remarks came a day after the US announced it would arm the fighters as a necessary step to recapture the Islamic State group's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. Mr Erdogan said the "fight against terrorism should not be led with another terror organisation" and that "we want to know that our allies will side with us and not with terror organisations". The president said he would take up the issue during a planned meeting with US President Donald Trump on May 16. Mr Erdogan said: "I hope that they (the US) will turn away from this wrong." During a visit to Montenegro on Wednesday, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said there was no difference between the Syrian Kurdish fighters and the outlawed Kurdish rebels fighting Turkey. "Every weapon that reaches their hands is a threat towards Turkey," Mr Cavusoglu said. However, the Syrian Kurdish group labelled a terror organisation by Turkey hailed the US decision to arm it with heavy weapons to fight IS. The YPG militia said the decision is "historic" and a "sign of confidence" in the group, in a statement released on Wednesday. Turkey's deputy prime minister Nurettin Canikli denounced the decision as "unacceptable" and said it "amounts to support to a terror organisation". "The Trump administration providing arms to a terrorist organisation - either directly or indirectly through the YPG - does not change the fact that this amounts to support to a terror organisation," Mr Canikli said. The YPG said the US commitment to the group, and its umbrella coalition the Syrian Democratic Forces, will allow it to expand its operations against IS. It said the decision is a refutation of the "distortions" likening the YPG to a terror organisation. Ilham Ahmed, a top official in the Syrian Democratic Forces' political office, said the decision to provide heavier arms carries "political meaning" and "legitimises the YPG and the Syrian Democratic Forces". U.S. plan to arm Syrian Kurds in fight against IS group outrages Turkey, report @philiptissa and @suzanfraser. https://t.co/BZpT0NSC7M pic.twitter.com/CejR64NMS7 AP Europe (@AP_Europe) May 10, 2017 She said the decision is likely to be met with "aggression" from Mr Erdogan. The SDF's rapid advance against IS last year prompted Turkey to send ground forces across the border for the first time in the six-year civil war to help allied Syrian forces battle IS and halt the Kurds' progress. Since then, Turkey is believed to have positioned more than 5,000 troops in northern Syria, and has escalated its air strikes and cross-border artillery attacks against Kurdish forces. A Turkish air raid in late April killed 20 YPG fighters and media officials, prompting the US to deploy armoured vehicles along the border in a show of support for the group. AP A woman has appeared in court after a brawl broke out at a theatre during a performance of Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance. Georgina Sixsmith, 48, is accused of two counts of assaulting police officers and one charge of being drunk and disorderly after trouble erupted in the orchestra stalls at the Palace Theatre in Manchester on April 11, the opening night of the high-kicking Irish dance extravaganza. Road, rail and runway construction will support growth from Western Sydney to Western Australia, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced in Canberra. His plan promises to create thousands of jobs in an infrastructure-building bonanza as workers transition from recent mining and housing booms. While the forecast deficit of A$29.4bn for fiscal 2018 is slightly wider than economists predicted, the government sought to calm rating agencies by maintaining a return to surplus by 2021. But its bridging that gap with a heroic assumption: Australians meagre wage growth rates are seen accelerating to above 3% from under 2% now. Infrastructure projects include a new airport in Western Sydney; acquiring greater or outright ownership of the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme and then expanding it; upgrading highways across the nation; and funding for a Melbourne-to-Brisbane inland railway. We are taking practical action to arrest the deficit and the growth in our debt, and doing all we can to preserve our AAA credit rating, the government said. We choose to focus on growing our economy, in particular by investing in infrastructure, to secure more and better-paying jobs. At the heart of Australias challenge is jobless growth: Much of the recent economic expansion has been underpinned by resource exports, immigration and house-price gains. The Reserve Bank of Australia is reticent to use further interest-rate ammunition for fear of fuelling house prices, while successive governments have tried and failed to balance the books. Its been a fair while since most hardworking Australians have had a decent pay rise. I know this has put real pressure on Australians, Mr Morrison said in his speech to parliament. To support growth we choose to invest in building Australia, rail by rail, runway by runway and road by road, he said. Bloomberg One Ukrainian serviceman has been killed and another four have been wounded in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in the eastern part of the country in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian Defense Ministry official Andriy Lysenko said. "One Ukrainian serviceman has been killed and two Ukrainian defenders have been wounded in action in the past 24 hours. Another two National Guard troops were wounded as a result of the detonation of an explosive device," Lysenko said at a news briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday. We confirm our 2017 guidance, with our cautious view on Britain, chief executive Caroline Parot said of Europcars second biggest market. Travel and tourism industry associations have been pushing to secure visa-free travel between Britain and the EU after Brexit to limit disruption to the industry. Europcar recently took full control of its Irish operations after buying out its Irish franchise business owners. Britains vote last year to quit the bloc has already had an impact Europcar and Avis Budget Group which in the second-half of last year saw a negative impact from the pounds slump following the EU referendum. Kepler Cheuvreux analyst David Cerdan said if the UK economy deteriorates it will have an impact on the car rental market, as the UK is primarily a business market and corporations will hire cars less often. Europcar reported a wider adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation Ebitda loss of 6.2m in the first quarter hurt by additional investments in its digitalisation programme and losses incurred in its new mobility division. The company is targeting organic revenue growth of more than 3% and an increase in its adjusted Ebitda margin, excluding new mobility, for 2017. Its shares, which were little changed, have climbed over 18% since the start of the year. The group also announced the acquisition of Danish franchisee, Europcar Denmark. This follows a number of deals in 2016 in countries, Italy, Spain, as well as here. The company is active in 10 countries across Europe. At the end of last year, the Irish franchisee said it was acquired by its Europcar its parent group for an estimated 26m. With estimated revenues of 50m, Europcar Ireland was viewed as one of the groups leading franchised operations. Caroline Parot, chief executive officer, at Europcar Groupe said: We start the year on a solid footing. Only four months after buying our Irish franchisee, we take yet another step in our dynamic acquisition plan, which not only strengthens our European leadership but also brings us a little closer to our 2020 ambition. Reuters and Irish Examiner staff Some 325,670 passengers travelled through Kerry in 2016 compared to 307,000 the previous year, an increase of 6%, according to the Kerry Airport company results. It had profits after tax of 287,613, up from just 30,980 the previous year. The daily Kerry-Dublin essential services route, which are subsidised by the Government and the EU, were up 10%; the daily London routes to Luton and Stansted were up 9%; and Frankfurt-Hahn, which operates four times a week between March and October, also grew 9%. The airport is keen to increase connections with Germany. Chairman Denis Cregan announced a new twice weekly service to Berlin, beginning in November. Load factors on the summer sun routes to Alicante and Faro also increased significantly. It is the second year in succession the airport has seen numbers increase. Turnover increased from 5.8m to 6m, reflecting increased passenger-related revenues for the year. Profitability was enhanced by achieving better margins on a number of key revenue sources, as well as from higher levels of Government grants of 626,855 last year, according to the airport. The airport spend 581,000 on safety and security, including upgrading firefighting equipment, helped by funding from the Department of Transport. Mr Cregan, however, warned about the current subsidised public service obligation contract for regional air services on the Kerry-Dublin route for the period 2015-18. Discussions are already in progress and will be on-going with the Minister for Transport, Tourism, and Sport and his officials with regard to the renewal of the contract for another three years, said Mr Cregan. The Kerry-Dublin air service was of critical strategic importance to the south-west region, he added. He called on users to increase their support and use the airport more frequently, urging people to opt to fly to Dublin City. During his first ministerial visit to Kerry in recent weeks, Transport Minister Shane Ross met with Kerry County chief executive Moira Murrell, a member of the board of the airport, and with tourism and business leaders and airport management at Farranfore. The business leaders stressed the importance of the route to gain access to Kerry and the south-west region. It will be Mr McCarthys first directorship appointment since announcing, in February, his decision to retire from Kerry later this year. He is due to step down as chief executive of the Tralee-based international taste and nutrition/consumer foods giant in September, after nearly 10 years in the top job after which he will be replaced by Kerrys Asia-Pacific boss Edmond Scanlon. Mr McCarthy will join the Ryanair board, in a non-executive director capacity, at the end of this month. His position on the board will be formally voted on by the airlines shareholders at Ryanairs AGM in September. Cllr Ken OFlynn urged anyone with information on the whereabouts of the Dunscombe fountain, which was installed in the late 1800s at the bottom of Shandon St and remained there for almost a century, to come forward. If someone has it or knows of its whereabouts, I would like to open a line of engagement with them to secure its return to the people of Cork, said Mr OFlynn. He offered the reward yesterday after quizzing officials during Mondays city council meeting about the fountains whereabouts. He also asked if they had any plans to reinstate the important part of Cork history back into the public realm. However, in a written reply, the councils head of roads, Gerry OBeirne, said: The location of the Dunscombe fountain and gas light structure is unknown. Mr OFlynn said he was baffled at how such an important piece of the citys heritage could simply vanish. He also criticised city management for their apparent indifference to the loss of such an important piece of the citys history. This is not just a case of missing furniture. This is an important historical and cultural item, he said. He called for a city-wide audit of similar heritage pieces to discover what else may have been lost. The fountain was gifted to the city in the late 1800s in the name of Reverend Nicholas C Dunscombe a leading Protestant clergyman and a founder member, along with the Apostle of Temperance, Fr Mathew, of the temperance movement in Cork. Irish Examiner archives show how friends of the late Rev Dunscombe established a committee to oversee donations to fund the construction and erection of the fountain in his native city. A testimonial, published on page two of the then Cork Examiner on June 23, 1877, reads: Several friends of the late philanthropic gentlemen wish to perpetuate his memory by the erection of a drinking fountain in some suitable place in this, his native city. It included a list of gentlemen who had kindly consented to act as a committee and who had agreed to receive subscriptions for the purpose. The fountain was cast in the George Smith & Company Sun Foundry in Glasgow. While archives show it was in place by 1880 in an area known as Browns Square at the bottom of Shandon St an area created following the demolition of several small houses and shops further records show it was given to Cork Corporation in April 1883. The area around it was used by the shawlies, or street vendors, who sold clothes as well as holly and ivy at Christmas. In his written answer to Mr OFlynn, Mr OBeirne said historical records suggest the foundation was removed from the street sometime before the 1980s, and that another fountain was installed on Browns Square as part of the Cork 800 celebrations in 1985. That fountain was removed in 2003 ahead of the Shandon St renewal scheme. Mr OFlynn said he would like to trace the original Dunscombe fountain and return it to the people of Cork. Cllr John Buttimer (FG), who said allowing large-scale student housing in certain residential areas was like ethnic cleansing and was choking and suffocating traditional residential communities, said a temporary ban on planning decisions on these schemes is vital to prevent a developer-led free-for-all. He made the call in the wake of a material contravention of the city development plan on Monday which gave the green light to a 348-bed student complex near CIT in the western suburbs. Several councillors supported his view, including Fianna Fails Sean Martin, who said such developments have eroded family life in residential areas around CIT and UCC. Independent Cllr Mick Finn also backed calls for a tighter policy on where such student accommodation complexes can be built. Mr Buttimer stood over his ethnic cleansing comments yesterday and said the city needs to adopt a coherent planning strategy to guide the future development of student accommodation in residential areas. During Mondays council meeting, 25 councillors voted to materially contravene the development plan and change the business and technology zoning of the former OMahony Packaging Building on the Melbourn Road to residential, clearing the way for Montesa Ltd to build 63-student apartments over five blocks ranging in height from three to five storeys high on the site. Mr Buttimer said he supported the development of quality student accommodation in the right place and pointed out that he was among the councillors to vote in favour of the project. I am all in favour of appropriate development, but we need a coherent policy on this kind of development, he said. We need to tighten up our control and regulation of this kind of development. Our planners should be very slow to consider future projects in residential areas until we have a solid policy framework in place. It is my view that we should have none built in residential areas until that policy is in place. Mr Buttimer urged city management to start work immediately on the development of such a policy and said the authorities in UCC and CIT should be part of the process. These institutions cant be allowed to continue to develop and expand in the absence of a coherent policy on student accommodation, transport and parking, he said. In 2015, a Higher Education Authority (HEA) commissioned study found there were 3,788 on-campus student beds available in Cork 813 public and 2,975 private. Earlier this year, Cork City Council said there are around 27 student apartment complexes across the city, providing accommodation for up to 4,500 students. But recent estimates suggest there is a 1,000-bed shortfall in the city. The HEA said the availability of campus accommodation in the main urban areas of Dublin, Cork, Galway, and to a lesser extent Limerick, is a prerequisite for attracting new overseas students. In the pipeline There are around 27 student apartment developments on and off campus in Cork City, providing accommodation for up to 4,500 students. However, recent estimates suggest there is a 1,000-bed shortfall in student accommodation in the city. It has led to a surge in the number of planning applications for off-campus student accommodation in recent times. Planning permission granted: The man, aged in his 20s, had been sought in relation to a major drug-and-gun haul in Co Kildare, last January. The cache, in Sallins, had included 30kg of heroin and cocaine with a street value of 3m an assault rifle and ammunition. It was linked by gardai to the Kinahan cartel. That operation, and the arrest in Wexford, were both carried out by the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB). Gardai said a man, who has an address in Kildare, was arrested in the Gorey area of Wexford last Sunday. The mans arrest was the result of local intelligence, prompting the dispatch of a DOCB team from Dublin. The man was arrested, under organised crime legislation, on suspicion of enhancing the ability of a criminal organisation to commit or facilitate a serious offence. The offence is contained in the Criminal Justice Act, 2009, and is in addition to the main charges of suspected participation in a criminal organisation and directing a criminal organisation. It covers situations that do not involve direct participation in a criminal gang, but takes in actions that might benefit a gang. On January 28 last, the DOCB, assisted by the Special Crime Task Force (SCTF), uncovered a drugs and firearms consignment inside a detached bungalow, in a quiet estate in Sallins. No contraband was found in an initial raid, but officers kept the house under surveillance. When individuals were seen using the house again, a second search was conducted and the items were found inside of sofas. Sundays arrest is the latest successful operation against the cartel. The previous Thursday, the DOCB found a ledger of payments, along with more than 300,000 in cash, at a counting centre in south Dublin. Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan said the seizure would make big inroads into dismantling the Kinahan organised crime gang. Last March, the DOCB seized 20kg of cocaine (street value 1.4m), and components for semi-automatic weapons and ammunition, in Artane, north Dublin. In March, the SCTF seized a submachine gun and drugs in Co Meath. The Sallins seizure was one of a number in January. Two other seizures involved 15 firearms, including a submachine gun, an assault rifle, silencers, and 1,500 rounds of ammunition in west Dublin, along with 1.8 tonnes of cannabis herb (street value 37m) at Dublin Port. The recommendations of the Public Sector Pay Commission will not determine what the Government does in upcoming negotiations, according to Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe. Public-sector unions are relieved the commission report has suggested the unwinding of pay cuts under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act (FEMPI). The report, published yesterday, does not suggest a timeline for the restoration of pay. Mr Donohoe was quick to emphasise the Government will dictate when and at what rate public-sector pay is restored. The long-awaited report found the earnings of public servants at higher pay levels are in some cases significantly below their private-sector counterparts. It suggests workers on gold-plated pensions benefit by between 12% and 18% and advises that public servants should make higher contributions towards these legacy schemes. After bringing the report to the Cabinet, Mr Donohoe made it clear the Government would not be compelled by the recommendations, especially in relation to pay restoration, which public-sector unions see as a priority in upcoming talks. He said: While the Government continues to be committed to the affordable and orderly unwinding of FEMPI legislation, it is a matter for Government regarding how and when we do it. The demands in relation to the resources that are available are hugely significant. The commission, chaired by former Labour Court head Kevin Duffy, made findings around three key areas: Recruitment and retention of staff; the unwinding of FEMPI; and pensions. It found that pre-2013 legacy pension schemes and fast accrual pensions are between 12% and 18% more valuable than private-sector pensions and must be addressed. Almost 270,000 public workers are on these lucrative pensions schemes. It advised an increased employee contribution but did not give details of how this should be implemented or what rates should be applied. Fianna Fails Dara Calleary said: Simply put, the next agreement must be placed on fiscally prudent and sustainable basis. The FEMPI legislation should be prudently unwound over the coming years, delivering real benefits to workers and the public alike. "The Government needs to move swiftly towards initiating talks with the unions with a firm goal of achieving a sustainable basis for a strong public service. This was echoed by Labour TD Sean Sherlock, who called on a start to talks on a successor to the Lansdowne Road Agreement. Mr Donohoe said there is a continued need for Ireland to remain competitive and that will have to be taken into account when talks begin with unions. He said: This will be a very challenging process. We will be dealing with a process that affects over 300,000 public servants in our State a matter that is of grave interest to all of those who work elsewhere in our economy to fund the services that we are discussing. While he refused to give a deadline for the talks, he said he hopes they begin before the end of the month and that he does not believe they will drag on for months. The Governments agreement to investigate Namas largest sale of property assets will pile pressure on Finance Minister Michael Noonan, who recently said there were insufficient grounds for a probe. An interim report on the new commission of investigation will be provided in three months while the judge overseeing it yet to be decided will have a year to complete the work. Leo Hickey, of Realt Na Mara, Skevanish, Innishannon, Co Cork, was sentenced to three years with the last two years suspended. The sentence was backdated to February when a jury convicted him of all the sexual assault counts at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. Hickey had denied all of the offences. The victim said, of his time spent in fourth class with Hickey: It was living hell. The injured party, Daniel Kelleher, of 32 Rosewood, Ballincollig, Co Cork, waived his anonymity when Hickey was convicted of the eight counts of sexual assault committed between November 1991 and June 1992 at Scoil Eoin Boys National School in Ballincollig. John Devlin, defending, described his client as a figure of some notoriety in the State. Detective Garda Donal OConnell said there had been a previous investigation of Hickey when he was principal at Dunderrow National School in Co Cork, where he was charged with 387 counts of indecent assault. On June 25, 1998, he had pleaded guilty to 21 sample charges and was sentenced to one year on each, the first three to run consecutively, and the remainder concurrently. Judge Sean O Donnabhain said he would have considered a fully suspended sentence on Hickey in the present case if he had pleaded guilty. The judge noted the accused was almost 78 and living a somewhat secluded life with his wife. Mr Devlin said of the Dunderrow case: The national attention has attracted a certain amount of opprobrium. Judge O Donnabhain said Hickey could not be blamed for the delay in bringing the present case. The judge also said that the victim referred to a lot of problems he had suffered in his life but Judge O Donnabhain said he could not put all of those entirely at the door of Hickey. He said the defendants actions were disgraceful and there had been no doubting that. Mr Kelleher was overcome with emotion in February when the jury agreed unanimously that Hickey was guilty of the eight sexual assaults. The complainant said it had happened a number of times, when Hickey gave him a note to be taken to another teacher and, when returning to class, Hickey would sexually assault him in the toilet. He said Hickey would touch the boys penis and get him to touch his penis. He said there were other incidents as well. It happened up in the pitch, outside the class, inside the class. Every day it was like pressure, it was tension not knowing if something was going to happen, said Mr Kelleher. I refused to go back in. They moved me to another class. He said on one occasion Hickey got him to carry a bundle of hurleys and touched his penis as he was walking across the pitch. He said he dropped the hurleys and ran back to the classroom. Mr Devlin challenged him on whether he was 9 or 11 as both ages were used in different statements. The complainant said: If I made a mistake about my age saying 8 or 9 or 10 or 11, I apologise. I had to live with it but I also had to block it out. My life stopped when I went into this classroom, said Mr Kelleher. Hickey, meanwhile, had said he did not have any specific recollection of the complainant. He described himself as an old-fashioned teacher with an emphasis on music. He was asked about allegedly putting the complainants tin whistle down his pants outside the classroom, taking it out, and telling the boy to play it or else he would get lines. Hickey said there was no way he would leave 30 children alone during a tin whistle class to bring one boy out of the classroom and that it did not happen. Imelda Kelly, prosecuting, suggested to Hickey that he gave the boy notes to bring to other teachers as a ruse to isolate him so that he could sexually assault him in the toilets on the way back. Hickey said: I did not sexually assault him. I never brought any boy to the toilet. What reason would I have for bringing a boy to the toilet? On the question of remembering the complainant, Hickey said: If he was very troublesome or backward or very clever I might remember him, but it seems he was very much average so I have no recollection of him. Daniel Kelleher said he would urge people to come forward and speak out about their experience. Padraig Sheehan, his solicitor, said Mr Kelleher felt strongly that survivors need to know they will be believed. He would like to encourage other survivors of abuse to come forward. Mr Kelleher said he had lived with this dark secret for 27 years but now wants to live a positive life. Leo Hickey, aged 77, of Realt Na Mara, Skevanish, Innishannon, Co Cork, was yesterday jailed for three years, with the last two years suspended, for sexually assaulting him. In his victim impact statement, Mr Kelleher said: At the age of nine my life path was altered when I was sexually abused by my then fourth class teacher, Leo Hickey. Leo Hickey is led from the courthouse in Cork. This had a devastating effect on me as I lived in the constant fear of when would be the next time I will be sexually abused. Normal daily tasks such as playing and doing homework became a major issue for me. I was afraid to tell anyone for years about this abuse because I was a small child. I felt so ashamed. I felt no one would believe me because he was my teacher, someone who everyone looked up to. I felt totally confused at what has been done to me. I could not get my thoughts around this vile act of a grown man abusing a 9-year-old boy. I found it an extremely difficult concept to understand. I went completely off track and began to abuse drugs. I spent my formative adolescent years abusing drugs and developing an addiction. My family continuously tried to veer me on to the right road but sadly my addiction won. To others I put on an exterior of a tough guy but inside I cried and hid my dirty secret. I tried and failed to trust anyone in my life over 27 years of pain and addiction. Mr Kelleher said he often wonders what his life would be like if he hadnt been abused. I am not in any way trying to justify my own behaviour but I do believe that had my life been allowed to be the same as my brothers lives, I would be a productive member of society, giving due respect to all. I am so glad that this court case is over. I know I wish to walk forward and to make a decent life for my partner and my children. I remain in recovery and I plan to be an example to my children. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude and thanks to Detective Garda Donal OConnell who believed my darkest kept secret and in doing so freed me to live a respectful life and a positive one into the future. Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak met with Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to Ukraine Yonet Can Tezel in Kyiv on Wednesday, May 10, during which he briefed the diplomat on the current situation in the East of Ukraine, as well as on the progress of reforms in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Poltorak noted the pace of activation of cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of Turkey in the defense sphere, including in the field of military and technical cooperation, the press service of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine said. "Turkey is a reliable strategic partner for Ukraine. The Ukrainian side is interested in expanding military cooperation both on a bilateral and multilateral basis," the Ukrainian defense minister said. Yonet Can Tezel said that Ukraine and Turkey in fact are at the beginning of a new stage of cooperation in the defense sphere. Poltorak in this context expressed conviction that this cooperation between the two states would be built up and proceed on the principles of openness and transparency. The warning from Local Government Minister Simon Coveney comes as the Department of Arts assesses the increased funding request from BAM ahead of a final decision from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The State has given everything to this project that its been asked to give, said Mr Coveney. But I have made it very clear that this is a big ask and Government is being stretched, and that Im not sure whether we are willing to put that level of money in at all. "The State will put as much as we need to make this happen. But I have to make sure it represents value for money. Just because theres an ask of 18m doesnt mean that that money will be sanctioned. Some 20m in public funding was sanctioned for the project over two and a half years ago. Taoiseach Enda Kenny turned the sod on the former Beamish and Crawford site in February 2016. But apart from site clearance and archaeological digs, work has yet to start. Mr Coveney, who has repeatedly defended the project, insists it is now in the final stages. He said both he, and Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe, have made it clear that they want to make the project happen but that the Government has to test the new funding request to ensure it represents value money: This is a very big project for the city and we need to make sure that one, it happens, and two, whatever we put in from the State that we can stand over it fully as representing value for money. He pointed out that the development of the Cork Airport terminal cost twice what was predicted at the start of that project: We dont want this [events centre] project to go over budget. We want to sign off on a clear agreement and deliver it on budget. He also defended BAM and Live Nations involvement in the protracted process to date and said they have both spent substantial amounts on the project in recent years with no return: A final agreement is needed on the State investment in the project, and when the robust assessment is finished, then the project will move ahead. There are a lot of hurlers on the ditch, trying to make political comment, which is reflecting frustration. Im not in the blame game. Im interested in making it happen. And, hopefully, we can get an agreement across the line. One of the remarks which was said to have caused offence was a famous phrase by Winston Churchill. Advising a class on the desired length of a particular essay, he quoted: A good speech should be like a womans skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. THE Everyman Palace, is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. And who could know more about not just Everyman but everything to do with theatre in Cork over the past 70-odd years, than Michael Twomey? Creator of characters, doyen of directors, master of every kind of ceremony, he wont mind being identified as an octogenarian. In fact he cant, since he is proud of the fact that his first ever stage appearance was at the old Opera House in 1944 at the age of 11. It awoke a passion for the stage which never abated. A range of roles at the old Opera House, Pres Theatre Guild productions with Dan Donovan and Der Breen, and of course Shakespeare at the Loft. It was in As You Like It that he met his future wife, Marie, playing Rosalind to his Orlando. The Southern Theatre Group began its long and successful career in 1959 with John B Keanes Sive, and Twomey will never forget his role as Carthalawn the tinker, the haunting song, and the atavistic beat of the bodhran. We would start the drumming way back near the dressing rooms, and slowly progress towards the stage, getting louder and louder. When we arrived, the whole place erupted with applause! KEANE EDGE Every new Keane play was a success, with sell-out seasons in Cork, followed by countrywide tours. They even did the west coast of America, and probably more unusual Dublin. Normally there was an unbridgeable gap between the two cities, but we crossed it. And we were sold out before we even got there. Anecdotes abound. We were headed to Tralee one weekend, four of us in James N [Healys] car, the rest having gone ahead. Now Jim was always one for taking what he considered were short cuts, and we were way up over Nad Bog when we got a puncture. Well, out we all piled, pulled everything out of the boot, and got the spare tyre. Job done, they headed off again, and fortunately arrived with minutes to spare before curtain up. Only afterwards was it discovered that James Ns briefcase, with the envelopes containing everyones pay for the weekend, had been left behind on the roadside. Well, there was nothing for it but to head back and hope for the best. That briefcase was still sitting there at the side of the road, just where we left it. Twomey has particular affection for Keanes Many Young Men of Twenty. I was in that first production; Marie was in two later revivals; I directed it myself for Everyman in 2006 and my granddaughter was in the one weve just seen, directed by Catherine Mahon-Buckley. Now hows that for family continuity? Meanwhile, in 1963, the Everyman Theatre Company had come into being. It was John OSheas idea. He could see that there were so many acting groups and companies in Cork that it would make sense to bring them together under one banner, so everything could be planned out ahead. And so OShea, together with Dan Donovan and Sean O Tuama, created the new company, first based at the CCYMS Little Theatre in Castle Street, then the Fr Mathew Hall, and finally the Palace on MacCurtain Street, which has borne the Everyman name since the 1980s. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Twomey on right as Miah, with Cha played by Frank Duggan. Twomey knows every theatre, every venue in Cork and beyond. The tiny and rickety Group Theatre on South Main St, where the Slag Shows, and Twomeys production of The Glass Menagerie were first aired. St Francis Hall, home of many a memorable pantomime. The School of Music theatre, both old and new. The Cat Club ditto. Both of Corks opera houses. Plus all those country venues in village halls. He recalls one winter when performers kept on getting injured or ill. I played six different parts in the Opera House panto that year, stepping in whenever someone didnt turn up. His first role as director came at the An Tostal celebrations in 1953, when he staged Shadow of the Glen with Charlie Hennessy, Abbey Scott, and Dan Coughlan. Those well-loved characters Cha and Miah with old buddy Frank Duggan are probably his most enduring creation. That duo began back in 1969 when young Telefis Eireann reporter Bill OHerlihy was doing a vox pop on the dangers of smoking. Twomey put on an old coat and hat for a skit interview, and coughed profusely as he explained how smoking 80 fags a day had no effect on him whatsoever. When Frank Hall asked him do a slot on his Newsbeat show, Frank Duggan was drafted in to play Cha. A legend was born. They became household names through their weekly slot on Halls Pictorial Weekly, with Twomeys Miah in the role of pub philosopher, and the dimwitted Miah as his foil. Twomey also devised and directed no fewer than 22 Summer Revels seasons at the Opera House. The Sunday Songbook shows at the Everyman continue to be sell-outs. In between, plays, musicals, cabaret, pantomime, TV, radio an endless list. TEAM WORK He has happy memories of working with the late Paddy Comerford. You wouldnt think it, but Paddy was the biggest worrier backstage. He would always panic that he might forget something. So for the opening night I organised big prompt cards which we fastened to the inside of the orchestra pit where he could read them easily. Just before the curtain went up, this big man came down to the very front row and threw his coat right over the rail, covering up several of the cards! Paddy went into orbit, and I had to think quickly. We got an usher to go down and murmur something about health and safety, and would he please remove his coat. There are still things he wants to do. Direct Inherit The Wind. Such a powerful play. And take the title role in Year of the Hiker, originally created by James N. Its probably the strongest Keane play, and I would so love to play that part. People who influenced him most? Jim Stack, probably Irelands finest director at the time. James N Healy for the incredible way he could stage everything from musicals to Keane. And most of all, Dan Donovan. Actor, director, visionary there couldnt be another like him. Which you could well say of Twomey himself. GIVEN the controversy over the ownership of the National Maternity Hospital and the Sisters of Charity, there has been much talk of the separation of the Church and the State. It is a doctrine we have scarcely come to terms with in this country. Insofar as it exists at all, it is honoured more in the breach than the observance. The modern doctrine of the separation of Church and State is traced back to Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the American Declaration of Independence, of 1776. He was also the third president of the United States (1801-1809). He had drafted a Bill for Religious Liberty for the state of Virginia, in 1779, and this was enacted in 1786, a year before the American constitution. Although this latter document made no mention of God, Jefferson believed that an explicit protection against any establishment of religion by government was necessary. He argued that a bill of rights should be added to the constitution, protecting, inter alia, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, as well as religious liberty. Jefferson had promoted the concept of a wall of separation between Church and State, and this found its constitutional moorings in the first amendment. It incorporates what is known as the establishment clause (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...), which is immediately followed by the free exercise clause (or prohibit the free exercise thereof). The bill of rights (the collective name for the first 10 amendments of the American constitution) was ratified in 1791. Afterwards, Jefferson couldnt hide his delight in what the first amendment represented. On January 1, 1802, he wrote, as president, a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut (published in a Massachusetts newspaper) as follows: I contemplate, with sovereign reverence, that act of the whole American people, which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the US, in 1805. He was a proponent of the separation of Church and State. Picture: AP Photo Prof Stephen Carter, of Yale University, has described, in his 1994 book The Culture of Disbelief, the separation of Church and State as one of the great gifts that American political philosophy has presented to the world. But he also outlines the limits of the doctrine. The most significant aspect of the separation of Church and State is not, as some seem to think, the shielding of the secular world from too strong a religious influence; the principal task of the separation of Church and State is to secure religious liberty. In other words, the doctrine does not mean that people whose motivations are religious are banned from trying to influence government, nor that the government is banned from listening to them. Carter says there is nothing undemocratic about religious activism and religious language in politics. The first amendment, and the wall of separation it supposedly erects between Church and State, have no effect whatsoever on the consciences or voices of individual citizens, as they seek to influence what government does in their names. What the doctrine does mean is that the State should remain neutral in regard to religion. The States neutrality is required in the interest of religious liberty, wrote Desmond Clarke, of UCC, in his 1984 book, Church & State. Just as it would infringe the individuals rights if he were coerced to believe, or not believe, against his will, so, likewise, it infringes the religious liberty of individuals, if the State uses its resources to help determine, in any way, the religious or non-religious beliefs of citizens. To respect the individuals liberty requires the State to mind its own business. The neutrality of the State with respect to religion has been reaffirmed again and again by the US Supreme Court. For instance, in Epperson v Arkansas, it ruled as follows: Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another, or even against the militant opposite. The first amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and non-religion. This neutrality is notably absent in Ireland, though the historical context must be considered. Clarke has contrasted the US, where the separation of Church and State is constitutionally guaranteed, with Ireland, where the Constitution explicitly recognises the role of religious groups in a variety of ways. He emphasised that the Irish Constitutions injunction against State endowment of any religion is hardly compatible with direct and indirect financing for religious schools at primary and secondary level and, at the third level, of a Roman Catholic seminary. This latter is a reference to St Patricks College, Maynooth. As Prof John Garvey, of Notre Dame University, has said, US citizens are accustomed to the notion that religion and government occupy different, non-intersecting spheres of influence. Such a situation doesnt pertain here. Two examples illustrate this: (1) the Eucharistic Congress of 1932, which, as Diarmaid Ferriter has said in his book, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000, involved the close collaboration of Church, State, and citizens (2) the circumstances of the creation of the Constitution, Bunreacht na hEireann, in 1937, whereby Eamon de Valera took advice from senior Church figures (and accepted much of it) in drafting the Constitution (though, as Ferriter has said, he resisted the demand that Catholicism should be recognised as the State religion). Instead, he recognised its special position, in Article 44, a position that remained until the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, in 1972. Then president Eamon de Valera visiting Dominican retreat house in Ennismore, Montenotte, Cork, in 1965. During the drafting of Bunreacht na hEireann in 1937, de Valera took advice from senior Church figures and accepted much of it. But if the separation of Church and State, as outlined by Prof Garvey, does not apply here in Ireland, then one must look to history, especially the history of the 19th century. Any attempt to understand the power and influence of Catholicism in Irish society must examine socio-political developments in nineteenth-century Ireland, Louise Fuller, of the NUI at Maynooth, reminds us in her excellent 2004 book, Irish Catholicism Since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture. Significantly, one of her key chapters is entitled The Legitimisation of the Catholic Ethos by the Free State and Subsequent Irish Governments. In it, she writes: One of the most outstanding features of Irish Catholic culture in the post-independence era was the extent to which the State, by the actions, words, and public appearances of its representatives, legitimated the Catholic ethos. An alliance was formed between the Catholic Church authorities and the Free State government during the Civil War years, and WT Cosgrave, during his tenure of office, looked to the Church to augment the authority of his government. The alliance was a mutually reinforcing one. The bishops were prepared to throw their weight behind the new State and endorse its political legitimacy, which was being contested by the anti-treaty republicans, and the rulers of the new State were not disposed to question the authority of the Church in matters having to do with education, health, or sexual morality, traditionally seen by the Church as its areas of competence. The tradition was deeply cemented into the prevailing culture during the 19th century, when the Catholic Church perforce took on the role of a proxy State in occupied Ireland. In the absence of a native parliament and a native government, it fell to the Church to provide services and facilities in education and healthcare, and in the enforcement of morals, that would otherwise have been the responsibility of a democratically elected government. It should never be forgotten (especially right now, when we have witnessed a near-hysterical tirade of criticism of the Sisters of Charity) that a great service was undertaken by the religious orders and congregations for the benefit, welfare, and wellbeing of the Irish people. The costs and benefits of that service simply cannot be computed. This is not to turn a blind eye to the dark episodes in the history of some of these congregations, but there is also a much larger picture. Of course, we live in a very different Ireland now, more secular and pluralistic, but to understand what Ireland was like, and how the power and influence of the Catholic Church grew to what it was in 1950 and beyond, we have to, as Fuller has sought to remind us, see things in historical perspective. The requirement that the State should be neutral as regards religion could not be met in the circumstances of the 1920s, as the nascent State sought to establish its legitimacy, and could not be met for a long time thereafter. The Irish State needed all the help it could get, and that help, in its most cogent form, could be provided by the Catholic Church to which the government of the day turned. An alliance was forged and it is one to which all subsequent governments adhered and contributed. It will be argued that this alliance turned into a far too cosy arrangement, and the undoing of that culture about which Fullers book offers an excellent study continues to this day. The unravelling of that culture has been slow and painful, and the present controversy over the National Maternity Hospital and the Sisters of Charity is but the latest manifestation of this. The cosy alliance remained in place for far too long because, of course, for a long time it was mutually beneficial: it suited both sides, with the negative and damaging result that shameful situations, which ought to have been examined, challenged and exposed, remained under the radar and hidden. The prevailing philosophy bred by this cosy alliance was live and let live. But responsibility for this alliance rests as much with the agents of the State as with the agents of the Church. The controversy over the National Maternity Hospital and the Sisters of Charity shows, among other things, that even in the Ireland of the 21st century we are still far from being able to erect that wall of separation between Church and State, which Thomas Jefferson so much prized and so ably championed. Vitriol spewed over a phantom prosecution of Stephen Fry for blasphemy. That came after outcry against nuns generally and Sisters of Charity particularly, over the national maternity hospital. The public conversation on those issues elicited remarkable coarsening. Road rage on air, in print and on social media is now accepted public speech. Self-appointed hatred is the posture of preference. It defiles any genuine sense of liberal values. Firstly may I say, I found Stephen Frys interview with Gay Byrne remarkably apt. His anger at a capricious, mean-spirited, stupid God is the cry of Job. The Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork, Dr Paul Colton, put it well, saying Fry is fully entitled to express his views about God. Tellingly, he pointed out he only highlighted something many people struggle with. Some who have are great saints. The public debate over the past days was not a reflective discussion of God. It didnt pick up the thoughtful conversation between Byrne and Fry about the possibility of one, or where between infinite love and casual cruelty the deity might be. No, our debate had Fry bound at the stake, ready for the firelighters. Ironically our blasphemy law is part of a history of appreciable liberalisation. It was introduced at about the same time as civil partnership for same-sex couples, by the same justice minister, Dermot Ahern. Both issues abutted constitutional imperatives. Legally and politically, they were handled adeptly and marked progress. It is an inconvenient truth but Article 40.6.1.i. of the Constitution states: The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law. Responding to media demand for reform of the libel laws, Ahern moved to repeal the Defamation Act, 1961. It prescribed that: Every person who composes, prints or publishes any blasphemous or obscene libel shall, on conviction thereof on indictment, be liable to a fine not exceeding five hundred pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to both such fine and imprisonment or to penal servitude for a term not exceeding seven years. Addressing the Dail committee on justice on May 20, 2009, Ahern summed up his options thus: As regards the offence of blasphemous libel, I think we would all agree that the optimal approach, and certainly the one that I find most preferable, would be to abolish it. As a republican, my personal position is that Church and State should be separate. But I do not have the luxury of ignoring our Constitution. So, as minister for justice I faced a choice referendum or reform. I chose reform The choice of reform over repeal was wise. Ireland in 2009 was in the eye of an economic storm. He served in the most unpopular government ever. A referendum then would have met only blasphemy on the doorsteps. It would have distracted a government stretched to its limits addressing multiple crises. The offence of blasphemy was renewed in the 2009 act. It was heavily hemmed in firstly, by the requirement that there was intent to cause such outrage. Intent is notoriously difficult to prove. Secondly, there is a defence if there is genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter complained of. It is extremely unlikely there could ever be a successful prosecution. As Ahern explained this week, that was the intention. His legislation was an artful advance on the status quo, and compliant with the constitution. Dermot Ahern Like him, I would vote to repeal the blasphemy provision in the Constitution. Free speech is generally an essential value. But it is not unfettered. Libel is one essential bulwark, and provisions against hate speech another. It is astonishing that in pursuit of a supposedly liberal republic, and the separation of Church and State that public speech against religion is so frequently imbued with hate. There is no concurrent appreciation that freedom of religion is one of the essential interlocking freedoms in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Ireland old sectarianism and authoritarianism has become a self-appointed hatred. In its expression, it is too often poisonously illiberal. Remarkably, at the moment organised religion collapsed, it mutated enhanced. It flatters itself as different because it opposes those same hierarchical institutions, just as their power is waning. There is certainly no cost to kicking now. But there is a consequence. It creates a coarsened society. It is iconoclasm of a sort that believes by defacing images, you emasculate them. Its history now, but Aherns civil partnership was assailed as an Uncle Toms charter in terms which were vitriolic and accusative. The condition of our public debate masks a deeper problem. Vitriolic spleen is a diversion from the complex, measured discussions leading to better choices. The churning of emotion absolves the need for reason. Nowhere was that clearer than in the deployment of Sisters of Charity as straw men in the debate over the National Maternity Hospital. As stated in this column previously, the scandal hiding in plain sight is the vested interests of consultants using vast amounts of State money to trade up from a clapped out plant on Dublins Holles Street to a state-of-the-art one in St Vincents the better to profit from private practice. Amidst bitter disagreements amongst themselves, one issue never caused a murmur: private practice in public hospitals. Like Aherns choice in 2009, Health Minister Simon Harris now belatedly understands the conundrum. He is told to sort it, but he cant confiscate property. Some of those most agitated by nuns have such expansive notions of property rights they exercise self-appointed authority to prevent the installation of water meters on the public road. Any law to impinge on the property rights of the Sisters of Charity would be unconstitutional. Any referendum would unhinge a primordial Irish instinct and certainly be defeated. A state that does ideally have a responsibility to provide a national maternity hospital outside of religious control, has limited options for colocation. Every policy choice influences another, and perhaps displaces it. In the gale of vitriol passing for debate, who would know? Only simple options are offered. The monster within themselves, becomes the other whom they must hate. Little thought is given, and no responsibility is taken for consequences. It cant be dismissed simply as populism. Commonplace abuse is too pervasive, and crudity too common place for that excuse to be acceptable. I recall the 1983 campaign for the Eighth Amendment which was universally crude, and frequently abusive. Far from being a low water mark historically, it is a standard now almost uniform, not least among those likely to be most appalled and who should be most ashamed by the comparison. EU visa-free waiver for Ukrainians to be approved on May 11 Ministers of the European Union member states on agriculture and fisheries will approve the granting of a visa-free regime for Ukraine at a meeting on May 11. So, according to the agenda of the meeting, the ministers will approve a number of legislative issues, including the issue of "exemption from visas for EU citizens traveling to Ukraine and Ukrainian citizens, owners of biometric passports, while traveling to the EU." In particular, the ministers will consider the Rules of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, amending Decree No. 539/2001, which specifies third countries whose citizens, when crossing external borders, must have a visa, and countries whose citizens are exempt from such a requirement (Ukraine). This issue is planned to be considered at about 11:00, Kyiv time. As reported, on February 28, representatives of the European Parliament and the EU Council agreed on visa-free travel for Ukrainians to the EU member states. On March 1, the EU Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament talked on granting a visa-free regime to Ukraine. The Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States of the European Union (COREPER) confirmed a decision reached within the framework of the triad on March 2. Thus, the completion of the process of liberalization of the visa regime requires several more procedural issues, in particular, consideration and approval of the issue at the plenary session of the European Parliament, scheduled for April 5, and approval by the Council of the European Union. After that, the document must be signed by the President of the European Parliament and the representative of the country presiding in the EU and published in the official journal of the EU. The decision to introduce a visa-free regime will come into force 20 days after publication. The cable industry is well known for interesting machinations. The most recent is a wireless agreement between Comcast and Charter Cable that could have significant ramifications down the road. Yesterday, the companies announced an agreement under which the multiple system operators (MSOs) agreed to make no moves in the wireless industry without the other for one year. In addition, they will work together to create operating platforms, work through technical standards development and harmonization, develop device forward and reverse logistics and on emerging wireless technology platforms. This interesting announcement would have been even more intriguing if it had been made during the Obama administration. Comcast and Charter, two huge and powerful MSOs, are working together to develop technology, set standards, and do other things that obviously will be in their best interests. Where does that leave other MSOs and their subscribers? Once executives in Stamford and Philadelphia decide on the path forward, vendors will have no choice but to quickly fall into line. Comcast and Charter more or less dictate the way forward and, in the bargain, encroach on the role that is supposed to be played by consortium CableLabs. This seems to run close to some lines that are obvious even to a non-lawyer. It is also obvious that scrutiny of such an arrangement will be less under the Trump administration. Chris Mills at BGR suggests that the move hints that Comcast and Charter may start their own network or buy one of the existing players, presumably Sprint or T-Mobile. His commentary enumerates the reasons that such an acquisition would be good for the wireless and cable companies and bad for subscribers. Sprint, he reasons, would win because it needs the cash to become a more serious competitor. T-Mobile would win by cashing out at the right time. Consumers would lose because reduced competition would lead to higher costs. Setting of higher rates in the absence of competition is typical marketplace dynamics. There is another worrying element, however. Mills points out that cable operators are largely dominant in their areas (though this is less true today than a decade ago). If Comcast and Charter added wireless to their video, data and wireline triple plays, it would very difficult for subscribers to opt out of any one offering: Quad-play is particularly problematic because of the regional monopolies cable companies already have in the US. If cable companies end up only offering cell service to customers who also subscribe to their cable bundles, you end up with a weird situation where customers get locked into Comcasts wireless network, even if Verizon has much better wireless signal in their area. This isnt a dystopian fiction, either Comcasts newly-announced cell service is only available to cable subscribers for now. Even if the companies develop technology together, they may need to wait and buy a wireless company. Mari Silbey at Light Reading points out that even the two cable companies together dont own enough spectrum to start a network from scratch. 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. Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman will pay an official visit to Israel on May 14-16 and hold talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein. The key topics of the talks are the introduction in Ukraine of the best practices of Israel in the field of agricultural production and health system reform, establishing cooperation in the field of high technologies, the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine said. In addition, Groysman will meet with Agriculture Minister of Israel Uri Ariel and will visit the research organization of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Volkani. During the visit, a number of bilateral documents will be signed: a memorandum on cooperation between the ministries of health of Ukraine and Israel, a memorandum on the exchange of statistical data between the customs administrations of the two countries, a joint Declaration between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of Israel on cooperation in the field of prevention of emergencies and liquidation of their consequences. It is also planned to sign an implementation protocol to the agreement between the governments of the two countries on the temporary employment of Ukrainian workers in certain sectors of the Israeli labor market. In addition, the meeting of the Ukrainian premier with the business community, the leadership of the Teva Center and the leaders of leading Israeli companies in the field of biomedical engineering and representatives of the Ukrainian community of Israel is planned. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin expects that Emmanuel Macron during his first visit as President of France to Germany will discuss, among other things, the issue of coordination of the parties in the Normandy format. "Of course, we all understand that the new president of France will visit Germany in the early days and coordination will be one of the issues within the Normandy format between us and our French and German friends," Klimkin said in an interview the with Voice of America. The foreign minister also expressed confidence that the newly elected president of France will contribute to pressure on Russia, including with regard to the implementation of the Minsk accords. "I am sure that he and his team will work consistently and powerfully to press on Russia in order to fulfill what it must fulfill. [...] Now we need to jointly find a complicated tactic, for there are no simple solutions anymore, how to pressure Russia to get out of this impasse it has brought the Minsk agreements to," Klimkin said. UPDATED WEDNESDAY 3.30pm CROSS-PARTY political group, Progressive Alliance, is hoping to unite the Isle of Wight against the Conservative government in next month's election. Progressive parties, independents, and voters have been invited to meet tonight (Wednesday) at the Riverside Centre, Newport, at 7pm to discuss the prospect of working together. Similar alliances have been formed in Ealing, Brighton, Shipley, Ilford, South West Surrey, Richmond, and Twickenham. Frances Foley, national campaign manager of the Progressive Alliance, said: "The Isle of Wight is ready for a progressive MP. "As last Thursday's results demonstrated, there's a non-Conservative majority on the Isle. "Over 25,000 votes were cast for either a progressive party or independent candidate, dwarfing the Conservative-UKIP total. "Progressive Alliance is using techniques from the Bernie Sanders campaign. The meeting will be a Bernie-style 'Barnstorm' and completely different to anything progressive campaigners in the UK have done before. "It's now time for progressives and independents to seize the moment and work together to unseat the Conservatives." However, the Isle of Wight Liberal Democrats will not be attending the meeting. A Lib Dem spokesperson told the County Press: "The Isle of Wight Liberal Democrats will field a candidate in the General Election 2017 as we believe it is important to give people a real liberal alternative on the Island. "The Isle of Wight Liberal Democrats are looking at the 'bigger picture', not just this snap election. We are looking at giving the Island a voice at Westminster post June 8, and we believe the best way of doing this is to field a candidate in this election." Proposals of an alliance have been backed by Green parliamentary candidate Vix Lowthion, and leader of the Island Independents Julia Baker-Smith. On Thursday, May 11, at 13.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference entitled "Ukraine's Team Places First at WWII 'Battle of the Nations' Historical Re-Enactment" defeating this category's favorite - the Russian national team. The participants will include captain of Ukraine's team for the 'Battle of the Nations' medieval battle re-enactment Illia Vyshutin, captain of Ukraine's '21 by 21' team in the 'Battle of the Nations' medieval re-enactment Valeriy Vozniuk, representative of the of the 'Battle of the Nations' historical medieval battle re-enactment Pavlo Besaha (8/5a Reitarska Street). Accreditation of journalists is required by phone: (095) 606 2858 (Liubov Sydorenko). Despite Israels 5th election in four years, it remains a beacon of democracy and freedom The Israeli elections are fast approaching. On November 1, Israelis go back to the polls for the fifth round of elections in less than four... What is a Jew? Israeli museum attempts an answer JERUSALEMI was on a short visit to Israel and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli... Interfax-Ukraine to host press conference 'New UIA Price Concept upon Infrastructure Ministry's Initiative to Reduce Air Tickets Cost. Can UIA Offer Prices for Low-Cost Flights?' On Friday, May 12, at 10.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference, entitled "New UIA Price Concept upon Infrastructure Ministry's Initiative to Reduce Air Tickets Cost. Can UIA Offer Prices for Low-Cost Flights?' The participants will include UIA President Yuriy Miroshnikov and Vice President of Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) for Commerce Serhiy Fomenko (8/5a Reitarska Street). Press accreditation is required by phone: (044) 451 8513, (067) 249 1277 or at: office@msgpr.com.ua; press.service@flyuia.com. BEIJING, May 9 (Xinhua) -- The establishment of "Chinese Brands Day" will help independent brands, a senior official said Tuesday. The State Council, China's cabinet, has approved a Chinese Brands Day, to be held on May 10 each year from this year. The first falls on Wednesday. Influential brands are symbols of the overall competitiveness of companies and countries, and can help lead economic transition, according to Wang Dong, a senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner. Compared with developed countries, China is still short of globally influential brands but well equipped to accelerate brand development, Wang added. Chinese Brands Day will publicize brands owned independently by Chinese companies, tell the stories of the brands and raise brand recognition, according to Wang. MACAO, May 9 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang on Tuesday lauded the success of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) since its return to the motherland more than 17 years ago, calling on the SAR to make redoubled efforts to achieve even greater progress. Zhang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said the basic experience behind the SAR's success lies in its adherence to the fundamentals of "one country" while making appropriate use of "two systems." Zhang made the comments here at a symposium which was attended by more than 150 representatives from all walks of life in the SAR. He called on the SAR to be always committed to fully and accurately comprehending and implementing the principle of "one country, two systems" and the Basic Law, and keep in mind the bigger picture. Macao should, from an overall and long-term perspective, carry forward the mainstream values of loving the country and Macao, support law-based governance by the chief executive and the SAR administration, fully make use of the central government's preferential policies for Macao and give full play to its unique advantages, he said. Zhang noted that President Xi Jinping came to Macao in December 2014 to attend celebrations for the 15th anniversary of Macao's return to the motherland and delivered a series of important speeches, which have charted the course for the practicing of "one country, two systems" as well as the development of various undertakings in the SAR. He called on the representatives to continue to deeply comprehend and implement President Xi's instructions and make their due contributions to maintaining the long-term prosperity and stability of the Macao SAR. He said Macao should sum up and cherish the successful experience of the SAR's development, further accurately implement the principle of "one country, two systems" and the Basic Law. Macao should firmly grasp such core factors as "one country" is the prerequisite and base of "two systems," earnestly implement the central government's overall jurisdiction over the SAR and the SAR's administration-led system so as to ensure the smooth operation of the system. When Chui Sai On, chief executive of the Macao SAR, went to Beijing last December to report to the central government on his work in 2016, President Xi said to him that the Macao SAR had set an example in implementing the "one country, two systems" principle and the Basic Law, as well as safeguarding national security and unity. Zhang said that President Xi's remarks are not only affirmation of, but also encouragement to the Macao SAR government and all walks of life here. The central government has always attached importance to and supported Macao's development, Zhang said, adding that "one country, two systems" is a pioneering undertaking and needs to move forward through constant exploration in practice. The top legislator expressed the belief that with the strong support from the central government and the mainland, and under the leadership of the SAR's chief executive and the SAR government, Macao compatriots will make greater achievements in the future. Zhang arrived in the Macao SAR on Monday for a three-day inspection. By continuing to browse or by clicking "Accept," you agree to our site's privacy policy. (Xinhua) 08:33, May 10, 2017 BEIJING, May 9 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday congratulated Emmanuel Macron on his election as French president. In a telephone conversation, Xi said that China-France relations, with a profound historical foundation, hold an important position in China's diplomacy. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 53 years ago, Xi said, bilateral relations have weathered volatile changes on the international scene and have been increasingly strategic. It meets the common expectation of the two peoples and international community to lift China-France relations from a new starting point to a new level, he said. Xi stressed that China attaches great importance to France and China-France relations, and has, as always, regarded France as an important priority cooperation partner and viewed bilateral relations from a long-term strategic perspective, Xi said. He called on both sides to carry forward their friendly ties, strengthen strategic mutual trust, accommodate their respective core interests and major concerns, and expand practical cooperation in various areas. Xi said China welcomes the French side's participation in the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, urging both sides to keep contact and coordination on international and regional issues, continue to advance global governance reforms and safeguard achievements of global governance such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The Chinese president also reaffirmed China's support for the European integration. Macron, for his part, said he attaches great importance to France-China relations. He said the new French government will continue to pursue its positive and friendly policy toward China, stick to the one-China policy, deepen practical cooperation in such areas as diplomacy, trade and industry as well as in the framework of the Belt and Road construction. The new government will maintain close communication and coordination with China on major international issues such as climate change, the president-elect added. Xi and Macron agreed to keep contact and meet each other at an early date so as to exchange views on bilateral ties and issues of common concern. Gov. Roy Cooper on Wednesday expressed his shock and disappointment in the small amount of federal disaster money the Trump administration and Congress have authorized in the latest round of funding for Hurricane Matthew recovery in North Carolina less than 1 percent of what the state requested. Cooper had hoped for more than $900 million in federal relief, an amount he said was a conservative request made in consultation with U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., U.S. Reps. David Price, a Democrat from Chapel Hill and David Rouzer, a Republican from Johnston County, and others in the states congressional delegation. Just $6.1 million in federal money was approved. The funding request was in addition to $1.4 billion in federal and state money the state has already received, Cooper said. The storm caused an estimated $4.8 billion in damage, Cooper has said. Cooper expressed his dismay at the latest round in a letter sent to President Donald Trump, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Cooper also invited Trump to visit North Carolina to see storm damage firsthand. An official in the Trump administration didnt immediately respond to an email request for comment Wednesday. Families across Eastern North Carolina need help to rebuild and recover, and it is an incredible failure by the Trump Administration and Congressional leaders to turn their backs, Cooper said in a statement. North Carolinians affected by this storm cannot be ignored by the Trump Administration and Congressional leadership, and I will continue to work with our Congressional delegation to get North Carolina residents affected by the storm the help they deserve, he said. Taylor Holgate, a spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said Wednesday that hurricane recovery has been and should continue to be above partisan finger-pointing. The bipartisan North Carolina congressional delegation worked to secure more than $300 million in federal assistance for Hurricane Matthew and is committed to making sure the people of North Carolina have the resources they need for hurricane recovery, Holgate said. Sen. Burr encourages both Democrat and Republican leaders to work together to ensure that those suffering as a result of a natural disaster get the support they need. According to Coopers office, the federal money the state had hoped for would have been used for: Housing repairs: $166 million for homeowners repairs, $63.7 million to repair rental housing, $15.2 million to repair public housing. $166 million for homeowners repairs, $63.7 million to repair rental housing, $15.2 million to repair public housing. Housing elevation: $434 million to buy out property, and pay for elevation and reconstruction of nearly 4,000 properties that flooded during the storm and could flood again. $434 million to buy out property, and pay for elevation and reconstruction of nearly 4,000 properties that flooded during the storm and could flood again. Agriculture: $92.6 million to cover losses the U.S. Department of Agriculture didnt cover, such as livestock, equipment and feed. $92.6 million to cover losses the U.S. Department of Agriculture didnt cover, such as livestock, equipment and feed. Public facilities: $43 million to fix public facilities and retrofit storm drains and sewer lines to prevent damage. $43 million to fix public facilities and retrofit storm drains and sewer lines to prevent damage. Small business : $39 million to help close to 700 small businesses. : $39 million to help close to 700 small businesses. Health: $37 million to support health and mental health programs for storm survivors, and to help repair child-care centers and social services agencies. Coopers letter calls on the Trump administration and legislative leaders to come up with additional money, either through an immediate supplemental spending bill or in the next appropriations process. Hurricane Matthew struck in October 2016, dumping 8 to 12 inches of rain across much of eastern and central North Carolina. It caused an estimated $4.8 billion in damage while displacing thousands of families and damaging more than 98,000 houses and more than 19,000 businesses, the governor said. According to Cooper, half of North Carolinas 100 counties suffered some damage from Matthew. Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic, has hailed the Belt and Road Initiative as the greatest infrastructure project in history and said he is looking forward to building greater connectivity between China and his country. "I will attend the forum, and the topic I am most concerned with is the Belt and Road, the world's largest initiative for infrastructure construction," Zeman said in an exclusive interview with China Daily on Monday. He was speaking ahead of his departure for Beijing, where he will participate in the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which will be held in Beijing on Sunday and Monday. "I am glad to see that the Belt and Road Initiative, which connects China and Europe, also includes the Czech Republic," he said. Zeman, whose visit to China will be his third since assuming the presidency in 2013, will join 27 heads of state and government leaders, more than 80 leaders of international organizations and more than 1,000 other participants. A strong supporter of the initiative, which was proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, Zeman has met Xi six times in the past three years. China and the Czech Republic signed a memorandum of understanding on the initiative in November 2015. The countries upgraded their relationship to a strategic partnership last year, when Xi became the first Chinese president to visit the Czech Republic. During talks with Xi during the Chinese president's visit, Zeman expressed the hope that his country will become China's gateway to the European Union and a hub for transportation and finance in China-EU trade. The Czech Republic is a member of the "16+1" group, formed by 16 Central and Eastern European countries and China. The concept is China's mechanism for engaging with Central and Eastern Europe, and with the promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative. As a result, Zeman expects to see further developments, especially in infrastructure, transportation and the bilateral exchange of goods and services. He will witness the signing of a number of agreements during his visit to China. He added that he was particularly delighted about a project to train a group of Chinese pilots in the Czech Republic, despite the relatively small scale of the undertaking. Zeman is keen to see more cooperation in aviation between the two countries. He said opening more air routes will improve people-to-people exchanges between China and the Czech Republic, while cooperation in the rail sector will involve greater transportation of freight. He pointed out that the number of Chinese visiting the Czech Republic has almost doubled in the past year, mainly thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative and the upgrading of bilateral relations after Xi's visit. BEIJING, May 9 (Xinhua) -- China said on Tuesday it has noticed the talks between representatives of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States in Norway, calling on solving the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue via peaceful means. Dialogue between the DPRK government officials and U.S. experts was held on Monday and Tuesday in Oslo, according to reports. The DPRK delegation is reportedly led by its Foreign Ministry's North America bureau chief Choe Son-hui. Her counterpart is Suzanne DiMaggio, director and senior fellow at a Washington D.C.-based think tank and former official in the Obama administration, said Yonhap News Agency of the Republic of Korea (ROK). The previous informal talks between the DPRK and the United States were held in Geneva, Switzerland last November. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said at a daily press briefing that China has always advanced that the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue should be solved via peaceful means. China has kept contact with parties concerned, urging for restraint and avoidance of provocation, he said. He said China has also noticed the positive signals in recent U.S. statements expressing the willingness to solve the nuclear issue via peaceful negotiation. "China will continue to actively engage with all relevant parties and promote the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue back on the right track of dialogue and consultation," Geng said. Liu Qibao (C, front), head of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), visits the Commercial Press in Beijing, capital of China, May 9, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo) BEIJING, May 9 (Xinhua) -- A senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) had urged the country's publishers to digitalize high quality books and distribute them through the Internet. Liu Qibao, head of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, made the remarks Tuesday at the Commercial Press, which is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. Traditional publishers should integrate their advantages in content with Internet technology, said Liu. Liu also called on the country's publishers to introduce more books on China's development, social system and contemporary values to overseas readers. Founded in 1897, the state-owned Commercial Press is known for publishing dictionaries and academic works. While much has been written about the trials and triumphs of the sleek, cylindrical and historic submarine, known as the H.L. Hunley, author Cheryl Oliver delves into the underwater vessel from a different angle in Ghosts of Hunley by spotlighting the individual crew members many of Read moreNew book release highlights crew members of ill-fated H.L. Hunley Chinese human rights lawyers Xie Yang and Li Heping were released from prison Tuesday after being detained for nearly two years on charges of attempting to subvert the countrys ruling Communist Party. The two activists were originally rounded up in July of 2015, along with hundreds of other activists and lawyers, in the so-called 7-09 Crackdown [JURIST report]. A video [materials, Weibo] released by the Changsha Intermediate Peoples Court [official website] shows Xie reading a prepared statement [materials] before his release in which he appears to retract previous statements that he was tortured and denounces his activism. A statement from the Chinese Human Rights Defenders [advocate website], an organization that has closely followed events following the 7-09 Crackdown, refers to Xies statement and the quick trial that preceded it a mockery of justice. Prosecutors accused [JURIST report] Xie of conspiring with people in and out of China to distort reports of police brutality, with the ultimate goals of undermining state power and threatening national security. Friends of Li say he is now with his wife and daughter at their family home in Beijing, adding that he appears emaciated and unrecognizable [Guardian report] in videos and photos [materials, Twitter] that have been shared on social media. China has faced continued international criticism for its treatment of human rights defenders, ranging from filing of arbitrary criminal charges, suspension or dismissal of law licenses, and disappearances. In February, the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders released its annual report [JURIST report] highlighting intensified crackdowns on human rights defenders. In December the UN called on China to investigate the disappearance of human rights lawyer [JURIST report] Jiang Tianyong, after he had been missing for two months. The same month China suspended the law license [JURIST report] of prominent human rights lawyer Li Jinxing, over his apparent allegedly unacceptable behavior in court while defending a client. Last September China handed down a 12 year sentence [JURIST report] to prominent human rights lawyer Xia Lin. In July China announced plans to prosecute [JURIST report] prominent human rights lawyer Zhou Shifeng on charges of subverting state power, furthering its recent crackdown on political dissidents. The Delaware House of Representatives [official website] passed a bill [text] on Tuesday that would reinstate the death penalty. The House voted a 24-16 on House Bill 125, designated the Extreme Crimes Protection Act [text]. The bill requires juries to unanimously agree that aggravating circumstances in a murder warrant a death sentence. Sponsors of the bill hope that this amendment will address issues raised last year that caused Delawares capital punishment law to be labeled unconstitutional [advocacy press release]. The bill now heads to the Senate. The death penalty continues to be a point of contention across the United States. In April Amnesty International released an annual report [text, PDF] revealing the US to not be among the worlds top five executioners since 2006. However, in March the Mississippi house approved a bill [JURIST report] allowing firing squad executions. In January the US Supreme Court refused to consider [JURIST report] a challenge to Alabamas death penalty system. That same month, Ohios lethal injection protocol was deemed [JURIST report] unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In April the Texas Department of Criminal Justice [official website] sued [JURIST report] the Food and Drug Administration [official website] for banning a shipment of lethal injection drugs to prison officials. Former acting US Attorney General Sally Yates testified [materials] before a Senate judiciary subcommittee on Monday stating that she had warned about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynns vulnerabilities to blackmail by Russia less than a week after President Donald Trump [official profile] assumed office. Flynns conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to US was a primary focus of the Yatess testimony. Flynn had denied discussing with Kislyak the subject of US sanctions on Russia for the November election interference, but high-ranking FBI and DOJ officials had recorded conversations between Kislyak and Flynn. Yates stated that she has no way of knowing what, if anything was done about the matter, and that If nothing was done, then certainly that would be concerning. This development comes after former president Barrack Obama [official website] said he had warned Trump not to hire Flynn [NYT report]. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer minimized the warnings saying that If President Obama was truly concerned about General Flynn, why didnt they suspend his security clearance, which they approved just months earlier? In late March Flynn requested immunity [JURIST report] in exchange for his potential testimony on Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, according to a letter [text, PDF] sent from his attorney, Robert Kelner. Allegations of Russian connections have been a problem for the Trump administration in the early stages of his presidency. The previous week, FBI Director James Comey confirmed [JURIST report] that the FBI is investigating allegations of Russian interference with the 2016 US presidential election. Earlier the same month US Attorney General Jeff Sessions [official website] recused himself [JURIST report] from probes into Russian interference after it was revealed that he had met with Russian officials [JURIST reports] during the campaign. In January a group of US Senators introduced legislation seeking to make mandatory sanctions enacted [JURIST reports] in December by then-president Barack Obama. [JURIST] The Supreme Court of India [official website] on Monday found [order, PDF] judge C.S. Karnan [official profile] guilty of contempt and sentenced him to six months in jail. The court ordered [Times of India report] the judge to be taken into custody immediately as [w]hosoever commits contempt gets punished. The judge was set to retire in June, however, he will serve out the rest of his term incarcerated. The court has also instructed the media to refrain from publishing [India Express report] past opinions from the ousted judge. Former judge Karnan is yet another leader ousted during his term of service. Last year Dilma Roussef was impeached [JURIST commentary] following allegations of improper accounting to cover-up a growing budget deficit and illegal loans from state-owned banks. Earlier last year, Brazils Supreme Court suspended [JURIST report] lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha after being suspected of obstructing investigations into his allegedly corrupt activities. [JURIST] Ireland Health Minister Simon Harris [official profile] said Monday that the countrys blasphemy laws [Defamation Act, text] were embarrassing and called for their repeal. His comments follow the revelation that an investigation [Independent Ireland reports] had been launched into British actor, Stephen Frye concerning comments he made on RTE in March of 2015. Harris said that the actor regardless of your own religious views, was clearly making a number of points that he clearly felt very strongly about in his usual witty way. I think we do need a referendum. In March Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif stated [JURIST report] that blasphemy is an unpardonable offense and ordered the state to remove such content from social media. Last year a sharia high court in Nigeria sentenced [JURIST report] cleric Abdulaziz Dauda and nine others to death by hanging for committing blasphemy against the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. In October the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye said that governments are wielding the tools of censorship and cautioned [JURIST report] that the freedom of expression is under the widespread assault. In 2015 a Pakistani man was executed for his part in murdering a politician [JURIST report] who supported a Christian who had been convicted of blasphemy. Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Indonesian Parliament in 2015 to reject proposed amendments to its law on the eradication of terrorism. HRW asserted that the proposed amendments are too vague [JURIST report] and would limit the exercise of free expression and directly conflict with Indonesias obligations to international human rights, leading to fundamental rights violations. And in 2010 HRW urged the repeal of all such laws [JURIST report]. US President Donald Trump [official profile] fired [press release] FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday. Trump said he acted under direction from both the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. A letter [text, PDF] written to former FBI Director states that his leadership was ineffective and that a new leader is needed to restore public trust and confidence in law enforcement. Comey was leading [Reuters report] the investigation into Trumps presidential campaign possible collusion with Russia. According to Trump, he fired Comey due to his handling of the email scandal regarding presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Democrats and some others, however, said they believe the move was intended to hinder an FBI investigation into alleged ties between the Trump administration and Russia. President Donald Trumps election campaign and political run has faced a lot of scrutiny. In November state democrats raised voter intimidation suits in six states [Politico report], yet only a federal judge in Ohio granted the requested injunction before being rejected on appeal [JURIST report]. In April a federal judge rejected Trumps free speech defense in response to his alleged inciting of violence among protestors during his presidential campaign. Trumps travel ban continues to opposed [JURIST report] by several states as a violation of immigration law and the First Amendment freedom of religion. Also, Trumps administration has been plagued with allegations JURIST report] of his collusion with Russia. (Global Times) 09:30, May 10, 2017 (file photo) Police in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou Province announced on Tuesday that they have arrested a former employee of Laoganma Co, the producer of China's most famous chili sauce, on suspicion of leaking the firm's commercial secrets. According to a statement the Nanming district police sent to the Global Times on Tuesday, Laoganma workers found products extremely similar to the company's signature sauce being sold in May 2016, and reported their suspicions to Police on November 8, 2016. Police investigators have verified that the knockoff chili sauce was made with Laoganma's secret techniques, and confirmed that someone illegally leaked the company's commercial secrets. They arrested the suspect, surnamed Jia, in February and found Laoganma business secrets on his hard drive, police said. The statement said that Jia held a number of positions at the Nanming-based Laoganma from 2003 to April 2015 including that of a quality examiner and engineer. During this time, he apparently learned some of the company's core secrets including their proprietary technology and production process. While he was working there he signed a confidentiality contract promising he would never reveal any business secrets nor get involved with a similar company after leaving Laoganma. Jia started working for the local food processing firm in November 2015 using a fake name. By sharing major commercial secrets, Jia has caused up to 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) in damage to Laoganma, said the statement. According to China's Criminal Law, Jia could be sentenced to up to 7 years in prison for stealing the trade secrets and causing harm. It is not clear if the firm which manufactured the knockoff chili sauce will also face criminal charges. Laoganma Co has grown quickly over the past 20 years. In 2016, its sales reached 4.5 billion yuan, the Guizhou Daily, a local newspaper, reported in February. It is also very popular in the overseas market. In a previous case brought against a chili sauce firm based in Central China's Hunan Province in 2001, the Beijing High People's Court ruled that other similar products could not use the "Laoganma" brand, nor imitate the Nanming Laoganma's package design. Nanming Laoganma received 400,000 yuan in compensation from the accused, according to cqn.com.cn, a website administered by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. Tinci Materials Technology Co, a Guangzhou-based materials company, reportedly claimed a total of 150 million yuan in compensation from its former employees who founded a firm to produce knockoffs, the Nanfang Daily reported in September 2016. As Amazon launches its AmazonFresh in Germany, Andrew Pearl, director of strategy and insights for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region at e-commerce analytics firm Profitero discusses the implications for retailers and brands. Germany is the latest country where Amazon is seeking to challenge the established grocery retailers, with the launch of its online grocery delivery business AmazonFresh. Following the launch in Germany of Prime Pantry in November 2015 and, the following May, of one-hour deliveries through its Prime Now service, Amazon is now looking to broaden its offering in ambient and fresh products, offering 85,000 products at launch. Germany appears to be launching its Fresh offering in its tried-and-tested format, trialling the service first on Berlin, the countrys capital, with further cities likely to launch in the next six to 12 months. The strategy also mirrors further European expansion, following the announcement that Prime Pantry will shortly be arriving in Switzerland. Although the initial impact on established German retailers is likely to be small in terms of market share, Amazon continues to influence its competitors through its same-day delivery options. In addition, price is likely to remain a key battlefield, with shoppers expecting significantly cheaper prices on Amazon than their usual weekly shopping trip. A 2016 study by Profitero shows AmazonFresh beats supermarkets in the UK where the e-commerce giant launched the service last summer on price by 17% on average. Brands operating in Germany should also be aware of the introductions of further Amazon own-label products, replicating the launch of Amazon sub-brands such as Happy Belly coffee and Wickedly Prime food in the US. With its extensive customer insight, Amazon is able to identify key products and flavours that resonate with the German grocery shopper, and therefore has the ability to launch very tailored innovations. FMCG brands should therefore continue to monitor their performance on Amazon, not only through their sales but also in areas such as search placement, to ensure they are able to quickly adapt to any challenges from emerging Amazon products. Grocery e-commerce has been slow to take off in Germany and is much less developed than neighbouring markets such as France and the Netherlands. However, Rewe, the countrys second-biggest supermarket chain, has been investing heavily in e-commerce in anticipation of Amazons move into food. It offers next-day delivery for EUR3.90-5.90 and a minimum order value of EUR40. As we are seeing in other major markets around the world, the online grocery channel is expected to see the biggest sales growth over the coming years. A.T. Kearney expects e-commerce will account for 3% of Germanys grocery market by 2020, up from just 1% now. Some industry observers have noted that, in Germany, Amazon is entering one of the hardest grocery markets in the world, a country where its incumbent retail majors have, to varying degrees, been more reluctant than some of their European peers to embrace e-commerce. However, Germany, with its raft of major cities and high population density, could offer promise for those interested in the online channel and it is clear Amazon believes the market has potential. (Global Times) 09:33, May 10, 2017 The Beijing government has established a scholarship fund for students from countries along the One Belt and One Road initiative for studies in the Chinese capital. The municipal government set up a "Belt and Road Scholarship" on Monday to fund academic programs in fields like aviation, railway operation, law, finance, electronic information engineering and traditional Chinese medicine, according to the China News Agency. The scholarship program will fund a number of selected programs each year. In 2017, 11 programs from 11 municipal-level colleges and 21 programs from 21 universities directly administrated by the Ministry of Educationwill receive the funding, benefiting 502 students. "There are many students from Belt and Road countries studying at our university, and many others are keen to come to China to study, especially to top universities like Tsinghua," said an anonymous program manager at Tsinghua University's International Students and Scholar Center. Due to limited financial capacity, many foreign students rely on Chinese government scholarships or other funds while studying in China. With enhanced support from the Chinese government, more students from developing countries will have the opportunity to study in China's best universities, she said. "Higher education is an important resource. In the past, only developed countries could provide this resource to the rest of the world, but due to the limited [number of] universities and high costs, students from developing countries who can study in the West are also limited. But now, those students have one more choice," an Iraqi post-graduate student surnamed Hosseini who studies at Peking University told the Global Times. "If my younger friends or family ask me for suggestions for overseas studies, I would suggest that they try Chinese universities. And I will tell them Chinese universities are not easy to apply [for], because universities like Peking and Tsinghua compete with the ranking, reputation and academic standards of many top Western universities," he added. 10,000 people each year Before the Beijing scholarship, the Chinese government had rolled out State-level scholarships to attract talented students from Belt and Road countries. China released the Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk RoadEconomic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road in March 2015, which stated that, "We [China and other Belt and Road countries] should send more students to each other's countries, and promote cooperation in jointly running schools." China provides 10,000 government scholarships to the countries along the Belt and Road every year, according to the document. Experts said this trend of international students receiving education in China coincides with the needs of Belt and Road cooperation. In the Middle East 20 years ago, one could rarely find anyone who could speak fluent Chinese to be an interpreter, but now this won't be a problem at all, said Hua Liming, a former Chinese ambassador to Iran. "China is becoming more developed, so students and officials from the Middle East don't just come to learn the language, but also other subjects like social management, economics, energy engineering and medicine," Hua said. Many of these students will become elites in their countries, and most of them are very friendly to China, appreciate China, and understand Chinese society and its political system, so they won't use ignorant Western bias to judge China, and they tend to cooperate, said Hua. "So providing educational resources to them will benefit us because we are creating future friends," he said. "Providing free or semi-free educational resources to students and officials from Belt and Road countries will attract more talented people and help the youth of these countries understand the Chinese model," said Liang Haiming, chief economist of the China Silk Road iValley Research Institute, a Guangzhou-based think tank. "It will also strengthen China's ties with these countries' governments and business people," he said. Food producers in Portugal have welcomed a new law that requires suppliers to label the origin of milk and milk used as an ingredient in dairy products sold in the country but say more is needed to tackle a national milk production crisis. The law was introduced after negotiations between Portugal and the European Commission last year, when Portgual argued the move was necessary to inform consumers and promote the recovery of domestic milk production. A spokesperson for Portugals National Confederation of Agriculture (CNA) told just-food the law is a fair and positive measure for producers and also for consumers, who have the right to know the origin of the products they buy. A conscious consumer with social concerns can now choose to buy high-quality Portuguese milk, the spokesperson said. We agree that the more information we provide for consumers the better, as long as these rules do not hamper, for example, distribution in the short distribution channels. However, the spokesperson said the new labelling law alone does not resolve the fundamental problem of the milk crisis in Portugal, because of what is happening with the relocation of milk production. Portugal has lowered its (milk) production and it is difficult to recover, the spokesperson said. What is needed is the restoration of a public instrument for market regulation to halt the destruction of the dairy sector. It is necessary to relaunch the debate on the creation of this instrument. Portugals agriculture minister Luis Capoulas Santos has previously called for a return to a milk quotas in the EU if the bloc is to save its dairy sector. He said the European Union had taken a wrong decision to end the quota system and said Portugals dairy farmers deserve the support of the government because of a continued fall in prices in the sector. Moon Jae-in of the liberal Minjoo Party waves during a celebration event in Seoul, South Korea, on May 9, 2017. Liberal candidate Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party said Tuesday that South Korea's presidential election is "a great victory of great people" after most of local media outlets viewed his victory as assured. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) SEOUL, May 10 -- Liberal Moon Jae-in has won a landslide victory in a South Korean presidential by-election amid growing hopes for a new society following the impeachment of his predecessor over corruption scandal. Moon of the biggest Minjoo Party gained a 41.1-percent support, defeating his two main rivals by a large margin, according to the final results released by the national election commission on Wednesday. It can be seen as a sweeping victory given the five-way presidential race. The country's incoming president celebrated with jubilant supporters gathering at the Gwanghwamun square in central Seoul around midnight as Moon's victory was assured by local media outlets in an early stage of vote count. In the televised speech, Moon told supporters that he would become a president for all the people from Wednesday, and he would become a president of unity, caring about those who did not support him in the election. This election was "a great victory of great people," said Moon who pledged to become a proud president of the Republic of Korea (ROK) that is great, righteous and confident. The ROK is an official name of South Korea. Before the speech, he told reporters at his party's building that he would achieve the two main goals of reform and unity as people had wished for. Reform and national unity will be high on the agenda under the Moon administration. People demand reform on conglomerates, called chaebol here, prosecutors governed by the presidential power and inequalities of income and wealth, which are seen by many as the most urgent issue that should be tackled immediately. "Overwhelming is public demand for the transfer of power regardless of whoever represents the Minjoo Party as two conservative governments messed up our country in the past 10 years," said Seo Bok Kyung, a researcher at Sogang University's Institute of Political Studies. Jang Seok-joon, vice president of local think tank Future Politics Center, said the demand for the transfer of power led to strong support for Moon, thanks to the downfall of conservatives. Four other major candidates made concessions to Moon, even before less than 10 percent of votes were counted. The concessions led local media outlets to predict an assured election of Moon. Hong Joon-pyo of the conservative Liberty Korea Party, with which ousted President Park Geun-hye was affiliated, garnered a higher-than-expected electoral score of 24.0 percent. Hong said in a televised address that he would accept the election result and be satisfied with restoring his party. Ahn Cheol-soo of the centrist People's Party suffered a heavy defeat with 21.4 percent support as his scores once came closer to Moon's in opinion polls released in early April. Ahn told the televised speech that he would humbly accept the election result, hoping that his country could go toward the future with a new president. Yoo Seong-min of the minor conservative Righteous Party said that he had a telephone conservation with Moon to congratulate his victory, asking Moon to humbly hear the voice of voters who did not support him. Sim Sang-jung of the minor progressive Justice Party gave a phone call to Moon, offering her heartfelt congratulations to him and saying Moon bore a heavy burden as a president facing tremendous assignments. Yoo and Sim gained 6.8 percent and 6.2 percent each in support scores. Moon, the elected president, will have no transition period as it is the first by-election caused by the removal of Park from office over corruption allegations. Moon is widely forecast to appoint part of the presidential staff later Wednesday, while naming the prime minster in the near future. The cabinet can be formed when the prime minister suggests ministers to Moon who will confirm the proposals. The prime minister is required to be subject to the parliamentary hearing. The final turnout was 77.2 percent, or 32,808,377 voters among the electorate of 42,479,710 people. It was higher than the previous election's 75.8 percent in 2012. A potential homebuyer checks out a property project in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Dec 17, 2016. [Asianewsphoto by Long Wei] Real estate markets in big and small cities will further diverge this year, with big cities likely to use more financing tools to curb speculation, said a report published on Tuesday. The blue paper on the development of real estate, issued by the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said investment in real estate development reached 10 trillion yuan ($1.45 trillion) in 2016, a record high and a year-on-year increase of 6.9 percent. Real estate markets in key cities and lower-tier cities will further diverge, as top-tier cities are likely to take more measures against speculation when new supplies are limited, while lower-tier cities will continue to struggle to reduce inventories, the report said. Risk management in cities with already high housing prices is a priority for policymakers along with reducing stocks in third- and fourth-tier cities, said Wang Yeqiang, a major contributor to the blue paper and a researcher. "Demand for home loans, under such conditions, is likely to decline. Growth in home loans will slow, and lending rates are likely to rebound. In some cities, lending to homebuyers is likely to be further tightened," said Wang. In Beijing, several banks have increased the lending rate up to 20 percent more than the benchmark rate for buyers of second homes since May 1, according to leju.com, a real estate trading information platform. Residential property agency Homelink is reported to have closed some 300 outlets in Beijing as transactions decline in Beijing. In Shanghai, more than 30 small property agencies have suspended their business due to the decline in transactions in preowned homes. Tian Linbo, a Shanghai-based property agent, said: "Tightened financing for home buyers has led to a decline in transactions, particularly for preowned homes." For some cities with lackluster transactions, developers said they expect average sales prices may drop, and their projects' value may shrink in the next few months. Zhuang Qiange in Beijing contributed to this story. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he would have "serious negotiations" with China and the United States over the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in a speech after taking an oath as the country's 19th president at the National Assembly building in Seoul on Wednesday. Moon also declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang in the DPRK. "If needed, I will fly to Washington immediately. I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances," said Moon. "I will do everything I can to build peace on the Korean Peninsula." Moon's five-year term began at 8:09 a.m. Wednesday when the National Election Commission confirmed his victory in the presidential election. The presidential office said Moon spoke by phone with Lee Sun-jin, army general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was briefed on the country's current security conditions and possible military movements by the DPRK. Former leader Park Geun-hye was removed on March 10 by a Constitutional Court ruling that upheld her impeachment over a series of corruption allegations that have also led to her arrest and indictment. BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- China will host the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation on May 14 and 15. Following are the projects now underway under the Belt and Road Initiative. -- China-Belarus Industrial Park China-Belarus Industrial Park Development Company was established on August 27, 2012 and the ground-breaking ceremony was held in Minsk on June 19, 2014. Occupying an area of 91.5 square kilometers, this industrial park will be the largest one China has built overseas, with the highest concentration of high-tech businesses. It also enjoys favorable policy incentives. Strategically situated, it connects the Eurasian Economic Union countries and the European Union members, offering easy access to international and transcontinental highways and railways. Focused on advanced manufacturing and services, and attracting international talent and resources, the park is intended to be a new international city, an environmentally friendly, vibrant community that embraces entrepreneurship and innovation, and an ideal place to live. -- Gwadar Port Free Zone The free zone will be modeled after the Shekou Industrial Zone in Shenzhen, China, comprising a port, an industrial park, and residential and business areas. The Pakistani government will grant tax exemptions to the zone, together with a land lease on preferential terms. Once completed, the free zone will significantly boost the development of Gwadar Port, and spur economic growth in Balochistan and the rest of Pakistan. -- Colombo Port City Rather than being an inter-governmental project, it relies on public-private partnerships for funding. The Port City will involve a combined floor area of over 5.3 million square meters, with an initial direct investment of 1.4 billion U.S. dollars. It is expected to attract further development investment of 13 billion dollars, and create 83,000 long term jobs. -- China Railway Express to Europe The "China Railway Express" service, seen as the "Belt and Road on rail," helps boost connectivity between China and the rest of Eurasia. An interconnected network has begun to replace uncoordinated individual cargo lines. In addition to offering freight transport solutions, it contributes to flows of global investment, resources, technology and skilled personnel, and facilitates global cross-sector collaboration. -- Jakarta-Bandung Railway The rail link is expected to stimulate growth in such sectors as metallurgy, manufacturing, infrastructure, power generation and logistics, create jobs, and promote structural transformation in Indonesia. It will, in particular, facilitate travel, expand business opportunities and promote tourism along the rail line. It will also provide a sound basis for further cooperation between China and Indonesia in such fields as infrastructure development and trade. -- China-Laos Railway This planned line is China' s first overseas railway project to provide a direct link to China' s internal rail network, and the second such project - after the Jakarta-Bandung rail link in Indonesia - to be built with Chinese technology and equipment to meet Chinese standards. It will also be an important section of the pan-Asia railway network. -- China-Thailand Railway The China-Thailand railway will be Thailand' s first standard-gauge railway to be jointly built by China and Thailand. Its planned length is 900 kilometers. This rail cooperation project will be a showcase for effective alignment between China' s Belt and Road Initiative and Thailand's infrastructure development plans. Serving Thailand's northeastern regions and covering major cities, the network will be a great boon to economic development and standards of living in those regions. -- Mombasa-Nairobi Railway The 471-kilometer-long Mombasa-Nairobi stretch is the first section of a planned East Africa railway network. Passenger trains will travel at 120 kilometers per hour, while freight trains will run at 80 kilometers per hour and be able to carry 25 million tons per year. Connecting Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, with Mombasa, the largest port in East Africa, this will be the first rail link conforming to Chinese standards ever built outside of China. It will also be the first new rail line in Kenya in a century. -- Addis Ababa-Adama Expressway The Addis Ababa-Adama expressway is the first expressway in Ethiopia and East Africa. The road was built with financing support from the Chinese government and using Chinese technology and standards. In addition to extensive use of local labor, the project's Chinese contractor brought technical and managerial expertise to Ethiopia, contributing to its capability in infrastructure development. -- Karot Hydropower Project The project is being developed on a build-operate-transfer basis. Started at the end of 2015, it is scheduled to be operational by 2020. After completion, it will be operated by the construction contractor for 30 years, after which the ownership will be transferred to the Pakistani government at no cost. With an investment of 1.65 billion dollars, the power station will have an installed capacity of 720MW and an average annual output of 3.2GWh. The aforementioned information was published by the New World Press under the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration. Carry-on computers on flights (file photo) US authorities are considering banning carry-on computers on European flights to the United States, widening the security measure introduced for flights from eight countries in March, an official said Tuesday. The Department of Homeland Security is close to making a decision on a wider ban as the busy summer transatlantic travel season looms, department spokesman David Lapan said. Airlines flying to the United States from European airports that would be involved in implementing the policy have been given a warning that it is under consideration, he told journalists. But "the secretary has not made a formal decision," he said, referring to DHS chief John Kelly. In March, Washington banned passengers on direct flights to the United States from 10 airports in eight countries from carrying on board laptop computers, tablets and other electronic devices larger than cellphones. The affected airports are in Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East. Britain followed with a similar ban applying to incoming flights from six Middle East and North African countries. The move, which forces passengers to put their devices into checked baggage, came as counter-terror officials developed concerns that jihadist groups were devising bombs disguised as batteries in consumer electronics. A bomb that blew a hole in the fuselage of a Somalian airline in February 2016, killing one person, is believed to have been built into a laptop computer carried into the passenger cabin. (Source: AFP) Feature: Nu Skin ageLOC Me Men and women have different skin problems. Some are easy to manage while others are difficult to deal with. In this day and age, there are so many skin care products in the market that caters to your skin care needs but not all deliver promising results. 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For more information, please visit www.nuskin.com.ph Nu Skin Philippines Like them on Facebook: Follow them on Twitter: @nuskinph Follow them on Instagram: @nuskinph Good Times!~ The Democratic Progressive Party's leader, Tsai Ing-wen (file photo) BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- A spokesperson from the Chinese mainland reiterated Wednesday that the current administration of Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was fully responsible for the island's absence from the World Health Assembly (WHA) this year. "The DPP administration refuses to recognize the 1992 Consensus, which embodies the one-China principle. [Thus, the] prerequisite and basis for its participation in the assembly no longer exists," said An Fengshan, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council. An said, while acknowledging that the island had participated in the meeting for the previous eight years, that the DPP administration should reflect on why it was excluded from the gathering this year. Emmanuel Macron has convincingly won the French presidential elections, defusing the nationalist bomb at the foundations of Europe. But a lot more needs to be done to set France and Europe on a positive path. A collective sigh of relief could be heard coming from a good part of Europe and the world in the evening of Sunday, 7 May, when it was confirmed that Emmanuel Macron had defeated Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential elections. The country was the third in the EU to reject populism, nationalism and intolerance in the span of a few months, starting with the presidential elections in Austria and continuing with the Dutch parliamentary elections. Possibly because of its painful experience in the previous century, Europe at least its continental part seems inoculated against the virus that has infected many countries around the world, notably the Anglo-Saxon ones. The victory of Mr. Macron is convincing. It is not about a few percentage points but with a difference of more than 30% that he won the race. Ms. Le Pen may have done significantly better than her father who was defeated in the 2002 presidential elections by Jacques Chirac who got more than 80% but her efforts to bring to the mainstream and make respectable the Front National did not bear the desired fruit. Nonetheless, Ms. Le Pen doggedly vows to carry on till the final victory. In the meantime, Mr. Macron has a hell of a job to do. The expectations are high in France, Europe and beyond. Will he stick to the expectations of the 24% of his core supporters who chose him in the first round, or will he be able to please the 66% of the voters who opted for him in the second round? He will certainly try to bring the former number closer to the latter in the parliamentary elections to take place in June, where his movement, En Marche, will compete not only with the Front National but also with the numerous established parties of the right and the left that supported him against Ms. Le Pen. Quite possibly he will have to work with a coalition government with a programme based on compromise, which may please neither the left nor the right, and alienate voters. Hopefully Mr. Macron will not end up like his hapless predecessor and former boss, the outgoing President Francois Hollande. What decisions Mr. Macron will make on alliances and priority measures, his domestic and international agenda will most probably change the face of France and the EU. Will he choose to go ahead with the liberalisation of the labour market, something he already attempted amid a lot of controversy as Economy Minister under Mr. Hollande or will he show a more pro-worker face? Will he side with his old colleagues in the finance sector or will he try to control the latters excesses? Will he prove a real leader for all Europeans, inspired by the ideal of a united Europe, as the use of the EU anthem, Ode to Joy, at the start of his victory speech indicated, or will he just be another national leader, going to Brussels to negotiate for his people and having no inclusive, overall vision for the continent? As well as his being the anti-Le Pen candidate, Mr. Macrons youthfulness, his earnest behaviour and his unusual personal story may have endeared him to many and brought him to this triumph over a short period since the inception of En Marche. But these characteristics cannot replace the vision, conviction and leadership skills that anyone preaching such dramatic change, as Mr. Macron does, should have to see it through. It is certainly very early to tell how things will turn out. Certain is that the significant majority of Europeans and others, who sighed with relief once Mr. Macron was elected, want to see him succeed in his domestic and European ambitions. In the case of the EU, only that way can it stand on its feet and finally start producing the results that its citizens and outsiders expect of it, including being a pole of sanity, moderation and well-being in a world that shows signs of turning increasingly insane, radical and cruel. A research team in Shanghai was recently criticized in an essay by scientists from Google and Princeton University over its controversial paper on the capability of artificial intelligence to judge whether a person could become a criminal. The essay, published on Medium.com on May 6, describes the research by Wu Xiaolin and Zhang Xi as deeply problematic, both ethically and scientifically. Wu and Zhang, from Shanghai Jiaotong University, authored a paper titled Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Image. The essay read: This is especially unfortunate given that the correlation they measure assuming that it remains significant under more rigorous treatment may actually be an important addition to the already significant body of research revealing pervasive bias in criminal judgment. Deep learning based on superficial features is decidedly not a tool that should be deployed to accelerate criminal justice. The essay was jointly written by Google scientists Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Margaret Mitchell, together with Alexander Todorov from the Social Perception Lab at Princeton University. This is only the latest criticism of the controversial research. Previously, the paper by Wu and Zhang has been attacked both at home and by international scholars. In their paper, the two researchers detailed the results of computer tests that used 1,856 images of real people, which they claimed produced evidence for "the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding the topic. In response to the latest round of criticism, Wu said that the team has no interest and lacks the social science academic background to offer an explanation of their results or discuss how they were formed. Nor have we ever implied that we would put [the results] into law enforcement or the judiciary. They were forcing those intentions on us, Wu told Thepaper.cn. Wu also pointed out that the writers ignored their original introduction, which stated unambiguously that the intent of their research was not to discuss or debate societal stereotypes. Rather we want to satisfy our curiosity about the accuracy of fully automated inference on criminality, the introductory passage read. We and the writers have no difference in values. They have distorted our original intention and set up an imaginary enemy, Wang said. KEARNEY An overflow parking area on the east side of the Buffalo County Fairgrounds will be ready if needed when there are sold-out concerts and other events. Fairgrounds Manager Dave Roseberry said he reported Tuesday night to the Buffalo County Agricultural Association (fair) Board that 30 acres the association owns east of the railroad tracks will be planted to alfalfa instead of corn this year so it will work better for overflow parking. Dirt work on an access driveway needs to be done. Roseberry said there also will be dirt work on the main grass parking lot on the northwest side of the fairgrounds to address drainage issues and potholes. KEARNEY A massive object, with roughly 1,000 times the area of Earth, is blocking the light coming from a distant star known as KIC 8462852, and nobody is quite sure what it is. As astronomer Tabetha Boyajian investigated this perplexing celestial object, a colleague suggested something unusual: Could it be an alien-built megastructure? Or is it merely comet dust? That lead-in is the promo for a TEDTalk that has been viewed online nearly 2.4 million times. In it, astronomer Boyajian challenges viewers to think about ways to solve the unknown. Planet-hunter Boyajian will be in Kearney for a free, public talk at 7 p.m. Aug. 20, the evening before the Great American Solar Eclipse, at Kearney High School Auditorium. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Her talk is appropriate for all ages. Boyajian is assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University. She earned her doctorate from Georgia State, where she was awarded the Hubble Fellowship, and continued her research at Georgia State for three years before becoming a postdoc at Yale University where she was part of the Yale Exoplanet Group. In her TEDtalk, Boyajian provides a look at how scientists search for and test hypotheses when faced with the unknown. The extraordinary idea that aliens built what is now known as Tabbys Star or Boyajians Star will indeed require extraordinary evidence. KIC 8462852 is a star exhibiting bizarre, and so far unique, variations in brightness. These fluctuations have led scientists to postulate causes ranging from comet dust Boyajians favorite scenario to alien megastructures. The latest studies of the star have proved even more baffling: KIC 8462852 has been gradually dimming over the last century, a strikingly short period of time on an astronomical scale. Boyajians research is assisted by the Planet Hunters a citizen science group that combs data from the NASA Kepler Space Mission for evidence of exoplanets and other unusual interstellar activity. Her research teams discovery of the most mysterious star in our galaxy, has also generated more than $100,000 on Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website. UNK astronomy professor Adam Jensen has known Boyajian since 2012, and both are part of a NASA team researching exoplanets and habitability in other solar systems. He recommended her for the Kearney lecture because of her notoriety and her speaking style. KIC 8462852 is possibly the most mysterious star known to humans, and Dr. Boyajians discovery and continued research into this star has captured the attention of the astronomical community and the public alike, Jensen said. She is a wonderful public speaker who makes this cutting-edge research accessible to everyone. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 21, UNK and NRG Media will have a free watch party at Cope Stadium. The eclipse will be in its total phase for two minutes at 12:57 p.m., and the partial eclipse begins at about 11:30 a.m. UNKs website for planned eclipse events can be found at unk.edu/eclipse, and the Kearney Visitors Bureau has a site with community activities throughout the weekend in Kearney and Ravenna, which can be found at visitkearney.org. Guangzhou has launched a pilot program to raise a special kind of fly that can dissolve kitchen waste at a rate of 100 tons per day. With a total investment of $35 million, the program aims to raise black soldier flies to dissolve kitchen waste at a garbage disposal site in the Baiyun district of Guangzhou. Four tons of waste are deposited at the site every day. The insect larva can consume up to 200 tons of kitchen waste per day, Guangzhou Daily reported. The project has been in trial operation since last September. It will be officially launched in the second half of 2017. According to the project manager, black soldier flies are native to Guangdong province. They feed on fallen leaves as well as organic matter contained in soil. They are not harmful to other plants or animals. In addition, once they finish digesting kitchen waste, the insects' discharge can be used as fertilizer. Over 15 kilograms of black soldier flies can be raised on a single square meter of earth; these flies can then consume about 10 kilograms of kitchen waste in a day. If garbage is buried in a landfill, it can lead to soil and water pollution. It also occupies a large amount of land. Meanwhile, burning the garbage could release toxic gas, the manager told Guangzhou Daily. Huang Yanhua, a researcher with the Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that black soldier flies can live for up to 35 days, and consume the most kitchen waste during their larva stage. Adult black soldier flies live for about 10 days. KEARNEY A California-based news magazine was in Kearney Tuesday filming a segment on the 2008 Kelcey Fike murder. Crime Watch Daily, a nationally syndicated show in its second season, focuses on unsolved homicides, missing persons and cold cases. Segment producer Ann Toler was trolling the Internet looking for cases when she came across Fikes case. Fike, 21, died in the early morning of June 17, 2008, when its believed someone entered the home she shared with her then-boyfriend at R-Villa South Trailer Court in west Kearney and murdered her. The house was then set on fire. We present (these shows) in the hope that somebody watching might remember seeing something or be persuaded to come forward with previously withheld information that could help solve the cases, Toler said. The one-hour show will look into Fikes case through an interview with her parents, Randy and Mary Jo Fike, and will cover the last time Fike was seen and heard from to the moment when members of the Kearney Volunteer Fire Department found her after extinguishing the fire in her west Kearney home. Its the first time the Fike case will be getting national publicity. The Fike segment will be told by reporter Ana Garcia, with the help of an independent film crew from Omaha. An air date for the Fike segment hasnt been set. On June 16, 2008, Fike got off work at about 5:30 p.m., and is believed to have gone home. Police know she made and received several phone calls that evening and sent and received text messages with family and friends. About 9 p.m., a neighbor reported seeing her outside with her dog, and at 1 a.m., Kelcey sent her last text message to her then-live-in boyfriend, who was at annual training with the U.S. Army National Guard. At 4:50 a.m., firefighters were called to Fikes home because of a structure fire. It wasnt until the fire was extinguished that they found her body lying in the hallway between two bedrooms of her single-wide mobile home. Police dont believe Fikes death was random, because R-Villa South where she lived is too hidden. Because of the level of blunt force trauma she endured, police also dont believe Fikes killer is a female or a weak person. Police have said they turned up no murder weapon, suspects or witnesses that lead them to viable conclusions or suspects, but firmly believe there are people in Kearney, or with ties to the area, who know how Fike died and at whose hands. Crime Watch Daily was the No. 1 rated new show in daytime syndication last year, and won a daytime Emmy for editing in March. It began its second season in September with new host, Chris Hansen, and was recently renewed for a third season to begin in fall 2017. @HubChic KEARNEY The building that housed the Kmart store that closed in December soon will have four new tenants, among them PetSmart. Retail developer Seritage SRC Finance LLC of New York City received the approval it needed from the Kearney City Council on Tuesday to carve out four retail shops from the 92,000-square-foot structure that formerly housed Kmart at 48th Street and Second Avenue in north Kearney. In his presentation to the Kearney City Council, Mitch Humphrey of Buffalo Surveying said Kearney is fortunate that investors stepped in so rapidly to reopen the empty building. Weve all been in cities where buildings like these have sat vacant for years, Humphrey said. According to floor plans filed with the city, the PetSmart area will be slightly larger than the next two largest retail spaces. The fourth store will occupy the north end of the building and have the smallest space. All four of the businesses will share a common area on the west side of the building. In addition to repurposing the main structure, Seritage aims to realign the Third Avenue frontage road on the east side of the parking lot. The new street will align with the Third Avenue frontage road that snakes around the Sonic restaurant on the north side of 48th Street at Second Avenue. Realigning the frontage road will create space to construct two additional outbuildings for businesses. One of those outbuildings will be a 5,100-square-foot structure, while the second outbuilding will encompass 3,825 square feet. Paul Brungardt of Brungardt Engineering said its possible either building could be used as a retail outlet or restaurant, but no decisions have been made. A report previously provided by Seritage indicated construction will begin this year, and the project should be complete in 2018. Total estimated development cost for the 92,500-square-foot Kmart building will be $7.4 million, according to the report. The inmate accused of shooting two Pottawattamie County sheriff's deputies unlocked his handcuffs from his leg shackles while in the back of an inmate-transport van before attacking one of the deputies at the rear of the van and getting in the van's driver's seat, according to an officer who investigated the attack. Following the May 1 attack by Wesley Correa-Carmenaty, which left Deputy Mark Burbridge with "numerous lacerations to the head, neck and arms," Burbridge ran to the passenger side of the van and got in, according to a report filed by Dan Dawson, an investigator with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. At the same time, Deputy Pat Morgan ran to the driver's side of the van and tried to assist in apprehending Correa-Carmenaty. According to Dawson: A struggle then ensued, during which Correa-Carmenaty took one of the deputy's firearms and shot Burbridge in the head. Burbridge then fell to the ground. Correa-Carmenaty turned and shot Morgan in the abdomen and Morgan fell to the ground. At that point, the inmate had taken both of the deputies' firearms. While Morgan was on the ground, Correa-Carmenaty got out of the van and took the van's keys from Morgan and an extra ammunition magazine from Morgan's duty belt. He then got back in the van, started it, backed out of the stall and rammed the closed sally port door, breaking through it and leaving the area. Burbridge, 43, was taken to Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, where he was declared dead a little more than an hour after the 10:50 a.m. attack. Morgan, 59, was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. He was released Friday and attended Burbridge's funeral service on Monday. A source close to the investigation has told The World-Herald that Correa-Carmenaty used a shank to attack Burbridge before shooting him. Correa-Carmenaty, 24, has been charged in the attack with first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of robbery, escape from custody, kidnapping, intimidation with a dangerous weapon and control of a firearm by a felon. He appeared in Pottawattamie County court Wednesday morning with armed sheriffs deputies standing at his sides. Correa-Carmenaty was wearing a bulletproof vest over an orange jumpsuit, his hands shackled. An armed officer stood inside the courtroom door, looking out. Correa-Carmenaty was taken to the Woodbury County Jail in Sioux City, Iowa. Before last week's attack, Correa-Carmenaty had been sentenced at the Pottawattamie County Courthouse to 45 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter in the 2016 killing of Anthony J. Walker. After the hearing, Burbridge and Morgan drove him back to the jail with a female inmate, who was in a separate compartment of the van. Dawson's report said Correa-Carmenaty told the female that he was going to be getting out and "they should hang out when he gets out." After the van was parked in the sally port of the jail, Morgan removed the female inmate and began to walk with her toward the jail intake door, Dawson wrote. Burbridge stayed at the rear door of the van, Dawson wrote, and waited for Correa-Carmenaty to get out. Correa-Carmenaty attacked Burbridge immediately after stepping out of the van, Dawson wrote. After he ditched the van in a nearby neighborhood, Correa-Carmenaty tried to steal a few drivers' vehicles before carjacking a woman and making her drive him to Omaha, officials have said. A witness said Correa-Carmenaty's legs were still shackled but his hands were free. Correa-Carmenaty then led Omaha police on a high-speed chase before crashing the woman's car into a wall at Cuming Street near the Interstate 480 entrance ramp. Police then took him into custody. This report includes material from the World-Herald News Service. LINCOLN Nebraska lawmakers passed the major state budget bills Tuesday, but only after coming close to forcing a government shutdown. The bills now head to Gov. Pete Ricketts, who has until Monday to decide whether to sign them, veto them entirely, veto specific spending items or let the bills become law without his signature. State Sen. John Stinner of Gering, the Appropriations Committee chairman, expressed relief at getting the budget package across the finish line. The rest of the budget bills passed on Monday. It was a fistfight, wasnt it? he said. The budget package 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, while closing a budget gap estimated at about $1 billion. A group of opponents argued that the package did not make deep enough cuts in state spending. Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard and others predicted state tax revenues would continue to lag, forcing more difficult decisions down the line, even a possible special session. The number of opposition votes on one key budget bill raised the possibility of the state being forced to shut down this summer. The bill fell one short of the 33 votes needed to pass and take effect immediately. Without those votes, the bill could have passed but not taken effect until Sept. 2. Speaker of the Legislature Jim Scheer of Norfolk chastised the opponents for voting against the bill but failing to offer any serious budget-cutting proposals of their own. It seems to me were playing a game of chicken here, he said. None of us were sent here to play chicken. Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango said he didnt want to shut down the state but wanted more discussion about state spending. We need to have some flexibility and this budget doesnt give us flexibility, he said. The bill ultimately passed 36-12, with one abstention, after Stinner made a motion to reconsider the earlier vote. The main budget bill passed with the same vote total. Together, the package makes cuts to some budgets, slows other spending growth and taps several cash funds. It provides for increases in the Property Tax Credit Fund, K-12 education, corrections, the justice system and child welfare. It reduces funding for the University of Nebraska and makes cuts in other state agency operations. LINCOLN A Denver man who fraudulently sold tractors, including sales to Holdrege and Bertrand residents, was sentenced for his conviction on one count of mail fraud. According to a press release from U.S. Attorney Jan Sharps Office, Benedict T. Palen Jr., 63, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to five years probation. Palen also was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service and to pay $2,500 restitution. In September 2012, Palen, acting through his company, Great Plains Farms, sold a John Deere tractor to a person in Holdrege for $45,000 representing it to be free and clear of liens. A $20,000 check was mailed to Palen as a down payment. On the same date, Palen sold the same tractor to a person in North Dakota. Further investigation revealed that not only was there a lien against the tractor by a bank in Kansas, but the same tractor had been sold in 2011 to a company in Florida by the defendant acting as vice president of Pull Pans Inc. When Palen had not delivered the tractor to the Holdrege buyer by April 2013, Palen claimed there was a discrepancy in the number of hours on the tractor and modified the agreement to provide for delivery of a different John Deere tractor. The buyer then mailed a $25,000 check to Palen for the remaining amount due. However, this alternate tractor had also been sold in 2011 by Palen and Pull Pans to the Florida company. In November 2013, Palen, again acting through Pull Pans, sold a different John Deere tractor to a person in Bertrand but did not deliver it after receiving a down payment. This tractor also had been previously sold by Palen and Pull Pans to the Florida company. The case was investigated by the Postal Inspection Service. To the public, Deputy Mark Burbridge was a peace officer who was willing to help anyone and died enforcing the law. For his three children, he held a more intimate job: dad. A lot of people tell me how much of a hero he was because of what he did for the community, said daughter Karley Burbridge. And I agree. He was a hero. My hero. But not because he risked his life for the safety of others, but because he protected me from the monsters under the bed to the ones that walk the streets. Karley and her brother, Kaleb Burbridge, and their stepsister, Kelsey Brant, offered their personal and stirring tributes with dozens of vibrant and detailed anecdotes at Burbridges funeral Monday at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs. Mourners chuckled at the funny stories and lighter moments: Kelsey being a sassy 4-year-old; Kaleb thanking his dad for taking him to Hooters for his 10th birthday; and Karleys memory of her dads voracious appetite for snacks. At the end of the day he was your hero when he was wearing that badge and uniform, but he was our hero every day whether he was in uniform or not, Kelsey said. Burbridge, 43, served as a law enforcement officer for 17 years 12 with the Pottawattamie County Sheriffs Office and, prior to that, in the Missouri Valley and Denison Police Departments. More than 1,000 law enforcement officers from agencies in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and points farther away came to pay their respects to the fallen deputy in a sign of unity and strength in numbers. About 1,500 civilians attended the funeral. Hundreds more lined the streets along the procession route from the service to the funeral home. Burbridge was killed May 1 in a shooting after he and a fellow deputy, Pat Morgan, transported Wesley Correa-Carmenaty back to the Pottawattamie County Jail from the Courthouse. Correa-Carmenaty had just been sentenced to 45 years for manslaughter and attempted murder in a March 2016 killing. Officials say he attacked the deputies at the jail and grabbed one of their guns, shooting both. He then took off in the jail van, eventually shooting a civilian, Jerry Brittain, in the neck during an attempted carjacking, and fleeing to Omaha, where he was apprehended, authorities said. Both Morgan and Brittain have been released from the hospital. Morgan attended the service, walking with a cane. Correa-Carmenaty, still in the Douglas County Jail, will be extradited to Iowa to face charges in Pottawattamie County. He will be held at the Woodbury County Jail in Sioux City. The focus Monday was on Burbridge, his grieving family and stone-faced fellow deputies. People in the crowd wore Support Blue T-shirts, blue ribbons, blue ties or blue dresses. On the stage sat a large golden Pottawattamie County Sheriffs Office badge made by Jefferson Dale Davis of Woodbine, Iowa. The metalworker made an Omaha Police Department replica badge after the slaying of Officer Kerrie Orozco in 2015. Pastor Mike Harvey of Carson Presbyterian Church in Carson, Iowa, delivered a 20-minute sermon that emphasized societys need for officers, but also sprinkled in stories about Burbridge. It is not a job for the faint of heart, Harvey said as he turned his attention to the law officers in the audience. It is a most important and necessary task you have taken upon yourselves. ... You put yourself at risk each and every day. You stand as the first guardians of society working to prevent us descending into chaos. Harvey also talked about Burbridges sense of humor; he often played practical jokes on his friends and co-workers. One time he offered ketchup to a fellow deputy. The deputy was puzzled, because his fries tasted spicy. He added more ketchup, but they became spicier. Burbridge had added hot sauce to the ketchup bottle as payback for the deputy, who had touched his hamburger. Burbridge showed respect to everyone including inmates and sex offenders. If transporting a prisoner, he would stop to buy a soft drink for the inmate. Or he would check on the homeless to make sure they were OK. He loved to restore classic cars, though not all projects would get finished, Kelsey recalled. Kaleb joked that he has many stories that end with dont tell your mom. I can always thank you for setting me down the right path in life and always teaching me to just roll with it, Kaleb said, reading from the letter he wrote to his dad and left in his casket. After the funeral, law enforcement officers left the arena between rows of American flags. After a rifle volley, a flyover by the Omaha police helicopter and the playing of taps, Burbridges body was taken in the procession to the Hoy-Kilnoski Funeral Home, 1221 N. 16th St. in the Bluffs. As she left, Jessica Burbridge, the deputys wife, clutched the folded American flag that had been draped over his casket. The procession a line of nearly 1,000 squad cars, fire engines and SUVs took roughly an hour to pass by Bayliss Park in Council Bluffs. On a stretch of Sixth Street near the park, a crowd of at least 100 people waved signs and American flags as they watched in silence. It was reminiscent of the silence during the eerie final radio call at the end of the funeral service. Thousands had listened as a womans voice called out on the scanner: 78-10 Pott County 78-10 Pott County 78-10 Pott County, Deputy Burbridge. There is no answer from 78-10. Deputy Mark Burbridge answered his final call on May 1, 2017. World-Herald staff writers Kevin Cole and Hailey Konnath contributed to this report. Maybe there really is a silver lining. Despite serious troubles this spring, Abbot Philip, the head of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert near Abiquiu, N.M., would insist that there is. The story begins on one Saturday in March when Abbot Philip, 73, had gripping abdominal pains. Another monk put him in the car and threaded the vehicle over the fishing-line-thin 13-mile dirt road from the monastery out to U.S. 84. From there, he hurried three hours south to a hospital in Albuquerque. There, surgeons removed the abbots appendix. One week later, the abbot came home, but he was sad. One month earlier, his beloved beagle Joshua had scampered out into the towering mesas around the monastery and vanished. A few weeks later, Gnuf-Gnuf, a monastery poodle, was kicked by some critter and went blind in her right eye. A few weeks later, on April 23 the Sunday after Easter Thumper, the abbots beagle mix, disappeared too. I really get attached to these animals. I mourn for them, the abbot said. As the abbot grieved, he didnt know that Thumper was romping out in the wild seven miles north in the skinny Rio Chama river canyon that stretches its long fingers north toward Colorado. Thumper had headed up that lonely canyon with great gusto, but a few days later, like all runaways, he was hungry and lonely and homesick. The little beagle knew where home was, so he stood on the bank of the Rio Chama and watched occasional rafts float by. He knew that river well because it ran right past the monastery. So he barked and barked at passing rafts like a hitchhiker poking out his thumb in hopes of a ride. Finally, a raft pulled over. Giddy, Thumper jumped in. The humans inside it were shocked, then amused, so they kept going down the river with their new four-legged passenger. Thumper was excited. He was going home. High above, the sky was blue as a bluebird. Around the raft were proud mesas as red as a frenzied sunset, carpeted in juniper and pinon pines. Cattle grazed on the river bank. Farther down the river, they bounced through choppy rapids that curled under a little bridge. This time of year, snowmelt rushes down the Chama from the Rockies. They saw a few hikers, too, because that bridge is part of the 3,000-mile Continental Divide Trail that leads hikers from the Mexican border through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana to Canada. Meanwhile, the rafters didnt know whether Thumper was lost or abandoned, but when they got out of the raft at the Abiquiu Dam, they put him in their car and drove him 65 miles south to their home in Santa Fe. Since he didnt have a collar, they had a scan done. Sure enough, he had a chip with his identification and his owners phone number. They called. The phone rang at the home of the man who had owned Thumper before giving him to the monastery. That man called the abbot, and on April 28, five days after he vanished, Thumper came home. It was a joyful celebration. The abbot thinks about that a lot these days, and about life, too. While hospitalized for his appendectomy, he had X-rays which revealed a tumor in his chest between his heart and his lungs. It has not spread, doctors said, but this week, he will return to the hospital to have it removed. So much spirituality is simply accepting what is and learning to be still and silent, trusting in the Lord, he said. That means trusting when his first beagle disappeared and the monastery poodle went blind in one eye and his second dog vanished and he learned that he had cancer. God is always present, bringing good out of what seems to be evil or bad, he said this week. Sometimes, God even works through rafters who brought a beloved dog home. Criminal charges have been filed in the death of an inmate at the Tecumseh prison. That marks the first such action in five slayings at the southeast Nebraska facility in two years. While it represents a benchmark for the troubled Nebraska Department of Corrections system, it also represents a tragedy of overcrowding that forced two inmates into the same cell who should never have been paired. One was a lifer charged with murder, the other a check forger who was days short of a parole hearing and within months of being released. The murderer was charged with yet another murder for allegedly strangling the check forger. Explanations from the department were incomplete. The results are pending investigation. Sure. Just like the investigation into the deaths of two inmates on March 2 and two more inmates on Mothers Day 2015. How do you suppose the families of the five dead inmates are coping? No, I dont envy the Department for having to get information from people who are programmed not to snitch. But I do blame the Department for fostering an atmosphere of deplorable living conditions that lead inmates to riot the Department prefers to call them disturbances to make themselves heard. I do blame the governor and the attorney general and the Department for failing to address overcrowding issues that led to the housing of a convicted murderer with a check forger. The same overcrowding issue that led to an April incident at the Diagnostic and Evaluation facility in Lincoln where there are nearly three times as many inmates as the facility was built to handle. A fire erupted in a housing unit after an inmate assaulted a staff member, a department spokeswoman said. In a letter received by the Lincoln Journal-Star, a number of inmates wrote that words were exchanged with a staff member who joined two other officers in the glassed-in bubble (turnkey) where the three pointed at the inmates and joked and laughed. One allegedly flipped the bird at inmates and the inmate-set fire ensued. The Department said that Nebraska State Patrol troopers and Department of Correctional Services emergency teams quelled the disturbance at the prison about two hours after it began. The inmates wrote that they were locked in their cells with smoke pouring in and water from the sprinkler system accumulating under foot. The emergency doors, which would have allowed them to go to the yard, away from the danger, were kept locked. Following the incident, the Department reported that the staff had been accounted for and were reported to be safe. The staff member who was assaulted did not appear to be injured. Thats good news for their families, but what about the inmates families? Do you suppose they were concerned? Their loved ones (the state calls them inmates or felons or incarcerated people) are at the mercy of the state. In a recent news release announcing his veto of LB75, a voting rights bill, Gov. Pete Ricketts said Nebraskans are kind-hearted and do not wish to permanently punish convicted felons. The distinction, however, between the restoration of rights versus privileges must be noted. While the Legislature may restore certain privileges, such as driving privileges, to convicted felons, the Legislature may not circumvent the Nebraska Constitution to automatically restore a voting right in state law. The measure would immediately restore the voting rights of felons on their release. Proponents say it is an important element to help them re-establish their role in society. Remember, they are humans too. They are sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers. Consider them among the least of these referred to by Jesus in Matthew 25: 40. The King will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. Ricketts rightfully said that the issue requires an amendment to the Nebraska Constitution. Heres hoping that the proponents will come back with a proposed constitutional amendment next year to allow voters to decide. It shouldnt be a big deal. The right to vote is referred to five times more than any other in the U.S. Constitution. But, given Nebraskas experience with the death penalty: repeal passed by lawmakers; vetoed by the governor; reinstated by voters in a campaign largely funded by the governor; its not clear if restoration of voting rights would prevail. Besides, Ricketts said while the rehabilitation of criminals is an important goal of the criminal justice system, the immediate restoration of voting rights is not the answer. Treating incarcerated people like humans should be a goal of the criminal justice system. Lets reduce overcrowding by actively supporting alternate courts and sentencing. Lets ensure the safety of those were institutionalizing with the same fervor as we do those who work there. J.L. Schmidt, a registered Independent, is the Nebraska Press Associations statehouse correspondent. Every spring, it seems, clouds of smoke descend on Lincoln from fields set aflame in Kansas. Each day, the eye-stinging haze rolls in, Nebraskans complain about the smoke, cancel outdoor activities and stay inside, most often when they would be outdoors enjoying perfect spring weather. Each year, Nebraska state officials refuse to seek federal intervention to control the potentially hazardous smoke, opting to continue informal discussions with Kansas a strategy that, as the last month has demonstrated, has proven to be ineffective and inadequate in controlling the air pollution. The fires are intentionally set in the Flint Hills region of Kansas, burning off fields to control invasive species like red cedar, manage prairie ecosystems and eliminate dead grass and brush that could fuel wildfires. Theyre set in the spring based on 40-year-old research that indicated the fires clear the way for more nutritious grass that will optimize weight gain in cattle. That leads to widespread burnings and, last month, caused three air-quality warnings in Lincoln. Smoke levels in Lincoln were in the unhealthy range for 24 hours during at least four days. One day in spring 2014, Lincoln had the worst air quality in the country from the smoke pollution. Kansas has warned Nebraska when the smoke is coming in the past three years thanks so much. Lincoln city officials have recently appealed to Kansas for relief from the smoke. The Ricketts administration is declining to take any formal action to force Kansas to change the burning plan it has used for the past five years. Rather, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality says it will continue discussions with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment on improving the plan and is putting together specific recommendations. The DEQ would not spell out those recommendations but reported that previous discussions included encouraging some burning in the fall. Those recommendations should be stiffer than mere encouragement. The Kansas plan should require fall burning in some areas and limit the number of acres that can be burned at any one time, which appears to be the only way to reliably reduce the potentially dangerous smoke in Lincoln. If those burning restrictions cannot be guaranteed by requirement and the smoke returns next spring, Nebraska should take action under the Clean Air Act and other mechanisms to keep the air clean while Kansas burns. Lincoln Journal Star A scene of two camera tripods being examined by snub-nosed monkeys was recently captured by photographers in the Qinling Mountains. The photographers did not dare to disturb the monkeys for fear that the tripods would be knocked over if the animals panicked and fled. The monkeys, known in China as Yunnan golden-haired monkeys, are among the world's most endangered primates. Norm Letnick, re-elected as MLA for Kelowna-Lake Country, speaks to supporters Tuesday night at the Coast Capri Hotel as Steve Thomson looks on. Thomson was re-elected as MLA for Kelowna-Mission. This still frame from video provided by KABC-TV shows former FBI director James Comey and his entourage boarding a private jet at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, May 9, 2017. Comey was scheduled to make an early-evening speech in Los Angeles, but was fired by President Donald Trump earlier in the day. (KABC-TV via AP) SEOUL, May 10 (Xinhua) -- President Moon Jae-in of South Korea on Wednesday appointed new prime minister, intelligence agency chief, presidential chief of staff and chief of the presidential security service. Lee Nak-yon, an incumbent governor of South Jeolla province, was named as the first prime minister of the Moon government. Lee, 65, is a former journalist who entered politics in 2000 and served as a four-term lawmaker. He worked as spokesman for late liberal presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. He was elected in 2014 as the provincial governor. The prime minister nominee will be subject to the parliamentary hearing, requiring a parliamentary ratification to take office. Im Jong-seok, 51, was named as presidential chief of staff. He is a two-term lawmaker who served as chief of staff for Moon's campaign team in the presidential race. Im is a famous student activist in 1980s who visited a students' festival held in 1989 in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). For the visit, he was jailed for three and a half years. Under the national security law, it is illegal to visit the DPRK without advance permission from the government. He entered politics in 2000 by joining the New Millennium Democratic Party, a predecessor of the current ruling Minjoo Party, and was elected as the youngest lawmaker in the year. Im also worked for Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon as vice mayor on political affairs. A traffic accident on Tuesday killed 12 people (file photo) The Chinese leadership has issued instructions for relevant departments and localities to help deal with the aftermath of the deadly Tuesday traffic accident in Weihai, Shandong province, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Twelve people, including 11 kindergarten pupils, were killed when a school bus crashed and then burst into flames as it traveled through a tunnel in the coastal city in northern China. Of the 11 children, who were aged between three and six, five were from the Republic of Korea and six were Chinese nationals. They were all pupils at an international kindergarten in Weihai, Xinhua quoted local authorities as saying. "The Chinese side is in communication with the ROK through diplomatic channels" and will help with any issues to be resolved, said a written statement issued on the ministry's website. Members of the ministry's staff have been assigned to provide comfort and assist the families of the dead, the statement said. Shandong province and Weihai city launched contingency response plans immediately after the crash, and leading local officials went to the site and guided operations by relevant departments, it said. Democratic Party candidate Moon Jae-in claimed victory in the South Korean presidential election Tuesday night. How South Korea's attitude toward the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system will evolve after he takes office concerns the Chinese public greatly. Although THAAD is already being deployed, the new president is likely to reconsider the plan. Moon said earlier that Washington's move to install elements of the THAAD system is "strongly regrettable." "It is not desirable for the South Korean government to deploy THAAD hastily without going through the democratic process," Moon said in an interview with the Washington Post, and meanwhile, he expressed his willingness to meet North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un over the nuclear crisis. The anti-missile defense system, instead of effectively protecting South Korea from potential attacks, would only make the North more anxious about the security risks it faces and provoke the country to take more radical actions. Pyongyang's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper accused South Korean conservatives of maximizing the "political and military confrontation" on the peninsula. "If the conservative clique is to come into power again, the tragedy will be extended," the newspaper said. Different from conservatives, Moon supported the "Sunshine Policy" and may work for closer ties with the North. This will help ease regional tensions. In addition, the estimated costs for the THAAD system range from $800 million to $1.6 billion, which could raise cost-sharing questions in the US, according to the US Congressional Research Service. US President Donald Trump called for South Korea to bear the costs for the system and its operation, and this has struck a heavy blow to Seoul. The South Korean public has launched protests several times demanding the government to withdraw the THAAD installation. The new government should act in compliance with its public's appeal for peace and stability. The THAAD system reaches deep into the hinterland of Asia, posing severe threats to China's security and strategic interests. Beijing remains resolute in its opposition to the system after the new government takes office. The Park administration insisted on the THAAD deployment in complete disregard of China's interests. The decision irked the Chinese public, who voluntarily moved to boycott South Korean products. The THAAD deployment is an issue that the new government has to take into account in handling its ties with China. It is hoped Moon can take the initiative to repair the battered bilateral relationship between Beijing and Seoul. If the opportunity is missed, the future ties will face more challenges. 464 Shares Share As the world digested the events that unfolded aboard United Airlines Flight 3411 at Chicago OHare, and watched the horrific video of Dr. David Dao being forcibly dragged off the plane that was supposed to be taking him home, social media was red with rage at United Airlines. People vowed never to fly with them, customers ripped up their loyalty cards, and Uniteds stock fell over a billion dollars in a single day. I was just as outraged as anyone else with what I saw. The site of a 70-year-old grandfather having his head smashed against an arm rest, and then dragged semi-unconscious across the floor with blood dripping down his face, like some wild animal, should send shudders down the spine of any half-civilized person. United Airlines clearly has a terrible policy of being able to bump paying passengers who are already sitting in their seats. They should be treating their customers better. But at the end of the day, they are a large corporation that unsurprisingly cares only for their bottom line. They nickel and dime their customers and employees at every opportunity, which has sadly become the norm in the airline industry. The real incident, however, which led to this whole debacle, was actually the work of the Chicago Aviation Police. Those officers walked onto the plane and resorted to violence in order to remove a passenger who was understandably furious that he was being asked to leave the airplane in order to seat other people. The officers felt that it was within their remit to forcibly remove the passenger in this way, despite the fact that he was someone who had cleared TSA and was just a normal paying customer seated in their seat a few minutes earlier. For anyone who says that Dr. Dao should have just complied with police orders, thats a reasonable point, but one must also ask what policing manual the officers technique of removing him came from? Whether or not they were official Chicago Police is irrelevant. They wear police uniforms, carry badges, and are paid by the State. To all intents and purposes, they are a form of police to the general public. They should have known better, and worked to defuse the situation and calm things down (some may argue that they should have helped Dr. Dao argue his case with the airline, or even at the other extreme, that its not their duty to be dealing with customer service issues in the first place). Even in health care, with minimal training, doctors and nurses encounter situations of belligerence and aggressiveness every day in hospitals. But we attempt to calm things down, not escalate them because thats what professionals do. The fact is that had the Chicago Aviation Police handled things in a more civil manner, this story would have barely made the news (for their part, their department have said that these officers did not follow protocol, and thus rightly suspended them). Over the next few days, several stories surfaced about what a bad guy Dr. David Dao might be. Having read some of these if what Ive seen is true, do I think that Dr. Dao is probably a bit of a piece of work himself whose past behavior is a disgrace to the medical profession? Yes, I do. Do I personally think Dr. Dao should have just complied, walked off the plane, and then kicked up a fuss later on (like most people would)? Yes, I do. But do I think any of this justifies his nose and teeth being broken and then dragged away on the floor, in full public view in broad daylight? No, I do not. Social media kind of gets a bad rep sometimes because so many people are hooked on it these days, but its actually wonderful we live in an age where individuals/organizations/governments have to live with the constant knowledge that inappropriate or nonsense behavior can be filmed anytime for the whole world to see, and then have to stand up to the court of public opinion. If I wanted to live in a country where authority and law enforcement have the ability to display open, excessive brutality towards people they perceive are not complying with orders, and be unanswerable to the media and the general public, then I would move to Russia or Zimbabwe. The whole idea of living in a country like America, or other Western democracies, is that the rule of law applies to everyone, and law enforcement are supposed to be the good guys. The ones who are professional, held to the highest standards, and remain civilized and decent even when faced with people who arent. In other words, they dont lower themselves to the level of the common criminal or street thug. Sadly, in this case, they didnt stick to those expected standards. Suneel Dhand is an internal medicine physician and author of three books, including Thomas Jefferson: Lessons from a Secret Buddha. He is the founder and director, HealthITImprove, and blogs at his self-titled site, DocThinx. Image credit: Shutterstock.com (Photo/Guancha.cn) The Chinese embassy in Canada on May 9 released an official statement accusing a Canadian newspaper of distorting facts and casting aspersions about Chinas education system. The controversial article, published by The Global and Mail on May 2, comments on a story about American inventor Thomas Edison that was previously included in a Chinese textbook. The story states that, as electric lights had not yet been invented, 7-year-old Edison utilized mirrors to reflect candlelight to help doctors perform an appendectomy on his mother. The article has been criticized by Chinese scholars as not in accordance with history nor common sense. In addition, it has already been removed from the new version of the textbook, which will be used from the coming semester. Nevertheless, the newspaper implied that China is using the textbook to promote a particular ideological and moral leaning among its youth. According to the report, the story about Edison was taken from the 1940 American film "Young Thomas Edison," and it speaks to the pernicious effect of propaganda in Chinese schools dating back to the Communist revolution. In response to this accusation, the Chinese embassy said it wrote to the newspaper to make its position clear, emphasizing that the purpose of teaching the story was to cultivate childrens interest in science and shape their morals. The report, the embassy claimed, distorted these good intentions. Even if the story was fabricated, it was not fabricated by the Chinese but by Westerners themselves. If a journalist views and reports on China only from a negative perspective, how can Canadian readers have an objective view on China? the embassy asked. This is not the first time the Chinese embassy in Canada has accused a local newspaper of distorting facts about China. On May 2, the embassy issued an announcement criticizing La Presse, a French-language daily newspaper, after the latter claimed that intelligence agents had been tracking several Chinese journalists in Canada due to suspected espionage. (Photo/Guancha.cn) Kells and Inistioge have been identified as key 'sub-county hubs' for Kilkenny's new tourism strategy, which aims to capitalise on the citys success and foster it throughout the county. Kilkenny County Council recently adopted a five-year tourism strategy, part of which entails the development of a series of these rural hubs. At a recent meeting of the Kilkenny City Municipal District, Brian Tyrrell, who is spearheading the strategy, asked for members input and opinions as to where they should be. In a strategy document shared with councillors, Mr Tyrrell had suggested a couple of locations he felt may be suitable. He said he wanted to make sure no one feels isolated or excluded. One of the things that came back to us in the workshops was that people felt it was the first time they'd been asked about the tourism product in their area, he told the meeting. Mayor Patrick O Neill noted that, historically, Bennettsbridge had been a busy tourist spot particularly during the Celtic Tiger, and it was now coming back. He said there were a number of attractions in the area, including Nicholas Mosse, and the riverwalk. Cllr Matt Doran proposed the village of Kells. It probably has the most untapped potential in terms of its tourism, he said. Cllr Michael Doyle seconded this and proposed Inistioge as the other hub. Its something weve spoken about for a number of years a golden triangle, he said. Tourism is huge. It's rapidly on the increase, and with the engagement of communities, its a great starting point. Cllr Malcolm Noonan said that, for the first time, there was a tangible plan to link all the rural areas to tourism in Kilkenny City. He said there was massive untapped potential. Cllr Patrick McKee asked if there had been positive feedback from tour operators regarding the new strategy, and also how much data was available on tourism. Mr Tyrrell said things were not yet at that stage of engagement with the operators, and that data was there in patches. He said outdoor pursuits by bodies like Coillte and Waterways Ireland had the potential to be gamechangers for rural areas. The next stage involves identifying people to represent these new constituencies. The plan then is to hold workshops to develop a list of assets in areas, and find out what people see as the challenges. In south Kilkenny, councillors of the Piltown Municipal District have also been discussing the matter. A workshop with preliminary stakeholders and tourism interests has been scheduled for May 17 in the Rising Sun in Mullinavat. The Priory Church of St. John the Evangelist (St. Johns Church), John Street, Kilkenny will celebrate its 200th anniversary on Friday at 7.30pm. Extensive renovations and redecorating have been completed recently for the worship service and celebration to commemorate this anniversary. The Right Rev Michael Burrows, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cashel Ferns and Ossory, will preside. All members of the Kilkenny community are welcome to join the congregation on this festive occasion. St. Johns is a thriving Church of Ireland parish church in the heart of the city in which the parishioners gather to worship on Sundays and Holy Days. St. Johns Church has played a significant role in the history of Kilkenny. In 1211, Earl Marshall, the Norman lord who built Kilkenny Castle, gave an endowment to the Canons Regular of St. Augustine and land beyond the bridge of Kilkenny to the East and adjoining the same bridge (referring to what is known today as Johns Bridge). On December 27, 1220, the feast of St John, Mass was celebrated for the first time on the high altar of the new abbey. The church was adapted in 1817 from the Lady Chapel of the more extensive Priory whose medieval ruins dating to 1220 are still there. Renovations included substantial improvements to the famous coloured-glass windows on the south side through which sunshine streams and enlivens the interior in a unique and vibrant way. This is reflective of the churchs longstanding title as The Lantern Church of Ireland because of the magnificence of its window formation and lighting interior. The upcoming Royal visit of the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall tomorrow to the Marble City and Thomastown is a great opportunity for Kilkenny to showcase to the whole world what we have to offer both the holidaying visitor and international businesses interested in potentially locating here. Kilkenny Chamber President, Deirdre Shine will be one of the delegation of dignitaries welcoming the couple at Kilkenny Castle. Kilkenny is a destination of choice for visitors from all corners of the world and it is a great pleasure to welcome their Royal Highnesses today she said. Kilkenny Chamber and Cartoon Saloon share offices in the same building at The Maltings and John Hurley CEO of Kilkenny Chamber said It is particularly appropriate that their Royal Highnesses are visiting Cartoon Saloon during their time in Kilkenny as that business is a fantastic success story and has become a global centre of excellence in the field of animation. There is much concern and uncertainty around the whole Brexit issue and it is refreshing to engage with this opportunity to re-emphasise the important and strong ties that exists between our two countries both at a social community level and in the business context. Through his position as Chair of the South East Region Chamber Co, John Hurley continues to pursue business and investment opportunities for Kilkenny and the South East through ongoing national and international engagements. Last week Kilkenny Chamber met with the Ambassador of France in Kilkenny Castle and more meetings with other embassies are scheduled to take place during the year. The South East Region has everything going for it and it provides that crucial work/life balance that international companies are seeking for their employees he said. BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, has signed a decree that will release a regulation on military legislation. The regulation took effect Monday. No matter how busy she is, and even when she's on vacation, Erin McLeod stops every night at 10 p.m. to make a phone call. On the other end is her 104-year-old friend, Henrietta Daytz, in her assisted-living facility in Sarasota, Fla. McLeod asks about Henriettas day and wishes her a good night. Shes like family now, says McLeod, president of the Senior Friendship Centers in Florida, which serve older adults. Its something we both look forward to. McLeod started calling when Daytz turned 99 and was still living independently. She says she figured that Daytz, a longtime volunteer at the senior center, could use someone checking in on her. McLeods family and friends sometimes join in on speakerphone. A simple phone call is one strategy to help counter social isolation among the elderly, a condition increasingly recognized as a health threat on par with smoking, and even more harmful than obesity. About 17% of adults age 65 and older are identified as isolated, says AARP Foundation President Lisa Marsh Ryerson. Studies show that isolated older adults die at higher rates from high blood pressure, heart disease and other chronic diseases than more engaged seniors. British researchers found that social isolation may increase an older persons risk of early death. 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 Older adults can become socially isolated when they live alone, have little contact with friends and family, and dont get involved with community or civic groups. The death of a spouse, physical difficulties, caregiving and giving up driving contribute to it. Feeling lonely as you age isnt a new affliction, but the link between isolation and poor health is becoming better understood. As more Americans age, researchers expect the problem to worsen. Social isolation kills, says James Lubben, director of Boston Colleges Institute on Aging. We need to address it with all the seriousness we put into other health problems, like smoking. The message is finally getting out to pay more attention to this. McLeod calls it death by sitting. For example, consider a long-retired senior in his or her eighties who has lost a spouse or outlived friends and stays in a chair all day, watching TV news and getting agitated. Circulation suffers, brain function slows, and a lack of movement triggers or worsens a health condition, such as diabetes. Isolation affects people of all income levels; someone can be as alone in a lush gated community as in a modest income neighborhood. Friends and family members sometimes feel powerless. But there are ways you can engage elderly relatives and neighbors, and connect them with opportunities to socialize or take care of their health. Reach out with a simple offer, such as taking out their trash. Check in on people in your neighborhood, and in your family, Ryerson says. Begin conversations. If youre headed out to run errands, offer to do their shopping. Or more important, make room in your car for them. You can avoid becoming isolated as you age by rethinking your retirement now, Lubben says. Include your social network in your retirement planning, so youll be near friends or family, or in a walkable community. Lubben, 72, and his wife loved living in Los Angeles years ago, but the couple plans to retire to New York, near their children. Building the social capital youll need in retirement is just as important as saving for your nest egg, he says. One of the silliest mistakes older people make is to retire to a warmer climate where they dont know anyone. They realize as they get older, they need some help, and no ones around. Search for Social Outlets To engage an older parent or neighbor, start by encouraging a second look at their local senior center. Some are remaking their outdated images, with gourmet cooking classes, wine tastings and meditation. A friend took Elizabeth Kraft, 91, to the Senior Friendship Center in Venice, Fla., after her husband died in 2013. She expected old people playing bingo. She discovered greeters at the door, a bustling cafe and a live band playing music that she loves. It felt very welcoming, she says. If you just sit on your porch all day and dont do anything, youll lose your strength. There are more than 11,000 senior centers in the U.S., with varying services and fees (find one at NCOA.org (opens in new tab)). It might be difficult to persuade a parent to go. Suggest they use their skills to volunteer, McLeod says. Well often see an adult kid dragging their mom or dad down here, and theyre complaining about being treated like a teenager, she says. Before you know it, theyre jumping right in. Seek out other socializing alternatives. In Chicago, three Mathers More Than a Cafe locations cater to adults over 50 with coffee, lectures, writers groups and karaoke. Mather LifeWays, a nonprofit, launched the first cafe in 2000, aiming to keep older adults active in their communities. Chuck Bermingham, 67, a retired computer specialist, was grieving and exhausted after his wife of 42 years died in 2015. A friend invited him to lunch at a Mathers Cafe. Now hes the chorus director and a regular at Saturday ukulele. Its been a great way for me to keep my mind off things, he says. I have a lot of new friends now. More than 40 organizations in the U.S. have cafes or programs based on the Mathers model. Those who are homebound can listen in by phone to live discussions on topics such as saving money and current events (search Telephone Topics at MathersLifeways.com (opens in new tab)). If your parent needs to stop driving, be sure to plan ahead. In rural and suburban areas, older adults often end up stuck for rides, adding to isolation. Organize an informal volunteer network of friends and family members to provide transportation. Check with the local senior agency to see if there are any special services available, or go to Eldercare.gov (opens in new tab). Doctors and social workers are starting to screen patients for problems caused by isolation. Accompany a parent or relative to an appointment, and be sure to bring it up, if the doctor doesnt ask, Lubben says. If youre older and alone, make an effort to build an old-fashioned social network in your neighborhood, advises AARP. Ask your neighbors about their grandchildren. Invite someone to go walking. Volunteer to read to a neighbors kids. (AARP offers more tips at Connect2Affect.org (opens in new tab).) You have to be proactive, says Jim Firman, president of the National Council on Aging. Get into the mindset of, If I dont make new friends, especially with younger people, Im just not going to have any. You might feel shy. But remember: Your health and happiness could hinge on that bold step. Have you ever tried to build something from scratch without directions? Recently, I ordered a dresser for my living room online without realizing I would have to put the thing together myself. Unfortunately, Im not particularly handy assembling anything more complicated than a turkey sandwich makes me pretty uncomfortable. To make matters worse, the company didnt include step-by-step instructions. It didnt take long to realize I wasnt up to the task. 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 A lot of people feel this way about retirement planning. They dont have any idea how to get started, so they throw up their hands and it never gets done. It seems like we see a new scary commercial about retirement every day. With so many experts out there warning us about having enough income to last, youd think Americans would be better prepared than ever. But we arent. The median working-age couple has saved only $5,000 for retirement, according to a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data (opens in new tab), and fewer than half of households are saving inside a qualified retirement account such as a 401(k), where contributions are tax-deductible. I think a lot of people are just overwhelmed. They hear these experts talk about a million-dollar portfolio as though thats barely scraping by, and they figure why even bother with their small savings? Or, theyre afraid theyll lose what little they do have if they invest it the wrong way. Folks often decide they can manage their retirement money just fine by themselves, but theyre busy and never get around to it. The good news is, its never too soon or too late to pull together your financial plan. Here are three steps to get you started: 1. Automate your investments. Few employers are offering traditional pensions these days. Instead, employees are encouraged to enroll in a 401(k) or some other qualified retirement plan, often with a company match (usually 3% to 6%). Are you making the most of your companys matching contribution? Its free money! If you work for a company that doesnt offer a 401(k), you can create your own retirement savings account using a traditional or Roth IRA. If your income doesnt exceed the threshold requirements eligibility phases out entirely (opens in new tab) at $133,000 for single filers and $196,000 for married filers I recommend a Roth. Youve already paid taxes on the money you contribute, so when you withdraw the funds in retirement (or after you reach the age of 59 and have had a Roth for at least five years), its tax-free. 2. Become debt free. Student loans, credit cards, car loans and mortgages can drag us deeper and deeper into debt. What if instead of making monthly payments, you were putting the same amount into your retirement savings? Think about how quickly you could build a stress-free nest egg. Begin by paying off high-interest credit cards, working your way through the bills until your only debt is your mortgage and then chip away at that. Also, create a rainy-day fund for surprise expenses. Financial experts recommend having enough for three months of expenses on hand if you are married and both spouses are working and six months if you are single or only one spouse works. Personally, I prefer six months or more, but getting started is the first step. Then you can put more money every month into an account that will carry you through a long and healthy retirement. You never know what your life or the economy will bring down the road, so do your best to have a secure financial foundation in place. Your future self will thank you. 3. Seek out professional guidance. Sure, youd expect me to suggest this; after all, Im a financial adviser. But I truly believe everyone should seek assistance from a qualified professional. The best way to cut through all the noise is to sit down with someone with the knowledge and experience to help you build your retirement future. Think about it: If your teeth hurt, would you watch YouTube to learn to fix the cavity? Of course not. So why try going solo on something as important as your finances? Do your research. Talk to at least two or three advisers before making a choice, and treat your first meeting like a job interview. Just remember that youre the boss; if someone makes you feel uncomfortable or theyre pushy, politely excuse yourself. Also, do a basic credentials check at brokercheck.finra.org (opens in new tab) and/or advisorinfo.sec.gov (opens in new tab). Financial planning shouldnt be an overwhelming task. Even if the decisions you make today are baby steps, youll be moving in the right direction. And with the help of a trusted adviser, you can get on track for the retirement of your dreams. Silver Wheaton Corp. (TSX, NYSE: SLW) posted a higher profit in the first quarter, as gold production rose and metals prices were higher than in the same period a year ago, the company announced late Tuesday. Net earnings were $61 million, or 14 cents per share, up 59% from $41 million, or 10 cents, in the first quarter of 2016. The precious-metals streaming company reported first-quarter production of 6.5 million silver ounces, down 14% from 7.5 million in the year-ago period. However, gold output rose 37% to 84,900 ounces from 61,900 ounces. First-quarter production was 12.5 million silver-equivalent ounces or 177,900 gold-equivalent ounces, with the silver ones comparable to a year ago but the gold-equivalent ounces up from 156,500. The company said it is on track to meet or exceed full-year gold production guidance, although first-quarter silver output was impacted by strike at the San Dimas mine in Mexico. Operations resumed on April 18. For the third quarter in a row, revenue was roughly balanced between silver and gold, further supporting the proposed name change to Wheaton Precious Metals, said Randy Smallwood, president and chief executive officer. Revenues of $198 million in the first quarter were up from $188 million in the same period a year ago. Average realized prices per ounce sold in the first quarter were $17.45 for silver and $1,208 for gold, representing year-on-year increases of 19% and 3%, respectively. As of March 31, output attributable to the company produced but not yet delivered amounted to 3.9 million silver ounces and 51,500 gold ounces, Silver Wheaton said. This represented an increase of 0.6 million silver ounces and a decrease of 8,100 gold ounces during the three-month period. Silver Wheaton maintained a cash dividend of 7 cents per share, to be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of close of business on May 25 and distributed around June 6. Silver Wheatons estimated attributable silver and gold production in 2017 is forecast to be 28 million silver ounces and 340,000 gold ounces. Estimated average annual silver and gold production over the next five years, starting with 2017, is anticipated to be approximately 29 million silver ounces and 340,000 gold ounces. These figures do not include any production from Barricks Pascua-Lama project or Hudbays Rosemont project, Silver Wheaton said. President Donald Trump defended his firing of FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday, fighting a storm of criticism that the ouster was aimed at blunting an agency probe into his presidential campaign's possible collusion with Russia to sway the 2016 election. The Republican president's abrupt move on Tuesday stunned Washington and was swiftly condemned by Democrats and by some in his own party. In a series of posts on Twitter on Wednesday morning, Trump sought to explain his move, and lambasted his critics. "Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me," he said. The Trump administration said on Tuesday Comey's firing was over his handling of an election-year FBI probe into then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. Though many Democrats have criticized Comey's management of that investigation, they said they were troubled by the timing of his dismissal, given that Trump could have acted soon after taking office on Jan. 20 and that he has repeatedly criticized the FBI and congressional probes into alleged Russian involvement in the election. Asked if Trump had fired Comey over his handling of the Russia investigation, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said no. "Frankly, if that's going to continue, it's going to continue whether Jim Comey is there or not," she told MSNBC in an interview. Some Democrats compared the move to the "Saturday Night Massacre" of 1973, in which President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of an independent special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal that eventually led Nixon to resign. Democrats amplified their calls on Wednesday for an independent investigation into Moscow's role in the 2016 election. 'CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS' "What we have now is really a looming constitutional crisis that is deadly serious," Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told CNN. In one tweet on Wednesday, Trump referred to previous Democratic criticism of Comey over the Clinton probe. "The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" he said. The president also personally attacked Blumenthal, referring to him as "Richie," calling his comments on the Comey firing "a joke" and alluding to a years-old controversy over the senator's military service during the Vietnam War era. Some Republicans have also said they were troubled by the timing of Comey's firing, including Senator Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That is one of several congressional panels investigating Russian interference during the election and possible collusion by Trump campaign staff. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a January report that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an effort to disrupt the 2016 election that included hacking into Democratic Party emails and leaking them, with the aim of helping Trump. Russia has repeatedly denied any such meddling and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia. LAVROV VISIT Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is visiting Washington this week for high-level meetings, including one with Trump at the White House later on Wednesday in what will be the highest-level contact between Trump and the Russian government since he became president. The two were scheduled to meet at 10:30 a.m. ET (1430 GMT), the White House said. Asked by reporters at the U.S. State Department before a meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson if Comey's firing would cast a shadow over the talks, Lavrov responded in a sarcastic tone: "Was he fired? You're kidding. You're kidding." The Kremlin said it hoped Comey's firing would not affect Moscow's ties with Washington, saying it believed his dismissal had nothing to do with Russia. Legal experts said Trumps dismissal of Comey does not mean the FBI's Russia investigation will be disrupted or end, since career FBI staffers can continue the probe even as the search for a new director begins. CNN reported on Tuesday night that federal prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas to former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, seeking business records, as part of the probe into Russian interference in the election. Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, took over as acting FBI director while the White House searches for a new permanent director. "James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI," Trump tweeted. (Reporting by Susan Heavey, David Alexander, Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Will Dunham and Susan Heavey; Editing by Frances Kerry) Europe, Japan and Canada hope a G7 meeting in Italy this week will give them a better picture of U.S. President Donald Trump's direction on key policies that he has yet to spell out. The official agenda for Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers in the city of Bari from Thursday to Saturday focuses on inequality, international tax rules, cyber security and blocking the funding of terrorism. However, many participants will be looking to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to gauge U.S. intentions on issues where Trump has threatened to upset the group's consensus: protectionism and climate change. "It will be another chance to learn what the U.S. government is thinking and planning," said a G7 official at one of several briefings by national delegations this week. At a meeting of the larger Group of 20 financial chiefs in Germany in March, ministers dropped their traditional pledge to keep global free trade open, acquiescing to an increasingly protectionist United States. Trump will decide whether to quit the global Paris agreement on climate change - a campaign promise - after meeting leaders at a G7 summit on May 26-27, the White House has said. "The important thing is that Mnuchin will be there, with a clearer picture of U.S. policies than was available in previous weeks and months," said another G7 official who also asked not to be named. Reflecting tensions over Trump's attitude to protectionism, there will be no formal discussion of trade in Bari, Italian Treasury officials said. The subject will be tackled at the summit, in Taormina, Sicily, at the end of May. "Everyone is concerned about the U.S. attitude towards protectionism," said the second G7 official, who called Trump's focus on bilateral trade surpluses or deficits a "poisonous" notion of what fair trade policy should entail. NOTHING NEW ON FOREX The closing statement from Bari will reiterate a warning against competitive devaluations, Italian officials said, as March's G20 did, allaying fears that the new U.S. administration might weaken the G20's united front on global currency policy. While not on the official agenda, sources said there will also be discussion of debt relief for Greece ahead of a May 22 meeting of euro zone finance ministers on the disbursement of new loans for Athens. Greece's creditors, including the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, will be in Bari. The IMF is pushing for rapid debt relief measures for Greece, but euro zone governments say this is still premature. On taxation, G7 ministers will sign the Bari Declaration for Fighting Tax Crimes and Other Illicit Financial Flows and promise to seek more effective ways to tackle money laundering, international tax evasion and financing of terrorism. Italian Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said last week Italy would "do everything we can" to push for more effective international rules on the taxation of global internet companies, but he admitted to "different positions within the G7" on the issue, which was likely to hinder progress. Italy, which is one of the world's most sluggish economies and has seen a sharp rise in poverty and income inequality over the last decade, was keen to make "inclusive growth" the main focus of the meeting. However, the "Bari Policy Agenda" to be signed there will not commit to specific measures but suggest approaches for countries to tackle inequality depending on their circumstances, officials said. (additional reporting by Jan Strupczewski, Gernot Heller and Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) Polyus Gold, Russia's largest gold producer, reported $203 million in adjusted first-quarter net profit on Wednesday, little changed from a year earlier due to higher debt servicing charges. Polyus, controlled by the family of Russian tycoon Suleiman Kerimov, is in talks to sell a stake to a consortium led by China's Fosun International Ltd and is also considering a secondary share offering. Including foreign exchange gains, one-off items and other financial instruments, the company's profit jumped 70 percent to $499 million while revenue climbed 19 percent to $609 million. In the first quarter last year, Polyus had adjusted net profit of $201 million. Polyus said its net debt fell to $3.13 billion at the end of March from $3.24 billion at the end of 2016 after it sold its stake in a gold asset, though higher debt service charges than in the first-quarter of 2016 weighed on net profit. It did not give details of its debt service charges. Earlier this year, Polyus raised $800 million with a six-year Eurobond. The company's main greenfield project is the large Natalka gold deposit in the east of Russia, which it plans to launch by the end of 2017. It also acquired the giant and largely untapped Sukhoi Log gold deposit in Russia earlier this year. The company said its capital expenditure was up by a third to $128 million in the first quarter, mainly driven by the ongoing work at the Natalka gold deposit. (Reporting by Katya Golubkova; editing by David Clarke) Stuff reports: Greenpeace has been accused of lying for financial gain as it fights seismic surveying off the New Zealand coast. Seismic surveying involves the shooting of compressed air to generate an underground map but it is a process protested against by Greenpeace, which fears the sounds are a danger to marine mammals. But Victoria University geophysics and tectonics professor Rupert Sutherland, who has studied the science and worked on seismic surveys, said Greenpeaces campaign was essentially lying for financial gain. He knew of no evidence that conclusively showed there was a single incident of a whale or dolphin being directly injured by seismic reflection vessels. For each survey, hundreds of thousands of dollars was spent on preventing and recording direct injury, something he said didnt happen. That money would be better spent looking into whether there was any long-term harm to marine mammals which had been under researched, he said. Climate change researchers used seismic surveying and drilling to collect sediment cores to look at climate records, he said. The current strategy of Greenpeace makes it expensive or impossible to conduct legitimate research in the ocean, including climate change research. Armed police officers from Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region conduct a routine patrol along the border between China and Kazakhstan on May 9. The officers ride on horseback and sometimes climb mountains during their patrol. They also inspect pastures and make small repairs. (Photo/China News Service) Gerry Morris, a former coal-mining journalist and author, writes: The dramatic release of 13 hours of underground footage by the police relating to the Pike River tragedy is more sad raking of the tragedys embers, instigated by a small minority of the 29 families. The video being the same one shown to them six years ago. It remains a sad fact that mining all over the world, in Australia, Europe, South Africa, the USA and China have underground mines as eternal tombs for victims of mine disasters. Strongman Number One mine near Greymouth is a tomb for two victims of the 1967 disaster that killed 19. No-one wants to leave the dead down a mine, but even more no-one wants to increase the number of people dead. Some of the Pike victims families commissioned an experts report to support their case for re-entry and have lobbied hard to get this report accepted. Prepared by United Kingdom coalmining experts, Dr David Creedy and Robert Stevenson, the report A method for safe reentry of Pike River Mine Drift, has been used to make the case for re-entry into the 2.3km stone access tunnel to the mine, known as the Drift. The five-page UK report contrasts with the extensive bevy of reports commissioned by Pikes owner Solid Energy, using New Zealand underground mining experts, and published in their hundreds of pages on their website. The UK report is not a detailed plan for safe entry. It is a high level proposal for what might be possible. It sits in contrast to the hundreds of pages of reports by mining experts on the dangers. Solid Energys work using extensive local knowledge, is perceived to be too conservative compared with the UK opinion. History repeats in a sense as on the day after the first explosion at Pike, on November 20, 2010, seven of the 13 New Zealand certificated underground mine managers were there ready to assist only to be sidelined by the government agencies. And that probably saved their lives as the mine exploded again. Both sides partially agree, based on footage obtained by robots and borehole cameras, that structurally, the drift could be entered as it is likely to be in good condition for the first 2km, given the installed level of structural supports and roof bolts. Even after four explosions, it is likely to be intact. Four explosions! The mine has been on fire at various stages and any form of re-ignition arising from re-entry activity into the drift, can not be dismissed. The UK experts say the workings have been gas-filled, therefore oxygen free for four years, which removes spontaneous combustion concerns, a view not shared by New Zealand experts. In any analysis of the risk of re-entry at Pike, history reminds us of the many rescue workers killed attempting recovery of coalmine disaster victims. In a Pike-sized mine at Crandall Canyon in Utah in 2007, six miners were killed in the mine and 10 days later, three rescue workers were killed attempting recovery. The six miners remain entombed. Yet Little and Peters want to pass a law forcing Solid Energy to send people down the mine, no matter how dangerous. The re-entry of the drift at Pike is recognised in mining circles globally, as not straightforward. The UK experts report commissioned by some of the Pike families, is full of unproven, hopeful assumptions. Its barely a report at five pages. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr Stuff reports: And only five of those families changed their minds and returned to New Zealands most populated and busiest city. A total of 303 families have been approved for the government -sponsored Relocation from Auckland Assistance grant. So 98% have settled elsewhere. Beneficiaries Paul and Patricia Robinson-Hill were homeless for two years living with friends and family in Mangere, and wanted a roof over their heads. The Robinson-Hills, with their two school age sons, Rune, 10, and Hunter, 14, had never been to New Plymouth. We didnt know anyone here, it was like going to another country, Patricia said. The family applied for the grant and were offered a three bedroom state house in Marfell, a suburb overlooking Port Taranaki. It was the first house we were offered, we could have said No but its not much fun being homeless so we didnt think twice, she said. The $5000 relocation assistance grant was used to pay for removal expenses, three nights temporary motel accommodation and daily expenses while the weekly rent of $116 is automatically taken out of the couples benefit. Stuff reports: They are Christchurchs moon shot children, travelling thousands of extra kilometres every week to avoid their local high school. Students travel a total of 171,000 kilometres a day getting to Christchurch schools, but would save 71,000km a day if they went to their nearest school, a new study has found. The 71,000km daily saving, which is four times the distance from Christchurch to London, comes to about 355,000km of extra travel a week close to the 384,000km distance to the moon from Earth. With around 20,000 students the finding is effectively that the average student travels an extra 2 km (each way) a day to get to their desired school. Wow wee. They then multiply that up to try and sound impressive. Heres something equally silly. Two million New Zealanders travel an (say) average 20 kms a day to get to their desired workplace, rather than the one closest to them. That is 200 million kms travelled a week or the distance from the Sun to Mars. Over a year that is equal to three trips to Pluto. All because people choose to work not at their closest business. Devonport said parents needed more information to make better decisions about where to send their child. Dont you love the assumption. Parents are making bad decisions because they are choosing not to send their kids to the nearest school. How dare they. The parents of school age kids I know do not make school decisions lightly. They regard it as one of the most crucial decisions for their childrens future. They spend a lot of time visiting schools, talking to other parents, reading ERO reports etc. But it seems they need to make better decisions according to this research because some parents decide not to attend the nearest school. The data used in this research was only available on request from NZQA. As a result, parents may be relying on potentially unverified and anecdotal information to form a perception of school quality when choosing a school for their child, he wrote in the report. How dare parents make decisions based on anecdotal evidence such as talking to other parents. If parents exercise choice when sending their child to school in the absence of easily understandable statistical information, they could potentially rely on stereotypes, prejudices, or misinformation to make their decision. These results provide some evidence to the conclusion reached in previous research that parents avoid their closest school if there are perceived quality issues with it. Devonport also calculated which school rolls would grow if pupils attended their nearest school, effectively highlighting which schools were being bypassed by parents. Linwood College, Mairehau High School and Hornby High School would all see their rolls swell by more than 200 per cent. The answer is not to force people to attend schools they dont want to. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr (Xinhua) 17:18, May 10, 2017 BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan should stop its "rude and dangerous way" of treating fishermen from the Chinese mainland, said An Fengshan, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, on Wednesday. An made the remarks at a press briefing, noting that Taiwan should instead ensure the safety and property of the fishermen from the Chinese mainland. He was referring to the seizing of a fishing boat from south China's Guangdong Province by a Taiwan patrol in waters near Penghu County in southeast Taiwan Saturday morning. Two fishermen were injured by rubber bullets fired from the patrol boat, and required hospital treatment, while the other five were detained. An reiterated his request that Taiwan should correctly handle the situation, release the fishermen as soon as possible and prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. The Chinese mainland has provided facilities to safeguard fishermen from both sides of the strait and given aid and supplies to fishermen from Taiwan, he added. (Xinhua) 19:15, May 10, 2017 BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank announced Wednesday that it had approved a loan of 600 million U.S. dollars to China to help improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare services in Anhui and Fujian provinces. The program will use the Program-for-Results (PforR) instrument, created in 2012, that links loan disbursements to tangible results on the ground, the World Bank said in a statement. "China has made impressive gains in improving overall health outcomes in past decades, but now faces new challenges: an aging population, an increasing burden of chronic diseases, and fast-rising health expenditures," said Ramesh Govindaraj, World Bank Lead Health Specialist and team leader for the program. Anhui and Fujian provinces, which face similar challenges as the country as a whole, have been pioneering innovative health reforms. The program will be implemented from 2017 to 2021, the World Bank said. The program aims to improve the quality and efficiency of hospital services by reforming hospital governance and management, controlling the growth of health expenditure, and creating an enabling policy and institutional environment for health reform by strengthening oversight and stewardship, it added. "We are pleased to support the Chinese government in the 'deep water' phase of its health reform. This PforR is building on our joint study with WHO and the Chinese government on health reform, and will put its recommendations into practice," said Bert Hofman, World Bank Country Director for China. Discrimination lawsuit filed by Christian geologist against Grand Canyon Park Officials Lawsuit was filed in the aftermath of Pres. Trump's executive order last week PETERSBURG, KY - In the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order last Thursday to protect religious liberties, a test case of those freedoms has entered the federal court system. A lawsuit was filed today in a US District Court in Phoenix, Arizona by the civil liberties group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of a scientist with Answers in Genesis (AiG). The suit alleges that the civil liberties of geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling were violated when he was twice denied a permit by Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) to continue his research due to his religious and scientific views. The lawsuit names the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Grand Canyon park superintendent, and other government officials as defendants. ADF lawyers have carefully laid out ample documentation of a clear case of viewpoint discrimination against Dr. Snelling (Ph.D., geology), who had requested permission from the GCNP Research Office staff to conduct additional Canyon research. After the GCNP refused to issue Dr. Snelling a research and sampling permit to collect about 40 small samples from inside the massive Canyon in Northern Arizona, the park's superintendent repeatedly ignored ADF's letters of demand, and to date has not responded to an inquiry from U.S. Congressman Trent Franks (Arizona) last March about the matter. The complaint argues that because of his "Christian faith and scientific viewpoints informed by his Christian faith," Dr. Snelling's application for a research permit was unconstitutionally rejected by the GCNP. The lawsuit highlights Dr. Snelling's impressive academic background, which includes writing many articles in peer-reviewed mainstream geology journals, earning a doctorate in geology from the University of Sydney (ranked in the top 100 universities throughout the world), and conducting "substantial field and laboratory experience relating to numerous aspects of theoretical and practical geological research." The lawsuit also points out that in 25 years of Canyon study, "Dr. Snelling has successfully completed 3 prior research projects without complaint from any NPS (National Park System) official within the Grand Canyon." During a three-year period that buried Dr. Snelling in needless red tape, the Park twice declined Dr. Snelling's straightforward permit. Tellingly, the Park offered no scientific grounds for its last refusal. Instead Park officials imposed onerous conditions, making it virtually impossible for Dr. Snelling to comply. According to Park documentation obtained, no other scientist has faced such stipulations to receive research permits at the Canyon in the last three years. Dr. Snelling has supplied his attorneys with compelling documentation to support that claim. Apparently, Dr. Snelling's most recent research project on behalf of a high-profile group (AiG) was deemed a threat to the prevailing viewpoint of the Canyon's formation and timing. The language used by Park officials and its reviewers to describe Dr. Snelling's proposal decry that a Christian and creationist seeks to do the research. Dr. Snelling's proposed study could yield results that will undermine an idea that is heavily promoted inside the Park: namely, that the Canyon's strata were formed over millions of years. With his intended research, Dr. Snelling seeks to gather samples at folds inside the Canyon where all the layers were bent, but were not shattered because the rocks were still soft as they folded - supposedly remaining soft over a period of 450 million years. Dr. Snelling commented: "This case is all about giving the freedom for a scientist to do good science without having to undergo a religious litmus test. The samples I have been blocked from collecting in the GCNP are to be subjected to routine lab processing and investigations any good scientist would perform. The results are to be openly reported for all scientists to draw their own conclusions, whether or not they agree with my worldview interpretation of the history of the Earth." Regarding the Park's censorship, Dr. Snelling added: "We expect debate about what the evidence means, but the Park shouldn't prevent us from collecting data just like other scientists. I am merely asking for equal treatment by the government." ADF attorneys argue that scientists should not be forced to change their beliefs to agree with the government to make a living. Government officials such as those at the Park Service can't require people to give up their beliefs as a requirement for getting a permit, and there should be no religious test for a credentialed scientist seeking to engage in further research in the Canyon. Grand Canyon officials have displayed a prior animosity toward researchers who do not toe the line on the Park's view of the Canyon's history. Several years ago they attempted to ban a book from its gift stores that offered an alternative view of the Canyon's formation. With his executive order on May 4, President Trump announced that a priority of his administration is to re-instate many lost religious liberties. His order declared it will "be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce Federal law's robust protections for religious freedom." The primary defendant in the Snelling lawsuit is the Department of the Interior, which manages America's national parks. The DOI falls under the purview of President Trump's executive branch of government. Ken Ham, president of AiG (which employs several staff with earned doctorates, including Dr. Snelling), argues that his colleague is "just asking for equal access to the Canyon and not be stonewalled. The case is about good science being practiced by a good scientist who is being blocked by intolerant government bureaucrats. They have shown a clear animosity toward a researcher's faith and want to trample on his civil rights." Ham added: "Ongoing infringements of religious liberty by the government, secular activists, and others have been a sad sign of the times. We are seeing that now with Dr. Snelling's civil rights being violated. I wonder if the same scientists and activists like Bill Nye who joined the so-called March for Science in Washington last month will support a highly qualified scientist like Dr. Snelling and file amicus briefs on his behalf." Alliance Defending Freedom is a civil liberties group based in Arizona. Its attorneys are offering their services to Dr. Snelling pro bono. Representing Dr. Snelling will be Gary McCaleb of ADF and Michael Kitchen of the firm Margrave Celmins. Answers in Genesis is an apologetics organization based in northern Kentucky, near Cincinnati. See the respective websites of www.adflegal.org and www.answersingenesis.org. Published May 10, 2017 Hyung Tae-gun, left, senior adviser of the law firm Yulchon, speaks during a Korea Times roundtable meeting in downtown Seoul, Wednesday, in time with the inauguration of President Moon Jae-in. From left are Hyung, Yonsei University professor Sung Tae-yoon, Korean Academic Society of Business Administration Chairman Han In-goo and Chairman Yoo Jang-hee of the National Academy of Sciences' humanities and social science division. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul Experts differ on corporate tax hike By Nam Hyun-woo Yoo Jang-hee, chairman of the National Academy of Sciences' humanities and social science division Han In-goo, chairman of the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration Sung Tae-yoon, Yonsei University professor Hyung Tae-gun, senior adviser of law firm Yulchon People pin high hopes on newly elected President Moon Jae-in. But experts say his administration faces tall tasks which would decide the fate of Asia's fourth-largest economy amid the fast-changing global environment. Participants of a group discussion organized by The Korea Times picked tax hikes and government spending on job creation as two key topics for the new administration's economic policies. They showed different opinions on the former but univocally warned of negative implications of the latter. Yoo Jang-hee, chairman of the National Academy of Sciences' humanities and social science division, said the country needs to raise corporate taxes. One of Moon's economic pledges is to return the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from the current 22 percent. "Korea's corporate tax rate is lower than other advanced economies and our companies are well aware of the fact. Accordingly, they would not strongly oppose moderate tax hikes," said Yoo, who also headed the Korea Commission for Corporate Partnership. "The new administration is required to use the increased tax revenues for marginalized people." Han In-goo, chairman of the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration (KASBA), was against the idea, saying the new leader should consider fair competition separately from corporate competitiveness. "Globally, there is a trend of lowering corporate taxes," Han said. "Korea needs to be careful when it comes to issues concerning corporate taxes and regulations when advanced economies such as the United States and France are set to lower taxes and promote a business-friendly environment." Yonsei University professor Sung Tae-yoon also said the government should try to raise its tax incomes in other areas rather than jacking up the corporate tax rate. "Korea has room to crank up its tax rates on capital gains in consideration of other advanced countries' examples. In particular, corporate capital gains should be taxed in a proper manner," Sung said. "I'm not saying the government should not raise the corporate tax. What I'm saying is that Korea can raise its tax income by working on capital gains taxes. That should be the priority." The participants in the discussion questioned the second major key subject of job creation through government spending. Moon promised to create 810,000 jobs in the public sector to tackle Korea's record-high youth employment rate of 9.8 percent last year. Hyung Tae-gun, senior advisor of Yulchon law firm, said the Moon administration's success hinges on how it deals with the country's unemployment issue. "When it comes to his pledges on job creation, I wonder whether Moon's camp looked into the case very carefully and seriously," said Hyung, formerly a standing commissioner at the Korea Communications Commission. Hyung worried that such an approach would not be very efficient. Sung echoed that the new leader should not spend taxpayers' money on creating public jobs, which he said would not revive the moribund economy. He expects people would reduce their spending because they would expect that the government would raise taxes to fund the hiring expenditures. Yoo also said creating public sector jobs through setting up a supplementary budget would be a stopgap. He stressed that the government needs to focus on improving flexibility in the labor market. Hyung agreed that improving labor market flexibility will be a key to the success of the Moon administration because the new President's pledge of nurturing industries related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution would depend on how flexible the country's labor market is. "Germany is already doing well in smart factories, because the country's labor market is very flexible and Germans worry less about unemployment thanks to the social safety net," he said. "Unless the government raises the country's labor market flexibility, Korea would not be able to succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era." Yoo said the new administration should promote the idea of "Korenter," a portmanteau of Korea and "enter" that is a contrary concept to Brexit. "Under the concept, the government should convince the world that Korea wants to cooperate with global partners and is open to joining global economic institutes as long as it is beneficial to both Korea and its trade partners." By Lee Hyo-sik Business associations here are calling for President Moon Jae-in to create a more corporate-friendly environment as a growing number of companies head overseas rather than invest here. Concerned about the new President's labor-friendly stance, lobby groups including the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) say the new administration should ease regulations, help companies nurture new growth engines and make the labor market more flexible. During his presidential campaign, Moon pledged to overhaul the country's family-controlled conglomerates, hike corporate income tax rates and protect the rights of small businesses, among others. "The new administration needs to build a foundation in which politicians, businesspeople and workers join hands to take the Korean economy to the next level," the KCCI said Wednesday. "The new government should show stable leadership so companies can do what they do best. The KCCI, as a constructive partner, will cooperate with the government in drawing up and implementing sound economic policies." The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) also asked the former human rights lawyer to place top priority on creating jobs and bolstering the nation's growth potential. "The new government must implement business-friendly policies to discourage corporations, which propel growth and generate jobs, from leaving the country," KITA said. "The new President should remove regulations and create a business-friendly marketplace so local firms can effectively compete with global competitors and successfully make inroads into foreign markets." No government can beat the market, according to the association representing about 70,000 importers and exporters, which said the state's role is to let market economy principles work and ensure companies exert their full potential. The Korea Employers Federation (KEF) is also urging Moon to abolish regulations and nurture newly emerging industries to create a more attractive investment environment. "The new administration must remember that decent jobs are created by corporations," the KEF said. "It should move quickly to improve the country's education system and labor market to enable Korea to more effectively deal with rapidly changing market conditions in line with the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution. The next five years will be crucial to determine whether Korea joins the league of elite nations or not." The Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) said the new head of state faces daunting tasks at home and abroad. "Korea has entered a low-growth era, plagued with the sluggish labor market, sagging consumption and shrinking corporate investments," the business lobby said. "Outside the country, Korea Inc. is grappling with increasing global trade protectionism. The new administration must do whatever it takes to revive the local economy." The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business (K-Biz) also released a statement urging Moon to keep his campaign pledges of establishing a ministry exclusively for small and medium-size enterprises and advocating the interests of small firms. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend: The Turkish Stream and Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) projects complement each other, Dmytro Marunych, co-chairman of Ukraines Energy Strategies Fund, told Trend May 10. Given the expected volume of supplies via the first leg of the Turkish Stream, the projects implementation will have a positive impact on the realization of the Southern Gas Corridor, he said. Additional volumes of gas will help Turkey to aspire to the role of a regional hub, especially if the issues on construction of pipelines for further transportation from the Turkish border to the EU are resolved, according to him. The South Caucasus Pipeline, Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) are parts of the Southern Gas Corridor. Russia and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement October 10, 2016 on implementation of the Turkish Stream project. Yoo Seong-min of the Bareun Party / Yonhap By Park Hyong-ki Yoo Seong-min of the Bareun Party, one of the conservative presidential candidates, has proposed tax hikes on the rich and conglomerates to boost social welfare and reduce inequality. His key economic policies and views of welfare and labor are close to those of liberal contenders such as Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and Sim Sang-jung of the Justice Party. Yoo's proposals for higher taxes on high-income earners are totally opposite to the other conservative candidate, Hong Joon-pyo of the Liberty Korea Party (LKP). Contrary to ousted President Park Geun-hye, who campaigned for welfare without tax hikes, Yoo has repeatedly said during the televised debates that her policy was "unrealistic." The Park government raised taxes on cigarettes, and tried to increase income taxes, which faced fierce opposition especially from the middle class. He stressed that the only way to gain financial resources to increase the welfare of the elderly and middle-class workers is through tax hikes. Like Moon, Sim and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party, Yoo is also for increasing the corporate tax rate back up to 25 percent, from 22 percent. The conservative candidate with liberal economic views agreed with other candidates, including Hong, that taxes on properties and the rich with multiple homes should be further increased not only for tax revenue to back social spending but also to curb speculation and apartment prices. This may be the only issue on which both Yoo and Hong agree. The latter has not voiced his view on income taxes on the rich, and is against raising the country's corporate tax rate, but proposed lowering it for companies that increase hiring. Yoo has tried to separate himself and his party from Hong and Hong's party. The Bareun Party was formed by a group of Saenuri lawmakers, including Yoo, who stood against Park. With a strong background in economics, Yoo has presented himself as a "reform-minded conservative" who has to be open to new ideas, including those of liberals, to reduce income inequality. Even his views on restricting and reforming the market ruled by family-owned conglomerates are in line with the liberal candidates'. In stark contrast to Hong, who was brought up in a poor family but became a conservative politician siding with the rich, Yoo said he was raised in a wealthy family, but has always worked for the interest of middle- and lower-class laborers. Yoo also agreed with the liberal candidates on gradually increasing the minimum wage, and that the market should now be led by startups, small and medium-sized enterprises and their laborers, not large conglomerates and their owners. By Jun Ji-hye President Moon Jae-in is expected to debut on the global political stage at the G20 summit in July, where he is expected to meet with the leaders of key countries, including the United States. Foreign ministry officials expect the G20 summit, which will be held in Germany, to bring U.S. President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping together, all of whom are leaders of countries that have bilateral challenging issues with South Korea. "President Moon will need to meet with various heads of state just two months after his inauguration," a ministry official said, asking not to be named. To make a successful debut on the global diplomatic stage, Moon is tasked with organizing positions regarding key issues at the earliest possible date, including the controversial deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, to avoid the nation's further diplomatic isolation. The nation has suffered from the fears of so-called "Korea passing," the term coined to describe Seoul's isolation from the international community, while going through more than 150 days of an unprecedented leadership vacuum since former President Park Geun-hye was removed from office for the massive corruption scandal. Throughout his campaign, Moon has said the THAAD issue should be discussed again by the new government, criticizing the Park government's rush to agree with the U.S. on the installation. Moon's position has been apparently gaining support from the public following Trump's abrupt calls on Seoul to pay $1 billion for the deployment. The THAAD issue is also closely related to China as the country has been strongly opposed to the installation, claiming the system seriously harms its national interests. Moon is expected to try to mend ties with China and persuade the country to drop its economic sanctions against Seoul in retaliation for the installation. "I will enter into earnest negotiations with the U.S. and China to resolve the THAAD issues," Moon said during his inaugural address, Wednesday. Moon also faces complicated issues involving Japan such as a disputed bilateral deal on "comfort women." Foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan reached a verbal agreement in December 2015 to resolve the issue of Tokyo's wartime sexual slavery, but Moon has expressed his will to renegotiate with Japan. The issue is mentioned as one of the hot potatoes for the new government as it is doubtful whether Prime Minister Abe will accept Moon's request for the renegotiation. Moon has also expressed a negative view on the Seoul-Tokyo deal on sharing military information, signed in November. By Kim Rahn Lee Nak-yon South Jeolla Province Governor Lee Nak-yon has been nominated as the first prime minister of the newly launched Moon Jae-in government. Sources at the Democratic Party of Korea said Wednesday that Moon will announce the nomination of the prime minister position and some other presidential secretaries later in the day after he takes the oath of office at the National Assembly around noon. The new president Moon, who is from Yeongnam region referring to the southeastern parts of the country including Gyeongsang provinces and Busan, has pledged to pick a figure for prime minister from Honam region, referring to the southwestern parts including Jeolla provinces and Gwangju, as a symbol of national unity. Lee, 65, was born in Yeonggwang, South Jeolla Province. After majoring law at Seoul National University, Lee worked as a reporter at Dong-A Ilbo and entered the politics in 2000 as a lawmaker. He had four terms at the National Assembly. President Moon Jae-in phones the Joint Chiefs of Staff from his home in Hongeun-dong, Seoul, Wednesday. / Yonhap Moon Jae-in's term as South Korea's new head of state was officially launched early Wednesday, only one day after the nation held an unprecedented presidential by-election. Moon's presidency began even before an inauguration ceremony as his election was a result of the rare by-election that sought to fill the top elected office vacated by former President Park Geun-hye. The former conservative leader was removed on March 10 by a Constitutional Court ruling that upheld her parliamentary impeachment late last year over a series of corruption allegations that have also led to Park's arrest and indictment. Moon's five-year term began at 8:09 a.m. Wednesday when the National Election Commission (NEC) confirmed his victory in the election held Tuesday, the commission said. The liberal candidate from the Democratic Party secured 13,423,800 votes, or 41.08 percent of the total 32,807,908 votes cast, according to the NEC. A written certificate confirming Moon's election was presented to the new president. The certificate was accepted by Rep. Ahn Gyu-back of the Democratic Party on his behalf. Moon's first order of business came from his role as the commander in chief. "President Moon Jae-in began his official term as the 19th president as he exercised his legal authority as the commander in chief at 8:09 a.m. on May 10," the presidential office said in a press release. Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) smiles at U.S. President Donald Trump as they pose together for photographers before dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Apr. 6. / AP-Yonhap By Ko Dong-hwan South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in has received congratulatory messages from two of the most influential nations in the world: China and the U.S. Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Moon with a message on Wednesday, according to China's state news agency. Xi said the two countries "have deepened their ties since they established diplomatic ties 25 years ago and the strong relations have brought benefits to both and contribute to peace and stability in the region." Xi also reportedly said he "hopes to deepen ties and resolve differences amid diplomatic rifts over a U.S. missile defense system deployed in South Korea," referring to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery at Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province. National Assembly Speaker Chung Se-kyun (right) and President Moon Jae-in in a National Assembly meeting room before Moon's swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday. / Yonhap By Ko Dong-hwan President Moon Jae-in took the oath of office Wednesday, promising to realize national unity and cohesion following the removal of his predecessor for alleged corruption. "I will become a president of all people," Moon said at his inauguration ceremony at the National Assembly. He said those who did not support him were also part of the nation. "My head is full of a blueprint to open a new world of unity and coexistence," he said in an address to the nation. "I declare that I will fulfill my responsibilities and calling as the 19th president of the Republic of Korea with a fearful but humble heart before history and the people." Moon is sworn in as the 19th President of South Korea at the National Assembly's Rotunda Hall on Wednesday. / Yonhap Moon said he would move the presidential office to Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, as his first measure to break from an imperious and uncommunicative presidency, a move he previously promised. "At times, I will hold large debates on Gwanghwamun Square," he said. "I will share the president's imperial powers as much as possible." President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook wave to citizens as they leave a swearing-in ceremony at the National Assembly, Seoul, Wednesday. / Yonhap Moon pledges to become 'president for all the people' By Kim Rahn President Moon Jae-in took the oath of office Wednesday, and offered to visit Pyongyang if conditions were met to help resolve the deadlock over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. In a message to the people delivered at the National Assembly, he said he would also go to Washington as soon as possible if necessary. To address security problems on the Korean Peninsula, Moon said after taking the oath, "I'll fly to Washington, Beijing and Tokyo soon if necessary. And I'll go to Pyongyang if conditions are met. I'll do everything I can for peace on the peninsula." Suh Hoon, the nominee for National Intelligence Service chief, reiterated Moon's remark. "Relations between the two Koreas have been strained," Suh told reporters at Cheong Wa Dae after being nominated to the post. "It may be premature to talk about an inter-Korean summit. But still, such a summit is needed. The president may visit Pyongyang only when the visit can play a catalytic role in relieving military tension on the peninsula and resolving the nuclear deadlock." Earlier this year, Moon said he would visit Pyongyang before Washington, and this remark was attacked by presidential rivals who claimed he was a North Korea sympathizer. Moon later said he had meant he could go to Pyongyang after sufficient prior discussion with the U.S. and Japan if it would help resolve the North's nuclear issue. Regarding his plan for a prompt visit to Washington, it is expected the two countries will also seek a summit as early as possible. Elected heads of the two countries have not had contact for almost half a year following the change of president in the U.S., and the corruption scandal that led to the impeachment and removal from office of former President Park Geun-hye. For the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here and China's retaliatory measures against it, Moon said he would seriously discuss the issue with the U.S. and China. By Choi Ha-young President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook walk into the main building at Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday. / Yonhap After his victory was confirmed by the National Election Commission at 8:09 a.m., Wednesday, President Moon Jae-in has had little time to waste on his first day as the country's new president. One minute after the announcement, Moon took control of the military forces and held a brief phone conversation with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Lee Sun-jin. Moon and first lady Kim Jung-sook left their home at 9:30 a.m., surrounded by some 500 residents of Hongeun-dong, western Seoul. The couple then went to the Seoul National Cemetery at 10:10 a.m. to pay their respects to those buried there. Moon then visited the National Assembly and met with opposition leaders. "I vow to share core intelligence information with opposition parties, and not just ask for your help," he told the Liberty Korea Party floor leader Rep. Chung Woo-taik. "This visit is not a one-off event. I will keep visiting you during the whole term." During his meetings with members of the second-largest opposition People's Party, third-largest opposition Bareun Party and tiny progressive Justice Party, he emphasized cooperation with them, under a pleasant atmosphere. Moon also appoints chief of staff, presidential security chief, NIS director By Jun Ji-hye President Moon Jae-in nominated South Jeolla Province Governor Lee Nak-yon as his first prime minister, Wednesday. Lee Nak-yon Suh Hoon Im Jong-seok Moon also nominated Suh Hoon, a former official at the National Intelligence Service (NIS), to head the spy agency, while appointing former lawmaker Im Jong-seok as presidential chief of staff. Ju Young-hoon, a former official of the Presidential Security Service (PSS), was also named to head his security team. Nominees for the prime minister and NIS director need to go through National Assembly confirmation hearings. While announcing the first round of his personnel appointments, Moon said Lee was the "right man" to contribute to the new government's goal of national unity with his extensive network in the political sector and regional base in the Jeolla provinces and Gwangju. Lee, 65, a native of Yeonggwang, South Jeolla Province, majored in law at Seoul National University and worked as a journalist at the Dong-A Ilbo. He entered politics in 2000, serving four terms at the National Assembly. He also served as a spokesman for former President Roh Moo-hyun when he was the president-elect. After Roh's inauguration, Lee grew apart from the pro-Roh faction and later actively participated in activities for exchanges and to create harmony among lawmakers from the southwestern and southeastern regions. Lee is known to have maintained close relations with lawmakers from the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) as well as the center-left People's Party, raising the hope for a prompt confirmation by the Assembly. "I will serve the job with responsibility and conviction," Lee said at Cheong Wa Dae. "I will carefully examine the duties of each ministry and resolve any discord between them." Suh, the nominee to head the spy agency, is a specialist on North Korea, having played a major role in helping previous governments arrange inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007. Under the governments of the late Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh, Suh had a number of formal and informal contacts with his North Korean counterparts. By Lee Kyung-min The Moon Jae-in administration plans to raise the minimum wage to 10,000 won ($8.80) per hour from the current 6,470 won by 2020 and reduce the number of irregular workers, as part of his labor policies to increase job security and protect workers. The government plans to establish a standing legal body that will represent non-unionized workers, who have paid employment insurance for over a certain period, to prevent unlawful actions by employers. The organization is to become the counterpart of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the body representing employers. It will ensure employers follow International Labor Organization (ILO) guidelines on labor standards, social protection and fair employment opportunities. The body will help guarantee the right to organize unions and collective bargaining as stipulated in the 1949 convention of the U.N. agency. The workers will have the right not to be discriminated against based on union activities. The government will also encourage workers to form unions. The plans come amid the latest statistics which shows only 10 percent of the country's workers are unionized, with the remaining 90 percent vulnerable to employers' unilateral measures. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend: Despite the fact that France has always supported Armenia, Paris wont change its position on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict after Emmanuel Macrons becoming Frances new president, says Ariel Cohen, senior fellow at the Institute for Analysis of Global Security. In general, Frances policy in the South Caucasus doesnt seem to be changed, according to Cohen, who is also the founder of International Market Analysis Ltd. and director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics. He believes that the Macron administration will hold more anti-Moscow position than any of the previous administrations. The course of independence of the three South Caucasus states will be a priority for France, he noted. Cohen believes that Macrons administration is also going to have strong relations with Germany and the US. Emmanuel Macron won 66.1 percent of the vote against 33.9 percent for far-right leader Marine Le Pen in Frances presidential election, final results from the Interior Ministry showed on Monday. Macron received a total of 20,753,797 votes, compared with 10,644,118 for Marine Le Pen, the ministry announced the day after the landmark election. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum Two leaders reaffirm strong alliance Korean President Moon Jae-in By Kim Rahn U.S. President Donald Trump has invited Moon Jae-in, the new president of Korea, to Washington for a summit to continue to strengthen the alliance between the two countries, Cheong Wa Dae said, Wednesday. The two leaders had a 30-minute phone conversation as Trump called Moon to congratulate his election victory. Trump was the first head of a foreign country to have a phone talk with Moon after he was sworn in earlier in the day. Stressing cooperation to prevent North Korea's provocations such as nuclear and missile tests, Moon told Trump that the importance of the Korea-U.S. alliance is the highest ever. "The alliance has been the core of Korea's diplomacy and security and it will continue to be," he said. "I appreciate that you put the North Korea issue on top of your security agenda list." U.S. President Donald Trump Trump congratulated Moon on his election victory. He then said the North's nuclear issue is a tough task but it can be addressed, according to Cheong Wa Dae. The U.S. president also said he would invite Moon to his country, saying they could celebrate both of their election victories. "Trump said Korea is a not just good ally but great ally.' He said he wants Moon to visit Washington soon and have a summit with him," Cheong Wa Dae said in a statement. Moon then responded that he would send a delegation as soon as possible to discuss the summit. The new president also said he hopes Trump will come to Korea as well. "They agreed they would have phone conversations again when needed even before they have a summit," the presidential office said. Dilip Sundaram, chairman of the Indian Chamber of Commerce in Korea (ICCK) and president of Mahindra Korea, poses for a photo during an interview with The Korea Times. / Courtesy of Mahindra Korea/ ICCK By Kim Ji-soo Dilip Sundaram, chairman of the Indian Chamber of Commerce in Korea, said India offers a great hedge for Korea, as turbulent geopolitics heightens uncertainty to the export-led Korean economy. Yet this possibility needs to be better grasped by Korea, he said. "Exchange between South Korea and India stands at about 17 to 18 billion dollar as of 2016," said Sundaram, who also heads Mahindra Korea, part of Mahindra & Mahindra, which owns Ssangyong Motor. "To a certain extent, we're all slightly disappointed at this point that it is stagnating. Both countries have to work hard to grow this." In the past several years, the relationship between the two countries has taken some vital steps. The two countries in 2015 upgraded their ties to "Special Strategic Partnership," and back in 2010 launched a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which will continue to be upgraded. Experts and policymakers have increasingly touted India as vital to diversifying Korea's trade market, dependent on China and the United States but compounded over the row caused by China's opposition to the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery here. But Sundaram said Korean businesses need to show more "yamang" (the Korean word for ambition, will) in addition to "somang" (desire) for the Indian market. "Korean companies have somang, but not yamang," Sundaram said. "Every time I meet people interested in India, ultimately Koreans choose to go to China." He personally saw it as Korean businesses' tendency to do things in the most convenient and familiar way. "Also, Korean culture is such that they want to do business with friends, so they are very focused on building relationships and I think it is easier for Korean people to build relationships with Chinese rather than Indians," he said. He sharply pointed out that he has noticed how Western companies come to India to make money and in the process make friends, while it may well be neither for Korean firms. Sundaram said it may be difficult for Korean businessmen to sometimes correctly grasp the nuances in Indian speech, among other things. But as ties between Korea and India remain extremely cordial, Sundaram once again stressed the merits of investing in and doing business with India. "First and foremost, India is the fastest-growing economy in the world today at 7.5 percent growth, and second is that India has the largest middle class (around 300 million to 450 million), which means tremendous market potential," he said. Sundaram also added that India at federal and state levels provides the best investment incentives, and most importantly, the success stories of Korean companies such as Hyundai that has the second-highest market share in India and the dominance of Samsung and LG should all point to more Korean firms advancing into the Indian market. The recent announcement of Kia Motors to build its first production plant in Andhra Pradesh, India, Sundaram notes, is a positive endorsement of Indian Prime Minister Modi's "Make in India" strategy, and something that Korea should take more advantage of. Another such endorsement is the two countries signing a memorandum of understanding in April to cooperate in shipbuilding for military use. . With the new government in Korea ready to set sail, Sundaram said he hopes the new coming Korean government puts Delhi-Seoul bilateral ties high on the priority list. Also, as a global business leader, much of his career has been focused on chaos and turmoil, which he is accustomed to transforming to profitability. A chartered accountant by training who earned his MBA from the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester in the United States, Sundaram joined Mahindra in 2010. Mahindra acquired Ssangyong Motor, a troubled Korean automaker at that time in 2011. This February, the company announced a profit for the first time in nine years: 58.1 billion won in 2016, up from a loss of 61.9 billion won. Korea's third-largest SUV maker unveiled its new car, the G4 Rexton, the pre-sales orders of which stood at 3,500 as of April 14. "Mahindra demonstrated values: the first and foremost was respect for local management, and at SsangYong we definitely did not change the management and we continued with the management. And it was a Korean management. The way we looked at it was that If Koreans don't know Korea who would know that?' We did not display arrogance that we know Korea better than Koreans. The second thing is that we did not treat labor as enemies, but as partners and we have worked closely with them," he said. Also, Mahindra invested in the future, he added. "We brought to the table fundamental values respect for the local management, culture and labor," which should serve as a successful role model for any acquisitions overseas especially in Korea. One of the hardest things to deal with while doing in business in Korea however is labor negotiations, Sundaram admitted. "We have to negotiate every year. Every two years is the major one and the alternate year is the minor one," he said, which means a businesses's May and June is practically gone. He added that compared with other comprehensive systems of labor negotiations, which may take place once every three to five years, it was one inefficiency he would like to point out. Before joining Mahindra & Mahindra, he worked at various companies including ArvinMeritor, United Technologies Corporation and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. As a global business leader, he said he learns through both successes and failures and learns till this day. "When I had my failures, it was first when I had not paid attention to my instincts. The second reason is that I have not assessed the local situation correctly," he said. He advised that courage was required for the first one, and patience for the latter. He wants to further serve a positive role in enabling other businesses of the Mahindra Group to come to Korea and more bilateral exchanges between Korea and India in such sectors as shipping, defense and services. "Shipping in the next couple of years may decline in Korea ... while India is trying to upgrade its shipping industry," he said, explaining that India needs help not only in shipbuilding but in other ancillary manufacturing for example as in marine engineering and ship repair. He said he was excited about Korea's Kangnam Corporation, which will help Goa Shipyard Limited, a state-owned company, build 12 mine countermeasure vessels for $5.5 billion. By Chyung Eun-ju The SBS gag show skit of "blackface," Sam Okyere's experience of racism in the subway, and Leonardo Mendoza's racial discrimination case in Busan, are just some of the many public racist issues that have emerged in the last couple of months in Korea. Even in Brazil where diversity is booming, there is a rising racist leader Jair Bolsonaro who is known for his open bigotry, racist corporate culture, Glamour's "slanty-eye" post, and the list goes on. "Japa" was the nickname for a Korean-Brazilian student in Brazil. At my high school it was not used to offend the student but it was a racist term used for Asians in general. Sometimes there were "friendly" racist jokes exchanged. A peer would hold a yellow folder on her face and say, "I'm yellow and flat, what am I?" referring to an Asian person. These trivial remarks and subtleties that may seem innocent enough become hackneyed stereotyping that snowball into the "public" identity of a race, usually a minority. It never really affected me on a conscious scale, but upon a closer look, it may have been one of the reasons I never really felt at home in Brazil. When I moved back to Korea, I instantly felt at home despite the fact I never really lived in Korea before. It's difficult to pinpoint just one reason, but mostly I think it was because I was no longer the minority race. Living in the city that never sleeps with public transportation that could get you anywhere, and fast internet connections, was much different to the slow-paced large city at the opposite end of the globe but also not quite contrasting. There were still racist remarks against the minority races. Yuri Rocha, a Brazilian who studied at Korea University for a year, said, "I believe this issue [racism/xenophobia] is getting better nowadays, but racism is still present in Korea, there were pubs that do not allow foreigners to enter." A number of foreign exchange students expressed difficulties with cab fares, glares on subways and extra charges on residencies in Korea. It is an issue that has been talked about in the media numerous times, and comes at the cost of disregarding everyday racism. On the other hand, an Austrian foreign exchange student, 22, said that he felt like a celebrity, "When I walked on the streets, many middle school teenagers asked if they could take a picture with me," and further elaborated that, "I think it's because they haven't seen many foreigners." A German foreign exchange student at Seoul National University also said, "I got easy modeling gigs because I was white and tall, but I was not allowed into saunas because they said it made their Korea customers uncomfortable. I don't even think the employee knew it was discrimination." Twenty-two Korean residents in Brazil unanimously agreed that they felt that they were more likely to be in danger because of their nationality and five of them experienced denial of help from policemen and were name-called. On the one hand, Korea has no discrimination laws, while Brazil does have anti-discrimination laws in its Constitution but allegedly fails to uphold them, and has the "next Donald Trump" racist leader on the rise, possibly running for the presidential election in 2018. The Korean presidential elections have not raised many issues on racism, demonstrating the lack of awareness. More small racist actions happen and we all seem to be discriminatory without knowing it, which could just be the start of a butterfly effect. The writer has lived in Brazil for 18 years and studied at Graded School. She currently studies at Seoul National University and works at Arirang TV. Her email address is: elainechyung@gmail.com. By Kim Tae-gyu I was a Leninist when I was a collegian in the early 1990s. At least I thought so. I was an avid reader of Russian revolutionist Vladimir Lenin. I almost memorized some of his books. Strongly believing that the capitalist system should lead its way to socialism and eventually communism, I dreamed of a proletarian revolution to make the ruling class tremble and disband conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai so that workers can control "the means of production." I even thought of working at a factory and getting married to a blue-collar worker on the firm belief that only labor, not capital, can create values for society. I loved the simple but compelling Marxist theory that the base of economic relationships and the production system determine the superstructure including ideology, culture, politics, rituals and states. Lenin was responsible for realizing the first socialist revolution based on Marxist theory, which critics denounce as reductionism but proponents praise as totality. Back then, Leninists were not rare as army general-turned-President Roh Tae-woo ruled the country. To grab power through a military coup along with his friend and former President Chun Doo-hwan, he killed so many innocent people. Many agreed with the idea of overthrowing Roh. Not a few regarded a proletarian revolution as a viable way to do so. Now, I no longer believe in Marxist or Leninist theories. I feel that socialism is too utopian so it would not materialize on this planet full of minds too egoistic to accept its idealistic creeds. I even love Samsung and think that the country should support the conglomerate so that it will be able to better compete in the all-important area of artificial intelligence with such multinational firms as Google and Amazon. Deep down in my heart, however, I am still a leftist and that is especially the case when it comes to politics and elections. I have never supported rightist hopefuls for presidents or lawmakers. For this Tuesday election, I initially decided to vote for either Moon Jae-in of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea or Sim Sang-jung of the progressive Justice Party. My original idea was that I would vote for the more progressive Sim in case Moon is highly likely to win the election and otherwise vote for Moon to prevent a conservative candidate from taking power. But I changed my mind a week before Election Day when 12 lawmakers of the conservative Bareun Party defected to the far-right Liberty Korea Party (LKP) obviously because of the low approval rate of their candidate Yoo Seong-min. The "dirty dozen" left the LKP about 100 days ago, claiming that the party should take responsibility for the corruption scandal involving ousted former President Park Geun-hye and her aide Choi Soon-sil, who illegally meddled in state affairs. Yoo is the best conservative politician I have ever seen. He seems to be smart, considerate, sympathetic and polite. Unlike his fellow politicians who found ways to shirk mandatory military service, Yoo served three years as a rank-and-file army soldier. His only son also served in the military. Unlike other conservative politicians, he seems to be compassionate about the have-nots and is open to good policy suggestions from progressive camps. The son of a judge, who was dismissed because of anti-dictatorship verdicts, he also has a life-long belief that the country's ever-sprawling conglomerates should have their governance structure revamped. To be frank, I don't think that my favorite candidate Sim would do well even if she became the leader of the country. From my perspective, she was third-worst. New President Moon was second-worst for me, who successfully blocked the worst candidate of the LKP Hong Joon-pyo from setting his feet into Cheong Wa Dae. But I cast my vote for Yoo to show that Korea can have a rational conservative politician who cares about principles, integrity and conscience instead of other rightist ones, mostly chicken hawks who have been infamous for bribery, corruption and other malpractices. In most other countries, rightists are about conserving the country by sticking to laws, principles and integrity while leftists are about bringing about changes through out-of-the-box imaginations and ideas. Leftists are like the round pegs in the square holes. They're not fond of rules and have no respect for the status quo so that they can change things as demonstrated at the 1997 Apple think different' campaign. For leftists to become change agents, rightists should hold their ground and stick to their principles they should be the square pegs to make our society roll over. To my great chagrin, however, we have lacked such genuine rightist politicians but I found one in Yoo, who says that he always reads the Constitution before making crucial political decisions. That's why I cast my ballot for Yoo against my political stance. I hope the four-term lawmaker would be a harbinger of many bona-fide conservative politicians to arrive in drones. By the way, we need to remember who the dirty dozen defectors are. They are Reps. Kweon Seong-dong, Kim Sung-tae, Kim Jae-kyung, Kim Hack-yong, Park Sung-joong, Park Soon-ja, Yeo Sang-koo, Lee Koon-hyon, Lee Jin-bok, Chang Je-won, Hong Moon-pyo and Hong Il-pyo. By Kyung Moon Hwang It used to be said that unlike in most other democracies, in South Korea, one's political identity depended on his or her opinion, ironically, of North Korea. Whether one was "conservative" or "liberal," or something in between or beyond, reflected mostly one's stance regarding the North. Of course it was more complicated than this. The issues that shaped a South Korean citizen's political ideology and affiliation usually were numerous and worked in complex ways. Still, this somewhat conventional analysis seemed, at heart, correct. If so, it was easy to see where such a reality came from: the fierce state ideology of anti-communism during the decades of authoritarian rule. The election of Moon Jae-in, however, raises further doubts about this picture of South Korean politics, because the presidential campaign took place amid high inter-Korean tensions, normally optimal conditions for conservatives. As it turned out, one of the least anti-communist candidates won the presidency, and he did so convincingly. We could suggest special circumstances, namely the process by which the previous president was removed from office, made this election cycle an exception to the rule. That is, as long as national division stays in place, disagreements over North Korea will probably remain central to political alignment and behavior in South Korea. I would argue, however, that this week's presidential election showed the rise of another major factor in South Koreans' political identity and ideology: history. More specifically, since the turn of the 21st century one's historical identification with the recent past, or one's sense of "ownership" over the nation's history, has become just as important. In short, historical views determine political views, and vice versa. There's a generational aspect to this phenomenon. Ever since the mass candlelight demonstrations began last fall, many middle-aged citizens have expressed publicly their sense of ownership over the country's history, specifically the struggle for democracy. This was the notion that they must protect the democracy that they, as students and young adults, sacrificed so much to gain. As the historical owners of democracy, they had to be its primary defenders. Two decades ago, these members of the "democracy generation," men and women now in their 40s and 50s, had driven an earlier wave of presidential politics toward the progressive side. They had insisted on overturning the simplistic anti-communism of their parents and grandparents. In doing so, however, they also testified to the persistent strength of the North Korean issue, especially as events originating in the North made such concerns unavoidable. Now, after feeling a grave threat to South Korean democracy from the old-style politics of anti-communism under the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye presidencies, members of this generation seem to have reasserted their social power. Furthermore, as the teachers, professors, and parents of adolescents and young adults, they are determined to transmit their sense of historical ownership over democracy to the younger generations. It is this version of history that has become the orthodox view in South Korea. Outside the classrooms and universities, however, the oldest generations still cling to their traditional historical views rooted in anti-North Korean anti-communism, the Cold War, and the story of South Korean economic development out of poverty. They still speak of absolute, existential dangers of "leftist" ideology, which they see as threatening their own sense of historical ownership over the achievement of economic development while resisting communism. This makes the younger generations the main target of competition in the so-called "history wars": the narrative of anti-communist development versus the narrative of democratization. Struggling with economic inequalities and pressed with other things to worry about, younger South Korean adults, who lack the experience of living under dictatorship, have not always drawn the connections between their lives and their history lessons. What's more, since the early 21st century, conservative intellectuals have sought to fight back against what they believe is an overly liberal historical orthodoxy, which developed as a reaction against dictatorship. But to do so, conservatives had to move beyond the traditional glorification of the authoritarian past. So they promoted another conservative sense of historical ownership: that South Koreans must take pride in both economic growth and democratization, which, along with the successful resistance to communism, should be seen as part of a greater, triumphant story of the country's modern transformation. This "New Right" intellectual movement remained anti-communist, but it also tried to legitimize just about everything in South Korea's past by claiming that it all contributed, in the end, to national growth: The Cold War dependence on the United States, the economic domination of the big conglomerate companies, the persistent inequalities, even the suppression of people's freedoms and rights were not only justified, but in fact were necessary to South Korea's eventual triumph. Not surprisingly, this neat view of history was attractive to conservative politicians, such as the previous two presidents, who further promoted this interpretation in their policies. Having personally benefited from the country's previous era of developmentalist dictatorship, it made perfect sense to them. It remains to be seen how well this conservative sense of historical ownership can compete against the now-dominant, progressive historical view. But undoubtedly the stakes are very high, because one's position in these history wars, perhaps even more than one's stance on North Korea, will help shape the political landscape going forward. Kyung Moon Hwang is a professor at the Department of History, University of Southern California. He is the author of "A History of Korea An Episodic Narrative" (Second edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Unprepared meeting with Trump to backfire President Moon Jae-in talked about prioritizing a trip to the United States for a summit with President Donald Trump during his campaign. This pledge was partially made to pacify conservative voters' concerns about his leftist policies that may ruin the ROK-U.S. alliance and cause serious security problems. For this very same reason, President Moon should make no haste in visiting Washington. An unprepared summit with an unpredictable Trump could get the two presidents started on a sour note, make it hard to coordinate on key issues such as North Korea's nuclear and missile programs and trigger conservative opposition in this young stage of his presidency. Rather, the new government would best send envoys to key countries _ the U.S. China, Japan and India _ to warm the way before he eventually meets the heads of the key allies, neighbors and partners. Reservations for Moon's early U.S. trip are based on Trump's unique style. He rejected an offer for a handshake by visiting German Chancellor Angela Markel in front of the media. He timed his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping with a Tomahawk cruise missile attack on a Syrian airbase as a show of force that was also seen as a move to impress Xi. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ended up having an awkward jerking handshake with Trump even after pledges of investing tens of billions of dollars in the U.S. For Moon, he has many issues that are on clash courses with the U.S. For example, Moon made clear the deployment of a U.S. missile interceptor _ the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery _ needs the agreement of the National Assembly, especially after Trump violated the existing arrangement and demanded Seoul pay $1 billion to cover all related costs. Then, Trump also wants Korea to reduce its trade surplus with the U.S. which reached over $20 billion last year, blaming the two countries' free trade agreement (FTA) and not ruling out the nixing of the bilateral pact. Also, the U.S. president has pressed Korea to pay more for the maintenance of U.S. Forces Korea. Moon has a visceral dislike for the FTA, although it was settled during the Roh Moo-hyun administration, which he worked for. Many of his supporters including former student activists have share the political teething experience of the "Yankees Go Home" anti-American sentiment. In other words, a Moon-Trump summit, if held without careful advanced preparations, could turn into political fireworks that may mangle the two countries' alliance beyond repair for years to come. Then, the two presidents would confirm an even greater gap in view and forsake a remedy about dealing with the nuclear-armed Pyongyang with Trump preferring a big stick policy and Moon going back to the old incentives-based policy. Moon won fewer than half of the votes cast, partially because the election proceeded in a five-way contest. Now, the conservatives are regrouping. Any show of a chasm with the U.S. can only invite a reaction of "I told you so" among his detractors to weaken his chance of bipartisan governance. If not convinced, he should remember how the late President Kim Dae-jung had to see his Nobel Prize-winning conciliatory effort bogged down after he failed to gain the backing of the newly elected U.S. President George W. Bush during their hurriedly arranged meeting. The United States held informal talks with North Korea in the Norwegian capital Oslo under tight security, Monday and Tuesday. The so-called Track 2 meeting was the first since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. Choi Son-hui, who is in charge of U.S. affairs at the North's foreign ministry, represented the North Korean side. The U.S. delegation was led by Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Washington-based New American think tank. What was discussed has not been made public yet. But speculation has it that Washington and Pyongyang might have discussed the latter's nuclear and missile threats, their future relations and the North's detention of Americans. In another development, the Trump administration has reportedly invited _ through China _ the North's young leader to the U.S. for direct talks if Pyongyang scraps its weapons of mass destruction program. At a time when the alleged "April Crisis" on the Korean Peninsula is over, Seoul has to heed any kind of change in Washington's policy toward Pyongyang. This is all the more so, considering that the situation around the peninsula could enter a new phase following the beginning of a liberal government here. The Oslo contact has its own limitations because it is a semi-governmental, semi-civilian meeting. So it's unclear if this will lead to the resumption of official dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang. What matters most is to ensure that Seoul won't be sidelined from discussions about security and peace on the peninsula. It is essential therefore to redouble efforts to enhance cooperation in sharing information with the U.S. It is unsettling though that our new liberal government might clash with America's conservative administration over North Korea policies. President Moon Jae-in is tasked with coping with the current complicated situation _ where maximum pressure is mixed with the chance of dialogue _ wisely. Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn, left , talks with Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, during a meeting at The Plaza Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Hanwha Group By Kang Seung-woo Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn met Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, to discuss various issues between Korea and the United States, Tuesday, according to the business group. It was their second meeting in seven months after they met last October in Seoul to amply demonstrate their three decades of friendship. The Heritage Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., is an influential conservative think tank that has been key to shaping American policies on politics, economy, foreign affairs and national security. According to the nation's eighth-largest conglomerate, Kim and Feulner exchanged opinions on a range of topics, including bilateral economic issues, the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and the Korean presidential election held on the same day. "I hope that you will help us improve the Korea-U.S. alliance in the midst of rising Northeast Asian tensions," Kim was quoted as saying to Feulner during the meeting. The American was also quoted as saying that U.S. President Donald Trump thinks highly of the bilateral ties and is working hard to upgrade them. After co-founding the think tank in 1973, Feulner served as president from 1977 to 2013 and assumed office once again this month. Observers say Feulner highly respects Korea as demonstrated by his decades-long friendship with Kim. He was close to Hanwha founder Kim Chong-hee, Chairman Kim's father. Feulner is also seen as a close aide to Trump given that he served on the U.S. president's transition team. His influence on state affairs under the Trump administration is likely to increase. In 2011, in recognition of Kim's contribution to non-governmental diplomacy between Seoul and Washington, the conservative think tank named one of its conference centers at its building the "Kim Seung Youn Conference Center." Feulner, born in 1941 in Chicago, began his career as an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Colorado's Regis University in 1963. After receiving an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in 1964, Feulner attended Georgetown University and the London School of Economics as a fellow. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. The Hyundai iX35 By Jhoo Dong-chan The Chinese government's trade retaliation against Korea over the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here has dealt a severe blow to Korean carmakers' sales for two consecutive months. According to sources, Korea's carmaker duo Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors jointly sold only 51,059 cars in China last month, a 65.1 percent nosedive year-on-year. They sold 146,378 cars in the same period last year. Hyundai Motor sold 35,009 cars last month, down 63.6 percent, while its sister brand Kia Motors' sales plunged 68 percent to 16,050. Hyundai sold 96,022 cars and Kia 50,156 in the same period last year. Due to their poor performances in the Chinese market, Hyundai and Kia's global sales also plunged 11.7 percent and 13.2 percent, respectively, to 364,225 and 209,832 cars last month. Hyundai Motor had a 1.5 percent increase in domestic sales to 60,361 units last month, but suffered a 13.9 percent plunge to 303,864 cars overseas year-on-year. It was the largest sales drop for the carmaker since Hyundai Motor had a 14.2 percent decrease in January last year. Meanwhile, Kia Motors suffered a sales drop both in the overseas and domestic markets. It had a 10.3 percent drop in sales, selling 43,515 cars in Korea, while suffering a 13.9 percent decrease to 166,317 cars last month. The carmaker duo's poor sales performance was not the first of its kind since their sales also more than halved in March. Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors sold 72,032 cars there in March, down 52.2 percent from a year ago. Hyundai Motor sold 56,026, down 44.3 percent, and Kia Motors 16,006, down 68 percent. This was the first time the two carmakers' monthly sales in the world's most populous country have fallen below 100,000 since February 2016. Hyundai Motor tries to make a rebound with the iX35 SUV, which will hit the world's largest automotive market in the months to come. But it remains to be seen whether Chinese motorists will briskly snap up the new models. Hyundai's lackluster performance is attributable to the Chinese government's trade retaliation and anti-Korean sentiment among consumers after the deployment of THAAD here. Protesting the Korean government's decision to deploy the U.S. anti-missile system, Chinese consumers have boycotted Korean products, while Chinese competitors have provoked nationalism among the Chinese people to rack up their own sales. Some Volkswagen dealerships in China are reportedly carrying out a special promotion with discounts of up to 16,000 yuan ($2,323) for customers who sell their Korean cars to buy their models. Another Chinese carmaker is also offering special gifts for customers who cancel their orders for Korean cars. In order to decrease their sales dependency on China, the two carmakers are diversifying overseas business operation. Kia Motors said it will build its first production plant in India, aiming to offset its poor Chinese sales performance while Hyundai Motor is enhancing its promotion operations in other markets like Europe and Russia. By Lee Hyo-sik President Moon Jae-in may prevent Double Star Tires' acquisition of Kumho Tire in response to concerns among Jeolla residents who overwhelmingly voted for him in the May 9 presidential election, analysts said Wednesday. If he does, this could provide a boon to Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam-koo who has been struggling to take back control of the group's tire unit. Kumho Tire runs two of its three domestic plants in the region, in Gwangju and Gokseong, South Jeolla Province. Moon has expressed negative views toward the mid-tier Chinese tiremaker's takeover of Kumho Tire, raising concerns over job security and adverse effects on the local economy. In March, Moon posted a Facebook message urging the state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB) to place top priority on job security for the 3,800 Kumho Tire workers. "It is not pleasant for Jeolla residents to witness what's been going on with Kumho Tire," Moon wrote. "The company employs 3,800 workers at three domestic plants. We cannot afford to let the tiremaker suffer the same fate as SsangYong Motor. The top priority is to ensure job security for all Kumho employees. Whoever acquires the company, it must not close local plants or dismiss workers." After Shanghai Automotive Industry took over SsangYong Motor in 2004, it fired hundreds of workers to cut costs. The Chinese carmaker was also criticized for allegedly stealing SsangYong's core technologies while not investing enough to strengthen the Korean carmaker's competitiveness. SsangYong was sold again to Indian carmaker Mahindra & Mahindra in 2011. An analyst familiar with the matter expects the Moon administration will not let market economy principles alone dictate the sale of Kumho Tire. He said it will try to find a middle ground between KDB and Kumho Chairman Park, who have been engaged in a war of words. "Given Moon's previous remarks and his liberal political stance, the new administration will not sit idly by and let KDB sell its 42.01 percent stake in Korea's second-largest tiremaker to Double Star under the current terms," said the analyst who asked not to be named. "The new government will attach a range of strings to the sales contract. For instance, it will require Double Star to guarantee job security for 3,800 workers at Kumho's domestic plants, investment to strengthen its corporate competitiveness, and a pledge not steal its technologies," he said. "Double Star may withdraw its takeover bid if these preconditions are too harsh. If so, this would be good news for Kumho chief Park." KDB and Double Star are engaged in sales negotiations to iron out their differences on the detailed terms of a stock purchase agreement (SPA) to finalize the deal over the next five months. In March, both sides signed the SPA under which the Chinese company would acquire the 42.01 percent stake for 955 billion won ($840 million). Kumho Chairman Park decided not to exercise his buyback right, blaming the bank for not allowing him to form a consortium. To derail the ongoing negotiations, the chairman said Kumho Industrial, controlled by him, will not allow Double Star to continue using the Kumho brand. According to KDB, the Chinese tiremaker is not interested in buying Kumho Tire if it cannot use the Kumho trademark. The state-run bank agreed the Chinese company could use the Kumho trademark for 20 years if it pays 0.2 percent of Kumho Tire's sales as brand royalties. However, Park has said Kumho Industrial never agreed to permit Double Star to use the trademark, calling the SPA legally flawed and urging creditors to hold another bid. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 Trend: May 10 marks the 94th birthday anniversary of the architect and founder of the modern independent state of Azerbaijan, outstanding statesman, brilliant son and national leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev. President Ilham Aliyev, First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, family members, relatives and friends of the national leader visited the Alley of Honors. President Ilham Aliyev laid a wreath at the grave of National Leader Heydar Aliyev, and paid tribute to him. The national anthem of Azerbaijan was played. Then, the president and his family members laid flowers at the graves of prominent ophthalmologist, academician Zarifa Aliyeva, outstanding statesman Aziz Aliyev, renowned doctor and scientist Tamerlan Aliyev. The event was also attended by Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov, Head of the Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev, ministers, heads of committees and companies, MPs. Gong Yoo won the Best Actor award at the prestigious Baeksang art Awards the other day but the audience were surprised by his surprising and tearful speech addressed to his mother during the ceremony. The actor admitted to being a bad son recently and said sorry to his mother for being remiss in his duties as her offspring. According to a report by Koreaboo, Gong Yoo received the top actor award for his portrayal as Kim Shin in the megahit fantasy series "Goblin." The actor won the award over top ranked actors Namgoong Min (Chief Kim), Park Bo Gum (Moonlight Drawn By Clouds), Jo Jung Suk (Don't Dare to Dream) and Han Suk Gyu (Romantic Doctor Kim). In his speech, the "Train to Busan" actor did not forget to thank his fellow cast members, the scriptwriter, director and the entire crew that worked hard on the set of "Goblin". He also thanked the fans for their support for the drama. What made the speech more meaningful was when Gong Yoo dedicated the award to his mother and acknowledged his shortcomings as her son. He said that he felt very sorry towards his parent and wished that she would lead a long and healthy life. "Since I was busy going between my house and the broadcast station, my mother says that she's become a bit disappointed in me recently," Gong Yoo said in his tearful apology. " She says that I feel like I'm someone else's son and not hers." According to Soompi, Gong Yoo was also very emotional during a recent fan meeting in Taiwan after watching a fan made a video. The actor was moved to tears and said that while he is tired from working so hard without taking a break, he promised that he will take their support as a source of strength to become a stronger person. Park Shin Hye is experiencing a lot of accomplishments this year as she has become the newest endorser of a well-known Filipino clothing brand. Just recently, Bench, a Filipino clothing line, has just confirmed that Park Shin Hye is their newest Global Benchsetter. The Global Benchsetter is the privilege that the Bench company gives to a well-known foreign celebrity endorser. According to Manila Bulletin, Ben Chan, the founder of Bench, confirmed the reports and speculations, as he posted a photo on Instagram which welcomes Park Shin Hye as the newest addition to the #GlobalBenchsetters. This will surely help in increasing her popularity not only in the Philippines but throughout the rest of Southeast Asia, knowing that K-pop and Korean celebrities have a huge fan base in this Asian region. It is worth noting that Bench has already had a number of Global Benchsetters in its arsenal. These well-known global celebrities are 2PM's Nickhun, Lee Min Ho and Super Junior's Donghae and Siwon. Park Shin Hye has been the star of many successful Korean dramas, such as "Heartstrings", "Doctors", "You're Beautiful", "Flower Boys Next Door" and "Pinocchio". The biggest break in Park Shin Hye's career was when she partnered with Lee Min Ho in the very popular K-drama, "The Heirs". According to Korea Herald, Park Shin Hye also had a recent visit to Manila last year, as she checked the construction of her charity named, "Shin Hye Center", that is aimed at helping the poor children. With all of these being said, one can clearly see that Park Shin Hye is one of the most, if not the most popular and loved Korean actress of today's generation. Let's wish Park Shin Hye the best of luck in all of her future endeavors in her career and personal life. BTS is getting ready to release the Japanese version of its hit song "Blood, Sweat, and Tears." The boys recently released a teaser of the new MV which features a different feel from the Korean version of the track. According to a report by All Kpop, the Japanese version of "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" also features artistic elements but is noticeably more dramatic and colorful than its predecessor. The Korean version of the track is considered one of the most viewed MVs on youtube and recently gained fresh momentum when it received 2 million likes. This makes the track the most liked K-pop MV on the streaming platform. Based on a report by Popcrush, the "Blood, Sweat and Tears" Japanese version is the first track to be released after BTS signed with Def Jam records, which will serve as their label in Japan. The Japanese MV of the track features colorful artworks, drugs and alcohol and violence in a seemingly surreal environment that may be symbolic of social issues. The Japanese version, however, retained BTS' strong choreography but amped it up to come out with an edgier feel to the track. "Blood, Sweat and Tears" is considered one of BTS' most successful tracks from its "Wings" album released last October. The track jumpstarted the BTS trend of breaking viewing records on youtube and has since surpassed the 100 million views mark on youtube last February. BTS' subsequent tracks "Spring Day" also earned the record of fastest video to reach 20 million views when it was released early this year. "Not Today" which was released soon after, also broke the record for earning the most views within a 24 hour period. The last 3 videos from BTS. "Spring Day", "Not Today" and Rap Monster's collaboration with American rapper Wale entitled "Change" collectively reached 100 million views in a span of months so the "Blood, Sweat and Tears" Japanese version stands to smash records in Japan as well. Lee Min Ho just finished shooting for a commercial. This will be the actor's last activity before enlisting in the military. As reported by Soompi, Lee Min Ho's recent photo shoot is for a fashion magazine. The photos of the actor appear to be a promotion for "Georgia Gotica Master's Latte", a product of Coca-Cola. Similarly, the actor posed for the @star1 magazine for their May issue. During the interview, Lee Min Ho shared his personal feelings regarding his imminent enlistment. In his response, Lee Min Ho revealed how he thought it would be fine and that it would be nothing. However, he did clarify that he would indeed feel sad when the day comes. "It's not about the fact that I have to enlist that makes me sad," said Lee Min Ho. "But the fact that I'm at the end of my 20s." The interviewer also told the actor that enlisting late in the military built the person Lee Min Ho is today, to which the actor agreed. "If I'd gone early, I wouldn't have been cast in 'Boys Over Flowers' and my 20s probably wouldn't have been as happy," said Lee Min Ho. Lee Min Ho also added that that decision turned out to be perfect for him. "I'm lucky to have acted during a great era and I was able to get a lot of love overseas, and I'm happy that I was able to contribute to hallyu in my own way," humbly said the actor. Lee Min Ho now has 2 days left until his military enlistment date this Friday, May 12. However, the actor will be assigned a non-combatant position, as previously reported. Because of the injuries Lee Min Ho contracted from the car crashes in 2006 and 2011, the actor will serve as a public service worker. There is no news however on when the actor will be dismissed from his government service. Details added (first version posted on 10:08) Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 Trend: May 10 marks the 94th birthday anniversary of the architect and founder of the modern independent state of Azerbaijan, outstanding statesman, brilliant son and national leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev. President Ilham Aliyev, First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, family members, relatives and friends of the national leader visited the Alley of Honors. President Ilham Aliyev laid a wreath at the grave of National Leader Heydar Aliyev, and paid tribute to him. The national anthem of Azerbaijan was played. Then, the president and his family members laid flowers at the graves of prominent ophthalmologist, academician Zarifa Aliyeva, outstanding statesman Aziz Aliyev, renowned doctor and scientist Tamerlan Aliyev. The event was also attended by Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov, Head of the Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev, ministers, heads of committees and companies, MPs. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev received a delegation led by Speaker of the House of Representatives of the parliament of Jordan Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh May 10. President Aliyev said Azerbaijan-Jordan relations are at a high level and cover different areas, stressing the importance of good cooperation in both political and economic fields. The president recalled his visits to Jordan and the Jordanian King`s visits to Azerbaijan, pointing out good relationship with the King of Jordan. President Aliyev emphasized the significance of the fact that the two countries always support each other in international organizations. Saying that Azerbaijan is making great efforts towards strengthening Islamic solidarity, the president added that the best example to this is the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games, which will start in Baku in two days. President Aliyev hailed the fact that Jordan will participate in these Games with a large squad. Praising the development of interparliamentary ties, the president expressed his confidence that the visit of Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh with a large parliamentary delegation will be a success and contribute to the development of bilateral relations, and that they will have fruitful discussions with their Azerbaijani counterparts. Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh extended the greetings of King of Jordan Abdullah II to President Aliyev. We are proud with the friendly relations and cooperation between our countries, he said. We believe that by using these relations we can make our positive contribution to regional and international processes. Hailing large-scale measures taken in Azerbaijan, he said great work being done in the country is followed with interest in Jordan. They discussed the issues relating to the development of cooperation between the two countries in a variety of areas, including tourism, investment making, export and import, and security. The president thanked for the greetings of the King of Jordan, and asked Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh to extend his greetings to Abdullah II. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 Trend: With its ancient history, rich cultural legacy, huge natural and human resources, the Islamic world has played a crucial role in the establishment and development of the modern world order and international relations system, reads Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs article headlined The strengthening of Islamic solidarity is a challenge of time. The article was published in the OIC Journal, issued by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Islam always encouraged peace, tolerance, humane ideals and made an outstanding contribution to the world civilization, the article said. Being a crucial and integral part of the Muslim world, Azerbaijan is renowned as one of the important places where the Islamic cultural legacy was established and preserved. Islam, which became widespread in the territory of Azerbaijan in the 7th-8th centuries, enriched the spiritual life of our people, later growing into one of the main factors defining their lifestyle and co-existence norms. Ashabi-Kahf pilgrimage site, the most ancient mosque in the Caucasus - Shamakhi mosque built in 743 - Bibiheybat mosque and pilgrimage complex, Ganja Imamzade complex and many other sites can be considered as Azerbaijan`s outstanding contribution to the system of Islamic religious and cultural values, reads the article. The people of Azerbaijan have always had great respect for their history, spiritual values; and even the flag - a state symbol - of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which was founded in 1918, reflected their Islamic identity. Despite persecutions under the USSR, the people of Azerbaijan managed to preserve some of their religious sites and mosques, and remained committed to their religious values. Restoration of state independence in the early 1990s marked the establishment of the freedom of religion and conscience in Azerbaijan, and significant work was done in the country to restore religious monuments, mosques and temples, Ilham Aliyev said in his article. If there were only 17 mosques in Azerbaijan during the Soviet period, their number reached 2,166 at the beginning of 2017. 306 mosques are currently under state protection as historic monuments. Bibiheybat mosque and pilgrimage complex, Tazapir mosque, Icharishahar Juma and Holy Muhammad mosques, Ajdarbay mosque, Shamakhi Juma mosque, Ganja Imamzade complex and tens of other religious monuments and mosques were completely repaired and renovated by the state, and opened doors to believers, according to the article. It should be noted that Azerbaijan has made great strides in all areas in the 25 years of its independence, the article said. The implementation of transnational energy projects since the 1990s created wide opportunities for us to develop our national economy and make the non-oil sector one of the leading segments of economy. Over the past 10 years all the infrastructure in the country has been modernized, energy security has been fully provided, food security has been largely ensured, the level of poverty and unemployment has decreased 10 times to reach five per cent. With its modern transport and transit infrastructure, Azerbaijan is playing an active role in the establishment of the East-West and North-South international transport corridors, and is already becoming a global transportation hub, Azerbaijani president said in his article. The Southern Gas Corridor, which is called the project of the 21st century and which is being successfully implemented, will allow Azerbaijan to transport its gas to the world market in large volumes. Building and developing relations with the Islamic world have been among the key priorities of Azerbaijan`s foreign policy in the years of independence, reads the article. Azerbaijan opened its first diplomatic missions in Muslim countries, and in a short period of time our state became an active member of the organizations, which unite the Muslim world, such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and ISESCO. Azerbaijan initiated the establishment of new organizations that contribute to the strengthening of Islamic solidarity, including OIC Youth Forum, OIC Labor Center and the Journalist Association of OIC Member States. Our country also created bilateral and multilateral cooperation formats, which serve the expansion of relations with the Muslim world, and numerous projects implemented within the framework of these platforms contribute to the strengthening of mutual ties, said the article. Elevation of our economic cooperation with Islamic countries to the level of our political relations is one of our primary goals. We attach special importance to the development of mutually fruitful cooperation with the Islamic world in these and all other areas. Mutual support within the framework of international organizations, particularly the United Nations, reinforces our standing, Ilham Aliyev said in the article. I have to note that Islamic countries played a vital role in Azerbaijan`s election as a member of the UN Security Council in 2012. We consider this as a manifestation of the high level of our political relations, mutual support and solidarity with Islamic countries. During its membership of the UN Security Council, Azerbaijan put forward and implemented a number of proposals serving the interests of the Islamic world, Azerbaijani president said in the article. For example, along with an initiative to organize a high-level international conference on the fight against terrorism, Azerbaijan also ensured the organization of a high-level meeting on the expansion of cooperation between the UN and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. We have to admit that today the Islamic world is facing serious challenges and numerous problems, which await solution, reads the article. The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Palestine and Kashmir problems, conflicts in the Middle East states, refugee crisis, etc. can be singled out among these problems. It is a well-known fact over the past 200 years the Armenians have committed bloody crimes in order to occupy Azerbaijan`s historic lands and build their own state in those territories. Today`s state of Armenia was established in the ancient Azerbaijani lands, said the article. Continuing its policy of aggression, Armenia occupied 20 percent of the Azerbaijani territories at the beginning of the 1990s, and as a result more than one million Azerbaijanis became refugees and IDPs, our fellow countrymen were subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocide. In 1993, the UN Security Council adopted four resolutions condemning the use of force against Azerbaijan and the occupation of its territories, and recognizing the country`s territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of its internationally-recognized borders. Similar documents were adopted by the OSCE, Council of Europe, European Union, Non-Alignment Movement, and other influential international organizations, the article said. OIC adopted numerous resolutions supporting Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity and just position, and urging recognition of the Khojaly genocide and practical measures against Armenia`s policy of occupation. The issue has repeatedly been discussed at the OIC Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and a Contact Group on the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan was established within OIC and held its first meeting in September, 2016. The UN and OIC resolutions, which clearly recognize Armenia as an aggressor, must be the main message to all Muslim countries that want to develop relations with the invader because Armenia`s policy of occupation is an attack not only on Azerbaijan`s religious and cultural assets, but on historic and cultural legacy of Islam in general, according to the article. Hundreds of Islamic culture monuments, mosques, temples, cemeteries, etc. were destroyed in the territories occupied by Armenia, and all this was confirmed by the OSCE fact-finding missions, Ilham Aliyev said in the article. I also have to note that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia refused to officially recognize Armenia because of its occupation of the Azerbaijani territories, while Turkey has not established any relations with this country. Currently five Muslim states have officially recognized Khojaly genocide. We consider all this as an example of brotherly relationship and real support. Azerbaijan spares no efforts to contribute to resolution of the ongoing conflicts in the Islamic world, unambiguously stands for international law during discussions on fair resolution of problems and always remains committed to its principled position, the article said. In 2013, Azerbaijan hosted "The donor's conference to finance the strategic plan for the development of the city of Al-Quds", and "The establishment of an Islamic Financial Safety Net in Support of the State of Palestine" conference, and made significant donations to this cause. Azerbaijan, which is strongly committed to religious and cultural values of Islam, is also renowned as one of the world`s centers of multiculturalism, according to the article. We consider the provision of cultural diversity, an atmosphere of ethnic and religious tolerance in Azerbaijan as a great achievement, reads the article. There has never been religious and ethnic discrimination in our country, and representatives of all religions have lived here in peace and mutual understanding. This is our lifestyle and the best way to confidently move forward. Were openly speaking against Islamophobia and working consistently to promote Islamic values around the world, Azerbaijani president said in his article. Azerbaijan actively contributed to the organization of the Department of Islamic Arts in famous Louvre museum in France, and was the first Muslim country to demonstrate its exhibition in the Vatican. In 2009, Baku was declared the capital of Islamic culture with the support of ISESCO. In 2018, Nakhchivan, another ancient Azerbaijani city, was awarded this honorary title. Azerbaijan is taking practical steps to strengthen intercultural dialogue, said the article. Baku, which annually hosts the Intercultural Dialogue Forum, International Humanitarian Forum and other major international events, is already called a "humanitarian Davos". In 2016, we witnessed how aggressively the migrants from the Middle East and African countries seeking refuge in Europe were met, and also saw a clear manifestation of Islamophobic trends. In such a situation, by declaring 2016 "The Year of Multiculturalism", Azerbaijan once again showed the world that representatives of different religions, nationalities, ethnic groups can live together comfortably and with dignity in the same country, under the same sky, according to the article. We not only perfectly regulate inter-ethnic, inter-faith relations within the country, but offer the world a progressive model of tolerance and multiculturalism, the article said. As one of the few countries, which are members of both the Council of Europe and OIC, Azerbaijan is making a practical contribution to the strengthening of dialogue among civilizations. As we know Baku hosted a meeting of culture ministers of the member states of the Council of Europe in 2008, and OIC representatives were also invited to that event. Then ministers of the Council of Europe member states were invited to a gathering of ministers of the OIC member states, which was held in Baku in 2009, reads the article. I think that this was a very important event on a global scale, and worthily went down in history as Baku process of dialogue of civilizations. In 2015, Azerbaijan hosted the First European Games, and this important sporting event was held at the level of Summer Olympic Games, according to the article. This year Baku will host the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games, Ilham Aliyev said in the article. It is symbolic that in a short space of time the European Games are followed by the Islamic Solidarity Games, and this shows that Azerbaijan has become the center of dialogue of civilizations and religions, and an economic and cultural bridge. We use this unique position to establish peace, multiculturalism and tolerance all around the world. Today the Islamic world needs unity and solidarity like never before, reads the article. Therefore, declaration of 2017 as The Year of Islamic Solidarity in Azerbaijan is a goodwill message to the Muslim community and to the whole world. Major goals of The Year of Islamic Solidarity are to strengthen unity in the Muslim world and to show the whole world that Islam is a religion of peace and culture. I think that apart from being a sporting event, the Islamic Solidarity Games to be held in Baku this May will be the days of unity and solidarity of the Islamic world. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 Trend: Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev has sent a congratulatory letter to President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae-in. I cordially congratulate you on the occasion of your confident victory in the presidential election in the Republic of Korea, said Ilham Aliyev in his letter. I attach particular importance to the overall development of bilateral and multilateral relations with the Republic of Korea, President Aliyev noted. It is with great pleasure that I would like to emphasize that relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Korea have become multifaceted and dynamic in nature over the last years. Successful development of bilateral fruitful cooperation between our friendly countries, in particular in political, economic, cultural and humanitarian fields, characterizes the 25 year-period of our diplomatic ties. I believe that through joint efforts we will continue to strengthen and expand the existing friendly relations and cooperation between our countries in the best interests of our peoples, Ilham Aliyev said. Please accept my best wishes for your robust health and happiness and for the lasting peace and prosperity of the friendly people of Korea, President Aliyev added. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 Trend: May 10 marks the 94th birthday anniversary of the architect and founder of the modern independent state of Azerbaijan, outstanding statesman, and national leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev. On the birthday anniversary of the national leader, the country's public representatives, people coming to Baku from various parts of Azerbaijan and the guests put wreaths and flowers at Heydar Aliyev's grave in the Alley of Honor and pay tribute to the cherished memory of the great leader. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Samir Ali Trend: Presentation of the M-346 jet trainer, produced by Italys Leonardo Aircraft Division, took place in one of the airbases of Azerbaijans Air Force, said the press service of Azerbaijans Defense Ministry. The leadership of the Defence Ministry inspected the aircraft, after which a comprehensive briefing was given on the aircrafts specifications. City police say a 64-year-old man walked into the lobby of the hospital and shot himself in the head with a handgun late Wednesday afternoon. Police say no one heard the man threaten anyone else before the shooting. The man was still alive after the suicide attempt. The medical staff decided he needed to be taken by helicopter ambulance to a hospital in Springfield. Mercy Hospital Lebanon did not go into lockdown status. People in the lobby were moved to the Emergency Room entrance until the scene could be cleared and cleaned up. A hospital chaplain was available to talk to anyone who may have witnessed the shooting. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Samir Ali Trend: The 13th International Defense Industry Fair IDEF-2017 has been opened in Turkeys Istanbul. Azerbaijans Ministry of Defense Industry is also represented at the exhibition, said the ministry in a message May 10. According to the message, Azerbaijans Defense Industry Minister Yavar Jamalov attended the opening of the exhibition. The ministry participated in IDEF for the first time in 2009, presenting 29 items of defense-related products, and currently, the ministry showcases 260 samples of its products at the IDEF 2017. A number of samples of new products of local production, presented for the first time at the Istanbul exhibition, which is attended by about 300 companies from 50 countries, aroused great interest. As part of the exhibition, Jamalov met with Turkeys National Defense Minister Fikri Isik and several heads of military-industrial companies. Jamalov also met with the leadership of Defense Ministry and Defense Industry Ministry of Mongolia. During the meeting, discussions were held on the establishment of cooperation in the sphere of defense industry between the two countries. Azerbaijans Defense Minister Colonel General Zakir Hasanov and representatives of other law enforcement agencies also visited the stand of Azerbaijans Defense Industry Minister at the IDEF 2017. During the exhibition, which will last until May 12, Jamalov is expected to meet with heads of delegations participating in the exhibition. The delegations will be informed about the third Azerbaijan International Defense Exhibition (ADEX 2018), which will be held in Azerbaijan in 2018. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 Trend: Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva has today visited Thalassemia Center. Minister of Healthcare Ogtay Shiraliyev informed Leyla Aliyeva about treatment of children at the Center, which was built under The Life without Thalassemia project. Thalassemia Center opened in 2009. Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva chatted with children being treated at the Center. On behalf of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, children with osteoporosis were given medicines. The Heydar Aliyev Foundation constructed the Thalassemia Center in Baku to create a qualified center and blood bank in Azerbaijan, prepare high-qualified personnel in the country, develop a voluntary donor service to provide safe and high quality blood to thalassemia-affected children, promote awareness-raising to prevent the expansion of thalassemia and enhance cooperation with foreign countries in fighting thalassemia. ONE FOR THE ROAD Editors Note: In response to an invitation to classic car owners to share their vehicle love stories, more than a dozen car buffs contacted La Jolla Light to be interviewed about their prize possessions. In this new series, we present their delightful roadster experiences. There is no other ride, even in a modern car, like one in an old Rolls-Royce, claims Ed Parrish of La Jolla, the proud owner of a 1967 silver and black Rolls-Royce named Sir Raleigh. Synonymous with luxury and coolness, the same model was driven by Steve McQueen in the 1968 sexy thriller The Thomas Crowne Affair, and was featured in the 1980s commercial for Grey Poupon mustard, in which a Rolls-Royce pulls up alongside another Rolls-Royce, and a passenger in one asks Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon? The other responds, But of course! and the closing shot is of the Grey Poupon jar being passed between the vehicles. The car has both extinct features like cigarette lighters and serving trays in the back for your Champagne, of course and modern standards, like an automatic transmission and 6.5 liter V8 engine. Rare for its time, the cars German-built body has lightweight aluminum and steel, whereas only race cars would have aluminum on the body. It was one of the early Rolls-Royce models to include disc brakes and other safety improvements, such as across-the-shoulder belts, while in the United States, cars only featured across-the-lap belts. An aerospace engineer by training, Ed purchased the car in 2011 after he and his wife Carolyn retired in La Jolla. We lived in Arizona before we moved here in 2004, and one day we were driving through Coronado and my wife saw an old Rolls parked on the side of the road and said, We ought to get one of those someday. In 2011, this car was parked down the street with a For Sale sign on it. So I bought it, he said. I took a chance and its worked out pretty well. The name Sir Raleigh came soon after, in honor of English writer/poet Sir Walter Raleigh. In researching the cars history, Ed learned the car spent some time in West Palm Beach Florida, was once owned by a woman in Beverly Hills, and for an unknown reason, was confiscated and auctioned-off by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How it got from Beverly Hills to a Federal auction, I dont know and I dont want to know, Ed joked. When he brought it home, the car was in less-than-perfect condition. Or, as wife Carolyn puts it, It was a sloppy mess! He did a lot of work on it to get it how it is today. But because older cars are not as reliant on technology as modern cars (and because of Eds know-how), restoring the car to its current condition and fixing any problems that arise, arent an issue for the most part. I grew up with cars you could work on. My dad would change the oil and make repairs, so I learned how to do that, Ed explained. As an engineer, I enjoy designing and making things, and when they break, I get to go back in and fix them. That was my career. I also like to understand how things work, so I like working on this car. Most modern cars are computer-controlled and hard for most people to fix without special training. There are some things I need to take Sir Raleigh into a shop for, but other things I can do myself. To collect information and resources, Ed said he turns to the invaluable Internet, to find digital car forums specific to his car, and international car clubs that post electronic versions of service manuals. He shops online to purchase parts and watches repair videos on youtube.com Thats not to say that getting the work done isnt expensive due to the rarity of parts. One of the first repairs Sir Raleigh needed was brake work, which cost $2,500. When it came time to replace the hub caps, they rang in at $150 apiece. But thats what it costs to do it right, Ed insisted. You have to be careful with these old cars because they can be money pits. With this car, it would be worth more in parts than the car itself, he added. But I like it, it rides like nothing else. To take advantage of the upscale feeling and smooth ride, Ed often donates A ride around La Jolla in a Rolls-Royce to auctions for organizations he supports. Earlier this month, he took a group of ladies who won the item on a drive around Mount Soledad. But thats about as seriously as the Parrishes take having an old restored car. This is not a show car, or a parade car, its just a nice old car that is fun to drive, Ed said. Some of the cars in car shows are driven off the trailer, onto the grass and then back onto the trailer, but thats all the driving they get. This is fun to drive around and it has some blemishes. And thats OK. Added Carolyn, People with pristine cars live in mortal fear of scraping or denting them, but we got a mark on Sir Raleigh early on, and after that it wasnt a big deal. Life happens. We dont take it too seriously and it shows that we arent snobby about it. She added that people feel comfortable approaching them with questions about the car. Ed said the most common are where he got it? How much it costs to maintain? And how many miles are on it? Surprisingly, he said there are only around 50,000 miles on Sir Raleigh, to date. Whether its up close or through a window, it makes people smile, and thats what I really like about it, Ed said. Editors Note: In response to an invitation to classic car owners to share their vehicle love stories, more than a dozen car buffs contacted La Jolla Light to be interviewed about their prize possessions. In this new series, we present their delightful roadster experiences. Next week: Taylor Miller talks about her mermaid car; a pink 1956 T-Bird. A 9-minute-long bank robbery thriller, written and directed by 20-year-old La Jolla resident Tanner Perry, was selected for the Cannes Festival Short Film Corner, a networking event that runs parallel to the film festival, May 17-28, where industry professionals and up-and-coming filmmakers share knowledge, space and (camera) shots. I think that one of the things that impressed (the judges) was the quality of work we did being so young, Perry told La Jolla Light. The we means Perry, Vlad Jebran and Noah Wilson, partners in a La Jolla-based small production company named SpiderBite. Although he wont be competing for one of the sought-after awards, Perry said he believes the opportunity is still very prestigious and extremely lucky, and a chance to network and get ready to become feature film makers. The film, Aftermath, describes the events that occur after a bank robbery goes wrong. For Perry, what amazed him about the production was how well my actors did, so a big shout-out to them because they portrayed the emotions and feelings like any adult actor would. For both of my lead actors, this was their first time doing anything film-related, he explained. A La Jolla High School grad, Perry attends Mesa Community College and works at a clothing store at UTC Mall. I never went to film school, never got any training, he said. I just watched people do it. (The film) looks amazing, the actors work really well, I think Im a pretty decent writer and Im generally impressed with the overall project. Inspiration for the script came when he was revisiting old SpiderBite projects. It was a good story, there were things there that were missing, but it was a good story, so I decided to pick it up and add to it, he explained. Perry shot the film mostly at a trailer park in Logan Heights for a total of four days, which followed a month-long pre-production, in color, and using his own camera. (I used) the kit lens (the default lens that comes with the camera), though a lot of filmmakers use a bunch of fancy lenses, and since we were working on a budget, its mostly hand-held or on a tripod. After that, he edited the piece on his own, which he said was the most difficult part of the process. During his years at La Jolla High School, he worked as an actor in some 10 performances. I go to Vons in La Jolla, and parents of my classmates would say to me, I saw you in that play 2-3 years ago, he said, adding that the experience he gained was instrumental to his filmmaking, One thing that outs me as a good director is I did start as an actor, so I know how to talk to an actor at a level theyre going to understand, so we both have a mutual understanding of what Im trying to do. Although he said he is still somewhat pursuing an acting career, with an agent that sometimes gets him auditions in L.A., For now my main focus is behind the camera. Im not beat up by not doing as much acting, Im having fun thats for sure. His favorite directors are Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), but he watches movies of all genres. I watch action, crime, drama, rom coms I try to watch everything that I can so I have a mindset of what can be done. I feel like for anyone to be a (film) director, you have to be open to anything and everything, so you can really feel out what people want to see and you want to tell, different perspectives make it good, in my opinion, he added. Perry moved to La Jolla six years ago when his dad, KUSI reporter Brad Perry, got a job in the area. Since moving to California and La Jolla, Ive met and made so many great relationships and people. Im very happy to be here and I dont want to leave any time soon, he said. To pay for the travel costs, he started a fundraiser at gofundme.com/goingtocannes A group of La Jollans called Citizens for Responsible Coastal Development (CRCD) are proposing a new era for construction projects in La Jolla. Their proposal, which is now being distributed among community groups, has the potential to change the way new building projects are done in the Coastal Zone and solve the problems contractors and neighbors have been complaining about for years if it garners enough support locally and, eventually, from the San Diego City Council. The proposed Coastal Development Permit (CDP) exemption, which pertains to coastal single-family residential areas within the La Jolla Community Plan, offers a fair, predictable and cost-effective review process based on an incentive system that rewards good design practices with extra square meters for over-the-counter building permits. In July 2015, an ad-hoc subcommittee formed out of La Jolla Community Planning Association (LJCPA) determined to end the mansionization of La Jolla, namely the building of houses that are out-of-character and too big for their neighborhoods. Before it disbanded in February 2016, and started proceeding as CRCD (without the constraints of the Brown Act), members found their enemy had a nickname, the 50 percent rule. In the San Diego Municipal Code, the 50 percent rule is defined in article 126.0704, Exemptions from a Coastal Development Permit, as: The demolition or removal of 50 percent or more of the exterior walls of the existing structure. This, according to CRCD member Diane Kane means, If you are keeping at least 50 percent of the exterior walls at an existing home, you dont need a CDP. For Kane, the problem came when developers started interpreting the rule in more liberal ways. Since the coastal zone was enacted in the 1970s, what we call the 50 percent rule has turned into complete tear downs where people are keeping two walls of studs, and theyre building completely around it with entirely new homes. So the reality is almost nobody is going for a CDP. The number of projects the community group overseeing most of La Jollas development permits (Development Permit Review committee) reviews has sunk in the past few years. As La Jolla Light previously reported, in 2015 the committee reviewed a record number of projects (36), five more than the year before (31) and since has been declining, with 22 project in 2016 and so far in 2017 three projects have come forward for review, one of them being an application to convert existing dwelling units into condominiums. Developer Tim Golba, who has collaborated with CRCD on the proposal, articulates a different point of view. In his experience, the cost of a CDP has risen from $10,000 to $12,000 (10 years ago) to $30,000 to $50,000 today for a single-family residency, factoring in fees, consultants and other costs associated with supplying the information and complying with the requirements. From my clients perspectives, they see (a CDP) as a major impediment to move forward, so they look for exception criteria to avoid it. The current system the City has, and its been on the books for a long time, is the 50 percent rule, he told the Light. Golba admits to having used the 50 percent rule many times but, in his words, the exemption is ripe for abuse. One of the ways the rule is abused, he explains, consists of completing a total teardown in two or three 50 percent remodels, keeping half the walls each time. But, for him, the worst part of the current exemption, is the lack of options for good design. There are design principals you want to employ, but youre handcuffed by this crazy set of rules from the City. And thats the most frustrating part, because almost every client wants to desperately avoid whats becoming a more costly process, which is financially crippling to a lot of clients. Its time to find something thats better, Golba concluded. A long-awaited solution The proposal, named Incentive-based zoning for coastal development, suggests giving over-the-counter permits to all developments in the coastal, single-family zone under 0.4 Floor Area Ratio (FAR). The FAR shows the relationship between the constructed square footage and the size of the lot. (The allowable FAR for most of La Jolla is 0.6.) But thats a tricky thing, too, Kane says. The other problem is the definition of what goes into the FAR is incredibly liberal, people have learned how to work around it. Features such as underground basements, roofs or patio decks, storage units, porches, balconies and carports are currently not taken into consideration when calculating the FAR. The proposal requires a more conservative definition of FAR, including all built portions of a structure. Projects that, abiding by this definition have a calculated FAR under 0.4 and comply with an 11-point list of base conditions, can obtain ministerial, over-the-counter permits, avoiding the CDP process. The check list includes elements such as setbacks, height, mature trees, landscaping, public views and grading. (If you comply with that) you can do whatever you want. Go to the counter, stamp your plans, and youre out of there. No CDP, no problema, Kane said. If you want to get up to 0.6 FAR, theres some additional things you need to do, Kane added, referring to the incentive-based system included in the proposal. For example, if the design is for a single-story house, you automatically earn 0.1 FAR to add to your structure. Other design practices, such as breaking up the building mass, setting back the second story from the first or placing a roof deck in the center of the design, allow for extra FAR points up to 0.6. For CRCD chair Sharon Wampler, this approach is a win-win-win, because 1) people are not going to have to work around the 50 percent rule, the builders and homeowners will save money, and they can build what they want as long as its in context and respectful to the community; 2) the neighbors wont freak as much because theres going to be a context, now they wont wake up one day and have a 30-foot wall right next to their yard; and 3) the City will have an easier time and wont have any complaints. Group members have met with District 1 City Council member Barbara Bry, who has offered her support. Bry told the Light, Preserving the unique character of our single-family residential neighborhoods is one of my priorities as Council member. I want to make sure that there is a fair and transparent review process that addresses community concerns and also respects the rights of property owners. In the following weeks, community planning committees and subcommittees will discuss the proposal during regular meetings. CRCD will try to garner their support before presenting the plan to the San Diego City Council. You can find community group agendas at bit.ly/LaJollaAgendas Plans for a new $1 million day spa attached to the La Valencia Hotel were approved at the La Jolla Community Planning Association (LJCPA) meeting, May 4. Dubbed Spa La V, the facility will occupy the three-story house at 1125 Coast Blvd., which is owned by the Hotel and located next to the staircase that connects Prospect Street to Coast Boulevard. It will be open to the public. If all proceeds on target, work will start next month for a grand opening in December. La Valencia Hotel managing director Mark Dibella told La Jolla Light the intention is to have a grand opening on Dec. 15 the Hotels 91st anniversary. Nearly all the remodeling work for Spa La V would be to the interior, including adding a new elevator and spa facilities. The exterior work would include adding a new deck, privacy walls and entry court, along with modifications to select openings. The color and style of the building will keep the current aesthetic pink where possible. Project plans were previously heard and approved by La Jollas Planned District Ordinance committee. The item was presented for full LJCPA review largely to answer questions about potential historicity. Dibella, along with designers and architects, attended the meeting to speak about their respective contributions. The Hotel itself is historic and the property (in question) sits adjacent the Hotel. The house was built at the turn-of-the-century and has been remodeled twice. It was acquired by the Hotel in the 1990s, Dibella said. They were once apartments, but the property hasnt been used as apartments for quite some time. Addressing potential historicity, Kerry Algaze, director of planning and development for Pacifica Hotels (which owns La Valencia) added, The City determined the property is not an individually designated resource but in 2013, the City determined the property is potentially historic. The City reviewed the plans to see if they were consistent with the Secretary of Interiors Standards for Treatment Historic Property. Algaze said the first version of the plan was not consistent with those standards, so the City recommended design changes to make it compliant. We agreed to make the revisions the City requested, such as retaining certain windows and doors. With the changes, the project scope does not adversely affect the buildings historic posture, she said. La Jolla Historical Society executive director Heath Fox spoke in praise of the project, claiming there couldnt be a better outcome for this building. Fox said, Weve been monitoring this project and been in communication with the hotel management and the Citys Historical Resources Board staff. They have been working collaboratively to make sure the historic characteristics of the building remain. This is a classic adaptive reuse historic preservation project where the historic exterior of the building is retained and the interior is adaptively reused for a purpose that is relevant to today and tomorrow. We are fully supportive of it. Landscape architect David McCullough said some of the plants would be removed, but the mature trees will stay in place around the spa. There would also be a privacy hedge, which will be more natural and subtle than a wall. Its a beautiful property, but a little bit overgrown, McCullough said. What we want to do is keep the plant material consistent with the Hotel so the experience when you walk from the Hotel to the spa is similar. Its more cleaning up and adding than anything else. The hedge will be California Bay Leaf, and while it can grow up to 15 feet tall, it will be trimmed to 6-8 feet. All said, LJCPA voted to ratify the findings of the PDO committee, 13-0-2 Spa La V amenities Dibella later told La Jolla Light that with the LJCPA approval, he expects work to begin in mid to late June and take about five months. Once open, Spa La V will have six indoor treatment rooms and two on the outside deck to offer experiential services, such as massage with sea salts and aromatherapy. Its rare to have a California Craftsman-style house with ocean-facing windows and we feel that setting is all part of the experience, Dibella said, adding that custom services could be added to a massage such as hot rocks and body wraps. A 60-minute massage would start at $125. There will also be a food and drink menu to accompany spa services and down the line, a larger wellness program that includes fitness training. KITCHEN SHRINK Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac, and the church banned it from nunneries. Barbara Kingslover Ahh, the seductive asparagus spear, considered the caviar of the vegetable world, heralds the arrival of spring as bright green bunches line produce aisles and farmers market stands. Close to botanical perfection, this member of the lily family has but one quirky trait it perfumes urine with an odiferous pungency as a result of the chemical breakdown of amino acids, specifically asparagusic acid. Get the best out of these seasonal treasures while theyre good and plenty during their peak season from April to June. On the Stalk Market While the most popular variety of asparagus is the green-hued, this delicacy comes in shades of purple and white. The latter version is grown beneath mounds of sandy soil to stave off photosynthesis and the formation of the plants green-pigmented chlorophyll, while purple and pink plants are naturally occurring Italian varieties thanks to the presence of an antioxidant-rich pigment called anthocyanins, and 40 genes (compared to half that in green varieties). For a milder, less grassy flavor, choose white ones; for a zippier, more bitter taste, go for the purple stalks. Asparagus Tips When picking asparagus, look for firm stalks with smooth unblemished skin, and uniform color. Tips should be dry and tightly packed. Store for several days in the refrigerator either wrapped in a dampened paper towel, or standing upright in a shallow cup of water. For more tender spears, trim stringy, wood-like ends and peel two inches from the bottom with a potato peeler. Wine pairing is tricky with asparagus as it contains a sulphur compound that imparts a metallic taste to the drink. Best to serve grassy, aromatic white wines like Italian Prosecco or cool climate ones with herbal notes. Steer clear of astringent wines like reds with high levels of tannins. Boys of Summer Being dioecious asparagus has both male and female plants. The female species produces fruit as the flower morphs into little red berries. This energy intense process results in puny, slender female stalks compared to thick, brawny male ones, making the boys the preferred choice of growers. Stalk Up Asparagus is a potent package of phytonutrients, containing a rich store of vitamins (A, Bs including folate, C, E and K) to boost the immune system, calm the nerves, promote healthy blood clotting and pregnancies, and enhance eye, skin and heart health. Packed with assorted minerals from copper, iron, and selenium to potassium, calcium and manganese asparagus balances fluids and stabilizes other metabolic functions, while boosting bone health. Theres more. Its source of inulin makes this mighty spear a digestive aid, while high fiber content keeps the constitution humming. Asparagus also contains a detoxifying substance called glutathione, which clobbers free radicals and lowers cancer risks, while its anti-inflammatory properties keep joints well lubricated, and the brain on its toes. Finally, this jolly green giant has been known to elevate mood, promote a restful sleep, and even alleviate hangover symptoms. Grilling to Chilling Asparagus is just as delightful cold as warm, raw as cooked, enlivening breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks. It pairs well with creamy Hollandaise, a balsamic glaze, sweet cream butter, Parmesan shavings, bacon or pancetta. Blend in frittatas, risottos, pasta dishes, crepe fillings, stir-fries or salads for an added crunch and antioxidant oomph. Juice spears with carrots, lemons, cucumbers or tart apples. Or serve solo either raw as crudites with a Greek yoghurt dip, or grilled, steamed, barbecued, sauteed, broiled or wrapped in pancetta or bacon as an impressive appetizer. Recipe: Bacon-Wrapped Asparagus Ingredients: 24 asparagus, trimmed; 6 slices thick-cut bacon; 3 tablespoons virgin olive oil; 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika; chopped scallions Method: Preheat oven to 400 F. Whisk together oil and seasonings. Set aside. Divide asparagus into 6 bunches. Wrap bacon around each bunch. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with oil mixture. Bake 15 minutes or until bacon is cooked. Drain. Garnish with chopped scallions. Catharine Kaufman can be reached by e-mail: kitchenshrink@san.rr.com WALWORTH The village board agreed it will look into ways to better communicate with the community at the meeting Monday night. The villages website has added a calendar and updated its information, as suggested by some of the trustees. Additionally, each trustee will soon have their own village-assigned email. New trustee Dan Banks said communicating to the public is something the board can improve on and suggested that each board member should have an official email account. Currently many trustees use their personal email accounts for village business. We can have up to 15 more emails through the village at no cost, Banks said. With our personal emails, they can be subject to open records because we are using them for board issues. Since we have the resources to get village emails, I think we should use them. He said that once assigned, those village emails will be posted on the villages website, in order to better communicate with the public. In addition, Id like to list the names of each board member and the committees we are on, Banks said. Village President Tom Connelly said he thinks Banks idea is worth pursuing. I also did some research, and we can do SSL emails, free of charge, which I strongly recommend, Connelly said. There is a huge difference between a regular, standard email account versus a SSL encryption. And since this is government email, we should use the safer option. An SSL encryption establishes a secure link between a server and a browser. The board also decided that once a trustees term was finished, they will not have access to the email address anymore. The email account will be deactivated, but the village will still have access for open records, Trustee Ed Snyder said. In other business: A special meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, May 15 will be held to discuss the amended fireworks ordinance. The village attorney has looked at the ordinance and made amendments to ensure it is legal; however village board members did not all have time to read his changes. The May 15 meeting was set up to ensure that all board members were informed before taking action. Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish, the quote is attributed to John Quincy Adams. Everyone, at some time or another, is hit with a proverbial ton of bricks. An unexpected, Mount Vesuvius-sized challenge comes crashing into our lives. It may come after a job loss, the death of a friend, an illness or another one of lifes unplanned hardships. We are often defined by our responses to the unexpected and tragic. As we look at our challenges, we can also look at others to provide us with some inspiration. The story of Wanda Diaz Merced is one which can provide anyone with a shot in the arm. Shes an astrophysicist who recently visited Yerkes Observatory to participate in a program called IDATA, or Innovators Developing Accessible Tools for Astronomy. The native of Gurabo, Puerto Rico, was studying astronomy when she lost her vision. She became blind in her early 20s. Would anyone blame her if she didnt continue studying a visually-oriented science? Probably not. However, she persevered. She earned a multidisciplinary PhD from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where she researched using sound to analyze astrophysical data. When reading her story, one may wonder whether they would continue their own career if they suddenly lost their vision. Could Regional News reporters continue to write stories or editorials? At first, one may think it would be too difficult, but if Diaz Merced manages to study the night sky, someone here could continue to report and write. Merced believes science should be accessible to anyone. Science is about exploring, said Merced. With this belief, shes kept her disability from limiting her exploration. General Electric currently is airing a commercial featuring Millie Dresselhaus. Dresselhaus, a famed female scientist, is shown given the same amount of press as any A-list celebrity. The goal of the commercial, other than promoting GE, is to push more women toward science fields. Unfortunately, Dresselhaus died on Feb. 20, but if GE is looking for another inspirational scientist to highlight perhaps they should reach out to Diaz Merced. Diaz Merced may not be as accomplished as Dresselhaus after all, few are but her story is certainly one to admire. The Regional News editorial board consists of General Manager and Editor Rob Ireland, Resorter Editor and Special Projects Coordinator Jessica Franzene, Office Manager Sue Hinske and Managing Editor David Michels. In April of 1904, Lincoln Steffens was featured on the cover of McClures magazine, as the author of an article entitled, Enemies of the Republic. Sharing this space was a colleague, Ida Tarbell, who had written The Breaking Up of the Standard Oil Trust. Both were what President Theodore Roosevelt lauded as muckrakers. Today we would call them investigative reporters. Recently, the Trump Administration characterized those in the media as enemies of the people. A century ago, the danger to the public was to be found in the nations corporate headquarters, not in the composing rooms of daily newspapers. Lincoln Steffens became notable for his expose, The Jungle. A book that unflinchingly catalogued the diseased meat products that were sold by Chicago processors, resulting in the sickness and death of hundreds and thousands of consumers. Tarbell advocated for the restructuring of John D. Rockefellers Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey. A vertically integrated monopoly that choked off competition, burdened consumers and stifled the nations economy. If these examples seem too far removed from the present, consider the following headline. Chemicals in Barrels put many in Danger, from the February 23, 2017 copy of USA TODAY. Charles Duggan was a young man, 23 years old, who was hired by Mid-America IBC to process containers filled with toxic and potentially combustible chemicals. He was not trained properly. This failure cost him his life when the materials he was working with blew up and killed him in 1984. Will Kramer, a consultant with Safety Management Services Co. witnessed the consistent refusal of Mid-America IBC to comply with federal regulations, endangering not just its employees but the lives of families living nearby in Oak Creek, only an hours drive from Lake Geneva. Mr. Kramer also recorded Mid-America IBC executives making jokes when employees got hurt and others in the company falsifying safety plans. Another story of corporate irresponsibility appeared in the April 6, 2016 issue of The New York Times: Donald Blankenship Sentenced in Mine Safety Case. Gary Wayne Quarles and Howard D. Payne died in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine, in Raleigh County, West Virginia, along with 27 others. They were the victims of willful negligence by CEO Don Blankenship. They were found guilty of safety violations that included permitting illegal levels of coal dust, low air quality and issuing worn or defective equipment to workers. Why is the welfare of wage-earners so carelessly endangered? What accounts for the deaths of those at Mid-America IBC and the Big Branch mine? The answer? Criminally negligent business practices that place profit before people, sales above scruple and shareholder dividends ahead of investment in practices that create a safe work environment. The Enemies of the Republic are not the media or government interference. The truth? Rolling back regulations invites policies that foul the air, pollute our waterways, ravage public lands for private gain and jeopardize workers lives. Regulation is not an absolute good. It is, however, an absolute necessity. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: Azerbaijan has invested $799.3 million in the Southern Gas Corridor project since early 2017, said director general of the Southern Gas Corridor CJSC Afghan Isayev. He noted that $6.6 billion, or around 53 percent of $12.4 billion worth funds required for the implementation of the project in 2014-2019, has already been spent. Moreover, Isayev informed that 92 percent of work on the Shah Deniz 2 project, 83.8 percent of the South Caucasus Pipeline Expansion project, 69 percent of Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and 40.3 percent of Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is complete. The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of gas from the Caspian region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey. At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage. As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans Adriatic Pipeline. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn Honoring Cesar Chavez Op Ed by Ruben Martinez, Ph.D. Cesar Chavez died near his hometown of Yuma, AZ on April 22, 1993 at the age of 66. Chavez was in San Luis, AZ to assist UFW attorneys defend the union against a lawsuit brought by Bruce Church Inc. (BCI), a giant California-based lettuce and vegetable producer. Eastern Michigan University's 12th annual Cesar Chavez celebration YPSILANTI: Eastern Michigan University is the most diverse university in Michigan, which it holds as a defining and singular strength. As part of that, EMU is proud to host various events throughout the year that celebrate all races, cultures and ethnicities. Por: Isabel Flores, corresponsal La Prensa DETROIT, MI: La Comision Nacional de Libros de Textos Gratuitos (Conaliteg) cuenta en su portal de internet con el acervo digital de todos los libros de texto gratuitos para el ciclo escolar 2019 - 2020. El catalogo puede consultarse en la direccion: http:/libros.conaliteg.gob.mx De esta manera, los ninos podran mantenerse entretenidos con informacion en su propio idioma y estar al dia con sus materias, mientras se encuentran en casa por la contingencia. Census 2020: Todos Debemos ser Contados PRESS RELEASE Bankers Fear Glass-Steagalls Enormous Political Power May 9, 2017 (EIRNS)"Glass-Steagall has enormous political power. Its one of the issues where you see agreement in principle from the far left and far right." That statement by Wall Street bum Isaac Boltansky (Director of Policy Research at Compass Point Research & Trading) is the final punchline of todays CNN Money article fretting about President Trumps announcement that he is studying a revival of FDRs Glass-Steagall banking separation act. CNN Money puts its hopes on some softer "version" of Glass-Steagall being adopted. As Margaret Tahyar, partner at the big-bank-representing Davis Polk firm, told CNN: "They all use the words Glass-Steagall, but they have nothing in common with each other. Were talking about a fish, a bird and a reptile." CNNs summary of these animals went like this: There is the White House version, which top administration officials Mnuchin and Cohn have hinted could be "something far more relaxed" than the other two versions: the "aggressive" Warren-McCain proposal which "looks like more of an attempt to bring back the original Glass-Steagall," and FDIC No. 2 Thomas Hoenigs "higher-fences," more "middle ground" version. But, CNN admits, "no matter the meaning behind the various proposals, Glass-Steagall talk isnt going away anytime soon." Likewise, the "Bank Watch" column of the Charlotte Observer, the leading newspaper of Charlotte, North Carolina, the second-largest financial center in the U.S., admitted yesterday, that for all the talk that this is just rhetoric, "its fair to say bankers in Charlotte are keeping a close eye on what happens." The Observer ruminates on "What would Bank of America, Wells Fargo and potentially other banks look like under a new Glass-Steagall? How many Charlotte jobs would be affected? How are bank executives responding?" And the big one: "How likely is this?" PRESS RELEASE Moon and the Sunshine Policy Win South Korean Election May 9, 2017 (EIRNS)As anticipated in the polls, Moon Jae-in has won the South Korean presidential election handily. Exit polls have him winning about 40%, with the second- and third-place candidates, another liberal and the conservative candidate, each winning just over 20%. Moon will be sworn in as president on Wednesday morning. As chief of staff to former President Roh Moo-hyun, who followed President Kim Daejung and continued the Sunshine Policy toward the North (a development and cooperation approach to move towards reunification), Moon will certainly revive that policy. He has opposed the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to South Korea, but is mainly focused now on the manner in which it was deployedwithout consulting the National Assembly, and not waiting for the new government to weigh in. As reported earlier, Moon granted an interview to the Washington Post in which he shocked the reporter by praising Trump, and indicating that he thought they could work together on solving the issues with the North. PRESS RELEASE Senior U.S., Russian Diplomats Meet in New York May 9, 2017 (EIRNS)In preparation for a May 10 meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in New York yesterday. "The consultations with Shannon were comprehensive and quite useful. It would be an exaggeration to say that we moved ahead on all issues, but we managed to reach more understanding on some bilateral issues than before," Ryabkov told TASS afterwards. Among the points of friction that Ryabkov was referring to, are the Russian government-owned diplomatic facilities that President Obama shut down before he left office. "The meeting has helped draw up certain issues more thoroughly and better, particularly for their further consideration at the level of Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Tillerson. I assume that Syria will top the talks, which is why Mr. Shannon and I have done some work to ease the bilateral agenda for the ministers to some extent so that they get around to Syria and other international issues," Ryabkov said. Wolfgang Puck receives The Times first Gold Award As part of Food Bowl, this Mays monthlong food festival, The Los Angeles Times is presenting the first Gold Award to chef Wolfgang Puck. The Gold Award is to be given to a California chef annually, with the idea of honoring culinary excellence and Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: Eight companies have expressed interest in the new tender for privatization of Greek natural gas grid operator DESFA, Greek media reported. Reportedly, these companies are Belgian Fluxys, Italian Snam, Dutch Gasunie, Spanish Enagas, Romanian Transgaz, as well as new players like the French GRTgas, SFPI and Marguerite. Earlier, Greek Ministry of Energy and Environment told Trend that investors from third countries can take part in the new tender on DESFA, but in partnership with the European Gas Transmission System Operator. In March 2017, the Board of Directors of Greeces Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) decided to proceed with a new tender for DESFA. Earlier, Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR won a tender in 2013 on the purchase of a 66-percent stake in DESFA for 400 million euros. SOCAR intended to obtain a 31-percent stake from the Greek government and to buy a 35-percent stake in Hellenic Petroleum. It was expected that the deal will be closed only after the purchase of at least a 17-percent stake out of SOCARs 66-percent by Italys Snam. SOCAR, Snam and Greek government have been holding intensive talks against the background of changes in legislation that affected DESFAs financial position and market value. However, the parties were unable to reach an understanding and consequently, the deal was terminated Nov. 30, 2016. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn President Trumps sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday was nearly unprecedented. Some observers compared the dismissal to Richard Nixons infamous Saturday Night Massacre, in which Nixon had Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox fired. But the Richard Nixon Presidential Library doesnt appreciate the comparison. On Tuesday, after the news of Comeys firing broke, the Nixon Library tweeted from its official account FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian. FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian pic.twitter.com/PatArKOZlk RichardNixonLibrary (@NixonLibrary) May 9, 2017 Advertisement Cox was fired on Oct. 20, 1973, after the special prosecutor attempted to subpoena the president, seeking tapes of conversations recorded in the Oval Office. Nixon refused, and asked Atty. Gen. Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson declined to fire Cox, and resigned. William Ruckelshaus, the deputy attorney general, also refused to dismiss Cox, and also resigned. Cox was then fired by Robert Bork, the solicitor general at the time. The Nixon Library, using the hashtag #SaturdayNightMassacre, reiterated on Twitter that Richardson and Ruckelshaus resigned, and were not fired. Presidential libraries dont often get involved in contemporary politics. Many Twitter users were delighted by the librarys tweet, including writer and editor Ted Genoways and Washington Post opinion writer Jonathan Capehart. Dude, @realDonaldTrump, when you're getting trolled by the Nixon Library... https://t.co/ywn6ZXLx80 Ted Genoways (@TedGenoways) May 10, 2017 You know things are messed up when you're getting shade from the Nixon Library. https://t.co/J6y3HnMjWE Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) May 10, 2017 At the New Yorker, Jeffrey Frank tried to explain how Comeys firing both is and isnt like the Saturday Night Massacre. Frank quoted John Dean, Nixons White House counsel and a witness for the prosecution in the Watergate hearings, as saying, If they think they can influence the Russian investigation by removing Comey, they are naive. I learned from my own experience that you cant put in the fix by removing somebody. Nvidia, the hot graphics chip company thats moving quickly into new markets, said Toyota would be using its chips and software in the carmakers autonomous vehicles. Tesla already uses Nvidia chips to process the artificial intelligence software that guides its Autopilot technology. Toyota joins Audi, Mercedes, Volvo and other major auto industry players using Nvidia chips for research and production vehicles. Advertisement Now weve got the biggest [auto company] in Japan using our drive platform, said Danny Shapiro, senior director of Nvidias automotive group. Toyota is the second-largest automaker in the world, close on the heels of Volkswagen. The announcement was made Wednesday at Nvidias annual GPU Technology Conference in San Jose. The company, based in Santa Clara, also announced a faster family of computer processors called the Volta. The stock market reacted favorably both to the blazingly fast Volta chip and to Nvidias strong earnings report Tuesday. Shares closed Wednesday at $121.29, up $18.35, or 17.83%, over Tuesdays closing price. Nvidia shares have nearly tripled over the last year as the company moves beyond its computer game base to provide chips that power artificial intelligence applications in areas that include automobiles and cloud services. In the auto business, Nvidia is going up against Intel, Qualcomm and other chip makers. Intel recently announced the purchase of Mobileye, which also makes self-drive sensors, chips and software. Last year, Tesla ended its relationship with Mobileye in favor of Nvidia. And Qualcomm bought NXP Semiconductors, betting that its future is in the car market. Many new cars already are equipped with self-drive features. Autonomous cars are being tested on public highways. Industry executives have said deployment of fully autonomous cars is likely within three to five years. russ.mitchell@latimes.com Twitter: @russ1mitchell Life without popular host Bill OReilly has brought lower ratings to Fox News, but its been far from a disaster for the top-rated cable news channel. Fox News has seen a 13% year-to-year decline in viewers since Tucker Carlson took over the hour held down by OReilly, its biggest prime-time star, who was fired April 19 over sexual harassment claims leveled against him. However, Carlson, who on April 24 took over the 8 p.m. Eastern time slot held down for two decades by OReilly, has retained most of the 25-to-54 age group coveted by advertisers, according to Nielsen ratings. Advertisement In his first two weeks as OReillys replacement, Carlson is averaging 2.75 million viewers, down from 3.17 million viewers during the same period in 2016. Most of those losses are among viewers ages 55 and up. Among the 25-to-54 demographic, Carlson is only down 2%. Carlsons move into the hour after OReillys departure has also meant the return of advertisers into the time period. After it was revealed that OReilly and Fox News had paid $13 million to settle claims by women who said they had been sexually harassed or verbally abused by the anchor, big-ticket sponsors left the show in droves. Although no network likes to see ratings decline, the results could have been worse after losing a major star such as OReilly, who had a strong following among Fox News viewers. Dan Hill, chief executive of Washington, D.C., strategic communications firm Hill Impact, said its not a big surprise that Fox News is weathering the lineup change and the ugly scandal that prompted it because there is no serious competition for viewers who want conservative commentary in prime time. If there was another conservative news option, they might be feeling the pain, Hill said. Hill also said loyal Fox viewers may be circling the wagons in response to the negative stories about the network. Its almost like the more detractors there are on the left, the more it emboldens their core audience, Hill said. Their viewers believe people are going after Fox because its telling the truth its part of an attack on what the right believes. But Fox News may face competition. Some media observes believe that Sinclair Broadcast Group, which recently agreed to acquire Tribune Media and its 42 TV stations, may eventually try to launch its own news service that politically skews to the right of Fox News. Carlsons ratings are off from the lofty levels that OReilly and Fox News reached in the weeks after President Trumps inauguration OReilly had nearly 4 million viewers on some nights. But CNNs ratings have dropped off as well, a sign that the novelty of Trumps unpredictable performance in the White House is becoming less of an attraction. MSNBCs ratings have remained flat since OReilly was last on the air April 11. MSNBC is being sustained by viewers anxious about the presidents policies. Those viewers are spending more time watching the channels liberal commentators in prime time. MSNBC viewers watched for an average of 310 minutes in prime time in April, up 82% over last year. That put MSNBC ahead of Fox News Channels 282 minutes, which was up 16%. CNN is down 5% to 110 minutes. Rachel Maddow, MSNBCs 9 p.m. Eastern anchor, was the most-watched prime-time anchor among the 25-to-54 audience in April. stephen.battaglio@latimes.com Twitter: @SteveBattaglio United Airlines is denying that its staff told a Missouri woman to urinate in a cup rather than leave her seat to use the restroom on a flight, and it implied that the flight in question involved one of its regional partners, Mesa Airlines. Nicole Harper told KCTV News that she had a sudden urge to urinate because of her overactive bladder on a flight last month from Houston to Kansas City, Mo. She said that a flight attendant told her she wasnt allowed to stand up because the pilot was expecting turbulence, and that she responded by saying she was going to need a cup. Harper said she filled two cups and was then escorted to the bathroom to empty the urine. Advertisement In a Facebook post, Harper said: The flight attendants treated me like I had committed a crime, stating they would be filing a report, calling in the hazmat team to clean the entire row (let me mention there was no mess involved) and told me I would need to talk with the pilot after the flight. She said the incident happened less than 30 minutes into the flight. United said in a statement that based on initial reports from our flight attendants, Harper attempted to visit the lavatory on final descent. The airline said it has reached out to Harper and Mesa Airlines to better understand what occurred. The airline industry has received a lot of backlash since last month, when video showed a United Airlines passenger being dragged off a plane. Dr. David Dao, 69, was injured and bloodied when aviation security officers pulled him from the crowded flight after he refused to give up his seat. United had picked Dao and three others to be removed from the plane so that airline employees could have seats. The April 9 incident, which was caught on cellphone video and seen worldwide, led United to apologize, adopt 10 policy changes to improve passenger service and reach an undisclosed settlement with Dao. Airline executives were even called to explain themselves before congressional panels. The passenger-dragging scandal hurt Uniteds image but has yet to damage the airlines bottom line, according to data released Monday. Times staff writers Lauren Raab and Hugo Martin contributed to this report. ALSO Airport chaos, flights canceled: Spirit Airlines apologizes American Airlines to squeeze seats closer together on new planes A terminal is opening at LAX for people willing to spend big to avoid the crowds. Heres how it works In composer Lisa Bielawas world, cows sing, a ponytailed man plays the hurdy-gurdy in the backseat of a vintage Chrysler Valiant and an escape from Alcatraz is as simple as tossing a knotted sheet rope out a prison cell window and driving off into the night to Sweden. Bielawas new opera, Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witchs Accuser, is unlike any you have seen before, in content and in form. Filmed in the historic San Francisco penitentiary (now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area) as well as other locations in the Bay Area, Southern California and New York over three years, Vireo is believed to be the first major opera project to be packaged episodically for digital distribution. For the record: An earlier version of this article reported that Vireo developed out of research that composer Lisa Bielawa conducted as a graduate student at Yale. She was an undergraduate. KCET acted as a creative partner in Vireo and will release all 12 episodes online on May 31. The station also will air the episodes back-to-back locally on TV and nationally on satellite (via Link TV) as part of a special 2-hour Artbound presentation June 13. Advertisement Translating a live performative art into something that can be binge-watched Netflix-style via computer, tablet or phone requires innovative thinking, so the diverse, boundary-breaking members of the Vireo creative team were an asset. Composer Bielawa has been working at the edge of possibility for years. In 2013, she brought together more than 800 professional and amateur musicians as part of her Crissy Broadcast, transforming San Franciscos Crissy Field into a living, breathing musical soundscape. That experience proved useful in making the Vireo episode filmed inside Alcatraz. Like Crissy Field, the islands facilities are overseen by the National Park Service. The contacts and permitting processes for both projects were essentially the same. We really went in Alcatraz through the front door, Bielawa said, adding that the experience of Vireo producer Marnie Burke de Guzman also was essential. In 2015, Burke de Guzman led the team that produced artist and activist Ai Weiweis exhibition "@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz. Once they were in the door, filming on Alcatraz presented unusual challenges and rewards. The acoustics of the former prison amplified the vocal ensembles sound magnificently. But the film team couldnt lean anything against a wall or use any tape on the floor. The crew also had to bring all of its own power generators for the complex shoot, and sound engineers had to work around wireless mikes that could not transmit through the thick concrete of cell block walls. Director Charles Otte said the biggest challenge to filming on Alcatraz was a universal one: limited time. But he also said that limitations prompt creativity. With a career in theater, opera, TV, film and gaming, Otte has frequently found himself at the intersection of creativity and new technology. For this project, he decided that the best approach would be to insert the viewer directly into the action. Early on, I decided there was no point in playing it safe, he said. There is no reason for us not to take chances and make this a piece that breaks rules. He shot every episode using a single camera (gimbal, Steadicam or hand-held) and inserted the musicians inside the action, placing them prominently throughout each set and including them in shots alongside the actors. That reality changed the way Bielawa composed her score. I was aware when I was writing the music that the camera might be right up on a cello, she said. So I was fascinated by that visual of the physicality of playing an instrument. It changed the way I wrote. I think it brought the instrumentation forward texturally. The story of Vireo is compelling and cryptic. The piece delves into the psyche of a young woman who experiences extreme visual and auditory hallucinations. Its a trippy, surrealist world where a woman in black-and-white cow print pajamas stands in a barn behind a table covered in an assortment of milks and cheeses, and, with a cowhide draped over her shoulders and pink plastic utters protruding from her stomach, looks into a camera and sings the seriousness of her rich, controlled alto tone contrasting sharply with her outlandish costume. Vireo developed out of research Bielawa conducted as an undergrad at Yale in the 1990s, when she became fascinated by micro-histories of young women across the centuries who experienced hysterical fits and the men (often doctors, priests and psychologists) who tried to understand or cure them. Erik Ehn wrote the poetic, dense libretto. Kronos Quartet was part of a long list of musicians to perform on the project. Like Hulus adaptation of Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale, the story of Vireo feels eerily pertinent today. The female gaze here is strong, effectively revealing the ugliness of patriarchal oppression as older men seek to control a young woman, poking, prodding and imprisoning her. In a grand display of of female power, opera veteran Deborah Voigt brings Wagnerian grandeur to Episode 11 as the Queen of Sweden. But it is a rising star, Rowen Sabala, who owns this show. SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter Sabala, who sings the title role, is a compelling young soprano who graduated from the Orange County School of the Arts in May 2016 and is studying vocal performance at Drake University in Des Moines. Sabalas technical ability to navigate Bielawas dense, atonal score is matched by her skill in communicating intimate emotion on-screen. Ultimately, it is her youthful abandon and connection to the role she was 16 when filming of Vireo began that makes the production sing. Watching Vireo online feels like being onstage during a live performance. It is an immersive experience that, while developed specifically for this production, could be translated to other opera recordings, engaging with the audience more easily than a traditional video shot from the seats. That the opera can be consumed in whatever way the viewer chooses all at once or in bite-sized portions also is interesting. This is opera, testing technologies and formats as it feels its way into the 21st century. Support coverage of the arts. Share this article. ALSO How SoCal became the backdrop to Lisa Bielawas opera about a hysterical woman Gustavo Dudamel dedicates concert to a slain student in Venezuela At 24, Benjamin Grosvenor delivers virtuosity beyond his years Diary of a world premiere: Join playwright Rajiv Joseph as the curtain rises on Archduke A Star Is Born: Morgan Freeman turns 80 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) I like to play characters who are the absolute opposite of me. I think the farther you get from yourself, the more fun you have because the real you is hidden away. Those are the kind of parts where you can become totally empty and let the character fill you up. Thats what I look for -- a role that gives me a chance to be someone completely different. Morgan Freeman, 1993 FROM THE ARCHIVES: No Sweat: Morgan Freeman Slides Into the Directors Chair Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Chloe Grace Moretz addresses body-shaming controversy over Snow White movie By Josh Rottenberg (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) Actress Chloe Grace Moretz has long been known as a strong voice when it comes to issues of feminism, whether its over-sexualization of female characters or equal pay for women. Now shes speaking out against the marketing campaign behind one of her own projects. Moretz went on social media Wednesday to address criticism that marketing for the animated film Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs an updated tweak on the Snow White story, with Moretz as the voice of the classic fairy-tale character engages in body-shaming. I have now fully reviewed the [marketing] for Red Shoes, I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else, this wasnt approved by me or my team, the actress wrote. According to the website of the South Korean animation studio behind the film, its story centers on a Princess who doesnt fit into the celebrity world of Princesses or their dress size. When she puts on a pair of magical red shoes, she instantly becomes skinnier. The films synopsis promises an empowering message in which Snow White learns not only to accept herself, but to celebrate who she is, inside and out. But the films trailer and other marketing materials have been blasted as fat-shaming. Plus-size model Tess Holliday took to Twitter to criticize a billboard for the film that appeared at the Cannes Film Festival, where Red Shoes was seeking distribution, that suggested that the less svelte Snow White was no longer beautiful. How did this get approved by an entire marketing team? Why is it okay to tell young kids being fat = ugly? @ChloeGMoretz pic.twitter.com/PVhgwluGTM Tess Holliday (@Tess_Holliday) May 30, 2017 Hearing the complaints about the films tone-deaf marketing, Moretz agreed and told her more than 3 million followers so in a pair of tweets. I have now fully reviewed the mkting for Red Shoes, I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else, this wasn't approved by me or my team Chloe Grace Moretz (@ChloeGMoretz) May 31, 2017 Pls know I have let the producers of the film know. I lent my voice to a beautiful script that I hope you will all see in its entirety https://t.co/IOIXYZTc3g Chloe Grace Moretz (@ChloeGMoretz) May 31, 2017 Even as she apologized, she promised that the marketing doesnt represent the complete picture and the films ultimate message is a far more positive one than initial impressions may suggest. The actual story is powerful for young women and resonated with me. I am sorry for the offense that was beyond my creative control https://t.co/HZP2ydPCAX Chloe Grace Moretz (@ChloeGMoretz) May 31, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Singing tween ventriloquist from Americas Got Talent is the cure for what ails you By Christie DZurilla Had enough outrage? Heres the cure for what ails you, courtesy of Americas Got Talent. Take a deep breath, exhale slowly and witness one Darci Lynne Farmer, a 12-year-old singing ventriloquist from Oklahoma City, who on Tuesday night got the Golden Buzzer from AGT judge Mel B for a performance that exuded unadulterated joy. Armed with bunny-puppet pal Petunia on lead vocals, Darci Lynne delivered a surprising version of Summertime for her audition. She ended up earning a ticket straight to the competitions live shows. You made my heart melt, said Mel B, who Darci Lynne later dubbed the best Spice Girl. I believe that that rabbit is a real separate person, judge Howie Mandel said. I love you. I believe youre gonna go far. You just changed your life tonight, young lady. https://t.co/VZmgRXv4PZ Darci Lynne (@ItsDarciLynne) May 31, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print John Legend makes case to take canceled drama Underground elsewhere By Nardine Saad (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times) John Legend is making a case for the recently canceled TV drama Underground to be picked up by other content providers. The Oscar-winning musician, who is an executive producer and played abolitionist Frederick Douglass on the Underground Railroad-centered show, rallied fans to give it a second life when cable broadcaster WGN America announced Tuesday it would be canceling the series after two seasons. The network has been scaling down its investment in original programming as part of a deal that its parent company, Tribune Media, made with conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. Sinclairs purchase of Tribune gives it control of more than 200 local TV stations and WGN America. The shift was not lost on Legend, who fired off a series of tweets to promote the content brought forth by Underground and its creators, Misha Green and Joe Pokaski. WGN America has been bought and is going a different direction strategically. We will find a new home for Underground! he tweeted, adding, Content wins. Were not reliant on a particular network to make great content. Were so proud of our show and the audience that supported! Legend, who has made no secret about his liberal politics, cautioned fans to be wary of Sinclair and claimed that theyre trying to make local stations mini Fox Newses that lean even further to the right. He completed his plea by asking followers to feel free to drop some hints to the network/streaming services you want to pick up #Underground. Show them who will be watching! View Instagram post Despite Underground being a terrific and important series, it no longer fits with our new direction and we have reached the difficult decision not to renew it for a third season, Peter Kern, president and CEO of Tribune Media, said in a statement. It is our hope that this remarkable show finds another home and continues its stories of courage, determination and freedom. Sony Pictures Television, the studio that produces Underground, is said to be trying to find it a new home. See The Times roster of new, returning and canceled series here. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Liam Gallagher plays new music at Manchester benefit show By August Brown In the wake of the terrorist attack outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, scores of artists joined forces to raise money for the victims. Among them was Liam Gallagher, the former singer and frontman for the citys most beloved rock band, Oasis. Gallagher played a benefit show for the bombing victims on Tuesday at the O2 Ritz Manchester. At the show, his first as a solo artist, he played several new songs, including the single Wall of Glass, which you can watch above. It was a preview of his forthcoming solo LP, As You Were. (Previously, Gallagher fronted the post-Oasis rock band Beady Eye.) For Oasis fans, he played several classic tracks, including Be Here Now with Oasis guitarist Paul Bonehead Arthurs and an a cappella take on Live Forever. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print CNN fires Kathy Griffin from New Years Eve show over controversial Trump picture By Christie DZurilla (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) Kathy Griffin is out of a job at CNN. The cable network on Wednesday terminated its agreement with the comic, who for years has co-hosted its New Years Eve program with Anderson Cooper, after a photo of Griffin holding a bloody, severed head in the likeness of President Trump went viral on social media. The image, taken by photographer Tyler Shields, elicited strong criticism from liberals and conservatives alike. Griffin apologized for the gory image in a 30-second video posted online Tuesday night. I beg for your forgiveness, Griffin said in the video. I went too far. Trump denounced the image Wednesday, calling it Sick! and saying Griffin should be ashamed. CNN has terminated our agreement with Kathy Griffin to appear on our New Year's Eve program. CNN Communications (@CNNPR) May 31, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Lebanon officially bans Wonder Woman from theaters By Josh Rottenberg If you live in Lebanon, Wonder Woman wont be coming to a theater near you anytime soon. On Wednesday, the country officially banned the superhero film just hours before it was set to arrive in theaters. The ban followed an effort by a group called Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel, which urged the Lebanese governments Ministry of Economy and Trade to block the film because its star, Gal Gadot, is Israeli. News of the ban, which had been the subject of speculation since Monday, was announced on social media by Lebanons Grand Cinemas and Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel. Lebanon has had a contentious relationship with the state of Israel for decades and has an official law on the books that encourages boycotts of products from its neighbor to the south. Israeli citizens and anyone whose passport shows theyve traveled to Israel are prohibited from entering Lebanon. Earlier films featuring Gadot, including Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Furious 7, have successfully screened in theaters in Lebanon, however. Batman v Superman, which introduced Gadots Wonder Woman, was the third biggest hit at the box office in Lebanon last year. And, as has been pointed out, Wonder Woman was, in fact, made by three companies based in America and two based in China, so calling it an Israeli product is debatable. But, on its Facebook page, the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel complained that Gadot had served two years in the Israeli Defense Forces (national military service is mandatory for Israeli citizens over 18) and boasted about the army training her for Hollywood. Wonder Woman lands in American theaters on Friday and, fueled by overwhelmingly positive reviews, is expected to perform strongly. Read our recent profile of director Patty Jenkins, in which she explains why the world needs Wonder Woman, right here. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement If President Trumps got the whole world in his hands, Trevor Noah says were in trouble By Robert Lloyd Having caught fire too late Tuesday for late-night TV, and with several hosts extending their Memorial Day weekend, the #covfefe hashtag would have to wait at least until Wednesday for its monologue moment. There were, however, some late-night-related tweets reacting to Twitter addict @realdonaldtrumps since-deleted mistyping of what is assumed to be the word covering or coverage. What makes me saddest, wrote Jimmy Kimmel, is that I know Ill never write anything funnier than #covfefe. The account for CBS Late Late Show poked some fun at Trumps gaffe, too. who do you want to see on the next covfefe karaoke The Late Late Show with James Corden (@latelateshow) May 31, 2017 Meanwhile, Trevor Noah and Comedy Centrals The Daily Show were back after a week off, above, catching up with President Trumps whole first trip abroad. International Hand Stuff was the name of the segment, which framed the excursion in terms of the presidents mitts. There were references to Trump touching the glowing white orb and Jerusalems Western Wall (they build one wall 2,000 years ago, Noah said in his Trump voice, zero Mexicans in their whole country); the question of whether First Lady Melania Trump swatted away her husbands hand on the tarmac in Tel Aviv (leave it to Fox News not to recognize what rejection from a woman looks like); and Trumps power handshake from new French President Emmanuel Macron (the first time that President Trump was on the receiving end of an unwelcome hand grab). The last manual metaphor was given to the German chancellor, who, after her visit with the American president, said, We Europeans must take our fate into our own hands. Yeah, said Noah, clearly Angela Merkel got one look at Trump and was like, All right, our fate is in our own hands, because his clearly ruin everything they touch. Jimmy Kimmel also looked at Trumps trip abroad, which he described, with probable irony, as spreading joy and optimism all over the world. Titled Drunk Donald Trump: Sicily, the segment replayed a portion of Trumps speech at half-speed. The effect is uncanny. Later, sitting outside on some steps -- urine-stained steps, apparently -- Kimmel asked a series of kids, who really do say the darnedest things, about the state of the union. If we measure a late-night host solely by an ability to engage with children in a way thats friendly, direct, deadpan and mostly honest, Kimmel is in a league with David Letterman, nearly. How did he think Donald Trump was doing, Kimmel asked one boy. Not really well, the child replied. My sister told me that Donald Trump is against another state. Which state? Is it Nebraska? Yeah, Nebraska. A lot of people are happy that he is bombing Nebraska, said Kimmel. (I did say mostly honest.) Do you think it was a good idea? No, replied the boy, cause they have, like, better bombs. I think theyre going to be OK, though, I really do, the host said. Once football season starts, theyre usually pretty solid. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Kathy Griffin apologized for that bloody severed-head stunt. But few are forgiving her By Nardine Saad (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) First Lady Melania Trump is the latest detractor of Kathy Griffins bloody depiction of the presidents decapitation. As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing, FLOTUS said in a statement to NBC News. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it. Griffins photographs and video by photographer Tyler Shields showed the comic straight-faced, holding up a blood-splattered severed head that appeared to be Trumps. The president denounced Griffins stunt, saying that she should be ashamed of herself and that the piece greatly disturbed his 11-year-old son, Barron. Griffins apology wasnt accepted by some on Twitter either, which spewed a variety of reactions, including several right-wing jabs that Griffin had been radicalized by Islamic State, the terror group that frequently beheads its victims. Several also sympathized with the presidents family, citing TMZs story about Barron believing that something horrible had happened to his father when he saw the images on the news. CNN subsequently fired Griffin from her co-hosting duties for its New Years Eve broadcast, and she has also been dropped as a spokesperson for Squatty Potty. Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was delighted by the bathroom footstool makers response but criticized CNN for not immediately doing the same. So Squatty Potty pulls the plug on Kathy Griffin, but CNN still evaluating and weighing their options, the presidents eldest son tweeted. Insane whats going on there!!! He then added, Apologies for my last tweet. I didnt mean to group Squatty Potty with CNN. Obviously one of them has moral/ethical standards. Griffins CNN compatriot, Anderson Cooper, who co-hosts the giggle-filled New Years Eve show for the cable news channel, did not come to his pals defense. For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate, Cooper tweeted. CNN host Jake Tapper also said on the air that he thought the beheading imagery by Griffin about the president was disgusting and inappropriate. For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate. Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) May 31, 2017 For those asking, I said on air that I thought the beheading imagery by Griffin about the president was disgusting and inappropriate. Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 30, 2017 Meanwhile, others believed that Griffins apology was a step in the right direction. Kathy Griffin did the right thing by apologizing. That sort of behavior, that sort of message, isn't acceptable in any setting. George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) May 31, 2017 I think she did the right thing asking for forgiveness and acknowledging that this was a horrible mistake, so I think she can, Minnesota Democrat and former Saturday Night Live writer Sen. Al Franken told CNN on Wednesday. Kathys a friend and shes a terrific comedian, but this had no business being in our public discourse..., Franken said. And I talked to her. She has apologized a real, fulsome apology. Shes actually begged for forgiveness, and I believe in forgiveness. Still, there was more snark to be had. Kathy Griffin's stupid photo was gross & offensive. She should lose her leadership role in the DNC and no longer be a candidate for office. Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 31, 2017 Update, 10:55 a.m.: Story added news that CNN has fired Griffin from its New Years Eve broadcast. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Melania Trump questions Kathy Griffins mental health after inflammatory photo shoot By James Reed President Trump and Melania Trump (Brendan Smialowski / AFP/Getty Images) As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it. Melania Trump, responding to Kathy Griffins controversial stunt involving a severed head in the likeness of President Trump Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement A Star Is Born: Clint Eastwood turns 87 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) If you want to be in for the long haul, you just have to trust your judgment about the material. ... If you go whoring for the money, the audiences will figure you out. They know when youre being a jerk, when youre just trying to get them in a room and show them a movie you dont even care about. Clint Eastwood, 1993 FROM THE ARCHIVES: Clint, closing in on El Dorado Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print This Is Us not moving to Thursdays, after all By Yvonne Villarreal Consider it a flash-forward flashback: Poised to help NBC reclaim its Must See TV glory on Thursday nights, This Is Us is now staying put in its Tuesday time slot before the switch even happened. The breakout drama from last season will keep hold of the 9 p.m. hour on Tuesdays where it performed mightily in its debut season, the network announced Tuesday. Itll retain its lead-in, The Voice. The move means some rejiggering for Thursdays. The revival of Will & Grace, which was slated to open the night, will now kick off the 9 p.m. hour. It will be surrounded by comedies Superstore, The Good Place and Great News to create a two-hour comedy block. Chicago Fire will take up the 10 p.m. hour instead of Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders. That drama will keep its This Is Us lead-in by moving to Tuesdays. Heres NBCs revised schedule: Tuesdays 8 p.m. The Voice 9 p.m. This Is Us 10 p.m. Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders Thursdays 8 p.m. Superstore 8:30 p.m. The Good Place 9 p.m. Will & Grace 9:30 p.m. Great News 10 p.m. Chicago Fire Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Erin Moran died of cancer, autopsy report confirms By Christie DZurilla Erin Moran is shown in 1992. (Wally Fong / Associated Press ) The coroner reportedly says Happy Days actress Erin Moran died of complications from cancer and cancer alone. Thats in line with what her husband said in an open letter written shortly after her death on April 22 at age 56. Tests showed no illegal narcotics were involved in her death, according to an autopsy report obtained by TMZ on Tuesday from the coroners office in Harrison County, Ind. Moran struggled with substance abuse earlier in her life, and media assumptions about her cause of death were amplified by a comment from Scott Baio during an early morning radio interview April 24. When Baio learned his former costar had been battling cancer, he fell all over himself trying to set the record straight. I was asked ONLY about Erins troubled past due to drug & alcohol abuse. I was still upset and said I felt that living that kind of a lifestyle will catch up with you and nothing good would come of it, he said on Facebook. THIS WAS BEFORE THE CAUSE OF DEATH WAS ANNOUNCED STATING STAGE 4 CANCER. One of the former child stars brothers, Tony Moran, told the Sun on May 30: My first thoughts were she must have had a heart attack caused by years of substance abuse. She has always battled demons and in recent years things have gone from bad to worse. In reality, as described by her husband, Moran had discovered last December that she had squamous cell carcinoma of the throat. After undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, by April she could no longer speak, eat or drink. She had a feeding tube. Baio posted the open letter from Steve Fleischmann, Morans husband of nearly 24 years, on his own Facebook page April 25. It got so bad so fast, Fleischmann said. The coroner told me it was really really bad. It had spread to her spleen, she had alot of fluid in her lungs and part of her brain was infected, Fleischmann wrote. The coroner said even if she was in the hospital being pumped full of antibiotics she still would not of made it. He said it was the best that she was with me and went in her sleep. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print WGN America cancels Underground, but will it really be the end? By Yvonne Villarreal A chat with Aisha Hinds and Jurnee Smollett-Bell, the badass women from Underground. WGN America has canceled slavery-era-set drama Underground. The fate of the series, which centered around the Underground Railroad, seemed doomed given how the network has been scaling back its investment in original programming. Until now, the drama, from creators Misha Green and Joe Pokaski, had stood as the lone original scripted series on the network following the recent cancellation of Outsiders. The shift away from original programming comes after Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., the conservative-leaning Baltimore-based company, announced it had agreed to buy Tribune Media in a deal that would give it control of more than 200 local TV stations and WGN America. As WGN America evolves and broadens the scope and scale of its portfolio of series, we recently announced that resources will be reallocated to a new strategy to increase our relevance within the rapidly changing television landscape, Peter Kern, president and CEO of Tribune Media, said in a statement. Despite Underground being a terrific and important series, it no longer fits with our new direction and we have reached the difficult decision not to renew it for a third season. Kern added: It is our hope that this remarkable show finds another home and continues its stories of courage, determination and freedom. Sony Pictures Television, the studio that produces Underground, is said to be trying to find it a new home. When Underground stars Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Aisha Hinds stopped by the Los Angeles Times video studio last week, both seemed hopeful that Undergrounds story wasnt over. We havent heard anything yet on the status of Season 3, said Hinds, who joined Season 2 portraying Underground Railroad icon Harriet Tubman. But I do know there is quite a bit more of this story to tell. And I know that we have engaged viewers waiting to see the story. If WGN is not our home, well find a home. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Lebanon might ban new Wonder Woman because of stars Israeli heritage By Libby Hill A new foe has arisen to oppose Wonder Woman at the box office: Lebanon. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Lebanon is seeking to ban Warner Bros.'s new Wonder Woman movie because lead actress Gal Gadot is an Israeli. On Monday, Lebanons National News Agency reported that the Ministry of Economy and Trade was adopting measures necessary to ban the film from screening. Relations between Israel and Lebanon have been strained since Israels independence in 1948, with Lebanon still abiding by the Arab League boycott of Israel adopted in 1945. Lebanon does not recognize the State of Israel and does not accept Israeli passports or passports indicating a person has entered Israel. But is Wonder Woman an Israeli product? The film is produced by five production companies DC Films, Atlas Entertainment, Cruel and Unusual Films, Tencent Pictures and Wanda Pictures three companies based in the United States and two in China. Gadot, however, is proud of her heritage. She served two years in the Israel Defense Force as required by the countrys conscription requirements and has posted in the past in support of IDF during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. The ban of the film would have to move quickly, as screenings are scheduled to begin in Beirut on Wednesday. But such action would require approval from a six-member committee from the Ministry of Economy, a process that had yet to begin, according to the Associated Press. Wonder Woman debuts in U.S. theaters Friday. 4:10 p.m.: This article was updated with information from Lebanons National News Agency. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Olivia Newton-John has a new cancer diagnosis; her June shows are postponed By Christie DZurilla (Esteban Felix / Associated Press) Olivia-Newton John has reluctantly postponed her June concert dates after learning that the back pain shes been waylaid by recently is caused by breast cancer that has metastasized to her sacrum. I decided on my direction of therapies after consultation with my doctors and natural therapists and the medical team at my Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia, the 68-year-old singer said Tuesday in a statement on social media. Those therapies include a short course of photon radiation therapy in addition to natural wellness therapies, the statement said. Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, at which time she underwent chemotherapy after a modified radical mastectomy with reconstruction. Her treatment also included acupuncture, which she said helped her with nausea, as well as yoga, meditation and massage. Three weeks ago, Newton-John postponed her May shows, with her team citing a bad issue with Olivias sciatica. Now, her June shows in the U.S. and Canada have been put off. Ticket-holders are being directed to venues for refunds, and any rescheduled dates will be posted on Newton-Johns official website. Olivia ... is confident she will be back later in the year, better than ever, to celebrate her shows, the Tuesday statement said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement After Cannes delay, Victoria & Abdul trailer debuts By Amy Kaufman One week after Focus Features scrapped plans to unveil the trailer for Victoria & Abdul during the Cannes Film Festival, a preview of the upcoming British drama has debuted online. Set in 1887, the film stars Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and follows the monarch as she strikes up an unlikely friendship with a Muslim Indian (Ali Fazal) who has traveled to the U.K. to deliver a ceremonial coin to her majesty. Focus, which is owned by Universal Pictures, was set to debut the trailer last Wednesday but postponed the release after the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, on May 22. A source told The Times the decision was made in part because a big piece of marketing right after the attack could seem insensitive. Directed by Stephen Frears, Victoria & Abdul is set for release at the start of awards season in September. The trailer centers on the real-life relationship that blossomed between the two, with Abdul going from servant to teacher while informing the queen about everything from the Koran to the joys of Indian mangoes. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ready for Alanis Morissettes Jagged Little Pill as a musical? Its happening By August Brown (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) Alanis Morissettes angsty, groundbreaking 1995 album, Jagged Little Pill, always seemed like it had enough melodrama to make it into a theatrical production. Now its coming to a stage in Massachusetts. The new production of Jagged Little Pill, helmed by Juno writer Diablo Cody and director Diane Paulus, will debut at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge next May. The musical will feature songs from the LP famed for its unsparing look at relationships along with other music from Morissettes catalog and Pill producer Glen Ballard. This team that has come together for this Jagged Little Pill musical is my musical theater dream come true, Morissette said in a statement. The chemistry between all of us is crackling and I feel honored to be diving into these songs again, surrounded by all of this searing talent. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Reunited Brady Bunch kids fondly remember Florence Henderson on Today By Nardine Saad It was a very Brady reunion on Tuesday. The Brady Bunch kids Barry Williams (Greg), Christopher Knight (Peter), Mike Lookinland (Bobby) and Susan Olsen (Cindy) came together on NBCs Today show to reflect on the iconic family sitcom and pay tribute to its late matriarch, Florence Henderson, nearly 50 years after the show debuted in 1969. The syndicated series about a blended family of six children and their housekeeper has permeated the pop culture zeitgeist with its unmistakable style and earworm theme song. With numerous parodies and attempted reboots in its wake, the comedy has endured because of its wholesome values, the cast members said. What you have on The Brady Bunch is something youre not going to see these days, which is a family where the parents and the kids respect each other today the formula is get the parents out of the show for the kids shows, said Olsen, a.ka. the youngest one in curls. You know how you dont grow old for yourself until you see yourself in a photo? Somehow you just dont see it, Knight explained. Its as though the show keeps us young in everyones mind, but were really this old. Added Williams: Everyone always refers to us as kids. No matter how we mature, were still the kids. After acknowledging that they would always be best known for The Brady Bunch, the actors said, they realized early on that they would never be able to walk away from the series at different stages of their careers. For Williams it was when a teenage girl asked him to sign an autograph for her mother and for Lookinland it was when he realized that his fans now had grandchildren. Knight said the show was always going to be in the room before me and it was always going to be in the room after me. Olsen, who claimed that she had written some off-color lyrics attached to the theme song, added that you spend a little while trying to run away from it, but you cant. Its like having a hunchback. You cant disguise it, so you might as well dress it up. As for their TV mom, Henderson, who died in 2016, the kids remembered her fondly. Everyone she met felt better about themselves and about the world around them after having spent a moment with Florence, Knight said. She was a mentor, a friend. We learned from her, added Williams. We learned how to interact with the public. She was so gracious with her fans, and we all learned how to do that graciously. Mostly she loved to make people laugh. You probably know that if youve been in her space. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Prince William talks about taboo of mental illness and death of Diana in new interview By Libby Hill As the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales approaches, her son Prince William has opened up to British GQ about the loss. I would like to have had her advice, William told the magazine. I would love her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grow up. It makes me sad that she wont, that they will never know her. The prince was just 15 when his mother was killed in a high-speed car crash on Aug. 31, 1997, and he and younger brother Harry were left to deal with their grief under great public scrutiny. While Prince William has of late found the words to speak publicly about his mother, the journey to that place has not always been easy. It has taken me almost 20 years to get to that stage, William said. I still find it difficult now because at the time it was so raw. And also it is not like most peoples grief, because everyone else knows about it, everyone knows the story, everyone knows her. View Instagram post It may have taken years, but William and Harry have found a way to honor their mother in a fashion that she would likely greatly appreciate: charitable work. Known as the Peoples Princess, Diana was a tireless advocate for those in need and worked to destigmatize AIDS in the 1980s, to fight the use of landmines and to better the lives of the underprivileged. In the last year, William and his brother, alongside Williams wife, Kate, have expanded their involvement in Heads Together, a mental health campaign led by the Royal Foundation, which aims to start a productive conversation about the reality of mental illness. Smashing the taboo is our biggest aim. We cannot go anywhere much until that is done. People cant access services till they feel less ashamed, so we must tackle the taboo, the stigma, William said. The Heads Together campaign has sparked several headlines for the royal family in recent months. In April, Prince Harry admitted that the death of his mother left him very close to a complete breakdown for which he finally sought professional help three years ago. The experience that Ive had is once you start talking about [mental health], you suddenly realized, actually, youre part of a big club ... and everybodys gagging to talk about it, Harry said during the Mad World podcast with Bryony Gordon. The GQ interview is not the only conversation that Prince William has had recently about mental health, either. He participated in a highly publicized FaceTime chat with Lady Gaga on the matter. In the interview, Prince William acknowledged that his public persona might suggest otherwise, but privately, he is impassioned about the issue. I cannot understand how families, even behind closed doors, still find it so hard to talk about it. I am shocked we are so worried about saying anything about the true feelings we have, the prince said. Prince Williams full interview with British GQ is available in its July issue, on newsstands June 1. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ariana Grandes mom has a message for Manchester bombing victims By Christie DZurilla Joan Grande, left, and Ariana Grande in September 2015. (Kevin Mazur / Getty Images) Days after daughter Ariana Grande issued a statement about last weeks post-concert bombing in Manchester, England, mom Joan Grande posted her own thoughts about the incident that left 22 dead and scores more injured. I join my daughter in extending my help & services to all those affected by the diabolical act of terror which occurred in Manchester! she wrote on Twitter as a Memorial Day message that also thanked U.S. servicemen and women. My heart goes out to all the victims: those who lost their lives, those injured, those recovering & all survivors of that night, along with the families and friends whose grief knows no bounds. The elder Grande was still in her front-row seat at the show, about to go see her daughter backstage, when the suicide bomb went off, TMZ reported. Mama Grande took about 10 kids who were seated around her to safety backstage, the website said. Ariana Grande similarly offered her assistance to those in need on Friday in a statement declaring her intention to return to the incredibly brave city of Manchester for a benefit concert. We will never be able to understand why events like this take place because it is not in our nature, which is why we shouldnt recoil, the Bang Bang singer said. We will not quit or operate in fear. We wont let this divide us. We wont let hate win. #MemorialDay pic.twitter.com/oUDmB7VD6x Joan Grande (@joangrande) May 29, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A Star Is Born: Annette Bening turns 59 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) "[W]hen they teach you to act, they teach you about objectives. You have a need -- a kind of emotional imbalance -- its not neurotic, but you want something. I try to consciously beef up that motivation in order to intensify what Im doing. You get an image in your head of what you want and then you find a way of expressing that. Annette Bening, 1991 FROM THE ARCHIVES: Regarding Annette Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Swedens The Square wins Palme dOr and Sofia Coppola wins best director at Cannes By Los Angeles Times Swedish director Ruben Ostlund reacts on stage after he was awarded with the Palme dOr for the film The Square during the closing ceremony of the 70th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. (Alberto Pizzoli / AFP / Getty Images) Ruben Ostlunds The Square, a ferocious drama of conscience, according to Times critic Justin Chang, about how a single lapse in judgment can cause a mans entire life to unravel, won the Cannes top prize, the Palme dOr on Sunday. The Grand Prix award went to Robin Campillos 120 Beats per Minute. Sofia Coppola won best director for her film The Beguiled, which stars Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell. Kidman also won the festivals 70th anniversary prize. Joaquin Phoenix won best actor for Lynne Ramsays You Were Never Really Here and Diane Kruger won best actress award for Faith Akins In the Fade. More coverage to come. Meanwhile... Here is what Justin Chang wrote about Ostlunds The Square, and Steven Zeitchiks interview with the director, who talked about the element of surprise in his movies: I really like scenes that when they end where you dont know 100% where to put them. It starts funny or it starts sad and then it becomes something else. When you get that shift, you know youve succeeded. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A Star Is Born: Kylie Minogue turns 49 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Axel Koester / For The Times) I have this following mainly young girls. This album had to appeal to those fans. If the singing was too R&B, they wouldnt like it, I guess. These producers think pop music is candy music. Theyre saying: Here, kids, have a piece of candy. Kylie Minogue, 1988 FROM THE ARCHIVES: Fame, fortune, but no respect Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Gregg Allman, pioneer of Southern rock, dies at 69 By Nardine Saad Gregg Allman performs with the Allman Brothers Band in 1979. (George Rose / Los Angeles Times) Gregg Allman, the gravel-voiced singer who helped lift the Allman Brothers Band to prominence with a hard-churning brand of soulful rock that became part of the soundtrack of the 1960s and 70s and set the coordinates for a musical genre known as Southern rock, died Saturday at the age of 69. According to a statement posted on his official website, Allman, who had canceled concerts and entire tours in recent years as he battled a variety of health issues, passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Ga. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 70 years of Cannes in 17 seconds: The art of the yacht deal, from Steven Spielberg to Steve Bannon By Steven Zeitchik Steven Zeitchik, Justin Chang and Kenneth Turan are bringing us Cannes moments from the 70 years of the international film festival -- in 17-second increments (or thereabouts). Here, Zeitchik, with Chang behind the camera, recalls the time he wound Steven Zeitchik, Justin Chang and Kenneth Turan are bringing us Cannes moments from the 70 years of the international film festival -- in 17-second increments (or thereabouts). Here, Zeitchik, with Chang behind the camera, recalls the time he wound up on a yacht with a future member of the Trump administration. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 70 years of Cannes in 17 seconds: The time Sofia Coppolas Marie Antoinette was booed By Justin Chang Steven Zeitchik, Justin Chang and Kenneth Turan are bringing us Cannes moments from the 70 years of the international film festival -- in 17-second increments (or thereabouts). Here, Chang, with Zeitchik behind the camera, recalls the year Sofia Coppolas Marie Antoinette played in competition and was booed by certain members of the media audience. Steven Zeitchik, Justin Chang and Kenneth Turan are bringing us Cannes moments from the 70 years of the international film festival -- in 17-second increments (or thereabouts). Here, Chang, with Zeitchik behind the camera, recalls the year Sofia Cop That same year, when the film debuted in theaters, Times critic Kenneth Turan looked back on the boos at Cannes and concluded the reaction wasnt just about the filmmaking. Here is the essay he wrote on Oct. 13, 2006: -------------------- WHO OWNS HISTORY? And, more to the point, who owns Marie Antoinette? Though theyre not usually phrased that way, those questions have swirled around Sofia Coppolas quietly exuberant new film about the doomed young French queen (only 18 when she ascended the throne, 37 when she was executed) since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year to some scattered and widely misunderstood boos. For the displeasure came not, as might be expected, from the French critics -- whod already seen the film and whose generally positive notices were already on record in Le Film Francais, the French trade paper -- but from political types who had an ax to grind about the films portrait of the woman in question. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor split after 17 years of marriage By Christie DZurilla (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor have split up after 18 years together, 17 of them as husband and wife. With tremendous love and respect for each other, and the 18 years we spent together as a couple, we have made the decision to separate, they said Friday in a joint statement. Our priority will continue to be raising our children as devoted parents and the closest of friends. We kindly ask that the media respect our privacy at this time. The Zoolander director and the Brady Bunch Movie actress met in L.A. in 1999, while he was developing a pilot in which she was going to star. They started dating that April and by November were engaged. They got married in May 2000. Stiller, 51, who proposed to Taylor while he was doing Meet the Parents, told Parade in 2013 that art imitated life when he was about to pop the question. I asked her father for permission before I did it, he said. It was like Meet the Parents in real life, because Christines father is an intimidating guy who owns a security company; were good friends now, but at the time I was in the basement rec room saying, I really would like to marry your daughter... Why the basement? " He was trying to find a place to sort of secretly ask my dad if it was OK to ask my hand in marriage, Taylor told New York magazine in 2008. The Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story costars have two kids together, daughter Emma, 15, and son Quinlan, 11. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 70 years of Cannes in 17 seconds: The home away from home for luminaries By Kenneth Turan Kenneth Turan, Justin Chang and Steven Zeitchik are bringing us Cannes moments from the 70 years of the international film festival -- in 17-second increments (or thereabouts). Here, Turan, with Chang behind the camera, brings us to the historic Hot Kenneth Turan, Justin Chang and Steven Zeitchik are bringing us Cannes moments from the 70 years of the international film festival -- in 17-second increments (or thereabouts). Here, Turan, with Chang behind the camera, brings us to the historic Hotel Splendid, which over the last 146 years has been a home away from home for luminaries ranging from the French composer Jacques Offenbach to the late critic Roger Ebert. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. music fixture Rodney Bingenheimer will leave KROQ next month By Mikael Wood Rodney Bingenheimer, the veteran radio DJ and rock-scene insider familiar to several generations of Los Angeles music fans, is ending his long-running show on L.A.'s KROQ-FM (106.7) after more than 40 years. Rodney on the ROQ will air for the final time on June 4 at midnight, Bingenheimer, 69, wrote on Facebook Thursday. It has been an amazing run, and I will be thanking all of you when I say goodbye to KROQ next week, he said in the post. I am planning on some special callers and special music as I say a proper goodbye. In a statement to The Times, KROQ program director Kevin Weatherly called Bingenheimer one of the most influential voices on the radio and said he and his staff will forever be grateful for the indelible mark that Rodney on the ROQ has left on this station, our listeners and the alt-rock music scene. Bingenheimer launched his show on the influential modern-rock station in 1976, four years after he opened Rodneys English Disco, a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard popular among the decades glam acts. On the radio, Bingenheimer quickly became known for championing new artists including the Sex Pistols and Blondie; he continued playing music by up-and-coming talent over the years, throwing his considerable enthusiasm behind the likes of Oasis and Coldplay. In his Facebook post, Bingenheimer the subject of a 2003 documentary called Mayor of the Sunset Strip didnt say why he was leaving KROQ. But he noted that hes not retiring from music. As this chapter closes, he wrote, I will be opening another chapter of my rock life soon. Heres his full statement on Facebook: Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ariana Grande to hold benefit concert in incredibly brave city of Manchester By Christie DZurilla (Valerie Macon / AFP/Getty Images) Ariana Grande on Friday announced her intention to return to the incredibly brave city of Manchester to spend time with fans and play a benefit concert to assist victims of the suicide bomb attack launched after her show in the British city earlier this week. I have been thinking of my fans, and of you all, non stop over the past week. The way you have handled all of this has been more inspiring and made me more proud than youll ever know, the 23-year-old singer said in a statement on social media. The compassion, kindness, love, strength and oneness that youve shown one another this past week is the exact opposite of the heinous intentions it must take to pull off something as evil as what happened Monday. YOU are the opposite. Grande gave no details about when she would return other than to say theyd be coming as soon as things were confirmed. The statement was her first since a brief tweet after the bombing saying she was broken and so so sorry. That day, Grande and her mother left Britain for Florida. She acknowledged her own reaction to the incident in saying she was sorry for the pain and fear you must be feeling and the trauma that you, too, must be feeling. She also talked about not wanting to go the rest of the year without being out there for her fans; at this point, her tour has been suspended only until June 5. There is nothing I or anyone can do to take away the pain you are feeling or to make this better, she said to the victims of the attack and their loved ones. However, I extend my hand and heart and everything I can possibly give to you and yours, should you want or need my help in any way. Those who were most tragically affected, Grande said, will be on my mind and in my heart everyday and I will think of them with everything I do for the rest of my life. View Instagram post Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Equality, not feminism, is the watchword at Wonder Woman premiere By Sonaiya Kelley Victoria Ikerd from San Diego, left, and Sylvia Vale from Culver City strike their best Wonder Woman pose. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) The stars of Warner Bros. Wonder Woman took to the red carpet outside Hollywoods Pantages Theatre Thursday night to celebrate the films premiere with a unified message. It just wasnt the message some people might expect. I think the world needs all types of superheroes, director Patty Jenkins said when asked why we need Wonder Woman. What a beautiful message right now because were in a dark place, and thats the only way were going to get to the other side, if everyone becomes a hero. (Warner Bros. canceled the films London premiere after Mondays attack in Manchester.) Despite the obvious girl power on display, many of the films stars and creators shied away from identifying it as a feminist film, hoping not to isolate the male fans in attendance. SEE PHOTOS FROM THE WONDER WOMAN PREMIERE I think that the film just takes a great character and tells a great story about how that character came to be, Charles Roven, the films producer, told the Los Angeles Times. Obviously the character wouldnt be who she is if she wasnt a woman, but shes a very specific woman, Roven added. Theres no other superhero character in the DC Universe who embraced their legacy and knew what they wanted to be and became [it]. And thats completely inspirational to everyone, not just women. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Bella Thorne and Scott Disick together in Cannes? Legit nothing By Christie DZurilla (Joshua Blanchard / Getty Images, left; Lars Niki / Getty Images) In whats been called a battle of strategic hookups between exes Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick, Bella Thorne has put up a white flag and flown away. Disick, 34, and Thorne, 19, were seen Monday at LAX on their way to the Cannes Film Festival, where surprise! Kardashian, 38, was already hanging out and getting handsy with Younes Bendjima, a 24-year-old boxer-turned-model. According to E! News, the latter twosome is for real but keeping it light. The Kardashian ex and the actress from The DUFF? Perhaps not so much. Thorne and Disick raised eyebrows Wednesday with a high-profile cuddle-fest by a pool in Cannes. Alas, by Thursday, word has it via TMZ, Thorne wasnt comfortable with her party-boy travel partner when he got his drink on: After tweeting Thursday that Yo this #cannes fancy life isnt for me, she told one person that she had been doing Legit nothing trolololo with Scott and another, Hahahah Im not talking to scott or anyone else. Scott is partially using Bella and a few other girls as a crutch to make Kourtney upset and feel jealous, a Keeping Up With the Kardashians"-related source told People on Thursday, sounding like a description of an upcoming episode of the show. They are both playing this game with each other and at the moment neither one of them are backing down. Around 3 a.m. Friday, Cannes time, Disick was paying attention to another lady, putting this pic of his and Kardashians 4-year-old daughter, Penelope, up on Facebook: Um, hashtag #supersad? Bye Cannes you were boring Thorne said Friday on Snapchat, posting video from the seat of what appeared to be a private plane. Kardashian, Bendjima and half-sis Kendall Jenner left Cannes on Friday as well. Yo this #cannes fancy life isn't for me BITCHIMBELLATHORNE (@bellathorne) May 25, 2017 @bellathorne bells, what were you doing with Scott? chrystal (@justintheslayer) May 25, 2017 Legit nothing trolololo https://t.co/t9eW4B17oI BITCHIMBELLATHORNE (@bellathorne) May 26, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Netflix cancels London premieres of Orange Is the New Black and GLOW By Libby Hill The fatal terrorist incident at an Ariana Grande concert Monday in Manchester, England, continues to resonate throughout the entertainment industry. Netflix canceled its plans for a London premiere for Season 5 of Orange Is the New Black and the pilot for GLOW, the latest series from Orange creator Jenji Kohan. Following the terrible events in Manchester on Monday night, we have decided to cancel our special screening of Orange Is the New Black and GLOW on Tuesday [May 30], a Netflix spokesperson told The Times on Friday. Our thoughts are with all of those affected by this tragedy. According to those knowledgeable about the decision, the streaming services choice to forgo its screenings comes from internal discussions only, not from any pressure from local authorities. This is just the latest cancellation in the wake of Mondays tragedy, which took the lives of 22 individuals, including victims as young as 8 years old. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. scuttled plans for a London Wonder Woman premiere, originally scheduled for May 31. Similarly, Universal Pictures announced Thursday that it had canceled its London premiere for The Mummy originally slated for June 1. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Oasis Liam Gallagher schedules Manchester benefit show By Mikael Wood (Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times) Former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher will play a hometown concert next week in Manchester, England, to benefit the families of Mondays bombing at the Manchester Arena. Its outrageous, the singer told the Manchester Evening News regarding the terrorist attack that killed 22 people following a concert by Ariana Grande. There are kids and people dying all over the world. And for what? He went on to say, I want to try and help pick people up. People like me, doing what we do, its our duty to give people a good time. The show, scheduled for Tuesday night at the O2 Ritz, will serve as Gallaghers first solo gig and comes ahead of the release of his debut solo single, Wall of Glass, from an album expected in October. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Body-slamming? Late-night hosts remind us that Donald Trump once did that on TV By Yvonne Villarreal Lest America forget the nations history of political candidates with body-slamming tendencies, the late-night circuit offered a refresher course Thursday night. Playing catchup to Wednesdays news that Greg Gianforte, the billionaire Republican candidate in Montanas special congressional election, had allegedly body-slammed a Guardian reporter after the journalist asked him about the Republican healthcare bill, TV hosts weighed in on the matter. Think about that, Late Night host Seth Meyers said. The GOP healthcare plan is so bad, Republicans would rather body-slam reporters than answer a question about it. His response to the question, Meyers continued, was to give the reporter a preexisting condition. Late Show host Stephen Colbert expressed faux skepticism about Gianfortes ability to move past the incident and win the election. That happened the night before the election, Colbert said. I just dont know how anyone could vote for a candidate who body-slams people. Cue a clip of Donald Trump performing such a move in 2007 when he appeared on WrestleMania 23" and tackled WWE Chairman Vince McMahon to the ground before shaving his head. I forgot, Colbert said after playing the clip. Nothing matters. During his A Closer Look segment, Meyers also played the Trump clip. That was a thing, a real thing that happened. and we still said Yeah, he should be president. For the record: Gianforte won Montanas special election Thursday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement A Star Is Born: Stevie Nicks turns 69 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times) I think if people like to dress like a gypsy and they get a little inspiration from me to do it, then its great. Its definitely something everyone should try at least once in their lives. Dress like a gypsy! Stevie Nicks, 1997 FROM THE ARCHIVES: Airy Godmother Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print For the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, see how fans packed L.A. theaters in 1977 By Los Angeles Times Staff When the original Star Wars opened on May 25, 1977, only about 40 theaters across the country initially screened the movie. In Los Angeles, fans packed showings in ways theater managers and moviegoers had never seen. For the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, we revisit this story examining the earliest stages of the Star Wars phenomenon. The Times originally published this story on June 4, 1977. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print George Lucas predicted Star Wars Disney future in 1977 interview with The Times By L.A. Times staff Happy 40th anniversary, Star Wars! Before the first-ever Star Wars premiered on screens across America on May 25, 1977, Los Angeles Times writer Paul Rosenfield sat down with the creator of a galaxy far, far away. Then 33, George Lucas was just a few days shy from the release of his space opera, prophetically claiming that Star Wars was the movie he thinks Disney would have made when Walt Disney was alive. Who knew decades later that the droids and the mouse would reside in the same castle? This story was originally published on June 5, 1977, and titled, Lucas: Film-Maker With the Force. (Also from our archives, read The Times original Star Wars review here.) I think of this as a movie Disney would have made when Walt Disney was alive ... I call it space opera. Thats a genre thats been around a long time, in the books of Burroughs and Heinlein, but never really done on film. George Lucas in 1977 Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Guns N Roses is playing Los Angeles again By Mikael Wood Guns N Roses will play two hometown concerts this fall, the reunited Los Angeles hard-rock band announced Thursday, one Nov. 24 at Staples Center and another Nov. 25 at the Forum. The dates are part of a new extension of GNRs Not in This Lifetime Tour, which launched in April 2016 with a show at the Troubadour that marked the first time in decades that frontman Axl Rose had performed in public with guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan. The tour went on to hit Coachella and Dodger Stadium. Opening acts for the L.A. shows werent announced, but GNR revealed that country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson will warm up crowds at stadium shows in August in Denver; Little Rock, Ark.; and Miami. Other acts with opening slots on the tour include ZZ Top, Deftones and Royal Blood. Tickets for the newly scheduled concerts go on sale June 3. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Claire Foy shoots down Lisbeth Salander rumors: I dont know about any of this By Glenn Whipp Claire Foy (Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times) Claire Foys sister called her last week, none too pleased that her sibling hadnt told her that shed be playing Lisbeth Salander in The Girl in the Spiders Web, the long-delayed follow-up to the 2011 David Fincher film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. My sisters like, Oh, what are you doing? and I was like, Im not doing anything! I dont t know about any of this! Foy told The Times Wednesday in an interview before an Emmy season promotional event for the actress Netflix series, The Crown. Its really weird, Foy added. Ive never experienced that before where theres a rumor about a possible job like this. Its very surreal. News broke last week that Foy was either in talks, eyeing or had been all but cast to play Lisbeth in the reboot of the Stieg Larsson book series. So is Foy, who plays Queen Elizabeth on The Crown, even in the running? No. Im not even in the same arena, Foy said. I cant even contemplate doing anything at all, to be honest, at this present time. The 33-year-old British actress just finished shooting Season 2 of The Crown last week. The ambitious series requires a nine-month commitment, meaning that Foy hasnt had much down time the last two years. She also has a 2-year-old daughter with her husband, actor Stephen Campbell Moore. So you can understand why, when asked about her immediate future, she emphatically states: Good God, no. I have got no plans to do anything. Those sentiments would seem to preclude her from The Girl in the Spiders Web, which is scheduled to begin filming in September to make an Oct. 15, 2018, release date. Then again, when asked what kind of role shed like to do after playing the reserved Elizabeth, a woman nicknamed Shirley Temple, Foy replied: I think I need to play somebody who expresses themselves and is able to communicate on a more open level, something really different. Like the avenging anti-heroine Lisbeth? Well ... Foy answered, with a hint of a smile. Well just have to wait and see. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Sony taps Gina Prince-Bythewood to direct Spider-Man spinoff Silver & Black By Libby Hill (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) Sony continues to get its superhero ducks in a row, with Deadline reporting Thursday that the studio had tapped Gina Prince-Bythewood to direct Silver & Black, a film centered around comic book characters Silver Sable and Black Cat. Prince-Bythewood also will rewrite the script for the film, originally written by Christopher Yost, screenwriter of Thor: The Dark World. Silver Sable and Black Cat are characters that originated in correlation to Spider-Man and have served as both allies and antagonists to the web-slinging superhero over the years. Silver & Black is the latest Spidey-related endeavor for Sony, with Spider-Man: Homecoming, starring Tom Holland, premiering July 7, and Venom, starring Tom Hardy as the sometimes villain, sometimes anti-hero, hitting theaters Oct. 5, 2018. The film will not be Prince-Bythewoods first dalliance with superheroes. She directed the pilot for Freeforms upcoming series Marvels Cloak & Dagger, about two teenagers learning to deal with both superpowers and love. Prince-Bythewood is an experienced director of critically acclaimed films including Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights, and she is well-versed in the world of television, where Foxs Shots Fired, the show she created and produced with husband Reggie Rock Bythewood, just concluded its first season. The director becomes the latest woman tapped to helm a superhero film, with Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman debuting in theaters June 2. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Happy puking: Baywatch is the summer blockbuster critics love to hate By Christie DZurilla Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron and Priyanka Chopra star in Baywatch. Whats more fun than seeing the new Baywatch movie? Having movie reviewers see it for you! Los Angeles Times critic Jen Yamato was in the Enjoy It for What It Is camp, describing the film thusly: "[I]t not only owns its dumbness but hurtles itself all the way back around through a flurry of genitalia jokes and F-bombs to splash unapologetically in an R-rated surf of winking postmodernism, led by the charismatic Dwayne Johnson, Hollywoods most unsinkable movie star. But although not everyone hates it 64% of audiences dug it, according to Rotten Tomatoes a lot of reviewers put the bouncing-beach-bodies flick firmly in its place, damning it, and then damning it with faint praise. That said, here are a few snacks, both bad and (relatively) good, from the Baywatch snark buffet. Over at the Chicago Tribune, they took the Yeah, and ...? approach to the review. The Bad: The movies comic instincts... are consistently coarse and frequently scrotal. The Good: The bodies on screen are pretty, which I seem to remember was a selling point of the 1989-2001 TV series. As we said, yeah, and ...? The Roger Ebert website perhaps cut closest to the bone, pulling few punches. The Bad: "[T]his is another one of those raunchy comedies thats barely a movie, that looks like it was edited by dumping a bunch of footage into whatever movie-cutting software theyre using and hitting randomize. The Good: "[T]he movie has a pervading air of crass amiability about it its almost like a two-hour end-credits gag reel. (Nevertheless, it contains an end credits gag reel.) Now could you tell us what you really think?: Rolling Stone painted a vivid picture of the Baywatch experience. The Bad: Think of yourself sitting down for a big two-hour wallow in instant stupid with a vat of popcorn, slathered in fake butter and possibly a mound of melted M&Ms on top. It feels great chugging it down, then your stomach hurts, your head aches and you puke the whole thing up so you can forget about it in the morning. Thats Baywatch in a nutshell. Happy puking. The Good: Of the recent spate of moldy TV material morphing into movies, with 21 Jump Street on top and CHIPs bringing up the rear, Baywatch barely escapes the basement. One reason it does: The Rock. Helpful! Turns out if you liked 21 Jump Street and CHiPs, this flick is for you! The New York Times loosened up its necktie for this one. The Bad: The digital effects fire and water, mostly are lackluster, and the whole thing has a crummy, overcast, second-rate-theme-park look to it. The Good: Like its source material, Baywatch is sleazy and wholesome, silly and earnest, dumb as a box of sand and slyly self-aware. Its soft-serve ice cream. Crinkle-cut fries. A hot car and a skin rash. Tacky and phony and nasty and also kind of fun. Tacky? Phony? Nasty? We didnt know it was a date movie. The Washington Post, of course, just couldnt leave politics out of it. The Bad: Its no shock that the women in Baywatch dont have much to do beyond look good. ... Maybe dodging bad lines was a relief for the actresses. Its not like the screenplay, by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, gives performers a lot to work with. The Good: If, indeed, Dwayne the Rock Johnson ditches Hollywood to become our next commander in chief, Baywatch may be singled out as the low point of his pre-political career. Well, at least Johnson has that out of the way. The Tampa Bay Times went deadpan. The Bad: Imagining Johnson and genetically gifted co-stars in swimsuits is all it took to pitch Baywatch. Director Seth Gordon and six writers didnt come up with much beyond that. The Good: What Baywatch has in its favor is Dwayne Johnson fireman-carrying a dead weight comedy to safety. We think thats a compliment. Maybe. Variety noted the films nods to current market and societal trends. The Bad: Baywatch ... is a stupidly entertaining trash folly, the kind that could only be made today: an obscenity-and-insult-laced, aggressively competent adaptation of a 25-year-old TV show that manages to repackage every aspect of the series except, perhaps, the reason it was popular in the first place. The Good: They wear their butt-hugging red bathing suits with dignity and pride, which makes this a highly sexually responsible Baywatch. The reviewer at the New York Post appeared to be familiar with the TV series global success. The Bad: Even the action scenes need CPR, often undermined by effects so chintzy, you wonder if the money intended for them was instead eaten up by the productions seven-figure waxing budget. The Good: On the bright side, itll probably do killer business in Germany. Wait, were they just dissing the Hoff? Finally, one need go no further than the AV Club to understand Rotten Tomatoes 19% positive critics rating. The Bad: "[N]obody not even the filmmakers cares about Baywatch all that much. Yet the jokes on them: In spoofing something so forgettable, theyve made something even less memorable. The Good: Nobody cares about Baywatch. Nuff said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Seth Meyers says Trumps cruel budget cuts would harm the presidents supporters most By Chris Barton After a number of weeks filled with late-breaking developments on the Trump administrations apparent ties to Russia, Wednesday night was a chance for late-night hosts to sort of catch their breath and essentially choose their own adventure. Jimmy Kimmel focused on the seemingly less-than-happy photos of the pope with President Trump that circulated on Wednesday, while Stephen Colbert took a brief swipe at the $2-trillion double-counting error in Trumps budget. Seth Meyers, however, took advantage of his shows A Closer Look segment to make time for all of the above. After addressing the photo of the stone-faced pope with Trump, Meyers recapped the latest developments in the investigations into whether, among other things, the president engaged in obstruction of justice by firing FBI Director James Comey. But then Meyers took on the administrations proposed federal budget, which could cause harm to many. While noting the budget amounts to a wish list that Congress will battle over, Meyers said the proposals harshness was not to be discounted. What someone wishes for tells you a lot about that person, Meyers said before recounting the many cuts the budget proposes to Social Security and Medicaid. The show then rolled a number of clips in which Trump the candidate promised not to do just that. This budget lays bare just how much of a fraud Trumps campaign was, Meyers added, noting how hard many of these cuts to the social safety net would hit Trump supporters. He then squared off the pointed words of Trump the candidate versus his actions as president to underscore his point. Maybe its better those two never meet, Meyers said. I think they would hate each other. Watch the clip above. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Universal Pictures cancels London premiere of The Mummy in wake of Manchester bombing By Libby Hill Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis and Sofia Boutella star in The Mummy. The specter of Mondays terrorist attack in Manchester, England, continues to loom large. Universal Pictures announced Thursday morning the cancellation of next weeks London premiere of The Mummy, the second such development this week. All of us at Universal have been devastated by the terror attack in Manchester and continue to stand with the community and country as it recovers, the statement from the studio read. Out of respect to those affected by this tragedy we have decided not to move forward with the London premiere for The Mummy scheduled to take place next week. The film, starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, serves as the launch of Universal Pictures Dark Universe, an extended universe that will see the reboot of several classic monsters from the Universal vault, including the Invisible Man and Frankensteins Monster. Cancellation of the June 1 London premiere for The Mummy comes just a day after Warner Bros. nixed its May 31 Wonder Woman London premiere. Ariana Grande, whose concert was targeted in the Manchester attack that killed 22 people, similarly suspended her tour through June 5 on Wednesday. A statement from the artists representatives said the suspension comes until we can further assess the situation and pay our proper respects to those lost. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Al Gore on the French Riviera: Why he was reluctant to make An Inconvenient Sequel By Kenneth Turan Former Vice President Al Gore arrives on the red carpet for the screening of The Killing of a Sacred Deer at the Cannes Film Festival. (Alberto Pizzoli / AFP / Getty Images) It has not been a very good year for those concerned with climate change. The U.S. is considering leaving the landmark Paris climate pact, a hostile appointee leads the Environmental Protection Agency, and right-wing websites chortle, Trumps Latest Move Will Make Al Gore Fry. But is Al Gore himself despondent or depressed about it all? Not in the slightest. Ive been inoculated in the year 2000, he says, combining a burst of genial good humor with a reference to his presidential election loss to George W. Bush. I now have a resistance to being disheartened, the antibodies are still thriving in my bloodstream. As we all learn, one of the hidden secrets of the human condition is we learn the most from our most painful experiences. Former Vice President Al Gore at the Carlton hotel for the Cannes Film Festival, which is screening his documentary An Inconvenient Sequel. (Stephanie Cornfield / For The Times) To spend time with Al Gore is to meet a man enough at ease with himself to dress as if for a Senate hearing in white shirt, suit and tie even though hes in the south of France; a warm, engaged, surprisingly funny individual whose innate courtesy has him personally hang a reporters sports coat on a nearby hotel room hanger. Yes, he does tend to stay on message when he talks (how could he not) and he likes to draw graphs in the air with his hands (Im going to get a little geeky for a moment, he apologizes with a smile, Im sorry, its a failing). But he combines this with good-humored self-awareness and a fiercely committed intelligence. If you think Im earnest now, you should have seen me earlier, he says. You cant change who you are. At times Ive tried, but Im old enough to stop worrying. Gore is in Cannes to promote the worldwide release of an impassioned and involving new documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel. Due in U.S. theaters on July 28, it brings us up to speed on where the battle against climate change stands more than a decade after the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Im here for a lot of to-ing and fro-ing is how Gore puts it. I think Ive done 75 seven-minute interviews Japan, Russia, Brazil, everywhere. The day before yesterday I was live on [the French cable channel] Canal Plus when the interpreter talking in my earpiece was evacuated from his building because of a bomb scare. The questioner was going a mile a minute in French, but because of those 75 seven-minute interviews, I picked up enough key words to fight my way through it. Gore has been concerned with climate change since he took a class with pioneering global warming theorist Roger Revelle as a college student in the 1960s. Not only did Gore never imagine when I was a young man that this would become an all-consuming body of work for me, he also never anticipated that the work would involve the movies. More than that, he was frankly dubious about both of his films. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Ellen DeGeneres says shes in for a Netflix stand-up comedy special By Christie DZurilla Ellen DeGeneres is working on a new comedy special for the first time in a very long time and this time shes working with Netflix. Looks like its been 15 years since you did a stand-up special. ... How about one for Netflix? the streaming service asked her Wednesday on Twitter. Minutes later, DeGeneres replied, Let me think about it. Ok Im in. Heres how in she is: Im writing it now, I cant wait, DeGeneres said in a statement confirming the upcoming gig. Ill keep you posted when and where Im gonna shoot my Netflix special. Im excited to do it; Im excited for you to see it. Previously, HBO was home for DeGeneres comedy specials: her One Night Stand in 1992, Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning in 2000 and Ellen DeGeneres: Here and Now. The second and third shows notched two Emmy nominations each. In March, the former sitcom star announced shed be returning to prime time with Ellens Game of Games, which shes hosting for six episodes on NBC. No air dates have been set. Its going to be like a combination of American Ninja Warrior, RuPauls Drag Race and a water park, DeGeneres said in a statement. OK, its nothing like that, but you should still watch. Looks like it's been 15 years since you did a stand-up special, @TheEllenShow. How about one for Netflix? Netflix US (@netflix) May 24, 2017 Let me think about it. Ok I'm in. https://t.co/kUAdHyXAjS Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) May 24, 2017 UPDATES 2:30 p.m.: This article was updated with confirmation from Netflix and a statement from DeGeneres. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Chris Cornells body has been cremated, report says; funeral set for Friday By Christie DZurilla Chris Cornell in 1991. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times) The body of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, who died last week in Detroit, was reportedly cremated Tuesday in Hollywood, and a funeral is planned for later this week. Widow Vicky Cornell, brother Peter Boyle and friends Linda Ramone and singer J.D. King were at Hollywood Forever Cemetery for the cremation, sources familiar with the service told TMZ. Cornells body was flown to Los Angeles from Detroit on Sunday, family attorney Kirk Pasich told Rolling Stone on Monday, and a private funeral will be held Friday. Pasich told Variety on Sunday that public memorials will be held when its decided. The short time between the end of Soundgardens May 17 show and 52-year-old Cornells death was chronicled in a police report obtained by the Detroit News. He and the band walked offstage around 11:15 p.m. May 17. Fifteen minutes later Cornell was in his hotel room, the report said, where bodyguard Martin Kirsten (who used to work for and date Heidi Klum) helped him fix his computer and gave him two Ativan. At 11:35 p.m. Cornell was talking to his wife, Vicky, who said Friday through her attorney that she had been concerned because her husband was slurring his words and told her he might have taken a few too many anxiety pills. She called Kirsten at 12:15 a.m. Thursday and asked him to check on the singer, the report said; the bodyguard kicked in the hotel room door, then the locked bathroom door, and found Cornell. At his final show, Cornell seemed high and was out of character from note 1, lead sound engineer Ted Keedick told TMZ in an interview published Wednesday. He said the Soundgarden frontman did not appear depressed. However, Keedick said: Id never heard his voice that way before. He was having serious control problems. One concert-goer told the Detroit News last week that as far as she could tell, Cornells final show was honestly great. Nothing seemed off. Tuesday at Detroits Fox Theatre, the site of that last performance, Norah Jones played a tribute to Cornell: an acoustic version of Black Hole Sun. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ariana Grande suspends tour through June 5 By Christie DZurilla Ariana Grandes tour has been suspended through June 5, her management team said Wednesday. That includes the cancellation of concerts planned for Thursday and Friday at Londons O2 Arena. Twenty-two people died and at least 59 were injured in a suicide attack Monday night outside Manchester Arena, where Grande had just concluded a stop on her Dangerous Woman Tour. We ask at this time that we all continue to support the city of Manchester and all those families affected by this cowardice and senseless act of violence, the singers reps said in a statement. Our way of life has once again been threatened but we will overcome this together. The dates that have been put on hold until we can further assess the situation and pay our proper respects to those lost, the statement said, are: London, May 25-26 Antwerp, Belgium, May 28 Lodz, Poland, May 31-June 1 Frankfurt, Germany, June 3 Zurich, Switzerland, June 5 The next tour stop after that is a June 7 concert in Paris. Speculation that the tour would be put on hold has been rife since the day after the bomb went off actually, immediately afterward and before the number of casualties was known, many on social media were already worried that shows would be axed but the situation had been in limbo until now. An exhausted"-looking Grande returned home Tuesday to Florida, where she and her mother were met at the airport by Mac Miller, who hugged and kissed his girlfriend in an emotional reunion. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Warner Bros. cancels London Wonder Woman premiere following Manchester attack By Josh Rottenberg In the wake of Mondays deadly terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, Warner Bros. has announced it is canceling a planned premiere in London next week for its superhero film Wonder Woman. Our thoughts are with those affected by the recent tragedy in the UK, the studio said in a statement. In light of the current situation, we will not be proceeding with our plans for the premiere and junket activities in London. Starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins, the highly anticipated film which is set in Europe during World War I will hold its U.S. premiere on Thursday in Los Angeles. It arrives in theaters June 2. The studio faced a similar situation last year when its European premiere of Batman v. Superman was scheduled to be held in London just hours after terrorist attacks struck Brussels, killing 32 people and injuring many others. In that case, the studio said in a statement that it had decided to go ahead with the event rather than yield to terror. But as Britain mourns the 22 people killed in the Manchester bombing, with scores more wounded, and with the countrys security threat level raised to its highest, signaling the possibility of another imminent attack, Warner Bros. clearly determined that the circumstances called for a different course of action. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print New Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer shows off Spideys tricked-out, Iron Man-style super-suit By Josh Rottenberg Spider-Man has a few new tricks up his spandex sleeve, with the latest trailer for Sonys upcoming franchise reboot Spider-Man: Homecoming offering a deeper look at Spideys newfangled, tech-enhanced super-suit. Courtesy of billionaire inventor/playboy Tony Stark, the suit is embedded with Iron Man-style technology. A Jarvis-like computer assistant informs Peter Parker (Tom Holland) of the 576 possible web shooter combinations he has at his command. A parachute can also be deployed out of the back of the suit when needed, and the chest piece can detach and turn into a drone. For those who prefer their Spidey old-school, though, the trailer also promises a return to Parkers teenage roots though with a decidedly cockier spin than the shy, alienated high school nerd weve often seen depicted in the comics and onscreen. Hollands Parker is clearly feeling his superhero oats, boasting to Stark of taking down a petty bike thief and raring for bigger challenges, Spanish quiz or no Spanish quiz. (Cue Michael Keatons villainous Vulture.) Informed by his best friend Ned that Stark has installed a training-wheels protocol on his super-suit to disable some of its abilities, Parker gripes, Im sick of Mr. Stark treating me like a kid. But you are a kid, Ned reminds him. Yeah, Parker says, a kid who can stop a bus with his bare hands! Spider-Man: Homecoming hits theaters July 7. Watch the trailer below. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Performers move U.K. concerts after Manchester bombing, but for some, the show goes on By Christie DZurilla Floral tributes in Manchesters St. Anns Square on May 24, 2017. (Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty Images) Manchester Arena has postponed concerts by Take That, an English pop group from the city that was to play there Thursday, Friday and Saturday. But its working to see that a KISS show proceeds next week. Unfortunately, due to the tragic events that unfolded on Monday night, it is not possible for the concerts to take place, the arena said in a statement. These have now been postponed and more information will follow. In another statement, the arena cited the ongoing police investigation. Take That had previously postponed a show at another location, saying Tuesday on its website, Out of respect to all of the people and their families that were affected by the horrific incident last night at the Manchester Arena, we have decided to postpone our show tonight in Liverpool. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all. KISS is scheduled to play Manchester Arena on Tuesday, and the venue said it is working on that show with promoters and police. pic.twitter.com/HkR9ilSTSt Manchester Arena (@ManchesterArena) May 23, 2017 As far as the Ariana Grande concerts set for Londons O2 arena on Thursday and Friday, as of Wednesday morning no decision had been made. Were still in contact with the tour promoters regarding a final decision, the O2 team said on Twitter Wednesday morning. As yet the tour is not officially postponed or canceled, despite media reports. Katy Perry, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Imagine Dragons, Shawn Mendes and the Chainsmokers will all go ahead with performances this Saturday and Sunday in Hull, England, at BBC Radio 1s Big Weekend, according to TMZ. Hull is about two hours from Manchester. Blondie postponed a Tuesday-night show at the Round Chapel in London, saying in a series of tweets the day of the show that the move was out of respect for the victims of the terrible attack at the Manchester Arena, and noting that plans to reschedule the show were in the works. The Afghan Whigs have moved their Friday show to the O2 Ritz Manchester from Manchester Cathedral, which, as of Wednesday morning, was still cordoned off by police. The Ritz said Tuesday that it would stay silent on social media for two days in sympathy with those who lost their lives or were injured, physically or mentally, but that it would have news Thursday about any rescheduled shows. Other acts that had been scheduled to perform in the Manchester area but not in the arena in coming days, including Colour of Noise, Damien Dempsey, Shriekback and the Cranberries, canceled their shows for reasons unrelated to the suicide attack. Most announced those plans well before Monday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement A Star Is Born: Bob Dylan turns 76 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times) When people think of me, they are not necessarily going to buy the latest record anyway. They may buy a record from years ago. Besides, I dont think interviews sell records. Bob Dylan, 1985 FROM THE ARCHIVES: Bob Dylan -- Still A-Changin Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Late-night TV hosts, U2 plead for love after Manchester bombing By Robert Lloyd After the news, late-night talk shows are televisions most topical forum. We turn there for the satirical distance and perspective that might allow us to process the day and get to sleep for laughs when laughter is appropriate, but also for a thoughtful response when events go beyond ordinary human folly to the terrible and unthinkable. Mondays suicide bombing after an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, was on the minds of some late-night hosts Tuesday night. Theres really nothing you can say that can approach the shock and the grief of the victims and their families, said Stephen Colbert on Late Show, asking his audience to go online to hear what his CBS colleague James Corden, who follows him on The Late Late Show, had to say the night before. All we can add here, said Colbert, is that following acts of senseless violence like this, its all the more important not to be controlled by fear, but instead to be reminded by the action of people of Manchester who rushed to the aid of their friends and strangers alike. It is just more proof that evil cannot succeed as long as good people are willing to love each other. On NBCs Late Night, host Seth Meyers had similar thoughts. At its best, being at a concert is an incredible collective experience, he said. Its a chance through a shared love of music to connect with, to sing with and to dance with people you dont know.... And so this comes down to the way we treat strangers, and while some cowards chose to treat strangers with hate, from everything I read, Manchester was filled with people last night who provided aid and comfort to help victims who were total strangers to them. He ended with a plea for all of us to not need a tragedy to remind us of the importance of treating those we do not know with love instead of hate. The Irish band U2, in Los Angeles to perform concerts of their own, were among Jimmy Kimmels guests on ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Live. Kimmel brought up Manchester. I imagine that is something you guys have been thinking about, he said. They hate music, they hate women, they even hate little girls they hate everything that we love, lead singer Bono replied. The worst of humanity was on view in Manchester last night but so was the best, as people took perfect strangers into their houses and queued up for blood banks. Manchester has an undefeatable spirit, I can assure you. Kimmel wondered how growing up in Northern Ireland in an era of political and sectarian violence had affected their music. It was so commonplace for a number of years, answered the Edge, the bands guitarist, that it just became a constant background to life. And occasionally something particularly awful would happen and it would really affect you but that was almost the worst of it. You got to the place where [it was] just ongoing every week, every month. Punk rock helped, added Bono. It made us suspicious of partisanship, it made us up suspicious of sectarian ideas. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Elisabeth Moss and BBC America join forces for Typhoid Mary limited series By Libby Hill (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times) The Handmaids Tale star Elisabeth Moss is wasting no time in lining up new projects. BBC America announced Tuesday its partnership with Moss and Annapurna Television in developing Fever, a limited series focused on the tale of Typhoid Mary. The series will adapt the novel of the same name, written by Mary Beth Keane and set in early 20th century New York, where Mary Mallon is unknowingly transmitting typhus to those around her. She was an immigrant in turn-of-the-century New York, a time of huge change and progress in America, Moss said of the character in a statement released by the network. She was incredibly unique, stubborn, ambitious and in fierce denial of any wrongdoing until her death where she lived out her days imprisoned on an island just off of the Bronx in N.Y. She is incredibly complicated, something I seem to enjoy playing, said Moss. Moss will star in the series and serve as executive producer alongside director Phil Morrison (Enlightened, Junebug) and writer Robin Veith (The Expanse, True Blood). Annapurnas Sue Naegle and Megan Ellison will also serve as executive producers. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Universal Music Group CEO on Manchester attack: A level of evil beyond comprehension By Christie DZurilla Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, in November 2016. (Frazer Harrison / Getty Images) Lucian Grainge of Universal Music Group sent a company-wide memo Tuesday, calling it a day of remembrance of victims of the suicide attack in Manchester, England, and acknowledging that emotions were raw. "[W]e grieve for all of those lost there, offering our deepest condolences to their families and loved ones, said the chief executive of UMG, parent company of Ariana Grandes recording label Republic, in a note obtained by Variety. Twenty-two people, one only 8 years old, were killed Monday night and at least 59 were hurt when a bomb exploded as Grandes concert at the Manchester Arena was ending. This hits home for us as a music company, Grainge said, because so many of us, myself included, spend so much time out seeing our artists perform, let alone attending concerts as fans. Thats why weve chosen music as our career or rather music has chosen us. No UMG employees, including Grande and her crew, were injured in the blast, he confirmed, and help from human resources and security was offered to those with questions or concerns. That said, Grainge continued, the fact that such an unspeakable act can be committed at a place where innocent people including so many young people come together peacefully to enjoy music reflects a level of evil beyond comprehension. READ MORE: Suspected Manchester suicide bomber identified as U.K. son of Libyan immigrants>> Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Ariana Grande returns home to Florida after Manchester attack By Christie DZurilla People attending a vigil for Mondays suicide-attack victims brought flowers to St. Ann Square in Manchester, England, on Tuesday. (Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty Images) Ariana Grande reportedly returned home to Florida on Tuesday after the bombing outside her Manchester, England, concert that left 22 dead and at least 59 injured. As they exited a private plane, Grande, her mom and her dog were met on the tarmac in Boca Raton, E! News said, by family members and rapper Mac Miller, whom the 23-year-old has been dating since last summer. Miller gave Grande a long hug and a kiss, a source told E! It was a very emotional reunion and they stood talking for a minute before getting into the car, t Its somehow fitting that Kathryn Hahn, an actress with a knack for cringe-inducing comedy, is the star of a new series, I Love Dick, whose title makes everyone squirm. I love hearing men try to say it, because their voices get quiet and breathy at the end, says Hahn, nestled into a couch at a downtown hotel. The previous day, Hahn had visited The Today Show and mocked co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, whod been barred by producers from uttering the double-entendre title out loud. So prudish! she scoffs. Perhaps, but then again, Hahns standards are different than most. Advertisement Chances are if youve been near a TV set or in a movie theater in the last 15 years, Hahn has made you laugh-cry. That was her repeatedly jumping John C. Reillys bones in 2008s Step Brothers. That was her as Leslie Knopes nemesis, a $1,200-an-hour political operative, in Parks and Recreation. And that was her again chugging an improvised White Russian straight from a milk carton in last years Bad Moms. The 43-year-old is frequently described as a scene-stealer, a characterization that, while accurate, also speaks to the fact that its taken Hollywood a long time to figure out what to do with her. If shes so good, then why isnt she the headliner? I Love Dick represents a long-overdue breakout role for Hahn. Premiering Friday on Amazon, the series is based on Chris Kraus cult favorite, autobiographical novel. She stars as a fictionalized version of Chris, a frustrated filmmaker who accompanies her husband, Sylvere (Griffin Dunne), to an artists retreat in remote Marfa, Texas, and becomes infatuated with an elusive cowboy-sculptor named Dick (Kevin Bacon). Following the 2013 indie film Afternoon Delight and the celebrated Amazon series Transparent, its Hahns third collaboration with writer-director Jill Soloway, who co-created the series with playwright Sarah Gubbins. Typical of their work together, I Love Dick is a complex exploration of sexuality and intimacy that blends comedy and drama. It has Hahn feeling tres vulnerable, as she puts it. We really looked into the abyss together. It just feels naked in all ways. In Hahn, Soloway has found her muse. Shes as hilarious as Lucille Ball, but also capable of such depth, she writes in an email. This duality is evident in person. Warm and tactile, Hahn is both surprisingly earnest and hilariously irreverent, speaking of her gratitude in between riffs on her teenage fantasies about Amish boys. Wearing a casual dark blue dress and loafers, Hahn is pretty in a non-terrifying way, though with her piercing blue eyes and dark hair, its easy to imagine her playing Melania Trump. Hahns big moment has been more than three decades in the making. First discovered in a youth theater program in Cleveland, she scored her first professional role in Hickory Hideout, a childrens show that aired on Saturday mornings and turned her into something of a local celebrity. She played a girl named Jenny who interacted with a pair of squirrels named Nutso and Shirley. The episodes were like Jenny Gets Braces or Jennys Parents Are Getting Divorced or Traffic Laws With Nutso and Shirley Hahn recalls. It was hilarious. (Yes, there are clips on YouTube.) Hahn was a good student and a regular in plays at her Catholic school. (She notes that some of her earliest directors were nuns.) With two younger brothers, Hahn held her own with the guys. It was like Fart City, U.S.A., in my house growing up, she says. Her family shared a tough, vicious sense of humor, but performing onstage became her way of being vulnerable. I spent so much of my life pretending to be normal Catholic family from Cleveland, couples club at the church. I think underneath it I felt like so many of us, that I was putting a damper on this innate weirdness, that I couldnt really quite name or unleash. She graduated from Northwestern and after a largely fruitless stint auditioning in New York, decided to enroll in the graduate drama program at Yale a risky decision for someone then in her mid-20s, a.k.a prime years for most actresses. In my heart of hearts I knew that I wasnt really an ingenue and that my parts would be happening later, she says. I never thought Id fit in the kind of camera-ready, polished, beautiful box. Hahn was more inspired by the kind of actresses the film industry rarely produces anymore Shelley Duvall, Dianne Wiest, Diane Keaton. I always liked messy brunets. Kindred spirits, I guess. After Yale, she landed a role on the NBC forensic drama Crossing Jordan. The series, which ran for six seasons, helped Hahn pay off her pesky student loans, but was not an especially rewarding creative experience. To make a network show still feel like it has a creative engine, Im always blown away by how that can happen. A small role in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy led to a streak of supporting parts in raunchy comedies, where she easily went toe to toe with the likes of Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell. On the small screen, Hahn landed lead roles in a number of seemingly promising TV projects that quickly flamed out, including the Showtime series Happyish and American remakes of Absolutely Fabulous and Free Agents. Hahn sees Afternoon Delight, written and directed by Soloway, as a major professional and creative turning point. Hahn played Rachel, an affluent Silver Lake housewife who befriends a young stripper (Juno Temple). With its gender-flipped take on the midlife crisis, the film earned decidedly mixed reviews, but Hahns performance was almost uniformly praised. More critically, it marked the beginning of her partnership with Soloway. I had been grateful for but not completely satisfied by the work I was being asked to do on camera, she says. Id been living in dude comedy for so long, where you slip in and are funny but its the dudes on the poster, the dudes behind the camera, the dudes holding the boom which, listen, I love. But you feel held in a different way when the eyes behind the camera are looking at you as the the and not the that. Soloway then cast her in Transparent as Raquel, a kind-hearted rabbi who becomes enmeshed in the Pfefferman familys toxic dysfunction. It was a relatively quiet, reflective role for Hahn, whom Soloway refers to, only half-jokingly, as Dame Kathryn Hahn. I truly believe shes one of our greatest actors, she says. I like to write female protagonists that are deeply flawed and relatable Kathryn is perfect in these parts; her ability to access vulnerability amazes me, says Soloway. I teasingly say Hahn has a gift for creating the most beautifully awkward sex scenes but its true! Come to think of it, I may have manifested I Love Dick purely so Id have an excuse to keep shooting more of them. The duo first began to discuss I Love Dick during long walks around Silver Lake, where Hahn lived until recently with her husband and two children. (Theyre now in Los Feliz.) While the title first jumped out at her for all the mature reasons, she was drawn to playing Chris for somewhat loftier reasons. Theres something really galvanizing and powerful about this woman jumping into that want wholeheartedly and trying to name this aching, all-encompassing desire that she has, without any shame or apology. Hahn just wrapped production of Private Life, a film for Netflix written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, in which she plays a woman another Rachel struggling with infertility. Shell soon head to Atlanta to shoot the holiday-themed sequel to Bad Moms, and shes talking to Soloway about returning to Transparent. Making her long-ago decision to bypass ingenue roles seem prescient, Hahn has reached a point where she has the luxury of saying no to things. Its a heady time, she says. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour meredith.blake@latimes.com Follow me @MeredithBlake By the time the 35th annual Otis Scholarship Benefit and Fashion Show, aptly themed Metamorphosis, came to an end, the students responsible for the 125-plus designs that streamed down the runway had clearly emerged as fashion stars. For the seniors, these fashions are akin to a thesis, committee chair Shelley Reid said before the show. Theyve got to save up for everything and then scout out all the fabrics and all the embellishments and go wherever they have to go to get them. Its amazing to think of what they go through before theyre done. The event Held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, the May 6 black-tie affair raised funds to provide scholarships to fashion students at Otis College of Art and Design. Although a silent auction ended during the evening, a selection of the one-of-a-kind student fashions still remain available for online bidding until 9 p.m. May 12. From left, Red Carter with a model as well as student winner Hanna Dorman. (Kai He / Otis College of Art and Design) The program Claudia Cividino, Bally chief executive of the Americas, received the Creative Leadership Award, while Daniela Villegas, a prominent Mexican jewelry designer based in Los Angeles, was honored with the Creative Vision Award. A fashion school graduate herself, Cividino said she understands the power of a good fashion education for anyone in the industry. Its important to have an appreciation of the craft, she said. When people in the field know that youve lived their challenges, they follow you, because they know you know what youre asking. The show No ordinary fashion parade, dancers and acrobats mixed with models on the runway, showing off fashions that answered challenges posed by their mentors. Albert Wolsky, a two-time Academy Award winner for costume design, asked students to create ethereal gowns inspired by the world of fairies. Fashion designer David Meister had his students explore proportion and transparency inspired by feathers. Student mentor David Meister, known for his collection of dresses and gowns, asked students to create modern cocktail dresses exploring proportion and transparency inspired by feathers. (Kai He / Otis College of Art and Design) The mentors Also working hand-in-hand with students were Zaid Affas, Claire Pettibone, Red Carter, Cory Cassella for Jessica Simpson , Chris Chang for Poesia, John Murrough for Illia, Michelle Watson for Michi and Marisol Gerona-Bradford for Universal Monsters. On the runway are werewolf looks from mentor project with Marisol Gerona-Bradford for Universal Monsters. (Kai He / Otis College of Art and Design) The numbers Although the final tally hasnt been completed yet, tickets for more the 700 guests sold for $500 with sponsorships ranging to $50,000 for tables of 10. Ellen Olivier is the founder of Society News LA. ALSO Cartier looks to L.A. and a few famous friends of the house to help relaunch its Panthere watch Paris Hilton, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Kris Jenner and Tommy Hilfiger turn out for star-studded Race to Erase MS gala David Foster leads singers and musicians in festive session at 2017 Milken Institute conference Developer Five Point Holdings debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday in a nearly $300-million initial public stock offering that produced mixed results for the company behind several marquee California communities. Shares of the Aliso Viejo firm rose as much as 11% from the initial price of $14 before closing up $1.04, or 7.4%, to $15.04 a share. Five Point ended the day with a market capitalization of about $3.3 billion. However, the company developing Newhall Ranch in the Santa Clarita Valley, Great Park Neighborhoods in Irvine and the Shipyard and Candlestick Point projects in San Francisco had hoped to price shares as high as $20 and raise more than $400 million. Advertisement The company sold 21 million shares, raising $294 million. It could raise an additional $44 million, minus expenses, if underwriters exercise an option to sell 3.15 million more shares. Miami-based home builder Lennar Corp., which had a 40.2% stake in Five Point following the IPO, also agreed separately to invest $100 million in the company. Five Point, which was spun off from Lennar in 2009, is planning to use its cash hoard to help build its master planned communities amid a persistent housing shortage in the state, especially along coastal California. To build out these master plans you need to lay out a lot in advance before there is any money coming in, said Gerd-Ulf Krueger, chief economist with Krueger Economics. In the last two years, Five Point has lost money as it has worked to develop its communities and spent heavily on management, operations and other expenses. The company bills itself as the largest developer of master-planned communities along the coast, an enviable but challenging position given the difficulty in building in the region. Five Point noted that among its major risks for investors are environmental lawsuits and other challenges that have already delayed Newhall Ranch for years. Stuart Miller, chief executive of Lennar, acknowledged that the pricing was lower than what the company had wanted. We opened a little bit below the range, he said, during an interview on CNBC. But its not about where you start. Its about how you proceed and how you grow along the way. Many economists and housing academics blame the lack of construction over the last several decades as the primary reason California home prices and rents have climbed much faster than the nation as a whole. In its prospectus, Five Point pitched itself to investors partly on the historic level of under-building, relative to jobs and population growth. The company noted that last year, San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties added 5.45 jobs for every new housing unit permitted, while Los Angeles County added 4.24 jobs for every housing unit. In Orange County, the jobs-to-permit rate was 3.66. Home prices in San Francisco were up 6.4% in February compared with a year earlier, according to the widely followed Case-Shiller index. In Los Angeles and Orange counties, prices were up 5.1% and agents in the region say buyers are packing open houses, given the shortage of listings. California is ground zero for supply constraint, Miller said during his CNBC interview. Demand continues to grow. The job market is strong, especially in these markets in California. Its a great time to be a residential builder. Five Point, led by CEO Emile Haddad, serves as a master developer of communities and then sells lots to individual home builders, such as William Lyon Homes of Newport Beach or Floridas Lennar. Upon completion, Five Points Great Park Neighborhoods is expected to have 9,500 homes and 4.9 million square feet of commercial space. Newhall Ranch will have 21,500 homes, and the companys two San Francisco projects will have 12,000 homes. Five Point had previously attempted to go public, but put plans on hold last year amid volatility in the stock market. The market wasnt open for IPOs [in 2016], Haddad said during an interview on CNBC. We waited until the market opened and here we are. We are very excited to be a public company now. The company trades under the ticker symbol FPH. andrew.khouri@latimes.com Follow me @khouriandrew on Twitter UPDATES: 3:40 p.m.: This article was updated with the companys market capitalization, past losses and other details from its prospectus. This article was originally published at 3:20 p.m. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend: Over 69 million barrels of oil were exported from Azerbaijans Sangachal oil terminal during the first quarter of 2017 compared to about 75 million barrels of oil exported in January - March 2016, the BP report on its activity in Azerbaijan for January - March 2017 said May 10. The total volume of the exported oil included over 60.5 million barrels of oil exported through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, over 7.5 million barrels through the Western Route Export Pipeline (WREP), and more than 1.1 million barrels of condensate via a separate export line, according to the report. At present, the total capacity of the terminals technical processing systems makes up 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, and for the gas from the Shah Deniz field - 29.5 million cubic meters per day (together with associated gas from Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil and gas fields, the total gas processing capacity at the terminal is 49.3 million cubic meters per day). On average, 26.5 million cubic meters of Shah Deniz gas was exported from the Sangachal terminal daily during the first quarter of 2017, the report said. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov USC names retired aerospace executive Wanda Austin as acting president, announces Nikias departure By Harriet Ryan USC appointed a retired aerospace executive as interim president and laid out a detailed plan for selecting a permanent leader Tuesday, ending speculation about whether outgoing President C.L. Max Nikias might remain in the post. Nikias, embattled over his administrations handling of a campus gynecologist accused of sexually abusing patients, relinquished his duties after a meeting of USCs board. The trustees tapped one of their own, Wanda Austin, an alumna and former president of the Aerospace Corp., to temporarily run the university. The trustees also approved the formation of a search committee and the hiring of firm Isaacson, Miller to coordinate the selection of a successor. A second search company, Heidrick & Struggles, will also advise trustees. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ex-student sues elite Brentwood School after teacher is charged with sexually abusing him By Richard Winton A former student sued the elite Brentwood School on Monday in the wake of a female teacher being charged with repeatedly having sex with the minor, alleging that other faculty members encouraged the unlawful behavior and failed to report it to authorities. The lawsuit accuses the private school, whose students include the children of many of Hollywoods elite and L.A.s powerful, of acting negligently and allowing Aimee Palmitessa to abuse and batter the teenager sexually. The suit alleges that the student was abused in summer 2017 after one of the schools counselors offered words of encouragement to the then-17-year-old, identified in the suit as only John Doe, to engage in an illegal relationship with the teacher. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Civil jury vindicates fired Montebello school executives in whistleblower case By Howard Blume The Montebello school district is in dire straits at risk of insolvency and under apparent criminal investigation. An outside audit in July found some teachers earning more than $200,000 a year, as well as improper raises, excess paid vacation time and inappropriate overtime, sick leave and car allowances. Fixing the district and pinpointing blame could take time. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. schools fall short on safety measures, new report warns By Howard Blume After the mass shooting at Floridas Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, Los Angeles school officials reassured parents that much had been done to keep local schools safe. California had tougher gun laws, after all, and the school district paid close attention to students mental health. But a new report issued Monday by a panel convened to take a close look offers some cause for concern, flagging inconsistent campus safety measures, thinly spread mental health staff and inadequate coordination between the school district and other public agencies. With the stakes this high, we must strive to do better, said L.A. City Atty. Mike Feuer, who assembled the panel. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement L.A. school district says more are graduating, but rate may not show it By Howard Blume The L.A. Unified School District has hopes of continuing its winning streak this year with another record graduation rate, but the official numbers may not show it. A senior district administrator warned the board Tuesday that graduation rates were likely to decline 2% to 3% across the state, even though L.A. Unified is likely doing better than ever in producing graduates, he said. The issue is that the state will now count high school students who transfer to adult school as dropouts, said Oscar Lafarga, who heads the districts office of data and accountability. Previously, schools treated these students as though they had simply enrolled in another high school, he said. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Betsy DeVos to California: Not so fast on that federal education plan By Joy Resmovits In April, Californias top education officials breathed a sigh of relief. After months of debate and back-and-forth with Betsy DeVos staff, they had finalized a plan to satisfy a major education law that aims to make sure all students get a decent education. The state focused on aligning its plan to fulfill the requirements of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act with Californias Local Control Funding Formula, which gives extra money to districts to help students who come from low-income families, are in the foster system or are English learners. But this week, DeVos team said not so fast. Jason Botel, the U.S. Department of Educations principal deputy assistant secretary, sent California education officials a letter asking for more information in such areas as measuring student progress, graduation rates and English learners. In an unsigned statement, the California Department of Education declared itself surprised and disappointed because officials thought after a meeting with federal officials in Washington that they were on the right track to get approval. Now the Every Student Succeeds Act plan will be up for discussion once again at the July meeting of the State Board of Education. The U.S. Department of Education has already approved most state plans. Every Student Succeeds is the Obama administrations 2015 replacement for the No Child Left Behind Act. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. school board sets a new goal: prepare every grad to be eligible to apply for Cal State or UC By Sonali Kohli Last month, Los Angeles school board president proposed a spate of highly ambitious mandates aimed at ensuring that every district graduate be eligible to apply to one of the states public four-year universities by 2023. By the time the L.A. Unified school board unanimously approved the resolution Tuesday, the original language had been watered down. The goal is no longer that in five years 100% of students meet the long list of benchmarks, which include not just college eligibility for graduates but first-grade reading proficiency and English fluency by sixth grade for all students who enter the district in kindergarten or first grade speaking another language. The original college-readiness goal, for example, called for 100% of all high school students to be eligible to apply to one of the states four-year universities. Now the goal seems to offer more wiggle room: Prepare all high school graduates to be eligible to apply to a California four-year university. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement We have been hurt. More women say they were mistreated by USC gynecologist By Richard Winton USC student Anika Narayanan says she vividly recalls her first appointment with Dr. George Tyndall at the campus health center, alleging that he made several explicit comments during an examination she felt was inappropriate and invasive. When she came back for a second visit in 2016 after a nonconsensual sexual encounter, he allegedly chastised her, she said in a civil lawsuit and at a press conference Tuesday. He asked me if I had forgotten to use a condom again, said Narayanan, 21. At one point, she said, Tyndall asked if I did a lot of doggy style, she said. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. Unified gives inspector general brief contract extension By Howard Blume The Los Angeles school board on Tuesday extended the contract of Ken Bramlett, its inspector general, by three months, though his job is far from secure and questions remain about the future direction of his watchdog office. Board members also unanimously promoted Vivian Ekchian, who had been the runner-up for the superintendents job, to deputy superintendent the districts No. 2 position. Both moves had elements of peacemaking between different factions on the board. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print USCs handling of complaints about campus gynecologist is being investigated by federal government By Harriet Ryan The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into how the University of Southern California handled misconduct complaints against a campus gynecologist, the latest fallout in a scandal that has prompted the resignation of USCs president, two law enforcement investigations and dozens of lawsuits. In revealing the inquiry by the departments Office of Civil Rights, officials rebuked USC for what they alleged was improper withholding of information about Dr. George Tyndall during a previous federal investigation. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has been criticized for taking a less vigorous approach to examining sexual misconduct than predecessors, called for a systemic examination of USC and urged administrators to fully cooperate. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Judge to sentence woman and her boyfriend for the murder of an 8-year-old that led to L.A. child welfare reforms By Marisa Gerber A woman and her boyfriend are expected to be sentenced Thursday for the torture and murder of an 8-year-old boy whose killing in 2013 provoked public outrage, prompted sweeping reform of Los Angeles Countys child welfare system, and led to unprecedented criminal charges against social workers who handled the childs case. Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, 34, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for her role in the death of her son, Gabriel. A jury decided last year that her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, 37, should be executed. When paramedics arrived at the boys Palmdale home in May 2013, Gabriel had slipped out of consciousness. He had a fractured skull, broken ribs, burned skin, missing teeth and BB pellets embedded in his groin. A paramedic would later testify that every inch of the boys small body had been abused. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. Unifieds spending out of step with similar school systems, task force says By Howard Blume The Los Angeles school district is out of step with similar school systems, spending more on teachers pay and health benefits and less on activities that could enhance student learning, according to a new report by an outside task force. The L.A. Unified School District Advisory Task Force did not make specific recommendations, but instead posed a series of questions it said the district needs to answer to make sure its funding is aimed at providing a full opportunity for all students to succeed. What were trying to say is: Lets put the data on the table. Lets look at the truth. Lets be transparent and here are the numbers, said task force member Renata Simril. This is not to say that we should cut teachers salaries. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Top USC medical school official feared dean was doing drugs and alerted administration, he testifies By Paul Pringle A former vice dean of USCs Keck School of Medicine testified Tuesday that he feared the schools then-dean, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito, could be doing drugs and expressed concerns about his general well-being to the universitys No. 2 administrator before Puliafito abruptly left his job in 2016. Dr. Henri Fords testimony at a hearing of the state Medical Board marks the first suggestion that any USC administrator had suspicions about Puliafitos possible drug use before he stepped down. A Times investigation in 2017 found Puliafito led a secret second life of using illegal drugs with a circle of young criminals and addicts. Puliafito testified about his behavior at the hearing Tuesday, saying he took drugs with one young woman on a weekly basis. Ford said that he decided to alert USC Provost Michael Quick after receiving reports in early 2016 that Puliafito was partying in hotels with people of questionable reputation, and that he came to worry about his mental stability. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Why L.A. Unified may face financial crisis even with a giant surplus this year By Jessica Calefati With more than half a billion dollars socked away for next school year, the Los Angeles Unified School District hardly seems just two years from financial ruin. Its a scenario that is especially tough to swallow if youre a low-wage worker seeking a raise or a teacher who wants smaller classes. But budget documents show that todays $548-million surplus cannot be sustained and that even basic services face steep, seemingly unavoidable cuts because of massive problems barreling the districts way. Theres a disconnect between the rosy short-term picture and what we know is coming, said board member Kelly Gonez. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print We have failed: Top USC officials try to reassure students amid gynecologist scandal By Joy Resmovits Top administrators at USC are reaching out to students in the wake of misconduct allegations against the universitys longtime gynecologist, acknowledging failings and vowing reforms as they try to address growing outrage over the revelations. Several USC deans have sent out messages trying to reassure students and faculty that the university is committed to changing. We have failed, wrote Jack H. Knott, dean of USCs Sol Price School of Public Policy, in a May 24 letter. What happened is antithetical to everything we know is right. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Rick Caruso is named chair of USCs trustees, vows swift investigation of gynecologist scandal By Thomas Curwen The University of Southern Californias board of trustees has elected mall magnate Rick Caruso to be the new chair of the board, giving fresh leadership as the university navigates a widening scandal involving a longtime campus gynecologist. The move marks the latest effort by USC to address the case, which has sparked a criminal investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and dozens of civil lawsuits. More than 400 people have contacted a hotline that the university established for patients to make reports about their experience with Dr. George Tyndall. In his first act as chairman, Caruso announced that the white-shoe L.A. law firm OMelveny & Myers would conduct a thorough and independent investigation into the gynecologists conduct and reporting failures at the clinic. He set an ambitious timeline for the review, pledging it would conclude before students return for the fall semester. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print UC Berkeley students persistence helps win more liberal rules for in-state tuition By Teresa Watanabe Ifechukwu Okeke thought shed be a shoo-in for in-state tuition when she was admitted to UC Berkeley for fall 2016. She had moved to the United States from Nigeria in 2012 to go to Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga. By the time she got her acceptance to transfer to UC to study molecular and cell biology, she had lived in California four years. She had a California drivers license, bank account and rental records as proof. UC Berkeley, however, ruled she was a nonresident which meant she would have to pay nearly $27,000 more. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement State medical board calls former County-USC doctor a sexual predator, suspends his license By Matt Hamilton A UCLA cardiologist has been temporarily stripped of his medical license after state regulators described him as a sexual predator who assaulted three female colleagues when he was working and training at L.A. County-USC Medical Center. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Global California 2030 aims to get more students learning more languages By Joy Resmovits Tom Torlakson (Andrew Seng / Associated Press) Outgoing state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson on Wednesday announced a new statewide effort to encourage students to learn more languages. Called Global California 2030, its goal is to help more students become fluent in multiple tongues. Torlakson said that by 2030, he wants half of the states 6.2 million K-12 students to participate in classes or programs that lead to proficiency in two or more languages. By 2040, he wants three out of four students to be proficient enough to earn the State Seal of Biliteracy. Torlakson announced the initiative at Cahuenga Elementary School, which offers a dual-language immersion program in English and Korean. Californias public school students speak more than 60 languages at home, and 40% come to school with knowledge of a language other than English. Torlakson called his plan a call to action that invites parents, legislators, educators and community members to pool resources to expand language offerings in schools and get more bilingual teachers trained. He said the state already is working with Mexico and Spain to expand a teacher-exchange program. Fluency, the plan argues, can help students succeed economically and language acquisition can help their overall critical thinking. The initiative builds on Proposition 58, a ballot initiative passed in 2016 that undid an earlier requirement that English learners be taught in English-immersion classes unless their parents signed waivers. Torlakson recently visited Mexico and met with that countrys education secretary. They later signed a pact to increase collaboration, particularly in language education. This [Global California 2030] is great follow-through on Toms part and very important, Patricia Gandara, a UCLA education professor who hosted the Mexico meeting, said in an email. It hands over a plan to move forward in an area in which California has a unique advantage, but must seize the opportunity. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Jury convicts man of murder in 2015 slaying of UCLA student found inside her burning apartment By Marisa Gerber A jury on Tuesday convicted a man in the 2015 slaying of a UCLA student found dead inside her burning apartment a gruesome stabbing case that led to a fierce rebuke of the police response amid concerns that the killing could have been prevented. The panel deliberated for about six hours before finding Alberto Medina, 24, guilty of murder, arson, burglary and animal cruelty. On Sept. 21, 2015, firefighters found the charred body of Andrea DelVesco inside her apartment after responding to the complex a block from campus. The 21-year-old student an Austin, Texas, native known to her sorority sisters as a fearless giver who befriended others with ease was stabbed at least 19 times, authorities said. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print LAPD begins sweeping criminal probe of former USC gynecologist while urging patients to come forward By Adam Elmahrek The Los Angeles Police Department said Tuesday it is investigating 52 complaints of misconduct filed by former patients of USCs longtime campus gynecologist as detectives launch a sweeping criminal probe into the scandal that has rocked the university. LAPD detectives also made an appeal for other patients who feel mistreated to come forward, noting that thousands of students were examined by Dr. George Tyndall during his nearly 30-year career at USC. More than 410 people have contacted a university hotline about the physician since The Times revealed the allegations this month. Tyndalls behavior and practices appear to go beyond the norms of the medical profession and gynecological examinations, said Asst. Chief Beatrice Girmala. We sincerely realize that victims may have difficulty recounting such details to investigators. We are empathetic and ready to listen. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print At L.A.'s only school for the deaf, parents want leaders who speak the same language By Anna M. Phillips Ever since her son was 6 months old, Juliet Hidalgo has been bringing him to the Marlton School, a low-slung building in Baldwin Hills that for generations has been a second home for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in Los Angeles. Marlton staff taught Hidalgos brother and sister, both of whom are deaf. The school was where her deaf son learned to make the signs for milk and food. Hidalgo had planned to enroll her daughter, taking advantage of a popular program that allows hearing children to learn American Sign Language alongside their deaf siblings. But after more than a decade of involvement, she and other family members are considering withdrawing their children. They are not alone. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Fueled by unlimited donations, independent groups play their biggest role yet in a California primary for governor By Ryan Menezes An unprecedented amount of money from wealthy donors, unions and corporations is flowing into the California governors race, giving independent groups unrestricted by contribution limits a greater say in picking the states chief executive than ever before. The groups have already spent more than $26 million through Thursday, the most ever spent by noncandidate committees in a gubernatorial primary, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance reports. California elections have always been expensive, and the future is even more expensive, said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former state Republican leader. The stakes are very real. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 2 hurt in Indiana middle school shooting; suspect in custody, authorities say By Associated Press Authorities say two victims in a shooting at a suburban Indianapolis school are being taken to a hospital and the lone suspect is in custody. Bryant Orem, a spokesman for the Hamilton County Sheriffs Office, said in a news release that the victims in Friday mornings attack at Noblesville West Middle School are being taken to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis and their families have been notified. He says no other information is available about the victims. Orem said the suspect is believed to have acted alone and was taken into custody. No additional information about the suspect was made public. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print For new L.A. schools chief Austin Beutner, some key unions are giving no honeymoon period By Howard Blume In the less than two weeks since Austin Beutner took charge of Los Angeles schools, unions representing teachers and administrators have staged a job action and a protest. Theyve made it clear that they will not give the new superintendent the traditional honeymoon period, and they are bashing him for his wealth and lack of experience running either a school or a school district. Beutner is a billionaire investment banker with zero qualifications, local teachers union President Alex Caputo-Pearl told members in a phone alert urging them to participate in a Thursday afternoon rally in Grand Park. The board is saying that billionaires who made their money blowing institutions up and making money off it know best not the education professionals who have dedicated our careers to working with students. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Pressure grows on Board of Trustees amid USC gynecologist scandal By Paul Pringle USCs large and powerful Board of Trustees is coming under growing pressure to provide a stronger hand as the university faces a crisis over misconduct allegations against the campus longtime gynecologist that has prompted calls for President C.L. Max Nikias to step down. Allegations that Dr. George Tyndall mistreated students during his nearly 30 years at USC have roiled the campus, with about 300 people coming forward to make reports to the university and the Los Angeles Police Department launching a criminal investigation. USC is already beginning to face what is expected to be costly litigation by women who say they were victimized by the physician. So far, the trustees to whom Nikias reports have expressed sympathy for the women who have come forward and launched an independent investigation while also publicly backing the president. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print UC regents approve leaner budget for Janet Napolitano By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents on Thursday unanimously approved a leaner, more transparent budget for President Janet Napolitano, moving to address political criticism over the systems central office operations. The $876.4-million budget for 2018-19 reflects spending cuts of 2%, including reductions in staffing, travel and such systemwide programs as public service law fellowships, carbon neutrality and food security. Napolitano shifted $30 million to campuses for housing needs and $10 million to UC Riverside to support its five-year-old medical school. She also permanently redirected $8.5 million annually to help enroll more California students, as required by the state. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print USCs Academic Senate calls on university president to resign after a series of scandals By Matt Hamilton The body that represents USCs faculty called on President C.L. Max Nikias to resign Wednesday in the wake of relevations that the universitys longtime gynecologist faced years of accusations of misconduct by students and colleagues at the campus health clinic. The Academic Senate took the vote late Wednesday afternoon after a fiery town hall meeting attended by more than 100 faculty members, many of whom voiced outrage over Nikias and the Board of Trustees leadership. The vote came a day after the trustees executive committee stood firmly behind Nikias, saying it has full confidence in his leadership, ethics and values. At the town hall meeting, Senate President Paul Rosenbloom said he did not think Nikias or Provost Michael Quick committed wrongdoing but that the university president deserved criticism for a lack of transparency. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Californias public universities on the way to getting a big longed-for boost in funding By Teresa Watanabe The University of California and California State University systems are poised to get major funding boosts that will help them enroll thousands of additional state students and eliminate the need for tuition increases in the coming school year. A key Assembly budget panel on Wednesday approved $117.5 million in new funds for the UC. A Senate panel approved a similar sum last week. The same committees recently approved even more funding for the Cal State system. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement UC regents to scrutinize Janet Napolitanos office budget in a step toward stronger oversight By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents this week plan to scrutinize the budget of President Janet Napolitano, whose office came under political fire last year for questionable spending and murky accounting. Regents will vote on the proposed $876.4-million budget for 2018-19 during their two-day meeting, which starts Wednesday, at UC San Francisco. They also will discuss state funding, financial aid, online education and transfer student policies. Board Chairman George Kieffer said regents are stepping up to exert stronger oversight of the presidents office after a blistering state audit last year found financial problems including an unreported $175 million budget reserve. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print State legislative panels approve major funding boost for Cal State By Teresa Watanabe After months of intensive lobbying, Cal State University has convinced two key legislative panels to approve funding to enroll nearly 11,000 more students, hire more faculty and expand housing aid to those without shelter this fall. An Assembly budget panel on Tuesday approved $215.7 million more for Cal State, adding to Gov. Jerry Browns proposed $92.1 million general fund increase. A Senate budget panel approved a similar increase last week. The extra funding which went beyond Cal States own request to the Legislature of $171 million is still subject to final budget negotiations with Brown. But the actions by the Senate and Assembly panels amount to a demand from Democrats that the governor hike higher education spending. Cal State University is the workhorse undergraduate university serving hundreds of thousands of Californians, said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who heads the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance. We need more graduates for the California workforce and higher education is the ticket to the middle class. Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White hailed the actions, but said it was too soon to celebrate. The CSU has a singular focus on helping students earn high-quality degrees sooner, and the entire university community has rallied to reinforce that message to our states lawmakers, he said in a statement. The actions taken thus far by the Assembly and Senate are promising and show that our message is being received, but there is still work to be done. Funding for the University of California was not taken up Tuesday as originally scheduled. McCarty would not comment on sticking points but said he was confident that a resolution would be reached this week. Were looking to provide resources above whats in the governors budget, but negotiations are ongoing, he said in an interview. State per-student funding is not what it once was, leaving both Cal State and the UC in a tough financial squeeze. Both systems raised tuition last year after a six-year freeze on higher costs. For this year, Cal State had asked for funding to enroll an additional 3,621 students, but both the Senate and Assembly panels approved three times that amount. Cal State, the largest public university system in the nation, turned away 32,000 eligible students last year because its campuses werent able to accommodate them. The panels asked that at least $50 million of the extra funding be used to hire more tenure-track faculty to help boost graduation rates. The Assembly panel also approved one-time funding of $5 million to ease hunger on campuses and $14 million for rapid rehousing pilot projects at three campuses, offering needy students rental support and short-term case management. Other items approved include $5 million to support the CSU Long Beach Shark Labs research on sharks and beach safety and $2 million for equal employment opportunity practices. This post has been updated to include comments from Assemblyman Kevin McCarty and Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Faculty members call for USC president to step down: He has lost the moral authority to lead By Matt Hamilton Two hundred USC professors on Tuesday demanded the resignation of university President C. L. Max Nikias, saying he had lost the moral authority to lead in the wake of revelations that a campus gynecologist was kept on staff for decades despite repeated complaints of misconduct. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Gun battle, negotiations lasted 15 minutes before Texas school shooter was apprehended, sheriff says By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Minutes after a school shooter opened fire in an art class last week, killing 10 people and wounding 13, including a local police officer, fellow officers returned fire in a protracted gun battle before isolating the suspect, the local sheriff said Monday. Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset praised first responders as well as Santa Fe Police Officer John Barnes, who was working as a resource officer at the school the day of the shooting. Their actions, he said, prevented the attack from spreading to other classrooms and potentially claiming additional victims. As officials continue to probe last Fridays shooting at Santa Fe High School, students are worried about returning to the scene of the attack when classes resume next week. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 6 women sue USC, alleging they were victimized by campus gynecologist By Richard Winton Six women filed civil lawsuits Monday alleging that a longtime gynecologist at the University of Southern California sexually victimized them under the pretext of medical care and that USC failed to address complaints from clinic staff about the doctors behavior. One woman alleged Dr. George Tyndall forced his entire ungloved hand into her vagina during an appointment in 2003 while making vulgar remarks about her genitalia, according to one of the lawsuits. Another woman alleged that Tyndall groped her breasts in a 2008 visit and that later he falsely told her she likely had AIDS. A third woman accused the doctor of grazing his ungloved fingers over her nude body and leering at her during a purported skin exam, the lawsuit states. The wave of litigation comes as USC continues to grapple with the scandal, which legal experts said could prove costly to the university as scores of former patients come forward about their experiences with the gynecologist. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Fatalities reported in Texas high school shooting; suspect arrested, officials say By Associated Press Houston-area media citing unnamed law enforcement officials are reporting that there are fatalities following a shooting at a local high school Friday morning. Television station KHOU and the Houston Chronicle are citing unnamed federal, county and police officials following the shooting at Santa Fe High School, which went on lockdown around 8 a.m. The Associated Press has not been able to confirm the reports. The school district has confirmed an unspecified number of injuries but said it wouldnt immediately release further details. Assistant Principal Cris Richardson said a suspect has been arrested and secured. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print This student followed the new L.A. schools chief on his first-day tour Melissa Barales-Lopez, a senior at Garfield High School followed Supt. Austin Beutner on his first day on the job, as he toured a variety of programs around the Los Angeles Unified School District. Heres what she took from the experience. LAUSD students and staff alike are looking for a personal champion, someone who will address and improve the difficulties afflicting their education. What LAUSD students need is someone whos willing to listen and learn, someone who can understand the current issues affecting their schools and act to efficiently amend them, someone who can unlock the full potential of LAUSD students and enable them to reach their goals. During the entirety of his first day, superintendent Austin Beutner did indeed demonstrate a willingness to learn. Posing questions to teachers and students, Beutner engaged with the student communities he encountered to gain a better comprehension of the minutiae and nuances that distinguish each school inside an overwhelmingly large district. From inquiries about Grand View Boulevard Elementary Schools dual language program to questions regarding the services of LAUSDs after-school program, Beyond the Bell, Beutner revealed he has a lot to learn about the system. But, Beutner also showcased a willingness to tackle challenges head-on on his first day. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print USC let a gynecologist continue treating students despite years of misconduct allegations By Matt Hamilton For nearly 30 years, the University of Southern Californias student health clinic had one full-time gynecologist: Dr. George Tyndall. Tall and garrulous with distinctive jet black hair, he treated tens of thousands of female students, many of them teenagers seeing a gynecologist for the first time. Few who lay down on Tyndalls exam table at the Engemann Student Health Center knew that he had been accused repeatedly of misconduct toward young patients. The complaints began in the 1990s, when co-workers alleged he was improperly photographing students genitals. In the years that followed, patients and nursing staff accused him again and again of creepy behavior, including touching women inappropriately during pelvic exams and making sexually suggestive remarks about their bodies. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Cal State trustees to discuss Browns latest budget proposal, which they say still falls $171 million short By Joy Resmovits Just how much money does California State University need to serve its students? In recent years, this question has been front and center for the nations largest public university system. Cal States leaders say that to keep their campuses quality from slipping, they need much more money than the state is giving them. This year, theyre also at odds with Gov. Jerry Brown on the question of whether any extra money should come in one-time bursts or be ongoing. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print On his first day as L.A. schools chief, Beutner plans a day of visits across the district By Howard Blume L.A. Unifieds new superintendent, Austin Beutner, will kick off his first day of work on Tuesday with a choreographed tour of the nations second-largest school district, from the San Fernando Valley to Carson. His day is scheduled to begin at 5:15 a.m. at a school bus depot and end more than 12 hours later at a parent meeting at Garfield High School. Along the way, Beutner is expected to be joined by school district administrators, L.A. Unified board members and the vice president of the union that represents school bus drivers. Though he will be covering a lot of ground, Beutners tour has him skipping Tuesdays school board meeting, when board members are expected to discuss labor negotiations in closed session. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Cal State trustees to discuss Browns latest budget proposal, which they say still falls $171 million short By Joy Resmovits Just how much money does California State University need to serve its students? In recent years, this question has been front and center for the nations largest public university system. Cal States leaders say that to keep their campuses quality from slipping, they need much more money than the state is giving them. This year, theyre also at odds with Gov. Jerry Brown on the question of whether any extra money should come in one-time bursts or be ongoing. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Why a handful of rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as governor By Ryan Menezes California voters have seen a barrage of sunny television ads in recent weeks touting former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosas record on finances, crime and education, aired by Families & Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor 2018. But the group is, in fact, largely funded by a handful of wealthy charter-school supporters. Together they have spent more than $13 million in less than a month to boost Villaraigosas chances in the June 5 primary at a time when his fundraising and poll numbers are lagging. Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, jump-started the group with a $7-million check, by far the largest donation to support any candidate in the election. Their efforts are part of a broader proxy war among Democrats between teachers unions longtime stalwarts of the party and those who argue that the groups have failed low-income and minority schoolchildren. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Talking schools with L.A. Unifieds new superintendent By Anna M. Phillips Austin Beutner, who officially starts Tuesday as the new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is taking on a famously difficult job at a particularly difficult time. The school board is divided and did not back him unanimously. The nations second-largest school district has deep-seated problems, including declining enrollment, lagging academic achievement and rising pension and healthcare costs that eat away at its budget. The 58-year-old former investment banker and former L.A. Times publisher has years of experience in the financial world but none as an educator. Earlier this week, he sat down with the Times education team to discuss the challenges facing the district, which has about 60,000 employees and 500,000 students in traditional public schools. He did not talk about his plans saying repeatedly, stay tuned but he spoke in broad terms about his mindset in approaching the tough decisions ahead. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Suspect detained, authorities search campus after reports of armed man at Palmdale high school By James Queally One person has been detained after a report of an armed man at a Palmdale high school sparked a massive law enforcement response Friday morning. The suspect was spotted at 7:05 a.m. on the campus of Highland High School in Palmdale, according to Sheriffs Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida. The person was detained in a nearby parking lot, according to Nishida, who did not know whether that person was an adult or juvenile. Deputies at the scene are clearing the school methodically, and students will be transported home via school buses once the campus is deemed safe, Nishida said. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement The education of Bertha Perez: How a UC Merced custodians disenchantment led to a political awakening By Robin Abcarian Its the third day of a three-day strike, and UC Merced custodian Bertha Perez is taking a break from a picket line at the universitys unremarkable entrance, an intersection with stop lights. Photos from other UC campuses this week have shown big crowds of striking service workers members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees marching and chanting pro-labor slogans as they try to force the University of California back to the negotiating table. But here, at UC Merced, whose handful of big buildings rise from a flat expanse of farmland, the picket line is tiny, maybe two dozen workers and a few students. Its not a big-city-style show of force. Then again, a union sympathizer is banging relentlessly on a snare drum, so its noisier than youd expect. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ref Rodriguez resigns from teacher credentialing commission By Howard Blume Ref Rodriguez appears during a court appearance. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez has resigned from the states Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which oversees the integrity and quality of Californias teachers. Rodriguez faces felony and misdemeanor charges for political money laundering. Separately, his former employer, a charter school organization, has accused him of improperly authorizing checks to a nonprofit under his control. Rodriguez has denied wrongdoing. Rodriguezs resignation from the state body was effective May 4, days after he cast a crucial vote as part of a narrow majority that voted to authorize contract negotiations with Austin Beutner to become superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District. Beutners first official day on the job is Tuesday. Rodriguez remains in his $125,000-a-year position on the Los Angeles Board of Education. The mission of the state body is to ensure integrity, relevance, and high quality in the preparation, certification, and discipline of Californias teachers. Critics had questioned Rodriguezs continued service on the commission, given that teachers can be suspended from work if they face criminal charges. They also can lose their jobs for lapses in personal behavior, such as excessive drinking, with the potential to affect their performance. Police in Pasadena arrested Rodriguez on a Friday afternoon in March for public drunkenness. He was not charged in the incident and has apologized. The state commission reviews teacher discipline cases and can take action to remove a teachers credential to work in a California classroom. The commission has 15 members. Rodriguezs departure was disclosed in a one-sentence announcement on the agencys website. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print School board members request for restraining order against blogger is rejected By Priscella Vega An Orange County Superior Court judge on Wednesday denied a school board members petition for a permanent restraining order against a Huntington Beach blogger. Attorney Jeffrey W. Shields filed the petition on behalf of Ocean View School District trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin, 46, who alleged in court documents that Charles Keeler Johnson, 56, has threatened her on social media and at school board meetings, causing her to fear for my own safety and for that of my immediate family members. Johnson, who goes by Chuck and publishes HBSledgehammer.com, said the trustee tried to stifle his freedom of speech. He also contended that Clayton-Tarvin took his blog posts and Facebook comments too seriously and out of context, saying anyone who is afraid of metaphors has serious issues. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Deal with workers averts one-day strike that could have shut down L.A. schools By Howard Blume Los Angeles school district and union officials announced a contract agreement Tuesday night that averted a one-day strike planned for next week. The pact, which runs through June 2020, removes one labor problem from the desk of incoming Supt. Austin Beutner whose first day on the job would have coincided with the strike. Plenty of other challenges remain. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print UC labor strike expands with show of support from more unions By Teresa Watanabe Fong Chuu is a registered nurse who has assisted with countless liver transplants, kidney surgeries and gastric bypasses during 34 years at UCLA. Working with her are scrub technicians who sterilize equipment, hand medical instruments to the surgeon and dress patient wounds. They are a team, Chuu says, which is why she walked off her job Tuesday in support of those technicians and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299. The 25,000 member AFSCME local, the University of Californias largest employee union, launched a three-day strike Monday. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print We are humans too: Voices of UCLAs striking custodians, hospital aides and imaging technicians By Joy Resmovits Demonstrators parade in front of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) This week, thousands of UC employees are staging a three-day strike for better pay and working conditions. On Monday, more than 20,000 custodians, cooks, lab technicians, nurse aides and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 walked off their jobs. By Tuesday, two more unions joined in sympathy strikes. The union and UC reached a bargaining impasse last year. The university has said it wont meet the workers demands. The strikers said they wanted better pay, more equity in the allocation of work, stable healthcare premiums and an end to the universitys use of contract workers. These are their stories. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Massive UC workers strike disrupts dining, classes and medical services By Joy Resmovits A massive labor strike across the University of California on Monday forced medical centers to reschedule more than 12,000 surgeries, cancer treatments and appointments, and campuses to cancel some classes and limit dining services. More than 20,000 members of UCs largest employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, walked off their jobs on the first day of a three-day strike. They include custodians, gardeners, cooks, truck drivers, lab technicians and nurse aides. Two altercations involving protesters and people driving near the rallies were reported at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. At UCLA, police took a man into custody Monday after he drove his vehicle into a crowd, hitting three staff members. They were treated for minor injuries at the scene and released, said Lt. Kevin Kilgore of the UCLA Police Department. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Sen. Kamala Harris to skip UC Berkeley commencement in support of striking workers By Teresa Watanabe California Sen. Kamala Harris has canceled plans to deliver UC Berkeleys commencement address this weekend in support of UC workers who are on strike over wages and health benefits. Due to the ongoing labor dispute, Sen. Harris regretfully cannot attend and speak at this years commencement ceremony at UC Berkeley, said a statement from Harris office issued Monday. She wishes the graduates and their families a joyous commencement weekend and success for the future. They are bright young leaders and our country is counting on them. UCs largest employee union, the 25,000-member American Federation of County, State and Municipal Employees Local 3299, launched a three-day strike Monday and had earlier called for a speakers boycott. The union and university reached a bargaining impasse last year and subsequent mediation efforts have failed to produce an agreement. The union is asking for a multiyear contract with a 6% annual pay increase while the university is offering 3% annual increases over four years. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ will deliver the keynote address instead, the university announced. About 5,800 students are expected to participate in the ceremony Saturday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement School mural depicting Trumps bloody, severed head sparks controversy By Gary Warth A Chula Vista school mural that depicts the bloody, severed head of President Trump on a spear sparked a controversy that prompted officials to cover it and issue a response distancing themselves from the work. The statement also said the artist will alter the painting. We understand that there was a mural painted at the event this past weekend that does not align with our schools philosophy of non-violence, read the statement from MAAC Community Charter School director Tommy Ramirez. We have been in communication with the artist who has agreed to modify the artwork to better align with the schools philosophy. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print New blackface incident at Cal Poly prompts calls for state investigation By Kim Christensen Cal Poly San Luis Obispo officials have asked the state attorney generals office to investigate after a new photo of a white student in blackface surfaced on a fraternity groups private Snapchat. I am outraged, Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong said in a video address Friday to the campus. These vile and absolutely unacceptable acts cannot continue. We must not allow these acts to define us as an institution. Armstrong said the latest photo was intended to imitate an incident last month in which a white member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity was photographed at a party wearing blackface. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print More than 50,000 UC workers set to strike this week but campuses will remain open By Teresa Watanabe More than 50,000 workers across the University of California are set to strike this week, causing potential disruptions to surgery schedules, food preparation and campus maintenance. The systems 10 campuses and five medical centers are to remain open, with classes scheduled as planned. UCs largest employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, plans to begin a three-day strike Monday involving 25,000 workers, including custodians, gardeners, cooks, truck drivers, lab technicians and nurse aides. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement New L.A. schools chief Beutner pledges to listen, learn and take action By Howard Blume New Los Angeles schools Supt. Austin Beutner proved Wednesday that hes a quick learner even without an education background. Like countless public officials before him, he appeared at an important event his first speech and news conference with a photogenic background of students. His message that he would put those students first seemed heartfelt if hardly original. Nor was it a huge surprise that he pledged to push cooperatively but unflinchingly to improve the districts academic performance and stabilize its finances. As an introduction, Beutner, a former investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street, offered little flash, but that was partly the point. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print In a school lockdown, one student takes stock of the stressful scene At the beginning of lunch one day late last month, Duarte High School, Northview Middle School, and California School of the Arts-San Gabriel Valley were advised by the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department to go into lockdown mode due to police activity in the immediate area. Phalaen Chang, a junior at the California School of the Arts, wrote a series of notes on her iPhone while she sat in a room with her classmates. By the time the lockdown ended an hour later, she wrote, she knew which of her friends would hold open the door for others, be the ones calming others down, be the ones barricading the doors. She knew that all of them have the potential to be such strong people. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Tale as old as time: L.A. Unified superintendent pick follows a historical pattern of outside-the-box choices By Joy Resmovits L.A. Unified has long gone back and forth between picking insiders and outsiders to run the nations second largest school district. The choice of Austin Beutner, announced Tuesday, places the district squarely back in the outsider camp months after a consummate insider, Supt. Michelle King, announced that she had cancer and would not return to the job. Check out this timeline of former L.A. superintendents to see how the school board members have changed their minds, sometimes favoring leaders who come from the world of education and sometimes executives from elsewhere, recruited to shock the system into change. At one point, the district hired someone from the military retired Navy Vice Adm. David L. Brewer III, who served as superintendent from 2006-2008. In hiring Brewer, board members had opted for a non-educator largely because they sought a fresh thinker, unwedded to the bureaucracy, unafraid to make bold, even unorthodox moves, reads a 2008 Times story. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Austin Beutner named superintendent of Los Angeles schools By Howard Blume Austin Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker, on Tuesday was named superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nations second-largest school system. His selection was the biggest move yet by a Los Angeles school board majority elected with major support from charter school advocates. The decision came after lengthy public testimony, most of it in support of the other remaining finalist, interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian, who is well known within the school system. Beutner, 58, has no background leading a school or school district. Less than 2 years ago, a school board with a very different balance of power named Michelle King, a former teacher who rose through the district throughout her career, to L.A. Unifieds top job. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Hearing delay gives both sides more time in Ref Rodriguezs potential trial By Howard Blume Ref Rodriguez and his attorneys will have more time to prepare their defense against charges of political money laundering, a judge ruled Monday. The preliminary hearing in the case had been scheduled to begin May 9, but that date will now be pushed back to July 23 per the ruling from L.A. Superior Court Judge Deborah S. Brazil. Rodriguez, 46, faces three felony charges of conspiracy, perjury and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, as well as 25 misdemeanor counts related to the alleged campaign money laundering. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement L.A. school board poised to name Beutner as superintendent By Howard Blume The Los Angeles Board of Education is poised to select philanthropist and former investment banker Austin Beutner to be the next superintendent of the nations second-largest school system. Barring a last-minute development, the only mystery is whether Beutner emerges with four or five votes from the boards seven members. Terms of his contract already have been under discussion, according to sources close to the process who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak. The selection of Beutner, 58, who has no experience managing a school or a school district, would be a signal that the board majority that took control nearly a year ago wants to rely on business management skills instead of insider educational expertise. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Teacher walkouts in Arizona and Colorado continue national debate on money for schools By Michael Livingston Following the lead of teachers who walked off the job in other states in recent weeks, thousands of teachers and their supporters took to the streets in Arizona and Colorado for the second day in a row to demand better pay and more funding for education. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Three decades before the #MeToo movement, UC San Diego led the way against sexual assault By Teresa Watanabe When Nancy Wahlig first started her fight against sexual assault, one company was marketing a capsule for women to stash in their bras and then smash to release a vile odor. Because of the very nature of society, the only person who can prevent rape is the woman herself, read a 1981 advertisement for the Repulse rape deterrent. Ideas about how to prevent sexual violence have come a long way since then, and Wahlig has helped lead that evolution on college campuses. In 1988, she started UC San Diegos Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC), the first stand-alone program at the University of California. Today, she remains the systems most senior specialist. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Andres Alonso withdraws from consideration for L.A. schools job By Howard Blume Andres Alonso, believed to be one of three remaining finalists to lead the Los Angeles school system, has withdrawn from consideration. The remaining known candidates in the confidential search are former investment banker Austin Beutner and interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian. Alonso, 60, announced his decision on Twitter on Thursday night, saying he had notified the L.A. Unified School District on Monday. The exit of Alonso, the former Baltimore schools chief, seems to solidify the front-runner status of Beutner, who also was a former L.A. Times publisher and a Los Angeles deputy mayor. He held each of those positions for about a year. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Heres why the apparent increase in autism spectrum disorders may be good for U.S. children By Karen Kaplan The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among American children continues to rise, new government data suggest. And that may be a good thing. Among 11 sites across the U.S. where records of 8-year-olds are scrutinized in detail, 1 in 59 kids was deemed to have ASD in 2014. Thats up from 1 in 68 in 2012. Normally, health officials would prefer to see less of a disease, not more of it. But in this case, the higher number is probably a sign that more children of color who are on the autism spectrum are being recognized as such and getting services to help them, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print UC shelves tuition increase for now, in hopes of getting more state funding By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents will not vote on a tuition increase next month, shelving the plan for now in hopes that state lawmakers will come through with more funding. Raising tuition is always a last resort and one we take very seriously, UC President Janet Napolitano said Thursday in a statement. We will continue to advocate with our students who are doing a tremendous job of educating legislators about the necessity of adequately funding the university to ensure UC remains a world-class institution and engine of economic growth for our state. Last week, Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White said the 23-campus system no longer would consider a plan to raise tuition for the 2018-19 academic year. But unlike Cal State, UC officials have not taken a tuition increase off the table entirely. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement A chemical spill, unchecked eyewash stations, poor training: Audit details Cal States lax lab safety By Joy Resmovits In May 2016, two bottles tumbled off a poorly supported shelf and broke, leading to a chemical spill in a Sacramento State University lab. The liquid got onto one students legs and soaked anothers feet. Five employees cleaned up the mess, even though no one knew for sure what it was and whether it was dangerous. They called fellow employee Kim Harrington, their union representative, to let her know what happened. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print After blackface incident, minority students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo say they dont feel welcome By Hailey Branson-Potts Aaliyah Ramos was walking through the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus last year when a prospective student approached her. Ramos was the only black person, the young woman said, that she and her mother had seen that day. They asked about the quality of education and the diversity of the student body. Ramos, a mechanical engineering student, didnt want to sugarcoat the truth: Cal Poly long has been predominantly white. But she told the young woman who also was black that she didnt want to discourage her from applying, because that wouldnt help with diversity at a school where only 0.7% of students are African American the lowest percentage of any university in the California State system. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills wins the 2018 U.S. Academic Decathlon By Carlos Lozano El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills has won the 2018 U.S. Academic Decathlon, officials said. The winner was announced early Saturday at a ceremony in Frisco, Texas. More than 600 students from the U.S., Canada, China and the United Kingdom gathered there over the last three days to compete in the 37th annual U.S. Academic Decathlon. Congratulations to El Camino Real Charter High School for another impressive victory, said Vivian Ekchian, interim superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Your academic stamina and competitive spirit to win is remarkable. The entire L.A. Unified family is so proud of you. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Anticipation mounts as L.A. school board meets over superintendent selection By Howard Blume The Los Angeles Board of Education is reconvening in closed session Friday at noon as anticipation mounts about the choice of the next leader of the nations second-largest school system. The presumed front-runner is former investment banker and philanthropist Austin Beutner, but interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian and former Baltimore Supt. Andres Alonso also are in the running. Most district insiders appear to be rooting for Ekchian, who has spent her entire career in education within the school system. After her 10 years as a teacher, her roles have included head of human resources, chief labor negotiator and regional administrator for campuses in the west San Fernando Valley. Shes managed the district since September, when then-Supt. Michelle King went on medical leave and chose Ekchian to fill in for her. King, who is battling cancer, never returned and announced her retirement in January. Numerous influential civic leaders have urged and pressured the board to select Beutner. Also lending their weight have been advocates for charter schools, which are independently operated, growing in number and competing for students with district-operated campuses. Four of the seven board members enough to control the outcome were elected with major financial support from charter supporters. Beutner has two ongoing connections with the L.A. Unified School District. The first is his leadership of an outside task force that is making recommendations on how to improve the school system. The second is his charity, Vision to Learn, which supplies glasses to low-income students. The charity and the school system are in a dispute at the moment over who is responsible for delays in providing services to students as part of a $6 million contract, half of which is paid for by L.A. Unified. Unlike Ekchian and Buetner, Alonso, who currently teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has no deep-seated local constituency, but the prospect of his selection has generated some excitement. While in Baltimore, Alonso was recognized for pushing for progress at low-performing schools, and for being willing to take strong action. While in Baltimore, he also weathered a test-score cheating scandal and occasionally rocky relations with the teachers union. But by the time he resigned, after six years, he and union leaders seemed to be working together without rancor. Leaders of some community groups have split from the pro-Beutner camp. They worry that Beutners approach to confronting the districts financial problems could shut out their voices or involve severe economic cutbacks that would undermine programs that are helping students. Some prefer Ekchian; some Alonso. Theyve been reluctant to speak out publicly because theyll have to work with whoever is selected, but they have tried to get the ear of board members. On Friday morning, one leader of a community group decided to come out in favor of Alonso. L.A. Unified has the opportunity to bring in an instructional leader of color with a history of success, said Alberto Retana, president and chief executive of Community Coalition, which works on behalf of low-income students and families in South Los Angeles. If we have a shot at that, we should go for it because its in the best interests of our kids and of our community. Retana said his statement was not meant to criticize Beutner or Ekchian but to alert board members that there also is community support for Alonso. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Cal State leader shelves proposed tuition hike: Its the right thing to do, but its not without risk By Joy Resmovits Cal State, the nations largest public university system, will no longer consider a plan to raise tuition for the 2018-19 academic year, Chancellor Timothy P. White announced Friday. The decision is a bet that Sacramento will come through in the end. If Cal State loses that bet, it could mean cuts to campus programs. White said in an interview that Californias economy is strong enough that families should not be shouldering the burden of higher college costs. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. students to participate in national walkout activities on Friday By Joy Resmovits Students are taking to the streets again Friday to protest gun violence on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. Starting at 10 a.m., students at many schools will spend 13 seconds honoring the 13 people 12 students and one teacher killed on that day in Littleton, Colo. After that, theyll participate in a host of different activities. Within L.A. Unified, one school is having an open-mic event for students to talk about school violence, and lawmakers are visiting campuses to hear students thoughts. According to a central hub for organizing the protests written by the students of Ridgefield High School in Connecticut the walkouts are intended to drive the political change necessary to curb school violence. The day is also a time for students to interact on an elevated platform they have never had before, the site states. It is a day of discourse and thoughtful sharing. Bringing together communities and students to get a national discussion rolling. Organizers have suggested using the event to convey the importance of curbing gun violence to legislators. They are encouraging students to push legislation that would ban assault weapons and tighten up rules around who can buy guns and how. Over 2,500 schools nationwide are expected to participate. In L.A., some students at campuses including Eagle Rock High School, the Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts and Bravo Medical Magnet plan to walk out. Students from various schools expect to join area marches, including those in Santa Monica and Huntington Park. Other schools are hosting career days and voter registration drives. At 1 p.m., students plan to start a rally in front of L.A. Unified headquarters. For the record: An earlier version of this article stated that 12 teachers and one student were killed in the Columbine shooting. The opposite is true: twelve students and one teacher died. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Stabbing of popular student devastates South El Monte High School; teen friend suspected in slaying By Sonali Kohli When administrators at South El Monte High School called Jeremy Sanchezs parents to say he never showed up for class Wednesday, his father began to worry. It was unusual for the 17-year-old junior to miss school, so his father filed a missing persons report and assembled two of Jeremys close friends to look for the popular student-athlete. Their search took them to a scenic stretch of the San Gabriel River Trail, where one of the friends a 16-year-old boy made a tragic discovery. Among the bushes in the riverbed near Thienes Avenue and Parkway Drive was Jeremys body, punctured with stab wounds, according to Lt. John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Racist fliers spark outrage at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo By Alene Tchekmedyian Soon after Neal MacDougall arrived on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus Tuesday, the professor noticed university police standing outside a restroom near his office. A racial slur against African Americans had been scrawled in red marker on a stall wall. Later, he discovered a series of racist fliers pinned up next to his door. Someone had also slashed posters hed hung outside his office supporting students in the country illegally. The discovery was the latest controversy on the prestigious campus which the president said is less than 55% white that MacDougall said demonstrates a culture of racism at the university. Last week, photographs emerged of white fraternity members, including one in blackface, flashing gang signs. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement The superintendent waiting game, paying for L.A.'s College Promise, Princetons slave history: Whats new in education By Joy Resmovits Acting LAUSD superintendent Vivian Ekchian is a finalist for the permanent job. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) In and around Los Angeles: The L.A. Unified school board spent 10 hours interviewing and discussing candidates for superintendent. When they adjourned after 10 p.m., they said they would reconvene on Friday. Who is paying for Mayor Eric Garcettis much-touted College Promise, a program that promises two years of community college for LAUSD grads? In California: The Legislature is considering a proposal that would boost K-12 education funding for black students. When the cost of living is taken into account, California has the highest rate of child poverty. Nationwide: The families of two children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School are suing Alex Jones and Infowars for saying the school massacre never occurred. Princeton will name two spaces an arch and a garden after slaves who lived or worked on the campus. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. school board meets privately with finalists and debates choice for school district leader By Howard Blume The Los Angeles Board of Education adjourned late Tuesday after spending more than 10 hours interviewing candidates and trying to reach a decision on who would be the next leader of the nations second-largest school system. When the meeting finally recessed at 10:11 p.m., a spokesman announced only that the school board would reconvene Friday at noon. Going into the days meetings, there were apparently four finalists, according to sources who could not be named because they were unauthorized to speak. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Two Sandy Hook families sue Alex Jones and Infowars for saying the school massacre never happened By David Altimari Families of two children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School have filed lawsuits in Texas against controversial radio host Alex Jones for continually claiming the massacre never happened. Neil Heslin, the father of Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah Pozner died in the massacre, filed separate lawsuits late Monday in Travis County, Texas. The lawsuits allege that Jones defamed the parents by constantly calling them crisis actors and insisting the shooting was a false flag operation; they also claim Jones accusations have led to death threats against the Sandy Hook families by Jones followers. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Beutner emerges as a top pick for L.A. schools superintendent amid last-minute jockeying By Howard Blume Austin Beutner has emerged as a leading contender to run the Los Angeles school district, with backers saying he is smart enough and tough enough to confront its financial and academic struggles. Though he does not have a background in education, the former investment banker has in the last year examined some of the districts intractable problems, serving as co-chair of an outside task force with the support of then-Supt. Michelle King. Sources inside and outside the school district said Beutner appears to have more support on the seven-member board than other finalists, and his name could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Challenge at Chicago school construction site: Watch for 38,000 unmarked graves By Nereida Moreno A 15-year effort to build a school in Chicagos Dunning neighborhood is underway with an unusual complication: Construction workers are taking careful steps to avoid disturbing human remains that may lie beneath the soil. The $70-million school is to be built on the grounds of a former Cook County Poor House, where an estimated 38,000 people were buried in unmarked graves. Among the dead are residents who were too poor to afford funeral costs, unclaimed bodies and patients from the countys insane asylum. There can be and there have been bodies found all over the place, said Barry Fleig, a genealogist and cemetery researcher who began investigating the site in 1989. Its a spooky, scary place. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Oklahoma teacher walkout winds down despite lawmakers failure to meet demands By Washington Post Oklahomas largest teachers union has announced an end to a walkout that has drawn thousands of educators out of classrooms and to the state Capitol demanding greater investment in the states schools, which have endured the nations steepest funding cuts. The announcement Thursday from the Oklahoma Education Assn. does not necessarily end the protests at the Capitol, as teachers not affiliated with the union vowed to stay longer. Instead of a walkout, the union and school districts across the state have said they plan to send delegations of teachers to Oklahoma City to keep the pressure on lawmakers. Teachers and their supporters have also promised to push education issues to the forefront of November elections, when the state chooses a new governor. As school districts begin to reopen, the protests may lose steam. The Legislature is not in session Friday, and observers are waiting to see what happens Monday, when lawmakers return. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Most Californians are worried about school shooting threats and oppose arming teachers, survey finds By Joy Resmovits Hamilton High School student Aiyana Dabriel holds a sign during a March 14 walkout in support of the Parkland shooting victims. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Most Californians are worried that a school shooting like the one that occurred in Parkland, Fla., in February could shed blood closer to home, a new survey found. Some 73% percent of adults and 82% of public school parents said they were very concerned or somewhat concerned about school shootings. The Public Policy Institute of California surveyed 1,704 adults in the state by phone just after the March for Our Lives protest against gun violence. Latino and black respondents were significantly more likely to be concerned about school violence than white or Asian respondents, the institute found. Two-thirds of adults and public school parents said they opposed letting more educators carry weapons in school. The response differed across party lines, with 86% of Democrats and 69% of independents voicing their opposition, while 60% percent of Republicans said they would support a measure to arm educators. The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.2% in either direction, also asked Californians about school funding, educational issues in the governors race and the impact of immigration enforcement on students. You can find the full results here. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Californias largest virtual charter school network agrees to contract with its teachers By Anna M. Phillips Nearly four years after teachers at Californias largest online charter school voted to unionize, they have reached a deal to increase pay and create job protections, according to a spokesman for the California Teachers Assn. The contract, which is still tentative and subject to ratification, is a victory for the teachers union. Although charter schools are publicly funded, most are privately managed and their employees arent protected by labor contracts. Under the terms of the contract the result of years of negotiation and legal wrangling approximately 500 teachers working for California Virtual Academies will no longer be at-will employees who can be dismissed for almost any reason. Their average salary will rise to just over $45,000, according to union estimates, a figure that remains far below the norm for traditional public school teachers. Still, it is an improvement over the previous average of $38,000. The accord also places a limit on the number of students each teacher is responsible for monitoring in online homeroom classes. Were very satisfied with the gains we made, said teacher Brianna Carroll, president of California Virtual Educators United. I think were going to see some extraordinary changes in our schools. According to Carroll, teachers at California Virtual Academies better known as CAVA had grown frustrated with the organizations foot-dragging and were making preparations to go on strike when CAVAs leadership agreed to the deal. CAVA and K12, the Virginia-based for-profit company linked to its schools, did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday asking for comment. The network currently operates nine virtual charter schools across California. In 2016, the charter network agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle claims of false advertising, misleading parents and inadequate instruction. The state attorney generals office had also accused K12 of controlling the charters for its own financial benefit. Neither CAVA nor K12 admitted to wrongdoing in the settlement. A year later, the state imposed a $2-million fine on CAVA after an audit found that it had misspent public funds. The network disputed the findings. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement School board approves a new formula for funding high-need schools By Sonali Kohli L.A. schools will soon get more money if they are located in neighborhoods with such problems as high levels of gun violence and asthma. The Los Angeles Unified school board voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt a new formula to determine how to dole out some funding to schools, based not only on the characteristics of the student populations but on the traumas that affect the communities around campuses. The new formula will be applied to $25 million in funding next fiscal year and about $263 million annually in future years a small part of the districts $7.5 billion annual budget. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Protesters demand Ref Rodriguez resignation outside school board meeting By Sonali Kohli Students, parents, teachers and UTLA marching outside the board meeting chanting "Ref resign" pic.twitter.com/W0LRWZSIXY Sonali Kohli (@Sonali_Kohli) April 10, 2018 A few dozen parents, students and teachers marched outside the Los Angeles Unified School Board meeting Tuesday, some calling for board member Ref Rodriguez to resign the week after news broke that he was taken into custody on suspicion of being drunk in public at a Pasadena bar and restaurant. Rodriguez was not cited or charged in that incident, but was held for more than five and a half hours before being released. The school board member faces felony and misdemeanor charges for political money laundering. He is accused of getting more than two dozen people people to donate to his campaign for his school board seat with the understanding that he would reimburse them. He stepped down from his post as school board president after he was charged last fall, but he did not give up his seat on the board. He has pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of conspiracy, perjury, and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, as well as 25 misdemeanor counts related to the alleged campaign money laundering. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May. He cant give his full focus to our students, said Rebecca LaFond, a Highland Park parent whose three children marched with her as she chanted, Ref resign. One daughter marched in front of her, using a drum stick to hit the bottom of a gallon-size empty water jug. Our kids deserve someone who has the utmost ethical standards representing them, LaFond said. The protests continued into the board meeting, where some addressed Rodriguez directly, calling on him to step down during public comment portions of the meeting. Rodriguez, through his chief of staff, declined to comment. Some parents outside the board meeting did not know about the charges against Rodriguez but came out to protest the possibility of sharing their school campuses with charter schools. Protesters also oppose colocation not all of the parents are here to ask Ref Rodriguez to step down pic.twitter.com/1Co8zQ9zSi Sonali Kohli (@Sonali_Kohli) April 10, 2018 Cynthia Martinez said her son, who goes to Christopher Dena Elementary School in Boyle Heights, has been bullied in the past by students from a charter school sharing the campus. She said she didnt know who Rodriguez was. Some parents and teachers are worried about losing computer labs, robotics rooms and fitness centers if they are required to share their campus with charter schools, said Ilse Escobar, a parent community organizer for United Teachers Los Angeles. The issues of Rodriguez and colocation are related, Escobar said. Rodriguez is part of a majority on the school board elected with financial backing from charter school supporters, and many parents, she said, feel that the school board is compromised if he is a part of it. Staff reporter Howard Blume contributed to this post. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Delaine Eastin tries to gain momentum in the California governors race, one voter at a time By Seema Mehta Delaine Eastin was a sophomore in high school when a drama teacher urged her to try out for a part in The Man Who Came to Dinner. She hesitated until he told her: This is a metaphor for your whole life. If you never try out, you will never get the part. Eastin auditioned and won the role. Decades later, the advice sticks with the former state schools chief, this time in her unlikely run for governor. Despite calls for more women in leadership roles in state politics following sexual misconduct allegations in Sacramento, Eastin has been largely overlooked in the race, lagging far behind her Democratic rivals in fundraising and the polls. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Arizona high court rejects in-state tuition for DACA recipients By Associated Press Young immigrants granted deferred deportation status under a program started by President Obama are not eligible for lower in-state college tuition, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday. The unanimous ruling will affect at least 2,000 students attending the states largest community college district and hundreds more at other colleges and the states three public universities. The Maricopa County Community Colleges District and state universities said they would begin raising tuition immediately for the coming school year. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print New York high school students injured when bus strikes overpass By Associated Press A charter bus carrying teenagers returning from a spring break trip Sunday night struck a bridge overpass on Long Island, seriously injuring six passengers and mangling the entire length of the top of the bus. The crash happened shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday on the Southern State Parkway in Lakeview, according to New York State Police. One of the six injured passengers had very serious injuries, said State Police Maj. David Candelaria. Thirty-seven other passengers suffered minor injuries. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Some good news for California in national student test scores By Joy Resmovits Every two years, the nations fourth- and eighth-graders are tested in math and reading and newly released results from last years tests give California at least a little reason to be pleased. The 2017 results out Monday night were mostly flat nationwide compared with 2015, though the average score in eighth-grade reading went up. But while that improvement largely came from the increased scores of the highest-performing students, California eighth-graders showed some reading progress from the lowest levels to the highest. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Under state control, Inglewood school districts financial picture worsened By Anna M. Phillips When Eugenio Villa agreed to return to the Inglewood schools for a second tour last summer, he knew the district remained one of Californias most troubled. Inglewood Unified had been nearly insolvent when it was taken over by the state Department of Education in 2012. Six years later, its enrollment was still declining. Its school buildings were tired some edging into decrepitude. Its test scores and graduation rates were still below the state average. And the public was out of patience. Still, Villa, who had signed back on as the districts chief business official, was shocked at what he found when he arrived in June 2017. Two years earlier, he had left the school system on what he thought was firm ground. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Charter school group drops two lawsuits against L.A. Unified By Howard Blume A charter schools advocacy group last week announced that it would end two long-running lawsuits in which it was seeking more classroom space and construction money from the Los Angeles school district. The decision, the California Charter Schools Assn. said, reflects better relations between charter schools and the L.A. Unified School District. But the move also suggests that the litigation, which already contributed to significant gains for area charters, was unlikely to produce much more. It takes time, money and effort to litigate, said Ricardo Soto, general counsel for the charter group. Maybe its better to see if we can find the time and opportunity for collaboration. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. school board member Ref Rodriguez is arrested on suspicion of public intoxication By Richard Winton Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez was arrested recently on suspicion of being drunk in public at a Pasadena restaurant, the latest trouble for an elected official who faces political money-laundering charges. Pasadena police took Rodriguez into custody on March 16, according to city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian. Officers arrested Rodriguez at about 4:30 p.m. at the Yard House restaurant and bar at the Paseo Mall and held him in jail for more than five-and-a-half hours. Rodriguez was ultimately released without being cited or charged, Derderian told The Times. Other details about the arrest were not available, she said. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Kentucky teachers rally at Capitol over state budget By Associated Press Thousands of Kentucky teachers filled the streets near the state Capitol in Frankfort on a cold, overcast Monday to rally for education funding. Teachers and other school employees gathered outside the Kentucky Education Assn. a couple of blocks from the Capitol chanting, Stop the war on public education and holding or posting signs that say, Weve Had Enough. Were madder than hornets, and the hornets are swarming today, said Claudette Green, a retired teacher and principal. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy L The Los Angeles city attorney filed suit Wednesday against a home healthcare business operator, accusing her companies of bilking hundreds of mostly immigrant workers out of their pay while violating minimum wage and overtime laws. Stealing wages from hardworking men and women is reprehensible, Mike Feuer said. No worker should be forced into poverty because an employer denies them their basic rights to a minimum wage and overtime. My office will aggressively combat wage theft and fight to ensure all workers are paid what the law demands. Feuer said he was filing the lawsuit Wednesday to send a message that in Los Angeles, workers rights are being protected. Advertisement It is the latest forceful move by the citys top lawyer, who in the last year has taken aggressive stances on immigrant rights, Wells Fargo & Co.s business practices and patient dumping by hospitals. When the Trump administration ordered a ban on travelers to the U.S. from six countries, Feuer sought to advocate on behalf of affected immigrants at Los Angeles International Airport, but he was denied meetings with immigration and customs officials. In Wednesdays court filing, the city attorney is using long-standing powers granted under the business and professions code of California. It is the same law that Feuer has used to file suits against hospitals involved in patient dumping and landlords who rent properties with unlivable conditions. The complaint says that Emelyn Nishi and her corporations, Health Alliance Nurses Corp. and Hand Homecare Provider Inc., have employed 200 or more immigrants, mostly Filipino, during the last four years. The companies, Feuer alleges, repeatedly failed to pay the workers minimum wage or give them overtime earned. The suit alleges the firms would charge clients between $170 and $250 per day for 24-hour in-home domestic care to patients, but the employees were paid only $100 to $125 per shift, equating to as little as $5.50 per hour or less. According to the lawsuit, the defendants pressured the caregivers to falsify time records to avoid overtime payments and routinely threatened them with termination or blacklisting within the industry. The workers, the suit alleges, were prohibited from discussing rates directly with clients and often were threatened with exorbitant contractual penalties if they attempted to go to work directly for a client. Company officials described the litigation as without merit and a misunderstanding of the laws governing the industry and promised to countersue the city for its allegations. There is no basis for the lawsuit, said John Arason, a company compliance officer. He said Feuer had been misled by union agitators seeking to unionize workers and control the market. The suit also alleges that the caregivers were wrongly classified as independent contractors to avoid paying federal and state payroll taxes and to sidestep a state labor investigation into Nishis operations that started in 2016. Nishi shut down Health Alliance and replaced it with Hand Homecare. But Arason said Health Alliance was a referral service, while the new firm is an employer. The city attorneys lawsuit seeks an injunction against further alleged unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business acts as well as financial restitution to all current and former employees. In addition, Nishi and her companies could face civil penalties of up to $2,500 for each violation, according to the suit. Feuer said he is asking other workers who may be victims of wage theft to come forward and report it to his office. richard.winton@latimes.com Twitter: @lacrimes A man who has been deported to Mexico 15 times pleaded not guilty Wednesday to felony drunk driving in a crash that fractured the skull of a 6-year-old boy. The parents of Lennox Lake, who was hospitalized after the weekend crash, didnt go to court for the arraignment. Hes a tough kid, Benjamin Lake said. He wants to go home, to his brothers, his dog, to play on his computer and go to the park. But Lennox will have to stay at the hospital while he receives antibiotics for a strep infection that set in after surgery, his family said. Advertisement The boy was knocked unconscious and wasnt breathing after a pickup slammed into his parents Honda Accord late Saturday night as they returned from a day at Disneyland. Lake and his wife, Ingrid, suffered minor injuries. Constantino Banda-Acosta, 38, is suspected of speeding through a stop sign in San Ysidro and plowing into the familys car. According to authorities, he was arrested about a mile away, where Border Patrol agents found him and a passenger inside a damaged truck. Immigration officials said the suspect has been returned to Mexico at least 15 times since 2002 for being in the U.S. illegally, most recently in January. Banda-Acosta pleaded not guilty in Chula Vista Superior Court to three felony charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, driving with a blood-alcohol level of more than 0.08% and hit and run, as well as a misdemeanor charge of driving without a license. His bail was set at $230,000. His lawyer asked that prosecutors make sure a material witness, likely the man taken into custody with Banda-Acosta, not be deported pending further investigation. The witness is being held by immigration authorities, deputy public defender Juliana Humphrey said. Banda-Acosta could face seven years and eight months in state prison if convicted of all charges. Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would seek deportation for Banda-Acosta after any prison sentence is served. She did not release specifics on his past deportations, citing privacy rules. pauline.repard@sduniontribune.com dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com Repard, Littlefield and Kucher write for the San Diego Union-Tribune. ALSO L.A. approves a path to legalization for some bootlegged apartments Sherman Oaks restaurateur faces child porn charge after allegedly hiding cameras in womens restroom LAPD officer shoots 3 pit bulls as they maul man on skid row UPDATES: 5:45 p.m.: This article was updated with details from the arraignment. This article was originally published at 9:45 a.m. Year after year, Los Angeles has forced hundreds of illegal or bootlegged apartments to be shuttered, even as local politicians bemoan a housing crisis. Now the city is easing the way to legalize such apartments, a plan long championed by an unusual alliance of landlords and tenant activists. The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to approve a new law that smooths the way for landlords to get approval for bootlegged apartments existing units that were created without the citys blessing if they guarantee affordable housing on the site. Advertisement Councilman Jose Huizar heralded it as a step that would add affordable units and bring existing housing out of the shadows. He stressed that the apartments still would need to meet all fire, life and safety codes. This is a common-sense solution in increasing the city of Los Angeles affordable housing stock and protecting many low- and moderate-income Angelenos, Huizar said Wednesday. The retroactive sanctioning of illegal construction is nothing more than a public acknowledgement that the city is incapable of enforcing the law. Elizabeth Pollock, president of Del Rey Residents Assn. But critics counter that L.A. should find other ways to relieve its housing crisis, saying that the city should not reward illegal behavior. There are tons of places that arent developed in the city, but they dont have the political courage to do whats necessary, said Beverly Grove resident Matthew Berger, who went to City Hall this week to raise concerns about the plan. Instead of doing affordable housing the right way, theyre forcing this on us. Politicians have been under pressure to relieve the high cost of housing for Angelenos. More than a quarter of Los Angeles households are severely burdened by housing costs, spending more than half of their income on a place to live, according to a study released last year by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That was the highest rate among more than 300 metropolitan areas that researchers examined across the country. Housing advocates say L.A. must build more housing and prevent the elimination of existing affordable homes. Last month, lawmakers tightened rules for tearing down and replacing apartments covered by rent stabilization rules. Mayor Eric Garcetti has declared that the city is more than halfway to his goal of permitting 100,000 new units and has pressed for a new fee on development to fund affordable housing. Making it easier to legalize bootlegged apartments is a small but significant step to address affordability, Councilman Gil Cedillo said in March. Law doesnt apply to granny flats The new law applies to buildings in areas that are zoned for multiple families, including apartment complexes and duplexes. It does not cover bootlegged units tucked behind homes in neighborhoods zoned for single families. Los Angeles has been embroiled in a separate debate over how to regulate newly constructed accessory dwelling units, also known as granny flats, that are built behind homes after California passed new laws that invalidated its existing city rules. Bootlegged apartment units already could be legalized in the past, but landlords said the process was so difficult and costly that it was easier to shut them down and evict tenants. Between 2010 and 2015, more than 1,700 units were eliminated after being discovered by city inspectors, according to the housing department. Tenant advocates lamented that many of those apartments were safe and habitable but were difficult to legalize because of other city requirements. Some were created years ago by walling off a bedroom in an existing unit, making them virtually identical to legally sanctioned apartments. Under the new system, Los Angeles will relax some of its rules, including restrictions on the number of apartments allowed on site, if landlords agree to provide at least one additional affordable unit and guarantee that it will remain affordable for at least 55 years. The process is much like the state system allowing density bonuses for developers who pledge that a percentage of their units will be affordable for people with lower incomes. Depending on how many affordable units a landlord provides, he or she can get up to three modifications in zoning rules, such as reducing requirements for open space or parking spots. City officials say that in most cases, however, a landlord has only one bootlegged unit that needs to be legalized. Units had to be occupied during a five-year window To gain city approval, the bootlegged apartments must meet other city code requirements and must have been occupied sometime between Dec. 11, 2010, and Dec. 10, 2015. That rule is meant to prevent landlords from rushing to improperly carve up more apartments and legalize them under the new ordinance. Anyone who tries to do that would have to go through the older, more difficult process to legitimize the units, city officials said. Were not creating anything new. These tenants already live there, said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenant advocacy group. This protects existing affordable housing and enables landlords to have a legal unit and not be subject to fines. Everyone comes out ahead. The Del Rey Residents Assn., a nonprofit neighborhood group, has consistently opposed the measure, arguing it would reward people for flouting the law. The retroactive sanctioning of illegal construction is nothing more than a public acknowledgement that the city is incapable of enforcing the law, its president, Elizabeth Pollock, wrote to city lawmakers. Some of the ordinances original proponents have been concerned about its final details: The Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, which joined tenant advocates to push for the measure, raised concerns that requiring units to remain affordable for 55 years could dissuade some landlords from going through the process. However, were happy that people finally have a path to legalization, said Fred Sutton, government affairs director for the association. In reaction to their concerns about the 55-year requirement, city lawmakers have asked to hear back from the planning department in one year to determine whether the law needs to be adjusted. emily.alpert@latimes.com Twitter: @LATimesEmily UPDATES: 2:35 p.m.: This article was updated with additional background on the citys housing crisis. This article was originally published at 12:35 p.m. California is putting communities downstream in danger of flooding with the way it runs the now-crippled Oroville Dam, mayors and county leaders wrote this week in a strongly worded letter to Gov. Jerry Brown. The letter signed by the mayors of Oroville and six other communities downstream, county leaders, state lawmakers and others comes in the wake of a February spillway emergency at the dam that forced the evacuation of 188,000 people. That ongoing emergency dramatically highlights the fact that those who suffer the greatest consequences from dam malfunction or failure have little or no say in the construction, operation or maintenance of that structure, said the letter, also signed by members of local chambers of commerce and other community groups downstream. Advertisement Asked Tuesday for comment, the governors office and state Department of Water Resources, which operates the dam, cited steps the state was taking to keep the public informed on the battered dam, and the number of other agencies the state was working with as it repaired the damage. Protection of lives and property is our top priority, and our objective is to repair the Oroville spillways by Nov. 1 so we can continue keeping downstream communities safe next winter and every winter thereafter, the statement said, in a reference to the autumn start of the next rainy season. We will continue to work with the community and local leaders in addressing their questions and concerns. Signers of the letter had delivered it to Browns office Monday afternoon, said Nghia Nguyen, a spokeswoman for state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), who signed the letter along with a fellow Republican, Assemblyman James Gallagher from Yuba City. Oroville Dam is the nations tallest dam, and one of the anchors of the states water supply system. Both spillways failed at the half-century-old structure in February under unusually heavy rain and snow melt, forcing the two-day evacuation with only an hours notice. Among the strongest accusations in the letter: Local leaders conclusion that this winters crisis at the dam shows the structure lacks the reliability to provide adequate flood protection to communities downstream. Other points include asking for public discussion of whether operation of the dam should be taken away from the state water agency now running it, for better communication in general from the dams operators and consideration of emergency-relief funds for businesses, property owners and others harmed by the dams troubles this winter. ALSO Water under Oroville spillway probably caused February collapse, state consultants say Serious design, construction and maintenance defects doomed Oroville Dam, report says Water officials brief lawmakers on $275-million price tag for Oroville Dam repairs On Jan. 7, a woman left a Hollywood club and got inside a car, mistakenly thinking the Uber she ordered had arrived. Instead, police said, the driver took the woman to a secluded location and sexually assaulted her. Police released a sketch of the suspect on Tuesday, asking for the publics help in finding the man, who was not an Uber driver. The man is described as between 25 and 30, 5-foot-9 and about 165 pounds. The woman said he told her that he owned an accounting business and worked with his brother, while another brother is in law enforcement, and that he either lived or worked in the Long Beach area, according to an LAPD news release. His car is described as a late model four-door. Advertisement People ordering rides from Uber, Lyft and other apps should make sure the cars license plate matches the app and the driver matches their photo before getting into a car, said LAPD Officer Mike Lopez. License plates and photos are not always available. . Anyone with information should call the Los Angeles Police Departments Operation West Bureau-Sexual Assault Section at (213) 473-0447. Reach Sonali Kohli at Sonali.Kohli@latimes.com or on Twitter @Sonali_Kohli. MORE LOCAL NEWS 1 man dead and 1 wounded in Lawndale shooting Body found under Bay Area home identified as girl who died in 1876 California not operating damaged Oroville dam safely, area mayors say LAUSD is making it harder for immigration officials to enter schools UPDATES: 8:35 a.m.: This story was updated to add that the victim had requested an Uber driver. This article was originally published at 6:15 a.m. The University of California, aiming to end fighting over how many out-of-state students it admits, on Tuesday announced a revised proposal to limit non-Californian and international undergraduates. Under the proposal, UC would restrict the percentage of nonresident students to 18% at five of its nine undergraduate campuses. UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine whose proportion of nonresident students exceeds 18% would be allowed to keep, but not increase, those higher percentages. The new plan is a retreat from the proposal for a 20% systemwide cap on nonresident students that university officials presented to the UC Board of Regents in March. The cap, which would have been the first of it its kind, drew so much dissension from faculty and lawmakers that it was pulled from action and a vote was delayed until this month. Advertisement UC has faced much criticism from California families who think the university gives spots to out-of-state students at the expense of those who live here. State lawmakers threatened to block more funding if UC didnt put a nonresident policy in place. But many faculty members said a limit would deprive schools of both money and top college applicants. UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein called the revised policy a consensus decision reached after extensive discussions. Should the regents approve the policy at their May 18 meeting in San Francisco, lawmakers likely would release $18.5 million in state funding to help enroll an additional 2,500 California undergraduates for the 2017-18 school year. At the first regents meeting, it was obvious there wasnt a consensus, Klein said. We felt it was in everybodys interest to continue discussions over what would be the best path to enhance the enrollment of California residents, while still allowing campuses to enroll qualified nonresident students. Last fall, nonresident students numbered 34,673 16.5% of the systems 210,170 undergraduates. Their proportion varies widely by campus, ranging from 24.4% at UC Berkeley to less than 1% at UC Merced, the systems youngest and smallest university. Campuses are eager to enroll students from other states and countries for both the diversity and extra tuition dollars they bring. They pay about $27,000 more in annual tuition than Californians money that UC officials say has helped campuses recruit and retain faculty, add courses to reduce the overall class sizes and purchase library materials, instructional equipment and technology. The nonresident revenue also has boosted financial aid for Californians by an average $700 per student, Klein said. As campuses scrambled to find extra money to offset deep state funding cuts after the 2008 recession, many actively recruited students from outside the state. Between 2007 and 2016, UC quadrupled its nonresident students. Even so, that percentage is lower than the average 27.9% for the 62 members of the elite Assn. of American Universities. The number of California resident students increased by 10% during that time. But the rapid growth in nonresident students, especially at flagships UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego, sparked a backlash from California families and lawmakers who believed they were squeezing out local children. A highly critical state audit last year concluded that UC had hurt California students by admitting too many nonresidents, although UC President Janet Napolitano labeled the findings unfair and unwarranted. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, has been a leading critic of the increase in nonresident students but said this week he was generally pleased with the revised proposal. If the regents approve it, he said, he would support the release of the $18.5 million in additional funds for UC. I would have liked to have gone back to 10% but Im not sure thats realistic, McCarty said. This is a compromise in the middle. Under an agreement between Napolitano and the state, UC enrolled an additional 7,400 Californians last fall the largest single-year expansion since World War II and officials hope to enroll an additional 5,000 over the next two years, in exchange for more state funding. The latest proposal to limit nonresident students drops the idea of the systemwide cap, which some university officials worried might unfairly disadvantage campuses with fewer out-of-state and international undergraduates. James Chalfant, chair of the UC Academic Senate, had voiced concerns at the regents meeting in March that a systemwide cap would create a tiered system in which the more popular campuses would enjoy the benefits of more tuition money. Chalfant said the Senate was happy that the cap was dropped. But he said faculty members considered the debate an exercise in haggling over arbitrary percentages rather than a serious conversation about how to support UC with enough dollars to maintain its vaunted excellence. A conversation about a funding strategy that preserves both access and excellence is long overdue and should start the moment this policy is adopted, he said in an email. The revised proposal would allow UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside and UC Merced to increase nonresident students up to 18% of undergraduates on their campuses. The other four campuses that exceeded that limit last fall UC Berkeley at 24.4%, UC San Diego at 22.9%, UCLA at 22.8% and UC Irvine at 18.9% would be allowed to keep but not increase the higher percentages of nonresidents they are expected to enroll in the 2017-18 academic year. The revised proposal reiterates that every eligible California student will be offered a spot on at least one UC campus and that nonresident undergraduates are in addition to rather than in place of Californians. Campuses still could increase out-of-state students if they also increased Californians proportionately. But most campuses are squeezed for space for housing, classrooms and labs after the major enrollment boosts of the last year. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block has said he has no plans to increase the share of nonresident students. Still, in an interview in March, Block said the additional tuition from students outside the state had made a huge difference and allowed UCLA to provide more lecturers, teaching assistants and services that helped students graduate more quickly. UC Irvine also appears to be satisfied with its share of nonresident students. Weve reached a comfort zone, spokesman Tom Vasich said. To read the article in Spanish, click here teresa.watanabe@latimes.com Twitter: @teresawatanabe Last week, I became fake news. Well, kind of. Milo Yiannopoulos really is starting his own media venture. I wrote about it on May 2. The next day, an article with the same headline Milo Yiannopoulos to launch Milo Inc., dedicated to the destruction of political correctness was published on a site called good-kingnews.com. The article was almost identical. Almost. But if you read it closely, there were some quirks. The phrase the alt-right became the alt-proper. The magazine Vanity Fair became Vanity Truthful. The Free Speech Movement became the Cost-free Speech Motion. Instead of prompting people to follow me on Twitter, it asked people to abide by me on Twitter. Ian Dennis Miller is the one who tipped me off. Miller is a PhD student at the University of Toronto who is writing a dissertation about memes, social networks and how information spreads within online political communities. Advertisement In the course of his work, Miller informally monitors the Trump-centric subreddit The_Donald. (A subreddit is a subject-specific chat board within the Reddit social media site.) Thats where he discovered the curious version of my article. He clicked through and was puzzled by the nonsense language and the fact that my name and Twitter account were linked at the end of it (which the site later removed). Milo Inc.s initial prevent? Berkeley, where hell organize Cost-free Speech 7 days and give out the Mario Savio Award for Cost-free Speech. A sample line from the fake news version of the story Even more puzzling: None of the commenters on Reddit seemed to notice. In more than a hundred comments on the Reddit post, not one person questioned the glaring issues with sentences such as the programs are to seek the services of 30 people today to function out of an workplace or a reference to Black Lives Subject activists. As for the bizarre language, Millers best guess is that the site takes articles like mine from legitimate news sites, and then feeds them into something that translates them into another language and then back to English. You end up with substitutions that make sense in some places and dont in others: Showcasing works in place of featuring, but Cost-free 7 Days doesnt quite have the same ring as Free Speech Week. In another story on the site, Attorney General Jeff Sessions became Attorney Basic Periods and later Jeff Periods. And in another, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is called the White Dwelling counselor. The site itself was anonymously registered in February. When Miller looked at other stories on the site, he noticed copy/paste errors similar to including my Twitter handle in the story. Since we cant find out who runs the site, its impossible to say exactly why the site exists in the first place, but theres a good chance its to make money off ads. Tweaking the language of the articles is most likely a ploy to evade Googles algorithm, Miller said. That makes it seem like the articles originated on that site, instead of being copied from other sources, which can make those stories appear higher in Googles rankings, meaning more eyeballs on the stories, meaning more ad money. Ten hours after it was posted, the article was upvoted to #26 on The_Donald just shy of the front page. By Friday morning, it had racked up just shy of 7,000 upvotes. At least thousands of people saw it and at least thousands of people voted it up, Miller said. Of phrases like the Cost-Free Speech Motion, he said, nobody questioned that. But, he said, thats not unusual. On sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, people post headlines and links, and not everyone clicks through to read them before offering their opinion. (NPR made fun of this phenomenon in 2014 by posting an article titled, Why doesnt America read anymore? It prompted more than a few comments on Facebook rebuking the premise without clicking through to the April Fools Day message in the story.) In this case, Miller said, the purpose of posting the article to Reddit wasnt to make people read it. It was to serve as a starting point for people to discuss Milo Yiannopoulos and complain about political correctness. Of course, there is some irony in the fact that supporters of President Trump a man whos obsessed with the idea of fake news failed to notice a pretty obvious example staring them in the face. The user who posted my story to Reddit, I_am_Orlando, is a prolific member of The_Donald, with more than 200,000 post karma (the total number of upvotes their posts have received, minus the number of downvotes.) One of the users more recent posts: A headline decrying CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS as fake news. Follow (or abide by) me on Twitter @jessica_roy. ALSO For the second time since Trump took office, people are talking about Nixons Saturday Night Massacre After his son is born with heart condition, Jimmy Kimmel calls for healthcare bickering to end As Trump defends his firing of Comey, White House spins a narrative of strength and decisive action Saying that rape allegations against him fed into the worst possible stereotypes of gay men, a somber Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced Tuesday that he would not seek another term in office. It tears me to pieces to have to step away, said Murray, who had been considered a near-cinch for a second term running one of Americas most liberal cities, but I believe it is in the best interest of this city that I love. For the record: An earlier version of this article said that Murray had a $400,000 war chest. He did at one point, but has spent half of it. Faced with a lawsuit and the allegations of four accusers who claimed Murray, 62, either paid for sex or raped them in the 1980s, the mayor, with husband Michael Shiosaki at his side, said that standing for reelection despite his commanding lead and $200,000 war chest would turn the campaign into more of a spectacle than it already is. Advertisement Any campaign for mayor must be about the future of the city. It must be focused on these issues, not on a scandal, which it would be focused on if I were to remain in the race, he said. The scandal, he added, hurts those who have been victims of abuse. It hurts my family. It hurts Michael. For these reasons, I am announcing that I am withdrawing as a candidate for mayor. Typical election issues had already been drowned out by the scandal. It unearthed both serious and bizarre accusations after a civil lawsuit was filed last month by Delvonn Heckard, 46, a Seattle-area man who claimed Murray sexually abused him as a teenager. Three other men have come forth with similar claims but are not part of the lawsuit. To help substantiate his accusations, for example, Heckard told reporters he remembered that the mayor had a mole in a specific location on his genitals. To disprove that, the mayor announced that he was examined by a doctor who could find no such mole. Back-and-forths such as that along with exaggerated claims by Heckards attorney that led to a $5,000 ethics violation fine against him, and Murrays suggestion that because his accusers had criminal records they werent to be believed led the Seattle Times and a Seattle alt-weekly, the Stranger, to urge Murray to finish his term and leave office. A former state legislator instrumental in pushing for passage of gay rights laws, Murray said his accusers claims paint me in the worst possible historical portraits of a gay man. The allegations against me are not true and I say this with all honesty and the deepest sincerity. Still, I must admit that my heart aches. Since I was 12 years old, politics was my dream and I have the best job in politics, the mayor of the city of Seattle. This lifelong love, this political career, this career that has been my life, will come to an end Dec. 31, he said as his voice cracked. He will walk away from a political career that began with his election as a high school student body president. As Seattles progressive mayor, he backed a new $15 minimum wage law, was supported by both property developers and advocates for the homeless, and pushed tax increases to pay for transit, parks and affordable housing. More recently, he proposed a 1.75-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks to help fund educational programs. He spoke Tuesday with what seemed a sense of both accomplishment and relief before finally thanking his husband and supporters, some of whom were teary-eyed. Nearly a dozen mayoral candidates have announced their plans to become the citys 54th mayor, including the man whom Murray beat in 2013, then-incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn. Nikkita Oliver, an educator and activist, and Cary Moon, an urban planner, are among the better-known candidates. Seattle attorney Jenny Durkan, considered the first openly gay U.S. attorney when appointed by President Obama in 2009 and serving until 2014, is expected to file this week now that Murray has exited the race. Anderson is a special correspondent. ALSO How Houston has become the most diverse place in America Mar-a-Lago, Dubai, Aspen: The bottom line on protecting Trumps in the first 100 days? More than $30 million Phoenix serial killer suspect arrested Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend: The Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) and Turkish Stream projects wont be rivals if the demand in Central and Southern Europe grows, Valentin Zemlyansky, director for energy programs at the Center of World Economy and International Relations of the Ukraine National Academy of Sciences, told Trend May 10. According to him, as the whole volume will be absorbed by the markets of Turkey and the EU, and given the decline in production in Europe, the demand will only grow. Today, Ukraine ensures the transit of a major volume of gas that goes to the EU. In case of implementation of the Nord Stream 2 and the Turkish Stream, the volumes that were sent through Ukraine will be reoriented to Turkey and Germany. Ukraine will lose the gas transit through its territory, but, this wont affect the balance in the European market, added Zemlyansky. The expert noted that Turkey will strongly support the implementation of both projects, since both the SGC and the Turkish Stream are strengthening its position as the regions biggest gas transiting country. The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of gas from the Caspian region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey. At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage. As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans Adriatic Pipeline. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum Over the last year, President Trump has been all over the map when it comes to his feelings about FBI Director James B. Comey . First, Comey was allegedly corrupt. Then, he was gutsy. Then, he was respectable. And then, suddenly, he was no longer fit to hold office. Trump says the system is rigged after Comey announces no charges against Clinton Last year, Comey found himself in an unusual position as his special agents investigated Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of State. Normally, the Justice Department decides whether to bring criminal charges in a case. But U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch had to distance herself from the email investigation after a brief and ill-advised meeting at an airport with Clintons husband, former President Bill Clinton, raised questions about her neutrality. Lynch said she would accept whatever recommendations were made by career prosecutors and Comey. Thats what led Comey to take the unusual step of publicly announcing in July why he was recommending that prosecutors file no charges against Clinton. The FBI investigation focused on whether Clinton had improperly shared classified information over the server, and although he concluded that the Democratic candidate shouldnt face any charges, he was hardly complimentary. Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information, Comey said. Trump, who would later embrace anti-Clinton cries from his supporters to lock her up, was disappointed in Comeys announcement, tweeting the hashtag #RiggedSystem. Trump alleges collusion and corruption at the highest level of the government As the presidential campaign entered its closing stretch, Trumps allegations of corruption grew deeper after the FBI released documents that showed officials discussing a possible quid pro quo between the FBI and the State Department over Clintons private email server. As the Los Angeles Times reported then: According to the documents, which were based on interviews with FBI agents, a high-ranking State Department official allegedly sought to pressure the bureau into changing the classification of an email related to the Benghazi attack in exchange for agreeing to help place more FBI agents in places like Iraq, where they are restricted. Officials said that no deal was made, and that the classification of the email was not changed nor were more FBI agents sent to Iraq. But Trump depicted it as a sign of corruption at the highest level. This is very big, and frankly its unbelievable, Trump said in a video statement. What was just found out is the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the FBI colluded got together to make Hillary Clinton look less guilty and look a letter than she looks. This is one of the big breaking stories of our time, in my opinion. Trump later suggested in an Oct. 27 interview with ABC News that Comey didnt just make a mistake, but that something happened. After Comey re-opens Clinton investigation, Trump says, I have great respect for the FBI and Comey brought back his reputation After Comey informed Congress in a now-infamous letter that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Clintons emails, Trump exulted in front of a roaring campaign crowd. The FBI, Trump said pausing as the crowd cheered after discovering new emails is re-opening their investigation into Hillary Clinton. Trump added: I have great respect for the FBI for righting this wrong. Trump said later: It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where theyre trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. Trump said of Comey: I was not his fan, but Ill tell you what: What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back. Now president, Trump bro-hugs Comey, decides to keep him on: He's become more famous than me In an interview with 60 Minutes shortly after winning the election in November, Trump declined to say whether he would retain Comey. I havent made up my mind, Trump said, adding: I respect him a lot. I respect the FBI a lot. After Trump took the oath of office in January, the White House announced that he planned to keep Comey. The FBI chief had been part of a delegation of intelligence and security officials who went to Trump Tower in December to brief the president-elect on evidence that Russia had interfered in the election in an effort to help Trump win. In a public reception at the White House Jan. 22, two days after his inauguration, Trump greeted Comey warmly telling an audience, Hes become more famous than me. He shook Comeys hand and gave him a gentle bro-hug, patting him on the back. Trump turns on Comey again: Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton As the months wore on, Comey cast a shadow over the Trump administration. In March, he testified before Congress that the FBI was still investigating Russias interference the presidential election adding: That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russias efforts. On May 2, Hillary Clinton said during an appearance in New York that Comeys October bombshell his disclosure, shortly before the election, that he was reopening the FBIs email inquiry cost her the presidency. Trump took to Twitter. Asked about the presidents tweets the next day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said: The president has confidence in the director. But I think, clearly, his point was after some of the comments that were made yesterday regarding the reason for the outcome of the election, I think he just wanted to make it clear what exactly happened. Trump fires Comey In a surprise move, Trump fired Comey a week later. Trump cited letters from Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein recommending that Comey be removed. The meat of the case against Comey came from Rosenstein, who wrote that Comey had acted inappropriately by going public with his reasons for not pursuing criminal charges against Clinton. Rosenstein said Comey had laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial." In Trumps letter of dismissal to Comey, he added a personal twist: While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. Trump added: I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. President Trump s firing of James B. Comey as FBI director has raised any number of questions. Perhaps near the top of the list: Why now? Unsurprisingly, Trumps surrogates in both the White House and Congress had pretty similar things to say Wednesday when questioned about Comeys dismissal. Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, filling in for Press Secretary Sean Spicer , hit many of the common talking points in the White House news briefing. Here they are, in no particular order: Trump had considered letting Comey go since hed been elected This is a bit perplexing. Eleven days before the election, Trump publicly praised Comey for his decision to further review Hillary Clinton s use of a private email server. It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the opposition he had, Trump said at the time. I was not his fan, but Ill tell you what. What he did, he brought back is reputation. Shortly after his election, in an interview with 60 Minutes, Trump declined to say whether he would dismiss Comey. But then came an embrace that seemed to cement Trumps approval of the FBI director. Two days after his inauguration, Trump hugged Comey and affectionately said, Hes become more famous than me. Dont hold President Trump to Candidate Trumps opinion The construction of this mind twister goes like this: Trump may have been happy with Comey on the campaign trail and to be fair, Trump the candidate ran hot and cold on the FBI director but that doesnt represent Trump the president. Sanders argued that his opinion changed once he took office. When exactly that shift occurred remains uncertain. Trump had lost confidence in Comey over the last several months Its unclear what the White House defines as several months, since Trump and his administration were publicly stating their confidence in the director as recently as last week. Just seven days ago, Sean Spicer said that Trump had respect for Comey. It was in response to Trumps overnight tweets that said FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton. Trump himself had said the same just last month. I have confidence in him, he said on Fox News. When pressed, Sanders said that the biggest turning point came during Comeys hearing last week. This was Trumps decision alone Sanders said that Rod Rosenstein came to Trump with concerns about Comey on Monday. According to the White House, Trump did not direct Rosenstein to write the widely-cited three-page letter, but only asked him to put his concerns down in writing after he had voiced the recommendation. Trump took Rosensteins comments into consideration, but ultimately, the White House said, it was Trumps decision to fire Comey. Without further detail, Sanders said the letter and conversation outline the basic atrocities Comey committed in circumventing the chain of command in the Department of Justice. Democrats, DOJ and rank-and-file members of the FBI lost faith in Comey too The White House position is that the controversy over Comeys firing is puzzling since Democrats had called for Comeys dismissal months ago. And Sanders said at the news conference theyd heard from countless members of the FBI. Sanders said she was surprised the decision created a divide and believed criticism of Comeys ouster from some prominent Democrats was a sign that Trump will have Democrats come out and fight him every step of the way. She characterized that as one of the things that is wrong with Washington. Sanders also referenced draining the swamp and took a swipe at Hillary Clinton, saying Clinton would have fired Comey if she had won the election. Her aside: Which, thank God, she didnt. The argument echoes conservative media and constituents voices on social media. We know that members of the Justice Department voiced concerns look no further than the letters from Sessions and Rosenstein. But there are no similar public statements by top FBI officials. Russia investigation is a distraction The White House wants the Russia investigation to be over so the focus can turn back to other matters. No one wants this to be finished and completed more than us, Sanders said. Asked to clarify Trumps claim in his dismissal letter that Comey had informed him on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation," Sanders declined. Asked why the president had put the statement in the letter, she responded: Thats something that is far above my pay grade, and Im not going to get into the specific of that. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Email colleen.shalby@latimes.com or tweet @cshalby. ALSO: Five candidates under consideration for acting FBI director Calls grow for an independent special prosecutor to investigate Trump campaign ties to Russia Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. Its Wednesday, May 10, and heres whats happening across California: TOP STORIES He went to L.A. and got fired James Comey was in Los Angeles on Tuesday for a scheduled appearance at an FBI recruiting event. Then he was fired as director of the agency. Comey learned about his firing from a TV news report while speaking with FBI agents in Los Angeles, according to an FBI source. He was caught flat-footed, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Los Angeles Times Advertisement Plus: The Justice Department is citing Comeys mishandling of Clintons emails last year as grounds for his ouster. Los Angeles Times Blocking out the advocates The groups that, for the last two years, pushed for a crackdown on police misconduct were left out of talks between L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and the LAPD union. Police accountability, police transparency, police reform, is probably the top government issue of concern in communities of color, said Pete White, executive director of the Community Action Network, a skid row advocacy group that also focuses on policing issues. We should be the first, not the last, to be considered in creating reform measures. Los Angeles Times A fight in the 1st City Council district Los Angeles City Council candidate Joe Bray-Ali is under fire over comments he made in an online forum that encouraged racism and fat-shaming. This and revelations about extramarital affairs along with unpaid taxes have provided a lift to unpopular incumbent Gil Cedillo. Los Angeles Times And a fight to be on the L.A. Unified School Board In the home stretch before the May 16 vote, two very different audiences focused on very different concerns at campaign forums for pivotal Los Angeles school board contests. Los Angeles Times L.A. STORIES Growing empire: L.A. radio station Power 106 has been sold to a Downey-based broadcaster. Previously, Meruelo bought Spanish-language television station KWHY-TV Channel 22 from NBCUniversal in 2011 and picked up radio station KDAY-FM (93.5) in 2014. Los Angeles Times Movable music feast: The Music Center is hitting the road. The downtown Los Angeles performing arts campus that includes the Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum and Walt Disney Concert Hall has announced a new initiative, The Music Center on Location. Los Angeles Times Letter from a fancy school: Heres how Harvard-Westlake High School was the breeding ground for two of the youngest and most vehement stars of the Trump movement. The Intercept The birds are alive: A rare shorebird has moved back into some of the prime real estate it abandoned seven decades ago the playground beaches of Los Angeles County. Los Angeles Times Restoring the beach: Santa Monica is taking steps to restore a section of its popular beach with the hope of creating a buffer against sea level rise and bringing back coastal plants and wildlife that have been almost eliminated from the region. Los Angeles Times IMMIGRATION AND THE BORDER Some pushback: The Kern County Board of Supervisors has voted to oppose Californias sanctuary state bill. Bakersfield.com What to do about the gangs? The MS-13 gang is actually a problem, but some say it doesnt seem as if President Trumps administration has any answers to it. The New Yorker More jail space, please: Orange County supervisors unanimously approved a plan Tuesday to rent an additional 120 detention beds at the Theo Lacy Facility to immigration officials that will provide up to $5 million more in revenue to the county. KPCC POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT A new front: A legal battle over regulations for construction vehicles could become the first test of whether President Trump wants to rein in Californias unique ability to limit air pollution. Los Angeles Times Here she goes: Newly elected Sen. Kamala Harris appears to cautiously be making behind-the-scenes moves to position herself for a presidential run in 2020. McClatchy Blocked by a judge: Crucial details about the location and depth of certain California water wells can be kept secret, and out of the hands of an environmental group. Sacramento Bee CRIME AND COURTS Shot from the air: A fatal police shooting in Sunland on Monday marked the first time that specially trained LAPD officers fired on a suspect from a helicopter. Los Angeles Times Body identified: The Sutter County Sheriffs Office identified the body found in the Feather River over the weekend as missing Yuba College student Aly Yeoman. KCRA Man convicted: A 26-year-old man was found guilty Tuesday of abducting and killing Sierra LaMar, a Northern California teenager who disappeared five years ago and whose remains have never been found. Los Angeles Times THE ENVIRONMENT A strawberry fight: A bitter legal battle in California is blocking everyone from eating sweeter strawberries. Associated Press More wine sold: Retail sales of California wine in the U.S. reached $34 billion in 2016 up 4.6%. ABC 30 CALIFORNIA CULTURE Profits up for Disney: Walt Disney Co. reported an 11% jump in profit in the second fiscal quarter, boosted by the hit movie Beauty and the Beast and gains in its theme park business. But ESPN was a big source of concern. Los Angeles Times Potbelly is coming: Midwest sandwich chain Potbelly is expanding into Southern California. Eater LA Off the hook: The Grammy Museum will salute 40 years of L.A. punk rock with a new exhibit focusing on the long-running band X. Los Angeles Times Good-looking brews: When a florist opens a coffee shop, pretty drinks ensue. LA Weekly CALIFORNIA ALMANAC Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles area: partly cloudy Wednesday and Thursday. More weather is here. AND FINALLY Todays California memory comes from Ed Soria: Our troop ship was returning from Korea after the armistice was signed in July 1953. We got back on Sept. 15, 1953 and our ship anchored within the city lights of San Francisco. We gathered on the deck and turned on our radios and listened to jazz emanating from the city. We were within a short distance from where we had departed for the Far East. The Golden Gate was there like a beacon with all its lights bright, as if it were saying, You are home! The following morning we sailed under the bridge, and there to welcome us home was a full-dressed Army band on a flat barge playing California, Here I Come. My family was there to welcome me home too. To this day, I recall that day with thanksgiving that America is not just words it is the home of the brave. If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.) Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Benjamin Oreskes and Shelby Grad. Also follow them on Twitter @boreskes and @shelbygrad. In some other universe, Americans might be able to take at face value the Trump administrations explanation for the abrupt firing of James B. Comey less than four years into his 10-year term as director of the FBI that Comey had mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server as secretary of State. But in the real universe, that explanation seems far-fetched. After all, Comey is the official who has been supervising an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign of the very president who just fired him. That president, by the way, tweeted this on Monday: The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end? Americans can be excused for wondering if Trump hopes that Comeys departure from the scene is the answer to his question. Besides, most of the conduct that supposedly led to Comeys dismissal detailed in a memo by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod J. Rosenstein that was released Tuesday by the administration has been a matter of public discussion for months and was known to Trump and Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions when they took office. Advertisement You can be critical of some of Comeys actions in connection with the Clinton email investigation and still be alarmed by the way he has been removed. That includes Comeys decision last July to hold a news conference to announce that he wasnt recommending that Clinton be charged criminally for mishandling classified information, his characterization of her conduct as extremely careless and his sending of a letter to Congress 11 days before the election which quickly became public saying that the FBI had learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation into Clintons private email server. (Two days before the election, Comey said that the new emails hadnt changed the FBIs earlier conclusion.) Even though all that information was well-known at the time, Trump told Comey in late January that he would be kept on as FBI director. So why the sudden decision to fire him now? Its true that in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Comey offered a combative defense of his actions, including a claim that when he learned of possibly relevant emails on a laptop owned by Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, he faced a choice between speaking and concealing. But that argument wasnt new either. In his memo, Rosenstein lacerates Comey for making this same argument in a letter to Congress last October. You can be critical of some of Comeys actions in connection with the Clinton email investigation as this page was and still be alarmed by the way he has been removed by a president who has his own reasons for wanting to see Comey gone. Nor does the timing of the dismissal seem to be explained by the fact that Rosenstein, a respected career prosecutor, only recently joined the Justice Department, having been confirmed on April 25. The department has other officials responsible for investigating misconduct, including an inspector general who was investigating Comeys actions in connection with the Clinton investigation. There was no mention of any findings by the inspector general in the White House or Justice Department announcements. Frankly, the Comey firing is deeply troubling, reminiscent of Richard Nixons forcing out of special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. Like Comey, Cox was investigating the president. That infamous series of moves is known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Now that Comey is gone there are two urgent priorities that Congress must insist on in its oversight role. One is to preserve the integrity of the Justice Department investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election and the possibility of collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign. Because Sessions has recused himself from involvement in that matter, its up to Rosenstein to decide whether to appoint a special counsel to direct that investigation; he should do so immediately. The integrity of the investigation is in peril. Comey had a reputation for independence, and unlike Rosenstein or Sessions, he was not appointed by Trump. Second, it is imperative that Comeys replacement be a professional law enforcement official with an impeccable reputation, familiarity with federal law enforcement, no taint of partisanship and no political, personal or business connection to Trump. The Senate should refuse to confirm anyone who falls short of that ideal. Read our Trump Editorial Series Why We Took a Stand on Trump Why now? The answer is simple. There is good reason to believe that rather than grow into the job, hell remain the man he was on the campaign trail impulsive, untruthful, narcissistic, ignorant of the limits on presidential power and woefully unprepared to wield it. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook If the Los Angeles City Council really has come up with a better, fairer police discipline system, why doesnt Charter Amendment C on the May 16 ballot ask voters simply to adopt it? Why does the measure instead offer police officers who are accused of misconduct a choice between the current, supposedly discredited Board of Rights a review panel composed of two members of the Los Angeles Police Departments command staff and one civilian and a new all-civilian board? The Police Protective League (the police officers union) and its City Hall supporters Mayor Eric Garcetti and the council argue that their proposal increases civilian oversight of the police. If thats the case, why do the citys most outspoken advocates of better civilian oversight the Community Coalition, Black Lives Matter, the Los Angeles Community Action Network, the ACLU of Southern California so adamantly oppose Charter Amendment C? Because they see it for the ruse that it is. The measure wouldnt change what the boards do they hear appeals of the chiefs disciplinary actions, with the power to reduce but not increase recommended punishments. It would just change whos on them. Advertisement Charter Amendment C was hand-crafted by the union, whose job is to seek better terms of employment and policies for its members. The union is free to do these things but it has developed its political clout to such an extent that city officials now go to bat for it. Amendment C is yet another mark of how far the political establishment has moved from its former respectful skepticism of police unions to acquiescence. Local leaders werent always so deferential. For example, a decade ago, council members and then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vocally backed legislation to reopen police discipline hearings to the public, arguing correctly that the secrecy prevented the public from seeing whether and how cops who violate policy are held accountable. But police unions around the state successfully lobbied Sacramento to keep discipline hearings closed. There was another attempt last year to make police proceedings and records public, as they had once been. This time, though, instead of advocating vocally for passage, most of L.A.s elected officials were as silent as the grave. Charter Amendment C is yet another mark of how far the political establishment has moved from its former respectful skepticism of police unions to acquiescence. Civilians have been shown to side with officers in discipline proceedings more often than do the police command staff who currently makes up the majority of each Board of Rights, so the union, the mayor and the council are offering a measure that would allow officers to present their cases to only civilians. Because proceedings would continue to be held in secret, the public would continue to be kept largely in the dark. Over two decades, there have been many thoughtful, independent analysts who agreed with the union that the current Board of Rights system should be replaced but who rejected all-civilian panels. The Rampart Independent Review Panel, for example, urged the city to limit the Board of Rights to fact-finding did the officer truly commit misconduct? and leave actual punishment decisions to the chief, who would have to follow guidelines adopted by the Police Commission. Other proposals have included making the Police Commission itself a true civilian review board by allowing it to make discipline decisions. These and other suggested reforms are well considered and should be among the options presented to voters or the council. They are not on the May 16 ballot, because Charter Amendment C is not one of those thoughtful proposals that an independent panel arrived at following a process of interviews, testimony and study. It is the result of private talks between top city officials and the Police Protective League. Union leaders surely see the advantage to their members of being able to choose among differently formatted Boards of Rights. If some future council changes the criteria for selecting civilian members to make them tougher on accused officers, those officers would still be able to select a board without a civilian majority. Its not as though the Boards of Rights are inordinately tough on officers. They reject more than half of the chiefs requests for discipline. Police officers have a constitutional right not to be fired or otherwise punished on a whim or out of personal animus or political pressure. They are entitled to an appeals system that offers due process, and they ought to have a system they perceive to be fair. What they will get, if Charter Amendment C passes, is an unwarranted choice of arbiters and a chance to further undermine the chiefs ability to run his department, as well as the publics ability to hold him accountable. Voters should say no to Charter Amendment C. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook The shocking dismissal of FBI Director James B. Comey by a president whose campaign he was investigating cant be undone. The immediate priority is to safeguard the integrity of that investigation and its credibility in the eyes of the public and to preserve the evidence that has been amassed. That means, first of all, that Comey must be replaced by an acting FBI director with an impeccable reputation for integrity. Equally important, Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein must announce immediately that he will turn responsibility for the investigation of foreign interference with the 2016 election including possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence operatives to an independent special counsel empowered to take the probe wherever it may lead. Rosenstein also should agree to testify at the earliest opportunity before Congress, where he must answer questions about how he came to provide President Trump and Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions with a not terribly credible written rationale for dismissing Comey related to his handling of an investigation of Hillary Clintons email server. If Trump doesnt want to be suspected of improper motives in Comeys dismissal, he will waive any claim of executive privilege about any discussions with Sessions and Rosenstein leading to this decision. Advertisement The stakes here could not be higher. An election is a sacred undertaking in a democracy, and the possibility that foreign powers or other covert forces meddled with last years presidential race is profoundly distressing. If the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in manipulating the election and no persuasive evidence has yet come to light that it did such behavior cannot be ignored. The attempt by Russia to affect the outcome of last years election was an assault on American democracy deserving of a serious investigation. Comeys firing has been compared to President Nixons decision in 1973 to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who was investigating the break-in at the offices of the Democratic Party at the Watergate office building and the subsequent coverup. Because Sessions, who as a senator from Alabama was an enthusiastic supporter of Trumps presidential candidacy, has recused himself from matters involving Russian interference in the 2016 election, the decision about appointing a special prosecutor now referred to in the regulations as a special counsel falls to Rosenstein. Before Tuesday night, one could argue that Rosenstein, a respected career prosecutor, could credibly preside over the Russia investigation. But his role in facilitating Comeys firing creates an insurmountable appearances problem. He, too, must now recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Whats more, he needs to ensure that the special counsel has maximum independence. Its true that Justice Department regulations adopted in 1999 offer special counsels only limited authority. For example, the attorney general (or, in this case, Rosenstein) must be notified concerning significant actions the special counsel is to take, and may countermand any proposed action by the special counsel. But, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service, the attorney general may also appoint an individual as a special counsel, and may invest that individual with a greater degree of independence and autonomy to conduct investigations and prosecutions, regardless of any special counsel regulations. That is what happened in 2003 when Patrick Fitzgerald was named as a special counsel with all the authority of the attorney general to investigate the leaking of the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent. Thats the model Rosenstein should follow in this case. Given Trumps hostility to the investigation of possible ties between his campaign and Russia on Monday he tweeted that The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax its vital that other actors in Washington, including Congress, the Justice Department, the FBI and potentially the courts, be prepared to ensure that any evidence of improper connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russian operatives be discovered and documented. We dont know where exactly the FBIs investigations will lead or whether Trumps fulminations reflect an attempt at concealment or simply the defense mechanisms of a fragile ego. What we do know is that the president has fired a public official who had stated publicly that his agency was investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russias efforts. The attempt by Russia to affect the outcome of last years election was an assault on American democracy deserving of a serious investigation, and thats what the FBI appeared to be pursuing especially in comparison with the unimpressive efforts by committees in Congress that have been riven by partisanship. Reportedly the FBI had made sufficient progress that Comey had sought additional funds from the Justice Department a few days before he was fired. Its vital that this investigation not be derailed by a petulant president with his own agenda. Comey may be gone, but the work he was doing must continue. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook Hillary Clinton is back. Six months after her defeat, Clinton has waded into the middle of our postelection battles more quickly and more bluntly than any other losing candidate in modern times. She has accused President Trump of pursuing what appears to be a commitment to hurt so many people. She called House Republicans healthcare bill shameful. She proclaimed herself part of the resistance. Shes traveling the country giving speeches. Shes reportedly organizing a new political action committee to raise money for Democratic causes. And shes writing a book to explain her side of the 2016 presidential campaign. She says she doesnt expect to run for president again. But she has been careful not to rule it out. Clintons impulse to get back into the fight is understandable. Democratic politics has been the cause of her life, and shes surely entitled to work through her grief over the campaign. If her book turns out to be a candid self-examination of what went wrong a big if, based on her self-protective previous memoirs that could be healthy for her party. Advertisement But by moving so fast and so visibly, and by keeping the door open to another presidential campaign, Clinton risks harming not only her own image, but the anti-Trump resistance she wants to help. Clintons presence in the center of any stage could make it harder for talented young Democrats to rise to the top. Start with her interview last week with Christiane Amanpour of CNN. Asked to explain her loss to Trump, Clinton said she took absolute personal responsibility but then listed all the external spoilers she faced: FBI Director James B. Comey, Russia, WikiLeaks, the media and misogyny. Although those items certainly belong on the list, she left out the missteps of her own campaign. Jim Comey didnt tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin, noted David Axelrod, who helped Barack Obama defeat her in 2008. And Clinton reminded everyone that she didnt do as badly as it looks. I did win more than 3 million votes than my opponent, she said. Meanwhile, she said she doesnt mind getting into Twitter wars with the president. Fine, she said. Better than [him] interfering in foreign affairs, Clinton said of the prospect Trump would tweet about her. If he wants to tweet about me then Im happy to be the diversion. Not a great strategy. I suspect Trump would like nothing better than endless verbal battles with Clinton, to remind his voters of the candidate they voted against instead of the ever-more-apparent flaws of the president they voted for. Indeed, Trump took the bait after Clintons interview. Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! he tweeted. The phony Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign? As for the new Clinton political action committee, Onward Together, its unlikely to convince Bernie Sanders voters that the party is devoted to campaign finance reform. Other Democrats arent sure they need Hillary Clintons help to raise campaign money in the age of Trump. Jon Ossoff, the House candidate in suburban Atlanta, has raised millions without her. The new super PAC, if thats what it is, would put the Clintons in the role of kingmakers, using money to help candidates they favor. And it will look suspiciously like a framework in the making for Hillarys still-not-ruled-out 2020 campaign. So about that campaign, in case shes thinking about it: bad idea. Its possible that Clinton doesnt really want to run again that shes simply trying to bolster her brand and maintain her influence. She knows shell get far more media attention for her book, her speeches, and anything else she chooses to say if she keeps the possibility of a presidential run alive. But theres no reason to believe a third Hillary Clinton campaign would be easier or more successful than her first two. Rank-and-file Democrats arent clamoring for her to run. A Harvard-Harris Poll in March found the former candidate in fifth place with support from only 8% (ouch!) of her own partys voters after Bernie Sanders, Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren. The top choice, tellingly, was someone new, at 45%. Clintons presence in the center of any stage, moreover, could make it harder for talented young Democrats to rise to the top. Hillary Clinton has more than earned her right to be a major voice in American politics. Shes smart and forceful on a raft of issues, from working-class job creation to foreign policy. But shes not great at running a presidential campaign. Shes tried twice, in races where she began as the presumptive front-runner, and lost both times. Thats enough. Maybe its time she moved on to higher pursuits. Jimmy Carter lost a presidential election in 1980, Al Gore in 2000. They devoted themselves to causes they believed in: international peacemaking for Carter, climate change for Gore. Both won Nobel Peace Prizes. That wouldnt be a bad legacy even for someone who hoped to shatter a glass ceiling. doyle.mcmanus@latimescolumnists.com Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook MORE FROM OPINION Absolutely nothing about James Comeys firing passes the smell test Trumps judges: conservative but qualified Donald Trump is too inept to conduct a successful coverup Republican faith in tax cuts and human suffering shapes healthcare bill Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the noted former litigator and poster boy for constitutional conservatism, had some stern words for the attorney general of the United States. Predecessors of yours in both parties, Democrat and Republican, when faced with serious charges of abuse of power for partisan gain, Cruz said, have made the right decision and appointed special prosecutors. The year was 2014. The allegation was that the Internal Revenue Service was disproportionately targeting tea party-affiliated groups for heightened tax-status scrutiny. And the special prosecutor actually special counsel; the prosecutor job expired with the enabling statute back in 1999 was never appointed. It should have been then. It should be now. But not according to Cruz, 2017 edition. On Wednesday, the senator released a brief statement agreeing with President Trumps sudden firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, no matter how suspiciously timed or absurdly justified. Unfortunately, Cruz said, Mr. Comey had lost the confidence of both Republicans and Democrats, and, frankly, the American people. Advertisement We expect that kind of ritual partisan insincerity from the likes of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a serial Obama-era supporter of special counsels who sure enough responded to Trumps ham-handed behavior by chortling hackishly about Democratic colleagues complaining about the removal of an FBI director whom they themselves repeatedly and sharply criticized. The most important thing that conscientious senators can do is make damn sure that whoever the president appoints is not some authoritarian-leaning...toady. But the tea party generation of Constitution-waving legislators, with their Federalist Papers quotations on separation of powers and Senate stemwinders on executive power abuse, was supposed to be different. Contemptuous of mindless party loyalty, uncommonly serious about the oversight function of Congress: Surely they would understand that an ongoing FBI investigation into the relationship between associates of a sitting president and a foreign adversary needs to be maximally shielded from Oval Office meddling? Think again. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of 31 GOP senators in 2012 to demand a special counsel to investigate high-profile national security leaks, is in 2017 the leading opponent of what he calls the hysteria of a special prosecutor regarding all things Trump-Russia. Many of these Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, said they lost confidence in Comey a long time ago, Paul said on Trumps favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, Wednesday, echoing the administration line to a T. They should be thanking President Trump. The GOP holds only a four-seat advantage in the Senate, 52-48, and more Republican senators than that have already expressed dismay at Comeys firing. Jeff Flake of Arizona said he could not find an acceptable rationale. Richard Burr of North Carolina said he was troubled by the timing and reasoning, a sentiment seconded by Nebraskas Ben Sasse. And Arizonas John McCain, among others, called for the creation of a special congressional committee. In the near term, the most important thing that conscientious senators can do is make damn sure that whoever the president appoints as the new FBI director is not some authoritarian-leaning political toady being rewarded for helping Trump during the campaign. In other words, not New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Not another Jeff Sessions. In February, Sessions sailed through confirmation via unanimous Republican vote, despite a long, ugly track record of opposing criminal justice reforms championed by the likes of Paul and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). Back then, Paul reasoned that, hey, Sessions agrees with the president on those issues, and therefore so would any replacement nominee. That kind of party-line deference helped bring us to where we are today. Sessions was reportedly tasked with finding a reason to fire Comey. Its only fitting that, having gone about things backward to help his boss, Sessions excuse represented a complete reversal of Trump team arguments so far: That Comey mishandled Hillary Clintons email investigation. For the record, the Trump campaign including then-Sen. Sessions praised Comeys actions in real time last year. Trumps crude self-dealing, outsize ego and willingness to wield state power against individuals were hardly secrets during the presidential campaign. Any politician who criticized executive-branch abuse under President Obama (and preferably President George W. Bush as well), should understand instinctively that this norm-breaking president requires more, not less, prophylactic restraint in the form of independent institutions and personnel. Valuing such protections does not require any belief in Russia-conspiracy Twitter threads. To the contrary: Those who believe theres no fire under the Russian smoke should want an unimpeachable, nonpartisan source to discover and publicize that conclusion. Paul, Cruz and Lee (who also supported Comeys sacking) are arguably the Senates three most eloquent voices declaiming the legislative branchs constitutional abdication in making war, surveillance policy and even budgets. They are right about this, and they were right in demanding more investigative independence in the Obama administration. Heres hoping they extend the discourtesy to Trump. Matt Welch is editor at large of Reason, a magazine published by the libertarian Reason Foundation, and a contributing writer to Opinion. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook MORE FROM OPINION All eyes in Washington are on Rod Rosenstein. Does he have what it takes to investigate Trump? Absolutely nothing about James Comeys firing passes the smell test The Russia investigation is on life support. Heres what it will take to survive after Comey Saturday Night Massacre: Key figures in Nixons 1973 Justice Department purge Now that FBI Director James B. Comey is gone, the most important person in the investigation of the Trump campaigns ties to Russia is the little-known man in the middle: Rod Rosenstein, the No. 2 official in the Justice Department. Rosenstein now has the power to allow the FBI inquiry launched by Comey to continue unimpeded or to essentially shut it down, as President Trump says he would like. So it was notable that Press Secretary Sean Spicer pinned responsibility for White House scrutiny of Comey on Rosenstein, a career prosecutor who isnt even a member of the Cabinet. Advertisement It was all him, Spicer told reporters. No one from the White House. That was a [Justice Department] decision. Its not clear that was true; other accounts say Trump has wanted to rid himself of Comey for months. In any case, the decision to fire the FBI director was all Trumps, as he made clear in the letter by which he fired him. But the White House wanted to make it look like Rosensteins choice, because hes not a dyed-in-the-wool Trumpite (like, for example, his boss, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions); hes a nonpartisan professional whos been praised by leading Democrats. When Rosenstein was nominated as deputy attorney general, the Senate confirmed him by an amazingly bipartisan margin, 94-6. The White House pointed to the long memo Rosenstein wrote laying out Comeys failings: the serious mistakes he made when he announced that he was closing the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails, more mistakes when he announced that the inquiry was reopened just days before the election, and finally his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Heres the curious thing about Rosensteins memo, though: It never actually recommends that Comey should be sacked. It comes pretty close. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to fix the FBIs problems, it says. But Rosenstein never explicitly states that Comey needs to go. That has led some of Rosensteins admirers in both parties to argue that the deputy attorney general was played that he was used by Trump and Sessions to justify a decision they had already been made. The sequence of events is intriguing. Last week, Comey asked Rosenstein to increase the budget and staffing of the Trump investigation. (The deputy attorney general is the FBI directors immediate superior on the Justice Department organization chart.) On Monday, Rosenstein met with Sessions and Trump to discuss the road ahead, and the president reportedly asked him to write a memo on Comey. On Tuesday, the memo landed, Sessions recommended that Comey be fired, and Trump immediately agreed. Rosensteins friends dont doubt that he believed Comey made huge mistakes; thats a widespread view among Washington lawyers in both parties. But as Donald B. Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, wrote, Rosensteins correct assessment of those mistakes is now being used to justify firing for a very different reason. That leaves Rosenstein in a precarious position oddly like the one Comey occupied for the last three months. Hes the top Justice Department official in charge of the Trump investigation. (Sessions has recused himself from that role, since he was a big player in Trumps campaign.) Hes essentially in charge of the FBI, too. The bureaus acting director, Andrew McCabe, has been criticized by Republicans because his wife, a Democrat, ran for the state Senate in Virginia and accepted donations from Clinton allies. So if anyone is going to protect the FBI and make sure the Trump investigation gets the staff and budget it needs, it will have to be Rosenstein. He has one major tool to get what he wants: the fact that he can publicly resign. Trump and the White House look terrible for firing Comey; if the man they used as their character witness jumps ship, it will look much worse. Senate Democrats have called on Rosenstein to appoint an independent special counsel to take over the investigation. Rosenstein has refused, arguing: As far as Im concerned, every investigation conducted by the Department of Justice is an independent investigation. Now hes got to prove he meant it. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook To the editor: Republicans, it is far past time to be patriots. Put country ahead of party. (Absolutely nothing about James Comeys firing passes the smell test, editorial, May 9) President Trump using former FBI Director James Comeys treatment of Hillary Clinton during his agencys investigation of her email affair as an excuse to fire him is laughable. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and Trump clearly are using Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein as a pawn to fire Comey, who is the only nonpartisan person left investigating possible collusion between the presidents campaign and Russia. Comeys firing is a direct assault on the checks and balances that uphold democratic institutions. A special prosecutor must be appointed and the Republicans need to stand up and protect our country. The longer they wait, the more they become complicit in Trumps corruption. Advertisement Noelle De Vita, Valencia .. I sincerely hope Trumps Russian connection gets him out of office, but still, I will sleep OK at night knowing Comey is gone. Ted Herrmann, Los Angeles To the editor: The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers, cries Dick the Butcher in Shakespeares Henry VI, not out of animosity toward lawyers but to remove legal barriers to a rebellion he favored. Appointing his own attorney general was normal and expected. Unexpected were the rapid firing (without notice or replacements immediately available) of the acting attorney general in February, removing all U.S. attorneys (including the one in New York who had jurisdiction over what might have occurred in Trump Tower) and now Comeys sudden dismissal. Notwithstanding the reasons for dismissal offered at the time, many believe Trump is trying to derail the FBIs Russia investigation. This is how Nixon tried to stop the Watergate investigation killing the lawyers is the first step. We need a special prosecutor; otherwise Dick the Butcher wins. Rick Dunn, San Diego .. To the editor: I was one who begged for Comeys removal last July and louder still in October, when he announced that he was reopening his investigation of Clinton less than two weeks before the election. I see the karma of his dismissal now. Sadly, he ruined his own reputation and his agencys. But the circumstances of this dismissal and its implications for the future of our country cannot be diminished. The echoes of Watergate ring loudly. We are again at a crossroads, and its really up to the Republicans in Congress to determine if our nation can survive. The only option is for an independent investigation. Will the Department of Justice and Congress put America ahead of their vested interests? We can hope so. Arlene Hoffman, Fullerton .. To the editor: Thanks to Comeys interference in the election, the Supreme Court will be in Republican hands for decades. I sincerely hope Trumps Russian connection gets him out of office, but still, I will sleep OK at night knowing Comey is gone. Ted Herrmann, Los Angeles .. To the editor: The manner in which Trump fired Comey vividly demonstrates that Trump has absolutely no class despite all his money, fancy planes, ostentatious homes and other luxuries. And I say that not being a fan of Comey. Rather than wait until Comey returned from his trip to Los Angeles on Tuesday and met with him face to face, Trump chose to send a letter to his office, as if waiting another day would have made any difference. George Lazik, Woodland Hills .. To the editor: So, does this mean we can stop appending -gate to whatever scandal happens to be current, and start using -a-Lago instead? Craig Arnold, Long Beach Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: The influence of the Turkish Stream project, which envisages Russian gas supplies to Turkey and further to Europe bypassing Ukraine, on the European gas market will depend on how many strings of this pipeline will be built up in the end, Marco Giuli, an energy issues analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Center, believes. Russian energy giant Gazprom started construction of the Black Sea section of the Turkish Stream pipeline past Sunday. A one string pipeline for 15.75 billion cubic meters would simply serve the Turkish market, replacing the current transit through the Trans-Balkan pipeline. A second string might provide gas to Europe notably the Balkans... However, some onshore adaptation would be needed on European territory, Giuli told Trend by email. Answering the question on possible negative effect of the Turkish Stream on the Southern Gas Corridor project, which will bring Azerbaijani gas to Europe, the analyst noted that the Southern Gas Corridor is now in advanced stage, and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) which is a part of the project has obtained an exception from the rules of the EUs Third Energy Package for 25 years. The Third Energy Package, in particular, says that one gas provider should use no more than 50 percent of the pipeline capacity, and the remaining capacity should be put up for auction. The EU refused to grant exception from the rules of Third Energy Package to the pipelines bringing Russian gas to Europe. However Giuli noted that increased Russian export capacity would put Russia in a strong position to compete with other sources, and to deter further developments of the Southern Gas Corridor. In addition the expert noted that it cannot be excluded that one day some Russian gas from the Turkish Stream might transit further to Europe through the TAP pipeline. Speaking on the influence of the Turkish stream on Ukraine, Giuli noted that this project, together with Nord Stream 2, is planned to reduce or eliminate the Russian dependence on Ukraines transit route. Ukraine would lose transit revenues and geopolitical centrality, he said. Meanwhile the expert noted that to counter the competition of alternative routes, Ukraine's Naftogaz is planning to reduce its transit fees after the expiration of the current contracts in 2019. In October 2016, Russia and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of two offshore strings of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline. The annual capacity of each string is estimated to have a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The first string will supply gas directly to Turkey, while the second is to be used to deliver gas to European countries through Turkey. Initially the countries planned to build four strings of the pipeline. Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova Sen. Kamala Harris says she hasnt considered running for president By Phil Willon U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Despite swirling speculation, Californias U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris said shes not giving any consideration to running for president in 2020. Harris was appearing at the annual Code Conference hosted by the tech news site Recode in Rancho Palos Verdes on Wednesday night when site co-founder Kara Swisher asked if she had eyes on the White House. Im not giving that any consideration. Ive got to stay focused, said Harris, a Democrat who was elected to the Senate in November after serving as Californias attorney general. After she won the seat vacated by former Sen. Barbara Boxer, Harris quickly gained a reputation as a potential presidential candidate in 2020. Harris took questions from Swisher alongside Laurene Powell Jobs, a philanthropist and the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Though she brushed off the presidential rumors, Harris urged Democrats to try harder to make convincing arguments on issues such as climate change instead of just criticizing those who disagree with them. She told the audience at the posh Terranea Resort where the conference is being held that it would be a mistake to dismiss the concerns of Americans who supported Trump in the November election. She said the issues that concern them good jobs and the future of their families are the concerns of all working-class Americans. There is a healthy number of people in our country who are feeling displaced, rightly, Harris said. I think we have to deal with that. Still, Harris dished out plenty of jabs at the Trump administration. She criticized Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions for resuscitating the war on drugs and told him to leave Grandmas medical marijuana alone. Harris also criticized the Trump administrations more hard-line immigration policies, and said she was concerned about allegations of collusion between Trumps campaign and the Russian government. These are serious times. These are not issues we can just sit around with a glass of Chardonnay debating and philosophizing about, Harris said. The decisions that are being made right now are impacting real human beings. Watch the entire interview: Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump wouldnt release his tax returns, so lawmakers move to make it mandatory for Californias primary By John Myers (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Legislation to require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns in order to gain a spot on Californias presidential primary ballot won passage in the state Senate on Wednesday, but only after a tense debate that largely centered on President Trump. Senate Bill 149 was approved on a strict party-line vote, 27-13. The bill now moves to the state Assembly, and was one of the last bills debated during a marathon session at the state Capitol to consider bills before a Friday deadline for action. The bill would require presidential candidates to file copies of their income tax returns with state elections officials for the five most recent taxable years. Failure to do so would mean their name wouldnt appear on Californias presidential primary ballot. The legislation was introduced in December, in the wake of Trumps refusal to disclose his tax returns during the 2016 campaign. The president has continued to reject calls for the information. Hes shaping international policy which could enrich himself, and the American public has no way to know, state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said of Trump during Wednesday nights floor debate. This legislation will help make transparency great again. Republicans denounced the bill as another in a long line of efforts by Democrats in the Legislature to lash out at the election of Trump and the defeat of Hillary Clinton. I get it that some people hate Trump, state Sen. Joel Anderson (R-Alpine) said. Weve got to move ahead. Weve got to get over it. Tensions flared after Anderson tried to amend the bill on the floor first, to require statewide and legislative candidates to also release their tax returns, and then to require a birth certificate from candidates who want access to the states primary ballot. Both were rejected by Democrats. A legislative analysis of SB 149 said some legal scholars believe the plan, which would be the first of its kind in the nation, would pass muster with the U.S. Constitution. Nonetheless, the analysis concluded that it would probably be challenged in court if signed into law. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California Senate moves forward with bill that would overhaul Los Angeles County MTA By Patrick McGreevy Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) proposed to revamp the Los Angeles County MTA. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) The state Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would expand and reshape the agency that oversees mass transit in Los Angeles County. Opponents of the measure include Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the city and county of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. The bill by Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) was sent to the Assembly for consideration after squeaking by with a 22-11 vote in the Senate. The measure would expand the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board from 12 to 15 members. It would also reduce the number of county supervisors on the board from five to two, remove the appointment of two public members and increase Los Angeles City Council member appointments by the mayor from two to five. This will allow for proportional and fair representation, Mendoza told his colleagues, adding that the board currently is made up of haves and have-nots fighting to get their share. Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) opposed the measure because he said he saw it as Sacramento meddling in local policymaking. But Sen. Scott Wilk (R-Palmdale) supported SB 268. Too much power is concentrated in too few people, he said of the current board. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Single-payer healthcare is popular with Californians unless it raises their taxes By John Myers (Rich Pedoncelli / Associated Press) Almost two of every three Californians in a new statewide poll said they like the idea of a single-payer, government healthcare system, but far fewer support the idea if it includes a tax increase. The poll released Wednesday night by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that 65% of adults surveyed support the creation of a single-payer state healthcare program to cover all of the states residents, and 56% of likely voters approved of the idea. Opinion was sharply divided between Democrats (75% support) and Republicans (66% oppose) who were surveyed. The single-payer proposal under consideration in the state Capitol, Senate Bill 562, assumes at least $50 billion in new taxes to fund the healthcare system. Asked about taxes, support drops to 42% of the adults surveyed and 43% of likely voters. While a majority of Democrats in the PPIC poll continued to support the idea if it means more taxes, support drops substantially among unaffiliated independent voters. The state Senate is expected to consider the single-payer bill before the end of the week. A legislative analysis put the estimated total cost of a new healthcare system that covers all Californians at $400 billion, while an analysis released on Wednesday by supporters provided a $331-billion estimate. The pending legislation by state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) does not identify what taxes would be raised but makes the enactment of the plan contingent on a full funding proposal. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Knowingly exposing others to HIV should no longer be a felony, state Senate says By Patrick McGreevy The Senate voted to no longer make it a felony for HIV-positive people to donate blood or semen without telling the blood bank they are infected. ( (Toby Talbot / Associated Press)) The state Senate on Wednesday voted to no longer make it a felony for someone infected with HIV to knowingly expose others to the disease by having unprotected sex without telling his or her partner about the infection. The crime would be downgraded to a misdemeanor, and the bill would also apply to people who donate blood or semen without telling the blood or semen bank that they have acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, or have tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the precursor to AIDS. The measure, which next goes to the Assembly for consideration, was introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who said it is unfair to make HIV/AIDS the only communicable disease given such harsh treatment by prosecutors. These laws are irrational and discriminatory, Wiener told the Senate, adding that the current felony status is creating an incentive not to be tested, because if you dont know your status you cant be guilty of a felony. The measure was widely opposed by Republican lawmakers including Sen. Joel Anderson of San Diego. If you intentionally transmit something that is fundamentally life-threatening to the victim, you should be charged and go to jail, he said. Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Murrieta) said, My friends, its not a gay issue. Its a public health issue. We shouldnt allow someone to play Russian roulette with other peoples lives. Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a physician, voted for the bill and argued that it undermines public health to imprison those with HIV under the current law. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Hillary Clinton: I was the victim of a very broad assumption I was going to win By Seema Mehta Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that she has no plans to run for office again, but she plans to remain involved in civic life, particularly helping the Democrats efforts to regain control of the House in 2018. Im not going anywhere, Clinton said at the annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes. I have a big stake in what happens in this country. I am very unbowed and unbroken about what happened because I dont want it to happen to anybody else. I dont want it to happen to the values and the institutions I care about in America. And I think were at a really pivotal point, she said. And therefore Im going to keep writing and keep talking and keep supporting people who are on the front lines of the resistance. The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said she woke up on election day expecting to win. Clinton told the gathering that she was responsible for every decision the campaign made, though she did not believe they caused her surprise loss. She attributed that to several things, including alleged Russian interference in the election and weaponizing stolen information and fake news. She also pointed a finger at the Democrats for falling behind the GOP in using technology and data to target voters, the media for covering her e-mail controversy like it was Pearl Harbor, misogyny and the high expectations many had for her candidacy. I was the victim of a very broad assumption I was going to win, she said, adding that she always expected the race to be close. Trump responded on Twitter, saying that Clinton still refused to accept that she lost because she was a terrible candidate. Crooked Hillary Clinton now blames everybody but herself, refuses to say she was a terrible candidate. Hits Facebook & even Dems & DNC. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2017 Clinton, who has increasingly jabbed President Trump, including at last weeks commencement address at Wellesley College, blasted his reported plan to pull out of the Paris climate accord as really stupid because of the economic implications. She described his personality as impulsive and reactive. And she joked about his peculiar overnight tweet about constant negative press covfefe, saying she thought it was a hidden message to the Russians to laughter from the audience. Going forward, Clinton said that she believes that it was realistic for Democrats to retake the House in 2018, notably by focusing on Republican congressional districts she won including seven in California. She sounded less optimistic about the Senate. Updated at 6:06 p.m.: This post was updated to add President Trumps response to Clintons remarks. This post was first published at 5:41 p.m. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California lawmakers take aim again at establishing statewide rules for drones By Jazmine Ulloa A state senator from Santa Barbara is taking another shot at establishing statewide regulations for the use of drones after the budding industry thwarted her efforts to pass similar legislation last year. Senate Bill 347, introduced by Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, would limit disruptive drone use near private property and prohibit the weaponization and reckless operation of the unmanned aerial vehicles. It also would require pilots to obtain insurance and to license, register and mark the aircrafts per federal regulations. The bill moved out of the Senate on Wednesday with a 26-13 vote. It heads to the Assembly for consideration. Speaking on the Senate floor, Jackson urged support for what she called comprehensive drone legislation, saying California needs common-sense rules that provide certainty for everyone and keep the public safe. Washington is not going to be acting on this issue very soon, she said, citing a federal appeals court decision that this month found the Federal Aviation Administration doesnt have the authority to regulate the use of drones by hobbyists. Debate has raged in recent years over just where federal authority begins and ends. And Jacksons attempts at drone legislation last year were blocked amid opposition from lobbyists who argued against creating a patchwork of laws that varied by state. Under Jacksons new proposal, violations would be punishable by a fine of up to $250 or a misdemeanor, and the California Department of Transportation would be tasked with developing liability insurance requirements. It has the support of the California State Assn. of Counties, the League of California Cities and the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Assn, but it once again faces tough industry opposition. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print School districts would be prohibited from shaming students whose parents havent paid for school lunches By Patrick McGreevy Students eat lunch at Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles. (Christina House / For the Los Angeles Times) Students whose parents have not kept their school lunch bills current would no longer go through shaming that includes marking their hand so they cannot be served, under legislation approved Wednesday by the state Senate. The measure by Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) would require school districts to ensure that any student whose parent has unpaid school meal fees is not treated differently, or delayed or denied a nutritiously adequate meal. Hertzberg introduced the legislation after hearing of school districts taking lunch trays from students whose accounts were not current and throwing the food in the trash, embarrassing the students in front of their friends. No more shaming, Herzberg told his colleagues. Dont visit the failures of the parents on their kids. The measure passed on a 39-0 vote and was sent to the Assembly for consideration. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Emilio Huerta, undaunted by 2016 loss, is back to challenge Rep. David Valadao By Sarah D. Wire (Sarah D. Wire / Los Angeles Times) Bakersfield lawyer Emilio Huerta came more than 13 percentage points short of winning Californias 21st Congressional District seat in 2016, but he plans to try again in 2018. Huerta, 59, blames his loss to Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) on inexperience and a rash of negative ads at the end of the campaign. We learned a lot in the last campaign. As a first-time candidate there was certainly a lot to learn and I think we did a good job, Huerta said Wednesday. The son of labor icon Dolores Huerta, he has worked for the United Farm Workers union which his mother co-founded throughout the Central Valley district. Huerta said Valadaos vote for the Republican healthcare plan shows hes ignoring Valley residents needs because it would end the expansion of the MediCal program, which many of the districts residents use for healthcare. Its going to be a pretty significant issue, he said. He is the first Democrat to announce a bid for the seat. Democrats are heartened by the fact that, while Valadao won the seat with 56.74% of the vote, the district has continued to trend Democratic in voter registration and chose Hillary Clinton for president with 54.72% of the vote. That tells me that there were die-hard Democrats, committed Democrats that vote, Democrats that were not convinced that my campaign should be supported and I think a lot of that has to do with me being a first-time candidate, Huerta said. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has made the seat a target for 2018. The majority-Latino district includes parts of Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare counties. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Gov. Jerry Brown and Democrats say Trump is going backwards if he pulls out of Paris climate pact By John Myers Gov. Jerry Brown warned Wednesday that a decision by President Trump to withdraw the United States from a 2015 global climate change agreement could be tragic, and vowed to keep Californias ambitious efforts in place and on track. Here we are, in 2017, going backwards, Brown said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. It cannot stand, its not right and California will do everything it can to not only stay the course, but to build more support in other states, in other provinces, in other countries. The governor also criticized efforts to the president to dismantle climate change initiatives launched by former President Barack Obama. Trump is going against science. Hes going against reality, the governor said. We cant stand by and give aid and comfort to that. News that the president had either made the decision to pull the country out of the Paris Accord on climate change or was on the verge of doing so drew swift condemnation from California leaders. Brown and other top lawmakers attended the talks in late 2015 that resulted in the international agreement, and insisted on Wednesday that it would not hurt the states own efforts to sharply curtail greenhouse gas emissions. As with so many other matters, from human rights to healthcare, the Trump administration has continued to surrender our nations longstanding role as a global leader, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) said. Others pointed out that a decision to remove the United States from the agreement would leave it in rare company among other nations. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted that such a decision by Trump would be more than just dumb + destructive. Brown, who leaves Friday for a weeklong visit to China to encourage more climate-change cooperation, predicted any decision to step away would suggest the countrys priorities arent clear. It sends a very muddled message, the governor said during an interview in his state Capitol office. Is the message [that] we like dirty cars and gas guzzlers? And were going to have a coal future? That cant happen. And Brown again suggested that Californias experience on the issue offers a road map for others. If we want to retain and enhance manufacturing, we have to do what California is doing, in clean energy and clean technology, he said. Thats the future of jobs, the future of sustainability. And we better get on board. And California will be right there with the best of them. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print This Orange County congressmans immigration town hall turned chaotic and led to three arrests By Sarah D. Wire The majority of calls into Rep. Lou Correas Orange County congressional office are about immigration worries and what the Trump administrations enforcement policies mean for Correas many Latino constituents. Theres a lot of fear in my district, he said. So the freshman Democrat has held seven town halls, all focused on immigration and explaining immigrants rights. Theyve been peaceful, with representatives from groups such as the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and the Mexican Consulate invited to help Correa answer questions. But as the crowd of about 100 people gathered at Santa Anas Delhi Center on Tuesday evening, Correa knew this time would be different. We had some people there, probably a dozen of them, that immediately had signs that were not complimentary to yours truly, he said. Two women arguing about immigration issues had already gotten into an altercation outside the town hall. They were cited for assault and battery, and barred by police from going inside. Correa told the crowd inside he would give a short presentation about immigration policy coming out of Washington and then have a question-and-answer session. About a dozen people were having none of it. Some of the most tense moments came when Correa started talking about green card holders who served in the U.S. military and have since been deported. Maam, Im trying to be courteous here, he said as a woman kept speaking over him. As soon as I started speaking, it became very clear they were not going to let me speak, Correa said Wednesday. They just got louder and louder. Video of the town hall posted on social media shows people in the crowd yelling Americans first and Illegals have no rights. Correa repeatedly asks them to let him speak. Are you guys going to cooperate, or am I going to have to ask you to leave? he said. About 15 minutes in, as some in the crowd continued to shout and their attention turned to berating a group of counter-protesters, Correa declared the meeting over. A handful of people circled around Correa as he tried to leave, yelling Shame, shame and You guys all want welfare. One womans voice can be heard repeatedly yelling Coward! Police emptied the room amid chants of USA. The crowd streamed into the parking lot, where confrontations quickly started between supporters of President Trump and others who appeared to be focused on Native American rights. Videos posted on social media show men shouting at one another, their faces so close their noses are practically touching. Police officers kept trying to separate the groups. (Warning: The video below includes language that some readers might find offensive.) Santa Ana Police Department spokesman Anthony Bertagna said a man struck a Trump supporter on the head with a pole bearing an anti-fascism flag. He was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, Bertagna said. The man was brought to police headquarters, and a group of about 10 people followed along to protest, he said. Shortly after, the town hall peacefully resumed in a different room with a much smaller crowd, Correa said. Several California members of Congress have held similar immigration-specific town halls or workshops in the last few months as questions swirl about changes to federal immigration policies and enforcement. The purpose of the town halls is to let people know how to follow the law, let them know their legal rights and responsibilities, Correa said. Protesters have characterized it as teaching people who are in the country illegally how to avoid deportation and get federal benefits. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement California plan for 100% renewable energy by 2045 clears key hurdle By Liam Dillon California will receive all of its power from renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, by 2045 under legislation that passed the state Senate on Wednesday. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) touted his bill, Senate Bill 100, as the most ambitious program in the world. Clean energy is the future, De Leon said. SB 100 ensures that California leads into the future. The measure would also speed up the states goal of reaching 50% renewable energy, changing the deadline from 2030 to 2026. SB 100 passed over objections from Republican senators. Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) criticized the measure as government getting ahead of technological capacity. What if we cant make that mandate that were putting into law today? Stone said. What its going to do is drive up electricity bills for our businesses. De Leons bill now moves to the Assembly. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A new proposal on Californias cap-and-trade program emerges as vote is delayed By Chris Megerian Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced), left. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) A coalition of business-friendly Democrats is detailing their own ideas for cap and trade, a centerpiece of Californias fight against global warming, the latest bid in a crowded field of efforts to extend the program. Cap and trade requires polluting companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions, and lawmakers have been considering a push from Gov. Jerry Brown to extend the program beyond 2020. The new plan would force the program to sunset in 2025, earlier than previous proposals from other lawmakers. It would also direct revenue from the program toward improving air quality and helping agricultural and trucking companies lower their emissions by replacing aging equipment. The plan is also aimed at keeping costs down for industries regulated by cap and trade, allowing them to support green projects known as offsets instead of reducing their own emissions. California must continue to lead the world by implementing a strong climate policy that ensures both a healthy environment for future Californians and growth in all sectors of our economy, Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced) said in a statement. The pro-business Democrats plan is the fourth such effort announced by various factions within the states ruling Democratic Party this year with two others emerging from the Assembly and one from the Senate. The plans offer varying degrees of changes to the existing program, either to prioritize pollution reductions in disadvantaged communities or eliminate offsets. Republican lawmakers also have said they want to be part of the cap-and-trade debate. Brown has pushed for a two-thirds supermajority vote of the Legislature to extend the program by the state budget deadline next month. But Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) said at a Wednesday news conference that that wasnt going to happen. Cap-and-trade is a very complex issue, De Leon said. Its very arcane. We want to make sure we get it right. De Leon said he hoped for a deal by the end of the year. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Senate fails to back bill to delay the Aliso Canyon reopening, but lawmaker will try again Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California state Senate advances bill to ban smoking and use of e-cigarettes in government housing By Patrick McGreevy Californians would no longer be able to use tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, in public housing and within 25 of those buildings under a measure approved Tuesday by the state Assembly. Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) said the measure builds on a smoking ban approved last year for federal public housing projects by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In addition to applying the smoking ban to state housing, expansion to include e-cigarettes makes sure the law cover new technology in tobacco use. The bill takes effect by July 30, 2018. Wood said tobacco-related diseases cost taxpayers significant funds each year. This bill will save money but will more importantly save lives, Wood told his colleagues before the vote. The measure is opposed by the Western Center on Law and Poverty, which worries it will lead to more evictions. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Californians would not be able to buy more than one rifle a month under bill approved by state senators By Patrick McGreevy Terry McGuire, owner of Get Loaded in Grand Terrace, shows a customer a Cobalt Kinetics BAMF rifle about a week after the 2015 shooting rampage in nearby San Bernardino. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) Californians would be prohibited from buying more than one firearm in any 30-day period under a measure approved Tuesday by the Senate to reduce straw purchasing and circumvention of gun laws. California already bars people from buying more than one handgun a month. The bill by Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge) expands the limit to also cover long guns, including rifles and shotguns. The measure, which next goes to the Assembly for consideration, seeks to address concerns that some people buy large quantities of guns and then sell them on the underground market to criminals and others not eligible to own guns. There is no need or reason why a person would need to purchase more than one gun a month, Portantino said during the floor debate. Republicans, including Jeff Stone of Murrieta, opposed the legislation. This is yet another example of the government trying to infringe on the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, Stone said. Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Chico) said he has seen no proof that past gun-control measures approved by the state have made the state safer. Its more of the same that will not decrease violent crime, Nielsen said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California state senators want to stop the public from smoking at California beaches and parks By Patrick McGreevy Californians would be barred from smoking or using electronic cigarettes in state parks and at beaches under a bill approved Tuesday by the state Senate. Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Concord) said his bill would address the health problems caused by smoking but also the harm done to the environment by discarded cigarette butts and the fire danger posed by the practice. Cigarette butts contain more than 150 toxic chemicals and although small in size, have a huge negative impact on the environment and the animals that live in them, Glazer told his colleagues. A legislative analysis said the bill does not address the concerns raised by Gov. Jerry Brown when he vetoed a similar bill last year. The veto message read, in part, The complete prohibition in all parks and beaches is too broad. A more measured and less punitive approach might be warranted. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement School day wouldnt begin before 8:30 a.m. in California under bill that clears the state Senate By John Myers (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) California teenagers wouldnt be required to start their school day before 8:30 am under a bill approved Tuesday by the state Senate. The legislation by Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge) would not fully take effect until 2020, and sparked a lively floor debate over the science on the sleep patterns of middle and high school students, and whether they simply need to go to bed earlier. I expect this would only dispose them to stay up later, said state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber). Another Republican lawmaker, Sen. Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield), said students need to learn what its like in the workforce. Job preparation is what schooling is all about, Fuller said. Unless youre a musician or someone who works nights, you probably did not start in the later morning. Opponents also said the later start time could affect collective bargaining agreements with teachers and other school employees. Supporters, however, pointed to a recommendation for later start times from the American Academy of Pediatrics. A University of Minnesota study linked school start times to sleep deprivation and the rate of car crashes among teenage drivers. The morning sleep time is the most valuable for student health, said Portantino. Their test scores go up, their attendance goes up, their graduation rates go up. The bill would allow rural school districts to obtain a waiver if they couldnt make the change. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) ended the debate with a simple request of the senators on behalf of teenage students. "Lets just let them sleep in a little bit, he said with a smile. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print More transparency proposed for prescription drug price increases under bill passed by California Senate By Patrick McGreevy Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-Azusa), shown speaking in March, won Senate approval Tuesday on a bill that would require more transparency on drug prices. (Melanie Mason / Los Angeles Times) Alarmed by skyrocketing prices for some prescription drugs, the California Senate on Tuesday approved a measure aimed at increasing pressure to hold down costs to consumers by requiring more public reporting of price hikes. The lawmakers approved a bill that would require drug manufacturers to notify health plans and state purchasers such as the prison department of increases in the wholesale cost of drugs in writing at least 90 days before the new costs were to take effect. The measure also requires that health plans and insurers notify state regulators of pricing information for the most costly drugs. Were not saying that they cant raise the price. Were just saying notify us, Hernandez said during the floor debate. And if [the price] goes up a significant amount, we should be able to question why. The measure passed by a 26-10 vote with some Republicans, including Sen. Ted Gaines of El Dorado Hills, opposed. Gaines said the pharmaceutical industrys pricing of drugs helps it pay for development of new medications. It funds their research, Gaines said during the debate. The measure next goes to the Assembly, where a similar bill last year failed to win passage. Hernandez said more opponents are talking to him this year about possible compromises, although the bill is opposed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Hernandez said the bill is needed, adding that current regulations allow pharmaceutical companies to reap obscene profits at the expense of the entire healthcare system. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California Senate advances bill to make pot use in cars an infraction By Patrick McGreevy San Bruno police officers stop cars at a DUI checkpoint. State officials are proposing to make it an infraction to use marijuana in motor vehicles. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) Just months after state voters legalized the recreational use of marijuana, the state Senate on Tuesday voted to prohibit its use in automobiles because of concerns over drugged driving. A bill by Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) makes it an infraction for drivers and passengers to use marijuana in motor vehicles. Stiffer penalties already exist for motorists found to be driving while impaired by drugs. California voters legalized recreational use of marijuana in November although the state does not plan to begin issuing licenses for its legal sale until January. In Washington state, which previously legalized pot, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that the number of drivers who had recently used marijuana before fatal accidents doubled from 2013 to 2014, Hill told his colleagues. Washington serves as an eye-opening case study for what other states may experience with road safety after legalizing the drug, Hill told his colleagues before the unanimous vote to approve the measure and send it to the Assembly for consideration. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California lawmakers want to give parents at smaller companies 12 weeks of protected family leave By Jazmine Ulloa State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara). (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) California lawmakers are once again seeking to expand the states paid family leave program to smaller businesses after Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a similar measure last year. SB 63, authored by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), on Tuesday moved out of the state Senate with a 25-13 vote. It now heads to the Assembly for consideration. The legislation, a priority bill for the California Legislative Womens Caucus, would allow parents at companies with 20 to 49 employees to take 12 weeks of leave to care for a newborn or newly adopted child without fear of losing their jobs. Under the current state law, only workers at businesses with 50 or more workers can take advantage of program. On the Senate floor Tuesday, the debate on the issue echoed that of last year. Republican lawmakers argued the bill would kill jobs and hurt small businesses already struggling in California. Those in favor argued progressive family leave policies attracted a strong and healthy workforce. Jackson said her bill would impact only 6.3% of California companies, while helping 16% of its workforce, a population of 2.7 million residents across the state. With so many women in the workforce than ever before, and with so many struggling, two-income families, this is a critical moment in time, she said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Kimberly Ellis files formal challenge over result of state Democratic Party chairperson election By Seema Mehta (Jay Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) The candidate who narrowly lost the race to be the next leader of the California Democratic Party on Tuesday filed a formal challenge of the election result. Kimberly Ellis campaign, which was already in the process of reviewing the ballots cast during the state partys convention two weekends ago, said they were filing the challenge to meet a requirement in the party bylaws that such an action must be taken within seven days of the contested act. Our review process is ongoing. Its critical that all formal processes outlined by the CDPs bylaws are followed at this time so that there can be no concern about raising issues in the manner prescribed by our party, said Hilary Crosby, immediate past controller for the state party and an Ellis supporter. Ellis campaign said challenges were also being filed in races for a vice chair, secretary and multiple regional directors. Chris Masami Myers, state party executive director, acknowledged receiving the challenges and said in a statement that they would be reviewed in accordance with the standard practices described in the bylaws. The partys compliance review commission, made up of six members who were appointed during former Chairman John Burtons tenure, will review the evidence and take oral or written testimony before issuing a ruling in mid- to late June. The state party chair race was the most heated and contentious. Longtime party leader Eric Bauman entered the race with advantages, but Ellis made the contest competitive. In the election, held this month at the state party convention in Sacramento, Bauman beat Ellis by just over 60 votes. But amid allegations levied by her supporters of ballot-box stuffing and ripped-up ballots, she refused to concede the race. Her campaign has been reviewing individual ballots for a week. Bauman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Updated at 4:57 p.m.: This post was updated to add additional information about how the review will be conducted. Updated at 3:35 p.m.: This post was updated to add a comment from a state party official. This post was originally published at 2:37 p.m. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Darrell Issa gets on his office roof to take a picture of protesters. A mild hubbub ensues By Sarah D. Wire Yes, this is really @DarrellIssa on the roof of his district office building. Too afraid to come speak with assembled constituents below. pic.twitter.com/wCYRjO8Ev8 Mike Levin (@MikeLevinCA) May 30, 2017 It began when one of Rep. Darrell Issas 2018 opponents, Mike Levin, posted an image on Twitter, saying the Vista congressman was hiding on his office roof from hundreds of protesters on the street below. The photo of Issa standing on the roof ricocheted around Twitter, with many comparing it to a scene from the popular television show The Office, and left-leaning media outlets quickly publishing headlines like Darrell Issa Appears to Flee to Building Roof to Avoid Protesters. Like most things, what happened at Issas office appears to have been a bit more nuanced. Issa soon tweeted that he had spent the morning talking with constituents gathered outside the office today, then popped upstairs to take a quick pic!. Multiple images, including one from Levins account and from Issas account, show the congressman on the street with protesters. Spent the morning talking with constituents gathered outside the office today, then popped upstairs to take a quick pic! pic.twitter.com/K2CFdenOIj Darrell Issa (@DarrellIssa) May 30, 2017 I just received an unprompted call from @DarrellIssa who said he tried, unsuccessfully to speak with protesters outside his district office. Joshua Stewart (@jptstewart) May 30, 2017 .@DarrellIssa said the protesters wouldnt' speak with him, so he went up to the roof and took pictures. Joshua Stewart (@jptstewart) May 30, 2017 The protests occur weekly outside Issas Vista district office, and the congressman has come out to speak with the group at least twice since President Trumps inauguration. Issa narrowly won reelection in 2016 over a novice opponent, and Democrats are targeting his seat in 2018. Issas staff said he tried to speak with all the protesters using their sound system, but was rebuffed. Rally organizer Ellen Montanari said she decided not to hand over the protesters microphone so Issa could take questions from the crowd because he refused to shake her hand before the protest began. He refused to do that, and he said, Step away, you are a protester. And I said I am a constituent, Montanari said. She said he also made disparaging remarks about the protesters and the signs they carry. Issas spokesman, Calvin Moore, said Montanari cant simultaneously organize people to stand outside our office with Where is Darrell? signs and feign outrage how he wont answer her questions and then deny him the ability to answer his constituents questions, he said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print State Senate Democrats pass bills designed to protect against Trumps possible changes Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Rep. Adam Schiff says alleged Russian meddling in election was an effort to destroy American democracy By Seema Mehta U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, left, discusses Russias threat to liberal democracies around the world at discussion discussion hosted by Erwin Chemerinsky at UCI. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said Tuesday that the alleged Russian meddling in last years presidential election was about far more than favoring one candidate over another. He said it was an effort to undermine the foundation of American democracy in order to prop up an authoritarian regime in Moscow. Now if you look at this as just a one-off intervention, you might be inclined to dismiss the greater significance of it, or if you listen to the president, you might be inclined to dismiss this as simply efforts to relitigate a lost election, Schiff told several hundred people at UC Irvine. But the significance is really far greater. Quite separate and apart from the desire of the Russians to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton was a more fundamental objective, and that was really to tear down at our democracy. Schiff is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating allegations of Russian intervention in the presidential election, including the leaking of hacked Democratic emails and contacts between Trump associates and Russians. Trump has declared the investigation the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history on Twitter. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the former chairman of the committee, recently told hundreds of Republicans at a fundraiser that the investigation is about nothing more than Democrats trying to justify Clintons loss. Nunes stepped down from his position after allegations arose that he mishandled classified information. Schiff said Russian President Vladimir Putin would have reasons for wanting to see Clinton fail and Trump succeed he believed that the CIA and Clinton were secretly behind mass demonstrations in Russia in 2011, and because Trumps positions on issues such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were more favorable to Russia than Clintons. But Schiff argued the larger point was sowing discord in the U.S., so Putin could argue that American democracy is no better than his government. Talk of rigged elections and surveillance, questioning the independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press as Trump has done boost Putins message, Schiff said. And the efforts are not limited to the United States, he added, pointing to allegations that the Russians made an effort to interfere in Frances recent election. The reality is there is new ideological struggle. Its not communism versus capitalism anymore. It is authoritarian versus democracy, he said. This is the broader challenge we are facing. Schiff also warned that there is no way to prevent Russian cyber-spying and that future attempts to interfere with American elections will only be more sophisticated, so voters must be educated. One of the most important conclusions the intelligence agencies have reached is the Russians will do this again, he said. The only real defense is to inoculate ourselves, to educate ourselves about what the Russians have done, why they are doing [it and] what they may do in the future and somehow we have to develop a consensus regardless of which party it helps and which party it hurts that we will reject it. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Rep. Devin Nunes: Democrats are using Russia investigation to justify Clintons loss By Sarah D. Wire (Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA) House Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told hundreds of local Republicans at a recent private fundraiser that congressional investigations into Russias interference in the 2016 election are about Democrats trying to justify Hillary Clintons loss. The Democrats dont want an investigation on Russia. They want an independent commission. Why do they want an independent commission? Because they want to continue the narrative that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are best friends, and thats the reason that he won, because Hillary Clinton would have never lost on her own; it had to be someone elses fault, Nunes told Republicans the day after he stepped away from leading the House investigation. His remarks were recorded on video and provided to The Times. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Californias embattled tax board would lose power over staff and funding under lawmakers plan By John Myers Following months of accusations about mistakes and improper use of power by its elected members, the state Board of Equalization could lose substantial power and gain an independent overseer under legislation introduced in the state Assembly. The bill by Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) would shift much of the power over staff and spending authority away from the independent tax board and create a new inspector general to watch over its actions. What were trying to do is make sure that the reform is transparent, Ridley-Thomas said. Thats what I think the moment demands. The plan, introduced as an amended bill just before the Memorial Day holiday, comes in the wake of audits alleging the tax agency made multimillion dollar miscalculations on revenue allocations and that some of its elected members improperly used staff members who were supposed to be focused on tax collection. Earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown called the situation a mess and in April asked for an investigation by the state Department of Justice. Four members of the Board of Equalization are directly elected by voters. The fifth, state Controller Betty Yee, serves in an ex officio capacity. The Assembly bill would transfer significant staff decisions to the agencys executive director and would require the Board of Equalizations members to have their operations funded in detailed line items included in the state budget. It would also create an inspector general office and would require the boards members to disclose all ex parte communications with those seeking action by the agency. I think that these issues can be addressed if we keep them in the sunlight, said Ridley-Thomas. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print New advertising campaign targets lawmakers over votes for climate change policies By Chris Megerian A coalition of California businesses launched a new advertising campaign on Saturday to pressure lawmakers against enacting tighter policies on climate change and air pollution. The campaign includes online videos and television advertising that warn of higher costs for business and residents. It arrives as Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers are debating whether to extend the cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases, and how restrictive the system should be. The first lawmaker being targeted is Assemblyman Ken Cooley (D-Rancho Cordova), accusing him of allowing unelected state employees to raise hidden taxes on gasoline and electricity because he voted last year for a tougher target to reduce emissions by 2030. Other lawmakers could face similar advertisements. Were locked, loaded and ready to go statewide, said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, which is funding the campaign through an advocacy group called Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy. The roundtable represents the states largest corporations, including oil refineries and manufacturers who have been critical of climate policies. A dollar figure was not disclosed for the advertising campaign, which will represent a balancing act for the roundtable. It supports the cap-and-trade program as an alternative to more restrictive regulations, but it opposes some of the current proposals to extend it. One measure would tie the program to air quality, targeting a wider range of pollutants than just greenhouse gases, and another would make it function more like a tax and charge higher prices for emission permits. Were at a tipping point here, Lapsley said. We need to get this information out into the public in order to try and create balanced policies. Although polls show broad support for fighting global warming in California, concerns about higher costs for constituents could be influential with some lawmakers who recently passed legislation to raise gas taxes to fund road repairs. Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) is facing a recall campaign over his vote. Nonpartisan legislative analysts have said cap and trade could boost the price of gasoline by 24 cents to 73 cents by 2030. Environmentalists have said its inaccurate to tie any single policy to fluctuations in gas prices. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California Politics Podcast: The debate among Democrats didnt end at their convention By John Myers The official gathering of California Democrats lasted only three days, but the lingering debate and simmering tensions could keep going well into next years elections. On this weeks California Politics Podcast episode, we look back at the line in the sand drawn at last weeks California Democratic Party convention by some of the partys most passionate progressive activists -- including the blunt speech delivered by an influential labor union leader last weekend. We also discuss big new developments this week on the topic that energized those Democratic activists: a single-payer healthcare system for California. On Monday, a fiscal analysis put a large price tag on legislation to enact that sweeping healthcare change. Im joined this week by Times staff writer Melanie Mason. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement California lawmakers quietly refuse to stop unlimited cash flowing from political parties to their campaigns By John Myers (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) An ambitious effort to close a widely used loophole that allows large donations from political parties to be funneled into California races was rejected on Friday. The bill by Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) would have made political party money donated to statewide and legislative candidates subject to the same contribution limits as individuals. Under the language of a voter-approved initiative, Proposition 34, money from political parties is exempt from those existing limits. Its a money-laundering scheme that has completely duped voters, Levine said last fall when he first promised to introduce the bill. The proposal was quietly killed, without a formal vote, by the Assembly Appropriations Committee during its biannual session to act on bills placed on the so-called suspense file due to their estimated costs. Committee staff estimated that Levines AB 1234 would have six-figure costs both for enforcement and for placing the issue before voters in 2018. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Veteran Democratic operative criticizes Kimberly Ellis for refusing to concede party chair race By Seema Mehta Supporters of Kimberly Ellis make signs, refusing to accept her loss to Eric Bauman for the California Democratic chair post. (Jay Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) Veteran Democratic operative Bob Mulholland slammed infighting among California Democrats, and urged Kimberly Ellis, who came up short in a nasty party chair election, to work to unify the party. I and others did not understand some of your supporters attacks on those of us who have spent decades or years building the Democrats in California as the most successful political Party in the country, he wrote in an open letter to Ellis on Thursday. He sent the email in the aftermath of the partys rancorous convention last weekend that featured a bitter leadership battle between Ellis, a favorite of newer members including the backers of Bernie Sanders failed presidential bid, and longtime party leader Eric Bauman. After Bauman was declared the winner by a razor-thin margin of just over 60 votes, Ellis refused to concede and demanded an audit of the vote as some of her backers floated rumors of ballot-box stuffing and discarded ballots. Ellis demurred when asked about Mulhollands scathing letter. While our review continues, we are refraining from making any statement that might cause further division, Ellis said. If we hope to truly unify this party, it will require patience by all. Officials with the Ellis campaign have been reviewing ballots this week. A spokesman said they had looked at about two-thirds by the end of Friday and hope to be done by the middle of next week. Joe Macaluso, Ellis strategist, declined to discuss the results and said her team needed to review additional documentation beyond the ballots. Were trying to stay true to our process and not release anything, but were in it, he said. Its an extensive process. Mulholland argued in his public letter that the convention should have showcased the partys message, not intraparty spats. Our annual Conventions should take care of internal business (Platforms, election of Officers, Resolutions, etc.), but more importantly a communication to voters, especially moderate Democrats and Independents about their concerns and issues, Mulholland wrote. If such busy people had a minute to read some news about our Convention, they saw Democrats yelling and arguing about ballots being stuffed, sounding like a Trump event. This Convention failed them. Mulholland listed the partys successes in the state, including Democrats lopsided voter registration edge, its nearly three-decade record of supporting Democratic presidential candidates, its election of female senators since 1992 and its hold of every statewide office, supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature and nearly three-quarters of the congressional delegation. Over the last 29 years, thats a [1.000] batting record, he wrote. Mulholland called on Ellis to hold a news conference with Bauman once she is satisfied with her audit of the vote. Then, he wrote, lets move on. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California lawmakers block proposals meant to make it easier to track and report hate crimes By Jazmine Ulloa Graffiti mars the steeple on the Greater Holy Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Compton in January. Cases of vandalism make up close to one-third of reported hate crimes, according to a new report. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times) California lawmakers Friday stalled measures meant to help report and track hate crimes across the state, proposals filed amid a wave of incidents reported after the 2016 presidential election. The state Assembly Appropriations Committee shelved bills that would have created new hate-crime reporting requirements for police and a hotline under the attorney generals office for victims wishing to report an attack. Of those bills, a proposal filed by Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima) initially sought to develop a state government database with the names of felons convicted of hate crimes related to race, religion and sexual orientation. That proposal was amended to instead require every law enforcement agency to forward a summary of a reported hate crime, upon conclusion of an investigation, to the human relations commission within its jurisdiction. But a committee analysis found it could cost the state more than $150,000 to help agencies redact personal information from their records. The committee also shut down bills that would have required police to update policies to address hate crimes and include a checkbox on the front pages of reports that would prominently provide an option to indicate whether a crime was bias-related. Local law enforcement officials have reported a recent rise in reported hate crime incidents. Existing state laws require local and state law enforcement officials to compile hate crime information. California jurisdictions reported a 10.4% statewide increase in those incidents last year. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Here were the top six moments from last nights L.A. congressional race debate By Christine Mai-Duc Robert Lee Ahn, left, and Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez sparred in a debate Thursday night ahead of the runoff for the 34th Congressional District seat. (Michael Owen Baker / For The Times) Attorney Robert Lee Ahn and Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez sparred Thursday night at the first and only debate in the runoff race for the 34th Congressional District seat. The candidates, both Democrats, offered little in the way of policy differences. Both agreed President Trump has racist tendencies, that keeping the Affordable Care Act is a top priority, and that they would fight to protect immigrants rights. Ahn came out swinging, repeatedly calling Gomez an insider whos sponsored by special interests, while Gomez pointed to his work supporting progressive policies in the Legislature and endorsements hes received from left-leaning groups. Here are the top six exchanges: The numbers problem: Gomez again criticized Ahn for a response he gave in an L.A. Times questionnaire that suggested he would negotiate with Republicans to protect parts of Obamacare. Gomez said Democrats need to take a hard line and that Ahn was too soft on support for Medicaid. In case you havent noticed, we have a numbers problem in Congress, Ahn shot back. Until were able to take back the House, were going to have to talk to the other side. Gomez again criticized Ahn for a response he gave in an L.A. Times questionnaire that suggested he would negotiate with Republicans to protect parts of Obamacare. Gomez said Democrats need to take a hard line and that Ahn was too soft on support for Medicaid. In case you havent noticed, we have a numbers problem in Congress, Ahn shot back. Until were able to take back the House, were going to have to talk to the other side. Gomez fact-checks Ahns name-check: Ahn made the case that voters should send an attorney to Congress to help in the legal battles against the Trump presidency. I will join fellow attorneys and Congress members Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff in the fight, Ahn said to the crowd. Gomez, who spent much of the evening bringing up his legislative experience and vast array of endorsements, responded: I hate to mention it, but, you know, Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu have endorsed me. Ahn made the case that voters should send an attorney to Congress to help in the legal battles against the Trump presidency. I will join fellow attorneys and Congress members Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff in the fight, Ahn said to the crowd. Gomez, who spent much of the evening bringing up his legislative experience and vast array of endorsements, responded: I hate to mention it, but, you know, Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu have endorsed me. Getting more personal: In discussions about immigration and healthcare, Gomez and Ahn delved a little deeper into their backgrounds. Gomez talked about his young nephew who feared that his mother, a permanent resident, might be deported after Trump was elected. Ahn told the story of how his parents came to the United States with $700 each and cobbled together enough money to open a hamburger stand, eventually building their piece of the American Dream. In discussions about immigration and healthcare, Gomez and Ahn delved a little deeper into their backgrounds. Gomez talked about his young nephew who feared that his mother, a permanent resident, might be deported after Trump was elected. Ahn told the story of how his parents came to the United States with $700 each and cobbled together enough money to open a hamburger stand, eventually building their piece of the American Dream. Ahn on the attack: Ahn repeatedly criticized Gomez for taking money from corporate interests. Special interests, big pharma, big bankers. ... Its all payback time [for Gomez donors] on Day One, Ahn said. On Day One, I owe the people of the 34th District and thats it. Ahn pitched himself as an outsider who understands the district and whose small-business experience will help him relate to the problems facing everyday residents. Ahn repeatedly criticized Gomez for taking money from corporate interests. Special interests, big pharma, big bankers. ... Its all payback time [for Gomez donors] on Day One, Ahn said. On Day One, I owe the people of the 34th District and thats it. Ahn pitched himself as an outsider who understands the district and whose small-business experience will help him relate to the problems facing everyday residents. A litmus test: Gomez fought back against the idea that hes a corporate Democrat, primarily by pointing to several endorsements hes received from left-leaning groups. If I was so establishment, I dont think Our Revolution ... would actually endorse me, Gomez said of the Bernie Sanders-affiliated group. If you want a litmus test, thats a litmus test if youre a progressive ... if youre actually able to take on the status quo. Gomez fought back against the idea that hes a corporate Democrat, primarily by pointing to several endorsements hes received from left-leaning groups. If I was so establishment, I dont think Our Revolution ... would actually endorse me, Gomez said of the Bernie Sanders-affiliated group. If you want a litmus test, thats a litmus test if youre a progressive ... if youre actually able to take on the status quo. Gomez gets skewered on gas tax: As part of his argument that he has fought for the little guy, Ahn expressed outrage that Californias gas taxes will increase July 1, saying theres nothing progressive about the gas tax hike Gomez voted for. We already paid 38 cents per gallon. Where is that money going? Ahn said, echoing a line many legislative Republicans have used. Sacramento politicians, this is what they do, they take our money and they spend it and theres no accountability. Gomez responded by saying public safety was at stake and that fixing roads was the responsible thing to do. If you missed it, you can watch the entire thing here. The election is set for June 6. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Rob Reiner, Hollywood bigwigs and Netflix co-founder team up to give Villaraigosas campaign a major cash boost By Seema Mehta (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Hollywood heavyweights are set to host a major fundraiser for Antonio Villaraigosas gubernatorial campaign on June 15, ensuring an infusion of large contributions shortly before a key fundraising deadline. Donors are being asked to contribute up to $29,200 to attend a summer reception at the home of media executive Peter Chernin and his wife Megan, the site of a celebrity-studded fundraiser for President Obama in 2013. Co-hosts include Paramount Pictures chief Jim Gianopulos, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, video game honcho Robert Kotick, comedian George Lopez, Sony chief Michael Lynton, NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer, producer Rob Reiner, super-agent Rick Rosen, producer Orly Adelson, former U.S. Ambassador to Spain James Costos, former White House decorator Michael Smith and attorney Michael Tuchin. Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, entered the governors race in November. Through the end of 2016, he raised $2.7 million, a respectable haul in a short time period when Democratic donors were reeling from the presidential election and distracted by the holidays. But his fundraising lags behind that of his top rivals, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Treasurer John Chiang. So political observers will be scrutinizing his next financial disclosure report, which will cover the first six months of 2017. The fundraiser occurs 15 days before the fundraising period closes on June 30. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A delay on cap-and-trade vote would be a victory for Donald Trump, Gov. Jerry Browns office says By Chris Megerian (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Despite hesitance and resistance from state lawmakers, Gov. Jerry Brown is refusing to budge from his goal of reaching a deal next month to extend Californias cap-and-trade program. The latest tug-of-war on the issue came this week in an email exchange circulated among Capitol staff members and advocates working on climate change policies. Kip Lipper, an environmental advisor for Senate leadership, wrote in a Thursday email that there were no plans to take up a cap and trade reauthorization bill anytime soon. Echoing concerns that have percolated among lawmakers, Lipper said senators were gas tax weary about the possibility of another difficult vote after deciding to raise gas taxes to pay for road repairs earlier this year. The cap-and-trade program, which is a cornerstone of Californias fight against global warming, requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions and could boost the price of gasoline. With votes hard to come by, Lipper wrote, the issue should not be rushed. Camille Wagner, Browns legislative secretary, responded on Friday saying there was no reason to delay. Weve all been meeting for months on this issue, she wrote. We know the areas of agreement and disagreement now is the time to work through those. She added that NOTHING is more important than getting a deal as soon as possible. This is not a time for retreat or a time to give aid and comfort to Donald Trump by undermining a pillar of Californias bold program to arrest climate change, Wagner wrote. If Californias Cap and Trade falls because we fail to act, climate denial wins. Brown had already faced resistance to his push to reach a deal on cap and trade in June, when the state budget is due. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) previously said we dont have to extend it this year. The disagreement over the timeline for reaching a deal is only one of the disputes surrounding cap and trade. Assembly leaders have raised the possibility of pushing legislation with only a majority vote, an idea the governors office rejected. Brown wants a two-thirds vote to insulate cap and trade from legal challenges. There are also varied ideas about how the program should function in the future. Assembly legislation would modify cap and trade so it also targets local pollution, rather than just greenhouse gases. Senate legislation would make the program function more like a carbon tax. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement The effort to make tampons tax free in California has been delayed until 2018 By John Myers (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Legislation to eliminate California sales taxes on the purchase of tampons was delayed Friday by the Assemblys fiscal committee until 2018, a blow to advocates who say the tax is an unfair burden on low-income women and families. The delay imposed on AB 9 is the second setback this month for efforts to eliminate taxes on products for women and children. A separate bill that included a tax-free provision for diapers was killed in a legislative committee on May 8. The bill that was held back on Friday, written by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), would have excluded tampons, sanitary napkins and other menstrual products from sales taxes. A legislative committee analysis estimated the proposal would reduce state general fund revenues by $10.5 million a year. Dozens of other bills with a cost to state government were killed by the Assembly Appropriations Committee, while AB 9 was instead reclassified as a two-year bill, meaning it is eligible to be heard again in the second year of the legislative session. Gov. Jerry Brown last year rejected a similar measure that sought to make tampons tax-free, writing in his veto message that tax breaks are the same as new spending they both cost the general fund money. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Outside money spills into L.A. congressional race as election day nears By Christine Mai-Duc Spending by outside groups hoping to influence Los Angeles congressional race is picking up, with less than two weeks to go before the runoff for the 34th Congressional District. Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez and attorney Robert Lee Ahn, both Democrats, are competing to fill the former seat of Xavier Becerra in the June 6 election. Becerra stepped down months ago to become the states attorney general. Spending separate from the candidates campaigns is reaching into the six-figure range, with most of the outside money going to support Gomez, the heavy favorite of establishment Democrats. One group funded primarily by an Ahn donor, Citizens for a Better Government, has spent $40,264 on data, printing and postage for mailers, and $8,000 on treasury services to support Ahns bid. The Latino Victory Fund, which has endorsed Gomez, recently spent $29,640 on direct mail and $30,000 on phone banking and voter canvassing for the candidate. Billboard company Outfront Media LLC has spent $1,973 on billboards for him. Also backing Gomez is a group called Middle Class Values PAC. The group spent $19,653 on mailers supporting Gomez despite not having reported receiving any major contributions so far this year. The groups biggest donors last year were a handful of Nevada casino owners and developers, but most of that money appears to have been spent on Democrats running for Congress in Pennsylvania and Nevada. Outside spending in the 34th Congressional District race has been dwarfed by candidate spending. As of March 31, Gomez had spent $446,455 and Ahn had dropped about $767,315 on his run. New campaign finance figures from both candidates are due at midnight Friday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Gov. Jerry Browns budget team drops its hotly debated plans to redefine the states spending limit By John Myers (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) With questions mounting about the legal justification for omitting some $22 billion in expenses from Californias long-standing spending cap, Gov. Jerry Browns administration dropped the plan Thursday while promising to work on the issue again later this year. Browns advisors told the Assembly Budget Committee that this could include some changes in state law to clarify the rules surrounding whats known as the Gann limit, a cap on state spending growth imposed by voters in 1979. The cap has rarely come into play in state budgeting in recent years, as it was loosened by a subsequent ballot measure in 1990. The governors administration said it continues to worry about how the law interacts with other mandates related to school funding. School financing has changed significantly since the limit was first established in 1979, said H.D. Palmer, Browns budget spokesman. Because of that, we continue to believe we need statutory clarifications related to these school funding changes. Legislative analysts warned lawmakers in April that the governor may have been overestimating how much room for spending was left under the cap, a dispute that continued for weeks while lawmakers began drafting plans for formal budget negotiations next month. Earlier this week, state senators again raised concerns about the complex estimates used to determine how much spending the Gann law would allow in the budget year that begins July 1. And they provided an analysis by the Legislatures lawyers that suggested Browns proposal could be unconstitutional. The spending limit is enforced over two fiscal years, which means Brown and lawmakers have time to reconcile different estimates. But absent changes similar to those advocated by the governor, a portion of future tax revenues would have to be split between schools and rebates to taxpayers. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California Senate, Assembly advance their own plans on how to spend tobacco tax revenue By Melanie Mason (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Perhaps the biggest budget skirmish that remains unsolved this year is how California should spend revenue from the tobacco tax voters approved last fall. Gov. Jerry Brown wants to put that money to expand overall spending on Medi-Cal, which provides subsidized healthcare for the poor. But the some of initiatives backers, namely doctor and dental groups, have cried foul, arguing that money is meant to go to increasing payments for providers. Now, the Senate and Assembly are weighing in. In plans approved in their respective budget committees this week, both houses stray from Browns proposal to put the money toward general Medi-Cal costs and lay out their own ideas on how to divvy up the revenue. But while both houses reject Browns approach, there are key differences between their proposals. Most significantly, the Assembly would allocate all $1.1 billion in projected tax revenue in the next budget year. The Senate, meanwhile, would spend just under $350 million next year, gradually ramping up spending to $1.1 billion by fiscal year 2020-21. Both houses also would increase provider payments, but in different ways. The Assembly would put around $857 million toward once-yearly incentive payments to physicians and dentists that would be tied to their Medi-Cal and Denti-Cal caseloads. The Senate proposed putting $150 million next year to physician rate increases that would be targeted for those working in high-need areas and specialties. That number would increase in successive years, topping out at $700 million by 2020. The Senate also would put $130 million toward higher rates for dentists. The California Medical Assn., which has been pushing for higher reimbursement rates, praised both houses for including the higher rates, but group spokeswoman Joanne Adams noted that the current Legislature cannot tie the hands of a future governor or Legislature, indicating a preference toward the Assembly approach. Each house would allocate $50 million for reimbursement rates for family planning providers, a priority of Planned Parenthood. And both houses put money toward expanding Medi-Cal to cover young adults up to age 26 who are in the country illegally. The proposal builds on Californias policy of making children without legal status younger than 19 eligible for Medi-Cal, which went into effect last year. Anthony Wright, of the advocacy group Health Access, noted that by expanding coverage for those up to age 26, it would align with Obamacares policy of letting children stay on their parents health insurance until that age. This is a concrete and tangible way to show we are actually taking steps forward in expanding coverage, Wright said. The Brown administration estimates that around 130,000 people would be eligible for Medi-Cal under such a proposal, and such an expansion would cost the state just under $230 million. The Senate proposal would put around $63 million toward that expansion in the upcoming budget year and around $85 million in subsequent years. The Assembly would put $54 million toward the plan. The Brown administration did not take a position on the Medi-Cal expansion proposal, but H.D. Palmer, spokesman for Browns Department of Finance, noted that the Senate was using higher revenue projections than Browns plan, which allows legislators to propose more funding. Palmer said the administration was sticking with its original proposal to use tobacco tax dollars for general Medi-Cal spending. The budgets proposal for Prop. 56 will provide increased funding for healthcare programs and services in a way thats consistent with the measure that voters approved last fall, Palmer said. ------------ FOR THE RECORD May 25, 2017, 4:58 p.m.: A previous version of this article reported that both houses were using higher revenue projections than Gov. Browns budget proposal. The Senate is using higher projections; the Assembly is using the same estimates as the Brown administration. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement California chief justice says she stands by her decision to speak out against Trumps immigration actions By Jazmine Ulloa California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye on Thursday said she stands by her position that courthouses should be areas where immigration arrests should not occur. Cantil-Sakauye, a former prosecutor who rose through the judicial ranks as an appointee of Republican governors, drew national attention in March after she blasted the federal governments expanded immigration actions, among which she said included stalking immigrants at courthouses. Speaking at a Sacramento Press Club luncheon on Thursday, she said the Supreme Court chambers fielded an outpouring of calls and letters after her comments. Some were profane and angry, from residents living outside the state. Others came from supporters. At Sac Press Club luncheon, Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye said she fielded lots of anger, support after courthouse enforcement remarks. pic.twitter.com/6OBrZOfI45 Jazmine Ulloa (@jazmineulloa) May 25, 2017 Many said that as a judge, she should not wade into politics. U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly admonished her in a letter, spurring California state leaders to respond in defense of state policies. On Thursday, Cantil-Sakauye stood by her decision to denounce the actions, saying, If I couldnt speak out as chief justice, I dont know who could. Courthouses in California have numerous programs to encourage people to come forward and ask questions, seek services and mediate issues, Cantil-Sakauye said. If we have a segment [of the population] that is afraid to come, then we are looking at no access to justice, [and] potentially public safety issues, which is antithetical to what the justice system exists for, she said. To me, it is a safe zone, and I ask that courthouses be placed on par with school districts and hospitals and churches. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Rep. Darrell Issa says the federal employee insurance program should be expanded to all Americans By Sarah D. Wire Though it wasnt included in the House Republicans healthcare bill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) still believes Americans should have access to the same insurance plans federal employees pick from, and hes hoping the Senate will embrace the idea. In a letter Thursday, Issa asked the Senate Health Care Working Group to consider opening the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program to more, or all, Americans. Its a national insurance idea thats persisted since the program began in 1960, and a proposal Issa has pitched before. The program allows more than 8 million current and retired federal employees across the country to shop among hundreds of health insurance plans and then apply their employer contribution to whatever plan they choose. Private insurance companies have pulled out of several state insurance marketplaces, where people whose employers dont offer insurance can purchase insurance using a federal subsidy. That leaves people with fewer health insurance choices, a common complaint cited by Republicans as a reason to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Its choice. If the government can maximize choice to you and then subsidize where appropriate based on need, then weve met the two bases for government involvement, Issa said. Issa voted for the American Health Care Act, the GOP bill to roll back much of Obamacare that passed May 4 without Democratic support, but he stresses that he did so just to keep momentum. One of the reasons I voted for this in the House was to keep the process alive so we could do reform, Issa said. Leveraging business models that work is the goal that somebody like me wants to do. Find out what works and invest in it, find out what doesnt work and fix it or abandon it. On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office said the bill as passed by the House would cause 23 million fewer people to have health insurance by 2026. The budget office, which Congress relies on to analyze the complex legislation, projected that many additional consumers would see skimpier health coverage and higher deductibles. The Senate has essentially said it will write its own version of the bill. Issas letter to his Senate colleagues also urges members to protect people with preexisting conditions, safeguard coverage for people with mental illnesses and protect people near retirement age from a spike in their premiums. Theres still more to be done. This bill is going to be about compromise, and a down payment on change, Issa said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Senate President Kevin de Leon is busy raising campaign funds but for what office? By Phil Willon Senate President pro Tem Kevin de Leon. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) stirred up speculation about a possible run for governor or U.S. Senate when he released a slickly produced video just before the California Democratic Partys convention last weekend, but he has remained coy about his future political plans. That doesnt mean he isnt padding his campaign war chest, though. De Leon has two fundraisers lined up in Los Angeles in June, presumably for his 2018 campaign for California lieutenant governor. The question is whether De Leon actually will run for lieutenant governor. In the past, he has said he hasnt made a decision. He has also given his supporters the go-ahead to endorse state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-Azusa), a longtime political ally, in the race. De Leons campaign account for lieutenant governor had $1.7 million in the bank at the end of last year. He raised close to a half-million this year, according to state political financial disclosure reports. The first fundraiser in June is being hosted by veteran Hollywood executive Peter Guber and his wife, Tara, in Bel Air on June 8, with suggested contributions ranging from $500 to $2,500. The second is in late June at the Palm in Los Angeles. The fundraiser is hosted by Craig Darian, CEO of the Occidental Entertainment Group, and his wife, Kimberly, as well as Albert Sweet, the founder of the company. The suggested donations are the same as for the earlier fundraiser. De Leon made history in 2014 when he was selected by his colleagues as the first Latino to lead the California Senate. The tenure has been marked by significant action on climate change, immigration and gun control. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Volkswagens clean car plan falls short in low-income neighborhoods, California regulators say By Chris Megerian (Markus Schreiber / Associated Press) State regulators have asked Volkswagen to revise its plan to invest in zero emission technology in California, a victory for critics who said the automaker wasnt doing enough in disadvantaged communities. The investment plan, which will total $800 million over 10 years, is part of Volkswagens obligation under a multi-billion settlement for evading pollution rules. California, which is struggling to get enough zero emission vehicles on the road to meet its goals, is eager to move forward, wrote Air Resources Board Executive Officer Richard Corey in a Wednesday letter to Electrify America, a Volkswagen subsidiary. However, Corey wrote, we need more information on how the company will meet its target of spending 35% of its investment in disadvantaged communities, a target set by state regulators in hopes of broadening the adoption of electric vehicles. Corey also asked Electrify America to consider supporting hydrogen fueling stations, rather than just electric chargers. Once the company submits an updated version of its plan, state regulators will consider whether to approve it. Electrify America said it is reviewing the letter. Dean Florez, a member of the Air Resources Board, said the original investment plan had significant holes and included no real investment in disadvantaged communities. He praised the decision to request revisions and said the board should hold VWs feet to the fire. This story has been updated with additional comments. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Lawmakers scrap effort to make it easier to pass local transportation taxes By John Myers An effort to boost the chances of local ballot measures raising taxes for transportation needs was quietly killed Thursday in the state Capitol. The proposal, which would have ultimately required changing the California Constitution through a statewide vote, was in response to the high hurdle set decades ago for local taxes earmarked for specific projects. Those kinds of taxes in cities and counties require two-thirds of the vote. The constitutional amendment by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would have lowered the vote threshold to 55% of ballots cast for any transportation proposal. Wiener argued the long list of local transportation projects lacking funds wont completely be erased by the $52-billion transportation plan signed into law last month. And he pointed specifically to examples like a transportation tax plan in the Bay Area last year that garnered 62% of the vote still slightly shy of the two-thirds mandate. While the effort can be brought back before lawmakers adjourn the current session in the summer of 2018, Thursdays action represented a major setback for transportation groups and labor unions that supported it. The measure was opposed by business and anti-tax advocates. Wiener said he intends to re-introduce the measure in the coming weeks. We must improve and expand transportation throughout our state, which has suffered from decades of underfunding, he said in a written statement. Update 1:29 p.m. This story was modified with additional information regarding constitutional amendments and the legislative process. Update 4:10 p.m. This story was updated with comment from Sen. Wiener. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Sex offenders will not be banned without exception from school grounds after state bill is shelved By Jazmine Ulloa State Sen. Connie M. Leyva, right. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) The state Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday shelved a bill that would have banned all registered sex offenders from school campuses without exception. Senate Bill 26 by Sen. Connie M. Leyva (D-Chino) would have made it a misdemeanor for a registered sex offender to enter any school building or grounds without lawful business. State laws keep registered sex offenders from living near schools. But those who have not been convicted of having sex with a minor under age 16 can visit or volunteer with groups or organizations that work with children if they give proper notice, and are granted permission. They cannot work directly with children. The committee advanced another bill by Leyva that would extend benefits under the Safe at Home initiative to former victims of forced prostitution or labor. Senate Bill 597, introduced with Secretary of State Alex Padilla, passed with a unanimous 7-0 vote. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Measure to help California students refinance private loans is shelved By Melanie Mason State Treasurer John Chiang, a candidate for governor, is behind a new effort to help people with student debt refinance their loans. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) A measure to help Californians saddled with student debt refinance their student loans was shelved in a key fiscal committee on Thursday. The measure by state Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) was touted as a way for the state to coax private lenders to offer more favorable interest. The proposal would have carried a $25-million price tag. We will continue to push for sensible solutions to the student loan crisis that provide real relief to the millions of Californians saddled with too much debt, Allen said in a statement. State Treasurer John Chiang, a 2018 gubernatorial candidate, had championed the bill, SB 674, as a way to try to get [Californians] out of debt as quickly as possible. College graduation is supposed to be synonymous with opportunity and prosperity and not a detour into a modern-day debtors prison, Chiang said in a statement. Although I am disappointed SB 674 will not be moving forward, I will continue to use my position as the states banker to invest in Californias young people and its future with innovative solutions that will make it more financially feasible to obtain a higher education, he added. 3:58 p.m.: This article was updated to add comments from Sen. Benjamin Allen and Treasurer John Chiang. This article was originally published at 11:17 a.m. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Where bills go to die: Lawmakers begin clearing the suspense file with hundreds of measures in limbo By John Myers (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) From a sales tax exemption on tampons to healthcare rules and marijuana regulation, a massive stack of proposed laws faces a major deadline Friday morning at the state Capitol. To survive, they must clear whats known as the suspense file -- the place where bills that would cost taxpayers money are held in legislative limbo. By law, bills with a fiscal impact must be sent to the floor of the Assembly and Senate by the close of business on Friday. That means its decision time for more than 800 pieces of legislation. The Senates fiscal committee will decide the fate of bills on Thursday; the Assembly will do so on Friday. Bills are generally sent to the suspense file if their projected cost to the state is $150,000 or more. The procedural move was widely used during Californias deficit years as a way for lawmakers to weigh the pros and cons of proposals in light of limited resources. But government watchdog groups have long pointed out that the clearing of the suspense file ends up hiding some of the legislative sausage-making from public view. Thats because bills that dont clear Fridays hurdle are essentially killed without a recorded vote. And neither chamber offers any explanation for why those bills were killed. Decisions on the fate of the suspense file are made in private, hours or days before the public hearing. In the Assembly, the appropriations committee chairperson will simply tell the public that a decision has been made to hold the bill. In the Senate committee, killed legislation wont even be mentioned during Thursdays hearing. That means that no one will know for sure whether a bill is really killed because of its price tag or its politics. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Formal apology sought after U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters was cut off during state convention speech By Jazmine Ulloa (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) In my 20 years as a Democratic Party leader, I have never experienced such the type of behavior as I did at the Sacramento Convention hall on Saturday evening. Darren Parker, longtime chairman of the African American Caucus The California Democratic Party African American Caucus is asking the state party for a formal apology to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and its members for what it called disrespect by a private subcontractor at its weekend state convention. Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat known for her comments on President Trump, had been speaking at a caucus meeting during the event Saturday night when the sound to her microphone was cut off. SEE THE VIDEO OF WATERS SPEECH> Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California sees a rebound in cap-and-trade auction, bolstering key climate change program By Chris Megerian (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) State regulators announced strong results from Californias cap-and-trade program on Wednesday, spurring analysts and supporters to say the system remains solid despite questions about its political future. The program requires oil refineries, food processors, power plants and other facilities to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly all of the permits offered by the state in its latest auction were purchased, generating an estimated $500 million in revenue. Thats a shift from other recent auctions, where most of the permits went unsold, reducing revenue that state leaders have counted on for Donald Trump, on just his third day as president, was closing his remarks lauding law enforcement officers at a White House reception when he spied a hard-to-miss figure. Oh, theres Jim! Trump exclaimed as the 6-foot-8 FBI director, James B. Comey, loped across the Blue Room for a presidential hug. Hes become more famous than me! Neither man could imagine how soon Trump would add to Comeys fame or infamy with the presidents stunning sacking on Tuesday of the man leading the investigation of possible ties of Trump campaign officials to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Advertisement Comey gained fame long before Trump, and long before the directors fumbling leadership last year of the FBI inquiry into Hillary Clintons handling of her emails as secretary of State. But from Comeys initial celebrity during the George W. Bush administration to the recent controversies, few officials have gone from such heights of public regard to such depths of bipartisan opprobrium, from an image of white knight to one of self-righteous knave. Comey first became widely known for his actions on a winter night in March 2004 when he dramatically stood up to top Bush administration officials over a domestic surveillance order. Comey was deputy attorney general, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, but in March he was heading the agency while Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft recovered from surgery in a hospital near the White House. As acting attorney general, Comey refused to certify as legal a presidential order for warrantless domestic surveillance. So President Bushs White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., secretly went to the hospital to secure a signature from the enfeebled, barely conscious Ashcroft. Comey got wind of the gambit and sped to the hospital. There he prevented the senior White House officials from carrying out their plan. Comey subsequently threatened to resign, but he remained at Justice after a private meeting with Bush, who agreed to make changes to the surveillance order that satisfied Comey and the FBI director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III. Despite his Republican pedigree, Comey was selected by President Obama to replace Mueller atop the FBI in 2013, in part because of his reputation for independence and integrity. The Senate easily confirmed him. At the bureau, Comey brought to the job long experience as a federal prosecutor, handling cases as diverse as white-collar crime, official corruption and terrorist acts. But that image for personal and professional rectitude largely unraveled amid his handling of the Clinton investigation, leaving him with few friends in either political party. Born in New York City and raised in New Jersey, Comey, 56, graduated from William and Mary College, where he studied religion and chemistry. He got a law degree from the University of Chicago. Early in his career he worked in the U.S. attorneys office for the Southern District of New York, a fiefdom he would later head. Twice he was involved in earlier Clinton-related investigations. During the Clinton administration, Comey was a counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Clintons Whitewater land deal in Arkansas years earlier, and after Bill Clinton left office, Comey was involved in investigating Clintons pardon of a fugitive tax evader, the husband of a Clinton donor. In 2002, George W. Bush named Comey as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and in December 2003 promoted him to be deputy attorney general. Both posts required Senate confirmation. In 2005, Comey left Justice, and in the years before Obama tapped him for the FBI, he worked as counsel at Lockheed Martin and then Bridgewater Associates, an investment management firm. His role in the 2016 campaign in investigating Hillary Clintons handling of classified material pleased neither side in the election. She has joined many other Democrats in blaming Comey, in part, for her loss. And Trump attacked him last summer for deciding not to seek a criminal prosecution of Clinton. Trump lauded the FBI director for reopening the Clinton case just before the election, only to condemn him for then clearing her again. After his election, Trump said he hadnt decided whether to ask Comey to resign. By a law passed after the Watergate era in response to Richard Nixons firing of his attorney general amid the scandal probe investigation, the FBI director has a 10-year term that straddles presidencies, to minimize political interference. Days after the inauguration, Comey spread word that Trump had asked him to stay on. But the tension between the two developed, particularly after Comey disclosed the inquiry into the possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, a story Trump has tried to dismiss as fake. On May 2, Trump tweeted, FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The next day White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the president remained confident in the FBI director. Yet by Tuesday, Comey was fired and Spicers deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said the reason was simple. Heres the bottom line: Comey had lost the confidence across the board from House members, from Senate members, from rank-and-file members of the FBI and the American public, she said. When you have that happen, you cant serve in that capacity. President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey on Tuesday, stunning Washington with a decision that carries vast political ramifications because the bureau is investigating whether anyone close to the president colluded with Russian intelligence agents to influence the 2016 presidential election. The abrupt ouster was needed to allow a new beginning at the FBI, Trump said, citing scathing criticism by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, a career prosecutor, of Comeys public announcements about the bureaus investigation of Hillary Clintons email practices. The firing the first dismissal of an FBI chief since 1993 caught Comey by surprise as he spoke to FBI agents at an event in Los Angeles. Advertisement He was caught flat-footed when the news flashed on television screens in the room, a senior FBI official told reporters before Comey headed back to Washington. Comey skipped a scheduled event at the Directors Guild of America aimed at recruiting more minority agents. The dismissal drew immediate calls from senior Democrats for an independent prosecutor to oversee the counterintelligence investigation into Trump associates ties to Russia, an inquiry that could lead to criminal charges. As Trumps political opponents compared the firing to President Nixons order to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor more than four decades ago in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre, even some members of Trumps party expressed concern. Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-N.C.), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting a Russia investigation of its own, said he was troubled by the timing and reasoning of the firing, which he said further confuses an already difficult investigation. Comeys departure, he added, was a loss for the bureau and the nation. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he told Trump, who called to notify him before making the firing public, Youre making a very big mistake. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions sent an email to FBI employees Tuesday saying that Andrew McCabe would take over as acting director. McCabe, an FBI employee since 1996, was named deputy director in January 2016. He supervised sensitive investigations, including the inquiry into whether Clinton mishandled classified information in using a private email server when she was secretary of State. McCabe visited the White House on Tuesday night, but officials said he did not meet with Trump. For the last 10 months, Comey has come under sharp, widespread criticism from both parties for his handling of two investigations connected to the 2016 presidential election the Russia investigation and the Clinton email inquiry. Trump said he had relied on the recommendation of Rosenstein, who assumed his job late last month and is overseeing the FBIs handling of the Russia investigation because Sessions has stepped aside from any role in it. In a memorandum to Sessions, which was released by the White House, Rosenstein harshly criticized Comey for his actions beginning last summer. On July 5, Comey announced at a news conference that the FBI would not seek criminal charges against Clinton, the Democratic nominee, in the investigation of her email practices, but he also denounced her conduct as extremely careless. That was a serious misjudgment, Rosenstein wrote, adding, The goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference. Comeys actions were a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do, he wrote. Rosenstein said Comey made the problems worse with his decision in late October 11 days before the election to disclose that the FBI had reopened its investigation of the Clinton case after finding State Department emails on a computer belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, the subject of a separate investigation and the estranged husband of Clintons aide Huma Abedin. After a week, the FBI determined that those emails added no significant new evidence to the case. The president has removed the sitting FBI director in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) Clinton has blamed the Comey letter for contributing to her defeat, although polling evidence on that point is unclear. Trump had loudly praised Comeys announcement at the time. Many Republicans had reacted with outrage in July when Comey said the bureau would not seek charges against Clinton. Many Democrats were equally upset with his wide-ranging comments on Clintons conduct. Their anger deepened with his letter in October and Comeys disclosure to Congress in March that the FBI launched an investigation last July into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russia an inquiry Comey did not reveal during the campaign. Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that the criticism he had received for his actions in the campaign had been painful. Ive gotten all kinds of rocks thrown at me, and this has been really hard, but I think Ive done the right thing at each turn, he testified. He added that he welcomed an FBI inspector generals review of his conduct, which was announced in January. But Comey argued that he had no choice but to disclose the renewed investigation just before the election and not conceal it. Rosenstein sharply disagreed. Prosecutors should never disclose nonpublic information about investigations, he wrote. Silence is not concealment. Given Comeys errors and his public refusal to admit that they were mistakes, Rosenstein continued, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Rosensteins recommendation was presented to the president today, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters several hours after the firing. No one from the White House ordered Rosenstein to conduct his review, Spicer added. It was all him. White House officials, hoping to insulate the president from opposition criticism, released past quotes from top Democratic leaders declaring a lack of confidence in Comey. Democrats, however, said that nothing Comey did last year justified Trumps firing him now. In statements, leading Democratic lawmakers called his ouster outrageous, brazen and not what an innocent person would do. They warned that Comeys dismissal could lead to a White House effort to shut down the FBI investigation. No one should accept President Trumps absurd justification for the firing, declared Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the former head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The president has removed the sitting FBI director in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country one that implicates senior officials in the Trump campaign and administration. This is nothing less than Nixonian, Leahy said. Sessions, in a letter to Trump, said that he was recommending Comeys dismissal for the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General and in order for the department to clearly reaffirm its commitment to longstanding principles of proper conduct by investigators. Trump, in a letter to Comey informing him of his dismissal, said he had accepted the recommendation. He added that he greatly appreciate[d] you informing me on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation. That claim was not independently confirmed, and White House officials would not explain when the three occasions were. Officials familiar with the investigation have said that the FBI inquiry has focused on Trump associates and have not suggested that the president himself is a target. In a statement, the White House quoted Trump as saying that the FBI is one of our nations most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement. Although the FBI director serves a fixed 10-year term, which is supposed to insulate him from political pressure, previous presidents of both parties have taken the position that as an officer of the executive branch, the director can be fired by the president. The last such dismissal was in 1993 when President Clinton fired Director William Sessions amid allegations of ethics violations. A search for a new permanent FBI director will begin immediately, the White House said. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Trump called her Tuesday afternoon to relay his decision. The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing, she said. But nominating and ultimately confirming a new director in such a politically toxic environment will be an extraordinarily difficult task. That prospect troubled some current and former FBI agents. The FBIs reputation for independence will now be under threat, said Frank Scafidi, a 20-year veteran of the bureau who ran its public affairs and congressional relations offices before retiring in 2004. There will always be a cloud of suspicion hanging over the head of whoever it will be, Scafidi said, speaking by telephone from his home in Sacramento. Democrats will intensely scrutinize any Trump pick in part because of the presidents comments and those of his administration attacking the judiciary and investigatory agencies. Just Tuesday, the White House questioned the public assertions and private actions of former Deputy Atty. Gen. Sally Yates, who testified Monday at a Senate panel hearing about concerns she had raised with the White House that then-national security advisor Michael Flynn had been compromised through misleading public statements about his interactions with Russian officials. Spicer suggested Yates was acting as a pro-Clinton partisan, and said without evidence that she was widely rumored to play a large role in a Clinton administration. President Obama nominated Comey in 2013 to replace Robert Mueller, who had served beyond the typical 10-year term of an FBI director in part because of the difficulty in finding a replacement amid continuing national security threats. Comey was easily confirmed by the Senate. In choosing Comey, a Republican, the Obama administration highlighted his credentials as a federal prosecutor and his apolitical manner. Trump at first appeared inclined to keep Comey in his position. Two days after his inauguration, Trump singled him out during a gathering with law enforcement officials in Washington, shaking his hand and patting him on the back. Hes become more famous than me, the president quipped. Last week, after Comeys Senate testimony, Spicer said that the president has confidence in the director. On Tuesday, however, speaking to reporters at his afternoon briefing, Spicer hedged on whether Comey still had that confidence. I have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about this, Spicer said. He returned to the briefing room hours later with news of the firing. Times staff writers Noah Bierman, Brian Bennett, Evan Halper, Lisa Mascaro and Joseph Tanfani in Washington and James Queally in Los Angeles contributed to this report. ALSO Comey was caught flat-footed and learned of firing from TV while talking to FBI agents in L.A., source says Donald Trump is too inept to conduct a successful coverup Trumps shifting stances on FBI Director James Comey UPDATES: 8:40 p.m.: This article was updated with additional reporting from the White House and the Justice Department. The article was originally published at 5 p.m. The push by the Trump White House and GOP congressional leaders to dismantle environmental protections hit an unexpected roadblock when the Senate would not go along with plans to kill Obama-era rules limiting the release of a potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Three Republican senators joined Democrats on Wednesday in blocking the effort to kill a rule that forces energy companies to do more to contain methane leaks at their drilling operations on public land. The vote was a setback for the GOP congressional leadership, which had been confident it could scuttle the rules, and for the Trump administration, which said the restrictions unnecessarily encumber energy firms. The attack on the methane rule failed amid an uprising in Western states, where tens of thousands of residents near drilling operations risk exposure to the toxic compounds that leak in tandem with the methane. Advertisement The collapse of the effort raised the prospect that some moderate Republicans are growing uncomfortable with the aggressiveness with which environmental rules are being rolled back under the current Congress and White House. And it comes at the same time resistance from moderate Republicans has compelled Trump to rethink his vow to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change that his predecessor had taken a lead in negotiating. At issue is 41 billion cubic feet of a greenhouse gas leaking from many of the nearly 100,000 oil and gas wells on federally owned land. Methane is among the most potent accelerators of global warming, 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. A swift House vote in March to eliminate an Obama-era Bureau of Land Management rule requiring energy firms to trap the escaping gas and convert it to electricity triggered a public backlash. Several Republican senators wavered on the measure in recent weeks. Improving the control of methane emissions is an important public health and air quality issue, said a statement from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who joined GOP colleagues Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in voting with Democrats to stop the proposal to repeal the nascent rule. I join the call for strong action to reduce pollution from venting, flaring and leaks associated with oil and gas production. McCain said that while he is concerned the methane restrictions are onerous on business, the measure to repeal them threatened to prevent the federal government from taking any new action at all to force the firms to capture the gas. The Obama administration had concluded the amount of methane escaping each year from drilling operations is enough to provide electricity for nearly 740,000 homes. The Government Accountability Office alerted Congress in July that capturing it would boost royalties owed to taxpayers by $23 million, much of it going to the cash-strapped local communities where the wells are located. Several Western states already have passed their own laws requiring oil and gas companies to contain the methane aggressively. But the efforts often are undermined by clouds of methane drifting in from neighboring states. Lawmakers got an earful from a broad coalition of businesses, activists and local officials embittered by the concentrations of methane pollution in their communities. Their grievances ran the gamut from methane leaks being Americas second-biggest source of industrial climate change to the stench of the air around drilling sites. More than 80% of the people in Western states, including Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, supported the Obama-era mandate in a Colorado College poll taken in December. Oil and gas firms vowed they will continue their fight against the rules, which they warn threaten to drive small, family-run energy companies out of business. And Trumps Department of the Interior made clear that it, too, will be working to undermine the methane regulation it inherited. Kate MacGregor, who oversees land and minerals at the Department of the Interior, said the regulation remains targeted for major revisions or even elimination by the administration, despite the Senate vote. But without help from Congress, such an effort is laborious, time-consuming and vulnerable to legal action from environmental groups and states. While the administration talked of Wednesdays vote in Congress as a minor setback, besieged environmental activists declared that their victory on this obscure regulation pointed to something bigger. This shows the tide is starting to change, said Madeleine Foote, a lobbyist with the League of Conservation Voters. What they want to do is radical; it is extreme. People are raising their voices about it, and members of Congress are hearing. The resistance is having an impact. evan.halper@latimes.com Follow me: @evanhalper In firing FBI Director James B. Comey, President Trump may have hoped to bring the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election under control. Instead, as reaction in Washington spread on Wednesday, the move seemed to carry a large risk of making his troubles worse. Trump has both privately and publicly seethed for weeks about the investigation into whether anyone connected with his campaign had cooperated with Russian efforts to influence the election. He was angered further last week that Comey would not publicly back his claim that no evidence of collusion exists. Advertisement The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax and a taxpayer funded charade, he tweeted on Monday, the day White House officials now say he first discussed firing Comey with Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. But if the goal was to get the investigation over with, firing Comey probably moved matters in the wrong direction, according to both Republican and Democratic former White House officials. In the short term it certainly fans the flames, said Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist and aide to former Republican presidents. In an email lament circulated among prominent Republicans, A.B. Culvahouse Jr., former Reagan White House counsel and head of Trumps vice presidential search effort, said the firing both prolongs the FBI/DOJ investigation and undermines the credibility of the Trump campaigns denials of no conspiracy with Putin. We could be talking about Russian hacking in the mid-terms at this rate, he wrote. Ironically, Comeys track record for defying his bosses and charting an independent course precisely the attributes that the White House cited in his dismissal made him potentially very valuable to Trump. Susan Hennessey, an expert in national security law at the Brookings Institution who has been closely tracking the Russia investigation, said Trump appeared to have lost sight of what would have been the best-case ending to the public investigation clearing those who are innocent and allowing the White House to move forward. Its apparent to everyone except perhaps the president that this story is not just going to go away, she said. Although high-profile investigations can be costly to an administration, theyre often the only way to dispense with the matter publicly and provide the level of certainty that the American people need. Comey, with his long service under presidents of both parties and his wide support among rank-and-file FBI agents, could have provided credible closure at the end of an investigation, especially if the inquiry were to clear most White House officials. Thats why Hennessey and others predicted that eventually, despite current resistance, the administration would probably have to accept some form of special counsel or independent investigative commission. These issues are serious enough that I think eventually well get there, said Lee Hamilton, a former congressman and co-chairman of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Will it be next week? Will it be six months from now? I dont know when, but I dont think Trump has helped himself by firing Comey, Hamilton said. Hes trying to get away from this. Its driving him nuts. Its eating away at his presidency day by day, and hes trying to stop it. But my view is hes not going to succeed. Demands for a special prosecutor of some form probably will play a major role in Senate hearings over a nominee to replace Comey. So far, the administration has staunchly resisted that idea, and it has kept the backing of the people it needs most, especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Today well no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, McConnell said in a Senate speech Wednesday morning. That can only serve to impede the current work being done. So long as McConnell stands firm, he could probably block any move in Congress to pass a new law creating an independent counsel of the type that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in the Reagan administration and Bill Clintons sexual escapades and perjury during his administration. The remaining route to a special counsel would be for Rosenstein to appoint one, using his authority as the overseer of the Russia investigation because Sessions has stepped aside over his close links to Trump during the campaign. That was the process used when a special counsel was named in the George W. Bush administration to investigate who in the White House had disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent. Much as Sessions resisted for several weeks before eventually deciding to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, we will see the same cycle play out with Rod Rosenstein, Hennessey predicted. Were on an inevitable path toward things like special prosecutors because otherwise were facing a legitimacy crisis, she said. In trying to fend that off, the White House suffered Wednesday from a problem that already has surfaced several times during Trumps tenure: The presidents decision appeared to have outrun his staffs preparation. White House officials, nearly all of whom were caught by surprise by Comeys firing, were ill-equipped to explain Trumps action, offering conflicting accounts of when he made the decision and what had precipitated it. On Tuesday night, for example, several hours after the firing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that no one from the White House had ordered Rosenstein to review Comeys conduct. It was all him, Spicer said. That was a DoJ decision. On Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who delivered the daily White House news briefing, offered a very different account, one that appeared to put Trump in the role of the motivating force. The president, over the last several months, lost confidence in Director Comey, Sanders said. She went on to say that when Rosenstein and Sessions came to the White House on Monday, the topic came up, and they asked to speak with the president, and thats how it moved forward. Trump asked them for their recommendation then asked them to put that recommendation in writing, she said. Rosensteins memo castigating Comey was dated Tuesday. Those sorts of inconsistencies dismayed Republicans even as they heightened suspicions among Democrats. I am bewildered about the sloppy handling of this at the White House. It makes Republicans shoulders slump, said Rogers, the Republican strategist. On the Democratic side, prominent figures insisted Trumps true motive had been to undermine the Russia investigation, and not, as claimed, Comeys fumbling of the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clintons email practices. If the administration truly had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they wouldve had them the minute the president got into office, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a floor speech Wednesday morning. At least some Republicans seemed troubled, as well. Ive spent the last several hours trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comeys firing. I just cant do it, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) tweeted Tuesday night. Times staff writers Jackie Calmes and Michael A. Memoli contributed to this report. David.Lauter@latimes.com For more on Politics and Policy, follow me @DavidLauter Get the latest news from the nations capital on Essential Washington ALSO From Anderson Coopers eye roll to Chuck Todds Wow: The media react to Comey firing As the White House defends Comeys firing, its allies join in deflecting calls for an independent Russia investigation Why was James Comey fired? We break down the White House talking points Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tangled with protesters, weaved through media hives and trotted on horseback across a Utah moonscape this week in pursuit of President Trumps executive order targeting national monuments. Its a directive that may prove legally tenuous but is nonetheless creating rich political theater for the White House. Trump struggled during the campaign in deeply Republican Utah, particularly with its politically potent landowner rights movement. But now the Queens-born president is polishing his bona fides with that crowd by dispatching a rugged Cabinet secretary on a quest that is rankling environmentalists and Native American tribes. Advertisement Over four days ending Wednesday, Zinke is surveying two hotly contested monuments: the 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears, which President Obama established at the behest of tribes and conservationists in the final weeks of his administration, and the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase Escalante, which has riled local developers and energy companies since President Clinton created it in 1996. In the hardscrabble communities nearby, these monuments are often derided as a betrayal, depriving them of potential jobs from energy extraction and other uses. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch invoked the word yet again recently while railing against the Bears Ears designation on the Senate floor. The administrations campaign against monuments was launched in Utah by design. The state is a hotbed of resistance to federal control of land. It has even passed a law calling on the federal government to cede control of most of its vast holdings to the state. They are trying to work with a favorable audience, said Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. Once they leave the confines of Utah and start looking at all those other monuments, the politics dramatically changes. Attorneys general in New Mexico and Washington warned Zinke in recent days he has no authority to diminish their monuments, and California would not hesitate to engage in a fight should Zinke move on lands within its borders. Even in Utah, polls show the public is divided on whether the Bears Ears designation should be rescinded. But the states political leadership is largely united, and Zinke is getting his fill of attaboys on this trip. We now have an opportunity to discuss and deliberate like we didnt even have during the Bush administration, said Ken Ivory, a Utah legislator who is leading a multi-state federal land push that would go much further than Trumps executive order. Ivorys crusade, which has a number of allies in Congress, seeks to export nationally the Utah approach of pushing the federal government to transfer its land to state control. Its a sensitive political issue for Trump and Zinke, who are aligned with a large coalition of hunters, anglers and outdoor outfitters anxious about what states would do with the federal land. Both men consider themselves outdoorsmen and have made assurances the Trump administration will not be relinquishing federal control of the millions of acres at issue. But Ivory is nonetheless encouraged by the move against the monuments. This will continue the discussion, he said. The protected lands Zinke came to survey are at the core of Trumps order for a review of all monuments created since 1996 that are larger than 100,000 acres, which is ultimately expected to end with Zinke suggesting both areas either get stripped of the monument designation altogether or be downsized substantially. Zinke is in a race to review those and 19 other monuments, including six in California, before producing two lists of suggested eliminations and rollbacks. He will present the first list in mid-June. There is ample evidence the exercise could go sideways, as some of Trumps other executive orders have. Trumps ban on visitors from six predominantly Muslim nations and his bid to punish sanctuary cities are both unraveling in court. The executive order Trump vowed would force builders of the Keystone XL oil pipeline to use American steel actually wont. The review of these monuments is predicated on the idea that the president has this authority that he doesnt have. Kate Kelly, advisor to former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell The Butler Wash Indian ruins within Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. Utah Republicans in Congress are advocating for President Donald Trump to jettison Utahs national monument designation. (Francisco Kjolseth / Associated Press) The review of these monuments is predicated on the idea that the president has this authority that he doesnt have, said Kate Kelly, who was an advisor to former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. There is no legal basis for it. The last time a president moved to get rid of a monument on his own authority was in 1938, when Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to jettison the Castle-Pinckney National Monument in South Carolina. His attorney general looked into options at the time and reported back that Roosevelt couldnt do that. It would take an act of Congress, which ultimately authorized the federal government to offload the property in the 1950s. The presidents authority to undo monument designations, environmentalists argue, has only shrunk since the Roosevelt administration, after Congress passed laws solidifying the federal protection. Attorneys affiliated with some of the conservative think tanks influential in guiding Trumps agenda argue the Roosevelt administration got it all wrong. They say that not only does the president have explicit authority to scotch monuments, but that many of the monuments created under the century-old Antiquities Act were done so illegally. The act, their argument goes, was never intended to preserve sprawling land masses the size of Delaware. By this line of reasoning, even Teddy Roosevelt was out of bounds when he designated the Grand Canyon a national monument. (It has since become a national park, and thus universally agreed to be untouchable by Trumps executive order). I think the president is in a strong position, said Todd Gaziano, an attorney at the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group. While no president has ever successfully eliminated national monuments, several have changed their shapes, and even shrunk them. John F. Kennedy substantially redrew the boundaries of the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, shaving off nearly 4,000 acres and adding 3,000, saying the borders of what needed to be preserved had evolved. When Olympic National Park in Washington was still a monument, it was reduced in size multiple times to enable timber harvesting, including in 1915 when logs were needed to build Navy ships for World War I. But there was a big difference between those parings and the ones Trump may be on the verge of trying to make now: the earlier presidential moves to redraw monument boundaries were not contested. The courts have yet to weigh in on whether the president can take such action when stakeholders such as American Indian tribes, environmental groups and lawmakers vehemently object. Those groups have made clear that they wont let Trump lift protections off a single acre of monument land without a bitter court fight. Justin Pidot, a former deputy solicitor general at the Interior Department who now teaches law at the University of Denver, said if he were working for this administration he would be warning Zinke that the legal arguments are shaky. But, Pidot allowed, that may not be an overriding concern in this case. A lot of things this administration does, it does for political theater, he said. They can say they have done them, and then they get to rail against the courts for stopping them. evan.halper@latimes.com Follow me: @evanhalper ALSO Reviving debate over Bears Ears National Monument also revives racial tension in a remote corner of Utah PHOTOS: Super bloom at Carrizo Plain National Monument Snowmelt triggers a flood warning in Yosemite and a river closure in the Central Valley UPDATES: 7:55 a.m. May 12: This story was updated after some states warned the administration over Trumps plan. This story was first published May 10, 6:05 a.m. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, May 10 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The plans on construction of the Turkmenbashi-Garabogaz-Kazakhstan border highway with a length of 242 kilometers were revealed at the Turkmen government meeting, Turkmenistan State News Agency reported. President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov ordered to study the issue of construction of this route, which will become the continuation of the Ashgabat-Turkmenbashi high-speed multimodal highway. The construction of the border highway will make it possible to increase the traffic flow and the volumes of trade turnover between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. California voters with limited English language skills were too often left on their own when it came to getting help casting ballots last November, concludes a sweeping new survey based on eyewitness accounts logged by hundreds of election volunteers. The data raise significant questions about the effectiveness of a long-standing state election law designed to help those voters, and whether they will struggle more as counties are allowed to transition away from traditional neighborhood polling places. Were talking about huge chunks of the electorate that are in danger of being disenfranchised, said Jonathan Stein, a staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-California. Advertisement The report comes as state lawmakers consider a bill to strengthen the rights of voters in communities whose primary language isnt English. That proposal, Assembly Bill 918, faces a key legislative deadline in Sacramento later this month. Language assistance during an election is covered by both federal and state law. In 1975, the federal Voting Rights Act was expanded beyond its historical focus on African American communities to require that all election material that is available in English also be provided in the language of the applicable minority group. Census data on voting-age adults are used to determine which counties must comply. Californias own state law for non-English election materials, drafted in the early 1980s, applies to smaller communities and thus would seem to offer an additional layer of help. But its also less far-reaching than the federal rule, requiring only that a polling place provide a single sample ballot in the communitys predominant language. State election law says that officials are required to display such a facsimile ballot in a conspicuous location. But the survey by the Asian American advocacy group found that on average, 1 in 4 polling places covered by the state law failed to provide the display copy of a non-English ballot. And it was missing from as many as 40% of the poll locations visited in larger counties. Theres clearly just a disconnect someplace, said Deanna Kitamura, voting rights director for the Los Angeles office of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. In a few locations, election materials in the other languages were easily findable. But in others, the report said, poll workers had no idea what a facsimile ballot was, or left the non-English sample in a box or under a pile of other election material. The survey comes from data collected on election day by 576 volunteers who fanned out across 25 California counties, home to communities of voters whose primary languages included Spanish, Chinese and Hindi. In addition to missing ballot samples, volunteers also found spotty use of bilingual poll workers in communities of color where the voting population is so small as to be covered only by the state election mandates, not the federal Voting Rights Act. There, election officials only have to make what the law calls reasonable efforts at finding bilingual poll workers. The counties dont take that reasonable effort requirement seriously, Stein said. Political Road Map: Californias election future will be built on the old-fashioned absentee ballot Dean Logan, Los Angeles Countys registrar of voters and president of the state association of county election officers, said it can be difficult to find qualified poll workers in those smaller communities. Youre dealing with a smaller population of people in the community that have those language skills, Logan said. I think that registrars do take it seriously. The pending legislation in the state Assembly would require new training for poll workers on offering a sample ballot in languages other than English. It would also mandate a new report, to be issued by the state after every general election, on how many bilingual poll workers were hired to assist voters. Almost every indicator suggests the state of California is not doing enough, said Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), the bills author. And the state will need to do more, too, as counties begin to transition to a new voting system one in which neighborhood polling places are replaced by absentee ballots and a limited number of community vote centers that offer a variety of election services. Signed into law last year, the change could be implemented by as many as 14 counties beginning in 2018, with the remainder being eligible to switch over in 2020. Bonta said his bill would require limited-English-speaking voters be given a sample ballot in their primary language if they request it, and be mailed information on the process in voter guides and other materials. We need to make sure that language is taken into consideration, he said. Stein said that few states have as many registered or eligible Latino or Asian American voters as California does, adding that his groups survey should help provide a catalyst for change. We know that huge percentages of voters in those groups need help, Stein said. We should be leading the country on this. john.myers@latimes.com Follow @johnmyers on Twitter, sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter and listen to the weekly California Politics Podcast ALSO: Some say its time California had statewide rules for using provisional ballots Fewer Californians will vote at polling places under a law signed by Gov. Brown Updates on California politics and government news Trump promotes sons Justice with Judge Jeanine interview President Trump promoted via Twitter an interview with his son Eric Trump just before it aired Saturday night on Fox News Justice with Judge Jeanine. Eric Trump on @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews now! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 Eric Trump called into the show to defend his father from criticism prompted by the first government shutdown in more than four years, as well as a series of Womens March events that saw protesters in dozens of cities take to the streets to oppose the presidents policies. .@EricTrump joined me over the phone from Mar-a-Lago ! pic.twitter.com/Hro3TzUW52 Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) January 21, 2018 Speaking to host Jeannine Piro who is reportedly an old friend of the presidents Eric Trump offered effusive praise for his father, ticking off glowing statistics to illustrate the strength of the U.S. economy and gains against Islamic State fighters overseas. My fathers working like no ones ever worked before to bring back this country and to fulfill his promise to make America great again, said the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He also repeated a sentiment recently expressed on Twitter by his father: That Democratic lawmakers forced a government shutdown on the anniversary of the presidents inauguration in a bid to distract from his achievements. You look at this whole government shutdown, and the only reason they want to shut down government is to distract and to stop his momentum, Eric Trump said. I mean, my father has had incredible momentum. Hes gotten more done in one year than arguably any president in history. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweets: a perfect day for all Women to March President Trump hailed the nationwide Womens March gatherings Saturday. On Twitter, the president called it a perfect day for all Women to March, seeming to imply that those taking part were celebrating his administrations accomplishments: Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Participants in the marches across the United States were actually seeking to deliver a powerful rebuke to Trumps policies and mount a crucial mobilization for this years midterm elections. But Trump continued to tout his administrations unprecedented success in tweets sent later in the day: Unprecedented success for our Country, in so many ways, since the Election. Record Stock Market, Strong on Military, Crime, Borders, & ISIS, Judicial Strength & Numbers, Lowest Unemployment for Women & ALL, Massive Tax Cuts, end of Individual Mandate - and so much more. Big 2018! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The Trump Administration has terminated more UNNECESSARY Regulation, in just twelve months, than any other Administration has terminated during their full term in office, no matter what the length. The good news is, THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 In addition to the roll call of major American cities where womens marches took place including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta protesters also raised their voices in suburbs and small towns, reflecting the aim of coalescing a broad-based movement on the anniversary of Trumps inauguration to oppose the presidents stance on immigration, healthcare, racial divides and an array of other issues. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump calls shutdown a present from Democrats By Associated Press President Trump is blaming Democrats for the government shutdown tweeting that they wanted to give him a nice present to mark the one-year anniversary of his inauguration: This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #DemocratShutdown Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 That comes after Senate Democrats late Friday killed a GOP-written House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks. Democrats were seeking a stopgap bill of just a few days in hopes that would build pressure on Republicans, and they were opposing a three-week alternative offered by GOP leaders. Democrats have insisted they would back legislation reopening the government once theres a bipartisan agreement to preserve protections against deporting about 700,000 immigrants known as Dreamers who arrived in the United States illegally as children. Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration: Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Cant let that happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans to Congress in November in order to power through this mess: Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border. They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation: For those asking, the Republicans only have 51 votes in the Senate, and they need 60. That is why we need to win more Republicans in 2018 Election! We can then be even tougher on Crime (and Border), and even better to our Military & Veterans! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 #AMERICA FIRST! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The stopgap spending measure won 50 votes in the Senate, including five from Democrats. Although the House and Senate were in session Saturday, it was unclear whether lawmakers would take any votes of consequence. Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon for a fundraiser at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he intended to mark the inauguration anniversary. But he remained in Washington and ended up scrapping his plans to attend the Saturday fundraiser. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweet casts doubt on likelihood of averting shutdown President Trump appeared to cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown Friday night in a tweet. Trump also sought to blame Democrats for what would be the first shutdown since 2013. His message came just hours before the midnight deadline by which lawmakers must pass a measure to fund government agencies, or some operations will cease. Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border. Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Despite last-minute negotiations Friday between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Congress remained deadlocked over a spending bill and the federal government was headed toward a shutdown at midnight. Senate Democrats joined by some GOP deficit hawks and immigration allies were set to filibuster a stopgap funding bill approved by the House on Thursday. A Senate vote was planned for 10 p.m. Eastern, and even White House officials predicted it would fail. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump signs surveillance law after confusing tweets By Associated Press President Trump on Friday signed a bill into law to renew a foreign intelligence surveillance program, announcing his action in the latest in a series of confusing tweets about the spy program: Just signed 702 Bill to reauthorize foreign intelligence collection. This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2018 Trumps tweet on Jan. 11 created chaos in the House just before it voted to reauthorize what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He linked the intelligence program to a dossier that alleges his presidential campaign had ties to Russia. That caused people to wonder if he didnt support the program that allows U.S. spy agencies to collect intelligence on foreign targets abroad. Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Obama administration officials improperly shared the identities of Trump presidential transition team members mentioned in intelligence reports. Democrats say there is no evidence that happened. Shortly before the House vote, and after conferring with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump did an apparent about-face. This vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land, he tweeted. We need it! Get smart! In his tweet announcing that he had just signed the bill, Trump wrote: This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! There are no obvious links between the dossier Trump spoke of, which includes salacious but unsubstantiated allegations against him, and the reauthorization of the spying program, or between the program and Trumps oft-repeated claims that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print In tweet, Trump suggests that Pennsylvania trip is a political one The White House press office was once again forced to walk back a tweet from President Trump on Thursday morning after he described a trip to Pennsylvania later in the day as a political one a statement that would force the Republican Party, not taxpayers, to pay for the journey. The White House had said Trump was going to an industrial equipment company outside of Pittsburgh to highlight the good economy and new tax cuts, making it an official, policy-oriented event. It was widely assumed that the trip had a political cast the area is holding a special election to fill a congressional seat vacated by a Republican who resigned. Trump, by his tweet, seemed to confirm that politics was the whole purpose: Will be going to Pennsylvania today in order to give my total support to RICK SACCONE, running for Congress in a Special Election (March 13). Rick is a great guy. We need more Republicans to continue our already successful agenda! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 Trump later shared via Twitter a pair of video clips of his speech at H&K Equipment, in which he touted the tax cuts he signed into law just before Christmas and tried to turn the conversation back to his accomplishments after weeks dominated by distractions, including questions about his mental health and comments about immigration that some considered racist: Departing Pittsburgh now, where it was my great honor to stand with our incredible workers, and to show the world that AMERICA is back - and we are coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before! pic.twitter.com/kWPgylqFzj Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 AMERICA will once again be a NATION that thinks big, dreams bigger, and always reaches for the stars. YOU are the ones who will shape Americas destiny. YOU are the ones who will restore our prosperity. And YOU are the ones who are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! #MAGA pic.twitter.com/f2abNK47II Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 The Republican National Committee, rather than the White House, is supposed to pay for political travel so that taxpayers are not financing party activities; for trips that combine policy and politics, parties have split the cost under past presidents. Neither the RNC nor the White House responded to emails sent Thursday asking who would pay. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement later Thursday suggesting that taxpayers would foot the bill. She insisted that Trump would be conducting government business while in Pennsylvania. Read More This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets praise of Bob Dole after awarding him Congressional Gold Medal By Associated Press Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole knew the art of the deal before President Trump published the 1987 book of the same name. The two shared a stage under the Capitol dome Wednesday as Dole, 94, accepted Congress highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his World War II service and decades of work in the House and Senate. Trump later praised Dole in a tweet, attaching to his message a video composed of clips from the ceremony: Today, we witnessed an incredible moment in history the presentation of Congress highest civilian honor to our friend, and true AMERICAN HERO, Bob Dole. #CongressionalGoldMedal pic.twitter.com/qNQqDLRmCk Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2018 At the ceremony, the president saluted Dole as a patriot and gave tribute to Doles struggle as a veteran who worked his way back from a grievous shoulder wound he suffered in Italy. He knows about grit, said Trump. But it was Doles penchant for working across the aisle that earned him his latest award, according to the legislation. Bob Dole was known for his ability to work across the aisle and embrace practical bipartisanship, reads the legislation Trump signed in September. Some of the awards 300 recipients include George Washington and Mother Teresa, according to the Congressional Research Service. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump touts report that seeks to link terrorism cases with immigration By Joseph Tanfani The Trump administration on Tuesday released a report attempting to link terrorism with migration, arguing that it was evidence of the need to dramatically reshape the nations immigration system. New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born. We have submitted to Congress a list of resources and reforms.... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 ....we need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based. https://t.co/7PtoSFK1n2 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The report, ordered by President Trump in an executive order last year, said that 75% of the 549 people convicted of terrorism charges since 9/11 were born outside the U.S. Administration officials called that a sign that the U.S. needs to scrap its policy of family preferences for visas, which they call chain migration, and a diversity visa lottery program. But the report did not specify how many if any of the convicted terrorists entered the country through those means. It also did not detail how many of the convictions were related to attacks or plans in the U.S. versus overseas and how many involved people who went to fight overseas for the Islamic State or another terrorist group. Those details were not available, officials said. The report, due last year, is being released in a highly charged moment in the immigration debate, as Trump and some Republicans in Congress seek tough new border and immigration measures in return for a deal protecting the 690,000 people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump also fired off a pair of tweets on the topic earlier Tuesday: We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all and Border Security. The biggest loser will be our rapidly rebuilding Military, at a time we need it more than ever. We need a merit based system of immigration, and we need it now! No more dangerous Lottery. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The focus of our immigration system should be assimilation, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition that his name not be used. He said the nation should give priority to potential immigrants who speak English, who have an education and those who are committed to supporting our values not family members of people already here. The official said the timing of the report was coincidental. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweets welcome to president of Kazakhstan By Associated Press President Trump said Tuesday that he and the president of Kazakhstan are united in a shared determination to prevent North Korea from threatening the world with nuclear devastation. Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed North Korea along with other issues during meetings at the White House. Today, it was my honor to welcome President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to the @WhiteHouse! pic.twitter.com/TerYFZViax Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 Trump said Kazakhstan, once part of the Soviet Union, is a valued partner in our efforts to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. Together we are determined to prevent the North Korean regime from threatening the world with nuclear devastation, he said, as both presidents addressed journalists between meetings. Nazarbayev noted that his country once had one of the worlds largest nuclear arsenals but voluntarily gave it up after the Soviet Union collapsed. He said his country is in talks with Iran, which was the focus of a global deal that lifted some economic sanctions in exchange for Irans curbing its nuclear program. Trump has sharply criticized the Iran nuclear deal and threatened last week to pull out soon unless other countries fix what he says are terrible flaws. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump falsely claims his approval rating among black Americans has doubled By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump lashed out at the news media Tuesday morning in a tweet denouncing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion among members of his campaign team. Do you notice the Fake News Mainstream Media never likes covering the great and record setting economic news, but rather talks about anything negative or that can be turned into the negative. The Russian Collusion Hoax is dead, except as it pertains to the Dems. Public gets it! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the presidents tweet, but it appeared as though he was watching Fox & Friends. A short time later, Trump tweeted a headline from a report that aired during that mornings episode: 90% of Trump 2017 news coverage was negative -and much of it contrived!@foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The segment focused on the latest survey results from conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which purportedly analyzed the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC from Jan. 20 to Dec. 31 and found that 90% of the statements made about Trump were negative. Study: 90% of Trump media coverage in 2017 was negative pic.twitter.com/vbrwup4Drg FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 16, 2018 But believe it or not, through all this negative coverage, they did a survey of 600,000 people about how black America views this president, co-host Brian Kilmeade said. His numbers have actually doubled in approval. Trump highlighted the statement in another tweet: Unemployment for Black Americans is the lowest ever recorded. Trump approval ratings with Black Americans has doubled. Thank you, and it will get even (much) better! @FoxNews Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 But its not true. The claim appears to have originated from a misreading of data from the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, according to factcheck.org. The firm polled 600,000 Americans in 2017 and found that Trumps approval rating among blacks actually dropped from 23% early in his presidency to about 17%, as of the week ending Jan. 3. Some conservative outlets, including Breitbart, produced an average from those and other SurveyMonkey figures and compared them to the scores Trump received from black voters in the 2016 exit polls. That methodology is not sound. And since the statistics measure different things, the comparison is misleading. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump goes after senator who surfaced his immigration remark By Associated Press President Trump turned his Twitter torment Monday on the Democrat in the room where immigration talks with lawmakers took a famously coarse turn, saying Sen. Richard J. Durbin misrepresented what he had said about African nations and Haiti and, in the process, undermined the trust needed to make a deal. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting, Trump tweeted, using a nickname to needle the Illinois senator. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 Trump was referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young people who came to the United States illegally as children. Members of Congress from both parties are trying to strike a deal that Trump would support to extend that protection. Trump also cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching an agreement in tweets sent earlier Monday: Statement by me last night in Florida: Honestly, I dont think the Democrats want to make a deal. They talk about DACA, but they dont want to help..We are ready, willing and able to make a deal but they dont want to. They dont want security at the border, they dont want..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 ...to stop drugs, they want to take money away from our military which we cannot do. My standard is very simple, AMERICA FIRST & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 On a day of remembrance for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump spent time at his golf course with no public events, bypassing the acts of service that his predecessors staged in honor of the civil rights leader. Instead, Trump dedicated his weekly address to Kings memory, saying Kings dream and Americas are the same: A world where people are judged by who they are, not how they look or where they come from. That message was a distinct counterpoint to words attributed to Trump by Durbin and others at a meeting last week, when the question of where immigrants come from seemed at the forefront of Trumps concerns. Some participants and others familiar with the conversation said Trump challenged immigration from shithole countries of Africa and disparaged Haiti as well. Without explicitly denying using that word, Trump lashed out at the Democratic senator, who said Trump uttered it on several occasions. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks pundit for laudatory Fox & Friends spot By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump thanked Fox News personality Stuart Varney after Varney praised Trump during an appearance on Fox & Friends. In a pair of tweets early Sunday, Trump quoted from Varneys commentary, in which he argued that Trump deserves more credit for the booming economy. The pundit, who also hosts a show on Fox Business Network, cited moves by some corporations to raise workers minimum wage or pay out one-time bonuses in response to the GOP tax cuts. President Trump is not getting the credit he deserves for the economy. Tax Cut bonuses to more than 2,000,000 workers. Most explosive Stock Market rally that weve seen in modern times. 18,000 to 26,000 from Election, and grounded in profitability and growth. All Trump, not 0... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 ...big unnecessary regulation cuts made it all possible (among many other things). President Trump reversed the policies of President Obama, and reversed our economic decline. Thank you Stuart Varney. @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 Varney was reacting to a quote from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who on Thursday called the bonuses handed down to workers pathetic in comparison to the gains corporations are expected to see from the tax cuts. In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic, Pelosi told reporters. Its pathetic. Varney shot back Sunday that the bonuses, along with explosive stock market growth, are enriching all Americans. This is a huge shot in the arm, its the result of this tax cut deal and I think President Trump should get the credit for it, he said. .@Varneyco Sets the economic record straight after Nancy Pelosi calls U.S. mass bonuses crumbs pic.twitter.com/BvjIHGm3HE FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 14, 2018 The sweeping tax plan passed last month lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and cuts personal income taxes. Analysts say the benefits will largely flow to corporations and the wealthy, as theyre more likely to be in positions to share in corporate profits. For instance, Wells Fargo & Co., which responded to news of the tax overhaul by announcing it will raise workers pay to at least $15 an hour, also reported that it expects to pay an effective tax rate of 19% this year, down from about 31% in previous years. That should amount to tax savings of more than $3 billion annually. On average, middle-class Americans are expected to see a very small tax cut in the near term and a tax increase after 2025, when all of the tax cuts for individuals expire. The tax cuts for corporations, however, are permanent. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer James Rufus Koren. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump touts MLK proclamation in tweet, but ceremony is overshadowed by reports of racist remarks By Associated Press President Trump signed a proclamation Friday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, noting the contributions of a great American hero. Today, it was my great honor to proclaim January 15, 2018, as Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service activities in honor of Dr. King's life and legacy. pic.twitter.com/samlJsz1Nt Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 Overshadowing the event was mounting backlash from Trumps comments during a private meeting with lawmakers the day before. A short time after the meeting, which was called to discuss a possible immigration deal, reports emerged that Trump had asked participants why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, the Senates second-ranking Democrat, appeared to confirm those reports on Friday. Trump did not respond Friday to several questions about the incident, including whether he actually used vulgar language to describe African nations, or if he is racist. The president said at the White House that love was central to the slain civil rights leader. Trump said the nation celebrates King for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or place of our birth, we are all created equal by God. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump criticizes Democrats in tweet calling for stricter immigration rules President Trump hit out at Democrats on Thursday night in a tweet calling for stricter immigration rules. Trump wrote that members of the party seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the border with Mexico: The Democrats seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the Southern Border, risking thousands of lives in the process. It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the tweet. Earlier Thursday, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to resolve the standoff over so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children but have temporary permits to work, attend school or serve in the military. The president drew widespread condemnation after reports emerged that he had asked participants in an Oval Office meeting about the proposal why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump touts bill aimed at improving border screening for fentanyl By Associated Press President Trump signed legislation Wednesday aimed at giving Customs and Border Protection agents additional screening devices and other tools to stop the flow of illicit drugs. Speaking at a surprise bill-signing ceremony while flanked by members of Congress from both parties in the Oval Office, Trump described the bill as a significant step forward in the fight against powerful opioids such as fentanyl, which he called our new big scourge. He echoed that language Thursday in a tweet: Yesterday, I signed the #INTERDICTAct (H.R. 2142) with bipartisan members of Congress to help end the flow of drugs into our country. Together, we are committed to doing everything we can to combat the deadly scourge of drug addiction and overdose in the United States! pic.twitter.com/ELZvFol5Lo Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 The legislation will pay for new portable and fixed chemical screening devices to detect and intercept fentanyl at ports of entry and in the mail, along with other laboratory equipment and personnel, including scientists. Trump has made fighting the opioid epidemic a centerpiece of his administration, though critics say he hasnt dedicated nearly enough money or resources to make a difference. Trump suggested during his remarks on Wednesday that hed like to take a more aggressive approach to the drug crisis but the countrys not ready for what he has in mind. So were going to sign this. And its a step. And it feels like a very giant step, but unfortunately, its not going to be a giant step, because no matter what you do, this is something that keeps pouring in, he said. And were going to find the answer. There is an answer. I think I actually know the answer, but Im not sure the countrys ready for it yet, he added. Does anybody know what I mean? I think so. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump applauds news that Toyota-Mazda plant is slated for Alabama By Associated Press Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda on Wednesday announced plans to build a mammoth, $1.6-billion joint-venture plant in Alabama that will eventually employ about 4,000 people. President Trump lauded the news in a tweet: Cutting taxes and simplifying regulations makes America the place to invest! Great news as Toyota and Mazda announce they are bringing 4,000 JOBS and investing $1.6 BILLION in Alabama, helping to further grow our economy! pic.twitter.com/Kcg8IVH6iA Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Good news: Toyota and Mazda announce giant new Huntsville, Alabama, plant which will produce over 300,000 cars and SUVs a year and employ 4000 people. Companies are coming back to the U.S. in a very big way. Congratulations Alabama! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 Several states had competed for the project, which will be able to turn out 300,000 vehicles per year and produce the Toyota Corolla compact car for North America and a new small SUV from Mazda. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and company executives held a news conference to announce that the facility is coming to the Huntsville area not far from the Tennessee line. Production is expected to begin by 2021. The decision to pick Alabama is another example of foreign-based automakers building U.S. factories in the South. To entice manufacturers, Southern states have used a combination of lucrative incentive packages, low-cost labor and a pro-business labor environment, because the United Auto Workers union is stronger in Northern states. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump highlights call for border wall in tweets on visit with Norways prime minister By Associated Press President Trump praised Norways prime minister in a tweet on Wednesday after Erna Solberg became the first foreign leader to visit with the president in 2018. Today, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway to the @WhiteHouse - a great friend and ally of the United States! Joint press conference: https://t.co/qWR1BhfQZI pic.twitter.com/PJvwznjRCO Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Trump also shared via Twitter a video clip of a joint news conference he held with Solberg on Wednesday afternoon. In the clip, Trump responds to a question from a reporter by saying there can be no bipartisan immigration deal absent funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been seeking a solution for hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers, young people who were brought to the United States as children and are living here illegally. The United States needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. The safety and security of our country is #1! pic.twitter.com/4CFzQXb5aS Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in, Trump said Wednesday. Any solution has to include the wall because without the wall, it all doesnt work. On Tuesday, Trump drew widespread attention when he said during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers that he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. That contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill in subsequent tweets and public comments. Read More This post contains reporting from Los Angeles Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump praises Cabinet in tweet touting meeting By Associated Press President Trump promoted a meeting of his Cabinet on Wednesday, sharing via Twitter a link to a video of the session posted on the White House YouTube account. In his tweet, Trump thanked his Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country and wrote that the last year has been one of monumental achievement. I want to thank my @Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country. 2017 was a year of monumental achievement and we look forward to the year ahead. Together, we are delivering results and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! https://t.co/ptXa1hAPwW pic.twitter.com/yv6RALkQf3 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The former reality television star continued to dispense accolades at the meeting Wednesday, greeting reporters in the Cabinet Room by saying: Welcome back to the studio. Then he proceeded to relive a Cabinet Room session from the prior day, when he had allowed reporters and TV cameras to stick around for much of his meeting with a bipartisan group of legislators on the thorny issue of immigration. It was a tremendous meeting. Actually, it was reported as incredibly good. And my performance you know, some of them called it a performance I consider it work, Trump said. Trump went on to say he had received letters from news anchors calling it one of the greatest meetings theyve ever witnessed. He added that the media will ultimately support Trump in the end, because theyre going to say, if Trump doesnt win in three years, theyre all out of business. Asked for examples of letters received from news anchors, the White House said it had received private communications. It also offered a series of positive on-air comments and tweets from journalists about the unusual access to the meeting. During his remarks, Trump swung from praising his own meeting coverage to telling journalists that they were dependent on his presidency for ratings to threatening a strong look at libel laws. Still, Trump thanked the journalists in front of him, joking: Youve gotten very familiar with this room. I appreciate your nice comments yesterday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump blasts DACA ruling in tweet calling courts broken and unfair By Lisa Mascaro President Trump denounced the federal courts Wednesday as broken and unfair after a district judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction keeping protections in place for so-called Dreamers. Trump tweeted: It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administrations decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which has protected from deportation some 700,000 people who came to the country illegally as children. Alsup granted a request by the state of California, the University of California and other plaintiffs to stop Trump from ending DACA on March 5. The administrations decision to end DACA, which was announced in September, was based on a flawed legal analysis, Alsup wrote in his decision. Dreamers would be irreparably harmed if their DACA protections, which allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., were stripped away before the courts had a chance to fully consider their claims, he ruled. The action is the mirror image of a ruling in 2015 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled in favor of that state when it sought to block President Obama from expanding DACA to include the parents of Dreamers. Trump administration officials praised that judicial ruling. By contrast, they sharply criticized Alsups decision. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks lawmakers for productive immigration meeting, says deal must include border wall President Trump thanked a bipartisan group of lawmakers for participating in a meeting on immigration legislation on Tuesday. Much of the discussion involved so-called Dreamers, an estimated 700,000 young people who were brought to the country illegally as children and are now facing deportation. In a tweet, Trump wrote that there was strong agreement to negotiate a bill to protect Dreamers, as well as put into place some of the reforms favored by Republicans. Thanks to all of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers for todays very productive meeting on immigration reform. There was strong agreement to negotiate a bill that deals with border security, chain migration, lottery and DACA. https://t.co/SdqAQ3aL3z pic.twitter.com/8DYHZHspAy Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 The most notable exchange of the meeting came when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the San Francisco Democrat, asked Trump whether he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. Yeah, I would like to do it, Trump responded. The statement drew widespread attention because it contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump later backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill, tweeting that a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of any deal: As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Pressure has been mounting for Congress to broker an immigration deal by Jan. 19 as part of a must-pass budget package to fund the government. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks officers and veterans in tweets President Trump doled out a slew of accolades Tuesday via Twitter. He thanked the nations law enforcement officers, including in his message a hashtag denoting a day of appreciation organized by a national support group for law enforcement families. On behalf of the American people, THANK YOU to our incredible law enforcement officers. As President of the United States - I will fight for you, and I will never, ever let you down. Now, more than ever, we must support the men and women in blue! #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay pic.twitter.com/Qb4uxB4JRm Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trump later expressed gratitude for federal immigration agents, in particular: .@ICEgov HSI agents and ERO officers, on behalf of an entire Nation, THANK YOU for what you are doing 24/7/365 to keep fellow Americans SAFE. Everyone is so grateful!#LawEnforcementAppreciationDay President @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/HXCpTlruVo Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The president thanked veterans as he cited his administrations efforts to curb the number of veteran suicides by improving mental health treatment for the high-risk group: Today, it was my great honor to sign a new Executive Order to ensure Veterans have the resources they need as they transition back to civilian life. We must ensure that our HEROES are given the care and support they so richly deserve! https://t.co/0MdP9DDIAS pic.twitter.com/LP2a8KCBAp Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trumps tweet included photos of the president signing an executive order Tuesday directing the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to develop a plan to provide seamless access to mental health and suicide prevention resources for 12 months for members leaving the armed forces. Also on Tuesday, Trump touted a law he signed the day before designating the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national historic park: It was my great honor to sign H.R. 267, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act, which redesignates the Martin Luther King, Junior, National Historic Site in the State of Georgia as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. https://t.co/Qe0b6HBFTY pic.twitter.com/QTgaqTawPT Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 And he thanked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) for sharing a video compilation comprised of clips of politicians and commentators praising the GOPs tax cut bill: Thank you @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy! Couldnt agree w/you more. TOGETHER, we are #MAGA https://t.co/QaxtqpyXTR Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump hails tax bill in tweets recapping speech to farmers By Associated Press Connecting with rural Americans, President Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers. Farm country is Gods country, Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federations convention. His Southern swing also included a stop in Atlanta for the national college football championship game. Cant wait to be back in the amazing state of Tennessee to address the 99th American @FarmBureau Federations Annual Convention in Nashville! #AFBF18 On my way now - join me LIVE at 4:00pmE: https://t.co/QaljAqekdD. pic.twitter.com/Wm7Io0hYT8 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Joined by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and a group of Tennessee lawmakers, Trump said most of the benefits of the tax legislation are going to working families, small businesses, and who the family farmer. The package Trump signed into law last month provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. In every decision we make, we are honoring Americas PROUD FARMING LEGACY. Years of crushing taxes, crippling regs, & corrupt politics left our communities hurting, our economy stagnant, & millions of hardworking Americans COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. But they are not forgotten ANYMORE! pic.twitter.com/MdYS7xnukQ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The president vastly inflated the value of the package in his speech, citing a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, with most of those benefits going to working families, small businesses and who? The family farmer. The estimated value of the tax cuts is actually $1.5 trillion for families and businesses because of cuts in deductions and the use of other steps to generate offsetting tax revenue. We have been working every day to DELIVER for Americas Farmers just as they work every day to deliver FOR US. #AFBF18 pic.twitter.com/QDH7fvFkZ7 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 From Nashville, Trump traveled to Atlanta to watch Alabamas Crimson Tide and Georgias Bulldogs face off Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship. We are fighting for our farmers, for our country, and for our GREAT AMERICAN FLAG. We want our flag respected - and we want our NATIONAL ANTHEM respected also! pic.twitter.com/16eOLXg6Fi Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Before departing for the game, Trump referenced his ongoing defense of the American flag and the national anthem, saying there was enough space for people to express their views. We love our flag and we love our anthem, and we want to keep it that way, he said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweet hails drop in unemployment rate for African Americans By Associated Press President Trump touted a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans on Monday in a tweet. African American unemployment is the lowest ever recorded in our country. The Hispanic unemployment rate dropped a full point in the last year and is close to the lowest in recorded history. Dems did nothing for you but get your vote! #NeverForget @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The rate fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Trump also hailed the development via Twitter on Saturday. His latest tweet on the topic came about an hour after it was discussed during an episode of Fox & Friends, according to Mediaite. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump talks up the economy and dresses down the media in Sunday tweets With President Trump cheering from the sidelines, the White House on Sunday pressed its defense of the presidents fitness to govern, as fired former aide Stephen K. Bannon reversed course and apologized for his role in a new books explosive portrait of Trump. The presidents critics, meanwhile, said Trumps stream of taunts and insults in response to the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, released last week served only to underscore the authors unsettling portrayal of Trumps year-old presidency, depicting a leader whose own aides consider him childish, ignorant and dangerously erratic. Trump provided more ammunition Sunday morning, as he continued to attack the book via Twitter while preparing to depart Camp David for the White House: Leaving Camp David for the White House. Great meetings with the Cabinet and Military on many very important subjects including Border Security & the desperately needed Wall, the ever increasing Drug and Opioid Problem, Infrastructure, Military, Budget, Trade and DACA. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Ive had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 The most vehement defense of Trump on Sunday came from senior advisor Stephen Miller, a onetime Bannon acolyte who distanced himself from his former mentor. In a combative appearance Sunday on CNNs State of the Union, Miller called the book grotesque and writer Michael Wolff the garbage author of a garbage book. Trump is known to closely monitor aides televised performances in putting forth his case, and he gleefully weighed in within moments of Millers televised clash with host Jake Tapper. CNN has long been a particular target of Trumps ire. Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trumps reaction, however, seemed to bolster Tappers on-air depiction of Miller as using his appearance on the show to play to the president rather than addressing questions put to him. I get it theres one viewer that you care about, the host said exasperatedly after Miller turned the discussion repeatedly to negative news coverage of the president while deflecting specific queries. Later on Twitter, Trump took up two themes that have been prevalent on his social media feeds recently. The president again went after the news media, tweeting that the recipients of his self-proclaimed most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year, which he promised earlier in the week to announce on Monday, would actually be revealed the following Wednesday: The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trump later lauded a New York Post opinion piece that compared him favorably with his predecessor, President Obama, as well as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In quoting the op-ed, Trump initally misspelled consequential as consensual, but he deleted those tweets and re-sent the messages. His is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency. So much so that, despite my own frustration over his missteps, there has never been a day when I wished Hillary Clinton were president. Not one. Indeed, as Trumps accomplishments accumulate, the mere thought of... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 ...Clinton in the WH, doubling down on Barack Obamas failed policies, washes away any doubts that America made the right choice. This was truly a change election and the changes Trump is bringing are far-reaching & necessary. Thank you Michael Goodwin! https://t.co/4fHNcx2Ydg Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Trump also continued talking up the economy, which has been enjoying a period of strong gains. The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 In addition to Miller, other senior administration officials made the rounds of Sunday news talk shows to decry the claims made in Wolffs book. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Wolffs characterization of Trump as averse to digesting classified briefing material was ludicrous, and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, insisted that that those around Trump love their country and respect their president. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Responding to book that mocks his intelligence, Trump tweets hes like, really smart By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump declared himself a very stable genius on Twitter on Saturday and later in a televised news conference called the author of a book that questioned his mental fitness a fraud. His comments came on a bone-cold day at Camp David during a weekend retreat with top administration officials and Republican congressional leaders strategizing on the years legislative agenda, including matters such as infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and national security. Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Still, Trumps explosive rebuttal to author Michael Wolffs claims not only opened the day, but it also ensured the presidents capability to fill the highest office in the land was a topic that would not go away. In his early-morning tweets, Trump said two of his greatest assets have been mental stability, and being, like, really smart. He noted that his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, played these cards [about competence] very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement In morning tweets, Trump touts job numbers and takes digs at news media By Associated Press President Trump used Twitter on Saturday morning to tout a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans. He also used the tweets as an opportunity to take digs at media outlets whose past coverage he has found to be critical. The African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years. I am so happy about this News! And, in the Washington Post (of all places), headline states, Trumps first year jobs numbers were very, very good. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The unemployment rate for African Americans fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Still, the rate for black workers remains well above those for whites and some other groups, something experts attribute in large part to decades of discrimination and disadvantages. Robust job creation has lowered unemployment for all Americans. U.S. employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs in 2017 the seventh straight year that hiring has topped 2 million. In his tweet, Trump praised a report that noted the numbers, touting the fact that it appeared in the Washington Post (of all places). Minutes later, Trump renewed his attack on an ABC News reporter who was suspended last month after filing an erroneous report on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor. Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity. He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The reporter, Brian Ross, was reportedly reassigned within ABC News upon returning from his unpaid suspension. But on Saturday, Trump wrote that he should have been fired. Trumps tweets came hours before he was set to host congressional Republicans and administration officials at Camp David. The meeting scheduled to begin at midmorning Saturday was expected to touch on the budget, infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and the shape of the midterm election this fall. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump commends Sen. Rand Paul after he proposes eliminating all U.S. aid to Pakistan President Trump commended Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican announced plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate all U.S. aid to Pakistan. Trump tweeted Friday night: Good idea Rand! https://t.co/55sqUDiC0s Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending security assistance to Islamabad until the country moves aggressively against local militants who have attacked U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration at the apparent inability of Pakistani authorities to rein in militants who cross out of the countrys rugged tribal areas to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump continues to lash out at Sloppy Steve Bannon in tweets on tell-all book By Associated Press President Trump is praising a major Republican donor family for distancing themselves from his former advisor Steve Bannon. Trump tweeted Friday: The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trump has continued to lash out at Bannon over an explosive new book that quoted his former aide as questioning Trumps competence and describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as treasonous and unpatriotic. On Thursday, billionaire GOP donor Rebekah Mercer issued a statement distancing her family from Bannon. Mercer is a co-owner of Breitbart, the populist website Bannon helps run. I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected, Mercer said. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements. The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, quickly shot atop Amazons best-seller list, and the publisher moved up its release date by four days, to Friday. Trump took up the topic again on Twitter on Friday night, denouncing both Bannon and the books author, Michael Wolff, in starkly personal terms: Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Trumps message linked to a meme depicting a parody book cover titled, Liar and Phony, that featured a photo of Wolff and disparaging quotes about the author. In a tweet sent earlier Friday morning, Trump suggested the book was intended to serve as a distraction from the FBIs investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump wrote is proving to be a total hoax. Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 That came amid reports that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Departments Russia investigation. Trumps effort to keep Sessions, a vocal and loyal supporter of his election bid, in charge of an investigation into his campaign offers special counsel Robert Mueller yet another avenue to explore as his prosecutors work to untangle potential evidence of obstruction. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump praises the economy ahead of meetings at Camp David By Associated Press President Trump is praising the strength of the U.S. economy ahead of meetings at Camp David with congressional Republicans. Trump tweeted early Friday: Dow goes from 18,589 on November 9, 2016, to 25,075 today, for a new all-time Record. Jumped 1000 points in last 5 weeks, Record fastest 1000 point move in history. This is all about the Make America Great Again agenda! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Six trillion dollars in value created! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The president also told reporters on the South Lawn that the tax cuts are really kicking in after Congress passed a package of tax cuts at the end of 2017. And the president praised the December jobs report, which found U.S. employers added 148,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1%, the lowest level since 2000. The modest but steady pace of hiring is a reassuring sign for investors who have been buoyed by the just-passed Republican tax plan and have been sending stock market indexes roaring to uncharted heights. The president is meeting with Republican congressional leaders and members of his Cabinet on Friday and Saturday to discuss the 2018 agenda. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets as Dow crashes through 25,000 By Associated Press President Trump dispatched a congratulatory tweet as the Dow Jones industrial average rose above the 25,000-point mark Thursday, just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 After the Dow closed above 25,000, Trump shared a graphic depicting the stock indexs record-setting rise. MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/iONbr1DkVk Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Later in the day, the president was back on Twitter, complaining that news outlets had barely covered the stock market milestone. He suggested that the strength of the economy would be the biggest story on earth, had it unfolded during the presidency of his predecessor. The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming...but the people know! Can you imagine if O was president and had these numbers - would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The Dow broke past 1,000-point barriers in 2017 on its way to a 25% gain for the year, as an eight-year rally since the Great Recession continued to confound skeptics. Strong global economic growth and good prospects for higher company earnings have analysts predicting more gains, although the market may not stay as calm as it has been recently. The Dow has made a rapid trip since it reached 24,000 points Nov. 30, partly on enthusiasm over passage of the Republican-backed tax package, which could boost company profits this year with across-the-board cuts to corporate taxes. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump reacts to Fire and Fury book in tweet lashing out at author and Sloppy Steve President Trump lashed out at the author of a soon-to-be-released book about the chaotic first year of his presidency Thursday night. In a tweet, Trump called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a phony book and claimed that hed never spoken to its author, Michael Wolff. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Trump wrote. He appeared to be referring to former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whose stunning criticisms of Trump and his circle figure prominently in the title. I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that dont exist. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trumps tweet came hours after he had his lawyer demand that Henry Holt & Co. and Wolff stop publication the book. Instead, the publisher expedited the books release to Friday, four days before it was slated to hit bookstore shelves, in response to unprecedented demand. Published excerpts on Wednesday and Thursday whetted that appetite and roiled Washington. Bannons comments, including that it was treasonous and unpatriotic for Trumps son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort to have met in 2016 with Russians said to have dirt on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, prompted Trump on Wednesday to rebuke his former advisor, saying Bannon had lost his mind. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Brian Bennett and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks senators who attended meeting on immigration President Trump tweeted thanks to Republican senators who attended a meeting about possible immigration legislation on Thursday. In his message, Trump also listed his top priorities when it comes to any type of overhaul of the nations immigration system. Thank you to the great Republican Senators who showed up to our mtg on immigration reform. We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration, end chain migration & cancel the visa lottery. The current system is unsafe & unfair to the great people of our country - time for change! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Trumps tweet echoed his remarks at the beginning of Thursdays meeting, when he insisted again that constructing a border wall and overhauling two legal immigration programs must be part of any deal with Democrats to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation. Two-year deportation protections and work permits given under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begin to expire March 6 under an executive order. Trump announced in September that he was ending the Obama-era program, but told Congress to draft a law to continue protections for people brought to the country illegally as children a group that has widespread public support. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Brian Bennett. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump resumes Twitter war against kneeling NFL players President Trump has resumed his Twitter war against NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest social injustice and racial inequality. In a tweet early Thursday, Trump replied to a supporter who shared a meme that appears to depict family members lying on the grave of a fallen soldier with the caption: This is why we stand. Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! Trump wrote. So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! https://t.co/tJLM1tvbvb Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The president has denounced players who kneel during the anthem in previous tweets. Hes also called for the firing of players who do so. His latest message came amid news that the NFL finished the regular season with TV ratings that fell nearly 10% below the previous season. Analysts attribute the drop to controversies facing the league, as well as changing viewing habits and a possible saturation point in the number of games available. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Stephen Battaglio and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump credits himself with facilitating talks between North and South Korea By Associated Press President Trump says his tough stance on nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula is helping push North Korea and South Korea to talk. Trump tweeted early Thursday: With all of the failed experts weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasnt firm, strong and willing to commit our total might against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 That assertion is in conflict with some of the presidents own statements. Last year, he ridiculed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for talking about negotiations with the North. This week, Trump seemed open to the possibility of an inter-Korean dialogue after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a rare overture toward South Korea in a New Years Day address. But Trumps ambassador to the United Nations insisted that talks wont be meaningful unless the North is getting rid of its nuclear weapons. The overture about talks came after Trump and Kim traded more bellicose claims about their nuclear weapons. In his New Years Day address, Kim repeated fiery nuclear threats against the United States. Kim said he has a nuclear button on his office desk and warned that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike. Trump mocked that assertion Tuesday evening in a tweet. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print After disbanding his vote fraud panel, Trump still says voting system is rigged By Brian Bennett One day after disbanding his troubled voter fraud commission without any findings of fraud, President Trump continued to call the U.S. voting system rigged and said states should require that Americans have voter-identification cards. In two tweets on Thursday morning, Trump blamed the commissions failure on the lack of cooperation from mostly Democrat States that refused to hand over voter rolls because they know that many people are voting illegally. However, voting supervisors in Republican-led states refused as well, objecting on privacy and other grounds. Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Despite Trumps assertions, analysts have not found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after alleging, without proof, that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Trump was elected after winning a majority in the electoral college, but the nationwide count showed Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. The commission sought personal data on voters across the country and faced mounting lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump touts another good day for stocks, credits tax cut By Associated Press President Trump touted another good day for the stock market Wednesday in a tweet. Stock Market had another good day but, now that the Tax Cut Bill has passed, we have tremendous upward potential. Dow just short of 25,000, a number that few thought would be possible this soon into my administration. Also, unemployment went down to 4.1%. Only getting better! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Big gains for technology and healthcare stocks helped U.S. indexes set records again Wednesday. Some analysts attributed the surge to investor enthusiasm for Trumps $1.5-trillion tax cut. All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poors 500 index by roughly 8% this year. Thats much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6% that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26% in support. Still, as Trump also noted on Twitter, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, dozens of companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees. Some 40 U.S. companies have responded to President Trumps tax cut and reform victory in Congress last year by handing out bonuses up to $2,000, increases in 401k matches and spending on charity, a much higher number than previously known. https://t.co/bmWrwWzxMR Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economys long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees. Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the United States and overseas, havent always led to higher wages. For Wall Street, its all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump reacts to death of Mormon Church president By Associated Press President Trump mourned the death of Mormon Church leader Thomas S. Monson on Wednesday evening. Trump tweeted a link to a statement in which he said that Monson demonstrated wisdom, inspired leadership, and great compassion and delivered a message of optimism, forgiveness, and faith. Melania and I are deeply saddened by the death of Thomas S. Monson, a beloved President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...https://t.co/ETD3fWtfU3 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 A church bishop at the age of 22, Monson became the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008. After a life of church service, Monson died Tuesday at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins. He was 90. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets that Iranian protesters will see great U.S. support at the appropriate time By Associated Press President Trump continued to express support for Irans anti-government protesters on Wednesday. In a tweet, Trump commended the protesters and pledged that the United States will support them at the appropriate time. Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Trumps tweet Wednesday morning came as Iranian Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo sent a letter to United Nations officials complaining that Washington was intervening in a grotesque way in Irans internal affairs. The President and Vice-President of the United States, in their numerous absurd tweets, incited Iranians to engage in disruptive acts, the ambassador wrote to the U.N. Security Council president and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.S. didnt immediately respond to the letter, which maintains that Washington has crossed every limit in flouting rules and principles of international law governing the civilized conduct of international relations. At least 21 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in Iran during a week of anti-government protests and unrest over economic woes and official corruption. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people took part in counter-demonstrations Wednesday backing the clerically overseen government, which has said enemies of Iran are fomenting the protests. Trump has unleashed a series of tweets in recent days backing the protesters, saying Iran is failing at every level and declaring that it is time for change in the Islamic Republic. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump congratulates Sen. Orrin Hatch upon news of his retirement By Associated Press President Trump congratulated Sen. Orrin Hatch for an absolutely incredible career upon news of Hatchs impending retirement. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Trump called Hatch a tremendous supporter and wrote that he will be greatly missed in the Senate. Congratulations to Senator Orrin Hatch on an absolutely incredible career. He has been a tremendous supporter, and I will never forget the (beyond kind) statements he has made about me as President. He is my friend and he will be greatly missed in the U.S. Senate! pic.twitter.com/0VjzLEeHTl Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Hatchs decision to retire from the Senate after four decades lets the Utah Republican walk away at the height of his power after helping to push through an overhaul of the tax code and persuading Trump to downsize two national monuments. Retirement also preserves the 83-year-olds legacy by allowing him to avoid a bruising reelection battle that would have broken his promise not to seek an eighth term. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweet exaggerates progress in improving veterans care By Associated Press President Trump played up tremendous progress in improving care for veterans in his first year on Tuesday in a tweet. His message linked to an Instagram video describing eight accomplishments that show Trump is fighting for our veterans. But it overstates the impact of these steps. We will not rest until all of Americas GREAT VETERANS can receive the care they so richly deserve. Tremendous progress has been made in a short period of time. Keep up the great work @SecShulkin @DeptVetAffairs! https://t.co/ir25vW15hx pic.twitter.com/OtuzIgxMn6 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Of the eight achievements cited, two are ceremonial proclamations recognizing National Veterans and Military Families Month and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Two are pieces of legislation that extended the troubled Veterans Choice program on a temporary basis. This became necessary because the Trump administration repeatedly miscalculated the amount of taxpayer dollars available to pay for care from private doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system when veterans had to endure long waits for treatment at VA medical centers. The departments poor budget planning caught lawmakers off guard. A fifth claim involves telehealth, a step letting doctors practice medicine across state lines using digital technology. Announced in August, it has yet to take full effect because a proposed VA regulation hasnt been completed. The VA wants authority to practice across state lines to come from legislation, not a regulation. On Wednesday, the Senate approved a telehealth measure that now goes to the House. A sixth claim refers to legislation that streamlines the appeals process for disability compensation claims within the VA. This step has had limited effect so far because it applies to new disability claims, not the 470,000 pending claims. The last two initiatives make it easier for the VA to discipline employees. The department has pointed to more than 1,300 employees who have been fired under Trumps watch. Because their infractions are not detailed in public documents, the effect on veterans care is not fully known. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump unleashes his first tweetstorm of 2018 By Noah Bierman President Trump clearly didnt resolve to change his Twitter habits this year. With nine disparate tweets over three hours on Tuesday morning, the first working day of 2018, Trump continued to exploit social media to be the most aggressive commentator in chief in American history. For any other president, his posts would have made for a monumental day of (mis-)statements. Yet for Trump, the series attacks on political foes and media, provocations of foreign leaders and self-praise for events he had nothing to do with was all but unremarkable. His Twitter barrage sent between 7:09 a.m. and 10:16 a.m. reflected a familiar gamut after nearly a year in office: Attacks on political foes: Nearly 14 months after his election, Trump called for the jailing of Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid (his misspelling, another occasional feature of Trump tweets). Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 In the same tweet, he disparaged the Deep State Justice Dept, headed of course by his appointees, calling on it to act against James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired for investigating the Russia thing. Diplomatic provocations: Trump again called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket man, ridiculed the volatile nuclear-armed foe for recent military defections and openly speculated about potential talks between North and South Korea. Sanctions and other pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not we will see! Trump wrote. Later Tuesday, Trump tweeted: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times. Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Also later Tuesday, Trump tweeted an attack on Pakistan, his second in as many days, and added a new one against Palestinians: It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They dont even want to negotiate a long overdue... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Undermining media: Trump offered Congratulations! to A.G. Sulzberger, who took over as publisher of the New York Times this week. The Failing New York Times has a new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. Congratulations! Here is a last chance for the Times to fulfill the vision of its Founder, Adolph Ochs, to give the news impartially, without fear or FAVOR, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved. Get... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ....impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent sources, and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you wont have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done! GL Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the two-part post was really yet another slam against a perceived media foe: Trump said the paper had a last chance to fulfill its journalistic mission, and accused it of relying on phony sources and substandard reporters just days after he granted another exclusive interview to the paper. As a bonus, the tweet contained a recycled falsehood, that the paper apologized after the election for reporting on him unfairly. It didnt. Trump later said on Twitter that he would soon announce the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year. Stay tuned! I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 oclock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 The president also tweeted a quote from Fox Business Networks Lou Dobbs Tonight, which aired a segment praising Trumps first-year accomplishments. Dobbs reportedly joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday for a gala to celebrate New Years Eve. President Trump has something now he didnt have a year ago, that is a set of accomplishments that nobody can deny. The accomplishments are there, look at his record, he has had a very significant first year. @LouDobbs Show,David Asman & Ed Rollins Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Taking credit: Trump congratulated himself for policing the border with Mexico, an area where his policies and anti-immigration rhetoric are believed to have had some effect on reducing illegal crossings. Thank you to Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council for your kind words on how well we are doing at the Border. We will be bringing in more & more of your great folks and will build the desperately needed WALL! @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 He took credit for employee bonuses by companies after he signed Republican tax cuts into law last month. Companies are giving big bonuses to their workers because of the Tax Cut Bill. Really great! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the jaw-dropper was Trump congratulating himself for planes not crashing. Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 It was the safest year on record worldwide, but the American streak without commercial jet passenger deaths goes back to 2009. Trump, who has promoted deregulation as one of his top accomplishments, has not signed off on any new airline safety regulations. The White House pointed to new security screening of passengers, to electronic devices to prevent terrorist attacks and to Trumps support for privatizing air traffic control a proposal that has gotten nowhere in Congress. Falsehoods: Trump said President Obama, in brokering the 2015 nuclear arms limitation deal with Iran, foolishly gave money to the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. He didnt. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 The nuclear deal, which included major U.S. allies as signators, released Irans own funds that had long been frozen. Trumps art of the deal: When Trump sees a big deal looming, he often blasts the other side to gain leverage, as hes written. This week he resumes a showdown with Democratic lawmakers over funding the government and immigration protections for so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Trump, who in September ordered a gradual end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sought to shift blame for the resulting controversy, saying Democrats are doing nothing for DACA and are just interested in politics. Trump has insisted that any help for Dreamers be paired with funding for a border wall and a crackdown on legal immigration. Democrats, and some Republicans, are opposed. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement In tweet, Trump suggests U.S. will withdraw financial assistance to Pakistan By Shashank Bengali Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies & deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018 U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest and asked for clarification about Trumps comments, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump continues to tweet in support of Iranian protesters By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Trump has tweeted about the protests for three days straight as Iranians took to the streets despite a heavy police presence, tear gas and scores of arrests. The defiance gained urgency after two people were reported shot to death in the city of Dorud, about 200 miles southwest of Tehran. As the conflict escalated, Iranian authorities on Sunday slapped a temporary ban on Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which were widely used to fan protest fervor. Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Irans leaders already are casting Trumps increasingly effusive expressions of support for the demonstrators as opportunistic meddling and are painting the demonstrators as foreign pawns, adopting a strategy that some analysts say could jeopardize the legitimacy of the nascent antigovernment protests. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets condolences after Colorado deputies are shot in ambush, one fatally By Associated Press A man fired more than 100 rounds at sheriffs deputies in Colorado early Sunday, killing one and injuring four others, before being fatally shot himself in what authorities called an ambush. Two civilians were also injured. President Trump expressed sorrow, writing on Twitter: My deepest condolences to the victims of the terrible shooting in Douglas County @DCSheriff, and their families. We love our police and law enforcement - God Bless them all! #LESM Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said deputies came under fire almost Why did President Trump fire FBI Director James B. Comey ? In a three-page letter sent by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein to his boss, Jeff Sessions, Rosenstein cites Comeys public statements about the FBIs investigation into Hillary Clinton s emails. Among Rosensteins conclusions: Comey refuses to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken to go public in July with his reasons for recommending no criminal charges again Clinton. During that news conference, Comey said Clinton and her aides were extremely careless in handling classified information. Comey was wrong to usurp the Attorney Generals authority to announce that the case would be closed. The Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department, Rosenstein wrote. Comey ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. Although such information is sometimes disclosed, we never release it gratuitously. The conclusion that Comey acted inappropriately in the Clinton case is shared by former Attorneys General and Deputy Attorneys General from different eras and both political parties. Rosensteins letter concludes: The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions. Heres a look at some key sections of the letter annotated by Edmund Sanders, an editor in our Washington bureau: I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Rosenstein Neither do a lot of people. Comey had come under fire from all sides for his handling of the Clinton email investigation, though many supporters insist his motivations were always to maintain the credibility and independence of the bureau. Yet he said earlier this week that even with hindsight, he would have taken the same action. The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016. Rosenstein Not exactly usurp. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch had already announced that she was going to accept the recommendations of Comey and career prosecutors. So she had tossed the ball in his court. Also he did not have the power to close the case. He simply announced he would not recommend prosecution. Lynch still had the final authority. It is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives. Rosenstein Yes, but Republicans and Democrats certainly disagree on what they think Comey did wrong. Republicans, including Trump, think that Comey should have charged Clinton with criminal wrongdoing and that he bowed to political pressure by declining to do so. Democrats say his extraordinary news conference in which he accused Clinton of being extremely careless with classified material, and the surprise reopening of the inquiry shortly before the election, helped lead to Clintons defeat. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. Rosenstein Thats true. It almost never happens. But Comey defended the decision by insisting that the circumstances were extraordinary. The FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors Rosenstein Again, Lynch in effect did empower him, though she did not approve of the news conference. The Director announced his own conclusions ... without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders. Rosenstein Comey supporters say he made the announcement independently, without first informing Justice Department officials, in order to maintain a sense of independence and credibility. Lynch, who had come under fire for a brief meeting with former President Cliinton, was under a cloud of suspicion. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do. Rosenstein True, many former prosecutors said exactly that. But its worth noting that Trump and many other Republicans, though initially disappointed that Comey had decided against prosecution, used Comeys comments over and over against Clinton during the campaign. We should reject the departure and return to the traditions. Rosenstein Many prosecutors would agree. But the question is: Why take this step now? If Comeys actions were so inexcusable, why wasnt he fired by Trump immediately? Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions. Rosenstein This seems to be Rosensteins attempt to explain the timing of the decision. Though Comey had previously stood behind his actions, he gave a more detailed defense of them during this weeks Senate hearing. That seems to have provided the administration with a hook to justify his firing, saying in effect that the director had failed to acknowledge and learn from his mistakes. 'Conceal' is a loaded term that misstates the issue. Rosenstein Many agreed that Comey was creating a bit of a false choice here. He could have waited until investigators had more time to review the new emails, which turned out to be unimportant or duplicates. Boy Scouts: Top leaders didnt call Trump to praise speech as the president said By Associated Press The Boy Scouts denied Wednesday that the head of the youth organization called President Donald Trump to praise his recent politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree. Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday, I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. Politico published the transcript of the interview. We are unaware of any such call, the Boy Scouts responded in a statement. It specified that neither of the organizations two top leaders President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh had placed such a call. The White House had no immediate response to the Boy Scouts denial. Surbaugh apologized last week to members of the scouting community who were offended by the political rhetoric in Trumps July 24 speech in West Virginia. Other U.S. presidents have delivered nonpolitical speeches at past jamborees. To the dismay of many parents and former scouts, Trump promoted his political agenda and derided his rivals, inducing some of the scouts in attendance to boo at the mention of former President Obama. I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree, Surbaugh said. That was never our intent. Surbaugh noted that every sitting president since 1937 has been invited to visit the jamboree. Stephenson told the Associated Press two days after the speech that Boy Scout leaders anticipated Trump would spark controversy with politically tinged remarks, yet felt obliged to invite him out of respect for his office. Hoping to minimize friction, the Boy Scouts issued guidelines to adult staff members for how the audience should react to the speech. Any type of political chanting was specifically discouraged. Stephenson, who did not attend Trumps speech, said the guidance wasnt followed impeccably. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Mayor of London again calls on Trump to cancel state visit By Christina Boyle (AFP/Getty Images) The mayor of London has reiterated his calls for President Trumps state visit to Britain to be canceled in the wake of the citys terrorist incident, saying his policies go against everything we stand for. The war of words between the two leaders intensified further Monday evening after Trump criticized Mayor Sadiq Khans response to the London Bridge terrorist attack in two tweets, and the mayor said Trump should not be welcomed in the capital. Since Saturday Ive been working with the police, with the emergency services, with the government and others to deal with the horrific attack on Saturday, Khan said Monday evening. I just havent got the time to deal with tweets from Donald Trump. But when pressed on whether he thinks a state visit for later this year should go ahead as planned, Khan was unequivocal. My position remains the same. I dont think we should be rolling out the carpet to the president of the United States in the circumstances where his policies go against everything we stand for, Khan told Channel 4 news. When you have a special relationship, it is no different to when you have a close mate: You stand with them in times of adversity, but you call them out when theyre wrong. And there are many things about which Donald Trump is wrong. Trump initially criticized Khan hours after the London attack posting on Twitter: At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed! Khans office soon pointed out that the president had, in fact, misquoted Khan, who actually said that Londoners should not be alarmed by the increased armed police presence on the streets. Trump took to Twitter again on Monday to slam the London mayor once more. Pathetic excuse by London mayor Sadiq Khan, who had to think fast on his no reason to be alarmed statement. MSM [Mainstream media] is working hard to sell it! the president wrote. This is not the first time Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital city, has called for Trumps state visit to be banned. He previously branded Trumps policies on immigration and proposed travel ban on people entering the U.S. from predominantly Muslim countries cruel. An online government petition calling for the invitation to be withdrawn also gathered more than 1.8 million votes. The visit was first announced during Prime Minister Theresa Mays trip to Washington, where she became the first foreign leader to meet the newly-inaugurated president. State visits are personal invites from the British monarch and involve a significant amount of pomp and ceremony, and usually a state banquet. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print He helped bring down President Nixon. He thinks President Trump is even worse. By Mark Z. Barabak (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times) John Dean is a connoisseur of coverups, a savant of scandal, so he can more than imagine what its like inside the Trump White House right now. Its a nightmare, he said, presiding in a high-backed leather wing chair off the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Not just for those in the headlines political strategist Steve Bannon, jack-of-many-duties Jared Kushner but for their unsung assistants and secretaries as well. They dont know what their jeopardy is. They dont know what theyre looking at. They dont know if theyre a part of a conspiracy that might unfold. They dont know whether to hire lawyers or not, how theyre going to pay for them if they do, Dean said in a crisp law-counsel cadence. Its an unpleasant place. Dean was a central figure in Watergate, the 1970s political scandal against which all others are measured, serving at the tender age of 32 as President Nixons White House attorney. In that capacity Dean worked to thwart investigators after the clumsy break-in at Democratic Party headquarters, then flipped and helped sink Nixon by revealing the presidents involvement in the coverup. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Two decades ago, Washington state Republicans repealed and replaced a healthcare overhaul there. It didnt end well By Noam N. Levey Republicans in the state of Washington didnt wait long in the spring of 1995 to fulfill their pledge to roll back a sweeping law expanding health coverage in the state. Coming off historic electoral gains, the GOP legislators scrapped much of the law while pledging to make health insurance affordable and to free state residents from onerous government mandates. It didnt work out that way: The repeal left the states insurance market in shambles, sent premiums skyrocketing and drove health insurers from the state. It took nearly five years to repair the damage. Two decades later, the ill-fated experiment, largely relegated to academic journals, offers a caution to lawmakers at the national level as Republicans in the U.S. Senate race to write a bill to repeal and replace the federal Affordable Care Act. Its much easier to break something, said Pam MacEwan, who led a Washington state commission charged with implementing the law in the mid-1990s and now oversees the state insurance market there. Its more difficult to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And thats when people get hurt. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office echoed that warning last week, when it concluded that the healthcare bill passed by the House last month would destabilize insurance markets in a sixth of the country and nearly double the number of people without health insurance over the next decade. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Companies accelerate hiring, adding a robust 253,000 net new jobs, ADP says By Jim Puzzanghera A now hiring sign is seen in Baton Rouge, La., on May 5. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) Companies accelerated their hiring last month, adding a robust 253,000 net new jobs in a sign the labor market remains healthy and the economy is strengthening after a weak winter. The private-sector job creation figures reported Thursday by payroll firm Automatic Data Processing far exceeded analyst expectations and was well above the downwardly revised 174,000 net new positions added in April. Job growth is rip-roaring, declared Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, which assists ADP in preparing its report. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print All jokes aside, Trumps covfefe tweet sparks questions too By Brian Bennett President Trump sparked a global kerfuffle over covfefe with his bizarrely truncated tweet just minutes into Wednesday, spawning countless jokes across Twitter but also more serious questions for which the White House gave no answers. Press Secretary Sean Spicer, during an unusually short 11-minute briefing in which he insisted he not be on camera, declined to give any explanation for Trumps tweet posted just after midnight. Nor would he translate what the president was trying to say in the garbled message that broke off midsentence. But Spicer told reporters that the public should not be concerned that the president sent what the questioner called somewhat of an incoherent tweet. The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant, Spicer said. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Biden launches new PAC, keeping the 2020 door open By David Lauter (Steven Senne / Associated Press) Former Vice President Joe Biden is launching a new political action committee, a platform that will allow him to provide help to favored candidates and, inevitably, boost speculation about a possible run for the Democratic nomination in 2020. The organization, which Biden is calling American Possibilities, will be staffed by a former top political aide to the vice president, Greg Schultz, who is also a veteran of President Obamas reelection campaign. The PAC will allow Biden to raise money that he can use to travel the country, contribute to candidates in governors races this year and congressional and state races in 2018 and generally do the sorts of things that aspiring politicians do to keep their names in the headlines. All that cant help but nurture questions about whether Biden, 74, will try yet again to attain the office he first started running for in 1987. In public appearances, which have taken him to electorally important states, and interviews since the 2016 election, Biden has been sharply critical of the Trump administration, but has also pointed to flaws in his own party. In one interview, he pointed to a bit of elitism thats crept in to the partys approach to working-class voters. At the same time, he has given carefully ambiguous answers when asked about his plans. At a conference in Las Vegas earlier this month, he responded to the question about a presidential run by saying: Could I? Yes. Would I? Probably not. In the announcement for the new group, Biden said that the negativity, the pettiness, the small-mindedness of our politics drives me crazy. Its not who we are. Its time for big dreams and American possibilities, he said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement U.S., regions foreign ministers debate Venezuela By Tracy Wilkinson (AFP / Getty Images) The United States and foreign ministers from across the hemisphere met in Washington on Wednesday to attempt to force Venezuelas leftist government and its angry opposition into talks. Hunger and violence have pushed Venezuela to the brink of humanitarian disaster, diplomats say. But Wednesdays meeting of the Organization of American States faced unlikely prospects for success: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro does not trust the organization and has said his nation will withdraw its membership. Some OAS nations, including several U.S. allies in the Caribbean, have criticized the regional bodys efforts as intervention promoted by Washington. But U.S. officials are hoping the sheer weight of the crisis will unite the region to put pressure on Venezuela. Theres more and more concern about what were seeing, and so more and more countries have gotten over their reluctance to question or go against the wishes of the Venezuelan government, a senior State Department official said in a briefing for reporters. Its really hard to stand by and do nothing in the face of the kinds of institutional steps weve seen in Venezuela, and the increasing humanitarian suffering, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, in keeping with frequent administration practice. Although the OAS periodically brings its members foreign ministers together, this is the first time a meeting has been convened to deal with a single topic, U.S. officials said. At the conclusion of Wednesdays session, diplomats said they had discussed two resolutions. One, promoted by Caribbean nations, called on Venezuela to reconsider withdrawing from the OAS. A second more pointed resolution authored by the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Panama and Peru urged the Maduro administration not to go ahead with a constituent assembly that would rewrite the Venezuelan constitution. Many fear it would dissolve the few democratic institutions that remain and favor the ruling Socialist Party. Separately, the Venezuela opposition, emboldened by a string of increasingly massive street demonstrations, sharply criticized Wall Street for extending what it called a lifeline to the Maduro government. At issue is the purchase by Goldman Sachs of Venezuelan government bonds for a reported $865 million, a major discount for paper originally worth $2.8 billion. Goldman Sachs confirmed the purchase of the bonds, issued in 2014 by the state oil company PDVSA, after it was reported in the Wall Street Journal. We are invested in PDVSA bonds because, like many in the asset management industry, we believe the situation in the country must improve over time, Goldman said in a statement. The firm added that it made the purchase through a secondary dealer to avoid direct interaction with the Venezuelan government. That distinction meant nothing to the Venezuelan opposition, which accused Goldman of making a buck off the suffering of the Venezuelan people. The Trump administration previously has targeted the Maduro government, slapping economic sanctions on its vice president and pro-Maduro Supreme Court justices. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Former FBI director spoke with new special counsel and is cleared to testify before Senate panel By Joseph Tanfani The special counsel investigating possible links between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign has cleared former FBI Director James Comey to testify before a congressional committee about his contacts with President Trump, according to an associate close to Comey. Comey met with Robert S. Mueller III, whom the Justice Department appointed on May 17 to investigate any Russian ties to the Trump campaign, and Mueller said he had no problems with Comeys testifying, the associate said. Trump abruptly fired Comey as head of the FBI on May 9. The president later said in an interview on NBC News that he was concerned about the FBI investigation into what he called the Russia thing. Comey reportedly wrote internal memos after his meetings with Trump. In one, he wrote that the president had requested he ease up on the FBI probe of Michael Flynn, who served as Trumps national security advisor until he was ousted in February for lying about his contacts with Russian officials. The Senate Intelligence Committee announced on May 19 that Comey had agreed to testify after the Memorial Day holiday. The hearing has not been scheduled. The FBI separately declined a request from the House Oversight Committee to turn over Comeys memos. The bureau said it would need to consult with Mueller before making any decisions. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the committee chairman, said in response that he would not push the matter. The focus of the committees investigation is the independence of the FBI and the events leading to Comeys firing, he wrote. In a separate development, a senior Justice Department lawyer with experience in complex financial fraud investigations has agreed to join Muellers investigation. Andrew Weissman has led the fraud section at Justice, where he oversaw probes into corporate wrongdoing at Volkswagen and Takata. Weissman also is a veteran of the FBI. Weissman is the highest-ranking Justice Department official to join the special counsel office being set up a few blocks from the main Justice building in downtown Washington. Mueller also hired two colleagues from the WilmerHale law firm, where he worked, and brought on a former Justice Department spokesman, Peter Carr, to handle media inquiries. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Analysis: In President Trumps wake, divisions mark both Democratic and Republican parties By Cathleen Decker Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez address a crowd at the California party convention in May. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) Six months after President Trump breached long-standing political boundaries to win the White House, the nations major political parties still muddle in his wake. On the sun-swept lawn of the Hotel del Coronado two weeks ago, national Republican leaders sipped cocktails and listened to San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, one of the partys brightest lights in the most populous state, praise a brand of moderate Republicanism that looks nothing like the versions coming out of Washington either the populism of the president or the more orthodox conservatism of congressional leaders. A week later, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez talked in a Sacramento interview of the remarkably constructive debate underway in his party, characterizing its divisions as largely in the past. Within hours, he and other party leaders were booed as they welcomed delegates to a state convention that would be filled with persistent internal warfare on healthcare and other issues. No political party is immune to disagreement; indeed the path to power often relies on combustible ideological diversity. But Democrats and Republicans alike seem particularly adrift and quarrelsome these days. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump preparing to pull U.S. from Paris climate accord, amid last-minute lobbying By Evan Halper President Trump hasnt made a final decision on whether the U.S. will quit the Paris Accord on climate change, but White House officials indicated Wednesday that he was headed in that direction, setting off a worldwide reaction. A flurry of leaks, counter-leaks and public statements thrust back into the spotlight a decision that has been agonized and untidy even by the standards of a White House known for internal drama. Wednesday morning, when officials told some news organizations that Trump had settled on pulling out of the climate agreement, seemingly everyone in the world jumped in to try to influence or spin his decision, from the Chinese government to the coal industry to the state of California. That offered a foretaste of the reaction Trump likely will receive if he does follow through on his vow to pull the United States out of the 195-nation pact, which President Obama hailed in 2015 as one of his major achievements. Other nations have swiftly moved to take over the leadership role on climate that the United States would be abandoning. Some states have followed suit, promising they would break with Washington to work with other countries in their efforts to contain global warming. During Trumps recent overseas trip, U.S. allies warned him that Americas broader diplomatic influence would be undercut if the administration gave up its seat at the climate negotiating table. All the public lobbying on Wednesday moved Trump to weigh in himself. He knocked down reports that he had decided to withdraw with a tweet announcing that he was still making up his mind. The mixed messages coming out of the White House left open the possibility that the original news reports reflected the views of officials who were aiming to steer the final outcome by presenting withdrawal as a done deal. Trumps schedule for the day includes meetings with advisors hoping to talk him into staying in the agreement, at least to some extent. If Trump does withdraw the U.S. fully from the Paris pact, scientists warn it will be a tremendous setback to the worldwide effort to contain temperatures from rising an average of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The consequences for the United States would extend beyond global warming. It will be a very big deal all over the world, said Todd Stern, the lead U.S. climate negotiator during the Obama administration. There will be consequential blowback with respect to our diplomatic position across the board. UPDATES 9:27 a.m.: This post was updated throughout with staff reporting and additional details. 6:23 a.m.: This post was updated with Trumps tweet. 6:04 a.m.: This post was updated throughout with additional details. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement U.S. Supreme Court makes it harder to sue police for barging into homes By David Savage The U.S. Supreme Court made it harder to sue police for barging into a home and provoking a shooting, setting aside a $4-million verdict against two Los Angeles County deputies on Tuesday. The money was awarded to a homeless couple who were startled and then shot when the two sheriffs deputies entered the shack where they were sleeping. The unanimous ruling rejected the so-called provocation rule that some lower courts have used. Under that rule, police can be sued for violating a victims constitutional rights against unreasonable searches if they provoked a confrontation that resulted in violence. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump lashes out at Germany over NATO spending and trade after Merkel questions the U.S. commitment to its allies By Brian Bennett (Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images) President Trump took aim at German trade practices and defense spending Tuesday following pointed criticism from Chancellor Angela Merkel that Germany may not be able to rely on its allies. We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change, Trump wrote in a tweet. Last week, White House spokespeople had denied that Trump criticized German trade practices after the German newspaper Der Spiegel quoted him as having done so. Trump unsettled Merkel and other allies during the recent NATO summit when, during his remarks, he did not mention the central commitment members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization make to defend each other. We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2017 Trumps policy toward climate change is another point of contention with many European countries. Trump promised during the election to tear up the landmark Paris climate accord. Merkel said the conversation with the U.S. on climate change last week during the G-7 meetings in Sicily, which followed the NATO summit, was extremely difficult. During a campaign speech in Munich on Sunday, Merkel said Germany must rethink how much it can rely on its allies. The era in which we could rely completely on others is gone, at least partially, Merkel said. I have experienced that over the last several days. In a 2014 meeting, NATO defense ministers agreed that each state would move toward a goal of raising military spending to 2% of its annual economic output by the year 2024. German defense spending is below that goal. The U.S. trade deficit with Germany shrank to $65 billion in 2016 from $75 billion the year before. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Consumers spend at fastest pace in four months in a sign of spring economic rebound By Jim Puzzanghera (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press) Americans ratcheted up their spending in April at the fastest pace in four months, in a sign the economy has rebounded this spring after a lackluster winter. The new data also could help push Federal Reserve officials to hike a key interest rate again when they meet in two weeks. Personal consumption expenditures increased 0.4% in April, up from 0.3% the previous month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Americans had more money to spend, with personal incomes also rising 0.4% twice the pace of growth in March. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print White House communications director Michael Dubke resigns By Associated Press White House Communications Director Mike Dubke listens as a reporter asks a question during a press conference in the East Room of the White House on April 20. (Shawn Thew / EPA) White House communications director Michael Dubke has resigned. Kellyanne Conway, White House counselor, told The Associated Press that Dubke handed in his resignation before President Donald Trump left for his international trip earlier this month. In an interview on Fox News on Tuesday, Conway said Dubke made very clear that he would see through the presidents international trip, and come to work every day and work hard even through that trip because there was much to do here back at the White House. Dubke issued a statement Tuesday morning: It has been my great honor to serve President Trump and this administration. It has also been my distinct pleasure to work side-by-side, day-by-day with the staff of the communications and press departments. A Republican consultant, Dubke joined the White House team in February after campaign aide Jason Miller Trumps original choice for communications director withdrew from consideration. Dubke founded Crossroads Media, a GOP firm that specializes in political advertising. -- 6:03 a.m.: Updated with Dubkes statement Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Should Jared Kushner keep his security clearance? Adam Schiff isnt sure By Laura King The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), says hes not sure that President Trumps son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, should retain his security clearance. The California Democrat, who has been a sharp critic of Trump, also said in an interview aired Sunday that national security advisor H.R. McMaster, a highly respected military officer, had been tarnished by his association with the White House. Schiffs comments, on ABCs This Week, came amid growing questions about Kushners contacts with Russian officials before Trump took office. Trump has denounced the latest round of news reports, saying that some of them could be based on fabricated sources. Top Trump aides, including John F. Kelly, the secretary of Homeland Security, pushed back Sunday against the suggestion that there was anything untoward about establishing back channel communications with the Russians during the presidential transition. Schiff said he regretted that McMaster had done so as well, saying he believed the White House used the solid reputations of people like him to back up dubious actions. Sadly, I think this is an administration that takes in people with good credibility and chews them out and spits out their credibility at the same time, said Schiff, who acknowledged that what McMaster said about back channel communications was true in the abstract. I think anyone within the Trump orbit is at risk of being used, he said. Kelly, in separate talk-show appearances on Sunday, said there was nothing untoward about an incoming administration establishing communications with a foreign power in order to lay the groundwork for better relations. Schiff declined to discuss the substance of the allegations regarding Kushners contact with Russian officials during the transition and whether Kushner had been forthcoming about them, but said enough questions had been raised that his access to top-secret intelligence should be scrutinized. I think we need to get to the bottom of these allegations, Schiff said. But I do think there ought to be a review of his security clearance to find out whether he was truthful, whether he was candid. If not, then theres no way he can maintain that kind of a clearance. Schiff was also critical of continuing involvement in aspects of the Russia probe by fellow Californian Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who stepped aside from the probe earlier this year after the House Ethics Committee began investigating whether he had improperly revealed classified information. Nunes remains involved in decision-making about the issuance of subpoenas, Schiff said, adding: I dont think that he should, given that he has stepped aside or recused himself. The committee is investigating Russian entanglements by figures in Trumps circle, including fired national security advisor Michael Flynn, who has been the target of multiple subpoenas. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump still wide open on climate change, Pentagon chief says By Laura King With President Trump set to make a decision this week about whether the U.S. should remain part of the landmark Paris climate accord, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Trump remains wide open on the issue. During a visit to Europe that ended Saturday, Trump dismayed European allies by refusing to commit to remaining in the 2015 accord during talks with European Union officials in Brussels and at the Group of Seven gathering in Sicily. The president said in a tweet that he will make a decision this week. Mattis, who was present at some of the Brussels talks, said that Trump is still making up his mind, and that he has been inquisitive about other leaders opinions. The president was open he was curious about why others were in the position they were in, his counterparts in other nations, the Defense secretary said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS Face the Nation. And Im quite certain the president is wide open on this issue as he takes in the pros and cons of that accord. During his European trip, Trump met privately at the Vatican with Pope Francis, who presented him with a copy of his papal encyclical on environment and climate change. French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with Trump in Brussels, also said he had pressed the issue with the U.S. president, though the White House did not mention that appeal in a summary of their meeting. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Homeland Security secretary defends Jared Kushner, blasts Manchester intelligence leaks By Laura King There is nothing inherently wrong with an incoming presidential administration establishing back channel communications with a foreign power such as Russia, Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly said Sunday. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Kelly was asked about reports by the Washington Post and other outlets that President Trumps son-in-law and close advisor, Jared Kushner, sought to set up secret lines of communication with Russian officials prior to Trump being sworn in. The retired general did not confirm the reports, but said the principle of establishing secretive contacts during a presidential transition doesnt bother me and is a legitimate means of building relationships. I think that any channel of communication, back or otherwise, with a country like Russia is a good thing, he said. Kelly did not address a central element of the reports that Kushner discussed the possibility of using Russian communications channels from a Russia diplomatic outpost to shield from U.S. intelligence surveillance whatever discussions Trump transition officials wanted to have with Moscow. The FBI, a special counsel and multiple congressional committees are probing Russian interference in the presidential campaign and whether the Trump camp colluded in it. The U.S. intelligence community says Russian cyberattacks were meant to boost Trump and harm his opponent, Hillary Clinton. In a separate interview on NBCs Meet the Press, Kelly defended the integrity of Kushner, whose involvement in communications with Russia has brought the investigation closer to Trump personally than has previous scrutiny of others in his campaign circle or the White House. Calling Kushner a great guy, a decent guy, the Homeland Security secretary said the presidents son-in-laws No. 1 interest, really, is the nation. Also in the NBC interview, Kelly excoriated intelligence leaks in the wake of last weeks deadly bombing in Manchester, England. British officials including Prime Minister Theresa May were angered by disclosures about details of the investigation, including the release of the dead attackers name and detailed photos from the bomb scene that were published by the New York Times. Several outlets cited unnamed U.S. officials as the source of the information including the bombers identity. The Times did not say how it obtained the photos. Britain routinely shares intelligence with close allies like the United States with the expectation that it will be kept confidential. Kelly said that failing to keep such secrets could seriously damage intelligence-sharing arrangements with other nations. I believe when you leak the kind of information that seems to be routinely leaked - high, high level of classification I think its darn close to treason, Kelly said. It is not clear what level of classification, if any, the information about the British investigation would have had. Trump himself, who recently caused controversy when he passed sensitive intelligence on Islamic State to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and discussed the location of U.S. nuclear submarines with the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has denounced the Manchester leaks and vowed to track down the source or sources. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print In tweets, Trump says stories based on White House leaks are fabricated By Laura King President Trump is back and tweeting. In a Sunday morning series of posts on Twitter, the president repeated his denunciations of the fake media, celebrated the Republican victory in a Montana special election and declared his overseas trip a success. Trump returned to the White House late Saturday after a swing through the Middle East and Europe, the first foreign trip of his presidency. During it, he tweeted only sparingly. While Trump was away, controversy continued to swirl around his White House, with media reports focusing on son-in-law Jared Kushners role in Trump campaign contacts with Russian officials. The GOP healthcare plan and Trumps budget also came under withering scrutiny during the presidents absence. In Sundays tweets, Trump said cascading leaks from within his administration were in fact fabricated lies by news organizations based on sources that did not exist. One tweet was corrected to fix the spelling of exist. It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2017 Trump also complained that the special congressional election in Montana, called to fill the seat vacated when Ryan Zinke became his Interior secretary, was such a big deal to Dems & Fake News until the Republican won. The V was poorly covered, he said, referring to the Republican victory. The victory by Republican candidate Greg Gianforte received extensive coverage. It was widely expected, given Montanas significant Republican edge, but made more suspenseful on the eve of the election when Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault for an incident in which he struck a reporter who had asked him a question. The president received mixed reviews for his inaugural overseas venture. He was praised by some for his outreach to Sunni Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, but continued his administrations practice of making no public criticism of serious human rights violations. In Europe, he rattled allies by declining to explicitly endorse the NATO alliances bedrock common defense pledge or pledge to adhere to the Paris climate accord. Whatever the commentary surrounding the trip, Trump counted it a success. Hard work but big results, he wrote. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trumps international trip underscored what America First looks like on the world stage By Michael Memoli Donald Trump made no secret during the presidential campaign of his disdain for Americas trading partners, his skepticism of longtime alliances and his eagerness to refocus U.S. foreign policy on the single-minded pursuit of American security. That was the largely the president the world got as Trump made his way through the Middle East and Western Europe over the last nine days, Trumps first foreign trip may have produced memorable, and at time cringe-inducing, images of the new president, whether grasping a glowing orb in Saudi Arabia or shoving the prime minister of Montenegro at a NATO meeting in Brussels. But perhaps most profoundly, the trip underscored what America First, as Trump has branded his governing philosophy, looks like on the world stage. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump says hell decide on Paris climate deal next week By Associated Press Seven wealthy democracies ended their summit Saturday in Italy without unanimous agreement on climate change, as the Trump administration plans to take more time to say whether the U.S. is going to remain in the Paris accord on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The other six nations in the Group of Seven agreed to stick with their commitment to implement the 2015 Paris deal that aims to slow down global warming. The final G-7 statement, issued after two days of talks in the seaside town of Taormina, said the U.S. is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics. Trump tweeted he would decide his stance on the Paris agreement next week. The announcement on the final day of the U.S. presidents first international trip comes after he declined to commit to staying in the sweeping climate deal, resisting intense international pressure from his peers at the summit. I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2017 Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who chaired the meeting, said the other six wont change our position on climate change one millimeter. The U.S. hasnt decided yet. I hope they decide in the right way. Gentiloni said climate was not a minor point and that he hoped the United States would decide soon and well because the Paris accords need the contribution of the United States. French President Emmanuel Macron also chimed in on the climate issue, praising Trumps capacity to listen. Macron said he told Trump it is indispensable for the reputation of the United States and the interest of the Americans themselves that the United States remain committed to the Paris climate agreement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was more downbeat, calling the G-7 climate talks very unsatisfactory. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Everyones a winner! Or what to take away from that special congressional race in Montana By Mark Z. Barabak Republicans were celebrating Friday, and relieved, and it was easy to see why: The party hung on to Montanas sole congressional seat even though its candidate faced a freshly lodged criminal charge for physically assaulting a reporter on election eve. Though they fell short in yet another special election Greg Gianforte won handily, 50% to 44% Democrats also found reason to be pleased: Their candidate, flawed as he was, continued a pattern of polling better than might be expected over-performing, to use the political parlance, and that could hold future promise. Its possible, as elections analyst Nathan Gonzales put it, to lose and still have momentum. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print In commencement address, Hillary Clinton remembers fallout from Nixon, makes subtle jab at President Trump By Kurtis Lee Hillary Clinton delivers the commencement address at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., on Friday. (Josh Reynolds / Associated Press) Hillary Clinton delivered a subtle dig at President Trump on Friday, offering some parallels between his presidency and that of former President Nixon. While delivering a commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College, a private womens liberal arts school in Massachusetts, Clinton, without naming Trump, recalled how many young people in the 1970s reacted to Nixons reelection and later battles with the Justice Department. We were furious about the past presidential election of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice, she said, pausing to note she was referring to Nixon. Actually, Nixon was not impeached, though many in Congress, including members of his own party, called for it. Clinton said Nixons resignation came after he fired the person heading the investigation into him at the Department of Justice. In 1973, Nixon ordered Justice Department officials to fire a special prosecutor who was looking into taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office as part of the Watergate investigation. A year later, in August 1974, Nixon resigned. Some political observers mostly Democrats -- have compared Trumps recent firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, who was overseeing an investigation of possible collusion between Russians and Trumps campaign, to Nixons actions. Last week, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) called for Trump to be impeached. Clinton, who has made few public appearances since Trump defeated her in last years presidential election, also assailed the Republicans new budget proposal. She called the budget, which proposes cuts to education and Medicaid, an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us the youngest, the oldest, the poorest and hard-working people who need a little help to gain or hang on to a decent, middle-class life. In a statement, the Republican National Committee said Clinton was lashing out after her election loss. Clinton graduated from Wellesley in 1969 and last delivered a commencement address at the school in 1992. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement At G-7 Summit, a day of clarification for the White House By Michael A. Memoli (Sean Gallup / Getty Images) As President Trump met with leaders of the worlds leading economies here Friday within miles of an active volcano, the White House was working to ease a pair of diplomatic eruptions. Trump was due to meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May on the sidelines of the G-7 Summit in this coastal Sicilian resort town, amid tensions between their countries, longtime allies, following leaks to U.S. media outlets involving Britains investigation of the Manchester terrorist bombing. Separately, a top White House adviser partially confirmed reports that Trump had said Germany is very bad during Thursdays NATO meetings in Brussels, but clarified that the president was referring only to German trade policies. Trump said, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel, See the millions of cars they are selling to the U.S.? Terrible. We will stop this. Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, acknowledged that Trump made the remark but added that the president doesnt have a problem with Germany. He said his dad is from Germany. He said I dont have a problem with Germany, I have a problem with German trade, Cohn said. Press access to the G-7 meetings has been extremely limited, though the surrounding setting has produced abundant compelling visuals. Editorial press access extremely limited for G7 meetings. But man, pretty pictures & good times for Taormina Chamber of Commerce (via AP) pic.twitter.com/WT2EdKrwJ5 Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) May 26, 2017 Trump tweeted that he expected to spend the day focused on economic growth, terrorism and security. The summit, and Trumps eight-day inaugural foreign trip, ends Saturday. Other allies here were likely to press Trump on another issue: climate change, specifically whether Trump will carry out his campaign promise to pull the United States out of the landmark Paris climate deal. Trump was hoping to better understand the European position, Cohn said. White House officials have said the president will make a decision once he is back in the United States. He knows that in the U.S. theres very strong opinions on both sides but he also knows that Paris has important meaning to many of the European leaders. And he wants to clearly hear what the European leaders have to say, Cohn said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print As Trump wavers over Paris climate accord, European leaders give him an earful By Evan Halper Mining operation near Grevenbroich, Germany. (Martin Meissner / Associated Press) With President Trump balking on his vow to shred the Obama-negotiated Paris agreement on climate change, the last place the pacts staunch opponents wanted to see the president is where he will be this weekend meeting other world leaders unanimous in their warnings that withdrawal from the accord would seriously damage Americas economy and world stature. Trump has repeatedly delayed fulfilling his campaign pledge to move against the agreement. The longer the White House deliberates over Paris, the more Trump seems to be searching for a face-saving excuse to walk back his previous position. The White House indecision over the climate accord which has the support of every nation except Syria and Nicaragua reflects a deeply divided worldview in a Trump inner circle now packed with establishment Republicans. The issue also presents yet another policy reckoning for Trump. On the campaign trail, he vowed to strike blows against the existing world order. But on the Paris agreement, as on other matters, he is finding that political backup for such pledges can fade quickly when the moves lack robust support from major U.S. companies or majority voting blocs. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Overcoming assault charge, Republican Greg Gianforte wins Montana congressional seat By Mark Z. Barabak Republican Greg Gianforte overcame a last-minute assault charge to win Montanas special congressional election Thursday, keeping its lone House seat in GOP hands and dealing Democrats a setback in their bid to gain a red-state toehold ahead of the 2018 midterm election. Gianforte, 56, a wealthy businessman who ran unsuccessfully for governor in November, had long been the front-runner against Democrat Rob Quist, a professional bluegrass musician making his first run for public office. With more than 90% of the votes counted, Gianforte was holding a healthy lead with just over 50% support. Appearing at an exuberant victory rally in Bozeman, the congressman-elect hushed the crowd and apologized to the reporter with whom he tangled on election eve, reversing his campaigns initial assertion that the journalist was to blame. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement FBI investigating Kushner meetings, report says; House leader seeks more Comey documents By Associated Press (Andrew Harrer / Getty Images) The chairman of the House Oversight Committee asked the FBI on Thursday to turn over more documents about former FBI Director James B. Comeys interactions with the White House and Justice Department, including materials dating back nearly four years to the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that the FBI is investigating meetings that President Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had in December with Russian officials. The FBI and the Oversight Committee as well as several other congressional panels are looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. Trump fired Comey on May 9 amid questions about the FBIs investigation, which is now being led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a former FBI director. Kushner, a key White House advisor, had meetings late last year with Russias ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, and Russian banker Sergey Gorkov. The Post story cited anonymous people familiar with the investigation, who said the FBI investigation does not mean that Kushner is suspected of a crime. Kushners attorney, Jamie Gorelick, released a statement saying: Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings. He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry. Earlier Thursday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe that he wants records of Comeys contacts with the White House and Justice Department dating to September 2013, when Comey was sworn in as FBI director under President Obama. In a letter to McCabe, Chaffetz said he is seeking to review Comeys memos and other written materials so he can better understand Comeys communications with the White House and attorney generals office. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Banks want higher debit-card swipe fees, but an effort to allow them has crumbled By Jim Puzzanghera Banks had hoped Congress would let them charge merchants higher fees to process debit card purchases, but an effort to allow that has crumbled a victory for retailers and, possibly, shoppers who might have had to shoulder those costs. In the latest chapter of a long-running fight, a repeal of federal limits on so-called swipe fees no longer will be part of a House financial regulation bill, said the legislations author, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas). Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he decided to strip the provision from the bill because many lawmakers are balking at removing the limits. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Appeals court rules against Trump travel ban By David Lauter A federal appeals court has ruled against President Trumps travel ban, upholding a nationwide injunction barring the administration from enforcing the executive order. The ruling is the latest legal setback for Trump on the travel issue and, like several previous court rulings, the outcome rested heavily on his own words. Trumps order restricting travel from six majority-Muslim countries speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination, Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in his ruling. Read the 4th Circuits decision to uphold the block on Trumps travel ban The 10-3 ruling included numerous citations to campaign statements in which Trump called for a ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States. The plaintiffs who have challenged the travel order have argued that it is a disguised version of the Muslim ban that he called for during the campaign. Trumps statements provide direct, specific evidence of what motivated both EO-1 and EO-2, the court said, referring to ther first and second versions of the travel order: President Trumps desire to exclude Muslims from the United States. The 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Va., is one of two appeals courts that have recently heard arguments on the travel ban. A similar case is pending before the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Obama, in Berlin with Merkel, says world cant hide behind a wall By Erik Kirschbaum Hours before German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew to Brussels to meet with President Trump and other NATO heads of state, she rekindled an old acquaintance with Trumps predecessor, Barack Obama. About 70,000 people packed an avenue by Berlins landmark Brandenburg Gate on Thursday to hear the two leaders speak, with cheers and chants of Barack, Barack! breaking out when the former president took the stage. Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama spoke of the need for universal healthcare and a nuanced approach to immigration in response to security threats. This is a new world we live in we cant isolate ourselves, the former president declared, with Merkel looking on. We cant hide behind a wall. Obama spoke of this weeks deadly bombing at a pop concert in Manchester, England, saying leaders had to find ways to balance security fears and fundamental rights. One of the biggest challenges is how do you protect your country and your citizens from the kinds of things that we just saw in Manchester, he said. And how do you do it in a way that is consistent with your values and your ideals? Making his first European speech since his presidential term ended, Obama told the crowd he had spent the last four months trying to catch up with my sleep and devoting more time to his family. Im very proud of the work I did as president, he said to more cheers, adding that he considered healthcare reform a signature achievement. Republicans are now in the midst of trying to dismantle his Affordable Care Act. My hope was to get 100% of people healthcare, he said. We didnt quite achieve that, but we were able to get 20 million people healthcare who didnt have it before. Obamas speech was not timed to coincide with Trumps first visit to Europe as president, aides said. The invitation was extended before Trumps trip to Brussels the fourth leg on multi-stop tour was scheduled. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Macron says he pressed Trump on climate accord By Catherine Stupp French President Emmanuel Macron, who met President Trump for the first time on Thursday, said he urged the U.S. leader to respect the Paris climate accord. The White House, however, did not mention the issue in its readout on Trumps working lunch in Brussels with the newly elected French president. Macron told reporters as he headed into the meeting that climate change would be one of the issues he raised, along with concerns about terrorism and the economy. Afterward, at a news conference, the French president said that in his talk with Trump, he reiterated the importance of the landmark climate accord. No hasty decision on this subject should be taken by the U.S., Macron said. Our collective responsibility is to make sure this commitment remains a global commitment. Referring to the agreement, he added: Its one of a kind. In its readout, the White House said Trump urged Macron to meet NATO commitments on French defense spending and help ensure that the alliance is focused on counter-terrorism. It also said the two leaders talked about the importance of defeating Islamic State and other vital issues. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump lawyers ask Supreme Court to reject 2nd Amendment claim by men who lost gun rights over nonviolent crimes By David Savage President Trump speaks at an NRA event in Atlanta in April. ( Scott Olson / Getty Images) Trump administration lawyers are urging the Supreme Court to reject a 2nd Amendment claim that would restore the right to own a gun for two Pennsylvania men who were convicted more than 20 years ago of nonviolent crimes. The case of Sessions vs. Binderup puts the new administration in a potentially awkward spot, considering President Trumps repeated assurances during the campaign that he would protect gun ownership rights under the 2nd Amendment. But the Justice Department under Trump has embraced the same position in this case that was adopted under President Obama: to defend strict enforcement of a long-standing federal law that bars convicted criminals from ever owning a gun, even when their crimes did not involve violence. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Former Sen. Joe Lieberman withdraws from FBI director search By Associated Press (AFP/Getty Images) Former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut has withdrawn his name from consideration for the role of FBI director. Lieberman interviewed last week with President Trump, who publicly identified him as a leading candidate. But in a letter sent to the White House, Lieberman says hes pulling out. He says he wants to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, given Trumps hiring of one of Liebermans law partners to represent him in the investigation of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. The White House declined to comment. Several other people interviewed for the job have also withdrawn from consideration. Trump fired former FBI Director James B. Comey earlier this month. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print At NATO celebration, Trump tells allies to spend more on defense By Michael A. Memoli (Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images) President Trump used his first NATO meeting to rebuke member nations who fail to meet the trans-Atlantic alliances defense spending target, saying American taxpayers unfairly are left to pick up the slack. Speaking at dedication ceremonies for NATOs new headquarters, Trump noted that the defense budgets of 23 of the 28 members dont meet a target equal to 2% of each respective nations economic output, while the United States has spent more on defense in eight years than the other 27 combined. Many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, he said. We have to make up for the many years lost. By his scolding, Trump was directly delivering to NATO allies the criticism that was a staple of his nationalist campaign for president. But his lecture came at an event intended to be celebratory, showcasing unity and resolve for the nearly 70-year-old alliance: the dedication of its shining, glass-enclosed new headquarters in Belgiums capital. The ceremony also was meant to call attention to the fact that the only time NATO has invoked its collective defense agreement was on behalf of the United States, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Trump stood beside a section of wrenched steel from the downed World Trade Center Towers, a relic NATO calls the Article V artifact, to signify that post-9/11 invocation of the NATO charters article holding that an attack on any one member would be considered an attack on all. Speaking to reporters before the president arrived, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged that the alliance had a long way to go to meet its goals. But its much better than it was just two years ago, he said. The reality is that when we decrease defense spending when tensions are going down, as we did after the end of the Cold War, we have to be able to increase defense spending when tensions are going up. And now we see that tensions are going up. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Watch: Trump lectures NATO leaders on defense spending By L.A. Times staff As NATO leaders looked on, President Trump told NATO members that they must finally contribute their fair share of defense payments. President Trump lectured members of the NATO alliance on Thursday, urging them to pay their fair share on defense. As NATO leaders looked on during a ceremony at the alliances new headquarters, Trump said that member nations must finally contribute their fair share and meet their obligations. The president has been urging NATO leaders to live up to a 2011 decision to increase spending on defense to 2% of GDP by 2024. Trump said 23 of the 28 member nations are not paying what they should and that the situation is not fair to the people of the United States. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print President Trump promises to review Manchester investigation leaks after anger from Britain By Noah Bierman Trying to head off a diplomatic rift with Britain, President Trump on Thursday issued a statement promising a complete review of possible intelligence leaks related to this weeks deadly terrorist attack at a Manchester concert. Some British officials have suggested that U.S. officials are leaking sensitive information to American media outlets about the investigation into the attack. The New York Times posted forensic photographs collected from the scene of the Manchester concert bombing, which upset British officials. Whether the photographs were provided by U.S. officials or came from some other source is not publicly known. Trump avoided questions earlier Thursday about the possible leaks. His statement came just before he was set to address NATO at its new headquarters in a speech considered pivotal to his first trip abroad as president. British Prime Minister Theresa May was expected to confront Trump over the issue when they meet later in the day. May told reporters as she entered the NATO gathering that she would make clear to Trump that intelligence shared between law enforcement agencies must remain secure. We have a special relationship with the USA. Its our deepest defense and security partnership that we have, she said. Of course that partnership is built on trust, and part of that trust is knowing that intelligence can be shared confidently, and I will be making clear to President Trump today that intelligence shared between law enforcement agencies must remain secure. In his statement, Trump said that the alleged leaks coming out of government agencies are deeply troubling. These leaks have been going on for a long time, and my Administration will get to the bottom of this. The leaks of sensitive information pose a grave threat to our national security. The statement continued with a promise to request the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to launch a complete review of this matter, and if appropriate, the culprit should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Trump also reiterated said there is no relationship we cherish more than the special relationship between the two countries. Separate leaks within his own administration and related to investigations of his campaign ties to Russia have also been a source of anger to Trump. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Montanas congressional election: that assault charge, the Trump factor, and why is it on a weird day (Thursday)? By Mark Z. Barabak Its election day in Montana after a wild 24 hours, with voters deciding who will fill the House seat vacated when Republican Ryan Zinke left to head the Interior Department under President Trump. The contest Thursday has drawn nationwide attention and an extraordinary amount of money and that was before the GOP front-runner was accused of attacking a national political reporter. The events have turned the contest into one of the strangest in memory. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump ignores questions about intelligence sharing ahead of NATO meeting By Michael A. Memoli (Peter Dejoing / Associated Press) President Trump refused to answer questions Thursday about concerns among key allies on intelligence sharing with the United States, just as he prepares to join many of them here to inaugurate the new NATO headquarters. During a brief photo opportunity at his first meeting with Emmanuel Macron, Frances newly elected president, Trump for a second time remained silent as a reporter asked about a potential breakdown in the U.S.-United Kingdom intelligence-sharing relationship. British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to press Trump on the issue when they meet later Thursday, after the New York Times posted forensic photographs collected from the scene of the Manchester concert bombing. The acting U.S. ambassador to Britain told the BBC that the leaks were deeply distressing. Speaking to reporters at the site of a NATO leaders meeting, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also deflected questions about whether the incident has led him to reevaluate his nations intelligence-sharing arrangements. We will continue to work with all our allies to keep Canadians and all citizens around the world safe, he said. Ahead of a working lunch with Macron, Trump said terrorism was at the top of the agenda, while also offering his congratulations to the 39-year-old for his tremendous victory. All over the world, theyre talking about it, he said. In addition to terrorism and the economy, Macron said he planned to discuss climate change and energy. His nation hosted the climate summit that produced the agreement under which countries pledged to reduce their carbon emissions, of which the Trump administration is considering dropping out. Trump also ignored a question about whether former national security advisor Michael Flynn should cooperate with the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump has no news conference scheduled with reporters for the entirety of his eight-day foreign trip, which ends Saturday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump visits European Union headquarters; EU leaders cite some differences By Catherine Stupp Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said Thursday that differences remain between the Trump administration and the European Union on Russia, energy and trade. I am not 100 percent sure that we can say today that we have a common opinion about Russia, Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who is sometimes called the other Donald, said after a meeting with President Trump at EU headquarters. Tusk added that while some issues remain open, like climate and trade, the leaders agreed first and foremost on the need to combat terrorism. EU officials were skeptical in advance of Trumps visit. Their concerns were driven in part by the U.S. leaders positive stance on Britains vote last year to leave the bloc. Trump at the time called it a great idea. However, he has since spoken of the importance of European unity. European officials are also concerned that the Trump administration might withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit global warming, and turn away from trade arrangements with the EU. Trumps visit to Brussels marked the fourth leg of his first overseas trip. Before heading into the talks with Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, he spoke enthusiastically about his earlier stops in Saudi Arabia and at the Vatican. His ceremonial welcome last week in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, Trump told the European officials, was beyond anything anyones seen. The Saudis staged elaborate festivities including a traditional sword dance. And the president called his private encounter with Pope Francis on Wednesday very impressive. The president and the pontiff met privately for half an hour, and Francis presented Trump with gifts including a copy of a papal encyclical on climate change. The pope was terrific, Trump said. After the visit to the EUs sprawling new headquarters, Trump headed to a luncheon with the newly elected French president, Emmanuel Macron. The two men were meeting for the first time. During the French presidential campaign, Trump had praised Macrons far-right opponent Marine Le Pen for her tough positions on immigration and borders, but he had stopped short of endorsing her. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Manchester attack makes terrorism the focus of Trumps NATO meeting By Michael A. Memoli (Emmanuel Dunand / AFP/Getty Images) The deadly suicide bombing in Britain and threats of more attacks thrust counter-terrorism to the top of President Trumps agenda for talks with NATO leaders here on Thursday, buttressing his bid to enlist the alliance he had called obsolete to join the fight against Islamic State. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, anticipating the alliance meetings, told reporters flying with the president to Brussels from Rome, where Trump met Pope Francis earlier Wednesday, that Mondays attack in Britain is going to strengthen the resolve in this fight against terrorism. Tillerson stopped short of predicting that NATO would agree to formally join the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but said it would be a really important step if the alliance did so. The attack, which killed 22 people at a pop concert and was said to be the work of a 22-year-old British man whose family is from Libya, also figured in Trumps brief meeting with the pope at the Vatican. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Analysis says 23 million more people would be uninsured by 2026 under GOP healthcare bill By Noam N. Levey (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) An analysis released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finds that the Republican healthcare bill that passed the House earlier this month would nearly double the number of Americans without health insurance over the next decade. The report likely will complicate Republican efforts to get the controversial bill through the Senate. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement By throwing Americas lot in with Sunni Arabs, does Trump miss opportunities with Iran? By Tracy Wilkinson On his first official trip to the Middle East, President Trump has resoundingly thrown Americas lot in with Sunni Arab states and cast Shiite Iran as a global pariah, even as Iranians reelected a president who has offered to work with the West. During his two days in Riyadh, Trumps full-throated support for the autocratic monarchies in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, as well as his fierce denunciation of Iran, allowed him to claim an historic new coalition of interests. In the next two days, in Jerusalem, he doubled down and argued that Israel and the Arabs should join forces against Iran and along the way, resolve Israels conflict with Palestinians in a grand bargain that has eluded diplomats for decades. But as he departed for Rome on Tuesday, Trump had little to show beyond lofty rhetoric, symbolic visits and a shower of flattery from kings, potentates and a prime minister. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Fed officials appear ready for another interest rate hike and are considering how to reduce assets By Jim Puzzanghera Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen (Michael Dwyer / Associated Press) Most Federal Reserve monetary policymakers indicated they were ready for another small interest rate hike -- perhaps as soon as next month -- if economic data strengthened as expected following a weak winter, according to an account released Wednesday of their most recent meeting. Fed officials also considered a plan to start reducing the $4.5 trillion in Treasury and mortgage securities and other assets the central bank has purchased since 2008 in an attempt to stimulate the economy. The plan, which they said likely would begin later this year, would involve slowly allowing some of the maturing securities to be cashed in instead of reinvesting the money in new securities, the meeting minutes showed. The goal would be to avoid roiling financial markets and causing interest rates to jump. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print So whats with the president and Melania Trump holding, or not holding, hands? By Tom Kington First Lady Melania Trump does not say much in public, but her actions seemed to speak louder than words or at least sent tongues wagging when she appeared to rebuff the presidents proffered hand as the couple descended from their plane in Rome late Tuesday. As President Trump looked to take her hand on the steps of Air Force One, Melania Trump quickly moved it out of reach, raising it to her head to adjust her hair. That made for two such episodes in two days. She had appeared to brush Trumps hand away at the airport in Tel Aviv during the previous stop in the presidents foreign tour. Video of that scene, often accompanied by snarky commentary, quickly went viral. Compare that to Melania Trumps positively hands-on visit on Wednesday to a Rome childrens hospital, Bambino Gesu, following the couples visit with Pope Francis. After praying to a statue of the Madonna at the entrance to the hospital, the Catholic first lady smiled cheerfully and chatted to children, posing for selfies and providing a very happy, maternal presence, according to one onlooker. Great visiting you! Stay strong and positive! Much love, Melania Trump, she wrote in the visitors book. Staff at the hospital said Melania Trump had been buoyed by her meeting with Pope Francis, and further proof came when photos emerged of the Trumps quick visit to the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday. As the president and first lady stood together to admire Michelangelos 16th century fresco, the Last Judgment, they held hands. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print House Intelligence Committee will subpoena Michael Flynn, Schiff says By Sarah D. Wire The House Intelligence Committee is preparing to issue subpoenas to President Trumps former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, according to the committees ranking Democrat, following the lead of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said the House subpoenas will be designed to maximize our chance of getting the information we need for the committees investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. I think we need to use whatever compulsory [processes] necessary to get the information that he possesses, Schiff said. Earlier this week, Flynns lawyers said he would refuse separate Senate subpoenas for any records about his former business dealings with Russia, citing his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. The Senate committee then issued separate subpoenas to two of Flynns businesses, which the panel said were not entitled to 5th Amendment protections. A federal grand jury in Virginia also has issued subpoenas regarding Flynns business dealings with Turkey and Russia, and the newly appointed special counsel investigating the Russia matter, Robert Mueller III, is expected to focus on Flynns role as well. Given the criminal investigations, Schiff said the House panel is highly unlikely to grant Flynns earlier request, through his lawyers, for immunity in exchange for his testimony. He said the panel would need more information about what Flynn would say and whether the testimony would be truthful. It also would need to ensure that granting immunity wouldnt affect the special counsels ongoing investigation, he said. Thats not somthinge I think we would entertain until far later, if at all, said Schiff, a former prosecutor. Certainly count me as very skeptical that we would get to that point. Trump forced Flynn to resign as national security advisor in February after news accounts revealed Flynn had misled White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his contacts with Russian officials. Schiff spoke to reporters at a breakfast Wednesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Watch live: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testifies on Trumps budget Follow live coverage from Times education reporter Joy Resmovits: Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Israel acknowledges pinpoint change needed after Trump intelligence disclosure By Joshua Mitnick After a week of silence, Israel publicly acknowledged for the first time, though in oblique terms, that it was the source of sensitive intelligence that President Trump shared with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week in a White House meeting. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israels army radio on Wednesday that Israeli officials had carried out an internal pinpoint correction after discussing and reviewing the episode. Lieberman did not elaborate, and declined to confirm or deny whether Trumps remarks had endangered an agent of Israel. But he said his government considered the matter resolved. Everything that needed to be clarified with the friends in the U.S. was done, he said. All of the conclusions we had to draw it was all done. The Israeli defense ministers comments came the day after Trump wrapped up a two-day visit to Israel and the West Bank. When word of Trumps disclosure to Lavrov emerged in U.S. news reports last week, the defense minister and other Israeli leaders confined themselves to expressing public confidence in the two countries intelligence cooperation. Israel did not comment more directly, presumably to avoid embarrassing the U.S. president just before his visit. But Trump himself mentioned the controversy anyway, in an awkward on-camera moment during the trip. With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu biting his lip alongside, Trump volunteered to reporters being hustled out of a news appearance: Just so you know, I never mentioned the word or name Israel. Never mentioned it during the conversation. News reports, however, had not said the president mentioned Israel in connection with the intelligence, only that the specificity of his remarks to Lavrov would in all likelihood have allowed the Russians to determine the source. The White House at first denied Trumps disclosure to Lavrov had occurred as reported, but then the president himself tweeted about it, saying he had the right to share information as he deemed fit. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump calls meeting with Pope Francis an honor By Michael A. Memoli "A very great honor," Trump says to the pope when they began their meeting in the pope's private study pic.twitter.com/NGsbsahAyT Carol Lee (@carolelee) May 24, 2017 President Trump held a half-hour private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday, declaring it a great honor despite their past public dissension. The unconventional Republican and the first Jesuit pontiff made for an unlikely pair in the Vaticans Apostolic Palace, where Catholic leaders have presided or centuries and American presidents have come or decades. Francis was silent as the two sat across one another at the popes wooden desk to begin the audience at approximately 8:30 a.m. local time. Exactly a half-hour later, the ringing of a bell signified the end of the private encounter. For the White House, the Vatican stop caps a tour through key sites of the worlds three major religions, following stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel, designed to promote tolerance and a united approach to terrorism. When you put it all together, youre really showing that this problem of radical extremism is one of the great problems of our time, a senior Trump aide told reporters Tuesday en route from Israel to Rome, briefing anonymously as is common White House practice. By putting everybody together you can really build a coalition and show that its not a Muslim problem, its not a Jewish problem, its not a Catholic problem, its not a Christian problem, it really is a world problem. In an exchange of gifts after their private meeting, Francis offered the president a medal by a Roman artist of an olive, a symbol of peace. We can use peace, Trump responded. Where Trumps and Francis interests may align on peace and combating terrorism, they disagree sharply on issues like immigration and poverty. Like Trump, the Argentine pope has shown a predilection for unscripted comments that have shaken the staid Vatican bureaucracy, as when he criticized candidate Trumps proposed stricter immigration policies including a border wall as not Christian. Trump fired back, calling the popes remarks disgraceful. Any animosity was not apparent Wednesday, as a meeting between Francis and a larger U.S. delegation ended. Thank you. I wont forget what you said, Trump said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Proposed budget would deeply cut State Department and its programs By Tracy Wilkinson (AFP / Getty Images) The State Department leadership voiced support for President Trumps proposed budget, which would impose deep cuts on spending for diplomacy and foreign aid, but critics vowed to fight to restore the funds in Congress. In a statement, the department said the presidents $37.6-billion request for it and for the U.S. Agency for International Development would support a leaner, more efficient government in line with Trumps America first mantra. If approved by Congress, that would represent a reduction of roughly 30% from the current fiscal year. Nongovernmental agencies that receive State Department support to carry out humanitarian and other work around the globe expressed deep alarm. The State Department statement said its new priorities would include efforts to counter terrorism, support Israel, promote border security and battle transnational crime and the spread of infectious diseases. The statement makes no mention of women-empowerment programs or efforts to fight climate change, issues that rose to prominence under the Obama administration. The proposed budget would allow the United States to remain engaged in the United Nations, but officials would seek a more fair distribution of the funding burden, the statement said. And it would eliminate direct funding for quasi- and non-governmental organizations that serve niche missions. The American Jewish World Service, which fights poverty all over the world through 450 local organizations, said much of its work would be jeopardized. At a time when poverty, human rights abuses, famines and conflicts are wreaking havoc globally, said the groups president, Robert Bank, the United States must not abdicate its long bipartisan tradition of providing development assistance and diplomatic support to the most vulnerable people around the world. Mercy Corps, a U.S.-based development and advocacy organization that works in 40 countries, said gutting development programs was short-sighted and absolutely shameful and could put millions of lives at risk. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, called the budget cruel and mean-spirited and said it would force the United States to abandon our global role as a champion for freedom, democracy and the rule of law. If President Trump thinks the United States can shrink into a defensive crouch without long-term repercussions, hes sorely mistaken, Engel said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Sessions first proposed budget: A crackdown on immigration and violent crime By Joseph Tanfani Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) In the first budget proposal under President Trump and Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department is seeking hundreds of millions in new funding to pay for an immigration crackdown on the border and a surge in resources to fight violent crime. Like the Department of Homeland Security budget, which includes billions for expanded immigration detention, more border agents and technology to catch those crossing the border illegally, the Justice Department budget is a reflection of the new get-tough policies promised by Sessions. The budget asks for another 300 federal prosecutors 230 to focus on violent criminals and gangs, and another 70 to concentrate on filing criminal charges on those crossing the border illegally. The shift in the spending priorities are in line with other policy changes ordered by Sessions, including a renewed focus on seeking stiff mandatory minimum sentences for drugs and other crimes. The $27.7-billion budget seeks 450 new attorneys and support workers for the immigration courts, which are now clogged with a backlog of 560,000 cases. There would also be another $50 million for increased immigration detention, plus 40 new U.S. marshal jobs to help take care of the expected increase in immigrants heading to federal court. With Trumps immigration initiatives tied up in federal court, the budget seeks another 15 lawyers to handle that litigation, plus 12 more to help handle property acquisition needed for Trumps promised Southwestern border wall. Violent-crime enforcement would get another $198 million, with the largest amount, $70 million, going toward setting up more anti-violence and gang task forces. Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod J. Rosenstein said more resources are needed because of what he called an alarming increase in the rates of murder and other violent crimes. The department is also asking for another $40 million for more drug enforcement to combat the opioid epidemic, which he said is spreading havoc throughout the United States. Sessions new policies should lead to an increase in prison population, so the budget contains funding to fully open a new supermax prison in Thomson, Ill., with room for 1,500 to 2,000 inmates. The department also wants to put more resources behind the FBIs efforts to counter cyber attacks and to figure out ways around encryption technology, along with another 50 agents to counter foreign intelligence and threats from homegrown terrorists. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Economists say Trumps budget proposal doesnt add up By Don Lee President Trumps inaugural budget proposal claims to eliminate the nations deficit in 10 years, thanks largely to faster economic growth that it projects will come from the presidents sweeping tax cuts. Never mind the overly optimistic projections on economic growth. Or that Trumps tax overhaul has not happened yet. Even allowing for both, economists say Trumps budget still does not add up. The administration is counting on generating $2.1 trillion in additional revenue over 10 years from better economic growth. But Trumps budget proposal leaves out the cost, or the revenue lost, from the massive tax cuts. In other words, the economic gains that the administration has said it would use to pay for tax reform is apparently also being counted on to pay for deficit reduction. Some people call that double-counting. You cant use the same money twice, 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. Lawrence Summers, former Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and top economic advisor to President Obama, called it an elementary but egregious accounting error. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said the proposal did not necessarily mean there was an outright omission or a double-counting. Its possible that the administration is looking for such strong economic growth to drive significantly extra revenue from payroll taxes, he said, or it could be that Trump officials were using different base lines from which they were drawing their results. But on the face of it, he said, the budget and tax-plan numbers dont seem to match. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated that Trumps plan to cut corporate and individual taxes would cost the federal government about $5.5 trillion over 10 years, adding more than $6 trillion to the national debt. Details of Trumps tax overhaul, however, are still being developed, and its possible that the administration is assuming a revenue-neutral tax plan although experts say big tax cuts never pay for themselves. On Tuesday, Mick Mulvaney, Trumps budget chief, did not provide a direct answer or explanation to questions about double-counting. Instead, he told reporters that you have to make assumptions about a budget. He went on to say that one of the assumptions that was not made was to take into account the uncollected taxes every year, which he said amounted to $486 billion last year. And we dont assume an additional penny of that being closed as part of our tax reform, said Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Of the 3% annual economic growth assumption, Mulvaney responded that the Obama administration in its first couple of years had based its budget on growth of 4.5%. In fact, Obamas first budget proposal as president, in May 2009, assumed economic growth of between 4% and 4.6% for the budget years 2011 to 2013. Since the Great Recession ended in mid-2009, the U.S. economy has been growing on average about 2% a year, and the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve and most private economists see the economy advancing at about 2% annually over the next 10 years. Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice chair and director of the Office of Management and Budget under Clinton, said its true that the Obama administrations growth assumptions proved too optimistic. But she noted that those projections were not unreasonable for that time and period in the economic cycle. Then, there was greater potential for growth with unemployment high and many more people than today available for work. Today, the economy is nearing its eighth year of expansion, and the jobless rate is 4.4%, at or near full employment. With the aging of baby boomers, labor force growth slowing, and lackluster productivity gains, economists see the current moderate growth persisting for the foreseeable future. This has been a very long period of growth and were at the high end already, Rivlin said. If we are so lucky to have continuous, steady growth, its not likely to be at 3% or 4% or 5%. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Who wins and who loses in Trumps budget The White House Office of Management and Budget sent Congress the presidents inaugural budget today, projecting spending and revenues over the next 10 years. The fiscal package, which include a partial skinny budget from March, reflects President Trumps priorities for the nation, but lawmakers are sure to reject many of the deep cuts in domestic and foreign affairs programs. The departments of State, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Education and Housing, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, are the biggest losers. The winners are the Pentagon and Homeland Security programs. Even with the increases in defense spending and large tax cuts, the administration projects that economic growth spurred by tax cuts will erase annual deficits by 2027. Take a look at some of the numbers released today. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement What that Montana special congressional race will and wont tell us about Trump and his political problems By Mark Z. Barabak Democrat Rob Quist is a quintessential cowboy who doesnt seem to relish campaigning in Montanas special congressional election. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) On Thursday, the political world will eagerly look to Montana and a closely fought congressional race for the latest test of Democratic strength and Republican resilience in the turbulent age of Trump. The major candidates and outside groups have sunk more than $8 million into the contest, a huge sum in a state where $250,000 pays for a robust week of television advertising. But for all that money and all the outside interest, the election will turn less on national trends than circumstances close to home: on the personalities and histories of the main contestants, their different campaign styles and, perhaps most of all, on who is regarded as the more authentic Montanan. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Terrorist attack in England has conservative media focused on safety of allies By Kurtis Lee (Dave Thompson/Getty images ) Its a sight witnessed all too often: an explosion, screams, people sprinting to safety. Late Monday night, this was the scene at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, after a man with possible ties to Islamic State militants set off a suicide bomb, killing 22 people and, once again, setting in motion a global discourse on how to fight terrorism. President Trump, while visiting Bethlehem, said the attack was committed by evil losers in life. Throughout the campaign and early in his presidency, Trump has said defeating the Islamic State is a top priority. (He reiterated that point in a speech Sunday in Saudi Arabia, urging Muslim leaders to plot their own course in combating terrorism.) In recent months, with attacks in Berlin, Paris and London, conservative media have questioned the safety of Europe and warned that the United States could face similar attacks. With the latest attack, some on the right are again homing in on the safety of our allies. Here are some of todays headlines: 2017 has seen a terror attack attempted in Europe every nine days (Breitbart) The attack in Manchester blankets the home page of the right-wing website. Europe has indeed been the location of high-profile attacks this year. In Paris last month, Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on the Champs-Elysees in which a man fired an automatic weapon, killing a police officer. And in March, a man plowed his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, near the British Parliament in London, and then fatally stabbed a police officer. In all, four people were killed and dozens injured in what police called a terrorist attack. The Breitbart piece is an analysis of different terrorist attacks attempted and carried out in Europe since January. Attacks and attempted attacks have taken place in Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and Germany, on average every nine days, the piece says. Pences message of civility and open debate lost on those who most needed to hear it (Weekly Standard) The debate over free speech on colleges campuses continues. In recent months, conservative speakers have canceled speeches on college campuses in the face of anticipated protests. And others, who have opted to speak, have faced vocal backlash. On Sunday, as Vice President Mike Pence began to address students at the University of Notre Dame commencement, several dozen stood and walked out of the ceremony. In his speech, Pence talked about civility and open debate, and this piece argues that the m Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 10 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbekistans Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov has met with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein in Tashkent, the Uzbek Foreign Ministrys press service said May 10. A delegation of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), led by Zeid Raad Al Hussein, will stay in Uzbekistan on an official visit until May 12. The aim of the visit is to discuss the current state of cooperation between Uzbekistan and OHCHR, as well as possible areas for future cooperation in the spheres of mutual interest. During the meeting, the two sides discussed the current state and prospects of relations between Uzbekistan and the UN and its institutions, including the OHCHR, and expressed their mutual interest in further development of cooperation within various formats. Kamilov stated that protection of human rights is considered as one of priorities of the policy of reform and development in Uzbekistan. To date, Uzbekistan has ratified 10 major UN human rights conventions, and the country regularly submits reports to relevant structures on fulfillment of its obligations in the human rights field. According to the Foreign Ministry, the issues of international and regional agenda were also discussed during the meeting. This is the first visit of Al Hussein to Central Asia since he became a UN high commissioner for human rights on September 1, 2014. A Burbank resident who has long admired the work of notable primatologists will spend her summer studying bamboo lemurs in Madagascar on the path to becoming a primatologist, or someone who studies primates, herself. As a girl, Emma Thurau would dress up in a safari outfit and lecture her parents on the importance of saving primates from extinction. She also studied the works of Jane Goodall and Alison Jolly, two noted primatoligists. What really intrigued me is the works of Alison Jolly, who is the first in the 1960s to go to Madagascar to study about the biology, conversation, ecology and social behavior of lemurs. I read all of her books, Thurau said in a statement. At Cal State Los Angeles, where Thurau is currently a student, professors shared their enthusiasm with her about primate behavior and genetics, furthering her pursuit to conduct her own research in the field. The university awarded Thurau a $1,000 grant to conduct research on lemurs in Madagascar as part of its Phi Kappa Phi award. She will graduate next week with a bachelors degree in anthropology. After her three-month expedition this summer, she will attend graduate school in Illinois with plans to focus her research on wild-lemur behavior and ultimately return to Madagascar to establish a field site. I am looking forward to exploring Madagascar to learn about the behavior of these endangered primates and to understand their natural habitat, she said. kelly.corrigan@latimes.com Twitter: @kellymcorrigan Laguna Beach appears on its way to banning smoking in any public place in town an action the city says would be the strictest smoking regulation in Orange County. The City Council on Tuesday unanimously supported a proposed ordinance that would expand a ban that currently covers public areas such as beaches, parks, outdoor dining areas and restrooms. Under the ordinance, smoking also would not be allowed on sidewalks, streets and alleys and in multi-unit residential common areas such as pools, laundry rooms and hallways. The council must pass the ordinance on a second reading before it becomes effective. Electronic cigarettes and other vaporizers also would be prohibited anywhere smoking is not allowed. Residents have complained to the council and city staff about secondhand smoke on sidewalks and in alleys and parking lots. Councilman Robert Zur Schmiede said the ordinance advances civilization. It recognizes smoking is a bad thing, he said. The ordinance is already balanced. It still allows smoking in some locations, such as in or outside a private residence and inside a car. A handful of Laguna Beach High School students urged the council to support the ordinance, citing not only secondhand smoke but also unsightly used cigarette butts. My main reason for supporting this ordinance is limiting secondhand smoke exposure as well as improving ambiance when you go to restaurants, student Catrin Williams told the council. Catrin said her family likes eating at Zinc Cafe & Market on Ocean Avenue, which has an outdoor patio. Frequently when people get off the bus [at a nearby stop on Broadway Street], they will stand there and take a smoke break, she said. That wind carries [the smoke] right over to the restaurant. For my family, that one weekend a month when we go to lunch with my grandma is kind of ruined by that. Laguna Beach, like most Orange County cities, received an F in an American Lung Assn. 2017 report on overall tobacco control. Nearby cities such as Laguna Woods and Laguna Hills had C grades due to more-stringent non-smoking rules for housing and outdoor spaces, according to a Laguna Beach staff report. For example, Laguna Woods does not allow smoking on balconies or patios of residential facilities, covered and semi-covered carports shared by more than one residential unit, and ticket, boarding and waiting areas for public transportation. Laguna Hills bans smoking within 20 feet of all outdoor dining and patio areas and on elevators, escalators and stairways. Laguna Beachs proposed ordinance allows owners of hotels, motels and bed and breakfast inns to decide whether to allow smoking in areas such as guest rooms and pools. Some cities have limited the number of motel and hotel rooms that can be reserved for smoking. In Laguna Woods, no more than 20% of rooms can be designated as smoking spaces. bryce.alderton@latimes.com Twitter: @AldertonBryce On the heels of a failed attempt by a Huntington Beach school board to secure a restraining order against him, an illegal immigration activist called Tuesday for the board presidents resignation. Dozens of community members, parents and out-of-town activists packed the Ocean View School District board meeting. Some supported President Gina Clayton-Tarvin, while others complained she attempted to stifle free speech by seeking a court order against the activist when his supporters made comments on his Facebook page that she found threatening and he allegedly liked. Still others sounded off on immigration, an issue not before the board. The activist, Raymond Herrera, who lives in Victorville, has attended Ocean View meetings for more than a month. In response to what officials believed to be threatening comments at public meetings and on social media, the district decided to pursue a restraining order against him on behalf of Clayton-Tarvin. In a court filing, Clayton-Tarvin cited two videos posted on Herreras Facebook page and what she described as threatening comments from his followers as reasons for feeling fear and anxiety that Mr. Herrera poses a real and objective danger to her well-being. However, Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin, citing free-speech concerns and Clayton-Tarvins position as an elected official, denied the request for a temporary restraining order April 3. Trina Trac, left, and Rachel Potucek hold signs up during the public comments section of an Ocean View School Board meeting on Tuesday. (Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot) During public comments Tuesday, Herrera also asked for other members of the board who have voiced opposition to his views to resign. The board did not respond. Clayton-Tarvin was not present because of a family emergency, officials said. Im a little bit sad to see that Gina Tarvin actually showed her true colors today, that of a coward, Herrera said. Shes not here today after stirring up the pot for the last month and a half Ive been here. He continued as if speaking to Clayton-Tarvin directly: Your days as board president of this school board of this district are near an end. Clayton-Tarvin said Wednesday morning that she has no plans to resign from her position on the board. I have been given the great honor by the voters to serve a second term and I was reelected with an overwhelming margin, she said. I am proud and thankful to the voters to give me the opportunity to represent them and the children of the Ocean View School District. Herrera contended that the district violated his First Amendment rights and were attempting to stifle his right to free speech by pursuing a restraining order. The district issued a press release last week clarifying its reasons for pursuing the restraining order. Ocean View, the release stated, is obligated to take cautionary measures, which may include seeking restraining orders on behalf of its employees and officials, upon being made aware of a threat of violence that could potentially endanger members of the OVSD community. However, the statement did not mention a judge had denied the request, which angered some of Herreras supporters. Chanell Temple, center, screams at Naui Huitzilopochtli, left, as Raymond Herrera records the interaction outside an Ocean View School Board meeting on Tuesday. (Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot) When you attack Raymond, you attack all of America, Herrera said. Some attendees clapped after Herreras comments. Others yelled sit down and held up signs reading Make America kind again and Stay strong, we resist racism. Clayton-Tarvin on Wednesday defended the districts decision to pursue the restraining order. Free speech is one thing. Even hate speech is protected, she said, but when youre talking about speech that could incite violence, thats completely different. The health, safety and welfare of our students, employees and other board members is paramount. Its my first priority. Huntington Beach police intervened when Herrera, one of his supporters and an opponent faced off in the parking lot outside the board room following public comments. The group held cameras toward one another as they traded verbal jabs before police calmed the conflict and Herrera left. Several community members and parents spoke in favor of the board and noted their support for Clayton-Tarvin. Parent Katheryn Clark thanked the district for its support of Oak View Elementary School, which is located in a primarily Latino neighborhood in Huntington. Clark said the issue with Herrera is not about freedom of speech, and the district should do whatever it can to protect students from harassment. I know what its like to face discrimination because my mother was a shade of brown that people did not like, she said. It is astounding that its happening in todays day and age. I cant believe we are back to where I was and these children are having to face and endure this sort of discrimination and racism. Clayton-Tarvin said the district has the legal responsibility to educate every child who registers to attend school. I believe that his anger that hes projecting upon our school board is completely misdirected, she said. His complaints and dissatisfaction should be lodged with the federal government and not the school board. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN About 30 demonstrators, some holding signs that read Putins favorite congressman, Dump Dana 2018 and Just say no to Trumpcare, gathered outside Rep. Dana Rohrabachers office in downtown Huntington Beach on Tuesday afternoon to protest the Republican congressmans support for President Trumps policies. The gathering was organized by Indivisible OC 48, a left-leaning group of constituents in Rohrabachers 48th Congressional District who have planned protests outside his office at 101 Main St. since Trumps inauguration. They started at the office and marched down the street to the pier. Indivisible OCs aim has been to coax the congressman into holding a town hall meeting to discuss what Indivisible members say are troubling issues stemming from the White House: the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trumps attitude toward Russia, and a perceived general nastiness toward minorities and the working class. Its appalling, said Newport Beach resident Jim Percival. If youre representing the people you should make yourself available instead of hiding. People like Rohrabacher dont give a hoot about the little people. Bethany Webb, an Indivisible OC organizer, holds a milk carton bearing Rep. Dana Rohrabachers picture at a protest outside his Huntington Beach office Tuesday. (Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot) In February, a scuffle at Rohrabachers office resulted in injury to a staff member and a 2-year-old girl, who was knocked in the head by a door. Rohrabacher responded to the incident by saying the activists were involved in political thuggery. Since then, activists said they have remained outside of his office during their demonstrations. A few people Tuesday held milk cartons bearing a picture of Rohrabacher and reading Have you seen Dana? While activists expressed disdain over the current administration, the House of Representatives recent passage of the American Health Care Act, which would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, drew fresh ire from the group. People chanted Shame on you and When healthcare is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back. Mike Fowler protests outside Rep. Dana Rohrabachers office in Huntington Beach on Tuesday. (Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot) If the American Health Care Act is approved by the Senate and signed into law, it could lead to an estimated 24 million fewer Americans with health insurance and could affect those on Medicaid and with employer-provided health insurance, the Los Angeles Times reported. Rohrabacher, who supported the act, wrote in a press release following his vote that the Affordable Care Act made healthcare too expensive for many Americans and officials needed to address a looming crisis. The Republican healthcare proposal takes us in the right direction, he wrote. What we sent to the Senate may not satisfy everyone, but its vastly superior to the failing Obamacare monstrosity. On Tuesday, Rohrabacher said hes hesitant to host an in-person town hall meeting. Instead, he plans to continue to host individual meetings with constituents and conduct town hall meetings by telephone, which he said allows more people to participate. He said the activists aim is to create their own political reality. These are the types of people who make town hall meetings impossible, Rohrabacher said. Aaron McCall, an organizer with Indivisible OC 48, said hes primarily concerned about the bills effect on individuals with preexisting conditions and the increasing cost of health insurance premiums. My entire family has preexisting conditions, he said. This is going to affect the people in this district immensely. Alex Mathews takes video of protesters outside Rep. Dana Rohrabachers office in Huntington Beach on Tuesday. (Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot) Demonstrators were expected to gather again at the pier Tuesday evening to host a die-in, in which individuals would lie on yoga mats with tombstones noting their preexisting conditions and eventual causes of death. Linda Clough of Costa Mesa said Trump and Rohrabachers views on climate change concern her the most. Rohrabacher has been openly skeptical of global warming, disputing scientists theory that man-made carbon emissions are primarily to blame. Clough, who was an activist during the Vietnam War era, said she was motivated by Trumps election to get involved with her local Indivisible OC chapter. Ive seen a lot in my lifetime, she said, but Ive never been as terrified as I am now with this administration. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN UPDATES: 7:50 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. This article was originally published at 5:50 p.m. As part of Glendale Community College officials hopes to expand the Garfield Campus in south Glendale, officials recently delivered letters to residents living nearby to gauge their interest in selling their properties to the college. The letters last month went to owners of 14 different residential properties located on the same block as the Garfield Campus, said Anthony Culpepper, executive vice president of administrative services for the college. The properties are located on South Chevy Chase Drive, East Garfield Avenue, South Adams Street and East Acacia Avenue. The letters state that once appraisals have been completed, college officials will consider making offers that are equivalent to the appraisal valuation of the relevant property, Culpepper said in an email. If any of these residential properties are purchased by the college, the college will meet the relocation needs of those who presently reside in the properties. The effort to expand the campus follows voter approval of Measure GC, a $325 million facilities bond, in November. The money provides officials the means to make extensive upgrades to the colleges infrastructure, classrooms and technology and the ability to purchase property to extend its reach in Glendale. Also in April, the colleges board of trustees agreed to hire the Glendale-based California Eminent Domain Law Group. However, in the colleges pursuit for property, Supt./President David Viar said hes hopeful the college will not attempt to force home sales. We do not intend to go to eminent domain, Viar recently told the trustees. We do not wish that to be the end product, but in the event we do, government entities must follow a certain number of steps before that is done. In order to make sure that the college follows all legal requirements, of state and federal laws to purchase property, we have engaged the eminent domain law group with expertise in that area to guide us through the process so we do it appropriately, and then, with great hope, and great care, avoid actually doing eminent domain. kelly.corrigan@latimes.com Twitter: @kellymcorrigan A 25-year-old homeless man attempted to gain entry at Franklin Magnet School in Glendale on Monday afternoon, prompting a brief lockdown of the campus, according to authorities. Shortly before 3 p.m., the man tried to enter the campus, but was stopped by the schools front office staff, according the Glendale Unified spokeswoman Kristine Nam. She said the man was not on a list of allowed visitors and was barred from entering the school. Some kind of disturbance ensued, and police were called to the scene. When police arrived, the school was placed on a short lockdown out of an abundance of caution, according to Nam. She said the school had already let out for the day, but an after-class program with a small number of students was being held at the time of the incident. Officers with the Glendale Police Department approached the man, who police describe as homeless, outside of the school near the intersection of Winchester Avenue and Lake Street, according to police spokeswoman Tahnee Lightfoot. He was arrested on suspicion of trespassing. Its unknown why he entered the campus. andy.nguyen@latimes.com Twitter: @Andy_Truc UPDATES: 11 a.m.: This article was updated with information about the man. This article was originally published May 9 at 2:05 p.m. A politician quoted in a national news story recently said he was wracking his brain to recall something. A few days later, a different national news publication reported that a senator had honed in on a person involved in an investigation. A few weeks earlier, a major international news outlet reported on an elected official whod planned to forego taking a salary. Language experts will tell you that English is not in decline. Changes over time look like problems only in the short term. A long-term view proves that gradual changes in word use are just part of the natural evolution of the language. But those language experts are linguists and scholars. Theyre not editors. They track usage trends, not editing standards. I, on the other hand, am an editor. As such, I can report that Im starting to see a slide. That first typo was in the venerable Atlantic magazine. The second was in The Hill. And the third, well, I forget (sorry). It was a news outlet of similar stature. Though my data collection and analysis are far from scientific, anecdotally, the picture isnt pretty. So as I watch my only marketable skills get devalued on the open market, heres the rundown on these three editing errors, plus a few more that crop up. The words to wrack ones brain would go unnoticed by most readers. But its exactly the kind of word-choice issue that makes us copy editors feel worthwhile. So the article sent me running to my reference guides, eager to confirm whether the rule Id long ago committed to memory had in fact been properly committed. It had. Heres how Merriam-Websters defines the verb wrack: to utterly ruin; wreck. Its possible to do that to ones brain, I suppose. But a quick check of rack puts that possibility in perspective: to torture on the rack; to cause to suffer torture, pain, anguish, or ruin; to stretch or strain violently. If thats not enough to convince you that the writer wanted rack instead of wrack, usage guides and editing stylebooks dont mess around on the subject: To wrack is to severely or completely destroy: a storm-wracked ship, advises the Chicago Manual of Style. To rack is to torture by means of stretching with an instrument rack the prisoner until he confesses or to stretch beyond capacity to rack ones brain. To hone in on something is common wording. In fact, a liberal reading of a few good dictionaries justifies it. But for copy editing purposes, hone in on just wont do. The original term, to home in on something conjures the idea of a homing pigeon. You set your course for a target and head straight to it. As for to forego a salary Im not sure Ive ever seen this word used correctly. To do without something, you forgo it. Theres no E in that one. The spelling with an E is also a word. Heres Websters New World College Dictionary: forego: to go before in place, time or degree; precede. I should point out that Websters also allows it as a synonym of forgo. But, come on. This reminds me of the term people use when someone does a magic trick or pulls off a clever con: slight of hand. Thats wrong (even my Microsoft Word spell-checker knows that). Those writers actually wanted the word sleight, which means cunning or craft used in deceiving; skill or dexterity. Along these same lines, you wreak havoc, you dont reek it. You reign supreme even as you rein in spending. And you get a sneak peek, not peak (and if I gauged you wrong on that last one, I dont want to know about it). JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of The Best Punctuation Book, Period. She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com. It was 1989 when La Canada residents Jerold and Dorothy Beeve first stepped foot on the sandy shores of Fiji, where theyd booked the second leg of a second honeymoon trip at the chic Turtle Island Resort. The Glendale ophthalmologist and his registered nurse wife were looking to relax and enjoy their 25th wedding anniversary in the lush accommodations afforded by their hotel, with occasional trips to nearby islands. When they saw the locals working on or near the resort, and noticed many were living in poverty and suffering from eye problems and serious vision impairment, the Beeves felt compelled to help. We thought weve got to do something for these great, wonderful people, Jerold Beeve recalled. We know they need help, so weve got to do it. They started the Beeve Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is bringing badly needed medical supplies and vision care to people living on the island. And from that one honeymoon visit, the lives of tens of thousands of Fijians have been changed for the better. Since 1991, the foundation and its medical team has aided about 3% of the countrys entire population, offering 28,603 eye exams, 27,714 pairs of eyeglasses, 1,756 cataract extractions with lens implants, 55 corneal transplants and 1,005 other procedures. The couple was recently at their La Canada home preparing for their final philanthropic medical trip to Fiji. As the years have worn on, the Beeves have developed a transition plan they hope will allow the foundations commitment to continue uninterrupted. Talks with people from the Eye Institute at Loma Linda University, where Jerold Beeve and ophthalmologist son Scott earned their degrees, have been promising, according to Dorothy Beeve. Both say the work is important and must be continued. And Fijians agree. In February, the Beeves took a special trip to the South Pacific island, where President George Konrote presented them as Honorary Officers of the Order of Fiji, a designation awarded non-Fijians for distinguished service of a high degree to the country and its citizens. He said, Thank you for the years you have given to our people, Dorothy Beeve said of the ceremony. The couple have come a long way from the early years when, without a partnering hospital, they asked permission to perform operations in their hotel room. A dining room table covered by padding served as an operating table, and a small bendable lamp provided overhead light. The foundations first cataract surgeries were performed inside a thatched wood and straw hut built by Turtle Island owner Richard Evanson for that purpose. He saw what was happening people being led into our rooms and walking out afterward with great big smiles on their faces, said Jerold Beeve, who wrote a book published in 2012 under the title Praying With My Eyes Wide Open, about the couples life work. Today, a team of doctors and staff members work in conjunction with Fijis Nadi Hospital to perform operations and procedures, while pre-screenings are conducted at nearby Lautoka Hospital. Jerold and Dorothy Beeve will be taking supplies on their last 5,500-mile work trip, and hope to start training their replacements. But talk of transition is bittersweet it marks a new beginning for the Beeve Foundations mission but also an ending of something the couple admits has been close to their hearts for so long. Its not a good feeling, Jerold Beeve said of the prospect of stepping back from a passion and a calling. Youre making people happy, but your body doesnt last forever. Its very, very emotional, Dorothy Beeve agreed. Because weve made some wonderful friends. This is a big part of our lives. FYI: For more on the Beeve Foundation, and the work of Dorothy and Jerold Beeve, visit fiji4sight.org. sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 10 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will visit China May 11-13 at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, said the press service of the Uzbek Foreign Ministry May 10. During the visit, Mirziyoyev is expected to meet Xi Jinping, Premier of the State Council of China Li Keqiang, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress of China Zhang Dejiang and other officials of the country. During these meetings, it is planned to discuss the state and prospects of Uzbek-Chinese bilateral relations, priority areas for strengthening and progressive development of long-term partnership between the two countries. The sides will also exchange views on the current regional and international issues. The program of the visit also envisages Uzbek presidents meeting with representatives of leading Chinese companies and firms, where the sides will consider opportunities for joint implementation of mutually beneficial projects in Uzbekistan with the use of modern technologies. Following the high level talks, it is planned to make a joint statement, and sign a number of intergovernmental, interdepartmental and other documents aimed at deepening of Uzbek-Chinese ties. Meanwhile, businessmen from the two countries are expected to sign important trade, economic, investment and financial contracts and agreements. South Koreas new president took office on Wednesday promising a more accessible and trustworthy administration and signaling an immediate change in tone on dealing with North Koreas emerging nuclear threat. Moon Jae-in, a lawyer and former opposition leader, took the oath about midday roughly 12 hours after he declared victory in a dramatic, two-month election contest to replace the countrys disgraced former president, Park Geun-hye. In a national address, Moon sought to reassure South Koreans that their new president would be different, especially after a tumultuous several months of scandal and political upheaval that sent millions of them into the streets, week after week, seeking change. Advertisement I will set a new example as the president of the Republic of Korea. I will make my utmost efforts to become a president who will be viewed as a success by the public and by history, he said, while also pledging to avoid a corruption scandal like the one that ensnared Park and her aides. I will become a clean president. I take office empty-handed, and I will leave office the same way. A key portion of his speech focused on his approach to North Korea, an emerging nuclear state despite the objections of the international community, and alleviating tensions in the region. He pledged a diplomatic and more conciliatory approach toward Pyongyang, offering to go to the rivals capital under the right circumstances. Moons approach on North Korea could be closer to the former sunshine policy, when two previous administrations sought to improve cross-border relations through economic exchanges and direct dialogue with few conditions. North Korea is a much different place now, however, under relatively new leader Kim Jong Un, the grandson of the authoritarian states communist patriarch. He has dramatically increased missile testing and nuclear development and has pledged to seek the ability to strike the United States mainland someday. He will soon realize there are major constraints because the security and geopolitical landscape is very different now than when he was last in government, Duyeon Kim, a visiting senior fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum in Seoul, said of Moon. She said reinvigorating inter-Korean dialogue and exchange shouldnt be terrible, however, for American interests. They might even help reduce tensions, as long as they dont violate sanctions and cause strains and cleavages in the alliance, Duyeon Kim said. South Koreas newly elected leader its 19th president pledged to have serious discussions about security with the United States, a key ally, and China, his nations chief trading customer. He said he would also travel immediately to Washington, if needed. Relations between the three countries have been strained in recent months over the American deployment of a controversial defensive missile system on the peninsula known as THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. It has frustrated China, prompting recent economic retaliation. The Trump administration has also frustrated some in South Korea with recent gaffes involving Korean history and the delayed perhaps botched deployment of an American aircraft carrier to the region as a sign of strength to the North. President Trump has also raised eyebrows suggesting South Korea pay more for its own security, and he has questioned a bilateral trade deal between the two countries. I expect that things will change since we have a new president. I dont know if he can change many things but I hope he does. Gwon Ga Rom, an office worker who lives in southern Seoul Moon promised to protect South Korea with self-reliant and mighty defense capabilities. About 28,000 American troops are stationed here, and South Koreans rely on U.S. military hardware for protection and training. By mid-afternoon, Moon held his first presidential news conference, announcing the appointment of several key aides and pledging to work with opponents and to change the culture of the presidential office. One change, he said, would be regular press briefings on key issues a measure of public accountability Park avoided. Park was often criticized for her insular, autocratic style that was in some ways a rhetorical and symbolic throwback to the two-decade reign of her father, Park Chung-hee, a military dictator assassinated in 1979. Moons administration also plans a new jobs push right away, hoping the government can help jump-start an economy plagued by high youth unemployment, household debt and income inequality. The economy is going through a difficult time in and outside Korea. Ordinary peoples livelihoods are under threat, Moon said. As I promised during my campaign, I will take care of the employment issue first. A focus on domestic and economic issues would be welcomed by South Koreans like Gwon Ga Rom, an office worker who lives in southern Seoul and wants an increase in the minimum wage or more job opportunities. I expect that things will change since we have a new president. I dont know if he can change many things but I hope he does, she said. Anyone will be better than Park Geun-hye. Kwon Hye Yeon, 22, a student who lives in Seouls northeastern suburbs, cast her ballot for one of the conservatives in the race, but she too is open to a Moon presidency. She said some of his platform appealed to her. Im not completely satisfied with Moon becoming president, but Im not dissatisfied either, she said. I hope Moon is able to solve the problems that university students are facing. Moons eventful first day on the job began after vote counters finished their overnight work. Moon finished first in the 15-candidate race, with about 41% of the vote. Hong Joon-pyo, a conservative, came in second with 24%, followed by Ahn Cheol-soo, a centrist, with 21%. Like in the United States, a newly elected president typically gets a two-month transition period. But Moons inauguration came quickly to fill the void left after Park was impeached by the National Assembly in December and removed from office in March. She has since been arrested on corruption charges and remains in jail. Moon the son of North Korean refugees who fled communism assumed presidential duties only hours after the national elections commission officially declared him the winner. He then received a briefing from the nations top military official about preparedness and North Korea. Before being sworn in, the former special forces soldier visited Seoul National Cemetery to honor past presidents and national heroes. He also received congratulatory messages from the leaders of China and Japan, two key regional counterparts who have had rocky relations on diplomatic and security issues of late. The White House also congratulated Moon on his election, as did opposition party leaders in a pledge of unity. South Koreans lined the streets as Moon traveled in a small motorcade to the Blue House the presidential complex, named for its distinctly colored tile roof in central Seoul. He stood from a limousine sunroof, waving to onlookers as the group traveled at pedestrian speed through Gwanghwamun Square a place typically crowded with tourists but also the site of the mass peaceful protests in the last several months that led to Parks ouster. Its this square where his administration, in a symbolic and geographic shift, plans to move some presidential offices inside a tall government ministry building rather than the palatial and inaccessible Blue House. I will strive to get rid of authoritarian practices in the presidency, he said. Stiles is a special correspondent. Last months constitutional referendum may have yielded a victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, enshrining vast powers for him and his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, but the results were far closer than his supporters were expecting, largely because of growing discontent within Turkeys conservatives. Erdogan has counted on conservatives support for more than 14 years, but his authoritarian style of governance and his pragmatic foreign policy are pushing a segment of Turkeys Islamists to turn against him. For the record: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Mavi Marmara incident occurred in 2009. It took place in 2010. It also incorrectly quoted Unsal as referring to a group of 150 party members; not all of them were party members. It also incorrectly stated that the head of Mazmunder left parliament in 2013; he left parliament in 2007 and the party in 2009. The AKP is no longer a humble party. It cannot hear any criticism, whether from its own members or from others, said Abdullatif Sener, one of 74 people who founded the party in 2001 and who served as deputy prime minister under Erdogan until he quit in 2007. Those critics still in the party have no power to direct it. Many are keeping quiet themselves, because they know if they criticize Erdogan, the next day they will be targeted. Advertisement As dissenters like Sener have left the AKPs ranks, those who have remained have taken a back seat to Erdogan. Former President Abdullah Gul and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reportedly forced by Erdogan to resign last year have not quit the party altogether, but their reservations with Erdogans policies have left them largely sidelined. The AKP is a broad umbrella party that has amassed Islamists, less politicized religious conservatives and even traditional center-right voters who care about economic benefits, said Mustafa Akyol, an expert on Turkeys Islamist movements. In the past four or five years, however, the party has been taken over by a cult of personality built around Erdogan. Erdogans Machiavellian ways, Akyol says, have put him at odds with Islamists on a range of foreign and domestic issues, and although the dissenting conservatives probably represent less than 4% of the electorate, the close margin of victory for Erdogan in Aprils referendum indicates it could become an important demographic in Turkey. Among the dissenting Islamist movements is the Saadet Party, a movement made up of ultraconservatives that in some ways is the intellectual predecessor to the AKP, but whose leadership actively campaigned against the April constitutional changes. Saadets small but influential constituency of traditional Islamists, says Akyol, helped the no vote win in unexpected places, including Istanbuls Uskudar district, where Erdogan lives and 53.3% of voters rejected the amendments. Many are keeping quiet themselves, because they know if they criticize Erdogan, the next day they will be targeted. Abdullatif Sener, a founder of the Justice and Development Party in 2001 But the Saadet Party represents just one facet of a growing faction of anti-Erdogan conservatives. Fatma Bostan Unsal, another core AKP founder, was purged from the party last year over her views on how to deal with the countrys Kurdish insurgency. It should be normal for religious people to be critical of government policy, Unsal said. But now, if you are critical of the government, it turns into something ridiculous; it turns into a controversy. In the partys early days, Unsal said, the priority for her and other Islamists was lifting restrictions on the head scarf, which kept her and millions of other women out of the public sphere. But over the next decade, Unsal realized Erdogan and the AKP were more interested in consolidating power than dealing with issues like the head scarf ban. I raised the issue at many closed meetings, I said we need to run candidates wearing the head scarf, and I and a group of maybe 150 women in the party threatened to start a public movement if this was not done. In response, Erdogan accused the dissenters of trying to abuse the head scarf issue. After that, I kept attending party meetings, but I did not raise my voice, Unsal said. It wasnt until 2013 that the AKP allowed a head scarf candidate to run on a party ticket. In 2014, an AKP lawmaker became the first woman in Turkey to give a speech in parliament wearing a head scarf. Last January, Unsal and more than a thousand other academics were labeled traitors by Erdogan for signing a petition calling for a cease-fire in the Kurdish conflict. Unsal, a career academic, is now one of 145,000 public workers who have lost their jobs. Her passport has been revoked, and her signature on the peace petition could draw terrorism charges for allegedly supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party. Because she had a credit card with a bank linked to Fethullah Gulen, the cleric Ankara blames for last years coup attempt, Unsal could face detention for alleged affiliations with that movement as well. Erdogans foreign policy did not fit with what Unsal and the other dissenters expected, either. Whether it was the decision to support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 or restore ties with Israel after the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010 in which Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish ship off the Gaza Strip coast, leaving nine people dead on deck and one fatally injured Erdogan seemed to stray from core Islamist views and strike a politically expedient path instead. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, welcomes Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma to the Presidential Complex in Ankara, on May 10, 2017. (Adem Altan / AFP/Getty Images) Turkeys largest humanitarian organization, the Human Rights Foundation, or IHH, which organized the Mavi Marama attempt to enter Gaza, occasionally calls for protests to mark the deadly raid, but its attempts to pursue criminal cases against Israel in Turkish and international courts have been stifled by the AKP. Last month, one of Erdogans best-known supporters, columnist Cem Kucuk, called for the expulsion of maniac Islamists supporting the foundation from the AKPs ranks. Outrage among Islamists over those remarks prompted Erdogan to weigh in himself, saying no one but him and his staff spoke for his office. While the foundation has weathered the storm so far, other Islamist civil society groups have not. Mazlumder, one of Turkeys best-known human rights monitoring groups, was founded by a group of Islamists in 1991, and for more than a decade many of its efforts were focused on documenting the effects of state discrimination against conservatives. At one point, its leaders were imprisoned and its offices shuttered over allegations that it was seeking to upend Turkeys secular foundation, similar to the charges that sent Erdogan to prison in 1999. More than 50 former Mazlumder members have gone on to serve as leaders in the AKP. Back then, says Reha Ruhavioglu, the organizations head in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, the focus for conservative human rights activists was a state bureaucracy dominated by a secular military. Today it is fellow conservatives in the AKP that are targeting Mazlumder. Mazlumder, like Saadet, opposes arming the Syrian rebels. In 2013, it published reports documenting what it said was excessive use of force by police dispersing protesters in Gezi Park. It should be normal for religious people to be critical of government policy. Fatma Bostan Unsal, AKP co-founder who was purged from the party last year We had problems with some of our [pro-AKP] colleagues over the Syrian war, and over Gezi, but those divisions really widened with our reports on the Kurdish conflict, said Ruhavioglu. In 2016, Ruhavioglu was part of a delegation of human rights monitors to the southeastern district of Cizre, where government forces had just lifted a 78-day curfew. They met with AKP officials and opposition parties and spent days interviewing locals, eventually concluding that up to 290 people were killed in the district, many of them civilians. After weeks of heated arguments with pro-AKP Mazlumder colleges in Istanbul, Ruhavioglu finally got a draft approved for publication that he believed was balanced in criticism of the government and the Kurdish insurgents. Then one day, Ruhavioglu watched on national television as Erdogan lambasted his work, throwing Mazlumder into the same category with secular groups that were working against the AKP. Who are you to publish this report? a fiery Erdogan told a gathering of police officers. There is a limit to our mercy. Either bow your heads or lose your heads. When a national television channel called to interview him, Ruhavioglu decided to speak out. I dont generally talk to media, Ruhavioglu said, but I went on the air because of what the president said. I told them he can cut off our heads, but he cant make us obey. The content of the report was left behind, and the main topic became whose name was on the report, Ruhavioglu said. The thing was quickly getting out of hand. There was a harsh political climate, coming from the top, and suddenly, the principles we had been using for 26 years, emphasizing the responsibility of both sides in conflict, were forgotten. In March, Mazlumder experienced a coup of its own: A court-appointed government trustee forced out the organizations leadership, including its head, who left a seat as an AKP parliament member in 2013 to head the human rights group. All 16 of the organizations offices in the Kurdish southeast were closed, and thousands of members deemed too critical of Erdogan were purged. Farooq is a special correspondent. UPDATES: 6 p.m.: This article has been updated to reflect the fatal injury of a 10th victim in the Mavi Marmara incident. It was first published at 11:20 a.m. Siberian tigers making a comeback in China Ice cubes help big cats cool off at Guaipo Siberian Tiger Park in Shenyang, northeastern Chinas Liaoning province. Chinese efforts on behalf of the Siberian tiger have won worldwide praise among environmentalists. In a lifetime of herding, Liu Xiangqing had never seen cows so scared. Normally, at 6 a.m., they would be gathered together, contentedly chewing and grazing in the dawn light. But this June morning, they were scattered through the pine scrub, pacing with agitation, their ears alert. Liu took a quick head count and realized one was missing, a 2-year-old bull. By the time the remains were located, the tail and thighs were missing, the entrails spilled in the dirt. There was a gash in the neck; claw marks raked down the torso. It was a sure sign: The Siberian tiger was back. "In my whole life, I'd never seen a real tiger, but I knew it couldn't be anything else," said the elfin-like Liu, 52, who grew up in this remote Chinese village wedged between the Russian and North Korean borders. Once believed nearly extinct in China, the Siberian tiger, the largest member of the cat family, is making a comeback, the result of a decade-long effort to restore its natural habitat by banning logging, hunting and trapping. Although they weigh as much as 675 pounds, Siberian tigers are elusive creatures that slink into the forest when humans approach. Villagers learn that a tiger has been on the prowl when they spot paw prints (or pug marks, as they are known) the diameter of melons. Or, as is happening more frequently in China, they discover that livestock is missing or mauled. Four cows were killed in five days in May in another village near the border. One of the largest of Liu's herd, a 1,300-pound bull, lost his tail to a tiger but stayed alive by fighting back. In March, a farmer investigating a noise pointed his flashlight into the darkness and saw a tiger with claws dug into a cow. He chased it away by banging a metal bucket and setting off a firecracker. In China, the number of Siberian tigers living in the wild (far smaller than those in captivity) has been listed in government statistics at between 18 and 22 for some years, said Li Zhixing, who has worked for decades on tiger protection. Nobody knows the exact number, because the Chinese don't have tracking collars on the tigers, but Li believes there could be as many as 40 now and that the population is growing. "I personally think the number of tigers has doubled in the last decade and that the area populated by tigers has become much larger," said Li, 60. Li credits campaigns to restore the degraded forests in China and Russia. The latter began tiger-protection efforts in the 1940s and has the largest population of Siberian tigers, between 400 and 900, according to the World Wildlife Fund. But in recent years, China has caught up and might even be moving ahead in creating tiger-friendly habitat, Li said. "Russia has fewer people than China, so it is a better place for tigers. But they are doing a lot of logging and burning off of agriculture fields after harvest, and the tigers don't like that," said Li, a native of Hunchun, the largest city in the region. "It is not hard for a tiger to jump over the barbed-wire fences at the border and come to China." Although Chinese still buy illegal body parts of tigers poached in India or killed in captivity for traditional medicine, the wild tigers have not been hunted in China since the 1950s, Li said. In fact, hunting of all animals except rats is banned in China. But many people in the down-at-the-heels villages near the Russian border trap other animals, which Li believes also has an effect on tigers. First of all, tigers can easily be snared in traps. More important, trapping sets off a destructive cycle of theft; if humans steal the deer and wild pigs that are the tigers' natural prey, the tigers in turn are prompted to steal the humans' livestock. "Getting rid of the traps is absolutely critical to making a better environment for the tigers," said Li, who was making the rounds recently in the villages near the border, distributing beekeeping equipment to encourage an alternative livelihood to trapping. The Chinese government also has sought to improve the public's attitude toward tigers by compensating farmers for pilfered livestock. Liu, for example, expects to receive about $500 for the young bull killed in June. Chinese newspapers now contain a multitude of articles about tiger attacks on farms, further raising awareness. Here in Jilin province, the Forestry Ministry has designated a wildlife preserve containing 108,700 acres of spruce, pine and larch forest, the favorite habitat of the tiger. In August, scientists released 37 deer into the preserve to attract tigers as well as leopards, another endangered species native to the region. "If you want to protect tigers, you have to protect their food supply," Zhang Changzhi, a scientist with the World Wildlife Fund, which is sponsoring the project, said as he toured a preserve in Wangqing county recently. Heat-detecting cameras attached to trees attest to the success of the project; they have produced three photographs of leopards and one of a tiger. Tigers are endangered throughout the world: Their population in the wild has dwindled from an estimated 100,000 in the early 20th century to as few as 3,200 today. Siberian tigers, also known as Amur or Korean tigers, are among six surviving subspecies and are native to the boreal forests, or taiga, of China, Russia and North Korea. We are always in groups of two or three so there is somebody to scare off the tiger." Qi Shuyan Chinese efforts on behalf of the Siberian tiger have won worldwide praise among environmentalists. A 2010 report in the journal of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies compared China's preservation efforts favorably with India's and ventured that China might even earn the right to claim it "saved the tiger." Chinese have been amazed not only by the apparent growth of the tiger population but also by how far the felines have spread. It made headlines around China this year when tigers were seen near Jiamusi, a city 140 miles from the Russian border. "My father used to tell how he once helped Russians hunt tigers, but in my lifetime and I'm almost 50 there hadn't been tigers around here until now," said Che Shiguo, a farmer from the outskirts of Jiamusi, in Heilongjiang province. He saw a tiger devouring a 3-month-old calf in August. He screamed, and the tiger ran away. "If not, I would probably have been eaten by the tiger too," Che said. The last time a tiger killed a human in China was 2002, and that was considered a freak incident, the result of an angry, wounded animal that had fallen into a trap. In 2006 and 2007, people were injured in tiger attacks near Hunchun, but both survived. Compared with some other subspecies, such as India's Bengal tigers, Siberian tigers are not considered dangerous to humans, preferring as they do to lurk quietly in the woods. "We never go out into the mountains now alone. We are always in groups of two or three so there is somebody to scare off the tiger," said Qi Shuyan, 46, who works on the same ranch in Jintang as Liu Xiangqing. Li, the tiger expert, says attacks are relatively rare here because of Chinese respect for the tiger, revered by many as a mountain god. "There is a superstition here that a tiger will only attack you if you do something bad," Li said. "Sometimes when people encounter a tiger, they don't run, they just kneel and pray." Tommy Yang of The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report. Contact the reporter Follow Barbara Demick (@BarbaraDemick) on Twitter Follow @latgreatreads on Twitter The soldiers were caught on video carrying out what appears to be an extrajudicial killing. In security camera images in Puebla state, a group of Mexican military officers fire on a car carrying suspected gasoline thieves. The soldiers then drag a man from the car who appears badly injured and lay him face-down in the street. A few moments later, a soldier fires a single bullet into the back of the mans head. Its unclear what happened to two other men seen dragged from the car and off-camera. Advertisement The video, recorded May 3 and made public Wednesday by the news agency Diario Cambio, sparked outrage in Mexico, where lawmakers are debating several versions of a law that would legalize and expand the militarys enforcement of domestic security across the country. For a decade now, Mexican soldiers and naval officers have been embedded in local communities as part of the governments strategy to fight drug cartels. Despite previously documented cases of soldiers engaging in torture and carrying out execution-style killings, Mexicos armed forces tend to be regarded as less corrupt than local and state police forces, some of whom collaborate with the cartels. Angelica de la Pena, chairwoman of the Senate Commission on Human Rights, said in a statement Wednesday that the video is further evidence that Mexicos armed forces should be focused on foreign threats and not on policing local communities. There was already concern about the use of excessive force by the military, and now this video seems to give us proof, she said. De la Pena, who belongs to the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, has been a vocal opponent of efforts by Mexicos ruling party to pass the so-called Law on Internal Security. The National Human Rights Commission, the governments independent watchdog, said it was already investigating claims of human rights violations by soldiers in the same area on the same day and had already examined the video. The shooting appears to be part of a broader series of deadly clashes that night in the town of Palmarito Tochapan between authorities and suspected fuel smugglers known as huachicoleros, who specialize in pilfering fuel from pipelines belonging to the state-owned oil company Pemex. Authorities said the thieves, some of whom are believed to have connections to Mexicos drug cartels, attacked military forces who were responding to reports that thieves had breached a pipeline. The day after the clashes, state officials told reporters at least 10 people were killed, including four soldiers and six presumed criminals. Federal officials announced that they were sending at least 1,000 more soldiers to fight gasoline theft. Officials accused the smugglers of using women and children as human shields during the altercations. But civilians protesting the military actions blamed the army for the clashes and casualties. We dont want the military to attack us, read a banner raised by a protester during a blockade last week on the Puebla-Veracruz highway. Mexicos attorney general issued a statement Wednesday saying the incident would be fully investigated. The Defense Department said it would fully cooperate but questioned whether the video was authentic or edited. Outrage over the video, which spilled onto Twitter and Facebook, comes on the heels of a high-profile report designating Mexico the worlds second most-dangerous conflict zone after Syria. Based on the number of homicides last year, the annual Armed Conflict Survey, released this week by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, ranked Mexico worse than Iraq, Afghanistan and other war-torn countries. On Wednesday, the Mexican government questioned the organizations methods and said the report wrongly pointed to the existence of an armed conflict within the country. The existence of criminal groups is not sufficient criteria to speak of a non-international armed conflict, said a joint statement issued by Mexicos secretaries of governance and foreign relations, adding that drug war violence is part of a bigger regional problem. Neither is the use of the military to maintain order in the countrys interior, it said. The statement also said Mexicos homicide rate is far lower than those of other Latin American countries such as Honduras and Venezuela. Although Mexicos homicide rate has soared the first two months of 2017 were the most violent since the government started releasing such statistics in 1997 officials have a point. In January, Mexico had a homicide rate of 20 deaths per 100,000 people, according to a Times analysis of Mexican crime statistics. By comparison, El Salvadors rate was 81 such deaths per 100,000 people in 2016, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that studies organized crime in Latin America. Venezuela, on the other hand, had a homicide rate of 59 deaths per 100,000 people. kate.linthicum@latimes.com Twitter: @katelinthicum Cecilia Sanchez in The Times Mexico City bureau contributed to this report. ALSO Mexicans were afraid Trump would bring disaster. So far, his bark is worse than his bite Liquor-drenched party in Mexican prison embarrasses government Mexican officials enrage women by suggesting a young victims lifestyle was responsible for her violent death The new US administration is talking tough on trade, but an end to the Trans-Pacific Partnership is already cheering Central American exporters He invested in real estate and equities before it was fashionable. Now, one of the wealthiest businessmen in Argentina sees a bright future for the economy. All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 10 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbekistan and China plan to sign about 100 contracts worth a total of $20 billion during the visit of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Beijing, Asad Khojayev, head of press service of the Uzbek president, told reporters May 10. The Uzbek leader will visit China on May 11-13 at the initiative of the Chinese President Xi Jinping. During the visit, meetings are planned with Xi Jinping, Premier of Chinas State Council Li Keqiang, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress Zhang Dejiang and other officials. The main issues of discussion will be the current state of bilateral relations in trade and investment. The sides will also touch upon a number of security issues and issues related to cooperation in the cultural and humanitarian spheres. Khojayev noted that in general, relations with China are developing actively. The visit is timed to coincide with the One Belt One Way forum. This is a big forum held by China. It unites more than 100 states and international organizations. Heads of more than 40 countries come to this forum to discuss trade, economic, social and humanitarian issues. Uzbekistan plans to actively participate in the forum, added Khojayev. The One Belt One Way forum will be held in Beijing on May 14-15. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Dalga Khatinoglu Trend: Iran increased gas production by 25 billion cubic meters (bcm), or 9 percent to 285 bcm, during the last fiscal year (ended March 21), but its domestic demand growth rate has increased as well. Almost the entire growth occurred in the second half of the year on phases 17-21 of the South Pars gas field, that Iran shares with Qatar. The total nominal capacity of these phases is 54 bcm and they are expected to become full operational in the first half of the current fiscal year. Mehdi Jamshidi Dana, dispatching director of National Iranian Gas Company told Shana news agency May 9 that during the last fiscal year, Iran increased gas delivery to power plants by 7 percent, while the same growth happened in gas supply to housing and industrial sectors. Iran should have increased gas usage in power plants by 14 percent to 65 bcm, but it supplied only 61 bcm due to gas shortage in the housing sector, especially because of cutting Turkmen gas flow to Iran since January 1, 2017 due to longed delayed $2 billion debt. Turkmenistan had exported 9 bcm of gas to Iran in 2015, but it halved in 2016 and stopped since the beginning of the current year. The gas flow to petrochemical and some industrial plants also experienced disturbs during some weeks of winter. The gas shortage in the country during the last fiscal year occurred mostly due to connecting more cities and villages to the gas network. Iran extended gas grid by 700 km during the last fiscal year. Yearly expansion of Irans gas grid Iran spent about $1 billion on expanding the grid and adding 24 pressure boost compressors last year, while for the current year, some $1.25-1.55 billion investment is planned. Jamshidi Dana said that the countrys gas demand would increase by 80-90 mcm/d (around 30 bcm) during the current fiscal year. Regarding that the full operational of phases 17-21 would add more gas to output, it seems Iran would not face gas shortage this year. Gas consumption 2014/2015 (bcm) 2013/2014 (bcm) Housing sector 91 88.9 Industrial sector 32.45 29.8 Power plants 50.5 36.8 Export 10 9.7 Gas lose in grid 9 9 Re-injection 33.9 32.9 Flaring 11.7 11.7 Total 238.55 218.8 Sweet gas production 188 163 Import 7.5 3.5 According the latest updated yearly report of oil ministry Irans total gross gas output reached 285 bcm during the last fiscal year and the volume would increase at least by 20 bcm during the current fiscal year. Iran injects about 25 bcm into old oil fields to maintain crude oil production, while about 11 bcm is flared and the 9 bcm is lost in the gas grid. About 80 percent of Irans active fields are in their second half life and during the current year, their production would decrease 300,000 b/d, according to Ali Kardor, CEO of National Iranian Oil Company. Iran needs to triple gas re-injection to fields, but according to production and demand growth rates, it seems the country wouldnt be able to increase the re-injection volume. According to the highlighted plans for the current year, it doesnt seem Iran would decrease gas flaring nor lose volume in the current fiscal year. Therefore, Iran would be able only to get rid of gas shortage in housing, power and industrial sector after a decade. --- Dalga Khatinoglu is the head of Trend Agencys Iran news service, follow him on Twitter: @dalgakhatinoglu Pakistans Foreign Ministry has summoned Irans ambassador in Islamabad over remarks made by the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri, PressTV reported. According to the Dawn newspaper on Tuesday, Mehdi Honardoost was summoned to convey Pakistan's concerns over a warning by Baqeri that Iran would deal with the terrorists themselves if Pakistan was unable. We expect the Pakistani officials to control the borders, arrest the terrorists and shut down their basesIf the terrorist attacks continue, we will deal crushing blows to their safe havens and cells, wherever they are," said Baqeri on Monday. He made the remarks in relation to an attack on Iran-Pakistan border that claimed the lives of 11 Iranian border guards on April 11, saying the border area on the Pakistani soil has "unfortunately" turned into a haven and training ground for Saudi-hired terrorists, who enjoy the US endorsement. The so-called Jaish ul-Adl terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. The assailants escaped into Pakistani territory immediately after the attack. Following the attack, Irans Foreign Ministry summoned the Pakistani ambassador to communicate Tehrans strong protest. Last week, Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Pakistan at the head of a high-ranking political, military, law enforcement and security delegation to address the tragedy and hold talks with senior Pakistani officials. During Honardoosts meeting at the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Iran was urged to refrain from making statements which may harm bilateral relations between the neighboring countries. Meanwhile, Iranian Armys Ground Forces Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said that the country reserves the right to destroy the lairs of terrorists in Pakistan. A finance expert recommended the Easton Area School Board authorize borrowing up to $110 million to renovate three schools and build two new ones. The board was asked Tuesday to approve a "parameters resolution" on May 23 that would pave the way for borrowing for the construction projects, according to Ken Phillips, the managing director of RBC Capital Markets of Lancaster, Pa. The plan calls for tax increases for five straight years: 0.60-mill increases in 2018 and 2019, a 0.49-mill increase in 2020 and 0.48-mill increases in 2021 and 2022 for a total of 2.650 mills. One mill equals $1 for every $1,000 of a property's assessed value. The owner of a home assessed at $100,000 for tax purposes would pay $265 more in taxes by 2022. The district can save time and money by passing this resolution rather than authorizing a bond for each individual project, Phillips said. The resolution doesn't commit the school district to any of the projects. "The vote is only to incur the debt under Pennsylvania law, not to issue the debt," Phillips said. "The only way the debt gets issued is to vote on the projects." The district has authorized renovations on Tracy Elementary School and for the Easton Area High School roof. But it hasn't approved the bigger-ticket items -- new Cheston and Palmer elementary schools. The school district won't borrow any money until the board gives final approval to the projects. If the school board wants to scale them back, the board doesn't have to borrow the full $110 million, Phillips said. So far the district has authorized sketch plans for the new Cheston. Assistant Superintendent Alyssa Emili hopes construction of the new school can begin by summer 2018. Here are the latest cost estimates for school district projects: Cheston Elementary School: $31.8 million for a new school Palmer Elementary School: $33.2 million for a new school Tracy Elementary School: $10 million for a new roof, heating and air-conditioning Forks Elementary School: $9 million for a new roof, heating and air-conditioning Easton Area High School: $2.3 million for a new roof Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook. Helped by surveillance footage, prosecutors painted a harrowing picture of the events inside a Penn State University fraternity in early February that led them to charge 18 members in the death of a pledge. The video from cameras inside Beta Theta Pi, interviews with students and text messages allowed them to build a detailed timeline of what happened to Timothy Piazza -- from his arrival for pledge acceptance night to his frat brothers' decision to call an ambulance for him the next morning. The 19-year-old from Readington Township in Hunterdon County drank a life-threatening amount of alcohol during a hazing ritual and then fell numerous times, a grand jury found. Fraternity members didn't call 911 until nearly 12 hours after his first fall, when Piazza was unconscious, the panel concluded. He had severe head trauma and a shattered spleen and later died of traumatic brain injury. Minute-by-minute account of the drinking, hazing and inaction that led to a Penn State frat pledge's death. More: https://t.co/ODrwvj05Uv pic.twitter.com/TkIKX8HFQz AP Eastern US (@APEastRegion) May 10, 2017 Eight fraternity brothers are accused of involuntary manslaughter. The others face charges ranging from furnishing alcohol to minors to evidence tampering. No pleas have yet been entered. A grand jury called to investigate the sophomore's death has said it will develop a full report looking at what role the conduct of the university's Interfraternity Council, and, perhaps, the university itself, played in his death. The following is a timeline of the events as described in the grand jury report. Times have been adjusted to account for the fraternity's camera system being 37 minutes behind the actual time. ___ FEB. 2 About 9 p.m.: Fourteen pledges arrive at Beta Theta Pi for pledge acceptance ceremony. Pledges are led to basement and directed to drink from a vodka bottle. They run a gantlet of drinking stations, downing vodka, chugging beer and drinking from a wine bottle. They also play beer pong. By one estimate, they each consume four to five drinks in about 2 minutes. 9:43 p.m.: Timothy Piazza appears in security camera footage lined up with other pledges. His hand is on the right shoulder of the person in front of him. 9:58 p.m.: Piazza is seen drinking from a vodka bottle, then is handed a beer. 11:08 p.m.: Pledges show visible signs of intoxication as they return from the basement. 11:17 p.m.: Someone has to help Piazza walk to a couch. He gets up briefly and walks around before a fraternity brother puts him on the couch. 11:22 p.m.: Piazza gets up, staggers toward the front door and tries without success to open it. He staggers toward the basement steps. A fraternity brother hears a fall and finds Piazza face-down at the bottom of the stairs. A forensic pathologist later estimates his blood-alcohol content is between 0.28 and 0.36 percent at this point. (In Pennsylvania, a driver is considered intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08.) 11:24 p.m.: Piazza is carried upstairs by four fraternity members. His body appears limp and his eyes are closed. A bruise appears on his left abdomen. He's placed on the couch with others around him. A member appears to administer a sternum rub, but Piazza does not respond. 11:26 p.m.: Someone dumps liquid on Piazza's face, but he does not respond. Another fraternity brother lifts Piazza's arm, which appears limp. More liquid is poured on his face. A brother removes his shoes and tries to turn him on his side, causing Piazza to nearly fall off the couch. 11:32 p.m.: A brother attaches a backpack to Piazza so he won't roll onto his back and choke on his own vomit. 11:37 p.m.: A brother sits at Piazza's legs to prevent him from rolling over. 11:51 p.m.: A brother is shown on tape examining Piazza and making animated gestures. He later tells the grand jury he saw a bruise on Piazza's chest and that he was thrashing and making weird movements. He stressed Piazza needed medical care, but another member shoved him into a wall and told him to leave. The brother confronts the chapter's vice president, who also dismisses his concerns. 11:53 p.m.: A fraternity member sends a group message: "Piazza might actually be a problem. He fell 14 feet down a flight of stairs, hair-first, going to need help." ___ FEB. 3 12:02 a.m.: The fraternity's pledge master slaps Piazza three times in the face. 12:12 a.m.: One brother tackles another onto the couch, landing on top of Piazza, who remains unconscious. 1:37 a.m.: Piazza vomits. Three brothers again attach a backpack to Piazza's back in an effort to keep him from rolling onto his back. 2:25 a.m.: Piazza rolls off the couch, onto the floor. Three brothers "slammed him onto the couch," grand jury says. Minutes later a brother, seemingly frustrated, strikes Piazza in the abdomen with his open right hand. 3:53 a.m.: Piazza rolls to floor with the backpack still attached. His legs move. 3:59 a.m.: Piazza tries to get to his feet. The backpack comes off, but he falls backward and hits his head on the floor. Another member shakes him but then leaves. 4:23 a.m.: Piazza is on the floor in the fetal position. He's on his knees and continues to grab his abdomen. Several minutes later he again tries to stand but falls facedown onto the wood floor. 5:36 a.m.: Piazza stands and staggers to lobby area, falls head-first into an iron railing and lands on a stone floor. He again tries to get up but falls head-first into the door. He spends about six minutes on his knees, with his head in his hands. He rolls to his side and clutches his abdomen. A forensic pathologist later estimates his blood-alcohol content at this point is between 0.19 and 0.24. 5:52 a.m.: A fraternity brother comes downstairs for a drink of water, steps over Piazza and leaves. 6:03 a.m.: Another brother comes downstairs for water, walks Piazza into the house's "great hall." Piazza falls down three steps and the brother leaves him on the floor. 7:34 a.m.: A fellow pledge videotapes Piazza before leaving the house. 7:55 a.m.: Piazza stands and staggers toward basement steps. Cameras do not capture what is assumed to be another fall. A forensic pathologist later estimates his blood-alcohol content is between 0.15 and 0.19 percent at this point. 10 a.m.: Two members see Piazza's shoes and realize he must be in the house, so they search for him and find him behind a bar in the basement. He is on his back with his arms tight against his sides, breathing heavily with blood on his face. He feels cold to the touch and his eyes remain half-open. Three members carry him back upstairs and put him on the couch. Over the next 42 minutes members shake him, try to prop up his limp body, cover him with a blanket, wipe his face and try to dress him. 10:35 a.m.: A brother searches on his cellphone for "falling asleep after head injury," ''cold extremities in drunk person" and related queries. 10:48 a.m.: A brother calls 911, summoning an ambulance. 5:09 p.m.: The fraternity's president directs a member to get rid of any evidence of alcohol. ___ FEB. 4 1:23 a.m.: Piazza is pronounced dead at Hershey Medical Center. A forensic pathologist said he had suffered a skull fracture, and a shattered spleen accompanied by an abdomen filled with blood. The pathologist said both his head and abdominal injuries would have been very painful. The pathologist also said his spleen injury could have been made worse by jostling, moving him around and sitting on him. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, dramatically ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's meddling in the election that sent him to the White House. In a letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. Comey has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for his public comments on an investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices, including a pair of letters he sent to Congress on the matter in the closing days of last year's campaign. Trump made no mention of Comey's role in the Clinton investigation, which she has blamed in part for the election result. But in announcing the firing, the White House circulated a scathing memo, written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, criticizing Comey's handling of the Clinton probe, including the director's decision to hold a news conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about Clinton. Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the bureau's Trump-Russia probe, Rosenstein, his deputy, has been in charge. This is only the second firing of an FBI director in history. President Bill Clinton dismissed William Sessions amid allegations of ethical lapses in 1993. Democrats slammed Trump's action, comparing it to President Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" decision to fire the independent special prosecutor overseeing the Watergate investigation in 1973, which prompted the resignations of the Justice Department's top two officials. "This is Nixonian," Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., declared on Twitter. Hard to square Sessions recommendation to fire Comey with his recusal. https://t.co/WoSCIWU1Fm Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) May 9, 2017 "Outrageous," said Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, calling for Comey to immediately be summoned to testify to Congress about the status of the Trump-Russia investigation. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the White House was "brazenly interfering" in the probe. Booker say FBI chief Comey's firing by Trump should 'set off alarm bells' https://t.co/GWSUK0fIni pic.twitter.com/rFRk0FjDpG NJ.com (@njdotcom) May 10, 2017 Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Congress must form a special committee to investigate Russia's interference in the election. Democrats expressed deep skepticism about the stated reasons for Tuesday's firing, raising the prospect of a White House effort to stymie the investigations by the FBI and congressional panels. Trump will now appoint Comey's successor. The White House said the search for a replacement was beginning immediately. Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, would presumably take over in the interim. Trump has ridiculed the investigations as a "hoax" and has denied that his campaign was involved in Russia's meddling. In his letter to Comey, he asserted that the FBI director had informed him "on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation." Tuesday's stunning announcement came shortly after the FBI corrected aspects of Comey's sworn testimony on Capitol Hill last week. Comey told lawmakers that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, had sent "hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband's laptop, including some with classified information. On Tuesday, the FBI told the Senate Judiciary Committee that only "a small number" of the thousands of emails found on the laptop had been forwarded there while most had simply been backed up from electronic devices. Most of the email chains on the laptop containing classified information were not the result of forwarding, the FBI said. Some lawmakers did welcome news of the dismissal. "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well," said Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating the Russian campaign interference. Comey, 56, was nominated by President Barack Obama for the FBI post in 2013 to a 10-year term, though that appointment does not ensure a director will serve the full term. Praised frequently by both parties for his independence and integrity, Comey has spent three decades in law enforcement. But his prominent role in the 2016 presidential campaign raised questions about his judgment and impartiality. Though the FBI did not recommend charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information, Comey was blisteringly critical of her decision to use a personal email account and private internet server during her four years as secretary of state. Comey strongly defended his decisions during the hearing last week. He said he was "mildly nauseous" at the thought of having swayed the election but also said he would do the same again. Clinton has partially blamed her loss on Comey's disclosure to Congress less than two weeks before Election Day that the email investigation would be revisited. Comey later said the FBI, again, had found no reason to bring any charges. Trump disagreed with Clinton's assessment, tweeting that Comey actually "was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!" Clinton's advisers were stunned by Trump's decision Tuesday. Former campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said that while he believed Comey had "inflicted severe damage" on the FBI, "the timing and manner of this firing suggest that it is the product of Donald Trump feeling the heat on the ongoing Russia investigation and not a well thought out response to the inappropriate handling of the Clinton investigation." Though Comey was well-liked within the bureau, his independent streak occasionally rankled the Obama administration, including his repeated contention that a spike in violent crime might be linked to police officer anxiety over public scrutiny. Before the past months' controversies, Comey, a former deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, was perhaps best known for a remarkable 2004 standoff with top officials over a federal domestic surveillance program. In March of that year, Comey rushed to the hospital bed of Attorney General John Ashcroft to physically stop White House officials in their bid to get his ailing boss to reauthorize a secret no-warrant wiretapping program. Comey described the incident in 2007 testimony to Congress, explaining that he believed the spy program put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks was legally questionable. When he learned that Andrew Card, the president's chief of staff, and Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, were heading to Ashcroft's hospital room despite Ashcroft's wife's instructions that there be no visitors, Comey told Congress, Comey beat them there and watched as Ashcroft turned them away. "That night was probably the most difficult night of my professional life," Comey said. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Fatih Karimov Trend: Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asked Iranians residing in Canada to cast their votes for the May 19 presidential election at polling stations in the US. Zarif said that based on Canadas regulations, polling stations for other countries citizens should be located in diplomatic sites and Iran has no diplomatic site in Canada due to lack of political relations between Tehran and Ottawa, Mehr news agency reported May 10. So the Iranians in Canada can go to the nearest polling station in the United States to cast their votes, Zarif said, adding several ballot boxes will be active in different cities of the United States during the upcoming election. Earlier, Zarif called on Canada to lay the ground for the Iranian nationals residing in the North American country to cast their votes in the presidential election. Iranians living abroad are extremely keen to participate in the determination of their countries future, Zarif said in a phone conversation with Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on May 9. Freeland, for her part, commended the positive presence of the Iranian communities in her country and said the Canadian government is mindful of the significance of the presidential election for the Iranian residents. She, however, added that some technical issues should be discussed and settled given the absence of political relations between Tehran and Ottawa, closure of Iranian diplomatic sites, and Canadas domestic regulations on polls involving other countries citizens. According to the official, about 400,000 Iranian citizens reside in Canada. By Gary Olson Normally I skip the op-ed pages of the power-worshiping New York Times, but a recent piece by R.R. Reno caught my eye. Reno, a political and religious conservative, edits First Time, a neoconservative journal. In his article, "Republicans Are Now the 'America First' Party," Reno contends that Donald Trump understood that unfair free trade deals, immigration, and the "broad and deep impact of globalization on America's economy and culture" deeply vexed many voters. Gary Olson. These were the ominous developments that stoked Trump's populist rhetoric. An angry backlash against the New York/Washington establishment carried the day in key electoral states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. According to Reno, Trump's juxtaposing of globalism and Americanism, or what Reno describes as "patriotic solidarity," won the election for Trump. That is, enough voters strongly resented the elite, neoliberal globalists (think Clinton and Obama), believing they cared not one whit about them. Prior to the election, the Deep State, or unelected real power, favored Hillary Clinton's tried and tested corporate reliability. Had the Constitution allowed a third term, Barack Obama's fervent goosing of golden goose globalism would have garnered their support. On the latter: In March 2009 Obama brought some dozen leading financiers to the White House. A rogue's gallery of people responsible for the meltdown in 2008, all of them entered the meeting with genuine trepidation. After the meeting one relieved participant told acclaimed political author Ron Suskind, "He could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn't -- he mostly wanted to help out, to quell the mob." In any event, Trump's election caught the shadow government by total surprise. He was seen as a loose cannon whose behavior might jeopardize America's pre-eminent role as enforcer and primary beneficiary of the capitalist world system. For example, the transnational capitalist class needs ever-cheaper sources of labor abroad to increase profits. With his talk about canceling trade pacts and forcing U.S. corporations to stay at home, Trump seemed dangerous, even deranged. But soon after the election, he quickly backtracked on his promises of economic nationalism and adopting an anti-globalist agenda. Did he possess any convictions on these promises, or did he simply say whatever was necessary to hoodwink voters in key electoral states? We do know, as sociologists Salvador Ranger and Jeb Sprague-Silgado astutely conclude, Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan tapped into the "sentiment of aggrieved entitlement" felt by a critical voting bloc. Whatever his inclinations, my sense is that Trump has been, in Diana Johnstone's indelicate phrase, "neutered" by the Deep State globalists. To avoid a failed presidency (in his view), he'll get on board. Today only the true believers such as Reno or the truly disingenuous defend Trump. We'll witness more conning of his base with episodic populist pandering, such as his recent event in Harrisburg. A few ideologues such as Stephen Bannon may be kept on to give the appearance of fidelity to Trump's earlier pledges and his faux populism. The critical takeaway is that growing income inequality, concentration of wealth, military interventions, environmental degradation and the heightened danger of nuclear war will continue unabated. Neoliberalism will rule regardless of the party nominally in power. No substantive policies viewed as contrary to the plutocracy will materialize. This analysis might foster a certain paralyzing cynicism, but that's neither my purpose nor an appropriate conclusion. There is hope, if -- and it's big "if" -- enough people of good will and heart engage in some emotionally painful reassessment of deeply held political localities to the two-party system, and especially the Democratic Party. Perhaps a crash course on capitalism would also be a good idea. I take no pleasure in suggesting this probing introspection commence with putting Obama and his ilk in the rearview mirror. Given the immense propaganda efforts directed at bamboozling us, that's a challenge. None of us likes admitting we've allowed ourselves to be conned. But until we engage in that necessary soul-searching, there's virtually no chance for serious change in our country. I want to believe we're up to the task. Gary Olson is a retired professor of political science at Moravian College in Bethlehem. More than four years after shooting the mother of his child to death inside her Phillipsburg home, the woman's killer has admitted to lesser charges in exchange for 24 years in prison. On Tuesday, less than a week before a trial on a first-degree murder charge was set to begin, 30-year-old Salim Newton pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated manslaughter and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, the Warren County Prosecutor's Office announced. With the plea, he admitted causing the death of 22-year-old Melissa Williams, whose body was found late Sept. 18, 2013, in her Spruce Alley home. Police investigate a shooting late Sept. 18, 2013, in the 300 block of Spruce Alley in Phillipsburg. (Tim Wynkoop | lehighvalleylive.com file photo) Neighbors had reported hearing at least two gunshots and seeing two people a short time later run down the alley. A gun was found later that morning nearby on Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Co. property, and police soon identified Newton, then 26, as a suspect. At the time, Newton was free after posting bail on drug charges in Hunterdon County. He had reportedly been living with Williams, his girlfriend, until abruptly leaving about two weeks before her death for a residence in the 500 block of South Main Street. U.S. Marshals tracked Newton to Richmond, Va., where he was arrested after about a month on the lam. Newton, whose last known address was in the 500 block of Phillipsburg's South Main Street, faced 30 years to life imprisonment if convicted of first-degree murder. He was also charged with burglary, criminal contempt and weapons counts. Under the plea, prosecutors call for 24 years in state prison, with at least 20 years served before Newton is eligible for parole and another five years of parole supervision upon his release. Salim Newton appears in Warren County court in 2014. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo) At least two other attempts at plea offers -- one from the state and the other proposed by the defense -- had been offered as the case progressed toward trial. First, in August 2014, Newton rejected prosecutors' offer that would have called for a 22-year sentence if he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of aggravated manslaughter and two weapons charges. Then, in November that year, prosecutors rejected a counteroffer in which Newton would have pleaded guilty to manslaughter -- which would have meant the death was not premeditated -- in exchange for a 5-year prison term. A trial on Newton's murder charge began last fall in Belvidere, but was halted when Newton changed attorneys before testimony began. On Tuesday, he was represented by Morris County attorney Michael Priarone, who has defended others accused in high-profile Warren County cases recently, including one murder. A second attempt at Newton's trial was scheduled to begin next Monday with jury selection. It would have been the county's second homicide trial this year. Warren County Assistant Prosecutor Victor Jusino -- who led the case against Newton -- last month convinced a jury to convict 29-year-old Daniel Lawrence of first-degree murder for fatally stabbing a man in 2014 outside a home in Washington. Another Warren County homicide case, also out of Washington in 2014, was resolved in March when 41-year-old Ralph Atkinson pleaded guilty to separate charges of murder and child sex crimes in exchange for a recommended 26-year prison sentence. At least one more Warren County murder trial is planned for 2017. Zachary Flowers, the last of four co-defendants in the 2012 Phillipsburg gas station shooting, is tentatively scheduled to stand trial on a felony murder charge in September. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A Portarlington man who damaged a car with a UK reg after mistakenly believing it belonged to a UK man hed just had an altercation with has been convicted and fined after paying compensation. Gordon Boggan (41), Carriglea, Portarlington, was convicted of the offence back in March. Inspector Jer Glavin gave evidence that on October 9 last year, at The Thatch Pub, Killenard, the accused caused 2,916.70 damage to a vehicle in the car park. He was in an abusive state on the night and was offensive to other patrons of the pub, said Insp Glavin. The accused had 13 previous convictions. Defence, Mr Barry Fitzgerald said that his client got into an altercation with two men and blows were exchanged. He was ejected from the pub and took umbrage, "and vented his fury on the windscreen" of a car he perceived to belong to one of his aggressors. "He got himself in a dispute with the car?" wondered Judge Alan Mitchell. Mr Fitzgerald replied that Boggan had a dispute with a UK national on the night and he attacked the car because it had a UK registration. This was the wrong car, however. "Has he got his little bag with his toothbrush with him?" asked Judge Mitchell, alluding to the possibility of sending the accused to prison. "I could take the view that he took it out on a foreign reg car." Mr Fitzgerald said the accused had written a letter of apology to the injured party. He said if given four weeks, the accused could have compensation. The matter was put back to May 4, for compensation to be paid, and for a probation report with the accused to be assessed for community service. When the case returned to Portlaoise District Court last week, the accused paid over 3,000 compensation. In that event, Judge Catherine Staines convicted and fined him 100. Nua Healthcare has been refused planning permission by Laois County Council for the second time in a month, with plans for a Portlaoise care home rejected just a week after Nua had lodged an appeal with An Bord Pleanala against the councils refusal of a proposed care home in Portarlington. Within the last week, the council refused permission to Maple Healthcare Ltd, which also operates in Ireland as Nua Healthcare, to build a new care home in Portlaoise providing residential care for people with high support needs. This comes just weeks after the council refused the company permission to change an existing dwelling to a residential care unit, and construct a 235 sqm single storey extension to the building, at Rathbeag, Lea Road, Portarlington. Regarding the Portlaoise application, the group said the development would be a prototype house for a new state of the art care model that Maple Healthcare plan to roll out across the country for persons with high support needs. The new building would have offered accommodation for six individuals, providing a private bedroom ensuite and private living space with direct access to a small private terrace. It would have required 24-hour staffing with up to 12 staff members required during the day and typically two during the night. However, the council has now refused the company permission. This is the second planning application by Nua Healthcare which has recently been refused by Laois County Council, with an appeal lodged by Nua with An Bord Pleanala against a decision made by the council in April. Back in February, the group applied to the council for permission to change an existing dwelling to a residential care unit, and construct a 235 sqm single storey extension to the building, at Rathbeag, Lea Road, Portarlington. In their application they said the existing bungalow is used to provide a community based dwelling for people with Asperger Syndrome, High Functioning Autism, intellectual disabilities and acquired brain injuries. However, the plans were rejected by Laois County Council, who said the application contravenes the Laois County Development Plan 2011-2017, which states the policy is to encourage the integration of healthcare facilities and discourage proposals that would cause unnecessary isolation or other access difficulties, particularly for the disabled, the elderly and children. Nua Healthcare have now appealed the councils decision on this application to An Bord Pleanala. Many people requiring physiotherapy in Laois are going to have a much reduced service, and also the service has been withdrawn from many areas in the county, a Laois TD has calimed. Sean Fleming TD says he is angered with the ending of physiotherapy services in Graiguecullen. I raised the matter with the Minister for Health and the HSE has come back and informed me that the services that were available in the Graiguecullen Health Centre are now being transferred to the Community Nursing Unit in Abbeyleix. Many people who use the service in Graiguecullen will now have to make a round trip of over 40 miles to Abbeyleix and back to avail of this service in the future. Many of these people are elderly and this will cause major upheaval for them. In addition to this, the HSE has also confirmed that there has been over a 50% reduction in physiotherapy staff available in Portarlington. Last year there were 2.1 full-time staff in Portarlington for physiotherapy services and this has been reduced to just one person in 2017. We are now seeing a major reduction in services in the Portarlington and Graiguecullen areas which have large catchment areas for patients, he said. The Fianna Fail TD said the Health Service Executive talk about consolidating services and their wish to recruit new staff. I am fearful that once the HSE remove and curtail the services in Graiguecullen and Portarlington that we will never see them restored to the area again. I am calling on the HSE to seek approval for the additional staff that are required in this area and that they are recruited as urgently as possible, said the TD. In a letter to the TD in relation to patients in Graiguecullen/ east Laois, the HSE said that due to a reduction in staffing resources over the past year, cross cover was provided from other primary care teams. It said this was not sustainable. It said to provide equal access to physiotherapy services for priority 1 referrals, it was decided to consolidated outpatient services as a short term solution in Abbeyleix. Please be assured that this is an interim solution we will continue to monitor Laois physiotherapy service pending availability for resources cognisant in the provision of an equitable service in locations of proximity to clients home address, he said. In relation to Portarlington the TD was told that the HSE endeavours to provided highest quality services within available resources and that it is committed to filling vacant posts. Age Action, Irelands leading advocacy organisation for older people, has urged people in Laois to make submissions to the Citizens Assembly, which will now consider the challenges and opportunities of an ageing population. The Assembly was set up by the Government to look at a range of issues including the eighth amendment to the Constitution, fixed term parliaments, referendums, climate change and planning for an ageing population. Naomi Feely, Senior Policy Officer with Age Action, said: Age Action is strongly encouraging people to get involved. This is an opportunity for everyone to have their say on what we need to do to make Ireland the best country in the world in which to grow old. How can we support older people in rural Ireland? What needs to be done to ensure we have a fair, effective, State Pension system? How can we ensure people have choice in the care they get and can stay at home as long as possible? These are the kinds of questions the Assembly needs to answer and you have the opportunity to put them on the agenda. Age Action will be making our own submission but we believe the Assembly needs to hear from individual older people and their families in Laois to ensure that they get a full understanding of what it is like to grow old in Ireland. Its so important to have your say, to set out in a short letter or email what you think Ireland must do to make ageing in this country something positive, that protects the dignity and independence of all older people. All documents received by the Assembly secretariat may be listed on the website, in order of date received and displayed with a name/name of organisation and the title of the submission. Submissions can be made online at www.citizensassembly.ie or by post to Citizens Assembly, 16 Parnell Square, Dublin 1, to arrive no later than 19 May 2017. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva Trend: Just weeks ago, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan announced that his nation and Russia will discuss the creation of a joint military-industrial complex in the city of Gyumri, Armenia, Alexander Murinson, a senior fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and Bar-Ilan University, wrote in his article published by The Washington Examiner, the US political website. This should raise alarms on the Capitol Hill and throughout Washington, as this is just the next step in a Russian military buildup utilizing its vassal Armenia as a proxy and launching point for operations against NATO, said the article. While the group of congressmen who form the Congressional Armenian Issues Caucus continue their unflinching, if not brazen, financial and military support to this South Caucasus nation, it serves as a military outpost for Russia - Armenia even brands itself as one of Russia's important military outposts, the author wrote. In an interview with Izvestia, a Russian daily, Sargsyan declared that Armenia is consistently building up its defense capability in the framework of military-technical cooperation with Russia, reads the article. Also, he stressed the role of the 102nd Russian military base located in Armenian territory. And in November 2016, Armenia joined the anti-aircraft defense system of the Russian Federation. The deepening Armenian military alliance with Russia poses a direct threat to NATO, said the article. Adam Ereli, former deputy spokesman at the State Department, said that the agreements reinforcement of the Russian troops in this region can threaten countries of NATO and their Western allies, according to the article. Ereli noted specifically that over the last six months - as Russia's war in Syria and pressure on Turkey has intensified - the flow of its arms and personnel into Armenia has escalated to include advanced Navodchik-2 and Takhion UAV drone aircrafts, Mi-24 helicopter gunships and Iskander-M ballistic missiles, the article said. The deployment of Iskander-M missiles significantly changes the military balance in the region, said the author. In February 2017, the Russians moved Iskander ballistic missile systems within strike range of anywhere in Turkey, Israel or Azerbaijan, some of the United States' closest allies, reads the article. These developments are in sharp dissonance with the continued financial support for Armenia approved by Congress and President Barack Obamas administration. The main lobbying effort on behalf of Armenia is conducted by the Armenian Caucus, said the article. The official mission of the caucus runs counter to US interests, as it advocates for increased trade and assistance to Armenia, self-determination for Nagorno-Karabakh region, and supporting US recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide, said the author in his article. Adam Ereli pointed to a very weak, even non-existent, response by the West to the beefing up of the Russian-Armenian military alliance, the author wrote. Western experts concur that Russia is preparing a new military alliance with Armenia, which may serve a launching point to unexpectedly hit at the interests of the US and NATO in the region, said the article. In light of the strengthening military alliance of Armenia with Russia, the wisdom of continued support for Armenia needs to be not questioned, but openly condemned, reads the article. Armenian "political" organizations such as the Armenian National Committee of America and others are, in fact, Russian puppets. They are completely dedicated to perpetuating within Congress the old and corrupt idea that relations with Russia are good for Armenia and that is, in turn, good for the US. This unwarranted support by the Armenian national organizations in the US for the anti-Western policies carried out by the Kremlin and Yerevan should be exposed, said the author in his article. The new stage in Armenian-Russian strategic cooperation represents a military threat to the Western alliance, the article said. Members of the Armenian Caucus should be reprimanded and financial aid to Armenia must cease, especially when the post-war American allies in NATO are asked to increase their contributions in order to beef up Western defense against Russia. The achievement of Abbeyleix in preserving its landscape is being honoured with the hosting of a big conference in the Laois town this summer. National Landscape Forum 2017 is themed Local Communities their Landscape and is scheduled to take place in the Abbeyleix Manor Hotel in June. Hosted by Landscape Alliance Ireland, the forum is said to mark a significant development in the evolution of the event with the organisers saying it is being hosted "by the dynamic, progressive community of Abbeyleix". It is hoped the theme will facilitate an in-depth exploration of the interactive relationship between communities and their landscape. The organisers say it will explore the challenges faced in managing landscape responsibly, creatively and sustainably in the interests of achieving a high quality of life for present and future generations. The organisers say Abbeyleix, its community and its hinterland will provide an "ideal, tangible living stage-set for the exercise". The Abbeyleix Bog project was recently chosen as a top ten example of conservation in Ireland. The achievement and ongoing work is to be recognised in May when President Michael D Higgins visits as part of National Bio-Diversity Week. The town's environment is a key part of the work carried out by Abbeyleix Tidy Towns. Landscape is to the fore in the committees entry to the European Entente Florale competition this month. For further information contact: Terry ORegan, Landscape Alliance Ireland E terryjoregan@gmail.com, M 087 2407618, T 021 4871460 Landscape Alliance Ireland is supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Rural, Regional & Gaeltacht Affairs, The Heritage Council and Laois County Council. For more on the Alliance and event check here The conference takes place at the Abbeyleix Manor Hotel, Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd June 2017. A school for children with learning disabilities that was left last on the list for a new building in Portlaoise, is finally seeing the start of progress, warmly welcomed by parents. St Francis school in Portlaoise has 94 pupils aged 5 to 20 from all over Laois and beyond, who have extra learning and physical needs. Their school is a small flat roofed, poorly insulated building on the Timahoe road that is forty years old and beyond restoration. Following years of campaigning by parents, planning permission is now being sought by the Minister for Education Richard Bruton, to Laois County Council, for a new two storey 12 classroom special needs school. Permission is also being sought for the demolition of another parish school that will soon be vacant, St Paul's School on the Borris road, offered by Portlaoise Parish to house St Francis School. The new school will be built in its place, with ample outdoor space for play and for safe traffic and pedestrian access, both of which were lacking at the old premises. The announcement in this week's Irish Independent has been welcomed by Michael Gorman, Chairman of St Francis Special School New Building Sub-Committee. "This is exactly what our committee and our parent body have been fighting for, a brand new, state of the art special school, where our children will be treated with the same dignity and respect as those in the mainstream of society," he said. "Our sub-committee would now urge all parties involved to do everything in their power to fast track this whole process so that these vulnerable children do not have to spend more than one more winter in their current location which has long since been past fit for purpose," he said. The group are confident that the new principal Malachy McNulty will "keep the pressure on". "Mr McNulty has brought a new impetus and sense of urgency to the process and we are confident that he will keep the pressure on to get this new State of the Art Special School built and occupied by his students and their wonderful teaching staff as soon as is reasonably practicable," Mr Gorman said. Mr McNulty has stated hopes to the Leinster Express of a new school "in the next two to three years". The spending of public money on housing asylum seeker direct provision centres in Laois and other counties is to be raised with the Department of Justice by a Dail committee chaired by Laois TD Sean Fleming. The former Montague Hotel in Emo, not far from Portlaoise, is used as a direct provision centre. The building, located on the old Dublin Cork Road, is owned and run privately. It has capacity for 202 people but had 16 'vacancies' according to the latest data from the Reception and Integration Agency. Deputy Fleming is Chairman of the powerful public accounts committee. It will be trying to find out how money is spent on in the Montague and other centres. Protests have been mounted at the hotel in the past and Portlaoise's priests have campaigned to end its use because of the conditions in which it forces people to live. In relation to procurement and management of contracts for Direct Provision, suppliers of direct provision accommodation at commercially owned and operated centres have been paid 251m over the five years to 2015. We will be asking the Department to outline the details of the Departments approach to securing direct provision accommodation and how rates paid to suppliers are determined. "In the absence of a competitive tendering process for the procurement of this accommodation, we will want to know how the Department can satisfy itself that value for money has been obtained for the significant sums paid," he said. The Laois Fianna Fail TD said people continue to live in direct provision despite the fact that their cases have been given the right to live in Ireland permanently. At August 2016, a significant number of people whose cases have been finalised continue to reside in direct provision centres. One in six direct provision residents have been granted status permitting them to remain in Ireland. The Committee will be interested to determine what specific assistance the Department provides to help persons move to permanent accommodation and what is the process involved, he said. The former Hazel Hotel in nearby Monasterevin has been used for some Syrian refugees. The Department of Justice is due before the committee on Thursday, May 11. The Prince of Wales and Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall are due to visit Kildare tomorrow Thursday, May 11 as part of their Irish tour. UPDATE: Curragh on lockdown as Kildare prepares for Prince Charles and Camilla visit today The precise details of the visit are being kept under wraps because of security operations. Plans are in place for Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla to visit two Lilywhite locations in the afternoon after a trip to Kilkenny City and Thomastown in the morning. The Royal Party are expected to Kilkenny shortly after 1pm and travel to Thomastown for a short visit before departing at 2.20pm. Kilkenny City will be open for business as usual. The public will be facilitated to view the visit of Their Royal Highnesses in Kildare. However, it's not clear if members of the public will be able to greet the pair when they arrive in Kildare. Prince Charles is expected to call to the UN Army Training School in the Curragh Camp, while the Irish National Stud will welcome Camilla. The Irish National Stud is no stranger to royalty. The Queen famously visited the landmark tourist destination during her historic visit to Ireland in 2011. Queen Elizabeth receiving a bouquet of flowers from Emma Osbourne at the Irish National Stud in 2011 Today, the President and Sabina Higgins will welcome the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to Aras an Uachtarain, where they will attend a number of events. This will be Prince Charless third visit to Aras an Uachtarain. President Higgins has invited a small number of young people to meet the Prince and the Duchess, as part of an event on Young People Working in Pursuit of Excellence and Ethics." Young people from all over Ireland and representing the worlds of sport, art, music, science, agriculture and advocacy will discuss their work and achievements with the Prince and the President. Following their arrival, the Prince and Duchess will be invited to sign the Visitors Book, followed by a meeting between the President and Prince Charles. The President and Sabina will then accompany their guests to the Peace Bell in the grounds of Aras an Uachtarain, before going on to meet with a small group of young people who have excelled in the fields of sport, art, music, science, agriculture and advocacy. This evening, the President and Sabina will host a private dinner for Their Royal Highnesses. A solidarity vigil to support 1,600 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails was held last Thursday evening at the Wyeth roundabout in Newbridge. Organised by activists from the Kildare branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, it will be repeated again this coming Friday, at 6.30 at Ballymany Cross in Newbridge. The vigil held banners and posters in silence to draw attention to the hunger strike now entering its third week. The prisoners began their hunger strike on April 17 under the title of Freedom and Dignity to call for an end to Israels practice of prisoner abuse, solitary confinement, torture, medical negligence and denial of rights guaranteed under international lawincluding the right to a fair trial and family visits. Several Palestinian prisoners leading the hunger strike have been transferred into isolation and all striking prisoners are being denied lawyer and family visits. According to Orla ONeill of the Kildare Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Israel currently holds more than 7,150 Palestinian political prisoners of which 6,300 are male political prisoners and 300 are male children. Of the 56 females in detention, 13 are children. A further 500 Palestinians are in administrative detention where they are being held for indefinite periods without charge or trial. It is estimated that since 1967 over 800,000 Palestinians or 40% of the male population will have served time in jail at some point due to Israels policy of mass arbitrary arrest and detention without trial. Speaking at the vigil, Ms ONeill said, We are deeply alarmed that despite human rights abuses, jailing of children, continuing occupation and theft of Palestinian land, our government along with the European Union has failed to hold Israel accountable for its grave violations of international law. And she called on the people of Kildare to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners by urging their elected representatives to put pressure on Israel to stop its ill-treatment of prisoners. She said the most powerful and effective form of solidarity for Irish people is to heed the call of Palestinian civil society to boycott Israeli goods and she highlighted produce currently stocked by local supermarkets such as potatoes, peppers, avocadoes and some herbs. The idea of knocking on strangers doors and asking them how to vote can be a bit daunting. Even those of us who are experienced at it can feel a bit nervous about doing it sometimes but the good news is that as soon as you are out and you have knocked on a few doors, you really start to enjoy it. Last night I headed out for my first big canvassing session with the fantastic Edinburgh West team. We were in an area of the constituency which is not part of Alex Cole-Hamiltons Scottish Parliament seat. It was a beautiful evening, with warm sunshine and pink cherry blossom. Its an area where we have in the past successfully persuaded people who support other parties to vote tactically for us. With the Tories surging in Scotland, would they still be willing to do so? Actually, they were. They understood that the seat was very much between the Liberal Democrats and the SNP and greeted us very warmly. I was actually surprised that we were doing as well as we were. We were able to show any doubters that in real ballot boxes last Friday in the Council elections we were in a winning position and, of course, Alexs victory last year showed that we could beat the SNP locally. There was also spontaneous admiration for our candidate Christine Jardine (people had heard her on the radio and liked her), Willie Rennie and Alex Cole-Hamilton. If you have never been canvassing before, heading out in a big team is a great way to start. Why not head over to your nearest held or target seat this week and try it out? * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings Tim Farron and Sarah Olney have announced that the Liberal Democrats will invest nearly 7bn more in schools and colleges over the next parliament. The funding would reverse cuts to frontline school and college budgets, protect per pupil funding in real terms and ensure no school loses out from the National Funding Formula. Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary Sarah Olney said: Children are being taught in overcrowded classes by overworked teachers but Theresa May doesnt care. While funding per pupil is set to see the biggest cuts in a generation, billions of pounds are being spent on divisive plans to expand grammars and free schools. This extra 7 billion of funding would ensure no school and no child loses out. We will reverse crippling Conservative cuts to school budgets and invest to ensure every child has the opportunity to succeed. Tim Farron added Tim Farron was challenged this morning on the radio whether the decision by the local party to stand down in Brighton Pavilion respresented some sort of deal. It isnt, and nor should it be. For all my long standing political differences with the Greens, I, like Tim, am relaxed about this decision. We werent going to win in Brighton Pavilion, and it is only fair that the Greens have a voice in parliament. Their politics are really quite bad in some ways but it is better they have a voice than are silenced. And tactically, Id rather see a remainer Green MP than another Tory. The decision to stand down is a reasonable one irrespective of any quid pro quo. If there were any prospect of Lucas putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street, I would reconsider, but there isnt. Similarly the Greens decisions not to stand in Richmond Park, Lewes, and Oxford West and Abingdon are sound in their eyes they would rather see Lib Dems win those seats than Tories. If you believe what the Greens believe, then the Tories are much worse than the Lib Dems. I welcome and applaud the non-tribalism. There is of course a conflict here between this post-Brexit pragmatism and the more tribal, purist view that my party should stand in every seat and give every voter the choice. Labour take a purist view, as they have every right to. Indeed if Labour were more pragmatic, and if they admitted that to any social democrat the Lib Dems are by far preferable to the Tories, it would open a whole Pandoras box of seats is it better not to fight, and risk creating a momentum for us, their rivals, at odds with their longer term goal of defeating us. I think it is worth the risk, but I would say that. The converse doesnt apply. It is not the case that to the average Lib Dem voter that Labour are any better than the Tories in fact we already risk leaking votes to the Tories precisely because Labour under Corbyn is so much worse. Labour have found a leader whose economic policy is probably the one thing that could do more damage to the economy than leaving the single market will. If we still had the normal Labour Party under Wilson or Kinnock or Blair or Brown or Yvette Cooper or Ed Balls it would be different, but Labour has been taken over by socialists from the 1970s who are as baffled by the modern world as UKIP are afraid of it. Most of the voters know this and even Labour MPs will admit it. The last thing we Liberal Democrats need is any taint of association with the Labour Party under Corbyn. Labour and Tory supporters hard Brexiters aside perhaps should recognise that we are better than the other lot, and vote accordingly where we are the challengers. Their parties would, if pragmatic, (and I never expect this to happen) detarget and/or stand down for us, but there is never the same case for us standing down for either of them: our vote would just split. This asymmetry makes deals difficult and punishes those who attempt them. May says we would support a coalition with Corbyn, though she knows it is not true, precisely because she knows it is bad for us and good for her if people believe it. Many many good, moderate and reasonable people are planning to vote Conservative today an extremist and reckless party because of Jeremy Corbyn. They may even feel they dont have a choice in the name of taking back control and reasserting parliamentary democracy, May will tell them, with no sense of irony or shame, that there is no choice. But good moderate and reasonable people, whether they are naturally Liberal Democrats, or pro-coalition Conservatives, or supporters of what the Labour Party stood for 5, 15 or 30 years ago, need to see that the Liberal Democrats will represent them far better than either of the others, and that a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for the Liberal Democrats. * Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield. Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10 By Orkhan Quluzade Trend: Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will pay an official visit to the United States on May 16-17. During the visit, Erdogan is expected to have his first face-to-face meeting with new US President Donald Trump. The main topic of will be not only bilateral relations, but also regional issues, and the main focus will be on resolving the Syrian crisis. Expert on international relations, correspondent of Turkeys Sabah newspaper in Washington Ragib Soylu believes that Ankara particularly expects positive development of bilateral relations from the new US leadership. Trump himself supports the establishment of good relations with President Erdogan. The fact that Trump, immediately after the referendum in Turkey conveyed his congratulations to Erdogan by phone, is important, Soylu told Trend. According him, the most important topics that are expected to be discussed by Trump and Erdogan will be related to the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, who resides in the US, and is accused of involvement in the July military coup attempt in Turkey. Meanwhile, the issue of US cooperation with the Democratic Union Party (PYD, Syria), which is considered by Ankara as a terrorist organization, will also be touched upon. The US, especially the Pentagon, believes that the PYDs participation in the operation for liberation of the Syrian city of Raqqa, which is considered the main reference point of the Islamic State terrorist group (aka IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), is necessary, according to Soylu. Washington hasnt yet made a final decision on this issue, but all actions of the US show that this plan will be implemented, he added. According to Soylu, the issue of Gulens extradition is a protracted legal process. Considering this, one shouldnt expect serious progress in resolving these two issues. However, Washington and Ankara can reach a compromise on the Syrian issue, since Ankara has become very satisfied with the recent US operation against the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, noted the expert. Under President Trumps order, the US military attacked a Syria-government airfield with 59 Tomahawk missiles in April 2017. The missiles targeted the Shayrat air base near Homs, and came in response to a chemical weapons attack. Earlier, Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey supports the launch of missile attack by the US Navy on the Syrian air base. 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 the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade Willie Rennie has been up in the Highlands these past couple of days. Yesterday, he helped out in a restaurant and cocktail bar in Tain to launch Jamie Stones campaign for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. Thankfully they didnt let him make any fried rice. When he was a student he thought that you actually had to fry it like an egg. Cooking up a storm with our candidates in the Highlands. Only Liberal Democrats can save the Highlands from the SNP. pic.twitter.com/I7lqgHVbky Willie Rennie (@willie_rennie) May 9, 2017 Today, hes visiting an ironing company in Dingwall (Lib Dems pressing forward ed) as he launches Jean Davis campaign for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, Charles Kennedys old seat. The thing about 54 Scottish seats at the moment is that they are all being failed in numerous ways from health to education to farming by the SNP Government at Holyrood, yet they are represented by SNP MPs who sign up to a code of conduct that they will not criticise the party . These areas need MPs who will stand up for them against what the SNP is doing. This is a point that Willie will be pressing (sorry) home today. He said: The NHS in the Highlands is under considerable strain and these figures show a multi-million pound shortfall on the SNPs watch. Waiting times are increasing and people are being forced to travel long distances for essential treatment. The SNP dismiss these problems and pretend everything is rosy while they deprive the NHS of the necessary funds to help tackle the problem. Imagine the difference we would see if the NHS in the Highlands hasnt been shortchanged like it has been over the years. With the Highlands crying out for a local champion the SNP have tunnel vision over their constitutional ambitions. Unlike the SNP, a Liberal Democrat MP will stick up for the region and reject a second divisive independence referendum. Only the Liberal Democrats can save the Highlands from the SNP. UPDATE: And here is pressing forward to victory: Journalists 'Marvel' at Lib Dem 'Iron Man' Willie Rennie on the election campaign trail in Dingwall pic.twitter.com/OeL4IBX5Gt Andrew Thomson (@andyinverness) May 10, 2017 * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings This (above) is a slide show courtesy of Getty Images. Click on the arrows to see all five photos of Tims glorious descension into Burnham-on-Sea yesterday Well, you have to admire the pluck of Tim Farron. As a keen student of Liberal History, I am sure he is aware of the intimate details of Jeremy Thorpes 1974 hovercraft adventure. That was the year of two elections one in February and one in October. In fact, if you ask the great Paul Tyler, he will tell you all about this, because he was MP for Bodmin (but, crucially, not actually Going Bodmin) from February to October and then had to wait until 1992 before returning to the Commons as MP for North Cornwall. Jeremy Thorpe was the charismatic leader of the Liberal Party at the time. He hit upon a marvellous idea to campaign to the populace during the summer hiatus before the October election, which was long anticipated. Jeremy Thorpe decided to go where the people go in the summer to the beaches of Britain. So he hired a hovercraft, gathered his lieutenants and the media about him, and took to the beaches of the South-West, via the oceans. It was a masterstroke. As a youngster, I witnessed the arrival of Jeremy Thorpe on his contraption at Bude in Cornwall. We heard it coming, saw the spray being thrown up by it. It made the tricky crossing of the bar and then came up close to the lifeboat house. Hordes of people in swimming trunks and bikinis stood up and moved across the beach to get a glimpse of Mr Thorpe, who emerged from the gliding vessel alongside Angela Rippon (reporting the event for Westward Television). Jeremy Thorpe was dressed in three piece suit with trilby creating something of a juxtaposition with the throngs of sun-tanned swim-suited holiday makers. Jeremy Thorpe then made an eloquent and passionate speech. The tour of the West Country was all very successful. Until that is, there came the mother of all storms somewhere about Somerset as the hovercraft made its way northward. Jeremy Thorpe wasnt beaten though. He donned a complete set of yellow Sou Westers and gamely forged on. You can see a wonderful photo of him in this garb on the BBC website here. But even Jeremy Thorpes bright yellow Sou Westers could not stop the great British weather. Finally, the weather won. It was a wonder that Jeremy Thorpe, his lieutenants and the media did not end up visiting voters in Atlantis. But, of course, Tim Farron knows all this. And still he bravely launched himself, via hovercraft, at Burnham-on-Sea yesterday. In fact, I dont think Burnham-on-Sea is very far from the site of the inauspicious end of Jeremy Thorpes hovercraft tour in 1974wed have to check that with the Lord Tyler. Anyway, like I say, you have to admire Tims pluck. In closing, I should mention a serious point. The hovercraft that Tim travelled on yesterday is part of BARB, formed as the Burnham Area Rescue Boat in 1992, which is a registered charity that operates two life-saving rescue hovercrafts and an inshore rescue boat in the Bridgwater Bay area. Please visit BARBs website here. Well done to the BARB team and thank you for all you do! * Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings. I am the Lib Dem PPC for Dartford in the upcoming general election, and, like candidates up and down the country, my campaign is being dominated by local issues. This is right and proper, a good MP can make their constituents lives better in so many ways, and for most voters, the key issues are always going to be the things that affect them directly. However, in my day job, I am also a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, an academic institute that studies, and tries to prevent, human extinction level threats. As academic institutes go, we are naturally very keen to produce work that is relevant to policy makers and to communicate what we do as widely as possible, and not just to other academics. However, standing for election makes me acutely aware of just how narrow the circle of people who we communicate with actually is. Threats to the survival of humanity are real and present, and should any of them come to pass the loss would be incalculably great. We face challenges from dangers that are well known, such as climate change and nuclear war, and others that can appear more speculative, such as global pandemics and Artificial Intelligence. Most importantly, there are things that we can do right now to substantially reduce these risks, if only we could motivate politicians and others to take them into account when making policy. Many of these are obvious. We need to implement ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. We need to work with international organisations to solve global problems. We need to achieve global nuclear disarmament as quickly as possible. We also need to protect ourselves from pandemics and achieve global health security by investing in the healthcare systems of countries that are most likely to be the source of new killer pathogens and least able to cope with any new outbreak. And we should be working to improve humanitys ability to respond to all manner of global challenges by ending child malnutrition and malaria, which together do so much to hold back the creative potential of our species. The truth is that none of these policies is that costly, especially when compared to the cost of leaving these kinds of threat unchecked, and many are beneficial in other ways as well. A mere 2-3% of developed countries GDP* equivalent to the amounts that people were willing to risk through leaving the EU could secure humanitys survival for many generations, and help us to reach a point of technological development where these things no longer threaten us. We dont do enough to implement such policies, in part, because spending such sums on long-term protection from intangible threats can seem like an electoral liability when there are so many immediate concerns that dominate our lives and when our sights seldom go beyond the next election cycle. Its hard to win an election by making pessimistic predictions about the future. However, governments will not take these risks seriously until they feel that they can respond to them without risking electoral failure as a result. We need to raise our sights and work together to ensure a safer, fairer world for our descendants. So, while my campaign this time will feature all the potholes and library closures that one would expect from any honest Lib Dem, I am determined to begin talking about these issues as well we have to! * Naturally this figure is a rough estimate. It includes: 1% of GDP to mitigate extreme climate change, as recommended by the Stern review, 0.7% GDP to tackle global poverty, channelled towards the most effective methods of improving public health and alleviating extreme poverty as recommended by effective altruists such as GiveWell, 0.3% GDP to prepare for, and prevent, natural disasters, including global catastrophes and additional funds to support international organisations that coordinate action on global challenges, such as the IPCC, IAEA, WHO and UNFPA, and further research into the identification and mitigation of existential risks and global catastrophes. For more about existential risks, and how to avoid them, see the 2016 Global Catastrophic Risk report . * Simon Beard is Academic Programmes Manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and a two time PPC for Dartford. He lives in Cambridgeshire. May 2, 2021, 2 AM Canada Post will commemorate the 2005 passage of the Civil Marriage Act on a stamp to be issued June 1. The stamp was unveiled May 9 in partnership with The 519 in Toronto. By Denise McCarty A stamp commemorating Canadas passage of the Civil Marriage Act 12 years ago was unveiled May 9 by Canada Post. Enacted July 2, 2005, the Civil Marriage Act made Canada the fourth country in the world after the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain to legalize same-sex marriage. The stamp is part of a set to be issued June 1 honoring historic moments from the last 50 years as part of the celebration of Canadas 150th anniversary. The stamps are being revealed one at a time at different locations throughout Canada. The next stamp in the series will be unveiled May 16 in Regina, Saskatchewan. The last unveiling will be on the June 1 issue date. All of the stamps are shaped like Canadas maple leaf emblem and are nondenominated with a P indicating they permanently pay the basic domestic rate (currently 85). Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter The Marriage Equality stamp shows a section of the rainbow flag. Canada Post describes the flag as a familiar symbol of pride for the LGBTQ2S (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Two Spirit) community. The unveiling ceremony was held at and in partnership with The 519, a city agency and registered charity in Toronto, Ontario. The 519 said that it is committed to the health, happiness and full participation of the LGBTQ community. A City of Toronto agency with an innovative model of Service, Space and Leadership, we strive to make a real difference in peoples lives, while working to promote inclusion, understanding and respect. In announcing the new stamp, Canada Post provided a brief history of the road to marriage equality in that country, stating that it began long before 2005. Canada Post said: For decades, LGBTQ activists and supporters from coast to coast to coast had fought for the rights of their communities, including the right to marry. In the late 1990s, the community began to achieve significant victories. CBC/Radio-Canada provides a time line of same-sex rights in Canada on its website. Legal battles for the right to marry in Canada began in the early 21st century. According to Canada Post, In early 2001, the battle for the right to marry took centre stage, after Reverend Brent Hawkes married two same-sex couples in a ceremony in Toronto. When the City refused to issue marriage licenses for these unions, it set off a series of heated court battles and public debate. The legal challenges culminated on June 10, 2003, when the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying was a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 2003, same-sex marriage was legalized in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, and the following year in Quebec, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia. All of the Canada 150 stamps will be available in self-adhesive form in 400,000 booklets of 10, and in 80,000 gummed panes of 10 stamps with circle perforations 4.5 cm in diameter, according to Canada Post. In addition, the Marriage Equality stamp will be sold separately in a booklet of eight (Canada Post product number 414053111). All of the stamps were designed by Roy White and Liz Wurzinger of Subplot Design Inc. in Vancouver, British Columbia, and printed by the Lowe-Martin Group. A total of 10,000 packs of 10 official FDCs one for each stamp design and each canceled in Ottawa will be made available. When each new design is revealed, stamps and FDCs can be preordered online at the aforementioned website. Beginning June 1, these stamps and FDCs will be available here. Also on June 1, stamps and FDCs will be available by mail order from Canada Post Customer Service, Box 90022, 2701 Riverside Drive, Ottawa, ON K1V 1J8 Canada; or by telephone from the United States or Canada at 800-565-4362, and from other countries at 902-863-6550. Canadas stamps and stamp products also are available from many new-issue stamp dealers, and from Canada Posts agent in the United States: Interpost, Box 420, Hewlett, NY 11557. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. French President-elect Emmanuel Macron addressed climate change and the Paris emissions agreement in his first phone call with US President Donald Trump, French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud stated on Tuesday, Sputnik reported. On Monday, Macron and Trump spoke for about 10 minutes following Macron's victory in the second round of the French presidential election. Araud said the conversation went well, and Trump told Macron he was considering the climate issue. "Usually in these phone calls its a lot of congratulations, [but] Macron raised the issue of climate change because the Americans are thinking about staying or leaving the Paris agreement," Araud said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN International. The US president emphasized that the Paris deal was a "very flexible agreement" and the United States could change its commitment or energy policy without leaving the agreement. Trump has threatened to withdraw from the accord, which sets long-term goals for each signatory to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. The US president has claimed the agreement threatens economic growth. Moon Jae-in from the South Korean Democratic Party on Wednesday became the new president of the Asian nation with support of 41.1 percent of voters, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) said, Sputnik reported. About 13,4 million of South Korean nationals participated in the election, the NEC added, as cited by the Yonhap news agency. About 50,000 migrants reached Europe by Mediterranean sea since the beginning of the year, the International Organization for Migration said in a statement on Tuesday, Sputnik reported. "IOM, the UN Migration Agency reports that 49,310 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in 2017 through 7 May, with the vast majority arriving in Italy and the rest in Greece, Cyprus and Spain. This compares with 187,569 arrivals through 7 May 2016," the press release read. According to the statement, over 41,000 migrants arrived in Italy, around 5.560 in Greece and 133 in Cyprus. The organization also said that 1.309 migrants died. Europe has been experiencing a dire migration crisis, and struggles to accommodate hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to enter wealthy EU member states through various routes, including via Turkey, Italy and Greece. President Donald Trump will nominate former congressman Mark Green to head the U.S. Agency for International Development, Reuters reported citing the statement of the White House. Green, a former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania and currently the president of the International Republican Institute, must be confirmed by the Senate. Zhang Dejiang on Macau Gaming Hub (Photo : Getty Images) Chinas third highest official Zhang Dejiang highlighted the need to diversify the economy of Macau gaming hub upon his arrival on the largest gambling center in the world on Monday. Zhang, the chairman of Chinas National Peoples Congress, is on a three-day visit to check a number of industries and to meet with legislators. Advertisement From the time when it was entrusted to China in 1999, the former colony of Portugal has been under a one country, two systems agreement. Macau has made brilliant achievements since the turnover, Zhang said, speaking on the tarmac alongside children who welcomed his arrival with flowers and a red banner. But now Macau faces an important stage as it makes a transition in its development, he added, mentioning the increased support of the Central Government for the special administrative region this year. Zhangs 5-minute speech was not particularly directed at the gaming industry, but the Chinese government has released earlier policy goals for Macau. Among which is to become an international leisure center and a platform between China and Portuguese-speaking nations. New casinos are being constructed on a reclaimed land area intended as Macau's Las Vegas-styled Cotai casino strip. Authorities have required these casinos to incorporate significant non-gaming facilities and services in an effort to shift away from gambling. Macaus economy is greatly dependent upon the gambling industry, contributing more than 80 percent of the governments revenue. Following President Xi Jinpings announcement of an anti-graft campaign, the gambling industry was undermined, causing the tiny territorys revenue to plunge for five years. Prior to Zhangs visit, Macau officials declared a new monitoring process for withdrawals at ATMs using facial recognition technology in an effort to increase restrictions on cash outflows from the mainland. According to the Macau government, Zhang will be meeting members of the Chinese territorys legislative body. A Legislative Assembly election is scheduled in September. The mainland seeks economic diversification for Macau, hoping that the territory will shift away from gambling as the government continues with its anti-graft campaign. For more than three decades, actor Brad Pitt was "boozing too much," and his drinking became a problem. But the actor has been sober for the last six months, he revealed in an interview appearing in the summer issue of the magazine GQ Style. "I can't remember a day since I got out of college where I wasn't boozing or had a spliff or something," Pitt told GQ Style, using a slang term for smoking marijuana. These days, the 53-year-old has given up drinking and has substituted "cranberry juice and fizzy water" for alcohol. In another important step in Pitt's recovery, he has been seeing a therapist to cope with "running from his feelings," the actor said. Pitt's struggles may resemble those of the approximately 17 million adults in the United States who have an alcohol use disorder, the medical term now used to diagnose drinking that seriously interferes with a person's life and health, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. [7 Ways Alcohol Affects Your Health] Although millions of people grapple with alcohol problems, only a small fraction of those individuals stop drinking and seek treatment to break the addiction, as Pitt did. Most addictions are difficult to break, and there is not a lot of scientific evidence available about which substances may be harder or easier to quit using, said Dr. Robert Swift, a psychiatrist and associate director of the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies in Providence, Rhode Island. How difficult it is to quit an addiction may depend on the length and intensity of a person's use of the substance, he said. A person like Pitt has both fame and fortune, but sometimes that is not enough to make someone quit drinking, Swift said. Live Science asked Swift to explain what happens in the brain when a person drinks heavily that can make alcohol so addicting. Three major brain changes One of the first things that happens to make people dependent on alcohol is that the substance stimulates the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked with pleasurable and rewarding activities, such as enjoying a great meal or having sex, Swift said. The release of this brain chemical affects the brain's reward center, and it can stimulate people's interest in and enjoyment of alcohol, so they continue to drink, he said. Consequently, the brain learns to associate alcohol with positive experiences. But as a person continues to drink frequently and heavily, a second major change occurs. The brain gets sensitized to the release of dopamine and over time, that enjoyment of alcohol fades, Swift said. As the brain becomes tolerant to alcohol, people need to drink more and more, in a sense, to feel good, and this begins the transition from liking alcohol to becoming addicted to it, he noted. A third major change takes place with repeated exposure of the brain to alcohol. As the brain becomes used to alcohol, it compensates for the substance's depressant, or slowing effects, by increasing the activity of glutamate, one of the main excitatory chemicals in the brain, Swift told Live Science. In other words, the brain responds by becoming more excited by the presence of alcohol, and even when a person is not drinking, the brain remains in an excited state, he noted. [11 Interesting Facts About Hangovers] With the brain in this excited, overactive state, a person with a chronic alcohol problem may not sleep well, may feel more anxious or may develop the shakes, Swift explained. The brain then needs the sedative effects of alcohol to damp down the excitatory chemicals so the person can feel normal, Swift said. In other words, the person needs to continue to drink. Alcohol addiction Breaking an addiction to alcohol is more difficult the longer and the more frequently a person has been drinking. If the individual has been drinking heavily for years, the changes that take place in the brain may be permanent, Swift said. Chronic alcohol use actually changes the brain neurologically; it sensitizes certain brain circuits and changes neurotransmitter levels, and it can also affect executive function, which is the part of the brain involved in decision-making that tells a person not to drink, Swift explained. Because some of the brain changes that occur with chronic alcohol use cannot be reversed, people who have become addicted typically need to avoid alcohol for the rest of their lives, Swift said. [How 8 Common Medications Interact with Alcohol] Individuals can vary in their vulnerability to becoming addicted to alcohol, he said. Some people are more genetically susceptible than others, and alcohol dependency tends to run in families, Swift said. About half of the cases of alcohol use disorders are due to genetics and family history, and the other half are due to environmental exposure, Swift said. Environmental factors may include social influences, such as friends and family, the availability and access to alcohol, and age at first use. For someone with a long-term addiction to alcohol, quitting drinking can be a difficult process with a high likelihood of relapse, Swift said. But chronic alcohol problems are treatable. The best treatment is a combination of medication and counseling, and some people need to go through a detox program first to get the alcohol out of their systems, he said. Originally published on Live Science. Dark and Light If any image can tell the story of North and South Korea in one frame, it's this shot taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station in January 2014. The nighttime view shows South Korea lit up with electric lights. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory) If any image can tell the story of North and South Korea in one frame, it's this shot taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station in January 2014. The nighttime view shows South Korea lit up with electric lights. Seoul is so bright as to be nearly washed out. With a 2017 gross domestic product estimated at $1.4 trillion by the International Monetary Fund, South Korea is among the dozen most prosperous countries in the world. North Korea's GDP is estimated at around $25 billion. According to one 2016 estimate, the per-capita GDP of North Korea was $1,013 in 2015, lagging behind even undeveloped countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh. Mythological Mountain This volcano on the border of China and North Korea is Paektu, or Baekdu, Mountain. It has long been a sacred place in Korean mythology and was said to be the birthplace of Dangun, the founder of the first Korean kingdom. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens) This volcano on the border of China and North Korea is Paektu, or Baekdu, Mountain. It has long been a sacred place in Korean mythology and was said to be the birthplace of Dangun, the founder of the first Korean kingdom. North Korea's Kim dynasty has seized on this mythology and claims that Kim Jong Il, the country's supreme leader between 1994 and 2011, was born there under a newly formed star. (According to Soviet records, Kim Jong Il was actually born in the former Soviet Union.) Empty country This 2012 image shows another stark nighttime view of North Korea and its more prosperous southern neighbor. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon) This 2012 image shows another stark nighttime view of North Korea and its more prosperous southern neighbor. In 1953, when the armistice ending the Korean War was signed, North and South Korea had similar levels of economic development. While South Korea has since nurtured high-tech industries and economic growth, North Korea has faced "chronic economic problems" under the repressive Kim dynasty, according to the CIA World Factbook. A widespread famine in the 1990s, exacerbated by the Kim policy of "self reliance" and the closed economy that prevented food imports, killed between half a million and up to 3 million people, according to different estimates. Agricultural Fires An image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite in April 2014 shows pinpricks of fire across North Korea. (Image credit: NASA image courtesy of Jeff Schmaltz/LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC) An image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite in April 2014 shows pinpricks of fire across North Korea. Some may have been wildfires, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. Others, particularly those near rivers, were probably agricultural fires, set by farmers growing crops in mountainous, marginal land. Engorged river This image, taken by the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite, shows the Yalu River in August 2010, after weeks of rain swelled waterways and caused flooding and mudslides. (Image credit: NASA images courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC) The Yalu, or Amnok, River runs for 490 miles (790 kilometers) along the border of North Korea and China. This image, taken by the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite, shows the river in August 2010, after weeks of rain swelled waterways and caused flooding and mudslides. Baekdu in winter A gorgeous view of Mount Baekdu and its crater lake, Heaven Lake. (Image credit: NASA) A gorgeous view of Mount Baekdu and its crater lake, Heaven Lake. In Chinese, the peak is called Changbaishan (translates to "ever-white mountain"), a name that seems appropriate for this image captured on April 4, 2003. Mount Baekdu last erupted in 1903. In around A.D. 946, the mountain exploded in one of the largest-known volcanic eruptions in human history, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program, depositing rock fragments as far away as northern Japan. Fire scars This 2014 image from NASA's Advanced Land Imager on its Earth Observing-1 satellite gives a sense of North Korea's rugged terrain as well as its agricultural practices. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon) This 2014 image from NASA's Advanced Land Imager on its Earth Observing-1 satellite gives a sense of North Korea's rugged terrain as well as its agricultural practices. Burn scars seen near the river running down the center of the image are probably agricultural burns, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. Farmers struggling to grow food in poor, mountainous land focus their efforts alongside river valleys and burn away debris from the previous year at planting time. Monster storm Tropical Storm Tembin blankets the entire Korean peninsula in this true-color image taken on Aug. 30, 2012, by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. (Image credit: NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team) Tropical Storm Tembin blankets the entire Korean peninsula in this true-color image taken on Aug. 30, 2012, by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. The storm hit just days after another storm, Typhoon Bolaven, made landfall. Prior to hitting the Korean peninsula, Tembin had hit Taiwan twice first on Aug. 23 and then after looping back again on Aug. 27. Hazy day A hazy day in South Korea is clear in the North. This image from Feb. 6, 2007, was taken by NASA's MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. (Image credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team) A hazy day in South Korea is clear in the North. This image from Feb. 6, 2007, was taken by NASA's MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. The haze emanates from China, which has struggled with air pollution issues as its population becomes more car-dependent. No man's land This false-color image shows the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a buffer between South and North Korea that was established in 1953. (Image credit: NASA image created by Jesse Allen) This false-color image shows the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a buffer between South and North Korea that was established in 1953 as part of the armistice that suspended the Korean War. Troops are stationed along both sides of this border, and burn scars in this image show some of the changes that both militaries have wrought on the DMZ in the context of patrolling and surveillance, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. This image comes courtesy of the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus sensor on NASA's Landsat-7 satellite. Line of truce Another view of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in real color. (Image credit: Image courtesy Jesse Allen/NASA's Earth Observatory) Another view of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in real color. The 2.5-mile-wide (4 kilometers) buffer is a mixture of mountains to the east and grasslands to the west. This image combines Landsat-4 and Landsat-5 satellite data from between 1989 and 1991 to get a cloud-free view of this largely depopulated swatch of land. A blood-red glacial waterfall in Antarctica finally has a full explanation. Blood Falls, a bold, sanguinary, waterfall-like stream of meltwater that spills off of Taylor Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, is fed by an under-ice stream of brine, according to a study published April 24 in the Journal of Glaciology. The briny water is full of iron, which oxidizes and turns red when it hits air, giving the outflow a bloody appearance as it flows into Lake Bonney. Last year, researchers reported that they had discovered a briny network of groundwater under the Taylor Glacier that they presumed to be the waterfall's source. The new study confirms the connection between this underground network and the waterfall, and traces the path between the two, glaciologist Erin Pettit of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks told Live Science. [In Photos: Antarctica's Stunning Ice] Strange glacier As if blood-red meltwater weren't weird enough, the researchers also found that the brines remain liquid even though Taylor Glacier is a cold glacier; it is frozen all the way through to the ground, and its ice is well below the freezing point of water, or 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). This liquid flow is possible, Pettit said in a statement, because water releases heat as it freezes. That heat penetrates the surrounding, cooler ice and warms it up. Since salty water requires lower temperatures than freshwater does to freeze, the brine is warm enough to move, she said. "Taylor Glacier is now the coldest-known glacier to have persistently flowing water," Pettit said. The brines are also home to microbes, which make the sites interesting to astrobiologists who think Mars could have once hosted extra-salty groundwater. Tracing the flow Pettit and her colleagues traced the brine using radio-echo sounding, a technique that involves pulsing electrical signals into the glacier using an antenna and then capturing the pulses that bounce back. The researchers found that the brine network penetrated at least 3 miles (5 kilometers) up from the terminus, or end of the glacier. It may go farther, but the ice was too thick for the electromagnetic pulses to penetrate, the researchers said. Crevasses at the bottom of the glacier probably allow brine to penetrate into the ice, the researchers reported. The brine does not flow continuously, but instead pulses episodically, Pettit told Live Science. The research team is now finishing up a publication explaining how the movement of the glacier drives these pulses. That paper wrapping up the final mystery of Blood Falls should be published in a few months, Pettit said. Original article on Live Science. Australia Craft Beer (Photo : Getty Images) China's lucrative beer market has opened its doors to one of Australia's most popular beer brands. The company announced on Friday, May 5, that they will be selling their products in China soon, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Advertisement Melbourne-based Little Creatures Brewery will export its products to Asia as part of efforts to tap into China's beer market, according to the report. In addition, the Australian company will open several bars in major Chinese cities, including Shanghai. It has already opened a bar in Hong Kong. According to Matt Tapper, the company's marketing spokesman, Little Creatures sees the huge earning potential for the brand in China. "We hope this deal . . . will accelerate Little Creatures growth to become one of the leading craft beer brands in China," Tapper was quoted as saying. Little Creatures is managed by Lion, Australia's second biggest beer company, which is owned by Kirin Company based in Japan. Lion products will be distributed in China by DXCEL, a Chinese company, the report said. In 2015, research showed that more than 25 billion liters of beer were consumed in China every year, more than double the volume of beer consumed in the U.S. Early this year, the Australian beer company launched a bar on Dagu Road in Shanghai, an initial step to penetrate the Chinese market. It also joined Austrade's inaugural craft beer road show in March. At the Vintage Cellars Best of Awards in April, Little Creatures was recognized as the brewery of the year. The company's Dog Days Summer Ale was also awarded the best craft beer. "It is a nice little pat on the back and recognition for our team and all the hard work they do day in and day out making the beers we love," Little Creatures brewer Russ Gosling said in April. "When we found out we won, it was high fives all 'round and a well-earned pint at the end of the day," Gosling added. Forrest Follet from the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University, removes the soil from the lid of one over 35 graves uncovered during construction in 2013. An estimated 7,000 bodies are thought to be buried under The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), according to radar scans of the campus grounds. Construction workers first discovered some of the unidentified human remains under the university in November 2012 while preparing to build a new road on the campus. University officials described the discovery of the 66 corpses in a statement published online in April 2013, noting that the workers had uncovered wooden coffins containing human remains dating to the 19th and 20th centuries. The remains were thought to be those of former patients at the Mississippi State Insane Hospital, an asylum for people with mental illnesses, which operated on that site from 1855 to 1935, according to the statement. Then, in 2014, radar scans of land to the west of the UMMC School of Dentistry yielded another grim surprise: 2,000 more bodies, The Clarion-Ledger reported in March of that year. And more recent scans now place the current estimate of human bodies under UMMC at around 7,000 people, distributed across 20 acres of grounds, UMMC officials announced yesterday (May 9) in a statement. [See Photos of the Excavations that Uncovered 'Insane Hospital' Bodies] Exhuming and reburying 7,000 bodies could be very expensive about $3,000 per corpse, or a total of about $21 million and UMMC is currently investigating options that could relocate the bodies and create both a memorial center and a dedicated lab for analyzing the remains, UMMC representatives added. Records indicate that the State Insane Hospital housed as many as 35,000 patients between 1855 and 1935, and up to 9,000 of its residents died on the site during its 80-year history. Between 1855 and 1877 alone, 1,376 patients were admitted. One in five died, from ailments including "softening of the brain," "nervous exhaustion" and "chronic diarrhea," according to The Clarion-Ledger. Studying the remains of people who lived and died long ago can provide pathologists with unique insights into human health and disease, Molly Zuckerman, assistant professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern culture at Mississippi State University, said in a statement. In addition to analyzing the skeletons themselves, archaeologists will investigate the age and composition of the wood coffins, which could also hold clues about the bodies that were buried in them, UMMC officials said in the statement. The coffins, all of which are pine boxes of the same design, are extremely narrow likely because they were compressed over decades by the weight of the soil, according to UMMC representatives. James Roncki of Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research measures the length of a coffin found at the site of the former state psychiatric hospital. (Image credit: The University of Mississippi Medical Center) Archaeologists working with the 66 bodies recovered between 2012 and 2013 emphasized the importance of handling and analyzing these anonymous skeletons with dignity and care courtesies that their owners might not have received in life, Zuckerman said in a statement published in April 2013. "Asylums in [the] late 19th century or early 20th century probably weren't salubrious places to live, so it matters to us to be able to exhume these people in a very respectful and ethical manner," Zuckerman said. The names and stories of these thousands of people, interred in unmarked graves, may never be revealed. But experts are already working to ensure that the patients will not be forgotten. Faculty from UMMC and other institutions recently formed the Asylum Hill Research Consortium (AHRC) to help guide the respectful relocation of the bodies and the creation of a memorial that would be open to the public, according to an AHRC overview that Ralph Didlake, director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at UMMC and a member of the consortium, shared with Live Science. "If we exhume the remains and rebury them off site, what we would have at the end of that process is a cemetery," Didlake said in a statement. "But with the project we're proposing, we will have not only a respectful memorial for these individuals, but we will have an education platform and a research resource." The AHRC also hopes to assist in assembling resources for analyzing the recovered bodies, and to provide educational resources that could help bring the long-buried history of the state asylum and its patients to light, according to the overview. Original article on Live Science. Adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who stay on their medication may be safer when they get behind the wheel than those who don't, a new study suggests. Researchers found a link between a person's use of prescribed ADHD medications and a reduced risk for motor vehicle accidents: U.S. men with ADHD were 38 percent less likely to be involved in a car crash during the months when they received medication for the condition, compared with the months when these same men were not receiving medication. For U.S. women with ADHD, the rates of motor vehicle crashes were 42 percent lower during the months when the women had received their ADHD medications than during the months when these same women went without treatment, according to the findings. The research was published today (May 10) in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. [10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp] The researchers concluded that people with ADHD are more likely to have motor vehicle crashes than people who do not have the condition, but that taking medication may help to reduce this risk, said lead study author Zheng Chang, a postdoctoral researcher in medical epidemiology and biostatistics at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. This is the first study to examine the association between the use of ADHD medication and motor vehicle crashes in the U.S., Chang told Live Science. Previous studies have suggested that people with ADHD are more likely to be involved in motor vehicle crashes, because many of the symptoms of the disorder, such as inattention and impulsivity, may interfere with the ability to drive safely. However, researchers also thought that the use of ADHD medication could have a protective effect, reducing unsafe driving behaviors and resulting in fewer crashes and injuries. In one study done in Sweden and published in 2014 in JAMA Psychiatry, researchers found that the use of ADHD medication in men was tied to a lower risk of traffic crashes, but it was unclear whether women's use of ADHD medications had a similar effect. ADHD medications and car accidents In the new study, the researchers tracked more than 2 million American adults who had been diagnosed with ADHD between 2005 and 2014. The data came from a health insurance claims database that contained patient information from more than 100 health insurers, including inpatient and outpatient hospital visits as well as prescriptions filled. To determine whether individuals with ADHD had been involved in car crashes, the researchers looked at visits to hospital emergency rooms resulting from motor vehicle accidents. The findings showed that ADHD medications were associated with a reduced risk of motor vehicle accidents in both men and women, Chang said. In a separate analysis, the researchers estimated that up to 22 percent of the car crashes could have been avoided if the patients had received ADHD medications at some point during the entire study period, he noted. Chang said he suspects the findings may actually underestimate the effect of ADHD medication on car accidents. That's because the study did not include crashes in which people did not seek out medical services, Chang said. "Many (possibly most) vehicular collisions do not result in an emergency room visit," two other researchers wrote in an editorial accompanying the study that appeared in the same issue of JAMA Psychiatry. In addition, the data did not include car crashes that involved a person dying at the scene, the editorial noted. In all, the new study probably underreports the benefits of appropriate ADHD medication and its effects on driving safety, suggestedthe editorial authors, Dr. Vishal Madaan, a child psychiatrist, and Daniel J. Cox, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology, both at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville. Both of the editorial authors acknowledged receiving research support from pharmaceutical companies. [10 Facts Every Parent Should Know About Their Teen's Brain] Madaan and Cox suggested that another limitation of the study is the way the researchers defined a patient's "use" of the ADHD medication; this was based only on whether he or she had filled the prescription during a given month. This "may have little bearing on whether the medication was active in the driver's body at the time of the driving mishap," the editorial said. It is not uncommon for people with ADHD to forget to take their prescribed medications or for the medication to have worn off at the time of the crash, especially if the accident occurred later in the evening, the editorial said. But overall, the editorial concluded that the study findings confirm and extend the existing evidence for the influence of ADHD medications on accidents. The results "have impressive implications for [the] judicious use of ADHD medication," the editorial said. Originally published on Live Science. Cartridges, shells and bullets from the 1918 Battle of Megiddo were recently unearthed by accident by students excavating in a national park near Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel. The battle was fought by Turkish and British forces. Archaeologists looking for ancient relics in Israel inadvertently found more modern pieces of history: artifacts from an epic World War I battle between the Ottoman and British forces. The artifacts were found at Rosh Ha'Ayin, which is near the ancient biblical fortress of Antipatris. Herod the Great built the fortress, apparently naming the city in honor of his father, Antipater. Volunteer archaeologists found rifle cartridges, shrapnel from artillery shells and even an insignia from the British forces' unit. "As archaeologists, we expect to discover ancient finds from hundreds and thousands of years ago, whereas here, we have a relatively 'young,' 100-year-old artifact, but we were all drawn to the fascinating story of the battle," Yossi Elisha, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in a statement. [10 Epic Battles That Changed History] Ancient history, newer finds The area where the artifacts were uncovered is part of Migdal Tzedek National Park. Along with the Herodian fortress of Antipatris, the larger region also holds the ancient ruins from a Medieval crusader castle. The artifacts were discovered completely by accident. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, along with student volunteers, were helping conduct excavations in advance of paving a road between two areas near Rosh Ha'Ayin when a student came upon one of the rifle cartridges. After further excavation, the team found bullets, Ottoman rifle cartridges, numerous fragments of artillery shells and part of a British army cap bearing an insignia. The team also discovered the remains of two Ottoman military outposts, one near an agricultural field and another near an older tower. A fragment of a British WWI unit insignia was recently unearthed in a national park in Israel. (Image credit: Clara Amit/Israel Antiquities Authority) Major battle The British and the Ottoman forces faced off in a major skirmish on Sept. 19, 1918, part of the larger Battle of Megiddo. At the time, the British were vying for control of Israel (then called Palestine), which was occupied by the Ottomans. "Two battalions, one-fourth and one-fifth of the British Norfolk Regiment, attacked the ridge where the excavated site is located, in order to assist another battalion that attacked the Ottoman fortifications," Assaf Peretz, a researcher at the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in the statement. "Finding the British cap insignia inside the Ottoman outpost vividly illustrates the historical event." The artifacts also enabled the team to reconstruct the battle. For instance, based on the artillery shells and shrapnel balls found at the site, Israel Antiquities Authority weapons expert Alexander Glick concluded that the British attacked the Turkish forces with 18-pounder guns. Bullet cartridges from Mauser rifles were found on the Turkish side, suggesting that the Turks returned fire with light arms. The Turkish forces sustained casualties, but still managed return fire, Glick said. "The rifles and cartridges were manufactured in Germany and were supplied shortly before the battle, evidence that the Turks were dependent upon their German allies for weapons and ammunition," Glick said in the statement. Originally published on Live Science. The average American drives about 30 miles (48 kilometers) per day, according to AAA (opens in new tab) , yet many people are still reluctant to buy electric cars that can travel three times that distance on a single charge. This so-called range anxiety is one reason gasoline-powered vehicles still rule the road, but a team of scientists is working to ease those fears. Mareike Wolter, Project Manager of Mobile Energy Storage Systems at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Dresden, Germany, is working with a team on a new battery that would give electric cars a range of about 620 miles (1,000 km) on a single charge. Wolter said the project began about three years ago when researchers from Fraunhofer as well as ThyssenKrupp System Engineering and IAV Automotive Engineering started brainstorming about how they could improve the energy density of automotive lithium batteries. They turned to the popular all-electric car, the Tesla, as a starting point. [Hyperloop, Jetpacks & More: 9 Futuristic Transit Ideas] Teslas latest vehicle, the Model S 100D has a 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which reportedly gives it a range of 335 miles (540 km). The pack is large, about 16 feet long, 6 feet wide and 4 inches thick. It contains more than 8,000 lithium-ion battery cells, each one individually packaged inside a cylinder housing that measures about 2 to 3 inches (6 to 7 centimeters) high and about 0.8 inches (2 cm) across. "We thought if we could use the same space as the battery in the Tesla, but improve the energy density and finally drive 1,000 km, this would be nice," Wolter told Live Science. One way of doing this would be to refine the materials inside the battery so that it could store more energy, she said. But another way would be to improve the system's design as a whole, Wolter said. [Infographic: An Inside Look at How Batteries Work] Nearly 50 percent of each cell is devoted to components such as the housing, the anode (the battery's negative terminal), the cathode (the battery's positive terminal) and the electrolyte, the liquid that transports the charged particles. Additional space is needed inside the car to wire the battery packs to the vehicle's electrical system. "It's a lot of wasted space," Wolter said. "You have a lot of inactive components in the system, and that's a problem from our point of view." The scientists decided to reimagine the entire design, they said. An illustration that shows how the new electric battery is stacked like a ream of paper. (Image credit: Fraunhofer IKTS) To do so, they got rid of the housings that encase individual batteries and turned to a thin, sheet-like design instead of a cylinder. Their metallic sheet is coated with an energy-storage material made from powdered ceramic mixed with a polymer binder. One side serves as the cathode, and other side serves as the anode. The researchers stacked several of these so-called bipolar electrodes one on top of the other, like sheets of paper in a ream, separating the electrodes by thin layers of electrolyte and a material that prevents electrical charges from shorting out the whole system. The "ream" is sealed within a package measuring about 10 square feet (1square meter), and contacts on the top and bottom connect to the car's electrical system. The goal is to build a battery system that fits in the same space as the one used by Tesla's vehicles or other electric vehicles, the researchers said. "We can put more electrodes storing the energy in the same space," Wolter said. She added that the researchers aim to have such a system ready to test in cars by 2020. Original article on Live Science. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Show More Show Less 2 of 3 facebook.com/IHOP Show More Show Less 3 of 3 MASSAPEQUA (AP) Police say a waitress at a New York IHOP pulled a steak knife on a Long Island family after an argument over poor service. The mother of the family says they were shaken up after she, her husband and their two special needs kids were surrounded by the pancake restaurant's wait staff after complaining about poor service. No one was injured. The Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday the mayors nomination of a longtime mediator and labor arbitrator to the Police Commission, filling a seat that has been vacant since January. Robert Hirsch was appointed 10 to 1, and is scheduled to be sworn in before Wednesdays meeting. Hirsch runs his own firm specializing in employment, civil rights, real estate and commercial matters, and serves as a mediator and arbitrator for the federal courts. His work as a mediator and arbitrator included work with law enforcement on labor issues, something he said gives him the insight and skills that would serve him well as a police commissioner. I think for myself, Hirsch told The Chronicle Tuesday. I believe in consensus, I believe in collaborative work and I believe in bringing different points of view form the community together, but ultimately, when it comes to making a decision, Im going to think for myself based on all the information Ive received. Hirsch will be joining the Police Commission at a turning point for the citys police force and its civilian oversight board. Following the emergence of bigoted text messages exchanged between two separate sets of officers and several controversial police shootings of people of color, the Police Department has committed to making a series of changes meant to strengthen relations with disenfranchised communities and bring down the use of force. These efforts for reform are why Hirsch has wanted to join the commission for some time, he said. At the rules committee hearing where his nomination was sent to the full board for approval, Hirsch said while he respected police officers, I have seen what everyone else has seen over the past few years and that is a clear abuse of force by police officers and police departments all over the country. Its not isolated, he said. Its not, in my view, an issue of rogue police officers. Its systemic and its in the way we have evolved policing in the United States. Hirsch had previously applied for an open seat in December. I had became convinced that policing in the United States really needs to be reformed, he said. You need to make a choice in your life: Are you going to sit back or are you going to participate? I believe people should participate wherever they can plug in. The sole dissenting vote on Tuesday was from Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, who said at the April 26 rules committee hearing that she wanted to pass on the recommendation to the full board with no recommendation. For this job, I think it takes a really deep knowledge of policing in the 21st century, she said. It needs a very, very deep knowledge about what is happening specifically in San Francisco around our Police Department. You need to know the external and the internal politics that happen within the Police Department and the things that surround it in order to penetrate internally what is happening in the Police Department. Hirsch acknowledged that hes not familiar with the politics and probably wont be until hes sworn in. But he said he believes that will actually serve him well as a commissioner. Im not a politician and I dont think Mayor Lee selected me because Im a strong political advocate of his, although Ive known him for many, many years, he said. Im not in anybodys pocket. Hirsch is filling a seat vacated by former Police Commissioner Suzy Loftus, who resigned after almost five years following a commission-led overhaul of the departments use-of-force policy, the appointment of a new police chief and the roll out of body-worn cameras. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Texas hoteliers, hospitality groups and tourism officials are nervous that a new law targeting sanctuary cities could drive away business and create a labor shortage in the already-tight hiring market for hospitality workers. On Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 4, which will allow law enforcement officers to ask people who get arrested or are detained for questioning about their immigration status and penalize officers who dont comply with federal immigration law. Critics argue the bill will lead to racial profiling and damage law enforcement agencies relationships with immigrant communities, leading to higher crime rates. Business groups worry the law could have widespread implications on the state, including the construction hospitality, tourism, retail and agricultural industries, by discriminating against and sending a workforce necessary to the Texas economy running underground. This is really shooting ourselves in the foot, said Ramiro Cavazos, San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce CEO and president. Its hurting our economy and our tax base by really preying on people just because of how they look. Bill Petrella, chairman of the San Antonio Hotel and Lodging Association, said local hotels have difficulty finding reliable employees and often resort to using third-party contractors to fill housekeeping positions. The legislation just will make it more difficult to find those workers in an already tight labor market, he said. Tourism groups already have been on heightened alert during this years legislative session monitoring Senate Bill 6, the so-called transgender bathroom bill. Officials in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston the states four largest cities have said dozens of groups that have planned or are looking at the state for future meetings have threatened to pass over Texas should that bill become law, leading to combined economic losses of at least $407 million. Senate Bill 4 could give convention groups more fuel to uproot their events from Texas. According to a study from the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, Phoenix lost $141 million worth of tourism and convention bookings in the four months after Arizona lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1070 in 2010, the controversial legislation that required officers to determine detainees immigration status. So far, no groups have signaled intent to yank their conventions from Texas, according to conventions and visitors bureaus in San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and Austin. While we haven't received any feedback from groups regarding the sanctuary cities legislation, any perception of Texas as unwelcoming could be potentially hurtful, Casandra Matej, Visit San Antonio CEO and president, said in a statement. As always, we will communicate with groups on any topic of concern, should it arise, to ensure that San Antonio remains a top-of-mind destination. But concerns abound that Texas could be subject to a boycott from travelers over the legislation. The left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union issued a travel advisory for the Lone Star State Tuesday, stating travelers should anticipate the possible violation of their constitutional rights when stopped by law enforcement. San Antonio business leaders already are nervous that tourists from Mexico who travel to San Antonio to shop will bypass the city because of President Donald Trumps negative rhetoric about the country and citizens along with the pesos devaluation. Add the possibility of being stopped by a law enforcement officer, and those tourists will take their money elsewhere, said Louis Barrios, CEO and president of Los Barrios Enterprises, which includes the three restaurants Los Barrios, La Hacienda de Los Barrios and Violas Ventanas. These affluent Mexican shoppers dont have to come here, Barrios said. They can go anywhere they want to. For the citys hotel industry, the implications are two-fold. Tourists are less likely to visit a state with policies seen as discriminatory, which means fewer hotel room bookings, said Petrella, whos the general manager at Hotel Emma in the Pearl complex. It also will thin the supply of available workers, he said. He said he had to import workers using the H-2B visa program from Mexico and Eastern Europe to work during peak tourism seasons while he was general at The Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa in Tucson, Arizona. Senate Bill 4 likely will tighten an already-competitive labor market in hospitality, Petrella said. We just dont want anyone to feel uncomfortable either working here or living here, Petrella said. We dont support legislation that can be viewed as discriminatory or cause people to leave San Antonio in this case or not move here because of policies that are viewed as discriminatory. That labor shortage extends to the landscaping industry, where businesses are turning away new projects and completing existing projects at a slower pace because companies cant find enough workers to complete jobs, said Amy Graham, CEO and president of the Texas Nursery and Landscaping Association, which represents more than 1,500 members. People are going to go underground and theyre not going to want to be on job sites because theyre afraid of raids and those kinds of things, Graham said. But, at the same time, we want a legal workforce. Graham later added that Senate Bill 4 doesnt help us get a legal, reliable workforce. jfechter@express-news.net Twitter: @JFreports Colin Firth and Taron Egerton attend 'Kingsman: The Secret Service' New York Premiere at SVA Theater on Feb. 9, 2015. (Photo : Getty Images/ Stephen Lovekin) Although "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" isn't out in theaters yet, "Kingsman 3" is already in active development. In a press event in London hosted by 20th Century Fox, "Kingsman" director and co-writer Matthew Vaughn screened the first act of "The Golden Circle" for the audience. He then teased that the climax of the sophomore film will expand the future of the franchise. Advertisement "No one will predict where Eggsy winds up [at the end of The Golden Circle]," Vaughn teased, as reported by ScreenRant. Unpredictability seems to be a prominent theme in the franchise. For one, Colin Firth's Harry Hart appeared to have died after getting shot by Samuel L. Jackson's Richmond Valentine in "Kingsman: The Secret Service" only to be brought back in the sequel. Moreover, Vaughn revealed how his co-writer, Jane Goldman, had been generating ideas for "Kingsman 3" while working on "Kingsman: The Golden Circle." This gives the "Kingsman" franchise a more detailed blueprint now. "We've got a big idea for that. This is sort of the bridge and if we can pull this off, we'll make another one," Vaughn said about their plans for the third film. Meanwhile, Taron Egerton will return as Eggsy Unwin in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle." This time he will journey to the US to join forces with their American counterpart, the Statesmen. Mark Strong will also reprise his role as Merlin. The official "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" trailer was chock-full of action sequences, explosive scenes and A-list stars in action. Aside from the core "Kingsman" team of Egerton, Firth and Strong, joining the spy flick are Channing Tatum, Pedro Pascal, Halle Berry, Julianne More and Jeff Bridges. Attendees of the screening of the "Kingsman 2" footage in London gave overwhelmingly positive reviews for the film. Reporters described the preview as "awesome" and "insane," and praised Moore performance the villain Poppy as "delightfully vicious." As for its lead star, Egerton, he compared the "Kingsman" films to two very explosive Marvel movies. "If the first 'Kingsman' was 'Captain America,'" Egerton told EW, 'Then ['The Golden Circle'] is very much 'The Avengers' now." There's something surprising about "The Wall," a stripped-down war drama featuring, for much of its brisk, 1 1/2-hour running time, exactly two on-screen characters, one of whom is lying face down in the dirt, unconscious, for the bulk of the movie. It was directed by Doug Liman, a filmmaker known for such kinetic action movies as "Live Die Repeat (Edge of Tomorrow)," "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," "The Bourne Identity" and "Go." Another surprising thing? It's pretty darn good. Not that it shouldn't be. But "The Wall," which features Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a U.S. Army soldier pinned down by a preternaturally accurate Iraqi sniper behind a crumbling wall and pro-wrestler-turned-actor John Cena as his injured superior officer, doesn't sound - at least on paper - like there's much room for innovation, let alone a movie. And yet the debut screenplay of Dwain Worrell - which won a screenplay competition sponsored by Amazon, before going on to make the 2014 Black List of the year's most-liked scripts - is smart, tense, provocative and weird. Set in 2007 Iraq, "The Wall" opens on Taylor-Johnson's Sgt. Allen Isaac and Cena's Staff Sgt. Shane Matthews as the two are following up, from a distance, after an attack at an oil-pipeline construction site that has left four workers and two security contractors dead. After this short prologue, in which nothing much happens - except the establishment of a viscerally real-feeling bond between these two profane, macho, half-cautious, half-cavalier warriors - the situation dramatically changes for the worse. Matthews, who has gone to get a closer look, is shot and grievously wounded. When Isaac rushes to his aid, he is wounded in the leg before hobbling to safety behind a stone barricade. When Isaac attempts to radio for help, he finds himself talking not to his base, but to the unseen sniper (voice of Laith Nakli), nicknamed "Juba" after the legendarily lethal gunman reputed to have killed as many as several hundred U.S. troops. And that is pretty much where things stand - that is, in a tense standoff - until the climax, which somehow manages to be both bleak and satisfying. "Rewarding" might be a better word. The movie, which defies conventional thinking about war-movie endings, largely consists of conversation, not conflict (at least not in a military sense), as Juba alternately taunts, attempts to school and acts as a confessor to Isaac, who, as one would expect of these things, tries to use his head to outwit his enemy and survive. The movie, for its part, is also fairly cerebral, raising questions about the purpose of this conflict in particular, but also about war in general. Worrell's screenplay, through the voice of Juba, interrogates the mechanisms through which terrorists are made and multiply, despite the best efforts of military strategists and attempts at nation building. "The Wall" is a fairly hopeless film. In a sense, the fragile structure of the title acts as a double metaphor: for a barrier between enemies that keeps them from killing each other, as well as one that must come down if true understanding is ever to occur. --- Three stars. Rated R. At area theaters. Contains coarse language and some war violence. 90 minutes. Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time. Advance fri may 12 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It was one of Bruce Hathaways favorite keepsakes an autographed photo of ZZ Top with Billy Gibbons private phone number written on it in the guitarists hand. The late KTSA radio icon proudly showed it off as he was helping to organize an exhibit at the South Texas Museum of Popular Culture a couple of years ago. Of course, Hathaway safeguarded the phone number. It was one of the few pieces of memorabilia that he didnt share. Hathaway, who died in January, had known the band since its fledgling days in the late 1960s at San Antonios Teen Canteen and considered the members friends. More Information In concert Who: ZZ Top When: 8 p.m. Tuesday Where: Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St. Tickets: $45-$125, 210-226-5700, majesticempire.com See More Collapse RELATED: Iggy Pop gives a shout-out to San Antonio band Fea Like Hathaway, a towering John Wayne figure who remained the embodiment of the hip radio disc jockey his entire adult life, ZZ Top guitarist Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard never has changed much, either, from its Texas blues-rock formula derived from Robert Johnson and others. Robert (Johnsons) tag on the turnaround found its way to La Grange, one of our favorite numbers played every night, Gibbons told the Express-News in November. And thats just fine with the fans wholl pack the Majestic Theatre on Tuesday. They want their little ol band from Texas just they way they are. Theres something about San Antonio that is rarely spoken about but everyone generally agrees on the same point, Gibbons told the Express-News in January 2015. Which is that not much changes. But no ones complaining. ZZ Top remains ageless, too. As do its hits La Grange, Gimme All Your Lovin, Legs, Sharp Dressed Man and on and on. RELATED: Medina Lake home crammed with rock 'n' roll memorabilia The bands history with San Antonio goes back to its first gig as ZZ Top at Sam Kinseys Teen Canteen on Sept. 13, 1969. The Houston act was paid all of $150. Gibbons also has mentioned that he used to love the old Pusi Kat nightclub downtown, a dark, cavernous place popular during the height of the Vietnam War and frequented by servicemen. The annual stop at the Majestic the last few years is often rejuvenating for the down-home band, which Keith Richards inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. For example, Gibbons likes to shop at Penners downtown for customized Stacy Adams shoes and sleeveless linen guayaberas. The bands exploits in town also make for fun stage patter. Inevitably, Gibbons shows off his new duds and talks about the band downing tequila shots at San Antonio landmarks such as Mi Tierra, Mexican Manhattan and Rosarios. Hill sometimes buys hats from Paris Hatters. If you're gonna be a vato, you gotta go to Penner's, Gibbons told the audience at the Majestic in January 2015. Dig it, man. Not only are they Stacy Adams from Penner's, they're slip-ons. The shoes are a longtime fashion statement on S.A.s West Side. Theyre transformed on Gibbons special orders the heels are popped off and shaved smooth at Moras Shoe Shop on South San Dario Avenue. Shop owner Albert Mora III customizes the shoes he calls it low-rider style for the musician he knows as Mr. ZZ Top. The real way to wear Stacy Adams is you remove the heels. Its a San Antonio thing, Gibbons explained a couple of years ago. RELATED: Austin City Limits Music Festival announces lineup Michael Ann Coker curated the Teen Canteen exhibit at the South Texas Museum of Popular Culture in December 2013. She was there when Gibbons arrived unannounced and took it in. One of the items on display was that first canceled check for the first gig. He loves San Antonio, and it was big when he showed up, said Coker, who no longer works at the museum. We didnt know he was coming, Its hard to find anyone cooler than Billy. Musician Jeff Smith of the Hickoids wrangled the guitarist. He commented on all the memories, Coker said, and was especially smitten with an old poster featuring the band the Laughing Kind. Gibbons spent much of the visit talking with Sam Kinsey, who operated the Teen Canteen. Kinsey who described Gibbons as down-to-earth, genuinely friendly and not sold on himself looms large in the bands formative days. He often booked the Moving Sidewalks, Gibbons Top 40 band that predated ZZ Top, at the Teen Canteen and at dances and parties. But they had original music they were dying to get out. They got their chance in September 1969. They had been working on their original material, but they didnt want to queer their reputation as Top 40 band if their material wasnt going to work, said Kinsey, 78. Gibbons came up with the name ZZ Top. The mystery of its origin has birthed numerous theories, from being inspired by brands of tobacco rolling papers to being based on bluesmen B.B. King and Z.Z. Hill. Kinsey didnt particularly like the new name. The bluesy rock was another matter. It was killer. It wasnt a firm decision. It was a trial thing, Kinsey said about the new name. By coming to the Teen Canteen, away from Houston and playing under their new name, they were not risking their Moving Sidewalks reputation. But I knew from the very first song that they played and the reaction from the Teen Canteeners that they were on the right track. hsaldana@express-news.net Labeled as the Internet Plus policy, the new service delivery will cover various aspects of government work. (Photo : Getty Images) Across Chinas fast-developing cities and regions, hundreds of social and civic services provided by the government are now offered virtually and eliminating the need for paying in cash, according to a report by China Daily. Leading the initiative to overhaul the national governments civic service delivery is the capital city of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou. The city is also where the headquarters of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is located. Advertisement Labeled as the Internet Plus policy, the new service delivery will cover various aspects of government work, from traffic fines, marriage registration and remote diagnosis to utility bill and income tax payments, the report said. More and more Chinese cities are embracing the power of data to transform how citizens transact with government. Shanghai and Nanjing are two of the cities that are using technology to ensure cashless civic transactions. Eliminating bureaucracy, expediting services For Chen Guangsheng, vice secretary-general of Hangzhous local government, the rationale behind implementing digital solutions is to make processes more convenient for citizens. "This has become a reality thanks to the establishment of a virtual public payment platform, which effectively covers payments for the government's over 200 services. Residents can transact via the unified online portal," Chen said. Since officially launching three years ago, Zhejiangs virtual government services have addressed 15 million transactions that now amount to approximately 450 million yuan. If such rate of progress continues, Chen sees a big opportunity to expand into property transaction fees and health insurance. For entrepreneurs and self-employed, finding social security fund payments via a mobile app called Alipay is convenient and saves a lot of time. This is in contrast with the previous experience of spending days to go through the paperwork. In addition, mobile transactions can easily produce a digital invoice with a QR code that can be utilized to acquire a hard copy. When Trinity University pre-med student Malcolm Conner entered the New York Times Modern Love college essay contest, he revealed a secret about himself that for years hed kept almost completely hidden. At the same time, he kept other secrets, the most basic details of the likely doomed love affair he and his girlfriend had embarked upon. Conners essay, The Physics of Forbidden Love, tells a classic Romeo-and-Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers and parental expectations transformed by up-to-the-minute concerns about gender identity and transphobia. The story of the romance between Conner, a transgender man, and an immigrant Indian woman caught the eye of Modern Love editor Dan Jones who, with two other editors, plucked it as the winning essay from a pile of 2,000 entries. The essay, Jones said, struck us a being timely sophisticated and well written and also hopeful in how these two were open to love despite the obstacles. Those obstacles include what Conner, a Wisconsin native, describes as his Midwest accent, ratty Packers sweater and frozen-tilapia complexion attributes he concedes his potential in-laws would not expect. Or accept. She told me her parents have forbidden her from dating anyone who isnt Indian because theyre afraid shell lose her culture, he explained. That if she marries a non-Indian, shell become part of her husbands culture. The Modern Love column is one of the Times most popular. Weekly, the personal essays explore the complexities of human relationships, usually with a contemporary edge. Several have been optioned for movies, and some 50 have resulted in book deals for their authors. When Lena Dunham wanted to show her character Hannah Horvaths growth as a writer in the HBO series Girls, she had Hannah publish a Modern Love column about learning that her best friend Jessa is dating her ex, Adam. Conner, who began his transition in high school, entered college determined to keep his status as a transgender man secret. But after several dates he decided to come out to his new girlfriend who is unnamed in the essay as the two sat in the schools ornithology lab: When I was finished she sat very still, the only sound a whirring centrifuge, in the other room, he wrote. I waited for her to get up and leave. She didnt. Taking my hand, she said, I had no idea. The couple dated for a while but, deciding the inevitable would be too painful, agreed to stop seeing one another. The split didnt last long. Within a week, she was back in my bed, he wrote. It wasnt a decision, it was physics. Opposites doing what opposites do. Still, theyve had to keep their relationship a secret from her parents. They dont post photos of themselves on social media, he stays silent when she talks to them on the phone and once, when she went home for the weekend, she had to wear a scarf to hide the hickeys he had thoughtlessly given her. Sitting on the second floor porch of the apartment he rents a bicycle ride from the Trinity campus, Conner said he wrote the essay more for himself than for the contests $1,000 first prize. I wanted to see if I could put what I was feeling down on paper in a reasonable way, he said quietly. To see if I could rationalize staying in the relationship. His decision to write also was triggered by two mutual acquaintances who asked his girlfriend if she knew he was transgender. I realized that my control was starting to slip and that I couldnt keep that aspect of my identity as private as I would like, he said. It was frightening, but I figured if people have to find out, Id rather they find out from my words. Initially angry about the situation, he pushed back against that emotion. I dont want to spend this relationship angry and resentful, he said. It means too much to me. Anger doesnt help anything and it doesnt change anything. Asked if he is in love, Conner paused for a long, long time. Finally, he answered, I think so. If I didnt love her I wouldnt be able to rationalize staying with her. Although his girlfriend knew he was writing the essay, she didnt get to read it until it appeared in The New York Times. If I knew she was going to read it I might have censored myself, he said. And I didnt want to do that. In the essay, Conner writes movingly that its not only her familys expected disapproval that hangs heavily over the couples budding romance. The current political climate also forces them to cling to one another ever more closely: As animosity toward brown-skinned immigrants seems to worsen daily and anti-transgender bills that strip me of my dignity draw closer to becoming law in the Texas legislature, there are days when we wake up scared, go to bed scared and navigate our isolation in between. While Conner said he never considered masking his girlfriends ethnicity, he did ask to change her name in case her parents happened to read the essay. Jones said he refused because its against the papers rules to change facts. Instead, they removed her name completely. The paper did contact his girlfriend and Trinity University to fact-check the piece. Overall, Conner said the response hes gotten has been positive, although hes also received a handful of hateful emails most from anonymous email addresses. For now, hes back home in Wisconsin, taking classes and studying for the MCAT, the admission test for medical school. While theyre still dating, the couple has made no plans to get together over the summer and they wont see one another until school resumes in the fall. rmarini@express-News.net Twitter: @RichardMarini Emmanuel Macron, New French President (Photo : Getty Images) Emmanuel Macrons victory in the recently concluded French presidential election has put a stopper to the rising sentiment of right-wing nationalism in Europe. This turnout especially bodes well for China and Sino-French ties in general, China Daily reported. Advertisement The independent centrist won against Marine Le Pen of the French National Front, gaining 66 percent of the poll votes. However, the abstention rate for this years election was recorded at about 25 percent, the highest in the past hundred years. Meanwhile, blank or spoiled ballots were turned in by over 11 percent of voters who werent swayed by either Macron or Le Pen. Labeled as the dark horse of the presidential campaign, Macron countered Le Pens nationalist agenda by promoting openness, free flow of people and vowing to fight extremism. His win is also a stunning change from the recent populist victories, most evident in the election of Donald Trump as the United States president and the United Kingdoms decision to leave the European Union. Macron is in for a challenge, however, as there are darker times ahead of France. The country has fallen prey to various terrorist attacks in the past two years, with over 230 people dead. France is also currently suffering from deep social divisions and unemployment among young professionals, among other issues. Still, its a great victory for China, who has been cultivating healthy relations with France in the recent years. The two countries have the shared view of maintaining global peace, order and development. Furthermore, with China now a leading figure for globalization, Macrons like-minded policies will definitely help the formers fight for free trade. Macron has previously said that China can also be a partner in fighting terrorism and climate change. President Xi Jinping sent a message of congratulations to Macron, saying that with him leading France, the two countries will move the strategic Sino-French partnership to a higher level. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A judge in the 111th District Court sentenced a man with multiple arrests and convictions on his record to serve 25 years in prison Tuesday. After a two-day trial, a jury found Edwing Ahmed Alvarez guilty of burglary of a habitation. This is the second time Alvarez, 31, has gone to trial for the burglary charge. On April 25, 111th District Court Judge Monica Z. Notzon declared a mistrial after a jury was unable to return a verdict after six hours of deliberations. Click through the gallery above to see the craziest mugshots from Texas arrests. On Tuesday, the jury reached a guilty verdict after an hour of deliberations, the District Attorneys Office said. Alvarez was arrested July 15 after LPD received a report of a burglary of a habitation. An individual reported to police that a man in the 500 block of East Fremont was pushing a shopping cart with a flat screen television. When approached by officers, Alvarez allegedly stated the television belonged to him. READ MORE: Mami Chulas owner arrested after allegedly hiring 16-year-old girl to dance in bikini Officers discovered a ransacked home at the residence, with knocked over items, doors left open and a television visibly missing, LPD Officer Juan Alvaro Morales testified. Further investigation revealed Alvarez stole a window air conditioner, three milk jugs with quarters, purses and other miscellaneous items, the District Attorneys Office said in a news release. After the burglary, Alvarez allegedly went to a pawnshop and pawned the window unit before returning hours later to attempt to pawn the television, according to witness testimony. Alvarez returned to the house after pawning the window unit and began stealing more items from the home, assistant District attorney Javier Guzman said. Alvarez denied the allegations. Prior convictions Court records state Alvarez reached a plea agreement with the state, pleading guilty to credit card or debit card abuse, in March 2011. He was sentenced to serve 10 months in a state jail facility. In April 2011, Alvarez received a two-year sentence to run concurrently with the card abuse sentence after pleading guilty to burglary of a habitation, records state. RELATED: Trial begins for convicted felon accused of ransacking west Laredo home Alvarez was sentenced again to serve 10 months jail time in February 2015 for theft of property charges. Records state Alvarez was indicted April 12 on charges of unauthorized use of a vehicle and theft of property over $2,500, both state jail felony charges. On May 2, Alvarez pleaded not guilty to the charges. He is scheduled to appear June 26 for an informal pretrial conference in the 111th District Court, according to court records. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A police pursuit in south Laredo ended when the suspect vehicle crashed into another motorist, authorities said. On Monday, Pablo Gonzalez, 21, and Kimberly Garcia, 21, were arrested in connection with the case. Gonzalez was charged with evading arrest with a motor vehicle and accident involving damages. He was also served with four warrants issued by LPD for burglary of a habitation, burglary of a vehicle and two counts of theft. Gonzalez was also served with warrants from the Webb County Sheriffs Office for failure to appear in court. Garcia was charged with evading arrest for allegedly running away from the scene of the crash. READ MORE: Ninth arrest made in probe of San Antonio prostitution ring An officer tried pulling over a Dodge Avenger for a traffic violation at about 8 p.m. in the 4800 block of South U.S. 83. A chase ensued when the driver did not stop, according to police. The pursuit ended near the entrance of the Santa Fe Subdivision when the Avenger collided with a silver Toyota Camry occupied by a woman. Two occupants in the Avenger ran from the scene and third passenger stayed, police said. Authorities caught up to the fleeing suspects who were identified as Gonzalez and Garcia. Click through the gallery above to see what the deadliest roads in Laredo are. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The owner of Mami Chulas was arrested Tuesday for allegedly employing a 16-year-old girl to dance provocatively outside the restaurant, according to Laredo police. Juan Ramon Meza, 43, was charged with employment harmful to children, a second-felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. LPD records show Meza was arrested for the same offense July 9, 2015. His case was dismissed May 2016, according to court documents. The mother of the girl reported April 30 that she had seen her daughter employed at Mami Chulas Drive Thru, 1806 Barrios St. An LPD report states the girl was wearing a black bikini while dancing and serving customers. READ MORE: Police: Mami Chulas employee arrested for public lewdness Investigators with the Juvenile Enforcement Team followed up on the case. Police spoke to employees and the owners of the location. Her mother alleged she recovered photos of her daughter from social media. The social media pictures were posted on the juveniles Facebook page of her working at Mami Chulas Drive Thru wearing what her mother had stated that she was wearing that day, an LPD report states. Authorities presented the case to an assistant district attorney, who approved the issuance of an arrest warrant for Meza. Click through the gallery above to see photos of Mami Chulas, as well as a list of crimes that most often occur in Texas prisons. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Laredo police are concerned that the passage of the controversial show me your papers bill can jeopardize public trust. Im especially concerned about the victims. I want to make sure that this does not erode the publics trust. We dont want victims of crime to be afraid to call the police, said acting LPD Chief Gabriel E. Martinez Jr., adding that he needs to do more analysis of the bill. On Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation banning sanctuary cities in Texas. State Sen. Judith Zaffirini and state reps. Richard Raymond and Tracy King opposed the bill. Last week, the City of Laredo issued a statement prior to the bills passage saying they are aware and in receipt of a copy of Senate Bill 4. The City of Laredo is not a sanctuary city and has never claimed to be one, the statement reads. READ MORE: Mami Chulas owner arrested after allegedly hiring 16-year-old girl to dance in bikini But the part that concerns authorities deals with local police departments undertaking immigration duties during a lawful detention. Furthermore, part of the bill states that a peace officer may inquire about the immigration status or nationality of a crime victim or witness if necessary. Its something that we have to vet it through the city to see what protocol we are going to follow, Martinez said. I just want to make sure exactly what the bill entails and what training we need to provide to our officers. RELATED: 36 vintage Laredo-area postcards from the early, mid-1900s The Webb County Sheriffs Office released a statement late Tuesday. I, Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar, (have) a sworn duty to enforce the laws passed by our legislature. The interpretation or the validity of any law rests with the courts. The Webb County Sheriff's Office will continue to serve our community by protecting and preventing them from crimes. We are always committed to public trust and confidence, the statement reads. During a news conference set for this morning, Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz and Martinez will address the possible impact of the new law on Laredos policing practices and the reporting of crimes. A married couple struggle to find outlets for their grief over the death of their son in director Asaph Polonskys gentle but uneven Israeli drama-comedy One Week and a Day. Set during the course of a day that day coming after the Jewish faiths traditional weeklong mourning period of shiva it follows Eyal (Israeli comedian Shai Avivi) and his wife, Vicky (Evgenia Dodina), after the death of their son from cancer. They spend the day mostly apart. Eyal becomes obsessed with his sons medical marijuana stash and enlists the help of a neighbor, Zooler (Tomer Kapon), to teach him how to properly roll a joint and smoke it. Vicky tries to go back to her job as a teacher, but the school had already lined up a substitute to take her class. So she fills her time with jogging, keeping her dental appointment and various other mundane tasks. Polonsky tries for much comic mileage out of the budding friendship between Eyal and his stoner neighbor like when they play air guitar to cranked-up music while getting stoned but he doesnt seem to know what to do with Vickys character. Thats too bad, because in a way, shes the more interesting character. Eyal doesnt have much dimension to him, and hes kind of a jerk there is a disturbing scene when he confronts his female neighbor for having sex at too high a volume. He hits her. Why? Although Polonsky consistently checks back on Vicky, it seems as if shes barely in the movie. Dodina does what she can without as much screen time or a well-written character to work with, so that she effectively achieves a sense of a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown is a tribute to her. One Week and a Day does have one really interesting sequence that belongs in a better movie, and shows Polonskys potential as a filmmaker. Visiting the graveyard where his son is buried, Eyal comes upon the funeral of a young woman. The eulogy is delivered by her father. As he gives the eulogy, we see a condensed version of his grieving in the days leading up to the funeral. This is a character weve never seen before, and we dont see him again. Its brilliant, and extremely moving. One Week and a Day has its moments, just not enough of them. G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BRfilmsAllen One Week and a Day Drama-comedy. With Shai Avivi, Evgenia Dodina, Tomer Kapon. Directed by Asaph Polonsky. In Hebrew with subtitles. (Not rated. 98 minutes.) Snatched is the movie where Amy Schumer comes into her own as a big-screen comic actress. A lot of people (not me) liked Trainwreck (2015), her feature breakthrough, but in that she was by turns obnoxious and sentimental, and she didnt quite add up as a specific screen personality. In Snatched, she does. Its a funny movie, but its also one in which Schumer becomes truly legible, as someone who could be headlining comedies for the next decade or more. The film shows her as a gifted practitioner of embarrassment, of the comedy of humiliation. She didnt write it Katie Dippold (The Heat) did but scene after scene seems tailored to what Schumer can do best. Snatched pairs her with Goldie Hawn, who plays her mother, and thats a strength of the movie. They look enough alike, and their personalities blend well, each seeming smart in the specific areas where the other seems lost. They also exude a certain warmth toward each other, which was either real or definitely worth faking. In the first second of the movie, we find out the meaning of the title that this mother and daughter are going to be kidnapped while vacationing in Ecuador. But the movie takes its time about putting the plot into motion, and its time well spent. Snatched is a film of comic set pieces, one after the other, and almost every one of them pays off. When we first meet Emily (that is, Schumer), shes in a clothing store, talking to someone we assume is a salesgirl about her upcoming plans. Its a clever way to unload a lot of exposition in a painless way, and the scene comes with a terrific reversal at the finish. Then were on to the next set piece, a terrific two-person encounter in which Emilys boyfriend is breaking up with her. Its well directed by Jonathan Levine on that line between absurd and sincere, so that Schumer gets to stay grounded in genuine grief and surprise, even as the scene takes some funny turns. The moment in which she leans over the table to kiss him and he blocks her face with both hands is both really funny and squirmingly embarrassing. Not every scene in Snatched is quite that successful, but its very clear that a real effort was made so that nothing was ever tossed off. Every scene has its comic hook some better, some worse, some hilarious. The filmmakers have a big advantage in Schumer, in that she is willing to do anything. It takes a lot to raise eyebrows in 2017, but she can do it. The funniest moment in Snatched comes close to being indescribable in a family newspaper. Whats great about Schumer here is that she is willing to be gross, but the grossness is just human. Shes not actually depicting anything outside the scope of normal life. Shes just depicting aspects of normal life you dont expect to see, especially from a woman. So that even as shes funny and shocking, the experience also feels rather useful. Or instructive. Even in small matters, honesty and truth are always good to see. The abduction plot is OK. Its a good-enough anchor for everyones comic invention. The story feels like its missing one last turn of the screw, one last amplification of the stakes and the craziness, but no one will particularly miss it. Anyway, if they just ran out of jokes, they did right to quit when they were ahead. Ninety-one minutes is good for comedy. No sense in pushing it. Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MickLaSalle Snatched Comedy. Starring Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn. Directed by Jonathan Levine. (R. 91 minutes.) WASHINGTON - Aftershocks from President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James B. Comey roiled Congress on Wednesday, as key Republicans criticized Trump's decision and Democrats slowed committee business to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russia's election meddling. Lawmakers also began to confirm reports that the Justice Department has denied - that Comey sought more resources for his probe into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government shortly before he was fired. "I understand that there have been additional requests. That's all I can say," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Calif., the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told reporters at midday. A chaotic morning had already unfolded in the upper chamber, as Democrats gathered on the Senate floor, invoked an obscure Senate rule that prevents committee hearings from continuing past midday and then met to discuss how to intensify their push for a special prosecutor. Meanwhile, the Republican leader of the Intelligence Committee said Comey's firing will frustrate bipartisan efforts to investigate Russian interference in the election and any possible ties between the Kremlin and associates of Trump. Sen. Richard Burr, N.C., met with Comey on Monday, a congressional aide confirmed. "[The firing] creates challenges for the committee," Burr told reporters. "An interruption in any of the access we have to the documents or the personnel would be harmful to our investigation. It wouldn't in any way shape or form preclude us from coming to a conclusion, but it might delay us." Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he and Burr invited Comey to testify before their panel on Tuesday of next week. "We've not heard back," Warner told MSNBC. "My hope is that he [Comey] will take advantage of this opportunity." While Republican leadership worked to deflect the flood of criticism hitting the White House, Vice President Mike Pence repeated Trump's claim that Comey informed him several times that he was "not under investigation." Pence made the claim, which the White House has not substantiated, during a visit to Capitol Hill. "The simple fact is, Director Comey had lost the confidence of the American people," Pence said, defending Trump's decision. House lawmakers, who were a week-long recess, were not in Washington. Senate committee business shut down by noon Wednesday after Democrats invoked the two-hour rule, which prevents committee hearings from lasting more than two hours after the Senate convenes. And though Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., publicly requested a closed-door briefing for all senators on Trump's decision to fire Comey, the minority party appeared undecided on further steps as members emerged from a lunchtime strategy session. The boldest, most extreme step Democrats could take is to slow Senate business to a crawl. They could refuse to allow consideration of any legislation or nominees awaiting confirmation votes until Trump agrees to appoint a special prosecutor. And with dozens of Trump administration nominees awaiting confirmation hearings or up-or-down votes on the Senate floor, such a move would likely hamper executive branch agencies that now lack political leadership. But some Democrats said they wanted to give Republicans time to form their own response. "This is 12 hours old. I think we have to give a little time for Republicans to have a conversation and perhaps rise to the occasion," said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., as he left the meeting. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., recommended that Democrats reach out to Republicans given that a small but powerful bloc of GOP senators has voiced concerns about the Comey firing. A former county prosecutor, McCaskill said Democrats needed to pressure Republicans to join the calls for the appointment of a special counsel. "It's about the integrity of law enforcement," she said. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who has been calling for an independent probe since January, said he "was powerfully impressed by the unanimity in our caucus behind appointing a special prosecutor," adding that "everyone seems very persuaded." Republican Party leadership stood up for the president. "Our Democratic colleagues [are] complaining about the removal of an FBI director whom they themselves repeatedly and sharply criticized," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor. "That removal is being done by a man, [Deputy Attorney General] Rod J. Rosenstein, who they repeatedly and effusively praised." Republican Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, dismissed the notion Trump fired Comey to impede the FBI's Russia probe, calling it a "phony narrative." "If you assume that, this strikes me as a lousy way to do it," he told reporters. "All it does is heightens the attention given to the issue." Among Republicans, only Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a longtime Trump foil, has called for an independent investigation separate from ongoing probes by the House and Senate intelligence panels. In a sign of his concern about Trump's decision, McCain stunned GOP colleagues on Wednesday by voting with Democrats to block final passage of a bill to repeal federal regulations on methane gas emissions. His vote ended Republican chances of reversing yet another Obama-era rule. Other senior Republicans are casting doubt on the decision to fire Comey, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Sen. Jeff Flak,e R-Ariz., who is up for reelection next year and did not support Trump in November. "I think the White House, after multiple conversations with many people over the last 12 to 14 hours, understand that they created a really difficult situation for themselves," Corker said. "To move beyond this in a way that gives the American people faith and Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate faith in future efforts is going to be a really tough and narrow path for them to follow." Flake tweeted Tuesday night: "I've spent the last several hours trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comey's firing. I just can't do it." Schumer said senators need to meet behind closed doors with Sessions and Rosenstein to learn why they recommended Comey's dismissal. He also said that senators are likely to call Comey to testify about his firing and his previous oversight of the Russia investigation. As of Wednesday, however, Democrats seemed ready only to use the two-hour rule. "I can't say it's an ongoing strategy," Feinstein, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said of the maneuver. "It certainly is for the day." Early Wednesday, as Blumenthal appeared on morning television programs to renew his calls for a special prosecutor, Trump went after him on Twitter for embellishing his Vietnam War record during his 2010 election campaign. "When caught, he cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness and now he is judge & jury. He should be the one who is investigated for his acts," the president wrote in a series of tweets that Murphy later described as "unhinged." Blumenthal said he was unmoved by the attack. "His bullying won't silence my call for an independent prosecutor," he said. --- The Washington Post's Karoun Demirjian and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report. http://wapo.st/2q4sXNP AUSTIN -- A bill to ensure that day care facilities can keep epinephrine auto-injectors on site received unanimous approval in the Senate Wednesday. The measure, SB 1101 by Plano Sen. Van Taylor, would let day care administrators get prescriptions to keep the life-saving drug, often known by its trade name EpiPen, on hand in case of emergencies. Even if there aren't any known cases of potentially fatal food allergies among a day care population, many cases don't appear until there is a life threatening reaction to an allergen, said Taylor. "The symptoms of anaphylactic shock can set in within seconds and if left untreated these symptoms can manifest themselves into unconsciousness and even death," said Taylor. "Many children never know they have that allergy until it's literally too late." The bill would permit doctors to write a prescription for the auto-injectors in the name of the day care rather than a specific person. Facilities would be responsible for training employees in the signs and symptoms of anaphylactic shock as well as use and disposal of the injectors. Also Wednesday the Senate approved a bill that would add photo identification to the front of Lone Star cards. These cards are used to provide federal and state food and cash assistance to needy individuals, and work just like a debit card. SB 1443 author Sen. Brandon Creighton of Conroe said that with so much money being spent on these programs, Texas must do what it can to reduce waste and abuse. "Increasing accountability through fraud prevention measures is a good policy and it serves all that are relying on the use of this card and these programs," he said. "These measures will ensure that benefits go to intended recipients and tax payer dollars are used for their intended purpose." The bill would also require Lone Star cards to feature the number of a fraud hotline that can be used to report suspected fraud. The new photo requirements would not apply to people over the age of 65, under the age of 19 or people who are blind, disabled or the victims of domestic abuse. Thousands of Brazilians have descended on the southern city of Curitiba for a showdown between one of the most popular leaders in the country's history and its most famous judge at a hearing that could determine the republic's future. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has arrived there to testify Wednesday afternoon before Sergio Moro, the lead jurist in the sprawling corruption probe known as Operation Carwash. If convicted of any of the charges against him, including bribe-taking and influence trafficking, the charismatic leftist who ended his second term with an approval rating of 80-plus percent could end up in prison, dashing any possibility of a political comeback. What started three years ago as an investigation into a money-laundering scheme run out of a gas station has blown up into a scandal that has tarnished Brazil's political establishment and made Moro into a folk hero. The judge's fans are pleading with him to run for president in 2018, with opinion polls placing him second to just one person: Lula. Moro will question the ex-president about claims he received benefits from a construction company trying to curry his favor. In the view of Lula's supporters -- and some of his rivals -- Brazil's political system itself is on trial. "It's a battle between the political class and the judiciary, symbolized by two giants," said Rogerio Arantes, a political scientist at the University of Sao Paulo. "We'll have to wait and see which one of these two wins in the end." The left-wing leader's red-shirted supporters were bused into Curitiba, a wealthy and conservative city. It's from the 13th Federal Criminal Court there that the Harvard-educated Moro has tried, convicted and imprisoned dozens of the Brazilian elite for their part in a scheme that siphoned over $2 billion from the state-run oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA. Lula, out of office since 2010, has long been in Moro's sights. In March last year, the judge issued a warrant authorizing the ex-president's temporary detention for questioning, sparking scuffles between supporters and police. On leaked tapes of phone taps that were sanctioned by Moro, Lula fretted about the power of what he witheringly described as "the Republic of Curitiba." Locals have seized on the term as a badge of honor. In a country where the rich and powerful too often get away with murder, sometimes literally, Moro's crusading judicial activism has turned him into a hero for millions. Billboards in the city center show Lula in prison uniform along with the slogan "The Republic of Curitiba awaits you with open jails...#WeAreAllCarWash." At least one was vandalized with red paint. "Moro is the hero of the hour, bringing down all those thieves," said Diego de Aguiar, a municipal worker trimming the grass in front of Curitiba's court house. Like many in the city, Aguiar is braced for trouble when the hearing gets underway. --- Supporters of Lula marched from a makeshift camp sandwiched between a railyard and a chain-link fence to the city center, where students, unionists and housing activists took turns at the megaphone blasting Moro and defending Lula. "He was the best president we ever had. He isn't guilty," Celeste Soares, a 56 year-old nurse who traveled six hours by bus to show her support for Lula, said in an interview. "He's being persecuted precisely because of everything he did for the country. " A much smaller group of Moro backers gathered outside the modern art museum, which hosts artwork confiscated from those convicted in Operation Carwash. A steady stream of passing cars honked horns in their support. Renato Tamayo, 49, who owns a lighting company in Sao Paulo, flew in to support Moro. "I'll be satisfied with him getting condemned and being illegible for election," said Tamayo, sporting a t-shirt with pictures of Carwash prosecutors. "We need political renewal in Brazil." --- Lula is a defendant in five separate criminal cases. Among the allegations is that he received upgrades to properties carried out by construction companies. State witnesses also allege that millions of reais in off-the-books donations were made to the Workers' Party on his watch. In September, federal prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol accused Lula of being the "mastermind" of the biggest graft scheme in Brazilian history. Lula has vehemently denied all the charges, saying they are politically motivated. A spokesman for Lula said the legal proceedings are flawed and biased. "The process is full of irregularities," said Jose Crispiniano of the Lula Institute. Despite the growing charge sheet, Lula has over recent months consolidated his lead in opinion polls for the 2018 presidential race. For Humberto Costa, a senator from the PT and close friend of Lula's, the hounding of the former president has only strengthened him politically and cemented his position as the PT's candidate. "The party has no Plan B," Costa said. With 18 months to go until the elections, some analysts argue the polls show name recognition rather than actual support for a candidate. Moro has said that he doesn't intend to run for president. For Marcos Troyjo, a Brazilian who teaches and co-heads an emerging markets forum at Columbia University in New York, regardless of whatever happens at the hearing, Lula is a long shot for 2018. That election "will be something new," he said. "I'm quite sure it won't be a traditional political battle." --Bloomberg contributors: Simone Preissler Iglesias and Samy Adghirni French President-Elect Emmanuel Macron (Photo : Getty Images) On Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Emmanuel Macron for being elected as the new French president. China-France relations, with a deep historical foundation, have a significant influence over Chinas diplomacy, Xi said in a telephone conversation with Macron. Advertisement According to Xi, bilateral relations have endured unpredictable changes and have been progressively more strategic since diplomatic ties were established 53 years ago. A lift in China-France relations from a new starting point to a new level meets the common expectation of the Chinese and French people and the international community, he added. Xi emphasized that China gives utmost importance to France and their relations, adding that China has always considered France as a significant cooperation partner and looked at bilateral relations from a long-term strategic perspective. He appealed to both countries to continue their friendly ties, enhance mutual trust, assist with their individual core interests and key issues, and increase practical cooperation in different areas. China welcomes the French sides contribution to the advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese president said. He also encouraged both sides to communicate and coordinate on international and regional concerns, keep on advancing global governance reforms and uphold success of global governance like the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Xi also reiterated Chinas support for the European integration. For his part, Macron said he puts great importance to France-China relations. The new French government will keep on pursuing its positive and friendly policy toward China, continue to honor the One China policy, increase practical cooperation in various areas including diplomacy, trade and industry and in the Belt and Road construction framework, the president-elect said. According to Macron, the new government will keep close communication and coordination with China on international concerns such as climate change. Xi and Macron agreed to maintain contact and to schedule a meeting at an early date in order to exchange opinions on bilateral ties and issues of common concern. China hopes to maintain its good relations with France through the new French president, Emmanuel Macron. The most prominent congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election -- and possible ties to President Donald Trump's campaign -- faces its toughest test yet after Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican, and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, a Democrat, have sought to present a bipartisan front in the high-pressure probe, and both have said Comey's FBI was cooperating by providing information to the panel. Now they must start a new relationship with acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and later with a new director nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate. Both senators also must contend with what's likely to be an even more poisoned atmosphere in the Capitol with Democrats seeing "Nixonian" signs of a coverup in Comey's dismissal by Trump on Tuesday. The president has repeatedly rejected the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia intervened in the election to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. "I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination," Burr of North Carolina said in a statement. "I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the committee." The Senate intelligence panel has a fairly small staff compared with the vast reach of the Trump administration, and it relies on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the rest of the intelligence community to gather information. One immediate question is whether Comey will be called before Congress, either in public or behind closed doors, to discuss what he knows about the FBI's investigation. A number of Democrats, including Warner of Virginia, say he should be summoned to appear. Warner slammed the firing amid the Russia probe as "deeply troubling." "The administration insists there's no 'there there,' yet President Trump has so far fired the acting attorney general, nearly every U.S. attorney, and now the director of the FBI," Warner said in a statement. "In addition, this president's choice for attorney general has been forced to recuse himself, and the national security adviser has resigned, as a result of undisclosed contacts with Russian officials." Warner and many other Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, insisted that a special prosecutor must be appointed. "The only way this administration can begin to demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law, which has so far been sorely lacking, is to cooperate fully with the ongoing congressional investigations and to support the appointment of an independent special counsel," Warner said. Warner had recently cited progress in getting more raw intelligence from federal agencies, including from the National Security Agency. But earlier Tuesday, he confirmed he was holding up an administration nominee until the intelligence panel receives more information it requested from the Treasury Department. Asked before Comey's firing Tuesday if he was prepared to issue subpoenas to get information sought by the committee, Burr said he was prepared to do what it takes to get information to complete the investigation. He said he had no reason to believe the administration wouldn't fully cooperate. Burr later went out of his way to praise Comey's help. "Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees," Burr said. "His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the bureau and the nation." But Sen. Susan Collins, another member of the committee and a moderate Republican, called the firing "likely the inevitable conclusion" of Comey's decision to bypass protocols and publicly announce his reasons for not recommending charges against Clinton while criticizing her actions in using a private email server while secretary of state. "Any suggestion that today's announcement is somehow an effort to stop the FBI's investigation of Russia's attempt to influence the election last fall is misplaced," said Collins of Maine in a statement. "The president did not fire the entire FBI; he fired the director. I have every confidence that the FBI will continue to pursue its investigation" and the Senate panel will "follow the evidence wherever it leads." Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the Intelligence committee and one of Comey's fiercest critics, called his firing amid the Russia investigation "outrageous." "Director Comey should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of the investigation into Russia and Trump associates at the time he was fired," Wyden said. "The president would do well to remember that in America, the truth always comes out." The firing was also criticized by Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation of Russian interference in the election. "The same president who has called the investigation into the Russian hacking of our democracy and the potential complicity of his campaign a 'fake,' cannot pretend to have made such a decision uninfluenced by his concerns over Comey's continued involvement in the investigation," Schiff said. Trump defended his move on Twitter on Wednesday -- and attacked his foes. "The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" Trump tweeted. "James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI." "Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!" Trump said in another post. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said that he had been critical of Comey during the presidential election, during which he was Clinton's running mate, but that he never called for Comey to be fired. "I was critical of director Comey and I am critical of Director Comey but there's a reason you give an FBI director a 10-year term, a 10-year tenure," Kaine told MSNBC Wednesday. "Whether Congress likes what a director does or whether the president likes or doesn't like it, you give somebody a 10-year term so that they can act without fear of being let go." Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "to redeem himself" by appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the U.S. election. "What he has to do now is say, 'I'm going to appoint a special prosecutor, she or he will conduct this investigation independently,'" he told MSNBC Wednesday. "'I will insulate and protect them from any political interference, they're going to use prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York and in the National Security division who have already apparently issued some subpoenas.'" Blumenthal added on CNN that if the deputy attorney general fails to appoint a special counselor, he will introduce legislation to establish an independent one. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served in President George W. Bush's cabinet, said in a CNN interview Wednesday that she has confidence that "this investigation is going to go on" because there are multiple centers of political power in the U.S., including Congress, the press and the judiciary. But, she added, "We're certainly seeing that democracy is a bit messy." --- Bloomberg's Toluse Olorunnipa and Elizabeth Titus contributed. The Justice Department on Wednesday called in four veteran law enforcement and intelligence officials for interviews to lead the FBI at least temporarily, as the administration tries to restore a sense of normalcy to an agency reeling from the sudden firing of its director. For now, Andrew McCabe, who had been James Comey's top deputy, is running the bureau, and Justice Department officials said it remains possible that he will stay in that post until a permanent replacement is selected. He met with Justice Department officials Tuesday night and is scheduled to testify Thursday at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in place of Comey. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - the two officials who officially presented Trump with the argument for firing Comey this week - were also scheduled to talk to four other people on Wednesday. They were Michael Anderson, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago division; Adam Lee, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Richmond division; Paul Abbate, the executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch; and William "Bill" Evanina, the National Counterintelligence Executive in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department officials said. The officials said the four men were being considered to serve only as interim director, although it was possible they would be under consideration to fill the post permanently. The permanent position requires Senate confirmation. If one of them took over, McCabe could move back to the No. 2 post, a Justice Department official said. Comey's firing landed suddenly and without warning for most in the White House and at the FBI. The president dispatched an emissary to FBI headquarters to break the news - apparently not knowing that Comey was traveling in Los Angeles, one official said. Ron Hosko, a former assistant director at the FBI who is now president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, said that aspect was particularly jarring - given Comey's years of public service. "A lot of people are shell-shocked," he said, adding that he had spent time with FBI officials shortly after the announcement. On Wednesday, inside the FBI, agents and officials tried to press forward with work as normal - though they remained stunned and anxious about what might come next. A major question for the next FBI director will be how to handle the ongoing probe into any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, as well as how to convince the public of the investigation's independence. Trump can select whoever he feels is up to the job, though the person will require Senate confirmation. Legislators on both sides of the aisle have called for a special counsel or other independent investigative body to take up the probe - though a special counsel would have to be approved by Rosenstein. At his confirmation hearing, Rosenstein resisted recusing himself from the matter, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had done. "I don't know the details of what, if any, investigation is ongoing, but I can certainly assure you if it's America against Russia, or America against any other country, I think everyone in this room knows which side I'm on," Rosenstein said at the time. Hosko said he expected the career agents and prosecutors to continue their work. "I hope that they expose what needs to be exposed, no matter who it touches," he said. Justice Department and other officials familiar with the process said the administration is looking for an FBI director above reproach - though their assessment of that might differ greatly from Democrats'. Among the names being talked about in Washington were Mark Filip and Larry Thompson, both former deputy attorneys general; Amy St. Eve, a federal judge in Illinois; Mike Luttig, Boeing's general counsel; and Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who is now leading the Justice Department's National Security Division. Justice Department officials said they hoped to nominate and install a replacement soon. The law says that an interim should serve no longer than 210 days, one Justice Department official said. --- The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report. Commissioners Court is addressing indigent defense in Montgomery County by approving a new plan that will help more efficiently move felony cases through the court system. The court unanimously approved a contract defense program for the district courts. The plan will include hiring 10 defense attorneys, two Spanish speaking, per each felony district court for one-year contracts. According to Associate Judge Paul Damico, resumes from attorneys are due by May 15 and the plan is set to go into effect June 1. Damico said the one-year contract will be for $60,000, with Spanish-speaking attorneys making an additional $5,000. Each contract defender will be capped at taking on 81 defendants per year. Damico said the new program will help clear cases as well as ensure the proper representation for defendants. While Montgomery County is at a 66 percent appointment rate for felony cases, which is below the state average of 72 percent, the cost per case is $200 more than the state average. "Obviously something is wrong," said Damico, adding the new program will provide quality representation for defendants and drop the cost per case about $100. "We are really excited about (the new program)." The contract attorneys will handle all cases up to a first-degree felony, Damico said. That can be problematic in providing adequate representation for indigent defendants, according to Montgomery County Defense Lawyers Association President Steve Jackson. "I'm greatly concerned that younger attorneys will be appointed on cases that they don't have the qualifications to handle, where under the old system you had to have certain qualifications to handle more serious cases," said Jackson, adding that a labor-intensive murder case could be foisted on a first- or second-year attorney under the new system. "The criminal defense bar association is concerned that the lawyers are going to be underpaid and overworked," Jackson said. "We expect an increase of approximately 20-25 cases per lawyer that makes the list with no compensation whatsoever for an hourly rate to prepare or go to trial. The DA's Office is allowed to have second-chair attorney assist in trials, whereas the indigent will have a lawyer who's not paid to go to trial, who is not paid by the hour to prepare for trial and is not going to have a second-chair attorney to assist him." He said the Defense Lawyers Association is looking forward to working with judges moving forward. Kate Bihm, a Conroe-based defense attorney with The Bihm Firm, PLLC, said she already has submitted her application to be one of the 40 attorneys. Only a portion of her cases are court appointed, saying she believes working with indigent defendants should be more of a "calling" than a business model. However, she said in Montgomery County, with as few resources indigent defense attorneys have, it can be hard to build a proper defense in some cases. "We deserve adequate compensation because we safeguard the liberties that are the very fabric of our daily lives," Bihm said. "Because in Montgomery County, we are fighting against one of the most well-funded district attorney's offices in the state." With the $60,000-per-year salary, and 81 defendants as the maximum caseload, attorneys stand to make roughly $740 per case, regardless of the level or severity of offense. "There are many variables that would be tweaked to improve the (new) program," Bihm said. "We've never done anything like this in Montgomery County, and the judges have assured the bar that there is room for change if something is not working." While the disposition rate of cases has improved since 2013, Damico said the new plan will help improve that rate even more. Court Administrator Nate Jensen said in 2013, there were two full-time district courts and three-part time district courts handling felony cases in Montgomery County. He added at that time jail capacity was at about 88.4 percent on average. He said 16 percent of felony dispositions took place when the case was a year or older. Today, however, the county has four full-time district courts handling felony cases. As of April 1, jail capacity was at 71 percent. Now, he added, the disposition rate for felony cases over a year has dropped to only 10 percent. Judge Lisa Michalk, of the 221st state District Court, said she was in full support of the program. "It should save some money," she said. "We don't know how much yet but we are pretty confident it will be a couple hundred thousand dollars." Precinct 1 Commissioner Mike Meador said he also is in favor of the program. "Hopefully this will alleviate some of the costs and provide better representation," he said. County Judge Craig Doyal asked whether the caseload was there to warrant the $60,000 per attorney. "Will they always have a full caseload?" Doyal asked. Jensen said "absolutely." Doyal called the plan and effort by the judges "great work." Google Maps A 76-year-old Montgomery man is facing a federal prison sentence of up to 40 years after pleading guilty to running an investment scam that duped dozens of people out of millions of dollars. Federal prosecutors say Allan George Cooper was able to convince nearly 50 people that he had met through a church group to turn over more than $5 million to him through a company he formed called AG Cooper & Associates by promising them guaranteed 12 percent returns. Related Egypt retains international lawyer for investigation into killing of GUC student in Germany Egypts Prosecutor-General Nabil Sadek is sending a request to German authorities for the details of the investigation into the death of an Egyptian student in Germany last month, after reports by German media suggested she may have been the victim of a hate crime, state-news agency MENA reported on Tuesday. Shaden Mohamed, a 22-year-old architecture student at the German University in Cairo, was killed on 18 April in a hit-and-run incident in Cottbus, Brandenburg, with the driver of the car arrested shortly after, according to German media reports. Shaden was hospitalised but died of her injuries three days later. Egypt's Immigration and Expatriate Affairs Minister Nabila Makram announced on Monday that Egyptian international lawyer Khaled Abu Bakr has been retained to follow up on the investigations. German newspaper Lausitzer Rundschau has cited witnesses as saying that the people in the car that hit Mohamed had laughed after striking her, and were heard saying that she should go back to her country. Search Keywords: Short link: When one of the biggest crude producers in Iraqi Kurdistan downgraded reserves in March, doubts about the economic potential of the region -- a key player in the fight against Islamic State terrorism -- deepened. But evidence suggests it's too soon to write off the emerging oil province. The downgrade at Genel Energy's Taq Taq field, the second in little more than a year, sent its shares tumbling amid gathering anxiety over a region already struggling with weak crude prices and escalating costs to fight militants. Yet that disappointment stands in contrast to improving prospects elsewhere in Kurdistan. DNO, the area's biggest publicly listed producer, this month doubled the number of wells planned for 2017 at its Tawke field, while competitor WesternZagros Resources Ltd. increased reserve estimates in March. "The Taq Taq story is very unfortunate, it has hurt us all," said Simon Hatfield, chief executive officer of Calgary-based WesternZagros. "Everybody thinks: on top of above-ground risk, now there's below-ground risk too. But it's not the same everywhere in Kurdistan." While drillers have been drawn to the northern Iraqi region by reserves that are cheap to pump, development remains in its early phases. Major projects didn't begin until the 2000s, and the geology is still being studied; it can sometimes take decades for big producing regions like the Permian Basin or the Caspian Sea to reach full potential. Exploiting natural resources is important to the economy of Kurdistan, whose armed forces have led a crucial fight against Islamic State since 2014. Genel's downgrade followed new data showing that the rocks couldn't hold as much crude as expected. Yet oil and gas basins commonly display variations in distribution, and Taq Taq's problems aren't replicated throughout Kurdistan, according to Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute. "The Taq Taq downgrade is clearly a blow but they're increasing oil production in other places that will offset a lot of the declines," Knights said in an interview, citing the forthcoming start of Abu Dhabi National Energy Co.'s Atrush field. Consultant Rystad Energy AS expects Kurdish oil production to increase more than 10 percent this year to 602,000 barrels a day. At the start of the year, the region's future looked brighter. Oil prices had partially recovered, the local government was paying producers more regularly, and the military campaign to chase Islamic State from Mosul was progressing. Then on March 28, Genel made its announcement. Taq Taq, which had pumped more than 115,000 barrels a day in 2015, was now producing just 19,000. The shares sank as much as 25 percent that morning. By this point, WesternZagros had already responded to mounting shareholder concern and media reports questioning the region's prospects, explaining the geological differences between its field and Genel's deposit, while also stressing Kurdistan's enduring potential. Indeed, no other Kurdish field has been downgraded on the magnitude of Taq Taq, according to Lynn Morris-Akinyemi, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie. "We can't write off Kurdistan just on one field," she said in an interview. "We need to see a clear pattern of this happening." In 2015, Iraqi Kurdistan said it targeted production of 1 million barrels a day. To lure the necessary investments to reach that goal, it has embarked on an audit of all oil and gas operations, Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani said in December. Findings are yet to be published, and Amanj Raheem, the legal adviser overseeing the audit, didn't respond to requests for comment. The Kurdish Ministry of Natural Resources declined to comment. Aside from the Atrush field, which is due to come on stream this quarter, companies including WesternZagros and NewAge Ltd. expect to boost production this year. They benefit from low operating costs in Kurdistan, typically about $4 a barrel in 2016 compared with $16 in the U.K. North Sea, Wood Mackenzie estimates. The region initially attracted oil majors including Exxon Mobil Corp., but disputes between the regional and federal governments have kept most big oil companies away and prompted some investors to pull back. Exxon has relinquished three of its six exploration blocks, the Iraq Oil Report said in December. The Kurdistan Regional Government's plan to make 20 more oil blocks available this year will test the region's ability to lure more investors. "We're certainly looking" at these blocks, Steve Lowden, CEO of closely held NewAge, said in an interview. Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd., another producer in Kurdistan, and WesternZagros both said they plan to focus on current assets. Genel, which says its Taq Taq deposit has pumped 206 million barrels of oil since starting output in 2008, also owns a 25 percent stake in DNO's Tawke field, yet it's looking to natural gas for growth. The company plans to export Iraqi gas to neighboring Turkey, CEO Murat Ozgul said in an interview. Nevertheless, oil will continue to dominate in Kurdistan, according to Rystad analyst Espen Erlingsen, who said "long-term" output could reach about 800,000 barrels a day. Iraq holds the world's fifth-largest proven oil reserves, according to BP, and is the No. 2 producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia. Kurdistan's mixed success makes it no different from any other emerging oil province, according to WesternZagros's Hatfield. "The KRG has a similar history as any part of the world: part of an OPEC country opens up for exploration, everyone floods there, everyone is really excited," Hatfield said. "They drill a bunch of wells, some of them are successes, some disappointments, that's normal." --- Bloomberg's Sam Wilkin and Mikael Holter contributed. DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Students booed, and many turned their backs on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as she gave the keynote address at Bethune-Cookman University's commencement Wednesday afternoon. Many students and alumni had objected to having DeVos as speaker in part because they said the outreach by President Donald Trump and the education secretary to historically black schools is an empty gesture. But the president of the university defended her work as a philanthropist and her commitment to education. Graduates came into the auditorium smiling, many with flowers and other decorations plastered on their mortar boards, and listened to the ceremony politely, until university President Edison Jackson introduced Omarosa Manigault, an adviser to Trump. Students started booing. Jackson stopped, and said: "You don't know her. You don't know her story." School leaders at the front of the room and some faculty applauded as he introduced DeVos to give her an honorary doctorate, but many students booed. When she began speaking, thanking Jackson, the room erupted with shouts. DeVos had to raise her voice as she thanked the moms attending the ceremony. About half the 380 graduates turned their backs on her. Shouts continued as she spoke loudly, saying that one of the hallmarks of higher education and democracy is the ability to converse with and learn from those with whom they disagree. Jackson warned the students. "Choose which way you want to go," he said sternly as the disruptions continued. DeVos resumed speaking, pledging the administration's support to their success. "I am at the table fighting on your behalf," she said. She spoke about the importance of listening to other viewpoints, and noted the increasing polarization so evident on cable news and social media. "Let's choose to hear one another out," she said at one point. When she spoke about how she would later visit the home and gravesite of the school's founder, civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, some in the crowd could be heard shouting, "No!" Tensions had been high for days. On Tuesday, protesters delivered petitions signed by thousands of people demanding that university leaders drop plans to have DeVos speak. "I was in shock," said graduating student Jasmine Johnson, describing her reaction when she learned who would address her and her classmates. She said she doesn't think DeVos -- a philanthropist and strong proponent of school choice, private and charter schools -- understands public schools, or historically black colleges. "For someone to come and speak at my commencement that cannot relate to me or know what I have been through is kind of like a slap in the face," she said. And she worries her student loans will be even more difficult to pay back under the Trump administration's actions. Jackson wrote in a letter to the campus community that a willingness to engage with varying viewpoints is a hallmark of higher education. "I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with, or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community," he wrote. "If our students are robbed of the opportunity to experience and interact with views that may be different from their own, then they will be tremendously less equipped for the demands of democratic citizenship." A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Elizabeth Hill, wrote in an email that DeVos "is looking forward to delivering the 2017 Commencement Address at Bethune-Cookman University and to engaging in productive dialogue with the students, faculty, and staff during her visit. "Commencements are a time to celebrate the graduates and that's what she will be focused on while at B-CU on Wednesday." The commencement speech, DeVos' first as education secretary, is the latest effort by Trump and his administration to reach out to historically black colleges. Over the past several months, that outreach has been marked, including an Oval Office meeting with scores of college leaders. And it has at times been awkward, as when DeVos described such schools as pioneers of school choice - words that her opponents repeated often. She has also noted that African Americans had been systemically excluded from quality, or any, education at the time. On Friday, Trump seemed to signal that a key funding source for such schools might be unconstitutional, startling HBCU leaders who have relied on the funds for decades. On Sunday, he followed that with a statement of "unwavering support" for historically black colleges. So DeVos' speech at the Daytona Beach school, which was founded by a civil rights icon, came at a particularly fraught time. Dominik Whitehead, a 2010 graduate of Bethune-Cookman working as a community organizer and political activist, started a petition online. He said he grew up hearing about the school's founder, activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, whose legacy is honored there. He said he didn't object to DeVos coming to campus to speak, but felt she was the wrong person to represent the school at commencement. "Do not use Bethune-Cookman as a photo op," he said Tuesday, shortly before delivering petitions to the administration building. "Come to the table with something that is going to actually do something, in terms of policy, funding." Seattle Mayor Ed Murray declared an end to his long political career Tuesday after struggling for months to refute the latest allegations that he paid teenage boys for sex decades ago. At an emotional news conference surrounded by friends and supporters Murray, 62, said he would serve out his term, which ends on Dec. 31, but not seek reelection. "The mayoral race," he said at an emotional news conference, "must be focused on the urgent, important issues facing our city, but those are being overshadowed by the false allegations against me, which have hurt the city, my family and Michael," a reference his husband, Michael Shiosaki. Describing himself as a "poor kid" from a Seattle neighborhood "who never even heard the word 'gay,'" Murray conceded that "this career that has been my life will come to an end on Dec. 31." The announcement was the climax not just of years but actually decades of accusations against Murray, most of which didn't get publicized until now, which he attributed to people being out to get him because of his strong stands in favor of gay rights and other progressive causes. One man first went to the police with charges against Murray in 1984, according to the Seattle Times. Police investigated but brought no charges. He and a second man again approached reporters in 2008 with claims of abuse by Murray. No news organizations chose to publish the story. The latest round of charges began with a lawsuit by 44-year-old man alleging that Murray sexually abused him on numerous occasions when he was a crack-cocaine addicted teen for payments of $10 to $20. At the time, Murray was in his 30s. The accuser was 15. "I have been dealing with this for over 30 years," the man told the Seattle Times, saying he was speaking as part of a "healing process" after years of "shame, the embarrassment, the guilt, the humiliation that I put myself through and that he put me through." Murray responded to the suit defiantly, saying "things have never come easy to me in life, but I have never backed down and I will not back down." He went so far as to submit to a medical examination of his genital area which was then released to the public to show "no trace of a growth or mole" as described in the lawsuit. Three more men, all with criminal records, then emerged to say he abused them in the 1980s, paying them for sex when they were underage. One of them was a foster son of Murray who told the Seattle Times that Murray "began sexually abusing him as a 13-year-old and later paid him for sex." Their "shocking allegations about the mayor," as the Times said, "bore similarities" to the story told by the man "of what he said happened to him when he was a crack cocaine-addicted high-school dropout living on the streets of Seattle." During the course of the scandal, the Seattle Times felt it had some explaining to do about, as its headline said, "Why we are publishing the allegations against Mayor Ed Murray, but didn't in 2008." "Ultimately, we felt we did not have enough information to publish these very serious accusations," Seattle Times editor Michelle Matassa Flores wrote in the April 7 article. She added: "We decided we needed to take another look when we learned recently that a Kent man was preparing to sue now-Mayor Murray. "A lawsuit of this nature against a public official is news. "When a claim is filed in court, the justice system assures the accused of a thorough public examination of any evidence that is presented, along with the opportunity to present a full defense. The filing of the lawsuit is also, in itself, a matter of public interest. "When we learned this lawsuit was pending, we therefore began looking into the new allegations, along with the earlier ones. We found no connection between the new accuser, identified in the lawsuit as D.H., and the other men. Our reporting revealed similarities among the three accounts, including some graphic details. We felt readers should know. Murray, in his news conference, denied all the accusations as he has all along." They "paint me in the worst possible historic portraits of a gay man," he said. And while they are not true, the scandal "surrounding them and me is hurting this city," including "all those" who have been victims of abuse. " . . . For this reason I am withdrawing as a candidate for mayor. . . . It tears me to pieces to step away but I believe it is in the best interest of the city I love." Murray has been a progressive political activist, champion of gay rights and self-described "social justice Catholic" in Seattle since the 1980s. He's held public office since 1995, when he was appointed to Washington's House of Representatives, serving there until 2006, when he was elected to the state senate. He was elected mayor in 2013 and was expected to be reelected easily. Even some of those he allegedly molested praised him for his record. The man who was Murray's foster son told the Times he thought what Murray "has done for the city of Seattle has been awesome, man. I feel for Seattle. I do. But I think that these are some of the consequences he has to face. "The consequences that the survivors of him have gone through have been 100 times worse than that." The Washington Post does not generally name victims or alleged victims of sexual abuse. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos can't seem to stay away from controversy. This time, tens of thousands of people have signed petitions asking that she be disinvited from giving Wednesday's scheduled commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida because of comments she made revealing ignorance about the history of historically black colleges and universities. DeVos was invited to speak by university President Edison Jackson, who defended the decision in an op-ed published in the Orlando Sentinel. In the piece, Jackson said in part: - - - I understand the concerns about her, and I genuinely appreciate those who voice those concerns in a constructive manner. I am especially sensitive to balancing the notion of academic freedom with quelling potentially hateful and harmful rhetoric. The political and racial chasms in our county have deepened, and college presidents have struggled with these issues over the past few months. Some have rescinded invitations to potentially controversial speakers. That is not my intention with DeVos. I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with, or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community. - - - Adora Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, the country's oldest civil right organization, called for Jackson's resignation as well as that of the chairman of the board, Joe Petrock. The protesters cited comments DeVos made in February that linked the rise of historically black colleges and university to the school choice movement. This is what she said about HBCUs in a statement after she met with leaders of these colleges in Washington D.C.: - - - They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn't working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution. HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish. - - - To anyone who knows U.S. history in this context, the statement was shocking, given that HBCUs were started not because blacks wanted to be pioneers of school choice but because white schools wouldn't accept them. The creation of schools are living proof of institutionalized racism, not school options. Protesters also cited some other actions by DeVos, including a move she made in April that weakens consumer protections for students who take out student loans. Dominik Whitehead, a Bethune-Cookman alumni, started a petition on change.org calling the choice of DeVos "an insult:" - - - Having DeVos speak at the commencement ceremony is an insult to the BCU graduating class, students, alumni, family, friends, and Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune's legacy. We, the proud alumni of Bethune-Cookman University, do not want Betsy DeVos to have a seat at our table. Please rescind her invitation to speak at the graduation ceremony. - - - Other petitions were circulated through the Florida Education Association and Color of Change, garnering what Fox 35 Orlando News said was more than 50,000 signatures from students, alumni and Bethune-Cookman boosters. The signatures were being delivered to the president of the university. Protests have followed DeVos on trips she has made to a number of schools since she became education secretary in February, after Mike Pence became the first vice president in history to break a tie in the Senate for a Cabinet nominee. WASHINGTON - Consistency has never been part of President Donald Trump's playbook, and no more so than in the firing of FBI Director James Comey. What once drew praise from Trump as a candidate has now become part of the president's rationale for one of the most controversial dismissals of a government official since the Watergate scandal. Nor is the president the only central player in the Comey drama to have seemingly reversed course in his evaluation of the director's actions. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recommended that Trump fire Comey, also had praised Comey for actions that have now turned him into a private citizen. Comey was nobody's favorite at the time of his firing. Republicans condemned him in July when he held a news conference to say he would not recommend that Hillary Clinton be prosecuted for using a private email server as secretary of state, Trump among them. Some of them thought she should have been sent to prison. Democrats condemned him at the same time for using that news conference to direct pointed criticism at how Clinton had handled emails that contained classified material. They thought the criticism was gratuitous, given the decision not to prosecute. Democrats grew even more critical when, on Oct. 28, Comey announced the reopening of the investigation. They considered it a potentially decisive moment in the presidential campaign, and they still think it contributed, perhaps significantly, to Trump's victory. Clinton said so just last week. Trump, meanwhile, suddenly became a Comey fan in the campaign's final days, his estimation of the FBI director suddenly growing significantly. Candidate Trump repeatedly praised Comey for his decision to make a public announcement about the investigation. He commended the director for having the "guts" to act as he had and said he had "brought back his reputation" with that single announcement. Shortly after being sworn in, Trump singled out Comey at a White House ceremony and showered him with more praise. After Comey wrote his Oct. 28 letter to Congress announcing the reopening of the investigation, Sessions joined in the acclaim, at least twice publicly defending the director. In a late October interview on the Fox Business network, Sessions said Comey "had an absolute duty . . . to come forward with the new information." Just before the election, he said on Fox News Channel that Comey "did the right thing . . . He had no choice." Now, suddenly, Comey's behavior has been reinterpreted as grounds for dismissal. The argument that he had mishandled the Clinton investigation was made forcefully by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the former U.S. attorney in Baltimore tapped for the No. 2 job at the Justice Department. It was Rosenstein, recently sworn in to his new position, who provided the justification for the dismissal. Sessions seconded the recommendation, which went to the president. Sessions had previously announced that he would recuse himself from all matters involving the Russia investigation because he had not told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings that he had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign. The explanation given was twofold: that the firing was not because of the Russia investigation and that the Russia probe is only a part of the FBI's work. It's correct that neither Rosenstein nor Sessions referred to the Russia investigation in their written communications to the White House. But the president did. In his dismissal letter to Comey, Trump said he appreciated having been told three times by the director that he is not under investigation. The circumstances of those assurances had not previously been revealed, and there was no immediate explanation from the White House about when they took place. White House officials have struggled to explain the sequence that led to the firing. Was it a decision generated by Rosenstein's critique, which provided the president a rationale to get rid of Comey? Or, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at Wednesday's briefing, Comey's dismissal was something the president has been thinking about for months. Comey had put Trump in a defensive position by announcing publicly the probe into Russian interference and possible collusion between Trump associates and the Russians. He was obviously furious about leaks that have damaged his administration. Trump told reporters Wednesday that he fired Comey because the director "wasn't doing a good job." Why then were reporters told recently that the president had full confidence in Comey? Accusations of hypocrisy are flying in both directions. Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, "The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" Attacking several Democrats personally, he said Comey had "lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington." He predicted that people "will be thanking me" once the dust settles. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaking on the Senate floor, pointed to the Democrats and their earlier calls for Comey to resign as evidence that they are the ones playing politics with the firing. He said that Comey was fired for "many of the very reasons they consistently complained about" and that the firing came at the recommendation of a deputy attorney general "whom they repeatedly and effusively praised." He also brushed aside calls for an independent counsel to take over the investigation. Vice President Pence, appearing on Capitol Hill, dismissed criticism of the firing. Echoing the president, he said that Comey had "lost the confidence of the American people" and that the FBI needs "a fresh start." He then praised Trump, saying, "This was the right decision at the right time." But the timing of the firing remains deeply suspect and the move highly controversial. It has been noted repeatedly that the dismissal came unexpectedly and that the decision apparently was extremely closely held inside the administration. The announcement Tuesday afternoon caught many White House officials by surprise, and they scrambled to explain it. The move also came in the absence of a replacement waiting in the wings, a sign of the haste with which the president and his team acted. Adding to the questions about the timing was a report Wednesday that a week before his firing, Comey had requested a hefty increase in resources for the Russia investigation. The news was first reported by the New York Times. However, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores denied the reports. She said the request for more resources "did not happen" and that the reports are "totally false." All of this raises questions about the president's true motive in dismissing Comey and the judgments of those around him about the potential reaction to such a controversial decision. Did he really suddenly reevaluate actions Comey took months ago? Was Comey's unwillingness to admit error for past decisions during testimony last week the final justification for his dismissal? Or is the president deeply worried about what the Russia investigation might turn up? It's important to restate that there is no known concrete evidence of collusion between associates of the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials. But it's equally important to remember that the Russia investigation is ongoing, on multiple fronts, with renewed calls for an independent inquiry. The president's brazen and abrupt firing of the official tasked with overseeing the government's investigation of Russia's interference in the election and the possible connections to the Trump campaign has created yet another cloud over the White House. Trump's decision to fire Comey has raised worrisome questions that will need to be answered to restore confidence not only in the FBI but in the administration and the chief executive. OTTAWA - Last week, President Trump announced the itinerary for his first foreign trip since taking office, and there was one destination noticeably absent from the list: Ottawa. By choosing to visit to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican - followed by a NATO summit in Brussels and a Group of Seven meeting in Sicily - Trump defied the convention that U.S. presidents make their first foreign trips to Canada. That custom isn't always followed. But for Canadians, who are chronically insecure about their relationship with the United States, it's usually seen as a sign of Canada's standing in Washington. In the past, picking a destination other than Canada for that first trip abroad usually led to considerable hand-wringing. In 2001, President George W. Bush opted to visit then-Mexican President Vicente Fox at Fox's ranch in San Cristobal rather than head north to Ottawa, sparking suggestions that Canada had been unfairly ignored and that Bush was deliberately shunning Canada's Liberal prime minister at the time, Jean Chretien. Eight years later, there was a collective sigh of relief when former president Barack Obama, less than a month after his inauguration, flew up to frigid Ottawa for a six-hour visit whose highlight was a stop at a local bakery for a BeaverTail, a flat, deep-fried pastry favored by skaters on the city's frozen Rideau Canal. But with Trump, there hasn't been a peep of protest from politicians or editorial writers. When Trump was elected in November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the usual congratulatory call and told the news media that he had invited the president for the traditional first visit north. "I reminded him of the tradition and extended an invitation for him to come up. He responded positively, but obviously we're still working with the incoming administration to finalize it," Trudeau said. There has not been any word about a potential visit to Ottawa since then. Trudeau's first face-to-face meeting with Trump, in February, took place at the White House, not Canada's Parliament. Srdjan Vucetic, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa, says it's clear what's going on. Trudeau has no desire to have Trump turn up in Canada and provoke massive protests, yet wants to keep relations with Washington as smooth as possible. "We have a radical president who nobody wants to meet, but there is a diplomatic playbook where you have to invite the leader of the free world," Vucetic said. "I imagine most governments that are not authoritarian have the same aim," he continued. "Invite him - but not really." Since Trump's election, Canadians' opinions of the United States have dropped to historic lows. According to the Environics Institute, a Toronto-based pollster and public policy group, only 44 percent of Canadians now hold a positive view of America, compared with 68 percent in the fall of 2012. That's the lowest favorability rating the United States has received since 1982, when Environics began asking the question. "Clearly, President Trump is not popular with Canadians," said Keith Neuman, the executive director of Environics. "I think it would create a problem for the Trudeau government if Donald Trump did come." British Prime Minister Theresa May has already discovered the pitfalls of a prospective Trump trip. When May invited Trump in January for a state visit to the United Kingdom, the announcement sparked huge protests and a massive online petition. The speaker of the British House of Commons later said there's no way he will allow Trump to address Parliament, and the potential visit has been delayed by several months. Small wonder, then, that government officials were quoted in Canadian media in January as sayingthat they would not be upset if a visit from Trump were delayed "for several months." Cameron Ahmad, Trudeau's spokesman, would not say what happened to Trudeau's original invitation. "They did have a really successful visit, and we're in regular communications with our counterparts in the U.S.," he told The Washington Post. So, while the invitation stands, it's one RSVP that officials in the prime minister's office are not anxious to receive. A day after firing the FBI director who had been overseeing the sweeping probe into his campaign's ties to Russia, President Donald Trump has just one event on his public schedule: An Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The sit-down between Trump and Lavrov, the first face-to-face contact the president has had with a senior official of the Russian government, will take place Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. in the White House. It will be closed to the press, according to the White House schedule. Trump and Lavrov are expected to talk about the turmoil in Syria and fight against global terrorism, among other issues, picking up on the conversation Trump had with Russian President Vladimir Putin via telephone on May 2. Lavrov's visit to Washington comes amid intense speculation surrounding Trump's sudden move to fire James Comey as FBI director. Comey had been overseeing the bureau's counterintelligence probe to determine whether Trump campaign officials or associates may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with last year's U.S. presidential election. Trump said he fired Comey at the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials who concluded that Comey had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly in his probe last year of her use of a private email server as secretary of state. Still, Trump's meeting with Lavrov could raise concerns among critics that the president is too cozy with Putin's government. Both Lavrov and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are scheduled to attend a meeting of the Arctic Council on Thursday in Fairbanks, Alaska, and were due to hold a bilateral meeting. Lavrov's decision to stop first in Washington comes as Russia is seeking support for a cease-fire agreement in Syria. Russia has signed the agreement along with Iran -- its partner in supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad -- as well as Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally that is backing rebels in a six-year civil war against Assad. The Trump administration has cautiously backed the cease-fire, which includes four "de-confliction" or safe zones. But the administration has given no indication of direct support for the plan, which many Syria experts consider a ploy by Russia to rid the four areas -- all of which are currently sites of conflict between Assad and rebel forces -- of the rebels. Russia has been preparing a resolution supporting the plan to submit to the United Nations Security Council, and wants Trump to support it. Trump is expected to hold his first meeting with Putin in July, when both travel to Germany to a summit of the Group of 20 leading and developing world economies. Tillerson met with Lavrov last month in Russia, where discussions also centered on Syria, and U.S. efforts -- in the wake of the cruise missile attack Trump launched against an Assad air base in early April -- to persuade Russia to abandon its support for the Syrian president and sever its ties in Syria with Iran. Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry flew to Accra, Ghana on Wednesday for talks on boosting bilateral cooperation with senior government officials -- the latest of Cairo's efforts to strengthen ties with countries on the African continent. During the visit, Shoukry will deliver a message from Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to his Ghanaian counterpart Nana Akufo-Addo on "ways to bolster bilateral relations," Egypt's state news agency MENA reported on Wednesday. Shoukry is also set to discuss regional and international issues of mutual interest with Ghana's top government officials including the country's foreign minister and parliament speaker. El-Sisi's government has repeatedly said it seeks to bolster Cairo's ties with African nations to achieve "economic and social developments, peace and stability in the continent." Egypt's foreign ministry said Tuesday that the visit comes as part of Cairo's "continuous effort to bolster ties with African countries." In July 2016, the presidents of Egypt and Ghana met on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Kigali, Rwanda. Egypt has around $1 billion invested in Ghana in the fields of infrastructure, construction and electricity, according to the foreign ministry. The two countries also cooperate on security, counter-terrorism, health, communication and education. Last month, Shoukry held talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda which tackled mutual ties and boosting cooperation among Nile Basin countries ahead of a summit of Nile Basin heads of state set for June. Search Keywords: Short link: VILNIUS, Lithuania - The U.S. military will increase its ability observe Russian troop movements near the Baltic states during a large military exercise planned by Moscow this summer, U.S. defense officials said. The United States will put ships in the Baltic Sea and take over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's air policing in the region ahead of the exercises in August and September, said the two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military maneuvers. The Russian exercise, known as Zapad, or West, occurs every four years and will take place this year in western Russia, including Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The U.S. military estimates that 70,000 to 100,000 Russian troops could take part in the exercise, the officials said, adding that the Russian military could also take the opportunity to upgrade certain equipment permanently stationed in the region. Specifically, the officials said that they expect the Russian missile defenses in Kaliningrad to be permanently upgraded with nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missile systems. Located on the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad provides Russia with a warm-water port and acts as a de facto wedge between Poland and the Baltic states: Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. The Pentagon has become increasingly wary of advanced Russian surface-to-air and ballistic missile deployments in Kalinigrad as their increasing ranges and radar signatures could affect U.S. and NATO military operations. The Iskander system - which can hit targets more than 100 miles from its launch site - has been deployed to Kaliningrad before. A permanent placement there, however, could prompt the Baltic states to increase their antimissile defenses to counter the Iskander's capabilities, including its ability to potentially launch long-range cruise missiles. In response, several countries in the region are considering additional ground-based air defenses, the defense officials said, adding that the United States also could deploy Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries during the Zapad exercise if needed. The Patriot is capable of intercepting aircraft and ballistic missiles. In October, the Lithuanian military said it was looking at positioning a Patriot system as part of the Lithuania-based multinational NATO battalion sometime this year. That battalion, led by the Germans, first arrived in January. The Patriot has also been deployed to Poland in the past. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who visited Lithuania Wednesday to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to NATO and shore up support for the Baltic states, addressed the Zapad exercise while speaking alongside Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite. "Any buildup like that is simply destabilizing," he said after being asked by reporters. Mattis is spending the day meeting alongside his Baltic counterparts and will also visit U.S. and German troops at a training base the capital Vilnius. In response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continued intervention in Ukraine, the United States has more than tripled its defense spending for its European command. Currently there are more than 20,000 U.S. troops Europe, including two brigade combat teams and another rotational brigade deployed to deter Russia. Additionally, NATO has placed four multinational battalions led by the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland. Russia has called the troop increase and expanded NATO deployments as acts of aggression and as railed against some of the larger multinational exercises near its borders. "I would just say I have too much respect for the Russian army to think they actually believe that there's any offensive capability," Mattis said of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe. "They know and the world knows it's a defensive and we deploy only defensive systems to make sure sovereignty is respected." In February, Mattis told the 28-nation NATO alliance in Brussels that it must pay its fair share for the alliance's collective defense, following President Trump's polarizing remarks about NATO on the campaign trail. "Americans cannot care more for your children's future security than you do," Mattis said in his first speech to NATO since becoming defense secretary. Currently, only five countries spend the alliance's suggested target of two percent of their gross domestic product on defense spending: Britain, Poland, Estonia, Greece and the United States. On Wednesday, Mattis lauded Lithuania's decision to increase its military spending to meet the two percent goal in the coming years. While Trump voiced doubts about NATO - calling the alliance "obsolete" before he was elected - the president has since reversed his tone. Trump is expected to attend a May 25 NATO summit in Brussels where he will likely ask his counterparts to increase spending and work harder to combat terrorism. With James Comey out as FBI director and President Trump holding the power to nominate his replacement, calls for a special prosecutor to take over the bureau's investigation of Russian election meddling are all the rage. Dozens of Senate Democrats have said they want an independent probe to determine whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia. The idea makes sense, in theory. In practice, some investigations headed by special prosecutors have rung up huge tabs while producing modest results. Josh Chafetz, a professor at Cornell Law School, offers this reminder: "The special prosecutor's agreement with the attorney general may specify certain types of independence but, at the end of the day, the prosecutor works for the Department of Justice and can be fired by the attorney general or the president." Such firings have actually happened, by the way. Here's a brief history of special prosecutors: Whiskey Ring Scandal In 1875, Treasury Secretary Benjamin Bristow exposed a conspiracy by a group of whiskey distillers in St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee to evade federal taxes. The distillers had bribed IRS officials and planned to use unpaid tax money to help fund the reelection campaign of President Ulysses S. Grant. Grant, who was not suspected of involvement, appointed special prosecutor John Henderson, whose investigation led to 238 indictments - including of Grant's personal secretary, Orville Babcock. Grant fired Henderson and replaced him with James Broadhead. Grant testified in Babcock's defense, and Babcock was acquitted; 110 others were convicted on charges related to tax fraud. Star Route Scandal President James Garfield appointed special prosecutor William Cook in 1881 to investigate the awarding of postal contracts for so-called star routes in the West and Southwest. Cook's probe produced 25 indictments on charges related to bribery but yielded only convictions, both of which were reversed in a retrial. More Post Office bribery In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt's attorney general, Philander Knox, appointed two special prosecutors, Charles J. Bonaparte and Holmes Conrad, to investigate another bribery scheme at the Post Office. Thirty Post Office officials and private contractors were indicted, but the postmaster general, Henry Payne, survived the scandal. Oregon land fraud Knox appointed another special prosecutor, Francis J. Heney, in 1905 to investigate a land fraud scheme in Oregon. Almost 100 people were indicted, including Sen. John Mitchell, R-Ore., and Rep. John Williamson, R-Ore., both of whom were convicted. Williamson won his appeal; Mitchell also appealed by died before the case concluded. Teapot Dome Scandal In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed special prosecutors Atlee Pomerene and Owen Roberts to probe the leasing of oil fields, including the Teapot Dome reserve in Wyoming. Interior Secretary Albert Bacon Fall was convicted of bribery five years later, but served just nine months in prison. Justice Department corruption After a congressional probe uncovered a conspiracy among officials at the Justice Department and Bureau of Internal Revenue to fix tax cases, President Harry Truman appointed special prosecutor Newbold Morris in 1952. Morris was given the title special assistant attorney general. As part of his investigation, Morris demanded that roughly 600 Justice Department officials fill out detailed personal finance questionnaires. Attorney General Howard McGrath refused and fired Morris, who had been on the job for only two months. Truman then fired McGrath, but did not name another special prosecutor. Watergate In 1973, Attorney General Elliott Richardson appointed special prosecutor Archibald Cox to lead the Watergate investigation. Cox subpoenaed Oval Office audio recordings made by President Richard Nixon, but Nixon fought the subpoena in court. After a federal appeals court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes, he fired Cox. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus resigned in protest, in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon initially said his Justice Department would take over the Watergate investigation but, under pressure, he appointed another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who ultimately succeeded in obtaining the tapes via a Supreme Court ruling. Nixon resigned in August 1974. Iran-contra affair In 1986, a three-judge panel appointed independent counsel Lawrence Walsh to investigate the Ronald Reagan administration's sale of weapons to Iran. (The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 had replaced the term "special prosecutor" with "independent counsel." Attorneys general retained the power decide when a special prosecutor was necessary, but judiciary panels assumed selection authority.) Walsh concluded that the Reagan administration had illegally sold the weapons to secure the release of U.S. hostages and defied Congress by giving the proceeds to Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras, who were fighting to overthrow their Marxist government. Fourteen U.S. officials faced criminal charges and 11 were convicted, including Reagan's national security adviser, Navy Adm. John Poindexter, and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, the National Security Council staff aide accused of masterminding the scheme. The convictions were overturned on appeal, however, and other officials received presidential pardons. A $39 million investigation ultimately resulted in zero prison time. Whitewater In 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske special counsel (yes, another new term) to investigate the business dealings of the Whitewater Development Corp., formed by Bill and Hillary Clinton and two partners after their joint purchase of 220 acres of land in Arkansas's Ozark Mountains in 1978. The Ethics in Government Act had lapsed by the time Reno tapped Fiske; when it was renewed later in 1994, a three-judge panel replaced Fiske with Kenneth W. Starr. Starr's investigation led to fraud convictions for the Clintons' partners, James B. and Susan McDougal. The Clintons were never charged. But Starr's probe expanded to include the president's personal conduct, ultimately focusing on his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and his statements under oath about the relationship. The House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton in 1998, accusing him of perjury and obstruction of justice, but the Senate acquitted him in 1999. The Whitewater investigation cost $70 million. Valerie Plame In 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from an investigation into whether George W. Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to a journalist. The Ethics in Government Act had lapsed again, leaving the Justice Department with the authority to name a special prosecutor. With Ashcroft on the sideline, the decision fell to his 43-year-old deputy, who had been on the job for just three weeks - James Comey. Comey appointed Patrick Fitzgerald, who sought the cooperation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller in identifying the source of the leak. Miller refused because she had promised to protect a confidential source and in 2005 spent almost three months in jail for contempt of court. Miller's source, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney, ultimately released her from their confidentiality agreement and was convicted in 2007 on charges related to the leak. --- Amber Phillips contributed to this report. An Egyptian passenger who was arrested upon arrival at Cairo international airport Tuesday night is to be referred to mental examination for threatening to blow up a Saudi airliner Flynas plane which was heading from Jeddah to Egypt, state news agency MENA reported. Egyptian airport security received an alert from the flight 567 pilot that the 61-year-old passenger had been uttering illogical words as well as threatening to blow up the plane, which caused a state of panic among passengers. The man, a retired employee of Egypt's Spinning and Weaving Company, was returning to Cairo after performing the Umrah rituals in Saudi Arabia. Cairo airport security searched the plane but did not find any explosives aboard. The aircraft later flew back to Saudi Arabia as scheduled. Egypt's President Abel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed with his Kenyan counterpart Uhuro Kenyatta boosting bilateral relations and African development during a meeting on Wednesday in Cairo. The Kenyan president stopped briefly in Cairo for the meeting with El-Sisi before heading to London. The two African leaders met in February in Nairobi to discuss bolstering development projects between Nile Basin countries. El-Sisi said he agreed with Kenyatta that development efforts should be undertaken in all Nile Basin countries to make the most out of this vital resource. The two leaders agreed also on intensifying efforts to restore stability in East Africa and the Horn of Africa. In November, Kenya's Vice President William Ruto visited Cairo to discuss with the Egyptian president strengthening cooperation in various fields between African countries in general and Nile Basin countries in particular. Ruto announced at the time that Kenya has exempted Egyptians from obtaining travel visas in advance to visit the country. Police recently arrested two Webster women, charging one with driving while intoxicated and the passenger with public intoxication. According to a Friendswood Police Department report, the caller that notified police was the driver herself, 25-year-old Marissa Ann Sluss. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With the start of mosquito season and the potential spread of diseases, a biology professor at Texas A&M-San Antonio is again partnering with the city to learn more about the insects in hopes of protecting local residents. Last summer, Megan Wise de Valdez and her students set up more than 100 mosquito traps across the city. The study found that kinds of mosquitoes capable of carrying the Zika virus Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus live in every area, she said. The concentration was highest on the West Side inside Loop 410; the lowest was in Castle Hills. The Zika virus, while not dangerous to most people, can raise the odds of birth defects if it is passed from a pregnant woman to her fetus. More than a dozen people in San Antonio were confirmed to have the virus last year but none contracted it from mosquitoes here. To figure out the disparities in the mosquito counts, Wise de Valdez is doing more research this summer. The city of San Antonio is providing $25,000 for another study, she said, but she also needs residents help. By participating in this study, what (volunteers) are helping to do is tell the city: This neighborhood has a lot of mosquitoes. We should spray there on a regular basis or This area is pretty good and doesnt have a lot of mosquitoes, so what are they doing thats working so well? Wise de Valdez said. Her field technicians and students will place mosquito traps, which are 5-gallon black buckets filled with water and hay, at volunteers homes. Students will check the traps once a week and note the number and kind of mosquitoes they find. Those interested in participating in the study can register online at bit.ly/mosquitoSA2017. In particular, she is looking for residents in the West Side and Castle Hills area, as well as downtown. Ideally, Wise de Valdez said, she would have 120 volunteers (40 for each area) by the end of May so her team could set up the traps at the beginning of June. As of Monday afternoon, she only had two volunteers, and neither lives in one of her three target areas. While Wise de Valdez prepares to trap the insects, Metropolitan Health District employees were at Lady Bird Johnson Park on the Northeast Side on Tuesday to demonstrate mosquito-killing gear. Metro Health uses truck-mounted sprayers to disperse insecticide at street level to combat adult mosquitoes. Backpack sprayers are used off of roadways and in deep brush. To kill mosquito larvae, it typically uses pesticide oil and doughnut-shaped pellets known as dunks that are plopped into puddles and pools. Bexar County Public Works uses much the same equipment outside the city limits. This summer, Wise de Valdez also will test whether or not mosquitoes in San Antonio are insecticide-resistant. In places that spray frequently, mosquitoes can develop a resistance to the chemicals used to kill them. Wise de Valdez wants to buy an insectary to house mosquitoes that she can expose to insecticide and then study them. Based on her research last summer, she noted that differences in income, proximity to water, the amount of shade and housing density of neighborhoods are possible influences on the number of mosquitoes in any one area. More densely populated neighborhoods appeared to have higher mosquito populations than those with houses farther apart, she said. To measure socioeconomic factors, she is adding downtown as a neighborhood to study this year because it has widely varying housing prices. Still, the fact remains: The amount of standing water people leave in their yards probably has the most bearing on the mosquito population. They can breed in litter or empty tires capable of holding water as well as water fountains, ponds and birdbaths. Stephen Barscewski, a program manager for Metro Health, said the most effective form of mosquito control is removing all standing water. Mosquitoes can grow in a water bottle cap full of water, he said Tuesday. Thats all they need. sfosterfrau@ express-news.net bgibbons@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Lisa Krantz /San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Lisa Krantz /San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Lisa Krantz /San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less 5 of 5 Friends, family and officials gathered Wednesday at the San Antonio Police Training Academy on the South Side to honor the 58 San Antonio officers who died in the line of duty since 1857. This year, the name and photo of another officer was etched into the stone memorial: Detective Benjamin Marconi, who was killed in an ambush-style shooting as he conducted a traffic stop outside police headquarters in November. Marconi, a father of two, was the first San Antonio police officer killed in the line of duty since 2013. Higher Council for Media Regulation head Makram Mohamed Ahmed also proposed liquidating many of the activities of loss-making state-owned press organisations Osama Heikal, head of parliament's Culture, Media and Antiquities Committee, told reporters that discussions of the long-awaited new press and media law will begin next week. "We held our first meeting Monday and it was devoted to reviewing proposed amendments to the draft law. We intend to take enough time to thoroughly study all suggested changes to the draft," said Heikal. Heikal said there was a consensus among MPs that they should coordinate with the Press Syndicate and the newly formed National Press Organisation (NPO) in an attempt to ensure the new law, when ratified, does away with custodial sentences for publication offences. Heikal said the committee opposed jailing journalists "on the grounds that this violates Egypt's 2014 constitution." "We are very keen the new general press law conforms to the constitution, which states in Article 71 that journalists convicted of publication offences cannot be imprisoned," said Heikal. In a memorandum submitted to Egypt's parliament this week, head of the newly-formed Higher Council for Media Regulation (HCMR) Makram Mohamed Ahmed said a number of measures aimed at reforming the financial and administrative conditions of state-owned press organisations should be soon taken. Topping the list of these measures, Ahmed proposed converting loss-making print publications into electronic editions. "State-owned press organisations shouldn't tolerate loss-making publications anymore and the best and easiest way is to transfer them to electronic editions," said Ahmed. Ahmed also proposed that state-owned or national press organisations liquidate many of their loss-making activities. "If these activities continued to be a financial burden, these press organisations should move quickly to liquidate them," Ahmed said. Ahmed argued that many national press organisations have been involved in many loss-making activities in recent years and that they have to rid themselves of these activities as soon as possible. Ahmed also proposed amendments of a new press and media law that was prepared by media experts from both the government and the Press Syndicate. Ahmed agreed with Heikal that the law should not impose prison sentences on journalists in violation of the constitution. "The draft law also states that state-owned press organisations must act as independent institutions rather than government media mouthpieces, in line with Article 72 of the constitution that states that the job of the state-owned press is to reflect the full range of national views," said Ahmed. Ahmed revealed that the NPO proposed that a new section by the name of "Disciplining of Journalists and Media People" be added to the draft. "The addition will entrust the disciplining of journalists and media workers guilty of publication offences or the violating of codes of ethics to the Press Syndicate or the Syndicate of Media Workers." Ahmed revealed that the three heads of three newly created three media regulatory bodies the Higher Council for Media Regulation (HCMR), the NPO and the National Media Organisation (NMO) had agreed they should consult with each other in their official capacity ahead of the selection of new board chairmen or new editors-in-chief of national press organisations and the Radio and Television Union (RTU). "What this means is that the head of any of the three media bodies will be unable to take a unilateral decision in selecting new board chairmen or chief editors and that this should be codified in the new law," said Ahmed. "We need to coordinate with each other rather than work in isolation from each other if we are going to succeed in our goal of reforming the Egyptian press and media." Ahmed said NPO had proposed Article 46 of the new press and media law be changed. "The NPO's proposed amendment states that each newspaper or magazine should have an editorial board and that this board should be headed by an editor-in-chief and seven chief editor deputies as members." The NPO has also proposed Article 76 be amended to allow journalists to retire at 65 rather than 60. "The NPO's proposals will apply to journalists who have been members of the Press Syndicate for at least 20 years, have not faced disciplinary measures during the last three years or taken long stretches of unpaid holidays," said Ahmed. "In addition, those who stay until 65 will not be allowed to hold senior positions such as board chair or editor-in-chief." The NPO also wants Article 77 to be changed to expand the general assembly of national press organisations to 15 members five journalists, five managers and five workers rather than the 12 stipulated in the government draft. It would also like to see the boards of national press organisations expanded to 13 rather than 11 members. On the criteria to select editors-in-chief of daily newspapers, Ahmed said the NPO was suggesting candidates have a minimum 15 years' experience of reporting and editing during which they did not take extended unpaid leave. Editors-in-chief of weekly, monthly or quarterly newspapers and magazines will be required to have a minimum of eight years of experience. Search Keywords: Short link: This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The brother of a San Antonio teen who is serving life in prison in the fatal shooting of an Army veteran at an East Side bus stop in 2015 was found guilty of murder Tuesday for the same crime. A jury deliberated about three hours before convicting Daniel Jeremy Torres, 21, of killing Jesse Lee Richards. Torres younger brother, David Alexander Zuniga, 18, was convicted of murder in January and is serving a life sentence for his part in Richards death. Zuniga told the jury at Torres trial Monday that the two were living with another brother, Juan Torres, and that it was Zuniga who came up with a plan to rob someone that night and get money really quick because Juan Torres needed to pay his rent. When prosecutor Josh Somers asked why they needed to rob someone, Zuniga said, Because they didnt want to take my laptop. Zuniga said Daniel Torres told him he wouldnt let him go out there by myself and do the robbery, so they both left on the night of Dec. 20, 2015, with a gun that belonged to Juan Torres. Once at the bus stop at Porter Street and South New Braunfels Avenue, Zuniga said, he stopped to talk to Richards, 28, who had just gotten off of work. I was supposed to talk to the dude, and Daniel was supposed to come up and scare him, Zuniga told the court. A short time later, he felt someone behind him, heard a gunshot and saw the shooter was his brother Daniel, he said. Shot in the chest, Richards got up and ran a few steps, then fell to the street. He was pronounced dead at San Antonio Military Medical Center a short time later. Zuniga testified he told police he was the one who shot Richards because he was afraid Daniel Torres would kill him or their mother. Juan Torres testified that he also felt threatened by his brother if he said anything. Testimony in the sentencing phase of the trial began Tuesday and was expected to conclude today. Torres faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. ezavala@express-news.net Twitter: @elizabeth2863 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two Wagner High School students were arrested Monday on accusations that they broke into the campus in February. Jakob Ponce, 19, and Jimmy Hennigar, 18, now face one charge of criminal trespassing on private property, a Class B misdemeanor. They were booked into jail on $800 bonds. RELATED: Ninth arrest made in probe of San Antonio prostitution ring The duo is accused of breaking into Wagner High School in the 3000 block of North Foster Road on Feb. 12 around 1 a.m. and leaving around 3:30 a.m. Two other suspects may be involved in the break-in as well, according to Judson ISD officials, though Ponce and Hennigar are the only students facing charges at this time. Officials said there was another break-in on April 15, though Ponce and Hennigar were only arrested in connection with the February break-in, according to their affidavits. There was no sign of forced entry, according to the affidavit. Surveillance footage from the night of the break-in shows two subjects dressed in dark clothing and wearing Go-Pro style video cameras on their heads. Their affidavits said several teachers at the high school identified the subjects in the surveillance footage as Ponce and Hennigar. RELATED: San Antonio murder trial ends when juror admits he was drunk A statement from officials at Judson ISD said there's no evidence that Ponce or Hennigar stole, vandalized or destroyed anything. "There is no evidence students or staff have been or are in any danger," said Steve Linscomb, the director of communications for Judson ISD. "Security at all of our campuses is of paramount interest and priority and any information in connection with this incident would be helpful in identifying all who were involved and keeping Wagner and all other campuses secure." According to Hennigar's Facebook profile, he and Ponce run a lawn care business together. Anyone with information on the break-ins is asked to call Judson ISD police at 210-659-9789. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com cdowns@mysa.com Twitter: @calebjdowns This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A jury handed a 65-year prison term Wednesday to Daniel Jeremy Torres for killing an Army veteran at a bus stop in 2015. Jurors who convicted Torres, 21, of murder Tuesday deliberated almost four hours on the sentence. In January, his brother also was convicted of murder in the case, which stemmed from an attempt to rob Jesse Lee Richards, 28, as he waited for a bus Dec. 20, 2015, at Porter Street and South New Braunfels Avenue on the East Side. Richards was shot in the chest. Torres younger brother, David Anthony Zuniga, 18, testified that Torres fired the shot. Each man testified that the two planned to rob Richards to get quick money to give to a third brother to pay rent. During his trial, Zuniga said he took the rap for Torres because he was afraid for himself and their mother. Zuniga is serving a life sentence for his role in the crime. Arguing for a life sentence for Torres, prosecutor Josh Somers told jurors they had an opportunity to protect us. There are bad men, evil men who hurt people, and Daniel Torres is one of those men, Somers said as he pointed to Torres. This man murdered someone who would have died to protect him. As he described the grandson he raised, Gary Richards, 76, choked up on the witness stand. He said Jesse Richards suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving three tours of duty in Iraq, lived in a halfway house in San Antonio and was trying to turn his life around when he was killed. He told the jury he and his wife took Richards in when he was about 2 because his mother couldnt handle him. As pictures were shown of Richards as a child named Jesse Hickman, through his teen years and in the Army, Gary Richards cried when he recalled that his grandson, as an adult, changed his name to Jesse Richards to honor the only father he ever knew. Torres attorney, Ron D. Ross, told the jury to consider the degree of responsibility that Torres had in the incident. Zuniga confessed to police on video to planning the robbery and being the shooter, he pointed out. It doesnt make any difference how many times he (Zuniga) tells you Daniel was the shooter, Ross said. It doesnt matter. The evidence does. Ross disputed the testimony of the third brother, Juan Torres, that he saw the shooting from where the men lived on Porter Street. Even if you were on the front step, you couldnt see it, Ross said. Torres showed no reaction when visiting Judge Laura Parker sentenced him. He also was fined $10,000 and will have to serve 30 years before he will be eligible for parole. ezavala@express-news.net Twitter: @elizabeth2863 Most Houston voters support issuing $1 billion in pension obligation bonds to invest in the city's under-funded police and municipal pension funds, a new poll shows. Fifty-three percent of respondents to a University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll released Wednesday said they back Mayor Sylvester Turner's plan to issue bonds as part of the city's pension reform package. Thirty-six percent were opposed, and 11 percent did not know or declined to answer. APPROVED: Texas House passes Houston pension reform bill The survey results come as Houston's pension reform bill heads to conference committee in the Texas Legislature, having passed the House and Senate in slightly different forms. Most of the $2.8 billion in benefit cuts would be contingent on voters' November approval of the pension obligation bonds. The poll of 425 Houston voters was conducted May 1 - 8 and has a margin of error of plus- or minus-4.7 percentage points. Egypt's Forensic Authority started Wednesday conducting an autopsy on Magdalena Zuk, a 27-year-old Polish tourist who died earlier this month in the Red Sea resort of Marsa Alam, Al-Ahram Arabic website reported. The autopsy is attended by Polish investigators upon the request of Warsaw, amid some Polish media reports that Zuk was a victim of rape and murder. Egyptian sources denied this claim, saying that Magdalena committed suicide in hospital due to her unstable mental state. A statement by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that its consular service remains committed to "cooperate closely and fully" with the investigation led by the Egypt's Prosecutors Office. "We hereby announce that the Polish Embassy in Cairo is closely following the proceedings in the case of the death of Polish national Magdalena Z," said the statement published by the Polish foreign ministry. "We emphasise that it is the responsibility of the Egyptian authorities to clarify the circumstances of the death. For its part, the Polish side seeks full access to information about the inquiry, including medical records, which will help ascertain what caused the death of the Polish citizen," the statement added. A far right Polish blog called Storrmfront initially suggested that Magdalena was raped or abused during her stay in the country. CCTV footage from a private hospital in Marsa Alam aired by Polands public TVP broadcaster showed the woman acting erratically and kicking at several men identified as hospital staff. Another video broadcast by Polsat 2 channel showed the woman lying unconscious in front of her hotel room in a brace position. Several reports also suggested that she was suffering from psychological disorders. The statement added that the Polish Prosecutors Office will request Egyptian authorities hand over medical documentation regarding the deceased woman and undertake several additional activities, such as the hearing of witnesses. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN A foster care bill in the House turned into a heated debate on vaccinations for children on Wednesday. The bill from Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, is part of the state's attempt to reform its foster care system. Wu's House Bill 39, which won preliminary approval, would limit on the number of kids a Child Protective Services worker could supervise. It would also require speedy medical evaluations of children entering the foster care system. OUTBREAK: Anti-vaccine activists spark a state's worst measles outbreak in decades Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington and vice chairman of the staunchly conservative Texas Freedom Caucus, authored an amendment to the bill that would have restricted doctors from including vaccinations in initial medical examinations for children. Zedler said children could be removed from their homes by Child Protective Services, and then given an unwanted vaccination. On the floor, Zedler told lawmakers that vaccines don't protect public health and should not be considered an emergency medication. "The vaccination is only for that child to protect that child," he said. Texas allows parents to opt out of vaccinations for non-medical reasons if they claim a conscientious objection. The number of Texas school kids not fully vaccinated has shot up more than 1,900 percent in 13 years, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle in April. The number skyrocketed from 2,300 to 45,000 kids. The opt-out movement stems from parents who fear that vaccines can lead to autism and other long-term ailments. Medical researchers say those theories are wrong. REDDIT WEIGHS IN: Reddit photo of vaccines-cause-autism billboard stirs up chat about Dr. Fitt, Amarillo, weather Zedler's amendment had both Democrats and Republicans up in arms. Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, attempted to change Zedler's amendment to allow doctor's to distribute a vaccine if it has been proven to prevent cancer. Davis, who has previously been an advocate for vaccinations, said she was "dumbfounded" that lawmakers would vote against preventing cervical cancer. "My amendment empowers doctors to practice medicine," Davis said during a testy exchange with Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano. "I think this is so important that we can eradicate cervical cancer." Leach said he was concerned that Davis' amendment would revoke parental rights who do not believe in vaccination, and "rip that decision from the parents and the child and give it to the doctor." Davis was referring to the Human Papillomavirus, or HPV infection, that can cause cervical cancer in women. The Centers for Disease Control recommends that all girls and boys who are 11 or 12 years old should get the HPV vaccine. It's also recommended for young women through age 26 and young men through age 21, according to the CDC website. YELP FOR HOSPITALS: Website lets consumers find best hospitals in the Houston area "I know a lot of you probably didn't anticipate a vaccine debate today," Rep. Sarah Davis told lawmakers just before they voted 74-64 to table her amendment to the amendment. Eventually, lawmakers agreed on an amendment to Zedler's anti-vaccination amendment with an exception for tetanus shots in an "emergency situation." Wu said the amendment would set a "dangerous precedent," but he would leave it up to the will of the House. Lawmakers adopted the amendment in a 74-58 vote, with Zedler voting for the amendment and Wu voting against. The debate also comes just one day after House lawmakers approved a controversial adoption bill that would allow child welfare service providers to potentially reject prospective foster and adoptive parents if their religious beliefs differ from those of the organization's. Nelly Watson was a creative woman whose devotion to family and stash of secret recipes, including for her ethereal Thanksgiving pies, inspired family and friends to call her a Hispanic Martha Stewart, her husband said. Watson died May 1 at 42 years old from complications related to pancreatitis. Although Watson could be a taskmaster, she had a spot soft when it came to animals, never forgetting her first pet, Dinky, a tiny Pekingese. When she was a child, her mother would come home to find new feral cats and kittens Nelly rescued. She was a young cat lady, her husband, Dennis Watson, jokingly said. More Information Nelly Watson Born: June 3, 1974, San Antonio Died: May 1, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Stepfather Renato Renteria Survived by: Husband, Dennis A. Watson; sons, Zachary and Addison; mother, Leticia Renteria; two sisters; two brothers Services: Memorial was held at Porter Loring Chapel See More Collapse Nelly and Dennis Watson grew up only blocks away from each other. The couple married on April 30, 1991, in San Antonio. Because Dennis Watson was in the military, the family moved around. Their first son was born in San Antonio and their youngest in San Diego. But Nelly Watson took the challenges of military life in stride, assimilating quickly to new surroundings. Before moving to the Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan, they both took driving courses because in Japan traffic goes to the left. She managed to drive everywhere, even with the children. She never went on the wrong side of the road unlike me, her husband said. She loved adventure, he said, recalling a family outing to the Emperors Palace in Tokyo. The excursion involved not only the train trip up to Tokyo but also a two-hour tour complete with strollers in tow. The family spent seven years living San Diego. However, Watson valued her hometown friendships and wanted to ground herself as well as her family. So they agreed to return to San Antonio. Watson spent most of her career working in human resources departments. When the family returned to San Antonio, she had an opportunity to work at either Xerox or Goodwill. She chose Goodwill, even though it meant not making as much, because its mission resonated with her. Once back in San Antonio, Watson and her best friend, Gabriella Flores, attended and supported their childrens extracurricular activities. They attended other events such as U2 concerts. They also shared a love of Hello Kitty products. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Watsons name to the Animal Defense League, https://adltexas.org/. szanetta@express-news.net A Sohag criminal court sentenced on Wednesday five people to 25 years in prison and 40 others to 10 years for planting a bomb at a railway station in Sohag governorate in 2015, Al-Ahram Arabic website reported. The court also sentenced 38 defendants to five years and acquitted 23 others in the same case. The defendants, who authorities say are supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, were also convicted of being members of an outlawed group. The court's ruling is subject to appeal. Search Keywords: Short link: WASHINGTON Senate Republicans rebuffed Democratic demands for an independent investigation of Russian meddling in the November election Wednesday, while expressing concern about President Trumps abrupt firing of FBI director James Comey. Despite intense political blowback from Trumps move, Republicans said they were content with a Senate Intelligence Committees probe into Russian electoral interference and possible ties to the Trump campaign, which has been running parallel to the FBI investigation Comey had been leading. I have confidence in the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who added that he could not find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comeys firing. I dont want to do anything that prevents the Senate Intelligence Committee from moving ahead. Outside political analysts said Trump has put his GOP allies on Capitol Hill in an uncomfortable position with the timing of Comeys firing. Still, Democratic calls for a special prosecutor to lead an independent investigation will go nowhere until a critical mass of Republicans decides this is necessary, said Thad Kousser, a political scientist at UC San Diego. Confirmation hearings on the person Trump selects as Comeys replacement present a looming test of GOP unity, Kousser said. If Trump nominates a political ally rather than someone with unblemished credentials to lead the agency, he could force Republican moderates to abandon the White House and join Democrats in a call for an outside probe. Republicans expressed hope that they could avoid this dilemma, urging Trump to nominate a new FBI director who is above any taint of politics. People are just taking this in and hoping that somebody really great is going to be nominated, said Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee. Corker recommended that Trump pick someone who people believe is independent, full of integrity, not be in any way politicized. Thats the next most important step. Trump, speaking briefly with reporters Wednesday after a White House meeting with Russian officials, said he fired Comey because he wasnt doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job. As Trump spoke, he was seated next to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, one of former President Richard Nixons closest advisers as Nixon became engulfed in the Watergate scandal. It was a scene that analysts said only served to underscore the maelstrom engulfing the White House. The Trump administration either misunderstood or did not accurately calculate what the fallout from this would be, said Doug Elmets, a Republican political consultant in Sacramento. They clearly believed that the Democrats despised Comey as much as Republicans because of what he did to Hillary Clinton. Democrats may feel that way, but this gave them one more opportunity to wrap Comey around Donald Trumps neck like an albatross. House members were on a weeklong recess and were not in Washington. Senate Democrats reacted with outrage across the board. On Wednesday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., began exerting the few levers of power that the minority party holds: He used an obscure rule to slow down committee hearings and voice a call by Democrats for an independent investigation as Democrats gathered on the Senate floor in a demonstration of unity. Schumer said Democrats would take up California Sen. Dianne Feinsteins demand that any appointment of a special counsel be made by a career Justice Department official, not a political appointee. Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, used her opening statement at a committee hearing to say she was incredulous about the chain of events leading to Comeys firing. She alluded to a briefing she and committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had with Comey last month, in which the now-fired director outlined what Feinstein called a substantial investigation of possible Russian interference with the general election. Turning to committee Grassley, Feinstein said, I cant go into the specifics, but you and I know that it was rather comprehensive for this kind of briefing. The FBI director was precise, and he presented us with substantial information. It was clear the FBI was taking its job seriously and that a substantial investigation was under way. Feinstein said the firing at a minimum raises questions about the appropriateness and timing of firing the person in charge of an investigation that could I wont say would, but could implicate the administration. To have this happen, and happen now, is beyond surprising. Feinstein told reporters that Comeys firing followed his request to the Justice Department for additional funds to conduct the Russia investigation. Corker said the GOP leadership had not handed down any instructions for how members should respond to the firing. Everybodys on their own, Corker said. Theres no policy statement being put out ... theres no attempt to try to get people on board. Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., set the tone with a floor statement Wednesday in which he defended Trump and accused Democrats of hypocrisy. Democrats are complaining about the removal of an FBI director whom they themselves repeatedly and sharply criticized during and after the campaign, McConnell said. Many Democrats, including presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, have said Comeys last-minute revelation in October that the FBI was taking another look at Clintons use of a private email server while she was secretary of state helped swing the election to Trump. But Trump has left his GOP allies on Capitol Hill in a difficult position, Elmets said. He has left a huge pile of manure in their laps, Elmets said. If they dont support an independent counsel, theyre going to appear is if theyre covering something up. If they rely upon what they contend is a bipartisan Senate or House investigation and it does not turn up anything of significance, its going to appear as if its a coverup, both of which will accrue to the detriment of Republicans running in 2018 and 2020. Elmets added that Trump has done so many things that are so egregious that if I were an elected Democrat or somebody running a Democratic campaign against a sitting Republican, I would be dancing in the street right now. Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead "At last we see light at the end of the tunnel". Ana Fernandez, director of an public examinations training center in Oviedo, said yesterday, given the prospect of a wide offer of public employment that the central government, regional administrations and unions are preparing for the next three years. "There are public examinations that have been suspended since 2008", emphasizes the directors of the academies, a sector that is preparing for a high number of students. The figures are very high. The Asturian Executive has not disclosed how many positions will be available in the Principality. According to some estimates, in the next three years could be around 5,000 positions, of which a large majority will correspond to health and education sectors. To this figure we should add the offers that will be raised by the central government - for example, for State security forces and bodies, for Post Office ... - and for local governments. In short, a whole binge of public employment after several years of strict abstinence. "There is more movement, so many people call us to ask about it", Vanesa Fernandez says, director of another training center. In her view, the boost in the number of registrations will occur rather after the summer. The experience tells her that "the specialized candidate does not wait for the selective processes to be called, but begins to prepare as soon as there is a little movement". If everything went as planned, the Asturian Administration's acting official rate would go from around 25 percent to 8 percent. The years of crisis, a period started around 2008, have taken their toll on public employment in Asturias. The calls were subjected to severe restrictions and the hiring of acting officials increased in a very remarkable way. The retirement replacement rate was kept to a minimum, with only slight hiring in strategic areas such as education and health. According to data provided to this newspaper by the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration, the Principality had at the beginning of 2016 - last available register - a total of 38,653 workers, a figure that included the 2,788 members of the University of Oviedo. Of this total, 9,797 were acting officials: that is, 25.3 percent. In the largest sector, health, the acting official rate was 35 percent (5,251 out of a total of 14,989). In education, it stood at 28.4 percent (3,489 out of 12,283). In education there were calls for public employments last year, and in health, they are being developed this year. Since the objective of the negotiating parties is that after three years the government's acting official rate will have fallen to 8 per cent, a credible approach indicates that the Asturian Government will call for about 5,000 permanent positions in the next three years. So far, the only sector that has disclosed specific data is the health sector, talking about calling for between 2,500 and 2,700 positions. Turkey on Wednesday reacted furiously to a US plan to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Ankara considers terrorists, but the force battling Islamist militants said the move would hasten the extremists' defeat. The issue risks further stoking tensions between Ankara and Washington less than a week before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan heads to Washington to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump in their first face-to-face encounter as heads of state. The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) is seen by Washington as the best ally against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria and the prime attacking force in any assault on their stronghold of Raqa. But Ankara regards the group as a terror group and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged an insurgency inside Turkey leaving tens of thousands dead. The dispute poisoned ties between Turkey and the United States under the administration of former president Barack Obama but commentators had hoped for a smoother ride under Trump. "The supply of arms to the YPG is unacceptable," Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told A Haber television. "Such a policy will benefit nobody," he said. "We expect that this mistake is to be rectified." In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon said Trump had authorised the arming of Kurdish fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) "to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa." The SDF, a US-backed group dominated by YPG but which also contains Arab elements, hailed the move and said that receiving US arms and military equipment would "hasten the defeat" of the jihadists. "The US decision to arm the YPG... is important and will hasten the defeat of terrorism," an SDF spokesman told AFP. The Kurdish-Arab SDF has been the main faction fighting IS on the ground in Syria, but Turkey dismisses it as a front for the YPG. It remains to be seen what shadow the issue will cast over the talks between Trump and Erdogan, which have been touted as chance to forge a new partnership between the two NATO allies. A high-level Turkish delegation including Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkey's spy chief Hakan Fidan has been in the US laying the groundwork for the meeting. Canikli said Turkey would take the diplomatic initiative to convince Washington "to do what friendship requires." "The argument that a ground operation in the fight against Daesh (IS) would be successful only with YPG has nothing to do with reality," he said. Both Washington and Brussels classifies the PKK as a terror group but has never regarded the YPG as such. Turkey has said it is keen to join the battle to recapture Raqa but on condition the offensive does not include Syrian Kurdish fighters. Last month, Erdogan said if Turkey and the United States joined forces, they could turn Raqa into a "graveyard" for militants. Turkey is hoping for better relations with Washington after tensions during the Obama administration but their disagreement over Syrian Kurdish forces has proven to be one of the thorniest issues. On April 27, Turkish warplanes struck YPG forces in Syria and also hit Kurdish forces in neighbouring Iraq in what Ankara described as "terrorist havens". Pentagon chief Jim Mattis had on Tuesday taken part in a summit in Copenhagen for senior leaders from the top 15 countries in the anti-IS coalition, including Turkey. Mattis, who is now in Vilnius as part of a European tour, gave a positive assessment of the role Turkey will play in the lead up to the Raqa fight. "Our intent is to work with the Turks, alongside one another to take Raqa down," he said. Meanwhile, Trump was to receive Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday to discuss a Russian plan to establish safe zones in Syria and help end the six-year conflict. Search Keywords: Short link: The loss of more than 20 jobs at a locally based architectural metalwork firm has been compounded by news of the imminent closure of one of Longford town's oldest pharmacies. The sudden and unexpected announcement made by Longford Architectural Metalwork Limited's of its intentions to cease trading with the loss of 24 jobs was followed this week by the closure of Corcoran's Pharmacy today (Wednesday) coinciding with a further four job losses. The fallout from both has sparked plenty of political rhetoric locally. At the forefront of that charge was Cllr Peggy Nolan, who branded the job cuts as another black day for Longford town. Twenty-four jobs gone means 24 families in crisis, she continued, before pointing out that there would be particular pressures on those with mortgages and children going to college. And no hope of another job either. Cllr Nolan went on to say that the workers there were a specifically skilled workforce and this would make it all the more difficult for them to find alternative employment in a small town like Longford. The work that these people do can be seen in buildings the length and breadth of this country, she fumed. 24 wages packets out of circulation in a town that is already on its knees is an absolute disaster. Established in Longford in 1976 by Brian Nerney, Longford Architectural Metalwork Ltd grew from humble beginnings crafting decorative bronze, brass-ware and stainless steel. As the years passed, the company developed and expanded to become a major employer in and around Longford town. In more recent times, it provided furnishing metalwork solutions to a range of establishments from historic buildings to luxurious hotels. Cllr Nolan, meanwhile said that it was time now for elected members to engage with the powers that be because the workforce at Longford Architectural Metalwork Ltd needed action. They need action from the people they elected; they expect us to do something for them, and I will do everything in my power to have the entire council engage with State bodies so that we can try and get something sorted for that workforce, the local area representative in Longford town continued. This is a huge shock; this town is on its knees. Since the loss of the Cameron jobs back in January, the executive of Longford Co Council has been engaging, on a monthly basis, with Enterprise Ireland. Cllr Nolan confirmed to the Leader on Monday that contact had been made by Longford Co Councils CEO, Paddy Mahon with the State body, after news broke that 24 jobs were gone at Longford Architectural Metalwork Ltd on Monday morning. This contact was made with a view to helping the workers here in Longford to get alternative work, said Cllr Nolan. All I can hope for at the moment is, that, this will in some way provide respite to the workers who lost their jobs. Meanwhile, Cllr Gerry Warnock (Ind) said the 24 jobs lost at the company served as another blow to the town. I want to firstly extend my sympathies to people who lost their jobs and to their families, said Cllr Warnock, before pointing out that the town was still reeling from the closure of the Cameron plant earlier this year. All of this just goes to show how fragile the rural economy is at the moment. There is an impetus now on central government to deliver jobs to rural Ireland; 24 jobs gone in Longford is a huge hit. Local News, Business & Finance, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: May 10 2017 Lupinacci: Unfortunately, another year passes and our states ranking as one of the most taxed states in the country remains unchanged. Long Island, NY - May 10, 2017 - Assemblyman Chad A. Lupinacci (R,C,I-South Assemblyman Chad A. Lupinacci (R,C,I-South Huntington ) criticized New Yorks economic policies as the state was ranked third to last on Tax Freedom Day. According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day is the day when the state as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. Ranked ahead of only New Jersey and Connecticut, it takes New York taxpayers longer than the remaining 47 states to pay off its total tab for the year. Unfortunately, another year passes and our states ranking as one of the most taxed states in the country remains unchanged, said Lupinacci. From our schools to our law enforcement, taxes play a critical role for a number of services we rely on each day. However, all too often the government passes laws that expand the size of government and then pass that cost onto us. Homeowners, business owners, landlords, renters and nonprofits all feel the pinch as more of their money is taken out of their paychecks to fund fiscally unsound and irresponsible programs. Our states population has declined and economic growth has fallen exponentially. We need policies that allow Americans to use their money as they deem fit, and to make room for businesses to open and hire New Yorkers from all economic and educational backgrounds. This is a strategy that puts the people back in control and sets us on a path to economic success. Local News, Crime, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: May 10 2017 LaValle: "The legislation should be approved immediately to lessen the unnecessary toll upon the victims families." Albany, NY - May 10, 2017 - Senator Kenneth P. LaValle (R, C, I- Senator Kenneth P. LaValle (R, C, I- Port Jefferson ) and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. (I, D, WF, WE- Sag Harbor ) were joined today by Senator Thomas OMara, Assemblyman Philip A. Palmesano, Assemblyman Joseph M. Giglio (Ranking Member Assembly Corrections Committee), Assemblyman Christopher S. Friend and Assemblyman Billy D. Jones, along with families of murder victims to urge the State Legislature to pass legislation to increase time between parole hearings for violent felons. Assemblyman Thiele and Senator LaValle are the main sponsors of the legislation (A.2350-A/S.2997-A). The measure provides that should parole be denied, the Parole Board shall specify a date not more than sixty months from such determination for reconsideration only in cases where a defendant was sentenced for: Murder in the first degree as defined in section 125.27 of the penal law where a sentence other than death or life imprisonment without parole is imposed; aggravated murder as defined in Section 125.26 of the penal law where a sentence other than death or life imprisonment without parole is imposed; and murder in the second degree as defined in Section 125.25 of the penal law where a sentence other than life imprisonment without parole is imposed. The legislation shall be known and cited as Lorraines Law in the memory of Lorraine Miranda who was a native of Shirley, Long Island. She was brutally murdered by her fiancee on December 5, 1988 at the young age of 24 years old. Her killer was sentenced to 15 years-to-life in prison. He became eligible for parole in 2003 and has since been denied seven times. Currently, parole hearings can be scheduled every twenty-four months. In many cases, especially those involving heinous acts of violence, parole will be denied numerous times. Each time an inmate is considered for parole, the victim and his/her family is required to testify before the Parole Board, pleading for parole denial and reliving the horror. The Legislators feel strongly that in instances where the Parole Board is confident that parole will not be granted for a period of five years, that they should have the discretion to set parole hearings for any date within those five years. This legislation would still allow for an earlier reconsideration, if warranted. Senator Ken LaValle said, Families of the victims suffer immensely from the crimes alone, it is then greatly compounded when they need to prepare and testify at the Parole Hearing. These families are faced with incredible anguish. Our bill would allow a more sensible approach be taken by the Parole Board when scheduling reviews. The legislation should be approved immediately to lessen the unnecessary toll upon the victims families. In cases where parole is likely to be denied consistently every two years, there is no reason why we should further disrupt the lives of victims and their families. Having to testify and relive often disturbing, graphic and highly emotional occurrences every two years is unnecessary, said Assemblyman Thiele. Senator Tom O'Mara, co-sponsor of the bill, said, "Theres no sense of justice in putting these families through the anguish, pain and suffering of repeatedly, every two years, having to make sure that the heinous, violent felon who took the life of their son or daughter, sister or brother, any loved one, wont ever see the outside of a prison cell again. Thats just not fair. Assemblyman Phil Palmesano, also a co-sponsor, said, Every time theres another parole hearing for one of these violent criminals, throughout the months, weeks and days leading up to the hearing, the families of the victims have to relive the horror of the crimes that took the lives they cherished. No family should have to go through that nightmare every two years, particularly in cases where the Parole Board determines that nothing will change within the next five years that would reverse a parole denial. Joining the Legislators were family members of murder victims Jenna Grieshaber, Lorraine Miranda, and Derrick Robie. Jenna Grieshabers murder case inspired the New York State Legislature to pass Jennas Law, which took effect in September 1998 and requires defendants convicted of violent felonies the first time serve 6/7 or eighty-five percent of their maximum sentences before being eligible for parole. Jenna was murdered by her neighbor, Nicholas Pryor, a paroled violent felon who had only served two-thirds of his sentence. Janice Geddes, mother of Jenna Grieshaber stated, Our loss is unimaginable. Reliving the details of Jennas tragic death every two years is an agonizing prospect, and certainly not a legacy we want to pass on to our living children. Enactment of this legislation is necessary to lessen the frequency of this tormenting burden. Margaret and Joe Hennessey, originally from Shirley , Long Island, were there to tell the story of Margarets daughter, Lorraine, who was violently strangled and mutilated by her fiance, Chris Patterson in 1988. Mr. Patterson has been denied parole six times since sentencing and is eligible to re-apply for parole in August 2017. Margaret said, The agony of reliving my daughters death every 24 months is unbearable for me and my family. I suffer from cardiac arrhythmia, have a pace maker and I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome. I pray that this legislation becomes a law to give grieving parents and families a chance to recover before the next parole hearings begin. Margaret Hennessys husband, Joseph, stated, The pain and agony of frequent parole hearings, I believe, is inhumane. My wife must relive the grief and of that terrible day every 24 months. I feel that the enactment of this legislation may alleviate the continuous suffering of grieving families who must endure the most heinous acts of murder. Dale and Doreen Robie, constituents of Senator OMara and Assemblyman Palmesano, from Savona, NY shared the story of their four year old son, Derrick, who was lured into a nearby field, and killed by Eric Smith in 1993. Mr. Smiths parole has been denied seven times thus far. Derricks parents shared, We are in total support of this important legislation and appreciate the efforts being made by state legislators to have it become law. We are committed to working with them to secure its enactment in Derrick's memory and so that other families like ours, whose lives have been forever changed by a violent criminal, do not have to relive their ordeal every two years." Tina Berrys daughter, Jennifer Marie Bolender, was brutally beaten and stabbed over 48 times by three teenage boys (ages 13, 14 and 18) in Niagara Falls in 2002. The first defendant became eligible for parole in 2008, followed by the second defendant in 2009. Ms. Berry stated by letter that her and her family have to relive this horrific act of violence not once every other year, but every year. In 2028, when the third defendant becomes eligible for parole, it will be three hearings within two years. Lorraines Law should be passed for families of murder victims. Changing parole hearings from every two years to every five years would make a great difference for the families of murder victims. She pleaded to make Lorraines Law a reality! The Taliban paraded a large convoy of fighters into the district center of Sangin in Helmand province just one month after Resolute Support denied Afghan forces were defeated there. The Taliban force operated openly in the daylight without fear of being targeted by US or Afghan airstrikes. The Taliban video, simply entitled Sangin, was released on Voice of Jihad on May 6. An English-speaking Taliban member narrated the video. When shown, his face is blotted out. According to the Taliban, the video contains information about the strategic district of Sangin, its conquest by the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate, barbarity by the foreign forces and the hirelings [Afghan security forces] and the reopening of the bazaar on the first day of the new blessed campaign Operation Mansouri. The video showed scores of vehicles, including several US-made Humvees, laden with Taliban fighters entering Sangins district center. The Taliban fighters were greeted by hundreds if not thousands of Afghans, while Taliban flags waved throughout the town. A large banner announcing Operation Mansouri, the groups newly announced spring offensive, is hanging at the entrance to the town. According to the Taliban, key buildings in the town, including a hospital, were destroyed during US airstrikes on March 22. The Taliban claimed it rebuilt and reopened the bazaar for the commencement of Operation Mansouri, which was announced on April 28. The Taliban seized Sangins district center on March 22 after surrounding it for several months, and hailed its capture as an important victory. US and Afghan warplanes bombed Sangins district center after airlifting the remaining forces during the dead of night. Resolute Support, NATOs mission in Afghanistan, denied that the Taliban overran Sangin, and instead claimed it relocated the district center several kilometers from the original site. In a statement that clumsily attempted to salvage the loss of Sangins district center, Resolute Support said that the only thing they left to the Taliban is rubble and dirt. The Taliban video told a different story. While some buildings appeared heavily damaged, and the Taliban attempted to use this damage as propaganda to portray the barbarity of US and Afghan forces, much of Sangin remained intact. Additionally, the Taliban video showed that more than a month after Afghan forces lost Sangin, and despite the relocation of the new district center just kilometers away, the Taliban can still flaunt a large force with little fear of reprisal. For more information the Taliban takeover of Sangin, see the following reports from FDDs Long War Journal: Taliban takes key district in Helmand province, Resolute Support spins loss of Sangin district center as a victory, and Capturing Sangin an important victory, Taliban says Images from the Taliban video Sangin 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. Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh is open to negotiations with rival Saudi Arabia, two years into a deadly war between Saleh's Houthi rebel allies and the Saudi-backed government. "We have no choice but dialogue," Saleh said at a meeting of his General People's Congress party in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Tuesday. "We are ready to go to Riyadh, Khamis Mushit, Muscat or elsewhere to start dialogue and to reach an understanding," Saleh said, referring to cities in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Oman. Saleh however reiterated his rejection of the government of internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and said Saudi Arabia would have to find "new leadership". Members of Saleh's circle have been meeting unofficially with Saudi delegates for weeks in Berlin, a Yemeni government official told AFP Wednesday. Saleh, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011, has repeatedly said he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia. But he ruled out mediation by UN special envoy Ismail Ould Sheikh Ahmed, who aims to resume stalled peace talks by the end of May, accusing him of bias. Government spokesman Rajeh Badi told AFP Ould Sheikh Ahmed is currently in Riyadh for talks on the Yemeni crisis, which the UN estimates has killed more than 7,700 people in since March 2015. While Saleh resigned under massive popular pressure in February 2012, he remains highly influential in Yemen. He was succeeded by Hadi, previously his vice-president. Parts of the army remained loyal to Saleh after his resignation and he solidified his position as a crucial player in 2014 when he forged an alliance with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The Houthis currently control Yemen's capital, the northern region bordering Saudi Arabia and a string of key ports along the Red Sea coast. The Hadi government is based in Aden, Yemen's second largest city. The president himself mainly resides in Saudi Arabia. Search Keywords: Short link: Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi warned in a speech on Wednesday that the countrys democratic path is under threat, as protests over social and economic issues continue in southern and central Tunisia. Essebsi announced the deployment of army forces to protect vital state facilities and petroleum outlets, as the protests brought a halt to production at two foreign energy companies; Perenco and Canada-based Serinus Energy. The president described the demonstrations and sit-ins, which were sparked in the southern Tataouine province and have lead to the blocking of roads and a halt of oil and phosphate production, as unacceptable. Protesters have been holding a sit-in for several weeks in the Sahara Desert and threatened to block roads used by oil and gas companies unless they are provided with more employment opportunities and a share in the region's energy resources. The president did, however, express his understanding of the youths calls for jobs and an end to marginalisation, urging officials to be patient and engage in dialogue. He also stressed his commitment to democracy as well as ensuring the right to peaceful protests. Essebsi described the Tunisian revolution in 2011 as a blessed one, adding that the freedoms gained through the revolution were not to be undermined. Essebsi used the colloquial Tunisian dialect while giving his speech, which was delivered at the capital's Conference Palace instead of the Presidential Palace for the first time. The president voiced his support for the government led by Prime Minister Youssef Chahed in light of demands that the cabinet be sacked. He also slammed calls for dissolving the parliament and holding new parliamentary elections, as well as holding a referendum on his initiative for economic and administrative reconciliation with state officials from the government of ousted president Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali. Experts have interpreted his speech as indicating that he plans to refer the matter to parliament for discussion. According to sources in the capital, the initiative may be amended. Essebsi did not address in his speech the recent calls by his supporters to amend the constitution to grant more powers to the president. He also addressed the recent sudden resignation of Tunisian election chief Chafiq Sarsar just months before the country is set to hold its first post-revolution municipal elections, slamming Sarsar for not consulting Essebsi ahead of announcing his resignation. Search Keywords: Short link: I hate paying for in-flight Wi-Fi. I use its terrible quality and high price as excuses to disconnect from the world and take a nap. But Gogo is about to ruin my life with its upgraded Wi-Fi, rolling out to airlines later this year. I tested Gogos next-gen 2Ku internet system in its Airborne Test Lab, a Boeing 737-500 that flew a couple dozen journalists around Newark Liberty International Airport Tuesday afternoon. The lab environment combined Gogos upgraded modem with capacity from Intelsats high-throughput satellites, which aim to deliver up to 100 Mbps per airplane. On a mostly empty plane cruising at 30,000 feet, I was getting anywhere from 20-50 Mbps download speeds on every device I brought with me: a MacBook Air, 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and iPhone 7 Plus. This will likely never happen to me againboth sitting in a seat with extra legroom on a Boeing 737 and the ultra-fast download speedsand it was glorious. Caitlin McGarry/IDG Seriously, so much legroom on this test flight. I played Beats One, Apple Musics live-streaming radio station, on my iPhone, watched episodes of 13 Reasons Why on Netflix on my iPad Pro, watched several movie trailers on YouTube, sent dozens of iMessages, chatted with my coworkers on the Mac Slack app, and worked in our content management system (which hates normal in-flight Wi-Fi and is therefore my excuse for not working on planes). My pal Ed Baig of USA Today even managed to Facebook Live the experience (with a brief guest appearance from yours truly) for close to 30 minutes. I struggled to make FaceTime video calls, with just one of the three attempts I made successful. The video quality wasnt great, and there was a severe lag. Gogos reps told me upload speeds are nowhere close to the download speed capability, and thats partly due to airlines not wanting passengers to make calls and upload videos to social networks (although as United can attest, when youre still on the ground, all bets are off). There were 53 devices connecting to Gogos in-flight Wi-Fi during our test flight. The max upload speed was 8 Mbps, while max download was 93 Mbps. I didnt experience anything close to 93 Mbps, but I did hit 53 Mbps, which was pretty solid. We used a total of 29GB in our roughly 2-hour flight. Gogos first-gen 2Ku modems are already in use on select Delta, AeroMexico, and Virgin Australia planes. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are currently testing the technology. With 2Ku, Gogo is aiming for 15+ Mbps per passenger with 98 percent service availability. Thats far better than what we have right now, and Gogo expects its next-gen modem and high-throughput satellites to bump download speeds even higher than 15 Mbps (though maybe not quite 53 Mbps). Caitlin McGarry/IDG I put Gogos in-flight Wi-Fi through several speed tests over the course of the flight using the SpeedTest and SpeedSmart apps for iOS. How Gogo is fixing its Wi-Fi problem Gogos reputation isnt great. Its Wi-Fi was so slow that American Airlines sued the company to get out of its contract (but later dropped the suit and is now committed to outfit 140 planes with 2Ku technology). The real reason for god-awful, snail-like internet speeds? Air-to-ground technology. Connecting planes to ground-based cell phone towers resulted in constrained bandwidth with download speeds of around 3 Mbps. Thats justsad. Those were the dark ages, but were moving past that. Gogo leased capacity from Intelsat to connect planes to satelliteswide-beam at first, and soon high-throughput ones that layer more capacity on top of existing satellites for higher-trafficked areas. Those satellites are coming online this year, with the Asia Pacific region rounding out the expansion with high-throughput satellite coverage toward the end of 2018. By leasing capacity from Intelsat, Gogo can finally make streaming and web-browsing on a long-distance flight a faster, less frustrating experience. Will that cost more? Well, in-flight Wi-Fi pricing is the domain of the airlines, but a Gogo spokesperson told me its unlikely that the upgraded service will cost far more than it currently does. (That would certainly anger airline passengers, which is what this air-to-satellite system is designed to fix.) Some airlines even offer promotions with free Gogo Wi-Fi. I dont expect my flight on Gogos test lab to be representative of my next commercial in-flight Wi-Fi experience, but it is a sign that airplane internet connectivity doesnt have to be so terrible. Facebook addicts and workaholics, rejoice. As for me, Ill be over here shaking my fist that airplanes are no longer an internet-free safe space. Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived at the White House Wednesday ahead of Oval Office talks with President Donald Trump, a rare honor bestowed on a non-head of government. Lavrov arrived to the West Wing at a dramatic moment in American politics -- hours after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, who had been investigating to Kremlin interference in the US election. Search Keywords: Short link: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Russia to rein in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his key ally Iran, as Washington and Moscow sought to boost their fragile ties with high-profile White House talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Washington since Trump came to power in January, earned a rare invitation to the Oval Office for a head-to-head with the Republican president. Before visiting the White House, Lavrov huddled with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss the crises in Syria and Ukraine -- talks qualified by the veteran Russian diplomat as "constructive." The meetings were nevertheless somewhat overshadowed by the uproar in Washington over Trump's firing of FBI chief James Comey -- the man who was leading a probe into Russia's alleged meddling in the US presidential election. "We had a very, very good meeting" Trump said shortly after seeing Lavrov. "We're going to stop the killing and the death (in Syria)." The Republican leader nevertheless told Lavrov that Moscow should "rein in the Assad regime, Iran and Iranian proxies," the White House said. Lavrov, who came to Washington seeking US support for a Russian plan to create safe zones in Syria, said "concrete mechanisms that we can manage together" were discussed. "Today, we have a common understanding that, as active players in the diplomatic process regarding Syria, we are going to pursue these contacts together and with other key countries, especially those in the region," he said. Trump's critics cried foul over the White House invitation to Lavrov, whose government stands accused by US intelligence agencies of interfering in the November election, which Trump won over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Democrats have seen Comey's shock dismissal as an assault on an investigation that could have sweeping repercussions for his administration. Lavrov, who last set foot in Washington in August 2013, dismissed all claims of election meddling as "fabrications," preferring in his press conference to focus on the substance of his meetings. "President Trump clearly confirmed his interest in building mutually beneficial, business-like pragmatic relations," he told journalists. Earlier, when Lavrov arrived at the State Department to meet Tillerson, he cracked a joke about Comey's firing, answering shouted questions from reporters by saying: "Was he fired?... You're kidding, you're kidding!" In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Wednesday with his security council to discuss US-Russian relations in the context of Lavrov's meeting with Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA Novosti news agency. Relations between the two former Cold War foes soured under former president Barack Obama over Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its unyielding support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Since March 2011, the Syrian conflict has caused more than 320,000 deaths and forced millions of refugees to flee. Neither Washington, which backs the opposition, nor Moscow, a longtime ally of the Syrian regime, have managed to find a solution to the conflict. Since the end of Obama's presidency in January, the United States has gradually withdrawn from the diplomatic process, leaving Russia to take the lead. The US was not part of a deal by Damascus backers Russia and Iran, and rebel supporter Turkey, signed Thursday in the Kazakh capital Astana on establishing safe zones in Syria. The agreement calls for the creation of four "de-escalation zones" to shore up a ceasefire, ban flights and allow for humanitarian aid deliveries. Washington has given the deal a skeptical welcome, citing concerns about Tehran's role as a guarantor even as it expressed hope the agreement could set the stage for a later settlement. "We will look at the proposal, see if it can work," Pentagon chief Jim Mattis said Monday. Several ceasefires have been agreed on since Syria's conflict broke out, but they have failed to stem the fighting. Over the past six years, Moscow and Washington have sparred multiple times over the conflict in Syria, especially concerning Assad's fate. Trump's arrival to power has not brought the two sides closer -- and in early April, the US even launched direct military action against the Syrian regime in retaliation for an apparent chemical attack. Both countries have recently indicated that relations under Trump have never been so bad, though Wednesday's meetings appeared rather cordial. Trump "emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia," the White House said. On the conflict in Ukraine, the White House said Trump had "stressed Russia's responsibility to fully implement the Minsk agreements." The State Department added: "Sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them." After Wednesday's talks, Lavrov and Tillerson will again meet Thursday in Alaska for the Arctic Council meeting, an intergovernmental forum for cooperation on the environment, oil and mining, shipping, fisheries and tourism. It brings together the eight countries bordering the Arctic Ocean -- Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and the United States. Tillerson and Lavrov's meeting in Alaska comes 150 years after Washington purchased the US state from Moscow. Search Keywords: Short link: Four months into 2017, most eyes are fixated on the West-particularly European elections and the new US administration. However, it's a big world, and it's easy to overlook one of the globe's biggest economies: Japan. The Land of the Rising Sun has struggled economically throughout the broader expansion, and many pundits are growing dour about Japan's economy and stocks-particularly because of allegedly tense trade relations. While we agree Japan's economy likely continues to struggle, sentiment is catching up with this weak reality. Stocks move most on the gap between sentiment and reality, and these lowered expectations increase the risk Japanese data and/or reform efforts positively surprise. A lackluster economy isn't a new development: see Japan's Lost Decade(s) for more. Since the current global expansion began, Japan suffered recessions in 2011, 2012 and 2014.[i] One-off events like the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 played a role, but weak domestic demand has been the persistent issue. In late 2012, present Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office and promised to revitalize the economy via his three-part "Abenomics" program: extraordinary monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and economic and structural reform. The first targeted long-running deflation, the second would kick start growth and the third aimed to liberalize the economy in the longer term. Abenomics' potential excited foreign observers and raised expectations-which also set up disappointment if the program fell short. Hence, Japanese stocks outperformed substantially right after Abe was elected. But this hasn't lasted: Japan has overall underperformed developed world stocks since Abe took office December 26, 2012. Exhibit 1: Japanese vs. Global Stocks Since Abe Took Office Source: FactSet, as of 5/5/2017. MSCI Japan and MSCI World, Total Return Index Levels, in USD, from 12/26/2012 - 5/4/2017. Indexed to 1 on 12/26/2012. Today sentiment is more aligned with reality. While Abe delivered monetary easing and fiscal stimulus, folks now recognize these measures alone haven't spurred growth. The Abe administration passed some reforms (e.g., corporate governance and labor), but they haven't been as deep and impactful as hoped. Despite the hype, reinvigorated domestic demand remains absent, and trade has been the primary growth driver. Thus, given recent talk of protectionist trade policies-specifically from leaders of major trading partners-some observers fear the country's already tepid growth will be snuffed out. However, the data don't paint that dire a picture. Japan has enjoyed global trade's recent rebound. March export values were up 12.0% y/y while import values rose 15.8%. While this sounds good, values figures aren't all-telling due to currency impact[ii]-trade volumes say more. On this front, March exports (6.6% y/y) and imports (4.2% y/y) have been on an uptrend. (Exhibits 2-3) If the global trade rebound continues and protectionist talk doesn't amount to action, there is the potential for upside surprise here. Exhibit 2: Export Values and Volumes Since April 2016 Source: Japan Ministry of Finance, as of 5/4/2017. Exhibit 3: Import Values and Volumes Since April 2016 Source: Japan Ministry of Finance, as of 5/4/2017. Other data show moderate improvement, too. In April, Japan's services (52.2) and manufacturing (52.7) PMIs were above 50-indicating expansion-for the sixth straight month-a sign more firms are growing than not.[iii] Meanwhile, preliminary March retail sales picked up from February's 0.2% y/y to 2.1%. However, reality still isn't rosy. Consumption is still weak, as consumer spending slipped -1.3% y/y in March-its 13th straight negative reading. Though business investment rose 8.4% annualized in Q4-the strongest reading since Q1 2014-the gauge has vacillated frequently and has yet to show a sustained uptrend. Overall, the largely lackluster[iv] expectations toward Japan seem appropriate. The development to watch is whether the data meaningfully pick up or if expectations fall lower from here-potentially widening the gap between perception and reality. As for politics, Abe has seemingly eased his effort to revise Article 9-the anti-war clause-of Japan's Constitution. Abe has pursued this lifelong ambition since his tenure's start. However, change requires significant political capital, and Abe's efforts have met stiff resistance, causing him to moderate considerably. Whereas pundits wondered before if he would scrap Article 9 altogether, today Abe is focused on a Special Defense Forces provision-basically keeping everything else. This theoretically frees up political capital to deploy elsewhere, and if Abe does end up using it towards reform-even incremental ones-that could result in a positive surprise. That said, this status quo isn't overall positive. Japan's long-running issues are likely to keep running: a stagnant economy restrained by entrenched special interests, a byzantine labor code and an overall protectionist trade policy, among other issues. Growth will likely remain tepid, weighed down by weak domestic demand. But stocks move most on the gap between sentiment and reality. With sentiment plunging and global trade picking up, there is an increasing risk of Japan positively surprising with reform and/or economically. If sentiment declines further, this risk becomes more acute. A US-backed alliance on Wednesday captured Syria's Tabqa and its nearby dam from the Islamic State (IS) militant group, a day after Washington said it would arm the force's Kurdish fighters. Turkey slammed the US decision to arm the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers terrorists but which Washington sees as an indispensable ally in the fight against IS. The issue risks stoking tensions between the two countries less than week before US President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan meet for the first time as heads of state. The YPG makes up the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which on Wednesday scored a major victory against IS in the Syrian city of Tabqa. The SDF said it had "completely liberated" Tabqa and the adjacent dam after weeks of fierce fighting. "The combing operations are ongoing to ensure that the city is clear," said spokesman Talal Sello. Tabqa sits on the Euphrates River as well as a strategic supply route about 55 kilometres (35 miles) west of Raqa, the Syrian heart of IS's so-called caliphate. The UN has warned damage to the Tabqa dam -- Syria's largest -- could lead to massive flooding. Warplanes from the US-led coalition have pounded the city and nearby IS positions for weeks as part of the broader offensive for Raqa. The YPG said the US's "historic" decision to begin providing it with weapons and other equipment would speed up its assault on IS positions in Syria's north. Spokesman Redur Xelil said the move was "somewhat late", but would still "provide a strong impetus" to all forces fighting IS. But this sparked ire from Turkey, which regards the YPG as the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged an insurgency inside Turkey, leaving tens of thousands dead. "I hope very much that this mistake will be reversed immediately," said Erdogan. "I will personally express our worries in a detailed way when we talk with President Trump on May 16," he added, saying the issue would also be discussed at the NATO summit in Brussels on May 25. In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon had said Trump had authorised the arming of Kurdish fighters within SDF "to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa". The dispute over arming Syria's Kurds poisoned ties between the two NATO allies under the administration of former president Barack Obama but Ankara had hoped for smoother ties under Trump. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said it was "out of the question" for Turkey to accept any direct or indirect help for the PKK. "The United States and Turkey are two major partners in NATO. We don't believe America would choose a terror group over our strategic relations," he said. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu added that "every weapon that turns up in their hands is a threat directed toward Turkey". Pentagon chief Jim Mattis sought to allay Turkish concerns, saying the US would work very closely with Turkey over security on its border with Syria. "We have very open discussions about options and we will work together, we will work out any of the concerns," he said. It remains to be seen what shadow the issue will cast over upcoming talks between Trump and Erdogan, touted as chance to forge a new partnership between the two sides. While the government expressed predictable anger, the deputy head of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Ozturk Yilmaz said it should go even further by postponing Erdogan's visit to the US. A high-level Turkish delegation including Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and spy chief Hakan Fidan had been in the US laying the groundwork for the meeting. According to the New York Times, the delegation was informed of the decision to arm the YPG by Trump's national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Turkish media said the three met McMaster at the White House on Monday but gave no details over the content of the talks. Both Washington and Brussels classify the PKK as a terror group but do not regard the YPG as such. But Cavusoglu said the two were one and the same. "YPG and PKK are both terror groups, there is no difference at all between them. They only have different names," he said. Turkey has said it is keen to join the battle to recapture Raqa but on condition the offensive excludes the YPG Last month, Erdogan said if Turkey and the US joined forces, they could turn Raqa into a "graveyard" for IS. But on April 27, Turkish warplanes struck YPG forces in Syria and also hit Kurdish forces in neighbouring Iraq in what Ankara described as "terrorist havens". Meanwhile, Trump received Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday and called on Moscow to reign in its ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Lavrov, the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Washington since Trump came to power in January, also met with his counterpart Rex Tillerson to discuss Syria and Ukraine. Search Keywords: Short link: STUART-A man facing attempted capital murder charges in Patrick County was declared mentally incompetent on Tuesday. In Patrick County General District Court, Judge Marcus Brinks ordered that 58-year-old Thurman Lee Linster be involuntarily committed to Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County. Brinks will review the case again on Nov. 28. Patrick County Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Andrew Hynes said in an interview that three different psychiatrists found Linster to be unrestorably mentally incompetent. They cited Linsters alcohol-induced brain damage as well as multiple traumatic brain injuries as the contributing factors to the finding, according to Hynes. The purpose in this case is to protect society, since his dementia coupled with the alleged acts indicate a clear danger to others, Hynes said. Linster is not receiving restoration services while in the hospital, as officials feel the damage is permanent. Patrick County Commonwealth's Attorney Stephanie Vipperman said in an email that Linster is in the mental hospital under the civil commitment process. The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services website states that people committed under this process will be treated like other civilly committed individuals. That means he will be discharged when stable and when a discharge plan is in place, unless a court order directs otherwise. "Once a person is found URIST (UnRestorably Incompetent to Stand Trial) by the court, the court does not receive any future evaluations of the defendants competency to stand trial, nor does the court receive clinical updates," Vipperman said in an email. Vipperman said civil commitment is about whether: the person has a mental illness and there is a substantial likelihood that, as a result of mental illness, the person will, in the near future, cause serious physical harm to himself or others as evidenced by recent behavior." A person can also be committed if he or she is at risk of suffering serious harm due to their current mental state. Vipperman said the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services notes that a defendant must be competent to stand trial, which includes having the ability to understand the proceedings against him and the ability to assist his lawyer in preparing his defense. As far as what becomes of the charges against Linster, Vipperman said: We can keep the case open for 5 years from his arrest date before its automatically dismissed. Or we can nolle prosse it before then with the right to bring charges again should he be restored to competency. A look at the case On Aug. 9 of 2016, Major Garry Brown of the Patrick County Sheriffs Office was called out to the 100 block of Heavenly Lane in Stuart, to investigate a report of a man setting fire to a house trailer. When he arrived, the court documents say, Brown found 57-year-old Thurman Lee Linster in the backyard of an abandoned trailer, arguing with Jerry Willard, who lives in the mobile home next door. Witnesses at the scene told Brown that they saw Linster walking around the abandoned trailer, pouring liquid out of a gallon jug. When he got around to one end of the trailer, one witness said, Linster allegedly set the trailer on fire. That witness, Jerrys wife Stephanie, told the police that Linster then came to the familys trailer door and saw the couples 4-year-old son. Linster allegedly asked Jerry if the 4-year-old lived in the abandoned house trailer. When Jerry replied no, Linster allegedly said I guess I will have to burn down this one now, referring to the couples home. It was then, the couple said, that Jerry noticed the fire at the abandoned trailer and went to put it out. He then confronted Linster, asking who sent him. According to Jerrys statement, Linster said that a local man had set him out and told him not to leave until everyone in the trailer was dead. Stephanie Willard's father David, owner of the trailer that was on fire, also testified that Linster allegedly told him the name of a local man that had "brought him here to burn them down." At the time, court records show that Stephanie Willard was a witness against the man Linster mentioned, in regards to an assault case. Hynes said no else besides Linster was charged in the incident on Aug. 9 largely due to Linster being found incompetent. U.S. President Donald Trump will host Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, for a meeting at the White House on May 15, the White House said on Tuesday. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump saw the meeting with a leader of the United Arab Emirates as an "opportunity to deepen cooperation with a key partner in the Middle East." Search Keywords: Short link: We asked where we could find the best sushi in Massachusetts and you responded with over 35 restaurants across the commonwealth. Now it is your job to determine which 10 sushi spots our judges will visit. In the poll below, you will find the names of the restaurants nominated for Best Of Mass Sushi on MassLive.com and social media. Voting is restricted to one ballot for up to 10 sushi spots once every 24 hours per IP address. The poll will remain open until Friday, May 19 at 12 p.m. The five most popular Western Massachusetts restaurants and the five most popular Eastern Massachusetts restaurants at the time of poll closing will comprise the Top 10. From there, our judges will visit and rank the Top 10 contenders and crown one the best sushi restaurant in Massachusetts. What are you waiting for? Cast your vote for your favorite sushi spot in the poll below, and stop back every day to vote your favorite into the Top 10. math.jpg Chestnut TAG math teacher Kevin McGrath assists one of his students in his independent style math class which was debuted in ithe schools partnership with New Classrooms this year to bring Teach to One: Math to 226 student in sixth, seventh, and eight grade. ((Jordan Grice / The Republican)) There will be a career fair this fall for Westfield's middle schools. But it won't be kids learning about what it takes to be a machinist, an engineer or an auto-body technician. It'll be their teachers. The idea isn't that educators are looking for new gigs themselves, said Kate Phelon, executive director of the Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce. The idea is for teachers to learn what employers are looking for -- and what they hope not to see -- in job applicants, so they can impart those skills to their students as early as sixth grade. The fair is part of what Westfield Education 2 Business Alliance is doing to tie the classroom to the business world -- an outgrowth of Phelon's decision a few years ago to get the schools in Westfield on board as a member of the Chamber of Commerce. "We are so excited about all that we are doing," Phelon said. "Our alliance meets every month. We just went through mentorship training for 22 mentors." There will also be a career fair next month for high school students, in addition to the fair for middle school teachers. Phelon was on a panel Wednesday as the Rennie Center for Education and Research Policy, a Boston-based think tank, presented its most recent report on the education in Massachusetts to a gathering of educators and business leaders at The Log Cabin in Holyoke. The stakes are high, said Tricia Canavan, president of United Personnel in Springfield. The region has economic headwinds, she said. Energy costs are high. Real estate and building is expensive. The so-called "Massachusetts advantage" is the state's reputation for having an educated workforce. "But the economic promise that is here will be lost if we are not preparing our students to take advantage," she said. The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education said 75 percent of employers report having trouble finding qualified job applicants, according to the Rennie Center. According to Rennie's own data, 87 percent of Massachusetts high school students graduated in four years in 2015 -- an improvement, up 1.2 points from a year earlier. But graduation doesn't mean success. In 2015, 30 percent of students in college needed remedial coursework. In 2014, just 47 percent of the community college earned a degree or certificate or the credits to transfer to a four-year school in six years or less. The answer, said Chad d'Entremont, executive director of the Rennie Center, is in partnerships like Westfield's, and in student-centered teaching. What he means is that students should be focused on mastering skills and meeting goals, not on "seat time" in a traditional lecture scenario. The goal is to get the skill, not to spend a certain number of hours in instruction. "If you can graduate high school in 2.5 years and go on to college, go," he said. "If it takes you five years. then we need to support that." Richard Malinoski, a math teacher at Springfield's Chestnut Accelerated Middle School, talked about Teach to One, an individualized math instruction program where students get daily evaluations. That shapes the next day's lessons. At Chestnut, 226 students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades participate in a 90-minute, two-session math block. They take math lessons on computers as well as through group projects or lectures. "Students are going to have cell phones and computers," he said. "This is the world we live in." Steve Zrike, superintendent of schools in Holyoke, said the Paper City is incorporating these concepts into its high school redesign and into middle school instruction. The workforce nonprofit agency CareerPoint now has a jobs center in Dean Technical High School. And Zrike said he's interested in replicating the Westfield Education 2 Business Alliance in the Paper City. But there is more work to do. Only 20 percent of middle school students in Holyoke report being excited about their education. "Now, it is hard to get a middle schooler to get excited about anything," Zrike said. "But that is sad. It's sad that we aren't getting these kids enthusiastic about learning these skills." Phelon said educators are learning the need for "soft skills" in the workplace. Unlike hard skills, like computer programming and algebra, soft skills are things like how to greet someone by shaking a hand and looking the person in the eye, punctuality or how to make a sale. Brian Wilson has extended his "Pet Sounds" tour to include stops in Connecticut and Boston. Wilson will perform at the Grand Theater at Foxwoods on Sept. 21 and the Orpheum Theatre in Boston on Sept. 22. A founding member of The Beach Boys, Wilson's current tour pays tribute to the 50th anniversary of the seminal "Pet Sounds," release. The album, which Wilson will play in its entirety, is ranked No. 2 by Rolling Stone in its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time." Tickets for the shows go on sale beginning Friday, May 12 through all Ticketmaster outlets and locations including ticketmaster.com and by phone at (800) 745-3000. vintage fourth 2.jpg Maestro Robert Gutter, music director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra from 1970-1986, conducts the SSO during 4th of July celebrations at Symphony Hall in Springfield in 1981. (The Republican file photo) Robert Gutter, conductor and former music director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, passed away unexpectedly on Monday in Moldova at the age of 79. According to his daughter, Frances KGL MacAllister, Gutter died doing what he loved - traveling, guest-conducting, and teaching during his annual tour of Eastern Europe. "He had retired, but never slowed down. He was quite feisty!" MacAllister said. "There was really no retirement for him - he was the most happy when he was conducting - he was going to do it until the day he died. He had been relatively healthy and quite active, so his passing was unexpected and tragic." Gutter stepped onto the Springfield Symphony Orchestra podium in the 1970-1971 season and remained there until 1986 when he became conductor of the Greensboro North Carolina Philharmonia. During his tenure in Springfield Gutter accomplished several firsts with the orchestra. Among them were the first staged opera production, the first annual Pops series (at Stanley Park in Westfield as well as Symphony Hall in Springfield), and the July "Big 4th" outdoor concert. His 1978 performance of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" was described by the Newhouse News Service as one which "surpassed in sheer electricity recent New York performances featuring Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony, Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic...." During his tenure in Springfield, Gutter commissioned 11 new works from distinguished American composers like Ned Rorem (his Violin Concerto, premiered in 1984 by Jaime Laredo), Michael Colgrass, and Gunther Schuller. He also showcased local talent, commissioning University of MA composer Robert Stern's "Carom," and Amherst College composer Lewis Spratlan's "Two Pieces for Orchestra," both of which he subsequently recorded. A writer for Musical America stated the "...Gutter has built the Springfield Symphony into a major ensemble...." Gutter said in 1988, "Springfield has been good to me, and I think I've been good for it. It's hard to take risks in today's world, (but) for organizations to survive down the road, more and more of them are going to have to start doing something that has real significance in terms of product...and that's only going to happen as long as the musicians are involved in the process and care about it." Gutter certainly fostered that involvement during his years on the SSO podium. There are still players in the orchestra who were hired by Gutter and who vividly remember his leadership. It is generally agreed that the Springfield Symphony of today - the excellent quality of the playing, the solidarity of the musicians - owes its existence in large part to Gutter's vision and guidance. "Robert really loved music, had a deep commitment to the Springfield Symphony and was the person most responsible for developing it into a viable ensemble," said Salvatore Macchia, the SSO's principal bass and a Gutter hire. "He also had a an unparalleled dedication to the music of our time and regularly commissioned, performed and recorded new pieces of orchestral music often by members of the Five College community. Robert Stern, Lew Spratlan, Ron Perera and I all had pieces either performed, commissioned,or recorded by Bob. He was an important figure in the history of the Springfield symphony." Gutter was born in 1938 in New York City. He graduated from New York's renowned High School of Music and Art, and received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Yale University School of Music. He studied in Siena, Italy at the Chigiana Academy with Franco Ferrara. He founded the International Institute for Conductors in 1996, and continued in his calling as an orchestral teacher, trainer and mentor. "A conductor," Gutter said, "has to be a communicator - has to communicate not only his musical ideas, but his whole person to other people, and affect them in that way." The Institute gave him the means to continue in that mission. He also served as the Principal Guest Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine in Kiev from 1996-2000, and later as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra "Mihail Jora" of Bacau, Romania. Through all these avenues, Gutter proved himself to be, as his daughter Frances described, "...an energetic, deeply dedicated, soulful person who had so much love for music, for conducting, for being a mentor to so many." In the brief time since his death, she has experienced an outpouring of tribute from people from many walks of life who have benefited from her father's tutelage and mentorship. Gutter was pre-deceased by his first wife, Bernadette Boyle Gutter. He leaves his brother, Malcolm; second wife, Suzanne Gutter McFadyen, daughters Deborah Goldenberg (husband Stanley), Joel Goldenberg, Adam Goldenberg, Sheryl McQuade (pre-deceased husband Bob McQuade) and their children Collin McQuade and Jenna McQuade, and Frances KGL MacAllister (husband Derek), daughter of Gutter and Susan Lisk. Imagine Dragons have included Mohegan Sun on its touring plans for 2017. The rock band will bring its "Evolve" tour to the Connecticut casino on Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the show are scheduled to go on sale Friday, May 19 at 10 a.m. Imagine Dragons will release its third studio effort "Evolve" on June 23. The corresponding tour will feature special guests GroupLove and K.Flay. Tickets will be available through all Ticketmaster outlets and locations including ticketmaster.com and by phone at (800) 745-3000. Tickets are priced at $105, $85 and $65. Imagine Dragons' 2012 debut "Night Vision" put them in the pop culture conversation with a ubiquitous single in "Radioactive" (Rolling Stone called it the "biggest rock hit of the year") and the distinction of being dubbed "Breakthrough Band of the Year" by no less an authority than Billboard Magazine. South Korea's new president was sworn in on Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory, and immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang amid high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Left-leaning Moon Jae-In, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with North Korea in the quest for peace -- in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks. "If needed I will fly to Washington immediately," Moon said in an inauguration speech after taking the oath of office in front of lawmakers at Seoul's National Assembly building. "I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances." Moon will have a difficult diplomatic path to tread in his approach to the North, which dreams of a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States, and has vast artillery forces trained on Seoul. At the same time the South is embroiled in disputes with China over a US missile defence system, and former colonial occupier Japan over wartime history. He named former journalist Lee Nak-Yon, a four-term lawmaker, as prime minister -- a largely coordinating role and appointed a new head of the National Intelligence Service, Suh Hoon, who played a key role in preparing the past two inter-Korea summits of 2000 and 2007. Domestically, Moon begins his term facing multiple challenges, including the aftermath of the huge corruption scandal that saw his conservative predecessor Park Geun-Hye impeached and swept him to power, but leaves the country bitterly divided. Ahead of the swearing-in, Moon met leading lawmakers of Park's Liberty Korea party -- which has repeatedly accused him of being a Pyongyang sympathiser -- to "beg" for their cooperation. "I will be a president to all people," he said in his speech, promising to "serve even those who did not support me" and remain "at eye-level with the people". After the low-key ceremony he was driven through the streets of the capital to the Blue House, standing in the back of his limousine and waving to supporters. Moon took 41.1 percent of the vote in Tuesday's election, far ahead of Hong Joon-Pyo of Park's Liberty Korea party, on 24.0 percent, and centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo on 21.4 percent. The 64-year-old is bespectacled, reserved and mild-mannered, although some critics describe him as bland, indecisive and uninspiring. "I liked the no-frills inauguration event and his down-to-earth style," said Lee Jeong-Mi, a Seoul office worker who watched him pass by. "He really looks like a true people's president." Since the beginning of last year the North -- which says it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against invasion -- has mounted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches. In recent months the Trump administration has suggested a military option is on the table, escalating fears of conflict -- although the US president changed tone last week, saying he would be "honoured" to meet the North's young ruler, Kim Jong-Un. Moon is expected to have his first conversation with Trump in a phone call Wednesday, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul diplomats. Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Moon on his election, saying he would be willing to work with him on a basis of "mutual understanding and mutual respect", according to China's official Xinhua news agency. The phrasing is Beijing's diplomatic code for acceptance of its stance. The South's biggest trading partner, China has been infuriated by the deployment of the US anti-missile system THAAD in the country, which it sees as a threat to its own military capability. It has taken a series of moves against South Korean firms seen as economic retaliation. At home, Moon will have to deal with slowing growth, soaring unemployment and public frustration over widening inequality in wealth and opportunities. The stellar expansion that pulled a war-ravaged country out of poverty has slowed down in recent years as the economy matured, with the jobless rate among those aged under 30 hitting record highs. Such frustrations fuelled anger over Park's scandal, which exposed the cosy and corrupt ties between regulators and powerful conglomerates that have endured for decades. The family-run giants, called chaebols, dominate Asia's fourth-largest economy but have come under fire in recent years for running their global businesses like personal fiefdoms, with minimum scrutiny by investors and regulators. Moon tapped into the concerns in his inauguration speech, saying he would create a society that offers "equal opportunity, fair process and just outcome". After leaving office two South Korean presidents have been jailed for corruption, one is awaiting trial, and another -- Moon's own mentor -- killed himself after being questioned over graft, but the new leader promised to stay clean. "I will take the helm empty-handed and will retire empty-handed," he said. Search Keywords: Short link: A man arrested near the British parliament last month was involved in bomb-making in Afghanistan in 2012, it was alleged Wednesday as he appeared in court on terrorism charges. Khalid Mohammed Omar Ali, 27, was arrested not far from Prime Minister Theresa May's office on April 27, in possession of three knives, London's Westminster Magistrates Court heard. He is charged with preparing terrorist acts relating to that incident, and faces two other charges of having or making explosives related to activity in Afghanistan in 2012. The court heard that his fingerprints were alleged to have been found on parts for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) recovered in Afghanistan that year by US intelligence. Ali, from north London, told the magistrate: "I don't recognise the charges." He remains in custody and will appear at the Old Bailey court in London on May 19. Search Keywords: Short link: The bill was passed with 420 MPs voting in favour, 5 MPs voting against, and 19 abstaining Egypt's parliament approved on Wednesday by a two-thirds majority a bill requiring the disbursal of an annual 10 percent social bonus for civil servants who are not subject to the civil service law, the state-owned MENA news agency reported. The bill was passed with 420 MPs voting in favour, 5 MPs voting against, and 19 abstaining. According to Article 1 of the new law, all state workers not subject to the civil service law, which was put into effect in October 2016, would receive a 10 percent bonus from their basic wage. The bonus is set to be disbursed ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, according to statements made by Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Omar Marawan following the passing of the bill. Article 5 of the law has faced controversy as it guarantees the bonus only for those not subject to the civil service law, not all state employees. The House has been divided between supporters and opponents, with minister Marawan arguing in previous parliamentary sessions that the removal of the article would not lead to just wage distribution between civil servants. The civil service law, which was passed to regulate the performance of more than six million employees in state departments and public authorities, also has controversial provisions. Labour unions and rights activists have argued that the law could destroy long-held rights such as job security and can put thousands of government workers out of work. According to the civil service law, basic salaries would constitute 80 percent of overall pay at all government institutions, while bonuses, traditionally dependent on seniority, would be calculated based on performance. Protesting workers argue that these rules could result in paycuts and other adverse consequences. Search Keywords: Short link: Cimatheque to present never before screened films by Hossam Ali as part of its 'Focus on Arab Documentary Cinema' Programme Cairo's Cimatheque Alternative Film Centre will screen a collection of short films by the late documentary filmmaker Hossam Ali as part of its tribute to the director. The screenings are presented as part of Cimatheque's two month 'Focus on Arab Documentary Cinema' programme. The collection of short films falls under program one, titled 'War and its Discontents' and includes never before screened works by the director. According to the event's description, Hossam Ali's films "remain a testament to his forward-thinking style and unique approach to documentary filmmaking". With his short documentary style of filmmaking, Ali foresaw the dawn of the digital format and the impact of video on filmmaking techniques beyond his time. Ali's work can be regarded as an "ideological and aesthetic bridge" from the schools of documentary filmmaking that preceded him to those that followed his work. The collection of short films includes The Rafah Trilogy (1982), a documentary short examining the Sinai Peninsula following the withdrawal of Israeli forces in the early 1980s; The Harvest (1974) which exhibits a progressive account of the 1973 October War, the film incorporates seldom screened footage; as well as The Exhibit (1985) which offers a critique of the economic and political policies occurring in 1980s Egypt. Programme: Tuesday 16 May at 7.00 pm Thursday 18 May at 4.00 pm Cimatheque - Alternative Film Centre, 19a Adly Street, Downtown Cairo For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture Search Keywords: Short link: K-8 educators can earn college credits and satisfy Office of Public Instruction (OPI) renewal requirements by participating in Flathead Valley Community Colleges annual summer Teacher Camp. Designed with input from local educators, Teacher Camp is scheduled for June 12-16 and June 19-23 on FVCCs Kalispell campus. Teachers have the option of registering for one or both weeks of the camp and can take one to four classes. The compressed two-week schedule allows participants to mix and match classes to earn up to four college credits, which satisfies the requirements for 60 OPI renewal units. Participants will learn best practices and take away lessons that can be implemented in their classrooms this fall. Lunch is provided each day. This years lineup includes the following classes: Week One (June 12-16): Media Arts Workshop; Early Reading Strategies for K-3 Students; Tech for Teachers; K-5 Dynamic Graphic Organizers; Integrating Elementary Science Standards with STEM Activities; Everything Google!; Hands-On Math for K-5; Integrating Elementary Science Standards with STEM Activities. Week Two (June 19-23): Making Social Studies Relevant; Fun with Music in the General Classroom; Tech for Teachers; ABCs and 123s of K-3 Reading and Math; Relationship Growth for Students with Disabilities; Art, Centers and Writing for K-1. Special tuition rates apply, and advanced registration is required. For more information or to register for Teacher Camp, visit http://www.fvcc.edu/teachercamp. Contact Emily Jense at 756-3811 or [email protected] with questions. The rural West matters for at least three important reasons: the vitality of the regions landscape; its impact on local, state, and national politics; and the future of the areas people and communities. Autre projet de loi que presente le Premier Minsitre lors de la seance parlementaire du 12 Juillet 2019 est le Business Facilitation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2019. The object of this Bill is to bring amendments to various enactments to provide for the simplification and harmonisation of the process for the application for permits and licences with a view to further facilitating enterprises in the context of ease of doing business. The wooden box of the canopic jars and remains of an anthropoid sarcophagus were uncovered inside the newly discovered pyramid remains in Dahshur necropolis The Egyptian archaeological mission from the Ministry of Antiquities uncovered the burial chamber of a 13th Dynasty Pyramid discovered last month at Dahshur archaeological site. Adel Okasha, head of the mission and the general director of the Dahshur site, explained that after removing the stones that covered the burial chamber, the mission discovered a wooden box engraved with three lines of hieroglyphics. These lines are rituals to protect the deceased and the name of its owner. Sherif Abdel Moneim, assistant to the minister of antiquities, revealed that the box housed the four canopic jars of the deceased with their name engraved, that of the daughter of the 13th Dynasty King Emnikamaw, whose pyramid is located 600 metres away. He said that the mission also discovered last month a relief with 10 lines of hieroglyphics bearing the cartouche of King Emenikamaw. Hence the box may belong to the Kings daughter, or one of his family. Inside the box, the mission found wrappings of the deceased's liver, intestines, stomach and lungs. Remains of an anthropoid sarcophagus have been found but in a very bad state of conservation. Excavation works would continue to uncover more of the pyramid's secrets. Khaled El-Enany, minister of antiquities, visited the site this morning to inspect the excavation works. Search Keywords: Short link: The book describes the events that led to the Syrian uprising of 2011, and the metamorphosis of the popular revolution into a regional war The Impossible Revolution by Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, (Hurst: London), 2017, 256pp. An English translation of The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Syrian Intellectual Yassin Al-Haj Saleh will be published by Hurst in July. Saleh recounts in the book the devastating impact of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and his familys tyrannical rule on his country. The Arabic version of the book was published earlier this year by the Arab Institution for Research and Publishing. The book comprises an introduction and materials written by the author between 2011 and 2016, with a foreword by Robin Yassin-Kassab. The author, often described as the intellectual voice of the Syrian revolution, describes with detail and fervor the events that led to the uprising of 2011, the metamorphosis of the popular revolution into a regional war, and the three monsters Saleh sees as treading on Syrias corpse: the Assad regime and its allies, ISIS and other jihadists, and the West. Where conventional wisdom has it that Assads army is now battling religious fanatics for control of the country, Saleh argues that the emancipatory democratic mass movement that ignited the revolution still exists, though it is besieged on all sides. Saleh, one of Syria's most famous thinkers, who now lives in exile, spent 16 years as a political prisoner during the 1980s and 1990s. After the Syrian uprising in 2011 he published many books, including Culture as Politics: The Intellectuals and their Social Responsibility in the Time of the Monsters (2016), Salvation O Boys: 16 Years in Syrian prisons (2012) and Walking on One Leg (2011). Search Keywords: Short link: I didnt intend to speak of the investment law again, having already written about it several times, first to criticize the changes made in March 2015, on the eve of the Sharm al-Sheikh conference, and later to express reservations about the draft law approved last week by parliament. But Im compelled to comment, not only because of the content of the revised law, but because the chaotic debate about it in recent weeks exposes a severe confusion in economic policy decisions. First, the content. Without delving too far into details, four aspects of the law give me pause. One, it reinstates the system of tax breaks that we discarded in 2005 because it opens the door to manipulation and corruption, introduces market distortions, and denies the country tax revenues that we desperately need to face development challenges. Two, it further complicates the system of investment licensing and land allocation due to overlapping authorities between various ministries and agencies. Three, it turns the General Authority for Investment (GAFI) into a regulatory agency subordinate to the Ministry of Investment, where before it was an independent agency dedicated solely to promoting and facilitating investment. Four, the major impediments to investment flows into Egypt are not the kind that can be addressed by the investment law. They concern other laws and policies, primarily the states opaque economic program, a sluggish court system, and excessive intervention by state civilian and military agencies in the economy that crowds out the private sector in matters unrelated to national security. Based on press coverage, the law approved by parliament a few days ago does not address any of these issues. In fact, it introduces additional complications to the tax status of various economic fields and geographic areas, the future of the special free zones, and the conditions for employing foreign workers. So while I believe the new tax incentives may bring in more foreign investment in the short term, I fear this will come at the expense of public resources and tax justice. Nevertheless, differences of opinion are normal, in fact necessary, and theoretically ought to be resolved by the majority vote of parliamentprovided the debate is conducted transparently and its terms are clearly defined. Herein lies the rub, for discussion in recent weeks has been anything but transparent and clear. GAFI should be commended for putting the draft law up for public discussion several months ago and soliciting observations from concerned bodies. But as the date of the final parliamentary debate approached, the waters were muddied by conflicting interventions from various parties, exposing confusion at the highest levels of economic decision-making circles. The disarray reached its peak when, according to media reports, five ministries objected to the final draft law submitted to parliament, claiming they hadnt seen or approved it. This is extremely worrying, demonstrating the absence of a unifying economic vision to facilitate coordination among ministries and ensure collaboration and complementarity. While internal conflicts are normal, they should be resolved within the Cabinet or its sub-ministerial economic group. What is not typical is for them to surface at this late date and send ministers racing to the parliament to salvage what they could and make last-minute tweaks. This raises serious concerns about the countrys overall economic policy. In any case, the law has been issued and its executive regulations will soon follow. I hope Im wrong in my skepticism about its longer term effect. More importantly, events of recent weeks and the confusion that surrounded the parliamentary discussions of the law offer a chance to reconsider economic decision making in Egypt. The episode should encourage the state, its agencies, and ministries to adopt a coordinated, uniform policy, whether in investment or in other matters. Search Keywords: Short link: The fifth annual Hispanic Festival will feature performances by students in the SPLASH program who will represent 12 countries through dance, food and presentations. The event is open to the community and will last from 5-6:30 p.m. on Friday at Eastfield Global Magnet School. Students will perform traditional dances from Hispanic countries, prepare traditional desserts, and learn and explain facts, history and culture about the countries each group represents. In preparation for the festival, students have been rehearsing steps, watching videos of professional dancers from each country, reading books, online research and baking and preparing delicious desserts. We think that making this event gives all EGMS students and the community the opportunity to learn in a more tangible way about the culture of other countries, said an email from SPLASH instructor Silvia Martin del Campo. The countries that will be represented during the festival include Guatemala, Argentina, Spain, Puerto Rico, Peru, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama. SPLASH is a Spanish language immersion program where students learn to read, write and speak in Spanish. After only two or three years in SPLASH, students become fluent and bilingual. Students take their literacy, math, social students and science classes in Spanish. There are six classes and 100 students in the program at Eastfield Global Magnet School. Students must begin SPLASH in kindergarten, and can continue through the fifth grade. McDowell County Schools hires well prepared teachers from Hispanic countries to teach the courses. The school is located at 170 Eastfield School Road in Marion. For more information about SPLASH, visit www.egms.mcdowell.k12.nc.us or call 652-3730. Previous research has suggested that a low level of vitamin D may raise the risk of asthma, dermatitis, and certain allergies. A new study looks at the genetic data available to see if genetic variations support the conclusions of previous research. Share on Pinterest New research indicates that low levels of vitamin D are not linked to atopic diseases. Some previous studies have associated low circulating levels of vitamin D with an increased risk of asthma, atopic dermatitis, and higher levels of total immunoglobulin E (IgE). A team of researchers led by Dr. Brent Richards, of the McGill University and the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital, both in Montreal, Canada set out to determine whether or not there is a genetic background to these alleged correlations. As the authors of the new study explain, atopy is a term that refers to a predisposition to allergic diseases including asthma and atopic dermatitis, or eczema. Atopy usually presents itself with elevated IgE levels a type of immunoglobulin that serves to protect against parasitic infections. The studies that correlated low vitamin D with increased IgE levels and associated disease risk were observational, the authors of the new research point out. Given that vitamin D deficiency affects over 40 percent of the population of the United States and is easy to remedy with supplements, the alleged correlation between low vitamin D and allergic disorders could be a matter of public health, the authors write. In this context, Dr. Richards and team decided to investigate the genetic data available. The results were published in the journal PLOS Medicine. In a chilling new video uploaded to their YouTube channel, the widely known online hackers group, Anonymous, have issued a forewarning to the world about an increasing possibility of World War III becoming a reality. All the signs of a looming war on the Korean peninsula are surfacing, watching as each country moves strategic pieces into place, says Anonymous famous Guy Fawkes masked man. But, unlike past World Wars, although there will be ground troops, the battle is likely to be fierce, brutal and quick. It will also be globally devastating, both on the environmental and economical levels. YouTube This is a real war with real global consequences with three superpowers drawn into the mix, the organization warns. The hackers claim that several military movements in the regionsUS and Koreaas well as, alleged warnings that were supposedly made by Japan and South Korea about an inevitable nuclear attack from the north, only solidifying the prophecy they made in this chilling 6-minute video clip. Why Is Anonymous So Sure? If you watch the video, the following statements have been made by the legion: According to the group, South Korea and the United States position has been well documentedboth, allied to the other. But, the devil is in the details, says the speaker. Its the surrounding nations and their actions that are starting to give away part of the real story. The citizen will be the last to know. China has reportedly told its citizens living in North Korea to waste no time returning home. The US tested its Minuteman 3, a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of travelling 8,000 miles to North Korean shores, in a successful test launched from California this week. AFP The Japanese have told their citizens they will likely only have a 10-minute warning of a pending nuclear strike against them; to find shelter in the most solid building they can find. Australia is witnessing a rotational deployment of its troops to Northern part of its country. The Chinese are desperate to avert a war. The pragmatic Chinese, it seems are starting to lose their patience. Japan, too is talking of the 2020 goal of inactive Japanese military, planning on shedding the problem of pacifism to remilitarize. Reading between the lines, the Japanese issued a warning to its citizens to prepare for nuclear attack. Sales have soared in Japan for essentials that would help to keep the citizens safe in such an event. North Korea showed this warning on May 04th 2017: In case of a nuclear war on the peninsula, Japan that houses logistic bases, launching bases of the US Forces will be put under radioactive clouds before any country. The Sun UK The statements made by the organization are nothing short of revelatory and shocking. It makes you wonder if were safe at all and what is going on in the world. If Anonymous warnings are anything to go by, war could be coming our way sooner than wed have expected it to. Alternate Foreign Minister G Katrougalos met today with the Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Lamberto Zannier. During their meeting, the OSEC Secretary General focused mainly on the situation in Ukraine. The Alternate Foreign Minister supported the OSCE's work, agreeing that handling the crisis in question is a major challenge. They also discussed issues concerning the situation in the Western Balkans, with the two sides agreeing that it is in everyone's interest for efforts to be made to defend political stability and consolidate the rule of law. Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my pleasure to be here today to celebrate World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day. This anniversary coincides with the birth date of Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross and the recipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize, in 1901, whose example is an inspiration to us all. In 1864 the First Geneva Convention was signed, establishing the International Red Cross Movement. Since then the Red Cross has played a decisive role, throughout the years, in dealing with numerous humanitarian crises. The activities of the Red Cross are without question a major achievement of human civilisation. In times of war, but also in times of peace, unbounded solidarity and relief of human pain beyond borders and national, cultural or religious discrimination are legacies that we need to defend daily and expand. The work the Red Cross does and the contribution it makes are multidimensional and internationally recognised. The International Red Cross Movement has evolved into the largest humanitarian network in the world, and it includes the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the National Societies, present and active in about 190 countries. Ladies and Gentlemen, As far as our country is concerned, the International Red Cross Movement has been part of our collective memory ever since the Asia Minor Catastrophe. In the most difficult times for our people, the Red Cross, loyal to its values and principles, has helped our country, incorporating thousands of Greek volunteers into its organisation. However, its humanitarian contribution is not limited to the past. Today, the refugees crisis is an international challenge that calls for solidarity with the afflicted populations, and Greece is constantly present with the help of organizations and movements such as the Red Cross. In this context, the Greek Foreign Ministry is in contact with leading members of the international movement, such as the Secretary General of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Geneva, Mr. Elhadj As Sy. I have also welcomed to Athens the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mr. Peter Maurer, the Regional Director for Europe of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mr. Regis Savioz, and the Head of the ICRC Mission in our country, Mrs. Sari Nissi. Our collective, universal response to the global challenge that is the refugee crisis, and recognition of the Greek government's unstinting efforts to support and show solidarity with refugee populations mobilise us even further to jointly plan initiatives and actions. Today's anniversary is not just a reminder of the principles of the Red Cross, but also a starting point for our dynamic actions that are committed to alleviating human suffering and protecting human life and dignity. Thank you. U.S. Army small-arms experts recently laid out a blueprint of future small-arms goals that would equip infantry units with several new weapons, ranging from a new squad automatic rifle to a new shoulder-fired, anti-armor weapon. Four months after the Army selected a replacement for its M9 service pistol, the service has started to talk openly about plans to equip infantry squads with lighter, more effective small arms. "There is a lot of discussion that may require changes to our formations, actually different capability sets we are trying to get to our squads," Col. Brian Stehle, head of Program Manager Soldier Weapons, told an audience recently at the National Defense Industrial Association's Armaments Systems Forum. The Army's senior leadership has issued a directed requirement to field more than 1,000 Medium Anti-Armor Weapon Systems, or MAAWS, which is also known as the Carl Gustaf, said Lt. Col. Loyd Beal III, who runs Product Manager Crew Served Weapons. The service plans to field the new M3A1 -- the replacement for the current M3 Carl Gustaf, Beal said, adding that the goal is to have the first unit equipped in fiscal 2018. Saab Defense unveiled this latest version of its 84mm weapon system in 2014. The 75th Ranger Regiment and other special operations forces began using the M3 MAAWS in 1991. The Army began ordering the M3 for conventional infantry units to use in Afghanistan in 2011. The M3 weighs 22 pounds and measures 42 inches long. The breech-loading M3 can reach out and hit enemy targets up to 1,000 meters away. The new M3A1 is significantly lighter and shorter than the M3. It weighs 15 pounds and measures 39 3/8 inches long. The weight savings comes from a titanium liner and carbon-fiber wrapping, Saab officials said. The new system is also more ergonomic and features a cable system running along the top of the weapon to make it compatible with future battlefield technology, such as intelligent sighting systems for programmable ammunition, according to Saab officials. The Army plans to field the M3A1 with an integrated fire-control system, Beal said. Additionally, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn issued a directed requirement for a new 7.62mm squad designated marksman rifle. Since 2009, the Army has equipped squad designated marksmen with the Enhanced Battle Rifle, or EBR, 14 -- a modernized M14 equipped with a Sage International adjustable aluminum stock with pistol grip; a Leupold 3.5x10 power scope; and Harris bipod legs. But at 15 pounds unloaded, the EBR is heavy, so the service will likely search for a new rifle to fill the requirement, Army weapons officials say. Some future weapons programs may be accelerated, Beal said. "There has been a huge emphasis on getting capability out to the field fast, so that has really affected our near-term, mid-term and far-term goals," Beal said, describing near-term as fiscal years 2018-2025, mid-term as fiscal years 2026-2035, and far-term as fiscal 2036 and beyond. The Army's Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle was scheduled as a mid-term goal, "but that may be accelerated into the near term as we plan on fielding that first unit equipped in by 2025," Beal said. The new squad automatic rifle would replace the current M249 squad automatic weapon in certain units, officials maintain. The service hopes to have a capabilities development document approved by third quarter of this fiscal year and plans on holding an industry day in June, Beal said. There were few details presented on the new weapon, but the service continues to invest in the Lightweight Small Arms Technology, or LSAT, program. The Army program is intended to cut the weight of its light machine gun by as much as 50 percent. The AAI Corp. weapon, by itself, weighs about nine pounds, compared to a 17-pound M249 squad automatic weapon. LSAT's cased-telescoped 5.56mm ammunition relies on a plastic case rather than a brass one to hold the propellant and the projectile, similar to a conventional shotgun shell. It weighs about 37 percent less than standard belted 5.56mm. The Army hopes to field a new Precision Sniper Rifle by fiscal 2021, Beal said. The PSR is a multi-caliber rifle that will enable sniper teams to engage man-sized targets out to 1,500 meters, he said. If all goes well, the PSR will replace the Army's M2010 sniper rifle, chambered for .300 Winchester magnum, and the M107 sniper rifle, chambered for .50 caliber, Beal said. "This is a great capability for the Army," he said. "We will be able to divest of two existing sniper rifles if this comes to fruition -- the M2010 and the M107." One program that was absent from the briefing slides was the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, the Army's attempt to field a "leap-ahead" weapon designed to give infantry units a decisive edge against enemies hiding behind cover. On April 5, the Army terminated the XM25 contract with prime contractor Orbital-ATK Inc., but the program's future is still uncertain. The XM25 is an offshoot of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon program the Army began in the mid-1990s to increase the effectiveness of soldier firepower. It features a target acquisition/fire control system that allows soldiers to identify a target, determine the range, and program the ammunition to explode above or near targets out to 600 meters. The service has considered taking the XM25's sophisticated fire-control system and joining it to a weapon that shoots a 40mm air-burst grenade, a technology Army ammunition experts are developing, according to service sources who are not cleared to speak to the press. The Army is reassessing its requirement for a shoulder-fired, counter-defilade weapon, officials maintain. The service's Modular Handgun System, or MHS, continues to generate excitement. Weapons officials announced recently that the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) will be the first unit to receive the new service pistol. The announcement came as the service waits for the Government Accountability Office to rule on a protest filed by Glock Inc. in February against the Army's selection of the Sig Sauer P320 as the replacement for its current M9 9mm pistol. The GAO is expected to make a decision in early June, but the service is free to continue work on the effort. The Army awarded Sig Sauer a contract worth up to $580 million Jan. 19. Sig Sauer beat out Glock Inc.; FN America; and Beretta USA, maker of the current M9 9mm service pistol, in the competition for the MHS program. The 10-year agreement calls for Sig to supply the Army with full-size XM17 and compact XM18 versions of its 9mm pistol. The pistols can be outfitted with suppressors and accommodate standard and extended-capacity magazines. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Related Video: 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... VAERNES GARRISON, Norway -- In addition to the occasional case of fingertip frostbite, Marines on a six-month rotational deployment here will return with authorization to wear the ice-blue Navy Arctic Service Ribbon, a testament to long days and nights spent learning to fight in the cold. Nearly 300 Marines deployed in January to this small Norwegian base near the city of Trondheim, part of a newly created element known as Marine Rotational Force-Europe. In collaboration with the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, the unit arrived with the joint goals of improving collaboration with European allies amid rising regional and global tensions, and improving the Corps' ability to move and fight in the cold, a skill set that has taken a backseat to desert combat operations in recent years. Shortly after the Marines arrived, they traveled above the Arctic Circle for three weeks of intensive cold-weather training. In March, they traveled to Porsangermoen, just 100 miles from the top of the continent, to participate in the British-led exercise Joint Viking. Marines who were part of the training and subsequent exercise said they learned how to dry sweat-dampened clothes using their own body heat; how to consume every ounce of energy from a slaughtered reindeer by drinking its red blood, as well as its meat; and the agonizingly slow process of melting and boiling snow to prepare freeze-dried food. It was snowing intermittently Tuesday, the mercury hovering just above freezing, as Marines stood at attention, the sleeves of their green camouflage utilities rolled up in keeping with the regional commander's order. The commander of Marine Corps Forces Command, Lt. Gen. John Wissler, ordered them at ease and congratulated them on earning the ribbon. "There's a lot of ribbons you don't have to do s--- to get," said Wissler, who was at Vaernes to attend a commanders' conference with other general officers. "This ain't one of them." Wissler exhorted the Marines to pass what they'd learned on to other troops so that the Corps as a whole would benefit from their extreme-weather experience. "As a Marine Corps, we've been very used to operating in sort of jungle and desert environments, but we're not as good at operating in Arctic environments as we need to be," he said. "This company of Marines, and those Marines that accompanied you in your training, are capable of engaging and locating, closing with and destroying by fire and maneuver any enemy that we would encounter in an Arctic environment. So my heartiest congratulations to you." About 200 Marines, including much of the rotational force's infantry element, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, earned the ribbon. To qualify for the award, a sailor or Marine must spend 28 days training or operating above the Arctic Circle over the course of a career. While the time spent in the Arctic can be nonconsecutive, Marines have rarely had the opportunity to earn the ribbon in a single deployment. While Marines traditionally participate in the biennial Exercise Cold Response in Norway, that exercise extends only two weeks and would not alone qualify them for the award. Marines with 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, who spoke with Military.com estimated they have spent between six weeks and two months above the Arctic circle in just the first half of their Norway deployment. Cpl. Anthony Selvitella, 22, said the unit's time in the Arctic had highlighted just how unfamiliar the Camp Lejeune, North Carolina-based Marines were with the demands of cold-weather operations. It demonstrated, he said, the need to develop more comprehensive preparatory training stateside for troops before they deploy. But he was gratified, he said, to see the accomplishment of the unit honored by Wissler in the brief ceremony. "It was a good experience for the company as a whole," he said. "Everybody wasn't really expecting it to happen. We thought [the award] was just going to show up on our [Marine Online account] and be there; we weren't expecting an actual ceremony." Fellow platoon-mate Lance Cpl. Cal Cushing-Hurley, 20, displayed a darkened burn scar on his hand, where he had spilled boiled snow during cold-weather training. He said he was proud to wear the ribbon. "Not many Marines have it, and not many Marines will have it," he said. "It's good to say I was able to accomplish the task." -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck. U.S. special operations advisers are moving quickly to get new arms and ammunition into the hands of the Kurdish YPG in Syria despite renewed demands from NATO ally Turkey to break the deal approved by President Donald Trump, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday. Trump signed off Monday on arming the YPG, or People's Protection Units; the Defense Department announced the authorization Tuesday; and U.S. troops Wednesday were preparing to deliver the weapons and equipment to the YPG from stockpiles already in Syria, said Air Force Col. John Dorrian. "Some of those may have begun to be dispersed," Dorrian said, although he could not immediately confirm that arms had actually been delivered into the hands of YPG fighters. He said the weapons being delivered were small arms, mortars, heavy machine guns and shoulder-fired weapons to stop the Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIEDS), or car bombs, that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has used to break up assaults. Dorrian declined to go into the makes or models of the weapons, types of ammunition, or how many will be handed over to the YPG. In a video conference from Baghdad to the Pentagon, Dorrian, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said U.S. troops will monitor how the YPG employs the weapons to make sure they are being used only against ISIS. "We intend to account for them and be sure they are pointed at ISIS," he said. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the U.S. to reverse the decision to arm the YPG before his expected arrival in Washington next week for talks with Trump at the White House. The talks are expected to cover the way forward in Syria's six-year-old civil war and proposals by Turkey and Russia for the creation of safe zones for civilians. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group linked to the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, which has carried out attacks in southeastern Turkey. However, the U.S. considers the YPG the most effective anti-ISIS force in northeastern Syria. The YPG is partnered with the Syrian Arab Coalition under the banner of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Until Trump authorized the arming of the YPG, the U.S. had maintained that arms were going only to the Syrian Arab Coalition and not the Syrian-Kurdish group. At a news conference in Ankara on Wednesday, Erdogan, who barely won a referendum last month to increase his executive authority, said of the decision to arm the YPG, "We want to believe that our allies will prefer to side with us, not with a terrorist organization." Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that the U.S. action "will surely have consequences and will yield a negative result for the U.S. as well." Despite the differences with Turkey on the YPG and other issues, "We're going to continue to work with Turkey" in the anti-ISIS campaign, Dorrian said. In an article for Foreign Policy, James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, said Erdogan and the Turkish military view the YPG as "a geographical extension of its parent organization, the Turkish-Kurdish insurgent PKK," which is seen as a threat to the territorial integrity of the Turkish state. "Now, Trump faces a possible confrontation with NATO ally Turkey -- economically and militarily the strongest state in the region, and irreplaceable in any strategy to contain Iran," said Jeffrey, a distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Turkish military has repeatedly attacked the YPG in northern Syria. The YPG and Turkish forces have recently traded cross-border and artillery fire. The U.S. sent special operations teams to the area in an effort to calm the situation by their "visible presence." Dorrian would not say whether U.S. troops are currently on the border but did say they go there "intermittently. It's something that's done on an as-needed basis." In the video conference from Baghdad, Dorrian said the SDF is engaged in heavy fighting against ISIS for the town of Tabqa and the Tabqa Dam, which is the largest in Syria on Lake Assad and feeds into the Euphrates River about 30 miles east of Raqqa. He said about 30,000 civilians had been displaced from Tabqa in the fighting. ISIS fighters are still holding the dam, but the U.S. has seen no signs that they intend to blow it, Dorrian said. In Raqqa, U.S. airstrikes recently destroyed about 13 boats and barges ferrying supplies on the Euphrates, he said. Airstrikes have also hit earth-moving equipment used to build up berms to prepare for the eventual siege of the city, the self-proclaimed ISIS capital, Dorrian said, adding that ISIS is seeking to build small earthen dams to channel the Euphrates and flood areas that might be considered avenues of approach for an attacking force. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. World War II ended in 1945. Historians have produced voluminous writings to chronicle its course. But among the mysteries that still remain is this question: How did Adolf Hitler die? And did he actually die in his bunker? Even now, considerable material remains classified about wartime military and intelligence operations. Some conspiracy theories claim that Hitler, Germany's dictator, did not actually die in his Berlin bunker in 1945 but escaped and found refuge in South America. The theme that Hitler lived has fueled countless movie scripts and thrillers, plus several "documentaries." Adolph Hitler shares a laugh with his henchman Joseph Goebbels. British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper documented the official account of the death of Hitler in his book, "The Last Days of Hitler." A British intelligence officer during the war, Trevor-Roper was tasked in June 1945 with documenting Hitler's last days to prove the evil leader had in fact died in his bunker. Read More: 'Burial' Tells a Fictional WWII Story About What Happened to Hitler's Body An Odd Choice for a Hitler Historian Critics of his book have argued that Trevor-Roper was an odd choice for the job. Though he went on to become a distinguished military historian and the Regius professor of modern history at the University of Oxford from 1957 to 1980, Trevor-Roper was known in 1945 as a specialist in 16th- and 17th-century British history. He neither spoke nor read German. He completed his research over 10 days. He appears to have relied on summaries of interrogations of people thought to have been in the bunker with Hitler in the last week of April 1945. American intelligence officers provided those summaries. He did not have access to Nazi prisoners being held by the Soviets, and it is unclear whether he spoke to any of the alleged witnesses. Eyewitness testimony was contradictory, claiming Hitler's death had occurred on any one of five days between April 27 and May 1. Accounts of the cause of death ranged from natural causes to poisoning to suicide. There was a consensus that the body of Hitler had been burned, but the descriptions of the body and how it was dressed varied considerably. It is common for eyewitness descriptions to vary widely, as police investigators know. It does appear, however, that Trevor-Roper constructed a narrative of Hitler's death by combining the various eyewitness accounts. One might assume, if there were any chance Hitler escaped from Berlin, Western Allies would have eagerly publicized it and organized the world's greatest manhunt. In fact, it was in the Allies' interest to advance the narrative Hitler killed himself in the bunker. The Allies believed Germans would accept the occupation more readily if they believed Hitler was dead and that the prospect of a Hitler-led Nazi resurgence was impossible. Moreover, the Allies were determined to show Hitler had died a coward's death. They wanted to erase any chance that the Nazis could advance a repeat of the "stabbed in the back" explanation that followed Germany's defeat in World War I. Trevor-Roper's task was not to determine what happened in Hitler's final days. It was to put together an argument that he had died in the bunker. This he did, creating a bestseller in the process. Read More: How a WWII British Op Fooled Hitler and Ensured a Successful Invasion of Sicily Operation Sunrise There was another reason the Allies wanted Hitler dead: Operation Sunrise. Hitler's alpine retreat in Bavaria, Berchtesgaden, was more than just der Fuhrer's vacation hideaway. All the major figures in the Nazi government had homes in Berchtesgaden, in some cases as annexes to Hitler's palatial estate. Miles of tunnels were built into the mountain below Hitler's Eagle's Nest, including a 240,000-square-foot command center. The Nazis had intended, after the fall of Berlin, to continue the war from their mountain fortress in Bavaria. Significantly, the Allies captured Hermann Goering, along with scores of other Nazi party bigwigs, in Bavaria. After the war, the German government destroyed what was left of Berchtesgaden, bulldozing the debris and planting trees over the site to ensure it did not become a shrine to Hitler. The tunnels and the underground bunker were sealed, but presumably still exist. Adolf Hitler accepts the ovation of the Reichstag after announcing the peaceful acquisition of Austria in March 1938. (National Archives photo) In March 1945, with the end of the war in sight, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with the assistance of Swiss intelligence operatives, began a series of negotiations. Dubbed Operation Sunrise -- otherwise known as Operation Sunrise-Crossroads or Crossword -- these talks took place between Allen Dulles (the first civilian director of Central Intelligence) and Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff over the surrender of Army Group C in northern Italy and western Austria. Army Group C was tasked with the defense of northern Italy. It consisted of about 1 million Wehrmacht soldiers, most of whom were being held in reserve. But Army Group C was also responsible for manning the Nazis' Alpine redoubt. There are several extensive histories of Operation Sunrise. There are also a lot of unanswered questions. The OSS files regarding the negotiations ended up at the CIA, and it is not clear whether they have all been released. Wolff was not authorized to conduct negotiations with the Allies. The surrender of Army Group C on May 2, five days before Germany's official surrender, sealed the fate of the Third Reich and eliminated any possibility of continuing the war in the Bavarian Alps. Read More: Hitler's Aborted Last Stand: WWII's Unexpected Ending Fueling Conspiracy Theories This is where the conspiracy theories have taken root. One version says Wolff convinced Hitler that he was negotiating an anti-Soviet alliance with the Western Allies. This deal would supposedly cease hostilities on the Western Front and let Allied armies and the remaining German forces immediately advance east and stop any further Soviet advances. Such an explanation isn't that far-fetched. Hitler harbored fantasies until his death that he could create a split between the Soviets and the Western Allies. A related version of the story is that, as part of this new alliance, Hitler would be given safe passage out of Germany. That addendum might have come from Wolff or have been created by the Soviets. Available Allied records of the negotiations say nothing about such a deal. Another version of the story is that Hitler proposed a potential alliance with both the Soviets and the Western Allies, offering the remaining German military forces to whichever side agreed first. The combined force would then push either the Western Allies or the Soviets out of the European territory they controlled. This would have been a replay of the negotiations between the Nazis and the British and French on one side and the Soviets on the other side, which ultimately led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, a nonaggression pact that divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. That Hitler thought such a scenario plausible isn't surprising, but there is no evidence such discussions occurred. The Soviets were eventually informed by the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, of the Operation Sunrise negotiations. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin insisted that a Soviet representative be included in the deliberations. Wolff, however, threatened to break off the negotiations if the Soviets were part of the discussions. In 2013, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transferred the lost diary kept by Alfred Rosenberg, a close confidant of Adolf Hitler, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. This historical document was seized by ICE Homeland Security Investigations special agents in Wilmington, Del., following an extensive investigation. Here, the diary is on display at the repatriation ceremony. (Paul Caffrey/ICE) By March 1945, it was clear that Germany's defeat was only a matter of time. It was also clear by then that Moscow intended to organize national governments to its liking in the territories it had liberated. As Stalin's armies expanded over central Europe, he had no interest in ending the war quickly. From the Kremlin's perspective, the longer the war lasted, the more territory would fall into Soviet hands. After the war, Soviet media sources began citing the Sunrise negotiations as proof that the Allies had made a deal to grant Hitler safe passage. The Trevor-Roper investigation was designed to refute that rumor by demonstrating that Hitler had died in the bunker. The physical evidence of Hitler's death was collected by SMERSH. Most people know of SMERSH as the mythical organization of bad guys in early James Bond films. But there really was a SMERSH, a Russian acronym for "Death to Spies." It referred to three counterintelligence agencies in the Soviet Red Army that operated from 1942, or possibly late 1941, until 1946. Stalin was deeply suspicious of the loyalty of the Red Army and was concerned about Nazi attempts to suborn it. SMERSH played a variety of roles, including identifying potential traitors in the army, as well as verifying the loyalty of returning prisoners of war whom the Nazis had captured. Read More: Before VE Day, This Soldier Wrote Home on Hitler's Stationery What Happened to Hitler's Corpse? The convoluted story of Hitler's physical remains has been documented extensively by Australian researcher Giordan Smith, detailed here. In summary, over the years, the Soviets and then the Russians trotted out various skulls they claimed were Hitler's, but all have been rejected. The most recent case, a 2009 analysis by a team from the University of Connecticut, found that a skull Russian authorities claimed was Hitler's belonged to a woman. The most definitive forensic evidence was a jaw allegedly matched to records from Hitler's personal dentist. But Smith points to circumstantial evidence that the records may have been faked. He notes that Soviet authorities arrested Hitler's dentist and that the man disappeared into a Soviet gulag. According to the Soviets, all but two of the bones recovered from the bunker under the Reich Chancellery building were cremated and the ashes dispersed to ensure Hitler's remains would not become a shrine for Nazi die-hards. The remaining bones, if the Kremlin is to be believed, consisted of a skull and the lower jaw used for the dental identification. The Soviets, and now the Russians, have seemed reluctant to settle the question of whether Hitler died in the bunker. They control whatever forensic evidence, however questionable, exists. DNA analysis might help, but the Kremlin may prefer to preserve the narrative that the Western Allies helped Hitler escape. Read More: Hitler Definitely Died in WWII, New Research Says Declassified FBI Documents on Hitler's Death Several years ago, the FBI released about 700 pages of documents on the question of Hitler's death. Conspiracy theorists were quick to pounce on them as proof that Hitler escaped. But the documents offer no such proof. First, the documents describe the FBI's doubts that the human remains Soviet intelligence officials showed FBI investigators were Hitler's. Secondly, they relate comments by various Soviet officials, including Stalin and Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov, that "Hitler got away." U.S. Gen. George Patton expressed the same view. Finally, they describe various purported Hitler sightings. Many of those were in South America, but reports came in from all over the world, possibly second only to Elvis sightings. The final body of documentation conspiracy theorists cite relates to evidence that the Nazis established a bolthole in Argentina, and that scores of Nazis made their way there after the war. Much of this information is credible and has been verified. The Nazis in 1932 began paying Juan Peron, Argentine army officer and future president, a subsidy to ensure they would have a safe refuge if needed. Nazi front organizations made large real estate purchases in Argentina, including a giant ranch in Patagonia with a dock capable of berthing ships or submarines. In the days after the German surrender, 40 Nazi submarines, as well as scores of ships and planes, left Germany. Thirty submarines subsequently surrendered; two, including U-977 -- the submarine that allegedly carried Hitler to Argentina -- surrendered after dropping off their cargo. Eight submarines were never accounted for. It's a historical fact that large numbers of submarines and aircraft carrying prominent Nazis left Germany after its surrender. But it's pure conjecture that one of them carried Hitler. How could Hitler have fled Berlin, assuming he was there? The city had an extensive underground subway system that would have allowed an escape to the west. Also, Hitler's personal pilot, the Luftwaffe's Hanna Reitsch, landed a Fieseler Storch near the chancellery grounds on April 26 and left a few hours later, but there's no evidence she had a passenger. She flew in and out of Berlin several times between April 26 and April 28. Read More: Here's the Only American Soldier to Defect to the Nazis in World War II Unsolved Hitler Mysteries Abound Other interesting tidbits weave their way in and out of the "Hitler lived" narrative. He supposedly had a thyroid condition that made him sensitive to warm temperatures. His home in Berchtesgaden was built with north-facing windows to avoid the sun. Visitors found the home to be cold. A German businessman in Argentina that often fronted for the Nazis built a replica of Hitler's Berchtesgaden home in San Carlos de Bariloche in the Rio Negro province. The area had a large German community and terrain similar to the Bavarian Alps. The Bariloche house had south-facing windows, which kept out the sun. Perhaps the home was intended for Hitler's use. Then again, maybe the view was better to the south. Either way, no proof of a link to Hitler exists. There is also the unresolved mystery of the Hitler fortune. The Nazis were notorious kleptocrats. Hitler liked to pretend he was above the money-grubbing of his associates, yet he's thought to have accumulated a fortune. He received royalties on tens of millions of copies of the German government-printed "Mein Kampf," and on the use of his visage on German stamps. There were probably other sources of wealth, but none of the money was ever found. Read More: 90-Year-Old Dutch Woman Seduced & Killed Nazis in WWII What Is Really Known About Hitler's Fate? In short, there's no tangible evidence Hitler died in the bunker in the closing days of April 1945. Nor is there any tangible evidence he escaped. The official accounts of the events leading to Hitler's death are suspect. There were certainly ways for Hitler to get to South America, but there's no proof. All the reported sightings are hearsay. If there's any chance Hitler lived, it's hard to believe Western intelligence agencies or Israel's Mossad could have kept a search for him hidden. The most likely scenario is the simplest: Hitler died in his bunker, though likely under very different conditions than the official history. The Western Allies wanted the world to believe the leader died by suicide. The Soviets had their own reasons to leave the mystery unsolved. Barring the release of a "smoking gun" document buried in intelligence archives, the truth will probably never be known. Joseph V. Micallef is a military historian, best-selling author, keynote speaker, syndicated columnist and commentator on international politics and the future. Chelsea Manning, the Army private who leaked a vast trove of U.S. state secrets to WikiLeaks, released her first statement Tuesday since being granted clemency. She will be released from Fort Leavenworth in Kansas on May 17. "For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea," Manning said, referring to her transition from male to female since her Army service. "I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world." The former intelligence analyst in Iraq, known at the time as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents and battlefield video. She served nearly seven years of her 35-year sentence, which was reduced in a commutation order by former President Barack Obama in one of his last acts before leaving office in January. Mark Fields Ford President and CEO Mark Fields addresses the Flat Rock Assembly Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, in Flat Rock, Mich. Ford is canceling plans to build a new $1.6 billion factory in Mexico and will invest $700 million in a Michigan plant to build new electric and autonomous vehicles. The factory will get 700 new jobs. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) (Carlos Osorio) The annual meeting of Ford Motor Company directors and shareholders this week appears to be taking on an air of uncertainty over the direction of the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, sources are saying that the Board of Directors scheduled an extra day of talks on Tuesday to discuss CEO Mark Fields and his plans for the company. The board is pressing Fields "to sharpen his strategy as the company races to catch up on electric cars, reverse its shrinking market share in the U.S. and buoy its languishing stock price," according to the article. Another report from Bloomberg said "shares have fallen 35 percent since Fields became CEO July 1, 2014" and that "investors have been indifferent to Fields' plan to pour billions into new technologies like driverless cars and robo-taxis to take on upstarts like Uber Technologies Inc. and Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving spinoff." The company's 2016 earnings were its second-best in history, but stock prices have fluctuated. Net income at $4.6 billion in 2016, with an adjusted pre-tax company profit of $10.4 billion. Stock shares have ranged from $10.90 to $14.04 over the past year. Trading on May 10 hovered around $11.16 per share, giving it the company a value of $44.3 billion based on outstanding shares. Meanwhile, its US market share is 14.8 percent, while global market share is about 6.8 percent. In 2013, its US market share was 15.7 percent. Ford is among Michigan-based auto companies that is investing billions in the state. Among its efforts: Creating electric vehicle development at production in Flat Rock and redeveloping its Dearborn campus. Other initiatives by the automaker: A $150 million investment to support 130 jobs at Romeo Engine and expands capacity for engine components for several vehicles, including Ranger and Bronco. A $200 million investment for an advanced data center in Michigan to support Ford's expansion to an auto and mobility company and expected dramatic increase in data storage needs. And $850 million Michigan Assembly Plant upgrade to support the return of Ford Ranger and Bronco. The shareholder meeting begins at 8:30 am EST on Thursday, May 11. For the first time, the company will conduct a virtual meeting. "Shareholders will be able to listen, vote and submit questions from their homes or any remote location with internet connectivity," according to Ford. DEARBORN, MICHIGAN- The first reaction to being named winner of our search for Michigan's Best sub sandwich? "I'm overwhelmed", Alcamo's Market owner Emily Chimento told us. "This smile is going to be stuck here forever." After visiting 62 places, and tasting 169 subs over three weeks, our pick for the best sub sandwich in Michigan can be found in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. The Chimento family has been operating the market at this site since 1972. Emily's father John worked the market every day, until just a few years ago. Her mother, Pina, and 11 year old daughter Anissa, currently help run this very busy shop, along with an incredible crew of employees that have become family. "I'm so very grateful to my staff. I'm at a loss for words, but I'm so grateful to them. We couldn't do it without them", Emily said. The surprise reveal was emotional, and exciting for the whole market. There were tears, cheers, and hugs all around at Alcamo's. It became clear pretty quickly that Emily and everyone at Alcamo's Market is about a lot more than just subs. Emily explained "The difference for us is that the people that shop here matter to us. We really do care about them. This isn't just a business, it's about caring and loving people" Emily was adamant that everyone on our search for Michigan's Best sub was a winner in her eyes, and that even though she might have the plaque as the best, she was holding it for everyone involved in the business. "I'm so happy for everyone. I know how hard this business is, and I know how hard we all work. This symbolizes everybody in this search, because we all work so hard for our businesses." She also credits her dad for building the market, and instilling in her not only an incredible work ethic, but also a positive view on life in general. Her dad, John, taught her to "Keep your chin up, and keep smiling. Remember why you are here." Emily believes that "You get up every day with a purpose. If you can make people have a good day, you have to." A visit to Alcamo's Market will almost ensure a good day. Not only can you get Michigan's Best sub, you can shop for other Italian specialties in a friendly, fun environment. If you are a veteran, show your card and receive 10%, in honor of John Chimento's service to our country in Vietnam. Watch for their annual "Customer Appreciation Day" when they throw down a huge party for their loyal customers. In thanks, Emily said "You work so hard. I'm just so grateful. I feel so appreciated." In response, we say thank you, Chimento family, for creating Michigan's Best sub. Alcamo's Market (313) 584-301 ANN ARBOR, MI - Spring construction is in full swing and three major apartment developments are underway on the edges of downtown Ann Arbor. That includes a 12-story high-rise on Huron Street, a 13-story high-rise in the South U district and a six-story building on South Main Street. By next year, they're expected to add more than 440 new apartments with more than 1,200 new bedrooms to the downtown rental market, adding to the thousands of new bedrooms already added downtown over the last several years as a decade-long housing boom continues to alter the Ann Arbor skyline. There also are multiple condo developments underway downtown right now, and more condos and apartments expected with other new projects in the pipeline, including more high-rise development coming on South University Avenue. Here's a brief overview of the three apartment projects that are currently taking shape downtown: A rendering by Myefski Architects of a 12-story apartment high-rise now under construction on Huron Street in downtown Ann Arbor between Sloan Plaza condos and The Graduate hotel. 12-story high-rise on Huron Street Chicago-based developer Core Spaces is behind the 12-story development that's starting to rise at 603 E. Huron St. on what used to be a parking lot between Sloan Plaza condominiums and the former Campus Inn hotel, which has changed owners and is now called The Graduate Ann Arbor. Spence Brothers, which has an office in Ann Arbor, is the main contractor for the project, which is expected to be done before the start of the University of Michigan's fall 2018 semester. Project architect John Myefski said the team hopes to be finished by the end of May 2018. When the development went through the city's approval process, it was known as The Calvin, though it's now branded as the Hub on Campus Ann Arbor on both social media and the Core Spaces website, which indicates the building will be more than 171,000 square feet, containing 124 apartments with 310 beds. The project team has indicated the building's high-end apartments will be targeted toward both college students and non-student renters. "Due to the high population of young adults attending the University of Michigan, it is a good assumption that the demographic will include many graduate students and/or young professionals in the area," reads a project information sheet. Crews have been busy in recent weeks constructing a two-level underground parking garage that's expected to contain 85 automobile parking spaces. The first floor of the new apartment building is now taking shape. The ground-floor plans include a club room up front along Huron Street on the side closest to Sloan Plaza and a leasing office up front along Huron Street on the side closest to The Graduate, with a lobby in between that also connects to a back mail room, business center, fitness center/spa and bicycle storage area. The parking garage entry will be at the back of the building. Core Spaces also plans to build a 17-story hotel/apartment high-rise on the city-owned Library Lot over the next few years. The City Council recently approved a $10 million deal to sell the Fifth Avenue property to Core Spaces. A rendering of a six-story apartment building now under construction at 615 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor. 6-story apartment building on South Main The Collegiate Development Group, based in St. Louis, Missouri, is the developer behind a six-story apartment building underway at 615 S. Main St. Crews are currently doing foundation work, and the project is expected to quickly move to vertical construction soon. The Continental Building Co., based in Columbus, Ohio, is the main contractor and is working to get the project done by the start of UM's fall 2018 semester. Measuring nearly 290,000 square feet, the building is expected to contain 229 apartments, including a mix of micro studios and larger studios, as well as one-, two-, three-, four- and five-bedroom apartments, with 588 beds altogether. Officially known as The Residences at 615 South Main, the target population is young professionals, empty nesters and graduate students. Throughout this year and into next year, passersby will see the new building rising along the east side of Main Street, just south of Madison and just north of Mosley, where the South Main Market, a neighboring car wash and an old buggy factory were demolished. Pieces of the original brick facade of the old buggy factory are expected to be incorporated into part of the facade of the new building where there will be new ground-level retail along the Mosley Street side. The new building will be similar in scope to the 618 South Main apartments built directly across the street in recent years. The plans include an onsite leasing center, clubhouse, fitness center, pool courtyard and parking for 163 automobiles and 229 bicycles, as well as an easement for a pathway through the back side of the property that could become part of a future Allen Creek Greenway trail. The project architects are J Bradley Moore & Associates and Hensley Lamkin Rachel Inc. A rendering showing the west side of a 13-story high-rise now under construction at 611 E. University Ave. in Ann Arbor. 13-story high-rise in South U district The Collegiate Development Group also is the developer behind a 13-story project that's now underway at 611 E. University Ave. in the South U district, just south of where UM's Central Campus Diag meets South University Avenue. Crews have demolished a collection of mid-block buildings between Church Street and East University Avenue, just south of South U, to make way for a building that's eventually expected to measure more than 137,000 square feet and contain 91 apartments with 343 beds. The project is still in the very early stages. Passersby right now can see mounds of dirt and some of the initial structural work starting. The new building will rise immediately north of the Zaragon and ArborBLU apartment high-rises that have been built in recent years. It will include retail and parking on the first floor, parking on the second and third floors and residential apartments on floors four through 13, with a mechanical penthouse on a 14th level. The developer is planning to create a mix of studios and three-, four- and five-bedroom apartments expected to cater to UM students. A total of 56 interior automobile parking spaces are planned, including nine on the ground floor, 22 on the second floor and 25 on the third floor. The plans also show 79 bicycle parking spaces. The architects are WDG Architecture and J Bradley Moore & Associates. The two firms also collaborated on The Varsity high-rise on Washington Street. Around the corner from the development, water main replacement work is underway on South U as part of a major streetscape improvement project that is expected to change the look and feel of South U. The Downtown Development Authority is funding the streetscape improvements, coordinating with Oakland County developer Ron Hughes of Hughes Properties, who recently won approval from the city for a 12-story high-rise on South U and has plans for other future developments along the street. 05-10 - disabled semi.JPG (Courtesy: MDOT) Update: Incident reported clear as of 3:11 p.m., per MDOT. NORTHFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI - A disabled semitrailer on northbound U.S. 23 was blocking a portion of the freeway on Wednesday, May 10, south of Whitmore Lake. The semi was blocking the right lane of traffic on northbound U.S. 23 just north of the 6 Mile Road exit as of 2:41 p.m., according to the Michigan Department of Transportation. Construction and road repairs currently are being carried out on that section of the freeway. YPSILANTI, MI - Former Ypsilanti Community High School Principal Scott Snyder claims the circumstances surrounding his exit from the school constituted a breach of contract, and he's now suing Ypsilanti Community Schools. Snyder's attorney, David Kotzian of GMGMK Law, filed the lawsuit May 1 in Washtenaw County Trial Court. The school district has not yet filed a response, and Superintendent Benjamin Edmondson said Tuesday, May 9, he's aware of the lawsuit but hadn't yet reviewed it. "I believe his resignation was such that there was no wrongdoing on our part," Edmondson told The Ann Arbor News. "I regret that he's taking this action, and we'll handle it appropriately." Snyder was hired as principal of Ypsilanti's New Tech High School in July 2015. In March 2016, he became interim principal of Ypsilanti Community High School in addition to his role as New Tech principal, when former YCHS principal Tanya Bowman was arrested on federal bribery charges stemming from her time at Detroit Public Schools. For the 2016-17 school year, New Tech moved into the same building as YCHS, and Snyder was hired as principal of the building on a one-year contract with a base salary of $91,500. On Nov. 28, Edmondson sent a letter to YCHS families announcing Snyder "will no longer be serving Ypsilanti Community Schools and has opted to pursue other professional ambitions and opportunities. This is a mutual separation and a personnel matter." At that time, Cory Gildersleeve was announced as interim principal of YCHS. YCS Human Resources director Jack Bauman told The Ann Arbor News in November that Snyder had neither resigned nor been terminated, but he would not be continuing in the role of YCHS principal. In April, Bauman said Snyder had resigned from YCS and taken a job with Ferndale Schools. Ferndale Schools spokesman William Good declined to provide the date of Snyder's hire, but he confirmed in April that Snyder is teaching Spanish at Ferndale's University High School. Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Ann Arbor News reviewed Snyder's YCS personnel file. In a letter sent Dec. 20, 2016, from Bauman to Snyder, Bauman references concerns with Snyder's job performance that led to him being placed on paid and unpaid leaves in the first semester of the 2016-17 school year. Bauman said in the letter that on Nov. 15, he told Snyder the administration was thinking about ending his employment with YCS and presented him with a termination agreement. "I believe we have a litany of reasons to proceed with termination for cause, but again I do not think that is in either of our best interests," Bauman wrote. "We will do what we think is best for the district and ultimately will proceed with a termination hearing if no agreement is reached." Snyder's lawsuit references that letter and says no agreement was reached and there was no termination hearing, which he considers a violation of his right to due process and a breach of contract. According to court documents, Snyder claims the board of education needed to approve his unpaid suspension and his termination, as outlined in the school district's bylaws. He also said administrators should have provided him advance written notice that they did not intend to renew his contract as YCHS principal. Snyder says in the lawsuit he was placed on unpaid leave without just cause while undergoing a medical procedure, and that he was terminated without just cause. Bauman wrote in the Dec. 20 letter that Snyder's paid leave was related to how he handled a teacher being assaulted by a student. Another document in Snyder's personnel file states he was placed on unpaid leave shortly after the paid leave due to his behavior and words in meetings that put the district at risk for sexual or racial discrimination lawsuits, not responding to a busing concern and insubordination of a supervisor. Kotzian, Snyder's attorney, could not be reached for comment regarding the allegations about Snyder's job performance as YCHS principal. Snyder has requested a jury trial for the lawsuit. The lawsuit states his contract as principal at YCHS should be renewed for the 2017-18 school year, and he would like compensation for the damages he suffered from lost earnings and benefits, the loss of his professional reputation and attorney fees. McQuade.jpg Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who is now on the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, spoke out about the necessity to create a special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and any ties to the Donald Trump administration. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive file) ANN ARBOR, MI - Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Barbara L. McQuade believes there should be a special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and any ties to the administration of Donald Trump, according to a piece she contributed to the Washington Post. In the column, McQuade, who was forced to step down by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early March, calls for appointing a special counsel in the Russia investigation in light of Trump's firing FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, May 9. McQuade, who has joined the faculty at the University of Michigan Law School as a professor since her resignation, wrote that only the appointment of an independent prosecutor can help avoid real and apparent conflicts of interest when investigating high-level executive branch officials. In a letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. Comey has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for his public comments on an investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices, including a pair of letters he sent to Congress on the matter in the closing days of last year's campaign, according to The Associated Press. Trump made no mention of Comey's role in the Clinton investigation, which she has blamed in part for the election result. But in announcing the firing, the White House circulated a memo criticizing Comey's handling of the Clinton probe, including the director's decision to hold a news conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about Clinton, according to the AP. McQuade was the first woman to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan after being sworn in by former President Barack Obama on Jan. 4, 2010. McQuade led the prosecution of imprisoned former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. She also served as vice chair of the U.S. Attorney General's Advisory Committee under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and served as co-chair of the Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee from 2010 to 2017. Before becoming U.S. Attorney, McQuade was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Detroit for 12 years, serving as deputy chief of the National Security Unit. BRIGHTON, MI - Police were initially called to a welfare check ahead of a police-involved shooting on Tuesday, May 9 in the Brighton area. Police were called about 10 p.m. Tuesday to the 4800 block of South Old U.S. 23 Highway for the check, according to a press release issued by Michigan State Police on Wednesday afternoon. Police say a Michigan State Police trooper arrived to the call to find a 36-year-old man walking inside the home. When the trooper identified himself, the man then exited the home with a pistol and began to walk towards the trooper, who then retreated to the yard and requested additional units, police said. Additional personnel from the state police, the Livingston County Sheriff's Office and the Brighton Police Department arrived and began speaking with the man and requesting that he put the pistol down, police said. However, the man advanced and did not obey commands. Police said officers continued to retreat and repeatedly gave the suspect verbal commands to put down the weapon, but the man continued to advance with the gun. After officers had retreated about 80 yards away from the man, he pointed his gun at police and police fired, striking him, police said in the release. Police then took the man into custody and began first aid. The 36-year-old was taken to the University of Michigan hospital with non-life threatening injuries, police said. The incident remains under investigation and no one is charged in the matter, said Michigan State Police First Lt. Mike Shaw, who is special enforcement section commander and public information officer at the agency's Second District. Shaw declined to comment on which agencies the officers involved in the shooting were from or whether anyone had been placed on leave, but CBS Detroit reports a state trooper and a Livingston County Sheriff's deputy were involved in the shooting. Police were no longer at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday afternoon, however, employees of neighboring businesses confirmed that officials were investigating near the Janis Chiropractic and Wellness Center earlier on Wednesday morning. The center neighbors a single home on the block. HOWELL, MI - An Oakland County probation agent who died in a fatal crash late Tuesday, May 9, east of Howell was on her way home from an appreciation banquet where she received a special honor. Candice Dunn, 35, was one of five people who died in the crash on M-59 in Livingston County's Oceola Township, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections. Dunn's mother, Linda Hurley, and Hurley's boyfriend, Jerome Tortomasi, also died in the crash. Albert Boswell, Dunn's boyfriend, was driving and remains in critical condition. Dunn, the MDOC's 2017 Parole/Probation Agent of the Year, was returning home from the department's Employee Appreciation Banquet in East Lansing. "We are devastated by the loss of Agent Candice Dunn, whose passion for her work changed so many lives for the better," said Michigan Department of Corrections Director Heidi Washington in a statement. "Her ambition and her drive to make Michigan a better and safer place will leave a lasting impact on our department." A 12-year veteran with the MDOC, Dunn worked in the Eastern District Probation Office, Troy Probation Office and as a Drug Court Agent in Wayne County, per MDOC. She worked at the Oakland County Probation Office in Pontiac since December 2015 and oversaw the Urban Drug Court and Sobriety Court programs. Dunn also was a criminal justice instructor at South University in Novi and a volunteer in her community to help families in need. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement Dunn will be remembered for her dedication to improving the lives of others and making her community a better place. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Agent Dunn's family, friends and colleagues in this very difficult time," he said in the statement. Gov. Rick Snyder also issued a statement regarding Dunn and two other recent deaths of law enforcement personnel. "The past few days have been especially tough for our law enforcement community and I send my condolences on behalf of all Michiganders whom they have sworn to serve and protect," Snyder said. "My thoughts and prayers are with the families, friends and colleagues of Kent County Corrections Officer Russell Stonehouse, Norton Shores Police Officer Jonathan Ginka, and Michigan Department of Corrections Probation Agent Candice Dunn." A 22-year-old man from Fenton likely ran a stop sign on Argentine Road at M-59 at 10:40 p.m. Tuesday, according to Michigan State Police. His vehicle struck another car with four passengers, which included a 35-year-old woman and a 39-year-old man from Oakland County and a 70-year-old man and woman from Macomb County. The 39-year-old Oakland County man, who was driving, survived and was in critical condition. The rest of the vehicle's occupants died at the scene, police say. Two passengers in the Fenton's man's car died at the scene, and the driver and another passenger were in critical condition. MSP is investigating the incident. Police said they did not know if drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash. YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - A Saginaw man was formally charged Friday, May 5, in the stabbing death of his brother-in-law in Ypsilanti Township. Gerald R. Kariem, 39, faces one count of open murder in the stabbing death of Marcus C. Coney, 40. Police believe Kariem stabbed Coney during an argument over a vehicle on Saturday, April 29. The incident occurred in the basement of Coney's home at 1412 Jeff Ave., police said. Coney was pronounced dead at an area hospital and, after a search by police, Kariem was arrested May 2 in Oak Park, Illinois. He was denied bond at his Friday arraignment. Kariem was previously convicted of manslaughter in 2002 in Saginaw County. He was released on parole in 2009 and discharged from the department in 2011, said Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz. He is now scheduled for a May 16 probable cause hearing and a May 23 preliminary examination. China's military has conducted live-fire drills and weapons tests in the northeastern Bohai Sea close to the Korean peninsula, the country's defense ministry said on Tuesday. In a brief statement late on Tuesday, the ministry said the tests of new missiles and weapons were carried out by the People's Liberation Army's Rocket Force "in recent days" and were designed to raise operational capability so as to effectively deal with national security threats. No further details were provided. Chinese President Xi Jinping is overseeing a sweeping modernization of the country's armed forces, with an emphasis on technological innovation and naval capability as it seeks to project greater power in the disputed South China Sea. Moon Jae-in is being sworn in as the new president in a brief ceremony at the National Assembly at noon Wednesday and immediately starts work. New presidents normally have an orderly 60-day transition period between administrations as they put together their Cabinet and staff, but Moon is denied that luxury because his predecessor Park Geun-hye was ousted over a massive corruption scandal in April. Moon hopes to appoint his chief of staff and top security adviser on Wednesday and will announce his nominees for prime minister this week as he swiftly plugs the power vacuum that has plagued Korea since October. He is scheduled to speak over the telephone with the leaders of the U.S., China, Japan and Russia. Natasha Baker, the head of Michigan's School Reform Office, was interviewed Tuesday for the position of superintendent of Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga, Tennessee, according to news reports. Baker, interviewed remotely, spoke about a controversial move by her office in January that placed 38 low-performing schools across Michigan at-risk of closure, telling board members that "state law mandated that she go through the process of evaluating those low-performing schools." Any state-imposed school closures, at least for the near future, have been scrapped. All but one of the 38 schools have signed partnership agreements with the Michigan Department of Education that establish an 18- and 36-month timeline under which academic improvements must be made. In her opening statement, Baker said, "All children deserve access to a quality education," according to a report by The Chattanooga Times Free Press. Later, she described her leadership style, saying "she isn't always about harmony and that giving and receiving feedback is important." "It's important to have a culture of candor across the district," she said, according to the Times Free Press. Baker could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. The mission of Michigan's School Reform Office is to improve the academic standing of Michigan's poorest performing schools. In May of 2015, Gov. Rick Snyder signed an executive order moving the SRO from the Michigan Department of Education - led by the state Superintendent - to the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget, an agency under his control. According to news reports, Snyder made the move because he wanted a more "proactive" approach to improving the schools. It's more than six hours from Marquette in the Upper Peninsula to Lansing. State Rep. John Kivela, who died of an apparent suicide Tuesday, May 9, after his second drunk driving arrest, made the trek weekly to be back in his district, former colleagues say. Kivela and his wife, Sandy, were familiar faces in the Marquette community - even after the Democrat went off to Lansing in 2013, colleagues said. "I knew who John Kivela was in town," said Marquette Mayor Pro Tem Tom Baldini. "He was a person who was involved in the community." The Kivelas were known for their civic engagement and their love of St. Bernard dogs. Everyone in town knew the couple had two of the large dogs, according to Baldini. Baldini, who taught high school in town from 1965-83, described Marquette as having a small, tight-knit political community. Many were in shock Tuesday after hearing the news Kivela, 47, had died. "Nobody saw this coming," said Marquette Mayor Dave Campana. "Right now, everyone is in shock. This is a big tragedy for our community." City leader Kivela got his start in the auto business, according to his biography on the website for the Michigan House Democrats. He worked first for his family's auto repair and distributor business before becoming a general manager of a local used car dealership, the website states. Kivela eventually felt the need to serve the public, according to Baldini, and was elected to the Marquette City Commission in 2006. Kivela was on the commission during a time of great development in the Marquette area - and helped guide it first as a member of the commission, then as mayor from 2008 to 2012, Baldini said. Kivela hired a new city manager - Bill Vajda - who helped bring in more business and development to Marquette, which with a population of roughly 22,000 is the biggest city in the Upper Peninsula. "John's legacy is a love story," said Vajda, who served as city manager from 2010-2016. "For his family and the community and for the state." Kivela was eager to spread the message of how unique the Upper Peninsula was, especially when it came to the area's natural wonders, Vajda said. Kivela was mayor during President Barack Obama's 2011 visit to Marquette, meant to highlight the need for broadband internet in rural America. "He dined with presidents and governors," Vajda said. "He worked tirelessly that the will of people of the Upper Peninsula was understood and represented in the state House." He was also keen on the continued development of Marquette. There's now a billion dollars of construction going on in the region, according to Baldini. One of Kivela's projects was helping to get a road built in a part of town that would promote connectivity and business, Baldini recalled. "He was very involved with economic development," he added. Baldini said Kivela was the "Mayor of Marquette" in official title, bearing and reputation. "John just had an upbeat to him," he said. Off to Lansing Campana, the current mayor, came to the city commission two years after Kivela was elected to the state House. Even though he never served on the city commission with Kivela, Campana said he "was well aware of him." "He was a great community person," he said. "He did a lot of things for Marquette." Kivela continued to do good things for Marquette and the rest of district that includes Alger, Luce and Schoolcraft counties, as well as a portion of Marquette County, according to Baldini. Kivela was integral in getting the Legislature to pass a law making stores put materials to make methamphetamine - Sudafed and other cold medicines - behind the counter, Baldini said. Kivela wanted to bring people together in Lansing. "He wanted to work across the aisle," Baldini said. He even went so far as to host spaghetti dinners at his Lansing house for the other U.P. lawmakers, according to a MIRS story from 2013, when Kivela was in his first term. "It's kind of unique. And it's kind of like family," Kivela told the news service about bonding with his U.P. colleagues. "A lot of it is that we're so remote. We're so far away that we have to lean on each other." Current U.P. lawmakers were shocked and saddened to learn the news Tuesday. "It's a sad day for the Upper Peninsula and the state of Michigan," said state Rep. Beau LaFave, R-Iron Mountain. "He's one of those good-natured guys who could always crack a joke. He was a kind soul. I hope he can be remembered for what he did for the U.P." When in Lansing for legislative session, Kivela lived next door to the public relations firm Martin Waymire. Dave Waymire, a partner in the firm, said lawmakers have lived in the home for a long time and said Kivela was a good neighbor. "He was the guy who would take care of the yard, was keeping the hostas up," Waymire said. "He was always very friendly." Kivela, who was in this third and last term in the House, was starting to gear up for a state Senate campaign. Arrests It's not always easy being a rep from the Upper Peninsula because of the great distances that need to be traveled back and forth, according to Baldini, but Kivela always came home. Many times, he'd stop at many of the small towns and townships in his large, rural district on his way back to Marquette to meet with the people there, Baldini added. It was on one of these long drives when Kivela was first arrested for drunken driving. He told a Clinton County sheriff deputy that he was headed to Lansing when he was pulled over Nov. 9, 2015. Kivela was reportedly speeding and swerving in and out of lanes on southbound U.S. 127 near St. Johns, about 12 miles north of the Michigan Capitol. He blew a 0.238 BAC and was charged with "super drunk" driving. He issued a statement in the wake of the arrest apologizing to his family and admitting he has battled alcoholism for most of his adult life. "My dependence on alcohol has become a problem, and I plan to seek treatment immediately," Kivela wrote. The state representative was arrested a second time Monday, May 8, again in Clinton County, and again for "super drunk" driving. News of his death spread around Lansing Tuesday, prompting the House to recess. "John was a tremendous partner in the Legislature who always put the needs of his constituents in Marquette and the Upper Peninsula first," Governor Rick Snyder. "It is with great sadness that I extend my deepest condolences to his family, friends, loved ones and colleagues in the Legislature as we mourn his untimely passing." Capitol reporter Emily Lawler contributed to this story. Editor's note: This story has been corrected. The former Marquette City Manager's name is Bill Vadja. It was misspelled as Badja in an earlier version. GRAND RAPIDS, MI - When dog rescuer Janelle McFarlane got a call about a petite and very pregnant dog that needed to get out of an animal shelter in Newaygo County, picking a name for the expectant mom was easy. McFarlane, a huge fan of "The Walking Dead" zombie apocalypse series on AMC, called her Maggie after one of her favorite characters on the show, who is also pregnant. And when six furry bundles arrived several days later, they, too, got their own TWD monikers: Tyreese, Judith, Morgan, Hershel, Lucille and Daryl. At least a few of them have personalities that match their names. "Morgan on the show is really wise, and Morgan the puppy is the smartest one. He figures everything out before the others ones," McFarlane said. "He figured out how to escape the kiddie pool (where the puppies were playing). He scaled a pen. He was the first one to figure out food and water and toys." Lucille has a very feisty personality, while her sister Judith is very laid back. The pups are growing fast and will be ready for adoption in June. When that happens, they will be among the more than 1,100 pets placed by Hearts of Hope Dog Rescue since it started five years ago. It takes a network of dog lovers McFarlane, of Rockford, started the nonprofit after working as a foster volunteer for a couple other West Michigan rescue groups. She built relationships with shelters and veterinarians across the region, started a website and began recruiting others who wanted to foster adult dogs and puppies in their homes. Hearts of Hope now has a network of 45 caregivers across the area, from Greenville to Dorr and beyond. "We're all spread out," McFarlane said of the volunteers, who loosely consider themselves one big, extended family. The group provides the crates, food and other dog gear. The foster families provide love, socialization, and good insight into the personalities of the dogs looking for forever homes. Many people who've adopted a dog through Hearts of Hope make it one of their favorite causes, donating food and sponsoring events. "A lot of them end up fostering," she said. "A lot of people get hooked." The breeds of dogs coming through the rescue are as varied as their situations. Some get stressed out in shelters, where close quarters and high noise levels make them anxious. Others are pregnant or have a health issue that has veterinarians and shelter staff calling McFarlane to see if Hearts of Hope has a spot open. "The vets at the shelters can only do so much with them," she said. "We take a lot of special cases, senior dogs, dogs that are stressed. We take a variety of everything." It's the foster families who tend to specialize in certain types of dogs. "We have the Chihuahua lady, the beagle lady. We have the puppy people and the pittie people." On Saturdays, volunteers bring their foster dogs to the PetSmart store in Grandville so they can meet prospective adopters. Those dogs who are able to come - not the puppies - must be spayed or neutered to join the four-legged mingle. "For the most part, we try to get as many dogs there as we can," McFarlane said. Maggie's "The Walking" puppies Maggie's story was pretty typical. The young, 40-pound Staffy mix was picked up as a stray and brought to the Newaygo County Animal Shelter. When her 16-year-old owner showed up there, he could not afford the fines or her licensing fee. "It was probably the best thing for her that she couldn't go back to the owner," McFarlane said. "The kid's parents did not want anything to do with it, either." The puppies' paternity is a mystery. There was reportedly a Labrador, Mastiff and another Staffy mix roaming the area where Maggie was found. McFarlane bets that the daddy was a big guy. "She's just a little thing and her puppies are huge." Application adoptions for the puppies are being accepted on the Hearts of Hope website. Maggie also will be looking for a home once her puppies find theirs. This litter is one of two batches of puppies Hearts of Hope is fostering right now. To donate supplies or other support to the rescue, see below for the types of dog food being requested. To see a list of its available dogs and upcoming events, check out the Hearts of Hope Facebook page. All photos of the dogs are courtesy of Lynae Marie Photography. Samsung is putting refurbished Galaxy Note 7 smartphones back on the market in Korea after a massive scandal saw the combustible devices banned from all flights and recalled around the world. Samsung won the green light from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission last Thursday to sell the refurbished phones and will also file for authorization from Korea's National Radio Research Agency. Tech website Phone Arena reported late last month that the phones were also given the all-clear by Wi-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit that certifies Wi-Fi products if they conform to certain standards of interoperability. The FCC passed three types of refurbished Note 7s, presumably so they can be released by Korea's three mobile service providers SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus. jackson college stock 1 Jackson College students face another tuition increase for the 2017-18 school year. (MLive Media Group) SUMMIT TWP., MI - Another hefty tuition increase greets students heading to Jackson College in the fall. Trustee Phil Hoffman cast the lone dissenting vote when the college's Board of Trustees approved the across-the-board hikes at a Monday, May 8 meeting. In-district students face a 7.4-percent increase, from $135 to $145 per billing contact hour, which is similar to a credit hour and represents the amount of time students spend in the classroom. Tuition for out-district students rises from $195 to $217, an 11.3-percent increase. Out-of-state and international student tuition rises from $270 to $290, also a 7.4-percent hike. These increases are projected to keep JC's tuition rate at the top of the list of all 28 Michigan community colleges, according to Michigan Community College Association figures. The average in-district cost per billing contact hour at the state's community colleges is $106.10, while the average out-district cost per billing contact hour is $176.58 according to MCAA figures. In-district students at JC have seen 8-percent, 6.8-percent, 5.4 percent, 4.7 percent and 4.9 percent tuition increases in the last five years prior to this hike. Changes also are coming to how students in JC's American Honors program pay for classes. Instead of paying a flat rate of $6,160 annually, in-district students in the program now will pay $204.33 per billing contact hour. The same rate applies to out-district students in the program, who were paying an annual $13,205. International American Honors students, who were paying a $12,995 flat rate, now will pay $366 per billing contact hour. Tuition remains the college's primary source of revenue, making up 55 percent of its budget. College officials continue to say the increases are necessary to offset a lack of revenue from local property taxes and decreases in state funding. JC has the lowest local property tax support of all Michigan community colleges, and is the only one to only have its original operating millage. Fifteen millage attempts have been defeated by voters over the years. State funding for JC also remains at 2000-01 levels, college officials said. On the plus side, K-12 school districts with students dual enrolled at JC will see their fees decrease. In-district dual enrollment is dropping 7.4 percent to $125, while out-district dual enrollment is going down 5.1 percent to $185. Dual enrollment fees are paid to JC by the school districts through their state funding. Jackson non-discrimination ordinance Councilman Derek Dobies is under fire for his Sixth Ward council seat while also running against incumbent Bill Jors for mayor. (J. Scott Park) JACKSON, MI - While three potential petitions were thrown out, efforts to recall Jackson City Councilman Derek Dobies moved ahead Tuesday, May 9, when three others were approved at a clarity hearing. The language of three of the six petitions seeking to recall Dobies were deemed to be not factual or unclear. Dobies plans to appeal the three that were approved, he said after the hearing. He has 10 days to do so. "I'm disappointed in the outcome, I strongly disagree with it," Dobies said. "There were many factual errors within the petitions and some of them lacked the requirement of sufficient clarity. Right now, I have every intention of appealing." Dobies, also a mayoral candidate in November, will go into detail on the specifics of the errors in his appeal, after consulting with his personal legal counsel, he said. The Jackson County Election Commission was tasked with making the decision on the petition language clarity. The commission includes Jackson County Clerk Amanda Kirkpatrick, Treasurer Karen Coffman and Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wilson. Six of the nine public commenters at the hearing spoke against Dobies, but Dobies noted they all live outside his ward. Only voters living within the sixth ward, which Dobies serves, can sign the petitions. Petition circulators must gather 495 names within a 60-day window in the next 180 days to get the recall on the November ballot. Resident Roger Roty, 81, filed the petition language. He's unsure if he'll have all three petitions circulated, or just one. This is the first time Roty has filed recall petitions, he said. Here are the recall reasons cited in each petition submitted by Roty. Petitions A, E and F were approved while B, C and D were denied. A: "His March 28, 2017 vote in favor of the resolution ordering construction of the Kibby Road Street Construction and his Feb. 7, 2017 vote in favor of the non-discrimination ordinance." B: "His Feb. 7, 2017 vote in favor of the non-discrimination ordinance that does not provide protection for a business owner or person to deny service based on strongly-held religious beliefs." C: "His Feb. 7, 2017 vote in favor of the non-discrimination ordinance which includes sexual orientation and gender identity, but does not include an exemption for persons with strongly held religious beliefs, or right of conscience." D: "Failing to hold the city attorney accountable to keep the City Charter up to date as required by the attorney's employment agreement and job description." E: "For making a motion on March 28, 2017 to appoint the city manager as city clerk for a 90-day period." F: "His Feb. 7, 2017 vote in favor of the non-discrimination ordinance." Roty's biggest issue is with the NDO, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations. But he said he's not against LGBT people. "I don't discriminate at all," Roty said, clarifying his comment from May 8. "In fact, if they could straighten that thing out, I'd be willing to vote for the ordinance." Roty's problems with the ordinance include the $500 fine, the permanence of the accusations for the wrongly accused and the group deciding on the cases - the Human Relations Commission. Roty is confident he and his supporters can collect the necessary signatures, but Dobies isn't concerned. "Today shows it's clear the old guard will do anything to protect the status quo (and) to reverse some of the progress we've made," Dobies said. With Michigan law prohibiting candidates from being on the same ballot twice, all parties are unsure of how this situation could play out come November. The County Clerk's office has consulted an attorney on the matter. The Jackson Police Department reports the following log of activities for Tuesday, May 9, with officers responding to 101 calls for service, made 28 traffic stops and 5 arrests. Officers assisted with traffic due to construction at Wildwood Avenue and Wisner Street. Officers visited the following schools: Parkside, Frost, and Northeastern. Detective Rose responded to the 300 block of North Cooper Street for a heroin overdose; a 40-year-old female was transported to Henry Ford Allegiance Health for medical attention. Officer Brant responded to the 700 block of Fourth Street for a domestic dispute; a 22-year-old male was arrested for domestic assault. Officer Kruso responded to the 300 block of East Franklin Street for a domestic dispute; a 42-year-old female was arrested for domestic assault and battery and for possession of drug paraphernalia. Officer Kruso responded to the 1100 block of West Argyle Street for a domestic dispute; a 25-year-old male was arrested for an outstanding warrant and for resisting the officer. Officer Kruso arrested a 31-year-old m ale for driving while under the influence of drugs, driving on a suspended license, and for violation of his conditional bond. Officer Brooker arrested a 25-year-old male for an outstanding felony warrant. The Michigan State Police Jackson post provided the following log of activities for Tuesday, May 9. Domestic Assault: Jackson County, Parma Township: At midnight, May 9, a Michigan State Police Trooper responded to a location in Parma to investigate a domestic assault. When the Trooper arrived he contacted the witness, a 55-year-old female victim from Parma, and the 50-year-old male suspect from Jackson. After completing his investigation, the Trooper arrested the suspect for domestic assault. Additional activities include: Four traffic crashes. One narcotics Investigation. Four civil Disputes. Nine suspicious situations investigated. Three fugitives arrested. Two burglary complaints. Two civil disputes. One injured deer complaint. One trespass complaint. One animal cruelty complaint. One narcotics investigation. One assist to Reading Emergency Services, One fraud investigation. One health and safety violation investigated. One damaged property investigation. One larceny investigation. KALAMAZOO, MI -- An 18-year-old Augusta man will stand trial for a crash that killed his friend. Jacob Lyons was scheduled for a preliminary examination Wednesday on evidence against him in Kalamazoo County District Court. Lyons waived the exam and instead will stand trial in Kalamazoo County Circuit Court. Lyons is accused of driving under the influence of marijuana, causing a crash that killed Conner Blinn, 17, of Kalamazoo. Police say Lyons' vehicle left the road and struck several trees in the 9800 Block of North 32nd Street shortly before 2:30 a.m. Aug. 1. Lyons faces charges of operating under the influence causing death and reckless driving causing death, both felonies. Lyons turned himself in Jan. 27. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, said the FBI should be independent and non-political and the replacement for former Director James Comey must restore public confidence. President Donald Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, May 9, writing in a letter to Comey that the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. Comey has come under intense public scrutiny in recent months for his public comments on an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices, the Associated Press reports. Upton sent the following statement in the wake of Comey's firing: "I have always advocated for an independent and non-political FBI. 'Just the facts, please.' I am not privy to the justification nor the details behind the firing but the replacement must restore the public confidence immediately. It cannot be a partisan selection," Upton said. "As it relates the Russian investigation, I remain hopeful that the existing bipartisan Congressional committees in the House and Senate can find answers for the many questions. If need be, I would support a special prosecutor at the appropriate time. We must continue to follow the facts wherever they lead," Upton said. In March, Upton publicly called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the Department of Justice investigation into Russia. Comey, 56, was nominated by President Barack Obama for the FBI post in 2013 to a 10-year term, the AP reports. The appointment does not ensure a director will serve the full term, AP reports. UPDATE, 1:22 p.m. -- Search and dive teams searching Lake Michigan for overboard fisherman MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI - Muskegon County's dive team and the U.S. Coast Guard helicopter were among first responders headed to a report of a man overboard on Lake Michigan late Wednesday morning. The man was reported about 200 yards off shore from Michillinda Lodge around 11:30 a.m. May 10. The White Lake and Montague fire departments responded, and called for the dive team and the U.S. Coast Guard. A witness reported the man yelling for help. Arriving first responders first saw the individual, but later reported he had gone under water, according to reports. White Lake rescuers were launching a rescue boat and the U.S. Coast Guard was preparing to respond with a boat and helicopter. The dive team also was being assembled to report to the lodge, located at 5207 N. Scenic Dr. This is a developing story. Check back for more information. NORTON SHORES, MI - Police officers from surrounding communities will step in to help answer calls for the Norton Shores Police Department as it mourns "a brother in blue." Norton Shores Police Chief Jon Gale speaks during a press conference about the death of officer Jon Ginka who was killed in a car crash while on duty in the early morning of Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Ginka was a ten-year veteran of the force. (Joel Bissell | MLive.com) The Norton Shores department was closed Wednesday following the death of Officer Jonathan Ginka. Ginka died after his cruiser struck a tree around 2:32 a.m. Wednesday while he was on duty. "We are asking for patience from our community as officers from other agencies will be assisting with police calls," said Norton Shores Police Chief Jon Gale. Gale gave a few somber comments during a press briefing Wednesday afternoon. "Today, at 02:32 hours, we lost a brother in blue," Gale said. A citizen reported the single-vehicle accident on Henry Street just south of Ross Road in Norton Shores. Gale thanked the first responders and hospital personnel who tried in vain to save Ginka's life. Ginka, 34, worked 10 years for the department. "Jonathan loved serving this community," Gale said. "He continues to serve today by donating his organs to those who need them." Condolences to the police department and Ginka's family have been pouring in from departments throughout Michigan and beyond. Gale and Norton Shores Police lieutenants Brandon Poel and Michael Kasher appeared at the short media briefing with support from Michigan State Police Lt. Chris McIntire, Muskegon County Sheriff Michael Poulin and Norton Shores Mayor Gary Nelund. McIntire, whose Rockford Post is heading up the crash investigation, said it could be a week before police know what caused Ginka to crash. Ginka, a "highly decorated" officer, is survived by his wife, two children, parents and brother, Gale said. He asked that the media let the family and police department grieve in private. The police department will be closed on the day of the funeral, Gale said. Funeral arrangements have not been set. "We will need some time to process this horrific loss," Gale said. The following people were sentenced April 24-27 by Judge William C. Marietti of Muskegon County's 14th Circuit Court. Dewayne Tyree Jackson, 56, of Muskegon, to 12 months in jail for possession of less than 25 grams of a controlled substance, second or subsequent offense, $1,098 court costs/fees. Joshua Adam DeWitt, 34, of Muskegon, to 235 days in jail for domestic violence third, probation violation, $1,317 court costs/fees. Janasia Nashay Rone, 17, of Muskegon Heights, to 12 months in jail for third-degree fleeing a police officer, assault/resist/obstruction/injury to a police officer, $2,530 restitution, $1,166 court costs/fees. Laneica Yvonne Wilkinson, 51, of Muskegon, to 90 days for retaining a financial transaction device without consent, habitual offender third, $679 restitution, $1,098 court costs/fees. Rodney Clifford Beaver, Jr., 38, of Baldwin, to 30 days in jail for marijuana possession, second or subsequent offense, $1,098 court costs/fees. Paul Stuart Hancock Jr., 29, of Muskegon, to 12 months in jail for larceny of more than $1,000 but less than $20,000, $17,185 restitution, $860 court costs/fees. Robert Lee Martin, 27, of Muskegon, to 15 days in jail for marijuana possession, assault/resist/obstruction of a police officer, $425 court costs/fees. Marcus Pollard, 18, of Muskegon, to 7-20 years in prison for armed robbery, $198 court costs/fees. Marcus Pollard, 18, of Muskegon, to 7-20 years in prison for armed robbery, $648 court costs/fees. Latrece Nikole Baker, 36, of Muskegon, to 12 months in jail for first-degree retail fraud, $648 court costs/fees. Ronald Harry Judson, 47, of Muskegon Heights, to 15 months to 10 years from possessing contraband in prison, habitual offender fourth, $198 court costs/fees. Quentin De-Shun Robertson, 37, of Muskegon Heights, to 20 months to 10 years for possessing a firearm as a felon, assault/resisting/obstruction of a police officer, habitual offender third conviction, $716 court costs/fees. Ylario Morales Calanchi, 63, of Muskegon, to 15 months to seven years and six months for assault with intent to commit criminal sexual contact, $648 court costs/fees. Brandy Lynn Huizenga, 30, of Muskegon, to 20 months to 10 years in prison for first-degree retail fraud, habitual offender third conviction, $419 restitution, $648 court cost/fees. Staci Marie Dempke, 31, of Muskegon, to 15 months to seven years and six months in prison for first-degree retail fraud, habitual offender second conviction, $389 restitution, $648 court costs/fees. Demario Drew Donson, 33, of Muskegon, to revoked probation for a probation violation, operating a vehicle with presence of a controlled substance, controlled substance possession, $6,011 restitution, $541 court costs/fees. Officer Jonathan Ginka NORTON SHORES, MI - Colleagues, friends and community members remembered fallen Norton Shores Police officer Jonathan Ginka on social media Wednesday, May 10. Ginka, 34, was reported dead following a crash that occurred sometime before 4:30 a.m. Wednesday on Henry Street near the Ross Road intersection in Norton Shores. A 10-year veteran of the police force, he leaves behind a wife and two children, according to the police department. On Facebook, Muskegon Fraternal Order of Police President Brian Harris called Ginka "a young man gone too soon" and a "a true warrior and unique personality." "You left the world a better place than you found it," Harris wrote. Another colleague of Ginka's, Jennifer Rhyndress, wrote that "Our hearts are breaking!" "I was honored to be able to call you, not just my brother in blue, but my friend!" she wrote. "You touched so many lives...You will be forever missed!" The Muskegon County Sheriff's office wrote that its members were deeply saddened to hear of Ginka's death. "We offer our deepest condolences to the City of Norton Shores and to Officer Ginka's family," the Sheriff's office wrote. The North Muskegon Fire Department was also saddened, writing on Facebook that Ginka once had worked as a firefighter there. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette wrote in a Twitter post, "My prayers are with the family and friends of the Norton Shores police officer killed in a car accident this morning." "The department and family would like to thank the public for the support during this difficult time," the Norton Shores Police Department wrote in a released statement. As of noon Wednesday, it was still not known what caused the crash. The Michigan State Police Rockford Post is handling the crash investigation. In a statement released later in the day, Governor Rick Snyder referenced Ginka's recent death, as well as those of Kent County Corrections Officer Russell Stonehouse and Michigan Department of Corrections Probation Agent Candice Dunn. "The past few days have been especially tough for our law enforcement community and I send my condolences on behalf of all Michiganders whom they have sworn to serve and protect," Snyder said. "Whether they are patrolling a beat, maintaining order in a correctional facility, or helping returning citizens stay on the right path for a better future - we appreciate the work they do every day. ... The outpouring of support and fond memories from people who knew and worked with these professionals shows how much each of them will be missed in their communities." RIP Jon Ginka. A young man gone too soon. You left the world a better place than you found it. A true warrior and unique personality. You will be greatly missed by all ! Posted by Brian Harris on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Our hearts are breaking! R.I.P Ofc Jon Ginka. I was honored to be able to call you, not just my brother in blue, but my friend! You touched so many lives.. You will be forever missed! Posted by Jennifer Tobin Rhyndress on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 The members of the Muskegon County Sheriff's Office are deeply saddened at the news of NSPD Officer Jon Ginka. We offer our deepest condolences to the City of Norton Shores and to Officer Ginka's family. Posted by Muskegon County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 My prayers are with the family and friends of the Norton Shores police officer killed in a car accident this morning. Bill Schuette (@SchuetteOnDuty) May 10, 2017 Just heartbreaking. Our thoughts and prayers are with Jon Ginka's family, fellow officers and friends. Posted by Holly Hughes on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Praying for the Norton Shores Police Department this morning... Although no additional information has been released... Posted by Darren Anderson on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Norton Shores Police Department. Http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2017/05/police-involved_crash_shuts_he.html Posted by Michigan Conservation Officer Association on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 NMFD is deeply saddened to report the death of Norton Shores Police Officer and former NMFD Firefighter Jon Ginka. Our prayers and condolences to Jon's family and the City of Norton Shores Police Department. Posted by North Muskegon Fire Department on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Rest in Peace Officer John Ginka- Norton Shores Police Dept. KIA 5-10-17. pic.twitter.com/pUOG1Opd8R Robert T Christensen (@ChristensenUSA) May 10, 2017 The country will face an increasing shortfall of nurses over the next decade, data suggests. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs last week said the country will be short of 110,000 nurses and 1,837 doctors in 2020. By 2030 that will have burgeoned to 158,554 nurses and 7,646 doctors. As to pharmacists, the country will be 7,139 short in 2020 and 10,742 in 2030. SAGINAW TWP, MI -- On the morning of Tuesday, May 2, 24-year-old Saginaw Township resident Jessica Greenwald woke up in her apartment with a sensitive, red spot on her left arm. Getting more sensitive and itchy throughout the day, it began to feel like a burn for Greenwald. She left it unattended for the day to see if it would go away. The next morning, the red spot began to blister and hurt even more. Greenwald did not hesitate anymore and went to her family doctor. Doctors determined that Greenwald suffered a spider bite. Due to the severity of the blister and the infection that came with it, the doctors concluded she fell victim to a brown recluse spider bite, Greenwald said. She said she never saw what bit her. Brown recluse spiders are not common in Michigan, but have been found in Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and Nebraska. It also is established in Texas, Georgia and Kentucky. Even though the spider is not common in Michigan, it has still found its way into the Mitten State in the past few years. Howard Russell, an entomologist at Michigan State University, believes it is "not very likely" Greenwald was bitten by a brown recluse spider due to the rarity of it in Michigan. "I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just not likely," he said. Russell believes these "little isolated populations" of brown recluse spiders are from people transporting them to Michigan while in a more southern area of the United States. Greenwald said she has not traveled outside the state recently, so there is no possibility of the spider traveling with her. Despite the unknown at what species of spider had bitten her, Greenwald was also surprised when she began to see how bad the infection had become. The infection quickly turned into lymphangitis, so the infection spread to her bloodstream. Greenwald was originally on two antibiotics to be taken together for a week, but once the infection made its way to her bloodstream, she was put on her third round of antibiotics. It began to heal for her once she was put on her third antibiotic. She will have a followup exam next week once her antibiotic is gone. The blister was at its biggest point this Monday morning, May 8, according to Greenwald. "It began to drain on my way to my appointment with my family doctor," she said. "By the time I left the appointment, it was almost completely drained. (The doctor) cleaned it and covered it and instructed me to allow it to drain itself the rest of the way. (Tuesday) morning, it is completely drained and is no longer tender or sore." Since spring began, Greenwald said she saw a few spiders "here and there," but nothing as dangerous or big as a brown recluse. After the incident unfolded, Greenwald set off a "bug bomb" in her apartment and "sprayed the perimeter with repellent to prevent this from happening again." Despite being an outdoors person, Greenwald has never had to deal with a rash or infection like this. "I used to run around barefoot in the woods as a child and never got poison ivy, poison sumac or poison oak," she said. Because of the infection, Greenwald has not been able to work for the past week. Luckily, her manager at Harvey's Grill and Bar in Bay City was "more than compliant" to have her shifts covered. SAGINAW, MI., - Music and prayer once again filled the Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption, 615 Hoyt in Saginaw during a dedication mass on Tuesday afternoon, May 9. More than 500 people gathered in the newly renovated church, sitting in new wooden pews, to watch The Most Rev. Joseph R. Cistone, Bishop of Saginaw, bless a new baptismal font, consecrate a new marble altar and anoint the walls with Holy Chrism. It was the first mass since renovation of the Gothic-style cathedral began after labor day of 2016. The church underwent a large remodeling including a new sanctuary, new marble altar, new baptismal font, cleaned and restored stained-glass windows, new lighting, new bathrooms, new pews, fresh paint, improvements to the parking lot and more. All of the marble came from Italy. The Cathedral was built in 1901 and this was the first major renovation since 1978. During the mass, Bishop Cistone referenced the splendor of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, Italy. He talked about how when people visit St. Peter's, they look up and go "Wow!" Cistone had this in mind with the remodeling of the Saginaw Cathedral. He said the splendor of the remodeled Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption is to inspire and "Convey faith to all who enter here." SAGINAW, MI -- Ramesh Kumar was a doctor, son, colleague and brother remembered by many. Kumar, 32, dedicated 10 years of his life to reach one of his dreams, which was to become an urologist, said Sarada Das, Kumar's sister. But those hard worked years and dedication fell to the way-side when he was found dead Thursday evening in his parked car at a rest stop on westbound I-94 near Grass Lake, according to a press release from Kumar's family. He was discovered in his vehicle at about 6 p.m., May 4, at the rest stop west of the Mt. Hope exit, Michigan State Police Jackson Post Commander First Lt. Kevin Rod said. After failing to report to work Thursday morning, the hospital called Kumar's father asking where he was, said Sarada Das, Kumar's sister. The family alerted authorities. Police would not comment on the cause of death or how long Kumar had been at the rest stop. Kumar grew up in Saginaw, and attended Saginaw Township schools such as Hemmeter Elementary, White Pine Middle School and Heritage High School for one year before heading off to boarding school in Bloomfield Hills at Cranbrook-Kingswood, Das said. Each year of schooling got Kumar closer to his goal of becoming an urologist. He attended Boston University and continued his studies at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kerala, India, and finally became a second-year resident at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, said Das. "He dedicated 10 years of his life," Das said. "That was something he achieved and he was really looking forward to that." Das said everyone knew Kumar, and his family was really proud of him, he touched many lives and was making a difference. "He has the ability to connect with his patients," Das said. You could assume Kumar got his ability to connect with others from his dad, Narendra Kumar, an ENT-otolaryngologist and board certified in sleep medicine. Das said her family didn't only connect with people in the medical field or patients but her dad along with her mom, Minni Kumar were also connected in the community at the Hindu Temple, 3311 Temple Court. After Kumar died, community connections came in strong and showered the family with support. "One good thing is we have a lot of support here in the community," said Das through sobs and pauses. "We've had an outpouring in the community, I think people are just in complete shock, he was young, he had everything going for him." Now plans are in motion for Kumar's name to reach people in need. Das said a few of Kumar's friends brought up the idea to set up an nonprofit foundation in Kumar's name to donate to various causes. Donations are being collected through youcaring, a crowdfunding site. According to the page, the charitable foundation has raised nearly $16,000 of its $100,000 goal. "He was a very loving, generous, energetic person," Das said. "He had the ability to connect with people. When he was with you, he made you feel like the most important person in the world." Das said Jackson Police are investigating Kumar's death, but for friends and family, he was gone too soon. "We all lost somebody that really had a lot of potential," Das said. Funeral services for Kumar took place Saturday, May 6, at the Snow Funeral Home in Saginaw, Das said. JCPenney sign (Shandra Martinez | MLive.com file) MIDLAND, MI -- After 25 years in business, JCPenney is leaving the Midland Mall. The department store, located at 6840 Eastman Ave., is among 138 JCPenney stores slated for closure. The store and the mall itself first opened in 1991. Nearby JCPenney stores are located at Saginaw County's Fashion Square Mall and Bay City Mall in Bay County. Those stores are not on the list to close. "As part of a continuing effort to advance sustainable growth and long-term profitability, J. C. Penney Company Inc. will be closing 138 stores, one supply chain facility in Lakeland, Fla., and relocating one supply chain facility in Buena Park, Calif., to align the company's physical store footprint and omnichannel network," company spokesman Joey Thomas said in an email to MLive/The Saginaw News. Also closing are JCPenney stores in Battle Creek, Escanaba, Holland, Houghton, Kingsford and Sault Ste. Marie. Thomas said store closures will affect approximately 5,000 employees nationwide, including about 50 store associates in Midland. "JCPenney is in the process of identifying relocation opportunities within the company for esteemed leaders," he said. "Additionally, JCPenney will provide outplacement support services for those eligible associates who will be leaving the company." Liquidation sales at stores slated for closure are to begin this month and most locations will close on July 31. Other Midland Mall tenants include Target, Younkers, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Dunham's Sports, GameStop, Express, Men's Wearhouse and more. A reporter was arrested after asking Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price a question about the plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare. The Hill reports that Dan Heyman, a Public News Service reporter, was arrested at the West Virginia State Capitol after asking Price if domestic violence was a preexisting condition under the GOP celebrated healthcare bill. Heyman tells The Hill that he was charged with "willful disruption of governmental processes," after asking the question to Price "repeatedly." BREAKING: Dan Heyman from @PNS_News has been arrested at the WV State Capitol by Capitol Police for trying to ask Secretary Price a question ACLU of WV (@ACLU_WV) May 9, 2017 "It's dreadful. This is my job, this is what I'm supposed to do," Heyman told the outlet. "I'm supposed to find out if someone is going to be affected by this healthcare law...I think it is a question that deserves to be answered. "First time I've ever been arrested for asking a question. First time I've ever heard of someone getting arrested for asking a question." The reporter's account of the incident claims he waited for Price to come inside, the reached past the secretary's group with his phone and asked the question. Heyman says that police at the capitol must have thought he was getting too persistent in doing his job. Police say in the criminal complaint that the reporter breached secret service agents and was causing a disturbance to Price. The Hill reports the filing officer said he and another arrested Heyman after "he tried aggressively to breach the security of the secret service." Dan Heyman of @PNS_WV is in S. Central Regional Jail for "causing a disturbance by yelling quesitons" at @KellyannePolls & @SecPriceMD. pic.twitter.com/ucLrnhRCKY Public News Service (@PNS_News) May 9, 2017 Heyman claims that not a single police officer told him not to do what he was doing or to be where he was. He had to pay a $5,000 bond and was charged with the misdemeanor. One of the more strange reports to come out of former FBI Director James Comey's firing was that Press Secretary Sean Spicer hid in some bushes on White House grounds on Tuesday night to avoid reporters. Combine that with reports that Comey learned of his termination via network news, and it's been an interesting news cycle Tuesday, May 9 and Wednesday. The Washington Post reports Spicer "spent several minutes" hidden in bushes behind the media sets on the White House grounds. One of Spicer's assistants is said to have emerged and communicated to the press that the press secretary would answer questions as long as cameras and lights were off. "Spicer got his wish and was soon standing in near darkness between two tall hedges, with more than a dozen reporters closely gathered around him," the Washington Post's account of the incident reads. "For 10 minutes, he responded to a flurry of questions, vacillating between light-hearted asides and clear frustration with getting the same questions over and over again." President Donald Trump called Comey's firing a move necessary to restore the trust and confidence in the law enforcement agency. "The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions, and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement," Trump said in an official White House statement. The statement also confirmed that the search for Comey's replacement started immediately. The 56-year-old former FBI Director was leading the investigation into whether Trump's campaign and his associates worked with Russia to swing the 2016 election. He has said during hearings that there is no evidence Russian hackers changed any vote tallies in the election, while maintaining they are highly confident the country interfered with the goal of getting Trump elected. Trump attached support from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in support of Comey's dismissal. Comey was nominated to the position with a 10-year term by former President Barack Obama in 2013. His firing comes after the FBI recently edited a sentence of Comey's in his sworn testimony on Capitol Hill, the Associated Press reports. The ousted FBI director told lawmakers that a Hillary Clinton aide had sent "hundreds and thousands" of emails -- some with classified information -- to her husband's computer. AP adds that on Tuesday, the FBI reported in a letter that only a "small number" of the emails found on the laptop were forwarded and that most were backed up on other devices. The Bureau said that most of the classified emails were not the result of forwarding. Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote a letter in favor of Comey's dismissal in saying that the head of the FBI "must be someone who follows faithfully the rules and principles of the Department of Justice and who sets the right example for our law enforcement officials and others in the Department." This is just the most unreal scene to pictureSpicer, hiding in the bushes, asking for the lights to be turned off https://t.co/jgQigjmW3y pic.twitter.com/3Gfi194kxF Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 10, 2017 .@PressSec Sean Spicer reportedly hid in bushes to avoid reporters following controversial James Comey firing https://t.co/RrhdZd9IZi pic.twitter.com/KYnV1hZSYV New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) May 10, 2017 The mystery surrounding the death of a giant rabbit that was shipped from London to Chicago last month just deepened, with an attorney alleging the animal may have been accidentally locked in a freezer for 16 hours after its United Airlines flight landed in the U.S. Simon, a 3-foot-long Continental Giant rabbit, had been purchased by an Iowa-based investors group that hoped it could win the Iowa State Fair's biggest rabbit contest in August, and be the centerpiece of some fundraising initiatives, according to The Des Moines Register and USA Today. The animal's owners are now asking for an investigation into Simon's death. Des Moines attorney Guy Cook said at a news conference earlier this week that an airline employee has reportedly said the rabbit may have been accidentally locked in a freezer after arriving in Chicago. The owners also want to know why United cremated the rabbit without permission, making an autopsy impossible, the attorney said. "Whatever the cause of Simon's death may be, Simon died in the care of United Airlines and its decision to destroy his remains establishes a reckless disregard for the Simon Group's rights and are indicative of the negligent care United Airlines provided Simon," a demand letter from the attorney reads. But United has denied the freezer claim, calling it "completely false." In an email to the Des Moines Register, a United spokesman said the rabbit was doing fine after it arrived in Chicago. A short time later, an employee found it dead. At the time, Simon was in a PetSafe kennel facility kept at 70 degrees, spokesman Charles Hobart said. "The assertion that Simon died in a freezer is completely false," he said. joe-jimenez-mulholland4.jpg Joe Jimenez was placed on the seven-day DL by Triple-A Toledo. (Mike Mulholland, MLive) PHOENIX -- Detroit Tigers right-handed relief prospect Joe Jimenez is going on the disabled list, but his back strain isn't thought to be serious. Jimenez was optioned back to Triple-A Toledo on May 1 and hasn't pitched for the Mud Hens since May 3. The move was made retroactive to May 5, when he started experiencing back tightness, so Jimenez would be eligible to come off the DL as early as this weekend. Jimenez has had two short stints with the big-league club in 2017, giving up six earned runs on five hits -- including two home runs -- in 4 1/3 innings. The Tigers could be searching for a new closer with veteran Francisco Rodriguez struggling. Jimenez, 22, could one day be in that conversation, but the Tigers want him to continue to work on his slider in Toledo. To fill Jimenez's spot, the Tigers promoted Jeff Ferrell from Double-A Erie. The Mud Hens also recently released veteran first baseman James Loney. Miguel Sano FILE - In this May 6, 2017, file photo, Minnesota Twins' Miguel Sano defends third base in a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, in Minneapolis. Major League Baseball has upheld a one-game suspension of Minnesota third baseman Miguel Sano for his role in a scrap with Detroit last month. MLB announced Sano must sit out Tuesday, May 9, 2017, in Chicago with the Twins playing the White Sox. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File) PHOENIX -- The commissioner's office has officially closed the book on the incident between the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins last month that began when JaCoby Jones was hit in the face by a pitch. A one-game suspension for Twins third baseman Miguel Sano was upheld on appeal. Sano will sit out Tuesday night's game against the Chicago White Sox. Tigers pitcher Matthew Boyd threw a pitch behind Sano in retaliation for Jones getting hit earlier in the April 22 game at Target Field. Sano took a step toward the mound and pointed his bat at Boyd and shoved Tigers catcher James McCann, who had stepped in front of him. Benches cleared, but no punches were thrown. The league said Sano was suspended for "aggressive actions." Boyd was fined, but not suspended. McCann was not punished. Jones was placed on the disabled list with a lacerated lip. He was recently optioned to Triple-A Toledo after completing a rehab assignment there. Feelings were mixed in the Liberty Korea Party on Tuesday night when it became clear that its candidate Hong Joon-pyo trailed frontrunner Moon Jae-in by over 15 percent. Moon was elected president with 41.1 percent of the votes, but Hong came an unexpected second with 24.03 percent despite the taint of coming from disgraced ex-President Park Geun-hye's party. Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party, not long ago the great white hope of supporters of political reform, came a sorry third with 21.41 percent. Premier Li Keqiang called for development of advanced manufacturing during a visit to Foxconn, a well-known sci-tech manufacturer, in Zhengzhou, provincial capital of Henan, on May 9. He spoke with Terry Gou, president of Foxconn. Premier Li hoped that Foxconn will set up its high-end research and development center and the whole industrial chain in the park. The government will continue to enhance opening up and optimize the business environment, said the Premier. China is a huge market and has abundant human resources, which makes it the best destination for investment in the manufacturing industries, he added. The company set up an online college and makers salon to encourage innovation in its employees. Employees can earn reward points by attending online training, which will be connected to their salary increases and promotions, and if their innovation plans are adopted by the company, they can share in the profits. The Premier said big companies should participate in mass innovation and entrepreneurship, and that is our innovation, a person in charge at the company told the Premier. Premier Li encouraged the employees at Foxconn to increase their points and wished them a brighter future. The Premier also visited the companys first intelligent unmanned production workshop, and then went to the precision assembly and test workshop, which employs more than 2,000 workers. He was concerned about the workers incomes and protection equipment, and told them that working in manufacturing should value the craftsmens spirit of continuing to improve and the makers spirit of never-ending pursuit. [May 10, 2017] Ethiopia's INSA Agency Selects Eutelsat for New Ethiosat TV Platform Regulatory News: One day ahead of the NexTV CEO event in Mauritius, Ethiopia's Information Network Security Agency (INSA), in charge of the transformation of the country's high-tech and security industry, officialised the launch of Ethiosat, its new TV platform. INSA has inked a multi-year contract with Eutelsat (News - Alert) Communications (Paris:ETL) for capacity at its 7/8 West neighbourhood, the pole position for satellite TV in the Middle East and North Africa. Launching with nine national channels, Ethiosat will progressively ramp-up with additional content. A single satellite TV platform Ethiopia's national satellite TV landscape currently features more than 30 channels that broadcast from multiple satellites. The new platform offers licensed channels the opportunity to broadcast in a single platform, ensuring easy reception for TV homes across the country and accelerating digital take-up. The first channels, including EBC (Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation) and Oromia TV[1], are available to homes on a Free-to-Air (FTA) basis. Multiple national and regional channels as well as commercial broadcasters are also candidates for inclusion in the flagship platform. Easier route to digital entertainment Viewers can access Ethiosat using a single 90cm antenna and set-up box rather than sourcing content through multiple providers at multiple orbital positons. The new platform also taps into the installed base of antennas already equipped for reception from the popular 7/8 West neighbourhood. A game-changer for Ethiopia's media landscape Michel Azibert, Eutelsat's Chief Commercial and Development Officer, said: "This contract puts EUTELSAT 8 West B fimly on Ethiopia's broadcasting map and is indicative of a new wave of growth in the country's digital TV market. The pull of our 7/8 West neighbourhood is driven by a strong channel line-up of over 1,200 channels and the diversity and exclusivity of free-to-air content." Gebremeskel Teklemariam, Directorate Director at INSA, added: "Ethiosat will be a game-changer for our media landscape. In drawing on the rich experience and expertise of Eutelsat, INSA can broadcast a diverse line-up of services across Ethiopia, further enriching the 7/8 West satellite neighbourhood with quality and compelling content." How to receive Ethiosat on EUTELSAT 8 West B Frequency: 11 512 MHz Vertical polarisation DVB-S2, 8 PSK, FEC 2/3 Symbol rate: 30 MBaud 8PSK About Eutelsat Communications Established in 1977, Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL, ISIN code: FR0010221234) is one of the world's leading and most experienced operators of communications satellites. The company provides capacity on 39 satellites to clients that include broadcasters and broadcasting associations, pay-TV operators, video, data and Internet service providers, enterprises and government agencies. Eutelsat's satellites provide ubiquitous coverage of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Americas, enabling video, data, broadband and government communications to be established irrespective of a user's location. Headquartered in Paris, with offices and teleports around the globe, Eutelsat represents a workforce of 1,000 men and women from 37 countries who are experts in their fields and work with clients to deliver the highest quality of service. For more about Eutelsat please visit www.eutelsat.com [1] Complete line-up of channels on Ethiosat: EBC, EBC3, Adiss TV, ES TV, Oromia TV, TIGRAI TV, Southern TV, Amhara TV, Walta TV www.eutelsat.fr - Follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @Eutelsat_SA and Facebook (News - Alert) Eutelsat.SA View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170510005735/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [May 09, 2017] Silver Spring Networks Expands Smart Grid Program in Mexico City, Adds New Deployment in Southeast Mexico for Comision Federal de Electricidad Silver Spring Networks, Inc. (NYSE: SSNI) today announced the expansion of its program for Comision Federal de Electricidad's (CFE) 'Reduccion de Perdidas de Energia en Distribucion' (Loss Reduction Projects on Distribution) smart grid program, in partnership with Tecnologias EOS. Silver Spring Networks' standards-based wireless IoT technology will be integrated into EOS subsystems to connect approximately 92,000 Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) devices across Mexico City's Southern District and approximately 71,000 AMI devices in Southeast Mexico through cabinet-based solutions. Silver Spring Networks previously detailed the award to connect 71,000 AMI devices in Southeast Mexico during its second quarter 2016 earnings conference call on August 4, 2016. CFE, the largest utility in the Americas, serves more than 40 million customers across 16 divisions throughout Mexico. With today's announcement, Silver Spring will be present in three of CFE's divisions. In 2015, Silver Spring announced its selection to connect 140,000 AMI devices in Mexico City's Central District. CFE recently unveiled its 2017-2021 Plan, which includes a $13.7 billion investment in distribution networks, including modernization and the development of a smart grid. Silver Spring has partnered with Tecnologias EOS at CFE to integrate Silver Spring's IPv6 platform and SensorIQ, an application for data collection and delivery to enable remote reading, command, and control of the meters housed in a cabinet to help prevent non-technical loss for residents and businesses. The cabinet solution will also enable Tecnologias EOS to provide remote indoor displays to help customers monitor their energy usage. "Silver Spring Networks' deployment in Mexico delivers on its promised benefits by helping CFE improve the reliability of its service and give its customers the tools to better manage their energy usage," said Bernardo Castro Inclan, CEO, Tecnologias EOS. "Its proven multi-application network delivers the security, scalability, performance and range required to meet the unique needs of these service areas dramatically varied dense urban and remote rural topographies." "Through our collaboration with Tecnologias EOS, CFE, the largest utility in the Americas, is deploying Silver Spring Networks' smart grid solutions in two of Mexico City's three service districts," said Dave Whalen, General Manager - Americas, Silver Spring Networks. "Advanced metering helps address inefficient use of energy, improves grid reliability, lowers pollution, and enables the utility to deliver better quality of service for increased customer satisfaction. CFE's success with loss redution through its use of smart grid solutions provides a clear example for other energy providers in high-growth markets that are looking to modernize their infrastructure while maintaining profitability." With more than 26 million enabled devices delivered, Silver Spring works with utilities on five continents including AEP Ohio, AusNet Services, Baltimore Gas & Electric, CESC Limited, CitiPower and Powercor, ComEd, Consolidated Edison, CPFL Energia, CPS Energy, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, Florida Power and Light Company, Pepco Holdings Inc., and Singapore Power, to deliver its proven, reliable and IPv6 standards-based platform. For more information, please visit www.ssni.com/solutions/smart-utilities/. Join the Silver Spring Networks Conversation Read more on the Silver Spring Connect blog at www.ssni.com/blog/ www.ssni.com/blog/ Follow @SilverSpringNet on Twitter (News - Alert) Like Silver Spring Networks on Facebook at www.facebook.com/silverspringnetworks Learn more about the Wi-Sun Alliance and the value of open standards-based IoT networking at www.wi-sun.org About Silver Spring Networks Silver Spring Networks enables the Internet of Important Things by reliably and securely connecting things that matter. Cities, utilities, and companies on five continents use the company's cost-effective, high-performance IoT network and data platform to operate more efficiently, get greener, and enable innovative services that can improve the lives of millions of people. With more than 26.0 million devices delivered, Silver Spring provides a proven standards-based platform safeguarded with military grade security. Silver Spring Networks' customers include Baltimore Gas & Electric, CitiPower & Powercor, ComEd, Consolidated Edison, CPS Energy, Florida Power & Light, Pacific Gas & Electric, Pepco Holdings, and Singapore Power. Silver Spring has also deployed networks in Smart Cities including Copenhagen, Glasgow, Paris, Providence, and Stockholm. To learn more, visit www.ssni.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements about Silver Spring Networks' expectations, plans, intentions, and strategies, including, but not limited to statements regarding the scope and benefits of Silver Spring's engagement with Tecnologias EOS and CFE. Statements including words such as "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" or "future" and statements in the future tense are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions, which, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties include the successful implementation and deployment of the engagement, as well as those described in Silver Spring Networks' documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to Silver Spring Networks as of the date hereof. Silver Spring Networks assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170509006290/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] In a visit to Central Chinas Henan province from May 8 to 9, Premier Li Keqiang asked local authorities to further streamline administration to improve the business environment, and encouraged enterprises to make technological breakthroughs to facilitate Chinas industrial upgrading. On May 8, Premier Li visited the Kaifeng area of China (Henan) Pilot Free Trade Zone, which is one of the first free trade zones set in the central region. The Premier praised local authorities efforts in streamlining administration and improving the business environment, by integrating business certifications and licenses and setting up a unified online portal for business registration. While talking with citizens in the comprehensive service hall, Premier Li learned that many of them came from developed coastal areas or abroad to invest or start businesses in the free trade zone. As the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, local government should further streamline administration, delegate power to lower levels, enhance regulations and optimize services to reduce institutional transaction costs, in order to attract more investors and stimulate the entrepreneurship and innovation enthusiasm of the whole society, said the Premier. After he heard reports on the renovation work of shantytowns and old districts in Kaifeng, Premier Li paid a visit to residents in Daxing community, where houses are shabby, vulnerable to bad weather, and exposed to old wiring. Premier Li stressed that shantytowns of this kind should be renovated as soon as possible. Renovation of old historical districts and shantytowns should be given equal weight. Efforts should be made to improve the living conditions of shantytown residents, while protecting historical relics, he said. Beach areas along the lower reaches of the Yellow River are prone to floods, where 2 million people of Henan and Shandong provinces live. Premier Li visited villagers in the floodplain areas in Fengqiu county, Xinxiang city of Henan, and asked about their daily life and willingness to move. Then he visited a community built as a relocation site, and expressed his delight at the improvements in peoples lives after moving from the beach area. The Premier stressed that living conditions in the floodplain areas should be improved. In past years, the government made great progress in resettling local residents, and will continue to push for the tasks to harness the Yellow River and lift the local people out of poverty. Peoples willingness should be taken into consideration, and different measures should be adopted to fit local conditions, Premier Li said. The central government will continue to offer financial support, the Premier said, encouraging development of diverse fundraising approaches and calling for an increase in support of poverty alleviation, infrastructure construction and industrial development. Priorities should be given to a three-year relocation work of residents in dangerous low-lying beach areas, to ensure safety of the Yellow River basin, and development in the areas, the Premier said. Premier Li showed great concern about manufacturing upgrades. He visited an industrial park of Zoomlion, a heavy industry science and technology company. The Premier praised a China-made, high-powered tractor, urging the company to seize the Made in China 2025 opportunity, achieve core technological breakthrough and promote the industry toward medium-and high-end stages in the process of supply-side structural reform. Informed that April-May data shows that the cloud platform of engineering machinery for the Internet of Things developed by Zoomlion surged over the first quarter, the Premier encouraged the company to enhance monitoring to provide a reference for macro-policy decisions. In the science park of Foxconn, Premier Li visited its intelligent production line, assembly workshop and communicated with the makers team. A person in charge told the Premier that mass innovation and entrepreneurship inspired the wisdom of the employees, offering the younger generation more opportunities through hard work. The Premier told Terry Gou, president of Foxconn, that China is still a popular destination for overseas investment, and hoped that investors could establish research centers here, and not just manufacturing bases, to grasp the opportunities of Chinas transformation and upgrades of industrial structure, promote employment and achieve win-win development. Premier Li affirmed Henan provinces achievements in social and economic development. He hoped that the province will make greater progress in expanding reform and opening up, advance adjustment of economic structure and improve peoples lives to play an important support role in promoting the rise of the central region. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More meeting of the Board of Directors of M/s. BNR Udyog Limited will be held on Monday, 29th day of May, 2017 at 3.30 p.m. at the registered office of the Company at 6-3-650, 218, 2nd Floor, Maheshwari Chambers, Somajiguda ,Hyderabad 500082, Telangana , India to consider the following: 1.Audited financial results for the quarter and year ended 31.03.2017. 2.Audit Report for the quarter and year ended 31.03.2017. 3.Recommendation of dividend, if any, for the financial year ended 31.03.2017. 4.Any other business with the permission of the Chair.Source : BSE Mitessh Thakkar of mitesshthakkar.com told CNBC-TV18, "There is some kind of positive action. You could see yesterday as the market was subdued, IDBI Bank kind of picked up steam in the last one, one and half hours and closed about 3 percent higher. So, looks like a continuation bullish candlestick pattern. I would buy this one with a stop loss at Rs 79 and look for target of around Rs 88." "Britannia Industries is something which is giving a good intraday setup. So, I believe that will also bridge on the upside. That is a buy with a stop loss at Rs 3,525 and look for target close to about Rs 3,730," he said. "I have swing breakout trade on Cadila Healthcare. Cadila has made a fresh high. That is a buy with a stop loss at Rs 464 and look for target of around Rs 495." "A similar trade happened on Chennai Petro. Good price and volume action, a range breakout happening there, so that is a buy as well. Keep a slightly deep stop loss at Rs 380 and look for slightly positional target of Rs 450." "Good price and volume breakout is in BGR Energy as well. It is a fresh buy with a stop loss at Rs 169 for target close to Rs 195." live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Shrikant Chouhan, Senior VP- Technical Research at Kotak Securities recommends the following picks: JSW Energy Limited: BUY: 68.90 / Stop-Loss: 65.1 / Target: 75 Stock has given a break-out of a falling trend line, as shown in the chart with a huge surge in volumes. Despite below-expected results the stock is continuously forming higher-low higher-high pattern on daily time-scale. Stock has formed a base around 60 levels and is rebounding from the same. Also, the 20-day SMA is acting as support to the same. We recommend buying the stock at CMP, for a price target of 75, keeping stop loss at 65.1 with a time horizon of 20 days. Bharat Forge: BUY: 1109.75 / Stop-Loss: 1070/ Target: 1175 Stock is continuously forming higher high-higher low pattern on daily and weekly time scale. The weekly formation suggests a rounding bottom pattern, which could take the stock to all-time high levels. Stock is rebounding from the upward slanting trend line (taking support). We recommend buying the stop keeping stop-loss at 1070 for a price target of 1175, with a time horizon of 20 days. Allahabad Bank: BUY: 87.55 / Stop-Loss: 83.5 / Target: 97 PSU banks have been outperforming the market quite handsomely, and in the same, small-cap PSU banks have been the flavor of the market. Allahabad Bank has come out of a long-term down-trend and the stock has broken out of a falling wedge formation in upwards direction, indicating a start of new strong uptrend. Trader as well as investor should look to create or add position at every support level. We recommend buying the stop keeping stop-loss at 83.5 for a price target of 97, with a time horizon of 20 days. biocon_logo live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Biocon on Wednesday said it has received US FDA observations on Form 483 for its Bengaluru facility. "Observations on Form 483 is a standard outcome of any audit, Biocon spokesperson said in an email statement "Biocon has already responded to US FDA on all observations of the recent audit within stipulated timelines," the statement added. The company didnt specify the nature of these observations. "As a policy we do not comment on any schedule or outcomes of regulatory inspections, unless we believe that there is a material impact. Biocon has a good track record of inspections by the USFDA, European regulators and other regulators from developed and emerging markets," the company added. CNBC-TV18 reported that Biocon has received eight observations for its Bengaluru unit. The observation related to lack of quality oversight in review steps followed in quality control tests, bio-burden sampling during manufacturing of drug product inadequate, among others. The US drug regulator conveys its concerns on manufacturing practices through Form 483. Companies that receive its observations must respond in writing with a corrective action plan and implement it quickly. If the company fails to meet the regulators expectations, a warning letter may be issued. Shares of Biocon dropped 2.92 percent and were trading at Rs 1016.40 on BSE at 12 noon, the benchmark Sensex gained 0.78 percent to 30168.20 points. Nisaba_godrej_1280 With experience of over a decade at Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL), the 39-year-old Nisaba Godrej who will be taking over from her father as executive chairperson, is something of a veteran in her own right. In her various roles at the company, Godrej has displayed her natural chops as a businesswoman in building GCPL as a global brand most notably in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Nisaba, who is an MBA graduate from Harvard Business School, is credited with fine-turning corporate strategy, while her focus on human capital and innovation in Godrej Industries and Associate Companies (GILAC), has resulted in a talent-led work culture. In the over century-old company where loyalties to the promoter family usually are a factor in promotions, Godrej has been seen to merit priority. Godrejs main thrust areas at GCPL have been hiring top talent, widening product base, and buying the right companies. The centrepiece of her push on quality talent was making the organisaiton younger. Thanks to Godrej, the average age of employees is around 35-36 against 40 years earlier. Before leaving for Harvard, she had cut her teeth on work floor of Godrej Group from 2000 to 2004. In 2006, she worked with Sara Lee as a trainee, then a group company. Nisa, as she is known, came into her own when she established an M&A cell in 2009 which triggered a series of eight acquisitions in the following two years. This largely helped GCPL take root in new geographies, and grow in the UK, Latin America, Indonesia and Africa. In 2011, when Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) announced its ambitious plan to aim for a ten-fold jump in revenue over the next ten years. Godrej was seen as the key architect of the firms objective. Under Godrej, the company launched the Rs 1 mosquito repellent for Good Knight Fast Card and a Hit Anti-Roach Gel. She also oversaw the launch of hair care products under the B:Blunt name. GCPL revenues leapt from Rs 3676 crore in FY11 to Rs 9584 crore last fiscal year a jump of 6 percent. GCPLs revenues too soared over 2.5 times in the last six years. Similarly, net profit too grew over three times to Rs 1,304 crore. Nisaba, who is married and has a son, will have her role cut out now to take GCPL to new heights. Shares of Marksans Pharma rose as much as 12 percent on Wednesday, with the company announcing that its Goa facility was approved by UK drug regulatory MHRA. UK's MHRA inspected the plant from February 14 to 17. Facility in Goa manufactures oral solid dosages and soft gelatin capsules. UK contributes one-third of Marksans Rs 902 crore revenue. The company is among the top ten Indian generic companies in the UK. The US FDA also inspected the company's Goa unit from April 3 to 7, 2017. After completion of inspection, there were 4 observations given under Form 483. The company has already started addressing the same and is confident of satisfying the FDA within the stipulated time. Shares of Marksans rose 11.42 percent and were trading at Rs 53.65 on BSE at 2.03 pm, the benchmark Sensex gained 0.85 percent to 30,191.78 points. The company is among the top ten Indian generic companies in the UK. A man walks past the logo of the SoftBank telecommunications company in Tokyo, Japan, May 10, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter - RTX2DKEH Japan-based investor SoftBank has incurred a valuation loss of USD 1.4 billion for the year ending March 31, mainly on account of its two biggest investments in India Snapdeal and Ola. Loss on financial instruments at Fair Value through Profit or Loss (FVTPL) was 160,419 million compared to a gain of 114,377 million in the previous fiscal year, the company reported in a financial filing on Wednesday. Currency fluctuation also played a role in widening the loss for the noted period. The investor had written down as much as USD 555 million in Snapdeal and Ola for the six months ending September 30, 2016. The loss in FY17 mainly resulted from changes in the fair value of the companys financial instruments including preferred shares of Jasper Infotech-led Snapdeal and ANI Technologies that operates Ola. The company said the fair value of these stocks fell sharply between March 2016 and 2017. Pointing to Snapdeals diminishing performance in Indias highly competitive e-commerce market; Softbank report said that low performance has become a trend now. Softbank, one of the primary investors of Snapdeal is currently in discussions with other investors of Snapdeal, especially Nexus Partners, to approve an impending sale to bigger rival Flipkart. The valuation of the company is said to have declined from USD 6.5 billion in early 2016 to just about a billion dollars, this year. Softbank has invested around USD 2 billion across multiple internet ventures in India with Ola and Snapdeal garnering maximum investments. Indian Army's Infantry Combat Vehicles are displayed during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi - RTSXF62 Moneycontrol Research After to-ing and fro-ing for more than a year, the defence ministry is finally close to announcing policy measures to allow the entry of private players in the sector. The strategic partnership model which was mooted by the government for defence manufacturing capacity in the private sector had been stuck in bureaucratic hurdles. A group of bureaucrats wanted the Indian Ordnance factories to be given a chance to develop the equipment while another group was clearly in favour of private sector and international player participation. Despite having 41 factories spread across the country, Indian Ordnance has little to show for their efforts. With nearly three-fourth of defence needs met through imports, Indian Ordnance factories have not kept up with the changing times. The Kelkar Committee had recommended corporatisation of ordinance factories. These factories, which some bureaucrats have been vouching for, spend less than one percent of their turnover in research & development activities. Compare this with global companies where the norm is a 20 percent spend on research. No wonder we are still using antiquated weapons against terrorist forces who have managed to acquire the most modern arms. These factories employ nearly 1 lakh personnel but are not even able to meet 50 percent of product target set out by Indian Army. Given this track record, one wonders why the government wasted over a year to free the defence sector from the shackles of ordinance factories, especially as hostilities between India and Pakistan have been on the rise. Listed companies in the defence sector have fallen out of favour with analysts and fund managers as they have nothing to report in their quarterly conferences. The general reply from these companies every quarter has been that they are waiting for orders from the government. Having spent time and money in acquiring expertise and all the necessary approvals, defence sector stocks have been potential multibagger candidates for long, with hope driving their stock price rather than fundamentals. In fact, defence stocks in the private sector have moved in the last one week after news of government breaking the logjam started appearing in media. Premier Explosives moved by 28 percent in the last one week while Astra Micro has gained 25 percent; however, Reliance Defence did not participate in the rally. Clearing of the strategic model might open up the floodgates for defence sector stocks. Private sector participation is expected to help production of aircraft, helicopters, warships, submarines, armoured vehicles, missiles, command control systems and critical materials. This measure is expected to open up a $20 billion opportunity. Having said that, the risk with defence stocks is that they normally have only one client government. A change in government can result in change in policy and can hamper investments. Governments need to enter into long-term contracts with a steady flow of orders so that there is capacities lying idle will be at minimum. India has topped the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's list of largest defence importers for the last seven years, but this is likely to change as the government has pledged to spend $250 billion by 2025 on weapons and military equipment, most of which will be produced in the country. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is also the defence minister, and has played an important role along with the Prime Ministers Office in clearing the strategic partnership logjam, has already announced incentives for defence sector production in India. The initial handholding will help Indian companies achieve critical mass, which will help them to get ready for next round of growth by tapping the global market. At $1.8 trillion, the global defence market is dominated by large players, none of whom are from India. Defence is among the biggest markets globally, and is kept buoyant by a series of terrorist activities. Indian companies, through their low-cost base and technological competence, have been able to capture nearly all outsourcing markets. The strategic partnership policy will give them the opportunity to exploit defence as well. Mutual funds industry lobby Association of Mutual Funds in India has asked fund houses to freeze non-FATCA compliant accounts with immediate effect, which means non-FATCA compliant investors cannot execute fresh mutual fund transactions. Mutual fund investors will not be able to operate their accounts, which were opened between July 1, 2014 and August 31, 2015, if they were not compliant with tax information sharing law FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act). This move was taken after Ministry of Finance instructed financial institutions--mutual funds, banks and insurance firms--to block non-compliant accounts. "Queries are being received by financial institutions regarding the revised time lines for completion of due diligence. The financial institutions are advised that all efforts should be made to obtain the self-certification (for FATCA compliance)," the ministry said. "The account-holders may be informed that in case self-certifications are not provided till April 30, 2017, the accounts would be blocked, which would mean that the financial institution would prohibit the account holder from effecting any transaction with respect to such accounts," the circular stated. Earlier, the ministry had directed fund houses to comply with FATCA regulations before April 30, 2017. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is an anti-tax evasion law under which fund houses are required to report information on US investors to US IRS (Internal Revenue Service) through CBDT. India agreed in substance to FATCA by signing an Intergovernmental Agreement Model 1 (IGA-1) with the US, in effect from July 9, 2015. Simply put, the legislation is meant to prevent wealthy US individuals from parking money overseas to avoid paying taxes. In a communication sent to fund houses, AMFI has asked not to accept any financial service request such as redemption, lump-sum investment, etc. from non-FATCA compliant investors. However, AMFI directed fund houses to allow such investors to continue with their SIP/SWP/STP until expiry. But such investors will not be allowed to redeem their mutual fund investments. AMFI further said that fund houses will be allowed to process payments arising out of dividend or maturity of closed-ended funds. It also clarified that fund houses can process non-financial service requests such as registration or change in nomination, bank account, mobile number and email address of non-FATCA compliant investors. Non-FATCA compliant investors can still update their FATCA information through all registrar and transfer agents by submitting a self-declaration form. Investors, who have invested in mutual funds after August 31, 2015, are FATCA compliant as fund houses insist investors to submit a self-declaration form right before initiating any transaction. The difficulty is with the accounts opened between July 1, 2014 and August 31, 2015 and this move is likely to affect large fund houses as they have old assets. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The S&P BSE Sensex rallied over 200 points in trade to reclaim mount 30K on Wednesday and hit a fresh record high of 30,207.13. The momentum was strong enough and took as much as 47 stocks to lifetime higher and over 150 stocks hit fresh 52-week highs. Stocks which rose to fresh lifetime highs include names like Eicher Motors, P&G Hygiene , UltraTech Cement, Britannia, Dalmia Bharat, Yuken, OCL India, CESC, Quess Corp, JK Cements, Aarti Industries etc. among others. Stocks which rose to fresh 52-week highs include names like Gillette, Siemens, Century Textiles, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Reliance Capital, Escorts, Havells India, Voltas, Coromandel, Chennai Petro, EID Parry, KEI Industries etc. among others. Indian markets witnessed a breakout on Wednesday amid positive handover from Wall Street and positive commentary from Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). Media reports suggested that India could be looking at higher monsoon rains than forecast. Monsoon remains a key risk for Indian market because it delivers about 70 percent of India's annual rainfall, critical for crops such as rice, cane, corn, cotton and soybeans. India looks likely to receive higher monsoon rainfall than previously forecast as concern over the El Nino weather condition has eased, Reuters reported quoting the chief of the weather office said on Tuesday, raising prospects of higher farm and economic growth. A large part of the rally in the month of May was led by domestic institutional investors (DIIs) who poured in over Rs 2,000 crore while foreign institutional investors remained net sellers. The new fiscal year has started with strong inflows into domestic equity mutual funds which are now driving the direction of India equity markets. Mutual funds Equity and ELSS (Equity Link Savings Scheme) schemes saw aggregate net inflows of Rs.94 bn (US$ 1.5 bn) in April 2017, Deutsche Bank said in a report. The S&P BSE Midcap index also recorded fresh record highs led by gains in Marico, ABB, Emami, JSW Steel, Glenmark, Petronet LNG, UPL, M&M Finance etc. The rally pushed the Nifty50 closer to 9,400 levels to record a fresh record high of 9,392.50 and over 100 stocks on the NSE hit fresh record highs which include names like Honeywell Auto, Bayer Crop, Dalmia Bharat, Century Textiles, HUL, KPR Mills etc. among others. The Nifty50 was trading in a narrow range for the past 8 trading session and was eyeing for a breakout or a breakdown. The positive takeaway from Tuesday session was that the index closed above its crucial support level of 9,300 and 5-days exponential moving average (DEMA). The new fiscal year has started with strong inflows into domestic equity mutual funds which are now driving the direction of India equity markets. Mutual funds Equity and ELSS (Equity Link Savings Scheme) schemes saw aggregate net inflows of Rs 9,400 crore (US$ 1.5 billion) in April 2017, Deutsche Bank said in a report. This is more than twice the April 2016 inflow and 61 percent higher-than-past 12-month average. The trend is also interesting in the context of relatively lean seasonality for the April to June quarter. The inflow momentum is even stronger in balanced funds. The aggregate net subscription of US$1.1 bn is at a historic high and the first billion-dollar-plus monthly inflow into balanced funds, said the note. These inflows underscore the overwhelming trend in the financialization of Indian household savings as the Indian saver gravitates from physical to financial savings. In what appears to be a secular trend, subscriptions into Systematic Investment Plans (monthly annuities) has been rising consistently. Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) reports a monthly inflow of US$ 650 mn through SIPs (Systematic Investment Plans) in March, reflecting the increased interest in recurring savings allocations. It looks like Indian equity valuations are getting dominant support from this trend which has become a dominant driver of Indian household savings over the past two years. The global investment bank is of the view that DIIs are now becoming meaningful determinants of market performance. The surge in mutual fund equity inflows is beginning to insulate the Indian equity market, which has so far been largely determined by the velocity of foreign institutional inflows, it said. Equity AUMs now constitute 26 percent of the aggregate mutual fund AUM. To put in the historical context, on an average Equity AUMs has been 23 percent of aggregate mutual fund AUM over the last 15 years. The high was 37 percent in December 2006. If the economic growth momentum revives and retail enthusiasm builds further, there is a likelihood of higher share of equity AUMs for mutual funds, said the Deutsche Bank note. Patanjali_products Baba Ramdev-led home-grown FMCG major Patanjali Ayurved, which posted a turnover of Rs 10,561 crore in the last fiscal, is now looking at a 10-fold jump in sales in the next five years. "Our turnover was Rs 10,561 crore last (fiscal) year. Now, we are targeting to achieve a turnover of Rs 1 lakh crore in the next five years," said Ramdev at a press conference on Thursday. On the occasion, the yoga guru-cum-entrepreneur announced his company will donate an equal amount of money for various social causes during the next 20 to 25 years. "Foreign companies (operating in India) do not give anything for charity, while we donate 100 per cent of our profit for the betterment of the society. We have set a target of giving away Rs 1 lakh crore for charity, including for education, during the next 20 to 25 years," he said. Asked about his plans for Gujarat, Ramdev said the Patanjali Yogpeeth may come up with a 'Cow Research Centre' in the state. "We are working on a project to increase milk yield of various cow breeds of Gujarat such as Kankreji and Gir. By using various methods and through embryo transplantation, we can increase the yield from 5 litres to almost 50 litres per day," said Ramdev. "It is very much possible that we would set up a Cow Research Centre in Gujarat to carry out these activities. However, you have to wait for a formal announcement on June 21," he added. Uber offices in Queens, New York, US (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid) Taxi-aggregation company Uber has done away with its three-member team model in India and has hired over 1,000 people, making the country as one of its biggest employee bases outside the US. The company is planning to hire more people this year as it looks to scale its marketing, customer support and new businesses such as Uber Eats and UberHire in India, a top executive of the company told Moneycontrol. Out of the 1,000 people, about 400 are based in Hyderabad, in its customer support centre of excellence division. There are functions like customer care, marketing where we need to add resources to be able to keep up with the growth in the business. There are also new businesses - such as the Uber Eats launch that just happenedso that team will scale as the business scales. There are experiments that we do, for example -- Uber Hire. That team needs to get supported as we scale it. The expansion will be mostly linked to how the business scales, Pradeep Parameswaran, head of central operations of Uber India told Moneycontrol.com in his first interaction with any media after joining the company in January. Uber has already invested over USD 1 billion in India. The company that sold its China operations to rival Didi Chuxing is looking to scale more even as biggest rival Ola already has a staff strength of about 6,000 people across functions. We are a thousand people plus now in India, starting with just three people some three and a half years ago, he added. Uber globally has about 9,000 employees and it is present in over 80 countries. Uber entered India in August of 2013, at a time when rivals Ola and Taxi For Sure already had a first mover advantage. The domestic rivals merged together and Ola did away with the telephone booking model which led to a massive cut down in its employee force. Given the aggressive expansion plans, has Uber let go of its famous three-member per city model? Every time a new city launches, we still start with that model. When we launched Dhaka, we started with the same model, so it is our belief. As UberEats is launching, it is launching with a similar model. So there is something around kind of the DNA of the structure, said Parameswaran, who is also responsible for the operations in South Asian countries of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Launched in 2009, Uber has raised over USD 10 billion, making it as one of the most highly valued startups across the world. priyanka.sahay@nw18.com live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Share price of AstraZeneca Pharma and Nitta Gelatin India declined 4 percent and 9 percent respectively intraday Wednesday on poor March quarter (Q4) numbers. AstraZeneca Pharma has registered net loss of Rs 2.9 crore in the quarter ended March 2017 against profit of Rs 50 lakh in the same quarter last fiscal. Total income was down 29.7 percent at Rs 111.6 crore versus Rs 158.8 crore, while its other income was up at Rs 6.4 crore versus Rs 2.1 crore. Nitta Gelatin India's Q4 net profit was down 62.5 percent at Rs 1.5 crore against Rs 4 crore. Its total income was down 19.8 percent at Rs 75.6 crore versus Rs 94.3 crore. The operating profit (EBITDA) fell 60.3 percent at Rs 4.6 crore and EBITDA margin was at 6.1 percent. At 11:39 hrs Nitta Gelatin India was quoting at Rs 199.75, down 6.53 percent and AstraZeneca Pharma was quoting at Rs 960.30, down 3.17 percent on the BSE. Posted by Rakesh Patil live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Shares of Biocon were under pressure as investors turned wary of the US FDAs observations at its Bengaluru unit. The US drug regulator issued eight observations to the unit, which was inspected from March 27 to April 7, 2017, according to a CNBC-TV18 report. The observations for the unit are as follows: - Discrepancies between information submitted and manufacturing process performed - Quality assurance unit approved documents that don't assure apt production and testing - Handling of in-process samples is inadequate - Lack of quality oversight in review steps following in quality control tests - Out of specification procedure does not ensure satisfactory conformance - Solutions for drug substance do not have adequate microbial control - Bioburden sampling during manufacturing of drug product is inadequate - Deviations are initiated and/or closed in time The stock has seen weak movements, with the stock seeing a one-month fall of 8 percent, while its three-day loss stood at 2.41 percent. At 09:39 hrs, Biocon was quoting at Rs 1,012.50, down Rs 34.50, or 3.30 percent on the BSE. It touched an intraday high of Rs 1,015.80 and an intraday low of Rs 984.25. Achiievers Equities' commodity report on Crude oil Crude oil trading range for the day is 2910-3054. Crude oil dropped rattled by concern over slowing demand, a rising U.S. dollar and increasing U.S. crude output. U.S. crude production has risen by over 10 percent since mid- 2016 to 9.3 million bpd, close to the output of top producers Russia and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih: Saudi Arabia has made long term commitment to Asia. Want to play bigger role in meeting Asia demand. SELL CRUDEOIL MAY 2017 @ 2980 SL 3030 TGT 2940-2910.MCX. 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 Workers dry ginger in a storage house in the southern Indian city of Kochi July 13, 2009. India's spices export in the first two months of the fiscal 2008/09 rose 20 percent in volume terms on the back of strong demand for pepper, chilli and jeera, the Spices Board said on Monday. REUTERS/Sivaram V. (INDIA AGRICULTURE BUSINESS) - RTR25MGI Achiievers Equities' commodity report on Jeera Jeera trading range for the day is 18020-18960. Jeera gained on short covering amid falling arrivals in the markets of Gujarat and Rajasthan helping the prices to recover in the coming week. India's 2016-17 jeera export is estimated at 120,000 ton-second highest in a decade. NCDEX accredited warehouses jeera stocks gained by 102 tonnes to 2122 tonnes. BUY JEERA JUN 2017 @ 18480 SL 18350 TGT 18600-18750.NCDEX. 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 today reported over 9 per cent decline in global sales in April at 73,691 units, including that of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) vehicles. The company had sold 81,333 units in April 2016, Tata Motors said in a statement. In the passenger vehicles category, global sales stood at 54,847 units last month as against 51,749 units during the same period in 2016, up 6 per cent. Sales of luxury brand Jaguar Land Rover grew 2.41 per cent to 41,923 units in April compared with 40,933 units in the same month of 2016. However, sales of commercial vehicles declined by 36 per cent to 18,844 units as against 29,584 units in the year-ago month. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday claimed an Electronic Voting Machine can be tampered with "within 90 seconds flat" and dared the Election Commission to provide a EVM to the AAP to prove it. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the AAP will participate in the 'EVM Hackathon' to be oraganised by the poll panel later this month and will prove how an EVM can be tampered with. Sisodia also challenged the EC to allow at least three AAP workers in place of those who service EVMs at store rooms and said they will "completely hack" all machines. During a day-long special session of the Delhi Assembly today, AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj today staged a "live demonstration" on how electronic voting machines can be programmed to favour a particular political party. "He (Bhardwaj) showed how easy it is to hack EVMs and it is being done on a massive scale. It is dangerous for the democracy and the country, and people should raise their voices against it. "The ECI can give us its machines, we will show how to hack it in 90 seconds by merely changing its motherboard," Kejriwal told reporters outside the Assembly. Participating in a discussion over the alleged EVM manipulation in the House, Sisodia said, he wished he was wrong about "EVM tampering". But when a councillor in Mumbai complained that a machine showed his family members' votes going in favour of other candidates his doubt got stronger, Sisodia said. Sisodia summed his attack on the BJP in a couplet. "Ladai jo tumne ye behterin jeeti hai, fareb de ke siyasi jameen jeeti hai...yahi wo sach hai jo main chikh karke bolta hun, chunav tum nahi jeete ye machine jeeti hai. (The magnificent political victory that you just had was possible through deceit. This is a fact that I will reiterate. The elections have been won not by you but by the EVMs)" "We are not raising a question on the democracy of the country. Instead, we are questioning the credibility of EVMs ...several political parties have doubted them," he said. Sisodia also raised the issue of alleged EVM manipulation in Bhind. "The Uttrakhand HC has also ordered seizure of hundreds of EVMs. The Delhi High Court has also issued the same order. In the MCD elections, an AAP candidate was defeated by just two votes in a Chattarpur ward. "There was a difference between polled votes and actual votes which indicates manipulation in the EVMs. This cannot be called technical snag. By saying it cannot be happen (EVM manipulation) thrice, the EC cannot ran away from its responsibility," Sisodia said. For more than a century, the British rule of India was a company-managed affair. Today, that British company is ruled by an Indian. The East India Company started out in 1600 by carrying tea, coffee and luxury goods to the West and also trading in spices. Over the next 150 years, it grew to be so powerful that it assumed control of large parts of India through its own armies. Company rule as it were began around 1757 and expanded to large parts of the subcontinent. A little over a hundred later, that power was taken away. Dissent had been growing among the Indian soldiers deployed in the Company's army. On May 10, 1857, it finally boiled over as Indians in the East India Companys security forces in Meerut rebelled against their employer. A group of sepoys shot dead British offers and rode on to Delhi. The uprising was quelled but the impact was far-reaching. Shortly after the 1857 mutiny, the British Crown took direct control of administrating India. The East India Company was subsequently diminished to a small company trading in tea and coffee before being nationalised by the British government in 1874. It lay largely dormant till the early 2000s, when a Mumbai-born businessman entered the picture. Sanjiv Mehta left India in the 1980s and arrived in the UK to set up an export business. He started with a capital of 100 pounds and eventually sold it for 80,000 pounds as he tapped up opportunities in Eastern Europe created by the fall of the Soviet Union. He encountered the East India Company in 2003, when a group of shareholders wanted to revive the business and approached Mehta to supply them with tea and coffee. None of those individuals were from former British colonies and Mehta felt its ownership should lie in the hands of someone who understood the symbolism of the company. Mehta began buying shares of the company in 2003 and gained complete ownership in 2005. He drew up a 25-year plan to turn it into a luxury products brand and spent the next few years extensively researching the company's history. In 2010, he officially re-launched the company with a luxury store in London. Today, it features 350 products including tea, books, gold coins, spices mustard and jam developed across the world and all inspired by the companys history. The historic East India Company built itself on aggression, but todays East India Company is about compassion, Mehta said in a recent interview to The Guardian. The Income Tax department today issued a notice to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) asking why it should not be prosecuted for alleged falsification of account books and "wilful attempt" to evade tax on donations received by it. The department has issued the show cause notice to the party's convenor - Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal- and three others and has sought the party's reply in this regard by first half of this month. The tax department has charged the party with not filing a "true and correct" contribution report for donations received for the assessment year 2014-15 which have been found to be over Rs 30.08 crore after year long investigations. The taxman said the first audit report filed by the party to it and the Election Commission, under the provisions of the Representation of People Act, were "incorrect and fabricated". The notice said that in view of these charges, the department seeks to file a prosecution complaint (charge sheet) under I-T laws in a court under sections 277A (false statement in verification) and 276C (wilful attempt to evade tax). A maximum of three years rigorous imprisonment and a fine can be levied on an accused once the charges are proved in court. It said that the exemption enjoyed by the Kejriwal-led AAP from paying income tax on donations could also be withdrawn as these privileges have been "wrongly claimed". Political parties enjoy tax exemption under section 13A of the Income Tax Act. The notice while acknowledging that the party had accepted that there were "certain errors" in its first report filed in this regard, added that this admission by the AAP was itself an evidence that its audit report was fabricated initially but was corrected after the taxman began investigations of its audit books and accounts. AAP's national treasurer Raghav Chadha termed the development as a "classic case of victimisation". "In the last four days, we have received four notices from the Centre-- from one wing of the I-T or the other, or the MHA. It is a classic case of victimisation. They (the Centre) have gone through every record of ours but have not been able to find anything. This is just concoction to malign and harass us. It is my legitimate right to revise my statement and you cannot prosecute me for that," he told PTI. The tax department, early this year, had submitted these findings to the Election Commission too. Kulbhushan Jadhav The International Court of Justice stayed the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order by the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month, official sources said. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Reacting to the development, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said, "I have spoken to the mother of Kulbhushan Jadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Art 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court." Swaraj said senior advocate Harish Salve was representing India before the ICJ in the Jadhav case. ICJ President Ronny Abraham has reportedly written a letter to Pakistan government, asking it to act in such a way which would enable the implementation of any order the ICJ may issue in the case. India, in its appeal, contended that it was not informed of Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further asserted that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the Pakistani authorities were denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite repeated requests. "Referring to 'the extreme gravity and immediacy of the threat that authorities in Pakistan will execute an Indian citizen in violation of obligations Pakistan owes to India', India urges the Court to deliver an order indicating provisional measures immediately, 'without waiting for an oral hearing'," India's appeal said. Jadhav, 46, was given death sentence last month by the Field General Court Martial in Pakistan, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learned about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. "India claims that 'linking assistance to the investigation process to the grant(ing) of consular access was by itself a serious violation of the Vienna Convention'," the ICJ release said. The ICJ said India urged it to restrain Pakistan from carrying out the death sentence, and direct Islamabad to take steps to annul the decision of the military court. 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." Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. The appeal on behalf of Jadhav was given last month 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. Kulbhushan Jadhav Pakistani officials today kept mum over the International Court of Justice's stay over the execution of Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on charges of "spying". Pakistan has not officially reacted to the Hague-based ICJ's order. The local media, which was initially slow to respond, rejected India's claim. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online did not report about the Indian claim of the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. Jadhav, 46, was awarded the death sentence by a Field General Court Martial last month. India moved the ICJ against Pakistan, accusing the latter of violating the Vienna Convention in the case of Jadhav. India, in its appeal, contended that it was not informed of Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further asserted that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the Pakistani authorities were denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite repeated requests. The ICJ through a statement on May 8 confirmed that it received an application from India. In New Delhi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj yesterday said that she spoke to the mother of Jadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Article 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court." 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." Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi waves following a joint statement to the press with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, in Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, Wednesday, June 8, 2016. Modi met with the Mexican President Wednesday evening during a short working visit to the country.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka to attend the biggest Buddhist festival 'Vesak Day' as its chief guest. The 'International Day of Vesak' celebrations, to be held in Colombo from May 12 to 14, will include an International Buddhist Conference in which over 400 delegates from more than 100 countries will participate. Vesak, the most important day in the Buddhist calendar, marks the commemoration of Lord Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing away. Briefing reporters on Modi's visit, Joint Secretary (Indian Ocean Region) in the External Affairs Ministry, Sanjay Panda said no formal talks have been scheduled, but Modi will be interacting with the Sri Lankan leaders. "We do not envisage any formal talks but he will be interacting with the leaders and review the relationship in its entirety. Nothing is specifically earmarked for discussion during the current visit," he said. During the two-day trip, his second to Sri Lanka since becoming the Prime Minister, Modi will also visit Kandy in the Central Province, which is famous for production of Ceylon Tea. Panda said India's ties with Sri Lanka have witnessed qualitative transformation in the last few years and both the countries are willing to strengthen and diversify the relationship further. "We feel our destinies are intertwined. We hope the Prime Minister's visit will be able to provide further momentum in the ties between the two countries," Panda said. Modi had travelled to Sri Lanka in March, 2015. His visit to Sri Lanka comes close on the heels of a trip by his counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe here. During that visit, the two countries had signed a pact to boost economic ties as Modi and Wickremesinghe discussed a range of bilateral issues and matters of mutual interest. The pact provided a framework to identify the infrastructure projects where India could invest. Kulbhushan Jadhav Pakistan Army today said it will respond at an "appropriate level" to any query by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the death sentence given to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav by its military court on the charges of "spying". Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor told the media that Jadhav was sentenced by a military court after "due process of law". "If the ICJ requests Pakistan anything about Jadhav, then the government of Pakistan will respond to it at an appropriate level, he said. He said "the process is continuing within the army over the decision by the (military) court against Jadhav. However, he did not explain the nature of "process". The statement came after Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and discussed the ICJ's stay order on the execution of Jadhav. On the beheading of two Indian security force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, he said, "We are a disciplined force and dont believe in such things. We would not have returned an Indian soldier with respect if we were involved in mutilations." Pakistan sent back an Indian soldier who crossed the Line of Control last year. Earlier, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said the government was analysing the Hague-based ICJ's authority in freezing the execution of Jadhav. Aziz said the government would issue a statement on the issue in the next few days. "We are analysing the Indian petition and the ICJ's authority in this case, Aziz said after the Hague-based ICJ stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav. Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif in a tweet accused India of using Jadhav's death conviction to "divert" attention from its "state-sponsored" terrorism in the country. "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security," Asif tweeted. The order by the ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. Pakistan's media rejected India's claim over the order. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online reported that ICJ has received the application of India, but did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhav's sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learnt about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa today discussed the International Court of Justice's stay order on the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, media reports said. During the meeting, which lasted for around 90 minutes, Sharif was briefed on the "latest situation" regarding Jadhavs case, the Geo News reported. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order by the Hague-based ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. In the meeting, Sharif and Bajwa also discussed other issues including the Dawn leaks controversy and Pak-Afghan relations, the channel said. The meeting between the army chief and the premier is the second one within a week and is significant in light of the civil-military row over Dawn's leaked report that had angered the powerful army. On May 6, Prime Minister Sharif had met the army chief and both discussed the Dawn Leaks issue, among other things. Sharif and the army chief had agreed that the issues surrounding Dawn leaks would be dealt with amicably. In October, a columnist for Dawn newspaper wrote a front-page story about a rift between civilian and military leaderships over militant groups that operate from Pakistan but engage in proxy war against India and Afghanistan. The army took strong exception to the Dawn story. The military had called the leak of the meeting a breach of national security and urged strong, punitive action against those responsible for leaking information to the newspaper. 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 has fired FBI Director James Comey who was leading the investigation into whether his election campaign had ties to Russia's alleged interference in the US polls. In a letter, Trump told Comey that he was no longer effectively able to lead the bureau and it was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in it. "You are hereby terminated and removed from the office, effective immediately," Trump said in the letter. The shock move comes days after Comey testified on Capitol Hill about the FBI's investigation into Russia's election meddling and a possible collusion between the country and Trump's campaign. In the letter, Trump acknowledged that Comey had informed him "on three separate occasions" that he was not under investigation. "I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau," he added. The White House said the search for a new FBI director would begin immediately. Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters: "The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General (Jeff Sessions) and the deputy Attorney General (Rod Rosenstein) regarding the dismissal." In a statement released by the White House, Trump said: "The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement." Comey had courted controversy during the 2016 presidential polls when he revealed a renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton's email use, which the Democrat claimed had hurt her chances of becoming president. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in his letter to Trump, criticised Comey's handling of the Clinton probe, including the director's decision to hold a press conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about her. "I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgement that he was mistaken," Rosenstein said, adding that Comey was wrong to "usurp" the Attorney General's authority on July 5 last year and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. In a separate letter, Sessions said he has concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI, based on his evaluation as well the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General. "It is essential that this Department of Justice clearly reaffirm its commitment to longstanding principles that ensure the integrity and fairness of federal investigations and prosecutions," Sessions said. The chronicle of a life split between urban Manhattan and rural Montana. 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, Letter to editor: Voting is necessary to protect democracy Rabbis installation at Keneseth Israel will get a boost of student creativity 'Captain America' star Chris Evans has been named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive, and admits his mother will enjoy being able to "brag" about his new title. 10 hours ago All this week, we bring you a Guide to What the Experts to Say; the top insights from the Morningstar Investment Conference in London; emerging markets, stock picks and the impact of politics. Emma Wall: Hello and welcome to Morningstar. I'm Emma Wall and I'm jointed today by Newton's Iain Stewart to talk about market uncertainty. Hello Iain. Iain Stewart: Good morning. Wall: So, over the last year we've had several macro results, which have resulted in the markets doing the opposite of what we might expect, Brexit. For example, Donald Trump and indeed even this week, Macron being elected, so stock markets in France and across Europe fall when we think they would be positive. So why are we in this environment now where markets seem to do the opposite of what we expect? Stewart: Yeah, I think, its, what we think it's because of continued support from central banks. So, as you're aware, we've used a lot of unorthodox mandatory policy over the last few years and thats been expressly designed to support markets and to inflate them. Because its kept going on, investors have become conditioned to that. And in fact, I think they almost anticipate that if there may be something bad going to happen then the central banks will come in again or maybe even inject liquidity ahead of it. I think that was probably what we saw through 2016, the lows there. There was a huge ramping up in the aggregate asset purchases, which is another way of saying money printing by central banks and that allowed markets to breeze through some of these what one might have thought were sort of calamitous events. Wall: And how do you invest in that kind of backdrop. Do you assume that it will carry on going forever more? Or do you have to take a difficult pillar at some point and think, central bank is going to stop propping this up? Stewart: Well, we're investing for absolute returns, so we're really not keyed into thinking about what the stock markets are doing. We're trying to invest for our investors in a target return basis, relatively a little bit incremental returns. And our approach is to try and balance the return that we can get from risk assets with capital preservation. So, if we can incrementally get a bit of return, but if markets are weak, we don't capture all of that, then we can make up a better return in the long run. But really, we think that the sort of euphoria that we've seen in our markets as a result, we think of excess stimulus. Mix is very cautious, so we are very hedged, perhaps too early, perhaps we're being cautious too early. But we do think there is a lot of tensions building and low volatility is quite often followed by periods of high volatility. So, that would give us the opportunity we think to invest on a better basis for our investors in the long run. Wall: Because we have seen incredibly low volatility. I mean, one of the first things I was taught when I first started covering investment was markets do not like uncertainty. Stewart: Yeah. Wall: And yet, markets have been pretty sanguine about uncertainty over the last year. So, do you think actually this is giving people false hope, and we should be prepared for a lot more volatility in the short to medium term? Stewart: Well, yes, I think we will agree that we will have volatility in the longer term. And in a sense you are right that high levels of valuation, which imply high levels of certainty, are coinciding with very low levels of volatility. In fact, levels of volatility that were last seen in 2006, for example, and that was the period where investors were starting to believe that, as Gordon Brown said, there was an end to boom and bust. And so that gave them the confidence to put in more gearing to lever more, to add more debt. And in a way we've got a similar situation now, we think debt growth is very rapid, particularly in some of the developing economies like China. And that low volatility encourages it. So, inevitably, if some of those debts go bad, which they can often do at the end of a cycle, then the volatility that we'd expect will come aboard. Wall: So, Gordon Brown said end to boom and bust in 2006 sold-off all our gold, followed by market crash and gold price rallying. Is that what you are predicting? Stewart: No, we're not predicting that at all. You know the market clearly chime but they don't repeat in that sense. But I guess what it's suggesting is that it probably is still a boom/bust cycle in our minds, because we don't see that underlying economic activity is really responsible for the sorts of levels of prices that we've got in financial assets. So, some sort of readjustment of that would make sense. And then that gives us an opportunity to invest with better expected returns because the higher the price that you pay for an asset broadly the lower return you can expect on it. Wall: Iain, thank you very much. Stewart: Thank you. Wall: This is Emma Wall for Morningstar. Thank you for watching. A fresh wave of fee cuts from iShares and db X-trackers, Europes largest ETF providers, has prompted Morningstar analysts to upgrade two ETFs. Amongst the cuts was the iShares S&P 500 Dist ETF (IUSA), which slashed its ongoing charge from 0.40% to 0.07%, bringing it into line with its accumulating stablemate the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (CSP1). In response, it has been upgraded from a Bronze to a Gold rating to match our most highly regarded S&P 500 trackers. The previous rating differential reflected the gaping disparity in price between the ETF and its direct peers, most of which charge a fee of less than 0.15%. The long overdue move lifts the fund from being an over-priced outlier to one of the very cheapest and best S&P 500 passive funds available. Elsewhere, db X-trackers has trimmed fees on a string of ETFs, including the MSCI Japan ETF (XMJD), which has dropped its ongoing charge from 0.5% to 0.3%. Previously rated Bronze, this ETF had been penalised as one of the most expensive funds tracking the MSCI Japan index. Following the move, which we expect to boost future returns, we have upgraded the fund from a Bronze to a Silver rating. The news of these upgrades will not come as a surprise to those familiar with Morningstar as a vocal critic of high fees. In numerous studies, we have identified management fees as the best predictor of future fund performance, therefore it is logical that fees play a pivotal role in our analyst ratings methodology. In the highly commoditised and fiercely competitive passive fund market, this role is only further emphasised. Even fee cuts which would be considered as small in the active world, can cause an index tracker to stand-out from its passive peers. Not All Improvements Merit Upgrade This said, not all price changes will result in ratings change. For instance, as part of their recent cuts, iShares also halved the fees on the EURO STOXX 50 EUR Dist ETF (EUE) to 0.16%. Although this fee cut has improved the competitiveness of this fund relative to peers, we still think that the Euro Stoxx 50 strategy does not represent a strong investment proposition and the fund will retain its Neutral rating. Similarly, db x-trackers reduced fees on the db x-trackers MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (XMMD) from 0.65% to 0.49%. While any such move should be applauded, in this case, the cut still leaves the fund charging more than double that of directly comparable rivals such as the Amundi MSCI Emerging Markets ETF [AMEM]. For this reason, the fund retains its Neutral rating. One strength of our holistic approach to rating is that it allows us to absorb new information, determine materiality versus the investment universe and reassign or reaffirm ratings on a case-by-case basis. At the age of 34 Keira Roth worried that she had left it a little late to start saving. In the last five years she has started contributing to both a pension and stocks and shares ISA, but she wishes she had put more aside when she started working. It would have been better to have started saving in my early 20s. But I cant put the clock back now, she said. Like many younger people, Roth found it difficult to save, as she had very little spare cash and was not knowledgeable about pensions and finance. Roth explains: One of my first jobs was working for the publishers EMAP. At the time they had a really good pension, where the company contributed a significant percentage of your salary into the scheme. But for some daft reason I never got around to signing up. Pensions didnt seem to be anything I needed to worry about then. Now, of course, I think what an idiot to have not taken those contributions that were available. Auto-enrolment Pennies Stack Up Roth, who lives in Buckinghamshire with her partner, now juggles a number of part-time jobs none of which offer quite so generous pension benefits. She is the warden of a Quaker building and also has a career in digital fundraising and campaigning. Roth has recently also set up her own technology company, alongside her other employment. Thanks to the pension reforms in recent years she is now automatically enrolled into a pension with the digital company she works for. She says: Every month contributions are automatically deducted through my pay-as-you-earn salary. They are invested in a NEST pension scheme. Its not a huge amount at present, but hopefully if I keep investing this will grow into a reasonable nest-egg over time. The NEST Scheme was set up by the Government, as a default pension scheme for workplaces who did not have the time or inclination to set up their own. All companies in the UK have to provide pension for staff now, thanks to auto-enrolment rules. Many have opted for the NEST scheme because there are no minimum contributions, so its suitable for those who have workers on lower wages, or part-time earnings. Rather than select individual funds, workers like Roth, have their money automatically invested in a retirement date fund. This assumes that people will take their money at the age of 65, or their State Pension age, whichever is higher. Money is moved from higher risk investments into lower risk assets as people approach this date. Most of the assets are in lower cost passive funds. ISA Investing for Property Purchase Elsewhere, Roth has started saving into an ISA, which she hopes at some point will enable her to get a foot on the housing ladder. She says: One of advantages of the wardens job is that it comes with its own flat. So this has certainly helped savings-wise. Roth would like to buy a flat to rent out while she is living in her current accommodation. This would give her a foothold in the property market, and she hopes to benefit from future house price gains. She adds: Its difficult being a first-time buyer; mortgages for first-time buyers looking for a buy-to-let seem few and far between. Passive Funds and Premium Bonds Roth left the construction of her ISA portfolio to the professionals, as she felt a little daunted by choosing individual funds. She chose to open an account with Nutmeg, selecting one of their managed portfolios. Roth opted for one of the higher risk portfolios, but investing hasnt been a smooth ride. She explains: For the first couple of years, the value of my investments seemed to fall. I was tempted to stop investing, or switch my money elsewhere. But I had to tell myself that this was a long-term investment and that ups and downs were inevitable. Its just off-putting if you start off with the downs. She kept the monthly direct debit rolling and tried not to look at the balance too often, and her patience has been rewarded, with performance picking up over the past 12 months. Roth says: I wasnt particularly happy with the result of the EU referendum, but its clearly not affected my investments too much. Since them the portfolio has been doing really well and over all Ive made about a 10% return on my money. Elsewhere Roth also has substantial number of Premium Bonds, reflecting: I probably have too much really, as the returns are pretty non-existent. However, she points out that starting her own business and juggling paid employment means that she does need access to cash savings periodically. I know my money is safe, and I can get at it if I need to. It seems to me that the returns are not much different to keeping them in a bank account, or cash ISA, but here, theres always the possibility of winning one of the bigger prizes. As her business moves onto a more even footing Roth may channel some of these Premium Bond savings into her ISA. Earlier this week, Home Capital Group Inc. announced that three veteran business executives will be joining its board effective immediately. The alternative lenders board appointments of Canadian Coalition for Good Governance founder Claude Lamoureux, former Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System CEO Paul Haggis, and former Bank of Montreal senior vice president of real estate Sharon Sallows came amid news that it has used $1.4-billion of its $2-billion credit line and suspended its quarterly dividend to shareholders. I think this is an organization that needs help, and Im willing to help, according to Lamoureux , who previously served as chief executive of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. To me, this is an important organization in Canada, and Im willing to lend a hand, he told The Globe and Mail. Where did they get in trouble? Not telling the truth right away. To me, its simple in life you just have to tell the facts, and people can see if they are bad facts or good facts. Home Capital added that independent director Brenda Eprile has been appointed chair, while former chair Kevin Smith will remain a director. I took on the role as chair because I believe in the fundamental premise of Home Capital, which is to assist home buyers, many of whom are new Canadians, to obtain mortgage financing and achieve their dream of home ownership, Eprile stated. Analysts such as Jeff Fenwick of Cormark Securities Inc. lauded the lenders move to incorporate directors with relevant expertise into its board. This is a very high calibre of new members, Fenwick said. These additions offer significant credibility to the view that a solution will be found to stabilize Home sufficiently to support an orderly process for pursuing the best strategic options for the firm. Meanwhile, staff of the corporation told the Crime Branch that the letter pad issued in the name of the mayor was fake. U.S. shale explorers are boosting drilling budgets 10 times faster than the rest of the world to harvest fields that register fat profits even with the recent drop in oil prices. Flush with cash from a short-lived OPEC-led crude rally, North American drillers plan to lift their 2017 outlays by 32 percent to $84 billion, compared with just 3 percent for international projects, according to analysts at Barclays Plc. Much of the increase in spending is flowing into the Permian Basin, a sprawling, mile-thick accumulation of crude beneath Texas and New Mexico, where producers have been reaping double-digit returns even with oil commanding less than half what it did in 2014. Thats bad news for OPEC and its partners in a global campaign to crimp supplies and elevate prices. Wood Mackenzie Ltd. estimates that new spending will add 800,000 barrels of North American crude this year, equivalent to 44 percent of the reductions announced by the Saudi- and Russia-led group. The specter of American supply is real, Roy Martin, a Wood Mackenzie research analyst in Houston, said in a telephone interview. The level of capital budget increases really surprised us. Drilling budgets around the world collapsed in 2016 as the worst crude market collapse in a generation erased cash flows, forcing explorers to cancel expansion projects, cut jobs and sell oil and natural gas fields to raise cash. The pain also swept across the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which in November relented by agreeing with several non-OPEC nations to curb output by 1.8 million barrels a day. Oil prices that initially popped above $55 in the weeks after the cut was announced have since dipped to around $46, reflecting pessimism that the OPEC-led deal can withstand the onslaught of U.S. shale. So far, independent American explorers such as EOG Resources Inc. and Pioneer Natural Resources Co. are holding fast to their ambitious growth plans. Some recently finished wells in the Permian region yielded 70 percent returns at first-quarter prices, EOG Chief Executive Officer Bill Thomas told investors and analysts during a conference call on Tuesday. EOG, the second-largest U.S. explorer that doesnt own refineries, plans to boost spending by 44 percent this year to between $3.7 billion and $4.1 billion. Pioneer is eyeing a 33 percent increase to $2.8 billion. The sub-group that includes North American shale drillers like EOG and Pioneer is collectively targeting $53 billion in spending this year, up from $35 billion in 2016, according to the Barclays analysts led by J. David Anderson. U.S. oil production is already swelling, even though output from the new wells being drilled wont materialize above ground for months. The Energy Departments statistics arm raised its full-year 2017 supply estimate to 9.31 million barrels a day on Tuesday, a 1 percent increase from the April forecast. Next year, U.S. fields will pump 9.96 million barrels a day, 0.6 percent more than the department estimated last month. To be sure, most of the biggest U.S. and European explorers an elite caucus of five companies known as the supermajors are pursuing a contrary path and cutting expenditures this year. As deepwater, oil-sands and other high cost, high risk investments soured during the slump, the supermajors were battered and had to regroup. But shale drillers, unburdened by such large-scale projects, have been better able to quickly respond to price changes. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp., Total SA and BP Plc are reducing or holding flat on 2017 spending. Only Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest member of the group, is pushing up its budget, planning to spend $22 billion this year compared to $19.3 billion last year. Shale drillers can afford to be sanguine despite oils recent tumble because theyve cushioned themselves with hedges, Martin said. Hedges are financial instruments that lock in prices for future output and shield producers from volatile market movements. There is some price malaise creeping in, Martin said. But the aristocracy of the U.S. independents have insulated themselves through hedging. We are collating signatures to petition ... GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. Bethune-Cookman University students made good on their vow to protest a commencement speech by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, booing as she was introduced and turning their backs on her as she spoke. The moment DeVos was introduced at the Ocean Center on Wednesday, graduates made their voices heard by booing. As she continued on with her address, dozens of students stood up and turned their backs on DeVos, some standing for the duration of the speech. The booing reached an intensity that prompted B-CU President Edison O. Jackson to intervene. If this behavior continues said Jackson, interrupting both DeVos and the booing. DeVos acknowledged the controversy behind her appearance, which a regional NAACP leader had called a "slap in the face." She was criticized earlier this year when she said historically black colleges were "pioneers of school choice." Critics, meanwhile, point out that black colleges grew out of necessity, because black students were barred from attending regular universities and colleges. Betsy DeVos booed when awarded an honorary doctorate degree. pic.twitter.com/6A2pZAQCRc Saul Saenz (@saulsaenznews13) May 10, 2017 Graduating students turn their back on Betsy Devos when she started her commencement speech, Jackson had to intervene. pic.twitter.com/zwe82gjHgA Saul Saenz (@saulsaenznews13) May 10, 2017 The only reason why the graduates felt that we needed to stand up was just to show that we feel theres a need for the HBCUs presence within the world, said Eric Barker, who received his diploma Wednesday. Other students thought they were left out of the decision-making process for commencement speaker. Jackson argued it was a good idea to invite DeVos, which stemmed from a meeting between President Donald Trump and leaders of historically black colleges and universities. Her department controls roughly 80 some percent of Title IV monies, as well as other grants, Jackson said, pointing out that her department controls federal funding for universities and colleges. Jackson said he and the school's board of trustees were well aware of the controversy her invitation attracted. But groups can disagree, he said, but do not have to be disagreeable about the choice referencing the dozens of protesters marching outside on Atlantic Avenue, some since 9 a.m., chanting "Fire DeVos." B-CU Chief Operating Officer Dr. Albert Mosley said before the ceremony that having DeVos at the school's commencement will help shed light on the needs of black colleges and would help foster a dialogue about her "misstatement." "We look forward to continued efforts that will positively influence the direction of higher education in this country," Mosley said. Meanwhile, graduation ceremonies did go on. In between some of the booing, DeVos spoke about coming together as a nation, the importance of higher education and encouraged the graduating class to thank a teacher who made an impact in their lives. B-CU commencement replay Dressed in camo pants and a security shirt, Markeith Loyd pushed his grocery cart through the Walmart on John Young Parkway. Surveillance video, witness interviews released in Markeith Loyd case Video from Walmart shows Loyd, Lt. Debra Clayton at the store Gives insight into what happened leading up to shooting PREVIOUS STORIES: Orlando officer dead, Orange deputy dies amid shooting manhunt 'We've got him!' Markeith Loyd taken into custody Surveillance video released this week by state prosecutors shows Loyd picking up groceries around 6:45 a.m. on January 9, giving a look at Loyd in the minutes leading up to the death of Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton. Loyd was already a fugitive for nearly a month, wanted for allegedly killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon. Police say he was wearing a bullet-proof vest. At one point, an asset protection associate named Rashene Smith inside Walmart said Loyd walked up to him and asked him if there was a bathroom other than the one at the front of the store. The question made the officer suspicious. "If I was a shoplifter, I wouldn't want to go to the front of the store where the officer is," Smith said. The associate, who was not in a uniform when Loyd spoke to him, told investigators that he started looking for Loyd as he walked the store. Smith said Loyd seemed to have a secretive walk. "Like you're tip-toeing, like sneaking around? Kind of like that." Smith said Loyd had water, chips and Vienna sausages in his cart. Clayton walked into the Walmart to do some shopping just before 7 a.m. She was regularly seen at the store in the morning, according to witnesses. As Lt. Clayton, who was still in her uniform, finishes her own grocery shopping, an ex in-law of Markeith Loyd tips her off to the fugitives presence. Video shows Lt. Clayton walking out of the store. Soon after, so does Markeith Loyd. But Loyd starts running, and thats when a witness says the situation escalates from a confrontation, into a deadly shooting. All of a sudden this tall black male wearing a security vest, hes dressed like a security guard, it said security on his back," witness Theophilus Edward said. "He was standing towered over her and he shot down at her. He shot down at her, he was kind of tall, he towered over her. He walked up to her and he shot down at least three times and when she dropped to the ground, he shot her three more times. And after he did that, he held the gun in his hand, he wasnt in a hurry. He started walking, it seems as if he was looking to see if anyone saw him. I was scared at that point. I just laid low in my truck. Edward says Loyd didnt run away after the shooting. "He just kind of slightly jogged," Edward said. "He tucked the gun back in his holster or whatever he had. He got in a small car. Edward said Loyd did not speed, instead he drove away normally, like a person who had just finished grocery shopping. An equine-assisted therapy center in Osceola County is at capacity and they want to serve more people but they can't do it without the community's help. McCormick Research Center in competition for a horse Equine-assisted therapy center will soon be down a horse Community can vote for the center This nonprofit hopes to earn your vote in a competition that would help them expand. "I love the horses and they have changed my life dramatically," said Francesca Langston. She is a veteran who stopped serving in the Marines after an injury overseas led to five jaw surgeries. She continues to recover, with the help of a four-legged friend. "It was really hard until I found actually this program, and that actually helped me more in dealing more with my mental and things that I deal with every day," she explained. Langston is talking about the McCormick Research Center in St. Cloud which provides horse-based therapy services for veterans and special needs individuals. The center has 15 therapy horses at the moment. Kristina Hess, 15, has epilepsy and mild cerebral palsy. Shes been part of the program for 10 years. "My horse name's JR. He is a sweet, kind and tenderhearted. He loved carrots and apples," Hess said. But one of the centers horses is retiring soon. This is why they have entered a national competition to see if they can win a Gypsy Vanner, a breed of horse that is docile and well-suited for therapy but can cost thousands of dollars. The founder of the center, Thomasa Sanchez, said they don't have enough resources to meet the community's needs at the moment. "We can show that Central Florida is the place that people can be cared for, because we have a community that gives back. Vote today, Sanchez said. Langston said this new horse would be a blessing that can help many others just like her. "If it doesn't make you happy or change your life, I don't know what will," Langston added. The McCormick Research Center is in second place. Supporters can vote every 24 hours for their favorite organization. For more information, head to the McCormick Research Center website. To vote in the "Gypsy Gift" competition, click here. The Orlando Gasification Plant in Parramore may be gone, but its toxic history is preserved at the Orlando Public Library. Parramore plant left behind lethal chemicals in the ground EPA says the lethal chemicals remains in the area Dozens of EPA 'Superfund' sites still exist throughout Central Florida A look back through thousands of pages of records show the energy plant left behind lethal chemicals in the ground that, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, are still there chemicals such as benzene, napthalene, coal tar and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, to name a few. Dozens of EPA "Superfund" sites such as the gasification plant, which leaked dangerous chemicals into the ground, still exist throughout Central Florida. Dan Ward represents the Orlando Gasification Plant Site group, the owners of businesses that have and continue to operate on the site and are responsible for implementing a plan to clean it up under EPA standards. "At the time, when these gas plants operated, people didn't understand the impact of residual compounds and things like that," he said. "There's been no evidence whatsoever that there is any contamination from this site ever found in the drinking water wells," Ward said. "There is a difference between reaching the aquifer and reaching our drinking water supply." Ward said remediation will include more than two square blocks being surrounded with underground walls to encase the affected site and prevent the spread of the chemicals. EPA representatives said if there were immediate concerns, they would be out there immediately to address them. In the meantime, they've sent a letter to residents in Parramore letting them know when plans would be completed on how to clean up this mess. Lawanna Gelzer is a lifelong Parramore resident. She said she learned of the EPA Superfund cleanup site and is actively trying to learn more about the site and alert her community. "We all played over there, not knowing that that over there is contaminated. We had no idea," said Gelzer, a community activist. "The community is always being told you shouldn't worry about it, but you are going to spend upwards of $60 million to clean it up? That's fine and dandy, but I don't trust my government sometimes," Gelzer said. EPA officials said there will be a community meeting in December to update residents 57 years after the closure of the Orlando Gasification Plant. Orlando- and Tampa-area Superfund sites Millions in funding for a University of Central Florida clinic which treats those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder was on the line. But legislators fought to save it during budget negotiations. Now it's up to Gov. Scott to sign the budget. UCF Restores Clinic to get $2.5 million in Florida budget Helps treat vets, first responders with PTSD Gov. Scott still needs to sign the budget I feel relieved, I feel elated, I feel energized," said Dr. Deborah Beidel. We were waiting last night for the final budget to be passed." Six years ago, Beidel founded the UCF Restores Clinic with grant money from the Department of Defense. They use virtual technology to recreate the sights, smells and sounds of war, treating hundreds of veterans free of charge. "These are our friends, our family, our neighbors," explained the Psychology and Medical Education professor. "We need to provide for them because they have certainly been there when we needed them. The clinic helped hundreds of veterans, including Bruce Chambers, who fought in Iraq during the surge. An IED explosion changed him and, struggling, he found the UCF Restores clinic in 2012. I remember being afraid to go out and do things," Chambers said. If I hadnt found that, I cant imagine what it would be like. Because it would be bad, and I dont want to think about it. But recently, the clinic needed help of its own. Grant money dried up and clinicians prepared to trim services within the next six months. Dr. Beidel traveled to Tallahassee to lobby on her clinic's behalf. Legislators added funding into their budget, giving her a preliminary sense of hope. We definitely were following it very closely because you never know whats going to happen with state budgets. Theres lots of competing priorities," she explained. In final negotiations, it was zeroed out until a bipartisan group of local legislators stepped in at the last minute. I fought alongside Senator Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, and Rep. Mike Miller, R-Orlando, to ensure that funding was reinstated for the PTSD clinic," said FL Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando. Pressure led to securing $2.5 million. That's enough, Beidel said, to hire more full time clinicians and hopefully take the program statewide. Its a lot of money, there are a lot of people. This is going to allow us to make this into a very different program, one that could help everyone in Florida," she said. Theres something thats happening, things are changing, and theyre doing amazing things and they can continue to do amazing things," said Chambers. The clinic treated those with PTSD after Pulse as well. The money can also help the clinic develop virtual reality programs specific to first responders, explained Beidel. However, its not a done deal: The budget has to be signed off by Governor Rick Scott. Veterans, first responders, Pulse survivors are running out of places to go to be able to seek treatment for mental health," said Smith, adding,Im hoping the governor would not veto funding that supports veterans, first responders and survivors at Pulse. AUSTIN -- Two facilities that house immigrants seeking asylum while they await legal hearings would be permitted to continue to house children under a bill tentatively passed by the Senate on Tuesday. In 2015, two federal family residential centers were opened in Texas near San Antonio to house immigrants entering the U.S. seeking asylum with their children. A lawsuit filed against this practice prevailed, with the court ruling that any facility that houses children must be licensed by the state through the Department of Family and Protective Services, like any other residential center. DFPS granted the facilities an emergency license, but another lawsuit resulted in a ruling that these centers cannot qualify for licenses. In response to this, Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola offered a bill, SB 1018, on Tuesday that would permit the state to license these facilities. He says without the bill, the facilities will close. "If these facilities close, then the feds must either release these folks and hope they return for their hearings or separate the children from the parents," said Hughes. "Neither of those feels like an acceptable solution." This bill was opposed by some members. One of the facilities, located in Karnes City near San Antonio, was originally constructed as a prison. Sen. Carlos Uresti of San Antonio, whose district contains the facility, doesn't think that's a good place to keep kids. "These facilities were not designed for children," he said. Hughes replied that the facility was reconfigured, and now offers a much less restrictive environment including health care services and recreational facilities. He added that state oversight over the facilities would ensure that the state has a role in making sure they conform to standards. "This bill says the state, our Department of Family and Protective Services . . . let's send them in there and do what needs to be done," said Hughes. Uresti also contested language that allows DFPS to waive certain standards as determined by the commissioner. The bill would permit the DFPS executive commissioner to exempt these facilities from minimum standards to keep families intact, but also for any purpose to "operate the family residential center." Uresti saw this provision as overly broad and worried that it gave the agency a blank check to issue licenses regardless of conditions. Hughes said that agency officials testified in committee that the language was necessary to keep parents and children together, and would only be used for that purpose. The bill received tentative approval on a vote of 20-11 and will likely face a final vote later in the week. Also Tuesday, the Senate passed a bill that would expand the definition of hazing. SB 50 by Laredo Sen. Judith Zaffirini would include coercion to consume alcohol under the crime of hazing. It would also classify coercion to incite a person to break a state law as hazing. Hazing in Texas is a class B misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $2,000 fine. If the hazing causes serious bodily harm, the crime becomes a class A misdemeanor, which can mean a year in jail. For hazing incidents that result in death, the perpetrators face a state jail felony. The bill also expanded protections for people reporting hazing, offering them immunity if they report hazing incidents before being contacted by police and cooperate with investigations into the reported event. The bill now heads to the House. The Senate will reconvene Wednesday, May 10 at 11 a.m. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Ash High School held their annual awards banquet Tuesday evening in the Ash High School cafeteria. Greg Brown, Plainview ISD executive director for administrative services, acted as master of ceremonies. Jose Parga, Student Council vice president, gave the welcome address. Student council member Lonnie Uvalli led the pledges and read the schools mission statement and guidelines to success. Student council member Alexis Gutierrez blessed the meal. Student speakers Brenda Magana, Nicolas Jones and Iris Pacheco shared personal stories of why they elected to attend Ash, how the school had made it possible to complete their degree, and their post-graduation plans to continue their education. Ash senior Marisol Aguero introduced the Ash High School teaching staff. The staff presented academic awards in their field to the following students: --English II - Magan Lucio --English III - Cassandra Diaz --English IV - Abrhm Pena --Business English - Brenda Magana --Business Information Management - Jazmin Borrego --Digital Information & Media - Emanuel Ramirez-Rodriquez --Principles of Business, Marketing and Finance - Marivel Melendez --Computer Maintenance - Alexandra Gonzales --Web Technologies - Israel Avalos --Algebra I - Steven Ybarra --Geometry - Magan Lucio --Math Models - Andrew Garcia --Algebra II - Lonnie Uvalli --Advanced Quantitative Reasoning - Marisol Aguero --Biology - Arely Patino --Chemistry - Marivel Melendez --Physics - Jazmin Borrego --Environmental Systems - Israel Avalos and Elizabeth Rodriguez --World History - Marivel Melendez and Magan Lucio --US History - Lonnie Uvalli and Nicolas Jones --Government - Israel Avalos and Alexsis Perez --Economics - Jose Parga --Spanish I - Damien Cano --Spanish II - Jacob Ross --Art I - Arely Patino --Art II - Jordan Plasencio --Personal Fitness - Alexis Gutierrez --Health - Lonnie Uvalli --Psychology - Jazmin Borrego --Sociology - Magan Lucio Student recipients of the Tomorrows Leader award were also recognized. The award recipient was Israel Avalos. Runner-up for the award was Alexsis Perez. School counselor Jay Jay Wiseman, with the assistance of Greg Brown, presented the top three student awards. Students receiving these awards will have their names engraved on permanent plaques hanging at the school. Recipients of those awards are: --Elizabeth Rodriguez - Female Student of the Year --Israel Avalos - Male Student of the Year --Marivel Melendez Phoenix Award (indicating greatest growth) More than $4,000 in scholarships were presented to the following students: --Nicolas Jones - Leah Dayton Educators Spirit Memorial Scholarship --Israel Avalos - Judy Buchanan Honorary Scholarship for Academic Excellence --Elida Lopez - Miller, Chatham, Brown Scholarship for Leadership --Chasity Villa - Wes Delz Memorial Scholarship --Iris Pacheco - Ash High School Student Council Scholarship --Jose Parga - Ash High School General Scholarship --Marisol Chavez - Ash High School General Scholarship --Iris Pacheco - South Plains College Scholarship --Israel Avalos South Plains College Scholarship --Ash High School Principal Rodney Wallace gave the closing remarks. Special guests were parents, district administrators, and scholarship donors including Mendoza Construction, Covenant Health Plainview, Centennial Bank and South Plains College. The event was catered by Weekends BBQ. Don Feria/Getty Images Daniel Mengden, recovering from preseason foot surgery, was throwing hard in his rehab outing with Triple-A Nashville on Monday, hitting 91-95 mph, according to As manager Bob Melvin. Felt good, velocity was good, Melvin said. The As have two other pitchers, Sean Manaea and Chris Bassitt, pitching with Nashville on rehab assignments on Tuesday evening. Manaea (shoulder tightness) is likely to come off the DL after his one appearance with the Sounds, but Mengden is likely to be optioned to Nashville when he comes off the 60-day DL, while Bassitt could wind up with the Sounds well into June while he is coming back from Tommy John surgery. Not long ago, the Angel Island Immigration Station was a historic mess. The buildings were in decay the old hospital was falling down, for example. The poems written by desperate people being held at the immigration station had faded away. The site was in such disrepair that the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the immigration station one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the country in 1999. However, thanks to a major effort by private and public agencies, the immigration station made a remarkable comeback. On Wednesday, it made the National Trusts list again, this time as a success story in historic preservation. Angel Island led the list of 11 once-endangered sites that the National Trust said are now thriving and contributing to their communities. Angel Island is a real success story, the trust said. Thanks to $14 million in state, federal and private funds, the site has been turned into the Pacific Coast Immigration Center, designed to inform the public about immigration policies and to celebrate the role immigrants played in this country. The Angel Island Immigration Station had a major role in the complexity of American immigration policies. While major centers like Ellis Island in New York Harbor welcomed immigrants mostly from Europe immigrants who went through Angel Island from Asia were regarded with suspicion, and many were turned away. Angel Island came to symbolize discrimination and exclusion instead of welcome, an inscription on a stone at the entrance to the new immigration center complex says. An estimated 500,000 people passed through Angel Island, about a third of them Asian, between 1910 and 1940. The Asians were subjected to particular scrutiny because various federal laws greatly restricted immigration from China, Japan and other Asian countries. Some of the people detained on the island wrote poems and carved them on the walls of the buildings. The poems most of them by sad and desperate people were neglected until they were noticed by California State Park ranger Alexander Weiss in 1970. He brought them to the attention of the Asian American community and helped start a campaign that restored the immigration station. At a time when the challenging and difficult history of U.S. immigration is front page news, the National Trust has selected Angel Island as a reminder of the difficult journey many immigrants have endured in the last century in America, said Stephanie Meeks, president of the the National Trust. The other 10 sites on the trusts success story list are Antietam National battlefield; St. Vibiana cathedral in Los Angeles; Governors Island in New York City; the historic Boston theaters; Little Rock (Ark.) Central High School; Nine Mile Canyon in Utah; Penn School in Frogmore, N.C.; President Abraham Lincolns cottage at the Soldiers Home in Washington, D.C.; the Statler Hilton Hotel in Dallas; and Travelers Rest in Montana. Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Antonian L. Lowry Mays, founder of the company that would become iHeartMedia Inc., is donating $25 million from his foundation to support the Texas A&M Mays Business School, already named for him, the university announced last month. The gift from the San Antonio-based Mays Family Foundation, founded in 1994, will be paid over 10 years. The foundations $25 million gift is the largest in the history of the universitys business school and is part of the foundations overall giving program totaling $47 million. Texas A&M named its business college the May Business School after Mays donated $15 million in 1996. Mays graduated from Texas A&Ms business school in 1957 and was a Texas A&M System regent from 1985 to 1991 and again from 2001 to 2007. He was board of regents chairman from 2003 to 2005. The $25 million will be used to develop a new Lowry Mays Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy program with the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship. The gift also will be used to expand the Mays Business School headquarters building, the Wehner Building, and the schools study-abroad programs. I am honored to help support the schools vision to advance the worlds prosperity with a $25 million gift, Mays said in a prepared statement. The gift adds to the universitys $4 billion Lead by Example campaign that started in 2015 and has passed the $2.5 billion mark. The Mays Business School recently named Lowry and wife Peggy as the first recipients of its Peggy and Lowry Mays Impact Award to recognize giving and leadership. Mays founded Clear Channel Communications with B.J. Red McCombs in 1972. The two sold the company, now iHeartMedia, in 2008 for $24 billion in a leveraged buyout by two Boston-based private-equity firms. McCombs donated $50 million in 2000 to the University of Texas at Austins business school, which is now named the Red McCombs School of Business. In 2005, then-Valero Energy Corp. CEO William Greehey announced a $25 million donation to his alma mater, St. Marys University in San Antonio, for the Bill Greehey School of Business. dhendricks@express-news.net This article was corrected to indicate that the $25 million gift was the largest in the history of the universitys business school. For May, the Express-News invited teachers of creative writing programs in local high schools to select work from their students and celebrate the exciting creative energy of young writers throughout the community. Dreams I pray, I pray for darkness to keep, And hold this land as you sleep, The unholy gaze of the morning sun, Is what I fear as I am undone. For all that I know, Yes it is true, I am the one that visits you, As you drift from this mortal world, And lifes sails are surely furled, I prance straight on up to you, To make your wildest fantasies true, Yet the morning comes as it always does, So I whither away with a small, quick, buzz. The pain and the hurt the sun has in store, It is just something I cannot ignore, And such Id rather watch the world burn, Instead of seeing the sun return, I know however that it will come, Whenever it is my time to succumb. Chris Rapps is a senior at John Jay Science and Engineering Academy. He leaves to study at Texas Tech University this summer. He is a competitive diver and athlete who writes poetry on the side. Rapps teacher Blake Jones selected this poem. Jim LaVilla-Havelin is the Express-News poetry editor. West, his fifth collection of poems, will be published by Wings Press in 2017. Send poems to: Poetry, Express-News Book Editor, P.O. Box 2171, San Antonio, TX 78297-2171 (40-line limit). This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An audience full of Hollywood stars such as Debra Messing, Christian Slater, Whoopi Goldberg, Zachary Quinto and Rosie O'Donnell watched as the now-exonerated women known as the San Antonio Four took the stage to accept a GLAAD Media Award. The annual awards, which honor media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the LGBTQ community, took place last weekend in New York. Winning outstanding documentary was "Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four," which tells the heartrending story of four Latina lesbians and their fight for exoneration after spending nearly 15 years in prison for their wrongful conviction of sexual assault. It premiered on Investigation Discovery TV channel last fall. RELATED: S.A. actor and fierce Spurs fan revives hit on TV The day before Thanksgiving of last year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled the four women were innocent, and their criminal records would be expunged. An emotional Elizabeth Ramirez accepted the GLAAD award from CNN anchorman Don Lemon and was joined onstage by the rest of the San Antonio Four, Kristie Mayhugh, Cassandra Rivera, and Anna Vasquez. The film's director, Deborah Esquenazi, and producer, Sam Tabet, also took the stage, but it was Ramirez who spoke at the podium. Fighting back tears, she movingly recalled that "in 1994, the four of us were convicted of a hideous crime that never happened. We were charged with the gang rape of two little girls." She went on to say that the San Antonio Four's story is a "cautionary tale of what happens when homophobia and misogyny and the misuse of science are present in our courts." RELATED: San Antonio novelist talks 'racy' new Hallmark movie Ramirez pointed to the documentary as a "testament to the power of filmmaking -- that shedding light on injustices can create real change." Others who received awards that night included Messing of "Will & Grace" fame (Excellence in Media Award); Goldberg, executive producer of "Strut" on the Oxygen channel (outstanding reality program); Tegan and Sara (outstanding music artist); and "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" on Comedy Central (outstanding talk show episode). Special guests and presenters Saturday night included O'Donnell, Slater, Quinto, Noah and the TV personality who hosted the event, Ross Matthews. "Southwest of Salem: The San Antonio Four" also was a recipient last month of a prestigious Peabody Award in the documentary category. jjakle@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The fear of missing out is a powerful force, and Sunday brunch is the most FOMO-tastic event of the restaurant week. On a day when we might rather sleep in or commune with the almighty, FOMO compels us to stand in line for eggs Benedict and cheap mimosas because its the only day we can do that at most places. NOLA Brunch & Beignets treats the symptoms of FOMO five days a week. Ironically, Sunday is not one of those days. Because sometimes you just have to sleep in, or at least atone for your sins. And theres a whisper of sin in a New Orleans beignet. You see it on every table at NOLA, traces of powder like a Hollywood house party in the 70s. Traces of confectioners sugar where beignets have been. Theyre more dense and less greasy than the beignets you had at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans that one time, like a sugar-dusted dinner roll. Theyre just as satisfying, in their way, sitting next to hot cafe au lait with the weedy twang of Community Coffee with chicory. Pieter Sypesteyn is the restaurateur behind NOLA, and he has a monopoly on the New Orleans experience on this block just off St. Marys Street. His other place around the way, Cookhouse, does po-boys at lunch and the rust-colored Cajun rainbow at dinner. NOLA channels some of that Cajun and Creole intensity into grillades and grits, a Southern classic with tender cuts of braised brisket in spicy gravy served with a poached egg over rich, compact grits. San Antonians will appreciate the way it takes the salty brownness of carne guisada to a sharper, brighter place. More Information NOLA Brunch & Beignets * 111 Kings Court, 210-320-1572, eatatnola.com Quick bite: New Orleans-style brunch served five days a week in a sunny cottage off North St. Mary's Street. Hit: Brisket grillades, beignets, French toast, Uptown Eggs Bennie Miss: Hash brown-crusted trout, boudin flautas, shrimp and grits Hours: 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday Price range: Beignets, $5-$7; small plates, $10; large plates, $12-$18; sides, $4-$5. Alcohol: BYOB, with orange juice for mimosas **** Superior. Can compete nationally. *** Excellent. One of the best restaurants in the city. ** Very good. A standout restaurant of its kind. * Good. A restaurant that we recommend. (no stars) We cannot recommend this restaurant at this time. Express-News dining critics pay for all meals. See More Collapse And NOLA knows how to poach an egg. A montage of bursting golden yolks would show those willowy eggs improving everything they touch. Theres a pair of poached eggs on an Uptown Eggs Bennie, which gives the tired brunch staple an inspiring makeover with the crunch of fried green tomatoes and the spark of shrimp Creole on biscuits. NOLA makes a biscuit with real weight and a soft, baking-powder character that makes it flaky at the golden crown and cakey and crumbly at the core. The biscuit helps to soak away the flatline flavors of NOLAs shrimp and grits. Its like a hotel version of the classic, with pasty grits, a sauce as unchallenging as tomato cream and shrimp too small and pale to stand up to it. At Cookhouse, they do a dish with head-on jumbo shrimp, and Id trade a bunch of little shrimp for a few full-bodied monsters at NOLA. But I imagine brunch is not the time for a crustacean anatomy lesson. Undersea anatomy played a sideways part in trout crusted with hash browns. The potatoes were less of a crust and more of a second skeleton and just as hard to cut through. The trout itself was cooked hard in that starchy cage. The poached egg and its lemony hollandaise wash seemed less like a brunchy affectation and more like a lifeline to hydrate and soften up the host. Hollandaise shouldnt be a blanket to cover up the dry character of the food underneath it, but thats the way it worked with an overcooked omelet topped with crab meat, the one dish that gave me value vapors at $18 with no sides. NOLAs dried-out frittata didnt have hollandaise to rescue it, but I liked the novelty of adding Zapps potato chips for texture and salt. Brunch burgers tend to be the canvas for frustrated chefs everywhere. Thats when they whip out the Mad Libs layering of sauces, cheese and proteins. Not so at NOLA, and while I appreciated the straightforward double-meat cheeseburger on a white picnic bun, I can get a good-better-best version of that down the street at Burger Boy. And lets talk about Cajun boudin flautas. Cajuns already a pastiche cuisine. Adding tortillas, chipotle and guajillo to that mix creates chaos. Chaos with lemon cream. In that same less-is-more spirit, NOLAs praline bacon reinforces my thought that plain old bacon is already the ultimate sidekick, adding big background sounds to whatever bit of breakfast celebritys going on up front. Did Clarence Clemons need sequins to back up Bruce Springsteen? Neither does bacon benefit that much from sugar and pecans, and not at $5 for two slices. But in the spirit of too-much-is-never-enough, I cant get enough of NOLAs bread pudding French toast, which takes a dense, starchy indulgence and dunks it in egg custard and cooks it all over again. Flan meets bread meets orange marmalade Danish, with a side of Steens cane syrup that could kick Canadian maples skinny butt any Sunday of the week. Ask for some extra to go on pancakes with a satisfying balance of fluff, structure and salted caramel. The atmosphere and look of NOLA both channel the attitude and aqua-tinted awning of Cafe Du Monde and the New Orleans aesthetic in general. The sun porch embodies the ease of a Southern breakfast, with strangers sitting together at a communal table on one day, a moms-day-out brunch party on another, all of it bathed in the dappled sun of a tree-lined neighborhood street and tended by a sharp, professional staff with the right genteel disposition for it. The front room, by contrast, is claustrophobically dim and crowded. On the way out, my guest had to dodge a waiter sailing through the rooms tiny doorway, putting his waistline precariously close to the table next to that doorway. Shrieking ensued. It was awkward, embarrassing and unnecessary, considering that tables could be moved to suit obvious traffic patterns. Such is the reality of running a restaurant in a neighborhood cottage so small that the storage for glassware creeps around the hosts stand like a Crate & Barrel display. The ups and downs of the food on any given day cant stop me from recommending NOLA Id return for French toast drizzled with cane syrup and dappled in sunlight and thats what one star in our four-star system means, a star awarded in part for comforting us in our time of FOMO. Ambjor Keefe and Gavin Egan didn't know each other, but they both died too young of the same illness in the last week of March. The 38-year-old Keefe and 27-year-old Egan will be counted among this year's deaths from opioid overdoses, which continue to plague the region, the state and the nation. Drug overdoses became the leading cause of accidental death in the United States in 2014, with addiction to heroin and prescription painkillers driving the trend. But like everyone who dies from an addiction to heroin or prescription narcotics, the impact of Keefe and Egan on those who loved them eclipsed the statistics, their deaths left emotional lesions too large to measure. They came from different environments and different families. Yet their parents share an experience and a belief that despite efforts in recent years to combat abuse of heroin and other opioids, public officials are doing too little to fight the scourge that is addiction. Despite increased awareness, despite the billboards and public service announcements, families are left isolated and without much recourse to handle a disease that is still judged as a behavioral problem or a failing, they said. They agreed to talk to the Times Union in the hopes that sharing their stories would help others grappling with a struggle that has no easy answers, that it would help chip away at the stigma that surrounds addiction, and especially heroin abuse. "We have to stop shaming people, because people are dying of shame," said Dan Egan, Gavin's father. Ambjor (pronounced "Amb-yor") Keefe's obituary, written to address that shame, was frank in a way that remains rare even in the midst of an addiction epidemic. She died at her Waterford home, it said, "as a result of the opioid crisis that this nation faces." "We decided to put it like that to help someone else," said Janet Keefe, Ambjor's 68-year-old mother. "It's the unspoken disease." There won't be a definitive cause for Ambjor's death for months as Janet and her husband, Ted, 69, await an official toxicology report. But they know their daughter overdosed on heroin, though perhaps the deadly drug was mixed with something else. The police found syringes on the apartment floor, and they'd suspected for the last seven or eight years that Ambjor was using the drug, following struggles with substance abuse that started as early as high school. "She seemed to be on the edge," Janet said. "And she just fell off the edge." Ambjor's troubles in high school in Averill Park started in a way that so many young people's do. She dressed slovenly, Janet said (grunge was the style of the time), and hung out with a wild crowd. After graduating in the late 1990s, she worked in what Janet called "a real bad bar" and partied with the bikers who were her customers. Alcohol was the first drug she abused. Over the years, Ted and Janet lost track of what was really happening in Ambjor's life. At some point they got tired of questioning her dubious stories and accepted that she was lying she'd say she needed money for a blood test to stay in rehab or a new cellphone so she could get a new job. She blamed her problems on alcohol, never an illegal drug. For the most part, though, she held down a job and managed adult responsibilities like paying rent. She always had friends around, though Janet said they were fellow drug users who took advantage of Ambjor's kindness, such as a boyfriend who couldn't hold down a job and let Ambjor support him. She was a hard worker, often handling heavy machinery at her jobs. Her most recent employer held a job for her while she was in jail, Ted said. It was about eight years ago that Ted and Janet noticed Ambjor couldn't always pay the rent, and the calls for help became more desperate and frequent, as did Ambjor's stints in jail. Small lies grew into fantastical stories. Four or five years ago, Janet told her daughter she would no longer go through the degrading experience of visiting Ambjor in jail. The most recent call from Ambjor came on March 28. Ted, who retired from his job with the city of Troy 15 years ago, helped her get out of jail in Albany County on a warrant from another jurisdiction. Three days later, Ambjor was found dead in her apartment. Ted and Janet don't know what might have saved Ambjor. Janet suspects her daughter never sought treatment voluntarily, but went to avoid jail. The Keefes have felt isolated, helpless and frustrated over a public response to the heroin epidemic that dwarfs the enormity of the problem. "We had no tools in the toolbox," Janet said. That statement would not surprise Dan Egan, who lost his son Gavin on March 25. "There's no family in the world that's equipped to deal with heroin addiction or alcohol addiction or any other kind of addiction," said Egan, 54. Egan, an administrator with the state Health Department who challenged Dan McCoy for the Albany County executive's position two years ago, did not want to discuss Gavin's struggle with addiction. He would only say that his son's substance abuse problems started in middle school, and that he died of an overdose while living at the Granite House in Derry, N.H., a sober residence for men who have gone through addiction treatment. What Egan wanted to share was the devastation that families experience when forced to confront addiction, and his opinions on the scant progress that's been made in treating addiction as medical experts see it a disease that alters the chemistry of the brain. Families are judged and shunned and pressured into silence when they deal with addiction, Egan said. They set up websites to solicit donations so they can pay for treatment that exceeds what their insurance will cover. He asked how society would respond if this were the response to any other illness. He likened the reaction to addiction to what families did before there were viable cures for cancer. "It doesn't matter how much you love someone, you're not going to cure them of breast cancer," Egan said. What's worse, he said, is that many people don't seek help, and families don't reach out for support, because of the blame that is put on both those with substance use disorders and their relatives. It sends struggling addicts into the shadows and, often, back to drugs and scary situations rather than reaching out for help. The third of Egan's five children, Gavin grew up in Albany until he was 8 years old, then he moved with his mother to Lee, Mass. He was surrounded by a big family who loved him and had "a million friends," Egan said. Creative and smart, he worked as an electrician, but was passionate about writing songs. He was loving and sensitive, perhaps to a fault. "He had a huge heart, and he took on everybody's pain," Egan said. Egan, who is watching his other adult children launch their lives, is haunted by thoughts of the future that Gavin might have had. "He'll never have children or write more songs," he said. chughes@timesunion.com 518-454-5417 @hughesclaire This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Wiesner family is no stranger to the Texas Children's Hospital system. When she was six weeks old, Falon Wiesner-Jones was diagnosed with a congenital cardiac condition that required numerous surgeries and much time in Texas Children's Hospital. Now an adult, Wiesner-Jones said she will likely be a "lifelong patient" with Texas Children's Hospital, as she continues to receive check-ups every six months through the hospital's adult congenital cardiac program. Her sister, Lauren Wiesner-Blackmon, has also brought both of her children, ages 7 and 15, to Texas Children's Hospital for their own congenital conditions. When the family's company, Wiesner Automotive Group, celebrated its 45th anniversary, the Wiesners wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to say "thank you" to the hospital and give back. The family's business recently donated $50,000 to the hospital to the newly opened hospital. "It's really near and dear to our hearts, it's a home away from home," Wiesner-Jones said of Texas Children's Hospital. "Every time we've come, they've provided incredible support, they have all the resources that a parent with a young, sick child would need to learn more about the disease." With the newest facility in the system, Texas Children's Hospital The Woodlands, opening on April 11 off Interstate 45 South, it was the perfect time for the Wiesner Automotive Group to donate. The new facility includes all outpatient, inpatient, surgical and emergency services. With the Weisner's donation to the hospital's Promise Campaign, the business was offered naming recognition on Triage Room 1, located in the Inpatient Tower of Texas Children's Hospital The Woodlands. On Wednesday morning, the family cut the ribbon on the triage room in celebration of their donation. Medical Director of Texas Children's Hospital The Woodlands Emergency Center Dr. Joseph Allen said triage rooms provide an area to give emergency young patients privacy and allows families to "get away from some of the stress" and chaos of an emergency room. Here, the patients can be assessed to determine the criticalness of their condition. "I think it's really important for Montgomery County, The Woodlands and Conroe, because there's so many children up here," Allen said. "It's really important that we finally have a facility up here that can really deliver the specialized pediatric care the community deserves." The average patient at Texas Children's ranges from the time of one's birth to when one reaches the age of 18, Allen said. Therefore, the needed equipment for an emergency pediatric triage room is extensive and of varying sizes. The Wiesner's donation to the Promise Campaign fund will assist in the maintenance of hospital needs. Development Manager of Texas Children's Hospital Leah Gross said the Promise Program's capital fund of $475 million is used across the hospital system - a system which has over 3 million patient encounters per year. Since Texas Children's Hospital The Woodlands opened in early April, 23 surgical cases, 41 radiology procedures, 31 Pathology Lab draws and more have been completed at the facility. "If you only have a dollar, give a dollar," Wiesner-Jones said of donating. "There's no threshold on what they (Texas Children's Hospital) will accept to further help the community." To donate to Texas Children's Hospital Promise Campaign, visit texaschildrens.org/promise or call 832-824-2945. Texas Children's Hospital The Woodlands Inpatient Hospital and Emergency Center is located at 17600 Interstate 45 South and Outpatient Services is located at 17590 Interstate 45 South. Texas Children's Hospital The Woodlands can be reached at 936-267-5000. President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday. From the Clinton email investigation to the Trump-Russia probe, this is all of the major dates concerning Comey: - July 5, 2016: Comey says the FBI will not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state but called Clinton and her staff "extremely careless" in handling classified material. "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," Comey said. - July 7, 2016: Comey is grilled by Republican legislators for five hours during a House Oversight Committee hearing on the Clinton email scandal. Comey stands by his decision to not charge Clinton. "As a non-lawyer, as a non-investigator, it would appear to me you have got a hell of a case," an exasperated Rep. Earl "Buddy" Carter, R-Ga., told Comey. "I'm telling you we don't, and I hope people take the time to understand why," Comey responded. - Aug. 16, 2016: In a letter released by lawmakers, the FBI defends its decision not to charge Clinton once again. "As the Director stated, the FBI did find evidence that Secretary Clinton and her colleagues were extremely careless in their handling of certain, very sensitive, highly classified information," FBI acting assistant director Jason V. Herring wrote. "The Director did not equate 'extreme carelessness' with the legal standard of 'gross negligence' that is required by the statute. In this case, the FBI assessed that the facts did not support a recommendation to prosecute her or others within the scope of the investigation for gross negligence." - Sept. 2, 2016: The FBI releases Clinton email investigation documents. - Sept. 7, 2016: In a memo to FBI employees, Comey says the decision not to charge Clinton was "not a cliff-hanger," and that "despite all the chest beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn't a prosecutable case." The letter incites fury among Republican lawmakers. - Sept. 28, 2016: Comey says he refuses to reopen the investigation into Clinton in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. "Since you announced that there would be no prosecution of Secretary Clinton in July, there have been several very material issues that are troubling, and would those not require a reopening of the investigation to solve those issues?" Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., asked. "I haven't seen anything that would come near to that kind of situation," Comey responded. - Oct. 3, 2016: Law enforcement officials seize a laptop, phone and tablet belonging to Anthony Weiner, who was under investigation for alleged inappropriate communications with a minor. They discover the laptop contained emails from Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin. - Oct. 7, 2016: The Obama administration officially accuses Russia of meddling in the 2016 presidential election. - Oct. 27, 2016: Comey receives a full briefing by agents in his office about the findings on Weiner's laptop. - Oct. 28, 2016: Comey sends a letter to congressional leaders informing them of the existence of emails pertinent to the Clinton investigation. - Nov. 6, 2016: Comey wrote that investigators had worked "around the clock" to review all the emails found on a device used by Weiner. In the end, the FBI concluded that it found nothing to alter its original opinion that it would seek no charges against Clinton. - Nov. 9, 2016: Trump is elected president of the United States. - Early January: President-elect Trump is informed by U.S. intelligence agency leaders that Russia may possess compromising information about him. - Jan. 10, 2017: Comey appears with NSA Director Mike Rogers, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee to talk about Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. election. Comey refuses to confirm that the FBI is looking into Trump team's ties to Russia. - Jan. 13: Democrats, after a briefing with Comey, accuse him of stonewalling about whether the FBI is investigating ties between Trump associates and Russia. On the same day, the Senate Intelligence Committee announces it will look into Russian interference in the election. - Jan. 18: President-elect Trump informs Comey that it is his intention to keep him on as FBI director. - Feb. 24: FBI rejects requests from the Trump administration to knock down news reports concerning communications between the Trump campaign and Russia. - March 1: The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not disclose contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. - March 2: Sessions recuses himself from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign, including any Russian interference in the electoral process. - March 5: Comey asks the the Department of Justice to refute Trump's tweet claiming Trump Tower was wiretapped during the election. - March 9: Comey meets with members of Congress concerning Trump's tweet claiming the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower during the election. - March 20: Comey confirms that the FBI is investigating any links between the Trump election campaign and the Russian government. - March 20: Comey refutes Trump's tweets alleging that the Obama administration was wiretapping Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. - Late March/early April: The House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., cancels all other scheduled testimony on Russia and insists that Comey come back to the Hill for a closed-door briefing. Nunes recuses himself from the Russia investigation before that meeting is ever scheduled. - April 12: Trump is asked on Fox Business Network about his decision to keep Comey on: - - - Maria Bartiromo: Was it a mistake not to ask Jim Comey to step down from the FBI at the outside of your presidency, is it too late now to ask him to step down? President Trump: No, it's not too late. But I have confidence in him, we'll see what happens. It's going to be interesting, but we have to just - look, I have so many people that want to come in to this administration, they're so excited about this administration and what's happening. Bankers, law enforcement, everybody wants to come into this administration. Don't forget, when Jim Comey came out, he saved Hillary Clinton, people don't realize that. He saved her life because I call it " Comey won," and I joke about it a little bit. When he was reading those charges, she was guilty on every charge and then he said, "She was essentially OK." - - - - April 25: Senate confirms Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general in a 94-to-6 vote. - May 2: Trump tweets: "FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony . . . Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign? - May 3: Comey testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his decision to announce the reopening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails. "Lordy, has this been difficult," Comey said of the fallout from his Clinton decision. Comey also says, " It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election." Comey alleges in the hearing that Huma Abedin "forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails [to Anthony Weiner], some of which contain classified information." - May 4: Comey briefs members of the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors about the Russia probe, now being led by Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas. - May 8: ProPublica published a report stating that Comey exaggerated the number of emails Abedin forwarded to Weiner. - May 9: FBI sends a letter to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee clarifying that Comey misspoke about the number of emails forwarded. - May 9: Trump fires Comey, citing recommendations from Sessions and Rosenstein. - - - The Washington Post's Karoun Demirijan and Kevin Uhrmacher contributed to this report. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, said in a combative television interview Wednesday morning that it was "inappropriate" to question the timing of Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. "You want to question the timing of when he hires, when he fires," Conway said on CNN. "It's inappropriate. He'll do it when he wants to." CNN anchor Chris Cuomo had pointed out that the sudden firing of Comey came as the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russia's interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election is heating up. Comey was overseeing the probe, which includes connections between Trump campaign officials and associates and the Russians. Conway insisted that the Russia investigation had nothing to do with Trump's decision to terminate Comey. "Especially on your network, you always want to talk about Russia, Russia, Russia," Conway said. She added that the Russia probe has been "a seven-month distraction." Conway said Trump fired Comey at the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the FBI, because he had lost credibility within the bureau. She singled out past comments by Democratic leaders criticizing Comey for his handling of last year's FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state. "Yet now they want him to be a martyr?" Conway said, suggesting that Democratic leaders were hypocritical for now criticizing Trump's firing of Comey. In a heated exchange with Cuomo, Conway said, "None of us want to re-litigate the campaign. We won it." Just two weeks ago, ahead of his 100-day mark, Trump distributed color copies of a county-by-county map showing his electoral college victory during Oval Office interviews with The Washington Post and Reuters, boasting of the size of his win. At a time when there's so much hand-wringing over the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of corrosive nationalism in the West, South Korea just offered a welcome reminder that people power is still alive. In a snap election Tuesday, South Korean voters elected Moon Jae-in as the country's next president. Moon, a liberal politician, took office Wednesday, marking the first time in a decade that Seoul's Blue House has been occupied by a progressive president. His views on engagement with North Korea may put his government swiftly at odds with the Trump administration. But that's not what is so striking about Moon's victory. His rise to power came amid seven months of political turbulence. First, South Korean media began reporting and investigating allegations of corruption and bribery surrounding then-President Park Geun-hye. Mass protests and legal proceedings followed, eventually leading to Park's impeachment and removal from power in March. The election cycle swung into gear, and Moon, a former human rights lawyer campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, was boosted by an electorate hungry for change. The protests against Park tapped into widespread frustration in the country over the pervasive reach of major South Korean conglomerates and their alleged collusion with political elites. Park's misdeeds reminded some South Koreans "how we haven't cared enough about politics and have not been keeping close enough watch on how the government is run," said Kim Wan-kyu, a 34-year-old office worker who spoke to my colleague Anna Fifield when demonstrations first began in November. Fifield tweeted: Seven months in South Korea- press exposes corruption- peaceful protests against president- president impeached- democratically replaced --- It's a powerful story, especially in a country where democracy only replaced a decades-long, U.S.-backed dictatorship in the late 1980s. "South Korea still has many problems. But its people, buoyed up by an extraordinary wave of civic activism, are showing that they aren't prepared to accept the established way of doing things," wrote my colleague Christian Caryl in March, when Park was forced out of office. "They have mounted a remarkable campaign for change, and today that campaign has borne fruit of the most dramatic sort. Their cousins to the north can only dream of similar acts of defiance - which is why their country remains frozen in time, beholden to a leader whose only plan for the future is tied to the machinery of violence." The focus now shifts to what Moon's presidency may look like. Domestically, he has "promised to improve transparency in government appointments and strengthen regulations on the conglomerates that dominate corporate South Korea," wrote Fifield on Tuesday. "Voters were also concerned about the anemic economy and the widening disparity between rich and poor. Moon promised to put together a huge stimulus package, to create 810,000 public-sector positions and to reduce long working hours." His party does not hold a majority. But the more pressing question for observers in Washington is how South Korea's attitude toward North Korea and the Trump administration's moves against Pyongyang may shift. Moon belongs to a South Korean political tradition that is eager for rapprochement, or at least positive engagement, with North Korea. That is at odds with the White House's aggressive ratcheting up of tensions in the wake of North Korea's latest round of missile tests. "Moon has stated he is not opposed to sanctions," explained academic Andrew Yeo in The Post. "But by seeking inter-Korea talks, promoting an 'economic community' and persuading regional partners to pursue engagement with rather than coercion against North Korea, the new South Korean government may find it difficult to coordinate its North Korea policy with Washington." Moon has also bristled at the deployment of the U.S.'s sophisticated THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, which Moon claims was authorized by the previous government without a proper review and then fast-tracked before the election. Liberal discontent with THAAD in South Korea was deepened by Trump's own contention that South Korea should foot the bill for its deployment. "The perception is that Washington has bullied Seoul into accepting THAAD and then shoved the bill at its close ally," wrote Duyeon Kim in Foreign Affairs. But there are reasons for optimism on U.S.-South Korea ties, too. Yeo suggests that, "like Korea's previous progressive presidents, Moon will seek to take greater initiative on issues pertaining to the Korean Peninsula - rather than rely on just the United States or China." This may actually be welcome to the Trump administration and its insistence on an America First doctrine that prioritizes extracting the United States from geopolitical quagmires elsewhere. "I believe President Trump is more reasonable than he is generally perceived," said Moon to Fifield before the election. "President Trump uses strong rhetoric toward North Korea, but, during the election campaign, he also said he could talk over a burger with Kim Jong Un. I am for that kind of pragmatic approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue." If Moon can develop a solid rapport with Trump, it may improve the chances of calming tensions with Pyongyang - and send another signal to South Koreans that their demands for change have produced real results. SEOUL - South Koreans have elected a new president who is wary of the United States and wants to foster warmer ties with North Korea, opening a new and potentially difficult chapter in relations with Washington. Moon Jae-in of the liberal Democratic Party claimed victory Tuesday night after securing an unassailable lead. With 65 percent of the votes counted, he had 39.6 percent. His closest rivals, conservative Hong Joon-pyo and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, had 26 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Both conceded while the votes were still being counted. "From tomorrow onward, I will serve as your president," Moon told cheering crowds of supporters in Gwanghwamun Plaza, the central Seoul square where hundreds of thousands of South Koreans held candlelight protests against President Park Geun-hye, leading up to her impeachment and triggering Tuesday's election. "I will become the president for everyone, even those who didn't support me," said Moon, who lost to Park in the 2012 presidential election. Moon's victory will end almost a decade of conservative rule in South Korea and the hard-line approach toward North Korea that had Seoul walking in lockstep with Washington. While the Trump administration is calling for "maximum pressure" on North Korea, South Korea will have a president who has pledged to resume engagement with the North - including reopening an industrial park that the previous administration said was funneling cash to the regime in Pyongyang. But analysts said Moon, 64, a former human rights lawyer, is likely to be constrained and more pragmatic in office, playing down the prospects of a serious rift with the United States even if the tone of the relationship changes. "We still have the alliance, and North Korea still has nuclear weapons. None of these things have changed," said James Kim, an international relations expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, referring to the six-decade-long security alliance between South Korea and the United States. "There is a reason we have this alliance, and these things are very difficult to change. It can't be done by one individual just because he wants to," Kim said. Tuesday's snap election was called after months of protest that led to the impeachment of Park over a corruption scandal. Park is behind bars and standing trial on 18 charges, including bribery and coercion, after it emerged that a confidante was using their relationship to extract money from South Korean conglomerates, including Samsung. South Koreans were eager to end the turmoil. Since President Donald Trump's election, they have watched the leaders of China and Japan go to Trump's resort in Florida for talks while their acting leader barely received a phone call from Washington. In a statement Tuesday, the White House said: "We look forward to working with President-elect Moon to continue to strengthen the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea and to deepen the enduring friendship and partnership between our two countries." Moon said his victory, if confirmed, would underscore the South Korean people's "desperate wish" for a change in government. "We did our utmost to help realize this aspiration of the people, and I believe that was the driving force that enabled our victory today," he told supporters in Seoul after the exit polls were announced. But many South Koreans were voting against conservatives rather than for Moon, said Kang Won-taek, a professor of political science at Seoul National University. "What people who were protesting wanted was political change, and a natural consequence of that is a change in government," Kang said. But after the upheaval of the past six months, expectations for the next president are high. To an electorate sick of the corruption that the Park scandal exposed, Moon has promised to improve transparency in government appointments and strengthen regulations on the conglomerates that dominate corporate South Korea. Voters were also concerned about the anemic economy and the widening disparity between rich and poor. Moon promised to put together a huge stimulus package, to create 810,000 public-sector positions and to reduce long working hours. These will be difficult to achieve, especially because Moon's party does not hold a majority in the National Assembly. Democrats have 119 seats in the 299-seat parliament, and general elections are not due until 2020. "The Park Geun-hye era witnessed further concentration of wealth and power and instances of government officials using public office for private gain," said Kim Yun-cheol, a professor of political science at Kyung Hee University. "The task facing the incoming president will be to solve these problems." Although domestic issues have dominated this campaign, foreign affairs is much higher up the agenda than usual, in large part because of Trump's election in the United States and the stance he has taken on North and South Korea. Trump has called for "maximum pressure" on North Korea to make Kim Jong Un's regime give up its nuclear and missile programs, and he has threatened to use military force, an approach that could push North Korea to unleash artillery fire on Seoul. Meanwhile, Moon has said that he is open to going to Pyongyang to meet Kim if it would help resolve the nuclear problem and that he wants to return to the "sunshine policy" of previous liberal presidents. This began in 1997 - well before North Korea had proven any nuclear capability - and involved economic engagement with the North to reduce the gaps between the two Koreas. Moon served as chief of staff to Roh Moon-hyun, a liberal president who governed between 2003 and 2008 and who inherited the sunshine policy of liberal predecessor Kim Dae-jung. During this period, South Korea began tours to the North Korean mountain resort of Kumgangsan and opened the industrial park at Kaesong, where North Koreans worked in factories owned by South Korean companies. In an interview with The Washington Post before his election, Moon played down his differences with Trump, saying he believed the American was "more reasonable than he is generally perceived." But Trump has had some tough words for South Korea, too. The U.S. president has said he will make South Korea pay $1 billion to host a controversial American missile defense system - contrary to the countries' agreement that South Korea provide the land and the United States the battery. Moon has vowed to review the Park government's decision to host the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, as the battery is known, and Trump's words have only bolstered his case. Trump is also threatening to tear up a free-trade deal that forms the basis of the countries' economic alliance. Moon has said he wants to maintain it. - - - The Washington Post's Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Jorge Garcia Navarro, a junior at Edison High School, won himself celebrity status Wednesday for next years cafeteria line. Navarro, 17, used his fathers recipe in the San Antonio Independent School Districts first-ever salsa cook-off, besting about 30 other students from five high schools. Navarros winning recipe was deemed the official salsa of SAISD and will be offered in all district cafeterias next year. Navarro said he looks forward to asking the cafeteria workers, Can I have some of my salsa, please? Im not sure if theyll know, but I will know for sure that its mine, he said. The district challenged students to create recipes for the SAISD cafeteria menu for all schools, said Jenny Arredondo, senior executive director of child nutrition. Arredondos department plans to sponsor similar culinary competitions in the future for other cafeteria staples. Going forward, we would like to have menus created that are geared towards the taste buds of our own students, Arredondo said. In the end, theyre going to be the ones eating it. They are our customers. With high levels of student poverty and food insecurity, SAISD serves free meals districtwide. But the district must deal with the waste that occurs when students dont like the food. Some admit to rejecting the cafeteria lunch and spending the entire school day with an empty stomach, but teachers say students dont learn as well when theyre not properly fed. Students in culinary arts and nutrition classes at Edison, Burbank, Lanier, Sam Houston and Brackenridge high schools were instructed to create traditional salsas with spice and heat levels appropriate for students as young as kindergarten. Dressed in chefs outfits, competitors served their concoctions with tortilla chips to judges Wednesday morning at the Cooper Learning Center. Each school made several varieties, including creamy green jalapeno, ranch and roasted salsas. More Information The winning salsa Created by Jorge Garcia Navarro at Edison High School, this will be the SAISD Child Nutrition Department's standard salsa for all the district's cafeterias. Ingredients One 8 oz. can tomato sauce Two jalapenos One white onion Bunch cilantro Lemon juice from 1/2 lemon Garlic powder Salt Directions 1. In a blender, mix tomato sauce and jalapenos until well blended. 2. Add onion, cilantro, lemon juice. Mix 3. Add garlic powder and salt to taste. 4. Serve. See More Collapse The judges included Patti Radle, the SAISD school board president; Arthur Valdez, board vice president; Willie Burroughs, the districts chief operating officer; and Nathan Graf, senior executive director of transportation. They sat at a table with glasses of water, tasting and rating the salsas. All of them were pretty darn good, Valdez said. Navarros salsa will be included as an ingredient or served on the side as a condiment for meals including tacos, enchiladas, chalupas, quesadillas and Spanish rice, Arredondo said. Navarro said his father would be excited to hear that the family recipe had become the official salsa of SAISD. It uses tomato sauce, jalapenos, salt, garlic powder, onions and cilantro, Navarro said. He spent at least an hour making the salsa Monday in class. He had never made so much of it at once, and keeping the kindergartners in mind, he cut back on the jalapenos. Its actually a pretty spicy recipe, Navarro said. amalik@express-news.net A student was arrested Wednesday after allegedly bringing a gun to Waller High School, school officials said. The school is in the town of Waller, about 40 miles northwest of downtown Houston. A student told a teacher Wednesday morning that a student in the alternative learning classroom had brought a gun to the campus, the Waller ISD superintendent said in a letter. The alternative class meets in a portable outside the main school building. The 21-year-old accused of stabbing at UT student to death earlier this month said in a jailhouse interview that he does not recall the attack, hopes to be given a fair trial and that he's been hearing voices in his head. Houston news station KPRC2 interviewed Kendrex White, the biology junior at the University of Texas at Austin who is in the Travis County Jail on a murder charge Tuesday. The interview marks the first time White has spoken since the deadly incident May 1 where Harrison Brown, 19, was killed and three other males were injured. UT Austin Police Chief David Carter said the attacks appeared to be random. "I think it's awful. I think if I'm found guilty then I do deserve it," White said, adding he hopes to be given a fair trial. "If it is true, let me feel the court's wrath, because I don't recall doing it." RELATED: Affidavit reveals what suspected UT killer told police soon after stabbing rampage In his interview with KPRC2 and police, White said he does not remember stabbing four male students at random in a crowded area on the campus's east end. By his account, White went to campus that Monday, missed his class and listened to music through his Beats headphones as he walked around, visiting the university's iconic tower and union building. "I walked around a little bit and was just kind of enjoying the ambiance," he told the TV station, adding he had his knife with him for added protection in the age of campus carry. At one point, White said, he told a man something about Jesus, who responded saying, "What the hell?" "He didn't even acknowledge my presence and he fell down and he just kept looking at me," White said. "And then I ran into someone and he said, "'What the heck,' and I pulled out my knife because my heart started beating really fast and no one moved and then I struck a table and no one acknowledged that I did that. They kept going on with their conversations." Witnesses told police White exited the Student Activity Center at the university and headed across the street to Gregory Gymnasium, an area packed with dormitory buildings near the campus's largest library. The affidavit said a friend of Brown saw White make a punching motion toward Brown. "I think he just stabbed me," Brown said, clutching his chest, according to a witness. RELATED: Police say UT stabbing suspect suffered from mental illness, attack not connected to Greek life White then walked south, on the west side of the gym, found a student sitting at a picnic table and stabbed him in the back of the head, then stabbed two others near a food truck in the vicinity, said UT Austin Police Chief David Carter at a press conference Tuesday. White told police the voices in his head told him to "tell the truth and withhold any action that he did because it really didn't happen," according to the affidavit. While speaking with KPRC2, White said he's been hearing "slight voices," and said doctors have evaluated him. "I talked to one of my lawyer's doctors and they said I might have schizophrenia and epilepsy and I might need mental health counsel," he said, adding he had a premonition of the attack. "I had a dream where it showed my face and I thought it was possible that I could have done it, but I didn't remember doing it myself." If he could speak to Brown's family, White said he would apologize. "I feel completely awestruck that I'm being charged with murder and one person died," he said. "The most I can say is, 'I apologize.'" White said he feels hopeful and hopeless being in jail he said he could have a decent life if he is not sentenced to the death penalty or life in prison. He hopes to get out and do something in the medical field as he was studying to be a doctor. "I always wanted to be a person to give back life and not take it away, and if that's what I did, I'm ready to face the consequences," he said. White's lawyers sent a statement to KXAN saying the suspect was taken advantage of during the interview with KPRC2. The entire lawyer statement reads: "The lawyers and family of Kendrex White are greatly disheartened by the video release of a jail interview yesterday by TV station KPRC. The video was conducted by teleconference in the psychiatric ward of the Travis County Jail facility. It is unclear whether Ms. Bauer, the reporter, recorded the videoconference without the knowledge of Mr. White. Furthermore, he lacked the mental capacity to understand the purpose or nature of that interview. Mr. White was not afforded the same protections that any person suffering from mental illness should be afforded under the circumstances. This reporter's reckless actions have now compromised the opportunity for the victims, their families, and everyone affected by this case a chance for a fair and just trial. As advocates for our community, we would like to send a strong message to Ms. Bauer and all media outlets, that taking advantage of a mentally ill person under any circumstance is unconscionable and cannot be tolerated. Our Constitution affords everyone, even those suffering from mental illness, the right to counsel, the right to remain silent, and the right to a fair trial. The lawyers have grave concerns that Ms. Bauer's careless actions have violated the very fundamental rights we all have as citizens of the Untied States." kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A traffic report reveals that an alleged drunken driver was speeding and ignored a traffic signal before a fatal collision early Sunday on the Northwest Side. Rita Barbara Martinez, 60, was pronounced dead by EMS at approximately 2:41 a.m. at the intersection of Bandera and Evers roads, the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office confirmed. Denys Martinez, 27, was arrested and charged Monday with intoxication assault and intoxication manslaughter. His bail totals $75,000, according to the Bexar County Magistrates Office. RELATED: Leon Valley police resolving $1.2M in unresolved tickets during May warrant roundup According to a crash report filed by San Antonio Police Department investigators, Rita Martinez had been driving her 2005 Hyundai Tucson south on Evers when she entered the Bandera intersection. Denys Martinez was speeding west on Bandera in a 2008 Mercedes-Benz, running the red light into the intersection, police said. Thats when his car collided with the Tucson, investigators said. The impact pushed the Tucson west onto Bandera, flipping it onto the drivers side and fatally injuring Rita Martinez, the report states. She was the sole occupant of the vehicle. RELATED: 2 Wagner HS students arrested in connection with overnight break-in Denys Martinez was taken to University Hospital with minor injuries, according to the report. His passenger, a 25-year-old woman, was found with serious bodily injuries, the report states. She was also taken to University Hospital. Records show Denys Martinez was still in jail as of Tuesday evening. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com jbeltran@express-news.net Twitter: @JBfromSA This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN A foster care bill in the House turned into a heated debate on vaccinations for children on Wednesday. The bill, from Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, is part of the states attempt to reform its foster care system. Wus House Bill 39, which won preliminary approval, would limit on the number of children a Child Protective Services worker could supervise. It would also require speedy medical evaluations of children entering the foster care system. Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington and vice chairman of the staunchly conservative Texas Freedom Caucus, authored an amendment to the bill that would restrict doctors from including vaccinations in initial medical examinations for children. Zedler said children could be removed from their homes by Child Protective Services and given an unwanted vaccination. On the floor, Zedler told lawmakers that vaccines dont protect public health and should not be considered an emergency medication. The vaccination is only for that child to protect that child, he said. Texas allows parents to opt out of vaccinations for nonmedical reasons if they claim a conscientious objection. The number of Texas schoolchildren not fully vaccinated has shot up more than 1,900 percent in 13 years, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle in April. The number skyrocketed from 2,300 to 45,000 kids. Zedlers amendment had both Democrats and Republicans up in arms. Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, attempted to change Zedlers amendment to allow doctors to distribute a vaccine if it has been proven to prevent cancer. Davis, an advocate for vaccinations, said she was dumbfounded that lawmakers would vote against preventing cervical cancer. Davis was referring to the human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer in women. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all girls and boys who are 11 or 12 years old should get the HPV vaccine. Its also recommended for young women through age 26 and young men through age 21, according to the CDC website. My amendment empowers doctors to practice medicine, Davis said during a testy exchange with Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano. I think this is so important that we can eradicate cervical cancer. Leach said he was concerned that Davis amendment would revoke the parental rights of those who do not believe in vaccination and rip that decision from the parents and the child and give it to the doctor. I know a lot of you probably didnt anticipate a vaccine debate today, Davis told lawmakers just before they voted 74-64 to table her amendment to the amendment. Eventually, lawmakers agreed on an amendment to Zedlers anti-vaccination amendment that allowed an exception for tetanus shots in an emergency situation. Wu said the amendment would set a dangerous precedent but he would leave it up to the will of the House. Lawmakers adopted the amendment in a 74-58 vote, with Zedler voting for the amendment and Wu voting against. The debate comes just one day after House lawmakers approved a controversial adoption bill that would allow child welfare service providers to potentially reject prospective foster and adoptive parents if their religious beliefs differ from those of the organizations. SAN ANTONIO Police are searching for a suspect who they say struck a woman in the head with a hammer Wednesday morning at a North Side apartment complex and then fled. Officers responded to the attack around 8 a.m. at a complex near Churchill High School at Parliament Street and Sir Winston Street, where they found the woman suffering from a head injury. Texans and the nation should be very clear on why President Trump really fired FBI Director James Comey. Not the reason: Though missteps occurred in Comeys handling of the investigation of Hillary Clintons private server and email problem, his biggest flaw was his decision to announce a reopening of the probe 11 days before the presidential election only to concede too soon before the election that there was nothing there. This move either contributed to or was substantively responsible for her loss. And it was a move that, along with Russian meddling in the election, directly benefited Trump. At the time, he lauded Comey for reopening the investigation. No, the reason Comey was fired was because he was leading an investigation into the possibility of Trump campaign ties to Russia. One issue here was whether Trump aides actively colluded with the Russians to tilt the election, a probe with the potential to reach even the president himself. These are extraordinary circumstances that dictate a special prosecutor in the investigation. At least four Trump associates reportedly have now been ensnared in the probe. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, ostensibly the FBI directors boss, has had to recuse himself from the investigation because of his own contacts with Russia. The Justice Department Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, with whom the decision now lies for a special prosecutor , joined Sessions in writing memos recommending Trump oust Comey. And now we have the firing of the director heading the investigation. We doubt a special prosecutor will be named because of Rosensteins role and because his bosses dont want one. That leaves the only viable option remaining an independent investigative commission, appointed by Congress. The initial foray into the investigation was a disaster with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, having to remove himself from the probe because he publicly embarrassed himself and the House in acting as a Trump apologist during the House probe. The Senate investigation continues, but there has now been enough partisanship on Trumps behalf on display in this investigation that any conclusion it reaches will be immediately suspect. But there is something else at stake here besides the extent of Trump ties with Russian meddling. At issue also is the independence of the FBI in acting without political interference. Trumps actions jeopardize any such confidence. The president will name a new director, who will be subject to Senate confirmation. The Senate must not roll over for the president on this confirmation. It must insist on an FBI director with the fortitude to withstand pressure from both the White House and the Justice Department. The president is not being truthful about the reason for this firing. He should not be allowed to profit from it. The investigations whoever or whatever undertakes them must follow the evidence to logical conclusions. A 53-year-old Greenwich man has been arrested for allegedly collecting more than $11,000 in unemployment compensation by under reporting his earnings. Marcus Deloatch, of South Water Street, was arrested by inspectors from the Unemployment Compensation Fraud Unit in the Office of the Chief States Attorney and charged with one count each of larceny in the first degree by defrauding a public community and unemployment compensation fraud. LOCAL church leaders have called on Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya to apologise for misleading the nation into false belief the bond note was equal to the US dollar. This is after the church leaders under the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) had met the under fire central bank boss on Sunday to share their views on his Monetary Policy Statement he presented last month. They said many Zimbabweans have twice lost life-time savings in a space of a decade through hyperinflation. In their remarks, the church leaders said Mangudyas recent monetary policy statement did not put forward any measures to preserve the value of bank balance which are in local currency. When he went against public resistance to introduce bond notes in 2016, Mangudya insisted the surrogate currency was at par with the US dollar and was not going to lose value. Mangudya has since separated US dollar balances and those denominated in RTGS, an acknowledgement the two were not the same. Church leaders felt authorities were short-changing citizens. The banking public believed that they were holding to US$ accounts over the past 9 years and the true value is lost as the bank balances are now in RTGS dollars, ZCC said in a statement. It is the publics opinion that bond notes yielded unintended impacts such as parallel market conversion rates that eroded peoples bank balances. Thus, the church is concerned by the introduction of the RTGS Dollar as the preferred currency in the context of weak economic fundamentals. Public acknowledgement and apology for such failures are important to bring closure to these issues and restore institutional trust. The church leaders said they were aware that the new monetary measures were introduced at the time of deepening poverty and unemployment, hunger and malnutrition caused by a system characterised by policy inconsistencies. They said Mangudyas measures were generating anxiety in the economy due to high levels of institutional mistrust, non-implementation of pronounced measures. Political polarisation, lack of independence of the central bank, ineffective communication, lack of public awareness and lack of stakeholder consultation, ZCC said. We remind the Bank of the economic fundamentals highlighted in 2016 as critical for the return of the local currency. These are minimum foreign exchange reserves equivalent to one year of import cover, balanced and sustainable government budget, sustainable interest rates, high consumer and business confidence, sustainable level of inflation and healthy job market. The church leaders added, We are further concerned by the contravention of the Constitution and RBZ Act in relation to contraction of loans and government borrowing from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The Church implores your office, government and all stakeholders to facilitate easy access to foreign currency resources to informal, cross-border and small-scale sectors. We are aware that resuscitating the formal economy is complex and will require longer time, thus the informal economy which currently exceed 60% with informal employment above 90% is the anchor of livelihoods in the short and medium term. The Church urged RBZ to pursue policies that will recover and transform the economy while rebalancing economic power in the interest of the majority. NewZimbabwe Breaking News via Email By Lambert Strether of Corrente This is another travel day for me, so I need to put something together in advance. Ive been wanting to consolidate my thoughts on the Ossoff race in GA-06 for some time, so herewith. Let me caveat that Im not in the District or the state of Georgia, and I welcome comments from readers who are! Tomorrow I will return to your regularly scheduled programming. lambert * * * When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite. Frank Herbert, Dune You know the Democrats regard the Ossoff race in Georgias Sixth District freed up by Tom Prices nomination to Secretary of Health and Human Services as existential because thats where theyre putting their money: $8.3 million as of April, 95% of it from out-of-state, and the most expensive House race ever. (Meanwhile, the Sanders-supporting Thompson campaign in Kansas couldnt shake loose $20K from the Democrats for a mailer, despite ultimately improving Democrat share by 24%.) Note that Jon Ossoff couldnt make 50% of the vote in round one of the special election. Not having won outright, Democrat Ossoff faces Google actually has a dropdown for the search who is ossoff running against Republican Karen Handel, a former Fulton County commission chair, she has run four statewide campaigns and has long been a fixture in 6th District politics, who didnt have a spend a dime on TV and radio advertising with a month to go, because of name recognition. Currently, the race is a toss-up: This is a very close race. Both public and private polling suggests that it is, as of today, a true tossup. Which means that moving a point or two either way could make a huge difference. The prospect of being the deciding voice in a race with this much national import attracts all sorts of outside spending on both sides of the aisle. Here are the salient points as I see them. (1) GA-06 is a wealthy Republican suburban district. NBC: The district is one of the nations most educated and affluent. It went for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP primary and Trump eked out a narrow 1.5 percent win over Hillary Clinton a far cry from Mitt Romneys 24 percent romp over Barack Obama in 2012. (2) Ossoff is running as a moderate Republican. NBC: Ossoff launched his campaign with an invitation for donors to make Trump furious, but now goes out of his way to avoid discussing the president or the fact that he is a Democrat. Instead, hes casting himself as a bipartisan pragmatist whose real foils are gridlock and political corruption. In an interview with NBC News, Ossoff said its about staying focused on executing locally. Here is Ossoffs script for his volunteers from the New Yorker: Small groups gathered around Ossoffs thirty-year-old campaign manager, Keenan Pontoni, and I heard someone whisper, He reminds me of David Axelrod! Pontoni went over door-knocking protocol: Things to know about Jon that I hope you can bring up at the doors, and are mentioned on the script: First, that he was a national-security expert and aide with top-secret clearance, fighting to stop corruption and cut waste. He did that several times as a congressional aide. Second, that hes a business owner, whos had to balance budgets and make payroll. Third, and probably most importantly, he has, throughout the world, exposed corruption and saved lives against isis; he has exposed sex trafficking; he has done amazing things through his investigative career. Right now, more than ever, we need somebody who knows how to fight corruption in Washington. (Weve already pointed out that Ossoff is opposed to #MedicareForAll; thats one of the policies that fiscally conservative is code for.) A local voter comments in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Its appealing. I live in Johns Creek and I know that fiscally conservative message will help him reach out across party lines, said Jason Ingraham, an attorney who volunteers for Ossoff. Im surprised by how many Ossoff signs are in the neighborhood, but youve got to appeal to Republicans to win this district. (3) A key Ossoff constituency is up-scale women. The New York Times: On the ground, though, the people powering the campaign were locals, many of them previously apolitical suburban women shocked into action by the presidential election. In Novembers aftermath, Amy Nosek, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mother of two living in an affluent Atlanta suburb, sank into depression, though shed never been depressed before. I didnt even want to go pick up my kids from the school bus because I didnt want to talk to the other parents, or see anybody, she told me. As an antidote, she and a friend founded a local chapter of Indivisible, the network of anti-Trump groups that sprang up after the election. Soon, they were consumed by political organizing. Were working all the time, Ms. Nosek said. Sometimes, I fall asleep on the couch at 9 or 10 p.m., and then I wake up at 2 and Im working until 4.Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Like her, most of the activists I met were new to electoral politics. Some had not even known what district they lived in or who their local representatives were. In general, I think its better than people be involved in politics than not. However, when the people involved and they candidates they support are opposed to universal direct material benefits like #MedicareForAll, I have to oppose them, even if welcoming their involvement. Id also note that previously apolitical or even pre-political people will have virtually no immune system against whatever bullshit the Democrat Establishment is peddling, starting with whos responsible for Clintons loss in 2016 (Clinton). * * * So, look at those salient points: 1) Appeal to suburban Republicans 2) With Republican-friendly policies 3) Especially upscale suburban women Does that sound like the 2016 Clinton campaign all over again? Clintons pivot toward the burbs after the convention? It should, because thats what it is. Democrat leader Chuck Schumer summarized the Democrat establishment strategy very nicely, and it applies to Ossoff in 2017 as much as it applied to election 2016: For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania [or Kansas or Montana], we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin. In short, the Democrat Establishments belief that they did nothing wrong in 2016 is bone deep. So theyre going to double down, and run the same plays from the same playbook in 2017. And part of my reason for writing this post is to inoculate you against the outpouring of Democrat triumphalism and kicking the left that will materialize should Ossoff win. It will be intense.[1] The election is June 20. I guess well see! NOTES [1] Id speculate that it will be along the lines of Ossoffs blueprint for victory, as if a wealthy Republican suburb were somehow representative of America as a whole. And to the Democrat Establishment, it is! * * * And, of course, talk amongst yourselves. Summer travel? Summer projects? Snow all gone? * * * Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And heres todays plant (Rainbow Girl): Rainbow Girl writes: Thrushing brook with mossy rocks (a frog?) and vibrant skunk cabbage. * * * Readers, Water Cooler is a standalone entity, not supported by the Naked Capitalism fundraisers. Please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help. Yves here. Even though this post is written from a UK vantage, it draws on work from Australia and the US. Be sure to read the section that discusses the mental health impact of having a decent job, a poor quality job, or no job. By Jane Mansour, an independent policy consultant specialising in work, active labour market policy, and adult skills. Originally published at Open Democracy Vulnerable employment, with workers experiencing high levels of precariousness, is a global phenomenon. The ILO projects global growth in vulnerable forms of employment to grow by 11 million a year. The impacts of this are being felt across developed, emerging and developing countries. In the UK, much concern about the changing labour market has been framed in terms of the shift in risk that has occurred between employers and individuals. The gig economy is often used to epitomise the imbalance in power between those controlling the technology, and those carrying out the tasks: However, this shift of risk reaches far beyond Uber drivers and millennials on bicycles. It can be seen in the use of contracted, agency and temporary staff and in the unpredictability of zero and minimum hours contracts of those working for supermarkets, in warehouses, in social care and in universities. The impact of this on peoples lives is exacerbated by a parallel transfer of risk in the systems set up to support those who are unemployed or in low paid work. At the same time as work has become less predictable, the safety net has become less springy and with bigger holes. This shift can be seen in cuts to social security, in the changes and increasing conditionality that universal credit brings, in the way jobs are measured and impact on poverty is not. It is seen in adult learning and the introduction of adult learner loans. It is also seen in a childcare sector that does not have the capacity to offer care to those with unpredictable or non-standard hours, even though those are the jobs increasingly likely to be available for those on low pay. The Changing Nature of British Poverty The composition of those in poverty in the UK is changing, and increasingly people in poverty are to be found in working households. Both real wages and living standards are predicted to fall over the next few years in a way that is highly regressive, as prices rise and employers are unable or unwilling to offer higher pay. Getting people into work has been the biggest anti-poverty policy of recent decades millions have been invested by successive governments in active labour market programmes to deliver job outcomes for those on benefits, millions more on evaluating their impact. However, such evaluations have not focused on measuring the programmes impact on poverty reduction. The policy focus on work has been underpinned by evidence that demonstrates the value of employment for both physical and mental wellbeing. Indeed, the work programme is now being replaced by the smaller work and health programme. However, the quality of work is central to broader positive outcomes. Research from Australia has shown the importance: Getting a high quality job after being unemployed improved mental health by an average of 3 points, but getting a poor quality job was more detrimental to mental health than remaining unemployed, showing up as a loss of 5.6 points. Poor quality work, whether defined by pay, security, or unpredictability is increasingly what is on offer to those most disadvantaged in the labour market. In the UK there is no metric in place to help the government understand the extent to which the very work on offer undermines the outcomes it assumes work will produce. Examples from the US show how changes in measurement requirements, at both national and state level, can impact on labour market programme design. The 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act required job outcomes to be above a certain pay threshold in order to be counted. The current model in the UK would need rethinking if Jobcentre Plus and other employment providers had to meet a similar quality proxy for the jobs they place people in. New York City has a career pathways model, developed with a broad group of stakeholders, including unions, providers and employers. It provides a framework that meshes employment and skills systems, measuring job outcomes based on pay. The UKs new metro-mayors, elected last week, with their wider geographical remit, offer an opportunity for a similar redesign, but it will require bolder demands for control of funding, and measurement mechanisms from the mayors themselves. Guidance Needed Lack of pay progression is a significant issue for adults in low-paid work. The high marginal tax rates experienced as in-work benefits are withdrawn mean that a promotion may mean more stress, less flexibility, and very little immediate financial compensation. Employment support tends to focus on entry jobs from benefits, so few jobseekers benefit from advice on how to use jobs as stepping-stones to better pay. Indeed, the evidence shows the most effective way to increase earnings is to move jobs. However, this brings risks for the individual and so requires them to have confidence in the social security safety net in case moving doesnt work out. This confidence is eroded by increasing conditionality, logistical administrative lags, asymmetric information and the lack of honest discussion abut the impact of low pay and insecurity at the bottom end of the labour market. This lack of information is compounded by changes to access to training. Employers are more likely to invest in training their higher paid, (and already high-qualified staff) than those in entry-level roles. Indeed, many large public and private organisations continue to outsource their security, administration, maintenance and reception roles, so those staff may well work under very different terms and conditions to those directly employed by the organisation. People in low wage jobs, wanting to improve their skills in order to support progression are now expected to take out advanced learner loans to fund their own training. This risk swap combined with significant cuts to the further education budget and poor information from learning institutions on the financial and labour market returns to the courses they offer, has seen a fall in the number of adults accessing education and training. In the US in Washington state, the Workforce Board tracks results (numbers into work and earnings) and taxpayer return on investment for 12 programmes which, between them, account for over 98% of the federal and state dollars spent on workforce development. This level of data is not available in the UK, so it is much more difficult to understand what works and how. The Work and Pensions Committee have been examining self-employment and the gig economy. They have noted the gap between Jobcentre Plus provision, universal credit, and self-employed claimants. One of their recommendations was the need for more specialist advisors and support for those working in this way. However, provision of support for all claimants (both in and out of work) needs to be reviewed in the context of labour market changes. This review needs to take account of how jobs are measured, access and information about adult learning, as well how technology enables support to be delivered differently. In France, Macrons employment programme addresses the social cost of precarious jobs by proposing employers using casual workforces bear a financial cost. The incentives in the UK run in the opposite direction. There is scope, in better delivery of work support, to challenge the atomisation and isolation of workers and the loss of social capital and networks of new working models. The precarity of insecure work needs to be addressed, rather than exacerbated, by the systems set up to support people through their working lives. In roles where working hours are flexible or unpredictable, the division between private and public lives can be complex. The interaction between the individual and the state needs to understand that complexity and support people to navigate through their working lives rather than leaving them without a compass or adequate map. Dingo fence study shows dingo extermination leads to poorer soil PhysOrg (Chuck L) Oldest evidence of life on land found in 3.48-billion-year-old Australian rocks PhysOrg Pope Francis invites scientists to the Vatican after Catholic Church realises the Big Bang is real Independent Only 36% of Indian engineers can write compilable code: study ITWire Whos banking whom in cryptoland? Izabella Kaminska, FT Alphaville. A terse debunking. Eating cheese does not raise risk of heart attack or stroke, study finds Guardian People are getting tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils failed evolution Emmanuel Macrons EU honeymoon: Nice while it lasted Politico Jean-Luc Melenchon: Pour une majorite parlementaire insoumise aux legislatives Defend Democracy Brexit 100 moderate Labour MPs to form breakaway group if Jeremy Corbyn stays on after a Tory landslide Telegraph Jeremy Corbyn hoping for Bernie Sanders election endorsement Guardian (martha r) Tickets to Bernie Sanders talk at Cambridge Union sold out in 38 SECONDS Cambridge News (martha r) CHURCH GETS LAST LAUGH AND TAKES ST. ISAACS IN ST. PETERSBURG, PLUS THE MONEY John Helmer Syraqistan Big Brother is Watching You Watch Comey Defenestration Trump Transition Obamacare From Richard Nixon to Donald Trump: Americas Great Leap Backwards James Petras (UserFriendly). Todays must read. See this, for example: Nixon proposed a National Health Insurance Program an expansion of Medicare to cover the health needs of all Americans. This radical proposal (a version of single payer) was attacked and defeated by the Democratic Party, led by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy who was backed by Big Pharma, the AMA and the growing corporate health industry. Doomsday Scenario U.S. Census director resigns amid turmoil over funding of 2020 count Washington Post. Chuck L: To paraphrase Stalin, Its not the voters who count, its the people who count the voters.' When Asked About DNC Unity Tour, Bernie Sanders Said, I Know What Happened During My Campaign Inquisitur Jimmy Carter Reveals He Voted for Sanders Over Clinton MSN (furzy) Berniecrats roil state Democratic Party leadership fight Capitol Weekly: The Newspaper of California State Government and Politics (martha r) Meet the tech-savvy activists trying to take over the Democratic Party The Verge (martha r) IT worker who trained H-1B-holding replacement aims for Congress ComputerWorld. Techies of the world, unite? Ohio fines pipeline builder over water, air violations Associated Press (martha r) IMF Report: U.S. Corporate Debt Could Be Trumps Waterloo Pam Martens and Russ Martens (Glenn F). Wonder how much of this is due to the increase of private equity relative to total equity. Its doubled over this time period. Oil Below $65 Per BarrelFor Years OilPrice The April 2017 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices Federal Reserve (martha r) Why Should We Worry About the National Debt? New York Times. The New York Times hard at work at its official job of making readers stupider. As MF wrote: Apparently, they have taken to publishing educational primers explaining how the world works, or, in this case, how you have to see it the same way as those in power. You will see that the tone is generally alarmist and emphasizes borrowing as the only realistic way to finance the debt. However, toward the end, they sneak in an acknowledgement of other reality: What if investors balked? Well, there is an escape hatch. The federal government could repay its debts by printing fresh dollars and giving them to its creditors. Notice that the article then refuses to explain at all why this is only an escape hatch, who gets to decide when we get to use the escape hatch, and what the consequences of it would be. It is just presented as an almost unspeakable alternative. To give you an idea of how much the Grey Lady thinks of its readers, it has also taken to running explainers like this: How to Get Ketchup From a Bottle Without the Wait, Watery Goo and Splatter. I saw a contact yesterday, who pulled out a print copy of the Times (as in the May 8 edition) and showed me a version of this article.on page A2. Ex-AIG CEO Greenberg loses appeal over 2008 bailout Reuters (UserFriendly) U.S. Asks Wal-Mart to Pay $300 Million to Settle Probe Wall Street Journal SEC probes rental home values in private-equity bond deals Bloomberg (DO). Sent this via National Mortgage News so you can see the comment regarding the fact that underpaying for BPOs (broker price opinions) results in them being drivebys or otherwise poorly done. This was endemic with mortgage securitizations and was one of the reasons weve been skeptical or rental securitizations: they seemed guaranteed to perpetuate the bad practices of mortgage servicing and add not good wrinkles of their own. A Dodd-Frank Rewrite That Would Increase the Chance of Bailouts New York Times. A short and clear explanation. Class Warfare Antidote du jour. Crittermom: I love Springtime! All the birds are returning, like this Yellow-rumped Warbler (male). What I see out my window is much more entertaining/healthier than I could ever find on TV. See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. Yves here. This post gets a bit geeky at points, but it confirms what is a conclusion many readers may have made already: that nominal wealth and income in the US are misleading due to how many costs Americans bear that counterparts in other countries dont, or dont as much. By Timm Boenke, Assistant Professor of Public Economics, Freie Universitat Berlin; Markus M. Grabka, Senior researcher, DIW Berlin; Carsten Schroeder, Head of Applied Panel Data Analyses, DIW Berlin; Professor of Public Economics and Social Policy, Free University Berlin; and Edward Wolff, Professor of Economics, New York University. Originally published at VoxEU While wealth inequalities have received some attention, most academic, political, and public debates focus on inequalities in income. Concerning private wealth and international comparisons of wealth inequalities, research usually investigates the distributions of real and financial assets, debts and net worth.1 Net worth is the current value of all marketable or fungible assets (total gross wealth) minus debts.2 Differences in levels of, and inequalities in, these aggregates miss an important component of household wealth positions, namely, pension wealth the discounted expected present value of future entitlements from public, occupational, and private pension schemes. Considering pension wealth is important because households in different countries make private savings decisions conditional on the country-specific characteristics of pension institutions. In particular, many studies show that (public) social security pension wealth serves as a substitute for other forms of private savings.3 Higher net worth in country A than in country B may indicate higher propensities to consume in the former. Yet if pension institutions are more generous in the latter, the opposite may be true. A comprehensive measure that considers pension wealth in addition to real and financial assets is augmented wealth (Wolff 2015a, Wolff 2015b; Bonke et al. 2016). In a recent paper, we attempt to create a wealth database that allows us to conduct a systematic head-to-head comparison of household net worth, pension wealth (including survivor pensions), and augmented wealth for two countries: the US and Germany (Bonke et al. 2017). The pension systems of both countries comprise three components: social security, occupational pension (including a government employee pension scheme), and private pension. Beyond these common features, their systems differ markedly with respect to generosity, coverage, attainment of entitlements, and type of financing. Our database builds on harmonised data from the Survey of Consumer Finances for the US and the Socio-Economic Panel for Germany in 2013 (see Bonke et al. 2016, Bonke et al. 2017). Including Pension Wealth Narrows the Wealth Gap Between the US and Germany Our data show that net worth holdings differ substantially between the two countries (Table 1). The mean for private households (in 2013 US dollars and purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted) is about $183,000 in Germany versus about $337,000 in the US. This gives a ratio of about 1.84 in favour of US households. The gap for median net worth is smaller and the median is even slightly higher in Germany almost $50,000 compared to $40,000 in the US. For the 75th percentile, we also find a small difference in favour of German households. In both countries, net worth for the 25th percentile is zero. These numbers suggest that net worth in the US is more concentrated at the top of the distribution. Adding pension wealth implies a sizeable reduction of the wealth ratio of the two countries. Augmented wealth holdings of the average US household are about $650,000, or 1.4 times the holdings of an average German household of about $473,000. This difference is mainly driven by the higher net worth of US households that belong to the top of the augmented wealth distribution. Up to the 75th percentile, households in Germany possess larger assets. For example, the 25th percentile value of augmented wealth is about $149,000 versus $86,000 in the US.4 Table 1 Household wealth in the US and Germany Note: The sample is top-trimmed at the 99.9th percentile. All results are based on multiple imputations, bootstrap standard errors accounting for multiple imputations are shown in parentheses. Nonlinear estimates (P25, P50, P75) are based on first imputation only. Source: Bonke et al. (2017). Household Portfolios of US and German Households Are Different With regard to the composition of household total gross wealth, the most important difference between the two countries pertains to owner-occupied property (Table 2). This wealth component contributes nearly 60% to total gross wealth in Germany, but only about 40% in the US. Important differences also relate to the relative contributions of business assets as well as to financial assets and building society savings agreements. Business assets contribute only about 7% to total gross wealth in Germany, but almost 19% in the US. For financial assets and building society savings agreements, the respective numbers are 28% in the US and 17% in Germany. Concerning debt, total household debt in the US is, at about $91,000 on average, 2.5 times higher than in Germany ($36,000). Mortgage debt on owner-occupied property makes up the largest relative portion in both countries: 74% in the US and 61% in Germany. Debt ratios in the US are also higher than those in Germany, with respect to both income and net worth. These numbers suggest that the willingness to go into debt is much greater in the US, and access to credit markets appears to be easier there than in Germany. Table 2 Overall portfolio composition Note: The sample is top-trimmed at the 99.9th percentile. All results are based on multiple imputations, bootstrap standard errors accounting for multiple imputation are shown in parentheses. Source: Bonke et al. (2017). Considering Pension Wealth Mitigates Wealth Inequalities Table 3 presents Gini coefficients for the different wealth aggregates in the two countries. Because indices are difficult to interpret if the distribution entails observations with negative wealth, we re-did the analysis for the total population with a bottom coding of the wealth component at zero. Finally, to shed light on the inequalities among households that actually hold positive wealth, we have also derived all indices excluding all households with zero or negative wealth. Here we only comment on the results for the overall population without bottom coding. Pertaining to net worth, our results confirm the previous finding of markedly higher inequality in the US. The Gini index is 0.892 as opposed to 0.765 in Germany. These high numbers indicate that wealth is highly concentrated among a small number of households in both countries and that it is much more concentrated than income. Adding social security pensions to net worth reduces inequality: the Gini index falls to 0.704 in the US and to 0.512 in Germany. When adding occupational and private pension wealth to net worth, we also find an inequality-reducing effect, albeit smaller. The Gini indices for augmented wealth reveal the overall effect of the inclusion of pension wealth the respective index for US households is 0.701 and 0.511 for German households. Table 3 Gini-coefficient by wealth aggregate Note: The sample is top-trimmed at the 99.9th percentile. All results are based on multiple imputations; bootstrap standard errors accounting for multiple imputation are shown in parentheses. Source: Bonke et al. (2017). Putting the Results in a Broader Perspective We would expect that the wider social safety net in Germany, relative to the US, implies that middle-class and poor Germans need to save less for job loss, sickness, and old age than corresponding US citizens. We would expect this primarily because of the higher social security pensions and their greater relevance in Germany than in the US. In addition, university education is free in Germany, which means that, unlike US citizens, Germans do not need to save for university tuition. In general, one would think that a wider social safety net would mean less need for precautionary savings. However, net worth is actually higher in Germany than in US up to the eighth decile. Our research also shows that cross-country comparisons of wealth are sensitive to the choice of the wealth aggregate. Augmented wealth may provide a more accurate picture of the welfare positions of households in different countries than net worth. Nevertheless, interpretations should be made with caution because of the restricted convertibility of social security pension wealth. See original post for references Three-dimensional direction-dependent force measurement at the subatomic scale (Nanowerk News) Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is an extremely sensitive technique that allows us to image materials and/or characterize their physical properties on the atomic scale by sensing the force above material surfaces using a precisely controlled tip. However, conventional AFM only provides the surface normal component of the force (the Z direction) and ignores the components parallel to the surface (the X and Y directions). To fully characterize materials used in nanoscale devices, it is necessary to obtain information about parameters with directionality, such as electronic, magnetic, and elastic properties, in more than just the Z direction. That is, it is desirable to measure these parameters in the X and Y directions parallel to the surface of a material as well. Measuring the distribution of such material parameters on the atomic scale will increase our understanding of chemical composition and reactions, surface morphology, molecular manipulation, and nanomachine operation. A research group at Osaka University has recently developed an AFM-based approach called bimodal AFM to obtain information about material surfaces in the X, Y, and Z directions (that is, in three dimensions) on the subatomic scale. The researchers measured the total force between an AFM tip and material surface in the X, Y, and Z directions using a germanium (Ge) surface as a substrate. Their collaborative partner, the Institute of Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, contributed computer simulations of the tipsurface interactions. The bimodal AFM approach was recently reported in Nature Physics ("Subatomic-scale force vector mapping above a Ge(001) dimer using bimodal atomic force microscopy"). Bimodal atomic force microscopy provides three-dimensional force vector maps with subatomic resolution. The cantilever is simultaneously oscillated laterally and vertically to determine the vector mapping over the buckled dimers on the Ge(001) surface. (Image: Osaka University) A clean Ge(001) surface has alternately aligned anisotropic dimers, which are rotated by 90 across the step, meaning they show a two-domain structure, explains first author Yoshitaka Naitoh. We probed the force fields from each domain in the vertical direction by oscillating the AFM tip at the flexural resonance frequency and in the parallel direction by oscillating it at the torsional one. The team first expressed the force components as vectors, providing the vector distribution above the surface at the subatomic scale. The computer simulation supported the experimental results and shed light on the nature of chemical tip termination and morphology and, in particular, helped to clarify the outstanding questions regarding the tipsurface distances in the experiment. We measured the magnitude and direction of the force between the AFM tip and Ge surface on a subatomic scale in three dimensions, says Naitoh. Such measurements will aid understanding of the structure and chemical reactions of functionalized surfaces. Mikolaj Glegolski, a Leaving Cert student at the CBS High School in Clonmel has his future all mapped out, thanks to a German multinational software corporation. SAP, a company that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations, has awarded Mikolaj a scholarship to study Business Information Systems in Germany. He will attend a German university for the next three years and all expenses will be covered by SAP, as well as receiving a bursary of 1000 a month to cover any additional costs and flights home. SAP is headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Wurttemberg, with regional offices in 130 countries, including Ireland. After being shortlisted for the scholarship Mikolaj had to travel to the Dublin office to be interviewed in both English and German. The format of the interview included a video conference with Germany and Mikolaj was thrilled to discover he was the lucky recipient of the scholarship. Mikolaj started learning German in First Year in the High School and his love for the language grew over the years. Last year he was one of the national finalists in the Irish Austrian Essay competition and he received an award from the Austrian Ambassador. He will travel to Germany after he has completed the Leaving Cert and once he has finished his studies in Germany he will then be offered a permanent job with SAP. He is really looking forward to the next stage of his life and also the opportunity to become proficient in the German language. Volunteers are needed in Clonmel this Friday to support the Happy Heart Appeal. Irish Heart is seeking volunteers to help sell their iconic happy hearts and raise vital funds to save lives from sudden cardiac arrest, which claims 5,000 lives in Ireland every year. Money raised for the Happy Heart Appeal will go towards Irish Hearts CPR programmes to create lifesavers in every community in Ireland. Starting CPR can double a persons chance of survival. According to Irish Hearts Basic Life Support Coordinator, Brigid Sinnott, when a person suffers a cardiac arrest and they dont receive prompt CPR or defibrillation their chance of survival decreases by 10 percent for every minute that nothing is done. She said: If you are a bystander when this happens and are willing to do something you can make the difference between life and death. Early CPR can double if not triple your chance of survival. Learning CPR can give you confidence in knowing what to do when faced with a collapse and we know that anyone who has done a CPR course at any stage in their life is 10 times more likely to respond and assist in such an emergency. Joe O'Sullivan, the Happy Heart Coordinator in Clonmel for Irish Heart said: This years Happy Heart Appeal target is 500,000; these vital funds ensure that Irish Heart can continue to provide essential CPR training in communities like ours. If a loved one or someone you know goes into a sudden cardiac arrest, you are their main chance of survival. Not a passer-by. You and your hands. CPR saves lives and so do volunteers. If youd like to support the Happy Heart Appeal by volunteering a few hours of your time and selling pins on 12th May, simply contact Mr O'Sullivan at josullivan16@gmail.com or 086 2654577. MSD in Ballydine has raised 1,700 to support the local branch of the Irish Cancer Society. The money was raised through a combination of activities that took place to mark Daffodil Day at the Tipperary plant. To support the fundraising, employees took part in a range of events organised by MSD in Ballydine, aimed at raising awareness and much-needed funds for a deserving cause. Staff dressed in yellow for the occasion and hosted fundraising events such as cake and book sales. Information areas on early detection and prevention of cancer were hosted by the sites Occupational Health Nurse Kate Gordon. Daffodil Day is the biggest and longest running fundraising day for the Irish Cancer Society, Irelands national cancer charity. For thirty years, the Irish Cancer Society has been able to raise funds to support life-saving cancer research and help deliver essential services for patients. Speaking at the cheque presentation, Nuala Strappe, Communications Specialist at MSD in Ballydine said, Our work within oncology and cancer treatment means that days like Daffodil Day are very close to our hearts, and were proud to be able to make this donation to the Irish Cancer Society and to support all of their work. Wed like to say a huge thank you to all those who helped organise such a successful day. Operating in Ireland for more than 50 years, MSD is a global healthcare leader dedicated to making a difference in the lives of patients in Ireland and around the world. MSD Ballydine develops innovative methods for the formulation and supply of new medicines and currently houses a Formulation R&D and manufacturing facility on-site. The plant, which last year marked 40 years in operation, exports life-saving medicines to over 30 countries around the world with primary markets being Europe, USA and Japan. A Clonmel man has retained his bail after explaining to a district court judge that he was home when gardai called at night but answered the front door too late and they were gone. Judge Terence Finn directed that Lee Ahearn's bail conditions should continue after hearing that he was abiding by the nightime curfew imposed on him as a bail condition when gardai called to his home at Heywood Close, Clonmel. Ahearn appeared before Carrick-on-Suir District Court last Thursday after being arrested on foot of a bench warrant issued at Clonmel Court two days earlier for allegedly breaching his curfew bail condition by failing to present himself at his front door when gardai called to his home at 11.45pm on April 28. Defence solicitor Eamonn Hayes explained that by the time Ahearne got to the front door the gardai had departed and moved further on down the street and were speaking with his sister Addie Ahearne. His client was instructed to remain away from Addie so he didn't make contact with the gardai when he saw them. However, he did speak to the gardai the next day. Judge Finn asked why Ahearn didn't just hail the gardai when he saw them. Mr Hayes responded that he was wearing "limited attire" and didn't wish to venture out of his propertry. "I think it may have been attire reasonably appropriate for inside but not for exiting onto the street." The Judge said he noted the execution of the bench warrant and directed that Ahearn's bail conditions continue. He told Ahearn to ensure the gardai had his mobile phone number and to contact them if he was delayed in coming to his front door when they called. The case against Ahearn was adjourned to Clonmel District Court sitting of May 16. He is facing charges of being dangerously drunk and engaging in threatening, abusive and insulting words and behaviour at Heywood Road, Clonmel. More Court... Man refused bail on Cashel pharmacy burglary charge NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, will travel to Berlin on Wednesday, 10 May and Thursday, 11 May 2017. On Thursday 11 May, Mr. Stoltenberg will meet Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Secretary General will also meet with the SPD Parliamentary Group in Bundestag and deliver remarks to think-tank experts and policy-makers hosted by the Korber-Stiftung. Media Advisory 11:30 Joint press point by the NATO Secretary General and Chancellor Merkel Chancellery The press point will be web streamed live on the NATO website. Still and video images will be available on the NATO website after the event. Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @jensstoltenberg) Today (9 May 2017) marks another important step in the consolidation of NATOs support to Iraqi security institutions in strengthening their capabilities in the fight against terrorism. NATO trainers and advisors and Iraqi high ranking officers have concluded a three day-workshop designed to enhance Iraqi leadership and training skills in the domains of countering improvised explosive devices, explosive ordnance disposal, and demining. Iraqi attendees included Generals from the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Interior, and the Counter-Terrorism Service. The workshop provided the opportunity to strengthen the coordination between NATO experts and Iraqi Security Forces and to exchange views on the future outlook of the Iraqi security forces and institutions. In January 2017, NATO deployed a Core Team to Baghdad. The Team includes eight civilian and military personnel. The Core Team provides advice to the Iraqi authorities and coordinates with the Global Coalition against ISIL and other stakeholders in Baghdad. Specialist training courses are delivered primarily by Mobile Training Teams (MTTs), provided by NATO Nations. These teams travel to Iraq, as required, to support specific training and capacity building activities agreed with the Iraqi authorities. These include the following: countering improvised explosive devices (C-IED), explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) and de-mining; civil-military planning in support of operations; civil emergency planning; training in military medicine; technical maintenance training on Soviet-era military equipment; and reform of the Iraqi security institutions. NATOs goal is to increase Iraqs own training capacity in the medium and long term. (Natural News) Wheeling, Illinois-based Evangers Dog & Cat Food Company Inc. has filed a $20 million lawsuit against Bailey Farms LLC, alleging that the Wisconsin-based meat supplier provided the pet food company with beef containing pentobarbital-tainted horse meat, which was found in Evangers Hunk of Beef and Against the Grain dog foods. The pet food company is also alleging that the meat supplier used an expired certification tag from the U.S. Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services. Evangers is suing Bailey Farms on ground of fraud, breach of contract, and breach of warranty. The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County in Illinois on April 25. In the lawsuit, Evangers named Bailey Farms its sole supplier of meat for its Hunk of Beef canned dog food. The beef supplied by Bailey Farms contained horse meat contaminated by pentobarbital. Pentobarbital is a barbiturate compound, commonly used in euthanizing animals. According to the lawsuit, Bailey Farms meat supply was the source of pentobarbital contamination that sickened several dogs and killed one pub in Washington. Evangers charged that the Wisconsin-based farm breached their contract by not supplying 100 percent beef, as provided in their contract. The pet food company also stressed that Bailey farms breached implied warranties and carried out fraud when it deceived Evangers about the contents of the meat supply. In addition to the loss relating to the unsalable product and the cost of the recall, Evangers has suffered extensive damage to its commercial reputation because its product contained horsemeat instead of beef and that horsemeat was contaminated with pentobarbital. This reputation damage has led to a significant loss of retail stores that will sell any of Evangers products, the lawsuit stated. Attorney Gregory Bedell of the Chicago law firm of Knabe, Kroning & Bedell is representing the pet food company. Evangers is seeking $5 million in punitive damages and court fee reimbursements. The pet food company also seeks reimbursements for attorneys fees, for the cost of recent batch recalls, and other fees that the court deems necessary. (Related: Read more news about pet health at PetHealth.news.) Shipping, DNA test and batch recall details According to the lawsuit, Evangers placed an order of more than 21 tons of hand deboned beef from the farm in November 2015, and had an additional order of 21 tons of inedible hand deboned beef in late May 2016. The federal law states that inedible beef is unfit for human consumption. However, if the meat supply is not adulterated or contaminated, it can be used in pet food manufacturing. The shipment placed in November was used in the production of Evangers Against the Grain Hand Pulled Beef product. On the other hand, meat supply shipped in May was used to manufacture about 50,000 cans of Hunk of Beef product. In January 2017, four pugs reportedly got sick and one died after eating Evangers dog food products. According to the pet food company, the dog owner sent the remaining dog food and the dogs stomach samples to a Michigan State University laboratory. Laboratory results confirmed that Evangers Hunk of Beef dog food contained high levels of pentobarbital concentration. The U.S. Food and Drugs Administration has also found traces of the toxic barbiturate in both Hunk of Beef and Against the Grain Hand Pulled Beef products. As a result, Evangers recalled five production lots of Hunk of Beef canned dog food on Feb. 3, 2017. The pet food company has also recalled a single production lot of Against the Grain Hand Pulled Beef canned dog food on Feb. 14, 2017. On March 3, 2017, the company recalled all chunk beef products manufactured from December 2015 and January 2017, as traces of pentobarbital may be found in this products. According to the lawsuit, all the recalled products contained meat that were supplied by Bailey Farms. They may be our best friends, but are you taking this friendship seriously? Be a nicer owner when you read the articles on NaturalNewsPets.com. Sources include: FoodSafetyNews.com ConsumerAffairs.com PetFoodIndustry.com (Natural News) In an astonishing feat of survival, a Taiwanese hiker was rescued in the Himalayas after 47 days stranded in the area, Telegraph.co.uk reported. Twenty-one year-old Liang Sheng-yueh was found in the Nepali section of the famous and notoriously challenging mountain range. The hiker was not just alive, but conscious and even speaking a miracle considering he had survived only on salt and melted snow for a majority of the time he was stranded. Meanwhile, the body of Liangs girlfriend, 19-year-old Liu Chen-chun was also found. Liang had told rescuers that she had died just three days before they were found, likely from starvation, and that he had stayed with her since then. According to the Telegraph.co.uk report, the couple had been hiking on the Ganesh Himal trail, which is one of the lesser-crowded routes in the Himalayas. They were making their way towards the Langtang Village to meet friends when they got caught in a snowstorm. Without a guide, the pair got lost, fell over a waterfall, and landed on a ledge, where they got stuck. Liang and Liu reportedly survived on their packed food for the first 10 or so days, but were forced to make do with salt and melted snow when their supplies ran out. They were found when locals spotted their red tent. With rescuers unable to get to the ledge, Liang and Lius body had to be airlifted by helicopter. Liang was then sent straight to the Grande Hospital in Kathmandu, where he is currently being treated both physically and psychologically. According to the report, Liang was found with no trauma injuries, though his feet were covered in maggots and his head was infested with lice. He also reportedly lost around 30 kgs. Despite this, he was given a good prognosis, with one of his doctors Ajay Singh Thapa saying Despite having to live like that for 47 days, he appears to be mostly normal. As reported on TaipeiTimes.com, the pair, both freshmen at the National Dong Hwa University, were reported missing after their respective families did not hear from them on March 10 as they had expected. Their families asked for official help on March 15, though snow and avalanches in the area made the search especially challenging. (Related: UNSOLVED: 1,600 people have mysteriously gone missing in public parks). A notice posted March 3 on the website MissingTrekker.com said that Liang and Liu landed in Nepal from India and began their trek on February 22. The notice mentioned that the latest Facebook posts from the couple indicated that they had some setbacks prior to the trek, including lost luggage and trivial arguments with each other. Lius post would take a particularly chilling turn considering the outcome. She was said to have written: I wish I had never ended up here. The MissingTrekker.com posted several safety tips for hikers who want to conquer the challenging terrains of the Nepali Himalayas. Before hiking, the website highlighted the importance of doing thorough research, getting insurance, and keeping friends and family informed about trek details as good ways to ensure that you are safe during your trek. The website also cautioned against trekking alone if youre a first-timer. They also highly recommended hiring a guide, whose expertise and knowledge of the terrain could help especially in unexpected conditions. Setting aside enough time for your trek is also important, the website said, as rushing can cause altitude sickness and increase the likelihood of accidents. As for the actual hike, the website warned against wandering off the trail. They also recommended taking your time during the trek, staying hydrated throughout the journey, and turning back when you feel dizzy. Learn more about wilderness survival and disaster preparedness on Preparedness.news. Sources include: Telegraph.co.uk TaipeiTimes.com MissingTrekker.com Wednesday, May 10, 2017 by: Frances Bloomfield Tags: Fukushima Disaster , Fukushima Nuclear Plant , wildfires This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author (Natural News) On the evening of April 29, a wildfire broke out in a mountain forest near the now-disabled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. In a report by the Mainichi.jp, the publication stated that the fire started on the 448-meter high Mount Juman in Namie, a town in the Fukushima Prefecture. In response to the prefecture governments request for aid, the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) dispatched eight helicopters to pour water on the blaze. Far from being a normal wildfire, it raised concerns over the probability of airborne radiation spreading from the site. The area has been designated a difficult-to-return zone since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The high radiation levels originating from the power plant forced officials to bar entry into the area. Its these high radiation levels that have sparked worries among the population. In a 2016 blog post by Anton Beneslavsky, a member of Greenpeace Russias firefighting group, he noted down the dangers of forest fires occurring in contaminated sections of land. During a fire, radionuclides like caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium rise into the air and travel with the wind. This is a health concern because when these unstable atoms are inhaled, people become internally exposed to radiation, Beneslavsky wrote. Formal regional government official Ludmilla Komogorsteva told Beneslacky that forests similar to the one in Namie were ticking time bombs. Based on her experience with the infamous 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Komogorsteva explained that woods and peat accumulate radiation and every moment, every grass burning, every dropped cigarette or camp fire can spark a new disaster. (Related: Fukushima radiation is affecting the health of the entire global ecosystem, scientist says) However, an official with the Ministry of the Environment commented that where were no major changes to radiation levels, stated CommonDreams.org. The official then added they will continue to closely watch changes in radiation doses in the surrounding areas. The cause of the wildfire is still unknown. According to the Fukushima Prefectural Police, a lightning advisory had been issued for the town of Namie by the Fukushima Meteorological Office on the day the fire occurred. They speculate that a lightning strike may have started the blaze, which has since consumed several hectares of forest. The 2011 nuclear disaster, in brief On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 struck the Pacific Ocean, 80 miles off the Japanese east coast. For several minutes, there was shaking and rumbling with little pause. The impact of the earthquake caused Fukushima Power Plant Reactors 1,2, and 3 to automatically shut down to prevent further damage. Heat was still being produced within the reactor core, however. This heat was caused by radioactive decay, and you have to keep cooling it. When the reactors shut down, the cooling was supposed to be by an external power source but that failed too, Jim Smith, a professor of Environmental Science at Portsmouth University, told the IBTimes.co.uk. A horrific chain of events followed. Two external power sources for the power plant were disrupted, forcing workers to rely on 13 emergency diesel generators. A 45-foot high tsunami struck the coast 50 minutes after the earthquake and flooded the basement levels of the nuclear power station, destroying all but one emergency generator. Hydrogen gas began to fill the reactors and, at 3:36 pm on the same day, Reactor 1 experienced a hydrogen explosion and radiation spilled into the environment. The rest is history, and the effects are still felt by Japan to this day. Authorities have since been dealing with an increase in cases of different types of cancers, particularly thyroid cancer. What effects the wildfire may bring remain to be seen. Stay up to date on all news concerning radiation by visiting Radiation.news. Sources include: Mainichi.jp GreenPeace.org CommonDreams.org IBTimes.co.uk (Natural News) Will expanding breast cancer screening guidelines really help to save lives, or will it just help to put more dollars into the pockets of those that make up what we collectively call the cancer industry? A recent press release from the Journal of the American Medical Association describes how different facets of the industry have expanded their guidelines for breast cancer screenings under the guise of prevention. Disagreement between medical societies and other organizations about what is best is rampant, but they all seem to believe that more is better. In 2015, the American Cancer Society revised its guidelines to include yearly mammograms for women 45 years of age or older, and biennial screenings for women who are 55 years of age or older. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, however, seems to take the cake with their blanket suggestion that all women who are 40 years of age or older should get a yearly mammogram. A recent study, led by Archana Radhakrishnan, M.D., M.H.S. from Johns Hopkins University, found that most physicians seem to recommend annual breast cancer screenings, and that gynecologists were more likely to recommend them to women of all ages when compared to general practitioners. To anyone wary of modern medicine, this probably isnt very surprising. Mammograms seem to be all the rage, and are often touted as a top tool for early cancer detection, but are they really the end-all be-all theyre proclaimed to be? Some doctors feel that they may actually be doing more harm than good and theres evidence to prove it. (RELATED: Read more stories about the cancer industry at CancerScams.news) Dr. Michael Baum, Professor Emeritus of Surgery and visiting Professor of Medical Humanities at University College London, made waves for his call to end the UKs NHS Breast Screening Programme. Baum is a surgical oncologist who is an expert on breast cancer treatment in fact, Baum was the driving force behind the programs introduction, back in 1998. Why would he have such a dramatic change of heart? Because, as Dr. Baum puts it, too many healthy women are harmed by breast cancer screening. According to Baum, these screenings often detect a form of cancer that is harmless, and that many women who receive treatment wouldnt have needed any at all, had they not had a breast cancer screening. And research backs up Baums sentiments: A recent Danish study found that one out of every three women who has cancer detected by a mammogram receives unnecessary treatment. Another study out of Canada, which was conducted over a period of 25 years, concluded that mammograms do not decrease the death rate for average-risk women in their forties and fifties. That study also found that 1-in-5 women received unneeded cancer treatment, after having a mammogram. Many studies have found that regular mammograms provide little benefit, but can actually cause quite a bit of harm. Because these cancers would not have needed treatment, many women are unnecessarily exposed to chemotherapy and radiation, and some even undergo surgery to have their breasts removed. As H. Gilbert Welch explains in his new book, Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health, The only way to know if the screening is saving lives is by doing a randomized trial. Its easy to forget this and assume that if technology can find more cancer, it will save more lives. Marketers exploit this assumption. Dont fall for it. As the Canadian study shows, cancer screening via mammogram has virtually no impact on life expectancy for the average middle-aged woman so why do health agencies continue to push the myth that yearly mammograms are essential? As Mike Adams has pointed out in the past, mammograms are a great way to recruit future patients not only can the industry essentially scare women into unwarranted treatments, repeated exposure to radiation (like yearly mammograms) can actually increase your risk of eventually developing cancer. Sources: Media.JAMANetwork.com DailyMail.co.uk NPR.org BCAction.org NaturalNews.com GoodReads.com (Natural News) In the interest of combatting the spread of fake news, Google has created a new algorithm that will bury online information the company deems misleading, false and offensive, according to Bloomberg. Even though the move doesnt necessarily eliminate fake news altogether, it will force low quality articles further down in the search results, thus making it much more difficult for users to locate. According to Google, the decision to introduce the new algorithm was sparked by the 2016 presidential election, where the issue of so-called fake news was consistently debated on the national stage. It was not a large fraction of queries only about a quarter percent of our traffic they were the important queries, explained Ben Gomes, Googles vice president of engineering for search. Its not a problem that is going to go all the way to zero, but we now think we can stay a step ahead of things. The most recent victim of Googles fake news witch hunt has been the website Infowars, run by political radio host Alex Jones. Leaked documents from the Internet search giant reveal that employees were being instructed to rate articles and other posts from Infowars as low to medium quality, even if the information was entirely accurate. Googles rating guide used Infowars as an example of what a website looks like when it has a poor reputation and conspiratorial bent. The leaked guide went on to say, There are a number of controversial, often debunked claims that the site regularly promotes. Eventually, Google was forced to admit that their suppression of Infowars was a mistake, and that they would act fast to correct the problem. This seems to be the consistent mindset among those who seek to suppress or silence what they consider to be fake news do it until you get caught, and then just simply call it a mistake to avoid any further scrutiny or confrontation. But what if its not a mistake at all? What if Google really is out to silence right-of-center websites and blog posts? Its truly bizarre how companies like Google and pundits within the mainstream media never give a clear-cut definition of the term fake news. They are always quick to tell us that we need to act to censor it, but they never seem to go into detail about what specifically is going to be censored. This is because fake news is a subjective term politically speaking, what is considered to be factual information by conservatives is almost always going to be considered lies or propaganda by the progressive left. Therefore, what we should really be paying attention to are the people behind the push to combat fake news, not just fake news itself. Sources: Infowars.com DailyCaller.com (Natural News) Has climate change gone from being just a scientific theory to a pseudo-scientific cult? A new study from the University of Warwick seems to underline the fact that the push for people to comply with the belief in global warming and human impact resides more in faith, than in science. In a world where anyone who even dares to question a single aspect of climate change and the hypotheses that are purported as facts is labeled anti-science and a denier of truth, it is more than ironic that theyve actually shown faith, of all things, to be more important than anything else, when it comes to global warming. The researchers found that when people were encouraged to believe that they could personally do things to help stop climate change, they were more likely to engage in personal actions to reduce their footprint, so to speak. For example, the team found that members of the High Efficacy Climate Change group (who received messages that encouraged them to believe in their impact on climate change) were more likely to adopt behaviors to stop climate change: They drove less, air-dried their laundry, used less water and were more stringent with their household thermostat settings. The team also found that pushing the belief that certain behaviors could help make a difference increased the moralization of these actions. In other words, they found that in addition to getting people to reduce their energy use also encouraged them to have a stronger belief in the morality of what they were doing: Saving energy was good, and using energy was bad. While conserving the use of resources like water is, of course, very important, the concept of climate change believers believing themselves to be more moral would seem to imply that people who do not engage in similar actions would be viewed as immoral, a very cult-like mindset that has overtly religious undertones. Its no secret that in early America, people deemed immoral by the majority were subject to a multitude of inhumane punishments: How long will it take for dissenters in modern America to experience the wrath of climate believers? Perhaps the most ironic thing about the cult-like mentality being pushed by the climate change community is that energy conservation alone is all we need to save the planet even as agribusinesses and biotech companies pollute the Earth with GMOs, herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers and other toxic compounds. Does anyone honestly believe that hanging your clothes out to dry can compete with the rate of toxic sludge that is being poured into our waterways and killing our oceans? Apparently, if you spoon-feed people a convenient narrative, you can ultimately get them to believe anything. The fact remains that companies like Monsanto do far more damage to Earth via their toxic chemical creations than we can even imagine. Monsanto was recently found guilty of crimes against humanity, human rights violations and ecocide by an international tribunal, and yet the media convinces people that they should be more worried about how much electricity they use. Monsanto has been polluting the Earth with hazardous compounds, like PCBs, dioxin and glyphosate, for decades. Even though PCBs were banned years ago, they are still present in the environment even today thats how persistent they are. In their 100 years of existence, nary a decade is complete without some kind of detrimental mishap from Monsanto. And yet, these climate change enthusiasts are often the same people who say GMOs, glyphosate and other such tripe are totally safe and harmless even in spite of the evidence that these things are harmful the cognitive dissonance between the belief in global warming and human impact and the refusal to admit that man-made chemicals are often harmful to the environment is pretty astounding. Follow more news headlines rooted in rational thinking at Rational.news. Sources: ScienceDaily.com WakingTimes.com When Lisa O'Bryan was planning her postdoc project in 201415, she knew that she couldn't buy field instruments off the shelf. O'Bryan, a behavioural ecologist now at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, wanted to tag social mammals with audio recorders to investigate how their communication patterns affect the group's activities. But she couldn't find a wildlife collar with an audio feature, or the right stand-alone recorder to add to an existing collar. A hyena wearing a specially customized wildlife collar (left) can feed valuable data to scientists. Credit: Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin So O'Bryan partnered with researchers at Swansea University, UK, who had already developed collars equipped with global positioning system (GPS) receivers and accelerometers instruments that measure acceleration and enable scientists to identify resting, foraging and other behaviours. During a visit to Swansea, she learnt how to connect an Arduino microcontroller a small, programmable device to a microphone and recorder. Abid Haque, an engineering undergraduate student from India who was visiting the NJIT, customized open-source software from Arduino libraries to fit her needs. The team 3D-printed plastic casing for the components, and a specialist in equestrian equipment attached the casing to leather collars. After testing them on domesticated goats, O'Bryan put the collars on baboons in Namibia last year. The field season went smoothly, and her team is analysing the data. The project made her feel more confident about fixing technical issues. It's made me more versatile, she says. O'Bryan is one of many biologists who have developed niche field instruments for their research (see 'A beginner's guide'). By going beyond commercially available options, researchers can gather new data, gain technical skills and sometimes even sell their products. But such projects are time-consuming and involve tricky engineering issues. Although some biologists develop their own lab instruments (see Nature 544, 125126; 2017), field devices bring different challenges because often, they must last a long time in the wild. In the worst-case scenario, an instrument failure can compromise an entire season of fieldwork. To succeed, biologists can partner with engineers, use open-source electronics tools such as the Arduino platform, or work with companies to customize products. And the payoff can be satisfying. The scientific rewards have been tremendous, says Randall Davis, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University in Galveston, who co-developed oceanographic data recorders with an engineer. Meeting of the minds Biologists can recruit engineers from their own universities or they can contact groups that specialize in field-research devices. In 2016, Frants Jensen, an ecologist now at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, and his colleagues wanted to develop custom wildlife collars to track communication and coordination in groups of hyenas. Jensen had previously studied marine animals using devices co-developed by Mark Johnson, an electronics engineer at the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews, UK; Johnson agreed to help Jensen again. Johnson's expertise was crucial. He noted, for instance, that when the radio transmitter came on, its power usage might reduce the battery voltage, which could potentially cause the device to lose track of time and fail to record data on schedule. So he programmed a microcontroller to save a timestamp every few seconds and note whether the recorder was on or off. He also minimized battery weight and positioned components to avoid chafing the hyenas. Other biologists forge ahead without the expertise of an engineer. In 2014, Anna Prinz, a wildlife biologist who was then conducting research for a master's degree at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, worked with Vikas Taank, a fellow biology graduate student with programming experience, to create a woodpecker-nest monitoring system1. The team used a mini-computer called a Raspberry Pi, and found that other users had written software to perform functions such as streaming video. That was ideal, because she didn't want to build it from the ground up, says Prinz, now at the non-profit Sandhills Ecological Institute in Southern Pines, North Carolina. She watched online tutorials to learn how to build a circuit that could power infrared light-emitting diodes to illuminate the nest. They used the devices to record the breeding behaviour of acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) for three months in California. Researchers can scavenge for components and customization advice online. Jolyon Troscianko, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Exeter, UK, advises checking eBay.com and Amazon.com for parts. When his team was developing miniature videologgers to attach to New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides), the researchers found small cameras online. If parts need to be modified, websites such as RCGroups.com offer tips from hobbyists. Biologists can also ask a company to tailor an existing product but the firm must be willing to help even if the customer is not placing a large order. You're never going to be a huge profit centre for them, says Kelly Benoit-Bird, an ocean ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California. She worked with a company to add sonar devices called echo sounders to an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Depending on project scope and component prices, some changes might not incur an extra charge, whereas others could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This customized autonomous underwater vehicle has sonar devices to detect marine animals. Credit: Kelly Benoit-Bird Working out how much data a device should collect can be tricky. Although it's tempting to amass as much as possible, recording at higher resolution and for longer durations may require a bigger instrument. But Jensen's team is deliberately collecting more data from some sensors than it might need. This will enable the group to determine the optimal resolution needed to obtain valuable information, he says. Typically, researchers need light, strong materials. Troscianko's team encased the crow cameras in thin films of a plastic called Polymorph; light packaging allowed the scientists to use a heavy, long-lasting battery. And an instrument must be rugged enough to withstand animals swimming, fighting or bashing against it. Prinz installed a Plexiglass sheet in front of her nest camera to protect it from the woodpeckers, and Jensen's team waterproofed the hyena collars' microphone and instrument casing. Before launch, the devices must pass several tests. Researchers can expose instruments to harsh conditions, such as extreme temperatures, in the lab. Developers often try out devices on captive animals; Johnson's team tests marine-animal tags on dolphins and porpoises at aquariums. Trainers observe whether the instrument seems bothersome, and scientists ensure that the tag does not leave an abrasion. There's 100 different ways that an instrument can malfunction when it's out at sea. Biologists should expect mishaps in the field. There's 100 different ways that an instrument can malfunction when it's out at sea, says Davis. His team once deployed data recorders on southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) in Argentina and a battery connector short-circuited after about six weeks. Another year, a manufacturer unbeknown to the team had changed a video chip and the devices did not record any video. To reduce risk, researchers can perform a pilot study and pair new instruments with established methods. When Benoit-Bird's team deployed its echo-sounder-equipped AUV to study marine animals, the researchers also gathered data from echo sounders installed on their ship. Although the onboard devices could not detect animals as deep down as the AUV could, they guaranteed at least some data. Persuading funders to support development can be tough. Johnson recommends that scientists describe intermediate steps that could provide useful information, even if the device doesn't work perfectly. Before applying for competitive grants, teams might need to build a prototype to gather preliminary data. Davis's team, for instance, used a US$25,000 in-house university grant to create an early version of its recorder before getting funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Project expenses vary widely. Prinz's nest-monitoring system ranged in cost from about $180 to $500, depending on the power source. O'Bryan's baboon collar costs about $1,100 to make, and her team is working on a cheaper version. But in harsh environments, costs increase dramatically. If a device must operate in the ocean, your budget automatically has to have another zero, minimum, says Benoit-Bird, whose AUV project cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Davis says that his team's prototypes originally cost $18,00020,000 to make, including research and development, and now can be produced for $5,00010,000; over about three decades, expenses have totalled less than $1 million, he estimates. Business boon If the devices succeed, scientists can explore commercialization. The first step is usually to contact their university's technology-transfer office to verify correct procedures for patenting and licensing. Government programmes can help: as part of the NSF Innovation Corps Sites Program at the NJIT, O'Bryan gauged potential customers' interest in her team's audio-recording collars. But often, the market is small. Davis says that he has had trouble persuading a firm to mass-produce his team's oceanographic recorders, because they would probably sell, at most, 500 per year initially. Still, some researchers have achieved commercial success even with a modest number of customers. In the early 2000s, David Mann, a marine biologist then at the University of South Florida in Tampa, began selling underwater acoustic recorders, which his team had devised, to colleagues, and he started Loggerhead Instruments in Sarasota, Florida. He left academia in 2013, and his company currently sells about 100 devices per year for about $3,00010,000 each. When pricing products, scientists should consider the instrument's uniqueness. They should also assess the relative value provided by the device. For instance, Loggerhead's recorders can be deployed underwater for up to a year. Gathering the same data manually by sending a researcher on a boat could cost much more than the recorder, Mann says. If scientists enjoy field-device work but do not want to run a business, they can join an existing company; there, engineers do most of the development, and biologists can work with customers and advise the firm. Kenady Wilson, a wildlife biologist, took a job at Wildlife Computers in Redmond, Washington, which designs and manufactures instruments for marine-animal research. She is analysing data from the devices and will help to determine which algorithms the company's software should include. Biologists can also find positions in groups such as Xylem Analytics in Charlotte, North Carolina, a division of the water-technology company Xylem. The jobs are well suited to people who have experience with similar instruments and want to address global water challenges, says Rob Ellison, the group's vice-president of strategy and technology in Boston, Massachusetts. But even a solely academic project can offer big rewards. Troscianko's crow cams caught the birds making hook-shaped tools2, and Davis's recorders have revealed seal behaviour ranging from fish-hunting tactics to energy-saving gliding3. Measuring something new, says Johnson, brings phenomenal satisfaction. The Ghostbusters monster dubbed Zuul, a horned demon-like creature who famously emerged from the refrigerator, has now inspired the name of a newly discovered 75-million-year-old dinosaur. "Me and my co-author David Evans were batting around ideas for what to name it, and I just half-jokingly said, 'It looks like Zuul from Ghostbusters,'" co-author Victoria Arbour of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and University of Toronto told CBC News. "Once we put that out there we couldn't not name it that." According to a report from The Guardian, the Zuul was one of the most complete specimens ever found with a complete skull, a tail club and preserved soft tissues. The scientists excavated a quarry in Montana where they were able to find the fossils in a remarkably well-preserved state. The size of the plant-eating animal is impressive, stretching six meters (20 feet) long and weighing around 2,500 kilograms (5,500 pounds). This is roughly the size of a modern white rhino, but it's not the only reason why this ancient dino is a terrifying creature. Like its movie namesake, the Zuul dinosaur is fearsome-looking with an armored face, a short, rounded snout and sharp horns protruding from the eyes. Its three-meter tail is a weapon in itself with a massive bony club and pointy spikes. The researchers believe the Zuul used their tails to target the legs of predators who attack them. To pay homage to this useful skill, the researchers gave the newly discovered dinosaur the official scientific name Zuul crurivastator, which roughly translates to "Zuul, destroyer of shins". "The preservation of the fossil is truly remarkable. Not only is the skeleton almost completely intact, but large parts of the bony armour in the skin are still in its natural position," co-author David Evans, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, said. The research was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. A retired firefighter from the Bay Area jumped into action Sunday when two men began throwing punches on a Southwest Airlines plane at Burbank Airport. The flight from Dallas was on its way to Oakland and made a stop at the Southern California airport. While it was on the tarmac, two men aboard the plane started fighting. That's when Daniel Green stepped in. "The victim did nothing; he was just getting ready to disembark," Green said. "The guy who started it, according to the victim, 'this guy just started going crazy on me.'" Cellphone video shows passengers scrambling to get out of the way as the two men punched each other and wrestled across aisles and seats. Some passengers and flight crew attempted to calm tensions between the two men. "What was awesome was the women were the first ones there trying to break up the guys, but they couldnt," Green said. The video shows a female flight attendant rushing in but ending up in the seat with the men slugging it out on top of her. "I see people with their cellphones, but nobodys helping," Green said. Green was able to break it up. "It was surreal," he said. "You see it on TV; all of a sudden its happening in front of you." Southwest Airlines acknowledged the fight took place, giving thanks to its employees for their response. One person was arrested. The Trump administration is weighing whether to send as many as 5,000 more troops to fight in Afghanistan, a military official told NBC News. President Donald Trump is still deciding on a variety of options U.S. military leaders are providing him with, according to senior administration officials. The U.S. currently has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan, part of America's longest war. The Washington Post first reported that the administration was considering adding at least 3,000 troops, with the U.S. asking other NATO nations to match. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday on the "Today" show that Trump must explain the strategy behind increasing troop levels: "It doesn't make sense to increase troop strength to keep doing the same thing." U.S. defense officials said a long-range Patriot missile battery may be deployed to the Baltic region later this year as part of a military exercise. The move, if finalized, would be temporary but signal staunch U.S. backing for Baltic nations concerned about the threat from Russia. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday declined to confirm the specific deployment, but said, "We are here in a purely defensive stance. Everyone knows this is not an offensive capability. For anyone who says otherwise, I would just say I have too much respect for the Russian army to think that they actually believe there's any offensive capability." At a news conference with Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaite, Mattis said the U.S. "will deploy only defensive systems to make certain that sovereignty is respected. The specific systems that we bring are those that we determine necessary." Asked about a potential Patriot deployment, Grybauskaite would only say that "we need all necessary means for defense and for deterrence, and that's what we will decide together." U.S. officials said the Patriot surface-to-air missile system could move into the region during the July air defense exercise, but it would be gone by the time a large Russian military exercise begins in August and September. They said there will be a U.S. component to the air defense exercise, adding that the U.S. is not considering any long-term change to its air defense status in the region. The potential placement of the Patriot system in Lithuania has been discussed since last fall. It would be the first time the system has been deployed in the Baltics. The officials said the U.S. will keep a close eye on the Russian exercise, called Zapad, which will take place in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, wedged between Lithuania and Poland, and the western section of the country. They said the U.S. will have an enhanced presence in the region at that time to monitor whether Russia uses the exercise as an opportunity to mass troops and equipment there and leave some behind when it's over. The officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Russia could have as many as 100,000 troops in the region for the exercise. Lithuania, which borders Kaliningrad, has deep concerns about the Russian threat on its eastern flank. Grybauskaite said Mattis understands the challenges and threats facing Lithuania. Also Wednesday, Lithuania said it had signed a contract to build a 44.6-kilometer (26.7-mile) stretch of a protective fence on the border of Kaliningrad exclave where Moscow reportedly last year deployed anti-shipping missiles. Construction of the 2-meter (6-foot) tall fence will be started shortly, according to Lithuania's Border Guard Service said. NATO has strengthened its military support for the Baltic region. Last July the alliance decided to deploy four multinational battalions in Poland and in the three Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia this year as a response to growing Russian military activity. Those countries have been increasing the size of their military forces, buying new weapons systems and improving their artillery forces. Also Wednesday, Mattis toured the Pabrade training area, northeast of Vilnius near the Belarus border, where a German battle group has been based as part of the NATO effort. He walked along displays of tanks and soldiers, asking commanders about how well the forces are getting along together and with their allies. The U.S. has an armored brigade in Poland. Mattis is in Lithuania as part of a three-country trip, including stops in Denmark and London. Associated Press writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report. Democratic members of Congress sounded off on Tuesday after President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey for what the White House said was his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. Because the FBI was also investigating possible ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, the Democrats questioned the state of the probe and made impassioned calls to have a special prosecutor on the case. "This investigation must be run as far away as possible" from the president, said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who called on the deputy attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor. Schumer, according to NBC News, even called on all Senate Democrats to "be on the floor in their seats" at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to hear how, if at all, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will address Comey's firing. A special caucus meeting will then take place at 10:30 a.m. to discuss the next steps. DV.load("https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3711263-2017-05-09-17-48.js", { width: 600, height: 600, sidebar: false, pdf: false, container: "#DV-viewer-3711263-2017-05-09-17-48" }); Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate during the 2016 election, was not shy about giving his thoughts on the Russia investigation. "Comey firing recommended by Sessions," Kaine tweeted. "I thought he had recused himself from Russia investigation! Trump firing Comey shows how frightened the Admin is over Russia investigation." Kaine is close to the situation, as Comey had written to Congress about one week before the presidential election that the FBI had reopened Clinton's email case. Clinton recently said that Comey's very public decision is one of the reasons she and, therefore, Kaine lost the election. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, both of Massachusetts, also called for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate possible ties between Trump and Russia. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut agreed with Warren and Markey, tweeting that the firing of Comey "compromises investigation of White House ties to Russians no doubt now special prosecutor is necessary." Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said the firing "raises the critical question as to whether the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the last presidential campaign will continue and as to whether the investigation of any collusion or involvement by the Trump campaign will also be investigated by the FBI. Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues." He continued, "Under these circumstances, I renew my call for an independent counsel and a special commission to fully investigate the Russian interference. We await clarification by the White House as soon as possible as to whether this investigation will continue and whether it will have a credible leader so that we know it will have a just outcome. Eric Holder, a Democrat who served as attorney general under Barack Obama and as deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton, also weighed in. "To the career men and women at DOJ/FBI: you know what the job entails and how to do it. Be strong and unafraid. Duty. Honor. Country," he tweeted late Tuesday. Meanwhile, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Trump's firing of Comey is "nothing less than Nixonian." Leahy called Trump's justification for the firing that Comey had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly in his investigation of her use of a private email server "absurd." "The President, in fact, celebrated the Directors egregious mistakes in that investigation. That fig leaf explanation seeks to cover the undeniable truth: The President has removed the sitting FBI Director in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country one that implicates senior officials in the Trump campaign and administration," Leahy said. He added that "this cascading situation demands the prompt appointment of an independent Special Counsel to pick up the pieces of these investigations." Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio tweeted, "Now more than ever, we need an independent investigation into Russian ties to ensure American people can have full confidence in findings." Sen. Mark R. Warren of Virginia said "the only way this administration can begin to demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law, which has so far been sorely lacking, is to cooperate fully with the ongoing congressional investigations and to support the appointment of an independent special counsel." Congressman Alcee L. Hastings of Florida said Comey's firing "cries out for a special prosecutor. Up until the moment of his dismissal, Director Comey was actively investigating President Donald John Trumps connection to Russian interference in the 2016 election. The American people deserve to know why Director Comey was fired without reason and Donald Trump needs to explain himself immediately. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson of Florida said this abrupt action raises many serious questions and is further proof that an independent prosecutor should be named to head the Russia investigation and could make the possibility of such an appointment more likely." Many other Congress members quickly took to social media to sound off on the dismissal of Comey and the state of the Russia investigation. .@realDonaldTrump's brazen firing of #FBIDirector raises the ghosts of some of the worst Executive Branch abuses. https://t.co/7yORPHGLnQ pic.twitter.com/zzjGvA15rQ Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) May 10, 2017 Meanwhile, Senate Republicans were divided over Comey's firing, with some supporting the president's decision and others voicing concern. All but ignoring the unfurling drama over Russia and the U.S. election, President Donald Trump on Wednesday sought to advance prospects for cooperation between the former Cold War foes in Syria and elsewhere in a rare Oval Office meeting with Vladimir Putin's top diplomat. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's talks with Trump were already destined to be a closely watched affair, given the dire state of U.S.-Russian relations and diplomatic wrangling going on over a Moscow-backed deal to stabilize Syria. Yet Trump's stunning decision on the eve of the meeting to fire the FBI director overseeing a Russia-related investigation injected further intrigue into Lavrov's first visit to Washington since 2013. Trump "raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere," according to a White House statement. Trump and Lavrov met in private, though both sides cast the session as a sign of ties having improved since the U.S. leader's assessment of them last month as at an "all-time low." On Wednesday, they focused on areas of budding agreement and Lavrov sought to blame the recent acrimony on former President Barack Obama. "The previous administration bent over backwards to undermine the solid foundation of our relations," Lavrov told reporters at the Russian Embassy after meeting Trump. "We have to start at a very low level." In contrast, he credited Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom he met earlier in the day, with taking a "businesslike" approach that is "free from ideology," focused on reaching agreements. None were apparently reached Wednesday. The meeting was Trump's highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian official since taking office and in itself represented modest progress. The last time Lavrov visited the American capital was before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and intervened militarily in Syria to help President Bashar Assad actions that fueled U.S.-Russian tensions. The Russian diplomat steadfastly refused to weigh in on Trump's decision to fire James Comey, the former FBI director, who had been overseeing investigations of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election and possible collusion by Trump's campaign. Lavrov called it a U.S. decision, echoing Putin, who said Russia had nothing to do with Comey's dismissal. "Was he fired? You're kidding," Lavrov said sarcastically, feigning surprise as he started his day of meetings in Washington. Comey's dismissal escalated concerns in both parties that Trump may be trying to undermine an investigation that appears to be gaining steam. Trump insisted that wasn't the case. He said Wednesday he fired Comey because he "was not doing a good job." Still, the overlap between the investigation and Trump's diplomatic efforts made for uncomfortable optics. Russia's Foreign Ministry tweeted a photo of Trump shaking hands with Lavrov and the Russian Embassy posted another of the president greeting another participant in the meeting: Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a central character in various Russia-related investigations because of his contacts with several individuals close to Trump. Lavrov chalked up the controversy to "noise" and to "false news" invoking Trump's frequent references to the Russia allegations as "fake news." On Syria, where Russia has backed President Bashar Assad's forces and the U.S. has supported anti-Assad rebels, the talks appeared to indicate a slight narrowing of differences. Russia, Turkey and Iran last week agreed on a plan for four "de-escalation zones" in the Arab country to quell a civil war that has killed some 400,000 people and contributed to global refugee and terror crises since erupting in 2011. The U.S. isn't party to the deal and has reacted cautiously, especially given its misgivings about Iran's role. But Lavrov said he detected a U.S. willingness to participate, especially with a zone being formed in Syria's south, near the border with Israel and Jordan. "We believe the U.S. is really interested in that," Lavrov said, acknowledged details of the plan still needed to be worked out. The zones would not cover areas where the U.S.-led coalition is fighting the Islamic State group, but enforcement and other questions remain unanswered. In his earlier meeting with Lavrov, Tillerson emphasized the U.S. wouldn't lift sanctions on Russia related to Ukraine until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered the punishment namely, its Crimea annexation. Moscow wants the elimination of those and election-related sanctions imposed by Obama. Nevertheless, Lavrov struck a conciliatory tone and said Russia isn't intending to retaliate. "Putin doesn't want to follow the lead of those who are trying to poison our relations to the point of no return," he told reporters. Sheriff's deputies responded to the Spirit Airlines terminal at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after skirmishes involving irate passengers broke out following the cancellation of multiple flights Monday night. Thousands of passengers were stranded at the airport because of a dispute between the airline and its pilots, who say they are working without a contract. Jessica Rosime and her family were packed for an international flight at O'Hare in Chicago to Haiti and hoping Spirit's problems don't become their problems. They saw this video of the melee Monday night at the Fort Lauderdale airport after the airline cancelled nine flights. Cellphone video posted online shows passengers crowding the carrier's check-in counters and Broward County Sheriff's deputies trying to break up fights and tackling unruly passengers. [[421714373, C]] Sheriff's deputies arrested three people and charged them with disorderly conduct. Those cancellations filtered back to Chicago where Christne Hatcher spent five hours on the phone from San Diego trying rebook her son's flight to Portland. "I feel it is their responsibility to keep their legal obligation in as much as I purchased a ticket and I did not get the goods I paid for," she said. In a statement, airline officials say they're "shocked and saddened" to see videos of the airport incident. The Miramar-based company said it filed a lawsuit Monday against the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) and the ALPA Master Executive Council of Spirit pilots over the disruption, which has lead to to hundreds of canceled flights and impacted thousands of travelers. We are disappointed that ALPA has decided to engage in this unlawful slowdown, Spirit spokesman Paul Berry said. This has led to canceled flights and prevented our customers from taking their planned travel, all for the sole purpose of influencing current labor negotiations. So we reluctantly filed this suit to protect our customers and our operations. Spirit also suggested the effort was an attempt by the union to affect contract negotiations. The union's chairman, Capt. Stuart Morrison, denied the allegations, saying Spirit's pilots would not accept "substandard pay and retirement based on the unenforceable hypothesis that the company may grow more quickly," adding that their peers throughout the industry "have uniformly and properly rejected agreements based on that theory." Spirit says its service in at least four major airports, including Fort Lauderdale, has taken a hit due to the contract dispute. Shortly before 3 p.m. Tuesday there were six flight cancellations and 21 delays for Spirit at the Fort Lauderdale airport, according to tracking website FlightAware.com. System wide, the airline had 38 cancellations and 63 delays. Passengers flying the carrier are advised to check their flight's status at Spirit.com. Brionka Halbert, 18, was trying to return to New York Monday night after a weekend at the Rolling Loud Festival in Miami when Spirit announced her flight was canceled. Before we took off, the flight attendants told us we have 28 minutes to board the flight or else the flight will be canceled, Halbert said. Everyone was stressed. They asked us to take out our boarding passes and be ready. Then about 20 minutes after that, they told us the flight was canceled. They sent us to the front desk, so that we could either change our tickets or have our tickets refunded. Halbert said passengers were "angry and stressed" over the abrupt cancellation. She said it took two to three hours in line to get tickets refunded. "It got rowdy." According to an arrest report, three people detained by deputies were yelling at employees and threatening them. Officers also alleged they pushed deputies while they were trying to place them under arrest. "I cried. I'm not going to lie, I cried," Spirit passenger Latreece Smith told NBC 6, recalling the chaotic scene. "I was getting mad. I was getting ready to punch on people, I was so serious." The Associated Press reported nine flights were cancelled out of the Fort Lauderdale airport. According to Spirit, more than 150 flights have been canceled in the last two days. Officials from the company told NBC 6 that a Federal Court judge had issued a temporary restraining order that could keep pilots from being able to slow down service. A 23-year-old woman who disappeared on a hike in Montana last week has been found several days after rescuers began searching for her. River Forest native Madeline Connelly and her dog Mogi were found alive Wednesday, a family member confirmed to NBC 5. She was conscious at the time she was found and was being evaluated by medics, her uncle said. [She] didnt have equipment to spend the night in those kinds of conditions, but was able to survive, said Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry in a FaceTime interview. She had her dog with hergreat moral support, she said. The two had been reported missing after Connelly never returned from a hike last week. Connelly, who family members said was an experienced hiker, went to Montana to see family while on her way to a job prospect in Alaska. She began a hike Thursday, but didn't return. I just kind of wanted to say thank you to everyone that put in all of this effort into helping me, Connelly said after being rescued. Curry described the area where Madeline was as dense forest with steep terrain and fast-moving rivers. He added that there is a lot of wildlife in the areaincluding grizzly bears. The Flathead County sheriffs deputy who hoisted Madeline into the chopper said she got turned around and pushed further into the wilderness without food or protection. She was found about five miles from where she parked her car, family members said. Her first words to the people who found her were Can I hike out with you? said uncle Michael Connelly. Madeline says she just wants to sit on the porch and enjoy some sunwhile her mom says her daughters return is the best Mothers Day present she could ask for. Police are searching for a missing Illinois college student after she failed to return to her Schaumburg home last week and has not been since. Olivet Nazarene University student Sheila Khalili, 27, was expected to return home to her parents house in Schaumburg Friday but never arrived. She was last believed to be in the Bourbonnais area, where she attends college. A prayer vigil was held Tuesday at the university's campus. "The faculty, staff and student body enjoy Sheila's warm heart and passion for serving others through our nursing program," Nazarene University said in a statement. Bobby Khalili, Sheila's brother, made a desperate plea Tuesday for his sister's safe return. "Our family isn't full without Sheila, she's the one whose always smiling," he said. Few other details surrounding Khalilis disappearance have been released. She is described as a white female, standing 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighing about 175 pounds. She drives a 2016 white Toyota Corolla with Illinois license plate Z750932. Anyone who sees Khalili or her vehicle is being asked to call 911. Those with information on her whereabouts can also call Schaumburg Police Department Investigations at (847) 882-3534. The Stratford Fire Department is crediting the manager of a Shelton marina with rescuing the man on board a boat that caught fire on the Housatonic River near the Sikorsky Aircraft Property. Video from the fire department shows smoke billowing from the boat engulfed in flames as firefighters on their own boats worked to get the fire under control. Call came in just around noon time for a boat fire in the river behind Sikorsky, Stratford Fire Deputy Chief Brian Lampart said. Its reported that the mechanic was taking the boat for a test drive and he described it as an explosion from one of the engines. That mechanic has been identified as an employee of the Beacon Point Marina in Shelton. The manager of the marina jumped into action on another vessel and was able to safely remove the operator from the burning boat, fire officials said. When times of the essence, when we are en route and you can make an effective rescue, it helps the outcome, which is a positive outcome for this mechanic or this gentleman who was on the boat, Stratford Fire Captain Jermaine Atkinson said. An emergency response unit from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) came out to make sure the fuel is handled properly. The fire has consumed most of the 200 gallons of gasoline on board. What makes it difficult is that boat is now on a sandbar and we cant really reach it, Lampart said. A Sikorsky employee sent in photos to NBC Connecticut showing the black smoke billowing above the river. A salvage company is waiting until Wednesday morning to tow the burned out boat back to the Shelton marina because of the late afternoon low tide, fire officials said. Firefighters from Shelton, Milford and Sikorskys own fire department also responded to the boat fire. There were no injuries. For people or businesses purchasing health insurance plans for 2018, they are likely to see higher premiums than 2017. Insurers provided their proposed rate increases to the State Department of Insurance for plans that would be offered for purchase both on Access Health Connecticut and off the state's healthcare marketplace. Connecticare and Anthem filed rate increases, signaling that each would remain on Access Health. Connecticare attempted to leave Access Health CT last year after its rate increases were scaled back considerably by the Department of Insurance. In 2016, there were five insurers offering plans, but by 2017 there only two. For group plans on Access Health Connecticut, Connecticare and Anthem are looking to raise rates by an average of 8.8 percent and 31.6 percent, respectively. For individual plans offered on the exchange, Connecticare and Anthem are proposing rate increases that average 15.2 percent and 33.8 percent respectively. The overarching justification from all insurers, which includes companies like United Health, Harvard Pilgrim, Aetna, and Oxford Health that are offering plans off of Access Health Connecticut, is that more people require healthcare services and more people need prescription drugs. The companies argue their proposed rate increases are justified since they have to provide more healthcare services than in the past. Connecticut is also reeling from what the possible fallout could be if the Republican-passed healthcare bill becomes law. The US Senate still needs to act, but leadership there has said the final bill will not be the House version. That's the hope of Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, who's led the state's efforts to comply as much as possible with the Affordable Care Act. I think the only thing redeeming in it is that its going to go to the Senate and hopefully they will change it because right now there is nothing in that bill thats going to protect people from losing health insurance," Wyman said during an interview Tuesday. Others, like community health centers are fearful that their patients may no longer have coverage due to funding cuts contained in the bill. For Medicaid specifically, healthcare for the poor, a scaleback of Medicaid expansion or payments to states could lead to fewer people receiving care and less money for hiring. Obviously if there are cuts to Medicaid, to the Medicaid program, we wont be able to afford staff salaries, or clinical staff salaries. So, all of that affects a patients ability to gain access to quality care," said Nichelle Mullins, President & CEO of Charter Oak Health in Hartford. Mullins said she's seen firsthand how more people than ever have received healthcare as a result of the law that was the hallmark of the Obama administration. Those are the people who now have access to care and they are at risk of losing their care. Realtors from across the state of Connecticut rallied at the State Capitol for one thing: a state they can sell to would-be home buyers. The common thread among real estate agents is that even though Connecticut has an inventory of homes for sale, many of them are out reach for the average buyer, which they say has to do with a struggling state economy. Homes in Connecticut are just not affordable," said Michael Barbaro, President of CT Realtors. "Theyre attainable through First Time Homebuyer and down payment assistance programs but you have to be able to afford to live in that home and you have to be able to maintain it, so low paying jobs in any economy are not a good thing so we need to again, build it out. We need to build our way out of this mess. Recent job gains at Sikorsky, Electric Boat, and Pratt and Whitney have been helpful, agents said, but they haven't been enough to make a dent in the inventory statewide. They said even though those are jobs in areas where some homes are affordable, they need to see more statewide success. "Connecticut should be a friendly state to do business in regardless of the name of your company or whether you work for the government or whatever you do for a living, Barbaro added. Even with that, many realtors are optimistic. They said homes in towns with good school systems continue to sell, and said they're optimistic about the future and Connecticut emerging from its economic malaise. Mike Feldman is a real estate agent from Stamford and said he thinks there is daylight for the market in Connecticut after a tough decade. Were still fighting the overhang of some of the foreclosures and the homes that are underwater value-wise compared to what their mortgages are, but were seeming to work through those a little bit slower than the rest of the country, but were getting through it," Feldman said. One man in North Texas may know former FBI Director James Comey better than anyone else here. Trophy Club Town Manager Tom Class is a 27-year veteran of the FBI, and up until a few months ago, he worked for Comey by running the FBI office in Dallas. He said Tuesday he's not shocked, but he is disappointed that President Donald Trump fired Comey as director of the bureau Tuesday. "I am saddened to see him fired," Class told NBC 5. Before moving to North Texas, Class worked closely with Comey at the FBI's Washington headquarters, as the section chief of the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group in the National Security Branch. "He will always make a decision based upon what he believes to be right," Class said. "I believe it's a huge loss to the FBI." Class became Trophy Club Town Manager on Jan. 30 after nearly two years at the FBI Dallas Office. A rally in response to the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards took place Tuesday evening on the courthouse steps near downtown Dallas, without the family's blessing. Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver, who has since been fired by the department, was charged last week with murder in Jordan's death. Tuesday's rally was organized by the Next Generation Action Network outside the Frank Crowley Courts Building. Fewer than 100 people attended, many holding signs, and it was peaceful. The family has asked that people be peaceful when it comes to their son. They made it very clear they didn't want any kind of rallies or protests before his funeral last weekend, and they still don't. In a statement released by their attorney, Lee Merritt, the family said Tuesday evening: "While we appreciate the passion and energy of individuals who just want to go and do something in protest of the failures that culminated in Jordan's murder, and so many other unnecessary deaths, our family is not interested in just doing 'something.' We want to do the right thing. We are choosing to be patient and strategic and only engage in and support activities we believe will result in a specific outcome. The cycle of injustice followed by protest, tragedy and public outcry, with no measurable impact or outcome must be broken. We need to change the systems that stole our son. We look forward to working with anyone who shares these goals." The rally organizers said they just wanted to honor Jordan's life and continue the push for justice. Organizer Dominique Alexander said there is a list of things they want, with an indictment for murder at the top of that list. Alexander said they also want a special prosecutor assigned to the case, the other officer involved to be charged with lying in a sworn statement, a federal investigation of the Balch Springs Police Department and federal charges brought against Oliver. Oliver has since bonded out after he was charged in the young man's death. Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson said the swift moves her office has made in this case are historic for Dallas County and the country. "We want what the family wants, and they want peace, they want unity, they want the process to work. They feel the process is working. That's what the family members are believing. They believe the process is working for them," Johnson said. "I just say to the people of Dallas County, let the process work." The DA's Office is continuing to build its case before it goes to a grand jury. That grand jury will decide whether Oliver is indicted for murder. There is no set time line for when the case will go to the grand jury. Authorities said one person was killed in a crash that shut down Texas 161 in Grand Prairie for hours Wednesday morning. Grand Prairie police said the driver died after the vehicle crashed on northbound Texas 161 near Interstate 30 just after 3 a.m. A passenger in the vehicle was transported to Methodist Dallas Medical Center in critical condition, according to police. The northbound lanes of Texas 161 were shut down until about 9 a.m. No further details have been released. Passengers aboard a flight that landed in Los Angeles swung punches in a caught-on-camera brawl, Southwest Airlines confirmed Tuesday. A fellow passenger, Michael Krause, caught the ugly fight on his cellphone on the Sunday flight from Dallas to Burbank. Screams can be heard in the video as one woman shouts, "What's wrong with you?" Southwest said the fight began on flight 2530 when passengers began to get off the plane. The flight landed safely from Dallas before the fight broke out. One of the brawling passengers, Chaze Mickalo Cable, 37, of Lancaster, was arrested on suspicion of battery by Burbank police, Burbank Airport police Sgt. Steve Saucedo said. The other passenger, whose name was not released, suffered a contusion and swelling of left eye, a small cut on left side of his nose, and a chipped tooth. According to the victim's account in the police report, the whole incident began when Cable turned around in his seat during the flight and made a comment about the woman seated behind him "messing with his chair." Once everyone began to deplane, the victim stepped into the aisle to help the woman get off the aircraft, the report said. That's when Cable allegedly sucker-punched the victim, the report said. The fight ensued as a flight attendant tried to break it up. The flight attendant lost her footing, and at that point the victim, flight attendant and Cable all fell. Another passenger then came from back of the plane to separate everyone, the report said. Krause, whose broken hand prevented him from intervening, described the scene as "total chaos." He described the flight attendant as the "hero" of the ordeal. "We're grateful to our employees who quickly reacted to break up a fight involving three customers," a Southwest Airlines spokeswoman said. "Our Employees are our everyday heroes and are trained to de-escalate conflict while delivering heartfelt hospitality." NBC4's Robert Kovacik and Adrian Arambulo contributed to this report. Things to know about President Donald Trump's firing of James Comey as FBI director: THE BIG WHY Theories abound about why Trump fired Comey and why now. Trump said he fired the FBI director because he "wasn't doing a good job" and on the recommendation of Justice Department officials. The White House pointed to a memo written by a newly confirmed deputy attorney general stating that Comey's disclosures about the Hillary Clinton email investigation were a "textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do." Democrats and even some Republicans found Trump's explanation implausible. They pointed to Trump's praise of Comey at the end of the presidential campaign for having the "guts" to disclose new questions about Clinton's email situation. Many critics believe the president fired Comey to derail the FBI's inquiries into possible contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. California Sen. Diane Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said what "sticks in her mind" is a classified briefing that Comey delivered in March in which he laid out counterintelligence and criminal investigations the FBI is conducting into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. The Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, said of the Comey firing: "The timing of this and the reasoning for it doesn't make sense to me." FINDING A REPLACEMENT The search is on for both short- and long-term replacements. Comey's deputy, FBI veteran Andrew McCabe, became acting director after Comey was fired. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior leaders at Justice are interviewing additional candidates to do the interim job until a successor is nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate to a full 10-year term. As for a permanent replacement, Trump promised someone "who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI." Among names generating speculation: former New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who led the investigation into the deadly attacks on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya. THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION Comey's firing has cast a cloud over the future of the FBI's inquiry into Russia's interference in last year's presidential election. But you can count on questions about the Trump team's contacts with Russia continuing to swirl on multiple fronts as well as partisan wrangling over who should investigate what. Democrats are escalating their calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor to conduct an independent investigation to dispel any impression of a cover-up. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is dismissing that idea, saying a new investigation would only "impede the current work being done." Comey had told Congress in March that a federal investigation examining Russian interference in the presidential election and potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign began last July. And in the days before his firing, he had told lawmakers that he needed more resources to pursue the investigation, according to three U.S. officials. There also are investigations under way in both the House and Senate. Burr said the firing made his committee's investigation "a little more difficult but it didn't make it impossible so we'll continue." WHAT ABOUT TRUMP Trump made an overt play to clear his own name as he ousted Comey. In his written announcement of the firing, Trump made a point of stating that the FBI director had informed him "on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation." There's no public record of such assurances. When Comey was asked last week during a Senate hearing whether the president was part of the probe, he declined to answer. Three Broward County families have been brought together by a grim reality. While they share a lot of commonalities having little boys under the age five, they also share the heartbreaking truth, that theyre watching these little boys die. Michael 5, Kalel 4, and Sebastian, 3, have Mucopolysaccharidoses Type II. Its known as Hunters Syndrome, where the body lacks the ability to rid itself of cell waste. It leads to toxicity in the body and a host of degenerative and developmental problems. The disease is rare, with less than 500 cases in the US and 2,000 worldwide. The average life span is 12-14 years of age. "The prospect of having to bury your own child is just difficult to wrap your mind around," said Sebastian's father, Mario Estevez. One of the symptoms which is noticeable is an arthritic complication in the joints. Each of the boys has rigidity in their hands and feet. Their fingers have begun to curl and have what is called "claw hands." The beautiful news is that there is a cure. Doctors and researchers at Nationwide Childrens Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, developed an infusion which gives the body the enzymes to cure the body of Hunters Disease. But these Broward families cant celebrate. While a cure has been developed to save these boys lives, money stands in the way. As a result, these boys will continue to die. Nationwide Childrens Hospital needs $2.5 million to begin trials, and $1 million needs to be raised by the end of this year. These Broward families have raised roughly $45,000 through numerous fundraisers. Other families afflicted with Hunters Syndrome across the country collectively raised $200,000. The push is on to raise enough money to begin the trials and FDA approval. But the clock is ticking. For more information on how you can help, click here. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against a pilot's union Tuesday to prevent boycotts or slowdowns after irate passengers started a near-riot over canceled Spirit Airlines flights at Fort Lauderdale's airport in South Florda. Deputies arrested three people from New York at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport Monday, charging them with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. The Broward Sheriff's Office said about 500 people were crowded into Spirit's terminal after the airline canceled nine flights because there were no pilots. Video posted online showed deputies grappling with screaming passengers and breaking up fights. The cancellations left hundreds stranded at the airport Monday night. The discount airline said pilots are refusing to pick up open flying assignments, which Spirit claimed is an illegal and concerted plot by the Air Line Pilots Association to apply pressure during contract negotiations. It has filed a lawsuit, saying it has had to cancel about 300 flights nationally and internationally over the past week because of the union's actions. Another 36 were canceled Tuesday. Federal District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas issued a temporary restraining order against the union Tuesday, ordering its member pilots to not engage in any boycotts or slowdown, saying that would violate federal law. Spirit spokesman Paul Berry issued a statement apologizing to customers and saying the company is "shocked and saddened" by the Fort Lauderdale melee. "We believe this is the result of intimidation tactics by a limited number of our pilots affecting the behavior of the larger group,'' Berry said. Meanwhile, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson took to the Senate floor Tuesday to tell the airline industry to "get their act together," otherwise Congress would be forced to act. "What happened just last night in Fort Lauderdale is just another example of passengers becoming sick and tired of what they perceive as mistreatment by airlines," Nelson said. "I have no trouble in putting the airlines on notice if they can't get their act together and start treating the flying public with respect rather than making them think that they are self-loading cargo then this Congress is going to be forced to act." Nelson said he spoke about the incident with the CEO of Spirit Airlines and the head of the Air Line Pilots Association. The union has denied the accusation from Spirit, but said in a statement that its members will obey the judge's order with the goal of helping Spirit resume normal operations. Airport spokesman Greg Meyer said Tuesday that the airport staff has added security agents and other staff at the terminal to help Spirit. He said passengers are often anxious before flying, so any serious disruption can aggravate matters. Three more flights were canceled Tuesday. "For many people, airline travel is very challenging. A lot of people don't do it frequently, so they are nervous anyway. When your flight is canceled and you need to be somewhere at a certain time it is an imposition and we understand that. The airport tries to work with our airline partner to work with our passengers,'' Meyer said. The body of a woman was found in a plastic garbage bag in a ninth-floor stairwell of a Manhattan building Tuesday after firefighters doused a small blaze there, and a trail of blood led cops to a person of interest apparently trying to take his own life a few blocks away, authorities say. Firefighters were called to the Clinton Houses on 105th Street in East Harlem shortly before 7 a.m. for a report of victims with burns. They quickly put out the flames and found the woman in the bag in a ninth-floor stairwell. That was woman was identified by police as 23-year-old Shantee Nakhid. According to officials, there was a trail of blood in the hallway and in the lobby. Authorities described it as a significant amount of blood. A short time later, ESU crews were called to the 12th floor of a building on Park Avenue, where they found a man barricaded inside an apartment. The crews got inside and found the man had slashed himself in the neck and wrist, authorities said. That man, identified by family and friends as Nelson Quinones, is considered a person of interest in the death of Nakhid. Investigators believe she was killed in the Park Avenue building where Quinones is a tenant; they say her body was taken to the 105th Street building, where it was apparently set on fire, officials said. No one was hurt in the blaze, which was contained to the stairwell area. Quinones was taken to the hospital in unknown condition. His relationship to the victim wasn't immediately clear. Quinones' older sister, Jacqueline Thomas, said he slashed himself after a domestic dispute Tuesday morning but insists he's not connected to the killing and burning of Nakhid. "They're claiming somebody dragged this from here, please," she told News 4. "He can't even lift his 5-year-old daughter when she's sleeping from the park upstairs, I got to help him. This is ridiculous." She added that "he was scared. He seen the police when he opened the door. He was scared. He shut the door." Quinones is believed to live on the 12th floor of the Park Avenue building with an older woman, a 20-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy. Neither the woman nor the young man and boy were hurt. Investigators are questioning the trio in hopes of finding some leads. Investigators say Nakhid who was found in the garbage bag had been partially burned; she was still wearing clothes. Police Sgt. John Flynn didn't even flinch as he started his descent from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, briskly walking down a narrow suspension cable with only a safety harness between him and a possible 27-story fall to the glinting East River below. "It becomes like second nature to you," he said of the dizzying height. "Three stories is no different from 30 stories." Being part of the Manhattan skyline was just another day at the office for Flynn and other members of an elite unit that specializes in dangerous, often high-rise rescues. Training exercises like a recent climb up the iconic bridge are designed to get team members thinking beyond the risk to their own lives so they can help save someone else's. Successful rescues over the years have included window washers dangling 17 stories up the side of a skyscraper, distraught people threatening suicide on the Manhattan Bridge and a young thrill-seeker who used suction cups to climb the glass walls of Trump Tower. They've even saved a paraglider who crashed into the torch of the Statue of Liberty. "You're working from the minute you get the call," said Flynn, a rope rescue instructor. "You're thinking about how to best approach the climb, and how to approach the person even before you meet them, how to help them." The New York Police Department's 400-officer Emergency Services Unit is among the most highly trained in the nation in both rescues and law enforcement, and it's one of the most coveted assignments at the 35,000-member department. Candidates must have at least five years on patrol and make it through an eight-month training program followed by rigorous testing. They go on to work as SWAT teams, jump out of helicopters, rappel down skyscrapers and dive into waters in scuba gear. "The officers are handling multiple different jobs all in the same tour," said Deputy Chief Vincent Giordano, the commanding officer of the unit. "They're prepared for anything, and they train for anything." New York has the second-most skyscrapers in the world, just behind Hong Kong, with about 325 buildings over 500 feet. While the fire department also is trained to handle high-rise rescues, the NYPD unit is brought in on cases in which people are resisting help, suicidal or otherwise mentally unstable. Most of the officers on the bridge drill had climbed taller structures and gone up the bridge under more stressful circumstances. Flynn, for instance, helped talk a jumper down from the top in 2013. The man stood at the very edge, and it took hours to get him down. "It's very hard," Flynn said. "You've just convinced this person they should live, and then you've got to get them down." But they don't save all of those who are intent on taking their own lives, and those cases haunt members of the unit. "You're just doing your best to try to save someone," said Detective Jose Otero. Others resist help because they are trying to make a point. That was the case last August, when Detective Chris Williams, a 14-year member of the unit, was about to end his shift for the day and got a call that a protester was using suction cups and ropes to climb from the fifth floor to the 21st floor of Trump Tower. Climber Stephen Rogata said he just wanted to talk to then-GOP nominee Donald Trump, and refused any help or efforts to get him to surrender for his own good. "I explained to him that Trump was not at home," Williams said. "It's going to rain, and you don't want to be on the side of this glass building in the rain." While Williams talked, police took out a window above Rogata and officers set up a rigging system. But Rogata refused to clip into the safety line. Williams decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. "That's when I grabbed him by his arms and did a long drag and pulled him inside the window," he said. The scene played out on national television, but the officers are used to an audience. During the bridge drill, crowds below gathered to watch, and 911 calls poured in. A local television helicopter circled as officers, accompanied by three journalists from The Associated Press, climbed the sloping suspension cable to the top of the southern stone tower. Detective Williams dangled on the side of a vertical ladder at the very top, helping others ascend. "It's all about trusting the equipment, and your partner," he said. "And yeah, I guess, yourself." The MTA worker and the mother of six who was shot and killed on her own Brooklyn street as she was headed home from a shift last week will be laid to rest Wednesday. Jacqueline Dicks, 41, was shot in the head on Elton Street on May 1 just after 11:30 p.m. and was pronounced dead a short time later, authorities had said. Her funeral will be at 11 a.m. in Queens. Investigators had said Dicks was dead by the time they got to the scene and was wearing her MTA uniform when she was shot. Dicks, was a conductor with New York City Transit since June, and had just finished her shift on the N line and her boyfriend, Zire King, had picked her up from the Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard station in Queens to drive her to the East New York neighborhood where she lived, law enforcement sources said. Authorities had questioned King at the start of their investigation into the death of his girlfriend, 41-year-old Jacqueline Dicks, but released him. Cops then obtained a search warrant for King's car and found a handgun in the trunk, police said. Authorities believe that was the weapon that killed Dicks, and Investigators believe he was the gunman. Dicks' bag and phone were also allegedly found in the vehicle at the time. King was later found dead in a closet of a home on First Street in Hackensack, New Jersey, after a three-hour standoff with authorities last Friday, officials said. "Give her her life back," Jacqueline's brother, Tyrone Dicks, said. "Let her finish her life." Jacqueline Dicks was a mother of six who co-workers say was jovial on the job. Her niece, Michelle Dicks, called her an "awesome" person. "I don't even know why this had to happen to her," said Michelle. "I wish whoever did this -- whoever saw, would come and just say something. My family is taking it real hard." Community members and coworkers had rallied around her family. "Last night we lost one of our own to gun violence," MTA Interim Executive Director Ronnie Hakim said in a statement the day following the deadly shooting. "Jacqueline Dicks was a 41-year-old mother of six and valued member of New York City Transit. We extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and will assist NYPD in any way possible." A New York City teacher has been fired after he allegedly ripped a hjiab off an 8-year-old girl in the classroom when she refused to take it off, police say. Police said the 31-year-old teacher at P.S. 76 in Allerton had asked the girl to get off her chair the afternoon of May 2, and the two got into an argument. That's when the teacher, Oghenetega Edah, told the student to remove her hijab, and when she refused, the teacher allegedly said, "I'm taking it off," according to police. He yanked the hijab off the girl's head. The girl reported irritation to her right eye and was taken to Jacobi Medical Center. Doctors found no injuries on the girl. In a statement, the Department of Education called Edah's behavior "completely unacceptable." "This individual was removed from the school immediately and his employment has been terminated," the DOE said. Police are also investigating Edah but say they haven't arrested him. U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says he values national monuments. But as he tours America's newest and most hotly contested one, he questions whether the designation by the federal government was the right way to preserve sacred tribal lands. Zinke said Monday at a news conference that Washington sometimes does things "that seem to be heavy-handed or without coordination." "A lot of the anger that is out there in our country is that local communities and state just don't feel like they've had a voice," Zinke, a Montana Republican, said. Zinke's four-day tour of Bears Ears National Monument, a 1.3-million acre (5,300 square kilometers) area, was part of a review ordered by President Donald Trump to determine if 27 monuments were properly established. On Tuesday, Zinke plans to visit a ranch and conservation area within Utah's new national monument as he re-evaluates government protections on the vast expanse of tribal lands, canyons and plateaus. Some Native Americans said they worry that as Zinke prepares to report back to the president, the voice he's hearing most belong to Utah elected officials. Bears Ears was established by President Barack Obama near the end of his term after a coalition of tribes spent years urging that the area be made a national monument. Tara Benally, a member of the Navajo Nation who lives south of the nearby town of Bluff, said she's glad Zinke's viewing the spectacular landscape within Bears Ears. But Benally and other supporters of the monument want him to spend more time with tribal leaders than his hour-long meeting he held Sunday. Tuesday's visit to a multiple-use site on the northern part of Bears Ears National Monument follows tours Monday by helicopter and on foot, where Zinke was accompanied a group of Republican officials who called the monument's declaration an abuse of power. Gov. Gary Herbert and other officials accompanied Zinke in the helicopter tour over Bears Ears and later on short afternoon hike to a lookout post above the ancient ruins, where security and staff kept media at a distance. Before the hike, Zinke shook hands and chatted briefly with Bears Ears supporters who waited for him at the trailhead. They believe the monument adds vital protections to tribal lands where members perform ceremonies, collect herbs and wood for medicinal and spiritual purposes, and do healing rituals. Interior Department officials have released few details about Zinke's schedule, but photos posted on the secretary's official Twitter account Monday evening showed him meeting with a group of locals, including tribal members, who oppose the monument. He also posted photos of his visit to a nearby state park that houses artifacts, where Zinke climbed down into a kiva, an ancient underground dwelling. Just outside the monument in the town of Blanding, with a population of 3,400 people, two large banners read, "#RescindBearsEars," reflecting the popular sentiment among residents. The monument review is rooted in the belief of Trump and other critics that a law signed by President Theodore Roosevelt allowing presidents to declare monuments has been improperly used to protect wide expanses of lands instead of places with particular historical or archaeological value. Conservation groups contend that the monument review puts in limbo protections on areas across the country that are home to ancient cliff dwellings, towering Sequoias, deep canyons and ocean habitats where seals, whales and sea turtles roam. Zinke insisted there is no predetermined outcome of his review, saying he may not recommend the monuments be made smaller or rescinded, and he might even recommend an addition. On Sunday, he held a closed-door meeting with a coalition of tribal leaders who pushed for the monument then spoke of his admiration for Roosevelt. Davis Filfred of the Navajo Nation said Monday that the one-hour meeting wasn't enough time for the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition to make their points to Zinke. Filfred, who was in the meeting, said it seems Zinke is listening more to opponents of the monument than people who want it preserved. The two monuments he's reviewing in Utah are quite large. Created in 1996, Grand Staircase-Escalante is 1.9 million acres (7,700 square kilometers), about the size of Delaware. Bears Ears is smaller at 1.3 million (5,300 square kilometers) acres. Zinke has been tasked with making a recommendation on the Bears Ears monument by June 10, about 2 months before a final report on all monuments. Environmental groups have vowed to file lawsuits if Trump attempts to rescind monuments a move that would be unprecedented. He said his upcoming decision is not just about how the local tribes, county officials or the governor feel about the monument, but it's also about how the entire country feels about it because it's America's public land. "President Trump, I'm going to tell you, is a great boss. The reason why I think he felt so strongly about this is he feels like sometimes Washington makes these rules and we don't have a voice," Zinke said. "He put this in motion to make sure that local communities count. States count. America counts." Democratic politicians and officials from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Tuesday responded to the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey by President Trump, some of them calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate any ties between President Donald Trump and Russia. U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York Given the way the president fired Director Comey, any person appointed to replace him should be concerned that he or she will suffer the same fate if they run afoul of the Trump administration. First Pres Trump fired Sally Yates, then Preet Bharara. Now #Comey. Doesn't seem like an accident. We must have a special prosecutor. Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 9, 2017 U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York No more excuses: We need an independent special prosecutor to investigate the Trump Administrations ties to Russia. No more excuses: We need an independent special prosecutor to investigate the Trump Administrations ties to Russia. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) May 9, 2017 U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey The President of the United States just fired the person who was investigating his campaign, which should set off alarm bells across the country. The last time a presidential firing raised this many questions, America was in the middle of the Watergate crisis. Now it's even more important that an independent special counsel is appointed to investigate the Russian interference in our elections. pic.twitter.com/WcoxtbfSyW Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) May 9, 2017 U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut "The need for a special prosecutor is now crystal clear. President Trump has catastrophically compromised the FBI's ongoing investigation of his own White House's ties to Russia. Not since Watergate have our legal systems been so threatened, and our faith in the independence and integrity of those systems so shaken. The only way to restore faith in a non-political, non-partisan FBI is to appoint an independent special prosecutor." Firing of #Comey compromises investigation of White House ties to Russians no doubt now special prosecutor is necessary. Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) May 9, 2017 New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman The president's actions today threaten both critical investigations now underway, and the integrity and independence of the FBI, which is a critical partner to my office and to law enforcement agencies across the country. It is now clear that we need a special prosecutor to investigate interference by the Russian government into our presidential election and any potential ties to the Trump campaign or campaign associates. We need our leaders in Washington to put partisanship aside and call on President Trump and Department of Justice to do the right thing. The American people deserve nothing less. Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut I am deeply troubled by President Trump's firing of FBI Director Comey in the middle of a investigation into possible links and connections between Trump, his campaign and associates and Russia. The White House cited Director Comey's handling of the investigation into Secretary Clinton's emails as the reason for the firing, but many will be rightly skeptical of that explanation. FBI Director James Comey was fired Tuesday, and Andrew McCabe was named Acting FBI Director. David Ushery reports. Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey On the heels of FBI Director James Comeys testimony that confirmed an active investigation into this Administrations ties to Russia, business entanglements and conflicts of interest - the President has fired Director Comey. It is extremely suspicious and troubling that in the midst of growing questions about the Trump Administrations ties to Russias interference into our democracy, Attorney General Sessions, who recused himself, could recommend the dismissal of the person in charge of carrying out that very investigation. Who is now in charge of this investigation? Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey The firing of James Comey is the latest, and perhaps most clear, example of the Trump administration's actions to impede accountability and transparency. We now need not only a fully independent investigation into President Trump's ties with Russia, but an inquiry into his unprecedented decision to replace the Director of the FBI. My fear is that the Trump administration is trying to prevent Director Comey from revealing it's involvement with Russia and other improprieties. The firing of #JamesComey is the latest, & perhaps most clear, example of the Trump admin's actions to impede accountability & transparency. Rep. Frank Pallone (@FrankPallone) May 9, 2017 Congressman Tom Suozzi of New York I am calling for a special prosecutor to be appointed immediately to conduct an investigation into President Trump and the Trump campaign's relationships with Putin and Russia. [[414088103, C]] A runaway garbage truck smashed into a house in Mount Vernon. Roseanne Colletti reports. President Donald Trump abruptly fired James Comey as director of the FBI in the midst of the law enforcement agency's investigation into whether Trump's presidential campaign was connected to Russian meddling in the election. In a letter to Comey, Trump said the dismissal was necessary to restore the public's trust and confidence. Comey told a congressional committee that Trump tried to pressure him to drop an investigation into one of his senior advisers then "spread lies" about the affair, and why he fired Comey. Often lauded for his independence, Comey had earlier come under intense scrutiny for his role in the agency's investigation into the email practices of Trump's opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, including a pair of letters he sent to Congress on the matter in the final days of last November's election. Here is a look at key moments in Comey's tenure, the lead-up to Trump's decision to fire him and what followed. Sept. 4, 2013: Comey is sworn in to office as the seventh director of the FBI. He was nominated for the post by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate. July 5, 2016: Holds news conference to announce that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, over her email practices as secretary of state, but criticizes Clinton and her staff for being "extremely careless" in their handling of classified material. July 5, 2016: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump calls the FBI's decision not to bring criminal charges against Clinton the greatest example yet that the system is "rigged." July 7, 2016: Comey vigorously defends the decision not to prosecute Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state. Under an onslaught of Republican criticism, Comey says that to charge Clinton would have been unwarranted and mere "celebrity hunting." Oct. 28, 2016: Days before the election, Comey informs Congress by letter that he was reopening the investigation into Clinton's email practices based on new evidence, citing the discovery of emails on a laptop used by a top Clinton aide. Justice Department officials warned Comey against sending the letter, saying that doing so would be inconsistent with department policy meant to avoid the appearance of prosecutorial interference or meddling in elections. Oct. 28, 2016: Trump reacts to FBI's decision to investigate new messages related to Clinton's emails, telling a campaign rally that he has "great respect for the FBI for righting this wrong." Nov. 6, 2016: Comey tells Congress in a follow-up letter that a review of newly discovered Clinton emails has "not changed our conclusions" that she should not face criminal charges. Nov. 6: Trump criticizes Comey's second letter to Congress, saying Clinton was being protected by a "rigged system" and pronouncing her "guilty," despite the FBI's conclusion that criminal charges were unwarranted. Nov. 8, 2016: Trump is elected president. Nov. 12, 2016: During a telephone call with top campaign donors, Clinton blames Comey for her defeat by Trump. Clinton said her campaign was on track to win the election until Comey sent the letter to Congress on Oct. 28. Nov. 13, 2016: In a CBS "60 Minutes" broadcast after the election, Trump said he hadn't decided whether to keep Comey. Jan. 6, 2017: Comey is among a group of four top U.S. intelligence officials who briefed then-President-elect Donald Trump on their conclusions that Russia meddled in the presidential election on his behalf. Trump told The Associated Press by telephone after the meeting that he "learned a lot" but declined to say whether he accepted their conclusion about Russia. Jan. 22, 2017: Two days after taking office, Trump appears to single out Comey at a White House reception to thank law enforcement officers and others that helped during the inauguration. Trump called Comey over to where he was standing in the Blue Room to offer a handshake and a partial hug, then commented that Comey has "become more famous than me." March 8, 2017: During a cybersecurity conference at Boston College, Comey said he planned to serve his entire 10-year term, quipping, "You're stuck with me for another 6 years." March 20, 2017: Comey testifies to Congress that the FBI has been investigating possible links between Trump associates and Russian officials since July, the same month he held an unusual news conference to discuss the investigation into Clinton. Comey had previously refused to acknowledge the parallel Trump investigation, and his disclosure enrages Democrats who already blamed Comey for costing Clinton the presidency. March 20, 2017: Comey testifies at the same hearing that the FBI and Justice Department have no information to substantiate Trump's unsubstantiated claim on Twitter that former President Barack Obama wiretapped him before the election. May 2, 2017: Clinton again lays part of the blame for losing the election on Comey's Oct. 28 letter. "If the election were on Oct. 27, I would have been your president," she tells a women's luncheon in New York. May 3, 2017: Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey insists that he was consistent in his handling of the separate investigations into Clinton and Trump. Comey also said it made him feel "mildly nauseous" to think his actions in October might have influenced the election outcome. But he told senators: "I can't consider for a second whose political futures will be affected and in what way. We have to ask ourselves what is the right thing to do and then do it." May 9, 2017: Comey sends Congress a letter correcting his prior sworn testimony regarding emails handled by longtime Clinton associate Huma Abedin. Comey had told Congress that Abedin had sent "hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband's laptop, including some with classified information. The two-page, follow-up letter said that, in fact, only "a small number" of the thousands of emails found on the laptop had been forwarded there while most had simply been backed up from electronic devices. May 9, 2017: Trump abruptly fires Comey. "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," Trump states in a letter addressed to Comey. May 10, 2017: Trump told Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting that firing Comey helped to deescalate the investigation into his ties with the Kremlin, The New York Times reported on May 19. "He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said of the former FBI head, according to a senior official who read from a document summarizing the meeting. May 11, 2017: The New York Times reports on a dinner Comey had with Trump a week into his term in which the president asked him do I have your loyalty? Comey did not oblige but promised his honesty instead, according to the Times, which cited two Comey associates. The White House disputed the account. In an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, Trump revealed that he planned to fire Comey even before receiving a recommendation to do so from his attorney general. He alleged the FBI was in turmoil under Comey's leadership, and described him as a "showboat" and "grandstander." He also suggested the Russia investigation played a role in the firing. "When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story," he said. May 12, 2017: "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump tweets. May 16, 2017: The New York Times reports on a Feb. 14 meeting between Comey and Trump regarding the investigation of former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn. I hope you can let this go, the president said, citing an unclassified memo from Comey. The Times said it did not received the memo but its reporter was read parts of it by Comey's associates. May 17, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the FBI's Russia investigation. May 19, 2017: The Senate Intelligence Committee announces that Comey will testify at an open hearing. June 7, 2017: Comeys written testimony is released ahead of his Senate Intelligence committee appearance. The statement outlines a series of interactions between him and the president, including those reported by The New York Times, which he found concerning or unusual. June 8, 2017: Comey testifies to the Senate intelligence committee that he believes his involvement in the Russian investigation is what led to his firing. He said President Trump pressured him to to drop an investigation into one of his senior advisers, fired him after he would not do so and lied about the affair. He also said he leaked memos of his conversations with Trump to a friend to spur the appointment of a special counsel after Trump suggested he taped their conversations. Trumps lawyer responded by denying the president pressured Comey and accused the former FBI director of leaking privileged information. Officials have finalized the sale of a state prison in central Pennsylvania. The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat reports that 328 acres of the former State Correctional Institute at Cresson was sold to businessman Carl Weaver. A spokesman for the Department of General Services says the property sold for $600,000. Ninety-three acres of the prison property were transferred to the Cambria County Redevelopment Authority last year. The county agency's executive director, Larry Custer, say developers will be more interested in the property now because the state isn't involved anymore. Custer adds that the site is served by public water and sewer lines. An energy firm was in talks with the Redevelopment Authority to build an electric generation plant on the agency's portion of the site before pulling out of the deal in January. State lawmakers in Delaware are scrutinizing a bill legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. The legislation being considered in a House committee Wednesday regulates and taxes marijuana in the same manner as alcohol. The bill doesn't allow people to grow their own marijuana but allows adults over age 21 to legally possess less than an ounce of marijuana for personal use. The legislation would create a commission to regulate, license and tax the marijuana industry, allowing licenses for up to 40 retail stores. Consumers would pay an excise tax of $50 an ounce, while businesses would pay an application fee of $5,000 and a $10,000 licensing fee every two years. A new smartphone app aims to help Delaware visitors and residents find fun events and activities right in their area. The Delaware Tourism Office and State parks announced during a news conference Tuesday their new partnership with GeoSwap, a location-based mobile app. GeoSwap was created by students in the University of Delaware Horn Program in Entrepreneurship. UD students Jason Bamford, Jordan Gonzalez and Keith Doggett said they came up with the idea for the app while in their dorms more than two years ago. High-quality, reliable information is essential to making GeoSwap worthwhile for its users, Bamford said. By partnering with Visit Delaware and State Parks, we can ensure that here in the state. We have worked to create a viable product, and its very gratifying to have these state agencies get behind us and show their support in this way. The app engages and encourages users to visit locations and share their experiences by navigating them to fun events and activities in their immediate area, including water parks, beaches, skating rinks, farmers markets, and places for bike riding. Geo pins with the Visit Delaware and State Parks logos were added to the app due to the new partnership. The pins will help visitors and residents identify locations and events. This is a great example of higher education, a small business and state government working together, Delaware Governor John Carney said. The partnership shows how innovation drives tourism in the state and how entrepreneurship plays an essential role in the new economy in Delaware. The partnership is the latest accomplishment for the GeoSwap creators. The app came in first place at Hen Hatch, the University of Delawares startup funding competition. It was also a finalist in April at e-Fest, a business plan competition. The efforts of these young entrepreneurs are truly impressive, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) said. As Delaware Labor Secretary and now as a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Ive seen how educational opportunities, like the ones provided at UD, can enable students to succeed in a competitive economy. The GeoSwap app is available for free on iPhones and Androids. Philadelphia's top prosecutor was indicted Tuesday on additional fraud charges after he was accused of using political action committee (PAC) funds and official government vehicles for his own personal benefit. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, 50, is now charged with using campaign funds to support a lifestyle that included expensive dinners, facials and massages and health club costs. The new indictment Tuesday also says he regularly used city vehicles for his family's personal use. Williams was initially charged in a 23-count indictment in March for bribery. His superseding indictment now contains 29 counts. Officials say the new charges are related to the "Friends of Seth Williams," also known as "The Committee to Elect Seth Williams," a political action committee that accepted contributions to support Williams' campaigns for public office. Under law, PAC funds are only allowed to be used in relation to political campaigns. Williams allegedly defrauded the PAC by using its funds for personal expenses between August, 2010 and August, 2016. Williams concealed this by providing false or incomplete reports to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia, according to the indictment. During one instance, between August, 2010 and September, 2010, the PAC disbursed two checks to a political consultant which totaled about $4,136.59, officials said. The memo line on the checks falsely stated, "Political Consulting," according to the indictment. Williams allegedly obtained checks from the political consultant's account and deposited them into his own bank account. Officials say he received $4,036.59 of the total amount and used the money for personal expenses. Williams also allegedly used the PAC's debit card to pay for personal expenses not related to any election between October, 2011 and May, 2015, including dinner parties and family events. The expenses included a New Year's Eve celebration at a social club with his girlfriend, a facial and massage, a birthday party and a health club membership, according to the indictment. The new indictment also states Williams used official vehicles provided by the City of Philadelphia and a federal narcotics law enforcement program for his own personal benefit. Some of the vehicles were obtained through grants provided by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, officials said. The program's purpose was to reduce illegal drug trafficking and production in the United States. As a member of the Executive Board for the HIDTA of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, Williams assigned HIDTA vehicles to detectives in its Dangerous Drug Offender Unit (DDOU) which conducted narcotics investigations with federal and state HIDTA partners. Vehicles owned or leased by those organizations cannot be used for personal purposes. Williams allegedly used both city and HIDTA vehicles for his own personal use during non-working hours. In some instances he used the vehicles to take himself, friends, family and non-employees around and also used them for personal trips outside Philadelphia, according to the indictment. The indictment also states Williams didn't incur any expenses during his personal use of the vehicles. Williams' use of the vehicles also reduced the number available to members of the DDOU for narcotics investigations. Along with the new charges, Williams is also accused of taking more than $100,000 in cash, trips and luxury gifts from several businessmen as he struggled financially after a divorce. He has belatedly acknowledged taking more than $175,000 in gifts but insists he never promised any legal favors in return. Prosecutors say he agreed to help two bar owners resolve a liquor license problem and help a businessman who made frequent trips to the Mideast clear security at Philadelphia International Airport. He was indicted on the initial charges on March 22. He remains in the $175,000-a-year job, but his law license has been suspended and he is not seeking a third term. Seven Democrats and a Republican are jostling to succeed him in the wide-open May 16 primary. The office has 600 lawyers, detectives and support staff who handle 75,000 criminal cases a year in the city of 1.5 million people. Williams, who is also charged with defrauding his elderly mother of $20,000, recently put his $450,000 home up for sale. The listing describes a new roof Williams admits having installed by one benefactor and shows off what looks like the $3,200 custom "chocolate" couch bestowed, according to the indictment, by another. Federal authorities say they don't plan to delay Williams' scheduled May 31 trial, despite the new charges against him. NBC10 reached out to Williams' defense attorney Thomas Burke for comment. "All the information that forms the basis of these new charges, the federal government has had months and years in some cases," Burke said. "I question why these charges were not brought in the original indictment." District Attorney Seth Williams has been indicted for taking briberies in exchange for favors. NBC10 Investigative Reporter Mitch Blacher uncovered a new reason why FBI agents are looking into Philadelphias top law enforcer. A former Maryland police officer and his mother were sentenced to life in prison for the double shooting in a McDonald's parking lot that killed a 25-year-old man and injured his pregnant wife, who was involved in a custody dispute with the police officer. The evening of May 20, 2015, the victims, Robert and Krystal Mange, drove from Virginia to the Rock N Roll McDonald's in Waldorf to pick up her two young children from their father, former Prince George's County Police Officer Richard Conway, 28. Instead, at about 5:45 p.m., Conway's mother, 53-year-old Caroline Conway got into their car and held the Manges at gunpoint with her son's service weapon. Caroline Conway demanded the victims surrender their cellphones so they couldn't call for help, according to the Charles County State's Attorney's Office. She also made Krystal Mange call her son to tell him the time and location of the exchange of the kids would be changed to 7:30 p.m. in La Plata. When Robert Mange reached for the gun, Caroline Conway opened fire, and the Manges fled the car, the prosecution said. Robert Mange fell to the ground and Caroline Conway stood over him and shot him three more times. She then went around the car looking for Krystal Mange and shot her twice. Caroline Conway called her son to pick her up, and he took her to the home of family acquaintances, where she confessed to the shooting, changed clothing and cleaned up, according to the prosecution. Witnesses at the home said Richard Conway put the gun and the clothing his mother took off in a plastic trash bag. The gun and clothing were never found. At 7:30 p.m., Richard Conway tried to establish an alibi by calling and texting Krystal Mange, leaving messages asking where she was, according to the prosecution. When they went home, police were waiting for them. Krystal Mange had identified Caroline Conway, the prosecution said. The Manges were taken to a local hospital where Robert Mange was pronounced dead. Krsytal Mange was critically injured but survived, as did her unborn child. Richard Conway was convicted of second-degree murder, use of a firearm in a murder, attempted first-degree murder, use of a firearm in an attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and first-degree assault. He was sentenced to life plus 50 years. Caroline Conway was convicted of first-degree murder, use of a firearm in a murder, attempted first-degree murder, use of a firearm in an attempted first-degree murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, first-degree assault and use of a firearm in a first-degree assault. She was sentenced to life without parole plus 60 years. A U.S. serviceman who was missing in action for nearly 50 years after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, a day after his widow's memorial service. Marine Corps Reserve 1st Lt. William C. Ryan Jr. was buried with full honors, just a day before the 48th anniversary of when his plane went down. A huge crowd followed his casket. A Marine killed during the Vietnam War was finally laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday. His remains were found after 48 years missing. News4s Kristin Wright reports. The day after Ryan's family learned his remains finally had been found, they learned his widow, Judith Azzara, had cancer. The former Fairfax County principal died April 11. She was buried Tuesday, a day before her husband's burial. "I did her eulogy yesterday. We had her funeral yesterday in Reston, at St. John Neumann, and today, my dad," Azzara and Ryan's son, Mike Ryan, said Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery. He was just a day from his first birthday when his father was killed. Ryan, a 25-year-old from Hoboken, New Jersey, was on a combat mission over Laos on May 11, 1969, when his F-4B was hit by enemy fire. The pilot lost control and called several times for Ryan, who was the radar intercept officer, but he received no response, the Department of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency said. The pilot ejected, and the plane crashed. The pilot was rescued. But "the location of the crash site precluded a search-and-recovery effort" for Ryan. He was declared dead that day. From January 1990 to May 2012, teams from the U.S., Laos and Vietnam interviewed witnesses to the crash, gathering information on Ryan's whereabouts. From May 2012 to January 2016, teams made six trips to excavate the site of the crash. They found possible human remains. In February 2016, the remains were sent to a lab for testing. Scientists used dental records, including isotope analysis, to try to figure out whose remains they had found. They were Ryan's. "They excavated the site seven times and finally found him and brought him home," Mike Ryan said. The Department of Defense announced to the public on May 4 that Ryan's remains had been found. The day after the family heard the news they had awaited for so long, they learned Azzara was sick. "She was diagnosed with colon cancer that had already metastasized to her liver, so we lost her within weeks," Mike Ryan said. NBC Washington He thanked everyone who paid their respects to his father. "For him to be memorialized this way and honored this way here by the Marines, by Arlington National Cemetery, it was amazing," Mike Ryan said. There are 1,611 American servicemen and civilians still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense says. What to Know Alexander Joseph Sevier, 24, was last seen in Yosemite Valley on the morning of May 3, 2 days after he'd arrived in the park. the NPS said. A member of the Navy stationed in Virginia has been missing for a week and was last seen in Yosemite National Park in California. Alexander Joseph Sevier, 24, was last seen in Yosemite Valley on the morning of May 3, two days after he'd arrived in the park, the National Park Service (NPS) said on Facebook. Sevier is a hospitalman at the Navy Medical Center (NMCP) in Portsmouth, Virginia. "Please keep NMCP's HN Sevier in your thoughts and prayers that he is found safe and sound," the center posted on Facebook. "Thank you to Yosemite National Park for doing it all can to find our Sailor." Sevier traveled to Yosemite alone and was staying at Housekeeping Camp, according to the NPS. Neighbors in the camp told park rangers that he went out for day hikes alone each day and would return in the evening, the NPS said. Rangers were searching for him on and around popular hiking trails in the area, such as the Upper Yosemite Fall Trail and the Mist Trail, the NPS posted Monday. Trained dogs and a helicopter from the California Highway Patrol were also involved in the search. Sevier is 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 128 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes, and he may have been wearing Aeropostale, Abercrombie, or Hollister brand clothing, the NPS said. The NPS is asking any Yosemite visitors who were on trails last week who may have seen Sevier to call 888-653-0009 with any information. President Trump is using a memo written by the newly confirmed deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, to justify his firing of the FBI director, putting an unusual spotlight on Rosenstein. Though little known until now, Rosenstein is a veteran government attorney who has worked for both Democrats and Republicans and has been widely praised for being professional and non-partisan. But despite his straight-and-narrow reputation, he earned criticism from Democrats during his confirmation hearing when he refused to commit to a special prosecutor to investigate Russian meddling in last year's presidential election. In his memo to the attorney general, Rosenstein criticized James Comey's handling of the conclusion of his investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails and his refusal to accept what Rosenstein described as the "nearly universal judgment" that he had been wrong. The FBI's reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, Rosenstein wrote. The deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said after Comey's firing that the administration had complete confidence in Rosenstein. Asked about a special prosecutor on Wednesday, she said, "We don't think it's necessary." But Democrats are rejecting the idea that Trump jettisoned Comey over how he had treated Clinton and are using the dismissal to renew calls for a special prosecutor or for an independent investigation, which some Republicans support. As the crisis over Comey's firing plays out, here are six things to know about Rosenstein. New to the Job Rosenstein was confirmed in his job by a 94-6 U.S. Senate vote only two weeks ago, promoted from within the Justice Department. His hearing focused on the investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, which Rosenstein now heads because U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself over contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Authority to Appoint Special Prosecutor Rosenstein has the authority to appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate Russia's actions during the 2016 election, as Democrats are calling for. At his confirmation hearing, he said he was "not in a position to answer" the question of whether he would name a special prosecutor because he had not read a report on the alleged meddling. He said that if he thought officials were wrong he would "overrule them." Some Democrats found his answer inadequate and demanded he commit to a special prosecutor. But on Thursday, after Comey's firing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat from California, called on Rosenstein and Sessions to recuse themselves from the appointment of a special counsel. The matter should be handled instead by the most senior career attorny at the Justice Department, she said in a statement. Rosenstein's memo read like a "political document" that appeared to "have been hastily assembled to justify a preordained outcome," she wrote. Experience with Special Prosecutors As a young Justice Department lawyer, Rosenstein was part of Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation into Bill and Hillary Clinton's real estate dealings, according to reports. The Harvard Law School graduate has worked for the DOJ for 26 years. He served in the tax and the public integrity divisions and as an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland before becoming the state's U.S. attorney. He was appointed in 2005 by former President George W. Bush, confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and kept on by President Barack Obama. Leak Investigation Rosenstein has experience in another area of interest to Trump: leaks. Former U.S. Attorney Eric Holder named Rosenstein as one of two U.S. attorneys to investigate the leaking of classified national security information in 2012, according to The Washington Post. As a result, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. "Straight Shooter" Rosenstein has been described as a non-partisan, straight shooter who has worked for both Democratic and Republican presidents, according to NBC News and The Guardian. A former boss in the Clinton Justice Department, Philip Heymann, told The Guardian that he was surprised Trump had not chosen someone more partisan. The Baltimore Sun says Rosenstein has a reputation for putting the law over politics. Democrats are now appealing to him to restore faith in the U.S. criminal justice system. "The American peoples trust in the criminal justice system is in Mr. Rosenstein's hands," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. How the Memo Came About A senior administration official told NBC News that Rosenstein and Sessions met with Trump on Monday at the White House to talk about Comey's leadership of the FBI. When Trump said that he had some concerns about Comey, Rosenstein said that he did, too, the official said. "Both had reached the same conclusion about Comey," the official said. Trump asked the men to put their thoughts on paper, which led to the memo. Comey's firing came after he had asked Rosenstein for more staff and money for the Russia investigation. On Thursday, in an exclusive interview with NBC News' Lester Holt, Trump said he was going to fire Comey regardless of a recommendation. Two Massachusetts firefighters were nearly killed at the start of this year when faulty equipment left their calls for help unanswered. The Auburn firefighters, Scott Davis and Lt. Justin Brigham, were called in to fight a fire at 604 Main St. in Oxford on Jan. 2. They made a mayday call, but no mayday was heard. "We were in the last half of our 24 hour shift," Brigham recalled. "It hadn't been an overly busy day. Then the call came in just after 2 a.m." Auburn firefighters Scott Davis and Lt. Justin Brigham talk in depth about the moments leading up to the fire and the dispatch. Auburn Fire was assisting the Oxford Fire Department as mutual aid. "[At] 2 in the morning, I immediately start thinking, 'Do we have people in the building?'" Brigham said. "And I didn't see anyone outside." Brigham and Davis went inside to search. "It was so hot and thick with smoke," Davis said. "The smoke was so thick, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. You could hear it in the walls. You could hear the fire roaring up through the walls as we are searching the room." Auburn firefighters Scott Davis and Lt. Justin Brigham describe what they encountered as they first went inside to search for people thick smoke, intense heat and life-threatening conditions. "I knew time was tight and we were running on borrowed time," said Brigham. "If there was a victim in there, it was not survivable. They would not be alive in there." It was a tight space and the heat was mounting. "We need to get out of here," remembered Brigham. "We need to turn around and get out." "I don't know where we are. We're lost and disoriented," Davis recalled. Then it got worse. "Things got very quiet. Pressures changed. You could feel the pressure in your ears and everything got muffled," said Brigham. "I broadcast the mayday and there was no answer." Looking for a wall to guide them out, they were crawling on their stomachs. "The heat had gotten hot enough you couldn't get up on your knees," said Brigham. "The heat had really taken over the floor and I knew we were in pre-flashover conditions." Flashovers are not survivable, and one was imminent. Auburns Lt. Justin Brigham and firefighter Scott Davis discuss, in depth, the harrowing conditions that led up to the flashover they escaped with just 30 seconds to spare. "I put my hand on the linoleum in the kitchen we had just come out of, and the floor was melting," said Brigham. "My glove slipped and stuck to it. I knew we had seconds." Their masks were melting, as designed, to warn of flashover. They made a second call for help but still, there was no answer. Seconds later, they found a window and dove out to safety. Just 30 seconds later, the flashover hit, the flames engulfing what they would later learn was an empty apartment. In the seconds afterward, Davis was getting his air bottle changed to continue fighting the fire and looked up to the second floor window to see the flashover. "That's when it hit me I almost didn't make it," he said. Brigham teared up as he talked about that night for the first time. "All these people, when they come to work, they've got kids, families, and I don't want to do something that's sorry," he said, unable to finish his sentence. The NBC Boston Investigators obtained a copy of the near-miss investigation. No one heard the mayday calls because Brigham's radio had been knocked to another frequency and couldn't talk to the radios owned by Oxford. An Oxford firefighter also could not communicate with dispatch. "The use of 16-year-old radios for life safety purposes is unacceptable," the report read. Oxford Fire Chief Sheri Bemis has repeatedly asked for money in the budget for new radios to replace the antiquated ones used that night. "Since the mayday, that has been addressed," she confirmed. Oxford Fire Chief Sheri Bemis recalls how she felt as she first heard the mayday call and her fight to add more resources to her department. Twelve of 16 firefighter radios will be replaced in the next year. The chief has also repeatedly asked for more firefighters. Right now, she has 13 full-time fighters, but for a growing town the size of Oxford, she says, should have "between 22 and 24." For years, Bemis has also asked for more officers. The near miss investigation found the police officer's report of occupants out of the building was not passed on by Oxford crews or repeated to command by dispatch. The report stated there was "a lack of trained, experienced firefighters" that night from Oxford. Bemis has now placed a fire prevention officer on that shift. Brigham and Davis credit training for saving their lives, an example of why never to get complacent in training. "Training put us there and training got us out of the situation," Brigham said. "Thank God for training," sighed Davis. Firefighters Scott Davis and Lt. Justin Brigham explain how training saved their lives, carrying a message to every firefighter in the country about never letting down on training or becoming complacent. Both men cheated death that night and continued to fight that fire for hours. Brigham is using that night in training for any and all fire departments. The Oxford town planner confirms they are not only replacing the radios, but are adding two more officer positions. They are applying for grant money to hire more firefighters. A car crashed into a 7-Eleven store in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, Wednesday morning. According to Fairhaven police, the crash happened at the 7-Eleven on Huttleston Avenue around 9:30 a.m. The elderly driver mistook the brake for the gas, launching the car into the building. There were no injuries, but the driver was taken to a hospital to be evaluated. The building appears to be structurally sound; however, 7-Eleven's corporate office said the store will remain closed until it's deemed safe for its employees and customers. "The safety and well-being of our 7-Eleven employees and customers are of the utmost importance," a spokesperson said. There are no charges at the time. During a New England tour for President Donald Trumps Counselor Kellyanne Conway and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Doctor Tom Price, Conway discussed the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. After a stop in Augusta, Maine, the two came to Concord, New Hampshire, Wednesday to discuss the growing drug epidemic. We dont just want to study this, we want to solve it, Conway told a room full of reporters. When NBC Boston asked about the Comey's firing, Conway said, "The president lost confidence and today the president said he wasnt doing a good job. Conway eventually explained the presidents decision and the timing of it Well the timing actually, Nancy Pelosi on November 3rd, told CNN that she thought Jim Comey might not be in the right job, Conway said. Many democrats have been calling into question his credibility for a while, I know theyre trying to make him Joan of Arc today, but the president made very clear he lost confidence and we need an FBI thats nonpolitical and that has confidence. Conway also had a planned stop at the Manchester Central Fire Department to talk with first responders about the drug on the Manchester streets. A Massachusetts auto auction held a house prayer service Wednesday morning to honor victims who died during a tragic accident last week. Three victims were killed when a vehicle went out of control and drove into a crowd of people at Lynnway Auto Auction in Billerica last Wednesday. Nine people were also hurt in the incident. The prayer service, which was open to the public, took place at the auction site at 8:15 a.m. Lynette Johnson, who works at the auction was one of the many people moved by the short prayer. She said, "He was basically saying prayers for the people who lost their lives and their families and I'm quite sure we are all praying for them." Brenda Lopez, 48, and Pantaleon Santos, 49, both of Rhode Island, died at the scene, and 36-year-old Leezandra Aponte of Lowell, Massachusetts, was pronounced dead at Lahey Hospital in Burlington, according to Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan. Lynnway Auto Auction took steps to improve safety. Large yellow barriers anre now in place to keep cars in their lanes. Peter Mueller, who attended the auction, said, "That's a big big difference - considerably better than it ever has been." When asked if he though the changes would help, Scott Richards, who works security, said, "Oh yeah. Yeah. I worked security for years, it's a lot better now." The driver, who spoke with NBC Boston last week, is in his 70's and had a suspended license. The DA's office actively investigating, but they say it appears to be a tragic accident Lynnway Auto Auction has announced plans to raise funds for the victims' families. He had a life, a family, and a job in Maine, but Otto Morales-Caballeros is now waiting in a jail, about to be deported to Guatemala. My husbands only crime was wanting to live here and work for a living, but the government tore our family apart, said his wife, Sandra Scribner Merlim, who is fighting to bring him back to Naples, Maine. She said her husband fled the violence in Guatemala as a teenager, and made the mistake of waiting more than a year to apply for asylum in the U.S. She said back then, he was told to simply lay low, work under the table, and stay out of trouble. Morales spent two decades making a life in Maine and obtained a fake social security number so he could hold down a job. In 2013, he was convicted of felony use of fraudulent documents. According to Merlim, her husband struck a deal with immigration officials and prosecutors to stay in the country, despite the conviction. He wasnt legal, and he wasnt illegal, she said. He was somewhere in between. They were letting him stay with deferred action. But that changed shortly after President Trump took office, and tightened immigration policies. Morales-Caballeros was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on April 12, on his way to work. A spokesperson for ICE released a written statement: On April 12, ICE officers arrested Otto Morales-Caballeros, a citizen of Guatemala, on an outstanding removal order issued by a federal immigration judge in 2010. Otto Morales-Caballeros was convicted on federal charges of felony use of fraudulent documents in 2013. He will remain in ICE custody pending his removal from the United States. Merlim, who did not vote for Donald Trump, expects her husband to be in Guatemala by Thursday. She has already filed a petition to begin the waiver process, with hopes of eventually bringing him back to the United States. She said if that doesnt work out, she could move to Guatemala, or they could apply for asylum together in Canada. As Merlim searches for a new attorney to take her husbands immigration case, she says her husbands story should serve as a warning to other immigrants in the country. When our new President said he was just going to take out the violent criminals and bad hombres, they werent talking about my husband, she said. In the field, the radio connection between a police officer and dispatch is a lifeline. But in York, Maine, police say that lifeline is getting cut and calls arent going through. Chief Douglas Bracy estimates 35 percent of town is a "dead zone" for radio calls, where officers cant call in to dispatch or to each other. Problem spots include beaches, York Hospital, and York High School. "When time is of the essence, thats not acceptable," said Chief Bracy. He said the towns terrain presents a problem for radio signals, with rocky areas and coast. Additional antennas could mitigate the dead zone areas, which is why police are asking for voters to approve $500,000 in bond money. The town will hold an election on May 20. Chief Bracy said police have had issues for years, and realized the gravity of the situation when the department tried to hold an active shooter drill at the high school. "Right off the bat, we could not talk to the command center sitting in the parking lot," he said. A few months ago, one York officer had an issue at the Ogunquit town line. According to Sgt. Brian Curtin, the officer made a routine traffic stop and called for back-up when the passenger acted suspiciously. Sgt. Curtin said the passenger was trying to hide heroin in the vehicle. When the officer arrested the passenger, the driver of the car became confrontational and started to get violent. The officers calls for help never came through. "Its a worse-case scenario happening," said Sgt. Curtin. "As a supervisor, its frustrating to think that could happen. He was in trouble, and we never heard." Curtin said another officer happened to be driving by, and assisted. If it hadnt been for that coincidence, he knows the situation could have ended differently. "That made me upset," he said. As shocking as it is, President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey yesterday, despite the agency investigating possible collusion with Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Trumps letter to Comey stated: While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. Trump said new leadership was needed to restore public trust and confidence in the FBI. Comey found out he was fired from TV news But thats not how Comey found out he was fired. While speaking to agents in the FBIs LA field office about recent corrected testimony to lawmakers about how classified information ended up on the laptop of former congressman Anthony Weiner, Comey glanced at TV screens in the room and saw on the news that Trump had fired him. CNN reported that Comey made a joke at the time and then called FBI headquarters. Sure enough, he was fired. The White House said President Trump fired Comey based on recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jess Sessions. Worse than Watergate? Nevertheless, all hell broke loose in Washington. Less than a week after House Republicans approved a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, and Democrats on the House floor taunted the Republicans by singing, Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, good-byeas if suggesting those Republicans would be voted out of their seatslawmakers started comparing Trumps firing of Comey to the Watergate scandal. Accusations of a new Watergate and the Nixonian move by the Trump administration grew to a crescendo. In the words of a GOP aides text message seen by CNN, This is a shitshow. Attorney Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, told Rolling Stone that Trump firing Comey was worse than Watergate. We cannot tolerate thisfor the President to be firing people who are investigating him and his campaign and its collusion with the Russians, he says. Its a lot worse than Watergate. Watergate was a third-rate burglary. It was purely domestic in nature. This situation involves Russian espionage, and weve got to find out who is collaborating. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe President Trump appointed FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as acting FBI director until Trump nominates a new FBI director. McCabe has a background in investigating counterterrorism. A year ago, McCabe told the Los Angeles Times that while Comey was focused on high-profile issues such as the San Bernardino shooters encrypted iPhone, for McCabe, the scariest thing at the time was the broadening and intensity of the terrorism threat, the crowd-sourcing of terrorism, the flood of propaganda, the enormous number of folks who have become swept up in that propaganda. Like Comey, McCabe is concerned with the FBI going dark by being unable to keep tabs on suspected terrorists who communicate with encrypted apps and emails. In the long haul, Trump will likely replace Comey with another who will wage war on encryption and want to increase surveillance. Trump said the replacement will be someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI. Trump will, that is, if he is still around. Comeys firing sparks call for immediate emergency hearings In an emailed statement, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD 7th District), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said: Congress needs to have immediate emergency hearings to obtain testimony directly from Attorney General Sessions, the deputy attorney general, and FBI Director Comey. The White House was already covering up for Michael Flynn by refusing to provide a single document to Congress, and now the President fired the one independent person who was doing the most to investigate President Trump and his campaign over allegations of coordination with Russia. It is mindboggling that the Attorney Generalwho claimed to have recused himselfwas directly involved in the decision to fire Director Comey according to the White House itself. There is now a crisis of confidence at the Justice Department, and President Trump is not being held accountable because House Republicans refuse to work with us to do our job. Congress must restore credibility, accountability, and transparency to this investigation and finally pass legislation to create a truly independent commission. Late night hosts react to Comey getting the axe On the lighter side of all this, on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kimmel compared Trump firing the director of the FBI to O.J. firing Judge Ito halfway through the trial. The Daily Show host Trevor Noah said, Wow, Trump fired the FBI director! Like, you cant just fire the FBI director. I mean if hes gone, whos going to investigate Russia's ties to Ohhhhhhhhhhh. Stephen Colbert on The Late Show asked if Trump had forgotten about the Clinton emails that Comey talked about before the election. Trying to imitate Trumps voice, Colbert said, Thanks for the presidency, Jimmy. Dont let the door hit 'ya where the Electoral College split 'ya. Newbury & District Agricultural Society announces foundation as presidents' chosen charity THE Newbury & District Agricultural Society has announced the Mary Hare Foundation as the Presidents Charity of the Year. The Foundation raises funds to support the Mary Hare School for Deaf Children from all over the UK. School principal Peter Gale said: I am really delighted that the society president has chosen Mary Hare as its nominated charity in 2017. Our pupils have always enjoyed attending, especially those pupils from our vocational courses programme, who enter animals in the show. I would like to thank the president and all the organisers for their support in this way. Society president Kirsten Loyd said: The staff at Mary Hare School do a wonderful job in safeguarding the future of deaf children. Mary Hare School moved to its current site in Snelsmore Common in 1946, following the death of Miss Mary Hare, who set up the school to educate deaf children through written and spoken English. Since this time the school has educated hundreds of deaf children, aged from five to 18. It is the only special school in the country to offer deaf children access to GCSEs and A-levels, supported by specialist teachers of the deaf and a range of other specialist support. The school receives funds from many local authorities for the children who attend. However, this fee only covers the cost of teaching and caring for the children while at school. All other developments depend on donations and fundraising. For more information about the Mary Hare Foundation and Mary Hare School, visit www.maryhare.org.uk Former Pangbourne pupil, aged 97, remembers his time serving with Prince Philip in the Royal Navy The Queen arrives at Pangbourne College THE Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh's visit to Pangbourne College this week, offered a rare opportunity for a former pupil to reminisce with an old Royal Navy pal. Among the watching guests, as the royal couple helped celebrate the college's centenary, was the oldest surviving Pangbournian, Keith Evans. The 97-year-old served with the Duke of Edinburgh during the Second World War, when the pair were both Lieutenants at a shore station, HMS Royal Arthur, in Warwick. I like him, said Mr Evans, who now lives in Hazelmere with his wife Heather. He was 18 months my junior. He was the Lieutenant Mountbatten because theyd got rid of all that Greek nonsense. He was a bit randy. Obviously the history of the man is extraordinary. The veteran had the chance to reminisce with the Duke and showed him letters sent between the two men after Prince Philips engagement. // The Queen and Prince Philip, who was appearing in public for the first time since announcing his retirement from royal duties later this year, met staff, students and parents during the visit on Tuesday (May 9) and attended a special service in the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel, which was opened by the Queen in 2000. For the full story see tomorrow's (Thursday, May 11). By Express News Service CHENNAI: Rising fuel prices dented profits for Indias largest domestic carrier by market share IndiGo. IndiGos parent company, InterGlobe Aviation saw a decline in net profit by 25 per cent to Rs 440 crore for the quarter ended March. The airline has also announced its intentions to enter the UDAN scheme and start flying on regional routes, a turnaround in strategy. For the entire fiscal year, the company posted a profit of Rs 1,659 crore, a drop of 16.5 per cent. However, revenue from operations for the full fiscal grew by 15.1 per cent to Rs 18,580 crore for the year ended March 2017. For the last quarter, despite a 38 per cent year over year increase in fuel prices, we have reported a profit after tax of Rs 440 crore. We are also pleased to report that our board of directors has recommended a dividend of Rs 34 per share for the fiscal year 2017, said IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh. On the entry into the regional segment, the carrier has signed an agreement with ATR for the purchase of 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft and expects to operate turboprops by the end of this year. Ghosh pointed out that the airline plans to build a nation-wide regional network and connect cities that have not benefitted from the growth in Indian aviation. CHENNAI: Rising fuel prices dented profits for Indias largest domestic carrier by market share IndiGo. IndiGos parent company, InterGlobe Aviation saw a decline in net profit by 25 per cent to Rs 440 crore for the quarter ended March. The airline has also announced its intentions to enter the UDAN scheme and start flying on regional routes, a turnaround in strategy. For the entire fiscal year, the company posted a profit of Rs 1,659 crore, a drop of 16.5 per cent. However, revenue from operations for the full fiscal grew by 15.1 per cent to Rs 18,580 crore for the year ended March 2017. For the last quarter, despite a 38 per cent year over year increase in fuel prices, we have reported a profit after tax of Rs 440 crore. We are also pleased to report that our board of directors has recommended a dividend of Rs 34 per share for the fiscal year 2017, said IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh. On the entry into the regional segment, the carrier has signed an agreement with ATR for the purchase of 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft and expects to operate turboprops by the end of this year. Ghosh pointed out that the airline plans to build a nation-wide regional network and connect cities that have not benefitted from the growth in Indian aviation. Shruthi HM By Express News Service BENGALURU: L&T Infotech, which recently revamped its brand identity as LTI, plans to recruit 1,500-2,000 freshers for its projects in India, the companys managing director and CEO Sanjay Jalona told Express. This is a significant number for the company, which has 21,000 employees in the country. This is also a notable move as it comes at a time when many IT companies are in the news for downsizing teams. The company would also consider opening new centres in Hyderabad or Delhi, depending on the requirement. At present, LTI is present in four locations in India Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and Mumbai. According to Jalona, the hiring pattern in the IT sector would witness a change thanks to technological advancements. With the technology moving fast, nobody can hire two years in advance like we used to hire. You will see more and more people going just in time. The company, which has created its new brand identity to signify a synergy of new technologies, will be focusing on five broad themes: Data analytics, digital, automation, Internet of Things and cloud services. Jalona said the company had to revamp the brand as the fundamentals of their business had seen a metamorphosis. L&T Infotech signifies what we did 20 years ago but not what we do today. What we are selling as IT products had fundamentally changed and who we are selling to has changed with the advent of exponential technologies. We needed a brand refreshment as we felt our brand was behind our capabilities. At present, digital technologies constitute 28 per cent of the companys revenues. While today, 80 per cent is traditional technology (like Java etc) and 20 per cent new technology, by 2025, 70-80 percent of what companies are investing in, would be the newer technologies, he added. BENGALURU: L&T Infotech, which recently revamped its brand identity as LTI, plans to recruit 1,500-2,000 freshers for its projects in India, the companys managing director and CEO Sanjay Jalona told Express. This is a significant number for the company, which has 21,000 employees in the country. This is also a notable move as it comes at a time when many IT companies are in the news for downsizing teams. The company would also consider opening new centres in Hyderabad or Delhi, depending on the requirement. At present, LTI is present in four locations in India Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and Mumbai. According to Jalona, the hiring pattern in the IT sector would witness a change thanks to technological advancements. With the technology moving fast, nobody can hire two years in advance like we used to hire. You will see more and more people going just in time. The company, which has created its new brand identity to signify a synergy of new technologies, will be focusing on five broad themes: Data analytics, digital, automation, Internet of Things and cloud services. Jalona said the company had to revamp the brand as the fundamentals of their business had seen a metamorphosis. L&T Infotech signifies what we did 20 years ago but not what we do today. What we are selling as IT products had fundamentally changed and who we are selling to has changed with the advent of exponential technologies. We needed a brand refreshment as we felt our brand was behind our capabilities. At present, digital technologies constitute 28 per cent of the companys revenues. While today, 80 per cent is traditional technology (like Java etc) and 20 per cent new technology, by 2025, 70-80 percent of what companies are investing in, would be the newer technologies, he added. By Express News Service MUMBAI: A middle child is considered rather unlucky and neglected. Branded variously as peacemakers or people-pleasers, rarely do they pip their siblings, particularly in family businesses. But, there are a few exceptions like 39-year-old Nisaba Godrej. For long, Nisa, as shes called, was seen as the ideal candidate to succeed industry veteran Adi Godrej. On Wednesday, itll be a reality, as the young Harvard graduate assumes a bigger role to be the Executive Chairperson of Godrej Groups flagship firm, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL), which sells brands like Cinthol and Goodknight. Taking over the baton from group patriarch Adi Godrej may seem like big-shoes-to-fill, but those who know Nisa say shes a natural in the spotlight. She turned around Godrej Agrovert in one of her very first assignments. A champion of womens empowerment, she silenced naysayers by balancing work-life priorities. She once attending a board meeting with her one-month-old son Zoran. Starting as an intern in the company, she worked her way up in a really short time. In fact, GCPLs growth in the past decade is largely attributed to her forward-thinking strategy to pursue organic growth in domestic market and inorganic growth in emerging markets. She pursued a string of acquisitions including hair extension brands like Kinky, Tura, Darling and Frika in Africa. Nisa focused on ramping up presence in the UK, Indonesia, Latin America and Africa. This turbo-charged expansion led to spectacular growth in the international business, which now accounts for nearly half its overall sales. I feel very confident that Nisa will be an outstanding Executive Chairperson. Over the past decade, I have worked closely with her and seen her deliver tremendous results, Adi Godrej said in a statement on Tuesday. In the one decade, Nisas design-driven approach catapulted GCPLs market capitalisation 20-fold from Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 60,000 crore now. MUMBAI: A middle child is considered rather unlucky and neglected. Branded variously as peacemakers or people-pleasers, rarely do they pip their siblings, particularly in family businesses. But, there are a few exceptions like 39-year-old Nisaba Godrej. For long, Nisa, as shes called, was seen as the ideal candidate to succeed industry veteran Adi Godrej. On Wednesday, itll be a reality, as the young Harvard graduate assumes a bigger role to be the Executive Chairperson of Godrej Groups flagship firm, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL), which sells brands like Cinthol and Goodknight. Taking over the baton from group patriarch Adi Godrej may seem like big-shoes-to-fill, but those who know Nisa say shes a natural in the spotlight. She turned around Godrej Agrovert in one of her very first assignments. A champion of womens empowerment, she silenced naysayers by balancing work-life priorities. She once attending a board meeting with her one-month-old son Zoran. Starting as an intern in the company, she worked her way up in a really short time. In fact, GCPLs growth in the past decade is largely attributed to her forward-thinking strategy to pursue organic growth in domestic market and inorganic growth in emerging markets. She pursued a string of acquisitions including hair extension brands like Kinky, Tura, Darling and Frika in Africa. Nisa focused on ramping up presence in the UK, Indonesia, Latin America and Africa. This turbo-charged expansion led to spectacular growth in the international business, which now accounts for nearly half its overall sales. I feel very confident that Nisa will be an outstanding Executive Chairperson. Over the past decade, I have worked closely with her and seen her deliver tremendous results, Adi Godrej said in a statement on Tuesday. In the one decade, Nisas design-driven approach catapulted GCPLs market capitalisation 20-fold from Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 60,000 crore now. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: A man allegedly attacked Delhi MLA and ex-minister Kapil Mishra who is on hunger strike started from Tuesday morning. After slapping Kapil Mishra, the accused identified as Ankit Bharadwaj claimed that he is Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supporter. The AAP, however, has rejected the man's claim of affiliation with it. AAP is claiming that accused is BJP Yuva Morcha candidate and gave details of his Facebook profile claiming that he is a leader of Yuva Morcha of BJP. The guy came running, put his hands on my neck and said he would kill me. My aides caught hold of him and the police came and whisked him away, said Mishra. Kapil Mishra is on hunger strike since Tuesday morning at his residence situated in Civil Lines area of Delhi. The AAP has said Bharadwaj has no link with it and is working for the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the BJP. The BJYM has also denied having any link with Bharadwaj. Police said he was sitting on the hunger strike and suddenly stood up when doctors came for Mishra's medical check-up. They, however, maintained that no attack has taken place. He was sitting there. When Mishra's medical check-up was underway, he stood up and shouted, 'Why are you doing this?' He has been whisked and further investigation is underway, said a senior police officer. Mishra has sat on hunger strike asking AAP chief and Delhi CM to provide details of foreign trips of various Delhi ministers and AAP leaders. Replying to the demands of Kapil Mishra, AAP party leader Sanjay Singh said that they are ready to furnish details of trips. We are ready to give details of foreign trips, government can setup enquiry as well, Singh said. NEW DELHI: A man allegedly attacked Delhi MLA and ex-minister Kapil Mishra who is on hunger strike started from Tuesday morning. After slapping Kapil Mishra, the accused identified as Ankit Bharadwaj claimed that he is Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supporter. The AAP, however, has rejected the man's claim of affiliation with it. AAP is claiming that accused is BJP Yuva Morcha candidate and gave details of his Facebook profile claiming that he is a leader of Yuva Morcha of BJP. The guy came running, put his hands on my neck and said he would kill me. My aides caught hold of him and the police came and whisked him away, said Mishra. Kapil Mishra is on hunger strike since Tuesday morning at his residence situated in Civil Lines area of Delhi. The AAP has said Bharadwaj has no link with it and is working for the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the BJP. The BJYM has also denied having any link with Bharadwaj. Police said he was sitting on the hunger strike and suddenly stood up when doctors came for Mishra's medical check-up. They, however, maintained that no attack has taken place. He was sitting there. When Mishra's medical check-up was underway, he stood up and shouted, 'Why are you doing this?' He has been whisked and further investigation is underway, said a senior police officer. Mishra has sat on hunger strike asking AAP chief and Delhi CM to provide details of foreign trips of various Delhi ministers and AAP leaders. Replying to the demands of Kapil Mishra, AAP party leader Sanjay Singh said that they are ready to furnish details of trips. We are ready to give details of foreign trips, government can setup enquiry as well, Singh said. By ANI NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to grant permission to abort the pregnancy of an HIV infected rape victim and directed the Bihar government to give her a compensation of Rs. 3 lakh. The apex courts decision came after the All India Institute for Medical Science (AIIMS) medical board in its report cited that there was danger to the life of HIV rape victim and foetus if she would terminate her pregnancy. Earlier the apex court had directed AIIMS to examine the woman, who is 26 weeks pregnant. The court was hearing a plea filed by an activist-lawyer on behalf of the woman, who was sexually assaulted in Patna. Earlier, the Patna High Court had refused to entertain womens plea saying that her pregnancy had crossed the legal embargo of 20 weeks under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971. The woman had earlier appealed to the government to grant her permission to terminate the pregnancy when it was 17 weeks. NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to grant permission to abort the pregnancy of an HIV infected rape victim and directed the Bihar government to give her a compensation of Rs. 3 lakh. The apex courts decision came after the All India Institute for Medical Science (AIIMS) medical board in its report cited that there was danger to the life of HIV rape victim and foetus if she would terminate her pregnancy. Earlier the apex court had directed AIIMS to examine the woman, who is 26 weeks pregnant. The court was hearing a plea filed by an activist-lawyer on behalf of the woman, who was sexually assaulted in Patna. Earlier, the Patna High Court had refused to entertain womens plea saying that her pregnancy had crossed the legal embargo of 20 weeks under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971. The woman had earlier appealed to the government to grant her permission to terminate the pregnancy when it was 17 weeks. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Believing that teachings of Buddha are still relevant, Government is working on inculcating it in the text books. Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said this on Wednesday while speaking on the occasion of Buddha Jayanti celebrations organized by the culture ministry. Union Culture minister Mahesh Sharma said that government is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of monuments, holy shrines and places of Buddhism in India to provide better facilities to pilgrims and tourists. Teachings of Bhagwan Buddha are very popular worldwide and the Ministry of Human Resources Development is working on inculcating the teachings of Bhagwan Buddha in the text books as his teachings are still very relevant, said union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar. He opined that the aim of imparting education should not only be confined to gaining knowledge and getting skilled for employment but should focus on preparing an ideal person also. He emphasized on improving the curriculum framework of NCERT textbooks. Union minister of culture Mahesh Sharma said that Buddhism has left a great impact on social and cultural life of our country and Bhagwan Buddhas entire events of life took place in India. His three baskets, known as Tripitaka, contain the ethical discipline, the methods of training of mind and the ground and modes of the cultivation of wisdom. Seven out of Eight religious places associated with Bhagwan Buddha are situated in India, said Sharma. Union minister Kiren Rijuju said that the entire world looks at India as to what India is doing for Buddhism. He opined that India can again become a super power if it continues to follow the path shown by Bhagwan Buddha. He said that the Ministry of Home Affairs has taken an important step in easing the norms of e-visa for foreign tourists. Buddhism being an important heritage of Indias ancient glorious legacy, Indian government took various initiatives for the promotion of Buddhism. In 1956, Government of India organized the 2500th anniversary of Buddhas Mahaparinirvana as an international mega event. Ministry of tourism is also developing Buddhist circuit and the map comprises Bodh Gaya, Vaishali, Rajgir and Kushinagar in Bihar, Sarnath, and Shravasti in UP, along with Kapilavastu and Lumbini in Nepal where Buddha was born. NEW DELHI: Believing that teachings of Buddha are still relevant, Government is working on inculcating it in the text books. Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said this on Wednesday while speaking on the occasion of Buddha Jayanti celebrations organized by the culture ministry. Union Culture minister Mahesh Sharma said that government is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of monuments, holy shrines and places of Buddhism in India to provide better facilities to pilgrims and tourists. Teachings of Bhagwan Buddha are very popular worldwide and the Ministry of Human Resources Development is working on inculcating the teachings of Bhagwan Buddha in the text books as his teachings are still very relevant, said union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar. He opined that the aim of imparting education should not only be confined to gaining knowledge and getting skilled for employment but should focus on preparing an ideal person also. He emphasized on improving the curriculum framework of NCERT textbooks. Union minister of culture Mahesh Sharma said that Buddhism has left a great impact on social and cultural life of our country and Bhagwan Buddhas entire events of life took place in India. His three baskets, known as Tripitaka, contain the ethical discipline, the methods of training of mind and the ground and modes of the cultivation of wisdom. Seven out of Eight religious places associated with Bhagwan Buddha are situated in India, said Sharma. Union minister Kiren Rijuju said that the entire world looks at India as to what India is doing for Buddhism. He opined that India can again become a super power if it continues to follow the path shown by Bhagwan Buddha. He said that the Ministry of Home Affairs has taken an important step in easing the norms of e-visa for foreign tourists. Buddhism being an important heritage of Indias ancient glorious legacy, Indian government took various initiatives for the promotion of Buddhism. In 1956, Government of India organized the 2500th anniversary of Buddhas Mahaparinirvana as an international mega event. Ministry of tourism is also developing Buddhist circuit and the map comprises Bodh Gaya, Vaishali, Rajgir and Kushinagar in Bihar, Sarnath, and Shravasti in UP, along with Kapilavastu and Lumbini in Nepal where Buddha was born. By Express News Service NEW DELHI/PATNA: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said an HIV positive destitute woman, who was raped on the streets of Patna and is 26 weeks pregnant, cannot abort the foetus as a medical report has suggested it would be risky for the mother and the child. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and AM Khanwilkar said the 35-year-old woman, being a rape victim, was eligible for compensation under the provision of CrPC and directed the Bihar government to pay her Rs three lakh within four weeks. The court also asked the State government to provide her all medical facilities at Patnas Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Science (IGIMS) as per the treatment chart which would be given to her by the doctors of AIIMS here. Earlier, being a married mother of two children and deserted by her husband, she had sought abortion of her foetus when she was 17 weeks pregnant. But Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) refused to terminate her pregnancy for lack of her identity proof. The Patna High Court refused to permit her to terminate the pregnancy after a medical board that examined her said it could be dangerous. A day after the apex court ordered her medical examination by a panel of doctors of All India Institute for Medical Science (AIIMS), she was flown to New Delhi on Thursday. The panel informed the top court in its report that there was grave danger to her life and that of the foetus if her pregnancy is terminated. NEW DELHI/PATNA: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said an HIV positive destitute woman, who was raped on the streets of Patna and is 26 weeks pregnant, cannot abort the foetus as a medical report has suggested it would be risky for the mother and the child. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and AM Khanwilkar said the 35-year-old woman, being a rape victim, was eligible for compensation under the provision of CrPC and directed the Bihar government to pay her Rs three lakh within four weeks. The court also asked the State government to provide her all medical facilities at Patnas Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Science (IGIMS) as per the treatment chart which would be given to her by the doctors of AIIMS here. Earlier, being a married mother of two children and deserted by her husband, she had sought abortion of her foetus when she was 17 weeks pregnant. But Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) refused to terminate her pregnancy for lack of her identity proof. The Patna High Court refused to permit her to terminate the pregnancy after a medical board that examined her said it could be dangerous. A day after the apex court ordered her medical examination by a panel of doctors of All India Institute for Medical Science (AIIMS), she was flown to New Delhi on Thursday. The panel informed the top court in its report that there was grave danger to her life and that of the foetus if her pregnancy is terminated. Fayaz Wani By Express News Service SRINAGAR: In a shocking incident, a woman in Jammu and Kashmir has alleged that a police officer and cops of a police station stripped her and inserted chilli powder and a beer bottle in her private parts while she was in the police custody. The 25-year-old woman (name withheld), hailing from Dhayaran area of Kana Chak in Jammu district, alleged that she was tortured and sexually assaulted by policemen inside a police station a fortnight back. I work as a domestic help. I had an argument with the lady in whose house I work as a maid. After the argument, the lady, who was running a clinic from her house, got me arrested on frivolous charges of theft, she said. The cops of Kana Chak police station, she said, arrested her from her house and lodged her in police station. The torture and sexual assault on me continued till I was shifted to womens cell, the woman said. After remaining in detention for a fortnight, the woman was granted bail on Saturday last. After being granted bail, she was admitted to a hospital in Gandhi Nagar, Jammu. The womans allegations have caused an outrage in Jammu. Deputy commissioner of Jammu, Rajiv Ranjan, told the New Indian Express that IGP Jammu has ordered an inquiry into the allegations. City judge of Jammu heard the case and directed police to investigate the matter thoroughly. SRINAGAR: In a shocking incident, a woman in Jammu and Kashmir has alleged that a police officer and cops of a police station stripped her and inserted chilli powder and a beer bottle in her private parts while she was in the police custody. The 25-year-old woman (name withheld), hailing from Dhayaran area of Kana Chak in Jammu district, alleged that she was tortured and sexually assaulted by policemen inside a police station a fortnight back. I work as a domestic help. I had an argument with the lady in whose house I work as a maid. After the argument, the lady, who was running a clinic from her house, got me arrested on frivolous charges of theft, she said. The cops of Kana Chak police station, she said, arrested her from her house and lodged her in police station. The torture and sexual assault on me continued till I was shifted to womens cell, the woman said. After remaining in detention for a fortnight, the woman was granted bail on Saturday last. After being granted bail, she was admitted to a hospital in Gandhi Nagar, Jammu. The womans allegations have caused an outrage in Jammu. Deputy commissioner of Jammu, Rajiv Ranjan, told the New Indian Express that IGP Jammu has ordered an inquiry into the allegations. City judge of Jammu heard the case and directed police to investigate the matter thoroughly. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Most of the 21 Kerala youth who had joined the Islamic State in Afghanistan and were feared killed in US bombings on April 14 are reportedly alive, Intelligence sources said here on Tuesday. Earlier, reports had claimed that the international terror groups Kerala recruits may have been killed after the US had dropped a GBU-43 bomb, the largest non-nuclear bomb it has ever used in combat, in eastern Afghanistans Nangarhar, close to the Pakistan border, against a series of caves used by the Islamic State terrorists. The news that 21 youth from Kerala who were being trained by IS in Afghanistan may have died in the bombing is not correct. Many of them are reportedly in touch with their family members through WhatsApp and other social media platforms, a senior Intelligence Bureau official said. Some of them, the official claimed, are allegedly trying to indoctrinate more youth back home through social media propaganda. We have learnt it through surveillance and scanning Internet chatrooms and social media, the official added. In July last year, seven persons had gone missing from Kasargode and four from Palakkad and their disappearance had come to light when relatives of the missing persons took up the matter with the local MP and MLA. A preliminary investigation revealed that they were radicalised on social media and went to Afghanistan to join terror training camps before travelling further to Syria. Nearly 140 youth from across the country, who are at present being de-radicalised with the help of the community elders, are under the close watch of the National Investigation Agency. The federal agency has desisted from any punitive action against them as part of the Centres policy to de-radicalise such vulnerable youth instead of initiating criminal action against them. Still in touch with families According to a senior Intelligence Bureau official, the news that 21 youth from Kerala who were being trained by IS in Afghanistan may have died in the bombing is not correct since many of them are reportedly still in touch with their family members through social media platforms. NEW DELHI: Most of the 21 Kerala youth who had joined the Islamic State in Afghanistan and were feared killed in US bombings on April 14 are reportedly alive, Intelligence sources said here on Tuesday. Earlier, reports had claimed that the international terror groups Kerala recruits may have been killed after the US had dropped a GBU-43 bomb, the largest non-nuclear bomb it has ever used in combat, in eastern Afghanistans Nangarhar, close to the Pakistan border, against a series of caves used by the Islamic State terrorists. The news that 21 youth from Kerala who were being trained by IS in Afghanistan may have died in the bombing is not correct. Many of them are reportedly in touch with their family members through WhatsApp and other social media platforms, a senior Intelligence Bureau official said. Some of them, the official claimed, are allegedly trying to indoctrinate more youth back home through social media propaganda. We have learnt it through surveillance and scanning Internet chatrooms and social media, the official added. In July last year, seven persons had gone missing from Kasargode and four from Palakkad and their disappearance had come to light when relatives of the missing persons took up the matter with the local MP and MLA. A preliminary investigation revealed that they were radicalised on social media and went to Afghanistan to join terror training camps before travelling further to Syria. Nearly 140 youth from across the country, who are at present being de-radicalised with the help of the community elders, are under the close watch of the National Investigation Agency. The federal agency has desisted from any punitive action against them as part of the Centres policy to de-radicalise such vulnerable youth instead of initiating criminal action against them. Still in touch with families According to a senior Intelligence Bureau official, the news that 21 youth from Kerala who were being trained by IS in Afghanistan may have died in the bombing is not correct since many of them are reportedly still in touch with their family members through social media platforms. By ANI NEW DELHI: After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) put a stay on the death sentence given by Pakistan to alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, defence experts in India on Wednesday praised the efforts by the Indian Government and asserted that Pakistani Military Court had no jurisdiction over Jadhav. As a military veteran, I am very happy to hear that our country has taken Kulbhushan Jadhavs case to the ICJ and that it has granted a stay upon the execution. The fact of the matter is that Pakistani Military court had no jurisdiction over him. He is not subject to the Pakistani Army act. He was denied consular access. In such circumstances, Indias only option was to go to the ICJ, which has taken due cognizance of what India has said and issued a stay order, defence expert G.D. Bakshi said. Echoing similar sentiment, another defence expert Praful Bakshi praised the efforts by the Indian Government. Pakistan has been put under tremendous international pressure because of this. Though, China perhaps is supporting it, it is also getting oblique support from America. But as you know that the ICJ does not bother about these pressures, so that is why a stay order has been given. Now, the India has to prepare its case strongly. All the dossiers have to be prepared properly. Our case has to be put in an appropriate manner. I am quite sure we will have success in this, Praful Bakshi told ANI. The stay on the death sentence came after India instituted proceedings against Pakistan, accusing the latter of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in the matter of detention and trial of Jadhav, and sought a stay on his death sentence. India on Monday contended that it was not informed of Jadhavs detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights, an official release from the ICJ said. India further said that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the authorities of Pakistan were denying it its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite its repeated requests. It's also pointed out that India learned about the "death sentence against Jadhav from a press release." India submitted that it had information that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy, and was then shown to have been arrested in Baluchistan on March 3, 2016, and that the Indian authorities were notified of that arrest on March 25, 2016. India also asked the ICJ to declare the decision illegal being violative of international law and treaty rights and restrain Pakistan from acting in violation of the Vienna Convention and international law by giving effect to the sentence or the conviction in any manner, and directing it to release the convicted Indian National forthwith, if Pakistan is unable to annul the decision. Pakistan had claimed that Jadhav was arrested from the Baluchistan province last year. A military court sentenced him to death, alleging he was involved in espionage and anti-national activities. Pakistan also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." This led to an outrage in India and other countries, which criticised Pakistan for sentencing Jadhav to death with formally informing New Delhi. India outrightly denied the claims, saying Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was running a business, and adding he was a retired Navy officer. Pakistan has turned down 16 requests from India for consular access to Jadhav. NEW DELHI: After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) put a stay on the death sentence given by Pakistan to alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, defence experts in India on Wednesday praised the efforts by the Indian Government and asserted that Pakistani Military Court had no jurisdiction over Jadhav. As a military veteran, I am very happy to hear that our country has taken Kulbhushan Jadhavs case to the ICJ and that it has granted a stay upon the execution. The fact of the matter is that Pakistani Military court had no jurisdiction over him. He is not subject to the Pakistani Army act. He was denied consular access. In such circumstances, Indias only option was to go to the ICJ, which has taken due cognizance of what India has said and issued a stay order, defence expert G.D. Bakshi said. Echoing similar sentiment, another defence expert Praful Bakshi praised the efforts by the Indian Government. Pakistan has been put under tremendous international pressure because of this. Though, China perhaps is supporting it, it is also getting oblique support from America. But as you know that the ICJ does not bother about these pressures, so that is why a stay order has been given. Now, the India has to prepare its case strongly. All the dossiers have to be prepared properly. Our case has to be put in an appropriate manner. I am quite sure we will have success in this, Praful Bakshi told ANI. The stay on the death sentence came after India instituted proceedings against Pakistan, accusing the latter of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in the matter of detention and trial of Jadhav, and sought a stay on his death sentence. India on Monday contended that it was not informed of Jadhavs detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights, an official release from the ICJ said. India further said that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the authorities of Pakistan were denying it its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite its repeated requests. It's also pointed out that India learned about the "death sentence against Jadhav from a press release." India submitted that it had information that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy, and was then shown to have been arrested in Baluchistan on March 3, 2016, and that the Indian authorities were notified of that arrest on March 25, 2016. India also asked the ICJ to declare the decision illegal being violative of international law and treaty rights and restrain Pakistan from acting in violation of the Vienna Convention and international law by giving effect to the sentence or the conviction in any manner, and directing it to release the convicted Indian National forthwith, if Pakistan is unable to annul the decision. Pakistan had claimed that Jadhav was arrested from the Baluchistan province last year. A military court sentenced him to death, alleging he was involved in espionage and anti-national activities. Pakistan also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." This led to an outrage in India and other countries, which criticised Pakistan for sentencing Jadhav to death with formally informing New Delhi. India outrightly denied the claims, saying Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was running a business, and adding he was a retired Navy officer. Pakistan has turned down 16 requests from India for consular access to Jadhav. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: An eight-member US Congress delegation met the Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharamsala on Tuesday and reaffirmed their commitment to the cause of Tibetan people. In her tweet, Nancy Pelosi, leader of Democratic Party leading this delegation which reached Dharamshala on a two-day visit to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader, wrote, Our delegation visits @DalaiLama in his spirit of faith & peace coming to be inspired & demonstrate our commitment to the Tibetan people. The US delegation also met Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) PrimeMinister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay. He said, The CTA is honoured to welcome the second visit by a high-level bipartisan delegation of the US Congress led by leader Nancy Pelosi to Dharamsala after nine years. The CTA will be organising a public felicitation in honour of the US delegation and the Dalai Lama will grace the public felicitation on May 10 at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharamsala, located close to the spiritual leaders palace. They will also meet Tibetan women leaders and will visit Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. Last time, Pelosi had come to meet Dalai Lama in 2008 when she was Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Interestingly, her last visit coincided with anti-China protests that had spread to other parts from Lhasa in Tibet and China had used force to suppress the rioters. Out of the eight members of the delegation, four members Pelosi, McGovern, McCollum and Beatty were part of the Congressional delegation that visited Tibet in the month of November 2015. CHANDIGARH: An eight-member US Congress delegation met the Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharamsala on Tuesday and reaffirmed their commitment to the cause of Tibetan people. In her tweet, Nancy Pelosi, leader of Democratic Party leading this delegation which reached Dharamshala on a two-day visit to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader, wrote, Our delegation visits @DalaiLama in his spirit of faith & peace coming to be inspired & demonstrate our commitment to the Tibetan people. The US delegation also met Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) PrimeMinister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay. He said, The CTA is honoured to welcome the second visit by a high-level bipartisan delegation of the US Congress led by leader Nancy Pelosi to Dharamsala after nine years. The CTA will be organising a public felicitation in honour of the US delegation and the Dalai Lama will grace the public felicitation on May 10 at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharamsala, located close to the spiritual leaders palace. They will also meet Tibetan women leaders and will visit Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. Last time, Pelosi had come to meet Dalai Lama in 2008 when she was Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Interestingly, her last visit coincided with anti-China protests that had spread to other parts from Lhasa in Tibet and China had used force to suppress the rioters. Out of the eight members of the delegation, four members Pelosi, McGovern, McCollum and Beatty were part of the Congressional delegation that visited Tibet in the month of November 2015. By PTI NEW DELHI: Nearly 20 nurses here have alleged that they were duped of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of being given lucrative jobs in Brunei, police said. They said the nurses were charged Rs 2.5 lakh each for the promised jobs in Brunei. The Crime Branch has launched a probe in the matter. In August last year, a nurse, working at a reputed hospital in Gurgaon, met three men who claimed that they work as placement agents. She later on took three of her co-workers to meet the three men at a Green Park guesthouse. The nurses were asked to pay Rs 2.5 lakh each for the formalities. The accused took Rs 10 lakh in total from them and then got their medical tests done. They were asked to pay Rs 5,000 each for the tests, police said. In October, they brought 18 more nurses to meet the accused and they were also made to undergo the same formalities, police said. Four of the nurses were sent to Brunei from the Cochin Airport. However, when they reached at the airport in Brunei, they found that there was no one to receive them, they added. When they reached the hospital, they were told that there were no vacancies there. The nurses tried to contact the placement agents but their phones were switched off, police said. Somehow, the nurses returned to India and made efforts to contact the accused but they remained incommunicado. Following this, they filed a complaint with the Crime Branch. Police have begun investigating the matter and it is suspected that more nurses might have been duped in a similar manner, police said. NEW DELHI: Nearly 20 nurses here have alleged that they were duped of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of being given lucrative jobs in Brunei, police said. They said the nurses were charged Rs 2.5 lakh each for the promised jobs in Brunei. The Crime Branch has launched a probe in the matter. In August last year, a nurse, working at a reputed hospital in Gurgaon, met three men who claimed that they work as placement agents. She later on took three of her co-workers to meet the three men at a Green Park guesthouse. The nurses were asked to pay Rs 2.5 lakh each for the formalities. The accused took Rs 10 lakh in total from them and then got their medical tests done. They were asked to pay Rs 5,000 each for the tests, police said. In October, they brought 18 more nurses to meet the accused and they were also made to undergo the same formalities, police said. Four of the nurses were sent to Brunei from the Cochin Airport. However, when they reached at the airport in Brunei, they found that there was no one to receive them, they added. When they reached the hospital, they were told that there were no vacancies there. The nurses tried to contact the placement agents but their phones were switched off, police said. Somehow, the nurses returned to India and made efforts to contact the accused but they remained incommunicado. Following this, they filed a complaint with the Crime Branch. Police have begun investigating the matter and it is suspected that more nurses might have been duped in a similar manner, police said. By Express News Service VISAKHAPATNAM: The Vizag Port will be soon developed as a logistics hub of Andhra Pradesh and it is marching ahead to achieve international recognition as a world class port, Visakhapatnam Port Trust chairman MT Krishna Babu said here on Tuesday. Due to the Central governments initiatives, the VPT is moving ahead to achieve good growth. There are plenty of opportunities for the entrepreneurs to make investments here, he said. He also appealed to the investors across the world to invest in the Vizag port. Krishna Babu, in a media interaction here on Tuesday, explained various developmental activities undertaken by the port. With the suggestions of international consultants, the VPT will be made an eco-friendly port. With the Union governments support, the VPT has achieved 7 per cent growth rate in the last fiscal year and that will continue in the current financial year too, the VPT chairman said. The port is well connected with road, water and air ways and it is developing on all fronts fast. In view of multifold growth of the port and the city area, all renowned shipping companies and top investors would come forward to invest here, he said. As it has good logistics strengths, the port will sign many MoUs with several national and international organisations soon, revealed Krishna Babu. VPT deputy chairman Haranadh, Customs Commissioner Sudhakar Mishra, DRM MS Mathur and several shipping company representatives were present. VISAKHAPATNAM: The Vizag Port will be soon developed as a logistics hub of Andhra Pradesh and it is marching ahead to achieve international recognition as a world class port, Visakhapatnam Port Trust chairman MT Krishna Babu said here on Tuesday. Due to the Central governments initiatives, the VPT is moving ahead to achieve good growth. There are plenty of opportunities for the entrepreneurs to make investments here, he said. He also appealed to the investors across the world to invest in the Vizag port. Krishna Babu, in a media interaction here on Tuesday, explained various developmental activities undertaken by the port. With the suggestions of international consultants, the VPT will be made an eco-friendly port. With the Union governments support, the VPT has achieved 7 per cent growth rate in the last fiscal year and that will continue in the current financial year too, the VPT chairman said. The port is well connected with road, water and air ways and it is developing on all fronts fast. In view of multifold growth of the port and the city area, all renowned shipping companies and top investors would come forward to invest here, he said. As it has good logistics strengths, the port will sign many MoUs with several national and international organisations soon, revealed Krishna Babu. VPT deputy chairman Haranadh, Customs Commissioner Sudhakar Mishra, DRM MS Mathur and several shipping company representatives were present. By Express News Service BENGALURU: Hordes of ministers and legislators made a beeline to see AICC Karnataka in-charge K C Venugopal and other in-charge secretaries at the KPCC office on Tuesday. Due to shortage of time, individual meetings later turned into group meetings to seek opinions and hear about various problems. While some senior leaders did get time to express their opinions about the party, many MLAs were said to have been questioned more about their particular districts and problems with the organisation in those districts. Some leaders were of the opinion that the dissension in the party was being projected as being more serious than it actually was. If the situation was as bad as claimed by some leaders like A H Vishwanath, then it would not have been possible to win the bypolls, they pointed out. A few leaders said that concentrating only on backward classes and minorities might backfire and all communities have to be taken into account. Bengaluru Rural MP D K Suresh said they had conveyed that the party members were united to start preparing for the Assembly elections. We have also given opinions on strengthening the party. It is common to have some differences in the party, but these issues will be resolved, he said. Madhugiri MLA K N Rajanna, however, minced no words when he alleged that district in-charge ministers were responsible for factions in the districts. Let them be moved out to other districts. They themselves are the problem. We have also said that all ministers who have completed three years should work for the party now and long-time party legislators should be given an opportunity to become ministers. We also do not support changing Parameshwara as KPCC president at this stage, as elections to various party posts have already been announced, he said. He too submitted a letter to Venugopal and warned that if the party high command did not take corrective steps immediately, it will be detrimental to the party. Other members expressed their support for D K Shivakumar as KPCC president as he is considered the most able to tackle the BJP Mission 150 goal. Some legislators like Mayakonda MLA K Shivamurthy Naik complained that the Siddaramaiah government, which had passed the Land Reforms Amendment Bill, had sat on it without sending it to the governor for assent. Another outspoken MLA was Satish Jarkiholi who complained against Siddaramaiah as well as Congress womens wing president Laxmi Hebbalkar. While saying that candidates should be identified six months ahead of the elections, Jarkiholi also complained that it was unfair for only those who lobby in New Delhi to get tickets. Saying there was no question of quitting Congress, Jarkiholi dismissed rumours of him joining JD(S). 2 disgruntled senior Cong leaders meet Venugopal Two senior Congress leaders A H Vishwanath and Afzalpur MLA Malikayya V Guttedar met Karnataka Congress in charge K C Venugopal on Tuesday and told him about what they found wrong with the State party unit. Vishwanath submitted a letter of his grievances to Venugopal. He told reporters that Venugopal reminded him that he had called Siddaramaiah a hero in 2006. I agree but now that thrill has gone. Those of us who have worked for the party have been ignored. You will have to wait and watch and see where I go, he said. Vishwanath wrote there is hardly any coordination between the party and the government and people like him have been pushed out. I was humiliated and emotionally isolated by my own men. There is no internal democracy in the party. Many senior leaders are leaving the party because of Siddaramaiahs arrogance. I may leave too, he said in his letter. Siddaramaiah retorted that it was the High Command which had to take a call on his behaviour. Minister H C Mahadevappa said he hoped that Vishwanath would stay back in the party. MLA Malikayya V Guttedar, who is also expected to join JD(S), met Venugopal. If I do not get justice, then I will have to discuss with my constituents and make a decision. It has become a suffocating environment and some people are pressurising me to quit the party. I have been told these issues will be resolved, he said. Guttedar admitted that he had been talking to JD(S) leaders Deve Gowda and H D Kumaraswamy. Why should I not talk to them? They made me a minister when I quit Congress earlier. But all this talk of me leaving is only guesswork, he said. Plaint against Yathindra politically motivated: Siddu Mysuru: Chief Minister Siddarmaiah refuted the allegations made against his son Dr Yathindra of making benami transactions. Addressing media persons here on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah said the complaint is politically motivated and far from truth. It is for the first time that Yathindra has gone on a foreign trip. How can he engage in benami transactions or investment in just one visit? he questioned. Stating that the allegations made against Yathindra are false, the Chief Minister said: I dont know the person who has lodged the complaint. The complaint has been registered just to malign Yathindra. Varthur Kanakadasa, in his complaint to the Income Tax Department, has stated that Yathindra has shares in Matric Imaging Solutions Pvt Ltd and is running YS Prasidh Diagnostics in Bengaluru and Mumbai, and that he has made several benami transactions and has gone on many foreign trips. CM makes a visit to KPCC office Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was forced to visit the KPCC office on Tuesday to meet AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal and other secretaries as the former made no attempt to contact him since his arrival in Bengaluru. Venugopal was expected to meet Siddaramaiah at the CMs residence as soon as he arrived just like earlier state in-charge Digvijay Singh. However, Venugopal, who has been put up at Kumara Krupa guest house, adjacent to the CMs residence, did not make any attempt to contact him after arriving on Monday morning. Finally, on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah himself went to the KPCC office to greet him. The CM later invited Venugopal and others for breakfast at his residence on Wednesday. BSY takes a dig at CMs son Yeddyurappa said though Chief Ministers son Yathindra says that he has nothing to do with the diagnostic centre coming up near Bowring Hospital in Bengaluru, he is signing the bank papers related to the centre. He added that he has documents to prove that the centre belongs to Yathindra, which he will release shortly. BENGALURU: Hordes of ministers and legislators made a beeline to see AICC Karnataka in-charge K C Venugopal and other in-charge secretaries at the KPCC office on Tuesday. Due to shortage of time, individual meetings later turned into group meetings to seek opinions and hear about various problems. While some senior leaders did get time to express their opinions about the party, many MLAs were said to have been questioned more about their particular districts and problems with the organisation in those districts. Some leaders were of the opinion that the dissension in the party was being projected as being more serious than it actually was. If the situation was as bad as claimed by some leaders like A H Vishwanath, then it would not have been possible to win the bypolls, they pointed out. A few leaders said that concentrating only on backward classes and minorities might backfire and all communities have to be taken into account. Bengaluru Rural MP D K Suresh said they had conveyed that the party members were united to start preparing for the Assembly elections. We have also given opinions on strengthening the party. It is common to have some differences in the party, but these issues will be resolved, he said. Madhugiri MLA K N Rajanna, however, minced no words when he alleged that district in-charge ministers were responsible for factions in the districts. Let them be moved out to other districts. They themselves are the problem. We have also said that all ministers who have completed three years should work for the party now and long-time party legislators should be given an opportunity to become ministers. We also do not support changing Parameshwara as KPCC president at this stage, as elections to various party posts have already been announced, he said. He too submitted a letter to Venugopal and warned that if the party high command did not take corrective steps immediately, it will be detrimental to the party. Other members expressed their support for D K Shivakumar as KPCC president as he is considered the most able to tackle the BJP Mission 150 goal. Some legislators like Mayakonda MLA K Shivamurthy Naik complained that the Siddaramaiah government, which had passed the Land Reforms Amendment Bill, had sat on it without sending it to the governor for assent. Another outspoken MLA was Satish Jarkiholi who complained against Siddaramaiah as well as Congress womens wing president Laxmi Hebbalkar. While saying that candidates should be identified six months ahead of the elections, Jarkiholi also complained that it was unfair for only those who lobby in New Delhi to get tickets. Saying there was no question of quitting Congress, Jarkiholi dismissed rumours of him joining JD(S). 2 disgruntled senior Cong leaders meet Venugopal Two senior Congress leaders A H Vishwanath and Afzalpur MLA Malikayya V Guttedar met Karnataka Congress in charge K C Venugopal on Tuesday and told him about what they found wrong with the State party unit. Vishwanath submitted a letter of his grievances to Venugopal. He told reporters that Venugopal reminded him that he had called Siddaramaiah a hero in 2006. I agree but now that thrill has gone. Those of us who have worked for the party have been ignored. You will have to wait and watch and see where I go, he said. Vishwanath wrote there is hardly any coordination between the party and the government and people like him have been pushed out. I was humiliated and emotionally isolated by my own men. There is no internal democracy in the party. Many senior leaders are leaving the party because of Siddaramaiahs arrogance. I may leave too, he said in his letter. Siddaramaiah retorted that it was the High Command which had to take a call on his behaviour. Minister H C Mahadevappa said he hoped that Vishwanath would stay back in the party. MLA Malikayya V Guttedar, who is also expected to join JD(S), met Venugopal. If I do not get justice, then I will have to discuss with my constituents and make a decision. It has become a suffocating environment and some people are pressurising me to quit the party. I have been told these issues will be resolved, he said. Guttedar admitted that he had been talking to JD(S) leaders Deve Gowda and H D Kumaraswamy. Why should I not talk to them? They made me a minister when I quit Congress earlier. But all this talk of me leaving is only guesswork, he said. Plaint against Yathindra politically motivated: Siddu Mysuru: Chief Minister Siddarmaiah refuted the allegations made against his son Dr Yathindra of making benami transactions. Addressing media persons here on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah said the complaint is politically motivated and far from truth. It is for the first time that Yathindra has gone on a foreign trip. How can he engage in benami transactions or investment in just one visit? he questioned. Stating that the allegations made against Yathindra are false, the Chief Minister said: I dont know the person who has lodged the complaint. The complaint has been registered just to malign Yathindra. Varthur Kanakadasa, in his complaint to the Income Tax Department, has stated that Yathindra has shares in Matric Imaging Solutions Pvt Ltd and is running YS Prasidh Diagnostics in Bengaluru and Mumbai, and that he has made several benami transactions and has gone on many foreign trips. CM makes a visit to KPCC office Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was forced to visit the KPCC office on Tuesday to meet AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal and other secretaries as the former made no attempt to contact him since his arrival in Bengaluru. Venugopal was expected to meet Siddaramaiah at the CMs residence as soon as he arrived just like earlier state in-charge Digvijay Singh. However, Venugopal, who has been put up at Kumara Krupa guest house, adjacent to the CMs residence, did not make any attempt to contact him after arriving on Monday morning. Finally, on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah himself went to the KPCC office to greet him. The CM later invited Venugopal and others for breakfast at his residence on Wednesday. BSY takes a dig at CMs son Yeddyurappa said though Chief Ministers son Yathindra says that he has nothing to do with the diagnostic centre coming up near Bowring Hospital in Bengaluru, he is signing the bank papers related to the centre. He added that he has documents to prove that the centre belongs to Yathindra, which he will release shortly. Baibhav Mishra By Express News Service BHUBANESWAR: The 16-year-old Bangladeshi boy, who allegedly masterminded the escape of 11 minors from Ruchika shelter home in the City, was apprehended from Choudwar on Wednesday. The boy, a resident of Gopalganj district in Bangladesh, was produced before Cuttack Child Welfare Committee which recorded his statement and shifted him to the Servants of India Society. This was the third time the Bangladeshi boy escaped from a shelter home since his rescue from the railway station here in 2015. On each occasion, he had facilitated the escape of other inmates from the premises. Earlier, he had fled from rescue centres Biswa Jivan in the City and Asha Kiran at Jatni along with six minor boys. Sources said though the Khurda district Child Welfare Committee has written to Department of Women and Child Welfare to send back the boy to his home country on multiple occasions, the latter is yet to initiate necessary proceedings for deportation. The minor has been a trouble for the rescue centres which have sheltered him and he also instigates other inmates to break the discipline of the unit, a member of the CWC said. The CWC is likely to approach the Deputy High Commission of Bangladesh through the Resident Commissioner, Odisha to take appropriate action in this matter, said sources. The minor had reportedly escaped from Ruchika Open Shelter here at Samantrapur along with 11 others on May 2. Two days later, one of the escapees was traced by Bhubaneswar Childline at the City railway station who informed that 10 other inmates have left for Jharsuguda on a train. Six out of the 11 escapees have been rescued from different places of the State so far. Two were apprehended from Banki in Cuttack district, two from Bhubaneswar railway station, one from Cuttack and the Bangladeshi minor from Choudwar, CWC member Benudhar Senapati said. Police said the boys made elaborate plans to escape. The bathroom had two skylights just above windows. Using the rails of the windows, they climbed through the ventilators, an investigating officer said. The matter was first reported at Lingaraj police station and referred to DCP Satyabrata Bhoi who initiated a probe by alerting the police of neighbouring districts. BHUBANESWAR: The 16-year-old Bangladeshi boy, who allegedly masterminded the escape of 11 minors from Ruchika shelter home in the City, was apprehended from Choudwar on Wednesday. The boy, a resident of Gopalganj district in Bangladesh, was produced before Cuttack Child Welfare Committee which recorded his statement and shifted him to the Servants of India Society. This was the third time the Bangladeshi boy escaped from a shelter home since his rescue from the railway station here in 2015. On each occasion, he had facilitated the escape of other inmates from the premises. Earlier, he had fled from rescue centres Biswa Jivan in the City and Asha Kiran at Jatni along with six minor boys. Sources said though the Khurda district Child Welfare Committee has written to Department of Women and Child Welfare to send back the boy to his home country on multiple occasions, the latter is yet to initiate necessary proceedings for deportation. The minor has been a trouble for the rescue centres which have sheltered him and he also instigates other inmates to break the discipline of the unit, a member of the CWC said. The CWC is likely to approach the Deputy High Commission of Bangladesh through the Resident Commissioner, Odisha to take appropriate action in this matter, said sources. The minor had reportedly escaped from Ruchika Open Shelter here at Samantrapur along with 11 others on May 2. Two days later, one of the escapees was traced by Bhubaneswar Childline at the City railway station who informed that 10 other inmates have left for Jharsuguda on a train. Six out of the 11 escapees have been rescued from different places of the State so far. Two were apprehended from Banki in Cuttack district, two from Bhubaneswar railway station, one from Cuttack and the Bangladeshi minor from Choudwar, CWC member Benudhar Senapati said. Police said the boys made elaborate plans to escape. The bathroom had two skylights just above windows. Using the rails of the windows, they climbed through the ventilators, an investigating officer said. The matter was first reported at Lingaraj police station and referred to DCP Satyabrata Bhoi who initiated a probe by alerting the police of neighbouring districts. By Express News Service CHENNAI: THE ongoing slanging match between the two AIADMK factions reached a new level on Tuesday with Law Minister C Ve Shanmugam linking rebel leader O Panneerselvam with controversial businessman Shekhar Reddy who is now under arrest. Who introduced Shekhar Reddy to Tamil Nadu? It was Panneerselvam. When he was PWD minister, he awarded contracts to Reddy. When (party icon Jayalalithaa) was in prison, Panneerselvam hastily appointed him as member of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam board. Reddy and Panneerselvam posed for a photographer like Ashokan and Nambiar (Tamil cinema villains of yesteryear). Why has no inquiry happened into that aspect? snapped Shanmugam on Tuesday, when asked for comments about reports that Reddy, now under the scrutiny of the income-tax department and the Enforcement Directorate, had connections with State ministers. Elsewhere, Finance Minister D Jayakumar, a member of the merger negotiation committee from the ruling faction, attacked senior rebel leader S Semmalai, his peer on the rebels talks committee, for his comments that 35 MLAs and 12 ministers were in touch with the rebels. Semmalais remark is akin to that of plugging a hole in a boat using salt. From headquarters office-bearers, district secretaries, MPs and MLAs and others in the party and government, we stand united. We are firm that the next general elections should be held only in 2021, Jayakumar claimed. After deciding to merge, the two factions drifted apart, with no progress made other than forming a seven-member panel each for talks. But since then, it has not moved an inch, except the sniping-conciliation routine by the chosen leaders. This time, it was left to the parliamentary party leader M Thambidurai from the faction led by the Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, and K Pandiarajan, former minister and now a key man in the Panneerselvam-led rebel camp. Merger talks would take place in a cordial atmosphere soon, repeated Thambidurai yet again, while Pandiarajan described the two groups as brothers whose coming together would only be good for the party and the State. We dont have any suspicions about the other faction. But some happenings have sowed seeds of suspicion, he said, reiterating their demand for investigation into Jayas death and ousting general secretary V K Sasikala and her family members from the AIADMK. CHENNAI: THE ongoing slanging match between the two AIADMK factions reached a new level on Tuesday with Law Minister C Ve Shanmugam linking rebel leader O Panneerselvam with controversial businessman Shekhar Reddy who is now under arrest. Who introduced Shekhar Reddy to Tamil Nadu? It was Panneerselvam. When he was PWD minister, he awarded contracts to Reddy. When (party icon Jayalalithaa) was in prison, Panneerselvam hastily appointed him as member of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam board. Reddy and Panneerselvam posed for a photographer like Ashokan and Nambiar (Tamil cinema villains of yesteryear). Why has no inquiry happened into that aspect? snapped Shanmugam on Tuesday, when asked for comments about reports that Reddy, now under the scrutiny of the income-tax department and the Enforcement Directorate, had connections with State ministers. Elsewhere, Finance Minister D Jayakumar, a member of the merger negotiation committee from the ruling faction, attacked senior rebel leader S Semmalai, his peer on the rebels talks committee, for his comments that 35 MLAs and 12 ministers were in touch with the rebels. Semmalais remark is akin to that of plugging a hole in a boat using salt. From headquarters office-bearers, district secretaries, MPs and MLAs and others in the party and government, we stand united. We are firm that the next general elections should be held only in 2021, Jayakumar claimed. After deciding to merge, the two factions drifted apart, with no progress made other than forming a seven-member panel each for talks. But since then, it has not moved an inch, except the sniping-conciliation routine by the chosen leaders. This time, it was left to the parliamentary party leader M Thambidurai from the faction led by the Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, and K Pandiarajan, former minister and now a key man in the Panneerselvam-led rebel camp. Merger talks would take place in a cordial atmosphere soon, repeated Thambidurai yet again, while Pandiarajan described the two groups as brothers whose coming together would only be good for the party and the State. We dont have any suspicions about the other faction. But some happenings have sowed seeds of suspicion, he said, reiterating their demand for investigation into Jayas death and ousting general secretary V K Sasikala and her family members from the AIADMK. By Express News Service HYDERABAD:Employees of Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) and representatives of Forum For IT Employees (FITE), a collective which works for the welfare of IT employees, approached the labour department on Tuesday with a petition on the issue of thousands of CTS employees terminated illegally. The employees, in a press release, said that nowadays IT companies, with a profit motive, are replacing highly-paid experienced employees with new recruits who are paid less, thus leading to illegal layoffs. Each company quotes different reasons for the layoffs, including an employees performance or need to streamline in order to meet customer demands, the release stated. Pointing specifically to Cognizant, one of the IT giants, the release alleged that it is illegally terminating thousands of employees by forcing them to submit their resignations. It is not a few thousands of employees who are affected, but thousands of families, the release further said. The Forum sought departmental intervention and submitted a petition to the Telangana Labour department on Tuesday. Yes, we received the petition and we have called for a meeting on Thursday. We will hold a meeting with employees from CTS and also the Forum to discuss and understand the problems. We will then conduct an inquiry and take action, informed R Chandrashekar, joint commissioner, Rangareddy zone, department of Labour. Analysis of employees profiles necessary Speaking on the issue, Kiran Chandra, senior leader of BJPs IT cell, and a senior executive in an IT firm, said the current trend across industries required people to upgrade their skill set as automation was taking over manual jobs. I cannot comment on the specific case in point here, as I do not have information on the company. However, there is a requirement for newer skill sets in the industry. People who can upgrade themselves will survive. There is a reduced demand in certain traditional skill sets like testing while an improvement in skills addressing interconnected areas like automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence, Chandra added. Companies must provide enough opportunities to staff to re-train themselves, he said. Also, proper procedures need to be followed and analysis of employees profiles is necessary before laying them off, he added. Pink slips back to haunt techies Several technology companies are looking to layoff sizeable chunks of employees this financial year. Though none of the companies have confirmed the sacking of staff, heres what reports claim... Infosys 1,000 employees The company has only said that bi-annual performance assessments are routine. However, estimates are that employees at levels of project managers, senior architects and higher levels could lose jobs Wipro 600 employees Tata Teleservices 500+ employees Cognizant 6,000 employees While the company has denied any retrenchment process, reports claim around 2.3% of the workforce could face the axe this year. VRS scheme has been announced for senior/mid-level professionals Snapdeal 30% Of workforce (around 1,000) CapGemini 9,000 According to reports. Company has denied layoffs HYDERABAD:Employees of Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) and representatives of Forum For IT Employees (FITE), a collective which works for the welfare of IT employees, approached the labour department on Tuesday with a petition on the issue of thousands of CTS employees terminated illegally. The employees, in a press release, said that nowadays IT companies, with a profit motive, are replacing highly-paid experienced employees with new recruits who are paid less, thus leading to illegal layoffs. Each company quotes different reasons for the layoffs, including an employees performance or need to streamline in order to meet customer demands, the release stated. Pointing specifically to Cognizant, one of the IT giants, the release alleged that it is illegally terminating thousands of employees by forcing them to submit their resignations. It is not a few thousands of employees who are affected, but thousands of families, the release further said. The Forum sought departmental intervention and submitted a petition to the Telangana Labour department on Tuesday. Yes, we received the petition and we have called for a meeting on Thursday. We will hold a meeting with employees from CTS and also the Forum to discuss and understand the problems. We will then conduct an inquiry and take action, informed R Chandrashekar, joint commissioner, Rangareddy zone, department of Labour. Analysis of employees profiles necessary Speaking on the issue, Kiran Chandra, senior leader of BJPs IT cell, and a senior executive in an IT firm, said the current trend across industries required people to upgrade their skill set as automation was taking over manual jobs. I cannot comment on the specific case in point here, as I do not have information on the company. However, there is a requirement for newer skill sets in the industry. People who can upgrade themselves will survive. There is a reduced demand in certain traditional skill sets like testing while an improvement in skills addressing interconnected areas like automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence, Chandra added. Companies must provide enough opportunities to staff to re-train themselves, he said. Also, proper procedures need to be followed and analysis of employees profiles is necessary before laying them off, he added. Pink slips back to haunt techies Several technology companies are looking to layoff sizeable chunks of employees this financial year. Though none of the companies have confirmed the sacking of staff, heres what reports claim... Infosys 1,000 employees The company has only said that bi-annual performance assessments are routine. However, estimates are that employees at levels of project managers, senior architects and higher levels could lose jobs Wipro 600 employees Tata Teleservices 500+ employees Cognizant 6,000 employees While the company has denied any retrenchment process, reports claim around 2.3% of the workforce could face the axe this year. VRS scheme has been announced for senior/mid-level professionals Snapdeal 30% Of workforce (around 1,000) CapGemini 9,000 According to reports. Company has denied layoffs By Express News Service HYDERABAD: Even as the State government is all set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Union government as part of the State Outreach programme on May 13 on immigrants issues, opposition parties alleged that the State was neglecting the problems of people working in Gulf countries. With cases of illegal migrants from Telangana allegedly being tortured in Gulf countries and 6,000 workers rotting in their jails emerging, an all party meeting on Gulf workers: Welfare-role of governments was convened on Tuesday by the Telangana Pradesh Congress Commitee (TPCC) NRI Cell. Representatives from Congress, CPI, CPM, TDP, Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) and Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) attended the meeting. Former Assembly Speaker KR Suresh Reddy chaired the meeting. TJAC chairman M Kodandaram talked about chalking out a plan to address migrants grievances and it was decided that all those participating will come together to finalise the plan within the next two days and hand it over to the State government. As per the data of the all-party seminar, around 200 Telangana migrants die in the Gulf countries every year. However, RGI Airport police records state that 600 dead Telangana migrants arrived since June, 2014. Among Telangana immigrants in the Gulf countries of Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), disadvantaged and semi skilled workers accounted for about two-thirds. TPCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy demanded that `5 lakh ex-gratia be paid to the kin of migrants, who died in Gulf countries. If the Congress is voted to power in 2019, we will allocate `100 crore in the State Budget every year for the welfare of Gulf migrants, Uttam Kumar Reddy announced. TDPs Budaya Reddy said, the promises made by K Chandrashekhar Rao to address the issue faced by gulf workers, when he was sworn-in as the chief minister, remain unfulfilled. Participants demanded that Saudi Arabian Consulate be set up in Hyderabad and a special Assembly session on the issue of migrants be held. HYDERABAD: Even as the State government is all set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Union government as part of the State Outreach programme on May 13 on immigrants issues, opposition parties alleged that the State was neglecting the problems of people working in Gulf countries. With cases of illegal migrants from Telangana allegedly being tortured in Gulf countries and 6,000 workers rotting in their jails emerging, an all party meeting on Gulf workers: Welfare-role of governments was convened on Tuesday by the Telangana Pradesh Congress Commitee (TPCC) NRI Cell. Representatives from Congress, CPI, CPM, TDP, Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) and Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) attended the meeting. Former Assembly Speaker KR Suresh Reddy chaired the meeting. TJAC chairman M Kodandaram talked about chalking out a plan to address migrants grievances and it was decided that all those participating will come together to finalise the plan within the next two days and hand it over to the State government. As per the data of the all-party seminar, around 200 Telangana migrants die in the Gulf countries every year. However, RGI Airport police records state that 600 dead Telangana migrants arrived since June, 2014. Among Telangana immigrants in the Gulf countries of Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), disadvantaged and semi skilled workers accounted for about two-thirds. TPCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy demanded that `5 lakh ex-gratia be paid to the kin of migrants, who died in Gulf countries. If the Congress is voted to power in 2019, we will allocate `100 crore in the State Budget every year for the welfare of Gulf migrants, Uttam Kumar Reddy announced. TDPs Budaya Reddy said, the promises made by K Chandrashekhar Rao to address the issue faced by gulf workers, when he was sworn-in as the chief minister, remain unfulfilled. Participants demanded that Saudi Arabian Consulate be set up in Hyderabad and a special Assembly session on the issue of migrants be held. By PTI DHAKA: Bangladesh's former military dictator H M Ershad, a special envoy of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was today acquitted in a 26-year-old corruption case that involved alleged misappropriation of USD 237,000, a media report said. Ershad, the 87-year-old former president, was convicted and sentenced to three-year imprisonment by a lower court back in 1992. The Dhaka High Court today acquitted the Jatiya Party chief of financial irregularities involving gifts worth over Tk 19 million in a case that started in 1991 when he was in office, BDnews24 reported. Ershad challenged the verdict in the High Court. In June 2012, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) was made a party to the case. On March 9 this year, the High Court finished the hearing and fixed March 23 to give its verdict. But it was not delivered as two appeals by the state against the trial court's verdict were yet to be disposed of, the report said. The court forwarded the matter to the chief justice, who then assigned a new bench to hear the matter. Ershad's counsel Sheikh Sirajul Islam told the media that the High Court overturned the trial court's verdict and scrapped two pleas by the state seeking stricter penalties. "I would suggest the ACC should take the verdict to the Appellate Division. The ACC has been informed; it's their call," ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan said. After his ouster following a mass movement, a total of 42 cases on various charges were stacked against Ershad. He was sentenced to different terms in jail in three of the cases and served out a total of six years. Ershad was the country's longest-serving president who ruled until 1990. DHAKA: Bangladesh's former military dictator H M Ershad, a special envoy of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was today acquitted in a 26-year-old corruption case that involved alleged misappropriation of USD 237,000, a media report said. Ershad, the 87-year-old former president, was convicted and sentenced to three-year imprisonment by a lower court back in 1992. The Dhaka High Court today acquitted the Jatiya Party chief of financial irregularities involving gifts worth over Tk 19 million in a case that started in 1991 when he was in office, BDnews24 reported. Ershad challenged the verdict in the High Court. In June 2012, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) was made a party to the case. On March 9 this year, the High Court finished the hearing and fixed March 23 to give its verdict. But it was not delivered as two appeals by the state against the trial court's verdict were yet to be disposed of, the report said. The court forwarded the matter to the chief justice, who then assigned a new bench to hear the matter. Ershad's counsel Sheikh Sirajul Islam told the media that the High Court overturned the trial court's verdict and scrapped two pleas by the state seeking stricter penalties. "I would suggest the ACC should take the verdict to the Appellate Division. The ACC has been informed; it's their call," ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan said. After his ouster following a mass movement, a total of 42 cases on various charges were stacked against Ershad. He was sentenced to different terms in jail in three of the cases and served out a total of six years. Ershad was the country's longest-serving president who ruled until 1990. By Associated Press FORT LAUDERDALE: Irate passengers swarmed ticket counters and some started a near-riot at Fort Lauderdale's airport after Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights, blaming the decision on pilots' failure to show up. Hundreds were left stranded at the airlines' Florida terminal late Monday. The chaos was the latest instance of airlines dealing with high-profile customer frustration. Problems began last month with cellphone video capturing a passenger being dragged off a United Airlines flight. Other horror stories from customers surfaced later involving flights on Delta and American airlines. Deputies arrested three people from New York in the Fort Lauderdale airport, charging them with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. The Broward Sheriff's Office said about 500 people were crowded into Spirit's terminal at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport late Monday night after the airline canceled the flights because there were no pilots. Video posted online showed deputies grappling with screaming passengers and breaking up fights. The discount airline says pilots are refusing to pick up open flying assignments, which Spirit claims is an illegal and concerted plot by the Air Line Pilots Association to apply pressure during contract negotiations. It has filed a lawsuit, saying it has had to cancel about 300 flights nationally and internationally over the past week because of the union's actions. Another 36 were canceled Tuesday. Federal District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas issued a temporary restraining order against the union Tuesday, ordering its member pilots to not engage in any boycotts or slowdown, saying that would violate federal law. Spirit spokesman Paul Berry issued a statement apologizing to customers and saying the company is "shocked and saddened" by the Fort Lauderdale melee. "We believe this is the result of intimidation tactics by a limited number of our pilots affecting the behavior of the larger group," Berry said. The union has denied the accusation, but said in a statement that its members will obey the judge's order with the goal of helping Spirit resume normal operations. Airline analyst Robert Mann said it doesn't take many pilots calling in sick or refusing to accept extra shifts for Spirit or any airline to find itself in the position of having to cancel numerous flights. An airline doesn't have that many reserve pilots on call, he said, and they have to be in the right place to step in. "There's not much they can do," he said. Sheriff's reports released Tuesday say 22-year-old Desmond Waul of Selden and 24-year-old Janice Waul and 22 year-old Davante Garrett, both of Brentwood, were seen by deputies threatening the airline's front counter employees. Deputies said their actions caused the crowd to become increasingly aggressive to the point of near-violence and that they wouldn't leave when ordered. When deputies tried to arrest them, they said the three threatened them and resisted efforts to handcuff them. They were being held Tuesday at the Broward jail in lieu of $10,000 bond each. It's unclear whether they have lawyers. Jennifer Glann said at the airport Tuesday that she was in the crowd Monday night, trying to get home to New Haven, Connecticut. She said conditions were "awful" and "horrible." "There was nowhere to stand, nowhere to sit," she said. Employees were forcing people to go outside, she said. Soon, scuffles started. "People were getting arrested left and right." Paul Yankowitz of Newark, New Jersey, said he tried to remain calm as the crowd became enraged. He didn't think the cancellations were worth getting angry about. "It sucks but like anything else in this life, life is short and you can't get stressed," he said. Fort Lauderdale airport was the scene of a mass shooting in January that killed five people and wounded six. It happened in another terminal on the opposite side of the airport. Airport spokesman Greg Meyer said Tuesday that the airport staff has added security agents and other staff at the terminal to help Spirit. He said passengers are often anxious before flying, so any serious disruption can aggravate matters. Three more flights were canceled Tuesday. "For many people, airline travel is very challenging. A lot of people don't do it frequently, so they are nervous anyway. When your flight is canceled and you need to be somewhere at a certain time it is an imposition and we understand that. The airport tries to work with our airline partner to work with our passengers," Meyer said. FORT LAUDERDALE: Irate passengers swarmed ticket counters and some started a near-riot at Fort Lauderdale's airport after Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights, blaming the decision on pilots' failure to show up. Hundreds were left stranded at the airlines' Florida terminal late Monday. The chaos was the latest instance of airlines dealing with high-profile customer frustration. Problems began last month with cellphone video capturing a passenger being dragged off a United Airlines flight. Other horror stories from customers surfaced later involving flights on Delta and American airlines. Deputies arrested three people from New York in the Fort Lauderdale airport, charging them with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. The Broward Sheriff's Office said about 500 people were crowded into Spirit's terminal at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport late Monday night after the airline canceled the flights because there were no pilots. Video posted online showed deputies grappling with screaming passengers and breaking up fights. The discount airline says pilots are refusing to pick up open flying assignments, which Spirit claims is an illegal and concerted plot by the Air Line Pilots Association to apply pressure during contract negotiations. It has filed a lawsuit, saying it has had to cancel about 300 flights nationally and internationally over the past week because of the union's actions. Another 36 were canceled Tuesday. Federal District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas issued a temporary restraining order against the union Tuesday, ordering its member pilots to not engage in any boycotts or slowdown, saying that would violate federal law. Spirit spokesman Paul Berry issued a statement apologizing to customers and saying the company is "shocked and saddened" by the Fort Lauderdale melee. "We believe this is the result of intimidation tactics by a limited number of our pilots affecting the behavior of the larger group," Berry said. The union has denied the accusation, but said in a statement that its members will obey the judge's order with the goal of helping Spirit resume normal operations. Airline analyst Robert Mann said it doesn't take many pilots calling in sick or refusing to accept extra shifts for Spirit or any airline to find itself in the position of having to cancel numerous flights. An airline doesn't have that many reserve pilots on call, he said, and they have to be in the right place to step in. "There's not much they can do," he said. Sheriff's reports released Tuesday say 22-year-old Desmond Waul of Selden and 24-year-old Janice Waul and 22 year-old Davante Garrett, both of Brentwood, were seen by deputies threatening the airline's front counter employees. Deputies said their actions caused the crowd to become increasingly aggressive to the point of near-violence and that they wouldn't leave when ordered. When deputies tried to arrest them, they said the three threatened them and resisted efforts to handcuff them. They were being held Tuesday at the Broward jail in lieu of $10,000 bond each. It's unclear whether they have lawyers. Jennifer Glann said at the airport Tuesday that she was in the crowd Monday night, trying to get home to New Haven, Connecticut. She said conditions were "awful" and "horrible." "There was nowhere to stand, nowhere to sit," she said. Employees were forcing people to go outside, she said. Soon, scuffles started. "People were getting arrested left and right." Paul Yankowitz of Newark, New Jersey, said he tried to remain calm as the crowd became enraged. He didn't think the cancellations were worth getting angry about. "It sucks but like anything else in this life, life is short and you can't get stressed," he said. Fort Lauderdale airport was the scene of a mass shooting in January that killed five people and wounded six. It happened in another terminal on the opposite side of the airport. Airport spokesman Greg Meyer said Tuesday that the airport staff has added security agents and other staff at the terminal to help Spirit. He said passengers are often anxious before flying, so any serious disruption can aggravate matters. Three more flights were canceled Tuesday. "For many people, airline travel is very challenging. A lot of people don't do it frequently, so they are nervous anyway. When your flight is canceled and you need to be somewhere at a certain time it is an imposition and we understand that. The airport tries to work with our airline partner to work with our passengers," Meyer said. By PTI LONDON: A ship load of tramadol, a synthetic opioid-like drug, from India to be sold to Islamic State terrorists in Libya to give them greater resilience has been seized by the Italian police, according to media reports today. The 37 million tramadol pills, worth USD 75 million, were found packed into three containers at the port of Genoa, labelled as blankets and shampoo and set to be loaded on a freighter bound for Misrata and Tobruk in Libya, The Times reported. "ISIS is making a fortune from this traffic, giving it to its fighters to make them feel no pain," the British newspaper quoted an Italian investigator as saying. Tramadol is a synthetic opioid-like drug used as a painkiller. Italian police said the consignment had come from India and would have been used for two purposes: to help finance Islamist terrorism and for use by jihadist fighters as a stimulant and to heighten resistance to physical stress, the BBC reported. Boko Haram, the Nigerian terror group, is said to feed child soldiers dates stuffed with tramadol before sending them on missions. ISIS is already known for feeding its fighters Captagon, an amphetamine that blocks hunger, fear and fatigue. Italian investigators traced the tramadol shipment to an Indian pharmaceuticals company, which allegedly sold the pills for USD 250,000 to a Dubai-based importer, which then shipped them from India to Sri Lanka where they disappeared from the freighter's documents, the report said. The tramadol pills would sell for two dollars each in Libya, said the investigator. Last year police at the Greek port of Piraeus found a container carrying 26 million tramadol tablets, originally from India and allegedly destined for a Libyan company with ties to ISIS, the report said. LONDON: A ship load of tramadol, a synthetic opioid-like drug, from India to be sold to Islamic State terrorists in Libya to give them greater resilience has been seized by the Italian police, according to media reports today. The 37 million tramadol pills, worth USD 75 million, were found packed into three containers at the port of Genoa, labelled as blankets and shampoo and set to be loaded on a freighter bound for Misrata and Tobruk in Libya, The Times reported. "ISIS is making a fortune from this traffic, giving it to its fighters to make them feel no pain," the British newspaper quoted an Italian investigator as saying. Tramadol is a synthetic opioid-like drug used as a painkiller. Italian police said the consignment had come from India and would have been used for two purposes: to help finance Islamist terrorism and for use by jihadist fighters as a stimulant and to heighten resistance to physical stress, the BBC reported. Boko Haram, the Nigerian terror group, is said to feed child soldiers dates stuffed with tramadol before sending them on missions. ISIS is already known for feeding its fighters Captagon, an amphetamine that blocks hunger, fear and fatigue. Italian investigators traced the tramadol shipment to an Indian pharmaceuticals company, which allegedly sold the pills for USD 250,000 to a Dubai-based importer, which then shipped them from India to Sri Lanka where they disappeared from the freighter's documents, the report said. The tramadol pills would sell for two dollars each in Libya, said the investigator. Last year police at the Greek port of Piraeus found a container carrying 26 million tramadol tablets, originally from India and allegedly destined for a Libyan company with ties to ISIS, the report said. By AFP SEOUL: South Korea's new President Moon Jae-In was sworn in on Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory, and immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang amid high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Left-leaning Moon, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with Pyongyang in the quest for peace -- in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks. "If needed I will fly to Washington immediately," Moon told lawmakers after taking the oath of office in Seoul's National Assembly building. "I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances." Moon will have a difficult diplomatic path to tread in his approach to the North, which dreams of a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States, and has vast artillery forces trained on Seoul. He also begins his term facing multiple domestic challenges, including the aftermath of the huge corruption scandal that saw his conservative predecessor Park Geun-Hye impeached and swept him to power, but leaves the country bitterly divided. "I will be a president to all people," Moon said, promising to "serve even those who did not support me". "I will become a president who is at eye-level with the people," he added, saying he would talk to market traders on his way home from work. The low-key ceremony -- which began with him walking into the building to a drum roll, accompanied by his wife -- came hours after he was formally declared the winner of Tuesday's election. Moon took 41.1 percent of the vote, far ahead of Hong Joon-Pyo of Park's Liberty Korea party, on 24.0 percent, and centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo on 21.4 percent. Ahead of the swearing-in, Moon met with leading lawmakers of Liberty Korea -- which advocates a hard line on the North and has repeatedly accused him of being a Pyongyang sympathiser who would "hand the whole country to the North once elected." "I'd like to show our people that all of us are moving forward together," Moon told them, saying he would seek their opinions on matters of national security. "I am begging for your cooperation." -- Fears of conflict -- Since the beginning of last year the North -- which says it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against invasion -- has mounted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches. In recent months the Trump administration has suggested a military option is on the table, sending fears of conflict spiralling -- although the US president changed tone last week, saying he would be "honoured" to meet the North's young ruler, Kim Jong-Un. Moon, 64, is expected to have his first conversation with Trump in a phone call Wednesday, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul diplomats. He is also expected to name his prime minister, spy chief and presidential chief of staff Wednesday, his aides said. Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Moon over his election victory, saying he would be willing to work with him on a basis of "mutual understanding and mutual respect", according to China's official Xinhua news agency. The phrasing is Beijing's diplomatic code for acceptance of its stance. The South's biggest trading partner, China has been infuriated by the deployment of the US anti-missile system THAAD in the country, which it sees as a threat to its own military capability. It has taken a series of moves against South Korean firms seen as economic retaliation. SEOUL: South Korea's new President Moon Jae-In was sworn in on Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory, and immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang amid high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Left-leaning Moon, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with Pyongyang in the quest for peace -- in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks. "If needed I will fly to Washington immediately," Moon told lawmakers after taking the oath of office in Seoul's National Assembly building. "I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances." Moon will have a difficult diplomatic path to tread in his approach to the North, which dreams of a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States, and has vast artillery forces trained on Seoul. He also begins his term facing multiple domestic challenges, including the aftermath of the huge corruption scandal that saw his conservative predecessor Park Geun-Hye impeached and swept him to power, but leaves the country bitterly divided. "I will be a president to all people," Moon said, promising to "serve even those who did not support me". "I will become a president who is at eye-level with the people," he added, saying he would talk to market traders on his way home from work. The low-key ceremony -- which began with him walking into the building to a drum roll, accompanied by his wife -- came hours after he was formally declared the winner of Tuesday's election. Moon took 41.1 percent of the vote, far ahead of Hong Joon-Pyo of Park's Liberty Korea party, on 24.0 percent, and centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo on 21.4 percent. Ahead of the swearing-in, Moon met with leading lawmakers of Liberty Korea -- which advocates a hard line on the North and has repeatedly accused him of being a Pyongyang sympathiser who would "hand the whole country to the North once elected." "I'd like to show our people that all of us are moving forward together," Moon told them, saying he would seek their opinions on matters of national security. "I am begging for your cooperation." -- Fears of conflict -- Since the beginning of last year the North -- which says it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against invasion -- has mounted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches. In recent months the Trump administration has suggested a military option is on the table, sending fears of conflict spiralling -- although the US president changed tone last week, saying he would be "honoured" to meet the North's young ruler, Kim Jong-Un. Moon, 64, is expected to have his first conversation with Trump in a phone call Wednesday, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul diplomats. He is also expected to name his prime minister, spy chief and presidential chief of staff Wednesday, his aides said. Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Moon over his election victory, saying he would be willing to work with him on a basis of "mutual understanding and mutual respect", according to China's official Xinhua news agency. The phrasing is Beijing's diplomatic code for acceptance of its stance. The South's biggest trading partner, China has been infuriated by the deployment of the US anti-missile system THAAD in the country, which it sees as a threat to its own military capability. It has taken a series of moves against South Korean firms seen as economic retaliation. By Associated Press VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis heads to Fatima today on a pilgrimage that will see him canonise two child shepherds who reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago. Some 400,000 pilgrims from around the world will welcome the Argentine pontiff on the giant esplanade that faces the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima as he arrives in his "Popemobile", while countless others will follow proceedings on television. The Virgin is said to have appeared six times in Fatima, north of Lisbon, between May and October 1917 to three impoverished, barely-literate children -- Jacinta, 7, Francisco, 9, and their cousin Lucia, 10. She apparently shared three major prophesies with the trio at a time marked by the ravages of the First World War and Church persecution in a relatively new Portuguese republic. According to interpretations of what Lucia revealed much later on, the first secret gave a vision of hell, while the second warned of a second devastating war and the rise of communist Russia. The third secret, which Lucia kept to herself for years, is believed to have been a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. His successor Benedict XVI, however, later said she had foreseen the "suffering" of the Church, which at the time was racked by pedophilia scandals. As such, the 12,000-strong town has become a major draw for pilgrims, with millions visiting every year. On Friday and Saturday, some 40,000 walkers, 2,000 journalists, 2,000 priests, 71 bishops, eight cardinals, 350 patients hoping for a miracle and hundreds of volunteers will be present, according to Carmo Rodeia, one of the sanctuary managers. Pilgrims will journey from countries as varied as South Korea, Japan and China, Mexico and Colombia. Nationals from Portugal -- where 89 per cent of the 10.3 million inhabitants are Catholic -- will be out in force, prompting the Pope to speak in Portuguese. On Saturday -- the 100th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's first reported apparition -- Pope Francis will canonise Jacinta and Francisco who were apparently responsible for two miracles. Talk of apparent apparitions and miracles outside of those described in the Old and New Testaments does not sit comfortably with everyone. But the Church is nevertheless very attentive to popular piety -- forms of prayer and worship inspired by believers' culture and experiences rather than by official religious teachings. "The Church must base itself on what people have experienced," says theology professor Ermenegildo Manicardi. "If it didn't, it would have an absolutist position." For instance, while the Vatican has yet to recognise the reported continuous apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje since 1981, it has dispatched a special envoy to examine "the needs" of the millions of faithful who go there. Fatima's apparitions, though, have been officially recognised by the Catholic church since 1930. And it's not just regular faithful who are attracted to the site, but popes too. With Francis included, four pontiffs will have visited the Marian sanctuary in half a century. Arguably the most devoted was the late Pope John Paul II, who made three pilgrimages to the shrine located 130 kilometres (81 miles) north of Lisbon. VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis heads to Fatima today on a pilgrimage that will see him canonise two child shepherds who reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago. Some 400,000 pilgrims from around the world will welcome the Argentine pontiff on the giant esplanade that faces the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima as he arrives in his "Popemobile", while countless others will follow proceedings on television. The Virgin is said to have appeared six times in Fatima, north of Lisbon, between May and October 1917 to three impoverished, barely-literate children -- Jacinta, 7, Francisco, 9, and their cousin Lucia, 10. She apparently shared three major prophesies with the trio at a time marked by the ravages of the First World War and Church persecution in a relatively new Portuguese republic. According to interpretations of what Lucia revealed much later on, the first secret gave a vision of hell, while the second warned of a second devastating war and the rise of communist Russia. The third secret, which Lucia kept to herself for years, is believed to have been a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. His successor Benedict XVI, however, later said she had foreseen the "suffering" of the Church, which at the time was racked by pedophilia scandals. As such, the 12,000-strong town has become a major draw for pilgrims, with millions visiting every year. On Friday and Saturday, some 40,000 walkers, 2,000 journalists, 2,000 priests, 71 bishops, eight cardinals, 350 patients hoping for a miracle and hundreds of volunteers will be present, according to Carmo Rodeia, one of the sanctuary managers. Pilgrims will journey from countries as varied as South Korea, Japan and China, Mexico and Colombia. Nationals from Portugal -- where 89 per cent of the 10.3 million inhabitants are Catholic -- will be out in force, prompting the Pope to speak in Portuguese. On Saturday -- the 100th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's first reported apparition -- Pope Francis will canonise Jacinta and Francisco who were apparently responsible for two miracles. Talk of apparent apparitions and miracles outside of those described in the Old and New Testaments does not sit comfortably with everyone. But the Church is nevertheless very attentive to popular piety -- forms of prayer and worship inspired by believers' culture and experiences rather than by official religious teachings. "The Church must base itself on what people have experienced," says theology professor Ermenegildo Manicardi. "If it didn't, it would have an absolutist position." For instance, while the Vatican has yet to recognise the reported continuous apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje since 1981, it has dispatched a special envoy to examine "the needs" of the millions of faithful who go there. Fatima's apparitions, though, have been officially recognised by the Catholic church since 1930. And it's not just regular faithful who are attracted to the site, but popes too. With Francis included, four pontiffs will have visited the Marian sanctuary in half a century. Arguably the most devoted was the late Pope John Paul II, who made three pilgrimages to the shrine located 130 kilometres (81 miles) north of Lisbon. By AFP JUDA: South Sudan President Salva Kiir sacked his powerful, hardline army chief Paul Malong on Tuesday, a government spokesman said. General Paul Malong, long regarded as an ethnic nationalist of Kiir's majority Dinka tribe, was replaced by General James Ajongo Mawut, a career soldier. "The decrees are two: one for the relief of Chief of General Staff, General Paul Malong Awan, and another decree is for the appointment of former Deputy Chief of General Staff for Administration and Finance General James Ajongo Mawut as the Chief of General Staff," Kiir's spokesmen Ateny Wek Ateny told AFP. Ateny said the move was a routine changing of personnel. "This is a position that can be held between two years and four years and Malong has spent three years so this is the prerogative of the president" he said. In February several senior army officers resigned, accusing Malong of conducting an ethnic war against non-Dinkas and ruling with an "unqualified clique of friends and relatives". Among those who quit was Lieutenant-General Thomas Cirillo who has since announced plans to launch his own rebellion. Malong is widely regarded as being the mastermind of fighting that erupted in the capital, Juba, last July killing hundreds and dashing hopes of a power-sharing government between Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar, a member of the Nuer tribe. The Dinka and the Nuer are the two largest ethnic groups in South Sudan and have a history of bloody rivalry. UN investigators were among those who blamed Malong for the bloody attacks in July in which civilians were killed and foreign aid workers raped. The US subsequently failed to get Malong sanctioned and put on a UN blacklist, subject to an assets freeze and travel ban, for his role in the ongoing conflict. South Sudan has been at war since December 2013 when Kiir fell out with Machar, accusing him of plotting a coup. The conflict -- characterised by brutality and human rights violations -- has triggered famine in parts of the country, forced millions from their homes and killed tens of thousands so far. JUDA: South Sudan President Salva Kiir sacked his powerful, hardline army chief Paul Malong on Tuesday, a government spokesman said. General Paul Malong, long regarded as an ethnic nationalist of Kiir's majority Dinka tribe, was replaced by General James Ajongo Mawut, a career soldier. "The decrees are two: one for the relief of Chief of General Staff, General Paul Malong Awan, and another decree is for the appointment of former Deputy Chief of General Staff for Administration and Finance General James Ajongo Mawut as the Chief of General Staff," Kiir's spokesmen Ateny Wek Ateny told AFP. Ateny said the move was a routine changing of personnel. "This is a position that can be held between two years and four years and Malong has spent three years so this is the prerogative of the president" he said. In February several senior army officers resigned, accusing Malong of conducting an ethnic war against non-Dinkas and ruling with an "unqualified clique of friends and relatives". Among those who quit was Lieutenant-General Thomas Cirillo who has since announced plans to launch his own rebellion. Malong is widely regarded as being the mastermind of fighting that erupted in the capital, Juba, last July killing hundreds and dashing hopes of a power-sharing government between Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar, a member of the Nuer tribe. The Dinka and the Nuer are the two largest ethnic groups in South Sudan and have a history of bloody rivalry. UN investigators were among those who blamed Malong for the bloody attacks in July in which civilians were killed and foreign aid workers raped. The US subsequently failed to get Malong sanctioned and put on a UN blacklist, subject to an assets freeze and travel ban, for his role in the ongoing conflict. South Sudan has been at war since December 2013 when Kiir fell out with Machar, accusing him of plotting a coup. The conflict -- characterised by brutality and human rights violations -- has triggered famine in parts of the country, forced millions from their homes and killed tens of thousands so far. By AFP ISTANBUL: Turkey on Wednesday reacted furiously to a US plan to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Ankara considers terrorists, but the force battling jihadists said the move would hasten the extremists' defeat. The issue risks further stoking tensions between Ankara and Washington less than a week before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan heads to Washington to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump in their first face-to-face encounter as heads of state. The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) is seen by Washington as the best ally against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and the prime attacking force in any assault on their stronghold of Raqa. But Ankara regards the group as a terror group and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged an insurgency inside Turkey leaving tens of thousands dead. The dispute poisoned ties between Turkey and the United States under the administration of former president Barack Obama but commentators had hoped for a smoother ride under Trump. "The supply of arms to the YPG is unacceptable," Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told A Haber television. "Such a policy will benefit nobody," he said. "We expect that this mistake is to be rectified." Ensure clear victory In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon said Trump had authorised the arming of Kurdish fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) "to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa." The SDF, a US-backed group dominated by YPG but which also contains Arab elements, hailed the move and said that receiving US arms and military equipment would "hasten the defeat" of the jihadists. "The US decision to arm the YPG... is important and will hasten the defeat of terrorism," an SDF spokesman told AFP. The Kurdish-Arab SDF has been the main faction fighting IS on the ground in Syria, but Turkey dismisses it as a front for the YPG. It remains to be seen what shadow the issue will cast over the talks between Trump and Erdogan, which have been touted as chance to forge a new partnership between the two NATO allies. A high-level Turkish delegation including Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkey's spy chief Hakan Fidan has been in the US laying the groundwork for the meeting. Canikli said Turkey would take the diplomatic initiative to convince Washington "to do what friendship requires." "The argument that a ground operation in the fight against Daesh (IS) would be successful only with YPG has nothing to do with reality," he said. Both Washington and Brussels classifies the PKK as a terror group but has never regarded the YPG as such. Graveyard for jihadists Turkey has said it is keen to join the battle to recapture Raqa but on condition the offensive does not include Syrian Kurdish fighters. Last month, Erdogan said if Turkey and the United States joined forces, they could turn Raqa into a "graveyard" for jihadists. Turkey is hoping for better relations with Washington after tensions during the Obama administration but their disagreement over Syrian Kurdish forces has proven to be one of the thorniest issues. On April 27, Turkish warplanes struck YPG forces in Syria and also hit Kurdish forces in neighbouring Iraq in what Ankara described as "terrorist havens". Pentagon chief Jim Mattis had on Tuesday taken part in a summit in Copenhagen for senior leaders from the top 15 countries in the anti-IS coalition, including Turkey. Mattis, who is now in Vilnius as part of a European tour, gave a positive assessment of the role Turkey will play in the lead up to the Raqa fight. "Our intent is to work with the Turks, alongside one another to take Raqa down," he said. Meanwhile, Trump was to receive Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday to discuss a Russian plan to establish safe zones in Syria and help end the six-year conflict. ISTANBUL: Turkey on Wednesday reacted furiously to a US plan to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Ankara considers terrorists, but the force battling jihadists said the move would hasten the extremists' defeat. The issue risks further stoking tensions between Ankara and Washington less than a week before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan heads to Washington to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump in their first face-to-face encounter as heads of state. The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) is seen by Washington as the best ally against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and the prime attacking force in any assault on their stronghold of Raqa. But Ankara regards the group as a terror group and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged an insurgency inside Turkey leaving tens of thousands dead. The dispute poisoned ties between Turkey and the United States under the administration of former president Barack Obama but commentators had hoped for a smoother ride under Trump. "The supply of arms to the YPG is unacceptable," Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told A Haber television. "Such a policy will benefit nobody," he said. "We expect that this mistake is to be rectified." Ensure clear victory In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon said Trump had authorised the arming of Kurdish fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) "to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa." The SDF, a US-backed group dominated by YPG but which also contains Arab elements, hailed the move and said that receiving US arms and military equipment would "hasten the defeat" of the jihadists. "The US decision to arm the YPG... is important and will hasten the defeat of terrorism," an SDF spokesman told AFP. The Kurdish-Arab SDF has been the main faction fighting IS on the ground in Syria, but Turkey dismisses it as a front for the YPG. It remains to be seen what shadow the issue will cast over the talks between Trump and Erdogan, which have been touted as chance to forge a new partnership between the two NATO allies. A high-level Turkish delegation including Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkey's spy chief Hakan Fidan has been in the US laying the groundwork for the meeting. Canikli said Turkey would take the diplomatic initiative to convince Washington "to do what friendship requires." "The argument that a ground operation in the fight against Daesh (IS) would be successful only with YPG has nothing to do with reality," he said. Both Washington and Brussels classifies the PKK as a terror group but has never regarded the YPG as such. Graveyard for jihadists Turkey has said it is keen to join the battle to recapture Raqa but on condition the offensive does not include Syrian Kurdish fighters. Last month, Erdogan said if Turkey and the United States joined forces, they could turn Raqa into a "graveyard" for jihadists. Turkey is hoping for better relations with Washington after tensions during the Obama administration but their disagreement over Syrian Kurdish forces has proven to be one of the thorniest issues. On April 27, Turkish warplanes struck YPG forces in Syria and also hit Kurdish forces in neighbouring Iraq in what Ankara described as "terrorist havens". Pentagon chief Jim Mattis had on Tuesday taken part in a summit in Copenhagen for senior leaders from the top 15 countries in the anti-IS coalition, including Turkey. Mattis, who is now in Vilnius as part of a European tour, gave a positive assessment of the role Turkey will play in the lead up to the Raqa fight. "Our intent is to work with the Turks, alongside one another to take Raqa down," he said. Meanwhile, Trump was to receive Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday to discuss a Russian plan to establish safe zones in Syria and help end the six-year conflict. By AFP WASHINGTON: The State Department issued a sharp warning to Americans Tuesday against travel to North Korea after the arrest of a fourth US citizen, cautioning against the "serious risk" of lengthy detention and "unduly harsh sentences." Kim Hak-Song was detained over the weekend for "hostile acts," the official KCNA news agency said, adding he had worked for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). The arrest put the number of Americans held in North Korea at four, as Washington and Pyongyang remain at loggerheads over the North's nuclear and missile ambitions. While a travel warning already was in effect for US nationals, the State Department offered a more detailed statement about the pitfalls of heading to North Korea. "The Department of State strongly warns US citizens not to travel to North Korea," the warning said. "US citizens in the DPRK are at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea's system of law enforcement," the department said. "This system imposes unduly harsh sentences for actions that would not be considered crimes in the United States," it added, reminding Americans that the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. Pyongyang has carried out two nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches since the beginning of last year in its quest to build a rocket capable of delivering an atomic warhead to the US mainland. Washington has suggested military action could be on the table but President Donald Trump has softened his message more recently, saying he would be "honored" to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. WASHINGTON: The State Department issued a sharp warning to Americans Tuesday against travel to North Korea after the arrest of a fourth US citizen, cautioning against the "serious risk" of lengthy detention and "unduly harsh sentences." Kim Hak-Song was detained over the weekend for "hostile acts," the official KCNA news agency said, adding he had worked for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). The arrest put the number of Americans held in North Korea at four, as Washington and Pyongyang remain at loggerheads over the North's nuclear and missile ambitions. While a travel warning already was in effect for US nationals, the State Department offered a more detailed statement about the pitfalls of heading to North Korea. "The Department of State strongly warns US citizens not to travel to North Korea," the warning said. "US citizens in the DPRK are at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea's system of law enforcement," the department said. "This system imposes unduly harsh sentences for actions that would not be considered crimes in the United States," it added, reminding Americans that the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. Pyongyang has carried out two nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches since the beginning of last year in its quest to build a rocket capable of delivering an atomic warhead to the US mainland. Washington has suggested military action could be on the table but President Donald Trump has softened his message more recently, saying he would be "honored" to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. By AFP CARACAS: Venezuela's opposition and rights campaigners voiced alarm Tuesday over claims that the military is holding and prosecuting scores of people detained in recent anti-government protests. One lawyer working for those detained, Tony Marval, said 70 of them were being held in the northern state of Carabobo on the order of military courts. The non-governmental criminal justice body Foro Penal said a further 11 were in a similar plight in Caracas and the northwestern state of Lara. President Nicolas Maduro has yet to respond to the claim, which has raised claims of an authoritarian turn in Venezuela's political crisis. Government officials have not confirmed the arrests, or the military processing of civilian suspects. Maduro was scheduled to appear at a rally of his supporters on Tuesday, while opposition lawmakers planned to pass a motion condemning the detentions. "The constitution is clear: military courts are not for civilians. Bringing demonstrators before them is a violation of their human rights," said the opposition speaker of the legislature, Julio Borges. Deadly clashes Clashes between protesters and riot cops have left 36 people dead and hundreds injured since the unrest erupted on April 1, according to authorities. Demonstrators blame Maduro for an economic crisis that has caused food shortages in the oil-rich state. His move to reform the constitution has further inflamed protesters, who say it is a ploy to resist calls for early elections. Maduro says the crisis is a US-backed capitalist conspiracy against his elected socialist government. He has branded protesters "terrorists" and insurgents. Hundreds detained A senior military commander, Jesus Suarez, said that 780 people had been arrested in protests. He said 251 of them were sent to military courts for charges such as attacking security forces and "rebellion." Constitutional law expert Jose Vicente Haro said the detentions violate article 261 of the Venezuelan constitution which says military courts can only handle "crimes of a military nature." "This is a violation of citizens' right to be judged by their peers in a civil manner with due process," Marval told AFP by telephone. Robbery, 'rebellion' Alfredo Romero, an attorney with Foro Penal, told AFP that many of the detainees were arrested for robbery but face charges such as rebellion and contempt. Venezuela's chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega has broken ranks with the government to speak out against detentions of protestors. Human rights groups said the military courts were a way to try cases that she had dismissed. Maduro has the public backing of the military high command -- a decisive factor in the political crisis, analysts say. Luis Almagro, the Uruguayan head of the Organization of American States, lashed out at the reported detentions in a video. Almagro is the most outspoken international critic of Maduro. The Venezuelan president brands him a US puppet. "Venezuela's part military, part civilian regime represents the very worst of a dictatorship," Almagro said. CARACAS: Venezuela's opposition and rights campaigners voiced alarm Tuesday over claims that the military is holding and prosecuting scores of people detained in recent anti-government protests. One lawyer working for those detained, Tony Marval, said 70 of them were being held in the northern state of Carabobo on the order of military courts. The non-governmental criminal justice body Foro Penal said a further 11 were in a similar plight in Caracas and the northwestern state of Lara. President Nicolas Maduro has yet to respond to the claim, which has raised claims of an authoritarian turn in Venezuela's political crisis. Government officials have not confirmed the arrests, or the military processing of civilian suspects. Maduro was scheduled to appear at a rally of his supporters on Tuesday, while opposition lawmakers planned to pass a motion condemning the detentions. "The constitution is clear: military courts are not for civilians. Bringing demonstrators before them is a violation of their human rights," said the opposition speaker of the legislature, Julio Borges. Deadly clashes Clashes between protesters and riot cops have left 36 people dead and hundreds injured since the unrest erupted on April 1, according to authorities. Demonstrators blame Maduro for an economic crisis that has caused food shortages in the oil-rich state. His move to reform the constitution has further inflamed protesters, who say it is a ploy to resist calls for early elections. Maduro says the crisis is a US-backed capitalist conspiracy against his elected socialist government. He has branded protesters "terrorists" and insurgents. Hundreds detained A senior military commander, Jesus Suarez, said that 780 people had been arrested in protests. He said 251 of them were sent to military courts for charges such as attacking security forces and "rebellion." Constitutional law expert Jose Vicente Haro said the detentions violate article 261 of the Venezuelan constitution which says military courts can only handle "crimes of a military nature." "This is a violation of citizens' right to be judged by their peers in a civil manner with due process," Marval told AFP by telephone. Robbery, 'rebellion' Alfredo Romero, an attorney with Foro Penal, told AFP that many of the detainees were arrested for robbery but face charges such as rebellion and contempt. Venezuela's chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega has broken ranks with the government to speak out against detentions of protestors. Human rights groups said the military courts were a way to try cases that she had dismissed. Maduro has the public backing of the military high command -- a decisive factor in the political crisis, analysts say. Luis Almagro, the Uruguayan head of the Organization of American States, lashed out at the reported detentions in a video. Almagro is the most outspoken international critic of Maduro. The Venezuelan president brands him a US puppet. "Venezuela's part military, part civilian regime represents the very worst of a dictatorship," Almagro said. Who will be the new District 11 senator? Votes are in. Certain blood vessels in the brainstem constrict when blood vessels elsewhere in the body would dilate. And that contrary behavior is what keeps us breathing, according to a new paper by UConn researchers published May 8 in eLife. If the body were a marching band, the brainstem would be the drum major. It keeps our heart beating and our lungs breathing in the essential rhythms of life. And just like a drum major, the job is more complex than it looks. If cellular waste products build up in the body, the brainstem has to jolt the lungs into action without disrupting other bodily functions, as surely as a drum major reins in a wayward woodwind section without losing the low brass. Neuroscientists studying the brainstem have focused on neurons, which are brain cells that send signals to one another and all over the body. But focusing just on the neurons in the brainstem is like staring only at the drum major's hands. Recently, neuroscientists have come to understand that astrocytes, cells once thought to simply provide structure to the brain, also release signaling molecules that regulate neurons' function. But until now, no one even considered the possibility that blood vessels may be similarly specialized. For more than a century, doctors and scientists have known that blood vessels dilate when cellular waste products like carbon dioxide build up. Widening the vessels allows fresh blood to flush through, carrying in oxygen and washing away the acidic carbon dioxide. This has been shown to be true throughout the body, and is standard dogma in undergraduate physiology classes. UConn physiologist Dan Mulkey was teaching exactly that to undergraduates one day when he realized that it couldn't possibly be true in a certain part of the brainstem. "I thought, wow. If that happened in the region of the brain I study, it would be counterproductive," Mulkey says. He studies the retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN), a small region in the brainstem that controls breathing. He's shown in the past that RTN neurons respond to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream by stimulating the lungs to breathe. But if the blood vessels in the RTN dilated in response to rising carbon dioxide the same way blood vessels do everywhere else, it would wash out that all-important signal, preventing cells in the RTN from doing their job driving us to breathe. It would be as if the drum major didn't notice the percussion section wandering off to left field. When Mulkey returned to the lab, he asked his team, including NIH postdoctoral fellow Virginia Hawkins, to see how blood vessels in thin slices of brainstem respond to carbon dioxide. And they saw it was indeed true - RTN blood vessels constricted when carbon dioxide levels rose. But blood vessels from slices of cortex (the wrinkled top part of the brain) dilated in response to high carbon dioxide, just like the rest of the body. But how did the blood vessels know to act differently in the RTN? Mulkey guessed that RTN astrocytes had something to do with it. He suspected that the astrocytes were releasing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a small molecule cells can use to signal one another. And that was causing the RTN blood vessels to constrict. When they tested it, they found the hypothesis was correct. The astrocytes in the RTN were behaving differently than astrocytes anywhere else in the body. When these brainstem astrocytes detected high levels of carbon dioxide, they released ATP signaling to the neurons and blood vessels. When the researchers induced the astrocytes artificially to release ATP, they got the same results. Bathing the RTN blood vessels directly in ATP also caused them to constrict. Blocking ATP receptors blocked the ability of blood vessels to respond to carbon dioxide. When the team did the same experiments in live animals, they got the same results. Perhaps most importantly, manipulating blood vessels in the RTN actually influenced how animals breathe, thus linking regulation of blood vessel diameter to behavior. The majority of this research was done by UConn undergraduates, including Ashley Trinh, Colin Cleary, and Todd Dubreuil, as well as Elliot Rodriguez, a summer student in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates in Physiology and Neurobiology program at UConn, who studies at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania the rest of the year. The students' work uncovered a major discovery in neurophysiology. The work was funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (HL104101 HL126381) and the Connecticut Department of Public Health (150263). "This is a big change in how we think about breathing," Mulkey says. And about blood vessels. Even in a single organ like the brain, the purpose of blood flow is not the same everywhere. Tailored responses in the RTN keep the body's drum major conducting, and let the band play on. Mothers infected with malaria during pregnancy can pass more of their own cells to their baby and change the infant's risk of later infection, a new study shows. The study, from researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and their colleagues, suggests that a mother's cells could directly act as part of her child's immune system, even after birth. The placenta blocks some infectious agents, but easily passes oxygen and nutrients to the baby. It also allows a unique exchange of cells between mother and child, known as "microchimerism." The research team looked at how malaria can alter the mother-child cell sharing that happens during pregnancy. It was led by Dr. Whitney Harrington, University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital pediatric infectious disease specialist, and Fred Hutch microchimerism researcher Dr. J. Lee Nelson. Most babies carry a very small number of foreign cells acquired from their mothers, on the order of a few maternal cells in every 100,000, but the researchers found that babies born to Tanzanian mothers infected with malaria during pregnancy and whose infections had traveled to their placentas had evidence for far more maternal cells on board at the time of their births -- on average about one percent, with a few cases even higher than 10 percent. The level of increase of mother's cells present in baby's blood was a surprise to the researchers. Harrington hypothesizes that the infection led to alterations in placental proteins that control cell trafficking, which allowed more maternal cells to enter the fetuses. Even more surprising was the lasting effect of this change. When the researchers looked at the health records of the babies, they found that those with higher levels of maternal microchimerism were twice as likely to be infected with malaria during childhood - but only half as likely to get sick from that infection, suggesting that the cells transferred from the mothers might confer some protection against the disease. Harrington said there are two possible explanations for what's going on: Either mom's immune cells are directly recognizing and acting on the malaria parasite in her child's body, or they're acting indirectly by teaching the child's immune system how to recognize and react to the pathogen. The researchers examined 53 umbilical cord blood samples from pregnant women and their babies enrolled in a previous study in Muheza, Tanzania, from 2002 to 2006. About half of the women had placental malaria, and about half of those infected women had what's called inflammatory placental malaria, in which the placenta gets very diseased and can stop functioning properly. In their study, the researchers looked for the amount of maternal DNA in the babies' umbilical cord blood. This is representative of the level of maternal microchimerism the children had at the moment they were born, Harrington said, although it's not known how long that level may persist after birth. Women with placental malaria gave birth to babies with higher-than-average maternal microchimerism, and babies born to mothers with inflammatory placental malaria had even higher average levels. In future studies, the researchers plan to explore how the maternal and infant cells interact to affect future malaria risk, whether and for how long the high levels of maternal cells persist during children's lives, and how in general a person's microchimerism status affects their susceptibility to other childhood infections. Malaria is a leading cause of death in low- and middle-income countries, especially among children. An estimated 429,000 people die every year of the infection, according to the World Health Organization, and the majority of those deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. A study in 65 countries has revealed low adoption of International Atomic Energy Agency recommendations to reduce nuclear cardiology radiation exposure. The research is presented today at ICNC 2017 by Dr. Edward Hulten, a cardiologist at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, USA. Nuclear cardiology uses small amounts of radioactive tracers which are injected into the veins and taken up by the heart. A gamma camera images the radiation from the tracer. The cardiac images are used to measure the heart size and function, identify coronary heart disease, and predict the risk of a heart attack. Dr. Hulten said: "Nuclear cardiology is a key part of contemporary cardiology management and around 15 to 20 million procedures are performed annually. It gives information regarding diagnosis, prognosis, and the effects of therapeutic interventions." "Concerns have been raised about tests, including nuclear cardiology, that expose patients to ionizing medical radiation," he continued. "Medical radiation potentially raises the lifetime risk of cancer which is important for all patients, especially younger patients or when considering additional radiation over time from further medical studies." A goal of 9 mSv or less radiation exposure per scan was recommended by the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC) in 2010. It was noted in a 2016 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear cardiology guideline but not formally endorsed as a recommendation. The IAEA developed eight quality metrics for responsible radiation use in nuclear cardiology: avoiding thallium 201 stress testing, avoiding dual isotope testing, avoiding too much technetium-99m and thallium 201, using stress only imaging, use of camera technologies to reduce dose, use of weight based dosing strategies for technetium-99m, and avoiding inappropriate dosing that can lead to "shine-through" artefacts. The IAEA Nuclear Cardiology Protocols Study (INCAPS) assessed adherence to the eight quality metrics. The present analysis investigated which metrics were most helpful in meeting the ASNC's 9 mSv target. During one week in 2013, 308 nuclear cardiology laboratories were studied in 65 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Oceania. The survey included 7 911 nuclear cardiology scans. There was significant variability in adherence to the quality metrics across laboratories and regions. There was low adherence overall, with the majority of sites implementing less than half of the quality metrics. When the researchers performed multivariable logistic regression analysis, they found that the practices most strongly associated with achieving a 9 mSv or less scan were the use of stress or rest only imaging, avoiding thallium, and use of camera technologies to reduce radiation dose. Dr Hulten said: "When the 9 mSv recommendation was made in 2010 it was suggested that it should be achieved in 50% of scans by 2014. The INCAPS survey shows that there is still work to do. It is possible to reduce radiation exposure with existing techniques. Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) cameras are more sensitive and allow for reduced dose scanning. With certain tracers, you can achieve 1 mSv or less. But some scans use more than 30 mSv, so there is huge variability." Not every site has all of the hardware and technology, said Dr Hulten, so the first step is to look at what is possible within each lab. He said: "There are improvements every lab can make regardless of money - for example, multiple position imaging, weight based dosing and stress only techniques. They do require adapting existing workflows which takes leadership but they should be feasible in most labs." He added: "Eventually cameras wear out and perhaps the decision on a replacement could factor in a reduced radiation dose which also lowers false positive tests and has the potential to reduce lab costs." Dr Hulten concluded: "The INCAPS survey is a crucial step towards improving patient care in the field of nuclear cardiology by quantifying worldwide adherence to best practices. Any test involving ionizing radiation will increase cancers within a population but the risk must be weighed against the benefit of gaining information about heart disease. The 9 mSv goal is achievable and the lower the better." Lyme disease an infection contracted from the bite of an infected tick is an important emerging disease in the UK, and is increasing in incidence in people in the UK and large parts of Europe and North America. A new study, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, found that some types of conservation action could increase the abundance of ticks, which transmit diseases like Lyme disease. The research led by the University of Glasgow in collaboration with Scottish Natural Heritage, the James Hutton Institute and Public Health England examined how conservation management activities could affect tick populations, wildlife host communities, the transmission of the Borrelia bacteria that can cause Lyme disease and, ultimately, the risk of contracting Lyme disease. The study found that managing the environment for conservation and biodiversity has many positive effects, including benefits for human health and wellbeing from spending time in nature; however the researchers suggested that there should be consideration of disease vectors such as ticks and mosquitoes in conservation management decisions. Lead author Dr Caroline Millins, from the University of Glasgows School of Veterinary Medicine and Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine (BAHCM), said: We identified several widespread conservation management practices which could affect Lyme disease risk: the management of deer populations, woodland regeneration, urban greening and control of invasive species. We found that some management activities could lead to an increased risk of Lyme disease by increasing the habitat available for wildlife hosts and the tick vector. These activities were woodland regeneration and biodiversity policies which increase the amount of forest bordering open areas as well as urban greening. However, if deer populations are managed alongside woodland regeneration projects, this can reduce tick populations and the risk of Lyme disease. Deer are often key to maintaining tick populations, but do not become infected with the bacteria. Previous research by co-author Lucy Gilbert of The James Hutton Institute has shown that greatly reducing deer densities by exclusion fencing or culling can reduce tick density and therefore Lyme disease risk. Senior author Dr Roman Biek, University of Glasgows BAHCM, said: Widespread management activities can potentially teach us a lot about how changes to the environment can affect the chances of humans coming into contact with ticks and with the pathogens ticks transmit. We recommend that monitoring ticks and pathogens should accompany conservation measures such as woodland regeneration and urban greening projects. This will allow appropriate guidelines and mitigation strategies to be developed, while also helping us to better understand the processes leading to higher Lyme disease risk. Co-author Professor Des Thompson, Principal Adviser on Science and Biodiversity with Scottish Natural Heritage, commented: This is the sort of vital research we need to act on in order to advise Government on the best practices for enhancing wildlife whilst minimising risks to human health. The Scottish Governments 2020 plan for Scotlands Biodiversity requires this integrated approach, bringing human health and wildlife management sectors together. The paper, Effects of conservation management of landscapes and vertebrate communities on Lyme borreliosis risk in the United Kingdom is published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The paper was funded by the BBSRC. Three chemists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI)- Dale Boger, Jin-Quan Yu and Phil Baran- have received awards from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), a renowned professional organization for chemists based in the United Kingdom, with more than 54,000 members worldwide. Dale Boger, co-chair of the Department of Chemistry at TSRI, was awarded the 2017 Robert Robinson Award of the RSC's Organic Division. The award honors his groundbreaking studies in natural product synthesis, which could lead to new therapeutic treatments for challenging clinical needs. Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today "I am very honored and humbled to receive the RSC Robert Robinson Award, which has such a distinguished list of prior award winners," Boger said. Jin-Quan Yu, Frank and Bertha Hupp Professor of Chemistry at TSRI, received the 2017 Pedler Award from the RSC's Organic Division in recognition of his development of pioneering methods of C-H activation, a technique in chemistry that can lead to new pharmaceuticals and other natural products. "I hope these new reactions will accelerate the discovery and synthesis of useful molecules, especially medicines," said Yu, who received his Ph.D. in the U.K. at the University of Cambridge and served as a Royal Society fellow. "It gives me a warm feeling to be recognized by the U.K. scientific community that I was part of for 10 years." Phil Baran, the Darlene Shiley Professor of Chemistry at TSRI, received the RSC's 2017 Merck, Sharp & Dohme Award, which honors contributions to any area of organic chemistry from a researcher under the age of 45. Baran's work focuses on developing new chemical reactions and methodologies for more efficient and economically viable routes in drug design. Baran credited his lab members for his success so far. "This award is a recognition of the students and postdoctoral scholars who work tirelessly to invent useful chemistry," Baran said. In addition to 2,000 and a medal, all three awards include a lecture tour in the U.K. New Delhi: After Infosys and Wipro, it's now IT firm Tech Mahindra that could hand out pink slips to 1500-2000 of employees as it looks to "weed out bottom performers". Tech Mahindra -- which ranks fifth in the tally of Indian IT firms by revenues -- has begun its annual performance appraisal process. "We have a process of weeding out bottom performers every year and this year is no different," Tech Mahindra said in an emailed response. The Mumbai-based company, however, did not specify the number of employees that could be asked to leave. However, industry sources suggest that the number would run into hundreds. At the end of December 2016, the company had over 1.17 lakh employees. Tech Mahindra's larger rivals, Wipro, Infosys and Cognizant have already initiated similar performance reviews and estimates suggest that thousands of employees in the sector could be shown the door over the next few weeks. The development comes at a time when Indian IT firms are facing challenges in the business environment and stricter work permit regime in countries like the US, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. While the companies have termed these layoffs as part of normal business decisions, many believe these are directed more towards controlling costs. Last week, the US-based Cognizant had rolled out a voluntary separation programme for directors, associate VPs and senior VPs, offering them 6-9 months of salary. Wipro, too, is learnt to have asked about 600 employees to leave as part of its annual "performance appraisal" even as speculations were that the number could go as high as 2,000. With the US hardening its stance on outsourcing, IT firms are under pressure to hire locals instead of taking Indian employees on work visas to client sites. This also impacts their margins. Infosys, for instance, has said it will hire 10,000 people in the US over the next two years. It is also looking at setting up four new innovation centres there. IT companies have been one of the largest recruiters in the country. Apart from the impact of stringent visa regime, increasing automation of processes would also lead to reduction in hiring in coming years. Authorities in Venice have passed a law preventing the opening of new fast food outlets in a bid to preserve the identity of the Floating City. Venetian authorities no longer want to see tourists strolling into Saint Mark's Square or around its legendary canals with a sandwich or a snack in hand. The city's authorities want to put a brake on the expansion of outlets selling burgers, kebabs and other fast-food items intended for eating on the hoof. Paola Mar, the city's tourism chief, considers that such establishments "are not compatible with the preservation and development of Venice's cultural heritage." The law also seeks to limit the growth of outlets selling take-out pizza by the slice. Venice is used to seeing students gather in the Campo Santa Margherita square to devour their slice of pizza. Other successful street food outlets have also modernized the Venice food scene, like in the San Polo district, where Acqua E Mais serves the famous Italian polenta topped with local fritto misto (mixed fried seafood) in a cone to go. It is currently prohibited to eat take-out food in Saint Mark's Square, nor is it not possible to sit on the steps of the square's basilica. Tourists wanting a bite to eat must instead ask for a table one of the historic cafes in the emblematic Venetian location. This isn't the first time that Italy has gone to war with fast food. Verona, an hour's train ride form Venice, prohibited the opening of new kebab shops in 2016. McDonald's also caused anger in Rome when it opened a restaurant a stone's throw from the Vatican early that same year. A cardinal even wrote to Pope Francis asking him to intervene. At the end of 2016, the Mayor of Florence refused the opening of an American fast food joint on the Piazza Del Duomo, one of the Tuscan capital's main squares. Deeply saddened to hear about the sudden demise of Narayana garu's son Nishith. My heartfelt condolences with his family in this dark hour. N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) May 10, 2017 Nishit Narayana, the 23-year-old son of Andhra Pradesh Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister P Narayana, and his friend were killed when their SUV crashed into a railing near a metro pillar in Hyderabad on Wednesday morning.The incident took place between Pedamma Temple and Pillar number 9 in the Jubilee Hills area.A watchman of one of the nearby buildings was eyewitness to the incident and he claims he heard a loud noise somewhere around 3AM.Nishit was recently appointed as a director in the family-run Narayana Group of Educational Institutions.Investigations are underway. It appears to be a case of speeding. The bodies were rushed to the nearby Apollo hospital where they were declared dead-on-arrival, said a police officer.The bodies were later taken to Osmania Hospital.A drunk driving angle cannot be ascertained unless we get the post-mortem report, said the police officer.The police have added that heavy rains and wind speeds of more than 100kmph lashed the city on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday. There was water logging in several parts of the city and poor visibility could have also played a role in the accident.Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu took to Twitter to expresses his condolence for Nishit's death.Nishits friend Raja Ravi Varma also died in the accident involving the Mercedes-Benz SUV.Minister P Narayana is currently in London and is on his way back. Srinagar: An infiltration bid by militants was foiled by the Indian Army along the Line of Control in Baramulla district of Kashmir on Tuesday. Army officials told PTI that there were no casulaties and that the militants were forced to retreat to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. "Army troops opened fire on a group of terrorists attempting to sneak into our territory on Tuesday night and forced them back across the Line of Control in Rampur sector of Baramulla district," the official said. The Army has launched a combing operation in the area to ensure that none of the militants managed to get in. (With Inputs from PTI) A cheque issued by the Bihar government to a family of a CRPF man killed by Naxals in Chhattisgarhs Sukma has allegedly bounced.CRPF Jawan Ranjeet kumar, a resident of Sheikhpura district, was among six from Bihar who were killed in the Sukma ambush on April 24.Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had announced compensation of Rs 5lakh to each of the bereaved family.Indradeo Yadav, father of Ranjeet, submitted the cheque issued in favour of her daughter in law Sunita Devi in a HDFC Bank branch for clearance. But the cheque bounced.When contacted branch manager of the HDFC Bank cited technical reasons for this unfortunate incident.The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has lashed out at chief minister Nitish for treating a martyr's family in such a way. "This is not the first time such thing has happened in Nitish tenure. Their ministers and leaders have been making inappropriate comments about our soldiers. Now today I am hearing this news of cheque bounce. His family needs support not such treatment, BJP spokesperson Sanjay Tiger said.On the other hand, the ruling Janta Dal (United) turned the blame on the bank officials. JD (U) leader Neeraj Kumar informed that the government had directed district magistrate of Sheikhpura to probe into the matter. Patna: A woman in Buxar, Bihar, refused to marry a dark-complexioned groom, saying he was not 'smart' enough for her. Anjani Chouhan, the groom, was shocked after his would-be-bride refused to marry him at the mandap in Ramrekha Ghat, Buxar town, about 125 km from Patna, IANS reported. "After Anjani was informed that woman had refused to marry him, he requested elders to persuade her not to do so as it is a matter of honour and dignity in society. However, the girl insisted that she would not marry a dark complexioned man," a district police official said. Police said the bride was happy during the rituals but suddenly told her family members and friends that she will not marry Anjani because of his dark complexion. Two members of the groom's family approached the police for help. "We told them that police cannot do anything if the girl has refused to marry," an official said. The upset groom had to return empty-handed along with the marriage party. It is the second such case in Bihar within two weeks. In a similar case in the last week of April, a woman refused to marry a dark-complexioned groom in Samastipur district. Over half a dozen cases of brides refusing to marry "unsuitable" grooms, on grounds they were illiterate, drunk, deaf or unemployed, have been reported over the past one month. "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. Several such cases across the state go unreported. In rural Bihar, hundreds of weddings take place in the traditionally auspicious marriage season known as "Lagan", which is in progress now. (With inputs from IANS) For those shopping at Meeruts Sadar Bazar, the evening of May 10, 1857, began like any other. Britons were milling around shops in the sweltering North Indian heat when a group of Sepoys (soldiers) swarmed the market. From there on, it was a bloodbath which went on to be recognized as the first revolt for independence. The anger of around 100 years of exploitation and humiliation under the Company Raj had reached a tipping point on this day, 160 years ago.For the Indian Subcontinent, the uprising of 1857 was perhaps the most significant development of the century. It was, after all, dubbed Indias First War of Independence. News of the uprising, which began from Meerut, spread across the country. Soon, sepoys in Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ambala and other cities were at war against the East India Company. Farmers, women, clerics, ascetics and common people all joined the fight.The news, however, did not reach London for over a month. Did Britain fail to fathom the scale of the uprising? How long did it take for the British press to realize that the East India Company was losing control of the subcontinent?On June 13, over a month after Indian sepoys of the East India Company rebelled against their English superiors in Meerut and laid siege to Delhi, London woke up to the news. Since news in the 19th Century was dispatched over telegram, which had to be transported by sea, it took that long for the updates to reach UK.For the Indian Subcontinent, the uprising of 1857 was perhaps the most significant development of the century.An article in the Illustrated London News, dated June 13, 1857, read, A telegraphic dispatch received at Bombay (now Mumbai) from Meerut states that the 3rd Bengal Cavalry were in open mutiny and that several officers and men had been killed and wounded. It was reported that at Calcutta (now Kolkata) a correspondence had been discovered in possession of a native officer of the 34th Bengal Infantry, proving the existence of a conspiracy for organising a general rising of the entire army. The 34th is to be disbanded.News of the uprising, which forced Queen Victoria of England to end Company rule, did not exceed 300 words.Amit Pathak, Meerut-based historian and author of 1857: Living History, had purchased original news clippings from the Illustrated London News, says, The way the British press treated the news makes it clear that they thought it was a small-scale rebellion. It was either because the full details had not reached them, or because they were so confident in their own ability that they thought the mutiny would be easily quelled.As telegrams continued to pour in from Bombay, the British public started to realise the full extent of the revolt. A casual dismissal of the uprising turned into outrage at the news of atrocities against Europeans and anger at the British government for keeping the public in the dark.The Illustrated London Newss coverage went from a tiny news brief to a full-page scathing editorial. A piece published on July 18 read, After an anxious perusal of many different accounts, the public is beginning to realise the full force of the news from India. It is of a nature at least as serious as was apprehended. In fact, we cannot but think that the public was trifled with when the first information of the mutiny came. We were told that it was a mere outburst a casual flash of fire a spasm, and so forth; whereas if anything is now clear about it, it is that its causes are profoundly deep and its spread extensive.According to Pathak, the mutiny caught everyone in England by surprise. Indians were considered docile and nice people. There was outrage at alleged atrocities committed against Europeans, especially women and children, but there was another significant development. The British press called out the East India Company for its bad governance. Pressure from the press was one of the reasons the Queen was forced to end company rule. After the mutiny, India was governed directly by the Crown.The Illustrated London Newss coverage went from a tiny news brief to a full-page scathing editorial.The July 18 piece goes on to illustrate Pathaks point. We believe that the Indian mutiny points to the fact that there is something seriously wrong in our whole governing system there. Nay, it is now coming out that the Bengal Army has been for years in an unsatisfactory state.The technology prevalent at the time did not allow news to travel fast. But what would have happened if the sepoys had risen in revolt in the 21st century instead?Pathak believes if updates were sent out instantly, the sepoys would have lost the war before they even reached Delhi to see the Mughal Emperor. The reason for their initial success was because they had the upper hand as the British officers were caught unaware. One of the first things that the sepoys did very smartly was that they had cut the telegraph lines. Only half a telegram had reached Agra and no news had reached Delhi at all. If news had spread, reinforcements from all corners of India would have gathered at Delhi swiftly to quell the rebellion. They would have secured their superior firepower and been better prepared for the Siege of Delhi.Troops from England, too, would have arrived much earlier. It took around 45 days for a detailed write up to reach from Bombay to London. It would take even longer for troops to reach India. The fastest way for them to reach India would have been to board ships to Alexandria in Egypt, cross over by land to Port Suez by the Red Sea and then board a ship to Bombay. It was only by August that the reinforcements finally arrived. And it was by mid-1858 that the British were able to control the situation. Things would have gone very differently in the digital age. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday announced that the chief justice of India will head the five member bench in the triple talaq case. CJI JS Khehar will be heading a Constitution bench comprising of Justices Kurian Joseph, RF Nariman, UU Lalit, and Abdul Nazeer. With one person each from Sikh, Christian, Parsi, Hindu and Muslim communities, the apex court has clearly made sure there are no questions raised on the basis of religion as it decides on the validity of the practice around 10:30 am on Thursday. The announcement comes a week after senior lawyer and former Union minister Salman Khurshid was appointed as amicus curiae to assist the court on the case. The case on triple talaqthe practice which gives a Muslim man the right to divorce his wife by saying talaq thricehas witnessed heated debates in public with Muslim leaders calling it an infringement on their religious laws and the ruling BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the matter should not be seen through a political prism. PM Modi had said he will fight against the sufferings of the Muslim daughters in the country, adding that his government will bring an end to this archaic law." Experts had told News18 that though Muslims in India would respect the Supreme Court verdict on triple talaq, quashing it was not going to stop the community from adhering to the Muslim Personal Law. People are free to seek remedial measures from the court. Similarly, others are equally free to be guided by the Personal Law within their household and in their personal lives, Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind (JUH) leader and senior Islamic theologian Maulana Arshad Madani had said. Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday raided liquor mafia don Ramesh Jagubhai Patel alias Michael, his wife Bhanu and others for storing and smuggling liquor valued at Rs 2.29 crore, officials said. During the raids, the ED team discovered small tenements to conceal an illegal liquor godown and found several imported luxury vehicles worth another over Rs 2 crore. The massive 3,000-square metre godown in Bhimpore at Nani Daman was hidden by 80 tenements surrounding it, akin to the 'Dagdi Chawl' in south Mumbai. However, Patel gave the ED a slip. Efforts are on to trace him, the agency said. The ED sleuths seized three luxury cars - a Land Rover Evoque, Audi Q3 and Audi A8L from Patel's residence. They found stocks of 38,000 cases of liquor worth Rs 7.10 crore which may have been illegally smuggled out. The ED seized 8,850 boxes containing stocks of 191,478 bottles of different liquor brands besides Rs 901,000 in cash. According to officials, the Patel couple run or own several liquor shops in the Union Territory of Daman and Diu and smuggled in bulk quantities to neighbouring dry state of Gujarat. Local bootleggers were engaged to smuggle large quantities of beers and IMFL brands to Gujarat. The illegally earned money was deposited in their businesses. Bank account details have thrown up cash deposits worth a whopping Rs 223.47 crore in the past three years alone, the ED said. Detailing the modus operandi, the ED said trailer trucks with shipping containers were loaded with the illegal liquor consignments using forged bills of other cargo goods to escape scrutiny at the Daman checkposts to enter Gujarat. The local bootleggers placed orders either telephonically or on WhatsApp, sending images of the written orders to one Sanat Ramesh Patel, an agent for the Patel couple. The ED said the Patels' businesses have not kept any sales records while the restaurant and business premises are non-functional though they held valid licences, indicating these entities were being used only for illegal transactions. Violating norms of the Excise Department under the Goa, Daman and Diu Excise Duty At, 1964, the businesses were operated under forged documents which were submitted to various banks. When the Excise Department came to know of these, it lodged a complaint with the Daman Police against the accused for cheating the government. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday praised the judiciary, saying that he was happy that judges were cutting down to vacations to hear cases. Happy that judges are cutting down on vacations to hear cases. It gives force to a sense of responsibility, gives new faith to people. New faith is a must for a new India, he said during the inauguration of a seminar on Supreme Court's journey towards becoming digital court. He launched the integrated case management system of the Supreme Court. The system will help litigants access data and retrieve information online. E is Easy, Effective and Environment-friendly governance, we have to implement that in our system, Modi said. IT + IT = IT, Information Technology + Indian Talent = India Tomorrow, he said, adding that the day is not far when Artificial Intelligence will drive human civilization. Speaking on the occasion, Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar said he proposes to integrate the system with all the 24 high courts and the subordinate courts. It will help usher transparency, reduce manipulation and help the litigant know about the progress of the case on a real time basis, he said. (With agency inputs) The committee also claims to have the support of retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Ashok Ganguly. The committee has also recently given a memorandum addressed to the President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chief Justice of India, J S Khehar. With the Constitution bench all set to hear the Triple Talaq case from Thursday, demands to reform Muslim personal law are getting louder.Travelling over 2,000 kilometres from West Bengal to Delhi, a joint action committee of three groups, Pragatishil Muslim Samaj, Reformist Muslim Society and Secular Mission, demands not only the abolishment of Triple Talaq, Nikah Halala, and Polygamy, but also says that the number game of who supports it and who does not should end and even if one woman is a victim of Triple Talaq, then that should be a crime.All India Muslim Personal Law Board had recently claimed that the organisation had garnered almost five crore signatures in support of no interference to the Muslim personal law, but Dr Syed Tanveer Nasreen, head of the committee and also a party to the case which will be heard from May 11, told News18 that the question is about unconstitutionality of the practice and not the numbers.Why has it become a number game now? Yes, we received around 28,000 signatures and AIMPLB claims around 5 crores, but even if there is one such divorce, there should be a remedy by which such a practice can be declared a crime, said Tanveer.The committee has been protesting against such unjust practices from the last 7 to 8 years, but the movement has gained more steam in the last one year as the apex court saw a flurry of petitions demanding a reform in Muslim personal laws.Interestingly, Tanveer feels that questions of divorce, property rights and inheritance are matters of public domain and cannot merit religious interference.We are not asking for the Quran, Geeta or the Bible to be rewritten. All that we are asking for is these matters are not of the private domain and are public issues. I am a Muslim married to a Hindu under Special Marriage Act and there is no religion involved in this. Similarly, why should there be discrimination against a woman and she be tortured because of such laws, says the group head.The group, which had victims of the practice accompanying it, carrying placards, shared their ordeals. Speaking on behalf of the victims, Kazi Masoom Akhtar, secretary of the committee, said that this rule of patriarchy needs to end and its time women are stopped being used only as objects of enjoyment.We do not want to identify the victim. But there is a case here, where the husband had married two girls who were sisters and then divorced both of them in a single year. Do they think it is a joke? This needs to end and only the courts can do it now, said Akhtar.The convener of the organisation, Osman Mallick, rubbished AIMPLBs diktat on Muslim personal law and termed it as an NGO. He also told News18 that Shariat needs to be in tandem with Constitution and only a law tested on the basis of Constitution should prevail.Till now, Shariat law was never challenged now it has been challenged and I am sure the courts will decide if it is best for a secular country like India. AIMPLB, which is nothing but an NGO, thinks it can pass orders and give rulings. It has no locus standi whatsoever to say that people who are protesting are non-Muslims and have no faith. There are so many religious scholars across Bengal who have supported us, said Mallick.Dr Tanveer, who will be in court on Thursday to witness the commencement of hearings in the case, said Mamata Banerjee government has till now maintained a stoic silence on the issue and said that the ruling party in Bengal thinks that any issue of personal law reform is only gross conspiracy of the Hindu majority.We are not here to take any political stand. But AIMPLB held its annual general meeting in Kolkata in November and we did not agree with most of their views. We hope our Chief Minister understands our problem. This is about basic human rights and women rights. Statements made by people like Imam Barkati only fuel the communal divide in the state and they must stop, said Dr Tanveer. At a time when India is witnessing a debate on nationalism, Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, who has authored several books on Indian freedom movement, including From Plassey to Partition: A History of modern India, which is considered to be a definitive account of the freedom struggle, talks to News18 about various aspects of the revolt. In an email interaction on the eve of 160th anniversary of the first war for Independent India, the historian and philosopher who teaches at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, says the revolt teaches us that Indian nationalism should be based on Hindu-Muslim unity. Edited excerpts:There were popular movements against British rule that took place before 1857, but they were not for independence, but against specific oppressive aspects of the rule or against specific policies. And they were also localised movements. In 1857, we first time witnessed popular unrest in a large part of north India, aiming specifically to overthrow the British rule.The discontent against East India Companys rule had been developing for a long period of time and over a large region. It was an open revolt with an element of spontaneity, but social mobilisation was taking place for a long time. A large segment of the Indian population was angry and when the sepoys revolted, they received the sympathy of the civilian population with whom they had family and kinship ties. So the mutiny soon turned into a civilian revolt. Whenever the rebel sepoys came to a village they were joined by the already aggrieved peasants.It was caused by a general dissatisfaction with the policies and administration of the East India Companys government. In general, there was also discontent about the activities of the Christian missionaries. Different segments of the population had different specific grievances. The soldiers had grievances against their service rules, and a distrust about the ulterior motives of the army administration. Peasants were aggrieved by the oppressive revenue system of the Companys government The sepoys were 'peasants in uniform', or in other words, had close ties with the peasant communities. So when they rose in revolt others joined them Aristocrats and indigenous rulers were aggrieved because of confiscation of their estates. So all the causes combined to create such a conflagration.It is difficult to judge the morality of the situation. Violence was perpetrated on both sides. But first there was the day-to-day experience of state violence that the Indian people faced because of a heartless profit making alien regime. Until 1857, the colonial state had a monopoly of violence, but now the rebels retorted with an equal amount of counter-violence. Both insurgency and counter-insurgency were equally indiscriminately violent. But before judging the morality of this violence, we need to look at the moral foundation of the colonial state itself.The revolt of 1857 failed to drive away the British not because of violence, but because of lack of organisation, ideological coherence and a vision about the future on the part of the rebels.The mutiny was triggered by a sepoy called Mangal Pande in the Bengal Army in Barrackpore on March 29, when he fired at a European officer and his comrades refused to arrest him. Later on they were apprehended, court martialled and hanged. Following this, the mutiny was started in Meerut on May 10. The British public look at this revolt as an act of betrayal. And Mangal Pande or 'Pandy' as he was probably called by European officers became the symbol of such treacherous Indians who were being ungrateful.The revolt began to spread rapidly over a wide region without any reported prior planning. So there is the mythical story of chapati or an Indian bread circulating and spreading the message of rebellion. Historians are not certain as to what exact message the chapatis used to convey when they were carried from one village to the other. There is lot of speculation on this. Probably it carried the message that some kind of bad time was coming.One major feature of 1857 revolt was the remarkable unity between the Hindus and Muslims during that period of turmoil. Sepoys and civilian rebels from both communities fought side by side to take back their country from alien rule and respected each others religion. It should teach the lesson that Indian nationalism should be based on Hindu-Muslim unity. New Delhi: The International Court of Justice on Wednesday announced that public hearing on Kulbhushan Jadhav case will be held on May 15, 2017. Kulbhushan Jadhav, a retired navy officer, was handed down a death penalty by a Pakistani military court for "spying" and "subversive activities". Denouncing all such allegeations, Indian government has maintained that Jadhav is a retired navy officer and was picked up from Iran. He was accused by Pakistan of being a "R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing) agent and planning "subversive activities" in the country. India had approached the ICJ against the death sentence and accused Pakistan of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. It asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy. However, Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Yateesh Begoore, a lawyer specializing in public international law who lives in New York, told News18 that once the provisional measures are issued by the ICJ, whether Pakistan is willing to violate an order of ICJ, and risk being an international pariah, is a political decision which will be made in Islamabad. External Affairs Minister Swaraj had on Wednesday informed that senior advocate Harish Salve will represent India before the ICJ in the Jadhav case. ICJ President Ronny Abraham has reportedly written a letter to Pakistan government, asking it to act in such a way which would enable the implementation of any order the ICJ may issue in the case. Jadhav, 46, was given death sentence in April by the Field General Court Martial in Pakistan, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. According to sources, the person behind this quick transformation is Kannada actor turned politician Ramya, who herself is famous for sharp opinions of social and political developments. Congresss social media performance has gotten better than earlier, but there is still is a long way to go. Hooda could not have done it. He tweeted erratically, led a young team with absolutely no direction. We needed someone bright, young and fiery, said a party source. The kind of intel machinery that was used in Snoopgate when Modiji was CM could not be put in place to protect our CRPF jawans? Priorities! she had tweeted after the Sukma attack in April. The official Twitter handle of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday posted a plan of action, SAMADHAN, for dealing with Naxals in the country. This was in line with Narendra Modi-led governments fascination for catchy acronyms and abbreviations to demystify policy for masses.Soon after SAMADHAN was made public, the official handle of Indian National Congress launched a full-frontal attack on the BJP government. According to @INCIndia, SAMADHAN means:stood for Sukma violence,for armed forces martyred,for Modi taking selfies,clueless government,istractedopelessrrogant BJPo help given to soldiersThe smart, confident and aggressive voice of the grand old partys Twitter handle brought it to the spotlight, something that was noticed even by apolitical netizens. This was in stark contrast to the slow and lackluster response that @INCIndia was known for in the fastest finger first world of Twitter and Facebook.Armed with an undeterred approach to hit out at the government, Ramya, who goes by the handle @divyaspandana, has replaced Deepender Hooda as the social media head of Congress.We have a bright young team, but the leadership was lackadaisical. These days, wars are fought on social media primarily, rather than through ballots, a senior Congress leader told News18.Ramyas appointment comes in the wake of her home state, Karnataka, going to polls early next year. The poor performance of the social media team under Hooda at the helm was, according to sources, another reason for his removal.Another issue that many from the Congress said was the diktat by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi to not to be abusive on Twitter. A member of Congress social media team said Hooda often confused aggressions and abuse as the same thing. We dont want to stoop to the level of the bhakts. But then, there are things that need to be done in a certain way on social media either you are aggressive or you are not part of the conversation, he said.Ramya, Congress leaders say, understands how social media works and can do a balancing act between remaining relevant and not being abusive. The young politician, who made to headlines for respectfully saying that Pakistan is not hell, has been critical of the government and its schemes, in a unique way.Ramya has reportedly called for an overhaul in the existing team. That, sources said, has not gone well with veterans in the team. But the party is desperate to connect with the youngsters and Ramya seems to have mandate from the top. It remains to be seen how the old guard in the party responds to this young leader. New Delhi: A day after International Court of Justice stayed the execution order against Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former Indian Navy official accused by Pakistan to be a spy and sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court, questions remain as to how the stay order by the apex court of international laws will be binding on Pakistan. Yateesh Begoore, a lawyer specializing in public international law who lives in New York, has been closely following the developments in the Jadhav case. Begoore spoke to News18 to answer three key questions around the ICJ stay on hanging and said it is not a stay order as understood by people. India had approached the ICJ against the death sentence and accused Pakistan of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. It asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy. However, Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Debayan Roy: Is the ICJ order binding on Pakistan? Will the death sentence be put on hold? And do you see Pakistan approaching the ICJ to appeal against this order? Yateesh Begoore: While many Indian news agencies have reported that the ICJ has issued an order staying the execution of Mr. Jadhavs death sentence, that is not, in fact, the case. A provisional measure (which is, in some aspects, similar to stay under domestic law) can only be ordered by a bench of the ICJ sitting to hear the request for indication of provisional measures filed by India under article 41 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice this has not happened. The development which is erroneously being reported as a stay is technically a request made by the President of the court under article 74(4) of the Rules of the Court. Under these Rules, the President of the court has the power to call upon a party to a dispute to not take any action which would prejudice the ability of the court to award a provisional measure. These requests are not per se legally binding upon the parties to which they are made. However, since India has made a request for indication of provisional measures, the ICJ is expected to hold an urgent proceeding shortly wherein it will hear and decide upon Indias request. If the court sees fit to order provisional measures at that hearing, such an order will be binding upon Pakistan. Once the provisional measures are issued, whether Pakistan is willing to violate an order of ICJ, and risk being an international pariah, is a political decision which will be made in Islamabad. DR: On April 20, the government said that India has asked for consular access to Jadhav for the 15th time. Still India awaits formal response from Pakistan to its two demands consular access and details of the trial proceedings against Jadhav. Whats the road ahead? YB: I think the current action taken by the Government of India is the most efficacious manner in which to secure consular access to Mr. Jadhav. The ICJs past practice in cases where foreign nationals have been sentenced to death without being afforded consular access has been to order a review and reconsideration of the domestic judgment. A similar result may be expected in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, with the ICJ in its final judgment ordering Pakistan to review and reconsider Jadhavs trial. The review would be conducted while the Government of India exercises its lawful rights under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which includes, providing Mr. Jadhav adequate legal representation. DR: There are also concerns about the secrecy around Jadhavs whereabouts. Do you think Pakistan can be legally compelled to disclose the location? YB: For all intents and purposes, the secrecy around Jadhavs whereabouts will likely be dispelled through a judgment of the ICJ in Indias favour. Since the receiving state (Pakistan) is obligated under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to facilitate the protection work performed by the sending states (India) consuls in the form of visits, communications and legal arrangements made for detainees, a judgment of the court upholding this right will ensure that Pakistan facilitates access to Jadhav. New Delhi: Pakistan has raised the Kashmir issue with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, calling for a peaceful settlement with India. Pakistans ambassador to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, underscored the need to address the situation in Kashmir during the hour-long meeting at the world bodys headquarters on Monday between Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ambassadors with the UN Secretary General, PTI reported quoting sources. Lodhi called for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue at the meeting, saying the escalating tensions could destabilise South Asia, the sources said. Lodhi said that to avert another crisis in the subcontinent, the issue of Kashmir on the UN agenda and one that figures in every OIC Communique, must be addressed. Other issues like Palestine, Islamophobia and the situation being faced by Rohingya Muslims also came up at the meeting. Guterres is closely following the situation in Kashmir amid escalating tensions at the border between India and Pakistan but has not made any direct intervention to resolve the issue. His spokesperson has repeatedly said that the UN chief reiterates his call for India and Pakistan to find a peaceful solution through engagement and dialogue to resolve the Kashmir issue. Tensions have escalated between the two nations after two Indian Army jawans were killed and mutilated in Kashmir in unprovoked firing by Pakistan last week. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: The International Court of Justice has stayed the execution order against Kulbushan Jadhav passed by a Pakistani military court. The Pakistan court had sentenced the Indian national to death for alleged involvement in "spying" and "subversive activities". India had approached ICJ against the death sentence and accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. It asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy. However, Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Turbulent Past - Before Kulbhushan Jadhavs case India has only once approached the ICJ - In 1971, India filed a case against the jurisdiction of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). This as Pakistan was demanding landing and overflight rights after the India Airlines Lahore flight hijack case. This ruling was against India. ICJ said ICAO had jurisdiction - In 1999, Pakistan took India to ICJ over India shooting down an Atlantique plane of Pakistan navy flying over Rann of Kutch. This incident occurred in August, 1999 just around the Kargil war. India told ICJ it had no jurisdiction in the matter. ICJ upheld Indias position. - This was what ICJ had observed limiting its role on disputes between India and Pakistan That Pakistans Application fails to take into consideration the reservations to the Declaration of India dated 15 September, 1974 filed under Article 36 (2) of its Statute. In particular, Pakistan, being a Commonwealth country, is not entitled to invoke the jurisdiction of the Court as sub-paragraph 2 of paragraph 1 of that Declaration excludes all disputes involving India from the jurisdiction of this Court in respect of any State which is or has been a Member of the Commonwealth of Nations." - But this time India has taken up Kulbhushan Jadhav matter on the grounds that the Vienna Convention on Consular relations are being flouted by Pakistan - Both countries are signatories to the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention concerning compulsory settlement of disputes, 1963. It provides for compulsory jurisdiction of ICJ for resolution of any dispute arising between parties of the treaty. So, technically India can invoke the jurisdiction of ICJ from the protocol and not under Article 36 mentioned above which was settled in 1999 in Indias favour The funeral gathering of Army doctor, Lieutenant Ummer Faiyaz, was attacked by stone pelters in Kashimrs Shopian district. Commotion broke out in the village when the family was preparing for last rites of the Army Lieutenant. Stone pelting broke out in the area as a gun of an Army man went off accidentally triggering panic among the mourners who thought that a gunfight has broken out.Angry villagers rebuked the Army man for firing, knowing little that it was actually a misfire. The situation was soon brought back to normal.The bullet-ridden body of the Army Lieutenant, who was posted in Akhnoor, was found at Herman Chowk of Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Wednesday.Police said the 24-year-old had gone to Shopian to attend the wedding function of a relative.Ummer Fayaz was part of the NDA hockey teamAccording to reports, Faiyaz was picked up by four militants from Shopian and later taken to Herman Chowk where he was shot.Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti condemned the killing of Lieutenant Faiyaz and said, "What was more painful to note is that the young officer had come home on vacation where he was attending the marriage of his cousin. She conveyed her heartfelt sympathies to the bereaved family.An Army official said they have received an input and are verifying the circumstances in which the officer was found dead. Police and Army have now started search operations in the area to nab the militants.The Army Lieutenant was commissioned only 6 months agoThis incident comes a day after when a car was snatched at gunpoint by militants in Pulwama district on Tuesday. Mohammad Rafiq Dar of Samboora village told police that his Alto car was hijacked by five gunmen.Following this, police have sounded a red alert and sent advisories to police and security forces units to be on vigil.The Indian Army statement said: "In a dastardly act, some unidentified terrorists abducted and then killed a young, unarmed Army Officer, Lt Ummer Faiyaz who had come on leave to his native place in Kulgam to attend a marriage The officer was serving in Akhnoor, J&K. The Army salutes the braveheart and stands by the bereaved family and commits to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act of terror to justice." Immediately after the violence began, some Sepoys moved to Parade Ground, now known as Meerut Race Club. Their aim was to take control of weapons and prepare for war, said Pathak. The British public was, after all, outraged at reports of alleged atrocities against women and children. One such woman was Charlotte Chambers, whose gravestone also finds space at ST. Johns cemetery. The year was 1857 and it was past 5 pm at Meeruts Sadar Bazaar. Just like any other day, British men were in the market to buy beer to beat the harsh Meerut heat. Very soon, a large group of Sepoys marched towards the Bazaar, and started beating the British with their bare hands. Indias first War of Independence had begun.Many people dont know that Bakers Street was where the first War of Independence started, said 76-year-old Atul Kumar, one of the oldest residents of the street in Sadar Bazaar whose family, he claims, has lived on this street for nine generations.News18 spoke to Dr Amit Pathak, a Meerut-based historian and author of 1857: A living history, who has spent years collecting documents, trying to piece together the sequence of events on May 10 that year.May 10 rendered many British men dead. Not far from Sadar Bazaar is St. Johns Cemetery in Meerut Cantt area. There are hundreds of graves here, most of them from the 19th Century. But there are nine graves here that tell very interesting stories. The date on all these graves is May 10, 1857 the day of the uprising, he said.This is perhaps the most important of all the graves, said Pathak.Col. John Finnis was the first British Officer to die in the uprising. In the mayhem, Col. Finnis, commandant of the 11th Native Infantry, managed to control men of his unit. He then rode towards the 20th Native Infantry to control them as well.The sepoys of this other regiment were not ready to listen to his requests and did not pay heed to his commands. When he was returning towards his own regiment, the first shot of the rebellion was fired. It hit Col. Finniss horse and he fell down. When two men tried to pick him up, he gave his last order before he, too, was shot. Inform the General he shouted in his last order, said PathakThere are many causes ascribed to the uprising. From 100 years of misrule under the East India Company rule to the deteriorating relationship between officers and troops. But the proverbial match that lit the haystack were the cartridges laced with cow and pig fat, which brought Pathak to the grave of Col. Carmaical Smith.After the carnage began, the sepoys made their way to Col. Smiths house and killed him. He was commandant of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry. He was the man responsible for the mutiny. On April 24, it was Col. Smith who had organized firing practice and ordered Indian troops to bite the controversial cartridges. When 85 Sepoys refused, they were rounded up at a ground and publically humiliated. For Indian soldiers, humiliation was worse than death. During the uprising, most of the Sepoys anger was directed against Col. Smith.The British response to the uprising was brutal.So brutal were reports of her death that for Britons, she became a symbol of British sacrifice. Mrs. Chambers was alone at home when her servants informed her that an enraged mob was making their way to her bungalow, said Pathak, They (servants) managed to hide her from the mob. After the mob left, Mrs. Chambers was trying to escape. She ran into a local butcher who hacked her to death with a meat cleaver. This outraged the British so much that Mrs. Chambers death became a rallying cry for them. Whenever British officers needed to motivate their troops, they would shout These are the killers of Mrs. Chambers!If you see this gravestone, says Pathak, a husband and wife have been buried together. Donald Macdonald, a British officer, was killed in the parade ground shortly after Col. Finnis was shot dead. Luisa Sophia, his wife, was at home when her servants whisked her away. The servants clad her in a veil a burkha, along with other women of their house. When they were escaping, they were intercepted by some locals. They started lifting the veils of all the women with the tip of their swords. When they finally saw Luisa Sophia, they asked her to identify herself. She simply responded by saying Hum hain (It is I). There was an unmistakable English accent in the way she spoke those two Urdu words. They then killed her on the spot. Her children, however, survived and grew up in England. With every passing minute, the euphoria and enthusiasm among Beliebers is on the rise. The Grammy Award winning Canadian singing sensation Justin Bieber arrived in Mumbai early on Wednesday amidst tight security for his maiden concert in India - a part of his Purpose World Tour.The entry to the DY Patil stadium which opened at around at 3 pm this afternoon, is going to see a massive crowd of approximately 45,000 Bieber fans, including several Bollywood celebrities. A red carpet was laid out for all the celebrities expected to attend the gala night.Among the many stars who showed up at the stadium, we spotted actress Alia Bhatt and quite liked her fashion choice. She showed up in denim shorts, a long blue top which she tucked in from the front and sky blue denims which she teamed with a cool pair of sunglasses and metallic sneakers. The Badrinath Ki Dulhania star was accompanied by friend Ayan Mukherjee.The 24-year-old actress kept her look casual and yet managed to look super chic in the outfit. She looked relaxed and yet super excited to enjoy the Canadian pop sensation's gig. Take a look.As many as 500 police personnel and 25 officers have been deployed for security, while Bieber has Bollywood star Salman Khan's personal bodyguard Shera accompanying him. Image: Delhi Art Slam Image: Delhi Art Slam Image: Delhi Art Slam Image: Delhi Art Slam In a one of its kind afternoon, Delhi-ites got together on Sunday to celebrate the magic that art is. With the backdrop of mesmerising Hauz Khas fort and the sound of a riveting lake by the side, various artists, art lovers and aficionados, from all walks of life and age no bar, united to bring their creations out in the open at Delhi Art Slam."Art can't be kept hidden in our journals and in galleries, it needs to come out into spaces, in parks and metros and roads and cafes," said Isha Yadav, founder of Delhi Art Slam."Our aim is to create a collective that fits better and well, in the contemporary, by making, selling, and becoming art. All art is sent by, for and of the people and could be up for sale at their discretion," she said.The summer afternoon had in store for visitors a modelled art gallery - a fine curation of everything visual - mainly illustrations, sculptures, photography, wall arts, diary arts and fine arts plus a live art therapy session and a performance act. From fine pieces of human portraits to aesthetically sound photographs - the makeshift gallery made for a sight to behold.While one may have attended poetry and soul slams, the concept of art slam is yet to become a rage. When asked the idea behind calling it a slam and not a mere exhibition, Yadav pointed out that while she personally believes art to be a tool to explore and revolt over issues, a 'slam' also "creates that space, that stage for art to create its own dialogue.""People need to see it everywhere. It has to create that discomfort, that hit-in-the-gut. Art is not only visual, art talks and talks loudly. When artists come under one roof, bring their art and co-curate the gallery, I think it speaks a lot for the whole community. This would bring together, both the creator and the bearer of the look, into a healthy interaction."While she lauded the spoken word revolution of the poetry slam culture, she also made clear that art won't be left behind. "We've heard the revolution will be painted and we're preparing for it," she said.When asked about art being a monopoly of elitist culture, she rightly rued about the lack of modern art galleries and brought to limelight the struggles of new-age artists."Art, as I've learnt, is an expensive hobby and the most exploited indulgence. There are very few art galleries in the city with old outdated structures, and hardly include the contemporary visual. The new age artists continues to struggle to make a name, lack a fraternity that he can call 'home'."She further emphasised that at Delhi Art Slam, they aren't competing but only collaborating with each other. She made clear that no academic affiliation or a degree in art is required for an aficionado to take up the stage."We're trying to localise the concept of art gallery and exhibition into a home, so it doesn't stay elitist anymore," she added.This might be one of the many significant firsts in the capital, but the thought of making art more accessible has been existent for quite some time now. And the testimony to that, is the art revolution, taking over our streets. Many artists - both national and international - have often collaborated with residents to rework their buildings' exteriors. Thus, making a pretty loud sound for the otherwise deaf ears of wasted public spaces. Palestinian fashion designer Natalie Tahhan is hard at work in her Jerusalem studio, replacing the painstaking processes of cross-stitching and embroidery with a laptop computer and printed fabric. Taking inspiration from traditional Palestinian patterns, Tahhan designs patterns digitally and then has them printed on satins and silks before piecing together her garments. Her modern take on generations-old designs has attracted a keen following both locally and abroad, particularly in the Gulf, where she sells her clothes via the web. "I wanted to do something new, modern, never seen on the market," the 27-year-old said, as she measured out fabric at her studio in her family home in Ras al-Amud, east Jerusalem. Palestinians have for centuries painstakingly sewn long black dresses and adorned them with red embroidery, in designs still worn today in rural areas and at marriages and other celebrations. The designs vary from region to region and tend to say something about the wearer. "We can tell where the woman who wears it is from and if she is married or single," Tahhan said. Several young Arab designers have sought to modernise traditional wear and bring the dresses of their ancestors -- an increasingly rare sight today -- to a new generation. Tahhan, who studied in Doha and at the London College of Fashion, is among the few to do so in Jerusalem. She believes she is the only one to have abandoned traditional embroidery for her new method. As the Palestinian territories lack the equipment she needs, she has her fabrics printed in Dubai. They are then delivered to Jerusalem via Qatar and Jordan to circumvent the lack of direct shipments from the Gulf countries to Israel and the Palestinian territories. - 'Proof of existence' - Maha Saca, director of the Palestine Heritage Centre in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, says she supports efforts to breathe new life into traditional designs. "Adding Palestinian motifs to modern wear is very important. It means we can wear a modern dress with Palestinian embroidery on it," she said. The centre, established in 1991, boasts the largest collection of traditional Palestinian dresses. "Embroidery is part of our identity and our proof of our existence in every Palestinian city and village," Saca said. "It shows the beauty and richness of our Palestinian heritage." She is lobbying for traditional embroidery to be incorporated into Palestinian school uniforms. Saca said top-end handmade dresses can cost between $1,500 and $2,000 (1,400 and 1,800 euros) because of the long hours of labour involved and the cost of materials. She stresses the need to preserve hand embroidering techniques, but accepts that clothes are being produced in new and more modern ways. "We support it 100 percent," she said. Tahhan's first collection, consisting of five white and violet satin capes with shimmering geometric patterns, sold out completely in less than three months at a price of $550 (500 euros) a piece. Most of the sales were to Gulf clients who bought the items online. - 'Really worth it' - One of Tahhan's signature works is a cape inspired by designs from the West Bank city of Hebron, occupied by Israel for 50 years. The garment bears a succession of blue and pink squares over black fabric, and is open at the shoulders. Tahhan's light fabrics work well in the Gulf market, where heavy black felt or thick cotton can become unbearable under the burning sun. Her latest collection is called "Prints of Palestine." Tahhan's location in Jerusalem, a city holy to Muslims, Christians and Jews, is also a plus for sales "despite the obstacles and difficulties" imposed by Israel's occupation, she said. Israel seized the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community. Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state, while Israelis consider the entire city of Jerusalem their unified capital. "I wanted to do something as a girl from Jerusalem," said Tahhan, her long black hair falling over her shoulders. "Why not create fashion here?" "People love the idea of owning something made in Jerusalem, especially Palestinians abroad," she said. "When they buy something they feel they are taking with them a small piece of the city." Ankit Bhardwaj, who claimed himself to be an an AAP worker, attacked sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra on Wednesday. Mishra, who was on an indefinite hunger strike, said he was not hurt and does not want to name anyone. In an open letter to Kejriwal, Mishra, suspended from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) after allegations that he saw the Chief Minister accepting Rs 2 crore in cash from Health Minister Satyendar Jain, said he was on a Satyagraha at his home. As it happened. Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here. New Delhi: Soon after Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Muslim face of Bahujan Samaj Party, was expelled for anti-party activities on Wednesday morning, the party leadership went into a huddle. According to sources, around 250 senior leaders of the party, from various parts of Uttar Pradesh and other states, were called by party supremo Mayawati for an emergency meeting at her residence in Lucknow. Earlier on Wednesday, Mayawatis trusted aide Satish Mishra announced Siddiquis sacking from the party in a press conference held in Lucknow. According to sources, BSP leaders, who have been called for the meeting at Mayawatis residence, were not allowed to take cellphones inside. Siddiqui joined the party in 1988, four years after it was founded by Mayawatis mentor Kanshi Ram. Siddiqui was made a Cabinet minister in 1995 after the party, led by Mayawati, came to power in UP for the first time. Since then, he was always seen as part of Mayawatis inner circle. In the press conference, Mishra said Siddiqui had been sacked from the party for two reasons poor performance of the party in the areas under him and him making illegal deals with private individuals in the name of the party. In all the areas that were given to Siddiqui West UP, Lucknow region and Uttarakhand the party performed very poorly. Following this, demands were made by a lot of our people to sack him. But after he was removed from UP, we got to know from a lot of responsible leaders that he had amassed a lot of wealth in West UP in the form of benami properties and slaughterhouses, he said. Mishra added that the party leadership also got to know that Siddiqui had cut deals with a lot of rich individuals privately, and had sought favours from them, promising to return them as soon as BSP formed government in UP. He had apparently told these people that he was going to get a lot of important portfolios and would hence repay their financial favours. But when our party did not form government, there was pressure on him to repay. He then started selling his benami properties and began a false propaganda that he was doing so because of orders from the party leadership. We called him several times but he never turned up or answered our calls, said Mishra. Mishra added that even after Siddiqui was given the charge of Bundelkhand region in Madhya Pradesh, he continued to stick to West UP, cutting more deals, which is when the party decided to sack him. The party also sacked his son, Afzal Siddiqui, who was the young Muslim face of the party in this years assembly polls. A senior BSP official said Siddiquis sacking had nothing to do with his alleged interactions with some BJP leaders. No, its not because he was getting close to any other party. With the sort of track record he has, there is no chance for him in BJP. And till the time Azam Khan is in SP, he has no chance there as well. And Siddiqui had better chances in BSP than he may have in Congress. So no, it was not because he was getting close to any other party, but it was to do with ticket distribution and him making money out of it in the partys name, said the BSP leader on request of anonymity. Despite repeated attempts, Siddiqui could not be reached for a comment. Patna: Two days ago, the Supreme Court asked a lower court in Ranchi to revive the conspiracy charges against Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav in the fodder scam. The apex court has given nine months for the lower court to complete trials in the case, which is over two decades old. The ramifications of the ruling have, expectedly, hit the spectrum of Bihar politics. Other than the spotlight on the mahagathbandhan between Lalus RJD and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumars Janata Dal United JD(U) in the state, the ruling has also created a flutter in his own party. Many Lalu Yadav loyalists, say sources, are contemplating switching sides. The ruling, they say, has rattled the old guards in the party who believe that the tainted leader will establish his son and deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav in the party. There are many senior leaders in the party who think that Lalu Yadav will do everything to establish his son as heir apparent in the party. Many are mulling switching sides, a highly placed source told News18. One of the names doing the rounds is that of finance minister Abdul Bari Siddiqui. Considered the Muslim face of RJD, Siddiqui has reportedly not been given due credit. He is the finance minister but his ambit does not include the revenue department. With his strong presence in the Cabinet, he should have been made the head of the party, sources said, adding that the minister had the support of at least 30 MLAs who might all jump the ship with him. Many others like Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Taslimuddin have also reportedly voiced their displeasure over revival of the charges and the prospect of his son heading the party. Coupled with the fact that Lalu Yadavs other children, son Tej Pratap and daughter Misa Bharti, have voiced their political aspirations, the feeling of RJD becoming a family-run party is rampant among the old guards. ALSO READ: No Double Jeopardy, Lalu to be Tried for Conspiracy in Fodder Scam, Rules SC Lalu Yadav wont be able to contest elections post the conviction. And many in the party dont want to be led by his children, sources told News18. This is not the first time when Lalu Yadav has been accused of promoting his family in the political arena. During the last elections, Ram Kripal Yadav and Shyam Razak had accused the RJD chief of indulging in dynasty politics. The fallout? Kripal switched over to BJP and Razak went with JD(U). So, does the recent crisis spell doom for RJD? Interestingly, party members have said they are not sure. Lalu Prasad will always be our leader. But we dont know what will happen once the trial ends, said Raghuwans Prasad, a senior party leader. There are others like MLAs like Surendra Yadav and Jagdanand Singh who have junked these doubts. For the RJD chief, the recent crisis looks like a rewind of what he had to face almost twelve years ago when Nitish Kumar came to power. Many switched over to JD(U) and Lalu Yadav had to fight a lonely battle to keep his party going. This was until JD(U) broke up with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the prime ministerial candidate. Realising it was difficult for him to charge at the saffron party alone, Nitish called Lalu Yadav on board and the grand alliance came to the fore. But now, the alliance that was expected to take on the saffron brigade head on, seems to be losing ground. While, according to party sources, many from RJD are in touch with Nitish Kumar, JD(U) has also not voiced its support for the tainted leader. Can Lalu overcome doubts from some of his own and continue to keep the party together? The next nine months will tell. ALSO READ: Bihar Fodder Scam Files go Missing, FIR Registered Lucknow: Expulsion of Naseemuddin Siddiqui from the Bahujan Samaj Party was on the cards as Mayawati on April 21 had stripped him of all the organisational posts in Uttar Pradesh unit of the party. Siddiqui, the national general secretary of the BSP, was appointed in charge of the Madhya Pradesh unit of the party. He had, however, refused to accept the new responsibility and not visited MP even once after the reshuffle in the organisation. Siddiqui is said to have begged before Mayawati for restoring his status in the party. Mayawati, much to his chagrin, asked him to work along with the six other coordinators of the party in Lucknow division who are the greenhorns of the BSP. Besides the charges of extortion from the people and ticket seekers and running the illegal slaughterhouses in West UP, he had fallen from the grace after the fiasco of the agitation against BJP leader Dayashankar Singh. Moreover, like Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party, Siddiqui was never indispensable for the BSP. In fact, no leader except Mayawati is indispensable for the party. With the expulsion from the party, Siddiqui is also likely to be removed from the post of the leader of opposition in the Upper House of the UP legislative council. His term as member of the council ends on January 30, 2021. Siddiquis wife Husna Siddiqui was also a Member of Legislative Council (MLC) from the BSP and retired on January 15, 2016. Siddiqui, a native of Banda district in Bundelkhand region, is likely to hold a press conference in Lucknow on Thursday. He had enjoyed number two position in two previous BSP regimes headed by Mayawati in 2002 and later from 2007 to 2012, and had the most lucrative departments like public works department, irrigation, housing, sugarcane and excise under him. Siddiquis fall began in July last year when he organised a protest demonstration in Lucknow against BJP leader Dayashankar Singh, who had made derogatory remarks on BSP chief Mayawati, accusing her of extorting money for giving party tickets. Along with other BSP leaders, Siddiqui had made highly provocative and unparliamentary comments against BJP leaders wife Swati Singh and his teenage daughter. The BJP was quick to seize the opportunity and turned the table on the BSP by launching counter campaign Swati Ke Samaan mein, BJP Maidan mein. This had snatched away a successful campaign issue from the BSP. Akhilesh Yadav, the then chief minister, who had ordered an FIR against the Dayashankar Singh under Prevention of atrocities (SC/ST) Act, was forced to recommend a police case against Siddiqui and other BSP leaders under POCSO Act. BJP elevated Swati Singh as the head of its women wing in UP and she is now a junior minister in the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet. This incident had also led to the alienation of upper castes from the BSP. Mayawati during the election campaign repeatedly referred to the Dayashankar Singh Kaand to salvage the situation. The expulsion from the party and the subsequent loss of the political status as leader of opposition in the legislative council could spell trouble for Siddiqui. The Adityanath government has already ordered a CBI probe into privatization of 21 public sector sugar mills during the BSP regime in 2007-12. The then Lokayukta Justice (retd) NK Mehrotra in May 2013 had recommended criminal proceedings under prevention of corruption law. He had also recommended to the UP government to either refer the matter to the CBI or constitute a special task force that should investigate the charges within a specific time frame. The Ombudsman had also recommended to the state government to constitute a special court with the consent of the Allahabad High Court for the speedy trial of the indicted persons. (The author is a Lucknow-based journalist) Quizzed further on Income Tax department's show-cause notices to AAP on its donations, following a report by CNN-News18, Bhardwaj said the agencies were against AAP. Kejriwal, a former Indian Revenue Services officer, is allegedly finding it hard to explain the mismatch in donations to his party. I-T department sources told CNN-News18 that there was a "major mismatch" in the amounts filed before the Election Commission, in AAP's bank account and on its website. : Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Saurabh Bhardwaj on Thursday said that the principle of resignation of a leader who is facing an investigation should apply to every political party."But the allegations must be strong enough," Bhardwaj said, when asked if Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should resign in the wake of allegations by former water minister Kapil Mishra.He came to limelight on Tuesday when his demonstration of hacking of an EVM prototype in Delhi Assembly was shown live on national television."We keep getting show-cause notices. Let there be a thorough investigation. We know it is just a clerical error," said the leader, adding that his party was serious about EVM tempering allegations and Tuesday's demonstration was not an attempt to divert attention from the corruption charges.High drama ensued in the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday as Aam Aadmi Party's) Greater Kailash MLA tried to "prove" that electronic voting machines can be rigged easily.The AAP, since the results of assembly elections in March, has accused that EVMs have been tampered with to ensure a BJP victory. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party had raised suspicions over BJP's landslide wins in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Lucknow: A day after Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath asked people to accept the "truth" that Mughal rulers were "invaders", his cabinet colleague Shrikant Sharma said devotees of Lord Ram do not need anyone's approval to offer prayers at the makeshift temple in Ayodhya. His remark came during a visit to Ayodhya in adjoining Faizabad district where he sought blessings of Ram Lalla at the makeshift temple. "Ram bhakts (devotees of Lord Ram) do not need any visa from any anuyaayee (follower) of Babar for having a darshan (glimpse) of Ram Lalla," Sharma told PTI. "Nearly 500 years ago, invaders had tried to destroy the symbol of our culture," he added. He cited Supreme Court's (March 21) suggestion for an out-of-court settlement of the lingering Ram Janma Bhoomi- Babri Masjid land dispute at Ayodhya. Sharma said he welcomed the SC's suggestion for an out- of-court settlement in the Ayodhya land dispute case and urged that people from all sections of society must sit together and deliberate and find a way forward for construction of grand Ram Temple in Ayodhya. "Enough of politics has been done in the name of Lord Ram. Time has now come for holistic development of Ayodhya," he said. At a function held here to mark the birth anniversary of Maharana Pratap, Chief Minister Adityanath had yesterday termed Mughal rulers Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar as "invaders" and asked youngsters to follow leaders like Maharana Pratap. "Maharana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh and Chhatrapati Shivaji are our role models, and we must follow the path shown by them. Youngsters must learn a lesson from the self-respect and strength of character from Maharana Pratap. Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar were invaders. The sooner we accept the truth, all the problems of our country will vanish," he had said. The UP government had yesterday approved formation of a municipal corporation for Ayodhya, besides making a similar announcement for Mathura and Vrindavan. Sharma, the power minister, said the BJP-led government is committed to all-round and holistic development of all the pilgrimage centres in the state. The Ayodhya municipal corporation will cover the twin cities of Faizabad and Ayodhya, while Mathura-Vrindavan municipal corporation will look after the civic needs in the two pilgrim towns. "The demand for a municipal corporations in Ayodhya-Faizabad and Mathura-Vrindava has been pending for the past 15 years. But successive state governments never paid any attention to this important issue," UP BJP spokesperson Manish Shukla said. New Delhi: In yet another incident of VVIP high-handedness, this time in Uttar Pradesh's Etah district, the nephew of Samajwadi Party MLC Ramesh Yadav slapped a police officer, boasting about his political connections. "My name is Mohit Yadav...," said the young man, who was brought to the police station after he scuffled with doctors at a district hospital. Mohit didn't stop there. He then caught the police officer by his collar before another officer intervened. Mohit, however, continued to hurl abuses at the police officer all this while. Samajwadi Party leader Deepak Mishra told CNN-News18 that the entire sequence of events was highly "unfortunate". "We will have to investigate the matter; we will have to look into the circumstances under which this man slapped the police officer," Mishra said. Reacting strongly against the assault on the police officer, BJP leader Vijay Bahadur Pathak said that the slapping was a serious offence. "No matter how big a person is, he cannot be allowed to take law into his own hands," Pathak said, Mohit Yadav's uncle Ramesh Yadav, whose name he bragged about, is a member of legislative council from Barabanki. The Bhartiya Janata Party had defeated the Samajwadi Party handsomely in the recently concluded Assembly Elections in Uttar Pradesh. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has repeatedly emphasised bringing an end to what he and his party refer to as "Gunda Raj" under the erstwhile SP government. One week until #MSBuild, our annual conference for developers. RT if youll be joining us in Seattle or watching online. pic.twitter.com/7XjuTEYCUK Microsoft (@Microsoft) May 3, 2017 Microsoft's annual developer conference, Microsoft Build 2017 kicks off on Wednesday.Build 2017 will start on May 10 and last until May 12, in Seattle, Washington. The event would bring together over 5,000 developers from around the world.The event could also see how Microsoft will outline its vision of future.Read more: Apple to Cut Price of iPhone 5s to Rs 15,000 in India The two-day conference will see keynotes, including announcements from CEO Satya Nadella, Scott Guthrie, EVP of Cloud and Enterprise Group, Harry Shum, EVP of Artificial Intelligence and Research Group, and Terry Myerson, EVP of Windows and Devices Group.Read more: Samsung Galaxy S8 vs OnePlus 3T: Which One Is a Smarter Buy? Other things that people can look forward to discussions on the Cortana Artificial Intelligence assistant, the HoloLens amongst others. The company is also expected to release one more big Windows 10 update this year.Iphone 7 plus review Online encyclopedia Wikipedia has appealed to Turkey's constitutional court against a government decision to block access to its website, broadcaster CNN Turk said on Tuesday, a case that has heightened concerns about censorship in Turkey.Read more: Xiaomi Could Launch Redmi 4 on May 16: Here's All You Need to Know Turkey's telecommunications watchdog said two weeks ago that access to Wikipedia had been blocked, citing a law allowing it to ban access to websites deemed a threat to national security.Watch video review of Vivo V5sThe block on the site was prompted by two Wikipedia entries accusing Turkey of links to Islamist militant groups, local media have reported. The communications ministry has said Wikipedia was attempting to run a "smear campaign" against the country, saying some articles purported that Ankara was coordinating with militant groups.A Turkish court on Friday rejected an appeal by the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, against the blocking, saying that while freedom of speech was a fundamental right, it can be limited in cases where there is a "necessity for regulation".The Wikimedia Foundation has called for the Turkish government to restore full access to the site. The president said he fired Comey, the top US law enforcement official, over his handling of an election-year e-mail scandal involving Hillary Clinton, Reuters reported. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke to Trump and told him he was "making a very big mistake" in firing Comey. He added that the president did not "really answer" in response. US intelligence agencies concluded in a January report that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an effort to disrupt the 2016 election, with the aim of helping Trump. The president told Comey in the letter that he accepted the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he could no longer provide effective leadership. Comey's term was to run through September 2023. He was appointed the director by Democratic President Barack Obama in 2013. In a decision that is likely to send shock waves through Washington, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday sacked FBI Director James Comey.Comey had been leading an investigation into Trumps presidential campaign's possible collusion with Russia to influence the poll outcome.Comey, 56, had been the target of criticism from many quarters for his handling of a probe involving Clinton's use of a private email server while she was US Secretary of State under Barack Obama. As recently as Tuesday, the FBI clarified remarks that Comey made on the matter last week.Trump had originally criticized the FBI director for not pursuing criminal charges against Clinton last July, but later lavished praise on him.There were concerns in Washington that the White House was trying to blunt the FBI probe by firing Comey.The White House officials maintained that there was no political motive behind the Republican Presidents decision.Schumer said an independent investigation into Moscow's role in the presidential elections is the only way nor to restore tha faith of the American people.Senator Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is overseeing its own investigation into Russian interference during the election, said in a statement he was troubled by the timing of Comey's termination."His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation," Burr said.Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.Trump, in a letter to Comey released by the White House, said: "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission."Sessions advised Trump's campaign before being picked by the president to lead the Justice Department. Sessions had recused himself from involvement in the Russia investigation after he misstated his own 2016 contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington.(With inputs from Reuters) Ankara: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday urged the United States to reverse a decision on arming Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Turkey considers terrorists, saying he would raise the issue in talks with Donald Trump next week. The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) militia applauded a "historic" move that would speed up the defeat of Islamic State (IS) extremists but the issue risks stoking tensions between the two NATO allies ahead of Erdogan's critical visit to Washington. The YPG is seen by Washington as the best ally against Islamic State group jihadists in Syria and the prime attacking force in any upcoming assault on their stronghold of Raqa. But Ankara regards the YPG as a terror group and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged an insurgency inside Turkey leaving tens of thousands dead. "I hope very much that this mistake will be reversed immediately," Erdogan said in Ankara alongside Sierra Leone counterpart Ernest Bai Koroma. "I will personally express our worries in a detailed way when we talk with President Trump on May 16," he added, saying the issue would also be discussed at the NATO summit in Brussels on May 25. "We want to believe that our allies would prefer be side by side with ourselves rather than with the terror groups," he added. Erdogan's statement capped a day of alarmed comments by Turkish officials, with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu saying that "every weapon that turns up in their hands is a threat directed toward Turkey". - 'Informed in advance' - Pentagon chief Jim Mattis sought to allay Turkish concerns, saying at a news conference in Lithuania the US would work very closely with Turkey over security on its border with Syria. "We have very open discussions about options and we will work together, we will work out any of the concerns," he said. In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon had said Trump had authorised the arming of Kurdish fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) "to ensure a clear victory over ISIS in Raqa". The YPG hailed the move as "historic" and said it would now play "a more influential, powerful, and decisive role" in fighting IS. YPG spokesman Redur Xelil described the move as "somewhat late", but would still "provide a strong impetus" to all forces fighting IS. The SDF, a US-backed group dominated by YPG but which also contains Arab elements, said that receiving US arms and military equipment would "hasten the defeat" of the jihadists. It remains to be seen what shadow the issue will cast over the talks between Trump and Erdogan, which have been touted as chance to forge a new partnership between the two NATO allies. While the government expressed predictable anger, the deputy head of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Ozturk Yilmaz said it should go even further by postponing Erdogan's visit to the US The timing of the announcement was especially delicate as a high-level Turkish delegation including Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkey's spy chief Hakan Fidan had been in the US laying the groundwork for the meeting. According to the New York Times, the delegation was informed of the decision to arm the YPG by Trump's national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Turkish media said the three met McMaster at the White House on Monday but gave no details over the content of the talks. Both Washington and Brussels classify the PKK as a terror group but do not regard the YPG as such. Paris: Two days after her aunt Marine Le Pen suffered a resounding defeat to centrist Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential election, National Front (FN) lawmaker Marion Marechal-Le Pen said she was quitting politics for now. Marine Le Pen's niece, who became the youngest member of France's national assembly aged just 22 in 2012, told Vaucluse Matin daily in a letter to appear today that she was leaving politics "for some time." She explained she "wishes to work ... (in) the business world" while also spending more time with her family, being the divorced mother of a young child. Known in the party simply as Marion, she said she did not want "to hang on at all costs" to the status afforded by her parliamentary seat, dealing a blow to the National Front ahead of parliamentary elections next month. But she insisted that she was not definitively turning her back on political struggle. "I shall never be able to remain indifferent to the suffering of compatriots," she said in her letter to the paper. As well as leaving parliament, Le Pen is stepping down as opposition leader on the council for the southern region of Provence-Alpes-Cte d'Azur. Her grandfather is Jean-Marie Le Pen, who stood for the presidency five times. He reached the second round run-off vote in 2002, where his losing margin to the centre-right Jacques Chirac was even greater than the 66 percent to 33 percent margin which Macron earned over Marine Le Pen on Sunday. Marion had previously hinted at dissatisfaction with the internal party politicking and her relationship with both Marine Le Pen and the party's deputy chairman Florian Philippot, who has taken the FN in a more "social" direction to the chagrin of its more conservative wing. Marine had suggested her niece was too "inexperienced" for a ministerial post in the event of victory over Macron while Philippot described her in December as "alone and isolated" in the party. Marion urged the party to "reflect" on her aunt's presidential defeat and future strategy. Despite garnering a record for the FN of some 10 million votes, Marine Le Pen was unable to secure enough support from the traditional right or undecided voters. In another development on the French right, Eric Woerth, tasked by the centre right Les Republicains (LR) with strategy for next month's legislatives, said he hoped to see "co- existence" with Macron and the latter's centrist movement founded only last year. Woerth said co-existence would be the byword for relations with Macron supporters rather than "opposition" or "hard co-habitation" -- that being an allusion to scenarios in the late 1980s and the mid-1990s which saw a leftist president twice forced to coexist with a conservative dominated parliament. The reverse then happened between 1997 and 2002 when Chirac, having served as prime minister under socialistFrancois Mitterrand, had to contend with a leftist government. For Woerth, "Macron brought oxygen and freshness" into a presidential contest which saw the candidates of the traditional parties bite the dust in the first round of voting, before Sunday's runoff. ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's powerful military on Wednesday sought to calm worries of a rift with the civilian government, emphasising its commitment to democracy in a country where the army has often seized power. The reassurance came after the military last month took the unusual step of publicly criticising the government's actions following investigations into a leaked newspaper story about a national security meeting. On Wednesday, the military's spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor told a news briefing there was no cause for concern. "We will continue to work with all government institutions to do what is best for the country," Ghafoor said. "There's been a lot of talk about democracy in the past two weeks, but nowhere was there any mention that any actions should be taken against democracy." Relations between the civilian government and military have often been strained in Pakistan, where several prime ministers, including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself during a previous administration in 1999, have been ousted in coups. The military has ruled Pakistan for 33 of the 70 years since the country gained independence from Britain in 1947. The country has had a democratically elected government since 2008, but the army retains sweeping influence and any hint of discord raises worries among advocates of a strong civilian government. The row came after an article in the English-language Dawn newspaper in October, detailing high-level security talks, angered the army. Sharif fired a close ally at the time of the leak and last month sacked one of his senior advisers after an inquiry report was completed. But a tweet from Ghafoor rejected Sharif's actions as "incomplete". At the news conference on Wednesday, Ghafoor said the April 29 tweet was "not against any government official or institution", adding that the investigation into the leaks had come to a satisfactory conclusion. Washington: President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Russia to "work together" with the US to end the Syrian conflict and underscored the need for Moscow to rein in the Bashar al-Assad regime there, and Iran and their "proxies". Trump said this as he hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the White House, a day after he abruptly sacked FBI chief James Comey who was leading the investigation into Russia's meddling in the polls that brought him to power. The White House said in a readout of their meeting that Trump "emphasised the need to work together to end the conflict in Syria, in particular, underscoring the need for Russia to rein in the Assad regime, Iran, and Iranian proxies." Lavrov is the highest-ranking Russian official to meet Trump since he took office on January 20. And US-Russia ties had soured under Trump's predecessor Barack Obama over Russia's unyielding support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the 2014 annexation of Crimea. The war in Syria has forced million of refugees to flee the country, over which the US and Russia have for the first time since World War Two had flown combat missions in the same air space. Over the past six years, the US and Russia have sparred several times over the Syrian conflict, especially concerning Assad's fate, but have failed to manage a solution to end it. During the meeting, Trump also raised the issues concerning Ukraine and expressed his administration's commitment to remain engaged in resolving the conflict. He stressed Russia's responsibility to fully implement the Minsk agreement. "He also raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. The president further emphasised his desire to build a better relationship between the US and Russia," the White House said. Trump's meeting with Lavrov follows the Russia visit of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow last month. Later at a news conference, Lavrov told reporters that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to meet on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in July. Washington: US President Donald Trump urged Russia to "rein in" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a meeting with Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the White House said on Wednesday. "Trump emphasized the need to work together to end the conflict in Syria, in particular, underscoring the need for Russia to rein in the Assad regime, Iran, and Iranian proxies," the White House said in a statement. US-backed Syrian militias say capture Tabqa from Islamic State Meanwhile, US-backed Syrian militias said they fully captured the town of Tabqa and an adjacent dam, Syria's largest, from Islamic State on Wednesday, some 40 km (25 miles) west of Raqqa city. With air strikes and special forces from the US-led coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, have been closing in on Raqqa, Islamic State State's base of operations in Syria. Vilnius: The US military is considering sending a Patriot missile battery to the Baltic region for NATO exercises this summer, US defence officials said, though the move would only be temporary. Speaking to reporters in Vilnius late on Tuesday, two defence officials said the United States is moving enhanced air defence assets into the region as part of multinational air drills. The move comes amid heightened tensions with Russia, which is itself holding massive military exercises in Belarus and Kaliningrad in September. The so-called "Zapad" drills will see Russia showcase new hardware and upgrade existing systems in its western military region, the officials said. Moscow last year deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles into its Kaliningrad exclave, which borders Lithuania and Poland, rattling nearby NATO members. Pentagon chief Jim Mattis was in Lithuania on Wednesday to visit a German NATO battle group and Dutch and Belgian soldiers at a training ground outside Vilnius. At a brief press conference with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, Mattis refused to discuss whether Vilnius had requested a permanent Patriot missile deployment. "We will make those decisions in consultation with the Lithuania government," he said. "Everyone knows this is not an offensive capability." The Patriot is a mobile air defence system made by Raytheon designed to intercept tactical ballistic missiles, low-flying cruise missiles and aircraft. Mattis's trip to Lithuania is his first to eastern Europe as defence secretary and his meeting with Grybauskaite, a very vocal critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, could be interpreted as a signal for Moscow. The highly militarised Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is right next door and Putin is prone to sabre rattling there. A US-led NATO battalion that is stationed nearby in Poland and the German-led battalion that Mattis will visit are the first line of defence for the so-called "Suwalki Gap". NATO experts see the vulnerable stretch of territory as key to eastern flank security. The battalions will hold exercises focused on defending the Gap from June 10 to 24. Banda Aceh: Two men accused of having gay sex sit on the defendants' chairs during their trial at Shariah court in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Shariah prosecutors in Aceh province said the two men should each receive 80 lashes, in another blow to the country's moderate image after a top Christian official was imprisoned for blasphemy. (Image: AP/PTI) An Amherst man was sentenced to eight years in prison Tuesday on two counts of indecent liberties with a child by a person in a supervisory or custodial relationship. Carlton Eugene Adcock, 53, was previously found guilty of the felony charges during a bench trial in Amherst County Circuit Court in March. At trial a judge acquitted him of 14 felony sex-related charges in the case involving a minor. On Tuesday Judge Michael Garrett sentenced Adcock, who pleaded not guilty to all charges, to 10 years with two years suspended. Adcock, a paraplegic who is paralyzed from the waist down, according to a family members testimony, was arrested Aug. 24 on charges prosecutors said took place during a 42-day period in June and July of last year. The victim, who was 17 at the time of the offenses, testified in March the sexual abuse she suf-fered from Adcock was a daily thing. She described instances in court of him performing sex acts on her. The victim testified Tuesday she has been seeing a counselor since August 2016, moved away from Virginia and is now enrolled in a third high school. She testified she sees the counselor three to five times a week and was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder trauma. In testifying how dramatically changed her life is because of Adcocks abuse, she no longer lives with her sister, has to make time for counseling and can no longer be around guys due to risk of panic attacks, he said. The victim said in foster care she has had between 20 and 30 panic attacks where she feels like is drowning but without the water. She added her future has also been changed since she isnt able to join the military with PTSD and cant afford tuition for college. Taryn Kelly, Adcocks probation officer, also was called on to testify Tuesday. Assistant Com-monwealths Attorney Amber Drumheller asked Kelly about Adcocks criminal record, which includes a burglary conviction in Baltimore, Maryland, a stalking conviction in Pennsylvania and seven misdemeanor convictions, among others. Kelly said when she spoke with Adcock she did not ask him about specifics of each conviction but he did make a statement to her expressing sorrow for what he had done. She added Adcock told her he wanted to get his GED once he was released and be a better person. Henry Devening, Adcocks attorney, confirmed with Kelly his client has had no convictions since 2007 and addressed the defendants current care where he is being held in custody. Kelly said in court Adcock has complained about the care he been receiving and told her he has experienced around 10 urinary tract infections since he arrived. Adcock testified Tuesday has experienced nearly a dozen urinary tract infections and a kidney infection and he doesnt get treatment he needs, including rehab from injuries from the accident that left him paralyzed, and he doesnt get exercise. Devening called Adcocks situation horrible in court. Adcock testified he was at one point on suicide watch and takes one day at a time. When he is released, Adcock said he plans to live with his brother and they plan to run a lawn care shop. Before delivering his sentence, Garrett asked Adcock if he had anything to say, to which Adcock said: Im sorry. I lost everything. Conditions of his suspended sentence include good behavior for 20 years with three years ac-tive supervision, not possessing or using illegal drugs and submitting to drug testing. Adcock also is ordered not to have contact with the victim and must register as a sex offender. Calling it a sad case, Garrett told Adcock you cant blame a child when there is an adult on the other side. Garrett acknowledged Adcock lost a lot, adding: Both lives have been affected forever. MONETA Rep. Tom Garretts second open town hall which included one woman escorted out by security for interrupting repeatedly bobbed between lectures on policy, philosophy and manners. Much of the crowd Tuesday at EastLake Community Church vented frustration about Garretts votes on the American Healthcare Act as well as a wide swath of issues including corruption-related complaints about President Donald Trump and his familys businesses. Sitting in an easy chair and sporting the thick beard he started growing during his 2016 congressional campaign, Garrett, spelled out his philosophy on representative government and its proper size and scope. One Nelson County resident asked what Garrett believes he owes constituents who didnt vote for him, referring to comments he made in an MSNBC interview that many people in videos of a protest didnt vote for him. My job is to run for office and say these are the things I believe in, if elected these are the things I will do, and then when I get to Washington, D.C., do exactly what I said I would, Garrett said, referring to the interview as an internet meme taken out of context. What I owe you is my time, my ear, my candor, and I should keep my word. The event did not have an official moderator. Garrett Chief of Staff Kevin Reynolds and Communications Director Andrew Griffin picked people to ask questions from among those with hands raised. When upset constituents clapped, heckled or cheered, Reynolds acted as the cooler and was quick to hush them. The event was advertised as allocating seats by lottery, although Reynolds said it wasnt necessary and everyone who applied was awarded tickets. Some of them got stuck in email spam folders, though, he said. An early break in decorum came almost 20 minutes in as Garrett touted his student security plan he said would allow people to forgo Social Security benefits later in exchange for immediate student loan forgiveness. A woman interrupted, but what she said was unclear. I disagree with you. You disagree with me, but Im calling you maam. Thats the difference between you and I, Garrett said. Reynolds added, Maam, please dont be disruptive. After interrupting, Loretta Merryman, of Rustburg, was given a chance to ask a question. Church officials later asked her to leave after she again made a disturbance, she refused to leave and deputies escorted her out while she resisted, Bedford County Sheriffs Capt. Mike Miller said. The church is private and has right to remove anyone, Miller said. Merryman thought the treatment was rough. They completely overreacted, said her husband, Frank Merryman. The decision wasnt his as he was on stage, Garrett told the press. In a perfect world, that doesnt happen, he said. Regarding the AHCA, Garrett defended statements he made on MSNBC that he didnt read the bill, although his staff did. Most of the bill was not new, he said, and had been debated thoroughly in its prior rendition. The Freedom Caucus, of which Garrett is a member, was central in killing the previous version. I would wager that if you line me up against any member of either party as it relates to the intricacies of the final evolution of the AHCA, and we have a debate, that I could prove myself very well, thank you very much, Garrett said. When crowd members shouted out when he claimed the AHCA was debated longer than the Affordable Care Act it was meant to supplant, Garrett defended his point and addressed the interruption. My standard would be if your kids could see you would they be embarrassed, Garrett said. If I were shouting over people, my kids would be like Dad, stop, its embarrassing. Maybe my kids have a different standard. When asked to defend Trumps character, Garrett targeted former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. When asked about Trumps family finances, he turned to former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, for making money while in office. When asked whether reports that Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushners family used the advisers name in business meetings in China recently showed a violation of the Constitution, Garrett referred to Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffes former company GreenTech Automotive used political influence to sell visas, Garrett said, allegations he made during the 2013 gubernatorial race. If Kushners situation is analogous, he should be gone, Garrett said. I traveled to Northern Virginia and did a press conference and said people shouldnt be in the business of using political influence to sell access to the United States to put money in their pockets, Garrett said. But at times, the meeting offered the reasonable exchange of ideas Garrett said he had hoped for. Just before Reynolds and Garrett decided to extend the meeting by 30 minutes, the congressman exchanged a discussion about tax policy with Bill Piatt, of Huddleston. Garrett went into the weeds on tax restructuring, saying he would like to change the individual tax code to a reverse income tax. What we really need to do is look at what people on the lowest end of the income tax spectrum are paying and create a system wherein theyre incentivized to continue to work, not penalized for working, Garrett said. There is bipartisan support for reducing the corporate tax code, Garrett said, before launching into details on small business tax reforms. Youre describing something very different from what was presented, Piatt said, referring to Trumps tax plan. Garrett responded, Anybody who came here expecting to see here to see Donald Trump, Im sorry to disappoint you. Lloyd Lee Welch Jr., who is set to go to trial on double murder charges in Bedford County this September in the 1975 disappearance of Sheila and Katherine Lyon, has been indicted separately on new child sex assault charges in Prince William County, court records show. A Prince William grand jury handed down three new formal charges in April against Welch: two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of indecent liberties with a child in a custodial relationship. The date of the alleged offenses is listed as June 5, 1996, according to Prince William County Circuit Court online records. In December, a grand jury in Prince William indicted Welch on charges of indecent liberties, aggravated sexual battery, rape and object sexual penetration, all with an alleged offense date listed as May 15, 1996. Welch has jury trial proceedings scheduled on those four charges in October, after his felony murder trial in Bedford County set for Sept. 12. A spokesman for the Prince William County Commonwealths Attorney Office could not be reached Wednesday for comment on the new charges. DC's Batman spotlight is expanding to his sidekicks more and more Members of Batman's family will seemingly play huge roles in the DCU in 2023 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. Students to sit 2018 exams online This was announced yesterday by the Ministry of Educations curriculum officer in information and communication technology (ICT) Gerald Phillip, who said more than 130 government and private schools will have the digital capability to allow students to do paper one (multiple choice) via the internet. There is a team at the ministry that is dedicated toward assisting schools to be ready in terms of internet bandwidth, connectivity and hardware in terms of computers to do CXC, CSE C and CAPE examinations online. We will be ready for 2018, Phillip said. He added the 2018 multiple choice exams will be done in real time. This will allow the ministry to get all schools ready for online testing, adding the long term plan is to introduce paper two examinations, which are written answers, online as well. Phillip made the disclosures at the launch of pennacool.com/Flow ICT in Education programme for Arima Boys RC at El Patio, Santa Rosa RC Church in Arima. Asked to give details on the secondary schools initiative, Phillip said Education Minister Anthony Garcia is expected to make a full statement. The online exam plan does not have the support of the TT Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) which after discussing the proposal, has several concerns on how it will be implemented, general secretary Fitzroy Daniel said yesterday. One of our major concerns is that facilities in schools are not up to the required standard. All our facilities are not up to the same standards. Some schools in Toco will not have the same facilities as those in the prestige schools, Daniel said. He also claimed the ministry proposed the multiple choice exam can be done on any device such as laptop, smart phone or tablet, but TTUTA has advised there is a need for a policy on such use. Another concern is the inconsistency of the electricity system in the country. If students are doing the exam on a given day and electricity goes what will happen to them? Daniel said the union continues to discuss the matter with the ministry but cautioned, if we have to take further action we will. Director of pennacool.com Phaessuh Kromah, speaking on the primary school programme said it will help teachers to assess students performance in mathematics. He thanked the ministry for approving the implementation of the programme at Arima Boys RC in collaboration with digital provider Flow. Kromah said every month, pennacool.com rewards 250 students including those at secondary school, who submit their work on the website. Principals, teachers and students, tell us over and over of the tremendous motivating and transforming effect this has, he said Food import bill drops He said this figure in the 18 month period before October 2015 was $570,107,188. Rambharat attributed this decline to factors such as increased availability of local produce at farmers markets at better prices, challenging in obtaining foreign exchange and a lower wheat prices over the last three years. Later in the sitting, Rambharat disclosed that guns that were procured for his ministry for the Praedial Larceny Squad, went missing in 2014. He said this situation was outlined in the recently submitted Auditor Generals report to Parliament and might not have received attention, were it not for the actions of a whistle- blower. Saying these guns which could have found their way on to the streets, have since been found and are being kept in a safe place. He added that an investigation into this matter is ongoing. Haul in CJ Archie for answers They must have discussions on the issue, Khan said at a media conference at his law chambers on Abercromby Street, Port-of-Spain yesterday. The judiciary must not be brought into further disrepute, Khan stressed. Ayers-Caesar, appointed a judge by Carmona on April 12, resigned 15 days later after prisoners near-rioted in the court she presided over as chief magistrate. Last Friday, 11 prominent senior counsel - of which Khan was one - indicated it would be imprudent and unwise for Ayers-Caesar to resume her duties at the lower court. Khan said it was imperative that an inquiry into what transpired take place, adding if there is evidence of misbehaviour in public office, the President must ask the CJ to stand down, while a tribunal is appointed to investigate. Given the crisis the Judiciary is in, it is crucial that he (Carmona) speaks out now, Khan said. He added that the facts had to come out on whether the JLSC, chaired by the CJ, did not engage in due diligence by enquiring of Ayers-Caesar the number of partheard matters she had on her docket or whether she misrepresented that number as claimed by Archie in his statement following her resignation as a judge. The question must be asked, did she disclose the number of part-heard matters and why wasnt she given time to finish them? What was the rush (to appoint), Khan asked. He pointed to Constitutional provisions for the removal of a Chief Justice and said Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has a crucial part to play in the imbroglio, since it is for him and his Cabinet to recommend to the President that a Tribunal be appointed. Avoid a vote of no confidence. Avoid questions being asked of you, he said, in reference to a petition to be debated next month by the Law Association which is calling for Archie and the JLSC to resign. Khan has also written the President raising questions on the constitutionality of the JLSC which sits with only four members and not five as prescribed by Section 110 of the Constitution. He said this is also a grave issue as it could result in a further crisis since all appointments made by the JLSC could be illegal, null and void. The ball is in the Presidents court, he said. There Was No Red Wave, 'That's for Darn Sure' The Hawaiian legislature just voted to make it easier for Hawaiians to pass down land to future generations by lessening the required percentage of native Hawaiian blood, West Hawaii Today reports. By 1919, the native Hawaiian population had shrunk by more than 650,000 due to a century and a half of colonialism, the Atlantic explained last year. That led to the passing of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, which set aside 200,000 acres of land for residents with at least 50% native Hawaiian blood. The holders of the new homeland leases could pass them down to their children and beyondprovided their descendants maintained at least 25% native Hawaiian blood. House Bill 451 lowers the required level of native Hawaiian blood to inherit a homeland lease to 3.125%. Passed by the Hawaiian legislature, it still needs to be signed by the governor and approved by the US Congress. Fewer and fewer Hawaiians meet the blood requirement, and thousands of people were set to lose their land, which would then be put up for sale to people with 50% or more native Hawaiian blood. While some argue the leases should be transferred to the thousands of native Hawaiians who meet that qualification, lawmakers didn't want to see families displaced or their property fall apart without the motivating possibility of passing it down to their children, KITV reports. (Read more Hawaii stories.) A tunnel collapse was discovered at the Hanford nuclear site Tuesday, months after experts called the Washington state facility "the most toxic place in America" and a "Chernobyl waiting to happen." Some 4,800 workers at the site were told to shelter indoors Tuesday morning after crews discovered the roof of a tunnel housing rail cars filled with radioactive waste had caved in, the Seattle Times reports. Nonessential workers out of a workforce of more than 9,000 were later told to go home early. Emergency officials told flights not to pass over the 580-square-mile Columbia River site, which produced plutonium for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. By Tuesday evening the incident was "moving from the emergency phase towards the recovery phase," with no workers injured or any sign of a release of radiation, the Department of Energy said. It's not clear, however, how the facility plans to deal with the 400-square-foot hole in the tunnel roof, reports the Spokesman-Review. "Sometimes you run into unexpected situations like this and our employees are figuring out a path forward to deal with it," an Emergency Operation Center spokesman says. The AP reports that the collapse has added to calls for improved worker safety at the site, which is undergoing a 50-year, $110 billion cleanup not expected to finish until 2060. (Read more nuclear waste stories.) President Trump's firing of James Comey was so unexpected that the FBI director initially thought it was a joke, sources tell the New York Times. Comey was addressing FBI employees in Los Angeles when news of his firing flashed on a TV screen, insiders say. He said he thought it was a pretty funny prankbut aides then ushered him into another room. Comey, who flew to Washington, DC, Tuesday night instead of attending an FBI recruiting event in Hollywood as scheduled, "was caught flat-footed," a source tells the Los Angeles Times. In other developments: The abrupt firing puts the future of the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign's alleged links to Russia in doubt, with Democrats calling for a special prosecutor to continue the probe, the Wall Street Journal reports. Most Republicans didn't go that far, though Sen. John McCain called for the creation of a special congressional committee. The BBC looks at the letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommending Comey's firing. Rosenstein cites Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, especially his "usurpation" of authority in announcing that the probe would be closed without charges. ABC has Trump's letter firing Comey in full. "While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau," the president writes. Politico spoke to a wide variety of experts about the constitutionality of the move, and received a wide range of answers, with some declaring a constitutional crisis and others saying Trump made a completely correct call. Comey's "mishandling of the Clinton investigation and his usurpation of prosecutorial decisions" would have been enough to get him fired under any administration, according to University of Virginia law professor Saikrishna Prakash. Aaron Blake looks at comments Trump has made about Comey and the Clinton investigation in recent weeks and concludes that the president was looking for an excuse to fire the FBI director. By misstating facts about the Clinton investigation at a Senate hearing, Comey gave Trump the excuse he needed, Blake writes at the Washington Post. The AP looks at key moments leading up to Comey's firing, including his letter to Congress Tuesday correcting earlier testimony. Axios answers seven questions about the firing, including what happens next: Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe will take charge until the Senate confirms a replacement. Democratic Sen. Bob Casey was among those calling the firing "Nixonian," though the Richard Nixon Library begged to differ, reports CNN. Nixon "never fired the director of the FBI," the library tweeted. (Read more James Comey stories.) Australian Sen. Larissa Waters made history with her 2-month-old daughter Alia Joy on Tuesday. The Australian Greens party member became the first mother to breastfeed a baby in the Parliament chamber, winning praise for setting an example for mothers in the workplace, the Telegraph reports. Other lawmakers in countries including Argentina and Spain have breastfed their babies in parliament chambers, and Icelandic MP Unnur Bra Konradsdottir fed her baby while delivering a speech last year, though breastfeeding remains banned in parliaments in countries such as the UK. Last year, Waters introduced rule changes that made it easier for lawmakers to bring children to work, saying it is "important we make all workplaces more family friendly, not just Parliament," the Courier-Mail reports. "I'll be having a few more weeks off but will soon be back in Parliament with this little one in tow," Waters wrote in a Facebook post announcing Alia Joy's birth in March. "She is even more inspiration for continuing our work to address gender inequality and stem dangerous climate change. (And yes, if she's hungry, she will be breastfed in the Senate chamber.)" For weeks Seattle Mayor Ed Murray pushed ahead with plans for his re-election campaign despite claims by men he sexually abused them decades ago when they were teenagers, allegations Murray vehemently denied. But Murray announced Tuesday he was abandoning his bid for a second term, saying it would be best for the city, the AP reports. "It tears me to pieces to step away, but I believe it's in the best interest of this city that I love," said Murray, 62, flanked by his husband and tearful supporters. He said he'll serve out his term through the end of this year. The mayor, a Democrat, said he was proud of his accomplishments, including raising Seattle's minimum wage to $15. Murray reiterated his denial of the allegations that first emerged last month when a man filed a lawsuit claiming Murray paid him for sex in the 1980s. Three other men also came forward with similar allegations, including one who is jailed on drug charges. "The allegations against me are not true," Murray said. "And I say this with all honesty and with the deepest sincerity. But the scandal surrounding them and me is hurting this city." Murray, who became a frequent, high-profile critic of President Trump after last year's election, has previously claimed the allegations were part of an anti-gay conservative campaign to oust him, but he didn't repeat those accusations during his speech. (Read more Ed Murray stories.) A new study adds to evidence that high doses of common painkillers such as ibuprofen increase the risk of heart attack. Researchers report in the British Medical Journal that patients prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were at greater risk for heart trouble in the first 30 days, reports the BBC. The greater risk applied to ibuprofen as well as the NSAIDs naproxen, diclofenac, and celecox. The first two are available over the counter in the US, while the latter two require prescriptions, notes CBS News. Researchers say those taking high doses, such as 1,200mg a day of ibuprofen, saw the greatest risk. The bright side is that the absolute risk of a heart attack among people taking NSAIDS is low, somewhere around 1%, reports the Independent. But because the drugs are so common, even a slight risk is meaningful from a public health perspective, says the lead researcher. "If an individuals risk of heart attack is 1% and it increases to 1.25%, they dont care," says Michele Bally of the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre. "But at a population level, its important, and if people want to contribute to public health, they might wish to make more informed choices." Her team says the takeaway from the study is that doctors need to carefully weigh each patient's risks before writing these prescriptions. And another doctor says people picking them up over the counter shouldn't be lulled into thinking that makes them safe. "If someone has to use an NSAID for pain relief, the best advice is to use the lowest possible dose and for shortest amount of time possible," says Deepak Bhatt of Brigham and Women's Hospital. (Meanwhile, another study suggests that dairy does not increase the risk of heart trouble.) President Trump's surprise firing of James Comey has one word in wide circulation: "Nixonian." Specifically, critics see a parallel to Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973, when the president ordered the firing of the special prosecutor investigating Watergate. Comey, for his part, was investigating ties between Trump officials and Russian meddling in the election. Is the comparison legitimate? Here's a look at coverage: Slate digs into the comparisons with background on the Nixon move, including the Washington Post's coverage of it at the time. One difference: Trump acted with the backing of his attorney general, while Nixon's resigned. Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Bob Casey were among the first to publicly make Nixon-Watergate comparisons, but Trump ally Roger Stone also did so. "Somewhere Dick Nixon is smiling," said Stone, who worked for Nixon, in defending the move, per the New York Times. Axios has a list of lawmakers bringing up Nixon. You know who's not happy with the comparisons? The Nixon Library. "FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI," it tweeted, per the Hill. Trump critics who think this might end similarly for today's president need a reality check, writes Jeff Greenfield at Politico. One key difference: Both houses of Congress are in GOP hands now. "In terms of the political climate, the position of the president, and the alignment of stars in Washington, this isnt apples and orangesits apples and bowling balls." So what does John Dean, Nixon's former White House counsel, think? "Its very Nixonian, in its own way," he says, per Politico. "But thats typical of the man. Theyre obviously trying the get the bureau back under the Department of Justices control. But I dont think itll affect the Russia investigation." Time notes that the last president to fire the FBI chief was Bill Clinton, who canned William Sessions over ethics allegations. "But it hasn't been since Nixon that a president terminated a person investigating him." The Boston Globe editorializes that Trump "just pulled a Richard Nixon." Comey had an independent streak, and Trump "clearly doesn't want a man like that in charge of an investigation that reaches deep into his inner circle and could have serious repercussions for his administration." A Nixon biographer, John Farrell, isn't sure what to make of the comparisons. "Trump is a unique individual who is not bound by the normal strictures of politics, so we dont know if hes doing this because hes unpredictable or because hes hiding something," he tells the Washington Post. Also in the Post, Rutgers history professor David Greenberg writes that the moves by Nixon and Trump were technically legal but blatant abuses of power. "The most pressing question is whether Republicans in Congress will muster the same courage and integrity Republicans did after Watergate." (Read more James Comey stories.) Everyone's got lots of questions about the American Health Care Act that passed the House last week, and Health and Human Services chief Tom Price seems like he'd be a good person to ask. Reporter Dan Heyman of Public News Service found out that wasn't the case with his queries, which led to his arrest Tuesday at the West Virginia State Capitol, the Hill reports. "First time I've ever been arrested for asking a question. First time I've ever heard of someone getting arrested for asking a question," Heyman noted at a presser shortly after he posted $5,000 bail. The question (or questions, rather) he posed in the Capitol hallway to Price, there with Kellyanne Conway to discuss the state's efforts to combat opioid addiction, revolved around whether domestic violence is considered a pre-existing condition under the AHCA. "He didn't say anything, so I persisted," Heyman, described by the Washington Post as a 30-year news veteran whose work has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, said at the presser. Per the criminal complaint, Heyman was "yelling questions" and "aggressively breaching" Secret Service agents, and he had to be removed from the area more than once, per WDTV. He was charged with willful disruption of state government processes. But Heyman says he wasn't told he couldn't be there, was wearing a press pass, and identified himself as a reporter. Heyman says he was just doing his job in questioning AHCA specifics, noting, "I think it is a question that deserves to be answered." (Price seems optimistic on the GOP's plans.) James Comey's firing was a shockbut not entirely unprecedented. Since its founding in 1908, the FBI has been led by 11 men (interspersed with a handful of acting directors), and Comey was the second of them to be fired. William Sessions got the boot in July 1993 compliments of Bill Clinton, though in that case, Sessions had been asked to step down and only saw his position terminated once he refused. The Los Angeles Times reports the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility began looking into the Ronald Reagan appointee at the end of George H.W. Bush's tenure and uncovered a rash of ethical transgressions that were detailed in a report released in January 1993. Among them, per the Times and New York Times: Having a $10,000 security fence constructed around his home that didn't actually provide security, flying free on FBI aircraft in order to meet relatives, and sidestepping taxes owed on his use of an FBI limo. Attorney General Janet Reno determined "in no uncertain terms that [Sessions] can no longer effectively lead the bureau" and recommended Clinton fire him. The Washington Post reports two presidentsTruman and Kennedyconsidered firing J. Edgar Hoover, who held the post for nearly 48 years and whose political clout allowed him to escape such a dismissal. Ten-year term limits were established after Hoover's death. Sessions was six years into his term; Comey was only three. (When Comey first heard the news he thought it was a joke.) The critics have weighed in on President Trump's firing of the FBI chief, generally with unflattering comparisons to Richard Nixon. But what does Trump himself say? "James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI," he tweeted Wednesday morning. And he predicted the move will be validated: "Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike," he wrote. "When things calm down, they will be thanking me!" The president also cast Democrats as hypocrites for suddenly having Comey's back. They've said "some of the worst things" about him, "but now they play so sad!" he tweeted. Trump struck a similar theme in a tweet Tuesday night, in which he seems to have christened a new nickname for the Senate minority leader. "Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, 'I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer.' Then acts so indignant." Schumer, for his part, said the firing makes it all the more important to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the election. And he told Trump the move was a "big mistake," per the Hill. (Read more President Trump stories.) President Trump is delaying a decision on whether to withdraw from a landmark climate deal until after an international summit later this month. The move means the president will head to the G7 summit in Italy at the end of May amid continued global uncertainty over whether the US will remain in the emissions-cutting deal struck in Paris under the Obama administration. Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to renegotiate the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency, reports the AP. The latest: The official line: Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump wants to "continue to meet with his team," seeking economic and environmental advice, as he works to make a decision. A meeting for top advisers to discuss the deal had been set for Tuesday afternoon but was postponed. The BBC reports it's the second such cancellation, and no new date has been given. Big business wants in: On April 26, Trump was sent a letter signed by giants ranging from Apple and Google to BP and Shell making the case that staying in the Paris Agreement will create jobs and reduce climate-fueled business risks. A New York Times op-ed's take: "This is as close as big business gets to a consensus position." On April 26, Trump was sent a letter signed by giants ranging from Apple and Google to BP and Shell making the case that staying in the Paris Agreement will create jobs and reduce climate-fueled business risks. A New York Times op-ed's take: "This is as close as big business gets to a consensus position." Ivanka's role: A senior administration official said the president's inclination has been to leave the pact, but Ivanka Trump set up a review process to make sure he received information from experts in the public and private sector before making a decision. CNN reports there's a schism among the president's top advisers, with his daughter and Rex Tillerson leaning toward in, and EPA head Scott Pruitt and Steve Bannon lobbying for out. A senior administration official said the president's inclination has been to leave the pact, but Ivanka Trump set up a review process to make sure he received information from experts in the public and private sector before making a decision. CNN reports there's a schism among the president's top advisers, with his daughter and Rex Tillerson leaning toward in, and EPA head Scott Pruitt and Steve Bannon lobbying for out. Why we can leave in the first place: The Paris accord, signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, was never ratified by the Senate due to staunch GOP opposition. It therefore does not have the force of a binding treaty, and the US could potentially withdraw from the deal without legal penalty. The Paris accord, signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, was never ratified by the Senate due to staunch GOP opposition. It therefore does not have the force of a binding treaty, and the US could potentially withdraw from the deal without legal penalty. The world forges ahead: Ten days of talks began in Bonn, Germany, on Monday, with officials trying to come to a consensus on how to implement the agreement. The Washington Post reports the US does have a presence, though it points out Zimbabwe's delegation is bigger than our own, which numbers seven. Ten days of talks began in Bonn, Germany, on Monday, with officials trying to come to a consensus on how to implement the agreement. The Washington Post reports the US does have a presence, though it points out Zimbabwe's delegation is bigger than our own, which numbers seven. A dubious milestone: In late April, Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory registered a carbon dioxide reading of 410.28 parts per millionbreaching the 410ppm mark and hitting a height the planet hasn't experienced in millions of years, reported Scientific American. When record-keeping began there in 1958, the measurement was 280ppm. (Read more President Trump stories.) The White House says President Trump fired the FBI's James Comey over his handling of Hillary Clinton's email trouble. Critics, however, think it's fishy that Trump just happened to get rid of the man leading the investigation into Russian meddling in the election. Now, a new report from the New York Times won't help Trump's case with those critics: It says Comey asked the Justice Department for "a significant increase in resources" to expand the Russia investigation just before he got fired. Here's a look: The meeting: Comey went to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last week with the request. (Remember that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the Russia inquiry.) Days later, Rosenstein wrote the Justice Department memo being used to justify Comey's firing, though that memo focuses on the Clinton emails and doesn't mention Russia, notes the AP. Comey went to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last week with the request. (Remember that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the Russia inquiry.) Days later, Rosenstein wrote the Justice Department memo being used to justify Comey's firing, though that memo focuses on the Clinton emails and doesn't mention Russia, notes the AP. Denial: A Justice Department spokesperson tells HuffPost that Comey did not ask Rosenstein for more money, but she did not elaborate on whether he asked for other resources, such as manpower. A Justice Department spokesperson tells HuffPost that Comey did not ask Rosenstein for more money, but she did not elaborate on whether he asked for other resources, such as manpower. The optics: " The timing of Mr. Comeys request is not clear-cut evidence that his firing was related to the Russia investigation," says the Times in its assessment. "But it is certain to fuel bipartisan criticism that President Trump appeared to be meddling in an investigation that had the potential to damage his presidency." The timing of Mr. Comeys request is not clear-cut evidence that his firing was related to the Russia investigation," says the Times in its assessment. "But it is certain to fuel bipartisan criticism that President Trump appeared to be meddling in an investigation that had the potential to damage his presidency." The briefing: Comey briefed members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on his request Monday, the day before he was fired, reports the Washington Post, which adds that the status of the FBI investigation is now unclear. The optics, take II: That Comey got the boot over Russia is all speculation, observes Joe Cunningham at the conservative RedState. "However, with a media that is not friendly to the Trump Administration, and with the number of leaks this administration has produced, the best case scenario is that Trumps timing was bad." That Comey got the boot over Russia is all speculation, observes Joe Cunningham at the conservative RedState. "However, with a media that is not friendly to the Trump Administration, and with the number of leaks this administration has produced, the best case scenario is that Trumps timing was bad." Another sign: CNN reports on what it sees as another "significant escalation" of the Russia investigation before Comey's firing: Federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to associates of ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who is accused among other things of failing to report business dealings in Russia. CNN reports on what it sees as another "significant escalation" of the Russia investigation before Comey's firing: Federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to associates of ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who is accused among other things of failing to report business dealings in Russia. 'Enraged': Politico reports that Trump pondered the firing for more than a week as he grew "enraged" at the ever-expanding Russia investigation. "He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said." Politico reports that Trump pondered the firing for more than a week as he grew "enraged" at the ever-expanding Russia investigation. "He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said." New Trump comments: In his first (non-Twitter) comments on the firing, Trump said Wednesday that he acted because Comey "was not doing a good job," per the Wall Street Journal. (Read more James Comey stories.) Pakistan's Permanent Representative Maleeha Lodhi has raised the Kashmir issue with UN Secretary-General and OIC at a meeting United Nations : Pakistan's Permanent Representative Maleeha Lodhi has raised the Kashmir issue with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) envoys at a meeting here, according to a source briefed on the proceedings. At their meeting on Monday she appealed to Guterres and the OIC to make it a priority to push for a "peaceful solution" of the Kashmir issue saying that the rising tensions threatened regional stability, the source said. Attempts by Lodhi and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to involve Guterres in the Kashmir issue have been unsuccessful. Guterres has not made any open attempts to get involved in the issue. His spokespersons have said that he was following the situation but would not go beyond saying that he wanted the neighbours to enter into a dialogue to find a peaceful solution. Lodhi said that it was acknowledged by the UN and also the OIC in its communiques that Kashmir issue need attention, according to the source The OIC Summit's communique in 2016 offered the 57-member organisation's "support to the widespread indigenous movement of the people of India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir for their right to self-determination." India challenged OIC's statement saying it "has no locus standi" in the Kashmir issue, an internal matter of India, and called its mention of Kashmir "factually incorrect and misleading". Sharif met Guterres at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January and told him that the issues between India and Pakistan "had security consequences for the region" and needed his attention, according to a Pakistani statement. Lodhi met Guterres at the UN headquarters in New York, also in January, and asked him to "restrain" India. She also gave him a dossier on "India's interference and terrorism in Pakistan" and a letter from Sartaj Aziz, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser. All three missing Cambodian UN peacekeepers ambushed in the Central African Republic were found dead Phnom Penh : All three missing Cambodian UN peacekeepers ambushed in the Central African Republic (CAR) were found dead, a Defence spokesman said here on Wednesday. This has brought the death toll of Cambodian troops in the attack to four, Xinhua news agency reported. "I'm sad to announce that the three missing Cambodian peacekeepers in a Monday's attack in the CAR was found dead on Tuesday about two km from the scene," Chhum Socheath, a spokesman for the Cambodian National Defence Ministry said. In a press release on Tuesday, the UN peacekeeping mission in the CAR strongly condemned the attack by a rebel group on one of its convoys near Bangassou, about 474 km east of the capital, Bangui. The press release said that eight peacekeepers were also injured, including one Cambodian and seven Moroccans. Besides, a Moroccan peacekeeper was still missing. The UN mission said it would do everything possible to ensure that the perpetrators of the attack, who fled into the bush, are arrested so that they could be brought to justice. Cambodia has sent peacekeepers to join a UN peacekeeping operation in the war-torn CAR since 2014. Currently, some 216 Cambodian peacekeepers are stationed there. Sorry! This content is not available in your region Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today Snow this morning will give way to partly cloudy conditions this afternoon. High 21F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 90%. About one inch of snow expected.. Tonight Cloudy. Snow showers developing late. Low 14F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 40%. New Delhi: The Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) who is gearing up to release board exam results by end of May has now published an update on the evaluation of Bihar Board Answer Sheets of the Class 10. The BSEB on Monday assured the Class X board examinees that they will get full marks for the incorrect answer key provided to the evaluators. According to the chairman of BSEB Mr Anand Kishor, The Board will provide full marks to the candidates if there is incorrect answer providing in the answey key given to the evaluators. A lot of complaints have been registered by the evaluators regarding the mistake in the answer keys of social science, science, and mathematics papers, which were earlier issued to the evaluators. A three-tier committee comprising BSEB secretary Anup Kumar Sinha, academic director AK Pandaya and chief vigilance officer Sudhir Srivastava has been constituted. "The committee will inquiry into the matter and the teachers who prepared the answer key of these subjects will be blacklisted. The committee will also ensure that there is no mistake in the answer key of other subjects of Class X board exam. They will also ensure that such mistakes are not committed in future," said Kishor. "The evaluation work is over. So, it is wise to award the marks for wrong answer key as it is not possible for the evaluators to go through each and every answer book once again. It will only delay the result," he said. Over 17.6 lakh students appeared for Class X board exam this year. According to BSEB the first errors in answer was pointed out by the members of Bihar Secondary School Teacher's Association (BSSTA) on Sunday. Also Read: GSEB HSC Class 12 Science Result 2017 to be announced today by GSHSEB at 10 AM BSSTA general secretary Shatrughan Prasad Singh said it happened because of the carelessness of the board and allowing the primary and middle school teachers to evaluate the answer books of matriculation examination. "The decision taken by the board is injustice to those who have given the right answers as those who answered wrong will also get full marks for nothing," he said. "We found so many problems in objective-type questions, but we can only guess how many errors were in the subjective ones. We had warned the board and the state government not to rope in primary and middle school teachers, but they didn't pay heed. Now, who will pay the consequences? The board has played with the future of the children," said Singh. The result will be announced on the official web site i.e will be announced online on Biharboard.ac.in, Biharboardresults.net or Biharboard.bih.nic.in. About BSEB Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) has published the update on the evaluation of Bihar Board Answer Sheets of the Class 10. According to the chairman of BSEB Mr Anand Kishor, The Board will provide full marks to the candidates if there is incorrect answer providing in the answey key given to the evaluators. A lot of complaints have been registered by the evaluators regarding the mistake in the answer keys of social science, science, and mathematics papers, which were earlier issued to the evaluators. New Delhi: Escalating its crusade against use of Electronic Voting Machines in elections, the Aam Aadmi Party will take its fight to the doorstep of the Election Commission on Thursday. AAP also demands use of VVPAT-equipped voting machines in all future elections. The AAP declared that its Delhi MLAs and senior leaders will lead a protest rallySave Democracy Movement -- in front of the Election Commission office in Central Delhi around 11AM on Thursday. Casting aside the poll panels assertion that EVMs cannot be manipulated, the party claimed that its MLA Saurabh Bhardwajs live demonstration in the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday had conclusively proven that EVMs can be rigged. AAP Delhi convenor Gopal Rai told a news conference that the party would participate in an all-party meeting called by the EC on the issue on May 12 and decide the next course of action based on its outcome. The Commission in its response said we used a dummy and not an actual machine in yesterdays demonstration. We request the EC to arrange a hackathon. We will show how its own machines can be rigged, Rai said. Apart from demanding that voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT)-equipped EVMs be used, the party will approach the EC with the request that votes registered in EVMs and paper trails of 25 per cent randomly chosen booths be tallied, Rai said. The VVPAT-equipped EVMs dispense a paper slip which helps a voter confirm that his vote has indeed gone to the candidate of his choice. Participating in a discussion on the issue during a day-long special session of the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday, Bhardwaj claimed that a voting machine could be manipulated by simply feeding it with a secret code. Using what his party claimed was a prototype EVM developed by a group of IITians, Bhardwaj, himself an engineer, showed how it could be tampered with to favour a particular candidate. Also read: Election Commission rejects AAPs EVM tampering demonstrations, says look-alike gadget is not its machine Also read: Arvind Kejriwal dares Election Commission to provide EVM to AAP, claims it can be tampered in flat 90 seconds For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday stoked controversy, asking if anyone ever witnessed martyr from Gujarat. Yadav said the country has witnessed several martyrs from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and southern part of the country, but has anyone ever seen martyr from Gujarat. The former chief ministers statement comes on the close heels of skirmish along the LoC in the Valley. Yadavs statement is a veiled attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he hails from the state. UP, Madhya Pradesh, Dakshin Bharat har jagah se shaheed huye hain, Gujarat ka koi jawan shaheed hua ho toh batao: Akhilesh Yadav pic.twitter.com/1eN85HemJh ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 10, 2017 On Wednesday, Akhilesh had cornered the previous government over the law and order situation in the state has been reduced to a "mute spectator". "Samajwadi Party is quiet and is not registering any protest against the BJP government at present. But, if the law and order situation remains like this, the party will certainly review its strategy. Ever since the BJP took charge of the state, there has been deterioration of law and order on a daily basis. The BJP leaders used to corner the SP a few days back on the issue of law and order. But today, they are silent, and are not issuing any statement. The government has become a mute spectator," he had told reporters in Kanpur. Also Read: BJP mocks at Akhilesh Yadav, describes him as 'confused' chief of Samajwadi Party For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Army on Wednesday assured the family of martyred young Kashmiri Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz that the perpetrators will be punished as the Defence Minister called it a dastardly act of cowardice by the militants. The Indian army officer, who received multiple bullet injuries on his body, has been identified as Umar Fayaz, who belonged to Kulgam. Reports said that Fayaz was abducted by terrorists on Tuesday following which he was shot dead and his body was disposed. I assure the family that the perpetrators of this heinous crime and dastardly act will not be spared, Lt Gen Abhay Krishna, General Officer Commanding-in Chief of South Western Command and Colonel of Rajputana Riffles, said. Fayaz, hailing from Kulgam in South Kashmir, was with Rajputana Rifles and had taken leave to attend the wedding. He was commissioned into the Army on December 10 last year and according to his colleagues, he was popular for his simplicity and honesty. Expressing anguish over the killing of the young officer Jaitley said Fayazs sacrifice reiterates the nations commitment to eliminate terrorism from the Valley and that he would continue to inspire youth from Kashmir. Abduction & murder of Lt. Ummer Fayaz by terrorists in Shopian is a dastardly act of cowardice. This young officer from J&K was a role model, Jaitley said in a tweet. Also read: Kashmir: Army officer Umar Fayaz, abducted and killed by militants in Shopian, was commissioned only 5 months ago For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Almost ten days after two jawans of the Indian army soldiers were mutilated by Pakistan in Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir, a bullet-ridden body of an army lieutenant has been found in Shopian district's Herman area in South Kashmir, reports said on Wednesday. The Indian army officer, who received multiple bullet injuries on his body, has been identified as Umar Fayaz, who belonged to Kulgam. Reports said that Fayaz was abducted by terrorists on Tuesday following which he was shot dead and his body was disposed. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley has condemned the act callinng it 'dastardly and cowardice.' "Abduction & murder of Lt. Ummer Fayaz by terrorists is dastardly act of cowardice. This young officer from J&K was a role model," he said. He was abducted and shot dead by militants in Shopian district where he had gone to attend the wedding ceremony of a relative. Lieutenant Umer Fayaz was abducted by five to six militants from his relatives house in south Kashmirs Shopian last night. His bullet riddled body was found in Harmain area of Shopian this morning, a police official said. Fayaz was in the Infantry and was posted in Akhnoor area in Jammu. He was commissioned in the Army in December last year. In a dastardly act, some unidentified terrorists yesterday abducted and then killed a young Army officer, Lt Umer Fayaz, an army official said. He said the officer, who was unarmed, had come to his native Kulgam district on leave for attending a wedding in his family. The Army salutes the braveheart and stands by the bereaved family in this hour of tragedy, the official said, adding, we are committed to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act of terror to justice. ALSO READ | Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat to hold high-level meeting after two soldiers mutilated by Pak troops On May 1, the bodies of two Indian soldiers, who were martyred following a ceasefire violation by Pak in Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir, were mutilated by Pakistan. Pakistani troops had violated ceasefire along the Line of Control in Poonch sector, attacking a patrol team near the border. A BSF soldier and a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) of the Indian Army were martyred in the firing by Pakistan Rangers. On April 19, Pakistani troops resorted to mortar shelling and firing on Indian posts along LoC in the same area. Pakistan violated the ceasefire on April 8 in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir as it resorted to firing at Indian posts. On April 5, ceasefire violation was reported along the LoC in Poonch district, while on April 4, similar incidents took place in Bhimbher Gali sector of Rajouri district. ALSO READ | Poonch: Bodies of two Indian soldiers mutilated by Pakistani troops, Indian army warns of 'appropriate response' Pakistani troops had shelled mortar bombs on forward posts in Balakote sector of Rajouri district on April 3. (With inputs from PTI) J&K: Bullet ridden body of a Army lieutenant found in Shopian district's Herman, in South Kashmir; identified as Umar Fayaz from Kulgam pic.twitter.com/lmeOU3Kgsa ANI (@ANI_news) May 10, 2017 For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Islamabad: Pakistan Foreign Office has said that a decision on India's request for consular access for Kulbhsuhan Jadhav will be taken on "the basis of merit". Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said Pakistan and India have a bilateral agreement on consular access but all cases have to be decided on merit. "In all such cases...the request of this nature would be decided on the basis of merit," he said at a media briefing Thursday. Zakaria said India had summoned Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner over consular access to Jadhav but this was not something new. It was a reaction after the death sentence awarded to Jadhav, he said. Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale after meeting Pakistan Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua earlier this week had said that he had asked for consular access to Jadhav for the 14th time. In response, Pakistan had said in a statement that India, in several cases, had denied consular access to Pakistani prisoners for years. Separately, army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor had ruled out consular access to Jadhav. "Under the law we cannot give consular access to Kulbhushan who was involved in spying," Ghafoor had told reporters. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Rebel AAP leader Kapil Mishra on Wednesday said that he has received life threats from an international number on WhatsApp. While talking to reporters, Mishra said he has been receiving life threats, but he is not afraid of anything. Before sitting on Satyagrah, Mishra alleged that he will sit on Satyagrah till he gets a clarification on details of international travel expenses of some senior AAP leaders. He also wrote an open letter to the Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal asking him to make public the details of foreign trips of its five leaders, Sanjay Singh, Satyendar Jain, Raghav Chaddha, Ashish Khetan , and Durgesh Pathak. I have been getting life threats, got a threat also from an international number. But I am not afraid of anything: Kapil Mishra pic.twitter.com/t9XQtu4Dgz ANI (@ANI_news) May 10, 2017 On Tuesday, the former Delhi water minister had submitted three complaints to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), charging Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and minister Satyendar Jain with corruption and other irregularities. Sitting on a 'Satyagraha' till I get a clarification on details of international travel expenses of some senior AAP leaders: Kapil Mishra pic.twitter.com/8Gts3CfOVh ANI (@ANI_news) May 10, 2017 The CBI had said it was "examining and verifying" the allegations. The agency had received three complaints from Mishra, former Water and Tourism minister, in which he levelled charges of bribery and other irregularities against functionaries of Delhi Government, CBI Spokesperson R K Gaur said. The Karawal Nagar MLA, who was suspended from the primary membership of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), had threatened to launch a hunger strike from Wednesday if the party did not make public financial details of five AAP leaders' foreign trips. Also Read | AAP Crisis: Kapil Mishra files 3 complaints against Kejriwal in CBI office, says will got to Election Commission next For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Averting major threat in Valley, the Indian Army has foiled an infiltration bid by militants along the Line of Control in Baramulla district of Kashmir on Wednesday. An official informed that there were no casualties in the incident and the militants were forced to retreat to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Army troops opened fire on a group of terrorists attempting to sneak into our territory yesterday night and forced them back across the Line of Control in Rampur sector of Baramulla district, the official said. The Army has launched a combing operation in the area to ensure that none of the militants managed to get in. Also Read | Number of militant camps increased across LoC after surgical strike by Indian army: Officials For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The International Court of Justice announced on Wednesday that public hearings on Kulbhushan Jadhav case will be held on Monday, May 15. "The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, will hold public hearings on Monday 15 May 2017... in the proceedings insituted by the Republic of India on 8 May 2017 against the Islamaic Republic of Pakistan," the statement said. Earlier, senior lawyer Harish Salve who is representing India at the Hague said that the next hearing in the case of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav at the International Court of Justice that has stayed his execution in Pakistan, may take place on May 15. Salve said Pakistans immediate reaction to the stay, pronounced on Wednesday, was essentially political and that India will respond if it raises any legal issue. We moved (the ICJ) for provisional relief. The case depends on also how much time Pakistan wants to put in its response to the petition which we have filed. Tentatively it will be on 15th (of May). We may have to be there and we have informed the court we are available any day next week, he told Times Now. On consular access to 47-year-old Jadhav, Salve said there are provisions in the Vienna Convention under which when a person is arrested in a foreign country, the counsel of his country has to be informed. The counsel of the country to which the man belongs has the right of access to that person. The basic idea is that if you are caught in a place where you are a stranger, people from your country are there to help you, he said. Also read: Pak PM Nawaz Sharif discusses Kulbhushan Jadhav's case with Army chief Bajwa Also read: Sachin: A Billion Dreams | This new song will take you on a nostalgic trip For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Union Home Ministry has been directed by the Supreme Court to secure and ensure the presence of embattled businessman Vijay Mallya, who is currently in the United Kingdom, before it on July 10 regarding the hearing on the quantam of punishment for contempt of court. Mallya has been held guilty by the apex court of contempt of court for disobeying its orders by not disclosing full particulars of his assets. Further, he has also violated the orders of Karnataka High Court by transferring USD 40 million received from British firm Diageo, to his three children. India had recently asked Britain to ensure early extradition of Mallya, who is an accused in a bank loan default case of more than Rs 9,000 crore involving his defunct Kingfisher Airlines. We direct the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi to secure and ensure presence of Vijay Mallya before this court on July 10, 2017. A copy of this judgment be sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs for compliance, a bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit said. As far as the offence of contempt of court is concerned, it entails a maximum imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of upto Rs 2,000 or both. The SC bench said that that Mallya has neither filed a reply to the contempt plea, nor has he appeared in person before it. As he has been found guilty of contempt of court, we deem it necessary to give him one more opportunity and also hear him on the proposed punishment. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya under UK judicial process, India doing its best, says Arun Jaitley We, therefore, adjourn matter to July 10 for hearing Vijay Mallya in person on matters in issue, including one regarding the proposed punishment to be awarded to him for contempt of court, the court said in its 26-page judgement. The SC order came on a plea by the consortium of banks, led by the State Bank of India (SBI), which claimed said that the beleaguered businessman Mallya had not disclosed full particulars of his assets apart from violating several judicial orders. In its verdict, the bench also noted that the orders passed by the apex court were clear and unambiguous and Mallya was called upon to make complete disclosure of his assets. READ: After fugitive Vijay Mallyas arrest, PM Modi tweets no place for corruption in India Whether the assets to be so disclosed were covered by the personal guarantee given by Mallya or not was immaterial. He was called upon to make a complete disclosure and was bound to comply with the directions, it said. The court also termed as correct the assertion made by the banks that details of bank account held in Edmond De Rothschild Bank were never disclosed by Mallya. In fact, no details of any bank account with overseas banks were given by Mallya. The violation by Mallya could not be termed as a mere infraction. Rather, it becomes more pronounced because it is this very account held in Edmand De Rothschild Bank that was utilised to transmit funds to the tune of USD 40 million, the bench noted. READ: India to make strong case for extradition of Vijay Mallya from United Kingdom Referring to the Karnataka High Court order, the apex court said it restrained Mallya and others from transferring, alienating, disposing or creating third-party rights in respect of movable and immovable properties belonging to them till further orders in the proceedings before it. It also said that all the properties, whether movable or immovable, were governed by the orders of restraint by the high court. There is no ambiguity of any sort and the orders of restraint are quite clear. Consequently, funds amounting to USD 40 million which came to be under the control of and in the hands of Vijay Mallya were completely covered and governed by said orders of restraint, the bench said. The explanation that the funds now stand transferred in favour of the trusts over which Mallya has no control at all, in fact aggravates the extent of violation. It is clear that the funds which were in control of Mallya have now been sought to be put beyond the reach of processes of court, which is reflective of the intent, it said. READ: ED to file its first charge sheet case against Vijay Mallya and others in IDBI bank loan default case The bench further said the least that was expected of Mallya was to disclose the relevant facts pertaining to receipt and disbursement of USD 40 million.Having considered the entirety of the matter, we find that Vijay Mallya is guilty of having committed contempt of court on both the counts, it said and directed Mallya to keep his affidavit ready to be tendered on July 10 by stating the mitigating circumstances, if any, and any other submissions he chooses to advance. The banks had alleged that Mallya had concealed the facts and diverted the money to his son Siddharth Mallya and daughters Leanna Mallya and Tanya Mallya in flagrant violation of the orders passed by the Karnataka High Court. Mallyas counsel had said that money which came from Diageo belonged to his children and not him. With PTI inputs For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: YSR Congress Party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy claimed on Wednesday that his party will provide support to any candidate that BJP fields for the upcoming presidential election. He had a meeting with PM Modi in New Delhi at the latter's official residence and discussed the issue with him. "We will support any candidate the BJP fields as we havevery less difference in opinion. Except for differences on theland acquisition bill and special status for Andhra Pradesh,we share similar opinions on various issues which we think arepro-people," Jagan said. "Also, the BJP has enough support for its candidate towin. Opposing their candidate and fielding another will notmake sense," he said. Jagan Mohan Reddy is the leader of opposition in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly where the ruling TDP is a partner ofthe BJP-led NDA alliance. The presidential election is set to occur in July and opposition unity for contesting it may well be a precursor to an anti-NDA front ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury recently met Congress president Sonia Gandhi to explore the possibility of fielding a joint candidate for the presidential poll and RJD boss Lalu Prasad discussed cobbling together a Bihar- style 'mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance). In Wednesdays meeting, Jagan discussed various issues with the prime minister while demanding disqualification of four MLAs from his party who switched over to the Telugu Desam Party and were made ministers in the recent Cabinet reshuffle. Moreover, he also sought justice for those affected in the AgriGold Estates and Farms scam, better support price for chillifarmers in Andhra Pradesh and granting special status for thestate. "We also gave a booklet, 'Emperor of Corruption', broughtout by the YSRCP, to the prime minister. The booklet talksabout the corruption by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu,"he said. With PTI inputs For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Baby Louie, the celebrated infant dinosaur, was discovered in the early 1990s tucked in a nest of eggs in Henan Province, in central China. The dinosaur orphan, a 90-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur embryo, was found among a clutch of squash-shaped eggs that measured about 18 inches long and 6 inches wide. Because of the size, these eggs are among the largest dinosaur eggs ever discovered. However, the remains of their parents were untraceable and hence their species was unknown. There were all sorts of speculation on what laid the eggs; was it the tyrannosaur? said Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Now after nearly 25 years, their species has finally been revealed by Dr. Zelenitsky and her colleagues, who have linked the infant dinosaurs with their prehistoric lineage. According to them, Baby Louie and its family are from a group of large, birdlike dinosaurs known as giant oviraptorosaurs. Heavy as a rhino and tall as an elephant, this species of dinosaurs resembles cassowaries and ostriches. Baby Loui has now become the first found member belonging to a new species of giant oviraptorosaur called Beibeilong sinensis, which roughly means Chinese baby dragon. We finally know the parentage of the largest known dinosaur eggs, Dr. Zelenitsky said. The discovery has been published in the journal Nature Communications. Such massive eggs are called Macroelongatoolithus eggs and they have also been discovered in North America. Typically arranged in a large ring, there are up to about 30 dinosaur eggs in a nest. Among all the eggs, only the one which was home to Baby Louie had a skeleton that was closely related to the eggs. Baby Loui provided the closest and best clues for finding out what creatures could produce such massive eggs. Baby Louie was discovered between December 1992 and 1993 in China. A fossil dealer named Charlie Magovern unexpectedly found the fossilized fetus bones after he came into possession of rocks. Baby Louie was featured on the cover photo of National Geographic in 1996 and was named after the photographer who wrote the feature article Louie Psihoyos. Until 2001, Baby Louie remained with fossil dealers. The Indianapolis Childrens Museum then bought it from the dealers and put it on display for around 12 years. An exciting discovery was made in China during this time the first giant oviraptorosaur fossil was unearthed in 2007. Previously known of oviraptors, Paleontologists were aware of the fact that Baby Louie resembled one. However, all the oviraptors discovered until that time were too small to have laid such massive eggs. However, the idea that the massive eggs came from a giant oviraptorosaur seemed plausible after the discovery of one-ton oviraptorosaur. Finally here it is there are giant oviraptorosaurs that could have laid these eggs, Dr. Zelenitsky said. ALSO READ | 160-million-year old dinosaur discovered in France, identified as earliest relative of Brachiosaurs Still, even after the giant oviraptorosaurs were discovered, it took another decade for the researchers to publish the connection. Dr. Zelenitsky and her colleagues were concerned about the legal status of the fossil and they wanted to wait until Baby Loui was repatriated to China. The fossilized embryo was finally put on display in the Henan Geological Museum in Zhengzhou in 2013. In 2015, some members of the team visited the site in China where Baby Louie was discovered and found fossilized egg shells that were identical to the ones from Baby Louies nest. ALSO READ | 66-million-year-old last dinosaur that lived in Africa discovered in Morocco For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Melbourne: In a breakthrough, scientists have discovered the oldest evidence of life on land in 3.48-billion-year-old rocks in Australia. According to scientists, the evidence found in the hot spring deposits in Australia suggests that life reached land for the first time some 580-million-years earlier that thought. Researchers said the discovery could help unravelling the mystery and may solve the debates in evolution whether life erupted in small, terrestrial ponds or in deep ocean. Previously, 2.7-2.9 billion-year-old deposits in South Africa containing organic matter-rich ancient soils provided oldest evidence for microbial life on land. Scientists at University of New South Wales (UNSW) have now discovered fossils in 3.48 billion year old hot spring deposits in the Pilbara region of Western Australia that have pushed back by 580 million years the earliest known existence of microbial life on land. Our exciting findings do not just extend back the record of life living in hot springs by 3 billion years, they indicate that life was inhabiting the land much earlier than previously thought, by up to about 580 million years, said UNSW PhD candidate Tara Djokic. This may have implications for an origin of life in freshwater hot springs on land, rather than the more widely discussed idea that life developed in the ocean and adapted to land later, said Djokic, first author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications. Scientists are considering two hypotheses regarding the origin of life. Either that it began in deep sea hydrothermal vents, or alternatively that it began on land in a version of English biologist Charles Darwins warm little pond. The discovery of potential biological signatures in these ancient hot springs in Western Australia provides a geological perspective that may lend weight to a land-based origin of life, said Djokic. The finding also has major implications for the search for life on Mars, because the red planet has ancient hot spring deposits of a similar age to the Dresser Formation in the Pilbara, researchers said. Of the top three potential landing sites for the Mars 2020 rover, Columbia Hills is indicated as a hot spring environment, said Djokic. If life can be preserved in hot springs so far back in Earths history, then there is a good chance it could be preserved in Martian hot springs too, Djokic said. Researchers, including Professor Kathleen Campbell of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, studied exceptionally well-preserved deposits which are about 3.5 billion years old in the ancient Dresser Formation. They interpreted the deposits were formed on land, not in the ocean, by identifying the presence of geyserite - a mineral deposit formed from near boiling-temperature, silica-rich, fluids that is only found in a terrestrial hot spring environment. Previously, the oldest known geyserite had been identified from rocks about 400 million years old. Within the Pilbara hotspring deposits, the researchers also discovered stromatolites - layered rock structures created by communities of ancient microbes. There were other signs of early life in the deposits as well, including fossilised micro-stromatolites, microbial palisade texture and well preserved bubbles that are inferred to have been trapped in a sticky substance (microbial) to preserve the bubble shape. This shows a diverse variety of life existed in fresh water, on land, very early in Earths history, said Professor Professor Martin Van Kranendonk, Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. Video | Proof of life on Mars: Alien-hunters spot tree stump on red surface The Pilbara deposits are the same age as much of the crust of Mars, which makes hot spring deposits on the red planet an exciting target for our quest to find fossilised life there, said Kranendonk. ALSO READ | Hunting for alien life: Super-Earth LHS 1140b could be the best exoplanet to search signs of life (With inputs from PTI) For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Making another attempt to seek global attention on Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan has raised the very issue with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, calling for a peaceful settlement with India in a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Pakistans Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi highlighted the critical situation of Kashmir during the over hour-long meeting at the world bodys headquarters on Monday between OIC ambassadors with the UN Secretary-General. Lodhi called for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue at the meeting, saying the escalating tensions could destabilise South Asia, sources said. Lodhi said that to avert another crisis in the subcontinent, the longstanding issue of Kashmir on the UN agenda and one that figures in every OIC Communique, must be addressed. Other issues like Palestine, Islamophobia and the situation being faced by Rohingya Muslims also came up at the meeting. Guterres is closely following the situation in Kashmir amid escalating tensions at the border between India and Pakistan but has not made any direct intervention to resolve the issue. His spokesperson has repeatedly said that the UN Chief reiterates his call for India and Pakistan to find a peaceful solution through engagement and dialogue to resolve the Kashmir issue. Also Read: China declines to confirm backing Pakistan on Kashmir Tensions have escalated between the two nations after two Indian jawans were killed and mutilated in Kashmir in unprovoked firing by Pakistan last week. Earlier in January this year, shortly after Guterres took charge as the UN Chief, Lodhi had delivered a dossier on India?s alleged interference and terrorism? in Pakistan to Guterres, along with a letter from Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz. Last year, India had slammed the OIC, an influential grouping of Muslim countries, for making misleading references to the Kashmir issue during its conclave in October, saying the bloc has no locus standi to comment on Indias internal matters. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa Wednesday discussed the International Court of Justices stay order on the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, media reports said. During the meeting, which lasted for around 90 minutes, Sharif was briefed on the latest situation regarding Jadhavs case, the Geo News reported. The International Court of Justice Tuesday in a letter to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had asked to stay the death sentence of Kulbhushan Jadhav. Last year, Pakistan arrested Kulbhushan Jadhav, a retired Indian naval officer, on alleged charges of 'spying'. He was later sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Also Read| Kulbhushan Jadhav death sentence: International Court of Justice stays hanging of Indian national in Pakistan Jadhavs death sentence had resulted in a major diplomatic face-off between two rival nations and India had been trying hard to get Jadhav back. In the meeting, Sharif and Bajwa also discussed other issues including the Dawn leaks controversy and Pak-Afghan relations, the channel said. The meeting between the army chief and the premier is the second one within a week and is significant in light of the civil-military row over Dawns leaked report that had angered the powerful army. On May 6, Prime Minister Sharif had met the army chief and both discussed the Dawn Leaks issue, among other things. Sharif and the army chief had agreed that the issues surrounding Dawn leaks would be dealt with amicably. In October, a columnist for Dawn newspaper wrote a front-page story about a rift between civilian and military leaderships over militant groups that operate from Pakistan but engage in proxy war against India and Afghanistan. The army took strong exception to the Dawn story. The military had called the leak of the meeting a breach of national security and urged strong, punitive action against those responsible for leaking information to the newspaper. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Whatever happened to Lock her up? Clinton exposed as an international WAR CRIMINAL for actions in Libya During then-Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trumps campaign, his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI for her use of a private, unsecured email server to exchange classified information. At a number of his rallies, Trump led chants of, Lock her up! many of his supporters believing, as FBI Director James Comey appeared to as well, that she was indeed guilty of violating laws governing the handling of classified materials. Trump himself even said he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton at a campaign rally in Panama City in October, before the election. However, that pledge appears to be on hold, at least for the moment. But should it be? Not if you take into account recent revelations from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose site recently released another trove of emails and documents showing Clinton may be criminally culpable for her handling of Libya. (RELATED: The Only Thing Hillary Clinton Has Done For Military Veterans Is Get Some Of Them Killed) As reported by The Free Thought Project, Assange has fought against criticism and threats of legal action from U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle, with Democrats and Republicans blaming him, and not guilty U.S. intelligence agencies or their own oversight shortcomings, for releasing information showing malfeasance on the part of the U.S. government. As such, he frequently points out the hypocrisy of Congress and U.S. government officials condemning him while still claiming to support the constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of the press. Clinton, in particular, has an ax to grind with Assange, for it was WikiLeaks that exposed her precious Democratic National Committee and beloved close advisor, John Podesta, as crooked and politically motivated to skew the nomination in her favor and against her chief primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. For the record, Clinton and her allies are upset at the release of the data; no one has ever claimed the information leaked was false. In any event, in a recent interview with RT, which is admittedly is a Russian government-controlled media outlet, Assange labeled Clinton the butcher of Libya after she called his organization Russian WikiLeaks. During a recent appearance where Clinton discussed her election loss, she claimed that she takes absolute personal responsibility right before she goes on to blame Russian WikiLeaks and Comey for her loss. The combination of WikiLeaks damning revelations (again, none of which Clinton has refuted) and Comeys late-October notification to Congress his agency was examining new email evidence discovered after the case was closed over the summer raised doubts in the minds of people inclined to vote for me, but got scared off. In other words, she lost because of WikiLeaks and Comey, not because she was a terrible candidate who got beaten by a much better candidate. In a tweet, Assange noted: Two lies in one screenshot: the butcher of Libya Hillary Clinton blames Russian WikiLeaks while sitting in front of #SheBringsPeace sign. Two lies in one screenshot: the butcher of LibyaHillary Clintonblames "Russian WikiLeaks" while sitting in front of #SheBringsPeace sign pic.twitter.com/mRyZTo85T7 Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) May 3, 2017 The truth is this: Clintons foreign policy throughout the Middle East was an unmitigated, amateurish disaster, claims of her being the smartest woman ever notwithstanding. Every Middle Eastern nation, save Egypt, collapsed in anarchy and war after her policies were enacted, and now there are a number of failed Middle East states Libya, Syria and Yemen, to name three as a result. As for Libya, that was all Clinton. Prior to the Day of Rage there Feb. 17, 2011, the country had a budget surplus of 8.7 percent of GDP the year before, and oil production of 1.8 million barrels per day, set to reach its goal of 3 million bpd. (RELATED: Goodbye, Obama, you sleeper cell traitor and enemy of America (you wont be missed) Before Clintons intervention and success in getting Obama to support the rebels with air power, the country was stable, secular and invaluable in terms of providing intelligence on post-9/11 terrorist activities. After the rebels destroyed the government and all functional vestiges of it, GDP plunged nearly 42 percent, oil production by 80 percent, and generated a national deficit of 17.1 percent of the economy all in 2011 alone, The National Interest reported. Before the Benghazi disaster, which Clinton and Obama lied about afterward, there were a number of opportunities to pursue valid ceasefire agreements to prevent further bloodshed. But Clinton intervened and pursued a policy of revolution instead, one backed by her boss. Today, four factions are competing to lead the country. Without a doubt, Clinton should be investigated and, if the evidence proves, put on trial. Let a jury decide her innocence, not Barack Obama and Loretta Lynch. Learn more at Clinton.news. J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel. Sources: RT.com NationalInterest.com TheDailySheeple.com NationalSecurity.news Submit a correction >> HARTFORD The House on Wednesday morning unanimously approved a ban on the harvesting or killing of horseshoe crabs along a section of the Stratford shoreline where the primitive shellfish spawn. The bill, passed 136-0, next heads to the Senate. It would create $90 fines for those caught killing the crabs or using them for fishing bait. RIDGEFIELD Voters have approved a $141.54 million budget for next year and nearly $3.9 million in capital projects for the town and schools. The budget, which includes a town budget of $47.07 million and a $92.63 million school budget, will increase taxes by 1.92 percent next year. Included in the budget is $1.84 million for roads and infrastructure. The results, which are unofficial, were reported by First Selectman Rudy Marconi after polls closed Tuesday night. Were very pleased that the voters turned out and passed everything, Marconi said. We appreciate those who did come out and vote for doing so. Voters approved the town budget by a vote of 1,843-595, and the school budget by 1,478-960. Marconi said 2,444 votes were cast, about 13 percent of the towns 18,000 registered voters. The school board cut about $1 million from its proposal last month. The $92.63 million school budget will be an increase of 2.5 percent over this years spending. The finance board cut $884,000 from the schools original proposal with potential cuts in state education aid in mind. The biggest driver of the schools increase was employee health insurance costs. About $14.4 million of the original budget proposal was allotted for benefits, which increased 9.18 percent over this year, Superintendent Karen Baldwin said in a budget hearing last month. The town operating budget of $35.55 million is a 2.45 percent increase over this years spending after the finance board made $60,000 in cuts to the selectmens original proposal. Board of Finance Chair Dave Ulmer said board members decided to use about $1.8 million from the towns fund balance to keep the tax increase under 2 percent. Property taxes will increase 1.92 percent under the budgets, making the new mill rate $27.21 for every $1,000 assesed valuation. Several capital projects, totaling about $3.9 million, were approved Tuesday. The projects include $900,000 for improvements to the Branchville train station area, which the town has applied to be covered by a state grant. Marconi said the money will cover phase one, including adding sidewalks to make it more user-friendly, of the total $2 million plan for the area after a transit-oriented development study was completed this year. But he said the town wont move forward without the state money. Nothing gets spent unless we receive the grant, Marconi said. A $950,000 project was approved to pay for repairs to the towns Recreation Center, where leaking pipes have caused structural damage in the walls. About $988,000 was approved to buy several town vehicles and to replace the towns fuel tanks, which were red-tagged by the state last month. Three school projects, totaling about $1 million, were approved. The schools expect to save about $250,000 through a energy-conservation plan that will cost $378,000. The other two projects include $550,000 for an upgrade to the phone system and $106,000 in sidewalk and curbing repairs. Voters already approved 32 capital projects, all under $100,000, at last weeks town budget meeting. aquinn@newstimes.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BROOKFIELD Residents can remember World War I through a new exhibit opening this weekend featuring hundreds of artifacts that showcase the soldiers experience and the towns involvement in the war. The Brookfield Museum and Historical Society will open The Yanks are Coming to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into the war at a reception from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The exhibit will stay open during the same time period on Saturdays through much of the summer. We thought wed provide this for the community, not only for the visuals, but for the educational aspect, said Gene Roberts, publicity director for the society. Most of the memorabilia is on loan from two collectors and re-enactors, William Baldwin, of Middlefield, and Peter Tragni, who lives in Waterbury but served as a police officer in Danbury for years. The rest was donated from area residents whose relatives served in the war. Nearly everything displayed, including uniforms and weapons, is original. That, to me, adds a lot to the feel of the exhibit, Roberts said. A section of the exhibit lists the names of town residents who served in the war or in the Brookfield Home Guard, which was made up of men too old to fight overseas. Some locals also donated photos of relatives in uniform. Among the highlights of the exhibit are artifacts lent by former Brookfield resident Peter Markle, whose paternal grandfather, Clifford Markle, served in the Battle of Seicheprey and at one point was gassed and captured. Clifford Markle, who was awarded the Purple Heart, in 1920 published a book called A Yankee Prisoner in Hunland that details his experience in the war and includes a foreword written by ex-President William Howard Taft. Both the Purple Heart and the book are on display. Tragni said it was common for soldiers to publish books after the war, but that they were rarely offered for sale. Now something that had been lost has been brought back, he said. Contemporary posters on loan from the Gunn Memorial Library and Museum in Washington line the exhibition walls. Several encouraged people to buy Liberty Loans as part of what Roberts said was the propaganda campaign to get Americans behind the war. Back then, they didnt have tweets, they didnt have social media, so they had to use print media, Roberts said. In Brookfield, which in 1910 was home to a little more than 1,100 people, most of them relatively poor farmers, residents donated an impressive $88,500 to the war effort. That is a lot of money, so people rallied to the cause, Roberts said. Several of the pieces come from the 26th Division, which was made up of soldiers from New England, and the 27th Division, which was of the few American units attached to the British army and was mainly made up of soldiers from New York. Brookfield men fought in both divisions. While most of the artifacts are behind glass, kids can try on a soldiers tunic and helmet and take a picture in front of a large photo of an airfield. The kids can wear a uniform, put on a tin hat and it might pique their interest in history, he said. Tragni said he hopes young people will be inspired to study World War I, so that these artifacts can be passed along to future generations during the 200th anniversary of the war. We want to preserve the history, he said. We dont want it to be lost in history. Its important to find value in your job -- its where you spend at least 40 hours of your week. And whether youre the CEO of a company or an entry-level employee, everyone should feel like their job has purpose. Angela Felix reminds us that whatever you do for a living, you should always do your best and feel good about it too. Related: Study Shows Entrepreneurs Really Do Love Their Businesses Like Their Children Felix is a tech support worker for Blue Cross Blue Shield in Arizona. She spends a majority of her day on the phone assisting customers -- much of the time, frustrated customers. And while being on the help desk doesnt get the best reputation as it involves solving other peoples problems, handling angry customers and keeping your cool, Felix finds her job inspiring and rewarding. And if youve got that kind of mindset, you can pretty much do anything. Image credit: Angela Felix | Linkedin After someone insulted Felixs job, she defended her title because hey -- she loves what she does. To Felix, her job isnt getting yelled at by angry customers, its about solving problems and helping people. Related: Why Life Is Too Short to Work Somewhere You Don't Care About She took to LinkedIn to come back at the person who tried to take a stab at her career. "I had someone recently make a jab at my job title, calling my Help Desk Lead role a 'little beetle bailey help desk job.' "It bothered me and I found myself trying to justify why I'm almost 40 and not in a management or director-level role in IT after 13 years. This is why. "I love what I do. Do I like resetting passwords for the same folks every day? No. But I do love the sound of relief after I have. I'm grateful I'm the first person people reach out to when they don't know what to do. I like knowing people feel they can count on me to get the job done right the first time. I'm blessed enough to be trusted by my company with access to just about any application we have, and I'm thankful my team respects me enough to hang on for the ride. So...so what I have a 'beetle bailey help desk job.' At least I find value in people and not titles." Related: How Bear Grylls Turned a Skillset Into Stardom This Help Desk Worker's Defense of Her Job Will Inspire You to Do Your Best Get Inspired by These 7 Epic Losers Who Bounced Back From Failure Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved NYSE - MKT: ASM TSX-V: ASM FSE: GV6 VANCOUVER, May 10, 2017 /CNW/ - Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. (ASM: TSX-V, ASM: NYSEMKT, GV6: FSE, "Avino" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the consolidated financial results for the Company's first quarter ended March 31, 2017. The financial statements and the management discussion and analysis can be viewed on the Company's web site at www.avino.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. "We are pleased to commence reporting in USD, which will better reflect the Company's business activities and will, therefore, improve investors' ability to compare the Company's financial results with other publicly tradeoutd mining companies. Our Q1 results reflect improvements in revenues, operating income, and net income. We remain focused on our objectives which include our expansion plans announced in January that are progressing very well, and we are confident that the implementation of these important plans will continue to support the company's growth efforts. We experienced lower production and development numbers in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, except gold production, which increased by 23%. While the results are lower, due to lower grade material being mined, we are confident that the company will achieve another solid year. Our team continually looks to improve efficiencies, and we are very appreciative of their support and dedication. Other key achievements for the quarter included the commencement of the work required for the expansion of Mill Circuit #4, the receipt of a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment of the Oxide Tailings at the Avino mine, and a review of possible alternatives to the Tailings Storage Facility." - David Wolfin, President, CEO & Director, Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd FIRST QUARTER 2017 HIGHLIGHTS IN $USD Generated revenues of $8.1 million from the sale of concentrates, a 306% increase from the first quarter of 2016 due to the commencement of production mining at the Avino mine during the second quarter of 2016 from the sale of concentrates, a 306% increase from the first quarter of 2016 due to the commencement of production mining at the Avino mine during the second quarter of 2016 Mine operating income of $3.5 million , a 168% increase compared to the first quarter of 2016 , a 168% increase compared to the first quarter of 2016 Net income after taxes of $0.7 million or $0.01 per share or per share Working capital of $21.1 million Net earnings of $1.1 million Produced 604,643 silver equivalent ounces 1 , including 320,082 ounces of silver, 1,837 ounces of gold and 1,024,853 pounds of copper , including 320,082 ounces of silver, 1,837 ounces of gold and 1,024,853 pounds of copper Consolidated all-in sustaining cost ("AISC") 2 was $9.55 per payable silver equivalent ounce, a 16% increase compared to $8.22 per ounce in the first quarter of 2016 was per payable silver equivalent ounce, a 16% increase compared to per ounce in the first quarter of 2016 Average realized selling prices for silver and gold were US$17.38 and US$1,218 per ounce, respectively and per ounce, respectively Cash of $7.7 million and short term investments consisting of cash of $10 million was on hand at the end of the quarter HIGHLIGHTS First Quarter 2017 First Quarter 2016 Change Operating Tonnes Milled 136,686 140,116 -2% Silver Ounces Produced 320,082 403,447 -21% Gold Ounces Produced 1,837 1,497 23% Copper Pounds Produced 1,024,853 1,350,912 -24% Silver Equivalent Ounces1 Produced 604,643 715,933 -16% Concentrate Sales and Cash Costs Silver Equivalent Ounces Sold2 524,356 150,507 237% Cash Cost per Silver Equivalent Ounce2,3 $ 8.01 $ 4.11 95% All-in Sustaining Cost per Silver Equivalent Ounce2,3 $ 9.55 $ 8.22 16% Average Realized Silver Price per Ounce $ 17.38 $ 16.42 6% Average Realized Gold Price per Ounce $ 1,218 $ 1,194 2% Average Realized Copper Price per Tonne $ 5,873 - -% Financial Revenues $ 8,127,863 $ 2,002,728 306% Mine Operating Income $ 3,460,843 $ 1,291,889 168% Net Income (Loss) $ 721,305 $ 42,246 1,607% Cash $ 7,654,982 $ 4,637,163 65% Working Capital $ 21,133,853 $ 2,900,349 629% Shareholders Earnings (Loss) per Share ("EPS") Basic $ 0.01 $ 0.00 100% Cash Flow per Share (YTD)3 $ 0.04 $ 0.02 100% 1. For comparison purposes, the silver equivalent ratio has been calculated using metal prices of $17.42 oz Ag, $1,220 oz Au and $2.63 Lb Cu. Mill production figures have not been reconciled and are subject to adjustment with concentrate sales. Calculated figures may not add up due to rounding. Metal production is expressed in terms of silver equivalent ounces, (oz Ag Eq), the formula for which depends on the copper, gold and silver metal prices used in each period and hence are only indicative. 2. "Silver equivalent ounces sold" for the purposes of cash costs and all-in sustaining costs consists of the sum of silver ounces, gold ounces and copper tonnes sold multiplied by the ratio of the average spot gold and copper prices to the average spot silver price for the corresponding period. 3. The Company reports non-IFRS measures which include cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, all-in sustaining cash cost per ounce, and cash flow per share. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have a standardized meaning and the calculation methods may differ from methods used by other companies with similar reported measures. Financial Results The Company generated revenues of $8.1 million during the first quarter of 2017; a 306% increase compared to the first quarter of 2016. The increase is a result of the commencement of production mining at the Avino Mine. Mine operating income was $3.5 million during the first quarter of 2017, an increase of $2.2 million or 168% from $1.3 million in 2016. During the first quarter of 2017, net income increased by 1,607% to 0.7 million or $0.01 per share, compared to net income of $42 thousand or $0.00 basic and diluted per share during the corresponding period of 2016. Operational Results Silver equivalent production for the first quarter of 2017 decreased by 16% to 604,643 oz1 compared to 715,933 oz1 in the first quarter of 2016. Silver production for the first quarter of 2017 decreased 21% to 320,082 oz compared to 403,447 oz in the first quarter of 2016. Gold production for the first quarter of 2017 increased by 23% to 1,837 oz compared to 1,497 oz in the corresponding period of 2016. Copper production decreased by 24% to 1,024,853 lbs compared to 1,350,912 lbs in the first quarter of 2016. Total mill feed processed during the first quarter of 2017 was 136,686 dry tonnes compared to 140,116 dry tonnes during the first quarter of 2016, a decrease of 2%. At the Avino Mine, silver equivalent ounces1 produced during the first quarter of 2017 totalled 439,163 compared to 474,206 during the first quarter of 2016, a decrease of 7%. The lower production is due to the lower grade material being mined. At the San Gonzalo Mine, silver equivalent ounces1 produced during the first quarter of 2017 totalled 165,480 representing a decrease of 32% compared to 241,727 in the first quarter of 2016. Costs and Capital Expenditures Consolidated all-in sustaining cash costs per AgEq ounce1 during the first quarter of 2017 were $9.55 compared to $8.22 during the corresponding period of 2016, an increase of 16%. All-in sustaining cash costs at San Gonzalo during the first quarter of 2017 were $6.21 per AgEq ounce1 compared to $8.22 during the first quarter of 2016, a decrease of 24%. All-in sustaining cash costs at Avino during the first quarter of 2017 were $10.81, with no comparable available as production mining commenced as of April 1, 2016. Capital expenditures during the three months ended March 31, 2017, were $1,965,198 compared to $946,217 for the corresponding period of 2016 (net of concentrate proceeds of $4,294,464). Capital expenditures relate to the Avino mine advancement (including Mill Circuit #4) and mining and production equipment to advance operations at the San Gonzalo, Avino, and Bralorne mines. Bralorne Mine Update During the first quarter of 2017, the Company continued to develop and review strategic operating plans to achieve a profitable operation at Bralorne. The mine plan includes changing the mining method to long hole mining, which is considered safer and less labour intensive than previous methods employed, and is expected to support a higher production rate. Engineering is in progress to expand the mill and to upgrade the surface infrastructure for a larger operation. Work in the mill during the quarter was focused on demolishing the old ore and waste bins plus the removal of all of the old crushing equipment to create room for new larger components. In February 2017, Bralorne, in conjunction with North Island College, the B.C. Government and First Nations completed a second educational cohort to provide basic mining training for members of the St'at'imc First Nation in Lillooet. Bralorne provided support and access to the mine site for hands-on training. To date, 22 students have graduated from the program, two of whom are now full time employees. Non-IFRS Measures The financial results in this news release include references to cash flow per share, cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, all of which are non-IFRS measures. Cash flow per share, cash cost per ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per ounce are measures developed by mining companies in an effort to provide a comparable standard of performance. However, there can be no assurance that our reporting of these non-IFRS measures is similar to that reported by other mining companies. Cash flow per share, cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent ounce are measures used by the Company to manage and evaluate operating performance of the Company's mining operations, and are widely reported in the silver and gold mining industry as benchmarks for performance, but do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS, and are disclosed in addition to the prescribed IFRS measures provided in the Company's financial statements and MD&A. Conference Call Avino will be holding a conference call on May 11, 2017 at 8:00 am Pacific Daylight Time (11:00 am Eastern Daylight Time). To participate in the conference call, please dial the following: Toll Free Canada & USA: 1-800-319-4610 Outside of Canada & USA: 1-604-638-5340 No pass-code is necessary to participate in the conference call; participants will have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A portion of the call. Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the conference. The conference call will be recorded and the replay will be available on the Company's web site within one hour following the conclusion of the call. Qualified Person(s) Avino's Mexican projects are under the supervision of Mr. Chris Sampson, P.Eng, BSc, Avino consultant and Mr. Jasman Yee, P.Eng, Avino director; Avino's Bralorne Mine project is under the supervision of Fred Sveinson, B.A., BSc, P.Eng, Avino Senior Mining Advisor. These individuals are qualified persons ("QP") within the context of National Instrument 43-101. The respective QP's have reviewed and approved all the applicable technical data in this press release. Outlook Avino is a silver and gold producer with a diversified pipeline of gold, silver and base metals properties in Mexico and Canada employing approximately 500 people. Avino produces from its wholly owned Avino and San Gonzalo Mines near Durango, Mexico, and is currently planning for future production at the Bralorne Gold Mine in British Columbia, Canada. The Company's gold and silver production remains unhedged. Avino's mission is to create shareholder value through profitable organic growth at the Avino Property and the strategic acquisition and advancement of mineral exploration and mining properties. We are committed to expanding our operations and managing all business activities in an environmentally responsible and cost-effective manner while contributing to the well-being of the communities in which we operate. The Company remains focused on the following key objectives: Maintain and improve profitable mining operations while managing operating costs and achieving efficiencies; Advance the Bralorne project towards profitable production; Explore regional targets on the Avino Property followed by other properties in our portfolio; Assess the potential for processing the oxide tailings resource from previous milling operations and; Identify and evaluate potential projects for acquisition. On Behalf of the Board "David Wolfin" ________________________________ David Wolfin President & CEO Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. Safe Harbor Statement - This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (together, the "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including our belief as to the extent and timing of various studies including the PEA, and exploration results, the potential tonnage, grades and content of deposits, and timing, establishment, and extent of resource estimates. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and the dates of technical reports, as applicable. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, the price of gold, silver and copper, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government authorities, uncertainties associated with legal proceedings and negotiations and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking information. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Known risk factors include risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; uncertainties and risks related to carrying on business in foreign countries; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers, directors or promoters with certain other projects; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; competition; dilution; the volatility of our common share price and volume; tax consequences to U.S. investors; and other risks and uncertainties. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. Cautionary Note to United States Investors - The information contained herein and incorporated by reference herein has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of Canadian securities laws, which differ from the requirements of United States securities laws. In particular, the term "resource" does not equate to the term "reserve". The Securities Exchange Commission's (the "SEC") disclosure standards normally do not permit the inclusion of information concerning "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" or "inferred mineral resources" or other descriptions of the amount of mineralization in mineral deposits that do not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards, unless such information is required to be disclosed by the law of the Company's jurisdiction of incorporation or of a jurisdiction in which its securities are traded. U.S. investors should also understand that "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. Disclosure of "contained ounces" is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures. 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 Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. For further information: T 604.682.3701, F 604.682.3600, [email protected], www.avino.com; Suite 900, 570 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC, V6C 3P1 Related Links www.avino.com Stamp is the fourth in a set of 10 that will showcase historic moments from the last 50 years in celebration of Canada 150 TORONTO, May 9, 2017 /CNW/ - At an event today in downtown Toronto, Canada Post unveiled a stamp commemorating the 2005 passage of the Civil Marriage Act, which made marriage equality the law throughout Canada. Grassroots activists, government officials and community members attended the unveiling, catching the first glimpse of the new stamp, which features the iconic rainbow symbol. The unveiling was held at and in partnership with The 519, a City of Toronto agency committed to the health, happiness and full participation of LGBTQ communities. The marriage equality stamp is the fourth in a set of 10 that Canada Post is issuing to celebrate Canada's 150th year since Confederation. Collectively the stamps highlight historic moments that have taken place in our nation over the past 50 years. Canada Post's stamp advisory committee, which includes historians, collectors and artists, selected these 10 milestones that together have helped shape the story of Canada. The road to the legislation Twelve years ago, on February 1, 2005, the Civil Marriage Act was introduced in Parliament as Bill C-38. After it was passed in the House of Commons and then in the Senate, the bill received Royal Assent on July 20, 2005, and marriage equality officially became the law. But the road to achieving marriage equality in Canada began long before 2005. For decades, LGBTQ activists and supporters from coast to coast to coast had fought for the rights of their communities, including the right to marry. In the late 1990s, the community began to achieve significant victories. For instance, in 1996, the federal government passed Bill C-33 adding sexual orientation to the Canadian Human Rights Act; three years later, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that same-sex couples should have the same benefits and obligations as opposite-sex common-law couples from social programs that they contribute to. A year later, Parliament passed Bill C-23 that made the Court ruling law. Marriage equality debate takes centre stage In early 2001, the battle for the right to marry took centre stage, after Reverend Brent Hawkes married two same-sex couples in a ceremony in Toronto. When the City refused to issue marriage licenses for these unions, it set off a series of heated court battles and public debate. The legal challenges culminated on June 10, 2003, when the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying was a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Within hours of the decision, Michael Leshner and Michael Stark were married in Toronto, the first same-sex couple to wed after the legislation. Similar court battles were also taking place in provinces across the country, and more provincial courts issued rulings legalizing marriage equality: B.C. in July 2003, followed by Quebec, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia in 2004. Finally, on July 20, 2005, the government of Canada passed the federal legislation that legalized marriage equality across the country, making Canada the fourth country in the world and the first outside of Europe to grant same-sex couples the right to marry the one they loved. Today, with support continuing to grow across the globe, more than 20 countries have legalized samesex marriage on the national level. To hear more from LGBTQ community members and activists about this fight for equality, please visit canadapost.ca/canada150. To learn more about the work of The 519, please visit www.The519.org. The next stamp in the Canada 150 set will be unveiled in Regina on May 16. The remaining stamps will be revealed individually at cities across the country, the last of them on June 1. About the stamps 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. SOURCE Canada Post For further information: Media Relations, 613-734-8888, [email protected] Related Links http://www.canadapost.ca MONTREAL, May 9, 2017 /CNW/ - CN (TSX: CNR) (NYSE:CNI) announced it will make a donation of $100,000 to the Canadian Red Cross in support of relief efforts to aid victims of the flooding in hard hit areas of Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and British Columbia. "The devastating impact of the flooding across the country has personally affected so many and saddens us all," said Luc Jobin, president and chief executive officer of CN. "Canadians are pulling together to help, and we hope our donation to the Red Cross will encourage others to support our neighbours across Canada in this time of great need." CN is also encouraging its employees to donate to the relief efforts. CN is a true backbone of the economy, transporting more than C$250 billion worth of goods annually for a wide range of business sectors, ranging from resource products to manufactured products to consumer goods, across a rail network of approximately 20,00 route-miles spanning Canada and mid-America. CN Canadian National Railway Company, along with its operating railway subsidiaries serves the cities and ports of Vancouver, Prince Rupert, B.C., Montreal, Halifax, New Orleans, and Mobile, Ala., and the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Duluth, Minn./Superior, Wis., and Jackson, Miss., with connections to all points in North America. For more information on CN, visit the company's website at www.cn.ca. SOURCE CN For further information: Media: Patrick Waldron, Senior Manager, Media Relations, (514) 399-8803; Investment Community: Paul Butcher, Vice-President, Investor Relations, (514) 399-0052 Related Links http://www.cn.ca GATINEAU, QC, May 9, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED) Acting on behalf of the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Minister responsible for CED, Greg Fergus, Member of Parliament for Hull-Aylmer, announced that the Fondation pour les Aines de l'Outaouais (website in French only) has been granted $4,007 in financial assistance, in the form of a non-repayable contribution, to renovate its community centre, the "Cabane en bois rond." Key local stakeholders have long been asking for concrete, sustainable measures to improve community and recreational infrastructure. As part of the Canada 150 celebrations, the Government of Canada is proud to invest in projects such as the one by the Fondation pour les Aines de l'Outaouais, which contribute to the strength and vitality of all regions of the country. Created in 1983, the Fondation pour les Aines de l'Outaouais is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide a place where seniors and organizations working with this clientele can get together. The community centre is a unique gathering place, graced with reception halls that can accommodate up to 160 people for a variety of activities (weddings, family functions, business meetings and so on). The funding awarded through the Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program (CIP150) will enable the organization to replace the windows in one of the community halls to make the Cabane en bois rond more comfortable and reduce energy costs. 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 "The financial support we provide for our communities clearly shows our commitment to fostering sustainable growth and prosperity in Canada. By improving community infrastructure, like that of the Fondation pour les Aines de l'Outaouais community centre, we are stimulating the vitality of our communities and helping ensure a higher quality of life for residents of all ages." Greg Fergus, Member of Parliament for Hull-Aylmer "The Government of Canada supports the projects of organizations like the Fondation pour les Aines de l'Outaouais, which mobilize and unite our communities. These projects strengthen Canada's communities, stimulate economic activity and benefit families across the generations, as well as the middle class." The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister responsible for CED 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]; Olivier Duhaime, Executive Assistant, Office of MP Greg Fergus, Tel.: 613-992-7550 VENICE, Italy, May 10, 2017 /CNW/ - After an intense period of study and creation, Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer has emerged with a presentation for the 57th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia that interweaves diverse stories of collision and reconciliation. "Geoffrey Farmer is a wonderful choice to represent Canada at the Biennale Arte 2017, which coincides with the 150th anniversary of our country's confederation," said Marc Mayer, Director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada the commissioning institution for the Canada Pavilion. "His new work is unlike anything he has created before or anything ever presented in this pavilion. Farmer has entered new creative territory with this extraordinary installation." The Geoffrey Farmer exhibition was commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and produced in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts. The Canadian representation at Biennale Arte 2017 is made possible through the generous financial support of Presenting Sponsor Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Major Sponsor Aimia. Other support was generously provided by the Canadian Artists in Venice Endowment, the Government of British Columbia, the Joy Thomson Fund, and the philanthropic support of over fifty families and individuals through the National Gallery of Canada Foundation. The art galleries Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, and Casey Kaplan, New York, offered valued assistance to the project. Simon Brault, O.C., O.Q., Director and CEO, Canada Council for the Arts, said: "Canada is present at the 57th Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia through some of contemporary art's boldest artists. Their work offers the world a window onto the issues, challenges and concerns that define Canada in 2017. They provoke conversations that resonate worldwide, on our current human condition both as a subject of apprehension and hope. "At RBC, we recognize that supporting the arts encourages a culture of creativity and innovation, in our communities across Canada and around the globe," said Wayne Bossert, Deputy Chairman and Head, Ultra-High Net Worth Clients, RBC Wealth Management. "As a proud presenting sponsor of the Canadian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2017, we are committed to championing the art and artists that will bring audiences together to educate and inspire." A way out of the mirror began with Farmer's discovery of two unpublished press photographs dating back to 1955 that depict a collision between a train and a lumber truck driven by his paternal grandfather. 71 brass planks, reminiscent of the lumber that was scattered at the scene of the accident, are part of the work. Other elements, including 3D-printed sculptures cast in aluminum and bronze, tell stories ranging from the relations between Italy and Canada after the Second World War to the artist's own familial trauma, of luminaries Kathy Acker and Allen Ginsberg, and of Inuit teenagers residing in Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Water is a powerful connector in Farmer's presentation and links imagery to the flow of liquid, from the "fountain of knowledge" to the constant "livestream of images" we are familiar with today. Kitty Scott, the Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario was selected by Farmer to curate the 2017 Canada Pavilion. "Farmer opens up and transforms the Canada Pavilion into an outwardly facing fountain courtyard: the water of A way out of the mirror translates a surfeit of emotion and discharges it in spurts and drips as tears, ejaculate and sweat," she said. "It is at once a monument and an anti-monument that memorializes individuals and stories in a gesture of generosity and inclusion." Titled to reference the emotive writings of beat poet Allen Ginsberg, A way out of the mirror presents a new way of experiencing the Canada Pavilion, in which the architectural history of the building is entwined with the installation itself. The presentation takes place on the 60th anniversary of the construction of the Canada Pavilion, just as the building undergoes a major $3M restoration. The Canada Pavilion, restored to its original 1957 design, will be officially unveiled at the Biennale di Architettura of 2018. Karen Colby-Stothart, CEO of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, said: "Geoffrey Farmer has surprised no one in creating a masterpiece at the Canada Pavilion at the complex mid-point of deconstruction and restoration. We are so deeply indebted to our loyal corporate supporters, RBC and Aimia, our small army of deeply committed philanthropists across Canada and the extraordinary new partnership with the Canada Council for the Artsall of whom have made this project possible." An illustrated catalogue, distributed by Mousse Publishing, accompanies the exhibition. The publication features a glossary of terms compiled by Geoffrey Farmer and Kitty Scott. About Geoffrey Farmer Geoffrey Farmer was born in 1967 in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he continues to live and work. Since his first show in 1997 and over his 20-year career, his work has earned critical acclaim around the world. It has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Louvre in Paris, Tate Modern in London, dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany, the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Canada. Selection Committee Geoffrey Farmer was chosen to represent Canada at the 57th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia by a selection committee convened by the National Gallery of Canada, which included Daina Augaitis, Chief Curator and Associate Director at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Josee Drouin-Brisebois, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada and Project Director of the Canada Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2017; Mark Lanctot, Curator at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal; Marc Mayer, Director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada; and Kitty Scott, the Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. About Kitty Scott Kitty Scott is the Carol and Morton Rapp Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada. Previously she was Director of Visual Arts at The Banff Centre, Canada; Chief Curator at the Serpentine Gallery, UK; and Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada. Scott's extensive resume includes exhibitions of artists such as Francis Alys, Stephen Andrews, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Peter Doig, Theaster Gates, Janice Kerbel, Ragnar Kjartansson and Silke Otto-Knapp. She was a core agent for Germany's dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012. Scott has written extensively on contemporary art for catalogues, books and journals and edited the publication Raising Frankenstein: Curatorial Education and Its Discontents (2010). She regularly lectures at art schools and curatorial programs throughout North America. SOURCE National Gallery of Canada For further information: For all media requests: North America press contact: Josee-Britanie Mallet, Senior Media and Public Relations Officer, National Gallery of Canada, 613-990-6835 or 613-355-3989, [email protected]; International press contact: Catriona Collins, Pickles PR, +44 7719 357 114, [email protected] WINDSOR, ON, May 9, 2017 /CNW/ - Today at Windsor's Thompson Park, Hiram Walker & Sons Limited joined Forests Ontario, Corby Spirit and Wine Ltd., and the City of Windsor to plant 200 trees. This planting event is part of Ontario's Green Leaf Challenge, an initiative launched by Forests Ontario and the Ontario government inviting Ontarians to plant three million trees in 2017 in celebration of Canada's 150th birthday. Thompson Park is located within a densely populated, urbanized area of Windsor, and this planting not only adds vital tree cover within the community, but also beautifies a central and accessible green space. Volunteers from the accounting and finance teams at Hiram Walker & Sons were joined by their colleagues at Corby Spirit and Wine to plant native trees in a section of the park. The two organizations work closely together as affiliates of Pernod Ricard, a global leader in the wines and spirits industry. Corby is the Canadian marketer and distributor of the spirits produced by Hiram Walker & Sons. The two companies are among the many organizations participating in the Green Leaf Challenge through employee engagement events. Rob Keen, CEO, Forests Ontario says: "The Green Leaf Challenge celebrates the fact that every tree matters and counts toward the kind of future we want for Ontario, one in which our natural ecosystems are resilient to the effects of climate change and essential benefits like clean air and water are secure." The partnership between Hiram Walker & Sons, Corby Spirit and Wine, and Forests Ontario emphasizes urban forest and green spaces and the contributions they make to health, well-being, and vibrancy in our neighbourhoods. "We believe that our organization has a responsibility to give back to the communities where we work and live," says Antonio Sanchez, CFO. "We are thrilled to be part of this project, and to make an impact that will last well into the future." Previously in 2016, Corby joined Forests Ontario and the Toronto & Region Conservation Authority to plant trees in Toronto's Tommy Thompson Park, the largest continuous habitat on Toronto's Waterfront and one that's entirely manmade. The planting was one of several projects carried out within Tommy Thompson to create aquatic and terrestrial habitat. The Green Leaf Challenge runs throughout 2017 with individuals, community groups, municipalities, and businesses planting across the province. Anyone can participate by visiting greenleafchallenge.ca and adding the trees they plant across Ontario to the online tree counter. About Forests Ontario Forests Ontario is the voice for our forests. Working to promote a future of healthy forests sustaining healthy people, Forests Ontario is committed to the re-greening of Ontario through tree planting efforts on rural lands and in urban areas, as well as the renewal and stewardship of Ontario's forests through restoration, education, and awareness. Visit www.forestsontario.ca or follow us @Forests_Ontario. About Hiram Walker and Sons Limited Established over 150 years ago, Hiram Walker & Sons Limited's tradition of blending quality ingredients, processes and highly skilled people continues at the Windsor, Ontario based production facility. Hiram Walker produces brands such as J.P. Wiser's, Lot No. 40, Pike Creek, Gooderham & Worts and Royal Reserve Canadian whiskies, Polar Ice vodka, Malibu and Lamb's rums, and McGuinness liqueurs for Canadian distribution by its affiliate, Corby Spirit and Wine Limited. Hiram Walker is a subsidiary of Pernod Ricard S.A., a leading global spirits and wine company with premium international brands such as ABSOLUT vodka, Chivas Regal, The Glenlivet and Ballantine's Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish whiskey, Beefeater gin, Kahlua liqueur, Mumm champagne, and Jacob's Creek, Wyndham Estate, Stoneleigh, Campo Viejo, Graffigna and Kenwood wines. About Corby Spirit and Wine Corby Spirit and Wine Limited is a leading Canadian marketer and distributor of spirits and imported wines. Corby's portfolio of owned-brands includes some of the most renowned brands in Canada, including J.P. Wiser's, Lot No. 40, Pike Creek, and Gooderham & Worts Canadian whiskies as well as Lamb's rum, Polar Ice vodka, McGuinness liqueurs, and the recently acquired Ungava gin. Through its affiliation with Pernod Ricard S.A., a global leader in the spirits and wine industry, Corby also represents leading international brands such as ABSOLUT vodka, Chivas Regal and The Glenlivet Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish whiskey, Beefeater gin, Malibu rum, Kahlua liqueur, Mumm champagne, and Jacob's Creek, Stoneleigh, Campo Viejo, and Kenwood wines. In 2017, Corby was named one of the 50 Best Workplaces in Canada by The Great Place to Work Institute Canada for the sixth consecutive year, and was also listed among Greater Toronto's Top 100 Employers for the third time. Corby is a publicly traded company based in Toronto, Ontario, and listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbols CSW.A and CSW.B. For further information, please visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter (@CorbySW), and Instagram (@CorbySW). SOURCE Forests Ontario For further information: For more information about Forests Ontario: Jeannette Holder, Communications Manager, Forests Ontario, Tel: 416 646-1193, ext. 257, E-mail: [email protected]; For more information about Corby Spirit and Wine or Hiram Walker & Sons: Valerie Brive-Turtle, Director, Communications, Public Relations and S&R, Corby Spirit and Wine, Email: [email protected], Direct: 416-479-2492 Related Links www.forestsontario.ca OTTAWA, May 10, 2017 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on the occasion of Vesak: "Today, Buddhists in Canada and around the world will celebrate Vesak, the most important of the Buddhist festivals. Vesak is a time when Buddhists come together to reflect on the birth, enlightenment and passing of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. "Around the world, Buddhists will visit their local temples to pray, and to offer gifts to show respect and gratitude to the Buddha for his life and wisdom. "This year, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation, I encourage all Canadians to reflect on the Buddha's universal teachings of peace, selfless service, and showing compassion toward others, especially those in need. These shared values unite us as Canadians, and are at the heart of Canada's success. "On behalf of our family, Sophie and I offer our best wishes to all those observing this sacred day." This document is also available at http://pm.gc.ca SOURCE Prime Minister's Office For further information: PMO Media Relations: 613-957-5555 Related Links http://pm.gc.ca/ LAVAL, QC, May 10, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Teamsters Canada will donate $30,000 to the Red Cross to help those affected by the historic flooding in Quebec and Ontario. Teamster members are hard at work helping flood victims. Truckers are figuring out ways to do the impossible and deliver food to supermarkets in flooded areas. Municipal blue collar workers in cities like Pontiac are doing everything they can to limit damages. And members from local unions in affected areas are volunteering to help their respective communities. Like during the Fort McMurray wildfires and the flooding in Calgary, Teamsters are on the front lines of this natural disaster to show their solidarity. However, despite the best efforts of rescue workers, the flooding will have a considerable impact on hundreds or even thousands of families. Moving forward, they will need financial help. "I'd like to invite all Canadians, particularly Teamster members, to give generously to the Red Cross," stated Francois Laporte, President of Teamsters Canada. "We have, and always will, stand in solidarity with the victims of natural disasters. They need our help because they might lose everything." Teamsters and members of the public can click here to donate to the Red Cross: http://www.redcross.ca/about-us/red-cross-stories/2017/red-cross-responds-as-floods-impact-communities-in-quebec-and-across-canada The current situation At the moment, thousands of people have been evacuated and thousands of homes have been flooded. In Quebec, 171 municipalities are affected and 486 roads are flooded. Five cities have declared a state of emergency, including Montreal. In Gatineau, 443 buildings and 794 people have been evacuated. Close to 1650 soldiers have been deployed to assist police and emergency workers. Hundreds of thousands of sand bags have been handed out in Eastern Ontario. Hundreds of homes have been flooded in the Ottawa area, while in Toronto, close to 200 houses have been affected. While things are worrisome in New Brunswick and British Columbia, the situation is much less critical than in Quebec and Ontario. Teamsters represent 125,000 workers in Canada in all industries. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, with which Teamsters Canada is affiliated, has 1.4 million members in North America. SOURCE Teamsters Canada For further information: Stephane Lacroix, Director of Public Relations, Cell: 514-609-5101, [email protected] Related Links http://teamsters.ca/ As many Canadians across the country deal with massive spring flooding, The Salvation Army's Emergency Disaster Services teams have been mobilized to provide support. TORONTO, May 9, 2017 /CNW/ - The Salvation Army's Emergency Disaster Services teams have been providing food, drinks and support to first responders, sand baggers and evacuees during recent floods in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. In Kelowna, B.C., the local Salvation Army church is being used as a reception centre where those impacted can receive practical assistance. In Eastern Ontario, The Salvation Army is providing emergency food services, clothing provision, and emotional and spiritual care at evacuation centres as well as near incident sites in communities such as Ottawa, Minden Hills and Clarence-Rockland. And in Rigaud, Quebec, The Salvation Army is serving meals to first responders and volunteers doing the sand bagging as well as providing emotional and spiritual support for those evacuated. Salvation Army response personnel remain on stand-by in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, should assistance be requested. "The Salvation Army is committed to supporting responders, work crews and those impacted by floods all across Canada," says Perron Goodyear, The Salvation Army's Director of Emergency Disaster Services for Canada. "Our Emergency Disaster Services personnel have been working tirelessly and will continue to do so for as long as needed." Often assigned a specific role in emergency situations, The Army's established and well-rehearsed emergency protocols allow the organization to deliver fast, efficient service to first responders as well as those directly impacted. The Salvation Army endeavours to ease human suffering wherever it is found and draws on a wide range of resources which rapidly shift into action when a disaster strikes. To make a donation to support The Salvation Army's response efforts, visit salvationarmy.ca/emergency or armeedusalut.ca/urgence or call 1-800-Sal-Army. About The Salvation Army: The Salvation Army is an international Christian organization that began its work in Canada in 1882 and has grown to become one of the largest direct providers of social services in the country. The Salvation Army gives hope and support to vulnerable people in 400 communities across Canada and in 128 countries around the world. The Salvation Army offers practical assistance for children and families, often tending to the basic necessities of life, providing shelter for homeless people and rehabilitation for people who have lost control of their lives to an addiction. When you give to The Salvation Army, you are investing in the future of marginalized and overlooked people in your community. News releases, articles and updated information can be found at www.SalvationArmy.ca. SOURCE The Salvation Army For further information: Perron Goodyear, Territorial Emergency Disaster Services Director, The Salvation Army, Phone: 416-422-6199, Cell: 416-705-1761, [email protected] Related Links http://www.SalvationArmy.ca F-4E fighter jet crash in August caused by engine nozzle defect: Air Force The crash of a South Korean F-4E fighter jet in August was caused by an engine nozzle problem, the Air Force said Wednesday. It announced the outcome of its probe into the cause... UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has decided to appoint Mark Lowcock, the head of Britains international development department, to be the world bodys new humanitarian aid chief, diplomats and UN officials said Wednesday.The 54-year-old career civil servant will replace Stephen OBrien, who held the post for two years, serving in what is widely viewed as one of the UNs most demanding jobs.Lowcocks appointment comes as the United Nations faces the largest humanitarian crisis in its history with mass famine looming in four countries and donor funding falling far short of needs.Guterres will announce the appointment of the new under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator on Friday, diplomats and UN sources told AFP. Lowcock has served as the permanent secretary for Britains department of international development since 2011 and held various senior posts at the department since he began his career there in 1985.He will be tasked with leading the UNs struggling relief efforts in Syria along with major aid operations in South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, the Central African Republic and the Lake Chad region.The United Nations has appealed for $4.4 billion to help avert mass famine in South Sudan, northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen. However, so far only $1.3 billion less than a third has been raised. Strongly backed by British PM Lowcock will be the fourth British national to hold the leading UN post since 2007 after British Prime Minister Teresa May strongly backed his candidacy, UN sources said.Former foreign secretary David Miliband had been eyeing the top UN aid job, but the former Labour politician did not have his governments backing, diplomats said.Lowcock is the first UN aid chief appointed by Guterres, who took over from Ban Ki-moon in January with a promise to overhaul the United Nations to improve its response to global crises.OBrien, a former British lawmaker, has been a strong advocate for allowing humanitarian access in Syria and sometimes clashed with Russia at the Security Council during his monthly reports on the worsening crisis.During his last briefing to the council in late April, OBrien said the humanitarian Syrias crisis was deteriorating and once again pleaded for action to stop the bloodshed.Since taking the UN helm, Guterres has appointed Jean-Pierre Lacroix of France as peacekeeping chief and kept on American Jeffrey Feltman as head of political affairs for another year.The appointment of a new counter-terrorism chief, most likely from Russia, is the next personnel decision to watch along with the head of UN management, who will steer reforms.The UN chief has continued his predecessors practice of filling top posts with nationals from the five permanent Security Council countries Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States. The President of Godsent Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Dion Osagie, said over $200 million donated to NGOs in Nigeria yearly end up in the private accounts of the owners of these organisations.Osagie stated this during a chat with newsmen in Benin City yesterday. He alleged that about 70 per cent of NGOs in Nigeria are fraudulent.While calling for complete re-orientation in the running of NGOs in the country, Osagie called for proper screening of these organisations operating in Nigeria.He further said that: If NGOs, especially those meant to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich really live up to their function and transparently utilise what they receive as donors, dont you think it would alleviate poverty in the rural areas? Meanwhile, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) has urged Nigerians to embrace the concept of whistle blowing to curb human trafficking in the country.The Director General (DG) of the agency, Mrs. Julie Okah-Donli said the concept became imperative in view of the great danger human trafficking constitutes to national development.Speaking yesterday during a visit to Osogbo, Osun State command of the agency, Okah-Donli urged the public to provide the anti-human trafficking body with necessary information which would lead to prevention and arrest of those engaged in the illicit trade.In a related development, a group Voice for Compliance and Legality (VOCAL) Project has described whistle blowing as another form of corruption.The group under the aegis of Catholic Caritas Foundation of Nigeria, funded by the European Union stated this in Calabar, Cross River State during its review meeting tagged, Support to Anti-corruption in Nigeria.It urged the Federal Government to review the use of whistle blowers in the fight against corruption.The leader of the group, Mr. William Itorok said: Whistle blowing is part of re-active corruption. They are part and of the crime committed against Nigeria by looters. If they were not betrayed by the looters, they wont come out to blow whistle. Olola Seun Akioye, a journalist with The Nation newspaper this morning recounted the moment the brother to one of the recently released 82 girls, called to give him the cheering news of her return on Saturday May 6th. He shared the story to prove that the release of the abducted school girls isn't a scam as some Nigerians think it is.... Read what he wrote on his Facebook Page after the cut... CEO of Made Men Music, Ubi Franklin, yesterday escaped being stabbed to death by an angry Chinese man, who is reportedly a manager of a f... CEO of Made Men Music, Ubi Franklin, yesterday escaped being stabbed to death by an angry Chinese man, who is reportedly a manager of a furniture showroom in Lekki, Lagos. Sharing a photo of the man in Police Custody, Ubi wrote; "Earlier today I was at LIFEMATE furniture show room at the palms Lekki to enquire about a service I paid for that wasn't attended to. I was then asked by a junior staff (Nigerian) to speak to his "OGA" (a Chinese man). The Chinese man paid me no attention when I approached him with my concerns, he rather walked away as I was still trying to make my concerns known to him. So I followed up to say his attitude was unacceptable and then proceeded to leave the shop since he wasn't going to pay me any attention or courtesy as a returning customer. "As I was walking out the door I heard someone scream, I turned my back, only for me to see the Chinese man running towards me with two knives. But for the quick intervention of my cousin the story would have been different. "I handed him over to the police who then transferred him to Maroko police state and he was asked why he wanted to stab me and he said Cos I said "see this Chinese man o". Anyways God got me covered physically and spiritually The House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education, yesterday, indicted the Ministry of Education over its lackadaisical attitude to... The House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education, yesterday, indicted the Ministry of Education over its lackadaisical attitude towards the death of three Queens College students in Lagos. The students had died after drinking contaminated water supplied from the schools water system. Chairman of the committee, Zakari Mohammed (APC, Kwara), declared, during an investigative hearing with all stakeholders on the matter: The Ministry of Education did not play any role when the epidemic broke out in the school. Rather, the Ministry of Health was on ground all through. It did not even end there. Before the outbreak, the former principal of the school had written repeatedly to warn the ministry of the impending danger, yet the ministry did not do anything. L-R: Principal of Queens College, Chief Betty Abiola Are; Deputy Director, Mrs. Stella Olagunju and Deputy Director, Unity Schools, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs. Angelina Obiageli Madueke The chairmans outburst was necessitated by the presentation of the former principal of school, Dr Lamin Amodu, who narrated her ordeal and declared that it was an act of sabotage. According to her, the situation was better managed before I was transferred to Federal Government College, Uromi, Edo State. It touches my heart that we lost those three students, they were my daughters. I sent enough signals across to the ministry and Ive everything properly documented as I informed them of the poor state of facilities in the school before I left. I requested for an annex in October 2015 because of space and I even wrote the Head of Service, HoS, Winifred Oyo-Ita, an old girl of the school, to assist and she did her level best by 2016. The current principal of the school, Mrs. B. A. Are, said: On February 27, I received an 11-man panel, who told me that we need to close down the school because it was no longer healthy for habitation and I obliged. It was alarming when I was told that within two weeks, 1,200 students were registered at the clinic, complaining of abdominal pains and that some even vomited blood. Members of the committee, who were apparently angered by the account of both principals at this point, focused on the Chairman of Parents Teachers Association, PTA, Dr John Afordike, who further opened a can of worms, alleging that it was an act of sabotage. Afordike, who was elected PTA chairman last October, told the bewildered panelists that what happened at the school was an act of sabotage perpetrated by the school technician employed by the Ministry of Education. Former chairman of QCs PTA, Mrs Beatrice Ayatore, in her presentation, told the lawmakers how she was paying the school technician, one Mr Alex Amadi, N39,000 monthly to buy chlorine to treat the school water before she vacated her position last October. After listening to her narrative, the lawmakers ordered the ministers representative, Dr Hussein Adamu, to ask the minister to sack Mr Amadi immediately. They also demanded that the minister appeared in person next Tuesday to listen to all the allegations and what actually happened at the school that led to the death of the girls. In his ruling, committee chairman, Mohammed, said the Minister of Health and Minister of State, Health should be commended for the role they played on the matter. Unknown gunmen have killed an aide to the Deputy Governor of Enugu State. The gunman struck Tuesday night in Enugu, the State capital killi... Unknown gunmen have killed an aide to the Deputy Governor of Enugu State. The gunman struck Tuesday night in Enugu, the State capital killing the aide-de-camp, ADC, to Mrs. Cecilia Ezeilo. Although details of the incident are not clear yet, the deputy governors aide, a Police Sergeant, Hellen was said to have been shot dead at Abakpa-Nike axis of Enugu metropolis at about 10 pm on her way to her residence after official duty. The State Police Public Relations Officer, Ebere Amarizu, while confirming the incident said It is a painful news. The PPRO added he was yet to establish exactly what really happened before he makes further comment on the story. He said, If you look at what happened, it is painful and sad to hear that aide to deputy governor was shot dead on her way back after daily activities. We cant really say exactly what happened now but we are trying to find out. The Enugu State Police Command on Wednesday advised residents to disregard rumours of bomb explosion in the state and assured citizens to go about their normal businesses without fear.The Commands spokesman, SP Ebere Amaraizu, gave the advice in a statement on Wednesday in Enugu.Amarizu said Tuesdays loud explosion in Enugu came from leftover of fireworks hidden in a cluster of firewood which was mistakenly used in cooking by a woman.He noted that on receiving reports of the alleged explosion from the community members, the command deployed operatives from its anti-bomb unit to the area.Amaraizu said: The commands anti-bomb unit collaborated with other police operatives, led by the officer-in-charge of explosive ordinance department, to comb the community.The operatives discovered that it was the leftover of fire-work/knock-out in the firewood of a groundnut fryer that allegedly exploded when contacted with fire, which also produced some noise.A woman, Cecilia Ogenyi, of 21 Savage Crescent GRA, Enugu on May 9 escaped unhurt when suddenly the firewood used for frying her groundnut ignited fire due to some particles suspected to be leftovers of fireworks, he said.Amaraizu said no one was injured during the incident and assured that investigations had since commenced into the matter. Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose has condemned the Department of State Services (DSS) arrest and detention of the Managing Director of ... Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose has condemned the Department of State Services (DSS) arrest and detention of the Managing Director of Capital Oil and Gas Limited, Ifeanyi Ubah, lamenting that, the DSS is becoming law unto itself and dragging Nigeria back to 1984 when Decree 2 was used by the National Security Organisation (NSO) to dump Nigerians in detention without trial under flimsy excuses. The governor, who described the DSS claim that it arrested and detained Ubah for inciting members of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers Union to stop lifting petroleum products so as to cripple the economy and cause untold hardship to Nigerians as nonsensical, added that; It is becoming obvious that if nothing is done to curb the lawlessness of the DSS, the agency will singlehandedly truncate democracy in the country. In a statement issued in Ado Ekiti on Wednesday, by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said arresting and detaining Ifeanyi Ubah for economic sabotage was a sad reminder of the President Muhammadu Buharis military regime. He said under the State Security Act CAP. N 74 LFN, 2004, the responsibility of the DSS is majorly the prevention and detection within Nigeria of any crime against the internal security of Nigeria and the protection and preservation of all non-military classified matters concerning the internal security of Nigeria, noting that the service has abandoned its core duties. If Ubah is being held for allegedly inciting members of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers Union to stop lifting petroleum products, one day and very soon too, members of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) will be sent to jail for going on strike to agitate for their welfare, the governor said. Governor Fayose, who said Nigerians did not vote for change to be hounded by the DSS as it is being done since the emergence of this All Progressives Congress (APC) government, noted that; Thats the same way the DSS arrested the former Governor of Benue State, Gabriel Suswan in February and detained him until two days ago, claiming that he constituted security risk and failed to cooperate with investigators. The other time too, this same DSS claimed that it uncovered plot by the Rivers State Governor, Mr. Nyesom Wike to disrupt governance in strategic federal government agencies and one can begin to imagine if the DSS wont one day accuse whoever that is perceived as opposing the APC-led government of coup plot. Speaking further, Governor Fayose said; Nigerians should be reminded that I raised alarm when this regime of impunity started with the invasion of the Akwa-Ibom State government house and later the Ekiti State House of Assembly. I did say then that democracy in Nigeria was becoming unsafe in the hands of this APC government and that those keeping silent because of politics might also end up in the belly of the roaring lion that was threatening to consume our democracy. Those who ought to have joined in condemning the DSS impunity at that time kept silent for fear of the unknown. Now it is Ifeanyi Ubah that they have visited with their tyranny, who knows who will be next? Well-meaning Nigerians and the international community must therefore raise their voice in condemnation of this regime of tyranny being ran be the DSS. The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, says the Federal Government is delivering on its election promises and that only a few vocal minority are not seeing what the government is doing.The minister stated this when the leadership of the National Association and Nigerian Students (NANS), paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja Tuesday evening.Mohammed said the administration is on course in the delivery of the three major electoral promises it made before coming to power. That are: to fight corruption, fight insecurity and fix the economy.He said in less than two years, the government had restored peace and territories that were taken over in the troubled North-East and defeated the Boko Haram insurgents.Our success in fighting insecurity is there for everybody to see. It is not just fighting insecurity but consistently restoring peace to every part of Nigeria, he said.The minister said the administration deserved credit for securing the freedom of the Chibok school girls so far released by Boko Haram.He assured that the government was working toward the release of the remaining girls as well as others in Boko Harams captivity.In fighting corruption, the minister said government took the bull by the horns, considering the fact that it is as deadly as insecurity and has grave effects on national development.In our approach, we are not interested in vilifying anybody but more interested in letting people know how much we are suffering as a result of corruption perpetrated by only a few opportunists.If the looted money were invested and utilised, today we are going to have railway, our power will not be epileptic, our roads will be better and we will not have highest number of mortality.We have not been selective in the fight against corruption and that is why we introduced the whistle blowing policy and I am glad to hear that the students are prepared to work with us not just to blow whistle but to blow trumpet, he said.The minister said that government has done a lot in fixing the economy but the approach is not a quick fix as was done in the past and expected by the people.He said the government was investing massively in infrastructure and in diversifying the economy from oil.For many decades we have discovered oil, the country has failed to develop other areas to diversify the economy.We came in and we said we are going to do what no government has ever done before and ensure that never again will Nigeria be held hostage by crude oil.We are working to develop other sectors of the economy like agriculture, manufacturing, mining and the creative industry so that even if oil falls to as low as 10 dollars a barrel, it will not affect us.We are also investing in infrastructure to create the foundation for sustainable economic growth, he said.The minister noted that there was no gain without pain and the hardship the people were going through was temporary.He said the national re-orientation campaign Change Begins with Me was the greatest legacy of the administration and he was glad that the students were prepared to partner with government to take the campaign to schools.National President of NANS, Haruna Kadiri commended the government for its efforts in addressing insecurity and ensuring the release of abducted Chibok girls.Kadiri also commended the governments anti-corruption policy and approach and prayed for quick recovery of the President and his safe return to continue the good work.He said the association was ready to work with government in taking the Change Begins with Me national reorientation campaign to campuses, secondary and primary schools. Armed robbers suspected to be Fulani herdsmen on Wednesday attacked travellers on the ever-busy Abuja-Keffi Expressway, carting away mobile phones and money from them.The robbery took place at about 10am on the Expressway close to a village called Barde, after Gidan Waya in Kaduna State, a few kilometres from Jos, Plateau state capital.The robbers numbering about ten, with five of them wielding dangerous weapons, including guns and machetes, came from the bush, stopped vehicles and ordered passengers to lie facedown.According to an eyewitness who was in a vehicle which was a few distance from them saw market women and others frisked at gunpoint.Ironically, the incident took place between two police checkpoints.The robbers fled into the bush after 30 minutes of successful operation, when they sighted some soldiers from Keffi in Nasarawa state.Some of the victims claimed the robbers were Fulani as they understood the language they conversed in.A woman who was on a business trip to Jos for her boss wept uncontrollably, having lost a huge amount of money.She begged that our correspondent should relay the incident to her boss, and from his exclamation, it was obvious that a big money has gone. Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has said he will not accept any chieftaincy title while in office. He said all titles will be defer... Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has said he will not accept any chieftaincy title while in office.He said all titles will be deferred until after his tenure.Okowa spoke yesterday when he visited the Odio Ologbo of Oleh in Isoko South Local Government Area of Delta State, Anthony Ovramwah, who was celebrating his 80th birthday.The governor, who was also in Oleh to inaugurate and inspect projects to mark his second year in office, hailed the communities that desired to honour him with chieftaincy titles.He said such titles would be taken after leaving office.Okowa said: I will not take chieftaincy titles during my tenure as governor. All titles will be deferred till after I leave office.The governor said he needed to concentrate on the delivery of dividends of democracy to Delta residents.He congratulated the Odio Ologbo on his birthday and wished him more happy years on earth. Former military President, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida will on Friday in Minna, Niger State give out his last daughter, Halimat, in marriage.The wedding is taking place amidst concerns over the Generals health. He recently returned from Germany, where he sought some medical help.Since then, he has kept off from public functions.Halimat is the second daughter and last child of the family. She was born by his late wife Maryam while the military ruler presided over the affairs of the country at Dodan Barracks in Lagos. Babangida ruled from Lagos between August 1985 until 1991 when he shifted the seat of government to Abuja.The groom is Alhaji Auwal Lawal Abdullahi, who holds the traditional title of Sarkin Sudan Gombe. He is a businessman.All arrangements have been concluded for the wedding and invitations sent to prominent Nigerians, across the country.The News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN) reports that the wedding prayers will take place at the Hilltop Villa of the former military President Minna by 2.30 pm.The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Niger says it will deploy no fewer than 135 personnel to provide security before and during the wedding fatiha.Mr Philip Ayuba, Commandant, NSCDC in the state, gave the figure in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN) on Wednesday in Minna.He said that the command has set up three teams to achieve this purpose, including a surveillance team that will carry out under-cover activities in all the black spots within and outside the metropolis of the city.He said another team will patrol the metropolis patrol, while a third team will secure the venues of the programme. These are Justice Legbo Kutigi conference center, where a reception will hold for the guests, the El Amin School, which will hold a spill-over reception and the residence of the former President. We have already issued an effective operational order to the officers deployed for that effect, he said.He also said that sufficient personnel will be deployed to all the roads leading to the hill top residence of the former president.Police Commissioner Zubairu Muazu also said 4000 policemen will be deployed to provide security on the highways, major roads in Minna the airport and the venues of the ceremony. 42 min GOAL! Atletico Madrid 2-1 Real Madrid (Isco) 16 min GOAL! Atletico Madrid 2-0 Real Madrid (Griezmann) 12 min GOAL! Atletico Madrid 1-0 Real Madrid (Saul Niguez) Good evening and welcome to's live commentary of the second leg of the Champions League semi-final between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid from the Vicente Calderon.Cristiano Ronaldo netted a stunning hat-trick in the first leg last week as Real Madrid took firm control of the tie with a 3-0 success.No team has ever overcome a three-goal first-leg deficit at this stage of the competition, but that is the task facing Atletico if they are to avoid more heartbreak against their bitter rivals.Follow our live minute-by-minute coverage of the action below.Oblak; Gimenez, Godin, Savic, Luis; Gabi, Saul, Koke; Carrasco, Torres, GriezmannNavas; Danilo, Varane, Ramos, Marcelo; Casemiro, Modric, Kroos, Isco; Benzema, RonaldoThe referee brings the second period to a close with Real Madrid booking their spot in the 2017 Champions League final despite losing 2-1 at Atletico Madrid in the second leg of their semi-final. Thanks for joiningfor the action once again. Until next time!Smart save from Navas to keep out Griezmann's effort.The rain continues to pour in Madrid as the full-time whistle draws closer. It will be Real Madrid against Juventus in the 2017 Champions League final. What a brilliant match-up!We are into the first of two additional minutes at the end of the 90.Ronaldo turns and fires over the Atletico crossbar from the edge of the home side's box.Out of nowhere, the heavens have opened!Morata replaces Isco for Real Madrid.Some of the Atletico supporters are making their way towards the exits as we approach the final moments of this match. Real Madrid have done enough to negotiate this difficult second leg tonight.Correa (Atletico) is booked for a late challenge on Ronaldo.Challenges are flying in all over the place at the moment as both teams battle for possession of the ball. It is a surprise that the referee has been able to keep all 22 players on the field so far here.The Real Madrid supporters are in fine voice as we approach the final five minutes of football. Atletico started so well tonight, but it is going to be Real Madrid in the 2017 Champions League final.Again it is super defending from Varane as the Frenchman denies Griezmann with a fine challenge inside the Real Madrid box. Atletico continue to force the issue as we enter the final 10 minutes.Gameiro has the chance to slot home from close range after super work from Correa, but Ramos just does enough to turn behind. Good pressure from Atletico here.Asensio and Vasquez replace Casemiro and Benzema.Correa replaces Koke for Atletico.Benzema dances into the Atletico box, but Thomas just does enough to make the challenge.Benzema meets a super cross from Marcelo, but his effort hits the side-netting. Atletico are living a charmed life at the moment as they continue to commit players forward.Atletico are preparing to make their third change of the night, with Angel Correa getting ready. Still three goals needed for the home side in the final 20 minutes or so at the Vicente Calderon.Decent save from Navas to keep out Griezmann's swerving effort.Ronaldo has the ball in the back of the net for Real Madrid, but the offside flag is raised. It was a very tight call, with Godin potentially playing the number seven onside!Navas has had his critics this season, but the Costa Rican has just made a massive double save. Atletico really needed one of those to go in, with the aggregate score still 4-2 approaching the final 20 minutes. The home side need to score at least three times in the final stages tonight.Incredible goalkeeping from Navas as the Real Madrid stopper first denies Carrasco from close range, before keeping out Gameiro's header from the rebound! Incredible!Not an awful lot to report in the last few minutes, with neither side creating much in the final third of the field. Atletico need three goals, but Real Madrid are comfortable as they pass and probe. Simeone continues to prowl the touchline, hoping that something will drop for his side here.Possession football from Atletico in the last few moments, but they cannot seem to find a route past Ramos and Varane, and another attack ends with Real Madrid clearing their lines.Still no movement on the Real Madrid bench, but we are entering the stage of the match where Zidane will be considering changes, and the Frenchman has a number of talented attackers on the bench. As for Atletico, Simeone's side are still in need of at least three more goals tonight.Another half-chance for Real Madrid as Ronaldo meets a low cross from Marcelo, but his effort is wide of the post. Still 4-2 Real Madrid on aggregate with 58 minutes on the clock here.! Gameiro and Thomas replace Gimenez and Torres.Half-chance for Isco as the Spaniard finds space outside the Atletico box, but his effort was always wide of the post. Atletico are preparing to make a double change here...Griezmann finds Carrasco with a super pass inside the Real Madrid box, but the Belgian just cannot control under pressure from Marcelo, and the away side have a goal kick. Atletico really need to find a third goal in the next five or so minutes if they are to stand a chance of progressing here.Atletico need their supporters to stay with them, but Real Madrid are taking the pace out of the match with a period of possession, which is exactly what the doctor ordered at this stage.Griezmann's free kick misses the Real Madrid crossbar.Atletico have a free kick in a dangerous position as Isco brings Gimenez to the deck...Oblak stands tall to keep out a free kick from Ronaldo, which had been struck with some pace towards the Atletico goal. Another goal for Real Madrid and it would be curtains!no changes from either side at the break, which is not too much of a surprise. However, I suspect that both managers will already have alterations in mind as the second period develops here.Atletico resume the action here...The referee brings the first period to a close with Atletico Madrid leading Real Madrid 2-1 on the night, but trailing 4-2 on aggregate. It was all Atletico in the early moments, and they scored twice through Saul and Griezmann to move to within one goal of their rivals. A close-range finish from Isco in the 42nd minute, however, has seen Real Madrid register an all-important away goal.Real Madrid goalkeeper Navas stays on the deck after a collision with Torres. There did not seem to be too much in it, but Navas looks in some distress in the latter stages of the first period here.What a brilliant opening 45 minutes at the Vicente Calderon. Real Madrid were in all sorts of trouble when they fell 2-0 behind early on, but Isco's goal has put them in a strong position once again.Real Madrid score a vital away goal at the Calderon as Isco converts from close range after Oblak had palmed a Kroos effort straight in front of him. It is a massive goal for the away side here.Real Madrid have had a lot of the ball since Atletico's incredible start to the match, but the visitors have really struggled to create openings. Kroos looks to find Ronaldo with a cross from a wide position, but Savic is on hand to head clear. Little under five minutes of the first period to play here.Isco dances into the Atletico box before having a go, but Oblak makes a comfortable save.Gabi (Atletico) is now booked for dissent after questioning the referee's decision not to book Isco for a late challenge on Griezmann. Bookings for everyone tonight!Simeone asks for more from the home supporters as Real Madrid pass and probe in Atletico's half of the field. I must admit that I fancy Real Madrid to find the net at some point tonight.Ramos (Real Madrid) is booked for dissent.Godin (Atletico) is booked for a heavy challenge on Ronaldo.All kicking off here as Godin jumps into the back of Ronaldo, which sees Ramos come flying over!Casemiro is fortunate to escape a yellow card following a poor challenge on Griezmann, who was chopped to the deck in the middle of the park. Casemiro really should have gone in the book there.Not an awful lot to report in terms of chances in the last few minutes, with both teams guilty of conceding possession in the final third of the field. The game has now settled into a pattern.Possession football for Real Madrid as they continue to pass and probe in Atletico's half of the field. It is not too much of a surprise that the home side have dropped a little deeper after such a fast start. Simeone's side need a third, but there is no point chasing the game at this moment.Saul steps on the foot of Isco, and Ramos goes absolutely potty as he calls for a yellow card. The referee, however is unmoved and simply awards a free kick, which is wasted by the visitors.The wind is swirling around the Vicente Calderon, with a cross from Marcelo evading Ronaldo at the far post. Godin then smashes into Modric with a clean challenge, which brings more cheers from the home supporters. Real Madrid, however, are seeing much more of the ball at the moment.Real Madrid would have wanted to get through the opening 15, 20 minutes without conceding, but Atletico have simply not allowed their rivals to breathe tonight. It has been an incredible display from the home side, although there are signs that the play is just starting to settle at the Calderon.The atmosphere inside this stadium is absolutely incredible, with Atletico right back in this semi-final. Real Madrid are still the favourites due to the fact that they will fancy netting an away goal, but the home side have given themselves serious hope with a lot of football left to play tonight.Incredible, just incredible. Griezmann puts his penalty past Navas, and we are now 3-2 in this semi-final. Real Madrid have absolutely fallen apart in the opening 17 minutes of this second leg!Atletico have a penalty as Varane brings Torres to the ground inside the box. Incredible!There it is! Atletico make the breakthrough at the Vicente Calderon as Saul rises to head a brilliant Koke corner into the back of the net. We have lift-off in Madrid, and this semi-final is alive!Carrasco delivers another dangerous cross into the Real Madrid box after finding space in a wide position, but Griezmann does not gamble, and the away side can clear their lines once again.It has been a wonderful opening nine minutes at the Vicente Calderon, with both teams committing numbers in the final third of the field. Atletico have to go for it tonight, and that will leave space for Real Madrid down the other end. If Atletico can score first here, then you just never know what could happen.Wonderful save from Oblak as the Atletico goalkeeper keeps out a header from Casemiro, which seemed destined for the bottom corner! Sensational goalkeeping from Oblak!Savic (Atletico) is booked for an elbow on Isco.Super chance for Atletico as Carrasco breaks down the right before delivering a low cross into Koke, but the Spaniard's near-post effort is kept out by Keylor Navas!Danilo (Real Madrid) is booked for a high challenge on Luis.Comfortable save from Oblak as the Atletico goalkeeper keeps out a strike from Isco.Griezmann decides to have a pop from distance after finding space in the final third of the field, but his effort was always high of the crossbar. Before that, Ramos received a bit of treatment after colliding with Fernando Torres in a pretty heavy aerial challenge. It has been a full-throttle start.Real Madrid kick things off at the Vicente Calderon... Nigerian Government has assured that more Chibok girls in Boko Haram captive will be freed. Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai... Nigerian Government has assured that more Chibok girls in Boko Haram captive will be freed. Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, gave the assurance during a courtesy visit to his office in Abuja on Tuesday by the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). He disclosed governments plan to take the Change Begins With Me Campaign to universities across the country, adding that Nigerian students remain the critical mass of the public who can drive the national re-orientation campaign to success. I think the biggest news you have given me today is your readiness to work with us on the Change Begins With Me. I see Change Begins With Me as the greatest legacy this government can leave and it is not by accident that our campaign is largely centered around students, he said. We have about seven themes that concentrate only on students. I remember very well about the one that says that I will not sell my body for marks, which reflects the campaign on moral rebirth. We must change our ways of doing things starting from punctuality, honesty, integrity, and industry. We have to change the way we do things in such a manner that will benefit everybody. We cannot be doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. While acknowledging NANS commendation of the Federal Government for the rescue of 82 Chibok school girls, the Minister said even though there are ongoing efforts to secure the release of the remaining girls, the government is now working for the total restoration of peace and security to the North East and other parts of the country. What is unique about the release of these 82 girls is that its only a phase and we are already working towards the release of even more girls But we have gone beyond looking at the release of these girls; we are looking at total restoration of peace all over the North East and by extension all over Nigeria. The Minister said in the area of economy, which was crippled by the crash in crude oil prices and unbridled corruption, the Federal Government has remained focused in fighting corruption and diversifying the economy away from oil in order to insulate the country from the volatility of crude oil prices. He gave the assurance that because of the creative approach adopted by the Buhari Administration to restore the economy, Nigeria will soon march out of recession. Earlier, the National President of NANS, Comrade Aruna Kadiri, hailed the government for the rescue of the 82 Chibok girls. Let me appreciate this government for the victory recently achieved talking about the 82 Chibok girls, its a laudable achievement. We want to use this opportunity to congratulate the Federal Government and the Nigerian Military, the DSS, the Police, everybody that has put in effort to make sure that we bring back our girls. We are saying this because Chibok girls are students and they are under our offices, he said. Comrade Kadiri said NANS has resolved to partner with the Federal Government in the national re-orientation campaign, tagged Change Begins With Me, noting that students and ordinary Nigerians should be the ones driving the campaign. He also commended the Minister for working hard to bridge the communication gap between the government and the people. Special Assistant to Governor Mohammed Abubakar on Development Partners, Mansur Manu Soro has said following the payment of N-Power Volunteer Corps (NPVCs) monthly stipend covering December 2016 to April 2017, the Social Investment programmes have injected the sum of N447, 280,000 into Bauchi State economy.He disclosed this in Bauchi on Wednesday at an interactive session between the N- Power Volunteer Corps (NPVCs) and the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Job Creation, Mr. Afolabi Imakwuede.He said that the state has a total of 42,617 applicants and is among the three best states in the country due to the massive mobilisation and the facilitation of free registration of applicants by governor Mohammed Abubakar."In collaboration with institutional partners, we have recorded a successful deployment of 4,834 NPVCs to various places of primary assignment across the lengths and breadth of Bauchi State. "As one of the key economic policies of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and the instrument through which the present economic recession is being addressed," therefore he said.He commended Governor Mohammed Abubakar for providing the enabling environment for implementation of Social Investment Programmes in the st, therefore,Soro enjoined the NPVCs to furnish the federal government's delegation with all the necessary information needed on the N-Power activities in the state.On his part, the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Job Creation, Mr. Afolabi Imakwuede commended the Bauchi state government for its commitment towards ensuring the success of N-Power and other federal government's Social Investment Programmes.He said that the provision of office accommodation, running costs and other incentives provided by the Bauchi State government is commendable.Mr. Imakwuede called on the NPVCs to remain committed to their N-Power job postings in order to actualise the goals of the programme and other similar programmes.He also charge Nigerian youths to embrace president Buhari's employment generation programmes which were design to reduce unemployment especially among the youths.The N-Power Programme is a job creation and youth empowerment initiative of the Federal Government been implemented in partnership with the 36 States and FCT.It was designed to help young Nigerians acquire and develop life-long skills to become solution providers in their communities and to become players in the domestic and global markets. Governor Kashim Shettima on Tuesday led key stake-holders and elders from Chibok community to the DSS Medical Centre where the Governors ... Governor Kashim Shettima on Tuesday led key stake-holders and elders from Chibok community to the DSS Medical Centre where the Governors delegation met with the 82 schoolgirls freed by Boko Haram three years after their violent abduction at Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State in April, 2014. The Governors wife, Nana Shettima was also at the centre to meet the girls. Shettima's delegation included the District head of Chibok, prominent elders, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume representing Borno South, lawmakers at the House of Reps and Borno State Assembly representing Chibok and other Government officials from Chibok community. The Governor was received by the Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs Jummai Alhassan and the Chief Medical Director of the Department of State Services Medical Centre, Mrs Ann Okorafor. Excited Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs Jummai Alhassan revealed that although the 21 girls freed by the insurgents in October, last year, have been under the custody of the Federal Government and undergoing rehabilitation, Governor Kashim Shettima has been making financial contributions to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs to co-fund the rehabilitation and skills acquisition programmes. "The people of Borno State are lucky to have a compassionate Governor who cares deeply and genuinely for his people. The 21 girls freed last year are under the Federal Government but Governor Shettima said these girls are his daughters, they are citizens of Borno and as such he was still going to be making contributions so that whatever we planned as Federal Government could be improved upon and he has been supporting us. He offered support without us asking and I am sure he will still support us in managing our 82 daughters by the time they leave this hospital and come to us" the Minister said. Governor Shettima told the girls that he was so full of joy and looks forward to receiving their remaining counterparts still being held. "By the grace of God your sisters will be also be freed. We have a determined President, all we need is to support him and pray for him. I assure you that we shall do whatever we can to make you not only comfortable but to actualize your dreams of becoming whatever you wanted while in school. 56 of your colleagues who escaped from abduction are in their final year in two international private schools. They are doing very well. We will work with the Federal Government and your parents to determine what is best for you. For now, the focus is on your health. I will urge you to cooperate with the physicians here. Please, do not hide anything from them, they are trained to keep your medical records confidential and the information you give them is what they need to assess your health. When your health assessment is completed, we will then discuss your education but please, do not allow your experience make you give up on education" Shettima said. The Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume and Representative Asabe Vilita Bashir, both representing local government areas that include Chibok addressed the girls separately, thanking God for their return and calling on them to par for the return of others still in captivity. The District head of Chibok, the member representing Chibok at the Borno State Assembly as well as other stake-holders from the community took time to speak to the girls in local languages to connect with their emotions. They all praised God for their return and called on them to cooperate with physicians at the DSS Medical Centre. Mrs Shettima's wife, Nana Shettima presented boxes of clothing to each of the 82 girls as part of contributions to uplift their spirit. The Governor's wife, who made several off camera visits to see the first set of 21 girls is expected to step up visits as the 82 girls undergo rehabilitation. More photos below... The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, yesterday paid the bill for the kidney transplant operation of 22-year-old Nayif Ismail who has be... The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, yesterday paid the bill for the kidney transplant operation of 22-year-old Nayif Ismail who has been on admission at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, AKTH, Kano for a while. Ismail has been battling with severe kidney disease for two years. The monarch ordered the chief medical director of the hospital to facilitate immediate transfer of the patient to the teaching hospital for commencement of the surgery. We have made all arrangements for his surgery at AKTH. You should please transfer him immediately to the hospital for the commencement of the operation, he said Despite his critical health condition, Ismail presented a gift of Holy Quran to the emir in appreciation. The monarch took pity on Ismail who is a Quranic teacher and paid his bill when he paid a visit to the hospital yesterday. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired his FBI director James Comey, the man who leads the agency charged with investigating his cam... US President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired his FBI director James Comey, the man who leads the agency charged with investigating his campaigns ties with Russia a move that sent shockwaves through Washington.The surprise dismissal of Comey, who played a controversial role in the 2016 presidential election, came as he was leading a probe into whether Trumps aides colluded with Moscow to sway the vote. The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. A search for a new FBI director was to begin immediately, the White House said in a statement.In a letter, Trump told Comey: You are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately. While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission, Trump said. FBI directors are appointed for a single 10-year term.The 56-year-old Comey, who is popular among rank-and-file agents, was appointed four years ago. Democrat Hillary Clinton accused Comey of trashing her chances of becoming president by revealing an renewed investigation into her email use. His dismissal will raise questions about Trumps motives.It will also prompt parallels with Richard Nixons decision to unceremoniously fire his attorney general, an event that plunged his presidency deeper into crisis. Russia probe In March, Comey revealed that the agency is investigating Russian interference in last years presidential election and notably Moscows possible collusion with President Donald Trumps campaign.During testimony to Congress, he also flatly rejected Trumps explosive claim that he was wiretapped by his predecessor Barack Obama.The explosive testimony in the House Intelligence Committee the first public hearing into both controversies came as Trump sought to steer the news focus by calling the Russia issue, which has been a cloud over his November victory, fake news. Republicans pointed to Comeys recent misstatement to Congress about Clinton forwarding emails to an aide as a possible reason for his dismissal. Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well, said Senator Lindsey Graham.I encourage the president to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nations interests. Democrats already angry that Congressional inquiries have been hamstrung by Republicans willingness to defend Trump worried that the FBIs investigation may also be in jeopardy Congressional Republicans cannot possibly disagree now: the only fix to this mess is an independent commission with subpoena power, said Brian Fallon, a former Justice Department and Hillary Clinton spokesman. The first two on top were previous letters and the third one below is the latest one that got people talking. The first two on top were previous letters and the third one below is the latest one that got people talking. As the choice of words in President Buhari's recent letter to the National Assembly, informing them of his medical leave to the UK continues to generate controversy, some Nigerians have dug out his past letters to the NASS members where he stated that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo would perform the functions of his office. "While I am away, the Vice President will perform the functions of my office" President Buhari stated in his letter to the senate on January 18th. Even when he asked for an extension, President Buhari stated clearly that Osinbajo will continue to act on his behalf. In his recent letter to the senate which was read yesterday, President Buhari said Osinbajo would "coordinate the activities of government", causing an uproar. See the full letters below: The recent letter, dated 5th May, 2017 The second letter, dated 5th Febuary 2017 Buhari's first letter, dated 18th January 2017 The release of 82 of the Chibok schoolgirls by their Boko Haram captors, after three years, is heart-warming, the U.S. government said.The Deputy Director, Office of West African Affairs, Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, Mr. Nathan Holt, made the remarks in Washington, D.C. via teleconference on: Nigeria, a critical U.S. partner.He said the release of the girls from captivity was also a positive development for them and their families.Many of you will have also followed the news of the release of the Chibok girls over the weekend.Obviously, that was a heart-warming and positive development for the young women involved and for their families.Wed like to point out that theyre among thousands of victims of Boko Haram and its offshoot, ISIS West Africa, Holt said.The U.S. envoy explained that his country was carrying out a lot of bilateral activities with Nigeria and multilateral cooperation, involving the UN.He noted that Nigeria had an influential voice on the African continent.Again, thats an overview of where we are in a very important bilateral relationship for us.Id like to point out as well that weve worked together closely in the United Nations.Weve worked together on issues of arms proliferation and nuclear questions.So, Nigeria has a voice in Africa that is quite influential.Ive worked on Africa for most of my professional career and its very good to be in a good place with this group.Holt regretted that Boko Haram terrorists had brought untold consequences on the country and its neighbours.According to him, however, it is heart-warming that civilians, who have been displaced, are gradually gaining access to some of the recovered territories by military operations.One of the critical consequences of the Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa insurgency, which has been going on since 2009, is that it has produced terrible consequences for the population.As the military authorities have begun to coordinate their activities more effectively, they and the civilian authorities have gained access to areas previously under the control of Boko Haram.As that happens, we have all come to understand more clearly the true dimensions of the humanitarian crisis, the envoy said.But, he said that the military operations alone could not solve the problem in northeast of Nigeria.We are engaged with Nigeria and its neighbours, not only to provide humanitarian relief to the victims of this insurgency but to help them as security and intelligence partners to address the security dimensions of this problemAt the end of the day, I think we and our partners all recognise theres no purely military solution.The hopes and aspirations of the people need to be met.Education, water and basic governance need to be provided in areas where it has not been provided before.And its a joint effort; there are no easy solutions, but were in this for the long haul. The Government of Spain has commended the Federal Government over the release of 82 Chibok School girls abducted by Boko Haram Terrorist in 2014.Spain in a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday expressed joy and satisfaction at the release of the abducted girls by the terrorist group, adding that they would be reunited with their families.Spain expressed the hope that the rest of the women and girls abducted by Boko Haram would be released soon after their lengthy stay in captivity.It called on the Federal Government to ensure that those responsible were brought to justice.The Government of Spain reiterates its solidarity with the people and Government of Nigeria over the inhumane suffering that Boko Haram has caused in recent years.Spain supports the efforts of the Government of Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram terrorism, which has led to so much instability in the region, it said. Earlier today, it was reported that the CEO of Made Men Music, Ubi Franklin was almost stabbed by a Chinese man at a furniture showroom in ... Earlier today, it was reported that the CEO of Made Men Music, Ubi Franklin was almost stabbed by a Chinese man at a furniture showroom in Lekki yesterday. ( Read here Well, Ubi has cried out after he found out this morning that the man was released and is carrying on with his business. He said the man was released 5 hours after the arrest. He wrote; "So the Police release the Chinese man At LifeMate furniture that tried to kill me and he seating comfortably working. This can't happen in their own country and if it does the Nigerian will be dead by now and his family will be looking for him." So the Police release the Chinese man At LifeMate furniture that tried to kill me and he seating comfortably working. This can't happen in their own country and if it does the Nigerian will be dead by now and his family will be looking for him. A post shared by Mr ubifranklintriplemg (@ubifranklintriplemg) on May 10, 2017 at 3:46am PDT Watch the video below: LINWOOD -- Five years after a former radio talk show host was found shot to death in her South Jersey home, the case remains a mystery with no arrest made and no suspects named. April Kauffman But as the anniversary of April Kauffman's death is marked Wednesday, a possible development in the cold case has surfaced, according to 6abc.com. Two weeks ago, the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office filed a motion requesting the DNA of Kauffman's husband, Jim Kauffman, but his attorney is opposing the request, according to 6abc.com. On the morning of May 10, 2012, one of Kauffman's employees found her body in the bedroom of the Linwood home she shared with her husband, authorities have said. Jim Kauffman has not been named as a suspect and had no involvement in his wife's death, his attorney told 6abc.com. At the time, authorities reportedly said the husband maintained that his wife was still alive when he left the house that morning. April Kauffman, a 47-year-old Sunday afternoon program host on WOND, who was also a staunch veterans advocate, had been shot several times, according to officials at the time. According to 6abc.com, April Kauffman's daughter, Kim Pack, has filed a wrongful death suit against Jim Kauffman, her stepfather, and her attorneys are trying to prevent him from getting two life insurance policies that were taken out against his wife. That case will be heard in court at the end of the month, 6abc.com reported. Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook. ORADELL -- Homeowners have filed criminal complaints against a contractor who they claim they paid thousands of dollars for work that was never completed, CBS New York reported. Three families from Oradell told the station that they plan to sue Nick and Rose Sirico of Wood Art Design. The firm reportedly had a storefront in Tenafly that has been vacated, and former customers allege that the name of the company keeps changing. The families each reportedly paid more than $25,000. Nick Sirico reportedly told families him he was a licensed cabinet broker. When David Dankin called the cabinet company, though, he was told an order was never placed, CBS reported. Dankin has had a pile of debris in his backyard for six months after a contractor left, he told the station. Five complaints were filed with the Better Business Bureau against the company, according to the report. The Siricos did not respond when the CBS affiliate knocked on their door. Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde. BOGOTA -- A Marine Lieutenant from Bogota will be buried Wednesday after his remains were flown back to the United States 48 years after he went missing, NorthJersey.com reported. Marine 1st Lt. William C. Ryan Jr. was 25-years-old when his F-4 Phantom fighter jet was shot down while on a combat mission over Laos. Marine Corps Reserve 1st Lt. William C. Ryan Ryan was born in Hoboken and grew up in Bogota. He enlisted in the Marines and was sent to Vietnam in 1968, serving as a radio intercept officer. In his career, Ryan flew more than 300 combat missions and was given the Distinguished Flying Cross award, among other Strike/Flight Air Medals. But, in 1969, his aircraft was struck down by enemy fire. While the pilot called for Ryan to eject, there was no response and the pilot eventually ejected himself and was rescued. American scientists first visited the crash site in 1990 and interviewed witnesses. But, the investigation dragged and it was only with DNA that the team was able to confirm human remains found at the site to be Ryan. Ryan's remains arrived Tuesday at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, where his family was gathered. Ryan will reportedly be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, according to the report. His son, Michael Ryan, was reportedly one day away from his first birthday when his dad went missing. "We've been crying for decades," Michael Ryan, 48, told NorthJersey.com. "This is a happy moment. My dad is finally home." Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde. Jeff Smisek A Florida pension fund has filed suit against the board of United Airlines over $37 million in compensation and benefits paid to Jeff Smisek, the company's ousted CEO. (Manuel Balce Ceneta |AP file photo) NEWARK--United Airlines, which agreed to pay out nearly $37 million in compensation and benefits to its former chief executive in the wake of a bribery scandal involving the chairman of the Port Authority, is being sued by a Florida pension fund over what it called "lavish golden parachutes." In a lawsuit unsealed Wednesday in Delaware, the Tamarac, Fla., Firefighters' Pension Trust Fund said United's board of directors breached its fiduciary duties over the payout to Jeff Smisek. The executive was forced by the company to step down in 2015, as federal investigators began zeroing in on a backroom shakedown of the airline by David Samson, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. At issue was a non-stop, money-losing flight the airline reluctantly agreed to put into service from Newark to South Carolina, resuming a route coveted by Samson that would make it easier to get to his country estate in Aiken on the weekends. David Samson at Christie's inauguration in 2014. (Tony Kurdzuk | Star-Ledger file photo) Samson, 77, a former New Jersey attorney general and a confidante of Gov. Chris Christie, pleaded guilty to bribery charges last July, admitting he used his clout to coerce United to put the flight back on its schedule. He acknowledged that he had pressured the airline by removing a plan by United from the Port Authority's agenda to build a hangar for wide-body airplanes, after being told United was not planning to reinstate the route. Samson was sentenced to a year of home confinement. United--which was not criminally charged in the case--agreed to pay a fine of $2.25 million and pledged to institute "substantial reforms" to its compliance program. The airline also paid a $2.4 million settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission over lax internal accounting controls and charges that it had circumvented its standard process for initiating new routes. In its lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court against the company's board members and Smisek, the Florida pension fund said that rather than fire CEO after the bribery scheme came to light, the board instead elected to sign a separation agreement awarding the airline chief with a lavish severance package. Other airline executives tied to the scandal were also allowed to resign and given severance packages, the complaint said. "Integrity matters, and when it is compromised at the highest levels, it has a direct impact on how a corporation is run," said Gustavo Bruckner, an attorney for the pension fund. "The minimum behavior expected from an officer of a public corporation is that (s)he act in accordance with the law. We should demand no less." A United Airlines spokeswoman said, "We will defend ourselves against this claim which we believe has no merit." It marks just the latest slap at the airline, still under fire over its treatment of a passenger who was forcibly removed from a flight to accommodate a crew member heading for another airport. The lawsuit said the granting of "lavish golden parachutes to the culpable senior executives" came after a special committee of the board comprised of ten directors has acknowledged the company's involvement in Samson's bribery scheme. Attorneys for the fund said the airline should have gone after the money it paid out--what's known as a claw back. The trust fund has been a United stockholder since at least September 2012. "The board's primary justification for not pursuing a claw back was that doing so could discourage other executives from joining the company, and thus render it less competitive," said the lawsuit. "This rationale is contrary to all the public policy concerns underlying the purpose of claw backs, and serves no reasonable business purpose." It said the board breached their fiduciary duties by putting the interests of Smisek and the other officers ahead of the company's best interest when they failed to reclaim the money paid out to Smisek. Bruckner, in an email, said the board of directors never truly considered instituting a claw-back of compensation paid to Smisek, and the other executives involved in the bribery scheme, despite the behavior that led to their ouster from the Company. "The company had the gall to assert that punishing executives who authorize bribing public officials would be bad for business. So instead they rewarded them with big bucks!" he said. Last month, the board of Wells Fargo, under fire over over a massive fraud involving the creation of fraudulent bank and credit card accounts, announced it would claw back $75 million in additional compensation from executives blamed for the scandal. Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter. Find NJ.com on Facebook. A day after fights broke out at a Florida airport following flight cancellations and delays, Spirit Airlines got a temporary restraining order against its pilots to prevent work slowdowns amid a union contract dispute. Spirit blamed pilots for the chaos that erupted at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport saying in a statement that it was caused by "unlawful labor activity by some Spirit pilots designed to disrupt operations for our customers, WashingtonPost.com reported. The union denied they instituted a slowdown and said they will do continue their jobs while contract negotiations with the discount airline proceed. There were 500 passengers in the terminal Monday night, some of whom became unruly when nine flights were scrapped. One was scheduled to go to LaGuardia Airport in New York. About 300 Spirit flights have been delayed or canceled in the past week. Three New York residents were charged with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing when they clashed with deputies called in to quell passengers' anger toward airline workers. As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, 61 Spirit flights have been cancelled, according to FlightAware.com. Another 39 have been delayed. On Monday, Spirit scrapped 39 fights. In addition, 112 flights faced delays. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. CAMDEN -- Instead of witness testimony, jurors in the murder trial of David "D.J." Creato Jr. on Tuesday afternoon watched as a man and woman read argumentative text message exchanges Creato had with a 17-year-old girl he was seeing at the time his son was found dead. Brendan Creato, 3, was found in a creek in Cooper River Park Oct. 13, 2015, about three hours after his father called 911 saying his son was missing. Creato, 23, of Haddon Township, has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege he killed Brendan because the boy was causing conflict in his relationship with Julia Stensky. Assistant Prosecutor Christine Shah warned jurors in her opening statements that they would see more than 2,000 of the nearly 10,000 text messages Creato and Stensky exchanged in their "rocky" relationship. Shah also said that Creato was crazed with jealousy regarding Stensky and stressing about money when he killed his son. Stensky is not a suspect because her alibi -- that she was at school at Pace University in New York City -- was confirmed by witnesses and surveillance footage, according to testimony. Assistant Prosecutors Kevin Moran and Marian Galietta read the text messages, which were shown on a television screen so jurors could follow along. When they met on the dating app Tinder in June 2015, the texts were pleasantries. But by July, they were fighting about how Creato had to have contact with his ex-girlfriend because the two shared custody of Brendan. By August, Stensky accused him of lying about paying a parking ticket for her. "I don't want to hear more of your lies," she texted. "This relationship is over." Their fights via text message over the next few months included arguments over whether Stensky left without saying a proper goodbye and about how his phone died while he was working, so he couldn't reply to her texts fast enough. Stensky repeatedly threatened not to visit him in Haddon Township and said she was done with the relationship, while Creato begged her to stay and spend time with him. One exchange when Stensky apparently walked out, saying she was leaving, started when Creato asked her if she wanted to go to Wawa, according to his side of the conversation. Several jurors smiled and one laughed at the exchange of insults. At other times, they would proclaim their love for one another and even talked of marriage. Stensky was jealous of Brendan's mother, Denoto, and Creato was furious that Stensky wanted to go to lunch with a male classmate, according to some texts. Starting in September, according to the texts the prosecution chose to show, they began to fight more and more about what Stensky called Creato's "situation." She didn't like that he shared custody with Denoto and had Brendan every other weekend. She wrote a blog post around that time that was read into evidence earlier in the trial. In it she described Brendan as a "mistake" and said she didn't want to be tied down in her future because of Creato's child. "He's your number one priority, right?" she texted Creato. "You are too," he replied. "I'm number two in your life. Don't spin it any other way," she said. Creato told her that he won't leave his child and she had to accept it. If she can't, he texted, "then don't be with me." Later she said that her dislike of Brendan wasn't personal. "I don't want to spend my precious time with your kid or any kid," she said in one text. On Oct. 6, a week before Brendan's death, Stensky again threatened not to visit and said she probably wouldn't for a month or more because every other weekend is "tainted" by his son's presence. Creato's responses were at times angry and frustrated, and at other times pleading. He said he couldn't afford to pay child support -- the alternative to sharing custody -- but then said he'd go to court if she wanted. "You make me so happy. You're the one thing going right for me now." he says. "I'm willing to do anything or change anything for you." Jurors read and heard an exchange then that Shah had mentioned in her opening statement. Stensky said they couldn't both get what they wanted, and Creato disagreed. "Well I want you to not have a kid in your life," she texted. "You can always get what you want in the future not in the past," he replied. Creato was begging her to come visit that weekend -- a few days before Brendan died -- and she eventually said she'd come to the area but would camp by herself in Wharton State Forest Friday night to "get away from" Brendan. Later that week, Creato told her he was worried that he was going to leave him. "I'm really scared and I can't stop thinking about it," he texted her. When he said he couldn't pick her up from the train because he had to work late, she told him they were done and he should "delete this number." She eventually agreed to come hear him out, as she put it "Please don't do this," he texted her. "We have so many happy times." Prosecutors told Judge John T. Kelley that they would have another witness read the remaining text messages -- the ones from the weekend the pair spent together and the day before and after Brendan was found dead. That witness was not available Tuesday so court adjourned early. Kelley told jurors he has a seminar for the next two days, so court will resume again May 16. Stensky testified earlier in the trial that she continued to have contact with Creato after his son's death, and last spoke to him on the day he was indicted in January 2016. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook. TRENTON -- New Jersey's private non-profit colleges and universities contribute $3.5 billion a year to the state's economy, according to a new report touting the value of the institutions. The 14 colleges and universities return $35 in economic impact for every dollar of state funding they receive, according to the report by Appleseed, an economic consulting firm. "This economic impact is generated with limited investment from the state budget," said Richard Levao, president of Bloomfield College. New Jersey currently invests $2,302 per private college student, according to the report. About 99 percent of that money is financial aid, according to the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in New Jersey. The report was released at a news conference Wednesday at the Statehouse. Private colleges in New Jersey previously received direct state aid, as much as $24 million per year to split between them, according to the association. But that funding was elminated in Gov. Chris Christie's first budget, and Christie has restored just $1 million thus far. The colleges, some of which have faced serious financial woes in recent years, have long sought to have that state aid restored, though critics question whether New Jersey should send taxpayer money directly to private colleges. "It is important for policy makers and the public to understand... the 14 independent colleges and universities are an important part of the overall economy in the state and more specifically in the regions where they are located," Levao said. Colleges and universities typically conduct economic impact reports every few years to make their case for more public support. Among the report's key findings: The state invests significantly more in its public colleges and universities ($11,460 per student), but private colleges are awarding degrees in some of the most sought after fields at a higher rate. New Jersey's independent colleges support more than 33,000 jobs directly or indirectly. Private universities in the state spend more than $1 billion a year in goods, services and construction. The state's private colleges spent $1.9 billion over the last five years on research, and almost all of the funding came from outside sources. The state association represents a diverse group of colleges, including Princeton University, one of the wealthiest in the nation. Many of the state's smaller private colleges, though, have faced economic turmoil. The College of Saint Elizabeth and Georgian Court University, formerly women's colleges, went co-ed after experiencing major declines in enrollment. Rider University in Lawrence Township staved off major budget cuts in 2015 after the faculty union agreed to concessions. And Drew University in Madison was recently stung by a Moody's rating downgrade that the reflects "the continued weakening of the university's financial viability," according to the credit-rating agency. Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Just minutes before Stephen Colbert's planned "Daily Show" reunion started filming on Tuesday's "Late Show," news broke that President Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey. "My pulse is racing," Colbert said, performing some last-minute riffing on the subject in his monologue, including a reading of Trump's letter to Comey in a Trumpian voice. "Now we'll have more on this tomorrow, when they scramble to cover the whole thing up," said the Montclair resident, who was a correspondent on the Comedy Central show before going on to host "The Colbert Report," which he left in 2014 to take the helm at "The Late Show." After that was out of the way, Jon Stewart, the longtime "Daily Show" maestro, who left the show in 2015 after 16 years, wasted no time in mentioning the recent controversy over Colbert's use of explicit (yet bleeped) language in a joke about President Trump and Vladimir Putin. "I've been seeing about you in the news -- you have a potty mouth," Stewart said. Colbert's reply: "I learned it from you, Dad." (Though those calling for Stewart's removal as host used the hashtag #FireColbert, "The Late Show" saw a bump in ratings the night after he made the joke on May 1, and the show performed well throughout the week.) Tonight! Stephen reacts to the day's big surprise: the firing of James Comey by President Trump. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/axuUmFLtSd -- The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) May 10, 2017 In the reunion episode -- for which Colbert had invited former "Daily Show" regulars Rob Corddry, Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Ed Helms -- Stewart and Colbert went on to talk about Trump firing Comey, and Colbert asked if Stewart missed sounding off on the news. Stewart said he sometimes finds himself "impotently shouting into the abyss" -- not all that different from his "Daily Show" role, he mused. Getting serious, he said he appreciated the time spent with family since his departure from the Comedy Central series. "We can insult, he (Trump) can injure," Stewart said, again addressing the criticism of Colbert for his use of explicit language on "The Late Show" last week. "I do not understand why in this country, we try and hold comedians to a standard we do not hold leaders to," Stewart said. The special episode started with Stewart making a sandwich for current "Daily Show" host Trevor Noah, who presided over a series of red buttons, including one that sent Colbert running for a Coke. The bit was a nod to President Trump's push-button White House drink delivery system. This really does look like a group of students coming back to see Mr. Holland. - #JonStewart isn't cool with how young everyone looks. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/qEnDKEEJie -- The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) May 10, 2017 In a one-on-one interview, Colbert called Stewart a "gentleman farmer." (Stewart, who has made several visits to "The Late Show," owns a farm in Middletown with his wife, Tracey, and plans to open an animal sanctuary in Colts Neck.) "I don't ... I live in New Jersey," protested Stewart, who grew up in Lawrenceville and seemed to take exception to how well everyone had aged, likening his former cast to students coming to see an older Mr. Holland in the film "Mr. Holland's Opus." "This was what it was like to hangout backstage for years at the Daily Show. It was the greatest experience" - @StephenAtHome #LSSC pic.twitter.com/89EHKQZeUj -- The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) May 10, 2017 Since leaving their jobs as "Daily Show" correspondents, Bee, Helms, Oliver and Corddry have gone on to lead their own shows and act in big movies and TV series. In a reenactment of his final day at "The Daily Show" in 2005, Colbert, sporting a soul patch, ran into Bee in the break room. The host of the TBS show "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" donned a big curly wig to complain about the Bush administration. Joining them were Corddry, wearing a spiky wig with bleached tips, and Helms, in a mustache and trucker hat, all fighting over Colbert's office. "Hello chums," said Oliver, host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight," playing the role of Steve Carell, a member of the cast at the time (alas, not present for this reunion), since his own "Daily Show" tenure began in 2007. Stewart, cowering in the refrigerator, ate a series of stolen yogurts as he frantically ordered up some Donald Rumsfeld penis jokes. Crowding onto couches in a morning show style, the group went on to recall fond memories of the show that launched their careers. Colbert cued up a montage of their early correspondent work. He recalled one segment for which he had to "flee the Klan" with his producer at "a cross-burning in the countryside" when the klansmen realized he was from a comedy show. At the end of the reunion, Colbert again addressed Stewart. "I wouldn't have this gig or any gig if it hadn't been for this man," he said. Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook. Moso.jpg (Left to right) Tene walking with China, Sammy, Tene, China. Authorities are searching for the father and children. (Courtesy Newark police) UPDATE: N.J. kids who went missing with homeless dad found safe in Boston NEWARK -- Police are searching for two young children who went missing Tuesday afternoon during a supervised visit with their father, who is homeless and has a history of drug addiction, authorities said. The children, 5-year-old Sammy Tene, and his 4-year-old sister, China, were visiting their father, Moso B. Tene, 30, at the New Jersey Family Court building in the Wilentz Justice Complex on Washington Street around 4 p.m., Newark police said. A New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency worker who was supervising the visit left the room and when the worker returned, the father and two children were gone, police said. Newark police officers are helping the state's Human Services Police in the search, and asking for the public's help in finding the man and children. Moso Tene is clean-shaven, has bleached blonde hair, and was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, white sneakers and dark jeans. Sammy was wearing a black Star Wars shirt, dark jeans and light-up Spider Man sneakers. China, who has short hair and is missing her two front teeth, was wearing a purple and pink hoodie, and purple and pink tights with black hearts, police said. Anyone with information is asked to call 877-695-8477 or 877-695-4867. Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook. NEW JERSEY, DELAWARE TEAM UP TO DEPLOY FAMED ZUNI/TAMAROA AS PART OF ARTIFICIAL REEF SITE COMPRISED OF FORMER MILITARY SHIPS 205-FOOT VESSEL OF PERFECT STORM RENOWN SUNK SOUTHEAST OF CAPE MAY (17/P42) TRENTON A 205-foot vessel immortalized for its service as a Coast Guard cutter that conducted daring rescues during a brutal 1991 East Coast storm was deployed today off Cape May to become part of an artificial reef comprised of old military ships that is enhancing fishing opportunities off New Jersey and Delaware. The sinking of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa, formerly the Navy fleet tug Zuni, at the Del-Jersey-Land Inshore Reef, located 26 nautical miles southeast of Cape May, was carried out by Coleen Marine Inc., a contractor for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), in partnership with the Department of Environmental Protection. The vessel was featured in the bestselling book The Perfect Storm and the movie of the same name. As the Zuni, the vessel supported landings by the U.S. Marine Corps in the pivotal 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima. It is believed to be the last surviving vessel that directly supported those operations. We are proud to partner with Delaware in making this deployment a reality and giving this venerable vessel a chance at continued service, this time of a different nature, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said. Anglers of all ages will now be able to visit this spot for many years to come to enjoy the varied marine life this ship will attract. Sport divers will also have a unique opportunity to explore the Tamaroas decks, bulwarks and passageways, perhaps soaking in the ships storied history in the process. The Zuni/Tamaroa has a renowned history of service at sea that now extends to Delawares artificial reef system which has earned its own renown by contributing to both the states environment and economy, Delaware Governor John Carney said. Projects such as the Del-Jersey-Land Reef are a direct link to our environmental health and to what Delaware is doing economically in creating new habitat where there was none, and the Zuni/Tamaroa strengthens that link. The cutter was deployed in water more than 120 feet deep after patches were removed from holes that were pre-cut into its hull. The Zuni/Tamaroa joined the former Army freighter and Navy support ship Shearwater, the minesweeper Gregory Poole, and the 563-foot destroyer U.S.S. Arthur W. Radford, the largest vessel ever deployed off the East Coast. The reef, established 10 years ago specifically for former military vessels, is jointly managed by New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. For much of its Coast Guard career, the Tamaroa served out of New York City, and toward the end of its service it was based in New Castle, N.H. Its Coast Guard roles included fisheries enforcement, drug interdiction, immigration enforcement and ice patrols in locations as far-afield as the Caribbean, the Straits of Florida and the vast North Atlantic fishing ground of Georges Bank. Over its nearly five-decade Coast Guard career, the Tamaroa, also known as the Tam, responded to numerous sinking and disabled fishing and pleasure boats, took part in the rescue of passengers from a sinking ocean liner, recovered bodies from an airliner that crashed off the coast of New Jersey, rescued hundreds of Haitian migrants from overloaded boats, saved the crew of a storm-battered Soviet freighter, and intercepted drug runners and smugglers. But the Tamaroa gained fame for its rescue efforts during the 1991 Halloween Storm a rare convergence of a hurricane and a massive low pressure system from Canada that battered the East Coast and was chronicled in Sebastian Jungers bestselling book, The Perfect Storm, made into a hit movie starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. The Tamaroa first assisted in the rescue of three people from a sailboat caught in the storm. Then, battling massive swells and making eight separate approaches, the vessel rescued four of five crew members from an Air National Guard rescue helicopter that ran out of fuel and had to ditch 90 nautical miles south of Montauk, Long Island. The fifth member was lost at sea. The Tamaroa and its crew received Coast Guard commendations for the missions. Plans to restore the Tamaroa as a museum were scuttled due to its advanced age that made work very costly and unfeasible. The Zuni/Tamaroa was prepared for reef deployment in Norfolk, Va., where the vessel underwent extensive environmental preparation. Interior paneling and insulation were removed and the ship was thoroughly cleaned of fuel and hydraulic fluids. The ships environmental tests were approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The vessel also met Coast Guard standards for sinking as an artificial reef. The New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife currently holds permits for 15 artificial reef sites 13 in federal waters including the Del-Jersey-Land Reef and two in state waters. The reefs, encompassing a total of 25 square miles of ocean floor, are made up of a variety of materials such as concrete and steel, fishing boats and barges, even subway cars and Army tanks. These materials provide surfaces for a wide diversity of marine organisms to grow on the otherwise flat and featureless continental shelf, ultimately providing habitat for many species of fish and shellfish. DEP studies have shown that these materials are colonized quickly with organisms such as algae, barnacles, mussels and blue crabs that attract smaller fish which, in turn, attract species that are popular with recreational anglers. Older vessels such as the Tamaroa are ideally suited for artificial reefs because of all the voids and cavities in them below deck theyre really the perfect sanctuary for fish, said Delaware reef coordinator Jeff Tinsman. Not long after the sinking, the fish will start to come outside her hull and decks to feed, Tinsman said. Within a few weeks, blue mussels, sponges, barnacles and soft corals will attach themselves to the structure, and in about a year the reef will be fully productive for fish and anglers alike. The U.S. Navy commissioned the vessel on Oct. 9, 1943, as the fleet tug Zuni. In February 1945, the Zuni arrived three days after the initial amphibious assault of Japanese-held Iwo Jima by the U.S. Marine Corps, assisting follow-up landing craft in funneling more troops and equipment into the attack on the barren volcanic island southeast of Japan. The Zuni, nicknamed the Mighty Z, towed damaged ships to safety and rescued hundreds of crew members from torpedoed ships during its war service. The Zuni was decorated with four battle stars, among many other honors. Upon its transfer to the Coast Guard after the war, the Zuni was refitted for service as a cutter and renamed the Tamaroa, after a Native-American tribe that once inhabited the central Mississippi River Valley. Among its many exploits during 48 years of Coast Guard service, the Tamaroa rescued passengers from the Andrea Doria, an Italian luxury liner that sank off Nantucket on July 26, 1956, after colliding with a Swedish liner. Five weeks earlier, the Tamaroa had assisted in recovering bodies from a Venezuelan airliner that crashed 32 miles off Asbury Park. In March 1984, the Tamaroa assisted in the rescue of the crew of a Soviet freighter that foundered in bad weather off New Hampshire. The Russian crew went on to enjoy a circuit tour of New York and Washington, D.C. that included a warm welcome at a Gloucester County diner. Five years later the Tamaroa saved hundreds of Haitian migrants while on patrol in the Caribbean. The ship also made a special mission to save a Cuban man who had paddled 40 miles out to sea on tire inner-tubes. The Coast Guard retired the Tamaroa in 1994, and donated the vessel to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on the Hudson River in New York City. A former crewman started a group to restore the vessel. Work was under way in Virginia when a 2011 storm flooded the Tamaroas engine room. Its hull also showed numerous signs of failure, making restoration impossible. Delaware paid for the bulk of the acquisition of the cutter, preparation and sinking, assisted by the DEP, which received funding from the Ann E. Clarke Foundation and the Sportfishing Fund. For a detailed U.S. Coast Guard history of the Tamaroa, visit: https://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Tamaroa1943.asp For more on New Jerseys Artificial Reef Program, visit: http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/artreef.htm For more on Delawares Artificial Reef Program, visit: http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/fw/Fisheries/Pages/ArtificialReefProgram.aspx PHOTOS/Top: U.S. Coast Guard; Tom Middle: The Sportfishing Fund; Bottom Middle: U.S. Coast Guard; Bottom: Coleen Marine, Inc. ### Pair tied up, held at gunpoint for 15 hours by victim's ex in Algiers: NOPD In this Wednesday, May 3, 2017, photo, then-FBI Director James Comey pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. President Donald Trump abruptly fired Comey on May 9, ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's election meddling.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) The head of Louisiana's largest and most influential anti-abortion group said Monday his organization intends to push the Legislature to not give up any ground from the state's strict ban on abortion and make the law even stricter by removing one Mike Stevens is an imaging assistant in the Diagnostic Center and has been with CHI Health Mercy Hospital for 15 years. Mike worked for the Council Bluffs Fire Department for 28 years as a paramedic and firefighter. With the skills he acquired as a paramedic, he wanted to continue in the health care field. After retirement, he applied for a position in the Diagnostic Centers outpatient lab. The most rewarding thing about working in health care at CHI Health Mercy is providing the highest quality of care to our patients, he said. We see many patients on a regular weekly or monthly basis. I look forward to coming in to work every morning because I work with some of the greatest people in healthcare. Mike is a Council Bluffs native and graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School. He received his EMT-A training at Iowa Western and his paramedic training from Creighton University. He met his wife in high school and has been married for 41 years. Two women face charges of theft after they used a potato to melt, then pawn, small gold bars stolen from a woman whose house one of them was hired to clean, police said. The women are both charged with felony theft and conspiracy. Both were arrested in April for thefts reported in February. According to the police report, woman one owned a cleaning company and had been hired by a Council Bluffs man to clean his and his mothers home since 2013. Woman two was employed by woman one at the time, investigators said. Woman two told the alleged victims that woman one had been stealing from them for some time, and police confirmed both women had dealings with an Omaha pawn shop. An employee of the pawn shop told police woman two had sold him an African gold coin for $1,290. Woman one had records of three transactions for scrap gold worth a total of $1,000, the shop employee told police. Police interviewed woman two, who told them her conscience is bothering her, about the thefts. She said, in the summer of 2016, woman one showed her a gold bar which she claimed to have found on the ground at an apartment complex she was cleaning. Woman one wanted to melt the gold, so she and woman two found a video tutorial on YouTube of how to melt gold in a hollowed-out potato. Woman two allegedly sold the gold for woman one, who stayed in the car, the report said. Woman one was interviewed by police and told them woman two was making her life a living hell. She said woman two had given her jewelry to pawn, thinking it was from her family and not stolen. She said she didnt know gold melted until woman two showed her. Wesley Correa-Carmenaty has been named as the sole suspect in the official report on the death of Pottawattamie County Sheriffs Deputy Mark Burbridge. Burbridge was killed in the line of duty on May 1 during a jailbreak by Correa-Carmenaty, police said. Correa-Carmenaty, 24, is charged with first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of robbery, escape from custody, kidnapping, intimidation with a dangerous weapon and control of a firearm by a felon. Correa-Carmenaty appeared in court Wednesday morning with armed sheriffs deputies standing at his sides. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, his hands shackled while clad in an orange jumpsuit. According to the report, Correa-Carmenaty was being transported to the Pottawattamie County Jail from the Pottawattamie County Courthouse after being sentenced to 45 years for attempted murder, voluntary manslaughter and robbery in connection with the death of Anthony Walker in March 2016. Correa-Carmenaty was handcuffed and shackled in the sheriffs office van alongside a separate, female prisoner who has not been identified by investigators. During the ride between the courthouse and jail, Correa-Carmenaty allegedly told the female prisoner that he was going to be getting out and they should hang out afterward. During this time, Correa-Carmenaty was able to defeat the locking mechanisms for his handcuffs and leg shackles, the report states. The report does not state how he was able to defeat the locks. At 10:55 a.m., the van entered the sally port where prisoners are loaded and unloaded at the jail. Deputy Patrick Morgan and Burbridge got out of the van and went to the rear doors and opened them. Morgan removed the female prisoner from the van and began to walk with her to the jail intake door. Burbridge stayed by the van and waited for Correa-Carmenaty to get out. When Correa-Carmenaty got out, he attacked Burbridge, who suffered numerous lacerations to the head, neck and arms during the attack. Correa-Carmenaty ran to the drivers door of the van and got inside the front seat area. Burbridge ran to the front passenger side of the van and got in while Morgan ran back around to the drivers side door and tried to assist in apprehending Correa-Carmenaty. In the struggle, Correa-Carmenaty took one of the deputys guns the report does not say which one and shot Burbridge in the head. Burbridge fell to the ground and was declared dead around noon at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha. Correa-Carmenaty then shot Morgan in the abdomen, and he also fell to the ground. Correa-Carmenaty allegedly took possession of both of the deputies firearms after shooting the men. Correa-Carmenaty took the keys from Morgans belt, along with a magazine of ammunition, then got in the van and rammed through the closed garage door to escape. After ramming the door, Correa-Carmenaty is accused of driving to the intersection of Big Lake Road and N. 16th Street. There, police said Jerry Brittain and a passenger of his were driving west on Big Lake Road. Brittain was driving a GMC truck and was slowing for the red light when he saw the white prison van behind him. Brittain told authorities he saw Correa-Carmenaty get out of the van and approach his drivers side door. Brittain, who is a correctional officer for a Nebraska agency, said it looked like Correa-Carmenaty was an inmate, so Brittain shifted into gear and tried to flee from Correa-Carmenaty, telling his passenger, I think were getting robbed! Correa-Carmenaty allegedly shot through the window, shooting Brittain in the neck, police said. Brittain drove into a ditch north of the intersection as Correa-Carmenaty went back to the jail van and drove west on Nash Boulevard. Brittains passenger, Kelsey Bridges, told police Brittain was shot and grabbed his neck as they went into the ditch, covered in glass from the shot out window. Brittain was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and has since been released from the hospital. Correa-Carmenaty told officers in an interview later that day his intent was to carjack the truck. The suspect was next seen near 25th Street and Avenue I. There, Amy Kanger was at a stop sign when she saw the jail van pass her form behind, then stop in front of her. Correa-Carmenaty got out of the van, pointed a gun at her and told Kanger to get out of her car. Kanger got out of her car. However, as she was walking away, Correa-Carmenaty yelled to her to come back, telling her he did not know how to drive a manual transmission and she would have to drive for him. Kanger got back in the car as Correa-Carmenaty sat in the passenger seat, pointing the gun at Kanger as she drove. Kanger drove to 35th Street and Avenue A and saw an unmarked State Patrol car. Kanger told police she thought about jumping out of the car but Correa-Carmenaty kept the gun on her, telling her to drive more. Kanger drove into Omaha on I-480, eventually being forced out of the car by Correa-Carmenaty at a liquor store near the 5800 block of North 30th Street. Correa-Carmenaty then drove away and Kanger called for help. Correa-Carmenaty was eventually caught after a car chase with Omaha authorities near Cuming Street and I-480 at about 11:30 a.m. Correa-Carmenaty is being taken back to the Woodbury County Jail where he will be held without bond. INDIANOLA Instances in which Iowans identity was stolen jumped a whopping 30 percent, from 56 out of every 100,000 Iowans in 2014 to 73 just a year later. Most of the thefts happened via the internet. The growth in Iowa mirrors what is happening nationwide. Thefts in the digital world are on the rise as the crime evolves with technology. Yet many people making legitimate purchases online still have a false sense of security about their private financial information. The result, a series of interviews conducted for an IowaWatchSimpson College journalism project revealed, is a feeling of intrusion and personal violation for cyber identity theft victims. I felt just devastated, I didnt know what all was affected, said Christy Eichelberger, 51, of Altoona. Thieves stole her identity to make online purchases in 2003, and Eichelberger now wonders how technological advances have made things easier for cyber identity thefts. Once inside a computers network, hackers can view documents, files and confidential data and use them for personal gain. Susan Kerr, a consumer protection investigator with the Iowa Attorney Generals Office, said digital security breaches have displaced the old way of obtaining unsuspecting consumers information: going through mail to steal peoples information. The rate per 100,000 is a standard that considers the population for jurisdictions reporting crime data. In 2015, Iowa recorded 2,214 total impersonation reports. The state recorded 1,371 impersonations in 2011. But 2,558 Iowa victims were involved in those 2015 cases, which means more than one victim was targeted in some incidents. Tracy Loynachan, a statistical research analyst at the Iowa Department of Public Safety, said the vast majority of these victims were individuals, while the others were business, financial institutions, governments, unrecorded or unknown. In Eichelbergers case, thieves hacked her eBay account and stole $1,300 in August 2003. She told her bank as soon as she noticed something was wrong. That marked the beginning of a long process to restore and secure her financial accounts. There were extra steps that we had to take to make sure that I really was who I said I was, Eichelberger said. Police told Eichelberger identity theft is becoming huge and that people need to protect themselves, she said. The process of regaining personal information is difficult, said state Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Bondurant, a former director of cybersecurity on the National Security Council and a former national counterintelligence officer in the Obama administration. Regaining personal information can mean getting new credit cards or even a new Social Security number and changing your banking information. That stuff is not only time-consuming but it creates a real fear in the individual that, Hey, this happened once. How could it happen again? Nunn said. Nunn said the most important part of reclaiming an identity, and perhaps finding vindication, is finding out where the stolen information is being redistributed or sold so that illegal websites can be shut down. He also urged people to give information that can be used to convict criminals before the thieves do more harm. The identity reclamation process leaves banks and businesses with plenty of work to do, setting up firewalls and tests that consumers must pass to get into their systems. This makes hacking more difficult but not impossible. The FBIs website states that identity theft is falsely representing someones identity or position and acting like that person to gain advantages the person has, such as profit or privilege. A specialized website for fighting identity theft, idtheftcenter.org, states that your identity can be stolen when you swipe your debit or credit card at a gas pump and dont realize a reader, which is a device made to steal card information that looks like part of the pump, is stealing your personal financial information. Or, thieves can steal your personal information when you order something online, even though you thought doing so was safe. Thats how thieves stole $1,800 from the PayPal account of the Rev. Elizabeth Bell, 49, of Fairfield, in February 2017. The fact that this happened seems so surreal to me and then it made me angry, said Bell, a United Methodist minister who formerly worked in the credit and collections business and who is appointed to three Van Buren County churches. Theres a vulnerability that happens with this. The idea of trusting a system or trusting individuals gets compromised. Protections & Punishments Kerr said the only way to protect yourself from data breaches is by putting a security freeze on your credit reports. This restricts access to the reports. Three main companies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion do this. Megan Stufflebeem, 29, of Des Moines, canceled her credit card and went through necessary paperwork after $200 was stolen from her bank account in 2013 but said the process was painful. It took a good month or two before they were able to refund my money, she said. The Federal Trade Commission has free data security resources including free publications, videos and tutorials to help businesses of any size protect their customers and meet their legal obligations. Iowa Code requires that anyone who owns or licenses computerized data containing a consumers personal information for professional or vocational purposes must notify the Attorney Generals Office consumer protection division within five business days about a security breach if it affects 500 people or more. Thieves are charged depending on how much in monetary value was stolen, with first-degree theft covering property exceeding $10,000 in value and carrying the maximum punishment for a Class C felony, which is up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Thefts in which less than $10,000 in value was stolen have varying degrees of lesser punishment, 30 days in jail, for instance, or a fine ranging from $65 to $6,250. Nunn said Iowa lawmakers face a challenge when trying to legislate crime in the internets virtual world the same way they legislate other crime. The virtual world is not always mirrored and handled in the physical world, Nunn said. If someone breaks into the Bank of America (in a cyberattack), steals billions of dollars or disrupts the business flow of a major bank, its very difficult to move to a physical crime in the same way if somebody broke into a bank and stole that money. Kevin Anderson, director of enterprise information protection at Farm Bureau Insurance, said he works with companies so that former employees no longer have access to a companys security system. But hackers try reaching current employees, said Anderson, who interfaces with businesses to make sure the company meets their cybersecurity needs. Theyre willing to pay employees large sums of money to, basically, hack from the inside, he said. So its always a concern. Its a threat. However, most hacking attempts his company sees are by large-scale programs and bots, which are computer programs designed to do tasks in repetition, at a rate of 2.1 million intrusions a month, Anderson said. The West Des Moines-based gas station chain Kum & Go has taken extensive measures to implement these methods and strategies in order to lower their costs, said Aaron Tekippe, IT security architect. We use a combination of technologies to protect customer data, Tekippe said. We use firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, we have data loss prevention systems that actually watch network traffic to ensure that data doesnt actually leave our environment. He would not say how much that costs. I would assume the problem will stay the same as far as expense goes or be more expensive, he said. I think the attacks will become more frequent over time and as the attacks get more frequent, it would make sense it becomes more expensive. Concern about cyber hacking has increased with reports that Russian hackers were behind a massive 2014 Yahoo data breach, in which information from a half-billion Yahoo users accounts was stolen. Bringing online identity thieves to justice is complicated when the suspects are from overseas. Many times prosecutors in foreign jurisdictions dont care about the U.S. case, said Einaras von Gravrock, CEO of CUJO Smart Firewall, a Los Angeles-based company that specializes in home and businesses internet security. The least of their worries is policing people who steal money from America, which is a shame, but thats the world we live in, von Gravrock said. He said Russian law enforcement personnel, for example, wont waste time pursuing charges for virtual attacks intended for locations outside of their jurisdictions. The bad guys throw away your money 6,000 miles away, von Gravock said. Its not necessarily blaming the Russian government. They have their own challenges. Notable Breaches Go Worldwide Some high-profile cases of identity theft have hit not only Iowa but the nation and world. In 2014, 70 million Target customers were affected by a data breach. Target reported that the stolen data included names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses. In one of the biggest hacking incidents in 2007, thieves stole 94 million credit and debit card numbers from T.J. Maxx customers nationwide. Kerr, at Iowas Attorney Generals Office, said data breaches such as these happen all the time to small credit processors and banks but do not make the kind of news large ones like those at Target and T.J. Maxx make. I think it boils down to crime that we know, crime that we dont know, and theres a lot of crime that we dont know, specifically in the world of hacking, said Lt. Chris Scott, who has served with the Des Moines Police Department since 2001. Scott continued: Youre talking about a savvy hacker group, and there are groups. We have groups in America, and thats what they invest their time in: How can I financially benefit myself by getting into peoples bank account? As an identity theft victim, Scott knows how frustrating it is to have your identity stolen. In 2000, someone stole and activated a credit card under his name and then went on a spending spree in Texas. Seventeen years later, technology is more sophisticated, but the same kind of bad guys exist, he said. Simpson Colleges Ashley Smith, Hunter Hillygus, Erich Bogner and Clayton Bowers contributed to this report. This story was produced for Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalisms IowaWatch.org, a nonprofit, online news website dedicated to collaborating with Iowa news organizations to produce explanatory and investigative work. An Omaha woman accused of taking her two daughters from Council Bluffs without permission is in custody. Authorities arrested Brandy K. Grass, 29, at the Sarpy County (Nebraska) Courthouse on two outstanding warrants from Council Bluffs, according to the Council Bluffs Police Department. Her daughters were taken into protective custody. On April 26, authorities announced they were searching for Grass, who no longer has legal custody of the girls and had concealed their whereabouts from a family member with legal custody. When returned to Iowa, Grass is expected to be charged with two counts of violation of a custodial order. Terry Branstad is one step closer to becoming this countrys next ambassador to the Peoples Republic of China. The Iowa governor on Tuesday morning cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a voice vote to serve in that position with the next step being a vote by the full Senate. Branstads approval by the Senate committee came as no surprise to Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, considering the governors background with that countrys government. Branstad, 70, is in his sixth nonconsecutive term as governor. He served from 1983 to 1999 before entering the private sector. He was re-elected in 2010. With more than 22 years heading Iowa government, Branstad is the countrys longest serving governor. His significant experience working with the Chinese government on behalf of Iowans and the personal friendships he has developed with Chinese leaders over the years make him uniquely prepared to be the next U.S. ambassador to China, Grassley said in a statement through his office. Iowans have benefited firsthand from Gov. Branstads relationship with China. And if hes confirmed by the full Senate, as expected, the United States as a whole will benefit. The relationship between the United States and China may prove to be more important than any other bilateral relationship in the 21st century. Members of the Foreign Relations Committee approved Branstad by voice vote. Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the committees top Democrat, described Branstad as fully qualified for the job at a time when the Trump administration is pushing the Chinese to act more aggressively to defuse North Koreas nuclear weapons program. During his confirmation hearing last week, Branstad pledged to confront Beijing on a range of thorny subjects, including human rights and trade. Branstad told senators he plans to leverage his decades-long relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping to advance U.S. and international interests. The two met in 1985 when Xi, at the time a provincial official, led an agricultural trade delegation to Iowa. Branstad said North Koreas push for a weapon of mass destruction is a threat to all of humankind. He said recent events, which include missile tests by Pyongyang, should prompt China to take the threat more seriously. He also said he expects China to become more engaged because of concerns that North Korean refugees may flood China if the crisis on the Korean Peninsula escalates further. Americans will be fortunate to have Gov. Branstad leading that relationship, Grassley added. I look forward to voting to confirm Gov. Branstad to serve the nation in this new role. Grassley, along with Sen. Joni Ernst, introduced Branstad at his nomination hearing last week. In a statement through her office, Ernst said she believes Branstad will exemplify the same leadership, thoughtfulness and dedication in his role as ambassador to China on behalf of the United States as he has for the people of Iowa. I congratulate Gov. Branstad on his approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, and I hope that the full Senate will move quickly to confirm Governor Branstad for this important role, she said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. WASHINGTON A Senate panel on Tuesday easily approved Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad's nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to China, a move that all but assures full Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump's pick for the key diplomatic post. Members of the Foreign Relations Committee approved Branstad by voice vote. Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the committee's top Democrat, described Branstad as "fully qualified" for the job at a time when the Trump administration is pushing the Chinese to act more aggressively to defuse North Korea's nuclear weapons program. During his confirmation hearing last week, Branstad pledged to confront Beijing on a range of thorny subjects, including human rights and trade. Branstad told senators he plans to leverage his decades-long relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping to advance U.S. and international interests. The two met in 1985 when Xi, at the time a provincial official, led an agricultural trade delegation to Iowa. Branstad said North Korea's push for a weapon of mass destruction is a "threat to all of humankind." He said recent events, which include missile tests by Pyongyang, should prompt China to take the threat more seriously. He also said he expects China to become more engaged because of concerns that North Korean refugees may flood China if the crisis on the Korean Peninsula escalates further. Branstad, 70, is in his sixth nonconsecutive term as governor. He served from 1983 to 1999 before entering the private sector. He was re-elected in 2010. With more than 22 years heading Iowa government, Branstad is the country's longest serving governor. DES MOINES Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad legalized the sale of bottle rockets, roman candles and most other consumer fireworks Tuesday, signing a bill that has sparked enthusiasm from vendors eager to expand into the state. Branstad signed the bill at a Capitol ceremony surrounded by fireworks vendors and lawmakers, some of whom have worked for years to pass legislation that ends Iowas nearly 80 year ban on such explosives. Most of Iowas neighbors already allow the sales of most fireworks, as do 43 other states across the country. Let the fireworks begin, Branstad said after signing the bill into law. Some retailers who attended the ceremony are eager to get started. Jason Marietta, retail sales director for Jakes Fireworks, said the Pittsburg, Kansas-based company is planning to open 70 to 100 temporary Iowa locations. The company has lobbied in favor of the legalization for three years and has worked for months to prepare for anticipated Fourth of July sales in Iowa. With the late passage of the law, were really scrambling against the clock, he said. But we finally got it passed, and Im happy to see it. Vince Bellino, manager for Papillion, Nebraska-based Bellino Fireworks, said his company expects to open about 50 locations in Iowa with four or five permanent stores. They operate over 100 Nebraska locations. Were excited for the opportunity to expand into the Iowa market, he said. Its a very easy fit for us. The law allows sales between June 1 and July 8 as well as from Dec. 10 to Jan. 3 from licensed shops. Temporary firework stands will be allowed June 13 to July 8. Several vendors have already started working with land owners and businesses to lease parking lot space for their temporary structures. Under the law, local governments may forbid the use of fireworks, but not the sale of them. However, cities can limit sales to certain zones, as officials in the Des Moines suburb of Clive are considering. Clive Assistant City Manager Matt McQuillen said city planners are still researching potential firework sales regulations. Since it was prohibited in the state of Iowa, it wasnt spoken to in our initial zoning regulations, he said. Our staff is playing catch up. Delaware, Massachusetts and New Jersey are the only states to uphold a full ban on firework sales, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association. Julie Heckman, the associations executive director, said more states have been legalizing firework sales since 2000, in part because of the tax revenue gained from such moves. Firework sales in Iowa are expected to bring in about $1.5 million in sales tax revenue for the 2018 fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. More of Iowas lawmakers should be voicing skepticism about the Department of Human Services newly proposed foster care rules. The skepticism, lawmakers say, stems from their concern that while the agencys proposed rule updates address myriad foster care issues, from bedroom requirements to disposal of pet waste, they dont address the underlying factors that led to high-profile child abuse cases, including the death of a teenage girl last year. A growing number of legislators have expressed concern since the October death of 16-year-old Natalie Finn of West Des Moines. She wasnt removed from her home despite reports to police that she was being neglected. Her parents have been charged in her death and the suspected abuse of two of Natalies siblings. Both have pleaded not guilty. The incident shocked Iowans when, on Oct. 24, Finn was found wearing an adult diaper, lying in her own waste on the floor of her bedroom, a room that had no furniture, not even a bed. Court records show she was unresponsive and died after being transported to a hospital. The Polk County Medical Examiners Office found she died of emaciation after being denied critical care. Concerns grew when police reports indicated that child welfare workers has been called to the house five months before Finns death to investigate reports she had been begging for food and showed signs of abuse. A neighbor had also talked to school officials who had reportedly contacted Human Services officials. The Finn case and that of Malayia Knapp, who told legislators about her experience suffering abuse from her adoptive mother, prompted an ongoing House Oversight Committee investigation into Department of Human Services policies. We obviously have a problem in our state when it comes to the Department of Human Services and the welfare of our kids, Republican Rep. Megan Jones told the Associated Press. Its counterintuitive to add regulations when you cant enforce the ones we have. It is absolutely ridiculous that we are going to regulate dog poop, but we have children in our state that are dying, that are being beaten to death. Wendy Rickman, the agencys division administrator of Adult, Children and Family Services, said the proposed rules presented during a legislative hearing last week werent in response to specific abuse cases and preceded recent cases. On one hand, theres a push to not be too punitive, she said. On the other hand, there are a lot of comments about us not doing enough to protect kids. We are constantly in that balancing act. Sen. Matt McCoy, who serves on the Senate Government Oversight Committee and has been critical of DHS, said he is cautious about the agencys proposed rule changes. McCoy cited fewer DHS employees, high turnover in departments and fewer overall resources as reasons that led to the departments decline in credibility. He said the agency is in a position where lawmakers will question everything they propose. The department is really stressed beyond its capacity, he said. But we should be doing more to protect the kids. The fact that the department is stressed beyond its capacity is largely the result of Legislative funding or the lack thereof. Lawmakers should be looking in the mirror. While clearly the focus of the DHS needs to be more on food for kids versus dog poop, doing more to protect kids is not likely to happen without funding increases. Dems need to get moving Hello Pottawattamie County Democrats: The midterm elections are coming soon. I cant brag about my new home, Iowa, when she keeps sending Republicans to office. There is so much to admire about her. The people are pretty honest and law-abiding as a group, except that she is a one-party state. I used to admire Chuck Grassley, as a person, until he turned to becoming a party hack. At least Steve King is no longer representing me, but that boost is poor consolation. Im ready to go out now to register voters and get out the vote. Maybe, the Pottawattamie County Democratic leaders are willing to follow suit. Bill Holmes, Council Bluffs ___________________________________________ A thank you to a coupon act of kindness On a recent weekend I was in one of the big shoe stores in Council Bluffs. There were two cashiers, each had quite a long line. When I got up to my cashier to pay, a lady, one person behind me in the other line, tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a $5 off coupon. She said she had two coupons and could only use one. We did not know each other, I had never seen her before and doubt Id know her face if I saw her again. One reads of this experience of kindness from strangers out of the goodness of their heart. I have never experienced such in this way, and I was very surprised by the kindness. I just want this young woman if she reads this and recognizes this experience I want her to know how it made me feel very grateful and leads me to continue to believe in the kindness of others. Shirley Plambeck, Harlan ___________________________________________ Support for disabled lacking in Iowa The state must reverse their misguided use of taxpayer funding through managed care organizations. Medical care to low-income persons with disabilities as a profit-making endeavor is immoral. While Iowa citizens are committed to using tax dollars to support our states most vulnerable, our state government through deep cuts and privatization of Medicaid is not. As an organization that provides guardianship for persons with disabilities, we are deeply concerned about Iowas plummeting support for the disabled. Underpayment of providers has created gaps in coverage and reduced access to critically needed services. The burden of filling gaps has fallen on organizations, families and guardians. Moreover, a lack of independent case management has placed advocacy at risk. We regret that documented facts, anecdotes and case studies are ignored. The administration and legislative majority refuse to recognize the new system as the catastrophic failure it is. Our elected officials must take corrective action next session. They must restore publicly managed Medicaid. We ask all Iowans to compel elected officials to make persons with disabilities a budget priority and not a means of profit for private companies. Our states most vulnerable citizens need their voices heard. Ron Arispe, Mike Glynn, Debi Latham, Deb Miller, Joy Newcom, Rod Pump and Teresa Schlichting, Board of Iowa Guardianships, Clear Lake ___________________________________________ We need better transportation options Hello America, what an antiquated transportation system we have in our country. Gosh, when you look at what was 100 years ago in the start of the vehicle transition from horse and wagon to motorized carriages, we have come back to that same point except we all have motor vehicles with very little options. We need streetcars, lightrail, passenger trains and railroads so as to break the cycle of importing crude oil, fuel, components, metals and a whole wide range of electronics. Yes, people are driving 20 to 140 miles for work, shopping, medical problems and on and on and only one person is in the vehicle 82 to 85 percent of the time. Roland Lynch, Council Bluffs Beginning Friday, law enforcement officers from across the state will participate in the Nebraska Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics Nebraska. On Tuesday, local officers, athletes and community members will run the Flame of Hope through North Platte. The torch run raises money and awareness for SONE and the organizations 6,000 athletes, who each have an intellectual disability. In each community the torch passes through, communities celebrate athletes and their families, supporters and volunteers. The run will end in Omaha for the annual Summer Games. This year, the local route has changed due to construction near Maxwell. Starting at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, area runners will meet at the Green Brier Rail Services lot, about half a mile east of Hershey. They will run along Highway 30 to Cody Park, accompanied by athletes of the North Platte Special Olympics Delegation. At 6 p.m., the Knights of Columbus will also present a check to the North Platte delegation. For more information about the local leg of the torch run, contact Rob Hampton, head of the NP delegation, at 308-520-5501, or Robert Veal, of Nebraska State Patrol Troop D, at robert.veal@nebraska.gov. For more information on Special Olympics Nebraska, visit the website at sone.org. The Niedan family has been in banking for many years, and on May 4, three family members received 50-year awards from the Nebraska Bankers Association at an awards luncheon in La Vista. Connie Niedan, vice president of Hershey Bank and Jean Niedan, a mortgage broker at American Mortgage Co., each received 50 years in banking service awards. Ken Niedan, president and CEO of Hershey State Bank, accepted the 50-year service award for the bank as well. The Hershey State Bank was started by Dean (Jeans husband, now deceased) and a group of Hersheyites, Jean Niedan said. At that time they needed help chartering this new bank and I was doing odds and ends, opening accounts, you name it, being a secretary. Jean said the bank lost a mortgage officer and she was thrown into the position. I didnt know anything about it and was scared to death, Jean said. Ive learned a lot since then and I truly have enjoyed it. Since that time, Jean returned to work in North Platte and continues with American Mortgage Co., which is owned by First State Bank. Jean said she also has enjoyed serving the community of North Platte through the years. My job has been very gratifying and Ive met so many nice wonderful, nice people, Jean said. I feel honored. I dont know where the 50 years went. The greatest reward is being able to help people achieve their goal of owning a home and that is the most gratifying part of my job. Ken and Connie Niedan have been at the Hershey Bank since its inception in 1968. Ken said his family has been fortunate to have been successful in the village of Hershey. It was an honor to get the award, Ken said. Jean was here opening day in 1968 and Connie waited until school was out before she came to work at the bank in May and she has been here ever since. Hershey State Bank has more than $70 million in assets, Ken said. We have some awful good years and last year we were in the top 10 for performance in banks under $100 million in the United States, Ken said. Things have been good and the community has supported us well. Both Ken and Connie still enjoy what they do and continue to work at the bank daily. Its been a pleasure to serve our community here for 50 years, Connie said. The community has been very, very good to us and we just look forward to keep on doing what were doing. Just the support of our community. We came here 50 years ago with a new charter, we didnt know anybody and it has served us very well and we think we have served our community well. Strack & Van Til parent company Central Grocers, which is going out of business, revealed in a bankruptcy court filing it owes $225 million in debt and is looking at closing an additional three Strack & Van Til stores. Central Grocers attorney Stephen Karotkin told a judge in a bankruptcy court in Delaware that the current buyer that's looking to purchase the remaining Strack & Van Til stores only wants 19 of them instead of the originally announced 22, so an additional three would close on top of the 14 that already have closed or are slated for closure this year. The filing did not specify which additional three stores would close. Central Grocers filed a transcript of the testimony of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in Delaware in a bankruptcy court in Illinois, where creditors like Coca-Cola and General Mills filed a Chapter 7 petition aiming to drive the century-old Joliet-based grocery wholesaler into bankruptcy and liquidate it. The company, which had served 400 independent groceries across the Chicago area, is asking a judge in Illinois to dismiss the Chapter 7 case so it can go bankrupt on its own terms. Central Grocers is looking to close its 930,000-square-foot warehouse in Joliet and lay off 550 workers there, shutter 17 Ultra Fresh Foods and Strack & Van Til stores and sell off the remaining 19 Strack & Van Til stores. Central Grocers wants to sell off the remaining Strack & Van Til stores to a buyer of its choosing in a bankruptcy court-supervised auction. "We had hoped that we would have a signed stalking horse agreement before the cases were commenced," Karotkin said, according to the transcript. "As a result of the involuntary filing, we are here a little earlier than we anticipated. That agreement is in the process of being finalized in the near term." Strack & Van Til, founded in 1959, once had as many as 38 stores across Northwest Indiana and the Chicago suburbs, and has long been considered the Region's hometown grocer after outlasting smaller rivals like WiseWay, PayLow and Burger's. The Highland-based chain currently employs around 4,000 and has been one of Northwest Indiana's largest employers. It was acquired in the late 1990s by Central Grocers, which already has begun layoffs at the warehouse in Joliet that will close after it couldn't line up a buyer. The cooperative's bankruptcy filing estimates it has $100 million to $500 million in assets, but owes $225 million to 10,000 to 25,000 creditors. The list of creditors runs nearly 500 pages long and includes many local municipalities, including Highland, Griffith, Lowell, New Chicago, Schererville, St. John and Winfield, as well as many local businesses. Low prices, added competition and changing tastes ultimately did in Central Grocers after a century, Karotkin said. "Challenges, Your Honor, include the highly competitive nature of the food industry and the shifting nature of consumer preferences and the growing presence of online retailers; additionally, the explosive growth in consumer demand for gourmet shopping experiences with offerings of organic and natural foods and the debtors' inability to devote substantial resources to that market contributed to the problems," he said. "In addition, the phenomenon of increasingly low profit margins in the grocery industry and historically low prices in more recent years also contributed to why we are here today," Karotkin said. "The debtors also suffered from financial constraints, limiting their ability to make capital improvements and technological advances to customize and improve the customer experience." U.S. Steel's Mario Longhi is out as CEO after a disastrous first quarter when the company lost $180 million, triggering a massive sell-off by investors that caused its stock to plunge by as much as 26 percent the next day. Longhi, 62, will retire June 30 and be replaced by President and Chief Operating Officer David Burritt, who was recently named president in what some saw as a signal of a looming transition in the Pittsburgh-based steelmaker's executive leadership. Longhi's tenure was best known for the Carnegie Way cost-cutting initiative and his efforts to lobby Washington for more tariffs and trade protections. "Mario played a key role in driving the company's transformation, including the successful implementation of the Carnegie Way," Chairman David S. Sutherland said. "His impact was felt across our company and the steel industry through his efforts in Washington, D.C., to combat unfair trade and create a level playing field. We thank him for his dedication to U. S. Steel." Longhi was brought in to turn around U.S. Steel and named CEO in 2013. He guided the company to its first profitable year in a half decade in 2015, before stumbling to a $1.5 billion loss last year and then failing to turn a profit in the first quarter when analysts were expecting a turnaround. "When I came to the company, I envisioned a five-year tenure, which I have completed," Longhi said. "I am proud of the progress we have made, which solely resides on the people of this company. U.S. Steel employees dug in, tackled every challenge and never stopped looking for ways to improve everything they could control. I am fortunate to have spent five years working with them." Steelworkers were often critical of Longhi's cost-cutting. "Mario Longhi rode into town with promises of renewed sustainability for our company and a phoenix-like return to the status as 'The Iconic Corporation,' " United Steelworkers Local 1014 President Rodney D. Lewis Sr. said. "He now rides out of town with pockets stuffed with cash long since harvested from the bloated shares he sold away while sitting in the seat as our chief executive officer." Lewis said workers at Gary Works were "negatively impacted by his lust for cost-cutting in the form of reduced manpower and layoffs. "Ask my members how they feel as some had to pack up boxes of belongings in the wake of foreclosures," he said. "Talk to their children forced to delay college because their parents could no longer afford tuition. That all happened while Mario raked in millions upon millions of dollars in 'performance bonuses.' " Longhi earned $10.9 million in total compensation last year, a 27 percent increase over 2015. His raise did not sit well with Frank Bokodi, who's worked at Gary Works for three years. "In all but one quarter of my time of employment USS has reported losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars translating into zero profit-sharing and a horrible union contract with no raises in pay and major concessions by the USW for its members," he said. "Yet Mr. Longhi has collected tens of millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses, yes bonuses for hundreds of millions in losses." Longhi arrived at a time when U.S. Steel was in bad shape and was expected to turn the company around, said Charles Bradford, a steel analyst with New York City-based Bradford Research Inc. Bradford said it's not clear he accomplished that, stating that much of the cost savings appear to have been achieved by putting off maintenance, which U.S. Steel paid for dearly in the first quarter when it wasn't able to ramp up production enough to take advantage of rising prices. "I wish Mario well," Bradford said. "He seemed a little bit out of his element. He was a mini mill guy. He didn't seem to understand the culture of U.S. Steel or the internal politics or the difficulties it faced." WINFIELD Lake County police said a Greenwood, Indiana, man crashed into a townhome Monday in the Stonegate Commons subdivision. Police said Zachary Sowinski, 46, of Greenwood, drove a black Ford Mustang into a garage in the 7700 block of E. 112th Avenue and damaged trees and a silver pickup truck parked outside the residence. Police said the accident took place 1:06 a.m. Monday. They said Sowinski was uninjured despite severe damage to his own vehicle. Police said officers at the scene smelled intoxicants on Sowinski, conducted a standard field sobriety test and offered him a breath test that he declined. Officers arrested Sowinski and confined him in the Lake County Jail on suspicion of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. LACROSSE High school students were gathered late this morning inside the building's gym in response to a nearby house fire, according to the Tri-Township Consolidated School Corp. The move was taken as a safety precaution, but the school corporation said no students were injured or were at risk. LaCrosse Fire Chief Aaron Rust said nobody was inside the two-story home when the fire started. It was vacant because of ongoing renovation. Rust said damage was extensive and kept investigators early on from uncovering the source of the flames. HAMMOND A bi-state law enforcement blitz last week resulted in the arrest of 39 people, including 10 in Lake County, police announced Tuesday. The Lake County Sheriff's Department was among the 14 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies from Northwest Indiana or the Chicago area that participated in the annual bi-state blitz May 4. The blitz is a multi-jurisdictional mission that targets violent offenders, high-crime areas, narcotics and weapons. Departments of Hammond, East Chicago, Whiting, Gary, Griffith, Highland, Munster and the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District assisted, along with the U.S. Marshals and Indiana State Police. The Chicago Police and Cook County sheriff's departments, along with Indiana State Police, also participated, according to the news release. Individuals arrested were wanted for misdemeanor and felony offenses including fleeing law enforcement, driving while suspended, possession of controlled substances, armed robbery, battery, possession of heroin and failure to appear. The Lake County Sheriffs Department reminded the public to call police to report any suspicious activity in their neighborhood. The Lake County Sheriffs Report-A-Crime Hotline, where callers can remain anonymous, is available at 1-800-750-2746. INDIANAPOLIS The Indiana Commission for Women is seeking nominations for its annual Torchbearer Awards recognizing Hoosiers who have broken barriers to advance women's causes. "These women have overcome or continue to confront immense challenges with courage, perseverance and compassion," said Kristin Garvey, commission director. "They serve as inspiration for others by facing tough choices, demonstrating character and making significant contributions to their communities and to Indiana." The nomination form is available online at: in.gov/icw/2334.htm. Nominations are due by June 30. Winners will be selected based on demonstrated achievement in professional careers, community leadership and/or public service. Last year, nine Hoosier women were named Torchbearers. A ceremony honoring the 2017 recipients is set for Sept. 27 in Indianapolis. MERRILLVILLE A multinational, multiorganizational collective disaster training exercise continued Tuesday at the partially demolished Radisson Hotel near U.S. 30 and Interstate 65. The 30-hour, high-pressure training scenario known as United Front 2017 is designed to replicate real-world operations, in this case a tornado strike that reduced the hotel to rubble. It was conducted by the Indiana National Guard and included first responders from Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Israel. "We're coordinating with groups of people we've never dealt with before," said Crown Point Fire & Rescue Division Chief Tim Tully said. "We've never had an opportunity to work with the Israeli group. It's been a good positive experience for us." United Front dates back to 2012 when the exercise was hosted by the Home Front Command in Israel. During the training in Merrillville, about 30 soldiers from the Israeli Home Front Command National Rescue Unit were on hand. Brig. Gen. Laredo Yoram, chief of staff of the Israeli Home Front Command, said the exercise is a way to improve their skills and expertise. "The main goal is to save lives," he said. "It's one of the most important things an Army can do, to save a life of a civilian." During an exercise on Tuesday, responders were trying to locate and rescue nearly 40 mannequins in the rubble near what was once the front lobby of the hotel. Two of the dummies were even placed in the hotel swimming pool, which had been re-filled with water for the training. White Lodging closed the 343-room Radisson Hotel at Star Plaza earlier this year to make way for a new hotel in late 2018. It has paused the demolition to let the venue be used for the exercise. Brig. Gen. David Vesper, assistant adjutant general of Joint Forces Headquarters, Indiana, said Indiana is one of the safest states in the nation as far as earthquakes, wildfires and hurricanes. "What that means is we respond in Indiana as we need to," he said. "But we also think about if there is something like Hurricane Katrina, how do we respond to that? So working with other organizations makes us better. Not just for Indiana but for the whole nation." Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch was at the exercise and said through her travels in Indiana she's seen the devastation of flooding and tornadoes. "Thank you for your commitment to be the first to respond to the call of duty," Crouch told the responders. "Always ready, always there." HAMMOND The Northwest Indiana Writing Project (NWIWP) has received a grant to participate in a national research project to develop materials for high school teachers in dual credit English classrooms. The grant from the National Writing Project (NWP) will help teachers provide students with instruction in writing the kinds of essays required in most college freshman composition courses. Purdue University Northwest will collaborate with NWIWP, providing matching funds and other resources. Participants will attend an intensive four-week institute this summer at PNW, learning about the teaching of writing and how to use the new activities and to evaluate the assignments. The teachers will use the materials in their classes during the school year. They will submit their findings to NWP which will compare their results with the results of approximately 80 other schools around the country testing the materials. The program is part of the NWIWP Summer Institute. This is the 22nd Summer Institute that NWIWP has offered. The institute provides kindergarten-college teachers with knowledge and skills for teaching writing in a variety of genres, including argumentative essays, creative writing and writing for STEM subjects. The Summer Institute is an invitational one and teachers must apply to attend. Tuition and participation fees are waived for those who attend. Teachers who attend the institute can receive six graduate credits in English. This summers institute will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, June 19 to July 13 at the PNW-Hammond campus. Teachers interested in applying should contact the Assistant Director Connie Farrell at cfarrel@pnw.edu. High school seniors throughout the Region will soon be graduating and heading out in search of degrees and/or work. Their success will depend not only on what they learned in the classrooms, but also on their ability to show up as expected, on time, how well they manage their time and cooperate with others, according to Tammy Stump, senior workforce associate at the Center of Workforce Innovations. Development of these so-called "soft skills" is the focus of a Work Ethic Certification Program that is underway or in development in more than 25 percent of the high schools across the Region, Stump said. "Our goal to ensure that the students in Northwest Indiana are prepared for the transition from school to work or from school to school to work by providing the resources and tools needed to gain the skills required by employers," she said. The Center of Workforce Innovations came to the list of targeted skills by surveying more than 100 employers about what they would like to see in potential employees, Stump said. The schools implement the voluntary program throughout the school year in a variety of ways and targeting different grades, she said. The participating students are evaluated in the areas of attendance, tardiness, discipline and community service. The community service requirement involves six to 24 hours of volunteer time. Students are further evaluated on their organizational skills, punctuality, respectfulness and ability to work as part of a team, Stump said. While the schools and students have been hard at work on developing these skills, Stump said she and others have been working to build the number of employers supporting the efforts and agreeing to give interview priority to students who earn the work ethic certificate. Employers are also being asked to hand out the certificates at the schools to illustrate their support, said Roy Vanderford, director of strategic solutions at the Center of Workforce Innovations. In addition to the regional program, there is a statewide effort underway that aims to have the certificates signed by the governor to make them that much more valuable, he said. High schools awarding certificates this school year include Chesterton, Hobart, Lake Central, LaPorte, Lowell, Michigan City, Valparaiso and Whiting and the AK Smith Area Career Center in LaPorte County. High schools picking up the program next year include Boone Grove, Calumet New Tech, Crown Point, East Chicago Central, Hanover Central, Hebron, Kankakee Valley, Merrillville and Wheeler, and high schools and middle schools in Kouts, Morgan Township and Washington Township. Griffith police became the most recent Region agency to join a proactive effort for fighting drug addiction, and it should bear notice by other local police departments. It's a welcome reaction to Northwest Indiana's opioid struggles, in particular, and it carries proactive overtones. The department is not alone in its forward thinking. Griffith, Schererville, LaPorte and Michigan City all have adopted policies of helping addicts, who seek help for addiction, find treatment without fear of arrest. Griffith became the latest Region department to join forces with the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, or PAARI. Since the initial program began in 2015 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that city has seen its overdose death rate drop from about one a month to just two in two years, PAARI Executive Director Allie Hunter McDade told us recently. The addiction-related crime rate in Gloucester also has fallen by 30 percent, McDade added. As part of this partnership, Griffith police pledge they will help any addict seek treatment who calls or walks into the department asking for help. Such addicts will be linked with treatment programs within six to 12 hours of making such requests. With a well-publicized opioid addiction epidemic in our state and Region, other Northwest Indiana departments should consider following suit. In Griffith alone, seven people died of drug overdoses last year, and the police department responds to one or two overdoses per week, the police and Lake County coroner report. Rather than just focusing on reactionary drug-related arrests, some departments are offing to serve as a conduit to a potential long-term solution for addicts. "Just putting drug offenders into jail and releasing them isn't solving anything," said David Borgetti, a Griffith police officer who has responded to some of those drug-related calls. We agree. Griffith and other Region departments should be congratulated for attempting to nip this problem in the bud and hopefully save lives along the way. Police investigate report Indy teacher dragged child INDIANAPOLIS Authorities are investigating a report that substitute teacher dragged a kindergarten student out of a classroom in Indianapolis. WXIN-TV reports a parent of the child called police and said she was told that her daughter had been dragged out of the classroom at Arlington Woods Elementary School on Monday. The parent told police her child was being chased by another student and hid under a desk when the teacher grabbed her by the ankles pulled her away. The station says the child complained of having back pain. The Indianapolis Public Schools district says it immediately reported the incident and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating. No charges have been filed. CROWN POINT Indiana has never been in a better position for economic development and the bipartisan actions taken during the 2017 legislative session will transform the Hoosier State for generations to come. More than 120 guests including business leaders and elected officials heard that message Tuesday during the Northwest Indiana Forums celebration of the 2017 legislative actions at White Hawk Country Club. Indiana Secretary of Commerce Jim Schellinger served as the keynote speaker while Bill Hanna, president of the Regional Development Authority, provided an overview of transit-oriented development in Northwest Indiana that will result from House Bill 1144. This bill provides investment in Northwest Indiana rail expansion and infrastructure, including the NWI Double Track project. In addition, a panel discussion moderated by the Forums policy chair Spero Batistatos featured Sen. Eddie Melton, D-Gary, and state Reps. Mara Candelaria Reardon, D-Munster, Hal Slager, R-Schererville, and Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso. The legislators discussed what they considered the highlights of the 2017 legislative session. Schellinger congratulated Northwest Indianas legislators for their efforts during the latest session. He recognized Soliday who sponsored House Bill 1002, which provides long-term planning and funding of local and state transportation infrastructure projects. This will take care of infrastructure for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. It is going to transform our state, Schellinger said. Although he said he couldnt reveal the specifics, Schellinger said Northwest Indiana will benefit from four new projects that will provide $50 million in investments and create 640 to 700 jobs. There are 20-plus projects in the pipeline that will create 1,500 new jobs with an investment of $115 million, he said. Forum President Heather Ennis said as the regional economic development organization, the Forum set out a legislative agenda in January regarding areas of concern. Those included the following: Expansion of the commuter rail line and double-tracking Transportation infrastructure improvements To concentrate on workforce development To provide money in the budget for Purdue University Northwests Bioscience Innovation Center, and To continually watch that the climate for investment in NWI is strong and that the economic development tools we use are enhanced. We want to continue to work to grow Northwest Indianas economy and grow businesses in the Region, Ennis said. During the panel discussion, Soliday said among the major victories during this session were the balanced budget and the protection of the states AAA bond rating. Candelaria Reardon said House Bill 1144 represented unprecedented cooperation while Slager said the town hall meeting in Munster that Candelaria Reardon hosted provided citizen input that became part of the bill. Melton said his major mission during his first session was to provide the city of Gary with a solid public school system. It was an education event, but much of the anger surrounded health care policy as protesters greeted House Speaker Paul Ryan in Harlem. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report. House Speaker Paul Ryan was greeted by jeers in Harlem as he visited the flagship of the Success Academy Charter School network. Some protesters spent hours waiting to denounce the powerful Republican, five days after he pushed a controversial repeal of Obamacare through the House. "Paul Ryan has devoted his entire political career to tearing down public government programs that people rely on like Obamacare," said one protester. Ryan waved at the hostile crowd as he dipped into Success Academy 1 Charter School to meet students and former Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, the charter's network's controversial founder. Moskowitz's profile has been elevated ever since she met with Donald Trump after his election, and Ivanka Trump subsequently toured Success Academy 1. Many protesters made clear that they were as angry at Ryan's support of charters as his repeal of Obamacare.. "I feel very sad. This isn't a public school, it's a charter school, and we should all be supporting public education," said one protester. A Ryan aide said he did greet the principal of PS 149, which shares space with Success Academy, and stopped by one of its classrooms before moving onto the charter. In a statement, Ryan praised the quality of teacher training at Success and said, "These remarkable kids are getting an excellent education." Much of Ryan's visit with cloaked in secrecy. There was no official announcement he would be there and no confirmation by Success Academy it occurred until afterward. Reporters were not allowed inside as he toured the school, nor did he stop to answer questions outside. In contrast to the protesters, parents NY1 spoke with said they were glad the speaker visited their school. "Our kids always need inspiration from those that are in office," said one parent. "It was nice that he came, but I seen some of the things that people wrote on the sidewalk. People are mad, you know, with this health care thing," said another. The Lee County Commission moved one step closer Monday to allowing Point Broadband use space on the Salem Hill Tower once an agreement is reached. The members of the commission voted unanimously to allow the wireless internet service provider to lease access to the tower pending the agreement. No timetable was given for completion of the contract. Todd Holt, chief executive officer of ITC Capital Partners, LLC, said the Salem Hill Tower would be one of two towers Point Broadband could use to relay signals from its other towers in Beauregard. Out of the two towers, Salem Hill would be better because it is taller, according to Holt. It is the gatekeeper for Point Broadband coming to Lee County, Holt said. The Lee County Sheriffs Office, the Lee County Emergency Management Agency and some volunteer fire departments use the tower. Holt said he would work with the agencies. The tower would provide the company with a six-mile range, according to Holt. Holt said the monthly cost for customers to use the wireless broadband would be $64 for 10 Mb and $85 to $90 for 20 Mb. In each city it serves, Point Broadband gives 10 percent of its funds to local non-profit organizations. We want to give back to the communities we serve, Holt said. During the meeting, Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones informed the commissioners that May 14-May 21 is National Police Week. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the calendar week in which May 15 falls, as National Police Week. It recognizes law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty. In Lee County, there will be a recognition ceremony May 16 at 10 a.m. at the Opelika Police Department. The event will recognize five officers that have been killed in the line of duty. In another topic discussed at the meeting, Lee County engineer Justin Hardee presented a status update on the countys ATRIP (Alabama Transportation Rehabilitation and Improvement Program) and Federal Aid projects. As of Tuesday, the county's ATRIP status is that six resurfacing projects consisting of 35 miles have been completed, eight bridge projects have been completed, one bridge is under construction, two resurfacing projects consisting of six miles are awaiting construction, one bridge project is awaiting construction and five bridges are in various stages of the design/right-of-way process. The status on the county's federal aid projects is that an additonal three miles on Lee Road 379 in Beulah are awaiting construction, and there are plans for two additional MPO projects on Lee Road 095 and a portion of Lee Road 248 totaling 3.4 miles. Chipped on the edges, potholed in the middle, and narrow in width, Uganda's roads can hardly offer the space that fuel trucks desire. The alternative now remains a new transport route for petroleum supplies over Lake Victoria, although other transport alternatives remain firmly in play, writes Jeff Mbanga. Mahathi Infra Uganda Limited, the Indian firm that plans to create a new petroleum transportation network along Lake Victoria, says the machinery needed to put up the required infrastructure for the project to take off is already on site and that 30 acres of land have also been acquired. The company says work to build the barges where petroleum supplies will be loaded from Kisumu and moved to Kampala is already underway. Also, the company is to put up an oil jetty and storage terminals on 30 acres of land in Bugiri district, completing a grand plan of a new petroleum transport system on Lake Victoria. Across the border, neighbouring Kenya plans to concentrate on building a number of oil jetties on the shores of some of its key ports such as Kisumu as East Africas largest economy plans to increase petroleum supplies to mostly landlocked Uganda and Rwanda. Mahathi was expected to undertake its ground-breaking ceremony on May 8, while Kenya Pipeline Company is set to launch the construction of its $10 million jetty at Kisumu in June. The two events are related and are bound to create more room for Uganda and Kenya to exploit the potential that Lake Victoria offers in terms of transporting petroleum products, a slight shift from the rickety road network, where fuel tankers have competed with other vehicles, motorbikes and animals such as cows and goats, over longer distances, for the narrow space. An oil tanker off the Indian ocean coast of Mombasa During the recent joint oil and gas convention and logistics expo at Kampala Serena hotel, Kalyan Swaroop, a director at Mahathi, said the new transportation network it intends to put in place will nearly halve the costs that trans- porters incur. We estimate the costs of transporting petroleum products to drop by between 40 per cent and 50 per cent, he said. Kenya Pipeline Company will launch a pier at Kisumu and they will partner with Mahathi. John Ngumi, the chairman of Kenya Pipeline Company, during the same oil and gas convention and logistics expo, said: We are now concentrating on the jetties. Uganda and Rwanda are important markets for us. The demand for petroleum supplies favours Mahathi. According to its figures, demand for petroleum products in Uganda is 1.6 million tonnes per year. With total petroleum consumption growing by seven per cent per year, the figure is estimated to hit three million tonnes by 2020. And that is just for Uganda. At least 600,000 tonnes of petroleum supplies pass through Uganda to South Sudan and DR Congo. Already, Mahathi has signed a 10-year exclusive right over the transportation of petroleum supplies between Kampala and Mwanza. SHELVED PIPELINES In pushing for more transportation of petroleum supplies across Lake Victoria, some plans of building petroleum pipelines are bound to be shelved. Swaroop said the new petroleum transportation system that Mahathi intends to put in place means Uganda and Kenya do not have to strain over constructing a petroleum pipeline from Eldoret. For more than 10 years, Uganda and Kenya have mooted the idea of constructing a petroleum pipeline between Eldoret and Kampala. Those plans were nearly complete when Libyas Tamoil East Africa won the bid for the project. However, delays in agreeing the final investment decision and the overthrow of the Muammar Gadaffi regime in Tripoli in 2011 saw Tamoils plan spiral into turmoil after the Uganda and Kenya governments cancelled its contract. The Eldoret-Kampala petroleum pipeline, however, was back on the table in 2014 when Rwanda added Kigali to the equation as part of the regional northern corridor projects. A new plan was launched to have a petroleum pipeline built from Eldoret through Kampala up to Kigali. A London engineering firm, Penspen, was awarded the contract to carry out a feasibility study for the pipeline. However, things have been quiet with very little development in getting a contractor for the pipeline. Mahathi hopes things stay just as quiet. A petroleum pipeline is bound to erode the profit margins it is targeting. Mahathi has, however, received a short sigh of relief after Kenya Pipeline Companys Ngumi announced that Kenya had dropped plans of building a pipeline to Busia and decided to concentrate on putting up jetties. Both Mahathi and Kenya Pipeline Company say pipelines have the risk of being tampered with, especially during pilferage. However, moving more refined petroleum volumes over Lake Victoria, a crucial fresh water source, which is shared by three countries, and where thousands of people use it to fish or draw water, is bound to place environmentalists on alert. It will be crucial that the new petroleum transport system meets environmental standards. The involvement of Uganda in improving water transport could be an indicator that environment issues are being considered. The government, in January, called for tenders for a study to assess the potential of a petroleum transport system over Lake Victoria. Uganda has noted in an earlier budget framework paper that it is keen to develop ports around Lake Victoria in order to open up the southern route to Tanzania. The European Union is already supporting marine transport on Lake Victoria by rehabilitating three to six ports be- tween Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda on Lake Victoria to a tune of 122.6 million euros. Much of the work will go towards improving the capacity of the ports to handle larger volumes. And yet, all these plans will take a new dimension when the rail services, especially the standard gauge railway between Kenya and Rwanda, come into play. That, however, might not be an issue for at least five years as Uganda is yet to start building its part of the rail. jeff@observer.ug Bottle Cap Alley is a unique roadside attraction located at the north edge of the Texas A&M University campus, in College Station Texas. As the name suggests, it is paved with hundreds of thousands by some accounts, millions of beer and soda bottle caps. No one knows exactly how the tradition of paving the 50-meter-long by 2-meters-across alley with metal caps began, but seeing as it is located between the iconic Dry Bean pub and the Dixie Chicken restaurant, some people believe that it started out as a dumping site for the two establishments. Patrons who took their drinks outside followed their example, and as word of the Bottle Cap Alley spread, other local bars started bringing in their nightly haul of bottle caps here as well. It is estimated that the tradition goes back four decades. Photo: Dixie Chicken/Facebook Bottle Cap Alley was officially recognized as a local attraction in the early 2000s, when local authorities recognized its potential as a place of interest for tourists. They installed a large sign over it, added lights so it could be visited at night and began promoting it as a part of the local sightseeing tour. The move didnt sit well with many Aggies (A&M students and graduates), who accused officials of Disney-fying their decades-old tradition, but it did turn the once obscure alley into a popular roadside tourist attraction. Photo: Dixie Chicken/Facebook In its heyday, most of the pavement for Bottle Cape Alley was provided by Dixie Chicken and Dry Beam, but Atlas Obscura reports that neighborhood establishments no longer contribute too much to its preservation. They dont sell as many beer bottles as they used to and have become more environmentally conscious. But the unique alley still has a special place in the hearts of A&M students, many of whom save their bottle caps and bring them here by the thousands, to keep Bottle Cap Alley alive. Photo: Dixie Chicken/Facebook Several Texas businesses have also contributed to the preservation of Bottle Cap Alley over the years, with the latest being the Shiner Beer Company, which unloaded a whopping 380,000 beer bottle caps there, last month. Photo: AggielandBud/Facebook At one point, some people noticed that most of the hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of beer bottle caps all came from American brands, and made it a point to add a variety of caps from imported beers as well, turning the place into an international bottle cap gallery. Unfortunately, that made Bottle Cap Alley all the more appealing to bottle cap collectors. Photo: I <3 College Station/Facebook Bottle Cap Alley is a gold mine for people who collect bottle caps, and it has been reported that some collectors travel to College Station from far away for the specific purpose of finding rare caps for their collections. Taking one or two caps may not seem like a big deal, but considering that average visitors often take a few as souvenirs, its easy to see why constant bottle cap contributions are vital to the preservation of Bottle Cap Alley. Photo: Dixie Chicken/Facebook Bottle Cap Alley is definitely not a place you want to visit barefooted, as cutting yourself on dirty, rusted metal is pretty high. And while many photos show tourists walking around in open footwear like slippers and sandals, I dont really recommend it. Before night lights were installed by the city, Bottle Cap Alley had a reputation for helping people avoid long bathroom lines at neighborhood bars and restaurants, if you know what I mean For some reason, this unusual tourist attraction reminds me a lot of the Seattle Gum Wall, Americas stickiest destination. via Amusing Planet 10/5/2017 - Businesses need to step up the adoption of cutting-edge technologies, materials and processes if countries are to reap their full potential in terms of productivity gains, according to a new OECD report. Development and implementation are taking place mostly in large firms, and even then new technologies are underemployed and could be contributing much more than is currently the case, it says. The report highlights the potential effects of a wide range of technological developments in production - from the environmental impact of 3D printing, to autonomous digital systems and the latest advances in industrial biotechnology. Governments must seize the potential of technological advances to boost economic growth, living standards and environmental sustainability, but at the same time manage the risks and disruption this next production revolution will cause, it adds. Policy makers have a key role to play in helping to create the right conditions for the adoption of new technologies and knowledge, particularly among smaller businesses. Action on multiple fronts is required. It includes encouraging life-long skills development and greater interaction between industry and education, improving conditions for business creation and development, and supplying the infrastructure needed by firms using advanced, digital technologies. Assisting research and technological scale-up and establishing agencies to aid the spread of technological innovation are also key. The Next Production Revolution: Implications for Governments and Business says even in the most advanced economies, diffusion can be slow or partial. A 2015 survey of 4 500 German businesses, cited in the report, found only 4% had implemented digitalised and networked production processes or had plans to do so. The productive potential of new technology is illustrated by estimates from Japan suggesting that the use of big data and analytics among some manufacturers could lower maintenance costs by almost JPY 5 trillion. More than JPY 50 billion could also be gained in electricity savings. And major energy savings have been recorded in early application of artificial intelligence (AI) to data centres. Estimates for Germany indicate that the use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) in industry could boost productivity by 5% to 8%. Industrial component manufacturers and automotive companies are expected to achieve the biggest productivity improvements. Other estimates cited in the report suggest that a major acceleration in the adoption of new technology could boost value-added in Germanys mechanical, electrical, automotive, chemical, agriculture and ICT sectors by an additional EUR 78 billion by 2025. Many businesses lag in adopting the ICTs necessary to digitalise industrial production. The adoption by firms of cloud computing, supply-chain management, enterprise-resource planning, and radio-frequency identification (to automatically track processes and objects) is still far below that of broadband networks or websites. The report points to research showing that productivity-enhancing technology causes job losses in some cases and job gains in others but that the overall employment and economic effects to date have been positive. This is not to underestimate the disruption caused by technological change and the hardship suffered by workers who have lost their jobs because of it. Implementing effective systems for life-long learning and ensuring labour markets can adapt to the shock of technological change are central to effective adjustment policies. Presenting the report in Rome today in the presence of Italys Deputy Minister of Economic Development Teresa Bellanova, OECD Chief of Staff and G20 Sherpa Gabriela Ramos said: The Next Production Revolution presents both opportunities and challenges. Governments need to be proactive and put in place forward-looking policies to anticipate the changes, mitigate the impact of adjustments and get the most out of this revolution in the making The report will also be presented to the leaders of the G7 countries at their Summit in Taormina, Sicily on 26-27 May 2017 where OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria will discuss the role of innovation as a driver of growth and development and the implications of the Next Production Revolution for developing countries. The report is available at: http://www.oecd.org/industry/the-next-production-revolution-9789264271036-en.htm. For further information, journalists are invited to contact the OECDs Media Office (tel. + 33 1 4524 9700). Agricultural News Criminal Charges Filed Against Melissa Morton in the Embezzlement of $2.68 Million From the Oklahoma Beef Council Criminal charges have been filed against a former employee of the Oklahoma Beef Council that has been accused of stealing millions of dollars from the checkoff program in the state of Oklahoma. The following statement has been released by the Oklahoma Beef Council and is being called a formal statement from the OBC Board of Directors: "Melissa Morton, the former accounting and compliance director for the Oklahoma Beef Council, was charged today by the US Attorney's Office of the Western District of Oklahoma with embezzling $2.68 million dollars from the Oklahoma Beef Council over a seven year period. We are grateful for the swift action of federal investigators and the U.S. Attorney's Office. "When initial evidence of the crime was discovered, we notified oversight authorities of the intent to begin an internal investigation, terminated the employee and hired an accounting firm to perform an extensive forensic analysis and assessment. We informed local authorities of the matter as the internal investigation was nearing completion. The case was quickly shifted to federal authorities and we have cooperated fully with investigators on the case. "This has been an extremely complex situation. We have appreciated the patience and support of Oklahoma's beef producers as it has progressed. We are limited in the details we can share and continue to be so due to on-going criminal and civil matters. It is our understanding the next step will involve a hearing with a plea entered by the defendant. "What we can share is the Oklahoma Beef Council has strengthened our internal controls to ensure the integrity of our accounting systems. We have also engaged a third-party firm for accounting services to provide an additional level of oversight. "According to Tom Fanning, a cattleman and the chairman of the Oklahoma Beef Council, "it is important to know since we turned this situation over to authorities, one of our overriding goals has been to work towards justice for our organization and the farming and ranching community we serve. Today's charges are a major move forward towards reaching that goal. We will continue to keep Oklahoma's beef producers apprised of the situation as it proceeds." Staff and leadership of the Oklahoma Beef Council have declined any further comment until after the case is resolved. Oklahoma Beef Council Executive Director Heather Buckmaster uncovered the wrongdoing at the end of this past summer- and Morton was dismissed in September. It was revealed at the beginning of 2017 that over $2.6 million dollars was the amount apparently embezzled. On January 5th, Beef Council Chairman Tom Fanning released the following statement- "Our board and staff take great pride in serving beef producers in investing their Beef Checkoff dollars to grow and protect beef demand. Discovering you have a staff member that did not share that vision and abused our trust, has been a devastating blow to all of us. We have taken every step to address this matter to ensure we are following through in our responsibilities to Oklahoma beef producers and are awaiting the results of the criminal investigation." "In the meantime, the OBC has taken the findings from the forensic analysis and assessment to strengthen our accounting systems and internal controls to ensure the integrity of the organization. We have moved forward in our operations with a third-party accounting firm to ensure an additional level of oversight and a greater level of segregation of duties. The OBC will be adding a new position to our team, Director of Compliance, to assist with checkoff compliance and outreach." Click here for our complete story from January 5th which includes comments by Fanning as well as reaction from the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association. The Oklahoma Farm Report also was able to get reaction at that time from Polly Ruhland, the CEO of the Cattlemen's Beef Promotion board- click or tap here to read her comments. Since that time, Beef Board officials have been advised not to comment further on the ongoing case. Also in early January, a half dozen Oklahoma groups involved with the cattle industry offered a statement on the developments- and thanked the Oklahoma Beef Council for their work to resolve the situation- click or tap here to read their earlier statement. This past February, Fanning did report to the Quarterly Board Meeting of the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association and indicated that Morton had begun to paid back some of the money taken- no dollar amounts were mentioned. WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady NSI Top Agricultural News Fu Chengqiu, president of Piraeus Container Terminal SA, inspects operations at Piraeus port in Athens, Greece, on Monday. XINHUA ATHENS/BEIJING In the years since China COSCO Shipping Corp Ltd's arrival at Piraeus, the image of Greece's largest port has changed dramatically. Greek and Chinese workers are continuing to work hard to realize their vision to transform Piraeus into a "shining star" of the industry, said Tassos Vamvakidis, a manager of Piraeus Container Terminal SA, COSCO Shipping's subsidiary at Piraeus. Chinese investors initially took over the upgrading and management of Pier II and III for a period of 35 years, while last year COSCO Shipping also acquired the majority stake in Piraeus Port Authority which manages Pier I. "There is no comparison between now and then," Vamvakidis said. In 2010, container handling at Piraeus totaled 880,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, and in 2016, it reached 3.74 million TEUs. And the port's function has been further diversifying. More than 200 Chinese tourists boarded cruise Celestyal Olympia at the port late last month to travel to Santorini island. The cruise sailed around the Aegean Sea for a week. Piraeus port will see more than 2,000 Chinese tourists board the cruise in May, according to the group's headquarters in Shanghai. Other facilities such as new docks to build ships and offshore engineering facilities, as well as new parking areas, will help Greece improve its manufacturing capabilities and build Piraeus into a major vehicle transfer terminal for the Mediterranean region. But Piraeus' route to success has not been a smooth one. Some reservations were initially expressed in sections of Greek society about the investment, amid concerns that it would do little to alleviate the serious unemployment problem in Greece. COSCO Shipping said its investment in Piraeus creates jobs and is helping to invigorate the Greek economy. The development of logistics platforms for combined transport and value-added services at the port will create even bigger opportunities for Greece and its economy, Vamvakidis said. When Mitch Lowe, co-founder of Netflix, takes the stage at Big Omaha next week as one of the events featured speakers, it will be a kind of homecoming for the entrepreneur. Lowe was born at Douglas County Hospital in 1952. Big Omaha 2017, a conference for startups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other business community members, will be held from May 17 to 19. This years speakers include Margenett Moore-Roberts, global head of inclusive diversity at Yahoo; Nish Nadaraja, former Yelp brand director; Brian Neider, partner at Lead Edge Capital; and Lowe, who co-founded Netflix 20 years ago. Lowe, who left Netflix in 2003, went on to become chief operating officer and, later, president of RedBox, the automated movie and game rental company. He is now chief executive of MoviePass, a subscription service that charges a monthly flat flee ($25 to $50, depending on the city) to view movies at participating theaters. Although Lowe and his parents moved to California in the late 1950s, he spent every summer until he was 14 working on his grandmothers farm near the Elkhorn area breaking in horses, he told The World-Herald on Tuesday. Lowe, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, hasnt visited Omaha in a decade. Im really excited to reconnect where I grew up, Lowe said. I like to think that a lot of my values came from growing up on a farm outside of Omaha. Lowe said his presentation will focus on three factors he sees as common to successful startups: an innovative culture, a diverse mix of workers that reflect the demographics of your consumer and a data system to track the companys progress and goals. Launched in 2009, Big Omaha is a nonprofit event, intended to energize and inspire startup and business owners, and support technology, entrepreneurship and creativity in the Midwest. It is organized by AIM, an Omaha nonprofit that promotes technology as a means to enhance organizations and people. This years conference will be held at Kaneko, an art and event space at 1111 Jones Street, in Omahas Old Market District. For more information or tickets, go to bigomaha.com. The inmate accused of shooting two Pottawattamie County sheriffs deputies unlocked his handcuffs from his leg shackles while in the back of an inmate-transport van before attacking one deputy at the rear of the van and getting in the vans drivers seat, according to an officer who investigated the attack. Following the May 1 attack by Wesley Correa-Carmenaty, which left Deputy Mark Burbridge with numerous lacerations to the head, neck and arms, Burbridge ran to the passenger side of the van and got in, according to a report filed by Dan Dawson, an investigator with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. The van was in the garage at the Pottawattamie County Jail. As Burbridge was running to the passenger side, Deputy Pat Morgan ran to the drivers side and also tried to stop Correa-Carmenaty. According to Dawson: A struggle ensued, during which Correa-Carmenaty took one of the deputys firearms and shot Burbridge in the head. Burbridge then fell to the floor of the jail garage. Correa-Carmenaty turned and shot Morgan in the abdomen and Morgan fell to the floor. At that point, the inmate had taken both of the deputies firearms. While Morgan was on the floor, Correa-Carmenaty got out of the van and took the vans keys from Morgan and an extra ammunition magazine from Morgans duty belt. He then got back in the van, started it, backed out of the stall and rammed the closed sally port door, breaking through it and leaving the area. Burbridge, 43, was taken to Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, where he was declared dead a little more than an hour after the 10:50 a.m. attack. Morgan, 59, was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. He was released Friday and attended Burbridges funeral service on Monday. A source close to the investigation has told The World-Herald that Correa-Carmenaty used a shank to attack Burbridge before shooting him. Correa-Carmenaty, 24, has been charged in the attack with first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of robbery, escape from custody, kidnapping, intimidation with a dangerous weapon and control of a firearm by a felon. He appeared in Pottawattamie County Court Wednesday morning with armed sheriffs deputies standing at his sides. Correa-Carmenaty was wearing a bulletproof vest over an orange jumpsuit, his hands shackled. An armed officer stood inside the courtroom door, looking out. Correa-Carmenaty was taken to the Woodbury County Jail in Sioux City, Iowa, where he will be housed. Before last weeks attack, Correa-Carmenaty had been sentenced at the Pottawattamie County Courthouse to 45 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter in the 2016 killing of Anthony J. Walker. After the hearing, Burbridge and Morgan drove him back to the jail with a female inmate, who was in a separate compartment of the van. Dawsons report said Correa-Carmenaty told the female that he was going to be getting out and they should hang out when he gets out. After the van was parked in the sally port of the jail, Morgan removed the female inmate and began to walk with her toward the jail intake door, Dawson wrote. Burbridge stayed at the rear door of the van, Dawson wrote, and waited for Correa-Carmenaty to get out. Correa-Carmenaty attacked Burbridge immediately after stepping out of the van, Dawson wrote. After he ditched the van in a nearby neighborhood, Correa-Carmenaty tried to steal a few drivers vehicles before carjacking a woman and making her drive him to Omaha, officials have said. A witness said Correa-Carmenatys legs were still shackled but his hands were free. Correa-Carmenaty then led Omaha police on a high-speed chase before crashing the womans car into a wall at Cuming Street near the Interstate 480 entrance ramp. Police then took him into custody. This report includes material from the World-Herald News Service. LINCOLN A controversial voter identification measure died quickly Tuesday on the floor the Nebraska Legislature, but not before its sponsor vowed to start working on its resurrection. Lawmakers voted 25-17 in favor of a motion to end a filibuster, but that was well short of the 33 votes needed to overcome the delay tactic used by opponents of the voter ID resolution. State Sen. John Murante said he remains convinced that a strong majority of Nebraskans would support a law requiring voters to show photo ID before casting their ballots. He pledged to spend the next eight months working on a new bill or another proposed constitutional amendment to enact voter ID next year. If you dont accept the election results, if you dont have confidence in the election system, we are jeopardizing the peaceful transfer of power in this nation, Murante said. Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha said minorities have paid with their lives to gain access to the voting booth. For that reason, he promised to fight the voter ID resolution for the rest of the legislative session if necessary. I cannot talk about this like I talk about anything else, he said. This voting has resulted in black people being lynched. Yet the outcome of the filibuster vote means the measure wont be debated again this session, which could be ending four days earlier than expected. Sen. Jim Scheer of Norfolk, the speaker of the Legislature, announced that he believes adjournment will take place May 23. Lawmakers spent only one hour debating the voter ID resolution Tuesday, instead of the six hours typically devoted to bills before they reach a filibuster vote. Murante, who sponsored and prioritized the resolution, said he knew he did not have the votes to break a filibuster so he did not want to spend more time debating the measure. Everyones mind was made up, he said. The resolution would have asked voters in 2018 if they wanted to amend the Nebraska Constitution to require voter ID. It would have then been left to senators to come up with a law spelling out the details, including the type of ID required and how to pay for it for voters who could not afford one. Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha declared that he would filibuster the measure, arguing that voter ID is intended to discourage poor and minority voters from going to the polls. He pointed out that voter ID laws started appearing in states in 2006 and some have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. Murante acknowledged that some voter ID laws have been illegally intended to suppress minority voters. But the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a voter ID law in Indiana, which shows that such laws can be written in a manner that does not disenfranchise voters. I do not and will not support legislation that inhibits the rights of any voter, including minority voters, to vote, he said. Every person who is legally entitled to vote ought to be allowed to cast a ballot, and we should fight for that. Murante said he will spend time after the session traveling the state, talking to county election officials to get their ideas not only on voter ID, but on ways to improve the election system. He also said he will try to work with those who oppose voter ID to find ways to make a system fair. Murante said that next year, if the Legislature does not propose a constitutional amendment for voters or pass a law, he would work to support an initiative petition to put voter ID on the ballot. Doug Kagan of Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom was one of a dozen people who testified in support of the measure at a public hearing. He said he has not heard of a plan to launch a petition drive on voter ID, which could cost $1 million or more to do successfully. A total of 23 opponents of the resolution testified at the same public hearing. Omahans can expect four more years of City Hall focus on public safety and the budget and maybe a new riverfront after Mayor Jean Stothert easily won re-election. Stothert won 53 percent of the votes to challenger Heath Mellos 46 percent in the final unofficial count, with a particularly strong showing in the western part of the city. To the community I love, thank you for rehiring me, she said. Ill work harder than ever to make you proud of our work. She said her focus during her second term will be public safety, the budget, workforce development, transportation, neighborhood support and making the city more welcoming. She also promised to reach out to the community leaders and elected officials who vocally opposed her. Most vocal of those was Sheriff Tim Dunning, who appeared in an anti-Stothert commercial, and the firefighters union, which spent thousands of dollars supporting Mello. Some prominent business leaders had also backed Mello. Stothert, a Republican in an officially nonpartisan seat, kept the focus on local governance issues as Mello tried to harness anger over President Donald Trump. Mello told his supporters that the results werent what they anticipated, but he urged young people not to give up and to be proud that their message was heard. Stothert told a jubilant crowd that Mello was a tough competitor and that now it's time for the city to come together. She got big applause for promising to work on downtown, including a new riverfront as our signature. What is the bottom line? Stothert said. Omaha is back. We have momentum. We are moving in the right direction. Omaha mayor's race: Results by precinct Gov. Pete Ricketts said Omaha sent a message that the national issues arent the ones that matter voters were more interested in her record on taxes and other local issues. I think the people of Omaha said the mayor is doing a great job, lets keep her, he said. Stothert racked up big margins in west Omaha, winning 64 percent of the vote in the three western-most council districts (5,6,7). That gave her a 14,000-vote edge that Mello could not overcome. Mello won the remaining four council districts, but most by narrower margins. In South Omaha, a crucial battleground in mayoral contests, Stothert got within 139 votes, even though Mello had represented the area in the Nebraska Legislature. Mello won north Omahas 2nd District with 72 percent of the vote, but it didnt help him much because of low turnout. In fact, the four council districts that Mello won had fewer total votes than the three that Stothert won. And while he took 59 percent of the overall vote in the eastern part of the city, that didnt add up to enough votes to close the gap. During the campaign, Mello had argued that the mayor needs to be thinking bigger and pursuing more public-private partnerships. The two clashed over age-old City Hall issues such as annexation, crime and streets. And they sparred over a new municipal issue: the proposal to build a streetcar between downtown and midtown. The election also got national attention: Former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders came to Omaha to campaign for Mello. Stothert brought Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to attend a rally with her. Mello is a former state senator who pushed for legislation such as drivers and professional licenses for young people who were brought into the country illegally as children and applying an equal-pay protection law to previously exempted smaller businesses. The 37-year-old also made a name for himself as the first Omahan in years to be elected by fellow legislators to the position of chairman of the Appropriations Committee. As a candidate, he said he wanted to make Omaha a city of the future, which he said means more welcoming, more connected, more innovative. He said one of his first hires would be a chief innovation officer, who would find ways to incorporate new technology into City Hall to make it more efficient and transparent. Mello trailed throughout the night, but his campaign and supporters held out hope that he could close the gap. The campaign expressed optimism that the difference was a matter of geography in how the votes were getting turned in and counted at the election office located at 114th Street and West Dodge Road. But after Mello conceded, his campaign said he started out the race far behind Stothert and argued that he did well to bring the race into single digits. Mello campaign strategist Ian Russell said the Democratic Party in Omaha is alive and well. In his concession speech, Mello hinted at the Democratic Party discord that surrounded the Sanders appearance as Mellos anti-abortion stance came under attack. Russell declined to call the Sanders appearance a mistake, but he said the debate struck a dissonant tone for Omaha voters at a time when Mello wanted to focus on such issues as potholes and the proposed streetcar project. Mello, in his Tuesday night speech, said he was glad he highlighted the importance of such issues as climate change, segregation and the need for inclusion in the city. He said he sees work ahead in making Omaha a more welcoming, connected and innovative city. Mello said he saw Stothert take differing points of view seriously during the campaign. I trust that she will continue to be responsive to each and every one of us and all Omaha residents during her next term, he told supporters. Stothert, 63, who previously served on the City Council and the Millard school board, had focused on the budget and public safety. She noted that she successfully negotiated contracts with every bargaining unit in the city and pushed for two property tax cuts. Stothert has gained a reputation as a fighter at City Hall, which her supporters like but which has turned off some business leaders and philanthropists. Her campaign consultant, Bill Protexter, said Stotherts popularity remained steady through the race. She worked hard, he said. She earned a second term as mayor. He said Mellos strong support from the firefighters union raised eyebrows from those who worried that the citys pension problems could return. Still, he said, Mello was an incredibly tough opponent. Thanking her supporters name by name Tuesday night, Stothert said, Lets continue to work together to make Omaha extraordinary. Former mayoral Chief of Staff Brinker Harding and Omaha Public Schools board member Vinny Palermo will join five Omaha City Council incumbents who rode to re-election by landslide margins. Council members Pete Festersen, Ben Gray, Chris Jerram, Rich Pahls and Aimee Melton cruised to victory. Harding, the current City Planning Board chairman, is a real estate executive who served at City Hall under former Mayor Hal Daub. He defeated former State Sen. Dwite Pedersen for the District 6 seat being vacated by council member Franklin Thompson. The voters appreciated the fact that Im energized and motivated, Harding said. With my work experience, that resonated with voters. ... In the end, they thought that was a good combination to have in a representative for District 6 and all of Omaha. He praised Pedersen on a positive race. Hes served Nebraska and Omaha and Elkhorn well and should be congratulated. Pedersen said Harding is a nice man and will do a good job. Hes given me the impression that he will give the people as far out as I live, Elkhorn, good representation, Pedersen said. Hell represent the whole district. Harding will have to resign his Planning Board seat before being sworn in to the council in June. Palermo and Rogers had finished in a virtual tie for first in the April primary, but Palermo pulled ahead in the general election. Hard work, 100 percent hard work, said Palermo, a former Metropolitan Utilities District and city worker who owns tree-trimming and auto glass businesses. Not just me, but the 100 people who volunteered, my friends and family. He said voters would see his election as a breath of fresh air that we still live in a city where hard work matters. Rogers, former outreach director for U.S. Rep. Brad Ashford and a former campaign manager, had been endorsed by longtime District 4 council member Garry Gernandt, who did not seek re-election. Palermo was endorsed by Rebecca Barrientos-Patlan, who had finished third in the primary. Rogers cited two factors for coming up short. Palermo has a great name for the political realm. And Rogers told people who asked that he supported Heath Mello for mayor, even if they had a Jean Stothert sign in their yard. The battles been resolved, and you go on and move the community forward, Rogers said. I absolutely have appreciated the people Ive met and the conversations Ive had. Our greatest untapped resource is people who love our community, and there are a lot of people who truly love Omaha. In District 1, Festersen beat University of Nebraska at Omaha student Grant Sturek for another term representing Dundee, Benson and part of Florence. He has represented the area since 2009. Festersen said he was pleased with Tuesdays strong showing. Our margin of victory has increased in every election, which is a reflection of our hard work, he said. Im excited to serve on what will be a strong City Council over the next four years. In addition to continuing his work on public safety, the citys finances and improving neighborhoods, Festersen said he looks forward to establishing a common vision to address infrastructure challenges and economic disparities in the area. In District 2, Gray defeated challenger Dennis Womack to win a third term on the council. People recognized the work weve been doing, Gray said. He said the vote acknowledged progress in economic development and toward combating unemployment and poverty in north Omaha. Weve made some really good progress, but weve still got a long way to go; its still what we need to really bring those poverty and unemployment numbers down, Gray said. He said hell work with the new council on those issues, as well as on voters' demand for better streets. Jerram was also victorious, beating community activist DShawn Cunningham for the District 3 seat. The area covers downtown, midtown and the Aksarben area. It will be Jerrams third term in office. Jerram said that the victory was exciting and humbling and that he looked forward to another four years of service. He said he wanted to keep working on economic development, mass transit, housing along mass transit routes and programs for people who are not employed and living in high-poverty areas of Omaha. In District 7, Melton handily defeated challenger Brian Thommes to win a second term on the council. An attorney, Melton has been a staunch supporter of Stothert during her first term. Melton attributed her re-election to her hard work on the council and campaign trail. I respond to neighborhoods and to constituents when they call and email me, she said. I try to address the issue theyre concerned with, not just the ones Im concerned with. She said voters will want her to work on improving streets and fashioning a new trash-hauling contract proposal for the city. Melton said the city wont fix its street repair problems in four years, but what we can do is put together a strategic plan for future mayors that we can strive for so were not so far behind. Pahls, who did not have an opponent, was elected to a second term as the District 5 city councilman. The area covers southwest Omaha. Pahls said Tuesday night that he enjoys being on the council and trying to solve issues and to make Omaha a better place. Because Pahls did not have to be out campaigning or pushing any agenda, he said hes been listening to all of the candidates for City Council and mayor. No matter who was elected, Pahls said he thought the City Council should sit down as a team and be more visionary and less reactive. He said the council should be coming up with ideas instead of just voting yes or no on proposals from the administration. Im anticipating the next four years to be very bright, Pahls said. I feel good about it. World-Herald staff writer Emily Nitcher contributed to this report. On Tuesday, Omaha voters will decide who will lead the city for the next four years current Mayor Jean Stothert or her challenger, former State Sen. Heath Mello. All seven City Council districts also are on the ballot, with South Omaha shaping up to be the most competitive race. The polls opened at 8 a.m. They will close at 8 p.m. * * * Long lines at some polling places frustrating to voters Long lines that appeared later Tuesday were frustrating some voters. At Baxter Arena, voters said the line was barely moving. Some said they waited an hour or more. Some gave up. One couple who left without voting said it was their only window to vote today. "Now we'll just have to watch and see if it turns out the way we want it," one of them said. Lines were also longer elsewhere, including Bethel Lutheran Church and Joslyn Castle. Hailey Konnath Elkhorn voters weigh life since annexation as they head to the polls Outside Peace Presbyterian Church in Elkhorn, a polling place banner was tied to a swing set next to the parking lot. But it remained mostly unused in the early afternoon as only a handful of voters, most sans children, trickled in and out. Tricia Ratliff, who stopped by around lunch time, said she was voting for former State Sen. Heath Mello in the mayors race. I dont vote for parties, Ratliff said. I never have, and I never will. Ratliff said her support for Mello mostly stems from her dissatisfaction of how Mayor Jean Stothert has treated Elkhorn. The quality of the streets as well as the police presence has gone downhill since Elkhorn was annexed, she said. Ive never felt we were part of Omaha, Ratliff said. Were just forgotten. Fellow Elkhorn voter David Rudd said he thinks Stothert has done a good job, particularly in working with the police. Rudd, who is a former police officer and whose son is a police officer, said he thinks she has built a good relationship with the police department. I really believe her vision is better suited to my vision for the city, he said. And shes sincere about what her intentions are. Of course I dont like the annexation, he said. But even so, he says it is a good business model for the city. Voters were also able to breeze through Standing Bear Elementary School near 156th and Maple Streets during the lunch hour Tuesday. Bob Richardson, who stopped by on his lunch break, said he tends to vote along party lines. Hes a Republican, so he voted for Stothert. Even if I wasnt satisfied with Stothert, Id be compelled to vote for her, he said. Earlier in the day in west Omaha, near 132nd and Center Streets, a crowd cheered for Stothert during the morning commute. At nearby Rejoice Lutheran Church, neighbors strolled up to vote. Jack Klein said he voted for Stothert because shes done a good job. Farther east, Daniel Shutes polling place, the Comfort Inn and Suites at 72nd and Grover Streets, also happens to be his workplace. That made it easy for him to vote for Mello for mayor Tuesday morning. Shute said he doesnt vote along party lines. I vote for people I think are going to provide the best change, he said. Shute has worked as a convenience store clerk as well as in security. Crime is an important issue for him, and he hasnt been pleased with Stotherts handling of the issue. Safety of the city is a big thing for me, he said. Hailey Konnath 'If you want to make changes, you start with local elections' Anna Blessing was at Brownell Talbot School, 400 N. Happy Hollow Blvd., before 8 a.m. so she could vote before work. Blessing said she will be at work until at least 6 p.m., and she doesn't want to stand in any lines after working all day. "I'm a firm believer, if you want to make a difference, if you want to make changes, you start with local elections." Blessing said she votes in every election. About 8:15 a.m., voters were 12 deep waiting for their ballots at the Nebraska State Office Building polling station at 13th and Farnam Streets. Toni Freilich, 60, who lives nearby, said she voted for Stothert. "I think she's done a good job," she said. Julianne Harm, 30, said the close battle between Stothert and Mello may have helped bring her out to vote. "I felt a little compelled to vote in this election," she said, because of all the attention it has generated and because of Donald Trump's upset win over Hillary Clinton in November's presidential election. At Morning Star Baptist Church at 20th and Burdette Streets, Wesley Dacus, 68, said he and wife, Lillian, 67, "voted for the best person." "We feel whoever gets in office will do the best job for all people." Lillian said the couple prayed over this election. "We asked for God's help." She also said anyone who thinks that voting is a waste of time is incorrect. "At least in our community," Lillian said, "voting can make a difference." Kevin Cole and Jay Withrow * * * Here is what you need to know about the races and the process of voting on Tuesday: Check your district The City Council approved new districts in the fall that made most eastern districts larger and expanded them westward. The changes were made to bring the districts back into balance after a series of annexations added residents in west Omaha. Where to vote Find your polling place at the Douglas County Election Commission website, votedouglascounty.com. The site also lists locations where early ballots can be dropped off through 8 p.m. Tuesday. When to expect results Preliminary tallies are expected to be released late Tuesday night. Go to Omaha.com that evening for results. Any problems? If you have a problem you can call the Election Commission at 402-444-8683. Mayor's race Stothert, a Republican, received the most votes in the five-candidate primary election, although Mello, a Democrat, was less than 3 percentage points behind. Both have spent more than $1 million on the race. Mello has been supported by many of the citys unions, including the firefighters union, the citys largest public employees union and teachers. He also brought in former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to stump for him. Stothert has gotten support from former Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker. She also was endorsed by Taylor Royal, who came in third in the primary, with about 11 percent of the vote. Stothert and Mello offer voters competing visions of the city, with Stothert broadly saying its headed in the right direction after four years of her work and Mello advocating more drastic change. Crime Stothert, who touts her efforts to hire more police officers and increase funding for police, has said that the city is on the right track. The citys best strategy, she has said, is to back Police Chief Todd Schmaderer. She also has been a consistent supporter of increasing funding for organizations that reach out to at-risk youth. Mello contends that an increase in aggravated assaults in the city means change is needed. While he has said he supports Schmaderer, he said the police need more oversight. Hes called for a more robust civilian complaint group, more money directed toward preventive efforts and a voluntary registry of the citys surveillance cameras. The police union, meanwhile, declined to endorse either candidate. Annexation Stothert has been a proponent of annexation, bringing some 27,000 people into the city limits during her term. Those additions, she says, help the city do more overall by building Omahas tax base. Mello says he would pause Omaha annexations, and instead of pushing west, he would build up the population in Omahas established areas. He said he believes Omahas future opportunities to build its population will come inside the Interstate 680 loop. Trash The fate of Omahas yard waste-turned-composting product Oma-Gro may depend on the election. Stothert favors collecting yard waste and trash together and sending both to the landfill, a change she made in June 2015 because of a driver shortage. She also notes that making Oma-Gro isnt profitable. Mello wants to collect yard waste and trash separately, so yard waste can be made into compost. He also said he would explore the possibility of privatizing the Oma-Gro business. Streetcar Stothert and Mello have both supported the idea of a $156 million streetcar to connect midtown and downtown, a concept promoted by a coalition of business interests in the area. But after the idea received a cool reception in the lead-up to the primary election, both walked back their support. Mello has called for the city to press pause on the idea, while Stothert has emphasized that she would put the proposal to voters before committing any money to it. Taxes Stothert and Mello have both talked about modest, incremental changes. In the face of steep valuation increases by Douglas County, both candidates said theyd do what they could to mitigate the increases by decreasing the citys property tax rate, if the valuation increases remain high. Neither promised a specific rate, however. And the citys rate is only one part of property owners overall tax bill. The two have each touted their tax records. Stothert has promoted the fact that shes led a successful effort to lower the citys property tax rate twice. Mello has pointed to a legislative effort to boost the states property tax credit by $100 million while he was chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Infrastructure Stothert and Mello broadly agree that the city should put more money into streets and infrastructure. But they differ on their strategies for accomplishing and paying for big-picture solutions to the citys transportation needs. Stothert wants the city to continue on a path she said is leading to good results. Shes put more into the budget for street maintenance, and shes participated in the planning for major public transportation changes, such as a bus rapid transit system. Mello, meanwhile, argues that the city needs to think bigger and engage citizens more in infrastructure planning. The centerpiece of Mellos transportation proposal is the creation of a quasi-governmental infrastructure bank to raise money for major projects. He says that would allow the city to bring in more money from different sources; Stothert argues that it wouldnt be an improvement from the citys current planning process. Read more City Council races All seven districts are up for election. Two of them Districts 4 and 6 do not have an incumbent running and are guaranteed to seat a fresh face. Incumbents are heavily favored in the other five districts. District 1 Incumbent Pete Festersen, on the council since 2009, faces a challenge from UNO student Grant Sturek. The district covers north-central Omaha, including Dundee and Benson. Festersen won the primary with more than 75 percent of the vote. Sturek came in third in the primary but was put back on the ballot after the second-place finisher, Paul Anderson, dropped out in the wake of anti-mosque comments. District 2 In the north Omaha district, incumbent Ben Gray faces off against social services worker Dennis Womack. Gray triumphed in a seven-person primary with 48 percent of the vote, and Womack brought in 13 percent to nab second place and stay on the ballot. District 3 Chris Jerram, who represents the central Omaha district, faces activist DShawn Cunningham, who emerged from a five-person primary with 11 percent of the vote. Jerram had 67 percent. District 4 The South Omaha district is one of two districts without an incumbent. Current council member Garry Gernandt is not running again, and two hopefuls are on the ballot to replace him: former Nebraska Democratic Party executive director Jim Rogers and current Omaha Public Schools board member Vinny Palermo. The two finished almost neck and neck in the three-way primary. Both received about 37 percent of the vote, with Palermo finishing ahead by 45 votes out of about 5,000 cast. District 5 Incumbent Rich Pahls is running unopposed in the southwest Omaha district for his second term in office. District 6 The west-central district, which covers Elkhorn, also does not have an incumbent, as council member Franklin Thompson decided not to run again. Candidates Brinker Harding and Dwite Pedersen both have political experience, but Harding led in the two-way primary 57 percent to 42 percent. District 7 Incumbent Aimee Melton faces challenger Brian Thommes in the northwest Omaha district. In the two-person April primary, Melton finished ahead of Thommes 68 percent to 31 percent. World-Herald staff writers Kevin Cole, Jay Withrow and Roseann Moring contributed to this report. 20 years later, CBI arrests bank fraud who was on Goa vacation India oi-Vicky By Vicky A 20 year old hunt finally came to an end. This man who fled India 20 years back after defrauding a bank to the tune of Rs 3.77 crore landed in Goa on a vacation when he was arrested. The man identified as Vinay Kadam landed in Goa with a new name Regan Rollin when he was picked up by the Central Bureau of Investigation. In his 60s now, this man had allegedly played a major role in defrauding the Bank of Baroda to the tune of Rs 3.77 crore in 1997. The CBI says that he was a director with a company in Mumbai. He is said to have helped one Rajendrasingh Mansingh Raolji, a director of an Ahmedabad-based real estate company to defraud the bank. They are alleged to have set up 7 fake companies which had a zero balance. The dummy directors of the company issued 31 cheques worth Rs 3.77 crore. The money was then withdrawn with the help of some bank officials, the CBI said. The CBI had issued a red-corner notice through the Interpol. He was untraceable for 20 years and was suspected to be hiding in Canada. However the CBI picked him up when he landed in Goa on a vacation. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 6:46 [IST] AAP crisis: Kejriwal should face investigation, says Anna Hazare India oi-Gulam Rabbani Bengaluru, May 10: After ousted leader of Aam Aadmi Party Kapil Mishra levelled corruption charges against the party convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the social activist Anna Hazare on Wednesday suggested Kejriwal be ready for investigation if he is sure that Mishra's allegations are false. "Arvind Kejriwal must come forward and say that he is ready for investigation. If Kejriwal is not found guilty, then he must file a defamation case against the concerned person and if found guilty then must resign within a second," Hazare told ANI. Hazare questioned Kapil Mishra for staying silent when he Kejriwal accepting Rs 2 crore. He also questioned suspended AAP leader for not telling in public about the corruption and now putting allegations after he was ousted from the party. "I am feeling very saddened about such allegations on Arvind Kejriwal. He was always with me when we fought against corruption. While fighting against the corruption, he became the Chief Minister. His own party's minister has now put allegations on him for accepting Rs. 2 crore. Why had the concerned minister not revealed to the public earlier when Kejriwal accepted the money? Now, he is putting allegations after being ousted from the party. This is not right," he said. In the meanwhile, Kapil Mishra on Wednesday began his hunger strike demanding the AAP leaders Satyendra Jain, Ashish Khetan Raghav Chaddha, Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Patnaik to put out the details of their foreign tours in public domain. He also submitted the documents in connection with the corruption he levelled against Kejriwal and others. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 10:43 [IST] 2 non-local labourers shot at by terrorist in J&K's Anantnag FM Nirmala Sitharaman hints at possibility of Centre considering restoration of state status to J&K In J&K, 14,000 dropouts find their way back to schools Abducted soldier's bullet-ridden body found in Shopian India oi-Vikas By Vikas Umar Fayaz, an Army officer, was found dead with multiple bullet injuries in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Tuesday evening. His bullet-riddled body was found in Hermain Chowk of the district. J&K: Bullet ridden body of a Army lieutenant found in Shopian district's Herman, in South Kashmir; identified as Umar Fayaz from Kulgam pic.twitter.com/lmeOU3Kgsa ANI (@ANI_news) May 10, 2017 Fayaz was earlier abducted by the militants from Kulgam where he had gone to attend a family function, said reports. Fayaz had joined the army recently and hailed from Kashmir's Kulgam district. The army had launched a massive operation, involving over 3,000 personnel, to flush out the terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. The operation was launched following an input that around 30-40 militants were present in the region. Last week, a civilian was killed and two soldiers were injured after terrorists ambushed an army patrol in Shopian. OneIndia News UPSSSC PET 2022 results to be declared soon: Steps to check scorecard Akbar was an invader, Maharana Pratap a hero: Adityanath India pti-PTI Lucknow, May 10: Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar were "invaders" and the youngsters should follow the path shown by leaders like Maharana Pratap, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said. He said the problems of the country will vanish if this truth is accepted. Adityanath was speaking at an event held here on the occasion of the 477th birth anniversary of Maharana Pratap on Tuesday. "Maharana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh and Chhatrapati Shivaji are our role models, and we must follow the path shown by them. Youngsters must learn a lesson from the self-respect and strength of character from Maharana Pratap. Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar were invaders," he said. "The sooner we accept the truth, all the problems of our country will vanish," he added. Maharana Pratap was a king of Mewar in the present day state of Rajasthan. Maharana Pratap's biggest enemy was Mughal Emperor Akbar. Asking the audience to treasure the rich history of the country, the UP CM said, "A community which does not have the capacity to treasure its rich history, can never keep its geography safe." Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik and Minister of State for External Affairs General (retd) V K Singh were also present on the occasion. PTI Amit Shah to visit Mumbai in June; to meet BJP workers India pti-PTI Mumbai, May 10: BJP president Amit Shah is scheduled to visit Mumbai in June and is likely to interact with intellectuals, party office-bearers and ministers. Shah, who will be in the city between June 16 and 18, is likely to interact with as many as 1,000 intellectuals. Shah is currently on a 95-day all India tour. He is expected to interact with ministers, BJP office-bearers and intellectuals to know their perspective about the party during his visit. "We have almost finalised his schedule," said Maharashtra BJP general secretary Sujitsinh Thakur. "Amitbhai has instructed us to prepare the schedule in a way that every second of his time is utilised for party work," he said. The state BJP has finalised a list of 1,000 intellectuals to be invited for interaction with Shah, Thakur said. "The entry at the venue will be by invitation only," Thakur said and added that invitees will be the people who have done excellent work in their respective fields. Shah has planned separate meetings with the leaders of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and its affiliated organisations as well as the constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). He will also meet the "future constituents" of the NDA, he said. However, it is not yet clear whether he will hold one-to-one talks with Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, said party sources. Shah also has asked the state unit to prepare a note on party's strengths and weaknesses in the state, where the BJP is heading its first-ever government. "He is going to take a review of each and every Lok Sabha constituency with details on why the party had won/lost the seat in the last election," a BJP leader said. The BJP believes that its proposed 'vistarak' scheme will get a boost during Shah's visit. Under the scheme, every office-bearer and minister is expected to work in areas apart from their own field for a fortnight. One vistarak will work in 10 booths and explain the social welfare schemes of the government at the Centre and the state to the common people. "The scheme will continue till September. We expect it to turn into a grand success," said Thakur. PTI AP minister P Narayan's son Nishith Narayana killed in road mishap India oi-Gulam Rabbani Hyderabad, May 9: Andhra Pradesh minister P Narayana's son Nishith Narayana and his friend Raja Ravi Varma died in fatal road accident in Jubilee Hills of Hyderabad in the wee hours of Wednesday. According to reports, the car in which the duo were traveling rammed into a metro pillar near road no 36 in Jubilee Hills. Both of them were on their way back to home after attending a function at around 3: 30 am in a Benz car with plate number as TS07FK7117. Reports said that the car lost control due to over speed and crashed into the pillar. The police, who rushed to the spot and shifted the duo to a nearby hospital where the doctors declared brought them dead. Nishith Narayana was one of the directors of Narayana education group. The deceased were 25 years of age. P Narayana, who is in London said to have returned after being informed about the incident. AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and other ministers and MLAs expressed grief over the incident. It is believed that most of the Telugu Desam Party members have left to Hyderabad to console the family. Nishith was born on July 4, 1994, and is survived by parents and two sisters. Reports said that the body will be shifted to Nellore after the post-mortem and the last rites will be performed on Thursday. Main opposition, YSR Congress Party chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy expressed shock over the demise of Nishith and his friend Raja Ravi. He had expressed heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family. OneIndia News When sister's wedding turned into funeral: The mourners gathered inside a makeshift tent in the courtyard of Parry House in Sursanoo in Yaripora village of Kulgam district, 75 kilometres south of Srinagar, as the cries of wailing women resonated in the air. The killing of Ummer Fayaz Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz, who hailed from Sursona village in Kulgam district, had gone to attend the wedding of the daughter of his maternal uncle at Batapura, about 74 kms from here, from where he was abducted bythe militants at around 10 pm last night. His bullet ridden body was recovered from the Herman Chowk in Shopian district - around 30 km from his village - on Wednesday morning. Ummer Fayaz Mother, wailing near the body of her son: Family members and relatives of the slain army officer Lt. Ummer Fayyaz mourn during his funeral at his native village Sudsona in Kulgam district on Wednesday. Fayyaz was kidnapped and killed by suspected militants in Shopian district where he was attending a marriage ceremony of some relative. Draped in tricolour: The bright boy of Sursanoo, Lt Ummer Fayaz, who was killed in Harmin village of the neighbouring Shopian district on Tuesday evening, had just been lowered in a grave, with full military honour. All about Army officer Ummer Fayaz Fayaz completed his schooling from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Aishmuqam, Anantnag in 2012. He graduated from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in 2015. He then underwent training at the National Defence Academy near Pune and the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun before being commissioned. Assam says good-bye to Madrasa education India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Assam Government has decided to do away with the Madrasa education and instead promote modern education. The education minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the state government has decided to do away with the Madrassa Board. The Madrassa Board will be dissolved and academic part will be handed over to the Board of Secondary Education," Sarma wrote in a tweet. He further added, "To mainstream Madrassa education, we are disbanding Madrasa Education Directorate and making it part of Secondary Education Directorate." Sarma it may be recalled had been criticised recently for telling Madrasas not to observe a holiday on Friday. Madrasas will remain closed on Fridays at Pakistan and Bangladesh, not India, he had also said. We want to introduce modern learning like computers in these educational institutes. For doing this, we have to change the existing structure," Sarma hadd said. He had also said that the government will make examinations mandatory from Class V in all schools. "Earlier, there was no exams till Class VIII. Now we want to change it to Class IV. After that, there will be examinations," he had also said. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 7:22 [IST] Cong says govt should explain why security cover to Vadra's mother India pti-PTI New Delhi, May 10: The Congress on Wednesday suggested that it was for the Modi government to explain why the mother of Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, was being provided security, which has become a matter of controversy. The opposition party said the NDA government had provided security to individuals with "interesting backgrounds", including industrialists, powerful corporate brokers and politicians, and demanded that the list of such people be released. "It is very interesting that Mr Modi has been in the government for 36 months now and there have been umpteen times when he could have reduced the security (provided to Vadra's mother)," Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar said. He was responding when asked to comment on a media report which said that six Delhi Police personnel have been deployed for the last 13 years at Vadra's family home in the posh New Friends Colony where his mother Maureen Vadra resides. "Unless there is a security perception, why is the Modi government continuing the security to her in the first place," Kumar asked. He told the journalists to find about the people who are getting government security, wondering if the Modi government was continuing such benefits "according to the set processes". "If the government releases the list of all people who have been given security in the past 36 months one could get an interesting list of industrialists, powerful corporate brokers and politicians with very interesting background," the Congress spokesman said. He said the government has decided that politician Amar Singh and yoga guru and businessman Baba Ramdev get security along with protection to the latter's factory. Kumar claimed the government has also provided security to a number of industrialists and sought to know who they are. Earlier in the day, Vadra hit out at the media over the report. "Really!! We have to stoop to the levels of now demeaning and harassing, elderly people...With all respect, please stop going after my mother...," Vadra said in a Facebook post. "Please remove my security and anything provided for me... no matter what the assessment, I will take every risk in the book, but lets have some level of decorum....Journalism at the worst I've seen," he said. PTI Talented, driven and great potential: President Putin is all praise for India and Indians Did not stop medical visas for Pakistani patients: India India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, May 10: India on Wednesday said it has not stopped giving medical visas to Pakistani nationals, but has informed Islamabad that a recommendation letter by the Foreign Minister or Foreign Affairs Advisor of Pakistan for issuing such visas was needed. In reply to a question on the issue, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was getting a lot of mails and requests on social media from patients in Pakistan for medical visa. "We have not stopped medical visas..." Baglay said. "In previous years, thousands of medical visas have been issued to Pakistani citizens. What has happened is the External Affairs Minister herself was receiving these requests addressed to her," Baglay said. Sushma is active on social media in addressing problems faces by Indians abroad. "She was receiving requests on email and social media. In order to ascertain that these are genuine requests we have suggested that their (Pakistan's) Foreign Minister or Foreign Affairs Advisor gives a recommendation letter," he said. "On social media it is difficult to ascertain if the request is genuine. If the letter comes, we will immediately issue a visa, but we need recommendation from the Pakistan government," the spokesperson said. On May 6, reports had said that India had not issued visas for two months to Pakistani patients who travel to the country for treatment. According to Geo News, the decision has affected thousands of Pakistanis suffering from liver, kidney and heart diseases. "India has made it impossible for Pakistanis to get medical visas," an official had said. According to the official, Pakistan has summoned Indian envoy to Islamabad Gautam Bambawale and expressed concern over the latest move. Tensions are running high between India and Pakistan following the death sentence awarded to Kulbhushan Jadhav, said to be an Indian spy, for sponsoring terrorism and waging war against Islamabad. IANS For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 15:53 [IST] IRCTC update: 151 trains cancelled on Nov 09; here is the complete list EVM tampering row: AAP to launch save democracy campaign India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, May 10: The AAP will start a save democracy campaign from Thursday and raise its voice strongly against EVM tampering, the party's Delhi convenor Gopal Rai said in Delhi. Rai made the announcement during a press conference at the Aam Aadmi Party headquarters. He said that "party legislator Saurabh Bharadwaj on Tuesday demonstrated in the Delhi Assembly that Electronic Voting Machines can be hacked just by changing the motherboard." "This is a great danger to democracy. We will start a 'save democracy campaign' from Thursday and under this campaign AAP MLAs and workers will stage a protest at the office of the Election Commission of India," Rai told reporters. "We want all future elections to be conducted only by using EVMs with Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail. AAP will stick to its viewpoint at the all-party meeting on EVMs called by the Election Commission on Friday." Using a prototype of what looked like an EVM used by the poll panel, Bharadwaj on Tuesday claimed that codes embedded inside the voting machines can be used to manipulate results. IANS 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 India hails ICJ's stay on Jadhav's hanging, repeats demand for consular access India oi-Vikas By Vikas India on Wednesday hailed the International Court of Justice's stay over the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav, whom a Pakistan military court had sentence to death on charges of espionage. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Gopal Baglay said India had made 16 requests for consular access to Jadhav which was denied by Pakistan in violation of the Vienna Convention. "We were informed by ICJ of the action initiated on our application& provisional measure that we sought," Baglay told media in the national capital. Baglay said that Pakistan has also not kept the MEA informed about the status of Jadhav's mother's petition to meet him. "Visas applied by family so that they could personally go to Pakistan to pursue the matter, havn't been granted,so far," he added. India moved the ICJ against Pakistan, accusing the latter of violating the Vienna Convention in the case of Jadhav. India, in its appeal, contended that it was not informed of Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further asserted that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the Pakistani authorities were denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite repeated requests. The ICJ through a statement on May 8 confirmed that it received an application from India. Pakistan claims its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 14:44 [IST] Jaitley statue at Kotla: Angry Bedi asks DDCA to remove his name from stands, quits membership PM Modi to attend first 'Arun Jaitley Memorial Lecture' in Delhi's Vigyan Bhavan today Reforms in India being done by conviction, not compulsion: PM Narendra Modi BJP leaders pay tribute to former minister Arun Jaitley on his third death anniversary Jaitley meets US congressional delegation Nancy Pelosi India pti-PTI New Delhi, May 10: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday met a US congressional delegation led by top Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. "(Having) Interactive session with a US Congressional Delegation led by Ms Nancy Pelosi," Jaitley tweeted. American and Indian business leaders briefed the delegation on the ways to strengthen the commercial relationship between the two countries. "The fact that leader Pelosi is taking a bipartisan delegation to India underscores the importance of the US-India bilateral relationship," a statement issued by the USIBC has said. PTI Kapil Mishra sits on Satyagraha, wants AAP's foreign travel splurge to be exposed India oi-Vikas By Vikas Sacked AAP leader Kapil Mishra on Wednesday sat on a Satyagraha and demanded clarification on details of expenditure on foreign travel by AAP leaders. Mishra had earlier threatened to launch a hunger strike on Wednesday if the party did not make public financial details of five AAP leaders' foreign trips. Mishra, who made startling allegations on Arvind Kejriwal and vowed to reveal other AAP misdeeds, claimed trhat he has been receiving threats. Among othe allegations, Mishra had also alleged splurge by AAP leaders in foreign trips. "I have been getting life threats, got a threat also from an international number. But I am not afraid of anything," he told reporters. Mishra on Tuesday even threatened to go on a hunger strike if AAP legislators did not reveal details of their foreign trips. On Tuesday morning Kapil Mishra threw open fresh set of dares to Kejriwal including one to resign over allegations. Mishra claimed that he would take on Kejriwal singlehandedly and expose him. The AAP, on its part, alleged that a big conspiracy was being hatched against it by the BJP through Mishra and said Chief Minister Kejriwal would not resign over the "baseless allegations". The party asserted that was Mishra was making such allegations against Kejriwal "out of desperation" after being expelled from the Cabinet. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 9:52 [IST] Karnataka: K C Venugopal flooded with complaints against Chief Minister and KPCC chief India oi-Anusha In his maiden visit to Karnataka after being appointed the in-charge general secretary, K C Venugopal has been flooded with complaints. Officer bearers, district presidents and committee heads along with workers have vented out their frustration in the form of complaints against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Karnataka Congress Chief Dr G Parameshwar. Siddaramaiah's 'autocratic' style of functioning and Dr Parameshwar's unavailability for party workers seem to be the biggest grouse among Congress party workers. Most complaints were also accompanied by the worker's 'choice' or 'suggestion' for the post of the KPCC President. The newly appointed in-charge general secretary has assured Congressmen that all their concerns would be addressed but maintained that the issue of who becomes the next KPCC President was left to the high command. Venugopal is said to have told the workers that the need of the hour was to accept anyone that the high command appoints and work towards saving the party's AHINDA votes. Complaints about Siddaramaiah's style of functioning Many officer bearers and MLAs have expressed disappointment over Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's style of functioning. The one-upmanship in the party, the workers feel, was denting the party's image. Siddaramaiah's unwillingness to consider suggestions have been a major grouse against him. Party workers have accused him of misusing his closeness to senior leaders of the AICC to quell dissent. Many leaders held him responsible for the rebellion within the party and losing many leaders to other parties. Requests have been made to K C Venugopal to appoint a 'strong', 'commanding' leader for the post of KPCC general secretary to stop Siddaramaiah from usurping all the control of the party. Venugopal has been requested to remind Siddaramaiah of 'collective leadership' that the party has been following and promote inclusiveness when it comes to decision making. KPCC President's unavailability a concern Juggling between two posts, one of the Karnataka Home Minister and another of Karnataka Congress Chief, Parameshwar has become unavailable for party workers, or so claim the complaints against him. Party workers have accused Parameshwar of refusing to fulfil duties as KPCC president. Workers have accused him of not being in office, meeting office bearers, promoting the party or engaging supporters. Even though Dinesh Gundu Rao has been appointed as the working president of the Congress party, Parameshwar continues to hold the post of president. Favouritism, one-upmanship, lackadaisical, disconnect with workers are among many complaints raised against Parameshwar. Workers have pushed for him to be replaced at the earliest. Parameshwar, the Dalit face of the Congress has been the Karnataka unit chief consecutive terms. In the process of collecting opinions, K C Venugopal has been gifted with a barrage of complaints. The outpour is only an indication of the team-wise, leader-wise differences in the party. Venugopal has asked workers and leaders alike to get their act together and stop the BJP from gaining a foothold in the 2018 assembly polls. Unhappy with mere complaints, some workers and office bearers of the Congress intend to accompany Venugopal all the way to Delhi, if need be, to voice their concerns. OneIndia News Kulbhushan Jadhav's execution stayed: Read India's full application before ICJ India oi-Vicky By Vicky It was a major victory for India as the International Court of Justice at The Hague stayed the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav. The ICJ has written to Pakistan to put on hold the execution of Jadhav, the retired Indian Navy officer who was convicted of espionage by a military court in Pakistan. Read the full application filed by India before the ICJ The Republic of India institutes proceedings against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and requests the Court to indicate provisional measures THE HAGUE, 9 May 2017. On 8 May 2017, the Republic of India instituted proceedings against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, accusing the latter of "egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations" (hereinafter the "Vienna Convention") in the matter of the detention and trial of an Indian national, Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court in Pakistan. The Applicant contends that it was not informed of Mr. Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further alleges that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the authorities of Pakistan are denying India its right of consular access to Mr. Jadhav, despite its repeated requests. The Applicant also points out that it learned about the death sentence against Mr. Jadhav from a press release. India submits that it has information that Mr. Jadhav was "kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy, and was then shown to have been arrested in Baluchistan" on 3 March 2016, and that the Indian authorities were notified of that arrest on 25 March 2016. It claims to have sought consular access to Mr. Jadhav on 25 March 2016 and repeatedly thereafter. According to the Applicant, on 23 January 2017, Pakistan requested assistance in the investigation of Mr. Jadhav's alleged "involvement in espionage and terrorist activities in Pakistan" and, by a Note Verbale of 21 March 2017, informed India that "consular access [to Mr. Jadhav would] be considered in the light of the Indian side's response to Pakistan's request for assistance in [the] investigation process". India claims that "linking assistance to the investigation process to the grant[ing] of consular access was by itself a serious violation of the Vienna Convention". India accordingly "seeks the following reliefs: [a] relief by way of immediate suspension of the sentence of death awarded to the accused[;] [a] relief by way of restitution in interregnum by declaring that the sentence of the military court arrived at, in brazen defiance of the Vienna Convention rights under Article 36, particularly Article 36[,] paragraph 1 (b), and in defiance of elementary human rights of an accused which are also to be given effect as mandated under Article 14 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is violative of international law and the provisions of the Vienna Convention[;] and [r]estraining Pakistan from giving effect to the sentence awarded by the military court, and directing it to take steps to annul the decision of the military court as may be available to it under the law in Pakistan[;] [i]f Pakistan is unable to annul the decision, then this Court to declare the decision illegal being violative of international law and treaty rights and restrain Pakistan from acting in violation of the Vienna Convention and international law by giving effect to the sentence or the conviction in any manner, and directing it to release the convicted Indian National forthwith." As the basis for the Court's jurisdiction, the Applicant invokes Article 36, paragraph 1, of the Statute of the Court, by virtue of the operation of Article I of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes of 24 April 1963. On 8 May 2017, India also filed a Request for the indication of provisional measures, pursuant to Article 41 of the Statute of the Court. It is explained in that Request that the alleged violation of the Vienna Convention by Pakistan "has prevented India from exercising its rights under the Convention and has deprived the Indian national from the protection accorded under the Convention". The Applicant states that Mr. Jadhav "will be subjected to execution unless the Court indicates provisional measures directing the Government of Pakistan to take all measures necessary to ensure that he is not executed until th[e] Court's decision on the merits" of the case. India points out that Mr. Jadhav's execution "would cause irreparable prejudice to the rights claimed by India". India further indicates that the protection of its rights is a matter of urgency as "[w]ithout the provisional measures requested, Pakistan will execute Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav before th[e] Court can consider the merits of India's claims and India will forever be deprived of the opportunity to vindicate its rights". The Applicant adds that it is possible that the appeal filed by the mother of the accused on his behalf may soon be disposed of. India therefore requests that, "pending final judgment in this case, the Court indicate: (a) [t]hat the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan take all measures necessary to ensure that Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav is not executed; (b) [t]hat the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan report to the Court the action it has taken in pursuance of sub-paragraph (a); and (c) [t]hat the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ensure that no action is taken that might prejudice the rights of the Republic of India or Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav with respect of any decision th[e] Court may render on the merits of the case". Referring to "the extreme gravity and immediacy of the threat that authorities in Pakistan will execute an Indian citizen in violation of obligations Pakistan owes to India", India urges the Court to deliver an Order indicating provisional measures immediately, "without waiting for an oral hearing". The Applicant further requests that the President of the Court, "exercising his power under Article 74, paragraph 4[,] of the rules of the Court, pending the meeting of the Court . . . direct the Parties to act in such a way as will enable any Order the Court may make on the Request for provisional measures to have its appropriate effects". OneIndia News Terrorists were informed about Lt Umar's whereabouts by locals in Kashmir India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar An officer in Indian Army, Lt Ummer Fayaz, was found dead with multiple bullet injuries in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Tuesday evening. Terrorists were informed about Lt Ummer's whereabouts by locals in Kashmir He was on leave to attend a function of a relative. This brave Army officer was only 22 when he was killed by terrorists at the Herman area, Shopian district in the rife-torn Kashmir Valley. Sources say that it was the locals who tipped off the terrorists about the brave soldier of India. Lt Umar Fayaz was abducted by terrorists and killed at Shopian. Sources also say that the villagers had told the terrorists that he was an Army officer and that he was on leave. The terrorists then abducted him on Tuesday and killed him. There are some unverified reports that also suggest that he was killed in public view at a bus-stand. His body was found with bullet marks. Gone too soon: Son of a farmer, Lt. Ummer was born on June 8, 1994. Trained at NDA, he joined the Indian Army recently. He was part of the Rajputana Rifles in Akhnoor and was martyred by terrorists in Shopian. He was commissioned in the Indian Army in 2016. Some of his colleagues remember him as a brave soldier who was passionate about the Indian Army. His colleagues say that he wanted to fight for his country. However, they say that fate has been cruel and he has gone too soon. Strict action promised: The Army in a statement said that it stands by the bereaved family of the soldier. We stand by the family in this hour of tragedy. The Army also said that it is committed to bringing the perpetrators of this heinous act of terror to justice. The Army has facing several casualties in the recent times. A plan of action which included an operation comprising 4,000 soldiers to snuff out terrorists was also carried out recently. Martyred Army Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz Ummer Fayaz, a young Army officer, was found dead with multiple bullet injuries in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Tuesday evening. Ummer Fayaz was in Shimla This picture was clicked when Ummer Fayaz was in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Courtesy: Facebook account Cadet Ummer Fayaz Photo of Ummer Fayaz during training at NDA, Pune. Courtesy: Facebook account. J&K: Bullet ridden body of a Army lieutenant Umar Fayaz found in Shopian district's Herman, in South Kashmir pic.twitter.com/9v9MioEuUG ANI (@ANI_news) May 10, 2017 Ummer Fayaz hailed from Kashmir's Kulgam district Ummer Fayaz hailed from Kashmir's Kulgam district; had joined the Army recently. J&K: Bullet ridden body of a Army lieutenant found in Shopian district's Herman, in South Kashmir; identified as Umar Fayaz from Kulgam pic.twitter.com/lmeOU3Kgsa ANI (@ANI_news) May 10, 2017 Ummer's bullet-ridden body recovered Ummer's bullet-ridden body was found in Shopian district's Herman chowk in South Kashmir. Condolences pour in: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah mourned the death of the young officer. He tweeted' Very sad and alarming. Condolences to the family. May Lt. Umar Fayaz's soul rest in peace.' Bollywood actor Ravina Tandon took to twitter to expressed her condolences. 'Rest my dear brother .. your work in this inhuman world is over .... India salutes you, ' she tweeted. National Conference state spokesperson Junaid Azim Mattu strongly condemned the cowardly and barbaric killing of Umar Fayaz in Shopian. Tragic! Solidarity with his family., he tweeted. OneIndia News Manmohan, Yadav discuss proposed Kashmir conclave India pti-PTI New Delhi, May 10: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and senior JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav on Wednesday held talks about holding a national conclave of stakeholders in Kashmir, which is in ferment since the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani last July. Amid the ongoing unrest in the valley, BJP veteran and former union minister Yashwant Sinha, who had gone there as part of a delegation twice, and met separatist leaders among others, also had talks with Yadav. Yadav has also discussed the proposed conclave with CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury and D Raja of the CPI and both were learnt to have favoured such a move. The Modi government had chosen to ignore the visit and report of the delegation which included Sinha, prompting the former external affairs minister to get in touch with opposition leaders to explore the possibility of holding a national conclave to discuss ways to restore peace in the troubled state. Yadav too had gone to the valley as a member of an all-party delegation but the dominant view among opposition leaders is that the government has done nothing on its report. "The government has not taken a single step to resolve the crisis. We too have responsibilities. If the government does not act, we must do our bit," an opposition leader said. He said an initiative must be taken in Delhi to send out a positive message to the people in Jammu and Kashmir. Sinha's group had recommended a "multi-dimensional dialogue" which should include the separatist conglomerate-- Hurriyat Conference. It had, in its report, also asked the government to improve the human rights situation. The delegation's visit was facilitated by Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, a Delhi based group that has been working in Kashmir for over a decade. The government had last month ruled out talks with separatist elements or those raising the issues of "accession or Azadi" in the Kashmir Valley, telling the Supreme Court that a dialogue to restore normalcy was possible only with legally recognised stakeholders. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had told the court that the government would come to the negotiation table only if legally recognised stakeholders participated in the dialogue and not the separatist elements who rake up the issue of accession or Azadi in Kashmir. The top had court asked the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association to come up with suggestions to resolve the crisis, including the stone-pelting incidents and the violent street protests in the valley. The opposition leaders are working to bring NGOs, civil society groups and political parties for the proposed conclave. Members of Jammu and Kashmir's ruling BJP-PDP coalition are also likely to be invited, the opposition leader said. Manmohan Singh heads a policy planning group of the Congress party on Jammu and Kashmir. The Congress has been strongly critical of the Modi government's handling of the situation in the restive state. PTI Naxalites undertake social-profiling of villagers to gain edge over CRPF India oi-Vicky By Vicky As the centre makes efforts to beat down the naxalites, the Maoists have already stepped up a drive in villages to mobilise villagers. The Intelligence Bureau has told the Union Home Ministry that there is already a major mobilisation drive to bring in the villagers into the fold of the naxalites. These villagers are being handpicked so that they can be used either as informers or human shields the IB has also noted. The naxalites are conducting several exercises such as social profiling and class analysis, the IB report says. Further the naxalites have also classified the villagers into three categories- core supporters, fence sitters and possibles. This social profiling has in fact help naxalites step up their operations and also mobilise villagers in their favour. The report further states that the naxalites are in the process of building a wider network of villagers so that they can have better intelligence on the ground. Moreover during attacks, they can also mobilise larger number of villagers to use them as human shields. In their fold are teachers, social activists, ground level workers and traders. These persons form part of the informer network. This intense network of informers has helped naxalites gain advantage over the security forces. This was one of the primary reasons why the naxalites were able to carry out a brutal attack at Sukma, Chhattisgarh in which 25 CRPF jawans were martyred. OneIndia News UP: SP leader's car hit by truck, dragged for more than 500 meters in Mainpuri | VIDEO Nephew of Samajwadi Party neta slaps Police Inspector in Uttar Pradesh India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar In an incident of utter disregard for law, nephew of a Samajwadi Party leader slapped a police sub-inspector inside the police station in Etah, Uttar Pradesh. The brat identified as, Mohit Yadav, was caught on camera slapping the police personnel in the police station. He is nephew of UP Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav. He agreed that the man who thrashed the cop is his nephew. #WATCH: A youth claiming to be nephew of SP MLC Ramesh Yadav slaps a policeman in Etah (UP) after his arrest for assaulting hospital staff. pic.twitter.com/apWJf2uczH ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 10, 2017 Over phone speaking about the incident, Ramesh Yadav, said 'I am in Lucknow, If i was in Etah, i would not have allowed that incident to happen.' 'My nephew is a brat', added Yadav. The slap-gate episode has brought once gain the issue of Samajwadi Party and criminal nexus. Gaurav Bhatia, BJP spokesperson, condemned the incident. This is completely shocking, strictest of actions should be taken against this person,' he said. During Uttar Pradesh poll campaign Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lambasted the Samajwadi Party government for its "failure" to maintain law and order in the Uttar Pradesh, saying 'goonda raj' was prevailing there and even the Supreme Court has had to intervene to get a minister booked in an alleged rape case. "The SC had to intervene to get the FIR registered against Gayatri Prasad Prajapati. 'Goonda raj' is prevailing all over UP and police stations have become Samajwadi Party office," Modi had said at an election rally here. (With agency inputs) Next hearing in Kulbhushan Jadhav case likely on May 15 India pti-PTI New Delhi, May 10: The next hearing in the case of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav at the International Court of Justice that has stayed his execution in Pakistan, may take place on May 15, senior lawyer Harish Salve, who is representing India at the Hague, has said. He said Pakistan's immediate reaction to the stay, pronounced on Tuesday, was essentially "political" and that India will respond if it raises any legal issue. "We moved (the ICJ) for provisional relief. The case depends on also how much time Pakistan wants to put in its response to the petition which we have filed. Tentatively it will be on 15th (of May). We may have to be there and we have informed the court we are available any day next week," he told Times Now. On consular access to 47-year-old Jadhav, Salve said there are provisions in the Vienna Convention under which when a person is arrested in a foreign country, the counsel of his country has to be informed. "The counsel of the country to which the man belongs has the right of access to that person. The basic idea is that if you are caught in a place where you are a stranger, people from your country are there to help you," he said. Jadhav has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "spying". The order of the Hague-based ICJ yesterday staying Jadhav's execution came a day after India approached it against a Pakistan Field General Court Martial decision last month sentencing him to death, according to official sources. India, in its appeal before the ICJ, has accused Pakistan of "egregious" (shocking) violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The plea has said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy, but Pakistan claimed he was arrested from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. PTI PM Modi to leave for two-day visit to Sri Lanka India oi-PTI New Delhi, May 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka to attend the biggest Buddhist festival 'Vesak Day' as its chief guest. The 'International Day of Vesak' celebrations, to be held in Colombo from May 12 to 14, will include an International Buddhist Conference in which over 400 delegates from more than 100 countries will participate. Briefing reporters on Modi's visit, Joint Secretary Indian Ocean Region in the External Affairs Ministry, Sanjay Panda said no formal talks have been scheduled, but Modi will be interacting with the Sri Lankan leaders. "We do not envisage any formal talks but he will be interacting with the leaders and review the relationship in its entirety. Nothing is specifically earmarked for discussion during the current visit," he said. During the two-day trip, his second to Sri Lanka since becoming the Prime Minister, Modi will also visit Kandy in the Central Province, which is famous for production of Ceylon Tea. Panda said India's ties with Sri Lanka have witnessed qualitative transformation in the last few years and both the countries are willing to strengthen and diversify the relationship further. "We feel our destinies are intertwined. We hope the Prime Minister's visit will be able to provide further momentum in the ties between the two countries," Panda said. Modi had travelled to Sri Lanka in March, 2015. His visit to Sri Lanka comes close on the heels of a trip by his counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe. During that visit, the two countries had signed a pact to boost economic ties as Modi and Wickremesinghe discussed a range of bilateral issues and matters of mutual interest. The pact provided a framework to identify the infrastructure projects where India could invest. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 16:55 [IST] Rajasthan Minister Kalicharan Saraf trivialises rape issue India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar A minister in BJP ruled Vasundhara Raje government has trivialised the issue of sexual assault on minor girls in a public meeting on Wednesday. Rajasthan State Medial education minister, Kalicharan Saraf, said the government and police can't provide security to everyone to stop rape. Saraf expressed helplessness of the police department and the government in connection with a rape of four-year-old girl by a servant of her home. 'What government can do about this ? It is easy to ask question' he hit back to media person. 'Number of crime is on the rise, true, at most police could arrest the culprit?', he further asked. It may be recalled that taking cognisance of "insensitive" remarks by a Rajasthan Minister in Bikaner alleged gang-rape case, the National Commission for Women had issued a notice to him, saying those in public life should be "gender sensitive". The 13-year-old girl was allegedly gangraped in April 2015 and an FIR was registered against the teachers after her father recently gave a complaint to the local Superintendent of Police. Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria had raised questions over the delay on part of the family in reporting the case. The NCW, which has asked Kataria to reply to the notice failing which he will be summoned, said that its member will visit the survivor's family as it suspects a "cover-up". (With agency inputs) Sena slams Maha min over seeking assurance on farm loan waiver India oi-PTI Mumbai, May 10: Slamming Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party chief Raosaheb Danve for seeking a guarantee from Opposition that loan waiver will stop suicide by farmers, ruling ally Shiv Sena on Wednesday said it showed he has no sympathy for farmers. Danve, while talking to reporters after visiting Sai Baba temple at Shirdi in Ahmednagar on Monday, asked the Opposition to 'give in writing' that a loan waiver would stop farmers' suicides in Maharashtra. The Opposition NCP and Congress had last month organised a statewide 'sangharsh yatra' campaign seeking farm loan waiver. The Sena too supported the demand. "Danve made the comments while he was on a trip to Shirdi. This shows how much reverence he has for farmers," quipped an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana'. "Loan waiver is not a permanent solution but it is an immediate help that should be given to ensure that farmers live, it said. The Sena also said that asking for a guarantee is equivalent to making fun of the plight of farmers. "Questions are now being raised if there is somebody behind Danve who is stinging the Chief Minister with his comments. It is the responsibility of the government to make sure farmers live. But the state has become a cemetery for farmers," it charged. The Sena claimed that 4,000 farmers have committed suicide in the state in last two years. It said farmers take debt to grow crops, which are at times destroyed by unseasonal rains, hailstorm or drought. Even if the natural conditions are favourable, they do not get the minimum support price, which results in the farmers dumping their produce in protest of the government's farm policies, the editorial said. Recently, a group of farmers dumped tur dal, bananas and onions at the gate of the state secretariat here to highlight the problems being faced by agriculturists. The Sena said if a farmer commits suicide to get out of this circle, it is the failure of the government. "These are the people who will not come forward to offer a glass of water to a dying farmer, but will seek their votes. On the contrary, they will ask for a guarantee that the farmer won't die if offered a glass of water," it taunted. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 15:27 [IST] Some Keralites who joined ISIS may have survived MOAB India oi-Vicky By Vicky Intelligence Bureau officials have picked up chatter which indicated a few Keralites part of the Islamic State may have survived the Mother of All Bombs dropped at Afghanistan recently. It may be recalled that the MOAB was dropped on an ISIS camp at Nagarhar, Afghanistan on the instructions of US President Donald Trump. Several persons including many from Kerala had died in the bombing. IB sources now say that a few of them may be still active. The IB learnt that some of the youth were still active on social media platforms. Chatter picked up suggests that they were inviting their friends over to be part of the ISIS camp in Afghanistan. In July several persons had gone missing from Kerala. It was later found that 21 persons from the state had left for Afghanistan to be part of the ISIS. The ISIS has ambitious plans for Afghanistan and has been setting up shop there. IB sources say that some of them are still in touch with their family and friends. The chatter suggests that none of them are remorseful or scared. They not only want to continue there, but also are inviting friends and family members to join them the officer also noted. The ISIS is targeting Indians in a bid to build a base. Moreover several recruits from India have found favour with Afghanistan over Syria or Iraq owing to proximity to India. India on the other hand has launched a major deradicalisation drive. Around 140 persons are part of this deradicalisation drive, IB sources say. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 9:40 [IST] Sukma martyr: Bihar Government's compensation cheque bounces India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar In an ultimate insult to CRPF jawan killed in Sukma attack, the Bihar government's compensation cheque given to the bereaved family has bounced. According to reports, a compensation cheque of Rs five lakh given to the family of martyred CRPF jawan Ranjeet Kumar has bounced. The District Magistrate has ordered for inquiry. A total of 25 Central Reserve Police Force jawans in Chhattisgarh's forested area of Sukma were killed in an ambush by Naxals. The CRPF soldiers killed were deployed there to provide security for the road construction work in the region. Among them six jawans were from Bihar. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had announced Rs five lakh to the kin of six martyrs from the state. However, the family of CRPF trooper Abhay Kumar, who was killed refused to accept Rs. 5 lakh as compensation announced by the government. "We have refused to accept the cheque of Rs. 5 lakh as compensation announced by the Bihar government. Is this amount an honour or humiliation for someone who sacrificed his life fighting against enemy of the country," a close relative of the trooper said. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 15:15 [IST] "Muslims will not allow conspiracy against India to succeed" India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Muslims are an equal partner in making a New India said a delegation that met with the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi at New Delhi. The Muslim delegation said that terrorism is a major challenge and also expressed a common resolve fight the problem with all their might. The comments were made during an interaction between Modi and leaders of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind. Modi said that the new generation in India must not be allowed to fall victim to the rising global tide of extremism. The members of the delegation expressed hope that the "nationwide trust" that he has among the people will ensure prosperity and well-being of all segments of society, the statement said. They said that the Muslim community is keen to be an equal partner in the making of the 'New India.' According to a statement from the PMO, they added that it is the Muslim community's responsibility that under no circumstances should anyone compromise the nation's security or well-being. They said the Muslim community would never allow any conspiracy against India to succeed. Meanwhile the PM urged the community not to politicise the triple talaq issue. Modi said India's speciality has been its unity in diversity, it added. On Triple Talaq, the Prime Minister reiterated that the Muslim community should not allow this issue to be politicised, a statement read.He urged the delegation members to take the responsibility for initiating reform in this regard, the PMO said. The delegation members appreciated the Prime Minister s stand on the issue of Triple Talaq, the statement said. OneIndia News First Chennai, now Srikalahasti: WB police on Justice Karnan's trail India oi-Anusha A team of policemen from Kolkata who arrived in Chennai to arrest Justice C S Karnan have now left to Srikalahasti. After learning that C S Karnan had left to Andhra Pradesh, the team of Bengal police is on his trail. The five-member team arrived in Chennai to execute orders of the Supreme Court that sentenced Justice Karnan to six months imprisonment. The team of policemen arrived at the Chennai Commissioner's office on Wednesday and held talks with the local police. A team consisting of senior police officers from West Bengal including DIG Durgapur, ADG and IGP armed police, DG and IGP home guard and DCP headquarters Bindhanagar arrived to take Justice C S Karnan into custody. The team is currently coordinating with the Andhra Pradesh police seeking their assistance in arresting the sitting judge of Calcutta High Court. Justice Karnan, a sitting judge of the Calcutta high court flew down to Chennai on Tuesday hours before the Supreme Court sentenced him to prison. Justice Karnan who held a press conference in Chennai yesterday is currently not at the government guest house where he had checked in on Tuesday. Sources claimed that Justice Karnan is yet to vacate the room but may have left to Srikalahasti in Andhra Pradesh. However, no confirmation on the same could be received. On Tuesday Justice Karnan boarded a flight to Chennai with police escort hours before he was sentenced to imprisonment. He went missing soon after he held a press conference in Chennai. Justice C S Karnan was escorted out of his plush apartment in Kolkata by a team of Bidhannagar police officers for a 6.15 am IndiGo flight to Chennai on Tuesday. The same policemen were later directed by the DGP to arrest the judge. In Chennai, Justice Karnan was not available at his Greenways Road home which he has forcefully retained despite being transferred to Calcutta high court. Protocol and security personnel attached to him were reportedly sent away. OneIndia News Why Modi needs to do a 'Kashmir ki Baat' India oi-Prabhpreet With growing agitations in Kashmir and daily incidents of violence being reported both inside India's territory and at the Indo-Pak border, the centre seems to be losing the plot in Kashmir. Now, with the average Kashmiri becoming ever more entangled in the web which is being cast by the Pakistan-backed terrorists, the separatist groups like the Hurriyat Conference, the Kashmiri government and the Indian security forces, the time for Prime Minster Narendra Modi to step in has come. And this needs to be done not only through the role of the armed forces but him taking a step to directly have a connect with the people of the valley. Even his staunchest critics would agree that among all the political leaders in the country at the moment, he is the best at being able to judge the pulse of the voters and connect with them. His willingness to regularly travel around the country to speak at public rallies, or his method to reach out to different segments of society through 'Mann ki Baat,' give ample evidence of this. And it is such an ability that puts him in an ideal position to take steps which can bring confidence to the people of the valley that at least he, even if they believe the Indian government does not as of now, respects their wishes and wants a peaceful solution to the current crisis the state is embroiled in. The need for this is even more urgent as the gulf of trust between the Kashmiri people and the central government is increasing, leading to daily reports of violence. Though this was not his original plan, but his initial attempts to achieve normalcy have stagnated, the time for the prime minister to connect directly with the people has come as the people of Kashmir are being bracketed in a category of 'with us' or 'against us' and can lead to the state being torn apart. What was the initial plan? After the BJP came to power at the centre with a thumping victory and the results of the assembly of Jammu and Kashmir came through, which paved the way for Peoples Democratic Party's, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, to form the government in coalition with the BJP. The conditions were finally set to start a process to achieve comprehensive, long-standing peaceful conditions to come back to the state. As such a combination finally had both the sides which had till then taken opposite sides on the issue of Kashmir come together. With the mandate that the BJP had won at the centre giving it the freedom to choose any approach as it would be considered to have the backing of the people, and the PDP, which had the support of the people of the valley and would be trusted by them, along with being able to use its close ties with the separatists groups to bring them to the table. This was to get all the parties that have a role to play in bringing peace, to come to the table and talk with a belief that the electoral results had finally brought conducive conditions to find a solution. What led to its breakdown? Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's death in early 2016, shortly following a rise in tensions between India and Pakistan after the Pathankot air force base attacks, played the first spoiler in Modi's plan. In order to save the process his daughter Mehbooba Mufti, even though she did not have the same support on either side of the table as her father, and not as adept as him at handling difficult conditions, was supported to become the chief minister and continue the coalition tie-up in the state. But such attempts to continue dialogue suffered a major blow when Burhan Wani, a commander of the terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen, was killed by the security forces. This led to a major blowout in the valley as massive protests erupted. Leading to a condition where all the sides involved in the negotiation, especially the leaders of the Hurriyat like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, fearing losing support among the locals, were left with no option but to take sides against the centre. This led to further isolation of the valley and its people from the rest of the country, in particular, the Modi government, and bringing the process of dialogue that had been started by it to a complete halt. Modi needs to reach out Ever since the protests erupted after the Wani incident, Pakistan and other forces who do not want the situation to normalise, have stepped up attacks not only along the border but also within the Indian territory through their planted operatives to increase tensions in the state. These operatives are either foreign or from India. And the chances of more Indian operatives joining them increases whenever tensions reach a boil and suspicions against the state and the central governments rise among the people of the state. With actions against them by security forces again lead to growing anger ande tensions among the people. In the end, landing the government in a cache-22 situation. It is to avoid such situations and further distancing of the people of Kashmir from that of the rest of the country and restore a sense of belief in them for the Indian government among them that Modi needs to reach out to the Kashmiri people through a highly visible and grand gesture. This may first help to normalise the conditions on the ground and to finally have a chance to resume the dialogue process while continuing to take a tough stand against Pakistan on the border. And such an effort from the prime minister needs to come before statements like those of Mehbooba Mufti that 'Only Modi can save Kashmir,' create trust rather than more resentment among the people of the valley, especially the youth. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 17:04 [IST] Media gag is wrong Justice Hegde points out that the gag on the media was wrong. This power is not vested with the Supreme Court at least in such an instance. The SC can gag the media from speaking only in the larger interest of the nation. It is the fundamental right of the people to know what is happening, Justice Hegde said. According to me prima facie the order to gag the media was not right. The media has not been heard in this case. It is infact the duty of the media to inform the people about what is going on. The media was not a party to these proceedings and neither were the happenings in the court being recorded in-camera. Could the SC have convicted Justice Karnan? Justice Hegde further said that the Supreme Court was very much in its rights to convict Justice Karnan. This is a contempt case and not an issue relating to impeachment. The powers to impeach a judge lie with the Parliament and in this case, the SC had not removed Justice Karnan from his post. This is just a criminal proceeding under a special law called Contempt of Court act. Justice Karnan and every other citizen of the country falls under the contempt of court act. The act provides what constitutes a contempt, Justice Hegde also said. Was the conviction order right? There is a principle that no man can be a judge in his own cause. One cannot be a judge, jury and executioner. Justice Karnan was entertained and given an opportunity to appear before the Supreme Court. It is not an ex-parte order which was passed by the Supreme Court since there was an ample opportunity given to him. The law required that this be done, Justice Hegde noted. What about Justice Karnan's own orders While I feel that the order of the SC ordering a medical test on him is debatable, there is no way that Justice Karnan could have delivered judgments. The orders he has passed are not orders says Justice Hegde. His judicial powers had been taken away. In Justice Karnan's case, the principle that no judge can be the judge, jury and executioner applies. The case in brief Justice Karnan who was transferred to the Calcutta High Court had raised issues such as caste discrimination. After shooting off letters about the judges, he was summoned by the Supreme Court which initiated contempt proceedings against him. He had appeared once, but refused to tender an apology. He instead passed orders against the judges of the SC who were hearing his case. He was accorded another opportunity to appear, but failed to do so. After ordering a medical examination to test his mental health, the SC a week later sentenced him to six months imprisonment. Will a divided opposition win Modi's Gujarat? India oi-Prabhpreet With Narendra Modi now the prime minister of India and no longer leading Gujarat, the opposition feels it is the best chance for it come to power in a state which has been in the hands of the BJP for the last 22 years. During his reign in Gujarat, the prime minister had a firm grip on the party machinery, administration and also a direct connect with the people. Such a control had seen him remain in control of the state and keep coming to power without any serious threat from the opposition, eventually leading him to become the prime minister. Such a situation now sees the opposition in a stronger position for the upcoming elections, than it has ever been in since Modi became the chief minister in 2002. And the hopes of the opposition stem from a couple of factors, the biggest of them being that the prime minister is not in direct charge of his home state, and second, a series of agitations that have hit Gujarat ever since he left for Delhi, leading to the state witnessing two chief ministers in a matter of three years after having the stability of Modi from2002 to 2014. While Congress remains the main political opposition, which is now led by a former chief minister of Gujarat, Shankersinh Vaghela, once considered the political guru of the prime minister, it is the challenge that the leaders of agitations, such as Hardik Patel and Alpesh Thakor, that is giving the opposition hope. But to have any chance of displacing the BJP, the least the opposition will have to do is come together. This though is far easier said than done. As the three have so far refused to come together under one grouping to fight the BJP. And this might very well lead to the BJP coming back to power without considerable trouble. Hardik- The Patel trigger Hardik Patel, the young leader, and the agitation he led against the government in the state has been one of the biggest reasons of hope for the opposition. He comes from the dominant community of Patidars, which has been one of the most important backers of the BJP in the state. His agitation had brought to the fore a chink in the armour of the party's control that it had not be seen in the last two decades. In 2015, the Patidar agitation for reservation had taken the government by surprise and the treatment of its leaders following it had led to further alienation of the community from the party. This according to many political commentators was one of the main reasons for Anandiben Patel, Modi's choice to take his place as the chief minister, being replaced by the current CM Vijay Rupani. But the extent of how much of the support he has gotten yet will turn into votes for the Congress is yet to be seen. Especially as he has rejected overtures from the Congress to join the party. According to reports, he has said that though he will transfer all his votes to the Congress, he will not join it since having the symbol of the party attached to his name would be poison. Referring to the image that Congress might have at the ground level. Thakor's waiting game Alpesh Thakor is the other leader that the Congress is putting its hopes on. The leader came into the limelight with his opposition to the Patidar agitation. Thakor's have mainly been supporters of the Congress and Alpesh heads the Kshatriya Thakor Sena, which he believes stands for the 146 OBC castes in the state which are small, educationally backwards, and are in predominantly rural pockets. He has been active in movements related to issues such as the strengthening of prohibition laws, demands of government employees on contract etc. But the leader who acknowledges that the lesson that smaller groups have the power to take on the government, came from the Patel agitation, claims to still be negotiating with both the main parties and will support whichever meets his agenda. Congress- Standing alone And it is this refusal of the leaders like Patel and Alpesh, that helpsincrease doubts about the party's ability to successfully take on the BJP, as for it to have any chance to win in Gujarat it does not only need their support but also a complete transfer of their votes to the party and to get over its own divisions. The party which has till date relied on the old formula of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Advisasis and Muslims, is now hoping to rope in Patels and the middle-class for the upcoming elections. Vaghela has reportedly said that "For Modi, it is only Hindu-Muslim. But this Hindutva card is not working anymore. Patels are now shaken. They were the party's strongest ideological and financial supporters." But analysts continue to believe that such a situation is difficult to bear fruit and lead to the BJP's defeat and that the standing of the government being seen as left and anti-industry does not bode well for it in a state which has for the Sardar Patel's Congress and others which were considered centre-right. And especially since unlike the local bodies elections that took place following the agitations, where the Congress was able to perform better than the ruling party, the BJP will leave no stone unturned for the assembly elections and will witness its whole central leadership behind the state machinery and with the prime minister taking charge in campaigning. With Vaghela reportedly admitting, "This is the home turf of the PM. The prestige of both guru and is at stake. So they will use all means." OneIndia News China fumes over American delegation meeting Dalai Lama International pti-PTI Beijing, May 10: China on Wednesday lodged a diplomatic protest with the US over a Congressional delegation's meeting with the Dalai Lama in India, saying the move sent a "wrong signal" to the world and violated America's commitment not to support Tibet's independence. The 14th Dalai Lama is a political exile who has long been engaged in anti-China separatist activities in foreign countries under the pretext of religion, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing. He was replying to questions on a US bipartisan Congressional delegation headed by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi meeting the 81-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. "The Dalai Lama is also the head of the Tibetan independence group," Geng said when asked whether the US delegation's visit, which is the first after US President Donald Trump took over office in January, signals his administration's policy towards Tibet. Geng said the US delegation's visit to Dharamshala and their meeting with the Dalai Lama has "sent a very wrong signal to the outside world about supporting Tibetan independence and violated the US government's commitment not to support Tibets independence." "We are firmly opposed to that and has lodged solemn representation with the American side. We urge the relevant Congressmen of the US to properly deal with the Tibetan related issues and stop all kinds of contacts with the Dalai Lama and take immediate measures to remove the negative impact," he said. Earlier reports said China has urged Trump, who also had a summit meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, not to hold any meeting with the Dalai Lama. Previous American Presidents, including Barack Obama, had met the Dalai Lama. After the meeting, Pelosi said, "As we visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama, our bipartisan delegation comes in his spirit of faith and peace. We come on this visit to be inspired by His Holiness and demonstrate our commitment to the Tibetan people, to their faith, their culture and their language." The Dalai Lama told the delegation that he is "the longest guest of the Indian government". He said he would be willing to visit China but it was not possible because Beijing considered him a "dangerous splittist." China routinely protests to countries hosting the Dalai Lama or world leaders meeting with him. Last month, China lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the Dalai Lamas visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of Southern Tibet. In an apparent retaliatory measure, China also announced "standardised Chinese names for six places in Arunachal Pradesh. PTI ICJ's stay on Jadhav's execution: Pak keeps mum International pti-PTI Islamabad, May 10: Pakistani officials on Wednesday kept mum over the International Court of Justice's stay over the execution of Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on charges of "spying". Pakistan has not officially reacted to the Hague-based ICJ's order. The local media, which was initially slow to respond, rejected India's claim. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online did not report about the Indian claim of the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. Jadhav, 46, was awarded the death sentence by a Field General Court Martial last month. India moved the ICJ against Pakistan, accusing the latter of violating the Vienna Convention in the case of Jadhav. India, in its appeal, contended that it was not informed of Jadhav's detention until long after his arrest and that Pakistan failed to inform the accused of his rights. It further asserted that, in violation of the Vienna Convention, the Pakistani authorities were denying India its right of consular access to Jadhav, despite repeated requests. The ICJ through a statement on May 8 confirmed that it received an application from India. In New Delhi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday said that she spoke to the mother of Jadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Article 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court. 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." Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. PTI Pakistan's Permanent Representative Maleeha Lodhi At their meeting on Monday she appealed to Guterres and the OIC to make it a priority to push for a "peaceful solution" of the Kashmir issue saying that the rising tensions threatened regional stability, the source said. Attempts by Lodhi and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to involve Guterres in the Kashmir issue have been unsuccessful. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres uterres has not made any open attempts to get involved in the issue. His spokespersons have said that he was following the situation but would not go beyond saying that he wanted the neighbours to enter into a dialogue to find a peaceful solution. Lodhi said that it was acknowledged by the UN and also the OIC in its communiques that Kashmir issue needs attention, according to the source. UNSG here for meeting with OIC Ambassadors starting now pic.twitter.com/vXoW4IrfQ7 Maleeha Lodhi (@LodhiMaleeha) May 8, 2017 UNSG meet with OIC ambassadors The OIC Summit's communique in 2016 offered the 57-member organisation's "support to the widespread indigenous movement of the people of India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir for their right to self-determination." Pak PM Nawaz Sharif Sharif met Guterres at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January and told him that the issues between India and Pakistan "had security consequences for the region" and needed his attention, according to a Pakistani statement. File image of Maleeha with Sharif and Sartaj Aziz Lodhi met Guterres at the UN headquarters in New York, also in January, and asked him to "restrain" India. She also gave him a dossier on "India's interference and terrorism in Pakistan" and a letter from Sartaj Aziz, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser. S Korea exit poll shows landslide win for Moon Jae-in International oi-PTI Seoul, May 10: Left-leaning former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in won South Korea's presidential election by a landslide on Tuesday, according to an exit poll, sweeping to power on a yearning for change after a tumultuous scandal. The ballot was called to choose a new president after Park Geun-Hye was ousted and indicted for corruption, and took place against a backdrop of high tensions with the nuclear- armed North. Voters were galvanised by anger over the sprawling bribery and abuse-of-power controversy that brought down Park, which catalysed frustrations over jobs and slowing growth. Conservative Hong Joon-Pyo, who dubs Moon a pro- Pyongyang leftist was far behind on 23.3 per cent, with centrist Ahn Cheol-Soo third on 21.8. The result was a great victory of great people who wanted to create a country of justice. Where rules and common sense prevail", Moon told cheering supporters on Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul -- where vast crowds gathered for candlelit protests over several months to demand Park's removal. The graft scandal plunged the South into political turmoil and bitter division, but Moon promised healing, telling the crowd: "I will be president for all South Koreans." On the square, freelancer Koh Eun-Byul, 28, told AFP: "I am so happy because now there is hope for some meaningful change." National elections are public holidays in South Korea and preliminary figures showed a turnout of 77.2 per cent the highest for 20 years in a presidential poll. With 40 per cent of the vote counted, results showed Moon with a slightly smaller share than the poll forecast, but not enough to matter. The campaign focused largely on the economy, with North Korea less prominent. But after a decade of conservative rule Moon's victory could mean significant change in Seoul's approach towards both Pyongyang and key ally Washington. The 64-year-old accused by his critics of being soft on the North advocates dialogue to ease tensions and to bring it to negotiations. He is seen as favouring more independence in relations with the US, Seoul's security guarantor with 28,500 troops in the country. Their presence, he told reporters during the campaign, was "important not only to our own security but also to the global strategy of the US". The North has carried out two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the start of last year in its quest to develop a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the US mainland. Washington has said military action is an option, sending fears of conflict spiralling. More recently US President Donald Trump has softened his message, saying he would be honoured to meet the North's leader, Kim Jong-Un. Moon also says he would be willing to visit Pyongyang to meet Kim and advocates resumption of some of the inter-Korean projects shuttered by his predecessors, including the Kaesong joint industrial zone. In Seoul's prosperous Seocho district, 72-year-old doctor Chung Tae-Wan backed Moon's conservative opponent Hong, telling AFP he did so because "security is the most important thing". But for many South Korean voters, corruption, slowing growth, unemployment and even air pollution from China top the list of concerns. South Korea's rapid growth from the 1970s to 1990s pulled a war-ravaged nation out of poverty but slowed as the economy matured, and unemployment among under-30s is now at a record 10 per cent. Frustration over widening inequality in wealth and opportunities fuelled anger over Park's scandal, which exposed the cosy and corrupt ties between regulators and powerful family-oriented conglomerates, known as chaebols, that have endured for decades. Park is in custody awaiting trial over corruption for offering governmental favours to top businessmen -- including Samsung heir Lee Jae-Yong who allegedly bribed her secret confidante, Choi Soon-Sil. Moon, Ahn and other candidates promised to reform the chaebols, which dominate the economy and have long been criticised for operating with little scrutiny. Another issue is relations with top trading partner Beijing, which imposed a series of measures seen as economic retaliation over the deployment of a US anti-missile system, THAAD, in the South. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 8:59 [IST] You are fired, Trump tells FBI director James Corney International oi-Vicky By Vicky The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Corney has been fired by US President Donald Trump. I have received the attached letters from the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of the US recommending your dismissal as the Director of FBI. I accept the recommendation and you are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately, Trump wrote in the order. While I greatly appreciate you informing me on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau. It is essential that we find a new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital enforcement mission, Trump also wrote. Comey had been embroiled in a controversy surrounding his handling of a probe of Clinton's use of a private email sever while she was US secretary of state. Reuters reported, "Today's action by President Trump completely obliterates any semblance of an independent investigation into Russian efforts to influence our election, and places our nation on the verge of a constitutional crisis," said Representative John Conyers, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 7:13 [IST] 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. The Wrap 19 Oct 2020 The New Yorker has suspended writer Jeffrey Toobin after he masturbated on a Zoom call last week with staff from the magazine and.. The original 'Ghostbusters' actor is mourning the loss of his brother Ed Murray who was also the inspiration behind the star's.. AceShowbiz 25 Nov 2020 CNN anchor John Berman called out senators in a rant on New Day, Thursday, for leaving their seats and missing chunks of the.. Mediaite 23 Jan 2020 Rumble 09 Nov 2022 China has expressed its interest in multilateral efforts like the digital trade pact Singapore inked with New Zealand and Chile, as.. Mediaite 06 Nov 2022 Former President Donald Trump's decision to go after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the final days before the election did not sit.. New Zealands Personal Accident and Health Insurance: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=944539 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=944539 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "New Zealands Personal Accident and Health Insurance: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Timetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in New Zealand Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segment, and a comparison of the New Zealand insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets and total investment income during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also gives a comprehensive overview of the New Zealand 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 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in New Zealand, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segment, including:An overview of the New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segmentThe New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segments growth prospects by categoryA comprehensive overview of the New Zealand economy and demographicsA comparison of the New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segment with its regional counterpartsDetails of the competitive landscape in the New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segmentDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the New Zealand insurance industryTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the personal accident and health insurance segment in New Zealand:It provides historical values for the New Zealand personal accident and health 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 New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the New Zealand personal accident and health insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the personal accident and health insurance segment.Key HighlightsThe personal accident and health segment accounted for 32.7% of the industrys direct written premium in 2015.Due to the introduction of the Insurance Prudential Supervision Act (IPSA) in 2010, all insurers must maintain compliance with solvency standards and appropriate risk management policies.Unsustainable levels of public spending on healthcare and a rise in healthcare costs initiated reforms in the health segment, prompting the government to contemplate the role of private insurance.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 @ EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Marine Hybrid Propulsions Market Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1046183&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/emea-europe-middle-east-and-africa-marine-hybrid-propulsions-market-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, With sales (Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Marine Hybrid Propulsions for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Marine Hybrid Propulsions sales volume (Units), price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingSiemensGeneral ElectricRolls-RoyceBAE SystemsImtech MarineWartsilaMAN Diesel & TurboCaterpillarTorqeedoAspin KempAssociatesAlewijnse HoldingSTEYR MOTORSSCHOTTEL GroupUQM TechnologiesOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoDiesel-electricParallel HybridSerial HybridOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (Units), market share and growth rate of Marine Hybrid Propulsions for each application, includingTugboats & Offshore Support VesselsFerriesDefense VesselsOthersObtain Report Details @Table of ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Marine Hybrid Propulsions Market Report 20171 Marine Hybrid Propulsions Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Marine Hybrid Propulsions1.2 Classification of Marine Hybrid Propulsions1.2.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Diesel-electric1.2.4 Parallel Hybrid1.2.5 Serial Hybrid1.3 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Tugboats & Offshore Support Vessels1.3.3 Ferries1.3.4 Defense Vessels1.3.5 Others1.4 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions 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 Marine Hybrid Propulsions (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions (Volume and Value) by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions (Volume) by Application2.4 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)3 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries3.4.1 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries4.4.1 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions (Volume, Value and Sales Price) by Players, Countries, Type and Application5.1 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.2 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Type5.3 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Market Share by Application5.4 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries5.4.1 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.2 Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.3 South Africa Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.4 Nigeria Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.5 Egypt Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.6 Algeria Marine Hybrid Propulsions Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)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 Analysis of Madagascar in Global Industry : Demands, Insights, Research and Forecast 2017-2021 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=852871 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=852871 ALBANY, NY, May 9, 2017 : The telecom services revenue in Madagascar is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.4% during 2016-2021, driven by growth in data revenue. Mobile data and fixed Internet will be the fastest-growing segment in the telecom market. Going forward, operators plan to invest in network infrastructure and rolling out 4G services. Vendors will have significant opportunities to support operator initiatives to roll out 4G networks.Key FindingsThe overall telecom service revenue in Madagascar will be mainly driven by growth in the data segments (mobile and fixed).2G will be the most adopted mobile technology through 2021. However, its share in overall mobile subscriber base will decline, as customers increasingly adopt high-speed 3G and 4G services in the coming years.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @The top two operators, Orange Madagascar and Telma, will account for a significant share of overall service revenue in 2016.The operators initiatives to improve their network infrastructure and roll out 4G networks in the coming years will fuel growth in Madagascars telecom market.SynopsisMadagascar: Low Mobile Penetration and 4G Rollout Will Offer Growth Opportunities for Operators provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Madagascar today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. It delivers deep quantitative and qualitative insight into Madagascars telecom market, analyzing key trends, evaluating near-term opportunities and assessing risk factors, based on proprietary data from Pyramid Researchs databases.The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following:Regional context: Telecom market size and trends in Madagascar compared with other countries in the Africa and Middle East region.Economic, demographic and political context in Madagascar.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, fixed Internet, mobile voice and mobile data.Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed and mobile sectors and between voice, data and video from 2014 to 2021.The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months.In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and mobile data 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 Madagascars telecommunications market.Make an Enquiry of this report @Reasons To BuyGain in-depth analysis of current strategies and future trends of the telecommunications market in Madagascar, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format, to build proactive and profitable growth strategies.Understand the factors behind ongoing and upcoming trends in Madagascars mobile communications, fixed telephony and broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares, to align product offerings and strategies to meet customers demand.Leverage the graphical information (more than 20 charts and tables in the report based on the Pyramid Research forecast products), to gain an overview of the telecom market in Madagascar.Analysis of key telecom players in the markets and major business strategies being adopted by them, to identify the opportunities to improve the market share.Explore novel opportunities to align your product strategies and offerings to meet the requirements and succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in Madagascar.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 Anti-Aging Market is Expected to Cross US$ 216 Billion Globally by 2021 https://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/anti-aging-market-report https://www.marketresearchengine.com/ New York, May 09: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Anti-aging Market (Breast augmentation, Liposuction, Anti-wrinkle products and Hair Restoration Treatment) - Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016 - 2021How Big is the Global Anti Aging Market?The global anti aging market is expected to exceed more than US$ 216 Billion by 2021; Growing at a CAGR of about 8% in the given forecast period.Browse Full Report:Anti-aging market is growing because the trendy technologies have initiated the involvement of novel anti-aging treatments and product. Anti-aging market is divided into product, services and devices. Anti-aging product market compared to services was ascertained to be resilient to economic cycles as a result of it had been ascertained that in a monetary worsening customers shifted to value economical mass marketed product that prevented any major declination in product market.The major driving factors of anti aging market are as follows:Increasing aging population globallyStrict rules have led to beginning of secure and efficient anti aging service and product in the marketThe restraining factors of anti aging market are as follows:Stringent regulatory environmentThe anti aging market is segmented on the lines of its age geographic, product, services, devices and regional. Based on age geographic segmentation it covers baby boomer, generation X and generation Y. Under product segmentation it covers anti stretch mark products, anti wrinkle products, botox and others. The anti aging market is segmented on the lines of its services into hair restoration treatment, chemical peel, liposuction, breast augmentation, anti adult acne therapy, anti pigmentation therapy and others. Under devices segmentation it covers anti aging radio frequency devices, anti cellulite treatment, laser aesthetics and micro dermabrasion. The anti aging market covers various geographic segmentation regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geographic market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for anti aging and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2021.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for anti aging.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.REPORT SCOPE:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for Anti-aging market variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include LOreal, SA, Allergan Inc., Cynosure Inc., Solta Medical Inc., Alma Lasers Ltd, Beiersdorf AG, Personal Microderm, Coty Inc., Photomedex Inc., and Lumenis Ltd, among others. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary, business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Top Companies Report is intended to provide our buyers with a snapshot of the industrys most influential players.The Anti Aging Market has been segmented as below:By Age Geographic segment AnalysisBaby boomerGeneration XGeneration YBy Product Segment AnalysisAnti stretch mark productsAnti wrinkle productsBotoxOthersBy Services Segment AnalysisHair restoration treatmentChemical peelLiposuctionBreast augmentationAnti adult acne therapyAnti pigmentation therapyOthersBy Devices Segment AnalysisAnti aging radio frequency devicesAnti cellulite treatmentLaser aestheticsMicrodermabrasionBy Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificRest of the WorldReasons to Buy this Report:1) Obtain the most up to date information available on all anti aging.2) Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry.3) Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast of anti aging data.4) Assess your competitors refining portfolio and its evolution.About MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States Sales Market Analysis: Global Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017 Global Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017 http://www.qyresearcheurope.com/goods-530649.html http://www.qyresearchglobal.com/ Global Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017 is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Quinoa Seed market. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2016 through 2022. Also, a six-year historic analysis is provided for these markets. The global market for Quinoa Seed is expected to reach about $1216.08 million by 2022 from $1015.28 million in 2016, registering a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 3.05% during the analysis period, 2016-2022.The report provides a basic overview of the Quinoa Seed industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. And development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information. Whats more, the Quinoa Seed industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.This report studies Quinoa Seed focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAdaptive SeedsTerritorial Seed CompanyVictory SeedsHancockHeritage Harvest SeedReal SeedMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Quinoa Seed in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeBoliviaPeruEcuadorChinaSplit by Product Types, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoBlack Quinoa SeedsRed Quinoa SeedsWhite Quinoa SeedsOthersSplit by applications, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Quinoa Seed in each application, can be divided intoDirect EdibleReprocessing ProductsOthersIn a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Ask a complete & professional report sample, please send message to tinaning@qyresearch.com or visit atTable of contents:1 Quinoa Seed Market Overview2 Global Quinoa Seed Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global Quinoa Seed Production, Revenue (Value) by Regions (2012-2017)4 Global Quinoa Seed Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)5 Global Quinoa Seed Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Types6 Global Quinoa Seed Market Analysis by Applications7 Global Quinoa Seed Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis8 Quinoa Seed Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global Quinoa Seed Market Forecast (2017-2022)13 Research Findings and Conclusion14 Methodology and Data SourceRelated Reports:Global Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017Europe Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017China Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017India Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017Korea Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017Japan Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017USA Quinoa Seed Market Research Report 2017Contact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | focus on Market Survey and ResearchContact Person: Tina Ning | Professional Market Research Report PublisherEmail: 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 Sales Market Analysis: Global Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017 Global Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017 http://www.qyresearcheurope.com/goods-529230.html http://www.qyresearchglobal.com/ This report studies the Solanaceae Vegetable Seed market status and outlook of global and major regions, from angles of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top manufacturers in global and major regions, and splits the Solanaceae Vegetable Seed market by product type and applications/end industries.The global Solanaceae Vegetable Seed 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.The major players in global Solanaceae Vegetable Seed market include Monsanto, Syngenta, Limagrain, Bayer Crop Science, Bejo, ENZA ZADEN, Rijk Zwaan, Sakata, Takii, Nongwoobio, LONGPING HIGH-TECH, DENGHAI SEEDS, Jing Yan YiNong, Huasheng Seed, Horticulture Seeds, Beijing Zhongshu, Jiangsu Seed.Ask a complete & professional report sample, please send message to tinaning@qyresearch.com or visit atTable of contents:1 Industry Overview of Solanaceae Vegetable Seed2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Solanaceae Vegetable Seed3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Solanaceae Vegetable Seed4 Global Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Overall Market Overview5 Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Regional Market Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Segment Market Analysis (by Type)7 Global 2012-2017E Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Segment Market Analysis (by Application)8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Solanaceae Vegetable Seed9 Development Trend of Analysis of Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market10 Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Marketing Type Analysis11 Consumers Analysis of Solanaceae Vegetable Seed12 Conclusion of the Global Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 201613 Methodology and Data SourceRelated Reports:Global Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Europe Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017China Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017India Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Korea Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Japan Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017USA Solanaceae Vegetable Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Contact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | focus on Market Survey and ResearchContact Person: Tina Ning | Professional Market Research Report PublisherEmail: 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 Sales Data Analysis: Global Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017 Global Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017 http://www.qyresearcheurope.com/goods-527739.html http://www.qyresearchglobal.com/ This report studies Forage Seed in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAllied SeedForage GeneticsDow AgroSciencesS&WPGG WrightsonGrassland OregonDLFDSVSmith Seed ServicesRAGTSemences De FranceGerminal HoldingsCropmarkOreGro SeedsSeedForceJ.R. Simplot CompanyTakiiSnow BrandSemillas FitoLa Crosse SeedDairyland SeedBarenbrugBy types, the market can be split intoAlfalfaCloversRyegrassFescueBy Application, the market can be split intoFarmGrasslandBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaAsk a complete & professional report sample, please send message to tinaning@qyresearch.com or visit atTable of contents:1 Industry Overview of Forage Seed2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Forage Seed3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Forage Seed4 Global Forage Seed Overall Market Overview5 Forage Seed Regional Market Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Forage Seed Segment Market Analysis (by Type)7 Global 2012-2017E Forage Seed Segment Market Analysis (by Application)8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Forage Seed9 Development Trend of Analysis of Forage Seed Market10 Forage Seed Marketing Type Analysis11 Consumers Analysis of Forage SeedRelated Reports:Global Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Europe Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017China Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017India Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Korea Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Japan Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017USA Forage Seed Market Professional Survey Report 2017Contact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | focus on Market Survey and ResearchContact Person: Tina Ning | Professional Market Research Report PublisherEmail: 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 Canada Generic Drug Market Driven by Changing Demographics and Government Initiatives http://www.imarcgroup.com/request?type=report&id=700&flag=B http://www.imarcgroup.com/canada-generic-drug-market http://www.imarcgroup.com/categories/healthcare-market-research-reports www.imarcgroup.com The Canada generic drug market has witnessed a significant growth over the past several years, reaching a volume of around 0.46 Billion Units in 2016. This can be attributed to public and private sector drugs programs and healthcare initiatives promoting the use of generic drugs.Canada currently represents the ninth-largest generic drug market worldwide, accounting for nearly 3% of the total global share. The share of generic drugs in the pharmaceuticals market has increased significantly over the past several years. At present, generic drugs account for around 70% of the total retail prescriptions, and 22% of the total pharmaceutical sales value in the region. This can be attributed to the various public and private sector drug programs aimed at cost-containment and increasing awareness about generic drugs. The latest report by IMARC Group titled, Canada Generic Drug Market: Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2017-2022, finds that the Canada generic drug market reached a volume of around 0.46 Billion Units in 2016, growing at a CAGR of around 8% during 2010-2016.Get Sample of the Report:Highlights of the Canada Generic Drug Market:Generic drugs account for nearly 70% of the total retail prescriptions in Canada.Changing demographics and government initiatives are the major growth drivers.Patent expiry of a number of blockbuster drugs is expected to provide growth opportunities.Population growth, changing demographics, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and a rise in the use of drug therapy are projected to put more pressure on Government healthcare initiatives such as the drug benefit plans operative in the Canadian territories and provinces. As the sustainability of these programmes is largely dependent on the use of generic drugs, the demand for these drugs is expected to increase over the next several years. Moreover, the patent expiry of a number of blockbuster drugs is also anticipated to expand the generic drug market in Canada. According to the report, the market is further expected to reach a volume of nearly 0.7 Billion Units by 2022.Browse full report with TOC @The report analyses the competitive landscape of the market and provides details of the major players in the market. Some of these include Teva Pharmaceutical Ltd., Apotex Inc., Snadoz Canada, Actavis, Mylan, Pharmascience Inc., Taro Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals Canada and Hospira. The report provides a comprehensive insight into the historical and current trends as well as the future prospects of the generic drug market in Canada. This study serves as an exceptional tool to understand the sales trends, volume trends, growth, key segments, competitive structure, regulations, major manufacturer, major distributors, top drugs, manufacturing requirements, opportunities and future prospects of the Canada generic drug market. This report can serve as an excellent guide for manufacturers, consultants, researchers, marketing strategists and all those who plan to foray into the Canada generic drug market in any form.Find more research reports related to Healthcare 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 Pseudomonas Diagnostic Testing Market Report: 2021 Edition with Leading Players http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4266 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4266 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Pseudomonas is a group of gram-negative, rod-shaped bacteria, commonly found in soil, plants, groundwater, and animals. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common bacterium belonging to the Pseudomonas family. This bacterium is found on the surface of plants and animals. Infections caused by pseudomonas bacteria are termed as pseudomonas infections. Healthy people are usually not at risk of contracting such type of infections. However, people with a weakened immune system, especially due to another illness or condition, have a higher risk of developing pseudomonas infections.A sample of this report is available upon request @The major pseudomonas infections include urinary tract infections, respiratory system infections, soft tissue infections, gastrointestinal infections, and bone and joint infections. In addition, pseudomonas aeruginosa infection is one of the major health problems in patients hospitalized for the treatment of cancer, burns, and cystic fibrosis. In the absence of proper hygienic practices in healthcare centers and hospitals, this bacterium can easily spread through the infected hands of healthcare workers or through hospital equipment that are not properly sterilized.The major diagnostic tests used to diagnose pseudomonas infections include blood cultures, complete blood count (CBC), urinalysis, blood gas analysis, sputum culture, wound and burn cultures, gram staining, and cerebrospinal fluid culture.The global pseudomonas diagnostic testing market is categorized on the basis of various types of infections, diagnostic procedures, and end users. Based on the type of infections, the report covers urinary tract infections, dermatitis, respiratory system infections, soft tissue infections, gastrointestinal infections, bone and joint infections, endocarditis, eye infections, ear infections, and bacteremia. Based on the type of technology, the report covers monoclonal antibodies, molecular diagnostics, differential light scattering, immunoassays, flow cytometry, chromatography, gel microdroplets, diagnostic imaging, and others. Based on end users, the report covers commercial or private labs, physician offices, hospitals, public health labs, and academic research institutes.In terms of geography, North America dominates the global pseudomonas diagnostic testing market. This is due to increased government funding on healthcare infrastructure in the region. In addition, technological advancements in pseudomonas diagnostic procedures have also propelled the market in North America. The U.S. represents the largest market for pseudomonas diagnostic testing in North America, followed by Canada. In Europe, Germany, France, and the U.K. hold the major shares of the pseudomonas diagnostic testing market. The pseudomonas diagnostic testing market in Asia is also expected to witness high growth rates in the next five years. This is due to the various initiatives undertaken by governments to increase awareness about pseudomonas infections. In addition, increased investments by many foreign diagnostic instrument companies have also propelled the growth of the pseudomonas diagnostic testing market in the region. India, China, and Japan are expected to be the fastest-growing markets for pseudomonas diagnostic testing in Asia.Advanced application of bacterial diagnostic instruments is a key driver for the global pseudomonas diagnostic testing market. Also, increased government support in the form of funding and rapid technological advancements have fueled the growth of this market.Increasing number of mergers and acquisitions involving diagnostic consumables manufacturing companies, and rapid product launches are the key trends of the global pseudomonas diagnostic testing market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @The major companies operating in this market are Abbott Laboratories, Enzo Biochem Inc. Beckman Coulter Inc., Wako Pure Chemical Industries, Ltd., Becton, Dickinson and Company, Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc., Affymetrix, Inc., bioMerieux, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., EIKEN CHEMICAL CO., LTD, Siemens AG, Scienion AG, Roche, Cepheid, Inc., GenBio, Olympus Corporation, Novartis AG, and Johnson & Johnson Services, 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: Global Ophthalmic Devices Market Expected to Hit US$ 42,685.1 Million by 2020 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3188 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/3188 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research Global Market Study on Ophthalmic Devices: Asia to Witness Highest Growth by 2020, the global ophthalmic devices market was valued at USD 29,171.5 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5% from 2014 to 2020, to reach an estimated value of USD 42,685.1 million in 2020.Globally, the ophthalmic devices market is witnessing significant growth due to increasing prevalence of eye disorders, such as diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration. In addition, growing global aging population, increasing government initiatives towards healthcare infrastructure in developing countries, and increasing incidence of lifestyle-associated diseases are also driving the growth of the market. However, lack of awareness among people about eye disorders, poor primary healthcare infrastructure, and lack of insurance in developing countries hamper growth of the global ophthalmic devices market. In addition, eye diseases in children are also increasing due to the general lack of awareness.The global ophthalmic devices market is anticipated to grow from an estimated USD 29,171.5 million in 2014 to USD 42,685.1 million in 2020 at a CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period.Age-related eye diseases, such as glaucoma, cataract, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration, are the leading causes of visual impairment and blindness in North America. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, approximately 22 million Americans aged 40 and above were affected by cataract and 2.3 million Americans were affected by glaucoma in 2011.In Europe, increasing prevalence of chronic eye diseases among the rising aging population is becoming a challenge for the European healthcare system. In France, the number of age-related macular degeneration cases was 0.3 million in 2000 and it is anticipated to increase by 0.5 million in 2020.However, glaucoma, cataract, and diabetic retinopathy are the major causes of blindness in Asia. Cataract can be held responsible for 50% to 80% of all cases of blindness in Southeast Asia. The prevalence of age-related macular degeneration is also increasing in Asia due to increase in life expectancy and rising incidence of diabetes among the younger population. As per the Centre for Eye Research Australia, prevalence of diabetic retinopathy among people ranged between 17% and 22% in India and 43.1% in rural China in 2012.A Sample of this report is available upon request @Johnson & Johnson, Essilor International, Bausch & Lomb Incorporated, Novartis AG, HOYA CORPORATION and Abbott Laboratories, Inc. are some of the major players of ophthalmic devices market.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Smart Meter Market Demand is Increasing Rapidly in Recent Years http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1045 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1045 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ On a global scale, many countries are facing challenges to meet the growing demand for energy. Thus utilities are looking for innovative and efficient ways to manage generation, transmission and worldwide distribution of energy. Global smart meter market consists of digital electronic devices for measuring and two-way information sharing to manage and control power consumption by customers. Customers also have the advantage of tracking their energy consumption and billing through internet. Global smart meter market demand is more in residential areas as compared to commercial areas and electric smart meter is prominently used among the types of smart meters. Environmental concerns for reducing carbon and energy wastage and for regulating supply of energy, are major factors driving global smart meter market. Global smart meter market is anticipated to grow with a single digit compound annual growth rate during the forecast period.Smart Meter Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe major driving factor for the growth of global smart meter market is government support and incentives, as utilities are initially reluctant to make huge investment in new technology without their support. Technological advancements such as smart grid development, infrastructure development, growing population and rise in economic developments are some of the other factors boosting the growth of global smart meter market. The successful deployment of global smart meter market is dependent on logistics which influences the delivery, installation and performance of smart meter. The health effects concerning wireless signals in smart meter, security concerns, regulatory constraints and stiff competition are some of the challenges faced by global smart meter market.Request For Report Sample:Smart Meter Market: SegmentationOn the basis of product type, global smart meter market can be segmented into following segments:Smart electric meterSmart gas meterSmart water meterOn the basis of application, global smart meter market can be segmented into:Residential applicationCommercial applicationOn the basis of technology, global smart meter market can be segmented into:Radio Frequency (RF)Power Line Carrier (PLC)Smart Meter Market: Region-wise OutlookGlobal smart meter market is expected to exhibit healthy growth in Asia-Pacific and Western Europe regions which is either due to increasing installation of new smart meters as well as upgradation of the existing smart meters. China is expected to display substantial progress of global smart meter market, as incorporated in its five-year nationwide plan to upgrade its grid infrastructure. In Japan, large scale installation by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) started on 2014 which is expected to last during the forecast period leading to increase in demand for global smart meter market. In North, America, the growth of global smart meter market is expected to slower down as infrastructure for energy is well developed and funding for the new projects has become limited. In Latin America, global smart meter is set to exhibit steady growth of global smart meter market, as compared to Middle East and Africa.Request For TOC:Smart Meter Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in global smart meter market are: Aclara Technologies LLC., Echelon Corporation, Elster Group GmbH, General Electric, Holley Metering Limited, Iskraemeco d.d., Itron, Kamstrup A/S, Landis+Gyr and Sensus.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: Automotive Stamping Market Key Growth Factor, Industry Analysis 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1527 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1527 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ Stamping is a metal working process by which a desired shape and structure of a material is achieved. This metal working process is adopted in manufacturing industries engaged in processing of hardened surfaces such as sheet metal and plastics components. Stamping process forms the base of all the building process in automotive industry as more than 80 percent of the components that make up a vehicle is produced by stamping. Both the interior structural components and the exterior build components are produced by this process.Since 2010, the demand for automobiles has increased exponentially after the global economic downturn during 2009. This has led to an increase in demand of the stamping machines so as to meet the demand of an impeding growth in the automotive sector. The increase in usage of stamping machines in the automotive sector attributed to the growth of stamped automotive parts and is forecast to expand at a increasing growth rates during 2016-2026.Automotive Stamping Market DynamicsThe market for stamping machines in the automotive sector is driven by reduced lead times required for manufacturing vehicles. The machines are extremely versatile as different modules can be achieved by changing the necessary die. This process has also led to reduced labor requirements as the process can be automated with the help of computers thereby reducing the labor costs. The process helps in reducing scrap wastage as precise amount of raw material is utilized. The production cost incurred in the stamping process is very low and is replacing other metal working processes such as forging and die-casting.Request For Report Sample:Automotive Stamping Market: SegmentationOn the basis of forming temperature, Automotive Stamping Market can be segmented as:Hot StampingCold StampingOn the basis of Stamping process, Automotive Stamping Market can be segmented as:Mechanical ProcessHydraulic ProcessPneumatic ProcessOn the basis of the number of stations required, Automotive Stamping Market can be segmented as:Single Tool StationProgressive StationsAutomotive Stamping: Regional OutlookThe Global automotive stamping market can be divided into seven geographical locations such as North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Asia-Pacific market is anticipated to grow steeply in the stamped components, as the automotive sector in China, Japan and India is growing at a rapid pace. In Latin America, Brazil is the strongest automotive stamped components market preceded by Mexico and Argentina, due to improved production and sales of automobiles in these regions. European countries such as U.K. and Germany are also expected to grow in the stamped component market as demand for vehicles in these regions has increased exponentially.Request For TOC:Automotive Stamping Market: Key PlayersSome of the major players which provide the Automotive Industry with Stamping Presses areSchuler GroupAIDA GlobalOrchid InternationalEagle Press & Equipment Co. Ltd.Hyundai RotemMacRodyne Hydraulic Presses & AutomationSantec GroupJier North AmericaRidgeview IndustriesBliss-Bret IndustriesABOUT 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: Liquid Ring Vacuum Pumps (LRVP) Market Poised to Account for US$ 2,871.3 Million Through 2024 Liquid Ring Vacuum Pumps Market http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12991 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/liquid-ring-vacuum-pumps-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/12991 www.persistencemarketresearch.com Global LRVP market will witness promising growth in the first half of the forecast period (5.5% CAGR), which will incur a slight dip post-2020, (4.9% CAGR). However, the overall CAGR of the market estimated for 2016-2024 is estimated at 5.2%.Sample of this report is available upon request @ Research Analyst, Industrial Automation Domain, Persistence Market ResearchAccording to Global Liquid Ring Vacuum Pumps Market Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016-2024, the global liquid ring vacuum pumps market will reach US$ 2,871.3 Mn by the end of the forecast period.Regional analysis indicates that the US$ 535 Mn North American market will rule the roost with an estimated 6% CAGR over 2016-2024. Towards the close of 2024, this region is expected to attain revenues worth US$ 851.1 Mn. Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are identified to be the next key markets for LRVP. North America, Europe, and APAC will collectively hold a whopping 75% share of the total market size in 2024.In developing economies within Asia Pacific, leading LRVP manufacturers are tackling the competitive pricing issue in order to deliver customer-centric products. Moreover, China and India host a swelling number of small manufacturers specifically serving pharma and chemical process industries. These factors will play a vital role in pushing the sales of liquid ring vacuum pumps in near future within Asian markets. Reaching a value beyond US$ 504 Mn, APAC market is likely to expand at a moderate CAGR of 5.3% over 2016-2024.LRVP market expanding at the backdrop of a slew of factorsIncreasing demand from oil & gas, and power industriesGrowing preference for high capacity-high cost liquid ring vacuum pumpsExtending applications in chemical and general process industriesConstant innovation by manufacturersStrict EPA regulationsPromising emergence of low water consuming pumpsBurgeoning M&A between key playersSegment analysis: Consumption by oil & gas segment crossing US$ 931 Mn by 2024In terms of capacity, 500-1500 cfm segment will continue to lead with the maximum revenue sales, followed by < 500 cfm segment. However, < 500 cfm segment will possibly thrive fastest at a CAGR of 5.2%, followed by > 1500 cfm segment with an estimated 4.4% CAGR over 2016-2024.Request to view Table of Content @Considering material type, cast iron segment will continue dominance with over 60% value share, reaching a value of US$ 1,718.2 Mn in 2024. This segment will also demonstrate the fastest CAGR of 5.3% over the forecast period. Stainless steel segment will also grow moderately at 5%, attaining a value worth US$ 876 Mn in 2024.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @Based on the end-use industry, oil and gas sector will retain dominance over others, with over US$ 931 Mn by the end of 2024 in terms of revenues. Chemical processing and general process industries will continue to maintain the second and third largest segments respectively. Among these, general process industries will display a higher CAGR of 5.8% over 2016-2024, bagging the revenues of over US$ 511 Mn. Paper and pulp, and power segments are expected to grow steadily throughout the assessment period.Report analyzes the key company profilesDekker Vacuum Technologies Inc., Busch Vacuum Technics Inc., Flowserve Corporation, Tsurumi Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Atlas Copco Airpower N.V., Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Tuthill Vacuum & Blower Systems, and Graham Corp. are some of the key players that constitute the competitive landscape of the global liquid ring vacuum pumps marketplace. Persistence Market Researchs report includes in-depth profiling of key companies.Lucrative opportunities in Asia countriesAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Plastic Healthcare Packaging Market Revenue, Opportunity, Forecast and Value Chain 2015-2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1127 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1127 www.futuremarketinsights.com Packaging is one of the major industry in the world in which healthcare packaging represents miniscule share. The pharmaceutical packaging has rapidly become a vital part of drug delivery system as well as a major element of the marketing mix, though which manufacturers can distinguish their products from that of their competitors. Healthcare packaging protects products from materialistic damage, biological contamination and from all unfavorable external influences which can destruct the properties of the healthcare products. In material terms, healthcare packaging comprises of primary packaging, secondary packaging and tertiary packaging system. Primary packaging includes cap, labels, bottles, cap liner and others such as vials, ampoules, blisters, tubes, syringes and inhalers. Other than that, secondary packaging system consist of corrugated shippers, pallets and cartoons. Plastic healthcare packaging is generally a practice of packaging of devices, drugs, tools, and other pharmaceutical products. Inclination in the demand for healthcare practices strengthen the growth of healthcare packaging. Amongst the overall healthcare packaging, the plastics segment holds the highest share due to its high-adaptability and cost-effectiveness. The plastic healthcare packaging is anticipated to grow at a significant CAGR during the period 2015-2025.Global Plastic Healthcare Packaging: Market SegmentationThe Global Plastic Healthcare Packaging market is segmented on the basis of type of healthcare industry such as medical device and pharmaceutical. The global plastic healthcare packaging is also bifurcated on the basis of end markets which include blister packs, plastic bottles, pre-fill syringe, caps and closure and others. The plastic healthcare packaging is further segmented on the basis of type of drug delivery which includes pulmonary, oral drugs, transdermal, injectable, nasal, topical, ocular and IV drugs.Request Report Sample@Global Plastic Healthcare Packaging Market: Growth DriversSignificant growth in pharmaceutical domain all across the world and inclining functional necessities for healthcare packaging products are some of the drivers in the global plastic healthcare packaging market. The anti-ageing population, inclining prevalence of chronic diseases and changing lifestyles will bolster the demand for healthcare related products and services and will further stimulate the growth of plastic healthcare packaging all across the globe. The advancement in technology in packaging and integration and advanced process of manufacturing are also fostering the growth of global plastic pharmaceutical packaging all over the world. Apart from this, escalating personal disposable income and higher standard of living in emerging countries such as India and China is also expected to grow the global plastic healthcare packaging market over the period 2015-2025.Global Plastic Healthcare Packaging Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the Global Plastic Healthcare Packaging industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Amongst all the mentioned regions, North America captured the major share in the plastic healthcare packaging market in 2014. This is majorly due to presence of health conscious people and their spending power. Strong innovation, rising ageing population and inclining consumer demand for sophisticated packaging is likely to foster the growth of plastic healthcare packaging in American region. Rising chronic diseases in Asian region is expected to intensify the growth of plastic healthcare packaging in the region by 2025.Visit For TOC@Global Plastic Healthcare Packaging Market: PlayersSome of the major companies grabbing the substantial market share in the Global Plastic Healthcare Packaging market includes Tekni-Films Inc., Sealed Air Corporation, United Drug Plc, Aphena Pharma Solutions, Vetter Pharma International, Beacon Converters Inc., Catalent Pharma solutions, and others. The plastic healthcare packaging manufacturers are anticipated to focus on development of new and innovative packaging for healthcare products in order to gain the competitive advantage in the global plastic healthcare packaging market.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Drug Delivery Technology Market Globally Expected to Drive Growth through 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1166 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1166 www.futuremarketinsights.com Drug delivery system is the process of administering therapeutic substance through common route of administration to achieve a therapeutic effect in humans or animals. Drugs release the active ingredients in the target area so that in the period of time it controls though its formulation. The most important driving factor for drug delivery technology market is the increasing demand for effective delivery mechanisms of novel biopharmaceuticals.Recently, AstraZeneca signed a licensing agreement with Starpharma for the use of its DEP drug delivery technology aiming to enhancing the dosing and efficacy characteristics of pharmaceuticals. AstraZeneca agreed to fund all development and commercialization costs, including ongoing and future collaborative work conducted with Starpharma.Request Report Sample@Drug Delivery Technology Market: Drivers & RestraintsGrowing incidence of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer, technological advancement, innovation, the growing focus on pediatric and geriatric patients, change in lifestyle due to growing urbanization, the increasing demand for minimally invasive surgeries, are the most important driving factors in drug delivery technology market. Since growth of biopharmaceutical market is fast, the demand for drug delivery technology market has increased.With so many advantages and splendid features of drug delivery technology, it has few disadvantages too. Side-effects related to drugs, patents expiry and regulatory hurdles are acting as key barrier for drug delivery technology.Drug Delivery Technology Market: SegmentationDrug delivery technology market is broadly classified on the basis of the following segments By Route of Administration :Oral RouteParenteral RouteIntramuscularIntravenousIntra-arterialSubcutaneous routeTransdermal RouteInhalation RouteNasal Drug DeliveryBy End User:HospitalsClinicsDiagnostic CentresHome care settingsOthersDrug Delivery Technology Market: OverviewThe drug delivery technology market has grown substantially at a healthy CAGR due to growing incidence of chronic diseases and change in lifestyle. With rapid technological advancement and innovation, drug delivery technology market is expected to grow globally. North America is the largest market for drug delivery technology and Asia Pacific would be the fastest growing market in the forecast period.Drug Delivery Technology Market: Region-wise OutlookThe drug delivery technology market is expected to register a double-digit CAGR for the forecast period. Depending on geographic regions, drug delivery technology 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 largest market for drug delivery technology market and is contributing the most as compare to other regions. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region in the forecast period.Visit For TOC@Drug Delivery Technology Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in drug delivery technology market are Johnson and Johnson Pvt Ltd, 3M, Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc, Glaxosmithkline PLC, Merck & Co., Inc, Antares Pharma, Generex Biotechnology, pSivida Corppration, Alkermes, Aradigm Corp., Vectura Group plc, NanoPass Technologies 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 IndiaCONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Research Report 2017 : Medtronic, Maquet Holding, Sorin Group http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1024857&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-veno-venous-ecmo-system-market-research-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Research Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The report on the Veno-Venous ECMO System deals with the all its critical facts and figures that will help in creating an in-depth and insightful analysis. The market is elucidated in a holistic fashion that allows the users to gain a thorough analysis of the market, as developed using the factors that are likely to have a significant effect on its development over the coming years.The report offers an illustrative overview of the Veno-Venous ECMO System and its competitive set-up as well as the regulatory framework surrounding the market. This provides a reader with a richer understanding of the state of major opportunities, threats, competition, and the major plans, regulations, rules, and policies impacting the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report provides valuable data to all its readers that may aid businesses as well as investors in taking advantage of the markets stronger suits and handle key problems with relative ease. The report additionally provides a colorful assessment of the Veno-Venous ECMO System in a qualitative and quantitative manner, pertaining to the precise elements responsible for the progress of the market. This data is something that organizations and players of all sizes will be interested in. An organization using this report can have gain easy access to the nuances of the Veno-Venous ECMO System and knowing these details are a reinforcing way to have a very visible and significant bearing on its overall development. The report is created with the vision of gratifying and customizations and other needs that vendors and readers may require. The report thus generates a highly practical repository of information that allows top decision makers to form highly effective business strategies.Table of ContentsGlobal Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Research Report 20171 Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Veno-Venous ECMO System1.2 Veno-Venous ECMO System Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Desktop ECMO1.2.4 Mobile ECMO1.3 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Segment by Application1.3.1 Veno-Venous ECMO System Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Neonatal1.3.3 Pediatric1.3.4 Adult1.4 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Veno-Venous ECMO System (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Veno-Venous ECMO System Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 North America Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 Europe Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 China Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Japan Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 Southeast Asia Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.10 India Veno-Venous ECMO System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)Browse Complete Report with TOC @4 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)4.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Consumption by Region (2012-2017)4.2 North America Veno-Venous ECMO System Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 Europe Veno-Venous ECMO System Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Veno-Venous ECMO System Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Veno-Venous ECMO System Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 Southeast Asia Veno-Venous ECMO System Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 India Veno-Venous ECMO System Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Veno-Venous ECMO System 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 Medical Compression Garments Market 2017- 3M, BSN Medical, Covidien (Medtronic), medi GmBH & Co KG, SIGVARIS, Therafirm Medical Compression Garments Market https://goo.gl/ElINFX https://goo.gl/SpIDT3 http://marketreports.biz/ MarketReports.biz, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Medical Compression Garments Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Medical Compression Garments 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 Medical Compression Garments industry, and estimates the future trend of Medical Compression Garments market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Medical Compression Garments Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report3MBSN MedicalCovidien (Medtronic)medi GmBH & Co KGSIGVARISTherafirm2XU Pty. Ltd.Santemol Group MedikalLeonisa, Inc.Nouvelle, Inc.Medical ZThe market research report explores the Medical Compression Garments market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Medical Compression Garments 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 Medical Compression Garments market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Medical Compression Garments. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Medical Compression Garments 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 Medical Compression Garments is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Medical Compression Garments market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Medical Compression Garments market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Medical Compression Garments market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Medical Compression Garments production volume, data pertaining to demand and Medical Compression Garments supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Medical Compression Garments 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 Medical Compression Garments across the world.About UsMarketReports.biz offers elevating market research worldwide. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different fields. 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 Valadez155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Toll Free: +1-855-918-5551 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +17739042683Web:Email: sales@marketreports.biz APAC Market Study on Gas Leak Detectors Segment to Witness Relatively Faster Growth During 2016-2024 MRRSE http://www.mrrse.com/sample/2839 http://www.mrrse.com/apac-gas-leak-detectors-market https://plus.google.com/u/0/109558601025749677847/posts https://www.linkedin.com/company/mrrse https://twitter.com/MRRSEmrrse Albany, New York, May 10, 2017: Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) has included a new study titled, APAC Market Study on Gas Leak Detectors-Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 2024.Persistence Market Research presents a comprehensive and detailed review of the Asia Pacific gas leak detectors market in a new publication titled Gas Leak Detectors Market: Asia Pacific Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2016 2024. The report delves into different markets spread across the region in order to fetch out crucial and relevant information about the Asia Pacific gas leak detectors market. The report was crafted by collating data related to the markets in key countries across the Asia Pacific region by the different market segments based on product type, technology and application. The report highlights key trends, drivers and restraints that are expected to affect the ecosystem of the APAC gas leak detectors market. The study provides data for 2015 along with a comprehensive market forecast for the period 2016 - 2024.Request Sample Report :Market segmentationBy ApplicationIndustrial Oil and gas Chemical PetrochemicalsCommercial Hospitals Hotels & Restaurants OthersResidentialOthersBy Technology Electrochemical Infrared Semiconductor Catalytic OthersBy Product Type Fixed Detectors Portable DetectorsBy Country China India Japan ANZ South Korea Rest of APACReport descriptionTo understand and assess market opportunities, the APAC gas leak detectors market report is categorically split into different sections based on market segmentation by product type, by application, by technology and by country. The report starts with an executive summary followed by research methodology and market overview. The executive summary provides a birds eye view of the gas leak detectors market in the APAC region. The report further highlights the key growth drivers, restraints and trends that are likely to influence the growth and performance of the APAC gas leak detectors market. The analysis section of the report presents an overview of the anticipated market growth considering the various factors that are likely to impact the market share by product type, technology, application and countries. This section of the report projects the potential of the overall market based on both value and volume. The subsequent sections of the report provide a comprehensive analysis of the APAC gas leak detectors market at a country level thereby highlighting growth potentials for each of the countries in terms of value and volume. The competitive landscape section of the report includes profiles of some of the leading market players and presents an evaluation of their strategies and highlights some of their key developments in the APAC gas leak detectors market space. This section also includes a dashboard view of the competitive landscape and tier-wise company market share assessment.Research methodologyPersistence Market Research has employed an elaborate research methodology encompassing extensive secondary research and in-depth primary research followed by data triangulation in order to ascertain the overall APAC gas leak detectors market size. The experienced team of analysts has gathered relevant market insights and data by means of primary interviews with key manufacturers operating in the APAC gas leak detectors market. The data gathered through primary and secondary research is validated using various statistical methods and triangulation techniques in order to present appropriate market value and volume. Moreover, weighted average prices of gas leak detectors have been considered in order to arrive at appropriate market size.Browse Full Report with TOC :Key metricsIn addition to highlighting the volume and value figures, year-on-year growth rates for respective countries across various segments of the market have been analyzed in terms of market share and basis point share (BPS) analysis to understand relative contribution of individual segments to overall market growth. The report also analyzes the market based on absolute dollar opportunity, which from a sales perspective is essential to identify potential resources in the market. Persistence Market Research has also developed a unique market attractiveness index to understand the key market segments in terms of their performance and growth and to enable market players to identify opportunities in the APAC gas leak detectors market.Market Research Reports Search Engine(MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.State Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United StatesTelephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comGoogle+:Linked in:Twitter: Global Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products Market 2017 : Accor, Ecolab, Stepan, Allergan, Starwood Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products http://bit.ly/2pxUUNc http://bit.ly/2q2ksFl A market study based on the "Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products Market" across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research ReportAccorAllerganStarwoodReynolds AmericanProcter & Gamble3MColgate-PalmoliveDuPont Medical ChemicalDaley InternationalCardinal HealthDow Microbial ControlEcolabJohnson & JohnsonStepanThe report studies the industry for Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market & dynamics of demand and supply of Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products into consideration. The 'Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products' research study covers each and every aspect of the Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market globally, which starts from the definition of the Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products industry and develops towards Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market. The geographical segmentation of the Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market worldwide.Enquire Here :The global Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products production volume, data regarding demand and Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis has been used in the research to present a comprehensive study of the industry for Antiseptic and Disinfectant Products across the globe.About Us :Business Worldwide are a trusted brand in the research industry with capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Business Worldwide, we believe in building long term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries such as Automotive and Aerospace, Medical Devices, Technology, Machinery & Manufacturing.Contact Us :Business WorldwideUnited States North And Latin America Water Pumps Market to Hit US$ 13,412 .8 Million by the end of 2024 North And Latin America Water Pumps Market http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/13618 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/north-and-latin-america-water-pumps-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/13618 www.persistencemarketresearch.com The demand for water pumps across North America and Latin America continues to grow in parallel with the growth in the regions population. More households emerging in countries such as the US, Canada, Brazil or Mexico will certainly require water pumps for domestic purposes. Concurrently, agricultural, administrative and industrial sector in these regions will also adopt such pumps to keep up with the surging demands of consumers. Water pumps being deployed in the residential sector of North America and Latin America are projected to grow as municipalities & county authorities from this region will strive to improve their drinking water facilitation and upgrade the wastewater treatment plants.Sample of this report is available upon request @Nevertheless, a recent study developed by Persistence Market Research projects that revenues garnered from sales of water pumps across Latin America and North America will soar at a moderate CAGR of 4% over an eight-year forecast period. After amassing an estimated US$ 9,422.9 million revenues in 2016, the water pumps market in North America and Latin America is anticipated to reach a valuation of US$ 13,412 .8 million by the end of 2024.Key Deterrents for Adoption of Water Pumps in North & Latin AmericaAvailability of cheap Chinese water pumps: North American and Latin American manufacturers of water pumps are constantly at risk of losing market presence to newly-entered Chinese pump makers. Consumers in these regions end up opting for cheap Chinese water pumps, which tend to go kaput in short span of time. On the other hand, availing Chinese water pumps becomes more practical for consumers with tight budget, especially for deploying them in agricultural activities, Durability & energy efficiency of centrifugal pumps: Manufacturers of centrifugal water pumps in this region are improving the operating life of their products. This has decelerated the rate at which water pumps get replaced. Low replacement rate has dragged down the aftermarket sales of water pumps in North America and Latin America, thereby impeding the aggregate market revenues, Budget limitations in industrial and agricultural sectors: Expenditure on water pumps fares on a tightrope in North America. Submersible pumps are also expected to impact the adoption of centrifugal water pumps in this region. Latin Americas industrial sector is likely to trim its gross expenditure, which will incidentally impact the sales of water pumps in this region. Low profit margins in North Americas agriculture industry have also slowed down the rate at which water pumps were being installed or replaced in farming activities.Request to view Table of Content @In the report, titled Water Pumps Market: North & Latin America Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2016-2024, Persistence Market Research predicts that more than 90% of water pump revenues in Latin America and North America will be accounted by sales of centrifugal pumps. While over 936 thousand units of positive displacement pumps are estimated to be sold in the Americas during the forecast period, sales of centrifugal pumps will be raking in revenues worth over US$ 12 billion by the end of 2024. In 2016, centrifugal pumps worth nearly US$ 3 billion were estimated to be consumed by wastewater and water treatment plants across North America and Latin America. Oil and gas industries in this region have been predicted to have consumed over 200 thousand units of positive displacement pumps in 2016.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @Compared to Latin America, North America will continue to have a large share in their collective regional market for water pumps. In 2016, the US water pumps market accounted for more than two-third of North Americas water pump revenues, while Brazil and Mexico attributed to more than 50% growth in Latin Americas water pumps revenues. US-based companies Xylem Inc. and Flowserve Corporation are the leading native players in North America and Latin Americas water pumps market. The market will continue to witness higher participation from European water pump manufacturers such as KSB AG, Weir Group Plc., Grundfos, and Sulzer AG. Japanese water pump manufacturer, Ebara Corp is also observed to be a key participant as the company has established two manufacturing plants in North America and one in Latin America.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC Market 2016 Industry, Analysis, Research, Share, Growth, Sales, Trends, Supply, Forecast to 2021 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=729849&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-radio-frequency-identification-rfid-ic-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com The Global Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.1 Definition and Specifications of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.1.1 Definition of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.1.2 Specifications of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.2 Classification of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.3 Applications of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.5.1 Industry Overview of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC1.7 Industry News Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) ICBrowse Complete Report with TOC @2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC Major Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC Major Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC Major Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC Major Manufacturers in 20154 Capacity, Production and Revenue Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Regions, Types and Manufacturers4.1 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Regions 2011-20164.2 Global and Major Regions Capacity, Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20164.3 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Types 2011-20164.4 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Manufacturers 2011-20165 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Regions, Types and Manufacturers5.1 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Regions 2011-20165.2 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Types 2011-20165.3 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Manufacturers 2011-20166 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Regions, Types and Applications6.1 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Regions 2011-20166.2 Global and Major Regions Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20166.3 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Types 2011-20166.4 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Applications 2011-20166.5 Sale Price of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Regions 2011-20166.6 Sale Price of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Types 2011-20166.7 Sale Price of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Applications 2011-20166.8 Market Share Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC by Different Sale Price Levels7 Supply, Import, Export and Consumption Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC7.1 Supply, Consumption and Gap of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20167.2 Global Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20167.3 United States Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20167.4 EU Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20167.5 China Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20167.6 Japan Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC 2011-20168 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) IC8.1 NXP Semiconductors8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue8.1.4 Contact Information8.2 Texas Instruments8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue8.2.4 Contact Information8.3 Atmel8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue8.3.4 Contact InformationQYReseachReports.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.QYResearchreportsContact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com Global Solvent Naphtha Market 2016 Industry Report http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=759207&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-solvent-naphtha-market-2016-industry-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com The Global Solvent Naphtha Market 2016 Industry Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the solvent naphtha industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The solvent naphtha market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (China, North America, EU, Asia (Ex, China)), and other regions can be added.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the solvent naphtha industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Solvent Naphtha 11.1 Definition and Specifications of Solvent Naphtha 11.1.1 Definition of Solvent Naphtha 11.1.2 Specifications of Solvent Naphtha 11.2 Classification of Solvent Naphtha 21.2.1 Paraffin Solvent 31.2.2 CycloParaffin Solvent 41.2.3 C9 Solvent 41.2.4 C10 Solvent 51.3 Applications of Solvent Naphtha 51.3.1 Paints & Coatings 61.3.2 Agro Chemicals 71.3.3 Rubber & Resin 81.3.4 Printing Inks 81.3.5 Industrial Cleaning 91.4 Industry Chain Structure of Solvent Naphtha 101.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Solvent Naphtha 101.5.1 Industry Overview of Solvent Naphtha 101.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Solvent Naphtha 111.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 111.7 Industry News Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 122 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 14Browse Complete Report with TOC @2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 142.2 Equipment Suppliers of Solvent Naphtha 172.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 182.4 Other Costs Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 222.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 232.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 233 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 243.1 Capacity of Global Solvent Naphtha Major Manufacturers in 2015 243.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Solvent Naphtha Major Manufacturers in 2015 253.3 Manufacturing Method and Technology Source of Global Solvent Naphtha Major Manufacturers in 2015 263.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Solvent Naphtha Major Manufacturers in 2015 274 Capacity, Production and Revenue Analysis of Solvent Naphtha by Regions, Types and Manufacturers 294.1 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Solvent Naphtha by Regions 2011-2016 294.2 Global and Major Regions Capacity, Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of Solvent Naphtha 2011-2016 344.3 Global Production and Revenue of Solvent Naphtha by Types 2011-2016 424.4 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Solvent Naphtha by Manufacturers 2011-2016 455 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Solvent Naphtha by Regions and Manufacturers 555.1 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Solvent Naphtha by Regions 2011-2016 555.2 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Solvent Naphtha by Manufacturers 2011-2016 596 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Solvent Naphtha by Regions, Types and Applications 666.1 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Solvent Naphtha by Regions 2011-2016 666.2 Global and Major Regions Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Solvent Naphtha 2011-2016 706.3 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Solvent Naphtha by Types 2011-2016 756.4 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Solvent Naphtha by Applications 2011-2016 786.5 Sale Price of Solvent Naphtha by Regions 2011-2016 816.6 Sale Price of Solvent Naphtha by Types 2011-2016 817 Supply, Import, Export and Consumption Analysis of Solvent Naphtha 837.1 Supply, Consumption and Gap of Solvent Naphtha 2011-2016 837.2 China Supply, Import, Export, Consumption and Gap of Solvent Naphtha 2011-2016 837.3 North America Supply, Import, Export, Consumption and Gap of Solvent Naphtha 2011-2016 847.4 EU Supply, Import, Export, Consumption and Gap of Solvent Naphtha 2011-2016 847.5 Asia (Ex. China) Supply, Import, Export, Consumption and Gap Solvent Naphtha 2011-2016 85QYReseachReports.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.QYResearchreportsContact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com Global Disposable Medical Textiles Market 2017 : Vilene, Medpride, ALLMED, Zhende & Diyuan Disposable Medical Textiles https://goo.gl/hqEiyI https://goo.gl/PFiaYA This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, covering- Medtronic(Covidien)- J&J- Ahlstrom- Braun- Dupont- 3M- Cardinal Health- KOB- TWE- TechtexThe survey report by Market Research Store is an overview of the global Disposable Medical Textiles market. It covers all the recent trends including key developments in the global market in present and in future. Analyses of the global Disposable Medical Textiles market trends along with the projections of CAGRs (compound annual growth rates) are provided in the research report.Further, an evaluation of the history of the global market and the basic information of the global market is included in the report. A developmental perspective of the industry is also documented in the report. Competitive profiles of the key players in the industry are also discussed.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The research report provides both an assessment of recent developments in the industry along with forecasts examining the industry from the perspective of major competitors, present players and prospective end users in the Disposable Medical Textiles market.Forecasts are generated on the basis of region, type, product, supply, demand, and other vital factors of the global market. The research report analyzed the major factors driving the global Disposable Medical Textiles market in various countries with a satisfactory and manufacturing and structure of the global market. Forecasts are also provided region-wise in the research report.The research report comprises several chapters, tables, figures, graphs, and various other presentations formats so as to provide a precise overview of the market. The sequence of the report is maintained in such a way that highlights the overall flow of the global market. Recent developments in the global market are further described in the research report. The report also summarizes latest trends along with abstracts of the Disposable Medical Textiles market. Major competitors of the global market including commercial and non-commercial participants in the global market are also covered in the report.Inquiry For Buying @Thus, the research report provides in-depth analysis covering all the major regions, competitors, and vital aspects of the Disposable Medical Textiles industry.About Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Global Industrial Gloves Market - Asia Pacific Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025 MRRSE http://www.mrrse.com/sample/2847 http://www.mrrse.com/asia-pacific-industrial-gloves-market https://www.linkedin.com/company/mrrse https://twitter.com/MRRSEmrrse Albany, New York, May 10, 2017: Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) has recently inserted a new study to its massive catalog, titled as Industrial Gloves Market- Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016-2024. Industrial gloves are used to protect the hands of the workers from being damaged from exposure to heat, corrosive materials and various types of harmful chemicals. Several industries work with hazardous chemicals, and corrosive materials that can severely damage the hands of the workers. Industrial gloves find major application in industries such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare, food, chemicals and various others. Additionally, apart from protection, these gloves are designed to provide superior comfort to the wearers. Further, these gloves do not reduce the sensitivity or agility that is required while working.Several types of gloves find application in the industries that require the usage of personal protective equipment. Disposable gloves find major application in industries such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals and food among others. Such gloves are made of nitrile, a material which is highly durable against acids, oils and greases.Request For a Sample Report:The Asia Pacific industrial gloves market has been segmented on the basis of product, material, application and country. The report provides the current market size in terms of revenue and volume (USD Billion and Billion Pairs) and anticipates its status over the forecast period.The report also analyzes factors driving and inhibiting growth of the industrial gloves market. The report will help manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors to understand the present and future trends in this market and formulate strategies accordingly.Asia Pacific Industrial Gloves Market: Trends and OpportunitiesHigh production of gloves in Asia Pacific is the key factor complementing the growth of the market. Malaysia is the frontrunner for the production of industrial gloves market in Asia Pacific. Malaysias dominance in this market is majorly due its natural rubber resources and constant support from the countrys government to industrialize natural resources and implement competitive advantages, which has allowed the country to attain the maximum market share in terms of production. Further, Malaysia has developed a manufacturing sector which can leverage its natural resources to form a competitive advantage. Major manufacturers of industrial glove such as Kossan Rubber Industries, Hartalega Sdn Bhd. and Top Glove Co. are based in Malaysia. There are more than 100 glove factories in the country, out of which 60 are located in Selangor. Other key provinces such as Perak, Negri Sembilan, Penang and Johor, hosts a number of manufacturing units for industrial gloves.Further, the rubber industry in Malaysia is a major industry among the twelve national key economic area sectors. Since the country is the major producer of latex/rubber gloves, the government also offers special benefits such tax breaks and lowered gas prices. Reduced gas prices are imperative since the cost of gas accounts for roughly 15% of the manufacturing cost of rubber gloves.Asia Pacific Industrial Gloves Market: Segmentation by ProductThe market has been classified on the basis of product into re-usable gloves and disposable gloves where the latter dominated the market both in terms of revenue and volume. Disposable gloves find major application in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, healthcare and food industry. Increasing incidences of pandemic diseases such as swine flu (H1N1) is one of the major factors fuelling the demand for disposable gloves across the globe. Further, the need for prevention of fatal infections/ control aids is another major factor driving the growth of disposable gloves market. Disposable gloves are imperative in medical environments, especially in the operating room. Several pairs of surgical gloves are used in a single surgical case and owing to the rising number of surgeries across the globe, the disposable gloves market is expected to witness a rapid growth in during the forecast period.Re-usable gloves are primarily used in industries such as construction, transportation, manufacturing, oil and gas and several others. The usage of industrial gloves as a personal protective equipment is relatively low as compared to the other PPE products. Moreover, re-usable gloves find minimal application in the application segment of industrial segment. Re-usable gloves are more durable than its counterpart as they are designed for heavy usage to prevent accidents such as cuts, electrocution and several other injuries.Asia Pacific Industrial Gloves Market: Other Key SegmentsOn the basis of material, the market has been classified into rubber/latex, nitrile, vinyl, neoprene, polyethylene and others. The others segment are inclusive of cotton, aluminum, leather, butyl and various others. Rubber and nitrile dominated the market both in terms of revenue and volume in 2016 and is expected to maintain a similar trend throughout the forecast period.On the basis of application, the market has been classified into pharmaceuticals, healthcare, food, chemicals, manufacturing and others. Further, on the basis of country, the market has been segmented on the basis of county into India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Rest of Asia Pacific. Malaysia and Thailand accounted for the major market share in 2016 and both countries are expected to retain their positions throughout the forecast period.Browse Full Report With TOC:Companies Mentioned in ReportSome of the key players operating in this industry include Top Glove Corporation Sdn Bhd, Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd., Hartalega Sdn Bhd, Supermax Corporation Bhd and 3M Company.The report segments the industrial gloves market as:Asia Pacific Industrial Gloves Market, by Product: Disposable Gloves Re-Usable GlovesAsia Pacific Industrial Gloves Market, by Material: Rubber/Latex Nitrile Vinyl Neoprene Polyethylene OthersAsia Pacific Industrial Gloves Market, by Application: Pharmaceuticals Food Healthcare Chemicals Manufacturing OthersAsia Pacific Industrial Gloves Market, by Country: India China Japan Malaysia Thailand Indonesia Rest of Asia PacificAbout UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comFollow Us on LinkedIn-Follow Us On Twitter- Smart Water Management Market | Industry Outlook Research Report 2016-2023 By DecisionDatabases http://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/download-sample-17068 http://www.decisiondatabases.com/ip/17068-smart-water-management-market-report www.decisiondatabases.com DecisionDatabases.com offers Smart Water Management Market Research Report. This Report covers the complete Industry Outlook, Growth, Size, Share and Forecast Till 2023. The report on global smart water management market evaluates the growth trends of the industry through historical study and estimates future prospects based on comprehensive research. The report extensively provides the market share, growth, trends and forecasts for the period 2016-2023. The market size in terms of volume (Units) and revenue (USD MN) is calculated for the study period along with the details of the factors affecting the market growth (drivers and restraints).The major market drivers are Advancement in technology and Increasing awareness of sustainable use of energy resources. The market growth might be restricted due High initial investment under the study period.Get FREE Sample Report Copy With FULL Segmentations and TOC @Furthermore, the report quantifies the market share held by the major players of the industry and provides an in-depth view of the competitive landscape. This market is classified into different segments with detailed analysis of each with respect to geography for the study period 2016-2023.The report also covers the complete competitive landscape of the worldwide market with company profiles of key players such as ABB Group, Avea Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S., General Electric Company, Honeywell International Inc., International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, Schnidler Electric SE, Takadu, Topcon Corporation and Trimble Inc. In terms of geography, the smart water management market has been segmented into regions such as North America (NA), Europe (EU), Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America (LA) & Middle East & Africa (MEA). The study provides a detailed view of country-level aspects of the market on the basis of application segments and estimates the market in terms of revenue and volume during the forecast period.The comprehensive value chain analysis of the market will assist in attaining better product differentiation, along with detailed understanding of the core competency of each activity involved. The market attractiveness analysis provided in the report aptly measures the potential value of the market providing business strategists with the latest growth opportunities. The report classifies the market into different segments based on meter type, solution and service. These segments are studied in detail incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country level. The segment analysis is useful in understanding the growth areas and probable opportunities of the market.Access full report at:About Us:DecisionDatabases.com is a global business research reports provider, enriching decision makers and strategists with qualitative statistics. DecisionDatabases.com is proficient in providing syndicated research report, customized research reports, company profiles and industry databases across multiple domains.Our expert research analysts have been trained to map clients research requirements to the correct research resource leading to a distinctive edge over its competitors. We provide intellectual, precise and meaningful data at a lightning speed.3rd Floor,Fountain chambers,Nanabhai Lane,Fort, Mumbai - 1E-Mail: sales@decisiondatabases.comPhone: +91 99 28 237112Web: Wi-Fi Test Equipment Market | Outlook Research Report 2016-2023 By DecisionDatabases http://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/download-sample-17069 http://www.decisiondatabases.com/ip/17069-wi-fi-test-equipment-market-report www.decisiondatabases.com The new research report on Wi-Fi Test Equipment Market offered by DecisionDatabases.com provides Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast Till 2023. The report on global Wi-Fi test equipment market evaluates the growth trends of the industry through historical study and estimates future prospects based on comprehensive research. The report extensively provides the market share, growth, trends and forecasts for the period 2016-2023. The market size in terms of revenue (USD MN) is calculated for the study period along with the details of the factors affecting the market growth (drivers and restraints).The Wide adoption of smart devices and Increasing need for mobile data offloading are the major factors pushing the market uphill. But Lack in fixed protocols to maintain compliance with the new standards in the Wi-Fi industry might restraint the growth in the coming years.Get FREE Sample Report Copy With FULL Segmentations and TOC @Furthermore, the report quantifies the market share held by the major players of the industry and provides an in-depth view of the competitive landscape. This market is classified into different segments with detailed analysis of each with respect to geography for the study period 2016-2023.The report also covers the complete competitive landscape of the worldwide market with company profiles of key players such as Cobham PLC, Danaher Corporation, Ixia, NetScout Systems, Inc., Spirent Communications and others. In terms of geography, the Wi-Fi test equipment market has been segmented into regions such as North America (NA), Europe (EU), Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America (LA) & Middle East & Africa (MEA). The study provides a detailed view of country-level aspects of the market on the basis of application segments and estimates the market in terms of revenue and volume during the forecast period.The comprehensive value chain analysis of the market will assist in attaining better product differentiation, along with detailed understanding of the core competency of each activity involved. The market attractiveness analysis provided in the report aptly measures the potential value of the market providing business strategists with the latest growth opportunities. The report classifies the market into different segments based on application and end-user. These segments are studied in detail incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country level. The segment analysis is useful in understanding the growth areas and probable opportunities of the market.A detailed description of each has been included, with information in terms of H.Q, future capacities, key mergers & acquisitions, financial overview, partnerships, collaborations, new product launches, new product developments and other latest industrial developments.Access full report at:About Us:DecisionDatabases.com is a global business research reports provider, enriching decision makers and strategists with qualitative statistics. DecisionDatabases.com is proficient in providing syndicated research report, customized research reports, company profiles and industry databases across multiple domains.Our expert research analysts have been trained to map clients research requirements to the correct research resource leading to a distinctive edge over its competitors. We provide intellectual, precise and meaningful data at a lightning speed.3rd Floor,Fountain chambers,Nanabhai Lane,Fort, Mumbai - 1E-Mail: sales@decisiondatabases.comPhone: +91 99 28 237112Web: Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth and Forecast Report 2016 to 2022 Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Market http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/request-sample/282814 http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/report/global-automotive-fuel-pump-control-ecu-market-research-report-2017 http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/check-discount/282814 http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/send-an-enquiry/282814 In this report, the Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Scope of the Report:Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesEUChinaJapanSouth KoreaIndiaGet Free Sample Copy @Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingBoschContinentalDensoDelphiTRWHyundaiMagneti MarelliMitsubishi ElectricBrowse full Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into16 bit ECU32 bit ECUOther TypesOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU for each application, includingPassenger VehicleCommercial VehicleCheck For Discount @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Some points from TOC:-Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Market Research Report 20171 Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU1.2 Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 16 bit ECU1.2.4 32 bit ECU1.2.5 Other Types1.3 Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Segment by Application1.3.1 Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Passenger Vehicle1.3.3 Commercial Vehicle1.4 Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 EU Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Automotive Fuel Pump Control ECU Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Enquiry Before Buying @About Market Research Globe:Market 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.We provide qualitative analysis of the current market scenario, latest market trends, price and cost changes, product growth rate and market share of the competitors through our exclusive syndicated research. Our comprehensive syndicated reports penetrate deep into micro levels of each target segment of the referred industry. We begin our journey into market research for every project through extensive primary data driven researches, from key suppliers in the industry.Liberty Society,Koregaon Park, Pune- 411001,Maharashtra, India. The Future of the Czech Republic Defense Market to Reach to US$2.15 billion in 2017 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1068012 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/1068012 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Future of the Czech Republic Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape, and Forecasts to 2022 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"SummaryThe Future of the Czech Republic Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2022, published by Strategic Defence Intelligence, provides readers with detailed analysis of both historic and forecast defense industry values, factors influencing demand, the challenges faced by industry participants, analysis of industry leading companies, and key news.SynopsisThis report offers detailed analysis of the Czech Republic defense industry with market size forecasts covering the next five years. This report will also analyze factors that influence demand for the industry, key market trends, and challenges faced by industry participants.In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following -- The Czech Republic defense industry market size and drivers: detailed analysis of the Czech Republic defense industry during 2018-2022, including highlights of the demand drivers and growth stimulators for the industry. It also provides a snapshot of the countrys expenditure and modernization patterns- Budget allocation and key challenges: insights into procurement schedules formulated within the country and a breakdown of the defense budget. It also details the key challenges faced by defense market participants within the country- Porters Five Force analysis of the Czech Republic defense industry: analysis of the market characteristics by determining the bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitution, intensity of rivalry, and barriers to entry- Import and Export Dynamics: analysis of prevalent trends in the countrys imports and exports over the last five years- Market opportunities: details of the top five defense investment opportunities over the next 10 years- Competitive landscape and strategic insights: analysis of the competitive landscape of the Czech Republic defense industry. It provides an overview of key players, together with insights such as key alliances, strategic initiatives, and a brief financial analysisGet Sample Copy Of This Report @Scope- The Czech Republics defense budget values US$2.15 billion in 2017, and registered a CAGR of 0.76% during the historic period. The urgent need to modernize the countrys defense arsenal, especially in the wake of the current European migration crisis and Russia military aggression in Ukraine has woken the concerned authorities to the possibility of an armed conflict in Europe. Coupled with the countrys participation in peacekeeping operations and counter terrorism, this has driven the Czech Republic defense expenditure during the historic period.- The capital expenditure allocation, which declined at an average of -5.2% during the historic period, is expected to increase significantly by an average of 12.4% during the forecast period. Key opportunities for equipment suppliers are expected in sectors such as military radar, transport aircraft, infantry vehicles, and military helicopters.- The MoD expected to invets in ammunition, weaponry, and equipment including new types of armament, new multi-role helicopters, infantry fighting vehicles, and air defense systemsView Report @Reasons to buy- This report will give the user confidence to make the correct business decisions based on a detailed analysis of the Czech Republic defense industry market trends for the coming five years- The market opportunity section will inform the user about the various military requirements that are expected to generate revenues during the forecast period. The description includes technical specifications, recent orders, and the expected investment pattern by the country during the forecast period- Detailed profiles of the top domestic and foreign defense manufacturers with information about their products, alliances, recent contract wins, and financial analysis wherever available. This will provide the user with a total competitive landscape of the sector- A deep qualitative analysis of the Czech Republic defense industry covering sections including demand drivers, Porters Five Forces Analysis, Key Trends and Growth Stimulators, and latest industry contractsAbout 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 Digital Printing Packaging Worth at USD 11.10 Billion - Xerox Corporation, W S Packaging, Hewlett-Packard Inc. and E.I. du Pont de Nemours https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2782 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/digital-printing-packaging-market-2782 Digital Printing Packaging Market, valued at USD 11.10 billion in 2015 is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.5% during the forecast period.Market HighlightsPackaging industry will undergo a revolution due to the increasing applications of digital printing. Digital printing for packaging is a concept specifically introduced to attract consumers. This method includes printing of digital images or text on the product package. The increasing demand for flexible packaging coupled with growing demand for sustainable printing has been driving the global digital printing packaging market. Digitally printed packages improve workflow and enable innovative marketing. They help the brand owner for quicker marketing and promotion of the brand. These are the main factors fueling the market growth.Request for Sample Report@Asia-Pacific Is the Largest Growing MarketOn the basis of region, global digital printing packaging market is segmented as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and RoW. Asia-Pacific region dominates the digital printing packaging market. Rapid growth in e-retail sector is the primary driving factor of digital printing packaging market in Asia-Pacific region. Additionally, the rising consumer awareness and increase the demand of packaged food are also fueling the demand of this market. This region is expected to grow at the fastest pace during the forecast period.Europe is also expected to contribute significantly to the global digital printing packaging market mainly due to major demand from food & beverage industry. North America region and Rest of the World are expected to witness steady growth over the forecast period.Key Players W S Packaging Group, Inc (U.S.) Weber Packaging Solutions Inc. (U.S.) Xerox Corporation (U.S.) Xeikon N.V. (Netherlands) Hewlett-Packard Inc. (U.S.) Mondi Group (South Africa) E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (U.S.) Quad Graphics, Inc. (U.S.) Labels in Motion (U.S.) Reel Appeal Limited(U.K.)Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 85 market data tables and figures spread in 140 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Global Digital Printing Packaging Market Information from 2016 to 2023"Browse Full Digital-Printing Packaging Market Report @Scope of the ReportThis study provides an overview of the global digital printing packaging market, tracking four 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, and Rest of the World. 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 digital printing packaging market as packaging type, technology, application and end user.By Packaging Type Labels Flexible Packaging OtherBy Technology Inkjet Electrophotography OthersBy Application Boxes Bottles Cans OthersBy End-User Food & Beverages Personal care Pharmaceuticals Electronics Goods OthersMarket Research AnalysisOn the basis of end user, global digital printing packaging market is segmented as food & beverages, personal care, pharmaceuticals, electronics goods and others. Out of them, the food & beverages sector dominate the end user segment of global digital printing packaging market. It accounts for the largest share mainly due to the growing demand for packaged food from developing as well as developed country. Additionally, the rising health consciousness among consumers also drives the growth of this market.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 Cypress Oil Market 08 Company Profiles and Competitive Landscape Analysis Report Deep Research Reports http://www.deepresearchreports.com/contacts/inquiry.php?name=476326 http://www.deepresearchreports.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=476326 Deepresearchreports.com adds Global Cypress Oil Market Research Report 2017 new report to its research database. The report spread across 107 pages with table and figures in it.Global Cypress Oil Market Report is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions of the Cypress Oil industry, focusing on the main regions and the main countries (United States, Europe, Japan and China).The report introduces Cypress Oil basic information, including definition, classification, application, industry chain structure, industry overview, policy analysis, and news analysis, etc. Insightful predictions for the Cypress Oil market for the coming few years have also been included in the report. These predictions feature important inputs from leading industry experts and take into account every statistical detail regarding the Cypress Oil market.#Key Manufacturers profiled in this research are Kanta Group, Paras Perfumers, Mother Herbs, Kanta Enterprises Private Limited, Ungerer & Company, Herbal Bio Solutions, NOW and The Essential Oil Company no less than 08 top producers.Complete report on the Cypress Oil Market Research Report spread across 107 pages, profiling 08 companies and supported with 125 tables and figures is now available at @Develop policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export, consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins. The report focuses on global major leading Cypress Oil Industry players, providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information.Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Cypress Oil in these regions, from 2011 to 2022 (forecast), like North America, Europe, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.Global Cypress Oil Industry 2017 is a comprehensive, professional report delivering market research data that are relevant for new market entrants or established players. Key strategies of the companies operating in the market and their impact analysis have been included in the report.Furthermore, a business overview, revenue share, and SWOT analysis of the leading players in the Cypress Oil market is available in the report.With the list of tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Major Points from Table of Contents1 Global Cypress OilMarket Research Report 20172 Global Cypress OilMarket Competition by Manufacturers3 Global Cypress OilCapacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2011-2017)4 Global Cypress OilSupply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2017)5 Global Cypress OilProduction, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type6 Global Cypress OilMarket Analysis by Application7 Global Cypress OilManufacturers Profiles/Analysis8 Cypress OilManufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global Cypress OilMarket Forecast (2017-2022)13 Research Findings and Conclusion14 AppendixDisclosure SectionResearch MethodologyData SourceChina DisclaimerSome of the tables and figures provided in Global Cypress Oil Market ReportBuy a copy of this report @2017 research report include:Table Global Capacity (Unit) of Cypress Oil by Types 2011-2017Figure Global Capacity Market Share of Cypress Oil by Types in 2011Figure Global Capacity Market Share of Cypress Oil by Types in 2015Table Global Production (Unit) of Cypress Oil by Types 2011-2017Figure Global Production Market Share of Cypress Oil by Types in 2011Figure Global Production Market Share of Cypress Oil by Types in 2015Table Global Revenue (M USD) of Cypress Oil by Types 2011-2017Figure Global Revenue Market Share of Cypress Oil by Types in 2011Figure Global Revenue Market Share of Cypress Oil by Types in 2015Table Global and Major Manufacturers Capacity (Unit) of Cypress Oil 2011-2017Table Global Capacity Market Share of Cypress Oil Major Manufacturers 2011-2017Figure Global Capacity Market Share of Cypress Oil Major Manufacturers in 2011Figure Global Capacity Market Share of Cypress Oil Major Manufacturers in 2015Table Global and Major Manufacturers Production (Unit) of Cypress Oil 2011-2017Table Global Production Market Share of Cypress Oil Major Manufacturers 2011-2017Figure Global Production Market Share of Cypress Oil Major Manufacturers in 2011Figure Global Production Market Share of Cypress Oil Major Manufacturers in 2015Table Global and Major Manufacturers Revenue (M USD) of Cypress Oil 2011-2017Connect us @ sales@deepresearchreports.com with subject line 2017 Market Research Report on Global Cypress Oil Industry and your contact details to purchase this report or get your questions answered. OR Call Us @ +1 888 391 5441.About UsDeep Research Reports is digital database of syndicated market reports for global and China industries. These reports offer competitive intelligence data for companies in varied market segments and for decision makers at multiple levels in these organizations. We provide 24/7 online and offline support to our customers.Contact:Ritesh TiwariUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, Hadapsar,Pune, Maharashtra 411013, IndiaTel: +1-888-391-5441sales@deepresearchreports.com Apps Associates to Exhibit and Present at Innovate17, Iselin, New Jersey Apps Associates will exhibit and present at Innovate17, on May 11th at the Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel in Iselin, NJ. Be sure to stop by and visit us at the Exhibitor Showcase and find out about our services and solutions to effectively leverage Oracle in the cloud. Apps Associates will co-present one session during the conference:Date: May 11, 2017Time: 7:30 AM - 4:30 PMVenue: Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel, 515 US Highway,1 South, Iselin, NJ 08830Session TitleCustomer Success Story: PBCS and BICS Real Time Integration for Management Analysis with Drill to DetailSpeakersJonathan Toland, BroadridgeMyles Gilsenan, Apps AssociatesErvin McFadden, Apps AssociatesTime1:50 PM - 2:40 PMINNOVATE17 is a joint Oracle User Group experience providing attendees:Educational content: Access to top-notch presentations and interactive sessionsCloud lab: See Cloud solution enhanced functionality and interact with Oracle expertsExhibitor Showcase: Meet providers of complementary services and solutionsApps Associates is a global IT and business services organization that provides solutions for Cloud, Analytics and Integration. Our mission is to partner with customers to enable business improvement by streamlining business processes using advanced technology. We innovate by constantly launching new services and solutions and we differentiate through our relentless attention to delivery excellence and customer care.AApps Associates is an Oracle Platinum Partner, a Premier Consulting Partner with Amazon Web Services, and a Salesforce Silver Consulting Partner. Apps Associates also partners with MuleSoftTM and TIBCO.Apps Associates LLC40 Nagog Park 105ActonMassachusetts MA01720 Acrylic Fiber Market Overview and Analysis about Manufacturing Cost Structure: Industry Forecast Report https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2125 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/acrylic-fiber-market Market Overview:Global Acrylic Fiber Market has been evaluated to be rapidly growing and is expected to grow tremendously. Utilization of acrylic fiber is increasing as it is mixed with various materials to provide enhanced quality to the final product. Along with supply of its substitute products like wool and cotton although in less quantity is affecting the global acrylic fiber market noticeably.These factors will increase the Global Acrylic Fiber Market over the forecasted period. However, the demand for acrylic fibers are facing sluggish demand for acrylic fiber in developed countries and are facing significant challenge in coping with the growth of the market as there is limited application of the Acrylic Fiber.The demand of acrylic staple fiber is declining consistently since 2003. In 2006 and 2007, its utilization declined approximately by 8.5%. In the following five years the demand for acrylic fiber was stagnant. Keeping in view the present economic situation, the utilization of acrylic staple fiber is expected to grow by 2.3 % which has started in 2016 and is expected to continue till 2022.Request a Sample Report @Key Players: Exlan Japan Co. Ltd., Kaneka Corporation, Indian Acrylics Limited, Jilin Chemical Fiber Group Company, Aditya Birla Group, Dralon, Aksa Akrilik Kimya Sanayii A.S. (Aksa), Taekwang Industrial co. Ltd., Pasupati Acrylon Ltd., Vardhman Acrylics Ltd.Segmentation: On the basis of form the market is classified namely into Staple and Filament. On the basis of blending the market is classified into Cotton, Wool, and others. On the basis of end-use the market is segmented into Wardrobe, Furnishing, Industrial and othersAccess the market data and market information presented through more than 25 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 140 numbers of pages of the project report Acrylic Fiber Market Forecast to 2022Study Objectives of Acrylic Fiber Market: Studying market overview of acrylic fiber Estimating the market size by form, by blending and by end-use To provide insights about market drivers, restrains and opportunities To provide geographic market analysis and future outlook with respect to North America, Europe, Asia, Middle East & Africa along with other parts of the world. To analyze the present status and future growth of global acrylic fiber market based on various factors- supply chain analysis, Porters Five Force analysis etc. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market and broadly analyzing their core competencies To evaluate competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments along with research and developments in the global acrylic fiber marketReasons to Buy This report includes an in-depth study analysis of acrylic fiber market It covers market segmentation by form, by blending and by end-use It helps in identifying region wise major suppliers and understanding the consumption pattern. The report will provide useful and premium insights that will support investments in acrylic fiber and allied companies by providing detail on the fast growing segments and regions. In addition, it will provide key findings that will help companies to improve profitability by using supply chain strategies and method of cost effectiveness related to various products mentioned in the report. The data used in the report is primarily based on primary interview with major producing companies and industry experts which are supported by authentic industry data from secondary sources.Access Report Details @List of TablesTable 1 World Population by Major Regions (2015 To 2030) (Million)Table 2 Global Acrylic fiber Market: By Region, 2014-2022 (USD Million)Table 3 North America Acrylic fibers Market: By Country, 2014-2022 (USD Million)Table 4 Europe Acrylic fiber Market: By Country, 2014-2022 (USD Million)Table 5 Asia-Pacific Acrylic fiber Market: By Country, 2014-2022 (USD Million)Continued.About Market Research FutureAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com The Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem Technology Market Size, Forecasts from 2016 through to 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/804872 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/804872 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.Get The Sample Copy Of This Report :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.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.View More :Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:Mobile phone insurance ecosystemMarket drivers and barriersInsurance policy structure, distribution channels and key trendsCase studies of mobile phone insurance initiativesIndustry roadmap and value chainProfiles and strategies of over 40 leading ecosystem playersStrategic recommendations for ecosystem playersMarket analysis and forecasts from 2016 till 2030Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for the following regional and country level submarkets:Regional SegmentationAsia PacificEuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaCountry Level SegmentationArgentina, 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 WirelessAIG (American International Group)Allianz InsuranceAllianz SE GroupAmerica MovilAmTrust International UnderwritersAonAppalachian WirelessAppleAssurantAsurionAT&TAT&T MobilityAvivaAXABarclaysBest BuyBouygues TelecomBrightstar CorporationBT GroupCellebriteChubbCWS (Connected World Services Distributions)Diamond WirelessDixons CarphoneDT (Deutsche Telekom)EEeSecuritelFonesureFortegraGeek SquadGoCareGroupamaHollard GroupHSBCInhance TechnologyiQmetrixLiberty Mutual Insurance GroupLifestyle Services GroupLookoutMarkerstudyMicrosoftMobi PCSMobile Rhino (Stuckey & Company)MTNNIA (New India Assurance)Nippon Life InsuranceNokiaNQ MobileNTT DoCoMoOptusOrangePier Insurance Managed ServicesProtectCELLSafewareSalt MobileSamsung ElectronicsSFRSingtel GroupSoftBank CorporationSo-SureSpark New ZealandSPBSprint CorporationSquareTradeSun CorporationSupercover InsuranceSwisscomTelefonica GroupTelefonica InsuranceTelstraT-Mobile USATokio MarineVerizon CommunicationsVerizon WirelessV-Key SolutionsVodacomVodafone GroupMarketResearchReports.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 Puerto Rico Telecom Industry: Gigabit Island Plan and LTE/LTE-A Expansion to Support Fixed Internet and Mobile Data Growth http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1068116 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1068116 http://www.researchmoz.us/puerto-rico-gigabit-island-plan-and-ltelte-a-expansion-to-support-fixed-internet-and-mobile-data-growth-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Albany, NY, May 10, 2017: "Puerto Rico: Gigabit Island Plan and LTE/LTE-A Expansion to Support Fixed Internet and Mobile Data Growth" a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Puerto Rico 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, Puerto Rico generated total telecom and pay-TV services revenue of $2.0bn (equivalent to 3.0% of nominal GDP), an increase of 0.2% since 2015, primarily due to growth in mobile data and fixed Internet. Puerto Rico is the ninth-largest market in the Latin American region, and the second largest within Central America and Caribbean, just behind Guatemala.Get a Sample Research PDF with TOC:The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following -- Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Puerto Rico compared with other countries in the region.- Economic, demographic and political context in Puerto Rico.- 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 Puerto Rico's telecommunications and pay-TV markets.Scope- GlobalData expects overall service revenue to grow at a CAGR of 0.9% during 2016-2021. Growth will be driven by the data segment, in particular mobile data revenue, as a result of increasing adoption of LTE/LTE-A services and availability of data-centric packages. The fixed/mobile revenue split will be dominated by the mobile segment through 2016-2021, driven by rising mobile broadband adoption.- Competition in the Puerto Rican telecom market has intensified in recent years in the wake of several mergers and acquisitions. Going forward, competition is set to intensify further with the recently announced merger of Sprints operations in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands with Open Mobile in February 2017. The merged entity is expected to be a strong contender in the mobile market with enhanced network capacity and spectrum assets.- The broadband penetration in Puerto Rico is one of the highest in the region, just behind Uruguay and Argentina, owing to the islands high degree of urbanization as well as strong concentration of its population. The rise in investment by operators and the government to develop fixed infrastructure under the Gigabit Island Plan will support broadband growth in Puerto Rico.Enquiry at:Reasons to buy- This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Puerto Rico's telecommunications and pay-TV markets, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies.- Accompanying GlobalDatas Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in Puerto Rico's mobile communications, fixed telephony/VoIP, broadband and pay-TV markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares.- With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality.- The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Puerto Rico's telecommunications and pay-TV markets.- The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in Puerto Rico.Browse more details at: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: The SDN, NFV & Network Virtualization Ecosystem Technology, Evolution, Advances 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/804852 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/804852 While the advantages of SDN (Software Defined Networking) and network virtualization are well known in the enterprise IT and data center world, both technologies also bring a host of benefits to the telecommunications service provider community. Not only can these technologies help address the explosive capacity demand of mobile traffic, but they can also reduce the CapEx and OpEx burden faced by service providers to handle this demand by diminishing reliance on expensive proprietary hardware platforms. The recognition of these benefits has led to the emergence of the NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) concept that seeks to virtualize and effectively consolidate many service provider network elements onto multi-tenant industry-standard servers, switches and storage.Mobile operators and internet service providers have already begun making SDN and NFV investments in a number of functional areas including but not limited to EPC/mobile core, IMS, policy control, CPE (Customer Premises Equipment), CDN (Content Delivery Network) and transport networks. SNS Research estimates that service provider SDN and NFV investments will grow at a CAGR of 46% between 2016 and 2020. As service providers seek to reduce costs and virtualize their networks, these investments will eventually account for over $18 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.Get The Sample Copy of This Report :The SDN, NFV & Network Virtualization Ecosystem: 2016 2030 Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the SDN, NFV and network virtualization ecosystem including enabling technologies, key trends, market drivers, challenges, use cases, deployment case studies, regulatory landscape, standardization, opportunities, future roadmap, value chain, ecosystem player profiles and strategies. The report also presents market size forecasts from 2016 till 2030. The forecasts are segmented for 10 submarkets, 2 user base categories, 9 use cases, 6 regions and 34 countries.Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:SNS Research estimates that service provider SDN and NFV investments will grow at a CAGR of 46% between 2016 and 2020, eventually accounting for over $18 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.At present, virtualized CPE, EPC/mobile core, IMS and policy control platforms represent nearly 70% of all VNF (Virtual Network Function) software investments.SNS Research estimates that by 2020, nearly 80% of all new EPC investments will be virtualized.Although the use of SDN is widespread in the enterprise and data center domain, service providers are only beginning to adopt the technology to programmatically manage their networks.Investments on orchestration platforms will account for over $1.6 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020, representing nearly 10% of all service provider SDN and NFV spending.The growing adoption of SDN and NFV has created a natural opportunity for silicon and server OEMs to combine their server platforms with a networking business stream.View Full Report :Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:SDN, NFV and network virtualization ecosystemMarket drivers and barriersEnabling technologies, protocols, architecture and key trendsUse cases, applications, PoC (Proof of Concept) and deployment case studiesCapEx saving potential of SDN and NFVOrchestration and management platformsRegulatory landscape and standardizationIndustry roadmap and value chainProfiles and strategies of over 240 leading ecosystem playersStrategic recommendations for ecosystem playersMarket analysis and forecasts from 2015 till 2030Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets, user base and use case categories:SubmarketsSDN Hardware & SoftwareNFV Hardware & SoftwareOther Network Virtualization SoftwareUser Base CategoriesService ProvidersEnterprises & Data CentersNFV SubmarketsHardware AppliancesOrchestration & Management SoftwareVNF SoftwareService Provider SDN SubmarketsSDN-Enabled Hardware AppliancesOrchestration & Management SoftwareSDN Controller SoftwareNetwork Applications SoftwareEnterprise & Data Center SDN SubmarketsSDN-Enabled Hardware AppliancesSDN-Enabled Virtual SwitchesSDN Controller SoftwareService Provider Use Case CategoriesCDNCPEData CenterEPC/Mobile CoreFixed Access NetworksIMS & VoLTEPolicy, OSS & BSSRAN (Radio Access Network)Transport & BackhaulRegional MarketsAsia PacificEastern EuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaWestern EuropeCountry MarketsArgentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UAE, UK and USAAdditional forecasts are provided for:SDN and NFV Induced Service Provider CapEx Savings by RegionKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:How big is the SDN, NFV and network virtualization 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, submarkets and countries will see the highest percentage of growth?How are service provider led initiatives driving SDN and NFV investments?How does regulation impact the adoption of SDN and NFV centric networks?How can NFV make the VoLTE (Voice over LTE) business case work?How can software defined DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) complement SDN functionality?What level of CapEx savings can SDN and NFV facilitate for service providers?Do SDN and NFV pose a threat to traditional network infrastructure vendors?Who are the key market players and what are their strategies?Is there a ring leader in the SDN and NFV ecosystem?What strategies should enabling technology providers, network infrastructure vendors, mobile operators and other ecosystem players adopt to remain competitive?List of Companies Mentioned:The following companies and organizations have been reviewed, discussed or mentioned in the report:3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project)6WINDA10 NetworksAccedian NetworksACCESS CO.Accton Technology CorporationActive Broadband NetworksActus NetworksADARA NetworksAdaxADLINK TechnologyADTRANADVA Optical NetworkingAffirmed NetworksAgema SystemsAirbus Defence and SpaceAkamai TechnologiesALAXALA Networks CorporationAlbis TechnologiesAlcatel-LucentAllied TelesisAllot CommunicationsAlpha NetworksALTEN Calsoft LabsALTEN GroupAltiostar NetworksAlvarion TechnologiesAmartusAMD (Advanced Micro Devices)AmdocsANEVIAArgelaAricentArista NetworksArkoon NetasqARM HoldingsARRIS GroupArtesyn Embedded TechnologiesASOCSAstelliaAT&TAudioCodesAvayaAWS (Amazon Web Services)BaiduBanco SantanderBarracuda NetworksBig Switch NetworksBlueCoatBrain4NetBroadcomBroadpeakBroadSoftBrocadeBT GroupBTI SystemsCanoga PerkinsCanonicalCatbird NetworksCaviumCedexisCellwizeCentec NetworksCeragon NetworksCertes NetworksCheck Point Software TechnologiesChina MobileCiena CorporationCIMI CorporationCisco SystemsCitigroupCitrix SystemsClavisterClearPath NetworksCloudscalingCloudWeaverCobham WirelessCohesive NetworksColt Technology Services GroupComodo Security SolutionsCompass-EOSComptelConcurrentConnectemConteXtreamCoriantCorsa TechnologyCSC (Computer Sciences Corporation)Cumulus NetworksCyanDellDialogicDorado SoftwareDT (Deutsche Telekom)ECI TelecomEdgewareEkinopsElemental TechnologiesEmbraneEMC CorporationEnterasys NetworksEnterpriseWebEquinixEricssonEtisalatETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute)EXFOExtreme NetworksEZchip SemiconductorF5 NetworksFibroLANFidelity InvestmentsFlash NetworksFlextronics InternationalFortinetFRAFOSFreescale SemiconductorFujitsuGENBANDGencore SystemsGigamonGigaSpaces TechnologiesGoogleGrupo SantanderGuavusH3C TechnologiesHarmonicHitachiHP (Hewlett-Packard)Hrvatski TelekomHuaweiHyTrustIBMIETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)IIJ (Internet Initiative Japan)IllumioImagine Communications CorporationInfineraInfobloxInocybe TechnologiesIntel CorporationInterface Masters TechnologiesIntracom TelecomIntune NetworksIP InfusionIPgalleryiPhotonixIPITEKIRTF (Internet Research Task Force)ItaltelITU (International Telecommunications Union)iwNetworksIxiaJuniperKanazawa University HospitalKDDI CorporationKEMP TechnologiesKT CorporationLemko CorporationLenovoLG UplusLineRate SystemsLinux FoundationLumeta CorporationLuxoft HoldingMaipu Communication TechnologyMarvell Technology GroupMatrixStream TechnologiesMavenir SystemsMediaTekMEF (Metro Ethernet Forum)Mellanox TechnologiesMetaswitch NetworksMicrosoftMidokuraMirantisMitel Networks CorporationMobily Saudi ArabiaMojatatu NetworksMRV CommunicationsNAKA MobileNakina SystemsNapatechNCLC (NCL Communication)NEC CorporationNetCracker TechnologyNETGEARNetronomeNetroundsNetScout SystemsNetYCENFVWareNippon ExpressNokia NetworksNominumNoviFlowNTT CommunicationsNTT DoCoMoNuage NetworksNXP SemiconductorsOi BrazilOMG (Object Management Group)Omnitron SystemsON.Lab (Open Networking Lab)ONF (Open Networking Foundation)ONRC (Open Networking Research Center)OpenDaylight FoundationOpenetOpenStack FoundationOpenwave MobilityOpera SoftwareOPNFV (Open Platform for NFV)OptelianOracle CorporationOrchestral networksOVA (Open Virtualization Alliance)Overture NetworksOX (Open-Xchange)Ozono SecurityPacket Ship TechnologiesPaddy Power BetfairPadtecPalo Alto NetworksPanda SecurityPantheon TechnologiesParallel WirelessPeerAppPenguinPertinoPica8Piston Cloud ComputingPlexxiPLUMgridPluribus NetworksPolatisPowerDNSProcera NetworksProdubanPT (Portugal Telecom)QCT (Quanta Cloud Technology)QosmosQualcommQuanta ComputerQuortusRackspaceRAD Data CommunicationsRadisys CorporationRadwareRapid7Realtek Semiconductor CorporationRed HatRedkneeRightScaleRiverbed TechnologyRuckus WirelessSaiseiSamsung ElectronicsSandvineSansaySencoreServiceMeshSevOneShutterflySilver Peak SystemsSingTelSK TelecomSoftBankSonicWALLSonus NetworksSophosSorrento NetworksSpiderCloud WirelessSpirent CommunicationsSprint CorporationStackIQSunTec Business SolutionsSupermicro (Super Micro Computer)Svarog Technology GroupSymantec CorporationSysMasterTail-f SystemsTango TelecomTE ConnectivityTE SubComTejas NetworksTelchemyTelco SystemsTelcowareTelefonicaTelekom Austria GroupTelstraTelumThomson Video NetworksTI (Texas Instruments)TietoTilera CorporationTitanHQTM ForumTransmodeTrend MicroTreq LabsTurk TelekomU2 CloudUBIqubeUBM TechUltra Electronics AEPUTStarcomvArmourVello SystemsVerizonVersa NetworksVeryx TechnologiesViavi SolutionsVipnetVMwareVodafone GroupWatchGuard TechnologiesWavenetWebNMSWedge NetworksWind RiverWiproWowza Media SystemsXilinxXOR MediaXtera CommunicationsXuraZhone TechnologiesZoho CorporationZTEMarketResearchReports.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 The Public Safety LTE & Mobile Broadband Market Size, Advances, 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 More :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 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 Zonal Isolation Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=229628 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=229628 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Zonal Isolation Market, by Technology (Mechanical and Chemical Zonal Isolation) and Application (Onshore and Offshore Zonal Isolation) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.This research study analyzes the market for zonal isolation in terms of revenue (US$ Mn). The zonal isolation market has been segmented on the basis of technology, application, and geography. The geographical segmentation includes regions which are further divided into twelve countries (major markets for zonal isolation). For the research, 2014 has been taken as the base year, while all forecasts have been given for the period from 2016 to 2024.Market data for all the segments has been provided at the regional as well as country-specific level from 2016 to 2024. The report provides a broad competitive analysis of companies engaged in the zonal isolation business. The report also includes the key market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities affecting the global zonal isolation market. These market dynamics were analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report with the help of supporting graphs and tables. The report also provides a comprehensive analysis of the global zonal isolation market with the help of Porters Five Forces model. This analysis helps in understanding the five major forces that affect the structure and profitability of the global zonal isolation market. The forces analyzed are bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and degree of competition. The report also provides the pricing trend and product differentiation for different zonal isolation technologies.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The high-level analysis in the report provides detailed insights into the zonal isolation business globally. There are currently numerous drivers of the market. The most prominent drivers include increasing exploration of unconventional resources and rapidly increasing offshore exploration and production activities. Market attractiveness analysis was carried out for the zonal isolation market on the basis of end-use. Market attractiveness was estimated on the basis of common parameters that directly impact the market in different regions.The zonal isolation market was segmented on the basis of technology (mechanical and chemical zonal isolation), application (onshore and offshore zonal isolation), and geography. The zonal isolation market was analyzed across five geographies: North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Rest of the World. Regional data has been provided for each sub-segment of the zonal isolation market. Key players in the zonal isolation market include Schlumberger Limited, Superior Energy Services, Inc., Weatherford International, Baker Hughes, Inc., Halliburton Company, Nabors Industries Ltd., Trican Well Service Ltd., Expro International Group Holdings Ltd., Aker Solutions ASA, and Tendeka.Zonal Isolation Market: By Technology- Mechanical Zonal Isolation- Sliding Sleeves- Packers- Perforated/Slotted Liners- Plugs- Chemical Zonal Isolation- Polymer Gels- Monomer Systems- Bio Polymers- Elastomers- OthersZonal Isolation Market: By Application- Onshore Zonal Isolation- Offshore Zonal IsolationZonal Isolation Market: By Region- North America- U.S.- Canada- Mexico- Europe- U.K.- Norway- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific- China- India- Rest of Asia Pacific- Middle East- Saudi Arabia- Iran- Rest of Middle East- Rest of the WorldMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Researchmoz | Global FPSO Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2021 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=229626 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=229626 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "FPSO Market, By Type (Converted, New-build, and Redeployed), By Water Depth (Shallow water, Deepwater, and Ultra-deepwater) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2015 - 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.A floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel are a type of floating production system used for offshore production, storage and offloading of oil and gas. Generally, a FPSO vessel is a converted oil tanker, or a newly constructed FPSO unit. A FPSO is often similar in appearance to a ship, equipped with production and processing facilities onboard. Furthermore, FPSOs consist of offloading facilities for the purpose of transporting processed oil and gas to onshore receiving facilities through a shuttle tanker.FPSO market is expected to see a robust growth during the forecast period attributed to the rising investment in offshore oil and gas exploration, especially in deepwater (500 to 1,499 meters) and ultra-deepwater (1,500 meters and above). Depleting present oil and gas fields globally is leading to rising concern for exploration of new oil and gas reserves for the purpose of meeting future energy requirements. Due to this factor, the oil and gas exploration companies have pushed exploration of oil and gas, from onshore to offshore, which in turn is driving the FPSO market growth. Furthermore, requirement of high investment or capital expenditure and technical challenges involved in installation of fixed production platforms or infrastructures in remote locations is driving the FPSO market growth. Additionally, ability of FPSOs to sustain harsh working environment and capability of FPSO to be moored at different locations after depletion of existing operating oil field is further driving the demand for FPSOs from oil and gas producers across the globe.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @However, high capital expenditure requirement for construction or building of a new FPSO vessel is restraining the market growth. Moreover, volatile oil prices is affecting the flow of cash in the FPSO industry, limiting the market growth. Additionally, rising environmental concern related to the pollution caused by oil spills due to leakage and damage of a FPSO vessel is further restricting the growth of FPSO market during the forecast period. Moreover, legal complexities over proposed field and local content requirements is leading to delay in project execution and cost overruns, restraining the market growth.Key opportunity of the global FPSO market lies in conversion of oil tankers, refurbishment and upgrades of FPSOs. Presently, majority of the FPSO contracts between FPSO providers and oil companies are based on the lease and operate structure. To meet the complex requirement for building and construction of advanced FPSOs, opportunities lies in collaboration and partnership among various players present in different stages of the value chain of FPSO industry.This market research study analyzes the global FPSO market and provides estimates in terms of revenue (USD Billion) from 2015 to 2021. It recognizes the drivers, restraints and opportunities affecting the industry and analyzes their impact over the forecast period.By geography, market is segmented into Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. In addition, the report segments the market based on the type, which include converted, new-build and redeployed. It also segments the market on the basis of water depth as shallow water (up to 499 meters), deepwater (500 meters to 1,499 meters) and ultra-deepwater (1,500 meters and above). All these segments have also been estimated on the basis of geography.For better understanding of the global FPSO market, key trend analysis is also provided. Furthermore, the study comprises a market attractiveness analysis, where the types of FPSOs are benchmarked based on their market scope, growth rate and general attractiveness.The report provides company market share analysis of various industry participants. The key players have also been profiled on the basis of company overview, financial overview, business strategies, and the recent developments in the field of FPSO. Major market participants profiled in this report include MODEC, Inc. (Japan), SBM Offshore N.V. (Netherlands), BW Offshore (Norway), Bluewater Energy Services B.V.(Netherlands), Aker Solutions ASA (Norway), Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (South Korea), Bumi Armada Berhad (Malaysia), Yinson Holdings Berhad (Malaysia), Teekay Corporation (Bermuda) and Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd.Global FPSO Market: By Type- Converted- New-build- RedeployedGlobal FPSO Market: By Water Depth- Shallow water- Deepwater- Ultra-deepwaterGlobal FPSO Market: By Geography- Americas- U.S.- Canada- Mexico- Brazil- Europe- U.K.- Norway- Italy- Asia- India- China- Southeast Asia- Africa- West Africa- Rest of Africa- Oceania- Australia- New ZealandThe report provides a cross-sectional analysis of all the above segments with respect to the following regions:- Americas- Europe- Asia- Africa- OceaniaMake 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 Auto-Dimming Mirror Market Research Report 2017 Industry Growth with CAGR in Forecast - 2022 Auto-Dimming Mirror http://bit.ly/2q1AFdi http://bit.ly/2qqtAUZ The Auto-Dimming Mirror research report by QY Research represents an inclusive evaluation of the Global Auto-Dimming Mirror Market and comprises considerable insights, historical data, facts, and statistical and industry-validated data of the global market. Additionally, it consists of estimated data that is evaluated with the help of suitable set of methodologies and assumptions. The research report highlights informative data and in-depth analysis of Auto-Dimming Mirror market and its corresponding segments that are based on technology, geography, and applications.The examination on value chain of Auto-Dimming Mirror market is provided which covers the growth factors and restraints of the industry along with the key market competitors.To Request Sample Copy Of This Report:The report comprises precise information, comprehensive analysis in two waysqualitative and quantitativeindustry experts inputs, and information provided by industry analysts and industry participants involved in the entire value chain. The report highlights exhaustive study of major market and their present trends, along with corresponding market segments. The Auto-Dimming Mirror report also provides data regarding various market factors and their impact on the overall market and its segments.Global Research report analyzes the scope of Auto-Dimming Mirror industry including size, share, analysis, sales, supply, production, definition, specification, classification, demands, application, forecast trends, industry policy, and news. The report focuses on regional as well as global market, its key players, along with market segments including detailed study on various divisions and its applications. The report provides comprehensive information on each and every segment covered of the Auto-Dimming Mirror market.Furthermore, the report evaluated major market points such as production, revenue, capacity utilization rate, gross, price, capacity, gross margin, supply, cost, demand, export, consumption, import, growth rate, market share, and so on.Browse Complete Report At:The global Auto-Dimming Mirror market report is a helpful source which assists manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, customers, and individuals and investors who have interest in this market.Notes:Sales, means the sales volume of Auto-Dimming MirrorRevenue, means the sales value of Auto-Dimming MirrorThis report studies sales (consumption) of Auto-Dimming Mirror 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, coveringMagna International Inc.Samvardhana Motherson GroupGentex CorporationFicosa InternationalMurakami KaimeidoAbout Us:MRS Research Group is the worlds giant collection of the Market research Reports. Where we specialized in global publisher, tailor made reports and specialists consulting. Global Publisher provides in-depth analysis of global and Chinese market. Tailor-made reports represent methodologies deliverable to proper insight of the client. While, expertise research specialist helps to provide strategic solution in specialists consulting. It consists of head such as, latest report, category, niche market and news. Reports published on the million of category like chemical, machinery and equipment, consumer goods, manufacturing and construction etc. Latest national, international, business News published under news portal.3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,Tel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651 The 5G Wireless Ecosystem Advances, Evolution 2016 - 2030 - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/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.Get The Sample Copy of This Report :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.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 2030Forecast 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 Global Quantum Dot Display Market Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2017 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=946234 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=946234 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Quantum Dot Display Market Research Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies Quantum Dot Display in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringSamsungLGSharpCSOTAUOBOEMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Quantum Dot Display in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanKoreaTaiwanSplit by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoQuantum Dot Enhancement FilmQuantum Dot Light Emitting DiodesSplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Quantum Dot Display in each application, can be divided intoTVMonitorSmartphoneOthersTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of ContentsGlobal Quantum Dot Display Market Research Report 20171 Quantum Dot Display Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Quantum Dot Display1.2 Quantum Dot Display Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Quantum Dot Display by Type in 20151.2.2 Quantum Dot Enhancement Film1.2.3 Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diodes1.3 Quantum Dot Display Segment by Application1.3.1 Quantum Dot Display Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 TV1.3.3 Monitor1.3.4 Smartphone1.3.5 Others1.4 Quantum Dot Display Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Quantum Dot Display (2012-2022)2 Global Quantum Dot Display Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Quantum Dot Display Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Quantum Dot Display Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Quantum Dot Display Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Quantum Dot Display Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Quantum Dot Display Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Quantum Dot Display Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Quantum Dot Display Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Quantum Dot Display Production by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Quantum Dot Display Production Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Quantum Dot Display Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 North America Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 Europe Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 China Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Japan Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 Korea Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.10 Taiwan Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global Quantum Dot Display Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)4.1 Global Quantum Dot Display Consumption by Regions (2012-2017)4.2 North America Quantum Dot Display Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 Europe Quantum Dot Display Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Quantum Dot Display Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Quantum Dot Display Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 Korea Quantum Dot Display Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 Taiwan Quantum Dot Display Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Quantum Dot Display Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Quantum Dot Display Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Quantum Dot Display Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Quantum Dot Display Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Quantum Dot Display Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Quantum Dot Display Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Quantum Dot Display Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Quantum Dot Display Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesMake 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 Metal Gratings Market is Valued at USD xx Million in 2016 And is Expected to Reach USD xx Million by The End of 2022 Orbis Research http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/276840 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/discount/276840 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/2017-market-research-report-on-global-metal-gratings-industry In our aim to provide our erudite clients with the best research material with absolute in-depth information of the market, our new report on Global Metal Gratings Market is confident in meeting their needs and expectations. The 2017 market research report on Global Metal Gratings Market is an in-depth study and analysis of the market by our industry experts with unparalleled domain knowledge. The report will shed light on many critical points and trends of the industry which are useful for our esteemed clients. The report covers a vast expanse of information including an overview, comprehensive analysis, definitions and classifications, applications, and expert opinions, among others. With the extent of information filled in the report, the presentation and style of the Global Metal Gratings Market report is a noteworthy.Get the Request a sample of this report @The major players in global Metal Gratings market include Kadee, Harsco (IKG), Valmont, Ohio, AMICO, OAO, Grating Pacific, Russel Metals, Metals Depot, McNICHOLS CO, Lionweld Kennedy.The Global Metal Gratings Industry report provides key information about the industry, including invaluable facts and figures, expert opinions, and the latest developments across the globe. Not only does the report cover a holistic view of the industry from a global standpoint, but it also covers individual regions and their development. The Global Metal Gratings Industry report showcases the latest trends in the global and regional markets on all critical parameters which include technology, supplies, capacity, production, profit, price, and competition. The key players covered in the report provide a detailed analysis of the competition and their developments in the Global Metal Gratings Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Metal Gratings Market report.The report also focuses on the significance of industry chain analysis and all variables, both upstream and downstream. These include equipment and raw materials, client surveys, marketing channels, and industry trends and proposals. Other significant information covering consumption, key regions and distributors, and raw material suppliers are also a covered in this report.Get a DISCOUNT of this report @Finally, the Metal Gratings Market report ends with a detailed SWOT analysis of the market, investment feasibility and returns, and development trends and forecasts. As with every report on Orbis Research, the Metal Gratings Industry is the holy grail of information which serious knowledge seekers can benefit from. The report which is the result of ultimate dedication of pedigree professionals has a wealth of information which can benefit anyone, irrespective of their commercial or academic interest.Some Points from Tables of Content:Chapter One: Metal Gratings Market OverviewChapter Two: Global Metal Gratings Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter Three: Global Metal Gratings Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Four: Global Metal Gratings Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Five: Global Metal Gratings Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeBrowse the complete report @About Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Contact Us:Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019Email ID: sales@orbisresearch.com Global High Purity Aluminum Sales Market Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2017 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1055845 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1055845 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global High Purity Aluminum Sales Market Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the global High Purity Aluminum market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K MT), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of High Purity Aluminum for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal High Purity Aluminum market competition by top manufacturers/players, with High Purity Aluminum sales volume, Price (USD/MT), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingJoinworldHYDROSHOWA DENKOChinalco Baotou AluminumKyushu Mitsui AluminiumHuomei HongjunDongyang GuanglvRusalSumitomoNewchangjiang AluminumC-KOE MetalsNippon Light MetalColumbia Specialty MetalsOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K MT), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/MT), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoThree-layer Liquid Electrolytic type High Purity AluminumSegregation Method type High Purity AluminumOn 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 High Purity Aluminum for each application, includingElectronic IndustryChemical IndustryHigh Purity AlloyOtherTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of ContentsGlobal High Purity Aluminum Sales Market Report 20171 High Purity Aluminum Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of High Purity Aluminum1.2 Classification of High Purity Aluminum by Product Category1.2.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global High Purity Aluminum Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Three-layer Liquid Electrolytic type High Purity Aluminum1.2.4 Segregation Method type High Purity Aluminum1.3 Global High Purity Aluminum Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Electronic Industry1.3.3 Chemical Industry1.3.4 High Purity Alloy1.3.5 Other1.4 Global High Purity Aluminum Market by Region1.4.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States High Purity Aluminum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China High Purity Aluminum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Europe High Purity Aluminum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan High Purity Aluminum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia High Purity Aluminum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India High Purity Aluminum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of High Purity Aluminum (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Global High Purity Aluminum Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Global High Purity Aluminum (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global High Purity Aluminum (Volume and Value) by Region2.3.1 Global High Purity Aluminum Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4 Global High Purity Aluminum (Volume) by Application3 United States High Purity Aluminum (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States High Purity Aluminum Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States High Purity Aluminum Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States High Purity Aluminum Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Players3.3 United States High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Type3.4 United States High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Application4 China High Purity Aluminum (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China High Purity Aluminum Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 China High Purity Aluminum Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 China High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 China High Purity Aluminum Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 China High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Players4.3 China High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Type4.4 China High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Application5 Europe High Purity Aluminum (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe High Purity Aluminum Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Europe High Purity Aluminum Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Europe High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.3 Europe High Purity Aluminum Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)5.2 Europe High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Players5.3 Europe High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Type5.4 Europe High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Application6 Japan High Purity Aluminum (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Japan High Purity Aluminum Sales and Value (2012-2017)6.1.1 Japan High Purity Aluminum Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.2 Japan High Purity Aluminum Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.3 Japan High Purity Aluminum Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)6.2 Japan High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Players6.3 Japan High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume and Market Share by Type6.4 Japan High Purity Aluminum Sales Volume 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 @ Global Stationary Oxygen Concentrators Market Trend, Size, Shares, Growth, Strategy and Forecasts Research Report 2015 to 2021 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=285014 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=285014 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Stationary Oxygen Concentrators: Market Shares, Strategy, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2015 to 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.The 2015 study has 464 pages, 187 tables and figures. Worldwide markets are poised to achieve continuing growth as the aging population worldwide needs homecare oxygen treatment. Older people develop COPD and other respiratory conditions where oxygen is able to improve the quality of the life in a dramatic manner. Portable devices have become affordable and support a mobile lifestyle even while on oxygen.Stationary oxygen concentrators are needed for night use by patients on portable oxygen concentrators during the day. People on oxygen wish to continue usual activities, the portable devices are useful for that during the day. Distributors are concentrated on determining which stationary oxygen concentrator supports patient lifestyle.Major factors driving the market for stationary oxygen concentrators include its ability to provide oxygen under all circumstances. The worldwide aging population. An increase in the number of people with COPD and other respiratory diseases. Advantages of newer stationary oxygen concentrator devices are that they weigh less, are somewhat quieter than toe older units, and are easy to use. They are generally affordable but reimbursement drives markets.There has been a quantum improvement in the home based stationary oxygen concentrator technology. Less weight, more power are the characteristics of the new stationary units. The huge jump in technology is illustrated by the effectiveness of the devices in providing improved patient lifestyle.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Stationary concentrator systems are always used by a patient to supplement portable oxygen concentrators. Portable oxygen must be supplemented with standard large, bulky, and inefficient, heavy, and impractical stationary devices because the stationary devices provide a more stable source of oxygen during sleep.According to Susan Eustis, lead author of the team that wrote the study, This transformation from stationary to portable devices presents an opportunity for people who make oxygen equipment. Economies of scale and a new distribution modality leveraging homecare services are set to change the medical oxygen industry. Home delivery markets tend to be shrinking. Users of stationary oxygen systems generally still need a stationary unit for night, but service needed is limited.Home oxygen therapy (HOT), is administration at home of highly concentrated oxygen produced using a therapeutic oxygen concentrator as an ongoing therapy for patients with chronic respiratory ailments.Home oxygen therapy has spread rapidly since health insurance began covering these treatments in 1985. Stationary oxygen concentrator markets at $669.5 million market in 2014 are set to become a $2.0 billion market in 2021. Steady growth is anticipated because the portable units will still need a stationary unit for sleeping throughout the forecast period.The move from a primary delivery distribution sales model with a cost structure that accounts for truck rolls to a portable device market has brought havoc to the industry, permitting the evolution of a direct sales system. This has brought dramatic changes to the industry. For vendors that have relied on the distribution network and financing the distribution network, their hold on the market has shifted.Oxygen concentrator markets at $669.5 million in 2014 are anticipated to reach $2 billion dollars by 2021. Growth is a result of new competitors in the market, demand for the smaller lighter technology by patients, and the market need by for stationary devices at home even as portable devices provide greater mobility support for older people.WinterGreen Research is an independent research organization funded by the sale of market research studies all over the world and by the implementation of ROI models that are used to calculate the total cost of ownership of equipment, services, and software. The company has 35 distributors worldwide, including Global Information Info Shop, Market Research.com, Research and Markets, electronics.ca, Bloomberg, and Thompson Financial.WinterGreen Research is positioned to help customers facing challenges that define the modern enterprises. The increasingly global nature of science, technology and engineering is a reflection of the implementation of the globally integrated enterprise. Customers trust wintergreen research to work alongside them to ensure the success of the participation in a particular market segment.WinterGreen Research supports various market segment programs; provides trusted technical services to the marketing departments. It carries out accurate market share and forecast analysis services for a range of commercial and government customers globally. These are all vital market research support solutions requiring trust and integrity.Companies ProfiledMarket Leaders- Chart / Caire / SeQual- Philips Respironics- AirSep- InvacareMarket Participants- Air Liquide- Braun and Company- CareFusion / Intermed Equipment- Chart Industries- CAIRE / SeQual Technologies- Covidien- DeVilbiss Healthcare- Drager- Drive Medical- Fanem- Fisher & Paykel Healthcare- Gardner Denver / Thomas Compressors- GE Healthcare- Getinge Group AB / Maquet- Graham Field- Hamilton Medical- Heinen & Loewenstein GmbH & Co- Inogen- Inova Labs- Jiuxin Medical- Leistung Engineering- Longfian Scitech- Merits- Nidek Medical- O2 Concepts- OSI Systems- ResMed- Teijin- Drive- O2Concepts Oxlife- Smiths Group plc / Smiths Medical- Teleflex Incorporated / Teleflex Medical- Terumo- UltraNebs- VBox Trooper- Vitality Medical- VygonKey Topics- Oxygen Concentrator- Stationary Oxygen Concentrators- Medical Oxygen- Portable Oxygen Concentrators- Homecare- Home Oxygen- Home Medical Equipment- Oxygen Therapy- Managed Care- Non-Acute Health Care- Unified Supply Network- Continuous Pressure Oxygen- Portable Pulsed Oxygen- Patients on Oxygen- Home Oxygen Reimbursement- Homefill Oxygen Concentrator- Portable Oxygen Concentrators Market Share- Portable Oxygen ConcentratorsMake 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 @ South-East Asia Rheumatoid Arthritis Therapeutics Industry Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2022 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1068036 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1068036 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Rheumatoid Arthritis Therapeutics in South-East Asia Markets to 2022 - Novel JAK and IL-6 Receptor Inhibitors to Stimulate Moderate Growth Despite Launch of Biosimilars of Blockbuster Anti-TNFs" to its huge collection of research reports.Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic, progressive and currently incurable autoimmune disease that primarily affects the joints. It is characterized by synovial inflammation and gradual bone erosion over many years. Disease progression results in stiffness and pain, especially in the hands and feet, which hinders mobility. Without treatment, the disease leads to joint destruction and disability.The chronic nature of the disease, which requires ongoing treatment, and the relatively high annual cost of therapy (ACoT) have made RA treatment a highly lucrative market.The RA therapeutic market has become very competitive due to the high number of new drug approvals. Competition is fierce, particularly among TNF-? inhibitors, which dominate the treatment market for RA patients who are refractory to traditional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD). Despite this, 30% of RA patients fail to attain a clinical response when treated with TNF-? inhibitors. However, other targeted programs, as well as newly marketed small-molecule DMARDs such as the Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor Xeljanz (tofacitinib), have the potential to replace ineffective TNF-? inhibitors. Recently published study results of Xeljanz have shown a significant reduction in the risk of developing cardiac diseases such as heart attack and stroke in patients with RA.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Despite the superior efficacy of recently marketed therapies over traditional DMARD therapies, there is a need to improve safety in the therapeutic landscape. Elevated rates of infection are a frequent consequence of the immunosuppression involved in treatments, but this is required to suppress the autoimmune responses responsible for the symptoms of the condition. As a result, these biological therapies are not recommended to patients who are susceptible to infection.In addition, there is a need to create biologics with more convenient and less invasive drug-delivery methods, as all existing therapies are administered subcutaneously or intravenously. These routes of administration are frequently associated with pain, rash, and allergic reactions at the injection or infusion site, and in the case of infusion flu-like illness, fever, chills, nausea, and headache. Therefore convenient and safe administration without significant compromise of therapy efficacy remains an unmet need.Although the recently approved drug Xeljanz is an orally administered small-molecule drug, indicated as a second-line treatment for RA patients who have not shown an adequate response to methotrexate, and as a third-line therapy for patients who have not responded sufficiently to biologics, it carries a black-box warning in the US due to the safety issues of serious infections and malignancy.ScopeThe current South-East Asia RA market contains novel products, including Xeljanz, a JAK inhibitor; and Actemra (tocilizumab), an IL-6 receptor inhibitor.- What are the competitive advantages of the existing novel drugs?There are over 450 active pipeline molecules, and most of the late-stage investigational drug candidates feature improved dosing regimens and administration routes in comparison to currently marketed products and combination therapies.- Which classes of novel drugs are most prominent in the pipeline?- What is the potential for pipeline products to address unmet needs in the RA market?Analysis of clinical trials since 2006 identified that the failure rates of RA molecules were highest in Phase II, at 72.6%, with the overall attrition rate for RA standing at 94.6%.- How do failure rates vary by stage of development, molecule type, and molecular target?- How do other factors, such as average trial duration and trial size, influence the costs and risks associated with product development?Over the 2015-2022 forecast period, the South-East Asia RA therapeutics market is expected to increase in value at a CAGR of 4.7%, from $1.04 billion to over $1.4 billion.- Which markets make the most significant contribution to the current market size?- What are the epidemiology trends in these markets?- Will new market entrants lead to substantial changes in annual therapy costs?- How will different treatment usage patterns impact growth in the eight assessed South-East Asia markets?Rising RA prevalence population and the uptake of newer therapies will lead to significant market growth over the forecast period, despite the launch of biosimilars of blockbuster anti-TNFs.- Will the launch of biosimilars or emerging pipeline molecules threaten the commercial success of existing drugs?Reasons to buyThis report will enable you to -- Understand the clinical context of RA by considering epidemiology, symptoms, etiology and pathophysiology, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment guidelines and options.- Identify the therapeutic strategies, products, and companies that dominate the current marketed products landscape and recognize gaps and areas of unmet need.- Identify key pipeline trends in terms of molecule type, administration route, molecular target, and novelty.- Consider market opportunities and potential risks by examining trends in RA clinical trial size, duration, and failure rate by stage of development, molecule type, and molecular target.- Recognize the late-stage pipeline molecules that have demonstrated strong therapeutic potential in RA by examining clinical trial data and multi-scenario product forecast projections.- Compare treatment usage patterns, annual therapy costs, and market growth projections for South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.- Discover trends in licensing and co-development deals concerning RA products and identify the major strategic consolidations that have shaped the commercial landscape.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 Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Outlook 2021 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1068065 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1068065 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry Outlook to 2021: Capacity and Capital Expenditure Forecasts with Details of All Operating and Planned Pipelines" to its huge collection of research reports."Global Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry Outlook to 2021: Capacity and Capital Expenditure Forecasts with Details of All Operating and Planned Pipelines" is a comprehensive report on major, trunk oil and gas pipelines industry in the world. The report provides pipeline details such as pipeline/pipeline system name, operator name, start year, start point, end point, status, length, capacity and diameter for all major, trunk crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas pipelines across the world by country and by region. The report also provides capital expenditure outlook by key countries, year on year, from 2017 to 2021. The report also provides key country comparisons within a region and regional comparisons, based on contribution to total pipeline length (regional/global). Planned or proposed (new build) pipeline projects, as announced by various companies, have also been included in this report. Further the report also offers recent developments and latest awarded contracts at regional level.Scope- Updated information on all active and planned crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas pipelines in the world- Provides key details such as operator name, start year, start point, end point, location, length, diameter and capacity for all active and planned crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas pipelines to 2021- Provides capital expenditure outlook at global as well as regional level by year and by key countries for planned oil and gas pipelines till 2021- Latest developments and contracts related to oil and gas pipeline industry at the regional levelTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Reasons to buy- Obtain the most up to date information available on all key active and planned transmission pipelines across the world- Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry- Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong pipeline data- Assess your competitors pipeline network and its capacity- Develop strategies based on the latest developments in the industry- Information on latest tenders and contracts in the industryTable of Contents1. Table of Contents 11.1. List of Tables 71.2. List of Figures 302. Introduction 342.1. What Is This Report About? 342.2. Market Definition 343. Global Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry 353.1. Global Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Snapshot 353.2. Global Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Planned Oil and Gas Pipelines 453.3. Global Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Regional Comparisons 504. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry 584.1. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Snapshot 584.2. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Planned Pipeline Lengths 674.3. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Cross Country Pipelines 774.4. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Algeria 814.5. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Nigeria 864.6. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Egypt 944.7. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Libya 1004.8. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, South Africa 1054.9. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Mozambique 1084.10. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Sudan 1104.11. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Tunisia 1124.12. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Kenya 1154.13. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, South Sudan 1174.14. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Tanzania 1184.15. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Congo Republic 1204.16. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Uganda 1214.17. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Niger 1224.18. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Cameroon 1234.19. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Angola 1244.20. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Cote dIvoire 1264.21. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Ethiopia 1284.22. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Morocco 1294.23. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Ghana 1304.24. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Chad 1314.25. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Djibouti 1324.26. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Gabon 1334.27. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Namibia 1344.28. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Madagascar 1354.29. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Senegal 1354.30. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Equatorial Guinea 1364.31. Africa Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Recent Developments and Contracts 1375. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry 1535.1. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Snapshot 1535.2. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Planned Pipeline Lengths 1625.3. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Cross Country Pipelines 1765.4. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, China 1805.5. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, India 1925.6. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Pakistan 2085.7. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Indonesia 2115.8. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Myanmar 2165.9. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, South Korea 2195.10. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Thailand 2215.11. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Japan 2255.12. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Malaysia 2285.13. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Bangladesh 2315.14. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Philippines 2375.15. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Vietnam 2395.16. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Taiwan 2415.17. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Malaysia - Vietnam PM-3 Commercial Arrangement Area 2425.18. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Brunei 2435.19. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Malaysia - Thailand Joint Development Area 2455.20. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Cambodia 2465.21. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Sri Lanka 2475.22. Asia Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Recent Developments and Contracts 2486. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry 2746.1. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Snapshot 2746.2. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Planned Pipeline Lengths 2796.3. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Cross Country Pipelines 2826.4. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Trinidad and Tobago 2836.5. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Cuba 2866.6. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Martinique 2876.7. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Barbados 2876.8. Caribbean Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry, Curacao 288Make 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 @ Cystoscope Market Size (Value), Share, Overview, Segment by Applications, Growth, Trends, Regions, Forecast to 2022 https://marketsizeforecasters.com/get-sample/46486/?utm_source=OPR-SP https://marketsizeforecasters.com/enquire-for-discount/46486/?utm_source=OPR-SP https://marketsizeforecasters.com/2017-top-5-cystoscope-manufacturers-in-north-america-europe-asia-pacific-south-america-middle-east-and-africa https://marketsizeforecasters.com/2017-2022-pharmaceutical-grade-vitamin-a-report-on-global-and-united-states-market/?utm_source=RR-SP http://marketsizeforecasters.com/ Global Cystoscope 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 Cystoscope in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa, focuses on the top 5 Cystoscope Players in each region, with sales, price, revenue and market share for top 5 manufacturer, covering such as Karl Storz, Olympus, Stryker, Richard Wolf, Hoya, Schoelly, Shenda Endoscope, Ackermann, Tiansong.Request a Sample Copy of Global Cystoscope Market Research Report @Market Segment by Regions, this Global Cystoscope Market 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 Cystoscope Market Split by Product Types, with sales, revenue, price, market share of each type, can be divided into - Flexible Systoscope & Rigid Cystoscope.Split by applications, this Global Cystoscope Market report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Cystoscope in each application, can be divided into - Bladder cancer & OthersEnquiry Discount for Global Cystoscope Market Research Report @Major Points in Table of Contents Global Cystoscope Market Report2017 Top 5 Cystoscope Manufacturers/Players in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and AfricaCystoscope Market OverviewGlobal Cystoscope Sales, Revenue (value) and Market Share by PlayersGlobal Cystoscope Sales, Revenue (Value) by Regions, Type and Application (2012-2017)North America Top 5 Players Cystoscope Sales, Revenue and PriceEurope Top 5 Players Cystoscope Sales, Revenue and PriceAsia-Pacific Top 5 Players Cystoscope Sales, Revenue and PriceSouth America Top 5 Players Cystoscope Sales, Revenue and PriceMiddle East & Africa Top 5 Players Cystoscope Sales, Revenue and PriceGlobal Cystoscope Players Profiles/AnalysisCystoscope Manufacturing Cost AnalysisIndustrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersMarketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersMarket Effect Factors AnalysisGlobal Cystoscope Market Forecast (2017-2022)Research Findings and Conclusion..For more information about Global Cystoscope Market Report @Related Reports: -2017-2022 Pharmaceutical Grade Vitamin A Report on Global and United States Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and ApplicationsThis report studies the Pharmaceutical Grade Vitamin A 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 Pharmaceutical Grade Vitamin A market by product type and applications/end industries.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 Online K-12 Education Market 2017 Latest Trend, Applications, Demand & 2021 Growth Forecast Analysis Report http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/280094 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/global-online-k-12-education-market-research-report-and-forecast-to-2017-2021 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/enquiry-before-buying/280094 https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbis-research https://twitter.com/orbisresearch https://plus.google.com/+Orbisresearch/posts Online K-12 Education Report by Material, Application, and Geography Global Forecast to 2021 is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific) and the main countries (United States, Germany, united Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and China).The report firstly introduced the Online K-12 Education basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, supply, demand and market growth rate and forecast etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.Request a sample of Global Online K-12 Education Market Research Report @The report includes six parts, dealing with: Basic information The Asia Online K-12 Education Market The North American Online K-12 Education Market The European Online K-12 Education Market Market entry and investment feasibility The report conclusionBrowse the full Global Online K-12 Education Industry Research Report @Some of the points from table of content:Part I Online K-12 Education Industry OverviewChapter One Online K-12 Education Industry Overview1.1 Online K-12 Education Definition1.2 Online K-12 Education Classification Analysis1.2.1 Online K-12 Education Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Online K-12 Education Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Online K-12 Education Application Analysis1.3.1 Online K-12 Education Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Online K-12 Education Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Online K-12 Education Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Online K-12 Education Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Online K-12 Education Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Online K-12 Education Product Market Development Overview1.6 Online K-12 Education Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Online K-12 Education Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Online K-12 Education Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Online K-12 Education Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Online K-12 Education Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Online K-12 Education Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Online K-12 Education Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisPart II Asia Online K-12 Education Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia Online K-12 Education Market Analysis3.1 Asia Online K-12 Education Product Development History3.2 Asia Online K-12 Education Competitive Landscape Analysis3.3 Asia Online K-12 Education Market Development TrendChapter Four 2012-2017 Asia Online K-12 Education Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast4.1 2012-2017 Online K-12 Education Capacity Production Overview4.2 2012-2017 Online K-12 Education Production Market Share Analysis4.3 2012-2017 Online K-12 Education Demand Overview4.4 2012-2017 Online K-12 Education Supply Demand and Shortage4.5 2012-2017 Online K-12 Education Import Export Consumption4.6 2012-2017 Online K-12 Education Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginThe Report Contains: 163 Pages.Make an enquire of this report @About Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019Follow Us on LinkedIn:Follow us on Twitter:Follow us on G+ : Tourism and Hotel Industry in Hong Kong: Analysis of Growth, Trends and Progress Tourism and Hotel Industry in Hong Kong http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/227652 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/tourism-and-hotel-industry-in-hong-kong-analysis-of-growth-trends-and-progress-2017-2022 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contact/purchase/227652 With a Population of 7.9 million and per capita GDP of USD 37777.26, Hong Kong is a growing hub of tourism. It ranks 13 out of 141 countries in terms of Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index. It shows promises in terms of Health and Hygiene, safety and security, international openness, Infrastructure, ICT readiness and business environment. It lags behind in terms of natural and cultural heritage, price competitiveness and Environment sustainability. Hong Kong Mainly accounts for business tourism.Each country envisages and aspires a greater economic dynamism and prosperity and wants to be a creditor nation than being a debtor nation. But that is not easy to achieve. It depends on respective governments public policy, political and sovereign power and the overall laws of the country.Lasting prosperity is a result of a persistent commitment to low tax rates, a stable currency, limited government, strong private property rights, openness to global trade and financial flows, and sensible regulation.Request sample copy of the report at:Mordor Intelligence has the worlds most inclusive research on the Travel and Tourism market. We monitor and analyze industry trends around the world, including in-depth analysis on market entry, market share and market size from qualitative analysis to qualitative with market data. Mordor Intelligence data and market analysis supports your organizations awareness of the Travel and Tourism market and the greater competitive atmosphere, ensuring accurate and focused strategies for your business.Report on Travel and Tourism market helps the organizations looking forward towards market entry. It also helps existing organizations and entities and supports in strategy formation for nurturing your business.A resource for your entire organization, Mordor Intelligence market research supports every level of business, assisting in strategic development, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, and brand management.Avail more details of the report at:What the report offersThe study identifies the situation of Hong Kong and predicts the growth of its tourism and hotel industry. Report talks about growth, market trends, progress, challenges, opportunities, government regulations, growth forecast, major companies, upcoming companies and projects etc. in the tourism sector of Hong Kong. In addition to it, the report also talks about economic conditions of and future forecast of its current economic scenario and effect of its current policy changes in to its economy, reasons and implications on the growth of this sector. Lastly, the report is segmented by various forms of tourism available in the country.Enquire more details of the report at:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +9164101019 Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Forecast 2017 - 2022 - McKesson Corporation, Cerner Corporation, Epic https://goo.gl/8zLy62 https://market.biz/report/global-clinical-decision-support-system-market-2017/86761/ https://market.biz/ https://market.biz/reporttype/chemicals-and-materials/ http://firstnewshawk.com/ According to Clinical Decision Support System Market Report by Market.Biz: China Clinical Decision Support System market sales revenue and India Clinical Decision Support System market sales revenue is expected to register CAGRs of --.--% and --.--% respectively over the forecast period. Clinical Decision Support System consumption in the ASEAN region's growth rate of --.--% outperforming many countries in the Europe and Americas on Clinical Decision Support System scinario. Middle East Clinical Decision Support System market and Africa Clinical Decision Support System market, followed by Europe are the other attractive regions with an estimated revenue share of --.--% and --.--% of the global Clinical Decision Support System market by 2017 end.The Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Report 2017 primarily focuses on the inclusive research study on the prevailing scenario of the Clinical Decision Support System market worldwide. This study improves the business productivity and Clinical Decision Support System market forecast of the industry. It gives the information about the Clinical Decision Support System market size for each category during the forecasting period from 2017 to 2022.For Any Query, before Purchasing Report Click Here:Global Clinical Decision Support System Market 2017: Competitive Study and Key Sellers1 McKesson Corporation2 Cerner Corporation3 Epic4 Zynx Health5 MEDITECH6 Wolters Kluwer7 NextGen8 Philips Healthcare9 Allscripts Healthcare Solutions10 GE Healthcare11 Carestream Health12 AthenahealthClinical Decision Support System Market Analysis: By ProductStandaloneEHR-CDSSEHR-CDSS-CPOECDSS-CPOEClinical Decision Support System Market Analysis: By ApplicationDrug Allergy AlertsDrug RemindersDrug-Drug InteractionsClinical RemindersClinical GuidelinesDrug Dosing SupportOthersThe report basically includes the overview of Clinical Decision Support System market, along with Clinical Decision Support System definitions, classification, Clinical Decision Support System industry chain structure and a certain area of applications. Clinical Decision Support System report also includes the scope of the Clinical Decision Support System market, market share and promising users. It also gives the development study of the Clinical Decision Support System industry, price structures, Clinical Decision Support System competitive analysis of the industry and competitive players from various regions including United States Clinical Decision Support System market, EU Clinical Decision Support System market, Japan as well as China Clinical Decision Support System market.The Clinical Decision Support System report provides information about the company profiles, description of the product, product specification, Clinical Decision Support System sale, price of the product. Additionally, it also gives information about the Clinical Decision Support System production, cost, Clinical Decision Support System market revenue, gross margin, capacity as well as import/export details, Clinical Decision Support System industry supply and usage figures. Growth rate and Clinical Decision Support System development processes of each category of product are also mentioned in the Clinical Decision Support System report. The Clinical Decision Support System market study gives a clear idea to the individuals regarding the major statistics on the status of Clinical Decision Support System industry.You can Purchase the Full Report Here:Further, the Clinical Decision Support System industry research report determines the usefulness of investment, investment return analysis and gives the complete idea of Clinical Decision Support System market development scope followed by various business strategies of Clinical Decision Support System industry. Lastly, the report contains essential outcome help could boost the interest level of the individuals in Global Clinical Decision Support System Market 2017.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 businessesJames JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor, Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade, Near Navale Lawns, Pune, Maharashtra, India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Market Research Reports-Browse Latest News- Saliva Collection and Diagnostic Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 10% During 2016 to 2022 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2522 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/saliva-collection-devices-diagnostics-market-2522 Market Overview:Global Saliva collection and diagnostic market has been evaluated as swiftly growing market in the coming future and it is expected that the market will have high demand globally. The global Saliva collection and diagnostic market is undergoing a rapid change.Over the last few years there has been tremendous growth in less invasive diagnostic testing. The role of saliva in this growth trend has been enormous. There is growing awareness regarding the broad utility of saliva as a diagnostic medium and there is a rising number of publications supporting new and varied applications for saliva. Over the last decade, saliva testing has been reinforced by a number of high-profile organizations including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), American Dental Association, American Association of Dental Research, and the Federation Dental International (FDI, World Dental Federation) among others who have validated the use of salivary diagnostics. Some institutes have providing valuable funding that has resulted in new technologies that have helped in the development of oral fluid-based diagnostics.For instance, in August 2013, NIH provided a funding of around USD 17 million for 24 projects under the name Extracellular RNA Communication Program out of which a significant share of USD 5.5 million went to UCLA Dentistry for studying biological markers in saliva in order to develop functional tools for the detection of pancreatic cancer. Hence, increasing funding by high-profile organizations for research and development has fuelled the growth of this market. Further Factors such as lack of awareness are restraining the growth of the market.Sample Copy of Report @Key Players:The amount of major players in the market which have global operations of the Saliva collection and diagnostic market, and are consistently working for the development of the following technology are some of the Key Players in This Market Are: Neogen Corporation, AboGen, Inc., Quest Diagnostics, OraSure Technologies, Inc, Oasis Diagnostics Corporation, Alere and others.Regional Analysis:Depending on geographic region, Saliva collection and diagnostic market is segmented into four key regions: Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa. Europe is the largest market for Saliva collection and diagnostic. Germany is the leading market in the European region. Asia Pacific is the second-largest market in the global Saliva collection and diagnostic market which is expected to continue its growth in the coming future.Access the market data and market information presented through more than 25 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 90 numbers of pages of the project report Saliva Collection Devices and Diagnostics Market - Forecast to 2022Study Objectives of Saliva collection and diagnostic 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 Saliva collection and diagnostic market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the Saliva collection and diagnostic 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 site of collection, by end users, by application 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 Saliva collection and diagnostic market.Access Report Details @List of FiguresFIGURE 1 Research ProcessFIGURE 2 Global Saliva Collection Devices and Diagnostics Market, By Application US$ MILLIONFIGURE 3 Global Saliva Collection Devices and Diagnostics Market, By Site of Collection US$ MILLIONFIGURE 4 Global Saliva Collection Devices and Diagnostics Market, By End Users US$ MILLIONContinued.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.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Diesel Common Rail Injection System Market is driven by increasing Demand of Passenger Cars and LCV https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2157 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/diesel-common-rail-injection-system-market Market Research Future published a Half Cooked Research Report (HCRR) on Global Diesel Common Rail Injection System Market.Market Overview:The growth of Global Diesel Common Rail Injection System Market is greatly influenced by rising demand of passenger cars and LCV. The recent technological developments have fostered the demand of fuel efficient vehicles. During the forecasted period, EMEA is estimated to have a large share of consumption. The major driver being stringency in the government regulatory emission norms.The Growth of the Diesel Common Rail Injection System can be attributed to the increasing regulatory norms by the governments across the globe. The stringency in the emission norms compelled the manufacturers to explore different technology improving the diesel combustion process by reducing the vehicle emission complying with the fuel economy standards. Another key factor for the growth of diesel common rail injection system is that it increases fuel efficiency and power of vehicles by mitigating fuel losses during combustion process. But, the absence of after-market is the major restraint of diesel common rail injection system market.Request a Sample Copy of Report @Major Key Players: Denso Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, Federal Mogul, Ganser, Hyundai KEFICO, Delphi Co., Continental AG, Siemens Deka Inc., Woodward Co., Eaton.Access the market data and market information presented through more than 50 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 100 numbers of pages of the project report Diesel Common Rail Injection System Market Forecast to 2022Market Research Analysis:The countries in the Europe region such as U.K have the largest market share of diesel vehicles. It accounts for around 50% of the total market share of vehicles. On the basis of Vehicle, LCV is the largest segment and acquires around 40% of the market share. Recent technological developments have raised the demand in the market. On the basis of Fuel Injector Type, piezoelectric is more sought compared to conventional solenoid injectors. The piezoelectric are less noisy and have reduced smoke emission. On the basis of Region, EMEA dominates the market owing to the presence of high no. of diesel vehicles in the region which is boosting to develop advanced technologies in direct common rail system market.Scope of the reportThis study provides an overview of The Global Diesel Common Rail Injection System industry, tracking two market segments across five 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, South America and Middle-East and Africa. 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 Diesel Common Rail Injection System market. On the basis of Vehicle type it is segmented as Passenger Car, LCV, and HCV. On the basis of fuel injectors it is segmented as Solenoid and Piezoelectric. On the basis of Region, it is segmented as North America, APAC, Europe, South America and Middle East & Africa.Target Audience Manufactures Raw Materials Suppliers Aftermarket suppliers Research Institute / Education Institute Potential Investors Key executive (CEO and COO) and strategy growth managerBrowse Report Details @About Market Research FutureAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Military Exoskel Market - Global Industry Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast Analysis For 2017 - 2025 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=22799 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/military-exoskel-market.html Exoskeleton or a powered armor is a wearable machine powered through electric motors and hydraulics. The use of exoskeleton gives a soldier increased endurance and strength. The global market for military exoskeleton is expected to grow significantly during the forecast period.There are certain factors driving the demand for military exoskeleton market globally. The use of exoskeleton helps the soldiers to run faster in battlefield thereby giving advantage over enemies. Furthermore these suits also help the soldiers in enabling them to lift heavy loads up to 200 pounds and heavy weapons for a longer time frame. Lifting of heavy weights is not possible for the soldiers in general as it can lead to serious injury to legs and back muscles. Furthermore, the suits are designed in such a way that it allows the soldiers to crawl and deep squat and ensure that their upper body is free for lifting weapons or equipments.Request a Sample of this Report to know what Opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Military Exoskel Market During 2017 - 2025@The evolvement of dynamic warfare is resulting into the defense forces across the globe developing exoskeletons and armed suites. Furthermore, the integration of combat and communication systems in these suits makes it preferable for the armed forces during warfare. Moreover, some of the exoskeletons are bullet proof in nature and hence provide additional protection to the soldiers. Hence these factors are expected to drive the demand for the military exoskeletons over the forecast period.However, there are certain factors limiting the demand for the exoskeletons during the forecast period. The integration of combat and communication systems increases the weight of the exoskeleton suits thus making it difficult for the soldiers to travel faster. Furthermore, the costs of the exoskeletons are very high hence it is not feasible for all the defense troops to acquire the suits for their forces. Nevertheless, the manufacturers are focusing on reducing the weights of the suits while integrating the communication capabilities. In addition, research and development is being conducted to develop suits that are capable of providing protection to the soldiers from nuclear, chemical and biological warfare. These factors are expected to drive the demand for military exoskeleton in future.The global military exoskeleton market can be segmented by types and region. By types, the market can be segregated into full body exoskeletons and partial body exoskeletons. The partial body exoskeletons are expected to have strong demand owing to their increased productivity by majority of the manufacturers. Furthermore, the partial exoskeleton suits are more flexible in nature and are more preferred by the armed forces. However, the ongoing technological innovations in defense for exoskeletons are expected drive the demand for full body exoskeletons in future.By geography, the global market for military exoskeletons can be bifurcated into five strategic regions which include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. North America is expected to dominate the global market for military exoskeleton owning to the presence of multiple manufacturers in the U.S. Moreover the department of defense is focusing on developing military exoskeletons to give competitive advantage to their army over others. Europe has been anticipated to have the second largest market share during the forecast period. The region includes developed counties such as Germany, France and the U.K. who are focusing on upgrading their defense capabilities consistently. However, Asia Pacific has been identified to be the most promising region during the forecast period. The presence of developing regions such as China which is investing heavily on developing exoskeletons, to provide increased capabilities to their soldiers, is expected to drive the demand in this region significantly.Browse Report@The leading players in the military exoskeleton market include General Atomics, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Bionic Power, Revision Military, Sri International and SpringActive among others.About Us:-Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact Us:-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com Bench-top Dental Autoclaves Market to reach $78mn by 2023 Global Market Insights, Inc. https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/513 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/bench-top-dental-autoclaves-market https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/513 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/steam-autoclaves-market https://www.gminsights.com https://gminsights.wordpress.com The industry report Bench-top Dental Autoclaves Market Size By Product (Pre & Post Vacuum, Semi-Automatic, Automatic), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 2023, by Global Market Insights, Inc., Bench-top Dental Autoclaves Market size was USD 49.4 million in 2015, with global growth projected at 6%.Rising geriatric population should significantly impact bench-top dental autoclaves market growth, as the elderly population has higher risk of acquiring dental diseases, thus requiring increased dental care. As per United Nations estimates, geriatric population globally was nearly 809.4 million in 2012, and is projected to rise and more than double to exceed 2 billion by 2050.Request for a sample of this research report -APAC with significant untapped potential in terms of both needs as well as population, could see autoclave revenue exceed USD 16 million by 2023. Growth is predominantly driven by the countries of Japan, and China, with the former having the largest regional aging population base.Vacuum autoclaves contributed the largest revenue to the global bench-top dental autoclaves market share in 2015 owing to its popular usage in dental practice. Moreover, these autoclaves are cost-effective and relatively convenient to use.Browse key industry insights spread across 50 pages with 15 market data tables & 17 figures & charts from the report, Bench-top Dental Autoclaves Market in detail along with the table of contents:Automatic bench-top dental autoclaves market should witness attractive growth at 7.1% in the coming seven years, attributed to the growing demand for automation in the field of dentistry yielding faster results without any manual interference. Manufacturers are eyeing China, India, Brazil, South Korea, and Indonesia as potential regions due to presence of large unmet dental needs, and relaxed regulatory compliance compared to U.S. and Europe.Growing concern regarding burden costs of dental diseases has led the government to take measures towards increasing awareness regarding oral health prevalence. WHO recognizes oral health to be of primary importance, various government bodies are coming forth with awareness programs. For instance, the BDA partnered with Colgate during Oral Health Month 2014 to raise awareness regarding the importance of oral health in children.Key insights from the report include:Global bench-top dental autoclaves market generated revenue of USD 49.4 million in 2015, with 6% compound growth anticipated from 2016 to 2023.Mandatory compliance to the guidelines issued by the regulatory bodies has boosted North America regional demand. U.S. bench-top dental autoclave market size accounted for over 80% revenue in this region.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report -Pre & post vacuum dental autoclaves market dominated the global sales revenue in 2015, pegged at USD 21.1 million. The segment was majorly driven by its popular use in dental clinics and increase in demand for dental procedures.Europe bench-top dental autoclaves market share is slated to reach USD 24.8 million by 2023, contributing second largest share to the market.A number of small & medium-sized players can enter the industry for manufacturing small, low capacity autoclaves; however, on the global scale the industry is steadily consolidation with periodic mergers & acquisitions.Browse Related Reports:Steam Autoclaves Market Size By Configuration (Table Top, Vertical, Horizontal, Floor Standing, High Pressure), By Application [Medical (Hospitals, Clinics, Medical Waste Management), Dental, Laboratory (Pharmaceutical, Bio-hazardous Waste Management)] Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, China, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 2023About Global Market Insights: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.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog: LED Lighting Market Facts, Figures and Analytical Insights, 2015 to 2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1014 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1014 www.futuremarketinsights.com LED light is a light-emitting diode product which is accumulated into the utilization in lighting fixtures. It is basically a semiconductor lighting source operate in different applications such as automotive lighting, general as well as backlighting. It has been noticed that LEDs are smaller and have a lengthier operating life as well as lower cost of ownership as compared to previous technologies in the similar area. The prices of LEDs have reduced to a point where such type of lighting is becoming the economic choice in every application. The acceptance of LED lighting is escalating in almost all major end uses such as industrial buildings, residential and commercial buildings, as well as outdoor application areas. The LED lighting systems provide more energy efficiency and longer life span. The LED light provides a lifetime of nearly 50,000 hours of brightness and work effectively by using only a fraction of energy as is utilized by traditional bulbs and CFLs. The LED lights compete with old and traditional bulbs on various parameters which include longer lifetime, energy efficiency, enhanced environmental friendliness, better durability, lower heat and smaller size. The Global LED lighting market has showcased rapid growth over the past few years. The Global LED lighting market is anticipated to grow at a stupendous CAGR over the period 2015-2025 with a substantial revenue in 2025. Thus, the revolution in LED is gaining traction in terms of market dynamics.Global LED Lighting: Market SegmentationThe Global LED lighting market is segmented on the basis of organizational structure such as organized and unorganized. The Global LED lighting market is further bifurcated by application areas such as automotive, general and backlighting. The LED lighting market in automobile industry is rising as LEDs are initiating to be used in mass market automobiles. The Global LED lighting market is also divided on the basis of end-user segment such as commercial, general, residential, industrial, outdoor and architectural. The Global LED lighting market is further segmented by technology which includes ultraviolet LEDs, basic LEDs, high brightness LEDs, polymer LEDs and organic LEDs.Request Report Sample@Global LED Lighting Market: Growth DriversThe global LED lighting market is influenced by various factors such as macroeconomic conditions which is impacting the new construction and subsequently new lighting installations. Less replacement, less heat as well as the lower price are fostering the demand for LED lights across the globe and strengthening the market of global LEDs. Such factors along with inclining demand for cost efficient lighting systems from communities and buildings will intensify the market for global LED lighting from 2015-2025. Besides this, innovation and change in technology along with different product designs by LED light manufacturers are anticipated to bolster the global LED lighting market. The rising government initiatives for conservation of energy is also fostering the growth of global LED lighting market.Global LED Lighting Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the Global LED Lighting industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. In 2014, Asia Pacific captured the highest share in the global LED lighting market due to significant population growth, huge private sector LED lighting projects as well as the suitable government policies. The LED lighting has become popular in Japans educational institutions, retail stores and hospitals. Followed by it, Europe stood at second position in the revenue of global LED lighting market as the demand for LED lights are gaining traction especially for architectural and commercial lighting functions. Apart from this, U.S. holds third position in the global LED lighting market.Request For TOC@Global LED Lighting Market: PlayersSome of the top vendors identified across the value chain of the global LED lighting market include Cree Corporation, International Light technologies, American Bright Optoelectronics Corporation, Philips Lumileds Lighting company, Samsung Electronics Limited and OSRAM Licht AG. It has been noticed that new companies from consumer electronics as well as from semiconductor segments are entering the LED lighting. Thus, the LEDs showcases a higher opportunity for service providers as well as the component manufacturers to enhance their activities in the areas of LED lighting.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Power Electronics Market Recent Industry Trends and Projected Industry Growth, 2015 2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1024 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1024 www.futuremarketinsights.com To control the flow of energy, the switching electronic circuits are used. These switching electronic circuits are called power electronics. Power electronics are also considered for the conversion of electric power. Such conversions are performed by semiconductor devices like diodes, transistors and thyristors etc. Power electronics devices have several advantages including optimum forward and reverse backing capabilities, simplified circuits, compact designs etc. Moreover, power electronics find its applications in connection of renewable energy resources to power grids, transportation in electric trains, motor drives and lighting. The major use of power electronics devices is heat sinking as well as soft starting of an equipment deploying power electronic devices.Global Power Electronics Market: SegmentationThe global power electronics market can be segmented into geography, types and applications. On the basis of geography, the global power electronics market can be segmented into America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Others. Considering types, the global power electronics market can be segmented into diode rectifiers, ac-dc converters, ac-ac converters, dc-dc converters, dc-ac converters and static switches. On account of applications, the global power electronics market can be segmented into industrial activities, solar power, wind power, electric cars, aerospace and consumer electronics.Request Report Sample@Global Power Electronics Market: Region-Wise OutlookIn terms of power electronics market value, Asia Pacific is the largest geography. America being the fastest growing region, Europe is considered as a very promising market comprising of Germany and UK while Middle East also grants an impetus to the growth of the global power electronics market.Global Power Electronics Market: DriversVarious factors are fuelling the growth of global power electronics market including rapid use of renewable sources of energy followed by the increase in the adoption of electric cars and defense. ICT, telecommunications, self monitoring and diagnostics systems, hospitals and healthcare are the major fields driving the global power electronics market to grow apparently.Global Power Electronics Market:: RestraintsThere are various challenges faced by the global power electronics market like high initial costs, deposition of GaN on silica materials which is in turn very difficult to reach in high voltage ranges. Moreover, manufacturing of power electronics is way to expensive and time consuming thus posing a restraint to the global power electronics market.Request For TOC@Global Power Electronics Market: Key PlayersThe major companies playing a key role in the manufacturing of power electronics are Enercon, Fairchild, Fuji Electric, GE Wind Energy, Mersen, Methode Electronics, Semikron Elektronic GmbH & Company etc. Microsemi Corp, Toshiba Corp, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Vishay Intertechnology, Infineon Technology, Texas Instruments Inc are some major key players in the field of global power electronics market.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Retail Order Management Software Worldwide Market Major Region, Analysis, Application and Forecast To 2021 Reportsweb http://www.reportsweb.com/world-retail-order-management-software-market-forecast-to-2021 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001715074/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001715074/buying Publisher's Retail Order Management Software market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Global Retail Order Management Software Market: Application Segment AnalysisGlobal Retail Order Management Software Market: Regional Segment AnalysisUSAEuropeJapanChinaIndiaSouth East AsiaFor More Information About This Report:The Players mentioned in our reportEpicor Software CorporationMicrosoft CorporationSAPIBMManhattan Associates.OrderDynamicsMNPSandersonFreestyle Solutions.OracleBrightpearlRetailOpsSpringboard RetailJDA Software Group, Inc.AccruentTCRDSKhaos ControlRequest Sample Copy At:Table of ContentChapter 1 About the Retail Order Management Software IndustryChapter 2 World Market Competition LandscapeChapter 3 World Retail Order Management Software Market shareChapter 4 Supply Chain AnalysisChapter 5 Company ProfilesChapter 6 Globalization & TradeChapter 7 Distributors and CustomersChapter 8 Import, Export, Consumption and Consumption Value by Major CountriesChapter 9 World Retail Order Management Software Market forecast through 2021Chapter 10 Key success factors and Market OverviewInquire For This Report At:Contact 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 Global Baby Food Market 2017 - 2021: Abbott Nutrition, Cow and Gate, Heinz, Hipp, Danone, Nestle Global Baby Food Market 2017 http://bit.ly/2qSiFTM http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-baby-food-market-2016-production-sales-supply.html The Global Baby Food Market 2017 - 2021 is the cornerstone of the global development aspects and prospects, as the development of specific concept requires various technologically supported ideas, theories, methodologies. The Global Baby Food Market 2017 - 2021 report explains the in-depth summary of current innovations, parameter, specifications, and creation. The Global Baby Food Market 2017 - 2021 also delivers a full abstract of the economic ups and downs in terms of demand rate and fulfillment ratios.Request For Download Sample Report:The Baby Food Market comprise of a large number of reputed organizations, firms, vendors, manufacturer and we deliver an in-detail summary of the overall key players who hold major count in terms of revenue, sales, demand, through their reliable services, products, and post-sale processes. The Global Baby Food Market 2017 - 2021 report provides a thorough analysis of the prominent driving factors that are identified based on the end user demands, variable market 2017 - 2022 changes, restraining elements and regulatory compliance.The Global Baby Food Market 2017 - 2021 research report also provides in-detail forecast predictions based on the current business trends and analytical techniques. Baby Food Segments are broadly segmented based on the constant updates in the development parameters, quality parameters, reliability parameters, end user demands, and applications. The slight change in the product profile leads to major modification in the product prototype, production methods and development platforms, these overall factors that are related to production are very well explained in the global Global Baby Food Market 2017 - 2021 research report.Browse Full Report With Toc:MRS Research Group [http://www.mrsresearchgroup.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. MRS Research Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442, Aerial Work Platform Truck Worldwide Market Overview by Major Countries, Growth and Forecast To 2021 Reportsweb http://www.reportsweb.com/world-aerial-work-platform-truck-market-forecast-to-2021 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001714932/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001714932/buying Publisher's Aerial Work Platform Truck market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Global Aerial Work Platform Truck Market: Product Segment AnalysisAWPscissors liftsbooms trucksOthersGlobal Aerial Work Platform Truck Market: Application Segment AnalysisMunicipalConstuctionOthersFor More Information About This Report:Global Aerial Work Platform Truck Market: Regional Segment AnalysisUSAEuropeJapanChinaIndiaSouth East AsiaThe Players mentioned in our reportTEREXJLGHaulotteSkyjackNifty liftManitouTadanoBronto SkyliftRuthmannAichiAltecTeupenRequest Sample Copy At:Table of ContentChapter 1 About the Aerial Work Platform Truck IndustryChapter 2 World Market Competition LandscapeChapter 3 World Aerial Work Platform Truck Market shareChapter 4 Supply Chain AnalysisChapter 5 Company ProfilesChapter 6 Globalization & TradeChapter 7 Distributors and CustomersChapter 8 Import, Export, Consumption and Consumption Value by Major CountriesChapter 9 World Aerial Work Platform Truck Market forecast through 2021Chapter 10 Key success factors and Market OverviewInquire For This Report At:Contact 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 Nasal Spray Market Outlook 2017 to 2024 - Industry Growth Analysis http://databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-nasal-spray-market/ http://databridgemarketresearch.com/global-nasal-spray-market-expected-grow-cagr-6-3-2017-2024/ Global Nasal Spray Market, By Type (Decongestant nasal spray, salt water solution/ saline nasal spray, steroid nasal spray), By Container Design (Pressurized Canisters, Pump Bottles), By Dosage form (Unit/Single dose, Bi-dose, multi-dose), By Prescription (Prescribed, Over-the-counter), By Therapeutic Class (Antihistamine, Nasal Steroids, Mast Cell Inhibitor, Anticholinergic), By Application (Allergic and non-allergic Rhinitis, Nasal Congestion, CNS disorders, Vaccination, Others), End User (Hospital, ASC/Clinics, Home Care Setting, Pharmacy, Others), By Geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East & Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2024Global nasal spray market is expected to reach USD 19.4 billion by 2024 from USD 11.9 billion in 2016, at a CAGR of 6.3% in the forecast period 2017 to 2024. The new market report contains data for historic years 2015, the base year of calculation is 2016 and the forecast period is 2017 to 2024.The market is segmented on the basis of product type, container design, dosage form, prescription/availability, therapeutic class, application, and end-user.Request a sample pages:On the basis of product type the global nasal spray market is segmented into decongestion nasal spray, salt water solution/ saline nasal spray, and steroid nasal spray.On the basis of end-user the global nasal spray market is segmented into hospitals, clinics, home care settings, pharmacies, and community health care.The geographical regions are further segmented into 24 major countries such as U.S. Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, U.K., Belgium, Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey, Japan, China, Singapore, Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and many others.Read more about the report:The key players operating in this market are Sandoz International,Catalent , Pfizer, AptarGroup, Inc., Nastech pharmaceutical, Adapt Pharma, Inc,Mylan N.V, Innovus pharmaceuticals, Allergan PLC, Nephron pharmaceutical corporation, Cipla ltd, Meda pharmaceuticals, Inc., Sunovion pharmaceuticals, Teva respiratory, Llc., Apotexcorp, Novartis, Valent pharmaceuticals international, Inc. among others.About Data Bridge Market Research:Data Bridge set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Data Bridge Market ResearchOffice Number 317, Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road, HadapsarPune 411028Maharashtra, India Canada Begins Mandatory Survey of 1500 substances for 2017 Inventory Update www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2017/2017-01-14/pdf/g1-15102.pdf www.sgs.com/en/consumer-goods-retail www.sgs.com/en/news/2017/04/safeguards-06817-canada-releases-domestic-substances-list-inventory-update-2017 www.sgs.com/subscribesg www.sgs.com/softlines As part of the 2017 Inventory Update (IU), the Government of Canada has issued a Notice under Section 71 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA, 1999), calling for manufacturers and importers to provide information on roughly 1500 chemicals and polymers. The survey calls for information on the commercial status of the substances, as well as data on downstream use and yearly market fluctuations.The Notice requires all manufacturers and importers, who have imported more than 100kg of any of the listed substances, either alone or at a concentration greater than 0.1% in a mixture or a product in 2014 and/or 2015, to provide specified data by July 17, 2017. Information can be submitted using the online reporting system available through Environment and Climate Change Canadas (ECCC) Single Window.Listed substances include prescribed forms of: Pigments Solvents Plasticizers / Phthalates Flame Retardant Synergist MonomersThe mandatory survey requires stakeholders to provide: CAS number Quantity Applicable substance function codes Applicable consumer and commercial codes etc. Applicable six-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codeStakeholders must respond to the survey if their products match any of the following category descriptions: Intended to be used by children under the age of 6 years Intended to come into contact with the mucosa of an individual, other than eyes Cookware, or cooking or serving utensils that is intended to come into direct contact with heated food within a residence, unless the component that comes into direct contact with heated food is made of glass, stainless steel or porcelain Food packaging that is intended to come into direct contact with food, unless the component that comes into direct contact with food is made of glass, stainless steel or porcelain Reusable food or beverage containers, unless the component that comes into direct contact with the food or beverage is made of glass, stainless steel or porcelain Items intended to release the substance during conditions of use such that the substance may be inhaled or come into dermal contact with an individual Clothing and footwear Bedding, sleeping bags and towels Furniture, mattresses, cushions or pillows intended to be used in a residence, where the substance is contained in foam, leather or in a textile fiber, yarn or fabric Carpets, rugs and types of flooring (including foam underlays) intended to be used in a residenceThe CEPA was enacted to assess and manage the types and quantities of substances that can enter the Canadian environment. It is designed to help protect both the environment and the health of Canadians by reducing exposure to toxic chemicals.The CEPA systematically reviews substances on the Domestic Substance List (DSL) via the Chemicals Management Plan (CMP). The information gathered during these surveys assists the government in setting priorities with regards to risk assessment and risk managements programs administered by ECCC and Health Canada.Published on January 14, 2017, the Notice is split into three schedules: the first is a complete list of substances being surveyed; the second provides details of persons required to provide information; and the third schedule looks at the information reporting requirements. Schedule 3 also defines manufacture, manufactured item, mixture, and product.To see a full list of substances, along with details on the data required, look at the relevant issue of the Canada Gazette. (SGS Consumer Products ServicesThrough a global network of laboratories, SGS provide a range of services, including analytical testing and consultancy for flame retardants in consumer products for the US and international markets. Learn more about SGSs Consumer Products Services (SGS SafeGuardS keep you up to date with the latest news and developments in the consumer goods industry. Read the full Canada Releases Domestic Substances List Inventory Update 2017 SafeGuardS. (Subscribe here,, to receive SGS SafeGuardS direct to your inbox.For further information contact:Louann SpiritoDirector Technical Support, SoftlinesTel: +1 973 461 7919Email: cts.media@sgs.comWebsite:About SGSSGS is the worlds leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 90,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 2,000 offices and laboratories around the world.1, Mons CalpeChitcombe RoadBroad OakRyeEast SussexTN31 6EU Webmaster for Hire Introduces Multi-Store E-Commerce Solution and Internet Marketing Packages http://webmasterforhire.us/ http://webmasterforhire.us/ NEWS RELEASEFor Immediate ReleaseWest Palm Beach, FLFor further information, contact:Elizabeth VarianWebmaster for Hire5725 Corporate Way, Suite 205BWest Palm Beach, Florida 33407(561) 822-9931info@webmasterforhire.usWebmaster for Hire Introduces Multi-Store E-Commerce Solution and Internet Marketing PackagesWebmaster for Hire, an internet marketing and web-design firm located in southern Florida, announces new multi-store e-commerce solutions and internet marketing packages for 2017.Webmaster for Hire, LLC, adds a multi-store e-commerce solution to its suite of products and services. Along with customized multi-store internet marketing packages, this solution is designed exclusively with industry-leading platforms and analytics.Multi-store e-commerce solutions, along with customized multi-store internet marketing packages, can assist businesses by: Organizing products for a better customer experience. Allowing for multiple email addresses and customizable newsletters, mailings, and blasts. Building brand reputation through multiple e-commerce sites under one umbrella. Providing secure single-point checkout for all sites.Most companies offer a host of products that may be difficult to display on an e-commerce site. Too many unrelated products on a site make it confusing for customers to find the product they need.High-level categories on most e-commerce platforms allow for grouping and categorizing products with easy navigation. Companies with more than four or six groups of products may find it difficult to organize their sites for easy shopping.A multi-store e-commerce solution allows companies to group products together on multiple yet interconnected sites. This allows for grouping products by site, then by subcategory.This multi-store e-commerce solution is combined seamlessly with a multi-store internet marketing campaign for the best in e-commerce solutions.Multi-store sites are designed with similar themes to maintain consistency among the sites. Use of different colors and banners allows for some differentiation in the details. This allows the consumer to recognize the brand but differentiate the products.Multi-store sites typically begin with a single IP address with different sites added on. This provides the administrator with the ability to create email addresses and newsletters specific to the domain.Setting up a multi-store e-commerce solution demonstrates to your customers that your business is large and trustworthy. Customers can move fluidly among the sites to purchase a range of products from your brand.Webmaster for Hire, LLC, is a leader in the Web & Marketing Services industry, located in West Palm Beach, Fla. They offer a full range of services, like: online marketing, digital healthcare marketing, search engine optimization, local maps marketing, online review marketing, and e-newsletter marketing, just to name a few. Webmaster for Hire provides the local, national, and international businesses with responsive website design services and site logistics. Visitfor more information.5725 Corporate Way, Suite 205B, West Palm Beach, FL 33407 Global Location-Based Services (LBS) In The Healthcare Sector To Grow At A Impressive Cagr Of 32.78% During The Period 2017-2021 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/244576 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/enquiry-before-buying/244576 https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbis-research SummaryOrbis Research Presents Global LBS in the Healthcare Sector 2017-2021 has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts.DescriptionLatest Trends And Development: Global LBS in the Healthcare Sector 2017-2021The Following Companies As The Key Players In The Global Location-Based Services (LBS) In The Healthcare Sector: AiRISTA, General Electric Company, HPE, and ZIH.Other Prominent Vendors in the market are: Awarepoint, Axcess International, CenTrak, Cisco, Decawave, Emanate Wireless, IBM, Infor, Navizon, PLUS Location Systems, Radianse, RF Technologies, Siemens Healthcare, Sonitor Technologies, STANLEY Healthcare, TeleTracking Technologies, ThingMagic, and Versus Technology.Commenting on the report, The latest trend gaining momentum in the market is growing popularity of LBM. In the healthcare domain, right communication between patient and doctor and patient and caretaker is the key factor. Poor communication between hospital staff and patients leads to patient delays, and sometimes it becomes critical and leads to patient death when proper communication does not happen on time.According to the report, one of the major drivers for this market is rapid adoption of beacon and location-based technology. Hospitals are deploying beacons that provide a viable solution to address information gaps and shortcomings in the healthcare industry. Beacon is a low-cost device that is used in hospital rooms and galleries to ensure effective communication with nearby RTLS tags. Healthcare providers, as well as patients, can easily retrieve real-time information in real-time using beacons while connecting to a larger network of information and services.Get a PDF Sample of Global LBS in the Healthcare Sector Market Research Report @:Further, the report states that one of the major factors hindering the growth of this market is high cost of implementation. Despite numerous advantages, RTLS also brings challenges to its users. Implementation of RTLS is expensive because of its high initial deployment cost, which will compel manufacturers to opt for low-cost technologies such as barcode system. The cost of RTLS includes expenses involved in planning and design, cabling, software licenses, and location hardware such as signposts and readers.The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors.Enquiry For Global LBS in the Healthcare Sector Market Research Report:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +9164101019Follow Us on LinkedIn: Motorized Quadricycles Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2017 - 2025 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/13651 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/13651 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Global Motorized Quadricycles Market: IntroductionMotorized quadricycles are small and fuel-efficient vehicles used for local transportation in rural and urban areas. Motorized quadricycles have emerged as an alternative to small city cars and motorcycles. With a speed range of 45 100 kmph and weight of up to 400-500 kg, motorized quadricycles have become a popular means of internal transportation. Quadricycles are largely used in European countries. They are exempt from stringent regulations and safety tests that are applicable for passenger cars; also, they are road-legal and may not require a full license to be driven. As per the directive 2002/24/EC & CE, quadricycles have been categorized into: light quadricycles (L6e) and heavy quadricycles (L7e). Light quadricycles are limited to a speed of 45 kmph, while heavy quadricycles are not speed limited and may have a speed of up to 100 kmph.Sample of this report is available upon request @Motorized quadricycles must meet environment regulations w.r.t emissions, however this isnt a key concern for manufacturers as a major share of motorized quadricycles are electric; gas powered quadricycles hold a low market share. Despite some existing restraining factors, the motorized quadricycle market is expected to witness noteworthy year-on-year growth over the forecast period. It has been witnessed that elderly population accounts for a majority of the demand for motorized quadricycles owing to low cost, light weight and ease of handling of the vehicle. This trend is expected to exist throughout the forecast period.Global Motorized Quadricycle Market: DynamicsLow cost, ease of handling and lack of stringent regulations are some of the prominent factors driving the sale of motorized quadricycles. Quadricycles are many folds cheaper than city passenger cars and thus appeal to huge masses, particularly the elderly population who do not seek high power and high speed vehicles. Motorized quadricycles are easy to handle; these usually have a CVT transmission and require comparatively low maintenance as compared to other passenger cars. Majority of motorized quadricycles are electric powered and thus, are environment friendly. Furthermore, the motorized quadricycle market lacks stringent regulations. Regulations for driving quadricycles vary from country to country. In some countries, no license is required to drive a quadricycle, while in some countries a valid driving license and a minimum age of 18 years are prerequisites.The recent one-off tests conducted by Euro NCAP brought the quadricycle market to limelight. The frontal and side crash test conducted by the organization highlighted that quadricycles significantly lacked passenger safety even at a low speed of 50 kmph. The frontal and side impact tests highlighted the lack of minimum safety equipment in quadricycles. This has created pressure on manufacturers to transform their vehicles and ensure a high level of safety during crash, while maintaining cost of the vehicle; as surge in prices would not be acceptable to customers. At the same time, this incident may also restrain customers from buying quadricycles due to the lack of safety.Global Motorized Quadricycle Market: SegmentationBy product type, the motorized quadricycle market can be segmented into: Light Quadricycles, Heavy Quadricycles. By mode of operation, the motorized quadricycle market can be segmented into: Electric Quadricycles, Fuel Operated Quadricycles. By price range, the motorized quadricycle market can be categorized into: Economic, Mid-range, Premium.Global Motorized Quadricycle Market: Region-wise OutlookPresently, Europe leads the demand for motorized quadricycles in the global market, and the region is expected to remain predominant in the motorized quadricycle market over the forecast period. Flexible regulations in the region are expected to be the major driver for market growth and thus, increased adoption of quadricycles is expected over the forecast period. After Europe, North America and Latin America are anticipated to be major upcoming markets for motorized quadricycles. However, slow adoption rate is expected in some countries of these regions. The Asia Pacific motorized quadricycle market possesses significant growth opportunity owing to robust economic growth and increasing vehicle ownership per capita. However, some of the countries in the region create moderate demand for quadricycles, as quadricycles here are only limited to internal transport application and are not authorized to be driven on roads. Safety concerns for passengers and poor road infrastructure in some countries of the Asia Pacific region are expected to hamper demand for motorized quadricycles in the region.Global Motorized Quadricycle Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants in the global motorized quadricycles market are: Aixam-Mega,Grecav, Groupe Renault, Bajaj Auto. Ltd., Ligier Automobiles, Club Car, LLC., TECNO MECCANICA IMOLA SPA (Gruppo Tazzari).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 market segments such as geographies, application, and industry.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Non-alcoholic Drinks Market: Health Concerns to Dampen Demand for Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/non-alcoholic-drinks-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1340 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Non-Alcoholic Drinks Market: SnapshotThe shifting lifestyles of consumers and the growing per capita income are amongst the prime factors positively impacting the global non-alcoholic drinks market. Due to the changing preferences of consumers, numerous flavors and variants of drinks have been introduced in this market which will bring in new growth opportunities in the global non-alcoholic drinks market. The increasing temperatures owing to global warming will also drive the growth of this market. This market is concentrated in nature and hence a couple of players hold a key share within this market. Due to the fact that the market is led by the changing tastes and preferences of consumers, this is why even smaller players are tapping into this market by catering to the needs of local residents and by keeping the prices competitive.Obtain Report Details @The global non-alcoholic drinks market stood at US$1,435.25 bn in 2013 and is anticipated to touch US$1,937.73 bn by 2020, expanding at a 4.30% CAGR from 2014 to 2020. Volume-wise, this market is poised to rise at a 4.90% CAGR in the forecast period and will fuel the non-alcoholic beverages consumption to 1,289.03 bn liters by 2020, starting from 912.77 bn liters in 2013. The increasing disposable income of consumers, the tastes of local consumers, and demographics will also bode well for the development of the non-alcoholic drinks market. On the other hand, the rising awareness on health is amongst the prime factors impeding the development of the global non-alcoholic market.Tea and Coffee to Gain Demand Due to Rising Disposable Income of ConsumersProduct-wise, the non-alcoholic drinks market is segmented into dairy drinks, juice, tea and coffee, bottled water, soft drinks, and others. Of these, the segment of soft drinks held a dominant share and stood at 471.07 bn liters in 2013. On the other hand, the segment of tea and coffee is poised to emerge as the most swiftly developing segment due to swift industrialization and the growing disposable income of consumers. This segment is predicted to rise at a healthy 7.0% CAGR between 2014 and 2020.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @In terms of geography, the report segments the global non-alcoholic drinks market into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Amongst these, the North America non-alcoholic drinks market emerged as the top market and was valued at US$220.79 bn in 2013. This is due to the growing awareness on health amongst individuals of all age groups in North America over the forecast period.Increasing Count of Young Consumers to Positively Impact Asia Pacific Non-Alcoholic Drinks MarketOn the other hand, Asia Pacific has also emerged as amongst the key markets for non-alcoholic drinks. The Asia Pacific non-alcoholic drinks market stood at US$332.22 bn in 2013 and is predicted to grow exponentially over the forecast period. This is due to the rising disposable income of consumers in developing nations of India and China and the increasing count of young consumers. In addition, the launch of Make in India campaign in India will also provide impetus to the development of the non-alcoholic drinks market in Asia Pacific.The prime players operating in the global non-alcoholic drinks market are A.G. Barr, plc. (U.K.), Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Inc. (U.S.), Dydo Drinco, Inc. (Japan), Attitude Drinks, Inc. (U.S.), LiveWire Ergogenics, Inc. (U.S.), Calcol, Inc. (U.S.), Danone (France), Nestle S.A. (Switzerland), PepsiCo, Inc. (U.S.), and The Coca-Cola Company (U.S.) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Microwave Absorbing Materials Market Value Chain and Forecast 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1565 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1565 www.futuremarketinsights.com Microwave absorbing materials absorb radio waves, micro waves & electromagnetic waves of wide frequency range -- from 100 MHz to a millimeter or a micron wave. These materials are commonly used in stealth technology for air-space, marine & military warfare, and signal transmission & reception process. These materials also find applications as a shield from high intensity electromagnetic fields/waves generated during medical diagnostics such as MRI, CAT scans.The properties of microwave absorbing materials include wave reflection reduction, resonance cavity reduction, and null echo. Finished products made using microwave absorbing materials find applications across defense, telecommunication, core & applied electronics industry.Request For Report Sample@Microwave Absorbing Materials Market: Segmentation & TrendsMicrowave absorbing materials are available into following types:Films & ElastomersFoamsMilitary Specialty Microwave and Custom Magnetic AbsorbersMolded, Cast Liquids and CoatingsMajor end-use application sectors include:Military & Defense.AutomationElectronics & TelecommunicationsChemicalsTextilesHealthcareThe global microwave absorbing materials market is skilled-labour-intensive with focus on new product & application developments, and diversification of existing product types a key focus area for manufacturers. The customers requirements range from a standard prototype to a customised one. Concept marketing and product marketing are the key go-to marketing strategies for key players in this region.The global microwave absorbing market has seen many acquisitions by large-scale enterprises, which has been a synergy of supporting capital & expertise in technical know-how. Industrial exhibitions, trade fairs, defense expo are the common platforms of marketing & promotion for the value & supply chain players. The market is oligopoly type, which consists of few specialised manufacturers -- backed by regional distributors & suppliers with defense & telecommunication -- as the major consumer markets.Microwave Absorbing Materials Market DynamicsThe major producers of microwave absorbing materials are located in North America & other OECD group Nations. U.S. defense sector is a major consumer & one of the key drivers for the markets evolution and growth. The electronic component manufacturing sector in the Asia Pacific region is likely to witness next wave of development over the coming five to six years, creating opportunities for microwave absorbing material manufacturers.Microwave Absorbing Materials Market: Drivers and RestraintsIncrease in spending on defense systems and sustained demand for finished electronic goods will continue to fuel the growth of the microwave absorbing materials market during the forecast period, 2016-2026. On the other hand, taxes & cess imposed on raw materials & finished goods of microwave absorbents and unfavourable export & import policies can act as a deterrent.Request For TOC@Microwave Absorbing Materials Industry: Key PlayersThe key players involved in manufacturing of microwave absorbing materials are Lairdtech, ESCO Technologies Corporation, ARC Technologies Inc., Western Rubber & Supply, Inc., Cuming Microwave, Mast Technologies, Thorndike Corporation, Parker Hannifin Corp. and Panashield etc. apart from other existing local & regional manufacturers of respective markets.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: Middle East Edible Oil Co-Products and By-Products Market: Dried Soap Stock Exhibits Strong Demand & Revenue http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/east-edible-oil-coproducts-by-products-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=13901 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Middle East Edible Oil Co-Products and By-Products Market: SnapshotThe edible oils industry in the Middle East has, over the years, witnessed considerable investment, which has resulted in a significant rise in workforce, number of factories, and total production capacity. The edible oil co-products and by-products market in the Middle East has benefited from these developments and from the growing affluence and rise in population in the region. In terms of value, the market is poised to expand at CAGR of 5.0% from 2016 to 2024. The demand for edible oil co-products and by-products is set to increase from 388,944.3 tonnes in 2015 to 559,775.89 tonnes, registering 4.2% CAGR therein.Browse Market Research Report @Consumers in the Middle East are constantly seeking new tastes, flavors, and applications and companies in the edible oil co-products and by-products market have been devising strategies around this trend to stay competitive.Dried Soap Stock Exhibits Strong Demand and RevenueBy product type, edible oil co-products and by-products are segmented into dried soap stock, hard oil fatty acid distillate, pure soft oil fatty acid distillate, mixed soft oil fatty acid distillate, pure acid oil, palmitic acid, stearic acid, sludge, and earth distillate.Dried soap stock is projected to be the leading segment in the Middle East market for edible oil co-products and by-products in terms of value as well as volume. The market for dried soap stock in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is likely to grow considerably during the forecast period owing to the increasing utilization of this co-product in animal feed. The soap produced from dried soap stock is biodegradable and is widely used as anionic surfactant in powder detergents.Mixed soft oil fatty acid distillates are anticipated to exhibit a strong CAGR by volume and value during the forecast period of 2016 to 2024.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Steady Demand Projected for Fatty Acid Distillates and Dried Soap Stock in EgyptBased on country, the Middle East edible oil co-products and by-products market is segmented into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, and Turkey.The oil and soap industry is one of the oldest and most important industries in Egypt. There is a high demand for dried soap stock in the country as it reduces the expense of raw material required for soap manufacturing and provides several economic benefits. Stearic acid acts as an emulsifying and thickening agent when used in cosmetics. With the growing middle-class population in Egypt, the demand for personal care products is rising, which is projected to push the demand for stearic acid in Egypt during the forecast period.The market for dried soap stock in Saudi Arabia is set to rise over the course of the forecast period owing to the extensive use of this by-product for the production of soap and detergents and as an animal feed ingredient. Iran is a leading producer of soaps and detergents and there is immense potential for the growth of the dried soap stock and pure acid oil markets in the country. Egypt and Morocco are anticipated to witness considerable growth for fatty acid distillates in the Middle East. The demand for hard oil fatty acid is comparatively higher in Turkey than in any other country in the region, driven by the increasing production of soaps and detergents and the rising disposable income in the country.Some of the prominent players in the Middle East edible oil co-products and by-products market are VVF L.L.C., Cayman Chemical Company, Rade Chemicals, Chemipakhsh Iran Co. Ltd., Mallinath Group, A & B Chemical Corporation, Iran Chemical Provider Co., Genome Specialities Fzc, Oleo Misr, and Arabian Environmental Protection Co. LLC.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: Javier Bravo joins CONRIC PR & Marketing as lead web developer CONRIC PR & Marketing has added Javier Bravo to its award-winning team as lead web developer. Bravo brings six years of front-end web development and graphic design experience to the CONRIC team. His diverse background and experience include a heavy emphasis on digital marketing for the automotive industry, including rebranding initiatives and a website build for an innovative multimedia company that garnered a case study by Google.Born in Havana, Cuba, Bravo moved to the United States when he was 10 years old. He is a graduate of Full Sail Universitys prestigious Digital Arts and Design program and specializes in illustration, 3D modeling and animation, videography, photography and UX/UI (user experience/user interface) design.My work reflects who I am as a designer and individual, Bravo said. I take great pride in my work and especially enjoy helping businesses realize their creative potential.Previously, Bravo was a web developer for a leading advertising agency, where he managed web-related projects including e-blasts, landing pages and websites to achieve the objectives of clients including large automotive companies such as Group One, Morgan Auto Group and Sonic.Connie Ramos-Williams, president and chief marketing officer of CONRIC PR & Marketing, said, Javiers unique blend of technical expertise, artistic vision and enthusiasm for clients success is an asset for our company. He will play an integral role in our rebranding projects that take clients from the light bulb idea stage to an award-winning marketing strategy with brand integrity and optimal user experience.CONRIC PR & MarketingRecognized as one of the leading public relations, marketing and advertising agencies in Southwest Florida, CONRIC PR & Marketing was founded by Connie Ramos-Williams in 2007. The award-winning, full-service agency provides strategic brand awareness campaigns, integrated public relations programs, marketing development and consulting services, advertising campaigns, media buys, custom and niche publishing, creative writing and design, digital marketing strategies, website development and crisis communications strategy and implementation. The firm serves clients in many industry sectors including banking, legal, medical, government, not-for- profit, restaurant, manufacturing, construction, building and development, real estate, professional association, hospitality and salon & spa. CONRIC is a recipient of multiple Image Awards from the Southwest Florida Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association and Golden Image Awards from its statewide chapter, and Charlie Awards from the Florida Magazine Association. For more information, call (239) 690-9840 or visit ConricPR.com.Conric Pr & Marketing6216 Whiskey Creek Dr B, Fort Myers, FL 33919Josh Milton239-690-9840 GCC and Qatar Cooking Oil Market: Demand for Processed Food Surges as Consumption Patterns Evolve http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/cooking-oil-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=15008 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com GCC and Qatar Cooking Oil Market: SnapshotThe cooking oil market in the GCC has been witnessing a major shift in investment patterns in recent years. Over the past decade, the investment in this market has doubled owing to players realizing the scope this market presents. The increasing population and a higher propensity of consumers to spend on edible oils are the primary factors driving the cooking oil market in the GCC. The presence of leading companies in the region has increased of late with the growth in demand. Improvisation and diversification of products in this market is a key strategy adopted by vendors.Browse Market Research Report @However, the high cost of raw materials required for the extraction of cooking oils is a major restraining factor for any new player in this market. The lack of local production of cooking oils due to adverse climatic conditions and less rainfall is another major factor limiting the scope of the GCC and Qatar cooking oil market.In terms of revenue, the cooking oil market in the GCC and Qatar was valued at US$988.2 mn in 2015 and is expected to reach US$1.7 bn by 2024, expanding at a 6.6% CAGR therein. In terms of volume, the market is projected to register a CAGR of 8.4% during the forecast period.Sunflower Oil Most Preferred Cooking Oil in GCCOn the basis of product, the cooking oil market in the GCC and Qatar is segmented into sunflower oil, corn oil, palm oil, and others. The others segment comprises soybean oil, flaxseed oil, and coconut oil, among others. Sunflower oil recorded a significant share in the cooking oil market, accounting for more than 70% in 2015. The segment is expected to lead the GCC and Qatar market throughout the forecast period owing to the widespread use of sunflower oil among residents in the GCC region. Despite accounting for a share of less than 7% in 2015 in the GCC and Qatar cooking oil market, corn oil is expected to grow at the fastest rate through 2024.For more information on this report, fill the form @By packaging type, the market is bifurcated into retail and bulk. Retail package emerged as the key contributor in the cooking oil market in GCC, accounting for more than 70% in 2015.High Consumer Purchasing Power a Prominent Driving Factor in Qatar Cooking Oil MarketGeographically, the GCC and Qatar cooking oil market is divided into Qatar and other GCC countries, such as Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, and Oman. The cooking oil market in Qatar is currently experiencing meager growth, with the arid regions low population being the major restraining factor. Nevertheless, consumer spending in Qatar is likely to rise rapidly in the next few years, with the growth being centered on the food sector. The purchasing power of Qataris is higher compared to other GCC countries and coupled with the surge in healthy eating habits, the country is forecast to witness considerable growth in the cooking oil market.The cooking oil market in the rest of GCC has been experiencing steady growth and is expected to maintain a similar trend throughout the forecast period. The demand for several types of cooking oils is supported by the rising presence of expatriates from European countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece. This trend is especially true for UAE, with Dubai being the most lucrative destination for market players.The leading players operating in the GCC and Qatar cooking oil market include Savola Group, United Foods Company, Asia Africa General Trading L.L.C, Hayel Saeed Anam Group and Co., Omani Vegetables Oils and Derivatives Co. LLC, and Al Ghurair Resources Oils and Proteins.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: Vision Disorders Market Global Outlook and Competitive Dynamics 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/vision-disorders-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14972 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Although there are significant progress in preventing and curing visual impairment in many countries since last twenty years, according to World Health Organization (WHO) around 285 million (In the year 2013) people are still visually impaired across the world. It is a matter of great concern. The reasons may be varied. However, we cannot deny the fact that there is still a lot to be done to save the people from going blind.Browse through Vision Disorders Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:Any disturbance in the normal sense of vision can be termed as vision disorders. Myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, presbyopia, conjunctivitis, cataract, corneal abrasion, entropion and glaucoma are some of the vision disorders, affecting majority of the population across the world. Improper nutrition, various infections, traumatic eye injury, insertion of foreign objects and growing age are major causes for majority of the vision disorders.Vision disorders: Control and preventionAccording WHO, 80 percent of visually impaired people can be cured by using simple eye examinations like abnormality in a frequency of blinking, size of pupil and color of the eye. The disorders can be confirmed by suitable clinical and retinal tests such as corneal topography, keratometry, pachymetry, fluorescein angiography, Indocyanine Green study (ICG) dye test and other related tests. However, ignorance and negligence are leading severe eye complications or permanent vision loss.The report published by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), revealed that approximately 14 million Americans above age of twelve are affected by various vision disorders in 2004. All these reports are alarming towards the need of immediate treatment for vision disorders across the world. This precisely a reason that the market for visual disorders may continue to grow in future.There are many companies which are involved in extensive research and development activities associated with these disorders such as United States based National Eye Institute working on clinical trials for nutritional supplements for age related cataract. Alcon Research is working on small incision cataract surgery. AqueSys, Inc. evaluating safety of AqueSys XEN 45 glaucoma implant in refractory glaucoma. Apart from this, University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with local NGOs is working on ancillary therapy of different eye infections.In case of region wise achievements in fighting against the visual disorders, Brazil has been providing eye care service through the national social security system since last decade. While, Morocco has launched a public effort to control glaucoma, China has invested over 100 million dollars in cataract surgeries since 2009. Oman has completely integrated eye care service provision in the primary health care framework over the last decade and India since 1995 has made available funds for eye care service provision for the poorest at district level.To reduce the burden of chronic eye diseases WHO is also coordinating a global research efforts to map services and policies for controlling diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, age related macular degeneration and refractive errors. To support comprehensive eye care systems, WHO continues to provide epidemiologic and public health technical support to its member states.Vision Disorders Market SegmentationComing towards market point of view, the market for vision disorders can be segmented according to different perspectives such as regional geography and types of disorder. It can be segmented in four regions namely North American, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World. Out of all these segments North America region have highest contribution in terms of value because of large number of population within the reach of treatment, high awareness and better reimbursement policies.Followed by this Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World respectively are major segments of the market. The market can also be segmented among disorders such as cataract, glaucoma, eye infections and refractive errors. Along with this, the market for visual disorders can be categorized into drugs and devices available for the treatment.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Vision Disorders Market by 2024:Currently various established pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are catering the needs of visual disorders by providing drugs and lenses. Pfizer, Alcon, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. and GlaxoSmithKline are leading contributors in drug therapy, while Novartis and Bausch & Lomb are major players in lenses.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 Fire Protection Glove Market 2017 - ROSTAING, Pfanner, safety experts, Fireguard safety equip, HexArmor http://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/45852/request-sample www.fiormarkets.com www.9dimenreports.com The report studies Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate in Global market Professional Survey 2017 : Size, Share, Trends, Industry Growth, Opportunity, Application, Production, Segmentation, Cost Structure, Company Profile, Product Picture and Specifications during the Forecast period by 2022The report titled Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate is an in-depth and a professional document that provides a comprehensive overview of the global Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate market.The report provides an executive-level blueprint of the Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate market beginning with the definition of the market dynamics. The analysis classifies the Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate market in terms of products, application, and key geographic regions. With focus on presenting a detailed value chain analysis, the study evaluates the set of region-specific approaches forged by the industry. To determine the market potential for Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate in the international scenario, the study delves into the competitive landscape and development landscape exhibited by the key geographic regions.Development plans and policies significantly impact the market dynamic. The report therefore studies in detail the impact of the strategies, plans, and policies adopted by leading vendors of the Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate market. Manufacturing cost of products and the pricing structure adopted by the market is also evaluated in the report. Other parameters crucial in determining trends in the market such as consumption demand and supply figures, cost of production, gross profit margins, and selling price of product and services is also included within the ambit of the report.To provide a detailed analysis on the competitive landscape, the report profiles the key players in the Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate industry. Information present in these chapters includes details of products manufactured by the leading companies, product specification and price, and production capacity. Using reliable analytical tools, the report evaluates the information sourced from both primary and secondary research. Results obtained through the detailed analysis helps in presenting refined forecasts regarding growth prospects of the Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate market. Apart from this, the analysts have also conducted upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis to compile and present an exhaustive study on the Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate market.Download Free Sample Report @A detailed segmentation evaluation of the Fire Protection Glove in Real Estate market has been provided in the report. Detailed information about the key segments of the market and their growth prospects are available in the report. The detailed analysis of their sub-segments is also available in the report. The revenue forecasts and volume shares along with market estimates are available in the report.Fior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: Demand of Better Measures for Remote Monitoring of Patients Propels the Market for Telemonitoring Systems http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/telemonitoring-systems-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=15176 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Healthcare monitoring systems have been an integral part of the patient care services since a very long time. They are used to observe the symptoms, condition and other medical parameters of the patient. It is performed by measuring the vital medical parameters of the patient such as the heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar level, etc. Telemonitoring systems are the medical devices used for the remote diagnosis, examination and monitoring of the patients by the clinicians. Telemonitoring systems allow the physicians and doctors to monitor the patients vital statistics at any given time. The rapid advancements in the information and visualization technology have provided new opportunities in the telemonitoring systems market. The telemonitoring systems enable the healthcare providers to provide effective and timely medical aid to the patients before it turns into a bigger problem. The data collected through monitoring must be analyzed thoroughly for suitable treatment measures. People who do not have access to high end hospital care due to lack of proper transportation or are unable to visit the doctor frequently due to critical conditions, telemonitoring systems have facilitated them to gain access to enhanced healthcare facilities, thus reducing the morbidity and mortality rates. Telemonitoring systems are used for the management a variety of disorders. For example, patients with heart ailments can have their blood pressure and weight monitored on a daily basis. Any undesirable sudden change in the blood pressure/flow or weight can reflect a need to attend the possible worsening condition. If diagnosed on time, the treatment is more likely to be easily managed and the chances of hospitalizations are reduced. Diabetic patients can measure their blood glucose levels regularly and sustain these levels within a healthy range.Browse through Telemonitoring Systems Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:The telemonitoring systems market is mainly driven by the incidence and prevalence rate of diseases such cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, etc. Moreover the demand of better measures for remote monitoring of patients and integration of information technology and monitoring devices have also propelled the market for telemonitoring systems. This integration has benefitted the patients with adequate monitoring at the comfort of home and are reducing the number of hospitalization and hence promoting efficient healthcare at home. High pool of geriatric population is also the major driver for the telemonitoring systems market.The Global Telemonitoring Systems market is segmented on the basis of product type, end-user and regional presence:Segmentation based on product type> COPD Telemonitoring System> Glucose Level Telemonitoring System> Blood Pressure Telemonitoring System> Cardiac Telemonitoring System> OthersSegmentation based on End-user> Home Care> Long-term Care Centers> Hospice CareWith the growing geriatric population leading to increase in the various disease indications, the telemonitoring systems market is also expected to increase rapidly. Moreover substantial rise in the healthcare spending and upsurge in disposable income will boost the telemonitoring systems market during the forecast period.Geographically the telemonitoring systems market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and MEA region.North America is anticipated to be the largest market for telemonitoring systems. The demand for telemonitoring systems market in the U.S. is driven by the countrys strong economy and the rising trend of home nursing facilities and hospice care. Other factors attributable to market growth include increasing patient awareness, technological innovations, high investments in research and development, and the increasing disease incidences. The telemonitoring systems market is also expected to witness strong growth in Europe due to advantages such as accurate diagnosis with easy to use technology and ease in data sharing. Asia-Pacific is also expected to be the promising market for AVS technology in the near future due to developing economies and presence of large under-served patient population. Latin America also offers immense growth potential in the near future due to extensive development of health care infrastructures, increasing population, and rising government funding. However, high costs for set-up and maintenance can be a major restraint of the market in regions such as Middle East & Africa.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Telemonitoring Systems Market by 2024:Some major companies in the telemonitoring systems market are Abbott, Cisco Systems, Inc., DigiO2 International Co. Ltd., GE Healthcare, Honeywell HomeMed, Mindray Medical International Limited, Philips Healthcare, Qi Imaging, LLC, Siemens Healthcare, and Telehealth Solutions.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: Angelica Extract Market Growing Due to Increasing Awareness Related to Benefits of Angelica Plant http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/angelica-extract-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=23981 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Angelica Extract Market: OverviewAngelica a root, known by many names such as wild celery, dang GUI and wild parsnip. Its an aromatic herb, which grows in Korea, Japan and China. Angelica has an antibacterial action, which prevents the growth of various bacteria and thus find potential medical usage. Angelica has been used for strengthening lungs, kidney, liver and heart. Angelica plant, seed fruit, root are used for making herbal medicine. Angelica extract is an herbal tonic for blood circulation. Also, it is considered as all-purpose womans tonic herb. Angelica extract is widely used in functional food and pharmaceuticals. Increasing health awareness among consumers is driving the growth of global angelica extract market.Obtain Report Details @Global Angelica Extract Market: Drivers and RestraintsGlobal angelica extract market is increasing due to increasing awareness related to benefits of angelica plant coupled with growing usage of angelica extract in functional food is driving the growth of global angelica extract market. Increasing use of angelica extract in various foods to enhance taste and health benefits is increasing the adoption of angelica extract in different food products, thus fuelling the market growth. Moreover, angelica has various medical benefits such as providing energy, vitality, enriching blood, etc. It also helps in reducing disease such as anaemia, low immunity problem, and other disease. Furthermore, angelica extract also contains anti-aging properties. So the demand for angelica extract is increasing amongst the cosmetic manufacturers, which further results in to growth of global angelica extract market. Now a days, online availability of the angelica extract is increasing, which is anticipated to fuel the growth of the global angelica extract market. Moreover, extensive research and development initiatives for the increasing uses and applications of the angelica extract is also fuelling the growth of global angelica extract market. High dose of angelica extract increase sugar in urine, which is not beneficial for diabetics and thus, restricts adoption among a significant population. Moreover, the prices of angelica extract are very high, which also acts as a restraining factor for global angelica extract market growth.Global Angelica Extract Market: SegmentationOn the basis of application, the global angelica extract market segmented into-Food and beveragesPharmaceuticalscosmeticsFill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @On the basis of product form, the global angelica extract market is segmented into-Angelica rootAngelica powderAngelica oilOn the basis of packaging, the global angelica extract market is segmented into-50 ml100 ml250 ml500 ml1000 mlOn the basis of sales channel, the global angelica extract market is segmented into-Hyper market / super marketSpeciality storesMedical storesRetail storesOnlineGlobal Angelica Extract Market: Region wise OutlookThe global angelica extract market is divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan and Middle East and Africa (MEA). China, Korea, Japan and Brazil are the major producer of angelica extract. Asia Pacific and Latin America are among the emerging clusters of the globe, which are anticipated to witness an above average CAGR over the forecast period. However, the global angelica extracts market is expected to witness a steady growth by the end of 2027.Global Angelica Extract Market: Key PlayersMighty International Company, ltd.Tropical Herbal Products Company, ltd.Thiptipa co., ltdZingo Enterprise Co., ltd.Bio-Botanica, Inc.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Learn details of the Advances in Aroma Ingredients Market Forecast and Segments, 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1833 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1833 www.futuremarketinsights.com Aroma chemical is a complex fusion of natural and/or synthetic ingredients that are added to various products in order to incorporate desired odor. These ingredients are widely used in consumer care and personal care products. Personal care industry is one of the major application industry for aroma ingredients market. The global aroma ingredients market has witnessed steady growth over the recent past owing to increasing demand for natural aroma ingredients. Soaps and detergent is estimated to account for a significant share in the global aroma ingredients market followed by cosmetics and toiletries applications. The global aroma ingredients market is expected to register a steady growth during forecast period.Global Aroma Ingredients Market: DriversIntroduction of innovative and novel products especially in cosmetics, toiletries, and skin care and hair care products has driven the overall growth of the global aroma ingredients market. The increasing demand for natural ingredients coupled with change in consumer preferences are considered to be the important driver for global aroma ingredients market. Furthermore, significant technological advancements have also fuelled the growth of the market. Moreover, the increase in demand from the emerging and developing nations for natural fragrance due to health concerns related to synthetic chemicals is likely to act as an opportunity for the growth of the global aroma ingredients market. These factors are likely to drive the global aroma ingredients market during the forecast period. A key trend witnessed in global aroma chemicals market is that the key aroma chemical producers are responding to growing opportunities by expanding their global presence. One of the major factor that is likely to restrict growth in demand for natural aroma ingredients is high costs associated with switching from synthetic chemical to natural ingredients.Request For Report Sample@Global Aroma Ingredients Market: SegmentationThe global aroma ingredients market can be segmented on the basis of type, application and region. On the basis of type, the global aroma ingredients market can be segmented intoessential oilsaroma chemicalsEssential oils segment can further be sub-segmented into menthe arvensis, cedar wood, orange, eucalyptus, citronella and others (basil, clove, jamrosa, litsea cubica, sassafras, coriander, patchouli, camphor and lemon grass) Whereas, aroma chemicals segment can further be sub-segmented into turpenes, musk chemical, benzenoids and others (alicyclic, heterocyclic and aliphatic compounds).On the basis of application, the global aroma ingredients markets can be segmented intocosmetic and toiletriessoap and detergentsfine fragranceOthers (household products, aroma therapy and pesticides).Global Aroma Ingredients Market: Region Wise OutlookOn the basis of regions, Europe is expected to be a promising revenue generating region for the global aroma ingredients market and is expected to grow at steady growth rate during forecast period. Latin America and Asia Pacific are anticipated to witness relatively faster growth both in terms of value and in terms of volume. Potential opportunities in Asia Pacific and Latin America due to availability of labor and low cost of raw materials are expected to drive growth in these regions over the forecast period. North America and Middle East & Africa are also expected to show positive growth in the near future.Request For TOC@Global Aroma Ingredients Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the global aroma ingredients market are as follows:BASF SEMane SAInternational Flavors and Fragrances Inc.Givaudan SAFermenich International SAFrutarom Industries Ltd.Symrise AGAgilex Flavors and Fragrances, Inc.Hindustan Mint & Agro Products Pvt. Ltd.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: Amaranth Market Growing due to Increasing Food Processing Industry & Growing Trend of Using Natural Ingredients in Cosmetics http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/amaranth-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=23972 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Amaranth Market: OverviewAmaranth is a cosmopolitan genus of short lived or annual perennial plants. It grows five to six feets in maroon or crimson colour. Some amaranth species are cultivated as pseudo cereals, leaf vegetables, and ornamental plants. Amaranth comprises various elements such as tocopherols, linoleic acid, stearic acid and oleic acid. It also contains protein rich acids and high quality squalene. It is used in pharmaceuticals, food supplements, cosmetics and fragrance industries. The global amaranth market is increasing due to its various applications in health care products. Amaranth oil helps in reducing weight and also contains vitamin k, which helps in reducing cholesterol and prevent heart related disease. Amaranth oil is also the important part of advance cancer therapies.Obtain Report Details @Global Amaranth Market: Drivers and RestraintsGlobal amaranth market is growing due to increasing food processing industry and growing trend of using natural ingredients in cosmetics. Moreover, the various health benefits of amaranth such as protein content, antioxidant activities, bone development, digestive health, vision health and weight loose, etc. are fuelling the adoption of amaranth in health and personal care products. Furthermore, the strong command of supply chain, which is making the product easily available everywhere, is also driving the growth of global amaranth market. The ease of availability of the product is also driving the growth of global amaranth market.Although, the global amaranth market is growing but due to higher cost of production only few companies are operating in this market, which is limiting the growth of global amaranth market. Also, the uncertain climatic conditions are also restricting the global amaranth market growth. Furthermore, food colorants policies in regions such as Europe and North America are restraining the growth of global amaranth market. Since, consumers are now more health conscious and avoid buying food products that are artificially coloured may risk the products natural purity, which acts as a major challenge to adoption of amaranth especially in food colorants.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Global Amaranth Market: SegmentationOn the basis of end use, the global amaranth market segmented into-Food and beveragePharmaceuticalsPersonal care and cosmeticOn the basis of product form, the global amaranth market is segmented into-Amaranth seedsAmaranth oilAmaranth leafsAmaranth flourOn the basis of sales channels, the global amaranth market is segmented into-Hyper market / super marketRetail storesOnline storesSpeciality storesOthersGlobal Amaranth Market: Region wise OutlookThe global amaranth market is divided into seven regions, namely Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Japan, Eastern Europe and Middle East and Africa (MEA). India, Korea, china, France, Germany, USA, Italy and Canada are the major producing countries of amaranth. Furthermore, Asia Pacific and Latin America are among the emerging clusters of the globe, which are anticipated to witness an above average CAGR over the forecast period. However, the global amaranth market is expected to witness a steady growth by the end of 2026.Global Amaranth Market: Key PlayersProderna Biotech Pvt. Ltd.AMR Amaranth A.S.Nans Products Pvt Ltd.Flaveko Trade Spol. S.R.ONu-World FoodsAmaranth Bio CompanyAmaranth NordRusOliva Pvt. Ltd.Dk Mass S.R.OSpol S.R.OHealth ValleyAmaranth ResourcesArrowhead MillsNu-world AmaranthAbout 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: Electricity Transmission Towers Market: Global Industry Trend Analysis 2012 to 2017 and Forecast 2017 - 2025 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/15166 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/15166 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Global Electricity Transmission Towers Market: IntroductionElectricity transmission towers are units that support power carrying conductors, i.e. overhead power lines between the generating end station and the local end substation. Electricity transmission towers play a vital role in delivering power through overhead lines by structurally supporting heavy high-voltage conductors. To transmit maximum power (110 kV or above) through overhead lines, typically towers have a height varying between 15 meters and 55 meters to withstand the tension. Normally, for heavy power transmission, HVDC (high-voltage direct-current) technology is used in long distance transmission to reduce power losses, and limit voltage drops; these DC conductors carry uniform voltage throughout their cross-sectional area. At maximum efficiency, the sending-end voltage should be equal to the receiving-end voltage, without any voltage drop out.A sample of this report is available upon request @Electricity (both power and energy) is a commodity that can be traded in a market place, such as to transmit electricity to a rural place, where the generated power is delivered to consumers, known as end users and also to manufacturing industries. In this process, transmission towers are essential to carry power, which drives the electricity transmission towers market. Aging tower infrastructure necessitates replacement with new towers, and hence drives the electricity transmission towers market.Electricity transmission towers have high tensile strength, and are designed as per the power rating of the conductor and supply frequency to withstand natural calamities and temperatures without losses. Transmission towers carrying high tension conductors with ground level clearance must be designed appropriately after calculating SAG. SAG is defined as the difference between the level between points of support and the lowest point on a conductor. Electricity transmission towers consist of the following parts: Boom of transmission tower, Transmission tower body, Peak of transmission tower, Cage of transmission tower, Cross arm of transmission tower, Stub/ anchor bolt and base plate assembly transmission tower, Leg of transmission tower.For residential or short distance purposes, electricity transmission towers are selected on the basis of usage and capacity of power conductors, whereas for long distances all the factors to be considered. Increasing population and growing demand for electricity drives growth of the electricity transmission towers market. Developing countries in the APAC region, such as India and China are estimated to hold a relatively high market share due to power deficiency, and lack of power supply in rural areas. After Asia Pacific, Europe is forecasted to capture a relatively high market share due to a high necessity for power in the increasing number of industries. North America and the Middle East collectively hold the third spot in terms of market share, owing to increase in industries, manufacturing, and oil and gas. Growing demand for electricity across the globe has created new opportunities for the global electricity transmission towers market.Global Electricity Transmission Towers Market: SegmentationThe global electricity transmission tower market can be segmented in a number of ways, of which two prominent classifications can be derived on the basis of type and design. The global electricity transmission tower market, segmented on the basis of type: AC, DC. The global electricity transmission tower market, segmented on the basis of design: Lattice, Tubular Steel, Concrete, Wood.Global Electricity Transmission Towers Market: Key Trends and DriversGrowing demand for electricity and an increased rate of industrialization in developing countries drives the growth of the electricity transmission tower market. Aging infrastructure and increasing rate of bulk power transmission across long distances drives growth of the electricity transmission towers market. Varying steel prices, availability of steel, and import and export restrictions may impact the electricity transmission towers market.Global Electricity Transmission Towers Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants identified across the value chain include Zhejiang Shengda Steel Tower Co. Ltd., Prysmian S.p.A., Nanjing Daji Iron Tower Manufacturing Company Ltd., Weifang Changan Steel Tower Stock Company Ltd., Associated Power Structures Pvt. Ltd., Karamtara Engineering Pvt. Ltd., Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., and Nexans S.A.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 market segments such as geographies, application, and industry.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Allura Red AC Market driven by Increasing Demand of Food Colorants http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/allura-red-ac-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=23957 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Allura Red AC Market: OverviewFood colours including synthetic, natural, or nature identical, are used in foods and beverages to enhance the flavour and appearance. Allura Red AC is an azo dye produced from petroleum to create shades of red. It is most commonly used red food dye. It is also known as calcium lake and aluminium lake with FD&C Red. No. 40. Allura Red AC originated in the United States and find potential use as a replacement for amaranth in food colouring. This has resulted in around 90% consumption of allura red AC in food colouring and only 10% in cosmetic and other industries.Obtain Report Details @Global Allura Red AC Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global allura red AC market is driven by increasing demand of food colorants food and beverages industry. Increasing demand for ice-creams, sausage casting, candies, cold drinks, dairy products, sugar confectionary, bakery products flour confectionary, frozen products, and gelatine desserts, etc. is fuelling the growth of global allura red AC market. Moreover, the lower prices of synthetic colours is also driving the growth of global allura red AC market. Furthermore, the ease of availability of raw material is an aid to the overall growth of allura red AC market.However, the global allura red AC market is witnessing significant growth, there are few restraints to the allura red AC such as natural food colourants adoption for colouring in other North American and European countries. This is supported by stringent food colorants policies in these countries along with consumers inclination towards green and clean-label food and beverage products.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Global Allura Red AC Market: SegmentationOn the basis of application, global allura red AC market is segmented into:-Food additivesColoured pigmentFood colorants & dyesToothpaste and soapsCosmeticsPharmaceuticalsGlobal Allura Red AC Market: Region wise OutlookThe global allura red AC market is divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan and Middle East and Africa (MEA). China holds the major share in the global allura red AC Market in terms of production of allura red AC products. The allura red AC market in the APEJ region is expected to grow at a substantial growth rate. Allura Red AC usage is banned in European countries such as Denmark, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. In US allura red AC has been approved by the FDA for use in cosmetics, drugs and food. The global allura red AC food colorants adoption in MEA is relatively lesser than in other regions of the globe due to low availability of raw materials in this region.Global Allura Red AC Market: Key PlayersExim India corporationZhongshan Weifeng Foodstuffs Co., Ltd.Foshan Nanhai Zunyi Beverage & Foodstuff C, Ltd.Jagson Colorchem LimitedChemical point UGRIA Dyes & chemicals Co.Shaanxi TOP Pharm Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.Jinan Boss Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.Roha Dyechem Sez Private Ltd.Ajanta Food ColoursSanchi Chemicals Pvt. Ltd.Warner-Jenkinson Europe Ltd.Asim ProductsFoshan Nanhai Zunyi Beverage & Foodstuff C, 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: Impact of Existing and Emerging On-Site Photovoltaic Solar Power For Data Centers Market Trends And Forecast 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1952 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1952 www.futuremarketinsights.com On-site photovoltaic solar power also known as solar PV has developed from market of small-scale application to becoming a source of mainstream electricity. With the increasing fuel costs, dependence on import of fossil fuel from ethically volatile areas and uncontrolled pollution level, on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market is recognized as a promising alternative renewable energy technology. The use of photovoltaic solar power for data centers has come long way since 2005 when Affordable Internet Services Online, Inc. (AISO) assembled the first solar powered data center. On-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers are a good solution for many data centers and ICT companies which are focusing on decreasing carbon footprints. Being a cost-effective and eco-friendly medium for supplement power the companies like Facebook, Apple, Cisco and other are adopting on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers. Among other renewable source such as wind, biogas and other the utilization of on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market is the highest.On-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market: Market DynamicsOne of the key driver in on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market is the stability in the cost of solar power energy. Solar power energy, further developed can be viable and economic source of energy for data center which require sustainable energy for operations and temperature maintenance within the data center. Solar energy provides an added advantage of availability as opposed the demand for fossil fuel which fluctuates annually. As the solar power is self-managed and self-contained it is not susceptible to any reduction or restriction in the availability of electric power. Another driving factors stimulating the growth for on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market are mentioned below:Government incentivesEnvironment alarm over Green House Gas (GHG) emissionCost saving associated with the power generation from PV solar powerAccess for electricity in the areas with no grid electricityWithdraw of reliance on non-renewable resources for power supply and its importRequest For Report Sample@However, even large installation of photovoltaic solar panels produce a fraction amount of energy which restricts the use of on-site photovoltaic solar power for many data centers. Thus solar power is not a full time reliable power supply. To mitigate these limitations, companies can use the combination of:Energy produced by solar panels into larger grid thus balancing the use of customary energy sourcesInstead of replacing the whole power supply system, photovoltaic solar power can be used as a supplementary power supply systemOn-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market: Market SegmentationOn-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market can be segmented based on the semi-conducting material used:Monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic panelsPolycrystalline silicon photovoltaic panelsThick-film silicon photovoltaic panelsAmorphous silicon photovoltaic panelsOn-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market can be segmented based on the application in respected countries:On-grid connectedOff-grid connectedOn-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market can be segmented based on the technology:Photovoltaic Solar Linear Fresnel ReflectorIntegrated Solar Combined Cycle power plant (ISCC)Photovoltaic Solar Parabolic DishPhotovoltaic Solar TowersPhotovoltaic Solar Parabolic TroughOn-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market: Regional OutlookBased on the geography, on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market can be classified into important segments as, Latin America, North America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Amongst all the region, North America is expected to be leading in on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market. The impending termination of the solar ITC (Investment Tax Credit) by the U.S. government for the purpose of business installation is one of the driving factor for the boost in on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market. Followed by North America, Western Europe is expected to be the second largest market for on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market. Western Europe on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market mainly propelled by demand and government initiative by the government from Germany, France, Spain and Benelux. Key economies such as India, China and ASEAN are expected to spearhead the APEJ on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market. Likewise, the developing IT infrastructure in Middle East, Latin America and Japan is anticipated to project strong growth for on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market.Request For TOC@Key PlayersSome of the recognized key players in on-site photovoltaic solar power for data centers market are mentioned below:Trina SolarJA Solar Co., Ltd.SunPower CorporationFIRST SOLARYingli SolarCanadian SolarJinko SolarEvergreenHanwha Q CELLSSCHOTT North America, Inc.Vikram Solar Pvt. Ltd.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Increasing Information Regarding the Technical Advantages Obtained from Laser-Capture Microdissection Techniques is Fueling the Laser Capture Microdissection Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/laser-capture-microdissection-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=7682 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Laser Capture Microdissection Market: OverviewLaser capture microdissection (LCM) technology is a contamination free procedure for obtaining subpopulations of tissue cells under direct microscopic visualization. Furthermore, laser-capture microdissection technology isolates specific cells by dissecting unwanted cells. Laser capture microdissection technology harvests the cells of interest directly to give pure enriched cells. This technology helps in preserving the genuine morphology of the dissected cell or tissue sample. The laser capture microdissection technology by type can be segmented into software, instruments, consumables, and services. Furthermore, the market for laser capture microdissection by system can be segmented into infrared LCM, ultraviolet LCM and Immunofluorescence LCM. In addition, by end users the laser capture microdissection market can be segmented into biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and government research institutes among others. Moreover, by application the market can be segmented into research and development and diagnostics among others.Browse through Laser Capture Microdissection Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:The laser capture microdissection market by geography has been segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America and Rest of the World (RoW).Laser Capture Microdissection Market: Trends and OpportunitiesIncreasing expenditure on healthcare along with technological advancement in the field of healthcare is one of the major driving factors for the laser capture microdissection market. Furthermore, increasing information regarding the technical advantages obtained from laser-capture microdissection techniques is fueling the market at the global level. In addition, growing funding and expenditure on research and development activities of companies involved in this market is stimulating the growth of this market. High maintenance and manufacturing cost of accessories and equipment along with lack of expertise professionals in this field is some of the restraining factors which may hinder the growth of this market.Research and development and diagnostics among others are major application areas of laser-capture microdissection technology. Furthermore, government research institutes and hospitals are major end users of this technology. Moreover, ultraviolet LCM and infrared LCM are leading the market globally. Increasing preference of laser-capture microdissection technology in forensic science and molecular biology under the research and development application segment is one of the major driving factors for the market.Laser Capture Microdissection Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsWith the increasing technological advancement and growing application of laser-capture microdissection (LCM) technology in pharmaceuticals, hospitals and research and development institutes are fueling the market globally. North America dominated the market for laser-capture microdissection in 2014 and is expected to maintain its position over the forecast period 2015 to 2023. U.S. is the major market across North America. Moreover, with the increasing expenditure on research and development activities of companies dealing in this market along with increasing awareness regarding the technological advancement is driving the market for laser-capture microdissection across Asia Pacific. China, Japan, India, contributes in the positive growth of this market across Asia Pacific. Growing application areas of this technology in the fields such as forensic science, diagnostics and molecular biology are having a positive impact on the growing market for laser-capture microdissection in Rest of the World (RoW).Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Laser Capture Microdissection Market by 2024:Some of the key players operating in the laser capture microdissection market are Carl Zeiss AG (Germany), Molecular Machines & Industries (Germany), Ocimum Biosolutions LLC (U.S.), DeNova Sciences Pte. Ltd. (Singapore), Danaher Corporation (U.S.), Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. (U.S.), Indivumed GmbH (Germany), AvanSci Bio, L.L.C. (U.S.), Theranostics Health, Inc.(U.S.) and 3DHISTECH Ltd. (Hungary) among others.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.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: Now Available Global Automotive Seat Heater Market Forecast And Growth 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2062 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2062 www.futuremarketinsights.com Increasing disposable income combined with consumer changing lifestyle is what drives development in the automotive industry. Currently, advancements in automotive industry is characterized by many factors namely speed, mileage, interior and exterior design elegance and others. Among them one of the most prominent factors that adds value to the customers is comfort. Thus in order to improve comfort for the rider while travelling long distance, automotive seat heater is one of the preferred device by major OEMs in four-wheel vehicles. Automotive seat heater is made from carbon fiber technology which easily fits at the bottom or back of the seat and can be easily integrated with cloth or leather covered seats.Global Automotive Seat Heater Market: DynamicsIncreasing demand for comfort and energy efficiency in passenger cars and commercial vehicles is primarily driving the growth of global automotive seat heater market. The customer base having high net worth usually prefers cars with high comfort features which makes premium car manufacturers to target such customers with advanced comfort features.Integration of seat heaters with conventional glued fabric seat are some of the major challenges being faced by the aftermarket providers. Moreover, rising no of fire incidents in the seat due to seat heater coil is primarily decreasing consumer confidence towards adoption of automotive seat heaters. However, development in seat heater power supply and product material is expected to mitigate such effects in the near future. Technological advancements such as seat heater with short duration warming time usually (16-20 seconds) are also increasing the demands for seat heater in premium model vehicles. Moreover, declining cost combined with low penetration of automotive heat heaters in majority of vehicles is expected to create significant opportunity for new entrants in the global automotive seat heater market.Request For Report Sample@Global Automotive Seat Heater Market: SegmentationThe global automotive seat heater market can be segmented on the basis of sales channel, vehicle type, and region.On the basis of sales channel, the global automotive seat heater market can be categorized asOEMAftermarketOn the basis of vehicle type, the market can be segmented asPassenger carsCompact and mid-sized carsExecutive carsPremium carsCommercial vehiclesHeavy trucks and busesThe aftermarket segment hold the largest market installation share primarily due to self-installation feature, declining cost and availability of product for different models.Global Automotive Seat Heater Market: Regional OutlookNorth America, Western Europe, and Japan are the prominent market for automotive seat heater market. Due to low temperate conditions in most parts of the western countries the demand for automotive seat heater systems is increasing. Changing lifestyle along with increasing urbanization and purchasing power is anticipated to drive the Asia Pacific automotive seat heater market during the forecast period.Request For TOC@Global Automotive Seat Heater Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified across the value chain in the global automotive seat heater market are: II-VI Marlow, Inc. , Gentherm , Panasonic Corporation, Changchun SET Electronics Co., Ltd., Kongsberg Automotive, Guangzhou Tachibana Electronic Co., Ltd., I.G. Bauerhin GmbH, Seat Comfort Systems, Activline, Champion Seat Systems (Automotive concepts), Langfang Golden Time Technology Development Co., Ltd. and Roadwire LLC.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT: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: Learn details of the Advances in Polyurethane (PU) Adhesives Market Forecast and Segments, 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2370 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2370 www.futuremarketinsights.com Adhesive is the substance applied on to different surfaces to bind them together. Use of adhesives has eliminated the demand for welded parts, rivets, and other mechanical parts in many equipment. The incorporation of polyurethane adhesives helps to reduce the overall manufacturing cost. Manufacturers have been using polyurethane adhesives due to superior product performance, improved product life, and reliability. Polyurethane adhesives are used in multiple industries such as construction, electronics, footwear, furniture, automotive, packaging, and so on. Nowadays, vehicles contain more of plastic parts over mechanical fasteners. Use of polyurethane adhesive makes vehicle parts light in weight and thus enhances the fuel efficiency. In automotive arena, the consumption of polyurethane based adhesives is significantly growing.Polyurethane adhesives are well accepted in many end-use applications, since they provide excellent adhesion to different substrates and binds them immediately. Polyurethane based adhesives are preferred over other adhesives due to fast curing. The demand for polyurethane adhesives is driven by growth in automotive and building & construction industry. Thermoplastic polyurethane adhesives are widely used for different applications as it offers enhanced flexibility and improved adhesion. However, thermoplastic polyurethane based adhesives are costlier. Rising demand for housing and government spending on infrastructure in China and India boosts the demand for Polyurethane adhesives. Industrial development and growing demand of customers for packaging, automotive, and electronics in terms of adhesives is expected to drive polyurethane adhesives market over the forecast period of 2016-2026.Polyurethane Adhesives Market: Market DynamicsDemand for polyurethane adhesives from end-use industries such as footwear, automotive, building & construction, packaging, and electronics has significantly increased over the past few years. The key driver of polyurethane adhesives market is the rapidly growing construction and renovation activities. There is significant growth in the building & construction industry of India, China, and Brazil, which results in propelling the demand for polyurethane adhesives. Increasing government expenditure on construction and growing economy are anticipated to boost the demand for Polyurethane adhesive market over the next few years in these countries. Growth of automotive industry due to rise in production of passenger and commercial vehicles with increasing demand for light weight components has impelled the demand for polyurethane adhesives. In Asia-Pacific region, significant automotive growth is observed in the past few years due to economic growth and rise in disposable income. The demand for automotive is likely to continue in next few decades in this region and thus drive the demand for polyurethane adhesives over the forecast period.Request For Report Sample@Rising income, change in life style, consumer preference, and improving standard of living fuels the demand for electronics appliances, which in turn boosts the demand for polyurethane adhesives market. Asia-Pacific is the rapidly growing region for automotive and electronics segments of the polyurethane adhesives market. Growth in other end-use industries such as footwear, furniture, and packaging is supporting the demand for polyurethane adhesives across the world. The product development and innovation will be the keys to increase the customer base and market share of polyurethane adhesives market. New products with superior solutions and eco-friendly features are the major demand drivers of polyurethane adhesive market.Polyurethane Adhesives Market: Market SegmentationPolyurethane AdhesivesMarket is segmented on the basis of technology type, product type, and end-use application.On the basis of technology, Global Polyurethane Adhesives Marketcan be segmented as:Solvent-borneDispersionHot-meltReactiveOthersOn the basis of product type, Global Polyurethane Adhesives Market can be segmented into:ThermosetThermoplasticOn the basis of applications, Global Polyurethane AdhesivesMarket can be segmented as:FootwearAutomotiveBuilding & ConstructionPackagingElectrical & ElectronicsFurnitureOthersRequest For TOC@Polyurethane Adhesives Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants in the Global Polyurethane Adhesives Market identified across the value chain include, 3M, BASF, ADCO Global Inc., Avery Dennison Corp, Arkema S.A., Ashland Inc., H.B. Fuller, Henkel AG & Co, Huntsman Corporation, Illinois Tool Works Inc., Pidilite Industries, American Biltrite Inc., Adhesives Research Inc., Chemence, Ellsworth, RPM International Inc., Beardow & Adams (Adhesives) Ltd., Scott Bader Company Ltd., Ninghai Dingcheng Adhesive Co Ltd., Sika AG, and Dow Chemical Company among others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) Market is driven by Food & Beverage Industry, as it is Mainly used in Protection of Food Products http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/butylated-hydroxyanisole-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=23936 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market: OverviewButylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is considered as antioxidant as it has a property of preventing rancidification of food which creates obnoxious odors.as it is a waxy solid it is used as a food additive with E-number E320. Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is primarily used as preservative in food, animal feed, wax food packaging, cosmetic, petroleum products, and rubber. It also has medicinal properties hence commonly used in medicines such as lovastatin, isotretinoin, and simvastatin. Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) acts as a free radical scavengers, with its conjugated aromatic rings it stabilizes the free radicals which prevents the further free radical reactions. As butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is an anti-oxidant it appears in many products such as potato chips, lard, butter, cereal, instant mashed potatoes, beer, preserved meat, dry beverages, dessert mixes and baked goods.Obtain Report Details @Global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market: Market dynamicsThe growth of global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market is driven by food and beverage industry, as it is mainly used in protection of food products. As butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) remains stable in high temperatures the food industry experts recommend the usage of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) in food and beverage products. Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is also widely used in cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries as it closely related to synthetic antioxidants which is used in lipsticks and moisturizers. The key factors restraining the global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market as there is debate whether butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is human carcinogen or not the national Toxicology Program classified butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) as reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogen however the international cancer agency stated it as a possible human carcinogen and is listed as a carcinogen under Californias proposition 65. It is also proved to be allergic if used in large doses which affects kidney and liver functions. The FDA regulations limits the use of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) in commercial food products to 0.02% in fat and oil based products.Global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market: Market segmentationOn the basis of end users industry, the global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market is segmented into:Food and beverage industryBeerReady to eatPacked foodPharmaceutical industryCosmetic industryFragranceLipstickmoisturizersOn the basis of form type, the global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market is segmented into:CrystalsPowderMake an Enquiry @Global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market: Segment OverviewFood & beverage industry has a higher rate of consumption of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) as a preservative followed by cosmetic and pharmaceutical company as an antioxidant.it is mainly manufactured in solid crystal form.Global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market: Regional overviewBased on the geographies, the global butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market is fragmented into seven key region- Latin America, North America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific except Japan, Middle East & Africa, Japan. Among the regions mentioned above, in North-America the use of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is unrestricted and has also categorized butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) as high human health priority, however few parts of North America requires warning labels on the products that contain butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA).the use of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) in Eastern and Western Europe is prohibited as fragrance ingredient in cosmetic, although Western Europe and North America are the only regions where butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is used in beverages. Asia-Pacific, Japan, Middle-East & Africa consume lower level of v compared to the other regions. Overall the growth of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) has a negative growth over the forecasted period, owning to the increase in ban and restrictions on the use of the butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) as preservative due to its adverse effect on human health.Global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market: market playersSome of the market players identified in the global Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) market includes:Clean ScienceSigma-Aldrich Co. LLC.Abcam plc.Crystal Quinone Pvt. Ltd.Finoric LLCEastman Chemical CompanyV. EnterprisesAbout 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: Smart Textile Technology Sector Market Opportunities, Market Size, News, Region of Operations, Advancement, Strategies with SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis and investment return analysis Smart Textile https://www.progressivemarkets.com/enquiry-about-report/smart-textile-market https://www.progressivemarkets.com/request-sample/smart-textile-market https://www.progressivemarkets.com/request-customization/smart-textile-market https://www.progressivemarkets.com/get-discount/smart-textile-market https://www.progressivemarkets.com Fabrics with electronic components inserted inside are smart textiles. The increase in demand for smart watches and wristbands as well as sophisticated gadgets with advanced functions, miniaturization of electronic components, and rapid growth of low-cost smart wireless sensor networks fuel the demand in smart textile market.Global Smart Textile Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35.2% from 2017 to 2025.Market By Type Passive Smart Textile Active Smart Textile Ultra-Smart TextileEnquire About Report:Market Dynamics:Drivers: Rise in demand of wearable electronics ( intelligent textiles Market ) Increase in demand of size reduction in portable electronic devices ( efabric Market ) Increase in popularity of smart gadgets and reducing cost of wireless sensors ( smart fiber Market )Restraints: Extra cost occurred by accommodating electronics in fabrics ( smart fabrics Market ) Absence of standards and regulations ( Smart Textile industry )Market Players:Top market players profiled in the report are Google Inc., AIQ Smart Clothing Inc., Interactive Wear AG, Clothing Plus Ltd., Schoeller Technologies AG, E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, Gentherm Incorporated, Textronics, Inc., and Outlast Technologies LLC.Market By Application Commercial Consumer Automotive OtherRequest Sample Report:Market By Geography North Americao U.S.o Canadao Mexico Europeo UKo Germanyo Franceo Spaino Italyo Rest of Europe Asia-Pacifico Australiao Chinao Japano Indiao Singaporeo Rest of Asia-Pacific LAMEAo Brazilo Saudi Arabiao Rest of LAMEACustomized Report:Table of Content Contain1. Executive summary1.1. Key Findings1.2. Market Attractiveness and Trend analysis1.3. Competitive Landscape and recent industry development analysis (2014-2016)2. Introduction2.1. Report Description2.2. Scope and Definitions2.3. Research Methodology3. Market landscape3.1. Growth Drivers3.1.1. Impact Analysis3.2. Restrains and Challenges3.2.1. Impact Analysis3.3. Porters Analysis3.3.1. Bargaining power of buyers3.3.2. Bargaining power of suppliers3.3.3. Threat of substitutes3.3.4. Industry rivalry3.3.5. Threat of new entrants3.4. Global Smart textile Market shares Analysis, 2014-2025ContinuedList of TablesContain 42 TablesList of FiguresContain 50 FiguresDiscount on Full Report:About UsProgressive Markets is the answer to every possible business query. It is a market research and business consulting firm, headquartered in India that aims to deliver conversant executive support to foster overall growth of an organization in its domain.Reach UsAntviews Global,Serve No. 721/1 Flat No 404,Sudhanshu co. op Housing Society,Shastri Road, Near Kalavati Devi Mandir,Fatak Baug, Pune 411 030.help@progressivemarkets.com Global and Chinese Car Carrier Market 2017 Industry Research Report http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1064817&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-and-chinese-car-carrier-market-2017-industry-research-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/car-accessories-market-reports.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global and Chinese Car Carrier Market 2017 Industry Research Report to its huge collection of research reports.Every key element that has happened so far in the Car Carrier has been represented in this widely inclusive report. A key portion of these market elements incorporate the key player profiles and the markets general competitive scene, as players are known to have whats coming to them of impact over it. Different courses of the Car Carrier 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 Car Carrier, a SWOT examination is jotted down for all players, new and old. This takes into account a clearer projection for the Car Carrier 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.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @The Car Carrier 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 Car Carrier. 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 Car Carrier 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.Table of Contents1 Car Carrier Overview and Price of Each Type11.1 Product Overview and Scope of Car Carrier11.2 Global and China Car Carrier Production, Growth Rate 2012-202221.3 Global and China Car Carrier Revenue, Growth Rate 2012-202241.4 Product Segments Price of Each Type51.4.1 Open-Air Car Carrier Price List (2012-2017)51.4.2 Enclosed Car Carrier Price List (2012-2017)51.5 Price List of Key Manufacturers in 2015 and 201661.6 Global and China Car Carrier Market Share by Type in 2015 and 201671.6.1 Global Car Carrier Market Share by Type in 2015 and 20167Figure Global Car Carrier Market Share by Type in 201571.6.2 China Car Carrier Market Share by Type in 2015 and 20168Browse Complete Report with TOC @2 Global and China Market Competition Analysis by Manufacturers102.1 Global Market Car Carrier Production, Revenue and Share List of Key Manufacturers in 2015 and 2016102.1.1 Global Market Car Carrier Production and Share of Key Manufacturers in 2015 and 2016102.1.2 Global Market Car Carrier Revenue and Share of Key Manufacturers in 2015 and 2016122.1.3 Global Market Car Carrier Average Price of Key Manufacturers in 2015 and 2016142.2 Global Car Carrier Product Type of each Manufacturer163 Global and China Car Carrier Production, Revenue and Growth Rate by Type183.1 Global Car Carrier Production, Revenue and Growth Rate by Type (2012-2022)183.1.1 Global Car Carrier Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2022)183.1.2 Global Car Carrier Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2022)193.1.3 Global Car Carrier Price by Type (2012-2022)203.2 Global Car Carrier Production Growth Rate by Type (2012-2022)203.2.1 Open-Air Car Carrier Production and Production Growth Rate 2012-2022203.2.2 Enclosed Car Carrier Production and Production Growth Rate 2012-2022213.3 China Car Carrier Production, Revenue and Growth Rate by Type (2012-2022)223.3.1 China Car Carrier Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2022)223.3.2 China Car Carrier Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2022)233.3.3 China Car Carrier Price by Type (2012-2022)243.4 China Car Carrier Production Growth Rate by Type (2012-2022)253.4.1 Open-Air Car Carrier Production and Production Growth Rate 2012-2022253.4.2 Enclosed Car Carrier Production and Production Growth Rate 2012-2022254 Analysis of Car Carrier Industry Key Manufacturers274.1 Miller Industries274.1.1 Company Profile274.1.2 Product Information284.1.3 Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue284.2 CIMC294.2.1 Company Profile294.2.2 Product Information314.2.3 Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue314.3 Boydstun324.3.1 Company Profile324.3.2 Product Information344.3.3 Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue344.4 Cottrell35Read 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 EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)UV Conveyor Systems Market Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1042136&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/emea-europe-middle-east-and-africauv-conveyor-systems-market-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/machinery-market-reports-169.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)UV Conveyor Systems Market Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.The UV Conveyor Systems 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 UV Conveyor Systems 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 reports given forecast period.Enquiry For Discount Visit @The report, similar to all reports added to this research repository, is a comprehensive and engaging perspective of the UV Conveyor Systems. 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 UV Conveyor Systems, and in addition the drivers that may exist between 2017 and 2022.The UV Conveyor Systems 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 ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)UV Conveyor Systems Market Report 20171 UV Conveyor Systems Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of UV Conveyor Systems1.2 Classification of UV Conveyor Systems1.2.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Market Size (Sales)Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Market Size (Sales)Market Share by Type (Product Category)in 20161.2.3 3-Foot1.2.4 6-Foot1.2.5 10-Foot1.2.6 Other1.3 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sales (Volume)and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Industrial1.3.3 Biochemistry Field1.3.4 Food Processing Field1.3.5 Medical1.3.6 Other1.4 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems 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 UV Conveyor Systems (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Browse Complete Report with TOC @2 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems (Volume and Value)by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems (Volume)by Application2.4 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems (Volume and Value)by Region2.4.1 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA UV Conveyor Systems Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)3 Europe UV Conveyor Systems (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume and Value (Revenue)by Countries3.4.1 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe UV Conveyor Systems Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume and Value (Revenue)by Countries4.4.1 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East UV Conveyor Systems Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5 Africa UV Conveyor Systems (Volume, Value and Sales Price)by Players, Countries, Type and Application5.1 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.2 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Type5.3 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Sales and Market Share by Application5.4 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume and Value (Revenue)by Countries5.4.1 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.2 Africa UV Conveyor Systems Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.3 South Africa UV Conveyor Systems 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 Barrier Tube Packaging Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth and Forecast Report To 2017 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/request-sample/365952 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/report/global-barrier-tube-packaging-market-research-report-2017 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/check-discount/365952 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/send-an-enquiry/365952 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com A new and latest research report proposed by QY Research Groups renders a market summary of the Barrier Tube Packaging 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.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @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 Barrier Tube Packaging 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.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 Barrier Tube Packaging 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 Barrier Tube Packaging 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 Barrier Tube Packaging Market.Browse full report with Table of Content @Market Scope:Various aspects are considered in this all-inclusive market research report and it inspects the global Barrier Tube Packaging 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 Barrier Tube Packaging Market Analysis of global market trends, forecasts for 2022, 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 developmentstechnologically in the Barrier Tube Packaging MarketThis report focuses on top manufacturers in global market:Essel Propack Limited, Ampac Holdings, Montebello Packaging, Viva IML Tubes, Uflex Limited, Tubapack, IntraPac International Corporation, Tekni-Plex, Skypack India Pvt Ltd, Guangzhou Amy Plastic Tube, Shenzhen Unique Pack Products, Yangzhou Zhongjidingsheng Trading, Rego Packing Industry, Nantong YouRong Equipment,The research report comprises of markets comprehensive analysisgeographically 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 Barrier Tube Packaging 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 Barrier Tube Packaging Market manufacturers. The report can function as an assistive reference point for helping individuals as well as businesses from this segment.Ask for Discount @Some points from TOC:-Global Barrier Tube Packaging Market Research Report 20171 Barrier Tube Packaging Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Barrier Tube Packaging1.2 Barrier Tube Packaging Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Barrier Tube Packaging Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Barrier Tube Packaging Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Plastic1.2.4 LDPE1.2.5 HDPE1.2.6 PP1.2.7 PA1.2.8 EVOH1.2.9 Metal1.2.10 Aluminum1.2.11 Tin1.3 Global Barrier Tube Packaging Segment by Application1.3.1 Barrier Tube Packaging Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Pharmaceutical industry1.3.3 Consumer packaging1.3.4 Food packaging1.3.5 Personal care1.3.6 Construction1.3.7 Others1.4 Global Barrier Tube Packaging Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Barrier Tube Packaging Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Barrier Tube Packaging (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Barrier Tube Packaging Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Barrier Tube Packaging Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Enquiry Before Buying @About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:John+1-888-236-2744Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb- Microcrystalline Cellulose Market Size (Value), Share, Overview, Type & Applications, Growth, Trends, Regions, Forecast to 2022 https://marketsizeforecasters.com/get-sample/14604/?utm_source=OPR-SP https://marketsizeforecasters.com/enquire-for-discount/14604/?utm_source=OPR-SP https://marketsizeforecasters.com/2017-top-5-microcrystalline-cellulose-manufacturers-in-north-america-europe-asia-pacific-south-america-middle-east-and-africa https://marketsizeforecasters.com/north-america-acrylic-sheets-market/?utm_source=RR-SP http://marketsizeforecasters.com/ https://marketsizeforecasters.com/news Global Light Guide Plate 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 Microcrystalline Cellulose in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa, focuses on the top 5 Microcrystalline Cellulose Players in each region, with sales, price, revenue and market share for top 5 manufacturer, covering such as FMC, JRS, Mingtai, Asahi Kasei, Tembec, Accent Microcell, Ashland, Anhui Sunhere Pharmaceutical, Linghu Xinwang Chemical, Shandong Guangda, Huzhou Zhanwang Pharmaceutical, Juku Orchem Private, Wei Ming Pharmaceutical, Jining Six Best Excipients, Aoda Pharmaceutical, QuFuShi Medical, DFE Pharma, Ahua Pharmaceutical.Request a Sample Copy of Global Microcrystalline Cellulose Market Research Report @Market Segment by Regions, this Global Microcrystalline Cellulose Market 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 Microcrystalline Cellulose Market Split by Product Types, with sales, revenue, price, market share of each type, can be divided into Wood Pulp Based & Refined Cotton Based.Split by applications, this Global Microcrystalline Cellulose Market report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Microcrystalline Cellulose in each application, can be divided into - Food & Beverage, Cosmetics & Personal Care, Others.Enquiry Discount for Global Microcrystalline Cellulose Market Research Report @Major Points in Table of Contents Global Microcrystalline Cellulose Market Report2017 Top 5 Microcrystalline Cellulose Manufacturers/Players in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and AfricaMicrocrystalline Cellulose Market OverviewGlobal Microcrystalline Cellulose Sales, Revenue (value) and Market Share by PlayersGlobal Microcrystalline Cellulose Sales, Revenue (Value) by Regions, Type and Application (2012-2017)North America Top 5 Players Microcrystalline Cellulose Sales, Revenue and PriceEurope Top 5 Players Microcrystalline Cellulose Sales, Revenue and PriceAsia-Pacific Top 5 Players Microcrystalline Cellulose Sales, Revenue and PriceSouth America Top 5 Players Microcrystalline Cellulose Sales, Revenue and PriceMiddle East & Africa Top 5 Players Microcrystalline Cellulose Sales, Revenue and PriceGlobal Microcrystalline Cellulose Players Profiles/AnalysisMicrocrystalline Cellulose Manufacturing Cost AnalysisIndustrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersMarketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersMarket Effect Factors AnalysisGlobal Microcrystalline Cellulose Market Forecast (2017-2022)Research Findings and Conclusion..For more information about Global Microcrystalline Cellulose Market Report @Related Reports: -North America Acrylic Sheets Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), also known as acrylic or acrylic glass as well as by the trade names Plexiglas, Acrylite, Lucite, and Perspex among several others (see below), is a transparent thermoplastic often used in sheet form as a lightweight or shatter-resistant alternative to glass.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:News:Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales Market Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=997319&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-aluminum-lithium-alloys-sales-market-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/chemicals-market-reports-57.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales Market Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.This research report gives a definitive review on the Aluminum Lithium Alloys 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 Aluminum Lithium Alloys 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 markets 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.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @The geographical examination of the Aluminum Lithium Alloys 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 Aluminum Lithium Alloys is broken down utilizing systems, for example, the SWOT investigation, giving the reports clients a top notch point of view of all available data and what it might be molded like sooner rather than later. The Aluminum Lithium Alloys is likewise portrayed on the premise of its industry chain structure, in however much detail as could reasonably be expected.Table of ContentsGlobal Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales Market Report 20171 Aluminum Lithium Alloys Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Aluminum Lithium Alloys1.2 Classification of Aluminum Lithium Alloys1.2.1 2XXX Series1.2.2 8XXX series1.3 Application of Aluminum Lithium Alloys1.3.1 Aeronautics1.3.2 Astronautics1.3.3 Other1.4 Aluminum Lithium Alloys 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 Aluminum Lithium Alloys (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Browse Complete Report with TOC @2 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.4 Global Aluminum Lithium Alloys (Volume) by Application3 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers3.3 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Type3.4 United States Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Application4 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers4.3 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Type4.4 China Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Application5 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.3 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)5.2 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers5.3 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by Type5.4 Europe Aluminum Lithium Alloys Sales and Market Share by ApplicationRead 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 Breast Pump Market | Global Industry Size, Share & Forecast Analysis Report Upto 2022 Breast Pump Market http://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/download-sample-16714 http://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/buy-now-16714 www.decisiondatabases.com www.decisiondatabases.com Research Report on Global Breast Pump Market 2015 to 2022 added by DecisionDatabases.com studies the current and upcoming Market Size, Share, Demand, Growth, Trend and Forecast.The report on global breast pump market evaluates the growth trends of the industry through historical study and estimates future prospects based on comprehensive research. The report extensively provides the market share, growth, trends and forecasts for the period 2015-2022. The market size in terms of revenue (USD MN) is calculated for the study period along with the details of the factors affecting the market growth (drivers and restraints).Get FREE Sample Report Copy @The major market drivers are increasing count of working women population and high disposable income. The market growth might be restricted due to low birth rates and availability of superior quality alternatives like lactation inducing remedies under the study period.Furthermore, the report quantifies the market share held by the major players of the industry and provides an in-depth view of the competitive landscape. This market is classified into different segments with detailed analysis of each with respect to geography for the study period 2015-2022.The comprehensive value chain analysis of the market will assist in attaining better product differentiation, along with detailed understanding of the core competency of each activity involved. The market attractiveness analysis provided in the report aptly measures the potential value of the market providing business strategists with the latest growth opportunities.The report also covers the complete competitive landscape of the worldwide market with company profiles of key players such as Ameda AG, Bailey Medical Engineering, Buettner-Frank GmbH, Energizer Holdings, Inc., Guangzhou Happy Baby Products Ltd., Hygeia Medical Group, Lansinoh Laboratories, Linco Baby Merchandise Work's Co., Medela AG, Philips AVENT, Royal Philips Electronics NV and Whittlestone, Inc. Geographically, this market has been segmented into regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. The study details country-level aspects based on each segment and gives estimates in terms of market size.Table Of Contents- Overview1.Introduction2.Executive Summary3.Market Analysis4.Breast Pump Market Analysis By Product5.Breast Pump Market Analysis By Technology6.Breast Pump Market Analysis By Application7.Breast Pump Market Analysis By Geography8.Competitive Landscape Of The Breast Pump Companies9.Company Profiles Of The Breast Pump IndustryPurchase Complete Global Breast Pump Market Market Research Report At @About DecisionDatabases.comDecisionDatabases.com is one stop shop for your Market research requirements like market reports, company profiles and industry databases. Our team consists of expert Business Analysts who have been trained to map your research requirement to the correct research resource.Contact:DecisionDatabases.comPhone: +91 99 28 237112Email: sales@decisiondatabases.comWeb:About-Us:DecisionDatabases.com is a global business research reports provider, enriching decision makers and strategists with qualitative statistics. DecisionDatabases.com is proficient in providing syndicated research report, customized research reports, company profiles and industry databases across multiple domains.Our expert research analysts have been trained to map clients research requirements to the correct research resource leading to a distinctive edge over its competitors. We provide intellectual, precise and meaningful data at a lightning speed.About the company:3rd Floor,Fountain chambers,Nanabhai Lane,Fort, Mumbai - 1E-Mail: sales@decisiondatabases.comPhone: +91 99 28 237112Web: Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Market - Industry Analysis- Size, Share, Trends, Demand, Overview, Forecast to 2017 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/request-sample/365983 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/report/global-automotive-steering-wheel-switch-market-report-2017 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/check-discount/365983 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/send-an-enquiry/365983 https://www.qyresearchgroups.com The latest report Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 added by QY Research Groups to its vast repository provides important statistics and analytical data to give a complete understanding of the market. The report is beneficial for strategists and industry players to plan their future business strategies.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @Major players:The major players in global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch market include Leopold Kostal, Delphi, Valeo, TRW, Standard Motor Products, Marquardt, ACDelco, Panasonic, Omron, Toyo Denso, Tokai Rika, Alps, C&K Components, Changjiang Automobile Electronic, and Fangxiang.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Automotive Steering Wheel Switch in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering: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 EastBrowse full report with Table of Content @On the basis of product, the Automotive Steering Wheel Switch market is primarily split into:Seesaw typePush typeTumbler typeothersOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report covers:Passenger CarCommercial CarOthersAsk for Discount @Some points from TOC:-Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Market Research Report 20171 Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Automotive Steering Wheel Switch1.2 Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Segment by Types (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Production and Growth Rate (%) Comparison by Types (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Production Market Share (%) by Types (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Seesaw type1.2.4 Push type1.2.5 Tumbler type1.2.6 Others1.3 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Segment by Applications1.3.1 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Consumption (K Pieces) Comparison by Applications (2012-2022)1.3.2 Passenger Car1.3.3 Commercial Car1.3.4 Others1.4 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Market by Regions (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Market Size (Million USD) Comparison by Regions (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 EU Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 South Korea Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Market Size (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Automotive Steering Wheel Switch Capacity, Production (K Pieces) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Enquiry Before Buying @About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:John+1-888-236-2744Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb- Major Driving Factors for Compound Feed Market & Feed Additives Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/compound-feed-and-additives-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=134 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The compound feed industry has a vital role in the food chain, as it provides nutritious and sustainable food to animals raised in captivity. Feed additives are primarily supplements used in compound feed to enhance the total productivity and health of animals. In 2012, the global compound feed market and feed additives market stood at US$15.1 billion and is estimated to touch US$18.3 billion by the end of 2017, growing progressively at a 3.72% CAGR from 2013 to 2019.Rapidly increasing meat consumption, growing population, and rising consumer awareness are some of the factors expected to boost demand for compound feed in the coming years across the globe. Moreover, growth in GDP of economies and technological advancements are proving to be great opportunities for the market players.On the flip side, increase in ethanol production and quality control during manufacturing and processing are some of the factors that are anticipated to hamper growth of the global compound feed market in the near future.Browse Market Research Report @Swine Feed Segment of Global Compound Feed Market to Record 3.92% CAGR from 2012 to 2017On the basis of products, the global compound feed market is segmented into pet food, swine food, poultry food, cattle food, and aqua food. Among these segments, the swine feed segment dominated the global compound feed market in 2011, accounting for approximately 31% of the overall market. It is expected that this segment will touch US$81.1 billion by the end of 2017, growing significantly at a 3.92% CAGR from 2012 to 2017. The other segments will collectively boost the demand for compound feed in the near future and witness steady growth.On the other hand, the global feed additives market is segmented on the basis of products into feed acidifiers, amino acids, antioxidants, enzymes, antibiotics, and vitamins. In 2012, the amino acid segment led the global feed additives market, accounting for 30% of the overall market. It is anticipated that the amino acid segment will reach US$5745 million by the end of 2017. However, the highest growth rate will be showcased by feed acidifiers, growing at an expected 5.98% CAGR from 2012 to 2017.For more information on this report, fill the form @North America Led the Global Compound Feed Market in 2010The global compound feed market and feed additives market has been geographically segmented into Latin America, North America, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Asia Pacific and Japan. In 2010, the compound feed market was dominated by North America, which stood at US$72.3 billion in terms of revenue. On the other hand, Asia Pacific has a promising growth potential in this industry in the coming years, owing to the fact that consumption of animal-based and animal-derived products is rapidly increasing in this region due to high disposable incomes of the average consumer. In 2012, Europe held the largest share of the global market, accounting for 33.5% of the global feed additives market. The market for compound feed and feed additives in Europe stood at US$5078.7 million. This is due to the importance of meat and dairy in the traditional meals in many European countries.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.Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Business Opportunities in Brazilian Animal Feed Additives Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/brazilian-animal-feed-additives-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=611 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The Brazilian animal feed additives market is the focus of research of a recent market intelligence report by Transparency Market Research. The report is titled Brazilian Animal Feed Additives Market - Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth And Forecast 2011 - 2018, and is available the companys website for sale.Obtain Report Details @It gives a thorough cross-sectional overview of the crucial segments of the market and discusses the past and present state of the market. The report also includes numerous forward-looking statements pertaining to the overall growth prospects of the market over the period between 2011 and 2018, the most profitable segments to be considered for investment, and several other market segments.Animal feed additives are the ingredients added to animal feed for enhancing its nutritive quotient. Feed additives act as food supplements for agricultural animals that cannot obtain enough nutrients from the meals provided by farmers. Animal feed additives have myriad effects, such as prevention of contagious diseases and encouraging proper physical development of the animals being fed.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @The report examines the major factors influencing the Brazilian animal feed additives market and explores the key drivers, restraints, and trends that are expected to have sizeable impact on the overall development of the market over the forecast period. It also examines the major regulatory factors at play in shaping the present and future state of the market.Being one of the most promising developing economies worldwide, Brazil has presented excellent growth opportunities for a number of industries in the past few years. This market for animal feed additives is also significantly driven by the steadily progressing economy and rising disposable incomes of the population. The Brazil animal feed market has grown substantially in the past few years owing to the rising demand for meat and dairy products in the country. The rising concern regarding the zoonotic diseases is also a major factor driving the Brazilian market for animal feed additives.However, the market is restrained to a certain extent by the uncertain growth prospects of the Brazilian animal feed industry and rising prices of raw materials in the country.For enhanced comprehension of the complex market-related facts, the Brazilian animal feed additives market has been examined based on two criteria: Livestock, and product type.On the basis of livestock, the market has been segmented into aquaculture, swine, poultry, and beef. Product type wise, the market has been segmented into feed enzymes, antioxidants, vitamins, feed acidifiers, amino acids, antibiotics, and other varieties such as trace minerals and non-protein nitrogen (or NPN).The report also includes detailed business profiles and other market-related data pertaining to some of the most influential vendors in the Brazilian animal feed additives market. With the help of detailed market data about other areas of the market, the report presents a thorough overview of the competitive landscape of the market. Companies in the market profiled in the report include Danisco, Novozymes, DSM, BASF and Evonik.The market has been segmented as follows:Animal Feed Additives Market by Livestock:BeefSwinePoultryAquacultureAnimal Feed Additives Market, by Product Types:AntibioticsVitaminsAntioxidantsAmino AcidsFeed EnzymesFeed AcidifiersOthers (Trace minirals, NPN and so on)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.Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Laser Diode Market to Expand at Healthy CAGR of 12.6% from 2014 through 2020 - Industry Analysis, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=229912 http://www.researchmoz.us/semiconductors-market-reports-63.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG http://deep-research-report.blogspot.com/ ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Laser Diode Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020 " to it's Large Report database.Significant growth in the usage of Laser Diodes across various end-use markets owing to a number of advantageous features offered by this technology over conventional technologies is a key factor driving the laser diode market globally. In addition, the rapid growth in automotive and electronic manufacturing across the globe particularly in the developing economies of Asia Pacific and Rest of the World region is further propelling the laser diode market. Furthermore, growing applications of laser diodes across end-use verticals such as military and defense, healthcare and medical, fiber optic communication and telecommunication are further bolstering this market, globally.This market research study analyzes the laser diode market on a global level, and provides estimates in terms of revenue (USD billion) from 2014 to 2020. The study identifies the drivers and restraints affecting the industry and analyzes their impact over the forecast period. Moreover, it highlights the significant opportunities for market growth in the next few years.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:The report segments the market on the basis of geography into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), and Rest of the World (RoW). In addition, the report segments the market by doping materials into InGaN, GaN, AlGaInP, GaAlAs, GaInAsSb and other types of doping materials. The market has also been segmented on the basis of technology into double hetero structure laser diodes, quantum well laser diodes, quantum cascade laser diodes, distributed feedback laser diodes, separate confinement hetero structure (SCH) laser diodes, VCSEL diodes and VECSEL diodes.Additionally, the report segments the market based on property (wavelength) into infrared laser diode, red laser diode, blue laser diode, blue violet laser diode, ultraviolet laser diode and green laser diode. The market has also been segmented on the basis of applications into industrial, consumer electronics, medical, automotive, healthcare, defense and other applications. All these segments have been estimated in terms of revenue (USD billion).Read All Semiconductors Market Research Reports @Table of ContentsChapter 1 Preface1.1 Report Description1.2 Research Scope1.3 Research MethodologyChapter 2 Executive SummaryChapter 3 Global Laser Diode Market Overview3.1 Introduction3.2 Value chain analysis3.3 Market Drivers3.3.1 Significant growth in the usage of laser diodes across end-use markets3.3.2 Greater number of advantages offered by laser technology over conventional material processing technologies3.3.3 Government regulations for mandatory use of laser technology in the marking and engraving of products3.3.4 Rising applications of laser products in medical surgeries and devices3.4 Market Restraints3.4.1 Limitations of laser diodes coupled with high initial costs involved in laser processing machines3.4.2 Rising environmental concerns regarding the mining of rare earth elements3.5 Market Opportunities3.5.1 Growth in fiber lasers owing to numerous advantageous features offered by them3.5.2 Rising use of disk lasers in industrial applications3.5.3 Emerging applications for laser technologyAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at: yStats.com: Philippine online retail forecasted to experience immense growth through 2025 yStats.com Logo https://www.ystats.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20170101_Product-Brochure-Order-Form_Philippines-B2C-E-Commerce-Market-2017.pdf www.ystats.com www.twitter.com/ystats www.linkedin.com/company/ystats www.facebook.com/ystats yStats.com, an international secondary E-Commerce market research firm headquartered in Hamburg, published a new report Philippines B2C E-Commerce Market 2017 that showcases that although the Philippines online retail market was the most minuscule out of the six leading E-Commerce markets in Southeast Asia, its growth rate is expected to be higher than most other countries in the region through 2025.Online retail in the Philippines is in infantile stages due to about 1% of all retail sales stemming from E-Commerce, confirms information found by yStats.com. However, the Philippines is actually forecasted to soon rank second in terms of market growth amongst the leading six online retail markets in Southeast Asia due to a raise in Internet and smartphone penetration. It is also expected to overtake Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia to rank as third in the area by 2025 regarding B2C E-Commerce market size.E-Commerce in the Philippines is, however, experiencing growth obstacles such as an underdeveloped logistics infrastructure and their complex island geography. Customers also lack trust in online credit card payments, leaving cash on delivery as the preferred payment method. Third party survey results cited in the yStats.com report conveyed that almost three-quarters of digital buyers from this country still paid with cash when receiving goods.Information from the yStats.com report reveals how Lazada, the major player in this region who is controlled by Alibaba, accounted for almost one-fifth of the E-Commerce market in the Philippines in 2016. Though they dont have local E-Commerce presence, US-based Amazon has still made their mark with over half of digital buyers beginning a product search through them.For further information, see:About yStats.comFounded in 2005 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, yStats.com is one of the world's leading secondary market research companies. We are committed to providing the most up-to-date and objective data on Global B2C E-Commerce and Online Payment markets to sector-leading companies worldwide.Our multilingual staff researches, gathers, filters and translates information from thousands of reputable sources to synthesize accurate and timely reports in our areas of expertise, covering more than 100 countries and all global regions. Our market reports focus predominantly on online retail and payments, but also cover a broad range of related topics including M-Commerce, Cross-Border E-Commerce, E-Commerce Delivery, Online Gaming and many others. In addition to our wide selection of market reports, we also provide custom market research services.We are proud to cooperate with companies like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters. Given our numerous citations in leading media sources and journals worldwide, including Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, we are considered one of the most highly-reputed international secondary market research companies with an expertise in the areas of B2C E-Commerce and Online Payment.Press Contact:yStats.com GmbH & Co. KGBehringstrasse 28a, D-22765 HamburgPhone: +49 (0)40 - 39 90 68 50Fax: +49 (0)40 - 39 90 68 51E-Mail: press@ystats.comInternet:Twitter:LinkedIn:Facebook: Global Rubella Testing Market to Gain Momentum due to Increasing Infections and Profitable Regions MRRSE http://www.mrrse.com/sample/1871 http://www.mrrse.com/rubella-diagnostic-testing-market https://www.linkedin.com/company/mrrse https://twitter.com/MRRSEmrrse Albany, New York, May 10, 2017: Recently, due to the rising number of infants born with congenital rubella syndrome or CRS, the business for rubella virus diagnosis has boomed across the global medical sector at a phenomenal pace. Recognizing this great feat, a new research report titled as Rubella Testing Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 2024 has been published in the vast online collection of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE). This report is an in-depth and professional study of the current situation along with the future growth estimation of the global rubella testing market for the forecast period from 2016-2024. It also offers enterprising information related to regional dynamics and the current situation of the key vendors.Request for Sample Report:The report presents a complete evaluation of the market through accurate introspection of the trajectory of the market by studying the historical data and observing the present as well as future status of the market. It uses powerful analyzing tools like value chain analysis and goes a step ahead by executing a stakeholder analysis for the benefit of the client. Serious market dynamics like challenges, drivers and opportunities are also evaluated in this research study. Based on the report, the World Health Organization (WHO) has informed that in 1996 eighty-three countries have introduced rubella-containing vaccines into their regular national immunization routine; and in 2011, the number increased to 130. The report also revealed that North America towers over the global market for rubella testing, as the region portrayed a stronger demand for diagnosis. Furthermore, the increasing awareness among the public and the federal governments initiative, supported the growth of the market in North America. Reflecting the same trend was Europe, which stood second in the market for global rubella testing due to increasing awareness among people and the European governments serious initiative.A valuable facet of this report is the segmentation of the global market for Rubella testing in terms of applications, and regions. The report segregates the applications in this market into hospitals, commercial and private labs, physician offices and public health labs. Whereas, the sectors active regions are split into North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. According to the report, the Asia-Pacific region is largely untapped and is predicted to expose bountiful opportunities in the future. This is expected to happen due to rising market penetration in this region along with improved medical infrastructure.Browse Full Report with TOC:Some of the successful vendors who have gained profits from this sector are Abbott Laboratories Inc., Becton, Dickinson and Company, Biomerica, Inc., bioMerieux, Inc., Novartis Diagnostics and Johnson & Johnson Diagnostics Inc.About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comFollow Us on LinkedIn-Follow Us On Twitter- Detailed Analysis of Global Anticoagulants Market: Industry Size, Shares, Growth, Trends, Forecasts & Opportunities 2016-2020 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=728254 http://www.researchmoz.us/healthcare-market-reports-56.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG http://healthcare-research-report.blogspot.in/ ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Global Anticoagulants Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020) " to it's Large Report database.Scope of the ReportThe report entitled Global Anticoagulants Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020) provides an analysis of the global anticoagulants market with detailed description of market size & growth and market share by products.The report also provides a detailed analysis of anticoagulants available in the market. Details of Lovenox, Arixtra, Fraxiparine (injectable anticoagulants), Xarelto, Pradaxa and Eliquis (NOACs) has provided in terms of their worldwide sales.The report provides detailed regional analysis of the US anticoagulants market covering market size and segmentation of the market.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:Furthermore, the report also assesses the key opportunities available in the market and outlines the market dynamics that are and will be accountable for growth of the industry. Growth of the global anticoagulants market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration previous growth outlines, growth drivers and the existing and forthcoming trends.A brief company profiling of major market players such as Aspen, Snaofi, Pfizer and Bayer has been provided in the report on the basis of attributes like business overview, financial overview and business strategies adopted by these companies in order to grow in the market.Country Coverage- The USCompany Coverage- Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd.- Sanofi- Pfizer Inc.- BayerRead All Healthcare Market Research Reports @Table of Content1.Executive Summary2.Introduction2.1 Overview of Anticoagulants2.1.1 Categories of AnticoagulantsUnfractionated herapinWarfarinLow molecular weight heparins (LMWH)Factor XA inhibitorsDirect thrombin inhibitors (DTIs)2.1.2 Novel Oral Anticoagulants (NOACs)3. Global Market Analysis3.1 Global Anticoagulants Market: An Analysis3.1.1 Global Anticoagulants Market by Value3.1.2 Global Anticoagulants Market by Products4. Product Analysis4.1 Injectable Anticoagulants4.1.1 Lovenox (Enoxaparin Sodium)4.1.2 Nadroparin (Fraxiparine)4.1.3 Arixtra (Fondaparinux Sodium)About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at: Energy Utility Analytics Market - Global Industry Analysis Growth 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/energy-utility-analytics-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=18281 For encapsulation of advantageous opportunities in the energy sector, utility and energy companies are transforming their systems into smarter energy systems, which would feature a new-way flow of information in energy and utility sectors. Energy utility analytics enables near real-time analysis of processes, thereby helping in optimization of operations through efficient identification and isolation of inefficiencies and failures. The energy utility analytics market has the following perspectives: vendor performance & risk management, demand forecasting, spend analytics, inventory optimization, logistics & routing analytics, and predictive analytics. Business analytics coupled with data mining, self-service, predictive analytics, and aggregation tools is employed to get more transparent information for critical decision-making and implementing the decision support system. This transforms mobility and supporting communication technologies into high-investment priority areas for utilities. Virtually all new technology projects in energy utility would require a combination of IT (Information Technology), OT (Operational Technology), and planning analytics such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) or advanced distribution management systems (ADMSs). More than any industry, the energy utility analytics market faces the challenge of separation between IT and OT management, coupled with the importance of hybrid projects that link IT and OT systems. The energy industry would benefit by aligning their OT support, standards, and procedures with those of IT. This would shorten the time consumed to develop governance over OT.Browse Market Research Report @:Energy Utility Analytics Market: Dynamics and TrendsMajor forces driving the energy utility analytics market are the increasing demand for energy, need for greener environment, and increasing demand from the consumer side to know their energy consumption pattern. Big data analytics, supply chain analytics, cloud computing, and operational analytics are the latest trends applied in the energy sector. Big data analytics service puts in: place data, processes, analytics tools, and visualizations by enabling faster time to insights. It enhances the quality and reliability of insights through exploratory and self-learning models. Business outcomes are thus improved through data-driven decisions. Energy utility analytics Big Data has a smart grid development system. This smart grid development increases data quantity by high magnitude. This grid development is driven by a host of devices and new IT applications such as AMI, synchrophasors and smart appliances, microgrids, advanced distribution management, remote asset monitoring, event avoidance, and self-healing networks. AMI is one of the major constituents of smart grid that potentially provides a communication backbone for low-latency data. This is aimed at improving distribution asset utilization, failure detection and facilitating consumer inclusion in energy markets. Different market structures, regulatory drivers, and benefit expectations create different ownership models for components of the AMI technology stack. This favors different technology solutions across the globe.Energy Utility Analytics Market: SegmentationThe energy and utility analytics market is segmented by type (software and services), by application (predictive maintenance, load research & forecasting, and transmission & distribution management), by end-use (energy, oil & gas, and utilities), and by region (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa).Energy Utility Analytics Market: Region-wise OutlookNorth America and Europe hold the leading share of the energy and utility analytics market as of 2016. The market in Asia Pacific (APAC) is projected to expand at the maximum rate during the forecast period. This is due to flexible policies of governments in developing countries as well as the ever-expanding digital industry in the APAC region.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @:Energy Utility Analytics Market: Key PlayersKey players include IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation, SAP SE, Ericsson, Cisco Systems Inc., Eaton Corporation, Schneider Electric Company, Capgemini, Oracle Corporation, TIBCO Software Inc., Infosys, and Wipro.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207 New Research In Action Report - IT And Enterprise Service Management SaaS And Software: Market Sizing 2016 And Market Forecast 2017 www.researchinaction.de/index.php/research/19-research-2017-english/64-2017-1-it-and-enterprise-service-management-saas-and-software-market-sizing-2016-and-market-forecast-2017 www.researchinaction.de Hartenfels, Germany May 10th 2017: Healthy growth and renewed activity in a mature market.Research In Action GmbH publishes its first global market sizing and market forecast for the IT and Enterprise Service Management SaaS and Software market.Research in Action uses a unique, primarily survey-based methodology for market sizing and market forecast. The data used for the market sizing and the market forecast was collected between Q3 2016 and Q1 of 2017, covering 2,750 IT and business buyers in a combined telephone and online survey.The following market categories were used: End-To-End Performance Management which includes all infrastructure elements like data center, branch offices, servers and networks, databases, mainframes and applications (APM), event correlation, SLM, BSM, as well as end-user experience. Change and Configuration Management which includes provisioning, capacity planning, software distribution, CMDBs, virtualization, as well as job scheduling. Customer and Vendor Management which includes service desk, service catalog, workflow automation, social IT, BYOD management, as well as all aspects of vendor and supplier interaction. Analytics, Dashboards and Big Data which includes all matters of visualization and data analysis, as well as Cloud management. Resource and Asset Management which includes tracking of IT and non-IT assets, IT financials, back-charging, IT service portfolio, workforce, as well as IT contracts. Automation which includes all aspects of process automation and Robotics. Enterprise Service Management which includes BTM/BPM, HR, technical/field services as well as shared services organizations.$ Billion2017 33,5Growth 12%2016 29,9Detailed report information:Thomas Mendel Ph.D., Managing Director of the Research In Action GmbH comments on the results of the study: Today, IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is more than just one standard amongst many others. According to the results of our survey, roughly 85% of enterprises globally are using ITIL. This makes IT and Enterprise Service Management, which is largely based on ITIL one of the most important markets. Buyers spending patterns from our survey predict a robust market growth of 12% for 2017, up from $ b 29,9 to $ b 33,5. There are many players in this market, well above the 1,000 threshold. The trend of many acquisitions will continue through 2017. Areas to watch are Enterprise Service Management, Application Performance Management and AutomationAbout Research In Action:Research In Action GmbH is a leading independent information and communications technology research and consulting company. The company provides both forward-looking as well as practical advice to enterprise as well as vendor clients.Press Contact:Research In Action GmbHDr. Thomas Mendel Ph.D.Managing DirectorHauptstr. 956244 HartenfelsGermanyTelephone: +49 160 99492223E-Mail: tmendel@researchinaction.deInternet: Global Smart Toilet Seat Market Overview | Forecast & Analysis Outlook -2022 http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=hyr0394 http://www.marketintelreports.com/purchase.php?id=hyr0394 www.marketintelreports.com The global Smart Toilet Seat market is estimated to reach 2.2 Billion USD in 2017. The objective of report is to define, segment, and project the market on the basis of hearting type, application, and region, and to describe the content about the factors influencing market dynamics, policy, economic, technology and market entry etc. The research analysts provide an elaborate description of the value chain and its distributor analysis.This report provides comprehensive analysis of Key market segments and sub-segments Evolving market trends and dynamics Changing supply and demand scenarios Quantifying market opportunities through market sizing and market forecasting Tracking current trends/opportunities/challenges Competitive insights Opportunity mapping in terms of technological breakthroughs.Based on products type By Hearting Type Storage Hearting Type Instantaneous Heating TypeBased on Application Residential CommercialGlobal Smart Toilet Seat Market: Regional Segment Analysis North America Europe China Japan KoreaThe Major players reported in the market include: Toto LIXIL Panasonic Kohler Coway Toshiba Jomoo Brondell Dongyang Magic Dongpeng Duravit ROCA Lotus HygieneReasons to buy This report of Smart Toilet Seat Market provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsFree Sample Brochure of report @For complete report @About us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aim to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions, we do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.A group of industry veterans who are well experienced in reputed international consulting firms after identifying the sourcing needs of MNCs for market intelligence, have together started this business savior MarketIntelReports.MIR intends to be a one-stop shop with an intuitive design, exhaustive database, expert assistance, secure cart checkout and data privacy integrated. It curates the list of reports, publishers and studies to ensure that the database is constantly updated to dynamically meet the targeted, specific needs of our clients.MarketIntelReports currently has more than 10,000 plus titles and 35+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand Supply Gap. We cover more than 15 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Building & Construction, Agriculture, Food & Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Contact us:Mayur S.Sales Manager2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington, Delaware, 19808United Statessales@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343 Digital Forensics Market - Continuous Improvements In Existing Technologies http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/digital-forensics-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=5588 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Digital Forensics Market: OverviewAt present, digital forensics technology is employed in civil court and criminal cases and is also utilized in the private sector for carrying on internal investigations. Industrial espionage, cyber-attacks, identity fraud, information security breaches, financial fraud, and a number of other types of illegal activities can be detected by using the technology of digital forensics. The utilization of this technology is on the rise in courts owing to the immense increase in the employment of electronic devices. It is also being highly adopted in private and government company networks due to the increasing count of attacks in different regions globally.Obtain Report Details @This report presents the competitive evaluation along with region-specific evaluation on the global digital forensics market. It identifies the key restraints and drivers in the market along with presenting the definition of the market. The prime factors responsible for altering the market scenarios, the identification of prominent companies impacting the market, and the primary opportunities present in the market have also been review in detail under this study.The study also encapsulates an evaluation and identification of the micro and macro factors impacting the market for digital forensics on both regional and global levels. The competitive landscape section of this study presents the leading market players and presents an evaluation of their top financial information and their strategic interests. A detailed insight on the regions in which the digital forensics market is on the boom also forms a fundamental part of this research report.Digital Forensics Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe growing threats from terrorist and crime attacks and the rising security concerns in numerous industries globally are the top factors providing impetus to the development of the global digital forensics market. In addition, the swift economic development in emerging nations will also bode well for the growth of the overall market. Furthermore, owing to the immense development in technology, the count of mobiles, computers, and other types of electronic devices is predicted to rise, which will further augment the development of the global digital forensics market.The wide application areas such as defense and aerospace, transport, education, and healthcare, among others, of digital forensics technology will also bolster the growth of this market. Furthermore, developments in digital forensic tools have emerged as key opportunities in the market. On the other hand, the rising employment of cloud-based applications and the consistent threat of security may impede the development of the global digital forensics market. The increasing complexity of mobile devices may also work against the development of the global digital forensics market.Fill The Form For An Exclusive Sample Of This Report @Digital Forensics Market: Region-wise OutlookOn the basis of geography, the global digital forensics market is segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World (RoW). Of these, the North America digital forensics market represented the most significant share of around 53% in the market in terms of revenue. The reason for the superiority of this region is owing to the rising expending on forensic tools in different industries of this region. In addition, this technology is being employed by the FBI and the state police departments in order to prevent illegal activities in various parts of Canada and the U.S.Key players Mentioned in the Report are:The leading players in the global digital forensics market are LogRythm, Inc. (U.S.), Guidance Software, Inc. (U.S.), AccessData Group, Inc. (U.S.), Binary Intelligence (U.S), Paraben Corporation (U.S.), Fireeye Inc. (U.S.), ASR Data (U.S.), Lancope, Inc. (U.S.), Digital Detectives (U.S.), and Global Digital Forensics (U.S.), among others.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Steel in Italy metal packaging market accounted for USD 2,842.70 Million, in 2015 with 2.09% CAGR https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/statistical-reports/enquiry/2619 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/statistical-reports/italy-metal-packaging-material-market-2619 The Italy Metal Packaging Market Material Segment Outlook (2016-2022) statistical report, published by Market Research Future contains succinct information on Italy metal packaging market, segmented on the basis of materials (steel and aluminum).Make an Enquiry @Fast-paced lifestyle and dependency on pre-cooked food & beverages are the major drivers of Italy metal packaging market. However, extreme competition and environmental issues are certain restraints that are projected to hinder the growth of this market. The report provides information on Italy global metal packaging market and forecast from 2016 to 2022.Access Report Details @Table of Contents1. Infographic Summary1.1 ITALY Metal Packaging market size, by material, 2016-2022, (in USD Million)2. Introduction3. Global Market DataList of TablesTABLE 1 ITALY METAL PACKAGING MARKET: BY MATERIAL, 2014-2022 (USD MILLION)List of FiguresFIGURE 1 ITALY METAL PACKAGING MARKET: BY MATERIAL, 2015-2022 (IN USD MILLION)ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance Italy Metal Packaging Market Material Segment Outlook (2016-2022) chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.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.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Lucentis Drug Market Overview, Competitive Analysis & Development by Companies, Analysis and Forecasts to 2017 Reportsweb http://www.reportsweb.com/lucentis-drug-insights-2017 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001544522/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001544522/buying Publisher Drug Report, "Lucentis- Drug Insights, 2017" highlights the Lucentis marketed details, pipeline status and the Global API Manufacturers along with the location. The Publisher's report covers the Global Market Assessment of the Lucentis covering the total sales estimation and also provides the Lucentis sales performance during the historical period and forecast period to 2018. Publisher's Report also covers the detailed clinical assessment of Lucentis, patents information and exclusivity data, route of synthesis, competitive landscape, and generic players. In addition to this, Publisher's Report provides the SWOT analysis for the Lucentis.For more informationScope- A review of the Lucentis based on information derived from company and industry-specific sources- Coverage of the Marketed data of the Lucentis on the basis of MOA, target, dosage, route of administration, molecule type, strength, Chemical type and ATC Classification- Coverage of the United States Drug Master File (US DMF), Active Substance Master File/EU DMF and API Manufactures in China & India for Lucentis with location details- Patent Expiry Timeline and Exclusivity Details- Route of Synthesis of the API- Global Forecasted Sales Figure to 2018- Qualitative and quantitative assessment of market space- SWOT AnalysisRequest Sample CopyReasons to buy- Evaluate the marketing status and exclusivity details of Lucentis to exploit opportunities for generic drug development opportunities.- Design effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage by identifying the key patent expiry details and exclusivity with respect to Lucentis.- API intelligence over Lucentis and gaining primary intelligence over Active Ingredients manufacturers across the globe.- Understanding the chemical route of synthesis of Lucentis.- Uncovering opportunities in the rapidly growing the US market- Stay ahead of competition by understanding the changing competitive landscape- Effectively plan your M&A and partnership strategies by identifying drugs with the most promising sales potential- Make more informed business decisions from insightful and in-depth analysis of the drug's performance- Obtain sales forecast for currently marketed drug for to 2018Make an enquiry:Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb 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.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Smart Healthcare Products Market- Market Data Forecast http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/smart-healthcare-products-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=9437 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The scope of product differentiation in the global market for smart healthcare products is quite high and therefore allows multiple players to be in the lead across various product segments. For instance, in 2014, Epic Systems Corporation and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions were at the top of the e-health records charts, Medtronic and Olympus Corporation led the smart pills sales, while Becton Dickinson & Company and Medtronic again were at the forefront in smart syringes.As per a recent release by Transparency Market Research on smart healthcare products, the key players of this global market regardless of their priority products segment - have all shown great interest in consolidation efforts. They have focused on creating fruitful partnerships and acting on several mergers and acquisitions over the past few years.The global market for smart healthcare products is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.84% from 2015 to 2023 with respect to the revenue. It is expected to be valued at US$31.71 bn before the end of 2016 and US$57.85 bn by 2023.View the report @Smart pills are showing a humongous increase in demand and are likely to continue doing so till 2023. Smart pills are projected at a very promising CAGR 18.84% from 2015 to 2023. Meanwhile, electronic health records are expected to remain the dominant smart healthcare product segment till 2023 when it is expected to accrue a revenue of US$39.61 bn. In terms of smart healthcare product applications, health data storage and exchange as a segment is expected to generate US$39.73 bn by 2023, thus remaining the dominant application segment till then.North America Stays on Top of Smart Healthcare Products DemandThe sheer demand for smart healthcare products in North America is expected to keep this region at the top of the charts till 2023. By the end of 2023, North America is expected to gather US$21.09 bn in smart healthcare product revenue. This is attributed to the large number of incoming small and medium-sized enterprises, along with constant market consolidation efforts by the more prominent players.Meanwhile, Asia Pacific is expected to show a robust CAGR of 9.77% from 2015 to 2023 owing to a quickly evolving healthcare industry on a digital scale. The digitization of the Asia Pacific healthcare industry is supported by both private and government organizations, allowing for a high scope of entry for local as well as globally prominent smart healthcare product manufacturers.Smart Healthcare Products Incorporation into IoT Apps to Consolidate Demand Over TimeThe IoT revolution has already caught up with the global smart healthcare products market and is creating a vast scope of applications in the market through the use of advanced sensors and machine communication technologies. The implementation of the latest IoT technologies is allowing manufacturers of healthcare hardware and medical equipment to produce and store medical records at rates much faster than before, states a TMR analyst.The scope of application of IoT in smart healthcare products is extremely high and can only be revealed through constant development efforts. A lot of top healthcare organizations are already using measuring and monitoring devices that are remotely controlled to provide astute critical care to patients. Medical personnel can access the recorded information at any time from relevant connected devices and across multiple device platforms, thus increasing the patients chances of recovery vastly.Security Issues Continue to Deter Smart Healthcare Product UsersAmong the few restraints on the growth of smart healthcare products on a global scale, two key factors that lie in its path are cost and safety. A large number of smart healthcare products are very high in cost, making them inaccessible for patients from several developing economies. The cost of implementing smart healthcare products is also quite high for healthcare organizations as well, as the growing use of cutting-edge smart tools requires a greater number of skilled labor, which is currently short in supply on a global level. Several studies have also posited that the use of smart healthcare products by small healthcare organizations or individual medical practitioners can actually be detrimental to their financial situation rather than make things smoother and cost-effective. At the moment, most large-scale implementations are therefore restricted to large healthcare organizations.The healthcare sector is not completely immune to market volatility, but can still show a constant rate of improvement especially in developing economies. Manufacturers of smart healthcare products can look to these regions for better chances while the spending in their healthcare industries increases steadily, adds the analyst.The information presented in this review is based on a Transparency Market Research report, titled, Smart Healthcare Products Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Smart Healthcare Products Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Key Takeaways:E-health records to remain leading smart healthcare product type till 2023, expected to generate US$39.61 bn by 2023.Health data storage and exchange is expected to produce a revenue total of US$39.73 bn by 2023 for the global smart healthcare products market.North America demand for smart healthcare products expected to generate a revenue of US$21.09 bn by 2023.Key segments of the Global Smart Healthcare Products MarketSmart Healthcare Products MarketBy Product TypeSmart SyringesSmart PillsSmart RFID CabinetsElectronic Health RecordBy Industry VerticalHealth Data Storage and ExchangeMonitoring and TreatmentInventory ManagementBy GeographyNorth AmericaEuropeLatin AmericaAPACMiddle East and AfricaAbout 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: Teleradiology Market Report 2015 - 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/teleradiology-technology-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1132 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The highly fragmented market for teleradiology features the presence of a large number of regional players, with the exception of some large companies with international presence, such as vRad, Inc., Radiology Reporting Online, and USA Rad. North America and Europe, the regions with some of the largest vendors in the global teleradiology market, will be the key enablers of teleradiology practices across the world and play a central role in the overall development of the global market, notes a recent report by Transparency Market Research (TMR).Acquisitions of small, regional players, and long-term contracts with remotely located community hospitals and other healthcare service providers, especially across emerging markets such as Asia Pacific and Latin America, will allow teleradiology companies to expand their global footprint. Although less in number than in the European market, teleradiology companies in North America will contribute the largest share in the overall revenues of the global teleradiology market from 2015 through 2023, thanks to their global presence.Rise in Healthcare Expenditure and Improved Healthcare Infrastructure to Enable Widespread Adoption of TeleradiologyThe vast improvement in telecommunication networks, enhanced data transfer speeds, and improved digital infrastructure of remote parts of the world has revolutionized the global teleradiology market in the past few years. In the next few years as well, developments across the data transmission field will be prove to be a major driver of the global teleradiology market, allowing its evolution from an ancillary radiology discipline to a mainstream practice.View the report @Radiology is a cost-intensive diagnostic modality owing to the high prices of the technologically advanced medical imaging machines central to the field. This factor, in combination with the factor of unavailability of broadband networks in urban dwellings has remained one of the toughest challenges for the teleradiology market in the past years. However, substantial rise in healthcare expenditures and widened broadband networks in the past few years have enabled the widespread expansion of teleradiology practices on a global front. These factors have especially allowed the teleradiology market in extending its reach to emerging economies such as Latin America and Asia Pacific, considered to be the regional markets with the most lucrative growth opportunities.Asia Pacific to Provide Most Attractive Growth OpportunitiesNorth America is currently the leading regional market for teleradiology and is expected to provide considerable growth opportunities over the next few years as well. The market in the region will be driven by the digitally advanced healthcare infrastructures, integration of teleradiology services in the workflow of a vast number of medical imaging service providers, and high healthcare awareness among the population. The rising prevalence of a number of cancers in the region has also led to an increased need for effective teleradiology services in the region.Nevertheless, Asia Pacific will provide the most lucrative growth opportunities for the global teleradiology market in the coming years. Factors fueling demand for teleradiology services in the region will be the rising expenditure on health and wellbeing, improving healthcare infrastructure, and widening network of high-speed broadband services.The global teleradiology market is expected to expand at a favorable 11.3% CAGR over the period between 2015 and 2023, and rise from a valuation of US$1,354.6 mn in 2014 to US$3,632.6 mn in 2023.The review is based on a recent market research report published by Transparency Market Research, titled Teleradiology Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Teleradiology Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.The market has been segmented as follows:Teleradiology Market, by ModalityX-RayUltrasoundComputed TomographyMagnetic Resonance ImagingNuclear ImagingTeleradiology Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeU.K.GermanyRest of EuropeAsia-PacificAustraliaMalaysiaPhilippinesRest of Asia PacificMiddle EastSaudi ArabiaQatarRest of Middle EastAfricaNigeriaGhanaRest of AfricaRest of the WorldAbout 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: Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market Research Report 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/respiratory-monitoring-devices.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1415 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com While a handful players have taken up a majority share in the global distribution of respiratory monitoring devices, the remainder of the market is marked by a very large number of small players.Of the key multinationals dominating the distribution of respiratory monitoring devices in 2014, CareFusion Corporation, Smiths Medical, and ResMed, Inc., had garnered a total share of 54.2% in terms of value.As described in a research report released by Transparency Market Research, the fragmented nature of the global respiratory monitoring devices market allows for a very high intensity of rivalry. This market is exceptionally dynamic as it is primarily controlled the rapid rate of technological development in the devices.The market for respiratory monitoring devices in major economic regions is more or less saturated due to the strong presence of multiple prominent players. As a result, the threat of new entrants is expected to remain moderate to low.The global market for respiratory monitoring devices is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.2% in terms of revenue from 2015 to 2023. By the end of 2016, this revenue is expected to reach US$1.60 bn and US$2.79 bn by 2023.View the report @Hospitals not only form the leading end-user segment of respiratory monitoring devices, but are also projected to be the leading segment in terms of growth rate. Hospitals are expected to generate a revenue of US$1.89 bn for respiratory monitoring devices by 2023. This segment is projected at a CAGR of 8.3% from 2015 to 2023.APAC Demand for Respiratory Monitoring Devices SoarsThe healthcare and medical devices industries of Asia Pacific are currently experiencing a very high rate of development. The booming economy of countries such as China and India, the growing government support towards healthcare development, the high density of population in these countries, and the growing trend of medical tourism are all responsible for bringing out the greater demand for respiratory monitoring devices.By the end of 2023, North America, the currently leading region in respiratory monitoring devices consumption, is expected to reach US$266.0 mn. Within 2015 to 2023, Asia Pacific will be showing a CAGR of 8.5% in respiratory monitoring devices.Asthma, COPD Cases on the Rise GloballyThe primary cause for a heavier demand of respiratory monitoring devices is the growing requirement for keeping a large volume of these devices in the market. Most medical devices are produced on a basis of need and there is certainly a much greater need for respiratory monitoring devices than before. Public health related bodies such as the CDC, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, and the American Lung Association are all shedding light on the growing prevalence of patients with respiratory problems. This is true especially for COPD and asthma, states a TMR analyst.Two factors responsible for this are the growing number of geriatrics in the world along with the growing incorporation of negative lifestyle habits such as smoking.The rate of technological advancement in respiratory monitoring devices is very high, thereby allowing players to keep a dynamic output. A large proportion of respiratory monitoring devices manufacturers is also supported by relevant governments, thereby allowing them to approach research and developed more efficiently.High Costs Deter Large Patient Base from Using Respiratory Monitoring DevicesThe cost of advanced spirometry devices is very high in comparison to peak flow meters and pulse oximeters. This disparity in costs is enough to deter a majority of patients to stick to the latter devices rather than go for advanced ones. Additionally, the installation of advanced respiratory monitoring devices requires skilled professionals, the lack of whom is further adding to the strain of providing them.There is currently a large untapped market for respiratory monitoring devices in the developing economies. Globally prominent players can take more notice of regions such as Asia Pacific and Latin America to make the most of their increasing demand, adds the analyst.The information presented in this review is based on a Transparency Market Research report, titled, Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2015 - 2023.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Key Takeaways:Hospitals expected to generate US$1.80 bn for respiratory monitoring devices by 2023.Pulse oximeter expected to remain most popular respiratory monitoring device, generating US$937 mn by 2023.North America expected to retain leading consumption of respiratory monitoring devices till 2023, to generate US$266 mn in this market by 2023.Key segments of the Global Respiratory Monitoring Devices MarketGlobal Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market, by TechnologySpirometryPlethysmographyIOS/FOTGlobal Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market, by End-userHospitalsLaboratoriesHome UseGlobal Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificLatin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaAbout 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: Corporate Wellness Market Research Report by Key Players Analysis 2024 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.Increase of Non-communicable Diseases Driving Need for Health and Wellness ProgramsThe 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.View the report @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.High Cost of Implementation Restricting Widespread AdoptionImplementing 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.China to Lead APAC Corporate Wellness Market throughout Forecast PeriodBy 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.This review is based on the findings of a TMR report titled Corporate Wellness Market - Asia Pacific Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Corporate Wellness Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Asia Pacific Corporate Wellness Market, by ServiceHealth Risk AssessmentFitnessSmoking CessationHealth ScreeningWeight ManagementNutritionOthers (stress management, diabetes management, and vaccinations)Asia Pacific Corporate Wellness Market, by CountryChinaJapanIndiaAustraliaSingaporeHong KongMalaysiaThailandRest of Asia PacificAbout 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: Transcatheter Embolization and Occlusion Devices Market Size - Industry Share Report 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/transcatheter-embolization-occlusion-devices-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2242 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The top three players in the global transcatheter embolization and occlusion (TEO) devices market accounted for over 63% in 2015. Medtronic, plc, Cook Medical, and Terumo Corporation are the three companies that together dominated the market in 2015. Transparency Market Research notes that the degree of competition is moderate due to market consolidation as a result of frequent acquisitions. The competitive rivalry is influenced by the presence of large global players and few local manufacturers of transcatheter embolization and occlusion devices.Business agreements and partnerships among key market players will enable them to expand their global reach and market their products to newer regions, the lead analyst recommends. In January 2016, Terumo Corporation expanded its strategic alliance with Quirem Medical and became the exclusive global distributor of radioembolization solutions developed by Quirem Medical.View the report @&nbasp;In terms of revenue, the global TEO devices market was valued at US$2.4 bn in 2015 and is projected to reach US$4.8 bn by 2024 at a CAGR of 7.9% therein. In terms of volume, the global market is anticipated to register a CAGR of 8.1% from 2016 to 2024.North America Emerges as Leading Regional SegmentIn terms of percentage share contribution, the embolization coils segment is expected to reflect a share of 39.5% by 2024. Registering an impressive CAGR of 13.2% from 2016 to 2024 in terms of revenue, embolization particles are likely to emerge as a highly lucrative product segment in the global transcatheter embolization and occlusion devices market. By application, peripheral vascular disease was the leading segment in 2015, while oncology is slated to be the most attractive segment of the market.Based on end use, the hospitals segment accounted for a significant share in the global transcatheter embolization and occlusion devices market in terms of revenue. In terms of percentage share contribution, North America is expected to account for 32.3% by 2024, emerging as the leading regional segment of the global transcatheter embolization and occlusion devices market.Rising Prevalence of Cancer Boosts Demand for Transcatheter Embolization and Occlusion DevicesThe TEO devices market is fueled by a number of factors, including an increase in the adoption of minimally invasive surgeries, a rise in the prevalence of cancer, technological innovations, and changing demographics and lifestyle leading to an increase in peripheral vascular diseases.Embolization is a minimally invasive surgery that marks a significant advancement in medical technologies, the author of the report states. The adoption of minimally invasive surgeries has increased significantly over the years owing to the various advantages they present, including less post-operative pain, reduced blood loss, shorter hospital stay, and faster recovery.Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity around the world and the rising prevalence of cancer globally has driven the demand for chemembolization and radioembolization. This has, in turn, boosted the demand for transcatheter embolization and occlusion devices.In contrast, frequent product recalls, stringent regulations governing product approvals, the lack of skilled professionals, and the lack of reimbursement policies in emerging markets threaten to impede the global market for transcatheter embolization and occlusion devices.This review is based on the findings of a TMR report titled Transcatheter Embolization and Occlusion Devices Market: (Product Type - Embolization Coils, Coiling Assist Devices, Embolization Particles, Flow Diverter Devices, Liquid Embolics, and Accessories; Application - Peripheral Vascular Disease, Neurology, Oncology, Urology, and Others; End-user - Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, and Clinics) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Volume, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Transcatheter Embolization and Occlusion Devices Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Transcatheter Embolization and Occlusion Devices Market, by Product TypeEmbolization coilsPushableDetachableCoiling Assist DevicesStent Assisted CoilingBalloon Assisted CoilingEmbolization particlesRadioembolization particlesMicrospheresDrug-eluting beadsOthersFlow Diverter devicesLiquid EmbolicsAccessoriesCathetersGuide wiresOthersTranscatheter Embolization and Occlusion Devices Market, by ApplicationPeripheral Vascular DiseaseNeurologyOncologyUrologyOthersTranscatheter Embolization and Occlusion Devices Market, by End UserHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersClinicsTranscatheter Embolization and Occlusion Devices Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeU.K.GermanyRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaAustraliaRest of Asia PacificLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaMiddle East & AfricaUAESouth AfricaRest of Middle East & AfricaAbout 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: Medical Aesthetic Devices Market - Evolving Industry Trends 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/medical-aesthetics.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1039 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The global market for medical aesthetic devices is characterized by a highly consolidated competitive landscape, wherein the top two vendors, Mentor Worldwide LLC and Allergan Plc., collectively held a nearly 60% of the market in 2015, observes a recent report by Transparency Market Research. Mentor Worldwide LLC, the market leader with a 32% share in the global market, stayed ahead of the competition with the help of strategic collaborations and a strong emphasis on aesthetic products such as breast implants and body contouring.In September 2016, the company announced its plans for a new collaboration with Galderma, a medical solutions firm with strong operations in skin health. Under the collaboration, the companies plan to partner with Canadian surgeons to improve patient experience across innovative aesthetic procedures and solutions, broadening consumers' access to and awareness of aesthetic treatment options.View the report @Transparency Market Research estimates that the global medical aesthetic devices market will rise from a valuation of US$6.5 bn in 2015 to US$15.1 bn in 2024. This reflects a 9.0% CAGR from 2016 through 2024. In terms of product types, the segment of laser and energy devices presently leads. The segment held a nearly 30% share in the global market in 2015 and is expected to remain one of the most promising product segments over the forecast period as well. From a geographic perspective, the market earns a significant share of its revenues from sales across developed regions such as North America and Europe. North America dominated in 2015, accounting for a 43% of the global market.Increased Usage of Lasers for Medical Aesthetic Procedures to Stimulate Market GrowthIn the past few years, the global consumer has become more open to aesthetic procedures owing to a vast reduction in cultural prohibitions and social taboos. The resultant rise in surgical procedures for enhancing personal appearance is the key driver of the global medical aesthetic devices market.Other key trends positively influencing the overall development of the market include the increased adoption of laser-based devices, heightened demand for minimally invasive and non-invasive equipment, and the high demand for augmentation and reconstructive surgeries. The global adoption of laser-based devices has increased owing to the widening utility of laser devices.Cost-effectiveness and versatility of laser devices are also the key factors increasing adoption and usage of laser procedures in the aesthetics market.Increased adoption of minimally invasive surgeries, owing to the fewer post-surgery complications and side effects, and shorter recovery spans, have driven innovations and technological developments, bringing about a huge change in the quality and effectiveness of surgeries. As a result, the number of minimally invasive procedures in dermatological applications has significantly increased lately. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons estimated that the number of minimally invasive aesthetic procedures performed in the U.S. increased to 15.9 mn 2015, a rise of 2% over 2014.Competitively Priced Equipment and Services from Domestic Vendors to Limit Market GrowthThe global medical aesthetic devices market is characterized by intense competition wherein local manufacturers and service providers offer devices/services at affordable costs. The resultant need to reduce costs of equipment to stay ahead of competition can severely hamper the overall profitability of international vendors, especially across cost-sensitive emerging economies.Continuous technological developments in the aesthetic devices market with respect to product design and efficiency require manufacturers to provide up-to-date solutions to the customers. Such upgrades could be highly cost-intensive and lead to erosion of investment and not many service providers may be open to adopting them on a regular basis. The scenario is expected to have a negative impact on the overall development of the market in the long run.This review of the market is based on a recent market research report by Transparency Market Research, titled Medical Aesthetic Devices Market (Product - Aesthetic Laser and Energy Devices, Skin Tightening and Body Contouring Devices, Aesthetic Implants, and Facial Aesthetic Devices; Application - Facial and Body Contouring, Facial and Skin Rejuvenation, Breast Enhancement, Scar Treatment, Reconstructive Surgery, Tattoo Removal, and Hair Removal) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Medical Aesthetic Devices Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.For the study, the global medical aesthetic devices market is segmented as follows:Global Medical Aesthetic Devices Market Revenue, by ProductAesthetic Laser and Energy DevicesAblative Skin Resurfacing DevicesNon-ablative Skin Resurfacing DevicesSkin Tightening and Body Contouring DevicesLiposuction DevicesSkin Tightening DevicesCellulite Reduction devicesAesthetic ImplantsBreast ImplantsSoft Tissue ImplantsAesthetic Dental ImplantsOthersFacial Aesthetic DevicesMicrodermabrasion DevicesBotulinum ToxinDermal FillersGlobal Medical Aesthetic Devices Market Revenue, by ApplicationFacial and Body ContouringFacial & Skin RejuvenationBreast EnhancementScar TreatmentCongenital Defect RepairReconstructive SurgeryTattoo RemovalHair RemovalGlobal Medical Aesthetic Devices Market Revenue, by End-userHospitalsDermatology ClinicsCosmetic CentersGlobal Medical Aesthetic Devices Market Revenue, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeGermanyFranceItalySpainU.K.Rest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaAustraliaNew ZealandRest of Asia PacificLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaMiddle East & AfricaSaudi ArabiaSouth AfricaRest of Middle East & AfricaAbout 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: Tissue Banking Market 2016 Research Report http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/tissue-banking-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=14681 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=D&rep_id=14681 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Tissue Banking Market: OverviewTissue banking refers to recovery and collection of human cadaver tissue for medical purposes. The tissues are stored under cryogenic conditions for keep them safe and usable. Technological developments, growing geriatric pool, and increasing blood donations are collectively expected to fuel the growth of the global tissue banking market in the coming years.The research report on the global tissue banking market offers a detailed outlook on the market dynamics. The market has been assessed using Porters five forces analysis and SWOT analysis to determine the various factors likely to influence the trajectory of the overall market.This 170 page report gives readers a comprehensive overview of the Tissue Banking market Browse through 24 data tables and 66 figures to unlock the hidden opportunities in this market.Global Tissue Banking Market: Key TrendsThe research report states that the global tissue banking market is likely to be worth US$2.1 bn by the end of 2024. During the forecast period of 2016 and 2024, the global market is projected to rise at a CAGR of 11.3%. The soaring demand for regenerative medicines, which are instrumental for creating functional and living tissues for repairing the impaired ones is expected to augment the demand for tissue banking. Such kind of replacement or repair is frequently seen in treating neurological and cardiovascular disorders, several types of cancers, and diabetes. The shortage of organ donations has led to a massive potential for regenerative medicine, which, in turn has triggered a massive demand for tissue banking.Global Tissue Banking Market: SegmentationIn terms of application, the global tissue banking market is segmented into clinical and therapeutic, drug discovery, and research and development. Of these, the freezers segment held a dominant share in the global market in 2015. This application is projected to witness a high demand in the coming years due to a growing need for organ transplants, regenerative medicines, blood transfusions, vaccines, and cellular therapies. The segment also stands to benefit from the exponential population growth, increasing expenditure on healthcare, and increasing usage of a wide range of tissues for research and development purposes.The demand for freezers is expected to improve in the coming years as they are being developed to offer temperatures as low as -86C for storage of tissues on a long-term basis. The demand for storage of tissues will continue to rise in the coming years due to widespread of chronic diseases that are likely to propel import and export of tissues.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Tissue Banking market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Global Tissue Banking Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global tissue banking market is segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. Over the past few years, North America has held a dominant position in the global market as region has a well-established healthcare facility and access, which has allowed a high rate of diagnosis of various diseases. Thus, awareness and diagnosis of various diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular conditions in North America has propelled the regions growth over the past few years.Europe followed North Americas lead with government initiatives such as Cells Directives (EUTCD) and the European Union Tissues. This move is aimed at improving the responsiveness of safety and quality standards for human cells and tissues across the region. Meanwhile, Asia Pacific is also expected to offer lucrative opportunities for growth to the global market due an exponentially growing patient pool, improving disposable incomes, and robust government initiatives to improve healthcare facilities.Key Players Mentioned in the Report are:The important leading players operating in the global tissue banking market are Taylor-Wharton, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, Backman Coulter Inc., Custom Biogenic Systems, Inc., Panasonic Biomedical, BioLife Solutions, Inc, and Brooks Automation.Request for Discount of this report - @Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.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: 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... jive_portland.jpg Jive employs 200 more at its office in downtown Portland. Aurea, the Texas company buying Jive, is trying to quell rising employee anxiety over the deal. (Oregonian file photo) Aurea, the Texas company buying Jive Software, sought to quell employees' fears about the $462 million deal on Tuesday by describing the takeover as an essential element in its growth strategy. "This is a bet-the-company acquisition for us," Aurea chief executive Scott Brighton told employees in a webcast from Jive's headquarters in California, according to multiple employees who watched the address. "If we fail at this, we're all done." Jive declined to comment or to confirm Brighton's comments. Aurea primarily uses a work from home model for its staff, but in Tuesday's webcast Brighton told Jive staff that Aurea plans to retain its Portland office at least through the end of its lease, which expires at the end of 2018. However, Brighton indicated that employee attrition averaged 40 percent in past Aurea acquisitions. He also said the company will provide details of a severance package for Jive workers on June 15. Additionally, Brighton said Aurea will not use its WorkSmart monitoring tool to track Jive employees' performance. Aurea uses WorkSmart in its other businesses, but it had generated enormous concern among Jive's Portland staff. Many felt it was potentially invasive and represented a break from Jive's employee-centric culture. Last week, Brighton said Aurea hadn't decided whether it would use WorkSmart at Jive. Jive was an early leader in adapting social networking tools to the workplace and a pioneer in helping shift Oregon's tech sector from computer hardware to the internet. Its headquarters are in California, but its largest office is in downtown Portland, where it has 200 employees or more. Jive's growth had slowed dramatically in recent years, and when the company announced its sale to Aurea last week it indicated investors didn't have the patience to wait for Jive to ramp up again on its own. Aurea comprises a collection of business software tools the Texas company acquired over the past few years. Jive represents its biggest deal yet. Privately held Aurea had $291 million in revenue in 2016, up from $187 million in 2015, according to financial data Brighton provided to Jive employees Tuesday. Growth has come primarily through acquisitions. Jive, by comparison, had $204 million in sales last year, growth of 4.2 percent from the prior year. Though Jive employees welcomed Brighton's address Tuesday, some say they remain extremely unsettled about the company's future. One employee who had a job offer from another company opted to leave Jive last week after news of the sale, and wrote a widely viewed internal blog post describing the company as a baby seal in danger of being eaten by a shark. Employee fear and trepidation often accompany a company's sale, but workers say concerns inside Jive are particularly acute. Oregon tech professionals say their LinkedIn connections are blooming as Jive staffers explore jobs elsewhere; one Jive engineer in Portland openly advertised his desire to leave, writing on LinkedIn that the sale to Aurea is the reason he wants out. Brighton sought to reassure Jive employees Tuesday by describing Aurea as an up-and-coming business and casting Jive as a key part of its future. He said Aurea hopes to reach $1 billion in annual sales within three years. "We hope you'll give us the benefit of the doubt and see who we are and what we're all about," one slide from his presentation read. "We believe this...can be an exciting new beginning for Jive." -- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699 ILLC OSU.jpg The International Living and Learning Center at Oregon State University in Corvallis, built in 2011, houses about 312 residents who have the opportunity to learn about other cultures while they're there. (Courtesy of Oregon State University) (Courtesy of Oregon State University) Oregon State University has come up with a clever plan to provide some extra lodging for the estimated 1 million people coming to Oregon for the upcoming solar eclipse: rent out the dorms. The university will rent out more than 800 rooms over the weekend of the big event, priced from $265 to $1,275 for the two nights before the eclipse, which will cross over Corvallis on its way across Oregon on the morning of Monday, Aug. 21. It's a smart solution to the shortage of lodging opportunities for the eclipse in Oregon. Campgrounds have almost all been booked, and many hotels within the path of totality - the 60-mile-wide path in which people will be able to see the total solar eclipse - have been reserved for years. "We had the resources here that we thought would be valuable to people," Jill Peters, the university's event manager for the eclipse, said. "This is a public university, this is a statewide university, this is a great opportunity to extend an invitation to people to come onto campus." The lodging will offer visitors on-campus access to the university's eclipse festival, which will include hands-on activities, educational talks, live music and more. All lodging packages come with free breakfast and dinner, a commemorative tailgate blanket and priority seating to a concert on Sunday. The dorm rooms also include access to a full kitchen, on-site laundry and the fully-equipped recreation center. The cheapest option is a $265 stay in traditional single and double-occupancy dorm rooms in Wilson, Callahan, McNary and Finley halls. The most expensive are the three-person suites in Tebeau Hall, which run from $1,080 to $1,275 for the weekend. Additional nights are available as well, the Friday before and Monday after, for half the price of the weekend rate, per night. Peters said the money will go to paying for the big eclipse event, which will be open to the public for free. The festivities will focus on the eclipse itself, of course, but will also be aimed at highlighting the educational opportunities on campus. "We have this great expertise and these really fascinating things going on," Peters said. "By doing the lodging we're allowing more people to come." --Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB On May 13, 1967, Oregon Gov. Tom McCall staged what today we would call a media stunt. McCall flew into Cannon Beach in a helicopter with a group of surveyors and scientists, landing on a beach where there was a growing dispute over public access. The SurfSand Motel had used timber to cordon off a section of the beach, reserving it for the exclusive use of its guests. That ignited a public debate about who has the rights to Oregon beaches, and whether any portion of it could be privately owned. Standing on the beach, looking over the cordoned-off section in front of the motel, McCall dug in his feet, declaring that Oregon beaches belonged to the people. The Governor's line-in-the-sand stand led to the Legislature passing the Oregon Beach Bill later that year. The law placed the dry sand of the beach from the ocean's high-tide mark to the natural vegetation line in public ownership. The wet sand below high-tide had already been claimed as a public right of way back in 1913, when then-Gov. Oswald West made it a travel corridor for horses and autos. Thomas "Tad" McCall, son of former Oregon Gov. Tom McCall. On Saturday, exactly 50 years after McCall's trip to Cannon Beach, his son will help kick off the 50th anniversary celebration of the landmark bill at the site of the 1967 visit. Thomas "Tad" McCall will be joined by other state dignitaries for a daylong commemoration that will include sandcastle demonstrations, an art project unveiling, beach volleyball, and a beach bonfire on the beach in front of the SurfSand Resort, as it's now known. The Beach Bill gave Oregonians ownership of the state's beaches, and that's a rare distinction. Only Hawaii has similar protection, and our unlimited access to the beach has made the Oregon Coast a big tourist destination. The anniversary is a perfect excuse for a May visit to the Coast to drink in its splendor. On the north end, visitors can pose for a selfie in front of the wreck of the Peter Iredale at Fort Stevens State Park, near Warrenton. Heading south, there's the beauty of Rockaway Beach, the stellar views from Otter Crest, and the rocky majesty of the Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor along the southern coast. For a full list of activities related to the Beach Bill's anniversary this Saturday, visit the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce. -- Grant Butler 503-221-8566; @grantbutler UPDATE: The driver who died is Byron Carlton Berry of Portland, according to Oregon State Police. The other involved driver is Russell Victor Eyer of Castle Rock, Washington. *** A driver died and another was injured Tuesday in a crash on Oregon 6 near Banks, an official said. Early information indicates a box truck driver who was rounding a curve crossed into the opposite lane and toward the second driver, who was in a loaded chip truck, said Lt. Cari Boyd, an Oregon State Police spokeswoman. The chip truck driver tried to get out of the way, Boyd said, but the trucks collided. The chip truck hit an embankment, traveled across the westbound lanes, went down another embankment and finally came to a halt, Boyd said in a news release. Its driver was stable and taken to a Portland hospital. The box truck driver died at the scene, Boyd said. She didn't publicly identify either of the drivers, citing ongoing family notifications. The crash happened near milepost 35 around 2:30 p.m. -- Jim Ryan jryan@oregonian.com 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 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. Professor Kevin Clements talks with Nigel Brown about his life, and the significant influences on his work as a peace artist, his anti-nuclear views and social activism. This conversation will also be live-streamed and can be accessed at this link: http://www.otago.ac.nz/its/services/teaching/streaming/otago029235.html Date Friday, 12 May 2017 Time 12:00pm - 1:00pm Audience Public Event Category Humanities Event Type Open Seminar Campus Dunedin Department National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Location Media Production Studio, 2nd floor, Owheo Building, Union St East Cost Free Contact Name Rosemary McBryde Contact Phone 64 3 479 4546 Contact Email peaceandconflict@otago.ac.nz Save this event Wednesday 10 May 2017 11:24am Dr Anita Dunbier A University of Otago biochemistry researcher has been awarded nearly $200,000 to study the potential of immunotherapy to treat breast cancer. Breast Cancer Cure (BCC), in partnership with the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) and The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation (NZBCF), recently announced the latest recipients of funding through the Breast Cancer Research in New Zealand initiative for 2017. Among those funded was Dr Anita Dunbier, of the Universitys Department of Biochemistry who has gained $199,491 over a period of 24 months for her new project. Treatments that stimulate the immune system to attack tumours, such as the drug keytruda, have revolutionised the treatment of certain types of cancer, however are yet to effectively treat breast cancer. Dr Dunbiers project will research the potential of immunotherapy as a treatment for breast cancer. More than three quarters of women with breast cancer present with the hormone-sensitive form of the disease and are subsequently treated with anti-oestrogen therapy. Dr Dunbier and colleagues have previously shown that treatment with anti-oestrogen therapies can stimulate an immune response directed against the tumour. This work will help assess whether they should be administered at the same time or separately. For more information, contact: Dr Anita Dunbier Department of Biochemistry University of Otago Tel 03 479 9258 Email anita.dunbier@otago.ac.nz An area pilot has given more than 100 young people a free demonstration airplane ride as part of the Experimental Aircraft Association Young Eagles program, which is introducing a new generation to the world of flight. Among the more than 50,000 volunteers around the world who have donated their time and aircraft to the effort is Jeff Gallant, of Midland. U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar announced Monday at the Midland Center for the Arts that Lydia Hershauer, a student at H.H. Dow High School, is the winner of the 2017 Congressional Art Competition for Michigans Fourth Congressional District. Hershauers artwork, Jackie, is a charcoal portrait and it will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol for one year. The Michigan Senate on Tuesday approved legislation sponsored by Sen. Jim Stamas to update Michigans firefighter training standards. Michigan firefighters perform a valiant service in our communities every day risking their lives to save others, said Stamas, R-Midland. This legislation is about ensuring our firefighters are prepared to meet new and existing challenges they will face as they protect our communities. We have been working with the Fire Services Coalition to improve our state firefighter training standards, which have not been updated in more than 30 years. Midland Fire Department Chief Chris Coughlin testified in April in support of the bills. Coughlin represents the Michigan Association of Fire Chiefs, which is one of the groups in the Fire Services Coalition. The other organizations include the Michigan Professional Fire Fighters Union, Michigan Fire Inspectors Society, Michigan Fire Service Instructors and the Michigan State Firemens Association. Senate Bill 264 would improve firefighter training standards while leaving in place the ability to take into account the vast differences in the ways fire services are provided across the state. The bill would ensure clear definitions and roles for all aspects of fire service training and also increase the membership of the Fire Fighters Training Council from seven to nine members. SB 265 would allow the FFTC the flexibility to fully utilize the funding for firefighter training made available through the fireworks safety fee assessed on the sale of all fireworks in Michigan. Under these bills, the council would be allowed to develop rules and offer certification in specialized areas of the fire service, such as technical rescue, airport rescue and hazardous materials response, Stamas said. It is all part of an effort to give firefighter training experts the ability to ensure that every Michigan community continues to have trained men and women ready to respond in fire emergencies. SBs 264 and 265 now head to the House of Representatives for consideration. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate You could hear the swing of hammers and sonorous circular saws Tuesday morning at the end of Sam Street. To the ears of neighbors, it may have registered as early-hour noise inevitably continuing into the afternoon and picking up again tomorrow. But for Julie Raymond, who will soon call herself a homeowner, it was a work site symphony of her dream turned reality. This is real, its on the lot now. Its happening, Raymond said, hammer in hand and hard hat on her head. Raymond, 47, works at Cafe American. She has a 10-year-old daughter, Laci. The two have lived in an apartment in the city for the past six years with the dream to own a home. Raymond had applied three years in a row for a mortgage through Midland County Habitat for Humanity. She was selected as an alternate in the past. Selection is based on applicants willingness to partner and ability to pay, and Habitat works with those in the 30 to 60 percent range of annual median income, said Jennifer Chappel, Habitats executive director. Raymond was approved for a mortgage through Habitat with monthly payments between $550 and $600 shell take on this summer. This woman is persistent, shes a hard worker, Chappel said. Shes really down to earth. Crews hauled Raymonds house through town on a flatbed on Sunday. You read that right they put the entire house on a flatbed, making for a 47-by-26-foot load, and slowly drove it nine miles from Lincoln Township at the northwest edge of the city southeast to the end of Sam Street. Raymond wasnt there to see the shell of the house delivered. But she said shed drive by the Greater Michigan Construction Academy and excitedly scope out the lot on Sam Street beforehand. Im ready right now, Raymond said of moving in. The Greater Michigan Construction Academy had started building the house last September. It will be a three-bedroom, one-bath, with about 1,056 square feet and a one and a half car detached garage. Matt Weckesser, Habitats construction manager, said its built high quality on a low budget with a simple but durable design. He said Raymond helped with site prep and land clearing not only to make way for her new house, but also for houses for others as part of past projects. The house also will be energy efficient; Chappel says the HERS Index (Home Energy Rating System), a benchmark for measuring energy efficiency, ranks in the 30s or 40s for the new house. It will cost about $100 a month to heat and cool the house, she said. The Dow Chemical Co. donated the property. Habitat and donors contributed toward the capital for the project. Raymond also got down payment assistance from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. Habitat requires applicants to put in hundreds of hours of sweat equity, which could include volunteering at the Habitat store, office and other sites. Anytime we ask for sweat equity, shes always there, Chappel said. The home value, which Chappel noted will fluctuate with changing property values and the housing market, is about $115,000. The Midland housing market is on fire right now, ask any realtor, she said. Raymonds sister, Vicki Clark, 48, pushed a wheelbarrow onsite Tuesday. She took a break to talk to the Daily News. Thinking about what the project meant to her sister, a tear fell to the sand and sawdust underfoot. Its easy to give up when youre not getting anywhere, Clark said of Raymonds attempts to get a house. She works hard to take care of her daughter. Im glad to see them get out of the apartment. Habitat and volunteers hope to finish the house by the end of June or early July, Chappel said. The line of cars on Sam Street this week and the newest addition to the block is part of the 10th annual National Women Build Week. Chappel said some 200 to 250 volunteers are participating, and that support comes from Lowes, which contributed nearly $2 million this year. Andrea Foster, 30, of Midland said it was her first time volunteering with Habitat for the build. Shes a conservation outreach coordinator at Little Forks Conservancy. I love the idea of Women Build Week, Foster said. It feels empowering. Chappel said Habitat doesnt provide a handout. Thats the biggest myth, she said. By no means is it free. You appreciate something more if your blood, sweat and tears go into it. We come alongside you and lift you up to see your dream of home ownership. Seeing a family improved really puts a fire in your belly, she added. It feels awesome, Raymond said. I want to say I did something to help build it. Health care reform has been a top priority for Congress in 2017. The current health care system that was created in 2010 is collapsing. That is why, on May 4, I voted for the American Health Care Act. In doing so, I kept the promise I have made to residents of my district since 2014, to rescue Americans from the collapsing system that is in place now. Here in Michigan, some families have seen their costs quadruple. In fact, just this year some health care premiums increased by nearly 40 percent for the nearly 400,000 Michiganders enrolled in the health care exchange. Residents in some Michigan counties have only one or two choices for an insurer, and in other states some Americans have no insurance choices at all. Expensive deductibles leave residents with insurance that makes it too costly to receive treatment. This is an unsustainable path for the hardworking families of Michigan. The American Health Care Act is a patient-centered solution that will give Michigan residents and their families more health care choices. The legislation covers preexisting conditions by keeping in place current policies that cover preexisting conditions. It also gives states the opportunity to opt out of those policies if they are better able to serve the needs of their residents. States would then have to offer insurance coverage that specifically caters to the needs of those residents with preexisting conditions. The American Health Care Act provides states $138 billion to help ensure health care is available for everyone regardless of a preexisting condition. State governments are closest to the people. This legislation gives them the flexibility they need to address the needs of their residents. The American Health Care Act is an important first step in the legislative process to reform our nations health policy. By passing the House of Representatives, the bill will now be sent to the U.S. Senate for debate and improvements. If the Senate passes a bill, the House and Senate will need to work together to iron out differences between the bills, or the Senate will send its version back to the House for an up or down vote. This process is ongoing and will take time. It is also important to remember that there will be a transition period after the legislation is signed into law, giving patients and doctors time to prepare for the new system. The American Health Care Act is a step in the right direction for our nations health care system. As always, I welcome the participation of my constituents as this process moves forward. I encourage residents of Michigans Fourth Congressional District to contact my office with their input as the debate on our nations health policy continues in the coming months. BLOOMINGTON After six hours and seven mostly recounted precincts, not much had changed in the Normal mayoral race Tuesday evening. Election officials reviewed every April 4 vote from precincts 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 25 for incumbent Chris Koos and challenger Marc Tiritilli but found only one difference with their records: a ballot for Tiritilli that was counted twice. Tiritilli requested the partial, or discovery, recount after losing to Koos by 11 votes among 6,336 cast. The discovery recount cannot change the outcome of the race but will give Tiritilli evidence he can present if he decides to pursue a full recount, which he can do through May 25 in McLean County Circuit Court. Officials will return at 10 a.m. Wednesday to the Government Center in downtown Bloomington to count electronic votes cast before Election Day, and again at 3 p.m. to count paper early votes, absentee ballots and provisional ballots. The recount was scheduled over three days with the expectation it could end early. "From there we'll start digging in a little harder to see if our analysis looks like we have a basis for a case," said Tiritilli. "We'll try to determine that over the next few days." Tiritilli didn't oversee most of the recount because he was at his job as a Bloomington High School science teacher. Koos, his representatives, Tiritilli's representatives, clerk's office staff, media and members of the public observed as Dana Clark, Illinois account manager for election system vendor Governmental Business Systems, fed paper ballots into the machines used on election night. The Tiritilli campaign took photos of each ballot as it left the machines to review later, in part for undervotes ballots not counted because the voter apparently chose neither candidate. The machines rejected ballots that appeared to have overvotes too many selections in a specific race. Clark also reviewed ballots cast by touchscreen at Illinois State University and the Government Center, where residents of any Normal precinct could vote. Koos said he appreciated the professionalism of Clark, McLean County Clerk Kathy Michael and Michael's staff through the process. "We've all been learning something, and, as a teacher, that warms my heart. Not just the candidates, even the staff," Tiritilli said. "When my students ask me, I tell them it's very important you fill in those ovals properly on your test." Tiritilli also has examined voter signatures from those precincts to find discrepancies between voter registration cards and Election Day signatures. In response, Koos has asked some of those voters to sign affidavits verifying they voted April 4. "We will continue to pursue affidavits," he said. Koos said Monday he had about 20 affidavits and suspected 300 signatures could be challenged. Koos, 68, the owner of Vitesse Cycle Shop, has been mayor since 2003. BLOOMINGTON Central Illinoisans will have an easy way on Saturday to help their hungry neighbors. The occasion is the 25th annual National Association of Letter Carriers' Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. People are asked to leave grocery bags with donations of unopened, non-perishable food canned or boxed soups, meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, pasta or rice at their residential mailboxes on Saturday morning. Letter carriers will collect the bags and with help from retired letter carriers and representatives of other labor unions will load donated food onto trucks from Midwest Food Bank. Representatives of 18 Bloomington-Normal food pantries will pick up food at the food bank beginning next week. Food collected in the area but outside Bloomington-Normal will go to the nearest food bank. "The food collected in the outlying area stays in those towns and goes to their food banks," said Kim Marshall, a Bloomington letter carrier and food drive coordinator for letter carriers union Branch 522. "It's perfectly timed," added Pat Turner, of Center for Hope Food Pantry Network. "It's right before we have a ramp up in demand when the kids get out of school." "Any time any food is donated, it's beneficial," said Jim Irwin of the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry. "But the amount of food we receive from this drive is astounding to me. It definitely helps us here at St. Vincent de Paul." "This is an easy way to participate in a food drive in our community." During last year's drive, Bloomington-Normal area residents donated more than 85,000 pounds of non-perishable food, including about 62,000 pounds from Bloomington-Normal proper, Marshall said. The area total was a record high, she said. "We would love to reach 100,000 pounds this year," said Marshall. To make donating easier, some Twin City area residential customers will receive paper bags for their donations from the letter carriers unions, Marshall said. In addition, Hy-Vee supermarket in Bloomington has $10 pre-packaged bags for people to purchase and place at their mailboxes. "I'm glad we're able to continue this every year but I wish we didn't have to," Marshall said of the need for food. "Everyone knows someone who's had to go to a food bank whether they realize it or not." NORMAL The Bloomington-Normal area has made progress in improving diversity and limiting segregation, but it still has room for improvement, according to research done through Illinois State University's Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development for the local chapter of the anti-hate group Not In Our Town. Research compiled by 27 graduate and undergraduate students involved in the project showed that Bloomington and Normal have a lower level of segregation than other communities studied, and the degree of segregation shows a downward trend. However, there remains limited access to grocery stores for areas where predominantly lower-income people live, especially in the southwest corner of Bloomington, the research showed. The research was part of a social justice project. The students also looked at such issues as disparities in traffic stop searches, time spent in jail, exposure to environmental hazards and access to transportation, health and financial services. Mike Matejka, a member of the Not In Our Town steering committee, said, I'm not sure if there's anything earth-shattering here, but it's an opportunity to probe beneath the surface on how people are impacted in our community. Matejka said, Overall, it shows some progress in the community, but a recent incident involving vandalism at McGraw Park that included racial slurs and a swastika shows we still have a long way to go. He said the steering committee will be discussing the study at a retreat in about two weeks. We've been often very reactive to events, Matejka said. With data like this, we can be more proactive in terms of community issues and long-term challenges. About 150 people, including a few elected officials, attended a presentation on the research on Tuesday evening at ISU's Bone Student Center. A review of statistics compiled in a 2015 Illinois Traffic Stop Study showed that blacks were more likely than whites to have their vehicles searched when stopped by police. The disparity was greater in Bloomington than Normal. In Bloomington, 5.6 percent of whites had their vehicles searched in a traffic stop compared to 13 percent of blacks. In Normal, only 1 percent of whites and 3.4 percent of blacks who were stopped were subjected to a search. Although Normal searched a comparatively low percentage of vehicles, its city police made more traffic stops per capita than any other city in the students' study, which included not only Bloomington but also Champaign, Urbana, Springfield, Decatur, Peoria and Rockford. Normal police made a total of 19,637 traffic stops in 2015. The next closest was Springfield with 15,910 stops. Bloomington made 9,740 stops. The students also interviewed community members and gathered information from focus groups. They also looked at groups in other communities that are similar to Not In Our Town to compile best practices that the Bloomington-Normal group might consider. Matejka said the students' research might open other doors for more community dialog. If you, like me, have been struggling with the constant stream of reminders that we are near apocalypse, here's something to slightly alleviate the doom and gloom: Chelsea Manning will be released from prison next week. As one of his final acts in office, Obama commuted Chelsea's 35 year sentence which she was serving since 2010 for leaking military documents to Wikileaks. She's since served the longest time in prison of any whistleblower in US history, something Manning's lawyers, Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward, described in a joint statement as "Draconian". "President Obama's act of commutation was the first time the military took care of this soldier who risked so much to disclose information that served the public interest," they said of Manning's release. While imprisoned Manning, a transgender woman, attempted suicide twice and went on a hunger strike in protest of the military's disregard her gender dysphoria. The military eventually conceded in September last year that Manning could begin the process for gender transition surgery, which might've been the first time in history that a prisoner transitioned in the United States. In her personal statement, Manning said that "for the first time, I can see a future for [herself] as Chelsea." "I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world. Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine. Now, freedom is something that I will again experience with friends and loved ones after nearly seven years of bars and cement, of periods of solitary confinement, and of my health care and autonomy restricted, including through routinely forced haircuts. I am forever grateful to the people who kept me alive, President Obama, my legal team and countless supporters." What a relief. [h/t Jezebel] In Q1 2017, smartphone penetration in India reached 48% a growth rate of 16% vs. the prior year. Rapidly expanding 4G infrastructure and low-cost 4G data services introduced by India telecom leader Reliance Jio have led to increased competition in India and stimulated higher demand for 4G-capable devices, reports Kantar. Kantar Worldpanel reports today that "Chinese vendors have increased their smartphone sales share in India from 27% in Q1 2016 to 50% in Q1 2017. Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Lenovo have made significant investments in India in an effort to disrupt the local vendors, and out-maneuver South Korean giant Samsung, which continues to rank as the largest smartphone supplier in India with 27% of smartphone sales in Q1 2017. Apple accounted for 3% of sales in the most recent period but has recently made several strategic moves in India, including teaming up with Reliance Jio to offer free 4G service for one year to purchasers of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Apple is also planning to manufacture iPhones in India in the near future to deflect some of the high import taxes that make iPhones inaccessible to many Indian buyers. Over the next 12 months, 51% of current mobile phone owners in India say they intend to upgrade their devices. For current smartphone owners, that number is 52%. Samsung is the top brand preferred in India at 26%, followed by Apple at 15%. Between 7% and 8% of consumers intend to purchase Vivo or Oppo products. All of this bodes well for Apple, especially if it can begin to manufacture iPhones in India in the coming months. Purchases over $300 remain a small fraction of the market, but this is where Apple and Samsung dominate, as they do in more developed markets. For Apple and Samsung, growth opportunities in India may not be immediate, but over the next few years we believe that consumers will become more engaged in services, 4G infrastructure will be stronger, and by all predictions people will want more premium phones." Apple began their big push into India in 2016 with a major tour by Apple's CEO followed by a series of investments including a new Mac Lab, an App Accelerator facility, and an iPhone SE plant via Wistron. Apple's SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller just finished a tour of India. Apple is also in constant contact with the India Government on trying to set up larger plants in India that would require more cooperation to encourage Apple's supply chain from China to open facilities in India. During Tim Cook's opening statement with financial analyst for Q2 2017 on May 03, he stated the following: "We set a new March quarter record for India where revenue grew by strong double digits. We continue to strengthen our local presence across the entire ecosystem and we're very optimistic about our future in this remarkable country with its very large young and tech-savy population, fast growing econony and improving 4G infrastructure." Without a doubt, growing their share in India is now a priority at Apple and we should hear more about their developments in that country over the next few years. It's still unclear if Apple's iPhone SE facility will be enough to gain license for a company owned Apple Store. Every time it looks like Apple's been given the green light, news from the government seems to dash that hope. There is strong opposition to giving Apple any consessions which leaves Apple's retail plans in limbo. The news of an Apple Store opening in India will be a positive development and hopefully we'll get to hear that news within the next year. Kantar on iOS in China In a secondary report, Kantar rehashes the news that while Apple's iPhone 7 was the best selling smartphone in China, it wasn't able to stop iOS from falling 8.6%, it's only weak market. Vendors like Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and others can't compete with Apple at the high-end of the smartphone market. Apple's iPhone is a status symbol, it's a smartphone with rich software and services. So the Chinese vendors shoot for the mid-market that sells in the $400 to $500 range with specifications that Apple's iPhone SE doesn't offer like a 5 to 5.5" display. Apple is likely to address this weakness later this year. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus. Patna: Former Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and a Member of Parliament from Madhepura, Pappu Yadav, who has a long rap sheet with the law and order, at a press conference in Patna on Tuesday, said that corrupt officials and politicians were more of a threat to the nation than Naxals and terrorists. Yadav, who is the chief of his own political outfit Jan Adhikar Party (JAP), said that India faced more threat from corruption and corrupt officials and must be dealt with accordingly if India believed in social justice for all. The man who has spent a considerable amount of time of his life behind bars on a host of criminal cases, however, tried to downplay prisoners talking to politicians from their jail cells saying the practice was fairly common and widely known by both the jail officials and top level bureaucrats. The Madhepura MP was referring to the bombshell release of an audio recording of a conversation between notorious gangster Mohammed Shahabuddin and RJD President Lalu Prasad Yadav by a private television channel last Sunday. "All political prisoners talk to their leaders in power. There is nothing new about it. It seems like people are forgetting that Lalu Prasad Yadav ran the entire Bihar government from behind his jail cell Beur Jail in 1997," he said. Yadav then turned his attention towards the rich politicians saying there were 156 'crorepatis' in Bihar Assembly alone and at least 130 of them were facing charges in serious crimes. "There are 40 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders whose net worth is in many crores, 32 Janata Dal - U legislators are 'crorepatis', RJD has 28 'crorepatis', while Congress has 13 of such mega rich legislators. Most of them have increased their net worth by ten folds in the last five years alone. Each one of them should be investigated and put on trial," the JAP leader said quoting numbers from a report from the Association for Democratic Reform (ADR), a non-partisan NGO based in Gujarat. It may be recalled that recently, while meeting with the family members of CRPF jawans killed by Naxals in Chhattisgarh, Pappu Yadav had asked the extremists to kill corrupt politicians instead of law enforcement officials who, he had said, are only doing their job. News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. Pakistan Criticizes Iran for Threatening Cross-Border Military Action 05/10/17 By Ayaz Gul, VOA ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Pakistan has criticized Iran for threatening to launch cross-border military strikes against suspected Sunni militants whom Tehran says are plotting attacks in the Shi'ite-majority nation. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry says the Iranian ambassador in Islamabad was summoned Tuesday following the reported remarks by the Iran's military chief. A ministry statement said, "The Iranian side was urged to avoid issuance of such statements that could vitiate the environment of fraternal relations." Iran's state media on Monday quoted Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the head of the armed forces, as saying Pakistan is expected to control its own border and take action against the terrorist bases. "If the terrorist attacks continue, we will hit their safe havens and cells, wherever they are," the general warned. The warning came days after an alleged cross-border militant raid killed at least 10 members of the Iranian security forces. An anti-Iran Sunni Muslim militant group called Jaish al Adl, or the Army of Justice, claimed responsibility for the April 26 ambush in the southeastern border province of Sistan-Balouchestan. Pakistani officials have urged Iran to share evidence to enable them to go after the suspects. Shortly after the attack, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wrote to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, calling for the perpetrators to be arrested and handed over to Tehran. Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Islamabad and raised the issue with Pakistani leaders, urging them to strengthen security along their shared border of nearly 1,000-kilometers. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Islamabad, May 3, 2017 (photo by Islamic Republic News Agency) An official statement issued after the meetings said the two sides agreed to enhance border security coordination, including deployment of additional Pakistani troops to prevent illegal crossings. Officials said the two governments also agreed "in principle to revive a hotline" between their border security forces to resolve any issues at the frontier. Tehran has long alleged that anti-state militants use Pakistani soil for plotting terrorist attacks against Iran. Islamabad maintains it is extending full cooperation to the neighboring country to deal with the terrorist threat and has in the past handed over fugitive Iranian militants. The issue of alleged anti-Iran militant sanctuaries inside Pakistan remains a source of tension in bilateral relations. Pakistan's recent decision to join a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition of 41 predominantly Sunni Muslim nations also has upset Iran. A former Pakistani military chief, retired General Raheel Sharif, is already in Riyadh, where he is preparing to take charge as the first commander-in-chief of the alliance. Defense ministers of member nations also are due to hold an inaugural meeting later this month. Tehran sees the military alliance as an anti-Iran group and an attempt to expand Saudi influence in the region. Saudi and Pakistani officials reject the assertions as unfounded. HPs Elite x2 could be the right Surface clone at the right time. On Monday, Microsofts Panos Panay crushed our dreams (and those of many others, no doubt) when he said thered be no Surface Pro 5 in the near future to replace the rapidly aging Surface Pro 4. Cmon, Microsoft, its been 18 monthsonly Apple can string its users along for years! Enter HPs Elite x2 1012 G2. Announced Wednesday, itll ship in July with a starting price of $1,099. Read on to see how it offers all the updated parts wed love to have in the Surface Pro 4, let alone the mythical Surface Pro 5. Why this matters: HPs Elite x2 is filling a void. Microsofts Surface products are supposed to be flagship, aspirational devices that lead the entire PC industry into a brighter and more innovative future. By definition, a flagship shouldnt look too dusty. If Microsofts not moving on the Surface Pro 4, that gives a company like HP an opportunity to step in and offer something fresher. Kaby Lake, please Just going by the specs released at announcement, HPs Elite x2 1012 G2 jumps ahead of the Surface Pro 4 in several key ways. Our number-one gripe about the Surface Pro 4 is its 6th-generation Skylake complement of CPUs. Granted, Kaby Lakes an incremental improvement over Skylake, but its advances in performance and battery life are good-to-haves in any portable PC. HPs Elite x2 offers four Kaby Lake options: Core i3 7100U with Intel HD Graphics 620 (2.4GHz, 3MB cache, 2 cores) Core i5-7200U with Intel HD Graphics 620 (2.5GHz-3.1GHz, 3MB cache, 2 cores) Core i5-7300U with Intel HD Graphics 620 (2.6GHz-3.5GHz, 3MB cache, 2 cores) Core i7-7600U with Intel HD Graphics 620 (2.8GHz-3.9GHz, 4MB cache, 2 cores) The Elite x2 will offer a maximum of 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage, compared to 16GB and 256GB for the Surface Pro 4. The base $1,099 Elite x2 in the United States will have the Core i3 CPU, 4GB of LPDDR3-1866 SDRAM, and 128GB M.2 SATA SSD. HP The HP Elite x2 includes the tablet with kickstand, keyboard, and stylus. The closest Surface Pro 4 in configuration and price to the Elite x2s base model has a Core i5, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB PCIe SSD, for $849 (discounted from $999). The Core i5s graphics is Intels older HD Graphics 520. Its worth noting that the Core i7 Surface Pro 4 offers Intels more powerful Iris graphics, while the new Elite x2s have no such option. The HP Elite x2s touch display is now the same diagonal width as the Surface: 12.3 inches, up from 12 inches in the Elite x2 1012 G1 model we tested last year. The resolution also increases, from full HD (19201080 pixels) to WQXGA+ (27361824 pixels). Corning Gorilla Glass continues to protect it. The display has a rear kickstand with a good 165 degrees of tilt. With the Elite x2 you also get what looks like a nicer keyboard (all models include a pen, too). There are actually two keyboards, and the one you get will depend on the model you buy. We have little information about the Advanced Keyboard, however, other than that it has NFC and a Smart Card reader. HP HPs Elite x2 has a new Collaboration Keyboard with videoconferencing buttons and a sturdy aluminum deck. The base $1,099 model comes with the new Collaboration Keyboard, designed to support videoconferencing. The Collaboration Keyboard has buttons dedicated to calendar, call answer/end, and presentation functions. As for typing, the keys are backlit and have a good 1.5mm of travel, plus theres a large clickpad. Theres even a pen loop and an easily cleaned polyurethane back cover. Its all wrapped in an aluminum keyboard deck that could feel sturdier than the lighter, plastic Type Cover and Signature Type Cover for the Surface Pro 4. What we dont yet know is whether the magnetic connection between the keyboard and the tablet will be stronger this time around. When we reviewed an Elite x2 a scant year ago, it seemed too easy for the keyboard to separate from the tablet while sitting on a lap. And you can open it up and replace things! HP The HP Elite x2 is easy to service, with removable components. The Elite x2 retains one big advantage over the Surface Pro 4: You can actually open up the Elite x2 for repairs. To be fair, it takes time and money to make a tablet serviceable, and the Elite x2 isnt cheap. But you dont have to be a corporation (the Elite x2s target market) to appreciate being able to open up the back and, say, replace the display or the battery, and even the SSD and Wi-Fi card. HPs Elite x2 debuts with many features we wish the Surface Pro 4 had. While we wont know whether the Elite x2 truly does compete with the Surface Pro until we can review it, the up-to-date hardware it contains certainly gives it a promising head start. Windows 10 has hit a milestone: 500 million devices have installed it, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Wednesday in his keynote opening the companys Build 2017 developer conference. Another number, however, is more troubling: Just a fraction of those devices frequently use Cortana, Microsofts digital spokesperson for its push into artificial intelligence. Just 141 million devices, or about 28 percent of Windows 10 users, use Cortana monthly. That stands in sharp contrast to what Microsoft calls the intelligent cloud, the next phase in the evolution of the mobile first, cloud first mantra that Nadella has talked up since he became CEO in 2014. At Build, Microsoft executives will describe how data used to be pushed from edge devices like phones or tablets to a cloud server, analyzed, and then sent back to the user. Now, Microsofts trying to build in those analysis capabilities as close to those data-generating devices as possible. Consumers dont care whats going on behind the scenes, though. They care whether services like Cortana are getting smarteror they should, if they were using Microsofts digital assistant. Its not even clear whether this small subset of active users is querying Cortana with questions or setting reminders, or whether theyre simply using Cortanas search box as a generic replacement for the Start menu. Fortunately, Microsoft had other numbers to share that were a bit rosier: 100 million people per month are using Office 365s commercial subscription services, and 90 percent of all Fortune 500 companies are using some portion of the Microsoft cloud. In all fairness, Microsofts said previously that it believes that its Cortana usage numbers are on par with other digital assistants. Amazon, Google and others havent said publicly how many queries they process. Microsoft probably has greater reach than Amazon, since Amazon probably hasnt sold 141 million Alexa-powered devices. On the other hand, Cortana is also available on iOS and Android as well. But its also fair to say that every device Amazon sells is actually used as a digital assistant. Why this matters: Microsoft will spend three hours on Wednesday talking about all of the different ways its bringing intelligence to the cloud: the bots framework it introduced last year, cognitive services that app developers can include, new Cortana skills, and more. Very few of these, if any, will be explicitly called out to consumerstheir online experiences will just improve over time thanks to these technologies. But it has to be a bit deflating for Microsoft to realize that its AI centerpiece, the Cortana intelligence engine, which is probably sitting on your taskbar right now, isnt being used. It doesnt bode well for the popularity of less visible and less engaging technologies. Harman / Kardon New features are coming to Cortana devices like the Harman/Kardon Invoke. Building intelligence into bots, Cortana, and Office Though consumers may not be taking advantage of Cortana, that isnt stopping Microsoft. At Build, Microsoft is launching a new Cortana Skills Kit, now in public preview. Skills are new features that developers can add to Cortana, similar to the skills that have already been launched for Amazons Alexa10,000 of them, according to one report. Interestingly, Microsoft says its Skills Kit can be used to port skills from Alexa or its bot framework, potentially increasing Cortanaa range of skills more quickly. Skills are available for Cortana on Windows, iOS, Android, and even the new Invoke speaker that Harman/Kardon unveiled in the days leading up to Build. The bot framework Microsoft launched a year ago has a similar visibility problem. Bots were intended to live somewhat behind the scenes. Though a number of chatbots are available to Skype users, there isnt really a high-profile example of a Microsoft bot in the real world. IDG More and more bots are expected to appear at the bottom of Bing searches, Microsoft says. According to Lili Cheng, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, that will change. Microsofts Bing team is actively trying to sell bots to local Seattle restaurants. When a potential customer searches for Monsoon Restaurant, for example, a Skype window pops up so the bot can respond to typed questions. Microsoft is also busy sprinkling intelligence into other apps and services, like Office. One of the new features Microsoft is expected to show on Wednesday is a PowerPoint translator, so users can rewrite an entire PowerPoint presentation in another language in a flash, via a drop-down menu. Updated at 9:49 AM with additional details. Ghana lost a whopping $2.3 billion in 2016 through galamsey activities. Isaac Karikari, a Director at the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry, who made the revelation, said the losses represent royalties and taxes the illegal miners did not pay to the state. Making a presentation at an interactive session with heads of African Diplomatic Missions in Accra yesterday, he announced that the laws on mining would be strictly enforced after the period of sensitisation was over and the provision of alternative jobs was provided. To effectively manage the galamsey menace in the country, he noted that the Ministry has instituted a 5-year Multilateral Mining Integrated project aimed at effectively solving the problem. Taking cognizance of the many initiatives that have failed in the past, Mr Karikari said the ministry is adopting a Project Management Approach to dealing with the menace. This approach would include, offering alternative livelihoods for people currently engaged in galamsey by organising them into cooperatives, create sustained awareness of the devastating effect of the activities of galamsey and ensuring strict enforcement of existing regulation in the mining sector. As part of the new enforcement regime, persons engaged in illegal mining would be arrested, prosecuted and jailed. Karikari said foreigners, who engage in illegal mining, could be imprisoned for a term of 20 years, while a Ghanaian could be imprisoned for five years. Special courts would be set up by the Attorney-General to deal specifically with galamsey issues. The interactive session was hosted by Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botcwey, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Integration, to share thoughts on strengthening and advancing relations with all foreign missions and their respective countries. It was used to brief the Missions on government foreign policy and other commitments that Ghana had with countries and entities like UN, AU and ECOWAS. Government also used the opportunity to discuss the crucial issue of illegal mining with the missions and sought their support to end it. John Peter Amewu, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources called on all African foreign Missions in Ghana to support the fight against illegal mining, known as galamsey, to save Ghana from the current environmental destruction. He also urged the missions to educate their citizens who wish to engage in the mining business in the country to get the right authorisation and mine in a more sustainable way. According to him, the government was not anti-mining but was worried about the devastation of farm lands and pollution of water bodies as a result of illegal mining. He said the government was therefore taking measures to curb the illegal activity, emphasising that small-scale mining was reserved for only Ghanaian citizens. The government believes in the private sector participation in businesses, but we are totally against the extent of degradation and pollution of the land and water bodies. And so, together as neighbours we need to come together and deal with the situation, Mr Amewu said. Mr Amewu said if the regional block did not assist the country to curb the menace, very soon it would affect other neighbouring countries and roll over to more countries, as in the case of Cote dIvoire. He mentioned citizens of Mali, Nigeria, Togo and Ghanaians as well as some Chinese, among others as those who had over the period engaged in illegal mining and thus causing the destruction to the environment. He said most of the 230,000 kilometre square land area of the country had been affected by galamsey activities in all eight out of the 10 regions of the country. The Minister said there were very good mining laws in the country but there had been difficulty in implementing them. However, government under its newly adopted five-year Multi Mining Integrated Project (MMIP), would implement the law and also provide other alternative livelihoods for miners. Source: The Finder Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Ghana Post Company has apologized to its customers for rendering poor services to them. This follows complaints from a number of customers on the Citi Breakfast Show recently. Some customers who sent messages into the show described various ordeals, including a moment when a customer was turned away about 15 minutes before the Cantonments branch of the company was scheduled to close. Others complained of extortion before they were allowed to receive parcels mailed to them. Apologizing for the bad service, a press statement issued by Management promised to address the issues to redeem the image of the company. We empathize with our customers and hereby apologize to our customers who have not had the best of customer service from us, the statement said. The company promised wholesale changes to the operations of the company to make it effective. Major aspects of the plan will include the creation of a single customer service department for all product lines, customer service training, adherence to delivery standards and the introduction of performance management targets for all staff, it said. We therefore plead with our customers to bear with us as we go through these challenges, it added. Source: citibusinessnews.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Institute of Economic Affairs has proposed to the Government of Ghana to set up a Fiscal Council to help instil fiscal discipline in the nation. Fiscal indiscipline which often results from the lack of adherence to fiscal rules has for a long time been the biggest cause of persistent macroeconomic instability and mounting public debt stock in Ghana. The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) says the establishment of the Fiscal Council would have to be accompanied by a strong political commitment to support and implement its recommendations. There is growing interest in the importance of independent Fiscal Councils as a way of improving fiscal performance across the globe. Indeed this debate was recently ignited in Ghana. In respect of this, the Institute on Tuesday, May 9, 2017 held a roundtable discussion on the theme "Making Fiscal Council Work For Ghana: Country Experiences And Best Practice". A Senior Economist and Adjunct Research Fellow of the Institute, Dr. Eric Osei-Assibey addressing a gathering at the forum outlined critical ingredients necessary to ensure a successful fiscal Council. Where there is legal independence and a bi-partisanship approach to its establishment, you have the buy-in of all stakeholders and thus it will have unbiased forecasting and credibility in its reports, which will make it more effective, Dr Osei-Assibey stated. "Among these are the following Legal and Statutory Backing for the Council, Autonomy and Independence of the Council, Clear Mandate of the Council, Adequate Funding Guaranteed In The Constitution of Ghana and Political Commitment to the Analysis and Advice of the Council". Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, a Deputy Minister of Information, commended the IEA for their input on the proposed Fiscal Council, and said the Government was ready to help set up the Council and make it work. He said though governments always spend money; sometimes to undertake projects, which they believed were politically logical, it was always important to balance that with the micro economic interest of the country; doing it in a manner that did not jeopardise the countrys finances. He explained that although the Public Financial Management Act addressed fiscal issues to a point, there was the need to put in specific numerical limits that would ensure that debt and deficit numbers were better managed. Mr Oppong Nkrumah said it was important to get to a point where a law would make it prevent any government from going beyond a certain point. He called on other stakeholders to also bring up their input and suggestions on the Fiscal Council to inform the Governments decisions in the setting up of the council. We want to encourage more conversation and suggestions on the issue, he said, and also urged the media to create more space for views and input on such critical topics. The forum was chaired by Dr. Mark Assibey-Yeboah, Chairman of Finance Committee of Parliament. Present were guests from Parliament, government, academia, development partners, civil society and the media among others. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. The Government of Ghana, through a project management approach, shall be placing a moratorium on illegal mining for one year, in order to regain the arable farmlands and aquatic life of the rivers. The ban would be a subset of a proposed five-year Multilateral Mining Integrated Project (MMIP) to check the once upon a time artisanal activity, which, hitherto, had devastated major water bodies and fast depleted farmlands. To ensure that the twelve months, ban on illegal mining, known as galamsey in the Ghanaian parlance, was enforced, John Peter Amewu, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, told The Chronicle that 14 courts had been instituted by the Chief Justice to hear cases on galamsey. Three strategies in the Project Management Approach are to enforce legislation, where a foreigner who engages in galamsey would be jailed 25 years, and five years for nationals. The rest are the use of social interventions with minimal force, and lastly, using hi-tech technology to trap persons who would surreptitiously be caught engaging in illegal mining. The Minister told The Chronicle yesterday, on the sidelines at the ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, where the sector Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, hosted foreign missions from Africa and Latin America to an interactive meeting at different times. The meeting was to afford the Lands and Natural Resources Minister show a documentary on how galamsey has destroyed farmlands and river bodies in eight regions of the country to the guests. With this background, the Ministry entreated the foreign missions to collaborate with the government to halt the illegal mining activities. Mr. Amewu held that the government was not against mining, but "the methodology in the past 20 years has been injurious to the environment and humans. He mentioned that Ghana's failure to stop galamsey all these years is its inability to enforce laws due to lack of political will, and how some of its security operatives had been compromised, saying: "This total lawlessness has been Ghana's weakness." Government, he said, believes in private-public partnership, and to this end, Mr. Amewu explained that the government would re-categories small-scale mining, by introducing medium-scale mining. That way, all such artisanal miners would be captured in the tax net. In 2016, Ghana lost $23 billion as uncounted revenue to galamsey, only for the country to turn around to look for $250 million to reclaim degraded lands in the Western Region alone. A confident looking Minister of Lands and Natural Resources said the government would ensure that all devastated galamsey sites are reclaimed. Source: The Chronicle Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video President Akufo-Addo yesterday revealed another part of him that perhaps many Ghanaians may not know; he says he relishes controversy. Speaking at the launch of Ghanas Pride & Glory authored by veteran lawyer Aidoohene Chinbuah, the president indicated, As you all know, Im somewhat of a historian myself at least to the extent to which a person whose every pronouncement on our history provokes passionate controversy can be said to be a historian, drawing applause from the gathering. Interestingly, even though some consider being controversial a negative attribute, President Nana Akufo-Addo said, But I relish it. Reason Controversy and passion are illuminating; they are lights on the path for the truth and that has to be the goal. A. B. [the author of the book] with his characteristic and idiomatic style and sense of humour, has made an important contribution to the search for understanding; and I came here to make this statement: hes revealed many insights into the personalities of so many Ghanaians who are the subject of this brilliant brief biographies whose lives are deeply woven into the fabric of our history. President Akufo-Addo, who bought the first copy of the book for GH10,000 indicated, My presence here should not surprise anyone who knows the author, A.B. Chinbuah; A.B., to all of us his friends. He described the author as a colleague and good friend whom he applauded for having written what he described as an excellent and informative book. Nana Akufo-Addo, therefore, declared total support for lawyer Chinbuah and his work, saying, The work is important; it is a contribution to the understanding of how we came to be where we are and of the people from all walks of life, backgrounds, who helped shape that process. Honour Lawyer Aidoohene Chinbuah could not hide his joy for the presidents decision to honour the invitation he extended to him for the launch of his book. He recalled how he almost turned down advice from friends and family members for him to invite Nana Akufo-Addo to launch the book for him, because he knew the president has an obviously busy schedule and the bureaucratic protocol that he (Chinbuah) would have to go through to get the number one citizen of the land to attend the event was quite unthinkable, let alone getting him to launch the book. Initially, I recalled asking himself- how can I go to the Flagstaff House with my broken legs? But after a careful consideration, the veteran lawyer said he considered the suggestion and extended an invitation to the president. He said, You wouldnt believe it; when we wrote to him, within three days an answer had come, amidst loud applause. Shocking Effect I was so flabbergasted and tantalized, Lawyer Chinbuah said, throwing the entire hall into an uncontrollable laughter. The respected lawyer could not but exclaim, Ei! This is a new dawn; a new era. He concluded, Honestly, your Excellency, you are doing well. Lawyer Chinbuah therefore thanked him for the honour done him. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A driver and his mate endured some painful strokes of a cane on Friday morning from a man in military uniform at 37 for allegedly violating road traffic regulations. An amateur video footage available to citifmonline.com showed the man in uniform subjecting the drivers mate to some lashes, having instructed him to bend. Reports say that the two were being punished for wrongfully parking at the 37 branch of Total filling station to pick a passenger. Picking a passenger anywhere besides a designated bus stop violates the countrys road traffic regulations but most drivers especially in the countrys capital, Accra, blatantly violate this regulation, stopping to pick passengers or allow those onboard to alight at undesignated areas. 37 in Accra, is a military zone, hosting various military installations including the Military Hospital, Burma Camp, Air Force Officers mess among others. Source: citifmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Almost two months since Unicef director Charlotte Nikois disappearance, President Jacob Zuma appealed to anyone who may have information to come forward and assist the police with their investigation. Nikoi, a Ghanaian national, is reported to have arrived in Cape Town on March 17 on holiday and to celebrate her wedding anniversary with her family. She went missing a few days later on Human Rights Day when she went for a hike on Table Mountain. Zumas spokesperson, Bongani Ngqulunga, said the president made a special plea for assistance to find Nikoi. We appeal to anyone with information to assist the police to locate Ms Nikoi so that she can be reunited with her family. The South African Police and other departments such as Social Development will continue to provide as much support as possible during this difficult time, said Zuma. Nikois husband Chris believes she might be kept against her will, and asked for the potential kidnapper not harm her and release her safely. If anyone is holding her, please dont hurt her, release her because her family needs her, he said. Chris said Nikoi disappeared on March 21 when she and their daughter went hiking up Platteklip Gorge. We have done all efforts of searching Table Mountain and clearly she is not there. She is somewhere against her will, he said. Chris has not been at work since Nikoi vanished. This is the most difficult time the family has found itself in, said Chris, adding that their 22-year-old daughter is taking the news of her mothers disappearance very hard as she will be graduating at the end of the month. The graduation day will be the most difficult day without her, he said, adding that their other two children, 16 and 20, living in the US, were receiving counselling. I am lying in bed thinking what I could have done to prevent her from going missing. Not a single day passes without my children calling asking if she has been found. I am hoping that the government will leave no stone unturned to locate her, said Chris. Police spokesperson Noloyiso Rwexana said the search for the missing person is ongoing, all leads are followed, the missing person has not been found yet. Anyone with information on her whereabouts must contact Chris on 062 439 5189 or 079 140 6099, or the investigating officer on 083 244 3688. Source: Iol.co.za Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Sanitation and Water Resources Minister, Mr. Joseph Kofi Adda, has announced the decision to sink 25,000 boreholes and construct 300 small water systems to expand access to quality water supply across the nation. This, he said, formed part of the governments water and sanitation for all programme. He was addressing the biennial review conference of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CSWA) at Fumesua in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality. Rural water and sanitation services provision; current role of CWSA, gaps and the way forward for effective and sustainable delivery was the theme chosen for the five-day meeting. It provided the platform to deliberate on the achievements, the challenges and how to deal with these, as well as the implementation of future projects. Mr. Adda spoke of the determination of the ministry to go the extra mile to ensure the safety of water supplied to the population. He made reference to the findings of a study by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany, that showed that water from boreholes drank by the people contained tadpoles and chemicals and said that gave cause for concern. That was why everything would be done to make sure that the right things were done and standards kept, he added. The Minister hinted of strong push towards the promotion of public-private partnership, to fund the urban water sub-sector and said good progress was being made. The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) had already responded - made available GH2 million. He encouraged the CWSA to work closely with research institutions to improve the quality of water. He reminded the Agency that issues relating to water, sanitation and hygiene had assumed greater importance and urgency and that it could not be business usual. Mr. Worlanyo Kodjo Siabe, Chief Executive of CWSA, noted that funding had remained a huge challenge, something, which was making it difficult to effectively monitor water, sanitation and hygiene services. The funding constraint was such that it had over the last years been unable to provide new boreholes and toilets in four of the 10 regions. He said given the needed support it could help to substantially bring down open-defecation in the communities. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The 2016 flag bearer of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, escaped being eaten by sharks after he was rescued by divers in the deep seas of the Bahamas. Mr Greenstreet, who is in the Bahamas helping a friend out with an election in that country, said he had gone scuba diving but ended up in the shark-infested part of the sea. According to him, his rescuers had to feed the sharks dead fish to divert their attention and get him out. Mr Greenstreet posted the video of his escape from shark jaws on his Facebook wall saying: Scuba diving is such a great sport, and thank God I made it out to tell the story to you all. Below is the video: Source: classfmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has expressed its readiness to support government in the spirit of making Accra the cleanest and the most beautiful city in Africa. According to AMA, the Presidents vision would be achieved if stakeholders commit to good sanitation practices concerted leaderships, and unbridled political will. This was disclosed by the Mayor of Accra, Mohammed Adjei Sowah when he disclosed AMAs response to the Presidents vision. On April 23, 2017, the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, pledged his commitment to making Accra the cleanest city on the African continent within the next four years. He said, the commitment I want to make, and for all of us to make, is that by the end of my term in office, Accra will be the cleanest city on the entire African continent. That is the commitment I am making. Soon after the President made his vision known, the Executive Chairman of Zoomlion Limited, Dr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, commended President for pledging to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa in the next four years, and said the Presidents commitment fed into the companys vision of championing clean, green and healthy communities. For the Mayor, the Presidents vision of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa is by extension, making it even more beautiful that Nairobi, South Africa, Johannesburg, and Port Louis which are considered the cleanest cities in Africa. According to the Mayor, the Assembly will work with capable private sanitation service providers in order to make the vision a reality. Notwithstanding the Assemblys position and determination, the Mayor noted that existing action plans may not be able to attain the vision hence; there is the need for a more realistic action plans, change in policy, city cleaning approaches, enforcement mechanisms, and attitude. He however assured the president that, the Assembly being the city authority sees his vision as realistic and achievable within the time frame and ready to take on the challenge. Mohammed Adjei Sowah also indicated that the presidents vision came on the premise of a 2015 WHO and UN Children Fund report which ranked Ghana the 7th dirtiest country in the world It is hard to deny the enormity and urgency of the sanitation challenge of Accra that has been petrifying the Accra city dwellers for decades. Clean means clean. it means zero tolerance for filth, pollution and unauthorized developments. It also means clean environment, clean water and orderly development, he said. The Mayor noted that the efforts to achieve this requires more than slogans, rhetoric, and speeches even though it would help in sensitizing the public but requires concerted action and commitment from all. He said the Assembly and other law enforcement agencies will work together to go tough on indiscriminate disposals of all kinds of wastes, since they will not renege in taking action against the disposal of untreated biomedical waste and other liquid wastes, solid, chemical wastes into the system. He also enumerated that they will institute action to cut back on waste generation at source and urged Ghanaian companies to rethink about ways goods are manufactured and packaged. The Mayor also averred that in order to galvanize waste disposal in the system, we must condemn littering of the environment and open defecation. He said the Korle Lagoon will be transformation and there will be sustained education and sensitization efforts on acceptable cleaning practices. Our focus will be on waste management, beautification and law enforcement. He indicated that the Assembly has begun putting measures in place that will lead to the realization of the presidents vision hence the Accra Metropolis has been divided into 50 zones with 11 sanitation and waste management service providers taking charge of these zones. Zoomlion Ghana Limited which is the number one waste management and sanitation service providers in Ghana and outside the country has been given three zones to operate including Ayawaso West, Ayawaso South and Ablekuma Central sub-metro. The other zones were shared among the existing qualified companies registered with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly. The AMA however directs all residents to register with the service providers in order to ensure a smooth implementation of planned programs towards making Accra the cleanest and more beautiful city in Africa. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Finance Ministry has released an amount of GHS106,697,628.80 to the Registrar of Scholarships for payment of feeding grants for second cycle schools in the northern regions. It says the payment is in respect of the third term feeding grant for 137,300 students for the 2015-2016 academic year, and also for 140,264 students for the first term of 2016/2017 academic year. An amount of GHS184,851,616.60 has been outstanding since the beginning of 2017 which is supposed to be scholarship payments for the third term of 2015/2016, the first term of 2016/2017 and the expected payment for the second term of 2016/2017, the Ministry said. The Ministry is processing the remaining claims for the second and third terms of the 2016/2017 academic year. Senior high schools (SHS) in the Upper East, Upper West and the Northern Regions on Tuesday, announced their decision to delay reopening indefinitely, due to lack of funds to pay their suppliers. The three regions together have a total of 72 Senior High Schools that are managed by the Ghana Education Service. The Heads said governments failure to reimburse the outstanding feeding grants for four academic calendars, necessitated the action because they were hugely indebted to their suppliers. The schools were scheduled to reopen on May 16, but the school heads say they are not in the position to feed the students if the feeding grants are not released. Source: Joy News Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The minority in Parliament is demanding an immediate disciplinary action from President Akufo-Addo towards Gender Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba and NPP Northern Regional chairman, Bugri Naabu regarding developments they refer to as posing a veritable threat to the countrys democracy and good governance. In a press release signed by the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, the opposition party expressed disappointment that 'state actors' had not responded accordingly especially to the allegation by Bugri Naabu. Mr Naabus allegations have widespread implications for the delivery of justice in the matter of the murder of the Upper East Regional Chairman. In any true democratic system, Mr Naabus pronouncement should have elicited immediate action from state actors especially the Ghana Police and President Akufo-Addo. As a government that is enjoined to uphold the rule of law and the fundamental human rights of the people, this loud silence from the state actors particularly the President is not only shocking but a betrayal of the people on whose shoulders he rode to power, the statement said. Below is a copy of the statement: STATEMENT BY THE NDC MINORITY IN PARLIAMENT. TAKE ACTION AGAINST BUGRI NAABU AND OTIKO DJABA NOW MR PRESIDENT The NDC Minority in Parliament has noted with grave concern recent accusations among some Ministers of State and the New Patriotic Party Big Wigs. It will be recalled that about a week ago the Northern Regional Chairman of the NPP, Mr Daniel Bugri Naabu led a group of hoodlums to disrupt a meeting organised by the Minister of Gender and Social Protection, Madam Afisa Otiko Djaba at the Modern City Hotel in Tamale. This resulted in altercations between the two on various media platforms. This worrying situation does not only have internal NPP Party ramifications but also far reaching negative consequences for the peace, stability and good governance of our dear country. In the verbal assault on each other in the media, Madam Otiko Djaba accused Mr Naabu of running a regime of political thuggery in the Northern Region which he uses to brutally suppress dissent against his dictatorial leadership style. Madam Otiko further accused Mr Naabu of bribery in which he allegedly collected goats, sheep and cows among others from NPP members seeking high public office positions such as District Chief Executive positions. In a rebuttal, Mr Naabu accused the Minister for Gender and Social Protection and two others of complicity in the murder of Alhaji Mahama Adams, former Upper East Regional Chairman of the NPP. The two are Mr Rockson Bukari, current Upper East Regional Minister and the newly appointed Builsa District Chief Executive. Mr Naabu had alleged that the three had had series of secret meetings at which the plot to murder Mr Adams, the Upper East Regional Chairman was hatched. We in the Minority consider these developments as a grave concern as they pose a veritable threat to our democracy and good governance. Ghana is a country of laws where the fundamental human rights and freedoms are enshrined in the 1992 Constitution and therefore expected to be enforced in ways prescribed by the law i.e. through the known and recognised institutions such as the courts. As we speak, two people are standing trial for their alleged complicity in the murder of Alhaji Adams. This allegation by the Northern Regional NPP Chairman Mr Naabu that the three were not only involved in the murder but were responsible is crucial to the determination of the matter currently pending before the court. Mr Naabus allegations have widespread implications for the delivery of justice in the matter of the murder of the Upper East Regional Chairman. In any true democratic system, Mr Naabus pronouncement should have elicited immediate action from state actors especially the Ghana Police and President Akufo-Addo. As a government that is enjoined to uphold the rule of law and the fundamental human rights of the people, this loud silence from the state actors particularly the President is not only shocking but a betrayal of the people on whose shoulders he rode to power. We in the Minority are calling for an immediate invitation from the Police to Mr Naabu to assist the Police with his evidence in respect of the murder of the Upper East Regional Chairman. Similarly we call the Police and the President to act on the serious bribery allegation made by Madam Otiko Djaba, Minister for Gender and Social Protection against Mr Naabu, the Northern Regional Chairman. We are by this asking that they invite all those whose names have been mentioned in connection with the scandal. What is most disturbing is that under the watch of President Akufo Addo who claims to be a champion of human rights and an anti-corruption crusader, these things are happening without any concrete action from him. As matters stand now, the Minority stands vindicated for its earlier opposition to the appointment of Otiko Djaba as a Minister of State. We demand an action from the President now else his inaction will confirm the view in the public domain that this is a double standard and substandard government. Signed, Hon. Haruna Iddrissu Minority Leader Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The outgoing UK High Commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin is perceived by members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) as a surrogate and a card bearing of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) according to a communications member of the NDC. Jon Benjamin is a complete ally of the NPP former Obuasi Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) Akwasi Ofori Agyeman Boadi claims. According to the former Obuasi MCE, the UK Commissioner prior to the 2016 polls made several utterances which suggested he likes the NPP more than any other other political party. Mr Jon Benjamin has been described by NDC functionaries as spokesperson for the NPP campaign team whose intention was to see the NPP in power and therefore describes his conduct as very undiplomatic of any envoy. The ardent critic of the Mahama led administration also comes under heavy criticisms by NDC members whom they opine always out step his bounds as diplomat. Commenting on his recent claim of lawmakers in the country allegedly involved in visa racketeering, the former MCE stated Nobody can convince me he is not if I say he is an NPP sympathizer. I suspect he is even more than that. I believe he might be a card bearing member if you look at his public utterances well I am now surprise that Mr. Benjamin is calling Members of Parliament fraudsters in acquisition of UK visas Agyeman Boadi said. The UK High Commissioner recently cited four Ghanaian lawmakers for alleged visa fraud as they were reported to have used their diplomatic passports through middlemen to apply for visas for some persons who traveled but overstayed during their visits to the UK Richard Acheampong, MP for Bia East in the Western Region, Joseph Benhazin Dahah, MP for Ntotroso in the Bono Ahafo region, Johnson Kwaku Adu, MP for Ahafo Ano South West, in the Ashanti Region and George Boakye, former MP for Asunafo South in the Bono Ahafo region are said to those who perpetrated the act. The British High Commissioner in a correspondence to the Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aaron Mike Ocquaye that has been leaked according to a leaked letter, said The British High Commission considers the actions [of the MPs] completely unacceptable. In some cases these behaviours may arguably be criminal in nature, the letter said. It added that given what has transpired, the High Commission will will henceforth only entertain and prioritise requests for visas from MPs, if they are made through the parliamentary protocol office who should verify that there is an official, parliamentary reason for the proposed visit. Source: mynewsgh.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The managing Editor of the New Crusading Guide newspaper says Gender Minister Otiko Afisa Djaba can be among the first list of ministers who can be reshuffled. Otiko can be an earlier casualty Kweku Baako said during a panel discussion on Peace FM morning show Kokrokoo, Wednesday. His comment comes on the back of altercations that occurred between the Northern Regional chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Bugri Naabu and Otiko Afisa Djaba over the weekend. Bugri Naabu in the company of some agitated women disrupted a meeting being held by Otiko Djaba to introduce a new northern regional coordinator of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) at Tamale. Mr. Naabu was infuriated that he was not given prior notice by the Gender Minister before the meeting was held. The incident resulted in clashes between the two on a number of media platforms. During the verbal exchanges, Otiko Djaba accused Bugri Naabu of taking goats, sheep and cows from certain people within the party with the promise of getting them the position of MMCE. In a quick rebuttal, the NPP Northern regional chairman also accused her of being involved in the murder of late Upper East chairman Adams Mahama. According to Kweku Baako, the Minister should have known better. is it not obvious. The minister also did not handle herself wellthe minister should be confronted and challenged to bring evidence to prove that Bugri Naabu was collecting goatsfrom MMCE. What can you say than these are walking disasters he indicated. Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Audio Attachment: Listen to Kweku Baako Jnr. on Peace FM's 'kokrokoo' Seasoned journalist Kweku Baako Jnr. has asked the Police Service to investigate the allegations by the NPP Northern Regional Chairman, Bugri Naabu, against the Upper East Regional Minister. Bugri Naabu has implicated the Hon. Rockson Bukari in the death of Adams Mahama and further accused the Gender Minister, Otiko Djaba, of complicitity in the scheme. Addressing the issue on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', Kweku Baako labeled Bugri Naabu's claims as "nonsense" and "bogus". According to him, it is "bogus and fraudulent" and charged the security agencies to probe him further, stating emphatically that Bugri Naabu was making empty talks. Its complete rubbish. Rubbish that deserves to be consigned into the dustbin of history. But before we can do that, Im all for investigations. Im all for Bugri to be challenged to substantiate because that is the only way for everyone to see that its complete rubbish, bogus and fraudulent." he said. He further stated that the conduct of the NPP Northern Regional Chairman is bringing the government into disrepute and it's prudent for the party to sanction him. Mr. Baako also found it ridiculous that the Regional Chairman of the ruling party kept silent on the matter till date if he indeed had any evidence to corroborate his claims. He added that Bugri Naabu must be compelled to back up his claims with concrete evidence. He stressed that he strongly believes the allegations are not true and that the "best way to demolish this nonsense is to invite the man to bring the evidence". Where was Bugri all this time? When the issue happened, Bugri talked on radio and TV. He accused certain personalities who are in the NPP. He mentioned namesNot just him, another leading member of the NPP also mentioned other big names. Do you remember someone claimed Kwadwo Mpiani and his boss were behind the killing? Bugri pointed fingers at Kwabena Agyepong and Afoko. This man that Bugri has mentioned his name Rockson Bukari he was the Spokesperson for the Adams family and at the funeralthis man gave a very emotionally charged speech and without mentioning names, he pointed at people he claimed were within the party who were responsible for it. Bugri was there. He was at the funeral and he knew this man was a murderer or the mastermind behind the murder and he sat down for the man to make all those statementsWhere was Bugri when the Council of Elders said that everyone should stop the passing of innuendos and so forth, and if you have evidence, go and give it to the investigators so that they can do a professional work with it? Mr. Baako questioned. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video To activate the text-to-speech service, please first agree to the privacy policy below. Taipei, May 10 (CNA) The opposition Kuomintang said on Wednesday that it will hold a rally at the weekend to call for a "toxin-free homeland." The focus will be a demand that the Democratic Progressive Party government does not allow imports containing ractopamine or food imports from radiation-affected areas of Japan. NDC Central Regional Chairman, Allotey Jacobs has categorically stated that the Okyehene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin is not involved in any illegal mining activities. A BNI report named the Okyehene as one of the galamsey kingpins. A 31-page report by the BNI, which has not yet been released, reportedly cited some Chiefs and political figures in the country as being involved in the illegal mining. The report focused on districts in eight out of the 10 regions of the country where galamsey takes place. Speaking on 'Kokrokoo' on Peace FM, Allotey Jacobs confidently stated that the Okyehene cannot be indicted by the BNI report to have any connections with illegal mining, popularly called galamsey. He dared the BNI to release the report into the public domain so as to clarify issues. I dont personally believe that this great Chief is involved in galamsey . . . As Im speaking now, BNI, theyre not doing this government any good. They have not come out with the statement. The statement has not circulated to the media for us, ordinary citizens, also to read. So, we dont know what is entailed in that BNI report, he said on 'kokrokoo' Meanwhile, the elders of the Akyem Abuakwa Traditional Council in the Eastern Region are reported to have storm the offices of the BNI to register their displeasure with the report. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The young Australian locked up in the Americas by border security officials has been released from detention and granted passage back home. No, not her, the other one. Canberra man Baxter Reid, 26, was given bail yesterday after spending time behind bars for allegedly overstaying his U.S. visa by 90 minutes. ICYMI, Reids five-year-long visa stated he had to leave the country every six months to keep it valid. He and American partner Heather Kansco took a quick trip to Canada from New York State last month on the night it was due to expire, but Canadian authorities held him for a couple of hours before granting him entry. When he made the journey back south, he was detained by American authorities for the apparent violation. Following yesterdays court hearing, Reid was released from Buffalo Federal Detention Facility on bail, and was given 120 days to scram back to Australia. Thats incrementally longer than 90 minutes, so Reid may just be able to avoid any dicey border mix-ups this time around. Reids attorney Julie Kruger said he was trying to comply with immigration visa laws, and that she was pleased that the Department of Homeland Security was willing to listen to our arguments. FWIW, Kansco intends to accompany Reid back to Australia. We can only hope our border security detail doesnt kick up a fuss about that one. Source: The Age. Photo: Baxter Reid / Facebook. An Australian Army soldier has died in the Northern Territory after becoming wounded in a live fire training exercise. The Department of Defence issued a statement this afternoon confirming that the man was killed at around 12.45pm local time in the Mount Bundey Training Area near Darwin. The soldier was taking part in a routine training exercise when he was injured. He received first aid at the site and was taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital where was later declared deceased. The department says they have suspended training activities and will be launching an investigation into what happened, NT Police will also be looking into the incident: The Army and ADF community extends its deepest sympathies to the soldiers family and friends. It is a deep shock to the organisation and will be felt by the broader Army family. The Chief of Army and Army commanders acknowledge the gravity of this and recent incidents and take all matters relating to personnel and training very seriously. As such, Army has instigated a suspension of training activities across its combat brigades to review risk assessment processes and training safety management. Defence will not be releasing any information relating to the soldiers personal or service history at this time. Northern Territory Police are investigating the incident and will prepare a report for the Northern Territory Coroner. The ADF are assisting police in their inquiries. The identity of the soldier is unknown at this time. Source: Department of Defence. Photo: Getty Images / Ian Hitchcock. WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault. In a first for Switzerland and perhaps worldwide a Swiss court has upheld a 12-month suspended sentence for a man convicted of stealthing, a.k.a. the practise of removing a condom without the partners consent. Swiss broadcaster SRF reported that the man and woman met on Tinder, and after a couple dates, agreed to have protected sex. Mid-way through, however, the man decided he wanted unprotected sex, and when the woman refused, he removed the condom in secret. Prosecutor Laurence Brenlla argued that his act was rape, or at the very least desecration, because the woman was surprised, deceived and incapable of resistance. During the trial, he presented the court with a paper recently published in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law by Alexandra Brodsky, which kickstarted the global discussion of stealthing and described the act as rape-adjacent and one rooted in misogyny and investment in male sexual supremacy. While one can imagine a range of motivations for stealthersincreased physical pleasure, a thrill from degradationonline discussions suggest offenders and their defenders justify their actions as a natural male instinctand natural male right, the paper said. Currently, there is no legal precedent for stealthing in Australia, as nobody has yet taken a case to court. A recent Triple J Hack investigation found that, despite police agreeing that the act is definitely dangerous, theres nothing in the Crimes Act related to it. Photo: China Photos / Getty. Well, you coulda called it. Turns out the old fella who smooshed a pie into Qantas CEO Alan Joyces face did it because he isnt a big fan of same-sex marriage. One wonders why this is the way to protest it, but it is what it is. .@Qantas CEO Alan Joyce had a cream pie smashed into his face at a business breakfast in the city this morning #7News @7NewsPerth pic.twitter.com/YfOiVcrdnZ 7 News Perth (@7NewsPerth) May 9, 2017 Tony Overheu the pie crim in question spoke with 6PRs Breakfast show about how he pulled it off: Lemon meringue appeared to be the softest and least likely to do any injury. I bought the cake the previous evening, popped it in my work ute that I own at 6 o clock yesterday morning. Drove from Willetton, parked in the bottom street below the Hyatt, had the cake wrapped up like a birthday present just to make it compact, walked in the front door waited for a couple of hours until everyone had come in. In case it wasnt clear exactly why he pied Alan Joyce the CEO who has famously directed Qantas to publicly support certain progressive causes then his statement to 6PR should probably clear that one up for you. Middle Australia completely rejects corporate bullying aimed at social engineering. Qantas is insulting many staff and passengers with their boarding pass propaganda. What Airbnb is doing in Canberra airport is highly offensive. Outfits like Wesfarmers and Holden loose huge credibility supporting such campaigns. The blatant bullying and extortion of Coopers Brewery was totally reprehensible. CEOs need to respect Australia is a democracy where backdoor attempts to subvert the clear wishes of the overwhelming majority will cost companies bottom lines. Allan Joyce is paid $13 million to run airlines not bulldoze Australia socially against its will. Ah. Right. Source: 6PR. Photo: 7 News. What can be assumed as Putins absolute favourite-ever feminist punk band, Pussy Riot, have been added to the annual Dark MOFO winter solstice festival in Tasmania. Two of the women from the notorious protest group will be headed to Hobart for a screening of the newest Pussy Riot documentary, Act & Punishment, a Q&A sesh, and a DJ set, as announced this morning by the festival. Maria Vladimirovna Masha Alyokhina (one of the Pussy Riot members thrown in jail in 2012 for hooliganism) and Alexandra Lukyanova (aka Sasha Bogino) will be joined by their producer, Alexander Cheparukhin for the screening and Q&A, and yep you can submit questions for the panel to answer. The doco is all about the formation of Pussy Riot in 2011, and how theyve managed to pull the issues of feminism and LGBT rights into the spotlight in Russia. Check out the trailer below. Once a year, Tassie becomes home to some of the darkest, most mysterious art and performances, turning the water-locked state into a hub of strange culture and modern art. Dark MOFO is in the thick of June, and serves as the nocturnal, weird younger sibling of the summer months MONA FOMA (MOFO for short). The rest of the second announcement looks pretty freakin sweet too, with Nai Palm from Haitus Kaiyote, the lineup for the annual Welcome Stranger art party, a big talk with the very controversial Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch and Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks locked in for a second show. Heres Masha from Pussy Riot dropping the announcement in a most beautiful thick accent. So if being in the Tassie in the middle of winter for ridic. art and music is your thing, then hop on over to their site to grab tix, folks. Photo: Youtube/Pussy Riot. A dining void has been filled in Lower Paxton Township. On May 9, Grill 22 opened at 6197 Allentown Blvd. in the former Ted's Bar & Grill with a neighborhood bar feel, pub foods and a familiar face working behind the bar. The restaurant, owned by business partners Dave J. Guy and Anne S. Arroyo, is nearly identical to their other establishment, the York Street Grille. They opened it last year at the former Grandpa's Growler in Mechanicsburg. The pair also owns the Firehouse Restaurant in Harrisburg and have a stake in MoMo's BBQ & Grill in Harrisburg. "The whole idea is to bring some quality pub food to the area," Guy said. Grill 22 chef Shawn Moyer slid over from the York Street Grille and oversees the menu of burgers, wings, pizza, sandwiches and entrees. In the past he worked at Niko's in Lebanon and as a chef in the cruise industry. A smoked half chicken is served over mashed potatoes with vegetables while bacon-wrapped meatloaf comes with redskin mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables. A grilled teriyaki salmon is accompanied by creamy mushroom risotto and seasonal vegetables. Prices range from $6-$12 for appetizers to $8-$18 for sandwiches and between $12 and $28 for entrees. The restaurant also serves a Sunday brunch from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. with items such as traditional biscuits and gravy and omelets to huevos rancheros and a breakfast burger topped with applewood bacon and an over-easy egg. "We are going to get the vibe of what people want around here and then change it accordingly," Guy said. "We have a killer base of pub foods and entrees." There's no shortage of beers on tap with 20 to choose from including both craft and domestic brews from Rubber Soul and Zeroday to Bud Light. The man pouring those beers as well as wine and mixing cocktails is Scotty Hohe, a bartender who previously worked for more than three decades at the Subway Cafe in Harrisburg. "It was a difficult decision to make but I'm trying to better myself because this is quite an opportunity," Hohe said. "It wasn't a decision I took lightly." The dining room has been given a much-needed facelift. It's lighter and more open with a hint toward an industrial feel. Grill 22's mascot is the rooster but it's not intended to confuse diners into thinking the restaurant specializes in poultry dishes. It was actually inspired by Arroyo's father, the late Robert Starrett, who was a painter. His painting of a rooster along with prints of several other paintings decorate the restaurant's walls. "Hopefully people recognize it as our brand," Arroyo said. Ted's Bar & Grill closed in November 2015 when its owners moved the restaurant to a new building at 7200 Allentown Blvd. in West Hanover Township. A Ted's Bar & Grill also operates at 1313 N. Second St. in Harrisburg. Kitchen hours at Grill 22 are: 11 a.m. -10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Fatal Crash Bermans Wife In this May 9, 2017, photo, medics pull a victim from an overturned vehicle in Woodbury, Conn. A second vehicle landed in a nearby stream. Katherine Ann Berman, wife of longtime ESPN broadcaster Chris Berman died in the traffic crash. (Steven Valenti/Republican-American via AP) Kathy Berman, wife of longtime ESPN sportscaster and anchor, was killed in a car crash Tuesday afternoon in Connecticut. She was 67. The wife of longtime ESPN broadcaster Chris Berman has died in a traffic crash in Connecticut. The crash happened around 2:15 p.m. on a Connecticut state road. According to a report from the state police, Berman's car rear-ended another car. Berman's car went down an embankment and overturned in a small body of water. Edward Bertulis, 87, who was driving the other car in the crash, also died. According to a report, troopers are investigating the possibility that Bertulis suffered a medical emergency right before Berman's car crashed into the back of his car. The president of ESPN, John Skipper, released a statement about Berman's death. "This is a devastating tragedy and difficult to comprehend. Chris is beloved by all his ESPN colleagues and for good reason: He has a huge heart and has given so much to so many over the years," he said. "We know how much his family means to him and all we can do at a moment like this is give him the love and support he will surely need at this hour. Our thoughts and prayers are with Chris, Meredith, Doug and the entire family." The Hartford Courant reports: The Lexus rear-ended Bertulis' Ford and continued traveling east, veering off the road to the right, state police said. The Lexus went down an embankment and overturned in a small body of water, state police said. The Ford also went off the road, striking a utility pole and landing in the middle of the road on its roof. Bertulis, of Welles Street in Waterbury, was taken to Waterbury Hospital, where he died, police said. Berman, of Peach Tree Court in Cheshire, died at the scene. Kathy and Chris Berman were married for 33 years and had two children. Associated Press photo of British pop band Gorillaz. (Associated Press ) The president of a veterans organization is calling from a boycott of the band Gorillaz after graffiti promoting the band was spray painted on walkways at Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park in Philadelphia, Police are looking for two suspects. According to Philly.com, Terry Williamson, the president of the Philadelphia Vietnam Memorial Fund, called for a boycott of Gorillas, who are scheduled to play locally in July. A representative of the band declined to comment on the incident to Philly.com. James Comey President Donald Trump on Tuesday abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's election meddling.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (Carolyn Kaster) Sen. Bob Casey on Tuesday afternoon called on justice officials to ensure an independent and thorough investigation continue into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in the wake of the firing of FBI director James Comey. Casey called Comey's ouster "Nixonian." "This is Nixonian. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein must immediately appoint a special counsel to continue the Trump/Russia investigation," Casey said. President Donald Trump on Tuesday abruptly fired Comey, ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of an investigation into whether Trump's campaign had ties to Russia's election meddling. Comey recently came under fire for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Democrats widely credit that move with Clinton's defeat. The White House on Tuesday said Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions recommended Comey's ouster. Casey called for a continuation of a rigorous investigation. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) "This investigation must be independent and thorough in order to uphold our nation's system of justice," he said. The Department of Justice had authorized Comey to investigate the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. That includes investigating the nature of any links between Trump campaign aides and the Russian government. President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey is being heralded and criticized by Pennsylvania's federal lawmakers. U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey and U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent issued statements Wednesday in response to Comey's fire. The White House attributed Comey's dismissal to his handling of the investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's email server. However, Democrats have said Comey's firing was a result of his probe into connections between Trump and his staffers to the Russian government. Toomey, a Republican, said he has doubted Comey's ability to lead the FBI effectively for some time now but the timing of his dismissal is unfortunate. "It is now up to the president to appoint, and the Senate to confirm, a successor who has unimpeachable credentials and integrity and who enjoys the confidence of the American people," Toomey said. "The next FBI director should continue pursuing ongoing investigations, including the 2016 presidential campaign." Dent criticised Trump's decision, since he considered Comey a "decent and honorable man" put in an extremely difficult situation. "His firing by President Trump is both confounding and troubling, and it is now harder to resist calls for an independent investigation or select committee," Dent said. "The president must provide a much clearer explanation as to the timing and rationale for this action. Additionally, more information is needed about how the Director's firing will impact the investigations by the FBI and both branches of Congress." Toomey and Dent's comments come after U.S. Sen. Bob Casey called on justice officials to ensure an independent and thorough investigation continue into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Casey call Comey's firing "Nixonian." christopher heath.jpg Christopher Mark Heath (York County Prison) A former California deputy sheriff was convicted on drug trafficking and a federal firearms offense Wednesday in Harrisburg. Christopher Mark Heath was found guilty of participating in a drug trafficking ring that moved hundreds of pounds of marijuana between North Carolina, Florida and York County. The 38-year-old former Yuba County deputy sheriff was convicted after a two-day trial and less than two hours of deliberation, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Bruce Brandler's office. Beginning in September 2014, Heath and his co-defendants grew marijuana on a property in Oroville, California. They then shipped the drugs using the U.S. Postal Service to several locations, including Hanover, Lancaster and York. Money to purchase more marijuana was mailed from Bangor, California and York, officials said. In December 2015, Health and his co-conspirators drove from California to York County in two vehicles. They were transporting 89.5 kilograms of marijuana, valued at around $500,000. Heath was caught with the marijuana in his truck, as well as a loaded Glock firearm and his deputy sheriff's badge. They were arrested by the York County Drug Task force and Penn Township police. Heath's co-defendants have already pleaded guilty. He resigned from his job as a narcotics investigator with the Yuba County sheriff's office.The drug trafficking ring was halted Jan. 7, 2016. Heath has pending firearms charges in Butte County, California. Heath was convicted of possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, and possess with intent to manufacture and distribute 100 kilograms and more of marijuana, conspiracy to commit money laundering, manufacture, distribution and possession with intent to manufacture. He faces up to life in prison on the most serious charge. HARRISBURG--Is the city of Harrisburg better off now than it was nearly four years ago? That's the question many voters may be asking themselves as they consider how to vote in the mayoral primary next Tuesday. PennLive visited some neighborhoods Tuesday to see what was on residents' minds as the city approaches a primary election that could either give incumbent Mayor Eric Papenfuse a chance at four more years or give that chance to a challenger with a different approach. Challengers Gloria Martin-Roberts, Jennie Jenkins, Lewis Butts and Anthony Harrell are trying to unseat the mayor in the May 16 primary. In the majority Democratic city, the winner of the primary is often the winner of the general election. Some residents think things have gotten better in the city in recent years, especially with their perception that crime is going down. Bill Alridge, who has set up a flea market under a tent at the corner of 18th and Derry streets for the past 15 years, said he no longer has to fret about people ransacking his tent. "There was a time when you couldn't set tables out without people running by and stealing things," he said, noting that a thief once swiped his bike right in front of him. Walter Gallant, who lives a few blocks from that corner, said the city's new energy-efficient streetlights have brightened his neighborhood. "That was money well-spent," he said, of the city's $3.7 million LED conversion project completed last year. "I think this area is better than what it was." But other residents think the current mayor hasn't been visible enough in all areas of the city. And they don't think he understands their problems. "I live on the hill," said Pete Smith, who stopped by Jimmy the Hot Dog King in uptown Tuesday. "He's not doing anything there. All you see is cops. And as far helping the city and kids, I don't see it happening." Lifelong resident Dannet Waters said she believed crime was down "a little bit," but that the current mayor is only worried about "downtown not uptown." "We have vacant houses and nothing's being done," Waters said as she pushed her cart filled with groceries across the uptown plaza shopping center parking lot. "There's not enough for the kids to do." Nearly everyone interviewed by PennLive Tuesday shared concerns about the school district and a desire for more social, educational, and recreational opportunities for youths. The school district is not under the control of the city, but its effectiveness has a huge effect on the city, Gallant said. "I don't care what the city does, if you don't fix the school system, no families are going to want to come," Gallant said. "You could fix every pothole and make the city safe, but it wouldn't matter until you fix that." Sheldon Jones, who was born and raised in the city, said the city's administration should partner with some community groups in the city such as the Making-a-Layup Foundation and Breaking the Chainz to reach more youths. "The youth right now, are misguided," Jones said. "The young kids aren't respectful. It's been a long time coming...That's the generation we need to get ahold of." Mark Simmons, a lifelong uptown resident, said he thinks the city is heading in the right direction. He said the roads seem better, but one area for improvement would be concerts back at Reservoir Park and more attention on all the city's parks. David James, of midtown, who's lived in the city for 55 years, said he hasn't noticed much change in terms of growth or crime lately. The city needs more department stores and restaurants, he said. "We need movie theaters, game shops, there's nothing," he said. "I grew up on William Street when there were two movie theaters on Third Street." If he were mayor, he said he also would look to build a parking garage in midtown because parking spaces can be so hard to find. Customers of some midtown bars can lock up spaces, leaving residents circling the block if they arrive home at night. Not a lot of people are talking about the election, James said, and most residents interviewed by PennLive Tuesday in uptown and Allison Hill agreed. "No one talking about election," said Shannon Gaston, who stopped by Sorrento Pizza near 18th and Derry streets for lunch, "but I see all the fliers." Talk of the election, however, is filling up other residents' social media feeds. And the talk is getting really negative. "The vitriol from all of the campaigns is worse than I've ever seen here," said Brian Ostella. "It's like they would rather everyone hate everyone else than promote their good qualities." Tara Leo Auchey, who started the Today's the Day Harrisburg blog, kicked off a detailed discussion with dozens of comments on her Facebook page last week when she lamented the way the campaigns were playing out. "Nothing for months leading up (except private fundraisers) then all of a sudden in these last three weeks, it's a mess of accusations and uninformed opinions, of stories and incorrect information," she wrote. "It's times like these that remind me of how and why our city is so damaged and so full of desperate expectations for quick fixes." Solutions will take time, she said, no matter who is elected. She advised her neighbors to "do your homework as much as you can (just Google!) Ask more questions and ponder the headlines and posts you see in rampant ferocity lately." kyle wireman.png Kyle Wireman (Bucks County district attorney's office) A Bucks County man will spend five to 15 years in state prison for giving friend fatal fentanyl-laced pills to reportedly ease the man's back pain. Kyle Wireman, 29, of Telford, pleaded guilty to drug delivery resulting in death, involuntary manslaughter, delivery of a controlled substance and related charges Monday in Bucks County Court. He had been charged for his role in the death of Justin Eschenburg. Wireman and Eschenburg, 30, had been friends since they were teenagers, according to a news release from the Bucks County district attorney's office. "I'm sorry, and I know that's not good enough. I pray for you every day," Wireman said to Eschenburg's parents. in court "Your son was a good friend to me, and I never meant to hurt him." Eschenburg's father, Gary, found him dead of an overdose on Nov. 3, 2015, in his son's Trumbauersville home, officials said. Justin Eschenburg had crushed and snorted a blue pill the night before, which Wireman had given him. Both Wireman and Eschenburg believed the pill was Percocet, but the pill was actually a combination of fentanyl and acetyl fentanyl. The pills belonged to a batch of 30 pills bought by Brianna Burns in Camden, New Jersey a few days earlier, officials said. Prosecutors explained that Wireman bought three pills from Burns in Sellersville, later taking them to Eschenburg's home. Wireman gave Eschenburg two of the pills as partial payment for a debt and to help for back pain, officials said. Wireman also swallowed the third pill with Eschenburg, testifying that he was sick and throwing up not long after. Both men exchanged texts about how potent the pills were, officials said, adding that Wireman assumed his friend was in the same condition as he was in and no worse. Gary Eschenburg went to his son's home the next day when there was no response to calls and texts, which is when he found his dead son. Justin was the second the child he and his wife, Peggy, had lost. Officials said the couple's oldest child died tragically in a car crash 15 years prior. Wireman reportedly went to state police and immediatedly confessed to his role in his friend's death. In addition to prison time, Wireman must pay more than $5,000 restitution for Eschenburg's funeral. Burns, who had been implicated in the death of William Grzyminski, 23, also pleaded guilty to endangering the man for selling him a variety of pills. However the coroner could not definitively say whether other factors caused Grzyminski's death, so she was not charged with his death. She will be sentenced at a later date after following a pre-sentence investigation. Voters hit the polls in Dauphin County Voters cast their votes at Edison Village in Harrisburg in this 2013 file photo. Sean Simmers | ssimmers@pennlive.com (SEAN SIMMERS) Welcome to your Voters Guide to Pennsylvania's 2017 primary election. Republicans and Democrats across the state will head to the polls May 16 to select their parties' nominees for a slew of local offices, ranging from county court judges to township supervisors to school board members. The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania teamed with PennLive to gather information from candidates in Dauphin, Cumberland, Perry, York, Lancaster and Lebanon counties. This guide includes three databases: one for state judicial races, one for county and local municipal races, and one for county and district judge races. Rally in support of Planned Parenthood, Affordable Care Act in Westfield Mayors from 28 states - including 17 from Pennsylvania - have sent a letter to congressional leaders urging them to oppose any measure that would slash funding for Planned Parenthood. ((Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) ) Gov.Tom Wolf, shown here with York Mayor Kim Bracey, has vowed to veto a measure that would slash funding for Planned Parenthood. Bracey has joined 16 other Pennsylvania mayors in urging Congress to protect the health care provider. A contingency of 17 Pennsylvania mayors --- the largest from any state --- are joining a bipartisan group of 106 mayors from 28 states in urging congressional leaders to oppose efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. In a letter to congressional leaders, the mayors - which include Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, York Mayor Kim Bracey and Lancaster Mayor Richard Gray - urged Congress to protect access to health care for the more than 30 million people they collectively represent. "Defunding Planned Parenthood would have serious consequences and an extraordinarily harmful impact on communities in our cities and across the nation," reads the letter from the mayors. "The reality is that if this blatant attack on health care access is passed by Congress, people will lose access to care because there are simply not enough health care providers to meet the need. In addition to Bracey, Gray and Papenfuse, the Pennsylvania mayors include Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. The letter was also signed by: Mayor Jeanne Sorg, of Ambler Mayor John K. Fetterman, of Braddock Mayor Timothy A. Scott, of Carlisle Mayor Josh Maxwell, of Downingtown Mayor Ron Strouse, of Doylestown Mayor Sal Panto, Jr., of Easton Mayor Norman Hawkes, of Hatboro Mayor Ed Foley, of Jenkintown Mayor Thomas Kramer, of Millbourne Mayor Tarah D. Probst, of Stroudsburg Mayor Kelley Kelley, of Turtle Creek Mayor Carolyn Comitta, of West Chester Sari Stevens, executive director of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates, praised the action from the mayors. Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse "These mayors are on the front lines and in the best position to truly understand the effects residents will face if Planned Parenthood is defunded and health centers are forced to close," she said. "They also recognize that these attacks --- at both the state and federal levels --- do nothing to protect women but instead put them it great risk by denying them access to critical reproductive and other health-care services. We're grateful for their support and hope other elected leaders take notice." The House on May 4 by a narrow margin voted in favor of a GOP healthcare bill designed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which extends Medicaid coverage to millions of people. If enacted, the GOP bill - the American Health Care Act - would ostensibly defund Planned Parenthood through a provision that would prohibit anyone from Medicaid benefits to access preventive care at Planned Parenthood health centers. Under the GOP health care bill, Planned Parenthood would be barred for a year from securing reimbursements from Medicaid for any services, from pap smears to birth control, according to Politifact. Abortions are already walled off from Medicaid payments by Planned Parenthood; but abortion opponents have long argued that the government is tacitly supporting abortion even by reimbursing Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services. About 43 percent of Planned Parenthood's budget comes from the government, much of which comes from Medicaid. Approximately 2.5 million people rely on Planned Parenthood for essential health services; that includes 90,000 Pennsylvania residents who rely on the 31 Planned Parenthood health centers for care, including cancer screenings, birth control, STD testing and treatment. GOP healthcare bill: The many ways women lose The mayors noted that almost half of Planned Parenthood health centers in Pennsylvania are in medically under-served areas of the state. Opponents of the House bill argue that defunding these services would deal a devastating blow in rural and minority communities. "Indeed, more than half of all Planned Parenthood health centers are located in rural or underserved patient communities, which means they are in communities that have been identified by the federal government as having an insufficient number of federal providers," the letter read. Pennsylvania lawmakers also are trying to slash funding for the health care provider. The Senate is considering legislation that would target similar reimbursements, which are provided by the state Department of Human Services. Gov. Tom Wolf has vowed to veto the measure.'Confounding and troubling': Pa. Republican lawmakers at odds over Comey firing -d46ae9700dda50a4.jpg Children have been denied food, made to do chores and singled out if they are unable to pay for their school lunches. A bill being drafted in the Pennsylvania Senate aims to combat the practice of "lunch shaming." (File) Children have been denied food, made to do chores and singled out if they are unable to pay for their school lunches. A bill being drafted in the Pennsylvania Senate aims to combat the practice of "lunch shaming." Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, is seeking cosponsors for a bill that would prohibit schools from discriminating against or stigmatizing children who have outstanding credit or don't have enough money to pay for meals. The bill is expected to be introduced next week. There have been reports of children being required to do chores, forced to wear a stamp or wristband, given subpar lunch or denied food entirely when they don't have enough money in their school lunch fund. The bill would require school districts to work with families to ensure every child has an opportunity to eat lunch and not be singled out for their financial situation, Costa said. Children should not have to be humiliated and ridiculed, he said, for not being provided lunch money from their parents. "We believe this is a very, very important piece of legislation that'll require school district to act accordingly and not to serve as bullies along those lines," Costa said. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey recently announced he was sponsoring a bill to prohibit schools from "lunch shaming" children that are unable to purchase their meals. Casey sponsored the legislation with Senators Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, and Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico. Casey's bill is officially being called the "Anti-Lunch Shaming Act." In many Pennsylvania school districts, a parent is notified when their children's school lunch fund balance reaches below a certain level. Often times, parents replenish the funds and the child doesn't notice a change in service. However, there are other times when parents forget to refill the fund or don't have enough money to refill it. That's when "lunch shaming" practices have been employed. "Schools are taking unbelievable and unconscionable steps of shaming those children," he said. While the bill can not be passed and implemented by the end of the school year, Costa said he hopes to have it ready for when kids go back to school in August and September. The goal is to have the bill passed by June 30. Ernie Pyle would approve of the new home for his aviator sunglasses, battered reporter's notebooks and trademark war correspondent beret. Seventy-two years after he was killed by a Japanese bullet, those items are back where they belong, among the relics of the soldiers Pyle, the "dogface's best friend," wrote about as they battled and bled through World War II. On Wednesday, the items became part of the collection of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center near Carlisle. Pyle's was a household name for the World War II generation. He wrote about the war from the GI's point of view, slogging through the mud and taking cover from artillery fire to get the stories as America's soldiers fought their was across North Africa, Italy and France from 1942 to 1944. The soldiers appreciated the risks he took to tell their grueling and often sad tales for the folks back home. In 1944, he won the Pulitzer Prize for those stories. So Col. Pete Crean, AHEC's director, felt a sense of awe as he opened the cardboard boxes filled with Pyle's artifacts. Minutes earlier, they had arrived in the trunk of a courier's Jaguar, freshly purchased by the Army from a private collector. "Although Ernie wasn't a soldier, he was seen as one of us," Crean said. "He's important for telling the story of the war." Pyle, who was what would now be termed an "embedded" reporter, was famed for looking out for the rank and file soldier. Crean cited how one story Pyle wrote prompted Congress to approve extra combat pay - a whopping $10 a month - for front line troops. The artifacts AHEC received include some items - such as two packs of Camel and Phillip Morris cigarettes, unfiltered - that were recovered from Pyle's body after he was killed on the little island of Ie Shima off the coast of Okinawa in April 1945. Pyle's tan-green beret with its "War Correspondent" badge is a centerpiece of the collection, which once belonged to his family. Along with his sunglasses is a metal case a crewman of the aircraft carrier USS Cabot made for Pyle soon after he arrived to cover the Pacific war. Another item, sheathed in plastic wrap, is especially poignant. It is the telegram that notified Pyle's wife of his death. Pyle was killed when the unit of the 305th Infantry Regiment he was accompanying came under Japanese fire. The correspondent took cover in a ditch, but was shot in the temple when he peered over the edge. "He was killed instantly," Crean said. Pyle was 45 when he died. He was a Navy veteran of World War I, so was old enough to be the father of many of the men he covered and watched die. Even before the war Pyle was well known as a widely syndicated traveling reporter for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. He roamed the country in the late 1930s and early 40s, writing about ordinary people in the closing throes of the Great Depression. He used that same folksy approach to tell the mothers, fathers, sisters, wives and brothers of the soldiers he covered how their boys were fighting the war against the Germans, Italians and Japanese. Some of Pyle's artifacts will be fodder for future AHEC exhibits, Crean said, while most of the documents will be preserved for use by genealogists and other researchers. So, Pyle's voice will still be heard. "We are focused on telling soldiers' stories," Crean said. "And that's what Ernie was all about." WILLIAMSPORT -- Court-approved wiretaps were used to gather evidence that led to the federal indictment of six purported members of a white supremacist organization. That was revealed Tuesday during a detention hearing before U.S. Middle District Magistrate Judge William I. Arbuckle III for one of them, Jacob Mark Robards, 40, of Bethlehem. The six are accused of engaging in criminal activity to obtain firearms, ammunition and funds to carry out the mission of Aryan Strikeforce. At the request of the defense, Robards remains detained, because Arbuckle deferred his decision on whether to release him on electronic monitoring until he receives a transcript of a proceeding in Allentown that followed Robards' April 13 arrest. Assistant U.S. Attorney George J. Rocktashel argued for detention, claiming the evidence is quite strong against the six. He also cited Robards' lengthy criminal record and his propensity to move about the country. The prosecutor reviewed some of the information about Robards obtained through wiretaps, including that 10 years ago he pledged a blood oath to Joshua Michael Steever, 27, of Phillipsburg, New Jersey, the reputed founder of Aryan Strikeforce. In other calls, he bragged about being shot in a fight with a member of another gang and claimed he "smoked" someone, Rocktashel said. Robards' criminal record does not include a homicide charge. Defense attorney John Reed pointed out the numerous tattoos on his client's face, head, neck and the rest of his body to support his argument for release. It would be "almost impossible for him to disappear," he claimed. Robards is not a hate monger, has medical issues including cancer and has been on Social Security disability for 11 years, he said. Reed accused the government of inducing a crime by agents who had infiltrated the organization, providing simulated methamphetamine that was sold to people who portrayed themselves as contraband dealers. Being a skinhead and homeless, as it appears Robards was when he lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is not a crime, the defense attorney told Arbuckle. Robards' common-law wife, Jolinn Melendez, testified he would continue to live with her in Bethlehem if he is released. Under cross-examination, she said they had met through Facebook but face to face for the first time in early March and exchanged vows several days later. She denied he was planning to move to Alabama, as he stated to a co-defendant in one of the recorded phone calls. Indicted besides Robards and Steever are Henry Lambert Baird, 49, of Brown Mills, New Jersey; Steven Daniel Davis, 47, of Bumpass, Virginia; Justin Daniel Lough, 26, of Waynesboro, Virginia; and Connor Drew Dikes, 20, of Silver Spring, Maryland. All are detained without bail except Dikes, who is free on electronic monitoring. Their charges include interstate travel in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to distribute and attempted distribution of controlled substances, money laundering, transport, delivery and receipt of unregistered machine guns and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The defendants are alleged to have held meetings in Potter County, Harrisburg, Philipsburg, New Jersey, and Staunton, Virginia, to plan organization activities. State biologists banded three young peregrine falcons Wednesday that were nesting on the 15th floor of the Rachel Carson State Office Building in Harrisburg. The educational event, which was held in front of a group of students and teachers from Harrisburg's St. Stephen's Episcopal School, was also broadcast live. A young peregrine falcon. Banding is part of the state's effort to track and collect information about the peregrine falcon, which is endangered in Pennsylvania. The species was removed from the federal Endangered Species List in 1999. Peregrine falcons have nested at the Carson building for 17 years. Since 1996, 64 falcons have hatched from the building that's named after the environmental advocate who was among the first to write extensively about pollution. The nest at the Carson building is one of about 45 across the state. You can watch video of the banding above. The state also maintains a falcon cam of the nest. James Comey FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) At least Richard Nixon had the decency to wait until the weekend. On Tuesday night, just before the first pitch in second game of the Beltway Series between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals, President Donald Trump shredded whatever remained of the independence of the Department of Justice. The nation's 45th president unceremoniously sacked embattled FBI Director James Comey, who arguably handed Trump the White House last November. He joined former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who got hurled onto the scrap heap when she defied the Reality Star-Chief. Almost immediately, veteran Washington hands were raising the spectre of the "Saturday Night Massacre" of October 1973, when President Nixon fired his attorney general and his deputy after they refused to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. "This is Nixonian," U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said in a statement released seemingly moments after the news of Comey's firing sent official Washington into a tailspin. The news enraged Democrats - who accused Trump of running roughshod over the separation of powers - and Republicans, who were furious they got no advance news of the dismissal. Casey continued, calling on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to "immediately appoint a special counsel to continue the Trump/Russia investigation." Comey, remember, said back on March 20 that he'd been "authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts." Writing on Twitter, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, R-Ore., a Comey critic, nonetheless called Comey's firing "outrageous." Wyden didn't spare the rod. He called for an appointment of a special counsel, adding that "the president would do well to remember that, in America, the truth always comes out." It's tempting to think that Comey, who was set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, was just about to stumble onto something major in the Russia connection when he got the hook. Reminder: Fired FBI Director Comey was scheduled to testify before Senate Intel on Thursday (h/t @MariannaNBCNews): pic.twitter.com/32l2llhtoQ Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) May 9, 2017 Certainly, Comey wasn't helped when it was revealed that he'd mishandled the probe of Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails during the presidential campaign. But that was a mere fig leaf - a Russian bear shaped shadow hung over the whole matter. In a speech from the Senate floor, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the investigation of the Russia connection was in danger. "Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues," Durbin said. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Rosenstein to hire an independent counsel to continue the Russia probe. If he didn't "every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire Director Comey was part of a cover-up." Strong words to be sure. And they're obviously coming from a seriously partisan place in a seriously partisan town. But they' re still worth considering. Trump, meanwhile is headed into uncharted waters. Who he taps as Comey's replacement will speak volumes. And autocratic and used to uttering "You're fired" to anyone defies him, the president who imagines himself a presidential scholar might do well to study what happened to Nixon after that Saturday night in 1973. Things only got worse. Much, much worse. Donald Trump PennLive file (Evan Vucci) By Jeffrey Lord The letter was three pages long. The author: Rod Rosenstein. Jeffrey Lord (PennLive file) Who is Rod Rosenstein? Mr. Rosenstein, newly installed as President Trump's Deputy Attorney General of the United States, is a career prosecutor who served both President Bush and President Obama as the United States Attorney for Maryland. In a word, he is bipartisan. So much so that in his recent Senate confirmation for the number two slot at Justice he was approved by a vote of 94-6. It was Rosenstein who took a good, professional look at the conduct of FBI Director James Comey and recommended that he be fired. It wasn't the President, it was Rod Rosenstein. Only the President has the authority to fire an FBI Director - and this isn't the first time it's been done either. (President Bill Clinton fired FBI Director William Sessions.) But the uproar over the Comey firing was both immediate and instantly misleading. Trump critics tried to say this was all about a President firing the guy investigating the alleged and thus far unproven Trump-Russia "collusion" allegations. But in fact that is decidedly untrue - and all one has to do to get the truth here is read Rosenstein's lengthy letter. Here, in part, is what Rosenstein said: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has long been regarded as our nation's premier federal investigative agency. Over the past year, however, the FBI's reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice. That is deeply troubling to many Department employees and veterans, legislators and citizens. The current FBI Director is an articulate and persuasive speaker about leadership and the immutable principles of the Department of Justice. He deserves our appreciation for his public service. As you and I have discussed, however, I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives. The director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement..... ...Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. ....My perspective on these issues is shared by former Attorneys General and Deputy Attorneys General from different eras and both political parties. ... Although the President has the power to remove an FBI director, the decision should not be taken lightly. I agree with the nearly unanimous opinions of former Department officials. The way the Director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions." Note well the flagging in the sentence " Although the President has the power to remove an FBI director, the decision should not be taken lightly." Indeed, firing any FBI Director should not be taken lightly. But it is important to recall here that this President is himself not a lawyer, much less someone who has spent a career in Washington. He is a businessman. And one can only imagine the thoughts that went through his mind when he receives via the Attorney General this lengthy and detailed letter from a career prosecutor and one-time Obama appointee. The letter, in chapter and verse, makes the case that Director Comey had lost the confidence of Justice Department and FBI employees. One former high-level Justice Department official after another is quoted by name saying Comey had made serious mistakes. The list includes ex-Attorneys General for Presidents Obama, Bush 41 and 43, Clinton and Ford. Among those former AG's is Obama's Eric Holder, of whom Rosenstein writes: "Eric Holder, who served as Deputy Attorneys General under President Clinton and Attorneys General under President Obama, said that the Director's decision 'was incorrect. It violated long-standing Justice Department policies and traditions. And it ran counter to guidance that I put in place four years ago laying out the proper way to conduct investigations during an election season.' Holder concluded that the Director 'broke with these fundamental principles' and 'negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI'." Not mentioned in the letter as, appropriately, Rosenstein focused on those who have or had responsibilities in the Justice Department, are all those Democrats on Capitol Hill who have been lashing out at Comey for months. Among those who have said they wanted Comey to resign outright or that they lacked confidence in him were past and present Senate Democratic Leaders Harry Reid and Charles Schumer. Reid went so far as to say that Comey was covering up evidence of Russian hacking and meddling in the US election. Said the Democrats then-Senate Leader in an appearance on MSNBC: "This is not fake news. Intelligence officials are hiding connections to the Russian government.There is no question. Comey knew and deliberately kept this info a secret." California Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff only days ago refused to give a vote of confidence in Comey. And his fellow California House Democrat Maxine Waters not only said Comey has "no credibility" but insisted the FBI Director had deliberately "advanced Russia's misinformation campaign." And these Democrats were far from alone in speaking out about Comey's lack of credibility. Only days ago Hillary Clinton told an audience in New York that "I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey's letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off - and the evidence for that intervening event is, I think, compelling [and] persuasive," Now? All of a sudden, Democrats and the media are up in arms that they got what so many of them wanted. There is a word for this: hypocrisy. And in this case enough hypocrisy to choke the entire fleet of horses in the Kentucky Derby. The central fact here is that a serious and bipartisan prosecutor - Rod Rosenstein - made a detailed and lengthy case that the Director of the FBI had lost in serious fashion the confidence of the organization he led and of which he was a significant part - the Justice Department. It beggars the imagination to realize what would have happened if word leaked that the President had been told in detail by a serious career prosecutor why he should fire Comey - and refused to do it. Talk about a media firestorm. With Democrats already well out there flatly suggesting it was Comey personally hindering an investigation into a Trump-Russian "collusion" and leading a cover-up the Trump White House would be targeted by every journalist with a keyboard or a microphone and camera. All of them insisting Comey had been kept in place to advance a cover-up, which is exactly what Harry Reid was saying. Now? Now the President has done exactly the right thing. He followed the advice given to him by a bipartisan, decades-long Justice Department professional. And suddenly, all those people who spent months attacking Comey and/or demanding his resignation are crying rivers of crocodile tears. Give me a break. Jeffrey Lord, of Camp Hill, is a CNN political analyst and frequent PennLive Opinion contributor. Screen Shot 2017-05-10 at 9.54.57 AM.jpg So this is what happens when you're deputy press secretary at the White House: You draw the short straw and get to go on morning television to defend a decision that's roiling official Washington. Such was the case for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, second-in-command to frequently marble-mouthed Trump administration spokesman Sean Spicer, who ventured into the Lion's Den on "Morning Joe" to suffer a predictable mauling. Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (newly engaged, mazel tov) took turns interrupting Sanders, who tried gamely to defend and explain the process that led to Comey's firing on Monday night. Things got particularly bad when, in response to a question from co-host Willie Geist, Huckabee Sanders suggested that it was "time to move on" from the Comey/Russia flap. Trump spox Sarah Huckabee Sanders explains why she said last night it's time to move on from Russia investigation https://t.co/qSh0jbQHUg Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 10, 2017 Panelists Heidi Pryzbyla of USA Today and 'veteran columnist' Mike Barnicle also weighed in with questions of their own. Sanders didn't even get a chance to finish answering Pryzbala's pointed query about the decision to give Comey the heave-ho, even as the Office of Inspector General was conducting its own inquiry on the October surprise the ex-FBI boss dumped on Hillary Clinton last November. "Why the rush? What happened in the last 24 to 48 hours," that moved Trump to sack Comey, Pryzbala asked, also inquiring why career prosecutors at the FBI hadn't been given advance notice. "Look, you have a new deputy attorney general [Rod Rosenstein] who conducted a thorough review ... and ..." "But Sarah, Sarah," Sacarborugh cut in, "we have a President of the United States who has been praising Comey for months for what he did during the campaign. Brzezinski cut in, "Last I checked he [Trump] was in charge ..." Smiling gamely, Sanders answered, "I think he showed he was in charge last night." Watch the video: Sanders' segment had barely gone off air when Twitter pundits felt obligated to offer their own analysis: Most outrageous statement on Comey firing: WH dep press secy Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Its time to move on, regarding Russia investigation. Michael McFaul (@McFaul) May 10, 2017 Dear media: Please do not invite Sarah Huckabee Sanders onto your shows to repeat Trump's lies. It's insulting to your viewers. Thx. Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) May 10, 2017 Youre not telling the truth: Sarah Huckabee Sanders walks into Morning Joe buzzsaw over Russia claims #MorningJoe https://t.co/rxIRdOZrjM pic.twitter.com/tFzyklEoGS Raw Story (@RawStory) May 10, 2017 BRADDOCK -- For a reminder of his party's stunning loss in the November presidential election, Mayor John Fetterman need look no further than his front window. There, across the street from his loft on the second floor of a converted Chevy dealership in downtown Braddock, sits one of the last continually operating steel mills in western Pennsylvania. The site is both sprawling and imposing, a 145-year-old symbol of the region's industrial past and often uncertain future. At its height, the Braddock plant employed some 5,000 workers, Fetterman said. It is currently down to just over 500. But beyond the local or even regional significance of such a place, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works plant across from Fetterman's home has now become a symbol of something else -- namely the election of President Donald Trump and the blue-collar support in some traditionally Democratic strongholds that made it possible. Fetterman, who ran for U.S. Senate in the Democratic Primary last year and who also campaigned for Trump's opponent in the presidential race, knows this as well as anyone. He's lived among these voters. He's even related to them. "I was running as the most progressive candidate in the U.S. Senate and my parents had a Trump sign in their front yard," he said. For that reason alone, some might consider Fetterman better positioned than almost anyone else within the Democratic Party to help bridge the gap between widespread economic anxiety, working-class identity and the party's more progressive ideals as it faces additional uphill battles in future election cycles. "There's nothing wrong with supporting gay rights and caring about making sure this factory doesn't close down," Fetterman insisted. "It's not an either-or." But many in the party remain at odds on this very subject, and whether the party would be better off appealing to Trump's supporters or his critics going forward. For Fetterman, the answer is obviously both. Whether Democratic leaders will listen, though, remains another matter entirely. Future of the party We'll dispense with the John Fetterman cliches up front: He's a gentle giant; a Harvard-educated liberal populist; a tattooed Rust Belt folk hero of sorts and the so-called "coolest mayor in America." But Fetterman is also arguably the future of the Democratic Party, one riven by divisions, navigational disputes and still reeling after bitter general election losses from the top of the ballot on down in states like Pennsylvania. Fetterman had plenty to say about this himself, and about the Democratic Party's ongoing "reset," while seated inside his hiply-furnished loft on a recent Friday morning. In rapid succession, Fetterman blamed FBI Director James Comey, Bernie-or-Bust voters, Jill Stein -- whose Green Party presidential bid he called a "bizarre sideshow" -- and a series of "unfortunate events" and strategic curveballs for Hillary Clinton's Nov. 8 defeat. He also recalled warning Clinton's campaign about Trump's growing popularity in states like Pennsylvania long before election night. "I'll never forget when I read the press release that Donald Trump was going to have a campaign event in Monessen (a struggling steel town near Braddock)," Fetterman said. "I was a proud surrogate for the Clinton campaign during that time and I just called up the campaign and was like, 'Either (the Trump campaign) has completely lost its mind or they know something we don't.'" Fetterman later tried to attend the Trump event in Monessen but says he was recognized and turned away at the gate. "I don't know if they thought I was there to be disruptive or make a problem, but that wasn't the case. I just wanted to take in this phenomenon," he said. Months later, Fetterman said he's still struggling to make sense of it all, along with much of his party. So far, the Democrats' anti-Trump strategy has largely mirrored that of the campaign: Stoke a now permanent sense of Trump-fueled outrage among the base while doing little else to bring disaffected Democratic voters or independents back into the fold, aside from a trickle of platform and policy adjustments. Others hope the anti-Trump backlash will serve to unify the party and cauterize the lingering rift between its more progressive factions -- supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, himself not a Democrat -- and those that backed Clinton. "I think Trump is our best recruiter and I think that speaks for itself," said Nancy Patton Mills, chair of the Democratic Party's organization in Allegheny County, where Braddock is located. Mills said that even if Trump voters aren't swayed themselves, the Democratic base is certainly more energized and organized, if not entirely united, a dynamic that could bode well for it in upcoming political races. In essence, Pennsylvania Democrats hope the passion pendulum that so benefitted Trump is beginning to swing the other way. Cliff Levine, a lawyer and past campaign representative for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, said Trump could also push that pendulum further away by promoting policies that work against the interests of many of his voters. This includes an Obamacare "repeal and replace" effort that could endanger health coverage for millions, proposed budget cuts to programs relied upon by many, and trade moves being eyed with trepidation by industries like agriculture. "The irony is that Trump's policies are most destructive to the very voters that put him in office," Levine said, "and the Democrats don't need to change their policies, they need to highlight their much better policies when it comes to the everyday lives of working-class families." Meanwhile, Trump remains wildly popular with those who voted for him at more than 100 days into his first term, and some in the Democratic Party want to abandon the cradles of Trumpism, like Appalachia and Rural America, to focus instead on reaching suburban voters and responding to changing demographics nationwide. As Fetterman sees it, this is one of two fundamental quandaries currently facing Democrats nationwide, the other being the ongoing Clinton-Sanders "proxy war." "The question within our own party is: 'Do we go after these Trump voters?' Or are we like 'Screw 'em, we're going to find a new way,'" he said. "And I feel like we're evenly divided between 'Screw 'em, they're all racists, we'll find a new path' and 'Look, many of these folks voted for Obama twice.'" Fetterman, who said he fully plans to run for the U.S. Senate again in 2022, added: "I count myself in the latter camp, where I believe we can't afford to let these folks go, both from a practical standpoint and more importantly from a moral standpoint." Finding middle ground But what might that big tent look like? And how might Democrats like Fetterman convince Trump voters that support for environmental protections and support for blue-collar jobs aren't mutually exclusive? Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf seems to be finding that answer in his own reelection bid, backing pipeline and petro-chemical projects and sometimes drawing criticism from his supporters and fellow Democrats in the process. Others in the party argue that Democrats must tout their economic victories at home to have any shot at repatriating some of those blue-collar voters now standing with Trump. "We do have to do a better job of messaging," said Rep. Michael K. Hanna Sr., D-Lock Haven. "I'm a rural Democrat and I've been able to hold on to my seat for 27 years, and part of the reason is that, like the governor, I have a strong business background and folks around here know that even though I'm a Democrat, I fight for good paying jobs and deliver," Hanna said. John Fetterman looks toward the Edgar Thomson Steel Works plant across the street from his home in downtown Braddock on Friday, May 5, 2017. Photo by Colin Deppen. In Braddock, Fetterman said he also believes there's a middle ground to be found between the Trump administration's kneecapping of environmental regulations in the name of job creation and environmental regulations that threaten already vulnerable workers. "You may not care about a steel mill in Clairton, but I do, and we all want a better environment, but there has to be some tradeoffs when it comes to shutting down facilities that are responsible for supporting a large part of a community," Fetterman said. He followed that up with a blunt assessment of the Democratic Party's priorities, one hinting at the deeper divisions within the 2016 election results and increasingly within the party itself. "We have to get away from the highly-educated urban creative professionals and we have to branch out and we have to embrace what I think still should be the heart and soul of the Democratic party," Fetterman said. "I will never concede the white working class that voted for Trump." A party in exile With Fetterman's second Senate bid still almost six years away, it's hard to say exactly what his Democratic Party might look like by then. As of right now, it's a party in exile, with no branches of federal government under its control and internal divisions remaining open. For the 46-year-old Fetterman, who endorsed Sanders before campaigning for Clinton after the primary, the party's progressive undercurrent is encouraging. (Fetterman's progressive bona fides include a DREAMer wife and ahead-of-the-curve positions on legalizing marijuana and raising the minimum wage.) But he's also concerned about the party's direction under its "fossilized" leadership and about the party's willingness, or lack thereof, to kick what many progressives see as its problematic big money habit. "I realized how important money was in getting outspent 15-to-1 in my primary and having the race go on to become one of the most expensive in U.S. history," Fetterman said. "You know there's something wrong with our republic when communities like ours are barely scraping by but there's $175 million to spend on ads calling each other names." In Braddock, Fetterman's critics have sometimes taken issue with comments like these, claiming he's overstated the community's struggles in using it as a springboard to higher elected office. But Fetterman, who has Braddock's zip code tattooed on his left forearm, said he's proud to call attention to "forgotten communities" like this one. He points to the urban renewal currently dotting downtown Braddock -- and to the borough's pursuit of a coveted license allowing it to host growers for Pennsylvania's fledgling medical marijuana program -- as proof of its progress. John Fetterman the Mayor of Braddock points to Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Katie McGinty at a Hillary Clinton campaign event near the Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh campus in Oakland, Pa. on Monday Nov.7, 2016. Barry Reeger | Special to PennLive Fetterman and others like him hope to see marijuana become Braddock's next legacy industry and a successor to steel. The push is a local-scale reflection of his larger jobs-oriented prescription for the Democratic Party in the Era of Trump. He explained all of this while seated in the living room of his loft at lunchtime recently, the Edgar Thomson plant churning silently in the background. "Many of these people just felt so disenfranchised and so let down that they were willing to take a chance on someone who's so grossly unqualified," Fetterman said of Trump voters while gesturing toward the plant. "But if you drive through downtown Monessen, can you blame anybody for feeling a sense of desperation or a sense of we've been left behind?" "We shall see," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, right, in answer to a question about if US Russia relations were improving, during a meeting with Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic Monday, May 8, 2017, at the State Department in Washington. Tillerson will meet with his Russian counterpart about the Syria crisis amid a new Russia-led push to create safe zones to lower violence. The State Department and Russia's Foreign Ministry say that Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet in Washington Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Local clerks report slightly down percentages in voter turnout Nearly 75,000 people in five Northern Michigan counties had their ballots counted, according to clerks' unofficial election results. This piece, titled, The New Plague, depicts life in Philadelphia in the age of COVID. Artist and educator Raphael Tiberino began painting at the age of four and has been in the spotlight as a professional creative for over 25 years. Movies, pro boxer Chuck Wepner, and Philadelphia have a checkered history. Philadelphia is where Sylvester Stallone made Rocky, the movie inspired by Wepner's 15-round, go-the-distance fight with Muhammad Ali in 1975, but it's also the site of a less-heralded episode featuring Wepner and the Rocky franchise. After the film was released, won the Oscar in 1977, and became a cultural phenomenon, Wepner and Stallone became pals in fact, Stallone offered him a part in Rocky II as a sparring partner. It could have been a big break for Wepner, but he was in the midst of a drug and booze binge and drove all night from North Jersey for his audition with Stallone at a Center City hotel. "That's exactly the way it was," said Wepner. "I should have taken more time, should have studied the script. Stallone did everything he was supposed do, and if I would have done better, maybe I would have gotten the part." He wasn't ready, and he blew it a sequence of events depicted with unblinking honesty in the new movie Chuck, based on Wepner's colorful and ultimately inspiring life story. Chuck which opens here Friday ends on an upbeat note. The tenacity that helped Wepner succeed in the ring allows him to outlast the mistakes of his life. Still, the movie does not skip unflattering details. "I like the movie a lot. You know, it tells the truth. I was living through a tough stretch at that point. I did a lot of partying. It was a wild time in my life. But I've been straight and clean for 30 years now. I can tell you, it's a better way to live," said Wepner, 78, who will be in Philadelphia to host a private screening Thursday, along with producer (and Philadelphia native) Mike Tollin. Chuck touches upon the relationship between Stallone and Wepner, who later sued Stallone over parallels between his life and that of the fictional Rocky Balboa. But that was lawyer stuff they are still friendly, and Stallone reviewed and approved the script for Chuck. Wepner was even closer with Ali, and was among those who attended the champion's funeral in June in Kentucky. He got to know Ali well in the days leading up to their Cleveland title bout, during which Wepner earned the champion's respect. "Like he said after the fight, 'I wouldn't want to fight that Chuck Wepner in an alley.' I mean, what I tried to do was rough him up. I couldn't outbox him, he was so great. I remember that as a great time. He was a great man, and I feel very sad about his passing." The two made several appearances together over the years, and even cooperated on a four-day tour, staging a comic version of their fight. Wepner said that Chuck has capture his essence as a fighter and that star Liev Schreiber was perfect in the role. "This has been 10 years in the making," he said. "There were many versions of the script that I didn't like, and many actors that I didn't like. But this guy is perfect. He sort of looks like me. I mean, I didn't have the Ken Norton kind of body. I was a tough guy who could take a punch and wear guys down." Wepner downplays his skills -- he did everything he could to earn his title shot with Ali. He grew up street fighting in Bayonne, learned to box in Golden Gloves competitions and later the Marines, and went on to become the only New Jersey heavyweight ever to win the New York Golden Gloves competition. Perhaps his most infamous fight was a brutal 1970 match with Sonny Liston, who opened up a 70-stitch gash on Wepner's face and closed both of his eyes. "The ref said, 'How many fingers am I holding up?' I said, 'How many guesses do I get?' " Wepner answered correctly, but in the ensuing onslaught, a Liston punch sent Wepner's blood all over the tan leisure suit of a Bayonne sportswriter covering the event. "He said they ought to call this guy the Bayonne Bleeder," Wepner said. That became his nickname, and he hated it. "Then somebody offered some money to make a movie called The Bayonne Bleeder," he said, "and I decided I liked it." He likes the current title better. "That's one reason I like it. Because it's the true story of what Chuck Wepner was really all about." It's not the Rocky story, he said. It's not just about one fight. "I've had some tough times in my life. I was a little out of control, but I pulled myself up by the bootstraps, met my wife, Linda [in the film, Naomi Watts], and the rest is history. We've been together 24 years, and it's great. It's a cliche -- you get knocked down, you have to get up. But it's true." The Wall draws its title from a crumbling pile of rocks, the only thing that protects a wounded U.S. soldier from the Iraqi sniper who has him pinned down. This compact little action picture has a few things in common with American Sniper and Lone Survivor, but more so with Phone Booth and Locke a grim story squeezed into a tight space, featuring a cast of mostly one. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is Isaac, a spotter in a sniper team (with John Cena) sent to investigate the murder of private contractors working for an oil pipeline in a remote desert location. The two men survey the gruesome scene from a concealed position, and the action starts as they decide to break cover and take a closer look, taking fire from the enemy sharpshooter. The exchange leaves Isaac scrambling for cover behind the wall, uncertain of the condition of his friend, unable to determine the location of the enemy. Director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow) puts you in the precariously small safe zone that Isaac finds behind the toppling wall, and builds terse drama around Isaac's resourceful bid for survival tending to his own wounds (the movie is not for the squeamish), trying to find something salvageable in the jumble of nearby weaponry and shot-up radio parts. In time, we realize we are not the only ones watching Isaac improvise the Iraqi sniper makes radio contact with the wounded American, and brags about toying with his pinned-down prey. There is potential here for something spooky and surreal, like A Midnight Clear, but the script feels more like an old episode of the Vic Morrow series Combat! The Iraqi turns out, improbably, to have majored in English literature he taunts his wounded quarry with lines from Edgar Allan Poe, which Liman underscores by having a raven land on a dead body from time to time. The voluble Iraqi may also subscribe to Foreign Policy magazine, and interrogates poor Isaac on the geopolitical particulars of U.S. goals in the region. Isaac wants to find the guy and shoot him, but it may not matter the Iraqi may talk himself to death. As he blabs on, we have time to ponder the implications of the name "Isaac." The action, we're told, takes place in 2007, just after coalition forces declare the war to be over. Isaac survives the war, but is now in grave danger of being sacrificed for a pipeline. The Wall, though, is not a movie with time to expend on politics. Just 81 minutes long, its goal is to put the viewer behind the wall with Isaac, in a tight space bordered by flying bullets, and to put you in his boots hungry and parched and a million miles from home. To drive home the dislocation and desperation, Liman returns to a close-up of a bright-red bag of Skittles, American comfort food, just out of Isaac's reach. I was reminded of the pinned-down SEAL in Lone Survivor, wishing he were back home on his couch in Texas, watching Anchorman. As Stanley Bard, the longtime manager of the Hotel Chelsea, once told a reporter, he tended to "allow things to go on that you couldn't do in the Hilton." That tolerant attitude may have paved the way for the New York City institution's darker reputation as the place where Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. But it also made it a destination for countless artists, musicians, writers, and actors, many of whom became close friends of Bard's, who managed the hotel from 1963 to 2007. Bard died this year, and on Tuesday, his collection of 88 artworks many of them purchased, given, or bartered from famous Chelsea residents will go up for auction at Freeman's in Philadelphia. Alasdair Nichol, vice president of Freeman's, said that for him, this sale was personal. He had learned of Chelsea lore from Florence Turner, a friend who wrote a book about the hotel. "The stories she used to tell about Mapplethorpe having his nipple pierced there!" But as he prepared for the sale, Nichol encountered a history even richer than he had realized. "I didn't know Stanley Kubrick had been there, that Arthur C. Clarke had written 2001 there," he said. "It's just got a fascinating history. I can't think of any other hotel in the world that quite has its reputation. You have the Plaza or the Savoy, but no place that contributed to the cultural life in this way." Leonard Cohen wrote a song about it. Dee Dee Ramone wrote a book about it. Andy Warhol made a film about it. Patti Smith and Sam Shepard wrote a play about it. There have been novels and memoirs, documentaries, a dance piece. Poet Dylan Thomas died there. Arthur Miller lived at the Chelsea after divorcing Marilyn Monroe; Ethan Hawke stayed there after divorcing Uma Thurman. Throughout, many artists lived or kept studios there, attracted by cheap rents, northern exposure, and Bard's easygoing approach. "There was always a long-standing rumor in the building that Stanley accepted art for rent," said Ed Hamilton, a longtime Chelsea resident who wrote a book, Legends of the Chelsea Hotel, in 2007. "Over the years, Stanley was well-known for helping artists in any way he could, financially, emotionally, and by providing a nurturing environment that fostered creativity, and he would continue to fight for their well-being up until the very end of his tenure." The most valuable work in the auction is a painting by pop artist Tom Wesselmann, a shaped canvas depicting a close-up image of a woman's mouth, her bright-red lips parted in, er, enthusiasm. Its estimated value is $600,000 to $800,000. On its back is an inscription, "For Stanley with affection Tom Wesselmann." There's an abstract expressionist portrait by Larry Rivers and a set of etchings by Francesco Clemente, both regulars at the hotel. There's an inviting watercolor swimming pool by David Hockney, who came to stay awhile. There's also an extensive collection of work by the Australian modernist Sidney Nolan, and several more by Ashcan School artist John French Sloan, who was a newspaper artist for the Inquirer before moving to an apartment at the Chelsea. A drawing for a proposed Christo installation, called The Mastaba of Abu Dhabi, is also included. Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, used their room at the hotel as a studio when in town. At a highlights-only preview in New York last week, a couple of art collectors were especially interested in a piece by the French artist Martial Raysse, two eyes glaring from a red color field. They liked the image but not the condition of the paper it was on. "I can see there are issues," one said to Nichol, squinting at the rippling paper. "Do you work with a conservator?" Some pieces are estimated at less than $1,000 so a piece of Chelsea history may be within reach for many. Dunham Townend, head of modern and contemporary art at Freeman's, said current and former hotel residents had been visiting the preview, sharing stories of Bard and life at the Chelsea. Mostly, they're stories of bygone times. The hotel has been undergoing renovations since 2011, with the goal of attracting a much more upscale clientele. "For the remaining tenants, life at the Chelsea Hotel is noisy and dusty during the days as the seemingly never-ending construction continues," said Hamilton, who remains in one of the rent-stabilized units. "And the nights can be deadly quiet. There used to always be something going on, and that's the sad thing. It's the ending of a way of life." The Stanley Bard Collection: A Life at the Chelsea, previews through Monday, auction 6 p.m., Tuesday, at Freeman's, 1808 Chestnut St., 215-563-9275, freemansauction.com. President Trump's dismissal of FBI Director James Comey Tuesday sent shockwaves throughout the country, and some interesting subsequent reactions on social media. U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, chairman of Philadelphia's Democratic City Committee, called for more oversight. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker was visibly distressed in a video he posted to his Twitter page. Considering some members of Trump's family were the focus of controversial headlines lately, one local Tweeter didn't see Comey's firing as coincidence. Some defended the decision to fire Comey. Others looked at the bigger picture. The Butler Did It par Read more [...] Aaron Saucedo was booked for a total of 12 incidents between August 2015, and July of 2016. (Photo: Fox 10 Phoenix Screen Shot) Phoenix Police announced Monday that a suspect in 2016's serial street shooting incidents has been identified. According to police officials, Aaron Saucedo, 23, has been identified as a suspect in connection with the shootings. The announcement was made during a news conference Monday afternoon that was attended by many public officials, including Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton. The shootings happened in 2016, and according to a Phoenix Police update posted on the department's verified Facebook page on August 3, 2016, at least 9 incidents are allegedly related to the serial street shooter. During the news conference, officials also linked a fatal shooting on New Year's Day in 2016 to the investigation. According to a statement released by Phoenix Police after the news conference, Saucedo was booked for a total of 12 incidents between August 2015, and July of 2016. With the new addition, the total number of deaths from the serial street shootings now stand at nine. The incidents involved 9 homicide victims, 5 aggravated assault victims, and several victims of drive-by shooting and criminal damage. James Comey (Photo: FBI) FBI Director James B. Comey has been dismissed by the president, according to White House spokesman Sean Spicer, reports the Washington Post. The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General and the deputy Attorney General regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Spicer told reporters in the briefing room, according to a pool report. Earlier in the day, the FBI notified Congress that Comey misstated key findings involving the Hillary Clinton email investigation during testimony last week, saying that only a small number of emails had been forwarded to disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, not the hundreds and thousands hed claimed in his testimony. The letter was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, more than a week after Comey testified for hours in defense of his handling of the Clinton probe. This letter is intended to supplement that testimony to ensure that the committee has the full context of what was reviewed and found on the laptop, wrote FBI Assistant Director Gregory A. Brower. The morning after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the "sanctuary-cities" bill into law, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus expressed his discontent for the policy, saying it will put a burden on the department and cause fear in the community. The bill, which will go into effect Sept. 1, allows local law enforcement to ask those who are "lawfully detained" what their immigration status is. Officers will have the authority to detain suspects thought to be in the country illegally, and may be required to do so at the request of federal officials. In addition, a sheriff, police chief, constable or jail administrator who fails to detain a suspect at the request of ICE could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail, a maximum $4,000 fine, or both. Repeat violations could reach a fine of $25,000, MySanAntonio.com reports. "There's nothing positive that this bill does in the community or law enforcement," McManus said, adding that the law was "dumped on" the department by lawmakers. Before now, the San Antonio Police Department enforced a policy that barred officers from asking about immigration status. Under the new law, officers will be allowed to ask suspects if they are in the country legally. Each of the roughly 2,400 San Antonio police officers will have to undergo new training on federal immigration laws, which could take at least one year, McManus said. New curriculum will have to be created for training, which could entail working with ICE or hiring an expert to help. "I'm afraid that people will shy away from the police all together," McManus said. "We work with the community every single day all over the city North, South, East and West and people are not afraid to interact with us. That bill legitimately creates that fear." The city of Cleveland doesn't think it's necessary to require police officers to wear body cameras while working off-duty security details, and has asked a federal judge to sign off on a new policy that says as much. The city filed a motion Friday that says none of the 630 officers authorized to do off-duty work stepped forward to take part in a pilot program to test how requiring officers to do so would affect their moonlighting details. The lack of volunteers may have been because the leaders of Cleveland's largest police unions told its members, at the very least, to be wary of pilot programs. The city is asking Chief U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver to approve a policy saying the use of body cameras during secondary employment is recommended but not required. The proposal is likely to be opposed by the team monitoring the city's progress under a settlement it reached with the Justice Department to reform the police department, Cleveland.com reports. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Intel Committee Ranking Member Schiff said it was more imperative than ever to appoint an independent prosecutor after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who is currently investigating Donald Trump and Trumps Attorney Generals possible collusion with Russia. Schiff went on slam Trump and Sessions for their conflicts of interest in firing Comey, comparing the act to a similarly tainted decision by President Nixon. The decision by a President whose campaign associates are under investigation by the FBI for collusion with Russia to fire the man overseeing that investigation, upon the recommendation of an Attorney General who has recused himself from that investigation, raises profound questions about whether the White House is brazenly interfering in a criminal matter, Schiff wrote in a statement sent to PoliticusUSA. While I had deep reservations with the way Director Comey handled the investigation into the Clinton emails which I made clear at the time and since, to take this action without addressing the profound conflict of interest of the President and Attorney General harkens back to a similarly tainted decision by President Nixon. The Nixonian comparison is exemplified by the New York Times reporting at that time: President Nixon, reacting angrily tonight to refusals to obey his orders, dismissed the special Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, abolished Mr. Coxs office, accepted the resignation of Elliot L. Richardson, the Attorney General, and discharged William D. Ruckelshaus, the Deputy Attorney General. The Presidents dramatic action edged the nation closer to the constitutional confrontation he said he was trying to avoid. Schiff continued, The same President who has called the investigation into the Russian hacking of our democracy and the potential complicity of his campaign a fake, cannot pretend to have made such a decision uninfluenced by his concerns over Comeys continued involvement in the investigation. It is more imperative than ever that an independent prosecutor be appointed to restore a modicum of public confidence now completely lacking that the criminal investigation will continue without further interference by the White House. Donald Trump just tried to obstruct justice by firing James Comey days before he was to testify for the Senate Intelligence Committee. We now have a White House, Congress, and DOJ that are actively seeking to obstruct an investigation into Russia. Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing only wanted to ask about Trumps claims of persecution instead of anything that might, say, protect this country from a hostile foreign aggressor. Adam Schiff is right, we need an independent prosecutor, but we wont get one. Republicans will let Donald Trump appoint a replacement to investigate him, and that sham will be an arrow straight into the heart of this country. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print The calls are getting louder in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey for Democrats to block Trumps nominee to be the next FBI Director until a special prosecutor is appointed to investigate Trump and Russia. Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Ken Gude said, We need a special prosecutor, and we need one right now. Every step of the way, President Trump has tried to stifle or kill the Russia investigation. Any notion that Trump would fire FBI Director Comey over his handling of the Clinton email investigation is a red herring. No new FBI Director should be confirmed until a special prosecutor is appointed to lead a truly independent investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia. Sen. Bernie Sanders said that Trump nominated FBI Director wont be able to carry out an independent investigation, President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to kill inquiries into Russias involvement in the U.S. election. It is clear that whomever President Trump handpicks to lead the FBI will not be able to objectively carry out this investigation. We need an independent investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia. The top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said, The same President who has called the investigation into the Russian hacking of our democracy and the potential complicity of his campaign a fake, cannot pretend to have made such a decision uninfluenced by his concerns over Comeys continued involvement in the investigation. It is more imperative than ever that an independent prosecutor be appointed to restore a modicum of public confidence now completely lacking that the criminal investigation will continue without further interference by the White House. The consensus for an independent investigation is already there for Democrats. The fact that Sanders is already casting doubt about Trumps nominee and activists are calling for the nominee to be blocked until there is a special prosecutor shows a roadmap to what may be coming next. Democrats should block Trumps nominee for FBI Director until a special prosecutor is appointed. Anything less would be allowing Trump and congressional Republicans to get away with obstruction of justice. It is time for every concerned American to tell Democrats to block Trumps nominee until a special prosecutor is appointed to investigate the Russia scandal. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) is warning that US democracy is in danger and calling for Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to appoint a bipartisan commission to investigate Trump and Russia after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Here is Rep. Cohens statement: With Donald Trump and his team of Putin pals firing anyone who gets close to the truth on Russia, it is clear that the only way this president will ever be brought to justice is through an independent investigation. The threat to US democracy grows with each passing day that Congress itself is allowed to handle the investigation. The administration will likely shut down the FBIs investigation into Trump and Russia, so it up to Republicans to decide whether they are going to do the right thing, or force voters to do it for them by electing a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2018. The country is in danger, but Republicans have already shown that they will sell themselves out to Putin to stay in power. Americas greatest hope is that the voters take their country back next November. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Despite the outrage over Donald Trumps stunning firing of FBI Director James Comey the man heading up an investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia there seems to be a general consensus that the FBIs reputation cannot be tarnished and the president isnt powerful enough to influence this important investigation in a meaningful way. Former FBI leaders disagree. According to Newsweek, the FBI investigation into Trumps ties to Russia may go on, despite the person running the bureau, but its possible even probable that the president could choose someone who would have the power to take that investigation off the rails. Citing former FBI supervisors, Newsweek reports that Trumps new FBI director could drag [the Russia investigation] out forever so nothing ever really comes of it. More from Newsweek: President Donald Trumps sudden firing of FBI director James Comey could jeopardize the bureaus investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election, former FBI supervisors tell Newsweek. While investigations typically continue after a FBI director steps down, a director who is sympathetic or friendly to Trump could easily drag out the FBI probe into Trump staffers and Russia, the ex-supervisors say. The report goes on, quoting former FBI officials who say that there are easy ways for an FBI director to kill a case if he wants to help the man who appointed him Trump, in this case. More: You dont kill a case just by telling everyone to stop investigating it. That would be obstruction of justice, says Myron Fuller, a former special agent who once ran the Honolulu division. But you could drag it out forever The FBI could work it until the cows come home. Another former FBI supervisor tells Newsweek that while all investigations continue regardless of a change at the top, the person who replaces Comey could steer the probe in a different direction. The person who replaces Comey will have influence on how the investigation goes, says Joseph Lewis, a former assistant director of the organized crime branch of the FBIs criminal division. He added that a FBI director sympathetic to Trump could, Play devils advocate and sow seeds of doubt with the investigators. At the end of the day, Trump could no longer control FBI Director Comey, and he didnt like the direction in which the investigation was headed so he used old reasons related to Hillary Clintons email inquiry as justification for firing Comey. Now that hes gone, there is still a conventional wisdom that the FBI cannot be penetrated or controlled by Trump no way, no how. But in a presidency full of troubling and unprecedented things, the American people shouldnt be surprised if the desperate President of the United States stoops to such levels in order to save himself from a scandal that blows up a little more each day. The only way to prevent that from happening, as former special agent Myron Fuller told Newsweek, is for Republicans to join Democrats in calling for an independent investigation one that is out of the reach of Donald Trumps very small hands. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Never once since hes been running for president has Donald Trump done something because it was right or wrong, so its near impossible to buy the argument that he fired the man whos investigating Trumps ties to Russia because of the way he handled Clintons emails back in July. Donald Trump blew a kiss to FBI Director James Comey on January 22, and then Comey crossed the room and the two had a bro-brace that looked like they might burst into song together. Trump loved Comey on January 22, which is long after Comey mishandled Clintons emails. Donald Trump does things because of how they impact him, and he doesnt usually try to hide it either. Hes usually quite open about his immature emotional reactions. Mean to Trump? Youre illegal. Nice to Trump? Youre a good guy. To wit: We have a rigged system, folks, then candidate Trump said during a North Carolina rally after Comey announced that he wouldnt recommend prosecution over Hillary Clintons private email server. Then Trump claimed Comey made a mistake: Trump on FBI director Comey: "He made a mistake.I don't even call it a mistake. I think something happened. Look, something happened." pic.twitter.com/lJuWVFRkAR Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) October 27, 2016 Comey BAD because Comey didnt do what would have helped Donald Trump. But Comey GOOD when Comey announced just days before the election that he was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails. It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where theyre trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that, Trump said. I was not his fan, but Ill tell you what. What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back. Hmmm And then theres that kiss. On January 22, Trump blew Comey a literal kiss. He knew all about the issues listed in the letter when he blew Comey this kiss. Letters from Trump, Sessions, and Rosenstein on James Comey pic.twitter.com/msc7QBV3xL Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) May 9, 2017 Right before the kiss that drew Comey across the room into Trumps arms: So it wasnt the way Comey handled Clintons emails; after all, this grateful kiss happened after Comey handled Clintons emails improperly by announcing what turned out to be a dud just days before the election, helping Trump limp over the finish line the Russians had already hoisted him over with all of the might. What changed between this kiss and now? Oh, the Trump Russia investigation. As Malcolm Nance suggested. Its a cover up . Trump will just keep firing people and Republicans will keep telling us that of course Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation into himself and Trump, but Sessions was so concerned over Hillary Clintons emails that he just had to weigh in now, of all times, to say that its time for Comey to go. Sure, Comey just got apparently busted for misrepresenting Clintons emails in his testimony to Congress. But misrepresenting things is something Trump does by the minute. This is, if nothing else, a qualification to be in the Trump administration. But also, the letter specifically cites Comeys actions in July, before the election, and again with his announcement days before the election. Trump grades people based on how they help or hurt him: Thats it. Its pretty basic. This is an administration who kept on a National Security Adviser who they were told was compromised by the Russians. If they fired people for being incompetent or misrepresenting things, Flynn wouldnt have been hired in the first place. Sessions had to recuse himself, so now they just had to fire the FBI Director who was in charge of the only even remotely happening investigation (thanks to Republican obstruction) into Trump Russia. Handy. Its Nixonian, as Senator Casey said tonight. The New York Times reported at the time, and tell me if this sounds familiar: President Nixon, reacting angrily tonight to refusals to obey his orders, dismissed the special Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, abolished Mr. Coxs office, accepted the resignation of Elliot L. Richardson, the Attorney General, and discharged William D. Ruckelshaus, the Deputy Attorney General. The Presidents dramatic action edged the nation closer to the constitutional confrontation he said he was trying to avoid. The excuse provided for firing Comey is flimsy and transparent. The Trump White House doesnt get rid of people for making mistakes. Look at the people he appointed. They dont even know how government is run in the most basic way. No. Trump fires people if he is forced to by the press (Flynn) or as punishment (Yates) for not doing his bidding even if his bidding was unlawful. High minded? Nope not this crew. Try again. If you doubt this, remember Trump the man who later hired as his NSA someone who was literally compromised by Russia saying this as the reason why Clintons emails deserved prosecution, Our adversaries almost certainly have a blackmail file on Hillary Clinton, and this fact alone disqualifies her from service. It would, wouldnt it. Trump fired Comey two days before he was set to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Looks like obstruction, walks like obstruction, probably is obstruction of justice. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print The big news tonight is that FBI Director James Comey has been fired by Donald Trump after Attorney General Jeff Sessions advised him to do so. The administration cites Comeys handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as the reason behind the firing, which makes little sense in its own right, but the larger question is this: Why is Sessions involved in this decision if he has supposedly recused himself from all things related to Russia? Certainly, advising the president to fire the FBI director while he is in the midst of an explosive investigation into Trumps ties to Russia would be under the umbrella of Sessions recusal. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine pointed this out in a tweet a short time ago: Comey firing recommended by Sessions. I thought he had recused himself from Russia investigation! Senator Tim Kaine (@timkaine) May 9, 2017 Not only is this a clear breach of the commitment made by Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, but its a sign that the attorney general likely never removed himself from the matter to begin with. The decision by the president to fire Comey raises a wide range of red flags, like whether the FBI can now be trusted to run a fair and credible investigation into Trumps ties to Russia after the president chooses a new director. But the fact that Jeff Sessions, a man who previously lied about his own links to Russia before subsequently pledging to recuse himself from the investigation, has now been instrumental in firing the man running the probe thats a troubling sign that something fishy is going on in. As Sarah Jones wrote a short time ago: Looks like obstruction, walks like obstruction, probably is obstruction of justice. Its past due to take this investigation far from the Trump White House or Justice Department and put it in the hands of an independent, special prosecutor. Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer issued a blistering response to Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, saying its the latest sign that the investigation into the presidents ties to Russia cannot be credible if the White House or Trump Justice Department has anything to do with it. This investigation must be run as far away as possible from this White House and as far away as possible from anyone that President Trump has appointed, Schumer said. Video: Sen. Schumer: Russia investigation must be run as far away as possible from this White House and Trump appointees https://t.co/Mxl0KADAFR Schumers full statement following the firing: Earlier this afternoon, President Trump called me and informed me he was firing Director Comey I told the President, Mr. President, with all due respect, you are making a big mistake. The first question the administration has to answer is: why now? If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the President got into office. But they didnt fire him then. Why did it happen today? We know that the House is investigating Russian interference in our election that benefitted the Trump campaign. We know the Senate is investigating. We know the FBI has been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians a very serious offense. Were those investigations getting too close to home for the President? It is troubling that Attorney General Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia investigation, played a role in firing the man leading it. So what happens now? Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein sat in the Judiciary Committee and promised to appoint a special prosecutor at the appropriate time. That time is right now. The American peoples trust in our criminal justice system is in Mr. Rosensteins hands. Mr. Rosenstein, America depends on you to restore faith in our criminal justice system, which is going to be badly shattered after the Administrations actions today. This is part of a deeply troubling pattern from the Trump administration. They fired Sally Yates. They fired Preet Bharara. And now theyve fired Director Comey, the very man leading the investigation This does not seem to be a coincidence. This investigation must be run as far away as possible from this White House and as far away as possible from anyone that President Trump has appointed. Given the way the President has fired Director Comey, any person who he appoints to lead the Russia investigation will be concerned that he or she will meet the same fate as Director Comey if they run afoul of the administration. The American people need to have faith that an investigation as serious as this one is being conducted impartially, without a shred of bias. The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor If Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein does not appoint an independent special prosecutor, every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire Director Comey was part of a cover-up. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Just when this day couldnt get any more bizarre, it does. On MSNBCs All In with Chris Hayes, former spokesperson for the Clinton campaign Karen Finney revealed that the letter written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein pulls information from the former Democratic nominees campaign literature in order to justify James Comeys firing. Video: So the Trump administration quoted Clinton campaign literature in letter explaining why Comey needed to be fired. Bizarre. pic.twitter.com/xdsImzzenX Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) May 10, 2017 Finney said, So the quotes that are in the letter from the deputy attorney general to Sessions actually cites some of the same quotes (from the Clinton documents) in order to explain the administrations reasoning behind Comeys termination. A stunned Chris Hayes says, This is really remarkable. Hes citing the same reasons from the Hillary Clinton campaign document, like actually the same quotes? Finney responded, Yes, and also using some of the same quotes that folks like Alberto Gonzales and Mike Mukasey and former Attorney General Holder used at the time, so I find that very ironic. Thats an understatement. What this really boils down to is that, after months of praising Comeys handling of Hillary Clinton emails investigation, the Trump administration was so desperate to fire the FBI director that they used Clinton campaign material as a phony way to justify it Clinton campaign material from last year that has no bearing on whats happening in the current FBI investigation into Trumps ties to Russia. Nobody is buying the administrations lie that this has anything to do with the non-scandal surrounding Clintons email use. The president didnt suddenly wake up and decide that the former Democratic nominee wasnt being treated fairly. Instead, its likely the White House is growing increasingly worried about the direction of this investigation and are hoping to throw it off track by making the historic decision to fire the FBI director the man running said investigation. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Trumps move to fire James Comey could already be backfiring after some Senate Republicans are so troubled by Trumps actions that they are now considering a special prosecutor to investigate the President Of The United States. Pema Levy of Mother Jones tweeted: A few Dem senators say some GOP colleagues are troubled by Comey firing, might consider special prosecutor or committee, but won't name Rs Pema Levy (@pemalevy) May 10, 2017 We know that at least one of the Republicans open to a special prosecutor is Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: Should there be a special prosecutor? Murkowski: "I think it needs to be considered." Does the timing look suspicious? Murkowski: "Sure." Laura Barron-Lopez (@lbarronlopez) May 10, 2017 Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WV) also wouldnt rule out a special prosecutor: Asked if there should be a special prosecutor to investigate Russia/Trump ties, Capito (R) says: "I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no." Laura Barron-Lopez (@lbarronlopez) May 10, 2017 Open to considering is not the same as appointing a special prosecutor, but the fact that Republicans have gone from a unified no on a special prosecutor or independent commission to well think about it is a big move. The early returns on Trumps firing of Comey are that this is a move that has made the Russia scandal a much bigger problem for the White House. Senate Republicans are thinking about appointing a special prosecutor to investigate their own president. The fact that they would even consider it shows how bad the Russia scandal is for Trump and the Republican Party. The ground is shifting under Trump, and it is moving into the realm of a criminal investigation, and criminal investigations are what get presidents impeached. Emanuel AMEs former secretary is suing the church and the Rev. Norvel Goff for ending her employment after she questioned the handling of donations that poured into the church after a gunman killed nine worshippers. Read moreFormer secretary at Emanuel AME sues for unpaid wages Watchdog/Public Service Editor Glenn Smith is editor of the Watchdog and Public Service team and helped write the newspapers Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, Till Death Do Us Part. Reach him securely on Signal at 843-607-0809 or by email at gsmith5@protonmail.com. Deanna Pan is an enterprise reporter for The Post and Courier, where she writes about education and other issues. She grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati and graduated with a degree in English from Ohio State University in 2012. Columbia Bureau Chief Shain is Columbia Bureau Chief for The Post and Courier. He was editor of Free Times and was a reporter and editor at The State, The Charlotte Observer and The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News. On April 29, the US House of Representatives passed a newly minted H.R 1644 Despite of its title, the Bill targets Russia, China, Iran and Syria by a slew of measures that normally would be implemented only in a time of war.At the look of it, the US Congress members claim to enforce the control over implementation of the UN Security Council resolution that limits the trade of the DPRK with other countries, and bans the supply of weapons, aircraft, missiles, nuclear and other technologies. However, the document also provides the legal basis for US military control over Russian ports in the Far East and in Syria, and also over the Iranian and Chinese ports.What the Russian politicians and observers found the most amazing was the fact that the UN Security Council has never requested the US to provide control over implementation of its resolution on the DPRK.As it is being presented, the H.R. 1466 Bill is an affront not only to common sense, but also to the fundamental norms of international law. For starters, if it becomes a law the Bill will allow the US military to inspect, search and seize any vessel or aircraftof the anti North Korea sanctions per their own discretion. It also gives the US military the authority to inspect the sea ports in Russia, Syria, Iran and China, implying that resisting will result in much broader sanctions against these four countries. Clemson City Council will welcome a fresh face and new perspective after the Nov. 8 election, while Pickens County elected its first female Democratic council member. Read moreClemson council incumbents keep seats, welcome new face The Fremont Board of Education was forced to adjust the Fremont Public School Districts 2017-2018 calendar due to some unforeseeable circumstances during Monday evenings meeting held inside of the Main Street Education & Administration Center. After the Board approved the school districts calendar in February, a month or two later the State Department of Education let all Nebraska school districts know that the statewide ACT examination for all juniors would be held April 3, which falls right at the end of the Fremont Public School Districts proposed 2017-2018 spring break. Because of this, students district-wide will have spring break March 26-30, rather than March 28 through April 3. This is the first time students will have a full week of spring break, said Kevin Eairleywine, executive director of human resources and elementary operations. They have the full five days now and it bookends Easter, so it is a pretty big break that they will have, he said. In other School Board news: *Cliff Huss, director of informational services, said that the Board approved the purchase of 870 new Chromebooks, which will be used at all elementary schools district-wide and at Johnson Crossing Academic Center. These computers have reached the end of their lives and their warranties have run out, Huss said. We are starting to see some troubles that we know beyond the warranty will be very difficult to fix in terms of expense. JCAC is receiving 300 laptops to replace its 5-year-old Dell laptops, and 420 Chromebooks will be sent to elementary schools across the district. The total project expense is $145,855.50. *Kate Heineman, executive director of teaching and learning, spoke about the districts purchase of upper-level math curriculum for Algebra 3 & Trigonometry, Math Analysis and Pre-Calculus. We began the revision process last summer and purchased curriculum through Algebra 2, Heineman said. Now we are finishing that revision process. The curriculum will be implemented next school year and teachers will complete their revision process May 22-26, Heineman added. The man behind the wheel in a crash that killed a 5-year-old Byron boy nearly a year ago pleaded not guilty Tuesday to three traffic violations. Myles Thomas Keller, 70, of rural Mantorville, was charged in August almost three months after the crash with reckless driving-conscious disregard of a substantial risk, a gross misdemeanor, and two misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree DWI. His next court appearance hasn't been set; Keller remains free on his own recognizance. Lukas Wharton was playing outside with his siblings May 24, riding down an embankment in a child's wagon, when a car driven by Keller came down 19th Avenue Northwest. The vehicle struck Lukas and the wagon, pushing them for several yards, the report says. ADVERTISEMENT A family member carried Lukas to the Wharton residence; Keller followed them up the driveway to the residence and called 911. Lukas died June 1 at a Rochester hospital from his injuries. A sample of Keller's blood analyzed by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension placed his blood alcohol content between .081 and .101 an hour after the crash. The calculation included consideration of unabsorbed alcohol, the complaint says, "accurately showing Mr. Keller was operating his vehicle above the legal limit." There would be "no way to prove" the more serious charge of criminal vehicular homicide, a felony, said Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem. The legal statute requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Keller's driving conduct was a substantial factor in Lucas's death or that Keller's acts had a substantial role in the crash leading to the death. Based on multiple reports, Keller's "driving conduct was very purposeful and deliberate in sneaking his way home," Ostrem said. "We believe he did that because he knew he was over the (alcohol) limit and was trying to avoid detection." Keller "made some very poor decisions that night," Ostrem continued, among them, drinking three beers at a Byron bar in less than an hour on an empty stomach. He then drove on unpaved roads with a number of turns, hills and crests and driveways and field entrances with limited visibility, the complaint says. The route nearly doubled the time it normally took Keller to drive home, Ostrem said. Keller's "choices were conscious decisions creating an environment with abundant risk," the county attorney said. ADVERTISEMENT No felony charge in fatal Byron crash Two Century High School students could face felony charges today of making terroristic threats after a social media post circulated on the Internet early Tuesday. Authorities were alerted to the social media post at around 8 a.m. when an email was sent to them by the Olmsted County attorney. The email included a screenshot of the post, accompanied by a photo of an unidentified 14-year-old male whom Rochester Police later confirmed was a student at the high school posing with a rifle in his hands and pistol in his waistband, according to Police Lt. Mike Sadauskis. A 15-year-old female Century High student had shared the post on social media, accompanied by a caption reading: "Don't go to school tomorrow." A screenshot of the post and photo was sent to the Olmsted County attorney, which was then forwarded to the Rochester Police Department. The agency was quick to work with Century High School's school liaison officer and administrators to identify the student in the photo, and notified his parents. The student admitted to posting the photo on Snapchat with a caption that read "Murica" but stated he was not making a threat of any kind. He told police that the guns were a BB gun and an Airsoft gun made to look like a pistol. ADVERTISEMENT He also revealed that he was aware the female student was sharing the post online, and didn't do anything to correct the situation. The female student confirmed the story, and was also aware of the original context of the photo. The two students were removed from school, authorities said. The Fremont City Council approved numerous resolutions during its Tuesday evening meeting held on the second floor of the Fremont Municipal Building, 400 E. Military Ave. A resolution passed authorizing Mayor Scott Getzschman to sign an interlocal cooperation agreement for membership to Nebraska Community Energy Alliance and permission to apply for the Nebraska Environmental Trust Grant. Membership to the Nebraska Community Energy Alliance would provide the City of Fremont and the Fremont Department of Utilities grant opportunities that both entities could benefit from, said Lottie Mitchell, executive assistant grant coordinator. Membership is $1,000 and would be split 50/50 between the city and DU, as is each grant application, which also would be split 50/50 between the city and DU. Through the Nebraska Environmental Trust grant, the city and Department of Utilities could apply for a grant that would enable them to purchase likely three electric vehicles. If received, the grant would cover up to $16,000 of each vehicle cost. Another portion of the grant would allow Fremont to apply for at least two vehicle charging stations available for use by the public that would be erected in locations around town. The grant would cover expenses up to $17,500 per charging station. Grant application is due to the Nebraska Environmental Trust by September, and awards will be announced in January 2018, Mitchell said. In addition, the Council approved a resolution authorizing application for a state-funded Civic and Community Center Financing Fund Grant for renovation to the Fremont City Auditorium. The grant, which if awarded will fund one project up to $750,000 every five years, was awarded to the City of Fremont in 2011 to help with Christensen Field renovations, Mitchell said. Grant applications are due June 3, and recipients of the grant are announced June 30. Although Fremont was a recipient in 2011, each new project requires a new application process. Typically, Mitchell said, the grant funds are awarded to projects that are ready to be started immediately. While the Auditorium project is moving along, true work wouldnt likely start for another year; potentially pending a bond issue vote in May 2018. Even if the grant isnt awarded to the city this June, getting the ball rolling on the grant application will pay dividends, Mitchell said. If not awarded the grant, the city could reapply in June 2018. It really does two things for us even if we arent awarded the grant this June, she said. First, if we are awarded it, great, we can show people we have money secured and that we are looking for other sources of grant funding. Second, even if we would be denied this really gets our project on the radar of the state so they really have some knowledge of whats going on. Other resolutions approved include: Resolution approving an outside corporation limits water/sewer connection for 351 N. Pierce St. Resolution enabling the Fremont Police Department to apply for the transfer of an armored vehicle from the military to its department, which would be used in emergency situations once demilitarized to protect the officers using it. The official terminology calls for the transfer of a MRAP from the 1033 program to the police department. Resolution to accept itemized statements of costs, complete cost and tentative schedule of assessments and set date of Board of Equalization meeting for Sanitary Sewer District No. 703-15. Resolution authorizing interlocal agreement with the village of Cedar Bluffs for a satellite keno location. Two resolutions dealing with a street project spanning from Second and Park Street to Military Avenue. Resolution awarding CR-MENN Concrete the 2017 Pavement Rehab Project Contract. ST. PAUL Republicans who control the Minnesota Legislature on Tuesday challenged Gov. Mark Dayton by forging ahead with their own budget plans, setting the two sides on a collision course with just two weeks remaining to finish a new, two-year spending package. The Democratic governor and GOP leaders entered the session's homestretch with a mountain of differences over how to spend a $1.65 billion budget surplus, from the size of spending Dayton pushed for $46 billion while Republicans' plans called for nearly $45 billion to the amount of tax relief and smaller, controversial policy changes scattered throughout the GOP bills. The two sides had been meeting for more than a week to chip away at a compromise, and Republican leaders had expressed little interest in sending Dayton their own budget bills for a sure veto. But Republicans at least temporarily abandoned the negotiating table after the latest round of private talks on Tuesday. Both the House and Senate started passing budget bills, kicking off a flurry of final votes on budget bills that Dayton has suggested he'd veto. "We've got a job to do, and we're going to pass those bills," said Rep. Nels Pierson, R-Rochester. "And if the governor wants to veto those bills, he should come in good faith and negotiate with leadership. It just doesn't seem like we've had any true movement from the governor." But Democrats warned Republicans against plowing ahead without first striking a deal with the governor. ADVERTISEMENT "If we choose conflict over collaboration ... we almost certainly send this legislative session into overtime," House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman said. "I can guarantee we will not find an agreement if we stop talking to each other." It's a bid to pressure Dayton to move their way in a final compromise, with more for tax cuts than the $300 million sum Dayton has proposed and a smaller overall budget than Dayton's two-year, $46 billion package. But there is a long list of differences dividing the two sides behind the big dollar figures. Rep. Duane Sauke, DFL-Rochester, said he is concerned about Republicans rushing to pass their own budget bills instead of sitting down to negotiate with governor's office. "I think it is the height of games," Sauke said. While Dayton has proposed a $175 million expansion for a preschool program that launched this year, the Legislature's budget would zero out that program, shifting that money to a more general "school readiness" fund that school districts could tap to continue their existing preschool offerings. An environmental budget has raised Dayton's ire by also delaying the fall launch of his marquee water quality measure requiring buffers between farmland and waterways by two years. Republicans are looking to go big on tax cuts lining up more than $1 billion in property tax reductions for farmers, reduce estate taxes and offer tax credits to college graduates with loan debt while Dayton has outlined just $300 million in tax breaks. Republicans weren't shy about their goal of building the case to the public that it's Dayton not the Legislature holding up a timely resolution. ADVERTISEMENT "The people sent us here to get our job done. Our job is to pass our bills," Republican House Majority Leader Joyce Peppin said. Dayton decried the maneuver and said he'd veto every single bill if that's the tack GOP legislative leaders take. "Their actions will make it much more difficult for them to fulfill their Constitutional responsibility to send me budget bills, which I can sign, by May 22nd," he said in a statement. It's not the first time Dayton and a GOP-controlled Legislature have clashed. Dayton and Republicans deadlocked over how to solve a $6 billion budget deficit, bringing the state to a 20-day government shutdown in 2011. Earlier Tuesday, it appeared legislative leaders could stave off a messy conclusion. The two sides traded several offers on the budget, narrowing the roughly $1 billion gap that separates their overall budget proposals. But Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said those talks weren't moving fast enough. "We are extremely disappointed and frustrated that negotiations have stalled after some early positive signs," he said. As Rochester expects an expanding workforce that could add 30,000 people within the next two decades, affordable housing advocates are wondering where the new workers will live. While records show construction of more than 2,000 new apartments was permitted during the last two years, the price of many of those apartments are out of reach for job-holders who will make up a large part of the future workforce. Dave Dunn, Olmsted County's housing director, said the message needs to be sent. "I think we have to be out there and continue to tell our story and document our need," he said. Steve Borchardt, housing initiative director for Rochester Area Foundation , has been sharing data in hopes of creating a fund to help build affordable housing in the region, but he's faced reluctance. ADVERTISEMENT "I first started hitting the road last year, meeting with community leaders and major employers, and they essentially told me there wasn't a sufficient consensus in the community to say that housing affordability was sufficient to compel anyone to donate to that kind of fund," he said. Workforce homes With doctors, researchers and business owners expected to be drawn to Rochester by Destination Medical Center, Borchardt said additional teachers, mechanics and service-industry workers will be needed. The anticipated growth is why Borchardt and others point to the 2014 Maxfield Research report that estimates 246 new affordable homes will be needed annually through 2020. Bryan Koster said he has more tangible proof that people already being drawn to Rochester need places they can afford. The Twin Cities developer, along with his partner, Dean Meier, renovated a 24-unit apartment complex at 1609 10th St. SE, and it continues to draw people looking to call Rochester home. "We've been getting a lot of out-of-state inquiries," he said, noting people who want to work in Rochester are commenting on the tight housing market. Without affordable units available, either new or existing, many feel Rochester's businesses could continue to struggle to find the workforce they need to meet growing demands. Dunn said he's seen firsthand how housing issues can affect the ability to attract employees. Before taking his position with the local Housing and Redevelopment Authority, he was assistant planning director of the Rochester-Olmsted Planning Department, where he saw housing-related challenges when recruiting staff. ADVERTISEMENT He said he doubts it's a unique issue in the community because affordable apartments, as well as houses, often are hard to find. "We need to, as a community, find a way to attract people, and housing is part of that," he said, noting the solution will take time. Changing opinions Borchardt said he is seeing opinions slowly change among the groups he speaks to. Rochester, however, isn't alone in the problem. Last year, Congressman Tim Walz held a housing summit in Austin, calling the issue one of the most significant challenges to southern Minnesota's growing economy. At the time, the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency reported 4,500 to 7,500 additional rental units are needed throughout the state. A year later, concerns remain. To help address regional concerns, a May 15 housing summit is planned. Anyone connected to the residential business whether single-family homes or multi-unit complexes is being invited to spend the morning discussing the issues and comparing what has been done throughout the region. The event is a collaboration of a collaboration of regional chambers, Southeast Minnesota Together, Journey to Growth, the Rochester Area Foundation and Southeast Minnesota Association of Realtors. ADVERTISEMENT "The goal is to raise the level of understanding throughout the region," Borchardt said, noting he expects participation from throughout Southeast Minnesota. Borchardt said he hopes the collection of people, including builders, financial representatives and policymakers, can work together to discover new ways to spur growth of affordable housing and alleviate what he sees as increasing concerns. If you go What:Southeast Minnesota Workforce Housing Summit When:7:30 a.m. to noon Where:Rochester International Event Center, 7333 Airport View Drive SW Who:Anyone from throughout the region looking to address workforce housing concerns. More information and registration:Contact Mike Schnell, Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce government affairs coordinator, at 507-424-5666 or by email at mschnell@rochestermnchamber.com. ST. PAUL For the first time, Dakota people whose ancestors were exiled from Minnesota 154 years ago met last week at Fort Snelling. It was just below the fort, where women, children, and the elderly were put onto steamboats and sent down the Mississippi, up the Missouri, then to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. Eventually, families that survived went to the Dakotas, to Montana, to Canada and elsewhere. Some of their descendants returned there for a four-day conference called Dakhota Wowicakhe Woyakapi Omniciye, or Dakota Truth-telling Gathering. The meeting ended on Sunday. As the families met, many hugged and wept, sharing their histories. "The argument that this space was put here to keep Dakota and Ojibwe people at peace, that's not actually the way we view this history," said Kate Beane, a Dakota historian who works for the Minnesota Historical Society. "The way we view this history is that this fort was put here to pave the way for European settlement," she said. "It is a symbol of colonization, of imperialism, of years of unjust negotiations and dealings with our community. Two of our warriors were hanged right over here, outside of the round tower. So sometimes if you hear 38 plus two, those were the two. They were kept in prison here, and that's where their lives ended, for us to live." Seth Eastman, who also goes by Iyokpiya (Doesn't Make Them Happy), is a Dakota horse-rider from Sisseton, S.D. ADVERTISEMENT To honor his ancestors who were interned at Fort Snelling 154 years ago, and later exiled from Minnesota, he and two other horse-riders met at the U.S. border with Canada and rode to Fort Snelling for the historic truth-telling gathering. What is an appropriate level of funding for Minnesota's colleges and universities? For Riverland Community College, it is $2.8 million added to base funding for the 2018-2019 biennium. The request will allow the college to continue to inspire personal success through extraordinary education at an exceptional value. The funding will add more than $73 million annual economic impact to the region, and help Riverland maintain optimum staffing level to accelerate student success and improve performance outcomes in enrollment, retention and completion. For all the 31 colleges and universities that make up the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, an appropriate level of funding is $143 million plus trusting the Minnesota State Board of Trustees to consult with stakeholders and make decisions about tuition rates. Post-secondary education and training is an undeniable key component of the oxygenated blood that fuels the heart of the economy of the state of Minnesota. No one sector addresses the talent and equity challenges in a more powerful, effective, and efficient way than Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Collectively we serve: 62,000 students of color ADVERTISEMENT 50,000 first-generation college students 92,000 low-income students 95,000 students aged 25 years or older 10,500 veterans According to researchers at Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce , in less than three years, 74 percent of jobs in Minnesota will require some form of post-secondary education to meet workforce needs. Only the District of Columbia at 76 percent exceeds Minnesota. Riverland offers more than 90 program options, including 88 targeting career and technical education. The story of Riverland is woven together with the compelling stories of the nearly 9,000 students we serve annually, about half of whom are credit seeking. Stories like that of Riverland's top rated truck driving program partnering with Rochester Community and Technical College, and our best-in-class Radiology Technology program, which supplies 60 percent of all radiologic technologists in southeast Minnesota. In a few days, Riverland will celebrate the graduation of 547 students who have completed their degree, diploma or certificate. It is a favorite time of the academic year for many of us in the education business. It is very satisfying to reflect on how the college has touched the lives of graduates and their families. ADVERTISEMENT It is also the time of the year to recount accomplishments. Among them: We have increased enrollment by 3 percent over the previous year. We have further closed the achievement gap from 10 percent (2012) to 0.2 percent (2015). We have raised $566,000 for scholarships and awarded 560 student scholarships. We expanded PSEO/Concurrent partnership to 16 regional high schools and several course sections that served 2,000 regional students. Without full funding, Riverland will have to take some drastic steps that will reverse the gains the college has made in the past biennium. We appreciate that as a public state institution, the taxpayers invest in us and as you can see from the achievements above, we use those funds effectively, all with a lean number of employees and limited resources. Funding of our colleges and universities at the appropriate level is a worthwhile investment in the future of our state in very concrete terms. The dividends of past investments are obvious. The state of Minnesota ranks in the top tier nationally in job creation, income, innovation, and best states to live. Funding at the requested level (with accountability for measurable outcomes) will serve the residents of our state very well. ADVERTISEMENT This morning we continue our preview of the new issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Thanks to our friends at the Claremont Institute, I read the new issue in galley to select three pieces to be submitted for the consideration of Power Line readers. As always, wanting to do right by the magazine and by our readers, I had a hard time choosing. You, however, can do your own choosing at the heavily subsidized price of $19.95 a year by clicking on the link above and accessing subscription services. At that price the CRB affords the most cost-effective political education available in the United States of America. Subscribe by clicking on Subscription Services at the link and get immediate online access thrown in for free. In the 2009 book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, Weekly Standard senior editor Christopher Caldwell peered into Europes dire future. It is an eloquent and prescient book that makes no concessions to the imperatives of political correctness on the subject of the books subtitle. Caldwells work on Europe has given him insight into the forces supporting the rise of Donald Trump. In the last issue of the CRB, for example, Caldwell took a still timely look at Sanctimony cities. In the essay Caldwell sought to capture the world of the urban haute bourgeoisie, i.e., the world of the anti-Trumpers. Caldwell observed along the way: Trump understood something no Republican had understood in decades. The partisan division in the United States was less about ideology than about sociology. Ideology was there, of course, but it arose from the sociology: you look at life differently when you write the rules than when you have to submit to them. Caldwell extends his analysis in the current issue of the CRB with the review of a new book examining globalization, another of the issues in the matrix supporting Trump. In Sending Jobs Overseas, Caldwell seeks to understand the the changing view of globalization from a miracle to a losing situation. Globalization showered certain people with blessings they had not expected, in ways that could not be explained by logic. How could Nike be the worlds most successful shoemaker when it owned scarcely any shoe factories? Globalizations cheerleaders, from Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, made arguments from classical economics: by buying manufactured products from people overseas who made them cheaper than we did, the United States could get rich concentrating on product design, marketing, and other lucrative services. That turned out to be a mostly inaccurate description of how globalization would work in the developed world, as mainstream politicians everywhere are now discovering. Recent elections and the rise of nationalist candidates both at home and abroad clearly underscore this dramatic shift. Caldwell writes of the book under review: Richard Baldwin, an economist at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, gives us an idea why, over the past generation, globalizations benefits have been so hard to explain and its damage so hard to diagnose. It is a great book: elegant, subtle, simple enough for a child to understand, and free of any political or polemical agenda. Baldwins argument is that information and communications technology ha[ve] changed trade in its very essence. We have had globalization, in the sense of far-flung trade, for centuries now. The United States has been putting all its diplomatic and military muscle behind it since Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. But around 1990, the cost of sharing information at a distance fell dramatically. Caldwell sorts out the consequences in a review that has an obvious bearing on the current political scene. The Associated Press is generally a mouthpiece for Democratic Party talking points. That is the case as to voter ID, as this rather pathetic piece shows: In Wisconsin, ID law proved insurmountable for many voters. State Sen. Mary Lazich was adamant: The bill Republicans were about to push through the Wisconsin state Senate, requiring that voters present identification at the polls, would do no harm. Not a single voter in this state will be disenfranchised by the ID law, Lazich promised. Five years later, in the first presidential election held under the new law, Gladys Harris proved her wrong. So the AP makes it clear from the beginning that its article is intended as a refutation of Republican claims, and a defense of the Democrats position on voter ID. Lets see how well the Associated Press makes the Democratic Partys case. By one estimate, 300,000 eligible voters in the state lacked valid photo IDs heading into the election; it is unknown how many people did not vote because they didnt have proper identification. But wait! The APs headline says that Wisconsins voter ID law proved insurmountable for many voters. The obvious question is: how many? The reporter now tells us that the number of people who didnt vote because they lacked proper ID is unknown. The article identifies exactly four. Next, one wonders about the source of the estimate that 300,000 eligible voters didnt have legal ID heading into the election. It apparently comes from the far-left web site Think Progress, which in turn evidently derived the figure from competing expert witness affidavits that were filed in a lawsuit that challenged the voter ID law. Those affidavits, one of which you can read here, were filed in early 2012. So Wisconsin voters who didnt have any of the seven forms of identification permitted by the statute (including a free photo ID issued by the state, of course) had four and a half years to obtain one. The APs statement that 300,000 legal voters (one of the experts gave a much lower number) didnt have proper identification heading into the election is deliberately misleading. Moreover, the federal courts ultimately upheld the Wisconsin law, rejecting the claims that were made by its criticsa fact that the AP never mentions. The Wisconsin law provides that if a would-be voter doesnt have any of the seven forms of identification permitted by the law, he or she can cast a provisional ballot and return with proper ID within a few days, in which case the vote counts. This fact is inconvenient for the Democrats and the Associated Press, but the AP does its best with the four (4) instances it has uncovered. * The first would-be voter allegedly lost her drivers license shortly before the election. It sounds like she didnt cast a provisional ballot. If she did, the AP gives no explanation for why she failed to return to the polling place to validate her ballot. * The second presented a drivers license from another state, and was too busy to return to the polls to validate a provisional ballot. * The third, who was dying of cancer, had an expired drivers license. She was told during the early voting period that she should get a new license, but the DMV station was 15 miles away, so she didnt do it. * The fourth had a student ID that didnt meet the Wisconsin laws standards. She went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a valid ID, but her work schedule at a Starbucks prevented her from going to the county clerks office with the ID so her vote would count. This is not exactly an impressive catalog of voter suppression. If voter fraud were not a risk, no voter security measures would be necessary. The AP dutifully spouts the Democratic Party line on voter fraud: Supporters of voter ID laws say that prohibiting out-of-state drivers licenses reduces the possibility of voter fraud and individuals filling out multiple ballots. Research has shown that such voter fraud can happen, but its very rare. Really? Lets see that research! Maybe it, too, comes from Think Progress. Is voter fraud rarer than the four dubious instances cited in this AP article? Here in Minnesota, hundreds or thousands of instances of voter fraud have been documented, where the name, date and polling place of the person committing fraud has been pinpointed. And that is a drop in the bucket compared with the number who commit fraud but are not caught. Is there any reason to believe that Wisconsin was different before it adopted better voter security procedures? The AP tries to suggest the President Trump carried Wisconsin because legitimate voters were foiled by the states voter ID law: Overall, nearly 3 million people in Wisconsin voted last November, about 91,000 fewer than in 2012. Milwaukee, a power center for Democrats, reported that 41,000 fewer people voted there than in 2012. So overall turnout in Wisconsin was flat, as it was in a number of states. And votes cast in many power center(s) for Democrats across the U.S. were down, because Hillary Clinton was an awful candidate. The AP never considers the possibility that Wisconsins voter ID law may have deterred some fraudulent ballots from being cast, thereby lowering vote totals. The remarkable thing about the Democrats attack on Wisconsins voter ID law is how feeble it is. The Associated Press gives us absolutely no reason to doubt that the courts were correct in upholding the statute. St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, has been convulsed by a series of alleged racial incidents that may or may not be what they appear to be. The Star Tribune reports that the college is scrutinizing persons of interest who may be responsible for a string of anonymous racist messages targeting black students. According to the college, some of the people of interest are affiliated with the college and others are not. At the College Fix this morning, Nathan Rubbelke leads off his report on the efforts to discover the perpetrators with a lead that grabs attention: Just hours after she found a typewritten note with a racial slur on her car, St. Olaf College student Samantha Wells said in an email that she didnt want the school to investigate her case. Rubbelke provides this context: That remark came at the same time as racial protests launched on campus, during which angry students blocked entrances to campus buildings, trapping students inside as demonstrators demanded redress for a string of alleged racial incidents on campus. The aggressive protest forced administrators to cancel classes last Monday to allow demonstrators to air their grievances in a daylong sit-in. Some students have seized on the unresolved incidents to submit a document setting forth terms and conditions of negotiations to the colleges president. The Star Tribune noted the presidents agreement to unreported terms and demands in a May 1 story. Rubbelke links to the consolidated document in his May 9 report depicting the grim scene on campus. The students should have been told to shove it in Minnesota Nice, but President Anderson succumbed. The details remain unclear. All this is occurring before a single one of the incidents has been resolved. There is a bad moon rising at St. Olaf. Reading the whole document to which Rubbelke links is painful, and not just on account of the demands. These students should be requesting instruction in remedial writing rather than seeking to impose the usual laundry list of race-based demands on the administration, governance, curriculum, personnel and whatever else there is of the institution. The Star Tribune hasnt gotten around to giving the details, but Rubbelke highlights one in particular. In his May 9 report Rubbelke noted that the students leading this parade have demanded the resignation of Arne Christensen from the advisory board of the colleges Institute for Freedom and Community. Christensen has served as Newt Gingrichs chief of staff and held prominent positions in public affairs over the years. Christensens crime? Paragraph I of the demands puts it this way: We demand the removal of Arne Christenson from the Advisory Board of The Institute for Freedom & Community. Given Mr. Christensons political views and values as a Christian Zionist, St. Olaf College risks his influence upon the speakers brought to the school, the educational offerings, faculty development workshops, and scholarships sanctioned by the Institute through financial means. We can stop right here in Paragraph I and cut this short. Rubbelke has done the job the Star Tribune refuses to do. Let it be noted that St. Olaf has disgraced itself bowing to this mob. UPDATE by JOHN: The most recent racist episode, which occurred on April 29, has been solved. The purported victim has confessed that she perpetrated a hoax. St. Olafs administration is proceeding, for the time being, as though the preceding incidents (approximately 7 over the course of the year) were real. In any event, college President David Anderson writes: Despite this fact, those concerns are real and, as I said earlier, we are committed to the process we have begun to address them. No doubt that commitment will persist even if the rest of the racist incidents also prove to be fraudulent. From the beginning of Trumps implausible rise to the presidency, Ive wondered whether hes a Chauncey Gardner-style idiot savant (which is what liberals always thought of Reagan, even after he demolished them at successive elections), a shrewd genius of sorts, or just plain lucky. Increasingly the evidence leans toward the second explanationthat underneath Trumps verb-tense and syntactically-challenged stream-of-consciousness speaking (and Tweeting) style, there is a shrewdness about him that bespeaks some real genius at work. And this genius is his ability to get liberals tied up in knots on an almost daily basis. To adapt an old Dennis Miller line, Trump has liberals more off balance than a Chinese acrobat with an inner-ear infection. The Comey firing is a sublime exercise in giving liberals what they wanted while sending them into new fits of apoplexy and Watergate nostalgia. Just last week Hillary Clinton was once again blaming her election loss on Comey, so whats the problem? (I notice Hillary has been silent about Comeys firing, unless I missed a statement from her camp.) The fact that Trump was unafraid to do what five presidents were afraid to do with regard to J. Edgar Hoover shows an additional aspect of his character that, while problematic, probably plays well with a lot of the public. It has not gone unnoticed that when Stephen Colbert announced the news of Comeys firing at the beginning of the taping of his late night show yesterday afternoon, the instant reaction of the studio audience was to erupt in cheers, which was not the reaction Colbert was expectingor desiring. But finally, it ought to be noted for the historical record that Comey might well be considered the last casualty of the recklessness of the Clintons. Aside from the specific controversy of Hillarys home-brew server, it was Bill Clintons dodgy meeting on the airport tarmac with Attorney General Loretta Lynch last summer than compelled Comey to come forward with his extraordinary press conference letting Hillary off the hook while explaining clearly that she is in fact a criminal. As Dana Milbank reported last week in the Washington Post: So now it can be told: Bill Clinton cost his wife the presidency. Almost three hours into a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey shed new light on his decision to go public about his agencys investigations into Hillary Clintons emails, first in July 2016 and again, with devastating effect, in late October, 11 days before the election. The specific reason he cited: Bill Clintons decision to board Attorney General Loretta Lynchs plane in late June, when their planes were both on a tarmac in Phoenix. The capper was and Im not picking on Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who I like very much but her meeting with President Clinton on that airplane was the capper for me, Comey said. Comey decided to step away and announce, without consulting the Justice Department, that Hillary Clinton shouldnt be charged. In Comeys telling, this public announcement in turn required Comey to speak up again in October, when more emails were found. Having done that [the public announcement] and then having testified repeatedly under oath that were done, he said, it would be a disastrous, catastrophic concealment not to go public on Oct. 28 with the newly discovered emails. Its a tragic chain of events: If Bill Clinton hadnt boarded that plane in June, Comey might not have spoken out in July, which means he wouldnt have felt compelled to speak up again in October, which means Hillary Clinton would have won the election in November. Heh. This is going to break my schadenfreude meter. This also adds more fuel to the fire that Bill really didnt want Hillary to win the election in the first place. After all, he could have campaigned for her on his in own in Michigan and Wisconsin if hed wanted to. Hed have been much more effective than she would have been anyway. I think the Big Dog just didnt want to be succeeded by a . . . A former military president, Ibrahim Babangida will on Friday in Minna, Niger State give out his last daughter, Halimat, in marriage. The wedding is taking place amidst concerns over the retired generals health. He recently returned from Germany, where he went for treatment. Since then, he has kept off from public functions. Halimat is the second daughter and last child of the family. She was born by his late wife, Maryam, while the military ruler presided over the affairs of the country at Dodan Barracks in Lagos. Mr. Babangida ruled from Lagos between August 1985 until 1991 when he shifted the seat of government to Abuja. The groom is Auwal Abdullahi, who holds the traditional title of Sarkin Sudan Gombe. He is a businessman. All arrangements have been concluded for the wedding and invitations sent to prominent Nigerians, across the country. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the wedding prayers will take place at the Hilltop Villa of the former military president in Minna by 2.30 p.m. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, in Niger says it will deploy no fewer than 135 personnel to provide security before and during the wedding event Philip Ayuba, Commandant, NSCDC in the state, gave the figure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on Wednesday in Minna. He said that the command has set up three teams to achieve this purpose, including a surveillance team that will carry out under-cover activities in all the black spots within and outside the metropolis of the city. He said another team will patrol the metropolis patrol, while a third team will secure the venues of the programme. These are Justice Legbo Kutigi conference centre, where a reception will hold for the guests, the El Amin School, which will hold a spill-over reception and the residence of the former president. We have already issued an effective operational order to the officers deployed for that effect, he said. He also said that sufficient personnel will be deployed to all the roads leading to the hill top residence of the former president. Niger Police Commissioner Zubairu Muazu also said 4000 police officers will be deployed to provide security on the highways, major roads in Minna, the airport and the venues of the ceremony. Share this: Twitter Facebook Corrupt practices are more prevalent in the executive arm of Nigerias government, and measures to tackle the menace should thus be targeted at the executive, two senators have suggested. In their contributions, following a motion, by Dino Melaye, on alleged abuse of law in procurement process by the Bureau of Public Procurement, the two lawmakers, Matthew Urhoghide and Bala NaAllah, pointed accusing finger at civil servants in the executive branch who, according to the senators, are responsible for contract frauds. We are aware that 70 per cent of the recoveries have come from the doorstep of the executive, said Mr. NaAllah, the Senate Deputy Leader. So, the preventive measures should be targeted at that arm of government. He also said: You look at the nature of the offence before you determine the control strategy. Happily enough, with what we have heard and seen today, you can convincingly say that the entire recoveries associated with this country today have depicted that over 70% of what have been alleged to have been recovered by the EFCC and ICPC were recovered from the executive arm of government. Mr. NaAllah (APC-Kebbi) alleged that civil servants handle government projects through their companies or fronts, and canvassed a legal deterrence to stop that. What measures have been put in place to make it practically impossible for what has been recovered not to be stolen? the lawmaker said. Similarly, Mr. Urhoghide (PDP-Edo) said civil servants are corrupt and they award contracts to themselves. Unfortunately, he lamented, the view held by the public is that we participate in the procurement process. He said not only do civil servants compromise the system to award contracts to themselves, they also execute substandard projects. But before the contributions, Mr. Melaye (APC-Kogi) accused the Bureau of Public Procurement of violating Section 5 of the Public Procurement Act 2007 by failing to submit its procurement audit report to the National Assembly. The law provides that such report be submitted to the lawmakers bi-annually. By that alleged failure, Mr. Melaye said, the lawmakers were being denied the right to perform their oversight duties as regards procurement exercise in the country. He said procurement was responsible for over 70 per cent of corruption in this country; so, to get the fight against corruption right, we must also get our procurement correctly. The powers of BPE is aimed at ensuring that government get value for contracts awarded and within relevant threshold has it backed by allocation. The BPE has consistently engaged in under hand dealings with respect to the grant of certificate of no objections, abusing this power to make gains. If urgent steps are not taken to investigate these allegations and address proven infractions, the BPE is likely to transform itself from a regulator to disruptor and endanger the whole public procurement system, said Mr. Melaye. Shehu Sani (APC-Kaduna) also contributed to the debate, condemning corrupt practices in procurement process. In closing, the Senate unanimously resolved, through voice vote, to refer the matter to the committee on public procurement for investigation. The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who presided, ruled that the committee should report back to the Senate in five weeks. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Nigeria Union in South Africa said on Wednesday that two Nigerians were shot dead in Western Cape Province of that country. Mike Ibitoye, the Chairman of the Union`s chapter in the province, told the News Agency of Nigeria on telephone from Cape Town, South Africa, that the Nigerians were shot by unidentified assailants. Mr Ernest Ughakwesili, 42, native of Nkpor, Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State, was shot in a night club by gunmen at Strand Area of Cape Town on Sunday. The assailants escaped after the shooting and the victim died before being rushed to the hospital, he said. Mr. Ibitoye also said the second victim, Chimezie Oranusi, 26, from Oba town in Anambra State, was shot with a friend in a car at Delst area of Cape Town. The friend is a South African and is still in the hospital receiving treatment. The incidents have been reported to the police and the national secretariat of the union, he said. The chairman said that the motive behind the shootings had not been ascertained, adding that the police had commenced investigation. The Secretary of the union, Adetola Olubajo, said the national secretariat had received the report of the killings. We have received report about the killing of two Nigerians in Cape Town, Western Cape Province of South Africa. The union`s chapter in the province is handling the matter while the national body has reported the incident to the Nigerian Mission in South Africa. We urge Nigerians in South Africa to remain law abiding. We also appeal to the Federal Government to continue to protect the welfare of our people here, he said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook Nigerias Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, on Tuesday held a closed-door meeting with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, with one of the major subjects of discussion being the Malabu OPL 245 scandal. Tuesdays meeting comes about five days after Mr. Kachikwu told journalists that ongoing investigation and prosecution of two multinational oil firms, Shell and ENI, in Nigeria and Italy, for their alleged roles in the Malabu scandal, will not lead to a stoppage of work on the controversial oil block, OPL 245. The Tuesday meeting at the Aso Villa, Abuja, was also attended by ENI officials represented by officials of its Nigerian subsidiary, NAOC; as well as officials of the Nigerian state oil firm, NNPC. Mr. Kachikwu confirmed to journalists after Tuesdays meeting that Zabazaba field, part of the OPL 245, was a major topic of discussion during the meeting. The Acting President chaired two meetings this morning. The first was with the ministry of Petroleum, NNPC and Agip Oil Company. In the first meeting, we dealt largely with issues relating to Agips investment on Zabazaba Field, Mr. Kachikwu said, adding that the discussion also centred on their cooperation with us in terms of repairs of the Port Harcourt refinery where they are working with Oando and a few other people. Mr. Kachikwus stance on the OPL 245 scandal, which saw ENI and Shell pay $1.1 billion through the Nigerian government to private accounts of a convicted money launderer, is at variance with that of the anti-graft EFCC which wants the block returned to the Nigerian government since it was fraudulently obtained. PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the block was awarded in 1998 to Malabu, a firm partly owned by then petroleum minister, Dan Etete, in violation of Nigerian laws (Since the company was later found to have a fictitious director on its board). Mr. Etete would later be convicted of money laundering in France. Tuesdays meeting appears to be Mr. Kachikwus way of getting Mr. Osinbajo to agree with his position on resolving the scandal, which is to focus more on the business side of the oil block rather than the EFCCs criminal trial. Total investment from Agip involved in both the Zabazaba field, the power plant and the new refinery is in excess of $15 billion. That is major push in terms of our search for investment, Mr. Kachikwu said after the meeting. The potential deal would also allow Agip to build a brand new refinery of 150,000 barrels capacity in Port-Harcourt or Brass, Bayelsa State, Mr. Kachikwu said. The minister did not explain if the proposal for the refinery is tied to ENI and Shell continuing to operate OPL 245 or if they were separate unrelated deals. The minister said Nigerian government and Agip officials are currently drafting a memorandum of understanding that will see the new deals through. Mr. Kachikwu said last week that the administration would focus on getting Shell and ENI to continue work on Zabazaba field, which is part of the OPL 245 in offshore Bayelsa. We need to talk because without any impact in terms of the project, which must continue, these are huge billions of dollars of investment in Nigeria, I am not going to shut that down. The issue of the criminality is outside my realm, he said. My realm is doing two things: Make sure the investments go ahead so we can get returns, and two, get back the one billion dollars from wherever they said they have put it and give me back the money so that the Federal Government can have it back. The Zabazaba deepwater is a greenfield offshore licence block located in the OPL 245 along the eastern coast of Niger Delta with water depths ranging from 1,200 to 2,400 metres. The OPL 245 is considered one of the richest oil blocks in Africa estimated to contain billions of barrels of crude oil. Mr. Kachikwus insistence that Shell and Eni must continue the project contradicts ongoing efforts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to charge the Malabu scandal suspects to court and recover the entire field for the Nigerian government. Although a court granted an EFCC request to return the oil block to the Nigerian government, the court reversed that ruling after Shell and ENI appealed against it. In Italy, prosecutors are ramping up plans to arraign a former Minister of Petroleum, Dan Etete, and 11 others, including Shell and ENI officials, for their alleged roles in the controversial deal. The EFCC accused Mr. Adoke of being on the run, and the anti-graft agency earlier this month sought a court order to compel him to appear for trial. Last month, Mr. Adoke vowed not to return to Nigeria until he secured assurances from the Nigerian government that he would not be persecuted. I will definitely come back, if I have the assurance that they will not harm me, they will not humiliate me any further, they will respect the laws of the land, Mr. Adoke told The Cable in an interview published on April 18. Apart from the ongoing criminal probe of the field, Mohammed Abacha and other stakeholders in the Malabu Oil and Gas Limited, a questionable company that secured the OPL 245 in 1998, are also seeking to repossess the oil block in an ongoing litigation. 0.85) according to four consensus subtypes proposed by the University of North Carolina, The Cancer Genome Atlas project and other leading MIBC research groups. In 305 evaluable patients, the study validated the previous findings that patients with favorable prognosis luminal tumors had the best overall survival, irrespective of treatment regimen, while basal tumors showed a nearly 30% improvement in overall survival with NAC compared to surgery alone and should be prioritized for treatment. "Despite evidence demonstrating a survival benefit of NAC in MIBC, uptake remains low. Use of Decipher to identify bladder cancer subtypes with the most to gain from chemotherapy may help improve its utilization in clinical practice," said Peter Black M.D., associate professor at the University of British Columbia, and lead investigator of this study. "Decipher genome-wide RNA expression analysis has great potential as a tool to help us better treat patients and continue our research of bladder cancer that we believe will benefit future patients as well." About Decipher GRID and Cancer Classifier Tests GenomeDx's Decipher Genomics Resource Information Database (GRID) contains genomic profiles of thousands of tumors from patients with urological cancers, and is believed by GenomeDx to be the largest shared genomic expression database in urologic cancer as well as one of the world's largest global RNA expression databases using cloud-based analytics. GRID is a platform for interactive research collaboration, and may enable more rapid discovery, development, commercialization and adoption of new genomic solutions for key clinical questions in cancer treatment. Derived from GRID, GenomeDx's Decipher Prostate and Bladder Cancer Classifier tests are commercially available genomic tests that provide a genomic assessment of tumor aggressiveness for individual patients. Decipher Biopsy is indicated for men with localized prostate cancer at diagnosis, Decipher Post-Op is indicated for men after prostate removal surgery and Decipher Bladder is indicated for patients being considered for neoadjuvant chemotherapy prior to bladder removal surgery. The Decipher tests are used by physicians to stratify patients into more accurate risk groups than determined by traditional diagnostic tools and to better determine which patients may be more likely to benefit from additional treatment. Each tumor analyzed with a Decipher test adds new data points to the GRID database, which is compiled into a Decipher GRID Profile that may reveal additional biological characteristics of the tumor for ongoing research purposes. Going beyond risk stratification, Decipher and GRID makes accessible genetic information for researchers to potentially better predict responses to therapy and more precisely guide treatment. More information is available at www.deciphertest.com and www.deciphergrid.com About GenomeDx Biosciences GenomeDx has reimagined the use of genomics as a platform for mass collaboration to improve treatment and outcomes of people with cancer. GenomeDx has built Decipher GRID, a large and fast-growing genomics database in urologic cancer that provides a foundation for open and interactive research collaboration and knowledge creation. Using Decipher GRID and machine learning to analyze vast amounts of genomic data, GenomeDx develops and commercializes proprietary clinical tests that are intended to provide more accurate and useful diagnostic information than traditional diagnostic tools or existing genomic tests. GenomeDx's Decipher Biopsy, Decipher Post-Op and Decipher Bladder are commercially available urologic cancer genomic tests that provide an assessment of tumor aggressiveness based on a patient's unique genomic profile. GenomeDx is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia and operates a clinical laboratory in San Diego, California. Learn more at www.GenomeDx.com SOURCE GenomeDx Biosciences Related Links https://www.genomedx.com DUBLIN, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Air Quality Monitoring (AQM) Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2022" report to their offering. The global air quality market was valued at $3,378.9 million in 2015, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.8% during 2016 - 2022 The increasing level of air pollution across the globe, the favorable government regulations for air quality monitoring, increasing prevalence of respiratory diseases and increasing awareness regarding environmental and healthcare implications of air pollution are the key factors driving the growth of the global market. The air quality monitoring (AQM) devices are used by public or private organizations to check any violation in air quality standards, to gather information and knowledge for corrective and preventive air pollution measures, and for monitoring wind based movement, dispersion, dry deposition, chemical transformation and precipitation of generated pollutants. Different manufacturers are investing huge capital for the development of advanced air quality monitoring devices. The key opportunities witnessed in the global market are huge growth potential in emerging economies and technological advancements for air quality monitoring. The high operating margins in emerging economies make them attractive to investors when compared to developed economies. Manufacturing air quality monitoring products in the developing regions tend to decrease the overall cost of manufacturing, thus reducing the cost of the product without altering the quality. However, high cost of air quality monitoring equipment and the limitations associated with the air quality monitoring devices are expected to hamper the growth of the global market to some extent. Air quality monitoring devices are mostly used for monitoring chemical pollutants. Among the different product types of air quality monitoring, the outdoor air quality monitor market would witness faster growth during the forecast period. Increasing adoption of outdoor air quality monitors in different industries and increasing installation of AQM stations are the major factors driving the growth of the outdoor air quality monitors market. The government agencies and academic institutes were the largest end user of the air quality monitoring. The global air quality monitoring market for government agencies and academic institutes was at $1,219.1 million in 2015 and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.0% during 2016 - 2022. North America accounted for the largest share in the global market in 2015 and it is expected to grow at the considerable rate during the forecast period. The factors driving the air quality monitoring market in the region are technological advancements and high public private funding for air pollution control. Europe was the second largest market for air quality monitoring devices in 2015. The European market is primarily driven by stringent regulatory norms for industrial air pollution and high public funding for air pollution control. Some of the major players operating in the global market include Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Merck KGaA, Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, HORIBA, Ltd., Emerson Electric Co., General Electric Company, TSI Incorporated, 3M Company, and Siemens AG. Market Outlook Opportunities In The Global Aqm Market Emerging Economies Offering Huge Market Potential Technological Advancements For Aqm Factors Diving Growth Of The Market And Its Impact On Market Forecast Increasing Level Of Air Pollution Across The Globe Increasing Awareness Regarding Environmental And Healthcare Implications Of Air Pollution Favorable Government Regulations Impact Analysis Of Drivers On Market Forecast Factors Hindering Growth Of The Market And Its Impact On Market Forecast High Cost Of Aqm Equipment Limitations Of Aqm Products Impact Analysis Of Restraints On Market Forecast Company Profiles Horiba Limited Teledyne Technologies Incorporated Merck Kgaa Emerson Electronic Company Tsi Incorporated Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. General Electric Company 3M Company Siemens Ag For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/77lh3v/global_air Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com PHILADELPHIA, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Analytics, formerly the IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters, today announced that Steve Pogorzelski has joined the company as President of its CompuMark business. Pogorzelski will lead the global CompuMark team from its Boston office. CompuMark is the leading provider of trademark research and protection services to the corporate and legal communities. The business enables trademark professionals worldwide to launch, expand and protect strong brands through unmatched global content and innovative tools. As an independent, global company with industry-leading products and services, Clarivate Analytics accelerates the pace of innovation for customers by providing trusted insights and analytics. With this exciting addition to its executive team, Clarivate continues to focus on investing in its business and accelerating its growth. Most recently, Pogorzelski was the CEO at Avention, an information company that provides SaaS solutions in the sales and marketing enablement industry. While there, he reinvigorated Avention, which led to its successful acquisition by Dun and Bradstreet. Prior to Avention, Pogorzelski was the President of Monster North America and Group President of Monster International, where he led the 3,000-person sales team. "Steve brings a lot of energy and executive leadership experience to Clarivate," said Jay Nadler, CEO of Clarivate Analytics. "He has a strong customer orientation and a successful track record of growing businesses by being very responsive to customer needs. I look forward to Steve building upon CompuMark's industry leading position." Pogorzelski is also a co-author of the book, Finding Keepers: The Monster Guide to Hiring and Holding the World's Best Employees, published by McGraw-Hill in January 2008. He is a frequent commentator on global labor markets and has appeared on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, ABC Nightly News, PBS and other television stations. He has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and dozens of other newspapers, and has offered commentary on Wall Street Journal Radio, NPR and Bloomberg. Clarivate Analytics Clarivate Analytics accelerates the pace of innovation by providing trusted insights and analytics to customers around the world, enabling them to discover, protect and commercialize new ideas faster. Formerly the Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters, we own and operate a collection of leading subscription-based businesses focused on scientific and academic research, patent analytics and regulatory standards, pharmaceutical and biotech intelligence, trademark protection, domain brand protection and intellectual property management. Clarivate Analytics is now an independent company with over 4,000 employees, operating in more than 100 countries and owns wellknown brands that include Web of Science, Cortellis, Thomson Innovation, Derwent World Patents Index, CompuMark, MarkMonitor and Techstreet, among others. For more information, please visit clarivate.com. SOURCE Clarivate Analytics Related Links http://clarivate.com DUBLIN, May. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR) Market" report to their offering. The growing demand for high-performance tires from the automotive industry is likely to boost the tire manufacturing industries' demand for higher specification raw materials. Also, high fuel-efficiency in automotive is creating the demand for low rolling resistance in tires, which is expected to drive the demand for SBR in the tire industry. However, stringent regulatory frame over the emission of toxic fumes during the production of SBR is one of the major hurdles for SBR manufacturers, which is anticipated to act as a constraint for the global SBR market. The styrene butadiene rubber market is segmented into two types - product and application. The product segment is further divided into emulsion SBR and solution SBR, based on their production process. Emulsion SBR is the largest product segment in the global SBR market due to the low-cost of production. However, changing demand from the consumers for high-performance tires is increasing the popularity of the solution SBR in the global market, due to its low rolling resistance property. The market is further segmented into footwear, construction, polymer modification, adhesives, and others, as per their applications. Countries such as China and India are enjoying the low-cost labor advantage in the automotive manufacturing industry, which accounts for most of the consumption of SBR. Europe is also flashing the growth trend for the SBR market due to a strong automotive industry in the region. The increasing demand for performance products from the tire industry is creating a demand for solution SBR in the global SBR market. The demand for low rolling resistance and tubeless tires is creating a potential opportunity for the SBR market, globally. Market Dynamics Drivers Rising Demand in the Automotive Industry Growing Use of Natural Rubber and SBR Cossover Products Constraints Environmental Regulations Over Production Fluctuating Raw Material Prices Opportunities Increased Growth of Solution Type SBR (S-SBR) from the Tire Industry Some of the major companies dominating this market for its products, services, and continuous product development, include: Sinopec LANXESS JSR Corporation Sibur Bridgestone Corporation Lion Elastomers Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction 2. Executive Summary 3. Market Insights 4. Market Dynamics 5. Market Segmentation and Analysis 6. Regional Market Analysis (Market Size, Growth and Forecast) 7. Future of the Market 8. Competitive Landscape 9. Company Profiles China national Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) national Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) Sinopec Kumho Petrochemical LANXESS JSR Corporation Trinseo Sibur LG Chem Bridgestone Corporation Michelin Synthos S.A. Versalis S.p.A. Asahi Kasei Corporation Shen Hua Chemicals Zeon Corporation Reliance Industries Limited Lion Elastomers TSRC Corporation Sumitomo Chemicals Tianjin Lugang Petroleum Rubber Co., Ltd. For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/f8l2b2/global_styrene Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com LOS ANGELES, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cherryl Weaver, a Realtor with RE/MAX Tri-City Realty in Los Angeles, has received the RE/MAX Hall of Fame Award, which honors consistently successful agents. Only 23 percent of active RE/MAX agents have earned this award since its inception. "Cherryl's tireless dedication to serving her clients and our community earned her this highest of honors," said Matthew Matti, Broker/Owner of RE/MAX Tri-City. "We're extremely proud that Cherryl is a member of our RE/MAX team." Platform House Platform House Weaver has been connecting sellers and buyers for more than 15 years. Her slogan, "Leave It To Weaver," summarizes her extensive experience in selling unique dwellings and assisting buyers to find dream homes. Significant among her achievements is creating long-lasting relationships with clients, many who consider her their "real estate agent for life." The secrets to her longevity and success in housing-mad Los Angeles? As a Realtor, she follows a strict code of ethics and standards that sets her apart from agents who are simply licensed. She listens attentively to her clients, then customizes strategies and provides detailed information about the homes and neighborhoods desired. One example is the Bredda family, who relocated from South Florida to Los Angeles. In 2004, Weaver considered their needs and wants, then found them the perfect home a classic Mid-Century Modern with "wow" factors inside and out at 2231 Gloaming Way in Beverly Hills. From a concept by celebrated designer Richard Neutra for Stone/Fisher Developers, it was one of a handful of "Platform Houses" built in 1961 by noted architect William Beckett. Even though the then-owners of the home were considering several serious offers, the family at Weaver's insistence toured it, and were impressed enough to make a bid. Weaver researched and worked to make sure the Breddas' offer was sound enough to make the house theirs, and it soon was. Seen from across Coldwater Canyon, the home appears to float on air. The family was dazzled by the home's glamorous retro style, enhanced by modern luxuries. The single-level, rectangular open floor plan (with horizontal emphasis), features wall-to-wall glass that wraps around the living and dining rooms and the master bedroom. Most dramatic was the 45-foot deck spanning the length of the home, providing spectacular views of the city, canyon and ocean. Today, the family's needs have changed, and they reached out to Weaver once again to market this historic structure. Said one family member, "We were contacted by agents from all around town, ranging from celebrity Realtors to local offices. But the first call we made was to Cherryl, whose knowledge and outstanding service brought us to the place we've called home for years." Now, Weaver seeks to connect the family with a buyer who appreciates the Platform House, as well as the history behind it. Showings may be arranged by calling Cherryl Weaver, at (323) 254-1350, or by email at [email protected]. Find her also on Facebook and Twitter. SOURCE Cherryl Weaver - ReMax ALPHARETTA, Ga. and WASHINGTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Halyard Health (NYSE: HYH) and the ALS Association today announced they are teaming up to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), at the National 2017 ALS Advocacy Conference taking place May 14-16 in Washington, D.C. The ALS Association is a national nonprofit organization that provides assistance for people with ALS through network chapters, coordination of multidisciplinary care and government partnerships. As part of National ALS Advocacy Day, Halyard Health and the ALS Association, along with advocates and patients will meet with members of Congress and their staff to share their stories and urge legislators to act on behalf of the ALS community. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Eventually, people with ALS lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movement, which often leads to total paralysis and death within two to five years of diagnosis. There is no cure, and only one drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) modestly extends survival. According to the ALS Association, roughly 6,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year and about 20,000 Americans have the disease at any given time. As a person's condition worsens, they can have difficulty eating because of trouble swallowing, aspiration and choking. Many patients turn to enteral feeding tubes to help them get the nutrients they need to maintain their weight and energy so they can continue living productive lives as the disease progresses. Feeding tubes can also be used to administer medication, help increase fluid intake and to reduce the risk of chest infections caused by aspiration. Early initial placement of feeding tubes is recommended to reduce complications associated with surgical placement in ALS patients. Halyard Health offers a range of digestive health solutions for patients and caregivers that help improve patient outcomes and overall quality of life. Its pioneering MIC-KEY* low-profile balloon-retained gastrostomy feeding tube sits at skin-level making it easy to conceal and less likely to interfere with clothing. "We are grateful to Halyard Health for their support," said ALS Association CEO and President Barbara Newhouse. "Proper nutrition is of paramount importance for a person living with ALS and Halyard Health's solutions provide vital support to our ALS community." "Halyard is committed to delivering reliable digestive health solutions that improve patients' quality of life," said Tom Kupec, vice president and general manager, Core Medical Devices at Halyard Health. "We are proud of the partnership we have formed with the ALS Association to generate awareness for ALS and to support the development of digestive health solutions that help patients get the nourishment they need to live their lives at every stage of the disease." About The ALS Association The ALS Association is the only national nonprofit organization fighting ALS on every front. By leading the way in global research, providing assistance for people with ALS through a nationwide network of chapters, coordinating multidisciplinary care through certified clinical care centers and fostering government partnerships, The Association builds hope and enhances quality of life while aggressively searching for new treatments and a cure. For more information about The ALS Association, visit our website at www.alsa.org. About Halyard Health Halyard Health (NYSE: HYH) is a medical technology company focused on eliminating pain, speeding recovery and preventing infection for healthcare providers and their patients. Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, Halyard is committed to addressing some of today's most important healthcare needs, such as reducing the use of opioids while helping patients move from surgery to recovery and preventing healthcare-associated infections. Halyard's business segments - Medical Devices and Surgical and Infection Prevention (S&IP) - develop, manufacture and market clinically superior solutions that improve medical outcomes and business performance in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit www.halyardhealth.com. *Registered Trademarks or Trademarks of Halyard Health, Inc. or its affiliates. SOURCE Halyard Health, Inc. Related Links http://www.halyardhealth.com CHICAGO, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Heart Rhythm 2017, the Heart Rhythm Society's (HRS) 38th Annual Scientific Sessions, kicks off at McCormick Place in Chicago where leading clinicians, scientists, researchers, educators and innovators from around the world present and discuss groundbreaking research for the care of cardiac arrhythmias. The theme of this year's meeting is "Together We Can" to reinforce the importance of global collaboration to propel the field of electrophysiology (EP) forward. Heart Rhythm 2017 continues to attract world renowned experts and includes more than 8,500 attendees from more than 75 countries, 1,300 scientific abstracts, 250 educational sessions and 130 exhibitors showcasing innovative products and services. The meeting focuses on the latest in science, education and technology with interactive learning formats, wide range of topic areas to meet the needs of every attendee and unlimited opportunities for networking. "The EP field continues to advance at a rapid pace and Heart Rhythm 2017 is the ideal opportunity to bring the EP community together to discuss the latest clinical advances and innovative technologies," said Michael Gold, MD, FHRS, president of the Heart Rhythm Society. "With new events on the agenda and more networking opportunities than ever before, we look forward to seeing how this global collaboration will work to continue to advance patient care." Special events and sessions during Heart Rhythm 2017 include: Opening Plenary Session: On Wednesday, May 10 at 8:30 a.m. , Hugh Evans , humanitarian, social entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO at Global Citizen/Global Poverty Project will bring his unique outlook on "Becoming a Citizen of the World" and how the EP community can work together to make a global impact. On at , , humanitarian, social entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO at Global Citizen/Global Poverty Project will bring his unique outlook on "Becoming a Citizen of the World" and how the EP community can work together to make a global impact. Atrial Fibrillation (AF) Summit: On Wednesday, May 10 at 10:00 a.m. , the AF Summit will provide a comprehensive review of AF ablation and evolving therapies. On at , the AF Summit will provide a comprehensive review of AF ablation and evolving therapies. Lead and Device Management Summit : On Wednesday, May 10 at 10:00 a.m. , the Lead & Device Management Summit will focus on present and future treatment options as well as the pros and cons of new treatment modalities. : On at , the Lead & Device Management Summit will focus on present and future treatment options as well as the pros and cons of new treatment modalities. Ventricular Tachycardia (VT) and Ventricular Fibrillation (VF) Summit: On Wednesday, May 10 at 10:00 a.m. , the VT/VF Summit will provide a state-of-the art discussion on all aspects of managing patients with arrhythmogenic heart disease. On at , the VT/VF Summit will provide a state-of-the art discussion on all aspects of managing patients with arrhythmogenic heart disease. Live Case Presentations: On Thursday, May 11 at 10:30 a.m. and Friday, May 12 at 8:00 a.m. , attendees can observe real-time, case-procedures conducted by leading EP clinicians at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the University of Chicago . These sessions are facilitated by an expert panel of physicians, providing a unique learning opportunity for debate and discussion. New to this year's meeting includes the following events: First-Ever Heart Rhythm Bowl: A quiz competition for EP fellows-in-training will include 16 teams of four, representing regions around the world. The Bowl will kick off on Wednesday, May 10 at 5:00 p.m. with the final round taking place on Thursday, May 11 at 12:15 p.m. A quiz competition for EP fellows-in-training will include 16 teams of four, representing regions around the world. The Bowl will kick off on at with the final round taking place on at Catheter Ablation Master Class: On Friday, May 12 at 10:30 a.m. , an expert, Warren M. Jackman , MD, FHRS, will choose a highly relevant topic and start with giving a lecture, followed by case presentations unknown to him. Attendees will learn more about the specific topic and participate in a Q&A session. On at , an expert, , MD, FHRS, will choose a highly relevant topic and start with giving a lecture, followed by case presentations unknown to him. Attendees will learn more about the specific topic and participate in a Q&A session. Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) Town Hall: On Friday, May 12 at 10:30 a.m. , the "Holy MACRA! A Town Hall on How Medicare Payment Reform is Impacting EP Practice" Town Hall will discuss how the Society is working to improve the regulation and maximize opportunities for bonus payments. On at , the "Holy MACRA! A Town Hall on How Medicare Payment Reform is Impacting EP Practice" Town Hall will discuss how the Society is working to improve the regulation and maximize opportunities for bonus payments. The New Science of Leadership and the Power to Persuade: On Saturday, May 13 at 8:00 a.m. , HRS launches the first in a series of professional development programs. This event is in collaboration with PhysicianCEO and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University geared towards attendees who want to develop the skills needed to take a leadership role either within their own organization or within HRS. Follow the #HRS2017 Twitter feed for real-time updates and news about the meeting. Scientists, clinicians, and HRS leadership will be available to discuss specific sessions and heart rhythm innovations further. Visit the Press Room (Room 270) at McCormick Place or contact Allison Kassel (904) 728-2145. Qualified media are invited to attend. Click here for more information. Heart Rhythm 2017 is the most comprehensive educational program for heart rhythm professionals, featuring more than 250 educational sessions and more than 130 exhibitors showcasing innovative products and services. The Heart Rhythm Society's Annual Scientific Sessions have become the must-attend event of the year, allowing the exchange of new vital ideas and information among colleagues from every corner of the globe. For more information, visit www.hrssessions.org. About the Heart Rhythm Society The Heart Rhythm Society is the international leader in science, education and advocacy for cardiac arrhythmia professionals and patients, and the primary information resource on heart rhythm disorders. Its mission is to improve the care of patients by promoting research, education and optimal health care policies and standards. Incorporated in 1979 and based in Washington, DC, it has a membership of more than 5,900 heart rhythm professionals in more than 70 countries around the world. For more information, visit www.HRSonline.org. Contact: Allison Kassel: (904) 728-2145 SOURCE Heart Rhythm Society Related Links http://www.hrsonline.org MENLO PARK, Calif., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Heffernan Insurance Brokers, one of the largest full-service, independent insurance brokerage firms in the United States, announced that Michelle Van Aken has joined the company as Assistant Vice President in the benefits department of the Menlo Park, Calif. office. Van Aken brings over a decade of employee benefits experience ranging from open enrollment renewals and vendor management to benefits consulting and systems implementation. She most recently worked as an employee benefits consultant and has a strong understanding of the benefits needs of Silicon Valley and Bay Area businesses. "We are excited to have Michelle on board as we look to increase our offerings of cutting-edge, customized benefits solutions," said Jani De La Rosa, Director of Employee Benefits at Heffernan. "She will fit in well with our successful production staff in Menlo Park." Van Aken looks forward to helping grow Heffernan's presence in the employee benefits sector in Northern California. Michelle Van Aken Assistant Vice President, Employee Benefits 650.842.5202 [email protected] About Heffernan Insurance Brokers Heffernan Insurance Brokers, formed in 1988, is one of the largest independent insurance brokerage firms in the United States. Heffernan provides insurance and financial services products to a range of businesses and individuals. Headquartered in Walnut Creek, Calif., Heffernan has offices in San Francisco, Petaluma, Menlo Park, Los Angeles and Irvine, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Portland, OR; and St. Louis, MO. Employee-owned, Heffernan Insurance Brokers was named the Top Mid-Sized Broker in the United States to work for in 2009 by Business Insurance Magazine. The firm has been among the Top Greater Bay Area Philanthropists since 2003, donating more than 11 percent of profits to charity in 2016. For more information, visit www.heffins.com. License #0564249 SOURCE Heffernan Insurance Brokers Related Links http://www.heffins.com MENOMONEE FALLS, Wis., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Herzing University has named Mary Judith Yoho, PhD, RN, CNE, as system dean of nursing, where she will provide leadership and oversight for Herzing University campus and online nursing programs. Yoho has more than 35 years of experience in nursing, including roles in nursing practice, instruction, research, management and education policy. Yoho will provide oversight and support for all nursing programs delivered by Herzing University, including LPN, ASN, BSN, RN to BSN, MSN-FNP and MSN-NE. "I'm looking forward to preparing Herzing students to meet the country's future healthcare needs because the demand for nurses will be strong for many years," said Yoho, who previously served in national and campus-level roles for national nursing academic institutions. "We will ensure that Herzing nursing graduates are ready to care for today's patients as well as for future healthcare challenges." Yoho said Herzing will help its nursing students and the healthcare industry prepare for current and future trends, including: An aging population that will include many "super seniors" over 85 years old Advanced practice nurse practitioners serving as the healthcare provider for all patient populations Preparation for the next global health challenge Providing care for victims of violence, trauma and natural disasters Resolving the shortage of nurses and nurse educators Increasing the diversity of the nursing workforce Throughout her career, Yoho has coordinated and participated in multiple grant projects and has authored and co-authored publications on topics including student testing and faculty recruitment and retention. She also has presented nationally and internationally in the areas of test development, exam analysis, teaching strategies, learner engagement and preparing nursing students for first-time success on the National Council State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) National Certification Licensing Exam (NCLEX) for Practical and Registered Nurses. Yoho earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Master of Science in Nursing at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and her PhD in Nursing Science at Texas Women's University. She is a member of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, National League for Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International and the American Nurses' Association. About Herzing University Herzing University, an accredited private nonprofit institution, encompasses 11 campuses in eight states, a continuing education division, an online division, and has a current enrollment of approximately 6,000 students. Founded in Milwaukee in 1965, today the University offers career-focused, convenient and caring education for master's, bachelor's, and associate degrees, diplomas and continuing education in the fields of nursing, technology, business, healthcare and public safety. From 2013 through 2017, U.S. News & World Report recognized Herzing University as having some of the "Best Online Bachelor's Degree Programs" nationally. Herzing University has also been recognized on the GI Jobs magazine list of "Military Friendly Schools" from 2013 through 2017. Herzing University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission; www.hlcommission.org or (800) 621-7440. More information about Herzing University is available at: www.herzing.edu. Contact: Candice Hudson 312-661-1050 [email protected] SOURCE Herzing University Related Links http://www.herzing.edu WASHINGTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Honeywell and NASA are bringing FMA Live! Forces in Motion, an award-winning hip-hop educational experience, to middle school students along the east coast this spring. FMA Live!, on its 26th tour, kicked off in Virginia, followed by a stop in North Carolina, and now is making its way to Georgia. Starting Monday, FMA Live! began performing in front of more than 2,000 Atlanta students at Long Middle School, Brown Middle School and Harper Archer Middle School. The tour will then travel to South Carolina before concluding in North Carolina. Honeywell and NASA created FMA Live! in 2004 to inspire middle school students to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) concepts and careers. Since then, FMA Live! has traveled nearly 112,000 miles to more than 1,200 schools and performed for 480,000 students in 48 contiguous U.S. states, as well as in Mexico and Canada. The one-of-a-kind show incorporates hip-hop music, dancers, student volunteers, and on-stage, interactive science experiments to demonstrate how physics is part of everyday life. The program addresses Forces and Motion learning objectives outlined by the Next Generation Science Education Standards for students in grades 58. "FMA Live! is designed to encourage the kids of today to take an interest in becoming our future scientists and mathematicians," said Mike Kincaid, NASA's acting associate administrator for Education. "It is important for students to understand that creativity and personal style can be mixed in with a STEM education. With our long-term partner Honeywell, we are showing students that a career in a STEM-related field is within their grasp if they want to pursue it." Each performance focuses on Newton's Three Laws of Motion and the Universal Law of Gravity. FMA Live! is named after Newton's second law of motion (Force equals Mass times Acceleration) and uses music videos and interactive scientific demonstrations to teach and inspire students to pursue STEM careers. "With each school performance, Honeywell and NASA are helping to prepare more students to take an interest in STEM and become our future problem-solvers," said Mike Bennett, president of Honeywell Hometown Solutions. "The longevity of FMA Live! is a testament to how influential interactive STEM programs can be to students." The FMA Live! Forces in Motion experience also features an online "Teachers' Lounge" that includes National Science Standards-based teaching resources including downloadable streaming videos, music from the show, and a comprehensive educational guide with lesson plans. This digital tool maintains post-show momentum and can be incorporated into classroom learning objectives throughout the school year. To learn more about FMA Live!, visit: https://fmalive.honeywell.com SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov "The Internet continues to transform every business, every consumer around the globe," said IMA Chairman and CEO Sinan Kanatsiz. "And everyone who attends an IMPACT event comes away with the knowledge and motivation they need to take the Internet to the next level and redefine marketing in a technology-centric world." Here are some key highlights of the experience from among the over 40 distinguished speakers and legends in digital marketing: Cayman Premier, the Honorable Alden McLaughlin, highlighted Cayman's suitability to host the innovation of the IMA and pointed to developments like the Kimpton as evidence of robust growth on the islands. Tamara Gaffney , Principal Analyst, Adobe Inc., shared her company's vision of what the future may bring. For example, she noted that "as people are moving over to mobile devices, we're not seeing growth in e-commerce" because mobile users spend less time on websites and are less likely to purchase. , Principal Analyst, Adobe Inc., shared her company's vision of what the future may bring. For example, she noted that "as people are moving over to mobile devices, we're not seeing growth in e-commerce" because mobile users spend less time on websites and are less likely to purchase. Jeff Marcoux , CMO Lead for of Microsoft, addressed "The Science of Relationships" and how the brain receives information. , CMO Lead for of Microsoft, addressed "The Science of Relationships" and how the brain receives information. Vincent Walden , partner with Ernst & Young, outlined "Governance Best Practices for Digital Marketers." , partner with Ernst & Young, outlined "Governance Best Practices for Digital Marketers." Victor Cho , CEO of Evite, gave a stirring presentation on the importance of face-to-face communication, particularly in a digital-centric world. , CEO of Evite, gave a stirring presentation on the importance of face-to-face communication, particularly in a digital-centric world. Eric Riviello , Director of Business Development for Cision's PR Newswire, offered findings from the Cision annual survey of marketing professionals in a presentation titled "No More Excuses: From Business Expense to Business Driver." In addition, Audi spoke about their autonomous vehicle. And Ketel One Vodka showed an informative brand video on their history and background. During the conference, speakers also reported on several IMA initiatives, including the Women Leadership Group and IMA.EDU education effort. "Positioning the Cayman business community around tech and innovation is a primary focus for Cayman Enterprise City," said CEO Charles Kirkconnell. "Thanks in part to IMA and their global tech partners, we continue to achieve our desired outcome." The impressive roster of IMPACT17 Cayman speakers also included: Aaron Hillegass , Big Nerd Ranch, CEO , Big Nerd Ranch, CEO Akbar Jaffer , IMA, San Francisco Group Chairman , IMA, San Francisco Group Chairman Alex Gray , IMA Canada, Chairman , IMA Canada, Chairman Bill Eldien , Ketel One Vodka, CEO , Ketel One Vodka, CEO Brian Wong , Kiip, CEO , Kiip, CEO Charlie Kirkconnell , Cayman Enterprise City, CEO , Cayman Enterprise City, CEO Don Simpson , MarketLinc, CEO , MarketLinc, CEO Eileen Keens , Yello, Marketing Manager , Yello, Marketing Manager Faquiry Diaz, mxHero, Chairman Hope Frank , Kiosked, CMO , Kiosked, CMO Jaime Ford , Jet.com, Digital Marketing Analyst , Jet.com, Digital Marketing Analyst Jeanniey Mullen, Mercer, Global CMO Jeff Montejano , KCOMM, President , KCOMM, President John Costello , Microsemi, VP Business Development , Microsemi, VP Business Development Kamin Samuel , Kamin Samuel Consulting, Business and Life Coach , Kamin Samuel Consulting, Business and Life Coach Keiran Hutchinson , Ernst & Young, Partner , Ernst & Young, Partner Keith Miller , Saffron Consultants, VP North America , Saffron Consultants, VP North America Natalie Urquhart , Cayman National Gallery, Director , Cayman National Gallery, Director Reggie Judah , TV Liquidator, CEO , TV Liquidator, CEO Rob McNabb , Logic Communications Cayman, CEO , Logic Communications Cayman, CEO Steve McIntosh , CML Offshore Recruitment, CEO , CML Offshore Recruitment, CEO Thomas Bartke , EcomConvert, Founder , EcomConvert, Founder Tracy Morgan , nContext, Senior Director , nContext, Senior Director Winston Conolly , Lainston, CEO , Lainston, CEO Yves Le Sieur, VDS Los Angeles, Head of Digital Marketing The Startup Battlefield is also one of the most anticipated events at an IMA IMPACT event. And this year's competition more than lived up to expectations. Selected to make their pitches were Feello, a new paradigm in real estate for matching buyers, sellers and agents; SALT Technology Group, a technology innovation and implementation firm; Scripsense, a platform facilitating philanthropy through everyday shopping; and TakeNote Global, a developer of a solution that allows students to notate and mark up books that they have rented. Judges for the Startup Battlefield were Faquiry Diaz, Chairman, mxHero; Aaron Hillegass, CEO, Big Nerd Ranch; and Brian Wong, CEO, Kiip. The winners were Feello in the Professional category and TakeNote Global in the Student category. Host sponsor for IMPACT17 Cayman was Cayman Enterprise City. The event was presented by Adobe, Cayman Media Park, the Internet Marketing Association, KCOMM, Kiip and Skylight Global. Partners included Arch Automotive, Berman Fisher, Big Nerd Ranch, Britcay, Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, Cayman National, Cision, CML, Ernst & Young, Evite, Island Air, Isofruit, Jet, Ketel One Vodka, Lainston, LinkedIn, Logic, MarketLinc, Mercer, Microsoft, mxHero, nContext, Pinnacle Media, Saffron, Trident Properties, TV Liquidator, VDS and Yello. The next major Internet Marketing Association event on the horizon is the annual IMPACT conference in Las Vegas set for Sept. 28-30, 2017. For information on that event and the association, visit www.imanetwork.org. About the Internet Marketing Association The IMA is one of the fastest growing Internet marketing groups in the world, with more than 1,000,000 professional members in fields including sales, marketing, business ownership, programming and creative development. It provides a platform where proven Internet marketing strategies are demonstrated and shared to increase members' value to their organizations. IMA is underwritten by corporate partners to provide an opportunity to learn, engage and define best practices without making a financial commitment. www.imanetwork.org Media Contact Rachel Reenders Head of Public Relations, IMA [email protected] SOURCE Internet Marketing Association Related Links http://www.imanetwork.org LOS GATOS, Calif., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Impetus Technologies, a big data software products and services company, today announced it will host a webinar titled "Real-Time Data360 on Apache Spark" on Friday, May 12, 2017, at 9:30 a.m. PT. Anand Venugopal, head of product for StreamAnalytix and Punit Shah, solution architect for StreamAnalytix, will discuss Data360, a new term that is being used to represent a one-stop shop for an enterprise's big data and fast data processing needs. The webinar will discuss how enterprise IT teams are faced with the challenge of choosing one vendor for data ingest, another for data wrangling, a third one for machine learning analytics and yet another for visualization. For enterprises that have already chosen Apache Spark, big data analytics should be easier because it is an all-in-one platform. However using native Apache Spark can be challenging because the technology requires very skilled Scala and Java programmers. Hence, a different, more user-friendly approach is needed an approach that would still deliver the benefits of Apache Spark and leverage the big data lake investment, rather than create more data silos. During the webinar, attendees will learn about: A powerful, all-in-one Apache Spark strategy for the enterprise and an implementation approach for end-to-end big data analytics processing; The elements of a real-time Data360 solution, including ingest, cleanse, transform, blend, analyze, load and visualize; A combination of tools and tactics used for Data360 on streaming and historical data, using Apache Spark and Apache Spark Streaming; and How use cases like anomaly detection, Customer 3600, Internet of Things (IoT) and log analytics, fraud and security analytics, and many more can be achieved using this approach. "We see a lot of enterprises working to build out an analytics strategy that is often very fragmented by various technologies from multiple vendors. Apache Spark also requires many specialized skills for development and integration, making it difficult to fully leverage for a broader team of analysts and business users," said Venugopal. "In this webinar, we're keen to educate the market about a powerful new approach to streaming analytics by using a real-time, visual Spark studio platform that provides complete Data360 processing." For more information, and to register for the webinar, visit: https://streamanalytix.com/webinarRegister/37. About Impetus Technologies Impetus Technologies is focused on creating big business impact through big data solutions for Fortune 1000 enterprises. The company offers a unique mix of software products, consulting services, data science capabilities and technology expertise. It offers full life-cycle services for big data technology implementations, including technology strategy, solution architecture, proof of concept, production implementation and on-going support to its clients. To learn more, visit: www.impetus.com or write to: [email protected], and follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/impetustech and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/impetus. Media Contact Meghan Locke LEWIS 781-418-2434 [email protected] SOURCE Impetus Technologies Related Links http://www.impetus.com CALI, Colombia, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Inca Worldwide (Pink Sheets: QEDN) has finalized a loan with El Banco Agrario to finance the growth and production of 2,300 hectares. The financing secures the relationship with three independent AfroColombian farming groups. The total financing is for $13,000,000 USD and the bank has agreed to increase the financing as needed by the company. Kate Bahnsen, states, " We now have secured all the financing we need for our company, our farmers, and our manufacturing. The bank will assist us in growing our production. But most importantly will support us as we move closer to approval for USAid." The company expects to make announcements shortly with respect to sales channels on our whole sales and retail distribution. To read more about https://www.bancoagrario.gov.co/Paginas/default.aspx For more information email [email protected] or visit the company website. About Inca Worldwide Inca Worldwide is a public listed company on the OTC under the symbol QEDN. Our project offers an alternative to Farmers in Colombia to grow crops like Inca Seeds (Sacha Inchi) instead of Coca Plants. Our Inca Seeds (Roasted Sacha Inchi) a complete protein with all 9-essential amino-acids rich in Omega 3, 6 & 9 and an antioxidant. A real Super-food. Sold to private brands and our own brand Inca Snacks. www.incaworldwide.com Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements: Our public communications and SEC filings may contain "forward-looking statements" that is, statements related to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance and financial condition, and often contain words such as "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "believe," "seek," "see," "will," "would," or "target." Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain, such as statements about our announced plan to reduce the size of our financial services businesses, including expected cash and non-cash charges associated with this plan and earnings per share of QED retained businesses (Verticals); expected income; earnings per share; revenues; organic growth; growth and productivity associated with our Digital business; margins; cost structure; restructuring charges; acquisition-related synergies; cash flows; returns on capital and investment; capital expenditures, capital allocation or capital structure; and dividends. SOURCE Inca Worldwide Related Links http://www.incaworldwide.com BOSTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Intrinsic Therapeutics, Inc. a medical device company that has developed a product to improve outcomes in lumbar discectomy patients, announced today that it recently closed a $49 million round of financing. The financing included a $28 million equity round co-led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Delos Capital, coupled with a $21 million debt facility with CRG. Other investors include Greenspring Associates, Quadrille Capital and a corporate strategic. The Company's Barricaid Anular Closure Device is designed to prevent repeat herniation in patients undergoing lumbar discectomy surgery to treat sciatic pain caused by a herniated disc. Luke Dster with CRG commented, "We are very happy to join with a prestigious group of investors to support Intrinsic as they bring this important technology to the market in the U.S. and around the world. In today's changing healthcare environment, technologies that conserve resources and reduce costs to the healthcare system will fit squarely within the paradigm of hospital and payer cost-containment." In December 2016, the Company successfully filed a Pre-Market Application (PMA) with FDA for approval in the United States. This filing is based on the outcomes of a two-year, multi-center, prospective randomized superiority trial of 554 subjects at the greatest risk of reherniation and reoperation. This is the first superiority trial for such a spinal device. Jeani Delagardelle, who has joined Intrinsic's Board representing Delos, commented, "We are extremely excited to be investing in Intrinsic at this later stage of their development. The company has generated conclusive clinical data which supports a large global opportunity including the US market as early as next year." Describing the market opportunity, Prof. P. Douglas Klassen, Chief of Neurosurgery at St. Bonifatius Hospital, Lingen, Germany stated, "Approximately 1 million discectomies are performed every year around the globe and 40% of these patients will leave the operating room after discectomy with a large hole remaining in the outer rim of the disc, the anulus. By simply sealing these large defects, patient outcomes can be improved significantly." "We are excited to welcome Delos and CRG as partners as we continue the process toward US market access," said Cary Hagan, Intrinsic's President and Chief Executive Officer. "The additional capital will allow us to continue our development efforts on reimbursement pathways for this compelling new technology with a sharp focus on demonstrating clear health economic value to surgeons, payers and hospital systems." About Intrinsic Therapeutics Intrinsic Therapeutics is a medical device company focused on delivering a safe treatment to improve efficacy in patients who are at a disproportionately high risk of requiring repeat surgeries due to reherniation following lumbar discectomy surgery. Intrinsic currently markets and sells the Barricaid in Europe, Australia, Mexico, S. America, the Middle East and selected countries in other regions around the world. In the United States, Intrinsic Therapeutics is seeking regulatory approval of the Barricaid Anular Closure device. See http://www.in-thera.com for more information. Barricaid is a registered trademark of Intrinsic Therapeutics, Inc. About NEA New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With nearly $17 billion in cumulative committed capital since inception NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 200 portfolio company IPOs and more than 320 acquisitions. www.nea.com. About CRG CRG is a premier healthcare-focused investment firm with more than $3 billion of assets under management across more than 45 portfolio companies. The firm seeks to commit between $20 to $300 million in each company and invests across the healthcare spectrum, including: medical devices, biopharmaceuticals, tools & diagnostics, services and information technology. CRG provides growth capital in the form of long-term debt and equity to support innovative, commercial-stage healthcare companies that address large, unmet medical needs. The firm partners with public and private companies to provide flexible financing solutions and world-class support to achieve exceptional growth objectives with minimal dilution. CRG maintains offices in Boulder, Houston and New York. For more information, please visit www.crglp.com. About Delos Capital, LLC Delos Capital is a healthcare-focused fund that invests in growth platforms in Greater China and innovation in the US in the areas of therapeutics and medical technology. Delos Capital seeks to achieve returns through supporting these companies in their development and also helping to create additional value from collaboration between these companies. Founded in 2014, Delos Capital operates from its main office in Hong Kong. This press release contains forward-looking statements. Any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements, including and without limitation, statements relating to the potential approval by the FDA of the Company's PMA submissions for the Barricaid Anular Closure device and the success of the Company's launch preparedness efforts. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Intrinsic does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, changed assumptions or otherwise. Media Contact: Cary Hagan [email protected] SOURCE Intrinsic Therapeutics, Inc. Related Links http://www.in-thera.com DUBLIN, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "IoT in Asia: ASEAN, China, India, Japan, and South Korea Forecasts 2017 - 2022" report to their offering. Certain countries in Asian are anticipated to quickly adopt the Internet of Things (IoT) and to expand usage of IoT applications and services across many industry verticals. This research provides detailed forecasts for IoT in ASEAN, China, India, Japan, and South Korea. Each forecast includes a working Excel document, allowing the user to easily input into their own models and projections. Purchase of this report includes time with an expert analyst who will help you link key findings in the report to the business issues you're addressing. This needs to be used within three months of purchasing the report. Key Topics Covered: IoT in China 2017 - 2022 IoT in India 2017 - 2022 IoT in Japan 2017 - 2022 IoT in South Korea 2017 - 2022 IoT in ASEAN Countries 2017 - 2022 For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/prbrvx/iot_in_asia Media Contact: Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com NEW YORK, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Israel Discount Bank of New York (IDB Bank) announces the appointment of Uri Levin as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective Friday, May 5, 2017. Levin brings years of experience in the global financial industry to the role, including time as Chief Financial Officer, Head of Planning, Strategy, and Financing at IDB's parent company, Discount Bank, Ltd. In his new position, Levin will be based in New York, and is committed to fulfilling the bank's promise of full-service banking through personal relationships. "IDB has such a unique culture of being personal, which is apparent both with our clients and also, internally, with our colleagues," shared Levin. "We are large enough to give our clients whatever they need and small enough to offer them real personal service. I am proud to assume this new level of responsibility for the Bank, and our clientele." After serving at various high-level management positions with Bank Hapoalim, including Executive Vice President in charge of corporate marketing, business development and strategy, Levin managed a global financial services group as CEO at ISP Group in Israel and Switzerland. In 2014, he joined Discount Bank Ltd. in Israel. His education and distinguished background have helped him prepare for his many leadership roles. A graduate of the Israeli Air-Force Aviation Academy, , he went on to study engineering and computer science at Tel Aviv University before earning his MBA at the London Business School. "We succeed because of our trusted relationships with our clients, often over two and three generations," added Levin. "When our clients call the Bank they ask for their personal bankers by name. 'It's personal' is not just a slogan for us. It's a way of living and a way of conducting our business. It's what makes this bank so special." IDB Bank is a New York State-licensed commercial bank and a member of the FDIC. In addition to its Manhattan headquarters and branch offices in Brooklyn, NY, Staten Island, NY, Short Hills, NJ, and a representative office in Long Island, NY the Bank also maintains full-service branches in Southern Florida and Southern California. IDB Bank provides a complete range of personal and commercial banking, trade services and deposit products to U.S. and international clients. Areas of expertise include Middle Market, Asset Based and Commercial Real Estate Lending, Factoring, Healthcare, Not-for-profit, Trade Finance, and U.S. and International Private Banking. IDB Bank is a registered service mark of Israel Discount Bank of New York. MEMBER FDIC SOURCE Israel Discount Bank of New York SALT LAKE CITY, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In recognition of his exceptional work in elevating Utah's tech industry and his leadership in advancing one of Utah's largest IT companies, Ivanti CEO Steve Daly was honored yesterday as Utah Technology Council's (UTC) 2017 CEO of the Year. The award was presented to Daly by UTC President Richard R. Nelson at the organization's Annual Members Meeting event in Salt Lake City. "Steve has played a pivotal role in elevating Utah's profile as an innovative technology hub for years, but his contributions over the past year have been truly remarkable," Nelson said. "His leadership, dependability and determination exemplify the principles our organization celebrates, and we could not be more excited to honor him and his incredible accomplishments." Ivanti is a billion-dollar Utah-based technology company helping IT organizations successfully automate and secure the digital workplace. For more than three decades, Ivanti has helped IT professionals address security threats, manage devices and optimize their user experience. Under Daly's leadership, the company has acquired nine companies in five years, further extending its leadership in the market. Ivanti experienced extreme growth in the past year, doubling in both revenue and the number of employees. In 2016, Daly also led the organization through multiple acquisitions, sold LANDESK to renowned private equity firm Clearlake Capital and rebranded the company to Ivanti. Amid all this change, Daly continues to encourage his employees to give back, doing their part to help build Utah's technology community. For example, Ivanti created coding classes for Utah high school students and recently launched Girls Go Digital classes to further STEM education in the Beehive State. In 2016 and 2017 alone, Ivanti employees spent 9,500 volunteer hours in support of STEM education. Daly has been a member of UTC for 10 years, and has served on the executive committee and the UTC board. He also co-hosts the CEO forum for the UTC, bringing in speakers whose lectures have helped Utah-based companies grow and evolve in 2016. "Utah is full of innovative technology leaders, so to be recognized among such a talented group is truly an honor. I am grateful for the opportunity to live and work in Utah's bustling technology community and be surrounded by brilliant members of the UTC," Daly said. "At Ivanti, we've focused on building a company that benefits the Utah community and nurtures the next generation of tech leaders. Not only am I proud of this award, but I'm proud of the thousands of hours my employees have put into ensuring Utah is a place where innovative ideas can thrive." About Ivanti Ivanti is IT evolved. By integrating and automating critical IT tasks, Ivanti is helping IT organizations successfully automate and secure the digital workplace. For more than three decades, Ivanti has helped IT professionals address security threats, manage devices and optimize their user experience. From traditional PCs, to mobile devices, virtual machines and the data center, Ivanti helps discover and manage IT assets wherever they are located, improving IT service delivery and reducing risk. Ivanti also ensures that supply chain and warehouse teams are effectively leveraging the most up-to-date technology to improve productivity throughout their operation. Ivanti is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has offices all over the world. For more information, visit www.ivanti.com Contacts Helen Carroll Ivanti +44 1344 407005 [email protected] Amberly Asay Method Communications +1 801-461-9776 [email protected] SOURCE Ivanti Related Links http://www.ivanti.com John Trudell (1946-2015) was a leader for the Indian of All Tribes Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969, and went on to serve as Chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM) from 1973-1979. On February 11, 1979, he burned an American flag on the steps of the F.B.I J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington D.C., as he'd been taught in the military to burn the flag once it had been desecrated; and the US government's treatment of Native Americans and its classism and racism had desecrated the flag. Some twelve hours after the flag incident, a fire "of suspicious origin" burned down Trudell's home on the Shoshone-Paiute reservation in Nevada, killing Trudell's pregnant wife, Tina, their three children, and Tina's mother. The F.B.I. declined to investigate, and the blaze was officially ruled an "accident." After the fire, Trudell turned his tears into writing poetry and later, spoken word music and acting. A lifelong activist and human rights advocate, he was quoted as saying "I'm just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human." The saying is the best writing comes from writing what you know and based on Joel Rafael's life experiences and 50 or so years of making music, he has a deep well from which to draw. Armed with a harmonica rack and an acoustic guitar, Rafael chronicles his life and the world around him with songs rooted in the American folk tradition, and influenced by Woody Guthrie, with whom he shares five co-writes. "Joel Rafael's songs are filled with passion and compassion," says Jackson Browne. "Passion for social justice, and compassion for those among us who have to struggle for a place at the table of American prosperity. His voice is unmistakably his own, big, warm and strong, and a conductor for the human emotions that connect us all." From a providential meeting at Peace Sunday, a concert to promote nuclear disarmament at the Rose Bowl on June 6, 1982, after hearing John Trudell speak, Rafael became an advocate for Indigenous Rights, sharing John's words, and following his trail, until the emergence of the seminal Joel Rafael Band in 1994 resulted in regular co-bookings with Trudell and his band Bad Dog, and opportunities to write together. After John's transition to the spirit world in December 2015, the band asked Joel to carry on Trudell's work by performing with them. John Trudell's Bad Dog band includes Ricky Eckstein (bass), Mark Shark (guitars), Billy Watts (guitars), Debra Dobkin (drums), Quiltman and T (traditional vocals). For more information please visit johntrudell.com and johntrudellarchives.org. JOEL RAFAEL WITH JOHN TRUDELL'S BAD DOG June 16-18 Clearwater Folk Festival Clearwater, NY June 24-25 Kate Wolf Folk Festival Laytonville, CA July 13-16 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival Okemah, OK August 5 Leavitt Pavilion Pasadena, CA SOURCE Joel Rafael Related Links http://www.johntrudell.com HOUSTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- KBR, Inc. (NYSE: KBR) announced today that its Government Services business KBRwyle has been awarded an engineering services contract by NASA to support more than 20 NASA exploration missions. This five-year, single award indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract has a maximum value of $442 million. Under the terms of the Ground Systems and Mission Operations-2 (GSMO-2) contract, KBRwyle will provide ground systems and operations support to various NASA missions managed by Space Science Mission Operations and Earth Science Mission Operations at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. KBRwyle will provide engineering services throughout the spacecraft mission life cycle for mission operations, including concept studies, design, development, integration, test, verification, operations, sustainment of mission operations systems and subsystems, and operations processes and procedures. "We are very pleased to have been awarded this contract by NASA to support the agency's missions managed by Goddard Space Flight Center," said Stuart Bradie, KBR President & CEO. "KBRwyle and its heritage organizations have partnered with NASA in advancing technology and science at Goddard as well as other NASA operations across the country for more than half a century. We are looking forward to the opportunity to continue to contribute KBRwyle's expertise to NASA," Bradie continued. As task orders are awarded throughout the contract period on this single award IDIQ contract, they will be booked into backlog of unfilled orders for KBR's Government Services business segment. About KBR, Inc. KBR is a global provider of differentiated professional services and technologies across the asset and program life cycle within the Government Services and Hydrocarbons sectors. KBR employs over 34,000 people worldwide (including our joint ventures), with customers in more than 80 countries, and operations in 40 countries, across three synergistic global businesses: Government Services, serving government customers globally, including capabilities that cover the full life-cycle of defense, space, aviation and other government programs and missions from research and development, through systems engineering, test and evaluation, program management, to operations, maintenance, and field logistics Technology & Consulting, including proprietary technology focused on the monetization of hydrocarbons (especially natural gas and natural gas liquids) in ethylene and petrochemicals; ammonia, nitric acid and fertilizers; oil refining; gasification; oil and gas consulting; integrity management; naval architecture and proprietary hulls; and downstream consulting Engineering & Construction, including onshore oil and gas; LNG (liquefaction and regasification)/GTL; oil refining; petrochemicals; chemicals; fertilizers; differentiated EPC; maintenance services (Brown & Root Industrial Services); offshore oil and gas (shallow-water, deep-water, subsea); floating solutions (FPU, FPSO, FLNG & FSRU) and program management KBR is proud to work with its customers across the globe to provide technology, value-added services, integrated EPC delivery and long term operations and maintenance services to ensure consistent delivery with predictable results. At KBR, We Deliver. Visit www.kbr.com Forward Looking Statement The statements in this press release that are not historical statements, including statements regarding future financial performance, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's control that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the outcome of and the publicity surrounding audits and investigations by domestic and foreign government agencies and legislative bodies; potential adverse proceedings by such agencies and potential adverse results and consequences from such proceedings; the scope and enforceability of the company's indemnities from its former parent; changes in capital spending by the company's customers; the company's ability to obtain contracts from existing and new customers and perform under those contracts; structural changes in the industries in which the company operates; escalating costs associated with and the performance of fixed-fee projects and the company's ability to control its cost under its contracts; claims negotiations and contract disputes with the company's customers; changes in the demand for or price of oil and/or natural gas; protection of intellectual property rights; compliance with environmental laws; changes in government regulations and regulatory requirements; compliance with laws related to income taxes; unsettled political conditions, war and the effects of terrorism; foreign operations and foreign exchange rates and controls; the development and installation of financial systems; increased competition for employees; the ability to successfully complete and integrate acquisitions; and operations of joint ventures, including joint ventures that are not controlled by the company. KBR's most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K, any subsequent Form 10-Qs and 8-Ks, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss some of the important risk factors that KBR has identified that may affect the business, results of operations and financial condition. Except as required by law, KBR undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. SOURCE KBR, Inc. Related Links http://www.kbr.com AKRON, Ohio, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kisling, Nestico & Redick, an Ohio-based personal injury law firm, today announced the availability of a new Don't Text and Drive Scholarship, which will award $5,000 to the student who develops the best proposal to persuade young adults to avoid texting while driving. The core of the application is for students to develop a plan that will communicate the risks of distracted driving and encourage young adults to avoid participating is such behavior while behind the wheel. Interested students can apply online or download a PDF version of the application. "We witness the terrible consequences of texting and driving every day, so we made the decision to encourage young adults to be part of the solution," said Rob Nestico, managing partner of Kisling, Nestico & Redick. "This scholarship reflects our firm's commitment to combating distracted driving whether by advocating for victims of this dangerous behavior, or engaging the community on prevention strategies." Kisling, Nestico & Redick has made community giving a pillar of the firm since its founding in 2005 and has raised more than $300,000.00 for local charities and organizations. "While we are excited to provide financial assistance to a student seeking higher education, we really want to get young adults thinking about the dangers of distracted driving and how they can make a difference," said John Reagan, partner at Kisling, Nestico & Redick. "In doing so, the benefits go far beyond the scholarship winner, or a cash prize many lives could be saved." Applications are due December 1, 2017. The winner will be notified prior to January 13, 2018. For a full list of eligibility criteria and to apply for the scholarship, click here. More information on Kisling, Nestico & Redick community initiatives can be found here. About Kisling, Nestico & Redick: Kisling, Nestico & Redick provides sophisticated injury law representation to clients throughout Ohio. The firm has gained a reputation as one of the state's leading personal injury firms due to a combination of personal service, inside knowledge of the insurance industry, and extensive legal experience. Founded in 2005, the firm has 10 locations and features more than 30 lawyers and nearly 100 support staff dedicated to seeking justice for victims injured in accidents. MEDIA CONTACT: Jamie McCuan Kisling, Nestico & Redick [email protected] 330-869-9007 SOURCE Kisling, Nestico & Redick Related Links http://knrlegal.com TEL AVIV, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - KPMG International has announced the acquisition of Matchi, a leading global fintech innovation and matchmaking platform that connects financial institutions, including banks and insurance companies, with leading-edge financial services technology solutions and companies worldwide. The Matchi platform includes more than 700 curated fintech solutions and a database of more than 2,500 fintech companies that financial institutions can work with to apply innovative fintech capabilities to solving their business problems and pursuing new market opportunities. Fintech companies and solutions are reviewed and undergo a curation process in order to qualify to appear on KPMG's innovative Matchi platform. Financial institutions are able to search for a specific company or solution, or they can use the platform's proprietary "Innovation Challenge" capability to present specific problem statements to the global fintech market and receive recommendations on solutions from Fintech innovators. In this way, financial institutions are able to access and unlock the leading edge technology and deep customer insight of the world's best fintech firms for their own operations. "The acquisition of Matchi adds to the capabilities of KPMG firms to bring market-validated ideas to financial services clients' toughest challenges," says Ian Pollari, Global Co-leader of Fintech, KPMG International. "The Matchi platform offers a curated approach that is much more rigorous than fintech databases that merely provide lists. It is designed to identify, match and enable collaboration with the most innovative fintechs and solutions to address specific issues being faced by financial institutions." Since its inception in 2013, Matchi has connected more than 100 leading banks and insurance companies with fintech innovations, including solutions in next generation payments, regtech, blockchain and P2P insurance. "Combining the Matchi platform with the exceptional knowledge and skills of KPMG professionals creates a powerful fintech resource," says David Milligan, Matchi CEO. "Together, we are positioned to help clients find and deploy the fintech solutions that are most relevant to their business needs. We are fulfilling the promise of collaboration between financial institutions and fintech firms, which can ultimately benefit all consumers and businesses." New features and functionality are being planned for the Matchi platform in coming months. "Financial institutions increasingly recognize the value in identifying and partnering with fintech companies around the globe who have already demonstrated an ability to commercialize their efforts," adds Ian Pollari. "Finding fintech companies who are pre-validated, helps to reduce risks and can accelerate time to market. KPMG financial services professionals are helping clients to navigate through the 'noise' of the rapidly changing fintech environment and take advantage of emerging technologies that can enable new business models and strategies. We are continuing to expand the capabilities of KPMG firms with investments and acquisitions such as Matchi." About Matchi Matchi is a global fintech innovation match-making firm, since 2013. Matchi has worked with over 100 leading banks and insurance companies (FIs) around the world, and has a database of over 2,500 fintech firms with 700+ curated solutions. Matchi provides both a searchable, highly-detailed portal of fintech solutions, as well as bespoke projects for FI clients to source targeted fintech solutions aimed at the FIs focus areas / pain points. The global Matchi team has run Fintech Challenges and Market Scans for multiple FIs around the world, in markets as diverse as Africa, Japan, Canada, Mauritius and India, as well as searches in more recognized fintech regions. About KPMG Fintech The financial services sector is transforming with the emergence of innovative products and solutions. This wave of innovation is primarily driven by changing customer expectations and continued regulatory and cost pressures. KPMG professionals are passionate about supporting clients to successfully navigate this transformation, working directly with emerging fintechs through 30 global fintech hubs. KPMG professionals also bring their global fintech insight to financial institutions, helping them fully realize the potential fintech has to grow their business, meet customer demands, and help them stay relevant and competitive. About KPMG International KPMG is a global network of professional firms providing Audit, Tax and Advisory services. We operate in 152 countries and have more than 189,000 people working in member firms around the world. The independent member firms of the KPMG network are affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative ("KPMG International"), a Swiss entity. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. SOURCE KPMG International ORANGE, Calif., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- To commemorate its 100th anniversary this year, the makers of the LA VICTORIA brand, the iconic, Southern California-based maker of salsas, taco sauces, enchilada sauces and chiles, today announced an art contest in San Francisco to help bring to life its embodiment of the "Modern West Coast Lifestyle." From now until May 31, the makers of the LA VICTORIA brand invite San Francisco artists to submit original artwork to be considered for an opportunity to participate in the brand's commemorative anniversary celebration on June 22. Five finalists will be selected to attend the dinner; one will be awarded a grand prize of $7,500, while the second- and third-place winners will take home $1,500 and $1,000, respectively. All finalists will also receive salsa prize packs. To enter, residents must submit photographs of five original works of art; any form of the visual arts will be considered. Five finalists will be chosen and asked to create one additional piece of art that embodies the LA VICTORIA brand and its philosophy of the "Modern West Coast Lifestyle." Be it a Golden Gate Bridge scene, a view of the city from Dolores Park, or a Twin Peaks hike, artists are encouraged to bring their creativity while giving an artistic nod to the LA VICTORIA brand. The finalists will exhibit these works at the celebration dinner. "We're excited to connect our iconic brand with local fans as a way to honor LA VICTORIA Brand's past, celebrate the present, and inspire the future," said LA VICTORIA Brand Manager Sebastian Friedman. "Our art contest is just one of several ways we are paying tribute to our West Coast roots and the authentic culinary traditions we've inspired for now a century." The celebration in San Francisco will take place Thursday, June 22, at The Here Collective. In addition to showcasing the artwork of the contest finalists, the brand will partner with a local chef and musician to honor Mexican-American culture and tradition while celebrating LA VICTORIA Brand's modern, West Coast approach. Following the San Francisco event, the makers of the LA VICTORIA brand will travel to Portland to continue the festivities. For Official Rules or to enter the art contest, visit http://lavictoria.com/100Years during the entry period and submit five works of art and other requested materials. For more information about LA VICTORIA foods, visit http://www.lavictoria.com. ABOUT LA VICTORIA BRAND Established in 1917 on the West Coast of California, LA VICTORIA Brand was the first to make jarred salsa and is an original maker of Mexican sauces. LA VICTORIA brand products include salsa, taco sauce, enchilada sauce, chiles, peppers and fruit-flavored salsas. The line is known for its bold, robust flavors and is easily identifiable in the grocery aisle by its iconic jars. The LA VICTORIA brand operates under MegaMex Foods LLC, a maker of a comprehensive portfolio of products that resonate with Mexican-American and mainstream consumers of Mexican foods. For more information about the LA VICTORIA brand visit www.lavictoria.com or follow LA VICTORIA brand on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @LaVictoriaBrand. SOURCE LA VICTORIA Brand Related Links http://www.lavictoria.com TEL AVIV, Israel, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Tel Aviv-based ad tech firm, Woobi, is delighted to announce that it is chosen as a finalist for the 2017 Bully Awards. Each year, the award explores the European Tech Innovation landscape, 'in search of bright stars'. The finalists are firms in all stages of business that exhibit excellence in product innovation, leadership, growth and growth potential. Chaya Soggot, Founder and CEO, Woobi, said, "We are proud to be finalists for the 2017 Bully Awards. Having won the Bully Awards in 2015 with our proprietary DMA technology, we are honored to have our Programmatic In-Game Video Platform nominated for innovation this year. The fact that we have been nomiated for yet another award is a great endoresement of our technology and our innovation, highlighting our commitment to helping brands utilise advertising channels within games in a way that truly benefits the user and creates a positive campaign impact. It is once again, extremely gratifying to see this industry's recognition of our work." Woobi's programmatic in-game video platform enables brands and agencies to plan around audiences, buy when users are open to engage and optimize their global advertising, based on performance-driven data. By creating deep engagement opportunities through in-game advertising, brands can now interact with their audiences where they spend their time and undivided attention, creating a deeper, long-lasting brand engagement. This year's theme for the Bully Awards is 'Reinvention'. The ceremony will explore the Reinvention of the Entrepreneur, of Venture Capital, and of the tech Industry as a whole. The 8th Annual Gala Awards Ceremony will see the winner's crowned. This year, Woobi's programmatic video platform has been shortlisted for the European Digiday Video Awards and The Drum's Digital Trading Award, and has won the Digiday US Video Awards. About Woobi: Woobi is an award-winning video advertising company, servicing brands, advertisers, games and app-developers. Woobi's programmatic platform enables brands and agencies to plan around audiences, buy when users are open to engage, and optimize their global advertising using verified data. Woobi's programmatic platform enables our advertisers a single gateway into games, and our publishers an easy access to premium global demand partners. By creating deep engagement opportunities through in-game advertising, brands can now interact with their audiences where they spend their time and undivided attention, while reacting to each user's significant moments during gameplay. For further information, please contact: Email: [email protected] Tel.: +44-(0)-20-7284-6969 SOURCE Woobi PHILADELPHIA, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LIGHTFAIR INTERNATIONAL Legrand, North & Central America provides the widest range of solutions that enable control of natural and artificial light. As part of its expansion in commercial shading solutions, Legrand introduces Solarfective roller shades and cassette systems and full software integration with the Wattstopper architectural dimming platform at LIGHTFAIR International 2017 in Booth # 1841. Solarfective products are designed with features that make the installation phase easier, faster, and safer. Shading systems can be customized for unique shapes, oversized skylights, and large format printing, and can be delivered to the job site pre-assembled. The combination of a wide selection of shade offerings and leading-edge technologies make Solarfective systems easy to specify. On display are: Solarfective Teleshades offer a single-unit shade system available in single or dual, and manual or motorized roller shades. Teleshades cut down on installation time and labor requirements with a compression bracket system and unique counterbalance spring clutch system. These features reduce blocking and bring added flexibility, with easy replacement of the clutch/chain without having to remove them from the bracket. Teleshades combine style and performance for glare control, occupant comfort, and increased energy efficiency. The patent-pending shade system also allows for fingertip raising action, making it easy to raise or lower the shade with two fingers instead of heavy pulling or tugging. Solarfective motorized shades can be wired to allow for individual control or group control with a push of a button. Solarfective Televent uses the shade pocket to draw warm or cool air over the window into the ceiling plenum, increasing the efficiency of the mechanical system. Using this patent-pending system reduces build-out costs as there is no need for a drywall/metal pocket. In addition, Solarfective shade systems can be fully integrated with the Wattstopper architectural dimming platform via Design Center software. Programming and commissioning can be done quickly and easily, providing greater efficiency and time savings to projects. The architectural dimming platform includes the Lighting Control and Automation Panel (LCAP) series, and a range of unique user interfaces to meet precise dimming, occupant experience, and energy savings objectives. "We are excited to showcase the Solarfective system for the first time at LIGHTFAIR. These commercial shading solutions are the easiest to use and install and when integrated with the architectural dimming platform, deliver robust control to bundled lighting and shade systems," said Nick Meloni, Product Marketing Manager for Solarfective at Legrand, North America. About Solarfective Products Limited Solarfective, a Legrand group brand, specializes in the design and manufacturing of standard and custom shading systems. Established in 1980 and based in Toronto, Solarfective has provided one-of-a-kind shading solutions for commercial facilities around the world. About Legrand and Legrand, North & Central America Legrand is a global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures. Its comprehensive offering of solutions for use in commercial, industrial, and residential markets makes it a benchmark for customers worldwide. Innovation for a steady flow of new products with high added value is a prime vector for growth, including, in particular, connected devices stemming from Legrand's global Eliot (Electricity and IoT) program. Legrand reported sales of $5.6 billion in 2016. Legrand has a strong presence in North and Central America, with a portfolio of well-known product lines that include C2G, Cablofil, Electrorack, Luxul, Middle Atlantic, Nuvo, OCL, On-Q, Ortronics, Pass & Seymour, Pinnacle, QMotion, Quiktron, Raritan, Solarfective, Vantage, Wattstopper, and Wiremold. Legrand is listed on Euronext Paris and is a component stock of indexes including the CAC40, FTSE4Good, MSCI World, ASPI, Corporate Oekom Rating, and DJSI (ISIN code FR0010307819) www.legrand.us. Media Contact: Mary Placido, Legrand Building Control Systems 415-218-3627 [email protected] SOURCE Legrand, North & Central America Related Links http://www.legrand.us VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LiCo Energy Metals Inc. ("the Company" or "LiCo") TSX-V: LIC, OTCQB: WCTXF is pleased to announce that Mr. Francisco Pimentel has been appointed to the Technical Advisory Board of LiCo and will provide technical management services to the Company with an initial focus on the exploration and resource studies for the Purickuta Project in Salar de Atacama. Salar de Atacama is considered to represent our planet's largest deposit of economically recoverable Lithium. Mr. Pimentel is a well-known and highly respected Chilean geological consultant based in Antofagasta. He has had an extensive career working throughout Chile with direct experience in mining exploration, hydrogeology, engineering geology for open pit and underground mining operations, management and project development, contract management, risk management and management of safety programs for employees and contractors. Having an active career, Mr. Pimentel has either worked for or consulted for some of Chile's largest mining companies. Dwayne Melrose, Director and Chairman of the Technical Advisory Board commented, "I am very pleased to have such a capable individual as Mr. Pimentel on our team in Chile. I feel we have identified the ideal expertise to manage and implement each phase of exploration required to prove-up resource potential of Purickuta. As exploration gets underway this coming week I am delighted to see our effort in Chile moving forward so rapidly." The Company holds an option to acquire up to a 60% interest in the Purickuta Exploitation concession (the "Property"). The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Alan Morris CPG and Qualified Person. About LiCo Energy Metals: https://licoenergymetals.com/ LiCo Energy Metals Inc. is a well funded Canadian based exploration company who's primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's focus is directed towards exploration for high value metals integral to the manufacture of lithium ion batteries. Chile Purickuta Lithium Project: The Purickuta Project is located within Salar de Atacama, a salt flat encompassing 3,000 km2, being about 100 km long, 80 km wide and home to approximately 37% of the worlds Lithium production. The salar possesses a very high grade of both Lithium (1,840mg/l) and Potassium (22,630mg/l) and is close to power, labour, communications, transportation and other infrastructure. The property of 160 hectares is enveloped by a concession owned by Sociedad Quimica y Minera ("SQM") and lies significantly within a few kilometers of the property of CORFO (the Chilean Economic Development Agency) where its leases to both SQM and Albermarle's Rockwood Lithium Corp. Together these two companies have combined production of over 62,000 tonnes of LCE (Lithium Carbonate Equivalent) annually making up 100% of Chile's current lithium output. The unique characteristics of Salar de Atacama make finished lithium carbonate easier and cheaper to produce than any of its peer group globally. Purickuta is a smaller exploitation concession rather than a large exploration concession thereby accelerating the task of taking the project to production once a measured reserve can be established. Currently, the Chilean government retains ownership of lithium separate from other minerals and thus production can only proceed upon receipt of a special lithium operation contract know as a 'CEOL.' In the future, it will be necessary for LiCo and partner to negotiate a production contract with CORFO concurrently with completing any positive feasibility study. "Chile, which has one of the world's most plentiful supplies of lithium, is pushing ahead with new policies to develop those reserves." (Reuters Jan2, 2017). Ontario Teledyne Cobalt Project: The Company has an option to earn 100% ownership, subject to a royalty, in the Teledyne Project located near Cobalt. Ontario. The Property adjoins the south and west boundaries of claims that hosted the Agaunico Mine. From 1905 through to 1961, the Agaunico Mine produced a total of 4,350,000 lbs. of cobalt and 980,000 oz. of silver. A significant portion of the cobalt that was produced at the Agaunico Mine located along structures that extended southward onto property currently under option to LiCo Energy Metals. Nevada Dixie Valley Lithium Project: The Company has an option to acquire a 100% interest, subject to a 3% NSR, on a large lithium exploration project at the Humboldt Salt Marsh in Dixie Valley, Nevada. The geologic setting and presence of lithium in active geothermal fluids and surface salts in Dixie Valley match characteristics of producing lithium brine deposits at Clayton Valley, Nevada and in South America. Nevada Black Rock Desert Lithium Project: The Company has entered into an option agreement whereby the Company may earn an undivided 70% interest, subject to a 3% Net Smelter Return Royalty, in the Black Rock Desert Lithium Project that consists of 128 placer claims (2,560 acres/ 1,036 hectares) in southwest Black Rock Desert, Washoe County, Nevada. The Company is planning an exploration programs for all its properties over the next several months. On Behalf of the Board of Directors Tim Fernback, President & CEO 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. Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information: This news release may contain forward-looking statements which include, but are not limited to, comments that involve future events and conditions such the Company's ability to exercise the Option, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Except for statements of historical facts, comments that address resource potential, upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt and security of mineral property titles, availability of funds, and others are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may vary materially from those statements. General business conditions are factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from forward-looking statements. Contact: 1220-789 West Pender St Vancouver BC V6C 1H2 Phone: (236) 521-0207 http://www.LiCoEnergyMetals.com SOURCE LiCo Energy Metals Inc. 21c Museum Hotels announce the opening of its seventh property in Nashville, Tennessee. Building on its mission of engaging the public with contemporary art and supporting the revitalization of American downtowns, 21c has rehabilitated the historic Gray & Dudley Building in Downtown Nashville near Printers Alley. Located at 221 2nd Avenue North, 21c Museum Hotel Nashville offers 10,500 square feet of contemporary art exhibition space open free of charge to the public, a 124-room boutique hotel, and the locally-inspired, Gray & Dudley restaurant helmed by Chef Levon Wallace. We have had our sights set on Nashville for quite some time, and are excited to bring 21c to Music City, said Steve Wilson, Founder and CEO of 21c Museum Hotels. With such a robust and exciting art and music scene, we felt the destination matched perfectly with our brand ethos, and we look forward to contributing to the areas thriving cultural landscape. Commissioned by 21c Museum Hotels, the multimedia works will be installed throughout the public and private spaces of the hotel, drawing on themes as diverse as technology, pop culture, and the environment. 21c Nashville will also feature a rotating schedule of curated exhibitions. On view until January 2018, the inaugural exhibition, Truth or Dare: A Reality Show, includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, digital animation, and installations by more than 24 artists that layer fiction with fact, narrating both the complexity and the necessity for seeking and speaking the truth. Docent tours of current exhibitions and site-specific installations are offered free of charge to the public on Wednesdays and Fridays at 5pm. 21c will continue engaging with the local community through its ongoing initiative, Elevate 21c, an exhibition program that features works by local artists. Dedicated exhibition spaces on each of the guestroom floors will present works on loan from Nashville-based artists. The installations will change periodically, offering opportunities for a wide range of artists to share their work with a visiting audience, and creating a sense of place for guests. The Elevate program was introduced at 21c Cincinnati in 2012, and runs throughout the seven locations of 21cs multi-venue museum. Architecture & Design Design and architecture firm Deborah Berke Partners has reimagined the historic Gray & Dudley Building as 21c Nashville, preserving the buildings historic elements while creating a versatile platform for exhibiting contemporary art. Erected in 1900, the buildings first life was as a former wholesale hardware company, the Gray & Dudley Hardware Co. Situated between 2nd and 3rd Avenues and flanked by Bank Alley, the Chicago Style building boasts large arched windows, an articulated masonry facade with terra cotta accents, and a prominent cornice at the roofline. Visitors to the hotel enter from 2nd Avenue into the lobby gallery, featuring historic cast-iron columns, a welcoming reception area, a boutique gift shop that doubles as a lounge and the video gallery designed to showcase new media and digital contemporary art. The space overlooks the double-height Main Gallery on the lower level. Contemporary art is integrated throughout the public spaces, including the public restrooms with mirrored tiles enveloping a video art installation. A gallery corridor leads to the restaurant, featuring a double-height space centered on a bar with a more intimate dining room and open kitchen adjacent. Custom wood, blackened steel elements and copper and zinc accents set off against deep, luxurious colors to give the restaurant a highly crafted and refined feel. Large metal windows and doors overlook Bankers Alley, which features an outdoor dining area with custom catenary lighting to enliven the previously little-used passage. The second floor of the hotel is comprised of additional gallery space, with works featured throughout the extended corridor before branching off into separate rooms that double as meeting and event space. The area features a variety of breakout and meeting rooms along with a larger boardroom, all showcasing art from the 21c Collection. Meetings & Events The propertys museum space doubles as meeting and event space, and can accommodate a wide variety of gatherings. On the second floor, meeting galleries and pre-function spaces are suited to events of differing sizes. Several of these spaces overlook the double-height bar area, creating visual connections between various parts of the building and enhancing the sense of activity throughout the hotel. A blackened-steel staircase with perforated metal risers and leather-wrapped hand rails connects the public floors from the Main Gallery on the lower level up to the ground floor and beyond to the gallery and meeting space on the 2nd floor, providing a sense of unity and ease of wayfinding. Guestrooms The 124 guestrooms and suites at 21c Nashville provide a welcomed sanctuary from the art and activity that fills the galleries and vibrant spaces in and surrounding the property. Designed by Deborah Berke Partners, guestrooms showcase wood floors and high ceilings, custom contemporary furnishings, large windows and luxurious floor-to-ceiling drapery. Three newly-built light wells bring natural illumination into the core of the building, including guest rooms facing the buildings interior. The hotel features seven rooftop suites, including the spacious 21c Suite with views of the Cumberland River and surrounding historic district. Featuring apartment-style accommodations, the penthouse level 21c Suite includes more than 1,700 square feet of living and outdoor space. Guests can enjoy an expansive, master bedroom with a king bed; an en suite bathroom with a luxurious soaking tub and glass-enclosed shower; a separate powder room for visitors; and an open concept living and dining area with a folding glass wall, providing access to the spacious outdoor terrace overlooking downtown. Rates for a Deluxe King start at $299 per night. Click here to book a room at 21c Nashville INDIANAPOLIS, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) will attend the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference on Wednesday, May 31, 2017. David A. Ricks, Lilly's president and chief executive officer, will participate in a fireside chat at 10 a.m., Eastern Time. A live audio webcast will be available on the "Webcasts & Presentations" section of Lilly's Investor website at http://investor.lilly.com/events.cfm. A replay of the presentation will be available on this same website for approximately 90 days. About Eli Lilly and Company Lilly is a global healthcare leader that unites caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We were founded more than a century ago by a man committed to creating high-quality medicines that meet real needs, and today we remain true to that mission in all our work. Across the globe, Lilly employees work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. To learn more about Lilly, please visit us at www.lilly.com and http://newsroom.lilly.com/social-channels. F-LLY Refer to: Lauren Zierke; [email protected]; (317) 277-6524 (Media) Phil Johnson; [email protected]; (317) 655-6874 (Investors) SOURCE Eli Lilly and Company Related Links http://www.lilly.com ST. LOUIS, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A survey of risk management professionals by Lockton Companies shows that they face a growing array of challenges and new demands unforeseen even a decade ago. The survey, to be fully discussed at Lockton's Complex Risk Symposium June 13 and 14 in St. Louis, shows that risk managers are increasingly involved with senior management and are more likely involved in strategic business issues, including M&A activity. The findings show that the C-suite, and specifically CFOs, are increasingly interested in the balance between the risk retained and risk transferred. Additionally, CFOs are more interested in the appropriateness and efficiency of programs and not only focused on program costs. According to Ryan Brown, Senior Vice President and Client Advocate for Lockton Companies, "Whether it's claims, contractual liability matters or M&A, risk managers are being asked to do more with less." Other key findings of the survey include: regardless of risk management department size (from 1 to 6+), there are many issues facing risk managers, from performing risk assessments to building a stronger understanding of the business operations to creating better administrative processes along with departmental procedures. CFOs tend to focus on strategic issues and less on tactics. Cyber risk is the most prevalent risk that respondents identified that CFOs are interested in exploring. From understanding and quantifying the exposures related to cyber events, assessing the organizational readiness for such events, to the financial resources available to backstop such an event (current insurance program response and available insurance products). There is demand for more strategic advice as brokers' historical focus of transactional excellence and broad understanding of the insurance marketplace is considered "table stakes" as opposed to the centerpiece of a broker's value proposition. Brown says the survey results point out that risk managers could become overwhelmed and mired in the day to day tasks of serving their internal constituents, and that it is difficult to make the all-important pivot to strategic issues. He says the survey results indicate that those risk managers able to tackle strategic issues have a "bigger seat at the table" with senior management by way of routine communication, involvement in broader organizational issues, and an integral role in M&A activities. Lockton believes that the role of the broker must evolve to support today's risk manager. "For the broker's value proposition to match the needs of its clients, a broker must provide administrative relief to its risk managers and provide unfettered access to strategic advice as a part of its core service," according to Brown. "The days of a broker's role solely placing coverage and then 'selling' strategic advice as an 'add-on' is in conflict with the needs of a risk manager operating in a resource-scarce environment," Brown said. About The 2017 Complex Risk Symposium The Lockton Risk Management Survey findings form the foundation of discussion topics at this year's Complex Risk Symposium, to be held June 13 and 14 in St. Louis at the Four Seasons Hotel. This invitation-only Symposium brings together risk managers and industry leaders to focus on complex risk issues and foster dialogue around today's most pressing risk management challenges. Bringing together many of the world's leading insurers along with corporate risk management executives and senior-level decision makers, the Symposium will explore best practices and practical solutions. Along with a featured Executive Panel Discussion and an inspiring keynote address by John O'Leary, session topics will include: Insuring Punitive Damages, Cyber Risks, Workers Comp Trends, hot Micro Topics, How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the World, and Crisis Management. For the full agenda and to register, visit the www.ComplexRiskSymposium.com or email Ryan Brown at [email protected]. For an advance summary of survey findings, please http://complexrisksymposium.com/survey-results/ About Lockton Companies More than 6,000 professionals at Lockton provide 50,000 clients around the world with risk management, insurance, employee benefits consulting, and retirement services that improve their businesses. From its founding in 1966 in Kansas City, Missouri, Lockton has attracted entrepreneurial professionals who have driven its growth to become the largest privately held, independent insurance broker in the world and 9th largest overall. SOURCE Lockton Companies Having experienced great success on both the client and agency sides of business, Piwinski is perhaps most recognized as the long-time top marketing and communications executive at TOMS, where he played a critical role in the evolution and growth of the now-iconic brand. "What Doug did in helping to build the TOMS brand worldwide was incredible," said Drew Fraser, CEO of People Against Dirty. "When you look at his entire career, you can see that Doug is clearly an expert at storytelling, driving awareness and relevance and creating deep, meaningful relationships with consumers in all types of industries. Both method and Ecover have a lot of business momentum here and abroad, and we are thrilled to have someone of Doug's caliber to add marketing innovation and creativity to our products, our purpose, and beyond." As the head of Global Marketing and Communications at TOMS, Piwinski was responsible for promoting and protecting the brand's image, while preserving the company's reputation with customers, community and the public at large. At various times, Piwinski oversaw PR, social media, influencer marketing, brand partnerships, community engagement, experiential activation, and events. His innovative work during the company's enormous growth led to TOMS' status as one of the most inspiring brands in the world, and elevated its founder Blake Mycoskie as the leading voice of the One for One movement. While at TOMS, Piwinski identified and secured a wide range of partnerships and collaborations that continue to lead to enormous consumer awareness reinvigorating the brand and driving traffic and sales to TOMS.com, its retail stores and its retail partners. TOMS partnerships ranged from those with celebrities such as Charlize Theron, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Christy Turlington, Paul Van Dyke to designers Jonathan Adler, Tabitha Simmons, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen to causes such as Movember, Discovery Network's Shark Week, Charity Water, Save the Waves and corporate-based American Greetings, AOL, National Geographic and Target. Before joining TOMS, Piwinski served as executive vice president with PMK*BNC, one of the nation's top lifestyle media and marketing agencies. Over 13-plus years, he built and rebuilt the images of some of the world's most recognized and respected companies and causes. Corporate clients included American Express, Audi, CNET, Essence, Gatorade, Gillette, Jordan (Nike), kidrobot, MAC Cosmetics, Nickelodeon, Nintendo, Paramount Movies, PlayStation, Proactiv Solution, Rolling Stone and Sony Pictures Consumer Products, among others. In the cause and mission-based worlds, Piwinski developed and directed several major campaigns as communications architect for (PRODUCT) RED, founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to eradicate AIDS in Africa. Alongside legendary producer and philanthropist Norman Lear, Doug helped create the successful youth voter initiative, Declare Yourself, which ran through and greatly impacted the high stakes 2004 election home and abroad. He served as lead for the program in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. "For someone who lives and breathes marketing and communications, joining Drew and the team is a dream job and a huge opportunity, " said Piwinski. "Both method and Ecover have great history and great potential. There are very few brands that have achieved the type of love, loyalty and respect that method has, both in the U.S. and now around the world, and in Europe, the Ecover brand is poised to assume iconic status. Together, they form a powerful combination of clean, and I'm excited to deliver new marketing strategies and ideas to accelerate their growth." ABOUT PEOPLE AGAINST DIRTY People Against Dirty is a company made up of two brands method and Ecover filled with fearless thinkers, mad scientists and adventurous designers who believe in defying the status quo with innovation and optimism. We take cleaning seriously but not ourselves. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, method (methodhome.com) is the pioneer of premium planet-friendly and design-driven home, fabric and personal care products. Formulated with naturally derived, biodegradable ingredients, method puts the hurt on dirt without doing harm to people, creatures or the planet. Today, method can be found in more than 40,000 retail locations throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Also playing an important role at People Against Dirty is Ecover (ecover.com) the revered pioneering European-based line of ecological cleaning products that has had an enormous impact on the world of cleaning and a positive impact on the environment since its formation in 1980. As a certified B Corp, People Against Dirty is raising the bar in clean manufacturing with our legendary green factory in Belgium and the industry's first LEED Platinum-certified manufacturing plant in Chicago, affectionately known as the South Side Soapbox. CONTACT: 415.568.4631 [email protected] SOURCE People Against Dirty Related Links http://www.methodhome.com LOS ANGELES, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- WHAT: Project:OM, a movement to drive positive change on an epic level, is amassing One Million men and women in the world's largest yoga event in support of Susan G. Komen's fight against breast cancer. Manduka is kicking off this initiative on May 11th with a sunset yoga event in Los Angeles hosted at The Lombardi House. Sophie Jaffe will teach the class at The Lombardi House and Samantha Harris, former co-host of Dancing with the Stars, will host. Media is invited to attend and cover both events. Call time for The Lombardi House event is 6 p.m. at the front desk check-in, where media will receive specialty project:OM gear. Call time for the Loyola Marymount University event is 6 p.m. With a suggested minimum donation of $10, interested participants can attend any one of over 500 additional events including 75 located throughout California at some of the state's most prestigious yoga studios including YogaWorks, Yoga Six, One Down Dog, and Y7. Anyone and everyone is invited to participate (select events listed below) to support Susan G. Komen and engage in this healthy activity. One hundred percent of donations generated from project:OM classes will benefit Susan G. Komen's bold goal to reduce breast cancer deaths by 50 percent in the U.S. by 2026. On a national scale, project:OM will take place over Mother's Day weekend (May 11-14) in hundreds of cities across the country. There will be 13 large-scale events in major cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Honolulu, Detroit, Miami, Kansas City and more. Additional participating locations include hundreds of yoga studios, more than 60 Simon Mall locations, and online events through pre-recorded and live streamed classes hosted by yoga YouTube sensation Adriene Mishler. For a full list of project:OM events please visit: https://www.manduka.com/projectom/classfinder WHERE: The Lombardi House 1717 N Bronson Ave Los Angeles, CA 90028 Loyola Marymount University 1 LMU Drive Los Angeles, CA, 90045 WHEN: The Lombardi House Thursday, May 11, 2017 Event: 11:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Loyola Marymount University Saturday, May 13th, 2017 Event: 6:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m. Select project:OM events taking place in Los Angeles, the surrounding areas and San Francisco include: Location Address Date Time(s) Fashion Valley 7007 Friars Road, San Diego CA, 92108 May 13th 9:30 AM - 10:00 AM Goorus 15327 Sunset Boulevard, Pacific Palisades CA, 90272 May 13th 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM Power Yoga Palm Springs 333 North Palm Canyon Drive #214, Palm Springs CA, 92262 May 13th 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM San Francisco Premium Outlets 2774 Livermore Outlets Dr., Livermore CA, 94551 May 13th 9:30 AM - 9:50 AM Soul Fitness LA 1209 South Pacific Coast Hwy, Redondo Beach CA, 90277 May 13th 7:30 AM - 8:30 AM The Hot Room 4101 Bellflower Boulevard Unit E., Long Beach CA, 90808 May 13th 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM SOURCE Manduka CHICAGO, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce that Marist College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, will be adopting the Ex Libris Alma library services platform, to be used in conjunction with the Summon discovery service. Replacing the library's Voyager integrated library system (ILS), the combination of Summon and Alma will streamline and enhance the management of resources and increase discovery capabilities. Through the integration of Alma with Summon, Marist will continue to benefit from Summon as the front-facing discovery service that the College's librarians, instructors, and researchers are familiar with. At the same time, Alma will enable the library to centrally manage all of its electronic, digital, and print resources. Marist will begin implementing Alma during the upcoming months and plans to complete the integration and launch the Alma-Summon solution in December 2017. "We are happy that Ex Libris offers an integrated Alma-Summon solution, which enables us to continue using Summon while replacing our ILS with a robust, modern SaaS solution," explained Rebecca Albitz, director at Marist's James A. Cannavino Library. "Alma also gives us the opportunity to move forward in developing our library systems. As a previous Intota v2 Partner, we are particularly pleased that Ex Libris has been responsive to our requests and integrated Alma with Summon to meet our future needs." Eric Hines, president of Ex Libris North America, commented, "Over the years, Marist has positioned Summon as an integral part of the College's library services and instruction on campus. The integration of Summon with Alma enables the library to manage resources more efficiently while maximizing the use of its collection through Summon. The library's forward-looking selection of this solution reflects Marist's confidence in the Ex Libris approach and commitment to enriching both Alma and Summon." About Marist College Located on the river in the historic Hudson River Valley and at its Florence, Italy branch campus, Marist College is a comprehensive, independent institution grounded in the liberal arts. Its mission is to help students "develop the intellect, character, and skills required for enlightened, ethical, and productive lives in the global community of the 21st century." Marist is consistently recognized for excellence by U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Forbes, and others. Though now independent, Marist remains committed to the ideals handed down from its founders, the Marist Brothers: excellence in education, a strong sense of community, and a commitment to service. Marist educates approximately 4,900 traditional-age undergraduate students and over 1,300 adult and graduate students in 47 undergraduate majors and 14 graduate programs, including fully online MBA, MPA, MS, and MA degrees. About Ex Libris Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for higher education. Offering SaaS solutions for the management and discovery of the full spectrum of library and scholarly materials, as well as mobile campus solutions driving student engagement and success, Ex Libris serves thousands of customers in 90 countries. For more information about Ex Libris, see our website, and join us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. SOURCE Ex Libris "By partnering with such a trusted health system, our patients know they will receive premier medical care from affiliated doctors and staff who are all held to Memorial Hermann's high standards," said Craig Goguen, CEO of Emerus . "We could not be more pleased, as this agreement continues the momentum we've established as an expansion partner of choice to leading health systems across the nation." "Emerus and Memorial Hermann share a common goal to provide innovative, high quality, patient-centered care to those who need it most," said David Bradshaw, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Memorial Hermann. "We're excited to join Emerus in this new care delivery venture that will help us continue to improve our community's access to that care by offering convenient locations throughout the city that are easy to get to, no matter where you live." Emerus opened its first micro-hospital in Tomball 11 years ago, followed shortly thereafter by the Sugar Land location. Until now, the two Houston locations were the only Emerus facilities not affiliated with a major health system. The Emerus Community Hospital, located at 24429 Tomball Parkway in Tomball, will be renamed Memorial Hermann Tomball Hospital; and the Emerus 24HR Emergency Hospital, located at 16000 Southwest Freeway, Suite 100, in Sugar Land, will be renamed Memorial Hermann First Colony Hospital. Uniquely different from urgent care clinics, Emerus facilities provide emergency centers with additional services such as primary care, diagnostic imaging, and lab tests in a smaller, more efficient footprint, with shorter waiting times and convenient parking, closer to patients' neighborhoods and homes. These new facilities will expand the already well-established Memorial Hermann emergency care network to 19 locations including acute care hospitals, Convenient Care Centers and a free-standing emergency room in The Woodlands. Once integrated, these hospitals will feature: Access to the broader Memorial Hermann network allowing for care coordination, consultation and seamless transition across the care continuum; Inpatient bed capacity allowing patients to stay closer to home when lower level admissions/recoveries are needed; Primary care physicians, diagnostic imaging and laboratory services on site; and Access to care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each facility will be staffed by board-certified physicians, experienced nurses and other clinical specialists dedicated to providing the same level of compassionate, patient-centered care found throughout Memorial Hermann Health System. ABOUT EMERUS Emerus is the nation's first and largest operator of micro-hospitals. Emerus partners with leading health systems to provide excellence, empathy and innovation in health care delivery through a network of efficient, value-based micro-hospitals. The Emerus network brings high-quality, patient-centric acute episodic and ambulatory clinical services to communities across a given market. This helps patients by positioning best-in-class provider services in the communities where they work, live and play. Emerus' distinctive level of care earned the Guardian of Excellence Award for Superior Patient Experience in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. More information is available at www.emerus.com. ABOUT MEMORIAL HERMANN A fully integrated health system with more than 250 care delivery sites throughout the Greater Houston area, including a nationally acclaimed Accountable Care Organization, Memorial Hermann is committed to delivering safe, high-quality, patient-centered care and offers world-class clinical expertise, innovation and cutting-edge technology to all patients, including its Health Plan members. The system, with its exceptional affiliated medical staff and more than 25,000 employees, provides compassionate, superior service while advancing health in Southeast Texas. Learn more about Memorial Hermann Health System. Emerus Media Contact: Memorial Hermann Media Contact: Richard Bonnin Kathryn Williams 713.637.1261 713.829.2361 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Emerus Holdings Inc. Related Links http://www.emerus.com SAN FRANCISCO, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at Dell EMC World, Mesosphere the creators of DC/OS, a premier platform for building and running data-rich, containerized applications announced a collaboration with Dell EMC to provide a reference architecture for customers to deploy DC/OS with select Dell EMC compute and storage infrastructure. Running Mesosphere DC/OS helps enable Dell EMC's customers to offer their internal development and operations teams a public cloud-like experience within their own data centers including best-in-class orchestration and management of containers and single-click deployment of big data services while avoiding public cloud lock-in. By combining DC/OS with Dell EMC hardware, customers are expected to achieve better performance and cost savings, and consumability compared to other options. Mesosphere and Dell EMC have a history of collaborating on behalf of customers. Last year, Mesosphere integrated REX-Ray by {code}, by Dell EMC a container storage orchestration engine to manage storage from multiple platforms, in DC/OS. Today's announcement is a result of the natural evolution of the relationship, putting access to the leading technology for powering modern apps into the hands of Dell EMC customers. This combined reference architecture will help enable customers to build and run modern applications that use containers and big data services within their on-premise infrastructure. In this reference architecture, Dell EMC ScaleIO and ScaleIO Ready Nodes provide a complete scale-out solution for compute and storage infrastructure for applications and micro services. Mesosphere's "Datacenter Operating System" (DC/OS) with ScaleIO provides a software platform that aggregates both compute and storage and provides a simple UI or CLI for application and container management and orchestration, single-click deployment of 100's of data and devops services, and elastic scaling. Customers who follow the reference architecture will be using a proven solution that minimizes risk and simplifies deployment, and are supported by both Mesosphere and Dell EMC. Dell EMC ScaleIO is a data center grade software-defined storage that uses standard x86 hardware and Ethernet to deliver scale-out block storage, simplifying storage lifecycle management. ScaleIO abstracts, pools and automates block storage in servers, including high performance All-Flash or hybrid media, and provides shared storage with enterprise class reliability. The ScaleIO Ready Node is pre-validated, tested and configured to provide the best performance possible with a single vendor for support. ScaleIO Ready Node allow customers to deploy ScaleIO in a hyper-converged appliance. "We're incredibly proud to expand our relationship with Mesosphere," said Josh Bernstein, Vice President of Technology, Dell Technologies. "DC/OS combined with ScaleIO Ready Nodes is a powerful solution for data-rich, microservices applications, as it uniquely allows deployment of big data toolsets along with other frameworks side-by-side, all while scaling from the smallest environments up to tens of thousands of servers." The move to the cloud is continuing at a rapid pace, but enterprise buyers increasingly ask for cloud native applications and infrastructure within their own data centers. With more reliance on proprietary tools and APIs from public cloud vendors, and increasing complexity for moving between providers, there is substantial potential for lock-in. In response, customers seek out hybrid cloud offerings. "Customers need the flexibility and ease that comes from being able to provision and scale infrastructure, services and tools on demand, and so it's no wonder many companies have rushed to public cloud providers. However, they also want to control costs, leverage existing investments, and have the ability to choose what infrastructure they deploy on, whether that's public or private," said Will Freiberg, COO at Mesosphere. "Pairing Mesosphere's software with Dell EMC solutions provides the benefits of cloud services while retaining freedom and control." Availability DC/OS is available from Mesosphere and Dell EMC today. Read the Mesosphere blog or attend the general session at Dell EMC World at The Venetian in Las Vegas on Wednesday, May 10 at 10:00 a.m. PT featuring Josh Bernstein to hear more about the collaboration. About Mesosphere Mesosphere is leading the enterprise transformation toward distributed computing and hybrid cloud. Mesosphere DC/OS is the premier platform for building, deploying, and elastically scaling modern applications and big data. DC/OS makes running containers, data services, and microservices easy across your own hardware and cloud instances. Mesosphere was founded in 2013 by the architects of hyperscale infrastructures at Airbnb and Twitter and the co-creator of Apache Mesos. Mesosphere is headquartered in San Francisco with additional offices in New York and Hamburg, Germany. Mesosphere's investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Microsoft. SOURCE Mesosphere Related Links http://mesosphere.com (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 66 market data Tables and 59 Figures spread through 148 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Mobile Encryption Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/mobile-encryption-market-120317676.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. The key forces driving the Mobile Encryption Market include the proliferation of smartphones and tablets across enterprises, need for stringent compliance and regulatory requirements, and increased concerns for data security and privacy issues. Moreover, with the subsequent increase in the adoption rate of cloud-based mobile encryption solutions, the Mobile Encryption Market is expected to gain a major traction during the forecast period. Request Report [email protected] http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=120317676 "Disk encryption application is expected to have the largest market share in 2017." Disk encryption is expected to have the largest market share and dominate the Mobile Encryption Market from 2017 to 2022, due to growing demands for hardware-based encryptions that ensure data security at the source. With the increase in the BYOD trend, employees have the freedom to carry personal devices and exchange of critical data via personal devices is made possible. Adoption of strong encryptions can protect the confidential data, even if an employee's device is lost or stolen. "Telecom sector is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period." Telecom and healthcare sectors are expected to grow at the highest CAGRs from 2017 to 2022, in the Mobile Encryption Market, due to the increase in the amount of personal and health-related data being stored on cell phones, tablets, and the Internet. The majority of the telecom companies rely on communication encryption for securing the data in motion, such as calls and messages for their customers. "North America is expected to contribute to the largest market share; Asia Pacific to grow the fastest during the forecast period." North America is expected to have the largest market share and dominate the Mobile Encryption Market from 2017 to 2022, owing to the early adoption of new and emerging technologies and the presence of a large number of players in this region. APAC offers extensive growth avenues in the Mobile Encryption Market, owing to a widespread presence of SMEs that are implementing enhanced mobile encryption solutions to prevent unauthorized access to critical business data and unethical use of confidential information. The major vendors providing mobile encryption solutions are Adeya SA (Morges, Switzerland), AlertBoot Data Security (Las Vegas, US), Becrypt, Ltd. (London, UK), BlackBerry Ltd. (Ontario, Canada), CSG, Inc. (Washington, US), Certes Networks, Inc. (Pennsylvania, US), Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel), DataMotion, Inc. (New Jersey, US), Dell Technologies, Inc. (Texas, US), ESET (Bratislava, Slovakia), Gold Line Group Ltd. (Israel), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (California, US), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (Shenzhen, China), IBM Corporation (New York, US), Intel Corporation (California, US), KoolSpan, Inc. (Maryland, US), MobileIron, Inc. (California, US), Open Whisper Systems (California, US), Proofpoint, Inc. (California, US), SecurStar (Munich, Germany), Silent Circle, LLC (Le Grand-Saconnex, Switzerland), Sophos Ltd. (Abingdon, UK), Symantec Corporation (California, US), T-Systems International GmbH (Frankfurt, Germany), and Zix Corporation (Texas, US). Make an enquiry @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=120317676 Browse Related Reports Encryption Software Market by Application (Disk Encryption, File/Folder Encryption, Database Encryption, Communication Encryption, Cloud Encryption), Service, Deployment Type, User Type, Industry Vertical, Region - Global Forecast to 2021 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/encryption-software-market-227254588.html Cloud Security Market by Service Type (IAM, DLP, IDS/IPS, SIEM, and Encryption), Security Type, Service Model (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), Deployment Type (Public, Private, and Hybrid), Organization Size, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cloud-security-market-100018098.html Know More About our Knowledge Store @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Knowledgestore.asp About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their pain points around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 Micro Quadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Rohan MarketsandMarkets 701 Pike Street Suite 2175, Seattle, WA 98101, United States Tel: +1-888-600-6441 Email: [email protected] Visit Our Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/telecom-it Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets SOURCE MarketsandMarkets SAN FRANCISCO, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Motivate, the global bike share leader implementing a new bike share system for the Bay Area that will soon be the nation's second largest, is ramping up efforts to hire qualified local candidates for its team. The new program will be a 7,000-bike regional network known as Ford GoBike, and Motivate anticipates creating 200 jobs to operate it, by the spring of 2018. More than half of the total positions will be available beginning this spring and summer. Job opportunities include temporary posts for the launch as well as permanent positions, which will help to operate the system once launched. Current job listings are available here. The diverse set of roles for which Motivate is hiring includes positions from marketing to technical functions to maintain the bike share system. Fully 90 percent of operations jobs are full time positions, paying at or above living wages. The jobs offer medical, dental and wellness benefits as well as 401k retirement benefits. Motivate is a proudly committed Affirmative Action Employer, and encourages minorities, women, disabled persons and veterans to apply for positions. "Motivate's values are reflected in so much of what we do as a company, and nowhere is that more true than in the kind of employer we aspire to be," said Jay Walder, CEO of Motivate. "We strongly believe in hiring from the communities we serve, and in taking good care of our workforce once hired. For us, being a good employer isn't just about paying living wages and offering generous benefitsit's also about investing in job training and professional development, and creating opportunities for our employees' advancement and long-term success. I'm proud of the reputation we've earned as a responsible employer and full community partner." "Creating and saving local jobs has been one of my top priorities as supervisor, and that's why I appreciate Motivate's commitment to hire from the same communities that bike share will serve," said San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen. "They've taken a thoughtful and proactive approach by partnering with employment-related nonprofits, and I know the new Ford GoBike system will be very well served by their outreach and hiring efforts." SOURCE Motivate Related Links https://www.motivateco.com/ NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GRAMMY-Award winning artists Kings of Leon, James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef Jonathan Waxman, Vector Management's Ken Levitan and Andy Mendelsohn, and C3 Presents are pleased to announce the fifth annual Music City Food + Wine Festival, September 15-17, 2017, offering expanded festival programming, including the addition of a Friday Night Grand Taste Pavilion, more chefs than ever before at Saturday Night's Harvest Night, the return of Pappy Hour and the brand-new Sunday Gospel Brunch. Tickets go on sale May 10, 2017, 10:00 a.m. CST, at http://www.musiccityfoodandwinefestival.com/tickets "Nashville's reputation as a destination for music lovers is fast being challenged by our status as a premier foodie destination in the Southeast," says Mayor Megan Barry. "The Music City Food + Wine Festival will highlight some of our amazing chefs and restaurateurs who are defining Southern cuisine and showing that Nashville is the place to be for talented and creative individuals looking to show off their skills." "The Music City Food + Wine Festival has grown in stature and quality in lock-step with Nashville's culinary scene," says Butch Spyridon, President/CEO of Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. "The two are inextricably tied to each other and our success as a destination. Great food, music, and fun sums up the event and the city." "It's that time of year again when we celebrate all things food, wine and dance in the best city in America," says Kings of Leon's Nathan Followill, festival partner. "There are some big changes in store this year so don't miss out. See you in September!" Music City Food + Wine Festival brings together stars of Nashville's culinary scene with acclaimed regional and national chefs, wine and spirits experts. Located in the heart of downtown Nashville, Festival programming will include the Grand Taste Pavilion, held at Bicentennial Capitol State Mall Park on Friday, September 15, from 6:00 10:00 p.m., and Saturday, September 16, from 11:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m. The Grand Taste Pavilion will offer interactive cooking demonstrations, engaging panel discussions, intimate Tasting Sessions, a dynamic line-up of more than 20 local chefs a day preparing signature dishes in the Chef Showcase, Book Signings and more: www.musiccityfoodandwinefestival.com The Grand Taste Pavilion will also offer food, wine and cocktail samples from more than 80 local and regional artisans and feature celebrated pitmaster Pat Martin, who will once again host Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint and Friends, featuring an all-star line-up of chefs, beverage pros and fellow pitmasters from around the country that will smoke and grill meats and veggies in an interactive, live-fire barbeque feast on festival grounds. Back by popular demand, Music City Food + Wine Festival is proud to host Pappy Hour at the Grand Taste Pavilion on Saturday, September 16. This bourbon tasting will be led by Preston Van Winkle of Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, great grandson of iconic bourbon maker Julian P. "Pappy" Van Winkle. More information on how to attend Pappy Hour will be announced this summer. "Nashville is home to some of the world's best musicians, chefs and restaurants, and we're proud to bring them together over the course of the Music City Food + Wine weekend," says festival co-founder Ken Levitan, Vector Management. "We're thrilled to expand the Festival to include Friday night's Grand Taste and Sunday's Gospel Brunch, and look forward to a fun and delicious fifth year!" Harvest Night: On Saturday, September 16, Walk of Fame Park (4th Avenue South) will be home to Harvest Night, which will feature more chefs than ever before, with a musical tribute from award-winning steel pedal guitarist Robert Randolph who will bring the Funk to downtown Nashville. Festivalgoers can enjoy signature dishes from nearly 20 of Nashville and the country's most acclaimed chefs. Food will be served from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m., with Robert Randolph's live performance from 8:00 - 9:30 p.m. Harvest Night chefs are scheduled to include: Hugh Acheson (Five & Ten, The National, Empire State South, The Florence, Spiller Park); Jimmy Bannos (Heaven on Seven, Juicy O); Jimmy Bannos Jr. (The Purple Pig); John Besh (Marsh House, L.A. Jackson, Killebrew); Matt Bolus (The 404 Kitchen); Sean Brock (McCrady's, McCrady's Tavern, Husk, Minero); Maneet Chauhan (Chauhan Ale & Masala House); Drew Curren (Elm Restaurant Group); Cassidee Dabney (The Barn at Blackberry Farm); Susan Feniger (Border Grill); Joseph Lenn (J.C. Holdway); Tim Love (Lonesome Dove Western Bistro, Woodshed Smokehouse, Queenie's Steakhouse, Love Shack, White Elephant Saloon); Marcus Samuelsson (Marcus Samuelsson Group); Alon Shaya (Domenica, Pizza Domenica, Shaya); Jonathan Waxman (Adele's, Bajo Sexto, Barbuto, Brezza Cucina, Jams, Waxman's SF); Tandy Wilson (City House) and Andrew Zimmern (Andrew Zimmern's Canteen). Gospel Brunch: On Sunday, September 17, join an acclaimed line-up of chefs as they prepare Southern brunch favorites set to a spirited live gospel performance from Gayle Mayes for Music City Food + Wine's first-ever Gospel Brunch held at Walk of Fame Park. Some of Tennessee's most beloved chefs will serve signature dishes paired with eye-opening cocktails, wine and coffee, including Tim Love (Back Dough); Joshua Simpson (Proper Bagel); Levon Wallace (Gray & Dudley); Karl Worley (Biscuit Love Brunch) and many more special guests to be announced. Chef Showcase: Featuring different chefs and restaurants on Friday, September 15, and Saturday, September 16, the Chef Showcase in the Grand Taste Pavilion at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park (600 James Robertson Pkwy) will give attendees the opportunity to meet some of the city's top chefs, while sampling dishes from a diverse line-up of restaurants. Chef Showcase will feature some of Nashville's most beloved chefs and restaurants, including Adeles; Bajo Sexto Taco Lounge; Jessica Benefield & Trey Burnette (Two Ten Jack); Kristin Beringson (Silo); Carey Bringle (Peg Leg Porker); Chris Carter & James Peisker (Porter Road Butcher); Brandon Chavannes (Moto Cucina + Enoteca); Trey Cioccia (The Farm House); RJ Cooper (Henley); Crystal De Luna-Bogan (The Grilled Cheesrie); Nathan Duensing (Marsh House); Matt Farley (Fin & Pearl); Jay Flatley (Tavern); Brandon Frohne (Hollar and Dash Biscuit House); Tony Galzin (Nicky's Coal Fired); Sarah Gavigan (Otaku South); Daniel Herget (Little Octopus); Nick Hertel (Merchants); Hal M. Holden Bache (Lockland Table); Jess Lambert (etc Restaurant); Brian Lea (Le Sel); Daniel Lindley (5th & Taylor); Andrew Little (Josephine, Prima Nashville); Margot McCormack (Margot Cafe & Marche); Deb Paquette (Etch Restaurant); Kyle Patterson (Sinema Nashville); Nick Pellegrino (Mangia Nashville); Giovanni Pianto (Giovanni Ristorante); Andrew Rodriguez (Pinewood Social); Jesse Rossbach (Lonesome Dove Knoxville); Tyler Saracino (Americano); Nina Sayasack (Thai Esane); David Tieman (Five Points Pizza); Jason Zygmont (The Treehouse) and more. The Chef Showcase schedule will be announced this summer. Cooking Demonstrations & Book Signings: Throughout the weekend at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, attendees will have the opportunity to get up close and personal as chefs lead interactive and informative cooking demonstrations, including: Hugh Acheson; Jimmy Bannos & Jimmy Bannos Jr.; John Besh; Susan Feniger; Tim Love; Marcus Samuelsson; Jonathan Waxman and Andrew Zimmern. Check www.musiccityfoodandwinefestival.com this summer for the book signing schedule and more information on the cooking demonstrations. Panel Discussions & Tasting Sessions: Listen in as the festival's chefs, wine & spirits experts engage in dynamic conversations during a series of intimate Tasting Sessions and Panel Discussions about hilarious disasters in the kitchen, your favorite chef's go-to desert island ingredients, party playlists and more. Stay tuned for panelist and moderator announcements. Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint and Friends : Back by popular demand, Music City Food + Wine Festival is pleased to announce that Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint and Friends will once again return with an all-star line-up of chefs and pitmasters from across the country, to be announced this summer. Celebrated pitmaster Pat Martin will be joined by a host of decorated chef friends to cook and serve an interactive, live-fire barbeque and grilling fest on festival grounds at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park on Friday night and Saturday. Tickets & More Information: Music City Food + Wine Festival ticket options include an All-In Ticket, as well as Friday Evening Ticket, Saturday Ticket, Harvest Night Ticket, and Sunday Gospel Brunch Ticket. All attendees must be 21 years of age or older. The All-In Ticket ($525 per person) enables guests to experience the full weekend of Music City Food + Wine Festival programming, including Friday evening and Saturday festival access; the Grand Taste Pavilion's cooking demos and panel discussions with local and national chefs, wine & spirits experts, and sommeliers; more than 80 beer, wine, cocktail, and culinary tastings; access to Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint and Friends; and access to Saturday's Harvest Night. The Friday Evening Ticket ($165 per person) includes single-day access to Friday, September 15 festival programming at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, including the Grand Taste Pavilion's cooking demos and panel discussions with local and national chefs, wine & spirits experts, and sommeliers; more than 80 beer, wine, cocktail, and culinary tastings; and access to Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint and Friends. The Saturday Ticket ($165 per person) includes single-day access to Saturday, September 16 festival programming at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, including the Grand Taste Pavilion's cooking demos and panel discussions with local and national chefs, wine & spirits experts, and sommeliers; more than 80 beer, wine, cocktail, and culinary tastings; and access to Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint and Friends. Harvest Night Ticket ($275 per person) is available as a stand-alone ticket option for Saturday evening, September 16. Located at the Walk of Fame Park in downtown Nashville, Harvest Night brings together signature dishes from nearly 20 world-renowned chefs from Nashville and across the country with a live musical performance from award-winning steel pedal guitarist Robert Randolph. Mix and mingle with the nation's brightest culinary stars and enjoy their best dishes. We've given Gospel Brunch ($85 per person) its own day on Sunday, September 17, and tapped a stellar lineup of chefs to prepare their Sunday best for you at Walk of Fame Park: Southern classics, creative brunch fare, and everything in between. Get a jump-start on your day with eye-opening cocktails, wine, coffee, and a spirited live gospel brunch performance. For more information, please visit http://www.musiccityfoodandwinefestival.com or follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/musiccityfw) and Facebook (Facebook.com/musiccityfw) #musiccityfw. For media credentials, please fill out the online application here: http://www.musiccityfoodandwinefestival.com/press/ Music City Food + Wine is generously sponsored by: FOOD + WINE, Nashville Convention + Visitors Bureau, KitchenAid and Barilla. About Music City Food + Wine Festival: Music City Food + Wine Festival is produced by GRAMMY-award winning artists (and Nashville residents) Kings of Leon, world-renowned chef Jonathan Waxman, Vector Management's Ken Levitan and Andy Mendelsohn, and Austin-based C3 Presents producer of Austin City Limits Music Festival, Lollapalooza, Austin Food + Wine Festival and Chicago Food + Wine Festival. About FOOD & WINE: FOOD & WINE is the ultimate authority on the best of what's new in food, drink, travel, design & entertaining. Our insider intelligence can be found in every issue of the magazine, on foodandwine.com, across our social media platforms and at events like the world-famous FOOD & WINE Classic in Aspen. No matter what the medium, FOOD & WINE is the go-to-guide for adventurous epicureans, and a leader in our category. SOURCE Music City Food + Wine Festival Related Links https://www.musiccityfoodandwinefestival.com COLUMBUS, Ohio and HOLLY SPRINGS, N.C., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MyComputerCareer today announced that it has been recognized and approved by the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (or SARA). Although a voluntary organization, SARA provides a framework for states to cooperate in the oversight and review of postsecondary educational institutions providing online courses and degree programs, regardless of where the institution is headquartered within the United States. Additionally, approval by SARA increases institutional transparency for government professionals as well as students considering and/or taking online courses from postsecondary schools. "Receiving the approval of SARA and its member organization (the Southern Regional Education Board) is another step forward as we work to make MyComputerCareer one of the best adult technical schools in the country," said Tony Galati, Founder and CEO of MyComputerCareer. MyComputerCareer was formed in 2007 as an innovative adult technical school after Galati discovered that many college graduates with computer science and information technology degrees could not meet industry standard competency levels. Today the school offers rigorous I.T. Training Programs delivered on a 30-week or 42-week schedules with courses available both online and at its seven campuses in Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas. When students complete these MyComputerCareer.edu courses, they are prepared to earn up to 13 valuable I.T. Certifications in areas ranging from basic computer repair and troubleshooting to Operating Systems, advanced networking and Cyber Security, certificates often required even for those with four-year college degrees. Uniquely, MyComputerCareer provides graduates with Lifetime Career Services, giving students highly personalized job placement support throughout their careers. For information about MyComputerCareer's Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) Program individuals should visit MyComputerCareer.edu or call 866-606-6922. About MyComputerCareer.edu Based in Holly Springs, North Carolina, MyComputerCareer is an innovative adult technical school with courses taught online and at its seven campuses in Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas. Students who complete MyComputerCareer's rigorous Information Technology courses may earn up to 13 highly valuable I.T. Certifications in areas ranging from Operating Systems to Computer Networks and Cyber Security, certificates often required even for those with four-year college degrees. In addition, these courses form the foundation for students interested in obtaining an Associate's degree from MyComputerCareer. MyComputerCareer.edu Contacts: Jenny Nichols, MyComputerCareer, [email protected], 919-926-7272(c) or David Politis, The David Politis Company, [email protected], 801-556-8184 SOURCE MyComputerCareer Related Links http://www.mycomputercareer.edu Florida Tech President T. Dwayne McCay presented the honorary degree to Bisk's children, Michael and Alison, during Spring 2017 Commencement ceremonies on May 6 on the Melbourne, Fla., campus. "My father believed wholeheartedly in the power of education to transform lives for the better," said Michael Bisk, a Florida Tech trustee and chief executive officer of the Tampa, Fla.-based Bisk Inc. "He was immensely proud of our affiliation with Florida Tech and would be delighted to be an honorary Panther." A native of New Jersey, Nathan Bisk earned his Bachelor of Arts in Accounting from Franklin & Marshall College, and spent the early part of his career on the auditing staff at firms including Ernst & Young and Merrill Lynch. While attending law school at the University of Florida and preparing for the Certified Public Accountant exam, he started his business offering CPA exam prep via recorded lectures and textbooks. The company grew, expanding its distance learning services to computer software and online learning, and helping launch one of the nation's first fully online MBA programs in the mid-1990s. Today recognized as a global leader in online program management, Bisk Inc. has facilitated more than 1 million enrollments for its university partners. Bisk first partnered with Florida Tech in 2004 to offer a Master of Science in Information Technology in a 100% online format. Powered by Bisk's industry-leading technology, the innovative program provided working professionals with 24/7 web-based access to Florida Tech's world-class curriculum and faculty. The partnership flourished and now comprises nearly 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, as well as for-credit certificate offerings. Florida Tech's online programs are ranked among the nation's best by U.S. News & World Report. In 2009, Nathan Bisk donated $5 million to support Florida Tech's College of Business, including expanding its online programs and establishing an endowed chair. "It is my intent to help make the Nathan M. Bisk College of Business one of the nation's premier business colleges, as well as one of the largest," he said at the time. The college was renamed for Bisk, who served as a Florida Tech trustee for nearly eight years, and in 2014 he bestowed another gift to support its expansion into a 22,000-square-foot facility. McCay said Bisk's lasting impact on Florida Tech extends far beyond the building that bears his name. "Nathan was a trailblazer in higher education, and his considerable contributions to our university community, both personal and professional, are reflected in the accomplishments of countless Florida Tech students who are bettering themselves through education," McCay said. For more information Victoria Raymer Public Relations 813-621-6200 Ext. 6257 [email protected] About Bisk Bisk partners with leading universities and organizations to deliver online degree and certificate programs to learners around the world. For 20 years, Bisk's online program management services have helped universities and corporations expand their institutional reach and deliver quality programs at scale. Bisk has facilitated more than 1 million enrollments for clients including Villanova, Notre Dame and Michigan State. Bisk is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, with more than 750 employees. Learn more at Bisk.com. SOURCE Bisk Related Links http://www.bisk.com NORTH FALMOUTH, Mass., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On Saturday, May 6, Kevin Lynch, President and CEO of The Quell Foundation, was the commencement speaker at Penn State's College of Health and Human Development graduation ceremony. Lynch challenged the nearly 14,000 people in attendance to stand up if they had a friend, relative or loved one that struggled with mental illness. "Would you sit with them in the dark? Would you stand up and stand beside them so they could feel your support?" That call-to-action, never before heard on a college campus, led the audience to stand in solidarity as advocates for supporting those struggling with mental illness. Diagnosed with depression in 2012, Lynch works to combat the stigma associated with mental illness. The Quell Foundation educates communities about issues and concerns surrounding mental health, promoting open, judgment-free dialogue. "I asked these graduates and their guests to stand up as a way to demonstrate that each one of us knows someone, or is someone, affected by mental illness. I wanted the graduates to see how widespread this challenge is, and help them appreciate how deeply connected they are to crushing the stigma," said Lynch. Lynch told the graduates, "I am confident your generation will remove the stigma of mental healthYou have grown up standing up for what is right inclusion and equalityYou are the next generation to not only navigate change, but make change happen." Lynch, an alumni of Penn State with a masters in health administration, was recognized by Dr. Ann C. Crowder, Dean of College of Health and Human Development, as "on a mission to end the social stigma of mental illness." Lynch's speech can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/user12034463/psucommencement2017quell. About The Quell Foundation, Inc. The mission of The Quell Foundation is to create a paradigm shift in the care and treatment of people with mental health illness. The Quell Foundation is registered 501 (c) (3) not-for profit organization benefitting the over 43 million Americans living with mental illness. Visit thequellfoundation. org to learn more, or contact Kevin Lynch at [email protected]. QUELL /kwell v. 1. To bring order and balance to chaos The Quell Foundation is a public not-for profit 501(c)(3) corporation registered in Massachusetts. Contact Information Kevin Lynch, President & CEO The Quell Foundation [email protected] 561-722-1938 SOURCE Quell Foundation OAKLAND, Calif., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Deloitte today announced new research that identifies keys to driving a highly diverse and inclusive corporate culture, which in turn drives better business outcomes. Summarized in a WhatWorks brief, the findings appear in "High-Impact Diversity and Inclusion: Maturity Model and Top Findings," research from Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. Researchers will present this study during Bersin by Deloitte's IMPACT 2017 conference, May 22-25 at the Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood, Florida. Based on a survey of 245 global organizations and more than 70 client interviews, the new four-level maturity model describes the evolution of diversity and inclusion and what companies should do to move from a compliance emphasis to a strategic focus in order to create a truly inclusive culture. The research reveals that organizations with inclusive cultures are six times more likely to be innovative, six times more likely to anticipate change and respond effectively, and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets. Despite the demonstrated benefits of embracing an inclusive culture, the research also indicates that only 12 percent of organizations around the world have reached full maturity. "Diversity and inclusion has been a compliance function driven by human resources for too long," said Josh Bersin, principal and founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "Our new diversity and inclusion maturity model shows that the most effective way to achieve significant gains is through leadership ownership, strategic measurement, and a culture of accountability for inclusion that is driven from top to bottom." The research demonstrates that inclusive organizations outperform their peers, and these organizations embed these strategies in almost all management decisions. The strong performance of such organizations may be among the reasons the "2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends" research shows 78 percent of respondents believe diversity and inclusion is a competitive advantage. "Our research demonstrates that inclusive talent practices drive measurable and predictable business outcomes," said Stacia Sherman Garr, vice president, talent and workforce research leader, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "After two years of study, we conclude that these business outcomes are possible for all companies but only with a change in focus. The research shows that CEOs and business leaders should own the strategy, and the entire organization should embed and use inclusive talent practices." The research also shows that in organizations with inclusive cultures, people tend to feel that they can be themselves, share problems, make mistakes, innovate, and drive change. In addition, the new research offers a roadmap for organizations that want to create inclusive cultures. Specifically, it reveals six principles that are key to creating a more inclusive organization: Treat the evolution of diversity and inclusion as business-critical, not compliance-necessary. Organizations that approach diversity and inclusion as a business priority are more likely to report superior business outcomes. Move beyond diversity to inclusion and diversity. Organizations that focus on the value of inclusion, in addition to diversity, typically enjoy superior performance as compared with peer organizations that do not. Prioritize inclusive leadership. Leaders who demonstrate behaviors such as courage, curiosity, and cultural intelligence tend to enable cultures that encourage inclusiveness. Reinforce an inclusive culture by integrating both demographic diversity and diversity of thought into all talent management practices. It is especially important to do this at moments that affect the talent pipeline, such as decisions that impact talent acquisition, promotions, succession management and leadership development. Provide diversity and inclusion resources that empower individuals to take action. Inclusive organizations are more likely to offer resources that enable individuals to bring their authentic selves to work, manage unconscious bias effectively, and leverage the support of mentors and sponsors to help them navigate their organizations. Further, more mature organizations offer these resources broadly not just for diverse populations. Drive accountability, not metrics tracking. Organizations should create accountability by sharing strategic measurements about diversity and inclusion-related activities and their impact, and have senior leaders discuss achievement on an ongoing basis. One aspect of this might be to tie compensation to diversity and inclusion outcomes, a practice employed currently by only 6 percent of companies surveyed. To begin to achieve maturity, organizations should talk about diversity and inclusion as a critical component of the organization's business strategy through both formal communications and reporting relationships, according to the research. "Organizations can also build an awareness of bias into critical talent activities, to remind all employees of the importance of managing bias at moments that will have long-term impacts on the talent pipeline," Garr said. "Critically, leaders should be held accountable for improving diversity and inclusion outcomes just as they are accountable for other business metrics." To learn more, register to hear Stacia Sherman Garr describe the top findings of this research in two upcoming online webinars: High-Impact Diversity and Inclusion: The New Maturity Model, 2 p.m. EDT /19:00 British Summer Time, May 18, 2017 . Candace Atamanik , talent and workforce research leader, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP, will co-present this webinar. /19:00 British Summer Time, . , talent and workforce research leader, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP, will co-present this webinar. Inclusive Cultures and HR Digitalization: HR technology's Impact on Workplace Equity and Diversity, 2 p.m. EDT /19:00 British Summer Time, June 29, 2017 . Bersin by Deloitte delivers research-based people strategies designed to help leaders and their organizations in their efforts to deliver exceptional business performance. A Bersin by Deloitte membership gives HR professionals the information and tools they need to design and implement leading practice solutions, benchmark against others, develop their staff, and select and implement systems. Those interested in learning more about Bersin by Deloitte or its WhatWorks membership can email [email protected] or call +1 510 241 4400. About Deloitte Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including 80 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than 6,000 private and middle market companies. Our people work across more than 20 industry sectors to deliver measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to make their most challenging business decisions with confidence, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthy society. Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms. SOURCE Deloitte Related Links http://www.deloitte.com/us The concept of a new transloading site is the idea of Mr. Real Tetrault of Emerson, MB. Tetrault is also the CEO and President of Emerson Milling Inc, an oat milling plant located at Emerson, MB. His 30 year old company is already shipping oat products by CN rail into the United States and Mexico. The product is loaded on CN rail and the rail cars are interchanged at Emerson, MB with the BNSF railway. This led to the idea of building an industrial park to transload other products that travel by rail but still require a truck to move the product to and from the rail site. The new location will be of particular importance to the agricultural trade as a private producer car loading site. This will allow farmers to ship their products by rail to either Canadian, US or Mexican destinations. Another vital agricultural market that Tetrault wants to capitalize on is "Identity Preserved" grain shipments to millers and processing plants. Manitoba's Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Cliff Cullen welcomed the new investment. "Cross-border trade is vital to the growth and prosperity of Manitoba's economy," said Cullen. "This development is strategically positioned with direct links to international markets. Manitoba producers, processors and small and mid-size shippers will benefit from the opportunities this new inland port will provide." Mid Canada Transload Services Ltd will also handle other commodities and manufactured products that travel in and out of Manitoba and Saskatchewan by rail. According to Tetrault, "any product that travels more than 10 hours by truck is more cost effective freight when shipped by rail." Tetrault further said, "We are offering a service to and from our rail site and we will transload the customers' product in a safe and efficient environment. We are also willing to build on this site as our customer may require." SOURCE Mid Canada Transload Services Ltd. IRVINE, Calif., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Proove Biosciences, Inc. announces a new study validating the accuracy of precision medicine technology to predict prescription opioid abuse. This study, entitled "Evaluation of a Predictive Algorithm that Detects Aberrant Use of Opioids in an Addiction Treatment Centre", is published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Addiction Research and Therapy (Impact Factor: 1.4). Distinguished Fellow American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), Diplomate American Board of Addiction Medicine and Fellow American College of Preventive Medicine, J. Ramsay Farah, MD, MPH, MRO, CPE, led a research team that showed Proove Opioid Risk identifies patients at risk for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) with nearly 97% accuracy. This study evaluated 186 patients, comparing 94 Medicaid patients at an addiction treatment facility with confirmed cases of opioid abuse, and 92 healthy patients with no history of opioid use. The receiving operator characteristic (ROC) curve had an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.967. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the "moderate risk" cut-off score was 98%, while the specificity of the "high risk" score was 100%. Dr. Farah, who serves as the Chief Medical Officer for the Phoenix Health Center in Hagerstown, prior NE Regional Medical Director for United Healthcare Clinical Services and Director ASAM explains, "Based on ASAM's definition of addiction, about half of substance abuse is due to genetic factors. This study shows that analyzing genetics with lifestyle and behavioral variables in a predictive algorithm can accurately stratify patient risk." Dr. Ashley Brenton, Associate Director of R&D for Proove states, "This validation study builds on the peer-reviewed evidence supporting Proove Opioid Risk and its components as an optimal model to predict opioid abuse risk." Study author, Gregory A. Smith, M.D, former Director of Pain Management at Harbor UCLA, explains, "Having used this technology for 6 years, this data provides further evidence that clinicians can use Proove Opioid Risk for ruling out patients unlikely to exhibit aberrant behaviors, and identifying high-risk patients for alternative therapies." Proove Opioid Risk is a proprietary precision medicine profile consisting of an algorithm which analyzes 17 variables (11 genetic and 6 lifestyle and behavioral factors) individually supported by over 30 peer-reviewed publications. Peer-reviewed clinical studies show that the Proove Opioid Risk profile accurately identifies patient risk for opioid abuse. About Proove Biosciences: Proove Biosciences is the leader in precision medicine for the condition that lies at the nexus of health pain. Proove delivers precision medicine solutions for the nation's most prevalent and expensive health condition by investing heavily in research that has won awards from leading medical societies and been published in peer-reviewed journals. Discovered by NIH-funded scientists, Proove has translated into clinical practice the genetic variants and phenotypic factors contributing to pain sensitivity and chronic pain risk. Proove's medical advisory board is led by those NIH-funded researchers and the company has licensed some of its technology from leading academic centers, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Utah, and other institutions. Positioned as The Healthcare Decision Company, Proove's patented technology platform combines genetic, clinical, environmental and lifestyle information to help clinicians better evaluate pain sensitivity, assess risk for opioid use disorder, predict therapeutic response to pain medications, and assess drug metabolism for the many medications used in chronic pain patients. For more information, please visit www.proove.com or call toll free 855-PROOVE-BIO (855-776-6832). SOURCE Proove Biosciences, Inc. Related Links http://www.proove.com Yet majority of these women remain unprepared to give or receive wealth 98% of women say they are joint or sole decision-makers for daily banking 84% of women have joint or full responsibility for family investments 92% of women are educating, or intend to start educating, the next generation on wealth and money topics Only 22% of women have a full wealth transfer strategy in place MINNEAPOLIS, MN, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Over the coming years, an estimated $3.2 trillion will transfer to the next generation in the U.S. Women, for a variety of factors, including longer life expectancy, will be the recipients of the majority of this wealth. But despite their rising influence on family wealth, most high net worth women are not prepared to either give or receive this money, according to new global research by RBC Wealth Management conducted in collaboration with Scorpio Partnership. Women play a critical decision-making role in family financial management, and are instrumental in deciding how to educate the next generation on money matters. Notably, 98 percent of female survey respondents report that they are either sole or joint decision-makers for daily banking; 84 percent are fully or partially responsible for the family investment portfolio. However, of those surveyed, only 22 percent of women said they have a full wealth transfer strategy in place, compared to 30 percent of men. "Women are becoming an economic powerhouse in the U.S.," said Angie O'Leary, head of Wealth Planning at RBC Wealth Management U.S. "A growing number are moving into the corporate executive ranks while others are starting their own businesses. Couple that trend with the fact that women, on average, live longer than men, and you can see how women are both creating and controlling more wealth than ever before. As such, it is important that they have wealth transfer discussions with their benefactors and have a solid wealth transfer plan in place." Women also play a critical role in the transfer of wealth and knowledge to the next generation. Survey respondents indicated they intend to start educating the next generation at an earlier age (generally two years earlier) than men across all areas of money managementday-to-day budgeting, investment strategy and wealth transfer. "The most effective way to teach children is to start early and with the basics," added O'Leary. "By bringing children into conversations about money and wealth at an early age, parents are actively instilling good financial values in their children, arming them with the mindset for financial success." The survey results also show that efforts to teach children about financial matters earlier are paying off. Millennial women in particular are benefiting from their mothers' efforts. The research shows that more than half of female millennials describe themselves as confident in matters of wealth: 51 percent of under-35 women surveyed give themselves a rating of 7 or higher, meaning they are confident in their wealth knowledge. The research undertaken from June to August 2016 includes responses from 1,752 high net worth women from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, who have an average net worth of $4.4 million. These individuals included professionals, retirees and business owners, as well as givers and recipients of wealth. Other key findings from the report include: Women are less inclined to give while living. Only 27 percent of the women surveyed said they intend to pass on their wealth to the next generation during their lifetime vs. 32 percent of men. Only 27 percent of the women surveyed said they intend to pass on their wealth to the next generation during their lifetime vs. 32 percent of men. However, of those women who do intend to give to their heirs while living, 27 percent said they would do so to help their inheritors achieve their ambitions more immediately. That compares with only 18 percent of men. A fear of running out of money seems to drive women's reluctance to give while alive. When asked why they would prefer to pass on their wealth only upon death, 27 percent of female respondents said because they feel they don't have enough to give away gradually (vs. 18 percent of men). When asked why they would prefer to pass on their wealth only upon death, 27 percent of female respondents said because they feel they don't have enough to give away gradually (vs. 18 percent of men). Women are less likely to be supported adequately when they receive an inheritance, with only 29 percent of female inheritors indicating that they received guidance from benefactors on how to use the assets (vs. 37 percent of males) and 36 percent stating they received no guidance at all. In January 2017, RBC Wealth Management released the 2017 Wealth Transfer Report, Lasting Legacy, which focused on wealth transfer trends in the U.S., Canada and the UK. In addition to the Women & Wealth Transfer report, RBC will release three additional research papers in spring 2017, which will delve further into the challenges and opportunities business owners, families and millennials face when it comes to inheritance. The full details of the report, and a survey which allows Americans to compare their answers to the findings, is available on www.RBCWealthManagement.com. This study focuses on linear transfers, in which wealth is passed down from the older generation of parents, grandparents or elder family members, to the younger generation. The research does not explore multi-dimensional transfers of wealth between spouses, children or siblings. About RBC Wealth Management U.S. In the United States, RBC Wealth Management operates as a division of RBC Capital Markets, LLC. Founded in 1909, RBC Capital Markets, LLC. is a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and other major securities exchanges. RBC Wealth Management has $289 billion in total client assets with 1,800 financial advisors operating in 200 locations in 41 states. SOURCE RBC Wealth Management - U.S. PHILADELPHIA, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters (NRCC) today announced their list of endorsed candidates for the upcoming Pennsylvania Democratic Primary election. NRCC Executive Secretary-Treasurer John Ballantyne said, "We are pleased to endorse this strong docket of candidates as they support many of the same important worker rights issues that are important to our Council in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Issues like prevailing wage on public infrastructure projects are so important not only to thousands of carpenters who work in the Commonwealth, but all middle-class workers in our region who are trying to make a good life for themselves and their families. Tricia Mueller, NRCC Political Director said, "As contributing partners to the economic, civic and social vitality of the City of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania, the Carpenters Union believes in taking an active part in the political process. Our involvement in endorsing candidates lets our members know which candidates share our values and support our vision for the continued economic growth and expansion of our region." The Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters endorsed the following candidates seeking the offices listed below: Larry Krasner (D) - District Attorney (D) - District Attorney Dwayne D. Woodruff (D) - Supreme Court Judge (D) - Supreme Court Judge Maria McLaughlin (D) - Superior Court Judge (D) - Superior Court Judge Carolyn H. Nichols (D) - Superior Court Judge (D) - Superior Court Judge Joseph M. Cosgrove (D) - Commonwealth Court Judge (D) - Commonwealth Court Judge Matt Wolf (D) - Municipal Court Judge (D) - Municipal Court Judge Marissa Brumbach (D) - Municipal Court Judge (D) - Municipal Court Judge Lucretia Clemons (D) - Court of Common Pleas (D) - Court of Common Pleas Zac Shaffer (D) - Court of Common Pleas (D) - Court of Common Pleas Vikki Kristiansson (D) - Court of Common Pleas (D) - Court of Common Pleas David Conroy (D) - Court of Common Pleas (D) - Court of Common Pleas Leon Goodman (D) - Court of Common Pleas 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 MILWAUKEE, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- This month, Northwestern Mutual marks the 50th anniversary of its industry-leading financial representative internship program. Since it began, more than 50,000 students nationwide have participated in the internship program. As a metric of the program's success, one third of interns who are college seniors are expected to pursue a full-time career with Northwestern Mutual after graduation. Additionally, more than half of those leading Northwestern Mutual offices around the country are former interns, while even more are among the company's most successful financial representatives. "Our internship program has been instrumental in attracting, cultivating, and retaining the next generation of leaders," said Michael Van Grinsven, internship program director. "As a result, Northwestern Mutual has built a robust talent pipeline prepared to meet the growing demand for holistic financial solutions." Distinguished by the immersive, real-world experience it provides, the internship program has earned consistent accolades in key rankings. Northwestern Mutual is the only firm to be named to the top 10 of the Vault's Top 50 Internships List for 21 consecutive years. In 2016, the internship earned the No. 1 position for financial services and No. 4 overall across all industries. Additionally, the company ranks second for career development opportunities and 10th in the U.S. in terms of positive office culture, flexibility and work-life balance. "The opportunity in financial advice is significant --- and growing. According to our proprietary research, there is a strong appetite, especially among Millennials for financial guidance," continued Van Grinsven. "Northwestern Mutual's internship program enables talented and diverse professionals to explore an exciting and lucrative career path with access to best-in-class training, mentorship, and digital capabilities." Participating in Northwestern Mutual's internship program has broad benefits. A recent survey of former interns revealed positive impact on personal and professional development as well as financial well-being, namely: Three quarters say they still use what they learned during the internship 8 in 10 say the internship helped them identify what they are good at 83% noted that it increased their confidence in making financial decisions, and, because of it, they feel financially secure "We're extremely proud of this milestone and our strong track record for helping develop business and community leaders for our company, industry, and the world-at-large," said Van Grinsven. "We look forward to even more success in the next 50 years as our company and industry continue to evolve." Interested applicants can visit the Northwestern Mutual website to learn more about available internship opportunities. About Northwestern Mutual Northwestern Mutual has been helping families and businesses achieve financial security for 160 years. Through a distinctive, whole-picture planning approach including both insurance and investments, we empower people to be financially confident so they can live life differently. We combine the expertise of our financial professionals with a personalized digital experience to help our clients navigate their financial lives every day. With $250.4 billion in assets, $28.2 billion in revenues, and more than $1.6 trillion worth of life insurance protection in force, Northwestern Mutual delivers financial security to more than 4.4 million people who rely on us for life, disability income and long-term care insurance, annuities, brokerage and advisory services, trust services, and discretionary portfolio management solutions. The company holds more than $100 billion of client assets as a part of its wealth management company and investment services. Northwestern Mutual ranks 100 on the 2016 FORTUNE 500 and is recognized by FORTUNE as one of the "World's Most Admired" life insurance companies in 2017. Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (NM), Milwaukee, WI (life and disability insurance, annuities, and life insurance with long-term care benefits) and its subsidiaries. Northwestern Mutual and its subsidiaries offer a comprehensive approach to financial security solutions including: life insurance, long-term care insurance, disability income insurance, annuities, life insurance with long-term care benefits, investment products, and advisory products and services. Subsidiaries include Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS) (securities), broker-dealer, registered investment adviser, member FINRA and SIPC; the Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company (NMWMC) (fiduciary and fee-based financial planning services), federal savings bank; and Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company (NLTC) (long-term care insurance). SOURCE Northwestern Mutual Related Links http://www.northwesternmutual.com MONROVIA, Calif. and SEATTLE, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Parasoft, the leader in software testing solutions, today announced its latest enhancements of their API testing and service virtualization solutions for the Microsoft Environment at Microsoft Build 2017, taking place May 10-12 in Seattle. Parasoft will be featuring its new functionality at booth #209. To get started and learn more, visit: http://software.parasoft.com/virtualize/microsoft/ Parasoft SOAtest and Virtualize are widely recognized as industry standard tools for enabling teams to quickly solve today's most challenging issues, including security, performance, and test environment obstacles. In a continued effort to improve functionality and ease-of-use for customers, Parasoft has introduced new functionality and streamlined workflows to address everyday challenges that software developers and testers face. Parasoft has focused on three key areas with this new release: Broadening access to testing through the thin client interface: Greater access enables teams to quickly initiate testing projects, facilitate correlation and collaboration, and seamlessly tie test scenarios to environments. Greater access enables teams to quickly initiate testing projects, facilitate correlation and collaboration, and seamlessly tie test scenarios to environments. Solving data challenges through enhanced workflows: Providing quick and simple access to test data helps test designers create move efficient and effective tests. Providing quick and simple access to test data helps test designers create move efficient and effective tests. Shift-left performance testing: Early-stage performance testing is available by reusing existing test artifacts in performance tests and reviewing results in the Web-enabled dashboard. To learn more about Parasoft's offering, please visit: Visual Studio benefits portal: http://my.visualstudio.com?wt.mc_id=AID605451_QSG_141866 Visual Studio Subscriptions overview page: https://www.visualstudio.com/subscriptions?wt.mc_id=AID605451_QSG_141871 Parasoft SOAtest-Virtualize Desktop for Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers: http://software.parasoft.com/virtualize/microsoft/ About Parasoft Parasoft provides innovative tools that automate time-consuming testing tasks and provide management with intelligent analytics necessary to focus on what matters. Parasoft's technologies reduce the time, effort, and cost of delivering secure, reliable, and compliant software, by integrating static and runtime analysis; unit, functional, and API testing; and service virtualization. Parasoft supports software organizations as they develop and deploy applications in the embedded, enterprise, and IoT markets. With developer testing tools, manager reporting/analytics, and executive dashboarding, Parasoft enables organizations to succeed in today's most strategic development initiatives agile, continuous testing, DevOps, and security. SOURCE Parasoft Related Links http://www.parasoft.com The first hotel in Istanbul Tourism Center which is under construction by DATI Yatrm Holding will be JW Marriott Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center. With 449 room capacity having elegant and splendid architecture, JW Marriott Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center will be realized with the investment of US$200 million by DATI Yatrm Holding. A press meeting was held on 10 May 2017 with the participation of Marriot International Europe Chief Operations Officer for Luxury Operations (COO) Satya Anand, Marriott International Vice-President, Development Pogda Demircan, DATI Yatrm Holding A.S. Executive Board Chairman Gokhan Kran and Dati Holding Subsidiary Management Company Atakoy Otelcilik A.S General Manager Mehmet Culha to give information about the investment which will make Istanbul's tourism potential stronger. DATI Yatrm Holding A.S. Executive Board Chairman Gokhan Kran said that they undersigned an important cooperation with Marriott International. Gokhan Kran reminded that they developed "Istanbul Tourism Center" which would contribute to making Istanbul one of the leading tourism centers of the world, on an area of approximately 500 thousand sqm, and added that JW Marriott Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center would be one of the most important parts of the project. Mehmet Culha, Gokhan Kiran, Satya Anand, Pogda Demircan Gokhan Kran said that Istanbul always continues to be one of the best congress cities of the world despite the recent adverse events, and added that their investment would provide significant contribution and benefits for the congress tourism of the city. Dati Holding Subsidiary Management Company Atakoy Otelcilik A.S General Manager Mehmet Culha stated that the hotel of JW Marriott, that would serve in Istanbul for the first time, would consist of 354 Deluxe, 56 Suite, 39 Club rooms. JW Marriott Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center will be located close to historical peninsula of Istanbul, Eurasia tunnel which connects two continents under the sea and Ataturk Airport and also in the heart of all transportation network with sea bus terminal and metro station inside ITM project, and added that it would offer unforgettable Istanbul memories to its exclusive guests from Turkey and World with its warm, sincere decoration, panoramic sea and marina view. Marriot International Europe Chief Operations Officer for Luxury Operations (COO) Satya Anand said, "The combination of modern and sophisticated design of the hotel with JW Marriott signature service will redefine the luxury in this city. We are looking forward to host the travel lovers coming from all over the world to visit Istanbul, while experiencing this hotel and this characteristic city". Marriott International Vice-President, Development Pogda Demircan said, "The unity of Marriott and Starwood, two of the biggest hotel companies of the world, made 25 hotels in Turkey participate in the same family together with their investors and employees. Another one is being realized today here. While Istanbul Tourism Center revives, Sheraton and JW Marriott brands come together within the same project. The seeds of the confidence in Istanbul tourism, especially in its potential in congress tourism, are planted here. We cannot thank DATI Holding enough for its confidence in the future of Istanbul and its courage. We, as Marriott International, believe that Turkey tourism will return fast to the place it deserves and we will continue to invest in Turkey." The project of JW Marriot Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center has been designed by Tabanloglu Architecture. The hotel will have 15 meeting halls at different sizes, and a high-ceiled ball room equipped with the state-of-the-art technology in an area of 650 sqm that will host its guests on special days and meetings with the capacity of 600 persons. The Hotel will be the indispensable address of all meetings with total capacity of 1400 persons from 80 sqm to 650 sqm. The guests staying in the hotel can taste the daily flavors in the main restaurant for 350 persons or experience the exclusive tastes from the world cuisine in Fine Dining Restaurant. Besides, there will be Lobby Lounge outstanding with its special architecture and a Roof Bar with an excellent view inside the hotel. JW Marriot Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center will be one of the favorite places of the city with its unique Istanbul view, rich bar, special cocktails and snacks, and improve the quality in Istanbul, one of the important cities of tourism, with its service quality. VIP Family Suites in SPA Center SPA center of JW Marriott Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center will be built on an area of 3000 sqm. It will offer unique experience for the guests with comfortable massage rooms and quiet and relaxing rest areas, fitness center equipped with new technologies and private exercise areas, jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, snow fountain and Turkish Bath. SPA center of JW Marriott Istanbul Hotel & Conference Center will offer unique experience for the guests with SPA and massage package options, and stimulate the unique feelings in company with naive music, soft lights and peaceful scents, and make the guests experience the feelings not experienced before. There will also be specially designed VIP Suite rooms in SPA Center. There will be massage room for couples, Turkish bath, jacuzzi, sauna and special changing rooms in VIP Suites, and the guests will have the opportunity to benefit from all services available in SPA center together with their families or spouses in these special suites. Phonak, the leading global provider of hearing instruments and wireless communication solutions, today announces that it will start a pilot program through Iron Bow to provide the U.S. Department of Veteran s Affairs (VA) real-life opportunities for employing modern telehealth solutions to enable a distance fitting approach for hearing aids . With this innovative distance support solution the two organizations are further lead ing the way in the field of e H earing c are in an effort to make the lives of v eterans with hearing loss easier. The development of the solution is already well advanced and f irst field trials will start this summer . (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/509826/Phonak.jpg ) The VA is one of the most important providers of hearing care in the United States. In a given year, over 1,000 audiologists at the VA provide more than 375,000 hearing aid adjustments and care services. A necessary and important part of that process is fine tuning of hearing aids. With the introduction of VA HearAssist a veteran can be anywhere in the world and have his or her hearing aids adjusted. Phonak, through Iron Bow, is one of the two partners to develop this solution for the VA, which is a great reflection of the company's innovation leadership. VA HearAssist allows the hearing aid wearer to connect via smartphone to the audiologist's fitting software via a secure internet connection. Using a Bluetooth link between the hearing aid and smartphone mobile app developed by Phonak, the audiologist can then directly access the hearing aids, without the use of an additional intermediary device. This allows the provider to check and adjust settings in real-time, while at the same time providing advice to the hearing aid wearer via video conference. Both, audiologists and veterans, benefit from this technology. VA HearAssist is easy to use - all it requires is the installation of the corresponding Android or iOS app on a preferred device. It is efficient and saves travel and waiting time. At the same time the app enables hearing aid wearers to take a more active role during the fitting process. "We are honored that Phonak has been selected as a trusted partner for running this pilot study. We have been working closely together for many years and this partnership once again proves our unwavering commitment to push the limits of technology and our efforts in the field of eSolutions for hearing care," says Jan Metzdorff, President of Phonak U.S. VA HearAssist will explore base line clinical trials at three VA facilities in Cleveland, Chicago and Miami this summer with a selected group of veterans. About the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs The mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Center for Innovation (CI) is to provide innovative solutions to complex VA problems. VACI strives to elicit solutions that in turn provide high quality, effective and efficient Connected Care, Telehealth, services to those responsible for providing care to the Veterans at the point-of-care as well as throughout all the points of the Veterans' health care in an effective, timely and compassionate manner. About Phonak In 2017, Phonak, a member of the Sonova Group, proudly celebrates its 70th anniversary. Headquartered near Zurich, Switzerland, Phonak was born in 1947 out of a passion for taking on the most difficult hearing challenges. Seventy years later, this passion remains. As the industry's leading provider, we offer the broadest portfolio of life-changing hearing solutions. From pediatric to profound hearing loss, we remain committed to creating hearing solutions that change people's lives to thrive socially and emotionally. We believe in creating a world where 'Life is on' for everyone. At Phonak, we believe that hearing well is essential to living life to the fullest. For 70 years, we've remained true to our mission, creating life-changing hearing solutions to help people thrive socially and emotionally. Life is on. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.phonak.com, http://www.phonakpro.com or contact: Media Relations Michael Isaac Telefon +41-58-928-33-24 Mobil +41-79-420-29-56 E-Mail [email protected] SOURCE Phonak AG HARRISBURG, Pa., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) today issued an invitation for bids to award 50 expired restaurant licenses in the third license auction since Act 39 became effective in August 2016. This auction includes 50 licenses across 40 counties: Two licenses each in the following counties: Allegheny , Berks , Chester , Delaware , Lancaster , Lehigh , Luzerne , Montgomery , Philadelphia and York . , , , , , , , , and . One license in each of the following 40 counties: Beaver , Bedford , Blair , Bradford , Bucks , Centre , Clarion , Clearfield , Columbia , Dauphin , Erie , Forest , Franklin , Fulton , Huntingdon , Lackawanna , Lebanon , Lycoming , Mifflin , Monroe , Northampton , Northumberland , Perry , Potter , Schuylkill , Snyder , Somerset , Tioga , Westmoreland , and Wyoming . The third auction will again use a sealed bid process, which successfully awarded 37 licenses in the first auction and 42 licenses in the second auction. Bids for the 50 licenses offered in this restaurant license auction are due by noon on Friday, June 30. Bids will be opened and auction winners will be determined the week of July 3. The minimum bid for each license is $25,000, and each bid must be accompanied by a $5,000 bid surety intended to avoid frivolous and underfunded bids. The highest responsive bidder for each license will win the right to submit an application for the license to the PLCB within six months of auction award. If bid payment is not received within two weeks of auction award, the second-highest bidder will have opportunity to apply for the license. Bids will be held in escrow by the PLCB, pending approval of the license application. Bidders with questions regarding this invitation for bid must submit inquiries via email to [email protected] by noon on Wednesday, May 24. Questions and answers will be posted to the Department of General Services e-marketplace website by noon on Friday, May 26. Lists of winning bids from each of the two previous auctions are available on the license auction page of the PLCB website. Auction revenue cannot be totaled until license approvals are granted and bids come out of escrow. The PLCB regulates the distribution of beverage alcohol in Pennsylvania, operates more than 600 wine and spirits stores statewide and licenses more than 20,000 beverage alcohol producers and retailers. The PLCB also works to reduce and prevent dangerous and underage drinking through partnerships with schools, community groups and licensees. Taxes and store profits totaling $15.1 billion since the agency's inception are returned to Pennsylvania's General Fund, which finances Pennsylvania's schools, health and human services programs, law enforcement, and public safety initiatives, among other important public services. The PLCB also provides financial support for the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, other state agencies and local municipalities across the state. For more information about the PLCB, visit www.lcb.pa.gov. MEDIA CONTACT: Elizabeth Brassell, 717-783-8864 SOURCE Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board Related Links http://www.lcb.state.pa.us "PocketECG is the only FDA approved mobile cardiac telemetry device that records and annotates every QRS complex and recognizes its morphology," said Marek Dziubinski, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of MEDICALgorithmics S.A. "This, when combined with the physical activity monitoring feature, allows us to provide better correlation data and enable specialists to derive more meaningful HR measurements to better guide treatment decisions." Many cardiac conditions cannot be diagnosed with a single ECG test, or by using standard diagnostic methods of arrhythmia detection. PocketECG makes precise diagnosis possible through full disclosure monitoring and transmission of a patient's ECG for up to 30 days, labeling and morphology-based classification of every heartbeat, as well as true statistical reporting of the detected arrhythmia. "PocketECG's reports show a physician everything they need to know to guide treatment decisions," said Dr. Dziubinski. "The system always detects the onset, offset, and the most extreme part of each arrhythmia episode not just the "snapshots." This feature overcomes the limitations of all other mobile cardiac telemetry systems ensuring a more accurate diagnosis." About PocketECG PocketECG is the only FDA approved unified arrhythmia diagnostic system. PocketECG was created in consultation with electrophysiologists, cardiologists and nurses to address the gaps and limitations of arrhythmia detection and diagnostics methods. As a result, PocketECG's online arrhythmia monitoring system offers unique technical capabilities that combine benefits of various methods while eliminating traditional limitations. PocketECG offers full disclosure, morphology-based online monitoring, where all heartbeats are labeled and the arrhythmia detection results are statistically summarized in the reports. The reports present meaningful ECG strips showing extreme cases of detected arrhythmia and include onset and offset, and the extreme part of each arrhythmia episode. The new physical activity analysis section in the report presents the correlation between the patient's physical activity, the arrhythmia and the symptoms. About Arrhythmia and Atrial Fibrillation Arrhythmia refers to any change, or abnormality in the sequence of electrical impulses that influence heart rhythms. Atrial Fibrillation (AF), affecting almost three million Americans, is a form of arrhythmia resulting in a quivering or irregular heartbeat. It can lead to heart-related complications including blood clots, stroke, and heart failure. Left untreated, AF can double the risk of heart-related death and increase stroke risk by as much as five times in patients. About Heart Rhythm Society The Heart Rhythm Society's 38th Annual Scientific Sessions convenes the finest clinicians, scientists, researchers and innovators in the field of cardiac pacing and electrophysiology. More than 800 of the worlds' most noted experts in cardiac rhythm management serve as faculty for more than 250 educational sessions while more than 130 exhibitors showcase innovative products and services. Attendees can anticipate an enhanced experience with advanced learning formats and new opportunities for networking. About MEDICALgorithmics S.A. MEDICALgorithmics S.A. (WSE:MDG) is a leader in arrhythmia diagnostic solutions. Its PocketECG solution is used for remote monitoring of cardiac disorders, arrhythmia diagnosis, and heart-rate monitoring around the world. It is also used in clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of new therapeutic methods. In addition, MEDICALgorithmics S.A. provides services in the field of information technology, biotechnology and scientific research. The Company is also developing several other products, including a device for cardiac rehabilitation, software for optimizing repetitive tasks in hospitals, and algorithms for remote interpretation of multi-lead electrocardiography (ECG) signals. Based in Poland, it operates in the United States through MEDICALGORITHMICS US HOLDING CORPORATION and Medi-Lynx Cardiac Monitoring LLC, the US service provider and subsidiary to MEDICALgorithmics S.A. For media inquiries: Lissette Steele 202.930.4762 [email protected] SOURCE MEDICALgorithmics S.A. NEW YORK, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Below are experts from the ProfNet network who are available to discuss timely issues in your coverage area. You can also submit a query to the hundreds of thousands of experts in our network it's easy and free! Just fill out the query form to get started: http://prn.to/queryform EXPERT ALERTS The ACA and AHCA: Repeal, Replace, and Impact on Employer-Based Health Plans Immigration and the Trump Administration GOP Reform/Repeal of Dodd-Frank Act EXPERT ROUNDUP Trump's Tax Reform Plan (14 experts) MEDIA JOBS Deputy Bureau Chief, Bankruptcy Wall Street Journal U.S. Correspondent South China Morning Post Features Editor Modern Healthcare OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES Journalist Spotlight: Anthony Zangrillo , Fordham IPLJ , Fordham IPLJ How to Become a Stand-out Photographer in Four Steps Blog Profiles: Travel and Wanderlust Blogs ------------------------------------------------------------------- EXPERT ALERTS: The ACA and AHCA: Repeal, Replace, and Impact on Employer-Based Health Plans Ron E. Peck Senior Vice President and General Counsel The Phia Group, Braintree, Mass. Healthcare reform continues to be a hot topic, though what that means varies from person to person. Regardless of your view on healthcare, it cannot be denied that the majority of Americans have, and continue to receive, healthcare through their employer. How the cost of healthcare, existing and new laws, and other innovative methodologies impact employer based health plans, and the evolving nature of these plans -- today and in the future -- are topics Peck is available to discuss: "In the United States of America, our lawmakers have and continue to focus entirely on 'who' pays for healthcare. Ensuring every American has health insurance has not, and will not, solve the problem. The issue is that healthcare costs too much in this country. The only solution will come from a combination of consumerism on the part of patients -- who must care about the cost of care they receive -- creative processes implemented by payers, and more efficient, cost-effective providers. The industry must solve the problem of cost, as lawmakers seem unable or unwilling to challenge those who game the system, and dip deeply into what is perceived to be the bottomless pocket that is insurance." ProfNet Profile: http://www.profnetconnect.com/ronpeck Website: www.phiagroup.com Contact: Matthew Painten, [email protected] Immigration and the Trump Administration Juan Carlos Gomez Director of Clinical Programs; Director of the Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic Florida International University, Miami Gomez was recently quoted on NBC 6 in Florida regarding Trump's executive order on immigration (article: http://tinyurl.com/l4dwyrt): "I think the community, while worried, should not panic. They should go get the correct information, understanding that this is only the beginning of a new policy but due process still exists in the United States." Gomez has been defending the rights of individuals in immigration matters for the last 20 years. During this time, he has represented persons before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the United States Departments of Justice and Homeland Security in complex immigration matters. Within the field of immigration law, he has helped thousands of individuals in situations including removal and deportation proceedings, family immigration, and the transfer of professionals and executives to the United States. Gomez counsels international and national corporations on compliance with immigration laws. He also has coordinated teams of attorneys in multi-forum conflicts to effectively resolve clients' problems. As an attorney for a Central American Refugee Project, he coordinated the representation of thousands of individuals in the Southeastern United States in a national class action. He has represented refugees from every part of the world where there have been conflicts over the last two decades. As director of East Little Havana Legal Services, he led a team of attorneys to resolve the series of problems faced by clients in a holistic manner. Gomez is a highly sought-out attorney by other immigration attorneys for consultation on complex matters. In addition to having taught at a law school, he frequently lectures on immigration matters before professional organizations. He recently participated in a roundtable discussion on this topic: Part 1: http://tinyurl.com/mfeqezz, Part 2: http://tinyurl.com/lcfb53s, Part 3: http://tinyurl.com/mvv7tof Contact: Jessica Drouet, [email protected] GOP Reform/Repeal of Dodd-Frank Act Michael Imerman Assistant Professor of Finance Lehigh University Dr. Imerman is available to discuss proposals to reform or repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010 to provide financial regulation: "Both Dodd-Frank and the proposed replacement, the Financial CHOICE Act, seek to end Too-Big-To-Fail, reduce systemic risk, hold Wall Street accountable, improve transparency of complex markets, and protect the American taxpayer from government bailouts. I absolutely do not think that the Dodd-Frank Act needs to be repealed and replaced, and these attempts to do so are purely a matter of partisan politics. Is the Dodd-Frank Act perfect? Certainly not. But the answer would be to refine those areas that are not holding up so well, not eliminate the whole thing. Too-Big-To-Fail still is a real problem. In a soon-to-be-released paper, I show one of the most effective ways to combat TBTF is to require the largest banks to hold more capital. If banks find this to be too expensive, they can sell off assets and scale down their size; otherwise, they should be required to hold disproportionately more capital to reduce the risk of a taxpayer-sponsored bailout." Dr. Imerman's research focuses on credit risk modeling, banking and financial institutions, risk management, and derivatives. Bio: http://cbe.lehigh.edu/faculty/finance/michael-b-imerman Contact: Amy White, [email protected] EXPERT ROUNDUP: Trump's Tax Reform Plan (14 experts) Following are experts from the ProfNet network who are available for interviews regarding Trump's tax reform plan: Trump's Tax Plan Rebecca Kysar Professor of Law Brooklyn Law School Kysar is available for comment on Trump's tax plan. Here is an excerpt from a January op-ed she wrote for Slate: "It is not realistic to expect the tax code to be set in stone. But the pillars of tax reform should be stable enough to form the basis of long-term investment and growth. Radical, partisan tax reform will prove short-lived and ineffective. Reform that gives the lion's share of its benefits to the wealthy and adds trillions to the debt runs the risk of exacerbating inequality within and between generations, perhaps alienating Trump voters who elevated him to the White House based on his populist rhetoric." Kysar teaches and researches in the areas of federal income tax, international tax, and the federal budget and tax legislative processes. Her recent scholarship examines tax treaties, as well as the tax legislative process. Her articles have appeared in the Cornell Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law, among others. Bio: https://www.brooklaw.edu/faculty/directory/facultymember/biography?id=rebecca.kysar Contact: John Mackin, [email protected] President Trump's Tax Reform Proposal Robert Duquette Professor of Practice in Accounting Lehigh University Duquette is available to discuss President Trump's tax reform proposal, as well as the House proposal and the need for tax reform. He can comment on who benefits from these proposals, their projected impact on economic growth and national debt, whether they will pass, and why true tax reform is needed: "President Trump's plan consists of three individual tax brackets: 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent; and a doubling of the standard deduction. That would mean, for example, the first $24,000 of a couple's taxable income would be exempt from taxes. The House's version also provides for new, higher combined exemption deductions of $12,000 for singles ($18,000 with children), and $24,000 for couples filing jointly, and consists of three tax rates: 12 percent, 25 percent and 33 percent. Who benefits the most from these plans? The Tax Foundation projects that taxpayers would see an average increase in their after-tax income of between 1 percent and 10 percent in total over 10 years. However, the top 1 percent would benefit the most, with the wealthiest taxpayers seeing an increase in their after-tax income of 5 percent to 20 percent. What is the impact on economic growth and the national debt? A significant part of the cost would be offset by broadening the tax base through elimination of many deductions and credit, loss of business interest deductibility, loss of the domestic manufacturing deduction, and possibly a tax on some type of imports. All independent analyses of the proposals indicate there would probably be trillions of dollars added to the federal debt over the next 10 years. I'm not optimistic of passage of this tax reform in Congress. Even if it does pass, no reputable study has yet suggested it can help mitigate the growth in the national debt from the present $20 million to $30 trillion over the next 10 years." In addition to teaching taxation and accounting, Duquette is a CPA and has worked in tax and audit advising for three decades. Blog: http://cbe.lehigh.edu/blog Bio: http://cbe.lehigh.edu/faculty/accounting/robert-duquette Contact: Amy White, [email protected] Corporate, Trust and Estate Planning-Related Questions Michael Kosnitzky Partner Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP "The Trump tax proposal to reduce rates on business income from flow through entities like S corporations and domestic limited liability companies has the potential to cause tax inequities. However, the Treasury and the IRS have ample tools under existing law to police this unfairness. Taxpayers should look to IRS policy on 'reasonable compensation' and the existing tax regimes under the so-called passive activity rules and net investment income tax rules for guidance on how the government will deal with aggressive taxpayers in similar situations." Bio: https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/lawyers/michael-kosnitzky.html Contact: Matt Hyams, [email protected] Tax Rates for Businesses Larry Elkin, CFP, CPA President Palisades Hudson Financial Group, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "President Trump thinks income generated by privately held Palisades Hudson Financial Group should be taxed at the same rate as income generated by Alphabet Inc., Google's publicly traded parent company. And he thinks the rate for both businesses should be an attractively low 15 percent. You might expect me to be delighted by this news. I am a Republican, and we Republicans generally believe tax rates should be as low as possible. I also happen to be the owner of Palisades Hudson Financial Group. And I would be delighted with Trump's proposal, except for one thing: It's a phenomenally bad idea. Trump's proposal that all business income be taxed at the same (low) rate makes rhetorical sense, but not logical sense. To see why, consider the two companies I just mentioned. Alphabet is what tax nerds call a C corporation. It pays its own income taxes and then, when it distributes remaining income to shareholders in the form of dividends, that income is taxed again at the shareholders' rate. This means that by the time a single dollar of Alphabet's pretax income reaches a shareholder, federal taxes have reduced it to as little as 52 cents. But Palisades Hudson is not taxed that way. Like nearly all owner-operated businesses, it does not pay its own taxes as a separate entity. Instead, its net income is included on the owner's tax return and is only taxed once. This is what is meant by a 'pass-through' entity. Cutting my taxes on Palisades Hudson's net income to 15 percent would mean my income would be taxed at half the rate of the wages I pay many of my employees, or even less. And this would be the case for many firms nationwide under the proposed rules, including some much larger than mine." Website: www.palisadeshudson.com Contact: Henry Stimpson, [email protected] 'Pass-Through Rate' and 'One-Time Repatriation Tax' Michael Faulkender Professor of Finance and Associate Dean of Master's Programs University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business On the pass-through rate: "President Trump's 'pass-through' proposal asks for abuse. Small-business owners could easily reclassify expenses to be net income and vice versa. If one mechanism has a lower tax rate than the other, the reclassifications will take place. Ideally, all income is subject to the same rate at the personal level, thus eliminating the incentive to reclassify the income." On the one-time repatriation tax: "A one-time tax on accumulated foreign earnings rewards corporations that have moved operations to foreign jurisdictions for gaming the tax system. Firms in position to move profits abroad (by transfer pricing of intellectual capital), and that anticipated being subject to the tax on the differential, would see that tax liability fall from as high as 35 percent to perhaps 5-8 percent." Faulkender's "Taxes and Leverage at Multinational Corporations" is published in the Journal of Financial Economics (summarized here: http://tinyurl.com/n3bgpkt). Bio: https://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/directory/michael-faulkender Contact: Greg Muraski, [email protected] Eliminating State-Local Deductions Albert "Pete" Kyle Professor of Finance University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business "Eliminating the tax deductibility of state income taxes, while preserving the tax deductibility of property taxes, would encourage states like California and New York to lower income taxes and increase property taxes. In particular, I would expect property tax caps in California to be phased out over time if these changes are made." Kyle has served as an economic advisor to NASDAQ, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Bio: https://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/directory/albert-pete-kyle Contact: Greg Muraski, [email protected] Trump's Tax Reform Proposals and the GOP Blueprint Stephen M. Breitstone Partner and Vice Chairman Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone, Mineola, N.Y. A tax attorney, Breitstone can readily discuss how Trump's tax reform proposals and the GOP blueprint could affect business in general, and especially the real estate industry, from commercial, office and rental owners and investors to individuals. Among other issues, Breitstone can discuss the implications of: standard and itemized deductions; repeal of the deductions for state and local taxes and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT); tax on business; Immediate expensing of capital expenditures and elimination of interest deduction; estate and gift taxes. Says Breitstone: "It is likely that any tax reform would also include 'immediate expensing.' The GOP blueprint proposes 'immediate expensing' of capital expenditures, including machinery and buildings, but not land. This is coupled with the elimination of the deduction for interest (all interest, except interest on personal mortgages, which hardly anyone would claim due to the increased standard deduction). For businesses that make investments in buildings and machinery (and probably for the owners of pass-through entities as well), the tax rate of 15% is mostly for show. The actual tax rate, at least for the next few years, will be zero. Immediate expensing will wipe out all income tax liabilities, at least in the short run. This may result in an increased flow of liquidity to these businesses to invest and to grow. But this will be short-lived. After the deduction for immediate expensing is used up, there will be no depreciation deduction and no interest deduction on the debt incurred to fund these investments. That means the effective tax rate on these businesses will soar." Breitstone further questions immediate expensing as proposed, as it doesn't target growth in areas where we really need it, such as education, technology and infrastructure. If you throw money at dying industries, it may only accelerate the further layoff of employees by encouraging increased automation. Bio: http://www.meltzerlippe.com/attorneys/stephen-breitstone/ Website: http://www.meltzerlippe.com Contact: Peggy Kalia, [email protected] Impact of Trump's Plan Adnan Mahmud Founder LiveStories LiveStories is a civic data intelligence platform used by local, state, and federal governments to make massive data stores easier to understand for the general public. The company released a report called, "Five Facts: State Taxes and Spending" that includes findings on state and local expenditures based on the most recent U.S. Census. Mahmud is available to explain what this data can tell us about how Trump's tax reform plan will impact Americans. He can use these findings to illuminate opportunities and challenges that need to be considered in light of these policy changes. Contact: Rosie Gillam, [email protected] How Reform Will Impact Citizens at Different Tax Levels Jinette Chiappetta, CPA Wealth Manager Equity Concepts Chiappetta can discuss how reform will impact citizens at different tax levels, as well as the overall economy. She is a wealth manager at Equity Concepts, a Richmond, Va.-based wealth management firm that serves more than 2,000 households and oversees approximately $875+ million in assets. Prior to joining Equity Concepts, Chiappetta spent 20 years in the tax field, with 15 years of public accounting experience and five years of corporate tax experiences. As a CPA, she places an emphasis on analyzing the impact of investment strategies on tax situations. Website: http://www.equity-concepts.com Contact: Kelly Holcombe, [email protected] Impacts on Individuals and Business Owners Bill Smith Managing Director, National Tax Office CBIZ MHM Smith is available to address the impacts of the plan on both individuals and business owners, the feasibility of the plan, and how it may evolve over time. He has more than 30 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, including five years in the office of General Counsel at Deloitte & Touche LLP, where he was responsible for all aspects of the firm's tax practice; five years as a tax lawyer for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.; and 12 years in private practice in San Francisco, representing businesses of all sizes and high-wealth individuals in developing and implementing tax strategies or negotiating with the IRS in Tax Court or administratively. Smith assumed his current position more than 15 years ago and is based in Bethesda, Md. In this role, he consults nationally on a broad range of tax services, including foreign and domestic transactional tax planning for corporations, partnerships, LLCs and individuals, such as mergers and acquisitions, domestic and international restructuring of businesses and investments, and negotiating partnership and other transactions. He is a frequent speaker at national conferences, and serves as a testifying expert in the area of accountants' professional duties and ethical obligations. Smith is well-versed on Trump's tax plan, having authored the following blog posts/columns: "Key takeaways of Trump's tax plan for business owners" (http://tinyurl.com/le365om), "The votes are in: Introducing the new president's tax plan" (http://tinyurl.com/nxja73y), "Comparing presidential candidates' tax reform plans" (http://tinyurl.com/k2tytgu), and "Trump's tax plan could help businesses, but questions remain (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/293576). Contact: Lauren Davis, [email protected] Retirement Planning Ed Slott, CPA Founder, Ed Slott & Company Creator, IRAhelp.com Slott is a New York-based nationally recognized IRA expert, television personality, and best-selling author who has dedicated his life to educating Americans on saving for retirement and the intricacies of IRAs. He was named "The Best Source for IRA Advice" by The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today wrote, "It would be tough to find anyone who knows more about IRAs than CPA Slott." He is the author of "The Retirement Savings Time Bomb And How to Defuse It" and "Parlay Your IRA into a Family Fortune." His most recent books include "Fund Your Future: A Tax-Smart Savings Plan in Your 20s and 30s" and "The Retirement Decisions Guide: 125 Ways to Save and Stretch Your Wealth." He is the host of the 2015 public television show "Ed Slott's Retirement Road Map," which airs in markets nationwide. He is a frequent columnist and resource for national media and has hosted many best-selling public television specials. Through his firm, Slott provides the highest level of IRA training to financial professionals, CPAs and attorneys; and through his website, he offers free resources to consumers. Website: http://irahelp.com Contact: Mindy Eras, [email protected] Tax Planning Greg Hammer Tax and Wealth Advisor Hammer Financial Group, Inc. Hammer specializes in coordinated, holistic financial planning for Lake County, Ind., and Chicago-area residents who are approaching retirement or currently retired. Bringing tax preparation and planning, Medicare supplements, estate planning, insurance and investments all under one roof, he aims to provide complete and convenient financial solutions for the best interest of the clients he serves. Hammer trains and coaches independent financial advisors nationwide on how to build their business to better serve the holistic financial needs of American families. In particular, he has helped develop and refine processes to integrate tax preparation and Medicare supplement services into a financial advisory practice -- a unique addition within the financial industry designed for the ultimate convenience and benefit of clients at and near retirement. He earned a B.A. in Applied Mathematics with a focus in economics from Yale University and has more than 23 years of experience in the financial services industry. In addition to his series 6, 63, 65 and 26 and life and health licenses, Hammer maintains Master Elite Membership with Ed Slott's Elite IRA Advisor Group for continued study and mastery of IRAs and applicable tax laws. Contact: Mindy Eras, [email protected] Retirement Planning Jeff Warnkin, CPA and CFP The JL Smith Group Warnkin specializes in holistic financial planning for the pre-retired and retired residents of Ohio. As a holistic planner, he incorporates investments, insurance, taxes and estate planning when building financial plans in order create an optimal solution for the retirement years. Warnkin has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, Series 7 and 24 securities licensed, has a Master of Taxation (MT) degree, and is life and health insurance licensed. He has also been personally trained by nationally acclaimed IRA expert Ed Slott, CPA, as a member of the exclusive Ed Slott's Elite IRA Advisor Group. Website: www.JLSmithGroup.com Contact: Mindy Eras, [email protected] Impact on Families and Investors Bijan Golkar CEO, Senior Advisor FPC Investment Advisory Golkar is a Northern California investment advisor that has been a licensed tax preparer since 2007 and earned the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) certification in 2013. He is frequently quoted in national media as an expert on investing and financial planning topics. In addition to his duties as the firm's CEO, Golkar provides comprehensive advice to high-net-worth individuals and families. He often creates and leads teams of legal, accounting and insurance experts to help these clients meet their goals. He also consults with small businesses on buyouts, employee benefits and other matters. ProfNet Profile: http://www.profnetconnect.com/bijan_golkar LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgolkar/ Expert Contact: [email protected] **************** MEDIA JOBS: Following are links to job listings for staff and freelance writers, editors and producers. You can view these and more job listings on our Job Board: https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com/community/jobs/ Deputy Bureau Chief, Bankruptcy Wall Street Journal U.S. Correspondent South China Morning Post Features Editor Modern Healthcare ***************** OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES: Following are links to other news and resources we think you might find useful. If you have an item you think other reporters would be interested in and would like us to include in a future alert, please drop us a line. JOURNALIST SPOTLIGHT: ANTHONY ZANGRILLO , FORDHAM IPLJ. In our Journalist Spotlight Q&A series, PR Newswire for Journalists and ProfNet users share their insight and advice on how PR professionals and experts can improve communications and increase their chances of being featured in their publications. In this edition, we catch up with Anthony Zangrillo , online editor of Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal (Fordham IPLJ). Anthony, a third-year student at Fordham University School of Law, maintains the digital presence of the journal, including the journal's website and podcast: http://prn.to/anthonyzangrillo , FORDHAM IPLJ. In our Journalist Spotlight Q&A series, PR Newswire for Journalists and ProfNet users share their insight and advice on how PR professionals and experts can improve communications and increase their chances of being featured in their publications. In this edition, we catch up with , online editor of Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal (Fordham IPLJ). Anthony, a third-year student at School of Law, maintains the digital presence of the journal, including the journal's website and podcast: http://prn.to/anthonyzangrillo HOW TO BECOME A STAND-OUT PHOTOGRAPHER IN FOUR STEPS. In the competitive field of photography, it can be a struggle to separate yourself from the pack. A journalist's role has expanded as well, and assignments that traditionally were assigned to a reporter and photographer now are assigned to one person. Advancements in technology allow journalists to take spectacular photographs and videos on their smartphone. Whether you're shooting with a phone or a digital SLR, producing unique images can be challenging. Here are some tips to help your pictures stand out: http://bit.ly/2r1VdRc BLOG PROFILES: TRAVEL AND WANDERLUST BLOGS. Each week, PR Newswire's Audience Relations team selects an industry/subject and profiles a handful of sites that do a good job with promoting and contributing to the conversation. This week, they look at travel and wanderlust blogs: http://bit.ly/2qKleY3 **************** PROFNET is an exclusive service of PR Newswire. SOURCE ProfNet Related Links http://www.profnet.com WALNUT CREEK, Calif., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Providence Medical Technology, Inc., an innovator in tissue-sparing cervical spine technology, today announced the closing of a $10.5 million debt agreement with Bridge Bank. "We are pleased that we have partnered with Bridge Bank to bolster our balance sheet with this debt facility," said Greg Curhan, Chief Financial Officer of Providence. "This financing, coupled with our recently completed equity financing, puts us in a great position to continue to expand our distribution both across the United States as well as in international markets to deliver innovative spinal technology to help patients enjoy pain-free lives." "Bridge Bank is excited to be partnering with Providence Medical Technology," said Rob Lake, senior vice president and head of Bridge Bank's life sciences group. "I am impressed with the management team, the company's eloquent and innovative technology, as well as the commercial progress over the past 24 months. We are delighted to be a resource to help Providence achieve its immediate and long-term goals." Providence's differentiated, tissue-sparing devices and instruments are designed to increase procedural efficiency, improve clinical outcomes, minimize complications, and reduce recovery times for cervical fusions. The technology has seen continued, rapid adoption by spine surgeons, hospitals, and ambulatory surgery centers. About Providence Medical Technology, Inc. Providence Medical Technology, Inc. is a privately-held medical device company focused on innovative solutions for cervical spinal conditions. The company has pioneered a proprietary, tissue-sparing approach to posterior cervical fusion. Providence has developed surgical instrumentation and implants that offer unique benefits to the $2 billion worldwide cervical spine market. The Providence family of products includes the DTRAX Spinal Instrumentation System, CAVUX intervertebral implants, and the ALLY line of bone and facet screws. All products are shipped-sterile and single-use to maximize efficiency and ensure consistent quality and performance. For more information, visit www.providencemt.com. About Bridge Bank Bridge Bank is a division of Western Alliance Bank, Member FDIC, the go-to bank for business in its growing markets. Bridge Bank was founded in 2001 in Silicon Valley to offer a better way to bank for small-market and middle-market businesses across many industries, as well as emerging technology companies and the private equity community. Geared to serving both venture-backed and non-venture-backed companies, Bridge Bank offers a broad scope of financial solutions including growth capital, equipment and working capital credit facilities, sustainable energy project finance, venture debt, treasury management, asset-based lending, SBA and commercial real estate loans, ESOP finance and a full line of international products and services. Based in San Jose, Bridge Bank has eight offices in major markets across the country along with Western Alliance Bank's robust national platform of specialized financial services. Western Alliance Bank is the primary subsidiary of Phoenix-based Western Alliance Bancorporation, one of the country's top-performing banking companies. For more information, visit www.bridgebank.com. Related Links: www.providencemt.com | www.bridgebank.com SOURCE Providence Medical Technology, Inc. Related Links http://www.providencemt.com BALTIMORE, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- R2i is a leading independent digital agency that has been working for the last four years with Williams Scotsman, an Algeco Scotsman company and leading provider of modular space and storage solutions in North America. Williams Scotsman was recently honored with a First Place Award of Distinction by the Modular Building Institute, the largest trade association for the industry. The MBI Awards recognize excellence and outstanding innovation within the commercial modular space industry. Williams Scotsman won in the marketing website category for their ability to elevate their brand's digital experience, designed and developed by R2i. In 2016, Williams Scotsman started to reimagine how their customers interact with their brand online. As their agency partner, R2i conducted persona research to identify the company's key users and audience types, and delivered data-driven insights to revamp their homepage, content hierarchy, IA structure, and navigation paths on www.willscot.com. The objective was to optimize the user experience of both their loyal and prospective customers by designing a website that focuses on their needs, motivations, and behaviors, while also highlighting the modular space options available to them. "First impressions are everything," says Kelly Christopher, Digital Marketing Manager at Williams Scotsman. "We redesigned the site and streamlined navigation so customers could find what they need quickly and easily. The improved user experience has resulted in an 11% increase in traffic and 8% more orders from leads generated on the site." By emphasizing the importance of visual design, content strategy, and digital experience, Williams Scotsman has transformed www.willscot.com into a sales tool for their team to effectively speak to the full spectrum of their customers and quickly connect them with appropriate products, ultimately supporting company-wide goals and initiatives. To explore the new website, visit www.willscot.com. To learn more about R2i, visit http://www.r2integrated.com/. About R2integrated R2i is a national full-service agency with offices in Silicon Valley, Seattle, New York, and Baltimore. With diverse expertise and a hands-on approach, R2i guides companies through a complex marketing landscape and builds integrated solutions that accelerate success. R2i's unique alignment between marketing technology, brand expression, and demand generation results in compelling creative campaigns, better user experiences, and deeper customer connections. Through focused areas of purpose such as web development and technology, multi-channel campaigns, media, loyalty and retention, brand strategy, and content marketing, R2i has consistently delivered on the new promise of marketing integration today for its clients. R2i clients include Microsoft, Chevron, University of Michigan, American Cancer Society, Atlantic Health, OneMain Financial, and MasterCard. About Williams Scotsman Williams Scotsman, an Algeco Scotsman company, offers space solutions for the construction, education, energy, industrial, commercial/retail, healthcare, and government markets, with operations in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Williams Scotsman serves customers' modular space and storage needs through a network of nearly 100 locations throughout North America. In addition to its core leasing business, the company manages and develops permanent modular structures. For more information, visit www.willscot.com. SOURCE R2i Related Links http://www.r2integrated.com "Public and private payers everywhere are increasingly focused on value and creating a 'smart' imaging network for better clinical and financial outcomes. As a result, they are adding RadSite recognition as part of their strategy," states Eliot Siegel, MD, Chief Technology Officer for RadSite. According to Janette Melendez, Sales Consultant, in Puerto Rico, "RadSite has gained the reputation of accrediting imaging provider systems in a fair, accurate and reasonable manner. The accreditation process should not be a heavy burden for imaging providers. RadSite accreditation reviewers focus on improving quality through an educational approach. Imaging providers who earn the RadSite accreditation seal are demonstrating their commitment to meet the highest standards for advanced diagnostic imaging." Over the past six months, RadSite has received over 300 recognitions from private payers and radiology benefit management organizations nationwide. Expansion is due, in part, to RadSite becoming a recognized accreditation organization by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). All imaging providers offering advanced diagnostic imaging services which include CT, MRI, PET and SPECT and bill for the technical component under the physician fee schedule, must become accredited by a CMS-recognized organization for claims reimbursement eligibility under the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA). While RadSite is the most cost-effective and simple to use accreditation program in Advanced Diagnostic Imaging (ADI), the company is also gaining attention for leadership. According to Jonathan Ramirez, Director of Sales for RadSite, "Our role promoting quality improvement in imaging is being noticed specifically, our work to incorporate process enhancements, operational efficiencies, and provider education into our accreditation offerings." An increasing number of health plans, insurers and radiology benefit management organizations are also recognizing RadSite's MIPPA Accreditation Program (MAP) Standards following the decision by Aetna and Humana to add RadSite to their list of 'deemed' accreditation organizations for participating imaging providers offering CT, MRI and PET and SPECT scans. It also reflects a move by some payers to no longer reimburse claims and/or remove non-accredited providers from their networks. More recently, payers who have recognized RadSite include: UnitedHealthcare Oxford Health Molina Health Care eviCore Cigna In a field known for constant innovation, RadSite is committed to helping identify and promote best practices through work with manufacturers and other stakeholders. RadSite offers a comprehensive, affordable, quality-based accreditation program that evaluates providers on established industry standards and best-practices. Working with health plans and their participating providers also helps raise imaging standards through a meaningful accreditation process, education, reasonable pricing and a quality seal. And, recognition from RadSite demonstrates to patients, payers, regulators and others that a facility is a clear leader in imaging quality and patient safety. Beyond each facility accreditation, RadSite is engaged in assessing, tracking and reporting on imaging trends to enhance imaging procedures and outcomes. RadSite also offers educational programs, publishes issue briefs and underwrites research to promote best practices and patient safety. To learn more about RadSite, visit www.radsitequality.com. Click here for more information on why payers are recognizing this leading accreditation organization. About RadSite (www.radsitequality.com) Founded in 2005, RadSite's mission is to promote quality-based practices for imaging systems across the US and US territories. RadSite is recognized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as an official accreditation organization under the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA) of 2008. The organization is governed by an independent board and committee system, open to participation by a wide-range of volunteers to ensure transparency and accountability. To learn more about RadSite, please contact us at (443) 440-6007 or [email protected]. MEDIA CONTACT Julie Irons (443) 440-6007 [email protected] www.radsitequality.com SOURCE RadSite Related Links http://www.radsitequality.com Launched from a central Texas urban location, the UAV flew a preplanned route through the National Airspace System (NAS) using a combination of a mobile command and control (C2), a visual observer team, and stationary visual observers (VO) located across the flight route were equipped with enhanced radios and cell phone communications which allowed the UAV to be flown using a cellular communications link until it successfully landed and delivered its package in Austin, Texas. Team Roadrunner consisted of the FAA-designated Nevada UAS Test Site (Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems), Volans-i UAS, Latitude UAS, AUV Flight Services, and the ground and mobile visual observer support from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) Worldwide campuses. "This was the most challenging, logistically-intensive, and longest package delivery demonstration recorded to date using cellular technology in the NAS, and allowed us the opportunity to demonstrate innovative capability a demonstration necessity for the UAS industry," said Dr. Chris Walach, Director of the FAA-designated Nevada UAS Test Site and Adjunct Assistant Professor, College of Aeronautics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide. "Assembling a resilient team, being at the right place at the right time, with the right innovative technology, and entrepreneurial perspective is what allowed us to accomplish this mission." Walach continued, "Drone package delivery in an urban and remote environment is the wave of the future, and Nevada is leading and helping to grow this major commercial endeavor. These package delivery milestones prove that new UAS technology enables the safe integration of UAS into the NAS for long-distance and urban package deliveries." Nevada previously conducted historic package delivery BLOS demonstrations in Hawthorne, Nevada at over 39 miles as well as the first publicly-recorded package delivery to a Reno, Nevada homeowner. For this mission, to embed an additional layer of safety into this operation, visual observers were placed along the route and a ground mobile visual observer team was deployed in remote areas. "Team Roadrunner was organized and very professional to work with. It is very exciting to be part of something truly ground breaking. Integration of students and alumni on similar projects with NIAS in the future extends our outreach to the industry," said Dr. Scott Burgess, Associate Professor, College of Aeronautics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide. "Aviation has evolved much since the days of the Wright Brothers and I truly believe that unmanned systems are going to revolutionize the aviation industry and beyond; I am proud that Embry-Riddle faculty, students, and fellow Alumni are actively playing a part in this incredible journey," said Kandi Windham, Campus Director, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide, Houston, Texas. "This was an extremely complicated mission. Making sure that the UAS met all the performance characteristics was only one piece. Great emphasis was placed on flight safety, airworthiness, communication, command and control as well as air and ground coordination, and VO logistics. The Volans-i, Latitude, AUV Flight Services, and the NIAS team worked extremely well together. Given the complexity and the ultimate success of the mission, it is clear to me that we couldn't have picked a better team," said Hannan Parvizian, Volans-i Founder. "Creating a safe and thriving drone industry is an incredible challenge, especially when you couple that with drone package delivery. The loss of communications during a long flight is a real concern, but because of this mission, cellular technology can be relied upon to ensure that communication with a drone is not lost over a long-distance delivery. The record-breaking success of Team Roadrunner's aerial package delivery mission proves that diligent testing in complex conditions will lead to drone delivery becoming reality," said Steve Hill, Executive Director of the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development. The Nevada UAS Test Site is one of seven Federal Aviation Administration-designated UAS Test Sites. The Nevada UAS Test Site planned this mission in consultation with the Lone Star UAS Test Site based out of Corpus Christie, Texas. About the Governor's Office of Economic Development: Created during the 2011 session of the Nevada Legislature, the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) is the result of a collaborative effort between the Nevada Legislature and Governor Brian Sandoval to restructure economic development in the state. GOED's role is to promote a robust, diversified and prosperous economy in Nevada, to stimulate business expansion and retention, encourage entrepreneurial enterprise, attract new businesses and facilitate community development. More information on the Governor's Office of Economic Development can be viewed at www.diversifynevada.com. About the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS): The Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS) and FAA-designated Nevada Unmanned Aviation Test Site leads the growth of the Nevada Unmanned Aviation Systems (UAS) Industry through business teaming relationships, collaborating with primary research institutions on UAS research and development, and enhancing the Nevada UAS Industry knowledge base to attract new and permanent business and create jobs in the State of Nevada. Learn more at http://www.nias-uas.com/. About Volans-i: Volans-i provides the fastest & cheapest on-demand delivery service for time-critical shipments over long ranges. We help our customers save millions of dollars on down-time & inventory costs and gain control over their supply chain by leveraging drone technology as a transportation method. About Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in unmanned systems at campuses in Daytona Beach (FL) and Prescott (AZ), online and through the Worldwide Campus in Nevada and around the globe. Professional education programs are also available. SOURCE Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS) BOSTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Recorded Future, the threat intelligence company, announced the launch of Insikt Group, the company's threat research arm. Comprised of world-class domain experts in technical threat intelligence and foreign adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures, the Insikt Group's mission is to proactively discover and deliver groundbreaking insight to Recorded Future customers for improved risk analysis. The team, combined with Recorded Future's industry-leading SaaS threat intelligence product, creates an unparalleled solution for mitigating cyber risk. Insikt Group is led by Levi Gundert, a former member of the United States Secret Service and expert in cyber threat intelligence for over 13 years. Members of the Insikt Group also include analysts, linguists, and security researchers with deep government and industry experience as well as native foreign-language skills. The team is comprised of leading authorities in: Geopolitical developments and underground economy Russian and Eastern European geopolitical communities Asia-pacific geopolitical communities geopolitical communities Malicious code and incident response Intrusion detection/analysis, incident response, and threat intelligence Financial services industry security All proprietary research produced by Insikt Group is incorporated into the Recorded Future product, adding unique threat intelligence insight that can be easily accessed and analyzed by clients of Recorded Future. "Recorded Future is tackling the challenge of threat intelligence with the broadest possible range of minds, sources, and methods. The launch of Insikt Group is a testament to our dedication to bring unmatched threat intelligence to both the Recorded Future product and our customers." -Levi Gundert, Vice President of Intelligence and Strategy at Recorded Future For additional information on the launch of Insikt Group, please visit the Recorded Future website at www.recordedfuture.com/services/insikt-group/. About Recorded Future Recorded Future delivers threat intelligence powered by machine learning, arming you to significantly lower risk. We enable you to connect the dots to rapidly reveal unknown threats before they impact your business, and empower you to respond to security alerts 10 times faster. To supercharge the efforts of human analysts and SOC teams, our patented technology automatically collects and analyzes intelligence from technical, open, and dark web sources. Recorded Future delivers radically more context than threat feeds alone, updates in real time so intelligence stays relevant, and packages information ready for human analysis or instant integration with your existing security technology. 86% of the Fortune 100 use Recorded Future every day to reduce risk. Learn more at www.recordedfuture.com and follow us on Twitter at @RecordedFuture. SOURCE Recorded Future Related Links http://www.recordedfuture.com BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) has been recognized as a Most Valuable Employer (MVE) for Military by RecruitMilitary, a national organization that helps employers connect with high-quality veteran talent, for the fifth year in a row. The MVE recognition serves to help military-experienced job seekers and veterans identify the top employers to target for civilian careers. Level 3's Focus on Veterans: For the fifth year in a row, Level 3 Communications has been recognized as a Most Valuable Employer for Military. Level 3 recruits military talent at all levels by participating in job fairs, visiting military bases and partnering with schools, military workforce sectors and veteran-focused programs. Level 3 employs veterans in diverse roles ranging from entry-level to senior leadership. More than half of the participants in Level 3 training programs like Ops Tech Academy and IP Bootcamp are veterans who have been selected in part because of their military-specific skills, attitude and aptitude. Level 3 provides a Veteran Employee Resource Group (VERG), comprised of more than 650 members. The VERG advises the business on how to best meet the needs of veteran employees and hosts a variety of internal and external events where members can connect, and create support groups and communities. About the Award: Winners of the 2017 MVE for Military were selected based on surveys in which employers outlined their recruiting, training and retention plans to meet the needs of military service members and veterans. The 2017 Most Valuable Employers (MVE) for Military was open to all U.S.-based companies. In observance of Armed Forces Day , the annual list of MVEs will be released in the May/June issue of RecruitMilitary's Search & Employ magazine. , the annual list of MVEs will be released in the May/June issue of RecruitMilitary's magazine. Prior to the 2017 application opening, the MVE recognition was produced by CivilianJobs.com. All previous winners can be found in the MVE Winner Archive section at http://RecruitMilitary.com/MVE. Key Quotes: Mary Beth McGrath, Senior Vice President of Global Talent Management, Level 3 "Level 3 has long been a company committed to veterans, as we recognize the value our dedicated military personnel can bring to the workforce. Veterans possess invaluable training, skills, and experience that bring a unique and innovative perspective to the work we do. We are honored to be recognized as a Most Valuable Employer for the fifth year in a row, and look forward to continuing our focus on veteran recruitment and development." Peter Gudmundsson, President of RecruitMilitary "Veterans truly represent the finest talent our country has to offer. Judging by the stature of the businesses that comprise the Most Valuable Employers for Military winners, we can see that organizations thrive when they include veteran hiring initiatives in their human resource strategies." Additional Resources: Level 3's Careers Page Learn more about Level 3's commitment to veterans in the Level 3 Diversity and Inclusion Report For more information on Level 3's advanced network and service offerings, visit www.level3.com. About MVE The RecruitMilitary Most Valuable Employers (MVE) for Military serves to help military-experienced job seekers identify the top employers to target for civilian careers. MVEs are selected annually based on those employers whose recruiting, training and retention plans best serve military service members and veterans. RecruitMilitary (http://RecruitMilitary.com) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bradley-Morris, Inc. (BMI), the largest military-focused recruiting company in the U.S. Together, BMI and RecruitMilitary offer employers access to more than 1,000,000 military job seekers via services that include contingency recruiting, military job fairs, a job board, employer branding, a military base publication and more. About Level 3 Communications Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) is a Fortune 500 company that provides local, national and global communications services to enterprise, government and carrier customers. Level 3's comprehensive portfolio of secure, managed solutions includes fiber and infrastructure solutions; IP-based voice and data communications; wide-area Ethernet services; video and content distribution; data center and cloud-based solutions. Level 3 serves customers in more than 500 markets in over 60 countries across a global services platform anchored by owned fiber networks on three continents and connected by extensive undersea facilities. For more information, please visit www.level3.com or get to know us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Level 3 Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 3, Vyvx, Level 3 Communications, Level (3) and the Level 3 Logo are either registered service marks or service marks of Level 3 Communications, LLC and/or one of its Affiliates in the United States and elsewhere. Any other service names, product names, company names or logos included herein are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Level 3 services are provided by subsidiaries of Level 3 Communications, Inc. Forward-Looking Statement Some statements made in this press release are forward-looking in nature and are based on management's current expectations or beliefs. These forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance and are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside Level 3's control, which could cause actual events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the statements. Important factors that could prevent Level 3 from achieving its stated goals include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to: increase revenue from its services to realize its targets for financial and operating performance; develop and maintain effective business support systems; manage system and network failures or disruptions; avert the breach of its network and computer system security measures; develop new services that meet customer demands and generate acceptable margins; manage the future expansion or adaptation of its network to remain competitive; defend intellectual property and proprietary rights; manage risks associated with continued uncertainty in the global economy; manage continued or accelerated decreases in market pricing for communications services; obtain capacity for its network from other providers and interconnect its network with other networks on favorable terms; successfully integrate future acquisitions; effectively manage political, legal, regulatory, foreign currency and other risks it is exposed to due to its substantial international operations; mitigate its exposure to contingent liabilities; and meet all of the terms and conditions of its debt obligations. Additional information concerning these and other important factors can be found within Level 3's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements in this press release should be evaluated in light of these important factors. Level 3 is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any such obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. SOURCE Level 3 Communications, Inc. Related Links http://www.level3.com The Seychelles President Danny Faure withdrew the candidature of Alain St.Ange from the election to the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation without asking Mr. St.Ange. Mr. St.Ange, former Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports & Marine of Seychelles, commented, It is a coup detat by Africa Union on Africa. St.Ange told ftnNEWS that he is sad that Seychelles took that decision. Africa endorses a candidate but did not impose a candidate. The IOC, the Indian Ocean Commission with four African Union members endorsed the Seychelles Candidate. The sanctions threat on Seychelles by African Union is a blackmail and not acceptable at United Nations. It is a Coup detat except the guns have been replaced by threats. 93 year old Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe will never get the UN under his control. In 1977 Seychelles suffered from a coup detat when the island's founding President Sir James Mancham was in London for a commonwealth meeting. In 2017, Seychelles is embroiled in a second coup detat when Alain St. Ange is in Madrid for UNWTO meeting. Africa loses its only chance of leading the UN body. EAST LANSING, Mich., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Renaissance Venture Capital Fund (Renaissance) and the Michigan State University Foundation announce today that Renaissance is opening its third office location. This newest space, located in the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center (TIC), marks the venture fund's widening footprint across Michigan, including offices in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and now East Lansing. "Renaissance coming to the TIC means greater access to capital resources for area entrepreneurs," said Jeff Smith, director of the University Corporate Research Park, the place-making arm of the MSU Foundation. "This activity strengthens mid-Michigan's entrepreneurial ecosystem and tells the larger story about Michigan's economic health and growth." The MSU Foundation's ongoing economic development initiatives focus on taking Michigan State University's faculty and researcher technologies to market, investing in MSU student entrepreneurs, and working with area partners to build and grow the region's robust, thriving culture of innovation. "Our mission at Renaissance is to serve as a bridge between researchers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and major corporations in Michigan," said Chris Rizik, chief executive officer of Renaissance Venture Capital Fund. "We are impressed with the growth of innovation efforts at Michigan State University and are excited to extend our presence and network in the region." The TIC, managed and operated by the MSU Foundation, offers its tech-based members office space, programmatic support, and resources aimed at helping startups and early-stage companies flourish. The TIC is adjacent to the MSU Innovation Center. About the Renaissance Venture Capital Fund The Renaissance Venture Capital Fund is a fund of funds that supports the growth of venture capital in Michigan while serving as a bridge between Michigan's emerging innovation company community and its strong industrial and commercial base. Formed by Business Leaders for Michigan, the Renaissance Venture Capital Fund boasts as its members many of Michigan's most important organizations. It has become a national model for strategic, financially successful regional investing. Through its investment in top tier venture firms that are active in Michigan, as well as its own co-investments in emerging Michigan companies, the Renaissance Venture Capital Fund is helping to drive forward both innovation and growth of emerging companies in the region. And it is again proving that Michigan, with its unique combination of scientific, engineering and business talent, is a great place in which to invest. For more information, please visit: www.renvcf.com. About the Michigan State University Foundation Established in 1973 as an independent, non-profit corporation, the Michigan State University Foundation fuels economic development initiatives through the commercialization of cutting-edge technologies invented by Michigan State University faculty, staff, and students. At its core is an extensive program, focusing on the support of research, invention, and entrepreneurship. The Michigan State University Foundation operates Michigan Biotechnology Institute, Red Cedar Ventures, Spartan Innovations, and the University Corporate Research Park. Further, the Foundation manages and operates the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center. More information on the Foundation's notable achievements, provided services, key leadership, and history are available at www.msufoundation.org . About the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center Founded in 2008, right in the heart of downtown East Lansing, the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center, also known as the TIC, became the first business incubator in the region. Today, the space continues to be home to technology startup companies, offering them support and space to grow their ideas. Members have direct access to resources within the MSU Innovation Center, as well as Michigan State University's campus. Connecting members with a vast network of area professionals, community resources, and venture capitalists, the TIC offers the space for tech entrepreneurs to explore their ideas, take creative risks, and grow their networks. For more about the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center, please visit: www.eastlansingtic.org. SOURCE Michigan State University Foundation Related Links http://www.msufoundation.org ATLANTA, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Rollins Inc., a global consumer services company (NYSE: ROL), announced today that Vice President and General Counsel, Beth Chandler, has expanded her responsibilities to oversee the company's Internal Audit department. She will also become a member of the Executive Steering Committee. In 2013, Beth joined Rollins, and her role quickly expanded to include large and international acquisitions, along with privacy and governance. In 2016, Beth took over the Risk Management group. With hard work and dedication, she has led her team to achieve great progress in streamlining operations. Adding the Internal Audit group to her responsibilities provides stronger synchronization between Risk, Legal and Internal Audit, all while improving compliance efforts. "Beth has 25 years of compliance, governance and transactional experience, and we look forward to her expanded role to support the business operations," said Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Eddie Northen. Beth received her J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Georgia School of Law. She also received her B.B.A. in International Business, magna cum laude, with general honors from the University of Georgia. About Rollins Rollins Inc. is a premier global consumer and commercial services company. Through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Orkin LLC, HomeTeam Pest Defense, Orkin Canada, Western Pest Services, The Industrial Fumigant Company, Trutech LLC, Rollins Australia, Waltham Services LLC, PermaTreat and Crane Pest Control, the company provides essential pest control services and protection against termite damage, rodents and insects to more than 2 million customers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, South America, Central America, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Asia, the Mediterranean, Africa and Australia from more than 500 locations. You can learn more about our subsidiaries by visiting our web sites at http://orkin.com, http://pestdefense.com, http://orkincanada.ca, http://westernpest.com, http://indfumco.com, http://trutechinc.com, http://www.allpest.com.au/, http://walthamservices.com, www.permatreat.com, http://cranepestcontrol.com and http://rollins.com. You can also find this and other news releases at http://rollins.com by accessing the news releases button. Media Contact: Eddie Northen Rollins Inc. 404.888.2242 SOURCE Rollins, Inc. Related Links http://www.rollins.com MIAMI, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The world's most adventurous cruise line is giving adventure-seekers more opportunities than ever to explore the vibrant island destination of Cuba with new sailings to Havana on Empress of the Seas. Royal Caribbean International's newly refreshed ship will sail 58 cruises of 4- and 5-night itineraries from January 2018 through March 2019, more than half offering overnight stays in the culturally vibrant city. Empress' Western Caribbean and Havana sailings are open for bookings as of today. "Since arriving in Cuba for the first time last month, we've seen the excitement of our guests when sailing into Havana and the passion they have for the city at sail away its people, its architecture, its food, its music. This is the enthusiasm we strive to bring to adventure-seekers who vacation with us," said Michael Bayley, President and CEO, Royal Caribbean International. "The positive reaction to our Cuba sailings is very encouraging, and we are thrilled to expand on the number of sailings for our 2018-2019 itineraries." Empress of the Seas will return to Tampa for summer 2018, offering a series of 4- and 5-night cruises, calling on Key West, Florida, and Costa Maya and Cozumel, Mexico, as well as Havana, Cuba on most sailings. The ship will reposition to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for the winter 2018-2019 season, continuing short Caribbean adventures to the Caribbean destinations. Currently, Empress sails from Tampa through Nov. 4, 2017. The ship then returns to Miami for the winter 2017-2018 season, adding calls to Royal Caribbean's private island destination CocoCay and Nassau in The Bahamas. The vibrant Cuban culture extends beyond land to the experience on board Empress of the Seas. From cortaditos and cafe con leche in Cafe Royal to salsa music and dancing in Boleros Latin lounge, guests can enjoy a range of onboard activities developed to bring the spirit of the island to life throughout the entire journey. Empress of the Seas spans 11 guest decks, encompasses 48,563 gross registered tons, carries 1,602 guests at double occupancy and features 795 staterooms. Media can stay up to date by following @RoyalCaribPR on Twitter and visiting RoyalCaribbeanPressCenter.com. For additional information or to make reservations, vacationers should call their travel agent; visit RoyalCaribbean.com; or call (800) ROYAL-CARIBBEAN. SOURCE Royal Caribbean International NEW YORK, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A proud partner to Fleet Week New York 2017, Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, created to honor the father of American old school tattooing, Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins, has partnered with another original American brand, Kiehl's Since 1851, to host its Sailor Jerry Home Base for Fleet Week in the brand's Hell's Kitchen location (678 9th Avenue at west 47th Street). Conveniently located in the heart of the Fleet Week New York activities, the Sailor Jerry Home Base will be open to the public on May 25th and May 26th, offering complimentary Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins tattoos, by noted tattoo artists Three Kings, to members of the military and their supporters on a first come, first served basis, from 11am-5pm. The Sailor Jerry Home Base will once again serve as Sailor Jerry's one-stop shop for all things Fleet Week New York, including information on events and specials going on throughout Manhattan. Willing participants can stop by and sign up for a complimentary Norman Collins' flash tattoo by New York's own Three Kings tattoo parlor, view a custom Sailor Jerry Harley-Davidson motorcycle designed by Oliver Peck, and experience Kiehl's efficacious skincare products. In addition to welcoming sailors, marines, coast guardsmen/women, and their supporters, Kiehl's Hell's Kitchen will also offer members of the military 20% off on purchases, with the presentation of valid military ID, throughout the duration of the Sailor Jerry Home Base. "For Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Fleet Week is a time to celebrate, honor and thank members of the military for everything they do," said Josh Hayes, Senior Brand Manager of Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. "This year, we have taken our celebration to a new level with this collaboration with Kiehl's Since 1851, an excellent partner with shared values and with our Welcome Party aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, a perfect setting to toast all those who give their service for our country. We cannot wait to open our Sailor Jerry Home Base and together offer some great experiences to the visiting members of the military." "Like Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Kiehl's Since 1851 is a true American brand and we are thrilled to host members of the military during this year's iconic Fleet Week in the heart of NYC," said Chris Salgardo, President of Kiehl's USA. Founded as an old-world pharmacy in Manhattan's East Village in 1851, Kiehl's offers efficacious skin, hair and body care products for women, men, babies and even pets. Today, Kiehl's is available worldwide, and along with its products, is also renowned for its rich, New York heritage and history, and commitment to philanthropy. Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum was created to honor Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins, and this partnership with Fleet Week New York is one way of doing that. Collins was born January 14th, 1911, and quickly found his aptitude for tattooing while traveling the country, hopping freight trains with a man named "Big Mike" who taught him the hand-pricking method. At 19, Collins joined the U.S. Navy where he was exposed to the art and culture of Southeast Asia. Following his time in the service, Collins made WWII-era Honolulu his home and continued honing his skills as a tattoo artist. Sailors on Shore Leave would wait in line for hours outside Collins' Hotel Street tattoo shop to be inked by the master himself. Not one to rest idly, Collins also became a licensed skipper of a large three-masted schooner, played the saxophone in his own band, and frequently hosted a radio show. These personal passions of Collins are now celebrated through Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. In addition to the Sailor Jerry Home Base program with Kiehl's, the spiced rum has partnered with the USO to throw the official USO and Sailor Jerry Welcome Celebration aboard the iconic Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. This second annual celebration will include a free concert for the troops by the three-time Grammy-winning Alabama Shakes, delicious rum cocktails, food and more. Complimentary tickets and additional information on how to attend will be available later this month. To learn more about Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum's Fleet Week activities and for a calendar of events, log onto www.sailorjerry.com. About William Grant & Sons William Grant & Sons Holdings Ltd is an independent family-owned distiller headquartered in the United Kingdom and founded by William Grant in 1887. Today, the global premium spirits company is run by the fifth generation of his family and distils some of the world's leading brands of Scotch whisky, including the world's most awarded single malt Glenfiddich, The Balvenie range of handcrafted single malts and the world's third largest blended Scotch, Grant's, as well as other iconic spirits brands such as Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey, Monkey Shoulder Blended Malt Scotch Whisky and Drambuie Scotch Liqueur. William Grant & Sons has been honored as "Distiller of the Year" by the prestigious International Wine & Spirit Competition and International Spirits Challenge 11 times over the past 16 years. Founded in 1964, William Grant & Sons USA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of William Grant & Sons, Ltd. and features one of the fastest growing spirits portfolios in the USA with brands including Glenfiddich, The Balvenie, Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey, Drambuie, Milagro Tequila, Grant's, Hudson Whiskey, Gibson's Finest, Monkey Shoulder, Clan MacGregor, Reyka Vodka, Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur, Montelobos Mezcal, Ancho Reyes, Flor de Cana Rum, Art In The Age, The Knot and Raynal French Brandy. For more information on the company and its brands, please visit www.grantusa.com. About Kiehl's Kiehl's was founded as an old-world apothecary in New York's East Village neighborhood. Its unique, extensive background represents a blend of cosmetic, pharmaceutical, herbal, and medicinal knowledge developed and advanced through the generations. In addition to Kiehl's freestanding stores nationwide, Kiehl's products are available at www.Kiehls.com, by mail order at 1-800-KIEHLS-2 as well as through select specialty retailers worldwide. For additional information on Kiehl's since 1851, visit kiehls.com. SOURCE Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum Related Links http://www.sailorjerry.com CLEVELAND, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/-- North American aftermarket demand for brake shoes, pads, and linings is projected to expand 2.6% per year through 2021 to $1.8 billion, in line with projected market gains for brake parts as a whole. Sales gains will continue to be supported by the constant wear on these parts, resulting in regular replacement. The trend away from the installation of drum brakes toward disc brakes on rear wheels will lead to a change in the product mix in this category. These and other trends are presented in Automotive Aftermarket for Brake Parts in North America, a new study from The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry research firm. The US dominates the North American aftermarket for brake shoes, pads, and linings, accounting for 86% of the regional total in 2016. Sales in this nation are buoyed by the rising number of light vehicles in use and the significant number of miles driven annually. According to analyst Reta Sober, "A consumer preference for larger vehicles such as light trucks and SUVs, which require greater stopping power and wear out brake pads and shoes more quickly, boosts overall market value." This will also contribute to future market gains in the US. The fastest growth through 2021 will be registered in Mexico, with sales boosted by increases in the light vehicle park. Sales gains will also be supported by a high volume of low-cost imports due to lax regulation of hazardous brake part materials and the lesser durability of these imported products, leading to more frequent replacement. More information about the study is available at https://www.freedoniagroup.com/industry-study/automotive-aftermarket-for-brake-parts-in-north-america-by-product-and-performer-3512.htm Related studies include: About The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com The Freedonia Group is a leading international industrial research company publishing more than 100 studies annually. Since 1985, we have provided research to customers ranging in size from global conglomerates to one-person consulting firms. More than 90% of the industrial companies in the Fortune 500 use Freedonia Group research to help with their strategic planning. Additional Automotive & Transport studies can be purchased at www.freedoniagroup.com, www.marketresearch.com and www.profound.com. Press Contact: Corinne Gangloff +1 440.684.9600 [email protected] SOURCE The Freedonia Group Related Links http://www.freedoniagroup.com BETHESDA, Md., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- SANS Institute, the global leader in information security training, today announced SANS course author and instructor Chris Crowley's new course MGT517: Managing Security Operations: Detection, Response, and Intelligence will take place July 10-15 at SANS Los Angeles - Long Beach 2017. This course will arm students with a roadmap to design, build and operate an effective security operations center tailored to the needs of their organization. Crowley will also deliver the keynote address, Tools and Techniques for Assessing Suspected Android Malware. Per Crowley, "Android malware is substantially more common than iOS malware. This is due in part to Android users' ability to enable the "Unknown sources - Allow installation of apps from unknown sources" and install applications from anywhere. For businesses that allow Android use, this talk is a must attend. Join me in Los Angeles where I will share how to assess Android applications to determine if an application is suitable for use within an organization." Additional courses offered include SEC301: Intro to Information Security, SEC401: Security Essentials Bootcamp Style and FOR508: Advanced Digital Forensics, Incident Response, and Threat Hunting. For a complete list of courses, instructors and bonus evening discussions, or to register for SANS Los Angeles Long Beach 2017, please visit: www.sans.org/u/rTL About SANS Institute The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest provider of cybersecurity training and certification to professionals at governments and commercial institutions world-wide. Renowned SANS instructors teach over 50 different courses at more than 200 live cybersecurity training events as well as online. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates employee qualifications via 30 hands-on, technical certifications in information security. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master's degrees in cyber security. SANS offers a myriad of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet's early warning system--the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to help the entire information security community. (www.SANS.org) SOURCE SANS Institute Related Links http://www.sans.org BOSTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On the heels of veteran Vice President and Casting and Release Paper Managing Director Tom Collins' announcement of his retirement, Sappi North America, leading producer and supplier of diversified paper and packaging products, has announced the combination of two key business units, Packaging and Release, and three notable promotions. Tom Collins leaves the paper industry and Sappi's Release Business after a successful career spanning over four decades. Since joining the Lead Team in 2013, the Release Business has improved its operational efficiencies and expanded its offerings far beyond its traditional business, including the introduction of the Neoterix ST bacteria-resistant products. With Collins' departure, formerly the Vice President of the Coated Paper & Packaging business, Deece Hannigan will now serve as the Vice President for the newly expanded Packaging and Specialties Business. In his new role, Deece will maintain his leadership of the Packaging, Supply Chain and Inside Sales groups, while assuming accountability for the Specialties Business, including Release. A graduate of the North Carolina State University, Deece joined Sappi in 1988 and has held a number of positions in Sales Management, Marketing and Technical Specialties. Rick Skoglund, formerly Director, Coated Sheet Grades, will join the Lead Team as Vice President, Coated Business. He will be responsible for the growth of the Coated Graphics Business. Rick has held a number of marketing and brand management roles with increasing responsibility at several companies, including Welch's, High Liner Foods and then Sappi when he joined the company in early 2015. Rick has a B.S. from Union College, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. Beth Cormier, Vice President of Research, Development and Innovation, expands her responsibilities to include Coated Paper, Packaging and Specialties Paper to capture efficiencies and more closely align research and development capabilities regionally and globally. Beth has over 30 years with the company in R&D and marketing roles, and has been leading the R&D group since 2007. Beth has a B.S. in Engineering Physics from University of Maine and a MBA from Boston University. "While we're sad to see Tom go, we're thankful for the 25 years of dedication, innovation and leadership he gave us," said Mark Gardner, President and CEO of Sappi North America. "Tom's contribution has helped us position ourselves to grow and expand. The future is exciting, and we are confident that this combination of our Release and Packaging businesses, together with the increased leadership of Deece, Rick and Beth, will only make it stronger." About Sappi North America Sappi North America, headquartered in Boston, is a market leader in converting wood fiber into superior products that customers demand worldwide. The success of our four diversified businesses high quality Coated Printing Papers, Specialised Cellulose, Release Papers and Specialty Packaging is driven by strong customer relationships, best-in-class people and advantaged assets, products and services. Our high quality Coated Printing Papers, including McCoy, Opus, Somerset and Flo, are the key platform for premium magazines, catalogs, books and high-end print advertising. We are a leading manufacturer of Specialised Cellulose used in a wide range of products, including textile fibers and household goods, and one of the world's leading suppliers of Release Papers with our Ultracast, PolyEX, Classics and Neoterix lines for the automotive, fashion and engineered films industries. Our Specialty Packaging products, such as LusterPrint and LusterCote, represent an important asset in the food packaging and labeling industries. Customers rely on Sappi for high technical, operational and market expertise; products and services delivered with consistently high quality and reliability; and, state-of-the-art and cost-competitive assets and innovative spirit. Sappi North America is a subsidiary of Sappi Limited (JSE), a global company headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, with more than 12,000 employees and manufacturing operations on three continents in seven countries and customers in over 150 countries around the world. Learn more about Sappi at: www.sappi.com. SOURCE Sappi North America Related Links http://www.na.sappi.com/home TALLMADGE, Ohio, May 9, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SlewPro, a precision manufacturer of slewing rings and drives, and related products, has acquired the assets of Rhino Gear, a provider of steel pinions, gears, pulleys, sprockets, splines, and custom broached internal shapes. SlewPro will continue to use the Rhino Gear brand following the acquisition. The addition of Rhino Gear adds new products and capabilities while delivering immediate customer benefits, said SlewPro President and COO Richard Potesta. "Rhino Gear is a perfect fit for us," said Potesta. "They were a trusted supplier of pinions for SlewPro prior to the acquisition, and now we have brought their entire range of capabilities in house." In addition to slewing rings, drives and pinions, SlewPro can now produce internal and external gears, ring gears, timing pulleys, sprockets, internal and external splines, keyways, custom broached internal shapes and CNC machined products. Secondary operations include various types of heat treat, grinding or specialty coatings. The acquisition is a part of a larger effort at SlewPro to serve a wider range of customer needs in terms of design capabilities, responsiveness and product offerings. "We're excited to be growing our manufacturing capabilities because it allows us to meet customers' needs even faster," said Potesta. "Our ability to deliver on shorter lead times for custom products, special requests and repairs will keep our customers working more smoothly and effectively." SlewPro will be adding manufacturing jobs as part of its acquisition of Rhino Gear, and is always looking for talented, experienced machinists who want to be a part of its growing team. "We're delighted with this next phase of growth for our company. Stay tuned for more exciting news from SlewPro as we move through the year," said Potesta. SlewPro Founded in 2012, SlewPro specializes in the precision manufacturing of slewing rings and drives. Beyond providing excellent bearings, SlewPro has expertise that allows the company to quickly understand customer challenges and meet complex needs on budget and on time. SOURCE SlewPro Related Links http://slewpro.com PITTSBURGH, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The SME Education Foundation received a $300,000 grant from Arconic Foundation, the independently endowed philanthropic arm of Arconic Inc., to expand its PRIME (Partnership Response In Manufacturing Education) initiative. The SME Education Foundation established PRIME in 2011 to build a collaborative network of students, educators and industry professionals to inspire and prepare students for careers in manufacturing. As part of a growing partnership between the organizations, the investment will help expand two high school manufacturing education programs in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Students will gain practical experience and skills using state-of-the-art technology and equipment. This new commitment builds on an investment of more than $1 million that the Arconic Foundation is contributing toward PRIME to train the next-generation advanced manufacturing workforce in local communities where Arconic operates. One example is its support of the Four Cities Compact, a career-tech planning consortium comprised of four east Ohio high schools Barberton, Wadsworth, Copley and Norton near the company's operations in Barberton, Ohio. Over 1,000 students at these PRIME sites are benefitting from tailored training curriculum, state-of-the-art equipment, industry-recognized certifications and mentoring opportunities with Arconic employees. "We are expanding our support of PRIME because of the success we are seeing with the advanced manufacturing programs in the Four Cities Compact," said Ryan Kish, senior program manager, Arconic Foundation. "We are committed to working with partners, such as the SME Education Foundation, to give students a more complete view of the spectrum of STEM careers available and equip them with the training they need to pursue a rewarding manufacturing career." The Arconic Foundation has been a dedicated supporter of PRIME since the program's inception. As a partner in several regions around the country including southern California and Virginia the Foundation is focused on growing the pipeline of advanced manufacturing talent in the communities around Arconic facilities. With this expansion, Arconic Foundation will fund the implementation of PRIME near Arconic plants in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and Whitehall, Michigan. Like the 12,000 students currently enrolled in the PRIME network, students at the new schools will gain practical experience and skills using state-of-the-art technology and equipment. Through PRIME, teachers at those locations will receive robust, industry-relevant professional development and classrooms will be outfitted with new equipment, ensuring that these students will be able to pursue career pathways to become engineers and skilled technologists. "Arconic Foundation has been a key supporter through funding as well as employee engagement with PRIME students," said Brian Glowiak, vice president, SME Education Foundation. "This new commitment is a testament to the success of the PRIME program in preparing high school students for rewarding careers in manufacturing." Arconic Foundation's new investment was announced at the RAPID + TCT 2017 conference, which several teachers representing PRIME schools in Ohio are attending as part of their professional development experience. About the SME Education Foundation The SME Education Foundation is committed to inspiring, preparing and supporting the next generation of manufacturing engineers and technologists. Since its creation by SME in 1979, the SME Education Foundation has provided grants, scholarships and awards through its partnerships with corporations, organizations, foundations and individual donors. Each year, the Foundation awards several hundred scholarships to students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering and technology disciplines closely related to manufacturing. The organization also administers scholarship awards on behalf of major corporations connected to manufacturing. Additionally, the Foundation's PRIME initiative was created to provide high school students with a tailored advanced manufacturing /STEM education. Visit the SME Education Foundation at smeeducationfoundation.org. Follow @mfgeducation on Twitter or facebook.com/SME.Education.Foundation. About SME SME connects all those who are passionate about making things that improve our world. As a nonprofit organization, SME has served practitioners, companies, educators, government and communities across the manufacturing spectrum for more than 80 years. Through its strategic areas of events, media, membership, training and development, and the SME Education Foundation, SME is uniquely dedicated to the advancement of manufacturing by addressing both knowledge and skills needed for the industry. Learn more at sme.org, follow @SME_MFG on Twitter or facebook.com/SMEmfg. About Arconic Foundation Arconic Foundation supports programs that help prepare the 21st century engineering and advanced manufacturing workforce. Arconic Foundation is an independently endowed foundation with assets of approximately $320 million and is the charitable arm of Arconic Inc. which works in close partnership with customers to solve complex engineering challenges to transform the way we fly, drive, build and power. Through collaboration with our nonprofit partners, our initiatives make quality STEM education opportunities available to students; support engineering and technical skills training through community colleges, technical schools and universities around the world; and help to create access for underrepresented individuals to the STEM fields. The work of Arconic Foundation is further enhanced by the thousands of Arconic employee volunteers who share their talents and time to make a difference in their communities. Established in 2016, Arconic Foundation is active in 26 countries around the globe. SOURCE SME Education Foundation Related Links http://www.smeef.org Global travel deals publisher Travelzoo revealed details of Summer 2017 Travel Trends survey. The findings reveal that Americans aren't afraid to go the distance and they are planning to take a long weekend trip this summer. When it comes to a long weekend trip, defined as an extra day added to a weekend. A majority of travelers are willing to travel three or more hours from home for their long weekend. Americans taking domestic long weekend trips will overwhelmingly travel by car. For those whose destinations are over five hours from home, 40% of survey respondents say they will swap their car for a plane or train. Visiting Europe Travelers are showing an interest in long weekends to Europe, especially when the price is right. While only 9% of respondents are planning a longer vacation (five days or more) to Europe in 2017, just over half would take a spontaneous long weekend trip. With new low-cost carriers like WOW air and Norwegian, fares to Europe are more competitive than in recent history. More than 65% of respondents would travel to Europe for a weekend if the airfare was $500 or less. In line with findings from Travelzoo's Spring 2017 Travel Trends Survey (Feb. 2017), the latest survey also finds that nearly 60% of Americans will travel domestically for their primary vacation this year. Visiting family and friends With the average American getting just two weeks of vacation time annually according to data from the U.S. Travel Association's Project: Time Off, it's surprising that one of the least cited factors in planning a long weekend trip is taking advantage of a national holidayeven with three opportunities to do so between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Regardless of the timing of their trips, the majority (85%) of travelers named visiting family and friends as their main reason to take a long weekend trip. Beach getaways This spring and summer, more than half of respondents would prefer beach getaways. Most travelers surveyed said they would spend their time on rest and relaxation combined with touring and dining. Ultimately, summer vacations, whether short or long, are just not enough for most travelers. Nearly half of those who travel for business have taken a "bleisure" tripcombining business with pleasure by adding extra time at a destination at the beginning or end of a business trip. The Travelzoo Summer Travel Trends 2017 Survey was completed by 1,367 consumers inthe United Stateswho responded to an online questionnaire distributed by third-party research agency Toluna. The questionnaires were completed April 34, 2017. All currency figures stated in this report are in US Dollars unless stated otherwise. The consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"). SHANGHAI, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981) ("SMIC" or the "Company"), one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world, today announced its consolidated results of operations for the three months ended March 31, 2017. First Quarter 2017 Highlights Revenue was $793.1 million in 1Q17, a decrease of 2.7% QoQ from $814.8 million in 4Q16 and an increase of 25.0% YoY from $634.3 million in 1Q16. in 1Q17, a decrease of 2.7% QoQ from in 4Q16 and an increase of 25.0% YoY from in 1Q16. Gross profit was $220.8 million in 1Q17, compared to $246.0 million in 4Q16 and $153.8 million in 1Q16. in 1Q17, compared to in 4Q16 and in 1Q16. Gross margin was 27.8% in 1Q17, compared to 30.2% in 4Q16 and 24.2% in 1Q16. Net profit for the period attributable to SMIC was $69.8 million in 1Q17, as compared to $104.0 million in 4Q16 and $61.4 million in 1Q16. Second Quarter 2017 Guidance: The following statements are forward looking statements based on current expectations and involved risks and uncertainties, some of which are set forth under "Safe Harbor Statements" below. The Company expects: Revenue to decline by 3% to 6% QoQ. Gross margin to range from 25% to 27%. Non-GAAP operating expenses, excluding the effect of employee bonus accrual, government funding and gain from the disposal of living quarters, to range from $178 million to $184 million . . Non-controlling interests of our majority-owned subsidiaries to range from positive $6 million to positive $8 million (losses to be borne by non-controlling interests). Dr. Haijun Zhao, SMIC's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Our team delivered a good quarter with year-on-year growth, improved operating income, and strong EBITDA in Q1 2017. Revenue grew 25.0% year over year, representing a sequential decline of 2.7%. Operating profit grew 17.0% YoY and 57.9% QoQ. EBITDA was a record high of $312.4 million, an increase of 42.8% YoY and 13.9% QoQ and representing an EBITDA margin of 39.4%. In the first half of 2017, we are confronting the challenges of customer changes in market positioning, seasonal inventory adjustments, and overall muted handset market growth in China; however, we have actively pursued new incremental revenue from a variety of customers and markets to mitigate the impact of such headwinds. We believe we are in a great position, both strategically and financially to weather this cyclical downturn and are positioned to benefit from some exciting future trends, including automotive, industrial, internet of things, and others. Our 28nm is ramping up and reached 5.0% of wafer revenue in Q1, representing a growth of 39.0% QoQ. We continue to work with our customers on 28nm new tape outs for a diverse set of applications. 55nm wafer revenue sequentially grew 29.1% YoY and 9.1% QoQ. We continue to ramp 28nm, 55nm and numerous products on 8-inch; and from a device-perspective, we are pursuing growth in areas in which we are seeing meaningful demand such as NOR flash, RF/connectivity, Power IC, and others." For the complete version of SMIC's 2017 First Quarter results including financial tables, please see: http://www.smics.com/eng/investors/ir_filings.php Conference Call / Webcast Announcement Date: May 11, 2017 Time: 8:30 a.m. Shanghai time Dial-in numbers and pass code: China +86 400-620-8038 (Pass code: SMIC) Hong Kong +852 3018-6771 (Pass code: SMIC) Taiwan +886 2-2650-7825 (Pass code: SMIC) United States, New York +1 845-675-0437 (Pass code: SMIC) The call will be webcast live with audio at http://www.smics.com/eng/investors/ir_presentations.php or http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/z3d2exzc. An archived version of the webcast, along with an electronic copy of this news release will be available on the SMIC website for a period of 12 months following the webcast. SMIC has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission its annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2016. The annual report is available on our website at www.smics.com. In addition, all SMIC ADR holders have the ability, upon request, to receive a hard copy of our complete audited financials free of charge. About SMIC Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"; NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981) is one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world and the largest and most advanced foundry in mainland China. SMIC provides integrated circuit (IC) foundry and technology services on process nodes from 0.35 micron to 28 nanometer. Headquartered in Shanghai, China, SMIC has an international manufacturing and service base. In China, SMIC has a 300mm wafer fabrication facility (fab) and a 200mm fab in Shanghai; a 300mm fab and a majority-owned 300mm fab for advanced nodes in Beijing; 200mm fabs in Tianjin and Shenzhen; and a majority-owned joint-venture 300mm bumping facility in Jiangyin; additionally, in Italy SMIC has a majority-owned 200mm fab. SMIC also has marketing and customer service offices in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Taiwan, and a representative office in Hong Kong. For more information, please visit www.smics.com. Safe Harbor Statements (Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) This press release contains, in addition to historical information, "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements, including statements under "Second Quarter 2017 Guidance", "CapEx Summary" and the statements contained in the quotes of our CEO are based on SMIC's current assumptions, expectations and projections about future events. SMIC uses words like "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "expect," "project," "target" and similar expressions to identify forward looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. These forward-looking statements are necessarily estimates reflecting the best judgment of SMIC's senior management and involve significant risks, both known and unknown, uncertainties and other factors that may cause SMIC's actual performance, financial condition or results of operations to be materially different from those suggested by the forward-looking statements including, among others, risks associated with cyclicality and market conditions in the semiconductor industry, intense competition in the semiconductor industry, SMIC's reliance on a small number of customers, timely wafer acceptance by SMIC's customers, timely introduction of new technologies, SMIC's ability to ramp new products into volume, supply and demand for semiconductor foundry services, industry overcapacity, shortages in equipment, components and raw materials, availability of manufacturing capacity, financial stability in end markets, orders or judgments from pending litigation, intensive intellectual property litigation in semiconductor industry, general economic conditions and fluctuations in currency exchange rates. In addition to the information contained in this press release, you should also consider the information contained in our other filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on April 27, 2017, especially in the "Risk Factors" section and such other documents that we may file with the SEC or The Hong Kong Stock Exchange Limited ("SEHK") from time to time, including current reports on Form 6-K. Other unknown or unpredictable factors also could have material adverse effects on our future results, performance or achievements. In light of these risks, uncertainties, assumptions and factors, the forward-looking events discussed in this press release may not occur. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date stated or, if no date is stated, as of the date of this press release. Except as may be required by law, SMIC undertakes no obligation and does not intend to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About Non-Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("Non-GAAP") Financial Measures To supplement SMIC's consolidated financial results presented in accordance with IFRS, SMIC uses in this press release non-GAAP measures of operating results that are adjusted to exclude finance cost, depreciation and amortization, income tax benefits and expenses, the effect of employee bonus accrual, government funding and gain from the disposal of living quarters. This earnings release also includes second quarter 2017 guidance for non-GAAP operating expenses. The presentation of non-GAAP financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with IFRS. This earnings release includes EBITDA, EBITDA margin and non-GAAP operating expenses which consist of total operating expenses as adjusted to exclude the effect of employee bonus accrual, government funding and gain from the disposal of living quarters. These non-GAAP financial measures are not calculated or presented in accordance with, and are not alternatives or substitutes for financial measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, and should be read only in conjunction with the Group's financial measures prepared in accordance with IFRS. The Group's non-GAAP financial measures may be different from similarly-titled non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. SMIC believes that use of these non-GAAP financial measures facilitates investors' and management's comparisons to SMIC's historical performance. The Group's management regularly uses these non-GAAP financial measures to understand, manage and evaluate the Group's business and make financial and operational decisions. The accompanying table has more information and reconciliations of each non-GAAP financial measure to its most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. A reconciliation of non-GAAP guidance measures to corresponding GAAP measures is not available on a forward-looking basis because the effect of these adjustment items excluded for the purpose of non-GAAP operating expenses guidance are subject to some unpredictable conditions that cannot be estimated with reasonable certainty. Contact: Investor Relations +86-21-3861-0000 ext. 12804 [email protected] SOURCE Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation Related Links http://www.smics.com SHANGHAI, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"; NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 0981.HK), China's largest and most advanced semiconductor foundry, today announces the appointment of Dr. Haijun Zhao as CEO replacing Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu, who will continue to serve as Vice Chairman and Non-Executive Director of the Board and guide the Company's future strategic direction. In addition, Dr. Chiu will serve as a full-time advisor until June 30, 2017, working closely with Dr. Zhao to ensure a seamless transition of leadership responsibilities. Dr. Zhao joined SMIC in October 2010 and has moved quickly through the company's ranks. In April, 2013, he became Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer. In July, 2013, he also assumed the role of General Manager of SMNC, SMIC's joint venture in Beijing. Dr. Zhao received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He has more than 25 years of experience in semiconductor operations and technology development. Dr. Zhou Zixue, Chairman of the Board said, "We are pleased to have Dr. Zhao, as nominated by Dr. Chiu, as the Company's new CEO, to lead the Company forward. Also, I want to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Chiu for his invaluable contributions to the Company. Dr. Chiu, in the past six years, has done an incredible job of turning around the Company, regaining the confidence of our stakeholders, and repositioning the Company as a leading player in the global foundry industry. Due to personal family reasons, he has decided to step down at this time. SMIC will remain a global, professional and independent company. With the solid management team which Dr. Chiu has already put in place at SMIC, I am fully confident of the Company's future prospects." "It has been an honor to lead the team to transform SMIC over these past years," said Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu. "The Board and I are confident that now is the right time to transition leadership responsibility, and Haijun is the right leader for SMIC's next chapter of growth. Since joining SMIC seven years ago, Haijun has been an invaluable leader and was a part of the executive team which brought about the transformation in these past few years. SMIC benefits from an outstanding management team with a diverse range of experienced leaders and thousands of dedicated employees. I would like to thank the Board and my SMIC colleagues for their support. I will continue to serve the Company as Vice-Chairman and Non-Executive Director on the Board and contribute to its continued growth and success." Dr. Haijun Zhao, SMIC CEO said, "I am greatly honored to have the opportunity to lead the SMIC team at this exciting moment in our history. I would like to thank Dr. Chiu for his guidance and mentorship, as well as the Board for their trust. I look forward to working with the Board and the management team as we continue to enhance our competitive position in the foundry markets. As a global and independent foundry player, we are committed to deliver results benefitting our shareholders, customers and employees." About SMIC Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"; NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981) is one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world and the largest and most advanced foundry in mainland China. SMIC provides integrated circuit (IC) foundry and technology services on process nodes from 0.35 micron to 28 nanometers. Headquartered in Shanghai, China, SMIC has an international manufacturing and service base. In China, SMIC has a 300mm wafer fabrication facility (fab) and a 200mm mega-fab in Shanghai; a 300mm mega-fab and a majority-owned 300mm fab for advanced nodes in Beijing; 200mm fabs in Tianjin and Shenzhen; and a majority-owned joint-venture 300mm bumping facility in Jiangyin; additionally, in Italy SMIC has a majority-owned 200mm fab. SMIC also has marketing and customer service offices in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Taiwan, and a representative office in Hong Kong. For more information, please visit www.smics.com. Safe Harbor Statements (Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) This document contains, in addition to historical information, "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on SMIC's current assumptions, expectations and projections about future events. SMIC uses words like "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "expect," "project" and similar expressions to identify forward looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. These forward-looking statements are necessarily estimates reflecting the best judgment of SMIC's senior management and involve significant risks, both known and unknown, uncertainties and other factors that may cause SMIC's actual performance, financial condition or results of operations to be materially different from those suggested by the forward-looking statements including, among others, risks associated with cyclicality and market conditions in the semiconductor industry, intense competition, timely wafer acceptance by SMIC's customers, timely introduction of new technologies, SMIC's ability to ramp new products into volume, supply and demand for semiconductor foundry services, industry overcapacity, shortages in equipment, components and raw materials, availability of manufacturing capacity, financial stability in end markets and intensive intellectual property litigation in high tech industry. In addition to the information contained in this document, you should also consider the information contained in our other filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on April 27, 2017, especially in the "Risk Factors" section and such other documents that we may file with the SEC or SEHK from time to time, including on Form 6-K. Other unknown or unpredictable factors also could have material adverse effects on our future results, performance or achievements. In light of these risks, uncertainties, assumptions and factors, the forward-looking events discussed in this document may not occur. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date stated or, if no date is stated, as of the date of this document. SMIC has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission its annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2016. The annual report is available on our website at www.smics.com. In addition, all SMIC ADR holders have the ability, upon request, to receive a hard copy of our complete audited financials free of charge. SMIC PR Contact Terry Ding +86-21-3861-0000 x16812 [email protected] SOURCE Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation Related Links http://www.smics.com NEW YORK, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the leading global Social Media Intelligence and Social Listening tool, Synthesio, announced Synthesio Plus. This new update, a premium offering, will allow Synthesio customers to gain stronger qualitative and quantitative insights out of their Social Data through utilizing interaction analytics in all aspects of the platform. "Everything that we build for our platform is designed to give our customers the ability to utilize Social Listening to gain real insights from the vast amount of Social Data in a flexible and user-friendly way. This mindset is why we work closely with our customers to understand what they are looking for as we continue to set the standard for Social Media Intelligence and Social Listening, and in this case, the answer was 'interactions.' Our customers wanted to know more about how people were interacting with every mention that appeared on their dashboards," explained Thibault Hanin, Co-Founder and CTO of Synthesio. "Synthesio Plus not only features new dynamic widgets, deeper and more consolidated metrics, more robust influencer panel creation capabilities and so much more, but it also gives the power to our customers to be able to dig as deep as they can into their data and really take control it. With new capabilities like country-specific share-of-voice metrics, integrating mention interactions data into all aspects of your Social Listening analytics, etc., Synthesio Plus will be able to give our customers insights that they need and want, and it is designed to present it to them quicker than we've ever been able to in the past." Synthesio Plus is designed to provide users with more impactful and insightful Social Data analysis for their Social Listening and Social Intelligence customers than ever before. For example: Consolidating Metrics: Interactions analytics are included in the algorithms of almost every widget in Synthesio Plus, allowing users to gain a much deeper understanding of their metrics. Consolidating interaction data into existing metrics will build a bigger picture and add more qualitative and quantitative substance to all mentions. Interactions analytics are included in the algorithms of almost every widget in Synthesio Plus, allowing users to gain a much deeper understanding of their metrics. Consolidating interaction data into existing metrics will build a bigger picture and add more qualitative and quantitative substance to all mentions. More Robust Influencer Panel Creation: Influencer panels are a necessity for most brands using Social Intelligence and Social Listening tools, Synthesio Plus' Influencer Panel Creation capabilities are being fully upgraded to take this into account using interactions data. This will allow users to understand the engagement that each influencer brings to the table for them, and users can also easily use this data to build Influencer Panels through the ability to sort Influencers by new metrics, including average total interactions or average engagement rate. Influencer panels are a necessity for most brands using Social Intelligence and Social Listening tools, Synthesio Plus' Influencer Panel Creation capabilities are being fully upgraded to take this into account using interactions data. This will allow users to understand the engagement that each influencer brings to the table for them, and users can also easily use this data to build Influencer Panels through the ability to sort Influencers by new metrics, including average total interactions or average engagement rate. Identifying Top Content: While Synthesio has offered top performing content for a while, Synthesio Plus will expand on this through the interactions data. Specifically, the biggest change will be that users will be able to sort the top content by influence or date (as they could in the past), and now also sort by top performing content in each social network according to the interactions data. "We've always prided ourselves on giving our customers the best Social Listening platform that will provide them with the insights that make their Social Data useful and impactful on their business," said Loic Moisand, Co-Founder and CEO of Synthesio. "Synthesio Plus is the natural progression of our offerings. Synthesio Plus is the first Social Listening and Social Intelligence platform that uses interactions data as a core metric in almost every widget and bit of insight that our customers will see. This will be a game changer for organizations that need a deeper understanding of the impact their work is having on their business, as well as provide incredibly useful analysis for all organizations, executives and business units. Synthesio Plus will also help companies bring new levels of understanding to the social analysis of their market research, brand health monitoring, crisis management and overall campaign measurement." Synthesio Plus' use of interactions will help with many of our customers' common business use-cases, including: Campaigns : An understanding of the impact of a campaign is the main goal for all Social Listening users, and Synthesio Plus will be able to give deeper insight into the impact that a campaign through the engagement level it had with customers. An understanding of the impact of a campaign is the main goal for all Social Listening users, and Synthesio Plus will be able to give deeper insight into the impact that a campaign through the engagement level it had with customers. Brand health : Users can understand the true definition of creating and acting on buzz. For example, they will be able to know that while they might be number one in overall share of voice, they are number 4 in engagement with their customers. Users can understand the true definition of creating and acting on buzz. For example, they will be able to know that while they might be number one in overall share of voice, they are number 4 in engagement with their customers. Insights and Market Research: Organizations look to Social Media to know what their customers are talking about and what trends they care about. Synthesio Plus will provide further insights into trends and audience information by looking at audience interactions and taking audience engagement into account. Synthesio Plus is a premium offering, that is being offered immediately. About Synthesio Synthesio, named the Global Leader by an independent analyst in two reports in Q1 2016 and an Editor's Choice by PC Mag, is a global Social Intelligence platform used by some of the world's top brands, and the agencies that support them. Synthesio is the framework for building social intelligence that provides real business results. Whether an organization's social team is built within Marketing or crosses multiple departments, business units or geographies, Synthesio helps teams listen to, and analyze, consumer conversations across social and mainstream media within one platform. Founded in 2006, Synthesio has offices in New York, Paris, London, and Singapore. Media Contact: Adam Dalezman Senior Communications Manager [email protected] SOURCE Synthesio Related Links http://www.synthesio.com NEW YORK, May 9, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SSA & Company (SSA), a New York-based global management consulting firm, announced today the addition of Philippe Rose as Managing Director. Rose will grow and lead the firm's European private equity and industrials practice. He brings over 25 years of experience in chemicals and management consulting and formerly ran Celerant's Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) Private Equity practice. In that role, he covered the full M&A cycle, from due diligence to post-merger integration, across multiple sectors as well as working on the sell side in chemicals and pharmaceuticals. "Increasingly, our clients ask for support of their global businesses," said Paul de Janosi, Senior Managing Director at SSA. "Philippe is a senior leader already familiar with our approach. I had the privilege of working with him over the past decade and look forward to better serving our global clients with his addition." "We have a proven model for value creation that holistically combines advanced analytics, digital technology, and operations transformation," said Thomas Kaiser, Managing Director, EMEA at SSA & Company. "With the addition of Philippe and our expanded data science team in Europe, we can better serve our growing list of global clients." "Every company today is thinking about how to embed digital, analytics, and process automation into operations to drive revenue, enhance productivity and margins, and decrease risk," Rose said. "SSA's approach brings a new dimension to Private Equity services and complements traditional M&A offerings. What drew me to SSA is its specialized service model of using experts to help clients enhance operating models and build agile organizations that accelerate and sustain growth in the digital era." ABOUT SSA & COMPANY : SSA & Company is the global management consulting firm that applies Advanced Operations to achieve sustained growth for clients. Advanced Operations combines operations transformation with technology and data for optimized, lasting results. For over 25 years, we have partnered with executives of leading companies and private equity firms to reduce cost, grow revenue, and build long-term strategic capability. Our agile, multi-disciplinary teams solve complex problems and execute strategies to transform businesses. SSA & Company is part of G100 Companies, a private partnership of businesses that deliver solutions, advice, and forums for the world's leading CEOs. SOURCE SSA & Company Related Links http://www.ssaandco.com Contestants must upload a video of their best one-minute tech tip to YouTube and add the hashtag #StandardTechStar in the video description. The tech tip should be for an underhood repair. Members of SMP's acclaimed training department will select the winning tech tips. Prizes The Grand Prize is an all-expense paid trip for two to SMP's training center in Irving, Texas, where the winner will record three install videos with SMP's Director of Training and YouTube Tech Star, Ryan Kooiman. The winner's videos will be posted to the Standard YouTube channel, which has over 3 million views and 4,000 subscribers. Plus, they'll receive $5,000 toward video equipment and automotive tools to start their own channel. Additionally, two 2nd prize winners will win $1,500 toward automotive tools and/or video equipment. Five 3rd prize winners will win a GoPro Hero4 Black camera. The first 500 entries will receive a commemorative Standard cap. Phil Hutchens, Vice President Engine Management Marketing, SMP, commented on the promotion, stating, "Standard has always been proud to recognize and support the professional technician community, and our Standard Tech Star Challenge is an exciting way to do just that." The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec). Complete rules and contest information can be found at www.StandardTechStarChallenge.com. About SMP: SMP supplies independent professional auto technicians and automotive do-it-yourselfers with high quality replacement parts for engine management ignition, emission and fuel systems as well as temperature control products for domestic and import cars and light trucks. SMP products are sold through both traditional and non-traditional distribution channels. For more information, download the SMP Parts App 2.0 or visit www.smpcorp.com. SOURCE Standard Motor Products, Inc. Related Links http://www.smpcorp.com SALT LAKE CITY, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Travelers to Utah spent a record $8.17 billion in the state in 2015 and generated an estimated $1.15 billion in total state and local tax revenue, according to a recent study completed by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. "This was a leading year for Utah tourism," said Jennifer Leaver, research analyst at the Gardner Policy Institute. "Travelers and tourists visited our ski resorts and national parks in record numbers, leaving more dollars in Utah than ever before." Travel and tourism generated an estimated 142,500 direct, indirect and induced jobs in 2015 and around $4.3 billion in wages. Travel and tourism-supported jobs grew 12 percent and tourism-related wages increased 20 percent from 2011 to 2015. Tourism-related sales tax revenues saw healthy increases over this period as well, including a 12 percent increase in municipal transient room tax revenue, a 10 percent increase in county transient room tax revenue and an 8 percent increase in resort communities' sales tax revenue. "In a year of fairly disappointing global economic growth, Utah attracted more spending by international visitors than ever before," said Juliette Tennert, director of economic and public policy research at the Gardner Policy Institute. "Utah's top international leisure markets are Canada, China and France. Chinese visitors spent an estimated 40 percent more in 2015 than in the previous year."' Utah's "Mighty 5" national parks experienced record visitation in both 2015 (8.4 million visits) and 2016 (10.1 million visits). According to the National Park Service, non-local visitation to Utah's national parks and places generate over $800 million in spending and support over 14,000 Utah jobs. The full report is available here and includes the most recent travel and tourism-related data that were available at the time of publication; in most cases, data reflect 2015 activity. About the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah enhances Utah's economy by placing data-driven research into the hands of decision makers. Housed within the David Eccles School of Business, its mission is to develop and share economic, demographic and public policy data and research that help community leaders make informed decisions. Located at the newly restored Thomas S. Monson Center on South Temple Street, the Gardner Policy Institute serves as a vital gathering place and center for independent economic, demographic and public policy thought leadership. Learn more at gardner.utah.edu or by calling 801-587-3717. About the David Eccles School of Business Founded in 1917 and educating more than 4,500 students annually, the David Eccles School of Business offers eight undergraduate majors, four MBAs, five other graduate programs, a Ph.D. program and executive education curricula. The Eccles School is also home to eight institutes and centers, including the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, which deliver academic research and support an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation. It is consistently one of the top schools in the nation for startup businesses based on university research. Experiential learning is central to the Eccles experience. For more information, visit Eccles.Utah.edu or call 801-581-7676. Contact: Nick Thiriot, Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, 801-587-3717, [email protected] SOURCE David Eccles School of Business SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A recent survey should be a word of caution to lawmakers and special interests that have introduced legislation to create a universal single payer health care. Despite the current growing call for a single payer system, the survey commissioned by the California Association of Health Underwriters (CAHU) showed a supermajority of California voters opposed the creation of government run health care when they learn of the associated cost burden to families. "The single payer universal health care law would force Californians to hand over at least $179 billion in new state taxes to pay for a health care system run by the State of California. That translates to costing each California taxpayer $9,100 per year," said CAHU President Richard Coburn. "This new policy would eliminate employer paid health coverage and shifts health costs to employees." The survey found: Eighty-one percent of Californians are satisfied with the timeliness, cost, quality, availability and accessibility of their current health care coverage with 42 percent of respondents saying they are "very satisfied." A supermajority (66 percent) opposes legislation establishing universal single payer universal health care with 44 percent strongly opposing the legislative proposal. When learning about the facts about universal single payer health care, different age groups, demographics and ethnic backgrounds all share opposition to a government run system. Of the minority who favor single payer universal healthcare: Seventy-five percent become less likely to support it knowing the cost to Californians in new taxes. Seventy-four percent of California voters are less likely to support knowing it eliminates employer paid health coverage. voters are less likely to support knowing it eliminates employer paid health coverage. Seventy-two percent of those polled become less likely to support knowing it will reduce health care quality and hinder medical advancement. The Senate Health Committee has approved the measure without specifying where money to fund the program would come from. The state would pay for all residents, and cover doctor visits, hospitalization, emergency services, dental, vision, mental health and nursing home care. The bill would also take the all funding from Medicare and all Medicare Advantage plans. "California has barely recovered from the Great Recession," Coburn said. "State lawmakers have just approved $69 billion in higher taxes for long-neglected education, water and transportation infrastructure repairs and upgrades. The universal health care law would leave Californians with a bill for their health care that has a limitless price tag, little accountability and no guarantee of better health care or even similar health care." About California Association of Health Underwriters (CAHU) CAHU works closely with legislators and government agencies at both the state and federal level by educating our government leaders about the healthcare delivery system and the vital role of a professional agent as a consumer resource and advocate. We have been instrumental in protecting California consumers through a very dynamic grassroots network that includes organized events and lobbying, as well as in-district activities with our elected legislators. We also work diligently with Covered California to ensure the best possible outcomes for Californians, and their leadership frequently cites our input and impact. For more information go to www.cahu.org. Survey Methodology From Saturday, April 22 through Wednesday, April 26, 2017 J. Wallin Opinion Research conducted a telephone survey of voters throughout the state of California. One thousand voters were interviewed, using live, professional interviewers, speaking both Spanish and English languages and calling both mobile and landlines (34.9% of this survey was completed on mobile phones). The sample is stratified and has a margin of error of +/-3.1% (95% confidence interval). An executive summary of the poll and its methodology are available. For complete survey methodology, please contact Marna Davis at 916-658-0144. SOURCE California Association of Health Underwriters (CAHU) Related Links http://www.cahu.org SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TE Connectivity (TE) (NYSE: TEL), a world leader in connectivity and sensors, has been named to the Forbes 2017 list of America's Best Employers. TE develops and manufactures highly engineered sensors and connectors that enable the world's most innovative companies to tackle their toughest challenges. TE's diverse range of connectivity solutions are essential elements in cars, planes, power grids, appliances, electronics, factories, medical devices and more. TE employs approximately 75,000 people in 150 countries, including 7,000 engineers whose innovations help make our world safer, greener, smarter and more connected. The company has 12,000 employees and more than 60 office and manufacturing facilities in the United States. "We are very excited to receive this recognition from Forbes as a best employer," said Tim Murphy, TE's senior vice president and global chief human resources officer. "Our employees are at the heart of our business and we are fortunate to have a very talented, global workforce whose commitment drives the innovation and quality that our customers count on. We know that our success as a business comes directly from the success of our employees, so we are passionate about unleashing our people's potential and creating an environment where all employees feel included, respected and valued." Working with online statistics provider Statista, Forbes asked more than 30,000 U.S. workers employed by companies with more than 5,000 staff members to determine, on a scale of zero to 10, how likely they were to recommend their employer to someone else. Employees were contacted anonymously online without the involvement of their employer. The full list of the 2017 America's Best Employers can be found at: https://www.forbes.com/best-employers/. This is the second employer honor for TE in the last month. In April, TE was certified as a "Great Place to Work" by the Great Place to Work Institute, India. As part of its global employee engagement program, TE is currently celebrating its annual Inclusion & Diversity Month, in which employees at every level are invited to participate in webcasts, panel discussions, and other networking and professional development activities. The company is committed to engaging with its employees and making TE a great place to work by emphasizing development and training, creating a safe work environment, embracing diversity and inclusion, and supporting uncompromising values. ABOUT TE CONNECTIVITY TE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL) is a $12 billion global technology leader. Our commitment to innovation enables advancements in transportation, industrial applications, medical technology, energy, data communications, and the home. TE's unmatched breadth of connectivity and sensor solutions, proven in the harshest of environments, helps build a safer, greener, smarter and more connected world. With 75,000 people including more than 7,000 engineers working alongside customers in nearly 150 countries, we help ensure that EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS www.TE.com SOURCE TE Connectivity Related Links http://www.TE.com CHICAGO, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Business and technology consulting company Technology Advisors Inc. (TAI) has acquired Infor CRM customers from Minnesota-based consulting company Interlinx Associates, LLC. Interlinx Associates, LLC has more than 15 years of CRM experience with multiple platforms and was one of the earliest companies to specialize in CRM in the Minneapolis/Twin Cities region. Until recently, the company focused exclusively on Infor CRM. The acquisition of Infor CRM customers by TAI ensures Interlinx clients will continue to have access to a trusted support partner. "Infor was one of our first CRM partners and we've maintained a strong relationship with the product," says Technology Advisors CEO, Sam Biardo. "We look forward to helping these new clients maximize their CRM potential with the training, customizations, integrations, and ongoing support they need." Based out of Chicago, TAI has more than 30 years of experience serving CRM customers across the country with implementations, training, support, specialized configurations, and software add-ons. The company also has 16 years of integration expertise. "Technology Advisors' customer focused strategy and deep business and CRM knowledge fits well with the philosophy that has guided Interlinx Associates through the years. We feel confident our clients will enjoy the highest level of service and expertise through TAI," said Elaine Koyama, president and CEO of Interlinx. TAI's acquisition is effective immediately. All transitioned customers can reach out to TAI directly for any CRM consulting needs. About Technology Advisors Inc. Technology Advisors Inc. is a global business and technology consulting company specializing in the development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) processes and technology solutions. Since 1991, the company has helped more than 2,000 businesses increase sales, boost productivity, and improve profitability. For more information, visit: techadv.com. About Interlinx Associates, LLC Interlinx Associates, LLC brings CRM experience in the areas of software selection, integration, customization, implementation, development and training. Interlinx will help you maximize productivity of existing resources. For more information, visit: interlinxassociates.com. Media Contact: Danine Pontarelli | Marketing Manager, Technology Advisors, Inc. | [email protected] | 847.655.3415 SOURCE Technology Advisors Inc. Related Links http://www.techadv.com SAN DIEGO, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hiring and retaining physicians to provide nighttime coverage is a tough challenge for many hospitals today, especially those in rural areas. Often, physicians who work days are expected to share nighttime shifts on-calla practice that can lead to stress and burnout at a time when the physician shortage and geographic maldistribution of doctors is increasing nationwide. Telenocturnist care offers a sustainable solution. Videoconferencing technology enables hospitals to "beam in" physicians from other locations to provide diagnosis and treatment for patients, as well as guidance for onsite nurses and other clinical staff throughout the night. This solutionand the benefits it can deliver to hospitals and patientswill be the topic of a presentation on Friday, May 12, at the National Rural Health Association's Rural Hospital Innovation Summit to be held May 9-12 in San Diego. Presenters are Talbot "Mac" McCormick, MD, president and CEO of Eagle Telemedicine; Doug Romer, executive director of Patient Care Services and chief nursing officer at Grande Ronde Hospital in La Grande, Ore.; and Jason Kimball, MD, hospitalist and founder of Sunflower Telemedicine, an extension of Eagle Telemedicine providing services to Kansas hospitals by Kansas-based physicians. Benefits Include Burnout Reduction, Reduced attrition "Especially as the physician shortage continues to grow, hospitals are hard-pressed to find physicians who are willing to work the night shift," said McCormick. "Telenocturnist coverage eases the night-shift burdens faced by rural hospitals, with five key benefits including patient satisfaction, quick physician access, cost savings, burnout reduction, and growth potential for nighttime admissions." The program, "Night Shift: How to Build Effective Telenocturnist Programs," will also focus on how rural hospital executives and clinical managers can evaluate their facilities to see what type of telenocturnist program is needed. Program attendees will also learn how to: Implement telenocturnist care to improve retention and recruitment and decrease unnecessary transfers Utilize Tele-Cross coverage to take the burden of floor calls off daytime doctors and improve quality of patient care with face-to-face consults Support Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant management by providing access to physicians offsite who can guide and advise staff in providing comprehensive local care During the session, a real-world case study will be presented by Doug Romer of Grande Ronde Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital in rural northeast Oregon. In 2009, the facility was honored with the Outstanding Rural Health Organization Award by the NRHAthe first hospital in Oregon to achieve this recognition. The NRHA chose Grande Ronde for its exceptional contribution to rural health services through its innovative and pioneering telemedicine program. "Telemedicine offers a lifeline that more hospitals, especially in underserved rural communities, rely on," McCormick said. "It can bring in a variety of specialtiesincluding neurologists, intensivists, cardiologists, and nephrologiststo help hospitals expand their offerings to their communities. We are pleased to share the benefits of one particular specialtytelenocturnist careat the NRHA conference." It can be overwhelming for a hospitalist to round all day and go home, only to return in the middle of the night to admit a patient. "Telenocturnist programs allow hospitalists the break they need to recharge and come back fresh in the morning," McCormick said. "At the same time, their patients are continuing to receive excellent clinical care via telemedicine, where seasoned hospitalists off-site have two-way communication via videoconferencing technology with patients and staff. Hospitals tell us that we are instrumental in helping physicians maintain work-life balance and avoid burnout." Additional Program on Telemedicine Best Practices McCormick will also present "How to Build Consensus and Collaboration for Telemedicine" during the NRHA's Health Equity Conference, to be held May 9 in San Diego as part of the NRHA's Annual Rural Health Conference. The session is designed to share best practices on how facilities can work with three key constituent groupsclinical, finance and administrationto set up effective telemedicine programs that deliver significant benefits for hospitals. About ETM Founded in 2008, Eagle Telemedicine was one of the first companies to emerge in the telemedicine physician service arena, and continues to serve as a pioneer in the industry, helping partner hospitals eliminate locum support costs, prevent burnout, manage specialty gaps, reduce unnecessary transfers, and increase census. Eagle offers solutions in multiple specialties including Hospitalist Medicine, Stroke and Acute Neurology, Psychiatry, Critical Care, and Cardiology. For more information, visit www.eagletelemedicine.com. Media Contact: Jan Sisko Carabiner Communications O: 678.461.7438 M: 678.591.2022 [email protected] SOURCE Eagle Telemedicine Related Links http://www.eagletelemedicine.com SOMERVILLE, N.J., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ethicon*, a trusted leader in suture technology, supports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) updated Guideline for the Prevention of Surgical Site Infection, 2017. Recently revised, the CDC guideline now includes a recommendation that health care professionals "consider the use of triclosan-coated sutures for the prevention of SSI [surgical site infection]." The guideline appeared in the May 3 edition of JAMA Surgery online. This announcement adds to the growing support from other prestigious organizations, including the World Health Organization, the American College of Surgeons and the Surgical Infection Society, on the positive impact of triclosan-coated sutures in reducing the risk for SSI. Suture selection provides an important opportunity to address a key risk factor for infection bacterial colonization of the suture. Ethicon Plus Sutures are the only globally available sutures coated with triclosan that inhibit bacteria commonly associated with SSIs (including S. aureus, S. epidermidis, MRSA, MRSE, E. coli, and K. pneumoniae.i,ii,iii) from colonizing the suture. Ethicon first innovated the triclosan-coated suture with the introduction of Coated VICRYL Plus Antibacterial (polyglactin 910) suture in 2003. "Triclosan-coated sutures should be considered as part of an institution's comprehensive evidence-based approach to reducing the risk of SSIs," said Charles Edmiston, PhD**, Emeritus Professor of Surgery & Former Hospital Epidemiologist at Froedtert Hospital - Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. "Ethicon Plus Sutures play an important role in reducing hospital-acquired infections, and with health care costs increasingly rising, it's now more important than ever to address the risk factors associated with SSIs." Surgical Site Infections are among the most common healthcare-associated infections (HAI) worldwide; they increase morbidity and mortality in surgical patients and represent an economic burden to healthcare systems.iv In fact, SSIs have been reported as the most common type of HAI in the U.S.,v occurring in up to 3% of all hospitalized patients.vi "Ethicon, with a 60-year legacy of innovation in surgical sutures, fully supports the CDC's updated guideline, which demonstrates their commitment to improving the quality of patient care and will ultimately help save many lives," said Liza Ovington, Franchise Medical Director for Ethicon. Ethicon Plus Sutures have been shown in vitro to inhibit bacterial colonization of the suture for seven days or more, as well as bacterial growth in a zone around the suture.iii By inhibiting bacterial colonization of the suture by pathogens commonly associated with SSIs, a key risk factor for infection is addressed. Numerous peer reviewed, randomized clinical trials, as well as prospectively planned meta-analyses of these trials, support a growing body of evidence that antibacterial sutures are an important tool in the fight against surgical site infections. To learn more about Ethicon Plus Sutures, visit www.ethicon.com About Ethicon From creating the first sutures to revolutionizing surgery with minimally invasive procedures, Ethicon, part of the Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies, has made significant contributions to surgery for more than 60 years. Our continuing dedication to Shape the Future of Surgery is built on our commitment to help address the world's most pressing health care issues, and improve and save more lives. Through Ethicon's surgical technologies and solutions including sutures, staplers, energy devices, trocars and hemostats and our commitment to treating serious medical conditions like obesity and cancer worldwide, we deliver innovation to make a life-changing impact. Learn more at www.ethicon.com, and follow us on Twitter @Ethicon. *Ethicon represents the products and services of Ethicon, Inc., Ethicon Endo-Surgery, LLC and certain of their affiliates. Ethicon, Inc. is the legal manufacturer of Plus Antibacterial Sutures. **Charles Edmiston is a paid consultant of Ethicon. i Ming X, Rothenburger S, Nichols MM. In vivo and in vitro antibacterial efficacy of PDS Plus (polidioxanone with triclosan) suture. Surg Infect. 2008;9(4):451-457. ii Ming X, Rothenburger S, Yang D. In vitro antibacterial efficacy of Monocryl Plus Antibacterial Suture (poligelcaprone 25 with triclosan). Surg Infect. 2007;8(2):201-207. iii Rothenburger S, Spangler D, Bhende S, Burkley D. In vitro antimicrobial evaluation of coated Vicryl Plus Antibacterial Suture (coated polyglactin 910 with triclosan) using zone of inhibition assays. Surg Infect. 2002;3(suppl):79-87. iv Wang ZX, Jiang CP, Cao Y, Ding YT. Systematic review and meta-analysis of triclosan-coated sutures for the inhibition of surgical-site infection. Br J Surg. 2013;100(4):465-473. v Magill, S.S., et al., "Prevalence of healthcare-associated infections in acute care hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida". Infection Control Hospital Epidemiology, 33(3):(2012): 283-91. Accessed April 6, 2016 at http://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/PDFs/pscManual/9pscSSIcurrent.pdf. vi FAQs About Surgical Site Infections. Accessed April 6, 2016: http://www.cdc.gov/HAI/pdfs/ssi/SSI_tagged.pdf. SOURCE Ethicon NORTH READING, Mass., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TraceLink Inc., the World's Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the Life Sciences supply chain and eliminating counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace, today announced that it has added three software industry veterans with deep expertise in talent recruitment, human resources operations and executive leadership for high-growth companies. The newest members of TraceLink's team include Nick Camelio as Chief People Officer, Regina O'Brien as Vice President of Learning and Human Resource Operations, and Jeff Sa as Senior Director of Global Talent Acquisition. These industry experts are the latest to join the rapidly expanding TraceLink team, which at the end of Q1, included 264 employees representing a 140% increase in employee growth in the last 18 months. "We're investing $70 million into our pharmaceutical track and trace solutions and support infrastructure this year, and we continue to recruit the best and brightest talent to aid in our local growth and international development," said Shabbir Dahod, president and CEO, TraceLink. "The addition of Nick, Regina and Jeff, who have the benefit of previously working together at Demandware and developing a strong, cohesive system of company culture and talent during a period of high-growth, will help us continue our trajectory as one of the fastest growing companies in North America and the global market leader in the pharmaceutical track and trace industry." TraceLink, which achieved revenue growth of 585 percent from 2012 to 2015, was ranked as the #8 fastest growing company from Massachusetts on the 2016 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, and ranked #4 among the fastest growing software companies headquartered in the state. "We expect to grow our team by more than 100 new employees over the course of 2017, with a strong focus on increasing our headcount at our corporate headquarters in North Reading, Mass., while expanding our presence in our London office for the international market," added Dahod. "As TraceLink's newly appointed Chief People Officer, I look forward to ensuring that the organization not only meets the impressive growth demands of an industry-leading company, but that we continue to engage with and develop our current employees while ensuring new talent brings an exceptionally high level of quality to the team," said Camelio. "The addition of Regina and Jeff joining me at TraceLink is a testament to our accomplishments in constructing exceptional organizations and the understanding that TraceLink is looking for A-players who want to be a part of a shared passion in securing the global pharmaceutical supply chain." Nick Camelio, Chief People Officer Nick Camelio joins TraceLink from Demandware, a publicly traded cloud-based ecommerce solution for some of the world's top brands and retailers, where he served as Chief People Officer and Senior Vice President for Human Resources. Camelio was an instrumental member of the Executive Team at Demandware, aiding in the company's growth from $56.5 million to $237.3 million in revenue, the Company's successful IPO in 2012, and increased employee headcount from 100 to more than 1,000 worldwide. Prior to joining Demandware, Camelio served as Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Salary.com, where he established the Global Human Capital Management function to support the advancement and development of Salary.com's business and people after a successful IPO in 2007. Previously, Camelio held HR leadership positions at BrassRing Inc., Vignette Corporation, IBM and Lotus Development Corporation. Camelio holds a Bachelor's degree from Bentley University, and is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). He is also a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) and Global Remuneration Professional (GRP) through WorldatWork, and a certified Human Capital Strategist. Regina O'Brien, Vice President, Learning and Human Resource Operations Regina O'Brien joins TraceLink as the former Vice President for Human Resource Operations at Demandware, where she was responsible for Demandware's HR Center of Excellence, including HRIS, compensation (cash and equity), payroll, corporate training, and organizational design and development. Prior to joining Demandware, O'Brien was the Human Resources Generalist & Business Partner at Brookfield Renewable Power, where she focused on union-management-corporate relations. Previously, O'Brien worked at Salary.com, Akamai and AOL. O'Brien holds a Bachelor's degree in Government and International Relations from Clark University, and a General Course Certification from the London School of Economics. She is a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP), Global Remuneration Professional (GRP), SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP), and a Certified Kolbe Consultant. Jeff Sa, Senior Director, Global Talent Acquisition Jeff Sa brings over 25 years of experience in software recruiting for some of the strongest Cloud and SaaS organizations in the industry. Sa was formerly the Senior Director, Global Talent Acquisition for Demandware, where he was responsible for strategic and tactical management of the company's Talent Acquisition organization and managed all executive level talent recruitment. Prior to his time at Demandware, Sa headed up North America Technical Staffing at BMC Software (formerly BladeLogic) and previously led staffing efforts for various EMC divisions, where he spearheaded recruiting initiatives for EMC's first Cloud and SaaS products. Sa holds a Bachelor's degree focused in Human Resources from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. About TraceLink TraceLink is the World's Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the Life Sciences supply chain and eliminating counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace. Leading businesses trust the TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud to deliver complete global connectivity, visibility and traceability of pharmaceuticals from ingredient to patient. A single point and click connection to the Life Sciences Cloud creates a supply chain control tower that delivers the information, insight and collaboration needed to improve performance and reduce risk across global supply, manufacturing and distribution operations. A winner of numerous industry awards including Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 (ranked number 149 in 2016), the Amazon AWS Global Start-Up Challenge Grand Prize, and the Edison Award for Innovation in Health Management, the Life Sciences Cloud is used by businesses across the globe to meet strategic goals in ensuring global compliance, fighting drug counterfeiting, improving on-time and in-full delivery, protecting product quality and reducing operational cost. For more information on TraceLink and our solutions, visit www.tracelink.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. TraceLink is funded by Goldman Sachs, FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital and F-Prime Capital. SOURCE TraceLink Related Links http://www.tracelink.com "As a family owned and operated business, we understand that family is the most important thing," said Laura Rea Dickey, CEO of Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc. "On this special day, we want to connect with our loyal guests to help all the moms out there celebrate the best way we know how: with delicious, authentic barbecue." With $10 purchase, guests will receive a free dessert and one free kid's meal per adult. To find the Dickey's Barbecue Pit nearest you, click here. Find Dickey's on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. About Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc. Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc., the nation's largest barbecue chain was founded in 1941 by Travis Dickey. Today, all meats are still slow smoked on-site in each restaurant. The Dallas-based family-run barbecue franchise offers several slow-smoked meats and home style sides with 'No B.S. (Bad Stuff)' included. The fast-casual concept has expanded to nearly 600 locations in 44 states. In 2016, Dickey's won first place on Fast Casual's "Top 100 Movers and Shakers" list. Dickey's Barbecue Pit has also been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine, Franchise Times, and Nation's Restaurant News. For more information on Dickey's awards, visit www.dickeys.com. Media Contact: Bryce Nayden [email protected] SOURCE Dickey's Barbecue Related Links http://www.dickeys.com PITTSFIELD, Mass., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hotel on North has received a 2017 Paul & Niki Tsongas Award for its preservation efforts in downtown Pittsfield. The awards are the highest form of recognition for preservation efforts in the Commonwealth. They are presented by Preservation Massachusetts, and celebrate projects that show the power of preservation while embodying their true essence. The hotel was honored in the Best Main Street Project category. Located in the heart of the Berkshires, the hotel's blend of urban style and classic 19th century ambiance have made it a top destination for those looking for finer accommodations. Each one of Hotel of North's rooms have a different footprint, but they all share the spirit of individual design. The iconic property has contributed to the re-emergence of Pittsfield's downtown area through investment and commitment to both North Street and the surrounding community. Through the thoughtful conversion of an 1880's department store, the renovated hotel is helping to give the heart of the city a new beat. "Even though it's been two years since we first opened our doors, we are still thrilled, moved and amazed by the outpouring of support and accolades from our community and peers," explains Laurie Tierney, owner of Hotel on North. "All we wanted to do was make our little corner of the world a little brighter and at the same time, benefit the city that we live in." The Preservation Massachusetts awards, first presented in 1988, honor winners with a dinner each May to recognize and celebrate the efforts and accomplishments of those individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to preserving the Commonwealth's historic resources. This year's dinner is being held on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Hotel on North has also been designated as one of the "Top 10 New Hotels in America" by Architectural Digest. In addition, it was one of a select group of hotels honored in the Outstanding Service Category of the 2017 TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards for Hotels. About Main Street Hospitality. Hotel on North is operated by the Main Street Hospitality Group. Formed in 2013, Main Street Hospitality is a hotel management company originally founded at The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The management company has a long tradition of excellence in preservation, innovation, sustainability and operations. As owners and operators of some of the most distinctive hotels in the Berkshires, the company's mission is to deliver unparalleled experiences for guests, employees and owners through an authentic approach to hospitality, service and management. Main Street's management hotel portfolio includes The Red Lion Inn, The Porches Inn at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA, The Williams Inn in Williamstown, MA and Hotel on North in Pittsfield, MA. Contact: Norma Probst 413-298-1670 [email protected] SOURCE Hotel on North WASHINGTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The International Center for Journalists will honor Chris Wallace, the Fox News anchor, and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, the National Public Radio correspondent, at its Awards Dinner on Nov. 9 in Washington, D.C. Wallace, anchor of "Fox News Sunday," is known for bringing a tough, but fair, interviewing style to his coverage of major news events, including a 2016 presidential debate. He will receive the ICFJ Founders Award for Excellence in Journalism for a lifetime commitment to the highest professional standards. Nelson, the NPR foreign correspondent whose stellar reporting shed light on the daily experiences of people living through turmoil in Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Africa, will be honored with ICFJ's Excellence in International Reporting Award. "Both Chris and Soraya are consummate professionals, seekers of substance and truth," said ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan. "We are delighted to single them out for their excellent work." CNN lead political anchor Wolf Blitzer will be master of ceremonies. At the event, ICFJ recognizes journalists whose work has made an outstanding impact on society. During more than four decades as a journalist at Fox, NBC and ABC, Wallace has applied his unbiased, piercing approach to interviews, whether moderating primary and general presidential debates, interviewing Democratic or Republican presidents, or leading the charge on groundbreaking investigations. Last year, he became the first Fox News host to moderate a presidential debate, earning high praise for keeping both candidates focused on policy issues. Wallace joined Fox News in 2003. He secured Fox's first interview with President Barack Obama in February 2009, and interviewed Obama more than anyone else at the network. Prior to that, he worked for 14 years as a senior correspondent for ABC's "Primetime Thursday," where he conducted several groundbreaking investigations. During the first Gulf War, he reported from Tel Aviv for "Nightline." From 1982 to 1989, he worked for NBC in key posts, from chief White House correspondent to anchor of "Meet the Press," making him the only person to have anchored two Sunday morning news programs. Nelson, who shared in a Pulitzer for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800, opened NPR's Kabul bureau in 2006 and spent 3 years reporting from Afghanistan. Not only did she cover the war, but she shared stories about the daily lives of Afghans, from teens struggling to get an education to women running for office in the midst of upheaval. During that time, she also reported on the war in Iraq. She moved to Cairo in 2010, months before the Arab Spring uprisings. She also covered Libya's violent regime change. She became NPR's Berlin correspondent in 2012, focusing on Europe's refugee crisis, terrorist attacks and right-wing populism as well as Ukraine's separatist conflict. The ICFJ Awards Dinner is Washington, D.C.'s top international journalism event, attracting about 600 media luminaries and supporters. At the gala, ICFJ will also honor the winners of the Knight International Journalism Awards, to be announced on May 31. To learn more about the Awards Dinner or to purchase a ticket, please visit www.icfj.org/dinner. For more information, please contact Vjollca Shtylla at [email protected] or 202-349-7604. SOURCE International Center for Journalists Related Links http://www.icfj.org "There is smoke in the air and people have been advised to stay indoors," U-Haul Company of Jacksonville president Shalon Lillard said. "Some residents have been displaced, so U-Haul wants to step up and make sure these families have a safe place to keep their belongings." Families seeking more information about the 30 days free self-storage assistance or needing to make storage arrangements should contact: U-Haul Moving & Storage of Mayport 1650 Mayport Road Atlantic Beach, FL 32233 (904) 249-9934 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Amelia Island 1830 S. 8th St. Fernandina Beach, FL 32034 (904) 491-6966 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Argyle 8115 Blanding Blvd. Jacksonville, FL 32244 (904) 573-7940 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Downtown Jacksonville 400 W. Ashley St. Jacksonville, FL 32202 (904) 358-9909 U-Haul Moving & Storage at Edgewood Ave. 1651 W. Edgewood Ave. Jacksonville, FL 32208 (904) 764-2516 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Jacksonville Heights 9433 103rd St. Jacksonville, FL 32210 (904) 772-8592 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Mandarin 11490 San Jose Blvd. Jacksonville, FL 32223 (904) 292-9404 U-Haul Moving & Storage at Normandy Blvd. 5481 Normandy Blvd. Jacksonville, FL 32205 (904) 786-2424 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Oak Hill 7052 103rd St. Jacksonville, FL 32210 (904) 573-8912 U-Haul Moving & Storage at Phillips & Emerson 3435 Phillips Hwy. Jacksonville, FL 32207 (904) 398-3016 U-Haul Moving & Storage at Regency 9411 Atlantic Blvd. Jacksonville, FL 32225 (904) 720-1932 U-Haul Moving & Storage of South Jacksonville 5630 Phillips Hwy. Jacksonville, FL 32207 (904) 731-1383 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Wesconnett 6805 103rd St. Jacksonville, FL 32210 (904) 772-8207 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Westside Jacksonville 6100 Blanding Blvd. Jacksonville, FL 32244 (904) 772-8704 U-Haul Moving & Storage of Orange Park 701 Blanding Blvd. Orange Park, FL 32065 (904) 276-9530 U-Haul Moving & Storage of St. Augustine 3524 U.S. Hwy. 1 S. St. Augustine, FL 32086 (904) 797-3667 With U-Box containers, you can conveniently pick up our custom-designed trailer and take your U-Box with you. U-Haul also can store your U-Box container in our secure warehouses or pick up and deliver it to a location of your choice. U-Haul stores offer needed supplies to help with recovery like boxes, tarps, propane and propane tanks. U-Haul urges customers to ensure their tanks are topped off since propane is good to have in the event of long-term power outages. U-Haul is the industry leader in do-it-yourself moving and self-storage with more than 21,000 locations across the U.S. and Canada. In addition to its 30 days of free self-storage assistance, U-Haul is proud to be at the forefront of aiding communities during times of disaster as an official American Red Cross Disaster Responder. Contact: Andrea Batchelor Jeff Lockridge E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 602-263-6981 Website: uhaul.com SOURCE U-Haul WASHINGTON, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau: SLIPPING THE SURLY BONDS Profile America Wednesday, May 10th. May this year marks the decennial anniversaries of two important aviation events. Ninety years ago, Charles Lindbergh flew his single-engine monoplane the Spirit of St. Louis nonstop from Long Island to Paris. For being the first aviator to cross the Atlantic solo, he became an international hero. But this month marks 80 years since the German zeppelin Hindenburg came to a fiery end while mooring in Lakehurst, New Jersey. That dramatic event was bad for the zeppelin business, but air travel still grew robustly. In 2015, almost 900 million passengers were carried in the U.S. alone. Across the country over 2,000 businesses run passenger air service to a schedule. Combined, they do about $157 billion in annual business. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov. Sources: Lindbergh and the Hindenburg/accessed 3/15/2017: www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/may.htm Air travel passengers/accessed 3/15/2017: www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts018_16 Scheduled air service establishments/County Business Patterns/NAICS 481111: https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/BP/2014/00A1//naics~481111 Scheduled air service revenues/Economic Census/NAICS 481111: https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ECN/2012_US/00CCOMP1//naics~481111 Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotion of the U.S. Census Bureau. Statistics and accounts drawn from cited non-Census sources are employed for illustrative or narrative purposes, and are not attested to by the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Audio" in the "Library" pull-down menu). SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau Related Links http://www.census.gov DUBLIN, May. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Research Report on Coffee Industry in Vietnam, 2017-2021" report to their offering. According to the report, Vietnamese coffee is popular throughout the world. The export volume and value present a fast growing trend. During 1991-1995, the annual export volume of Vietnamese coffee beans was only 142,000 tons, with the annual export value of only USD 210 million. During 2006-2016, the export volume exceeded 1 million tons with the highest yearly export value exceeding USD 3 billion. The coffee trees planted in Vietnam are mainly Robusta and Arabica coffee. Southern Vietnam is humid and hot, suitable for growing Robusta whereas the northern part is suitable for Arabica. In 2014, total coffee cultivation area in Vietnam was 653,000 hectare, increasing by 2.7% YOY. This was 30 times the area in 1961. Export value of coffee beans accounts for around 15% to 20% of the total export of agricultural products in Vietnam. Commercial coffee production provides jobs for over 500,000 farmers with income growth. Presently, Vietnam forms strong production capacity of coffee bean rough processing and deep processing. The designed rough processing capacity is 1.5 million tons/year, coffee bean baking and coffee powder processing capacity is 52,000 tons/year and instant coffee production capacity is 36,500 tons/year. The proportion of baking and instant coffee deep processing with high added-value is growing. Vinacafe, Trung Nguyen, An Thai, Me Trang and Phuong Vy are famous coffee brands recognized by consumers. Meanwhile, coffee processing devices and facilities made in Vietnam are sold to the domestic and foreign markets. Coffee is very cheap in Vietnam and is a favorite drink of the Vietnamese. According to the report investigation, the price of a cup of coffee is low to only USD 0.5 in Vietnamese street, which is affordable for any class of the society. According to the report, the planting area of coffee beans expands continuously in Vietnam. The output volume grows accordingly, which promotes the processing, sales and export of coffee beans. Coffee has formed a complete industry chain in Vietnam, which is also an important part of Vietnamese economy providing millions of job opportunities. Key Topics Covered: 1 Overview of Vietnam 2 Development Environment of Vietnamese Coffee Industry 3 Supply and Demand of Vietnamese Coffee Industry 4 Export of Coffee Beans in Vietnam 5 Market Competition in Coffee Industry in Vietnam 6 Analysis on Major Domestic Coffee Brands in Vietnam 7 Prospect of Vietnamese Coffee Industry, 2017-2021 Companies Mentioned - An Giang Coffee - An Thai - Highlands Coffee - MOOSSY - Me Trang - Phuong Vy - SAGOCAFE - Trung Nguyen - Vinacafe For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8k45pt/research_report Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com SUNBURY, Pa., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Weis Markets, Inc. (NYSE: WMK) today reported its sales increased 15.4 percent to $852.2 million in the first quarter compared to $738.2 million for the same period in 2016 while first quarter comparable store sales, adjusting for the New Year's and Easter holiday shift in 2017, increased 1.1 percent, which represents the Company's 12th consecutive quarter of increased comparable store sales. During the 13-week period ended April 1, 2017, the Company's net income declined 41.2 percent to $11.8 million while earnings per share totaled $0.44 compared to $0.75 in 2016. "Our net income was impacted by the Easter and New Year holiday shift compared to 2016, a mild winter and overall price deflation," said Weis Markets' Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Weis. "We also continued to make significant investments in our pricing and promotional programs throughout our seven state market area." About Weis Markets Founded in 1912, Weis Markets, Inc. is a Mid Atlantic food retailer operating 204 stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and West Virginia. For more information, please visit: WeisMarkets.com or Facebook.com/WeisMarkets. In addition to historical information, this news release may contain forward-looking statements, which are included pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. For example, risks and uncertainties can arise with changes in: general economic conditions, including their impact on capital expenditures; business conditions in the retail industry; the regulatory environment; rapidly changing technology and competitive factors, including increased competition with regional and national retailers; and price pressures. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect management's analysis only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof. Readers should carefully review the risk factors described in other documents the Company files periodically with the Securities and Exchange Commission. WEIS MARKETS, INC. COMPARATIVE SUMMARY OF SALES & EARNINGS First Quarter 2017 (Unaudited) 13 Week 13 Week Period Ended Period Ended Increase April 1, 2017 March 26, 2016 (Decrease) Net Sales $ 852,229,000 $ 738,204,000 15.4% Income Before Income Taxes $ 21,074,000 $ 31,907,000 (34.0)% Provision for Income Taxes 9,238,000 11,778,000 (21.6)% Net Income $ 11,836,000 $ 20,129,000 (41.2)% Weighted-Average Shares Outstanding 26,898,000 26,898,000 --- Basic and Diluted Earnings Per Share $0.44 $0.75 $(0.31) SOURCE Weis Markets Related Links http://www.weismarkets.com Rhone Valley Vineyards Bistro at Pierre Loti Wine Bar Chelsea is made possible by the Chelsea Drinks Project (CDP), a newly formed company conceived by three experienced professionals, and noted experts, in the wine, food, beverage and restaurant service industries: Orhan Cakir (restaurateur), Robin Kelley O'Connor (wine & spirits expert and educator), and Barney Lehrer (wine expert and operating partner). Like a great wine blend, or carefully crafted cocktail, CDP is dedicated to working in collaboration with wine and spirits partners to bring out the very best of their product offerings. "Chelsea Drinks Project was created with the recognition that it's not always practical for the North America wine & spirits trade and enthusiasts to come to vineyards or distilleries, so we're bringing the vineyards and distilleries to New York, for an immersive experience a chance to network and taste. We're particularly proud to be working with Rhone Valley Vineyards to bring their wonderful wines to the convenience of New York City," said Robin Kelley O'Connor, Chelsea Drinks Projects. "In a business that is highly sensory and relationship-driven, nothing beats face-to-face encounters and letting the wine speak for itself. We're grateful to have the trio behind the Chelsea Drinks Project because they each bring their own brand of expertise to the table. We're especially looking forward to connecting with the wine community in the comfort of our own specially designed, and designated, bistro over a two-week period, an initiative that is a first for us," said Daphne Payan of Rhone Valley Wines. The wine trade, enthusiasts and members of the media are invited, and welcome to attend a series of Happy Hours to be held from 4 7pm at Rhone Valley Vineyards Bistro at Pierre Loti Wine Bar Chelsea, located at 258 West 15th Street, just east of 8th Avenue, near the 14th Street Stations of the A,C,E and L and 1 and 2 subway lines. (Please see the full calendar of events for details at http://bit.ly/2pjHUOQ.) There will also be a sweepstakes for a winner to win a trip to the Rhone Valley, starting and concluding in conjunction with the series. Calendar of Events Sun., May 14 : Consumer seminar on Rhone Reds, Wine Lovers of NY : Consumer seminar on Rhone Reds, Wine Lovers of NY Mon., May 15 : Wine maker dinner (Meffre & Colomobo wines) : Wine maker dinner (Meffre & Colomobo wines) Tues., May 16 : Wine maker dinner ( Christophe Pichon ) : Wine maker dinner ( ) Sun., May 21 : Consumer seminar on Rhone Whites, Wine Lovers of NY : Consumer seminar on Rhone Whites, Wine Lovers of NY Mon., May 22 : Sommelier late night event, TBD : Sommelier late night event, TBD Tues., May 23 : New York Women's Culinary Alliance Dinner 6:30-8:30pm : New York Women's Culinary Alliance Dinner Wed., May 24 : Final Happy Hour; Sweepstakes closes About the Chelsea Drinks Projects Team ORHAN CAKIR is president of the Pierre Loti Hospitality Group, owners of the Pierre Loti wine bars and restaurants and a new restaurant in Delray Beach, Florida. A native of Istanbul, Orhan has been in the restaurant business in New York for more than 20 years. ROBIN KELLEY O'CONNOR (http://rkovine. com) is one of the world's leading wine and spirits experts and educators. As a global wine specialist he is in constant demand as speaker and advisor to wine producers, regions, corporations, collectors and trade organizations all over the world. Robin has served as Lead Specialist & Head of Wine, Americas for Christie's Auction House, Director of Sales and Education for Sherry-Lehmann, the "Oldest Wine Store in NYC," Director of Education and Private Client Portfolio Advisor at Italian Wine Merchants and was Trade Liaison and Director of Trade and Consumer Education in the Americas for the Bordeaux Wine Bureau (Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux) for 20 years. He also served as president of the Society of Wine Educators. BARNEY LEHRER, director of Wine Lovers of NYC (http://wineny.com) is a freelance wine journalist and expert on international ecommerce. He has a Certificate in Wines and Spirits from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust of London, is an annual judge at the Concours du Vin in Orange, France, the annual competition for wines from the Rhone regions, and he owns a house in the southern Rhone area. For more information contact: Barney Lehrer [email protected] 917-293-6588 SOURCE Wine Lovers of NYC Related Links http://www.wineny.com CONSHOHOCKEN, Pennsylvania, May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Wirecard Samsung Pay Rewards Card has been selected as a 2017 Pay Awards winner in the Product of the Year category. Since 2006, the Pay Awards have conferred the most prestigious recognition of excellence in prepaid and payments technology worldwide. The awards are presented annually by Paybefore, whose publications are the leading source of industry information for payments executives. "Our incentives business has always been about delivering a compelling customer experience that drives a desired behavior on behalf of our corporate clients. The Wirecard Samsung Rewards Visa Card represents a fundamental shift in the digital payment experience by providing a truly seamless loyalty platform where rewards are made immediately available to consumers through the Samsung Pay mobile wallet", says Brad Garfield, Vice President, Product Development, Wirecard North America. He continued, "As digital payments through emerging channels continue to gain momentum, we believe the opportunities for delivering a great user experience through payments innovation with amazing partners like Samsung will continue to grow." In partnership with Samsung, Wirecard North America created a frictionless incentive that drives Samsung Pay mobile wallet adoption and usage, as well as delivering consumer value through personalized offers and promotions. The first payment innovation of its kind - the Samsung Pay Rewards program creates, loads, and delivers virtual cards directly into the Samsung Pay wallet in real-time, allowing the consumer to easily transact at a point-of-sale within seconds of funds being loaded in the Samsung Pay wallet. "As our industry changes, we remain committed to honoring innovation and excellence. Among the big themes in this year's competition were solutions tailored to specific B2B, health care, T&E and cross-border payment needs," says Loraine DeBonis, Paybefore editor-in-chief and chair of the judging panels. "We also saw a remarkable number of consumer-focused solutions with ingenious approaches to savings and incentives that are making a difference in people's lives. We're proud to recognize Wirecard North America and Samsung and their contributions to propelling the industry forward." The Wirecard Samsung Pay Rewards card now will vie for Best-in-Category distinction, which will be announced in Pay News the week of June 12. Visitors to Paybefore.com will have a chance to vote on Best in Category through May 31. The outcome of this vote will be combined with the judges' picks to determine Best-in-Category honorees, all of which will be profiled in the Pay Magazine - Awards Issue. About Wirecard: Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licenses for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on twitter @wirecard. About Samsung: Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, digital appliances, network systems, and memory, system LSI and LED solutions. For the latest news, please visit the Samsung Newsroom at http://news.samsung.com About Paybefore: Paybefore is the leading information provider to prepaid, mobile and emerging payments industry professionals, offering the latest news, commentary and analysis. Paybefore's family of media properties includes: Paybefore.com; Pay News; Pay Gov; Pay Week; Pay Op-Ed; Pay Magazine and a global payments directory, Pay Connect available online. Visit us at http://www.paybefore.com. Media Contact: Wirecard AG Jana Tilz Tel.: +49-(0)-89-4424-1363 Email: [email protected] Wirecard North America Brenda Ortiz Lee Tel.: +1-610-897-2951 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Wirecard AG "Our previous program produced hundreds of model linemen and leaders over the past 30 years who make a critical impact on utilities and quality of life throughout the state of Michigan," said Eric Baker, president and chief executive officer of Wolverine Power Cooperative. "We look to build upon this foundation and deliver industry-leading training for the next generation of Michigan utility workers through JMAP." The JMAP will be a U.S. Department of Labor-certified program committed to producing safe, high-quality journeymen through exceptional, state-of-the-art apprenticeship training. The program features smaller, segmented training labs and field instruction performed at a single location in northern Lower Michigan. All apprentices currently enrolled can transition to JMAP, remain on their current pace, and continue on-the-job learning from experienced journeymen. "Training is very important to IBEW and our members," said Chad Clark, business manager at IBEW Local 876. "We are excited to continue working with the cooperatives on a joint program to produce high-caliber journeymen." For classroom, lab, and field training, Wolverine is partnering with Northwest Lineman College (NLC), an industry-leading educational institution that provides pre-apprentice, apprentice, and journey-level training for hundreds of companies throughout the United States and internationally. Graduates of NLC are highly regarded in the power delivery industry. Fall enrollment for JMAP begins in July. For more information regarding enrollment or utility participation in the program, please visit www.michiganapprentices.com. About Wolverine Power Cooperative Wolverine Power Cooperative is a generation and transmission cooperative serving the wholesale power supply and transmission needs of seven member-owners: Cherryland Electric Cooperative (Grawn); Great Lakes Energy (Boyne City); HomeWorks Tri-County Electric Cooperative (Portland); Midwest Energy Cooperative (Cassopolis); Presque Isle Electric & Gas Co-op (Onaway); Spartan Renewable Energy (Cadillac); and Wolverine Power Marketing Cooperative (Cadillac). Learn more by visiting www.wolverinepowercooperative.com About IBEW Local 876 Headquartered in Edmore, Mich., Local Union 876 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers represents over 2,000 members working for Cooperatives, Cities, Public Agencies and Overhead Line Contractors in 73 Counties in the State of Michigan. For over a half century, Local 876 has trained Linemen that serve the citizens in both the Upper and Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Local 876 members work in every form of Electrical Transmission and Distribution. Training the next generation of Electrical Linemen and Technicians is and always will be a core principle of the IBEW and Local 876. SOURCE Wolverine Power Cooperative Related Links http://www.wolverinepowercooperative.com As a part of its fire suppression and fire equipment servicing business, Fyr-Fyter had a standing business relationship with Infirmary Health for decades prior to Mr. Sells' death, and regularly serviced and maintained Infirmary Health's fire protection and suppression systems. In early 2014, Infirmary Health contracted with Fyr-Fyter to decommission a large, high-pressure Halon fire suppression system located at an Infirmary Health satellite facility. During that decommissioning process, Fyr-Fyter disconnected a nearly 300-pound liquid Halon cylinder from the suppression system and moved it to a storage room on Infirmary Health's main campus, where Infirmary Health stored its spare fire extinguishers. By design, Halon cylinders utilized in Halon fire suppression systems throughout the world will, upon manual or automatic activation, spontaneously release the full contents of the liquid Halon fire suppression agent within a ten second window-of-operation. The conversion of the liquid Halon to Halon gas at the instant of its release into the atmosphere results in a volumetric expansion of the liquid as it transforms to gas, and the simultaneous development of enormous thrust-force as the liquid-to-gas mixture seeks to escape from its containment cylinder. The Halon cylinder in question in this case was capable of generating in excess of one thousand pounds of thrust-force through its discharge port. The manufacturer of the cylinder, together with fire suppression and safety experts worldwide, have long recognized that in the event of an accidental discharge, this amount of thrust-force is sufficient to transform an unsecured Halon cylinder into a high-speed rocket. In order to prevent the catastrophic consequences of an accidental spontaneous discharge or release of the liquid Halon contents into the atmosphere, Halon cylinders are equipped with a safety-diffuser cap designed by the manufacturer of the cylinder to be installed over the discharge port any time the cylinder is not connected to a fire extinguishing system piping network. When installed, the safety-diffuser cap reduces the thrust-force of the cylinder to less than ten pounds. The evidence in the case ultimately demonstrated that when Fyr-Fyter disconnected the Halon cylinder from the piping network and moved it to the storage room, a steel pipe-coupling that had been used to connect the cylinder to the piping network was not removed from the discharge port of the cylinder as prescribed and cautioned by the manufacturer, thus blocking the safety-diffuser cap from being installed on the discharge port, and defeating the primary safety feature intended by the cylinder designer and manufacturer to prevent catastrophic accidental discharges. Thereafter, the cylinder remained in the Infirmary's storage room for 33 days uncapped, unsecured and imminently dangerous a ticking time bomb awaiting its appointed time. Early in the morning of April 16, 2014, David Thomas Sells was working alone in the storage room verifying expiration dates on smaller, hand-held fire extinguishers. While Mr. Sells was in the storage room, the Halon cylinder suddenly and without warning catastrophically discharged. Because the safety-diffuser cap was not installed over the discharge port of the cylinder, the cylinder recoiled and rocketed through the windowless concrete block storage room, causing what ear-witnesses described as an explosive discharge. Within minutes of the discharge, 30 to 50 hospital personnel responded to the storage room. As responders arrived, a vapor-like haze was seen billowing from the vents in the room. The responders that entered the room described it as a "war zone." The fluorescent light ballasts which had been affixed to the ceiling were stripped from their mounts and swung from the ceiling by their electrical cables. A large hole was found in one of the concrete block walls of the room; numerous red-paint transfers from the glancing blows of some unidentified but high-speed, red-painted flying object were found on all four walls, the ceiling and the floor of the room; and dozens of smaller fire extinguishers were damaged and scattered throughout the room. Mr. Sells was discovered lying in the center of the room, still alive, but suffering from a head injury that would claim his life three weeks later. Following the incident, Infirmary Health enlisted personnel from Fyr-Fyter to assist with the determination and documentation of the cause of the incident. Much later, Cunningham Bounds was able to establish that Fyr-Fyter had used its position as a primary component of the Mobile Infirmary's investigative team to orchestrate and execute an elaborate cover-up and subterfuge designed to focus attention away from the inappropriately decommissioned and stored Halon cylinder. Just prior to trial, Fyr-Fyter's service manager conceded under oath that despite being expressly instructed by Infirmary Health personnel to document and preserve all evidence found at the scene on the day of the disaster, he had nevertheless secretly embarked on a course of conduct that same afternoon which resulted in the alteration of critical evidence (his deliberate and entirely secretive removal of the coupling from the discharge port of the Halon cylinder without permission and without any documentation whatsoever); the deliberate concealment of that same evidence with the intent of keeping its existence, its whereabouts and its role in the disaster which claimed the life of Mr. Sells from coming to light (his taking of the coupling out of the storage room, the placement of it in his truck in the parking lot adjacent to the scene of the disaster, and his concealment of the coupling in his office thereafter for the next two years); and his after-the-fact placement of the safety-diffuser cap on the discharge port of the cylinder, all in an effort to make it appear that Fyr-Fyter had indeed stored the cylinder with its safety-diffuser cap appropriately installed as intended by the manufacturer and designer, thus eliminating the cylinder as a potential cause of the ballistic discharge in the storage room and the injuries which ultimately claimed the life of David Thomas Sells. In the end, Fyr-Fyter personnel admitted under oath that they had actively concealed from Infirmary Health and others on the investigative team the fact that they had actually weighed the Halon cylinder at the accident scene on the afternoon of the explosion for the express purpose of determining whether its contents (140 lbs. of liquid Halon) had been released during the incident, and had concluded that it had, in fact, discharged during the incident earlier that day. "This is without a doubt the most flagrant example of corporate cover-up I have seen in my nearly 40 years as a lawyer. From the moment of his arrival on the scene of what can only be described as the horrifying and tragic loss of an entirely innocent and exceptional young man, Fyr-Fyter's service manager recognized the errors Fyr-Fyter personnel had made in the decommissioning, transportation, and storage of what had effectively become a dangerously defective armed rocket, and initiated a plan and scheme which would include wrongfully removing from the scene of the disaster the critical evidence of Fyr-Fyter's own misdeeds then concealing that evidence as well as Fyr-Fyter's own spoliative misconduct from Infirmary Health, the Sells family, and the Judges of the Circuit Court of Mobile County for almost three years and, in the end, leading everyone on an extended and extraordinarily expensive wild goose chase which very nearly succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of those of us in search of the truth. When the Sells family first came to us, they only had one question: 'WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR SON?' Fortunately, in the end we were able to provide a truthful and complete answer to that question, and, in the process, expose the lengths to which Fyr-Fyter was willing to go in its efforts to conceal its own guilt and to deny the Sells family justice and the peace which could only come from a revelation of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," said Buddy Brown of Cunningham Bounds, LLC. The Sells family was represented by Billy Bonner and Buddy Brown of Cunningham Bounds, LLC in Mobile, Alabama. For more information, contact: Joan Cumbie 251-471-6191 SOURCE Cunningham Bounds, LLC Related Links http://www.cunninghambounds.com Booking with Zeel is simple, safe, and convenient. Customers can download the Zeel Massage app for iPhone or Android or go to zeel.com to schedule their massage. 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All Zeel Massages automatically include 18% gratuity, with the tip and therapist payment clearly indicated on all receipts. The price of a 60-minute Zeel Massage in Detroit is $105, including tip; Zeel Massage members pay just $87. Zeel's ambition is Powering Massage Everywhere. The company also offers a staffing solution for spas with Zeel Spa; Zeel Concierge, a platform for hotels to provide in-room massages; and Zeel Corporate Wellness, delivering on-site massages at workplaces and events. About Zeel Zeel created the Massage On Demand category in 2012 and was the first company to bring same-day, in-home massages to customers. Zeel is the leading and largest on-demand massage company with more than 8,500 licensed massage therapists in its network of over 60 U.S cities. Zeel offers the most reliable on-demand massage service in as little as an hour, 365 days a year, with start times as early as 8 am and as late as 10:30 pm. Zeel delivers the highest quality, five-star massages from licensed, vetted massage therapists to homes, hotels, workplaces, and events. With best-in-class security protocols and white glove customer service, Zeel customers enjoy massages in the comfort, convenience, safety, and privacy of the place and time of their choosing. Booking, scheduling, and payment are made easy with the Zeel Massage app for iPhone and Android. Zeel is also home to Zeel Spa, the on-demand staffing solution for spas; Zeel Concierge, which enables hotels to provide in room massage bookings for guests; and Zeel Corporate Wellness, which brings Zeel Chair Massages to companies, events, and workplaces. SOURCE Zeel Related Links http://zeel.com TREVOSE, Pa., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As high lead levels in Pittsburgh's city water have prompted officials there to declare a "public health crisis," ZeroWater is stepping in to assist with the most recent lead findings. The manufacturer of the five-stage filtration system that removes virtually all (99.6%) Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) will distribute its 10-cup filtration pitchers and replacement filters to the city of Pittsburgh. The distribution began last week, with expectant mothers and families with children less than six years old being given first priority. 10-C ZeroWater Pitcher This latest Pittsburgh initiative continues ZeroWater's history of helping cities with lead concerns. Such efforts began back in late 2015 when the Flint, Mich. water crisis unfolded. To date, the company has donated over $300,000 worth of filters and pitchers to the city of Flint to help with the ongoing situation. It followed up those efforts with assistance to Milwaukee, Wisconsin as well as other cities across the United States. Zerowater pitchers are NSF certified to reduce lead and chromium 6 as well as other heavy metals. ZeroWater is the obvious water filtration manufacturer to take action when such crises arise. "At ZeroWater, we believe kids deserve lead-free drinking water," explains Doug Kellam, CEO of ZeroWater. "Lead in drinking water is a major health concern, and it can occur anywhere, anytime, without residents even knowing it. With young children being especially susceptible to its health risks, we feel it is our duty to prevent long-term damage to our future generation." The office of Pittsburgh mayor, William Peduto, indicates that approximately 6,000 people have requested the filters so far, and among that group 1,600 have identified themselves as expectant mothers or with young children. ZeroWater's filters will be distributed through the city as wells as other locations including fire stations throughout the city. During phase two of the distribution, ZeroWater is working directly with city officials to hand out filters to federally funded health clinics, early childhood centers, day care centers and other facilities with prioritized clientele. The 10-cup pitcher that is being given to city residents enables the enjoyment of pure-tasting water with the latest filter technology. The ZeroWater filtration system combines five sophisticated technologies that work together to remove virtually all dissolved solids from tap water, delivering great tasting water that is certified by the NSF to reduce lead. For more information or to set up an interview with ZeroWater executives, please contact Dawn Ryden at 512-294-6218 or [email protected]. For further information on ZeroWater please visit www.zerowater.com. About Zero Technologies, LLC Zero Technologies, LLC has developed the ZeroWater Filtration System with the mission of delivering the best filtration possible to consumers through its premium 5-stage ion exchange filter, which removes virtually all total dissolved solids (TDS). No other filter pitcher or dispenser can make this claim. By removing virtually all TDS, ZeroWater is the only gravity-fed filtration system to match the TDS levels found in Purified Bottled Water. SOURCE ZeroWater Related Links http://www.zerowater.com BIRMINGHAM, Mich., May 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ZIFiT Founder and CEO Allie T. Mallad proudly announced the continued national expansion of ZIFiT Infrared Fitness into Florida, headed up by the company's first U.S. national area developer, former major league pitcher and World Series champion Alex Fernandez. "We are thrilled to be partnering with Alex and his team to open a very strategic market for our company in Florida, and with Alex' leadership, continue to roll out the brand and franchise concept," announced Mallad. The company has already opened four flagship locations in Michigan in West Bloomfield, Allen Park, Lansing and Livonia, and will open the fifth in Birmingham branded as the ZIFiT Executive Club in June 2017. The first locations in Fernandez' Miami-Ft. Lauderdale markets are scheduled for opening later in 2017. ZIFiT Infrared Fitness offers an unparalleled workout experience. ZIFiT is first to market infrared therapy technology in the interval fitness training model. The infrared technology throughout the studio warms the body naturally, rather than simply warming the air, which raises core body temperature and enhances the workout to produce a deep, healthy and detoxifying sweat at a cellular level where most toxins reside. On its own, infrared therapy can burn up to 300 calories in just 40 minutes, and all ZIFiT studios will offer the added benefit of Infrared Sauna rooms as an extra perk of studio membership. "Among numerous health and wellness benefits, the innovative approach of infrared therapy could help fitness studio guests lose weight, lower their blood pressure, improve concentration, release toxins, reduce stress, increase energy and recover faster. We are the first movers with this concept and are building an extraordinary model for fitness and consumer value," announced Founder and CEO Mallad. "The consumer value proposition is positioned to be the absolute best for our members that are seeking optimal health and wellness. We are to very excited to be joining ZIFiT with Allie to rapidly expand the brand," said new Area Developer Fernandez. ZIFiT Infrared Fitness will continue to roll out nationally and internationally and expects to have locations in Michigan, California, Florida, Canada and other strategic markets by end of 2017. For franchise development inquiries and media requests, please contact Carlos Guzman, Chief Operating Officer of ZIFiT Infrared Fitness LLC, at [email protected] or 954-559-2117. SOURCE ZIFiT Infrared Fitness Related Links http://zifitinfraredfitness.com If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here Beijing, May 5 : China on Friday opposed unilateral sanctions on North Korea by Washington, a day after the US House of Representatives approved a law granting more power to the executive to take such a step. "China firmly opposes any country's imposition of unilateral sanctions on any other country according to their own domestic law," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. Geng described the situation on the Korean peninsula as "very complex and tense" and called for restraint to prevent a major conflict from breaking out, Efe news reported. On Thursday, the lower house of the US Congress approved a law conferring more power on President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on North Korea and the companies of any country that sell materials to Pyongyang which allow it to develop its nuclear and missile programmes. The bill, which will go to the Senate for final approval, prohibits North Korean ships or those from any other country, including China, that refuse to comply with the resolutions of the UN Security Council condemning the ballistic missile launches from operating in US waters or docking at US ports. Geng added that Beijing fully complies with these resolutions despite doubts surrounding China's actions with regards to North Korea. Although China has publicly distanced itself from Pyongyang and insists it has halted coal imports, some experts believe the two countries are still trading through the "livelihood purposes" clause that allows trade to ensure the survival of the North Korean people. Chandigarh/Shimla, May 6 : A husband-wife officer couple of Himachal Pradesh who have offered to bear the educational expenses of the school-going daughter of an Indian soldier who was killed and mutilated by the Pakistan Army earlier this week met the family of the slain soldier in Punjab on Saturday. The officer couple -- Yunus Khan, an Indian Administrative Service officer and his wife Anjum Ara, an Indian Police Service officer, visited the family of Paramjit Singh at their native village Voin Poin in Punjab's Tarn Taran district, close to Pakistan border, around 255 km from Chandigarh. "It is a salute to the soldier who sacrificed his life for the country," Khan, who is posted as Deputy Commissioner of Kullu, told reporters after meeting the family. He said this was a small gesture on their part to the slain soldier's family. The couple met his younger daughter, Khushdeep, whose expenses they will bear. "We all should come forward to help the families of the martyred soldiers. Our country needs the thinking of brotherhood. This is a small initiative by us," he said. Naib subedar Paramjit Singh was killed near the Line of Control in Krishna Ghati area of Poonch district in Jammu and Kashmir on May 1 along with Border Security Force trooper Prem Sagar and their bodies "mutilated". Khan's wife Anjum Ara, a 2011-batch IPS officer who is posted as Superintendent of Police in Solan, said the girl, Khushdeep Kaur, 12, would continue to stay with her family. "The children need emotional and financial help. Their mother will help them emotionally. I am also a mother and will help them emotionally," Ara said. "She (Khushdeep) will remain with her mother. We will keep coming here. We will help her as a member of the family," an emotional Ara said. Khan, who is born in Punjab's Malerkotla town, said the family agreed that "we would bear the entire education expenses of this girl". "It was my and my wife's feeling (to support the family of the soldier). This family also needs our emotional support. So we are here," Khan, a 2010-batch IAS officer, told IANS over the phone. "We will help this child in shaping her career. We will give her freedom, proper guidance and moral and financial support. We will take care of her entire education," Khan said. He had a narrow escape in 2013 when a tractor-trailer tried to ram his official vehicle thrice while he was checking illegal quarrying. The officer couple has a four-year old son. Ara said that bearing the educational expenses of the child was the initiative of her husband who had seen emotional pictures of the victim's family on a news channel. "So we have decided to help the family." "Many officials have adopted children (of slain soldiers) and they are helping them," she added. Khushdeep, a Class 7 student, has elder 15-year-old brother-sister twin siblings -- Simardeep Kaur and Sahildeep Singh. The soldier's wife Paramjit Kaur said: "For us, this couple is like a god. We are grateful to them for this gesture." Paris, May 7 : The first batch of polling stations on France's European mainland closed at 7 p.m. local time in Sunday's runoff of the presidential election. Stations located outside cities like Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Strasbourg will open for one hour longer (till 8 p.m. local time), Xinhua news agency reported. More than 66,000 polling stations in the French European mainland opened at 8 p.m. local time for the decisive vote. There are nearly 47 million eligible voters across France but the turnout this year might be lower than the 2012 election, according to pollsters' estimates. An estimation by research firm Elabe for BFMTV indicates a final turnout of 74 per cent, a figure smaller than the 80.35 per cent in the 2012 runoff vote. According to another estimation by Ipsos/Sopra Steria for French media, the final abstention rate for the second round is expected to be 26 per cent, highest since 1969. The turnout at 5 p.m. local time in the runoff was 65.30 per cent, also lower than the figure in 2012, which stood at 71.96 per cent, the French interior ministry said. The French election law bans the publication of any early poll or counting results of the vote before all polling stations are closed. Preliminary projections of the voting results are expected to be revealed by various sources after 8 p.m. when all polling stations are closed. The presidential race is between centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron and far-rightist Marine Le Pen. Opinion polls before the vote estimated that the former minister of economy Macron would defeat his far-right rival by at least 20 points. Washington, May 8 : Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a bill that would ban sanctuary cities in the US state, the media reported. The bill, which Abbott could be seen signing on Facebook Live on Sunday evening, establishes criminal and civil penalties for local government entities and law enforcement that do not comply with immigration laws and detention requests, CNN quoted the governor's office as saying. The new measure would fine government entities up to $25,500 for each day the law is violated. It would also result in a misdemeanour charge for sheriffs, police chiefs and constables who fail to comply with detention requests and in removal from office for elected and appointed officials, Abbott's office said. "As Governor, my top priority is public safety, and this bill furthers that objective by keeping dangerous criminals off our streets," Abbott said in a press release. "It's inexcusable to release individuals from jail that have been charged with heinous crimes like sexual assault against minors, domestic violence and robbery." The measure will go into effect from September 1. Sanctuary city is a broad term applied to jurisdictions with policies in place to limit cooperation or involvement with federal immigration actions, reports CNN. Many US cities, counties and some states have a myriad of informal policies and laws that qualify as "sanctuary" positions. However, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas said the bill "encourages racial profiling by untrained immigration agents" and it "removes democratically elected representatives from office should they fail to comply." "This is not the Texas I know...This racist and wrongheaded piece of legislation ignores our values, imperils our communities and sullies our reputation as a free and welcoming state," CNN quoted Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, as saying. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to crack down on sanctuary cities. The order said it would "strip federal grant money from the sanctuary states and cities that harbour illegal immigrants". In March, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened to cut federal funds from the sanctuary cities and states that will not comply with immigration laws. Late last month, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from enforcing its threat to take away funds from sanctuary cities. Manila, May 8 : The US and Philippines on Monday began their main annual military exercises with a smaller number of troops than previous years and also limited to anti-terrorist operations and disaster response. The 2017 edition of the Balikatan drills began with a ceremony at the headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo to the north of Manila, Armed Forces spokesperson Restituto Padilla told Efe news. Nearly 5,400 soldiers -- 2,800 Philippines and 2,600 US troops -- will participate in these 12-day exercises. The current edition of Balikatan will be restricted to anti-terrorist and disaster response operations, the military spokesperson said. Manila has deployed its biggest warship in this maneuver which will focus on mass evacuation, urban search and rescue, underwater demolition and anti-terrorism operations in Samar, Cagayan, Isabela, Aurora and Nueva Ecija provinces. During previous years, both armies practiced war situations with response exercises in the face of an invasion. This edition does not even include exercises near the Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea where Manila and Beijing are embroiled in territorial disputes over the sovereignty issue. The scaled-back exercises come after President Rodrigo Duterte changed the Philippines' foreign policy, distancing the country from Washington and aligning itself more with China. Last week, three Chinese warships visited the Philippines - for the first time since 2010 - to "bolster camaraderie and understanding between the two navies through naval diplomacy," according to the Armed Forces of the island country. Balikatan has taken place every year since the US and the Philippines signed a mutual defence agreement in 1951. Navi Mumbai, May 8 : Police will provide security, including surveillance by drones, for the May 10 concert of Canadian pop singing sensation Justin Bieber at the DY Patil Stadium, an official said on Monday. Expecting a turnout in excess of 45,000 for the live show, Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale said around 500 police personnel and 25 officers would be deployed for security and emergency disaster management at the venue. The 23-year-old icon is likely to reach Mumbai on Tuesday for the Wednesday concert, part of the Asia leg of "Bieber's Purpose World Tour" and his first performance in India. The tour is to promote his fourth album, the critically-acclaimed "Purpose", in which he has experimented with more adventurous electronic sounds. Besides India, the Asian component of his current tour includes Tel Aviv and Dubai. Nagrale said police had been deployed at various entry-exit gates and the event venue to manage the crowds. Inside the stadium, plainclothes police would be on watch, a special police control room would be functional and a CCTV surveillance system with a command centre would monitor the event. Prior to the main concert, the entire stadium would be checked by the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad. Throughout the event, drones mounted with cameras shall provide live feeds to the police control room at the venue. The organisers, White Fox, shall deploy private security agencies for crowd management and ticket checking. Navi Mumbai Police will be attending to overall security. The organisers have arranged for parking slots for around 15,000 and shuttle services to and from the stadium. Ballari (Karnataka), May 9 : Asserting that he had no rift with BJP's Karnataka unit President B.S. Yeddyurappa, senior party leader K.S. Eshwarappa on Monday said they would jointly fight the next assembly polls. "Yeddyurappa and me are not like India and Pakistan. We are together. I have no rift or differences with him. He is our leader and the Chief Ministerial candidate in the 2018 state assembly elections," Eshwarappa told reporters here, about 330km from Bengaluru. Denying confusion in the party's state unit on its strategy for the ensuing elections, the BJP's leader in the state Legislative Council said as the party's central leadership had declared that Yeddyurappa would be the Chief Minister again if the party wins in 2018 poll, he would work under the latter and campaign for him. "We will contest the assembly elections under Yeddyurappa's leadership as decided by our party's central leadership. As a party worker, I abide by its advice. We are friends and not adversaries like India and Pakistan," reiterated Eshwarappa. Refuting media reports that he was ignored by Yeddyurappa at the party's state unit's two-day executive meeting at Mysuru on May 6-7, the former BJP Deputy Chief Minister said they both had discussed how to strengthen the organisation and tour every assembly constituency. Yeddyurappa, who is the party's lawmaker in the Lok Sabha from Shivamogga in the state's central region was the BJP's first Chief Minister in the state. Eshwarappa also hails from Shivamogga. Clarifying that his Sangoli Rayanna Brigade was apolitical organisation and not a parallel outfit, Eshwarappa said its members were working for the betterment of Dalits and Backward Classes people across the state. "I have explained its role to the party leadership, which has not objected to me associating with it," he added. Dharamsala, May 9 : A US Congressional delegation reached here on Tuesday on a two-day visit during which its eight members will meet Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Led by House of Representatives' top Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, the delegation includes Jim Sensenbrenner, Eliot Engel, Jim McGovern, Betty McCollum, Judy Chu, Joyce Beatty and Pramila Jayapal. Pelosi, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, is a long-time supporter of the Tibetan cause and last visited Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh in 2008. Congresswoman Jayapal is the first Indian-American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives. The US delegation was received at the Gaggal airport near here by Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) Secretary of International Relations Sonam Dagpo and Information Secretary Dhardon Shearling. The delegation will also meet CTA President and Prime Minister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay. The Tibetan government-in-exile is not recognised by any country. A day earlier, the delegation visited a Tibetan settlement in Kathmandu. The Dalai Lama has lived in India since he fled Tibet in 1959. Islamabad, May 9 : Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will attend the upcoming US-Arab and Islamic Summit in Riyadh, the PMs House here said on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia's Minister for Information and Culture Awwad Bin Saleh Al-Awwad extended to the Prime Minister the invitation from Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in a meeting held at the Prime Minister's House. The summit meeting will focus on ways to enhance cooperation between the Muslim countries and the US in the fight against extremism. Dharamsala, May 9 : A US Congressional delegation on Tuesday met Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama here on Tuesday and reaffirmed their commitment to the cause of Tibetan people and to address the issue of Tibet through the mutually beneficial policy. The eight-member delegation, led by House of Representatives' Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, reached here on Tuesday on a two-day visit. "Our delegation visits @DalaiLama in his spirit of faith & peace coming to be inspired & demonstrate our commitment to the Tibetan people," tweeted the Democrat lawmaker. Besides Pelosi, the delegation includes Jim Sensenbrenner, Eliot Engel, Jim McGovern, Betty McCollum, Judy Chu, Joyce Beatty and Pramila Jayapal. Pelosi, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, is a long-time supporter of the Tibetan cause and last visited Dharamsala in 2008 to express solidarity for the Tibetan people in the aftermath of unrest in Tibet ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Congresswoman Jayapal is the first Indian-American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives. The delegation met Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in a private audience at his residence here. They also met Central Tibetan Administration (CAT) President and Prime Minister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay. The Tibetan government-in-exile is not recognised by any country. "The CTA is honoured to welcome the second visit by a high-level bipartisan delegation of the US Congress led by leader Nancy Pelosi to Dharamsala after nine years," Sangay said. Other day engagements of the delegation include meeting with Tibetan women leaders and visit to Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. The CTA is organising a public felicitation in honour of the Congressional delegation's visit. The Dalai Lama will grace the public felicitation on Wednesday at the Tsuglakhang temple, located close to the spiritual leader's palace. A day earlier the delegation visited a Tibetan settlement in Kathmandu. "It was an honor to observe the 70th anniversary of US-Nepal relations as we met with President (Bidya Devi) Bhandari in Kathmandu this week," Pelosi said in another tweet. The Dalai Lama lives in exile along with some 140,000 Tibetans, over 100,000 of them in India. Mumbai, May 10 : International pop star Justin Drew Bieber landed in Mumbai early on Wednesday amidst tight security for his 'Purpose World Tour'. Escorted in a thick security blanket out of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at around 2 a.m., he was quickly whisked off to a five-star hotel in south Mumbai amidst Z-plus level of security. Several hundreds of mediapersons and fans had parked themselves at various points outside the Mumbai Airport for a glimpse of Bieber, but were largely disappointed. Bieber is likely to fly in a private helicopter to the D.Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai for his concert scheduled this afternoon. The concert venue, reported to be fully sold out with over 45,000 tickets, will open at 3 p.m. and Bieber is expected to give his performance at 8 p.m., according to the tour organisers, White Fox India. Washington, May 10 : US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday approved Iowa Governor Terry Branstad to be the next US ambassador to China. To be confirmed, Branstad needs to be approved by the full Senate, which hasn't yet scheduled the vote, Xinhua news agency reported. Branstad, 70, is the longest-serving Governor in the US , who also has nurtured a close relationship with China and has visited China multiple times. He served as the Governor of Iowa in 1983-1999, and again since 2011. He was nominated by US President Donald Trump to be the next US ambassador to China in December 2016. During his confirmation hearing last week, Branstad said, if confirmed, he would work to "positively influence" the US-China relationship. "As Governor of Iowa, I saw first-hand the importance of a positive and healthy trade relationship between our two countries," Branstad was quoted as saying. Calling US-China relationship "multi-faceted," Branstad also noted that the two countries must work together on major security issues, including the denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula and cybersecurity. Seoul, May 10 : South Korea's newly elected President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday said he will visit North Korea under the right conditions, a media report said. Moon was sworn in as the President inside the main hall of the National Assembly, just hours after winning a landslide victory in a five-way presidential race, Xinhua news agency said. The liberal candidate from the Democratic Party secured 13,423,800 votes, or 41.08 per cent of the total 32,807,908 votes cast, according to the National Election Commission. Moon's term as the country's new head of state began only one day after the nation held an unprecedented poll. The new presidency began even before an inauguration ceremony as the rare poll sought to fill the top elected office vacated by former President Park Geun-hye, Yonhap news agency said. In a televised inaugural speech, Moon said: "My head is full of a blueprint to open a new world of unity and coexistence." The new leader vowed to sincerely consult with the US and China to resolve the issue on the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile system. He promised to push for national unity and cohesion following the removal of his predecessor for corruption. The President also said he would relocate the presidential office to Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, as soon as preparations are made, as his first measure to break away from an imperious and uncommunicative presidency. He vowed to give priority to tackling North Korea's nuclear programs. "If necessary, I will fly straight to Washington," he said. "I will go to Beijing and Tokyo and under the right circumstances go to Pyongyang as well." Moon's five-year term began earlier in the day after his election was confirmed by the NEC. The election was triggered by the impeachment of Park Geun-hye on corruption charges. New Delhi, May 10 : In a move that could herald an IT revolution in smaller cities, the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) is all set to launch 1,000 seats in Patna this week, which is likely to create roughly 1,500 vacancies in the country's business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. Functioning under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the STPI has plans to launch 48,000 such seats across the country, with a target employment of 72,450 in the sector, but restricting itself to tier-II and III cities as part of its India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS). The scheme is being executed by allocating seats across 50 cities in 20 states. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), where this week's 1,000 seats will be inaugurated, is one of the bidders. The initiative, the first of its kind in Bihar, targets employing youth from cities like Muzaffarpur and Dalsinghsarai in the state. Besides, it also aims to hire youth in cities across India, including Raipur, Siliguri, Shimla, Sopore, Dehradun, Salem, Kozhikode, Tiruchi, Sagar, Nagpur, Ghazipur, Bareilly, Jhansi, Unnao and Varanasi. "This is for the first time that the industry would set foot in Bihar. A total of 4,600 seats had been fixed for Bihar alone, of which 1,910 seats have already been allotted. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will inaugurate the 1,000 seats at TCS on Thursday," STPI Director General Dr. Omkar Rai told IANS. Based on a 24X7 model and a minimum 50 per cent additional vacancy on one seat (minimum 1,500 vacancies for 1,000 seats), STPI feels that, in the near future, they would be able to optimise the potential of each seat -- three jobs for one seat. Officials said that beside 48,000 pan-India seats, 5,000 additional seats had been created for the north-eastern states. Speaking of STPI's aspirations, Rai said that initially operations in tier II-III cities would be comparatively small, but would gradually expand. "We are trying to light a bulb here. India is reputed for its IT industry. The idea of this scheme is not just limited to generating employment or creating an IT revolution in small cities, it's also about taking certain IT processes from metros to smaller places," Rai said. As per the STPI's vision, the BPO's profile is not limited to IT or software only; the seats planned and offered by it also seek to outsource operations from sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, construction, financial services and the hotel industry. "Ten years from now, places like Gurugram and Pune will have less such processes. Jobs will shift to tier-III cities with only high-end and leadership positions in the big cities. Slowly, the top positions will also shift," Rai said. The idea is to engage the manpower that migrates to big cities to perform the same work and draw almost same salaries , according to officials. Another reason is to maintain India's global tag of "best-suited destination" for outsourcing by cutting down the operational cost, as countries like Philippines and Bangladesh are also emerging as options. "It's important that BPOs move from tier-I cities... Costs in tier-III cities are much less. The idea is to harness the problem-solving generation in the small cities and provide them a global process-based job in their cities," Rai said. With the creation of one vacancy in the IT sector, as is being done in Bihar, three additional jobs would be created, including in allied fields like logistics and support. "So, speaking of Bihar, space for about 7,000 manpower is being created, which would create allied jobs to the tune of 25,000," Rai said. The total number could vary in individual states, depending on local conditions. Counting on the aspirations of Indian youth and the reputation of the Indian IT sector, the STPI, on the lines of an incubator, is now seeking to tap potential start-ups. "Next time you pass through Bihar in a train, try using a Patna-based start-up called Rail Restaurant... Such small initiatives will soon become a driving force in cities of Bihar and small towns of the nation," Rai said. (Kushagra Dixit can be contacted at kushagra.d@ians.in) New Delhi, May 10 : India's publishing industry is as ruthless as it is dotted with glitz. With debutant authors often taking years to find a publisher, the journey of the manuscript to a full-fledged book is not a cakewalk. Changing this trend is the rise of literary agents in India. Commonly known as "middlemen" in the publishing industry, the literary agents offer their expertise to authors to reduce their struggle in getting books published. Take 34-year-old Kanishka Gupta, one of the youngest literary agents in the South Asian belt whose big break came in 2013 with Anees Salim's book "Vanity Bag". Gupta's firm, Writer's Side, was set up in 2010 and he claimed that his agency has sold more than 500 books to publishers in the last six years. "In the year 2015, we sold 100 books to the publishers, among which 25 were to HarperCollins. We stress on strong prose and exceptional storytelling skills in fiction, and socially relevant or controversial themes in non-fiction," Gupta told IANS. According to him, the publishing industry is not a field which can sustain on funding or investment. "It breathes on goodwill; and agenting in the literary world can survive only on goodwill exercise; it is a relationship-driven world." Like Writer's Side, another agency -- Siyahi -- too has been acting as a guide to many authors since 2007. Not just Indian authors, but Siyahi has been bringing good writings from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the US and Britain to Indian readers. "An agent acts as a catalyst in all senses, helping with the creative process of writing, liaisoning with publishers, making sure the book gets promoted well for an author," Siyahi founder Mita Kapur told IANS. Unitl a few years ago, authors did not know much about literary agents. But Gupta says that the change has begun and authors, mostly debutants, are approaching agents because they assure that a manuscript is turned into a book. Gupta further said that often a debutant author remains clueless about how to submit a manuscript, which publisher to approach and what the market prospects of the book are. India's publishing industry is unstable as the top honchos keep shuffling very frequently and often good scripts do not get published, the agents said. "Unless one has direct connection with the editors, a writer can end up getting quite a low amount for the book. And here lies the importance of our job. If an author is supposed to make one lakh, we make sure that he gets at least five lakhs for the book," Gupta added. And not just the authors, publishing houses too are opening their doors to literary agents. According to Kapur, a manuscript from agents is an assurance of "quality writing" and also maintaining a smooth relationship between an author and the publisher. "Publishers are preferring to work through the literary agents because they are very good mediators. From making a copy publishable to its book cover designs -- it is on the shoulders of the literary agent," Gupta further added. Success does not always knock on their doors and, according to Gupta, no agent -- even the top ones -- has a 100 per cent success rate. "Often it is because of differences in opinion. At times, publishers don't like the book or feel it doesn't fit their publishing profile. Many times, sales compulsions force publishers to turn down manuscripts they really want to publish," Gupta said while also adding that smaller publishers are not keen on dealing with literary agents. "The whole problem of legitimising the role of an agent, settling with payment issues, makes us avoid them," he stated. Though the agents have made an impact in the publishing industry, some hurdles still remain to be overcome. "In India, agenting is very tough and difficult to scale because of the menace of direct commissioning wherein authors sign directly with publishers," concluded Gupta. (Somrita Ghosh can be contacted at somrita.g@ians.in) New York, May 10 : In a move laden with ironies, US President Donald Trump suddenly dismissed James Comey, the controversial head of the FBI, who had earned the wrath of the Democratic Party for his interference in last year's elections but was in the middle of an investigation into whether Trump's campaign had links to Russia. Democrats, who had blamed Comey for Trump's victory and their candidate Hillary Clinton's defeat, reacted swiftly to Tuesday's firing of the powerful domestic intelligence chief by calling for an independent investigator to take over the probe into Trump's campaign. Trump wrote in the dismissal letter to Comey that he was firing him on the advice of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because of his handling of the bungled Clinton investigation. The dismissal was a continuation of the election mess affecting both parties in which Comey was embroiled. His letter to Congress on October 28, about investigations into Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for official work as Secretary of State, started the sordid controversy. Clinton and the Democrats say Comey's disclosure of the investigation - that ultimately came to naught - 11 days before the election cost her the presidency as it made some voters suspicious of her. Comey himself admitted at a Senate hearing last week that it made him "mildly nauseous" to think that he had affected the November 8 election. Then the mercurial Trump praised Comey, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, over the action, saying it took "guts." But in a political twist, with Comey launching an investigation into his own campaign, Trump turned around and made the Clinton investigation as the official reason for the firing. Trump cited Rosenstein's letter to him, in which he wrote, "I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken." But Democrats were not gloating at the turn of events -- had she been elected Clinton would have herself fired Comey. Indian American Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat, said in a statement: "No matter how you view Comey, this is not a 'gotcha' moment." Krishnamoorthi noted that Comey "was leading a counter-intelligence investigation of the President's 2016 campaign" and called for an independent Commission or prosecutor to take over the investigation. Republican Representative, Justin Amash, tweeted his support for an independent probe, adding his voice to the calls by several other Democratic Party leaders. Trump, however, made a reference to the Russia probe in the dismissal letter, but only to highlight the fact that he was himself not under investigation. "While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau," Trump wrote to Comey. In March, Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI was investigating if anyone from Trump's campaign had coordinated with Russia the hacking of Democratic Party computers "and whether crimes were committed. In January, Comey joined other heads of US intelligence agencies to say that Russia had interfered in the US elections. The likely beneficiary of Moscow's actions was Trump. CNN reported that court orders had been issued seeking records of people connected to Michael Flynn, whom Trump had fired as National Security Adviser in April. The subpoenas issued by a grand jury were a sign that a preliminary legal process was underway. Grand jury, made up of citizens, is the first step to determine if there was a prima facie case for prosecution. On Monday Sally Yates, who was dismissed by Trump as Acting Attorney General, told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that Flynn could be blackmailed by Russia. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in) Chennai, May 10 : Calcutta High Court Justice C.S. Karnan, sentenced to jail for six months by the Supreme Court, was not at the state guest house here where he checked in on Tuesday and is expected to go to the temple town of Srikalahasti in Andhra Pradesh, officials said. Officials also said two other advocates who came along with Karnan have been asked to vacate their rooms in the guest house. According to officials, Karnan has not officially vacated the room and his bill remains to be settled. Karnan is said to have gone to Srikalahasti, but it is not confirmed. An official at Srikalahasti temple told IANS that Karnan is scheduled to reach Srikalahasti on Wednesday evening and have "darshan" on Thursday morning. The apex court ordered the Director General of West Bengal Police to set up a team to implement its arrest order "forthwith". The Supreme Court also restrained the media from reporting any statements made by Karnan. He was found guilty of contempt for levelling corruption charges against apex court judges including the Chief Justice. Mumbai, May 10 : The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday raided liquor mafia don Ramesh Jagubhai Patel alias Michael, his wife Bhanu and others for storing and smuggling liquor valued at Rs 2.29 crore, officials said. During the raids, the ED team discovered small tenements to conceal an illegal liquor godown and found several imported luxury vehicles worth another over Rs 2 crore. The massive 3,000-square metre godown in Bhimpore at Nani Daman was hidden by 80 tenements surrounding it, akin to the 'Dagdi Chawl' in south Mumbai. However, Patel gave the ED a slip. Efforts are on to trace him, the agency said. The ED sleuths seized three luxury cars - a Land Rover Evoque, Audi Q3 and Audi A8L from Patel's residence. They found stocks of 38,000 cases of liquor worth Rs 7.10 crore which may have been illegally smuggled out. The ED seized 8,850 boxes containing stocks of 191,478 bottles of different liquor brands besides Rs 901,000 in cash. According to officials, the Patel couple run or own several liquor shops in the Union Territory of Daman and Diu and smuggled in bulk quantities to neighbouring dry state of Gujarat. Local bootleggers were engaged to smuggle large quantities of beers and IMFL brands to Gujarat. The illegally earned money was deposited in their businesses. Bank account details have thrown up cash deposits worth a whopping Rs 223.47 crore in the past three years alone, the ED said. Detailing the modus operandi, the ED said trailer trucks with shipping containers were loaded with the illegal liquor consignments using forged bills of other cargo goods to escape scrutiny at the Daman checkposts to enter Gujarat. The local bootleggers placed orders either telephonically or on WhatsApp, sending images of the written orders to one Sanat Ramesh Patel, an agent for the Patel couple. The ED said the Patels' businesses have not kept any sales records while the restaurant and business premises are non-functional though they held valid licences, indicating these entities were being used only for illegal transactions. Violating norms of the Excise Department under the Goa, Daman and Diu Excise Duty At, 1964, the businesses were operated under forged documents which were submitted to various banks. When the Excise Department came to know of these, it lodged a complaint with the Daman Police against the accused for cheating the government. New Delhi, May 10 : Delhi-based IT risk assessments and cyber security platforms provider Lucideus has raised an undisclosed amount in an angel round of investment from Google India Managing Director Rajan Anandan, Adobe Managing Director Kulmeet Bawa and other industry stalwarts. Lucideus, which provides cyber security to the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app, will use the funds to enhance research and development on cyber security. "As a company, we have been growing 700 per cent (average year-on-year) in revenues while being cash flow positive for the last four years," said Saket Modi, CEO & Co-founder, Lucideus, in a statement on Wednesday. "We have got a set of marquee names of handpicked investors who have not only invested their money but also bring in their strategic and technical guidance that is playing a key role in our evolution," he added. The list of investors also include Rahul Chawla, Managing Director, Head of Global Markets at Deutsche Bank, Jonathan Boutelle, ex-Director of Technology at LinkedIn/SlideShare, former Freecharge CEO Govind Rajan, Digi Locker chief architect and Slideshare co-founder Amit Ranjan. "Considering all the ground work done by Lucideus for the last five years, I feel they are well positioned to grab the market opportunity and emerge as clear market leaders," said Govind Rajan. New Delhi, May 10 : Days after Pakistan raised the issue, India on Wednesday clarified that it has not stopped giving medical visas to Pakistani nationals, but has asked that such requests be vetted at the top level. In reply to a question on the issue, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was getting a lot of mails and requests on social media from patients in Pakistan for medical visas. "We have not stopped medical visas..." Baglay said. "In previous years, thousands of medical visas have been issued to Pakistani citizens. What has happened is the External Affairs Minister herself was receiving these requests addressed to her," Baglay said. Sushma is active on social media in addressing problems faces by Indians abroad. "She was receiving requests on email and social media. In order to ascertain that these are genuine requests we have suggested that their Foreign Minister or Foreign Affairs Advisor gives a recommendation letter," he said. "On social media it is difficult to ascertain if the request is genuine. If the letter comes, we will immediately issue a visa, but we need recommendation from the Pakistan government," the spokesperson said. On Saturday, Pakistani media reported that thousands of Pakistanis seeking treatment for liver and heart-related ailments at major hospitals in New Delhi, Chennai and other Indian cities have been affected due to non-issuance of medical visas. "India has made it impossible for Pakistanis to get medical visas," an official was quoted as saying by Geo News. It said that Pakistan summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale and expressed concern over the issue. However, there was no official confirmation of the meeting by India. Chandigarh, May 10 : Two days after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) named MP Bhagwant Mann as its Punjab convenor, senior AAP leader Gurpreet Singh Waraich (Ghuggi) on Wednesday announced that he has quit the party. Waraich, popular more with his screenname Ghuggi, was the Punjab convenor for AAP since last year. He remained on the post as the AAP contested the Punjab Assembly elections in February this year. Comedian-turned-politician Waraich told the media here that he has resigned from the primary membership of the AAP. He said he had been removed as AAP Punjab convenor in an "unceremonious" way. Ghuggi said he was not against the selection of Mann as the Punjab convenor but against the manner in which it was done. He lashed out at AAP national leaders for not taking Punjab leaders into confidence while taking major decisions. A few leaders in AAP's Punjab unit are upset over Mann's elevation. Punjab AAP chief whip and spokesman Sukhpal Singh Khaira had on Monday resigned from his posts after Mann was announced as the convenor. London, May 10 : After winning accolades at the Venice Film Festival and the New York Indian Film Festival, Shubhashish Bhutianis "Hotel Salvation" -- "Mukti Bhawan" in Hindi -- will soon premiere in Britain. The film, which is about a father and son trying to mend their relationship, will have its Britain premiere at BFI Southbank here as part of the Bagri Foundation London Indian Film Festival which will start from June 22 and go on till June 29. The film will be screened on June 27. It will open in cinemas in Britain in late summer and will also be a centre of attraction at the BFI Southbank film season, running from April till December. According to the official BFI site, the India on Film is part of UK/India 2017, a major cultural celebration between the two countries in collaboration with the British Council. The deal was negotiated by Julie Pearce, Head of BFI Distribution, and Marina Fuentes, Director of International Sales & Acquisitions at Cinestaan International Ltd, read a statement on Wednesday. The film brings forth the story of how a father and son reconnect when the father asks his son to go with him on his final pilgrimage to Varanasi. "Hotel Salvation" stars Adil Hussain, Lalit Behl and Geetanjali Kulkarni. Bhutiani is thrilled at the Britain release. "We couldn't have asked for more, and after such warm responses from all around the world and in India, I can't wait to see how the audience in the UK reacts to the film," Bhutiani said. The film won the Prix Enrico Fulchignoni at last year's Venice Film Festival. It also won Best Film at the New York Indian Film Festival, and a Special Mention at the 64th National Film Awards. Pearce feels that the film "will strongly appeal to UK audiences" and praised the director saying that "he is part of the current new wave of fresh and exciting young Indian directors and is, without doubt, a talent to watch". Islamabad, May 10 : Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Wednesday held a meeting amid the stay order from the International Court of Justice against the hanging of Indian "spy" Kulbushan Jadhav. The meeting between Bajwa and Sharif was the second within a week and is significant in the light of the prevailing civil-military relations in the country. Sources, quoted by Geo News, said that the Prime Minister was briefed on the ICJ order. Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General Inter-Services Intelligence Lt. Gen Naveed Mukhtar while Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was also present at the meeting. Reacting to the stay order, Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister Sartaj Aziz here said: "We are analysing the Indian petition and the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) authority (on the case)." Earlier, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, India's decision to move the ICJ to halt the death sentence awarded to Jadhav was an attempt to divert attention from "state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan". The ICJ on Tuesday told Pakistan not to hang Jadhav, sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of promoting terrorism in its territory and spying for India. Asif tweeted: "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbushan convicted of offences against national security." Lucknow, May 10 : Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday stirred controversy with his comment that while soldiers from all states were being killed in Jammu and Kashmir there were no casualties from Gujarat, drawing sharp reaction from political parties. Akhilesh, speaking in Jhansi, raised questions on the central government's response to the mutilation of the bodies of two soldiers on the Line of Control (LoC) by the Pakistan Army earlier this month. "The Pakistani soldiers beheaded Indian soldiers, they mutilated their bodies so badly. No one is debating or discussing that. You didn't tell which body parts were mutilated, you are not debating on that. We have seen martyrs from Bihar, UP, MP, Jharkhand and south Indian states. But why no martyrs from Gujarat?" Yadav said. Gujarat is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah. Akhilesh accused Modi of doing "politics over martyrs, Vande Mataram and nationalism". Uttar Pradesh Power Minister and state government spokesman Srikant Sharma told the media on Wednesday that Akilesh Yadav's statement was very unfortunate and reminded the Samajwadi Party (SP) president that soldiers guarding the frontiers belonged to the nation and not to any particular state. "When a soldier is martyred while serving Bharat Ma, he belongs to the nation," Sharma said. He said the former Chief Minister was making these statements out of frustration as he was not able to digest the crushing defeat handed to his party in the state assembly elections. "People gave him a chance to develop the state and he failed miserably...such statements echo his frustration" Sharma added. A senior leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also slammed the 44-year-old leader for the statement and said soldiers and the armed forces should not be brought into politics. In February, Akhilesh Yadav had stirred a controversy just before the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, when he took a pot shot at Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and advised him to stop promoting the "donkeys of Gujarat". Berlin, May 10 : German security forces launched a nationwide anti-terror operation on Wednesday targeting suspected members and supporters of the Islamic State (IS) terror group. The police operation took place in the four states of Bavaria, Berlin, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, BBC reported. Witnesses reported that multiple people were detained in the course of the raids. Police were looking for three suspects -- two of them are believed to be IS members and the third a supporter of the jihadist group. A Leipzig police spokesperson confirmed "there was a nationwide operation under the leadership of the federal prosecutor", regional news portal Tag24 reported. According to German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, authorities searched three apartments belonging to asylum seekers in the Leipzig districts of Volkmarsdorf, Mockau and Connewitz. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the raids showed that country's security forces "are prepared to strike" against the threat of international terrorism. Amsterdam, May 10 : Supermodel Gigi Hadid will continue as global brand ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger Womenswear and co-design the TommyXGigi collaborative collections for Fall 2017 and Spring 2018. Hadid will continue as the global brand ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger womenswear, including apparel, footwear, watches and accessories, said a statement from the brand. "Gigi (Hadid) is a force in the fashion industry and the ultimate Tommy Girl," Hilfiger said. "Her positive, down-to-earth energy, and cool, effortless style continue to captivate her audiences around the world. I have loved designing the TommyXGigi collections with her and I look forward to continuing our partnership for another year," added the designer. Following the TommyXGigi collection launch each season, Hadid travelled to cities around the world, including Berlin, Dubai, Tokyo, Shanghai, Amsterdam, London, Milan and Paris, to meet fans and present her collections personally. She was also set to visit India but later postponed her tour. Patna, May 10 : Following reports of "rats guzzling down liquor" stored in police stations of Bihar, the authorities have now started destroying seized contraband, with a staggering 28,000 litres being destroyed on Tuesday and Wednesday, officials said. In "dry Bihar", as the state government prefers to call it, while 10,000 litres of illicit liquor was destroyed on Tuesday, the very next day, they destroyed another 18,000 litres of liquor seized by the Excise Department. The total 28,000 litre liquor -- valued at Rs 2.5 crore -- destroyed by the authorities was seized from Vaishali and Patna districts of the state. The seized liquor, mostly Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) bottles, was stored in "maalkhanaa" (store room) of police stations in both districts. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was scheduled to hold a top-level meeting of officials on Wednesday evening here to review prohibition in the state. Since clamping of prohibition on the state in April 2016, Vaishali police first time on Wednnesday destroyed 18,000 litres of liquor. Interestingly, last week it was reported that rats had finished nine lakh litres of alcohol seized by police. But later, the police headquarters refuted the claim and ordered a probe into it. According to official reports, ever since total prohibition was imposed on April 5, 2016 in Bihar, the government has seized around 9.15 lakh litres of liquor, out of which eight lakh litres is still in the store rooms of various police stations in the state. Police officers from a large number of police stations have conveyed to top police officials the problem of space crunch in storing such huge quantities of liquor. Over 45,000 people have been arrested in a year in Bihar for violating the liquor prohibition law imposed by the Janata Dal-United-led grand alliance government in the state. Bihar had acted tough against the violators of prohibition law, Excise and Prohibition Minister Abdul Jalil Mastan said. "The law enforcement agencies have been directed to act tough against those violating the law." The state police have raided 2,18,722 locations and seized liquor valued at Rs 50 crore the last year alone, a state Excise and Prohibition Department official said. According to a police report, 40,413 cases were registered for prohibition violations. Washington, May 10 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday to the State Department for a meeting ahead of the Russian diplomat's visit to the White House. President Donald Trump's meeting with Lavrov later in the day will be the highest-level contact between Washington and Moscow since the US leader's inauguration on January 20, Efe news reported. Lavrov's meeting at the White House comes a day after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. "Was he fired? You are kidding, you are kidding," Lavrov said in response to a question from a reporter about Comey's dismissal. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that Russia hoped that the FBI director's firing would not affect bilateral relations. The White House has not provided details on the agenda for the Trump-Lavrov meeting, but the US leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a telephone conversation last week that Syria would be a priority in the Washington-Moscow dialogue. Tillerson and Lavrov, according to the State Department, plan to discuss the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Lavrov stopped in Washington on his way to Alaska, where he and Tillerson are scheduled to participate in the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial meeting, a two-day gathering that starts on Wednesday. Chennai, May 10 : The whereabouts of Kolkata High Court judge C.S. Karnan, sentenced to jail for six months by the Supreme Court, remained a mystery on Wednesday, even as a West Bengal police team reached here. Some sources in Chennai said he had left the State Guest House for the famed Shiva temple in Srikalahasti town in Andhra Pradesh. But an official at the temple, about 120 km from here, told IANS over telephone that there was no trace of the judge. "He did not arrive yesterday or today. We have no idea if he will reach the temple tomorrow," the official said. Another temple official had earlier said that the judge was likely to reach the Andhra town on Wednesday evening and offer prayers on Thursday morning. Justice Karnan checked into the Chennai Guest House on Tuesday after leaving his home in Kolkata. But he has not officially vacated the guest house room and his bill remains to be settled. Officials said two other advocates who came with the judge have been asked to vacate their rooms in the Chennai guest house. The apex court has ordered the Director General of West Bengal Police to set up a team to implement its arrest order "forthwith". Justice Karnan was found guilty of contempt for hurling corruption charges against Supreme Court judges including the Chief Justice. New Delhi, May 10 : Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind President Maulana Syed Arshad Madani on Wednesday opposed what he said was judicial interference in Muslims' religous affairs and said a solution to the triple talaq issue should be found outside the court. "Instead of court interference in religious affairs (of Muslims), the issue should be discussed between Islamic scholars," he said. He said the higher judiciary should put forth its objections to Triple Talaq before the religious scholars and ask them to find a solution to the contentious issue. "The court can have objections to certain points; it should ask us to find a solution. If the Supreme Court can say that the issue of Babri Masjid (in Ayodhaya in Uttar Pradesh) should be resolved outside the court, why not this (talaq) issue be solved by the ulemas (Islamic scholars)?" he asked. Madani said: "If they are able to find a solution, then it is good... and if they cannot, the court doors will still remain open." The Jamiat leader said neither the minority community nor others should play politics on the issue. Under Triple Talaq, a Muslim man can divorce his wife by orally pronouncing the word talaq (divorce) three times. "I am surprised that Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) is saying that Muslim women are being meted out injustice. Isn't this politics? This is also politics. You are doing politics over Muslim issues," Madani said. Citing a survey, he said there were more divorces among the Hindus than the Muslims in the country. "Muslims have been living in this country for more than 1,000 years. Had Muslims women been oppressed for so long, voices would have been raised earlier too. "An impression has been created that every Muslim man divorces his wife. Muslims have been projected in a poor light. This is not true; this is wrong. Divorces happen in one in thousand cases," the Jamiat leader said. He said divorce is not a one-sided affair in the Muslim community. "There is also a provision for the woman to take divorce on her own." Asked if he would meet the Prime Minister, Madani said: "If he calls me, I'll definitely go... I won't go on my own." On the issue of the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) in Assam, Madani said the state government should respect the Assam Accord and strictly follow its terms and conditions. He said the citizenship issue should be decided on the basis of March 25, 1971, as the cut-off year and not 1951. "As many as 48 lakh women in Assam are likely to lose their citizenship rights. The Bharatiya Janata Party government is harassing these women. It is wrong and unfair," said Madani. New Delhi, May 10 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Sri Lanka on Thursday and Friday on a visit which a senior official has said will boost bilateral relations. Modi will be the Chief Guest at the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha. The visit follows the invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. It will be Modi's second trip to Sri Lanka as Prime Minister after March 2015. In a pre-departure media briefing here, Sanjay Panda, Joint Secretary (Indian Ocean Region) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said that this is the first time that Sri Lanka will be hosting the International Vesak Day celebrations. "The theme of the event is Buddhist teachings for social justice and sustainable world peace," Panda said. He said that various religious and political leaders from various countries, especially those with Buddhist traditions, have been invited for this celebration. "The Prime Minister's visit to Sri Lanka for the Vesak Day celebration assumes significance because this is a reflection of our shared Buddhist heritage which is spanning over centuries," he said. As part of the celebration, Modi will participate in a lamp lighting ceremony at the Gangaramaya Temple in Colombo, one of the most important temples in Sri Lanka. Modi will also pray at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic at Kandy in central Sri Lanka. The golden-roofed Kandy temple houses Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist relic -- a tooth of Lord Buddha. In Pallekelle, Modi will unveil a plaque commemorating the foundation laying of the Faculty of Kandyan Dance at the Sri Lankan International Buddhist Academy that will be constructed with India's grant assistance. Modi will also open an India-funded 150-bed multi-speciality hospital in the central hill district which is home to Tamil tea plantation workers of Indian origin. "This project is part of our development cooperation project since 2005 in which over $2.6 billion has been committed out of which $450 million have been grants," Panda said. He also said that as part of the Vesak Day celebration, acclaimed Indian sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik will make the world's longest Buddha statue at a special Vesak zone near the Sri Lankan parliament. "India is also participating at an International Buddhist Film Festival which is being organised on the sidelines," Panda said. He said that thousands of handcrafted candles made from paraffin wax and produced at the world's oldest refinery at Digboi in Assam have been gifted to Sri Lankan Buddhist temples and this has come in for much appreciation from people there. Although no bilateral talks are scheduled, Panda said the visit was expected to give renewed momentum in India-Sri Lanka ties. Last month, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited India. New Delhi, May 10 : A police Inspector shot himself dead with his service revolver at the Chittaranjan Park police station here on Wednesday, police said. Kaushal Ganguly, posted with the District Investigation Unit, got the revolver issued in his name at around 5.50 p.m. and shot himself in the head inside the washroom 10 minutes later. The 1997 batch officer procured the weapon citing Thursday's 'Shab-e-Barat' security arrangements, Deputy Commissioner of Police Romil Baaniya told IANS. The officer was rushed to a hospital where he was declared dead. No suicide note was found. Mumbai, May 10 : This is one die-hard fan even popstar Justin Bieber would be proud of. A 12-year old New Delhi schoolgirl Akshita Rajpal, who's an obsessive fan of the singing legend, flew down here on Tuesday alone to mark her presence at her idol's maiden live concert in India - at Navi Mumbai on Wednesday. Akshita is a Class 8 student of Amity International School in the national capital and has virtually spent sleepless nights ever since the Bieber concert was finalized last month, revealed a family member. Her parents had bought three Platinum tickets for entry to the D. Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, but had to cancel their travel plans at the last minute on Tuesday. Not disheartened, Akshita flew down alone and handed over the two extra tickets to a couple of family friends to attend the biggest musical event of 2017 in the city. A child model, she has created a booklet on the life, lyrics and everything she loves about the 23-year old Bieber, her uncle Sumit Kaushik said. "In fact, she is a trained professional dancer who dances only to Bieber tunes and has excelled in academics and extracurricular like music, martial arts, modeling and acting, besides of course, being a fulltime crazy fan of Bieber and his music," Kaushik told IANS. Having played a small role in the recent romantic ghost comedy, "Phillauri" starring Anoushka Sharma and Diljit Dosanjh, Akshita has also modelled for brands like SBI General Insurance, Kodak, Birla SunLife, Fortis, etc, said Kaushik. Two years ago, she launched her on YouTube channel showcasing live and recorded videos on fun and games for kids. Her father Ajay Rajpal has fashion retail store in Lajpat Nagar market, and mother Bhawana works in a private company in New Delhi. Rome, May 10 : Alitalia will select one or more financial advisor to manage its sale, a commissioner picked by the government to run the bankrupt flagship airline, Luigi Gubitosi, said on Wednesday. "We will hire one or more advisor. We will invite contenders to a beauty contest in the coming days and will make our choice," Gubitosi told journalists at Rome's Fiumicino airport. Gubitosi denied he and fellow commissioners Enrico Laghi and Stefano Paleari were negotiating with any potential buyers for Alitalia, which is losing around a million euros a day. "We aren't in talks with anyone," Gubitosi said. Earlier on Tuesday, Laghi announced that Alitalia had received payment of the first 220-million-euro tranche of a 600-million-euro bridge-loan. Alitalia will publish a tender next week for its sale with non-binding offers due in July and binding ones to be received by October, he said. The Italian cabinet last week approved the 600 million euro loan to keep Alitalia in business for a maximum period of six months, until a buyer is found or a decision is taken to liquidate the company. The government also said the company would be sold in its entirety and would not be nationalised. Alitalia filed for bankruptcy after its workforce in April resoundingly rejected a turnaround plan involving job and salary cuts that would have unlocked 2 billion euros of investments for the company. The airline was privatised in 2009 and has gone through several restructurings. It has made an annual profit only a few times in its 70-year history and has received over 7 billion euros from the Italian state over the past decade. Rival airlines including Lufthansa and Norwegian Air have shown little interest in buying Alitalia, which is struggling to compete at home against low-cost carriers Ryanair and EasyJet as well as high-speed train links. Current investors in the airline include Etihad of the United Arab Emirates, which owns 49 percent of Alitalia, and Italy's top two banks Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit. The Hague, May 10 : Dutch police were searching for two suspects after a drugs laboratory was found with a large stash of pills favoured by jihadists, a media report said. During a raid on April 5 in Brunssum, a drug lab was discovered hidden in a barn. Pills with the logo of Captagon and raw materials, as well as a machine for making tablets were found. In a neighbouring house, three firearms were also discovered, Efe news reported on Wednesday. Police officials said they do not know if the pills were destined for the Middle East. "The occupant of the neighbouring house, a 40-year-old man, was arrested on April 11. His 39-year-old girlfriend was arrested on May 8. Just before the raid two men fled," police said. The investigation is still underway to identify the two men," said police officials. Analysis by the Netherlands Forensic Institute found that the seized pills contain two ingredients, amphetamine and caffeine. "The pills were of a type used as a stimulant in the Middle East but it was not known if that was their destination," said police. Captagon is a popular drug among combatant groups in the Middle East, where it is used as an "upper" to keep fighters awake and alert. It is the first time this sort of pill has been found in The Netherlands, reported Dutch daily Telegraaf. Meanwhile, Italy's financial police revealed this week that they had uncovered 37.5 million pills of another drug -- tramadol -- also used by Islamist fighters, BBC reported. The cargo was heading for Libya. Tramadol is a synthetic opioid-like drug used as a painkiller. Italian police said the consignment would have been used for two purposes -- to help finance Islamist terrorism and for use by jihadist fighters as a stimulant and to heighten resistance to physical stress. Abuse of tramadol was described by a report this year as "rampant" in the ranks of Boko Haram fighters in Nigeria and to have played a role in "enabling atrocities on both sides of the conflict". In March, Greek police arrested four suspects in a fake Captagon-making ring and confiscated 650,000 tablets. Rabat, May 10 : Morocco's King Mohammed VI sent a congratulatory message to Moon Jae-In after he was elected and sworn-in as new South Korean President on Wednesday. "It gives me great pleasure to congratulate you most warmly on your election as President of the Republic of Korea. I send you my best wishes for success in your high office and your endeavours to lead people towards progress and prosperity," said the message. The Moroccan king also said he is keenly looking forward to working with the new South Korean President. "I keenly look forward to working with your Excellency to consolidate the fruitful cooperation between our two nations. This will help us serve our peoples' interests and enhance peace and security in the world," the Moroccan king said. Kolkata, May 10 : Two persons were arrested and seven countrymade guns were seized from their possession in central Kolkata on Wednesday, police said. Morselim S.K. (50), a resident of South 24 Parganas district's Falta town and Md. Shamsud (20), who hails from Munger district of Bihar, were arrested outside a CRPF camp on Strand Road at 9 a.m. and seven countrymade 7 mm pistols were seized from their possession," a police official said. Police subsequently raided the residence of one of the accused in Howrah district and seized one more gun and gun manufacturing tools. "On the basis of their interrogation, a raid was conducted at Md. Shamsud's house in Howrah and one 7 mm pistol, 17 more semi-finished guns and large number of gun manufacturing tools were seized from there," the officer said. The two accused have been remanded in police custody till May 18, police said. Lucknow, May 10 : Government think-tank NITI Aayog on Wednesday shared some key development strategies to transform Uttar Pradesh with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. A 17-member delegation led by National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya and CEO Amitabh Kant met the Chief Minister and other top government officials with specific strategies across sectors. The think-tank said that the way forward to transform Uttar Pradesh was through transforming key sectors, including industry, agriculture, infrastructure, health and education. "Upon constructive discussions, it has been decided that a Joint Working Group (JWG) will be set up with three members from NITI Aayog and three members from the state government. "The JWG will prepare a road map and identify action points for the development of Uttar Pradesh within the next 15 days. Respective departments of the state government will then implement these action points," a NITI Aayog statement said. During the meeting, Yogi Adityanath sought the cooperation of NITI Aayog and the Central Government and also asked for extension of the Bundelkhand package and special assistance in areas of the state where drinking water has been affected by arsenic and fluoride contamination. NITI CEO Amitabh Kant made a presentation on where Uttar Pradesh stands today and what steps are needed to transform it. "Pleasure making a presentation to the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and his team... Cooperative federalism at its best!" Kant tweeted. "Earlier, chief ministers used to come to the Planning Commission seeking funds and approvals. Now NITI Aayog goes to states to support and facilitate their growth," he said in the next tweet. During the meeting, NITI Aayog Adviser Alok Kumar shared his views on maternal and child health and emphasised that "for India to move forward, Uttar Pradesh must improve". Rural Development Secretary Amarjeet Sinha made a presentation on how to ensure poverty alleviation and rural housing in the state. Another NITI Aayog Adviser-HRD Maninder Kaur Dwivedi talked about improving learning outcomes by enrolling and retaining children in schools. New Delhi, May 10 : The BJP and the Narendra Modi government have planned massive outreach to coincide with the ruling NDA alliance's third anniversary in power at the Centre on May 26. Apart from a 'MODI Festival' in about 500 districts, beneficiaries of different schemes are being contacted through letters, SMSes and personal visits. As part of the celebrations -- which will last over a fortnight -- Union Ministers will hold press conferences and address public rallies. BJP sources said letters by Modi will reach two crore citizens by May 26 and 10 crore SMSes will be sent by the government about its achievements. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders said that the party will seek to give out a message of its connect with the common man and the Ministers will visit villages electrified by the government in three years, as part of its programme to provide power to all unelectrified villages in 1,000 days. They will also visit the houses of the beneficiaries. Party sources said that the Ministers will also visit 120 constituencies where the BJP or its allies could not win in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The third anniversary coincides with a buoyant mood in the party after a series of electoral victories. BJP won local body elections in several states and scored emphatic victories in assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It also formed governments in Goa and Manipur by stitching alliances despite finishing second. With Modi seen as the chief architect of BJP's victories, 'MODI (Making of Developed India) Festivals' will be held in about 500 districts, to be attended by Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states and ministers, among others. Party leaders said caps with catchy slogans and pamphlets will be distributed at these festivals. The officials said celebrations will take forward the government's "New India" campaign. Istanbul, May 10 : Turkey and Pakistan on Wednesday agreed to buy each other's warships and training planes. Under a memorandum of understanding signed by the defence ministers of the two countries, Turkey will deliver four Island-class corvettes developed under the country's national warship programme to Pakistani naval forces. Pakistan will hand over 52 Super Mushshak training planes to Turkey under another deal. "The final agreement was planned to be signed in Pakistan on June 30 and expected to be Turkish republic's biggest defense industry export project in its history," the Turkish Undersecretariat for Defence Industries (SSM) announced on its website. The deals were inked at the ongoing 13th International Defence Industry Fair in Istanbul. The Pakistani planes are going to replace T-41 and SF-260 planes currently in use, and "with this project, a Nato member country for the first time in history will include Super Mushshak planes into its inventory and will use it for training activities," an SSM statement said. Guwahati, May 10 : The Assam government's decision to disband the State Madrasa Board and Sanskrit Board invited flak from minority groups on Wednesday, with All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) leader Aminul Islam terming the decision "anti-Muslim". Another group announced that it will organise a statewide protest on May 11 to oppose the decision. "To mainstream Madrasa education, we're disbanding Madrasa Education Directorate & making it part of Secondary Education Directorate," Assam Education Minister Himanta Biswa has tweeted on Tuesday. "The Madrasa Board too will be dissolved and academic part will be handed over to Board of Secondary Education. Restructuring to reform," he added. He had also told the state assembly that the government wanted to "mainstream" madrasas and Sanskrit tols and introduce modern learning like computers in these institutions. Riyadh, May 10 : Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has received an invitation to attend an upcoming summit in Riyadh between Muslim leaders and US President Donald Trump, the reported on Wednesday. The letter was delivered to Abbas in Amman by the Saudi Charge d'Affaires in Jordan, Tariq Rashwan, on behalf of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the Saudi Press Agency and Palestinian news agency Wafa said. In the letter, King Salman said the Arab-Islamic-American Summit on 20-21 May aimed to address the challenges facing the Arab and Muslim worlds and to forge a new partnership to fight extremism and tolerance, Wafa reported. "The summit will aim to strengthen our peoples' security, stability and cooperation in the present and in the future by spreading the values of tolerance and peaceful co-habitation," read the letter, quoted by Wafa. Abbas was visiting Jordan on the first leg of a three-nation trip that also takes in Russia and India. He met Trump in Washington earlier this month and was among the first ten foreign leaders to do so. King Abdullah II of Jordan, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Niger's Mahamadou Issoufou are among other leaders who have been invited to the Riyadh summit. King Salman has asked Yemen President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and Morocco's King Mohammed VI to attend, the SPA said. Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif, Iraqi President Fuad Masum, and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi have also been invited to the talks, Arab News reported Wednesday on its website. Separate meetings will also take place in Riyadh between monarchs of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and Trump, as well as bilateral talks between the Saudi and US leaders, according to Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. Saudi Arabia - which is home to Islam's holiest sites - will be the first stop on Trump's first foreign trip since becoming president in January. The four-day trip will also include Israel, a NATO summit in Belgium and a visit to Italy and the Vatican. Trump's aides described his decision to visit Saudi Arabia as an effort to reset relations with the Muslim world. The Trump administration is currently appealing rulings against an executive order Trump issued in March that tried to halt new visas from six Muslim-majority countries and suspend refugee resettlement in the US, sparking widespread protests. Imphal : Imphal May 10 (IANS) A tripartite MoU was signed in Churachandpur district of Manipur on Wednesday over claiming of eight dead bodies lying in the district hospital morgue since September 2015 following dispute over demands of some agitating tribal bodies. Following the signing of memorandum of understanding (MoU), the bodies will now be claimed within May 25 to perform their last rites. The parties to the tripartite MoU are the Manipur government, central government and the Joint Action Committee, which has been spearheading agitations against the "three anti-tribal bills". While A.K. Jha, Secretary, Union Ministry of Home Affairs, signed papers for the Centre, Manipur Chief Secretary Oinam Nabakishore represented the state government and the Joint Action Committee representatives were there to give their consent to the MoU. Nabakishore said: "The government shall pay ex gratia of Rs 10 lakh each to the nine persons who had died. Besides, government job will be provided to one member each of the bereaved families and compensation would be paid to the 48 injured persons." On August 31, 2015, the assembly had passed three Inner Line Permit System bills. But within hours, the tribals in Churachandpur district had launched violent agitations. Houses of almost all MLAs and ministers and government buildings in the district were torched. Nine persons had died in the violence, out of which one body had been claimed earlier. With the signing of this MoU government, it is believed that the impasse over non-claiming of dead bodies stands resolved. The government efforts to resolve it had repeatedly failed as the activists demanded much more, according to Chief Minister N. Biren Singh. The Chief Minister said: "The activists demanded a rollback of the creation of the seven districts, extension of the 6th Schedule and creation of yet another district. The talks could not proceed since a Chief Minister cannot make commitments on all these issues." The African Well Fund (http://www.africanwellfund.org) is hosting the 15th Annual Build a Well for Bono's Birthday fundraiser http://www.africanwellfund.org/bono-well-2017/ May 5th to May 31st. The previous fourteen fundraisers have raised over $255,000 for clean water and sanitation projects benefiting more than 60,000 people in Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Mali, Uganda and Zimbabwe. This year African Well Fund aims to raise $15,000 to celebrate fifteen years of fundraising. It is such an honor to join together with U2 fans from around the world to make a tangible, lasting difference in the lives of Africans lacking one of the most basic needs all human beings: clean water, said African Well Fund board chair Rob Trigalet. It is humbling - and at the same time a source of pride - to be a part of a fan community that has raised almost a quarter of a million dollars since the first Build a Well for Bonos Birthday fundraiser in 2003. As always, all donors are invited to add their name and a message to a birthday card on the African Well Fund website http://www.africanwellfund.org/bono-well-2017/ that the organization will send to Bono upon completion of the fundraiser. African Well Fund plans on holding another Tweet a Well for Bonos Birthday, a 24hr Tweet-a-thon on May 10th. Details will be coming soon. Any volunteers wishing to assist with the tweet-a-thon should email Diane Yoder at dyoder(at)africanwellfund.org. The African Well Fund is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the mission of funding clean water and sanitation projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Since its founding in 2002, the organization has raised more than $1 million to fund 32 projects in 15 countries, benefiting more than 350,000 people. By leveraging Ruprechts restaurant quality meats and working in cooperation with Tony Romas award-winning culinary team, Tony Romas ribs and BBQ meats sold in US retail channels will taste just like the world-class product sold in our restaurants Romacorp, Inc., parent company of Tony Romas, announces the companys newest licensing deal with Ruprecht Company, the oldest and most renowned operating meat processor and food manufacturer in the Chicago area. Ruprecht has been providing center-of-the-plate protein items to the countrys finest food service and retail establishments for more than 140 years, and has been a trusted supplier partner to Tony Romas restaurants for more than a decade. This new agreement makes it possible for rib and BBQ fanatics to enjoy Tony Romas restaurant quality ribs and BBQ meats in their homes for any occasion. By leveraging Ruprechts restaurant quality meats and working in cooperation with Tony Romas award-winning culinary team, Tony Romas ribs and BBQ meats sold in US retail channels will taste just like the world-class product sold in Tony Romas restaurants around the world, said Stephen K. Judge, President and Chief Executive Officer of Romacorp, Inc. We are excited to work with Walter Sommers and his team and leverage their sous vide cooking method, ensuring Tony Romas retail products will be produced without preservatives, retain greater nutritional content, and be the best tasting and safest product possible for our customers and their families. Ruprecht Company uses Sous Vide technology, a cooking method which retains foods natural moisture, flavor, aroma, and nutritional content, produces meat tender enough to cut with a fork, and results in a longer shelf life product without the use of artificial preservatives and chemicals. The company operates with extremely high standards of safety and sanitation delivered through a newly constructed state-of-the-art processing facility. In addition, the use of sous vide technology improves product quality and consumer safety by pasteurizing the meat at precise temperatures and vacuum-sealing the product, ensuring the best tasting and safest product possible. "Ruprecht Company is thrilled to be working with such an iconic global brand to bring Tony Romas great flavors into retail, said Walter Sommers, President of Ruprecht Company. We have been a prime supplier to Tony Romas for almost 15 years, and we are looking forward to bringing exciting new items and Tony Romas classics to retail shelves across the country. This is the latest in a string of transformational announcements for Tony Romas as it celebrates its 45th birthday, an incredible milestone unmatched by any American casual dining restaurant chain. Recent Tony Romas announcements include new licensing deals in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, renewed US restaurant growth with new development and franchise agreements in Tennessee and West Palm Beach, Florida, accelerated international restaurant growth with new development agreements in Spain, Nicaragua and Bolivia, and the launch of Tony Romas new global prototype restaurant in Orlando, Florida. With restaurants in more than 30 countries on five continents around the world, Tony Romas is the worlds largest casual dining chain specializing in ribs. About Romacorp, Inc. Romacorp, Inc., is the parent company of Tony Roma's restaurants, the world's largest casual dining concept specializing in ribs. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Romacorp, Inc. has more than 150 restaurant locations in more than 30 countries and is one of the most globally recognizable names in the industry. The first Tony Roma's restaurant opened 45 years ago in North Miami, Florida. Tony Roma's is also proud to partner with the Make-A-Wish Foundation (http://www.cnfl.wish.org), one of the world's leading children's charities, in an effort to help grant the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses across Central and Northern Florida. For more information about Romacorp, Inc. and Tony Roma's, visit http://www.tonyromas.com. Please visit http://www.tonyromasfranchise.com or call (866) 981-0586 for information about Tony Roma's franchising opportunities. Broad Street Licensing Group is Romacorps licensing agent for the Tony Romas brand and helped facilitate this agreement. For information about retail sales licensing opportunities with the Tony Romas brand, contact Bill Cross, SVP, Broad Street Licensing Group at (973) 655-0598. Rev1 was an early advocate of Updox and their support, advice and counsel has been invaluable to our continued growth. Today Rev1 Ventures, the leading seed-stage venture fund, announced its investment in Updox, the industry leader in care coordination and healthcare connectivity solutions. This is the second investment from the companys seed-stage, corporate-backed fund. As an existing investor, this financing showcases Rev1s commitment to supporting startups through multiple phases of growth, said Tom Walker, CEO of Rev1 Ventures. Updox has a proven model for success and is part of market with large opportunity, so we see big things on the horizon for the company. Updox is helping more than 40,000 physicians and 60 million patients communicate more effectively on the Updox messaging platform. Updox allows independent healthcare providers to share patient records and care plans, schedule appointments, make payments, provide care notifications, and adhere to reporting requirements through its secure platform. Providers can more easily run their business and provide better service to patients. Rev1 was an early advocate of Updox and their support, advice and counsel has been invaluable to our continued growth, said Michael Morgan, CEO of Updox. We are fortunate to have founded this company in a region so well-equipped to drive success for startups. We know Rev1 and its approach are a big reason for that success. This investment will fuel our growth as we enter new markets and support our rapid hiring initiatives. Rev1 has produced $1.2B in capital, revenue, and exits in the past three years. A snapshot of 2016 growth shows Rev1s portfolio companies generated $86M in revenue and created and retained more than 1,014 jobs. TT Capital Partners led the Updox funding round, with additional participation from Tamarind Hill. About Rev1 Ventures Rev1 is a venture fund that helps entrepreneurs build great companies. Combining investment capital with a unique blend of services through our startup studio, we propel innovation for startups and corporate innovation teams. Our seasoned, data-driven team helps lay the foundation for scalable growth with the skills to evolve a product, sell to customers, and build the right team. Named a top VC investor in the Great Lakes Region, Rev1 manages a continuum of financial support from corporate and community partners, as well as the Ohio Third Frontier. Rev1 was named the Most Active VC in Ohio in 2016 by CB Insights. For more information, visit http://www.rev1ventures.com. About Updox Where Healthcare Connects! Updox is the industry leading healthcare care coordination solution. Named #571 on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies, Updox is integrated with more than 70 electronic health records (EHR) and serves more than 250,000 users and 60 million patients. Through an extensive Direct messaging network and platform of apps, Updox connects various healthcare providers, including physicians, patients, payers, pharmacies, labs, and healthcare partners. Once part of the Updox network, users or partners can access a full suite of applications including secure messaging, patient portal, appointment scheduling & reminders, credit card payments, and health alerts, all with the goal of driving improved outcomes through more efficient communications and better care coordination. Connect with Updox at http://www.updox.com. ### Dr. James Robert Whites new book Spelling Out the Truth to a New Generation ($18.99, paperback, 9781629528663; $9.99, E-book, 9781629528670) is an excellent educational masterpiece, blueprint, road map, user friendly, and step-by-step guide to be implemented by all students, teachers, parents, counselors, mentors, principals, and superintendents in the Educational Continuum relative to the decision and pursuit of Spelling Out the Truth to a New Generation. This author's book will allow an educational foundation for all reading it. The book gives a foundation that will encourage a new interest to learning for academic success in the 21st Century. Dr. White writes, This book is a career long writings (for Pre-K-Through-Secondary grade levels) that incorporates the synergy of knowledge, experience and wisdom for learning with a purpose of gaining academic success in the 21st Century for readers of ALL ages, race, color, ethnicity, and/or religious orientation. The central theme of Spelling Out the Truth to a New Generation is to give all people (i.e., students, teachers, parents, counselors, mentors, principals, and superintendents, etc.) in the Educational Continuum the inspirational support, focus, and vision they need to succeed! Dr. White has worked at each Public Educational Level: Pre-K-6, Elementary K-6, Open School K-9, Jr. High 7-9, Senior High 10-12; public-school counselor, parenting counselor, student services specialist, elementary administrator; college admissions counselor & public relations assistant, grant reviewer, university adjunct professor, researcher, motivational/ keynote speaker, author, and educational consultant for more than forty years. Xulon Press, a division of Salem Media Group, is the worlds largest Christian self-publisher, with more than 12,000 titles published to date. Retailers may order Spelling Out the Truth to a New Generation through Ingram Book Company and/or Spring Arbor Book Distributors. The book is available online through xulonpress.com/bookstore, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com. Media Contact: Dr. James Robert White Email: Drjrwhite(at)carolina.rr.com Rick will be an important asset to Ravinia as he provides investment banking advisory services to our clients, drawing upon his wide-ranging experience with complex restructurings and other challenging financial situations. Ravinia Capital, a boutique investment banking firm that addresses the financial and structural needs of distressed companies, said well-known restructuring specialist Richard Bendix has joined the company as a Managing Director, effective immediately. Rick will be an important asset to Ravinia as he provides investment banking advisory services to our clients, drawing upon his wide-ranging experience with complex restructurings and other challenging financial situations, Ravinia Capital LLC President and Managing Director Tom Goldblatt said. Rick has worked in this area for more than 35 years. He brings unrivaled knowledge to the Ravinia team that will be pivotal in helping our clients achieve the best possible outcomes. His legal acumen and extensive work with both lenders and debtors will be a great benefit as we expand our offerings and client base. In his new position at Ravinia Capital, Mr. Bendix will be involved with the sale of distressed companies, out-of-court restructurings and Chapter 11 bankruptcy issues. He most recently worked at Dykema, where he had been a member of its Bankruptcy and Restructuring Practice Group. He originally joined Schwartz, Cooper, Kolb & Gaynor (predecessor to Schwartz Cooper Greenberger & Krauss) in February 1981 before it combined with Dykema in 2008. He has played a significant role in many cases, including two ground-breaking Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases203 North LaSalle Street, one of the largest single-asset real estate cases ever filed (where he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court), and UNR Industries, Inc., the first company to use Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code to resolve asbestos claims. Mr. Bendix received his BA (with highest honors and high distinction) and his JD (cum laude) from the University of Michigan, and is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. I am excited to join Ravinia Capital -- a growing boutique firm known for its intelligent and highly skilled team, Mr. Bendix said. I am looking forward to using my knowledge of and experience with complex restructurings and sales of distressed businesses in an investment banking setting to help our clients achieve success. About Ravinia Capital Chicago-based Ravinia Capital LLC is a boutique investment bank that offers advisory services tailored towards privately held, middle market clients with revenues between $25 and $500 million. Its focus is on mergers & acquisitions, debt advisory, and strategic consulting. Please visit our website at http://www.raviniacapitalllc.com. bioMerieux has been committed to the diagnosis of infectious diseases for more than 50 years and we are proud to partner with Sepsis Alliance in this public awareness campaign. bioMerieux, a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, is proud to announce that its U.S. affiliate, bioMerieux Inc. will be expanding its partnership with Sepsis Alliance. bioMerieux Inc. will serve as the 2017 National Sepsis Awareness and Education Title Sponsor, including sponsorship of Sepsis Alliances Sepsis ChallengeTM events. Together, the two organizations will host a variety of events and collaborate on multiple initiatives throughout the year to raise public awareness about the risk of sepsis, and encourage the sharing of best practices for early sepsis detection and antibiotic stewardship among hospitals and healthcare professionals. Without question, bioMerieux is a partner that has given back in a meaningful, positive way to the healthcare community, said Thomas Heymann, Executive Director of Sepsis Alliance. We are very proud to work with an organization that shares our commitment to ending sepsis fatalities and injuriesso many of which are preventable with early detection and treatment. Sepsis Alliance and bioMerieux, Inc. will collaborate on several important resources aimed at educating health care professionals and the public about sepsis as a medical emergency, including a webinar series addressing various stages on the continuum of care for sepsis, a downloadable information guide series, and a new patient-focused sepsis video. In addition, bioMerieux will be the lead presenting sponsor on 2017 Sepsis ChallengeTM events, designed to raise awareness of sepsis among the general population. These resources will be instrumental in raising awareness about sepsis, which according to the 2016 Sepsis Alliance Annual Survey, just 55 percent of adults in the U.S. have ever heard of. bioMerieux is also a supporting sponsor of the 6th Annual Sepsis Hero Gala, an event held in New York City during Sepsis Awareness Month to honor people and organizations that have made a significant contribution to sepsis awareness and education among both the general public and healthcare professionals. Until a cure is found, the very best hope for sepsis patients is early detection, said Stefan Willemsen, CEO of bioMerieux Inc. and Corporate Vice President Americas. bioMerieux has been committed to the diagnosis of infectious diseases for more than 50 years and we are proud to partner with Sepsis Alliance in this public awareness campaign. This organization has been instrumental in making sepsis prevention and treatment a national priority. Visit http://www.biomerieux-usa.com to learn more about bioMerieux and for more information on Sepsis Alliance, please visit: http://www.sepsis.org. About Sepsis Alliance Sepsis Alliance is the leading nonprofit patient advocacy organization in North America. Sepsis Alliance's mission is to save lives by raising awareness of sepsis as a medical emergency. The organization hosts national and community events, distributes educational information, and promotes training and education on sepsis prevention and early recognition and treatment. Sepsis Alliance also supports sepsis survivors and family members with information about sepsis and Post Sepsis Syndrome, as well as a Faces of Sepsis community forum. The sepsis.org website receives more than 1.5 million visits each year. Sepsis Alliance, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is a GuideStar Gold Rated Charity. For more information, please visit http://www.sepsis.org About bioMerieux Pioneering Diagnostics A world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics for more than 50 years, bioMerieux is present in more than 150 countries through 42 subsidiaries and a large network of distributors. In 2016, revenues reached 2,103 million, with more than 90% of international sales. bioMerieux provides diagnostic solutions (reagents, instruments, software) which determine the source of disease and contamination to improve patient health and ensure consumer safety. Its products are mainly used for diagnosing infectious diseases. They are also used for detecting microorganisms in agri-food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. bioMerieux is listed on the Euronext Paris market (Symbol: BIM ISIN: FR0010096479). U.S. Website: http://www.biomerieux-usa.com Sepsis Informational Website: http://www.sepsisknowfromday1.com Accepting the FANTASTIC 50 award on behalf of DIGITALSPEC: Dr. Charles Dadoo, Managing Partner & CEO, Vishal Dadoo, President, Dr. M.L. Dadoo, CFO To have the opportunity to accept this award among so many outstanding VA businesses is a true honor, stated Dr. Charles Dadoo, CEO of DIGITALSPEC. We will continue to provide innovative solutions for our clients and look forward to an exciting 2017. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce honored DIGITALSPEC, LLC. (DSPEC) at the 2017 FANTASTIC 50 awards banquet on April 27th at Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, VA. This twenty-second FANTASTIC 50 event showcased fifty of Virginias fastest growing companies and accepting the award on behalf of DSPEC was Dr. Charles Dadoo, CEO Vishal Dadoo, President, and Dr. M.L. Dadoo, CFO. The Virginia FANTASTIC 50 is the only program to highlight fifty of Virginias fastest growing companies on a statewide basis and is open to all types of businesses. We know that companies will grow and expand where they have the skilled workforce to support their mission, said Barry DuVal, president and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. We are glad to toast the entrepreneurial spirit of these Virginia business leaders and the dedicated employees who have brought these companies continued success. Nominations for the 2017 FANTASTIC 50 were sought last fall from local chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, and through the sponsors networks: companies may also nominate themselves. To have the opportunity to accept this award among so many outstanding VA businesses is a true honor, stated Dr. Charles Dadoo, CEO of DIGITALSPEC. We will continue to provide innovative solutions for our clients and look forward to an exciting 2017. This signature event hosted over 400 of Virginias finest business owners and professionals as the VA Chamber recognized winners for their entrepreneurial success and contribution to Virginias economic vitality. In addition, the banquet was preceded by an engaging networking reception encouraging winning companies to connect and collaborate as well as recognition in the Virginia Business Magazine. DSPEC President, Vishal Dadoo, recognized the contributions of many noting, As we continue to grow, our employees work hard to reach the highest level of customer satisfaction for our clients. We want to thank the VA Chamber of Commerce for recognizing DIGITALSPEC as one of the fastest growing companies in Virginia. Founded in 2005, DSPEC is a leading provider of Government Acquisition solutions and Program management and Systems Integration consulting services, delivering true business value and return on investment to Federal clients in the metropolitan Washington, D.C area. About Virginia Chamber of Commerce The Virginia Chamber of Commerce is the largest business advocacy organization in the Commonwealth, with more than 26,000 members. The Chamber is the leading non-partisan business advocacy organization that works in the legislative, regulatory, civic and judicial arenas at the state and federal level to be a force for long-term economic growth in the Commonwealth. Learn more at http://www.vachamber.com About DIGITALSPEC, LLC DIGITALSPEC, LLC is a Small Business Administration (SBA) certified 8(a), ISO 9001, 20000, and 27001 program founded in 2005 and headquartered in Fairfax, VA. We are a leading provider of Government Acquisition solutions and Program Management and Systems Integration consulting services, delivering true business value and return on investment to Federal clients in the metropolitan Washington, D.C area. DSPEC portfolio of services includes PMO, CIO Advisory Support Services, Infrastructure Engineering Acquisition Management, Solution Development and Integration, and Assurance and ITIL Process Consulting. DSPEC provides solutions and services in markets such as: Investigation & Case Management, Financial, Education and Training. DSPECs Managing Principals leverage more than 100 years of combined business and IT experience, deep domain expertise, and rich technical knowledge to ensure client satisfaction. We work collaboratively with clients to create solutions that fit the client environment and use industry best practices. DIGITALSPEC holds a performance rating of 95%+ with Dun and Bradstreet (D&B). It strives to hold 100% customer satisfaction. Our Federal clients include the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), , National Background Investigation Bureau (NBIB), Department of Justice (DOJ)/Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Department of Education/Federal Student Aid (FSA), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC), Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) along with our partners PricewaterhouseCoopers, (PwC), Accenture Federal Systems, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), CSRA, Inc., and The Carlyle Group. Our headquarters are in Fairfax, Virginia, along with additional locations in Rosslyn, VA, Boyers, PA, Washington, DC, Fort Meade, MD, Crystal City, VA, Chicago, IL, and Vienna, VA. For more information, please contact us at 703-626-7445, 443-818-2736 or at info(at)digitalspec(dot)net. Follow us @DIGITALSPEC_LCC http://www.digitalspec.net INNOVATIONS I SOLUTIONS I RESULTS Umi, a female Malayan tapir born at Denver Zoo on May 6, takes some of her first steps under the watchful eye of her mother, Rinny. Denver Zoo is happy to announce the birth of Umi (OOH-mee), an endangered Malayan tapir (TAY-purr). The female calf, whose name means life in Indonesian, was born to mother Rinny, and father Benny, early the morning of May 6. She is only the third birth of her species at the Zoo. Umi will remain behind the scenes at the Zoos Toyota Elephant Passage habitat, while being cared for by her mother, until she is able to swim and they are both comfortable enough to venture outdoors. This is the third birth for both parents and Rinny has already proven to be a very patient mother, calmly making sure Umi is nursing successfully. Rinny was born at Seattles Woodland Park Zoo in 2007 and came to Denver Zoo from there in 2010. Benny was born at the City of Belfast Zoo in Ireland in 2006 and arrived at Denver Zoo from there in 2007. The two were paired under recommendation of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Species Survival Plan (SSP) which ensures healthy populations and genetic diversity among zoo animals. Fortunately, the couple has proved to be an excellent match. Though they are most closely related to horses and rhinos, tapirs are similar in build to pigs, but significantly larger. Malayan tapirs have a large, barrel shaped body ideal for crashing through dense forest vegetation. Their noses and upper lips are extended to form a long, prehensile snout similar to a stubby version of an elephants trunk. Malayan tapirs are the largest of the four tapir species. As adults, they can stand more than 3-feet-tall and can stretch from between 6 to 8-feet-long. On average they weigh between 700 and 900 pounds. They are also excellent swimmers and spend much of their time in water. They can even use their flexible noses as snorkels! As adults, Malayan tapirs have a distinctive color pattern that some people say resembles an Oreo cookie, black in the front and back, separated by a white or gray midsection. This provides excellent camouflage that breaks up the tapirs outline in the shadows of the forest. By contrast, young tapirs have color patterns that more resemble brown watermelons, with spots and stripes, which help them blend into the dappled sunlight and leaf shadows of the forest to protect them from predators. Malayan tapirs are the only tapir native to Asia. Once found throughout Southeast Asia, they now inhabit only the rainforests of the Indochinese peninsula and Sumatra. With a wild population of less than 2,000 individuals, they are classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), due to habitat loss and hunting. Rachel Cervantes Rachel Cervantes, Ph.D., MBA has joined the University City Science Center as VP Corporate Development. Cervantes brings over 20 years experience in the commercial and scientific aspects of pharmaceutical innovation within large pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic research environments. In this newly created position at the mission-driven nonprofit, Cervantes will play a leadership role in forging strategic partnerships with industry, non-profit and academic institutions with the goal of building a sustainable corporate and institutional presence in uCity Square and yielding additional revenue sources for the Science Center. As uCity Square expands, University City will enter a new era of innovation, access, inclusion, and discovery with the Science Center playing a key role as the connector between multiple, diverse organizations, says Science Center President & CEO Stephen S. Tang, Ph.D., MBA. Rachels business development background and private industry experience will enhance the Science Centers ability to develop creative and flexible approaches that bring mutual value to its partners. Cervantes was most recently Senior Director of Business Development at Egalet Corporation where she was responsible for the company's external partnering efforts with a primary focus on M&A and licensing. Cervantes held similar roles at Inovio Pharmaceuticals and Merck & Co., where, in addition to evaluating, structuring and negotiating global healthcare partnerships, she also held a number of leadership roles within R&D and marketing. In addition to her private sector experience, Cervantes was a research associate at the Salk Institute at Biological Sciences where she conducted NIH-funded cancer research. Cervantes earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Cincinnati, and a BA from the University of Hawai'I at Manoa. She serves on the Wharton Alumni Executive Board and is a member of the Trustee's Council of Penn Women. About the Science Center Located in the heart of uCity Square, the Science Center is a mission-driven nonprofit organization that catalyzes and connects innovation to entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. For 50+ years, the Science Center has supported startups, research, and economic development in the life sciences, healthcare, physical sciences, and emerging technology sectors. As a result, graduate firms and current residents of the Science Centers incubator support one out of every 100 jobs in the Greater Philadelphia region and drive $13 billion in economic activity in the region annually. By providing resources and programming for any stage of a businesss lifecycle, the Science Center helps scientists, entrepreneurs and innovators take their concepts from idea to IPO and beyond. For more information about the Science Center, go to http://www.sciencecenter.org NetBeez named as a finalist for Best of Interop Award NetBeez, a four-year-old network performance monitoring company, has been named as a finalist for the Best of Interop Award in the Cloud category for their BeezKeeper product. The award recognizes exhibitors at Interop ITX who have made significant technological advancements in some of the most important facets of the IT industry. Interop ITX is happening May 15-19, 2017, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, NV. NetBeez is exhibiting at booth 440. The NetBeez BeezKeeper is a solution that reduces the amount of time network administrators and IT teams invest in identifying, troubleshooting, and resolving performance issues of enterprise infrastructure and cloud applications. The BeezKeeper deploys proactive, end user simulations that deliver real-time data results to the NetBeez dashboard for multi-site administration. The Best of Interop ITX Awards are an essential facet to our program and were excited to welcome such a robust range of innovations as this years finalists, said Meghan Reilly, General Manager, Interop ITX. The IT industry has experienced, and will continue to experience, rapid change - wed like to thank these companies for recognizing and acting on those transitions with their valuable contributions. We look forward to celebrating their accomplishments as well as announcing winners onsite at our annual event. The Best of Interop ITX Awards Presentation will take place on May 18. About NetBeez NetBeez, Inc. was founded in 2013 and provides the only fully-scalable network performance monitoring solution designed for network managers interested in early fault detection and quick troubleshooting of complex wide area networks. The system relies on wired, wireless, and virtual sensors that continuously test connectivity and application performance, allowing network problems to be detected before they affect the end-user. This proactive identification and troubleshooting of complex network issues significantly reduces IT's time to resolution. About Interop ITX Interop ITX is the industrys most trusted independent Conference focused on Full Stack IT education for technology leaders. The event continues the 30 years Interop has dedicated to providing IT decision makers with a trusted environment to learn, collaborate and uncover new strategies and solutions they need to lead their teams and their businesses through constant change and disruption. Employed by a Conference-first model, Interop ITX offers both breadth and depth of content to a broad IT audience across core areas: Infrastructure, Security, Cloud, Data & Analytics, DevOps, and Leadership & Professional Development. For more information, visit interopitx.com. Interop ITX is organized by UBM plc. UBM is the largest pure-play B2B Events organizer in the world. Our 3,750+ people, based in more than 20 countries,serve more than 50 different sectors. Our deep knowledge and passion for these sectors allow us to create valuable experiences which enable our customers to succeed. Please visit http://www.ubm.com for the latest news and information about UBM. NetBeez PR Counsel Andrea Finch, Digital Marketing Manager andrea.finch(at)netbeez(dot)net 844-638-2339 ext. 701 Interop ITX PR Counsel Kimberly Samra, Interop ITX PR Manager InteropPR(at)ubm(dot)com 415-412- 6784 ### Success in fashion requires a fine balance of innovation, commerce, and experience, all centered around the customer and what she wants in that moment. Fashion retailer Charlotte Russe today announced a partnership with Feed.fm to provide custom in-app music playlists to enhance the customer experience while shopping in the app. As highlighted in a recent survey, Gen Z teens spend 4 or more hours per day with their earbuds in and 95% say music enhances their mood. Similarly, Millennials listen to 75% more music than Baby Boomers on a daily basis, as reported by Digital Music News last summer. Feed.fms music furthers Charlotte Russes commitment to customer-centric app innovation by combining their customers love of fashion, shopping, and music into one app. The right music at the right time is undeniably powerful and uniquely inspirational, said Jeff Yasuda, CEO and co-founder of Feed.fm. Charlotte Russe clearly has its finger on the pulse of mobile shopping and we are excited to partner with the brand to customize their digital brand soundtrack. Success in fashion requires a fine balance of innovation, commerce, and experience, all centered around the customer and what she wants in that moment, said Sejal Solanki, Director of Digital Experience at Charlotte Russe. With Feed.fm, our customers can now express their musical style as well as their fashion sense, placing our app at the top of its class in an extremely competitive category. The Power of the Brand Soundtrack Since partnering with PredictSpring to re-launch its mobile app experience last Summer, the Charlotte Russe app has seen explosive growth with over 1 million downloads. Growth is largely attributed to speed, ease of use, and feature innovations like shoppable Instagram, exclusive VIP offers, daily flash sales, and real-time inventory. Adding music content to the mix increases differentiation and opens up a whole new medium for experimentation. Brands have traditionally under-leveraged music as content, despite the fact that it is proven to drive measurable shift in brand perception and ROI, as its been costly and challenging to license. Feed.fm changes that with a turn key solution for developing a brands soundtrack to amplify engagement and conversion regardless of mobile, app, or in-store location. The Charlotte Russe app is available on the App Store and Google Play Store. About Charlotte Russe Charlotte Russe is a one-stop head-to-toe shopping experience for stylish girls on the go. With more than 550 stores throughout 45 states and Puerto Rico and with an ever-growing digital shopping presence, theyre always evolving and looking for whats next. For more information, please visit http://www.CharlotteRusse.com and follow them on Instagram @CharlotteRusse#CRItsOn. About Feed.FM Feed.FM helps brands leverage music to connect with their customers. Music impacts shopping behavior, drives lasting memories, and creates brand affinity. Feed.fm works with top brands including Charlotte Russe, Shazam, Toys R Us, and The Golden State Warriors to power mobile web and in-app music solutions. Customers listening to music are, on average, 2x more likely to convert to a purchase in a mobile app. Based in San Francisco, Feed.fm is funded by Crunchfund, Core Ventures Group, KEC Ventures, and Fyrfly. About PredictSpring PredictSpring is the fastest mobile commerce platform designed exclusively for brands and retailers. Our innovative technology powers native mobile apps, mobile web and store associate apps for the worlds leading brands, including Cole Haan, Tommy Hilfiger, Charlotte Russe, Nine West, New York & Company, Brooks Brothers, and Vineyard Vines. North-West College Commencement, Pasadena, CA The College has been training health professionals for more than 50 years and takes great pride in preparing students in short-term programs for gainful employment. On Sunday, May 7, 2017, North-West College and Glendale Career College, along with family and friends, recognized graduates at commencement as they received diplomas in health care professions such as Dental Assisting, Medical Assisting, Massage Therapy, Pharmacy Technician, Surgical Technologist and Vocational Nursing. The ceremony was held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, in Pasadena, California. The new graduates join more than 45,000 who have come before them since the first North-West College ceremony in the 1960s. Scott A. People began the ceremony with a rendition of the National Anthem, beautifully silencing and mesmerizing the crowd with the first note. Scott has featured his talents in such productions as "Jesus Christ Superstar," "The Wiz" and "Dreamgirls." Mitchell Fuerst, the College's President, opened the ceremony, welcoming the graduates and their guests with swelling pride as he congratulated them for achieving their goals. He spoke about his mother, North-West College founder Marsha Fuerst, and how her tireless efforts and unwavering passion for career education allowed her to fulfill her own dream of creating a College where women and men have the opportunity to train for careers, enabling them to support themselves and their families. Mr. Fuerst was followed by the ceremonys keynote speaker, Dr. Bill Dorfman. Recognized world-wide as a leading cosmetic dentist, Dr. Dorfman has been practicing dentistry for over 30 years and has been featured on numerous TV programs, including ABC's "Extreme Makeover," CBS's "The Doctors," "Larry King Live" and "Oprah." During his keynote address, Dr. Dorfman shared several pearls of wisdom for success and encouraged the new graduates to remain positive, to never fail, to learn from the challenges they will face and to never give up. In a heartwarming moment during the ceremony, a Vocational Nursing grad, Nicole De La Rosa, was taken by surprise when her boyfriend and their two children met her on stage during the conferring of graduates. Jose Lopez dropped to his knee in the middle of the stage and lovingly asked for her hand in marriage. Crying with joy, she accepted his proposal, to the applause and admiration of her fellow classmates and everyone in the auditorium. The College has been training health professionals for more than 50 years and takes great pride in preparing students in short-term programs for gainful employment. To learn more about North-West College or to enroll in one of NWC's programs, please contact Nancy Aguillon at NancyA@success.edu. About North-West College Founded in 1966, North-West College has been committed to training individuals to enter and advance in the health care field for 50 years. A leader in allied health education, the College offers a dozen different health care programs at seven campus locations throughout Southern California. Accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC) and approved by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE), North-West College offers a supportive educational environment for those ready to start a health care career. To date, the College has graduated more than 45,000 studentsindividuals who have gone on to raise the standard of excellence at health care organizations of all types. For more information about North-West College and its programs, visit http://www.nw.edu. Linda Canizales, William McManus, Celeste Eggert, Elizabeth Waltman and Marty Landon. All of us at SAPD are very touched by this act of kindness from our fellow city employees. In continuing on with Det. Marconis legacy, their generosity will serve those most in need. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus In the San Antonio spirit of community support, one gift has turned into another and then another that will benefit Haven for Hope and the Battered Womens and Childrens Shelter. The City of San Antonio holds employee blood drives twice a year. At their blood drive earlier this year, the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center (STBTC), a subsidiary of San Antonio-based nonprofit BioBridge Global, gave blood donors $10 H-E-B gift cards as a thank-you for their generous donations. City employees decided to donate their gift cards from the blood drive to the family of San Antonio Police Department Det. Benjamin Marconi, who was killed in the line of duty in November. The city raised $3,330 worth of gift cards. In a gesture to honor their loved one, Det. Marconis family donated the cards to Haven for Hope and the Battered Womens and Childrens Shelter. On behalf of my brother, Dane, and myself; I would like to thank the City of San Antonio employees and the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center on their joint efforts to not only selflessly give blood, but to then turn around and donate their H-E-B gift cards from STBTC to our family in honor of our father, said Jacy Marconi Lewis, Det. Marconis daughter. It speaks volumes about the type of amazing people who work for our great city. As a token of our personal appreciation, we would like to donate the funds that were gifted to our family to Haven for Hope and the Battered Women's and Children's Shelter. We know so many fall on hard times, and these two organizations are tirelessly trying to make our city even better than it already is. Your donations will help change lives, which is all our dad ever wanted to do. So thank you again to all who participated and donated at the blood drives to honor his memory! From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Kenneth Wilson, Haven for Hope CEO: We at Haven for Hope are truly grateful to the Marconi family for this generous donation. We are humbled to receive such a generous donation from such a tragic event. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the Marconi family. Linda Canizales, director, External and Volunteer Relations, Battered Womens and Childrens Shelter: The Battered Women and Childrens Shelter is so appreciative of the Marconi familys generosity. This donation in honor of Officer Marconis memory has touched our hearts. Thank you for your kindness and support to continue to help victims of abuse. SAPD Chief William McManus: All of us at SAPD are very touched by this act of kindness from our fellow city employees. In continuing on with Det. Marconis legacy, their generosity will serve those most in need. Mayor Ivy Taylor: San Antonio is a city where even the most senseless tragedies can lead to wonderful acts of kindness and sharing among our residents. Every day, city employees work hard on behalf of their neighbors; their generosity, and that of Det. Marconis family, is a true testament to how much we care about each other in our community. Elizabeth Waltman, chief operating officer, STBTC Both the City of San Antonio and the San Antonio Police Department are longtime partners in our mission to save lives through a safe and adequate community blood supply. As a frequent blood donor, Det. Marconi exemplified serving his community, beyond his lifes work as a police officer. We were humbled when, at the time of his passing, his family urged people to donate blood because of his belief in our cause. Through the generosity of his family and of city employees, two deserving organizations for which Det. Marconi cared deeply will benefit. About the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center: The South Texas Blood & Tissue Center (STBTC) is a nonprofit community blood center that provides blood, plasma, platelets and other blood components to more than 70 hospitals in 40 South Texas counties. It is the largest blood supplier in our region. STBTC has a proud 42-year history serving the South Texas community. The center is a subsidiary of BioBridge Global, a nonprofit organization comprising services for regenerative medicine and research including blood banking and resource management; cellular therapy; umbilical cord blood collection and storage; donated human tissue recovery and distribution for transplant; and testing of blood and plasma products to help patients in South Texas, the United States and worldwide. STBTC has seven donor rooms in South Texas and conducts thousands of mobile blood drives each year. Visit us at SouthTexasBlood.org and BioBridgeGlobal.org. Plastic Surgery Associates is honored to announce practice founder, Heather Furnas, MD, was recently awarded the Tiffany Award for Best Scientific Presentation of the Aesthetic Meeting 2016. Her paper, Why Patients Request Labiaplasty, was presented at last years Aesthetic Meeting. The award, from the Aesthetic Society Board of Directors and the Aesthetic Surgery Education & Research Foundation (ASERF), was presented to Dr. Furnas at the 2017 Aesthetic Meeting in San Diego on April 29th. The Aesthetic Surgery Education & Research Foundation was founded as a way to encourage advancement, effectiveness and safety in aesthetic surgery through collaborative research and education. The ASERF promotes studies, publications and lectures that share knowledge and awareness within the international aesthetic community. To acknowledge those physicians leaving their mark through aesthetic research, the ASERF presents numerous awards each year, including accolades for journal research papers, distinguished service, leadership and journal articles. The Tiffany Award is presented each year during the ASAPS/ASERF annual meeting. The coveted award is given to the physician or aesthetic professional who offers the most effective and extensive research on a given topic. The Tiffany, a crystal prism on an onyx base, is announced and distributed during the subsequent years meeting. The 2016 Tiffany Award was given to Dr. Furnas on the first morning of the ASAPS meetings Scientific Session. Dr. Furnas was on hand to accept her recognition in-person, as she was presenting on genital rejuvenation during the Premier Global Hot Topics Session. This year, Dr. Furnas and practice co-founder, Francisco Canales, MD, presented their expertise on a variety of cutting-edge innovations in female genital plastic surgery, discussing its role in improving a womans quality of life. Topics addressed by Drs. Furnas and Canales at the 2017 Aesthetic Meeting included surgical and noninvasive vaginal tightening, noninvasive RF treatment, ThermiVa and Viveve. Additionally, Dr. Furnas was asked to provide the welcome message and introductions at the 4th Annual Women Aesthetic Surgeons Symposium, also part of the Aesthetic Meeting. Dr. Furnas is board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. She completed both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University, before completing her medical degree at the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Furnas then returned to Stanford to complete a competitive, six-year plastic surgery residency. She is a member of the California Society of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. In 1992, Dr. Furnas and Dr. Canales founded Plastic Surgery Associates in Santa Rosa, California. More information on the Aesthetic Surgery Education & Research Foundation, and the recent 2017 Aesthetic Meeting, can be found from the ASAPS. To learn more about Dr. Heather Furnas, the labiaplasty procedure, or to schedule a confidential consultation, contact Plastic Surgery Associates at 707.537.2111. Appointments are available at both Plastic Surgery Associates locations, in Santa Rosa and Novato, California. OSAGE | I think there are only four Tarentaise Cattle Breeders in the state of Iowa, Phil Anderson said. Andersons first encounter with Tarentaise, a French breed of cattle, was by chance. While growing up, my favorite part of dads farm was the cow pasture. So, it was kind of a coincidence when I began looking for a group of cows, after my first tour in Iraq, he said. I was looking through the ads and discovered a group of cows for sale that was the exact number of animals I was looking for and the price was reasonable. Anderson purchased the small registered Tarentaise cow herd near Corning and, today, the family raises the deep red cattle, on Iowas rolling land northeast of Osage, far from the breeds origins. Originally in France, the Tarentaise Breed served a dual purpose. They were both a beef breed and a dairy breed. They were known for their ability to graze at high elevations in the Alps. The breed is not new to the U.S., there was a good population in Wyoming and Montana, 20 to 30 years ago, but they declined in numbers due to some poor bloodlines and other reasons, Anderson said. Today, interest is again rising in Tarentaises bloodlines for multiple reasons Anderson said. The cattle are goodnatured and quiet, which makes for good mothers. Most bloodlines are easy calving with birth weights between 65 to 85 pounds. They have good udders and their milk has high butterfat, which translates into good weaning weights, he said. Because of their natural selection for grazing in the steep mountains of the Alps, they are very muscular. They finish out at 1,200 to 1,400 pounds and have good marbling. Most of my market cattle are choice yield grade 3 and I have had them go prime. Most of the bulls I sell go to commercial cattlemen to cross with Herford or Angus cows, Anderson said. One gets good hybrid vigor when crossing Tarentaise with other breeds, and when heifers are saved for the cowmans future herd they make good mothers. Last year, Anderson placed a couple of his bulls on test at Green Springs Bull Test Station in Nevada, Missouri. The bulls were on test for about seven months and the testing data looked at the animals back fat, marbling, ribeye size, average daily gain and feed efficiency. At the test station, each bull had a chip placed in their ear and when the animal ate from the single stall high tech feed bunk, the amount of feed consumed was recorded for each animal. At the end of the test period, one of my bulls was found to have a feed conversion ratio of five point two pounds of dry matter to one pound of gain, which was considerably lower than the average bull, Anderson said. Currently, he sells purebred bulls, a few heifers, some feeder calves and also markets some of his bulls semen. To date, he has sold semen to cattlemen in New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri. Recently, I began working with a rancher in Colorado to verify my bloodlines will have the genetics for strong heart and lungs for cattle in feedlots at higher elevations, Anderson said. Because the breed in both polled and horned, Anderson also does DNA testing, which can help determine if an animal carries genetics that would be prone to throw calves with horns, which can assist potential buyers in selecting breeding stock. As for his own herds genetics, Anderson is an Artificial Insemination (AI) Technician and selects semen specifically for some of his cows. He uses his own bulls on the rest of the cows and heifers. He only gives cows 45 days to settle, and if they dont, the cows are culled from the herd and marketed. I keep a cow as long as she does a good job. My oldest cow was 17 years old, Anderson said. He uses the short breeding season so calves are born close together, which provides him with uniform group of calves to feed. Andersons herd, which also consists of some purebred Red Angus and a few Angus cows, are dry-loted in the winter, but he places them on pasture when grass becomes available. His calves have asses to creep feed after they are few months old. Anderson said he believes Tarentaise will become a more popular breed, because there is an increase of heart failure among fat cattle fed at higher elevations. Cattle are growing so fast that their heart and lungs cant support them. This is another advantage in using Tarentaise breeding stock. Anderson, who served two tours of duty in Iraq with the Iowa National Guard, graduated from Osage High School 2001, and from Iowa State University in 2006 with a degree in Animal Science. Along with his cattle operation, Anderson is the assistant manager of the Northern Country Co-op fertilizer plant in Stacyville. Becky, his wife, is currently employed as Office Manager for the Mitchell County Farm Bureau, and is a busy homemaker with their two sons and daughter who range in age from eight months to ten years. More information can be obtained on the French Breed through the website www.americantarentaise.org. Applied Systems today announced the North American launch of its Follow-the-Sun Support program, which provides Applied customers with 24/7 live technical support. This industry-first program will ensure Applieds customers can always connect with a live support technician anytime, anywhere providing the industrys highest level of customer support. Each and every support call will be serviced by an Applied employee located within one of Applieds fifteen offices in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland. Applied Systems is the leading international provider of insurance solutions for agencies, brokers and insurers. As the only provider in the industry to deliver 24/7 support, Applied is focused on providing customers the support and peace of mind required to run their business and support their clients when they need them most. At no additional fee to customers, Applieds team of experts from across its global offices will be at the ready to address customers needs around-the-clock. The insurance industry is becoming more global and connected, where agencies require anywhere, anytime service from their partners, said Kris Hackney, executive vice president of Customer Experience, Applied Systems. As the industrys trusted technology partner, Applieds ability to provide 24/7 support will ensure we are available when our customers need us so, in turn, they are there when their customers need them most. About Applied Systems Applied Systems is the leading global provider of cloud-based software that powers the business of insurance. Recognized as a pioneer in insurance automation and the innovation leader, Applied is the worlds largest provider of agency and brokerage management systems, serving customers throughout the United States, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom. By automating the insurance lifecycle, Applieds people and products enable millions of people around the world to safeguard and protect what matters most. America II Electronics, Inc., one of the worlds largest distributors of semiconductors and electronic components, today announced it has signed a franchise distribution agreement with Lite-On Semiconductor Corp. This latest addition extends America IIs global power management solution as well as adding green power related semiconductor components that are applied toward communications, information, consumer electronics products' switching power supply and system power supply. Lite-On Semiconductor is at the forefront of the mass production of next-gen power technology, said Jed Pecchioli, Chief Operating Officer at America II Electronics. We are excited to grow our ever expanding line card while partnering with one of the largest providers of discrete and analog integrated circuits. Established in 1990 and headquartered in Taiwan, Lite-On Semiconductor Corp. is a market leader in discrete power management. The company specializes in the design and manufacture of a series of semiconductor components to enhance power efficiency of switching power supply for household appliances, industrial, consumer electronics, communications and automotive related end applications. Lite-On has production sites in both Taiwan and China. "Lite-On Semiconductor is pleased to join forces with one of the worlds largest semiconductor components distributor America II Electronics. America II's innovative distribution competencies can enhance our competitiveness and expand our power supply market shares in the United States, said Lite-On Semiconductor, Sales A.V.P Teddy Wang. With four billion components in stock at their St. Petersburg, Florida distribution facility, America II Electronics has one of the largest inventories in the industry. The company offers the most complete range of products, from active, passive and electromechanical components to memory and specialty products. In addition to hundreds of franchise and direct manufacturing lines, America II provides supply chain solutions, cost-saving programs, and inventory solution programs to industries ranging from telecommunications, industrial and lighting to healthcare, automotive and military. The distributors deep experience in global markets allows America II to provide superior service and a broad array of solutions to its customers around the world. To learn more, contact America II Electronics at (800) 767-2637 or visit http://www.americaii.com. About America II Electronics: Established in 1989, America II Electronics, Inc. is a global leader in component distribution. The company stocks more than four billion components, making it one of the worlds largest distributors of semiconductors and electronic components. Through its franchise and direct distribution lines, America II serves as a primary partner for all OEM and EMS customers. Headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida and with offices in the UK, Germany, China, Japan, Singapore and Mexico, the company also provides value-added services and inventory solutions from its ISO 9001:2008 and ESD-certified 300,000 square foot North American distribution facility. Contact: Kristofer Strong, Marketing Director America II Electronics 800-767-2637 kstrong(at)americaii(dot)com ### The United Nations Foundation today welcomed Sue Biniaz as a Senior Fellow. For more than 25 years, Sue Biniaz served as the lead climate lawyer for the U.S. State Department. In that capacity, she played a central role in all major international climate negotiations, including the Paris Agreement on climate change. During her tenure at the State Department, as a Deputy Legal Adviser, she also supervised the Treaty Office and issues related to the law of the sea, Somali piracy, the Western Hemisphere, human rights, law enforcement, and private international law. Prior to that, she led the State Department's legal office for Oceans, Environment, and Science, as well as the legal office for European Affairs. She clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, attended Yale College, and earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she is currently on the adjunct faculty. Elizabeth Cousens, Deputy Chief Executive Office of the UN Foundation, said: Sue Biniaz was a key drafter and architect of the Paris Agreement on climate change. She possesses an unsurpassed understanding of the legal nuances surrounding this and other critical international climate and environmental agreements, and is renowned for her ability to resolve the most contentious and seemingly intractable negotiating issues. Her experience and thought leadership will prove invaluable to UNF and to others committed to uniting all nations of the world around bold and ambitious climate action through the Paris Agreement. About the United Nations Foundation The United Nations Foundation builds public-private partnerships to address the worlds most pressing problems, and broadens support for the United Nations through advocacy and public outreach. Through innovative campaigns and initiatives, the Foundation connects people, ideas, and resources to help the UN solve global problems. The Foundation was created in 1998 as a U.S. public charity by entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner and now is supported by philanthropic, corporate, government, and individual donors. Learn more at: http://www.unfoundation.org. Patrick Vieau Im hoping, by bringing Pet Wants to this area, I can help people understand how nutrition can impact their animals health and help more pets live long, healthy lives. When Patrick Vieau takes his English Pointer, Romeo, out hunting, he wants to make sure Romeo is at his best and ready for a long, challenging, fun day. For Vieau and Romeo, that all starts with proper nutrition. Now Vieau is excited to announce that hes opening a new pet food business in Green Bay to help other pet families have easy access to that same quality of food Pet Wants Green Bay. Pet Wants carefully developed proprietary pet food is slow-cooked in small batches with fresh, all-natural ingredients once per month, so every kibble is guaranteed to be fresh and packed with nutrition. Pet Wants Green Bay offers personal delivery service to the entire Green Bay metropolitan area. Before opening Pet Wants, Vieau, who is launching the business with the support of his wife, Kay, and their two children, had a long career in sales and portfolio building. Vieaus own journey with finding the right pet food started with his own pets. I have been a sporting dog owner for more than 25 years and I know from experience that the pet food industry is lacking products like Pet Wants. I have a passion for training and using my dogs for what they were bred to do and, at the end of the day, our play is hard. My animals need proper nutrition to help them stay as healthy as possible and I searched for the right food for many years before finding Pet Wants. Now Im looking forward to sharing Pet Wants with other pet families in this region, Vieau said. In addition to being made fresh monthly, Pet Wants only sources the best salmon, chicken, lamb, brown rice and other ingredients available. Theres no sugar added, no fillers and no animal by-products and Pet Wants never uses corn, wheat, soy or dyes, which makes the food great for animals with allergies. Have you ever looked at the ingredients labels on pet food? You basically have to be a biologist to figure out what all those fillers are. I wouldnt want to eat that and I know those chemicals arent good for my animals. With Pet Wants, I can explain exactly whats in the food and why its there and, with it being made every month in small batches, youll know the food is fresh and nutritious, Vieau said. Im passionate about pets and making sure animals are as healthy as possible. Im hoping, by bringing Pet Wants to this area, I can help people understand how nutrition can impact their animals health and help more pets live long, healthy lives with fewer unnecessary trips to the vet, he added. Pet Wants originally launched in Cincinnati in 2010. Owned by Michele Hobbs, the business was built to provide proprietary crafted, fresh, slow-cooked, all-natural pet food delivered to customers through a retail store and a convenient home-delivery service. Hobbs, now the company founder, turned the business into a franchise in 2015 with the help of Franchise Funding Group, an investment and franchise-development company designed to help entrepreneurs scale their companies nationally as franchise systems. To order Pet Wants food for your favorite companion or to learn about the company, call (920)660-5901, email PVieau(at)PetWants(dot)com or visit http://www.PetWantsGreenBay.com. About Pet Wants: Pet Wants was started by Michele Hobbs out of love for her pets and frustration. Veterinarians were unable to help relieve her dogs painful skin allergies. After doing much research, Michele discovered the national dog food brand she trusted was not fresh, not all natural, and lacked sufficient nutrition...and when pet food sits in warehouses and store shelves for months and months it loses even more nutritional value. She was committed to developing a better solution for all dogs and cats. Their food is exclusively crafted fresh, healthy, slow-cooked and all natural with no sugar added, no fillers and no animal by-products. They source only the best salmon, chicken, lamb, brown rice, and other ingredients. Fresh ingredients make for better food and better health for pets. And since they never use corn, wheat, soy or dyes, the common pet health problems associated with these ingredients are no longer worries. Their fresh food is conveniently delivered to the customer within weeks of production, not months. Roughly half of Pet Wants products are sold through their store and half through their convenient, home-delivery program. You can learn more at http://www.PetWants.com. Meqnes While most leather bags look the same and have no structure, Meqnes combines the aesthetics of old-school mens travel bags, with the sleekness of modern-day fashion. The Meqnes team launched their Kickstarter campaign today and is looking to raise a total of $49,500 to help bring the Meqnes weekend bag to life. The full-grain calfskin leather bag is vegetable-tanned for a unique and beautiful color that will last the sophisticated, traveling man a lifetime. The ultimate gift for the man who is always on the go, Meqnes bags make a statement while maintaining comfort with dual handles and straps for convenience. While most mens bags are made of poor-quality leather that doesnt hold shape, Meqnes materials can withstand frequent travel and will hold up for everyday use. The Meqnes team has worked hard to eliminate the middleman and sources bags directly from the workshop straight to the customer, which, in return, will keep the cost of these bags down to a minimum. Factory-made leather products have started to replace the handmade Moroccan tradition. The handmade tradition is dangerously close to dying, and this is our chance to bring it back to life, said founder Kamal Jahid. While most leather bags look the same and have no structure, Meqnes combines the aesthetics of old-school mens travel bags, with the sleekness of modern-day fashion. Meqnes, a young, Poland-based company with a focus on craftsmanship, stays true to Moroccos deep history of handcrafting leather products, specializing in creating unique, stylish handbags. No two Meqnes bags are stitched the same so that each weekend tote is different in its own way. Meqnes bags measure 24.4 x 11.8 x 12.6 inches, which serve as the perfect size for a weekends-worth of attire. Early adopters can purchase Meqnes bags in Bullet Black or Sahara Brown on Kickstarter for $495, which is $305 less than the market retail value. For more information about Meqnes bags, visit http://bit.ly/MeqnesKS. ABOUT MEQNES Headquartered in Warsaw, Meqnes offers a new line of high-quality, handmade leather products with a sturdy, stylish look and unique design. Each product showcases authentic Moroccan craftsmanship at its best while also providing lasting durability. For more information, visit http://www.meqnes.com. ban.do and Starbucks?! Is this real life?! Oh yeah! The Los Angeles lifestyle brand thats serious about fun has partnered with the coffee giant to release the BAN.DO x STARBUCKS collection, a limited edition 10-piece assortment of drinkware and accessories. Its exclusive to Starbucks, packed with feel-good vibes, and is the perfect blend of both brands DNA. The co-branded collection, which launches May 16th 2017, will only be for sale in Starbucks stores in Asia. It gives international fans of ban.do a unique experience and is another huge step forward in the brands growing global presence. Designs include a colorful hand-painted floral, the phrase good times, and a retro-inspired stripe. The brand cites LA culture, beach umbrellas, lounging by a pool, and anything tropical as their inspiration. All the designs were based off of the idea that wed bring a little slice of LA sunshine and fun to the other side of the world, said Jen Gotch, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of ban.do. We wanted to give our international fansboth old and newsomething really special that they couldnt get anywhere else. The partnership was a natural progression for the rapidly growing brand, who currently has a presence in 3,000+ stores in the United States and 50 countries total. And, as the brands started working together, they realized that they had a lot in common. Togetherness is really important at ban.do, said Gotch. And its something we felt totally aligned with Starbucks plus, were both super passionate about our products down to the last detail. The collection will launch in select Starbucks locations throughout Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Taiwan, South Korea, and China. Products include Starbucks signature cold cups, double-walled travelers and ban.do core products; notebooks, totes, luggage tags, passport holders, pencil pouches, and drink coasters. A second capsule collection will launch in July 2017. To celebrate the launch of this collaboration, ban.do will be hosting a giveaway for all of their loyal fans in the US. Visit bando.com/Starbucksgiveaway beginning May 16 for more details. about ban.do Founded in 2008, ban.do is a lifestyle brand based in sunny Los Angeles that designs clothes, accessories, bags, stationery, gifts, and tech. Their products can be found globally in over 3,000 department stores and boutiques, as well as online at bando.com. Theyre inspired by self-expression, the power of friendship, and all things FUN. I deeply value the recognition, for a third year running, of being a Castle Connolly Top Doctor, says Dr. Stong. It is an honor that also motivates me to stay at the forefront of facial plastic surgery and continue to offer the most innovative procedures. Dr. Benjamin Stong of Kalos Facial Plastic Surgery, LLC in Atlanta, Georgia was named a "Top Doctor" by Castle Connolly for the third year in a row. He is dual board certified in Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery and Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery by the American Board of Otolaryngology and the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (ABFPRS). I deeply value the recognition, for a third year running, of being a Castle Connolly Top Doctor, says Dr. Stong. "It is an honor that also motivates me to stay at the forefront of facial plastic surgery and continue to offer the most innovative procedures to my patients." Castle Connolly helps consumers find the best healthcare by screening for medical educations, training, hospital appointments, disciplinary histories and more. Only about one in ten doctors nominated by their colleagues are selected for inclusion as a Top Doctor, and doctors cannot pay to be included in any Castle Connolly Guide or online directory. Castle Connolly is acknowledging Dr. Stongs unrivaled performance in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery for the face, including facelifts, rhinoplasty, eye lid surgery, hair transplantation and more. His minimally invasive techniques and long-lasting results consistently set him apart from other surgeons in his field. In fact, Dr. Stong is the only doctor in the Atlanta area of almost 6,000,000 residents who offers certain advanced procedures. For example he is the only surgeon in the area to offer the deep plane facelift. With careful attention to detail, study and experience, Dr. Stong has taken the deep plane facelift procedure and improved it by adding his own advanced techniques. As a result, he has created his own unique deep plane facelift: the KalosLift. Castle Connolly is considered the countrys most reliable source for finding the best local physician specialists. Dr. Stongs repeated distinction as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor allows his facial plastic surgery services to be featured across a number of local and national media outlets and publications, including the America's Top Doctors book, credible online directories and multiple popular magazines. About Dr. Benjamin Stong and Kalos Facial Plastic Surgery, LLC: Owner and facial plastic surgeon, Dr. Benjamin Stong is dual board certified in Head and Neck Surgery and Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He completed his fellowship under one of the most nationally renowned plastic surgeons, Dr. Andrew Jacono in New York. He has combined such an elite level of training with his own proven experience and talent to bring patients of Atlanta and across the country outstanding results in plastic surgery. Kalos Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery specializes in providing the most advanced techniques in facial plastic surgery and other cosmetic services. If you would like to get more information about the services offered by Kalos Facial Plastic Surgery, LLC, please call their Atlanta office at (404) 963-6665 or visit their website at http://www.kalos-plasticsurgery.com. Prepared by Find Local Company The JetPay Money Access Card is issued by Central National Bank of Enid, Oklahoma, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. We designed the JetPay Money Access Card purposefully, and in such a way, that a cardholder will be proud to carry and put their card on display whether shopping at a local retailer or just out for a night on the town with a significant other or friends. Paybefore judges have selected the JetPay Money Access Card as a 2017 Pay Awards winner in the Best Design category. For 11 years, Pay Awards has conferred the most prestigious recognition of excellence in prepaid and payments technology industry. The awards are presented annually by Paybefore, whose publications are the leading source of industry information for payments executives. Jeff Foster, CEO of Cardplatforms, commented, We are extremely thankful and humbled to be recognized, along with our partner JetPay, by the Pay Awards. JetPay has an unwavering commitment to delivering superior solutions to their client and we are proud to help them achieve their mission with the JetPay Money Access Card. Foster added, This honor represents the validation of our approach to only create custom solutions tailored specifically to the needs of our partners and their cardholders. JetPay didn't want a standard program. They desired a payroll card solution that not only delivered tremendous value and convenience to their clients employees but also was beautifully designed to appeal to the cards target demographic. Michael Pires, the President of JetPay HR & Payroll Services, as well as Prepaid Solutions, exclaims his pleasure with this award stating, We are pleased and honored to be recognized, along with our partner Cardplatforms, by Pay Awards in the Best Design category and appreciate the distinguished panel for selecting the JetPay Money Access Card for this great distinction. With the intent of the JetPay Money Access Card to be more than just a prepaid card Pires explains, We designed the JetPay Money Access Card purposefully, and in such a way, that a cardholder will be proud to carry and put their card on display whether shopping at a local retailer or just out for a night on the town with a significant other or friends. I am pleased to share that we have thousands of cardholders across the U.S. who are proudly carrying the JetPay Money Access Card in their wallets and are enjoying the financial freedom that comes with the card. The JetPay Money Access Card was selected by an expert judging panel that evaluated a stellar field of global nominees. As our industry changes, we remain committed to honoring innovation and excellence. Among the big themes in this years competition were solutions tailored to specific B2B, health care, T&E and cross-border payment needs, says Loraine DeBonis, Paybefore editor-in-chief and chair of the judging panels. We also saw a remarkable number of consumer-focused solutions with ingenious approaches to savings and incentives that are making a difference in peoples lives. Were proud to recognize Cardplatforms and JetPay for their contributions to propelling the industry forward. With the emphasis of the card being a true financial vehicle for many across the United States, Pires talks of the combining of convenience, security and design, with the passion JetPay has in placing people first; We are passionate about providing prepaid solutions that enable our clients employees across the country to maximize their paycheck while also giving them the flexibility and conveniences that traditional credit and debit card users enjoy. The JetPay Money Access Card is a prepaid payroll card solution offered exclusively to JetPay clients. The JetPay Money Access Card was designed purposefully. It was critical that the cards brand identity complement its core values. The values the card represents include financial freedom and convenience. The JetPay Money Access Card is an indispensable financial tool for cardholders as it provides them with all the functionality of a traditional bank account without the high monthly fees and inconvenience. The JetPay Money Access Card now will vie for Best-in-Category distinction, which will be announced in Pay News the week of June 12. Visitors to Paybefore.com will have a chance to vote on Best in Category through May 31. The outcome of this vote will be combined with the judges picks to determine Best-in-Category honorees, all of which will be profiled in the Pay Magazine Awards Issue. The JetPay Money Access Card is issued by Central National Bank of Enid, Oklahoma, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. About Cardplatforms Cardplatforms is a South Florida-based company, founded in 2010 by payment technology, marketing, and banking executives. Cardplatforms issues MasterCard, Visa and Discover prepaid cards in the US, primarily for payroll, corporate expenditures, incentives, legal settlements and government benefits. The company provides virtual banking to all of its cardholders, vertically integrated support solutions, admin and cardholder portals and comprehensive reporting and reconciliation tools to its customers. Learn more at http://www.cardplatforms.com. About JetPay Corporation JetPay Corporation is a leading provider of vertically integrated and customized cloud-based solutions for businesses including card acceptance, processing, payroll, payroll tax filing, human capital management and other financial transactions. JetPay provides a single vendor solution for payment services, debit and credit card processing, ACH services, and payroll and human capital management needs for businesses throughout the United States. Please visit http://www.jetpay.com for more information or call 866-4JetPay (866-453- 8729). About Paybefore Paybefore is the leading information provider to prepaid, mobile and emerging payments industry professionals, offering the latest news, commentary and analysis. Paybefores family of media properties includes: Paybefore.com; Pay News; Pay Gov; Pay Week; Pay Op-Ed; Pay Magazine and a global payments directory, Pay Connect available online. Visit us at http://www.paybefore.com. TransMerit Merchant Services To be recognized for this effort, amidst a field of global firms, excites us about the future of the industry. TransMerit Merchant Services announces their naming as the Best Credit Card Payments Solution by the 2017 FinTech Breakthrough Awards. These awards aim to recognize excellence and success in a variety of FinTech categories, including Payments, Transaction Security, and Personal Finance. This years awards drew over 3,000 nominations from leading FinTech companies. We are honored to receive the award for Best Credit Card Payments Solution, affirms Keith Olmo, Managing Director, who co-founded TransMerit Merchant Services with George Csahiouni in 2014. At TransMerit, we pride ourselves on pioneering and navigating evolving technology developments in the world of merchant service processing. To be recognized for this effort, amidst a field of global firms, excites us about the future of the industry. Other award recipients include such household names as Quicken, Nerdwallet, and Square. TransMerit offers customized enterprise programs to aid in business development. These FinTech solutions include equipment, analytics, savings on merchant processing rates, and merchant cash advances. Many payment companies only offer a processing solution, but TransMerit, as a small business payment concierge, provides the full suite of business solutionsfrom the actual technology, to processing, to banking and lending. TransMerits credit card processing suite not only includes credit, debit, EBT, mobile payments and swipers, point of sale (POS), smart terminal and check programs, but also contains custom gift card programs to attract and retain new customers while strengthening merchant brands. In order to succeed, retailers need far more than payment acceptance tools. That is why TransMerit offers terminals and gateways with customizable payment features and processing equipment to fit various needs, from face-to-face to virtual payment acceptance. TransMerit provides the merchants the tools they need to succeedall at their fingertips. TransMerit can frequently be seen on creditcards.com as the expert source in the Your Business Credit column. About TransMerit Merchant Services Founded in 2014 and based in Los Angeles, CA, TransMerit Merchant Services is a full-service merchant company serving small and mid-sized businesses. TransMerit offers customized enterprise programs to aid in business development. These solutions include savings on merchant processing rates, equipment, analytics, and merchant cash advances. TransMerit is at the forefront of change in the merchant services business, extending the very latest in programs and equipment for Visa, Master Card, American Express, and Discover. To learn more, visit transmeritmerchantservices.com. Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Water source heat pumps discussed at Euroheat Conference The announcement of Low Carbon Infrastructure Investment funding by Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is a prime example of the commitment to decarbonising heat in Scotland and we are delighted to be involved in the Gorbals project. Star Renewable Energy is planning to be a fundamental part of the Euroheat & Power Congress, exhibiting and delivering industry seminars on large scale heat pumps for district heating and industrial processes. The esteemed industry event includes an exhibition, expert speakers and a programme of social events to encourage everyone in the wider energy industry to connect and share innovations. The exhibition and seminars take place on Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th May, and SRE will be welcoming attendees at stand 503. Dave Pearson of Star Renewable Energy said, The EuroHeat & Power Congress is a really important event on the industry calendar and were thrilled to be taking part in such a significant way. Were looking forward to sharing our low carbon heat pump technology and exhibiting at the renewable industry event in our hometown of Glasgow. The announcement of Low Carbon Infrastructure Investment funding by Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is a prime example of the commitment to decarbonising heat in Scotland and we are delighted to be involved in the Gorbals project and will share details of the plans at EuroHeat and Power. Stars homegrown water source heat pumps have been in used for almost a decade now, effectively delivering low carbon, low cost heat to towns, hospitals, schools, and business in Europe. We hope that sharing our vast knowledge and experience of the technology contributes to its long-awaited uptake throughout the UK. The congress schedule takes place over four days and includes a variety of learning opportunities and social exchanges. From keynote speeches and dialogue sessions to awards ceremonies and whisky tasting evenings, EuroHeat 2017 looks set to be one of the most exciting business events of the year. The main congress and exhibition events take place on 15-16 May at SECC Glasgow. The official welcome reception is held on Sunday 14th May and the last day of the event, Wednesday 14th May, is reserved for site visits. For more information about the EuroHeat & Power Congress 2017 and to register to attend, visit the website: http://www.ehpcongress.org To find more about Star Renewable Energy and the companys innovative heat pumps, go to http://www.neatpumps.com OSAGE | What would you do if war, persecution or conflict forced you from your home and you and your family had to flee the country to survive? Margaret Grguric Smolik experienced that first hand as a refugee from Croatia after World War II. Her family found help, hope and a home in Iowa after the war. Smolik shared her experiences with Shion Ishikura and David Hall representatives from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) at the home of Mary Mills Dunea on Thursday, April 27. Dunea and her guests came to learn about todays refugee crisis and the current response from the two special guests. Those gathered at Duneas home learned of some of the critical ways UNHCR provides aid. UNHCR is the United Nations Refugee Agency and is the worlds leading organization with an international mandate to aid and protect those who are forced to flee their homes because of violence, conflict and persecution. Ishikura and Hall work for USA for UNHCR, a national partner in the US raising awareness and funds. Though everyone is aware of the Syrian refugee crisis, there are currently over 65 million refugees and internally displaced persons world-wide coming from countries including Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen and Guatemala. Hall reported on the agencys work in Mexico. According to Hall, gang violence in Guatemala is forcing thousands to flee that country. The UNHRC is working with the government of Mexico and other aid agencies that provide help for people seeking refugee status. By providing shelters and legal aid to those seeking asylum, the agency is working to keep people in Mexico who are fleeing violence in Central America. This helps stem the tide of people attempting to cross the border to the US. The UNHRC works with countries hosting refugees including Jordan, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey and Uganda. Many of the hosting countries are poor, and without assistance would be overwhelmed by the thousands of refugees. Funding for this organization is almost entirely from voluntary contributions with 86 percent coming from governments and the European Union. Most Americans can trace their roots to ancestors fleeing war, famine, and poverty. Smolik spoke from her own experience about the importance of finding help and acceptance in a new country. USA for UNHRC is one of the largest contributors of private sector funding for the UNHRCs lifesaving and life-changing work. It is a reflection of American generosity and willingness to help those in need. More information can be found at www.UNrefugees.org. URBANDALE Republican Gov. Terry Branstad is stepping up his criticism of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller in the wake of the Democrats controversial legal opinion on powers of the governors successor, telling a conservative group Wednesday that voters should oust the attorney general. Branstad insisted Miller was absolutely wrong when on May 1 he reversed a position he took in December by issuing a formal opinion that Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds will be governor once Branstad resigns to accept an ambassadorship but would not have the constitutional authority to appoint a new lieutenant governor. In his decision, Miller cited past elected executive successions at the state and national level to bolster his position that Reynolds would serve in both capacities as governor and lieutenant governor until the next election. Branstad called Millers opinion convoluted on his Tuesday evening radio call-in show because he said it flies in the face of a 2009 state law that spells out the procedure for a sitting governor to name a lieutenant when the post is vacant, and noted two situations in Utah and New York where such action was taken and upheld by the courts. I think this is a very cynical effort to try to create controversy. I think its absolutely wrong. I think the people of Iowa recognize that we need to have an attorney general that will represent the people of Iowa and not his own partisan viewpoint or that of his staff, Branstad told members of the Westside Conservative Club Wednesday morning. Asked by one attendee why he does fire Miller, the governor said: We cant fire the attorney general. Hes elected separately. You can. I cant. Theres an election coming up in 2018. He has been the attorney general since 1978 with the exception of four years of Bonnie Campbell. I think its time for a new attorney general. So lets vote a new attorney general that will represent Iowa and the people of Iowas interest. The attorney generals office is representing the state in a court challenge to the new 72-hour waiting period for abortions performed in Iowa that Branstad signed last week. But Miller has cited a conflict in declining to represent the state in a union challenge to a rewrite of Iowas collective bargaining law for public employees. By issuing the opinion on succession, Miller will have to recuse himself if Reynolds chooses to appoint a lieutenant once she is sworn in as Branstads successor and if she is challenged in court, the governor said. So its just a way to kind of mess the whole process up and create confusion, and I think its one of the worst partisan things hes ever done, Branstad said. Reynolds last week said she is evaluating the succession question but noted Millers change of position has cast a cloud over the issue. We believe the law is on our side, she said in an interview. Attorney General Miller, my attorney, gave us that advice in December and Ive moved forward anticipating. In light of the reversal of his opinion, were sitting down with a team and were evaluating how we move forward. No decisions will be made until Branstad clears the U.S. Senate confirmation process, likely this month, to become President Donald Trumps choice to be ambassador to China. In a brief response Wednesday to the governors comments, Miller defended his opinion, saying despite all the rhetoric, this thoroughly researched opinion is based on the law and not politics. Its up to Iowans to make that judgment. The opinion is based on constitutional provisions concerning succession order, which provide that, upon a governors resignation, the office goes from governor to lieutenant governor, to president of the Senate, and then to the speaker of the House. To insert a replacement lieutenant governor would require changing that constitutional provision, he noted. Cookies What are cookies ? How do we use cookies? How to control cookies? Managing cookies in your browser see what cookies you have got and delete them on an individual basis block third party cookies block cookies from particular sites block all cookies from being set delete all cookies when you close your browser X A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. 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Elena Giovinazzo at Pippin Properties negotiated the seven-figure deal for North American rights. Hali Baumstein at Bloomsbury has bought at auction, in a two-book deal, a debut fantasy series by Mimi Yu. The first book, The Girl King, is set in a world inspired by East and North Asian history, about an exiled princess fighting to reclaim the throne from her younger sister with the reluctant help of a shapeshifting boy whose family was killed by the empire. Publication is slated for spring 2019; Beth Phelan at the Bent Agency brokered the deal for North American rights. Daniel Ehrenhaft at Soho Teen has acquired North American rights to Tom Pollock's White Rabbit, Red Wolf, a YA thriller described as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time meets John Le Carre, about a teen math prodigy with an extreme anxiety disorder who finds himself caught in a web of lies and conspiracies after an assassination attempt on his mother. Publication is set for August 2018; Walker Books is publishing the U.K. edition in February 2018. Barry Goldblatt at Barry Goldblatt Literary negotiated on behalf of Nancy Miles at Miles Stott Children's Literary Agency. T.S. Ferguson at Harlequin Teen has bought Belly by Hillary Monahan, writing as Eva Darrows. Pitched as Juno meets Gilmore Girls, the book follows a 16-year-old biracial Hispanic girl who moves to a new town with her mother and must navigate a new school, a new guy, and the tiny human growing inside of her. Publication is planned for summer 2018; Miriam Kriss at the Irene Goodman Agency did the deal for world rights (excluding Italy). Erica Finkel at Abrams has acquired Rachael Allen's YA novel, A Taxonomy of Love. Pitched as One Day meets I'll Give You the Sun, the book follows a boy with Tourette Syndrome who's in love with the girl next dooronly she's dating his older brother. The story is told through snapshots spanning seventh grade to the summer after senior year. Publication is scheduled for spring 2018; Susan Hawk at Upstart Crow brokered the deal for world English rights while at the Bent Agency. Alvina Ling at Little, Brown has bought These Unclosed Few by Dawn Kurtagich, author of The Dead House. Based on the legend of Faustus and set in the Welsh mountains, the story explores the events that took place in an ancient mill house where a centuries-old evil connects three girls across the centuries. Publication is slated for fall 2018; Sarah Davies and Polly Nolan at Greenhouse Literary negotiated the deal for world rights. Maggie Lehrman at Abrams/Amulet has acquired world English rights to Laurie Morrison's solo debut, Up for Air. The novel stars 13-year-old Annabelle, a struggling student and star swimmer, who is thrilled when she gets called up to the high school summer team and attracts the attention of an older boy. But when she finds herself alienated from her closest friends, she has to figure out what her true strengths are and where she really fits. The book is planned for spring 2019; Sara Crowe at Pippin Properties did the deal. Michelle Frey at Knopf has bought world rights to Gwen and the Clan MacDougall by Jeanne Birdsall, a new middle grade novel from the author of the Penderwicks series, in which a girl named Gwen must help beleaguered Scottish fairies find a new home in Boston, leading to a summer of marvels and excitement. Publication is scheduled for fall 2021; Barbara S. Kouts at Barbara S. Kouts Literary Agency brokered the deal. Christy Ottaviano at Macmillan/Christy Ottaviano has acquired world rights to Underbelly: King of the Mole People, a debut illustrated middle-grade humor series pitched as Troll Hunters meets Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, by Paul Gilligan, creator of the syndicated cartoon Pooch Cafe. The first book is set for 2019, with the second following in 2020; the author represented himself. Cassandra Pelham and David Saylor at Scholastic/Graphix have bought, in a five-house auction, Glitch by Sarah Graley, a graphic novel debut pitched as Nimona meets Ready Player One for middle-grade readers. It features a girl who can enter the world of her new video game, where she fights to take down an evil villain who is a threat to both her virtual and real worlds. It's slated for spring 2019; Scholastic UK will publish simultaneously. Steven Salpeter at Curtis Brown Ltd. did the deal for world English rights. Steve Geck at Sourcebooks has acquired North American rights to The Stupendously Spectacular Spelling Bee and another untitled middle-grade novel by Deborah Abela. The first book is about a shy girl whose family helps her to follow her dreams of being on a televised spelling bee. Publication is scheduled for spring 2018; Allison Hellegers at Rights People negotiated on behalf of Penguin Random House Australia. Joanna Cardenas at Viking has bought, in a 10-house auction, author-illustrator Anna Kim's Danbi, a debut picture book about an immigrant child's first day at school in a new country and how she navigates between her two cultures with ingenuity and optimism. Publication is planned for summer 2019; Steven Malk at Writers House brokered the two-book deal for world rights. Kate Fletcher at Candlewick has acquired author-illustrator Hyewon Yum's picture book, Saturday Is Swimming Day, in which a girl learns that when trying something new, a little braveryand a lot of patiencecan be all you need to face your fear. Publication is set for spring 2018; Sean McCarthy at Sean McCarthy Literary Agency handled the deal for world English rights. Nancy Paulsen at Penguin/Nancy Paulsen Books has bought world rights to The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra illustrator Ana Aranda's first solo picture book, an as-yet-untitled exploration of the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition. Publication is slated for fall 2019; Adriana Dominguez at Full Circle Literary negotiated the deal. Alessandra Balzer at HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray has acquired Sincerely, Buster, a new picture book from author-illustrator Jessica Olien, about a dog who learns to write and starts corresponding with his owner about what he really wants. Publication is scheduled for winter 2020; Molly Jaffa at Folio Literary brokered the deal for world rights. Jessica Echeverria at Lee & Low has bought world rights to Marsha Diane Arnold's (l.) Galapagos Girl, a picture book about a girl who lives on one of the Galapagos islands, and the various species of the island that provide her with friendship and inspiration. Pura Belpre Honor recipient Angela Dominguez will illustrate; publication is planned for fall 2018. Karen Grencik at Red Fox Literary represented the author and Linda Pratt at Wernick & Pratt Agency represented the illustrator. Aubrey Poole at Little, Brown/Jimmy Patterson has acquired at auction North American rights to The 96 Words for Love, a debut YA novel by designer and author Rachel Roy (l.) in collaboration with Ava Dash, her 17-year-old daughter. A modern retelling of the classic Indian legend of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, the novel follows Raya as she leaves her California life behind to visit an ashram in India in an attempt to confront the sources of her anxiety and realize her place in the worldand, maybe, even fall in love. Publication is scheduled for winter 2018; Kirsten Neuhaus at Foundry Literary + Media represented Roy, and Jess Regel at Foundry Literary + Media represented the packager, In This Together Media. Sarah Barley at Flatiron Books has bought at auction The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue author Mackenzi Lee's Semper Augustus, pitched as a YA The Miniaturist meets Sarah Waters. Set during the height of the Dutch tulipomania, the book tells of a florist who must choose between her family's ruin and playing a part in duping her beloved's father into buying a false Semper Augustus, the most expensive bulb of the time. Publication is planned for winter 2019; Rebecca Podos at Rees Literary Agency handled the deal for world English rights. Rosemary Brosnan at HarperTeen has acquired in a three-way house bid pre-empt Anica Mrose Rissi's YA debut, Always Forever Maybe, a novel about a controlling relationship, an unraveling best friendship, and the depths and boundaries of platonic and romantic love. Publication for the first book is slated for summer 2018, with a second, untitled stand-alone novel to follow; Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at DeFiore and Company brokered the deal for world rights. Aimee Friedman at Scholastic has bought, in a two-book deal, world rights to P.S. I Like You author Kasie West's Listen to Your Heart, about a girl who reluctantly agrees to host the school's podcast and finds that doling out advice about love is almost as hard as taking it. The first book is set for summer 2018, and the second book for summer 2019; Michelle Wolfson at Wolfson Literary Agency negotiated the deal. Claudia Gabel at HarperCollins/Tegen has acquired at auction, in a six-figure, two-book deal, Claire Legrand's Sawkill Girls. Pitched as Shutter Island meets Bone Gap, it tells the story of three teen girls desperate to unravel the mystery behind the vanished girls of Sawkill Rockbut an ancient evil is at work on the island's privileged shores, and soon the girls realize that nothing and no one can be trusted. The book is scheduled for fall 2018; Victoria Marini at the Irene Goodman Agency did the deal for North American rights. Grace Kendall at Farrar, Straus and Giroux has bought Pilgrim Playwright Genie Guard, a YA anthology of short stories featuring disabled teens, written by #OwnVoices disabled authors and edited by author Marieke Nijkamp. The stories reflect a range of genres and disabilities; contributors include bestselling authors Kody Keplinger and Francisco X. Stork, as well as newcomers Fox Benwell, Keah Brown, and more. Publication is slated for 2018; Jennifer Udden at Barry Goldblatt Literary brokered the deal for English-language rights. Tara Weikum at HarperTeen has acquired Winterfolk by Janel Kolby, a debut YA novel with magical realism. Set outside of Seattle, the story follows a homeless teen searching for a way to save her encampment when the city threatens to drive them out. Publication is planned for early 2018; Beth Phelan at the Bent Agency negotiated the two-book deal for world English rights. Kieran Viola at Freeform has bought Riverdale writer Britta Lundin's debut YA novel, Ship It, the story of a fanfic writer named Claire who just knows the two male characters on her favorite show are in love, and tries to convince the showrunner to make the relationship happen on screen when she's invited on a Comic Con tour with the cast. Publication is set for spring 2018; Jim Ehrich at Rothman Brecher Ehrich Livingston did the deal for world rights. Reka Simonsen at S&S/Atheneum has acquired world rights to J. Albert Manns untitled YA biographical novel about Margaret Sanger, early womens health and rights activist and the founder of what is now Planned Parenthood. The coming-of-age novel follows Margaret through her early years as she struggles to find her way in a large family amid the harsh realities of life in the late 19th century. Publication is scheduled for spring 2019; Kerry Sparks at Levine Greenberg Rostan brokered the two-book deal. Becky Herrick at Sky Pony has bought two middle grade novels by Beth Vrabel. Bringing Me Back is a standalone story about a boy who can't seem to tackle the mess he made with his hardscrabble school's football team, nor shorten his mom's jail timebut when he sees a black bear that needs help, he knows he has to take action, even if it means getting in even more trouble. Publication is set for February 2018. The second book, Super Dorks, continues Vrabels Pack of Dorks series, and is planned for summer 2018. Nicole Resciniti at the Seymour Agency negotiated the deal for world rights. Jenna Pocius at Bonnier USA has acquired in a preempt for the company's new middle grade imprint The Flourishing of Floralie Laurel, a magical realism novel by debut author Fiadhnait Moser. Pitched as The Secret Garden meets Alice Hoffman, the story follows a girl who must use a secret floriography written by Claude Monet's gardener to decode a letter from her long-lost mother and escape the clutches of her wicked grandmother. Publication is slated for summer 2018; Jaida Temperly at New Leaf Literary & Media did the deal for world English rights. Christian Trimmer at Holt has bought Lost in the Library: A Story of Patience and Fortitude, written by Josh Funk and illustrated by Stevie Lewis, about the two lions who faithfully guard the New York Public Library. When Patience goes missing, Fortitude realizes the secret to Patience's disappearance may be within the Library itself. Lost in the Library is the first picture book that Macmillan plans to publish in partnership with the New York Public Library; its scheduled for publication in 2018. Kathleen Rushall at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency represented the author, and the illustrator is unagented. Andrea Welch at S&S/Beach Lane has acquired world rights to Nancy Raines Day's (l.) Pirate Jack Gets Dressed: A Colorful Yarrrn, a picture book about a pirate getting dressed, piece by colorful piece. Allison Black will illustrate; publication is slated for spring 2019. Tricia Lawrence at Erin Murphy Literary Agency represented the author and Kelly Sonnack at Andrea Brown Literary Agency represented the illustrator. Julia Maguire at Knopf has bought world rights to Building Books by Megan Wagner Lloyd (l.), illustrated by Brianne Farley, a picture book about a pair of siblings who argue over which pastime is best: reading or building? Publication is planned for fall 2018; Ammi-Joan Paquette at Erin Murphy Literary represented the author and Paul Rodeen at Rodeen Literary represented the artist. Sylvie Frank at S&S/Paula Wiseman has acquired world rights to Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy author Susan Vaught's (l.) debut picture book, Together We Grow, a story of community and rebuilding in the wake of disaster. Kelly Murphy will illustrate; publication is set for fall 2019. Erin Murphy at Erin Murphy Literary Agency represented the author, and the illustrator represented herself. Jaime Schwalb at Sounds True has bought world rights to author Jennifer Adams's (l.) picture book, I Am a Warrior Goddess (l.), about a tiny girl with big aspirations. Trees author-illustrator Carme Lemniscates will illustrate; publication is scheduled for spring 2018. Steven Malk at Writers House represented the author and Adriana Dominguez at Full Circle Literary represented the illustrator. It might be the only bookstore in Canada where you can look out the window and see horses, free-range hens, lambs, and a donkey. On July 3, in the small community of River John, Nova Scotia with a population of fewer than 3,000 people longtime childrens book author and literacy advocate Sheree Fitch will be opening a seasonal bookstore. Mabel Murples Book Shoppe & Dreamery is named after the authors 1995 childrens book Mabel Murple, a tongue-twisting poem about a girl living in a purple world. Its a dream. I was the little city kid growing up reading books about kids who lived in the country, says Fitch, who grew up in New Brunswick. Fitch published her first book, Toes in My Nose: And Other Poems, 30 years ago, in 1987, and has since published dozens more, including several YA novels, a book of adult poetry, and an adult novel. After living for years with her Quebecois husband, Gilles Plante, in Washington, D.C. (where he worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), the two of them moved to River John about six years ago. They bought a 99-acre parcel of land containing a farmhouse, an old grainery, and some birch trees and oak trees, with a dirt road running through the middle of it. Plante, now retired, built a house on one side of the road, and on the other side, he is converting the old grainery into Mabel Murples Book Shoppe & Dreamery and the old farmhouse will be turned into a replica of Mabel Murples purple world. Fitch plans to open the store annually from about July to September, welcoming visits from locals and from tourists driving along the Sunrise Trail on their way to Cape Breton. The shop has about 600 square feet of space, plus room outdoors for a few picnic tables, reading nooks, and an area for author readings and open mic nights. Now, people are going to have to bring clothespins if they dont like the smell of manure, because its very fragrant, she says. The idea is to have an experience in nature and imagination, where you can sit outside with a good book and hear stories outside. Its a beautiful, natural habitat. On July 3, the shops opening day, Fitch will be hosting WordPlay, the childrens offshoot of Read by the Sea. The annual literary festival has been hosted in River John since 2000, and will bring visitors such as Marie-Louise Gay, creator of the Stella and Sam series, to the bookstore. Meanwhile, Fitch is busy working on several new books this year. A 20th anniversary reissue of her book If You Could Wear My Sneakers (originally published by Doubleday Canada, now by Nimbus Publishing) came out in April in Canada, and will be available in the U.S. in October. The picture book, which won the Ontario Library Associations Silver Birch Award when it first came out, is a collection of poems loosely based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (which has never been ratified in the U.S., but was ratified in Canada in 1991). Next up is Whispers of Mermaids and Wonderful Things (Nimbus, May), a collection of childrens poetry by Atlantic Canadian writers, illustrated by New Brunswick artist Lloyd Fitzgerald. It was edited by Fitch and early childhood educator Anne Hunt, and features more than 100 poems for young readers. Finally, Fitch has a book called Polly MacCauleys Finest Divinest Wooliest Gift of All, which she describes as an old-fashioned tale set in River John, coming out in June from small Newfoundland-based publisher Running the Goat Press, with illustrations by Darka Erdelji. Fitch says her goal with the shop is to promote the Atlantic Canadian publishing industry. Her store will carry adult fiction, nonfiction, and poetrymostly from Atlantic authors and publishersand a significant selection of Canadian childrens books. But dont come expecting all the latest bestsellers, she warns. There are going to be a lot of backlist books, Fitch says. If people come here expecting to find that beach read thats in the drugstore or in Chapters, theyre not going to find it here. Ill send them somewhere else. A day after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, brushed aside Wednesday the idea of calling a special prosecutor to look into Russian influence on the 2016 election and said he supported the dismissal. Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, also echoed President Donald Trump's claim that the president was not being investigated personally. Comey's dismissal has brought objections from Democrats, and some Republicans have even expressed some misgivings. But Grassley, who on Fox News early in the day said that critics ought to "suck it up and move on," argued the way to transparency on Russian influence was to rely on congressional committees investigating the matter, not a special prosecutor The senator also said, "Remember, theres been charges but no proof. And we know that Trump was not being investigated. In a letter to Comey notifying him of his dismissal, Trump claimed the FBI director had told him three times he was not under investigation. The White House would not elaborate on the statement. Meanwhile, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, weighed in on the dismissal Wednesday. Ernst did not issue a statement on the matter, but when asked by a reporter about the firing on Wednesday, a spokesperson said in an email: "Senator Ernst has said the Director of the FBI serves at the pleasure of the President; therefore, this decision was up to President Trump to make." She did not elaborate. Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa, said, "It was probably time for Comey to go. The FBI has been way too involved in politics, on both sides of the aisle." Democrats have called for a special prosecutor or an independent commission to investigate Russian interference. And they have likened Comey's dismissal to President Richard Nixon's firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox during Watergate. In a tweet Wednesday, the president accused Democrats of hypocrisy given their past complaints about Comey. But Democrats expressed concerns about the effect on the Russia investigation. "The Presidents actions transcend any one individual and raise significant concerns over the basic rule of law, especially if they are intended to dissuade criminal investigators from digging too deep into Trump Administration officials and associates or even the President himself," Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said in a statement late Tuesday. Reps. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, and Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., also complained about the firing. Bustos objected to the idea that Trump would appoint a new FBI director who would oversee the Russia investigation. Loebsack noted he had disagreements with some of Comey's past actions but said "his firing is an abuse of power and flies in the face of the rule of law." The Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce has helped create about 6,000 jobs and draw $873.4 million in area capital investments since its creation six years ago, according to chamber officials. The group was formed in 2010 by the merger of the Illinois Quad City Chamber and the Iowa Quad Cities Chamber. Since then, the group has carried out 55 projects related to business attraction, retention, growth or creation, according to chamber officials. "We're in the business of helping every business in the region be more successful," said Quad Cities Chamber President/CEO Tara Barney during a visit this week with the DispatchArgusQCOnline editorial staff. The Quad-Cities' traditional economic strengths include advanced manufacturing and agriculture, according to Ms. Barney and other members of the delegation. The chamber, government officials and other regional advocates are focusing on that core, they said, while trying to diversify the Quad-Cities' portfolio and keep the area competitive in a changing business climate. The chamber also is helping area businesses be prepared in a dynamic climate by introducing small and medium manufacturers to technological advances, said Jillian McCleary, the organization's vice president of communications. Those technologies include 3-D printing and virtual reality. Among the successes cited by the delegation -- as well as an example of cooperation between area jurisdictions -- was the retention and growth of divvyDOSE. The Quad-Cities startup is a full-service pharmacy that delivers medications to people's homes in monthly installments as presorted packs, helping customers take the right dose of medication on the right schedule. The company recently left its Rock Island location for a larger one in Moline. Moline City Planning and Development Director Ray Forsythe, who works on chamber projects, said divvyDOSE needed room to grow. Other areas were trying to entice divvyDOSE out of the Quad-Cities, he said. The chamber worked with divvyDOSE and Rock Island officials seeking to find a site within the city's borders, Mr. Forsythe said. When that failed, rather than lose the business to another area, stakeholders found a Moline location for divvyDOSE, Mr. Forsythe said. Since the move, divvyDOSE has been adding about 10 jobs a week, he said. Having a business in the Quad-Cities -- regardless of its location -- has a huge impact on the entire region, he said. He said work is now being done to develop programs at area colleges to provide workers with the skill sets needed by divvyDOSE and other pharmacies. Moon's softer stance on North Korea could create friction with Washington, which has swung from threats of military action to hints of dialogue as it seeks to formulate a policy under President Donald Trump. Moon, speaking during his formal oath of office, also said he'll "sincerely negotiate" with the United States, Seoul's top ally, and China, South Korea's top trading partner, over the contentious deployment of an advanced U.S. missile-defense system in southern South Korea. The system has angered Beijing, which says its powerful radars allow Washington to spy on its own military operations. In a speech at the National Assembly hours after being declared the winner of Tuesday's election, Moon pledged to work for peace on the Korean Peninsula amid growing worry over the North's expanding nuclear weapons and missiles program. "I will quickly move to solve the crisis in national security. I am willing to go anywhere for the peace of the Korean Peninsula if needed, I will fly immediately to Washington. I will go to Beijing and I will go to Tokyo. If the conditions shape up, I will go to Pyongyang," Moon said. Moon, whose victory capped one of the most turbulent political stretches in the nation's recent history and set up its first liberal rule in a decade, assumed presidential duties early in the morning after the National Election Commission finished counting and declared him winner of the special election necessitated by the ousting of conservative Park Geun-hye. He is also expected to nominate a prime minister, the country's No. 2 job that requires approval from lawmakers, and name his presidential chief of staff during the day. Taking up duties as commander in chief, Moon received a call from Army Gen. Lee Sun-jin, chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, who briefed him on the military's preparedness against North Korea. He then left his him, receiving an emotional send-off from hundreds of residents, before visiting a national cemetery in Seoul. After bowing to honor the former presidents, independence fighters and war heroes at the cemetery, Moon wrote "A country worth being proud of; a strong and reliable president!" in a visitor book. He also visited the offices of opposition parties, seeking support in governing the country split along ideological lines and regional loyalties. His Democratic Party has only 120 seats in the 300-seat National Assembly, so he may need broader support while pushing his key policies. The leaders of China and Japan sent him congratulatory messages. South Korea's relations with Japan are strained by the Japanese military's sexual exploitation of South Korean women during World War II, and relations with China have been strained by the THAAD missile-defense system recently deployed in South Korea. Moon made a campaign vow to reconsider the THAAD deployment. The son of refugees who fled North Korea during the Korean War, Moon will lead a nation shaken by the scandal that felled Park, whose criminal trial is scheduled to start later this month. Taking office without the usual two-month transition, Moon initially will have to depend on Park's Cabinet ministers and aides, but he was expected to move quickly to replace them. He will serve the typical single five-year term. Moon was chief of staff for the last liberal president, the late Roh Moo-hyun, who sought closer ties with North Korea by setting up large-scale aid shipments and working on now-stalled joint economic projects. Winning 41 percent of the votes, he comfortably edged conservative Hong Joon-pyo and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, who had 24 percent and 21 percent, respectively. The conservative Hong had pitched himself as a "strongman," described the election as a war between ideologies and questioned Moon's patriotism. Park's trial on bribery, extortion and other corruption charges could send her to jail for life if she is convicted. Dozens of high-profile figures, including Park's longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil, and Samsung's de facto leader, Lee Jae-yong, have been indicted along with Park. Moon frequently appeared at anti-Park rallies and the corruption scandal boosted his push to re-establish liberal rule. He called for reforms to reduce social inequalities, excessive presidential power and corrupt ties between politicians and business leaders. Many of those legacies dated to the dictatorship of Park's father, Park Chung-hee, whose 18-year rule was marked by both rapid economic rise and severe civil rights abuse. Many analysts say Moon likely won't pursue drastic rapprochement policies because North Korea's nuclear program has progressed significantly since he was in the Roh government a decade ago. A big challenge will be U.S. President Donald Trump, who has proven himself unconventional in his approach to North Korea, swinging between intense pressure and threats and offers to talk. "South Koreans are more concerned that Trump, rather than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, will make a rash military move, because of his outrageous tweets, threats of force and unpredictability," Duyeon Kim, a visiting fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum in Seoul, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs magazine. "It is crucial that Trump and the next South Korean president strike up instant, positive chemistry in their first meeting to help work through any bilateral differences and together deal with the North Korean challenge," she said. MOLINE -- Johnny Pancrazio served three tours in Vietnam and was a Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient. He had hoped his service would keep his three brothers from the front lines of a war. Pancrazio, a 1961 Moline High School graduate who called Silvis home for many years, died Oct. 14 in Mesa, Ariz., where he lived in retirement. He was 76. At 1 p.m. Friday, on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, he will be laid to rest amid full military honors. The honor is worthy and fitting for a man who gave so much during combat and continued to assist others like him long after he left active duty. His family requested to have him honored and interred at Arlington. "It is a wonderful honor,'' Annie Pancrazio, Johnny Pancrazio's widow and a veteran, said of her husband's ashes being inurned at Arlington National Cemetery. "He gave his all to his country in war and he gave so much to so many veterans after he served. "We are grateful to lay him to rest at Arlington.'' According to arlingtoncemetery.mil, for interment (ground burial of casketed remains) or inurnment (above ground cremated remains), the last period of active duty for a former armed forces member must have ended honorably. The honor is offered to any veteran retired from active military service with the armed forces, including those retired from the reserves, upon reaching age 60 and drawing retired pay, and those who served a period of active duty other than for training. If, at the time of death, a retired member of the armed forces is not entitled to receive retired pay stemming from his service in the armed forces until some future date (gray area retiree), the retired member will not be eligible for ground burial. However, most veterans, who have at least one day of active service for other than training and an honorable discharge, are eligible for above-ground inurnment. Arlington honors also are available to any former armed forces member awarded a Medal of Honor, a Distinguished Service Cross (Navy Cross or Air Force Cross), a Distinguished Service Medal, a Silver Star or a Purple Heart. Pancrazio is certainly resume-worthy of Arlington National Cemetery. He joined the Illinois National Guard during his senior year of high school and enlisted in the Army in November 1961. He began his first Vietnam tour in June 1965, first, as a part of Advisory Team 43, Cu Chi subsector, as Infantry/Communications Advisor. He later served in the 525th Military Intelligence Group based in the Saigon area. He received the Purple Heart for wounds received in July 1965, September 1965 and during the Christmas Truce of 1966. He also received the Bronze Star Medal with a "V" Device for Valor; the Cross of Gallantry by the government of South Vietnam; a second Bronze Star with "V" and the Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) and three Army Commendation Medals with "V." In civilian life, Pancrazio was a Rock Island County Sheriff's Department deputy for several years. He joined the Vietnam Veterans of America in 1986. For 25 years, he was a tireless advocate for veterans, making sure they received benefits deserved for their service to the nation. He was awarded the Vietnam Veterans of America Achievement Medal in September 2016, a month before his passing. It must also be noted, Jim Pancrazio (Navy), Michael Pancrazio (Army) and Edward Pancrazio (Army) -- like their brother -- served their country honorably. "It will be a proud day,'' Annie Pancrazio said of Friday. "I'm glad to be able to share it with family and honor Johnny.'' Celebrating Our Service Members Friday, November 11 is Veterans Day, when we honor and show gratitude to all members of our Armed Forces those currently serving, those who... Transit Equity Starts With QueensLink For decades Queens has seen a disinvestment in the necessary transit infrastructure the borough needs to promote equity and sustainability. Most of the time, transformative... CEDAR FALLS A Cedar Falls man has been arrested for allegedly taking vehicles from auto dealerships. Matthew David Dudden, 33, of 4410 University Ave., was arrested Tuesday at the jail on warrants for two counts of first-degree theft. He allegedly took a 2017 Cadillac from Community Motors, 4521 University Ave., and a 2016 Lincoln MKX from John Deery Motors, 6823 University Ave. Both vehicles have been recovered. According to court records, employees at Deery noticed Dudden on their lot attempting to drive away in one of their vehicles on Monday morning. When they approached him, he left in a white Cadillac with no plates and Community Motors sticker. Deery employees called Community about the encounter, and Community employees realized they were missing a Cadillac. Meanwhile, Deery workers discovered they were missing a Lincoln MKX, and a short time later a Deery official noticed Dudden driving the missing vehicle on the dealerships lot. The official boxed in the MKX, and Dudden exited, claimed he was returning the vehicle and started walking off toward College Square Mall. Cedar Falls police arrested Dudden, and investigators later discovered the missing Cadillac in the 1000 block of Denver Street in Waterloo where the On Star service had apparently disabled the vehicle. Dudden was also arrested for third-degree theft for allegedly taking $535 worth of items from VonMaur in Cedar Falls on May 3. 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! Hitachi will offer its AT400 classic-compatible train which would be a 200m-long eight-car train mounted on bogies and designed for 360km/h operation. Our concept for HS2 is very fluid, Mr Jim Bowen from Hitachi told IRJ. It will be a bespoke product for which we are trying to maximise our supplier chain. Talgo is developing its Avril UK concept for operation within the restrictive British loading gauge. This means the British train would only have two-plus-two seating compared with three-plus-two for the Spanish version of Avril which Talgo is supplying to Renfe under a contract awarded in November 2016. Avril UK would retain Talgos articulation system, which avoids the use of conventional bogies. However, while the Spanish version has power cars the British variant would have distributed traction. An invitation to tender for the contract to supply 54 high-speed trains will be issued in the first quarter of next year with a view to awarding the contract by the end of 2019. In January 2015 Paris Transport Authority (RATP) and Ile-de-France transport authority Stif awarded Alstom a 20m contract to implement the rollout of ATO on the central section of Line A between Nanterre-Prefecture in the west and Val-de-Fontenay and Fontenay-sous-Bois in the east. The contract encompasses detailed studies, development of a prototype, onboard equipment, testing, and project support services. The ATO solution developed by Alstom overlays the existing Sacem ATC system, which was introduced in 1989 and upgrades the line to Grade of Automation (GoA) 2, with the driver continuing to start the train and operate the doors. By November 2018, Alstom will install ATO onboard equipment on the lines entire fleet of 183 MI2N and MI09 trains. The project will reduce journey times between Vincennes and La Defense by two minutes, representing a 5km/h increase in the commercial speed on the core section. The 108km Line A links Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Cergy Le Haut, and Poissy in the west with Boissy-Saint-Leger and Marne-la-Vallee Chessy in the east and carries around 1.2 million passengers per day. In addition to the project on Line A, RATP is also studying the rollout of ATO on Line B, and the authority is also planning to introuduce an interchangable and interoperable CBTC solution on the common section of Line B and Line D. 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 ALGONA | An Algona-area canine officer and his dog recently earned an invitation to a national seminar in Texas. Kossuth County Sheriff's Deputy Mark McGregor and K-9 Yoschi received the invitation by finishing first during a narcotics-detection workshop at the Midwest Dogs for Law Enforcement K-9 Workshop in Washington, Iowa. Yoshi, a German shepherd, is used for tracking and narcotics detection. They'll receive an all-expenses paid trip to the Alvin K-9 Seminar in Alvin, Texas. The annual event offers training and certification for police dogs in patrol, narcotics detection and explosives detection. It also offers professional development to the handlers and a variety of training sessions. The event will be held Feb. 20. In his article Is the Taiwan Strait Still a Flash Point? Rethinking the Prospects for Armed Conflict between China and Taiwan, Scott Kastner concludes that although the relationship will continue to be characterized by periodic tensions, the risk of armed conflict has been declining and is likely to continue to decline in the years ahead. Indeed, the chances for armed conflict between China and Taiwan have been decreasing since Ma Ying-jeou became president of Taiwan in 2008 and began to prioritize cross-strait engagement and integration. However, by focusing on the accomplishments of the Ma administration without assessing what is probable under Taiwan's current pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president, Tsai Ing-wen, Kastner gives readers a false impression of the coming cross-strait dynamic. Rather than periodic tensions, we are far more likely to see prolonged tensionseven possibly amounting to a cross-strait cold peaceif Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Tsai cannot reach basic agreement on Taiwan's sovereignty. The most important question regarding cross-strait relations is whether Xi and Tsai can find common ground on the 1992 Consensus, an agreement between China and Taiwan on the one China principle that Beijing states is a precondition for peace and cooperation. Although Ma agreed to the 1992 Consensus, he suggested that Taipei's interpretation is different from Beijing's. Chinese leaders lived with this difference in interpretation because they generally trusted Ma's intentions. Tsai is another story altogether. She rejected outright the 1992 Consensus the last time she ran for president in 2012. Chinese leaders believe that Tsai was behind former DPP President Chen Shui-bian's decision to reject the 1992 Consensus. And in the late 1990s, she served as senior adviser to former President Lee Teng-hui and helped craft his special state-to-state formulation of cross-strait relations. Beijing has routinely labeled Tsai a splittist and true believer in Taiwan independence. Tsai has attempted to mend fences with Beijing. Shortly after her election victory in January 2016, for example, Tsai gave an interview in which she referred to the existing political foundation that contains the historical fact of the process resulting in the 1992 Consensus.[1] In March, however, Xi mandated that Taiwan recognize the core connotation of the 1992 Consensus, implying that verbal circumlocution would not suffice. Indeed, analysts have wondered if Xi has set the rhetorical bar even higher for Tsaithat is, she must explicitly accept that one China includes both mainland China and Taiwan without differing interpretations. Tsai's inauguration speech in May 2016 excluded the one-China principle entirely, though she reiterated that the talks in 1992 were a historical fact. Beijing responded that Tsai's speech was an incomplete test answer. Lack of agreement on the 1992 Consensus will hover over the strait and color all manner of interaction between China and Taiwan. In fact, we are already beginning to see its effects. After eight years of a tacit agreement not to recognize countries that decide to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, China decided in March 2016 to recognize the Islamic Republic of The Gambia. To be sure, The Gambia had announced in 2013 its intent to switch recognition, but under the agreement, Beijing refused to accept. Now, however, Beijing wants to pressure Tsai by taking things away, in this case limiting Taiwan's already severely constrained international space. Beijing seems prepared to pressure Tsai even further. China canceled government and quasigovernment talks with Taiwan as well as negotiations on a large merchandise agreement. China could also look to curb direct flights and tourism exchanges, the latter of which already appears to be occurring. Even in the most optimistic scenario featuring accommodation on the 1992 Consensus, cross-strait relations will likely progress far more cautiously than was the case under Ma. Tsai has pledged to diversify Taiwan's economy away from dependence on China, implying that economic integration effortsa key pillar of Kastner's argument for stabilityare likely to cool significantly. Legislative elections in January 2016 have also given Tsai's DPP a majority, and in April her party introduced a Cross-Strait Agreement Oversight Bill. This bill would allow legislators to intervene at any time in cross-strait agreementsan unprecedented exercise of power certain to hamstring integration, and perhaps promote further estrangement, in the future. Note Derek Grossman is senior project associate at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Derek Grossman, Stability of Volatility Across the Taiwan Straight?, International Security, 41:2, pp. 192195. 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published by the MIT Press. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/isec This commentary originally appeared in International Security on November 10, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. Western countries have struggled to define what many see as a new Russian strategy and way of war since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, staged various cyberattacks and reportedly tried to influence elections in the United States and Europe. In an attempt to characterize Russia's modern warfare strategy, Western observers have used many terms, including indirect action, hybrid warfare, grey zone conflicts, hostile measures of influence and 21st century warfare. These terms, and the concepts they attempt to describe, are not always clearly defined, and there is great debate about whether they really reflect Russian thinking. Adding to the confusion: Valeriy Gerasimov, head of Russia's military, identified hybrid warfare in a recent speech as an American concept. Yet some Western analysts have said they developed the concept from his remarks and writing. A more fruitful path than debating what to call Russia's approach is to look at what Russia has done, not only in the past few years, but throughout history. A more fruitful path than debating what to call Russia's approach is to look at what Russia has done, not only in the past few years, but throughout history. Rather than employing some fundamentally new plan, Russia typically draws on longstanding means of political influence and tailors influence campaigns to heighten preexisting divisions and strengthen groups that pursue similar goals as Russia. Truly responding to Russia's hostile influence involves predicting which groups Russia will target, identifying the tools Russia is likely to adopt, thenlike Russiaplaying the long game rather than focusing on near-term events. Russia (or the Soviet Union) has been employing active measures (using intelligence forces to shape outcomes abroad), propaganda and proxies since the late 1800s. In the last decade, Russia has added cyberwarfare and the manipulation of social media to its toolbox. Today, thanks in part to the effective coordination and more aggressive application of these newer techniques, Russia appears to have greater success with its measures short of war than other countries. This means that Western countries and organizations need to work more quickly and coordinate better to offset Russia's capabilities, aggressiveness and success. The key lesson here is that Russia does not apply a one-size-fits-all approach and utilizes known vulnerabilities. Russia creatively leverages these techniques in different ways throughout the world, and especially in Europe. In countries where Russia shares a political or cultural history, including Slavic-speaking countries in Europe, Russia can provide money or assistance to pro-Russian proxies that mirror Moscow's interests. Russia can also support groups that share some interests even if they are not explicitly friendly to Russia, such as far-right skeptics of the EU. Russia likely also restrains its use of measures short of war due to its desire to avoid conventional escalation. In Ukraine, which NATO is not explicitly committed to defend, Russia seized Crimea and is slowly tightening its grip on two rebel regions in Eastern Ukraine in response to apparent U.S. disinterest. In Montenegro, which is close to NATO membership, Russia reportedly only attempted a coup. The key lesson here is that Russia does not apply a one-size-fits-all approach and utilizes known vulnerabilities. To defend against Russia's hostile measures, it is necessary to scrupulously assess individual national and regional vulnerabilities and to tailor a response to Russia's specific approach in each country, rather than applying a generic strategy to countering Russian influence. A recent RAND report provides an example of the needed assessment for Europe, noting for example that Russia probably cannot easily gain politically by cutting off natural gas but can more easily benefit through support for the far right. This kind of assessment will hopefully lead to greater understanding and consensus of Russia's intent among European countries, since European perceptions of the threat from Russia vary greatly across the continent. By working from focused and realistic assessments, Western countries can better adopt shared policies to reduce vulnerabilities. The key takeaway for Western policymakers: Don't focus solely on what Russia is doing now, but also discern and attempt to counter Russia's longer-term approach. Russian measures short of war do not necessarily seek an immediate impact. Rather, they are used to cultivate local support, proxies and resources, and to create a future opportunity that might be exploited later. One example of Russia's ability to build on prior means of influence occurred in Estonia in 2007. Russian propaganda and state-controlled nongovernmental organizations set the stage for local Russian-speakers to protest the Estonian decision to move a Soviet-era war memorial informally known as the Bronze Soldier from the center of Tallinn, the capital of the country. Russia reportedly fomented the crisis by encouraging anti-Estonian protesters and possibly encouraging cyberattacks to undermine the Estonian economy and government. Currently, Russia's strategy in Ukraine involves developing levers that can be used to strengthen the Kremlin's control over the separatist regions in the east on short notice. The key takeaway for Western policymakers: Don't focus solely on what Russia is doing now, but also discern and attempt to counter Russia's longer-term approach. To respond to Russia's continuous, adaptive and aggressive measures short of war, Western leaders and analysts should avoid overthinking what to call Russia's strategy and focus on addressing the Russian actions. To support its partners in assessing and reducing their vulnerabilities, the United States has a wide range of tools available. These include strengthening partner state institutions, promoting democracy and aiding economic development. These tools can be seen as the United States' own measures short of war, and perhaps its best defense against Russia. Bruce McClintock is an adjunct policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a former U.S Defense Attache in Moscow. Andrew Radin is an associate political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. This commentary originally appeared on U.S. News & World Report on May 5, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. The role of U.S. special operations forces (SOF) in the Middle East has expanded steadily since the inception of the counter-ISIS campaign in 2014. In part, this expansion is due to the metastasis of ISIS into Libya, Yemen, and other countries beyond its major land-holding presence in Iraq and Syria. But the most notable feature of the expanded U.S. SOF role in the Middle East has been its work alongside indigenous forces in Iraq and Syria. Conventional and coalition forces provide additional numbers of troops. What makes this campaign so unusual is that U.S. forces are not providing the muscle of the frontline combat troops. Instead, the campaign is conducted by, with, and through others, a Special Forces phrase that the CENTCOM commander, General Joseph Votel, has adopted to call attention to this new way of warfighting. If the counter-ISIS campaign succeeds in dislodging ISIS from Iraq and Syria, this approach is more likely to be considered for other, similar conflicts. During seven weeks visiting Iraq, Syria, and neighboring countries this year, I observed three major changes in how the campaign accounts for its increasing momentum. First, the number of advisers and supporting forces has now reached a level that can provide meaningful support to the variety of indigenous forces fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. That number is hovering around 10,000, including forces deployed in-country on temporary duty. Special operations forces are advising a variety of partners, including the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), tribal forces and Iraqi Kurds. In Syria, they are assisting Kurdish groups, particularly the YPG (Popular Protection Units), and a variety of Arab forces. As in Afghanistan, U.S. SOF count on major support from their closest SOF partners in Britain, Australia, and Canada, as well as the Danes, Norwegians, and French. While SOF are at the forefront of the tactical-level advising, U.S. and coalition conventional forces have been training forces at five main bases and advising at the headquarters level. The second major change has been in how these advisers are used. The special operations forces have become progressively more dispersed and now accompany the indigenous forces to a secure location near the front lines. This means that they are no longer attempting to provide tactical advice from headquarters, where they must analyze battlefield operations through the soda-straw perspective of drone feeds. They do still advise commanders of indigenous forces at the senior level, which is a critical function, but now they can also observe units in action to better advise their tactics. In East Mosul, movement of advisers to the 16th Iraq army division provided critical assistance to galvanize that unit. U.S. and coalition SOF have also played a significant role in helping to rebuild the CTS, Iraq's SOF, which has led every major battle in the counter-ISIS campaign and has suffered heavy casualties as a result. The third major change has been the steady increase in fire support, a critical enabler in both Iraq and Syria. This change has occurred gradually over the past year. U.S. Apache helicopters were first used in combat last June in Qayyarah, which today is a major staging base for the assault on Mosul. In a visit to Q-West, as U.S. troops call it, I saw a recently installed U.S. military medical unit and its ICU set up in tents on the base. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARs) are positioned there to provide support to the Mosul offensive. Also in the outskirts of Mosul, at a base in Hamman al-Alil, I saw U.S. Paladin howitzers dug into a berm along the Tigris River, firing in support of Iraqi CTS and Federal Police moving into West Mosul. This fire support is even more important to the Syrian Democratic Forces, a far more lightly armed irregular force which constitutes the major ground force fighting ISIS in Syria. Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit have moved into Syria with their 155 mm howitzers in preparation for the assault on Raqqa. I visited Kobane, which is a rustic but increasingly important hub for operations in Syria. An airstrip has been carved from the limestone and now lengthened to accommodate C-17 planes that fly in to deliver rocket pods for HIMARs, along with tons of other ammunition. U.S. SOF are thus being thrust into a new role of coordinating fire support, managing the conventional troops that employ them in support of the SOF-indigenous ground force, and overseeing the sprawling network of austere lily pad bases from which they work. If they succeed in ousting ISIS from Mosul and Raqqa in the coming months, this new way of combining forces and using SOF to direct a ground war could become a model for conducting low- to mid-level combat. Conventional forces would still be relied upon heavily to conduct major wars, such as a North Korean, Chinese or Russian contingency. But this by, with, and through model could become a standard option in the U.S. military playbook. The fight for Mosul is far from over, and the last part will be extremely difficult as troops try to fight among 400,000 civilians trapped in western Mosul without harming them. Similarly, Raqqa will pose a stiff challenge for the anti-ISIS forces, as ISIS has dug trenches, bunkers, and tunnels, and laced the city with mines. One consequence of the heavy reliance on U.S. SOF is high deployment rates with little downtime. The demands in the rest of the world are significant: Special operators are also needed to conduct low-visibility operations in Europe in support of partners there, as a complement to conventional deterrence against Russian aggression. In addition, the parlous situation of Afghanistan may require more SOF, whose training and advice have made that country's commando forces into very effective fighting units. In a turbulent world, hard decisions will be required about where SOF are most needed, and how other countries' SOF may be able to help. Linda Robinson is a senior international and defense researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and author of several books on special operations forces. This commentary originally appeared on The Cipher Brief on May 9, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. Russian tour operator ordered to pay $5.8 mln to Transaero airline MOSCOW, May 10 (RAPSI) - The Moscow District Commercial Court has upheld the lower courts ruling to collect $5.8 million from tour operator Natalie Tours in favor of Transaero airline, RAPSI learnt in the court on Wednesday. On November 11, 2016, the Moscow Commercial court granted the air carriers claim seeking to recover the debt from the travel company. Under the contract signed between parties, the tour operator was to transfer earnings from transportation sales excluding fee to the plaintiff. Additionally, the court dismissed a counterclaim by Natalie Tours demanding to invalidate provisions of the agreements supplementary contract. The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals upheld the ruling on February 27. The travel company in turn filed a lawsuit to recover about 400 million rubles ($6.7 million) in damages from Transaero. However, the claim has been dismissed. In April, the Moscow Commercial Court dismissed a claim by Transaero demanding to declare Natalie Tours bankrupt. In 2015, Transaero found itself unable to pay its debts valued at 250 billion rubles (about $4 billion). Government-approved plan of transferring 75% of companys shares to Aeroflot failed. Its problems resulted in a large number of flight cancels and delays. In October 2015, Sberbank and Alfa Bank filed bankruptcy petitions against the troubled airline. The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region initiated a bankruptcy procedure against Transaero on December 16. Natalie Tours, a tour operator on the Russian foreign tourist market, was founded in April 1992. In 2014, the companys amount of business was estimated at $850 million. Moscow court upholds extension of mayor Koshurnikovs detention MOSCOW, May 10 (RAPSI, Oleg Sivozhelezov) The Moscow City Court has upheld a ruling of a lower court extending detention of Denis Koshurnikov, the mayor of Pereslavl-Zalessky, charged with abuse of office that led to grave consequences, until July 16, RAPSI learnt in the court on Wednesday. Earlier, the Basmanny District Court has ruled to detain Koshurnikov and NTpharma top managers Rustam Ataullakhanov and Yevgeny Sultanov in this case. Detention of Ataullakhanov and Sultanov has also been extended. Investigators believe that in 2011 Ataullakhanov and Sultanov purchased a land plot from a firm belonging to Koshurnikov to give the appearance of handling of work on the project realization. As the acquired plot is located within the national park Pleshcheevo, permit issuing for the construction was inadmissible. However, Koshurnikov, then head of Pereslavl region, gave such permit. Investigators claim that Ataullakhanov as a founder of NTpharma has completed control over the company and ordered Sultanov to transfer funds to accounts of controlled firms. Ataullakhanovs lawyer said that his client has never been a founder of NTpharma and that there is no evidence of embezzlement. Ataullakhanov denies guilt. According to case papers, Rusnano invested over one billion rubles in the construction of NTpharma pharmaceutical complex in Pereslavl-Zalessky, 150 kilometers (85 miles) northeast of Moscow, since 2010. The object had to be completed in September 2012, but the project company repeatedly rescheduled the facility commissioning. Investigators along with the Interior Ministry and Russias Federal Security Service found that construction works at the object had not been conducted for years. However, funds received by NTpharma from Rusnano have been embezzled. Therefore, the facility has not been put into service yet. Sentencing in Vneshprombank embezzlement case set for May 12 MOSCOW, May 10 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) Moscows Khamovnichesky District Court will read a sentence for ex-Vneshprombank president Larisa Markus and former vice-president of the bank Yekaterina Glushakova, who stand charged with embezzling 114 billion rubles (about $2 billion), RAPSI reported from the courtroom on Wednesday. On Wednesday, Glushakova gave a final speech in court. She repented sincerely all what she had done and asked the victims pardon. Earlier, prosecutor asked to pass a 10-year prison sentence and a 400,000-ruble fine (about $7,000) for Markus. He requested a five-year prison sentence and the same fine for Glushakova. Defense lawyers of Markus and Glushakova called the requested punishment too harsh. They noted that Markus participated in the projects under the auspices of the United Nations and UNESCO. Lawyer of Glushakova noted that she was a subordinate under Markus and got deceived about true reasons behind her actions. They asked court to give Markus and Glushakova non-custodial sentences. A representative of Vneshprombank noted earlier that defendants partially compensated the caused damage by transferring 100,000 rubles (about $1,750) to the bank. Overall, claims in the civil lawsuit against the defendants amount to 13 billion rubles (about $228 million). Investigators believe that Markus along with her brother Georgy Bedzhamov, who once co-owned the bank, created an organized crime group to siphon money from the bank. The group allegedly granted loans to sub-companies and did not refund money to Vneshprombank. Allegedly, from May 2009 to December 2015, conspirators managed to embezzle over 114 billion rubles. Bedzhamov was arrested in absentia and put on a wanted list. In March 2016, the Moscow Commercial Court declared Vneshprombank bankrupt. Vneshprombank was one of the top 40 by assets before it lost its license in January of the same year. Lawsuit against AFK Sistema returned to Rosneft, Bashneft MOSCOW, May 10 (RAPSI) The Moscow Commercial Court has returned to Rosneft and Bashneft a claim to collect 106.6 billion rubles ($1.9 billion) from AFK Sistema holding company, according to court records. Rosneft and Bashneft have filed the lawsuit in early May. The cause for legal action has not been disclosed in court papers. However, RIA Novosti agency reported citing spokesman for Rosneft Mikhail Leontyev, that the lawsuit is connected with alleged siphoning of assets. According to the oil companys representative, actions of AFK Sistema led to decrease of assets at this sum. A similar lawsuit has been filed with a court in Ufa. Bashneft was controlled by the government of Russias Bashkortostan region until 2003, when a major stake was sold to companies affiliated with Ural Rakhimov, son of the former head of Bashkortostan Murtaza Rakhimov. The company was privatized in 2009, when Russian oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Sistema gained control of it. A court in Moscow ruled that Bashneft had been privatized in violation of law. The Prosecutor General's Office brought a suit to return a 71.6 percent stake in Bashneft to the government. The Moscow Commercial Court ruled on October 30, 2014, in favor of the Prosecutor General's Office. Russian antimonopoly watchdog accuses Forbes of advertisement law violation MOSCOW, May 10 (RAPSI) The Federal Antimonopoly Services (FAS) Moscow directorate ruled that AC Rus Media company, founder and publisher of Forbes magazine in Russia, had violated legislation by advertising smoking products, the watchdog announced on Wednesday. According to the FAS, there was advertisement of Zenith watches brand published in the Cohiba Special Edition version in one of the Forbes issues. The layout contained the registered trademark for the Cohiba manufacturer of Cuban cigars and was related directly to the watches advertisement. The FAS directorate believes that the whole image could spark the readers' interest not only in the watches, but also in tobacco products produced by Cohiba. Such advertisement is prohibited by Russian legislation. Earlier, the service found that publishing house Conde Nast, founder and publisher of GQ magazine, had also violated legislation by publishing similar advertisement. The Killid Group, May 7, 2017 By Akmal Zahir & Asadullah Dawlatzai The US dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat on Achin, Nangarhar province, to target what the military described as a "tunnel complex" used by the ISIS's Afghanistan affiliate. A Killid investigation reveals other truths. Colloquially called the "mother of all bombs", the GBU-43/B is meant for destroying underground targets with an explosive yield of more than 11 tonnes of TNT. As the bomb detonates in mid-air, the blast radius is enormous. According to media reports, the shock-and-awe effect on survivors or observers is considered an added impact of the massive bomb. Killid travelled to the epicentre, Asad Khil village in Achin district, and was told by locals of emerging health concerns and also the tyranny of the ISIS. More importantly they said the tunnels were not dug by ISIS but by miners well before the area was taken over by ISIS. Abdul Rahman, commander of the first detachment of the 4th Brigade who is now leading the coordination team, confirms the mines are for the extraction of shawkani (slate, which is used for roofing) and other minerals. Even the Member of Parliament (MP) from Nangarhar, Haji Zaher Qadeer, referred to the mines when he told Parliament on Monday that the bomb must have split the mountain and made it easier to extract the minerals. While Mohammad Radmanesh, deputy spokesperson in the Ministry of Defence, chose not to challenge the MP's view ("We respect the view of Haji Zaher Qadeer but the extraction of mines cannot be done by bombing."), authorities in the mines presidency of Nangarhar province say the area has never been surveyed for its geological wealth. The presidency's Sayed Saleh Shinwarai told Killid there are "some contracts" in Mamandara area of Achin, but they are not aware of the existence of mines where the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) was dropped. Qadeer, the MP from Nangarhar, wonders how come none of the other centres of ISIS in the province were bombed. He mentions "four centres of ISIS next to the area the MOAB has been used They (insurgents of ISIS) carry PK (an automatic gun) and rockets, but there is no one to ask what they are doing." The Afghan defence ministry claims commandos of the 4th Brigade, Base 201, are busy in operations to eliminate ISIS. General Mohammad Radmanesh, deputy spokesperson, says, "We will continue our operation to clean up the Mamandara area." He claims that sometimes the enemy fires on the Afghan forces. Built by miners Photo: CNN Photo: CNN However, in Asad Khil village, locals say the warren of tunnels the US military have claimed was an "ISIS-tunnel complex" was old. One was from the time of the mujahedin Afghan fighters who were armed by the US via Pakistan to fight its Cold War rival Soviet Union and the rest "dug by local miners to extract precious minerals". However, locals do not deny that there may be some newer tunnels dug more recently by ISIS since its fighters would not allow local people in any more. Talking to Killid, Shaker Shinwarai, a resident of Mamandara, Achin district, said ISIS militants "tryrannised" people a lot but they were not so strong that the biggest (non-nuclear) bomb had to be used against them. The government and the US could have eliminated the fighters without inflicting harm on local people by dropping a MOAB, he says. The defence ministry's General Radmanesh points out there have been operations in Achin in the past too where Afghan security forces have eliminated an ISIS base, and killed some fighters. "We have killed 96 ISIS insurgents including 13 commanders. The bodies of some were beyond recognition; some can be identified. The bodies that are fine have been buried," he told Killid. He did not say what the hurry was in burying the dead. Shinwarai from Mamandara feels that if the US were really keen on eliminating ISIS, it would have targeted their main centres across the Durand Line, the so-called border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The bomb was more damaging to people who were told to leave the area," he feels, "Why would ISIS stay if people were told to leave because of an operation? How many ever times the government and the US may so the ISIS have not suffered great losses." Locals warned Mohammad Gulab, another local, who aired similar opinions including that the tunnels were dug for mining, confirmed that two weeks before the bombing, helicopters had airdropped flyers at night, asking people to leave their homes. He also refers to some of the tunnels as being very old. "The ISIS had first come through the mountains," he says. Afghan helicopters came to the valley (to find them), he adds. "They airdropped sheets of paper for locals before the MOAB bombing. And after the bombing the helicopters returned but we doubt whether they fired on ISIS; they may have equipped ISIS or carted away precious minerals," he says, deeply suspicious like Shinwarai of foreign forces. Gulab claims the ISIS had left the valley before the bombing. General Radmanesh confirms only helicopters of the Afghan Air Force and NATO were flying over the area. Like the Atom Bomb dropped over Hiroshima in August 1945, MOAB has destroyed all the houses and trees in the radius of the blast. "The ISIS is still strong here, the radio of ISIS is broadcasting as clearly and we can hear them say that even if you throw the father of all bombs we will not be eliminated, which only means that the bomb has done no damage to ISIS," says Mohammad Gulab. Another local Shad Mohammad says ISIS have been present in the area from Asad Khil, the village targeted by the MOAB, to Shadal Bazaar. "Their frontline was in Shadal Bazaar. There were caves in the hillsides where they kept prisoners. We still don't know how many of them were killed when the bomb was dropped," he says. Immediately after the bombing US forces took control of the area and did not let anyone enter even after two weeks. Local authorities told Killid the Americans were investigating, but the fact is that even Afghan forces were not allowed past Shadal Bazaar. Eye witnesses After some persistence, Killid found an elderly woman, Noor Bibi, from Asad Khil. She said she was forced out of her home by ISIS but the bomb, she said, has cost her vision. "The bomb made people blind and deaf," she says. "I cannot see anything, my skin is itching, my four grandchildren have chest problems, and they also complain about their eyes." Another Asad Khil resident Ghazeer who lives with his family in Shadal Bazaar also says that while he lost everything including his home to ISIS, the bomb has created health problems. "When the bomb was dropped we were next to Shadal Bazaar. We saw a big cloud of fire now my children are scared to sleep at night. Our skin is itching, small spots have appeared on the bodies of all people here. Our throats hurt. We are scared." A child sitting against a wall showed us his hands. The skin was peeling. Lal Wali, another resident of Achin, has red spots all over his body. He says he accepts his condition; he just wants Afghan forces to defeat ISIS. Dr. Esmail Shinwari, district governor of Achin, refuses to believe the bombing has had health effects. He also told Killid that there were no homes in the targeted area. "No one has come to us saying they are facing an illness. All this (reports of health effects) is a lie," he insists. Moqadasa Meraj, deputy head of the Nangarhar health presidency says a team of health professionals including doctors from the Ghani Khil Hospital did not find any evidence of health effects either in Achin or in neighbouring districts. MASON CITY | A Forest City man was given a five-year suspended prison sentence Monday for stealing a trailer containing lawn care equipment in November in Mason City. Cole T. Seglem, 22, will be on probation for five years for felony second-degree theft. A $750 fine was suspended but he is to pay a $125 surcharge. Restitution will be determined at a later date. Seglem was accused of taking a parked utility trailer containing lawn care equipment valued at $4,200 on Nov. 14 while it was parked in front of the owner's residence in the 100 block of Parkridge Drive. Man arrested in Mason City burglary, theft MASON CITY | A Forest City man faces felony burglary and theft charges after allegedly steal He pleaded guilty in March. Seglem originally was charged with felony third-degree burglary as well for allegedly breaking into barns in Mason City, but that charge was reduced to misdemeanor fifth-degree theft. He was sentenced to two days in jail with credit for time already served. Also on Monday, the court dismissed a misdemeanor theft charge filed against Seglem for allegedly stealing a bicycle from the parking lot of the Mason City Public Library in October, as well as a methamphetamine possession charge. Seglem also had been charged with possession of burglary's tools in that case, but the charge was dismissed in November due to lack of probable cause. Seglem's Cerro Gordo County felony sentence is to be served concurrently with a suspended five-year prison term he also received this week for a Floyd County conviction of second-degree theft. IWPR, May 8, 2017 By Zamzama For the last year Ziaullah, a resident of Jalalabad city in the eastern province of Nangarhar, has been regularly taking the medicine his doctor prescribed to treat his kidney stones. But his agonising condition had not improved for one simple reason, he told IWPR. It was virtually impossible to get decent medication locally, with a market flooded with substandard or out-of-date drugs. My disease has made me tired of living, he said, explaining that as he lacked the money to go abroad for treatment, he had no option but to take the poor quality medication available and hope for the best. Between pain and poverty on the one hand and substandard medicine on the other, I cant take any more, he continued. May Allah almighty help me, these drugs wont. Out-of-date or counterfeit medicines are a major risk to public health across Afghanistan, and a particular problem in provinces like Nangarhar, where a common border with Pakistan provides rich opportunities for smuggling, including substandard pharmaceuticals. Local people have accused both public health officials and the security forces of either taking part in the illicit trade or turning a blind eye to it. Anyone with a sense of humanity who was a good Muslim would not sell substandard medicines to people, said Azizullah, another Jalalabad resident. Some staff from the department of public health are involved in this business and share its profit, and this must be investigated. Nangarhar officials have acknowledged the problem, explaining that they were struggling to deal with the flow of out-of-date and substandard medicines smuggled into the province. But Moqadas Miraj, the deputy director of Nangarhars public health department, denied any corruption and insisted that they were doing their best to stamp out the illicit trade. Every month, tonnes of low-quality and out-of-date medicines were collected and destroyed in Jalalabad. As for those found selling such contraband, Miraj said, We take legal action through issuing financial penalties, closing down pharmacies and confiscating drugs. Every day our teams carry out inspections across the city, collect expired medicines and burn them. Idress Momand, spokesman of the Nangarhar border police, also denied that his forces accepted bribes in return for allowing counterfeit drugs to be smuggled into the country, insisting that they constantly tried to prevent this illegal trade. We cant deny that substandard medicines are smuggled through the border areas, but in areas where our forces have set up outposts no one can smuggle such medicines or any other material into Afghanistan. Ehsan Shinwari, head of the Nangarhar Civil Hospital, said that the problem had reached such a level people no longer felt they could rely on Afghan doctors and instead sought treatment in Pakistan wherever possible. People dont trust their doctors, but doctors are not to blame, as they properly prescribe medicines for patients but due to the poor quality of these medicines the treatment doesnt work, Shinwari said. However, if the same medicines are prescribed by a doctor in Pakistan, the patient will respond to treatment and quickly recover, as the quality of medicines are better. We are trying to tackle this problem and were collecting out-of-date drugs daily and destroying them. Fozullah Kakar, a doctor who has a private practice in Jalalabad, agreed that the substandard medicines in circulation had damaged the reputation of the local medical profession. He accepted that some doctors were involved in this trade but said that this was only a minority. The real culprits were the drug importers, Kakar argued, because they purposely bought cheap, low-quality drugs abroad to resell for a greater profit in Afghanistan. The medicines that are imported through smuggling routes are always of low quality, and the medicines that are imported legally are also of low quality. The medication doesnt work as its intended to and then its the doctors who are blamed. Some pharmacists blame the public for not being willing to pay top prices for high-quality medicine. Faridullah, who owns the Farid pharmacy in Jalalabad, said that patients needed to shoulder some of the blame for the market in inferior medicines since they often sought out the cheapest possible option. MAJOR BUSINESS Khan Jan Alokozay, the vice-chairman of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that Afghanistan imported 400 million US dollars worth of legal drugs from Pakistan each year. But Najibullah Sahibzada, head of the Association of Pharmaceutical Businesses in Nangarhar, refuted any suggestion that his members knowingly smuggled low quality medicines into Afghanistan. He said that all drugs importing companies were registered with the government. I categorically deny that the drug corporations and companies import substandard medicines, he said. If someone has smuggled it privately, then thats a separate issue. Corporations do not import substandard medicines and if it was discovered then their license would be terminated. The first major medicine and foodstuff quality-control laboratory, which cost five million US dollars to build, staff and equip, was inaugurated in Kabul in April 2017. But testing all imported drugs will prove expensive, and the smuggling routes are so established that few expect there to be much impact on the illicit pharmaceutical trade. Nusrat, a civil society activist, said that border police were bribed to allow substandard medicines into Nangarhar province via well-known smuggling routes. If government corruption ends, then the buying, selling and smuggling of substandard medicine will also end, as corruption is enabling this problem, he said. Ordinary people say that they remain at the mercy of local pharmacies. My small daughter got sick and we took her to a doctor, said Sayed Mirza, a 20-year-old who runs a grocery shop in Jalalabads Eidgah city. The doctor prescribed some medicine but instead of getting better, she got even worse. When we took her to another doctor, he said that the medicines were just poor quality. In Sep 1944, the Japanese Army 4th Air Army and the Japanese Navy 1st Air Fleet conducted tests and concluded that tokko, short for tokubetsu kogeki or "special attack", during which the pilot carried the bomb all the way through the dive and releasing only a split second before the aircraft struck the enemy ship, was much more effective than the standard anti-ship bombing technique during which only one in four skills crews could score hits with bombs. The first authorized tokko attack took place on 13 Sep 1944 by Army planes based at Los Negros, Philippine Islands. On 17 Oct 1944, Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi took command of the 1st Air Fleet, and soon organized a special unit within the 201st Air Group based in the Philippine Islands named Shimpu Tokubetsu Kogeki Tai, or "Divine Wind Special Attack Unit". The kanji characters used for shimpu could also be read as kamikaze especially in modern mortgage; despite Onishi's usage of shimpu as the pronunciation, kamikaze became the common pronunciation in western literature. A tokko usually began with dispatch from a communications center, whose information came from forward reconnaissance aircraft. The special attack air group commander would then determine the attack force's size base on weather, enemy strength, and the overall tactical objective. While the air group commander briefed the pilots, the ground crew fueled, armed, and warmed up the aircraft. The standard kamikaze aircraft were usually fighters or other similar light aircraft, while the standard armament were either four 60 kilogram or one 250 kilogram bombs. Depending on distance to the enemy and weather conditions, commanders determined the best launch time in order to reach the enemy at 1820 at the latest. The time was chosen in order to avoid reaching the enemy after sunset, after which time finding enemy vessels and selecting targets would become difficult. Some air group commanders preferred dawn attacks if the option was available to them. Dawn time attacks tend to encounter the least number of enemy interceptors en route. Property details: 32,700 RCI Pts at San Clemente Inn ~ San Clemente, California FREE CLOSING!! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE The Whole Amount of the Winning Bid is to be Paid by Buyer Payment Accepted: *Check *Money Order *Wire Transfer All funds (Payment) are held by GO Properties Services LLC, a licensed, bonded and insured Real Estate/Closing Company. Funds will be held by GO Properties Services LLC escrow until ownership has been transferred. Closing: We guarantee clear title to every ownersh... 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"[I'll spend my days] reading and I want to learn to speak Spanish," she added. "And I'm already working on a new book." Miller's prison stint will be followed by two years of supervised release, federal judge Joy Flowers Conti ruled Tuesday in a Pittsburgh courtroom. The star will also have to pay a fine of $40,000 and $120,000 judgement for a currency reporting violation charge in June. Miller pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud in June after being indicted on 20 counts of fraud in October 2015. She told Davis she wasn't "intentionally" trying to hide $775,000 during Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in 2012. FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS! Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source! "I wasn't ever trying to hurt anyone," the star insisted. "I would have never filed for bankruptcy ever," she added in hindsight. "I do not recommend it." Dance Moms star Maesi Caes was among those to voice their support for Miller online, calling the star a "truly inspiring, generous and passionate" teacher. Miller quit the Lifetime series in March after six seasons with the show. BRITT | Officials in Britt want a traveling physician accused of flying a drone too close to a medical helicopter to be criminally charged. Some are also renewing calls for the city to adopt ordinances regulating drones. The doctor flew a drone in the vicinity of a Mercy Air Med helicopter on April 9 while it was picking up a patient at the Hancock County Health System hospital in Britt, according to a criminal complaint and affidavit. The charge is operating an aircraft (drone) in a careless manner, a simple misdemeanor. The court document was filed late Tuesday night, but as of Wednesday the physician had not been arrested or appeared before a magistrate judge. The Globe Gazette is not naming the physician because he has not been formally charged. Britt City Attorney Earl Hill, who said the charge is under review, said the helicopter's flight crew noticed a drone in the area as they arrived in Britt. The drone was spotted again while the crew was loading the patient for transport to Mason City. "The officer was outside with the air ambulance and several people pointed up into the air and, lo and behold, there was the drone hovering above the helicopter," Hill said. He did not know the distance between the helicopter and the drone. No one was hurt. When the drone left the hospital, Britt Police Chief Dan Cummings reportedly followed it about four blocks to a parking lot at Main Avenue and Second Street Northwest. The drone and a remote were seized as evidence. Hill said the operator was flying the drone from a local laundromat. "He was doing laundry at the laundromat and, apparently, while the clothes were being washed or dried or something, he was out playing with his drone," Hill said. The operator of the drone flew the drone in the vicinity of the hospital even though he knew a helicopter was landing, Cummings wrote in the affidavit. "He knowingly landed his drone after the first incident, changed batteries and then resumed flying the drone, not only in the same area, but flew it directly to the hospital and hovered his drone directly over the helicopter while the patient was being loaded," he said. The allegations were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates aircraft, including drones. Hancock County Health System Spokeswoman Jody Ball said hospital officials were aware of the incident. "Of course, we have concerns in general about drones or laser lights or anything else that would interfere with us taking care of our patients," Ball said. She said the person accused of flying the drone was a physician contracted to do services in Britt. Hancock County Health System contracts with the employment company for short-term or temporary staffing of some positions. It was unclear if the doctor will continue to see patients in Britt or if the contracting company has already assigned him to another hospital, Ball said. Hill, the city attorney, appeared at the Britt City Council on May 2 to discuss the incident and renew his request the city create an ordinance to regulate flying of drones in city limits. He'd lobbied unsuccessfully for regulations in late 2015 and early 2016. Council members planned to research the issue and, if necessary, bring it up at another council meeting. , We're sorry, this article is not currently available Doug Rozendaal has been flying airplanes for more than four decades, but when he took off from Mason City Airport on Friday it was a first for FLOYD | A North Iowa woman was excited to win the lottery, but her excitement grew when she found out that she won a lot more than she initially thought. Dianne Menden of Floyd claimed the 15th of 33 prizes of $10,000 available in the Iowa Lotterys "$100,000 Mega Crossword" scratch game. The 59-year-old said she bought her winning ticket Friday at Loves Travel Stop, 100 Monroe St., in Floyd. She said it was late at night and she was sleepy so she didnt know how much shed won right away. So, she had a store clerk check her ticket for her on the lottery machine and asked what she had won. "She said, '$1,000.' And I'm like, 'Get out of town, really?' And she says, 'Yeah,'" Menden told lottery employees Monday as she claimed her prize at the lotterys regional office in Mason City. However, when Menden re-read her receipt the next morning she realized that the store clerk had miscounted the zeroes she had actually won $10,000. It was a total 100 percent surprise, she said. Menden said she plans to use a portion of her winnings to buy a wedding gift for her son, who is getting married later this month, and save the rest. Over three years after former University of Georgia student Min Seok "Michael" Cho was shot and killed during a drug-deal-gone-wrong, Andre Ru Ford is among several multinational automobile companies in India for whom exports now bring bigger volumes than local sales. American car maker Ford produced more cars than Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors in 2016-17 to emerge as the third biggest car maker in the country. Ford India produced 252,959 vehicles in 2016-17, helped by a 43 per cent surge in export volumes. In comparison, M&M produced 242,721 passenger vehicles and Tata Motors 169,599 passenger vehicles. In 2015-16, Ford had ranked fifth in production after Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, M&M and Honda Cars. Ford exported more than 62 per cent of its vehicles and accounted for 22 per cent of the 758,830 cars exported by India in 2016-17. The company is now the second biggest car exporter after Hyundai and could well emerge as the biggest this year. South Korean car maker Hyundai has remained the largest passenger vehicle exporter for the past many years. But with a sharp growth in the last couple of years, Ford has managed to close the gap. In 2016-17, Hyundai exported 167,120 vehicles, growing just 3 per cent over the previous year, while Ford increased shipments by 43 per cent to 158,469 vehicles. Ford exports the EcoSport, Figo and Figo Aspire to Latin America, West Asia and Africa. The car maker is focusing on the export market for better capacity utilisation and greater economies of scale. The company did not respond to emailed queries on its further plans for exports and the domestic market. Hyundai and Maruti are seeing a strong pull in the domestic market and have accorded greater priority to local demand. Ford inaugurated its second Indian plant at Sanand in Gujarat in March 2015 with an annual capacity of 240,000 vehicles. The first plant at Chennai had a production capacity of 200,000 vehicles. The capacity utilisation for Ford is still less than 60 per cent and gives the car maker headroom to expand exports and domestic sales. An analyst said global automobile majors, including Ford, now recognise that vehicles made in India are quite competitive in cost as well as quality. Manufacturers here enjoy the advantage of low manpower cost as well as low cost of components. That is driving their export strategy, he said. Ford is among several multinational automobile companies in India for whom exports now bring bigger volumes than local sales. Others in the list include Volkswagen, Nissan and General Motors. Vistara Chief Executive Officer Phee Teik Yeoh is expected to meet the senior management of BA over the next few days to discuss the partnership. Vistara is looking to grow its commercial ties with British Airways (BA) as it prepares to launch overseas flights next year. Enhanced co-operation will help Vistara in securing passengers and brand recognition in the United Kingdom, which it hopes to connect as a part of its international network strategy. The tie-up will enable BA to grow its share in the Indian market. Government regulations do not allow Vistara to operate international service until it has a minimum 20 aircraft in its fleet. At present, the airline has 13 Airbus A320 aircraft and, according to consultancy CAPA, it is set to order 100 planes, including 50 wide body Boeing 777x. Sources said that Vistara and BA are discussing code shares and frequent flyer programme co-operation. Vistara Chief Executive Officer Phee Teik Yeoh is expected to meet the senior management of BA over the next few days to discuss the partnership. A code share with BA will be Vistara's second such commercial agreement. Vistara already has a code share pact with Singapore Airlines, its co-promoter. A code share is a form of commercial co-operation among airlines which allows them to sell tickets on each others networks while a frequent flyer programme co-operation enables loyalty club members to earn and burn miles on networks of two or more airlines. "Vistara has a number of interline relationships with various airlines, including British Airways, as well as code-share partnerships with Singapore Airlines and SilkAir. As a full service GDS-based airline, such relationships and partnerships are normal business. We currently have interline agreements with 15 international airlines and are working on several others. We have nothing more to share at this point," a Vistara spokesperson said. "We do not comment on rumours and speculation," British Airways, for its part, said. "If Vistara and British Airways decide to enhance their partnership from an interline to codeshare, it will be a win-win for both. A sizeable percent of British Airways capacity (18 per cent) is in premium economy and no airline other than Vistara provides premium economy service in India. Thus, it will help British Airways sell the same class of service on onward routes flown by Vistara," said aviation analyst Ameya Joshi. Vistara would also get passenger feed for its premium cabins for its shorter routes beyond Delhi to Lucknow, Amritsar, Chandigarh, he said. Also, the partnership with BA, which has a vast North America network, would help Vistara carry connecting traffic over London. This will improve loads and yields on the India-London route, sources said. BA is an important member of Oneworld, which is one of three big airline alliances (other being Star Alliance and Sky Team). While Air India is part of Star Alliance and Jet Airways has close co-operation with Sky Team member airlines, Oneworld has no member in India. "For Oneworld, the Indian map is blank and Vistara makes for a potential member. However, Singapore Airlines is a Star Alliance member and Vistara would have to strike a fine balance to what level it wants to deepen the relationship with British Airways," an aviation expert said. India isn't Israel, nor can it, or should be, says Shekhar Gupta. Have we lost Kashmir? The answer is no. But qualifications and caveats must follow. We have 'lost' Kashmir many times since 1947. The first time, when Pakistani raiders were about to storm Srinagar airport when Lieutenant General (then Lieutenant Colonel) Harbakhsh Singh's troops landed there, one Dakota at a time. How hopeless that situation was, go back to a decent library and read Lieutenant General Lionel Protip ('Bogey') Sen's Slender Was The Thread. The second time we 'lost' Kashmir was in 1965, as the logical culmination of a grand design launched by Pakistan in 1962 (India's China debacle) onwards. Mass upsurge in the valley following the 'theft' of the Holy Relic at Hazratbal, a weakening New Delhi in the years of Nehru's decline and finally Ayub Khan's ambitious assault of Operation Gibraltar, involving thousands of Pakistan army regulars infiltrating in the valley, followed by Operation Grand Slam in Chhamb that nearly succeeded. How nearly lost Kashmir was then read General Harbakhsh Singh's War Despatches. We had professional, clinical, soldierly, scholarly and reflective generals then. That other talent much in evidence now, prime-time television warfare, wasn't much seen. Generals of those dangerous decades had spent lifetimes fighting real wars against real enemies and not merely some 'Greenland' on sand models. This, 1965, was the last time India could conceivably have lost Kashmir militarily. Fifty-two years have passed since. So what do we need to worry about? We should worry about precisely this fact, that 52 years after the last credible military threat was crushed, our thinking on Kashmir has become as militarised as in the past when stirring deshbhakti ditties sung in our school assembly would have lines like 'hoshiyar tumko apne Kashmir ki raksha karni hai' (be on guard, you have to fight and protect your Kashmir). The difference is, the perception of military threat in the past was real. Even in our folklore, Kashmiris were then seen as broadly nationalist and trustworthy -- remember the 1965 infiltrators were spurned by local people who reported on them instead. Today, there is almost no military threat, but we have worked ourselves up into seeing our own people as a 'military' threat. That is the difference. That is why it might be an arguable point that while Kashmir is territorially secure, we are fast losing it emotionally and psychologically. Three questions arise here. How do we know this? Do we care? And finally, should we care? We shall answer the second question first, because it is the shortest. No, we don't care. The reasoning is short, sharp, and ruthless, as most patriotic arguments are. Why bother trying to win the love of people who hate you, who have been disloyal for decades, who swear by Pakistan and throw stones at your soldiers? How can this resurgent India put up with open treason when ordinary folk in the mainland could be sent to jail or beaten to a pulp for not standing up in time for the national anthem in a cinema hall? Those Kashmiris who do not like India can go to Pakistan. The answer to the first is self-evident. For months, Kashmiris have come out in thousands, shedding their fear of lathis, bullets and pellets. As weeks pass, they will also likely shed their hesitation of 'sacrificing' fellow Kashmiris if used as human shields. Only 7 per cent voted in a recent Srinagar by-election. You don't need more evidence that while your grip on the land is firm, you are losing its people. The third question, should we care, is more complex. If you were the usual hyper-nationalist, the answer is, let the 'traitors' go to Pakistan. Then flood the valley with nationalists (Hindus) from other states. Or, as some responsible ruling party leaders have suggested, move out the Kashmiris and resettle them in camps far, away, say in Tamil Nadu, just relocate the fish and empty the pond. Or, as some senior retired generals insist, just shoot to kill, a hundred maybe, and it will all calm down. This is the surest way of losing not just Kashmir, but India. A country we admire immensely for its strength, courage, focus, talent, military prowess -- and ruthlessness -- has tried this for exactly 50 years, and failed. Since it conquered large Arab territories in the Six Day War of 1967, Israel has tried in many different ways (barring a few liberal interludes) to keep the lands, but get rid of the people. Israel has generally had the Western powers' support, overwhelming military superiority, an endless stream of loyal new citizens, Jews migrating from Africa and Eastern Europe. It has been able to crush many guerrilla movements, an intifada, defy the United Nations, global pressures, shoot-at-sight, build a wall, keep its society militarised. It has succeeded in keeping the land. But it still has the people. The strongest military power in West Asia, which has defeated Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon militarily in the past, is caught in this withering, permanently deadlock. To imagine that this will work for India is fantasy. It is suicidal too, because, much as we (this writer included) admire Israel for its many national qualities, India isn't Israel, nor can it, or should be. Israel is an ideological Jewish State, where its sizeable population of native Arabs could vote, but were not equal citizens. In India, every Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Parsi and atheist is an equal citizen with the same rights and could rise to hold the most sensitive jobs. One-country-two-systems is a Constitutional impossibility that can only be sustained in a unique dictatorship such as China, as with Hong Kong. Last fortnight, I was in New Delhi's Sathya Sai Baba Auditorium at the memorial meeting for the legendary former Research and Analysis Wing chief and Kashmir governor Girish Chandra 'Gary' Saxena. In the spring of 1991, as infiltration from Pakistan peaked, Edward 'Ned' Desmond, the then bureau chief of Time magazine in Delhi, and I plotted to spend a few days on the Line of Control to possibly see an encounter from close. We went to the then Union home secretary Naresh Chandra (later Cabinet Secretary, ambassador to Washington and more) for help. He liked the idea and said he would request the defence ministry to help. But won't we need the governor to help more importantly, I asked. 'No worries, I will tell him,' he said, with a 'gotcha' smile I was to become more familiar with in the course of time, and added, 'He is my elder brother, you see.' Naresh-ji was very much in attendance at the memorial. It was thanks to his 'brotherly' good offices that we got to spend time around Uri, but an encounter only happened the day we had returned story-less. But we got an audience with Gary Sahib. Is Kashmir lost, I asked him. Remember, this was the peak of the domestic insurgency, what today's generation may call the Haider (Vishal Bhardwaj's movie) phase of the Kashmiri rebellion. 'No, it isn't,' he said calmly, 'A country has to have it in its guts to stay together, and we have it,' he said. And then he went on to say how, after the writ of the State is restored (he didn't use soft methods), there will need to be a political plan to convince the people they were better off with India. The job we do is still the easier one, the real challenge is for the political large-heartedness, he said. He could as well have spoken the same words again now. MUST READ features in the RELATED LINKS BELOW... The CPEC poses a clear and imminent danger to Indian security interests, says Kulbir Krishan. The announcement on April 12 that China has approved additional financing for infrastructure projects in Pakistan under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, taking the total investment to $62 billion, has been largely ignored by the Indian media, even though it has serious implications for Pakistan, China and the region. The CPEC, a collection of infrastructure projects originally valued at $46 billion in 2014, has seen a cost escalation of nearly 40 per cent. The CPEC aims to develop the port of Gwadar in Baluchistan and link it with a network of highways and railways to western China passing through the whole of Pakistan and the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Jammu and Kashmir, which has been under Pakistan's illegal occupation since 1947. Another goal is to add over 10,400 Mw of electricity generation in Pakistan, largely from fossil fuels, although hydroelectric, wind power and solar energy farms are also included. There is also a plan for a network of pipelines to transport liquefied natural gas from Gwadar to consuming centres in Pakistan. The CPEC is being funded through a mixture of loans and grants by the Chinese government or Chinese State-owned companies. The cost escalation from $46 billion in 2014 to $62 billion in 2017 has raised fears of Pakistan walking into a debt trap. Pakistan's financial situation has been precarious in recent years and the government had to take the IMF's help to escape bankruptcy a few years ago. The Pakistani newspaper The News (November 13, 2016) projected that Pakistan's external debt could reach $110 billion by 2020, leaving it with no option but to go back to the IMF to avoid default. Official Pakistani accounts allay such fears, but given the high T&D losses in Pakistan's power sector (about 17 per cent) and the reluctance to pay user charges, whether for electricity, water, roads or railways, it is doubtful if Pakistan will be able to escape a debt trap. The CPEC makes eminent sense for China due to its strategic importance, and because it enables China to obtain petroleum and other products from West Asia without having to go through the chokepoint of the Straits of Malacca. China is now the world's largest importer of oil. Its dependence on imported oil demands this kind of alternative route, which would also help strengthen its grip on the restive Xinjiang province. Besides, with China's infrastructure development slowing down, it aims to use its excess capacity of steel, cement, engineering goods and labour to build the CPEC. The CPEC also gives it an excuse to station over 10,000 Chinese troops in Pakistan. Pakistan has already raised a special division of 15,000 troops to provide security to about 9,000 Chinese workers on the almost 1,300-km-long CPEC from Gwadar to Xinjiang. The security costs are being embedded in the power projects, increasing the cost of power for domestic consumers in Pakistan. While China may have good reasons for financing and constructing the CPEC, Pakistan also benefits through improved infrastructure and an end to crippling power outages. The real reason why the Pakistani leadership is keen on the CPEC could be that public money is being used to enrich the Pakistani elite. While most contractors for the CPEC are Chinese, the sub-contractors largely belong to the Nawaz Sharif family, the Dawood group and the military. Ayesha Siddiqa in her book, Military Inc: Inside Pakistans military economy, uses the term 'Milbus' to refer to 'Military capital that is used for the personal benefit of the military fraternity, especially the officer cadre, but is neither recorded nor part of the defence budget.' In 2007, she estimated it to be about $21 billion. She revealed that the Pakistan military not only had security-related enterprises but also hotels, shopping malls, insurance companies, farms and an airline. Since the Pakistani political, military and criminal establishment are making huge profits from the CPEC, they are more than willing to support it. When a debt trap occurs, it will be the Pakistani State, and not the powerful ruling families, that will have to pay the price. Pakistani Defence Minister Khwaja Asif informed the Senate (July 20, 2016) that the country had nearly 50 commercial entities that were run by the armed forces, including 15 projects by the Army Welfare Trust, 14 by the Fauji Foundation, 11 by the Shaheen Foundation, an LNG project by the Bahria Foundation and eight defence housing societies. Companies linked to these foundations have allegedly been given major contracts in the CPEC. The CPEC poses a clear and imminent danger to Indian security interests, particularly as it passes through parts of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian defence planners will have to reassess their strategies to deal with these new threats. However, it is even more important that the United States sees through the double game which Pakistan has been playing with it since 1959, when it signed the CENTO and SEATO pacts. Pakistan, like North Korea, has been the beneficiary of Chinese nuclear and missile technology which were supplied in violation of the NPT. Instead of bailing Pakistan out through IMF loans and funding Pakistani terrorist activities through 'defence assistance,' it is time the US clamped down on Pakistan and treated it as a rogue State and a Chinese client, like North Korea. Kulbir Krishan is a retired Director General of Police, Meghalaya. IMAGE: Chinese and Pakistan troops jointly patrol the border connecting Pakistan occupied Kashmir with China's Xinjiang region last year. PTI Photo, Courtesy The People's Daily Online MORE CHINA features in the RELATED LINKS BELOW... Should you test yourself for cancer, if you have family history? Do you know how to protect yourself from cancer? If you are worried about a symptom, when should you go to a cancer specialist? How much medical coverage do you need for cancer? Is there anything you don't know about cancer? Cancer surgeon Dr Ramakant Deshpande answers the most crucial questions on the disease. And offers very important advice on ensuring yourself a healthy, everyday life. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com An extended conversation with cancer specialist Dr Ramakant Deshpande instantly makes one acutely aware of how little one knows about this terrifying disease. The first fact: It is not that terrifying. If, fact two, caught early, that is. Awareness is, therefore, all that more important. Our ignorance about cancer exists, even though it is now the leading cause of death in the world. Global cancer deaths are projected to increase 60 per cent from 8.8 million deaths per year now t0 13 million in the next two decades. New cases of cancer will rise to 22 million by 2030. These statistics prove how crucial keeping ourselves safe from cancer is. Dr Deshpande, an expert in lung cancer and a surgeon at the Asian Cancer Institute, Sion, north-central Mumbai, stresses the importance of understanding the everyday causes of cancer, that stem from our lifestyle. Awarded the Padma Shri in 2014, Dr Deshpande, who trained at the Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai and at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Center, New York, is the vice-chairman at the Asian Cancer Institute, one of the top facilities in the country. He has conducted, he reveals when asked to estimate, nearly 15,000 to 20,000 major surgeries in his career spanning three-and-a-half decades. His most unusual cancer case, which came to him 25 to 30 years ago, was of an elderly woman who had a tumour in one lung and developed very grim signs of "disease activity" in her other lung too. Hesitant to operate, Dr Deshpande finally did and discovered, to his surprise, it was tuberculosis in Lung 2; his patient is still alive. The ACI runs the Dr Pendharkar ACI Scheme in conjunction with five state governments, where surgeons like Dr Deshpande and oncologists donate their time to training district doctors from these states. District doctors learn the basics of identifying, diagnosing and staging cancer and administration of therapy for some cancers, bringing better cancer treatment facilities closer to parts of interior India. Dr Deshpande, left, in this interview with Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel, explains the vital importance of genetic testing for cancer and, most important, how to protect yourself from cancer. What is the biggest myth about cancer that you constantly deal with? That cancer is incurable. Cancer is not incurable. If diagnosed at an early stage, it can be totally cured. The person can have a totally normal life span, which is almost 71 years for a five-year-old child today. In Western countries it is said: If you are 24 today -- if you don't have any (bad) habits or co-morbidity, for example hypertension (high blood pressure) or diabetes at a young age -- your life expectancy should normally be 100, in a developed country... It is our doing -- or the atmosphere, pollution, external factors -- which can reduce this particular longevity. The biggest problem in India is that people feel that cancer is incurable... It is an ailment which comes, which can be treated. In an early stage, you can actually treat it very well, based on its nature, its stage, whatever. Then you can expect the person to live a normal life. Then you get an intermediate stage: Where the cancer has grown. But not grown to a terminal advanced kind of stage. You can (still) do a lot and add a lot of quality of life, prolonging life to a substantial extent. Even in advanced cancers today -- many cancers, not all.... For example 30 years back, for a lung cancer, a stage 4 malignancy, with fluid in the lungs, we said, 'Alright, go home and get lucky.' It was six months to nine months. That would be an average lifespan. Today you can actually identify if they have a genetic mutation. Some of these are actionable mutations (that is, with the potential of perhaps responding to targeted therapy). By giving medicines you can prolong their life for five to seven years. Maybe longer. Because these things are still coming up. The methodology of treatment is still (evolving). What you actually land up doing is: You may not be able to cure the disease in many (instances), but you can actually make it a chronic disease. For example: You cannot cure hypertension (high blood pressure) and diabetes. But you can convert them into chronic diseases. You mean a patient can live with the disease, even if the quality of life is reduced? It will be fair. I would say: It would be a fair quality of life. Someone harbouring a tumour in the lung. As long as it doesn't really obstruct their breathing. Or diminish their quality of life, probably it need not bother them too much. To that level we can treat patients today. Is it typical for anyone without family history to get cancer? And vice versa: Do people with family history have a very high risk of getting cancer? Which cancers? Are there lifestyle changes they can make to delay its arrival, if they are susceptible? If you really analyse family history: In India today, there is no family where either a member of the family, or a first relative -- like uncles, aunts, somebody or the other -- would have not suffered from cancer, at some age or the other. There is no family which is totally clear of cancer. There are certain families in which certain cancers are more common, for example breast cancer. It does not mean that the next generation is definitely bound to get cancer. If you analyse the incidence of, say, breast cancer, among all girls born today in India: 1 in 27 will get breast cancer in a lifetime, which is (till the) age of 71 to 73. This is the current statistic in India (it is 1 in 7 in a developed country like the US). The moment more than three members of a family -- say, mother, maternal aunt, or grandmother -- get cancer, it means there is a preponderance of breast cancer in that family. When you have that kind of (preponderance) your breast cancer incidence is likely to increase, double. Even then it will be 1 in 14. That means 13 people will not get breast cancer in the same family. There are certain genetic predispositions. There are genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2. If you have that positive in your body, your chance of getting breast cancer in BRCA1, by the age of, say, 50, is almost about 70 to 80 per cent -- your odds get narrowed down. In that case, what you can do is: Complete your family early, get married, have a child... What are BRCA1 and BRCA2? Human genes BRCA1 (also called breast cancer 1) and BRCA2 (also called breast cancer 2) have the capacity to manufacture proteins that suppress tumours and mend damaged DNA, maintaining the stability of a cell's genetic matter. If these genes get distorted -- either because of mutation or alteration -- and does not manufacture, or manufactures dysfunctional, tumour suppressing proteins, it will be unable to repair its DNA. This could lead to further genetic modifications and subsequently cancer. Mutations of BRCA2 can also bring about a higher risk of ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancers. Similarly, there are other genes that relate to colon and blood cancers. Like in the case of American actor Angelina Jolie? Yes. Finish your family and all that. Maybe by the age of 40 you can actually have your breasts removed. Now having breasts removed doesn't mean you go totally flat. Today there are techniques available in plastic surgery. They take out the entire breast tissue and reconstruct those breasts using prosthesis. Cosmetically the lady will be exactly the way she was before... Or you can actually have certain medication, called PARP inhibitors (drug inhibitors of the enzyme poly ADP ribose polymerase or PARP. Many cancers are dependent on PARP and taking inhibitors helps to not get cancer), which help these kind of patients to not develop cancer. There is also an incidence -- almost 50 percent -- of developing ovarian cancer in these patients. In the same patients? In the same ones who are BRCA 1 positive. We tell them also to finish your family by 40 and then have your ovaries removed (too). These are all preventive methodologies to reduce the chances of getting breast cancer. So your answer is a bit of both? The odds of people with family history getting cancer vary? Depending on that BRCA1 and BRCA2 factor? Yes. Is testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 factor -- to check for gene mutation in the DNA -- very expensive in India? No, it is about Rs 20,000. It is worthwhile? Very few people in India know of it. Definitely worthwhile. This is not a wild shot in the dark. There are specific indications to undergo this particular thing. This is not a routine haemoglobin kind of test. The person should see a genetic counsellor, who will identify if there is a need for doing this. That is how it should be. Now everybody has an Aadhaar card. A time will probably come, 20 years from now, when we will have our genetic profile also... So you will know if you have a predisposition for a malignancy. (Or if) you have a weakness for something. There could be genes, which if you are exposed to (say) meat, or something like that, you may have a higher incidence of developing bowel cancer or something like that. The best thing for those who have that kind of genetic abnormality should be to avoid non-vegetarian food. You can actually take (these kinds of) precautions. So does that mean if you have a relative who had, say, colon cancer, you should test your children for BRCA1 or BRCA2 with respect to colon cancer, too? In the same way as breast cancer? No, no. There are other genes. BRCA is not connected with colon cancer. BRCA is only connected with breast cancer and ovarian cancer. And BRCA2 is in prostate cancer in men. There is a test for ovarian cancer. There is a test for colonic cancer. They are all genetic tests. They all cost the same? Approximately. For any of these tests: If there is some member in your family with a history of cancer, is it very important to test? Very few know that. It is better we get it done. Should get that thing checked out. It is quite possible to have a BRCA positive mother and a BRCA negative daughter. That's also a possibility. So, then, you don't have to go through the removal of the breast and ovaries and all that. So even in the other categories one should do genetic testing wherever possible? There are certain malignancies where the genetic connection is known. The moment you have that kind of cancer (in your family) your oncologist, who will be aware of these possibilities, will put you in touch with a genetic counselor and then you should have that genetic testing done. That is the reason why it is always better to go to a centre which treats malignancy rather than go to an individual... Which cancers can one do genetic testing for in India? Colon. Breast. Ovaries. Prostate. And certain blood cancers -- lymphomas, leukemias -- which will have some sort of genetic (predisposition), as well as prognostically, you can find out whether they are likely to do well. Or not likely to do well. You can do genetic testing for advanced cancers to find out if there is a targeted therapy available. For example, in lung cancers if the genetic mutation is positive, you have actionable mutation where you can use specific drugs and prolong survival from a few months to quite a few years. In a significant order, the Allahabad high court has held that divorce by a Muslim man cannot be in a manner which may infringe his wife's Fundamental Rights guaranteed under the Constitution, and that the personal law can always be superseded by legislation. Justice Surya Prakash Kesarwani, in his order which began with the Sanskrit verse from the Manu Smriti, yatra naryastu pujyante ramante tatra devata (gods reside where women are worshipped), said that all citizens, including Muslim women, have Fundamental Rights which cannot be infringed under the garb of personal law. The order, dated April 19, 2017, assumes importance as it comes against the backdrop of the raging debate over triple talaq. "The personal law operates under the authority of legislation, subject to constitutional limitation, and not under the religion. The personal law can always be superseded by legislation," the court said. It was passed on a petition filed by Aaqil Jamil and two others, who had moved the court challenging summonses issued by an Agra court in connection with a case filed by Jamil's estranged wife under the Dowry Prohibition Act and relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. The petitioners contention was that the proceedings initiated by the CJMs court at Agra were null and void since the complaint was registered by Jamils wife a few days after he had divorced her by saying thrice that I divorce you Sumaila Afgani. The petitioners had contended that following the divorce, Jamil had rendered his wife free to lead her life in the manner she wants and even obtained a fatwa whereby the mufti of Agra city has affirmed the talaqnama. However, the court turned down the application observing that it did not find any good reason to interfere with the impugned summoning order or the impugned proceedings. The court made it clear that fatwa, issued by whatever body, not emanating from any judicial system recognised by law, is not binding on anyone including the person who had asked for it. In the concluding part of its 40-page order, the court remarked, A society that does not respect its women, cannot be treated to be civilised. All citizens, including Muslim women, have fundamental rights, the court pointed out, adding, Under the garb of personal law, individual or collective rights of the citizens could not be infringed. The Supreme Court is all set to begin on May 11 its hearing on the constitutional validity of triple talaq. Image used for representational purpose only. The shock move comes days after Comey testified on Capitol Hill about the FBI's investigation into Russia's election meddling and a possible collusion between the country and Trump's campaign. United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday fired Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey, abruptly removing the top sleuth overseeing a criminal probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election that was won by the real estate mogul. "You are hereby terminated and removed from the office, effective immediately," Trump said in a letter to Comey, who was four years into his 10-year term as FBI director. Trump, while responding to a volley of questions by reporters during a surprise meeting with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger at the White House, said, "He (Comey) wasn't doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job." The US President also asserted that the development had not affected his meeting with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Trump, however, did not respond when asked if the new FBI director will be in charge of the Russia investigation. Earlier, Trump had explained his bombshell announcement by citing Comey's handling of the investigation by America's leading law enforcement agency into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was the secretary of state. Trump told Comey, 56, that he was no longer effectively able to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and it was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence" in it. In a tweet, Trump said, "Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!" The President's move comes days after Comey testified in Capitol Hill about the FBI's investigation into Russia's meddling into the US elections and a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. In recent days, Comey again came under fire for his handling of the investigation into Clinton's private email server. Many Democrats believe that his announcement that he was re-opening the probe 11 days before the November 8 election cost Clinton the presidency. In the letter, Trump acknowledged that Comey had informed him "on three separate occasions" that he was not under investigation. "I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau," he added. Comey learned from news reports that he had been fired while addressing bureau employees in Los Angeles. It was reported that he made a joke about it to lighten the mood and called his office to get confirmation. Comey's deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, a career FBI officer, has been appointed the acting director, the Justice Department said. The White House said the search for a director will begin immediately. Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters: "The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General (Jeff Sessions) and the Deputy Attorney General (Rod Rosenstein) regarding the dismissal." In a statement released by the White House, Trump said: "The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement." Comey had courted controversy during the 2016 presidential polls when he revealed a renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton's email use, which the Democrats claimed had hurt her chances of becoming president. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in his letter to Trump, criticised Comey's handling of the Clinton probe, including the director's decision to hold a press conference announcing its findings and releasing "derogatory information" about her. In a separate letter, Sessions said he has concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI, based on his evaluation as well the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General. "It is essential that this Department of Justice clearly reaffirm its commitment to longstanding principles that ensure the integrity and fairness of federal investigations and prosecutions," Sessions said. Though the president has the authority to fire the FBI director for any reason, Comey is only the second director to be fired in bureau history. President Bill Clinton fired William S Sessions in 1993. It was not immediately clear how Comey's ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation. "I told the president, 'Mr President, with all due respect you are making a big mistake,'" Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, told reporters. The Senate Minority Leader demanded that the Department of Justice appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russia's alleged influence on the 2016 elections. "The firing of top officials like Sally Yates and Preet Bharara, and now Comey does not seem to be a coincidence," Schumer said. Schumer also questioned the timing of the decision. "If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the president got into office. But they didn't fire him then. Why did it happen today?" he asked. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley said Comey's dismissal is extremely troubling. "President Trump fired the man investigating him and his cohorts. I strongly support calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor," he said. Terming the move as "nearly unprecedented", Indian- American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said it was extremely disturbing that the Chief Executive is interfering with an ongoing investigation into his administration by firing the person charged with conducting it. Republican Senator John McCain, the Chairman of Armed Services Committee, said he was disappointed by Trump's decision to dismiss Comey. "James Comey is a man of honour and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances. I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election," he said. "The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee," McCain said. The New York Times noted that Comey was three years into a 10-year term, an unusually long tenure that Congress established to insulate the director from political pressure. "Trump had already fired his acting attorney general for insubordination and his national security adviser for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about contacts with Russians. But firing Comey raises much deeper questions about the independence of the FBI and the future of its investigations under Trump", it commented. Image: FBI Director James Comey is sworn in to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation" on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters India moving the International Court of Justice on the Kulbhushan Jadhav issue was a "carefully considered decision" as the retired Indian Navy officer was in illegal detention in Pakistan and his life was under threat, the external affairs ministry said on Wednesday. Briefing reporters on the reasons why India approached the ICJ, which on Tuesday stayed Jadhav's execution, MEA Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said consular access to him was denied by Pakistan despite 16 requests and this was in contravention of the Vienna Convention. Islamabad has not responded to India's request for Jadhav's case papers, including charge sheet as also there is no information on the status of an appeal by Jadhav's family against the order of a Pakistan military court which sentenced him to death on charges of "spying", Baglay added. Asserting that in such circumstances India had no option but to move the ICJ to protect the "son of India's" life, he said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj wrote to Pakistan Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz on April 27 requesting visa for Jadhav's family. As per the information with the government, the family has not been granted visa, he added. Noting that India has been informed by the ICJ that an action has been initiated on the "provisional measures" sought by New Delhi, Baglay said now there is "legal juridical procedure" that will be followed. India has taken this course of action after "carefully considered decision" as the life of an Indian citizen is under threat, the spokesperson added. He also said former Solicitor General Harish Salve, who is representing India in the ICJ in the case, has mentioned that "address to the court is likely to be in next few days". On whether the "provisional measures" granted by the ICJ including a halt to Jadhav's execution was binding on Pakistan, Baglay referred to the clauses in ICJ rules which said, "a request for the indication of provisional measures shall have priority over all other cases". The ICJ rules also make it clear that "pending the meeting of the court, the President may call upon the parties to act in such a way as will enable any order the court may make on the request for provisional measures to have its appropriate effects." Baglay reiterated that the government has no information about the location of Jadhav in Pakistan and also his health condition. The ICJ stayed Jadhav's execution after India initiated proceedings against Pakistan, accusing it of "egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations" in the matter of his detention and trial. "In my capacity as president of the court,... I call upon Your Excellency's government, pending the court's decision on the request for the indication of provisional measures to act in such a way as will enable any order the Court may make on this request to have its appropriate effects," the ICJ president wrote to Pakistan prime minister. India had submitted that it has information that Jadhav was "kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy and was then shown to have been arrested in Baluchistan" on March 3, 2016, and that the Indian authorities were notified of that arrest on March 25, 2016, a ICJ press release had said. According to the applicant, on January 23, Pakistan requested assistance in the investigation of Jadhav's alleged "involvement in espionage and terrorist activities in Pakistan" and, by a Note Verbale of 21 March 2017, informed India that "consular access [to Jadhav would] be considered in the light of the Indian sides response to Pakistans request for assistance in the investigation process", it said. South Korea's presidential election has been won by liberal Moon Jae-in who favors a more open policy towards the country's hostile neighbour, North Korea. Early results suggested that Moon, the Democratic Party's candidate in the election to replace ousted president Park Geun-hye, won by a substantial margin, reports the CNN. The election of Moon, a 64-year-old former human rights lawyer, is likely to mean an overhaul for Seoul's policy on North Korea as he favors engagement with Pyongyang and has challenged the deployment of United States missile defense system, THAAD, on South Korean soil. "This is the great victory for the great people who have been with me to build a just country, united country and a country where principle and common sense works," said Moon. With around 34 percent of the vote counted, Moon had 39.36 percent of the vote followed by conservative Hong Jun-pyo at 26.71 percent and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo with 21.8 percent. Park, who narrowly beat Moon in 2012 to become South Korea's first female president was impeached for sharing government documents with her confidante Choi Soon-sil who held no official government position. Choi is accused of using her relationship with Park to accumulate millions of dollars in donations to her foundations. IMAGE: South Korea's president-elect Moon Jae-in celebrates at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, South Korea. Photograph: Kim Kyunghoon/Reuters OSAGE | Phil Anderson is one of only four Tarentaise cattle breeders in the state of Iowa. Andersons first encounter with Tarentaise, a French breed of cattle, was by chance. While growing up, my favorite part of dads farm was the cow pasture. So, it was kind of a coincidence when I began looking for a group of cows, after my first tour in Iraq, he said. I was looking through the ads and discovered a group of cows for sale that was the exact number of animals I was looking for and the price was reasonable. Anderson served two tours of duty in Iraq with the Iowa National Guard. He graduated from Osage High School 2001 and from Iowa State University in 2006 with a degree in animal science. Along with his cattle operation, Anderson is the assistant manager of the Northern Country Co-op fertilizer plant in Stacyville. He purchased the small registered Tarentaise cow herd near Corning and, today, the family raises the deep red cattle, on Iowas rolling land northeast of Osage, far from the breeds origins. Originally in France, the Tarentaise Breed served a dual purpose. They were both a beef breed and a dairy breed. They were known for their ability to graze at high elevations in the Alps. The breed is not new to the U.S., there was a good population in Wyoming and Montana, 20 to 30 years ago, but they declined in numbers due to some poor bloodlines and other reasons, Anderson said. Today, interest is again rising in Tarentaises bloodlines for multiple reasons, Anderson said. He said they are good-natured, quiet, easy calving, have good udders and high butterfat in their milk. Because of their natural selection for grazing in the steep mountains of the Alps, they are very muscular," Anderson said. "They finish out at 1,200 to 1,400 pounds and have good marbling. Most of my market cattle are choice yield grade 3 and I have had them go prime. Most bulls he sells go to commercial cattlemen to cross with Herford or Angus cows. Last year, Anderson placed a couple of his bulls on test at Green Springs Bull Test Station in Nevada, Mo. The bulls were on test for about seven months and the testing data looked at the animals back fat, marbling, ribeye size, average daily gain and feed efficiency. At the test station, each bull had a chip placed in their ear and when the animal ate from the single stall high tech feed bunk, the amount of feed consumed was recorded for each animal. At the end of the test period, one of my bulls was found to have a feed conversion ratio of five point two pounds of dry matter to one pound of gain, which was considerably lower than the average bull, Anderson said. Currently, he sells purebred bulls, a few heifers, some feeder calves and also markets some of his bulls semen. To date, he has sold semen to cattlemen in New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri. Recently, I began working with a rancher in Colorado to verify my bloodlines will have the genetics for strong heart and lungs for cattle in feedlots at higher elevations, Anderson said. Because the breed is both polled and horned, Anderson also does DNA testing, which can help determine if an animal carries genetics that would be prone to throw calves with horns, which can assist potential buyers in selecting breeding stock. As for his own herds genetics, Anderson is an Artificial Insemination Technician and selects semen specifically for some of his cows. He uses his own bulls on the rest of the cows and heifers. He only gives cows 45 days to settle, and if they dont, the cows are culled from the herd and marketed. I keep a cow as long as she does a good job. My oldest cow was 17 years old, Anderson said. He uses the short breeding season so calves are born close together, which provides him with uniform group of calves to feed. Andersons herd, which also consists of some purebred Red Angus and a few Angus cows, are dry-lotted in the winter, but he places them on pasture when grass becomes available. His calves have access to creep feed after they are few months old. Anderson said he believes Tarentaise will become a more popular breed, because there is an increase of heart failure among fat cattle fed at higher elevations. Cattle are growing so fast that their heart and lungs cant support them. This is another advantage in using Tarentaise breeding stock. A day after Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath asked people to accept the "truth" that Mughal rulers were "invaders", his cabinet colleague Shrikant Sharma said devotees of Lord Ram do not need anyone's approval to offer prayers at the makeshift temple in Ayodhya. His remark came during a visit to Ayodhya in adjoining Faizabad district where he sought blessings of Ram Lalla at the makeshift temple. "Ram bhakts (devotees of Lord Ram) do not need any visa from any anuyaayee (follower) of Babar for having a darshan (glimpse) of Ram Lalla," Sharma said. "Nearly 500 years ago, invaders had tried to destroy the symbol of our culture," he added. He cited Supreme Court's (March 21) suggestion for an out-of-court settlement of the lingering Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute at Ayodhya. Sharma said he welcomed the SC's suggestion for an out-of-court settlement in the Ayodhya land dispute case and urged that people from all sections of society must sit together and deliberate and find a way forward for construction of grand Ram Temple in Ayodhya. "Enough of politics has been done in the name of Lord Ram. Time has now come for holistic development of Ayodhya," he said. At a function held in Lucknow to mark the birth anniversary of Maharana Pratap, Chief Minister Adityanath had on Tuesday termed Mughal rulers Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar as "invaders" and asked youngsters to follow leaders like Maharana Pratap. "Maharana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh and Chhatrapati Shivaji are our role models, and we must follow the path shown by them. Youngsters must learn a lesson from the self-respect and strength of character from Maharana Pratap. Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar were invaders. The sooner we accept the truth, all the problems of our country will vanish," he had said. The UP government had on Wednesday approved formation of a municipal corporation for Ayodhya, besides making a similar announcement for Mathura and Vrindavan. Sharma, the power minister, said the BJP-led government is committed to all-round and holistic development of all the pilgrimage centres in the state. The Ayodhya municipal corporation will cover the twin cities of Faizabad and Ayodhya, while Mathura-Vrindavan municipal corporation will look after the civic needs in the two pilgrim towns. "The demand for a municipal corporations in Ayodhya-Faizabad and Mathura-Vrindava has been pending for the past 15 years. But successive state governments never paid any attention to this important issue," UP BJP spokesperson Manish Shukla said. Pakistan Army on Wednesday said it will respond at an "appropriate level" to any query by the International Court of Justice over the death sentence given to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav by its military court on the charges of "spying". Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor told the media that Jadhav was sentenced by a military court after "due process of law". "If the ICJ requests Pakistan anything about Jadhav, then the government of Pakistan will respond to it at an appropriate level, he said. He said "the process is continuing within the army over the decision by the (military) court against Jadhav. However, he did not explain the nature of "process". The statement came after Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and discussed the ICJ's stay order on the execution of Jadhav. On the beheading of two Indian security force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, he said, "We are a disciplined force and dont believe in such things. We would not have returned an Indian soldier with respect if we were involved in mutilations." Pakistan sent back an Indian soldier who crossed the Line of Control last year. Earlier, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said the government was analysing the Hague-based ICJ's authority in freezing the execution of Jadhav. Aziz said the government would issue a statement on the issue in the next few days. "We are analysing the Indian petition and the ICJ's authority in this case, Aziz said after the Hague-based ICJ stayed the execution of 46-year-old Jadhav. Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif in a tweet accused India of using Jadhav's death conviction to "divert" attention from its "state-sponsored" terrorism in the country. "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan convicted of offences against national security," Asif tweeted. The order by the ICJ came a day after India approached it against the death sentence handed down to Jadhav by Pakistan's Field General Court Martial last month. Pakistan's media rejected India's claim over the order. Geo TV said that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Pakistan as it can only take cognizance of the matter with the consent of the parties. Dawn online reported that ICJ has received the application of India, but did not report about the Indian claim on the stay order. Similarly, The Express Tribune in its report on the issue has not reported about the stay order. India, in its appeal to the ICJ, accused Pakistan of "egregious" violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and asserted that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the Indian Navy but Pakistan claimed to have arrested him from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. Jadhav's sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. India has warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. In its application, India had also informed the ICJ that it learnt about the death sentence against Jadhav from a press release. Jadhav was sentenced to death for "espionage and subversive activities". India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the Navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. It also said that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran. India has also handed over to Pakistan an appeal by Jadhav's mother, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. The Supreme Court will commence hearing from Thursday on a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of 'triple talaq', 'nikah halala' and polygamy practices among Muslims. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice J Khehar will commence hearing on seven petitions, including five separate writ petitions filed by Muslim women challenging the practice of triple talaq prevalent in the community and terming it unconstitutional. The bench, also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph, R F Nariman, U U Lalit and Abdul Nazeer, will also take up the main matter on its own as a petition titled "Muslim Women's quest for equality". The members of the bench are from different religious communities including Sikh, Christian, Parsee, Hindu and Muslim. The hearing assumes significance as the apex court has decided to hear the case during the summer vacation and even suggested that it is likely to sit on Saturdays and Sundays to expeditiously decide the contentious and sensitive issues arising in the matter. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi will assist the bench which will also examine to what extent the court can interfere in the Muslim personal laws if they are found to be violative of the fundamental rights of citizens enshrined in the Constitution. The apex court had on its own taken cognizance of the question whether Muslim women faced gender discrimination in the event of divorce or due to other marriages of their husbands. The top court will examine the issue to give an authoritative pronouncement on the constitutional and legal validity of 'triple talaq', 'nikah halala' and polygamy practices among Muslims. The hearing holds importance as the Allahabad high court in its verdict pronounced in the last week of April, had held the practice of triple talaq as unilateral and bad in law. The high court verdict had come while dismissing a petition filed by one Aaqil Jamil whose wife had filed a criminal complaint against him alleging that he had tortured her for dowry and when his demands were not met, he gave her triple talaq. The copy of high court verdict was made available only on Tuesday. The apex court had on March 30 said that the Muslim practices of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy are issues that are "very important" and involve "sentiments" and a constitution bench would hear the petitions from May 11. Influential Muslim organisations like the All India Muslim Personal Law Board have opposed court's adjudication of these matters, maintaining these practices stemmed from the Holy Quran and were not justiciable. The Muslim women who have filed the petitions have challenged the practice of triple talaq in which the husband, quite often, pronounces talaq thrice in one go, sometimes even by phone or text message. On other hand, Nikah Halala is a practice intended to curb the 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. The apex court while referring to the matter to a larger bench had observed that "sentiments" were involved in the matter pending before it and a five-judge constitution bench would adjudicate the issue, which required a detailed hearing. The apex court had earlier said it would decide issues pertaining to the legal aspects of the practices of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy among Muslims, but would not deal with the question whether divorce under Muslim law needs to be supervised by courts as it fell under the legislative domain. The Centre had on October 7 last opposed in the Supreme Court the practice of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy among Muslims and favoured a relook on grounds like gender equality and secularism. On March 27, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board had told the apex court that pleas challenging such practices among Muslims were not maintainable as the issues fell outside the realm of judiciary. The board had also said the validity of the Mohammedan Law, founded essentially in the Holy Quran and sources based on it, cannot be tested on the particular provisions of the Constitution. It had said there was a need for "judicial restraint" before going into constitutional interpretation of these unless such an exercise becomes unavoidable. The ministry of law and justice, in its affidavit, had referred to constitutional principles like gender equality, secularism, international covenants, religious practices and marital law prevalent in various Islamic countries to drive home the point that the practice of triple talaq and polygamy needed to be adjudicated upon afresh by the apex court. IMAGE: Activists of Joint Movement Committee protest on the issue of triple talaq at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Photograph: Kamal Singh/PTI Photo Farooq Abdullah requested the PM to consider the proposal, supported by opposition parties, reports Archis Mohan. A non-governmental proposal to hold a conference to discuss the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday received a shot in the arm when it found support from former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. During his half an hour meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, Abdullah requested Modi to look at the proposed initiative by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha, supported by opposition parties and leaders, including Janata Dal-Uniteds Sharad Yadav and the Communist Party of India-Marxist, as a means to reach out to the people of Kashmir. On Tuesday, Sinha, Yadav and CPI-M Chief Sitaram Yechury also reached out to the Congress party to be a part of the initiative to hold a conference on J-K. After his meeting with the PM, Abdullah later met some of these leaders. According to Opposition sources, apart from Sinha and Yadav, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Yechury are likely to send a joint invite for this conference on J-K. The plan is to invite intellectuals, experts on Kashmir and political leaders to the conference with the objective of sending a message to the people of the state that rest of India is concerned about them and cares for them, Yadav said. In his meeting with Modi, Abdullah told the PM that the KashmirValley was on the brink, and the unrest could get out of hand if not urgently addressed politically. Please do not think all of us are Pakistanis, he told the PM, according to a source close to Abdullah. The National Conference leader said to the PM that Kashmiris do not wish to join Pakistan but the people have their grievances, which the Centre should look at through a political process and by reaching out to the stakeholders. Abdullah, who was recently elected to the Lok Sabha from Srinagar in a by-poll, reminded the PM of the initiatives taken on the Kashmir issue during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee as well as the subsequent Congress-led United Progressive Alliance governments, and to let these J-K assembly resolutions and reports of committees and group of interlocutors as the basis for the Centres outreach to the people of Kashmir. CPI-Ms Central Committee at its meeting on April 21 had expressed grave concern at the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, and had proposed to hold a convention of likeminded political forces, intellectuals and social movements on the Kashmir situation. A nephew of Uttar Pradesh legislative council chairman and Samajwadi Party leader Ramesh Yadav on Wednesday slapped a sub-inspector inside a police station in Etah after he was held for allegedly assaulting hospital staffers who refused give in to his demand for "VIP treatment". Bragging of his political links, Mohit Yadav, who was said to be in an inebriated state, was also caught on camera hurling abuses at the cops in the incident, prompting rival Bharatiya Janata Party to accuse the Samajwadi Party of suffering from "hangover" of power. "Mohit Yadav is my name...," said the 24-year-old, before slapping sub-inspector Jitendra Kumar. He was immediately arrested and charged with assault and obstructing an official from carrying out his duty. Mohit, who is unemployed, had visited a hospital with a relative and "demanded VIP treatment" for an X-ray, refusing to wait for their turn, hospital staff alleged. When he was refused, he allegedly assaulted a lab technician and a doctor. The hospital called in the cops. When he was brought to the police station, he abused Kumar and hit him before being overpowered. Mohit shouted abuses and threats at other police officers, expecting better treatment because he was the nephew of the Samajwadi Party lawmaker of the area in Etah. As police officers rushed to control him, he grabbed the collar of one of them. "It seems he was under the influence of alcohol. He claimed to be the Legislative Council Chairman's nephew and was asking for this and that and misbehaved with the hospital staff. He misbehaved with the police officers too," a senior police officer said. Distancing himself from his nephew's actions, Ramesh Yadav said, "He will be beaten if he slaps policemen.... I have nothing to do with it." "I was not there. I am in Lucknow," Yadav said, and even described Mohit as a "brat". Incidents of political leaders and their kin flaunting their links to get their way are not new. Just days earlier, a ruling BJP MLA publicly snubbed a woman IPS officer in Gorakhpur, leaving her in tears. But the ruling party was on Wednesday quick to target the Samajwadi Party over the incident involving Mohit Yadav. "They are yet to come out of their hangover. They should realise that gone are the days of Samajwadi Party's hooliganism," BJP spokesperson Shalabhmani Tripathi said. The Samjwadi Party was ousted from power in the recent assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. After a string of incidents under Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lambasted it for "failure" to maintain law and order and had even said that "police stations have become Samajwadi Party offices". SSP, Etah, Satyarth Anirudh said they will ensure that the accused gets stringent punishment. China on Wednesday lodged a diplomatic protest with the United States over a Congressional delegations meeting with the Dalai Lama in India, saying the move sent a wrong signal to the world and violated Americas commitment not to support Tibets independence. The 14th Dalai Lama is a political exile who has long been engaged in anti-China separatist activities in foreign countries under the pretext of religion, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing. He was replying to questions on a US bipartisan Congressional delegation headed by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi meeting the 81-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. The Dalai Lama is also the head of the Tibetan independence group, Geng said when asked whether the US delegations visit, which is the first after US President Donald Trump took over office in January, signals his administrations policy towards Tibet. Geng said the US delegations visit to Dharamshala and their meeting with the Dalai Lama has sent a very wrong signal to the outside world about supporting Tibetan independence and violated the US governments commitment not to support Tibets independence. We are firmly opposed to that and has lodged solemn representation with the American side. We urge the relevant Congressmen of the US to properly deal with the Tibetan related issues and stop all kinds of contacts with the Dalai Lama and take immediate measures to remove the negative impact, he said. Earlier reports said China has urged Trump, who also had a summit meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, not to hold any meeting with the Dalai Lama. Previous American Presidents, including Barack Obama, had met the Dalai Lama. After the meeting, Pelosi said, As we visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama, our bipartisan delegation comes in his spirit of faith and peace. We come on this visit to be inspired by His Holiness and demonstrate our commitment to the Tibetan people, to their faith, their culture and their language. The Dalai Lama told the delegation that he is the longest guest of the Indian government. He said he would be willing to visit China but it was not possible because Beijing considered him a dangerous splittist. China routinely protests to countries hosting the Dalai Lama or world leaders meeting with him. Last month, China lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the Dalai Lamas visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of Southern Tibet. In an apparent retaliatory measure, China also announced standardised Chinese names for six places in Arunachal Pradesh. Image: US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi meets Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in Dharamsala. Photograph: Douglas Busvine/Reuters Martand Singh, the master of weaves, took India to the world, notes Ritika Kochhar. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com Design curator and writer Mayank Mansingh Kaul says Martand Singh 'Mapu' was foundational to his work. "For my generation, his work was the benchmark that brought the rigour of thorough research and expert execution together, with great imaginative and creative leaps," he says. It's hard to think of national icons outside politics, movies and sports, but in the passing of Singh, there is an outpouring of grief from the art and fashion fraternity. From the 1980s to the 1990s, he was India's leading exponent of textiles, and he shaped notions of contemporary India within the country as well as abroad, much like his mentor, Pupul Jayakar, before him. "Mapu was brilliant at finding varying degrees of excellence and creating a coherent statement of where art stood," says Rajeev Sethi, the other inheritor of Jayakar's vision. Singh, Sethi says, brought together the Weavers Service Centres that were started by Jayakar across the country in the 1950s and created a coherent statement documenting textiles and weaves across the country. In 1982, the Vishwakarma Exhibition that went to Britain as part of the Festival of India brought together these efforts from almost every state. "His chutzpah and eye for quality made Vishwakarma a rallying point to reintroduce amazing creations like the patola, kanjeevarams and ghar cholas," Sethi recalls. Sethi first met him in college where they were both studying history. "He was a year senior to me. He extricated me from being ragged and took me up to his room in the hostel. I still remember that he lounged in this carved cane chair and his lamp was covered with scarves, which was so unusual for a hostel room." After college, Goody Oberoi gave Singh, Naveen Patnaik and Mahijeet Jhala a space within the Oberoi Hotel to open a boutique they called Psychadelhi and where they created bespoke couture like leather pants and capes with peacock feathers. He left it to join Jayakar in The Handlooms & Handicrafts Export Corporation of India. He headed the Calico Museum in Ahmedabad for a while. And in the 1980s, he moved to Delhi where, after the success of Vishwakarma, he helped found the Indian National Trust of Art and Heritage on the lines of the National Trust of Britain. "He was an extremely capable administrator. Jayakar would often say that Sethi, the artist, and Mapu, with his ability to get things done, are my two hands. Now, if only they could get along," says Sethi. Sethi says both were always uncomfortable with the way they were pitched as rivals. "I always envied him his sense of organisation and his administrative abilities. He could make you laugh till you were rolling on the floor, but he found ways to communicate the creative process, and his ability to position things was magical." Singh, Sethi adds, was also very astute in understanding trends and had a clear-sighted view of what made India 'India.' "And he had the correct idea of getting the right stakeholders for INTACH, like the royal families." The royal families were a natural preference for Singh. His mother, Sita Devi of Kapurthala, was known as the 'Pearl of India' in her youth, and, as he wrote in the book, Maharanis: Women of Royal India, was friends with Maharani Gayatri Devi and Princess Durru Shehvar of Berar. He also put together an exhibition in 1985 on the costumes of royal India with Diana Vreeland that travelled to the Met Museum in New York. "I still remember when he came to see me in Paris in 1969 to ask me to collaborate on a fashion show to be held in America. I'd never seen a car so big. It was owned by the Woolworth's heiress who was a family friend of his," recalls Sethi. 'I was 13 or 14 when I first saw him in 1960. Mapu was extra special and we all gawked out of the dorm windows at his fey beauty,' Laila Tyabji wrote in a social media post. She collaborated with him in the 1970s on various interior design projects, and later shared offices when he moved back to Delhi. He was then writing and editing the Amar Vastra Kosh series of books that included Saris of India and Handcrafted Indian Textiles, on which he worked with Rita Kapur Chishti and Rahul Jain. 'He had morphed into an elegant, fastidious textile guru and aesthete. Blue jeans had been abandoned for beautifully tailored white khadi kurta-pyjamas, a 400 count muslin angavastra or shahtoosh shawl draped over his shoulder, setting a fashion of ethnic chic much copied by Delhi's cultural elite,' Tyabji remembered. He became the soul and vision behind INTACH as well at this time. As the first secretary of the trust, along with B K Thapar, he created a holistic vision of conservation that included the protection of the environment as well as material and tangible heritage and also set up the 122 chapter offices at the district level to ensure that the effort reached the grassroots. Among their earliest projects was the conservation of the town and textiles of Chanderi. Fellow founder A G K Menon and he worked on the Varanasi ghats, where the government was planning a World-Bank-funded promenade. "We were able to persuade the government that it was important to consult the people who used the ghats. We even built an electric crematorium and made the burning ghats more efficient," says Menon. "In all, we completed a Rs 100 crore project in Rs 3 crore or Rs 4 crore. And we preserved and brought back meaning to our heritage." Singh retired to Mussoorie in the last decade where he focused on textiles and jewellery, but textile designers from every generation remember him as much for his great sense of humour and unconditional love as his work. "It is important to remember that, at a time when Indian art was only beginning to emerge in its nascent stage, his work showed the way for curatorial questions in textiles," says Kaul. "Thus, for us, his work remains the only example of how research, scholarship and design practice could come together for public projects." MUST READ features in the RELATED LINKS BELOW... MASON CITY | A new urgent care clinic on the east side of Mason City is expected to open in mid-June. The former Iowa Department of Transportation administration building at 1420 Fourth St. S.E. is being remodeled into the Quick Care Medical Clinic. Dr. Hameed Khan, a physician practicing in Waterloo, and his wife, Husna Khan, purchased the building for the clinic, which also will include a medical spa. Medical spa will be part of new Mason City urgent care clinic MASON CITY | A Cedar Falls couple hopes to open a new urgent care clinic in Mason City in th Hameed Khan said he wanted to start his own practice, and urgent care seemed like the way to go. The Khans said there seemed to be a need for another urgent care clinic in Mason City. Urgent care is a place people can go to get treatment for illnesses and injuries that need immediate attention but are not severe enough to require an ER visit. Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa has an urgent care clinic, Mercy Urgent Care, that's open seven days a week at Willowbrook Mall. Husna Khan said the Quick Care Medical Clinic will "work hand-in-hand with Mercy" rather than competing. The Quick Care clinic will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The Khans said the weekend hours may be expanded if there's a need. The urgent care portion of the clinic will employ 10 people, while the medical spa will employ 10 to 12 people, according to the Khans. The medical spa will offer weight loss management, body contouring and skin tightening. It will have a separate entrance and reception area. CASO, a St. Louis-based architectural and engineering firm, is designing the clinic. CASCO has an urgent care clinic prototype that has been used in multiple locations across the U.S. The Khans, who currently live in Cedar Falls, are planning to move to Mason City eventually. They said they look forward to being involved in the community. 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-Herald's 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 state's 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 route's 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. What's important now is that Midlanders show the world another way to disagree, a responsible way our way. This editorial appeared in the April 27 edition of the Omaha World-Herald. Efforts to impeach Nepalese Chief Justice 'an assault on human rights' UN rights chief Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Efforts to impeach Nepalese Chief Justice 'an assault on human rights' UN rights chief, 5 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5912d2254.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. According to a news release issued by the High Commissioner's Office (OHCHR), the impeachment motion was filed days after the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Sushila Karki, revoked the Government's appointment of a new Inspector General of Police, ruling that the Government had violated existing processes and regulations. I urge the Nepal authorities to respect the independence of the judiciary, to withdraw what appears to be a politically motivated impeachment motion and to commit to the processes of transitional justice and accountability, said the top UN human rights official, underscoring their importance to overcome the tragic legacy of the decade-long internal armed conflict in the South Asian nation. On 30 April, two ruling parties, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), filed the motion, alleging that the Chief Justice had encroached on the prerogatives of the executive branch, noted the OHCHR news release, adding that the move suggested a fundamental misunderstanding on the role of an independent judiciary. Also in the news release, High Commissioner Zeid stressed that recent Supreme Court rulings have been critical in advancing human rights in the country and ensuring redress for victims of crime and serious human rights violations. Some of these cases included overturning a presidential pardon recommended for Bal Krishna Dhungel, a leader of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) who had been convicted of murder, and a Government decision to withdraw criminal charges against individuals accused of serious crimes during Nepal's civil war. Noting that the attempt to remove the Chief Justice also gave rise to serious concerns about the Nepalese Government's commitment to transitional justice and the rule of law, High Commissioner Zeid added: The failure to address impunity raises serious questions about Nepal's [] obligations under international human rights law and the motion to impeach Chief Justice Karki undermines its commitment to strengthen democratic institutions and transitional justice. Following the filing of the impeachment motion, Chief Justice Karki has been suspended from her post until the impeachment proceedings are concluded. A committee will now be established to investigate the allegations, after which Members of Parliament will vote on whether to impeach her. The process is unlikely to be concluded before the Chief Justice reaches the mandatory retirement age on 7 June, meaning she will not be able to participate in a number of politically sensitive cases that she had announced the Supreme Court would consider in the near future. However according to most recent reports, acting on a litigation challenging the impeachment motion against Ms. Karki, the Supreme Court of Nepal issued an interim stay on the motion and relieved her suspension. UN migration agency transports hundreds of South Sudanese refugees from border into Ethiopia Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN migration agency transports hundreds of South Sudanese refugees from border into Ethiopia, 5 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5912d29e4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The United Nations migration agency has begun transferring South Sudanese refugees from Ethiopia's Pagak border entry point in Gambella to the Gore-Shembola refugee camp in Benishangul Gumuz Regional States approximately 835 kilometres away. IOM [International Organization for Migration] has set up two way stations, one at Metu [275 km from the Pagak entry point] and the other at Gimbi [310 km from Metu], said Anezier Ebrahim, IOM Officer in charge of the operation, explaining the route taken to reach Gore-Shembola refugee camp in a press release announcing the effort, which began on 1 May. The way stations have been constructed with the financial assistance of the United Kingdom Department for International Development and provide overnight accommodation, shelter and meals for refugees in transit from the border entry point to the camp, he continued. With recent fighting and severe food insecurity further worsening the already dismal humanitarian situation in South Sudan, an additional 30,000 refugees are expected to enter Gambella over the coming months, according to IOM. Refugee camps in Gambella, one of Ethiopia's least developed regions, are currently at maximum capacity with the total number of South Sudanese refugees surpassing that of the local population. In collaboration with the Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs and the Office of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), IOM carried out an assessment of the potential route from Pagak border entry point to Gore-Shembola refugee camp in Benishangul, to ensure the safe and dignified migration of the refugees. Prior to relocation, IOM provided pre-departure medical screenings to ensure that refugees are fit for travel, referring those who present medical concerns to local health facilities. IOM is also working in coordination with Plan International to provide psychosocial support and protection services for unaccompanied minors. Nyakim and her four children are among the 365 refugees who were transferred to Gore-Shembola refugee camp in Benishangul this week. The struggles of the journey to reach Ethiopia are clearly visible all of her children suffer from skin rashes and a cough. The journey from Jonglei to Pagak has been really difficult. We have walked for six days straight and my children and I have eaten only wild fruit from the forest, Nyakim said. Renewed fighting led her to make the perilous journey for the safety of her children, leaving her husband behind. IOM worked in collaboration with Action for the Needy in Ethiopia (ANE) for way station site preparations and the provision of latrines, showers and water. Continued transportation assistance is urgently required to ensure newly arrived refugees' access to basic services in the camps. added Mr. Ebrahim, with the reminder that IOM remains committed to assist refugees with transportation from Pagak border entry point to Gore-Shembola refugee camp in the coming months. In Colombia's central Meta region, Security Council witnesses first-hand progress on peace deal Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, In Colombia's central Meta region, Security Council witnesses first-hand progress on peace deal, 5 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5912d3094.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. While touring the Amazon region of Colombia where one of the monitoring mechanism facilities was set up under a historic peace agreement, a delegation from the United Nations Security Council met today with members of La Referma community, as well as Government representatives and FARC-EP members. The purpose field visit is to witness first-hand implementation of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP), and to observe the progress as well as the challenges of carrying out the aims of a hard-won peace deal. This monitoring mechanism facility in Colombia's Meta Department is one of the designated locations where the Government of Colombia as well as FARC-EP continues to work together paving the path towards peace. While addressing all parties present in the transitional zone, Ambassador Elbio Rosselli, of Uruguay, which holds the Council's presidency of the month of May, highlighted the trust between Government and FARC-EP representatives. He said he was struck to see, on one hand people with the UN (blue) jackets and on the other, Government representatives as well as guerrilla component using the same brown colour, adding that this further affirms the absolute confidence, certainty, that this process goes forward and has no return. The members of the Council are accompanied by the head of the UN Mission in Colombia, Jean Arnault, senior Colombian Government officials and FARC-EP leaders. The Colombian Government's High Commissioner for Peace recalled that Meta was one of the areas most affected by violence. We know what peace means for this community and we hope they can talk to the people immersed in the conflict, Sergio Jaramillo told the members of the Security Council. Also present was FARC-EP leader, Ivan Marquez. He expressed a sincere, deep thanks to the Security Council. Upon departure from New York earlier this week, Mr. Rosselli stressed that the presence of the Security Council would carry a message to Colombia that the UN was committed to the special political mission established there, and would provide additional support, as requested. After finishing the visit to Colombia, the Members of the Security Council will return to New York, where they will hold an informative session about their visit later in May. Security Council condemns attack against UN Mission in South Sudan Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 6 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council condemns attack against UN Mission in South Sudan, 6 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5912d3584.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Strongly condemning the attack against the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on 3 May, the Security Council has called on all parties to immediately adhere to the permanent ceasefire called for in an August 2015 peace agreement. Between 11pm and midnight on 3 May, the Mission's temporary operating base in Leer town in the former Unity State came under small-arms attack from the direction of the nearby Government-held town. According to the Mission, peacekeepers' quick defensive action secured the safety of all of the internally displaced people who had sought UN protection adjacent to the base. The members of the Security Council recalled that individuals who, directly or indirectly, engage in attacks against United Nations missions, international security presence, or other peacekeeping operations, or humanitarian personnel, may be designated for targeted sanctions, said a statement issued overnight by the 15-member body. Further in the statement, the Council members expressed appreciation for the actions taken by UNMISS peacekeepers to repel the 3 May attack, further condemned the continued violence committed by all parties, including the ongoing military offensives, and called for removal of all obstacles to the delivery of lifesaving humanitarian assistance. Earlier this week, the UN human rights chief urged the Government of South Sudan to halt any further military offensives towards Aburoc in the Upper Nile region. Despite the August 2015 peace agreement, South Sudan slipped back into conflict due to renewed clashes between rival forces the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) loyal to President Salva Kiir and the SPLA in Opposition backing former First Vice-President Riek Machar. Violence has caused a spike in the number of displaced people. South Sudan: UN peacekeepers deployed to enable aid delivery to Upper Nile's Aburoc area Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 7 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, South Sudan: UN peacekeepers deployed to enable aid delivery to Upper Nile's Aburoc area, 7 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5912d4294.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has urgently deployed peacekeeping troops to Aburoc in the Upper Nile region to help enable the delivery of much needed humanitarian assistance to the 50,000 people displaced from home, the Mission said today. The aim is to provide humanitarian groups with the confidence they need to resume the provision of urgent assistance to tens of thousands of people in Aburoc who are fleeing the ongoing violence, said the Head of UNMISS, David Shearer, in a press release. Currently up to 50,000 people are sheltering in and around the town of Aburoc on the west bank of the River Nile after a series of clashes between Government and opposition forces. The most urgent need is drinking water as there is a risk of an outbreak of diarrhoea or even cholera which has the potential to kill thousands of vulnerable people, he said. Mr. Shearer said the deployment is short-term and the peacekeepers' immediate task is to secure the base from where humanitarians are providing water and other assistance. The road between Kodok and Aburoc will be checked for old landmines by the UN Mine Action Service and cleared as necessary. Protection may also be provided for water trucks using the road if that is required to enable people to move freely. Despite the August 2015 peace agreement, South Sudan slipped back into conflict due to renewed clashes between rival forces the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) loyal to President Salva Kiir and the SPLA in Opposition backing former First Vice-President Riek Machar. I also note that the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has acknowledged UNMISS' intention to help facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance to the people of the Upper Nile, Mr. Shearer said. Nigeria: UNICEF welcomes release of 80 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 7 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Nigeria: UNICEF welcomes release of 80 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, 7 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5912d4714.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today welcomed yesterday's release of more than 80 of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram insurgents over three years ago. "It is heartening to know that the girls will be returning to their families who have been waiting for this day. They will face a long and difficult process to rebuild their lives after the indescribable horror and trauma they have suffered at the hands of Boko Haram," said UNICEF Nigeria Acting Representative Pernille Ironside in a statement. She said UNICEF is on standby to support the Nigerian authorities to provide the comprehensive psychosocial support, help reunite the girls with their families and make sure they can continue their education in a safe environment. "UNICEF calls on Boko Haram to end all grave violations against children, especially the abduction of children and the sexual abuse and forced marriage of girls," she said. HOUSTON, May 09, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Contango Oil & Gas Company (NYSE MKT:MCF) (Contango or the Company) announced today its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017 and provided an operational update. First Quarter Highlights Production of 5.2 Bcfe for the quarter, or 57.6 Mmcfed Net income of $0.9 million for the quarter Adjusted EBITDAX, on a recurring basis, of $7.2 million for the quarter Commenced production from our Pecos County acreage in the Southern Delaware Basin, targeting the Upper Wolfcamp formation Summary First Quarter Financial Results Net income for the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $0.9 million, or $0.04 per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $11.4 million, or $(0.60) per basic and diluted share, for the same period last year. This improvement was attributable primarily to higher revenues from higher prices, lower operating expenses from cost improvements, lower depreciation, depletion, and amortization (DD&A) expense and impairment expenses, a higher gain attributable to our investment in Exaro Energy III LLC (Exaro) and a gain from the sale of a non-core South Texas gas field. Average weighted shares outstanding were approximately 24.6 million and 19.1 million for the current and prior year quarters, respectively. The Company reported Adjusted EBITDAX, as defined below, of approximately $7.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, compared to $7.3 million for the same period last year. Cash flow for the current quarter was $6.4 million, or $0.26 per share, compared to $6.4 million, or $0.33 per share for the prior year quarter. Revenues for the current quarter were approximately $19.4 million compared to $17.6 million for the 2016 quarter. Despite lower production during the current quarter, the dramatic increase in commodity prices was responsible for the increase in revenues. Production for the first quarter of 2017 was approximately 5.2 Bcfe, or 57.6 Mmcfe per day, within our previously provided guidance, compared to 79.4 Mmcfe per day for the first quarter of 2016. This expected decline in production can be attributed to minimal new production added during 2016 and 2017 because of our reduced 2016 drilling program in response to the low and uncertain commodity price environment. Crude oil and natural gas liquids production during the first quarter of 2017 was approximately 2,700 barrels per day, or 28% of total production, compared to approximately 4,200 barrels per day, or 32% of total production, in the first quarter of 2016, a decline related to the lower capital expenditures in 2016. Our production guidance for the second quarter of 2017 is expected to be relatively flat with the first quarter, or 54 59 Mmcfed, as we start to add initial production from our Southern Delaware Basin drilling activity. The weighted average equivalent sales price during the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $3.75 per Mcfe, compared to $2.43 per Mcfe for the same period last year, as we experienced increases of 72%, 48% and 78% in crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids prices, respectively compared to the prior year quarter. Operating expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2017 were approximately $6.8 million, or $1.32 per Mcfe and within our previously provided guidance, compared to $7.6 million, or $1.05 per Mcfe, for the same period last year. Included in operating expenses are direct lease operating expenses, transportation and processing costs, workover expenses and production and ad valorem taxes. Operating expenses exclusive of production and ad valorem taxes were approximately $6.2 million, or $1.19 per Mcfe, for the current quarter compared to approximately $6.7 million, or $0.93 per Mcfe, for the prior year quarter. Our guidance for operating expenses for the second quarter of 2017, exclusive of production and ad valorem taxes, is between $6.2 to $6.8 million, higher than the recent quarter due to additional workovers scheduled for the upcoming quarter. DD&A expense for the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $11.8 million, or $2.27 per Mcfe, compared to $16.5 million, or $2.29 per Mcfe, for the prior year quarter, a decrease primarily attributable to lower production during the quarter. Impairment and abandonment expense of oil and gas properties was $30 thousand for the current quarter. Impairment and abandonment expense of oil and gas properties for the three months ended March 31, 2016 was $1.9 million. Of this amount, approximately $0.7 million was related to impairment of proved properties and $1.1 million was related to the impairment of unproved properties primarily in Fayette and Gonzales counties, Texas. G&A expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2017 were $6.6 million, or $1.27 per Mcfe, compared to $5.9 million, or $0.82 per Mcfe, for the prior year quarter. G&A expenses for the current and prior year quarters include $1.5 million and $1.7 million, respectively, in non-cash stock compensation expense. Other items contributing to the increase in G&A costs for the current quarter were higher cash incentive bonus accruals for 2017 compared to no accruals in 2016; accrual of retention bonuses for certain non-executive employees in 2017 and lower cash compensation costs in the prior quarter due to the implementation of our salary replacement program in late 2015, where cash employee salaries and directors retainer fees were reduced by 10%, with that amount to be paid at the end of 2016 in common stock. That program was discontinued in latter 2016. For the second quarter of 2017, we have provided guidance of $5.2 million to $5.8 million for general and administrative expenses, exclusive of non-cash stock compensation (Cash G&A). Gain from affiliates for the three months ended March 31, 2017 was approximately $1.8 million, compared to a gain of $40 thousand for the same period last year, associated with our investment in Exaro. 2017 Capital Program Capital costs incurred for the three months ended March 31, 2017 were approximately $19.3 million, including $3.0 million in paid and accrued leasehold acquisition costs and $16.1 million for the drilling and completion of wells in the Southern Delaware Basin in Pecos County, Texas. Our capital expenditure budget for 2017 was originally forecasted to be $46.3 million, including $36.6 million to drill and/or complete nine gross wells (4.0 net) on our Southern Delaware Basin acreage. We have revised our 2017 budget to include an additional $11.2 million in drilling and completion costs for one additional gross well (0.5 net), and anticipated increases in the cost of vendor and supplier goods and services, which increases our forecast for the year to a total of $57.5 million. As of March 31, 2017, we had approximately $59.7 million of debt outstanding under our credit facility. Effective May, 4, 2017, the borrowing base under our facility was redetermined at $125 million, which reflects the impact of our limited drilling program in 2016 as well as no benefit from our 2017 drilling program as the borrowing base is redetermined based on year-end reserves. Derivative Instruments We have the following financial derivative contracts in place for the remainder of the year: Commodity Period Derivative Volume/Month Price/Unit (1) Natural Gas Apr - July 2017 Collar 400,000 MMBtus $ 2.65 - 3.00 Natural Gas Aug - Oct 2017 Collar 200,000 MMBtus $ 2.65 - 3.00 Natural Gas Nov - Dec 2017 Collar 400,000 MMBtus $ 2.65 - 3.00 Natural Gas Apr - July 2017 Swap 300,000 MMBtus $ 3.51 Natural Gas Aug - Oct 2017 Swap 70,000 MMBtus $ 3.51 Natural Gas Nov - Dec 2017 Swap 300,000 MMBtus $ 3.51 Oil Apr - July 2017 Swap 9,000 Bbls $ 53.95 Oil Aug - Oct 2017 Swap 6,000 Bbls $ 53.95 Oil Nov - Dec 2017 Swap 8,000 Bbls $ 53.95 Oil Apr - Dec 2017 Swap 9,000 Bbls $ 56.20 (1) Commodity price derivatives based on Henry Hub NYMEX natural gas prices and West Texas Intermediate oil prices, as applicable. Selected Financial and Operating Data The following table reflects certain comparative financial and operating data for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Offshore Volumes Sold: Oil and condensate (Mbbls) 22 51 -57 % Natural gas (Mmcf) 3,008 3,838 -22 % Natural gas liquids (Mbbls) 84 113 -26 % Natural gas equivalents (Mmcfe) 3,646 4,821 -24 % Onshore Volumes Sold: Oil and condensate (Mbbls) 92 134 -31 % Natural gas (Mmcf) 720 1,082 -33 % Natural gas liquids (Mbbls) 44 86 -49 % Natural gas equivalents (Mmcfe) 1,534 2,405 -36 % Total Volumes Sold: Oil and condensate (Mbbls) 114 185 -38 % Natural gas (Mmcf) 3,728 4,920 -24 % Natural gas liquids (Mbbls) 128 199 -36 % Natural gas equivalents (Mmcfe) 5,180 7,226 -28 % Daily Sales Volumes: Oil and condensate (Mbbls) 1.3 2.0 -38 % Natural gas (Mmcf) 41.4 54.1 -24 % Natural gas liquids (Mbbls) 1.4 2.2 -36 % Natural gas equivalents (Mmcfe) 57.6 79.4 -28 % Average sales prices: Oil and condensate (per Bbl) $ 48.71 $ 28.39 72 % Natural gas (per Mcf) $ 2.99 $ 2.02 48 % Natural gas liquids (per Bbl) $ 21.36 $ 11.99 78 % Total (per Mcfe) $ 3.75 $ 2.43 54 % Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Offshore Selected Costs ($ per Mcfe) Lease operating expenses (1) $ 0.93 $ 0.51 82 % Production and ad valorem taxes $ 0.13 $ 0.07 86 % Onshore Selected Costs ($ per Mcfe) Lease operating expenses (1) $ 1.81 $ 1.77 2 % Production and ad valorem taxes $ 0.13 $ 0.22 -41 % Average Selected Costs ($ per Mcfe) Lease operating expenses (1) $ 1.19 $ 0.93 28 % Production and ad valorem taxes $ 0.13 $ 0.12 8 % General and administrative expense (cash) $ 0.99 $ 0.58 71 % Interest expense $ 0.15 $ 0.12 25 % Adjusted EBITDAX (2) (thousands) $ 7,154 $ 7,264 Weighted Average Shares Outstanding (thousands) Basic 24,607 19,079 Diluted 24,641 19,079 (1) LOE includes transportation and workover expenses. (2) Adjusted EBITDAX is a non-GAAP financial measure. See below for reconciliation to net income (loss). CONTANGO OIL & GAS COMPANY CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (in thousands) March 31, December 31, 2017 2016 ASSETS (unaudited) Cash and cash equivalents $ $ Accounts receivable, net 11,825 16,727 Other current assets 2,267 2,327 Net property and equipment 344,642 340,382 Investment in affiliates and other non-current assets 18,744 17,078 TOTAL ASSETS $ 377,478 $ 376,514 LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY Accounts payable and accrued liabilities 52,958 55,135 Other current liabilities 5,929 7,754 Long-term debt 59,722 54,354 Asset retirement obligations 19,949 22,618 Other non-current liabilities 248 248 Total shareholders equity 238,672 236,405 TOTAL LIABILITIES & SHAREHOLDERS EQUITY $ 377,478 $ 376,514 CONTANGO OIL & GAS COMPANY CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (in thousands) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (unaudited) REVENUES Oil and condensate sales $ 5,542 $ 5,247 Natural gas sales 11,140 9,935 Natural gas liquids sales 2,742 2,400 Total revenues 19,424 17,582 EXPENSES Operating expenses 6,833 7,604 Exploration expenses 91 320 Depreciation, depletion and amortization 11,771 16,545 Impairment and abandonment of oil and gas properties 30 1,851 General and administrative expenses 6,596 5,902 Total expenses 25,321 32,222 OTHER INCOME (EXPENSE) Gain from investment in affiliates, net of income taxes 1,784 40 Gain from sale of assets 2,940 Interest expense (759 ) (878 ) Gain on derivatives, net 3,096 4,204 Other expense (88 ) (40 ) Total other income 6,973 3,326 NET INCOME (LOSS) BEFORE INCOME TAXES 1,076 (11,314 ) Income tax provision (191 ) (90 ) NET INCOME (LOSS) $ 885 $ (11,404 ) Non-GAAP Financial Measures EBITDAX represents net income (loss) before interest expense, taxes, and depreciation, depletion and amortization, and oil & gas expenses. Adjusted EBITDAX represents EBITDAX as further adjusted to reflect the items set forth in the table below, all of which will be required in determining our compliance with financial covenants under our credit facility. We have included EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX in this release to provide investors with a supplemental measure of our operating performance and information about the calculation of some of the financial covenants that are contained in our credit agreement. We believe EBITDAX is an important supplemental measure of operating performance because it eliminates items that have less bearing on our operating performance and so highlights trends in our core business that may not otherwise be apparent when relying solely on GAAP financial measures. We also believe that securities analysts, investors and other interested parties frequently use EBITDAX in the evaluation of companies, many of which present EBITDAX when reporting their results. Adjusted EBITDAX is a material component of the covenants that are imposed on us by our credit agreement. We are subject to financial covenant ratios that are calculated by reference to Adjusted EBITDAX. Non-compliance with the financial covenants contained in our credit agreement could result in a default, an acceleration in the repayment of amounts outstanding and a termination of lending commitments. Our management and external users of our financial statements, such as investors, commercial banks, research analysts and others, also use EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX to assess: the financial performance of our assets without regard to financing methods, capital structure or historical cost basis; the ability of our assets to generate cash sufficient to pay interest costs and support our indebtedness; our operating performance and return on capital as compared to those of other companies in our industry, without regard to financing or capital structure; and the feasibility of acquisitions and capital expenditure projects and the overall rates of return on alternative investment opportunities. EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX are not presentations made in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. As discussed above, we believe that the presentation of EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX in this release is appropriate. However, when evaluating our results, you should not consider EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX in isolation of, or as a substitute for, measures of our financial performance as determined in accordance with GAAP, such as net income (loss). EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX have material limitations as performance measures because they exclude items that are necessary elements of our costs and operations. Because other companies may calculate EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX differently than we do, EBITDAX may not be, and Adjusted EBITDAX as presented in this release is not, comparable to similarly-titled measures reported by other companies. The following table reconciles net income to EBITDAX and Adjusted EBITDAX for the periods presented: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (in thousands) Net income (loss) $ 885 $ (11,404 ) Interest expense 759 878 Income tax provision 191 90 Depreciation, depletion and amortization 11,771 16,545 Exploration expense 91 320 EBITDAX $ 13,697 $ 6,429 Unrealized gain on derivative instruments $ (3,275 ) $ (2,696 ) Non-cash stock-based compensation charges 1,456 1,699 Impairment of oil and gas properties 1,872 Gain on sale of assets and investment in affiliates (4,724 ) (40 ) Adjusted EBITDAX $ 7,154 $ 7,264 Drilling Activity Update Our recent Southern Delaware Basin activity consists of the following: Lonestar Gunfighter The Lonestar-Gunfighter #1H, an Upper Wolfcamp test in the northwest portion of our acreage position, initiated flow back in January 2017, on a controlled flow basis, reaching a maximum 24-hour IP rate of 966 Boed (72% oil). The well was drilled to a Total Measured Depth (TMD) of 20,801 feet with a 10,074 foot lateral and 50 frac stages. For the past five days, since running tubing in preparation for artificial gas lift, the well has averaged 593 Boed (71% oil). Rude Ram The Rude Ram #1H was drilled from a common surface location with the Ripper State #1H one mile south of the Lonestar-Gunfighter, also targeting the Upper Wolfcamp. The well was completed in April 2017, with 30 day initial rate expected in late May. The well was drilled to a TMD of 20,804 feet with a 10,103 foot lateral and 50 frac stages. Ripper State The Ripper State #1H was drilled from a common surface location with the Rude Ram #1H one mile south of the Lonestar-Gunfighter, also targeting the Upper Wolfcamp. The well was completed in April 2017, with 30 day initial rate expected in late May. The well was drilled to a TMD of 20,898 feet with a 10,152 foot lateral and 50 frac stages. Grim Reaper The Grim Reaper #1H was initially drilled in February 2017 as a vertical pilot well through the Lower Wolfcamp, and after reaching a TMD of 12,508 feet in the Lower Wolfcamp and logging the well, casing problems in the intermediate hole section prohibited a sidetrack into the Upper Wolfcamp. It was therefore decided to perforate, frac and test several zones in the Lower Wolfcamp section that looked prospective on the logs and had hydrocarbon shows while drilling. These tests, which commenced in early May, could provide valuable knowledge about other potential opportunity levels across the leasehold. Gunner After drilling the Grim Reaper, the rig was moved to the Gunner location, approximately two miles southeast of the Lonestar-Gunfighter, also targeting the Upper Wolfcamp, and drilling is in progress. We expect completion operations to commence in early July. Management Commentary Allan D. Keel, the Companys President and Chief Executive Officer, said We continue to advance the de-risking and development of our Southern Delaware Basin acreage. To date we have brought three wells on production, the first of which we previously announced and the other two which have been on-line for less than 30 days. Upon completion of the Gunner, we will likely move the rig back to the Grim Reaper location to drill a new horizontal well, the Crusader #1, as we continue moving forward toward de-risking our position and maximizing our results. Guidance for Second Quarter 2017 The Company is providing the following guidance for the second calendar quarter of 2017. Production 54,000 - 59,000 Mcfe per day LOE (including transportation and workovers) $6.2 million - $6.8 million Production and ad valorem taxes (% of Revenue) 5.00% Cash G&A $5.2 million - $5.8 million DD&A Rate $2.30 - $2.55 Teleconference Call Contango management will hold a conference call to discuss the information described in this press release on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 9:30am Central Daylight Time. Those interested in participating in the earnings conference call may do so by calling the following phone number: 1-800-723-6604, (International 1-785-830-7977) and entering the following participation code: 9929003. A replay of the call will be available from Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 12:30pm CDT through Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at 12:30pm CDT by clicking in the audio replay link here, and entering participation code 9929003. Contango Oil & Gas Company is a Houston, Texas based, independent energy company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development, exploitation and production of crude oil and natural gas offshore in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and in the onshore Texas and Rocky Mountain regions of the United States. Additional information is available on the Company's website at http://contango.com. This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Contango that are intended to be covered by the safe harbor "forward-looking statements" provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, based on Contangos current expectations and includes statements regarding acquisitions and divestitures, estimates of future production, future results of operations, quality and nature of the asset base, the assumptions upon which estimates are based and other expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions, strategies or statements about future events or performance (often, but not always, using words such as "expects", projects, "anticipates", "plans", "estimates", "potential", "possible", "probable", or "intends", or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "will", "should", or "could" be taken, occur or be achieved). Statements concerning oil and gas reserves also may be deemed to be forward looking statements in that they reflect estimates based on certain assumptions that the resources involved can be economically exploited. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those, reflected in the statements. These risks include, but are not limited to: the risks of the oil and gas industry (for example, operational risks in exploring for, developing and producing crude oil and natural gas; risks and uncertainties involving geology of oil and gas deposits; the uncertainty of reserve estimates; the uncertainty of estimates and projections relating to future production, costs and expenses; potential delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures; health, safety and environmental risks and risks related to weather such as hurricanes and other natural disasters); uncertainties as to the availability and cost of financing; fluctuations in oil and gas prices; risks associated with derivative positions; inability to realize expected value from acquisitions, inability of our management team to execute its plans to meet its goals, shortages of drilling equipment, oil field personnel and services, unavailability of gathering systems, pipelines and processing facilities and the possibility that government policies may change or governmental approvals may be delayed or withheld. Additional information on these and other factors which could affect Contangos operations or financial results are included in Contangos other reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Investors are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from the projections in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the estimates and opinions of management at the time the statements are made. Contango does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements should circumstances or management's estimates or opinions change. Initial production rates are subject to decline over time and should not be regarded as reflective of sustained production levels. Fourth Opinion on Austria, adopted on 14 October 2016 Publisher Council of Europe: Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities Publication Date 14 October 2017 Citation / Document Symbol ACFC/OP/IV(2016)007 Related Document(s) Statement by the Republic of Austria on the Opinion of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities during the 4th monitoring cycle Cite as Council of Europe: Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Fourth Opinion on Austria, adopted on 14 October 2016 , 14 October 2017, ACFC/OP/IV(2016)007, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591301d64.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Regime Classification:: Transitional Government or Hybrid Regime Nations in Transit Democracy Score: 4.61 / 7 (1 = Most Democratic, 7 = Least Democratic) Score Evolution: No Change NIT Country Rank: 17/29 Quick Facts Capital: Tbilisi Population: 3.7 million GNI/capita, PPP: $9,340 Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free Press Freedom Status: Partly Free Net Freedom Status: Free 2017 Electoral Process 4.50 Civil Society 3.75 Independent Media 4.00 National Democratic Governance 5.50 Local Democratic Governance 5.25 Judicial Framework and Independence 4.75 Corruption 4.50 Democracy Score 4.61 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Electoral Process 4.75 5.25 5.25 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 Civil Society 3.50 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 Independent Media 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 National Democratic Governance 5.75 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 Local Democratic Governance 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.25 5.25 5.25 Judicial Framework and Independence 4.75 4.75 4.75 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.75 Corruption 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 Democracy Score 4.79 4.93 4.93 4.86 4.82 4.75 4.68 4.64 4.61 4.61 NOTE: The ratings reflect the consensus of Freedom House, its academic advisers, and the author(s) of this report. If consensus cannot be reached, Freedom House is responsible for the final ratings. The ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the highest level of democratic progress and 7 the lowest. The Democracy Score is an average of ratings for the categories tracked in a given year. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author(s). By Michael Hikari Cecile Executive Summary: Throughout 2016, Georgia's democratic development continued its recent positive trajectory, although progress stalled or even regressed along certain lines. The parliamentary elections in October 2016 demonstrated improved administration and regulation of the electoral process, and hard-won gains countering both petty and elite-level corruption appear increasingly institutionalized. Yet while monitors described the elections as mostly free and fair, instances of pre-election and election day violence cast a pall over the process. More problematically, politically charged legal battles over the fate of the primary opposition television channel, Rustavi2, and a running conflict over the independence of the judiciary, threatened the country's pluralistic and open environment. The last four years in Georgia have been defined by the conflict between the United National Movement (UNM) and the Georgian Dream (GD). In 2003, UNM was in the vanguard of peaceful protests that forced out Georgia's president Eduard Shevardnadze, and its leader Mikheil Saakashvili replaced him as president in early 2004. Under Saakashvili's leadership, the party governed until 2012, during which time it rapidly strengthened its state institutions, forced organized crime into hiding, and virtually exterminated petty corruption. However, in pursuing its reforms, UNM rule often acted in contradiction to the rule of law, and power became concentrated in the hands of Saakashvili and a small circle of his closest advisers. UNM excesses fed popular dissatisfaction, which led to a surprise victory by the opposition Georgian Dream coalition in the 2012 parliamentary elections. Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of the Georgian Dream (GD) party that led the coalition, assumed the office of the premiership, and went into an acrimonious cohabitation with Saakashvili as president. Following the end of Saakashvili's term and GD-backed Giorgi Margvelashvili's presidential victory in 2013, Ivanishvili stepped down as prime minister. Ivanishvili's longtime business associate, Irakli Gharibashvili, assumed the post. Despite presiding over several key reforms, Gharibashvili's acerbic style and combative stance towards the UNM made him unpopular, and he resigned at the end of 2015 ahead of the 2016 parliamentary elections. Current prime minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, also a former Ivanishvili business associate, took up the premiership in a move that lowered the political temperature. Despite Ivanishvili's departure from government office, he remains active in Georgia's political life, which has prompted accusations that his wealth and influence over GD make him an unaccountable, informal power. Saakashvili, too, retained significant power over the UNM until the aftermath of the 2016 parliamentary elections, even after he left the country under threat of prosecution and effectively gave up his Georgian citizenship to join the Ukrainian government. After coming to power in 2012, GD embarked on a campaign of "restorative justice," prosecuting former officials from the UNM for various acts of corruption and abuse of office. While a number of UNM officials did engage in abuses and had erected a system that put UNM allies in control of broad swathes of the economy, GD's campaign was regarded by many as politically motivated. GD's singular emphasis on prosecuting former officials, as opposed to redressing thousands of outstanding complaints of forcible state property appropriation, for example, contributed to doubts over GD's interest in pursuing justice. New cases against UNM ex-officials largely ceased in 2015, and disappeared almost entirely in 2016. The October parliamentary elections were the most significant event of 2016. Domestic and international organizations broadly assessed them as well administered and a generally accurate representation of voters' preferences. However, there were some administrative irregularities, voter intimidation, and violent incidents pre-election and on election day, most notably the bombing of the car of a senior UNM official only two days before the election. These incidents did not appear to have a direct effect on the election's integrity, however. GD running as a party and without the coalition partners with which it had won in 2012 and governed in parliament won 114 out of 150 seats, giving it a "super-majority" with which it has the ability to pass constitutional amendments at will. The UNM, still the largest opposition party in Georgia, saw its representation in parliament fall by more than 50 percent, prompting a split within the party over the role of Saakashvili and the radical tactics he advocated from abroad during and after the campaign. The areas of greatest concern for Georgia's democratic consolidation in 2016 were the independence of its media and judiciary. While the Georgian media landscape is broadly pluralistic and transparent, ongoing legal issues surrounding ownership of the most watched TV channel in the country, the pro-UNM Rustavi2, have cast the integrity of the entire sector into doubt. In late 2015, a Georgian court ruled in favor of a plaintiff who claims ownership of the station, despite his relatively brief claim to the station and a battery of legal inconsistencies noted by Georgian watchdog organizations. In 2016, an appeals court upheld the decision, and the Georgian Supreme Court had accepted the case for review by the end of 2016. Similarly, guilty verdicts in the so-called "cable case" for seven defendants charged in 2014 on corruption charges were strongly criticized by independent judicial observers as lacking in any reasonable legal basis. Both cases raise serious questions over the continued independence of the judiciary and media sector, which have otherwise seen some genuine improvements in recent years. No score changes. Outlook for 2017: Presidential elections are tentatively scheduled for 2017, but there is increasing uncertainty over whether or not they will take place. Proposed constitutional amendments have raised the possibility of GD using the party's supermajority to change the presidential selection process to an indirect system using a college of electors from the current direct elections. Current President Margvelashvili has used his veto willingly and exercised independence in other ways, at times to the frustration of the GD. There are also concerns the ruling party will use its power to push forward illiberal measures, such as banning electoral blocs and constitutionally enshrining marriage as a heterosexual union (even though it is already forbidden by existing Georgian law). These proposals suggest willingness by some elements of GD to use its constitutional supermajority as a political cudgel. Democratization's momentum could be further challenged by the weakening of the opposition in the wake of GD's overwhelming victory, as several smaller, vibrant liberal parties are out of parliament and the main opposition UNM has split. The court-approved takeover of the opposition-aligned Rustavi2 TV channel is another major issue for 2017, as its case now stands before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It remains to be seen if Rustavi2's problems will be isolated amid an otherwise relatively healthy media environment, or if it only represents the first in a wider attack on the country's independent media. National Democratic Governance: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 5.75 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 Despite parliamentary elections in October, much of 2016 in Georgia was politically calm relative to recent years. The governing Georgian Dream (GD) coalition and the main opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM), continued to be at odds, but the acrimony between the two sides was relatively less bitter than it has been since GD defeated UNM in the 2012 parliamentary elections. The most significant political event of the year was the October parliamentary elections. Most independent domestic and international observers described the elections as free and fair, although there were incidents of violence and some administrative irregularities (see Electoral Process). The result of the elections was a major shift in the political landscape. Running as a party instead of a coalition, GD won a super-majority of 114 out of 150 seats, with which two independent MPs will also align. [1] GD's former coalition partners from the liberally-inclined Republicans and ex-partners turned opposition Free Democrats, to conservative and nationalist factions like the Industrialists and National Forum ran on their own and failed to clear the five percent threshold to enter parliament. The UNM remained the largest opposition party in Georgia, but its representation in the new parliament decreased by more than half compared to 2012. The Alliance of Patriots, a populist, socially conservative party with anti-Western leanings, just barely met the threshold and became the third party in parliament. Having won without the coalition partners with which it gained power in 2012 and governed through 2016, GD will now be able to pass legislation, or even change the constitution, without the input or parliamentary backing of other parties. While GD's dominant position is not itself evidence of democratic decline, Georgia's post-independence history of autocratic swings toward single-party rule raises fears that GD could succumb to similar temptations. The first two years of GD rule saw numerous prosecutions of former officials who had served in the UNM governments 2004-2012. These cases were mostly ended in 2016, continuing the pattern from 2015, during which new prosecutions slowed and outstanding cases were brought to their judicial conclusions. The exception was new charges for exceeding official powers with use of violence against former deputy interior minister Giorgi Lortkipanidze, who had left Georgia to serve as the Chief of Police in Odesa, Ukraine. [2] The slowdown in prosecutions may be attributable to the administration of Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who pursued a more conciliatory and policy-oriented agenda in 2016 after replacing Irakli Gharibashvili at the end of 2015. [3] Kvirikashvili also brought a newfound stability to relations between the prime ministry and President Giorgi Margvelashvili. Margvelashvili took office with GD support in 2013 but frequently feuded with Gharibashvili, [4] due in part to ambiguity over the division of powers between the presidency and prime ministry after constitutional amendments that came into force in 2012. [5] Improved coordination between the head of state and head of government did not appear to upset the independence of the presidency, however, as President Margvelashvili periodically used his constitutional authority to check the GD coalition's parliamentary majority in 2016. [6] However, unlike in previous years, Margvelashvili's perceived policy heterodoxy did not lead to harsh statements from the prime ministry, or from GD founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country's wealthiest individual and prime minister between 2012 and 2013. Ivanishvili stepped down from the premiership in November 2013 following Margvelashvili's victory in the presidential elections, but he continues to play a role in Georgian politics. The full extent of Ivanishvili's involvement in governing is hard to assess now that he has no official position, but in 2016 he was less publicly visible compared to previous years. Kvirikashvili may exercise more independence compared to his predecessor, particularly given his pursuit of more constructive ties with both the presidency and the UNM. At the same time, according to polling in 2016, [7] Ivanishvili is still seen as the ultimate authority in GD, even if he is increasingly disengaged from everyday policy and political decision-making. On the other side of the political divide, former president Mikheil Saakashvili struggled in 2016 to retain control of the UNM, which he founded in 2001 and through which he served as president from 2004-2012. After his party lost the presidential election in 2013 and with criminal charges looming, Saakashvili moved abroad and took the post of Governor of Odesa region in Ukraine in 2014. After taking Ukrainian citizenship, Saakashvili's Georgian citizenship was automatically terminated. [8] However, Saakashvili continued to exercise authority over the UNM during 2016, joining UNM campaign rallies remotely, [9] and seeing his wife Sandra Roelofs installed as second on the UNM parliamentary election party list. [10] In late September, statements by some UNM-affiliated youth activists [11] and a leaked recording of Saakashvili talking with UNM officials [12] indicated that certain UNM cadres were discussing taking to the streets to topple the government after the elections if UNM did not get the results it wanted. Saakashvili's influence diminished following the UNM's collapse in the parliamentary elections. The UNM's huge losses during the first round of voting precipitated in-fighting when Saakashvili called on the party to boycott the second round runoff elections and the parliament itself. Ultimately, in the face of domestic and international criticism, the UNM's political council rejected the boycott [13] over Saakashvili's protests. [14] Despite foregoing a boycott, some UNM leaders described the elections as invalid or manipulated, [15] contrary to the conclusions of domestic and international election monitoring groups and civil society organizations. The UNM's loss effectively ceded the bulk of Georgia's political space to GD. In particular, the UNM's fixation on Saakashvili's potential return to Georgia likely did little to improve the party's electoral prospects, and left the party internally divided before and even more so after the elections. [16] Even in its weakened and divided state after the October elections, the UNM is the strongest and best organized opposition party in Georgia, which makes the quality of its opposition crucial to Georgia's democratic future. The separatist, Russia-backed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia continue to subsist outside of Tbilisi's control or direct influence. In 2016, there was little evidence that Tbilisi had made any significant progress towards reintegration, or in building ties to separatist authorities or local populations. On the contrary, Russian control over Abkhazia formally deepened with the ratification of a de facto Abkhazian-Russian military agreement that establishes a joint military force and places Abkhazian troops under direct Russian control in wartime.[17] The 2016 agreement with Russia implements the type of provisions that had previously been abandoned in Abkhazia's own 2015 integration treaty in the face of domestic criticism.[18] Russia already has a more comprehensive agreement in place with the separatist South Ossetian authorities, which effectively ceded its minor military capabilities to Russian control in a 2015 integration "treaty."[19] Georgia's limited options regarding the separatist territories were highlighted in May, when an ethnic Georgian was killed by Abkhazian border guards along the de facto border.[20] Electoral Process: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 4.75 5.25 5.25 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 The October 2016 parliamentary elections were the most high profile and consequential political events of the year. The Georgian parliament is chosen through a mixed system, where 73 members of parliament (MPs) are elected in single-mandate ("majoritarian") constituencies and 77 MPs are proportionally elected through party lists. GD had previously promised to do away with the majoritarian constituencies, which the Constitutional Court ruled in 2015 violated the equality of votes due to large discrepancies in their size. [21] Instead, however, GD pursued less radical measures by redrawing electoral boundaries and raising the threshold for first-round victories in the majoritarian districts from 30 to 50 percent. [22] Following the October elections, Prime Minister Kvirikashvili announced his support for abolishing the majoritarian system in favor of multi-mandate constituencies, though he did not offer a specific timetable for doing so. [23] The re-drawn electoral boundaries were not without controversy. The opposition claimed it had not been adequately included in the process of redrawing the electoral boundaries, resulting in skewed electoral districts. The Georgian Constitutional Court reviewed these complaints in July 2016, which rejected the claims of gerrymandered boundaries and split on the issue of whether the lack of clear criteria risked future gerrymandering, resulting in the complaint on those grounds also failing. [24] The Venice Commission, weighing in on the electoral reforms, also highlighted problems with the process and methods of redistricting, stating that the amendments lacked specific, regular mechanisms for future consideration of modifications or review. Nonetheless, the Venice Commission described the reforms as an "important step forward," noting that "deviations among the number of voters in constituencies that previously undermined the principle of equal suffrage have largely been addressed." [25] The mixed system delivered a landslide GD victory. In the proportional voting, the ruling party won 48.68 percent of nationwide votes, translating to 44 of 77 possible seats in the new parliament; the UNM won 27.11 percent and 27 seats; and the Alliance of Patriots (PA) 5.01 percent (6 seats). [26] No other party cleared the five percent threshold. GD then virtually swept the majoritarian constituencies: it won 70 of 73 possible seats, and GD-aligned independent candidates won two. PA won the one remaining majoritarian seat, while UNM won none. The result is a supermajority of 114 deputes for GD as a party in contrast to the broad coalition with which it won the 2012 elections and two aligned independents. In line with the previous elections in 2012, [27] local and international observers described the 2016 parliamentary elections as broadly free and fair. [28] The elections showed a number of improvements over elections in 2014, 2013, and especially 2012, among them the redistricting and higher threshold for the majoritarian seats. Procedurally, 97 percent of election day processes were observed as "good" or "very good" by Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) election monitors, compared to 97 percent in the 2013 presidential elections [29] and 89 percent in the 2012 parliamentary elections. [30] However, there were concerns among several monitoring groups over the speed of vote tabulation, which in a politically polarized atmosphere fed fears of manipulation. [31] Parallel vote tabulation of the proportional voting by Georgian election monitoring group International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), however, essentially mirrored official election results. [32] Nevertheless, several violent incidents occurred during the election period, including some that triggered result annulments by the Central Election Commission. On October 2, two individuals were shot in the town of Gori during a campaign meeting with independent opposition candidate Irakli Okruashvili. [33] Police apprehended a suspect with a long criminal history, but his motive remained unclear. [34] Most disturbingly, on October 6, days before the first round of parliamentary elections, senior UNM leader Giorgi Targamadze survived a car bombing in an apparent assassination attempt. [35] While GD government officials quickly denounced the bombing, some UNM leaders blamed the government for the attack. State security forces arrested an individual in connection with the bombing, but did not provide information on motive by the end of the year. [36] In Zugdidi municipality, pro-GD activists raided two polling stations in the village of Jikhashkari during the vote tabulation process, [37] and in the village of Kizilajlo in Marneuli municipality, a polling station was attacked by pro-UNM activists. [38] GD had proposed in September a kind of "code of conduct" to combat election-related violence for all political parties to sign, [39] but the agreement attracted little attention, as opposition parties were skeptical of signing onto a set of guidelines crafted by the ruling party. Pre-election evaluations were also generally positive, although local and international assessments were not so uniform. IRI stated that the pre-election period was characterized by instances of abuse of administrative resources by the ruling GD, intermittent violence between supporters of rival parties, and poor transparency over election administration. [40] By contrast, an OSCE report suggests that these issues, while present to varying degrees, ultimately played a more minor role in the pre-election environment. [41] The pre-election assessment by Transparency International-Georgia mentioned incidents of violence, vote-buying, and alleged political intimidation, but concluded "the pre-election process was characterized by a pluralistic media environment and low levels of political harassment and use of administrative resources." [42] A pre-election assessment from a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) described isolated incidents of intimidation and violence, but noted that the "climate was clearly less tense than it was during past elections" and that "there was an environment for democratic elections." [43] Outside the general elections, local by-elections in May 2016 saw a serious violent incident in the village of Kortskheli in Zugdidi municipality, when several UNM opposition leaders were attacked and beaten by pro-GD activists. [44] The UNM blamed Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze, a former soccer star, for organizing the attack, which appeared to be led by a group of sportsmen. The incident prompted expressions of concern from both international diplomats and local civil society, [45] and six men were charged for the violence. [46] The October elections increased representation of women and ethnic minorities in parliament. Female candidates won 24 of the 150 parliamentary seats, which translates to some 16 percent, compared to the 2012 proportion of 11.3 percent.[47] This is below the global average of 21.8 percent (2015), and well below the UN target of 30 percent,[48] but it represents a high for Georgia. Meanwhile ethnic minorities won 11 seats in the 2016 parliamentary elections,[49] which is the highest number in over a decade.[50] Though positive, the results also underscore Georgia's extended underachievement in minority parliamentary representation. Civil Society: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 3.50 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 The civil society sector in Georgia is strong and active. Georgian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a major role in policy research, advocacy, and opinion leadership. NGOs are frequently referenced in Georgian media, and NGO leaders are regularly sought out for their commentary and analysis. NGOs are generally free to operate without harassment or intimidation. The Georgian legal code offers sufficient protections for NGOs to operate normally, and the autonomy of organizations is broadly observed. Registering and legally operating NGOs is simple, straightforward, and can often be accomplished in short order. The overall strength of the civil society sector is evidenced by a large number of NGOs representing a multitude of ideologies and groups. Among many examples, functional NGOs exist that advocate for Euro-Atlantic integration; [51] promote closer political ties and social relations between Georgia and Russia; [52] or campaign for Georgian Muslim minority rights. [53] Georgian NGOs are vocal and active in the public sphere, and make open declarations on a variety of political and policy positions. While direct, public cooperation between the government and individual NGOs has declined since 2013-2014, Georgian civil society organizations continue to be proactive in raising concerns [54] and airing various recommendations. [55] Georgia also contains numerous non-governmental groups with agendas that sometimes border, or breach, normal standards for civil society activism, such as advocating for policies that limit the rights of ethnic, religious, or sexual minorities. One area of concern is increasing activism by Orthodox religious nationalists, which have operated more openly and freely since 2012, leading to regular reports of harassment, intimidation, and even violence against religious minority groups, particularly Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims. [56] Local research has found that a certain amount of this activism is backed by groups that receive support from Russia and Russian propaganda outlets. [57] Other minorities, particularly sexual minorities, have also been targeted by religious nationalists, though 2016 did not have the large anti-LGBT demonstrations and violence seen in previous years. The breadth and diversity of Georgian civil society also feeds into the atmosphere of political polarization. There are NGOs led by former GD government officials and those led by former UNM government officials. [58] NGOs with reputations for non-partisan orientations and politically objective activities are rare, and even those may be attacked for partisanship. For example, in mid-2015, GD founder Ivanishvili spoke out against the leader of Transparency International-Georgia and the former head of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) high-functioning, nonaligned organizations claiming that they were allied with the UNM. [59] Signs of government hostility were less noticeable in 2016 under Prime Minister Kvirikashvili's administration, however. The ambiguous roles of some NGOs, the charged political climate, and the international community's reliance on local civil society groups for information contributes to current and past government sensitivity over NGO politicization, which has a self-fulfilling effect of contributing to further perceived politicization. For example, prior to the second round of elections in October, some individual NGO leaders circulated a letter calling on Georgian voters to support opposition candidates to prevent a GD constitutional majority. [60] Funding continues to be a weakness in Georgia's otherwise robust civil society sector. NGOs in Georgia rely heavily on grants from large international agencies and private foundations based in the US and Europe or, alternately, on a small cadre of wealthy Georgians. This raises potential issues of sustainability as well as the sector's long-term independence should international organizations depart or scale back. Conversely, funding from illiberal donors whether Russia or others[61] also poses a potential threat without more organic, long-term means of civil society funding. Independent Media: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 The Georgian media is generally vibrant, pluralistic, and free. International organizations describe media freedom in Georgia as mostly strong, [62] and the media sector benefits from a reasonably robust legal framework and significant pluralism. In many respects, the media sector in Georgia has improved in terms of administration and editorial independence, but the ongoing legal dispute over Rustavi2, the most viewed television station in Georgia, and a brewing ownership dispute at the third-most-watched channel Maestro TV, are holding back further progress. Polling in 2015 confirmed the longstanding dominance of television as the most popular information medium, but noted major increases in Internet usage in the country. [63] Freedom on the Net 2016 rates Georgia as "Free." [64] According to the local Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), Georgian online media is active, diverse, and generally unimpeded, although there are concerns over self-censorship and the proliferation of politically polarized and low-quality information portals. [65] The pluralism of the television media landscape has improved in recent years. Transparency International-Georgia argued in a 2016 report that growth in the breadth and diversity of the Georgian media landscape since 2012 has contributed to a genuine expansion of pluralism and overall media integrity. [66] In a report by the European Commission evaluating the implementation of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement, press freedom was assessed as "dynamic and pluralistic," yet polarized. [67] The US State Department's annual human rights report also noted positive trends in pluralism as well as in the transparency of media ownership and financing. [68] Nonetheless, the ongoing legal battle over the fate of Rustavi2, a popular, UNM-aligned television channel, has cast a pall over improvements in the overall environment. In mid-2015, onetime Rustavi2 owner Kibar Khalvashi filed a lawsuit against the company in a bid to regain ownership, claiming that his shares of the company had been illegally liquidated by the then-UNM government in 2005 and 2006. [69] The Tbilisi City Court ruled in favor of Khalvashi in November 2015 and held that new managers could be appointed immediately at Rustavi2, [70] in a decision that disregarded a previous Constitutional Court ruling saying that any enforcement of a ruling must await the conclusion of the appeals process. The existing management was preserved following intense international and domestic outcry, [71] and another Constitutional Court ruling. [72] However, an appellate court upheld the Tbilisi City Court decision in June 2016, [73] and the case was elevated to the Georgian Supreme Court, which admitted the case for review in early September. [74] The Rustavi2 case bears the hallmarks of state interference in media freedom. A joint statement in 2015 by several prominent Georgian NGOs described a litany of judicial inconsistencies in the establishment and conduct of the lawsuit, which suggested the case was an attack on the channel's pro-UNM editorial position. [75] Documents released in September contesting Khalvashi's original ownership of Rustavi2 raised additional questions over the viability of the case. [76] According to the documents, Khalvashi held his stake in Rustavi2 on behalf of current opposition leader Irakli Okruashvili,who once served as Defense Minister under the former UNM government, and thus Khalvashi had no standing to pursue judicial remedy. Although the Rustavi2 case is the highest-profile media freedom issue, it is not the only one. An ownership dispute over the television company Maestro, the third-most-watched channel in Georgia, also raised concerns over media independence in the run-up to the election. [77] While the case for government interference is not as clear-cut as with Rustavi2, the friendly relationship between Maestro majority owner Giorgi Gachechiladze and Prime Minister Kvirikashvili has become an item of interest. [78] Leadership issues at the Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) have also raised their own questions, [79] although independent assessments suggest that GPB's administration and editorial independence have improved in the last several years. [80] Another ongoing issue affecting Georgia's media environment is the use and release of illegally recorded video footage to blackmail politicians and public figures, a political tactic that continued in 2016.[81] Even though the authorities publicly destroyed large caches of kompromat after the UNM was ousted in 2013[82] and some alleged perpetrators have been arrested,[83] new tapes continue to surface. The Constitutional Court in April ruled that existing legislation lacked adequate protections of the rights of citizens from surveillance by the security services.[84] Local Democratic Governance: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.25 5.25 5.25 Georgia is divided into 12 provincial regions, including the capital Tbilisi, which is a special administrative unit, and two autonomous republics, Adjara and Abkhazia. However, local governance is executed through 69 local municipal units, of which 12 are legally defined as "self-governing cities." A package of legislation enacted in 2014 reversed years of trends towards centralization under the UNM and transferred new powers to the provincial and local levels. [85] However, the 2014 decentralization initiatives faced fierce domestic opposition due to fears of "federalization" [86] and left more ambitious reforms on the shelf. GD pledges to empower province-level administration and restore a greater fiduciary role for local and municipal authorities were essentially abandoned and have yet to be revisited in any substantial way. The most important outcome of the 2014 reforms were to expand the number of self-governing cities to include all provincial capitals, and to ensure that all mayors and district executives were directly elected along with local legislatures. [87] There is widespread popular discontent, and confusion, with the activities and responsiveness of local governments. Polling in October 2015 indicated that many Georgians saw local government as largely absent or ineffective. [88] In late 2015, Transparecny International-Georgia's Local Integrity Systems Assessment, which studied local governance in the self-governing cities of Tbilisi, Kutaisi, and Zugdidi, found that insufficient public administration, weak local leadership, and poor constituent outreach were the chief shortcomings in local governments. [89] In Tbilisi, which is home to almost one-third of the national population and has had the longest uninterrupted experience with self-rule, unhappiness with the policies and style of city authorities is a frequent source of protest. In August 2016, UNM members of the Tbilisi City Council launched no-confidence proceedings against Mayor Davit Narmania [90] following protests over shrinking green spaces as a result of rapid urban development. [91] Tensions between demands for rapid urban development and ecological considerations pose major issues for local democratic governance in Georgia. Increasing urbanization, especially in Tbilisi, has made infrastructure development a key priority for local authorities. Yet lax regulations on car ownership and parking have negatively impacted the rights of pedestrians. [92] Past attempts to impose relatively modest regulations over car ownership were met with fierce resistance. [93] While perhaps understandable, development-first policies have almost certainly contributed to severe ecological and public health risks, for instance from air pollution, [94] suggesting that local authorities have fallen short in striking an optimal balance between development and the well-being of residents. Perhaps no issue better encapsulates the problem of local governance when faced with pressure for rapid development as the controversial "Panorama" project in Tbilisi. A large-scale mixed-used development that would reach from central Tbilisi up through terraced improvements into the Sololaki hillsides overlooking the historic city center, Panorama was first proposed in May 2014 as part of the Georgian Co-Investment Fund's flagship project.[95] Backed by former Prime Minister Ivanishvili, some have raised concerns that Panorama will damage Tbilisi's architectural and cultural integrity, or even endanger Old Tbilisi's candidacy for UNESCO World Heritage status.[96] Limited public input on the project's approval in spite of spirited grassroots protests[97] amid opposition allegations that Panorama is a white elephant that primarily benefits Ivanishvili[98] highlight the lack of accountability in local government. Judicial Framework and Independence: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 4.75 4.75 4.75 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.75 The functioning of the judiciary has improved since the transfer of power following the 2012 parliamentary elections, but there remain widespread concerns over judicial independence and the operation of the judiciary. A November 2016 European Commission assessment on implementation of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement noted that recent judicial reforms have "promoted judicial independence, professionalism, accountability and effectiveness," while also stressing considerable work to be done in transparency of judicial management, case allocation, and staffing. [99] The US State Department's 2015 human rights report on Georgia, released in 2016, also noted continued "progress on judicial reforms," but raised the problem of judicial independence. [100] Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, also pointed out that "positive trends continued" of judicial reforms progressing at a "dynamic pace," even as he flagged problems with judicial appointments, case allocation, and political interference. [101] Some of these issues, notably a system for randomly assigning cases to judges, were supposed to be resolved in legislation in 2016. However, the package failed to receive a parliamentary vote due to a lack of a quorum. [102] High-profile court cases continue to raise serious questions about the independence and politicization of the judiciary. In June, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in a case concerning former minister of interior, prime minister, and UNM Secretary General Vano Merabishvili, who was arrested in 2013 and convicted of embezzlement and abuse of authority. The court found that an attempt by prison authorities to force him to give evidence in unrelated cases against other UNM leaders, including Saakashvili, was an improper use of detention for other means. [103] The ruling did not address Merabishvili's guilt or innocence of the charges against him, but it did give substance to claims by the opposition that after coming to power, GD had used the judicial system to accomplish political ends. [104] The ongoing Rustavi2 court cases also appear to suggest state involvement in the judiciary in an attempt to suppress an independent media outlet (see Independent Media). At the same time, the Rustavi2 saga shows the judiciary was not completely dominated by the government in 2016, as the Constitutional Court has overruled lower court decisions, and, despite widespread speculation that the Supreme Court would dismiss Rustavi2's judicial appeal, it admitted the case for review. [105] The functioning and independence of the Constitutional Court itself was again a source of conflict between the UNM and GD in 2016. Much of the controversy centered on Giorgi Papuashvili, the President of the Constitutional Court and a former minister in the UNM government who was appointed in 2006. Early in the year, Papuashvili repeated his concerns that members of the court were being threatened for their handling of sensitive political cases, including through protests staged in front of their homes. [106] He later alleged judges were targeted with surveillance and blackmail, triggering a probe by the Prosecutor's Office. [107] Five of his colleagues on the court publicly rejected Papuashvili's allegations and accused him of privileging politically sensitive cases involving UNM officials and Rustavi2, while three other justices defended Papuashvili's handling of the cases. [108] Papuashvili stepped down from the court in September, when his ten-year term ended. Amid these controversies, parliament passed a bill on the Constitutional Court in May 2016 that among other things would have increased the court's quorum and majority rules for deciding cases. [109] While welcoming some of the bill's changes, the Council of Europe's Venice Commission criticized the new quorum and majority requirements and called for their removal. [110] After President Margvelashvili vetoed the bill, a revised bill passed in June that still increased the requirements for a quorum. [111] Local experts criticized the changes for making it harder for the court to hear cases in a timely fashion. [112] Another court case in 2016 raised concerns over political interference in the judiciary. In May 2016, defendants in the so-called "cable case" were found guilty by the Tbilisi City Court on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years in prison.[113] The defendants, former Defense Ministry employees, had been arrested in late 2014 over alleged embezzlement by using a fabricated tender ostensibly for fiber optic cabling in 2013. The incident led to the resignation of former defense minister Irakli Alasania, who argued that the charges were politically motivated. Prominent NGOs, including Transparency International-Georgia[114] and the Georgian Young Lawyers Association,[115] issued statements linking the case to a political confrontation between Alasania and Ivanishvili and calling into question the quality of the evidence. For example, the civil society groups pointed out that the officials convicted did not hold sufficient rank to be able to make the kind of decisions required for their alleged crime. Corruption: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 Georgia has become known as a leader in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union in combatting corruption. Intensive reforms and anti-graft efforts during the UNM's time in power from 2004 to 2012 resulted in major gains against petty corruption and organized crime. However, UNM efforts to fight corruption and strengthen state institutions also led to circumvention or sometimes outright contravention of the rule of law. By the end of its period in power, the UNM had erected a semi-corporatist apparatus of "elite corruption," in which small circles of state-connected elites controlled vast swathes of the Georgian economy and acted as de facto gatekeepers for market access and success. [116] After the transfer of power in 2012, the GD coalition government sought to preserve the UNM's impressive gains in petty corruption while also rolling back elite corruption. In both endeavors, the GD government has been largely successful. Several elite-driven patronage networks under the UNM government were disrupted through the government's "restorative justice" campaign, which peaked in 2013-2014, where ex-UNM government officials were investigated and sometimes tried on corruption charges. While effective, the government's drive also attracted domestic and international criticism for arbitrary application of the rule of law, and efforts countering elite corruption appeared to be primarily, though not exclusively, targeted against former government officials from the UNM (see Judicial Framework and Independence). There have been fears of improper influence under GD, in part because dozens of GD government officials, including prime ministers Gharibashvili and Kvirikashvili, previously worked in companies owned by Ivanishili. [117] [118] Nonetheless, perceptions of elite corruption as an issue have noticeably declined compared to the latter period of UNM rule. Petty corruption remains very rare by post-Soviet standards in Georgia. Georgia's score continued to improve in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2016 by Transparency International, and the country now ranks 44 th in the world, making it a regional leader and even ahead of a number of states with more consolidated democracies. [119] Similarly, Transparency International's 2016 Global Corruption Barometer showed that petty corruption in Georgia remained extremely low, with corruption named as one of the top three problems facing the country by only 12 percent of the population, the fourth-lowest number of the 42 countries of Europe and Central Asia assessed. [120] To consolidate these trends, local civil society urged the formation of an independent anti-corruption bureau and more assurances for judicial independence. Georgia' rating also markedly improved in Transparency International's 2015 Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index, which was released in late 2015. Georgia improved to a "Band C" (moderate) position from a D- (high risk) in 2013, although the report also raised concerns about flagging momentum for reforms. [121] In addition, a survey commissioned by the International Finance Corporation, a member organization of the World Bank Group, found virtually zero instances of corruption in Georgia, according to business representatives. [122] The survey found that only 0.03 percent of respondents reported that their business had encountered government corruption in the last year, and only 0.75 percent reported hearing about corrupt practices experienced by others. In spite of these positive assessments, isolated incidents of corruption continued to surface in 2016. For example, anticorruption authorities in the State Security Service arrested an employee of the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons on bribery charges in June 2016. [123] In July, the Deputy Chief of Tbilisi City Hall's Security Service was arrested for soliciting a large bribe from a foreign business in exchange for accelerating auction procedures for a large parcel of land. [124] While these incidents raise concerns over the persistence of corruption, they also suggest that authorities investigate and prosecute it. Nepotism remains an area of potential concern. A 2015 poll by Transparency International-Georgia found that public perceptions of nepotism in government roughly doubled from 12 percent in 2013 to 25 percent in 2015.[125] The same poll showed that approximately 44 percent of Georgians reported hearing of nepotism in public service employment. In July, two Defense Ministry employees made public allegations of cronyism and nepotism in the hiring and promotion of ministry officials,[126] which other ministry employees familiar with the case described as an accurate representation of events. A November Transparency International-Georgia analysis of asset declarations filed by Georgian officials found some 70 cases where family members were hired in government positions after officials' appointments.[127] Such analysis highlights shortcomings in existing legislation and regulations to increase public confidence that the risks of nepotism are being sufficiently mitigated. Legislation to criminalize nepotism in the civil service proposed in 2015 has not moved forward.[128] AUTHOR: Michael Hikari Cecire Michael Hikari Cecire is a Fellow at New America, a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the cofounder of the Tbilisi-based Georgian Institute of Politics. He has researched politics and foreign relations in Georgia and the wider Black Sea region since 2007, and has lived and worked in Georgia for over three years. Notes: 1 "Georgia's ruling party wins constitutional majority," RFE/RL, 1 November 2016, http://www.rferl.org/a/georgia-elections-second-round-georgian-dream-super-majority/28085474.html 2 "Georgia charges its ex-deputy interior minister, who is now chief of police in Odessa," Civil Georgia, 22 September 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29460 3 "Georgia's ruling party selects new prime minister," RFE/RL, 25 December 2015, http://www.rferl.org/a/caucasus-report-georgia-new-prime-minister-kvirikashvili/27449071.html 4 "Georgian prime minister acknowledges 'worsened' ties with president," RFE/RL, 15 September 2014, http://www.rferl.org/content/garibashvili-margvelashvili-un-ties-worsening-problem-visit-statement/26584943.html 5 "Final opinion on the draft constitutional law on amendments and hanges to the Constitution of Georgia," Venice Commission, 15 October 2016, http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2010)028-e 6 "Consensus reached over Georgian Constitutional Court changes," RFE/RL, 8 June 2016, http://www.rferl.org/a/georgia-constitutional-court-changes-kvirikashvili-margvelashvili-usupashvili/27786224.html 7 "Results of March 2016 public opinion poll in Georgia," National Democratic Institute, 11 April 2016, https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/NDI%20Georgia_March%202016%20poll_Public%20Political_ENG_vf.pdf 8 "UNM opts not to elect new chairperson," Civil Georgia, 6 December 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php/article.php?id=28835 9 "Saakashvili tells UNM campaign rally via video link: election victory 'inevitable'," Civil Georgia, 26 September 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29463 10 "Sandra Roelofs put on UNM party list," Caucasian Knot, 26 August 2016, http://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/36676/ 11 Vasili Rukhadze, "Is Georgia heading toward post-election violence?" Jamestown Foundation, 28 September 2016, https://jamestown.org/program/is-georgia-headed-toward-post-election-violence/#.V-5pD_l96Ul 12 "Saakashvili heard plotting revolution in Georgia in Youtube tape," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 27 September 2016, http://dfwatch.net/saakashvili-heard-plotting-revolution-in-georgia-in-youtube-tape-45735 13 "UNM opts against boycotting parliament, MP runoffs," Civil Georgia, 11 October 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29532 14 "Saakashvili: 'No desire to have anything in common with one or two whimsical persons from UNM'," Civil Georgia, 10 November 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29613 15 "UNM opts against boycotting parliament, MP runoffs," Civil Georgia, 11 October 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29532 16 "Saakashvili: UNM congress will be held on January 20," Civil Georgia, 26 December 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29722 17 "Putin approves Russian-Abkhazian army group," The Moscow Times, 22 November 2016, https://themoscowtimes.com/news/putin-approves-russian-abkhazian-army-group-56255 18 "Russian parliament ratifies deal to combine forces with Georgia's breakaway region," Agenda.ge, 2 November 2016, http://agenda.ge/news/69239/eng 19 "Moscow, Tskhinvali sign 'integration treaty,'" Civil Georgia, 18 March 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28143 20 Tamar Svanidze, "Abkhaz border guards shoot and kill Georgian citizen," Georgia Today, 21 May 2016, http://georgiatoday.ge/news/3842/Abkhaz-Border-Guards-Shoot-and-Kill-Georgian-Citizen 21 "The Constitutional Court Upheld Ucha Nanuashvili's Claim," Public Defender of Georgia, 28 May 2015, http://ombudsman.ge/en/news/the-constitutional-court-upheld-ucha-nanuashvilis-claim.page 22 "Electoral redistricting passed with first reading," Civil Georgia," 12 December 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28851 23 "PM on electoral system reform, planned constitutional amendments," Civil Georgia, 30 October 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29578 24 "Constitutional Court rejects opposition's complaint against electoral redistricting," Civil Georgia, 21 July 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29324 25 "Joint opinion on amendments to the Election Code of Georgia as of 8 January 2016, adopted by the Council for Democratic Elections at its 54th meeting, Venice, 10 March 2016 and by the Venice Commission at its 106th plenary session, Venice, 11 March 2016," Council of Europe, 14 March 2016,http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD(2016)003-e 26 "CEC summaries final vote tally for October parliamentary elections," Civil Georgia, 16 November 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29625 27 "Georgia Presidential Election: OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report," Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 27 October 2013, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/110301; Jos Wienen, "Observation of Local Elections in Georgia (15 June 2014)," Council of Europe, 15 October 2014,https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=2247289 28 "Georgia, Parliamentary Elections, Second Round, 30 October 2016: Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions," Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 31 October 2016, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/georgia/278146; "Georgia's Parliamentary Elections: 'Mostly Peaceful and Another Step Forward in Georgia's Democratic Journey'," International Republican Institute, 09 October 2016, http://www.iri.org/resource/georgia's-parliamentary-elections-mostly-peaceful-and-another-step-forward-georgias-0; "Assessment of October 8 2016 Parliamentary Elections," Transparency International Georgia, 9 October 2016,http://www.transparency.ge/en/blog/assessment-october-8-2016-parliamentary-elections 29 "Georgia, Presidential Election 27 October 2013: Final Report," Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 16 January 2014, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/110301 30 "Georgia, Parliamentary Elections, 1 October 2012: Final Report," Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 21 December 2012, http://www.osce.org/odihr/98399 31 "Georgia's Parliamentary Elections: 'Mostly Peaceful and Another Step Forward in Georgia's Democratic Journey'," International Republican Institute, 9 October 2016, http://www.iri.org/resource/georgia's-parliamentary-elections-mostly-peaceful-and-another-step-forward-georgias-0; "Georgia, Parliamentary Elections, Second Round, 30 October 2016: Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions," Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 31 October 2016, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/georgia/278146 32 "ISFED parallel vote tabulation Results," Civil Georgia, 9 October 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29520 33 "Police investigate shooting at campaign meeting in Gori, Georgia," Agenda.ge, 03 October 2016, http://agenda.ge/news/66653 34 "Gori Regional Court Discusses Aleksadre Induashvili," Georgian Public Broadcaster, 06 October 2016, http://1tv.ge/en/news/view/137428.html 35 "Car bomb rips through Georgian opposition leader's car," Georgia Today, 4 October 2016, http://georgiatoday.ge/news/4817/Car-Bomb-Rips-Through-Georgian-Opposition-Leader's-Car 36 "Large amount of firearms and explosives seized by MIA," Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, 17 October 2016, http://police.ge/en/shss-m-sagamodziebo-moqmedebebis-dros-didi-odenobit-ukanono-iaraghi-da-asafetqebeli-nivtiereba-amoigho/10105 37 "Persons detained for incidents at polling stations in Jikhashkari charged," Georgian Public Broadcaster, 13 October 2016, http://1tv.ge/en/news/view/138316.html 38 "Repeat elections in four precincts go to runoffs," Civil Georgia, 23 October 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29560 39 "Ruling party invites all elections players to sign deal minimising pre-election clashes," Agenda.ge, 21 September 2016, http://agenda.ge/news/65771/ 40 "The pre-election environment in Georgia," International Republican Institute, 22 September 2016, http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/fields/field_files_attached/resource/2016-09-28-_georgian_parliamentary_2nd_lto_report_.pdf 41 "Georgia, Parliamentary Elections, 8 October 2016: Interim Report," Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 23 September 2016, http://www.osce.org/odihr/267321 42 "Georgian parliamentary elections of October 8, 2016: Assessment of the pre-election environment," Transparency International Georgia, 07 October 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/report/georgian-parliamentary-elections-october-8-2016-assessment-pre-election-environment 43 "PACE Pre-Election Mission's Assessments," Civil Georgia, 15 September 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29439 44 "UNM leaders, activists beaten outside polling station in Zugdidi during local by-election," Civil Georgia, 22 May 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29168 45 "Investigation of Kortskheli incident is ineffective," Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, 1 June 2016, https://idfi.ge/en/investigation-on-cortskhel-case-is-not-effective 46 "Six men charged over Kortskheli violence," Civil Georgia, 2 June 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29192 47 "Parliament does not reflect Georgia`s diversity," Civil Georgia, 21 November 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29637 48 "Georgian Politics without Women Quotas as a Solution to the Problem," Open Society Georgia Foundation, May 2016, https://www.osgf.ge/files/2015/Publication/EU-Geirgia%20Association%20/Angarishi_A4_3.pdf 49 "Parliament does not reflect Georgia`s diversity," Civil Georgia, 21 November 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29637 50 "Minorities in 2012 Parliamentary Elections Observatory," European Centre for Minority Issues, 2012, http://www.ecmicaucasus.org/upload/Post_elelction_observations.pdf 51 "Civil society groups launch coalition for Euro-Atlantic Georgia," Civil Georgia, 05 September 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29411 52 "Russian influence on Georgian NGOs and media," Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, 22 July 2015, https://idfi.ge/en/russian-influence-of-georgian-ngos-and-media 53 "Batumi Muslims rally demanding permit to construct a mosque," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 05 March 2016, http://dfwatch.net/batumi-muslims-rally-demanding-permit-to-construct-a-mosque-40687 54 "IDFI and GYLA appeal to the Chief Prosecutor's Office to launch an investigation against the Ministry of Internal Affairs," Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, 18 November 2016, https://idfi.ge/public/upload/Press%20Releases/idfi_gyla_appeal_to_prosecutors_office_eng.pdf 55 "NGO coalition calls for clarity in Russia policy," Civil Georgia, 28 October 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29571 56 "2014 Report on International Religious Freedom: Georgia," US State Department, 14 October 2015, https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2014/eur/238382.htm 57 "Russian influence on Georgian NGOs and media," Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, 22 July 2015, https://idfi.ge/en/russian-influence-of-georgian-ngos-and-media 58 "Eka Tkeshelashvili President of GISS," Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies, undated, http://giss.org.ge/eng/ekatyeshelashvili; "Georgia's Reform Associates: Team," Georgia's Reform Associates, undated, http://grass.org.ge/en/team/; "Georgian Center for Security and Development: Board," Georgian Center for Security and Development, undated, http://www.gcsd.org.ge/en/admission-board/; "Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies: Team," Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, undated, http://gfsis.org/people/team 59 "Ivanishvili slams NGO's head and president's adviser," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 27 April 2015, http://dfwatch.net/ivanishvili-slams-at-ngos-head-and-presidents-adviser-35323 60 "Tbilisi NGO workers urge opposition for action against imminent GD constitutional majority," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 18 October 2016, http://www.dfwatch.net/tbilisi-ngo-workers-urge-voters-not-to-support-gd-in-second-round-46114 61 "Russian influence on Georgian NGOs and media," Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, 22 July 2015, https://idfi.ge/en/russian-influence-of-georgian-ngos-and-media 62 "Georgia," Reporters Without Borders, undated, https://rsf.org/en/georgia 63 "Public attitudes in Georgia, August 2015," Caucasus Barometer, 12 October 2015, http://caucasusbarometer.org/en/ns2015ge/FRQINTR/ 64 "Freedom of the Net 2016: Georgia," Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/georgia 65 "Internet Freedom in Georgia in August 2014 - November 2015," Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, 10 December 2015, https://idfi.ge/en/internet-freedom-report-for-august2014-november2015 66 "Georgian media environment from 2012 parliamentary elections till present," Transparency International Georgia, 22 September 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/report/georgian-media-environment-from-2012-parliamentary-elections-till-present 67 "Association implementation report on Georgia," European Commission, 25 November 2016, http://mfa.gov.ge/getattachment/News/-----/report.pdf.aspx 68 "Country reports on human rights practices for 2015: Georgia," undated, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2015~amp;dlid=252849 69 "One of ex-owners in court bid to reclaim Rustavi2 TV," Civil Georgia, 7 August 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28484 70 "Judge rules in favor of ex-owner in Rustavi2 TV ownership dispute," Civil Georgia, 3 November 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28738 71 Giorgi Lomsadze, "Georgia's Rustavi2 case: was justice served?," Eurasianet, 16 November 2015, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/76111 72 "Constitutional Court suspends clause based on which Rustavi2 management was replaced," Civil Georgia, 13 November 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28770 73 "Rustavi2 TV shareholders lose appeal in ownership dispute," Civil Georgia, 10 June 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29219 74 "Supreme Court finds Rustavi2 TV's appeal in ownership dispute admissible," Civil Georgia, 9 September 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29427 75 "NGOs respond to the Rustavi2 asset freeze," Transparency International Georgia, 10 August 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/general-announcement/ngos-respond-rustavi2-asset-freeze 76 "Document proves Kibar Khalvashi had no stake in Rustavi2," Tabula.ge, 5 September 2016, http://www.tabula.ge/en/story/111494-document-proves-kibar-khalvashi-had-no-stake-in-rustavi-2 77 "Statement of NGOs on TV company Maestro," Transparency International Georgia, 4 February 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/general-announcement/statement-ngos-tv-company-maestro 78 "Co-owners fight for control of debt-ridden Maestro TV," Civil Georgia, 06 February 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28964 79 "Public TV head resigns," Civil Georgia, 21 November 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29639; "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015: Georgia," undated, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2015~amp;dlid=252849 80 "Changes on Georgian Public Broadcaster - more editorial independence and management challenges," Transparency International Georgia, 03 October 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/report/changes-georgian-public-broadcaster-more-editorial-independence-and-management-challenge 81 "Campaigners demand action against secret surveillance blackmail," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 19 March 2016, http://dfwatch.net/campaigners-demand-action-against-secret-surveillance-blackmail-41085 82 "Georgia: secret surveillance tapes to be destroyed," Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, 18 June 2013, https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/1989-georgia-secret-surveillance-tapes-to-be-destroyed 83 "Two men detained for distributing secret surveillance videos," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 15 March 2016, http://dfwatch.net/two-men-detained-for-distributing-secret-surveillance-videos-40952 84 "Constitutional Court deprives security service of surveillance access keys," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 15 April 2016, http://dfwatch.net/constitutional-court-deprives-security-service-of-surveillance-access-keys-41827 85 Michael Cecire, "Georgian local government reform: enacted but languishing on the back burner," Caucasus Analytical Digest, 30 June 2015, https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/192096/CaucasusAnalyticalDigest74.pdf 86 "Orthodox Church weighs in local self-governance reform debate," Civil Georgia, 04 December 2013, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=26760 87 "Local self-government in Georgia: 1991-2014," International Center for Civic Culture, 02 July 2015, http://www.ivote.ge/images/doc//local%20democracy%20development%20report_english%20final%202.pdf 88 Laura Thornton and Koba Turmanidze, "Public Attitudes in Georgia: Results of August 2015 Survey Carried Out for NDI by CRRC Georgia," National Democratic Institute (NDI), 19 October 2015, https://www.ndi.org/files/NDI_August_2015%20survey_Public%20Issues_ENG_VF.pdf 89 "TI Georgia has released Local Integrity Systems Assessment," Transparency International Georgia, 09 December 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/5699 90 "Goodbye, Narmania! UNM begins no-confidence proceedings against mayor," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 25 August 2016, http://dfwatch.net/unm-wishes-starting-no-confidence-against-tbilisi-mayor-44904 91 "Activists rally for green spaces in Tbilisi," Civil Georgia, 17 August 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/category.php?id=87~amp;size=wide~amp;gallery=142 92 Giorgi Lomsadze, "Georgia: Tbilisi pedestrians rage against the machines," Eurasianet, 28 November 2016, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/81446 93 "Georgia postpones ban on registration of right-hand cars till 2017," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 24 March 2016, http://dfwatch.net/georgia-postpones-ban-on-right-hand-cars-registration-by-2017-41239 94 "Georgia No. 1 among the countries that have deadliest air pollution," Georgian Journal, 28 June 2016, http://www.georgianjournal.ge/society/32635-georgia-no-1-among-the-countries-that-have-deadliest-air-pollution.html 95 Eva Anderson, "Georgian Co-Investment Fund's 2014 projects: Further transparency needed," Transparency International Georgia, 30 May 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/4279 96 "UNESCO vs Ivanishvili," JAMNews, 10 November 2015, https://jam-news.net/?p=2860 97 Dominik Cagara, "Hundreds rally against Ivanishvili's 'Panorama Tbilisi' project," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 29 February 2016, http://dfwatch.net/hundreds-rally-against-ivanishvilis-panorama-tbilisi-project-40538 98 Irakli Zhvania, "Tbilisi's Panorama project is urban boosterism at its worst," Open Democracy, 20 October 2016, https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/irakli-zhvania/tbilisi-panorama-project-urban-boosterism-at-its-worst 99 "Association Implementation Report on Georgia," European Commission, 25 November 2016, http://mfa.gov.ge/getattachment/News/-----/report.pdf.aspx 100 "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015: Georgia," undated, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2015~amp;dlid=252849 101 "Observations on the human rights situation in Georgia: An update on justice reforms, tolerance and non-discrimination," Council of Europe, 12 January 2016, https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet~amp;InstranetImage=2903587~amp;SecMode=1~amp;DocId=2367686~amp;Usage=2 102 "Parliament Breaks for Summer Without Adopting Judicial Bills," Civil Georgia, 25 June 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29254 103 "Case of Merabishvili v. Georgia," European Court of Human Rights, 14 June 2016, http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{"itemid":["001-163671"]} 104 "European Court ruling on the case of former prime minister Vano Merabishvili," Transparency International-Georgia, 17 June 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/6101 105 "Supreme Court finds Rustavi2 TV's appeal in ownership dispute admissible," Civil Georgia, 9 September 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29427 106 "Statement regarding the recent events surrounding the Constitutional Court," Coalition for an Independent and Transparent Judiciary, 4 March 2016, http://www.coalition.ge/index.php?article_id=75~amp;clang=1 107 "Prosecutor's office probes into alleged pressure on Constitutional Court," Civil Georgia, 26 July 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29334 108 "Constitutional Court judges in public row over high-profile cases," Civil Georgia, 30 July 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29344 109 "Controversial bill on Constitutional Court adopted in final reading," Civil Georgia, 14 May 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29149 110 "Preliminary opinion on the amendments to the organic law on the Constitutional Court and to the law on constitutional legal proceedings," Council of Europe, 27 May 2016, http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-PI(2016)005-e 111 "Revised Constitutional Court bill adopted, but controversy remains," Civil Georgia, 03 June 2016, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29199 112 "The Coalition responds to the veto on draft amendments on Constitutional Court," Coalition for an Independent and Transparent Judiciary, 3 June 2016, http://www.coalition.ge/index.php?article_id=80~amp;clang=1 113 "Court delivers guilty verdict in 'cable case' against MoD officials," Civil Georgia, 16 May 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29154 114 "Joint statement of NGOs regarding the 'cable case," Transparency International Georgia, 18 May 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/6050 115 "GYLA: guilty verdict in cable case 'unfair, unjustified, unlawful'," Civil Georgia, 16 May 2016, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=29156 116 Paul Rimple, "Who Owned Georgia (2003-2012)," Transparency International Georgia, 18 December 2012, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/2619 117 "Ivanishvili's companies the forge for government officials," Transparency International Georgia, 22 April 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/5211 118 "'Changes at the City Hall serve Bidzina Ivanishvili"s interests' - Irakli Abesadze," Rustavi2, 01 February 2016, http://rustavi2.com/en/news/37929; "'Direct political corruption' - Vashadze talks about Minister's loans," Rustavi2, 13 April 2016, http://rustavi2.com/en/news/44247 119 "Corruption Perceptions Index 2016," Transparency International, http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016 120 "Global Corruption Barometer 2016: level of petty corruption remains low in Georgia but people consider government's anti-corruption policy ineffective," Transparency International-Georgia, 16 November 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/barometer2016-eng 121 "Government defence anti-corruption index 2015: Georgia," Transparency International Defence and Security, undated, http://government.defenceindex.org/countries/georgia/ 122 "Business see Near-Zero Corruption in Georgia: IFC Survey," International Finance Corporation, 30 June 2016, http://ifcext.ifc.org/IFCExt/pressroom/IFCPressRoom.nsf/0/E7C809267EDFB25E85257FE20059EF9D 123 "Ministry of IDPs employee detained for corruption," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 22 June 2016, http://dfwatch.net/ministry-of-idps-employee-detained-for-corruption-43290 124 "Deputy Chief of Tbilisi City Hall's Security Service arrested for bribery," Inter Press News, 27 July 2016, http://www.interpressnews.ge/en/justice/80178-deputy-chief-of-tbilisi-city-halls-security-service-arrested-for-bribery.html?ar=A 125 "Nepotism, Abuse of Power, and Bribery: Public Opinion Survey Outcomes," Transparency International Georgia, 25 September 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/blog/nepotism-abuse-power-and-bribery-public-opinion-survey-outcomes 126 "Employees of MoD of Georgia accusing current heads in nepotism and illegal actions," NewsTime.ge, 27 July 2016, http://newstime.ge/2016/07/27/employees-of-mod-of-georgia-accusing-current-heads-in-nepotism-and-illegal-actions/ 127 "Public Official Family Members in the Public Service," Transparency International Georgia, 08 November 2016, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/6369 128 "TI Georgia Proposes Criminalization of Nepotism in the Civil Service," Transparency International Georgia, 10 March 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/5078 Title Statement by the Republic of Austria on the Opinion of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities during the 4th monitoring cycle Publication Date April 2017 Country Austria Cite as Council of Europe: Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Statement by the Republic of Austria on the Opinion of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities during the 4th monitoring cycle, April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591301dd4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Uganda: Stella Nyanzi free but ludicrous charges must be dropped Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 10 May 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Uganda: Stella Nyanzi free but ludicrous charges must be dropped, 10 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591303b64.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Responding to news that outspoken feminist academic Stella Nyanzi has been released on bail after four weeks in prison, Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, said: "It is a great relief that Stella Nyanzi is no longer behind bars, as she should never have been arrested in the first place. The government's attempt to prosecute her for speaking out for the rights of Uganda's women and girls, is an affront to freedom of expression. "The authorities must now let common sense prevail by immediately and unconditionally dropping all the charges against her. The continuation of this farcical case blatantly violates Uganda's constitution, and its regional and international human rights obligations." Background Nyanzi appeared in court in the capital Kampala this morning looking in need of medical care. The charges against her under the Computer Misuse Act of 2011 are based on her social media statements, including one where she referred to President Yoweri Museveni as "a pair of buttocks".She denies any wrongdoing. She had also criticized the First Lady and Education Minister, Janet Museveni, for her ministry's failure to provide sanitary towels to all girls in public schools. This was a promise made by Museveni as he campaigned for a fifth term in office in 2015. Her next court appearance will be on 25 May. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Bahrain: First civilian case referred to military court Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 9 May 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Bahrain: First civilian case referred to military court, 9 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591304f54.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Bahrain's authorities have referred a civilian to trial before a military court for the first time since 2011, after the King of Bahrain ratified a disastrous constitutional amendment in April 2017. Bahrain's public prosecution referred the case of Fadhel Sayed Abbas Hasan Radhi, a victim of enforced disappearance, to the military court earlier today. "This is a shameful move by the authorities designed to strike fear in the heart of the population. It is also a serious blow for justice in Bahrain. Military trials in Bahrain are flagrantly unfair. And trying civilians before military courts is contrary to international standards," said Samah Hadid, Director of Campaigns at Amnesty International's Beirut regional office. "The decision to transfer Fadhel Sayed Abbas Hasan Radhi to the military court must immediately be quashed. He must be given immediate access to proper legal representation, informed of the charges against him, and tried in a civilian court, according to international fair trial standards." Fadhel Sayed Abbas Hasan Radhi was forcibly disappeared for over seven months after his arrest on 29 September 2016 by Criminal Investigations Directorate officers at his family home in Hamad Town, south-west of the capital, Manama. During that time he was not allowed access to a lawyer and was cut off from the outside world raising fears he faced torture and other ill-treatment in detention. The organization is also concerned that he may have been forced into making a "confession" which will be used as evidence during his trial before the military court. His family were not told where he was being taken or the grounds for his arrest, and did not hear from him until two weeks later, when he called and told them his whereabouts for the first time. Since them his family have had only very sporadic contact with him by phone. Despite the numerous inquiries made by Fadhel Radhi's family and by Amnesty International to the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) and the Ombudsman of the Ministry of Interior, the latter of which has a mandate to investigate all allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, no answers had been received until his family were told this morning by the PPO that Fadhel Radhi's case has been transferred to the court. His lawyer has not been informed about this decision nor has he been told any information about his client's case or charges. Amnesty International also fears that another individual who has been subjected to enforced disappearance for more than six months, Al-Sayed Alawi Hussain al-Alawi, will be referred to military court. He too has been cut off from the outside world since his arrest in October 2016, has had no access to a lawyer throughout his detention and his charges are also unknown. He remains at risk of torture and other ill-treatment. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Kazakhstan: Persecution of NGO for "failure to pay taxes" as authorities again clamp down on dissent Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 10 May 2017 Reference EUR 57/6205/2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Kazakhstan: Persecution of NGO for "failure to pay taxes" as authorities again clamp down on dissent, 10 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591305854.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The recent case brought against a human rights NGO for alleged failure to pay taxes is yet another attempt by the authorities in Kazakhstan to clamp down on the rights to freedom of expression and association. The case also sends a chilling message to other human rights and legal assistance NGOs that they could face reprisals simply for assisting people to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Authorities in Kazakhstan should desist from using tax and other administrative legislation to silence NGOs and other civil society groups, and should respect the rights to freedom of association, expression and peaceful assembly. Dubious tax inspections On 6 April 2017, the Special Inter-District Economic Court of Almaty found the International Legal Initiative ("ILI") human rights NGO guilty of failing to pay taxes. This followed a tax inspection carried out by the city tax authorities six months earlier. The ILI is convinced that the tax inspection and the subsequent legal case are designed to intimidate and harass them for the work they do. Specifically, ILI see this case as punishment for the fact that they provided legal assistance to peaceful protestors who were detained on 21 May 2016 in Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city. In August 2016, the tax authorities began inspections at ILI and two other NGOs: The Liberty Foundation, also based in Almaty, and the Dignity (Kadyr Kassiet) Foundation, based in Astana. These inspections followed a written complaint from an individual whom the authorities described as a "concerned citizen", made on 3 August 2016 to the Almaty city prosecutor's office. This "concerned citizen" accused the NGOs of being linked to public protests that had taken place in Kazakhstan earlier in 2016. These public protests were peaceful, but had not been authorized by the authorities as the unduly restrictive Kazakhstani law requires. In the complaint, the "concerned citizen" referred to a newspaper article published on 11 July 2016 on a pro-government news site. In this article, the unnamed author accused the ILI and two other human rights NGOs in Kazakhstan of using foreign grant money to "influence political processes" under the flag of "bringing democracy to developing nations". The article also accused one of the ILI's foreign donors - the USA-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - of "funding terrorism and extremism" by providing grants to ILI and other NGOs like it. At the end of December 2016, the ILI and the Liberty Foundation were ordered to pay ruinous fines for allegedly failing to pay taxes: ILI received a fine of the equivalent of EUR 3700, and the Liberty Foundation, EUR 8300. In February 2017, the ILI appealed the Almaty tax directorate's decision in court, which resulted in the ruling on 6 April 2017. The bank account of the Liberty Foundation has been blocked. It, too, has filed a law suit and is awaiting a hearing. The Dignity (Kadyr Kassiet) Foundation is still waiting for the outcome of its tax inspection. Misuse of the Tax Code Kazakhstan's tax legislation exempts all non-profit organizations from paying tax on the income that they receive from donors, provided that the organization meets two criteria: (1) its work should not be designed to create profit, and (2) it should not redistribute any of the organization's income between its members. In its decision on 6 April, the court agreed that ILI was a non-profit NGO, but despite this, the court interpreted the law to mean that only those NGOs that rely on grants provided by the state shall be exempt from taxation. The tax legislation was amended in 2009 to include additional provision to permit tax exemption specifically for NGO-run projects funded by the state. However, these amendments did not revoke the tax exemption rule for other non-profit NGOs that do not receive funding from the state. In spite of this, this is not the first time that courts in Kazakhstan have applied this ambiguous legislative provision in the tax code to non-state-funded NGOs. In at least one previous case, another human rights NGO was fined for alleged failure to pay taxes on the same grounds as ILI. During the court hearing on ILI's case the tax authority's representative made a statement that was irrelevant for the case under consideration, but was intended to undermine the ILI's credibility and smear its work, as well as the work of some other independent NGOs. The official drew attention to the fact that ILI is funded for its projects by NED and Freedom House and stated that NED and Freedom House "were known" for funding "colour revolutions" aimed at regime change. This is a an official narrative in Kazakhstan that is widely-used today, which purports that funding for human rights work is used by foreign funders to undermine political stability in the country. It is the same argument used by the "concerned citizen" in the complaint letter against the NGOs. BACKGROUND INFORMATION Restrictions on freedom of peaceful assembly In April and May 2016, peaceful protests took place all over Kazakhstan. These protests were against changes to the Land Code initiated by the government, by which foreign citizens would have gained the right to rent land, including pasture lands, in Kazakhstan for prolonged periods. The law in Kazakhstan imposes undue restrictions on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, meaning that street protests cannot take place without express permission from the authorities. During April and May 2016, local city authorities consistently denied requests for permits, but protests went ahead regardless. Further rallies were planned across the country on 21 May 2016, although again, permission was not granted by the authorities for these to take place. In the days leading up to 21 May, at least 34 activists were arrested and held in administrative detention (for up to 15 days), as the authorities attempted to suppress information about the planned protests and place behind bars those identified as "organizers". In many cases, these "organizers" had done nothing more than indicate via social media their intention to join the protests. Among those arrested were Maks Bokayev and Talgat Ayan, human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience. While other protest "organizers" were released, Maks Bokayev and Talgat Ayan faced criminal charges and are serving five year terms in a prison colony for having called for, and participated in, meetings in their native Atyrau in the west of Kazakhstan. In Almaty, on 21 May large numbers of people attempted to protest, however police blocked roads leading to the city centre and detained large numbers of would-be demonstrators. All in all, in Almaty on that day, according to different estimates, between 500 and 2,000 people were apprehended and taken to police stations. There they were asked to write explanations as to why they were out on the streets, and had their fingerprints taken, before being released. The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is provided in legally binding international human rights treaties that Kazakhstan has ratified, including Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This right, as detailed by international law and standards, should not be subjected to the permission of government authorities. The authorities may require prior notification of assemblies in order to facilitate the right of peaceful assembly and to take measures to protect public safety or the rights of others, but this should never translate into advanced authorization of such demonstrations. In Almaty, the ILI NGO organized a monitoring centre to document potential violations of human rights during the protests due to take place on 21 May. On 21 May, the ILI's leader, Amangeldy Shormanbayev, was arrested on the pretext of having caused a minor traffic incident; he denied all involvement in the accident, but spent the entire day in a police station. His colleague and sister, Aina Shormanbayeva, along with a group of other human rights defenders and lawyers, spent the day monitoring police stations in Almaty to see and document how police was bringing in and treating protesters who had been arrested. Restrictions on the right to freedom of association Leading or participating in an unregistered organization is an offence under both the Criminal and Administrative Offences Codes of Kazakhstan. "Leaders" of associations are treated as a separate category of offenders, providing for harsher penalties. The definition of "leader" is broad, potentially including any active member of an NGO or other civic association. These clauses were used for the first time in 2016, including in the criminal cases against Maks Bokaev and Talgat Ayan. Legislative changes introduced at the end of 2015 mandated the creation of a central state database of NGOs. Failure to regularly supply accurate information for the database could lead to fines or a temporary ban on activities. In February, the ILI challenged the provision in a civil court, but lost the case; the NGO believes that this legal challenge is another reason why it was targeted by the tax authorities. Civil society activists are concerned that this new law has the potential to constrain their activities, and limit their access to funding from outside of Kazakhstan. Independent trade unions also operate in a very difficult environment in Kazakhstan. In April 2017, a trade unionist from Atyrau, Nurbek Kushakbaev, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for calling for what the authorities labelled an unlawful labour strike. Further information: "Kazakhstan: Workers' rights: trade unionist Nurbek Kushakbaev jailed on trumped up charges", 11 April 2017, Index number: EUR 57/6053/2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur57/6053/2017/en/ Think Before You Post: Closing down social media space in Kazakhstan, 9 February 2017, Index number: EUR 57/5644/2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur57/5644/2017/en/ "Kazakhstan: Presumed guilty before trial: prosecution of peaceful protesters Maks Bokaev and Talgat Ayan", 9 November 2016, Index number: EUR 57/5116/2016, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur57/5116/2016/en/ "Kazakhstan: A dark day for freedom of expression and peaceful assembly", 27 May 2016, Index number: EUR 57/4141/2016, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur57/4141/2016/en/ Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Thailand: Insurgents Bomb Southern Mall Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 9 May 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Thailand: Insurgents Bomb Southern Mall, 9 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591308504.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Bombings by alleged separatist insurgents at the largest shopping mall in Thailand's southern border provinces appear intended to inflict maximum civilian casualties, Human Rights Watch said today. The two bombings at a Big C shopping mall in Pattani town used a "double-tap" tactic long employed by separatist armed groups in the restive region. At least 61 people, including children, were injured. Deliberate insurgent attacks against civilians in Thailand may amount to crimes against humanity. On May 9, 2017, at about 2:10 p.m., a small bomb detonated near a food court inside the shopping mall, causing many panicked people to run outside into the parking lot. Shortly after, a larger bomb hidden in a parked pickup truck about 40 to 50 meters away from the mall exploded. "The double bombing of a crowded shopping mall shows a vicious disregard for civilian lives," said Brad Adams, Asia director. "The Big C attack has all the hallmarks of separatist violence, attacks targeting civilians that may be crimes against humanity. The government should hold all those responsible to account." The pickup truck used in the attack was reported stolen earlier in the day. The owner remains missing and there is concern for his safety. Since the escalation of their armed attacks in January 2004, Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) insurgents have committed numerous violations of the laws of war. Of the more than 6,800 people killed in the ongoing armed conflict in Thailand's southern border provinces, about 90 percent have been civilians from the populations of ethnic Thai Buddhists and ethnic Malay Muslims. On April 10, BRN issued a statement opposing a Malaysia-brokered peace dialogue between the Thai government and mostly defunct separatist groups in the loose network of Mara Patani (also known as Majlis Syura Patani). The laws of war, also known as international humanitarian law, prohibit attacks on civilians or attacks that fail to discriminate between military personnel and civilians. Claims by insurgents that attacks on civilians are lawful because they are part of the Thai Buddhist state, or that Islamic law as they interpret it permits such attacks, have no justification under international law. The laws of war also prohibit reprisal attacks and summary executions against civilians and captured combatants, mutilation of the dead, and attacks directed at civilian structures, such as schools. Crimes against humanity consist of specific criminal acts committed on a widespread or systematic basis as part of an "attack on a civilian population," meaning there is some degree of planning or policy to commit the crimes. Such acts include murder and "other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health." International law protects "any" civilian population from attack, and there is no requirement that the victims be linked to any side in an armed conflict. Liability for the commission of crimes against humanity is not limited to those who carry out the acts, but also those who order, assist, or are otherwise complicit in the crimes. Under the principle of command responsibility, government or armed group leaders can be held criminally responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates when they knew or should have known that such crimes were being committed, but failed to take reasonable measures to stop them. Although the insurgents have suffered major setbacks from government security sweeps in recent years, they still maintain a presence in hundreds of ethnic Malay Muslim villages. Insurgents point to abusive, heavy-handed tactics by government security forces to recruit new members to the insurgency and justify their acts of violence. Human Rights Watch also remains deeply concerned by violations of international human rights law and the laws of war by Thai government security forces and militias. Killings, enforced disappearances, and torture cannot be justified as reprisals for insurgent attacks on the Thai Buddhist population and security personnel. This situation has been reinforced by an entrenched culture of impunity for human rights violations by officials in the southern border provinces. The government has yet to successfully prosecute any officials for human rights abuses committed against ethnic Malay Muslims alleged to be involved in the insurgency. "The Thai government needs to respond to these brutal attacks by upholding the rule of law, ending abuses by its own security forces, and addressing long-held grievances in the ethnic Malay Muslim community," Adams said. "If the government continues to shield its troops from criminal responsibility, it will only add fuel to extremist violence." Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Kyrgyzstan: New Domestic Violence Law Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 10 May 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Kyrgyzstan: New Domestic Violence Law, 10 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591308bb4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. President Almazbek Atambayev of Kyrgyzstan took an important step toward curbing violence against women when he signed a new domestic violence law and accompanying legislation on April 27, 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. The law, which replaces a 2003 version, includes measures to improve protections for victims of domestic abuse and strengthen police and judicial response. The new Law on the Prevention and Protection against Family Violence requires police to register a domestic abuse complaint from anyone, not just the victim. The law recognizes not only physical and psychological abuse but also "economic violence," which in Kyrgyzstan often takes the form of restricting access to and use of financial resources, property, or other assets. The accompanying Law On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of the Kyrgyz Republic on the Prevention and Protection changes elements of the Administrative Code and other relevant laws. "By enacting this new law, the Kyrgyz government has shown a commitment to the rights of domestic abuse victims and is setting a standard that others in the region should follow," said Hillary Margolis, women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Now government agencies should demonstrate leadership by putting into practice, and enforcing, these new measures that can literally save women's lives." Local organizations and women's rights activists, who have been pushing for a revised law since 2009, were instrumental in drafting and advocating for the law's passage. An important feature is that any victim of domestic violence, regardless of whether criminal proceedings are opened in their case, can avail of the provisions. These include key rights, such as access to safe shelter, and medical and mental health services. In a significant move to heighten safety for victims, under amendments to the Law of the Kyrgyz Republic on Weapons convicted domestic violence offenders are no longer eligible for a permit to purchase or possess weapons. Authorities will revoke permits already held by convicted offenders. Domestic violence is widespread in Kyrgyzstan, affecting nearly one third of women and girls ages 15 to 49. According to the most recent government data, for 2013, fewer than half of registered domestic violence complaints resulted in a court case. Of those that did, only 7 percent were referred to the courts as criminal offenses. The rest were treated as administrative offenses, which have lesser punishment. Of domestic violence cases that resulted in administrative penalties, 64 percent resulted in only small penalties for "minor hooliganism," or disorderly conduct. Kyrgyzstan's 2003 domestic violence law made important strides toward criminalizing domestic violence, but significant gaps in implementation and enforcement remained. In a 2015 report, Human Rights Watch documented insufficient police and judicial responses to domestic violence, as well as lack of shelters and other critical services for survivors. Anna D., 43, told Human Rights Watch that police at several stations in Bishkek and Issyk-Kul province sent her away when she tried to report domestic abuse on multiple occasions between approximately 2007 and 2010. "When I came to the police station the policeman at the door would start asking, 'Why are you here? What do you want?'" she said. "Then they would say, 'No, you cannot do that, we do not take complaints on domestic violence.' Then I would turn around and walk away." To address gaps, the new law calls for the government to name a coordinating body for all activities related to the prevention of, and protection from, domestic violence. It also assigns responsibilities for preventing domestic violence and assisting victims to multiple government and nongovernment entities, including the Ministries of Justice, Internal Affairs, Social Development, Health, and Education, the Office of the Ombudsman, and nongovernmental groups. Allocation of resources, both by the central government and through funding from international donors, will be key to full implementation and enforcement, Human Rights Watch said. The law's essential assistance measures include targeted training of police, judicial officials, health care providers, social workers, and local authorities, and provision of shelter, mental health care, and legal aid for survivors. Services for victims can be the key to escaping abuse, Human Rights Watch said. "I knew if I went to the police I would have to leave the house and couldn't go back and I thought, 'Where will I go with two kids?'" Aigul G., a 42-year-old woman from Naryn province who suffered domestic abuse for nine years, told Human Rights Watch. "I put up with his beatings, but at least I have a place to stay." While some provisions of the new law will go into effect within 10 days of the law's publication, others will not take effect until January 1, 2018, including the rights to social and psychological assistance and to free temporary accommodation in shelters. Government agencies, with support from international donors, UN agencies, and nongovernmental groups, should ensure that by January 1 there are adequate shelter spaces in line with Council of Europe standards, for example and social and psychological services for victims in all provinces. Adopting a survivor-centered approach consistent with international standards for domestic violence response, the law calls for health and social development authorities and service providers to obtain adult victims' consent prior to informing police of a domestic violence incident. This helps to mitigate risks for victims particularly those who live or maintain a relationship with their abusers and facilitates a response that respects victims' needs and best interests. Some provisions of the law lack specificity and survivor protections, and should be clarified through implementing regulations or protocols, Human Rights Watch said. For example, the law mandates the police to issue short-term protection orders in all domestic violence cases, but does not require a survivor's consent for such orders. The law also should be elaborated to ensure that it includes unmarried partners, former partners, and relatives of current or former partners or spouses, regardless of whether the victim and abuser live together. Though changes to the Administrative Code increase the potential fine for failure to comply with a protection order, Kyrgyzstan's parliament should amend the Criminal and Administrative Codes to make violation of a protection order a potential criminal offense. The parliament should also amend the Criminal Code to clarify that its provisions may be invoked in cases of domestic violence, and eliminate the possibility that an abuser could be immune from criminal liability by reconciling with the victim. "Kyrgyzstan's government and civil society should be proud of this move to make women and girls safer in their own homes," Margolis said. "But the new domestic violence law will only be meaningful if its promise is backed by action to make better protection for victims a reality." Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Search Refworld and / or country All countries Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Falkland Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China) Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau (Special Administrative Region of China) Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island North Macedonia Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestine, State of Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-Leste (East Timor) Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkiye Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu U.S. Virgin Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland United States of America Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Viet Nam Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Territory Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Child Labour in Afghan Coal Mines Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Yaqub Azorda Publication Date 5 May 2017 Reference ARR 569 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Child Labour in Afghan Coal Mines, 5 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130ab44.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Shir Ahmad, 12, spends all day working in the pitch darkness of a coalmine in the Dara-e Suf district of northern Samangan province. His face black with dust, he said he spent his time loading a donkey with coal to then transport to the surface. The work was dangerous, Ahmad explained, continuing, "Once a big piece of coal fell on my head and I was in bed for ten days." But the money was good - 400 afghanis (six US dollars) a day, well above the average wage in Afghanistan. Leading three donkeys out of the mine, Najibullah, a 13-year-old from Tor village in Dara-e Suf, also said that he needed the wages to support his family. "I was in fifth grade at school when my father died. I had to drop out of school and work in the mine," he said, adding, "I wake up at one o'clock in the morning and remain inside the mine until 2pm the next day so as to fill two lorries full of coal." Child labour is rife in the more than 500 coalmines spread across the Dara-e Suf district of Samangan province, one of Afghanistan's largest seams. According to Khair Mohammad Akhtarzada, the deputy governor of Samangan, more than 1,000 of some 5,000 people working in these mines are underage. He said that the government only controlled four out of the hundreds of mines currently operational in the region. The others were unlicensed and did not maintain even minimal safety standards. This meant that accidents were common and often fatal. Akhtarzada said that his office had written hundreds of letters to the ministry of mines and industries on the subject, but no action had been taken. He said that he understood that the scale of the problem was beyond the government's capacity to deal with. "There are over 560 coal mines in Dara-e Suf district," he said. "The government cannot place a guard in front of every mine to prevent employers recruiting children." Akhtarzada said that the ministry had promised to approve a 200-member security force to monitor the mines in Dara-e Suf, but had apparently not yet been able to reach an agreement over the issue with the ministry of interior. Ahmad Ali Hassani, the governor of Dara-e Suf Bala - the district's upper valley - called for the ministry of mines to dispatch mobile teams to halt work at pits deemed too dangerous to function as well as preventing child labour. But he agreed that government lacked the resources to monitor such a large number of collieries. "The mines are spread across an extensive area. There are limited numbers of employees from the ministry of mines to regulate them. So if workers are killed in the mines, the owner asks the family to stay silent and not inform anyone officially by paying them some money." Hassani said that the ministry had only two offices, in the coal-rich areas of Shab Bashak and Sheikha, but claimed that neither outpost was functioning. Hassan Kargar, the chairman of the labour union of the northern provinces, based in Mazar-e Sharif, said that Afghan law clearly precluded the use of children or even young teenagers for hard physical tasks. "According to article 13 of the labour law, those who perform heavy labour should be aged at least age 18," he said, adding that the mine owners were enacting "a form of violence against children which the Afghan government must act to prevent". Kargar said that he had a letter from the ministry of labour, social affairs, martyrs and the disabled dating from 2014 that confirmed it was illegal to employ children in heavy labour and which had been sent to mine owners. However, there had been no further attempts to hold them to account. Human rights defenders say that allowing this situation to continue clearly violates international agreements signed by the Afghan government. Qazi Sayyid Mohammad Samay, head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights' Commission (AIHRC) in the northern province of Balkh, said, "The use of children in heavy or forced labour is against all accepted conventions on children's rights and amount to a form of violence against children." He said that as a signatory to the international convention on children's rights, Afghanistan should keep to its commitments. The convention states that members "shall defend the rights of abused children and shall prevent any work that is heavy and/or prevents children from education or causes harm to their physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social growth". Ministry of mining spokesman Zabihullah Sarwari agreed that child labour was against the law and acknowledged that a number of mines were operating illegally in Samangan province. However, he said that there was nothing his ministry could do. They were limited to making policy, he explained. Sarwari added that his department had written to the ministry of the interior a number of times asking them to act over illegal extraction, but no action had been taken. "We are now working on a strategy to bring the mines out of control of abusive owners," he said. Najibullah Danish, the deputy spokesman of the ministry of interior, confirmed that the police were considering developing a plan to increase government scrutiny of the mines, but gave no details as to when this might be ready. ACCIDENTS ARE COMMON Mine workers young and old routinely endure hot, dusty and dangerous conditions. Faiz Mohammad, 50, works alongside his 15-year-old son in a Dara-e Suf coalmine. He said that each day they walked up to 300 metres inside the mine to dig, with no safety equipment beyond a small headlamp. "There are eight children working alongside my son," he told IWPR. "Each of them uses two donkeys to take coal out of the mine." Under these circumstances, mishaps are common, and many locals say that they have lost family members to workplace accidents. Sayyid Ghulam Hussein, 25, who works at the Shab Bashak mine, said: "My 12-year-old brother was killed due to gas inside the tunnel a month ago." He continued, "I went to the Dara-e Suf market to buy groceries one day. When I returned, I noticed that people had gathered near our house and my brother was lying on the ground unconscious." The family tried desperately to find oxygen equipment to revive the boy, but in vain. "Finally, we found a car and took my brother towards the hospital in Dara-e Suf. The hospital is one-and-a-half hours away from our village. My brother lost his life on the way." Ghafoor, 45, another worker at the Shab Bashak mine, also lost a younger sibling in a pit accident. "My brother was 13 years old. He would go to work on his donkey and return home [to their nearby village] every day. One day, it was around noon when someone called my name and asked me to go to the mine. I ran. I saw that they had taken my brother out of the mine, but he was no longer alive. He had already died inside the mine." Ghafoor said that his brother had been found 200 metres inside the mine and it was thought that gas had killed him. Sometimes, tunnels simply collapse on the workers inside. "There were two sons from a family from Qaram Qul village who worked in one mine a year-and-a-half ago," said Hajji Saifuddin, 75. "The entrance to the mine collapsed. Both boys, 14 and 15 years of age, were buried under piles of coal and died." Saifuddin, a resident of Dara-e Suf's Sheikh village, said he had spent decades working in the coal mines. "Based on my experience, around 100 people are killed each year inside the tunnels when parts of the mine collapses, big chunks of coal are displaced, or when the tunnel ceiling caves in," he said, adding that injuries were also common. "There are many wounded people," he continued. "One or two people are sent home with broken arms or legs each week." Saifuddin said that the local environment had also been badly contaminated, adding that countless numbers of people suffered from asthma or allergies in the area. Medical workers confirm his assessment. Eid Mohammad Ramazani runs a dispensary in the market of Dahana-e Tor in Dara-e Suf district and estimated that 70 per cent of residents of areas around the mine also suffered from asthma and respiratory diseases. More than 10 people, including children, came to him for treatment each day, he said, adding that he also saw four of five children each month with fractures he believed were sustained in the mines. Gul Ahmad Quraishi, the director of a 30-bed hospital in the centre of Dara-e Suf district, also said that he believed that the mines had had a devastating impact on the health of local people. "Over 200 patients visit the centre each day for treatment, most of them from areas near the mines. The majority suffer from respiratory diseases and asthma," Quraishi said, adding that even the water in the canals near the mines was contaminated with coal dust. Quraishi said that he also regularly treated children with limbs broken from injuries he believed they had sustained in the mines. IWPR managed to contact one private mine-owner, Amanullah, who runs a pit in Dahan-e Tor. "Nobody has been killed in my mine, but one or two people get killed or wounded in other mines every two or three months," he said. This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Hamilton, Bermuda (May 10, 2017) Archer Limited ("Archer") today presents the company strategy and financial outlook at its Investor Day 2017 held in Oslo, Norway. The company outlines its leading positions in selective segments of the oil services industry, an EBITDA margin target of 11% through the cycle, and the ambition of selective non-core divestments. Archer reiterates the short term guidance of a second quarter of 2017 in line with the first quarter, and a sequentially stronger second half of 2017. "Archer has been successful in turning around its operations and is currently delivering a positive cash flow in a challenging market environment. We have secured a financial runway to 2020, with sufficient cash to support our operations until the market recovers. In addition, we are well-positioned in attractive segments of the oil services industry that are expected to be among the first to recover in an improving market, including our substantial exposure to a high-growth US onshore market. However, global offshore operators are still cautious and measured in their spending," says John Lechner, Chief Executive Officer of Archer. Archer today hosts its Investor Day 2017 at the Engineerium, outside Oslo, Norway, where it is presenting a more operationally efficient company with an updated strategy. "Archer has a portfolio of companies with meaningful operational leverage requiring limited capex, allowing us to grow both rapidly and profitably as the market improves. We have adopted an approach which allows us to think strategically regarding all our businesses, using both organic and structural levers that best secure value for our shareholders", says Lechner. Archer provides the following financial group outlook: EBITDA margin: Management target of above 11% through the next cycle Capex: Sustainable at 3-4% of revenues as the growth capex program in drilling assets is finalized Continued balance sheet de-leveraging: Break-even cash flow at an annual EBITDA of USD 55 million, in addition to selective non-core divestments 2017 activity: Second quarter 2017 in line with the first quarter 2017, with increased activity in the second half of 2017 The Investor Day 2017 presentations are enclosed, and can also be downloaded at the investor relations section of www.archerwell.com You may also find the presentations, and follow a LIVE webcast of today's Investor Day, here: http://ljsp.lwcdn.com/api/video/embed.jsp?id=bab7adb2-9a72-440f-beb2-25c9c1b1f6cf&pi=ebfbbe96-9803-4012-a516-39b46b9b7e68 For further information, please contact: Dag Skindlo, CFO and EVP Strategy + 47 98 22 66 24 dag.skindlo@archerwell.com Joachim Houeland, Corporate Treasurer +47 482 78 748 joachim.houeland@archerwell.com About Archer Archer is a global oil services company with a heritage that stretches back over 40 years. With a strong focus on safety and delivering the highest quality products and services, Archer operates in 40 locations over 19 countries providing drilling services, well integrity & intervention, plug & abandonment and decommissioning to its upstream oil and gas clients. Archer is publicly traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker ARCHER. The main operations currently take place in the major basins within Europe, North and South America and the company is expanding rapidly throughout the Middle East, Asia Pacific and West Africa. www.archerwell.com This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. Attachments: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/56b32d83-f5a4-497c-855a-a51c5cd1e2d7 Afghanistan: Women Seek Refuge in Safe Houses Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Salma Rasa Publication Date 20 April 2017 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 570 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghanistan: Women Seek Refuge in Safe Houses, 20 April 2017, ARR 570, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130b044.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The beatings began soon after Zahra, now 22, was married off to a 75-year old man in exchange for a large bride price. "My father was blinded by money and he gave me in marriage to this man," she told IWPR. "Every time my husband was violent to me, his family members used to tell me, 'Your husband has these rights over you, you should put up with it.' "On many nights during the cold winter I was dragged out of the house for no reason, my hands and feet were tied with chains and I was forced to spend the whole night outside the back door in the snow, and no one would help me." The abuse became so severe that eventually Zahra's case was brought before a community Jirga, or council of elders, for resolution. But their intervention made no difference, and Zahra was forced to flee her marriage and take take refuge in a women's shelter in Kabul, one of a handful of safe houses that NGOs have set up across the country. Zahra, who managed to get a divorce from her husband, said she was happy living at the women's refuge. Her family, however, wanted her to return home. "I'm pleased with my life here, but my family still doesn't leave me alone and says I should leave the safe house," she explained. "I want my family to let me be and let me live my own way, because my life belongs to me and I need to decide my own future." In Afghanistan, women facing forced marriage or domestic abuse have few options. If they escape and ask for help from the police, they face either being returned or imprisoned, as Afghan women who run away from home or refuse to get married are commonly accused of "moral crimes", a vague concept that does not exist in formal law. Sometimes community elders are asked to intervene or host the runaway, but this is only a very short-term solution. The idea of a safe house is to provide emergency accommodation where women and girls at risk can access legal advice and healthcare. Mediation is also available. Nazia Faizi, head of the department of women's protection centres, said that the first such refuge was set up in 2002, the year after the fall of the Taleban regime. Since then 12 safe houses have been built in Kabul, Herat, Kapisa and Nangarhar province and are currently hosting some 600 women. Faizi said that girls and women were not referred to a safe house with the intention of separating them from their family. It was rather an opportunity for them to resolve their differences and solve their problems through dialogue. This was not possible when a woman's life and safety was at risk. She explained that women received psychological and medical services during their stay in the safe house, and a lawyer was hired to defend their rights. Literacy courses, vocational training and religious education were also provided, and women who wanted to return to study were referred to appropriate institutions. Taahirah Faizi, a psychologist who visits the west Kabul safe house twice a work to work with the women there, said the aim was to support women in overcoming their trauma. "We prepare women psychologically to be active in society and stand on their own feet once again, and it's up to them if they want to return to their families," she said. But the whole concept of women's refuges remains controversial in deeply conservative Afghanistan. Some argue that they encourage women to leave their families and lead to immoral behavior, and persistent rumours circulate that women are often sexually abused inside the refuges. In June 2012, the then Afghan justice minister, Habibullah Ghaleb, told female parliamentarians that shelters were "centres of prostitution". He later apologised after coming under a barrage of criticism from human rights groups. Negative attitudes remain, however. "The creation of safe houses in Afghanistan, which is a conservative society, has caused more social and family problems than it has solved," said Sayed Abdul Ghafar Ibrahimi, a lawyer. He claimed that women felt free to make trouble at home since they were confident of finding shelter at a safe house. This in turn led to the break up of families. In addition, Ibrahimi argued that women's refugees were viewed by the public as a foreign concept, incompatible with Afghan traditions, and called for the government to take a more active role in supervising them. Otherwise, he continued, they risked further alienating citizens from state institutions. But others argue that establishing places of safety for women was essential in a society rife with gender violence. "The Afghan government must work to strength and improve the rule of law in society, so that women get their rights and it won't be necessary to brought them to safe houses," said Sayed Maroof Jahid Hashimi, a lawyer. "But we can see that the dominant culture in our society, especially in villages and small towns, violates [young women's] rights. "Since women in the country are deprived of the authority to make decisions, and it's men who rule and decide the fate of the entire family, women need government intervention to achieve their rights." "The rumours that safe houses are morally corrupt are completely false and I deny them," agreed Shabnam Sima, head of women's affairs at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). She noted that the AIHRC, the ministry of women's affairs and the police all referred women to safe houses for their own protection. Any allegations of sexual impropriety in a safe house would be thoroughly investigated, she insisted. If the allegations were proved, the refuge would be shut down. But Sima said that such tales of abuse were simply malicious rumours spread by perpetrators of domestic violence whose victims were forced to seek refuge in safe houses. Some women do complain about the treatment they received at safe houses. Madina, 17, said that her experience at a safe house in the west of Kabul had not been positive. She had fled her in-laws house, explaining that soon after she got married in December last year, her mother-in-law began drugging her to drug her to make her sleep with unknown men. She explained that after she was betrothed to her future husband Yama, who was living in the Netherlands, she discovered that he was already married man and had teenage children. "I fought with Yama to break off the engagement, but he deceived me with his lies and slept with me before we were married," she said. "When my husband went back to Holland, my mother-in-law used to drug me so that I could be sexually abused by men. She told me that I had to take these pills to stay beautiful, but they were sleeping pills so I passed out." "One day when I had not taken any tablets - it was only nine in the morning - two men entered our house. They looked at me and said, 'She's normal today.' I wondered what they were talking about, and realized that they had evil intentions towards me. When they came close I cried and screamed and all three of them began to beat me." Madina escaped and made it to a police station. From there she was taken to a safe house. "Although there were scars on my body and my hand was injured, instead of treating me, I was abused with all kinds of vulgar language at the safe house," she said. Shamila, 23, spent eight months in a Kabul safe house and also said that it had been a frightening and intimidating experience. "Women in safe houses fight among themselves, they are seeking dominance and supremacy over each other, from chairman to lawyer all are abuse women with ugly language," she said, adding, "Families should treat their daughters well so that they don't end up in safe houses." Benafsha Afaf is head of Women for Women in Afghanistan, an NGO working across 13 provinces of the country, said that nonetheless numbers of applicants for spaces in refuges were rising. She said, "Since the beginning of 2007, the number of women referred to safe houses has been increasing." Afaf said that women could spend between six months and a year in a safe house, during which time they were supported by government funds. As far as the allegation that safe houses were detrimental to women's welfare, she said that there would be no need to provide a place of refuge if families and communities did not abuse women and girls. Faizi, of the department of women's protection centres, acknowledged that it was hard to combat rumours that safe houses were a western plot to undermine Afghan society when they were supported by foreign donors with little government oversight. Up to now, the state had lacked the resources to fund their own refuges, but Faizi said that the ministry of women had proposed this as a alternative relying on the services of NGOs and had receved a positive response. She said that the president had indicated that state-run refuges would be set up in the future. This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Child Malnutrition Mounts in Afghan Province Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Mohammad Ibrahim Spesalai Publication Date 27 April 2017 Reference ARR 571 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Child Malnutrition Mounts in Afghan Province, 27 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130b694.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Rising numbers of children in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar are suffering from malnutrition, according to local health officials, with more than 36,000 in need of assistance. Ahmadullah Faizi, head of public nutrition at Kandahar's department of public health, told IWPR that their most recent figures, from December 2016, showed that 20,157 children were suffering from moderate malnutrition. A further 16,000 were suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Faizi explained that this indicated a rise of nearly 4,000 children from two years ago. The true number was likely to be even higher, he continued, noting that his figures only accounted for those children whose parents were able to seek treatment at public health centres. Malnutrition is a countrywide problem in Afghanistan. A recent UN report found that 1.8 million people need assistance for the condition, including at least 1.3 million children under the age of five. However, across the country, only around 250,000 children had been admitted for treatment as of September 2016. Malnutrition amongst children leads to both short and long term irreversible health problems. Growth may be stunted and cognitive development harmed, and lowered resistance means that children are more vulnerable to disease. Nearly 70 children were known to have died in Kandahar as a result of malnutrition last year, Faizi said. Child malnutrition was a problem in a number of areas in Kandahar city and the centres of the province's 17 districts including Maiwand, Panjwai and Zhari, he continued. "The reason that more children in some areas of Kandahar city are malnourished is because many families have been displaced and fled from Zabul, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces, and moved to Kandahar city where now they are living in poor conditions," Faizi said. The real crisis, however, lay in more remote areas where security was very poor and there were soaring levels of unemployment. The situation had been made worse by increased fighting, an economic slowdown since most coalition forces left in 2014 and a sharp rise in the number of returnees from Pakistan. Across the country, both floods and drought have hit local agriculture hard, while locust infestation and crop diseases have also taken their toll. EMERGENCY FEEDING At Mirwais Hospital, Kandahar's largest health-care centre, 34 children are currently in-patients receiving treatment for severe malnutrition. Some mothers told IWPR that they were just too poor to be able to feed their children properly. "My six-month-old son suffers from this condition," said Raxia, who had travelled from her home in the village of Waish village of Spin Boldak district. "He was losing weight and seemed weaker day by daythere's no clinic in our village and our family has not been able to feed him enough milk. He spent a week in bed and finally I had to bring him here." Guldasta, from Talokan village in Panjwai district, added, "My son has been malnourished and too thin ever since he was born, his situation is getting worse day by day. Now I've brought him here, please God he will be treated." Bibi Amina, from Sangisar village in Zhari district, said she had been there for more than two weeks with her young son, having been unable to access treatment closer to home. "We took our kid to a clinic in our village but they told me there was no treatment and I should take him to Mirwais hospital. Eventually we brought my kid here and now his health situation appears somewhat better." According to the UN, only 60 per cent of Afghans have any access to healthcare, with provision being weakest in more remote parts of the country. Of the health facilities that are available, only 54 per cent provide any form of nutrition services. Kandahar officials say that they are attempted to boost the availability of help for with malnutrition. "Previously we didn't have much space or many beds to admit children, but this year we've increased the number of beds from 90 to 120 and can now treat more patients simultaneously," said Muhammad Siddiq, head of the Mirwais children's department. The Kandahar health department has also set up 48 static and 38 mobile centres in Kandahar city and the districts to combat child malnutrition. Faizi said that it was vital for parents to seek help if they were concerned about their children, adding, "I call on families not to keep patients at home but instead take them immediately to healthcare centres." He explained that all cases of malnutrition were referred to local clinics, where each malnourished child was monitored and checked weekly for a four-month period to chart their condition. These clinics provide two types of supplemental feeding, both of them for free. Ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF) are high-energy products provided by UNICEF that deliver around 550 calories per 100 grammes, and are used to treat severe acute malnutrition. Ready-to-use complimentary foods (RUCF) are distributed via the World Food Programme and are intended to treat moderate malnutrition. Siddiq emphasised that a long-term strategy was crucial to dealing with child malnutrition. While he agreed that that the lack of security and widespread poverty was exacerbating the problem, raising public awareness was also vital. Simply eating more locally available and nutritious foods, particularly eggs and dairy products, could make a real difference to child health. "Currently, in addition to our health services, we also provide information on how to prevent malnutrition, and we hope that if families put our advice into practice It will benefit them greatly," Siddiq concluded. Shamsuddin Tanvir, head of the children's department at the Kandahar office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), also said that addressing malnutrition needed to be part of a more wide-reaching strategy. Without better security and economic development, particularly in the districts, malnutrition would spiral out of control, he continued. Local health professionals had already warned the AIHRC about an impending "humanitarian disaster" if child nutrition was not improved. "This is a concern for our office," Tanvir said. "We want the local authorities and the government to improve security, prevent migration and displacement and create jobs in order to empower people and improve their financial situation, so that they will be able to buy proper food and prevent their families from becoming malnourished." Others argue that if security was improved in more volatile parts of Afghanistan, people displaced to Kandahar could return home and contribute to agricultural production. Kandahar activist Haji Faiz Mohammad said that local resources had been put under immense pressure due to the burden of caring for people displaced from the districts and neighbouring provinces. "Unemployment is the source of all misery," he said, arguing that the government needed to prioritise a local job creation scheme. "If we want to get rid of social problems, we need to address people's fundamental needs, and that's providing work which allows people to become self-reliant." This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Afghans Angry Over Fake Medicine Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Zamzama Publication Date 8 May 2017 Reference ARR 572 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghans Angry Over Fake Medicine, 8 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130b9f4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. For the last year Ziaullah, a resident of Jalalabad city in the eastern province of Nangarhar, has been regularly taking the medicine his doctor prescribed to treat his kidney stones. But his agonising condition had not improved for one simple reason, he told IWPR. It was virtually impossible to get decent medication locally, with a market flooded with substandard or out-of-date drugs. "My disease has made me tired of living," he said, explaining that as he lacked the money to go abroad for treatment, he had no option but to take the poor quality medication available and hope for the best. "Between pain and poverty on the one hand and substandard medicine on the other, I can't take any more," he continued. "May Allah almighty help me, these drugs won't." Out-of-date or counterfeit medicines are a major risk to public health across Afghanistan, and a particular problem in provinces like Nangarhar, where a common border with Pakistan provides rich opportunities for smuggling, including substandard pharmaceuticals. Local people have accused both public health officials and the security forces of either taking part in the illicit trade or turning a blind eye to it. "Anyone with a sense of humanity who was a good Muslim would not sell substandard medicines to people," said Azizullah, another Jalalabad resident. "Some staff from the department of public health are involved in this business and share its profit, and this must be investigated." Nangarhar officials have acknowledged the problem, explaining that they were struggling to deal with the flow of out-of-date and substandard medicines smuggled into the province. But Moqadas Miraj, the deputy director of Nangarhar's public health department, denied any corruption and insisted that they were doing their best to stamp out the illicit trade. Every month, tonnes of low-quality and out-of-date medicines were collected and destroyed in Jalalabad. As for those found selling such contraband, Miraj said, "We take legal action through issuing financial penalties, closing down pharmacies and confiscating drugs. Every day our teams carry out inspections across the city, collect expired medicines and burn them." Idress Momand, spokesman of the Nangarhar border police, also denied that his forces accepted bribes in return for allowing counterfeit drugs to be smuggled into the country, insisting that they constantly tried to prevent this illegal trade. "We can't deny that substandard medicines are smuggled through the border areas, but in areas where our forces have set up outposts no one can smuggle such medicines or any other material into Afghanistan." Ehsan Shinwari, head of the Nangarhar Civil Hospital, said that the problem had reached such a level people no longer felt they could rely on Afghan doctors and instead sought treatment in Pakistan wherever possible. "People don't trust their doctors, but doctors are not to blame, as they properly prescribe medicines for patients but due to the poor quality of these medicines the treatment doesn't work," Shinwari said. "However, if the same medicines are prescribed by a doctor in Pakistan, the patient will respond to treatment and quickly recover, as the quality of medicines are better. We are trying to tackle this problem and we're collecting out-of-date drugs daily and destroying them." Fozullah Kakar, a doctor who has a private practice in Jalalabad, agreed that the substandard medicines in circulation had damaged the reputation of the local medical profession. He accepted that some doctors were involved in this trade but said that this was only a minority. The real culprits were the drug importers, Kakar argued, because they purposely bought cheap, low-quality drugs abroad to resell for a greater profit in Afghanistan. "The medicines that are imported through smuggling routes are always of low quality, and the medicines that are imported legally are also of low quality. The medication doesn't work as it's intended to and then it's the doctors who are blamed." Some pharmacists blame the public for not being willing to pay top prices for high-quality medicine. Faridullah, who owns the Farid pharmacy in Jalalabad, said that patients needed to shoulder some of the blame for the market in inferior medicines since they often sought out the cheapest possible option. MAJOR BUSINESS Khan Jan Alokozay, the vice-chairman of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that Afghanistan imported 400 million US dollars worth of legal drugs from Pakistan each year. But Najibullah Sahibzada, head of the Association of Pharmaceutical Businesses in Nangarhar, refuted any suggestion that his members knowingly smuggled low quality medicines into Afghanistan. He said that all drugs importing companies were registered with the government. "I categorically deny that the drug corporations and companies import substandard medicines," he said. "If someone has smuggled it privately, then that's a separate issue. Corporations do not import substandard medicines and if it was discovered then their license would be terminated." The first major medicine and foodstuff quality-control laboratory, which cost five million US dollars to build, staff and equip, was inaugurated in Kabul in April 2017. But testing all imported drugs will prove expensive, and the smuggling routes are so established that few expect there to be much impact on the illicit pharmaceutical trade. Nusrat, a civil society activist, said that border police were bribed to allow substandard medicines into Nangarhar province via well-known smuggling routes. "If government corruption ends, then the buying, selling and smuggling of substandard medicine will also end, as corruption is enabling this problem," he said. Ordinary people say that they remain at the mercy of local pharmacies. "My small daughter got sick and we took her to a doctor," said Sayed Mirza, a 20-year-old who runs a grocery shop in Jalalabad's Eidgah city. "The doctor prescribed some medicine but instead of getting better, she got even worse. When we took her to another doctor, he said that the medicines were just poor quality." This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Horse Carts Return to Syria's Streets Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Sonia al-Ali Publication Date 3 May 2017 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Horse Carts Return to Syria's Streets, 3 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130c194.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Horse-drawn carts are returning to the streets of Maarat al-Nu'uman, as high fuel costs take their toll on the local economy. With fewer and fewer people able to afford the upkeep of a car or lorry, carts and barrows are being used to transport goods around the local area. Abu Hussein, a 61 year-old from the village of Kafr Rumah, remembers the last time such vehicles were a daily sight in the area. "Horse carts were in frequent use across Idlib 30 years ago, but they disappeared when cars became more common," he said. "Now they have returned because of war conditions which brought with them high fuel and transportation costs. Horse carts are useful for people on low incomes and villagers in rural areas starting using them when grazing herds peasants doing agricultural work like tilling the soil and transporting crops are also using them." For some trades made more popular by the conflict, for instance the sale of fuel spurred by power shortages, horse carts are simply more suitable. Abu Ayman, 45, said he had bought a horse cart to help him sell fuel with his son in the street. The fuel barrels, he explained, did not fit on his motorbike. For Kamel al-Razzouk, a 41-year-old who owns a small restaurant in a Maarrat al-Nu'man neighbourhood of, horse-drawn transport is a way to significantly cut his overheads. "Every night I go to the vegetable market to buy goods needed for the restaurant and I prefer to transport them by horse cart because it's cheaper. This costs 300 Syrian pounds and I would have to spend 1000 pounds to transport my shopping by taxi," he said. "That's how I save some money in light of the high cost of living and the low level of income." Walid al-Marawi, 36, bought a horse and cart when the running costs of his own vehicle became too much to meet. "War destroyed our dreams and imposed difficult living conditions on us," he explained. "We can no longer afford a car for work because of the high cost of the vehicle as well as the fuel. So I decided to buy a horse cart to transport vegetables and fruits from the market to homes and shops, and that's how I make a living. There is a high demand for horse carts as a form of transportation because they are cheaper than cars." Al-Marawi said the horse could only travel so far in one day, and took a long time for each journey. Spending his days sitting on the cart, he himself suffered during the cold winter weather, although he had at least fixed up a piece of plastic to protect him from the rain. But al-Marawi said that he was happy with his work, and even took children for trips on weekends to give them a break from the pressures of the war. While the use of horses for transportation is increasing, horse-breeding - which used to be a valued part of Syrian heritage - is waning. Local farmers used to pride themselves on breeding beautiful and expensive Arabian horses, which were exported worldwide. A certified purebred Arabian horse can sell for between 2,000 and 25,000 US dollars, depending on its pedigree. "The Arabian horse is one of the oldest means of transportation and had a distinguished history during times of peace, but the fierce Syrian war has left its mark on everyone and everything," said Munib Abu Jawad, 34, a farmer in the Idlib countryside. "Horse farmers are suffering from the scarcity of feed, the expensive prices and the lack of medicine and suitable barns for raising horses, in addition to the difficulty registering them with the World Arabian Horse Organisation (WAHO) to prove authenticity. All of this threatens the future of the purebred horses which are part of the history of the country." Abu Jawad said he still bred Arabian horses, but only as a hobby, so as to ensure this long-standing Syrian tradition would continue. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting I Can Still Smell the Blood Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Haneen Al-Mouhamed Publication Date 16 April 2017 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, I Can Still Smell the Blood, 16 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130c4f4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. My family and I were having lunch on the afternoon of September 15, 2013 in our home in the city of al-Tabqah when we heard the sound of distant shooting. My little sister Nada asked my father, "What's going on? What's that sound?" "Only God knows, my daughter, continue eating," he replied, but he was clearly concerned. I felt that my father knew what was happening but didn't want to say anything. A few minutes after we finished lunch, we heard shooting again. The sound was getting louder and louder, as if the shooters were approaching our house. I began to panic and felt myself trembling. My older brother Mohammed went out on the balcony and screamed in a shaking voice, "Come and see what I see!" We all rushed to the balcony. My father was the first one to arrive, followed by my mother. After seeing what they saw, my parents didn't let us go out to the balcony. My mother's eyes filled with tears she was unable to hide. My sister and I begged my father to let us take a look but he positioned himself between us and the balcony door. He stood in silence by the door of the balcony to stop us going outside while my mother closed all the windows. My brother could keep quiet no longer and said, "How can they do such a thing, are they human beings? They can't be!" I was curious and thought it would be impossible for them to hide what was happening right under our house. "Brother, tell us what you saw," I asked him. "Human heads cut off, and thrown in the street," my brother said in a painful voice. My father shouted at him. "Shut up, why did you speak?" "They will know eventually," my brother replied. I was shocked. I burst out crying and said to my father, "What does he mean by 'cut heads'? Human heads? Tell me!" Time passed inside our house, we were all in shock. Later I went to my sister Nada and said, "Let's go to the balcony and see what they saw." "No, I don't want to see anything," she told me. I didn't dare to do it on my own, especially since my father and mother had forbidden us. Evening came quickly and again we heard the sound of heavy gunfire. It was accompanied by voices crying, "God is great, God is great!" This time I realised that the shooting was coming from right in front of our house, which overlooked the public square. I heard a voice shouting, "With the help of God, we cut off the heads of these al-Assad pigs!" "God is great, God is great," a crowd replied. This time I didn't wait for anyone's permission to go to the balcony. I ran towards it, too fast to allow anyone to stop me. "Don't go onto the balcony," my father shouted at me as I wrestled with the door. I turned for a moment and said to him, "I have to go out, I want to understand what's happening." As soon as i stepped out onto the balcony, my body was paralysed with fear. I saw dozens of people in black clothes, their faces covered with black masks. They were carrying real human heads. Even as I write this now, I can smell the blood I smelled that day. The men grabbed the severed heads by the hair, waving them to the right and left and almost playing with them as they chanted, "God is great!" A true horror movie was being enacted in front of me. I went back into the house and began sobbing loudly. It was the first time I had seen Islamic State fighters. My father came and hugged me, saying, "So, my daughter, this is why I was trying to prevent you from going out to the balcony." I was 16 years old. To this day I can't forget those moments. Haneen al-Mohammed, 19, was a student in al-Tabaqah in the Raqqa countryside before the conflict forced her to move to the Idlib countryside. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting My Wheelchair and I Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Fatima Bakkur Publication Date 24 April 2017 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, My Wheelchair and I, 24 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130c944.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. On May 29, 2012 I took my four-month old baby in my arms and went to visit my family as usual. I was 28 years old. But that evening was different. Regime forces and rebels had clashed in the neighbouring village, and many people had fled to take refuge with us. Suddenly, we heard a noise, a noise we heard for the first time. It was a helicopter hovering over my village. But we were not yet used to the presence of military aircraft or helicopters in the skies above our village and so we weren't afraid of them. As I sat discussing politics with the displaced people outside my parents' home, we heard a new and more terrifying noise. It was a helicopter shooting, targeting my parents' house. Did the pilot think that the displaced people were armed? Everyone panicked, so we all ran inside. I was unlucky, I didn't run fast enough, and I was shot and fell to the ground. I felt like the fires of hell was flaming inside me, as if my limbs had been cut off, as if someone was tearing me apart. Blood was flowing around me, but I couldn't move. My brother and my mum were a metre or less away from me but I couldn't reach them. My brother managed to drag me inside the house with the helicopter still shooting above us. I could hear everything and I was aware of what was happening to me. I heard the ambulance arriving and a young man with a Homs accent said to me, "Get well soon sister." It was the paramedic. They put me in the ambulance and rushed me to a nearby hospital. I saw the concerned faces of the doctor and the nurse. I heard them saying to my father, who was crying and screaming in grief, "It would be better if you took her immediately to Turkey, this seems to be a difficult injury." The ambulance took me again but this time to deliver me to a Turkish ambulance near a village on the border. My husband came with me, he looked sad, but my daughter stayed in Syria. I couldn't stop thinking about her; it was time to breastfeed her and put her to bed. I arrived at the hospital in the Turkish city of al-Rihaniyya and stayed there for one night. But the next morning they took me to the Antakya hospital because I was in such a bad condition. Everyone in the hospital spoke Turkish which I didn't understand, but I knew from their faces that I was not in a good state. I still remember every detail. I entered a white room, it was the operating room. I could only see the ceiling above me. I couldn't move so I looked at the faces of the doctor and nurses standing around me. They took off my ornaments and accessories. I felt the nurse's cold hands as she took off my earrings. I slept in the operating room and woke up feeling weightless. Dr. Ali said hello to me in Turkish. I smiled and tried to get up but I couldn't. Then a man came to translate. They asked me, "Are you hungry?" I said, "Yes, I am hungry" The doctor, the translator and I ate together. Then the doctor began talking via the translator. He told me I had to be patient. Then he told me that I was semi-paralysed. That was the start of my huge suffering. I settled with my aunt and her family in the Turkish city of al-Rihaniyya to begin my rehabilitation. I only saw my daughter again eight months later. My husband brought her from Syria. I couldn't keep her with me while I was in this condition. How could I breastfeed? What could I do with her? How could I take care of her? My daughter was now a year and two months. The first meeting with her was the hardest. She didn't react; she didn't recognize me. After a year-and-a-half of treatment, I was finally able to sit in a wheelchair. It felt like my first encounter with the outside world. It had changed so much. I was looking at faces and buildings as if seeing them for the first time. I knew that nothing would prevent me from getting well enough to be with my daughter again, not even the fact that my husband decided to abandon both of us. He left and a while later divorced me. I was still determined to get back to my daughter, to get used to me again after our separation and make her proud of me. In 2015, three years after my injury, I was well enough to go back to Syria. Everything had changed. My encounters with people were harder than I had expected. They showed me a kind of sympathy I did not want. But I was strong enough to overcome that situation. In Syria, I worked with other friends who had also been injured towards opening a physical therapy centre. Today, we practice our job at the centre and are very proud to be disabled and yet still to be able offer even a fraction of assistance to other injured people. The wheelchair didn't change me. The wheelchair showed many people's true colours and made me stronger. Fatima Bakkur, 23, is from Idlib's western countryside. She works with the Badael organisation. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting More than one million children flee South Sudan violence Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author Claire McKeever Publication Date 8 May 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), More than one million children flee South Sudan violence, 8 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130d074.html [accessed 9 November 2022] As armed marauders closed in on her home in Yei, South Sudan, mother of two Aisha fled on foot, with her youngest son strapped to her back. Along the path to the border, the group were stopped by armed men. Ordered to kneel down, Aisha believed that they were going to be executed. "They attacked us they wanted to kill us even, but I was holding a small baby," said Aisha, convinced that the gaze of four-year-old Jonathan looking back into the eyes of one of their attackers saved their lives. "When they saw me like this, they just asked me to go." During the assault, her eldest son, 13-year-old Godwin, sensed the grave danger they were in and was distraught. But Aisha kept reassuring him that everything would be okay, and focused on keeping the children's spirits up as they trekked through the bush to Uganda. "I encouraged the children. I told them things will be better. Because something happened in our home, that's why we came here for safety. But in time, things will be alright." Godwin and Jonathan - who are now safe at Bidbidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda - are among more than one million children who have fled more than three years of conflict in South Sudan, UNICEF and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, announced today.. Children make up 62 per cent of more than 1.8 million refugees from South Sudan, according to the latest UN figures. Most have arrived in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Inside South Sudan, more than 1,000 children have been killed or injured since fresh conflict erupted in 2013, while an estimated 1.14 million children have been internally displaced. Nearly three quarters of the country's children are out of school - the highest proportion of out-of-school children in the world. The trauma, physical upheaval, fear and stress experienced by so many children account for just part of toll the crisis is exacting. Children remain at risk of recruitment by armed forces and groups and, with traditional social structures damaged, they are also increasingly vulnerable to violence, sexual abuse and exploitation. More than 75,000 children in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia have crossed South Sudan's borders either unaccompanied or separated from their families. As well as caring for her own children, Aisha also cares for her nephews, six-year-old twins Godfrey and Pilip, after they become separated from her sister as they fled. She also recently became a foster mother to Mercy, a four-year-old a girl with a disability found abandoned in the settlement. She and the children now live in a new mud hut or tukul she built from grass and mud bricks she made herself. Aisha dreams that the children can go to school and that she will receive the support she needs to feed them so they can grow up strong and educated - and look after her when she is old. "I'm just dreaming that they will find a way to study and that I can feed them. Or if anyone can help to support, because I know I cannot. I'm just praying to God to open another way so that they will maybe help me in the future." UNHCR is providing shelter to over half a million South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda and is urgently preparing new settlements to shelter 30,000 new arrivals. Much greater support is needed to ensure that every refugee family has somewhere safe to live, as well as urgent humanitarian assistance Refugee families fleeing in search of shelter and safety face a double catastrophe as the rainy season closes in. Children are most at risk from the health and protection risks of inadequate shelter, and urgently need your support. China to relocate millions of people away from disaster zones Publisher IRIN Publication Date 11 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, China to relocate millions of people away from disaster zones, 11 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130eef4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. How do you relocate a population bigger than Russia's and Germany's combined? Look to China over the next decade as it plans to resettle 250 million people in a bid to fight poverty, prioritizing the first relocations for those living in areas prone to natural disasters. The government says it has already assisted in resettling 1.2 million "ecological migrants" and aims to move 1.4 million more people "away from geological threats" by 2020, according to its five-year social and economic development plan. The mass relocations form part of China's evolving strategy on disaster preparedness and poverty alleviation, which involves shifting people away from remote areas and building up city centres with the aim of raising overall living standards. The government hopes to eliminate poverty by 2020 and resettle 250 million people into urban centres by 2026. Moving people out of disaster-prone regions is an important part of the plan, as 65 percent of China's landmass is mountainous or hilly, and the poor are most likely to live in areas prone to landslides. Baicheng County in Jilin Province is 1,287 kilometres from the coast, and much of the land there is infertile and vulnerable to drought. As one of the poorest areas in northeast China, it is on the frontlines of the government's campaign to eliminate poverty. Twenty years ago, people who now live in Lu Jia village in Baicheng County, were among the first rural poor to be resettled from areas where water was scarce and disasters such as landslides were a constant risk. "This place is much better. We were too far away and the earth was too dry before. Here the land is expensive, but at least it is fertile," said Xu Dong, a 52-year-old villager who now grows vegetables as part of a farmers' cooperative. After their relocation, the villagers initially lived in simple, brick homes. But following a fresh round of government-funded construction last year, all 900 residents received free apartments in new, five-story buildings. The villagers say they have mixed feelings about the modern apartments, which have running water and heating, but make it more difficult to chat with neighbours and have eroded their sense of community. But nobody regrets moving here. "There's an elementary school 25 kilometres away, which is not bad at all, and we will have a nursery soon right here in the complex," said another villager, Jiang Fa, gesturing at cranes overhead. Disaster-stricken land China's poverty alleviation efforts have been hindered by the fact it is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. From 2011 to 2015, the country saw more than 60,000 geological disasters, which killed over 2,000 people and caused losses totalling nearly $3 billion, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing statistics from the Ministry of Land and Resources. Last summer, China's second-costliest flood season on record left at least 1,000 people dead and wiped out 54,390 square kilometres of cropland, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Climate change is partly to blame, with increased flooding and drought threatening much of the country, including major economic hubs, according to the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. But experts say that authorities have long responded in an ad hoc way to the threat of natural disasters. "China had, until recently, been slow to develop new institutions for managing risks and responding to crisis situations," Richard Suttmeier, of the University of Oregon, wrote in a 2011 paper. It wasn't until 2006, he noted, that China promulgated its "National Plan for Environmental Emergency Response" and established an Environmental Emergency Response Centre. Relocation as a disaster mitigation strategy figured prominently in China's 2014 urbanisation plan and is now a top priority. In addition to Jilin, the government has identified a number of other eastern and central provinces where people will be relocated away from areas prone to natural disasters, including Hebei, Shanxi, Anhui, Fujian, Henan, Hubei and Shandong. Speedy construction The apartment buildings in Lu Jia were completed in just a few months between June and October 2016. Residents say they see no problems so far, but they also know that "Chinese buildings are not meant to last," said villager Lu Xun, crouching on a slab of styrofoam that was discarded by builders. The average amount of time that Chinese structures remain liveable is 25 to 30 years, compared to a century or more in many developed countries, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. It is also unclear if people in areas identified as at-risk are given any choice about whether they want to move. Lu Jia villagers told IRIN that their elected village chiefs made the decisions on behalf of their communities. They did not get any compensation, although everyone receives a standard social welfare allowance of $15 a month with an additional $12 a month for those over 60 years old. Another point of controversy is whether resettlement projects could contribute to the marginalization of ethnic minority cultures. Government backed migration has often involved moving the Han - China's most populous ethnic group - into minority areas. These include Tibet, which China annexed in 1951, and Xinjiang, where the government has cracked down on protests by members of the indigenous Uighur ethnic minority. Kevin Carrico, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at Australia's Macquarie University, said there is a risk that the government could use relocations away from disaster-prone areas as an excuse to further change the demographics in minority regions. "It's difficult to say whether environmental reasons are a cover and if this is necessarily planned in advance, but it's certainly a convenient side effect," he told IRIN. A Ministry of Land and Resources spokesperson declined to be interviewed about relocation programmes, and told IRIN that more information would be made public soon. Syria: Return of the red line Publisher IRIN Author Aron Lund Publication Date 26 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, Syria: Return of the red line, 26 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59130fe94.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. As Syria's warring parties take stock of US President Donald Trump's cruise missile strike and of his warnings against the use of chemical weapons, the dominant theme seems to be one of confusion. Has Trump's policy toward Syria changed, or was the missile attack strictly about deterrence? If so, what was it intended to deter, and what would cause Trump to strike again? Trump is a longstanding sceptic of American involvement in the war in Syria and a harsh critic of the mostly Islamist rebels fighting Syria's authoritarian government. Since taking office three months ago, he has kept a low profile on Syrian affairs, but in late March the new president's priorities began to manifest themselves. On 30 March, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced at a press conference in Ankara that the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would now "be decided by the Syrian people", which is to say, it won't, but the United States will no longer try to get him to leave. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley followed up by telling reporters, "our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting al-Assad out", and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer piled on: "with respect to al-Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept in terms of where we are right now". Not the most eloquent formulation of a new policy, but clear enough. However, only a few days later, the US suddenly seemed to reverse course once again. The massacre in Khan Sheikhoun On 4 April, the rebel-controlled city of Khan Sheikhoun in northwestern Syria was the scene of a massacre, with dozens of civilians reportedly poisoned by the nerve agent sarin. Horrifying pictures of choking children spread first across social media and then through the world press. Local activists said the attack had come from the air, indicating that the Syrian government was behind it. The international reaction broke along familiar lines. Al-Assad and his foreign allies, notably Russian President Vladimir Putin, denied involvement and accused the Syrian opposition of having staged the incident, though they presented conflicting narratives about what had actually happened. Meanwhile, pro-opposition governments like the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Israel insisted they had evidence the Syrian government had fired sarin-tipped rockets from a Su-22 jet. The Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons later concluded that the Khan Sheikhoun victims had been poisoned with "sarin or a sarin-like substance", though Russia and Syria dispute these findings. If the Syrian air force had indeed used sarin gas, it would represent a flagrant breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention that Damascus signed in 2013, and a direct challenge to the UN. The issue was particularly sensitive for the United States, which was close to striking Syrian military installations in September 2013 after concluding al-Assad's forces had breached a US "red line" by killing hundreds of people with sarin near Damascus. Instead, then-president Barack Obama decided to use the momentum created by his threat of intervention to work together with Putin to rid Syria of chemical weapons. The ensuing deal was hailed as an "ugly win" by administration officials but criticised by Obama's opponents and some of his allies, including many supporters of the Syrian opposition who had hoped for US military intervention against al-Assad. To many Americans, the September 2013 crisis has come to epitomise a wider debate over how Obama should have handled the Syrian crisis. It also shaped Trump's posture before Khan Sheikhoun. Although Trump had demanded congressional authorisation before launching airstrikes and called on Obama to "stay out of Syria" in 2013, he later turned around and began to use the red line affair to portray his predecessor as feckless and weak. On his watch, he promised, America would not back down from a challenge like Obama had. With Khan Sheikhoun, Trump had his own red line moment. According to the White House, US intelligence agencies quickly concluded that al-Assad was responsible and that the weapon used was sarin. Unlike in 2013, there was little hope of recourse to a UN investigation Russia had spent the previous three years undermining Obama's 2013 deal and seemed determined to veto anything put forth in the Security Council, regardless of what UN and OPCW investigators came up with. Trump made clear he had reacted strongly to the images coming out of Khan Sheikhoun. "My attitude toward Syria and al-Assad has changed very much," he said. "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal people were shocked to hear what gas it was. That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines." The US missile strike Just before dawn on 7 April, the United States launched a barrage of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the Syrian military air base at Shayrat, southeast of Homs, from where the White House claimed that a Su-22 had taken off to bombard Khan Sheikhoun. Storage depots, hangars, and several jets were reportedly destroyed; US Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the attack had taken out some 20 aircraft, which, if true, would represent a very significant loss to the Syrian air force. To no one's surprise, the US attack was condemned by the Syrian government and its allies, and welcomed by Syrian opposition leaders, many of whom called for continued air strikes and a no-fly zone. Regional allies of the opposition took the same line, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exclaiming that the cruise missile attack was "positive" but "not enough". Reactions in the United States were also largely positive, but the strikes triggered a tense debate over how to interpret Trump's decision and, relatedly, what to do next. In announcing the missile strike, the Pentagon had described it as a "proportional response" and said that the "use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated", which indicated that Trump had now drawn his own red line against the use of chemical weapons. But the statement made no mention of other goals or policies in Syria. Some of those involved in US debate over Syria wanted the Trump administration to keep raising the pressure on al-Assad. Having previously advocated deeper US intervention in the war, they argued that the 7 April strike had proven that military means were effective and posed limited risks to US forces. In their view, the United States should not stop at a one-off strike. Instead, the Shayrat attack should be incorporated into a broader strategy to resolve the Syrian conflict on American terms, by tipping the military balance and engineering a political transition away from al-Assad's rule. However, intervention sceptics cautioned against what they viewed as demands for irresponsible escalation, warning that Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran would not stand idly by if regime survival were threatened, and that the United States risked wading into a quagmire of open-ended and unproductive intervention. Now, they said, administration officials needed to exercise "rhetorical discipline and restraint" and make clear that the Shayrat attack was indeed a one-off punitive strike, in order not to squander the lesser but potentially achievable goal of a reestablished chemical weapons deterrence. Mixed messages The Trump administration seemed largely oblivious to these finer points of strategy, focusing instead on seeking domestic praise for the strikes. But for all the rhetoric about Trump as a man of action who had defended US red lines, there was still very little clarity about what the president considered those red lines to mean. The confusion revolved around two issues: whether Trump had reasserted the old policy of seeking al-Assad's removal, and what had motivated him to use military force in Syria. Would the United States strike again if there were new reports about large massacres of civilians, or would Trump only react against the use of chemical weapons? If so, would he seek to deter the use of military-grade nerve gas, like sarin, or would he also respond to less lethal and improvised chemical munitions, like the chlorine bombs that have been in widespread use in Syria since 2014? A couple of days after the strike, Haley declared that the United States could not envisage "any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with al-Assad at the head of the regime", which many took to mean that Trump had indeed backtracked from his view of al-Assad as a "political reality". But Haley was quickly contradicted by Tillerson, who said the strike "was related solely to the most recent horrific use of chemical weapons" and "other than that, there is no change to our military posture". Later, however, Tillerson indicated that although the United States was not about to overthrow al-Assad, it was prepared to engage in very intensive policing of the battlefield: "We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world," he said at a press conference in Italy. Right after Tillerson's remarks, White House press secretary Sean Spicer casually asserted that Trump would attack anyone who bombed civilians in Syria, with or without poison gas: "If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you can you will see a response from this president," he said. The term "barrel bomb" refers to helicopter-dropped explosive charges that are very widely used by the Syrian air force. According to a pro-opposition human rights group, the Syrian government dropped nearly 13,000 such bombs in 2016 alone. Preventing their use against civilians would require considerably more effort than one or two punitive strikes. It was only at this point that the Trump administration seemed to realise it had a messaging problem, and that it was seen to be drawing red lines it wasn't prepared to defend. The White House quickly rolled back Spicer's statement, saying he had meant only chlorine-filled barrel bombs, not the conventional high-explosive kind. Trump has backed off from seeking regime change in Syria, but, at the same time, he has retraced Obama's red line against chemical weapons, while leaving open a possibility of additional retaliation against massacres committed with conventional arms The following day, Mattis attempted to clear up both the al-Assad issue and the extent of Trump's red lines in Syria. "Our military policy in Syria has not changed. Our priority remains the defeat of ISIS". But Mattis warned that Syrian officials should expect to "pay a very, very stiff price" for any continued use of chemical arms, which, he noted, "could be considered a red line". When asked whether his definition of chemical arms included chlorine gas, Mattis answered in the affirmative: "Chemical weapons are chemical weapons," he said. "It is not about whether it's delivered with an artillery shell or it's delivered by a helicopter with a barrel bomb, or a fighter aircraft with a bomb. It's about chemical weapons." This seems to be a considerably more expansive red line than the previous administration was prepared to enforce with military means. The Syrian opposition reported more than 130 chlorine attacks in the first two years after the 2013 red line affair. Though few of these cases have been fully investigated, a Security Council-designated UN-OPCW team of experts concluded last year that the Syrian government committed at least three chlorine attacks in 2014-2015. In response, the Obama administration unsuccessfully pushed for UN sanctions and, when blocked by Russia, moved to unilaterally sanction Syrian officials. This did not stop the reports of chlorine attacks, however, and they have continued since Trump took office. Though the UN-OPCW panel has not yet investigated the recent allegations, the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic has accused pro-government forces of carrying out four chlorine attacks between 30 January and 21 February in the eastern Ghouta region. Anti-Assad activists in that area also reported a new chlorine attack immediately after the US cruise missile strikes. On 12 April, the Wall Street Journal finally got Trump himself to explain his policy. The president confirmed his view of the missile attack as a one-off punitive strike, rather than an argument in the debate over al-Assad's future. While he said he believed al-Assad's ouster is probably "going to happen at a certain point," he did not feel it should be America's doing. "We have other fights that are fights that are more important as far as our nation's concerned," Trump said. "We don't need that quicksand." Asked what would prompt him to strike in Syria again, the president said any renewed use of chemical weapons by al-Assad would trigger another attack. That, then, seems to be current US policy: Trump has backed off from seeking regime change in Syria, but, at the same time, he has retraced Obama's red line against chemical weapons, while leaving open a possibility of additional retaliation against massacres committed with conventional arms. How stable Is the new US policy? Michael Anton, who serves as head of strategic communications at the US National Security Council, recently told Politico the cruise missile attack fits well into Trump's non-interventionist policy and should not be "touted as some major change". But he also praised Trump for being "a very flexible person" who "responds to events" rather than adhering to a particular ideology or strategy. According to Anton, "the only thing maybe predictable about his foreign policy is that he says to the world, 'I'm going to be unpredictable,'" which, he said, would help the United States "keep adversaries, competitors alike, sort of off-balance". That's one way of looking at it. From the other end of the table, one could argue that it is in fact the United States that is now off-balance swaying from one idea to the next according to the whims of its commander-in-chief, while State Department and Pentagon officials struggle to interpret and implement unclear guidance in ways pleasing to the president, all working toward the Oval Office in dissonant concert. It also raises the question of how permanent Trump's new Syria policy will be, considering his reluctance to communicate his views at length or in depth, his apparently less than fully-formed ideas on the subject, and the forces within his own administration that are quietly pushing for more aggressive intervention in Syria. And what to make of the fact that this famously popularity-obsessed president was showered in praise by former critics after his missile strike, while his otherwise poor poll ratings experienced a quick uptick? The Tomahawk effect already seems to be wearing off, but it is hard to shake the suspicion that Trump might be tempted to seek the role of war president again. What that means for Syria remains to be seen, but a red line has been drawn. It is unlikely to remain untested. End of Joseph Kony hunt breeds frustration and fear Publisher IRIN Author Samuel Okiror Publication Date 26 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, End of Joseph Kony hunt breeds frustration and fear, 26 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5913104c4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Uganda and the United States have ended a six-year hunt for elusive warlord Joseph Kony and his notorious Lord's Resistance Army. But calling off the mission, focused on Central African Republic, has left the commander of Ugandan forces in the country frustrated and advocacy groups concerned that the failure to "kill or capture" Kony could see the insurgency rebound. Uganda began withdrawing its officially 2,500 troops from their base in eastern CAR last week. The pull out of 100 US special forces, who worked alongside the Ugandan soldiers, began today. The mission, known as the African Union Regional Taskforce (AU-RT), was almost from the start a wholly Ugandan affair. Frustration It was supposed to have been 5,000-strong, drawing troops from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the CAR. But the neighbouring countries, with security problems of their own, either never deployed or quickly withdrew their contingents. The task force failed to win donor funding, and Uganda ended up footing the bill. Since 2011, armed US special forces advisors have provided intelligence and logistics support. Colonel Richard Otto is the commander of Uganda's contingent in the CAR. At his divisional headquarters in Uganda's northern city of Gulu, the amiable, decorated, former senior military intelligence officer, explained the difficulty of his three-year posting. "In CAR, the area we are operating in is almost the size of Uganda. You can imagine [the vastness], and I don't have enough troops," he told IRIN. The task force was drawn from all units of the Ugandan army, but may not have exceeded 1,500 men, according to media reports. Hiding out CAR has been the perfect hideaway for the LRA. It has been convulsed by violence since 2013, when a predominantly Muslim coalition of rebels known as the Seleka overthrew the government. The UN mission, MINUSCA, has been unable to end ongoing violence between Christian militia and the former Seleka. "The armed forces of CAR are yet to be organised," said Otto, who before his deployment in CAR served as chief operations planner with African Union forces in Somalia. "Some of them are undergoing training by [the] UN [and the] European Union Training Mission, and they are not yet deployed in the eastern part of the country." The lawlessness of the CAR has attracted not only "Seleka" from neighbouring Chad, but also the "Janjaweed" militia from Sudan's Darfur region coming in to poach elephants, among other armed men. "We have quite a number of armed groups," said Otto. "So, when you encounter them in the jungle, sometimes it's difficult to know whether you are fighting LRA or other [forces]." But the Ugandan troops have recorded significant successes. Four key LRA commanders have been captured, and an insurgency of 2,000 fighters that terrorised a huge swathe of territory across central Africa has been sharply degraded. On the run The LRA, now believed to be down to less than 120 armed men, has splintered into small units operating in the remotest regions of eastern CAR, northeastern Congo, and Darfur. "The enemy is permanently on the run," said Otto, claiming that there had been a steady trickle of defections and that "over 1,000 civilians" that were abducted by the LRA had been rescued. Kony, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has a $5 million bounty on his head. He is believed to be hiding in the Kafia-Kingi enclave, a disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan. Khartoum is not a member of the regional task force and, as a historical supporter of the LRA, appears to have given Kony safe haven. But, crucially, he no longer leads his men. "He has lost command, control, and communication," said Otto. "For the first time, the LRA has factions. There is a group who has decided to leave [the] LRA and operates on [its] own." Two senior LRA commanders, Bosco Kilama and Peter Ochora, who defected last month in Congo, agree with Otto's assessment on the group's disintegration. "The LRA is disarray. The LRA has been completely disorganised with no central command. Kony is growing old and losing the grip on the soldiers," Kilama told reporters at Uganda's Entebbe airbase last week. The two men will receive a government amnesty. Mission accomplished? The LRA's apparent toothlesness has allowed the Ugandan army and the US Africa Command to trumpet Kony's irrelevance as justification for their withdrawal from the hunt. But Otto, an Acholi from northern Uganda, the original heartland of the LRA, acknowledges that the group remains a threat. "The will to fight and attack the security forces is not there. However, they still remain a problem to the general population," he told IRIN. "They are involved in looting food, looting gold, diamonds, killing elephants in [Congo's] Garamba national park and Zemongo national park in CAR," he said. It is a revenue stream that could keep them armed for years. Abductions The LRA was responsible for 563 abductions in 171 attacks in 2016, according to the LRA Crisis Tracker, a monitoring group. It's a drop from the 737 people kidnapped in 2015 in 222 attacks, but still significant. As of 30 March this year, they are believed to have kidnapped 147 people in 43 incidents. "Completely abandoning the mission will create security vacuums for already extremely vulnerable communities, particularly in the Central African Republic and northeastern DRC," said Holly Dranginis, a senior analyst at the US-based Enough Project to End Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. "Leaving now will also dismantle key defection sites, leaving individuals with scarce options if they want to leave the LRA and reintegrate into civilian life," she told IRIN. Lino Owor Ogora, director of the Gulu-based Foundation for Justice and Development Initiatives, noted: "The LRA has always taken advantage of any lapses in combat to regroup and reorganise. "People in northern Uganda have enjoyed peace for close to 10 years now, and the region is on a firm road to recovery. It would be unfortunate if the LRA returned because they were allowed too." There is also unease in CAR. On 16 April, civilians in Obbo town, which has been the tactical headquarters for Ugandan and US forces, demonstrated, calling for the troops to stay. Otto, who spoke to IRIN last week, is now back in CAR finalising the return home of the last of his men. What happens next? But the Ugandan government has hinted that it will not step away altogether from an insurgency that began in Uganda almost three decades ago, and was then exported to its neighbours. Richard Karemire, the military spokesman, said last week that Uganda could join the UN peacekeeping mission in CAR under a strengthened mandate to tackle the LRA. He also suggested Uganda could support "capacity-building" of the CAR Armed Forces for "counter-LRA operations". Ogora, the head of the Gulu-based foundation, also favours a military option, drawing on the UN and regional armies to "neutralise" the LRA once and for all. "Short of that, the LRA will continue roaming the jungles of Garamba at will, trading in ivory and arms, and abducting and killing civilians." But Phil Clark, a Great Lakes expert at SOAS, University of London, says the military option has been tried and has failed. "This requires a political solution, with amnesty at its core," he told IRIN. According to Dranginis, "the United States should continue supporting defection campaigns" as it has proved successful in "weakening the group and creating opportunities for fighters and abductees to leave." Demobilisation and reintegration is a complex process, she added, but it "can pay dividends for security in the region". English French Paris (France), Belfast (Ireland), 10th May 2017 - Atos, a leader in digital transformation, and a recognised Leader for European Managed Workplace Services by Gartner*, announces today that it has been selected as the trusted digital partner to provide IT services for Northern Ireland Electricity Networks Limited (NIE Networks), the owner of electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure in Northern Ireland. Under the 60 million, seven year agreement, Atos will supply NIE Networks with a range of core services including desktop management, applications management, ICT infrastructure, hosting and voice and data network services. These will help NIE Networks to deliver continual improvement and innovation, drive operational excellence and assist the business to operate optimally in the changing electricity market, so it can continue to provide an efficient service to its 860,000 customers in Northern Ireland. Welcoming the news of the contract, Gavin Thomson, Senior Vice President, Big Data & Security UK&I, Scotland, Ireland and Wales said: "As a leader in Managed Workplace Services, Atos is delighted to have been chosen by NIE Networks as its trusted partner to deliver the IT operational excellence and innovation required to transform their digital experience and provide a more innovative workplace. We look forward to building a long-term, rewarding and successful partnership that will benefit and support their continuing digital transformational journey." Nicholas Tarrant, Managing Director at NIE Networks said: "IT is a critical part of how we run the electricity network today. It ensures that we can respond quickly to power cuts and keep customers up to date with progress. It also helps us to collect meter readings quarterly from 860,000 homes and businesses. We are looking forward to working with Atos over the next seven years to deliver a reliable and efficient service for NIE Networks and its customers." With a global practice of 1,500 business technologists, Atos' specialist Energy and Utilities team are experts in delivering digital transformation through managed workplace services for businesses in the distribution, transmission and retail networks industries across the world. Atos' experience and market knowledge will be made available to NIE Networks to support their vision of being a high-performing networks company contributing positively to the Northern Ireland community. *** *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. In the UK & Ireland around 10,000 employees deliver business technology solutions for some of the country's largest public and private sector organisations. 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: Defence, 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. About Northern Ireland Electricity Networks Limited Northern Ireland Electricity Networks (NIE Networks) owns the electricity transmission and distribution network and operates the electricity distribution network which transports electricity to over 860,000 customers. Acquired by ESB in December 2010, NIE Networks remains an autonomous organisation with its own Board and management teams and separate regulation via the Utility Regulator.The company's transmission and distribution network consists of over 49,000 kilometers of overhead lines and underground cables and 300 major substations. Press contact: Laura Fau - laura.fau@atos.net - +33 6 73 64 04 18 @laurajanefau Captive IS fighters face extrajudicial killings on fringes of Mosul conflict Publisher IRIN Publication Date 25 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, Captive IS fighters face extrajudicial killings on fringes of Mosul conflict, 25 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591312224.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. On the main road into east Mosul, a rotting skeleton swings from a post outside a row of bullet-riddled shops. What was once a brain lolls horribly from an eye socket in front of a grimace of teeth - starkly white against blackened remains of flesh and skin decomposing onto bones. The corpse belongs to an alleged Islamic State fighter strung up by Iraqi soldiers in January as a warning to IS supporters hiding out in liberated areas of the city. Even before being pinned to the post, the corpse was unidentifiable - its face and upper body mostly stripped of flesh. The caved-in skull and shattered ribs indicated brutality, but was this inflicted while the person was alive or dead? The body was one of several encountered during a months-long IRIN investigation that reveals extrajudicial killings of IS captives and serial violations of international law on the treatment of prisoners, with commanders at least turning a blind eye to frontline Iraqi troops taking justice into their own hands. Towards the end of the battle for east Mosul, so-called Islamic State's last stronghold in Iraq, death was everywhere. In late January, on a wasteland patch in a residential area near east Mosul's Al-Salam hospital, two men wearing civilian clothing, their hands tied behind their backs, lay where they had been executed. One, kneeling facedown in the rocky soil, had been shot through the back of the head. The other - a man in his 60s - lay prone on his back, a close-range bullet hole gaping open in his face. "They were with Daesh," a local resident told IRIN at the time, referring to IS by its Arabic name. "The [Iraqi] Army brought them here and executed them three days ago," he said, complaining how women and children were shocked and scared to see the bodies left like this. Around one month later, IRIN asked frontline Iraqi troops about the fate of an Egyptian IS fighter captured during that morning's advance. "He'll be questioned then killed," one soldier, Mohammed, said flatly. Another, Abbas, interrupted to say the prisoner would be transferred to Baghdad. Mohammed insisted he would not. "No way are the Iraqi forces going to let him go and live in three-star luxury prison accommodation while we are being slaughtered on the front lines by Daesh car bombs and snipers." A Mosul-based commander, speaking to IRIN on condition of anonymity, admitted that some IS captives are being shot dead near the front lines, often while military operations are ongoing. Others continue to be executed away from the fighting, presumably after interrogation, such as two men whose bodies were thrown into a ravine near Mosul airport in late March, in an area controlled by Iraq's federal police. Above the law? "Killing captured combatants or civilians is a war crime, as is the mutilation of corpses," Human Rights Watch's senior researcher in Iraq, Belkis Wille, told IRIN. "Iraqi criminal justice authorities should investigate all alleged crimes, including unlawful killings and mutilation of corpses, committed by any party in the conflict in a prompt, transparent and effective manner, up to the highest levels of responsibility." Realistically, however, extrajudicial killings carried out by rogue military units or individuals on the edge of a conflict zone with few, if any, witnesses are unlikely to be investigated. Ongoing accounts of IS barbarity in Mosul - the militants are said to routinely execute residents accused of collaborating with the Iraqi Army or caught trying to flee - do captured combatants and suspected IS affiliates no favours. The militants are viewed with hatred and disgust by the battle-hardened soldiers manning Mosul's front lines, where IS has resorted to multiple daily suicide operations, as well as the extensive use of IEDs and snipers, to defend the city. "The Iraqi government should control its own forces and hold them accountable if it hopes to claim the moral upper hand in its fight against ISIS," said Wille. "Political, security, and judicial officials should work together transparently to establish the truth about any abuses that take place in the course of this battle." However, investigating abuse is not the priority in Iraq right now, and some extrajudicial killings are apparently being overseen - or at least condoned - by senior military personnel. On one revealing occasion, a high-level commander with the Iraqi Army's Rapid Response Division told IRIN how his own interrogations of IS prisoners - both Iraqi and foreign - had produced some useful intelligence. Asked what happened to those prisoners after interrogation, he replied: "they were finished", before hastily asking the interpreter not to translate those words. The number of extrajudicial killings of IS prisoners in and around Mosul about which IRIN was able to gain verifiable first-hand information was modest. Many more suspects are incarcerated in prisons across Iraq, where at least they stand a chance of facing official justice. The Mosul-based commander said more than 1,000 alleged IS affiliates are being held in prisons in Mosul and the nearby towns of Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil alone. High-ranking IS captives are transferred to Baghdad, he added. Iraqi security forces have been arresting IS suspects since mid-2014, so the number of detainees in and around Baghdad is thought to be large, and HRW were told that at least 910 prisoners had been transferred to the capital from three prisons in towns near Mosul. More than 700 IS suspects are also being held in prisons in semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, according to one commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. In a March report, HRW said that at least 1,269 prisoners suspected of crimes including affiliation to IS were being held without charge in "horrendous" and "degrading" conditions in three makeshift jails near Mosul: two in Qayyarah and one in Hammam Al-Alil. With chronic overcrowding, poor sanitation, and minimal access to medical care - which may have contributed to four deaths and two leg amputations - the facilities failed to meet basic international standards, the report said. It noted that few prisoners had access to legal counsel and some were being held unlawfully. "The deplorable prison conditions in Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil show that the Iraqi government is not providing the most basic detention standards or due process," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Middle East director. "Iraqis should understand better than most the dangerous consequences of abusing detainees in cruel prison conditions." Selfies with the dead The Mosul conflict has also unearthed disrespectful treatment of the IS dead, whether executed or killed during fighting. Public displays of bodies have become commonplace and are viewed by many soldiers as acceptable. "These Daesh are not humans - just look what they did to hundreds of Mosul civilians," said one federal police sergeant, explaining why he thought it was reasonable that men in his unit had strung up an IS fighter from a lamppost for several hours after killing him. "We are only doing to them what they did to others, and doing this is a warning to anyone here who was with Daesh." Publicly displayed IS corpses have become sickening local attractions. By the side of a main road in east Mosul, children casually spat or threw stones at the corpse of a young IS fighter of Asian descent wearing military fatigues, his neck tied up to a broken metal structure with electrical cord. "There were five Daesh fighting here. This one was injured and the other Daesh ran away and left him," a young local man explained. "When the army came, they killed him and hung him here." A passing taxi driver stopped his car to take selfies with the corpse, cheerfully explaining: "I'm going to put these pictures on Facebook and I'm sure I'll get a lot of 'likes'." Selfies with dead IS fighters have become common in Mosul. Iraqi soldiers routinely post such images on Facebook, attracting 'likes', 'shares' and congratulatory, encouraging comments. When it comes to IS fighters, disrespectful behaviour around the dead - something forbidden by Islam and international law - has somehow become acceptable practice. Near the still-active front lines of west Mosul, as the weather turns warmer and the stench of the IS dead in the streets becomes unbearable, bodies are increasingly set alight to curb the smell. This too is prohibited in Islam, and has also given rise to further macabre acts. "We made coffee on that dead Daesh," one young soldier said, laughing and pointing to a coffee pot resting on a smouldering corpse. "And we cooked our lunch on that one over there." Mental toll In 2009, the World Health Organization noted that mental health disorders were the fourth leading cause of illness in Iraqis over five years of age. The barbarity of IS and almost three years of conflict involving heavy civilian and military casualties and mass displacement have only exacerbated this mental health crisis. Earlier this year, IRIN reported that only around 80 clinical psychologists are practicing across the country. SEE: Iraq's growing mental health problem Many soldiers have been engaged in IS-related conflict virtually non-stop since mid-2014 and have witnessed friends and comrades being killed or horribly maimed by the militants. The battle for Mosul - now in its seventh month - is proving particularly tough, leaving Iraq's armed forces mentally and physically exhausted. Some soldiers confessed to IRIN their desire to exact revenge on IS captives or corpses. After an advance towards west Mosul's old city in late March, IRIN witnessed a federal policeman approaching the body of an IS fighter. He started kicking him violently in the head, before setting fire to his hair and beard. "You think you're going to heaven?" he shouted. "There is only one place you are going, and that is hell!" A few other federal police officers joined in the mockery and took selfies with the corpse. After filming the burning body on his mobile phone for a few minutes, the man who had set it alight started to break down. An older policeman put his arm around his shoulder, to comfort him. Together they crouched there in the late afternoon sunshine. Turkey-Kurd feud distracts from Islamic State fight in Syria Publisher IRIN Author Aron Lund Publication Date 2 May 2017 Cite as IRIN, Turkey-Kurd feud distracts from Islamic State fight in Syria, 2 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591313204.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. A flare-up of Turkish-Kurdish violence in northern Syria threatens to undercut the US-backed campaign by Kurdish fighters against the so-called Islamic State in Raqqa, the extremist group's main stronghold in the country. Since Turkish air strikes and shelling killed dozens of Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq on 25 April, clashes have been ongoing along Syria's northern border. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now says he may order "at any time" and without warning an intervention against Kurdish groups in Syria he considers terrorists. Referring to the Syrian Democratic Forces coalition and its main constituent, the People's Defense Units (Kurdish acronym: YPG), a new report from the International Crisis Group warns: "more extensive Turkish military action could seriously hamper a US-backed SDF offensive on Raqqa city by forcing the YPG to divert resources toward its own defence". The United States has called the air strikes "unacceptable" and deployed special forces to the border region, but the violence has yet to stop. The beginnings of intervention? The 25 April air strikes targeted groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Syria and Iraq, killing a large number of fighters in both countries. The YPG has released details on what it said were the 20 dead in its own ranks, half of whom were female cadres from its women's branch, the YPJ. "This was a strategic attack, since Erdogan hopes for us to abort the Raqqa operation," SDF spokesman Jesper Soder told IRIN. "We have repeatedly tried to explain to the [US-led anti-jihadi] coalition that Turkey must be restrained," said Soder, a Swedish volunteer with the YPG and SDF who is based in northeast Syria. "We have said that we will abort operation Raqqa if Turkey enters Rojava [the Kurdish name for Syrian Kurdistan] with an invasion force or if they are allowed to keep bombing our cities and headquarters." But since last week's initial attacks, the Syrian border region has seen escalating violence and continued bombardment. The Turkish military announced that it had responded to YPG rocket attacks on 28 April, killing 11 fighters, while the YPG claims to have killed 17 Turkish soldiers the day before in northern Syria's Afrin. "After this, no attack of the Turkish state will be left unanswered and strong responses will be given against attacks," the Kurdish group said in a statement released on 28 April. Turkey trapped American calls to stop the violence appear to have fallen on deaf ears. At the root of the disconnect lies Washington's and Ankara's irreconcilable views of what the YPG is and how it should be treated. The YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), are Syrian offshoots of the PKK, whose brutal, decades-long insurgency has been fuelled by the harsh anti-Kurdish policies of successive Turkish governments. Turkey considers the growing influence of YPG and PYD forces within the SDF in northern Syria a major national security threat, but the US refuses to acknowledge ties between the PKK, which it calls a terrorist organisation, and the YPG, its primary ally against the jihadis in Syria. "SDF confirms that it has no affiliation or ties to PKK," US Central Command said on Twitter in January. In Turkish eyes, the US position adds insult to injury. "The PYD was formed upon the directives of [PKK founder and leader Abdullah] Ocalan," Bunyamin Keskin, who recently published a report on the group for the SETA Foundation, a think tank close to the Turkish government, told IRIN. "This is not a secret and can be observed in several writings of Ocalan himself," he added. "With its PKK nature, the PYD/YPG can neither be a partner for Turkey, nor a neighbour or an actor controlling neighbouring regions at the border. Last August, Erdogan ordered his troops and Turkish-backed Syrian Arab and Turkmen fighters into northern Syria. While the intervention did secure a foothold for Turkey in northern Syria and prevented the YPG from connecting its territory to the isolated western Kurdish enclave in Afrin, Erdogan soon found that it did not provide him with the leverage he had hoped for. Russian and US troops embedded with the Syrian government and the SDF/YPG, respectively, blocked any further expansion. On 30 March, Turkey declared that the intervention was over, though troops would remain in the areas it captured. Since then, two developments seem to have been driving Turkey toward radical action, and they focus on familiar names: Sinjar and Raqqa. In Iraq, Turkey's interest is focused on the Sinjar area, which is at the center of an intra-Kurdish struggle for influence between local PKK affiliates and the Ankara-friendly forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP. Kurdish rivalry in this part of Iraq has its own dynamics, but Turkey is anxious to help the KDP oust its local rivals. Sinjar is also about to take on added strategic importance, since the Syrian government and the YPG are reportedly using their recent territorial gains to re-open a road connection from Aleppo to YPG-controlled northeastern Syria, for the first time in four years. If the PKK secures control over Sinjar and the Iraqi government eventually ousts IS from Mosul and nearby Tel Afar, the Kurds with sit astride a land link stretching all the way from the Iranian border through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, bypassing all zones of Turkish influence. The PKK will benefit both by gaining a safe land route for trade and traffic to its Syrian and Iraqi holdings, and by using its position at the center of this network as a source of political leverage. In Syria, Erdogan's eyes are on Raqqa. Not because he particularly covets that dusty and troubled provincial city, but because it has acquired an outsized symbolic value as the IS "capital". To tear down the black banners now fluttering over Raqqa is to write oneself into the history books and Erdogan has no intention of letting his Kurdish enemy become the knight in shining armour who slayed the jihadi dragon and saved the Western princess, especially not since he suspects it might come with a reward of half the Syrian kingdom. Yet all through spring 2017, the YPG has powered on relentlessly toward Raqqa, backed by US air power. Washington has brushed aside a long line of increasingly unrealistic Turkish proposals for how to muster an alternative, non-YPG force to take the city, and at this point Raqqa looks likely to fall into Kurdish hands almost by default; the only plausible substitute is the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. From Ankara's vantage point, the US has cornered Turkey in an untenable and deteriorating situation where it is forced to watch in impotent rage as the United States continues to protect, nourish, and expand a pro-PKK enclave on Turkey's southern border. It is this strategic trap that the Turkish president hopes to break by striking PKK affiliates in Syria and Iraq and threatening another intervention in northern Syria. What role for the referendum? Internal politics seem to have played some role in determining the timing of Turkey's escalatory gambit. Erdogan said already in early April that he was ready to order further action in Syria and Iraq, but he was clearly wary of upsetting voters before the 16 April constitutional referendum on expanding his powers as president. As it turned out, despite reportedly using emergency laws and state resources to secure a victory, Erdogan barely squeaked through with 51.4 percent support. Michael Sahlin, a former Swedish ambassador in Ankara who is now a fellow with the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies, told IRIN that the slim margin was "a considerable disappointment for Erdogan" and could force the president to call snap elections to shore up his hold on power, even at the cost of scaring off investors and further upsetting Turkey's ailing economy. Erdogan's Kurdish opponents also view the results with concern, albeit for different reasons. "When countries and leaders become more dictatorial, they become more dangerous for everyone," PYD representative Sheruan Hassan told IRIN in mid-April, adding, "I think the coming period will be increasingly dangerous for us all due to this dictatorial style of gathering power that Erdogan is using." "I do not think the referendum [by itself] brought a drastic change in terms of leaving Erdogan's hands free or not," added the veteran Turkish journalist and Middle East specialist Cengiz Candar, who spoke to IRIN prior to the recent fighting. But he argued that swift Russian and US endorsement of the results, which remain controversial among Erdogan's opponents, had likely emboldened the president to push forward in Syria. The president's priority, Candar said, would certainly be to check Kurdish advances. Breaking stuff and building leverage Hemmed in on all sides and backsliding strategically, Turkey seems to be lashing out mostly because of the lack of other options, hoping to force a reshuffling of the deck and build leverage, rather than to realise any one, specific end-goal. Escalation has its own benefits: As Turkish armoured vehicles move to the Turkey-Syria border, all sides have been rudely shaken out of complacency and are recalibrating to account for Erdogan's threats of full-scale intervention in Syria. "Unless Erdogan is restrained and stops his attacks, we will pause the Raqqa offensive to fortify our borders against Turkey," the SDF's Soder told IRIN. But that may be exactly what Erdogan wants to hear. By demonstrating that he could neutralise the SDF as a US partner in Raqqa, he may finally find the leverage over US policy that Turkey has hitherto been denied. Ultimately, the increasingly aggressive Turkish military posture in Syria and Iraq seems to be less about inflicting material damage on the Kurdish groups than it is a bid to wring political concessions from the United States. Apart from wanting to end or at least reduce US support for the PKK affiliates, Turkey is also seeking to gain Washington's ear on a number of other issues. It is perhaps no accident that just as he was ramping up pressure along the border, Erdogan told an audience of US think-tankers that his "number one demand" from the United States is the extradition of the Pennsylvania-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, whom he holds responsible for the July 2016 coup attempt. How far he will push the envelope is anyone's guess, but Erdogan likely hopes to have improved his bargaining position on a range of bilateral disputes before he heads to his first meeting with US President Donald Trump on May 16. Decree 66: The blueprint for al-Assad's reconstruction of Syria? Publisher IRIN Publication Date 20 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, Decree 66: The blueprint for al-Assad's reconstruction of Syria?, 20 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591313c04.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. With violence in Syria ongoing and even hitting new lows, talk of rebuilding the devastated country might seem premature. But work is already under way, at least in one corner of southwestern Damascus. It might not look like much now - patches of turf and half-finished dust roads bulldozed through orchards and farmhouses - but a three-square-kilometre plot of land in the neighbourhood of Basateen al-Razi is fast becoming ground zero for the reconstruction of Syria. Critics say it is also the urban planning blueprint President Bashar al-Assad intends to use to consolidate his post-war power. Back in September 2012, al-Assad signed legislative decree (66/2012) to "redevelop areas of unauthorised housing and informal settlements [slums]". Decree 66 has since provided the legal and financial foundation for reconstruction in several areas returned to Syrian government control, including Basateen al-Razi. Al-Assad inaugurated the multi-million-dollar urban redevelopment project in March 2016, promising grand designs and a scintillating future for the capital. Armed with planning documents full of futuristic tower blocks, park boulevards, and row upon row of modern-fronted housing, the Damascus Governorate says the 2.15-million-square-metre development will provide 12,000 housing units for an estimated 60,000 residents. There will be schools and restaurants, places of worship, even a multi-storey car park and a shopping mall. Not everyone shares the government's vision for the future. Opposition activists and independent analysts, as well as former residents, argue that Decree 66 is not only being used to forcibly dispossess Basateen al-Razi civilians but also to engineer demographic change. Profits and pressure Funded through Damascus Sham, a holding company worth SYP 60 billion ($279 million) and established by the Damascus Governorate in December, the project is being financed by private sector investors with shares in the development. There are said to be at least 25,000 co-owners tied in to a form of public-private partnership increasingly popular in Damascus. Consultants familiar with the development say Basateen al-Razi, once a key site of opposition that saw anti-government protests (as seen in the video below) and then armed clashes during 2012, has been viewed as a hugely lucrative real estate opportunity for years - undeveloped farmland and informal housing in some places within walking distance of central Damascus. Some of the redevelopment under Decree 66 has been directly transplanted from a 2007 urban plan for Damascus that was still to be implemented when the Syrian uprising erupted in 2011. Many residents were originally offered shares and compensation payments for evacuating meant to cover their rent in new homes outside the area - albeit subject to conditions. But so far, locals haven't done well out of the changes. A series of demolitions since the decree was signed in late 2012 gradually upturned areas of housing and farmland in Basateen al-Razi - including the plot that now houses the project's HQ, where al-Assad laid the foundation stone 13 months ago. A network of new roads has also been built through the site. Families who fled but still own property in the area told IRIN they had not been compensated. "Our home has been demolished, although other areas have not been demolished yet," Abu Ahmad, a refugee in Turkey whose family fled three years ago, told IRIN. "I always wanted to return [there] but, after this plan, that has become impossible." Relatives of some property owners who remain say the government is using progressively more coercive measures to encourage people from the formerly pro-opposition neighbourhood to leave. In June 2015, a printed warning was sent to hundreds of residents telling them they had two months to leave before demolitions would start. According to Syria Direct, another round of warnings was distributed in December 2016 ahead of further demolitions scheduled for June this year. Former resident Abu Khattab, also a refugee now living in Turkey, said his parents received warnings but only moved out in February, to another suburb of Damascus. "In the past, they'd been promising alternative housing, but they did not honour this promise," he told IRIN. "[The government] cut electricity, water, internet, and telephone supplies. They are forcing civilians to live like this to push them towards evacuating." It was not possible to independently verify claims of cuts in services. At least three residents still in the area declined to be interviewed out of fear of the authorities. Where next? Other cities are already following the Damascus example. Local authorities across Syria have been treating Decree 66 as a green light for their own reconstruction projects, using the powers invested in a separate May 2016 proclamation to establish their own investment companies - like Damascus Sham - to fund them. In 2014, Homs Governor Talal al-Barazi announced plans to launch reconstruction projects in Baba Amr, using Decree 66 as a model. The city recently established its own holding company to handle real estate projects. Observers expect Aleppo to announce a similar holding company soon, likely for redeveloping the bombed-out remnants of the formerly rebel-held east. Government pronouncements suggest it's no accident that areas being eyed for reconstruction are current or former opposition strongholds. When al-Assad announced Decree 66, his minister of local administration, Omar Ibrahim al-Ghalawanji, hailed it as a "first step in the reconstruction of illegal housing areas, especially those targeted by armed terrorist groups". State media promotional material for the Basateen al-Razi development makes a similar argument. With "terrorists" gone, it says, the serious work of rebuilding Syria can begin. The Housing and Public Works Ministry, the General Directorate for Real Estate, and the Decree 66 Implementation Directorate all declined to comment or failed to respond to IRIN's requests to do so. However, pro-government sources commonly portray the decree as simply economic common sense - a regulation to allow the scaffolding out of rubble so post-war reconstruction can begin. "When you have badly damaged places, then putting in resources to restore them to the way they were - especially if they weren't properly planned in the first place - that's going to be a waste of time and money," London-based analyst Ammar Waqaf, a member of the pro-government British-Syrian Society (established by al-Assad's father-in-law in 2003), told IRIN. "It would make more sense to have a properly planned project. In fact, if you don't do that, you won't be able to bring in investors." Google Earth In 2014, gradual demolitions of crops and housing had cleared the south-western edge of the Basateen al-Razi plot, making way for the Decree 66 project HQ where Assad laid the development's foundation-stone in March 2016. Social cleansing? Urban planners intend to let the bulldozers start work soon on a second block of land earmarked for redevelopment under Decree 66 and located on the other side of the capital's southern ring road. This much larger site includes Daraya and a series of outlying towns stretching to al-Qadam further east - key opposition areas during the early days of the uprising and the later armed rebellion's 2012 battle for Damascus. When Daraya finally capitulated to Syrian government control in August 2016 - its entire civilian population forced to evacuate - the opposition commonly described it as "ethnic cleansing". Rumours, which now appear unfounded, suggested that Shia Iraqi families would be moving in. Last year, an activist from the opposition-allied Kafr Souseh Local Coordination Committees said the "vast majority of the [local] population" was "absolutely convinced that this despicable policy of evicting them from their homes [is motivated by sectarianism] and to attract others from different sectarian and religious groups to take their homes". Abu Ahmad, the former Basateen al-Razi resident now living as a refugee in Turkey, agreed with this theory, saying the government "wants to change the demographic composition of the area by replacing the [majority Sunni] original population with people from another country". From where, he couldn't say for sure. But others dispute charges of sectarianism. Waqaf, the pro-Assad analyst, said such talk comes from an opposition "gasping for support". However, he did acknowledge that demographic changes could follow the war - albeit more along social and class lines. Speaking to IRIN shortly after Daraya's evacuation last year, Syria expert Fabrice Balanche argued that Decree 66 projects "will be more about social cleansing" - the offering up of land to "the Sunni bourgeoisie and upper-class loyal to al-Assad". "When you expel the population of Daraya, a poor population, so that you can build luxury flats and villas for people then it's not just sectarian, it's a social conflict," he explained. Past and future The complex ties between sectarianism, social class, and opposition to the al-Assad regime have developed over the decades, along with Syria's demographic changes. From the 1960s onwards, movements from the countryside to the city by migrants - permanent and temporary - drove an expansion of the hinterlands on the outskirts of Syria's cities. This rural-urban migration only accelerated in the 2000s - not helped by a devastating 2006-2010 drought that saw whole families forced to relocate. Migrants moving into informal settlements often either squatted illegally on state-owned land or built without planning and permission on private land, creating new social tensions in Syria's cities. Al-Assad's neo-liberal policies added to those tensions by largely leaving out the suburbs from the economic prosperity visibly benefiting a rich, often regime-tied business class in the city centres. With some 40 percent of the total population living in informal settlements by the mid-2000s, the central government realised it had a problem and began commissioning plans and detailed studies to redesign Syria's cities. By then, it was already too late. The first protests in Deraa in March 2011 might have been the spark for the revolution and later the war, but many of these areas, including Basateen al-Razi, had been simmering with socio-economic and sectarian grievances for years. "It's important to recognise where the early protest movement started: in the disadvantaged rural areas and these slums, these informal settlements, spreading around the major cities," explained Leila al-Shami, British-Syrian activist and co-author of a history of Syria's uprising, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. "The levels of repression in those communities was so much stronger, as well. It was the working-class communities around Damascus that were put under siege very early on [something that] wasn't happening in the more middle-class areas." Damascus had never really decided what to do with these "slums", but the war changed that. By 2012 and with the help of Decree 66, experts say urban planning had been transformed into a weapon. It was used to "destroy the homes of opponents, places where the opposition could hide and fight... [and] to get rid of informal settlements without consultants and meetings," Valerie Clerc, a research fellow at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, told IRIN. Human Rights Watch and the UN's International Commission of Inquiry documented deliberate demolitions of hundreds of homes in neighbourhoods around Damascus and Hama between 2012-2013. In one reported but unconfirmed case, governorate officials used land registry documents to mark out the homes of pro-opposition families for destruction. Later, opposition sources allege, land registry offices were destroyed altogether - in some cases deliberately - after pro-government forces retook an area. The Syrian economy will need revitalising whatever happens next in the conflict. But on the back of Decree 66, reconstruction that might only look like revitalising gentrification to al-Assad loyalists is already being seen as politicised population transfer by his opponents. Reconstruction was on the agenda at this month's Supporting Syria Conference, but the debate has not yet drawn widespread interest. In this vacuum of international attention, areas ravaged by the six-year conflict that have seen mass displacement are increasingly being treated as blank canvases on which government officials, investors, urban planners, intelligence officers, and regime allies can paint their own visions of the future of Syria. Turkey steps up crackdown on humanitarian aid groups Publisher IRIN Author Diego Cupolo Publication Date 27 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, Turkey steps up crackdown on humanitarian aid groups, 27 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591315894.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Turkish authorities have detained 15 staff of a US NGO working on Syria relief operations the latest in a series of moves restricting humanitarian aid groups in the country. Observers attribute the crackdown on foreign NGOs to a resurgence in Turkish nationalism and government concerns about Kurdish empowerment inside Syria. Police detained the 15 employees , who were working for the International Medical Corps in the southeastern city of Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, on Thursday 20 April. Four of those detained foreign nationals from Britain, India, Indonesia and Ireland were deported five days later. The 11 others are Syrian and remain in a detention centre near Gaziantep, from where they face deportation back to Syria. Turkish authorities cited discrepancies in employment permits as the cause for the detentions, but Rebecca Gustafson, a senior communications adviser for the US-based NGO, said all the staff had valid work permits. "[IMC] is working with the Turkish government to secure the release of those staff still detained as soon as possible, and we continue to support our team members and their families during this very difficult time," she said in a statement on Wednesday. Former IMC employees told IRIN the detained staff members had permits, but for districts outside Gaziantep. The incident follows last month's expulsion of Mercy Corps , which had been running one of the largest aid operations in Syria from Turkey, and the detention of 10 staff from Denmark's DanChurchAid. Other NGOs, including one from Italy have also recently been banned from operating in the country. Turkish media reports and aid workers say representatives from the UN, the United States, and the EU have been engaged in diplomatic efforts to relax the clampdown, but with little visible effect. An IRIN examination of documents provided by the Ministry of Interior shows that since mid-2015 a number of other international NGOs have dropped off the approved list. However, a number of NGOs have contacted IRIN to say they are permitted to work even though they are not on the list of approved "CSOs". Those who do remain listed as permitted to work on "direct activities", including World Vision and Save the Children, have licenses requiring renewal every six to 12 months. Tougher working environment Aid groups still operating in Turkey were reluctant to comment openly on the matter for fear of their own licenses being revoked. But off-the-record interviews with IRIN suggest a shrinking operating space for international NGOs, many of which are based along the country's southern border, providing cross-border relief to the northern Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. For several years, foreign NGOs have operated in Turkey under flexible mandates that waived certain bureaucratic requirements that would have slowed down the aid response to desperate Syrians. But there has been increased scrutiny of their operations since a US-led probe in 2016 into NGO involvement in corruption in the delivery of cross-border aid and since allegations, in pro-government Turkish media, of collusion between NGOs and Kurdish militants. The problems have been compounded by the fall of Aleppo to President Bashar al-Assad's forces and the exclusion of Turkish forces in the battle to retake Raqqa from the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Largely shut out of northern Syria, Turkish officials fear that foreign aid may end up in regime-controlled or Kurdish-held areas across the border. "We always had problems with work permits," a former aid worker in Turkey told IRIN. "The state always knew about it. We were always transparent about those things, and due to smooth operations and because there is a huge contribution from the international NGOs in Turkey, they always let us work like this." Government officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but speaking at the annual conference of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies last month, Berk Baran, deputy permanent representative at the Turkish mission to the UN in Geneva, blamed the expulsions on international NGOs not following government protocol. "If the channels are open and you are being told what you have to do, then it is very simple," Baran said. "A government expects you to abide by its regulations." But many foreign aid workers complain that understanding Turkish regulations has become anything but simple. Following last year's coup attempt and subsequent purges of more than 100,000 state workers, many government ministries have been thrown into turmoil. Administrative work has piled up as new protocols have been put in place, and the operating licenses for many NGOs have been stuck in extensive review. "Every country we go into, we try and mitigate our risk. That's how we work," one aid worker said. "It should be a clear cut process where there is criteria to follow, but we still don't know what that is." Another aid official in Turkey told IRIN: "They don't need to do anything special to stop NGOs. They only need the normal bureaucracy, which is [effective] because we can't say anything against that. So this is done mostly by law. Even in very painful situations when Syrian staff get deported." Knock-on effects The NGO expulsions have caused reductions in aid, particularly to northern Syria but also for the three million Syrian refugees living inside Turkey. Mercy Corps alone said it was assisting up to half a million Syrian civilians every month, with an additional 100,000 beneficiaries in Turkey. If the banned international NGOs are not allowed to restart missions in Turkey, domestic organisations may fill the gaps, although with more restrictions on working in Kurdish areas. UN reporting suggests as many as 58 international NGOs and over 469 local NGOs supply aid to Syria from Turkey, reaching about a million people per month. While the capacity of Turkish NGOs to take over has been questioned by international aid workers, Sema Genel Karaosmanoglu, executive director of Support to Life, one of Turkey's largest aid groups, said local agencies could scale up. Karaosmanoglu added that the Turkish state itself may be seeking more involvement in relief efforts. "In Turkey, we have a strong state tradition and so the government has always been keen on doing everything on its own," Karaosmanoglu said. "I think they're looking for domestic solutions to resolving some of these issues." But the capacity of local aid groups has also been impacted by post-coup purges that have led to the closure of roughly 550 domestic NGOs for alleged links to terrorist organisations. An internal "read-out" from the UN's aid coordination body, OCHA, leaked to Voice of America last month, stated that Turkey's interior ministry plans to cancel all existing registrations of foreign NGOs and will require new registration requests to be submitted according to new rules and regulations. OCHA officials warned that the Turkish government would use such a process "to choose which organisations they want to keep in [the] country". Such a move would not be unexpected, say observers familiar with Turkish politics. Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the US-based Washington Institute and author of "The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern", said he was "surprised" by the amount of leeway Turkish authorities had given foreign aid groups in the early years of the Syrian war. Traditionally, government officials have been suspicious of foreign entities operating within Turkish borders. Following Turkey's intervention in Syria, known as Operation Euphrates Shield, which started last August, and the securing of border areas, the recent crackdowns on aid groups may be a signal that Turkish authorities are returning to the more restrictive policies employed before the war, Cagaptay said. Kurdish factors In addition, analysts suggest the NGO crackdown may be motivated by Ankara's concerns about the balance of power and resources available in northern Syria, where Kurdish forces receive support from the United States for anti-Islamic State operations. Only on Tuesday, Turkey bombed a base of the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), a US-backed group, highlighting the complex alliances at play. The ongoing conflict between the Turkish state and the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has strong links with the YPG, may also be a contributing factor, although aid officials who spoke to IRIN denied allegations of colluding with Kurdish militants. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and the EU. The general political atmosphere in Turkey has become more and more strained during a past year marked by instability, a coup attempt, several extremist attacks, and the tense run-up to this month's tightly contested referendum. To shore up support for his bid to expand his presidential powers, and with an eye on re-election in 2019, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has adopted increasingly nationalist rhetoric. "Until the next elections, Erdogan will remain hardline on the PKK, which would go with the strategy of weakening the Kurdish entity, targeting it militarily, but also politically," Cagaptay said. "This means preventing international NGO access and therefore weakening its societal fabric and its resilience." In the meantime, the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and civilians who depend on aid delivered by international NGOs will be the biggest losers. Kenya's black market in "refugee real estate" Publisher IRIN Author Cory Rodgers Publication Date 2 May 2017 Cite as IRIN, Kenya's black market in "refugee real estate", 2 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591315e44.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The informal system of shelter ownership that has sprung up in refugee camps in Kenya and elsewhere has allowed entrepreneurial activity to flourish, but it is also unregulated, corrupt, and leaves some refugees vulnerable to losing everything. "It was more than just our source of income. It was the place we called home. And now, after they've taken it and given it away, it's just a place to sell cheap Ugandan beer." Daniel's email suggests bitter defeat. He has attached a photo of himself standing proudly outside the shelter-cum-printing studio he and his wife ran in one of the Kakuma refugee camps in northwestern Kenya. That situation came to an abrupt end recently when Daniel was accused by his landlord of defaulting on his "rent", charged by the police for failing to vacate the shelter, evicted, detained, and finally released without being assigned a new shelter. Outside Daniel's old home, the sun-drenched street is bustling. Sales clerks, bike mechanics, and hairdressers chat busily with customers and friends. A noisy diesel generator rumbles in the background, providing electricity to local homes and businesses. It's a far cry from the images of idle, tent-dwelling aid recipients that have dominated popular depictions of refugee camps. "We don't reap huge profits," says Abdul, who fled Somalia in the late 1990s and now operates a cinema and electricity-generating service in Kakuma. "We are struggling to manage our lives, but we thank God that we are not begging and asking others to manage our lives for us." The first refugees arrived in Kakuma more than 25 years ago and, according to the last count, the camps are now home to 155,000 people. The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, provides no electricity and only very limited firewood rations. In recent years, the World Food Programme has been forced to reduce monthly food rations by as much as half. An informal camp economy has developed to fill the gaps in aid delivery and provide a vital income to camp residents. "As a single mother, I needed more than the food supplied by the UN," explains Axlam, a Somali woman living in Kakuma. "So, I came up with this plan of baking and selling biscuits." Her income from selling biscuits means she can buy extra food as well as school supplies and medications for her children. Most camp businesses restaurants, barbershops, and even a cyber cafe operate out of modified structures originally built as shelters. Each new arrival receives a randomly allocated shelter free of charge, depending on where space is available. But, especially for entrepreneurs like Axlam, location matters: businesses thrive closer to market areas and the main highway. When Daniel arrived four years ago, after fleeing political persecution in Ethiopia, he was allocated a shelter in the relatively remote Kakuma 3 Camp. Daniel needed money to pay for medication for his wife's chronic renal condition. With the aim of opening a small printing studio in the market, where he would have a customer base and access to electricity, he made an informal agreement with another refugee living in the market area who had expanded his shelter. Daniel agreed to pay him 5,000 Kenyan shillings per month (about $50) for two rooms: one to live in and one for his shop. After reaching 200,000 Kenyan shillings in payments ($1,915), registration of the shelter would be transferred to him. Informal "real estate" markets UNHCR supports refugee self-reliance. Multiplying refugee crises and growing shortfalls in donor funding mean that promoting refugee livelihoods has become an increasingly important focus of the agency's work. But in countries like Kenya, where the host government restricts refugees' freedom of movement and right to work and where the majority of refugees are still confined to remote camps, the agency faces a dilemma. The informal "real estate" market in Kakuma goes against UNHCR's policy on the free provision of shelters, but with no formal route to acquire a place to do business, it is the only option for camp-based entrepreneurs. This dynamic is not unique to Kakuma. In Uganda's refugee settlements, government officials have complained that before moving, some refugees sell their land allocations to other refugees. Farm plot allocations in the Nakivale settlement, for example, are often sold by Somalis to obtain start-up capital for shops in Kampala. In the camps administered by UNRWA in Lebanon, Rayyar Marron has described the informal real estate system among Palestinian refugees, and a similar system operates in Jordan's Zaatari camp where shelters in the Champs-Elysee market area command high "rents". The informal system makes it possible for industrious camp residents to make a living, and the income from shelter and business sales can make it easier for refugees to fund repatriation or ease the transition to resettlement countries. But the black market in refugee real estate also foments disputes and corruption. Refugees leaving Kakuma are required to surrender their shelter to the government's Department of Refugee Affairs recently restructured as the Refugee Affairs Secretariat for reallocation. But many refugees move to Nairobi without notifying the DRA and others pay "fees" to DRA staff to maintain their shelter registration. Refugees about to be resettled to a third country or returning home sometimes "sell" their shelters to other refugees before they depart. A bribe is paid to someone at the DRA who transfers registration to the buyer. Daniel had nearly completed his 200,000 Kenyan shillings in payments when his refugee "landlord" moved to Nairobi and in need of money decided to sell the shelter to another refugee. Daniel was told to leave, but refused. His landlord filed a complaint with the police, money changed hands, and Daniel was evicted from his shelter. UNHCR often tries to resolve such disputes, but its mediation is unofficial and once someone takes a case to the police, the agency is sidelined. "The police are supposed to solve land conflicts and refer the case for resolution," says a refugee with experience in shelter disputes. "However, if the police see money in the conflict, they take bribes from both parties. The winner is often the one who paid more." Refugee entrepreneurs who can afford to pay higher bribes can acquire a significant portfolio of shelters, becoming what some have termed "refugee real estate tycoons". Protecting refugee assets In 2015, UNHCR signed an agreement with the Turkana County Government to create a new refugee settlement at Kalobeyei, just north of the existing Kakuma camp. Relocations began last year. Kalobeyei is being billed by UNHCR as a new approach to refugee assistance that promotes the self-reliance of refugees and equally impoverished host communities. A UNHCR official explained to IRIN that business development at Kalobeyei will occur by facilitating informal market activities: "We want them to do it themselves: the [refugee] traders and the host community. Our job will be to create the environment for this to happen, to demarcate the commercial spaces." But encouraging informal business activity is not the same as providing protection for property and assets. The lack of a legal system for refugee property in Kalobeyei may leave refugee entrepreneurs feeling vulnerable and wary of investing in non-movable assets. As Daniel told IRIN: "I had a plan to develop my studio into something big. I had the potential for it. But if I fear that one day they will come and force me to leave you stop thinking about investments." Jeff Crisp, former head of UNHCR's Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, told IRIN that "amongst all the protection problems confronting camp-based refugees, those arising from the informal market in plots and shelters are the least well documented and most poorly understood by humanitarian organisations. "They must be given much greater attention if refugees are to realise their full entrepreneurial potential." Yet UNHCR is facing a difficult political landscape in Kenya. Caught between a local government eager to direct humanitarian resources toward local voters, and a national government that has promised to shut down Dadaab the country's largest refugee complex by the end of May, UNHCR has very little space to advocate for refugees' rights. There is also no legal framework that allows the agency to regulate land use or ownership. UNHCR and refugee advocacy groups are now pushing for the introduction of a bill to update Kenya's current refugee legislation. The draft bill includes protections for movable and immovable property, and would set up a trust to compensate refugees for legally held property following resettlement or repatriation. But these protections would not be applicable in areas designated as camps and settlements, leaving camp-based refugees to pursue livelihoods in the unregulated informal economy. Daniel and his wife now pregnant with their first child are staying with friends while they await a new shelter allocation. Having lost three years of investments to the dispute with his landlord, Daniel is unsure how he will find the capital to re-open his studio. "It is like I am starting from zero. Maybe less than zero." Techno-utopian solutions to Syria's refugee crisis fall short Publisher IRIN Author Sara Elizabeth Williams & Rana F Sweis Publication Date 11 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, Techno-utopian solutions to Syria's refugee crisis fall short, 11 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591316614.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. In a dull, pre-fabricated caravan in Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp, a group of Syrian children marvel at brand-new laptops and tablets, tapping out words. In another corner, a clutch of youngsters, many in ragged clothes, watch cartoons downloaded from the Internet. "We don't want lost generation after lost generation," says Patrick Weil, president of Libraries Without Borders, as he watches over the children. With financial support from the Alex Soros Foundation, his organisation donated this portable multimedia centre, loaded with learning tools. Slickly designed by French designer Philippe Starck, the Ideas Box contains tablets, laptops with satellite Internet connections, a movie projector, chairs, tables, puppets and board games. Teachers hover nearby, facilitating discussion and prodding the kids to join in. Technology-led aid projects like this one are a reaction to Syria's relentless six-year-long conflict which has pushed more than five million refugees into neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. In Jordan alone, which is host to more than 655,000 registered Syrian refugees, a dizzying array of technology-led projects for refugees are rolling out with the backing of well-meaning, tech-savvy benefactors. One initiative by Tech Tribes aims to create a tech-supported learning space for Syrian and Jordanian women. Another is developing a mobile application for refugees with mental disabilities. Advocates of this approach say they're bringing valuable solutions to the table, but some experts more familiar with local contexts describe such programmes as expensive band-aids that deliver mixed results. "It's hard to measure these projects and hard to evaluate," commented Sami Hourani, founder of For9a.com, a website that aggregates educational and job opportunities for young people in the region. Hourani said there is a need for long-term, sustainable initiatives based on detailed research about refugees' educational and employment needs. He added that programmes designed without this sort of empirical backing are often guesswork and a waste of resources. Covering the basics According to Libraries Without Borders, the Ideas Box is a means for young refugees to pick up skills and complete correspondence courses or online training. However, many of Zaatari's young people are long out of school and working to help support their families. For them, logging enough hours with the Ideas Box to earn a degree is a tall order. Amanda Lane, executive director of the Collateral Repair Project (CRP), a grassroots charity that works in one of Amman's poorest neighbourhoods, stressed the importance of appropriate giving. This starts, she said, by knowing what a community really needs. She gave the example of a box of Raspberry Pi computers recently donated to her organisation to help the children they work with learn to code. "Coding? Our kids aren't even literate," she said. "IT skills are useful and there will be people who can benefit, but the vast majority need foundational skills." After years in exile, most Syrians living in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey have few remaining resources and restricted rights to work, while their children have often been out of school for as long as five years. Lane believes their real need is not for high-tech solutions, but for basic education and wellness programming. Her focus is on providing a safe space and experienced, professional facilitators. When children and adults come to CRP's after-school programmes, group discussions and yoga classes, they are acting on a need to feel safe and human again, she told IRIN. "People come here, they do this, and it's like, 'For a time, I forget I'm a refugee'," said Lane. The need to feel normal again isn't lost on those backing big-ticket tech projects for refugees. "We give refugees the right to water, shelter [and] food, which is what they need at first, but then what about their humanity?" asked Alex Soros, who funds Ideas Boxes in several countries, including four in Jordan. "What about the thing that makes us human: cultural activity, education for those of age, the right to be treated as a human being?" "Perhaps the future president of a peaceful Syria will use the Ideas Box to get an education and read some political theory," he added. "Maybe that's the best scenario we can hope for." The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, has partnered with Libraries Without Borders and the Alex Soros Foundation to deploy Ideas Boxes to camps in Burundi and Ethiopia as well as Jordan and Lebanon, and is conducting research to gauge their impact on academic performance amongst other things. In an article warning about the need for tech companies to consult aid agencies when designing apps and websites for refugees, UNHCR cited the Ideas Box as an example of a "collaborative project" that draws on the agency's knowledge about the needs of refugees in different settings. Tech over cash Grassroots groups like CRP also stress the importance of proximity and detailed local knowledge when designing programmes. Those backing tech projects from afar often don't fully understand the needs they're trying to serve, or how they fit into the broader context. Yet, the sense that those at the leading edge of technology can and should be doing something with their wealth and smarts is pervasive. In June last year, former US President Barack Obama called on the country's private sector to "make new, measurable and significant commitments that will have a durable impact on refugees residing in the frontlines of the global refugee crisis and in countries of resettlement". More than 50 companies have responded to that call, many of them top tech companies including Facebook, Google and Microsoft. But while some have pledged cash, companies often prefer to showcase their techie know-how by developing their own bespoke "solutions". "There's a lot of product pushing and 'what's in it for us?'," said Lane. "Tech companies are giving skills, pre-made solutions or gifts versus cash. And there are so many random, one-off projects, it's not that easy to co-ordinate." Drop in the ocean? For those tech-led projects that are delivering real results, the problem is often one of scale. ReBootKamp (RBK) is a software engineer training programme run out of Amman's King Hussein Business Park. It provides trainees, about 60 percent of which are refugees, with an 18-week, thousand-hour course of English training, problem solving and programming. On the day IRIN visited, the group was coding and flexing some serious soft skills. Two trainees delivered a "lightning talk" short, personal presentations about issues that matter to them. Palestinian Ru'a spoke of her stomach surgery and told a group of people she didn't know a month ago, in a language she is still learning to use, how it felt to be bullied about her weight. As the group broke up, speakers filed outside with a counsellor to talk in a smaller group while the rest returned to a group programming task. "These are self-actualisation talks," said RBK's founder Hugh Bosely, above the hubbub. "We're trying to eliminate any emotional hurdle that's getting in the way of their learning." Jordan has 32,000 unemployed ICT graduates, with another 7,000 to 8,000 entering the job market every year. And yet, RBK's software engineers are in high demand, with blue chip companies pre-booking 200 or 300 graduates at a time. Bosely said new RBK graduates command on average salary of $1,100 dollars or more per month compared to the Jordanian average of around $350. He attributes his students' employability to RBK's holistic approach which combines soft skills and English training with an engineering curriculum. Skilled, attentive instructors, on-site counsellors, healthy meals and a safe, warm space are also vital components. The results can be life-changing for both graduates and the families they support. "The main thing is to get a job," said Fatima Himmami, 26, an RBK graduate from Aleppo who now works as a teacher for the programme. "Now I'm a real coder. I also develop applications, I can build websites and I support all my family members." With 20 applicants for every spot, RBK can choose the most engaged, grounded applicants. Bosely aims for consensus builders: students who can work with and support colleagues from different countries, faiths and sects. "We're trying to create better humans," said Bosely. "We are about producing the kind of people who will go back to their home countries and create peace." It's a lofty goal for a programme spitting out fewer than 50 graduates every four months. Critics say while RBK has proven its model works, for it to make a real difference, it must be able to reach more young refugees. "The big question is, is this model scalable?" asked one aid worker familiar with the programme. "If it doesn't scale, this fantastic, high-quality solution risks being a drop in the ocean." Boko Haram: Nigeria winning the battle but losing the war? Publisher IRIN Author Obi Anyadike Publication Date 4 May 2017 Cite as IRIN, Boko Haram: Nigeria winning the battle but losing the war?, 4 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591316d94.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. "Prof" Usman Abakyari is instantly likeable. But the impish, slightly dishevelled water engineer turns serious at any mention of Boko Haram, the jihadist insurgency that for seven years has traumatised northeastern Nigeria. He blames Boko Haram, incubated in his home city of Maiduguri, for the death of his wife. He has vowed to take revenge should he ever get the chance. As a public employee, Abakyari was a target. The goal of the insurgency is the destruction of a corrupt Nigerian state, replaced by a justly governed caliphate, harking back to a pre-colonial past. But when armed men tried to break into his apartment one night in the "Locos" suburb of Maiduguri, he believes the motive was robbery rather than any grander statement. Boko Haram's membership is broad. Within its ranks are educated ideologues, opportunists looking for power or money, and the men and women who have been kidnapped and coerced. In Locos, as in other parts of the city they once controlled, they killed and extorted under the noses of the security forces, imposing a tax "for breathing" on anyone they chose. But when they knocked at Abakyari's door, his wife stood her ground. As he hid in the shower, she denied he was home and refused them entry. When the gunmen finally left, she collapsed in the doorway and he couldn't revive her. "She protected me," he tells IRIN. This is a war that has killed more than 20,000 people, driven over 1.8 million from their homes and left two million hungry. But what has been a spectacularly grisly conflict now seems to be entering a new and uncertain phase. Boko Haram once controlled most of northeastern Borno, with footholds in neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa states. At one stage it was estimated to be 15,000 strong. Now the momentum appears to be with the military. Boko Haram is still active in Borno, but the last unliberated territory is on the northern desert fringe of the state, bordering Chad and Niger. Boko Haram members still raid army posts, and they still bomb. The explosions are rarely high-profile - almost exclusively attacks by "expendable" young women on crowded urban centres, serving only as disconcerting reminders of the insurgency's deadly intent. But there is a diminishing intensity to the conflict. In the last few months of 2016, death toll figures were at their lowest levels since February 2013, according to the monitoring group ACLED (although there is the beginning of an uptick). Adding to Boko Haram's problems is that it has split. The charismatic, ranting, classical Arabic-speaking leader Abubaker Shekau seems to have lost the support of so-called Islamic State. IS now backs Abu Musab al-Barnawi, who has questioned Shekau's indiscriminate use of violence. Another powerful commander, Mamman Nur, is reportedly aligned with al-Barnawi. Time to talk? There has been a long and at times farcical history of "back channel" talks with the jihadists. But the release of 21 Chibok schoolgirls in October signalled that more solid contact was being made. The government has confirmed yet more of the estimated 195 remaining pupils, held since 2014, could be freed. Zannah Mustapha, one of the mediators involved in the negotiations, sees an even more tantalising prospect. He believes there is scope for an agreement on a no-fire buffer zone, humanitarian access to Boko Haram-controlled areas, and ultimately a cessation of hostilities. The talks, conducted over cellphone with at times "erratic" Boko Haram leaders, are coordinated by Nigeria's Department of State Security and supported by the Swiss government. The International Committee of the Red Cross is acting as a "neutral intermediary". Agreeing a peace would require a gargantuan political investment by the government. Nigeria is all too often polarised along regional fault lines, with the insurgency regarded as a northern problem in a country where conspiracy theories run deep. The Nigerian military would also need to be on board to end a conflict that its more entrepreneurially minded officers and men benefit from. Mustapha, a lawyer who runs a school in Maiduguri that enrolls the orphan children of both Boko Haram and the security forces, says the choice is stark. He hunches forward in his seat for emphasis: "Do we want to continue this war or do we want to stop it? If you say stop it, then you need to find the political courage to do that." The counter-argument is a simple one: A peace accord is not in the DNA of an absolutist Boko Haram. If money changes hands for the release of the Chibok girls, it will be invested "in more guns to wage more war", said one security source who asked not to be named. It's hard to see how a settlement can be in the interests of Boko Haram's leadership. No amnesty deal could ever be offered to Shekau, responsible for multiple atrocities, or Nur, allegedly the mastermind of an attack on the UN headquarters in Abuja in 2011 that killed 23 people. But a smarter approach to this war is being tried. While Boko Haram's leaders are ruled out of any peace deal, there are supposedly more than 4,500 footsoldiers who have surrendered under a safe corridor initiative. They are being held in secret locations around the country. The goal of the programme "is to rehabilitate repentant Boko Haram militants and reintegrate them back into their respective communities as productive law-abiding citizens". If the fighters in the bush can be convinced there is a genuine path to reconciliation, it would likely trigger yet more defections. The initiative was developed by the Office of the National Security Advisor, part of a civilian-run counter-insurgency strategy. Ferdinand Ikwang, who pioneered it, explains how militants would signal to ONSA their intention to defect, drop their weapons at pre-arranged sites, and then be taken into custody. The army, with its history of rights abuses, was deliberately kept at arm's length. But the programme is now in the hands of the military, which is trying to coordinate multiple government ministries and agencies with only limited resources. Not only would they seem not to want the portfolio, but also a lack of transparency is threatening what was a potentially groundbreaking initiative to counter violent extremism. A year down the road, a legal framework is still to be developed to cover the secret detention sites and indefinite incarceration of prisoners. Operationally, the categories of ex-combatants qualifying for the programme have not been spelt out. Neither has the "reintegration" process been properly explained. Moreover, the 12-week period set aside for "deradicalisation" is seen by most analysts as way too short, and no biometric records are being kept to track the former fighters. View from Maiduguri Another glaring omission has been the failure to consult the communities supposed to receive the ex-combatants. A pilot programme involving a handful of detainees - who had gone through "deradicalisation" in a camp in Gombe, south of Borno - ended badly. At least two of the former militants were killed when they were returned home. This should not have come as a surprise. A report in April last year by the international NGO Mercy Corps interviewed former members who had quit the group and independently came home. It described how precarious their life now was. Even if they had not been implicated in killings, they were under constant surveillance by the community, and risked being disappeared by the vigilante Civilian Joint Task Force or the army. Some felt it safer to settle elsewhere. The report's researcher, Ballama Mustafa, remembers one case where the CJTF debated killing a returnee, an early member of Boko Haram before the war started in 2009. Instead, he was taken to the police station, where he signed a statement, and then to the Bulema, the community leader, before whom he swore on the Koran that he meant no harm. He was let go. Mustafa explains how local people are often aware of the extent of returnees' involvement. "We know who was Boko Haram and what they did," he says. But the ex-combatants in the safe corridor programme are a different proposition. These are men who have taken up arms, potentially committed crimes, and could still be Boko Haram. Ikwang, the former ONSA official, flags the inherent danger in the programme. "We could wake up in five years and these guys are entrenched. They [could be local government] chairman, be mainstream." Not in my backyard After the failure of the Gombe pilot, the Centre for Democracy and Development, a local research NGO, held a "stakeholders' dialogue" with the community in Maiduguri on the safe corridor initiative. The community's demands at the July 2016 meeting were clear: a minimum 10-year cooling off period before ex-fighters could return; the welfare of the displaced and those affected by the violence had to take precedence; and they wanted a say in the design and implementation of the reintegration effort. Eight months later, opinions have scarcely changed. "Prof" Abakyari is one of several community representatives at a workshop in Maiduguri at the end of March run by the Mercy Corps stabilisation programme. Also at the table are religious leaders, state officials, security agencies (with the exception of the army), and a senior member of the CJTF. "[Islam talks] about reconciliation, but it's very difficult." - Abba Munguno, retired civil servant The conversation ricochets between the accountability of the government and people's individual responsibility for the rise of Boko Haram: "what did you do to stop your child from joining?" is one rhetorical question that silences the room. What is clear is the fundamental distrust in the government's ability to protect its citizens. Boko Haram began as an intolerant grassroots religious movement with influential political patrons. The warning signs of the violence to come were ignored. With no faith in the judicial system, few people disagree when Abakyari bluntly says he would take the law into his own hands if he ever met the men who had come to his door that night. "[The emotion generated by this conflict] is not like a switch you can off and on," he explains. Islam is the traditional mechanism for conflict resolution in the north. Religious leaders are expected to take the lead in promoting forgiveness and reconciliation. But despite the platitudes of "leaving judgement to God", everyone at the workshop understands the reality. "Even if you're very religious, the gravity of these things makes it very hard," says Abba Munguno, a retired civil servant. "[Islam talks] about reconciliation, but it's very difficult." Women held captive would be welcome back, people around the table nod. There is grudging acceptance too of children fathered by Boko Haram fighters. And boys who had been coerced to fight might also be forgiven. But it is clear there can be no blanket approach to reintegration in the city. "This is a step forward," says Harriet Atim, manager of the Mercy Corps stabalisation programme. "Last year, if you even mentioned reintegration, people would just get up and walk out of the room." The victims Not a single UN agency or international NGO was based in Maiduguri until a few years ago. Now, every meeting room in the hotel where Mercy Corps is holding its workshop is busy with donor-funded seminars that anticipate a post-conflict peace. Adama Umoru wears a torn hijab, dirty wrapper, and has a permanently stunned look on her face. She came from Gwoza a year ago. The town - about 135 kilometres southeast of Maiduguri, on the border with Cameroon - was captured by Boko Haram in 2014 and declared the centre of its caliphate. Her husband, a CJTF member, was killed in the attack. The insurgents also shot her father. A man called Abdulahi Abubaker, who sold food-seasoning ingredients in the market, pointed him out to the gunmen. Four months pregnant, Umoru was left to dig her father's grave. In Maiduguri, she looks after her two children by frying akara bean-cake snacks. She is doing better than many displaced people, but can't make eye contact and seems deeply troubled. At the thought of returning to Gwoza, she becomes unequivocal: "I'm not going back, I buried my father." People make a community, and the need for healing is the unaddressed challenge of reconciliation, says psychologist Fatima Akilu (photo on right). She favours a truth and reconciliation process as one way to help move a fractured society forward. "People keep telling me: 'Nobody has allowed me to tell my story until now'." She has sunk her savings into opening the first dedicated child trauma centre in Nigeria, in Maiduguri, and provides counselling services in the community. But Akilu, who set up Nigeria's deradicalisation programme when she was a director at ONSA, worries about the future. "The fundamental reasons for joining Boko Haram are not being addressed: the lack of access to justice, marginalisation [to name a few]," she says. "The ideology has been seeded." The authorities still seem unprepared. There is no comprehensive early warning system for people to report to; no certainty there will be a security response, or that whistle-blowers will be protected. Imams are not registered, and the northeast remains educationally stunted. "We are not good at long-term planning," says Akilu. "But this insurgency calls for long-term planning, and for us to hold our nerve." oa/ag This is one of a series of features on violent extremism in Nigeria and Sahelian Africa, part of a project with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) Nigeria wakes up to its growing vigilante problem Publisher IRIN Author Hilary Matfess Publication Date 9 May 2017 Cite as IRIN, Nigeria wakes up to its growing vigilante problem, 9 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5913178a4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Sporting a commando-style green knit hat despite the heat, Ali* boasts that he has found a foolproof way to kill up to 50 suspected Boko Haram members at a time, by roasting them in a pit. "We question them, and then put them in a hole, then dump kerosene or whatever materials we have on them to start the fire," explains Ali, speaking excitedly, proud of his accomplishment. He is a member of Nigeria's Civilian Joint Task Force, a vigilante army of around 23,000. It has been an indispensable, though controversial, part of the military campaign against Boko Haram, the brutal jihadist group that has waged an insurgency in the country's northeast since 2010. Hometown heroes Residents throughout the region have turned to the CJTF to provide protection against Boko Haram. For many, its fighters are hometown heroes, a reflection of the community's resistance to the jihadists, and a response to the military's failings. They are the eyes and ears of the counter-insurgency campaign. It was the CJTF, as a spontaneous community movement, that rose up. Armed with little more than sticks, they chased the jihadists out of Maiduguri, the main city in the northeast. They have proven stubborn defenders of towns throughout the region, and the first people to be executed whenever Boko Haram takes over. Though the CJTF is not a part of the police nor the military, it's encouraged by state authorities, who sometimes provide equipment, training, and weapons. But as the threat from Boko Haram wanes, there are mounting cases of the CJTF targeting the civilian population they claim to protect. They enjoy near-impunity, and the current lack of a comprehensive demobilisation plan, points to a potential crisis ahead. The threat is so pressing that Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima has characterised the CJTF as "more dangerous than Boko Haram". In a February interview he said: "If we fail to care for them, they could become Nigeria's Frankenstein [monster]." Monsters Amnesty International first reported the CJTF was committing "grisly extrajudicial executions" in 2014, with video footage of vigilantes slitting the throats of detainees alongside the army. Despite government promises to bring the group to heel, civilians in Maiduguri - the birthplace of both Boko Haram and the CJTF - report that some vigilante members still harass, torture, and physically and sexually abuse their victims. Amir* recounts being savagely beaten after a group of young children reported him to the CJTF, claiming he had "disrespected" them. "The men began beating me with their sticks. I raised up my hands to try to protect myself. Their beatings broke my hands. With my hands broken, they dragged me behind them like a dead dog," he told IRIN. "They tied me up by my broken hands to a tree and beat me. All the while they said to me: 'You must be Boko Haram because you are so stubborn'." He was released only after a traditional community leader intervened in the middle of the night. Women have not been spared. Fearing female suicide bombers - Boko Haram's favoured urban weapon - the CJTF in Maiduguri has set special night curfews for women, and will beat any woman in violation. Ibrahim* recalls that his friend was walking his girlfriend home after curfew when they were confronted by a CJTF patrol. "They slapped him and removed their knives. They tried to stab him, so he fled, leaving this girl behind. He came to us, his friends, and we regrouped and went out to see if the girl was still alive." They found her lying on the side of the road in tears. The CJTF men had covered her face so she couldn't identify them, and then raped her. Military model The CJTF has its own internal hierarchy, in which each community CJTF unit reports to one of 10 district commands, which in turn is overseen by a state-level leadership council. It is modelled on the military: Districts correspond to the army's zonal commands, and checkpoints throughout the region are often jointly managed. Sometimes, even military raids are conducted alongside CJTF members. The organisation has a remarkable degree of autonomy. Jibrin Gunda, a legal advisor for the CJTF, told IRIN that Borno State has "recognised the CJTF court's sovereignty" in dealing with disciplinary issues. The CJTF's legal enclave is all the more troubling given the difficulties that civilians face in reporting abuses. Many people expressed fear of retaliation and confusion as to how to access justice. In Bama, a town 60 kilometres from Maiduguri, a CJTF commander said: "In our duties, we cycle in and out of town very often. Some can come and report the problem to me when I am in town, but some may not want to wait or not know how to report the issue." Gunda outlined the CJTF's "three strike" policy of warning, suspension, and dismissal when abuses are reported. But he acknowledged that dismissal was rare and had only occurred "four or five times" in the organisation's history. Nigeria has often grappled with how to integrate vigilante groups, which arise as a result of the failure of the police to maintain day-to-day order. The country is considering a 'Vigilante bill' that would help formalise and integrate vigilantes. However, it does not tackle what should be done about the most prominent vigilante group at present - the CJTF. The need for a viable demobilisation plan is now evident. A leader of the CJTF unit in Bama admitted: "It is tough to keep the boys in control after Boko Haram is defeated, it will likely get even harder." Qualifications? Indeed, many CJTF have expressed their unwillingness to demobilise without a proper package from the state or federal government in place for services rendered. "For now, there is no more respected job than [being] a CJTF member, because without us, so many people would have been killed," one vigilante explained. "I am too big a man now to go back to that work [as a driver for hire] now." CJTF members in general seem eager to take jobs in the security sector or, failing that government support, to set up businesses. Their demands are not unprecedented: The amnesty programme for the militants in the Niger Delta in the mid-2000s included livelihoods provisions. But demobilsation is complicated by the low education level of most vigilantes and their sheer numbers. One CJTF leader estimated that 75 percent of his force was unemployed prior to the crisis. Many vigilantes come from the same group of marginalised urban youth that turned to Boko Haram, a fact well understood by the authorities. There is growing friction with the army, which increasingly regards the CJTF as a security risk and is unwilling to absorb them. Budgetary-wise, both the military and the police are already struggling to pay their current level of recruits. Already, there is discord within the CJTF's ranks. In particular, many members express frustration over perceived favouritism. Only a handful of CJTF units are provided with a relatively regular salary from the state government, while the remainder make do with infrequent handouts or tributes from the communities they defend. Governor Shettima tried to encourage the formalisation of the CJTF through a Borno Youth Empowerment Scheme, or BOYES, which was originally intended to train 6,000 vigilantes. It was terminated after training an estimated 1,850, "apparently due to the army's uncertainty about training so many potentially unreliable persons", according to an International Crisis Group report. The result of this piecemeal approach is a patchwork of varying equipment and abilities. The Bama CJTF, for example, has members that attended training on bomb disposal, vehicles provided by the state government, and relatively new weapons. Other units are forced to provide all of their own equipment. Tinderbox This disparate treatment and the government's early termination of the BOYES programme contributes to a lack of trust between the government and the CJTF. Some civil society advocates fear that certain units may now refuse to disarm if asked to do so. The impending 2019 elections may prove to be a match to the vigilante's tinderbox. Throughout Nigeria's history, vigilante groups have been co-opted by politicians, transforming community-policing initiatives into political thugs-for-hire. The military training and armament of the CJTF makes that politicisation all the more dangerous. Before it is too late, a proper plan for demobilisation, disarmament, rehabilitation and reintegration needs to be developed. "Most importantly, CJTF members need to be able to see a post-violence future for themselves," said Chitra Nagarajan of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, a USAID-funded project in the northeast. Musa*, a CJTF leader based in Maiduguri, has been pleading with his government contacts to provide jobs and support to his men once they decide to leave the CJTF. "You have taught them how to use arms. You have taught them how to fight. To not help them find another purpose [would be a mistake]," he said. In a frightening nod to the Boko Haram insurgency, he added: "It's possible that they [could] become robbers, or worse." *Names have been changed Azerbaijan: Fined for selling religious books Publisher Forum 18 Publication Date 10 May 2017 Cite as Forum 18, Azerbaijan: Fined for selling religious books, 10 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59132f5b4.html [accessed 9 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Kifayat Maharramova was fined four months' average wages in Gyanja in early May for selling religious books and discs without the state permission required to sell religious books or items. Police and State Religion Committee officials often seize religious books in raids. Net Revenues Increased 23.3% Year-over-Year to RMB1.3 Billion Net Income Attributable to Autohome Inc. Increased 33.8% Year-over-Year to RMB327.4 Million BEIJING, May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Autohome Inc. (NYSE:ATHM) (Autohome or the Company), the leading online destination for automobile consumers in China, today announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. First Quarter 2017 Financial Highlights1 Net Revenues increased 23.3% year-over-year to RMB1,348.4 million ($195.9 million). increased 23.3% year-over-year to RMB1,348.4 million ($195.9 million). Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc. increased 33.8% year-over-year to RMB327.4 million ($47.6 million). increased 33.8% year-over-year to RMB327.4 million ($47.6 million). Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities was RMB495.2 million ($71.9 million), an increase of 205.4% year-over-year. First Quarter 2017 Operational Highlights Continued Focus on Mobile Traffic : During the first quarter of 2017, the number of average daily unique visitors who accessed the Companys mobile websites and mobile applications reached 10.1 million and 8.2 million, respectively. Combined, this represents a 23% increase in the total number of average daily unique visitors on mobile platforms compared with first quarter of 2016. Average time spent on the Companys primary mobile application was 18 minutes per day during the first quarter of 2017. : During the first quarter of 2017, the number of average daily unique visitors who accessed the Companys mobile websites and mobile applications reached 10.1 million and 8.2 million, respectively. Combined, this represents a 23% increase in the total number of average daily unique visitors on mobile platforms compared with first quarter of 2016. Average time spent on the Companys primary mobile application was 18 minutes per day during the first quarter of 2017. Successful Launch of Augmented Reality Showroom during March Auto Festival : The Company launched an Augmented Reality Automobile Showroom during its March Auto Festival which spanned from March 17 to 22, 2017 to enhance user engagement and interaction. Leveraging this successful launch, Autohome plans to further expand the use of augmented reality technology during its June Auto Festival by inviting more automakers to promote their products. : The Company launched an Augmented Reality Automobile Showroom during its March Auto Festival which spanned from March 17 to 22, 2017 to enhance user engagement and interaction. Leveraging this successful launch, Autohome plans to further expand the use of augmented reality technology during its June Auto Festival by inviting more automakers to promote their products. Asset-Light Vehicle E-commerce Platform Business Model: The Companys strategic change to become an asset-light vehicle e-commerce platform remains on track. Autohome sold 3,658 vehicles from its direct sales inventory during the first quarter of 2017. Mr. Yan Kang, President of Autohome, stated, We started off the year strongly with better-than-expected financial and operational results. Revenue growth from our core media and leads generation services increased 27.8% year-over-year, primarily driven by solid growth in mobile traffic and our continued gain in market share for online advertising spending, which demonstrates Autohomes leading market position and brand recognition among consumers as well as our unrivaled advantage in leads generation. While our progress so far is very encouraging, we still have a lot of work ahead of us, particularly when it comes to growing our community, efficiently connecting consumers throughout the automobile ownership cycle, facilitating transactions, strengthening our core competitive position, and expanding the scale of our automotive ecosystem using big data analysis and technology. Mr. Julian Wang, Chief Financial Officer, added, We delivered an excellent quarter as we continued to gain top-line growth momentum which surpassed our original guidance. We also saw a solid improvement in our profitability despite the effects of seasonality. This reflects the success of our strategy to remain at the forefront of the industry in terms of user engagement, technology advancement, brand recognition, and commitment to our partners. Looking towards the rest of 2017, we are committed to further driving the growth and profitability of our core media platform and leads generation business, as well as further developing our value-enabling transactions and services. We will continue to enhance our value propositions to consumers, automakers and dealer clients in order to further strengthen the foundation of our business. Overview of Key Financial Results for First Quarter 2017 Key Financial Results (In RMB Millions except for per share data) 1Q2016 1Q2017 % Change Net Revenues 1,093.5 1,348.4 23.3 % Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc. 244.7 327.4 33.8 % Adjusted Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc.2 294.4 367.2 24.7 % Diluted Earnings Per Share3 2.11 2.80 32.7 % Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities 162.2 495.2 205.4 % Unaudited First Quarter 2017 Financial Results Net Revenues Net revenues increased 23.3% to RMB1,348.4 million ($195.9 million) from RMB1,093.5 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The increase was mainly due to a 27.8% increase in revenues from media and leads generation services. Media services revenues increased 17.2% to RMB518.1 million ($75.3 million) from RMB442.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The increase was mainly due to an increase in average revenue per automaker advertiser as automakers continue to allocate a greater portion of their advertising budgets to the Companys online advertising and marketing channels. revenues increased 17.2% to RMB518.1 million ($75.3 million) from RMB442.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The increase was mainly due to an increase in average revenue per automaker advertiser as automakers continue to allocate a greater portion of their advertising budgets to the Companys online advertising and marketing channels. Leads generation services revenues increased 40.1% to RMB538.0 million ($78.2 million) from RMB384.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The increase was primarily attributable to a 26.0% year-over-year increase in average revenue per paying dealer as dealers continue to allocate a greater portion of their budgets to the Company's services. . revenues increased 40.1% to RMB538.0 million ($78.2 million) from RMB384.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The increase was primarily attributable to a 26.0% year-over-year increase in average revenue per paying dealer as dealers continue to allocate a greater portion of their budgets to the Company's services. . Online marketplace revenues were RMB292.3 million ($42.5 million) compared to RMB267.3 million in the corresponding period of 2016. In the first quarter of 2017, the Company sold 3,658 vehicles and generated RMB275.1 million ($40.0 million) in direct vehicle sales revenues, which accounted for 94.1% of online marketplace revenues. This is in line with the Companys strategy to de-emphasize direct vehicle sales and focus more on transaction facilitation. Cost of Revenues Cost of revenues increased 16.0% to RMB444.6 million ($64.6 million) from RMB383.4 million in the corresponding period of 2016, primarily due to an increase in cost of goods sold related to direct vehicle sales and an increase in valued-added tax and surcharges along with the increase in revenue. In addition, cost of revenues included share-based compensation expenses of RMB4.1 million ($0.6 million) during the first quarter of 2017, compared to RMB2.0 million for the corresponding period of 2016. Operating Expenses Operating expenses increased 7.7% to RMB556.4 million ($80.8 million) from RMB516.6 million in the corresponding period of 2016. This increase was mainly due to increases in product development expenses as the Company continues to reinvest in future growth opportunities. Sales and marketing expenses decreased 6.9% to RMB306.3 million ($44.5 million) from RMB329.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. This decrease was primarily due to decreased investment in certain online marketing channels and decreased offline execution and promotional expenses related to the new vehicle transaction business. Sales and marketing expenses for the first quarter of 2017 included share-based compensation expenses of RMB10.7 million ($1.6 million), compared with RMB11.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. expenses decreased 6.9% to RMB306.3 million ($44.5 million) from RMB329.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. This decrease was primarily due to decreased investment in certain online marketing channels and decreased offline execution and promotional expenses related to the new vehicle transaction business. Sales and marketing expenses for the first quarter of 2017 included share-based compensation expenses of RMB10.7 million ($1.6 million), compared with RMB11.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. General and administrative expenses decreased 16.2% to RMB60.4 million ($8.8 million) from RMB72.0 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The decrease was primarily attributable to decreases in general expenses for corporate functions. General and administrative expenses for the first quarter of 2017 included share-based compensation expenses of RMB9.3 million ($1.4 million), compared with RMB24.8 million in the corresponding period of 2016. expenses decreased 16.2% to RMB60.4 million ($8.8 million) from RMB72.0 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The decrease was primarily attributable to decreases in general expenses for corporate functions. General and administrative expenses for the first quarter of 2017 included share-based compensation expenses of RMB9.3 million ($1.4 million), compared with RMB24.8 million in the corresponding period of 2016. Product development expenses increased 64.3% to RMB189.7 million ($27.6 million) from RMB115.5 million in the corresponding period of 2016. This increase was primarily attributable to an increase in salaries and benefits associated with growth in product development headcount, which is in line with the Company's strategy of strengthening its technology and big data analysis capabilities. Product development expenses for the first quarter of 2017 included share-based compensation expenses of RMB14.5 million ($2.1 million), compared with RMB10.8 million in the corresponding period of 2016. Operating Profit Operating profit increased 79.6% to RMB347.3 million ($50.5 million) from RMB193.4 million in the corresponding period of 2016. Income tax (expense)/benefit There was an income tax expense of RMB68.8 million ($10.0 million) in the first quarter of 2017, compared to income tax benefit of RMB33.1 million in the corresponding period of 2016. The income tax benefit in the first quarter of 2016 was derived from change in the enacted tax rate of one of Autohomes subsidiaries which resulted in tax benefit of RMB69.4 million being recorded in the first quarter of 2016. Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc. and EPS Net income attributable to Autohome Inc. increased 33.8% to RMB327.4 million ($47.6 million) from RMB244.7 million in the corresponding period of 2016. Basic and diluted earnings per share and per ADS (EPS) were RMB2.83 ($0.41) and RMB2.80 ($0.41), respectively, compared with basic and diluted EPS in the corresponding period of 2016 of RMB2.16 and RMB2.11, respectively. Adjusted Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc. and Non-GAAP EPS Adjusted net income attributable to Autohome Inc., defined as net income attributable to Autohome Inc. excluding share-based compensation expenses and amortization expenses of intangible assets related to acquisitions, increased 24.7% to RMB367.2 million ($53.3 million) from RMB294.4 million in the corresponding period of 2016. Non-GAAP basic and diluted EPS were RMB3.18 ($0.46) and RMB3.13 ($0.45), respectively, compared with non-GAAP basic and diluted EPS in the corresponding period of 2016 of RMB2.60 and RMB2.54, respectively. Balance Sheet and Cash Flow As of March 31, 2017, the Company had cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments of RMB6,189.9 million ($899.3 million) . Net cash provided by operating activities in the first quarter of 2017 was RMB495.2 million ($71.9 million), a substantial increase compared with RMB162.2 million in the corresponding period of 2016, primarily attributable to the positive cash flow from direct vehicle sales model associated with inventory clearance and part of the Companys shift in focus towards an asset-light automobile e-commerce platform. Employees The Company had 3,745 employees as of March 31, 2017. Business Outlook Autohome currently expects to generate net revenues in the range of RMB1,405 million ($204.1 million) to RMB1,437 million ($208.8 million) in the second quarter of fiscal year 2017, representing a 1.9% to 4.3% year-over-year increase. This quarter also marks the end of our buyout clean-up effort. This forecast reflects the Company's current and preliminary view on the market and operating conditions, which are subject to change. Conference Call Information The Company will host an earnings conference call at 8:00 AM U.S. Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 (8:00 PM Beijing Time on the same day). Dial-in details for the earnings conference call are as follows: United States: +1-855-298-3404 Hong Kong: +852-5808-3202 China Domestic: 400-120-0539 United Kingdom: 0800-015-9725 International: +1-631-514-2526 Please dial in ten minutes before the call is scheduled to begin and provide the passcode to join the call. The passcode is 9616672. A replay of the conference call may be accessed by phone at the following numbers until May 17, 2017: United States: +1-866-846-0868 International: +61-2-9641-7900 Passcode: 9616672 Additionally, a live and archived webcast of the conference call will be available at http://ir.autohome.com.cn. About Autohome Inc. Autohome Inc. (NYSE: ATHM) is the leading online destination for automobile consumers in China. Its mission is to enhance the car-buying and ownership experience for auto consumers in China. Autohome provides professionally produced and user-generated content, a comprehensive automobile library, and extensive automobile listing information to automobile consumers, covering the entire car purchase and ownership cycle. The ability to reach a large and engaged user base of automobile consumers has made Autohome a preferred platform for automakers and dealers to conduct their advertising campaigns. Further, the Companys dealer subscription and advertising services allow dealers to market their inventory and services through Autohomes platform, extending the reach of their physical showrooms to potentially millions of internet users in China and generating sales leads for them. The Company offers sales leads, data analysis, and marketing services to assist automakers and dealers with improving their efficiency and facilitating transactions. As a transaction-centric company, Autohome operates its Autohome Mall, a full-service online transaction platform, to facilitate transactions for automakers and dealers. Further, through its websites and mobile applications, it also provides other value-added services, including auto financing, auto insurance, used car transactions, and aftermarket services. For further information, please visit www.autohome.com.cn. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains statements that may constitute "forward-looking" statements pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will", "expects", "anticipates", "future", "intends", "plans", "believes", "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, Autohome's business outlook, Autohome's strategic and operational plans and quotations from management in this announcement contain forward-looking statements. Autohome may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Autohome's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: Autohome's goals and strategies; Autohome's future business development, results of operations and financial condition; the expected growth of the online automobile advertising market in China; Autohome's ability to attract and retain users and advertisers and further enhance its brand recognition; Autohome's expectations regarding demand for and market acceptance of its products and services; competition in the online automobile advertising industry; fluctuations in general economic and business conditions in China and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in Autohome's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and Autohome does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures To supplement net income presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP, we use Adjusted Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc., Non-GAAP basic and diluted EPS and Adjusted EBITDA as non-GAAP financial measures. We define Adjusted Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc. as net income attributable to Autohome Inc. excluding share-based compensation expenses and amortization expenses of intangible assets related to acquisitions. We define Non-GAAP basic and diluted EPS as Adjusted Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc. divided by the basic and diluted weighted average number of ordinary shares. We define Adjusted EBITDA as net income attributable to Autohome Inc. before income tax expense/(benefit), depreciation expenses of property and equipment and amortization expenses of intangible assets and share-based compensation expenses. We present these non-GAAP financial measures because they are used by our management to evaluate our operating performance, in addition to net income prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. We believe these non-GAAP financial measures are important to help investors understand our operating and financial performance, compare business trends among different reporting periods on a consistent basis and assess our core operating results, as they exclude certain expenses that are not expected to result in cash payments. The use of the above non-GAAP financial measures has certain limitations. Share-based compensation expenses have been and will continue to be incurred in the future and are not reflected in the presentation of the non-GAAP financial measures, but should be considered in the overall evaluation of our results. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP, but should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. For more information on these non-GAAP financial measures, please see the table captioned "Reconciliation of non-GAAP and GAAP Results" set forth at the end of this press release. 1 The reporting currency of the Company is Renminbi (RMB). For the convenience of the reader, certain amounts throughout the release are presented in US dollars ($). Unless otherwise noted, all conversions from RMB to US$ are translated at the noon buying rate of US$1.00 to RMB6.8832 on March 31, 2017 in the City of New York for cable transfers of RMB as certified for customs purposes by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. No representation is made that the RMB amounts could have been, or could be, converted into US$ at such rate. 2 Adjusted net income attributable to Autohome Inc. is defined as net income attributable to Autohome Inc. excluding share-based compensation expenses and amortization expenses of intangible assets related to acquisitions. For more information on this and other non-GAAP financial measures, please see the section captioned "Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures" and the tables captioned "Reconciliations of Non-GAAP and GAAP Results" set forth at the end of this release. 3 Each ordinary share equals one ADS. AUTOHOME INC. CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (Amount in thousands, except per share data) For three months ended March 31, 2016 2017 RMB RMB US$ (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) Net revenues: Media services 442,130 518,072 75,266 Leads generation services 384,054 537,987 78,159 Online marketplace 267,277 292,302 42,466 Total net revenues 1,093,461 1,348,361 195,891 Cost of revenues (383,390 ) (444,593 ) (64,591 ) Gross profit 710,071 903,768 131,300 Operating expenses: Sales and marketing expenses (329,127 ) (306,328 ) (44,504 ) General and administrative expenses (72,017 ) (60,381 ) (8,772 ) Product development expenses (115,490 ) (189,726 ) (27,564 ) Operating profit 193,437 347,333 50,460 Interest income 18,824 38,890 5,650 Loss from equity method investments (1,629 ) (2,619 ) (380 ) Other income, net 936 10,116 1,470 Income before income taxes 211,568 393,720 57,200 Income tax (expense)/benefit 33,083 (68,785 ) (9,993 ) Net income 244,651 324,935 47,207 Net loss attributable to noncontrolling interests - 2,482 361 Net income attributable to Autohome Inc. 244,651 327,417 47,568 Earnings per share for ordinary shares Basic 2.16 2.83 0.41 Diluted 2.11 2.80 0.41 Weighted average shares used to compute earnings per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders: Basic 113,321,719 115,578,134 115,578,134 Diluted 115,689,256 117,132,322 117,132,322 Other comprehensive income attributable to Autohome Inc., net of tax of nil Foreign currency translation adjustments (4,843 ) (5,488 ) (797 ) Comprehensive income attributable to Autohome Inc. 239,808 321,929 46,771 AUTOHOME INC. RECONCILIATION OF NON-GAAP AND GAAP RESULTS (Amount in thousands, except per share data) For three months ended March 31, 2016 2017 RMB RMB US$ (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) Net income attributable to Autohome Inc. 244,651 327,417 47,568 Plus: income tax expense/(benefit) (33,083 ) 68,785 9,993 Plus: depreciation of property and equipment 15,361 19,616 2,850 Plus: amortization of intangible assets 1,138 1,145 166 EBITDA 228,067 416,963 60,577 Plus: share-based compensation expenses 48,629 38,653 5,616 Adjusted EBITDA 276,696 455,616 66,193 Net income attributable to Autohome Inc. 244,651 327,417 47,568 Plus: amortization of acquired intangible assets of Cheerbright, China Topside and Norstar 1,138 1,138 165 Plus: share-based compensation expenses 48,629 38,653 5,616 Adjusted Net Income attributable to Autohome Inc. 294,418 367,208 53,349 Non-GAAP Earnings per share for ordinary shares Basic 2.60 3.18 0.46 Diluted 2.54 3.13 0.45 Weighted average shares used to compute earnings per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders: Basic 113,321,719 115,578,134 115,578,134 Diluted 115,689,256 117,132,322 117,132,322 Luxembourg, 10 May 2017 - The Annual and Extraordinary General Meetings of shareholders of ArcelorMittal held today in Luxembourg approved all resolutions on their respective agendas by a strong majority. 63.19% of the voting rights were represented at the general meetings. The results of the votes will be posted shortly on www.arcelormittal.com under "Investors > Equity Investors > Shareholders' meetings > General Meetings - 10 May 2017" where the full documentation regarding to the general meetings is available. The shareholders re-elected Mr. Lakshmi N. Mittal, Mr. Bruno Lafont and Mr. Wurth as directors of ArcelorMittal for a term of three years each. In addition, the shareholders approved the reverse split (consolidation) of the Company's share capital in the sense that every 3 shares of the Company after implementation will be represented by 1 share. Also approved were technical decisions adapting the Company's Articles of Association to new legislation. ENDS About ArcelorMittal ArcelorMittal is the world's leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries and an industrial footprint in 19 countries. Guided by a philosophy to produce safe, sustainable steel, we are the leading supplier of quality steel in the major global steel markets including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging, with world-class research and development and outstanding distribution networks. Through our core values of sustainability, quality and leadership, we operate responsibly with respect to the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, contractors and the communities in which we operate. For us, steel is the fabric of life, as it is at the heart of the modern world from railways to cars and washing machines. We are actively researching and producing steel-based technologies and solutions that make many of the products and components people use in their everyday lives more energy efficient. We are one of the world's five largest producers of iron ore and metallurgical coal. With a geographically diversified portfolio of iron ore and coal assets, we are strategically positioned to serve our network of steel plants and the external global market. While our steel operations are important customers, our supply to the external market is increasing as we grow. In 2016, ArcelorMittal had revenues of $56.8 billion and crude steel production of 90.8 million tonnes, while own iron ore production reached 55.2 million tonnes. ArcelorMittal is listed on the stock exchanges of New York (MT), Amsterdam (MT), Paris (MT), Luxembourg (MT) and on the Spanish stock exchanges of Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid and Valencia (MTS). For more information about ArcelorMittal please visit: http://corporate.arcelormittal.com/ 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: Man Group Plc (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a): N/A (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates: Sandstorm Gold Ltd (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: N/A (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken: 09th May 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? YES / NO / N/A If YES, specify which: 2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE (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: Common Shares NPV Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: 979,200 0.6442 0 0 (2) Cash-settled derivatives: 0 0 258,664 0.1702 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell: 0 0 0 0 TOTAL: 979,200 0.6442 258,664 0.1702 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 Common Shares NPV Purchase 6,917 4.5854 Common Shares NPV Purchase 7,795 4.5854 Common Shares NPV Purchase 666 4.5854 Common Shares NPV Purchase 1,761 4.5854 Common Shares NPV Purchase 1,804 4.5854 Common Shares NPV Purchase 618 4.5854 Common Shares NPV Purchase 1,639 4.5854 Common Shares NPV Purchase 91,400 4.6117 (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 (GBP) (c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options) (i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit (ii) Exercise Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit (d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities) Class of relevant security Nature of dealing e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable) 4. OTHER INFORMATION (a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer: Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" None (b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to: (i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or (ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced: If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" None (c) Attachments Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? YES/ NO Date of disclosure: 10th May 2017 Contact name: Matthew Irwin Telephone number: 02071447255 Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service and must also be emailed to the Takeover Panel at monitoring@disclosure.org.uk. The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129. The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk. Cambodias Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has ordered its provincial offices to stop all illegal logging and timber trafficking activities in an apparent response to a report exposing an industrial-scale timber laundering operation that Vietnamese companies and corrupt Cambodian authorities started late last year in the countrys northeastern Ratanakiri province. The report issued on April 8 by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) charges that corrupt government officials and military personnel in Vietnam have been smuggling huge quantities of illegal timber from Cambodia, despite the latter countrys ban on log exports to its neighbor. Those involved in the operation are pocketing millions in bribes from timber smugglers for allowing hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of hardwood logs stolen from Cambodias national parks to be laundered into Vietnams lucrative timber economy, the report said. The government order dated May 8 and publicly released on Tuesday said the agriculture ministry has taken note of the existence of forest and land-clearing as well as the seizure of forest land for private ownership. Illegal logging across the country has continued, especially in the areas near the borders with our neighboring countries, the order said. The ministry shall therefore issue this order for the forestry officials to stop all illegal logging activities. Ouch Leng, an investigative reporter and activist who has exposed illegal logging and corruption in the Prey Lang Forest in northern Cambodia and who won the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize, applauded the move. He said what appears to be the governments first official admission that a crackdown on the illicit timber trade is failing is a good sign that the agriculture ministry has acknowledged the problem. But he added he has no faith in the ministrys ability to tackle the problem because of its past failures to honor promises to stop illegal logging. I dont think the government is very genuine and determined in setting out strict measures to address these issues," he told RFAs Khmer Service. Thats because the people who are involved in the illegal logging business are members of the government or the armed forces. Seng Sok Heng, who works in the secretariat of the Prey Lang Community Network, said he has no faith in the ministerial order because some law enforcement officials in the forestry sector will continue accepting bribes for their compliance in illegally exporting timber. The cancer in the law enforcement sector has entered a very late stage, he said. Its too little, too late now. Such action should have been taken much earlier. The EIAs report said that approximately 300,000 cubic meters of logs have been smuggled out of Cambodia and laundered in Vietnam, and that kickbacks to Cambodia authorities have likely amounted to more than $13 million since early last November. Cambodia has had a ban on illegal timber exports to Vietnam since 1986. Reported by Sokheng Saut for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday condemned the killing of four Cambodian United Nations peacekeepers in Central African Republic (CAR) earlier this week, and warned similar violence and civil war is likely to descend on Cambodia if his ruling party loses local elections in June. Cambodian U.N. peacekeeper Im Sam, a 36-year-old bulldozer driver, was shot to death during an ambush by the largely-Christian Anti-Balaka terrorist group in CAR while traveling in a convoy from his work site to his base on the night of May 8, according to Cambodias Ministry of National Defense. Three other peacekeepers who had gone missing during the convoy attackquality control assistant Seang Norin, 35, excavator driver assistant Mom Tola, 31, and medical staffer Mao Eng, 37were later found dead, the ministry confirmed Wednesday. The four are members of an unarmed crew of Cambodian engineers accompanied by armed Moroccan forces in the CAR. Im Sam is Cambodias first peacekeeper to ever be killed in combat. Eight Anti-Balaka fighters were killed on Monday night, with a number of people wounded on both sides, including a fifth Cambodian peacekeeper, driver Thuch Thim, who was shot in the left hand and is now recovering. The Phnom Penh Post cited Cambodias National Centre for Peacekeeping Forces (NPMEC) as confirming that the attack near the village of Yogofongo, 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from Bangassou, was motivated by Anti-Balaka demands to liberate prisoners held by Moroccan forces. Speaking at an event to mark Veterans Day in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen said Cambodia would not be intimidated by the attack. Cambodia will continue to send peacekeepers abroadwe shall never be defeated by the acts of terrorism, he said, adding that 15 million Cambodians, including around 110,000 members of the armed forces and about 60,000 policemen, are readily prepared for peacekeeping operations. The prime minister then shifted gears, suggesting that terrorism and other forms of lawlessness would never be allowed to occur in Cambodia while he is in charge of the nation. Hun Sen also warned that he will do whatever it takes to keep the countrys opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) from ruining the achievements he has made during his 32-year tenure as leader of Cambodia. I shall protect these achievements at all coststhat means the [ruling Cambodian Peoples Party] CPP shall win all elections, he said. Be warned that, during the [commune] elections in [June] 2017 and 2018 [general] elections, if you continue to [hold protests about election results] you will be cracked down on immediately by the armed forces. I dont care if war erupts. War of words The strong man said that the opposition should also be careful about what it says in the lead up to the June 4 election. Even though you say that you have no guns, war is not necessarily started with weapons, he said. It could be started simply with words. If you claim to love peace, you must educate your underlings to stop cursing [the CPP]. Advocating for economic sanctions against Cambodiasuch as a ban on buying garments or freezing foreign aidbecause of human rights abuses is also a way that the opposition is instigating war, according to Hun Sen, who likened such statements to killing Cambodian workers and farmers. In response to Hun Sens comments about economic sanctions, CNRP spokesperson Yim Sovann told RFAs Khmer Service that the opposition had never called on foreign countries to cut aid to Cambodia. We have called for foreign countries to help ensure that foreign assistance is used transparently and accountably, he said. We dont want foreign aid to fall into the hands of corrupt individuals and want to make sure it benefits all Cambodians. We want donor countries to ensure that the government respects human rights and democracy and that development is genuine and benefits everyone equally. Hun Sen has previously warned of violent upheaval in recent months, with CPP-controlled media regularly alluding to civil war as the country prepares for commune elections in June. In February, the prime minister hinted that he might deploy military force against any political party that attempts to wrest power away from him with a victory in national elections scheduled for July 2018. Hun Sen, who has already ruled Cambodia for three decades, has previously suggested he would remain in power for 10 more years. Nearly every previous incident of major political violence in Cambodia since it emerged in the early 1990s from brutal rule by the Khmer Rouge followed by civil war has been attributed to Hun Sens ruling party. The CPP won more than 70 percent of the vote and secured 1,592 of 1,633 communes in Cambodias 2012 local elections, held before the CNRP was formed. The CNRP won nearly half of the vote in the general election the following year. Observers say the CNRP could give the CPP a run for its money in the June pollsa race that many believe may foreshadow the general election in 2018. Reported by Sereyvuth Oung and Vuthy Tha for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. A Chinese rights lawyer detained in a nationwide crackdown in July 2015 has finally been allowed to return home following his release from jail after he was found guilty of subversion charges, his wife told RFA. Li Heping was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, with the sentence suspended for four years, by the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People's Court, which found him guilty of "subversion of state power" in a trial behind closed doors on Apr. 28. His wife, Wang Qiaoling, had previously refused to go and meet him in Tianjin following his release, fearing the entire family would be held in a secret location under house arrest. "He is extremely thin and he has gone gray, although his mental state isn't too bad," Wang told RFA after Li arrived back at the couple's Beijing home on Tuesday. "But he seems to have some trouble expressing himself; he no longer sounds like a successful young lawyer," she said. "He was very closed in on himself in prison, and I'm sure that there was torture involved." "He was also force-fed medication that they said was for high blood pressure," Wang said, adding: "But he said it made his muscles ache and blurred his vision." Wang said Li had been mistreated during his incarceration because he had refused to incriminate others or himself during his interrogations. "They were seriously tortured in there," she said, but gave no further details. Crackdown not over yet Wang said she believes the ruling Chinese Communist Party's crackdown on rights lawyers isn't over yet. "They wouldn't release him and allow him to come home after the [suspended] sentencing, and they tried him in secret," she said. "They wouldn't allow him to meet with his own lawyer." "They broke the law in a lot of places in the past two years, and I think that the local governments involved should give us an explanation, but instead they are trying to shut us up," Wang said. The court said on its verified Weibo account that it had "decided not to proceed with an open trial, owing to the fact that the Li Heping case involved state secrets." The court found that Li had, largely through the medium of foreign media interviews, "attacked and discredited organs of the state and China's legal system." The judgment also accused him of using foreign funds and "hyping cases" to further provoke people already disgruntled with the country's political system. Li had also "colluded with illegal religious activities to subvert the power of the state," the court said. Plans to sue the government It accused him of conspiring with fellow lawyers and associates to "jointly plan a strategy, steps, and methods to overthrow the socialist system," concluding that he had endangered national security and social stability. Some families of the more than 300 lawyers, law firm staff, and rights activists who have been detained, questioned, and banned from leaving China or who face other restrictions since the July 2015 crackdown say they plan to sue the government over its treatment of them. U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao said the administration of President Xi Jinping appears intent on wiping out the last traces of China's nascent civil society. "All of these crackdowns [on lawyers and nongovernmental organizations] are connected," Teng said. "We are now entering the endgame, and the damage done to civil society has been huge." "But they don't appear to have lost courage, and it looks as if China's human rights lawyers are going to get braver and braver the longer they fight this," he said. Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Ng Yik-tung and Sing Man for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. South Korean presidential candidate Moon Jae-In stands on a stage to greet supporters after exit polls suggested a landslide victory, in the central Gwanghwamun district of Seoul, May 10, 2017. Liberal politician Moon Jae-in's decisive victory in South Korea's presidential election on Tuesday adds potential volatility to an already unstable environment on the Korean peninsula, where North Korea is ramping up its nuclear and missile programs and Seoul's ally the United States is tightening sanctions on Pyongyang. Moon, who is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday, campaigned on taking a more conciliatory approach toward North Korea than the two previous conservative South Korean presidents who ruled the past nine years. Among policies that hark back to the 1998-2008 "Sunshine Policy" era of his late liberal predecessors Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun that Moon has spoken of reviving are the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a South Korea-subsidized zone employing cheap labor to make consumer goods and a cross-border tourist project. Both projects, which were touted by supporters as signs of inter-Korean reconciliation and decried by critics as cash transfers to Pyongyang that subsidized leaders' lifestyles and weapons programs but failed to change North Korean behavior, were shuttered years ago as inter-Korean tensions spiked after North Korean atrocities and provocations. A new attempt by Moon to reopen those channels comes at a time of high tension with North Korea, which is believed to be preparing for a sixth nuclear test and has said it will test an intercontinental missile that can reach the United States. North Korea is also under a growing list of United Nations and other economic sanctions, some of which would bar the largesse Seoul used to extend to Pyongyang under the Sunshine Policy. "At least in his campaign statements, (Moon) wants to renew many of these policies," said Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jonathan Pollack. This would come at time when "Trump administration is trying to increase all kinds of pressures against North Korea, given its nuclear and missile development," he told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday. "The new government in Seoul would seem to be working very much in opposite directions from what President Trump seems to be pursuing with respect to North Korea," he said. Limited maneuver room? The tense regional conditions could limit Moon's room to maneuver, however. "I suspect that Moon Jae-in will take a cautious, but forward-leaning policy toward North Korea. He will want to continue to support sanctions, but open the aperture for engagement. This probably will take some time to unfold and be dependent on Pyongyang's actions," said Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the CNA, a research outfit in Virginia. "Right now, North Korea has signaled another diplomatic charm campaign to see what Seoul will offer. If Moon is slow to respond, more provocations could follow," he told RFA's Korean Service. "If Moon is too quick to reach out to North Korea, this could cause tension with Washington. I expect that Moon will try to secure a meeting with the Trump administration to better understand U.S. red lines," added Gause. One early challenge for Moon and U.S. President Donald Trump will be the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which was agreed to by Moon's predecessor and the U.S. military last year and is currently being installed in rural South Korea. Moon has shifted from opposing THAAD outright to saying the decision was made in undue haste and without transparency. "Moon might also try to slow roll THAAD or use it as a bargaining chip to get more latitude to reach out to Pyongyang. Depending on the U.S. reaction, U.S.-ROK relations will thrive or take a major step back," said Gause. "We are at an inflection point. But it will take months to unfold," he added. China and THAAD The THAAD deployment has also drawn the wrath of Beijing, which has launched an intense propaganda and economic warfare campaign against Seoul, halting Chinese package tours to South Korea and blocking South Korean pop stars from touring in China. "China will be cheering on the sidelines if President Moon tries to restrict further missile defense development," said Pollack. Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, says Moon and his team are more realistic about a Sunshine Policy redux than widely perceived. "South Korean progressives understand that they cannot simply return to the past, that North Koreas advance toward nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems has limited the prospects of fostering change simply through engagement. But they remain committed to the idea that such engagement is essential to averting conflict," he wrote in an essay published by the National Bureau of Asian Research, a Seattle-based think tank. "Implicitly, this blueprint runs counter to the current policy of tightening economic sanctions against North Korea and cutting the flow of capital into Pyongyangs coffers. Moon is also skeptical of the current U.S. approach of relying on China to bring about a change in North Korean policy, though he is careful to stress a desire to coordinate closely with Washington," added Sneider. Park Young-ho, a professor at South Korea's Kangwon University, predicts an initial low-key approach to Pyongyang by Moon. "To reopen the inter-Korean dialogue channel, first of all, the informal channel needs to be connected. The new government is expected to use secret contact with North Korea or dispatch a special envoy," he told RFA. Reported by Sungwon Yang for RFA's Korean Service. Translated by Park Bong. Written in English by Paul Eckert. Myanmar police block a street in a neighborhood in Mingala Taungnyunt township in the commercial capital Yangon during a confrontation between Buddhists and Muslims, May 10, 2017. UPDATED at 2 P.M. EST on 2017-05-11 Myanmar police fired warning shots during a confrontation in the early hours of Wednesday in the commercial capital Yangon after Buddhist hardliners entered a Muslim neighborhood claiming that ethnic Rohingya Muslims were hiding illegally in the area, witnesses said. Two people were injured during the scuffle, they said. Monks from the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, also known at Ma Ba Tha, received information that some Rohingya were hiding in apartments on two floors of a building in Mingala Taungnyunt township, said Thuseitta, a monk from the Patriotic Young Monks Union. Myanmars Buddhist majority views the Rohingya, a stateless group of 1.1 million who live mainly in the countrys western Rakhine state, as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and government policy has denied them citizenship and access to other basic rights for decades. Because of that information, we went to that apartment with police and immigration officers and checked, Thuseitta said. They found these illegal people and long swords, but they didnt detain them or take action against them. Police, however, determined that the people were living there legally. While the monks were talking with the officers about the possibility that the Rohingya were hiding, some Muslims who live in the area arrived and beat and cut them and the police with wooden sticks and knives, and threw stones at them, Thuseitta said. Both the monks and the police officers ran from the building and sought shelter in the police station, he said. Although people gave information about the Rohingya hiding in the area, and they found weapons at the location they checked, officers could not take any action against them, he said. Police then told the group of monks to return to their homes. Former lawmaker Phyu Phyu Thin, who lives in Mingala Taungnyunt township, said two residents were injured during the confrontation among locals and monks and others who joined in the scuffle. One of them [the injured men] ran away out of fear, and the other was sent to a hospital, she said. A few minutes after the problem, more security forces from a division unit came in, and these monks and strangers drove away at around 1:30 a.m. Like brothers and sisters A neighborhood witness who refused to give his name corroborated the story that officials and monks had come and searched an apartment in a building, but said they had found nothing. After the monks left the apartment, they became involved in an altercation with two people from the neighborhood, which developed into a larger confrontation in which some outsiders became involved he said. They [the outsiders] came in three cars and brought weapons like wooden sticks and swords, and they acted thuggishly, he said, adding that neighbors had heard rumors that outsiders would come into the area to stir up trouble. Police eventually fired shots to break up the scuffle. We have Muslims and Buddhists living together in this neighborhood, and we are like brothers and sisters, the resident said. We are working together to safeguard our neighborhood, even now. The people who came in and acted like this were strangers, he said, adding that action should be taken against them. Hla Htay, a regional lawmaker from the same neighborhood, also said that monks and officials who checked the apartment had found nothing. They found nothing, so officials couldnt do anything, he told RFA. Because the officials didnt do anything, the monks got into an argument with them and created tension with people from the neighborhood. We havent had any problems like this before, Hla Htay said. We [Muslims and Buddhists] have been living together in this area peacefully for a long time with no problem, and I want that to be the same in the future. A local apartment dweller surnamed Win told RFAs Myanmar Service that the Ma Ba Tha monks had been threatening her on Wednesday before about 20 people, including monks, police, and township administrative officers, showed up at her home at about 10:30 p.m. I have six family members, including an infant, who were falling asleep, and they pulled them from their beds, she said. They asked us to show our IDs and a list of family members, and the Ma Ba Tha monks asked police to take us to the police station. An administrative officer told the monks that the police did not need to take the woman and her family to the police station, but would do so later if necessary, Win said. The monks argued with the officials but left the womans apartment, she said. Harassment is nothing new Phyu Phyu Thin indicated that the monks and police had overstepped their boundaries by getting involved in the matter. As far as I understand, the police need documents and a warrant to search a house, and no one can get involved in their search, she said. Homeowners have the right to ask them why they want to check a house. Phyu Phyu Thin also said that the harassment is nothing new. We have been adapting to different situations, but authorities are doing the same as they have in the past, and I feel that a group has interfered in the administrative sector, she said. We have had the same problem [with Ma Ba Tha monks] in Bago city [in Bago region], [Yangons] Thaketa township, and now in Mingala Taungnyunt township, but authorities took no action against them, she said. What they did is like destroying the peaceful situation and stability, she said. Phyu Phyu Thin said the Ma Ba Tha monks and others who break the law should be sued and charged. In late April, a group of Buddhist ultranationalists pressured local officials to close two schools in Thaketa township attended by students aged five to 12, arguing that Muslims were using them to hold prayers in violation of an agreement signed by school leaders in October 2015. Tensions between Buddhists and Muslims have increased since last October when people said to be Rohingya militants carried out deadly attacks on border police posts in the northern part of Rakhine state, prompting a crackdown by security forces. The United Nations estimated that 1,000 people were killed and about 90,000 Rohingya were displaced, most of whom fled to neighboring Bangladesh where they are living in refugee camps. The U.N. has said that atrocities reported by the escapees could amount to crimes against humanity. Reported by Kyaw Zaw Win, Aung Theinkha, Htet Arkar, Kyaw Min Tun and Tin Aung Khine for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written by Roseanne Gerin. Correction: A previous version of the article erroneously identified Thusietta as a monk from Ma Ba Thas Yangon chapter. He is from the Patriotic Young Monks Union. English Danish On 10 May, a fire erupted at a section of Hartmann's factory in Denmark. The fire has been extinguished, and fire fighters have initiated mopping-up procedures. The fire has not entailed serious personal injuries. Hartmann assesses the extent of the damages on the section of the factory in Denmark and will inform about potential operational and financial consequences as soon as possible. Hartmann has taken out an all risk insurance policy covering fire damage and consequential loss, cf. the section on risk in the annual report 2016. For further information, please contact: Ulrik Kolding Hartvig CEO Tel.: (+45) 45 97 00 57 Authorities in northwestern Chinas Gansu province have imposed restrictions on the family of a Tibetan self-immolation protester, preventing them from holding prayer services and blocking visits by relatives and friends, a source in the region says. The move has upset and distressed the parents of Chagdor Kyab, a 16-year-old student who set himself ablaze on May 2 in Gansus Bora township in a challenge to Beijings rule in Tibetan areas, a resident of the area told RFAs Tibetan Service. Chinese police have moved away from the site of the self-immolation itself, making it seem that things have returned to normal, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But security personnel and other officials have now gone to Chagdor Kyabs family home, causing them much inconvenience. Authorities are not allowing the family to invite monks to perform religious rituals for Chagdor Kyab, and they are also preventing friends and other people from the village from visiting the family [to offer their condolences], he said. Kyabs May 2 protest near Bora monastery in Gansus Gannan (in Chinese, Kanlho) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture brought to 149 the total number of self-immolations by Tibetans living in Tibetan areas of China since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009. As he burned, Kyab called out for Tibetan freedom and the return to Tibet of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, sources told RFA in earlier reports. He then tried to run toward Chinese government offices in Bora township but collapsed in the street, sources said. Chinese authorities immediately imposed a strict clampdown on communications in the area, making it difficult to obtain further information. It is not yet clear whether Kyab has died of his injuries, and his whereabouts have not been verified. Travel, phone use restricted Restrictions imposed in the wake of two earlier self-immolations in neighboring Sichuan have meanwhile been tightened, with residents outside Kardze (Ganzi) county required to obtain special permits for travel to the Kardze county seat, a Tibetan source says. Once the Tibetans have their documents ready, they again have to seek permission from the authorities before they can proceed, a Tibetan living in exile told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity and citing contacts in the region. Clampdowns are also in place on Tibetans use of mobile phones and social media, and political reeducation courses are now mandated in the countys monasteries, schools, villages, and towns, RFAs source said. Tibetans are being warned that they can be sentenced to 15 years in jail if they are caught sharing photos or video of self-immolations with outside sources. And this has deterred many Tibetans from sharing stories outside their areas, he said. Reported by Kunsang Tenzin and Dawa Dolma for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney. UPDATED at 10:11 A.M. on 2017-07-28 A coalition of human rights groups and organizations representing minority peoples around the world released a letter this week condemning the expulsion of a Uyghur rights activist and NGO member from a U.N. forum in April, calling the move an expression of domination by an unnamed U.N. member state. Dolkun Isa, a founder of the exile World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), was forced from U.N. premises in New York by security guards without explanation on April 26. Two days later, he was denied a new badge to be able to re-enter the forum, to which he had duly registered, said the May 8 letter signed by Human Rights and China, China Change, Human Rights Watch, the International Campaign for Tibet, and other organizations. It is very worrying to witness once again the domination exercised by states within the UN system, said UNPO General Secretary Marino Busdachin in an apparent reference to China, which routinely objects to political activities by ethnic Uyghurs living in exile from their traditional homeland in Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Especially troubling was Isas removal from an event organized by the United Nations Permanent Form on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), a crucial UN forum that gives space to indigenous peoples to voice their concerns and recommendations, Busdachin said. Demand for explanation Calling on the UNPFII Secretariat to provide a full account of the causes of this incident, those who signed the letter also demanded that the rights of indigenous peoples representatives to express themselves in this arena be unconditionally respected in the future. Speaking to RFAs Uyghur Service on May 9, Isa said that the question of his expulsion from the forum has now been raised with U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Hussain Zaidi, and that he has been told the matter is being discussed at the highest level in Geneva and New York. I am waiting for an answer from the OHCHR at the moment, Isa said. I am obviously waiting for a positive response from them, Isa added. I dont believe that my right to participate and speak at U.N. forums should be dictated by China, because this will negatively impact the U.N.s image in the world. Speaking to RFA from OHCHR offices in Geneva, spokesperson Rolando Gomez declined to comment on the case in detail, saying he was unfamiliar with the circumstances surrounding it. NGOs certainly can participate in U.N. forums, though, he said. We encourage NGOs to participate. Reported and translated by Alim Seytoff for RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified a forum Dolkun Isa was denied reentry to as being hosted by the UNPO. The Central Committee of Vietnams ruling Communist Party further demoted prominent party official Dinh La Thang on Wednesday, removing him as party chief of the countrys commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City for misconduct while he served as the head of state-run oil giant PetroVietnam. On May 7, the 12th Party Central Committee decided to remove Thang, 56, from the powerful 19-member Politburo and issue him an official warning based on more than 90 percent of votes, for committing very serious mistakes and violations while leading PetroVietnam between 2009 and 2011. On Monday, the party announced on its website that it had removed Thang as party chief of Ho Chi Minh City and reassigned him as vice head of the central party's economic committee. Nguyen Thien Nhanhead of Vietnam's Fatherland Front and a politburo memberwill take Thangs place, it said. The official Tuoi Tre news quoted Thang calling the partys decision to remove him from the politburo reasonable and apologizing to the people and the party for his mistakes at PetroVietnam. The rare decision to discipline a Politburo member followed an April recommendation by the partys Inspection Committee that the Central Committee consider disciplinary measures against Thang for greenlighting unregulated investments that caused the company losses of nearly U.S. $40 million. The committee also blamed Thang for failing to appropriately oversee four major projects while head of the company, which led to their suspension and financial losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Thang was appointed transport minister in 2011, before being elected to the Politburo and appointed secretary of the Communist Party Organization of the countrys commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, early last year. It is highly unusual for a member of Vietnams powerful Politburo to face sanctions. Previous disciplinary actions against Politburo members have included warnings and the stripping of party membership. Thang remains part of the 180-member Central Committee of the Communist Party. Blogger and freelance journalist Truong Duy Nhat told RFAs Vietnamese Service that reassigning Thang to the partys Economic Committee was a mistake because of his previous mismanagement of funds. Dinh La Thang was dismissed from the Politburo because of his financial mistakes and violations at PetroVietnam, but now he has been appointed deputy chief of the party's Economic Committeehow can he manage this organization? Nhat wondered. It doesnt make sense to appoint a person who made finance-related mistakes to an economic body! Nguyen Quang A, an economist and dissident, noted that it is common practice for the Communist Party to demote disgraced individuals to roles that are largely research-oriented. If he is smart and experienced in economics, then he might be able to contribute a lot to his new position, he said. The political system has ruined many kind and talented people. If it hadnt been Dinh La Thang, another person would have made the same mistakes, because they are forced to follow Communist Party policy. New party secretary Meanwhile, Nguyen Thien Nhan, 63, will replace Thang as party chief of Ho Chi Minh City, marking a second stint for the Harvard-trained technocrat in the countrys economic hub. Nhan served as deputy mayor of Ho Chi Minh City from 1999 until he was appointed education minister and sent to Vietnams capital Hanoi in 2006. He was later elected to the Politburo and made president of the Fatherland Front, a pro-government organization tasked with building national unity. The official Vietnam News Agency quoted Nhan during his inauguration speech Wednesday as saying that he had learnt much during his 11 years of work in Hanoi, one of which is the Partys discipline. An official has to judge himself based on the pleasure of the people he serves, Nhan said, adding that he was thankful for the contributions Thang had made to Ho Chi Minh City while party chief, and pledging to do his best to further develop Vietnams largest city in his new role. Reactions to Nhans appointment were mixed, with some observers expressing hope he can work on behalf of the citys interests and others suggesting that internal politics would prevent him from being an effective leader. Huy, a resident of Ho Chi Minh City, told RFA that with his former experience in the city, Nhan was likely to do well as party chief there. Nhan was deputy mayor of Ho Chi Minh City for a long time and he was good at what he did, Huy said. Lawyer Tran Quoc Thuan called the city dynamic and said that its leaders can benefit from that strength. A person with good awareness will find it easy to promote this characteristic [of the city], he said. Most leaders have not been that good, but Nguyen Thien Nhan has a lot of experience working for the central government, so I hope he will be able to promote the strengths of Saigon. Journalist Pham Chi Dung said that as deputy mayor of Ho Chi Minh City he was unable to work effectively because he did not have a good relationship with then-party chief Le Thanh Hai. Nhan lobbied for a move to the central government and was appointed education minister, but Dung said that during his tenure the education sector improved little. If Nhan is not about to improve his shortcomings in management and not brave enough to deal with the negatives, then hell end up doing things [similar to when he was] at the Ministry of Education, which was ineffective. Trung, another resident of Ho Chi Minh City, told RFA that it mattered little who is running the show in the commercial capital. One person cant change the whole system, so I dont care anymore about who is going to be in charge, he said. The only reason to discuss this is if the whole system is changed. Until then, there is nothing that a new person can do. Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Emily Peyman. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. Chinese human rights lawyer Xie Yang may have been officially released "on bail" after pleading guilty to subversion charges at a court in Hunan, but his wife says that, far from regaining his liberty, he is now under house arrest in a secret location. Chen Guiqiu, who narrowly escaped repatriation with the couple's two daughters after seeking asylum in Bangkok, told RFA's Mandarin Service that the best she can do is raise their children in a free country: RFA: We heard that Xie Yang has been released. Have you been in touch with him? Chen Guiqiu: He may have been let out of jail, but he hasn't really regained his liberty. I had a very brief phone conversation with him, but he said it was very inconvenient to talk then, and I haven't heard from him since. He isn't genuinely free. I told him that we're all fine here in the U.S. He was using someone else's cell phone that a state security police officer had taken from someone. He is with his parents right now. I don't know where the state security police have taken him. He's been 'disappeared,' just like a lot of the other July 2015 people. He's not free. They are pretending to set him free. It's a joke; I want to make that very clear. He must be under unimaginable pressure. RFA: So what do you think his status is right now? Chen Guiqiu: It's very common for people detained in the crackdown on lawyers to wind up detained in a secret location, accompanied by state security police at all times. RFA: Where do you think they might be holding him? Chen Guiqiu: I don't know. All I know is that they get transferred from a detention center, where you know where they are, to an unknown location. Nobody knows where he is. RFA: What are your plans now that you are here in the U.S.? Chen Guiqiu: To live a good life. To find a job, and raise my kids, and enjoy my freedom. I really appreciate the freedom you have here. RFA: How about Xie Yang? Chen Guiqiu: I hope that he will be unconditionally released, with no controls or restrictions from anyone. A lot of the people involved in the crackdown are still under house arrest. This is extremely disappointing. RFA: What is your view of your husband's guilty plea? Chen Guiqiu: Neither of his defense lawyers, Chen Jiangang and Liu Zhengqing, have been allowed to meet with Xie Yang since they visited him in . I don't know what took place between the end of February and . Nobody knows what sort of duress or coercion he was under. In , Xie Yang issued a declaration saying that, should he ever 'confess,' then it would only be because he was under some kind of duress. So I think that between the end of February and , he was put under some kind of intolerable pressure, the details of which we don't yet know. I think that's the only way he would have come to such a decision. RFA: What made you decide to flee China? Chen Guiqiu: I didn't flee. I was prevented from leaving the country. [The authorities] were the ones who acted illegally. Without any paperwork whatsoever, they designated me and my eldest daughter as 'persons likely to harm national security.' I am not aware of any way in which I have ever harmed national security. Then, when I tried to protect my rights using legal channels, they refused to accept the case. They broke the law first. RFA: So you left to ensure your family's safety? How did you get from China to Thailand? Chen Guiqiu: I'm sorry, I can't really tell you about that. RFA: How are your two daughters now? Chen Guiqiu: They're both doing fine. One is 15, the other is four. RFA: How did the Chinese police manage to track you down in Thailand? Chen Guiqiu: I have no idea. I still have no idea. I switched off my cell phones, and I never went online. I really don't know what happened there. RFA: What happened after they found you? Chen Guiqiu: We were put in immigration detention, and then there was a hearing. It was the immigration police who arrested us, and put us in their detention center. RFA: So how did the U.S. embassy officials find you? Chen Guiqiu: I don't know. I really had no idea what was going on in the outside world. I had had no internet access, nor any phone contact with anyone since arriving in Thailand, so I have no idea how they managed to come to my assistance. I may have been the whole point of it all, but I really don't know the details. RFA: One detail that has been reported is that when you were taken by U.S. officials to the airport in Bangkok, there was an altercation between U.S., Thai and Chinese officials who wanted to take you back to China. Is that correct? Chen Guiqiu: This report didn't come from an interview with me, but through other channels, so I still can't answer that, I'm afraid. I'm sorry. RFA: The U.S. government put quite a lot of effort into rescuing you. What is your view of that? Chen Guiqiu: I am very grateful to the Trump administration and his team. I would like to thank all of their staff and members of Congress, including Congressman Chris Smith. It was partly that I am the wife of a human rights lawyer, because they aim to protect human rights, but also because they are very keen to protect the human rights of their own citizens. My youngest daughter is a U.S. citizen. RFA: So do you think that is the reason you were rescued by the U.S. government? Chen Guiqiu: It definitely had something to do with it. My daughter was born in the U.S. RFA: When was that? Chen Guiqiu: I spent a year in the United States, and that was the year she was born. Reported by Wang Yun for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Ng Yik-tung and Sing Man for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. VANCOUVER, B.C., May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:SYH) (OTCQB:SYHBF) (Frankfurt:SC1P) (the Company) is pleased to announce the Companys option partner Azincourt Uranium (TSX-V: AAZ) (Azincourt) has announced details for an upcoming exploration program at the East Preston Uranium Project. Their exploration program is slated to commence this summer / early fall with the purpose of locating new drill targets that were previously untested and refining other additional targets within the Swoosh corridor. Preston Uranium Project Claims Map: http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/maps/SYH_Patterson_Lake_Area_Promo_20161212_blue_hi_res.pdf Skyharbour and Clean Commodities recently entered into Option Agreement (the Agreement) with Azincourt which provides Azincourt an earn-in option to acquire a 70% working interest in the East Preston Property (see news release dated March 28th, 2017). Under the Agreement, Azincourt has issued to Skyharbour and Clean Commodities each 2,250,000 common shares and will contribute cash and exploration expenditure consideration totaling up to CAD $3,500,000 in exchange for up to 70% of the applicable property area over three years. Of the $3,500,000 in project consideration, $1,000,000 will be in cash payments to Skyharbour and Clean Commodities. The Preston Uranium Project is a strategic, district-scale property with robust exploration upside potential throughout and is located near recent high-grade discoveries in the Patterson Lake area including NexGen Energys Arrow deposit, Fission Uraniums Triple R deposit, and the Spitfire discovery. Skyharbours President and CEO, Jordan Trimble commented: Skyharbour continues to execute on its business model by adding value to its project base in the Athabasca Basin through focused mineral exploration at its flagship Moore Uranium Project, with final winter drill results expected shortly, as well as utilizing the prospect generator model to advance its other projects with strategic partners. The option agreement with Azincourt complements the other recent option agreement we signed with industry-leader AREVA Resources Canada and together the two option agreements combine for $9,800,000 in total exploration expenditures over six years, as well as $1,700,000 in total cash payments and the issuance of 4,500,000 shares of Azincourt split between Skyharbour and Clean Commodities in return for 70% interests in the respective property areas. We are excited to have Azincourt commencing exploration programs at East Preston shortly which will contribute to ample news flow for Skyharbour over the next year including Azincourt and AREVAs exploration programs at Preston as well as the Companys upcoming summer drill program at the Moore Uranium Project. Highlights: Azincourt may earn a 70% interest in East Preston totaling 25,329 hectares, which represents the eastern region of the larger 107,278 hectare Preston Project through the upfront issuance of 4,500,000 shares as well as $3,500,000 of total project consideration over three years, including up to $2,500,000 of exploration work programs and $1,000,000 of cash payments to Skyhabour and Clean Commodities to be split equally. If carried to completion, a tripartite joint venture would be formed being 70% as to Azincourt and 30% as equally divided between Skyharbour and Clean Commodities. Azincourts initial exploration program is budgeted at $250,000 and is being planned for completion by the fall of 2017 to allow for future winter drill target testing. The Preston Uranium Project is one of the largest tenure positions in the Patterson Lake region and currently consists of 107,278 hectares strategically located near NexGen Energy Ltd.s high-grade Arrow deposit hosted on its Rook-1 property and Fission Uranium Corp.s Triple R deposit located within their PLS Project area. In addition to the Azincourt Agreement on the Preston East Property, Skyhabour recently announced that it signed an option agreement with AREVA Resources Canada whereby AREVA may earn up to a 70% interest in a separate 49,635 hectare portion of the Preston Project. Upcoming East Preston Work Program Details: The East Preston property had extensive regional exploration work completed in 2013 and 2014 including airborne electromagnetic (VTEM), magnetic and radiometric surveys. Three prospective conductive, low magnetic signature corridors have been discovered on the property area. The three distinct corridors have a total strike length of over 25 km, each with multiple EM conductor trends identified. Ground prospecting and sampling work completed to date has identified outcrop, soil, biogeochemical and radon anomalies, which are key pathfinder elements for potential uranium deposit discoveries. Only one of the corridors has been drill tested to date, intersecting structurally disrupted graphitic metasedimentary rocks at the Swoosh S6 target using a combination of Horizontal Loop EM (HLEM) and gravity as primary targeting tools. Following positive technical discussions between Azincourt and Skyharbours geological teams, Azincourt is planning to complete a summer / fall exploration program aimed at generating new drill targets within the previously untested corridors and refining additional targets along the Swoosh corridor. The proposed work to be completed will include re-logging and sampling of the seven diamond drill holes (1,571 m) drilled in 2014, with additional ground electromagnetic survey work (HLEM) and ground gravity planned along the airborne conductive trends. Additional ground geochemical sampling work is also being considered, but will be used to enhance any target areas identified from the geophysical surveys. The exploration work program planned is budgeted at $250,000 and is being planned for completion by the fall of 2017 to allow for future winter drill target testing. Overview of East Preston: The significant potential of the Western Athabasca Basin has been highlighted by recent discoveries in the area by NexGen Energy Ltd. (Arrow), Fission Uranium Corp. (Triple R) and a joint-venture consisting of Cameco Corporation, AREVA Resources Canada Inc. and Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. (Spitfire). More than $4.7-million in expenditures on the entire Preston Uranium Project have been incurred to date, including over $2 million at East Preston. This exploration has consisted of ground gravity, airborne and ground electromagnetics, radon, soil, silt, biogeochem, lake sediment, and geological mapping surveys, as well as two exploratory drill programs. Several high-priority drill target areas associated with multiple prospective exploration corridors have been successfully delineated through this methodical, multiphased exploration initiative, which has culminated in an extensive, proprietary geological database for the project area. Preston Uranium Property Map and Regional Exploration Corridors: http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/SYH_Regional_Corridors.jpg Furthermore, on March 9th, 2017, Skyharbour announced an option agreement with AREVA Resources Canada which provides AREVA an earn-in option to acquire up to a 70% working interest in a 49,635-hectare portion of the total 121,148 hectares Preston Uranium Project (see News Release dated March 9th, 2017). Under the agreement, AREVA can contribute cash and exploration program consideration totaling up to CAD $8,000,000 in exchange for up to 70% of the applicable project area over six years. About Skyharbour Resources Ltd.: Skyharbour holds an extensive portfolio of uranium and thorium exploration projects in Canada's Athabasca Basin and is well positioned to benefit from improving uranium market fundamentals with five drill-ready projects. In July 2016, Skyharbour acquired an option from Denison Mines to acquire 100% of the Moore Uranium Project which is located 20 kilometres east of Denisons Wheeler River project and 39 kilometres south of Camecos McArthur River mine. Moore is an advanced stage uranium exploration property with a high grade uranium zone known as the Maverick Zone returning drill results of up to 6.0% U3O8 over 5.9 metres including 20.8% U3O8 over 1.5 metres at a vertical depth of 265 metres. Skyharbour and its partner Clean Commodities recently signed option agreements with AREVA Resources Canada and Azincourt Uranium whereby AREVA and Azincourt can earn in 70% on the Preston Project through a combined $9,800,000 in total exploration expenditures, as well as $1,700,000 in total cash payments and 4,500,000 Azincourt shares. Preston is a large, geologically prospective property proximal to Fission Uraniums Triple R deposit as well as NexGen Energys Arrow deposit. The Company also owns a 100% interest in the Falcon Point Uranium Project on the eastern perimeter of the Basin which contains an NI 43-101 inferred resource totaling 7.0 million pounds of U3O8 at 0.03% and 5.3 million pounds of ThO2 at 0.023%. The project also hosts a high grade surface showing with up to 68% U3O8 in grab samples from a massive pitchblende vein, the source of which has yet to be discovered. The Companys 100% owned Mann Lake Uranium project on the east side of the Basin is strategically located adjacent to the Mann Lake Joint Venture operated by Cameco, where high-grade uranium mineralization was recently discovered. Skyharbours goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions. Skyharbours Uranium Project Map in the Athabasca Basin: http://skyharbourltd.com/_resources/SYH_Landpackage_2014.jpg To find out more about Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:SYH) visit the Companys website at www.skyharbourltd.com. SKYHARBOUR RESOURCES LTD. Jordan Trimble Jordan Trimble President and CEO For further information contact myself or: Nick Findler Corporate Communications Skyharbour Resources Ltd. Telephone: 604-687-3376 Toll Free: 800-567-8181 Facsimile: 604-687-3119 Email: info@skyharbourltd.com NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THIS NEWS RELEASE. This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com for further information. Dominion's shareholders approved a company name change Wednesday but rejected proposals related to lobbying disclosures, nominating a board member with environmental expertise, preparing a report on methane emissions and publishing a risk assessment of the company's investment in fossil-fuel power generation, among other actions at the yearly shareholder meeting. Effective Wednesday, the company's official name changed from Dominion Resources to Dominion Energy. The logo will go from what Thomas F. Farrell II, the company's chairman, president and CEO, called the "E.T. phoning home" sparking fingertip and hand to a newer, simpler blue-and-white "D." "In short, we produce energy electricity and we transport energy electricity and natural gas," said Farrell, whose nearly $13.3 million in salary, stock awards and other compensation for 2016 was also endorsed by shareholders in a nonbinding, advisory vote. Dominion's operating earnings were $2.3 billion in 2016. The name change will also filter down to the company's other business units. For example, Dominion Virginia Power, the state-regulated utility that has about 2.3 million customers in Virginia, will be called Dominion Energy Virginia. Company officials and shareholders sipped coffee and chatted before the meeting at the Greater Richmond Convention Center behind large black pipe and drape sets that blocked the glass windows at street level as well as those on either side of the elevated walkway over East Marshall Street that attendees had to transverse from the parking garage to get into the gathering. "What are they trying to prevent their shareholders from seeing?" said Vanessa Bolin, an environmental activist from Oklahoma who is living in Richmond and spent time in North Dakota protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Bolin was one of a handful of protesters, a common fixture at Dominion shareholder meetings over the past several years, standing outside the convention center Wednesday morning. They were joined by dozens more for a rally at Nina F. Abady Festival Park after the meeting ended. "Hopefully they address the issues and let the shareholders have a real voice," Bolin said. In addition to the unsuccessful proposals, more than a dozen shareholders questioned Farrell on big-ticket projects. They ranged from the company's potential pricey development of a third nuclear reactor at its Lake Anna power station and its approximately $4 billion natural gas liquefaction and export facility at Cove Point in Maryland to its controversial 600-mile, $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will bring shale gas from West Virginia through the heart of Virginia to North Carolina. The pipeline is awaiting federal approval. Irene Leech, an associate professor at Virginia Tech, said she never dreamed her Dominion stock holdings would come into conflict with her Angus beef operation on 1,000 acres of Buckingham County land that has been in her family for generations and is proposed to be bisected by the pipeline. "It looks like we're being sacrificed," she said, adding that she worried about laying down for the night within the "blast zone" in the event of a catastrophe. Farrell said the federal permitting process for the pipeline, urgently needed, he added, to expand natural gas capacity in North Carolina and Virginia, is the "most thorough, exhaustive environmental review ever done for a project of this scope." "It's going to be safe," Farrell said. In a news release issued Wednesday morning to blunt environmental criticism, Dominion said it has cut carbon intensity by 43 percent since 2000. Total carbon emissions are also 43 percent lower than 2005, the company said. Sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen 94 percent, nitrogen oxides have dropped 78 percent and mercury is down 95 percent since 2000. Dominion has also saved about 4.4 billion cubic feet of methane since 2010, in part by aggressively replacing aging pipes, the company said. "Rates are low, the air is cleaner, the grid greener and service better than ever before," company spokesman David Botkins said in a statement. "You would think we could find some common ground on these issues. I'm sure the folks marching today didn't charge their iPhones with a candle." But environmental groups have pointed out that the long-term plan the company filed with the state last week would actually increase carbon emissions. "I tried to get him to talk about climate change," said Seth G. Heald, chairman of the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club and a company stockholder who questioned Farrell. "You have to reduce carbon emissions total and you have to do it fast. When you're in an industry like Dominion's, not talking about it is not a responsible option." Farrell also hailed Dominion's increasing investment in solar power in Virginia and North Carolina, where the company plans to have more than 700 megawatts of Dominion-owned solar installations operating by the end of 2018 in addition to 500 megawatts under contract from other developers. But shareholders such as Ruth McElroy Amundsen an environmentalist from Norfolk, said the state and Dominion are still lagging behind the curve on solar development. Virginia was ranked 17th in 2016 for solar installations, per the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group. North Carolina, ranked fifth in 2016, installed 923 megawatts of generations in that year alone. Martins Food Markets officials may be getting close to announcing what will happen to the last of its area stores not being sold to Publix Super Markets. Managers of area Martins stores met Wednesday morning at the chains store at 7045 Forest Hill Ave., but questions about the meeting were referred to the companys spokeswoman based in Carlisle, Pa., who did not return calls or emails for comment. The companys policy has been not to comment to the media until all of its employees have been told of the companys plans. Martins officials have already said that one of the nine Richmond-area stores that Publix is not buying the store at 10001 Hull Street Road in the Oxbridge Square Shopping Center in Chesterfield County will close June 30 when its lease expires. The eight remaining stores are at 253 N. Washington Highway in Ashland; 12601 Jefferson Davis Highway; 6401 Centralia Road; 200 Charter Colony Parkway; 7045 Forest Hill Ave.; 5700 Brook Road; 11361 Midlothian Turnpike; and 5201 Chippenham Crossing Center. Martins also operates a store in Williamsburg, the fate of which also remains in limbo. Martins announced the sale of 10 stores to Publix last July . At the time, a Martins spokesman said the company hoped to find buyers for the other area stores but did not expect to operate the remaining locations beyond six to 12 months. Martins also has informed the Virginia Board of Pharmacy when it plans to close pharmacies at three stores. The pharmacies at the Chippenham Crossing Center and the Williamsburg stores are scheduled to close at the end of the business day on May 23. The pharmacy at the store at 11361 Midlothian Turnpike is scheduled to close May 31. R. Scott Shaheen, a longtime leader of Long & Foster Real Estate in the Richmond area, has left the Chantilly-based company to start a real estate firm with three other former Long & Foster managers. He, along with Scott Ruth, John Martin and Mahood Fonville, retired Monday from Long & Foster. They hope to have Shaheen, Ruth, Martin & Fonville Real Estate up and running by May 15, if not sooner. They are waiting for their operating license from the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. I am very excited about our next chapter, Shaheen said Wednesday. We are forming a hometown firm. The four co-equal broker/owners plan to sell residential real estate from Williamsburg to Wintergreen, while focusing mainly in the Richmond area. Their nearly 3,000-square-foot office is at 420 N. Ridge Road in Henrico County. We have all worked together through Long & Foster but never at the same office before, Fonville said. We each bring something different to the table. The company is bigger than one person, Fonville said. Its the four of us coming together to do something we hope will be very special. They hope to bring in real estate agents with high levels of ethics and commitment to the profession, Ruth said, adding that they have no specific number in mind. Weve always had a dream of owning our own real estate company, Shaheen said. We appreciate all the years with Long & Foster and we have learned a lot, but we want to grow a firm that is local. Shaheen, 51, the former regional vice president for Long & Foster, was promoted in 2012 to senior vice president assuming responsibility for Hampton Roads in addition to the Richmond area and Southwest Virginia. He oversaw 48 offices and 1,400 agents from the companys regional headquarters in Henrico. He earned his brokers license in 1994 and moved to Bowers Nelms & Fonville a year before that company became part of Long & Foster in 1998. The newly formed Shaheen, Ruth, Martin & Fonville takes its cue from the Bowers Nelms & Fonville name, he said. Ruth, 44, former manager of Long & Foster Tuckahoe office, has 15 years experience in the business. Martin, 43, former managing broker of the office on the Fan Districts Strawberry Street, has 16 years under his belt. And Fonville, 47, former manager of the Short Pump office, has 24 years. GAITHERSBURG, Md., May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today held a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by Dr. Rick Bright, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi, Emergents president and chief executive officer, to mark the formal opening of the companys newly expanded Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) at its Bayview Campus in Baltimore. The facility is one of three centers designated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide advanced development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures to support the U.S. governments national security and public health emergency needs. With the expansion of our Bayview campus, Emergent is pleased to directly support BARDAs vision of enhancing the nations capability to respond quickly to both known and emerging public health threats, said Abdun-Nabi. This milestone strengthens our manufacturing infrastructure, which is one of our core competencies, and symbolizes Emergents commitment to the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland, where we are proud to meaningfully contribute to economic activity and job growth. The Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing were designed as public-private partnerships to provide greater speed, flexibility, and domestic capacity to produce medical countermeasures to address public health emergencies, said Bright. The work that we do in BARDA and that we do together with industry partners at our CIADMs is critical to protecting Americans health in emergencies and is fundamental to our nations security. Emergent has doubled the Bayview facilitys footprint to 112,000 square feet with investments to the original 56,000-square-foot facility purchased by the company in 2009. The facility, comprised of laboratory, manufacturing and office space, offers flexible manufacturing of drug substance from microbial, cell culture or viral production platforms and is equipped with disposable manufacturing technology to enable Emergent to meet the governments domestic preparedness priorities on a cost-effective, reliable and sustainable basis. The new suite within the expanded facility is expected to come online with cGMP production capabilities in late 2018. Since its inception, the Emergent CIADM has been awarded four task orders by BARDA to develop Ebola and Marburg therapeutics and a Zika vaccine. Emergent also successfully manufactured some of its product candidates at the CIADM and an Ebola vaccine candidate as part of a third-party collaboration. Emergent employs approximately 1,200 employees worldwide. More than 500 employees are located across four sites in Maryland, including its Bayview Campus, Camden manufacturing facility, and corporate headquarters and product development site in Gaithersburg. BARDA contract HHSO100201200004I, awarded to Emergent in June 2012 to establish a CIADM, consists of an eight-year base period of performance valued at approximately $220 million (cost-shared between the government and Emergent) and up to 17 additional one-year option periods. BARDA is a division within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Quotes from Government Officials: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) Marylands biopharmaceutical industry continues to grow and create good-paying jobs. Emergent's new Bayview facility is an exciting addition to their statewide footprint, and people across the nation could benefit from their vaccines and therapeutic treatments like those for anthrax and Zika. A successful biopharmaceutical industry requires a coordinated strategy to both expand job opportunities and ensure our next generation of workers has the skills needed to fill these jobs. I will continue to work on the federal level to help the industry grow in Maryland so the lifesaving innovations made in this sector also provide an economic boost to our state. Rep. John Sarbanes (D-3rd District) Maryland is home to a vibrant biotechnology industry that supports thousands of good-paying jobs. The expansion of Emergent BioSolutions Bayview facility in Baltimore will help ensure that Maryland remains a leader in biotechnology innovation and will help boost our states economy for many years to come. Rep. Andy Harris (R-1st District) I congratulate Emergent BioSolutions today on the expansion of their Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing that fulfils such a critically important component of Americas countermeasure development and biosecurity enterprise. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-2nd District) Emergent BioSolutions expansion was a public-private investment in the welfare of all Americans through the development of vaccines and treatments for diseases from the flu to Ebola. For us Baltimoreans, its also exciting because it means more high-quality manufacturing jobs in the cutting-edge biosciences sector. I congratulate Emergent and thank them for their commitment to Maryland and our great city. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan Emergent BioSolutions plays a critical role in addressing many of our nations emerging public health threats and we are proud they are continuing to do that important work right here in Maryland. Doubling the size of its Bayview facility and adding new jobs to meet its increased capabilities is further confirmation that Maryland offers an outstanding environment for life sciences companies to thrive. Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh Its exciting to witness the continued growth of Emergent BioSolutions in Maryland and Baltimore City. I am encouraged by so many businesses investing and expanding in Baltimore. Not only does Emergent make meaningful products, which improve public health, the company is bringing and keeping manufacturing jobs in the city jobs that provide family-sustaining wages. Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. Jack Young I am extremely pleased to see Emergent expanding its manufacturing capabilities in Maryland. They are at the forefront of innovation, and represent everything we want in a Baltimore area company. Emergent also continues to emphasize local hiring, which I have fought hard to promote so we can increase job opportunities and put our city to work. I commend Emergent for its commitment to our city schools where they teach students about manufacturing and expose them to potential career paths in science. I am confident Emergent will continue to be an asset to Baltimore. About Emergent BioSolutions Emergent BioSolutions Inc. is a global life sciences company seeking to protect and enhance life by focusing on providing specialty products for civilian and military populations that address accidental, intentional, and naturally emerging public health threats. Through our work, we envision protecting and enhancing 50 million lives with our products by 2025. Additional information about the company may be found at emergentbiosolutions.com. Follow us @emergentbiosolu. A psychiatrist at a state mental hospital asked a judge on Tuesday to allow him to administer anti-psychotic drugs to a Henrico County man accused of killing his parents last year. William Roy Brissette, 23, laughed to himself and lounged in his chair with his arms folded behind his head during a court appearance before Henrico Circuit Court Judge James Stephen Yoffy. Tuesdays hearing focused on what treatment Brissette should receive before standing trial on capital murder charges in the shooting deaths of his mother, Martha B. Brissette, 56, and his father, Henry J. Brissette III, 59, on March 27, 2016. Daniel Sheneman, assistant medical director at Central State Hospital in Petersburg, said Brissette suffers from schizophrenia, a psychosis that includes hallucinations and delusions. We highly suspect he is hearing voices, although he denies it, Sheneman said. Yoffy ordered last month that Brissette be taken to Central State after a mental evaluation by a University of Virginia psychiatrist found the defendant is not competent to stand trial. The judge ordered the facility to take steps to bring the defendants mental state to a level where the proceedings could continue. Prosecutors have filed a motion to order Brissette to take medication so that he can be tried on the charges against him. Shannon Taylor, the Henrico commonwealths attorney, said during Tuesdays hearing that she had grave concerns about the delay in getting Brissette to take medications. This defendant needs to be treated ASAP, Taylor said. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Brissette, citing the vileness of crimes where they said each victim was shot multiple times. Advocates for people with mental illnesses have urged prosecutors to reconsider that position, saying it would amount to cruel and unusual punishment for Brissette. Under cross-examination from Douglas Ramseur, Brissettes attorney, Sheneman said Brissette has complied with staff at the mental hospital and has not shown any signs of aggression or violence in the weeks since being brought to the facility. Sheneman also said under questioning that he does not think that Brissette is faking having schizophrenia. The Central State psychiatrist explained that medication is needed to treat Brissette, saying schizophrenia is caused by a medical imbalance that has to be treated with anti-psychotic drugs. No amount of talk therapy is going to fix that, Sheneman said of treating schizophrenia. Sheneman said he was fairly confident that Brissette would respond to treatment, adding that the longer a psychosis is untreated, the more enduring its symptoms become. Shenemans diagnosis of the particular mental illness affecting the defendant is somewhat different from that made in an April 3 mental evaluation that found the defendant was incompetent and could not stand trial. That April evaluation found Brissette suffers from schizoaffective disorder, Ramseur said. That illness combines elements of schizophrenia with other mental illnesses, such as depression. Yoffy set a May 26 hearing where hes expected to rule whether the defendant has to take medication. In April 2016, parents in western Henrico County received a letter laying out a timeline for a much-needed redistricting to stanch overcrowding at Hungary Creek Middle School. The changes, the letter from Henrico County Public Schools read, would go into effect in fall 2017. Months later, the School Board voted to delay redistricting to study specialty centers at middle schools. It later agreed to a two-phase redistricting, the bulk of which would take place in fall 2018. The slow-going process has stirred ire among a number of western Henrico parents, prompting some of them to form Equitable Advocates, a group whose immediate mission is to address classroom overcrowding and a redistricting process theyve assailed as unnecessarily complicated. The parents, who feel their children are being shortchanged as more local and federal resources are directed to poorer-performing schools in the eastern part of the county, also intend to tackle equity issues they say redistricting has brought to the fore. Its making sure that the basic needs across the county are the same regardless of where youre at, said Tonia Blanchet, a parent of two students at Glen Allen Elementary School and one at Hungary Creek Middle School. Group members plan to speak out during a redistricting public hearing tonight during which community members can comment on three proposed redistricting options. The meeting will take place at New Bridge Learning Center. Blanchet said her daughter, a sixth-grader at Hungary Creek, has 32 students in her advanced life science class. I cant fathom how 32 children are getting what they need in a class situation like that. Yes, they are all very intelligent little children but its very easy to get lost in a big group, she said, adding that her daughter has between 26 and 33 students in each of her classes. The school district publicly recognized overcrowding at Hungary Creek as an issue as early as January 2014 when a study from school system staff members showed the school was 25 students over its capacity. This academic year, the school is 106 students over its capacity, according to September enrollment figures. Overcrowding has forced students into four classroom trailers, with an additional four one which will be used for storage on the way, according to the school system. The school operates on a staggered bell schedule, where students are dismissed from one class to another in successive groups rather than all at once. Blanchet and other parents called on the school district to separate the issue of Hungary Creek overcrowding from the two other goals the school system has included into the redistricting process shifting students from L. Douglas Wilder Middle School to create space for a proposed Young Scholar Academy for gifted students and attempting to reduce the concentration of poverty in schools. Those goals, parents say, confuse the Hungary Creek redistricting by broadening what was initially pitched as a process that would have involved three middle schools into one that involves seven. Kristi Kinsella, who has three children at Glen Allen Elementary, said she feels as if addressing overcrowding at Hungary Creek was last on the list. Schools spokesman Andy Jenks defended the process and reaffirmed that alleviating overcrowding at Hungary Creek takes precedence over the other two goals. Weve been addressing the needs of Hungary Creek Middle School first, Jenks said in an email, adding that the combined process was done to limit community disruptions. If the goals were made into separate projects, then the same families stood the chance of being impacted multiple times over the course of just a few years, he said. He also noted that, in March, the School Board voted to rezone 68 rising sixth-graders who would normally attend Hungary Creek in the fall to Holman Middle School. The move was intended to provide more immediate relief as the school district works on the full redistricting that will go into effect in fall 2018. Equitable Advocates, which held its first meeting Monday and had a 15-person turnout, is planning to press the School Board and school system staff for lower pupil-to-teacher ratios and classroom sizes in western Henrico schools. The district participates in a federal program that caps K-3 class sizes based on the level of poverty in schools. Title I money is also used for resources in elementary schools in the eastern and central parts of the county, and additional resources are directed to non-Title I schools that arent fully accredited by the state, Jenks said. All seven Henrico schools that were denied state accreditation this academic year were located in Varina and Fairfield, the countys easternmost magisterial districts. Ten of the 12 schools that were partially accredited by the state are in Fairfield and Varina, while the last two are in the Brookland magisterial district. Pete Kinsella, who is married to Kristi Kinsella and who has attended county School Board and Board of Supervisors meetings to decry the redistricting process, said that while students in struggling schools benefit from those additional resources, high-achieving, fully accredited schools in the western part of the county are enrolled with the maximum students allowed under state code 35 in grades four through six. French English Luxembourg May 10, 2017 - The Annual General Meeting and Extraordinary General Meeting of shareholders ("the General Meetings") of Aperam held today in Luxembourg approved all resolutions on the agenda by a large majority. 57,154,037 shares, or 74.23% of the Company's share capital, were present or represented at the General Meetings. The results of the votes will be posted in due course on www.aperam.com under "Investors & shareholders" - "Equity Investors" - "Shareholders' Meetings" - "10 May 2017 - General Meetings of Shareholders". In particular, the shareholders approved the consolidated financial statements for the financial year 2016; re-elected Ms. Laurence Mulliez and Mr. Joseph Greenwell as directors of Aperam for a term of three years each; authorized grants of share based incentives under the Group's Long Term Incentive Plan covering Performance Share Unit grants for the Leadership Team and other performance based grants below the level of the Leadership Team; decided to cancel shares and to consequently reduce the issued share capital following the cancellation of shares repurchased under the share buyback program, such cancellation to take place after the end of the program; decided to amend the articles of association to reflect recent changes in Luxembourg law; approved the compulsory dematerialisation of all the shares in the Company in accordance with the law of 6th April 2013 on dematerialised securities and delegation of powers to the Board of Directors to inter alia determine the effective date of such compulsory dematerialisation. About Aperam Aperam is a global player in stainless, electrical and specialty steel, with customers in over 40 countries. The business is organised in three primary operating segments: Stainless & Electrical Steel, Services & Solutions and Alloys & Specialties. Aperam has 2.5 million tonnes of flat Stainless and Electrical steel capacity in Brazil and Europe and is a leader in high value specialty products. Aperam has a highly integrated distribution, processing and services network and a unique capability to produce stainless and specialty from low cost biomass (charcoal). Its industrial network is concentrated in six production facilities located in Brazil, Belgium and France. In 2016, Aperam had sales of USD 4.3 billion and steel shipments of 1.92 million tonnes. For further information, please refer to our website at www.aperam.com Contacts Corporate Communications / Laurent Beauloye: +352 27 36 27 103 Investor Relations / Romain Grandsart: +352 27 36 27 36 U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Tuesday called President Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey shocking and urged the appointment of a special counsel to probe ties between Trumps campaign and Russia. It is deeply troubling that the president has fired the FBI director during an active counterintelligence investigation into improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, Warner, D-Va., said in a statement. Warner said the appointment of a special counsel is the only way the American people will be able to trust the results of any investigation by the Justice Department. Comey was scheduled to appear Thursday in a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Warner told CNN Tuesday night that he still wants Comey to appear. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the 2016 Democratic nominee for vice president, criticized the presidents move Tuesday in a series of tweets, saying in one that: Trump firing Comey shows how frightened the Admin is over Russia investigation. While most of the political world was transfixed by the drama unfolding in Washington, Republican gubernatorial front-runner Ed Gillespie sat at a kitchen table in Richmond on Wednesday talking about policies he acknowledged were not the most scintillating topic in the world. The former Republican National Committee chairman and polished political communicator had just released a detailed plan to streamline state government and make Virginia the best managed state in the country, a pitch laden with the 21st-century business lingo of innovation, automation and analytics. What Gillespie didnt want to talk about was President Donald Trumps decision to fire FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday night amid ongoing FBI scrutiny of possible ties between Trumps campaign and Russian operatives. The stunning development plunged D.C. into crisis mode and served as an early example of how Trumps unpredictable behavior could upend Republican efforts to win back the Executive Mansion this year. During a prescheduled conference call with reporters Wednesday morning, Gillespie said he hadnt had time to focus on the Comey news. Asked about Comey again around midday after his campaign event, Gillespie, a former political consultant, demurred a second time, saying he had been running and gunning all day on the governors race. No one asked about that, Gillespie said, referring to the dozen or so attendees at the roundtable event held in the home of former Richmond School Board member Dawson Boyer. They were asking about the opioid addiction crisis. They were asking about our schools. As Democrats began to pounce over the silence from one of the highest-profile Republicans running for election this year, the Gillespie campaign released a written statement that acknowledged the Comey controversy without taking sides. While it is any presidents prerogative to hire or fire an FBI director, there have been many questions and concerns raised about this decision and I look forward to learning more about its timing and rationale as theyre answered, Gillespie said. Its critical that the American people have faith in the bureau, its leadership and the administration. The statement didnt satisfy Gillespies potential Democratic opponents in the governors race, who took to Twitter to register their rapid-fire reproach. Huh? said former U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello. What a BS statement, said Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam. Northam and Perriello called for a special prosecutor to take up the investigation into the Trump campaigns possible foreign ties. Gillespies main rival for the GOP nomination for governor, Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, again accused Gillespie of being insufficiently loyal to Trump. As President Trump works to drain the swamp by firing FBI Director James Comey a move I fully support its no surprise, Stewart said in a statement. Its no surprise career lobbyist Ed Gillespie is flip-flopping on whether or not the swamp needs to be drained. In a phone interview, state Sen. Frank Wagner, a Virginia Beach Republican also in the running for the GOP gubernatorial nod, said Comey interjected himself into politics and said there was enough there for Trump to fire him. I think it was appropriate at this point, Wagner said of the firing. A former political consultant and Bush White House aide who came close to upsetting popular U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in 2014, Gillespie has sought to focus his campaign on business-friendly proposals anchored by a plan to cut the states personal income tax rate for the first time since 1972 and push localities to scrap business taxes. Shrinking government The highlight of Gillespies new good-government push is a plan to shrink the size of government without layoffs by allowing 1,000 jobs to disappear from the states roughly 105,000 full-time positions as a wave of state workers become eligible to retire, using half of the savings to boost pay for remaining workers. Gillespie also said hed create an Office of Innovation and Efficiency that would be tasked with finding $200 million in savings, lead a citizen experience redesign to improve customer service, appeal to millennials to attract and keep them in public jobs, host a good government hackathon to gather ideas from the private sector, and appoint a chief operating officer to oversee performance and report to the governor. I actually enjoy the management side, Gillespie said. The public, Gillespie said, will be able to check the progress of his efficiency initiatives through an online dashboard. Eds going to be his own watchdog, said House Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, adding that state employees are going to like this plan. The Richmond region is home to about 30 percent of the states classified workforce, according to recent data from the Department of Human Resource Management. Asked if he feels Trumps presidency could overshadow his state-focused policy suggestions, Gillespie said, at kitchen tables across Virginia, he hears more about traffic congestion, the job market for college graduates carrying expensive degrees, underemployment and gang violence. MCLEAN, VA., May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Washington Technology, in partnership with Microsoft, announces a defense contracting event focused on securing the DOD Cloud environment, Delivering on the Demands of Secure Cloud for DOD. The event will take place May 12 at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner in McLean, VA. Defense organizations are looking for business partners that can execute on cloud securitynot just on controls specified by the DFARS, but also on the requirements spelled out by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), the FedRAMP High baseline, and Department of Defense (DOD) Impact Level 4 and Impact Level 5. This event, produced by Washington Technology and Microsoft, will bring together defense contractors, systems integrators and members of the Defense Industrial Base to learn about technologies and strategies that can deliver secure commercial cloud solutions. Speakers include senior-level defense, federal government and industry experts. As DOD moves forward with its cloud plans, security will be the make-or-break point for any company trying to sell those services, said Washington Technology Editor in Chief Nick Wakeman. The best way to understand those security requirements is to hear it directly from those in charge. Thats why Im happy that we have such a strong line up of speakers from the Defense Department who can share what their security concerns and priorities are. "CSRA is excited to discuss next-generation IT with our strategic alliance partner Microsoft for this week's event hosted by Washington Technology," said CSRA President and CEO Larry Prior. "Cloud computing in the DOD environment requires solving technical, security, and policy challengesall at the same time. This event is a great step forward in helping unleash the innovation potential with cloud computing for our warfighters. Confirmed speakers include John Bergin, Business Technology Officer, DOD CIO, Department of Defense; John Connor, IT Security Specialist, Office of Information Systems Management, National Institute of Standards and Technology; Kevin Dulany, Chief, Risk Management Framework Division, and Deputy CIO for Cybersecurity (DCIO-CS), Department of Defense; Victor Gavin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Information Operations and Space, U.S. Navy; Thomas Sasala, Director, Army Architecture Integration Center, Office of the Chief Information Officer/G-6, U.S. Army; Larry Prior, President and Chief Executive Officer, CSRA; Susie Adams, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Federal; and Tom Keane, General Manager, Microsoft Azure. Looking forward to sharing more during my technology session about how Microsoft Azure Government continues to provide federal and DOD agencies and partners with the deepest set of services, capabilities, and compliance standards to help best achieve their mission scenarios. shared Tom Keane, General Manager Microsoft Azure. For more information on the May 12 event, visit: https://WashingtonTechnology.com/DODCloud or contact: cmcdonagh@1105media.com About 1105 Public Sector Media Group Washington Technology is an award-winning media brand in the 1105 Public Sector Media Group, a division of 1105 Media, Inc., that provides information, insight and analysis to the Government contracting community. Content platforms in the 1105 Public Sector Media Group include print, digital, online, events and a broad spectrum of marketing services. http://1105publicsector.com About Microsoft Azure Government Microsoft Azure Government delivers a cloud platform built upon the foundational principles of security, privacy and control, compliance, and transparency. Public Sector entities receive a physically isolated instance of Microsoft Azure that employs world-class security and compliance services critical to U.S. government for all systems and applications built on its architecture. These services include FedRAMP Moderate and FedRAMP High provisional authorizations; DOD compliance certifications (DOD Impact Level 4 and Impact Level 5 provisional authorizations); support for NIST Special Publication 800-171; support for Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS); and ITAR. Operated by screened U.S. persons, Azure Government supports multiple hybrid scenarios for building and deploying solutions on-premises or in the cloud. For more information, visit the Microsoft Azure Trust Center at https://azure.microsoft.com/trustcenter and Microsoft Azure Government at https://azure.com/gov. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8c86f356-5994-45b5-b080-f063e4b185b6 Last week, Puerto Rico filed for the equivalent of Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. The U.S. territory is facing an insurmountable $74 billion in debts and $49 billion in pension liabilities. The largest-ever U.S. municipality bankruptcy will undoubtedly spawn epic legal battles and create an uncertain future for island pensioners. Over the past 70 years, Puerto Rico has incurred debts far exceeding its gross national product. The islands economy is in tatters. Its unemployment rate exceeds 12 percent and in the past 10 years more than 20 percent of its jobs have disappeared. The islands population has contracted 10 percent as residents flee to the mainland. The Puerto Rican government has only made matters worse by raising taxes, expanding government bureaucracy, borrowing ever greater amounts of money to pay its bills and continuing to offer large pensions that are clearly unaffordable. President Trump has repeatedly said he does not support a bailout for the island. Last year, in an attempt to avert the inevitable crisis, Congress approved a bill called PROMESA (Spanish for promise) that created an oversight board to start a restructuring process called Title III similar to the Chapter 9 bankruptcy provision Detroit used in 2013. (Since Puerto Rico is a territory rather than a state, it does not qualify for Chapter 9.) Dallas, TX, May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Associa, the industrys largest community management company, announced today that Ashley Cantwell has joined the Dallas team as director of media and public relations. Ms. Cantwell will be focusing on the development and implementation of the companys media strategy and ongoing public relations efforts to support Associas global brand. During her career, Ms. Cantwell has worked extensively with clients to create and implement comprehensive communication plans to support financial and legal strategies. She has represented many high-profile clients, including Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), Guggenheim Partners, Relativity Media LLC, Hostess Brands and New Yorks St. Vincents Medical Center. Ms. Cantwell is joining the team from New York City based KCC Strategic Communications Services, where she served as a senior consultant specializing in strategic, corporate, restructuring and litigation support. Prior to joining KCC, Ms. Cantwell was a senior associate at Sitrick and Company, one of the top strategic communications firms in the U.S. Throughout our companys history, Associa has been an innovator and leader in community association management, said Senior Vice President of External Affairs Andrew Fortin. Ashley's vast experience and expertise will play a crucial role in helping Associa communicate our investments in our employees and client services. We are excited to see where her vision takes us." Ms. Cantwell graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in Journalism. Delivering unsurpassed association management services to communities since 1979, Associa leads the industry operating more than 180 branch offices across North America and employing 10,000 team members dedicated to serving nearly five million residents who are part of the Associa family. With unrivaled industry expertise, safeguarded finances and trailblazing innovation, Associa provides solutions designed to help communities achieve their vision. To learn more go to www.associaonline.com. Stay Connected: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/associa Twitter: https://twitter.com/associa LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/associa Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/associa/ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/associamarketing Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Associaonline/ Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5898c29b-1aac-4709-8b7d-12eb391941b9 May 11, 2017: Oslo, Norway, Petroleum Geo-Services ASA ('PGS' or the Company') held its Annual General Meeting today at PGS head office, Lilleakerveien 4C, 0216 Oslo, Norway. The Annual General Meeting resolved to approve all matters as proposed in the Calling Notice. The minutes from the Annual General Meeting can be downloaded from www.newsweb.no and www.pgs.com. This information is subject of the disclosure requirements acc. to 5-12 vphl (Norwegian Securities Trading Act) LYNCHBURG U.S. Capitol Police are investigating a threat of harm the second in two weeks made against Rep. Tom Garrett, the congressmans spokesman said Wednesday. Garrett told reporters Tuesday evening that ramped-up law enforcement at his Moneta town hall was influenced by recent incidents national and state authorities deemed credible and real. Dissent is American. Praise God. We need that. Thats what made us who we are. But when its Im going to kill you this way. Then Im going to kill your wife. This is what Im going to do to your daughters, Im not going to not share it, Garrett told reporters Tuesday evening. Capitol Police are working with social media and tech companies to track down the operator of a fake Facebook account who sent the most recent threat in a private message, Garrett Communications Director Andrew Griffin said in a text message Wednesday. Capitol Police could not be reached for comment through its press office Wednesday. The message came to Garretts campaign Facebook page after the American Healthcare Act passed the House last week, Griffin said. The individual masked the server, making it appear to be coming from the Netherlands, although authorities have narrowed the search to inside the United States, Griffin said. A previous threat came in a phone call to Garretts Washington, D.C., office saying if the callers health care went away, he would kill Garrett, Griffin said. Capitol Police visited the Fluvanna County man who made the threat, Griffin said, and hes being monitored for now. The county is inside Garretts 5th District. But Garrett isnt making any day-to-day changes to security other than boosted security at large events like the town halls that draw people from all over, Griffin said. Garrett talked with reporters about security after a town hall Tuesday in which many of his constituents who gathered at EastLake Community Church town hall voiced frustration with his AHCA votes, public comments hes made in the media and President Donald Trump in general. Garrett is a first-term congressman and former state legislator from Buckingham County whose extensive Congressional District includes Franklin County and part of Bedford County, where the Tuesday evening town hall was held. The crowd interrupted several times, and one woman was escorted out by Bedford County sheriffs deputies after causing a disturbance. That lady wasnt a threat, Garrett said. Some of Garretts most outspoken detractors come from the anti-Trump group Indivisible. After learning of the threats, Indivisible Charlottesville organizer David Singerman said the group condemns any threats of any kind of violence. Any threats made on the safety of anybody are totally out of line and are unacceptable, Singerman said. Its unfortunate that we live in a moment where apparently that has to be articulated by anyone. MONETA Tensions ran high at Rep. Tom Garretts town hall Tuesday, where constituents demanded to know why the freshman congressman voted for the Republican health plan designed to replace the Affordable Care Act. Constituents shouted, interrupted and jeered. One woman was so worked up she was escorted out of the forum by local law enforcement, an incident Garrett said he wished hadnt occurred. The pastor of EastLake Community Church, the event venue, warned attendees from the outset that they were not to disrupt the question-and-answer session. Loretta Merryman of Rustburg, in the second row, shouted at Garrett several times, eventually yelling, Youre wrong. You know youre wrong! when he answered a question about having not read the full text of the health care replacement bill. Members of Garretts staff read the bill in its entirety, and the latest text of the bill was a series of amendments to legislation that was released months ago, so Garrett had time to review much of the legislation, he said. Bedford County sheriffs then asked Merryman to leave, and when she protested, they forcibly ejected her from the venue at the request of church officials. Later, the womans husband, Frank Merryman, humbly apologized to Garrett. Im not proud of that moment, Garrett said. It wasnt my decision, but I respect the law enforcement professionals who protect us and Ill defend that decision on their part. Throughout the two-hour-long town hall, Garrett faced strong opposition as he answered audience questions, largely on President Donald Trump and the GOP health care plan that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. Alternately, Garretts supporters in the audience cheered when he said negative things about Gov. Terry McAuliffe and former President Barack Obama. Garrett is among the first Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives to hold a town hall since the House narrowly passed the health care bill. He and Rep. Dave Brat, R-Henrico, who also attended a town hall meeting Tuesday, are the first members of Virginias congressional delegation to hold such events after last weeks vote. Garrett got personal when explaining his vote in favor of the Republican health plan designed to replace the Affordable Care Act . The Republican from Buckingham County talked about his mother, a three-time cancer survivor. About 34 years ago, Garretts mother was first diagnosed with cancer that was believed to be terminal. She beat it, but was forever marked with a pre-existing condition. Yet, she was still able to get care, he said. Then, citing the portion of health bill that allocates $8 billion over five years to treat people with pre-existing conditions, Garrett questioned if his mother would have beat cancer if she was diagnosed after the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Critics of the health care bill say the millions of Americans diagnosed with pre-existing conditions may not be able to acquire affordable insurance under the plan. The goal of the bill is to reduce the costs of premiums and deductibles for the end users in health care to make actual care, as opposed to coverage, more accessible to people, he said. Garrett, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, opposed the original health care replacement bill because he did not believe it would lower insurance premiums and deductibles. Senate Republicans already are redrafting the health care legislation . Several people asked questions about corruption in the Trump administration, name-checking Michael Flynn, the presidents former national security adviser, and James Comey, the FBI director who was fired Tuesday. Garrett declined to comment on the Comey firing, which was announced just moments before the start of the meeting. When asked what it will take to clean up government corruption and waste, Garrett suggested eliminating redundancy in the federal government and shifting federal funds back to states and localities. We need to power down government to the people, he said. As audience members routinely cut off Garrett mid-response, he fired back with rigid responses and etiquette tips such as explaining how question-and-answer sessions typically work and telling people not to interrupt. Sometimes, living in a democracy means hearing things you dont like, he said. Garretts town hall was open to 250 people via a lottery, but there were more tickets than attendees, leaving open seats in the church sanctuary. About two dozen law enforcement officials guarded the meeting. Prior to the event, 50 people associated with local groups opposed to the agenda of Trump and his Republican supporters held a protest/tailgate outside the venue. Bob Dylans Blowin in the Wind reverberated through the crisp evening air over to where Garrett and Trump supporters rallied nearby. Conservative lawmakers are increasingly being asked to hold town hall meetings so constituents can express their concerns . Virginia Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, Barbara Comstock, R-Fairfax, and Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, have not attended in-person town halls this year. Garrett held his first in-person town hall in March in Charlottesville. He has pledged to hold another forum in the fall in Danville. We do not normally fashion ourselves as trouble-makers. We prefer to lower our voices while others are raising theirs. Come, let us reason together. However, it may be time to make an exception. More specifically, it may be time for those most interested in Southwest Virginia especially the coal counties to start being more of a disruptive force in Virginia politics. Weve bemoaned a litany of grievances before: When coal counties found themselves facing an unprecedented funding crisis earlier this year brought on by the collapse of the coal economy the states Democratic governor offered nothing except empty words. When one state legislator, Del. Nick Rush, R-Christiansburg, came up with a temporary solution, Republican-led budget negotiators tweaked that formula to still leave some counties with nothing. Its hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that neither party in Richmond is really interested in the economic fate of Southwest Virginia. But wait, theres more: Of the five candidates for governor, theres really only one Republican Frank Wagner who lays out a specific plan for the economy of Southwest Virginia. Hed raise the gas tax to build lots of roads, from widening Interstate 81 to getting started on Interstate 73 and the Coalfields Expressway. (News flash: Hes also unlikely to win the nomination.) Instead, this is a more typical response: When a questioner at the recent Democratic debate in Roanoke asked about far Southwest Virginia, the candidates turned the answer to a more general answer about rural Virginia not exactly the same thing. Finally, when the Southwest Virginia Technology Council invited the candidates on both sides to debate before the June 13 primary in the coalfields to address issues there, the response was mostly silence. Granted, the council extended its invitation after both parties had set their pre-primary debate schedule, but if the Northern Virginia Technology Council had made the same offer, we suspect the candidates would have found it possible to re-jigger their schedule. All this, of course, comes against a backdrop of an ongoing demographic crisis in the coalfields: People are moving out at a rate not seen anywhere else in the state. In most rural counties in Virginia, the majority of the population decline is attributable to the aging of the population deaths outnumber births. Some rural counties actually have more people moving in than moving out, just not enough to make up for the deaths/births deficit. In Virginias coal counties, though, the population decline is overwhelmingly driven by people moving out in search of work. Jack Kennedy, the Democratic clerk of court for Wise County, even has a phrase for these people. Americas first climate refugees, he calls them, a phrase potent enough to discomfit partisans on both sides. Since 2010, Buchanan County has seen the largest percentage drop of any locality in the state down 6.7 percent. Nearly 73 percent of that decline is due to people moving out, not dying. Dickenson County next door has the second-biggest rate of population decline with a drop of 5.7 percent. There, out-migration accounts for 75 percent of the countys population loss. In Wise County, people moving out accounts for 81 percent of the countys population decline. Why is this not a crisis that candidates are talking about? Perhaps its time for people in Southwest Virginia to be a lot more vocal to get Richmonds attention. Heres an idea: Its time to start making these candidates uncomfortable. Two years ago when Sweet Briar Colleges board wanted to shut down the school, alumnae tried to get Attorney General Mark Herring to intervene to enforce the will of the schools founder, which called for the college to be a perpetual memorial. When Herring initially distanced himself from the controversy, some alumnae took to shadowing the attorney general at his public appearances waving signs and generally causing a ruckus that couldnt be ignored. Eventually, Herring did get involved by calling in a mediator and Sweet Briar College remains open today. (The schools endowment was never really the problem; the problem was that its old board simply lost faith in its mission.) Perhaps community leaders in the coal counties should follow the example set by those activist Sweet Briar alumnae. They could even turn that exodus of workers to their advantage because that means they now have potential advocates scattered across the state. Maybe some of Americas first climate refugees should start showing up at appearances by the gubernatorial candidates wherever they are and try to force them to address the economy in the coal counties. Well even offer up some ideas for signs, playing off the names of communities there. When will (insert candidate name) Wise up? Will we see you Monday in Grundy? Or, for those of a particular bent, Make Appalachia Great Again. Laugh if you want. Admittedly, theres a certain level of silliness in the slogans, but a deadly seriousness behind the purpose: To force our next governor, whomever he may be, to focus on the coalfields and talk about the economy there. Democrats Northam and Perriello spend time talking about rural Virginia in general and the need to get more students into workforce training programs at community colleges. Republican Ed Gillespie gives a good conservative account of how his proposed tax cut will rejuvenate the economy across the state. All those might be good ideas, but they are not specific to the coalfields. If a Southwest Virginia county wanted to tear down a Confederate statue, perhaps even Corey Stewart might pay attention. To be fair, Gillespie has told the Southwest Virginia Technology Council hed accept an invitation to debate his Democratic opponent in the coalfields this fall if hes the Republican nominee (which he probably will be). Ideally, all the candidates would commit themselves to at least that minimal level of conversation. If not, we know some Sweet Briar alumnae who could probably offer some advice to Americas first climate refugees on how to get a politicians attention. The last weekend in April, two of Blacksburg Transits top operators traveled to Lynchburg to compete in the State Paratransit Roadeo. Drivers from across the state competed against each other in a series of events including a written test, appearance test, assisting and securing a wheelchair user, and a timed obstacle course. In order to succeed at the event an operator must excel in all aspects of the competition. Jon Barnes took first place in the Body-on-Chassis division and will represent the state of Virginia in the National Community Transit Roadeo in June. Scott Tmay took second place in the Body-on-Chassis division. Were incredibly proud of these two operators, said Transit Director Tom Fox. This makes a clean sweep for Blacksburg Transit, winning both the State Paratransit and State Bus Roadeos in the same year. We look forward to seeing how they fare at the national level. For more information please visit www.btransit.org or call 443-1592. CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HIFU Prostate Services, LLC (HPS), the leading provider of HIFU technology to physicians practices in the United States, reflects on a year of steady growth and expansion since last years annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA). HPS has experienced over 250 percent growth in the number of HIFU treatments completed over the previous year. This growth is attributed to doubling the number of locations where HPS offers HIFU as well as increasing the number of trained physicians at existing partner facilities. We continue to see the number of HIFU treatments that our physician partners complete at all our facilities increase every quarter. Combine that growth with a strong sales pipeline and we anticipate similar growth over the next year, said John Linn, chief executive officer of HIFU Prostate Services. We believe this growth is because of our extensive training and marketing programs that are unmatched by any US provider. Over the past year, HPS has made it a priority to strengthen its training program for the Sonablate in order to make it the most robust and accessible in the country. Additionally, HPS has substantially expanded recruitment efforts to increase the number of HIFU physicians in the HPS network. HPS currently works with six highly respected LUGPA (Larger Urology Group Practice Association) member groups. We currently have 12 physicians undergoing training and several who have recently completed the program. Since last year at this same time, we have increased the number of treating physicians in our network by over 150 percent and grown our affiliated network of physicians to over 250, said Jenny Robeson, chief sales officer of HIFU Prostate Services. This years AUA Annual Meeting will take place in Boston, May 12- 16, 2017. The program includes several abstracts and presentations highlighting the clinical applications and outcomes of HIFU. HPS anticipates that one of the hottest topics to be discussed at the AUA meeting this year will be PSA screening for prostate cancer in direct response to new guidelines issued by the US Preventative Services Task Force last month. At the AUA meeting this year, we hope to engage new physicians who are looking for another treatment option to offer their patients that is non-invasive and to strengthen relationships with existing users of the technology, said John McLean, chief operating officer. Our mission is to provide a prostate cancer treatment option that ultimately offers a better quality of life for men facing prostate cancer. We feel like we are already accomplishing this. About HIFU Prostate Services, LLC HIFU Prostate Services (HPS) was founded to provide men access to a less invasive treatment option for prostate cancer that has the ability to eliminate cancer and preserve patient quality of life. Our mission is to deliver the highest quality of care, support, and technology to the patient and to the urology community for the treatment of localized prostate cancer using Sonablate HIFU. The company is headquartered in Charlotte, NC and with locations in 12 cities throughout the US. Learn more at http://www.hifuprostateservices.com. Business News Texas Business Tourism Groups Decry Sanctuary Cities Bill | RobinsPost News & Noticias After a 10-hour hearing and despite opposition from powerful state business groups ... all versions of the bathroom bill for months. It says such legislation could cost Texas $5.6 billion by driving ... Read More The cities with the highest greenhouse-gas emissions per capita included Corpus Christi, Texas, Oklahoma City, Denver and Baton Rouge, rounding out the top five. On the flip side, the cities ... Read More AUSTIN (KXAN) - On Tuesday, 33 House Republicans, including five Texas representatives ... of the document call it a federal "Don't Say Gay" bill. "The Democrat Party and their cultural allies ... Read More (Bloomberg) Tourist havens like Orlando and Oahu are seeing more revenue from taxes levied on overnight hotel stays than their counterparts who rely on business-focused travel. Cities that ... Read More Texas housing remains among the most affordable in the country, making big city life an option for retirees worth considering. As Darryl Lyons, CEO of San Antonio-based PAX Financial Group, says ... Read More AUSTIN Asian Americans could be the "deciding margin" in Texas's upcoming midterm elections ... the president of an advocacy group told Fox News. "Because this community is so highly motivated ... Read More This approach is proving successful as the City has a pipeline of external investments to the tune of more than $100 million the majority of which are from within in the tourism and hospitality ... Read More GBTG has a strong client base that attracts travel suppliers. I think Global Business Travel Group (NYSE ... which is good news for patient investors. To fully appreciate GBTG's strong network ... Read More The big news in crypto this week came via a court filing in Texas. FTX, the crypto giant that ... a.k.a passing a bill. We want rules, one industry lawyer vented to me. Read More KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) A Kansas City business group has come out against a proposed state constitutional amendment that would require the city to spend a larger percentage of its general ... Read More According to new race/ethnic data released by the U.S. Census Bureau last month, Hispanics are estimated to comprise 40.2% of the Texas population, versus white people at 39.4%. Whites are defined ... Read More Business News Polish Company To Expand Business Volume To Rs 100 Billion In Pakistan | RobinsPost News & Noticias The MarketWatch News ... how companies deploying these technologies across various industry verticals aim to explore its future to become a major business disrupter. The Non-toxic Nail Polish ... Read More Polish companies are going to present their business abilities tomorrow in Azerbaijan, Polish Ambassador to Azerbaijan Rafal Poborski told Trend. Today was a great opportunity to promote compan ... Read More The number of Polish companies declared insolvent increased ... associated with the depletion of Covid-19 public aid offered to business to counteract the economic effects of lockdowns. Read More Later on in your business journey, if you want, this overseas branding can then be used to expand a physical presence ... I have witnessed many companies operating without a website and getting ... Read More Royal Philips NV said it would write down the value of its sleep and respiratory care business by 1.3 billion ... 512 million a year earlier. The company is set to report full earnings ... Read More If you manage to get past those initial hurdles and see significant growth in your business, it may be time to expand ... workers who care about your company as much as you do. Read More On Oct. 14, a $24.6 billion deal between Kroger Co. and Albertsons was proposed that would make a 5,000 grocery store giant. Today we look at the national landscape of the grocery business. Read More The growth rate of Microsoft's search and news advertising business ... of $7.42 billion. It was the first time YouTube's ad revenue shrank on a year-over-year basis since the company started ... Read More Broken stock, or broken company? That's the question that ... Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis. Read More SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS ... 1,200 multinational companies based in North America and Europe with at least 15 percent of their revenue coming from overseas, sustained $49.09 billion in total impacts ... Read More CANTON, MASS. Better-for-you tortilla company Maria and Ricardos is expanding distribution of its keto-friendly tortillas to include most Spouts Farmers Market, Shop Rite and Wegmans locations. Read More Selling your family business requires assembling a team of trusted advisors in various disciplines to create whats likely to be your single largest liquidity event. Only an interdisciplinary ... Read More Business News Business Backed Open Primary Elections Are About To Become Colorado Law | RobinsPost News & Noticias Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is headed to a second term after challenger Heidi Ganahl conceded the election. Polis, a Democrat, leads 58.5% to Republican Ganahl's 39.5% with more than 60% ... Read More Democrats scored a win in Colorado, where Sen. Michael Bennet beat Joe ODea, a Republican who tried wooing moderates by distancing himself from Trump. Read More Latest updates and results as Democrats perform better than expected and Fetterman wins Pennsylvania Senate race ... Read More US midterm election is just days away, and candidates across the country are making their final pitch as early voting is underway. Follow CNN for the latest election news and updates. Read More US midterm election will be held on Nov. 8, but early voting is already underway. Follow CNN for the latest election news and updates. Read More The infomercial pitchman has transformed his company into an engine of the election denial movement, using his wealth to propel the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Read More Candidates across the United States prepare their campaigns for the final weekend before election day on Tuesday, holding events to motivate potential voters. Read More With four days to go, Democrats are seeing the limits of their focus on abortion. Republicans have a chance to win veto-proof supermajorities in Wisconsins State Legislature. Read More Gubernatorial races in Arizona and Oregon were too close to call after Election Day. Incumbents had strong showings in Florida, Texas, Michigan. Read More Trump called DeSantis endorsement a big mistake. I dont want to talk about it There has always been speculation that a Trump-DeSantis confrontation was inevitable, while others have tried to ... Read More Wisconsin's race for U.S. Senate will be one of the most hotly contested elections in the country this fall. Here are the latest developments. Read More Wisconsin's race for U.S. Senate will be one of the most hotly contested elections in the country this fall. Here are the latest developments. Read More Business News Uber S Battle To Do Business In Costa Rica Continues | RobinsPost News & Noticias Six people, including the German businessman behind Gold's Gym, are feared dead after a small plane crashed into the Caribbean off the Costa Rican coast SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- Six people ... Read More The pilot, 66, was a Swiss citizen, according to Costa Rica's security ministry. GERMAN GYM TYCOON RAINER SCHALLER, PARTNER AND KIDS ON PLANE THAT DISAPPEARED OFF COSTA RICAN COAST MARK ZUCKERBERG ... Read More Proposed Department of Labor rules stop short of classifying Uber and Lyft drivers as employees. But the Biden administrations ... business. "It seems like the start of a Game of Thrones battle ... Read More SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ContextLogic Inc. (d/b/a Wish) (NASDAQ: WISH) today announced strategic partnerships with two leading Latin American logistics providers Moovin in Costa Rica ... Read More Costa Rica argues that Panamas decisions limiting imports have no scientific basis and that there would be no justification for not renewing the import authorization. Panamas attitude is a ... Read More Uber's advertising business is making investments in new ad formats and an international salesforce as it races toward a $1 billion annual revenue target that it hopes to reach by 2024. Read More Well send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Uber Technologies Inc news every morning. Uber has launched its global advertising unit with the goal of creating a $1bn business ... Read More However, as ride-hailing continues to rebound, Wall Street analysts see better days ahead for Uber ... advertising business and are launching ad-supported tiers. While Netflixs ad-supported ... Read More SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE ... About Uber Ubers mission is to create opportunity through movement. We started in 2010 to solve a simple problem: how do you get access to a ride at the ... Read More Uber, Lyft and DoorDash companies that rely heavily on gig workers reacted Tuesday to the Biden administration's ... we do not anticipate this rule causing changes to our business model ... Read More Following is a statbox on Costa Rica at the World Cup. FIFA Ranking: 31. Odds: 500-1. Previous tournaments: Costa Rica have appeared in five World Cups since the ... Read More 6 Feared Dead in Small Plane Crash off Costa Rica By JAVIER CORDOBA, Associated Press SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) Six people, apparently including the German businessman behind Gold's Gym ... Read More Health News Women Senators Aren T Thrilled The New Health Care Bill Is Being Written By All Men New York Magazine | RobinsPost News & Noticias With less than a week before the midterm elections, U.S. Democratic Sen. Tina Smith and Rochester area medical professionals framed the race as a choice between a Democratic Party that has voted to ... Read More It is officially Election Day. Many of you dear readers may feel stressed as you wait for the results, so we invite you to take a break and instead consider voting on names for these newborn lion cubs ... Read More Health News China Says Taiwan Health Not At Risk By Absence From U N Meeting | RobinsPost News & Noticias China Says It Reserves Right ... Reunification of China and Taiwan meets the interests of all, including Taiwan compatriots, Sun Yeli told a news conference in Beijing. President Xi Jinping ... Read More War between Taiwan and China is "absolutely not an option", Taiwan ... which is that the concentration of the semiconductor sector in Taiwan is not a risk," she said. "We will continue to maintain ... Read More TAIPEI, Taiwan Chinas threat to absorb ... Mr. Bidens aides insist that the U.S. policy of deliberate vagueness has not changed. Others say Mr. Biden has further muddled a policy that ... Read More Beijing has responded to the U.S. Navy's warning of a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan as soon as this year by cautioning Washington against any intervention on the sensitive geopolitical issue ... Read More He said the same things he had said before, but emphasized that faced with gross provocations of external (U.S.) interference in Taiwan affairs, China ... Center, says Xi will not try ... Read More Taiwan Says China Looking ... its sovereignty claim. China mounted military exercises around Taiwan in August to express its anger at a visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and ... Read More China has decided the status quo of Taiwan's situation is no longer acceptable and has begun to ratchet up pressure on the self-governing island, including holding out the possibility of using force, ... Read More Taiwanese politicians and researchers say the of ... information to Taiwan, about 20 percent of them said U.S.A. and Japan," Shen said. Disinformation is not the only front of China's cyber ... Read More undertake live-fire military exercises near the border of Taiwan in a show of force. Pelosi has defended the trip, saying it was worth it to show China the U.S. could not be intimidated. Fox News ... Read More President Tsai Ing-wen has thanked British Trade Minister Greg Hands for Londons support for Taiwan after he became the latest foreign official to defy Chinese pressure and visit the self-ruled islan ... Read More Reunification of China and Taiwan meets the interests of all, including Taiwan compatriots, Sun Yeli told a news conference in ... Australia's top health insurer reels after data breach, article ... Read More China mounted military exercises around Taiwan in August to express its anger at a visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy ... Chen said. Taiwan says China's "grey-zone" warfare campaign ... Read More Health News Journalist Arrested During Us Health Secretary S Visit | RobinsPost News & Noticias The seven-time All-Star was detained in Russia on Feb. 17 for allegedly carrying a marijuana concentrate in her luggage ... Read More The Committee to Protect Journalists describes the arbitrary arrest of Abdalle Ahmed Mumin, the secretary-general of the Somali Journalists ... for the rights of Somali journalists to report the news ... Read More A dozen former patients and staffers described attacks by security staff. One said his abuser told him, Youre here. Youre crazy. They wont believe your word over mine. ... Read More An NBC News ... reporter Amanda Morris. It featured voices speculating Fetterman has aphasia, an auditory processing disorder, while admitting he's released "very little information about his health." ... Read More Robert Telles, 45, was arrested and charged last month in connection with the death of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter ... during a court appearance this week, despite his attorney's argument ... Read More Telles was arrested last month in connection with the death of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter ... was denied bail during a court appearance this week, despite his attorney's argument that ... Read More A reporter told AFP on the condition of anonymity that he saw Wembi being taken away from the hotel in a white jeep by the men who arrested him ... pvh/ah The Barron's news department was not ... Read More Journalists in the United States could be one ... for journalist records. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented 155 subpoena and legal orders filed to news organizations since the media ... Read More Forty-one journalists have been confirmed ... a woman in the custody of the country's so-called morality police. Mahsa Amini, 22, a Kurdish woman, was arrested in September for improperly wearing ... Read More HealthDay Reporter FRIDAY, Oct. 14, 2022 (American Heart Association News) -- When it comes to posting health information on social media, beware before you share. Experts say that's an essential ... Read More Poor mental health ... the US reported experiencing at least one adverse childhood experience in 2021, such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, food insecurity or loss of a parents job during ... Read More Follow along for real-time, on-the-ground updates on the 2022 U.S. midterm elections from The Associated Press. Live updates all ... Read More Politics News Macron Presides Over Quickening Collapse Of French Politics | RobinsPost News & Noticias French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday announced that France was ending its Barkhane anti-jihadist mission in Africa after over a decade, saying a new strategy would be worked out with African ... Read More French English HiPay Group: Shareholders' meeting held on May 10th, 2017 Paris, 10 May 2017, 5:45 p.m.: HiPay Group (ISIN code: FR0012821916 - HIPAY), a Fintech company specialized in online payments releases the results of the vote of its Shareholders' Meeting. The mobilization of HiPay's shareholders allowed the company to reach a quorum of more than 61%. All the resolutions proposed to the General Meeting were approved, except the resolutions 22, 23, 24 and 26 which have been rejected. The Board of Directors wants to thank again all the Shareholders who attended the Meeting or participated by post mail. Next financial communication: 27 July 2017 - 2017 First Half-Year Results. About HiPay Group We're a global payment provider processing more than 2bn annually across 150 countries and 220 payment types. By harnessing data analytics we help deliver valuable customer insights that enable our client's businesses to succeed. More information on hipay.com Find us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ HiPay Group is listed on the Euronext Paris Compartment C (ISIN code: FR0012821916 - mnemo: HIPAY). Daiana Hirte +33 (0)1 53 32 78 90 daiana.hirte@citigate.fr Antoine Denry +33 (0)1 53 32 78 95 antoine.denry@citigate.fr This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy HiPay Group shares. If you wish to obtain more information about HiPay Group, please refer to our website hipay.com, under the Investors heading. This press release may contain some forward-looking statements. Although HiPay Group considers that these statements are based on reasonable statements on the publication date of this release, they are by their very nature subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ from those indicated or projected in these statements. HiPay Group operates in a continually changing environment and new risks could potentially emerge. HiPay Group assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, whether to reflect new information, future events or other circumstances. Elections News United Kingdom Local Elections Conservatives Score Big Gains Huge Win For Pm May | RobinsPost News & Noticias With most local ... win in ten plus years, points out Politco. According to current predicted national votes shares, Labour have a five-point lead over the Conservatives following local elections. Read More The choice of 6 May places King Charles's coronation in the same week as local government elections, which will be the first big electoral test for Liz Truss's government since she became prime ... Read More Conservatives blasted President Biden on Friday for warning that Republicans will "crash the economy" next year if the GOP wins control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. Multiple ... Read More Latest updates and results as millions across the US cast votes in what is largely seen as a referendum on Bidens presidency follow all the latest news ... Read More The United Kingdom is once ... December that year and won. Theresa May, who served as prime minister before Johnson, also first became PM without an election, as did Labours Gordon Brown ... Read More Their aim is to gain control of more ... the 1776 Project claims a 70% win rate, but conservative candidates in some areas have fallen flat in recent elections. Still, the number of groups that ... Read More The FBI is warning voters against election-related crimes, a standard warning before all major elections but one that warrants increased vigilance this year amid threats to local election workers. Read More Election Day is less than two months awaybut one key race wont be on most ballots. Theyre school board elections, and thats a big problem ... Voters may not be mobilized, but others ... Read More To win the Senate, Republicans would then need to gain Nevada, where they lead by one point, and Georgia, where Democrats lead by four. In every midterm election since 2006, the non-presidential ... Read More Yet there is plenty of policy and politics that matter at the state and local ... legislatures may play an even more consequential role now that Republicans are trying to use elections of ... Read More In each midterm cycle, hundreds of congressional seats are up for election in addition to key state and local ... need to win five more races than they did in 2020 (213) to gain a majority ... Read More The 2022 national elections ... kingdom of 2.1 million people since 2012. The rookies won 56 out of 120 parliamentary seats - five seats short of an absolute majority. But the impressive win ... Read More Elections News After Macron Win France S Main Parties Fret Over Parliament Elections | RobinsPost News & Noticias Emmanuel Macrons decisive victory over Marine Le ... adapted to two dominant parties. These two issues make the outcome of Frances upcoming legislative elections, which take place in June ... Read More A French parliament session was thrown into turmoil Thursday after a far-right MP was accused of yelling "back to Africa" to a black colleague posing a question on migrant arrivals to the government. Read More Though results are not final, Le Pen has already conceded victory, but told her supporters that the game is not over, pointing to legislative elections ... Macron will win Frances ... Read More PARIS Emmanuel Macrons government triggered an emergency political mechanism Wednesday to push through Frances 2023 budget, overruling the parliament ... parties after his party lost an absolute ... Read More European lawmaker Jordan Bardella replaced his mentor Marine Le Pen on Saturday at the helm of Frances leading far-right party, and pledged to defend French civilization from perceived threats posed ... Read More French parliamentary politics this week turned into a game of liars poker in which winners are losers and losers are winners. Two votes of confidence in the National Assembly on Monday night, when ... Read More French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday announced that France was ending its Barkhane anti-jihadist mission in Africa after over a decade, saying a new strategy would be worked out with African ... Read More Macron convened a meeting Tuesday at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris with the heads of some 50 industrial sites in France, accounting for about 10% of France's total greenhouse gas emissions. Read More Which party ... elections? Will Democrats maintain majorities in Congress, or will Republicans win control? How do I vote? If you're a beginner to the process, this is the place for you. Here's ... Read More What are the midterm elections? Midterm elections occur every four years, halfway through a presidents term in office, occurring on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year the ... Read More Riding on a wave of anger over government corruption, Anwar's three-party Hope Alliance ... and believes it can win big on its own after victories in several recent by-elections. Read More Search RobinsPost News & Noticias Potus News Trump Fires F B I Director Investigating His Campaign Ties To Russia | RobinsPost News & Noticias Search RobinsPost News & Noticias Potus News Senate Intel Leaders Split On Need For Independent Trump Russia Probe | RobinsPost News & Noticias Science News University Of Nairobi Mt Kenya Offering Most Science Courses | RobinsPost News & Noticias After Kenyatta University match, Mt Mount Kenya University will face Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology amongst others and hope to once again deliver. Read More a flamingo expert at the University of Exeter, said. Scientists say climate change is partly to blame for the decline of the birds as vast amounts of rain have been dumped into Kenyas lakes ... Read More That was a prevailing idea in 2019, when I started as the social sciences reporter at Science News. But when I began ... I stumbled across a Harvard University white paper explaining that ... Read More Science News for Students and more. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in general sciences because she couldn't decide on her favorite area of science. In her spare time ... Read More explain Jan De Houwer and Sean Hughes (Ghent University) in a new Perspectives on Psychological Science article. Embracing a broader definition of learning that includes any behavioral adaption ... Read More Fortune compiled a list of seven universities that offer free online data science courses, which offers prospective students an opportunity to learn more about this field. Each university ... Read More assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. "It's really hard to tune these materials to grab carbon dioxide ... Read More Seattles cloud computing prowess just got another boost. The University of Washingtons Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering unveiled a new hub called the Center for the ... Read More Perez Ortega, a bilingual science ... and courses on data visualization at UCSC, and she created an online learning center as a resource for scientists interested in using graphic design, animation, ... Read More A senior Pakistani journalist living in hiding in Kenya ... known; most of his friends knew only that he had spent time in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and London. Nairobi police said the ... Read More 10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint But one of the most thought-provoking scenes occurs when a volcano, which we learn is Mount Doom ... at Washington University in St. Louis ... Read More Science News Review Alton Brown Brings Zany Fun To Oklahoma City With Eat Your Science Live Show | RobinsPost News & Noticias Researchers at Princeton Engineering have found a way to turn your breakfast food into a new material that can cheaply remove salt and microplastics from seawater. Read More What better place for food science nerd Alton Brown to bring his tour than ... Like my first two live ventures (The Edible Inevitable Tour and Eat Your Science) there will be cooking, comedy ... Read More When Spanish genetics researcher Pablo Carbonell spots a green rectangle among the endless grey rows on his computer's screen, it could be good news for winemakers struggling with the impact of a ... Read More Alton Brown, chef and Food Network star, is heading to the Star City. Ahead of his visit, 10 News anchor Rachel Lucas has an opportunity to interview him and we want to bring you into the process. Read More Senator Julia Kirt (D-Oklahoma City) hosted an interim study Monday focused on Oklahomas laws for ethics and accountability for elected officials. The Stillwater Police Department released body ... Read More If you've ever wondered what it's like when Alton Brown goes rogue in the ... The just-what-we-needed silliness in an episode of Brown's YouTube show, Quarantine Quitchen, kicks off with Brown ... Read More Smokers who quit, particularly at young ages, show much lower mortality rates ... Nicoletta Lanese is a staff writer for Live Science covering health and medicine, along with an assortment of ... Read More The Fungus among us Standup comedy as an evolutionary advantage The GOAT pays it forward one more time, Ali and Parkinsons Did Garlic Protect Rasputin? Ready for some serious idiocy? Hope so because ... Read More Dr. Emily Pentzer, associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and ... is likely to show real-world impact on material sustainability ... Solid-state materials ... Read More A new study finds the microbial ecosystem in the guts of wild marten (Martes americana) that live in relatively pristine ... A new study published in the journal Science Advances sheds light ... Read More Technology News Us Brings In More Technology To Fight Drug Smuggling At Sea | RobinsPost News & Noticias Fishermen lost at sea ... fight off sharks with their bare hands Fishermen lost at sea fight off sharks with their bare hands Fishermen lost at sea fight off sharks with their bare hands Like us ... Read More Two Russian nationals were arrested and several other individuals charged with evading sanctions to smuggle US military technology, some of which was used in Ukraine, and Venezuelan oil. Yury ... 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Read More French English NOT FOR PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, SOUTH AFRICA OR JAPAN This press release does not constitute a solicitation to purchase or an offer of the Bonds (as defined below) or the shares of VINCI (together, the "Securities") in the United States of America or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended). The Securities may not be offered or sold in the United States of America or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. Persons unless they are registered or exempt from registration under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended. VINCI does not intend to register all or any portion of the offering in the United States of America or to conduct a public offering of the Securities in the United States of America. Rueil Malmaison, May 10 2017 VINCI launches a tap issue of non-dilutive cash-settled convertible bonds for USD 125 million to be fully assimilated to its USD 450 million non-dilutive cash-settled convertible bonds due 2022 VINCI announces today the launch of a tap issue of non-dilutive cash-settled convertible bonds (the "New Bonds") with a nominal amount of USD 125 million. The New Bonds are to be issued on the same terms (save for the issue price) as the USD 450 million non-dilutive cash-settled convertible bonds due February 16, 2022 issued by Vinci on February 16, 2017 (the "Original Bonds") and, as of 40 days after the settlement date of the New Bonds, shall be fully fungible with and assimilated to the Original Bonds (together, the "Bonds"). Concurrently, Vinci will purchase, in addition to the cash-settled call options over its own shares that were bought with regards to the issue of the Original Bonds, new cash-settled call options (the "New Call Options") over its own shares to hedge its exposure to pay cash amounts upon any potential exercise of conversion rights embedded in the New Bonds. The conversion rights will not result in the issuance of new shares or the delivery of existing shares of Vinci upon conversion. The net proceeds of the New Bonds offering will be used for general corporate purposes. The New Bonds will be issued with an issue price between 108.625% and 109.625% of their nominal value (plus accrued interest). The initial pricing for the issue price will be announced before markets open on May 11, 2017 at the latest. The final issue price will be determined following a reference period of 2 consecutive trading days after the placement (from May 11 to May 12, 2017 (the "Reference Period") in order to reflect the share price performance and the evolution of the EUR/USD exchange rate. The final tap price will be announced on May 12, 2017. The settlement and delivery date of the New Bonds is expected to take place on May 18, 2017. An application for the admission to trading of the New Bonds on the Open Market (Marche Libre) of Euronext Paris and the Open Market (Freiverkehr) of Deutsche Borse will be made with effect from the settlement and delivery date of the New Bonds. In the context of the offering, Vinci will agree to a lock-up undertaking in relation to its shares and equity-linked securities for a period ending 60 calendar days after the settlement and delivery date, subject to certain exceptions. It is anticipated that the New Call Options counterparties will enter into transactions to hedge their positions under the cash-settled call options, through the sale or purchase of shares of Vinci or any other transactions, on market and off-market, at any time, and in particular during the Reference Period and at or around the conversion or redemption of the Bonds. The New Bonds will be offered via an accelerated bookbuilding process through a private placement to institutional investors only or otherwise not entailing a public offering, outside the United States of America, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Africa. No prospectus, offering circular or other similar document will be prepared in connection with the offering. This press release does not constitute or form part or form part of any offer or solicitation to purchase or subscribe for or to sell the New Bonds and the offering of the New Bonds is not an offer to the public in any jurisdiction, including France. About VINCI VINCI is a global player in concessions and construction, employing more than 183,000 people in some 100 countries. We design, finance, build and operate infrastructure and facilities that help improve daily life and mobility for all. Because we believe in all-round performance, above and beyond economic and financial results, we are committed to operating in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. And because our projects are in the public interest, we consider that reaching out to all our stakeholders and engaging in dialogue with them is essential in the conduct of our business activities. www.vinci.com DISCLAIMER Available information The issue of the New Bonds was not subject to a prospectus approved by the French Financial Market Authority (Autorite des marches financiers) (the "AMF"). Detailed information on VINCI (the "Company"), including its Shares, business, results, prospects and related risk factors are described in the Company's registration document, the French version of which was filed with the AMF on February 24, 2017 under number D.17-0109 which is available together with all the press releases and other regulated information about the Company, in particular the press release relating to the 2017 First Quarter results of VINCI dated 27 April 2017, on VINCI's website (https://www.vinci.com). Important information This press release may not be published, distributed or released directly or indirectly in the United States of America, Australia, Canada, South Africa or Japan. The distribution of this press release may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions and persons into whose possession any document or other information referred to herein comes, should inform themselves about and observe any such restriction. Any failure to comply with these restrictions may constitute a violation of the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No communication or information relating to the offering may be transmitted to the public in a country where there is a registration obligation or where an approval is required. No action has been or will be taken in any country in which such registration or approval would be required. The issuance or the subscription of the New Bonds may be subject to legal and regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions; none of the Company nor any of the managers in the context of the issue of the New Bonds (the "Managers") assumes any liability in connection with the breach by any person of such restrictions. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to, and no reliance should be placed upon, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of the information or contained in this press release. The information presented in this press release is subject to change by the Company without notice. This press release is an advertisement and not a prospectus within the meaning of Directive 2003/71/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of November 4, 2003 as amended (the "Prospectus Directive"). The New Bonds will be offered only by way of a private placement in France to persons referred to in Article L.411-2-II of the French monetary and financial code (Code monetaire et financier) and outside France (excluding the United States of America, Australia, Canada, South Africa and Japan), and there will be no public offering in any country (including France). This press release does not constitute a recommendation concerning the issue of the New Bonds. The value of the Bonds and the Shares can decrease as well as increase. Potential investors should consult a professional adviser as to the suitability of the Bonds for the person concerned. European Economic Area With respect to the Member States of the European Economic Area which have implemented the Prospectus Directive (the "Relevant Member States"), no action has been undertaken or will be undertaken to make an offer to the public of the New Bonds requiring a publication of a prospectus in any Relevant Member State. As a result, the New Bonds may only be offered in Relevant Member States: to any legal entity which is a qualified investor as defined in the Prospectus Directive; or in any other circumstances falling within Article 3(2) of the Prospectus Directive. For the purposes of this paragraph, the expression "offer to the public of New Bonds" in any Relevant Member State, means any communication, to individuals or legal entities, in any form and by any means, of sufficient information on the terms and conditions of the offering and on the New Bonds to be offered, thereby enabling an investor to decide to purchase or subscribe for the New Bonds, as the same may be varied in that Relevant Member State. These selling restrictions with respect to Relevant Member States apply in addition to any other selling restrictions which may be applicable in the Relevant Member States who have implemented the Prospectus Directive. France The Bonds have not been and will not be offered or sold or cause to be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, to the public in France. Any offer or sale of the Bonds and distribution of any offering material relating to the Bonds have been and will be made in France only to (a) persons providing investment services relating to portfolio management for the account of third parties (personnes fournissant le service d'investissement de gestion de portefeuille pour compte de tiers), and/or (b) qualified investors (investisseurs qualifies) acting for their own account, as defined in, and in accordance with, Articles L.411-1, L.411-2 and D. 411-1 of the French monetary and financial Code (Code monetaire et financier). United Kingdom This press release is addressed and directed only (i) to persons located outside the United Kingdom, (ii) to investment professionals as defined in Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order"), (iii) to people designated by Article 49(2) (a) to (d) of the Order or (iv) to any other person to whom this press release could be addressed pursuant to applicable law (the persons mentioned in paragraphs (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) all deemed relevant persons ("Relevant Persons")). The Bonds are intended only for Relevant Persons and any invitation, offer of contract related to the subscription, tender, or acquisition of the Bonds may be addressed and/or concluded only with Relevant Persons. All persons other than Relevant Persons must abstain from using or relying on this document and all information contained therein. This press release is not a prospectus which has been approved by the Financial Conduct Authority or any other United Kingdom regulatory authority for the purposes of Section 85 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. United States of America This press release may not be published, distributed or transmitted in the United States of America (including its territories and dependencies, any State of the United States of America and the District of Columbia). This press release does not constitute or form a part of any offer or solicitation to purchase for securities in the United States of America or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"). The securities mentioned herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the Securities Act, the law of any state of the United States of America and may not be offered or sold in the United States of America or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. Persons, except pursuant to an exemption from, or a transaction not subject to, the registration requirements of the Securities Act or the law of the above states. The Bonds will be offered or sold only to non-U.S. persons in offshore transactions outside of the United States of America, in accordance with Regulation S of the Securities Act. The Company does not intend to register any portion of the proposed offering in the United States of America and no public offering will be made in the United States of America. Australia, Canada, South Africa and Japan The Bonds may not and will not be offered, sold or purchased in Australia, Canada, South Africa or Japan. The information contained in this press release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in Australia, Canada, South Africa or Japan. The distribution of this press release in certain countries may constitute a breach of applicable law. The Managers are acting exclusively on behalf of the Company and no-one else in connection with the issue of the New Bonds. They will not regard any other person as their respective client in relation to the offering and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the same protections as to any of their clients or to provide advice in connection with the offering, the New Bonds, the contents of this press release or any other transaction, arrangement or other matter described in this press release. In connection with the issue of the New Bonds, the Managers and any of their respective affiliates, may take up a portion of the New Bonds as a principal position and in that capacity may subscribe for, acquire, retain, purchase, sell, offer, offer to sell or negotiate for their own account such New Bonds and other securities of Company or related investments in connection with the issue of the Bonds, the Company or otherwise. Accordingly, references to securities issued, offered, subscribed, acquired, placed or dealt should be read as including any issue, offer, subscription, acquisition, placement, dealing or negotiation made by the Managers and any of their affiliates acting as investors for their own account. The Managers do not intend to disclose the extent of any such above mentioned investments or transactions otherwise than in accordance with any applicable legal or regulatory requirements. None of the Managers and none of their respective directors, employees, advisors or agents accept any responsibility whatsoever which could result from any representation and warranty expressed or implied regarding the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of the information contained in this press release (or if any information which has been omitted in this press release) or any other information regarding the Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates whether written, oral or electronic, whatever the means by which it may be transmitted or made available, or for any loss resulting from the reliance on this press release, the information it contains or otherwise in connection with this press release. Travel News Aclu Issues Travel Alert After Texas Sanctuary Cities Law Signed | RobinsPost News & Noticias The U.S. State Department issues travel warnings ... to these destinations. After reading such advisories, you might be hesitant to visit any place that has a travel warning issued by the State ... Read More San Angelo has been deliberating about becoming a sanctuary city for the unborn since an initiating committee approached city officials in November 2021. As ... Read More June 13, 2019 The city of Waskom, which is 19 miles east of Marshall in East Texas, declares itself a "sanctuary city for the unborn" after its ... U.S. Supreme Court issues an opinion in ... Read More Power Outage Alert After our power crisis during the 2021 winter storm, lawmakers created the Texas Power Outage Alert to notify you when the state's power supply is inadequate to meet the demand. Read More Abilene voters will consider making the city a sanctuary ... even if they travel out of the state. The item was brought before the Abilene City Council on April 28 after advocates attempted ... Read More While prices have climbed in the last year, Texas housing remains among the most affordable in the country, making big city life an option for retirees worth considering. As Darryl Lyons ... Read More Oct. 20Travelers heading to high elevation areas and through Cascade mountain passes in central and southwest Oregon this weekend should be ready for winter weather. National Weather Service ... Read More Chinese cities were imposing fresh lockdowns and travel restrictions after the number of new daily ... need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to ... Read More Editor's Note Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel's weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations ... Find out if your own city -- or your future vacation destination -- made the ... Read More MINNEAPOLIS --The University of Minnesota issued an emergency alert after an armed robbery outside a rec center Tuesday night. It happened around 9:30 p.m. on Harvard Street Southeast. The ... Read More Travel News China Plans Asteroid Base For Interstellar Travel And Mining | RobinsPost News & Noticias A Chinese official says the government plans to boost coal production through 2025 to avoid a repeat of last years power shortages BEIJING -- China plans ... said at a news conference held ... Read More The Chinese city of Guangdong plans to start the of a massive 43.3 ... its price tagwhich wasnt divulged. For comparison, China added 16.9 GW of offshore wind capacity in 2021, according ... Read More Except, that is, in one country: China. After having their economies battered by nearly three years of halted travel ... according to the government-owned news site VietnamNet. Read More Our sold-out summer was proof: Waiting to make travel plans wont work. Weve taken first steps in the pages that follow and found stellar trips for whoever you are: an adventurer or a nester ... Read More which include agencies and travel management companies. On Tuesday, Travelport announced it was the first GDS partner for the portal, providing airline content through Travelport Plus. DidaTravel ... Read More German Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to travel to China around November 3-4 in a delicate balancing act to discuss business interests and human rights violations, people familiar with the matter said. Read More Editor's Note Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel's weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations ... for your upcoming vacation plans, and Fat Bear Week weathers a cheating scandal ... Read More Its that time of year the rush to procure airline tickets and figure out travel plans for the rapidly approaching holidays. As of the first week of October, 31% of U.S. adults plan to ... Read More Are you interested in purchasing one of the above travel insurance plans? If you've recently booked a trip or you're getting ready to do so, then shop around for quotes now (before it's too late!). Read More Travel expenses can be pricey, depending on where you're going and when. So, you may be inclined to deny or refuse travel insurance as a way to cut costs. But sometimes that decision can end up ... Read More BEIJING (AP) China plans to boost coal production through ... Ren Jingdong, said at a news conference held during a ruling party congress. That would be a 12% increase over last years ... Read More Us News Us Warns Its Citizens Against North Korea Travel After New Arrest | RobinsPost News & Noticias Japans Takeo Mori said they will never tolerate the nuclear blackmail employed by Russia in its war against ... grew after recent military drills by South Korea and the US and North Korean ... Read More Iran on Friday urged its citizens in Ukraine to leave the country and warned against travel to the war-torn nation one day after the ... shield" but said, "The United States is going to pursue ... Read More North Korea's Foreign Ministry criticized the United States for expanding joint military exercises with South Korea that it ... Read More U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is warning North Korea against escalating its provocations TOKYO -- The United States will ... in a joint news conference after three-way talks in ... Read More The United States warned Monday that North Korea is "likely" to conduct a nuclear missile test after seeing an escalation of tensions in recent weeks, as well as the completion of its Punggye Ri ... Read More Warning Pyongyang against escalating its provocations, Sherman said North Korea needs to understand that the U.S. commitment to the security of South Korea and Japan is "ironclad." "And we will ... Read More The United States, has warned against ... travel to Pakistan, especially its restive provinces due to terrorism and sectarian violence. The United States Department of State urged its citizens ... Read More Officials from the United States and its ... North Korea's new nuclear policy is creating a serious tension on the Korean Peninsula, Cho told a joint news conference after talks with U.S ... Read More TOKYO The United States will make full use of its ... joint news conference after three-way talks in Washington, leaving Sherman to make a solo media appearance. Sherman said North Korea ... Read More Us News New Us Embassy In London | RobinsPost News & Noticias And they build a new embassy. Thats the good news. The bad news is it cost over ... to dissatisfaction with the embassy project. The new US Embassy in the lousy location of Nine Elms, south London ... Read More Londons new US embassy may be just a glass cube with disguised fortifications, but it is also restrained, efficient, green the antithesis of Donald Trump A giant, translucent bladderwrack ... Read More (More on the hotel below and in slideshow below) The purpose of Trumps canceled trip had been to cut the ribbon on the new $1.2 billion U.S. Embassy in a southwest London neighborhood called ... Read More It would be a third bigger than the enormous new US embassy in Vauxhall, south London. Chairman of the Royal Mint Estate Residents' Association Dave Lake said: 'All of a sudden the estate has ... Read More The US Embassy in London sent two new requests to UK authorities seeking the return of a RI man they say faked his own death and went on the run. Read More The ministry alleges the news outlets have provoked ... in the vicinity of the Iranian Embassy in London's Princes Gate will remain in place. Like us on Facebook to see similar stories Please ... Read More New leader Sunak's spokesperson says no current plan to relocate mission from Tel Aviv; Palestinian envoy to London welcomes development, says idea should never have been discussed ... Read More It is adjacent to a proposed site for a new US embassy which is also on land previously ... according to an agreement signed in London. But the UK held onto the Orange Plot and, as part ... Read More Prime Minister's office confirms that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has abandoned his predecessor's plans to move UK embassy to Jerusalem. Read More It appeared that they had rushed to destroy the Iranian embassy building when there were no police around, he added. Five males, according to the London police, have been detained for vandalizing the ... Read More On Tuesday, the new Australian foreign minister ... a state department spokesman said the US had no plans to reverse Donald Trumps decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. Read More In 2008, the US embassy in Beijing installed ... as demonstrated in this new study, says Frank Kelly at Imperial College London. Read More Us News China Complains To Us Over Lawmakers Visit To Dalai Lama | RobinsPost News & Noticias Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama on Wednesday said that he would visit U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Reuters reported. I think there are some problems to go to United States ... damage ... Read More The US policy on Tibet has lost its way and two prominent lawmakers ... China Conflict Act' faults China for failing to meet expectations of participating in dialogue with the Dalai Lama ... Read More China Accuses US of 'Cold War Thinking' in Security Strategy ... U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades, strained by disputes over technology, security, Taiwan and human ... Read More As the West seeks to forge a stronger presence in the South Pacific to counter China's security push in the ... Last month, the US struck a partnership deal with the Pacific island nations ... Read More The U.S. military is not ready to fight a major war with China, let alone a war against ... but lacks the will to defend itself. The United States must no longer tolerate Europe's insouciant ... Read More US officials have blamed President Xi for what they see as a growing effort by China over the past decade to steal US intellectual property and to crack down on Chinese political dissidents in the ... Read More And the intensifying US-China tech war threatens to undercut global growth at a time when economies are already swooning. The value of global chip maker stocks have declined by over US$240 billion ... Read More His rallying call reflects the intensifying tensions between China and the US, which has tightened the screws in recent years on the transfer of cutting-edge technology to the worlds second ... Read More We want level playing field with China: US Steel CEO The Biden administrations sweeping new export controls aimed at cutting off China from obtaining chips used in supercomputers has caused the ... Read More The White House document calls for the United States to maintain a competitive edge over China ... Mao, speaking at a regular news briefing, said China was a defender of the world ... Read More Us News West Virginia Journalist Arrested During Us Health Secretary S Visit | RobinsPost News & Noticias Federal officials are investigating complaints about conditions at a West Virginia jail ... you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your ... Read More Dr. Frank Annie sees desperation in his hospital, where 30- and 40-year-olds come in with organ failure after injecting opioids with dirty needles. Joe Solomon finds it in ... Read More according to a West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources news release. 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Read More "We are here for a very important purpose and that's ... during his press conference that was streamed on CBS News Philadelphia on Thursday morning. Two Donald Trump supporters from Virginia ... Read More Authorities believe the child ingested a large amount of THC gummies, according to a news release ... wrote. The Virginia Department of Health confirmed the childs death is considered ... Read More A Virginia man was arrested Tuesday and accused of killing ... The suspect was an acquaintance of a resident who was not home during the incident, police said. "The investigation revealed an ... Read More A Russian court has ordered the arrest of television journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, Interfax news agency said ... platform of Russia's First Channel television during a live broadcast in March ... Read More The shooting occurred early Sunday at an outdoor gathering. A 20-year-old man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of shooting eight people at an outdoor gathering near the campus of James Madison ... Read More Us News Us Arming Of Syrian Kurds Could Spark Crisis With Turkey Defense Minister Says | RobinsPost News & Noticias Editors' Blog / Analysis & Opinion News Live ... Follow TPM ANKARA, Turkey (AP) A senior U.S. official trying to negotiate the safety of Kurdish allies in northeastern Syria was apparently ... Read More Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Friday the US ... Kurdish "cantons" of Afrin and Kobane. Separately the Turkish military said it hit 52 ISIS targets in northern Syria, while the Dogan ... Read More The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria last month restated that Syria is not safe for returnees. Amid a dire economic crisis ... living in Turkey fear warming relations could led to greater ... Read More ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Trying to negotiate the safety of Kurdish allies in ... Trump discussed Syria during a phone call Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who had warned that Trump's ... Read More But for those who thought the US might be enticed to work with Turkey and Turkish-backed extremist groups in Syria, bad news ... could move Syrian refugees into areas it had ethnically cleansed of ... Read More Turkey says ... Syria and concern that thousands of jihadists being held in Syrian Kurdish prisons could use it as an opportunity to escape. The operation had seemed almost inevitable after US ... Read More Turkey has thousands of troops in northern Syria and is a vital lifeline for aid and commercial goods flowing into the region, notably Idlib. It is unlikely that HTS could have acted ... Forces (SDF), ... Read More Syrian refugees in Lebanon are facing ... forcing asylum seekers back to a country where they could be persecuted. The advocacy group said Turkey arrested, beat, and coerced Syrians even ... Read More There are some 900 U.S. forces in Syria supporting Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces ... 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events ... Read More Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also spoke to defense officials from Britain, France and Turkey over the weekend ... "If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something ... Read More Us News The Latest Haiti Will Ask Us To Renew Immigration Benefits | RobinsPost News & Noticias The United States plans to increase security and humanitarian assistance to the people of Haiti ... a new visa restriction policy under section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality ... Read More More than 280 immigration and rights groups sent a letter to the Biden admin Friday asking them not to send Haitian migrants found at sea to a Guantanamo facility. Read More The United States on Wednesday offered new help to Haiti in combatting the Caribbean ... sct/des The Barron's news department was not involved in the creation of the content above. Read More UNITED NATIONS (AP) In a story published October 17, 2022, about the United States and Mexico preparing a U.N. resolution that would authorize an assistance mission to Haiti, The Associated ... Read More US justifications for intervention ... was somehow allowed to opine in the New York Times just after the countrys giant 2010 earthquake. Left alone, Haiti would descend into chaos and ... Read More Right now, our staff are on the ground in Haiti, working alongside Haitian ... At the same time, the administration announced the US is unveiling a new visa restriction policy aimed at ... Read More The United States ... Haiti's National Police in confronting the gangs. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, said at a security council meeting on Monday that the new proposal ... Read More Four decades later, MS-13 has an estimated 10,000 members in the United States and ... Piorr told Fox News Digital. "The situation in Haiti today has sadly reached new levels of desperation." ... Read More The United States and Canada should take the lead in forming a strike force to confront Haitian gangs that have created a humanitarian crisis by blocking access to a key fuel terminal, Haiti's ... Read More SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The U.S. and Canada sent armored vehicles and other supplies to Haiti on Saturday to help police fight a powerful gang amid a pending request from the Haitian government ... Read More The United States has long been the key player in Haiti, which lies 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) off the Florida coast, but has been increasingly jaded about prospects for change after ... Read More Us News Us Senator Helps Minnesota Man Who Irs Falsely Declared Dead | RobinsPost News & Noticias Latest updates and results as Democrats perform better than expected and Fetterman wins Pennsylvania Senate race ... Read More Republican Brad Finstad wins reelection to U.S. House in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District. Read More With the election just days away, both parties are looking for an advantage in the economic news. Candidates are also fanning out on the campaign trail with support from their respective parties ... Read More World News From France S Macron To Jfk A Look At Some Of The Modern World S Youngest Leaders | RobinsPost News & Noticias French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday announced that France was ending its Barkhane anti-jihadist mission in Africa after over a decade, saying a ... Read More A rare book gifted by French President Emmanuel Macron to Pope Francis ... World War Two. Macron gave the pope the first-edition 1796 French translation of German philosopher Immanuel Kant's ... Read More Macron convened a meeting Tuesday at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris with the heads of some 50 industrial sites in France, accounting for about 10% of France's total greenhouse gas emissions. Read More France's Macron Says There Is ... it will come around at some moment," said Macron at a conference in Rome aimed at seeking ways to promote world peace. "And at a particular moment, given how ... Read More France's Macron ... leaders in Brussels sent her messages of congratulations on Saturday. Macron, who on Sunday attended a conference in Rome aimed at seeking ways to promote world peace, will ... Read More We do not want a World War. Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted: "We do not want to appease evil. Thought you guys learned that 70 years ago." Macron's comments that France ... Read More "We do not want a World War." Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 13, 2022 But France has been criticized for giving low levels of support compared to many other of Ukraine's allies in ... Read More But the world has ... the largest in France, has been on strike, disrupting fuel deliveries throughout the country.Credit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times Mr. Macrons opposition ... Read More "There is the prospect for peace, it will come around at some moment," said Macron at a conference in Rome aimed at seeking ways to promote world peace ... Sunday with France's Armed Forces ... Read More PARIS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron and new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni held talks in Rome on Sunday in the first, though informal, meeting between the two ... Read More DALLAS, May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Public Relations Global Network (PRGN) today announced the addition of two new communications agency affiliates to one of the worlds largest PR agency networks. These firms S&A Communications and asoluto joined PRGN during the consortiums recent bi-annual meeting in Dallas, Texas. PRGN members elected Christina Rytter, managing director and founder of Copenhagen, Denmark-based Scandinavian Communications as its new president. The group also unveiled a new PRGN website, which incorporates powerful search functionality to help companies find the right expertise in the right location around the globe. The new prgn.com also is a new resource for PR professionals searching for tools and templates, including press releases or plans, while serving as one of the first-ever international job search banks for the profession. Photos accompanying this announcement are available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e946f923-d8f9-4e48-879d-ba1b626d4c22 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c3c0ef41-296c-46f4-a7cb-788ef681b1d2 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0a7030cb-b888-43e3-b6fe-f78e3a709905 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9e7c3b46-0152-47af-844c-3581be660917 Rytter, who replaces Evelyn Holtzhausen, founder and director of South Africa-based HWB Communications, leads the worldwide network of 50 independently owned firms for the next 12 months. Founded in 1992 by a group of visionary public relations leaders, PRGN is planning a celebration for its 25th anniversary later this year. As we celebrate 25 years of service to our clients around the world, were thrilled to reach the 50-member mark for the organization, said Rytter. The addition of a multi-disciplinary firm in Austria further strengthens our impact across the European Union, while our expansion in the southern US increases our capabilities in such key practice areas as technology, health care and government relations. The newly inducted agencies are: S&A Communications: Founded in 1982, this North Carolina, USA-based firm is an integrated marketing brand that grew from deep-seated PR roots. For more than 35 years, it has evolved into a team of strategic marketing professionals whose driving goal is to help clients outthink, outwork and outperform their competition. S&As nationwide client base looks to them for public relations, marketing, digital, creative, photography, event planning and custom-publishing services. S&As executive leadership team includes Chuck Norman, APR, owner and principal; Bill Zadeits, owner and principal; and Ron Smith, APR, founder and owner. asoluto: The Vienna, Austria-based agency is among the country's biggest PR and communications organizations. Founded in 2011 by the merger of two long-established firms, asoluto combines traditional PR with integrated digital services, including social media campaigns and web project development under one brand. The team of 20 specialists works for both local and international clients, representing such brands as AEG, Roche, paysafecard and QuintilesIMS. asoluto earned a national award nomination for its non-smoker protection communications campaign, DONT SMOKE, which ultimately led to the passing of new legislation in Austria. asoluto is led by managing partners Robert Bauer, Brigitte Muhlbauer, Andreas Freitag, Beatrice Verdino and Martin Verdino. The New PRGN.com PRGNs enhanced website represents a significant milestone for the global network. A complete redesign of the site now allows businesses and corporations worldwide to more easily research and connect with the communications partners that fit their needs. The new, search friendly PRGN.com gives prospective clients one-stop access to a curated suite of PR services. Also, it serves as a common conversation point for member agencies to interact with each other and build business together, said Rytter. For those on the outside, its a new resource that anyone can use, including those hunting for a job in one of our 50 markets. PRGN partners meet twice a year in cities around the world. The next meeting will be held in October 2017 in Kyoto, Japan. At each meeting, the groups leadership teams discuss best practices and find new ways to collaborate and develop business partnerships globally. Agency members are independent, local, owner-operated public relations and marketing communications firms that share expertise and resources, while providing broad-based comprehensive communications strategies to clients worldwide. Companies or organizations interested in the services of PRGNs local agency network can visit www.prgn.com for more information. Independent agencies interested in joining the network can visit the member recruitment section of the PRGN website for more information or email its membership chair, Layth Dajani, founder of The Content Factory at layth@tcf-me.com. About Public Relations Global Network (PRGN) Clients across six continents depend on the combined resources of the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN) to deliver targeted public relations campaigns in markets around the world. With revenues of more than $101 million (US), PRGN is one of the worlds largest international public relations networks. PRGN harnesses the resources of 50 independent public relations firms and more than 900 communications professionals to connect international companies and organizations with individual and culturally diverse markets globally. Visit PRGN online at www.prgn.com or on twitter at @PRGN. World News Katz S Delicatessen To Launch World Wide Shipping Service | RobinsPost News & Noticias Saudi and other Gulf-state officials rebuffed an urgent appeal by U.S. officials to delay by a month a decision on a major oil-production cut by OPEC and its Russia-led allies days before the ... Read More You walk in thereits a frenzy. It'll be the first comedy show at Katz's in the deli's 134-year history, the organizers say. Levine and Mansoor, both 24, are the brains behind Underground ... Read More An Iranian man dubbed the "worlds dirtiest man" has died at the age of 94, according to state media. Amou Haji died Sunday in the village of Dezhgah, according to the Islamic Republic News ... Read More The EVERY Company, the visionary precision fermentation platform and creator of the world's first animal-free pepsin and egg proteins, today announced its entrance into the beverage alcohol space ... Read More Iranian state news agency IRNA confirmed ... Life of Amou Haji" in 2013. If Mr Haji's claims of 60 years without a wash is true, it would make him the world's dirtiest man. An Indian man called ... Read More Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) is known as of Monday under its new nameSLBto reflect its transformation from an oilfield services provider to a global technology company helping the energy ... Read More 26 (UPI) --A roller coaster at a Dubai mall was dubbed the world's fastest vertical-launch roller coaster by ... was a pair of mating pythons. Odd News // 2 days ago Halloween candy stop earns ... Read More Japan's space agency said it sent a self-destruct order to its Epsilon rocket after a failed launch on Wednesday because ... fuel Epsilon rocket has been in service since 2013. Read More Odd News // 2 days ago World's largest bread mosaic created in Mexico Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Bakers in Mexico teamed up to create 20,689 loaves of bread and assemble them into the world's largest bread ... Read More TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese space agency's Epsilon rocket failed after it was launched on Wednesday, Kyodo News and other domestic ... of a major Japanese rocket launch since 2003, and the ... Read More The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot issued a subpoena to Trump demanding documents and testimony, setting the stage for a tense standoff between lawmakers and ... Read More and now the worlds first protein-boosted hard juice, said Arturo Elizondo, CEO and co-founder of EVERY. This launch further proves EVERY Proteins capacity to unlock never-before-seen ... Read More World News Mexico Is Now The World S Deadliest Conflict Zone After Syria | RobinsPost News & Noticias This November 2nd is the World Day against Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. Reporters are not only vulnerable in war zones, but also in other countries where they can risk their lives just by ... Read More The incident has happened less than two weeks after ... region's crisis. The horror crash occurred on a sharp curve outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico ... Read More Mexico's National Guard and the ... on the Apple App Store after owner Elon Musk said the change will add a new revenue source to the company. World News // 12 hours ago COVID-19 world weekly ... Read More A dozen people were rescued from burning homes after a tanker truck crashed into a railway overpass in the central town of Aguascalientes A huge blaze erupted in central Mexico after a fuel tanker ... Read More Mexicos Congress has approved a constitutional reform ... He eliminated the civilian federal police and created the National Guard, which he now wants to hand over completely to the Defense ... Read More Speaking after ... Mexico not to be swept up in the U.S. electoral rhetoric. "We don't want to see the migration issue and Mexico to be part of the debate in United States," he told a regular news ... Read More This years Time Out ... to be right now. The title of the coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2022 goes to Colonia Americana! This downtown district of Guadalajara in Mexico topped the ... Read More Alcohol will be sold at special zones around the eight tournament stadiums before and after games, in a FIFA fan zone and ... at the World Cups in Mexico in 1970 and 1986. "It's a very devoted ... Read More becoming the 29th of Mexico's 32 states to do so. "Equal marriage is a public institution, whereby two people freely decide to share a life," the state's legislative body said in a tweet, after ... Read More An Iranian man dubbed the "worlds dirtiest man" has died at the age of 94, according to state media. Amou Haji died Sunday in the village of Dezhgah, according to the Islamic Republic News ... Read More According to world soccer's governing body FIFA, Mexico will have one of the biggest fan contingents at the World Cup. Mexico are in Group C where they will face Poland, Argentina and Saudi Arabia. Read More Mexico national soccer team fans pose with a replica of the World Cup trophy in the Iztapalapa neighborhood of Mexico City, Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022. The World Cup tour kicked off in May in Dubai and ... Read More World News Story Israel Slams Rights Violator Erdogan Over Threatening Jerusalem Remarks | RobinsPost News & Noticias "Jerusalem is the eternal and united capital of Israel and nothing will ever change ... caused friction with neighbouring Indonesia -- the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation ... Read More But in modern times, many in the international community refuse to acknowledge that Jerusalem is part of Israel, even though most world leaders ... the argument over Jerusalem has often focused ... Read More Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and later annexed that part of the city. It considers the entire city its eternal, undivided ... Read More "Jerusalem is the eternal and united capital of Israel and nothing ... gl/kir The Barron's news department was not involved in the creation of the content above. This story was produced by AFP. Read More Jerusalem is the eternal undivided capital of Israel and nothing will change that, Lapid said in a statement. Israels Foreign Ministry said it would summon the Australian ambassador over ... Read More Nasser Mashni, vice president of the human rights group ... in recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered ... Read More The Palestinian statehood issue is not on the agenda in Bidens first Middle East trip as president, adding to anger over Al Jazeera ... been killed. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the ... Read More Australia said Tuesday it would no longer recognise West Jerusalem as Israel's capital ... friction with neighbouring Indonesia -- the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation -- temporarily ... Read More Australia has reversed a previous governments recognition of west Jerusalem ... Israels Foreign Ministry said it will summon the Australian ambassador to express deep disappointment ... Read More Image: Donald Trump formally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017 Donald Trump was condemned in many parts of the world when he officially recognised Jerusalem as the capital of ... Read More English French Suresnes - May 10, 2017 at 6 p.m. Fromageries Bel First-quarter financial information Sales Sales advance 12.4% in Q1 2017 In the first quarter of 2017, the Fromageries Bel Group generated consolidated sales of 822 million, up 12.4% over the prior-year period. Excluding the negative 0.5% impact from foreign exchange fluctuations and the positive impact of consolidating Mont-Blanc Materne (MOM), a company acquired in December 2016, consolidated sales declined 1.2% organically in Q1 2017. The sales performance is presented by geographical region in the following table: First quarter (in millions of euros) 2017 2016 % change Europe 440 380 15.8% Middle East & Greater Africa 199 223 -10.7% Americas, Asia-Pacific 183 128 42.6% TOTAL 822 731 12.4% In Europe, volume growth slowed in the first quarter as a result of fierce competition among food retailers, particularly against a backdrop of a sharp increase in milk and dairy raw material prices. Excluding the impact from changes in the consolidation scope, sales in Europe grew 1.0% during the period. Markets in the Middle East and Greater Africa region, affected by unrest in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and other countries, continued to suffer from supply issues and lower consumer purchasing power. Sales in the region declined markedly in the first quarter of the year, and the region was further negatively impacted by the depreciation of the Egyptian pound. The Americas, Asia-Pacific region reported a strong performance with sales advancing 5.6%, excluding the MOM acquisition. The most buoyant markets were in Asia, where double-digit sales growth was achieved in Q1 2017. Outlook for 2017 On April 18, 2017, the Group successfully completed a 500-million bond placement with a coupon of 1.50% and maturing in April 2024. The proceeds from the issue are earmarked to cover Fromageries Bel's general needs and potentially to refinance a share of existing debt. The issue will also extend the average maturity of the company's financing and further diversifies Bel's funding sources. The sharp rise in milk and dairy raw material prices observed in world markets since the end of 2016 will weigh on operating margin in 2017. In addition, economic conditions have durably eroded in regions affected by armed conflict, negatively impacting sales in the Middle East and Greater Africa region in particular. Lastly, unbridled competition among food retailers in both Europe and North America continues to hamper the deployment of promotional campaign plans for the Group's brands. In this environment, the Group will focus in particular on future projects in the healthy snack market, following the consolidation of its latest acquisitions, Safilait and MOM. Further, Bel will continue efforts to improve industrial productivity and to tightly manage resources, while following its aggressive strategy for advancing its global positions by building on the vitality of its brands and the talent of its teams. This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Such trend and/or target information should in no way be regarded as earnings forecast data or performance indicators of any kind. This information is by nature subject to risks and uncertainties that may be beyond the Company's control. A detailed description of these risks and uncertainties is provided in the Company's Registration Document, available at (www.groupe-bel.com). More comprehensive information about the Bel Group can be found in the "Regulatory Information" section of the www.groupe-bel.com website. English French Press release Paris, 10 May 2017 Q1-2017 revenue Continued strong business growth: +25.7% Record customer acquisition: 240,000 new sites m Q1 2017 (*) Q1 2016 Change Revenue from ordinary business (**) 648.5 516.0 + 25.7% of which revenue excluding energy management margin 616.7 509.7 + 21.0% of which energy management margin 31.8 6.3 x5 (*) unaudited figures, estimated turnover (**) details of contribution by segment in Appendix Striking commercial growth once again Q1-2017 revenue shows once again strong growth of +25.7% compared to the same period in 2016, and reaches 648.5 million. Supported by all business segments, increase on a like-for-like basis (+24.3% to 641.4 million) is all the more impressive as it compares to record growth of +62% over the same period in 2016. Among the highlights is the upswing in power production, recognized in energy management margin, under the combined effect of the first contribution from the Marcinelle combined gas cycle power plant of 7.1 million, with production of 425 GWh, and the Bayet combined gas cycle power plant which contribution is multiplied by 5 to reach 25.5 million (production of 505 GWh). Continued momentum for sales With 233,000 customer sites acquired in France, the Group confirms its ability to continue the sales growth over extended periods. This new acceleration is mainly driven by the residential segment with 202,000 new customer sites, as compared to 138,000 over the same period in the previous year (+46.4%). This performance enables the Group's French customer portfolio to increase by 7.9% compared to 31 December 2016 with 2,227,000 customer sites at 31 March 2017. As a reminder, Q1 2016 fully benefited from the termination of regulated "yellow" and "green" tariffs whose implementation starting 1 January 2016 exceptionally boosted commercial acquisitions in the "Major Accounts" segment with 66,000 new sites as compared to 21,000 for Q1 2017. 2017 outlook Based on these commercial achievements, the Group confirms its 2017 annual targets: A portfolio of 2.5 million customer sites; Revenue of 2,000 million at seasonal average temperatures and; Current operating profit of 100 million at seasonal average temperatures. Next publication: H1-2017 revenue and results: 27 September 2017 after market ISIN Code: FR0004191674 / Mnemonic: DIREN / Euronext Paris, Compartment A About Direct Energie Third-largest French electricity and gas provider, the Direct Energie Group supplies, in France and Belgium (under the Poweo brand) more than 2.1 million residential and non-residential customer sites. As an integrated energy actor, Direct Energie produces power, supplies gas and electricity, and sells energy services to its customers. Direct Energie's success has been underpinned for more than 14 years by its technical expertise, excellent customer relationships and innovation capacity. In 2016, the Group generated consolidated revenues of 1,692.4 million and delivered 19.8 TWh of energy. For more information, visit our website: www.direct-energie.com Press contact: Image Sept Gregoire Lucas - glucas@image7.fr - Tel +33 (0)1 53 70 74 94 Marie Artzner - martzner@image7.fr - Tel +33 (0)1 53 70 74 31 or +33 (0)6 75 74 31 73 CM CIC Market Solutions Stephanie Stahr - stephanie.stahr@cmcic.fr - Tel +33 (0)1 53 48 80 57 Direct Energie Mathieu Behar - mathieu.behar@direct-energie.com - Tel +33 (0)6 12 48 85 85 Segment reporting In thousands of euros Commercial Trade Production Total Total France Belgium France Belgium France Belgium Revenue at 31 March 2017 (*) Revenue from ordinary activities 604,724 11,070 25,553 7,117 630,277 18,187 648,463 Revenue at 31 March 2016 Revenue from ordinary activities 502,529 8,448 5,060 - 507,589 8,448 516,037 (*) Estimated revenue Pictured from left to right are: Teacher Abigail Stoner, Rhys Richards, Kristian Eaves, Alfie Bashforth and IT technician Niels Puttemans. YOUNG robot builders were left buzzing by a life-changing trip to the USA to battle against other school-aged engineers. The All Stars from Brampton Ellis Primary School flew the flag for their school, town and country the map at the Vex IQ Worlds Challenge event in Kentucky. Accompanied by teacher Abigail Stoner and IT technician Niels Puttemans, the four-strong team of Matthew Chambers, Kristian Eaves, Rhys Richards and Alfie Bashforth just below halfway in the league table of teams from around the world. Nicola McMullen, community project manager for the James Montgomery Academy Trust, which runs Brampton Ellis, said: This was a fantastic result considering they only started in September and were the first UK primary team to make it this far in the finals. It was a life changing experience for the full team. They all had an amazing time and returned absolutely buzzing.We are very proud of our young team and they now have aspirations to become engineers of our future. The team, then including classmate Lillie Travers, booked their place by taking the Elementary School Excellence Award in the north-eastern regional challenge at Wath Comprehensive School in February. A crowdfunding page was launched to help pay for T-shirts, activity packs to keep the children entertained on their long journey, cameras, journals and even a large Union Flag. Another team from Brampton Ellis known as the Robot Wolves won the regional final and went on to last weeks national final, where they finished 28th out of 40. 10 May 2017 HARBOURVEST GLOBAL PRIVATE EQUITY TO ANNOUNCE ANNUAL RESULTS ON 12 MAY 2017 HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited ("HVPE"), a closed-end investment company listed on the London Stock Exchange, will announce its annual results to 31 January 2017 on Friday 12 May 2017. The Annual Report and Audited Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying press release will be available on HVPE's website on 12 May 2017. Enquiries: HVPE Richard Hickman Tel: +44 (0)20 7399 9847 rhickman@harbourvest.com Charlotte Edgar HarbourVest Partners Laura Thaxter Tel: +44 (0)20 7399 9826 Tel: +1 (617) 348 3695 cedgar@harbourvest.com lthaxter@harbourvest.com MHP Communications Jamie Ricketts / Mark Lunn / Kelsey Traynor Tel: +44(0)20 3128 8100 hvpe@mhpc.com Notes to Editors: About HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited: HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited ("HVPE" or the "Company") is a Guernsey-incorporated, closed-end investment company which is listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 index. HVPE is designed to offer shareholders long-term capital appreciation by investing in a private equity portfolio diversified by geography, stage of investment, vintage year, and industry. The Company invests in and alongside HarbourVest-managed funds which focus on primary fund commitments, secondary investments and direct co-investments in operating companies. HVPE's investment manager is HarbourVest Advisers L.P., an affiliate of HarbourVest Partners, LLC, an independent, global private markets asset manager with 35 years of experience. About HarbourVest Partners, LLC: HarbourVest is an independent, global private markets asset manager with 35 years of experience and more than $40 billion in assets under management. The Firm's powerful global platform offers clients investment opportunities through primary fund investments, secondary investments, and direct co-investments in commingled funds or separately managed accounts. HarbourVest has more than 400 employees, including more than 100 investment professionals across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This global team has committed more than $34 billion to newly-formed funds, completed over $16 billion in secondary purchases, and invested $6 billion directly in operating companies. Partnering with HarbourVest, clients have access to customised solutions, longstanding relationships, actionable insights, and proven results. This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute or form part of any offer to issue or sell, or the solicitation of an offer to acquire, purchase or subscribe for, any securities in any jurisdiction and should not be relied upon in connection with any decision to subscribe for or acquire any Shares. In particular, this announcement does not constitute or form part of any offer to issue or sell, or the solicitation of an offer to acquire, purchase or subscribe for, any securities in the United States or to US Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended ("US Persons")). Neither this announcement nor any copy of it may be taken, released, published or distributed, directly or indirectly to US Persons or in or into the United States (including its territories and possessions), Canada, Australia or Japan, or any jurisdiction where such action would be unlawful. Accordingly, recipients represent that they are able to receive this announcement without contravention of any applicable legal or regulatory restrictions in the jurisdiction in which they reside or conduct business. No recipient may distribute, or make available, this announcement (directly or indirectly) to any other person. Recipients of this announcement should inform themselves about and observe any applicable legal requirements in their jurisdictions. The Shares have not been and will not be registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") or with any securities regulatory authority of any state or other jurisdiction of the United States and, accordingly, may not be offered, sold, resold, transferred, delivered or distributed, directly or indirectly, within the United States or to US Persons. In addition, the Company is not registered under the US Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the "Investment Company Act") and shareholders of the Company will not have the protections of that act. There will be no public offer of the Shares in the United States or to US Persons. This announcement has been prepared by the Company and its investment manager, HarbourVest Advisers L.P. (the "Investment Manager"). No liability whatsoever (whether in negligence or otherwise) arising directly or indirectly from the use of this announcement is accepted and no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, is or will be made by the Company, the Investment Manager or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, advisers, representatives or other agents ("Agents") for any information or any of the opinions contained herein or for any errors, omissions or misstatements. None of the Investment Manager nor any of their respective Agents makes or has been authorised to make any representation or warranties (express or implied) in relation to the Company or as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of this announcement, or any other written or oral statement provided. In particular, no representation or warranty is given as to the achievement or reasonableness of, and no reliance should be placed on any projections, targets, estimates or forecasts contained in this announcement and nothing in this announcement is or should be relied on as a promise or representation as to the future. Other than as required by applicable laws, the Company gives no undertaking to update this announcement or any additional information, or to correct any inaccuracies in it which may become apparent and the distribution of this announcement. The information contained in this announcement is given at the date of its publication and is subject to updating, revision and amendment. The contents of this announcement have not been approved by any competent regulatory or supervisory authority. This announcement includes statements that are, or may be deemed to be, "forward looking statements". These forward looking statements can be identified by the use of forward looking terminology, including the terms "believes", "projects", "estimates", "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "plans", "goal", "target", "aim", "may", "will", "would", "could", "should" or "continue" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology. These forward looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts and include statements regarding the intentions, beliefs or current expectations of the Company. By their nature, forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future and may be beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. More detailed information on the potential factors which could affect the financial results of the Company is contained in the Company's public filings and reports. All investments are subject to risk. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Prospective investors are advised to seek expert legal, financial, tax and other professional advice before making any investment decision. The value of investments may fluctuate. Results achieved in the past are no guarantee of future results. This announcement is issued by the Company, whose registered address is Ground Floor Dorey Court, Admiral Park, St Peter Port, Guernsey, GY1 2HT. 2017 HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited. All rights reserved. Jane Collins UKIP MEP Jane Collins could face bankruptcy after she failed to pay damages to Rotherhams three MPs over libellous remarks she made about the towns child abuse scandal. Ms Collins was ordered to pay 358,000 in damages and costs in February after being sued by Kevin Barron, John Healey and Sarah Champion for libel and slander. She appeared in court in Hull on Monday after failing to pay up. Speaking after the hearing, a spokesman for Ms Collins said she could be made bankrupt if she cannot make the payments owed. Ms Collins claimed in a 2014 conference speech months before she stood for election as MP for Rotherham that the MPs knew about child exploitation in the town but did nothing to intervene and failed in a court bid to prove she was entitled to MEPs immunity. The claims came just a month after a report found that at least 1,400 children in the borough were abused between 1997 and 2013. Ms Collins was ordered to pay a total of 162,000 in damages to the MPs and 120,000 towards the 196,000 legal bill within 21 days, but failed to do so. She appeared at Hull County Court to discuss a demand for payment issued by the MPs lawyers. Her spokesman said the judge had now ordered that an examination of her assets should take place before June 8. Speaking after the damages hearing, Ms Champion said that if the MPs did receive any money it would be fabulous to give some of it to childrens charities, in particular those that work with survivors of abuse. De Beers said it improved its returns to governments, communities, supply chain partners and its joint venture partners by 26 percent to $5 billion in 2016. It said in its latest Report to Society that this was through taxes, payments for goods and services and dividends. De Beers said the increase in returns confirmed an improved financial and operating performance in a year that it signed a milestone sales agreement with Namibia and opened the Gahcho Kue diamond mine in Canada. The group further sold $1.4 billion of rough diamonds to local cutting and polishing businesses within its producer countries a more than 70 per cent increase on 2015 as part of its in-country beneficiation strategy. Goods and services amounting to more than $1 billion were procured by the company within its producer countries, it said, which was a three percent increase from the previous year. Last year our partnerships delivered significant value for the countries in which we operate. Through our $1 billion investment in local goods and services, we helped put local supply chains to work, sustaining jobs and encouraging socio-economic development, said De Beers chief executive Bruce Cleaver. As the worlds leading diamond company, we have a responsibility to the people in the countries we operate in to ensure the value of what we mine below ground is realised at a local level above ground. The group mines diamonds in Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished The Tanzanian government met with officials from Petra Diamonds Thursday afternoon on the sideline of the Arusha Gem Fair to discuss the implementation of a new regulation that compels mining companies to cede 30 percent of their equity to locals as well as list on the Dar es Salaam stock exchange. The new regulations, which seek to promote local ownership and build the countrys capital markets should be implemented by August 23 this year. Rough & Polished witnessed the ministry of energy and minerals representatives holding a meeting with Petra officials. Tanzanias commissioner for minerals Benjamin Mchwampaka told Rough & Polished minutes before the meeting started that government had not yet decided on whether Petra should cede 30 percent of its current 75 percent stake in Williamson Diamonds, according to the new regulation. Government currently own a 25 percent stake in the mine. We are still consulting, we will be meeting with Petra, as our partner, to see how best we can take this issue without affecting both sides, he said. However, some officials were arguing that the government stake in Williamson Diamonds was not public held so Petra should still relinquish 30 percent of its stake to the public. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished A British non-governmental organisation, Survival International, is reportedly opposed to the recent awarding of new prospecting licences to Sunland Minerals, a joint venture company between Botswana Diamonds and Alrosa. Sunland was awarded six prospecting licences last month. Four were in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) covering 3,135 square kilometres, while the other two were in the Orapa kimberlite province covering 482 square kilometres. The CKGR area was close to the Gem Diamonds Gope Mine as well as high interest projects held by the Maibwe Joint Venture, where Botswana Diamonds was a partner. However, Africa Intelligence quoted Survival, which works to stop the displacement of indigenous peoples, as saying that it was concerned by the location of four of these licences inside the CKGR where several Bushmen communities live. The Bushmen won a landmark case in late 2006 at the high court of Botswana, under which it was made illegal to expel local populations from the CKGR. Survival had protested De Beers presence in the reserve since 2003 and its efforts were rewarded when the diamond giant withdrew its activities in 2008. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished Cabinet office is set to release preliminary Japan leading economic indicators data for March at 1:00 am ET Wednesday. The leading index is expected to show a score of 105.5, up from 104.8 in February. Ahead of the data, the yen fell against its major rivals. As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 123.93 against the euro, 147.34 against the pound, 113.04 against the Swiss franc and 113.79 against the U.S. dollar. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Forex News The US Government has strongly warned its citizens not to travel to North Korea following the arrest of a fourth US citizen in the reclusive Communist nation. In a Travel Warning issued Tuesday, the Department of State warned that U.S. citizens are at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea's system of law enforcement. At least 16 U.S. citizens have been detained in North Korea in the past ten years. Those who decide to enter North Korea against the advice of this Travel Warning have been advised not to expect any privacy in that country. All electronic and multimedia devices including USB drives, CDs, DVDs, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, Internet browsing histories, and cookies are subject to search for banned content. Since the United States does not maintain diplomatic or consular relations with North Korea, the U.S. government has no means to provide normal consular services to U.S. citizens. The Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang is the Protecting Power for U.S. citizens there, providing limited consular services to U.S. citizens who require emergency assistance. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Editors Pick Facebook parent Meta Platforms decided to lay off more than 11,000 employees, representing about 13 percent of its global workforce, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. The reductions are across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs segments. In a message to Meta employees, Zuckerberg said the company intends to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending... The Wendy's reported on Wednesday that profit for the third quarter increased 23 percent from last year, driven by higher operating profit and double-digit revenue growth. Adjusted earnings per share topped analysts' estimates by a penny, while quarterly revenues missed their estimates. The company also maintained its adjusted earnings guidance for the full-year 2022. Tesla Inc. founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has sold at least $3.95 billion worth of his stake in the electric vehicle maker after completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc., U.S. regulatory filings showed. In pre-market activity on Nasdaq, Tesla shares were gaining around 1.5 percent to trade at $194.22. The New York Times is offering a "Brexit Means Brexit" tour of London for $6,000, that will help tourists understand what does Britain's exit from the European Union will actually mean to the country and rest of the world. "It is still unclear what Brexit will ultimately mean for the U.K., politically and economically. On this six-day journey to London with New York Times experts, examine the historic implications of a historic vote," the New York Times said in its website. "Prime Minister Theresa May said that 'Brexit means Brexit,' but what does this really mean for the British and the international community beyond? Did the voters really know what they were voting for? Does the British government have the power to begin the separation from the EU? And what of the impact on Europe and the strength of the union?" the Post states. Tourists will have to pay $5,995 for the six-days and five-night trip, which includes a walking tour of Westminster, the political center of London, taking in the Houses of Parliament and Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The tour will be guided by Steve Erlanger, the London bureau chief of The New York Times. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News English French Annual General Shareholders' Meeting of May 10, 2017 - Shareholders' approval of the financial statements for 2016 - - Dividend of 2.96 per share payable as of May 18, 2017 - - Board Composition: renewal and appointments - Paris, France - May 10, 2017 - The Combined General Shareholders' Meeting of Sanofi was held today at the Palais des Congres in Paris under the chairmanship of Serge Weinberg. All resolutions submitted to the vote were adopted by its shareholders. The shareholders approved, among other resolutions, the individual Company and consolidated financial statements for the year 2016. At the General Meeting, shareholders decided the distribution of a cash dividend in the amount of 2.96 per share with payment as of May 18, 2017. The General Meeting also renewed as Director Fabienne Lecorvaisier and approved the appointment of Bernard Charles and Melanie Lee as independent Directors, for a term of four years, i.e., until the General Meeting called to approve the financial statements for the year 2020. Following the General Meeting, the new Board of Directors is comprised of 14 members, of whom six are women. A large majority of the Board's Directors is independent Serge Weinberg*, Chairman of the Board of Directors Olivier Brandicourt, Chief Executive Officer Laurent Attal Robert Castaigne* Bernard Charles* Claudie Haignere* Patrick Kron* Fabienne Lecorvaisier* Melanie Lee* Suet-Fern Lee* Christian Mulliez Carole Piwnica* Diane Souza* Thomas Sudhof* The composition of the committees remains unchanged. The voting results will be available on the Company's website (www.sanofi.com) in the coming days. The audiocast of the Annual General Shareholder Meeting is available on the Company's website (www.sanofi.com). About Sanofi Sanofi, a global healthcare leader, discovers, develops and distributes therapeutic solutions focused on patients' needs. Sanofi is organized into five global business units: Diabetes and Cardiovascular, General Medicines and Emerging Markets, Sanofi Genzyme, Sanofi Pasteur and Consumer Healthcare. Sanofi is listed in Paris (EURONEXT: SAN) and in New York (NYSE: SNY). Contacts: Relations Presse Laurence Bollack + (33) 1 53 77 46 46 mr@sanofi.com Relations Investisseurs George Grofik + (33) 1 53 77 45 45 ir@sanofi.com (* Independent Director) French English Havas Annual Shareholders' Meeting The Havas Annual Shareholders' Meeting took place today at the Group's headquarters and was chaired by Yannick Bollore. All the proposed resolutions were adopted. The dividend of 18 cents per share (an increase of 20% compared to the dividend paid in 2016) payable in cash or in new shares, will be paid on June 13th 2017. Concerning the option for the dividend to be paid in shares, the subscription price is set at 7.48 euros and the subscription period will run from May 17 to June 2nd 2017 included. The terms of office of Mr Jacques Seguela, Mr Yves Cannac, Mr Stephane Israel and Madame Christine Ockrent as well as those of the companies Bollore SA, Financiere de Sainte Marine, Financiere de Longchamp and Longchamp Participations were renewed for a further term of three years. Detailed voting results may be consulted on the Havas Group website under "Shareholders Meeting" of May 10, 2017. ---- About Havas Group Havas is one of the world's largest global communications groups. Founded in 1835 in Paris, the Group now employs 20,000 people in over 100 countries. Havas Group is committed to being the world's best company at creating meaningful connections between people and brands through creativity, media and innovation. Based on a client-centric and regional organization, Havas is also the most integrated Group in its sector: the Together strategy is implemented through its Havas Villages, where most creative, media and healthcare teams share the same premises ensuring agility and a seamless experience for clients. Further information about Havas Group is available on the company's website: www.havasgroup.com Contact : Lorella Gessa Chief Communications Officer, Havas Group +33 (0)1 58 47 90 36 lorella.gessa@havas.com @Lorella_Gessa Aurelie Jolion Directrice des Relations Investisseurs, Havas Group +33 (0)1 58 47 92 42 aurelie.jolion@havas.com 29-30 quai de Dion Bouton, 92817 Puteaux Cedex, France Tel +33 (0) 1 58 47 80 00 SA au capital de 167 862 108 - 335 480 265 RCS Nanterre - APE 7311Z Attachments: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c0dc68e7-ebbf-4417-975c-cb831f9b9d7a Bowling Green, Kentucky , May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ba2145a6-3fe6-4659-9fd9-76787e7890e8 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ba2145a6-3fe6-4659-9fd9-76787e7890e8 Today, the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, Bowling Green Independent School District, and the Warren County School District kicked off the SCK LAUNCH talent initiative that will be piloted in both school districts beginning this summer. SCK LAUNCH stands for Learning About Unique and New Careers Here and is an overarching talent development strategy aimed at helping raise student career awareness, develop employability skills and empower students to leverage their options upon graduation. SCK LAUNCH is a collective effort of the community intended to inspire the powerful education and business partnerships necessary to create the talent pipeline for high-demand sectors to grow the South Central Kentucky economy. The initiative will build on and enhance work already going on in Bowling Green and Warren County high schools to offer career shadowing, educator externships, career academies, and employability skills training as a way to inspire students and provide valuable learning opportunities that engage their personal interest and career aspirations. SCK LAUNCH Experience, a hands-on career expo and curriculum held annually for area 8th graders is also a part of the newly launched initiative. This years expo will take place on November 16th at the Bowling Green High School Arena. The collaborative community approach of SCK LAUNCH builds on the work of the Leader in Me, as well as efforts to ensure students graduate from high school, college and/or career ready, said Gary Fields, Superintendent of Bowling Green Independent Schools. The opportunities provided by our Chamber of Commerce, our local businesses, and industry are beyond what we could offer in the school buildings alone. All of the SCK LAUNCH components provide real, relevant career exploration to help students make decisions for the future. The work of SCK LAUNCH is a great testament to our communitys investment in our students and schools, as well as our regions future workforce. According to Warren County Schools Superintendent Rob Clayton, Two of our top priorities in Warren County Public Schools are Ensuring Student Learning and Ensuring Student Opportunities. The SCK LAUNCH partnership with the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce allows us to take those commitments to the next level through a unique hands-ons experience designed to provide our students with skills and experiences that will lay the foundation for a successful future as they leave WCPS. I am grateful for the Chambers commitment to excellence and for its partnership as it supports educators in giving every student strong opportunities." Over the past several months, a Steering Committee of business and education partners and four tactic teams met regularly to design specific components of the plan including career shadowing, teacher externships, student led leadership, and communications and marketing. The group collectively wrote a Community Plan and designed toolkits which will serve as the roadmap for schools and businesses who are implementing the initiative. Henkel, Med Center Health, Independence Bank, and Stewart-Richey will be the first companies to offer teacher externship and career shadowing opportunities. To develop this unique, first of its kind educational model the Chamber partnered with several entities: Ford NGL and Alignment USA helped the team envision pathway and academy models, Covey principles led the teams work on employability skills, and Gallup work experience indicators helped inform the career shadowing modules. Today is an exciting day for Bowling Green and Warren County, said Ron Bunch, President and CEO of the Chamber. In 2011, the business community raised $1.4 million to ensure The Leader In Me was available in every public school in Bowling Green and Warren County. That was a brave first step and a national first - toward ensuring the quality of the future workforce of this community. Today, we take another giant leap with another national model - in ensuring that our students are empowered to leverage their options upon graduation. I would like to thank the Bowling Green Independent and Warren County School Districts for their vision and their commitment and we look forward to continuing to work with them as we implement this exciting initiative. Warren County is a thriving community that continues to grow and prosper. I am delighted today to celebrate the kick off of the SCK LAUNCH initiative and I look forward to watching the further development of our community as our business and educational communities collaborate and create a world-class pool of talent. I offer my congratulations and my thanks to all the businesses and educators that have served on the steering committee and tactic teams, and also to those businesses that have already stepped up to contribute, said Warren County Judge Executive Mike Buchanon. Mayor Bruce Wilkerson noted, I am delighted to celebrate this exciting announcement today. The unmatched collaboration between businesses, students, and educators creates powerful linkages to the community that will serve us for decades to come. Congratulations on this outstanding achievement. To learn more about the initiative and available volunteer opportunities, please contact Meredith Robinson or Sandra Baker at the Chamber or visit the initiative website at SCKLAUNCH.com. By SA Commercial Prop News South African Real Estate ranks as the best-performing South African subcategory in latest quarterly PlexCrown Survey for the March quarter with 8,04% dividends and interest reinvested. Global Equity General with a return of 16,43% was rated the best-performing unit trust subcategory for the quarter to 31 March 2013, while Global Real Estate was the best subcategory overall for the year with a return of 39,11%, according to PlexCrown Fund Ratings latest findings. South African Real Estate ranks as the best-performing South African subcategory in latest quarterly PlexCrown Survey for the March quarter with 8,04% (dividends and interest reinvested), followed by South African Equity Industrial and South African Equity Mid- and Small Cap with 6,73% and 6,19% respectively. The subcategory was also the third-best overall over one and five years and second-best over three years. The Resources subcategory was the worst-performing subcategory over all periods measured to the end of the March quarter. Old Mutual Global Equity Fund and Allan Gray-Orbis Global Equity Feeder Fund were the best performing funds over the quarter with total returns of 22,94% and 22,79% respectively. Prescient Africa Equity Fund and Momentum Africa Fund were the best performing funds over the last year to 31 March with 53,82% and 53,66% respectively, while Satrix INDI and Coronation Industrial topped the charts over three and five years respectively. In the quarter, 445 funds were rated compared to 381 funds at the end of December 2012. The increase was mostly due to the fact that funds, which were previously unrated due to their listings in subcategories where benchmarks and mandates varied widely, were moved into subcategories where they can now be compared to similar funds. In total, 17 funds lost their ratings. Coronation was again the leading management company in the first quarter of 2013 and achieved a near-perfect overall rating of 4.906 PlexCrowns out of a maximum of 5.000. Coronation had the highest South African rating of 4.926 PlexCrowns. This was secured by a fifth-highest rating in the broad South African Equity and Real Estate category, third-highest ratings in South African Interest-bearing and Income and the broad South African Multi-asset classes. Coronation also had the third-highest rating in Global and Worldwide with 4.793 PlexCrowns. Six of Coronations funds were ranked top in their respective subcategories, while 16 (84%) of the companys 19 rated funds achieved above-average ratings of 4 or more PlexCrowns. Total Overall PlexCrowns Rank Coronation 4.906 1 Allan Gray 4.613 2 Nedgroup Investments 3.837 3 Absa 3.603 4 PSG 3.577 5 Marriott 3.561 6 Investment Solutions 3.438 7 Prudential 3.362 8 SIM 3.308 9 Old Mutual 3.031 10 Discovery 2.986 11 Investec 2.941 12 STANLIB 2.894 13 Momentum 2.793 14 Prescient 2.541 15 Oasis 2.492 16 Allan Gray had the second highest overall rating with 4.613 PlexCrowns. Allan Gray had the second-highest South African rating of 4.721 PlexCrowns that was underpinned by sharing the highest ratings in the broad South African Equity and Real Estate and the South African Interest-bearing and Income categories respectively. The company had the fifth-highest rating in the South African Multi-asset category and also shared the fifth-highest rating in the Global and Worldwide category. Five (71%) of the investment houses rated funds achieved above-average ratings of 4 or more PlexCrowns. Nedgroup Investments had the third highest management company rating with 3.837 PlexCrowns. Nedgroup Investments South African rating of 3.967 PlexCrowns was the third-highest of all management companies and was underscored by fourth places in the South African Interest-bearing and Income and the South African Multi-asset categories. The investment houses overall rating was, however, diluted somewhat by average showings in the broad South African Equity and Real Estate category and the Global and Worldwide category. Seven of the companys 15 rated funds had above-average ratings. Among the management companies that did not qualify for overall management company ratings, Foord shared the highest ratings in the broad South African Equity and Real Estate and South African Multi-asset categories, while Regarding Capital Management led the way in the broad Global and Worldwide category. FirstGlobal was the only non-management company with its funds administered as third-party funds by a registered management company that conformed to the requirements for an overall rating. The company achieved an overall rating of 3.723 PlexCrowns. The best-performing foreign category for the three months ended March 2013 was the Japan-Equity-General category with 22,45%. Global-Real Estate-General was the best-performing category over 12 months with 38,62%. The USA-Equity-Varied Specialist category was the best-performing category over three and five years with 23,38% and 14,22% per year respectively. The Franklin Biotechnology Discovery Fund was the best-performing FSB-approved foreign fund for three and 12 months with 29,55% and 55,43% respectively. At the end of March, 104 FSB-approved foreign funds were rated, compared to the 90 at the end of the previous quarter. Oasis was the leading FCIS manager with an overall offshore rating of 4.250 PlexCrowns. This was underscored by achieving a top rating in Global Real Estate General and a joint eighth place in Global Equity. Momentum was runner-up with an overall offshore rating of 4.000 PlexCrowns. The investment house achieved the joint second-highest rating in Global Asset Allocation and joint third-highest rating in Global Equity. AF (Alexander Forbes) Strategic had the third-highest overall offshore rating of 3.750 PlexCrowns. The PlexCrown Survey was based on data provided by Profile Data and new fund classifications by ASISA that became effective on 1 January 2013. India on Wednesday said its move to approach the International Court of Justice on alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav was a "carefully considered decision" to save the life of an Indian and ensure justice after Pakistan denied its 16 requests for consular access. "It is a carefully considered decision in the interests of a citizen facing threat to his life and for ensuring justice," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Gopal Baglay said here on Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court for spying. Terming the death sentence and the process adopted by Pakistan as a "contravention of international law", Baglay said that India got "no response" from Pakistan on getting the documents of the case and the charge sheet. He also said there is no word on the visa application by Jadhav's parents to visit their son. On Tuesday, the ICJ suspended the death sentence on Jadhav, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said. "I have spoken to the mother of #KulbhushanJadhav and told her about the order of President, ICJ under Art 74 Paragraph 4 of Rules of Court," she tweeted. She said that legal luminary Harish Salve was representing the country on the matter. India had moved the court on Monday seeking a set of reliefs including "by way of suspension of the sentence of death awarded to the accused", and "restraining Pakistan from giving effect to the sentence awarded by the military court". Jadhav, a former Indian naval officer, was allegedly arrested in Balochistan in March 2016. Pakistan said Jadhav worked for the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). A military court sentenced him to death on April 10 on charges of espionage and waging war against Islamabad. New Delhi had warned that if Jadhav was hanged, it would be considered "premeditated murder" by Islamabad. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Wednesday held a meeting amid the stay order from the International Court of Justice against the hanging of Indian "spy" Kulbushan Jadhav. The meeting between Bajwa and Sharif was the second within a week and is significant in the light of the prevailing civil-military relations in the country. Sources, quoted by Geo News, said that the Prime Minister was briefed on the ICJ order. Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General Inter-Services Intelligence Lt. Gen Naveed Mukhtar while Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was also present at the meeting. Reacting to the stay order, Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister Sartaj Aziz here said: "We are analysing the Indian petition and the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) authority (on the case)." Earlier, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, India's decision to move the ICJ to halt the death sentence awarded to Jadhav was an attempt to divert attention from "state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan". The ICJ on Tuesday told Pakistan not to hang Jadhav, sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of promoting terrorism in its territory and spying for India. Asif tweeted: "Indian letter to ICJ attempt to divert attention from state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbushan convicted of offences against national security." A woman in Bihar's Buxar district refused to marry a dark-complexioned groom, saying he was not 'smart' enough for her, a police official said on Wednesday. The groom, Anjani Chouhan, was shocked after his would-be-bride refused to marry him citing his dark complexion at the marriage mandap in Ramrekha Ghat in Buxar town, about 125 km from Patna, on Tuesday. "After Anjani was informed that she had refused to marry him, he requested elders from his family and the bride's side to talk to her and persuade her not to do so as it is matter of honour and dignity in society. But the girl made it clear that she would not marry a dark complexioned man," a district police official said. According to police officials, the bride was happy during the rituals related to marriage but suddenly told her close family members and friends that she will not marry Anjani because of his dark complexion. Two members of the groom's family approached the police for help. "We told them that police cannot do anything if the girl has refused to marry," an official said. The upset groom had to return empty-handed along with the marriage party. It is the second such case in Bihar within two weeks. In a similar case in the last week of April, a woman refused to marry a dark complexioned groom in Samastipur district. Over half a dozen cases of brides refusing to marry "unsuitable" grooms, on grounds they were illiterate, drunk, deaf or unemployed, have been reported over the past one month. "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. Several such cases across the state 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 of 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. _ _SHOW_MID_AD__ Sacked Water Minister Kapil Mishra was on Wednesday attacked in his house as he was sitting on indefinite hunger strike to protest alleged corruption in the Aam Aadmi Party. A person from among the crowd at his house slapped Mishra repeatedly, shouting "He (Mishra) has betrayed the party." The attacker was nabbed by the others present and handed over to police. Before being taken away by the police, the man said he "belonged to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)". Sacked Water Minister Kapil Mishra's "satyagraha" fast to protest corruption in his former Aam Aadmi Party was on Wednesday marked by high drama as he was slapped by a man at his house. Mishra alleged he has been receiving "death threats from international numbers". As Mishra, who has been suspended from the AAP following his series of corruption allegations against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other top party leaders, sat on fast in his Civil Lines house, a person from among the crowd slapped him repeatedly, shouting "He (Mishra) has betrayed the party." The attacker was nabbed by the others present and handed over to police. Before being taken away by the police, the man claimed he "belonged to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)". Reacting to the attack, the Mishra said: "The man suddenly attacked me and hit me on my neck before he was caught by the people here." Mishra then appealed to his supporters not to retaliate violently. "I will leave drinking water if any of my supporters retaliate violently to the attacker or any other AAP supporter," Mishra said, as he lay on the ground. Mishra is only drinking water during his indefinite fast. In the morning, before sitting on "satyagraha", Mishra claimed that he was receiving life threats on his phone from international numbers. _ _SHOW_MID_AD__ Though still in a nascent stage, the online gaming industry in India is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2021 from the current $360 million - a growth rate of 20 per cent - with the online gamers community reaching 310 million by 2021, a Google-KPMG report said on Wednesday. Though still in a nascent stage, the online gaming industry in India is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2021 from the current $360 million - a growth rate of 20 per cent - with the online gamers community reaching 310 million by 2021, a Google-KPMG report said on Wednesday. There has been a 117 per cent spike in searches for online games by Indians, offering huge potential for developers, said the report titled "Online Gaming in India: 2021". The report is based on a primary qualitative and quantitative research executed by global market research firm IMRB that covered over 3,000 respondents across 16 geographies. The respondents were in the age group of 16-45 years who own smartphones and tablets/laptop/PC with internet connection. The report provided a detailed overview of the online gaming industry in India, its potential growth, the challenges and growth opportunities for developers. The report also highlighted the consumer insights in terms of demographics and their gaming preference, their usage and spending patterns. PALO ALTO, Calif., May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) today announced a comprehensive set of computing innovations to accelerate Deep Learning analytics and insights across all organizations with innovations spanning systems design, partner ecosystem collaboration, and expertise including flexible consumption models from HPE Pointnext Services. Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as Deep Learning, are growing in popularity across various sectors including financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, energy, government and retail. HPE has a strong track record of delivering comprehensive, workload optimized compute solutions for all AI and Deep Learning with its purpose-built HPE Apollo portfolio that maximizes performance, scale and efficiency. With the latest innovations specifically targeted to Deep Learning, leveraging capabilities from the recent SGI acquisition, HPE now offers greater choice for larger scale, dense GPU environments and addresses key gaps in technology integration and expertise with integrated solutions and services offerings. Customers pursuing Deep Learning projects face a variety of challenges including a lack of mature IT infrastructure and technology capabilities leading to poor performance, efficiency and time to value, said Bill Mannel, Vice President and General Manager, High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. To address these challenges, HPE is introducing new optimized GPU compute platforms, an enhanced collaboration with NVIDIA and HPE Pointnext Services from the Core Datacenter to the Intelligent Edge. The new portfolio of capabilities includes: New HPE SGI 8600 : Based on the SGI ICE XA architecture, High Performance Computing platform with support for optimal combination of liquid-cooled GPU performance with NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators with NVLink TM interconnect technology to provide scale and efficiency for the most complex, largest environments - up to thousands of nodes with leading power efficiency. : Based on the SGI ICE XA architecture, High Performance Computing platform with support for optimal combination of liquid-cooled GPU performance with NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators with NVLink interconnect technology to provide scale and efficiency for the most complex, largest environments - up to thousands of nodes with leading power efficiency. Interactive Rendering from the Datacenter with the HPE Apollo 6500 and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs certified with NVIDIA VCA software Datacenter with the HPE Apollo 6500 and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs certified with NVIDIA VCA software Support for NVIDIAs next generation Tesla GPUs based on its Volta architecture when available in production quantities in the Apollo 2000, Apollo 6500 and Proliant DL380 servers HPE and NVIDIA Enhanced Collaboration for Deep Learning Through their collaboration HPE and NVIDIA will jointly address GPU technology integration and Deep Learning expertise challenges to accelerate the adoption of technologies that provide real-time insights from massive data volumes. As the artificial intelligence era takes hold, enterprises are increasingly adopting NVIDIA's GPU computing platform to generate insights from decades of untapped data, said Ian Buck, General Manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA. Expanding our collaboration with HPE around deep learning will help enterprises deploy, manage and optimize their GPU computing infrastructure and realize the benefits of AI and deep learning in their business. Building on the recent HPE Supercomputer win at Tokyo Institute of Technology, which is one of the largest NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU based clusters, this collaboration will deliver: Enhanced Centers of Excellence for benchmarking, code modernization and proof of concept initiatives. The locations include Korea, Sydney, Grenoble, Bangalore and Houston Early access program for Volta-based NVIDIA Tesla SXM2 GPU systems powered with eight GPUs for selected customers in 4Q 2017 Through our partnership with SGI, and now HPE, the Tokyo Institute of Technology has worked successfully to deliver a converged world-leading HPC and Deep Learning platform that can address our requirements and those of our nation, said Satoshi Matsuoka, Professor and TSUBAME Leader, Tokyo Institute of Technology. The NVIDIA Tesla P100 SXM2 node solution enables GPU based Deep Learning capability to be scalable to the entire size of our TSUBAME 3.0 system. We look forward to continuing our partnership with HPE to work together on future projects in HPC and Deep Learning. Partner Ecosystem Collaboration for Deep Learning based Fraud Detection As part of HPEs partner ecosystem collaboration, HPE is working with Kinetica, a leading software application provider leveraging Deep Learning frameworks to develop a solution to automate, real-time fraud detection with GPU acceleration. Designed specifically for consumer credit card transaction processing, the new performance optimized, cost effective solution, will be demoed at the HPE booth during GTC. We look forward to advancing the Kinetica GPU database with HPE and jointly offering a best-of-breed GPU-accelerated analytics solution that converges Artificial Intelligence and Business Intelligence workloads for financial services as well as for retail, healthcare and other industries, said Chris Prendergast, Vice President of Business Development and Alliances from Kinetica. Services to Enable and Support AI and Deep Learning Environments As customers begin the journey to adopt these powerful and scalable IT solutions, HPE Pointnext provides the knowledge and expertise through its Advisory, Professional and Operational Services to help achieve desired business outcomes, including faster time to value. With AI and Deep Learning requiring scalable infrastructure, Pointnext offers HPE Flexible Capacity, a service that provides on-demand capacity, combining the agility and economics of public cloud with the security and performance of on-premises IT. With the need to embed more intelligence and automation into data analytics to address scientific and business challenges, artificial intelligence-based techniques are growing in importance. HPEs systems and solutions innovations announced today are designed to address key performance and expertise constraints affecting deep learning, said Steve Conway, Senior Vice President for Research at Hyperion Research. HPE's enhanced collaboration with NVIDIA for Deep Learning and comprehensive infrastructure capabilities, from the Core Datacenter to the Intelligent Edge, aims to use automated intelligence to enable real-time insights for customers. HPE will showcase the new Deep Learning portfolio along with our fraud detection demo at GTC in San Jose at booth # 811. Additionally, Dr. Goh, and Professor Matsuoka will discuss Tokyo Institute of Technologys large scale system, the latest TSUBAME3.0 supercomputer during a breakout session on the Scalable Learning Platform. About Hewlett Packard Enterprise Hewlett Packard Enterprise is an industry leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the industrys most comprehensive portfolio, spanning the cloud to the data center to workplace applications, our technology and services help customers around the world make IT more efficient, more productive and more secure. Here are the unofficial results for Saline County in the 2022 election VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abacus Mining & Exploration Corporation (Abacus or the Company) (TSXV:AME) provides comments on the recent unusual trading activity in its shares on the TSX Venture Exchange. While it is not the Companys usual policy to comment on trading price, at the request of IIROC (the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada), Abacus wishes to confirm that the Companys management is unaware of any material change in the Companys operations that would account for the recent increase in market activity. Abacus believes that the recent unusual trading activity may be related to the consolidation of its common shares announced on April 26, 2017, which commenced trading on the basis of one (1) post-consolidation share for every six (6) pre-consolidation shares on May 1, 2017, and to an article on the Company that appeared in the Resource Stock Digest Premium website (RSDP) dated May 8, 2017. The article follows a site visit made by the author to the Companys recently optioned Willow Property in Nevada. An introductory report was made available to subscribers of the RSDP on May 3, 2017, which was followed by the article of May 8, 2017. No compensation has been or will be provided by the Company to RSDP or the author of the May 8th article. RSDP and the author are at arms length with the Company. The target price in the May 8th article is solely the opinion of the author of the article and is not endorsed in any way by the Company. There is currently no material information of the Company that has not been generally disclosed. For further information, please contact the Company at (604) 682-0301. On Behalf of the Board, ABACUS MINING & EXPLORATION CORPORATION Michael McInnis Chairman, President & CEO About Abacus Abacus is a mineral exploration and mine development company with a 20% interest in the Ajax Project located at the historic Ajax-Afton site southwest of Kamloops, B.C., and an option to acquire up to a 75% undivided interest in the Willow porphyry copper-gold property located in Nevada. The Ajax Project is a proposed copper-gold open-pit mine currently undergoing a provincial and federal environmental assessment process. Through KGHM Ajax Mining Inc., a joint venture company between Abacus (20%) and KGHM Polska Miedz S.A. (KGHM) (80%), the Ajax Mine is being funded in large part by KGHM and operated by its wholly-owned subsidiary, KGHM International Ltd. For the latest reports and information on Abacus projects, please refer to the Companys website at www.amemining.com. Forward-Looking Information This release includes certain statements that are deemed forward-looking statements. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that Abacus expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words expects, plans, anticipates, believes, intends, estimates, projects, potential and similar expressions, or that events or conditions will, would, may, could or should occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include changes to commodity prices, mine and metallurgical recovery, operating and capital costs, foreign exchange rates, ability to obtain required permits on a timely basis, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. 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. Almost every morning over recent weeks now, the sky is covered under a cloak of menacingly dark clouds which, once in a while theyd unleash those cascading buckets of pouring rain, so that for quite sometime there you begin to wonder if the sun would remain forever hidden, behind those dark, menacing clouds. And so in frustration you may ask: Whats going on here? Why are the clouds covering the sky all the time? And where is the sun? Is the world doomed to never again see the sunlight? In any case, the answers to those questions are found in the story about an important event in which our government played a very crucial part, which is why we should all be familiar with it. The event in question took place in the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto; that was where in December 1997, leaders from the world community gathered and put together an international convention, which they tentatively called, The Kyoto Protocol. An instrument aimed at reducing global warming as a result of the uncontrollable production and proliferation of greenhouse gas emissions, later the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. And from there, the Protocol called for worldwide cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent further warming of the earth, melting of the polar ice caps, and flooding of low lying islands such as those scattered around the Pacific Ocean, one of which is Samoa. At that point, a total of 159 countries had ratified the convention and were given until March 1999, to sign the protocol. Samoa did not wait. On 17 March 1998, it signed the protocol. Reported Radio Australia: Samoa is among the first countries to have signed the Kyoto protocol on climate change. The United Nations says the Maldives, Antigua and Barbuda also have signed. Sometime later, a total of 192 countries had signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty thats the closest thing we have to a working global agreement to fight climate change. And yet, also around that time, the only nations that had not signed the ratified Kyoto Protocol were Afghanistan, Sudan and the USA. At the time, it had been established that the United States of America was emitting 35% of the worlds greenhouse gases - a significant amount of emissions that, according to the Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol, was contributing directly towards the rising warming of the planet. The question then was: Why did the USA refrain from signing the treaty? A numbers of reasons were made public. One of which was that, President William J. Clinton, had signed the Kyoto Protocol, but he did not ratify it. Why? It had not been made clear. Later, when President G.W. Bush came along, he eliminated Clintons signature completely. Bush said his specific complaints about the Kyoto Treaty include, a serious harm to the U.S. economy, which would cause a more dramatic shift from coal to natural gas for electric power generation. He also said: Coal generates more than half of Americas electricity supply, and therefore my main reason for pulling out is the economic impact it would have on the United States, if they were to reduce emissions, especially on the coal industry. And so the question emerged: How is the coal industry in America going to be affected if he had gone ahead and ratified the Kyoto Protocol? Answer: By a significantly paralyzing degree he did not want to talk about. The point is that carbon dioxide is produced when coal, or other fossil fuels are burned, or combusted. Fossil fuel combustion is a process that most industry in the United States used to produce energy. The story said: Fossil fuel combustion accounts for the majority of carbon dioxide emissions. So, if American industries were to cut down on fossil fuel combustion that would mean a sharp decrease in the need for coal. The coal industry would suffer greatly as millions would lose their jobs. Because 51% of American electricity is powered by coal, and electricity provides heat, price of heating would skyrocket and so would electricity bills. And this, according to President Bush, was the sort of economic disaster he would indeed want to avoid. Another complaint President Bush made was that there was a lack of commercially available technologies for removing and storing carbon dioxide. He said the existence of an incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change simply had to be looked into, before any commitment to ratify the protocol would be made. In addition, Bush said: There is not a concrete and fundamental basis to sign the Kyoto Treaty due to the lack of proof of global warming. Lack of proof of global warming? Isnt the sky remaining dark all day long, and the sun never showing up, proof enough that global warming is alive and well on this side of the world, and therefore a threat to be wary of? Indeed, arent people living on their small islands tottering on the waves of the South Pacific victims of global warming, and then when the huge waves come along and flatten their homes so that they sink in the ocean, isnt that proof enough? What about Donald Trump? What would he say about the Kyoto Protocol anyway? Sure, hes been President of the United States of America for just a lousy 100 days, and yet during that short period of time hes made hes already stamped his mark bold and clear, around the entire world. Indeed, the man has already announced he was going to build a wall around Mexico, and then he would call that part of the American Continent, Little America, and throw Mexico to the background, where it should have always been. So what is to stop him from taking over the Kyoto Protocol, and then after hed renamed it Donald Trump World Protocol, who is to stop him from just throwing it in the draw, and let it just lie there. After all, thats the kind of man he is; indeed, he is that loveable scoundrel we all want to meet and shake hands with, one of these days. You never know. The man is such a complex enigma and an adorable rogue at the same time, its a wonder hed not yet been named, the President of the World. We never know. He could be just the man who could tell us why the sky is always dark and covered with clouds, and where the sun is hiding, during times like now. Samoa has become the 121st country to officially implement the Teen Challenge programme. The mission of Teen Challenge is to evangelize and disciple persons with life-controlling problems and initiate the discipleship process to the point where the student can function as a Christian in society. Yesterday was the official launching of Teen Challenge in Samoa at Apia Harvest Centre Church. The Minister of Works, Transport and Infrastructure, Papalii Niko Lee Hang is the patron of this programme. In his keynote address he said, The official launching marks the unwavering commitment of the church leaders and hard work and determination of the chairman of Teen Challenge Samoa and its team. The Ministry of Justice, Courts and Administration has partnered with Teen Challenge Samoa to help reoffending youth and signed a memorandum of understanding to honour their partnership. Today marks the Teen Challenge Samoa a milestone by the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Ministry of Justice, Courts and Administration and Teen Challenge Samoa to work in partnership to provide rehabilitation programmes to young offenders between the age of 13-35, Papalii said. Teen Challenge Samoa is going to prepare to work in partnership with the MESC on a MOU to provide rehabilitative programmes as well as prevention programmes to remove teens from early addiction to alcohol, smoking, violence. I believe the task in counselling teens is indeed a big challenge for all of us who are involved. We can do it, nothing is impossible with God, he concluded. The Regional Director Asia Pacific for Teen Challenge, Reverend Jim and Cathie Lowans celebrated the milestone for Samoa. During an interview with the Samoa Observer, Reverend Lowans said, Teen Challenge in its nearly 60 years, has seen much success. Our success shows nearly 85% of those who go through the entire programme, which is a year long. They do not return to their addiction. Theres no other organization or ministry that has that success rate. American Samoa was the first to set up Teen Challenge in the region nearly a decade ago and since then, it has spread to Fiji and now, Samoa. We believe that with Teen Challenge established here, it will have a positive impact on the drug culture that is now growing in Samoa, Reverend Lowans said. Our goal is to work with countries, specifically with the church to have a desire to see a Teen Challenge established. We dont go into a country unless were invited whether it is the government or the church. Typically its the church that says, we want to establish Teen Challenge. The reason we want to be in any part of the world including Samoa is unfortunately the use of drugs and alcohol and the addiction problems that are growing around the world. As Teen Challenge continues to grow were at a point where were in approximately 120 countries now. We have begun to assign directors to the various regions of the world. Reverend Lowans also explained the inception of Teen Challenge in Brooklyn, New York. Teen Challenge was established in 1985, when a young 28 year old preacher by the name of David Wilkerson from the state of Pennsylvania in America, just felt a call to go and work with the gang members in New York City, he said. He obeyed that call and went to New York City and one by one, the gang members heard what he had to say and the preachers who were sharing with them, and began to lay down their weapons of gang warfare and began to stop using drugs and became followers of Christ. From there, Mr. Wilkerson set up a dwelling in Brooklyn for those in the programme and the rest is history. What started out in a borough in New York , spread across the country and eventually the world. Weve seen many thousands of addicts who have seen their lives turned around, he concluded. The historic day concluded with the unveiling of the plaque to mark the occasion. Maua Selimo prefers to devote his life to taking care of his elderly mother and his family. The 55 year-old father from Aleisa Sasae, said those are his priorities. Maua is the only one who works. Every day is a struggle, he said, but they try to make the most of any situation. Luckily the money I earn is just enough to cover my familys needs every day in terms of food and the bills, he told Village Voice. Maua sells the fruit from his land at a village flea market in Siusega to earn money. We have a plantation to depend on and we sell what we have to make money, he said. The money we earn from our crops is for our monthly water and electricity bills. The cost of living is high though, he noted. Not every family in Samoa is the same. Some people struggle to provide for their families but some dont; they have everything in life. We are just thankful for what we have every day. We have the land to depend on, even if we dont earn much from it, but at least we have something to turn to everyday. One important thing that Maua wants for his family is for them to be happy. Even though we are struggling, my family is happy, he said proudly. He was also accepting of things he feels he cannot change. Village, family and church demands are expensive. Family faalavelave costs us a lot but we have to do it because its the way of life in Samoa. We know we dont have enough but we still try to make do with what money from my sales. Its a tough life, but we cant do anything about it. His other concern is for his elderly mothers care. We all know, Mothers Day is around the corner, this is another reason why I will be bringing stuff down here to sell for mothers day pocket money especially a gift. But my mother for sure does not want any gift, because she knows the gift is what we are doing to her every day, making sure she has everything she needs and is well cared for. This is also a great opportunity to wish you all the mothers of Samoa a happy mothers day and especially to my dearest mother. Think a minuteThe famous African-American Booker T. Washington was extremely poor. He was only 16-years-old when he traveled 500 miles to attend university. After he finally arrived, a teacher ordered him to sweep the room. So Booker swept the room not just once, but three times! Then he dusted the furniture four times! That was the kind of person Booker was. He always went the extra mile and did his very best to finish all his work well. Years later Booker became a professor and actually started his own university, the Tuskegee Institute! This was still in the late 1800s when most white southerners treated African-Americans horribly as an inferior, lower class of people. One day as Booker was walking past a southern mansion, the lady of the house called out and ordered him to chop some wood. So he pulled off his coat, chopped the wood and carried it into her house. One of the servant girls recognized Professor Washington and told her boss and owner of the house, Mrs. Varner. The next morning this wealthy woman, Mrs. Varner, went to Professor Washingtons office and apologized. She also gave a large amount of money to help his university, and persuaded many of her rich friends to also give money to Washingtons school. As it did with Booker T. Washington, when diligence, humility and inner strength becomes a part of your character and daily way of working, it brings good things to you and others. Real success comes when you work to help make the lives of others better. The wonder of work is that it makes both you and your family better. You get more in return than what you gave. It is simply a law of life that works for your happiness and success. As a prosperous businessman says: Hard work is the best investment a man can make. In 1949 an unknown scientist started research on polio. He worked 16-18 hours a day6 days a weekfor 5 years! His reward? He found the cure for polio and saved millions of lives around the world. Dr. Jonas Salks hard work paid off in a big way, and he is now known as one of historys greatest men of medicine. Are you enjoying the success and satisfaction that comes from diligently using your time and talents God gave you? It is the only way you can make your family and career the best it can be? Sincerely ask Jesus to help you start reaching your full potential by discovering the wonders of work. Just think a minute WASHINGTON, May 10, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI) supports the people of Venezuela as they fight for their freedom and democracy. The policies of the Nicolas Maduro regime have resulted in extreme shortages of food, medicine, and other essential goods, and have led to a dire humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. In recent weeks the regime has unleashed violence against the Venezuelan people, leading to countless civilian casualties. Lilian Tintori and Antonieta Mendoza de Lopez, wife and mother of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, were denied access and information about Lopezs whereabouts for over 35 days. Leopoldo Lopez is one of approximately 200 political prisoners whose most basic human rights are being violated. He was CHLIs 2016 International Relations Honoree, and CHLI has pledged to him, his family, and the people of Venezuela, solidarity as they fight for free and fair elections. CHLI is urging Members of Congress to support the people of Venezuela by denouncing the brutal Maduro regime, by highlighting the atrocities of the regime, and by facilitating humanitarian aid. CHLI is thankful to our Congressional Board Members and other Members of Congress who have vocalized their support for the people of Venezuela, and looks forward to working with these Members to continue to raise awareness of the dire situation in Venezuela. CHLI is urging other national organizations to support the people of Venezuela and denounce the regime by issuing statements of support for democracy and organizing efforts for humanitarian aid. CHLI is urging national media to highlight the atrocities currently occurring in Venezuela so that the American public can become more informed about the crises in our hemisphere. CHLI recognizes that the situation in Venezuela has implications for U.S. Hispanics, the United States and the entire Western Hemisphere. CHLI believes that taking a stand is imperative. As citizens of the United States, and of the world, we must denounce the brutal Maduro regime and stand with the people of Venezuela as they fight for their basic human rights and for freedom and democracy. About CHLI: The Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI) is the premier organization founded by Members of Congress and corporate leaders to advance the Hispanic community's economic progress with a focus on social responsibility and global competitiveness. Founded in 2003, CHLI is a 501(c)3 non-profit and non-partisan organization. CHLI is dedicated to fostering a broad awareness of the diversity of thought, heritage, interests, and views of Americans of Hispanic and Portuguese descent. Yesterday, our lead story on the front page may have seemed like a departure from many of our previous leads. However despite other competing articles for the front page, it was decided that it was deserving of that front spot. Headlined, Taumeasina Resort offers Village Voice youth job, it was a story about two of the major concerns in our country today; namely youth and unemployment. It also tied in with what is being promoted as a vital industry tourism, which we hope will help to drive our economic growth in the short and long term future. It was not an uncommon story about a young person in the village who was hoping to gain skills other than those acquired on a plantation. There have been others. But equally there have been as many other stories told by young people extolling the enjoyment of working outdoors and seeing the results of their hard work which provide food and money. But this young man, Nuu Aufale had left school in Year 12 and perhaps naively thought at the time, that getting a job would be easy. Four years later, at the age of 20, he had learned that it was not so easy. However his self belief was still strong, I may not have had the best education but Im a worthy person for any job that is offered, he said. On reading the young mans story, and impressed by the sincerity and self belief of the words of Nuu Aufale, the General Manager of the Taumeasina Village Resort, Mr Nathan Bucknall agreed to meet with him. After spelling out what would be expected, a job offer was made and accepted. Nuus words to his new employer as they shook hands were, Thank you very much for the opportunity and I promise you, Mr Nathan Bucknall, you wont regret your decision to hire me. While there are no guarantees what the long term outcome of this story may be, we at the Samoa Observer are ever hopeful that there will be a long and happy relationship between employer and employee. We also hope that other young people may also get similar chances if they are sincere and have a good work ethic. Well keep you posted. The lead author of the Pacific Multicountry Mapping and Behavioural Study report, Professor Heather Worth 0f Global Health, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, has called on the Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr Leao Talalelei Tuitama and Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi to read the report. The report Professor Worth is referring to is the Multi-country Mapping and Behavioural study 2016, which was quoted by the Ministry of Health in their sixth annual report to UNAIDS. The Samoa Observers first article from the report Economic reasons forces 400 women to sex work, was published on 5 May, 2017. Following that report, the Samoa Observer reached out to Prime Minister Tuilaepa for a comment. He laughed at claims that poverty and hardship are to blame for the growing number of sex workers in Samoa. He also attacked the newspaper over its coverage of the issue describing the reporting as rubbish. A week later, the Minister of Health, Tuitama in response to queries stated, If P.M. says it's rubbish, it must be rubbish, and this was published on 9 May, 2017. Yesterday Professor Worth wrote this response to the news articles: Dear Editor As the lead author of the report on HIV and STI risk and vulnerability among key populations in Samoa I would respectfully like to respond to the Honourable Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr Leao Talalelei Tuitama and the Honourable Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. We urge the Prime Minister and the Minster of Health to read both the cross-Pacific summary of the findings and the Samoa report which are available online: http://www.pacific.undp.org/content/pacific/en/home/library/DG/pacific-multicountry-mapping-behavioural-study-key-findings.html Samoa was part of a nine-country study across the Pacific. The study was undertaken to estimate population sizes of key groups vulnerable to HIV: faafafine, men who have sex with men, sex workers and seafarers; to map levels of vulnerability to HIV and STIs; and to provide evidence of barriers to prevention in order to improve effectiveness of HIV prevention efforts. We had considerable support for the study which was funded by the Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria, through UNDP and UNICEF. The study had ethical approval from the Samoan Ministry of Health and the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The researchers have a long history of sex worker research in the Pacific. The data collected in Samoa found that there was a small group of women selling sex. The number of sex workers (400) was estimated at stakeholder meetings and with interviews with those involved. Two-thirds of the women selling sex were not employed, and sex workers themselves told us that they undertook sex work for economic reasons. The most worrying issues out of the study were that only half of the women used condoms the last time they had sex with a client, and none of them had used a sexual health service or been tested for HIV in the last 12 months In-depth interviews show that the money they receive from sex work helps pay the bills. Regards, Heather Worth Professor, Global Health School of Public Health and Community Medicine University of New South Wales 2052, NSW AUSTRALIA The national bird of Samoa, the Manumea is facing imminent extinction. As numbers continue to decline, government, community and environmentalists have sprung into action to save the Princess of the Forest. Tuesday was the kickoff of the three-day Manumea Protection Campaign at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (M.N.R.E.) Workshop Facilitator Steve Menzies explained, This workshop which is supported by the Auckland Zoo, is about developing a campaign plan to protect the Manumea. The primary focus is on hunting. Were looking at working with the hunting community to see how they can help address some of the problems due to the fact that the Manumea is down to quite a critical status in terms of numbers. The campaign were looking to plan is to remind people the problem that Samoa faces in terms of the Manumea and what practical things the community can do to address that problem, he added. Mr. Menzies says the decline in numbers is mainly attributed to human behaviour in hunting the bird for game Some research was done last year, which shows that the Manumea is still being killed by hunters but often accidentally when hunters are going for another Pacific pigeon. As a Kiwi, I think Manu Samoa and Manumea; is it important enough for people to want to do something about it? They say there are 200-250 left, which is a bit scary. They say once its gone its gone; and its only found in Samoa. I dont think anyone in Samoa wants to see the bird extinct but we have to be practical about what the community can do together if people are hunting it for a reason: for food or gifts. The campaign workshop here is about is really saying what can we realistically do? We dont have a lot of money and theres not a lot of resourcing. At the start is to mobilize awareness, maybe get some funding and working with the hunting community. He said the continuity of the bird rests on the shoulders of us, as an entire country. The community bonds in Samoa are very tight; which is a country that is based on the community spirit. I think that we need to get the community to understand first of all, is it something that the community wants to support and protect since its the national bird, Mr. Menzies concluded. The Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Leao Talalelei Tuitama is calling on the public not to panic about what is happening with the health agencies as they go through the transition of merging which will occur by the next fiscal year. The service will not change in any way. It will go on as usual, whats happening should not in any way affect the way the services of the health care that is delivered. He further noted that probably the only change that we anticipate is in the management. In the meantime, Cabinet has appointed a task force to oversee the transition and assure the public that it will be smooth, fair and peaceful. The members are Tuitama, the Minister of Finance, Sili Epa Tuioti and the Minister of Public Enterprises, Lautafi Fio Selafi Purcell. Tuitama said they will work on a new proposal to consolidate the task force and consider the formula to best implement the transition. Are we going to contract a homemade one, that will address all the local issues, or are we going to adopt another formula that can work for us, with some modifications to conform to our own standards to our culture? Theres a lot to be considered but the aim is, we feel that everything should be in place by the end of the year and hopefully well present a new consolidated Ministry for the next budget. We will start with some alterations and were looking at the simplest transitions and trying to calm the seas. The Minister also pointed out his concerns, with the present trend of diseases that Samoa is encountering especially the Non Communicable Diseases which includes, diabetes, kidney cancer, hypertension, heart diseases they are really tapping our resources. Its like a tsunami that has swooped into the country, not only us but over all through the Pacific and developed countries. The Non Communicable Diseases are the number one killer in the world. Sixty plus percent of all deaths are due to Non Communicable Diseases and in the set up that we have now, that really has a negative impact on our efforts to meet this challenge. He said The primary health care is very much compromised; public health is very much diminished, ever since the separation so we are looking now as part of this merge to recapture the community participation. In moving forward the Minister said they are going back to the villages to develop the facilities in the community to provide the service so the people dont have to come all the way to the hospital. Tuitama believes they would be able to prevent the complications of diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, heart diseases if they go out into the community. It will prevent them from getting worse and requiring specialized services. Tuitama pointed out that the 300 beds they have are full already. With people hospitalized and the amputation of the legs, to provide dialysis for the failed kidneys and cure heart diseases, we will not be able to do that. The Health Minister said, In the new set up, we will be able to develop the district hospitals, increase the presence of medical officers in the community, treat people in early stages of the problems, so that will not need hospitalization and they will not need to come to the hospital. At the same time, we will not neglect the majority that now have diabetes. We have a high number of diabetes and we will continue to encounter complications from these illnesses for the next 10 years from what we have at the moment. We will have to improve and upgrade the facilities, by providing appropriate equipment to deal with these complications; we will also need to improve the capacity of our doctors. We will need more health workers to deal with these diseases so that we can minimize the necessity to send these patients overseas and they will be treated here. DALLAS (AP) Boeing is suspending test flights of a new airliner because of a possible problem in the manufacturing of a key engine part. The company said Wednesday that it still plans to deliver the first Boeing 737 Max later this month, and production will continue. The news sent Boeing Co. shares down nearly 4 percent, although they recovered partly to close at $183.18, down $2.31, or 1.3 percent. Chicago-based Boeing was notified last week of a potential issue involving turbine engine discs produced by a supplier to engine maker CFM International. Boeing said it has not experienced any problems with the discs during more than 2,000 hours of testing. The Max is designed to be a more fuel-efficient version of the workhorse 737, Boeing's most popular commercial plane. Malaysia's Malindo Air plans to take delivery of the first Max in a few days and begin using it for passenger flights before July. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. expects to begin using the plane this fall. The discs in question are made by a supplier to CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric and France's Safran. GE spokeswoman Jamie Jewell declined to identify the supplier. She said GE and Safran will work with the supplier to find and correct any shortcomings in the manufacturing process while also turning to a backup supplier to keep production of engines on schedule. In a written statement, Boeing said it will work with CFM "to understand the precise scope and root cause of the quality issue." New planes and parts go through extensive testing to turn up problems before passengers go on board. Cai von Rumohr, an analyst with Cowen and Co., said "this doesn't look like a serious concern" because Boeing still expects to deliver the first plane this month and it appears to be a fixable manufacturing problem rather than a design flaw. Boeing has built about 9,500 single-aisle 737s since the late 1960s. The company said it has taken more than 3,700 orders for the Max, which carries a list price of $112.4 million to $119.2 million, although airlines routinely get big discounts. Tuesdays Senate confirmation of Scott Gottlieb, M.D., as Food and Drug Administration commissioner was praised by life science organizations in California and Washington, D.C. The confirmation is also good news for e-cigarette users, who have seen signs that the Trump administration may drop the opposition to vaping from the administration of his predecessor. A former FDA deputy commissioner with extensive medical industry experience, Gottlieb has criticized the agencys drug approval process as too slow and cumbersome. Besides being trained as a physician, Gottlieb has been a venture capitalist, a consultant for drug companies and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Advertisement Congratulatory statements came from California-based Biocom and the California Life Sciences Association; and the D.C.-based Biotechnology Innovation Organization. We are enthused with the appointment of Scott Gottlieb to the position of head of the FDA, said Biocom, which is headquartered in San Diego. We believe he will strike a balance between what Californias life science industry needs to progress novel therapies to market, what patients need to get life-saving medicines and what FDA staff needs in terms of support Given his prolific writings since he has been in the private sector, we believe that Dr. Gottlieb will make efforts to instate programs that may accelerate the development of innovative products and solve the problem of backlogged generic applications. Sara Radcliffe, the CLSAs president and CEO, said Gottlieb has a proven track record as a strong advocate for both protecting public health and promoting biomedical innovation. More recently, Dr. Gottliebs prominent and respected participation on several public health and policy committees, including the Federal Health IT Policy Committee and the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, further confirm the breadth and depth of his experience and commitment to bringing life-saving innovations to patients in need, Radcliffe said. The FDA faces tremendous opportunities, said BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood. We are confident that Dr. Gottliebs confirmation will provide the agency with the stability and leadership needed to fully harness the tools of modern drug development and to better incorporate patients perspectives into the agencys regulatory processes. However, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a left-leaning environmentalist group, said Gottlieb was too friendly with industry, bringing conflicts of interests that would put the interests of drug makers before the public. The blog post by Genna Reed also criticized President Donald Trump for firing Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who had campaigned against e-cigarettes. Gottlieb has served on the board of Kure, an e-cigarette company. While agency scientists seem uncomfortable with the level of corporate involvement in regulations, industry is likely feeling pretty comfortable with the current regulatory landscape for food and drugs, stated the post. E-cigarette supporters have praised Murthys firing and Gottliebs appointment as a sign that the Trump administration will take a more positive view of vaping than that of former President Barack Obama. Over at the libertarian magazine Reason, Gottlieb got good wishes from science reporter Ronald Bailey. I earlier noted, While not a radical reformer, Gottlieb clearly has a good understanding of how over-regulation has been slowing down innovation in medicines and foods., Bailey wrote. Good luck to him as he tries to reform the agencys excessively cautious regulatory culture. Gottlieb has personal experience with the health care system, as a survivor of Hodgkins lymphoma. 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 bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1020 UPDATES: 7:30 a.m.: May 10: This article was updated with additional details. This article was originally published at 5:10 p.m. May 9. Its not so easy to get an item onto the agenda of an Oceanside City Council meeting these days. Now, instead of just one council member, it takes two one with written concurrence from another to place something on the agenda The city joins several others in San Diego County that require an extra step to get something on the councils agenda. National City approved an ordinance in March that requires the approval of three council members, and Escondido switched to two members several years ago. Advertisement The Oceanside council voted 4-1 last week, with Councilwoman Esther Sanchez opposed, to make the change. This is unfair and extremely prejudicial, said Sanchez, whos often the lone voice on the councils 4-1 votes. She said the change disenfranchises the public, especially the people who voted for her and expect her to speak for them on the council. Sanchez said the change is another effort by the council majority to stifle her comments. In January the council voted 4-1, with Sanchez opposed, to limit any individual council members comments to 10 minutes on any one topic. Councilman Chuck Lowery, an occasional ally of Sanchez, last week defended the requirement for a concurring council member, saying its not a censure of speech. He said there are other ways members can bring an item to the councils attention, such as bringing it up during their remarks at the end of the meeting. This is an attempt to block (the discussion of) specious issues that the council can do nothing about, Lowery said. He added that the change will shorten the agenda and prevent the council from wasting time on fruitless discussions. The new policy states that council members should not discuss any details of the proposed item other than scheduling issues. The request must be submitted to the city managers office by 10 a.m. three weeks in advance of the meeting for which the item is proposed. Individual cities are expected to use their own discretion on matters such as the agenda, said Catherine Hill, a spokeswoman for the League of California Cities. Carlsbads municipal code allows any individual council member, the city manager or the city attorney to place an item on its City Council agenda. National City, in southwestern San Diego County, voted 3-2 in March to require a three-member consensus to add something to its council agenda. Its neighboring cities of Chula Vista and Coronado also have the three-vote rule. philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @phildiehl Come From Away, the 9/11-inspired Broadway musical that premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2015, won five awards Monday, including Outstanding Musical, from the Outer Critics Circle in New York. La Jolla Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley was honored as Outstanding Director of a Musical for Come From Away; the musicals book by married Canadian book/score-writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein was also a winner. Jen Colella, who plays real-life airplane Capt. Beverly Bass, won for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical, and Gareth Owen was honored for Outstanding Sound Design. Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichmans Indecent another play on Broadway that premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2015 lost the Outstanding New Play prize to J.T. Rogerss Oslo. But Taichman, who directed the Playhouses co-premiere of Indecent (with Yale Rep), was named the Outer Critics winner for Outstanding Director of a Play. Advertisement Ashley said in a statement that hes overjoyed to see two Playhouse productions get this incredible national recognition. Both David Hein and Irene Sankoffs musical Come From Away and Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichmans play Indecent speak passionately and eloquently to the issues of this very moment in history, and both perfectly exemplify the Playhouses commitment to new play development. I couldnt be more proud of our production teams and staff, who helped create and support these new works here in San Diego and propel them to continued life on Broadway, Ashley said. Come From Away beat out the musicals A Bronx Tale, Groundhog Day, Holiday Inn and Anastasia, the last of which was directed by fellow nominee Darko Tresnjak, a former co-artistic director at The Old Globe. In another local connection, Taichmans win in the directorial category bested Jack OBrien for The Front Page. OBrien was the artistic director at The Old Globe for more than 25 years. The uptempo Celtic/folk score for Come From Away was beaten out in the score category by The Bands Visit, which was composed by David Yazbek, whose previous credits include the Tony-nominated The Full Monty, which had its world premiere at The Old Globe in 2000. The Outer Critics Circle is a group of media writers who cover the New York theater scene. Awards were announced in 27 categories and will be handed out on May 25 at Sardis Restaurant in Manhattan. For a full list of Outer Critics Circle winners, visit outercritics.org. Still to come are New Yorks biggest prizes, the Tony Awards, which will be handed out on June 11. Come From Away is nominated in seven categories including Best Musical. Indecent earned three nominations, including Best Play. pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com ProRussian militias in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, a main stronghold for opponents of the government in Kiev, on Saturday freed six Western military observers and their interpreter who had been taken captive a week ago. Vladimir Lukin, special envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the announcement outside the town hall building in Sloviansk, local media reported. They werent exchanged for anyone. It was a voluntary and humanitarian act. Were very grateful to the leader of the city, Lukin said, referring to the selfproclaimed proRussia mayor of Sloviansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov. Anuncio Lukin, who said a total of 12 members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, including several Ukrainians, were freed Saturday by the militants, expressed hope that their release would be the first step in bringing peace to conflictridden eastern Ukraine. Wed hope this would be followed by other humanitarian acts, in particular an end to clashes and for the sides to sit down at the negotiating table, Lukin said. A spokesman for the Russian mediator said later that the observers are in good health and have been taken to Donetsk, the regional capital, where they will board flights out of Ukraine. Kiev, which says proRussian militants have kidnapped more than 40 people in Sloviansk, said the efforts of Ukraine, the OSCE and Russia made the release possible. The ethnicRussian insurgents had accused the foreign military observers including three Germans, a Pole, a Dane, a Czech and their German interpreter released Saturday of spying for NATO. Putin this week criticized the OSCE observers for not coordinating their arrival in the Ukrainian mining region of Donetsk with the proRussian militants who have seized numerous government buildings in the countrys southeast. One Western observer, Swede Thomas Johansson, had earlier been released for health reasons. The release comes a day after a fire at a union hall amid political clashes Friday in the southern city of Odessa caused at least 38 deaths, Ukraines provisional government said. Thirtyeight people died as a result of the fire: eight of them jumped out the windows on finding themselves trapped and the rest were asphyxiated, the interior ministry said in a statement. Four people were killed earlier Friday in Odessa during violent confrontations between supporters and opponents of the government in Kiev. The disturbances in Odessa, Ukraines thirdlargest city, came hours after Ukrainian armed forces launched a military operation to wrest control of Sloviansk from ethnicRussian militias opposed to the Kiev government. Ukraines interior ministry said two of its helicopters were shot down by missiles during the operation. Two military personnel were killed and seven others were wounded, the head of the provisional government, Oleksandr Turchynov, said, adding that the insurgents suffered significant losses. Sloviansk has been blockaded by the Ukrainian troops, who have deployed a score of helicopters in their offensive, militia leader Igor Strelkov said. Longsimmering tensions between proEuropean western Ukraine and the countrys eastern region, which has close ties with Russia, were exacerbated by the ouster in late February of President Viktor Yanukovych, a Russianspeaker from the East. The crisis that led to Yanukovychs ouster erupted at the end of November, when Yanukovych backed away from plans to ink a pact with the European Union and instead signed a $15 billion financialaid package with Russia. Brussels offer of closer ties with EU was conditioned on a pledge by Ukraine not to enter into any additional economic accords with Russia, Kievs leading trade partner and energy supplier. The Long Beach VA is being renamed today for a Holocaust survivor and Medal of Honor recipient who was a longtime patient there until his death in 2015. The massive U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Long Beach will be known as the Tibor Rubin VA Medical Center, to honor a man who stared down death at several points in his life. Born to a Jewish family in Hungary, Rubin and his entire family were sent to a Nazi concentration camp in Austria during World War II. His parents and sisters died, but Rubin survived for 14 months until the U.S. Army liberated his camp. Advertisement Immigrating to the United States, Rubin joined the U.S. Army and was attached to Company I, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division as a rifleman, deploying in support of the Korean War. Welcome to The Intel, a blog examining the hot military news of the day He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nations highest commendation for combat valor, for his actions in protecting his regiment in Unsan, North Korea, in the fall of 1950. Rubin is credited with standing alone for 24 hours to hold off attacking forces, allowing for the regiments successful withdrawal. In the 2005 Medal of Honor ceremony for Rubin, President George W. Bush, described the incident. When Corporal Rubins battalion found itself ambushed by thousands of Chinese troops, the Americans firepower soon dwindled to a single machine gun. The weapon was in an exposed position and three soldiers had already died manning it. That was when Corporal Rubin stepped forward. He fought until his ammunition was gone. He was badly wounded, captured and sent to a P.O.W. camp. When Rubin and fellow soldiers were taken prisoner, he risked his life to sneak out of camp and gather food and medical supplies to bring back to the wounded and starving. Rubin spent 30 months as a prisoner of war in North Korea. His Medal of Honor was delayed by decades due to anti-Jewish sentiment among some he served with, according to his New York Times obituary. It came only after then-President Bush ordered a review of the records of 137 Jewish veterans who were seen as having been denied medals that they deserved. Rubin was 76 when he received the award. After the war, Rubin settled quietly in Orange County. Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, introduced legislation to rename the Long Beach VA medical center and it was signed into law by President Barack Obama in December. 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 Two Singapore-based executives pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court Tuesday to their role in the massive Fat Leonard bribery scandal, admitting they helped their boss, Leonard Glenn Francis, overcharge the Navy in a scheme that has exceeded $38.4 million. Neil Peterson, 39, served as the vice president for global operations at Glenn Defense Marine Asia, and Linda Raja, 44, was the general manager for Singapore, Australia and the Pacific Islands. While Francis, the companys president, engineered a long-running scheme to bribe naval officials with hotel suites, cash and prostitutes to win lucrative contracts in Southeastern Asia, the company also created a system that used fraudulent invoices and fictitious companies to ensure GDMA would always come out on top. Advertisement According to their plea agreement, Peterson and Raja would submit bids to the Navy from fake companies or inflate prices and lie about services offered by actual companies. GDMAs bid would then appear as the lowest and best. The rigged bidding process allowed GDMA to inflate prices for its husbanding services supplying items such as security, food and trash removal to visiting Navy ships at various ports. Peterson and Raja also admitted to creating fake port authorities at various locations and would request in official-looking documents that the Navy pay port tariffs rates, the plea states. In one incident, the Navy paid $1.2 million for the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richards October 2012 port visit to Kota Kinablu, Malaysia. But the cost, based on fraudulent documents, was inflated by more than $877,000, the plea agreement states. Peterson and Raja were arrested in Singapore at the request of the U.S. government and were extradited here on Oct. 28. Sentencing is set for Aug. 11 in San Diego federal court. The investigation has resulted in charges against 20 Navy officials, as well as five GDMA executives. kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @kristinadavis A longtime San Diego County prosecutor who retired last year after 33 years is considering applying to be the interim district attorney and pledged not to be a candidate in the 2018 campaign. Greg Walden becomes the third announced candidate for the interim appointment to replace District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who is resigning in July. She announced in January she would not seek a fifth term. Another former prosecutor, Adam Gordon, also announced he will apply and will not run for the permanent job next year. Chief Deputy District Attorney Summer Stephan, who Dumanis has endorsed and said last year was her preferred successor, also has taken out papers to apply. Advertisement Stephan has announced she is running for the seat in 2018. Shes the only announced candidate so far. Gordon has urged the county Board of Supervisors, which will select the interim replacement, to make it a condition that anyone accepting the appointment pledge not to run for post next year. Gordon and Walden said they were motivated to apply because they think voters and not the county supervisors should decide who the next district attorney is. Getting the interim appointment can be a huge boost for anyone who wants to run for the position. Stephan, if she gets appointed, will essentially be able to run as an incumbent, with the advantages of name recognition and being publicly identified as the district attorney for months before the vote. Walden said he would apply and not run in the election because he believes county voters should decide who is the next district attorney. Bonnie Dumanis wants to choose who will be the next DA, and I think it should be up to the people of the county of San Diego who the next DA is, he said. Not one person. Walden was a respected trial lawyer who prosecuted murders and other serious cases, working in Vista for many years and ending his career as a top-level administrator. The Board of Supervisors will accept applications for the position until the end of this month. Twitter: @gregmoran greg.moran@sduniontribune.com San Diego State University graduation ceremonies begin Thursday, and more than 10,000 students are expected to pick up their degrees throughout the weekend in eight commencements. The first ceremony is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday in the Rollie Carrillo Quad of SDSUs Imperial Valley campus. Commencements at the main San Diego campus will be held in Viejas Arena, beginning at 10 a.m. Friday with a ceremony for the College of Arts and Letters. Community activist Andrea Skorepa, president and CEO of Casa Familiar, will be the commencement speaker. Advertisement Ceremonies continue at 3 p.m. for the College of Sciences. On Saturday, the commencement for graduates of Fowler College of Business begin at 8 a.m. Harold Brown, a civil rights activist and first African-American administrator at SDSU, will be the commencement speaker. Saturday ceremonies continue at 1 p.m. with commencement for the College of Health and Human Services followed at 5:30 p.m. with a ceremony for the College of Engineering. On Sunday, commencement for the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts will be at 9 a.m. Former San Diego City Manager Jack McGrory and SDSU jazz studies director Bill Yeager are scheduled to give commencement addresses. Sunday ceremonies resume at 2 p.m. with a graduation ceremony for the College of Education and Division of Undergraduate Studies. The College of Sciences will hold the largest ceremony, honoring 1,778 degree candidates, and the College of Engineering will have the most intimate ceremony, awarding 849 degrees. Campus visitors are advised that the university expects Viejas Arena to reach its 12,414-person capacity during several ceremonies, and the use of alternate modes of transportation to campus is encouraged. SDSU President Elliot Hirshman, whose last day as head of the school is June 30, is scheduled to attend all ceremonies. He is leaving the school after seven years to be president of Stevenson University in Maryland. For more information on the ceremonies, visit the SDSU commencement page online at https://go.sdsu.edu/commencement. gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939 Immigration officials told Congress on Friday that they will no longer hold off on deportations for individuals who have special legislation pending that would give them legal status to be in the U.S. Private bills, as they are known, affect a specific person or small group. About half of the 4,200 private bills introduced since 1983 have been to grant an individual legal immigration status in the U.S., according to data from Congress. Under Immigration and Customs Enforcements previous policy, the agency would postpone a deportation while waiting to see if a bill passed and became law. About six percent of private immigration bills have become law since 1983. By reintroducing private immigration bills each Congressional session, members of Congress have been able to postpone deportations for years. Advertisement They will not be able to do that any more, according to a letter that ICE sent to certain members of Congress on Friday. Deportations will not be automatically postponed. If the chair of the Judiciary Committee sends a written request to ICE, the agency will postpone a deportation for up to six months, but it will no longer repeatedly postpone deportations. In the letter, acting ICE director Thomas Homan writes that the stay mechanism, combined with the repeated introduction of bills which are rarely if ever enacted, could prevent ICE from removing aliens who fall within the enforcement priorities from an executive order that President Donald Trump signed in January, including those who pose a risk to public safety or national security. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, who has sponsored 91 private immigration bills since 1997 the second highest for any member of Congress after former Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii issued a joint statement with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, calling the change mean-spirited. Childrens and families lives are on the line. Private immigration bills are a critical safety net that Democrats and Republicans alike have carefully used for a small number of the most critical cases, the Senators wrote in the joint statement. Lawmakers have used private bills to help individual immigrants who are important to their constituents, immigrants whose stories are often extraordinary and who dont have options to stay in the U.S. under the current system. Just under two-thirds or about 64 percent of private immigration bills introduced since 1983 have come from Democrats. There are currently 26 private bills pending in Congress. All but one are meant to help individuals with their immigration status, and most have had bills introduced for them before, so their deportations have been postponed for a number of years. They come from all over the world. One family fled the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Another set of parents are stateless and cannot be deported together to one country. Some are from Pakistan and France and China. Feinstein is sponsoring eight of the current bills. Two more are sponsored by Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, and one is sponsored by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine. Davis said she carefully considers the criteria agreed to by members of Congress about who is eligible for a private bill before deciding to sponsor someone. That includes making sure the person has no criminal history, that he or she contributes to the community and that he or she has exhausted all other options for immigration relief, she said. The reality is that its in the absence of comprehensive reform that that would even become an issue, and thats why I think its done with a great deal of care, Davis said by telephone. Davis inherited one of her cases from former Rep. Bob Filner, who was a copious sponsor of private bills. Filner said one of his strategies in introducing private immigration bills was to give time for other legal options to be pursued. It became a bureaucratic way to buy time and in many cases it bought enough time to change the situation, Filner said over the phone. Together with Feinstein, he got one of the three most recent successful private immigration bills signed into law in 2010, for a San Diegan named Shigeru Yamada who was orphaned after an accident killed his mother a few years after they arrived in the U.S. Without her, Yamada did not have an option for legal status after he became an adult. Filner said he was careful about bills he agreed to sponsor, making sure the beneficiaries had no criminal history. The people I knew were in very strange and difficult circumstances that really deserved a private bill, Filner said. I didnt do it just for a lark. Filner also sponsored a bill for Flavia Maboloc Cahoon, 56, of southeastern San Diego, and now Davis sponsors a bill for her. Originally from the Philippines, Cahoon came to the U.S. on a fiance visa, but immigration officials refused to give her a green card after she got married because they said she checked the wrong box on her visa application, Cahoon said. She and her husband eventually divorced, and she met Albert Cahoon, 66, who has become the love of her life, she said. She and Cahoon married in September 1997 and together raised her daughter Jane, who is now in the Navy. Because of the earlier issue with her visa application, Cahoon said, normal immigration channels would require her to return to the Philippines for 10 years before her husband could sponsor her green card. Private bills have kept her in the country since ICE tried to deport her in 2005, she said. She pays taxes, has cared for many Americans as a nurse and has never used public benefits, even when she struggled financially in the years she was a single mother, she said. What are they going to gain that theyre going to separate me from my husband, my daughter and now my granddaughter? Cahoon said over the phone after she heard about the change in policy. Shes been nervous since she heard about a Denver woman with a private bill pending who ended up taking sanctuary in a church when her request for postponement was denied earlier this year, Cahoon said. Cahoon anxiously checks her driveway every night, fearful that she will see ICE vans coming for her, she said. Rep. Hunters office didnt respond to repeated requests for comment about his private immigration bill. Hunter inherited the current case from his predecessor and father, Duncan L. Hunter, and previously sponsored a bill for one other case. The elder Duncan Hunter said that when he was in office, he sponsored private immigration bills when there was a significant amount of hardship involved. Because of that standard, he said, sponsoring private immigration bills did not conflict with his otherwise hardline approach to immigration policy. Theres a vast difference between people coming legally or people who apply for hardship and smugglers coming in, the elder Hunter said in a phone interview. Follow me on Facebook for live updates about immigration news kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter James B. Comey, who was ousted today as FBI director by President Trump, learned about his firing from a TV news report while speaking with FBI agents in Los Angeles, according to an FBI source. He was caught flat-footed, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Comey was surprised by the news but kept talking to the agents, the source said. Another source said that once the news flashed on the screen, Comey was ushered off into another room to meet with aides. Advertisement Comey was set to speak Tuesday night at an FBI recruiting event in Hollywood. But the source said that in the wake of his firing, Comey will not go forward with the program. TV coverage showed Comey boarding a jet at Los Angeles International Airport. The jet took off about 6 p.m. and was headed for Washington D.C., according to the planes flight plan. More than two dozen reporters were standing outside the Directors Guild of America, where the event was taking place, awaiting Comey. The source said Comey was at both the FBIs Los Angeles field office and the DGA building Tuesday. Deirdre L. Fike, the assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, did not discuss Comeys dismissal during her opening remarks at an event aimed at recruiting more minorities into the agency on Tuesday night. She said the director, whose name was still listed on a PowerPoint presentation detailing speakers at the event, had to return to Washington unexpectedly. Fike did praise Comey for making diversity a cornerstone of the FBIs recruitment proceedings in recent years. No matter who leads the agency, our mission remains the same, she said. In announcing Comeys firing, Trump said the move was necessary to allow a new beginning at the FBI. Comey has been supervising an investigation of Russias meddling in the 2016 election and the possibility of cooperation between people linked to Trumps campaign and Moscow. Meanwhile, the FBI director has been widely criticized by people in both parties for his handling of investigations connected to the election the Russia inquiry as well as the probe into Hillary Clintons email practices while she was secretary of State. richard.winton@latimes.com Twitter: @LAcrimes Decreased expectations for returns on pension investments and changing state and federal policies are creating troubles for San Diego Countys financial planners. The accountants and forecasters say the county is in good fiscal health, but also caution that its pension fund isnt expected to perform as strongly as in decades past, possibly forcing government to put more money into investment funds in order to write retirement checks for former employees. Additionally, a state revenue shortfall will likely mean that counties will have to pick up the bill for some services it must provide, while changes to the Affordable Care Act could leave it responsible for paying for millions worth of health care for indigent people. Advertisement With the state facing the first revenue shortfall in several years, the new federal shaking up Washington, and volatility in financial markets, we really do have to be on our toes, proactively anticipating what might be ahead, Chief Administrative Officer Helen Robbins-Meyer said. There are no immediate plans to reduce spending, but contingencies have been prepared to cushion any financial hits. Other California counties are cutting services and implementing hiring freezes to control spending, but San Diego will rather glide slope programs to accommodate new unavoidable expenses in 2018 and 2019, Robbins-Meyer told supervisors last week as she and her top staff presented their proposed $5.69 billion budget. Three factors are causing the uncertainties. Pensions are one of them. People are not only living longer theyll receive more retirement checks over the course of their life but investment funds arent expected to perform as strongly as they have before, so they arent growing as much because of the market. We are seeing a trend of retirement systems lowering their assumed rates of return to align pension funding with this new market reality, said Tracy Sandoval, the countys auditor and controller. To accommodate this, the county can divert money from services into the pension fund. It can also create new retirement programs that pay new employees less, reducing the amount of money leaving the pension fund. A new pension benefit tier was created during the countys recent round of contract negotiations with county employees. Under the new system, newly hired workers would be paid less when they retire. A new agreement, however, has not been reached with the Service Employees International Union, Local 221, a group that represents about 10,000 of the countys 17,400 workers. A $1.6 billion state revenue shortfall is another issue. Our most immediate risk comes from the state, Robbins-Meyer said. Sacramento requires that counties provide certain services to constituents, and often provides some funding, but the governor, in order to cut expenses, might require counties to take over in-home support services without providing the funds to do so. If this happens, the county could have to pick up the tab. This is real, and this is happening, Robbins-Meyer said. The potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act health care law is another possible financial problem for the county. If the policys Medicaid expansion is scrapped, the county could face $75 million in additional expenses per year to provide healthcare for indigent people. Don Steuer, the assistant chief administrative officer and chief operating officer, said they are monitoring the impacts a new health care policy would have on the county. His statement came two days before the House of Representatives approved a new health care bill. The impacts, however, are unknown because the Congressional Budget Office has not yet completed its analysis of the legislations fiscal effects, nor has the Senate taken up the issue. The proposed county budget totals $5.69 billion, a 6.2 percent increase over current funding. The budget allows for the equivalent of 17,404 full-time employees, eight jobs more than the current level. Like this years budget, the proposed spending plan allocates the largest portion of funds to the countys Health and Human Services Agency, a department that provides social services, runs the foster care system, assists the homeless, and runs public health initiatives. While the county is poised to spend nearly $6 billion, only a fifth of the funds can be spent at the boards discretion. The remainder of the money comes to the county as funding through the state and federal governments and must be spent in a particular, predetermined way. There are challenges on the horizon, but the county is increasing spending in some areas. The proposed budget includes 261 new affordable homes for seniors, including 81 at The Grove in Vista, the largest of five affordable senior housing projects. Public safety spending is increasing 4.2 percent. A memo from Robbins-Meyer noted the payments into the countys pension program, union contracts, and an increased workload in the probation program (various efforts to release people from state prisons have caused an increase in probationers). The Sheriffs Department will also start a comprehensive body camera program, there will be more prosecutors to fight human trafficking. Twitter: @jptstewart joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1841 On a Friday last August, Mark Hayward went to a Wells Fargo bank to withdraw $20,000 of his inheritance money. He got arrested and spent the night in jail instead. His girlfriends brother went to a different Wells Fargo branch the same day, Aug. 5, to withdraw the same amount to buy a car, and he was detained and handcuffed by police, too. No charges were ever filed, and the two men got their money from Wells Fargo about two weeks later. Advertisement Hayward, his girlfriend, her brother and the brothers wife are suing the San Diego Police Department. Wells Fargo is next, their attorney says. The lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in San Diego, alleges racial discrimination and civil rights violations as well as assault and battery, and negligent hiring, training and supervision of police involved. The four are seeking damages between $100,000 and $500,000. We dont believe police had any probable cause to detain and interrogate any of the four plaintiffs, attorney Joel Golden said. Golden said Hayward, accompanied by his girlfriend, had gone to a Wells Fargo branch on Rosecrans Street and tried to withdraw money from an account he had set up a week earlier after he received an inheritance. Hayward, who is black, presented his California drivers license to the teller, but the employee told Hayward the photo didnt look like him and refused to let him withdraw the money, the lawsuit says. San Diego police were summoned. Golden said Hayward was questioned and eventually arrested on suspicion of forgery. He was held for almost 12 hours before he was released on bail. He was never charged. (Hayward) was arrested. He was the only one put in jail, and I think that he was treated less favorably than anyone else that was detained, Golden said. His girlfriend, Robin Rose, also was handcuffed and detained for about four hours. At the same time, Jesse Rose, accompanied by his wife, Lorraine, went to the downtown Wells Fargo branch on B Street and tried to withdraw $20,000. Police were called and the couple was detained and questioned. All three Roses are white. Golden said Jesse Rose was trying to take out money in order to purchase a vehicle. The attorney said he did not know why Hayward was withdrawing funds. The attorney also said he did not know why bank employees keyed on Jesse Rose. The nexus may have been two people trying to withdraw $20,000 close to the same time, Golden said. Tellers should have had another way to verify Haywards identity, especially since he had just opened his account, the attorney said. They should have had a picture of him or prints or whatever, Golden said. For whatever reason, they called the police. Hayward and Rose were both able to complete their transactions about two weeks later, after Wells Fargo determined they had done nothing wrong. A spokesman for Wells Fargo released a statement that did not address the specifics of the lawsuit, but said the bank has policies and procedures to identify, monitor for and detect anomalous or unusual activity and to report suspicious activity. The statement continued: This is done in accordance with all applicable financial crimes-related laws and as part of our commitment to safeguard our customers assets. A spokesman with the City Attorneys Office said the office had been served with the lawsuit and it would be assigned to an attorney. karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com A Mexican man who has been deported at least 15 times pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a felony drunken driving crash in San Ysidro that fractured the skull of a 6-year-old boy. Lennox Lakes parents didnt go to court for the arraignment, preferring to stay at their sons bedside at Rady Childrens Hospital. Hes a tough kid, father Benjamin Lake said. He wants to go home, to his brothers, his dog, to play on his computer and go to the park. But Lennox will have to stay at the hospital for at least nine more days while he receives antibiotics for a common strep infection that set in after surgery to repair his skull, his family said. Advertisement The boy was knocked unconscious and wasnt breathing when a pickup slammed into his parents Honda Accord late Saturday night as they returned from a day at Disneyland. Lake and his wife, Ingrid, suffered minor injuries. Constantino Banda-Acosta, 38, is suspected of speeding through a stop sign on Camino de la Plaza at Dairy Mart Road in San Ysidro and plowing his pickup into the side of the Accord. Then, authorities say, he kept going. He was arrested about a mile away, where Border Patrol agents found him in the damaged pickup with a passenger. Immigration officials say Banda-Acosta, 38, has been returned to Mexico at least 15 times since 2002 for being in the U.S. illegally, most recently in January. Banda-Acosta entered his not guilty plea in Chula Vista Superior Court to felony charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, driving with a blood-alcohol level of more than 0.08 percent and hit-and-run, and a misdemeanor charge of driving without a license. If convicted, he faces a possible sentence of seven years and eight months in prison. At the prosecutors request, Judge Edward Allard III set the defendants bail at $230,000. Because the defense attorney did not oppose the bail amount, the judge did not allow a prosecutor to reveal other details about the case. A defense lawyer asked that prosecutors make sure a material witness, likely the man taken into custody with Banda-Acosta, not be deported pending further investigation. The witness is being held by immigration authorities, Deputy Public Defender Juliana Humphrey said. Hes a tough kid. He wants to go home, to his brothers, his dog, to play on his computer and go to the park. Benjamin Lake, father of 6-year-old Lennox While speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Chandler declined to provide details about Banda-Acostas blood-alcohol level after the collision, his criminal history or his citizenship status, noting he had not discussed them during the arraignment. His citizenship status doesnt affect what we have to do for our case, Chandler said after the arraignment. Its not relevant to our prosecution of the case. Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would seek deportation for Banda-Acosta after any prison sentence is served. Banda-Acostas past deportations could have occurred under a number of federal processes. They include a formal removal order issued by an immigration judge or an expedited removal order handled administratively by law enforcement officers. A person can also be returned to their home country in a reinstatement of prior deportation orders or when a person voluntarily agrees to go back and doesnt ask for a hearing. Mack said she could not release specifics on Banda-Acostas deportations because of privacy rules. Chula Vista police said they arrested Banda-Acosta twice on charges of domestic violence against his wife, on April 9, 2006, and this year on Jan. 9. According to court records, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic battery in 2007 and spent time in county jail. The records also show he has convictions for driving on a suspended license and a 2006 misdemeanor DUI conviction for which he was placed on probation for five years. Some immigration attorneys expressed surprise at the number of times Banda-Acosta was sent back to Mexico although they pointed out it is not known whether those were formal deportations or voluntary returns. Although entering the U.S. illegally is a crime, federal prosecutors typically prosecute border crossers in those cases where the person has a criminal record, they said. Ive never heard of a case, and Ive been practicing for 35 years, where a person has come in 15 times, but then again they dont come to me because theres nothing I can do for them, said Lilia Velasquez, a San Diego immigration attorney. Velasquez said the U.S. Attorneys Office tends to focus on hard-core criminals and not just illegal entrants. Ive never heard of a case, and Ive been practicing for 35 years, where a person has come in 15 times. Lilia Velasquez, San Diego immigration attorney Benjamin Lake said knowing Banda-Acosta has been deported so many times has changed his opinion about immigration law enforcement. I probably feel a little bit different about the whole sanctuary thing. We need to protect people, he said. I feel like its a broken system. Its sad that this could have been prevented. Shortly before Saturdays crash, Lake said the family had stopped for milkshakes and were looking forward to spending Sunday with their other two sons, ages 14 and 16. Then, as he was driving on Dairy Mart Road and was about to make a turn toward home, he heard the screeching of tires speeding toward their car. The next thing I know, Im awake to airbags around me, he said. He and his wife assured each other they were OK. But Lennox, in a child seat on the side of the car that took the brunt of the impact, was unconscious, not breathing and bleeding from his ears and nose. Lake crawled out of the car on the passenger side and called 911. Im a nurse, but I was freaked out pretty bad, Lake said. His wife worked frantically until she got Lennox breathing again. Border Patrol agents rolled up, and Ingrid Lake gave them the description of the pickup that helped them to find the suspected driver. A Mexican citizen who has been deported 15 times was arrested in a hit-and-run crash that left a boy, 6, badly hurt over the weekend. Their son started crying and told medics, Im fine, Im fine. But the boy had suffered deep fractures to his skull along with a broken nose and scrapes. Lake said more tests are needed to try to figure out why Lennox bled from his ears. Lake said his sons eyes were swollen shut until Tuesday night, when he was able to open them again. He couldnt see and watch TV in his hospital bed, and he was getting bored, his father said. My wife and I made up games, like making animals out of Play-Doh and have him guess what they were, Lake said. He added that doctors said if Lennoxs scalp laceration had been an inch further back on his head, he wouldnt be here. Hes not paralyzed, he didnt lose his left eye. Were blessed, Lake said. UPDATES: 7:15 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details from court and interviews with immigration lawyers. This article was originally published at 4 p.m. A drunken driving suspect in a hit-and-run crash that severely injured a 6-year-old boy in San Ysidro over the weekend had been deported from the U.S. at least 15 times, authorities said Tuesday. Constantino Banda-Acosta, 38, was last deported Jan. 18, with at least 14 prior cases since 2002, federal authorities said. Banda-Acosta is accused of speeding west on Camino de La Plaza, running a stop sign at Dairy Mart Road and slamming his pickup into a Honda Accord about 11:30 p.m. Saturday. The pickup driver did not stop. Advertisement Banda-Acosta, a Mexican citizen, was arrested about half an hour later, San Diego police and the U.S. Border Patrol said. The car that was struck was occupied by a family driving home after a day trip to Disneyland. They were a block away from their home when the crash occurred, a relative said. The speeding Chevrolet Silverado hit the driver and passengers side where the boy, Lennox Lake, was sitting in his car seat, said his grandmother, Cheryl Lake. The boys father, Benjamin, became trapped. His wife, Ingrid, crawled out of the front passenger seat and rushed to aid Lennox, who was unconscious, not breathing and bleeding from his nostrils, ears and head, his grandmother said. The child suffered a major head injury and was taken to a hospital. As of Tuesday night, he had undergone two surgeries at Rady Childrens Hospital, Cheryl Lake said. Despite a long road ahead, his family and doctors are cautiously optimistic the boy will make a full recovery, his grandmother said. She described Lennox as a friendly and smart boy. The kid makes friends everywhere he goes. Hes just a delight as a grandson, Cheryl Lake said, fighting back tears. Lennox has two older brothers, 14 and 16, who did not join the family on the trip to Disneyland. His family set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for the medical bills and other expenses. Soon after the collision, Border Patrol agents came upon the familys wrecked Honda and fanned out in search of the hit-and-run driver. A few blocks away, shortly after midnight, agents found a damaged pickup that matched the description Ingrid Lake gave them. Inside were two men, who were detained. Banda-Acosta was identified as the driver. He was booked into jail on suspicion of felony hit-and-run with injury, drunken driving with injury and driving without a valid license. The Border Patrol took custody of Banda-Acostas passenger, also an unauthorized immigrant, agency officials said. Banda-Acosta is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday . He was being held on $100,000 bail. His criminal history includes arrests stemming from domestic violence allegations against his wife of 18 years, Chula Vista police Capt. Fritz Reber said. Chula Vista police arrested Banda-Acosta April 9, 2006 and Jan. 9 of this year. ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack said the agency would again seek deportation for Banda-Acosta after any conviction and sentence is served in connection with the DUI and hit-and-run crash. The agency confirmed that, given its longstanding relationship with the San Diego County Sheriffs Department, ICE is confident Banda-Acosta will be released to the agency once his criminal case is settled. Cheryl Lake, the boys grandmother, was shocked and at a loss for words when a Union-Tribune reporter shared information about the number of times Banda-Acosta has been deported. She said she couldnt wrap her mind around how Banda-Acosta repeatedly entered the country illegally. There are not enough words to describe the huge impact his actions have had, she said. ICE confirmed that 15 removals is a significant number and indicates an egregious immigration violation. San Diegans who support Trumps immigration policies saw the incident as proof that his plans are needed. Why do we continue to accept these travesties day after day? said Imperial Beach resident Ernie Griffes via email. Our state legislators encourage it with legislation. We need vetting, rules, order, structure. At a minimum, criminals need to go, said Patti Brasga via email. San Diegans who oppose Trumps immigration policies spoke out against using this case to depict all immigrants as criminals. Drunk driving is a nation-wide problem that has affected the lives of far too many, said Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego, via email. Using the pain and suffering of victims and their families to vilify a single community is irresponsible and unhelpful. We all need to work together, immigrants and citizens alike, in an atmosphere of trust in order to solve public safety issues. Because of the Banda-Acostas immigration history, the boy and his family will be eligible for help from the new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, or VOICE, office created by President Donald Trump in an executive order. The office aids victims of crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants. The office was announced at the end of April and plans to study statistics related to unauthorized immigrants and crime in addition to supporting victims. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez A concerned motorist who stopped to help after spotting a semi-truck engulfed in flames on a Scripps Ranch freeway inadvertently prompted a chain-reaction crash Tuesday night, a fire official said. The truck driver was headed west on state Route 52 near Santo Road when he pulled over about 10:30 p.m., said San Diego Fire Battalion Chief Dave Seneviratne. Its unclear why the driver stopped whether he saw smoke, flames or experienced engine trouble but he was able to get out of the truck safely before a fire that started near the engine overtook the vehicle, Seneviratne said. Advertisement Upon seeing the flaming truck, a motorist stopped on the freeway to help. His car was then struck by another vehicle, who didnt see the stopped car in time, the battalion chief said. A driver headed east on Route 52 also pulled over when he saw the fire. Yazn Hamoode said the stopped car was also clipped by a second vehicle. Fire officials said California Highway Patrol officers searched for that second vehicle. Its unknown if it was found. Twitter: @LAWinkley (619) 293-1546 lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com A house fire in Spring Valley displaced three adults and three children Tuesday night, fire officials said. The blaze broke out around 8 p.m. at the home on Grand Avenue near Birch Street in the community of La Presa. Crews put out fire about 20 minutes later, Cal Fire Capt. Issac Sanchez said. Investigators are still determining the cause of the fire, which charred the homes roof and attic space. Advertisement The Red Cross was called to assist the residents with temporary lodging. A damage estimate was not immediately available. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez A man was beaten, stabbed and shot several times in an attack at Southcrest Park while he was heading to work Wednesday morning, San Diego police said. The victim left a trail of blood away from the park at Alpha Street and Keeler Avenue to the Northgate Gonzalez Market strip mall where officers found him. Several women were tending to him before paramedics got there, police Lt. Charles Lara said. The shooting was reported about 5:40 a.m. near the Southcrest Recreation Center. Officers found shell casings at the park. Advertisement The victim, believed to be in his 30s, told officers he was walking across the park to get to the Northgate mall where he would get a ride to work. Several men jumped him, beat him, stabbed him several times, and shot him four times in the arm and back, Lara said. He ran from them, crossing Alpha Street to get to the strip mall for help. Medics took him to a trauma center, and he is expected to survive, police said. Lara said the motive for the attack is not known. There is no indication that he was robbed or of any gang affiliation. He just seems to be a working guy, Lara said. One of the assailants was described as a Latino man about 5 feet 3 inches tall, wearing a blue jacket, who left in a white 2001 or 2002 Toyota Camry. Officers cordoned off sections of the park and nearby street where they found the blood. They were also asking residents in the area if they saw or heard anything. Its been 24 years since a president fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1993, President Clinton ousted William Sessions as FBI director after Sessions refused to voluntarily step down amid ethical concerns. Sessions, appointed by Ronald Reagan, had been under investigation by the Justice Departments Office of Professional Responsibility during George H.W. Bushs final year in office. Advertisement Heres how The Los Angeles Times reported the findings at the time: The Justice Department report found, among other things, that Sessions had engaged in a sham transaction to avoid paying taxes on his use of an FBI limousine to take him to and from work, that he had billed the government for a security fence around his home that provided no security and that he had arranged business trips to places where he could meet with relatives. Sessions dismissed the findings and refused to resign. Clinton, at the recommendation of his attorney general, Janet Reno, dismissed Sessions. We cannot have a leadership vacuum at an agency as important to the United States as the FBI, Clinton said at a White House news conference. It is time that this difficult chapter in the agencys history is brought to a close. Sessions serves on the board of directors for non-profit think tank, The Constitution Project. According to their website, he is a partner at the Holland & Knight law firm Washington, D.C. The District Attorneys Office said Wednesday it would not challenge a judges order to return more than $100,000 seized from a medical marijuana business owner and his family last year even though they were not charged with a crime. A spokesman for District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said prosecutors informed Judge Tamila E. Ipema at a hearing Wednesday that the office would comply with the recent order. Spokesman Steve Walker declined to provide any additional comment, referring to a statement the office issued earlier this week. Advertisement The investigation remains under review for potential criminal charges, therefore the District Attorneys Office is not able to discuss the facts, the status of that review or any evidence related to it, the statement said. Until Wednesday, Dumanis had not stated whether she would comply with the order or appeal to a higher court. U-T Watchdog reported Monday that Judge Ipema ordered Dumanis to return just over $100,000 seized by prosecutors from James Slatic and his family. The judge said in her ruling that the District Attorneys Office could not hold the money indefinitely without filing criminal charges. Attorney Wesley Hottot said his clients would likely get their money within 10 days. The Slatics are overjoyed to be getting their money back, and now are turning their attention to how Californias civil forfeiture laws can be reformed to make sure no one else has to go through this painful ordeal, he said. Slatic operated the Med-West Distribution medical-marijuana business in Kearny Mesa until January 2016, when dozens of drug agents raided the facility, confiscating records, inventory and some $324,000 in cash. Days later, agents froze Slatics personal bank account and those of his wife and daughters under the civil-asset forfeiture program, which allows government agencies to confiscate cash and property they suspect of being illegal drug or crime profits. Slatic fought the seizure in court. A separate dispute over the $324,000 in seized assets remains in court. 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 In the age of Facebook and Twitter, kids have all sorts of ways to be mean to each other, to bully. And all sorts of ways to wander the internet free of oversight by their less techie parents. We just have to assume they can handle all this with aplomb and that, with good parenting and caring teachers, they will end up as compassionate, moral human beings. But lets not impose on them the politically correct follies of our own generations. Case in point: the post-2001 notion of an Islamophobia crisis. The term is entirely political and unnecessary to clear communication or to fighting unjust discrimination. It serves only to divert our attention from real issues. Advertisement Related: In taking stand against hate, San Diego Unified exemplifies civility The Islam-sanctified discrimination against and occasional slaughter of Christians and Jews in many countries of the Middle East could be said to represent a Christianophobia and Judeophobia far more extensive, unjust, and barbaric than the Islamophobia now getting such exaggerated attention in the West. But we dont need those terms either to reduce discrimination or bullying on the basis of religious beliefs. Politically loaded, imprecise language leads to careless thought and bad decisions. An excellent example is the San Diego Unified School Districts (SDUSD) caving in to demands by the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and planning to develop a multi-tiered approach to combating Islamophobia, as reported in the Union-Tribune on April 6. That article contained much information on the issue and did so in such a clear way that SDUSD board members may already be questioning their earlier decision. One incentive for the plan was 82 recorded incidents of bullying in the school district between July and December 2016, with religion the motivator in seven of these cases. There is no record though of what religions were involved. Wheres the Islamophobia? Under the proposed CAIR-SDUSD plan, students will learn more about [Islam] in social studies classes, staff members and parents will receive letters addressing Islamophobia and identifying resources to learn about the religion, and schools will review and vet materials related to Muslim culture and history in media centers and provide resources and material for teachers and take steps to promote a more positive image of Islam. The SDUSD is ambling into a tar pit here, going in a direction that will lead to unending headaches and costs for educators and all the rest of us. If schools wish to offer survey courses comparing side-by-side the histories, doctrines and practices of the worlds major religions, that would be fine. But there are zero grounds for selecting Islam for special treatment. A narrow special interest group like CAIR mustnt be allowed to vet the materials used, censoring anything that did not promote a more positive image of Islam. Such de facto Islamic apologetics would be unacceptable. Many Muslims, ex-Muslims, and non-Muslim experts on Islam regard CAIR as a covert supporter of Islamic fundamentalism, not as a supporter of a reformed Islam compatible with the Constitution and laws of the United States. Is CAIR willing to condemn publicly and in print not just terrorists but also the hundreds of millions of fundamentalist Muslims in the world who advocate a worldwide caliphate, discrimination against non-Muslims, and capital punishment for apostates, adulterers and those who insult Mohammed? Will materials given to students include information from the Pew Research Center about how widespread such barbaric beliefs are? For a summary of Pews findings, Google Andrew Bostoms article Sharia uber Alles. If CAIR or SDUSD teachers plan to exclude such information, that would signal that the objectives are not education but, rather, propaganda. Public schools have no business engaging in such apologetics on behalf of any religion. How do we suppose parents and students will react to all this? Some will distribute information on CAIR, Sharia, and Islamic fundamentalism that CAIR would prefer students not see. They will challenge principals and teachers with this. Many will insist that, for balance, books by critics of Islam, such as Brigitte Gabriel, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, Irshad Manji, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, be in every school library. Surely SDUSD board members can now foresee these problems, even if they couldnt before. At its April 25 meeting, almost two dozen citizens spoke out against the plans for a CAIR-vetted program of Islamic apologetics. Not one audience member spoke in favor of such. Even without binoculars, the board should be able to see a tsunami developing. Hurlbert is professor emeritus of biology at San Diego State University. The primary obligation of a public school system is to provide our children with an outstanding education. San Diego Unified has thousands of dedicated teachers and other professionals who focus on that core mission every day. Together, they help our children achieve phenomenal results, including the highest graduation rate in the state of any big-city district. To protect these gains and put our students first, San Diego Unified takes a firm stand against the bullying of any child. Bullying is not a peripheral issue to the education of our children. Decades of research shows children do not learn when they are frightened and suffering from emotional trauma. As educators, we have an obligation to protect our children from bullying to help them learn. More importantly, we have a moral obligation to keep every student safe. Advertisement Related: Why San Diego Unified should drop its plans to address Islamophobia Muslim students are deserving of our same care and concern as all students, and are feeling particularly vulnerable. A survey released last month by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) found Muslim children are more likely to be bullied in school than children of other faiths. In fact, nearly half of all Muslim parents, or 42 percent of those with children in K-12 schools, said their children had been bullied due to their religion. That figure was roughly double the numbers for other faiths. There was also a more disturbing aspect to the study. The ISPU poll found that in a quarter of all reported anti-Muslim incidents, a teacher or school official had been involved. In San Diego, the local Muslim community brought its concerns to the school board. Their testimony included parents and students who had been reduced to tears by the taunts of their peers. These meetings still available for viewing online are truly heart-wrenching to watch. These types of reports are why the San Diego Unified school board took action to bring attention and awareness to the bullying of Muslim students. Our goal was not to endorse a religion, but rather to assure a vulnerable segment of our community that our schools are safe places for them, just as they are safe spaces for all children. Given the volume of misinformation regarding the districts actions and intentions, it might be helpful to set the record straight. San Diego Unified does not favor any one religion over another. We welcome students from all faiths within the school community. Our students learn about all major world religions as part of their world history classes in several grades. These lessons are secular. The lessons have been constructed in accordance with the 2016 State of California History-Social Science Framework. It is worth pointing out that the California curriculum firmly maintains the separation between church and state. As evidenced by our students academic success, San Diego Unified is focused entirely on our mission of educating the next generation. That next generation will include Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and others. It is essential these students learn about each other and the strengths every student brings to our schools. Ironically, many of the complaints the district received after announcing the policy to protect Muslim students from bullying complaints that came largely from outside San Diego made appeals to the First Amendment to the Constitution. Teaching students about different cultures and religions is not a violation of the First Amendment. Teaching tolerance is the best way to protect the First Amendment, and tolerance is at the heart of San Diego Unifieds work to protect all students. To provide all our students with the opportunities they deserve, San Diego Unified will continue its work to protect all our students from bullying. The volume of hate mail and mean-spirited online posts is proof this work is both necessary and right. If adults in our community feel comfortable attacking public employees for trying to protect children, just imagine what those children must be facing from their own peers. By taking a stand against hate, San Diego Unified is offering everyone a timely refresher on civics and civility. Barrera is president of the San Diego Unified School District board of trustees; Beiser is vice president of the board. Afghanistan a remote, ruggedly mountainous, landlocked west Asian nation with 32 million residents but limited urgent geopolitical strategic value has repeatedly bedeviled world superpowers. Three attempted military takeovers by the British Empire ultimately failed, including one launched in 1919 when the empire was at or near the height of its power. A 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union at or near the height of its power failed as well. More recently, America invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after al-Qaedas 9/11 terror attacks on New York City and the Pentagon when the Taliban regime that controlled the nation gave al-Qaeda safe haven. After a long 16 years of war, America with the most powerful and advanced military in world history has also failed to bend Afghanistan to its will. Al-Qaeda is a much diminished force, but the Taliban remains a stubborn foe in what seems an irreconcilable civil war, and broader U.S. hopes of establishing a stable, loyal civilian government in Kabul have never come close to being achieved. Advertisement Now The Washington Post and The New York Times report that President Trumps Cabinet is advising him that increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan from 8,400 to as many as 13,400 and loosening rules on the use of U.S. military assets could break a stalemate between the Taliban and the Afghan government and also encourage the often-corrupt Afghan government to shape up. Yet nothing in history suggests that Afghanistan, with its dozens of ethnic fiefdoms and difficult terrain, will ever have a strong central government or that political leaders in this impoverished land will stop using their clout to enrich themselves. And nothing in history suggests that a small escalation will achieve anything permanent for the United States beyond adding to the tallies of more than 2,200 Americans killed and more than 20,000 injured fighting in Afghanistan. There is, on the other hand, plenty in history to suggest that Trumps old view of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan that it has been a total disaster is more accurate than his apparent present assessment that this is a war the U.S. can resolve in its favor. It was only in 2010 and 2011 that the U.S. had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and other jihadists. This was done while Washington was simultaneously spending enormous sums on infrastructure and civic projects in that country to try to create a modern, lawful society and to win over hearts and minds of Afghans who oppose Islamic extremists but are suspicious of outsiders. The Pentagon itself best documented the failure of these U.S. efforts. A lengthy report issued in April 2016 concluded that U.S. projects that cost American taxpayers a staggering $113 billion had not paid off in a more stable, more secure Afghanistan. Military training programs were plagued by ghost soldiers and school expansions by ghost teachers Afghans paid by the U.S. who never came to work. Meanwhile, the Taliban were making steady gains against U.S.-trained Afghan troops and the U.S. forces that remained after President Obama ordered a massive drawdown. So a strategic and military initiative that was immensely costly to the U.S. in lives and dollars didnt pay off. And now Americans are being told that a small effort has promise to achieve what that massive effort couldnt? By a president who was elected in part by decrying his reckless predecessors willingness to spend American might and American dollars meddling in foreign nations? If Trump deploys more troops, he would become the latest leader of a superpower to ignore Afghanistans extremely daunting history. Brave Americans will die unnecessary deaths as a result. Twitter: @sdutIdeas Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion Republicans in Congress are coming out with a wide range of reactions after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday including a fair amount who are raising questions about the timing and the reasoning behind the decision from the White House. The Trump administration maintains it was based on a recommendation from Justice Department officials who said Comey should be let go for how he handled the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. He wasnt doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job, Trump said Wednesday morning. However in the late hours of Tuesday night, questions were already being raised over whether the firing had to do with the FBIs investigation into alleged Trump campaign ties to Russia and the countrys interference in the 2016. (Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway strongly denies the firing had anything to do with Russia.) Why did it happen today? Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, asked Tuesday. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president? Some members of Congress are renewing calls for a special prosecutor to take over the investigation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, says that would just impede the current work going on in the Senates own investigation. But many Republicans feel the same as Schumer. Heres what some of the GOP lawmakers who disagree with Trumps decision are saying. Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake Arizona Sen. John McCain McCain is one of many Republicans calling for a special prosecutor to take over the Russia probe. I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office, McCains statement online said. James Comey is a man of honor and integrity, and he has led the FBI well in extraordinary circumstances. Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock Michigan Rep. Justin Amash Amashs note took issue with the second paragraph of the letter Trump sent Comey explaining his decision. That paragraph says, While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr What do you think of Trumps decision? Comment below or send a letter to the editor to letters@sduniontribune.com and we may publish your thoughts online or in print. Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @abbyhamblin ALSO Editorial: Time for President Trump to really put America first A lot of people are defending Trump firing FBI Director James Comey Poll: Do you think Donald Trump was justified in firing FBI director James Comey? President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey in a surprising turn of events that has shaken the political world and is drawing strong reactions given the unusual timing of the firing. In a letter addressed to Comey, Trump said he accepted the recommendations of his deputy attorney general and attorney general to terminate and remove him from office, effective immediately. While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau, Trump wrote. The White House said in a statement that a search for a new director was underway. On Tuesday it remained unclear why exactly Comey was abruptly fired but one memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, surfaced by a CNN reporter, suggested the Justice Department had sought to restore public confidence in the FBI. Still, the timing of Comeys firing raised immediate questions, and reactions about the unusual development quickly dominated the broader conversation about the FBIs high-profile ongoing investigations, including one focused on Russias interference in the presidential election. Related: Did Comey sway the 2016 election? Idea makes him 'mildly nauseous,' he says For months, the FBI has been investigating how Russia meddled in the presidential election and whether any members of Trumps campaign colluded with foreign agents. The White House has strongly denied such connections, and as recently as Monday, Trump tweeted to say there is no evidence of such collusion. As news broke of Comeys firing, prominent political figures including Edward Snowden and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-San Francisco, offered strong reactions. Meanwhile, David Axelrod , a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said it smelled like a coverup, former conservative presidential candidate Evan McMullin said Comeys firing jeopardizes the investigation. And former San Diego mayoral candidate Richard Rider called it GOOD news while Fox News Channel political analyst Brit Hume talked about Comeys political sway. Among those expressing concern over Comeys firing were other lawmakers, including Republicans like Rep. Justin Amash and Sen. Richard Burr , who chimed in on Twitter. Rep. Amash, R-Michigan, who once opposed Trumps nomination for the GOP presidential ticket in 2016 said his staff was reviewing legislation to establish an independent commission on Russia and then zeroed in on the second paragraph in Trumps letter to Comey, calling it bizarre. Sen. Burr, R-North Carolina, said he was troubled by the timing and reasoning of Comeys firing. On Tuesday, Trump attorney Michael Cohen said in a tweet that he thought Comeys firing was justified. This just the beginning of this story and many more questions are likely to be answered in the coming days: Who will replace Comey? Will his firing severely impact the investigation into Russias meddling in the elections? We will update this post as new developments emerge. In the meantime, chime in with your thoughts: Does Comeys firing surprise you or not surprise you? 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. New York real estate developer Arnold Fisher had a vision that the U.S. military should heal injured troops even the invisible wounds of the brain before they are discharged. What became a $100 million private fundraising drive is now manifesting at Camp Pendleton. On Tuesday, Navy medical officers ceremonially broke ground on the seventh of nine Intrepid Spirit centers nationwide that are meant to address the trauma inflicted on the brain by blast injuries. Science as a whole remains in the infancy of its understanding of the potential for recovery after head injury, said Capt. Lisa Mulligan, commanding officer of the Camp Pendleton naval hospital. This center will combine the resources of clinical, research and educational specialists to broaden our horizons. Advertisement The $12.5 million facility, expected to take a year to build, will bring to bear the state-of-the art in traumatic brain injury care thats based on seven years of work at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence in Bethesda, Maryland. The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund built that center in 2010 to tackle research and diagnosis of brain injuries and psychological health conditions among returning troops. The same charity, led by the Fisher family, is building the 25,000-square-foot facility next to Camp Pendletons main hospital. Like the others, it will be donated to the Defense Department upon completion. More than 356,000 U.S. service members have been diagnosed with some level of brain injury during the Iraq and Afghanistan war era. Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, occurs when an external mechanical force like a blast or strong jolt causes brain dysfunction. Many people who get it also develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Arnold Fisher said he views it as a duty to address the brain and psychological issues that he sees as tied to the 20-a-day suicide rate among Americas veterans. When they come home, and they have mental problems, we need to take care of them immediately, said Fisher, 84, who spoke at Tuesdays ceremony and a panel discussion afterward. We cant let them have this malady for which they could shoot themselves, beat up on their families and do things they would never have done before. Its very important that we catch this and fix this as soon as they return, he added. The Intrepid centers boast a cure rate as high as 94 percent. Also, theyve cut opioid painkiller use by 50 percent among people who start out on these habit-forming prescription medications. The cure rate is really a return-to-duty rate, said Capt. Walter Greenhalgh, director of the national Intrepid center in Bethesda. Its hard to compare that to the early years of the post-9/11 wars because the nation, including military medicine and Congress, started paying good attention to brain injuries only a decade ago, Greenhalgh said. You talk about signature injuries of the war obviously they are amputations and burns. But its actually the signature mechanism, which is blast, that has created these injuries, he said. So it stands to reason that if blast is the mechanism, the effect on the brain and the nervous system there has to be an association there as well. At Camp Pendleton, more than 1,743 patients have been referred to the concussive care unit since 2014. That unit will be transferred to the new Intrepid Spirit center and expanded upon. Research supports a multi-disciplinary approach to treating brain and psychological afflictions, officials said Tuesday. That means experts located together in one site to address different parts of the injury, in addition to trying things such as yoga, acupuncture and animal therapy. Even the look and feel of the Intrepid Spirit centers are different, officials said. At military bases full of squared-off buildings, the centers feature softer facades with rounded corners. Inside, the paint and furniture schemes are designed to make people comfortable. Theres also an intangible benefit derived from the bricks and mortar, Greenhalgh said. Its really been the first major step to bring visibility to the invisible wounds of war, he said. To have a monument, essentially, to these injuries I think really has done than anything to destigmatize what has been an invisible wound. The first two Intrepid Spirit centers were built at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. They were followed by Kentuckys Fort Campbell, Fort Hood in Texas and North Carolinas Fort Bragg. Another is being built at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. The final two are planned for Fort Carson in Colorado and Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. The Fisher family is also behind the Fisher House Foundation, which provides housing for families visiting injured troops, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York. The Fallen Heroes fund also led fundraising for the Center for the Intrepid at San Antonios Brooke Army Hospital, which focuses on care for Iraq and Afghanistan troops suffering from lost limbs and burns. Symptoms of traumatic brain injury Physical Headache Feeling dizzy Being tired Trouble sleeping Vision problems Feeling bothered by noise and light Mental Memory problems Trouble staying focused Poor judgment and acting without thinking Being slowed down Trouble putting thoughts into words Emotional Depression Anger outbursts and quick to anger Anxiety Personality changes These symptoms are part of the normal process of getting better. They are not signs of lasting brain damage and are not a cause for concern. More serious symptoms include severe forms of those listed above, decreased response to standard treatments and seizures. Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD 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 DETROIT (AP) Autonomous cars will appear on worldwide roads in big numbers between 2025 and 2035, according to a recent report by IHS Automotive. The report forecasts global sales of autonomous vehicles will rise from 600,000 in 2025 to 21 million in 2035. China will have the most, with 5.7 million; the U.S. and Europe will be right behind. IHS analyst Jeremy Carlson says the consulting firms forecast reflects the substantial amount of money being invested in autonomous technology. General Motors Co. recently bought a self-driving software startup in San Francisco, for example, while Uber and Google are testing self-driving cars on public roads. Advertisement Here, Carlson answers some questions about autonomous cars from The Associated Press. His comments have been edited for length. Q. Will traditional automakers be making autonomous vehicles in 2035? Or technology companies? A. Within the 21 million autonomous vehicles sold worldwide in 2035, we expect a healthy mix of traditional vehicles with an autonomous mode and new and purpose-built designs that forego driver controls and therefore represent a very different use case what is often called on-demand mobility-as-a-service. The former will likely remain the stronghold of automakers; the latte will be a mix of manufacturers, owners and operators of the mobility-as-a-service business model. Q. A recent study from the University of Michigan suggested that almost half of drivers dont want any autonomous capability in their next car. How will the public come around to this idea? A. Consumer acceptance is one of the stronger headwinds, but drivers today are already getting experience with similar functionality. Electronic stability control already includes semi-autonomous functionality. Automatic braking probably the most clear and acute form of autonomy in cars today will be standard equipment in the U.S. by 2022 and is common in luxury vehicles already. Other systems like adaptive cruise control and automatic parking tend to garner positive feedback. As these technologies that enable greater safety and convenience become more common across the industry, even more drivers will grow to understand the value they provide. Q. You see the earliest deployment in the U.S. But most states still havent passed legislation regulating autonomous cars. Is technology coming too fast for government to keep up? A. Regulation is the other major headwind next to consumer acceptance, but IHS expects regulators to recognize the benefits that autonomous mobility can bring their citizens and find the means to work through these complex issues. That said, regulators certainly face big challenges today they are being asked to regulate very technical topics without being provided any technical education themselves, and they must do so with an eye toward future-proofing rapidly evolving technology and consumer markets. Federal regulation will be necessary for long-term mass deployment, but it will be states that pioneer autonomous vehicle regulation in the U.S in the short term. Q. Are consumers in some markets more accepting of autonomy than others? Chinas growing middle class, urban population density, environmental challenges and centralized authority will all play a part, and these factors also tend to be favorable to the mobility-as-a-service model. In the U.S. and Europe, vehicle ownership is more established and will remain strong, but there are still areas where mobility-as-a-service can be attractive. The future of autonomous mobility will be unique in each market. Dubai, United Arab Emirates -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/10/2017 -- Dubai24-7 through its online guide available on its mobile app and website, is helping tourists and travelers planning to holiday in the Emirates have a memorable and fun travel experience. The online platform is serving as a one-stop shop for all travel needs and tips as far as holidaying in Dubai is concerned. Dubai is one of the most visited cities in the world. However, travelers and tourists alike need to be abreast of the latest news and information in Dubai especially as it affects their itinerary. This is where platforms like Dubai24-7 come in handy. The website is segmented into different pages, detailing the different places to visit in Dubai, the best restaurants in Dubai, and the fun and exciting things to do in Dubai to ensure the experience is fun, exciting and rewarding. As a complete travel guide for travelers and tourists, the platform also provides the best deals in Dubai comprising of hotel and flight packages. This ensures that people can experience the beautiful city without having to break the bank. The online and mobile platform serves its users with the latest and most reliable information on the go, helping them save time and other resources that could have been spent on researches and online findings. In addition to being a reliable source for travel information, Dubai24-7 also provides a platform for businesses in Dubai and across the globe to advertise their products and services. This ensures that they reach their target audience and subsequently grow their revenue. Other information available on the platform includes top rated attractions in Dubai and discounts in Dubai for hotels, restuarants and fun activities. About Dubai24-7 Dubai24-7 is a subsidiary of 24/7 Group DMCC. As an online and mobile platform, it provides users across the globe with the latest news, information, deals, and discounts necessary to make their travel experience fun, exciting and memorable. Media Contact: Company: Dubai24-7 Address: JLT Cluster I, Platinum Tower, 8th Floor, Office 802-04, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Phone: +971(0)44504821 Email: info@247grp.com Website: http://dubai24-7.com/ Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/10/2017 -- The Natural Potassium Salt in China 2017-2022 industry mainly includes a number of stocks and companies operating and following a number of techniques such as production, manufacturing, distribution, and sales of the different varieties of consumer goods throughout the globe in order to meet the supply and demand chain of the consumers. Not only is the increasing demand and technological innovation but also many others factors that help propel the growth and development of the global Natural Potassium Salt in China 2017-2022 market. The growth of the Natural Potassium Salt in China 2017-2022 industry also depends on the growth opportunities provided by the major players in the various regions across the globe. Request For Download Sample Report: http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/market-research-on-natural-potassium-salt-in-china-126945#RequestSample The 95% potassium salt in China is of salt-lake type, centered at the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai and the Lop Nur region in Xinjiang. In 2016, the basic reserves of natural potassium salt accounted for about 580 million tonnes. As drilling and exploring techniques of natural potassium salt is being improved, the exploration of the resource will be speeded up for the next few years, meaning that the reserves will increase as well. In 2022, the reserves are predicted to be nearly 610 million tonnes. The domestic natural potassium salt industry will continue its expansion, for that globalization of agriculture is going to attract more attention. According to the forecast, the exploration and process of natural potassium salt will be faster and stronger and the industry has a well prospect. In this report, AskCI will further disclose market potential and commercial opportunities for venture capital of natural potassium salt industry in China. Recommendations will be given at the end of the report to analyze the forecast of the industry and provide suggestions on the investment. 1) The Aim of Report To provide readers with comprehensive and in-depth understanding of Chinese natural potassium salt industry; To analyze current development of the industry; To analyze industrial chains of the industry; To discover drivers and barriers of the industry; To reveal opportunities for natural potassium salt industry in China. Browse Full Report With Toc: http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/market-research-on-natural-potassium-salt-in-china-126945 2) Benefit from the Report Obtain latest info of natural potassium salt industry, such as status, supply and demand, upstream and downstream, import and export, etc.; Find out how Chinese natural potassium salt market will change and how your business can be involved in; Keep informed of your competitors/their activities in the globe and in China; Learn about key market drivers and barriers; Share this information within your organization using free global intranet license. 2. SCOPE OF INVESTIGATION The report will investigate natural potassium salt industry from the following aspects: General situation; Supply and demand; Upstream and downstream; Import and export; Future trend; Commercial opportunity. About Market Research Store Market Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Market Research Store is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. Rancho Cucamonga, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/10/2017 -- 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 Rancho Cucamonga, CA General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Adam Paul Green (Ancestor Stephen Hopkins / Gen.No. 86,723) Announces New Geneology Support Website for Local Enthusiasts http://www.g3-development.co/ 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. 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 Richmond, UT -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/10/2017 -- 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 The Mayflower was hired in London, and sailed from London to Southampton in July 1620 to begin loading food and supplies for the voyage--much of which was purchased at Southampton. The Pilgrims were mostly still living in the city of Leiden, in the Netherlands. They hired a ship called the Speedwell to take them from Delfshaven, the Netherlands, to Southampton, England, to meet up with the Mayflower. The two ships planned to sail together to Northern Virginia. The Speedwell departed Delfthaven on July 22, and arrived at Southampton, where they found the Mayflower waiting for them. The Speedwell had been leaking on her voyage from the Netherlands to England, though, so they spent the next week patching her up. On August 5, the two ships finally set sail for America. But the Speedwell began leaking again, so they pulled into the town of Dartmouth for repairs, arriving there about August 12. The Speedwell was patched up again, and the two ships again set sail for America about August 21. After the two ships had sailed about 300 miles out to sea, the Speedwell again began to leak. Frustrated with the enormous amount of time lost, and their inability to fix the Speedwell so that it could be sea-worthy, they returned to Plymouth, England, and made the decision to leave the Speedwell behind. The Mayflower would go to America alone. The cargo on the Speedwell was transferred over to the Mayflower; some of the passengers were so tired and disappointed with all the problems that they quit and went home. Others crammed themselves onto the already very crowded Mayflower. Finally, on September 6, the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England, and headed for America. By the time the Pilgrims had left England, they had already been living onboard the ships for nearly a month and a half. The voyage itself across the Atlantic Ocean took 66 days, from their departure on September 6, until Cape Cod was sighted on 9 November 1620. The first half of the voyage went fairly smoothly, the only major problem was sea-sickness. But by October, they began encountering a number of Atlantic storms that made the voyage treacherous. Several times, the wind was so strong they had to just drift where the weather took them; it was not safe to use the ship's sails. The Pilgrims intended to land in Northern Virginia, which at the time included the region as far north as the Hudson River in the modern State of New York. The Hudson River, in fact, was their originally intended destination. They had received good reports on this region while in the Netherlands. All things considered, the Mayflower was almost right on target, missing the Hudson River by just a few degrees. As the Mayflower approached land, the crew spotted Cape Cod just as the sun rose on November 9. The Pilgrims decided to head south, to the mouth of the Hudson River in New York, where they intended to make their plantation. However, as the Mayflower headed south, it encountered some very rough seas, and nearly shipwrecked. The Pilgrims then decided, rather than risk another attempt to go south they would just stay and explore Cape Cod. They turned back north, rounded the tip, and anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor. The Pilgrims would spend the next month and a half exploring Cape Cod, trying to decide where they would build their plantation. On December 25, 1620, they had finally decided upon Plymouth, and began construction of their first buildings. The End of the Mayflower: "Mayflower's End," by Mike Haywood. The Mayflower returned to England from Plymouth Colony, arriving back on 9 May 1621. Christopher Jones took the ship out on a trading voyage to Rochelle, France, in October 1621, returning with a cargo of Bay salt. Christopher Jones, master and quarter-owner of the Mayflower, died and was buried at Rotherhithe, co. Surrey, England, on 5 March 1621/2. No further record of the Mayflower is found until May 1624, when it was appraised for the purposes of probate and was described as being in ruins. The ship was almost certainly sold off as scrap. The claim, first originating from J. Rendel Harris' book The Finding of the Mayflower (1920), that the Mayflower ended up as a barn in Jordans, England, is now widely discredited as being a figment of an overzealous imagination on the tercentenary anniversary of the Mayflower's voyage, combined with a tainted oral history. None of the evidence has withstood subsequent investigation. Regardless of the lack of evidence for its authenticity, it has been featured in National Geographic on several occasions and is a tourist destination. It is important to realize that in 1624, when the ship was scrapped, it was not at all famous, and nobody would have thought twice about letting it rot away. Richmond, UTAH General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Adam Paul Green (Ancestor Stephen Hopkins / Gen.No. 86,723) Announces New Geneology Resource Website for Local Enthusiasts http://www.g3-development.co/ The Pilgrims did not leave behind any lists of the items they brought with them on the Mayflower, but historians have used a provision list put together by Captain John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) to take an educated guess. However, in 2012, Caleb Johnson, Simon Neal, and Jeremy Bangs started transcribing and studying a rare manuscript (a page of which is here illustrated) in the possession of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, that was written by one of the investors in the Pilgrims' joint-stock company. This manuscript actually contains several lists of suggested provisions the colonists should bring with them. It is the closest thing we can get to a list of what the Pilgrims would have actually brought. A summary of some of the key items on the provision lists: http://mayflowerhistory.com/pilgrim-history/ -Food and Drink: Biscuit, beer, salt, (dried) beef, salt pork, oats, peas, wheat, butter, sweet oil, mustard seed, ling or cod fish, "good cheese", vinegar, aqua-vitae, rice, bacon, cider. -Clothing: Monmouth cap, falling bands, shirts, waistcoat, suit of canvas, suit of cloth, Irish stockings, 4 pairs of shoes, garters. Slippers, plain shoes, little shoes, French soles, sewing needles. -Bedding: Canvas sheets, bolster "filled with good straw", rug and blankets. -Arms: Light armor (complete), fowling piece, snaphance, sword, belt, bandoleer, powder horn, 20 pounds of powder, 60 pounds of shot. -Household: Iron pot, kettle, frying pan, gridiron, two skillets, spit, platters, dishes, spoons of wood, napkins, towels, soap, hand mill, mortar and pestle. -Tools: Broad hoes, narrow hoes, broad axe, felling axe, steel handsaw, whipsaw, hammers, shovels, spades, augers, chisels, gimlets, hatchets, grinding stone, nails, locks for doors. 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 Dubai, UAE -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/10/2017 -- Today, everyone wants SEO friendly websites that can quickly gain reputation on search engines to get the desired traffic and the business leads. Temok now announces the best SEO hosting plans on their Linux servers with multiple SEO IP's. More importantly, they are offering free domain with each Linux hosting plan. According to the spokesperson of the company, their Linux SEO hosting plans come with a number of astounding features, such as the ability to host several websites on the same server with multiple IP addresses. They allocate a unique C Class IP for a website to achieve an SEO friendly attribute. A client can choose the IP from the IP list provided by them. The website is hosted on secured Linux servers that ensure the security of the data and an enhanced performance. 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For Media Contact: Email: contact@temok.com Website: https://www.temok.com Every time I come across the latest pizza crazewhether it's Inception Pizza, Hawaiian Pizza, Russian Nesting Doll Pizza or even Pizza Bagels (ugh!)I am deeply skeptical. As someone who thinks a classic plain slice is the ideal form of pizza, these pizza-adjacent concoctions often seem like nothing more than snazzy attempts at convincing the kind of people who dismiss pizza that it too can be packaged into a whimsical, artisanal experience. As Confucius once said: pizza is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. So it was with that same skepticism that I approached Sofia Pizza Shoppe and its DoughDici pie, aka the $38 pizza. The Sutton Place pizzeria, which hasn't been open a year yet, is only offering the specially-made six-slice pie a few nights each week for a limited number of seats (and it requires an online ticket purchase beforehand). Thanks to a very clicky NY Times article on the pie (describing it as "exclusive and elusive"), it has blown up in the last week into a bonafide pizza eventthey've already sold out all their pies for the rest of May. "It was never intended to be sold because it is a very long, tedious process," Sofia co-owner Thomas DeGrezia, who experimented for months with a Detroit style-pan before he perfected this pie, told us. "I also know it is one of those things people are going to roll their eyes at. And the thing is, it is a very limited thing. I'm only doing it until it's not fun anymore. If I read the comment sections, it wouldn't be fun right away." Ben Yakas/Gothamist The comment section will have its turn down below, but for my part, believe the hype: the DoughDici is a remarkably delicious pizza-adjacent concoction. It's a well-balanced pie with hand-crushed tomatoes and four different kinds of cheese. It's like a cousin of the classic Sicilian slice (or as DeGrezia described it, "the bastard child between Neapolitan pizza and a Sicilian pizza"), but with one of the best crusts I've ever tasted. It's somehow fluffy and also doughy, airy but not floppy, flavorful but not soaked in grease. It puffs up like a souffle but it's much more solid than you would expect. That crust, and the amount of effort it takes to properly prepare the dough, is why the pie is so costly. The dough for all of Sofia's pizzas are cold-fermented for three days; for the DoughDici, that dough is then allowed to rise in a oil-lined pan with grated cheese for 12 additional hours ("The more black [bubbles] I get in that dough, the more I know this is going to be amazing"). That delicate process is to make sure the cheese is infused into the crust, and to keep it hydrated: "If it dries out too much, it won't rise properly and it'll give me a hard shell on top so it won't have that beautiful airiness." DeGrezia has experimented with adding toppings to it, but found that they took away from "that beautiful airiness" and flavor of the bread, and made the whole thing too dense. A little bit of garlic is the only accent, and it's all it needs. You can see a time-lapse video of the dough rising below. It's understandable that some may balk at the price (which includes two complimentary non-alcoholic drinks), but considering the amount of time and labor that goes into the pieDeGrezia has to start preparing it at least 12 hours before the first serving, which cuts into time with his newbornas well as the garlic-tinged final product, it seems like a decent trade-off. (For comparison: a plain eight-slice pie costs $21.) Think of it as a special occasion pie. It's not something you're going to splurge for that often, but if you get the chance to go onceif have a friend coming from out-of-town, or consider yourself a pizza connoisseur, or have an erotic relationship with breadI'd heartily recommend it. [Disclosure: DeGrezia comped my pie, but I would gladly go back again and pay full price.] The biggest critique DeGrezia, 35, has received about his concoction isn't the price, but rather something I alluded to up above: pizza lovers complain that this is "not pizza," but something else. "I'm like, 'I know,'" DeGrezia said. "For me, pizza is that plain slice. It's what you like, but I always say to people to come in with an open mind, don't come in saying that's not a New York slice. Yeah, no shit it's not. It's not supposed to be. Just keep an open mind, come in with no expectations, you may absolutely love it, you may hate it. I don't know. It might be something and you'll be like, 'Oh that was great, but I don't need to do it again.' And that's fine. Like I said, it's just very limited. For me, it's just about how far I could take ithow extreme can I go with the dough?" Speaking to DeGrezia about the genesis for the DoughDici, you realize this was never supposed to be a media gimmick or a cash-grab. He started making the pie just for friends and family, before it came to the attention of Arthur Bovino, who ended up writing that Times piece about it (and encouraging them to sell the pie). "I hate to think of it as a pretentious pizza," DeGrezia added. "I really do because it was honestly a family vibe. It's something that I made for my family over Christmas." Ben Yakas/Gothamist If all this has gotten you salivating at all, you better get on ittickets can be purchased through Eventbrite, but the best way to watch out for when it'll be on sale is by following Sofia's Instagram feed. DeGrezia and co-owner Matt Porter aren't planning on serving them regularly for much longer. "After the summer's over we're not going to do it weekly," DeGrezia said. "It's just going to be random pop-ups. Like whenever I kind of feel like making it to be honest with you." He did add that there are no plans to increase the price for now: "It's honestly so much work, I couldn't even raise it to a price that's even worth it to make, so I don't even know if I'm going to raise that," he said. "So many people called wanting to have it. I think I'm going to keep it the way it is because this pie is not about making money. We don't make money on this pie. This is really just for some people who love a pizza experience." Dubai, UAE -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/10/2017 -- Temok offers web hosting services that promise performance, value and quality. The web hosting service provider now brings USA based fully managed virtual private servers that are reliable with the 99.9% uptime guarantee. 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About Temok In business since 2014, Temok is a cohesive team of developers, technicians, marketing specialists and design professionals. Headquartered in Dubai, UAE with offices in the UK, USA and several other countries, the company is positioned to provide top-quality service and value to the fast-growing global clientele of 8000+ and counting. They maintain state-of-the-art server networks in top-tier data centers in several countries, including: Sweden, The Netherlands, USA and Luxembourg. For Media Contact: Email: contact@temok.com Website: https://www.temok.com Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/09/2017 -- Timetrics 'The Insurance Industry in Kazakhstan, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed analysis of the Kazakh insurance industry. 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To order report Call Toll Free: 866-997-4948 or send an email on sales@marketresearchreports.biz When scientists joined non-scientists on Earth Day (April 22) to march for science and against climate change, the vulnerable Asia-Pacific region, and much of the developing world, were conspicuously missing. The nerve centres for the march were Washington, London and Paris, but media reported smaller satellite marches in 600 or more cities all over the world on the same day. That tens of thousands of scientists from hundreds of cities, empowered by social media, came together with non-scientists even for a day was an achievement. Scientists "are not famous for their camaraderie," a professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, David Reay, has said. "We are trained to question, criticise and, where needed, contest each other's work. Unfortunately, the march happened mostly in the West and hardly a word was heard from Asia-Pacific and the developing world in general. There was a sense that the march was driven by politicsto which scientists are known to be allergic. But, the first global March for Science had two non-political objectives: to defend science and to defend the earth against the threat of climate change and it's deniers. Scientists are not famous for their camaraderie, we are trained to question, criticise and, where needed, contest each other's work. David Reay, University of Edinburgh For scientists concerned about the threat of climate change mainly, this first worldwide march for science was rather timely, happening soon after the Paris Climate Change Agreement came into force in 2016. The Paris Agreements central aim is to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius, and as low as 1.5 degrees Celsius. The march gives needed impetus to push the accord forward. At the same time, the marchers staunchly defended science against the threat of alternative facts as they brandished placards that shouted: "Stop the assault on facts! Down with alternative facts! Keep our science great! Tell taxpayers why science matters!" The beginnings of the movement were apparently triggered by that guy over there in the White House. According to the placards, it happened when U.S. President Trumps blueprint budget proposed to cut $12.6 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services. Asian scientists missing We therefore note with dismay that Asian world scientists were not more prominent in this March for Science. Except for Tokyo, Seoul and Manila, not a peep. The giant economies of China, India and Indonesia were conspicuous by their absence. The 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), having a summit meeting in Manila (April 29) at the time of the march, were nowhere to be heard. In Manila, there was just a small demonstration and a public statement on the website by 350.org Philippines, with calls for phasing out of fossil fuel use and a shift to renewable energy by Agham Youth and activists. But, we hope this march has broken the ice and will not be one and done. We have argued in this column many times in the past that Asian and developing world scientists should come out of their laboratories and speak out their minds on issues of the day. They certainly are more knowledgeable on science issues and their impact on society. Scientists could consider several courses of action. For instance, engage in politics like in the Philippines when they recently formed a political party and got elected to Congress (although they lost the following election). This will ensure that laws passed by Congress are evidence-based. Scientists could lobby to provide more advise to the courts on scientific issues and avoid a repeat of a recent Philippine Supreme Court decision to permanently ban the field testing of genetically modified eggplant , a decision which a Philippine national scientist called quaint.The probably 10,000 prominent and potentially influential scientists who are members of some 50 national academies of science and technology in the Asia-Pacific region can make their voices heard.These eminent citizens of the developing world should go out to the streets figuratively, give lectures on the role of science in society and fight for bigger government budgets for science.We urge that the United Nations proclaim a month for science each yearMarchand call it March for Science. Earth Day, April 22, should focus on the environment.Let scientists voices be heard. Let the marches continue.Crispin C. Maslog, a former journalist with Agence France-Presse, is an environmental activist and former science professor at Silliman University and University of the Philippines Los Banos, Philippines. He is a founding member and currently Chair of the Board, Asian Media Information and Communication Centre based in Manila. The invention addresses two important social needs of humanity concerning climate change, clean air, and generation of renewable energy. Researchers from the University of Antwerp, Belgium and KULeuven (University of Leuven) recently have that invention working to filter polluted air and at the same time produce hydrogen on the side. Hydrogen could be stored and used as hybrid fuel for buses, cars and other equipment requiring it. For the prototype, Professor Sammy Verbruggen (Antwerp/KULeuven) summarizes how they made the trial of their invention. The use of a small device, using nanomaterials, was placed in the adjacent wall of two rooms designed and erected for the trial. One side cleans the air while the other side generates renewable energy in the form of hydrogen for fuel. Professor Verbruggen explains that the process similarly deals with Hydrogen extraction from the water. The discovery claims that Hydrogen is even efficiently retrievable in polluted air. The gadget breaks down particles from polluted air purifying it and at the same time generates renewable energy. The process that cleans the air and generates renewable energy is not as confusing as it sounds and looks, It only has to be exposed to light for it to operate. Sunlight is ideal for the process as it is similar to the properties of solar panels, reports Science Daily. The difference between the invention that cleans the air and generates renewable energy and the solar panels is that the invention does not directly produce electricity. It cleans the air and generates Hydrogen. Dr. Verbruggen and his team are still on a small prototype scale. They hope to develop their discovery on a large proportion and test the efficiency of their technology and its application to industrial operations, reports Phys.Org. The researchers also aim to develop other sources of materials that could optimize the use of sunlight during the process. This is really a big help in fighting back at climate change. A small town in Norway has abruptly been swarmed with tourists due to a navigation error of Google maps. Confounded travelers, who considered to encounter the wonder of the renowned Preikestolen cliff, have been turning up in Fossmork now, which is around 19 miles far from the area where they had to go. According to the New York Post, many locals of the Fossmork village were visited by the confused tourists. When enquired, the locals knew that these tourists were heading to the Preikestolen cliff, but entered the village as a part of wrong navigation by Google maps. Fossmork occupant Helge Fossmark said there have been lines of minibusses arranging outside the town on summer days. There was a glitch in the Google maps navigation, due to which the tourists were shown the wrong way in the Norway. Preikestolen is a grand, about 2000-foot-high rock arrangement that towers over a fjord. It's famous, as per the Norwegian tourism agency, it gets more than 200,000 guests a year. Fox News reported that the locals and the tourists were interviewed by the Norwegian Newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad. "We have sent hundreds of tourists away in no uncertainty that they're on the wrong side of the fjord. In the summer season, up to 10 to 15 cars show up each day," a resident of the town said. All these happen due to the wrong navigation of Google maps. Google maps error is all blamed for the confusion between the tourists and the exact location. Google has responded to the problem and has said that it always encourages its users to report any problems which the users can find for improving the service. It will help in providing better service to its customers. If someone notices a problem in Google Maps, please go through steps on the video so that no one else has to face the same problem. An archaeologist from the University of Iowa discovered a city trash pit containing 30,000 artefacts believed to be dated back in the 19th century. This was discovered after a construction site at Davenport contacted him for an emergency excavation. In an article published in Archaeology.org, John Hedden of the University of Iowa and his team unearthed what is believed to be a pit containing 30,000 artefacts in the 19th century. These artefacts, all from working-class homes, varies from chamber pot, animal bones, broken china, shoe soles, pipes, medicine, liquor bottles, and an inkwell. In an article published in Global Gazette, Hedden said that he was astounded as they dug into the city trash pit in Iowa. "You never see this dense (amount of material in) an early deposit, he said. Before the excavation happened, a Minneapolis developer was constructing a five-story apartment complex on the site of the former Buesing Automative company in Iowa. Because the federal money was involved in financing the project, the developer is required to tap an archaeologist to have an archaeological survey. Furthermore, he explained that back in the early nineteenth century in Iowa, the site that was located along Western Avenue used to be a swampy area deemed unsuitable for development of any establishment. It is theorised it is the start of the residents using the area as a local dumping ground. Hedden said that adding unsanitary conditions in the neighbourhood of Iowa, a ditch was constructed in the middle of the Harrison Street back in 1839. This was used to carry water to the river. Officials of Davenport originally passed an ordinance that made residents of Iowa illegal to throw any unnecessary and rotten materials to the public spaces, streets, and alleyways. Stated in the ordinance that is illegal to be thrown away are manure, spoiled meat, animals and their entrails, and decayed vegetables. One afternoon a few weeks ago, Faithe Craig noticed that her temperature had spiked to just above 100 degrees. For most people, that might not be cause for alarm, but Craig is being treated for Stage 3 breast cancer, and any temperature change could signal a serious problem. She called the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her nurse there told her to come in immediately for urgent-care services at the hematology oncology clinic. "I thought I'd be waiting there all night," said Craig, 33. But the clinic had lined up a blood draw before she arrived and then sent her directly to get X-rays. Clinicians had details of her case at their fingertips. "They already knew my story and knew everything about me," she said. The bloodwork showed she had severe anemia and required a blood transfusion, pronto. It has been more than a year since the Dallas medical center began providing same-day urgent-care services to cancer patients. It's an effort to help them avoid the emergency department and admission to the hospital, said Thomas Froehlich, medical director of all the center's cancer clinics. Cancer treatment "clearly carries a lot of side effects and toxicity, and there are also complications of dealing with the cancer," Froehlich said. "Many of these things, if you can intervene early, you keep patients at home and out of the hospital." A small but growing number of hospitals and oncology practices are offering cancer patients urgent care in which specialists are available, often for extended hours and sometimes around the clock. Keeping cancer patients out of the emergency department makes sense not only because many of them have compromised immune systems that put them at risk in a waiting room full of sick people, but also to provide the most efficient and appropriate care. "What we hear from cancer physicians and administrators is that in the emergency department not all emergency physicians and nurses feel equally confident in their ability to treat cancer patients," said Lindsay Conway, managing director of research at the Advisory Board, a health-care research and consulting firm. "So they may admit them [to the hospital as inpatients] when it's not necessary." Severe pain, nausea, fever and dehydration are not uncommon side effects of traditional chemotherapy. Newer immunotherapy treatments that activate the immune system to fight cancer can cause serious and sudden reactions if the immune system instead attacks healthy organs and tissues. It can be difficult for physicians who are not cancer specialists to evaluate what these symptoms mean. "Targeted therapies are wonderful, but if you don't know the drug, you're going to have a hard time managing the person," said Barbara McAneny, chief executive of New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants, whose three centers around the state provide urgent care for more than a dozen cancer patients daily. Offering same-day services fits in with a broader shift in oncology toward patient-centered care, said J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society. "There's a general sense within the practice of oncology that we need to do a better job of managing pain and side effects, and we need to provide a higher level of care," Lichtenfeld said. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is encouraging these efforts through new payment and delivery models, Lichtenfeld said. And starting in 2020, hospitals may be penalized financially if outpatient chemotherapy patients visit the emergency department or are admitted to the hospital, according to a final rule issued in November. Avoiding the emergency department also makes financial sense for patients and insurers. Johns Hopkins Hospital opened a six-bed urgent-care center next to its chemotherapy infusion center a couple of years ago. Of the patients who land there, about 80 percent are discharged home, at an average total hospital charge of $1,600, said Sharon Krumm, director of nursing at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. (The patient and the insurer would divvy up that charge based on the patient's insurance coverage.) Only 20 percent of cancer patients who visit the hospital's emergency department are discharged home, with an average total hospital charge of $2,300. The others face the ER charges plus the hefty cost of a hospital admission. Rebecca Cohen has been a frequent visitor to the Johns Hopkins urgent-care center. Diagnosed more than two years ago with Stage 4 lung cancer, Cohen, 68, is receiving immunotherapy. She has been treated or checked for dehydration, electrolyte abnormalities, low hemoglobin, low sodium, blood clots and infection, among other things. Before she started going to the cancer urgent-care center, "you sat in the waiting room at the emergency room with people who had the most extraordinary diseases," Cohen said. "Having Stage 4 lung cancer, the thought of being exposed to pneumonia or bronchitis is more than scary." - - - This column is produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service that is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today CENTENARY, S.C. Creek Bridge High School rising junior Skyler Parks has been accepted to the South Carolina Governors School for Science and Math in Hartsville for the 2017-18 school year. She is the first CBHS student to accomplish the feat. Parks said she dreamed of attending the Governors School since the eighth grade. She had first heard about the advanced academic program for juniors and seniors through her Algebra I teacher, Prasanna Divvela. He persuaded her to make a plan for her future, always work hard and give her upmost effort to anything she did both inside and outside of the classroom. Parks spent her freshman year in high school doing research on the school, studying and keeping her grades up, so that she would qualify to attend the school. In March, she received a letter in the mail saying her application was accepted and she would now go through interview process. She had practice interviews with her teachers to prepare and combat nervousness. There were more than 345 applicants, 280 interviewed students, and only 150 spots at the school to be filled. Parks received her acceptance letter in April, and her dreams of becoming a Govie were finally coming true. Parks said she aspires to be an OB/GYN and loves the idea of helping women stay informed about their reproductive health, helping them through pregnancy and the labor and delivery process. This summer she will attend a 10-day medical program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Her activities include writing, reading, swimming, hanging out with family and playing varsity softball and volleyball. Advocates fear that new state legislation intended to "fight the deadly criminal behavior of gangs throughout New York" will further criminalize young men and women of color in NYC regardless of whether it becomes law. The Criminal Street Gang Enforcement and Prevention Act, which passed the Senate this week by a vote of 48-13, creates new felonies for alleged gang affiliation in direct response to a recent string of homicides in Long Island that investigators have linked to the transnational gang MS-13. And while Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has voiced opposition, some of the bill's critics predict it will embolden the NYPD's guilt-by-association approach to gang policing regardless. "They are using this big, feared, transnational gang to try to create fear and hysteria around something that is going to impact New Yorkers," said Josmar Trujillo, an advocate with the Coalition to End Broken Windows and vocal critic of NYPD gang raids. "MS-13 is the boogeyman they can use to put [charges] on the 15-year-old black guy in the Bronx." While prosecutors focus their attention on MS-13, which is concentrated on Long Island and has attracted the attention of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, data suggests that gang-related crime is minimal in NYC. Between 2005 and 2012, the NYPD designated less than one percent of all crime as "gang-motivated," according to NYPD data acquired by CUNY Law Professor Babe Howell. Mayor de Blasio has recently praised the NYPD for record-low crime rates. MS-13 activity has been reported in NYC, as well. Three Queens men, two of whom are alleged MS-13 members, were arrested Wednesday and charged with assault and attempted murder for a 2016 shooting that left an alleged rival paralyzed. "Sociologists call it moral panic," Howell told Gothamist. "Essentially you are opening up a world where law enforcement will apply for and get money, target these groups, and be able to enhance public support by creating this 'we are going after the worst of the worst' mentality." The Senate bill, sponsored by Republican Brooklyn Senator Marty Golden, would define criminal street gangs in the penal code for the first time, as "an association in fact of two or more individuals identified by a common name, sign, dress, symbols, tattoos, or other mark or markings." It would also add new felonies to the penal codeincluding for participating in gang activity and recruiting a person to join a gangand lengthen sentences for certain misdemeanors and felonies if the person is deemed complicit in gang activity. Legal Aid Society attorney Anthony Posada told Gothamist that he fears the legislation could result in harsher sentencing for broadly-defined charges that, in his experience, are applied generously to young men of color based largely on social media monitoring. "This will just build on what we feel is a big problem, which is that hundreds get charged with conspiracy to commit murder or other violent crimes, absent allegations or direct involvement," Posada said. "Social media accounts are followed and tracked. If I am an alleged gang member and someone follows me on my page, that person can be an associate of mine simply because they befriend me." Suffolk Police Commissioner Timothy Sini at a press conference this spring, following four murders police suspect are connected to MS-13 (Getty). Howell, the CUNY professor, acquired the NYPD's criteria for gang affiliation in 2014, in response to a 2011 Freedom of Information Law request. Howell's research revealed that the NYPD already uses broad criteria. Specifically, any person who meets any two of the following: gang association, affiliated hand signs, colors, scars, tattoos, documents, or living in a "known gang location." The new legislation would be "a big new step" in creating a criminal definition of gangs, Howell told Gothamist. "It includes changing a non-violent felony into a violent felony if the person is associated with a gang. It's enhancement based on association." But Howell believes the deck is already stacked against defendants who are charged with conspiracy following large-scale gang sweeps. For example,103 people were indicted in a June 2014 raid of the Grant and Manhattanville houses in West Harlem. Of that total, 25 were charged with conspiracy in the first degree, an A-1 felony with sentences ranging from fifteen years to life. The vast majority of defendants took a plea (93 of the total), acquiring criminal records that can impact job and housing prospects. Many served at least a year on Rikers. Defendant Kenneth Thomas, 21, was charged with conspiracy in the first degree based in part on Facebook posts and YouTube videos where he affiliated himself with the crew Money Avenue, according to the Manhattanville indictment. "Even if the [state] bill doesn't pass the Assembly, the fact of the matter is here in progressive, liberal NYC we are already doing these things," Trujillo said, in reference to broad gang indictments. Senator Golden's legislation is "holistic," he says, as it calls for the state Division of Criminal Justice Services to implement a gang violence prevention curriculum in New York schools. It would also create a "Criminal Street Gang Prevention Fund," fed by 40 percent of all money recovered during gang-related police activity. "We must not only work to prevent the formation of gangs, but we should penalize them, track them, and educate them so the dangers they cause on our streets can be eliminated," Golden stated. Advocates say they'd prefer more funding for programs entirely unaffiliated with the police, like NYC Cure Violence, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Health and Hospitals Corporation. The NYPD deferred comment on Golden's bill to the Mayor's Office. A spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Built for stock at Damen Song Cam Shipyard in Vietnam, it was transported to the Netherlands for finishing. With the agreement in place the new vessel, named the SST Portobelo, is now underway to join the 11-strong Saam Smit tug fleet in Panama. The SST Portobelo is the first ASD 2411 for Saam Smit in Panama. In October 2015, the company placed an order for an ASD Tug 2913, named the SST Rambala, which was delivered in May 2016. With 80 tonnes of bollard pull, she is ideal for assisting vessels through the expanded Panama Canal. The new ASD 2411 is smaller, but still has 70 tonnes of bollard pull and is exceptionally manoeuvrable. Recently Saam Smit ordered two ASD 2411 tugs for their operations in Brazil. Replacing a 55 with a 70 tonnes bollard pull tug fits in well with the Saam Smit Towage Panama strategy of serving its customers with the right tugs, especially in view of the trend of larger vessels sailing into the Panama terminal, said Saam Smits general manager in Panama, Walter van der Dussen As part of the contract, Saam Smit Panama will be trading in an older tug from their fleet in part exchange for the new vessel. The SST Portobelo will prove to be a reliable vessel, ideal for conditions in Panama. Damens excellent after-sales service will be available to keep her performing at her best, supported by the new Damen Shipyards Curacao just a short distance away, commented Damen. Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced earlier this week that it would be exempting the states of Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia as well Labuan from the cabotage law. The cabotage law was started in the 1980's as way of promoting Port Klang in west Malaysia as a national load centre, however, it has been blamed for high shipping costs between east and west Malaysia. Najib said the changes to the cabotage law were made after calls from the leaders of both Sabah and Sarawak. Analyst Alphaliner commented: The move will affect Malaysian flagged container carriers operating on the cabotage routes including MTT Shipping, Shin Yang Shipping, Harbour Link Lines, PDZ Lines and Chong Fui Shipping. EMAS said that Hai Jiang 1401 had filed a winding-up application with the Singapore High Court on 5 May and was seeking to have Soo Hon Weng appointed as liquidator. A hearing for the winding up application has been fixed for 25 May. The company and Lewek Champion are seeking legal advice in respect of the winding up application and the company is assessing the impact of the winding up application against the group, the company said. EMAS is a subsidiary of Singapore-listed Ezra Holdings which has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US. In April EMAS received a received a statutory demand from Chinas ICBC Financial Leasing for the payment of around $195.02m relating to the termination of a bareboat charter. The statutory demand was issued by the solicitors of Hai Jiang 1401, a special purpose vehicle fully controlled by ICBC, against the charterer Lewek Champion Shipping, wholly-owned by EMAS. Ezra has acted as the guarantor for EMAS over the sale and leaseback arrangement of the pipe-lay vessel Lewek Champion with ICBC, entered into in February 2014. Citing company officials at the Asia Oil and Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur this week, Reuters said Petronas is resorting to this to cope with new supply coming onstream just as its major long-term contracts with longtime buyers are expiring. Petronas, one of the world's top LNG exporters, is in a difficult position as its supply is expanding after new facilities at its Bintulu terminal and its first floating LNG unit come onstream. "New demand creation is becoming a norm," said Petronas vp of LNG trading and marketing Ahmad Adly Alias. "We have recently restructured our organisation to put a lot more focus on Middle East and South Asia... We've also set up a team to cover Southeast Asia," he said. In China, Petronas plans to work with a partner to sell smaller parcels to meet the demand of small buyers, Ahmad said. Petronas is also exploring LNG sales as a transportation fuel for trucks and ships. Meanwhile contracts with top buyers in Japan are due to expire by March next year and Petronas needs to start negotiations, which will inevitably deviate from the established long-term, fixed volume and price contract model common in the past. Reuters reported that some 2,000 workers from the union are expected to go on strike from May 15-20 to protest against the contract extension of the Jakarta International Container Terminal's (JICT) contract to operate the port, which they say is bad for the country and for workers' rights. The industrial action is expected to disrupt shipping operations at Jakarta's main port, which is Indonesia's biggest gateway port and is completing upgrading works to boost annual capacity to 11.5m teu. "We are going all out in [next week's] strike," said Nova Sofyan Hakim, chairman of the union at Jakarta International Container Terminal (JICT), adding that all port operations would be halted during the strike. The issue is not new. The container handling contract held by JICT, which is a joint venture between state-owned port operator Pelindo II and Hong Kong's Hutchison Ports, was due to expire in 2019, but in 2014 Pelindo II extended it until 2039. The decision drew public criticism at the time and has been under investigation since 2015. A parliamentary committee earlier this year claimed the contract extension potentially caused state losses of IDR36trn ($2.70bn) and that it was awarded without shareholders' approval. Port strikes are not uncommon in Indonesia. Port workers at Tanjung Priok had gone on strike in January last year and several times in 2013 on other issues. Borders Group's 2011 bankruptcy and liquidation had a variety of effects on the bookstore chain's hometown of Ann Arbor, not the least of which was what former Borders employee Drew Waller describes as a sudden "deficit" of major author appearances in town. Borders' downtown Ann Arbor flagship store, where Waller worked as acting director of national events, was well known for presenting a steady stream of author events (as well as events featuring film and music luminaries). But with the major retailer out of the picture, Ann Arbor started to fade off publishers' radars. "They would go from Chicago to New York, or Chicago to Toronto," Waller says. "But here it is. This is Detroit. This is a major metro area that people need to acknowledge." When Waller left Borders in 2009 to become the Michigan Theater's director of sales and marketing, he formed a partnership with Ann Arbor retailer Nicola's Books to begin building a new structure to bring big-name authors to town. Nicola's and the Michigan Theater have partnered on numerous author events since then, hosting major names ranging from Malcolm Gladwell to Patti Smith in the theater. Rather than a venue rental arrangement, the relationship between Nicola's and the theater is a true partnership, with the two organizations splitting costs and planning responsibilities. Nicola's event manager Lynn Riehl says it took a few years to establish the "marriage" between Nicola's and the theater, and the bookstore still fights perceptions of being in a "flyover zone" today. But she says a sold-out 2013 event with fantasy author Neil Gaiman, cosponsored by Nicola's and the Michigan, was the "tipping point" for keeping Ann Arbor on New York publishers' maps. "People remember, and they put the two together," Riehl says. "I think at this point New York sees it as a partnership." Ann Arbor book lovers will note that 2013 marked another major tipping point for the local literary scene, as Literati bookstore opened its doors downtown. The store has brought numerous major author events of its own to town since then, both within the bookstore itself and in rented venues like Rackham and Hill auditoriums. Literati co-owner Hilary Gustafson says she hasn't noted a direct correlation between the Nicola's-Michigan Theater partnership and her own ability to bring authors to town. But she says Nicola's and Literati contribute to an "ecosystem" of retailers that serves a diverse range of reading interests in town. And that's valuable, because Gustafson says it can still be a battle to convince some publishers that Ann Arbor is a worthy stop for their author tours. "Many of them already know how great Ann Arbor is, how plugged-in culturally (community members) are, and how excited they are about the literary landscape," Gustafson says. "But other publishers are just learning about Ann Arbor and some of the other towns in the Midwest that do a good job." Riehl says the arrival of Literati, as well as the regular events put on by other local bookstores like Bookbound and Crazy Wisdom, only further bolster Ann Arbor's literary reputation. When Nicola's is offered an event that isn't a good fit for the store's customer base, Riehl says she happily refers publishers to other local stores with a more appropriate niche. "I like to say, 'Play well with each others,'" Riehl says. "Everybody's happy in the end. Overall, I think it's all good for Ann Arbor to have all these voices and all these outlets for authors to come to." This month alone will bring another couple of major literary names to town. Literati will present Jo Nesb at the Graduate Hotel on May 14, and Nicola's and the Michigan will present Paula Hawkins at Nicola's on May 17. Borders or no Borders, Waller says the Ann Arbor area's "enthusiasm towards knowledge" has remained a constant that demands to be served one way or another. "There is a reason we continue to do this, because it is appreciated and because it is acknowledged," he says. "I think that is the best thanks that anybody could ever get." Bam: Ensure resiliency of structures, houses against strong tremors Due to its density, an estimated 23,000 people will perish if the magnitude 6.7 earthquake that struck Surigao del Norte in February happened in Metro Manila. According to Sen. Bam Aquino, around half of that number belong to the so-called informal settlers, whose houses are not structurally sound to withstand strong tremors. Nine people were killed in the Surigao del Norte quake that occurred last February 10, 2017. "Kung nangyari sa Metro Manila ang lindol na tumama sa Surigao, nasa 23,000 ang namatay. Ang nakakabahala pa rito, karamihan sa mga iyon ay mga kababayan nating informal settlers," said Sen. Bam, chairman of the Committee on Science and Technology. Sen. Bam emphasized that this could be avoided if structures and residential houses will only comply with the Building Code, enabling them to withstand earthquakes of up to magnitude 8 to 9. "We need to conduct a periodic review of the resiliency of our structures, especially houses, to ensure that it can withstand strong tremors and avoid loss of lives," he said. The senator called on concerned government agencies and local government units (LGUs) to make sure that buildings, houses and other structures can withstand strong earthquakes. PHIVOLCS Director Renato Solidum echoed Sen. Bam's statement, saying he has been pushing for inspection and periodic evaluation of buildings and houses for resiliency. Sen. Bam also called on Congress to conduct a periodic review of Republic Act 10121 or the Act Strengthening the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management System to make it attuned to present needs. "Kailangang ang mabilis na aksiyon upang matiyak ang kaligtasan ng mga istruktura sa ating bansa upang maiwasan ang pagkawala ng buhay at malawakang pinsala," said Sen. Bam. By virture of Sen. Bam's resolution, the SciTech Committee conducted the hearing to ensure if scientific data gathered by PHIVOLCS is effectively disseminated to allay fears and combat the prevalence of false information online. In addition, the probe was aimed at better preparing communities in the occurrence of destructive tremors. Press Release May 10, 2017 Cayetano pushes for creation of dept of fisheries Senator Alan Peter Cayetano is pushing for the establishment of a government agency solely dedicated to uphold the interests of Filipino fisher folk and to protect the country's marine and aquatic resources. The senator on May 4 filed Senate Bill No. 1437, a measure seeking to create a Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR), which would give the nation's fishery sector a more focused attention. Cayetano said for a country surrounded by water, and with fishery as one of the Filipinos' major sources of livelihood, the proper management of our aquatic resources should be given a priority. Citing statistics from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), Cayetano said the fishing industry offers employment to more than one million Filipinos. In 2014, the country ranked 8th among the top fish producing countries in the world with its total production of 4.7 million metric tons of aquatic resources. But despite the industry's significant contributions to Philippine economy, the inadequate attention provided by government had led to a decrease in our fisheries production since 2014, the senator lamented. "While we have very good people in the Department of Agriculture, the department's focus is more on land-based farming. It is time that the government provides for a focused, single-minded, specialized department responsive to the needs and concerns of the fisheries industry," he noted. "(T)here is a need to create the DFAR in order to strengthen the institutional capacities of BFAR as the primary policy and regulatory body on fisheries and aquatic resources. (It) will serve public purpose, efficiency, and the best interest of the industry," he added. Cayetano said the creation of the department will be a step forward in the government's plan to better protect, utilize, maximize, and conserve the nation's marine resources. It will also greatly contribute to the administration's goal of upholding the best interests of Filipino fisher folk, he added. Press Release May 10, 2017 PH to draft Philippine Human Rights Plan for next 5 years A Philippine Human Rights Action Plan under the Duterte administration for the next five years is already being prepared. Senator Alan Peter Cayetano reported this in his opening statement during the 3rd cycle of the Universal Periodic Review last May 8. In line with the administration's commitment to uphold the rule of law and protect the human right of all Filipinos, Cayetano said the government is in the process of drafting a five-year human rights plan that will adopt "a culture-sensitive perspective, gender-sensitive paradigm, and human rights-based approach in public service." The plan seeks to mainstream the government's human rights agenda in its development initiatives to protect all, especially the most vulnerable sectors, including but not limited to, the indigenous people, children, women, migrant workers, the elderly, domestic workers, persons with disabilities, farmers, laborers, and members of the LGBT community. It should be recalled that the Human Rights Plan of the past administration was crafted in 2012. Cayetano cited the President's statement during his first State of the Nation Address in July 2016: "There can never be real, tangible and felt development without making our people feel secure." The senator also highlighted the Duterte administration's effort to augment the budget of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) from P439 million to P724 million. This year's budget of CHR is the highest since 2005. "The provision of additional resources for CHR, the President's most outspoken critic, shows that this administration supports human rights programs and initiatives," Cayetano explained. Additionally, Cayetano stressed that the issuance of an Executive Order institutionalizing the Freedom of Information in the executive branch as well as the installation of a direct complaint hotline - 8888 - to the Office of the President are clear proofs that President Rodrigo Duterte is for accountability in government. He also noted the government's efforts in encouraging private sector participation in ensuring a more effective and sustainable rehabilitation and reintegration program for self-confessed drug users and pushers who surrendered. "The Philippine Government under President Duterte is committed to real change, to peace and development and to addressing the problems of poverty and inequality... We are committed to Change. We are committed to the rule of Law. We are committed to upholding human rights," Cayetano concluded. STATEMENT OF LP PRESIDENT SEN. FRANCIS PANGILINAN ON UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL'S UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW The government's presentation at the UN Human Rights Council has apparently failed, as 45 member-states seek a closer look into reported killings linked to the government's war on drugs. The government should allow the United Nations investigation of the extra-judicial killings if it truly believes its pronouncements that EJKs are not happening in the country. It should open its doors to the international body to let human rights advocates see for themselves what's happening in our streets, the poorest communities, and the countryside. For a start, it can invite anew UN Rapporteur Agnes Callamard, who has earlier expressed a desire to look into the killings. This time, it should be without conditions -- to allow her and her team unhampered access to the people. Only then can we boast about being transparent, truthful, and faithful to our role as part of the community of nations in promoting and defending human rights. Press Release May 10, 2017 Senate expresses support for Red Cross' call to ban nuclear weapons The Senate adopted today a resolution expressing its "full support" to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in calling for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. Senate Resolution No. 349 was introduced by Senator Richard Gordon, who is also the chairman and chief executive officer of the Philippine Red Cross. "Given the real and serious threat and the catastrophic global consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, whether deliberate or not, and its general incompatibility with international humanitarian law, the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons is a humanitarian imperative," Gordon said in the resolution. The resolution said the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement had been broadly calling for the "prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons following the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings." The resolution said the organization made an appeal to all states last April 27 in Nagasaki, to "take a decisive step towards a world without nuclear weapons." The resolution added that in 2011, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement also appealed to all states to "pursue in good faith and conclude with urgency and determination negotiations to prohibit the use of, and completely eliminate nuclear weapons through a legally binding international agreement, based on existing commitments and international obligations." According to the resolution, such a treaty "prohibiting nuclear weapons at the global level would have important benefits and reinforce the stigma against their use, and would be a basis to advance their elimination pursuant to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and other relevant treaties and resolutions." The Federation of American Scientists, an organization dedicated to reduce the spread and number of nuclear weapons, estimated that there were "approximately 14,900 nuclear warheads as of early 2017 existing worldwide." The resolution said that under Article II, Section 8 of the 1987 Constitution, the Philippines, "consistent with the national interest, adopts and pursues a policy of freedom from nuclear weapons in its territory." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If Dorothea Langes mark on the history of photography was profound, her pictures have a continuing effect that is not bound by the borders of the art world. They define an era of American history now seven decades past. Some of them have become universal emblems of human need. The Oakland Museum of California possesses an extraordinary trove of works by the woman universally acknowledged as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. A new exhibition, Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing, opens Saturday, May 13, with the goal of reaching a new understanding of the artist and the 25,000 negatives, 6,000 prints and myriad other materials she left behind. No picture more aptly fits the notion of that universal emblem of human need than Migrant Mother, one of historys most famous photographs. It is a portrait Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson in 1936, at a roadside settlement called Nipomo, about 20 miles south of San Luis Obispo. Lange described Thompson as a destitute pea picker, a 32-year-old mother of seven children. The woman told Lange that her family subsisted on gleanings from the fields surrounding her encampment and birds that the children killed. None of this is in the photograph. Lange made other photographs of the woman that same day; the biographical and geographic details would apply equally to those pictures, but none of them have the same diagonal rhythms of gesture, harmonies of texture, rotations of heads. The website of the Library of Congress reproduces two versions of Migrant Mother. Theres the one we know, but theres also a print from the original negative. That one clearly shows a thumb that was once visible at lower right, later retouched to make it less obtrusive. Once you know this, its impossible to ignore the amorphous, fleshy knob left behind, but it is still the much better picture. Drew Johnson argues that what we most value about Lange her instinct for classic composition amid the confusion and devastation of the Great Depression misses a more complex point. He has cared for and studied her work for 28 years, as the Oakland Museums curator of photography and visual culture. He is working on a catalogue raisonne of her entire body of work, and is curator of the exhibition. The exhibition will look at the photographer as activist, Johnson says. She hoped that people could be motivated to work for change. She was all about sequencing and stories throughout the show youll see groupings of works, he adds. Johnson is particularly keen on providing historical context, while keeping true to the artists language, both visual and verbal. Some of her captions sound like excerpts from John Steinbeck novels, he notes. Lange was the only California photographer to be hired by the Farm Security Administration, and the first woman to be tapped for a photography retrospective at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art. My photographs are collaborations with the people depicted, Lange once said. Johnson plans to show us what she meant by that. Charles Desmarais is The San Francisco Chronicles art critic. Email: cdesmarais@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Artguy1 Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Saturday, May 13-Aug. 13. $6.95-$15.95. Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. http://museumca.org Jacom Stephens/Getty Images Officers were greeted with a scene of chaos when they responded to a fight at a banquet hall in Fremont Saturday night, officials said. Callers reported a group of 10 to 15 males fist fighting at Royal Palace Banquet Hall on the 6000 block of Stevenson Boulevard in Fremont, but when officers arrived, 35 to 60 people were involved in the fight as crowds of hundreds watched, police estimated. New details on the mass robbery of passengers on a nighttime BART train at Oaklands Coliseum Station are emerging including revelations that: The operator of the Dublin-bound train allowed the automatic doors to open, letting a mob of as many as 60 youths storm aboard, even though they were beating on the doors and windows. The same crowd of youths had swarmed a San Francisco-bound train at the same station just minutes before, fleeing only when they found no one to rob. Four of the nine cars on the Dublin train didnt have working surveillance cameras, including the car where at least some of the victims were robbed and beaten. According to passenger Rusty Stapp of Dublin, who just filed a $3 million claim with BART stemming from the April 22 episode, it was clear as the train rolled up to the Coliseum Station platform that things were going to turn out badly. They were banging on the windows even before the train stopped, Stapp said. We could hear the conductor over the intercom telling the crowd to stand back or the doors would not open, Stapp said. Then two seconds later, the doors opened. The teens rushed in, pummeled Stapp and stole his wifes purse, robbed other passengers and ran from the train, Stapp said. BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost conceded that the teens were waiting for the train when it pulled in and that they had jumped the fare gates to get there. But this train operator hadnt been advised of the fare evasion, since it had just occurred moments before, she said. Trost said train operators can override the automatic controls and keep doors from opening. But an operator gets only a brief look at a platform as the train speeds into a station, and he or she is often looking at the tracks to make sure they are clear, Trost said. She added that this operator might not have known that the mob of youths was pounding on the train before the doors opened. The operator hadnt received word not to allow this to happen, since the police had just been called moments before, Trost said. She said the entire incident, from the moment the youths entered the station to the time they ran off, took four minutes. It all occurred very fast, she said. When Stapp was interviewed by BART police, he was shown video of the same teens swarming a San Francisco-bound train minutes before, then coming back onto the platform to wait for the Dublin train. Trost confirmed the earlier incident, but said no crimes were committed. As for surveillance cameras, Stapp said police told him they had no video from the car he was in nor any from the two adjacent cars or the lead car, where the operator sits. BART has said it has surveillance video from some of the cars and station. But it has declined to release it, saying the footage appears to show juveniles whose identities would be withheld if they were arrested. BART has since announced the arrest of two juveniles suspected of being part of the robbery mob. Political poker: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom would like us to think that his release of six years of personal tax returns was in response to President Trumps refusal to release his taxes a first for a president in 40 years. There has been a lot of noise about what Trump may be hiding, and Gavin feels the public has a right to know how its elected officials have made their money, said Newsom spokesman Dan Newman. Newsoms decision to lead by example, however, is also aimed a little closer to home the targets being two possible Democratic opponents in his 2018 race for governor, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and billionaire hedge fund operator Tom Steyer. Newsom is looking to put pressure on Villaraigosa to disclose which businesses, unions or other interest groups hes worked for since he left L.A. City Hall in 2013. One of those was Herbalife, the nutritional supplement company that agreed last year to pay a $200 million federal fine over questions about its marketing practices. 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. As for Steyer, Newsom wants the public to see the extent of the hedge fund operators investments. Such financial disclosures are little trouble for either Newsom or his other major rival in the governors race, state Treasurer John Chiang. Both have years of public office under their belts that call for yearly financial disclosure statements. Plus, its common knowledge that Newsom and his actress/filmmaker wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, are loaded. The couples returns show the Newsoms paid about $500,000 a year in taxes at a rate of 36 percent, and gave about $100,000 a year to charities. Gavin Newsoms income comes from a number of sources, including restaurant, resort and wine investments he made with the Getty family. Siebel Newsoms income comes, in part, from a blind family trust. Villaraigosa campaign strategist Eric Jaye said his candidate will match Newsom in releasing six years of income taxes in a matter of months, but not days or weeks. Gavin has been running for nine years, and Antonio for five months, Jaye said. If you asked for income taxes for six years on 24-hour notice, you couldnt do it. As for Steyer, a spokesman said someone would get back to us. Were still waiting. San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross A roundup of upcoming events: Thursday Town hall: Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, hosts a town hall at 5:30 p.m. at the Danville Community Center, Valley Oak Room, 420 Front St. in Danville. Nuclear weapons: A talk by former Defense Secretary William Perry on how to end the threat of nuclear weapons. The event is from 7 to 9 p.m. at Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso Ave. in Atherton. For information: http://bit.ly/2pJIL8D. Saturday Political art show: A show to celebrate female artists active in opposition to President Trump, hosted by Indivisible Alameda County. The event is from 3 to 7 p.m. at 37275 Niles Blvd. in Fremont. For information: indivisiblealamedacounty@gmail.com. May 18 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. Abortion rights: The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League holds a fundraiser supporting the fight for reproductive freedom. The event is from 6 to 8 p.m. at Tank18, 1345 Howard St. in San Francisco. For tickets: http://naral.org/MenforChoiceSF. May 27 Immigration discussion: Immigration for Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity will host a discussion on immigration, followed by postcard writing to support social justice. The event is from 10 a.m. to noon at Northern Police Station Community Room, 1125 Fillmore St. in San Francisco. For information: info@owlsf.org. Destroying the world is easy, while making it a better place to live in is hard. Many American writers of fiction took a turn toward the dystopian and the apocalyptic well before November of last year. But already there are novels in the pipeline that find something positive or even hopeful to express in the face of great national uncertainty. In his previous novel, Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson took his characters to Alpha Centauri and back, emphasizing that humanitys only real home is Earth and that we had better keep it safe, rather than plan on reaching some suitable Planet B. The author of the acclaimed Mars Trilogy, Antarctica and 2312 sets his new book closer to home in place and time but adopts a lighter tone, suggesting that climate change isnt necessarily a death sentence and that there may actually be healthy alternatives to the current global economic order. New York 2140 posits a 50-foot rise in sea levels, which turns the streets of Lower Manhattan into a landscape of canals between the surviving skyscrapers. The consequences of two disasters known as the First and Second Pulse sound familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the inequitable impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Robinson writes: This remarkable rise had been bad for people most of them. But at this point the four hundred richest people on the planet owned half the planets wealth, and the top one percent owned fully eighty percent of the worlds wealth. For them it wasnt so bad. Told from multiple points of view and reminiscent of one of Emile Zolas apartment novels in the way it portrays characters from various social strata in one setting, New York 2140 focuses on the inhabitants of a single, partially sunken apartment building, the old Met Life tower on Madison Square. Two homeless coders, dubbed Mutt and Jeff, vanish from their squat on the buildings rooftop farm. Their mysterious absence comes to the attention of police inspector Gen Octaviasdottir, via immigration lawyer Charlotte Armstrong, a fellow Met resident. They take their concerns to Vlade, the skyscrapers super. On the lookout for mechanical failures and sabotage attempts, Vlade keeps the building running, but he cant explain the two-hour gap in the security tape at the time of the programmers disappearance. The Met is home to the rich, the eccentric and the disenfranchised. Day trader Franklin Garr sees investment opportunities in the precarious properties closest to the water and uses his hedge fund idea to impress the beautiful woman he wants to date. Watched by millions of viewers around the globe, cloud personality Amanda Black transports endangered species to more suitable climes aboard her dirigible, the Assisted Migration, which she moors at the Met. Young orphans Stefan and Roberto are fascinated by the wreck of the HMS Hussar, buried with its treasure chest somewhere beneath the flooded streets, and the boys risk their lives with homemade diving equipment in an effort to retrieve it. New York 2140 is indisputably a science fiction novel, but one rooted deeply in history and popular culture. The diverse points of view allow Robinson to riff on various genres, from police procedural to romantic comedy, political cyberthriller to historical travelogue, disaster novel to pirate adventure. Each chapter is preceded by apt quotations or anecdotes about New York, mentioning personalities as various as Dashiell Hammett, Henry James and Fran Lebowitz. These tidbits of trivia and opinion remind the reader of the citys endurance and malleability, its inhabitants wisdom and craziness. Manhattan has been in trouble before and will be again. Also contributing to the narrative are helpful dispatches from the citizen, a disembodied omniscient figure able to fill in the historical record or comment on the action. Its with the citizen passages that Robinson cuts loose most freely, ably capturing the voice of the metropolis: So it isnt all that special, this NOO YAWK of ours. And yet. And yet and yet. Maybe theres something to to it. Hard to believe, hard to admit, pain-in-the-ass place that it is, bunch of arrogant fheads, no reason for it to be anything special, a coincidence, just the luck of the landscape, the bay and the bight, the luck of the draw, space and time congealing to a history, to have come into being in its moment, accidentally growing the head, guts and tumescent genitals of the American dream. By the books midpoint, theres another natural cataclysm headed Manhattans way. But the disaster may represent an opportunity for something better for its survivors. New York 2140 is a big, playful and thoroughly engrossing book, generous in spirit and very serious about the political issues it raises. Robinson excels at keeping the narrative moving across multiple characters and topics of conversation, maintaining the necessary level of suspense while taking time to investigate intriguing tangents to the primary plot. One reaches the end of New York 2140 with a smile and at least the momentary belief that the future might work out after all. Michael Berry writes the science fiction and fantasy column for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: books@sfchronicle.com. New York 2140 By Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit; 624 pages; $28) This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The next push for more transparency in how Facebook and Alphabet deal with fake news and hate speech may come not from users or executives, but from investors. Shareholders will go into the companies annual meetings next month with exhaustive research suggesting the corporations are not doing enough to stem the flow of lies and misinformation, thanks to a report released Tuesday by an organization that advocates for corporate policy changes. The report, published by the nonprofit Open Mic, recommends that Facebook and Alphabet, parent of the Google search engine and YouTube video site, release annual assessments of the impact of propaganda, fake news and hate speech, as well as what theyre doing to address those issues. Several shareholders say those policy changes would be good for business and would help restore public confidence in two of the biggest tech corporations in the world. These companies would have you believe that (fake news) is kind of a temporary hiccup that theyre experiencing, said Michael Connor, Open Mics executive director. When you dig down and find out what is at play here, there are some serious governance issues and management issues in terms of how these companies have developed technology and launched that technology into the world, and then waited until long after that to deal with the unintended results of it. The first test of these recommendations will come in a few weeks, when Facebook investors convene for the companys annual shareholders meeting on June 1. Natasha Lamb, managing partner of investment firm Arjuna Capital, will ask stakeholders to vote on a proposal to require that the social networking company issue a report reviewing the public policy issues associated with fake news enabled by Facebook. The report should review the impact of current fake news flows and management systems on the democratic process, free speech and a cohesive society, as well as reputational and operational risks from potential public policy developments. Arjuna created the proposal in conjunction with investment management firm Baldwin Brothers. Though Lamb is not confident the measure will pass, she hopes it sparks a conversation about how Facebook can be a more responsible arbiter of information. A similar proposal has been drafted and is expected to be voted on at Alphabets annual shareholders meeting on June 7. Open Mics report will bolster shareholder proposals like hers, Lamb said. Facebook, whether they like it or not, controls the conversation, Lamb said. They have a responsibility to ensure their platform is not being misused by propaganda, misinformation and hate speech. Since the November election, Facebook and Google have been grappling with the issue of fake news misinformation meant to sow confusion and division for economic and/or political gain and their roles as traffic cops on the information superhighway. First they cut cash flow to fake-news websites. Then they began to offer services meant to help users discern what information is true and what is not. But, in an effort to maintain distance from the controversy over fake news, the companies have largely outsourced fact-checking and turned to other organizations, or users themselves, to police the Web. As investors, right now were relying on third-party analysis to determine whether or not what Facebook and Google are doing is actually effective, Lamb said. We saw that Google banned 200 publishers in 2016. That seems like a drop in the bucket. Did that fix the problem? How pernicious is the problem? How many people do they have on board dealing with this? These are some of the questions we want answered. Among the recommendations outlined in Tuesdays report, Open Mic has called for tech companies to start acting more like media companies, a term that both Facebook and Google have adamantly resisted. The organization suggests tech companies should hire ombudspersons or other figures to hold the companies accountable to their users and offer assessments of how corporate actions may impact the public interest. Tuesdays report also recommends that Facebook and Alphabet publish annual impact assessments on fake news, propaganda campaigns and hate speech that are transparent, accountable and provide an opportunity for those affected by any fake-news crackdown to appeal. Those assessments, the Open Mic report said, should include definitions of these terms; metrics; the role of algorithms, the extent to which staff or third parties evaluate fabricated content claims; and strategies and policies to appropriately manage the issues without negative impact on free speech. Last month Google announced a product it calls Fact Check, which will pair headlines with a notification stating whether the claim has been verified by a reputable news agency or fact-checking organization. Facebook introduced a similar feature in partnership with fact-checking groups like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org in December. Fact-checking organizations agreed to verify questionable claims on Facebook in order to provide users an impartial assessment of accuracy. Google and Facebook are data companies they have billions of bits of data, Connor said. So what were saying is, show us how effective those efforts are. In the absence of facts, those efforts are just window-dressing. Nearly two-thirds of Americans reported feeling confused about basic facts of current events and issues due to made-up news stories, according to a December study from the Pew Research Center. But fake news doesnt just damage the reputations of big tech companies like Facebook and Google, Lamb said its bad for their business. She cited fines being levied in Germany against companies that allow fake news or offensive content to remain online, investigations in the United Kingdom, and comments from American legislators on both sides of the aisle who believe the government has a responsibility to curtail the spread of fake news. Theres a public policy risk here, she said. Theres also a palpable erosion of trust, which can affect how sticky these companies are. Alphabet has been under fire since a March investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that Google had been running advertisements on YouTube videos containing hate speech or espousing white-supremacist points of view. Though this is hardly the only instance of objectionable speech on social media, Lamb said, it is the clearest example of how a company not addressing offensive content can impact its bottom line. YouTube has since lost millions in advertising as companies including AT&T, Verizon, Pepsi and Johnson & Johnson pulled their ads from the online video site. Last month, Google released a report that stated 0.25 percent of its daily traffic returns offensive or clearly misleading content, which is not what people are looking for. Facebook and Google have for months cut off fake-news sites access to their advertising tools in an effort to remove incentives for those who publish misleading or false content for profit. Both companies also have a list of other types of websites they ban from their advertising tools, including sites with offensive content such as hate speech and pornography. But some investors worry that by simply blocking those websites or removing offensive content as it arises the companies may be playing a game of Internet Whac-A-Mole without a broader strategy. How does Google or Facebook decide what is hate speech? Who makes that call? And when they do or an algorithm does what happens? We dont really know, Connor said. What troubles us is (policing offensive content) happens on an ad hoc basis. Its not clear to us that its any part of a well-developed plan. Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae The resurgent debate over net neutrality regulations has created battle lines that pit some of the technology industrys most prominent companies against one another. Cisco Systems of San Jose and Oracle of Redwood City have broken ranks with a significant swath of Silicon Valley including companies like Facebook, Google, Salesforce and Netflix in supporting the Federal Communications Commissions proposal to sharply curtail the amount of oversight regulators have over high-speed Internet providers. Supporting an overhaul of net neutrality is less about taking a political stance for Oracle and Cisco and more about boosting the bottom line, experts said. Both companies have major business interests in the telecommunications industry. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a longtime critic of the governments role in regulating the Internet economy, unveiled a proposal last month that would peel back rules intended to ensure that Internet providers treat all traffic moving through their networks equally. Pai has called the rules a heavy-handed approach to government regulation and blamed them for discouraging needed investments in Internet infrastructure. On Friday, Oracle Senior Vice President Kenneth Glueck penned a letter to Pai applauding the agencys efforts to roll back stifling net neutrality regulations. From our perspective as a Silicon Valley technology company, Glueck wrote, what should have been a purely technological discussion of managing traffic on Internet networks has inexplicably evolved into a highly political hyperbolic battle, substantially removed from technical, economic and consumer reality. In an interview, Glueck added that Oracle was chiefly concerned with ensuring that net neutrality regulations are applied evenly to Internet companies of all stripes. Companies like Google, with a range of apps that effectively connect users to the Internet through their phones, should not be exempted from the rules covering Internet providers, Glueck said. We need to think about regulatory neutrality. Similar players doing similar things ought to be treated similarly, he said. What were saying is, if we want an open Internet, we need to think about the way that people actually use the Internet. With a few exceptions like its Google Fiber services, Google is not considered to be an Internet provider, so the FCCs regulations dont apply. Shortly after Pai announced his intent to repeal net neutrality rules, Cisco Vice President Jeff Campbell wrote on the companys blog that it is our hope that this new vision will be the first step in creating sustainable light-touch regulation for the Internet once and for all. The FCCs proposal would undo the agencys 2015 decision to designate Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon as common carriers, a distinction that gave the agency broader oversight over those companies. But where Pai and his supporters see governmental overreach, supporters of the regulations see them as critical to preventing Internet providers from forcing content purveyors to pay for fast-lane access to their networks. Troubled by the potential harm such pay-to-play schemes could have on their businesses, many tech companies have rallied around strong net neutrality protections. Eliminating net neutrality protections will result in an inferior Internet, said Noah Theran, a spokesman for the Internet Association, a trade group representing some of the most prominent companies in Silicon Valley, in an email. Most companies in Silicon Valley can be considered content companies, noted Benjamin Hermalin, an economics professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, as they stream videos or deliver apps. If youre a content company, you really want net neutrality, because its not to your advantage whatsoever to allow the large telecom companies to start charging differential rates for last-mile service to the home, he said. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes By contrast, Ciscos clientele would be large telecom companies, and thus it might want to align with them, said Hermalin. Cisco, which makes a variety of networking equipment for telecommunications companies, declined to comment. Likewise, Oracles stance is a function of the company looking at whats in their best interest, said Steve Koenig, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco. Many of Oracles customers support the FCCs rollback of net neutrality rules and thus its a prudent choice for Oracle to align with them. On May 4, just a day before Oracles Glueck sent his letter to the FCC, AT&T and Oracle announced a deal to run thousands of AT&T databases in Oracles data centers. Joan Marsh, an AT&T executive, has called the FCC rules that Pai wants to undo an outdated regulatory scheme designed for networks of a bygone age. Glueck said that the companies are longtime business partners and that the database deal was unrelated to the companys position on net neutrality. The FCC has received more than 184,000 public comments on its proposal to roll back net neutrality rules. The agency will take up the issue again at its next meeting on May 18. Administrators at three University of California campuses changed their responses to a state auditors survey to reflect more favorably on UC President Janet Napolitanos office after her staff directed them to make the changes, according to new documents obtained by The Chronicle that shed light on the controversy. State Auditor Elaine Howle surveyed UCs 10 campuses as part of her recent investigation of finances and spending at UC headquarters. The surveys and previously unreleased emails show that administrators at UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego and UC Irvine removed criticism of Napolitanos office or upgraded performance ratings in key areas at the direction of Napolitanos staff. The interference including a systemwide conference call conducted by the presidents office to coordinate responses among all campuses prompted Howle to discard all the results as tainted. The tampering is absolutely outrageous and unbelievable, said Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who requested the audit last year with Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, amid concerns over increased spending and rising tuition and fees. Napolitano oversees an office with a $686 million budget and nearly 1,700 employees. Ting compared the interference to a student who is failing, and magically the professor changes the grade and passes the student. Another Democratic lawmaker called for Napolitanos resignation Tuesday, citing revelations published this week in The Chronicle that the UC presidents office spent extravagantly on parties, cell phones and iPads while other public agencies cut back. The audit, released April 25, uncovered $175 million in secret reserves in Napolitanos office money that lawmakers said should have been disclosed to the public and the governing Board of Regents. Now, as lawmakers prepare to approve a new state budget, some say they will try to impose greater restrictions on the $3 billion they allot to UC each year. Howle intended for the surveys to provide her investigators with independent, confidential reviews of UC headquarters, and to help them determine whether services were being duplicated. In one survey, UC Santa Cruz rated the technology help it received from the presidents office as poor. But after Napolitanos office intervened, UC Santa Cruz administrators changed the poor rating to good. They also changed ratings for three services previously judged fair to good. And they changed their ratings of three other services, including help in identifying top-performing high school students, from good to exceptional. In a letter accompanying the survey, Howle told the campuses to keep the surveys confidential and not to share them outside of your campus. But emails show Napolitanos staffers learned about the surveys in October when a UCSF administrator informed them she had received one. Subsequently, Napolitanos office contacted all the campuses and began directing administrators on how to respond to the surveys. On Nov. 22, Napolitanos Deputy Chief of Staff Bernie Jones wrote UC Santa Cruz: Our expectation is that we review an updated version of the survey responses before it is resubmitted to the California State Auditor. Jones email was among a flurry of correspondence between Napolitanos office and UC Santa Cruz from Nov. 21 to 23 showing that the presidents office monitored the survey submissions. On Nov. 23, an email from UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal to his staff revealed that Napolitanos office had a problem with even their revised survey. The feedback I received from (the presidents office) is that they are happy with the entire submittal except for the long paragraph at the bottom of page 39, Blumenthal wrote. I suggest you remove the paragraph and submit it. The paragraph contained complaints about Napolitanos offices division of Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services. The final version replaced that criticism with a statement that the ethics division provided high-quality services that UC Santa Cruz could not otherwise afford, and was a critical partner for the campus. UC Santa Cruz officials did not respond to a request for comment. Ratings were changed at two other campuses. UC San Diegos original survey said administrators were dissatisfied with explanations from the presidents office about how it spends the campus fees that keep it afloat. They changed the survey answer to satisfied after the presidents office reviewed it. At UC Irvine, survey ratings on questions about the quality of collaboration with the presidents office over campus fees were changed from OK to satisfied, and others from satisfied, to very satisfied. I am sorry that we did it this way, Napolitano told lawmakers at last weeks audit hearing in Sacramento. But she also tried to calm the lawmakers alarm that her office manipulated the results of the audit. Its important to take a step back and look at what changes were actually made. At seven of the 10 campuses, there were no changes made in the ratings, Napolitano told them. It clearly was not a process that was designed to make UCOP look good. It was designed to coordinate and collect the transmission of the surveys. Asked on Tuesday to respond to the new documents, Napolitanos spokeswoman, Dianne Klein, said again that many answers were not changed. And despite the emails showing that the presidents office monitored submissions at several campuses, Klein said the presidents office did not see what the campuses ultimately submitted. The audit has prompted a growing backlash against UC, an autonomous public university whose president operates at the pleasure of the regents. On Tuesday, Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton (Orange County), called for Napolitanos resignation, saying she is no longer trustworthy. Its time she resigned, said Quirk-Silva, a member of the Assembly Higher Education Committee. Napolitano has been UC president since mid 2013, and previously was secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration. On Tuesday, regents Chair Monica Lozano expressed confidence in Napolitano, calling her a capable and effective leader. At the same time, she said the regents will oversee an independent review of how Napolitanos office handled certain aspects of the audit. On Thursday, the regents will livestream a meeting to appoint an outside consultant to monitor UCs compliance with 33 recommendations from the state auditor to improve financial accountability. Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-San Ramon, vice chair of the Higher Education Committee, and other Republicans want to subpoena documents from UC, and have twice asked Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County) to do so. We do not wish to prove malfeasance, they wrote Rendon. We want to ensure students, parents, and stakeholders that malfeasance has not occurred. As a revered institution, their letter said, UC must be beyond reproach. Democrats want to take a different approach with UC, looking at its purse strings. One lawmaker, state Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, has already introduced a bill to cap salaries and limit tuition increases under certain circumstances at the autonomous university. Others will consider placing restrictions on the more than $3 billion the state typically gives to UC each year. That has traditionally been almost completely discretionary, Ting said. We have to look at whether that is smart or whether we need to be more specific about where thats going. Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov Online: To see all Chronicle stories on the UC audit, visit: www.sfchronicle.com/uc_audit/ One of the worlds most famous athletes, reality stars and activists answered questions just a few feet away when I looked down to the notebook sitting on my lap to find that I had scrawled, Caitlyn Jenner is not a genius. Jenner was in town to promote her book, The Secrets of My Life, and starred in a Commonwealth Club of California onstage conversation in a ballroom at the Mark Hopkins Hotel last week. While Im no big fan of her first reality show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, I find Jenners life journey fascinating. The former gold-medal-winning decathalete and current multimillionaire Republican transitioned from Bruce Jenner to her true self and she did it with the world watching. Before the event, I popped a question onto my Facebook page that read, What should we ask Caitlyn Jenner? The responses, at least the ones fit for print, included a lot on this theme: Can you admit that you are slightly out of touch with whats going on day to day with issues affecting your community, and how are you taking steps to change that? Whoa. Good question. The sold-out crowd had passed through unusually heavy security for a Commonwealth Club celebrity appearance. One member of the security team told my friend, Youd be surprised how many people are not happy about this event. She hadnt even taken the stage and Jenner was already dodging criticism from both sides of the spectrum. Is Jenner too trans or not trans enough? When she finally did emerge and make her way to her seat alongside the interviewer, retired Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, Jenner did so to a standing ovation. The Jenner weve seen on reality television is exactly the Jenner who appeared at the Mark Hopkins, and I found her sincere and well-intentioned. Cordell began by asking Jenner about her book and her transition. This allowed Jenner lots of crowd-pleasers like, Today my life is so simple. I just get up in the morning and be myself. Pretty quickly, Cordell got to the heart of some of my questions (sadly not the ones about Jenners former friendship with O.J. Simpson). Cordell pointed out that most trans people face issues that Jenner does not need to confront, namely struggles with health care, violence, racism, employment and poverty. And heres where Jenner lost me. She didnt answer the question, nor did she tackle several follow-ups that provided an opportunity to detail exactly why she deserves to take a leadership role for a community whose struggles dont really apply to her. Later, Cordell asked Jenner to name some people who reaffirm her faith in humanity, who carry the torch of her own beliefs. Jenner rambled on about politics, never dropping a single name. I dont think Jenner avoided these questions on purpose. Perhaps it was because she was paired with the brilliant Cordell, a former assistant dean at Stanford Law School, but Jenner, as my notes indicated, is not one of our times great minds. And thats OK! Neither am I! But ultimately, Jenner is an E channel reality show juggernaut, and she could use that power to promote longtime leaders in the trans community who know what theyre talking about. Jenner left to another standing ovation while I met the die-hard Chronicle reader sitting directly behind me. Seventy-four-year-old Linda Lee lives in Hayward and takes BART to the city nearly every night. The retired postal worker hits up numerous LGBT events around town, and she always has a turkey dinner beforehand at the same Castro neighborhood restaurant. She is interesting, authentic and direct. We lounged in the lobby of the Mark Hopkins for over an hour. Her humility and gentle kindness felt like a soothing eucalyptus-scented bath after two hours of Caitlyn Jenner and her disconnect from everyday reality. Lee took to Facebook too, posting pictures of the event and noting of Jenners talk, I found it interesting, but dont understand some things she said since she hasnt been around the transgender community that long. ... I just wish her a happy life, everyone deserves that. Late in the evening, Lee used her cane to push herself up from the plush hotel lobby couch. She packed her camera into her backpack and got herself situated for a bus ride to the BART station. It had been a long night of complicated people and complicated journeys and Linda Lee had reaffirmed my faith in humanity. Beth Spotswoods column appears Thursdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com Michael Macor/The Chronicle Current and former employees of Speakeasy Ales & Lagers who were seeking back wages have finally gotten paid, according to the brewery's public relations director Brian Stechschulte. Bill Brinkman of Jigsaw Advisors, the court-appointed receiver that oversaw the sale of Speakeasy to Hunters Point Brewery for $2.5 million, has "cut a check to every employee, current and former, for back wages (wage claims) owed prior to the receivership," Stechschulte wrote in an email. Whitewater. Iran-Contra. Scooter Libby. Those were among the names in the headlines when special prosecutors, also known as independent counsel, were being appointed to investigate allegations of government corruption. Its an institution that many congressional Democrats would like to revive after President Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was looking into possible connections between Trumps 2016 campaign and the Russian government. But the law establishing the independent counsels office, passed by a Democratic Congress in 1978 in the aftermath of Watergate, was allowed to expire in 1999 by leaders of both parties, who saw it as a vehicle for unfairly partisan prosecutions. The most prominent investigation was Kenneth Starrs probe of President Bill Clintons Whitewater real estate venture. It produced no evidence of Clintons financial wrongdoing, but led to his impeachment by the House for lying about a sexual encounter. The investigation produced several convictions, including that of Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker for bank fraud. Independent Counsel Lawrence Walshs investigation of Iran-Contra, President Ronald Reagans agreement to use funds from illicit arms sales to Iran to finance right-wing rebels in Nicaragua, led to the convictions of two Reagan aides, John Poindexter and Oliver North. Both verdicts were later overturned on appeal. A special prosecutor can still be appointed, but under Justice Department supervision. The last time that happened was in 2003, when veteran prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was assigned to look into a leak that identified Valerie Plame, the wife of a critic of President George W. Bushs administration, as a CIA agent. With Attorney General John Ashcroft disqualified by a conflict of interest, the appointment was made by Comey, then his chief deputy. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury in Fitzgeralds investigation but was pardoned by Bush. With Attorney General Jeff Sessions removed from the Russian investigation because of his own contacts with Russian officials, his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, would decide whether to appoint a special prosecutor. Rosenstein was also the author of a memo on Comeys handling of Hillary Clintons emails that provided the public rationale for Trumps dismissal of the FBI director. Rosenstein, a former federal prosecutor under presidents of both parties, was confirmed to the Justice Departments No. 2 position in April with bipartisan support. Although congressional Republican leaders, and Trump himself, have publicly opposed naming a special prosecutor to look into allegations of Russian involvement in the election, some commentators said the publics response to Comeys firing could make a difference. I think the odds get better the longer this story stays in front of peoples minds, said Christopher Schroeder, a Duke University law professor who served in the Justice Department under Presidents Clinton and Barack Obama. The Department of Justice itself is under a cloud of conflict of interest. ... It would make a difference if some Republicans started calling for a special counsel. Rosenstein has to decide, said Bruce Jentleson, a former State Department adviser under Obama who now teaches political science at Duke. Is he Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, who resigned in the Saturday night massacre, or is he Robert Bork, who did what the president asked him to do? Richardson, then the attorney general, and Ruckelshaus, his deputy, resigned in 1973 when President Richard Nixon ordered them to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor. Bork, next in line, complied with the order a pivotal event that helped lead to Nixons resignation in 1974 and the creation of the independent counsels office. Before Comeys dismissal, Nixons firing of Cox was the last time a president removed an official who was investigating his conduct or his aides although Trump, in his letter of dismissal to Comey, said the FBI director had assured him three times that he was not under investigation. Trump administration officials have declined to elaborate, and there has been no independent confirmation of any such assurances. Comey has refused to say whether Trump is a target of the Russia probe. While virtually no Republicans have called for appointment of a special prosecutor, a few have joined numerous congressional Democrats in demanding the creation of an independent commission of outsiders to look into the Russian issue, now being examined by Republican-controlled committees in both houses. A new law would be needed to authorize a commission, which could subpoena witnesses and evidence and report its findings to the public. Such panels issued influential reports on Iran-Contra and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and one commentator said the Trump administration should reconsider its opposition to the idea. This problem is not going away, said Peter Feaver, a former National Security Council adviser in the George W. Bush administration who teaches political science at Duke. The best way to deal with it, from the point of view of the administration, is to have it insulated from the rest of the business they need to do. Thats what an independent commission would do ... (in) an investigation that helps the country move forward. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@egelko It's a president's right to fire his FBI director. But getting rid of James Comey - especially at this moment - could backfire on President Donald Trump by making it more likely that an independent special prosecutor (not Trump's new FBI director) takes over the investigation into whether members of Trump's campaign worked with Russia to meddle in the U.S. presidential election. Let's walk through how this could play out against Trump. --- 1) Senate Republicans can't justify why Trump fired Comey Democrats are pretty sure Trump fired Comey to get rid of the guy who was investigating his campaign. Chris Van Hollen tweeted: Firing Comey has the foul stench of an attempt to stop an ongoing investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. We're not so sure what Republicans think. And it matters whether Senate Republicans ultimately decide they can justify Comey's firing. There's no filibuster anymore for presidential nominees since Democrats got rid of it in 2013. Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, which means they could conceivably approve Trump's nominee over every single objection from Senate Democrats. But will they want to? Some, like Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, aren't giving Trump the benefit of the doubt he had reasons to fire Comey. Richard Burr tweeted: I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. Richard Burr also tweeted: Dir. Comey has been more forthcoming w/ information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intel committees. Richard Burr tweeted: His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation. --- Others, like Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., are giving the president the benefit of the doubt: Comey had made several mistakes with political implications (re: Hillary Clinton's emails), so maybe it's best to start over, they're saying. Republicans only hold a slim, 52-vote majority in the 100-member Senate, so Trump needs pretty much every single Senate Republican to see things his way. Not helping: Trump's own staff is struggling to explain to reporters why Comey got fired now. Press secretary Sean Spicer literally hid behind hedges at the White House on Tuesday night instead of briefing reporters. Trump tweeted: Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me! 2) Trump nominates someone who is overtly political Comey got fired less than 24 hours ago, so it's not clear who that person would be. But even some of Washington's most partisan Republicans have urged the president to appoint someone "independent minded." There's a consensus in Congress that the FBI is supposed to be above politics, for the same reason there's a consensus in the United States that courts shouldn't be politicized: Justice is supposed to be blind, not Republican or Democrat. Of course, justice is in the eye of the beholder. When Trump nominated Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Democrats recoiled at what they saw as a right-wing ideologue judge. Republicans cheered his supposed impartiality. Gorsuch will surely decide very important cases for America, but because the FBI director was in the middle of untangling how Russia got its teeth in the U.S. election, there could be more pressure from Republicans on Trump to appoint someone to the FBI, who everyone can agree is independent. 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. If he doesn't, it could lead to our next step in this process. 3) Congress decides to appoint a special prosecutor or independent committee on Russia A quick recap of where we're at: 1 (not being able to justify Comey's firing) + 2 (not being able to justify Trump's desired replacement) = 3 (the decision to put a congressional check on the FBI's investigation). A handful of Senate and House congressional committees are knee-deep into their own investigations into Russian meddling and possible Trump collusion, but at least one has already been mired in politics. And the public has very low confidence Congress can conduct these fairly. An April NBC-WSJ poll found 73 percent of Americans want an independent investigation. Congress could set up an independent commission, like it did after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to look at what went wrong. The commission cannot prosecute for crimes, but it's the most independent tool Washington has for investigations. Congress (or the Trump administration) could also pick a special prosecutor - usually outside the confines of government - to investigate potential wrongdoing, and, if it finds it, to prosecute. (Like the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives.) Both those would take an act of Congress. Despite public support for something more independent than the FBI or congressional investigation, there's no evidence Republicans in Congress want to launch such an aggressive investigation. Yet. If Trump does nothing to assuage Senate Republicans' concerns that his decision to fire Comey was political, it's easy to see how Republicans come to the conclusion they have to take matters in their own hands to ensure the investigation's impartiality. Voting-rights advocates accused the state Department of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday of violating the federal motor voter law by requiring the more than 1 million Californians who renew their drivers licenses by mail each year to fill out a separate form to register to vote. In a federal court lawsuit in San Francisco, the League of Women Voters and other organizations said the 1993 National Voter Registration Act requires states to include voter registration opportunities in their applications to obtain or renew a drivers license or a state identification card. The California DMV provides a single form, for both voting and driving, to people who apply in person or online, but requires mail-in applicants to fill out a separate form for voter registration, the suit said. That may be one of the reasons that more than 5.5 million eligible voters in the state are unregistered and that California ranks near the bottom of the states in registration rates, the advocacy groups said. Its an embarrassment that in 2017, more than 20 years after the law was enacted, California DMV is still violating the law by making millions of people jump through hoops to become voters, Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. The DMV issued a statement saying California has been in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act for decades. The agency contended the 1993 law allows separate application forms for mailed license renewals and voter registration and does not require a single form. The lawsuit, the DMV added, serves as an unfortunate distraction from ongoing joint efforts by the secretary of states office and the DMV to further improve the voter registration process in California, which already exceeds the voter registration obligations in the federal law. Secretary of State Alex Padilla, Californias top elections official, has been trying to make voter registration easier in the state. He sponsored a law, enacted in 2015, that would automatically add applicants for drivers licenses and state ID cards to the voter rolls unless they opted out. The change requires additional state funding, however, and its implementation date is uncertain. Plaintiffs in Tuesdays lawsuit said they sent letters to Padilla, DMV Director Jean Shiomoto and Gov. Jerry Brown in February 2015, notifying them of the requirements of federal law and their intention to sue. The state has improved the DMV registration process since then but still fails to provide mail-in applicants with a single form to renew their licenses and register to vote, the suit said. 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 Of all the instant reactions on President Donald Trump's decision to fire his FBI director, few seemed as blunt as Jeffrey Toobin's. The CNN legal analyst and longtime New Yorker staff writer didn't mince words when he was asked to provide some context on the sacking of James Comey, the top official leading the probe into possible ties to the Russian government by members of the Trump campaign. "It's a grotesque abuse of power by the president of the United States," Toobin told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. His colleague at the New Yorker, John Cassidy, wrote that Trump had "acted like a despot" and mounted a "terrifying attack on the American system of government" in an article headlined "Donald Trump's firing of James Comey is an attack on American Democracy." "It amounts to a premeditated and terrifying attack on the American system of government" and possibly "will usher in a constitutional crisis." The national security blog Lawfare called it a "nightmare scenario." It was "a horrifying breach of every expectation we have of the relationship between the White House and federal law enforcement," wrote the generally cerebral Ben Wittes and Susan Hennessey. ".The immediate concern is to ensure that the integrity of the Russia investigation, and all associated investigations, is preserved. We have not previously called for a special prosecutor, believing that [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein was a person of integrity who should be given a chance to make a call on that question. His performance today, however, requires that he now step aside." And David Frum, an editor at the Atlantic and a former George W. Bush speechwriter, asked: "Who can sincerely believe that President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey for any reason other than to thwart an investigation of serious crimes?" If anything, the remarks seemed to signal that, with the firing of Comey, even Trump's more moderate critics had given up any semblance of restraint. "This is the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies," said Toobin, "that when there is an investigation that reaches near the president of the United States or the leader of a non-democracy, they fire the people who are in charge of the investigation." Toobin went on to say that "if anyone thinks that a new FBI director is going to come in and the agency will just take over and continue their investigation as if this had never happened, that's not how it works. They will put in a stooge who will shut down this investigation." He specifically mentioned New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Administration officials said Tuesday that Comey was fired because he had publicly discussed the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. The move violated Justice Department principles and procedures for handling investigations and had damaged the FBI's credibility, officials said. Toobin dismissed the administration's explanation for Comey's dismissal as "a lie." "It is not possibly true," he said. "They wanted to fire him now, when he is investigating the White House. I mean, sometimes the most obvious explanation is the correct one." CNN tends to give their paid commentators considerable leeway to opine about the day's news. But for Toobin, a former federal prosecutor who has written about some of the biggest court cases of the past 20 years, the remarks carried an unusual degree of certitude. They also appeared to channel much of the anger and anxiety - particularly from the left - over Comey's firing and the progress of the FBI's investigation of Russian meddling in the election. At one point, Toobin even used a phrase that has become something of a mantra for critics of the Trump administration: "This is not normal." Twitter took notice. The commentary went viral almost instantly, becoming a Twitter "moment" before the end of the night. "I think @JeffreyToobin was all of us tonight," MSNBC analyst Joy-Ann Reid wrote. 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. Not everyone was so impressed. The right-leaning website NewBusters criticized Toobin as "over the top," saying "all of his pontificating was mere speculation." Conservative syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post was incredulous about Comey's dismissal as well. "To fire him summarily with no warning because of something that happened in July is almost inexplicable," he said in an interview with Fox News. In his interview with Blitzer, Toobin offered his historical perspective on Trump's decision. Like many others, he compared the situation to President Richard Nixon's dismissal of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who was leading the investigation of the Watergate scandal. When Nixon ordered Cox fired in October 1973, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned in protest, refusing to carry out the directive. Cox was eventually fired by Robert Bork, the solicitor general, and Nixon went on to abolish the special prosecutor's office entirely. The events became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," widely viewed as one of the most sordid moments in White House history. "That firing led indirectly but certainly to the resignation of President Nixon, and this is very much in this tradition," Toobin said, while acknowledging that firing an FBI director is well within a president's powers. "This is not normal. This is not politics as usual." Toobin tweeted: May 9, 2017. The Tuesday Night Massacre. Toobin's assessment of the Saturday Night Massacre is shared by Ken Gormley, author of a 1997 biography of Cox, who described the decision to sack the special prosecutor as miscalculation that doomed Nixon's presidency. "The Saturday night massacre," Gormley wrote, "was the single event in his long and controversial political life from which Richard M. Nixon, president of the most powerful nation in the world, would never recover." WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, at the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials who said he had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly and in doing so damaged the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department. The startling development comes as Comey was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with the U.S. presidential election last year. It wasn't immediately clear how Comey's ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, would be the acting director of the FBI. As a presidential candidate, Trump explicitly criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in the Clinton probe while at other points praising Comey for his "guts." "The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in the White House briefing room. The firing is effective "immediately," he said. Matt McClain/The Washington Post Comey was in Los Angeles on Tuesday on a recruiting trip. Officials said Comey was fired because senior Justice Department officials concluded that he had violated Justice Department principles and procedures last year by publicly discussing the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Democrats have long argued that Comey's decisions in the months and days before the election hurt Clinton's standing with voters and affected the outcome, but the president and his closest advisers had argued that Comey went too easy on Clinton and her aides. Just last week, Trump publicly accused Comey of giving Clinton "a free pass for many bad deeds'' when he decided not to recommend criminal charges in the case. Officials released a Tuesday memo from the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, laying out the rationale behind Comey's dismissal and attributing it all to his handling of the Clinton case. Officials said Rosenstein began examining Comey's conduct shortly after being sworn into office two weeks ago. "The FBI's reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice," Rosenstein wrote. "I cannot defend the director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives." - - - But Democrats immediately linked the dismissal to the Russia probe. "The decision by a President whose campaign associates are under investigation by the FBI for collusion with Russia to fire the man overseeing that investigation, upon the recommendation of an Attorney General who has recused himself from that investigation, raises profound questions about whether the White House is brazenly interfering in a criminal matter," Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. The House committee is looking into Russian interference in the election. Some Republicans were also concerned. "I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also examining Russian meddling. "I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee." There were multiple calls by Democrats on Tuesday night for the appointment of a special prosecutor to lead the Russia investigation and take the matter out of the hands of Justice Department leadership. In an attempt to pressure Republicans to join calls for an independent prosecutor, Senate Democrats have been asked by Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to be in the Senate chamber at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday when the legislative day begins. In a late-night tweet Tuesday, Trump targeted Schumer. "Cryin' Chuck Schumer stated recently, "I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer." Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp," the president wrote. Trump plans to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday. It will be the first face-to-face contact between the president and a senior official of the Russian government. Rosenstein wrote in the memo that when Comey announced on July 5 that he had decided not to recommend charges in the Clinton case, he did so "without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders. Compounding the error, the director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation . . . we never release it gratuitously . . . It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do." Rosenstein was also critical of Comey's decision to reveal in late October that the Clinton email probe had resumed, and he dismissed the FBI director's recent defense to Congress that not doing so would have effectively been to "conceal" important information. " 'Conceal' is a loaded term that misstates the issue," Rosenstein wrote. "When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment." In a letter to Trump, Sessions said that he agreed Comey had to go. "I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI,'' Sessions wrote. "I must recommend that you remove Director James B. Comey, Jr. and identify an experienced and qualified individual to lead the great men and women of the FBI.'' But in October - when Sessions was a senator supporting Trump, and Comey revealed less than two weeks before the election that he had reopened the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server - Sessions applauded the decision in an appearance on Fox Business Network. "He had an absolute duty, in my opinion, 11 days or not, to come forward with the new information that he has and let the American people know that, too," Sessions said at the time. Nothing in the Rosenstein memo suggests that the Clinton investigation will be reopened. Tuesday afternoon, White House aide Keith Schiller, who has long served Trump as a bodyguard, visited FBI headquarters to hand-deliver Trump's dismissal letter to Comey's office, although the director wasn't there to receive it, officials said. Trump wrote to Comey: "You are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately.'' The president added: "While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.'' The news stunned Washington. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Comey's decisions "have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI.'' The senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, compared Tuesday's developments to the Watergate scandal and said the actions "reek of a coverup and appear to be part of an ongoing effort by the Trump White House to impede the investigation into Russian ties and interference in our elections.'' Over the past two years, Comey had assumed an extraordinary role in Washington - overseeing not one, but two investigations involving presidential candidates. In some ways, that made him more powerful than the Justice Department officials to whom he reported. 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. After Clinton lost to Trump, many Democrats blamed Comey for what they viewed as his unprecedented interference in the election process, but most later came to see him as an independent figure in the Trump administration who would be critical to a fair and thorough investigation of any possible ties between Russia and Trump associates. - - - Several current and former officials said the relationship between the White House and the FBI had been strained for months, in part because administration officials were pressuring Comey to more aggressively pursue leak investigations over disclosures that embarrassed the White House and raised questions about ties with Russia. That pressure was described as conversational challenges to FBI leadership to pursue the source of leaks seen as damaging to the administration, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Although the FBI is investigating disclosures of classified information, the bureau has resisted calls to prioritize leak investigations over the Russia matter, or probe matters that did not involve leaks of classified or otherwise sensitive information, the officials said. "The administration has been putting pressure on the FBI to focus more on the leaks and weren't satisfied with the results,'' said a former senior U.S. official familiar with the matter. A current official said administration figures have been "very aggressive'' in pressuring the FBI. The Justice Department inspector general has been investigating how Comey and his top deputy handled the Clinton probe, though that investigation is expected to continue for months. Shortly before the announcement, the FBI notified Congress by letter that Comey had misstated key findings involving the Clinton email investigation during testimony last week, but nothing about that issue suggested it might imperil Comey's job. - - - The Washington Post's David Weigel and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report. --- Video: Comey testifies on Clinton emails, Russia and WikiLeaks: Short URL: http://wapo.st/2pZp2Vl - - - Video: Trump fires FBI Director Comey President Trump informed FBI Director James Comey he had been dismissed on May 9, stemming from a conclusion by Justice Department officials that he had mishandled the probe of Hillary Clinton's emails. (Bastien Inzaurralde / The Washington Post) Short URL: http://wapo.st/2q41v2U Embed code: Lars Stenman/Getty Image A Fremont man crashed a car and left his child behind when he fled the vehicle in Fremont, officials said. The man crashed the car in the center divide on Vasco Road on Friday afternoon, according to the Fremont Police Department. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON Growers and farmworker unions said Tuesday that a federal immigration crackdown in rural towns is scaring away workers and forcing cutbacks in production of hand-harvested produce. The comments came as part of a push for a long-shot bill by California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris to revive Feinsteins 2013 blue-card visa proposal that would provide legal status and a path to citizenship for farmworkers. Wherever I go in California I was just up in the wine industry when I talk to dairy farmers, when I talk to small farmers in the Bay Area, even some in the Central Valley, they tell me they cant find workers, Feinstein said on a conference call with reporters. That workers are scared, that theyre afraid theyre going to be picked up and deported, that they have disappeared. Feinstein said growers tell her they are looking to set up operations in Mexico, but thats not the answer. The people who feed us should have an opportunity to work here legally. Shah Kazemi, owner of Watsonvilles Monterey Mushrooms, which has operations in several other states, said a federal immigration raid on a neighboring grower in Pennsylvania had scared away his workers. Kazemi said that the shortages have forced him to cut production 12 percent in California and 15 percent in Illinois, and that efforts to mechanize harvests of the tender plant have proved unsuccessful so far. Feinsteins office, using a UC Davis estimate, said 70 percent of Californias 560,000 farmworkers are in the country without authorization. Her bill, the Agricultural Worker Program Act, would grant blue card legal status to farmworkers who have worked in agriculture for at least 100 days in both 2015 and 2016. If they continue working on farms for at least 150 days a year over the following three years, or 100 days a year for the following five years, they would be eligible for permanent residency. The bill is similar to one that Feinstein attached to a 2013 immigration overhaul that passed the Senate but died in the House. Its chances of passage are bleak, given stout opposition to expanded immigration in the GOP-controlled Senate, House and White House. The 2013 Feinstein bill was part of a compromise Feinstein brokered between the United Farm Workers union and California growers. Arturo Rodriguez, president of the union, said he is confident growers will support the new version. Kazemi said he pays farmworkers an average of $16 an hour plus benefits. An analysis by the Los Angeles Times found the average farmworker in the state earns about $30,000 a year for full-time work, about half the state average. UC Davis farm economist Daniel Sumner said farmworker wages have been rising recently, and we project in California they will continue to rise. Sumner said farm wages in some regions of the state are now in the $15-an-hour range, although wages in the Central Valley tend to be lower than on the coast. Growers said they have not seen systematic federal raids on farms despite the Trump administrations stepped-up enforcement. Rodriguez said that in California, unions have an agreement with growers to direct federal agents to the farms administrative office before allowing them in the fields. 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. Rodriguez said the alarm stems from the presence of federal agents in rural towns. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is very prevalent within the communities where farmworkers live throughout the San Joaquin and Salinas valleys, Rodriguez said. It doesnt take much to spread alarm. Growers have complained of worker shortages for many years. In addition to raising wages and pleading with Washington to ease legal entry for laborers, growers have expanded operations to Mexico and mechanized harvests of some crops such as nuts. Some produce remains too delicate for machines, however. Rodriquez said growers are experimenting with labor-saving methods such as growing strawberries on tables so that workers dont have to stoop to harvest them. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is introducing a companion bill in the House. He said Americans face a choice of admitting foreign workers to grow food domestically, or importing food from abroad. Its pretty simple, Gutierrez said. Foreign hands in foreign countries, or foreign hands in our own. Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead Less than two weeks after the presidential election, slurs aimed at black students were found scribbled on a bathroom wall at San Ramons California High School. It was the fourth incident of racist graffiti in a month, and I wish I could say I cant believe it happened. Also in November, at Monte Vista High School in Danville, graffiti was written on a boys bathroom wall marking a row of urinals for whites and one urinal for colored. Then in March at Albany High School, deeply hurtful and racially offensive photos were posted to Instagram, according to police investigating the cyberbullying. No, a photo of a black doll alongside images of a Ku Klux Klan member, a torch and a noose isnt just racially offensive. Its racist. It was also racist to write racially offensive comments under photographs of black girls who are students at the school. These incidents at the high schools are a reminder that 50 years after the civil rights movement, theres still a lot of work to be done. Racism isnt part of Americas long ago history. Racism is alive and well, a contagious bacteria that was weaponized by a xenophobic and nationalistic presidential campaign. And in the wake of racist images at Bay Area high schools, school administrators and teachers across the country should be talking to students about race. Seeing the racist word colored reminded me of the time my mother pulled me out of the painfully long Space Mountain line at Walt Disney World when I wrongly used it when remarking to my parents that I didnt see many black people at the park. My mom gripped my arm tightly as she gave me a lesson in racism that Ill never forget. I was 9. But what about the parents who dont know to teach their kids about race? How do you tell children that white landowners in this great country of ours profited from the forced labor of slaves for almost four centuries and then after emancipation how laws were established so freed slaves would remain second-class citizens? You give it to them straight: What were going through now is the legacy of slavery. Were so race conscious, but if we dont talk about race, how are we going to understand why weve been conditioned to be the way we are? If schools teach the basics of addition and subtraction and reading and writing, maybe the basics of how not to be a racist should be added to curriculum. Really, if there are classes to teach kids to drive, maybe there should be required coursework on human decency. Race should be taught in the classroom, and not just in February when theres only enough time to repeat that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, that Harriet Tubmans Underground Railroad wasnt really on rails and didnt involve trains, and that Barack Obama has a birth certificate that shows he really was born in the United States. This year to commemorate Black History Month, our current president the person who led the racist birther conspiracy about Obama implied that Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became an abolitionist, was still alive. Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody whos done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice, he said. Seriously, what can be expected from a person raised in privilege who had to be prompted during his campaign to say he disavowed the support of white supremacists? 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. Since the election, expressions of hate have become bolder. Hate has been normalized, which is why members of Congress can give each other congratulatory back slaps after voting to ensure that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance. Its why a police officer in Texas can shoot a black teenager in the head as the kid is riding in a car leaving a house party and then claim self-defense. Its why bananas were hung by nooses at American University after a black woman was elected student government president. Its why kids in the Bay Area think its cool to write or post racist images and why four Albany High School students suspended for following, liking or commenting on a racist Instagram post can shamelessly file a federal lawsuit to argue that their First Amendment right was infringed and that they were publicly ridiculed. The lawsuit against Albany High School alleges that four students were brought before a makeshift public square at their school where their incensed peers hurled obscenities and berated them. Whose feelings matter more the black students who were targeted or the students who were shamed for their behavior? Yes, people have a right to express hate. But people also have a right to condemn hate. And for many of us, its not just a right to oppose hate but an obligation. But, man, if only we were all obliged to treat each other fairly and with respect. Just think of how great America would be. Getty Images / / Police are looking for a man who tried to kidnap a 10-year-old boy outside a home in Oakland on Tuesday, officials said. The boy, who was not named, was standing outside his home on the 300 block of 45th Street, when a stranger walked up and grabbed him shortly before 9 p.m., Oakland Police Department officials said. Xinhua/TNS President Trumps stunning decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, on the most suspicious of grounds, smells to high heaven. It came less than two months after Comey revealed in a congressional hearing that the FBI was investigating possible collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. It was hard to accept the Trump administrations explanation that one of the reasons for Comeys termination was his news conference last summer about the results of FBI probe into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while secretary of state. As a candidate, Trump repeatedly cited and praised Comeys criticisms of Clinton from that very news conference. It seemed a slam dunk that even with the number of Italian restaurants in the city, Locanda would have made the Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants list this year. But then chef Anthony Strong, who had headed up the kitchen since it opened six years ago, left last summer. When I finally made it back in late last month, I discovered that the kitchen had turned over again and Locanda had yet another new chef, Melissa Reitz, formerly of Bar Agricole. Some dishes that distinguished the menu still star, especially the fried Roman artichokes ($7) and the Castelvetrano olives ($7) stuffed with cheese. They are as good as I remember, each with a crisp-perfect fry. Reitz is putting her stamp on the menu in such items as the lamb meatballs ($15) where the bold flavor of the meat is balanced by a thick spicy tomato sauce and served with a slice of their pizza bianca, kind of like focaccia, required for sopping the sauce. A contented sigh escaped me as I took the first bite of the cacio e pepe ($17). Its a simple pasta with only two main ingredients, black pepper and cheese, but Ive had two lately that left a lot to be desired; this one was just right, with the slightly al dente pasta, proving yet again that what looks simple isnt. The casarecce ($22), a thick twisted pasta, telescoped everything we love about spring with baby artichokes barely as big as a thumb, fava beans, peas and pecorino. Reitzs expertise comes to light again on the leg of lamb ($30), where the firm, pink slices were fanned around crushed ceci beans, grilled endive and scallions. Dessert continued to hold the line, featuring an excellent lemon tart ($9) with thin slices of Lisbon lemon, and strawberry rhubarb Italian ice ($9) layered with softly scented tarragon cream and yogurt meringue. We didnt take the suggestion of our efficient waiter the mocha semifreddo ($10) but we were really happy anyway. I was also happy that Reitz is seamlessly carrying on what Strong built with owners Craig and Annie Stoll, who also own Delfina, respecting what came before but adding her own voice where she can. Its a strong combination for inclusion in next years Top 100. Michael Bauer is The San Francisco Chronicles restaurant critic and editor at large. Twitter: @michaelbauer1 Instagram: michaelbauer1 Locanda Food: Service: Atmosphere: Price: $$$ Noise: Four Bells 557 Valencia St. (between 16th and 17th), San Francisco; (415) 863-6800 or locandasf.com. Dinner 5:30-10 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday and Sunday; and until 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Brunch 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Full bar. 5% S.F. surcharge. Reservations and credit cards accepted. Difficult street parking. Life is frustratingly resistant to order, which is why we find comfort in generalizations. People need to make sense of things by taking what weve experienced and extrapolating some tidiness from it. Now this is more of a statement than a generalization, but its based on my not-negligible experience: El Molino Central in Boyes Hot Springs serves the best Mexican food in the Bay Area. A molino is a place where nixtamalized corn that is, dried corn thats been simmered in an alkaline bath, washed and hulled is ground into masa, the life-giving dough thats used to make tortillas, tamales, gorditas, sopes, panuchos and other maize-based wonders. Nixtamalization predates Columbus and has been employed for centuries to unlock nutrients in corn that our bodies cant reach on their own. Its a tricky process to get right, and there are relatively few places that actually bother to do it from scratch. More often than youd hope, fresh tortillas are made with Maseca: powdered, instant masa. Thankfully, the name El Molino Central is not just decorative. Stone-ground, organic masa is at the heart of the food here. If youve browsed the tortilla section at nearly any San Francisco grocery store, you might already be familiar with the corn-grinding work of El Molinos owner, Karen Taylor. Her company, Primavera, has been selling ready-made tamales, tortillas, chips and salsas around the Bay Area for more than 25 years. And on Saturday mornings at the Ferry Building, her stand offers hefty plates of chilaquiles thick chips cooked until crunchy-tender in red or green salsa, with soft scrambled eggs and refried beans that have pulled me and many others back from the brink of hangover-induced ruin on numerous occasions. Taylor opened El Molino Central seven years ago as a place where she could serve a wider range of freshly prepared food, along with a decent cup of coffee. I first chanced upon the restaurant while passing through the area, desperate for a caffeine bump. Back then, the coffee was Blue Bottle. Nowadays, theyre using beans from Jewel Box in Oakland. Taylor says she likes them because theyre not overly fussy about how their coffee should be brewed. El Molino Central is not fussy. You order your food from a register in the front. Theres a refrigerator behind you where you can pick out beer and wine by the bottle. And there are often a few paper-wrapped to-go stacks of warm tortillas on the counter, which I always find hard to pass up, if only so I can breathe in their aroma while waiting for my food. You walk into the kitchen, then through a swinging screen door to get to the dining room, which comprises a covered patio and a gravel lot furnished with picnic tables, gas heaters and a relatively new pergola. The cooking at El Molino veers toward slowly cooked meats, stews and sauces paired with various manifestations of fresh masa. Taylor is a disciple of Diana Kennedy, the famed cookbook author and prevailing English-language authority on Mexican cuisine. Shes known Kennedy for years and shares her fascination with and rigorous approach to understanding the regional cooking of Mexico. There are always two or three tacos on the menu, but not the sort one polishes off while hunched over beside a street-side stall. The tacos here feel somehow gentler and more deliberate than those of a taqueria, like the difference between barbecuing and grilling. In fact, my favorite of El Molinos taco fillings is the barbacoa: shreds of lamb pulled from a whole animal cooked at a leisurely pace over maguey leaves and under charcoal in a Caja China roasting box. El Molinos tortillas are large and thick, bouncy and bewitchingly fragrant. Theyre moister and more tender than your typical corn tortilla, without being mushy or too soft. Sopes hand-formed masa cups shaped like shallow ashtrays are made from the same dough but have a griddled crispness that persists even when buried under shredded chicken and doused in thin salsa. Chips and tostadas are made from different batches of masa where the corn has been washed more thoroughly, producing a satisfying, shattery crunch. Of all the masa preparations at El Molino Central, the tamales move me least. I tend to find that the delicacy of fresh masa is lost when you wrap a brick of it in a banana leaf and steam it. I recognize that this is probably an unpopular opinion, and Im OK with that. Maybe Im just not a tamale guy. But hey, we can all agree on the beans, right? Everybody flips out about El Molino Centrals beans. Sometimes theyre pinto, sometimes theyre black, but theyre always refried in freshly rendered lard with onion and either fresh or dried chiles or chile adobo. Be advised: If you choose to order family style, the beans will disappear first. John Storey/Special to the Chronicle Taylor will be the first to tell you that both El Molino Central and Primavera are wholly dependent on her crew: mostly women, all Latino immigrants. Almost all of them hail from different states of Mexico Guerrero, Oaxaca, Jalisco, Michoacan and several have been working for the company for decades. People will often comment to Taylor about the loyalty she inspires in her employees, pointing to the times shes helped them with medical bills and paid leave, watched their dogs, granted time off, attended quinceaneras and christenings, and raised money for organizations that offer support to the local Latino community. But Taylor is quick to insist that thats not the whole story. I feel like Im a fair employer, she says. But at the same time, Im benefiting from my employees. I benefit from the fact that a lot of them learned to cook from their mothers. The mole on the menu at El Molino is listed as Zoraidas mole, but its actually Zoraida Juarezs mothers recipe. Its everything you want in a mole: complex earthiness, faint sweetness, an evasive color that brown or burnt umber dont do justice to. But Zoraidas sister Alfonsina Juarez says its not quite the way mom used to make it. In the coastal part of Oaxaca, where they grew up, their mother would cook the mole over an open fire, giving the sauce a whisper of smokiness. And the breadcrumbs they sometimes used to thicken the mole came from bread they baked themselves. Taylor says that recipe development at El Molino usually unfolds in three stages. First, she comes up with something she wants to try, usually drawn from a memory of eating in Mexico. Shell ask around to see if anyone on staff has experience making what she has in mind, then do some research on her own. Then theyll start experimenting. Most of the time, the women arent cooking food they grew up with. (When I ask them, their favorite dishes tend to be ones that dont come from where they do.) Taylor values their regional expertise, but she also pushes them to join her in learning about food from other parts of the country. John Storey/Special to the Chronicle Liliana Calvario and Maurilia Pineda have both been working for Taylor for more than 20 years. I ask them how much thought theyve given to Taylor, a white woman from California, cooking Mexican food. Calvario says it crossed her mind in the beginning, and that it still comes up from time to time, but the conclusion is always that Taylor is the real deal. Theyve learned a lot from her, she says. Pineda agrees. She and Taylor have worked side by side on recipes, and she knows that Taylor is not like other gabachas dabbling in the Mexican hustle. Still, Alfonsina Juarez points out that the people in her neighborhood in Boyes Hot Springs dont eat at El Molino. They have simpler tastes, she says, but their bosses come here. Its not that they dont think the foods legit theyll often ask if Taylor is Mexican but they imagine its too expensive. Many of her friends and family are employed in the filas the rows, i.e. the vineyards. Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more. The population of Boyes Hot Springs is mostly Latino and the economy is largely dependent on tourism and grape-growing difficult, inconsistent industries. Its a small, quiet area 10 minutes from Sonoma Square thats recently seen a number of infrastructure improvements: new sidewalks and streetlamps, and a plan for a town plaza. But Taylors been robbed three times in the past year. Twice, someone broke into her car while she ducked into Primavera, stealing the bag of cash from the farmers market. The third time, burglars ransacked her house in search of money they knew she was pooling for various construction projects and a new restaurants liquor license. I wont get too deep into the details of the whodunit. Suffice it to say that investigators havent been looking more than a couple degrees beyond Taylors current or former employees to find suspects. The perpetrators knew where she kept her money, and how to get to it. I ask Taylor if this makes her feel betrayed. I wonder if she sees the robberies as a rebuke from the community shes been working with for 30 years. She says she was naive, but not about the community. She shouldnt have left anything in the car, or told anyone she had money at her house. She should have installed security cameras and motion sensors earlier. But people get robbed everywhere. She looks at the responsible parties as individuals. Its not a community that victimized her it was probably some punk kids. We make generalizations because thats the best way we can manage the flood of information besieging us these days. We hear about bad hombres and we either accept it as truth or reject it with our own generalization: Immigrants are good, hard-working people. Either way, I think its too simplistic. The only way to make any satisfying sense of the world is to engage with its disorderliness. I dont think El Molino Central is a paragon of perfect racial integration. Nor do I think Taylor should be seen as exceptional for her generosity. She is, however, commendable for showing up. Doing so is never simple, but delicious things can come from trying. Chris Ying is a writer, editor and co-founder of Lucky Peach. Email: food@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @chrisyingz El Molino Central: 11 Central Ave., Boyes Hot Springs. (707) 939-1010. www.elmolinocentral.com. Open 9 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. A Monterey County motorcycle salesman pleaded guilty to defrauding the U.S. government of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and spending the money on luxury cars and jewelry, officials said. In the plea agreement, Daniel Laine Kyle of Carmel (Monterey County) admitted to tax fraud and structuring currency transactions to avoid reporting requirements, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of California. Kyle owned and ran a performance motorcycle parts business called Kyle Racing, which he founded in November 1997. As part of his fraud scheme, he instructed employees not to issue invoices to customers who paid in cash so he could under-report his income to the Internal Revenue Service, officials said. He used the cash to buy money orders from post offices across the country from 2007 to 2014, keeping the amounts of the orders below the $3,000-a-day threshold at which purchasers are required to submit transaction reports the U.S. Postal Service. He then allegedly used the money orders to buy $850,000 worth of luxury cars and jewelry from brands including Audi, BMW, Porsche, and Tiffany and Company. Kyle acknowledge that through the scheme he avoided paying $500,000 to $1,500,000 in taxes over a six-year period, beginning in 2007, authorities said. The maximum sentences and fines for Kyles offenses are 3 years in prison and $250,000 for making a false tax return, and ten years in prison and $500,000 for structuring transactions to avoid reporting requirements, according to the US Attorneys Office. Kyle remains free on bond and is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila in San Jose on Aug. 21, 2017, at 1:30 p.m. for sentencing. Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi Michael Short/Special To The Chronicle San Francisco has until the end of 2022 to drive its existing fleet of gas-fired motor vehicles into the ground before it replaces the majority of those cars with new zero-emission versions. The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance by Supervisors Katy Tang and Mark Farrell that would require San Francisco to buy about 400 zero-emission vehicles at a cost of up to $22 million, which includes all the infrastructure needed to charge them. The city would cycle through about 150 automobiles per year during the 51/2-year period a significant increase from the 100 cars and trucks that are replaced during a normal year. Number of the day $110 million Thats how much venture capitalists will pay for a piece of just about anything involving artificial intelligence, whether its computers learning to drive or helping people shop for clothing. In this case, the sizable investment is in Grammarly, a San Francisco startup looking to use AI to improve peoples grammar. General Catalyst, a Massachusetts venture firm with offices in Palo Alto, led the round. Grammarlys software underlines awkward locutions words and phrases in the users writing and makes suggestions to improve it them. This is only a test Target is testing a program that lets customers order household essentials like laundry detergent, paper towels and peanut butter and have them delivered to their homes the next day. The move is designed to help the retailer better compete with Walmart and Amazon. Target Restock, announced on the companys blog this week, is limited for now to employees at the companys headquarters in Minneapolis, where the service will expand to shoppers in its loyalty program this summer. They will be able to order up to 45 pounds of goods to be delivered for a low flat fee. Expansion will depend on on performance, Target said. Sexual health Mountain View startup Nuelle, which makes the Fiera device, designed to enhance physical arousal and sexual desire in women, has been acquired by Aytu BioScience, the companies reported. The acquisition was structured as a two-step merger process that makes Nuelle a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aytu, a specialty life sciences company in Colorado. Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techchronicle There was a time when privately held companies largely avoided scrutiny by the government because they were usually small-scale operations. The explosion of Silicon Valley unicorns worth billions of dollars has changed that dynamic by bringing much greater attention from prosecutors and regulators, as Uber and Theranos have learned. When dealing with a federal grand jury investigation, a company learns quickly that almost any document can be obtained and that prosecutors have broad authority to look into just about every dark corner of its operations. Fighting a subpoena is an exercise in futility in most instances because the U.S. Supreme Court found in Braswell vs. United States that corporations do not have the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to block a demand for records. Instead, companies cooperate in the hope that the investigation will go away. Uber, which at one time had a valuation of almost $70 billion, is being investigated by the U.S. attorneys office for the Northern District of California about its use of a software program called Greyball, a use that was first reported by the New York Times in early March. It allowed the company to send what was essentially a fake version of its ride-sharing app to users to help drivers evade law enforcement agencies that were scrutinizing the service for potential violation of local laws. The federal investigation came to light in a roundabout way through a report about the use of Greyball prepared by the Bureau of Transportation in Portland, Ore., that was initiated in response to the Times article. It states that the city was notified that Uber is the subject of a federal inquiry by the Justice Department. The Philadelphia Parking Authority also disclosed that it had been contacted as part of the investigation. It will not be a surprise if other municipalities reveal they have been in contact with the Justice Department about Ubers use of Greyball. Uber does not have the same public disclosure obligations that corporations whose shares trade on the stock markets do, which might have resulted in a more detailed and earlier revelation of the investigation from the company. At this point, all that can be inferred from the cryptic statements by authorities in Portland and Philadelphia is that the U.S. attorneys office investigation is just getting started as prosecutors begin gathering information. To be clear, Uber has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Neither Uber nor the Justice Department would comment on the investigation. This type of investigation usually begins with a grand jury subpoena seeking records and, in some instances, testimony from witnesses with knowledge of the conduct under inquiry. The standard for issuing a subpoena is quite low because the Justice Department does not have to seek approval from a court or even the grand jurors. There are few limitations on what prosecutors can investigate through a federal grand jury, although the power is not unlimited. In United States vs. R. Enterprises, the Supreme Court stated that grand juries are not licensed to engage in arbitrary fishing expeditions, nor may they select targets of investigation out of malice or an intent to harass. But as long as the investigation relates to an area governed by federal law, the Justice Department can issue a subpoena even just to assure itself that there was no violation. A grand jury subpoena does not provide information about the subject of the investigation, unlike a search warrant application that must identify specific laws that may have been violated. A subpoena issued early in an investigation is likely to be quite broad so that investigators dont overlook potential avenues that might not be immediately apparent. It is not clear how the Greyball program might have violated any federal criminal laws, although there are a few possibilities. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act defines a computer to include any data storage facility or communications facility, excluding only such quaint devices as a typewriter or handheld calculator from its coverage. In United States vs. Kramer, a federal appeals court found that use of a cellular telephone that did not even have Internet access qualified as a computer under the law. The computer fraud statute contains a number of additional elements, like causing damage to a computer or unauthorized access, that might not have been violated in these instances. Prosecutors will have to take a close look at how Greyball might have affected the devices to see if it might rise to the level of a federal crime, but at this preliminary stage it appears to come within the scope of the grand jurys purview. Blocking a local law enforcement inquiry could be viewed as an obstruction of justice, but the federal laws on this crime apply only to an official proceeding involving a federal court, grand jury, or administrative agency. The Justice Department can get involved in many areas related to state and local governments, but obstructing the work of the local police probably falls outside the jurisdiction of federal prosecutors. In most white-collar crime investigations, there are two venerable provisions that can be applied to almost any type of deceptive conduct: the mail and wire fraud statutes. They have been used in a number of cases, like the prosecutions of General Motors and Toyota over misstatements about vehicle defects, that are not ordinarily thought of as fraud. If Uber deceived certain users of its app, or made misleading statements to local authorities about how it operated to secretly let its drivers avoid them, that could be the start of a fraud case. One major hurdle would be showing that Ubers use of Greyball constituted a scheme to deprive victims of money or property, another requirement of the fraud statutes. At this stage, the grand jury can inquire into how Uber designed the program to determine whether it might have resulted in an improper benefit for Uber that can be the basis for a fraud case. The investigation of Theranos, which was once valued at almost $9 billion, is taking a clearer path as both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking at its disclosures to investors. A violation of the securities laws can be prosecuted as a crime and in a civil enforcement proceeding, so the Palo Alto company has to deal with parallel investigations of its conduct. Like Uber, Theranos is a private company whose shares are not traded on the stock markets. But the primary antifraud provision, Rule 10b-5, applies to the sale of any security, so transactions with private equity investors involving misleading information could be a violation. Theranos recently settled a securities fraud claim filed by Partner Fund Management accusing it of making a series of lies to attract a $96.1 million investment from the firm. The company has also settled actions by Arizona and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services related to its blood-testing service, although it still faces a claim by former partner Walgreens over a contract to operate testing centers in its stores. Getting rid of the private litigation and settling with regulators clears out some uncertainty for Theranos, but prosecutors and the SEC can continue their investigations. Unlike a private party seeking damages, the government works to vindicate the law, so paying settlements to private litigants and agreeing to regulatory sanctions do not necessarily end the threat of criminal and civil liability. The old saying is that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Whether or not that is true, the Justice Department can certainly investigate just about any culinary concoction as long as there is a chance it violated federal law, including privately held companies worth billions of dollars. Peter J. Henning is a New York Times writer. San Francisco prosecutors dismissed the remaining criminal charges against a man who was shot and seriously wounded during a video-recorded confrontation with city police officers at his Ocean View home, the public defenders office said Wednesday. Sean Moore, 43, who according to family members suffers from mental illness, was jailed following the Jan. 6 shooting on suspicion of assaulting a peace officer, making criminal threats and resisting arrest. At a preliminary hearing, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman dismissed two charges but upheld the other 10. Then, Judge Jeffrey Ross ruled that prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to proceed to jury trial on eight of the charges, agreeing with Moores attorney that Officers Kenneth Cha and Colin Patino overstepped their authority by staying on Moores property after Moore refused to be questioned. On Wednesday, prosecutors dropped the two remaining charges, a felony count of battering an officer and a misdemeanor count of violating a restraining order that had been filed by a neighbor. Prosecutors also filed an appeal of Ross ruling, with the intent of refiling charges against Moore if it is granted. We have two contradictory rulings from two different judges, said Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorneys office. As a result, we are seeking clarity from the Court of Appeal to take the appropriate next steps. Cha and Patino had been trying to speak to Moore through a locked gate about a suspected restraining-order violation at about 4:15 a.m. Moore responded by yelling profanities at the officers and telling them to leave. The ensuing 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. Moore originally was held on $2 million bail, with the amount later lowered to $105,000, but following Ross ruling, he was released last week. According to his family, he was shot in the groin and abdomen, had multiple surgeries and is still recovering. Last week, Officer Cha shot and killed a 26-year-old man who was attacking and stabbing a worker at a Subway sandwich shop on busy Market Street. On Wednesday, officials released video footage of that shooting. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Fear has been higher on public transportation lately after a string of crimes on Muni and BART. In March, a stranger set a 50-year-old woman's hair on fire while she rode the 9-San Bruno Muni line. A month later, a mob of teens swarmed a BART train at the Oakland Coliseum station, assaulting passengers and running off with their belongings. After the violent mob attack, BART interim Police Chief Jeffrey Jennings declared a state of emergency for his department. The announcement came after a sudden spike in crime on public transportation, which has increased 22 percent in 2017 compared to the same period last year. See also: BART makes first arrest in teen takeover robbery as police declare 'emergency' While San Francisco may be seeing a spike in incidents on public transportation, a report from SFMTA asserts that crime on public transportation has actually been decreasing in the past three years. An interactive map shows an average of five police-reported crimes per 100,00 miles in March of this year (the last-reported month). Comparatively, 2014 and 2015 saw an average of 9.2 and 8.8 crimes per 100,000 miles. The data includes incidents committed both on and off Muni vehicles, a change in reporting methodology that was enacted in January 2013. Larceny the taking of personal property without the use of force accounts for the majority of crime on public transportation from year to year, according to SFMTA. The report claims that a "boost in police presence at stations and on vehicles" accounts for the decreased crime rates. SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose added that Muni has increased security with "data-driven policing, advancements in video technology, and our ongoing communication network between MTA staff and SFPD." Story continues below. While an op-ed in Streets Blog SF claimed that the decrease in crime could be chalked up to a decrease in ridership, the number of riders has actually risen by about 25,000 since 2013, according to figures supplied by Rose. Although crime has decreased on Muni over the years, officials are still shaken by the slew of recent incidents. Following the mob robbery in April, BART added extra police controls and enacted emergency staffing levels. As for how to nip this crime wave in the bud, many officials at an April 27 meeting called for a crackdown on fare evasion. Read The Chronicle's full coverage of the meeting here. Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Coffee-free beverages have been making headlines lately (see: Starbucks' Unicorn Frappuccino), but Peet's Coffee is doing things a bit differently. Watch: SFGATE taste tests the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino Instead of serving coffee-free drinks, Peet's is handing out free coffee. On Friday between 1 and 3 p.m., participating Peet's locations will be giving away any beverage at any size. The promotion was announced Tuesday morning via Facebook with the message, "We're starting Summer early with our biggest kickoff ever." It's unclear what exactly the coffee company is kicking off, but it's hard to argue with a free beverage. Medium-sized drinks at Peet's range from $2.25 for a drip coffee to $5 for fancier "Javiva" blends, but free stuff often leads to long lines so you'll have to decide if saving five bucks is worth the wait. As the third wave coffee movement takes a hold of major urban centers, coffee behemoths, like Peet's and Starbucks, have been taking extra measures to stay relevant. See also: Starbucks says Unicorn Frappuccino shows its digital savvy Starbucks was the talk of social media with its colorful Unicorn Frappuccino, although its citrus-sweet flavor divided tasters. Peet's is getting in on trendy coffee culture, too, with its recently launched ready-to-drink cold brew coffee, available at coffee bars and grocery stores. Other new drink developments at Peet's include the Honey Macchiato, the Coconut Creme Javiva, Honey Cortado and Earl Grey Javiva. Peet's Coffee began as a humble North Berkeley cafe in 1966. Four years ago, the franchise was sold to a private German firm for $1 billion. Find your nearest Peet's location with this handy cafe locator. Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com. TUSKEGEE, Ala. Decades later, its still hard to grasp what the federal government did to hundreds of black men in rural Alabama even if youre among their descendants, lighting candles in their memory. For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the segregated South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward. Finally exposed in 1972 , the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement. Twenty years ago this month, President Bill Clinton apologized for the U.S. government. It seemed to mark the end of this ugly episode, once and for all. Except it didnt. Relatives of the men still struggle with the stigma of being linked to the experiment, commonly known today as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. For years they have met privately to share their pain and honor the victims. And, amazingly, that class-action lawsuit filed by the men in 1973 has outlived them all. The litigation continues to this day, with a federal court currently considering a request that will help determine the studys final legacy. A key, unanswered question: What should be done with unclaimed settlement money that still sits in court-controlled accounts? In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service, working with state and local health agencies, began what was supposed to be a short-lived program in Tuskegee to record the progression of the illness, which begins with a small sore and can progress to open wounds, blindness, deafness, mental illness and death. Workers initially recruited 600 black men into a health program with the promise of free medical checks, free food, free transportation and burial insurance in a county where many blacks had never even seen a doctor. The men were tested and sorted into groups 399 with syphilis and another 201 who were not infected. The disease-free men were used as a control group. Health workers told syphilitic fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers and uncles only that they had bad blood. None of the men was asked to consent to take part in a medical study. They also werent told that bad blood actually was a euphemism for syphilis. Instead, doctors purposely hid the studys purpose from the men, subjecting them during the studys early months to painful spinal taps and blood tests. Medical workers periodically provided men with pills and tonic that made them believe they were being treated, but they werent. And doctors never provided them with penicillin after it became the standard treatment for syphilis in the mid-1940s. The government published occasional reports on the study, including findings which showed the men with syphilis were dying at a faster rate than the uninfected. But its doubtful any of the men or their wives, girlfriends or other sexual partners had any idea what had happened until an Associated Press story was published nationwide on July 26, 1972. Payments of a multimillion-dollar settlement reached in 1975 differed based on whether men were infected or were in the control group, whether they were dead or alive. Living participants who had syphilis got $37,500; heirs of deceased members of the control group received $5,000. Women and children who were infected with syphilis got lifetime medical and health benefits, and a handful still survive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Currently, the legal fallout from the Tuskegee syphilis study lives on at the federal courthouse in Montgomery. Settlement funds were used for decades to compensate study participants and more than 9,000 of their relatives. Court workers were unable to locate other descendants, and some never responded to letters from the clerks office, which disbursed millions before the last payment was recorded in 2008. Court officials will not say how much money is left, but documents indicate the balance is mostly interest earnings from money first paid by the government decades ago. Civil rights attorney Fred Gray said hes heard its less than $100,000. Some family members say the money should be used for additional funding for medical screenings for the mens families, and others want a long-discussed memorial at the old hospital where the study was run at Tuskegee University. Jay Reeves is an Associated Press writer. 1 Health care law: Senate Democrats are asking Republican leaders to drop their effort to repeal former President Barack Obamas health care law. If they do, theyre offering to help them improve the health care system for all Americans. Democrats say theyd work with the GOP to reduce premium and drug costs, stabilize insurance markets and help small businesses provide health coverage. The plea comes in a letter signed by all 46 Democratic senators and the two independents who usually side with them. Democrats noted that the House-passed measure would take coverage from an estimated 24 million Americans, cuts Medicaid and pares back protections for people with preexisting conditions and others. 2 Seattle mayor: Seattle Mayor Ed Murray on Tuesday dropped his re-election bid for a second term after four men claimed he sexually abused them when they were teenagers, claims vehemently denied by Murray as an antigay political conspiracy aimed at derailing his campaign. Murray said for weeks after the allegations emerged that he would press on in his campaign for a second term but told reporters that he decided it was best for Seattle to not seek another term. He said he will serve out his term through the end of this year. Murray, 62, was elected in 2013 and successfully pushed to raise Seattles hourly minimum wage to $15. A seventh-grader found out that a simple "like" of an Instagram photo is enough to get him suspended for 10 days at his Ohio middle school. Zachary Bowlin "liked" a photo of an airsoft gun posted by another student after school last week, and told Fox19 that he was suspended the following day by an official at Edgewood Middle School in Trenton, Ohio. The photo was captioned, "Ready." Zachary said that he liked the photo about 8 p.m., and that "the next morning they called me down [to the office], patted me down and checked me for weapons." He was sent home with a note stating that the reason for the suspension was for "Liking a post on social media that indicated potential school violence." Zachary's father, Marty Bowlin, described his reaction as "livid" following the suspension, saying that his son and his friends often play with airsoft guns, which shoots pellets. Bowlin said he knew what the Instagram post was about and "wasn't concerned" about the photo, but questioned why his son was suspended. "He never shared [the photo], he never commented, never made a threatening post ... [he] just liked it," Bowlin told broadcast station WCMH. Russ Fussnecker, superintendent of the school district, at the time released a statement about the situation that stated, "I assure you that any social media threat will be taken serious, including those who 'like' the post when it potentially endangers the health and safety of students or adversely affects the educational process." "At the end of the day, and I've said it time and time again, parents will forgive us for certain things," Fussnecker said in an interview. "They're not going to forgive us if their kid doesn't come home. They're just not. And it's difficult to even think about it, but it happened 10 minutes up the street almost." Fussnecker also mentioned that some students opted to stay home after the photo was posted to social media, saying that they felt uncomfortable. Ultimately, the suspension was revoked by school officials after speaking with Zachary's parents, and he was allowed back to school on Monday. The student who posted the original photo to Instagram, however, remained under suspension and was set to meet with school officials this week. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, dramatically ousting one of the nations top law enforcement officials in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether Trumps campaign had ties to Russias meddling in the election that sent him to the White House. In a letter to Comey, Trump said the firing was necessary to restore public trust and confidence in the FBI. Comey has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for his public comments on an investigation into Democrat Hillary Clintons email practices, including a pair of letters he sent to Congress on the matter in the closing days of last years campaign. Trump made no mention of Comeys role in the Clinton investigation, which she has blamed in part for the election result. But in announcing the firing, the White House circulated a scathing memo, written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, criticizing Comeys handling of the Clinton probe, including the directors decision to hold a news conference announcing its findings and releasing derogatory information about Clinton. Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the bureaus Trump-Russia probe, Rosenstein has been in charge. This is only the second firing of an FBI director in history. President Bill Clinton dismissed William Sessions amid allegations of ethical lapses in 1993. Comey was speaking to agents at the FBIs field office in Los Angeles when the news of his firing flashed on TV screens, according to a law enforcement official who was there. Comey initially chuckled, then finished his speech, said the official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the official wasnt authorized to discuss the situation publicly. Comey later left on a plane to return to Washington. Trump will now appoint Comeys successor. The White House said the search for a replacement was beginning immediately. Comeys deputy, Andrew McCabe, takes over in the interim. Trump has ridiculed the investigations into Russia-campaign ties as a hoax and has denied that his campaign was involved in Russias meddling. In his letter to Comey, he asserted that the FBI director had informed him on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation. Tuesdays stunning announcement came shortly after the FBI corrected aspects of Comeys sworn testimony on Capitol Hill last week. Comey told lawmakers that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, had sent hundreds and thousands of emails to her husbands laptop, including some with classified information. On Tuesday, the FBI told the Senate Judiciary Committee that only a small number of the thousands of emails found on the laptop had been forwarded there while most had simply been backed up from electronic devices. Most of the email chains on the laptop containing classified information were not the result of forwarding, the FBI said. Comey, 56, was nominated by President Barack Obama for the FBI post in 2013 to a 10-year term, though that appointment does not ensure a director will serve the full term. Praised frequently by both parties for his independence and integrity, Comey has spent three decades in law enforcement. But his prominent role in the 2016 presidential campaign raised questions about his judgment and impartiality. Though the FBI did not recommend charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information, Comey was blisteringly critical of her decision to use a personal email account and private internet server during her four years as secretary of state. Comey strongly defended his decisions during the hearing last week. He said he was mildly nauseous at the thought of having swayed the election but also said he would do the same again. Clinton has partially blamed her loss on Comeys disclosure to Congress less than two weeks before election day that the email investigation would be revisited. Comey later said the FBI, again, had found no reason to bring any charges. Trump disagreed with Clintons assessment, tweeting that Comey actually was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! Clintons advisers were stunned by Trumps decision Tuesday. Former campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said that while he believed Comey had inflicted severe damage on the FBI, the timing and manner of this firing suggest that it is the product of Donald Trump feeling the heat on the ongoing Russia investigation and not a well thought out response to the inappropriate handling of the Clinton investigation. Julie Pace and Eric Tucker are Associated Press writers. WASHINGTON All but ignoring the unfurling drama over Russia and the U.S. election, President Trump on Wednesday sought to advance prospects for cooperation between the former Cold War foes in Syria and elsewhere in a rare Oval Office meeting with Vladimir Putins top diplomat. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovs talks with Trump were already destined to be a closely watched affair, given the dire state of U.S.-Russian relations and diplomatic wrangling going on over a Moscow-backed deal to stabilize Syria. Yet Trumps stunning decision on the eve of the meeting to fire the FBI director overseeing a Russia-related investigation injected further intrigue into Lavrovs first visit to Washington since 2013. Trump raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, according to a White House statement. Trump and Lavrov met in private, though both sides cast the session as a sign of ties having improved since the U.S. leaders assessment of them last month as at an all-time low. On Wednesday, they focused on areas of budding agreement, and Lavrov sought to blame the recent acrimony on former President Barack Obama. The previous administration bent over backwards to undermine the solid foundation of our relations, Lavrov told reporters at the Russian Embassy after meeting Trump. We have to start at a very low level. In contrast, he credited Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom he met earlier in the day, with taking a businesslike approach that is free from ideology, focused on reaching agreements. None were apparently reached Wednesday. The meeting was Trumps highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian official since taking office and in itself represented modest progress. The last time Lavrov visited the American capital was before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and intervened militarily in Syria to help President Bashar Assad actions that fueled U.S.-Russian tensions. The Russian diplomat steadfastly refused to weigh in on Trumps decision to fire James Comey, the former FBI director, who had been overseeing investigations of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election and possible collusion by Trumps campaign. Was he fired? Youre kidding, Lavrov said sarcastically, feigning surprise. Still, the overlap between the investigation and Trumps diplomatic efforts made for uncomfortable optics. Russias Foreign Ministry tweeted a photo of Trump shaking hands with Lavrov, and the Russian Embassy posted another of the president greeting another participant in the meeting: Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a central character in various Russia-related investigations because of his contacts with several individuals close to Trump. Lavrov chalked up the controversy to noise and to false news. Josh Lederman and Vivian Salama are Associated Press writers. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. Irate passengers swarmed ticket counters and some started a near-riot at Fort Lauderdales airport after Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights, blaming the decision on pilots failure to show up. Hundreds were left stranded at the airlines Florida terminal late Monday. The chaos was the latest instance of airlines dealing with high-profile customer frustration. Problems began last month with cell phone video capturing a passenger being dragged off a United Airlines flight. Other horror stories from customers surfaced later involving flights on Delta and American airlines. Deputies arrested three people from New York in the Fort Lauderdale airport, charging them with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. The Broward Sheriffs Office said about 500 people were crowded into Spirits terminal at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport late Monday night after the airline canceled the flights because there were no pilots. Video posted online showed deputies grappling with screaming passengers and breaking up fights. The discount airline says pilots are refusing to pick up open flying assignments, which Spirit claims is an illegal and concerted plot by the Air Line Pilots Association to apply pressure during contract negotiations. It has filed a lawsuit, saying it has had to cancel about 300 flights nationally and internationally over the past week because of the unions actions. Another 36 were canceled Tuesday. Federal District Judge William Dimitrouleas issued a temporary restraining order against the union Tuesday, ordering its member pilots to not engage in any boycotts or slowdown, saying that would violate federal law. Spirit spokesman Paul Berry issued a statement apologizing to customers, saying: We believe this is the result of intimidation tactics by a limited number of our pilots affecting the behavior of the larger group, Berry said. The union has denied the accusation, but said in a statement that its members will obey the judges order with the goal of helping Spirit resume normal operations. Josh Replogle and Terry Spencer are Associated Press writers. I always choose going on a road trip to celebrate Mothers Day, and I usually pick a route that enables us to stop and eat at the Crazy Mountain Inn in Martinsdale. The drive to the historic small town nestled between the Castle Mountains, Crazies and Little Belts is picturesque no matter which route you take to get there. My stomach is always growling by the time our bumper hits the board sidewalk out front. Inside, a toasty fire crackles in the lobbys wood stove. Light filters through lace curtains and the wooden floor creaks as owner Cheryl Marchi, hair twisted into her trademark braids, greets us with menus. Reservations are required on Mothers Day, and our family usually picks a table on the bright, plant-filled lobby near the fire, where we can stretch out a little more with the kids. So often, people come in and are amazed that we have a place like this in Martinsdale, says Marchi. I often hear, I cant believe you serve such good food way out here! They seem to like the quality and the fact that most things we serve are homemade. Built in 1901 as a hotel, the inn has passed through many owners, but its appearance hasnt changed much. Marchi and her husband Peter were living in Ronan when they discovered it after Peter had taken a job on a ranch near Martinsdale. I was still living in Ronan and would drive down to visit Peter, says Cheryl. I walked in one day and just thought this place was so cool. Everything was so well-preserved; I felt like I was stepping back in time. The couple bought the business in 1990 and raised their five children, who now range in age from age 29-36, on premises for 17 years before moving to a country home. Currently in their 27th year, theyve run it longer than any previous proprietor which at one point even included the Kessler Brewing Company in Helena. I just love the lobbys high ceilings, bead-board walls and antique furniture, but the cafe side, with its dark wood walls, long counter and oilcloth tablecloths, is nice too. The inn usually seats 28 people, but they pull out a couple extra tables on Mothers Day and top them with fresh flowers. The most weve ever served on Mothers Day is 150, states Cheryl, who rounds up extra wait staff for the special occasion. My family knows if theyre around on Mothers Day, theyre working." Cheryl runs the inn alone these days now that Peters job as chief water commissioner for the Musselshell River keeps him occupied. But hes always back in the kitchen slingin it with Cheryl on Mothers day, often stepping out to help servers top off wine glasses or help deliver icy bottles of Moose Drool and Trout Slayer. Mothers Day Specials come with vegetable and homemade roll with choice of soup or salad. This years entrees include a good old-fashioned favorite: Prime Rib served with au jus and horseradish and baked potato ($24); Poached Shrimp with baked potato ($23); Shrimp Sauteed with Lemon and Garlic over rice ($24); and Deep Fried Fantail Shrimp with choice of potato ($16.25). Theyll also offer a limited number of items from their regular menu basics like their trademark Chicken Fried Steak but not all sandwiches and burgers. Homemade desserts on Mothers Day will be Sour Cream Lemon Pie (voted Best Pie in Montana in 2005 by Montana Magazine readers), Sour Cream Banana Pie, Rhubarb Pie, Peanut Butter Pie, Cheesecake with Strawberry or Raspberry, Mixed Berry Pie, Chocolate Cake, Apple Pie, Chocolate Mousse and Ice Cream Sundaes. In the summertime, Cheryl always lists Sour Cream Lemon, Peanut Butter, Rhubarb, Banana Cream and at least one berry pie on her chalkboard and makes homemade cinnamon rolls and muffins as often as she can get around to it. Her menu is full of great sandwiches and burgers and breakfast items like quiche. She makes Fish Tacos on many Fridays and also does one annual Thai Night sometime between June and September whenever her 70-year-old cook, originally from Thailand, can fit it in. I only advertise it on Facebook, and we serve just one dish. Past entrees have included Green Curry, Pad Thai and Red Curry. I like that I get to meet so many interesting people from all over, says Cheryl, who clearly is passionate about what she does. I just love to cook, and I love to feed people. Though shes not actively looking for a buyer, shed hand over the reins if the right person came along. If we ever sell it, Ill miss the people the most, says Cheryl, But I could only let it go to someone who loves this wonderful place as much as we do. After eating, its fun to wander upstairs and check out the second floor, where 11 sunny guest rooms flank the long hallway. Each is outfitted with an antique bed (or beds) and desk and shares a large communal bathroom that has a claw foot tub and shower. Down the road, the Bair Museum (open 7 days a week Memorial Day through Labor Day; Labor Day through October WednesdaySunday) brings visitors to Martinsdale from all over the country. The Bair Museum is a really big draw," Cheryl said. "It pulls in people from all over, and so does hunting season. Elizabeth Guheen, curator of the Bair Family Museum, says "The visitors to the Bair Museum love their Crazy Mountain Inn "experience." We like to kick around town (theres a really cool old jail near the Inn that looks like a Medieval torture chamber) and let the kids throw rocks in Martinsdale Reservoir before heading home to catch the Mothers Day caddis hatch on the Yellowstone River. We usually go to Pig Farm fishing access east of Livingston. Dan makes a few casts, our Jack Russell chases marmots down holes, the kids check out caddis on rocks (and laugh as they crawl up their legs). Then one of them wades out too far and ends up with drenched jeans, removing them before we can intervene. I just sit back and frame it all up in the viewfinder. Now thats my idea of a perfect Mothers Day! Crazy Mountain Inn Cinnamon Rolls 1 cups milk cup butter 1 tsp salt 2 eggs cup warm water cup honey 1 Tablespoon yeast 3 to 4 cups flour cup butter cup sugar 2-3 teaspoons sugar Scald milk and add butter to it to melt. Let this mixture cool and then add the salt and eggs. In a large bowl add cup warm water and honey. Sprinkle the yeast on top and let it sit until it gets foamy. When the milk mixture has cooled to lukewarm, add it to the water/honey/yeast mixture. Add flour 1 cup at a time, kneading after each additional cup, until dough starts to pull away from the bowl. Then knead dough on a well-floured surface until smooth and elastic. Grease your bowl and put the dough back in, cover and let rise until dough doubles in size. Punch down and roll into a rectangle. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cup sugar and 2-3 teaspoons cinnamon. Roll the rectangle up length-wise and pinch edges together. Cut this roll in half, and then cut each half into six slices. Carefully put them on a greased cookie sheet. Cover and let rise until doubled and bake at 400 for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Cool and top with icing. (Don't put frosting on until rolls have cooled completely.) Icing: Mix 1 cup confectioners sugar with a drop of vanilla and enough milk to make it drizzle. A Bay Area flier named Navang Oza, who was traveling from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport to San Francisco International Airport on May 4, says a United Airlines ticket agent canceled his flight after he began filming an altercation they were having. Oza said the agent was attempting to charge him $300 for his bag, which exceeded the 50-pound limit. Oza contends that the same bag holding the same contents only cost him $125 in his flight out of SFO to New Orleans, which caused the disagreement. Related: United Airlines passenger with ticket to Paris lands at SFO At this point it was 4 a.m., and the confrontation escalated to the point where Oza began filming within his right in a public place, despite what the agent suggests apparently leading the agent to cancel his flight ticket. United has since apologized, but Oza is attempting to get the company to reimburse him for a one-way flight he had to book on a different airline to get home. As he later told NBC Bay Area, "the lady was being rude...I was shocked because I didn't know she had the right to cancel my flight because I started recording." Just about a minute after Oza begins filming the agent, she begins filming him as well, which Oza initially posted to his Facebook page as part of a raw 13-minute video (it has since been deleted). She instructs a co-worker to cancel his ticket, and informs him that "until that [recording] is erased, you're not traveling." United has responded to the incident, saying, "The video does not reflect the positive customer experience we strive to offer, and for that we apologize. We are reviewing this situation, including talking with Mr. Oza and our employees to better understand what happened." Related: The Latest: United CEO defends employees in plane incident Some reports point out that Oza confirmed he drank two beers before heading to the airport, and he might have been inebriated. SFist writes that in his since-deleted public post, Oza says "when the cops got there they said I was drunk when I only had 2 beers before getting to the airport with my colleagues from work." The airline did not confirm the reason Oza's ticket was canceled, and it also did not comment as to what happened before Oza began filming. The incident comes after a tumultuous couple months for United Airlines. In early April, the airline came under fire for forcibly removing a passenger from a flight, injuring him in the process. Again, just last week, another passenger headed to Paris who does not speak English boarded the incorrect flight and landed in San Francisco. Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira. It will be a busy graduation day in Helena Saturday, with both Carroll College and Helena College holding their 2017 commencement ceremonies. Carroll College Carroll College will hold its commencement ceremony on Saturday with 268 students graduating. Alumni from the classes of 1957 and 1967 will also be honored. Associate Professor of Engineering, Mr. Gary Fischer, will provide remarks during the ceremony. Mr. Fischer was the recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Teaching Award. The class of 2017 senior speaker will be Chase Farrell of Spokane, Washington. Farrell, who is graduating with a major in business administration, was elected by his fellow classmates to speak on their behalf. In addition, the college will be honoring the achievements of faculty and students with the Outstanding Teaching Award, Distinguished Scholar Award, Bishop Gilmore Memorial Award for Outstanding Scholarship, and the Michael Murphy Award for Outstanding Collegiate Citizenship. At 10 a.m. baccalaureate Mass with be held at the Cathedral of St. Helena. Due to limited seating in the Cathedral, admission to the service is by ticket only. Doors to the Cathedral open at 8:30 a.m. The commencement ceremony is at 2 p.m. Due to fire code regulations at the Carroll PE Center, guest tickets will be required for the 2017 commencement ceremony. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to select suitable seats. Doors to the PE Center open at 12:30 p.m. The commencement will be streamed live at http://www.carroll.edu/graduation. Helena College On Saturday 228 graduates will receive their certificates and degrees from Helena College University of Montana. Of these graduates, 123 have achieved honors status with cumulative grade point averages of 3.5 or higher and 10 will graduate with high honors having maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA. The ceremony will also recognize graduates receiving their high school diploma from the Access to Success program. This years commencement ceremony speaker is Sarah Calhoun, the owner of Red Ants Pants, the executive director of the Red Ants Pants Foundation and the producer of the Red Ants Pants Music Festival. She has nearly two decades of leadership experience in both the nonprofit and small business sectors, working in the outdoor education industry before founding Red Ants Pants in 2006. In 2012, Calhoun was named the National Women in Business Champion for the Small Business Administration. In 2011, President Obama invited her to attend a White House forum on jobs and economic development after serving as a U.S. Delegate to the APEC Women in Business Summit in San Francisco. Closer to home, she was honored when Governor Schweitzer named her the 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of Montana. The commencement ceremony will take place in the Exhibition Hall at the Lewis & Clark County Fairgrounds in Helena at 11 a.m. A reception for graduates and their families & friends will immediately follow the ceremony. Jodi Smith and her three children will move into their new home in East Helena this weekend after a team of volunteers from Habitat for Humanity helped renovate it. Smiths house is the 33rd home Helena Habitat has dedicated since 1992. Home owners and their families are required to put in a collective 250 hours toward their home, another home or time in the ReStore -- an improvement store and donation center. Smiths mortgage will be subsidized according to her income to keep it affordable, but not without the responsibility that comes with owning a home. Smith said something was always wrong with her familys rental, and the constant transition left her feeling insecure. At some point youre just ready to stop, she said. She had first heard about Habitat from her mom, who worked on a home in Colorado. When she was looking for a way to find permanent housing, she said something reminded her of Habitat, and called it fate. After putting in time and using tools she wasnt familiar with, Smith said she overcame a fear after taking her first swing to demolish a wall. You might need someone else to show you how to do something, she said. But you dont need someone else to do it for you. Having a permanent place to live is linked to food security, better health of a family overall and better performance in school, Jacob Kuntz, executive director of Habitat for Humanity, said. Kuntz said 72 percent of low-income families in Helena are spending more than 50 percent of their income on housing, which often forces them to make decisions that threaten the stability of their family, such as going without meals. To combat housing insecurity, Habitat builds homes with the help of volunteers that are modest and safe. All that insecurity that came before, Kuntz said. That stops now. The funds to renovate Smiths home came from Helena resident Mary Munger, as a donation around Christmas. At the dedication ceremony, Munger, 93, presented Smith with the keys to her new home, and talked about her own childhood. Her father died when she was 12, leaving her mom to raise four kids. But her mom and dad had built the house they lived in when they came to Montana in 1915, and Mungers family always had it to rely on. It gave us a real sense of security to say we had a home, Munger said. Munger also donated money to fund a second renovation for another single mother of three. Her home is expected to be dedicated in July. Smith has already volunteered to renovate that home, and said she plans to continue working with Habitat. They are hoping to dedicate five homes in 2018. President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey, sweeping away the man who is responsible for the bureau's investigation into whether members of his campaign team colluded with Russia in its interference in last year's election. The bombshell announcement that sent shocks and surprise ricocheting through Washington ends the career of the man who was once seen as the unimpeachable and nonpartisan ideal of how a law enforcement officer should behave. But Comey saw his reputation tarnished when he was dragged into the toxic politics of the 2016 campaign. In recent days, he again came under fire for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Many Democrats believe that his announcement that he was re-opening the probe 11 days before the election cost the former secretary of state the presidency. The White House said that Comey was fired based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions has recused himself from the Russia investigation since he was a member of Trump's campaign team. In a signed letter, Trump informed Comey that he was "hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately," explaining that he reached the conclusion that Comey is "not able to effectively lead the bureau." "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," Trump told Comey in the letter. "I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors." In a separate letter, rich in irony, Rosenstein laid out the reasons for Comey's firing, arguing that it was his transgressions over the Clinton email investigation that were the cause of his dismissal. At the center of Rosenstein's rationale for recommending Comey's firing was the director's handling of the investigation into Clinton's private server, namely his decision to recommend no charges be filed and the news conference he held to explain his reasoning. Rosenstein accused Comey of attempting to "usurp the attorney general's authority" by publicly announcing why he felt the case should be closed without prosecution. "Compounding the error, the director ignored another longstanding principle: We do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation," Rosenstein argued in his memo. "We should reject the departure and return to the traditions (of the bureau)," Rosenstein said. "The way the director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them." CNN's Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin, however, was not buying the idea that Comey was sacked over the Clinton investigation, saying it was "absurd." Toobin branded the move a "grotesque abuse of power by the President of the United States." "This is the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies," Toobin said, referring to the fact that Comey was dismissed while leading an investigation that "reaches near" the President. "We do not fire FBI directors when they are closing in on the White House." "This is not something that is within the American political tradition," Toobin said, comparing the sacking of Comey to President Richard Nixon's firing of special prospector Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal. "This is not normal. This is not politics as usual," Toobin said though added that Trump did have the legal authority to fire an FBI director. Former officials of the Clinton campaign, accused Trump of using the furor over Comey's handling of the email server as a ruse to get out from under the Russia investigation. "I was as frustrated, concerned and disappointed as anyone with Director Comey's handling of the email investigation, but President Trump just fired the man investigating how Russia meddled in our election and whether members of his campaign were involved, an investigation President Trump called "charade" only 24 hours ago," said Clinton's former campaign manager Robby Mook. "It's equally concerning that our attorney general, who lied about his own meetings with the Russians, approved Director Comey's firing," he said. One Trump loyalist, who worked on the campaign and the transition gave his reaction to CNN's Jim Scuitto. "I firmly believe the Russia angle is fake news. But this gives me pause," the person said. Senior Justice and FBI officials say they were unaware of the Comey decision until the announcement. Officials who spoke to CNN said they are shocked by the development. Comey's term was due to run until 2023. The decade-long tenure was introduced to shield FBI directors from being drawn into politics. The firing of Comey sent shockwaves through Capitol Hill. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is leading one of four investigations into Russia's interference in the election, said he supported Trump's decision. "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well," Graham said in a statement Tuesday. "I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests." But Democrats, like Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey blasted the move. "This is Nixonian. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein must immediately appoint a special counsel to continue the Trump/Russia investigation," he said. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said shortly before 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday that Comey was "notified a short time ago," but declined to say how Comey was told. Comey's dismissal took effect immediately. The White House said it will immediately launch the search for a new FBI director. Comey was appointed FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013. In so doing, he elevated a Republican law enforcement veteran who had been critical of the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush to the top domestic investigative and surveillance organization, among the most powerful posts in the world. In the decades since former FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, the controversial director who brought FBI into the modern era, law enforcement has avoided the appearance of influencing politics the way Hoover did. But Comey's decision to thrust himself repeatedly into the 2016 election, put him at odds with the FBI's general decision to stay away from the political spotlight. Comey made the decision in July to go public with his recommendation that the Justice Department not pursue any charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or her former staffers over her email practices as secretary of state. However, he also took the opportunity to rebuke Clinton at length as being "extremely careless" with sensitive information. Then-candidate Trump had talked up the investigation until this point, at which time he and his campaign derided Comey for the "political" decision. Just days away from the election, Comey jumped into the race again. He informed Congress, via letter, that the FBI had re-opened its investigation into Clinton. The decision was made because of its investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is married to Clinton confidant Huma Abedin. Comey followed up days later with another letter, informing Congress that the FBI didn't find anything and continued to believe Clinton's practices did not merit the pursuance of any criminal charges. After Clinton's loss, former President Bill Clinton blamed Comey for it, as have many Clinton staffers, at least in part. After taking office, Trump met with Comey at the White House. He offered a cryptic remark to the FBI chief. "Oh, here's Jim," Trump said in January. "He's become more famous than me." BUTTE Officials have put to rest an undocumented Facebook report about a gun incident at Butte High School following an investigation by administrators and the school resource officer. Superintendent Judy Jonart on Tuesday characterized the posting as false. The report has since been removed from the public group Facebook page. Last Thursday, someone who hasnt been identified -- posted word of a supposed gun incident at the high school. Jonart said administrators and SRO Kyle Barsness investigated the allegation and found nothing to substantiate the claim. There was never a threat, said Jonart on Tuesday. They checked it out, talked to students and followed regular procedure. The district took action after receiving calls from parents who either saw the post or heard through the grapevine, she added. On Friday morning after the investigation, the district sent mass text notices to parents via the automated Shout Out texting program, alerting them that all was safe, Jonart said. The text to parents read: "This is an important message from Butte High School Administration: Despite the unfounded rumors there is no threat at Butte High School and there never has been a threat at Butte High School. Thank you." Principal John Metz and Associate Principal Brenda Floreen handled the matter, said Jonart. I dont know how it got started, but it was misinformation (posted) on social media and texting,'' Jonart said. Backeberg says Bissett had been camping and fishing in the area with family and friends when a severe thunderstorm caught them off guard. She was reportedly running back to camp when a tree broke, striking her on the head. She died on the way to the hospital. MISSOULA Madeline Connelly, a 23-year-old woman who had been missing for a week in northwest Montana's Great Bear Wilderness, was found safe Wednesday. Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said a Glacier National Park trail crew found Connelly around 11 a.m. in the Spruce Creek drainage, around five miles from the trailhead where she'd left her car. The sheriff was conducting a training exercise with Two Bear Airs helicopter at the time, along with Michael Goguen, who funds all of Two Bear Airs operations. The helicopter flew to the site and airlifted Connelly to West Glacier, where she was treated and released by a medical team before being reunited with her family. Curry said Connelly didnt have anything with her, and had been without food since she got lost. She was not carrying a water bottle, but drank from a creek. "All I had was overalls, a sweater with a hood, a T-shirt, my dog's leash, my dog and my car keys," Connelly said told KTMF-TV Wednesday. "I feel like an idiot, honestly, because it was just a huge mistake that it ended up being seven days in kind of treacherous weather conditions." Connelly said when she realized she was lost she figured she was on the loop of a trail and if she continued walking she would get back to where she had been. "And then I ended up at a lake and I was like, well, this is not right," she said. Her rescuers estimated she hiked about 10 miles each day. She said she and her dog rested for two days and slept under trees. Her dog, Mogi, was also found alive, and walked out with the trail crew, Curry said. The search for Connelly who lives in Arizona and was in Montana visiting family started Saturday The Flathead County Sheriff's Office, Two Bear Air, Glacier National Park rangers, U.S. Forest Service personnel and members of both the North Valley and Flathead search and rescue teams, Curry said, thanking everyone who participated. It was a huge group effort. We had a ton of people searching for her, the sheriff said. Connelly said she had no idea people were searching for her. "I just kind of wanted to say thank you to everyone that put in all of this effort in helping me," she said, sounding hoarse. Connelly's mother called her daughter's rescue the best Mother's Day gift ever. She also thanked those who searched for her daughter and prayed for her safe return. Connelly's uncle Dan Fioravanti told the Missoulian he got a call from Madeline's mother Laura on Wednesday with the news. Fioravanti, who now lives in Illinois but was a resident of Whitefish and East Glacier for years and said hes an experienced mountaineer, said he was shocked when he heard his niece was alive. We were all hoping and at the same time knew the odds, he said. The Associated Press contributed to this story. GREAT FALLS A Montana woman has been charged with her boyfriend's stabbing death in Great Falls. The Great Falls Tribune reports 38-year-old Linda Roseann Christianson was charged Tuesday with deliberate homicide and tampering with evidence in the March 5 death of 41-year-old Steven Fletcher. His body was found on a couch at his residence. Christianson initially reported Fletcher's death as a suicide, but court records say investigators found evidence that the knife used to stab him was placed in his hand after he died. Prosecutors say Christianson ran to a neighbor's house to call 911 and that neighbor reported she said, "oh my God, I killed him," then later said "he killed himself." Investigators say they learned Fletcher planned to end his relationship with Christianson. She did not enter a plea during her initial appearance. This article originally appeared on KCRA.com The bald eagle is one of the most well-known symbols of U.S. history -- embodying freedom and the American dream. And for a Sacramento-area photojournalist, that dream has been fully realized during her yearlong journey capturing the beauty of these majestic creatures. Susan Maxwell Skinner, an immigrant from New Zealand who recently became a naturalized American citizen, discovered the bald eagles along the American River Bike Trail near Folsom more than a year ago and has watched the family grow over the last several months. Skinner spoke with KCRA chief photographer Mike Rhinehart about her yearlong experience capturing nature's beauty. How did you come upon the bald eagles? Skinner: I have a passion for photographing wildlife anyway, and when somebody said they had seen bald eagles on the American River so close to our suburbs, I knew I wanted to get a picture. And I would have been happy with one picture, but it took me some months to find them, and eventually I found them near Folsom. And they put on quite a nice show for me. I just had to keep coming back and coming back, and before I realized, a year had passed and I had been photographing them nearly every day. I had developed such a close affinity and a love for them. I just felt that this was the project of a lifetime for a middle-aged immigrant to be photographing America's national bird as a passion. As the nest was being built, what did you see? Skinner: As the days passed, the nest grew larger. They worked on it all through late summer, fall, winter, and when they worked, I worked. I've got pictures of them building the nest -- they start with the outer lumber. They're big birds, so they can break off quite heavy chunks of dead wood and bring it in, and they fly it in from all over the river, and eventually they get to the point when they start lining it with pine needles, with moss, with lichen. It gives it a soft interior, not just to cushion the eggs, but to make the mother comfortable. So I watched this progress, and in February, she sat down on her nest in a very serious way, and we knew at that point that the eggs were in the nest. How long was it until you saw the baby bald eagles? Skinner: She sat for probably 30 days or 32 days. We figure that this being California, the incubation period was probably between 30 and 35 days, and then they started bringing fish in on a regular basis, and we knew that she was feeding; she was eating for two or maybe three. It took quite a few weeks until I got my first baby shot, and the absolute delightful irony of the situation was on the very day I was naturalized as an American, I came back from my naturalization ceremony, and I came out to the river, and I'm darned if the mother didn't show me her baby. What a thrill! What a thrill on the day you were naturalized to see America's most beautiful icon presenting to you her young. Well, that's what it felt like. It just made a great day perfect. What did that do to your heart and your inspiration? Skinner: I felt like I'd been given a very great gift, not only my American citizenship, but I think I was probably the first person to take a picture of the mother and her baby. That was the most amazing serendipity of that day. I'd been accepted as an American citizen, and I came out to work on the river and America's most splendid icon showed me her baby that day. And the funny thing is, I was still wearing my red, white and blue ribbon from the ceremony on my jacket, and I wear it all the time now. It reminds me that I was given such a rich blessing. Did it just snowball into an affection and a love for these birds? Skinner: It became a real passion, a real opus. I think the artist in me saw something really graphic and beautiful about the fabulous appearance of those birds. It's like a lion's mane, that white pompadour, and when the sunlight catches it, it glows -- it glows like a beacon. It's just every symbol of America, not just America, but the assurance of that species and all it's been through. It was near extinction. The fact that it's persevering on and it's bringing new generations into this river where it's never nested before, it embodies the American spirit. It is not put down. It never loses sight of the dream. What have you found so special about photographing this family of birds? Skinner: We think of these raptors as fierce and angry beasts, but they're just like any mother in the world. They love their babies. Bald eagle parents are fabulous parents. They always think of their babies first. Bald eagles, like many birds, have to go through that ugly duckling phase before they become as beautiful as their parents. But to a mother and to me, they're beautiful at any stage. What do these new babies mean for the species of the bald eagle in California? Skinner: For a species that faced extinction 40 years ago, they are making a huge comeback. At one point there were only 50 breeding couples left in the entire state of California, which is a scary prognosis for the future of the species. So they banned DDT, and they put in all sorts of other protections and ways that the nesting couples could be protected. And as Americans do, they bounced back -- can't hold a good bird down. Why did you want to become an American citizen? Skinner: I'm a New Zealander. I grew up in an equally beautiful country, but I've been here 30 years. I'm happily married to an American. It seemed to me it was time to become an American citizen. And the year that I have spent following these birds has certainly increased my patriotism. I'm aware of American iconry every day I work with these beautiful birds. It makes you proud -- it makes you proud to be an American whether you're an American or not. This article originally appeared on KCRA.com Nearly 14 years after the last flight of the Concorde, Supersonic air travel is back in fashion. The Virgin-backed Boom project, aims to get passengers from London to New York in 3.5 hours and they want to ensure you enjoy every minute of the ride. This sleek jet would cruise at Mach 2.2 (or 1,451 miles per hour), 10 percent faster than the Concorde and about 2.6 times faster than other commercial jets that airlines fly today. The proposed cabin is plush, with a 1-1 configuration each passenger would get direct aisle access, a nice view from a large window and a personal overhead bin for carry-on luggage. The seats are similar to short-haul first-class seats and more luxurious than long-haul premium economy. The company also promises a smoother flight than any commercial planes today, avoiding turbulence by cruising as high as 60,000 feet: Our goal is to provide a tranquil and stress-free experience from the moment you step aboard, whether you want to work, play, or relax, Boom says on its website. For Boom flights over 6 hours (to destinations which might take more than 15 hours of flying today), the company says airlines could install lay-flat suites. The company believes Boom is the right size to ensure airlines fill all the seats onboard and still make money. The Boom has room for 45 passengers to stretch out, while still ensuring the economics make sense for airlines. The cabin of the Concorde 'Speedbird' didn't leave a lot of room to stretch. It was laid out in 2-2 seat configuration with 40 passengers in the front cabin and the 60 in the rear cabin. There were 38 inches of legroom, only a little more than what you'd find on a Premium Economy cabin on a slow-jet today. The 6.5 by 4.5 inch windows offered a more limited view of the skies than the views Boom promises, and there were no roomy overhead bins. Even hand luggage was stowed in the Concorde's belly. Passengers often expressed surprise that the interior was so constrained, said Jennifer Coutts Clay, who worked on the British Airways Concorde program and serves on the Concorde Advisory Committee at New York's Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. But at 60,000 feet, flying at Mach 2, passengers could see the glorious colours of the 'edge-of-space' horizon and the curvature of the Earth. It provided unforgettable experiences. The economics of Concorde were also bad because it was a futuristic aircraft built with the materials available decades ago. As Blake Scholl, chief executive officer and founder of Boom explained in a press release, Concordes designers didnt have the technology for affordable supersonic travel. New composite fuselages and high-temperature material systems, which would make Boom faster, lighter and safer, were only recently approved by the FAA commercial planes. Considering the luxury of some of today's long-haul flights, one might ask whether we need faster planes. But Supersonic flight appeals to the imagination and airline industry designers have come up with a variety of ways to make Mach 2+ travel delightful. Boom is optimistic about airlines loving the plane and they're already pursuing clients in the Middle East. The Boom airliner will be a core part of the intercontinental airline fleet, said Mike Boyd, Boyd Group International. Travelers are hungry for faster flights and airlines will be excited for a differentiated and profitable option for their premium travelers. Aerospace visionary Richard Branson is excited about the Boom project enough to put his money behind it: I have long been passionate about aerospace innovation and the development of high-speed commercial flights. As an innovator in the space, Virgin Galactics decision to work with Boom was an easy one," he said during the unveiling of Boom's XB-1 demonstrator. And he's not the only one eager for faster flights. NASA is working on a QueSST 'quiet supersonic' plane which would emit a soft thump 'heartbeat' instead of a big BOOM when breaking the sound barrier. And U.S. and Australian military scientists are working on a hypersonic 'scramjet' which could hit Mach 7.5, fast enough to get from London to Sydney in two hours. But for now, that's a concept more than a reality. Boom's focus on making supersonic travel practical and affordable both for airlines and passengers could get Boom off the ground. Boom says airlines could charge fares matching today's business class. For VIPs with a reasonably generous travel budget who have better things to do with their time than sit on a plane for 16 hours, this would be a great way to fly. For those with more money to burn, the Boom jet will also be available to order as a bespoke, ultra-VIP private jet. This article originally appeared on TravelandLeisure.com: "This is what it will be like to fly in the next supersonic jet" VATICAN CITY When Pope Francis travels to the Portuguese town of Fatima this weekend, he will be lending his blessing to a religious phenomenon that has captivated Catholics for a century: It involves visions of the Virgin Mary, supernatural meteorological events and apocalyptic prophesies of hell, Soviet communism and the death of a pope. For doubters, the Fatima story is a trumped-up tale built around hallucinations. For believers, Fatimas message of peace, prayer and conversion from sin is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago, when three illiterate shepherd children first reported seeing visions of the Madonna. The pope will canonize two of those children on Saturday and is likely to make his own Fatima message of peace and conversion as a weapon against secularism and the persecution of Christians today. The three shepherd children, siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lucia aged between 7 and 10 at the time, said the Virgin Mary appeared to them six times in 1917 and confided to them three secrets. The first two described an apocalyptic image of hell, foretold the end of World War I and the start of World War II, and the rise and fall of Soviet communism. In 2000, the Vatican disclosed the long-awaited third secret, describing it as foretelling the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt against St. John Paul II in St. Peters Square. John Paul credited the Virgin Mary with saving his life. One of the bullets fired at him rests in the crown of the statue of the Virgin at the shrine. Pope Francis arrives on Friday afternoon and will meet privately with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. After a spin in his popemobile at Fatima, hell pray at the chapel dedicated to the apparitions and send a greeting out to the crowd, which is expected to number up to 1 million people. On Saturday, Francis meets with Prime Minister Antonio Costa and visits the basilica built on the site where the children reported the first apparition. Hell celebrate the canonization Mass in the main square, lunch with his bishops, and return to Rome in the evening. Nicole Winfield and Barry Hatton are Associated Press writers. KABARTO CAMP, Iraq They made the captive children, weak from hunger, fight over a single tomato. Then the Islamic State militants told them that in paradise they could eat to their hearts delight, but they could only get there by blowing themselves up. The lesson was part of the indoctrination inflicted by the militants on boys from Iraqs Yazidi religious minority after the extremist group overran the communitys towns and villages in northern Iraq. The group forced hundreds of boys, some as young as 7 or 8, into training to become fighters and suicide bombers, infusing them with its murderous ideology. Now boys who escaped captivity are living in camps for the displaced along with what is left of their families. Even here Im still very afraid, said 17-year-old Ahmed Ameen Koro, who spoke to a reporter in the sprawling Esyan Camp in northern Iraq, where he now lives with his mother, sister and a brother, the only surviving members of his family. I cant sleep properly because I see them in my dreams. The militants stormed into the Yazidi heartland in the summer of 2014, killing tens of thousands of people and kidnapping thousands of women and girls to be used as sex slaves. The Yazidi minoritys ancient faith is considered heretical by the Islamic extremists. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces drove Islamic State out of Sinjar in November 2015, but few Yazidis have returned, and an estimated 3,500 remain in Islamic State captivity in Iraq and Syria, according to Human Rights Watch. Ahmed was among about 200 Yazidi boys sent to a two-month training camp in the Islamic State-held town of Tal Afar. They studied the Quran and the militants hard-line interpretation of Islam, and learned to shoot assault rifles and pistols. They watched videos on how to use a suicide belt, throw a grenade, or behead a person. Akram Rasho Khalaf was only 7 when his town was overrun by the militants. Eventually, he was brought to Raqqa, Syria, the Islamic States self-declared capital. There the militants would throw balls at the childrens heads. If anyone cried, he was beaten. Those who didnt cry were praised, and told they would one day be suicide bombers. Asked about his dreams for the future, Ahmed answers immediately. When I grow up, I will take my revenge against those infidels. Yesica Fisch and Maya Alleruzzo are Associated Press writers. 1 Sinai attack: Islamic extremists in Egypts restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula ambushed local tribesmen who were securing an area in the region on Wednesday, killing 10, security officials said. The men were from the Tarabin tribe and were manning a checkpoint south of the border town of Rafah when the militants approached them in a vehicle and opened fire, said the officials. Sinais powerful tribes have stayed on the sidelines of the battle between Egyptian authorities and a growing insurgency led by the Islamic State that has been raging in the northern Sinai in recent years. However, an open conflict between the tribesmen and the militants emerged in recent weeks. 2 West African forces: West African nations are preparing to deploy a military force to counter a surge in ambushes and bombings by Islamist militants that more than 15,000 international troops have failed to contain. Militants are targeting not only U.N. peacekeepers in Mali but increasingly carrying out assaults across its borders. Thats prompted five nations in the arid region south of the Sahara desert known as the G5 Sahel to agree to assemble a 4,000-member force by the end of the year. Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania will also contribute soldiers. They had to have told you about us, someone piped up at Ross Shaver.The project manager for Pilot Flying J appeared to take the comment in stride. It wasn't his first community meeting, but the audience of neighbors to his proposed project had a self confidence born of similar experience protesting development. Its interesting you picked up on that, Santa Fe planning consultant Jim Siebert tells SFR about his client. Because I did tell them.Siebert and Shaver spent the evening pitching a new travel centera truck stop before someone figured out a more gentle nameto those who cared to listen. And while 60 or so people gathered at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center Tuesday night did care to listen, not many were buying the pitch.Its gonna bring traffic like you wouldnt believe. Its gonna bring noise like you wouldnt believe, retired parole officer Joe Glen told the crowd when he got a chance to speak. He recently left Arizona, where there was a similar travel center along Interstate 10. I didnt move to Rancho Viejo to undergo this.This proposed Flying J would be a full-on travel center at the southwest corner of Highway 14 and I-25, just off the new diverging diamond interchange that feeds Cerrillos Road to the north. The development would become part of the largest diesel fuel retailer in North America, and the largest owner-operator of fast food franchises in the country.The location of a proposed Pilot Flying J travel center Plans call for the Pilot Flying J station to feature a Wendys, a Dunkin Donuts and an in-house restaurant, along with a drivers lounge, showers, fuel stations for trucks and cars and 70 parking spaces for what Shaver promised would be a 24/7/365 operation. The fuel giant is under contract to buy a 10-acre piece of land, provided Santa Fe County signs off on a conditional use permit. Siebert tells SFR that Pilot Flying J will complete traffic, environmental, fiscal and water studies before handing in its application at the end of May. Along with noise and traffic, several people worried about the air that would waft eastward toward their homes from the truck stop. Shaver promised the travel center would abide by local pollution rules, but said he didn't plan on paying for an air quality study that wasn't required. "I walk out to the smell of coffee and pancakes in the morning," one woman told him. "Well, hopefully you'll smell Wendy's and Dunkin' Donuts soon," Shaver offered. He received jeers in return. Pilot Flying J doesn't own the land yet. Currently, the title is held by Rancho Viejo Partnership, which also developed much of the community that brought angry residents out to complain on short notice. Because the county only requires developers to notify people who own land within 500 feet of the property, many homeowners in Rancho Viejo and the Turquoise Trail subdivision at the corner of highways 14 and 599 heard about the meeting through word of mouth or online. Thats how Megan Velasquez ended up at the Chavez Center. A social worker, she bought her home in Turquoise Trail 10 years ago and now lives there with her husband. You have to understand, youre in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she told Shaver. There are a lot of educated people here who care about where they live. She won a smattering of applause. As the evening wore on, though, Velasquez had heard enough. This, to me, is designed to disempower residents as much as possible, she says to SFR outside the meeting. This is a little show they put on. As Velasquez continued, a disgusted Stephen Linam walked past. This is bullshit, Linam said, stopping a few feet away to offer his thoughts. This is the biggest bunch of not-in-my-backyard bullshit. Tell me you never get gas or go to a Pilot. He accepted a business card from SFR and walked off. He phoned half an hour later. Not in my backyard is part of human DNA. I understand that. But I think in the universe of businesses that might attempt something on that piece of property, they actually seem to be a good corporation, Linam tells SFR. I was intemperate when I spoke as I was walking out. I was frustrated. Of course Id rather have a kitten petting zoo there or something like that. But I dont think thats going to happen. Linam works part-time as a consultant. He and his retired wife moved to Rancho Viejo from Austin, Texas, three and a half years ago. He doesnt buy the argument that his property value will tank if theres a truck stop a couple miles down the road, but he admits the project will make daily drives less pleasant. Sure. Traffic is going to be worse and Id rather not have more of it, he says. But I will trade more traffic for somebody down the street getting a job they didnt have. For her part, Velasquez says, Ive been to a Pilot. I patronize them when I travel. Of course I like the idea of jobsgood, safe jobs. But it sounds like these jobs are in fast food; theres not a lot of upward mobility. Im not against Pilot. But why here? Why not outside our community? Like Velasquez and like Linam, most of the people who showed up didnt look pleased when they left. Many promised a loud voice at public hearings. Siebert, the planning consultant, says there will be at least twoin front of a hearing officer probably by the end of July, and before the county Planning Commission, which could happen by the end of September if everything goes according to plan. Tuesday evening, it seemed, there were a few dozen people determined to make sure it wouldnt. Santa Fe Reporter Zespri Groups expansion into China is continuing at pace, after the country last year overtook Japan as its biggest retail market, though the company is battling against counterfeiting and theft from local growers who want a slice of its market. Lewis Pan, the fruit marketer's China country manager, says Zespri is focusing on brand recognition to shore up its dominance in the market. China delivered almost $300 million in revenue in the 2016 financial year, a 60 percent lift on a year earlier, and accounting for 16 percent of Zespris total $1.91 billion of revenue that China is the biggest producer of kiwifruit in the world, growing nearly 1.3 million tonnes in 2014/2015, about triple that of New Zealand, with all that fruit sold domestically. Zespri is still trialling growing the fruit in China, so it imports kiwifruit from Italy and France as well as New Zealand to ensure its brand is on supermarket shelves year-round. The company sells into about 50 of Chinas 500 cities, more than double the number of cities it was in three years ago. Fourteen of those cities are what the company refers to as media-supported cities - places where it focuses on marketing and advertising. Within large 'Tier One' Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, English literacy is fairly high and the brand has good recognition, but its having to work harder to connect to Chinese consumers who dont speak English. Zespri has also begun marketing itself using a local name, Jia Pei, which sounds similar to the Chinese word for double, and its slogan here translates to 'double the good life'. Were now probably at the stage that we need to go deeper, Pan said. Our resources are only enough to support those cities, and we are not going to do more until weve done everything we can in those top 14 cities we are strategically supporting. The flip-side of the brands success is domestic counterfeiting - a problem faced by other large multinationals in China like Coca-Cola and Lays. Local kiwifruit sellers use fake Zespri stickers, their own name with the companys large Z logo, or inaccurate references to the fruit being sourced from New Zealand, in attempts to mislead consumers. For the past eight months, Zespri has doubled its efforts to fight against this kind of counterfeiting, Pan said. In China, once you have a well-known fruit with a premium image, people start to imitate it, he said. These people are selling in the wholesale market, sometimes we can see them and we follow up with them. In one of the cases, it will maybe even lead to a prosecution of some people producing fake labels. Weve ramped up those actions in the last eight months to protect our brand. Last month, the company became aware that there had been some theft of its plants by growers in China, where it suspects the sale of a licence from one jurisdiction to another was in breach of Zespri's licensing rules. The issue is still under police investigation, Pan said. The understanding is there could be some people in China who have been receiving the G3 plant material and illegally growing it, and there is a dedicated team working on the case and trying to find out more information and how to contain the situation, he said. We have to manage the best ways we can and mitigate that risk where possible to our New Zealand brand interests. (Sophie Boot is on an exchange at the Shanghai Daily News, with support from Asia New Zealand Foundation) (BusinessDesk) Science and Innovation Minister Paul Goldsmith announced the government is beefing up its support for Callaghan Innovations research and development growth grants to meet growing demand. Goldsmith announced an additional $74.6 million in funding through the Innovative New Zealand programme in Budget 2017 and the additional funding means a total of $657.2 million is now available over four years through the Growth Grants programme, he said at a presentation at ASX-listed Volpara Health Technologies, a Wellington-based company that develops digital health solutions for breast cancer screening. "The government is continuing to make a major investment in support of business R&D in New Zealand," he said. "What we are trying to achieve is to help New Zealand businesses be more competitive internationally," he said. The end goal is to encourage businesses to invest more in R&D to ensure greater resilience and diversity, he said. Recent data from Statistics New Zealand showed that total R&D as a proportion of gross domestic product increased to 1.3 percent in 2016, up from 1.2 percent in 2014. While New Zealand lags the OECD average - which is 2.4 percent - Goldsmith downplayed any suggestion the government isn't doing enough. "The government has been very active in this space and we have consistently raised our investment in R&D and it sends a signal that over the next few years businesses can have the confidence to invest. We are not going to chop and change. There is a long-term commitment to support R&D," he said. Regarding whether the government is using the entire budget allocation for the growth grants he said businesses have to apply for them so it's a demand-led system of funding "but we have seen very high demand for those grants and that's why we are increasing our investment," he said. Volpara chief executive Ralph Highnam said that Callaghan is a key reason why the company opted to set up shop in Wellington. "It's our engineering and R&D hub," he said. Among other things, the company's software for analysing mammograms measures breast density, a key indicator in early breast cancer detection. The software is now being used in 35 countries and Highnam said Callaghan was instrumental in moving the company from onsite software onto cloud-based software, which is now reaping a commercial benefit. Callaghan funding - through career grants - enabled them to have access to PhD students, who were subsequently hired, he said. Highnam said the government's increase is "reasonable" and overall the funding is good for companies like Volpara that "continually invest in R&D and seek to outperform and out-compete companies around the world." While he said the US is the company's biggest market, it is also focused on Asia, with research in China currently underway. "Breast cancer is becoming endemic across Asia right now and they are desperate to work out what to do about that," he said. The company's shares last traded at 33 Australian cents, down 2.9 percent. (BusinessDesk receives assistance from Callaghan Innovation to cover the commercialisation of innovation) (BusinessDesk) DECATUR The Rev. Mark Gearig's first mission trip was to Haiti, where electricity comes and goes and summers are tropical. I remember having nights where the electricity went out and the fan stopped and you wake up in the middle of the night in a pool of sweat, Gearig said. It's just realizing the things you take for granted. Fans and electricity are not as critical as basic food and shelter, he said, which is why that experience made him realize that the things he took for granted, and the comforts of American life, are in such stark contrast to the poverty he saw all around him. It's those sights that motivate many churches and their members to volunteer their time, talent and treasure to programs that help make another corner of the world a little better. Two such programs are the Central American Lutheran Mission Society (CALMS) and Fivefold International. Gearig is an associate pastor at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, which is sending a team to Guatemala Sept. 23 to 30. The church has sent mission teams to that country through CALMS for six years. It began when Laura Mueller, former worship minister at the church, went on a leadership mission trip with CALMS and came back fired up to start mission trips with St. Paul's members. Dr. Steve Hughey, is the executive director of CALMS, and his wife, Grace, are friends of hers. It was not very hard (to convince then-senior pastor Wray Offermann and then-associate pastor Rob Mrosko), said Mueller, who is an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University now. I had to go to them and ask permission for the leadership trip, and I had been wanting to do this before that. The first trips were to Juarez, Mexico, and Offermann went along on one of those to help build a house for a poor family, she said. But Juarez is a dangerous area, and volunteers were nervous about going there, so the church became interested in Guatemala. CALMS serves the entire Central America area. It's usually one of the first things that's an emotional hurdle to get over, Mueller said. When you first go, it's the poverty that you've seen in pictures, you see face to face, and it gives a whole different perspective, not only on what you have, but how they're able to have peace and contentment and happy lives existing, and existing happily, with much less than what we have. The houses the teams build in Gualan, Guatemala, are small by American standards. As one teenage boy said to Mueller, they're about the size of his bedroom at home, yet those houses are home to several family members. St. Paul's additionally buys and constructs efficient wood-burning indoor stoves for cooking, so families aren't using open fires indoors. In the last couple of years, has also provided bunk beds to increase living space and keep the Guatemalan families from having to sleep on the hard floor. The September trip will be Gloria Greene's sixth such mission. It's just being able to preach the word of God to people who may not have ever heard it, and to be blessed in the little things, from the kids at (vacation Bible school) or making crafts, by seeing the people when their houses are being built, she said. To just see their expressions when we're working, and they see this new home, which to us would be nothing special. It just blesses me to see that. "We have so much and they have so little, but they are so appreciative of everything they have, and we're so spoiled with everything we have. The program works something like Habitat for Humanity, said Lori Newhouse, director of mission advancement for CALMS. Gualan is the country's biggest city, and a neighborhood named Los Limones has been set aside for poor families in substandard housing. The government sets aside plots of land for those families, who apply to the program, and the local group decides which family is next to receive a home. The land and the home are given to them for a fraction of the actual cost, and the family makes payments. Professional contractors are hired by CALMS to do the majority of the work, while the American mission teams assist with the final push to finish. Most homes are made of concrete blocks, while some are composition, half concrete block and half wood. Mission trips are usually a week long, and those who go have to use their vacation time and their own money to do it, though churches usually help with fundraising. Sometimes it's a sacrifice people are hesitant to make, Mueller said. Ryan Clark of Macon isn't hesitant to make that sacrifice. He's not part of the St. Paul's group but is planning to go on a mission trip with Fivefold International to Guatemala in July. It will be his first such trip. I've wanted to go on one for a long time, Clark said. This just came up, and I knew the people that were going and their mission, and I thought it was as good a time as any. Clark is employed full time in the heating/air-conditioning business but does carpentry and woodworking on the side. He'll be using his vacation time for the mission trip and is raising money through a GoFundMe account and through help from his church, Elwin United Methodist. One of the things the church is helping with is a quilt raffle. The quilt was made by member Jeanette Pickrel. I make quilts all the time, Pickrel said. I have a few people who help me and we give them to shut-ins or people who are terminally ill and we give a couple for fundraising things at the church. Pickrel was glad to help Clark with his fundraising because she believes what he's doing is important, she said, and since she's not able to go on such a mission trip herself, she decided contributing a quilt to raffle was the best way she could help. St. Paul's Pastor Gearig said that as eye-opening as it is to see the differences in lifestyle and the poverty the missionaries are there to help alleviate, what strikes him is the joy and the hope of the people. The faith of some of these people, and the opportunity to hear them share their faith is a big blessing, Gearig said. "It's really cool to see a different culture and see how they worship, and I love being part of those worship services: the body of Christ joined together as one, and being able to pray together in spite of our differences. CHENNAI: Students from Rajalakshmi Engineering College here emerged winners in the recently held Smart India Hackathon 2017 organised by the HRD Ministry. The students developed an innovative solution for Indian Space Research Organisation "for document tracking" within the space agency. ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar handed over the trophy and certificates to the winners and rewarded the team with a prize money of Rs one lakh, a media release from the college said. The engineering college students took part in the finals of the competition held at Ahmedabad and bagged the first place among the 50 competing finalists. A pan India 36 hour non-stop digital programming competition, the hackathon witnessed teams taking part in the event from across 33 locations in India. The competition posed "500+ problem statements" to technology students from all over India. Another team of students from the same institution developed a project titled 'A security device for women' and it finished as one of the top six teams among 56 other finalists in the same event. Read Also: IIT-B Researcher Working On CO2 Emissions Gets INSA Medal Atos Named Leader In Cloud Infrastructure Migration And Management NEW DELHI: Secretary of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTy) Aruna Sundararajan has said that India is one of the most promising growth markets in the world. "India is amongst the most promising growth markets in the world, and this makes it an attractive destination for all," Sundararajan was quoted as saying at the Annual West Coast Summit of the US-India Business Council (USIBC) in California on Monday. Besides, Sundararajan spoke about the 'Digital India' and the 'Make in India' flagship initiatives of the central government. The IT secretary was awarded the 'Transformative Leadership Award' by the USIBC on Monday for her excellence in public service and for championing the US-India trade ties. Sundararajan is leading a delegation to the US to meet IT companies. Read Also: Atos Named Leader In Cloud Infrastructure Migration And Management MobiKwik Partners Bhopal Smart City Initiative For Payments NEW DELHI: A US congressional delegation led by top Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi will be briefed by American and Indian business leaders here tomorrow on the ways to strengthen the commercial relationship between the two countries. The US-India Business Council (USIBC) will host a reception in honour of the bipartisan congressional team from the US House of Representatives here. Pelosi has been critical of some of the policies of the Trump Administration in the past. Trump last month signed an executive order for tightening the rules of the H-1B visa programme to stop its "abuse" and ensure the visas are given to the "most-skilled or highest paid" petitioners, a decision that is seen to impact India's USD 150 billion IT industry. "The fact that leader Pelosi is taking a bipartisan delegation to India underscores the importance of the US-India bilateral relationship," a statement issued by the USIBC said. "The delegation will be briefed by the US and Indian business leaders on the opportunities for strengthening the commercial relationship between the countries." Pelosi had earlier served as the Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011 and is the first woman to serve in that role. She is the highest-ranking female politician in the American history. "We are pleased that leader Pelosi is taking time out of her busy schedule to meet with business leaders who have made large investments in India and are committed to growing the economy there," USIBC President Mukesh Aghi said. Read Also: Trump Picks Indian-American Neil For Key Federal Energy Agency U.S. Official Calls For Enhanced Commercial Ties With India Source: PTI STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Before Gilberto Suero allegedly placed his hands on the inner thighs of a 12-year-old patient, the licensed therapist told the girl, "you are so beautiful," according to court records. The girls were clients of Seamans Society Child Welfare Organization on Staten Island. Suero was referred to the clients by Seamens. Seamen CEO Dart Westphal said Tuesday that Suero is part of an ongoing investigation, but declined to comment further. The organization is funded by the city's Administration for Children's Services. ACS released the following statement: "We are deeply disturbed by these allegations, and are working with the NYPD to support this investigation. We are also working closely with our contract provider to identify and ensure the safety of any child with whom this individual may have been in contact." Three girls, ages 8, 10 and 13 were listed in the complaint against Suero. The most recent incident occurred April 6 inside his primary office at 1227 Richmond Road, when he allegedly touched a then-12-year-old patient near her crotch after telling her she was beautiful, police said. Two weeks later, Suero kissed the patient on her nose and grabbed her buttocks, according to the criminal complaint. Two other girls shared similar stories with detectives. In December, Suero allegedly placed a then-9-year-old girl on his lap during an evening therapy session, police said. Suero slid his hand under her shirt and grabbed her breast area, then, grabbed her buttocks and kissed her on the cheek, according to court records. On the same night, he allegedly performed the same routine on a then-7-year-old girl, police said. Suero is being held on Rikers Island on charges that include first-degree sexual abuse, second-degree sexual abuse and forcible touching. A neighbor told reporters over the weekend Suero had children of his own, according to a Daily News report. Neighbors also said there used to be a sign posted outside of the home that read, "Psychotherapy: Let your healing begin." STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Joseph Paul Delaney, an active leader and volunteer with several community service, faith based, and voluntary organizations on Staten Island and New York City for the past 40 years, has been named the new Chairman of the Board of Catholic Charities of Staten Island. Delaney was approved as Chairman, replacing the retiring Chair, Gerry McEnerney, at the Board's April 27 meeting, held on the MIV Catholic Charities Campus. A member of the Board for the past seven years, Delaney was initially appointed to the Board by then Archbishop Timothy Dolan in May 2010. "My work with Catholic Charities over many years, has always been a way of putting the beliefs of my Catholic fauth into action," said Delaney. "I can think of no better way to follow the teachings of Jesus, than to be involved in the mission of Catholic Charities in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, providing shelter for the homeless and seeing Christ in the people we meet and serve. "I am honored and humbled to be The Chairman of The Board of such a wonderful organization serving our Staten Island Community." A retired director with the firm of Deloitte LLP, Delaney was employed for 40 years before retiring in January 2010 as a Managing Director. During his distinguished career with Deloitte LLP, Delaney was cited on several occasions for his outstanding volunteer community service in representing the firm in the New York City market place. In 2002 and 2003, Delaney was honored by Deloitte as their most outstanding Community Service Volunteer in the United States. In February 2007, he was awarded the prestigious DAVOS award by the Deloitte Global Organization to recognize his volunteer service in the Staten Island and New York City communities. A member of the Board of Directors for the Bernikow Jewish Community Center of Staten Island and Project Hospitality, Delaney served on the board at the University of Notre Dame Alumni Club as President from 1996 to 2006. Under Delaney's leadership as President, the Staten Island Club twice received from the University of Notre Dame, The Charles F. Lennon Award (1999 & 2005) as the most outstanding Notre Dame Alumni Club in America. Since 1997 Delaney has directed the Notre Dame Club's Annual Bread of Life Food Drive. Now in its 26th year, the Bread of Life has collected and donated over 1,100,000 items of food to 25 not-for-profit organizations on Staten Island and Brooklyn. These organizations serve the hungry and people in need. Delaney lives in Pleasant Plains with Nancy, his wife of 45 years. They have two children: Tracey and Joseph, and two grandchildren.They are parishioners of St. Joseph-St. Thomas Parish, where Delaney had coordinated the Adult Religious Education Program for the past eight years. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- NYPD "Cop of the Month" honorees George Aguilar and Stephen D'Amico of the 122nd Precinct aren't chilling after putting the freeze on an armed suspect in the Berry Houses in Dongan Hills. When his tour of duty ends, Aguilar's real job begins as a father of an infant son and toddler daughter. D'Amico, a neighborhood coordination officer at the Berry Houses, is living the dream as the first cop in his family. "Being at home with two under age 2 is very, very difficult," Aguilar said of his parenting with wife Sandra of Marcos, 4 months, and Alandra, 1 1/2. "I find it a little bit easier at work, but I'm proud to be both a father and a New York City police officer." Aguilar has nothing but praise for the New Dorp precinct that he has protected for more than a dozen years. "I consider it my second home," Aguilar said, adding, "I love serving the community of the 122 and Staten Island." A 12-year veteran of the force, Aguilar has made 97 arrests and received one commendation and one Excellent Police Duty award. He previously was named "Finest of the Finest" and "Cop of the Year" and "Cop of the Month. Aguilar attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "I love what I do," said D'Amico, a member of "The Finest" for about five years. "It's been my dream job. "I'm the first police officer in my family and I'm hoping to have many more follow me." Food and friendship are sustenance for D'Amico both on and off duty. "The best part about working on Staten Island is you get to help people that you know and grew up around as well as the amazing food that the 122 has to offer around it," D'Amico said. A member of the force for five years, D'Amico joined the 122 in May 2014 after being assigned to the 7lst Precinct in Brooklyn. He is credited with 79 arrests and was awarded "Cop of the Month" in June 2015. He earned a bachelor's degree from Baruch College. Aguilar and D'Amico were among six NYPD officers honored with "Cop of the Month" awards at a ceremony last Thursday hosted by the NYPD's Patrol Borough Staten Island and the Staten Island Advance. D'Amico and Aguilar were assigned to the Berry Houses on the afternoon of Feb. 13 when they received an email from the 122nd Precinct Detective Squad with information about a suspect, Troy McGlaughlin, sought on criminal possession of a weapon charges. The officers then searched the stairs of a Berry building at 30 Dongan Hills Ave. At about 8:30 p.m., they found McGlaughlin on the roof landing above the sixth floor. While attempting to take the suspect into custody, McGlaughlin escaped to an apartment on the sixth floor and locked the door behind him, police said. When the suspect wouldn't come out, the Emergency Service Unit responded and officers made their way into the apartment. McGlaughlin was found hiding inside a freezer, cops said. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- District Attorney Michael E. McMahon will host a "parent night" at Curtis High School in St. George on Wednesday night. During the event, McMahon will share information on how to keep children safe in school, in public, and on the Internet. Parents will also learn more information about the D.A.'s efforts battling the heroin and opioid epidemic, domestic violence, gangs and street violence. Parents will have the opportunity to share their concerns with McMahon. Those who wish to attend need to RSVP with community liaison Jenny Fischman by leaving a message at 718-876-5734 or by emailing jenny.fischman@rcda.nyc.gov. The event will take place from 6 to 7 p.m. at the library of the school, located at 105 Hamilton Ave. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - We realize that President Donald Trump is still relatively new to all this governmental stuff. There's still some on-the-job training going on. After all, he's been at the White House for just 111 days. So let us make a suggestion: If you're the president of the United States and the FBI is conducting an investigation that touches on the White House, you don't fire the head of the FBI. Even if you think the investigation is bull, you just don't do it. Simple, right? But that's just what Trump has done. He fired FBI Director James Comey, a move that predictably and wrongly has Democrats screaming about Richard Nixon and the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" of the Watergate era. Hey, every lawmaker and media member wants their own Watergate, right? Everybody wants to be involved in a story that big. So we understand all the sturm und drang, the rending of garments, particularly against this president. The knives have been out since before day one. But Trump's biggest mistake is that he too often seems bound and determined to give his opponents the fight that they want. And on their turf. How else to explain the positively horrific optics of firing Comey when the FBI is conducting an investigation of possible collusion between Trump's people and the Russians during the 2016 presidential election? Trump may just as well have "Go ahead, impeach me," tattooed on his forehead. And are we supposed to accept with a straight face that Trump canned Comey because Comey screwed up the Hillary Clinton email investigation? Quite a turnaround after Trump sang Comey's praises over it on his way to the White House. Well, things can go sour fast in a relationship. Whatever the reason, Trump had to know that many at first blush would assume that Comey was fired because Russia investigation was getting too close for Trump's comfort. That it would put blood in the water. Maybe Trump just doesn't care. We know all too well that he doesn't mind being a maverick on things. Not that the Democrats get a free pass here. They've been calling for Comey's head for months now, ever since Comey "cost Hillary the election." Now that they've gotten their pound of flesh, we all of a sudden have a constitutional crisis on our hands? We need to start holding hearings and minting special prosecutors? We're in full crisis mode? Please. And let's talk about this Russia stuff for a second. We still haven't seen any proof that the Kremlin colluded with Trump's people during the election. The CIA briefed Senate lawmakers on the topic last week. Afterward, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN that she had no evidence of collusion. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) said much the same thing on "Face the Nation." Former director of national intelligence James Clapper also offered no evidence in recent sworn testimony. So, is there fire under all the smoke? We don't know. But while Trump was quick to write in Comey's termination letter that Comey wasn't investigating Trump in particular, that doesn't guarantee that there's nothing to see here. That's why we have investigations. And once started, you have to see them through to the end. You don't fire the top cop in mid-stream. But all that being said, you would have thought that the Dems would have come up with something concrete after all these months. All we've seen is a lot of bluster and innuendo. And while it's easy to compare Trump to Nixon, the comparison doesn't hold water. When Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, the president and his top aides were at the center of a criminal investigation involving the Watergate burglary. There was a tussle over evidence, Nixon's White House tapes. This is not that. And not that Comey did himself a lot of favors either, particularly after his explosive testimony last week about Hillary aide Huma Abedin's forwarding of "hundreds of thousands" of classified emails to hubby Anthony Weiner had to be significantly walked back. Meanwhile, we need a new FBI director. Wonder if Trump has rung up Rudy Giuliani yet? Or maybe Chris Christie? Brian Allan '17 is the 201617 student blogger in the Office of Communications and Marketing. A double major in English and Spanish with a minor in media and film studies, he has provided a unique student insight into life at Skidmore. A few nights ago, while walking to the library for what I realized was going to be one of the last times, my friend Cheyenne and I were struck by a near-simultaneous feeling of strangeness. It was a warm night, and the leaves on the trees had begun to sprout, and the pathway was wet from a brief rain earlier on in the day. The library appeared as a surreal vision of light in the dewy mist. I turned to Cheyenne and told her it was weird that we were set to graduate in some two weeks, that our four years of college were about to run out, like the hourglass of some childhood board game. She reciprocated my feelings, and added that though it was four years, she could still envision in her mind the moments that made up her freshman year, the first nerve-wracking days on the Skidmore campus. Like her, I could picture my first days at Skidmore: the overcast morning drive, cooped up with my siblings in the family car, and then unloading my things. My parents worried that I was forgetting somethingan extension cord, maybe?and I insisted that it was fine, that I could take the bus to Target and all would be okay. I longed for them to leave and longed for them to stay; they were, at once, my anxiety and my calm. Later that day, I didnt look when the family car backed out of the parking space outside my freshman residence hall and disappeared from campus, because all I could allow myself to feel in that moment was excitement for what was to come. I jettisoned everything elselingering stress, worries about making friends and getting along with roommates, feelings of displacementfrom my mind. I squelched the occasional thought that maybe some freak situation would arise in which the only thing that could come to my aid was an extension cord. And that burgeoning sense of excitement, as it turned out, was warranted. Skidmore gradually became one of the best decisions I have ever made, for a lot of different reasons. I made friends, some of whom Im still exceptionally close with four years later, and some of whom I simply smile at when we pass on our separate routes to class or spot each other downtown. I took classes on subjects I wouldnt have engaged with before: among those, a creative writing course that inspired me to pursue what has become the foundation of my undergraduate career in fiction-writing. Ive had the privilege of learning under some of the most inspiring professors and people, in the English and Spanish departments and outside of them. I made stupid decisions, and then smart ones. I pushed myself to be independent. I challenged myself to be more politically active, to try to understand the unique plights of others. I befriended people who impelled me to be a better person myselfwho inspired me, and who continue to do so. It was this Skidmorethe students, the professors, the classes, the hard winters and the enlivening springs, the long nights spent studying, the long nights spent talking and laughingthat allowed me to be myself, whatever that was freshman year, and whatever that is now. I am grateful beyond words. And this is what had made that moment with Cheyenne on the pathway to the library so strange, the same feeling that had made my first day so strange: we were happy and sad at the same timewe knew that our time in college was coming to an end, that come next fall we would be in different cities, doing different things. We would talk to one another primarily over the phone, in text-messages sent in spare moments. But we also knew that these quick four years had shaped us into better people than we were when we got here, had allowed us something timeless and invaluable. And now I feel that same excitement that I did on that first day, but this time I dont need to jettison anything, because I know that good and bad things will come, but that Skidmore at least has been something unequivocally good. BLUFF CITY A Brownstown man was killed in a single-vehicle crash at 7:43 p.m. Tuesday in Fayette County, the Illinois State Police said. Kenneth W. Eckhardt, 69, was driving east on County Road 1750N a half mile east of County Road 1250E near Bluff City when his car left the roadway, possibly due to a medical condition, police said. The car went into a ditch and struck a utility pole. Police said Eckhardt was taken to Fayette County Hospital in Vandalia by ambulance where he succumbed to his injuries. 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 President Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday prompted U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to renew his call for an independent investigation into Russias influence on the 2016 elections. Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, accused Comey of losing the publics trust and said it was the presidents call to dismiss him. That was sampling of the reaction Tuesday to the firing of Comey, who only two months ago publicly acknowledged that the FBI was investigating Russias influence on the 2016 election, including possible links to the Trump campaign. Democrats have been calling for an independent inquiry, which Durbin echoed after news of the dismissal. He said Comeys firing raises the critical question of who will continue the investigation. Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues, Durbin said in a statement. Under these circumstances, I renew my call for an independent counsel and a special commission to fully investigate the Russian interference. Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee that exercises oversight of the FBI, did not mention the inquiry into Russias actions in his own statement. He said Comeys decisions "on controversial matters have prompted concern from across the political spectrum and from career law enforcement experts. The effectiveness of the FBI depends upon the public trust and confidence, Grassley said. "Unfortunately, this has clearly been lost." Democrats and Republicans complained about Comeys handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server last year. Republicans also have been seeking to find the source of leaks to the news media that have angered the Trump White House. Only a week ago, Grassley called on the Justice Department to exercise close supervision over FBI investigations into matters that have political overtones. The Iowa Republican didnt outright praise Comey's dismissal, but he said, "the FBI director serves at the pleasure of the president. System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: